Lunar Eclipse in the Mental Realm

I'm not here to validate your opinion. I'm here to present my own. Spoilers unless I mention otherwise.

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The Amateur Media Blog

We're a group of college students who write about media in all forms, books, movies, songs, TV series, etc. We write reviews, op-eds and much more.

I made a site local to India, where likeminded people can write about all forms of media that they’re in love with. Be it movies, music, anime, TV shows, or even web culture, it’s all fair game. 

Do give us a look!

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Hannibal, a eulogy

Hannibal just ended, most probably for good.

It's a goddamn shame that, with the kind of risks TV shows take these days, Hannibal is a risk that failed. Always a critical darling, always watched fervently and religiously by its fans, it nevertheless failed to pull in the kind of ratings it deserved or needed. And now, abandoned by NBC, no other company wants to pick it up because it's too weird, too different.

Hannibal started off as part of a trend, where people were giving the prequel treatment to classic movies in the form of TV shows. Bates Motel drew good reviews, Fargo received rave reviews as well (although I couldn't watch past the first episode because I hated it so much, with all the forced meanness it exhibited). Even then, Hannibal was different from the crop, with great direction and cinematography. Mads Mikkelsen took on a role made classic by Anthony Hopkins and proceeded to own it in totality, and the series descended into beautiful brutality and surrealism. 

Again, so many shots in the show were simply brilliant. The show really knew how to use lighting and colour balance, often showing faces bathed in half blue and half orange to show duality. The exterior shots of Florence were worth shedding tears for. 

And the food. Hannibal the show would obviously be nothing without the food, and the shots of all the delicacies of horrific origins were so well shot, we always wanted to have a taste of the delicious recipes Hannibal was whipping up for his guests, to be delivered with a wry smile and a couple of cannibal jokes no one would get.

And goddammit, the direction was so good as well. Bryan Fuller has actually said he told every episode director, very specifically, that they were shooting a pretentious art movie instead of just any episode of television, and they should make the most of it. The show knew how to be vague and keep the audience guessing, like how it kept Will's innocence in season one and two just ambiguous enough to make us doubt him, while still making us root for him and trust his inherent goodness.

And god freaking dammit, the violence was so beautiful. From corpses in prayer with wings ripped off their backs to dead bodies forming an eye to heaven, from totem poles of death to a flayed body twisted into a rough heart shaped sculpture, there was so much to love for fans of gore and art.

I don't even know why I'm writing this article, all I'm doing is gushing over everything Hannibal did so right. Even in the end, it defiantly subverted expectations and delivered an ending that was so brutal, so final and so goddamn mad, it would be hard to imagine any other ending that would be so perfect. 

Damn it, Hannibal, you'll be missed. 

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Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows - My favourite books (and why they suck)

Wow, that’s a mouthful of a title.

The seventh book of the Harry Potter series (which you may have heard of, it's a little popular) is the biggest, densest, most brutal and emotional book in the series. It's my favourite book out of all the titles.

It's also, easily, the most flawed book in the series.

Maybe it was inevitable. Six books of consistently high quality was pretty sweet, but everyone expected Rowling to pull out all the stops and deliver one of the best literary accomplishments of all time, to fall in line with their expectations and yet surprise them. The pressure must have been immense, even to someone as immaculate in plotting entangled threads as Rowling. Did she succeed?

Well, can that question be answered by two very opposite statements at once?

Before the book was out, a lot of people were fearful (and yet very big on foresight, it was going to pleasure them immensely if they were right) that Harry Potter, the boy who lived, would die at the end of the book. Ask anyone who witnessed the hype leading to the run, the way all fans suddenly turned to fanfiction to speculate about how the trio would die taking down Voldy, and how all of Hogwarts would definitely die in a DBZ-spirit-bomb equivalent attack to finish him off.

Rowling also seemed to know it. Start up the book, and you're greeted with two pretentiously ominous poems on death. The huge shift in tone in the book was also far beyond the gradual increase one usually expected from the series, with people dropping like flies left and right, and the very first chapter showing a character (only mentioned once before) being tortured and murdered by the Death Eaters for fun. Hedwig gets killed off in a single paragraph and her death isn't dwelt upon as much, leaving us to wonder whether the symbolism of the loss of the first magical relic Harry ever had was worth it.

It's also surprising how much infodump is present in the last book of the series, clearly meant to make up for the great, but slow rate of information doled out to the readers so far. Characters, in a lot of cases, get the short end of the stick. Take Tonks, for example, who gets very sad at Mad-Eye's death in particular, and it's only then that Harry has to tell us that she was close to him because he was her protege.

Even worse offenders, though, are the titular Deathly Hallows themselves. We have to learn about the Deathly Hallows, three objects of great importance to various people in the book, redefining (actually, mostly defining or tacking on additional because-I-told-you-so qualities about) the objects we've already seen. Dumbledore revealing that Voldemort's diary is a Horcrux made sense, because it was far too malevolent and powerful for a mere magical diary, but to suddenly claim that Dumbledore's wand is totally the best one ever, or that Harry's cloak is special because no one told the readers up until now that cloaks really do fade in power quicker than the Ron-Lavender storyline outlasted its welcome in book 6, sounds too much like an attempt to settle plot threads by pretending two of them were actually one all along.

The progression of the story is quite nice, thankfully, right up until the middle. A lot of criticism is aimed at the aimless wandering of the trio (that gets shortened to the duo) for far too long, but here's the thing. The aimless wandering was never the problem.

I'll take this moment to digress for a bit. What comes into your mind when you think of a commonly abused, stupid trope? For me, it's the Misunderstanding. I've covered it once before, but just to reiterate, take a rom com, any rom com. What is the portion of the film with the least rewatch value, the one point where you keep yourself on tenterhooks purely because you want to see the part that comes immediately after? If my clairvoyant abilities still work, I can predict that it's probably the part immediately before the ending hookup, where the two characters cease talking to each other because of some manufactured problems related to jealousy, ego issues, or just plain stupidity. It's the most boring part because you know that, to resolve it at any point, the leads just need to talk to each other, and then they'll find out how everything they were fearing was so unfounded. But they won't, because the story needs to be padded for a while.

Coming back to the book, the reason the camp portions of the book drag so much is because of the Misunderstanding. Ron's jealousy and anger and restlessness drag everything down, and the situation is exacerbated by the fact that he's unwilling to talk about it to Harry unless it's too late and he needs a fight. Yes, the problem is worsened by the locket he's wearing, but in terms of narrative purposes, it simply acts as a generator of conflict. So, for too long, we have to settle with the group down in the dumps because they have too much resentment buried, and despite knowing each other for six years (and having similar problems before, like Ron and Harry's fight after the Goblet gave the latter's name), they can't settle it with a discussion.

Lastly, we have Slytherin. The house of Slytherin, which, from the first book, has always been shown as an evil house that is a breeding ground for terrorists and supremacists, has no justified reason for existing. The founder of the house literally kept a chamber with a deadly magical monster for his heirs to use for Darwinian murder purposes. None of the students have anything redeeming about them. Even by the seventh book, despite a small attempt, Rowling fails to show anything good about Slytherin.

We have two examples that might be brought up to disprove the above point, so I'll have to rebut them, of course. The first one is Draco Malfoy, the spoilt brat deified by fans and fanfiction, glorifying him as confused and depressed and misunderstood. Draco, the poor boy who was proud to join ranks with a powerful murderer, who was happy imagining dead Muggle-borns at age twelve, who faltered at the task of killing Dumbledore because he couldn't look past him as Headmaster of his school (and, to be fair, Dumbledore can bust out some mean rhetoric when he needs to). Did the last book do anything to develop and redeem him? Seeing how he tried to trap Harry to deliver him to ol' Voldy (and couldn't even do that properly) and tried to survive after that by joining up with any Death Eater he could find in the Hogwarts hallways, I'd say no.

The second example should be harder to disprove, what with Snape being the star of the best chapter of the book, and arguably, the whole series. Then again, take away the great prose and direct your attention to his story, and what you're left with are... questionable motives. Snape is, essentially, an overgrown man child with a million grudges and an attitude so corrosive, students actually picture him as their worst fear. His backstory amounts to mean parents, the object of his obsessions reacting negatively to his other obsession (terrorism) and leaving him, and his bright career in serving racist Nazi-like murderers cut short because one of the people murdered by his boss turned out to be his former flame (killed because of his own eager help). If, in that fateful night he told Voldemort about the prophecy, Voldemort would have come to the conclusion that the Longbottoms needed to be eliminated, would Snape still be the same tortured soul on Dumbledore's side, or a cackling murder-happy lackey?

With such angry skewering of the book, it might seem that my answer to the above question of Rowling's success might be no. Recall, however, that I did mention Deathly Hallows to be my favourite book in the series. Even with all the flaws, the gut wrenching moments, Dumbledore's backstory, the heart stopping action, the bravery with which it tore itself away from the format established by the last couple of books, all culminate in a supremely satisfying end to the series, one that will be remembered as the Lord Of The Rings of our generation. And isn't it so exciting to have been part of this making of literary history?

Cheers.

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Piku, or the sad case of wasted puns

Because Piku actually turned out to be a good movie, I’ve lost too many smart headlines to count.

Some examples would include :-

Piku - Shittier than you expected

Piku - Too little gray matter, too much fecal matter

Piku - Like watching loose motion in slow motion

Yes, dear reader, I am very talented in such dirty jokes. You might even say I have a very shitty sense of humour. Actually wait, don’t, I didn’t mean that, I meant I have an awesome sense of humour that will make sure you can’t hold it in. Your laughter, that is. Okay, this isn’t working.

Well, I guess I could take some pointers from the movie itself. The creators make sure that, despite the off-colour subject that permeates most of this movie, it never feels crass or unfunny. It takes tremendous amounts of effort to create a screenplay this balanced, and to make sure that the movie always feels classy. Which is why my other heading, “Piku - Did they write the script on toilet paper?” lies unused.

Another thing that the movie showed really well was the depiction of Bengali families. The director himself is a Bengali, so it must have been easier for him to show the frequently critical nature of Bengalis, along with their tendency for PNPC, and most of all, how they can value blunt frankness and honesty so much.

Also, it’s refreshing how much the movie has to say about women in modern times, having full control over their relationships and full acceptance of and responsibility about their physical needs, and yet it implores us to treat it as normal and give women today the space they deserve, instead of judging them or putting them on a pedestal for everyone to see.

One criticism - the editing of this movie felt a little iffy. A lot of scenes seemed to end just when it felt like they were about 60-70% over, skipping ahead to the next scene. While it does make the movie snappier, it also makes us feel like we’re constantly missing out on scenes that could have gone on comfortably longer.

Another criticism could be the sometimes arbitrary nature of some conflicts that the characters faced. The most egregious example comes exactly at the middle, where Amitabh Bachchan freaks out on seeing a knife in the trunk of the car and refuses to continue with the journey, and Irrfan Khan becomes obstinate and refuses to throw the knife as well. Cue the interval, and when the movie starts up again, Deepika asks Irrfan to throw it away, he complies, and they move on with little fuss.

Also, I don’t quite understand the point of Jisshu Sengupta’s character. There is no arc to his character, seeing as how he stays at the sidelines and exists to have Irrfan and Deepika meet, but the movie obviously wants him to have a better role, with no idea what to do with him. The end reveal that he too has constipation especially feels like the punchline to a joke that was never set up, since it pretty much comes out of left field.

However, the strongest point in favour of the movie is undoubtedly the actors. Irrfan Khan is one of the best actors of today, and this role is no different. Amitabh Bachchan is a delight to watch, quite unlike the previous time he played a character with the same name (in Anand), this time a tornado of excitement and energy that radiates from the screen. But the show is stolen by Deepika Padukone, who has, time and again, shown the Bollywood audience how she’s probably the best female actor in the industry today. Through every subtle expression, every moment of happiness and pain shown primarily through her eyes, every moment she explodes with anger, and every moment of contentment shown, we watch one of the best performers in India today.

So, in the end, the only regrets I have about watching this movie is the amount of wasted headlines I had to throw away. There aren’t a lot of pun filled positive titles I can make too. “Piku - Explosive Enjoyment!” would misrepresent the kind of movie it is, and “Piku - A Buttload of Fun” would just be awkward.

How about “Piku - Excellent or Excrement?” No, that’s just plain horrible.

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Possession : A Selective Analysis

When I first heard of Possession, it was through a list of lists by various critics giving their own top 10 movies of the 80s. This movie I've never heard of, that doesn't even come up properly on Google (there have been too many movies by the same name, you see) had the top spot on at least two of those lists. I decided to give it a try. Holy shit, I was not ready for this.

Possession is a mess. It deals with themes of loss, infidelity, rekindled feelings, sexuality, and it does it through a (mostly secular and understated) lens of religion and the supernatural. There can be scenes where the two leads shout at each other about how much had changed between them, and there can be scenes with Eldritch Abominations having sex with human beings. One time, a silver haired man talks about love and freedom, the next a woman has a miscarriage in a subway by oozing blood and pus out of every orifice.

Basically, it has a lot even Exorcist fans won't necessarily be able to take. And that movie had possessed masturbation with a cross.

So yes, Possession is a mess. It's also a very well directed, consistently interesting mess with a clear thematic vision and a lot to say about a lot of things. More importantly, it has the courage to make a point, and the good sense to trust the audience and leave room for interpretation.

Let's look at one theme in particular. The director, Andrzej Żuławski, apparently made this during a messy divorce he was going through. As it turns out, the very first moments spent with the lead pair has them coming to terms with the fact that they don't love each other anymore, the female lead wants a divorce. Immediately, this sets itself up as an intensely personal tale, but the way it presents itself with wide angles and a lot of vague imagery, it's clear that something is off.

Yes, she's in contact with the supernatural, as revealed much later, but that's not what this article is focusing on. It's the fact that she cheats on her husband, and not only does she hate herself for it, she tries to make her husband hate her for it. They're both rollercoasters of emotions, alternatively angry and sad and desperate.

There is a lot of talk about the twin concepts of faith and chance as living beings. It might be my own interpretation, but they're probably related to love and relationships, and in an extremely symbolic speech (interspersed with the craziest miscarriage scene of all time), Anna tells her husband about how she lost her faith. Could it be that it was the point where she lost her faith in her own ability to sustain her love for a man who had left her for the war? Seeing how it followed a scene of her grunting and rubbing herself whole looking at a statue of Jesus, it could be comparing the concept of lack of sexual satisfaction in a marriage to blasphemy.

Again, no matter what your thoughts on the subject might be, it has to be consistently acknowledged that this story is the product of a mind in devastation due to a failed relationship.

The existence of the tentacled monster and the dopplegangers might also be symbolic of what an attempt at salvaging a relationship might look like. People who might have lost their faith in a relationship, but are still willing to give it another chance, might think the solution is to completely change yourself and the other person, and make a completely different version of both. Kill the older selves that had the misunderstandings and the hatred, and make yourselves into someone clearly different and unrecognizable. Do it through special care, do it while ignoring and disregarding the world around you, and all the others you love, do it through repeated sex to rekindle the passion.

But what then? The movie ends with the male doppelganger knocking on the door, and the child asking the female doppelganger not to open it. Will all these measures help keep any sanity in your family? Will you be able to guarantee that the rest of your family will remain unscathed even after you've completed your transformations? And will it even last? Zulawski certainly doesn't think so, since he ends the movie with a lot of offscreen chaos through sounds of bombs and missiles and bright, flashing lights.

In the end, Zulawski seems to want to show everyone else how a diseased relationship can't be salvaged. No matter how much you try, no matter how much you try to change yourself or the other person, it will fail. Again, while a viewer may not necessarily agree, they can understand the intention behind this implication, since it is borne through an intensely personal experience.

And for that alone, it is definitely worth a rewatch - and more.

Cheers.

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Nightcrawler - The Modern Inspirational Movie

We all have role models. By role models, I don't mean hard working and honest people, police officers, teachers, parents, coaches. No, that stuff is for the children, all those sappy rose tinted life lessons we give them, all those heavily edited examples of idols we make stories about. Our role models are the rich, the successful, the famous, the ones who look at an opportunity and are brave enough to take it, the ones who use those Dale Carnegie books and give thoughtful, detailed speeches to win people over. And Nightcrawler gives us exactly that kind of role model.

The beginning of the movie itself establishes our protagonist, Lou Bloom. Who is he? He's a go getter. He looks at what he wants, and he goes and gets it. The people that have everything, the pricey bicycle they brandish, their nice, shiny watches - who hasn't felt like taking everything others have for themselves? When an opportunity arises for us, at other people's expenses, morality doesn't hold us back. Fear does. There have been various viewers who think Lou is a psychopath, but all that's different between him and us is fear. He fears no retribution, so he has no problems doing anything reprehensible, if it happens to be the best option for him. And isn't the capitalist society of today encouraging of that very approach? We look at movies like The Wolf Of Wall Street, and all we can think about is how Jordan Belfort really had everything. We let unqualified people host reality shows about how to make it big. We boast about income tax fraud. We look at shady businessmen in the newspapers and only feel jealousy at not leading the same lives they live.

Take all that ambition and introduce a drive behind it, and you have Lou. He's us, except he takes all those bogus leadership seminars and books to heart. He's us, except he takes internet research seriously and applies it to real life. He's us, doing everything we want to do, manipulating people the way we dream of doing, and screwing people over the way we wish we could. And really, why do we need those bogus warnings by storytellers about how greed ruins everything? Greed runs the world. The ones who are ruined are the ones who made the mistake of getting caught. Which is why the ending refuses to grant us any reprieve for the time we spent with Lou, looking at him doing everything we'd want to do, making us feel like we're looking at the most depraved, unhinged version of ourselves we rein in. We want to win, at the cost of everyone else. And we see that desire through a third person lens, finally fulfilled. And we know. This is exactly what we want.

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Ah, RahXephon - The child of Eva that almost could

RahXephon is the culmination of the Eva storm, a result of a mass attempt to try and make a full fledged consistent story that used all the tropes that made it a classic, while avoiding the mistakes that pulled it down. A hard task, certainly - the mistakes are inherent to those tropes, and you need a lot of skill to overcome those problems. RahXephon was Studio BONES's attempt, and it almost succeeded too. Almost.

At first glance, RahXephon certainly does improve on the mistakes Eva made. The plot points are sufficiently mysterious enough to be hard to guess, but they do explain it all. The protagonist isn't perfect, but he is more likable. The show does use sexuality in a very warped way, but it never feels diseased and disgusting. Where, then, did the show stumble? I'll take this moment to clarify that as opposed to the majority opinion, I very much like the first few episodes. They're tightly plotted, the suspense is intriguing, and the imagery is striking and memorable. That being said, they do betray one huge weakness of the show - an awareness of the shadow of its predecessor. The callbacks to Evangelion are numerous, extremely obvious and horrendous, and they keep on coming throughout. Take, for example, Kim Hotal. An orphaned Australian soldier with an axe to grind, her flashbacks are clear ripoffs from the flashbacks Asuka experienced. While that wouldn't be a problem in itself, the horror-styled flashback format is hilariously unsuited to Kim, her memories and experiences, and the whole thing just gets uncomfortable. Hell, even the mecha fight in that episode, with quicksand-like streets, is lifted directly from Eva. Of course, because parental issues must be present in some for or the other (because every major character in Eva had it), we need a random throwaway dialogue from Sayako Nanamori, apropos of nothing, that comes off as extremely cringe-worthy (and with revelations that come a lot later, completely useless). Less obvious as a failed ripoff is the Bähbem company, clearly a replacement to SEELE, their menace rarely felt, and while the kernel of the idea looks interesting, the execution is sloppy. The show is clearly uninterested with its associated characters. Again, RahXephon is a show built on musical influences and themes, with instrumentalists and puns on musical notes for a lot of names. However, the musical connection is only skin deep, since most of the soundtrack is very average and generic, with a battle theme clearly ripped off from Eva's battle theme. Also, the role of the instrumentalists seems merely nominally related to actual music, with the constant references to tuning and the mysterious song calls to the mechs never really amounting to anything. But what about the mecha fights themselves? The designs are very clearly defined, and the origins are very well planned, but that doesn't excuse the fact that the majority of Dolems are just boring. RahXephon attempts an action arc like Eva, but the creators miss a huge part of what made Eva fights such classics. None of the Dolems are interesting, none of them have memorable appearances or attacks, and all of them are dispatched by the same pattern - enemy fights Ayato, Ayato seemingly loses, RahXephon gets an unexpected power increase, dispatches Dolem with ease. Now, while it may seem that they're just repeating the most interesting events that happened in Eva fights, the problem is this - of all the fights in the Eva TV series, only 4 fights had an Eva go berserk. The rest found interesting ways and strategies to use for defeating the enemy. RahXephon, on the other hand, relies on plot convenient power ups a little too much, ultimately resulting in the fantastical feeling mundane. Coming back to the supporting cast and their storylines, it's pretty clear that there are a lot of interesting ideas somehow lost in translation to screen. While the Bähbem storyline is a shining example, we also have the sudden revelation of Commander Watari as Ayato's father, something that has practically no valuable buildup or effect. We have Torigai, who seems to be a conflicted, complex character with a lot of pent up frustration, but the show simply doesn't seem to find any time for him. And why are the plotters in this series so stupid? Nanamori is clearly being manipulated by Isshiki, but she pretends she's got an ace up her sleeve (plot twist: she doesn't) and acts scandalized when he ultimately does do what he clearly set out to do. Of course, the best example is the final plan Terra enacts to oppose their overseers, which is to destroy the wall around Tokyo Jupiter and unleash the Mu on the world. Genius. These things aren't problematic by themselves, actually. If given enough time to play out, or more brainpower toward building the plot, it would have been much better. Unfortunately, the show is clearly interested in the main love story. Yes, RahXephon is, fundamentally, a love story. There is a long time where they pretend it's about intrigue, suspense and interesting themes, but that pretense is abandoned towards the end. That, of course, wouldn't be a problem if it wasn't botched up completely. The idea behind the love story is noble - a woman in love with someone who was stuck in time, and is now too young for her. The problem arises from her being pretty much the worst character in the series. The only characteristic of Haruka Shitow seems to be a constant stream of pining for her lost love. There are no moments of chemistry, no touching moments they share, except for Haruka constantly screaming Ayato's name every time he gets into trouble in a fight. She's said to be a hard working woman who's respected by all, but we're never really convinced, even with the token shots of her doing some office work on the beach. Whenever she's motivated to action, it's only ever reactionary to Ayato, as if he's the only reason she exists (which might probably be true, seeing as she doesn't serve much more to the story, other than a belated Mishima reveal). But what about the romantic teases from Ayato's end, you ask? The scene where he gets sullen on seeing her with the scientist, or the dream where he finds himself being attracted to her? I'd have to argue that those were artifacts from the exploration of another theme RahXephon aimed to tackle - one of repressed sexuality. We have Megumi having feelings for someone older, yet being treated like a child despite having to work like a professional adult soldier in the military, then later crushing on Ayato himself - one that goes unrequited. We see Asahina. and the tension that goes on between Ayato and her, which is probably the only instance of actual sexual chemistry between two people in the show. We see Torigai, someone who loved her but was too blinded by arrogance to give up on power, grappling with feelings of frustration at having lost her at the hands of someone who she apparently chose instead of him, trying to force feelings between himself and Megumi in Nirai Kanai. And, of course, we have the taboo relationship of a teenager with someone much older than him. It's a pity that this theme didn't get explored a lot in the previous cases, though, because RahXephon could have had a lot more to get out of the experience, a lot more thematic richness, a more interesting cast of characters. Instead, it chose to develop these undertones with merely one pair. And it isn't the one you think. The relationship between Ayato and his mother, Maya Kamina, is screwed up in entirely too many ways. They act more like lovers with a lot of misunderstandings between them, an observation gleaned from the fact that an extremely high portion of the dialogue between them could be recontextualized in a suggestive way. Most of his time in Nirai Kanai he spends trying to get back to his home, despite it being full of humanity's enemies. She wears lipstick for him and keeps trying to win him back. He asks her to dress for her the way she did. The Oedipal tension between the two is so thick that no amount of high frequency singing can shatter it. The whole thing is messed up, uncomfortable and brilliant. A huge part of it is Maya Kamina herself.  The strongest character in the show, she is the perfect example of an enigmatic character done right (while also being the one aspect at which RahXephon kicks Eva's ass in comparisons - remember Gendou Ikari?). Her episodes tend to be some of the best ones in the series. In fact, Tokyo Jupiter as a setting is also very well realised, combining a Truman Show-like paranoia with sinister undertones of mind control, and it contributes towards the high quality of its associated episodes. Combine that with episode 19's perfect combination of emotion with horror, and the rest of the series simply fails to live up to them. Which is a shame, since the rest of the series form the majority of the story. In the end, RahXephon comes close, so close to greatness, only to stumble in the end. A pity, since it does so much so well. To be honest, though, a flawed, experimental series like this is more interesting to me than a technically perfect series like Wolf's Rain. I can still rave about all the things it did right, all the themes it attempted to explore. Even if the brilliant parts couldn't add up to a satisfying whole. In hindsight, maybe it did accomplish its aim of having the same legacy as Evangelion. After all, an explosion is infinitely more beautiful than mere fireworks.

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Birdman: The Fourth Wall

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Evangelion, and the point of subversion

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Inside Llewyn Davis - The Cycle of Pain and Art

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PK - No drunk jokes in this article

I watched a Rajkumar Hirani film recently. Guess which.

Clues -

1. Start off with main character who's seemingly a fish out of water in his environment 2. Show that the unique perspective of main character is actually best suited to this environment 3. Build up to a direct challenge to a rot in a large scale institution/ideology 4. Suddenly kill off (or have something horrible happen to) a tangential character and have main character numb 5. Make it seem like the system has won and the whimsical protagonist every likable character in the movie likes, has lost 6. Introduce a decidedly small-scale tangential plot element, use unique characteristic of protagonist to solve it 7. End movie with whimsical epilogue

Of course, now that I'm done being a smartass, you can see the name of the movie in the name of the article.

PK might be the weakest film Hirani has yet made.

The reason isn't because the lead whimsical protagonist is preachy - compared to Gandhigiri Munna or Rancho, he's pretty damned great. This time, the central conceit of the fish-out-of-water has been taken to its logical extreme by making him a literal alien. The problems in the "system" (this time the institution of godmen and organized religion) aren't taken as naturally obvious - in fact, our lovable alien tries everything out from the various religions. Every question he faces are direct results of what he experiences, and unlike Oh My God!, its most obvious counterpart in Bollywood, the questions it poses are simple, yet presented in a unique way, so that we aren't rolling our eyes at the obvious parables or the fictional audience reacting like these parables are world-shattering. No idea is particularly unique, but they are presented in such an understated way that it ends up feeling fresh.

The problem is this understated approach itself. It's a double edged sword, that, while helping it not feel like a retread, make us feel like nothing has really changed at the end of everything. Some characters do experience life lessons and get reunited, sure. But, to come back to the case of the naiveté of Oh My God!, at least it felt bolder, as if it was openly challenging all its detractors, all the false godmen to simply deal with it, as if it was calling for a revolution.

A significant portion of that comes from the way the two deal with theism removed from religion. Oh My God! introduced a modern spin on Krishna, complete with sight gags, that explained that, yes, God is real, and religion itself is the last thing he wants. PK has no such narrative reason to believe in God. He follows all the religious scriptures, sees the truth behind them, but in the end, he still believes that a supreme being, a concept alien to him, and with literally no reason given to endear itself to him, is real. It feels like a last-minute addition to the script to distance itself from those irritating atheists with their smug smiles.

But the real reason that ending seems so hollow might be point no. 6 of my previous list, which contributed the biggest flaw in 3 Idiots, and the biggest flaw in PK itself. The romantic plot between Anushka Sharma and Sushant Singh Rajput, given at the beginning of the film, is suddenly made the central plot element in the end, right in the middle of an ideological debate, to prove the fact that religion is just a human idea, and godmen have no powers of their own. Notwithstanding the weak nature of the romantic portions themselves, which felt incredibly rushed, my central question is this - if one of the two did leave the other at the altar, would it completely, undeniably prove that Muslims are bad by character, and/or that the abilities of godmen are real? Aren't human beings complex enough to be a bundle of contradictions, ideas, and flawed reasoning to make mistakes on their own? And does that mean that every abandoned wedding, every runaway groom/bride in the real world proves unrelated astrology and religious assumptions right?

It's a shame. None of Hirani's films are perfect, but none of them are badly made either. And PK is no exception. I genuinely laughed at his antics, I thought a lot of monets were very cleverly handled, and I'm willing to forgive the fact that Sanjay Dutt's sudden death (point 4) seems shoehorned in and feels out of place with the film's tone. However, it is this core ideology of the movie that troubles me the most, and makes me enjoy it much lesser than any of his other movies.

Oh well. Cheers.

[eatpotatochip]

Fargo, or how to renovate your snowy backyard

Spoiler alert - those of you who haven't seen any of the Coen brothers' movies yet, and are still obsessed with the works of Tarantino and Nolan, do pick this movie up. It's pretty representative of their deconstructionist, darkly comedic and richly thematic repertoire of movies. Take advantage of the free time you get and introduce yourself to their filmography. You won't regret it.

The greatest strength of Fargo lies in balance. Balance of the happy, the warm, the sad, the dumb, the evil, and the horrific.

The second greatest strength of Fargo lies in the deceptively simple story. All the characters are well-written, full of personality, and all the events are a direct result of their personalities and the way they react to events. When a desperate man, a dirty salesman by nature, falls short of money, he resorts to a plan to have his wife kidnapped - and pocket most of the money. His rich father-in-law, a strong businessman by nature, dominating in nature, decides to take control of the negotiations he's in the dark about. The kidnappers, greedy, merciless and prone to quick decisions without a second thought, face difficulty after difficulty and make the dumbest decisions possible. And thus, as the events bounce off each other, with mangled faces, the loss of a million dollars into oblivion, and a death toll of seven, the plot keeps twisting and turning till it reaches a satisfying, if bittersweet, conclusion.

The third greatest strength of Fargo is Marge, played by Frances McDormand. Marge is the emotional core of the film. She contributes all the happiest moments of the movie, all the ones that make you stupidly smile with contentment. She is prone to making mistakes, like not being able to understand when Naginata is lying to her, but she's still the smartest character in the whole movie, by a long shot. She's a heroine, willing to raise her gun when it's important, not flinching at horrific situations, but her character doesn't fall victim to the general misconception by most writers that strong female characters = women who are more masculine than feminine. She's kind, motherly, and genuinely believes in good - and is all the more empowered by it.

The fourth greatest strength of this movie is the direction. The Coen brothers are some of the best in the business, always choosing the best shots, and here they choose to showcase scenes that lay emphasis on showing the story in the best way possible, instead of trying to show off, like many directors with a smattering of theoretical knowledge tend to do. Take, for example, this shot that opens the triple homicide scene on the highway, a sinister picture of things to come.

Or this shot, set at a point when Jerry feels alone and betrayed, with nothing to help him out.

The fifth greatest strength of the movie is the opening scroll, which claims all the events are based on an actual story. In reality, while certain scenes were grabbed off seperate incidents from the newspaper (the infamous woodchipper scene, for example), the story on the whole is completely fictional. Which is a boon, since the movie doesn't feature any unrealistic last minute action shenanigans. Taken in the context of the real world, it makes impatient viewers accept the simple, bittersweet ending easier.

And the sixth greatest strength of Fargo is that it serves as a fantastic entry point to the filmography of the Coen brothers, while simultaneously being one of their best movies. 

Cheers.

[eatpotatochip]

Breaking Bad - My favourite TV shows (and why they suck)

Time for something new.

"Breaking Bad title card" by Breaking Bad, Season five episode nine "Blood Money".. Licensed under Fair use via Wikipedia.

Breaking Bad is a pretty stereotypical choice for “Favourite Television Show evaar”, and, well, I’ve never been one to wear hipster glasses and talk about how “people these days really need to watch Sang Wo-Lee instead of mainstream trash, man”. So yeah, it’s a predictable choice, but Breaking Bad is my favourite TV show.

Buildup so krazy, it's spelled with a K

Breaking Bad certainly has a crazy concept. A Nobel prize-winning high school chemistry teacher down in the dumps with a suburban house of his own (I never understand poor people in American media) turns to cooking meth after he gets cancer. On paper, it sounds like Weeds taken to a ridiculous extreme. However, the creators clearly want to approach this concept with a slow-burn, realistic approach, so they needed to build that tone up from the beginning, and do it well. The distinctive thing about this show is that it was completely devoted to letting the consequences of every action pan out naturally. If the characters made a mistake, sooner or later, it would return to bite them in the ass with vengeance. What I’m basically tryijng to say is that BrBa was cautious, meticulous and deliberate in its plotting. It’s because of this that I think Episode 6, Season 1, Krazy Handful Of Nothin’, hurt the series so much.

Yes, I’m saying that the epic “This is not meth” scene hurt Breaking Bad.

This scene completely oversold the fantastical aspect of the show, faux-starting a build-up towards Walter White, the upcoming drug baron who destroys his competition WITH SCIENCE! The core aims of the show were still unchanged, and this brought people a great amount of irritation, waiting for Walter to don his Hat and do some Science to blast some Bad People. Unfortunately, Season 2 was very relaxed in pace, content with seeing every storyline through instead of rushing stuff. Is that a bad choice? No, of course not. But it’s harder to accept that when the 2nd episode itself features life-or-death stakes and you’ve got cold opens foreshadowing an explosive finale.

So, did BrBa get to the action parts? Sure, in Season 3. But it felt like Season 3 was less of a cohesive whole than past seasons, or, with today’s benefit of hindsight, even latter seasons. It often felt like we were jumping on shaky ground from one plotline to another, as if the creators were making the story up on the go (which, as it turns out, they did). As a result, the deed-consequence structure felt too rushed, especially with the continuation of that-friend-of-Jesse’s-who-got-shot-in-season-two coming a touch too late.

BrBa did finally get the balance between storytelling and action, but that was all the way up in Season 4. Hence, all the fans of BrBa will fervently recommend it to you, and in the same breath, tell you to be patient until season 4 “where it gets really, really good”.

The Misunderstanding

The essence of good stories come through some kind of conflict. It might be a couple of Rebels against the empire, it might be the FBI against a cannibalistic psychologist, it might be a couple of toys against a tyrannical teddy bear. What I’m saying is, stories know they’re not interesting if everyone is perpetually happy and celebratory. So, they often need a central source of conflict.

The worst method to introduce conflict, though, is The Misunderstanding.

The Misunderstanding is a classic example of the writers copping out from providing any proper reason for conflict. Lead pair likes each other? Time to make both think the other is doing something bad, and instead of resolving it by asking each other like smart people, they go full retard and decide to hold silent grudges. There's tension between two people, which can cause a potentially explosive situation and ruin everything? Make one think the other banged his mom or something, that'll do the job. The classic symptom of The Misunderstanding is the complete inability of the two parties to resolve the situation by, y'know, talking to each other.

Of course, The Misunderstanding is the basic cause of most conflicts in Breaking Bad.

The best example, of course, is the Walt-Jesse animosity in most of Breaking Bad. Walt is an egomaniac who is incredibly insecure of emasculation and incredibly proud of having one thing he's good at, and Jesse is a perpetual accident waiting to happen who still seeks approval and recognition from his peers, especially Walter. So Walter will keep pushing Jesse down and Jesse will keep making sullen faces and getting manipulated. The best example? Jesse gaining the recognition of Gus and Walter saying "It's all about me." Yes, it's the truth, but could you not phrase it better? Now Jesse's against you, and you're in the middle of the desert with a gun to your head and threats being shot at a rate of five Holy Shits per minute. How to resolve that? Bamboozle Jesse again, with Lily Of The Valley. Getting a chance to talk to Jesse (albeit with a mic up his coat courtesy Hank)? Jesse sees a random scary looking Mexican, backs the hell out, and ruins all chance of setting this without a shootout in the desert.

And there, ladies and gentlemen, is where Breaking Bad falls short in its writing.

Show, don't tease, please

Of course, the ending also has to be talked about. Was it a fitting end to the series? Eh, maybe.

See, the cause-and-effect nature of the series has always been strongly prevalent throughout. If Walt makes a mistake by keeping Gale's gift book, you'll be damn sure it'll put him in a shitty situation. If Gus decides to torture Hector Salamanca with bad news again and again, he risks the situation getting explosive. What I'm saying is, Breaking Bad never shies away from showing the effects of all the mistakes these characters make.

Oh, except for the effects of the biggest mistake of all. The one that started everything in the first place.

When Heisenberg's identity finally goes public, the attention shifts to his time in the hills, alone and defeated. That's fine, but what about all the destruction he's left in Albuquerque? His wife, disgraced? His son, probably ostracised as the son of a meth kingpin? Marie, a widow, probably relapsing into kleptomania as all the ceremonies and protection leaves her numb? The police interference in their lives as they try to get back to normal? Only glimpses, in the last episode. That is all we see. And that makes us - or at least, it certainly made me - feel robbed of a lot of story they could have told.

In closing

Breaking Bad is a problematic show, not meant for everyone. Would I still recomend it to everyone? Well, yeah, I would. This is still my favourite TV show, and the experience has been akin to watching a movie unfold over 6 years. All the brilliant storytelling, all the commitment to its basic values, all the fun.

Cheers.

[eatpotatochip]

The Dark Knight - My Favourite Movies (and why they suck)

So, I'm starting this series of blog posts on some of my favourite movies of all time, only with a new angle. I see all the people who go rabid over the things they hate, and all the people who go blind with adoration about the things that they love, and I've realized - why not pick out flaws in the things you love, or the best things about the movies you hate? Of course, the latter lends itself to some backhanded compliments ("George Clooney certainly made us kinder to Adam West's portrayal of Batman"), so I'll start by doing something harder. Hence, the attempt to make people go up in arms over this concept by choosing a movie that 90% of all people (94%, according to Rotten Tomatoes, if we try to be more precise) already like. 

First off, let me state some of the usual complaints people have with TDK that I won't make, for the simple reason that I disagree with them. Yes, Heath Ledger was a brilliant Joker. Yes, Mark Hamill is better. That does not make Ledger bad in any way, unless you're an idiot. Yes, The Dark Knight is a Batman story through-and-through, and if you feel it's too different from the comics to be faithful to what makes Batman Batman, you're a close-minded buffoon who ignores the fact that not only do comics have multiple universes, the tones vary wildly from writer to writer, which means you have uber-serious stories by Frank Miller (who only wrote two good ones, anyway) and tonally colourful writers like Grant Morrison.

Now, SPOILER ALERT.

Nolan Editing

A controversial opinion: Nolan is better at handling the editing of his movies than Tarantino. Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs will always be considered great examples of editing, but Nolan has consistently shown inventiveness through almost each one of is movies. The Prestige, to choose just one example, twists the narrative to misdirect the audience from the real trick of the plot, keeping three portions of the timeline running linear, yet parallel to each other. The more we progress, the more things aren't what they seem, until the end, where the central conceit (and reason for the bizarre editing) is perfectly explained through a symbolic speech about magic tricks.

The Dark Knight, on the other hand, shows the flip side of his skills, his problem with characters. You've got characters like Ramirez and Reese and Berg, who feel like they've got full-fledged storylines that have been edited out or , left incomplete or - wait, you don't remember who some or all of those people are?

Ramirez was a cop in the MCU who had a corrupt past, but was taken in by Jim Gordon anyway. She's an integral part of the team, but the Mafia threatens her mother's life, because of which she betrays Harvey Dent and gives him away to them. She appears in four to five scenes, and is the main subject of only one.

Reese was an employee of Wayne enterprises who puzzled out the identity of Batman, and was subtly discouraged by Fox to disclose it or manipulate anyone, on the simple grounds that he risked looking extremely stupid. Later, though, as the Joker wreaked havoc in demand of Batman's true identity, Reese decided to surrender his own knowledge, which might have been due to his search for glory, or his feelings of guilt. We will never know, because he's only in two major scenes, and is a side-player in the second one.

The rapid cuts only serve to exacerbate our annoyance at leaving these, and others things, unexplained. Sure, it keeps the pace snappy, but cutting away after Reese looking at Bruce Wayne after the car crash, or Ramirez making shifty eyes as the kidnapper drives away with an unsuspecting Harvey Dent, is just plain irritating.

Two Face - wait, what?

In fact, there's a general problem with leaving too much unexplained. Of course, the plot hole with the Joker still in the party after Batman saves Rachel from falling (which also makes no sense, since all he does is catch her and crash himself into a car) is pretty famous. A lot of the plot problems, however, actually involve Two Face.

Harvey Dent discovers the two cops that took Rachel and him away - how, exactly? He decides to injure Maroni by shooting the driver in the limousine they're both in, except he's already in, and he still appears in later scenes without a scratch.

Going back, there has always been an element of disbelief in Two Face's origin story. The nickname Two Face is unexplained and unbelievable, for instance. Why would a man who is so completely on the side of good be considered two-faced? He's against criminals, and against corruption in the force as well. Plus, the nickname is said to have originated back when he was in Internal Affairs, so the disconnect between his easy-breezy persona in the news as DA and his desperate-for-results self can also be discounted. Ultimately, it feels like poor shoehorning of the name to try and start his turn into darkness.

And about that turn into darkness -did anyone believe that speech by the Joker in the hospital (brilliantly written, of course, but still) was enough to drive him towards vengeance against the police force? Yes, he was in pain due to the disfigurement and presumably (notice this word, since we're never really given any hint toward it other than a single line by Gordon) wasn't thinking straight because of it, but all the Joker did was say that he was a crazy pawn in the mob's schemes (which, given the sudden recent successes by the mob as soon as they let him run the shots, was immediately dismissable) and that the police also had "plans" of their own. Was that really enough of a case?

These faults could have been forgiven, if not for the fact that Harvey Dent's storyline is extremely important to this film as well as its sequel. In fact, this is easily the best depiction of Two Face on film, partly because Aaron Eckhart gives such an understated and nuanced performance throughout. The strengths make the flaws stick out even more like a sore thumb.

In Closing

The more I think about it, the more The Dark Knight is an overrated piece of tripe that got far too much attention for Heath Ledger's overrated performance. The story doesn't make a lick of sense, the characters are all inconsistent and dumb, and the whole thing feels like Batman fanfiction. The Dark Knight sucks.

To all detractors, this is the ending of this article for you. Close the tab and continue congratulating yourself for finding some new points to diss TDK about.

To the rest, this is still an amazing movie, but it has flaws that do deserve to be mentioned. After all, you have to acknowledge that something is flawed before you can truly love it. So, does TDK suck? Absolutely not - that title was just to grab eyeballs. So do watch it for the 25th time, and rewatch all the scenes you love. 

I know I have.

[eatpotatochip]

Top 10 Marvel Cinematic Universe everythings

The Marvel Cinematic Universe is probably the most ambitious idea ever put in movies - take all the complicated mythos of Marvel, all the quirkiness of the comic book format, and apply it to Hollywood, with all the movies adding to a vast, interconnected universe. In fact, I'm calling it. The MCU is probably the best movie franchise ever. We're already 10 movies in, and no other film series has ever sustained this level of quality throughout it's entire run. And we're not even finished!

So, in honour of the most recent entry in the series, Guardians Of The Galaxy, let's make a top 10 list of, well, everything related to the MCU.

Disclaimer - the lists below are entirely subject to personal opinion. Also, HUGE spoilers.

Top 10 Best Movies

10. The Incredible Hulk

We don't really think about this movie as a Marvel movie, do we? Not even Marvel does - they've basically chosen to forget about it right now. At the bottom of the list, it's by no means a bad movie, it just isn't particularly impressive or memorable. Car gloves still for the win though.

9. Iron Man 2

This is a problematic movie, for sure, but by no means a bad one, again. "I Vant My Burd" is suitably memorable, as is Whiplash himself, and Justin Hammer is thoroughly smarmy. Plus, Tony and Pepper still rock together, and War Machine is cool.

8. Iron Man Three

This movie is extremely divisive. People either consider this the best movie in the MCU, or the worst. There's hardly ever an in-between. For what it's worth, it's incredibly funny, the action scenes are pretty memorable, and Tony Stark is still awesome.

7. Thor

I wish this movie was better than it is. All the Asgard scenes are epic in feel, and Chris Hemsworth as Thor is immensely likable. Idris Elba as Heimdall is an inspired choice. And, of course, Tom Hiddleston as Loki is a revelation, the breakout villain of the MCU, the villain against which all others are judged.

6. Thor 2: The Dark World

I actually consider these two movies pretty close in quality. The editing is so much better, the annoying characters from the previous film all become much more likable, and there's a substantial amount of world-building going on this time around. Thor might be the more memorable film, but in terms of quality, Thor 2 is much better.

5. Iron Man

The one that started it all. The movie to prove to the world that dark and gritty could be executed alongside fun and lively. Robert Downey Jr. is a complete boss owning every frame he's in, and the movie itself knows that too, choosing to keep him out of the armor for a long time (of course, this became a staple of all Iron Man movies, but this one justifies it). This movie kicks off the MCU too, and for that it deserves even greater consideration.

4. The Avengers

The Avengers is probably the greatest pure superhero movie of all time. Let's face it - The Dark Knight was more of a suspense thriller than a superhero movie, and all the movies ranked above this aren't really superhero movies in the traditional sense anyways. The brilliance of the premise lies in the fact that Joss Whedon took the central question in everyone's minds ("Would all these wildly different superheroes from tonally different movies even work together on screen?") and made it part of the central story. With all the memorable character interactions and the amazing climax, there's no denying it. This movie rocks.

3. Captain America: The First Avenger

I have a soft spot for this movie. With all the morally grey heroes we must see in all of today's movies, it's a refreshing change to see a hero that honestly wants to do good. The name itself raises so many eyebrows that it's refreshing they didn't make an ironic, snarky hero, but a film very period in aesthetic, that strived to be pure good in every way. Even discounting the captain, there are so many memorable characters in the movie, like Peggy Carter and the Red Skull. I love this movie, and for a long time this was my unapologetic pick for the best Marvel movie, even after the Avengers came out. I had pretty high expectations from it's sequel. How did that turn out, I wonder?

2. Captain America: The Winter Soldier

Take a force of pure goodness and force him into an age of lies and deceit, and you get an amazing premise that the Russo brothers derive every potentially interesting plot thread out of. This isn't just an amazing action movie or a suspenseful spy thriller, this is an uncaring, ballsy force that disrupts everything in the MCU, destroying the status quo and still managing to put all of these memorable characters to good use, like the Captain himself, Black Widow and Nick Fury, as well as introducing instantly memorable characters, like the Falcon, Alexander Pierce, and the Winter Soldier himself. It raised the bar even higher for all future Marvel movies...

1. Guardians Of The Galaxy

...which was immediately raised even higher by the 21st century's answer to Star Wars. I do not make that comparison lightly - this movie is a treasure, a modern space opera movie that pays homage to all it's previous genre icons, a la Star Wars, while still carving out it's own unique identity. Immensely memorable and quotable, this is easily the best Marvel movie yet.

Now, it's time to compare all the action scenes. One action scene per movie.

10. Thor and the dimension hopping fight against Malekith

Let's face it - Malekith isn't a terribly interesting villain, and the intersecting universes don't entirely make a lot of sense, but this scene is pretty sweet. Bonus points for Thor riding the subway and Jane Foster actually being useful for once.

9. Hulk vs Abomination

Tim Roth, you deserved better. But car gloves and Hulk Smashes still make for an enjoyable fight.

8. Iron Man vs Whiplash at the Grand Prix

As hammy as Whiplash was, this is probably the one time he appeared truly scary in the entire movie. Sliced race cars, transforming portable Iron Man armor, and some zippy humor - what's not to like?

7. Iron Man w/o armor against Extremis soldiers

Shane Black seemed to be trying to prove to us that Iron Man didn't need a suit to be who he is, and this scene certainly proved it. Tony Stark took various commonplace equipment and improvised makeshift weapons to infiltrate the Mandarin's base in an incredibly cool sequence.

6. Iron Man vs Taliban stand-ins

Okay, yeah, they're the Ten Rings, but in the MCU they aren't really connected to Mandarin, are they? This fight is easily the most cathartic one in the entire movie, and it's exhilarating to see the Iron Man armor, even in its rudimentary form, blasting away terrorists with glee.

5. Captain America and the WW2 montage

It's exceedingly disappointing to see the majority of Cap's work being relegated to a quick montage, but by god, this was an insanely cool montage, I could watch an entire movie derived just off this montage alone. 

4. Thor vs Loki at the Rainbow Bridge

OK, again, it's the Bifrost bridge, but whatever. This scene works so well because of all the plot points in the film that culminate towards this moment - Thor, the brat who has finally learnt selflessness and Loki, the trickster who betrayed his native race for the one he grew up in, finally facing off against each other. Take creative usage of the hammer and some nice character moments and you've got an incredibly memorable climax.

3. Nick Fury v/s Hydra agents

The best action sequence in this movie was, surprisingly, given to Nick Fury instead, and it is incredible. From the modern fears of unknown agents enabled by the government to enact a completely public assassination, to the revelation that not even an entire contingent is enough to capture or contain Nick Fury. Inventive, crazy and completely awesome, this is an easy number 3. 

2. The Guardians and Ravagers vs the Dark Aster

What's so great about this battle to propel it to number two? Everything. The Xandarian ships coming together to form a giant net, the battle sequences with so many great and little moments thrown in (Star Lord finally being referred to by his name, Groot playing foosball with soldiers, the ultimate crazy sequence involving Infinity stones and the power of dance), this would have been the strongest climactic battle in the MCU if not for...

1. The Avengers in New York

Take everything that made the previous entry awesome, and put four films' worth of build-up behind it, and you have an easy contender for the greatest superhero fight ever in movies.

Now for the negativity. Let's do a top 9 dumbest moments in the Marvel Cinematic universe (because I couldn't find 10).

9. Iron Man is unreachable at this moment

In Captain America: The Winter Soldier's climax, the stakes have never been higher. Hydra is poised to eliminate each and every threat in the entire world, and it's up to Captain America and his team to stop them. Except... why isn't he calling Tony Stark up? Or Bruce Banner? Hell, wouldn't the chip-switching gambit be entirely unnecessary once they had the Hulk on their side?

8. Malekith the villain

The character of Malekith is incredibly underwritten, incredibly uninteresting, but that isn't the main problem. The main problem is him being a villain in Thor 2, a sequel to a movie that birthed the most iconic villain of the MCU. It is precisely that detail that makes him so disappointing to behold.

7. Why the montage?

In Captain America The First Avenger, we're supposed to see the origin story of the Captain, and we do, but just as we're about to see how he gained his strategic skills and leadership qualities, the film decides to cut away to a montage. Yes, it's a very cool montage, to be sure, but it makes the film feel incomplete as a result. When future reference is made towards his activities in WW2, we can't help but wish we were privy to all of it.

6. Obadiah Stane's sudden turn as Warmonger

For the record, I found Obadiah's character pretty great, and his turn towards evil pretty believable. That does not mean his decision to steal and pilot a giant Iron Man suit is believable at all. So you're telling me, this balding, aged businessman with an insane lust for money would suddenly want to pilot a giant suit and go all murderous?

5. Edward Norton as Hulk

Edward Norton is an amazing actor. He's just thoroughly unsuited for the Hulk's role. Don't get me wrong, he does Bruce Banner pretty decently, but you never feel sold on the latent rage he needed to show. At least, I certainly wasn't.

4. Why is Loki suddenly so evil?

Loki was an incredibly complex character in Thor and even Thor 2, a man who didn't explicitly want to do evil, but only wanted approval and recognition. In The Avengers, though, he's incredibly gleeful, snarky and delights in being evil, murdering human beings en masse because of a superiority complex. Yes, he's still incredibly entertaining to watch, but a lot of the complexity has been stripped out.

3. Aiden Pearce as The Mandarin

This is just wrong on so many levels. Guy Pearce does not sell any part of his role. Yes, the fake-out of Ben Kingsley being a British actor was extremely funny, but Aiden Pearce does not fit the bill as the real Mandarin. Granted, it's a persona he was using to further his own goals, but even as a Big Bad, he falls short.

2. All the earth scenes in Thor

Call it a case of early installment weirdness, but the Earth scenes in Thor compare horribly to it's Asgard scenes. Cringe-inducing dialogue (Mjolnir is "Myuh-myuh"? Seriously?) and the most contrived and unconvincing romance plot in the MCU (Natalie Portman now has something to compare her Star Wars romance to) made me wish the Asgardian parts came as quickly as possible, and that some freak accident quickly killed all these idiotic and pointless extra characters. Thank god for Thor 2.

1. Only Iron Man can control a private weapon of destruction because he's like totally cool and whatever

The most retarded part of Iron Man 2 is the most retarded part of the MCU. Senator Stern might be an unlikable douche and a Hydra agent, but he does have a point when he says that the Iron Man armor can't be controlled or owned by one man alone, and Tony can't ensure that others won't make armor similar to him. This is swiftly proved right by Whiplash himself. So, what does Tony Stark do to prove this theory wrong? Nothing at all, actually. He coasts by on his own awesomeness and people concede that he's awesome and totally qualified to control the Iron Man technology just because. At least trying to explain would have been nice.

And that wraps up this list, don't you think? How about a list of top 4 villains now? (All uninteresting villains have been discarded prematurely)

4. Johann Schmidt - The Red Skull

Incredibly hammy, menacing and entertaining, the Red Skull was a blast to watch, and a nice opponent for Captain America's first feature, being his physical equal while being completely opposite to him in his outlook towards human nature.

3. The Winter Soldier

Is this list going to be predominated by Captain America villains? The Winter Soldier is incredibly powerful, intelligent, ruthless and a worthy opponent to the Captain in every way, as well as having a nice backstory tied in to the Captain's own.

2. Alexander Pierce

Another Captain America villain? Well, I'd argue that Alexander Pierce is a stronger villain than even the Winter Soldier because of his mix of ruthlessness, determination and conviction in his own ideals. All of his scenes are memorable, especially his last one.

1. Loki

Of course there could be no one else. Despite everything, Loki is an amazing character, played amazingly by Tom Hiddleston, who steals every scene he's in. 

And I think that's enough for this pretty long post of mine. Disagree with my list, or think I'm too biased towards Captain America? Make your own list then, because I don't care. Now, on to the excruciating wait for The Avengers: Age Of Ultron.

Cheers. 

[eatpotatochip]

Another (a non spoiler analysis)

Another is a 12 episode horror mystery anime produced by P.A. Works, adapted from a 2009 novel by Yukito Ayatsuji.

Another- the mystery

How do you tell your viewers a mystery story, without them catching on to your clues?

It's a long time since I've seen a mystery series that has kept me in perfect suspense, making me guess and second guess myself, and throwing me off each time with such aplomb that it's hard not to appreciate it. I can proudly state I didn't anticipate a single twist the show threw at me.

But the show tripped over it's own mystery in the end.

Let's back up- how DO you keep the mystery alive? There are a lot of mystery tropes that storytellers use.

The first, of course, is to obfuscate the clues. Variations on these include feeding the audience falsified information, or red herrings, that keep them on their toes searching for clues that don't exist. The risk here is that your audience might disrespect you for leading them on a wild goose chase.

You can also attempt to hide the clues in plain sight - but that's easier said than done, considering the media saturated internet generation we have these days. We see everything cool, and everything revolutionary and surprising automatically turns cool and meme-worthy and is copied ad-infinitum till the tropes are stripped back and laid bare for all to look. So we kinda have a bad tendency to predict how a story will progress. I should know. I predicted nearly all of Monster's twists before they happened, and it diminished my enjoyment of the finished product in the end.

The third way is the riskiest, and to this date, it has never impressed me. What is it? Well, to piece the puzzle together, you need the pieces. Hide those until the end, and you've got a puzzle no one can solve, even if they'll feel cheated by the end.

Another did the first and second with such expertise that it was kind of disappointing to see the last twist handled the third way. The novel it is adapted from originally gave the piece to the puzzle much beforehand, so it baffles me why they decided to hide it. I can see where this decision comes, though. The scriptwriters probably thought that with all the information, the mystery would be rendered predictable.

Oh, well. Maybe I overestimated them.

But seriously, the rest of the story is handled so well. The mystery is only enhanced by the exposition, which is a rare feat. The show draws you in, and every mistake it seemingly makes quickly turns out to have been a masterstroke.

So, ultimately, how is Another as a mystery? Your mileage may vary, and my expectations were probably coloured by the rest of the story, but it is pretty good.

Another - the horror story

Monsters, Inc said it back in 2001. It's damned hard to scare us kids these days. I look at A Nightmare On Elm Street, a beloved classic in the horror genre, and I can't help but laugh. THIS is what scared people back in the day?

Suffice to say, horror stories have it hard these days.

Another does itself no favours towards the beginning, with the first episode. Dissonant rising music and creepy imagery do not unsettle us just by themselves, and Another abuses it quite a lot in the beginning. You need substance to a story, and have us empathize with the characters, and then build up the tension before trying to scare us. So does the show learn from it's mistakes?

Hell yeah, it does.

The show quickly finds it's step by the fourth episode and fleshes out the characters instead of trying to insert unnecessary attempts at disturbing the viewers. The story progresses naturally, and it's one of the rare cases I've seen where explaining the horror elements to us actually makes the attempts to increase tension and uneasiness easier.

Plus, I'm genuinely surprised at how believable the transition from sanity to madness is handled in some of the characters. When chaos erupts, it makes an even stronger impression on us.

And yeah, there's gore in this anime. Thankfully, there isn't a lot of it spread throughout, so we never get used to it, and it almost never goes over the top for it's own sake. So, yeah, it's pretty sweet.

Conclusion

All the problems I had with Another in the beginning were quickly dissipated, and I have thoroughly enjoyed this anime. The ending twist does frustrate me a lot. However, while I do wish it had been handled better, I can't say it ruins the series. So, yeah, this anime is highly recommended to every horror, mystery and gore fan. Have a ball.

Cheers.

[eatpotatochip]

Of subjectivity and consensus

The Dark Knight is the worst movie ever made, and you're wrong for liking it.

Now that I have your attention, I'd like you to to look inside yourself. What did you feel when you saw such negative words associated with a movie that you quite possibly love? If you don't, replace it with any movie that you like, the actual movie name doesn't matter. The thought rushes to your head, accompanied with anger, "Everyone loves The Dark Knight. Who is this guy to tell me what I should feel about my favourite movie, especially when everyone knows he's wrong?" Indeed, who am I? Who is anyone to tell you why you're wrong, especially in the case of works of art, which are always meant to be subjective?

Ever since we've been born, we've been exposed to popular media of many kinds. Movies, TV shows, comic books, anime, etc. In the beginning, we never really paid much attention to any of the nuances of the stories, the little details, the framing, but as we grew older, we began to read reviews that populated the internet, newspapers, and media in general. Stern wise-looking people taught us that all examples of popular culture could and should be cross-examined and assigned a number, then pushed on various lists pertaining to any particular category (Loved a movie? Top 10 Best Movies Of All Time. Hated it? Top 10 Worst Movies Of All Time. Merely liked it? Top 10 Friendzoned Movies Of All Time).

And as we grew up, searched for friends with common tastes, we delighted in the fact that people shared our opinions. In a way, it vindicated us. We felt happy to be correct about liking something. "Everyone loves it, so I'm right in liking it too, right? Everyone hates it, so I'm right in hating it too, right?

"Everyone loves it, so I guess I should also like it, right?"

And there comes the danger of consensus. It influences our opinions even before we have time to formulate them.

With the advent of the internet, this problem has become even more ubiquitous. We have Metacritic, who collate multiple reviews to generate a number that can be bandied about to demonstrate superiority of a work of art over something. "Oh, you don't think The Legend Of Zelda: Ocarina Of Time is anything special? Well, let me show you how wrong you are, with this link showing how it has a score of 99. Ashamed yet?" "Oh, you thought You don't mess With The Zohan was pretty funny? WELL YOU'RE WRONG YOU MONSTER." And so on. I think you get the point.

"But wait," you say, "isn't Transformers pretty successful, despite always being consistently critically lambasted?" To that point, I will concede, in the world of movies, TV shows and video games, there is still a general acknowledgement towards the difference in opinions of critics and the public. After all, aren't there separate average scores for critics and users on both Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic? So problem solved, right? Not quite.

User reviews come from laymen like us. People who don't have as much of an interest in cinematic affectations and only want to enjoy a movie. Loved a movie? 10/10. Liked a movie? 8/10. Didn't like it? 4/10. Hated it? 0/10. Of course, this means that any anger towards the creators or the genre in general affects the scores in an even bigger way than critics, as with Mass Effect 3. So, in a way, both sides of the coin are equally unreliable, and should always be depended on with a pinch of salt.

But what if there aren't a lot of reviews for a medium to collate, and thus all these sites only show scores of the users?

This brings me to anime.

Unlike movies, TV shows, music, or games, there really hasn't been a subculture of anime reviews able to match the enormity of the subculture of anime watchers. Thus, anime fans don't have the requisite experience necessary to take reviews and scores with a pinch of salt. There isn't a viable gap between critical opinions and layman opinions, since the critics are most often laymen who tend to watch a lot of anime.

This poses a problem due to sites like these. People who love anime generally tend to get MAL to "support" their opinions, as if not getting a good ranking implies that they're wrong for liking it. People put an anime on their top list and go on about how it's pretty highly rated in MyAnimeList, or how it got a glowing 5 star review on themanime.

To all you happy people, all you geeky people, all you sexy people, all you fanboys and fangirls, I have one piece of humble advice to offer.

If you like a piece of art, you don't need the approval of the world to do so.

You like Zohan? Hurray for you. You don't like the Nolan Batman trilogy? To each his/her own. You actually liked Dante in the new DMC? Go crazy playing it again and again. Really, as long as you're confident about your likes and dislikes, I don't care how much they differ from mine. Don't shove it down my throat, and I'll respect it, even.

But make sure you're unapologetic about it.

Because art is subjective, and meant to be enjoyed in your own way.

Cheers.