Hugo: a review

I just saw Hugo last night. All in all I enjoyed it. Martin Scorsese made a very pretty movie and it was really well acted. It has been receiving universally good reviews (93% on Rotten Tomatoes as of this moment) and I can understand why. For what is framed as a children's movie it comes across as a lovely period piece. Asa Butterfield was fantastic. Chloë Grace Moretz was also very good though I often felt she was sticking to the Wendy (of Peter Pan) school of acting: be wide-eyed and say "Adventure!" a lot with a British accent.

Yeah, a small thing I found very odd was that everyone has a British accent and this movie is supposed to drip with Paris. It often does but I do not understand why everyone either kept or put on a British accent to be French.

The real thesis of the movie isn't really about Hugo and his quest for familial fulfillment. It's about film preservation. I say that because the last act takes a narrative turn. It's been a while since I've read the novel but I think it balance both Hugo's and Georges Méliès' (Ben Kingsley) stories a bit better. The film seems to be about Hugo, then both and ends explicitly focusing on Georges and his life and career. The entire last act features the titular Hugo as a supporting character. While it didn't kill the movie for me it did feel like they partially abandoned Hugo's importance in the narrative, though thankfully still finishes his story. I know it's a delicate balance in the book, served by featuring the dénouement as a separate epilogue that places Georges story as a part of Hugo's life rather than tucking Hugo into Georges story and family. It's a subtle thing but makes all the difference.

The weaving of film history into the main plot is done, barring the end, well. Though slightly too on the nose in a few spots I found it a strong thread. There are side stories told in near pantomime, making the silent films experience by the characters also experienced, and relevant, to the audience. There's a romance between a couple of Harry Potter alumni and a romance for Sacha Baron Cohen's station inspector that takes him from a caricature to an absurd but full character.

Touching back on the film thesis there were two things that felt slightly off about it. The first is that it's in 3D. For something glorifying the days of simple stories and the most mechanical of practical effects this movie really delights in CG and 3D. I was thinking about that and realized that the only movie I have ever seen in 3D where the screen disappeared and I simply experienced the story in my head was Coraline. With good 3D the depth is usually rendered behind the screen. When things project it may be fine for a 3D gag but the audience doesn't actually believe that things are appearing in the theater with them. With depth it helps build the illusion of a window but still I always find myself aware that I'm not watching a play. With Coraline not only did they go for the recessed effect but they are stop-motion puppets. For that my brain allowed me to believe that perhaps I was watching puppets, I bought the illusion and at times the story took over. I've never experienced that with live action 3D the way that the best 2D films sometimes take me away from the theater or living room and put in inside of the story.

I found it a little strange and a little depressing that Scorsese felt this helped convey the magic of simpler films. Likely he became enamored with the concept of having an audience watch the silent footage of that early film of the train and feel at least a touch of belief that it would hurtle out at them. Perhaps it's because of a saturated 3D market or perhaps it's just an effect that is dated and impossible, but this movie did not deliver that. That's not to say that the 3D is bad. It adds a nice depth and there are times where it creates a very good sense of space. But I don't think that this movie would suffer if shown in 2D and the 3D never feels needed.

The other thing that popped into my mind was that it's odd that Scorsese chose this project to make a love letter to film restoration. Yes, that's really in the original book. It's just a little bizarre Scorsese's call comes in the form of a movie based on a novel. Really? From a writer's point of view that is discouraging. Something so personal as a love letter to the medium of film from a master director can't manage to be something on its own? The best way to pour this message onto the screen is from a book? I'm glad it was made and it's a fine adaptation; hopefully it will get Selznick's books out into more hands. But the fact that this billet doux to film was born from a novel takes at least a small amount of authenticity from it.

On a scale of -5 to +5
Hugo is a +4.

TV that I watch

It seems a bit weird to start writing again and make it all about television but since I haven't been writing I have been watching a lot of tv and reading a lot of books. That means I'm going to have reviews to toss out. And rather than giving these my usual +5 to -5 rating I’ll be judging them by current watchability:

LOVING IT

SOLID

GOOD ENOUGH

HANGING ON

NEARLY DONE WITH IT

QUIT

PS These are shows that are currently airing. I held back on things that are between seasons or between partial season or whatever the hell the networks do with their shows.

• Monday
• How I Met Your Mother – NEARLY DONE WITH IT
• Not happy with this once clever show. For the full story take a look here.
  
• House - SOLID
• Most of the people I know who used to watch this have given up. I am honestly enjoying what they’ve done with the character of House recently. I thought that the stint in prison was really good and I like that one of the members of his new team is pushing him right back. I’m a little confused as to why Chase is still around. He’s had the longest residency I’ve seen and after his divorce they really haven’t done anything with him. He’s just – there.
• Adventure Time with Finn and Jake – LOVING IT
• Adventure time! A post-apocalyptic cartoon about the last human and his adopted brother, a shape shifting dog.
  This show is amazing. The music is great, the animation is adorable and the humor funny and bizarre. I’m pretty sure this is one of those shows where you immediately love it or hate it. So far I only know of people who love it or have not seen it. Check out an episode.
• Terra Nova – GOOD ENOUGH
• It’s OK. To be frank, it’s Avatar painted with Jurassic Park. It’s derivative, the special effects range from passable to cringe inducing, and some of the characters feel like they are trying to fight against developing so they can continue playing generic tropes (all the kids come to mind). Why am I watching this? It’s fairly entertaining and it’s science fiction.
• Tuesday
• Wednesday
• Todd and the Book of Pure Evil – LOVING IT
• A metal loving high school kid uses the Book of Pure Evil to become more metal and get the girl he lusts after. He nearly kills everyone at his school. His plucky one-armed friend and the girl stop him but the book flies away. It does that. They band together to find the book. Oh, and did I mention that the girl’s father mysteriously vanished while investigating this book? Because he did and it’s totally mysterious. But I’m pretty sure the evil guidance councilor had something to do with that. Because he’s evil.I am so in love with this show, though I’m still just in season 1. It’s like Buffy and Evil Dead 2 and Middle Man had a beautiful, bloody, foul mouthed three way baby. The only thing I’m not crazy about is that it’s a half hour show so each plot is wrapped after 22 minutes instead of 40-something. I suppose that’s a trade off. While some episodes seem too short it also means I’ve made it through an entire season and not a single episode has dragged.
• American Horror Story – SOLID
• Re-titled Ghost Fucking
  This show is so cheese it’s wonderful. My wife flat out likes the show a lot. I don’t know if I can make that claim but I do find it highly entertaining. The “name that horror reference”, which was so distracting early on, has dropped to a much more tolerable level. A lot of camera angles and soundtrack cues are lifted directly from horror films so at the very least it’s an impressive meta-analysis of the horror genre.
  
  More recently in this season it has come into its own as a standalone horror story. It took a while for the mythology of the house to get rolling, and while there are still a few hiccups in their world building (what exactly is the rule about ghosts leaving the property?) overall it is really rolling.
• Thursday
• Big Bang Theory – QUIT
• Much like Leverage this is another show I didn’t choose to stop watching. The references are nerd-catnip and some of the performances are really good (though Howard is beyond done). But when it comes down to it this show is basic sitcom. The references usually don’t actually show much more understanding of a geek subject than Wikipedia and the show never tries to rise above the standard sitcom format. I guess I just felt like it wasn’t offering anything more than what I get from my real friends.
• Bones – HANGING ON
• It seems that wherever I tune in another show has decided to infect the cast with a little bundle of ratings. I could be wrong but wasn’t the addition of a baby to a show usually a kiss of death? Perhaps that was just for children characters and baby’s don’t actually count. Whatever the old rule was it is clear that babies are now in vogue. I was actually interested to see what would happen with Angela and Hodgins' baby. It’s Bones’ pregnancy that I’m annoyed with. Her gimmick was being so logical as to alienate people. Now it seems that they’re just playing that against the “hormones hormones hormones” of pregnancy to make Bones comedic and possibly insane. The writers couldn’t find another way to get Bones and Booth together? I’m still watching the show but I will admit that the episodes tend to sit unwatched for longer periods of time.
• Person of Interest – HANGING ON
• I officially dropped this show but then went back to it. Not because I read that it was doing something good and I wanted to see. Only because it’s produced by JJ Abrams and every time I give up on it out of boredom I get the sneaking suspicion that, since it’s an Abrams show, it has some sort of big picture that it will get to. I have now admitted to myself that I will follow the first season but if no long term plot peeks its head out by then I’m probably going to call it quits.
• Mentalist – between SOLID and HANGING ON. Hanging on and a half?
• This show is definitely in the “OK, not great” zone. Last season: “Yay they took care of Red John. Boo, they didn’t solve anything with Red John.” The show has become a string of competently written one-off crime stories. The bad thing is that the series is now just treading water from week to week. The good thing is at least it’s with characters I still like.
• It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia – LOVING IT
• If this show were simply a weekly monologue of Danny Devito shouting the word “who-er” for half an hour I would recommend it. What’s even better is that this show is so much more than that. While things this season haven’t touched on the greatness of The Nightman Cometh it has still been some of the best comedy on television.
• Friday
• QI – LOVING IT
• Quite Interesting – a very funny trivia panel discussion hosted by our lord and savior, Stephen Fry.
  Delightful as always. I now am usually a week behind because I’ve since switched over to the QI XL format.
• Supernatural – SOLID
• This season hasn’t been great. They wrote off Cas and I miss him in the show far more than I expected. Plot wise it felt like these villains had no aim and when it did come out I immediately recognized it as the exact same idea that the Alliance used in the movie Serenity. Exactly the same. And some of the writing has come across as a little lazy.
  
  Despite all of that this show is still good enough to get me watching each week. The brothers Winchester are still good enough characters to hold the show together on their relationship alone, which is what they’ve been doing. Hopefully the writers will start to bring Dean to a boil, as he’s been simmering all season and something needs to happen to trigger him.
• Grimm – HANGING ON
• This one is just hanging on. I’m not sure if it’s sticking around on its own merits or strictly because it is better than Once Upon A Time. That said, the main character and his sidekick are boring. The sidekick is slightly comically slightly awkward. The main character, who’s name I can’t even recall, is beyond bland. He came prepackaged with an interesting lineage of creature hunters called Grimms but it seems that was enough for the writers. The touch on him trying to do research every so often but really he’s just there because there is a conspiracy that involves his somewhat more interesting family. The only reason to watch is the big bad wolf character. The show really should have been about him, perhaps with a Grimm sidekick trying to find his place in the world. Now that I think about it, that would have been a much better narrative frame.
  
  And speaking of framing, it seems odd that every police case this guy has investigated since he learned monsters exist has revolved around monsters. So how the hell did he solve a single crime before? Did he just spend his career until now putting innocent humans away? That’d be an interesting show.
• Saturday
• Would You Rather –
• This show hasn’t actually premiered yet but I’m really looking forward to it. It’s the classic game where you are presented with two unwanted options and need to choose one. What looks really fun is that it’s hosted by Graham Norton and the guests look really good. Examples? In the first two episodes they have Cyndi Lauper and Stanley Tucci.
• Sunday
• Misfits – LOVING IT
• A crazy ice storm hits London and lots of people find they now have super powers. This show follows a group of juvenile offenders so they aren’t exactly heroes.
  
  So we’re now into the third season and this show is still brilliant. They’ve taken some risks, like switching out everyone’s powers, and they’ve hit some hurdles, such as fan favourite Nathan leaving the show. It’s still good. Really good. The Hitler episode was miles above when Doctor Who pathetically tackled that gimmick and some of the things they are doing with gender is really interesting. They handle pretty intense issues with thought rather than disgust and fear. And while it’s often funny and definitely British this show is not No Heroics. And it’s certainly not Heroes. Maybe if you took the quality of Heroes’ first season, removed a lot of the borrowed storylines from Marvel and DC and made the characters less mopey. So not really Heroes at all I suppose.
• Penn and Teller’s Fool Us – LOVING IT
• A number of magicians go on stage in front of Penn and Teller. They perform a single trick. If Penn and Teller cannot figure out how it’s done they win a slot opening for Penn and Teller in their Las Vegas show.EDIT Just noticed that this show is between seasons so don't look for new ones just yet.
  This show might not have the gravitas of Bullshit! or even Tell a Lie but this show brings me joy. Flat out joy.
  
  They are going on stage to trick two amazing magicians so you know that they are going to be bringing their best. Not only that but a lot of these tricks are different enough that they contain an illusion or method Penn and Teller might not know. In addition to some jaw dropping skill you also get the wonderment of P&T when they don’t solve it. When they figure it out there’s a comfortable and friendly nod of understanding but what I love is a trick so good that not only do I not have the slightest clue but neither do the experts. They are impressed. They are mystified. Sometimes it may be a trick I think I know and it turns out that it’s not done in the standard way. And it’s amazing.
  
  Magic tricks can fulfill on two levels: 1) a show of skill and 2) mystery. Penn and Teller’s Fool Us usually delivers on one of these and sometimes both. It’s in those moments, when I can rewind, watch in slow motion and the only thing I can discern is that I don’t know what’s right in front of me, that this show brings actual wonderment. And I love it for that.
• Walking Dead – SOLID to LOVING IT
• The end of this season was the kick in the pants it needed. Recently things have slowed down and it hasn’t been great for the show. They’ve been staying at the same farm for most of the season, they’ve been looking for an unimportant stock character for even longer than that, and the show has been light on zombie kills. Well, until the massacre for the mid season finale. Finally, the little girl search is over, Hershel’s farm has come to fruition, Shane has completely lost it. It’s fun again.
  
  I admit, earlier on this season I was skeptical. I could feel the shift in writing, the lack of Frank Darabont, and the lower budget. The mid-season finale was a killer and I hope it means they’ve found their footing. At the very least they won’t be looking for Sophia anymore.
• Once Upon A Time – QUIT
• I just officially gave up on this one. I don’t buy Jennifer Morrison as a bounty hunter; she was tougher when she was a doctor on House. The kid that this whole concept hinges on is crap. He has no personality of his own and isn’t a terribly good actor. The whole thing reeks of one of those ABC miniseries that has been dragged out far past its welcome.
• Leverage – between HANGING ON and QUIT. Quit and a half
• I didn’t make a choice to stop watching this, I simply stopped caring enough to catch missed episodes sometime last season. Every now and then there will be a stand out fantastic episode, and the guest stars are usually a treat, but the show itself just didn’t hold up enough to keep me engaged. This is towards the top of my “Frak, there’s nothing on. What should I catch up on now that all TV is on mid-season hiatus?” list so I may come back to it. It never got bad while I was watching, just stopped being good enough.

How I left How I Met Your Mother

I used to really enjoy How I Met Your Mother. The way my TV habits go I usually have one sitcom that I watch mixed in with the rest of my shows. It also seems to go that I just sort of let them go rather than riding them out until the end. I skipped the last two and half seasons of Scrubs, I stopped following Big Bang Theory about a halfway through last season and now I think How I Met Your Mother may be cut.

With Scrubs the format changed and it became pointless. There was nothing left to care about. Big Bang Theory stalled more than anything. Leaving that show wasn't a conscious choice so much as actually putting 24 minutes aside each week to catch up just seemed like more work than the show was worth. HIMYM is a different story. Recently I've just been finding the show downright offensive.

I will admit that over the years the show has taken some easy low brow jokes, mostly with gender. I usually consider that sort of broad writing as the sitcom version of suspension of disbelief. Overall it's been funny and smart, at times even clever, with an amazing eye for continuity in their timeline. Periodically the show has suffered from repeating plot lines but I suppose that happens when your show is centered around an event that keeps getting pushed further into the future with each new season ordered. And then Lily got pregnant. I know that Lily and Marshall have always planned to have a kid but I did groan when it first happened.

Adding a child to a sitcom is often a step away from demanding your show be cancelled. But I went with it. I've invested a lot of time in these characters and the writers have proved themselves so far. But they started to mangle that plot pretty early on. In The Slutty Pumpkin Returns we have half the episode devoted to demonstrating how being pregnant makes Lily too stupid to function. They have carefully shown that she and Marshall disagree with where the best place to raise children is, with Lily strongly in favor of urban rearing. Suddenly she is pregnant and a moron, handing out wine to trick or treaters and loving the suburbs. She's hormonal and therefore too stupid to function. Disaster Averted (the episode revolving around hurricane Irene) started to pull apart at their carefully constructed timeline. It also ends with a groan inducing moment putting Robin and Barney back together to an extent, a plot that's been thoroughly explored and completely closed off.

From this point on it seems like the writers wanted to see how far down they could bring the show down with each subsequent scene. The next episode treads water with the Barney/Robin storyline by not providing any sort of closure on a plot that shouldn't be happening. We've seen them together. We know it's terrible and they don't work. As for thinking that perhaps Barney has grown as a person in his efforts to establish a monogamous relationship it should be noted that he has now managed to completely destroy the integrity of his one monogamous relationship. Meanwhile, over with Lily, Marshall and Ted, we see that they are going to a concert. Their plot seems muddled. It starts with Lily insisting that Marshall can't do certain fun things anymore (like "eat a sandwich"\smoke pot) since he's a future parent. It ends with Marshall panicking because he doesn't have time for fun things anymore while stoned and then not wanting to do the things he used to enjoy (like the concert) once sober. When Lily finds out Marshall didn't listen to her about smoking weed she really doesn't seem to care. Her reaction is to demand nachos. At this point I'd prefer nachos to what's going on as well. There's a mixed message that doing fun things takes all your time away but being responsible removes your desire to do fun things, and as a parent one should not try to have fun to begin with, but really in the end no one cares.

The Rebound Girl is really the last straw. The short version is: Barney now claims to have been thinking about becoming a parent when this has never been true until this moment. Ted is now no longer interested in finding love but rather just wants a child. This seems antithetical to the entire point of the show. Lily was told that impulse moving to the suburbs was a symptom of pregnancy brain a few weeks ago but when she repeats the same idea this week it is now taken seriously even though this is contrary to her character up until the last few episodes. And Robin is pregnant. That plot should be really short as she is pregnant with someone she knows she is not compatible with as is also explicitly childfree. If she has changed her mind then what the hell was the point of not having her end up with Ted? Suddenly this show is making me A) feel like I've wasted my time and B) very angry.

The series now seems like an amalgam or rehashed plots, reversed character development and incredibly cheap jokes about gender in general and pregnant women in particular. I will be honest and admit that I'm not dropping the ax just yet. I'm annoyed and beyond disappointed but I've seen some interviews with the writers and show runners that say they have a specific set of developments they are working toward. I'll probably give them one or two weeks to get the show back on track before I take off for good. It's also worth noting that whenever a work needs to be explicitly explained by the writer in a way that is completely outside of the story it is a blaring alarm that the story is being told poorly.