To say that I was excited about the newest Star Wars film is a huge understatement. Having attended first-night, 12:00 screenings of the prequels (Episodes 1-3), I know how very
real the disappointment in Star Wars can
be. Still, I'm a huge fan of J.J. Abrams (Alias
is still my favorite show of all time, for some reason), and all of the
trailers and behind-the-scenes interviews/clips made the movie seem, if nothing else, cool. So I went into the theater with a little trepidation but a lot of joy. And since it's fun to rope other people into my nervous psychosis, I brought family along as well. Below are our ALMOST COMPLETELY SPOILER FREE reviews of the film:
This weekend, I had the privilege of attending the Philadelphia Wizard World Comic Con with my good friend (and occasional Guest Blogger) Square Peg. It was may first Comic Con, and, though we only attended for one day, we were able to see a lot of events, panels, and art:
A few weeks ago, my cousins and I wrote a short story titled "Nemo and Darla's Adventures in Crime: Part 1" without any indication of whether there would be a part 2. In this work of fiction, collectively written by myself and my two cousins (age 10 and 13), we followed the lives of a boy, Nemo, and his best friend, a unicorn named Darla. We each took turns writing a sentence, and slowly but surely a strange story emerged. Well, the first installment was wildly popular, so I forced my cousins to write another chapter (just kidding, they wanted to...I swear). In continuing the series, my cousins and I attempted (ever so slightly) to tell a story with a little more pop-culture relevance, and we accidentally landed on a story about the superhero of the moment. We're talking Spider-man!
Usually I stick pretty close to the pop-culture spectrum of movies, television, theater, and music. I don't delve into real-life current events or talk too much about my personal life. Today, however, I wanted to bring you something that is neither pop-culture related nor serious/real. I bring you a work of fiction, collectively written by myself and my two cousins (age 10 and 13). We each took turns writing a sentence, and slowly but surely a strange story emerged. Herewith is the first part in what I hope will be an ongoing series: "Nemo and Darla's Adventures in Crime: Part 1"
There once was a boy named Nemo. Nemo liked to eat broccoli and his sister's boogers. It seemed like he had nothing to live for. He always found ways to cause big trouble, as if he was really stupid. But he wasn't stupid at all, but rather a genius who had trouble communicating. One day a crime happened in the Mississippi National Bank. Nemo wanted to stop weird people from robbing the bank, but he lived too far away.
So instead, he sent his unicorn, Darla, to stop the robbers.
Darla shouted "Never fear, one of Nemo's servants is here, so stop it!" at the robbers.
Nemo watched the whole thing from Darla's back, and shouted "Oh, Beezle Bazzles, they're getting away!" The robbers heard him, hit him and Darla on the head, and got away with all the money. When Nemo woke up, he used a special device to get to the robbers and save the day. The Mayor thanked the two heroes and rewarded them with shiny medals and chimichangas.
Where they're going, they don't need roads. Because they're in space.
I love watching movies, there's no doubt, but I REALLY love
talking about movies. So, when I was staying with my sister and brother-in-law over
the holiday weekend, and I happened to find out that we had all seen Star Trek Into Darkness, I was obviously
going to talk about it. And write down the conversation, to enjoy the talk at a later date. Just
as a bit of background information, my sister is not normally a fan of action
movies. She's screamed more than once at more than one Harry Potter movie, and not just the later, scarier ones. She
screamed while watching Chamber of
Secrets.
Warning: Some of the conversation is a little spoiler-y, so
I blotted out everything that might give too much away. You can scroll over the red portions if you want to have some elements of the film spoiled.
Tableau: So, what did you think of the movie?
Sister: It never lets up. It is intense all the time. It felt
like it was so constant that you
I'm a pretty lazy person by nature. I'm less of a "carpe diem" man and more of a "sit at home watching marathons of Even Stevens" man. So, when I found out that my cousins love and were good at reviewing movies, it only made sense that I exploited that as much as possible. And when I realized that they also like drawing pictures, well, the path was clear. So, without further ado, here is my cousins' review of Iron Man 3, the latest in the Tony Stark saga. It gets a tiny bit spoilery (no major reveals, but a few minor plot details are discussed), so you may want to wait until after you watch the movie to read.
I love Jurassic Park.
I love it so much. From the first time I
watched it (in the basement at the house of my sister's friend, clinging to the
arm of a two-tone couch), I was hooked. I have always been fascinated with dinosaurs. I wanted to be a paleontologist so badly when I was in
elementary school, and this movie was a natural extension of my prehistoric
curiosities. So, when Jurassic
Park came back out in theaters, I knew that I had to see it. And I also
knew that there were only two people I needed to see it with – my two cousins,
whose excitement about movies matches my own and whose childlike wonder I
could hopefully feed off of (but not in a creepy, succubus way). Herewith are their/our
thoughts (Spoilers Ahead):
I really couldn't think of anything to say aboutSam Raimi's Oz the Great and Powerful. Even after seeing it twice, I just feel
kind of 'meh' about the whole thing. I think that the film had beautiful
parts, that James Franco was inconsistently interesting, that the Tim-Burton-Alice-in-Wonderland aesthetic felt
overplayed, and that Michelle Williams was lovely, but I couldn't figure out
how to bring those ideas into a cohesive review. So, I enlisted my cousins (Ages
12 and 10, respectively) to review the film for me. They are, as always, better at
this than I am (MAJOR SPOILERS BELOW):
My family loves two things unconditionally: hanging out with each other, and watching movies. So, when my family descends on New York City for Christmas and New Year's Eve, we do a lot of both. This weekend, we watched Pitch Perfect(along with a variety of other films), a film about growing up, college, and a cappella singing competitions (natch). It was produced and spearheaded by Elizabeth Banks, who we here at Tableau Your Mind love so very much. Since my parents were engaging in spirited debate after the movie, I thought I would share the conversation that followed between them. For the record, I really like this movie. I think that there are some tonal problems, but overall I was completely charmed by it. Here are my parents thoughts: Mom: I loved it. Other teenage movies are so juvenile. This one doesn't feel as teenage-y. It's a a little more adult. The premise is not so different than other movies; it follows the same beats. I enjoyed the girls. I enjoyed all the girls. Fat Amy (Rebel Wilson) - I like the way she used her body. She puts herself out there, makes her body part of the comedy. She's comfortable in her body, she's not self-conscious. She's hilarious. Dad: Overall I did not like the movie. I like the singing - top notch. Mom: I loved the songs. You said you have the soundtrack? I want that. Dad: But you don't know who the market they were playing to. At first I thought it would be a family movie, but then I thought it was trying to be crude and crass, like, what's that movie? Bumped up? Knocked up! They missed out on the family audience with all the sex and the dicks, and it's not funny enough for people that like that kind of sophomoric and obvious humor. It's a poorly designed movie. The plot was just sort of thrown together. The only character development was with the magician character (Ben Platt). Mom: I quite liked the magician. Dad: He was the best developed of all the male parts, which was unfortunate, since he was such a small part. Still, it was nice that they worked on his character, because it came around and was important later. But the guy in the club that had to leave (Adam DeVine)? It didn't make any sense. They could have gotten someone else. Mom: Hmm... Dad: Seriously, who would you buy this movie for? Funny-wise, it wasn't that funny; family-wise, it wasn't right for the family. Dancing and singing-wise, it was beautiful, but everything else fell apart.It felt like a bunch of people throwing something together over the weekend. Plus, so much of the movie hinged on whether the audience has seen The Breakfast Club. If you haven't seen it, Beca's (Anna Kendrick) character change doesn't really make sense.
Mom: For a senior citizen like him, it doesn't work.
Dad: You want her to be involved in The Breakfast Club. I don't know the ending, I don't know what she's reacting to. There are too many leaps.
Mom: That would be showing too much. They have to focus on the real movie, not the movie within the movie. Even of you haven't seen the movie, you can tell that it's a powerful ending. Dad: It just didn't work for me.
Ratings: Dad: Hated it Mom: Liked it
We couldn't bring ourselves to see The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn: Part 2, because even saying the name makes us feel ridiculous, so we deputized Guest Blogger Bro-sie the Riveter to review it for us:
I read the Twilight books four years ago during Thanksgiving
break of my senior year of high school. I bring this up because the book of Breaking Dawn is probably one of the
most insane things I've ever read. There are weird no-sex-before-marriage and
anti-abortion undertones mixed with the fact that an adult werewolf falls in love with a baby and it's okay. A third
of the book is told from the pedo-wolf's (AKA Jacob's) perspective, because Bella is
pregnant and no one wants to listen to a pregnant lady talk about her problems.
So the fact that the producers take out that part, and then split the story
into two movies leaves very little to piece together in this finale.
The screenwriter, Melissa Rosenberg, tries to make this
final movie into a concluding chapter of an epic. The one major flaw is that The Twilight Saga is anything but an
epic. We establish that Bella is a vampire now, meaning she doesn't breathe, has
amazing posture, and basically acts like a statue – Which gets rid of 90% of
K-Stew’s acting style (i.e. heavy breathing, slouching, and having nervous tics
like running her hands through her hair). But that just leaves blank eyes and
her pretending to be an animal. She also hilariously almost kills some mountain
climber who should probably die anyway because he's on a cliff in the middle of
nowhere without any rope, but Edward stops her. So instead, she eats a mountain
lion.
Bella's vampire sister-in-law, Alice, builds her and Edward
an adorable cottage in the woods. It's basically a teenage girl's fantasy: post-marriage bliss, having a baby, and being a vampire allows you to have sex forever. I'm serious. This house is
basically a sex house. After the most uncomfortable PG-13 foreplay ever, they
quickly cut to Edward and Bella
It took a little under two years to make it happen, but Tableau Your Mind has finally reached its 200th blog post. You're reading it RIGHT NOW! They say it only takes a person 16-21 times to make doing something into a habit, and it definitely feels like, after 200 posts, we have moved beyond "habit" and into "psychopathic fanaticism." Over these 200 labors of like, we have written about topics covering all elements of popular culture, including food, movies, music, television, and so much more. We've done posts on Hollywood "It" Couples, Hipster Babies, and Pedophilia in Film. We've compared the stars of Tangled and Salt and looked at what would happen if Mr. Feeny suffered a "Wardrobe Malfunction." We've doted on 30 Rock, Kristen Bell, Doctor Who, Harry Potter, and Batman, and hated on Kristen Stewart, Slow Motion in Indie Movies, and Easy Mac. We've even learned how to pronounce Gotye, just in time for him to become culturally irrelevant. We really wouldn't believe that there were 200 posts if it weren't for the photographic evidence:
Well, it's semi-official: Robert Pattinson and Kristen
Stewart are back together, just in time to renew our faith in love. Or, they are
back together just in time to promote The
Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part II.Is it true love or a marketing ploy? To find out, I, the main blogger
here at Tableau Your Mind, am bringing back one of the most popular segments on
the blog. That's right; it's time for a little Point/Counter Point with Guest
Blogger Jennifer Love Bacon:
Hello. I am the main blogger here at Tableau Your Mind (one of the few that make up the collective 'we'), and I am a pretty big fan of Kristen Stewart. I know it's not a popular opinion, but I don't care. However, I do realize that not everyone feels the same way as me, and I always want to at least appear to be a fair-minded person. In an effort to do just that, to present both sides equally, I have enlisted Guest Blogger Jennifer Love Bacon to present her different opinion of K-Stew alongside my own. Presented below is a conversation that hopefully sheds some light on what makes her so maddening, so brilliant, so hated, and so loved [Editor's Note: this conversation occurred before Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson got back together]:
Jennifer Love Bacon: [looking at the picture to the left] Hahaha. She's heinous.
Tableau: She's amazing. She's so effed up. I love it.
JLB: She can't even make
eye contact in the picture …she's a disgrace to celebrities.
T: I didn't realize we were going to get into the debate so quickly.
After we watched The Dark Knight Rises, the final film in
Christopher Nolan's trilogy, we thought it would be good to go back
through the seven films that make up the modern Batman franchise and
compare them to one another. We've already ranked the bottom four movies, and we were definitely stalling on the final three. Firstly, we didn't want to disappoint readers. Secondly, we were a little sick of the Caped Crusader.
Then, The Dark Knight rises
made a billion dollars, and suddenly the films were thrust back into our minds.
So here it is, our ranking of the top three Batman movies (with the generous help and support of our many guest bloggers and future guest bloggers). Read the list below and let us know
what you think (spoilers ahead):
It is time to name Tableau Your Mind’s 2nd
Official 'Obsession of the Week,' and this time it’s an easy one. Because we
are absolutely obsessed with
Garfunkel and Oates, the singing comedy duo headed by very funny ladies Rikki
Lindhome and Kate Micucci. It’s hard to say when we first fell in love with
G&O. Was it when Lindhome played a bulimic dandy lion on Pushing Daisies? Was it when Micucci Scrubbed it up as Gooch, the adorable
and ebullient girlfriend of sad sack Ted Buckland, or when she partied internationally with Kristen Bell in When in Rome? Or was it the first time we heard "Pregnant Women are Smug" and it effectively kicked us in the ovaries or the testicles or
whatever reproductive organs that we have (we don’t know anymore)?
We’re not really sure where our love began, but we are sure
that it was in full effect when we
After we watched The Dark Knight Rises, the final film in Christopher Nolan's epic trilogy, we thought it would be good to go back through the seven films that have made up the modern Batman films thus far, starting with Tim Burton's Batman in 1989, continuing through Joel Schumacher's Batman & Robin (that temporarily killed the franchise)and ending with the Nolan films in the last seven years. How did they stack up to one another? Which was the best? And since we couldn't make up our minds alone (this was too important), we enlisted the help of tons of guest bloggers, friends, and colleagues to rate and talk about the seven films. Or, at least, we tried to talk to all of our guest bloggers - My Mom kindly declined, saying that "these are frivolous movies. I have no need for them." Harsh words, but, for the rest of us, here are the rankings:
Watching tons of movies is so difficult! It’s, like, who has
the time these days?!And, even if you
have the time, who has the money, especially with the tickets and the popcorn
and the toll roads and the finder’s fees and the bridge troll tolls? It’s like,
URGH!!!(coincidentally, that the sound a toll-troll makes if he doesn't collect enough tolls)
Well, Tableau Your Mind (with some help from guest Blogger Funton
Abbey) have watched a ton of movies for you, and we’re here to provide pointed
critiques and ask a simple question: should people HIT the theater and see this
movie, or is it more of a MISS?
Magic Mike
Strippin' Ain't Easy
The Story: Steven Soderbergh directs this film about a
30-ish stripper Mike (Channing Tatum), who has a great life, but he doesn’t
have love (from Cody Horn or Olivia Munn), and he can’t get a bank loan to
pursue his dreams. Will he turn out like his aging, charismatic boss (Matthew
McConaughey) or can he escape his life of easy money, attractive women, and
hip-hop stripping?
Pros: There are great performances from Tatum and McConaughey (Olivia Munn is pretty good, too), the first half is breezy and fun, there are
genitalia for all audiences (a few out-of-focus penises and a few pairs of
boobs - everybody wins), the stripping scenes are well choreographed and
cheesy, and everyone seems to be having a good time. Also, Alcide from True Bloodand Neal Caffrey from White Collar are in it and strip a few times.
Cons: The second half of the movie gets mired in a story
about the dangers of drug abuse and selling drugs, Magic Mike’s problems mostly
seem kind of stupid, Cody Horn (as the love interest) is possibly the worst
actress we’ve ever seen, and the color palate is stereotypically yellow and
washed out, which is Filmmaking 101 for shooting a film in Florida
but which makes everyone look a bit pancake-faced.
Consensus: Channing Tatum is turning out really solid
performances lately, and this is no exception. It’s a shame that most of his
scenes are with Horn, who can’t act herself out of a paper bag, and Alex
Pettyfer, who is mostly just boring. Even his tattoos lack inspiration. The
story is mostly fun, and the film is directed really interestingly (a lot of
scenes cut out a second before you think they should, which puts you on edge).
All-in-all, it’s solid but also kind of forgettable.
Hit or Miss: Hit, but you can probably leave after the first
hour or so, when things start to get REAL.
Your Sister’s Sister
The Story: Jack’s (Mark Duplass) brother Tom is dead. Before
he died, Tom dated Iris (Emily Blunt), Jack’s best friend. Iris loves Jack. Jack loves Iris (but hasn't figured it out yet).Jack sleeps with Iris’s lesbian sister Hannah (Rosemarie
DeWitt) while staying at Iris’s family cabin. Iris arrives, and complications
ensue.
Pros: As you might be able to tell from the synopsis, this
is one of the more backstory-heavy films in existence. Mostly, the
relationships feel real, which is due in no small part to the stellar acting
from the three leads. They sell a lot of material that is pretty ridiculous.
When the characters are talking and interacting, the film is golden.
Cons: The last third of this film is insufferable,
especially because there is an 10-minute montage where nobody says anything to
anybody and it’s really frakking weird. We don’t want to spoil anything for
anyone, but things get really out-of-control plot-wise near the end, and the
film’s attempts to tie everything up in a neat bow and a group hug rings false.
It’s also a little too twee and cutesy for the subject matter.
Consensus: Good performances build a lot of goodwill, and
that is seriously tested as audiences are treated to several minutes of people
pitching and un-pitching tents and sleeping and walking. The last bit of this
film is located firmly between Dullsville, Lazytown, and Implausible Cove.
Hit or Miss: Miss. Honestly, you can probably skip this one.
It will be on Netflix Instant Watch within a year.
Ted
Ted: he's high-larious
The Story: A wisecracking, sentient bear (voiced by Seth
MacFarlane) and his wisecracking friend with bad hair (Mark Wahlberg) have to
learn to grow up or else the bad hair guy might lose the love of
his life (Mila Kunis) who is way more attractive, young, and responsible than
he is.
Pros: It’s funny. There are a lot of laugh-out-loud moments and some solid jokes about Flash Gordon. The bear (the titular Ted) is a funny concept that is explored well. There are two great
scenes: one involving sh*t and the other Norah Jones. Also, Ryan Reynolds shows
up for no reason and it’s awesome.
Cons: The film relies on the same humor that Seth MacFarlane
peddles in his television shows, and we can watch those for free. It’s mildly
offensive and not funny enough to make up for the offensiveness. Also, Mark Wahlberg
has no right to be playing a 35-year-old stoner/slacker. He's super jacked
and is and looks 41 years old. 35-year-old stoner/slackers are rarely as
ripped as him and they are certainly not 41. He’s also not that funny. Plot-wise, things hold together as long as everyone is having a good time, but, when it tries to be honest emotionally, it feels false and stupid.
Consensus: The film can be funny and is mostly harmless, but this style of
humor is done better in other movies and in MacFarlane’s own shows. The novelty
of a talking bear wears off quickly, and the constant sex jokes smack of
desperation.
Rock of Ages, the newest rock-musical-turned-movie, was
pretty much hated by critics and unceremoniously ignored by audiences. Who,
exactly, is this movie for? Well, I wanted an answer to that question, so I asked the only person whose opinion matters more to me than my own: my mother.
Here is her opinion on
Rock of Ages, dictated with approval:
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