Sgt. Angle Reporting for Duty!

It’s the holiday season, but I’m not going to dwell on “holiday movies” just yet — there’s a lacking in the Kwanzaa film department anyway, so there’s not even enough to please everyone.

That being said, I wanted to tackle a minor importance in the movie world — the movie viewing world, that is: The Etiquette — or lack thereof.

It’s called movie etiquette, folks. I know I’m going to go off on a bit of a rant here, so I’ll try to keep it civil — especially with the kids in the other room. When we are at the movies, enjoying the visual, aural, community experience, there are some rules you must adhere to in your quest to enjoy your snacks. I use the word “must” lightly. These are not laws, but guidelines. They are not merely guidelines to semi-follow, but they are regulations that will give you the best out of the entire filmgoing experience. Why does this matter? “It’s just a movie,” blah blah blah. Well, it’s also at least $10 that you’ve shelled out to sit in a chair for two plus hours, and everyone around you has paid the same toll for the experience. Get used to the fact that most everything you do will have an effect on someone else in this universe.

1) First off, the snacks. The plastic bags which never seem to open, the straws that only seem to suck the end of the beverage very loudly when the main character on screen is having a good cry. Or the soupy cheesy nacho sauce that ends up on the back of your neck when the chick behind you just can’t squeeze through her aisle.

2) Candy bags. Open them BEFORE the movie. I don’t need the crunching plastic noise in my ear while Harry Potter and Hermione discuss a key plot point before the movie kicks into high gear.  Also, despite your attempts to be more stealth that James Bond at a baccarat game, the quieter you try to make the opening of the bag, the more noise you make. Treat your pea-nutty goober gummies like a band-aid and rip that sucker open in one clean swoop.

3) Beverages. If you can’t find the hole for the straw to enter the lid, remove the lid and take a sip. Your whispered cusses and use of your phone’s light to find a simple plastic hole in a lid do nothing but make me want to punch a pillow with your face underneath it.

4) Anything hot. Good luck with that hot dog that’s been rotating since ten AM. This is a movie theater, not a dinner buffet. Keep your expensive Chinese take out at home or in the fridge, and stick to the snack foods. If you’re that hungry that you need to eat an entire meal in the two hours it takes this movie to finish, then maybe you should spend your $12.50 on a burger and half-salad rather than a ticket to a movie you’re rather not pay attention to.

OTHER ETIQUETTE

5) The Walk Out. I have never walked out of a movie. Ever. I have seen some terrible movies, some bad movies, and several movies in the theater more than once. But I’ve never walked out. If you are so inclined to leave the theater, as well as the cost of admission, then do so quietly. I don’t care how much “this movie sucks” or that you’d “rather be sleeping”, just get out of the theater and leave me be. It’s unfortunate that you have the attention span of a pea, but I don’t need to hear about it.

6) The Phone. Some theaters have toyed with the idea of employing a device that would cut off all cell service to prevent distractions. But this may lead to emergency situations becoming dangerous, so I don’t think it’ll happen. If you get a text or a call during a movie, or have a sudden urge to Tweet about your oncoming diarrhea, then you better have night vision goggles because that light is a distraction not only to my viewing of the movie but also to your ability to listen. Turn off all cell phones, prevent distracting other viewers from their experience. That’s right, there are other people here besides you. Get used to it. You’re not an island.

7) Chatterbox. This is not only the name of a cafe in Lake Wobegon, it is a name for a subset of rude and pretentious moviegoers who have no respect for, again, the attention span of other people. You know, the community around you. Shut up once those lights go down. If you’re not following the movie, give it a chance. If you still have a question at the end, ask a neighbor. If you’ve figured out what he’s about to do with that gun, keep it to yourself. You don’t need to show off to the person sitting next to you that you’ve solved the mystery we’ve all paid $14 to see (yeah, I think the ticket prices have risen that much since I started writing this piece). If I shush you, and you just laugh back at me, than I will shush you for real with my knuckle-sandwich (the cold one). This ain’t an Elizabethan Age theatre crowd, this is a movie.

Late arrival. If you walk into a theater and the movie has already started (I’m not talking previews, I’m talking actual feature presentation) then turn right the hell around and leave, get your money back. Nine times out of ten you’ll end up sitting next to me, or in front of me, and then ask me what you’ve missed. I’m not going to tell you what you’ve missed, you know why? Because if you didn’t have the foresight to get there on time, you’re not going to have the superhuman ability to understand what I’m talking about without having seen it for yourself. Get out of my show.

9) Kicker. Stop kicking the back of my seat, or any other seat in front of you. Again, this is because you have no idea that there are other people around you. That’s right, every time your toe “accidentally” hits the seat in front of you, it’s like a damn earthquake. I’m not going to talk to you about every kick, but take care to know that you are not alone, that I will find you in a crowded theater, even with the lights off, and demonstrate with my own foot you what you’ve done.

You are dismissed — after the credits roll!

Sgt. Angle

Heya, folks. Welcome back to another Book Report.

Today I want to talk about something Semantink has been doing for quite some time now. Since around February, they’ve hosted a Comic Savvy on the third Sunday of each month. What’s a Comic Savvy? Well savvy can mean either practical understanding or experienced and well-informed. It’s a corruption of the Spanish word sabe which means “(you) know”. So a comic savvy might be a gathering of experienced and well-informed comic readers and collectors chatting and helping non-experienced and poorly informed comic readers gain a practical understanding. Savvy all around!

I admit my knowledge and experience in comic books is severely limited. I’m a fairly fast reader, and growing up, I got way more satisfaction sitting down and plowing through the 1,000+ pages of The Lord of the Rings than I did positively burning through the 20ish or so pages of a monthly mag. The stories were good (most of the time) and the art was really good (most of the time), but I was used to blasting through hundreds of epic pages in a matter of days. An epic comic only took me a couple minutes, and then I’d have to wait a whole month and hope the next issue would be just as epic? Thank god for the graphic novel format!

Why am I telling you this? I only bring it up so you can realize that I’m not particularly savvy in comic books, but I enjoy the hell out of the Comic Savvy Meetups! There are gentlemen there who’ve been collecting comics for decades, know the ins and outs of not just stories, but author and artist runs as well. To be honest, that level of devotion, and, well, nerdom is hugely refreshing (I use nerdom here with the highest complimentary tone).
I wonder how much people realize the extent of comic’s influence over us on a daily basis. Yeah, there’s the superhero movies, but even more than that. Comics get made into movies or expanded into books, but it happens the other way just as often. Popular novels, Shakespeare, even the Bible have all gotten comic book treatment. The original Aliens and Predator movies spawned some sci-fi comics, and led to a brilliant comic mash-up in the late 80s of Alien versus Predator. The brilliant comic run led to an alien skull being placed on the predator ship in the mediocre Predator 2 movie, several popular video games, and ultimately the two disappointingly craptastic Alien vs. Predator films. Movies inspire comics inspire movies…not bad, eh? Comics pervade every aspect of pop culture, whether it’s in the graphic novel companions to some albums (like Coheed & Cambria) or the only way we’ll ever see new episodes of Firefly.

So if you’re thinking that these Comic Savvies are only for the most hardcore of comic readers and collectors, you’re wrong. There have been discussions where I’ve felt out of my depth, sure, but that’s not any different than any other time I’m with a group. Other times I feel perfectly able to add my input to a conversation.
Another worry I know a few people have had is that Semantink is somehow using these meetups to push their product and steer conversation into directions that feature themselves. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Semantink occasionally mention themselves, but only the way any representative of a production company might mention themselves in the course of a conversation: to provide an example. They would certainly encourage anyone to check out their properties, but let me be clear: This isn’t like an Avon meeting or Tupperware party. The point is not bring Semantink business, it’s to tighten a sense of community around readers, viewers, and listeners.
What these Savvies ultimately provide is a chance to grab some coffee and chat, more or less intelligently, about pop culture and the way the graphic novel format influences (and is influenced by) it. And trust me, these meetings are absolutely a blast!

The Sunday Comic Savvy Meetups happen at Milano Coffee Company on the third Sunday of every month. Semantink also added a Weekday Savvy at The Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf on the first Thursday of every month. Perhaps the only downside is these Savvies happen down in San Diego, but it should be seen as great advertising that I’m willing to drive down from Long Beach to attend these, if only irregularly.
But if you live in San Diego, or don’t mind the drive down to spend a day there, you should definitely try to work at least one of these into your schedule.

Happy Thanksgiving, folks! Until next time,
Still paddlin’ the old knew…
_-Akatzen-_

Sgt. Angle Reporting for Duty!

127 Hours — Five out of Five Rifles.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 — Three out of Five Rifles (a whole rifle cracked for the fact that this tale was split in two)

Due Date — Two Rifles and an unloaded Rifle out of Five fully loaded rifles.

Unstoppable — Stop it.

But beyond those movies, we have something else to talk about this week. It will be brief, because this person is still up-and-coming in the film world. But she’s worth discussing because she’s made an impression with each of her roles thus far. Malin Akerman.

I won’t go into a hard bio of Malin, suffice it to say that she was born in Swedan and her mother was a model. Look at her photo, and tell me that I didn’t need to tell you that bit of information.

After a few years of modeling and some commercial work, Malin appeared in The Brothers Soloman and The Showbiz Show with David Spade as a correspondant. She then garnered a co-starring role in The Heartbreak Kid and appeared alongside freakshow Katherine Heigl in 27 Dresses.

Somewhere in there she apparently already hit the Low Country in a film called Heavy Petting. Check out the poster and figure out how many ways to tell me this movie looks terrible, just going by the poster alone.

Watchmen came and showed us that Akerman respected genre pieces and fans as much as her own career. I’ve heard tell, through hearsay, that she enjoyed the movie and the fact that the fans enjoyed it, even though it didn’t haul a lot of cash. Again, this is a hearsay paraphrased quote, possibly overheard during a breakfast by an unseen wallflower.

Akerman starred as Silk Spectre II in Watchmen, fulfilling many a young man’s fantasy in a sex scene while wearing her costumed hero boots.

She also fulfilled no one’s fantasy by appearing in Couples Retreat and The Proposal. Because these films were successes at the box office, Malin Akerman is well on her way to becoming a household name.

In her down time, she met her husband, Roberto Zincone, when she sang lead for the band The Petalstones.

Akerman has a slew of pictures coming up with big names — Catch .44 with Bruce Willis (a thriller/crime drama), The Bang Bang Club with Ryan Phillippe (a drama set in South Africa), and Wanderlust with Jennifer Aniston and Paul Rudd (a comedy from David Wain). Malin is also a co-star in Elektra Luxx, a comedy about a pornstar who gets pregnant.

Recently, it was announced that Malin has been offered the role of Linda Lovelace in the docu-drama Inferno, based on Lovelace’s autobiography. Lindsay Lohan was supposed to play the role, but it’s easier to ensure a one-eyed tiger than Lohan these days. After Luxx, Inferno will represent Malin’s second foray into the porn story universe.

She’s got an eclectic resume and is only just past thirty. Here’s hoping Malin Akerman remains only in The High Country.

You are on leave.

Sgt. Angle.

It’s not going to happen but I felt that this old bit of news was relevant to both this blog and this weekend as The New Harry Potter film opens up to theaters world wide.

I have two huge loves. 1) Movies. 2) Michael Jackson. Thats why this piece of news gets me all giddy inside. Here is a bit of news from Perez Hilton and JK Rowling.

- — -

J.K. Rowling says she was approached by Michael Jackson to turn her Harry Potter novels into a stage musical.

But the author turned him down because she was convinced that the musical wouldn’t be a success.

Even though she has agreed to many merchandising deals and even a theme park, she told Oprah Winfrey that there were many things she rejected. She said:

“Michael Jackson wanted to do a musical. I said no to a lot of things. For me, I love the films, I love the books, and there’s elements that I love around it… like the theme park. But I only wanted to do it because I knew it would be incredible.”

- — -

Well, their you have it. I personally think it’s a good thing it didn’t happen but it does make me wonder what it would have looked and sounded like.

Well, at least we have Michaels new album in December to look forward too.

Until then, keep on dancing.

–Admiral Eo

G’day folks! Welcome back to another Book Report. I’m gonna try and make this short today. I’m fighting a nasty cold and pushing words through my mucous-filled brain to reach my fingers and snap out typing is taking serious effort right now. Apologies.

For a while it bugged me that Christmas deco started going up right after Halloween. And then I figured that Halloween was just the kick-off for a three-month season of sweets and sweetmeats, candy and candied yams, chocolate and champagne (ran out of steam on that last one, sorry). This season of eating is one of the reasons so many people make a New Year’s Resolution to lose weight. So what I thought I’d do is recommend a couple of cookbooks to help make the most of your eating time.

Betty Crocker Cookbook

One of the things about this cookbook that I love is that it contains over 1,000 recipes, most of them fairly simple. It also contains helpful advice on making the recipes healthier. The instructions are clear and easy to follow. But the thing I love most about this cookbook is that it provides the basic building blocks from which you can create truly great meals. It’s incredibly easy to take a simple recipe, experiment the hell out of it, and come up with results that please the taste buds.

Simple Suppers

Weeknight cooking is the worst. You’ve been working all day, and the last thing you want to do is stand in a kitchen at the end of the day and prepare a meal. Especially when there’s fast food just down the street. The problem is that you really want to eat healthier, and/or it’s cheaper to eat home-cooked meals.
What this cookbook does is offer plenty of recipes that you can almost literally throw together with very little effort involved. The simple recipes are delicious on their own, but a little experimentation can provide truly wonderful results.

Cook With Jamie

Jamie Oliver gained a lot of recognition this past year with his television show Food Revolution, where he tried to inspire the town rated unhealthiest to change the way they eat and think about food. In 2002 he started the Fifteen Foundation, a charitable organization that takes 15 troubled youths every year and helps them gain confidence and self-reliance by teaching them to become chefs.
This cookbook is a wonderful tool to help you create absolutely fantastic tasting (and looking) dinners without breaking your budget or driving you mad in the kitchen trying to pull off something you lack the cooking skill to do.

So if you’re looking to do some cooking this holiday season then here’s three great suggestions for ya.

And just in case you missed it, Mythoi #3 came out yesterday. And by came out I mean released and not that it admitted to being gay. And by released I mean available to purchase and not that it got out of jail. Unless you consider the mind of James Ninness a prison. Which some do.

Until next time,
Still paddlin’ the old knew…
_-Akatzen-_

Sgt. Angle Reporting for Duty!

Two weeks ago, I dove deep into a discussion of the mockumentary genre in film, and how filmmakers will test the intelligence and loyalty of the audience by providing a false sense of reality as if it were truly real. To further the discussion of how film can toy with an audience’s attention span, let us this week explore a sub-genre of the mockumentary: the Found Footage Film.

(There is a movie that is considered the start of this genre, Cannibal Holocaust. I have not seen it, but from all descriptions it is disgusting and involved actual killing of animals. I choose not to discuss it here.)

Unlike Forgotten Silver — the great Peter Jackson movie we discussed last time — which is ABOUT the found footage, an actual discovered footage movie serves the purpose of embedding the viewer “in the moment” that the footage takes place. Perhaps one of the most famous movies that kicked off this phenomenon was the unexpected (and sometimes inexplicable) successful Blair Witch Project, about a few kids who set off to explore the legend of a terror in the woods, and find themselves the victims (or something like that. My memory of this film is that it was an unsuccessful, disturbing, incomplete mission of storytelling, so I’m not going to bother reading the synopsis again).

Blair Witch was misunderstood by some as to be “real” footage, because the actors mostly improvised, and their reactions were often real because the directors took it upon themselves to withhold information from time to time about when the “terror” would strike next, and how. Because the reactions and the screaming are real, perhaps that is why audiences were disturbed as much as they were — or maybe it was the unsteady handywork of the handheld cameras, the dizziness that ensued, and the snot dripping from the girl’s nose.

Drip. Drip.

Whatever the case, Blair Witch raked in over $140 million domestically, on a budget of $60,000, so began the long and tested relationship moviegoers still have with “being duped.” Below is a short list of other “found footage” movies, some better than others, and one that pushes the genre even further by showing us “documentary” footage of aliens.

That movie is, of course, probably the best of the bunch: District 9.

Taking the world by storm in 2009, District 9 follows an alternate version of South Africa where aliens have been stranded and placed into a restricted zone for the last twenty years. As authorities try to herd the aliens to a new location, one human becomes entangled in their culture in an interesting way. The documentary style is chopped up halfway through with “normal” movie storytelling, mixing fiction with “reality”, nevertheless being entirely fictional. Talking heads, typical of many documentaries, offer the film a true sense of realism that drives home the story’s character and emotional arcs poignantly.

Another found footage alien movie that is perhaps more mainstream is Cloverfield, which covers a monster/alien attack seen through the eyes of three desperate New Yorkers trying to save a young lady friend while being sure to stop and take a picture of the angry alien every chance they get. The problems with the conceit of the film — besides silly and unlikeable characters who make awful decisions — are two fold: 1) No camera’s battery would last that long. 2) Drop the damn camera and worry about surviving. Enough said, soldier.

Former CHUD columnist Devin Faraci pointed out that horror is the owner of the found-footage genre, what with recent flicks Paranormal Activity, Rec 2, and The Fourth Kind messing with audiences’ acceptance of what is real and what is fake. Faraci also makes an interesting point, that the very concept of “found footage” is not unique to film alone. Books and stories, dating back to the 19th Century (Dracula, anyone?) would be presented as discovered letters and diary entries of actual people, such that we must be reading something true, if it’s all in a letter written between two people. Perhaps Akatzen can contribute in an upcoming “Book Report” on the “discovered letters” concept in books, how it came to be, and thus adds to the shaping of the conceit in the film world?

The director of Paranormal Activity is continuing his foray into the “discovered footage” world with the film Area 51, which is about three teenagers’ horrifying adventure into the top-secret facility.

The alien world will also be explored with the Timur Bekmambetov / Weinstein’s collaboration Apollo 18. The concept of the movie is based on a conspiracy theory revolving around the “cancelled” Apollo 19 and 20 space missions. “Legend” has it that these missions actual DID happen, that they were joint US/Soviet missions, and they were executed to explore wreckage of a space craft photographed by Apollo 18. The exploration allegedly led to the discovery of a female alien. See the odd video below.

The Found Footage genre isn’t going anywhere any time soon, and will most likely get bigger in the next year or two — found footage of a superhero or villain, perhaps, or of vampires and werewolves lurking behind coffee shop counters. Wherever the concept takes us will only more sharply define the role that films — fact or fiction — have in the overall “duped” culture of Americans.

In the next installment of Trickery! Tomfoolery! we’ll look at docu-dramas and biopics — how a fictionalized version of the truth is more often than not mistaken for the truth. Thanks to Oliver Stone and the like.

Until next time: You are DISMISSED!

Sgt. Angle

Ok, so I don’t know a single soul who doesn’t LOVE the goonies film. It’s a classic. Apparently with the release of the 25th Anniversary DVD/BluRay, the powers that be announced they were working on a Goonies Musical for Broadway! Amazing idea right? Here is the interview with Richard Donnor:

“Hopefully we’re doing this as a musical on Broadway. It took forever to get on Broadway. It was a long, long process but it just got a lot shorter because there’s a great writer/producer (Tim Long) who does musicals on ‘The Simpsons’ which are classic. He just delivered a treatment on ‘Goonies’ as a musical and it’s friggin’ great.” — Richard Donnor

Not much but it’s something. I’m in. This is something I need to see!

Until then, keep dancing!

Admiral Eo