SHUTTER ISLAND: The Twist

I haven’t seen the new Scorsese film Shutter Island. I haven’t read the script or the book it’s based on or a synopsis of the plot. I haven’t read any spoilers or seen anything besides the trailer. 

And based on the trailer, it’s so obvious how the film ends it makes me want to scream. 

I’m going to put my bet down after the jump. Spoilers, if I’m right, but I can’t be the only one who’s sorted this out. 

The 20-Year-Old Fogey

The other day, my father tweeted a link to this article on the New York Times website. It basically argues that with the advancing pace of technology, “mini generation gaps” are springing up with higher and higher frequency.

I was intrigued by the title of the article, since it coincides with a thought I’ve been having, but as is often the case the title is misleading.

STC review: reinstated

After a few days’ thought, I’ve put the SAVE THE CAT! review back up, unchanged from before but with a brief addendum.

It’s back up as-is for several reasons. The first and foremost being that it’s just my honest opinion on the book. I tried to rewrite the review in a gentler tone — I even tried the conceit that worked with NEW MOON, pretending I was writing a letter straight to the author (which, had Snyder not died, I probably would have actually done). But there are some things that needed to be said, and there just isn’t a nice way to say them without being a complete pussyfoot and beating around the bush, and that’s just a waste of everybody’s time.

Snyder was a successful screenwriter, who sold more screenplays and made more money than I have to date and perhaps more than I ever will in both cases. It’s still a jackass move to insist that the Break Into Two MUST happen on page 25 and no later, then use as the example a movie that has the Break Into Two on page 40ish. That’s just a stone cold factual inaccuracy which can be easily checked, and I don’t have to have sold a screenplay to Spielberg to point it out.

I considered whether it was hypocritical of me to employ a negative tone when I was chastising the book for doing so, but I’ve concluded that it’s not, because my tone is primarily directed at the subject, while Snyder’s, by and large, seems like it’s directed at the reader. Call that rationalization if you like, and feel free to call me a doodyhead on your own blog or in the comments. Turnabout and all that.

Another issue, and somewhat of a bigger one, is that I’m a serious opponent of censorship in all its forms, and especially self-censorship. I said what I said. It’s out there. Maybe I’m wrong, or uninformed; maybe I’ll come to regret saying it, or discover new information that changes my perspective. Perhaps I’ll be embarrassed by my naivete or negativity down the line. But I’m all about freedom of information and a free and open internet. I had the choice to write a different version before I posted; once it was up, it was up. The bell is rung. To turn around and try to withdraw information from the public stream, THAT would be the hypocrisy.

And I mean, it’s fucking SAVE THE CAT! for god’s sake. If I can’t sack up and be honest about that, what am I going to do when it comes to issues that MATTER?

So anyway, I guess it’s good I wrestled with these issues and all, despite the somewhat silly reason. Review’s back up, more will trickle in over the course of…time, and love me or hate me, thanks for reading.

SAVE THE CAT! review: down for maintenance

For those looking for the STC review that was up briefly this afternoon, I’ve had a few second thoughts about it. It’s a fair point that if I’m going to reprimand Snyder for his tone, I should probably be more conscientious about my own.

I know that people who read this blog regularly (or just know me in general) were less than surprised to see me express myself like an asshole, and probably filtered my point out of it just by sheer force of habit. But dammit Ringo, I’m trying real hard to be the shepherd. And I don’t want to feel like I’m just trying to stir up controversy to get attention.

So while I may just put the old one back up, I’m going to take another crack at that review, trying to hit the same points without undermining myself quite so much, and hopefully have it up tomorrow.

EDIT: It’s back up, unaltered but with an addendum. But since I have a new rule of not un-publishing things, that means this post stays, too, as an interesting artifact.

Book Review: SAVE THE CAT!

When I finally broke down and picked up a copy of SAVE THE CAT! I noticed a few things right away. First off, the image of the cat on the cover has some truly nasty green spill on it, to the extent that portions of the fur are overexposed. It makes me feel ill to look at.

After that, I noticed that the subtitle on the front cover is The Last Book on Screenwriting That You’ll Ever Need. But on the book’s spine and back cover, it’s The Last Book on Screenwriting You’ll Ever Need, redacting the “that.” It’s a weird inconsistency that put me on edge before I even started reading.

But you know what they say about books and their covers. Let’s talk about the content of the book itself.

They fixed it!

What a great way to start the decade. I’ve complained before about the frequent misuse of the term “irony,” which has sprung up for me yet again in reading SAVE THE CAT! (review forthcoming). 

But all is not lost. The CollegeHumor folks have heard my cry and produced Actually Ironic, a version of the song that alters the lyrics to make the random and simply unfortunate events listed, you guessed it, actually ironic. 

WordPress still doesn’t let me embed easily, so for now, the link.

Regarding the “Liberal Media”

I don’t always agree with Keith Olbermann — since the election last year he’s occasionally seemed a little unhinged. It’s not that he is sometimes “too liberal;” if anything, it’s that he sometimes lets his emotional reactions compromise his liberalism and make him say unreasonable things.

I recall one occasion when he essentially called for a limit on the Constitutional freedom of speech for the teabaggers, birthers, and other such vile creatures. While I was completely on board with Keith regarding the fact that they’re hateful, ignorant embarrassments to the conservative movement in particular and the human race in general, he lost me instantly when he implied that they should not be legally permitted to be hateful, ignorant embarrassments etc. Because they should. Because as awful as they are, giving the government the power to limit free expression of any idea is a slippery slope, and the visceral satisfaction of having people I disagree with silenced would not be worth the inevitable silencing of my own expression when the pendulum inevitably returns. Call it “Mutually Assured Discussion.”

And then there was when this went down. Olbermann went berserk, spearheading the accusations of racism that I honestly am not convinced were intended or even subconsciously inserted. The joke of the cartoon was that the stimulus plan was so poorly-written that it must’ve been written by a chimp. I don’t think at all that it was meant to cast aspersions on the actual writer(s) of the bill, and certainly not against the new black President. I’d be more likely to associate it with the “1000 typewriters for 1000 years” type of monkey than the “porch” type. It’s called satire, folks. When you see “it’s because he’s black!” under everything, you’re the racist. 

Still, among the available talking heads that aren’t Stewart and Colbert, Olbermann is still my preference — although I want to watch more of Maddow’s show. For one thing, he’s a liberal and, occasional lapses of irrational hypersensitivity aside, is usually reality-based. Compare this to Beck, Hannity, O’Reilly, etc, who will distort, dismiss, or outright fabricate information in order to form events to the predetermined version (though O’Reilly seems to have occasional lapses of rationality). Olbermann at least cites his sources.

Compare also to the fact that, again, he’s a liberal awash in a sea of conservatives — and unlike those conservative commentators, who like to pretend that they’re in some way “neutral,” he at least makes no bones about the fact that he’s coming at this from a liberal slant.

I’ve always been annoyed by the blanket references to the “liberal media,” because I really don’t know what the people who use the phrase are talking about. They seem to mean that entertainment is liberal — but the news media certainly isn’t. Conservatives like to say that conservatism doesn’t have a voice in the media because, I dunno, they have a persecution complex or something.

This claim is clearly false, but I’ve never quite had the motivation to piece together a response to it. But Olbermann — who again, I like because he does the research and cites his sources — did it for me.

Skeptical Sunday: 100 Science Lectures

Not much time to write a big thing this week, so instead I’ll just share this link to a collection of science lectures to entertain and expand your mind. That should keep us both occupied for a while!

Regarding “Cap and Trade”

President Obama is in Copenhagen right now with other world leaders, trying to figure out what to do about the crisis we’re facing.

The number one solution on the table is something called “Cap and Trade.” I’m sure you’ve heard of it. A lot of liberals support it as a good idea because, in concept, it sounds sensible. A lot of conservatives oppose it because that’s what they do.

But Cap and Trade may not be all it’s cracked up to be. From the makers of the Story of Stuff, a look at why this solution could just contribute to the problem.

Check out the comments on the video if you want to see the ridiculous politicization at the heart of this. Some people would literally rather die than sacrifice some of the decadence of the culture, or think of someone besides themselves.

Fuck this commercial

If you watched the Colbert clip from yesterday, you almost certainly saw the Chase Sapphire commercial. If not, here it is:

Chase has apparently broken the bank to get this ad on every streaming television show there is, at every commercial break. This is seriously one of the worst commercials I’ve ever seen, and I have to keep seeing it.

Before we go any further: I’m aware that by linking to and talking about this ad, I’m just giving the creators what they intended, which is attention. But it’s negative attention, so it should balance out. And I hate this ad so much I really just need to get this out of my system.