Not for the Faint of Heart: Quickies, Liars, and the Hilariously Cruel

You may have noticed that a lot of my mini movie reviews are called "quickies." Unfortunately as a teenager who spends most of her time reading Internet forums, I am exposed to terminologies such as that.

Don't know what a "quickie" is? Let Urban Dictionary define it for you, here.

I forgot about that, so naming my mini reviews that was unintentional. I think it was an unconscious thing. Like the girl in the video I'll be getting to in a second, I internalized that term sometime ago and it all just came out one day. Curse you, Toy Story 3 and my subsequent non-review! (jay kay love you baby)

And now the video I am getting to in a second. I love reading about random things. I think I just wrote an essay about that recently for some college. It was a terrible essay. But that aside, reading about random things = check plus.

I have different obsessions that I go through. A couple of years ago I was obsessed with author scandals, like the whole James Frey-exaggeration-Oprah deal, as well as the outcry against Jonathan Franzen after spurning Oprah's approval of (his absolutely amazing) The Corrections. The one that I always thought was most pathetic was the story of How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life by 19-year-old (at the time) Kaavya Viswanathan (spelled that right on my second try, whoo!).

Kaavya V. was the victim of a high pressure Indian household who was convinced that she must attend Harvard for her life to have any meaning. So she did the requisite extracurricular activities and extreme studying; eventually, she got in. Thankfully, unlike many children born from these kinds of stifling environments, she liked to read and was a decent-enough writer. (Apparently she wrote an extremely long novel about Irish history in high school? I mean, wow.)

So Kaavya got a book deal and got to Harvard. She released the young adult sounding Opal Mehta, which personally sounds extremely generic and frivolous to me (it's practically an autobiography, except starring Opal and not Kaavya, and Opal did NOT get into Harvard because she was too boring), and it sold well. That is, until she was hit with accusations of plagiarism.

Here is the by now-infamous video, where Katie Couric grills Kaavya on this in a totally-not-biased-at-all way (oh, Katie, how we all wish you were still on the Today show):

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

In the end, Kaavya (who I did feel sort of bad for by the end of that clip) got her book pulled of the shelves and never wrote another word. Okay, that's an exaggeration, but her dreams of being a famous author were dashed. That's what you get for plagiarizing other generic teen girl novels, sister! And she plagiarized a lot of them, too: the Princess Diaries, some books by some Megan McCafferty woman, another book about an Indian-American girl...it's sad.

She got to stay in Harvard, though. I find that to be an ethical issue. I'm sure they have an upstanding rule about plagiarism (didn't The Social Network talk about this? Oh wait, no, that was different because their conflict was internal within Harvard. This was the case of a Harvard woman stealing from non-Harvard women, so I guess Harvard didn't care as much? Although even in the movie they didn't care!) so wouldn't it make sense for her to be reprimanded by them in some way? I guess her public humiliation was punishment enough.

Read more about the scandal here.

And now for our hilariously cruel portion: this is utterly unrelated to neither quickies nor plagiarism but it's a Roger Ebert review and he demands our constant attention!

Surely you've seen those terrible commercials for the fittingly awful-looking The Nutcracker 3D? Yeah, well, guess what? It's AWESOME! No, wait, sorry. It's not. At all. In fact, it currently has the dreaded 0% on RottenTomatoes, a badge of horribleness that not even The Room can boast to have. (The Room is probably way better though, and it's one of the worst movies I've ever seen. And I've seen Manos: The Hands of Fire! Which was worse yet. But still, okay?)

While most reviews of Nutcracker are side-splitting, Ebert's is my favorite. I read it to my sister and we both laughed mightily. (Random: anyone remember that movie Mighty Joe Young? Ugh. Awful.) Here it is, with the best parts in bold!

From what dark night of the soul emerged the wretched idea for “The Nutcracker in 3D”? Who considered it even remotely a plausible idea for a movie? It begins with an awkward approximation of the story behind the Tchaikovsky ballet, and then turns it into a war by the Nutcracker Prince against the Holocaust.
Am I exaggerating? At one point, the evil Rat King (John Turturro) has his troopers snatch toys from the hands of children so they can be tossed into furnaces, and the smoke will emerge from high chimneys to blot out the sun.

Yes. And the rats are dressed in fascistic uniforms. Against them stand our heroine Mary (Elle Fanning) and her Christmas present, a nutcracker (voice of Shirley Henderson) that has imprisoned a handsome prince (Charlie Rowe). And two-legged helicopters swoop low over screaming children, and the city is laid waste, and the rats dream of world domination.

You may be in disbelief. I was. “The Nutcracker in 3D” is one of those rare holiday movies that may send children screaming under their seats. Their parents, naively hoping to see a sweet version of “The Nutcracker,” will be appalled or angry, take your choice.

Yes, the film uses melodies that began with Tchaikovsky at one point, but now they have — are you sitting down? — lyrics by Tim Rice (“Jesus Christ Superstar,” “Evita” and “The Lion King”).
“The Nutcracker in 3D” easily qualifies as one of the most preposterous ideas in the history of the movies. It isn't a story, it's a gag line for one of David Letterman's “Top 10 Lists” (No. 9, “It's a Horrible Life”; No. 8, “A Christmas Carol in Hell”).

Andrei Konchalovsky, who wrote and directed this live-action CGI movie, says this “Nutcracker” has been a dream project for 20 years. That is tragic. Konchalovsky made the great films “Shy People” (1987) and “Runaway Train” (1985), and perhaps he became obsessed with this folly.

But what did others think? What about Nathan Lane, who plays a character not previously associated with the Nutcracker tale, Albert Einstein? Yes, Lane gets to sing a song about the Theory of Relativity, but not since he played Jacqueline Susann's adoring husband in “Isn't She Great” (2000) has a role been more thankless.

Only one thing could have made this film worse, and they haven't neglected it. That would be to present it in 3-D. They have. The movie was filmed in Hungary in 2007, and perhaps those studio execs screening it sensed a certain lack of enthusiasm. Maybe they thought that by retroactively “adapting” it to 3-D, it would play better. No luck. I've seen bad retro 3-D, but I've never seen 3-D as bad as this. The film is so dim and dingy, you almost wonder if the smoke from those burning toys is drifting between you and the screen. 

 Funny stuff. Gotta love that guy.

This post was exquisitely long. No more posts until next week, I think. My birthday's on Friday so I'm going to be busy! Wish me happy birthday in the comments?

Can you hear me now?

Lying in this bed?

Here's a song that's been stuck in my head for the last five minutes, "That Day" by Villagers.



Villagers is technically a band but the "band" aspect of it is undermined by the fact that the frontman is basically the only-man (you ever see/hear from). I don't mind, though. There are a lot of "bands" that are really just one guy.

Also, this guy (Conor J. O'Brien, is his name) is Irish. He doesn't really sound it, though. It sort of peeks in sometimes but it's not so obvious. Or is it?

Bonus: Download "That Day" by Villagers here.

Top 5 Weezer B-Sides

No one's going to care about this post but me, but then, that would sum up this entire blog, wouldn't it? Blah blah blah, whatever.

Just now I FINALLY acquired the long hold-out in my extensive(ly biased towards old school) Weezer collection, "Waiting on You," a B-side from the Pinkerton era (AKA ye olde 1996). It really was worth the wait. I like it a lot, and I'm a tough critic (ha, understatement). Rivers' voice sounds great in this one, especially during the chorus ("Mine is the loneliest of numbers/Now is the loneliest of times/You're 19 days late, but still I sit and wait) his harmonizing in the background is especially cool. The song is really sad and paints Riv as a lonely, miserable, consistently down-on-his-luck dude, but that's my favorite flavor of Rivers, so it's alright. Overall, I'm ecstatic that 1. I finally got this song and 2. it's so good!

Since Weez B-Sides are almost just as good as [good] album cuts, Imma rank 'em. Because how could we function in society without meaningless numbers arbitrarily defining which thing is better than which? We couldn't. (Oh, and like you care, but I would totally rank "Waiting on You" on my list but I wanted to give myself a chance to write about another song...sorry, WOY.)

5. "Jamie (Live Acoustic)" from the "Say It Ain't So" single

I really love Weezer acoustics. I read somewhere once that the best thing about Weezer, and today really the only good thing about them, is Rivers' voice. Thus the acoustic versions, which strip the band of their sometimes way-too-loud guitars and force them to show off their vocal talent, are always fun to listen to and sound quite nice. This is an acoustic of what was a b-side itself, actually, on the "Buddy Holly" single. The original "Jamie" is loud, generic, and even annoying; this song is, like my favorite Weezer songs, a little pathetic but still very "cute." What I like most about this song is that it seems like it's the standard W. love ballad (which I will discuss in #3) but is in actuality an ode to the band's lawyer! It makes sense when you consider that one of the lines is "You've got the Beach Boys/and your firm's got the Stones," which is completely dumb otherwise. If the band I was the lawyer for wrote me a song as nice as this one, I'd be flattered. Maybe I'd even work pro bono! Haha, no.

4. "You Gave Your Love to Me Softly" from the "El Scorcho" single

"El Scorcho" is my second-favorite song by the band, right after the B-Side that makes number 1 on my list. I guess I'm a little bit biased, then, because I automatically like most things associated with. "You Gave Your Love to Me Softly" is not particularly noteworthy until you consider that it accomplishes as much as any of the 2nd tier (lawl) songs on Pinkerton in under 2 minutes. "La la la/you sang to me" is also just a really great singalong line. The whole song is a singalong! For me, anyway. This song is such an earworm; its melody stands out more to me than any of the actual lyrics so I mostly just shout "YOU! GAVE YOUR LOVE! TO ME SOFT-LY!" and leave it at that. Enough about that: this song also has a great bassline, so props to my beloved Matt Sharp (why did you have to leave?).

 3. "Susanne" from the "Undone (The Sweater Song)" single

"Susanne" is a typical Weezer ballad - crunchy guitars underscore silly rhymes declaring that the Girl-of-the-Week did sweet things for our pathetic loser hero Rivers Cuomo ("When I met you I was all alone/Cold and hungry cryin' on the phone/You baked me brownies and said, 'Don't you cry'/And gave me the coat off your back"). This song also makes use of references to the band's influences, in this case Guns 'N Roses. "Susanne" (You're all that I wanted of a girl!) is sweet and catchy and while I'm not sure if the pairing of it and "Undone" was so well thought out, it really exudes classic =W=." (Oh, and the back-up vocals are great, especially in my absolute favorite part, the bridge: "I haven't much I can give you in return/Only my heart and a promise not to turn/But I sing to you every day and every night/Suzanne, I'm your man.")

2. "Devotion" from the "El Scorcho" single

Told you I was biased! But in all seriousness, there's a nice sincerity and empathetic quality about the flying W's 90s output, and "Devotion" really emphasizes that. "Devotion/waiting for me/you'll always be my girlfriend!" Yeah, okay, it's a little sappy and the lyrics can be stupid at times but it's sweet and I believe my pal Rivers when he tells me (or, y'know, whoever he's actually singing to) that he'll always be my friend (which seems to be less than reciprocal but I'll take it!)  This song was another recent addition to my collection and was the one I was searching the hardest for. This song is revered in the fanbase, I believe, for just how simple and good it is. I believe this was a cut from Songs from the Black Hole originally, which would make sense as to why everyone is so in love with it. For an album that was deemed unfit to see the light of day, it's excellent (both tracklists)!

1. "I Just Threw Out the Love of My Dreams" from the "The Good Life" single/EP

This is my absolute favorite Weezer song of all-time. This is quite ironic, considering how this song features lead vocals from that dog.'s Rachel Haden instead of Rivers Cuomo, whose voice I've been lauding throughout this countdown. But don't worry! I'm really not that inconsistent. One of my favorite things about this near-perfect song is when Rivers kicks in during the bridge towards the middle/end of the song, singing with Rachel. Other great things about this song: that it's written, not just sang, from a female's perspective! One of the great things about Songs from the Black Hole is that all of the songs are from the perspectives of different characters. It was a rock space opera, after all. Since most of the songs didn't get the full studio treatment like this one, on a lot of them Rivers is singing the part of Maria/Laurel, the two main female characters. However, in this song, Rachel gets to perform and we get a taste of what SFTBH would have really been like. This song has shades of Matt Sharp's later project, the Rentals, with its keyboards, and since I like the Rentals I have no qualms. "Dreams" also has some really nice lyrics ("I'm so tall/can't get over me/I'm so low/can't get under me" is my favorite by far and I think about it all the time), and it's just a charmer of a tune that stays with you. The second I first heard it I knew that it would become a favorite. And it has! The whole synth-emphasizing, different singers thing would have been an interesting direction for the band to go in (although they did take turns singing on later albums, like Red, but that album sucks) but it would have meant that we would have not had Pinkerton, and so I think I can settle for just having magnificent B-sides like this one.

Honorable mentions!: "Automatic (LA Riots Remix)," which is not technically a B-side and more like a rarity as it was just a remix of a Red album song (I think the purpose of creating the remix was so that it could be the theme to Grand Turismo 5: Prologue but who knows) but I like it a lot anyway; "My Evaline" from the "Undone" single (short but nice).

If you stuck around, thank you and congratulations, but...

Yeah, I went there. I probably won't post tomorrow or Thursday or even Friday, so Happy Thanksgiving, survivors (and all Americans).

A Quickie: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1

I went to see it tonight, and it was so good! Here's my five-star review:

I think I may be closer to a 4.5 on this one, but I really did love it, and would rank it up there with 1 and 3. It did feel like there was more "exposition" (even though these movies abandoned trying to re-familiarize audiences with the overarching plot about 3/4 movies ago, which is both good and bad) than actual action but I enjoyed it as a more character-driven story than other movies were. I really love the interaction between our main gang, especially Harry and Hermione and Ron and Hermione (I just love Hermione), and it was nice seeing pretty much all of our favorite characters again, even briefly (LUPIN HI LUPIN...WAIT WHERE ARE YOU GOING COME BACK AND BE IN THE WHOLE MOVIE PLEASE he looked really good in this movie, I feel like he's decreasing in age or something). This movie was SO BEAUTIFUL, I really felt like saying "wow" the whole time. The colors and the locations were great. Those HP kids better be grateful that they got to see all of these amazing places. The ending felt a bit odd; "No, Harry, I can't help Dobby, we haven't reached our death quota yet! And also it would be a perfectly sad way to end this movie! So let's end it now! Predictably! But let's also remind people that this is TBC by showing Voldemort! Yay!" Also I haven't read the book since it came out so the movie was a bit hard to follow at times, but even so this felt like one of the most succinct (despite its running time) films in the series, as well as the most engaging, and I'm SO READY for Part 2!

This is Essentially a Post You've Read Before But You Will Read It Again and You Will Like It

Last night's 30 Rock proved that life is worth living. It was a comedy powerhouse that transcended race, religion, sexual orientation, and shoe size.

Yeah. "Wow." Watch it.

And I'm like, "Forget you!"

Last night's Glee was surprisingly awesome. Kurt and Blaine being hilarious/not annoyingly catty/adorable/hilarious (bold for emphasis), the musical numbers, G. Paltrow as Holly Holiday, the one-liners...I actually really liked it. Yippee!

Here is the far-and-away best number of the night, "Forget You" (based on the explicitly titled song by Cee-lo).



(Favorite part? "Why? WHY?")

Is she cool? Is she lame?

Oh, are you talking about old what's her name? PEPPER ANN PEPPER ANN

Pepper Ann was such a great show. Thank goodness there are episodes on Youtube!



Pepper Ann was mos def much too cool for 7th grade! That girl (and NICKY AND MILO I MEAN COME ON) was one of the coolest in cartoons, ever. SHE IS SO AWESOME URGGH. This show talked about "middle school issues" or whatever but since the characters were so amazing it was just a great show. Disney used to have some really awesome shows back in the day. The Weekenders is one that's kind of similar and also newer but just as good (well, almost).



Seriously. Milo is a stoner-in-training. Nicky is a child prodigy but still amazingly cool. And Pepper Ann is just neurotic, paranoid, and generally amazing. And then there's Dieter...hilarious. And Moose! Who was a girl. The ultimate tomboy.



And that theme song really is the best. PEPPER ANN PEPPER ANN SHE'S LIKE ONE IN A MILLION

A Quickie: Catfish

Tonight I attended a special screening of Catfish. Here's my Flixster "review" (I gave the movie 4 stars):

I got a very cool opportunity to watch this movie at a screening that had a Q&A afterwards with the directors + Nev. VERY cool. And since I'm a kid and there were other kids there and kids are just awesome, Nev and Rel stuck around for an hour (maybe even more; they were still talking to other people 20 minutes after I left!) and took more questions and talked to us. Very cool. All of the other girls were fawning over Nev but my friends and I talked to Rel, who was similarly very nice (but not as...not charming, but obsessed with the ladies). So, very cool. Although Henry disappeared. I wanted to talk to him, too. Oh well. It was cool talking to/shaking the hand of a filmmaker.

Okay, it's not really a review, but if you haven't noticed it's almost midnight. So shut up. Blaaargh. (The movie was really good though, by the way. Funny and uncomfortable and sad and uncomfortable and uncomfortable and...)

You May Think This Post is Useless, But I Assure You, It's Not

This is Jake. Jake is a famous actor. Jake is an Oscar-nominated actor, in fact. He is descended from a long line of Swedish nobility, apparently. He may or may not be dating Taylor Swift. (That may or may not be disgusting.)

But most of all, Jake has a funny last name. This name is one that many people have had trouble spelling properly over the years.

I never considered myself one of those people, until now.

I was watching that terrible show on Cartoon Network, MAD, and they had some awful sketch about fan letters. One of them said, "Dear Jake, how do you spell your last name?" The joke was that even Jake himself was not sure. Ha, ha.

"Come on," I said, rolling my eyes with an air of superiority. "Spelling his name is SO easy. It's...it's..." I typed it out, saying it out loud as I wrote so I could affirm my choice of spelling. G-y-l-l-e-n-h-a-l. Was that not it?

I instantly felt self-conscious. Perhaps this was...not correct? No, that couldn't be. I've written the name many a time before; I think I would know how to spell it. But maybe I should check, just to make sure.

I typed it into Wikipedia. J-a-k-e. G-y-l-l-e-n-h-a-l. This is what showed up.

What? I...no. This couldn't be. I had to take a closer look.

I zoomed in.

Gyllenhaal. Gyllenhaal.

JACOB BENJAMIN "JAKE" GYLLENHAAL.

And that is what I learned today. Gyllenhaal. Two A's.

Never forget.

Presenting: A New-But-Dumb Venue for Jason Sudeikis and His Glorious Face (And Stephen Merchant!)

Jason Sudeikis: "DO WANT! you to see this movie." Me: "No! I can't! Too...stupid..."

That is a hilarious screencap from the trailer for Hall Pass. "Hall Pass" is some dumb new movie coming out next year that I will not go and see, but will tell you about excitedly anyway for 3 reasons: ONE, Jason Sudeikis is in it!!!!! TWO, STEPHEN MERCHANT IS IN IT!!! and THREE, JASON SUDEIKIS AND STEPHEN MERCHANT ARE IN IT TOGETHER!!!!

Huzzah! Behold, the trailer!



This movie is unworthy of these guys' heaps of talent, but god darnit all, a movie exists with both of these two in it now! How can I not be excited?

Although, listen to that premise. Poor Jenna "Pam" Fischer, looking all bored and sad that her healthy career on The Office has led to only tiny roles in middling lowbrow comedies, as she flatly tells us the movie's plot. I've never heard the term "hall pass" used for this purpose before, but then, my "worldliness" is defined only in the context of video games and very specific kinds of television shows, so it's quite likely that it's a very popular term. (But I doubt that.) Anyway, why would any woman EVER give their husband this kind of "pass?" That makes no sense to me. It's a really idiotic plot device and ME AM DISPLEASED PAM. Me am displeased.

So anyway, other than that I really have no clue how this movie is supposed to sustain more than 20 minutes. Owen Wilson (Pam's husband, which is really weird because Jim is Pam's husband and I mean isn't everything on the Office fact and don't all movies and TV shows exist in the same universes and and and and?) goes clubbin' with his motley crew consisting of J. Sud' (who apparently was also freed from that prison sentence that is marriage), Stephen Merchant (YAY!), and some other people who aren't J. Sud' or Stephen Merchant, and tries to "score babes" with probably little success. Although, according to this magazine I read on an airplane to Japan, Owen Wilson is an "American hearthrob" whose broken nose is "handsome," so maybe he actually does manage to use his hall pass successfully. But then, that's it, really. If the movie goes down that road, with Owen Wilson being successful, then it can't last any more than 5 minutes, really. Unless he realizes how much he looooves his wife or something and goes running back to her. But then, since the hall pass is only effective for one week anyway, with the implication that Owen and Jason Sudeikis go back to their wives afterwards, then the movie is still only 5 minutes.

Basically Hall Pass is going to be a flimsy concept "hilariously" stretched out for an hour and a half. Well, at least that means we get to see Stephen Merchant and Jason Sudeikis try their darnedest to make me want to pay money to see this movie. I will resist, but it's hard. That chloroform joke at the end made me chuckle more than it should have.

I give this trailer 3 Stephen Merchant's dressed like fabulous British gentlemen out of 5.

P.S. I watched the trailer a second time on mute, and it was entertaining. I suggest you try that.