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?