Breaking Bad

You're probably expecting a rundown of the series: The premise, the acclaim, and why you should watch it. But you know it, already-- nice guy becomes cancer guy becomes drug guy. There's also a chicken guy that he fights for a while. No need to be ashamed for not watching it, yet. Take your time.

This is the most common "You've never seen Breaking Bad?" response.

Instead of spoiling the plot or redirecting you season one on Netflix, I'm going to tell you how many similarities the show happens to have with a critically acclaimed book. It can be found in paperback or on the Apple app store and is simply called the Bible.

• In the Bible's New Testament, heavily whiskered Jesus Christ is introduced as a man who turns water into wine. In Breaking Bad, mustachioed Walter White turns methylamine into methamphetamine. Coincidence?
• Then in Breaking Bad, Walter White's brother-in-law Hank Schrader often gets vexed with his wife, Marie. Her shenanigans, sometimes even illegal, usually prompt him to respond "Jesus Christ, Marie!" Is it a coincidence that Hank referenced Jesus Christ out of all of Earth's historical figures? He could have just as easily cried "Herbert Hoover, Marie!" or "Benedict Cumberbatch, Marie!" Why didn't he?
• Walter's wife, Skyler, eventually has a baby on the show. However, her character was already pregnant when the show began, so the audience still has no idea if that baby is the biological daughter of Walter White, or if God granted them a free baby without the two of them having to "know" each other. Baby Jesus was born to Virgin Mary without her "knowing" anyone, so it begs the question-- is Breaking Bad's baby, Holly, going to grow up to be a prophetic character? Maybe we'll find out in the spin-off series: Better Call Saul!

This review was satirical. Before you riot, I'm not pro or anti anything. I also don't wear a tin foil hat.

R.I.P.D.

R.I.P.D. (an initialism for "Rest in Peace Department") is one of those movies that sort of happened. I only cared to see it once I read The Dude and the Zen Master, a really insightful book by Jeff Bridges and his friend Bernie Glassman. In it, the two discuss what it's like to try to be relaxed, with an occasional anecdote from the set of a movie.

Here's Bridges recounting his experience on R.I.P.D.

"Kevin Bacon and I recently worked on a movie together, R.I.P.D. Just before we'd begin a scene, when all of us would feel the normal anxiety that actors feel before they start to perform, Kevin would look at me and the other actors with a very serious expression on his face and say: "Remember, everything depends on this!" 

"It would make us all laugh. On the one hand, it's not true, of course, but on the other, everything does depend on this, on just this moment and our attitude toward this moment."

It's pretty clear that not even the cast was crazy about making the movie, but it was a fun hour and a half. I found myself tuning in and out often simply because there was just way too much CGI-- which looked unfinished and belonged on Syfy channel, Doctor Who, or an early 90s movie. The villains are all poorly computer generated undead creatures known in the movie's mythology as "deados". I guarantee you've seen better special effects on YouTube.

Jeff Bridges played a fun character, reprising his role as 1800s lawman Rooster Cogburn from True Grit. I've been a fan of Bridges since The Big Lebowski, so I laughed heartily every time his character said and did anything. I especially loved the chemistry between him and his hat. Ryan Reynolds is in the movie, too. He plays his convincing movie star character who's reluctantly just "doing this for another paycheck". He successfully said all of his lines while keeping his face and emotional investment in the story as static as possible.

The story is simple:

Man loses identity.
Man meets supernatural police agency who wants to employ him.
Man partners up with old cowboy who speaks in wild west jargon.

And of course, Bridges and Reynolds have to save world from a conveniently placed doomsday-based plot point. It's screenwriting 101 meant to make you laugh until you choke on your aromatic, but stale popcorn.

On the plus side, their guns looked really cool and shiny!

As for the tone, R.I.P.D. is in every way an amalgamation of Men in Black and Patrick Swayze's Ghost. See it if you like scraping the bottom of the entertainment barrel.

Starcrash

Starcrash is a Star Wars knock off far worse than any B movie you can possibly imagine. It briefly stars David Hasselhoff as the token Han Solo character, and it makes Howard the Duck look like No Country for Old Men.

Starcrash was released in the late 70s, a year or two after the original Star Wars, fitting into a genre I like to call "Disco Sci-fi" (which to me is any sci-fi/outer space movie from the late 70s to 80s, trying to mooch off the success of Star Wars' mass appeal). But as pretty as some of the backgrounds were, it's clear that the filmmakers did not put in the necessary effort to make the movie powerful enough to stand on its own hind legs.

Yeah, that's totally a lightsaber.

The intro consists of some idiots wearing what looks like aluminum foil hats, as they fly around in a spaceship, only to get overtaken and blown up by a cheap lava lamp special effect superimposed onto the screen. I'm not kidding. It literally looks like footage of a lava lamp, which is later revealed to be a "powerful weapon of space monsters". The worst part about this is that somewhere, an executive saw that and said "yeah, that's good."

Then there are the characters. Obviously, they're not real people, but it would be nice if the filmmakers gave us some sort of impression that they had lives off screen, that they don't suspend themselves on clothes hangers when no one can see them. They live in a sci-fi universe, which is great, so I can understand if their customs are different than ours. They can speak differently, dress differently, but Christ alive, they're so weird. The male lead looks like an unkempt, confused, supersized hobbit. And the main woman dresses very... very minimally. It's like she lives in an orgy. Side note: SHE'S SUPPOSED TO BE A PILOT! Any frame of her in the film can easily be used on a Maxim cover.

The dialogue must have been written by a three year old. In the beginning, the two main characters, Akton and Stella Star (yes, that's her character's actual name), are just cruisin' around the galaxy when a police ship tries to pull them over-- for speeding, I guess. The space cop shows up in their magic t.v. and some bald guy yells at them, saying "As Thor, chief of the Imperial police, I order you to surrender at once". Real original name, by the way, Thor. Naturally, I expected one of them to retort with, "Come and get us, doo-doo head!" Sadly, they didn't say that. They just happily jumped to hyperspace, which is evasion and a goddamn felony, something they should have taken into account.

I'm not saying I didn't enjoy the movie. I had a great time watching it, but for all the wrong reasons. It mimicked Star Wars in as many ways possible, but it lacked heart. In fact, Starcrash had about as much soul as a dead sociopath, but I found every subtle mistake and careless nuance hilarious. Like in the intro where they cut off the intro music abruptly at the end of the credits. Or how they solved every plot point with a deus ex machina-- the main character just reveals new "powers" (a.k.a. force powers) whenever the good guys need to move the story along in their benefit. I love the campy substitute they had for Darth Vader. You know, the bad guy with an evil beard and a cape. I loved how he had a "Doom Machine" instead of a "Death Star". In a non-ironic way, I genuinely loved the stop motion, the fantastically multicolored constellations, and the fact that all the ships were models instead of CGI. At the end of the day, it's Spaceballs, the only difference is that Starcrash, though a whole lot funnier, took itself way too seriously.

American Horror Story: Freak Show

The fourth season of American Horror Story is not horror. If you want real horror, watch the first two seasons, or a little movie called The Conjuring.

That aside, let me get to the real meat of this review. What separates American Horror Story: Freak Show from some of its previous seasons is that, although it's riddled with gore, the creeping, invasive feeling of something lurking from behind the shadows is just not there. For whatever reason, they try and humanize the villains, giving them some sort of "evolutionary arc".

But if there's one thing we've learned from Star Wars, it's that when you show the origins of a villain, that character easily loses what makes them the most menacing-- their mystery. Darth Vader was goddamn terrifying before we saw his past. All we knew about him up 'til the '90s was his old name, and that his head looked like an egg. The rest was up to our imaginations... then we saw him as a little punk with a bowl cut.

As a kid, I felt like Jar Jar right here.

Another major problem with Freak Show is the musical numbers. I mean, Jesus-- I know it's by the same makers, but if I want to watch Glee, I'll watch Glee. I once had a girl insist on us watching that show together a few years back, and let me describe it for you now-- it's one hour of filler.

You probably know I wasn't a fan of American Horror Story: Coven, so if you're wondering why I'm watching this new season, it's because I've got a heart of gold and I always give people and things chances. Hell, I give too many (people and things) too many chances. That's because deep down, I expect everyone to try their hardest to do their best.

But it's clear by now that American Horror Story is nothing more to its makers than a nine-to-five grind. They under-utilize their cast, ignoring characters for episodes on end. Malcolm-Jamal Warner guest starred in the last episodes for mere seconds!

Aside from all that, the series is becoming way too meta, assimilating into pop-culture as a "must-be-iconic" show for being "edgy", caring less and less about the content they create. The show ignores major plot points for so long, the audience forgets and loses interest by the time they even tease at resolving them. The show is pretentious, predictable, and chickens out of killing characters by bringing them back to life, which Ryan Murphy (one of the producers) specifically said they would stop doing and I quote: "This season, once you die, you're dead. There's no supernatural thing to bring you back like last year."

Of course, being them, they resolved that little issue by bringing characters back as ghosts and even-- I can't believe I'm saying this-- projections from the minds of other characters.

Still, I am curious to know what happens next. I'm weird like that-- I still enjoy watching the show, even if it is mostly filler.

Kinect Star Wars

If you're wondering what kind of blog this is, it was originally supposed to be a place to playfully judge movies. Then I changed that rule by reviewing t.v. shows.

Today we're looking at a video game based on one of my favorite childhood sagas:

Kinect Star Wars.

Why critique that game? Because I finally gave it a go and it's more accidentally hilarious than I could have ever imagined.

Kinect's technology is surprisingly good. It's not perfect, but it works. My biggest concern is the fact that you can't sit down without C-3PO thinking you've abandoned him. There's a Podracing minigame that you control with your arms, which is great, but if you try and sit down (which would be more realistic), the game goes haywire and the controls get all wonky.

The main storyline lets you choose from a list of new Jedi that never say a word. I vowed to not take the game seriously because I wanted to have as much fun as possible, so I chose an alien called "Cho Zeh'Bra" since his face looks like a... well... do I have to say it?

This is Cho Zeh'Bra.

I genuinely can't look at this character without laughing. I never laughed this hard watching the same-looking guys during the cantina scene in "A New Hope", but seeing him as a jedi is so far-fetched, I just can't help it. He apparently has a sense of purpose, and it's so much funnier to think that he has aspirations to help others than to imagine him as a struggling musician.

My favorite part of the game is probably the dance-offs. This consists of you dancing to modern pop as Han Solo, burlesque Leia, etc. I like this minigame because it's ridiculous and would never happen in that universe, but I'm sure it fulfills someone's long-awaited fantasies. Heck, I got a kick out of it.

There's another minigame called "Rancor Rampage" in which you're a giant beast, the one that tried to eat Luke in "Return of the Jedi", terrorizing towns and eating people. I had a blast playing it the first time, but eventually, it just became busy work. That's probably the best way to describe every mode in Kinect Star Wars. It's all fun at first, but when you need to reach a point quota, it's almost torturous.

My advice to you is this: If you can find a way to play Kinect Star Wars, go for it. It's even more fun with friends, if they're open to having their perception of Star Wars further skewed.

May the choice be with you,

-Philip

Arrested Development

Arrested Development is the best t.v. comedy ever made.

Period.

However, I encourage you to avoid season "four" (as it's called on Netflix) at all costs. Let me explain why.

I have a theory that every show should be done by the third season (preferably the second). I stand by this belief because, from what I've seen, shows get watered down in quality by season three, simply for the sake of making new episodes. This leads to great income for the studios making the shows, but often a decline in quality. I love Breaking Bad, but I have never seen more filler than in season four of that show (e.g. the scene where Skyler White parks Walter's car somewhat far from the house and walks toward the camera for what feels like half an hour). Community also suffered from a similar problem during its season four, only that was due to a mix of the show getting too weird in season three, but also the foolish firing of its remarkable showrunner and creator.

Back to Arrested Development.

The first three seasons aired on Fox, and the show was cancelled just as it was starting to get watered down. It was still funny, but it was going to die and everyone knew it. The fans knew it, the makers knew it, it was inevitable.

And so it was cancelled after a three year run. And it was nice. It was (relatively) short and sweet. They even wrapped the main storyline up and put a bow on it. The show was done, and it was done so well, you can watch any episode over and over again and still laugh dozens of times per episode. This is not only because the dialogue is witty, but the actors just work really well off each other. This is something you can't write. Sometimes, that just happens. And that's the mark of a good show.

Arrested Development is about a highly dysfunctional, quirky family who stays together when they shouldn't, but rather than being cringe-worthy, it has a warm, welcoming vibe that makes you want to see every character interact with every other character just to see what they'll do. Really, it's one of the best things ever to have been on t.v.

The wonderfully talented cast of Arrested Development.

Season four on Netflix does not have that same charm. Not even close. And it's a shame because so many people say that it's great, but they either don't understand what made the show so good, or they're kidding themselves because the show on Netflix is entirely different (or maybe they're just wonderful people who find the beauty in all things flawed. In which case, they're way better people than me).

The two biggest problems with Netflix's Arrested Development is that the style of the show does not match the original comedic style (making it a different show), and each episode is about a different character. Too much of the story is guided by narration and there is almost zero interaction between the main characters. What's worse is that the characters are extremely untrue to themselves. It's as though the writers of this season have no knowledge of the prior seasons.

There is supposed to be some sort of grand plot that's shown in different segments of these character's lives and it's supposed to all sync by  the end of the season, but I'm telling you now, it does not come across well. It's repetitively, unnecessarily confusing.

Season four has great guest stars, including comedians Kristen Wiig and Maria Bamford (both of whom I adore for their unique sense of humor), but the show prohibits them from shining with its goal to tie some sort of story together.

The writers tried to reignite old laughs by alluding to old jokes, but the thing they didn't understand is that these jokes were funny because of their subtlety. One example is the running joke of the main character, Michael Bluth, in the old seasons always referring to his son's girlfriend whom he didn't approve of as "...Her?"

That was one of the best running gags. You don't read it and laugh, but when you see it, your face will crack a little smile. Season four imposed a grand joke on the audience by staging some wedding between that girl and Michael's brother, with a giant sculpture next to them that reads "Her?". I know this sounds like a minor complaint, but good comedy works best when it's not forced. It's almost as though the writers are sitting next to you this entire season, poking your shoulder and pointing at the screen every time someone makes a joke.

The cherry on top is the ending, which is simply Michael Bluth's son punching him in the face. I'm not kidding. That's how the series ends.

On the plus side, there are still three hilarious seasons from the mid 2000's for you to watch over and over again. If aliens ever come and invade Earth, I hope they stumble upon those seasons and not the fourth.

'Til next time.

Before Sunrise

Before Sunrise, Before Sunset, and Before Midnight make up a trilogy of the lives of two people over the course of almost 20 real years. Let me say this: They're some of the best movies I have ever seen! The first was released in 1995, in which a young American man (played by Ethan Hawke) meets a young French woman (Julie Delpy) while traveling in Austria. The second movie was released in 2004 and the third in 2013. Each film consists of the same two characters walking and talking, which would be boring in the context of a play, but with the way it's shot, mixed with the dialogue, and their impeccable acting talent, it doesn't feel like you're watching a standard movie. The scenes go minutes without any cuts, allowing the actors to really live in their environment.

Their chemistry is hypnotically realistic.

Despite the fact that these aren't conventional blockbusters with action sequences with stereotypical film archetypes (aside from "boy meets girl"), they're extremely entertaining. When they laugh, you want to laugh. When they ask each other personal questions, you have no idea what the other might say. And if they argue, it's gut-wrenching.

Richard Linklater, the writer and director, is a master of his craft. He's up there with Wes Anderson, Tarantino, the Coen brothers, etc. I can't wait to see his newest movie, Boyhood (which took literally 12 years to make).