It’s Sci-Fi month here at The Buzz, and our first column back since we named out Top Ten Science Fiction Movies. This week, we continue the speculatory tech trend with a new sci-fi short, a review of a classic film now on Blu-Ray, and some tech/entertainment news you gotta know. Plus, we take a look at a new horror film and take a look at some new TV. So if you’ve come here to kick a** and chew bubblegum, and you’re all out o bubblegum then its time for this week’s Buzz!
Movies: The interesting thing about truly great actors is that they can either make even the worst movie infinitely watchable, or they can leave the viewer infuriated to see such talent wasted on some bland, uninspired dreck. Which is the case when Idris Elba and Oscar-nominee Taraji P. Henson team up? More on that in a moment.
No Good Deed is your standard “babysitter home alone with a killer” set-up, but targeted towards an older audience (and judging from the box office returns, the strategy worked). Idris Elba plays Colin Evans, is denied parole while imprisoned for the murder of 6 people, so naturally, on transport back from the hearing, he racks up two more kills and flees because if we’ve learned one thing from movies, its that drivers of prisoner transports are essentially brain dead cannon fodder. On the flip side, we have Terri, played by Taraji P. Henson, who’s a stressed out mother of two with a barely-there husband, a supportive and rambunctious best friend and every other element they could throw in designed to make Terri the ultimate “It could happen to you” archetype for the middle aged woman.
To describe what unfolds once Colin, after murdering his cheating ex, turns up at Terri’s house asking to use the phone. Saying “twists and turns” occur afterwards would be wrong, as it implies anything changes from the trajectory we all laid out in our minds the minute the premise is introduced. Any plot developments within the film are greeted with only one of two responses, either “Well, of course they’re doing this” or “Really, they’re doing this?”. It’s frustrating “She don’t need no man” conclusion might be the most insipid of all the film’s choices, but it’s certainly got some stiff competition.
Of course, the one positive takeaway from No Good Deed is that its #1 box-office position gives Idris enough clout that studios are willing to back projects he anchors. No longer relegated to second-fiddle roles and indie fare, we might indeed see this gifted actor leading big budget films, and my even get to see that Luther movie (based off of the hit BBC detective series he leads) happen after all. Yet, one can’t help but leave No Good Deed vexed by a question: Why are talented performers like these forced into bland genre crap like this? Yes, it performed well its opening weekend, but it also had little competition. This is normally the type of film that would fall to the wayside the minute it came out, like Deliver Us From Evil or As Above, So Below. Now, of course, the argument can be made that, talented as he may be, Idris isn’t established and has to pay his dues, but what of Taraji P. Henson? This is a woman who was up for an Oscar in 2008 (and quite honestly deserved to win it, losing to Penelope Cruz in the dreadful Vicky Cristina Barcelona), and yet 6 years later is still doing dreck like this and Think Like a Man Too? Clearly something is off here.
Obviously, a movie review is no place to make intimations of a race problem in Hollywood, but No Good Deed makes that intimation itself in its blandness and its horrific squandering of the fantastic talent on screen. And indeed, the only way that No Good Deed doesn’t feel like a complete waste of both the actors within it and the time spent watching it is if it’s used as the impetus to meditate on why an actress like Taraji P. Henson is 6 years out from an Oscar nomination and her career is virtually in the same place, while other at-the-time unknown actresses who’ve received the “Oscar bump” like Jennifer Lawrence for Winter’s Bone or Jessica Chastain for The Help have seen there stars rise rapidly in less time.
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Well, now that the lambasting and grandstanding is done, let’s take a look at a film that very much is worth your time. This week’s classic sci-fi click is much more obscure than the others, barely making a splash amongst the general public in the US upon its release, and still goes unseen by even ardent sci-fi fans who relegate the genre of anime to “those weird kids at the corner lunch table in high school”. While we’re not gonna deny there was certainly something off about those guys (there’s typically at least one who always plays with a lighter) we will say that ignoring an entire genre, especially one as influential and significant as Japanese animation, is to deny themselves a whole world of new ideas and incredible cinematic innovations. Ghost in the Shell, now available on Blu-Ray, has both, with a cutting-edge-for-its-time fusion of CG and hand-drawn animation and for a plot filled with so many rich, bold ideas that the Wachowski Brothers would outright rip it off to make their mega-hit The Matrix well before Guillermo Del Toro would rob Neon Genesis Evangellion in the same fashion.
In the year 2029, the world is hooked up to a futuristic type of internet which can be accessed by “shells”, or cybernetic bodies they can use to explore with superhuman skills. Public Security Section 9 is assigned to track down a hacker called The Puppet Master who is “ghost-hacking” other people’s shells in order to either control them or read their thoughts. From there, the story evolves into something so sprawling and dynamic that it simply must be witnessed, both for the mind-bending turns and the enthralling visuals. Now in HD, the film is more dazzling than ever, and is a must see/must own for any interested in the genre. And n this one case, and only this one case, it’s ok to use the English dub. Just don’t miss out on this sci-fi masterpiece.
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Television: Let’s get this out of the way: This week’s piece of must-watch TV is Dancing With the Stars. Now, before our readers click away with that thought of “real men don’t dance”, I implore them to just scroll down and click the clip at the bottom of this segment. Did you watch it? That’s Ultimate Fighter and Expendables 3 star Randy Couture dancing. And not just dancing, dancing brilliantly, and single-handedly invalidating any argument that dancing isn’t for “real men”. In fact, the genius of the show isn’t watching those less gifted stars stumble, its in seeing the committed succeed. Even past season comic relief figures like Bill Engvall have grown episode by episode. Its seemingly the one reality show where people genuinely seem improved by the end, and hard work is rewarded. Granted, there are still the occasional “Why are you here?”, the “Who is this?” and occasionally the ringer in the form of stars with previous dance experience like last year’s ice dancing winner Meryl Davis or this year’s former Broadway dancer Alfonso Ribeiro or former ballerina (and Howard the Duck co-star) Lea Thompson.
Yet, the true joy of the show is seeing people like beloved burnout Tommy Chong actually perform way better than even he expected. So even if the show has the culture clash combination of PBS host Tavis Smiley and Duck Dynasty daughter Sadie Robertson (both of whom performed decently enough in their first night), the show has proven itself enthralling by not feeding on the drama or the contrived “narrative” most reality competition shows try create, but rather on the actual art itself. And, hey, even if you hate the show, that’s fine, because even the host Tom Bergeron seems to, with countless snide comments directed at the competitors, the judges, and even the producers (yet he keeps getting Emmy nominations for it, so they can’t exactly retaliate). Is it high art? Not exactly, but Dancing with the Star is a fun distraction for an hour a week that still feels mildly more cultured than most of the TV available in its time-slot, so take some time to take in some two-step and see who goes home next.
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News: The biggest news this week probably hasn’t made most “entertainment” columns, and that’s a problem. Because Microsoft buying Mojang isn’t just news, its the biggest news there can be. Bigger than box-office numbers, bigger than the iPhone 6. It’s definitive proof that video games aren’t just a new art form, they’re the thing to beat.
For those of you who haven’t heard of Minecraft, a) congrats on not having kids, and b) Let’s fill you in. Minecraft is the main product of Swedish game developer Mojang. An open-world (read: no story, free play) sandbox building game, Minecraft allows players to build whatever they want with a limitless amount of digital blocks, ranging from a complete replica of New York City to a working Game Boy. It’s blocky, cheap-looking design and non-violent creative outlet have made the game popular with players of all ages, and characters like the green “creeper” or internet-inspired black, long armed “Ednerman” have become iconic, and their cardboard block-shaped heads staples of the Comic Con costume set. You can’t set foot in a toy store or web forum without “minecraft” being mentioned, and tech titan Microsoft finally decided to jump on the sensation (available for virtually every platform from the iPad to the PS3) and purchase the company for a staggering $2.5 billion dollars. That’s all the more impressive when you realize the game was designed not by some 100 man team in Silicon Valley, but by one developer, Markus “Notch” Persson, who maintains the sale was not done for money, but for peace of mind. “I've become a symbol. I don't want to be a symbol, responsible for something huge that I don't understand, that I don't want to work on, that keeps coming back to me. I'm not an entrepreneur. I'm not a CEO. I'm a nerdy computer programmer who likes to have opinions on Twitter.”
Now, why should any of this matter? Well, if $2.5 billion dollars (bigger than isn’t enough of a reason (that’s double the budget of Captain America 2, Transformers 4, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, Spider-man 2 and Guardians of the Galaxy combined, and Microsoft clearly expects to turn a profit quick from this), lets bear in mind that the once lucrative fields of TV and movies were a heavy investment from Microsoft, setting up their own studio to create original video content for the Xbox One, and the public proved so disinterested they axed the whole staff. Now they’re spending 2.5 billion dollars just to try and recoup the losses of the TV studio endeavor, which only makes sense when you acknowledge (as few in the industry are willing to) that interactive entertainment is routinely winning out over more passive forms of media consumption. Talk about Netflix winning over cable all you want, but it looks like a rogue creeper is crawling in, about to destroy that whole house of cards.
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Short Film: This week’s short is a brilliantly inspired short that was actually a student film from German director Kaleb Lechowski, and it does everything a short film should. What we gather in its 6 minute run time is that an alien (the titular R’ha, we ascertain )is being tortured and interrogating by machine hellbent on finding out where the rendezvous is taking place. The rendezvous is a gathering of the alien’s species who created the very machine not interrogating R’ha, and many others like it. The species as at war with the machines, who were determined to become free by eliminating their creators.
Right off the bat, the first thing for be acknowledged is how gorgeous the animation is on the film. It’s detailed and refined enough that the viewer is initially unsure whether they should be commending an animator or a make-up artist, so vivid is the imagery. The CG on R’ha looks better than even the best game the current generation of consoles has to offer, and indeed the short plays like the introduction segment to a video game, which brings us back to the point of it doing everything a short film should, because it intrigues us. It doesn’t tell a full story so much as it teases a larger world, and an epic tale about to unfold that we the viewer both want to see and have already imagined in our minds. R’ha makes us want to play the video game its seemingly setting up, It makes us want to follow this character back to his home world, to see the epos battle both before and after his capture. Thankfully Lechowski is teaming up with Matthew Graham and Rick McCallum to produce a feature length film, but even without one, R’ha stands out as a truly memorable adventure that dazzles the eyes, engages the mind and ignites the imagination.
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