Fargo: Season 2

Fargo. Season 2. Let's get to it, eh? 

After catching up on this show that the 3rd Party Support podcast ultimately agreed as the best TV show of 2015, I have to say... I think I sort of agree. (Working my way through Mr. Robot which is going to definitely give this show a run for its money.) The second season of Fargo still holds strong while providing some extra insight into the characters and the history of this Midwest crime community, which conjures up some interesting theories on where the show could go, and -- possibly -- how the film has an even stronger connection to this series. 

First, how did I like the show this season? I liked it very much. Frankly, I believe it sits in the "masterpiece" echelon along with the first season. Whether you choose the first season or the second as your favorite comes down to a preference of taste. It's like going to the best ice cream parlor in the world and having to decide between vanilla or chocolate. Regardless of which one you choose, you know the quality is going to be astounding. At this point it's just personal taste. For me, I choose chocolate... I mean, season 2. 

The second season just had that suave tone of being cool and hip, borrowing editing techniques that reminded me a bit of 24. On top of that, I really enjoyed the story of two crime families waging war against one another with another mild-manner couple innocently getting all caught up in the carnage with the performances by Ed Blumquist (Jesse Plemons) and Mike Milligan (Bokeem Woodbine) being excellent. Then there's Molly's dad (back in his prime as a State Trooper) just trying to make sense of it all. I also like how there were seeds planted for the Sioux Falls Massacre layered into the show even from the first season. We all knew shit was going to be bad. Just a matter of when.  

Some questions, and I suppose this is the obvious one... what's with the aliens? Part of me thinks that the writers behind the show feel the need to drop in the essence of something supernatural in each season. Season 1 we have clear mentions of God. Season 2, we've got aliens. At this point, who knows what we'll get in season 3... Ghosts? Witches? The Tooth Fairly?

Speaking of the Tooth Fairy... let's all remember that 

the Rock as the Tooth Fairy was actually a thing. 

Back to the show... I'm wondering what the need for these other-worldly things is? I mean, it felt very deus ex machina for the UFO to show back up during the massacre essentially saving Trooper Solverson's life. But, hey, I suspend my disbelief and just enjoy the ride. If anyone that has any input on this enigma, I'm all ears, because I'm struggling to make heads or tails of it. 

The other question (or maybe an answer) that this season gives is the information behind the Fargo crime syndicate. We get the hint that Hanzee, after betraying the Gerhardts, might become the leader of the very same crime syndicate that Numbers and Wrench come from (seeing as how Hanzee walks over to, what we can only presume are, the child versions of the two hitmen from season 1). But this whole thing got me thinking -- as I'm desperately looking for some sort of cohesion between the film and the TV show -- what if the name of the TV show and movie isn't referring to the humble town, but rather the crime family with the same name. In season 1, we see two hitmen sent out from Fargo, which ultimately lead to the Fargo mob's destruction as Malvo shoots up the joint. In season 2, we get a sense how Fargo may have been started. And in the movie, well... where do the two hitmen (Showalter and Grimsrud) come from? A quick peak at Fargo's wikipedia page reminds me that William H. Macy's character drives to Fargo, North Dakota to hire these two unscrupulous characters to kidnapped his wife. It stands to reason that a crime family so big likely wouldn't allow any competition to run games on their home turf, so I submit to you that Showalter and Grimsrud are actually members of Fargo, the crime syndicate. 

And, thus... we have our connection perfectly tying in the TV with the movie. 

This isn't a reference to the location where terrible things happen to innocent people with funny accents. This is a story about a family... a mob family. The Fargo mob family. 

But I can already hear complaining, "If that theory's true... then isn't everyone already dead after Malvo shot up the joint?" 

Great point. Perhaps everyone is dead. Or maybe Hanzee...

...this guy...

Is actually still alive. A survivor of the Malvo assult, and continues to exist... 

...as this guy.

Crazier things have happened. Like muther-fucking UFOs appearing out of nowhere with no explanation! 

Kirby's Adventure

It being B-Town's birthday and all, I decided to chip away at my Kirby backlog a little more. Kirby's Adventure is the second Kirby game and also one of the last games ever made for the NES. It felt a whole lot like Kirby's Dream Land, which makes perfect sense.

These games are cute and charming and, remarkably, not all that old. This game came out in 1993, a good two and a half years into the SNES lifecycle. B-Town once told me that Nintendo likes to end their major consoles with a Kirby game, and the evidence agrees. For instance, Dream Land 3, for the SNES, came out in 1997 - and not until '98 in Japan, even. What's interesting is that such releases come when developers have tapped into every last corner of a given console's processing power - and as such, Kirby games are often among the most beautiful and graphically advanced titles on their own consoles.

I don't have a ton to say about this one. I mean, it's Kirby. You float around, dodge enemies, absorb powers, and kill bosses. The first boss is Whispy Woods and the last two* are Meta Knight and King Dedede. What more do you want?

*(Just kidding! They're actually the antepenultimate and penultimate bosses, respectively. The last boss this time around is an entity called Nightmare, which I'll admit I wasn't expecting! I was wondering why Dedede was the boss of the seventh world when I'd read that the game had eight of them...)

Adorable, easy, enjoyable, quick - I find this whole franchise to be a rather pleasant logging experience so far. Good thing I've got a handful of Kirby games left in my backlog!

The Dresden Files: Small Favor (Book #10)

Another Dresden book down. 

If you've been following along with the other Dresden posts I've made, then you'll know that this is the second book where Dresden squares off against the Denarians. You know... the Order of the Blackened Denarians. That evil ancient race powered by the 30 silver coins containing the souls of the fallen angels. The same fallen angels that are bent on bringing about the apocalypse. Those Denarians. Jeez... don't you guys read anything I write?! 

But, yes... as this another book (book #10 to be exact) that's divisible by five, then that means Dresden faces his time-honored nemesis... the Denarians led by the immortal Nicodemus. You know... Nicodemus. The oldest of the Denarians who's host to the fallen angel Anduriel. The same Denarian who wears the noose the killed Judas around his neck and thus that noose and only that noose can kill him. That Nicodemus! 

Ugh... Man, you guys are useless. 

Regardless, this story was another fun one. More magic. More fights. More quippy one-liners from Dresden as he constantly keeps himself just one step ahead of meeting some horrifying death. As the title implies, Dresden is forced to oblige the Queen of Winter by accepting to help her with another favor -- for all those keeping track, this is the second of three favors he owes Queen Mab. (I'm sure all these names and details make total sense to everyone, so I wont even bother explaining.) While fulfilling the favor, which is to locate and return one of Chicago's mob bosses who's mysteriously disappeared, Dresden bumps into the Denarians and realizes shit's about to get real. 

Like the books before this one, it was fun, enjoyable... all-in-all, my guilty pleasure. But after putting ten books down roughly within the last year, I'm getting a little fatigued with all the wizardry nonsense. Sure, it's quality storytelling with excitement and suspense dripping over every page, but a man can only take so much at one time. 

At this point I've tried to start into book #11 Turn Coat, but at 60 pages in I'm struggling hard to keep the inertia going to finish it. Despite my roommate telling me that books #11 and #12 are his favorites, I can't seem to find my second (or, rather 11th) wind to save me. Perhaps Dresden needs a little down time before I realize it's entirely possible to have too much of a good thing. 

Stay tuned for book #11, to be posted... who knows when?

Fargo: Season 1

Alright... I guess I'm in agreement with everyone else out there -- or at least the Third Party Support podcast -- that, yes, this show is riveting. Massively suspenseful with excellent performances all around, especially from Billy Bob Thornton. There wasn't a dull moment in the 10-ish hours I spent consuming the first season. 

First I want to praise the show in the direction they took for adapting the movie to a TV show, in that it really doesn't follow the movie at all. The creators could have easily done a show following Frances McDormand's police character from the film on a new case -- making the series possibly more of a procedural or something. Instead, we have brand new characters, yet will still retain the soul that I believe was at the heart of the movie. Evil comes to disrupt and corrupt the simple, happy folks in a seemingly peaceful, Podunk town. Watching Lester's slow transformation from someone I feel sorry for, to someone I weirdly root for, to someone I completely despise was a thoroughly satisfying experience. And, of course, Thornton's portrayal of Lorne Malvo was haunting causing him to steal every scene he appears in.  

I do wish they would have played up Oliver Platt's character a little more. Sure, he's the strongest link to Fargo's canon laid out in the film with him finding the (I think?) $920,000 buried in the snow beneath the red ice scraper. Besides this link to finding the money hidden in the film, he's the one character truly tied to God, and I like to think that religion has a strong role in this show. In a weird way Malvo, seems to represent the devil -- in that he's pure evil lacking in any sort of human soul. Then we have this evil incarnate character playing with Oliver Platt's belief in God to the point that Platt puts the money back where his found it in fear that he's angered God somehow. Then, out of nowhere, it rains fish causing Platt's character's son to die in a car accident. And thus concludes Platt's character's arc. All of which felt a little sudden and unsatisfying. 

Honestly, I'm not sure what to make of this. I'll accept that this isn't Platt's story (despite the strong link to the film), but then help me make sense of all this supernatural imagery. What lesson am I suppose to learn from these events? What should I take away as an audience member? This is definitely something that bugs me.

While I just finished season two, I'll have another bone to pick with this supernatural context buried in this show. (More to come later.)

Point is, this show is riveting and I'm glad I finally hopped on the bandwagon and watched it. But if anyone can provide any context to this religious allegory, it would be much appreciated. 

One final point... why Fargo? While I appreciate what the show is, why did it have to be holding onto the coat tails of the movie. For publicity? Sure, the move is excellent (one of my favorites), but I don't think there's a whole lot of recognition for it. Certainly nothing that would entice me to hitch a new show's wagon to it -- even more so if the show barely has anything to do with the movie! Seems like this series could easily stand on it's own, but here we are with a TV show set in the film's canon, yet it actually has very little to do with the movie. I do have some sneaking suspicions on how this show could truly connect with the Coen brothers' film, but I'm hoping these questions will be answered in later seasons.

However, it still bugs me. Just a bit. 

On that note, I'm pitching a new idea for a great TV show about a guy named Will who happens to a good hunter. I'm calling it Good Will Hunting. Before you ask... Yes, it does take place in the same canon as the movie with the same name, but there will never be any mention of Damon, Affleck, or Williams in the whole thing. Just a show about a decent hunter with a common male name. Brilliant? Yeah, I thought you would agree. 

Stan's Movie Dump: Early January 2016

Out of the gate swinging for the fences, apparently. After watching something like 30 movies in the final month of 2015, I've opened 2016 with 15 films in ten days. Can't stop won't stop! Just kidding. Definitely slowing down. At any rate, here's my first movie dump of 2016.

The Master

No better way to start a year than with the A.V. Club's top-ranked movie of the first half of the decade. I'd heard great things about The Master, and I'd also heard that it was a complexing puzzler of a film that required multiple viewings and had no consensus "solution" so to speak. Yeah, sounds like Paul Thomas Anderson. I only watched this once - so far, at least - and, yeah, no, I couldn't really tell you what it was about beyond the story that unfolded on screen. But that doesn't mean I wasn't impressed. I really liked this! Philip Seymour Hoffman? Fantastic here. Joaquim Phoenix? Perhaps even better. Amy Adams? Just fine. I've read plenty of theories and reviews and deep reads regarding The Master, and I don't like any of them as much as I liked the movie itself. So, there's that. I can't imagine this will go down as my own favorite movie of the decade, but I can understand why others would feel that way about it.

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

A little more than ten years ago, The Lord of the Rings was the absolute biggest story in movies. Box office records, critical acclaim, Oscars upon Oscars, and "instantly iconic" status. I feel kind of bad for Peter Jackson, because here he is making three equally epic movies this decade, firmly planted in the same genre and containing many of the same characters, and nobody really seemed to care. Hardcore Hobbit fans did, of course, but none of the same acclaim or Oscar buzz or box office success could be found this time around. These are clearly three overall lesser films than The Lord of the Rings, but they're not bad by any stretch; they're just as competently and completely made. So what happened? Did the world get sick of Middle Earth somewhere during the financial recession? Is this just due to the law of diminishing returns? I ask these questions rhetorically, but also to myself. Because despite seeing each of the Lord of the Rings movies something like three or four times, I never even bothered seeing the second or third Hobbit movies in theaters. And watching them earlier this month at home, I felt... kind of bored, honestly, during large stretches. Let's pick this up below.

The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies

Yeah, I just didn't love these. Never felt any hype for them, barely felt any excitement while watching them. And watching the second and third movies back-to-back like I did has kind of left them blurring together in my memory. The only thing I really feel like I loved from the second movie was a chaotic and well-choreographed sequence in which dwarves, elves, and goblins fought their way down a winding river. And the biggest thing I remember from the third one was the climactic showdown at the end of an overlong climactic battle sequence. (Eagles to the rescue! Again!) I don't have anything negative to say about either of these movies; I just wish I felt stronger about them in general.

Timbuktu

I need to slow down on the foreign language films. There's nothing wrong with them, but going back to last month it feels like every other movie I've seen lately is subtitled, and there's just something that gets lost in there sometimes. My attention can wane during some of these movies - I won't lie - and that's particularly difficult when I need to be looking directly at the screen and reading the words on it in order to follow the plot. Timbuktu is a movie that a ton of my favorite critics seemed to love, and it just didn't do a lot for me. Maybe that has nothing to do with the subtitles - I don't know, some of my favorite movies from the last few years have been subtitled. This should have been a powerful movie for me, based on some of my tastes, and it just wasn't. Mostly I just got the impression from this movie that Sharia regimes are horrible and oppressive and brutal - but don't the semi-regular dispatches from ISIS remind us that much?

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2014)

No need for me to get dramatic here; no "childhood memories" were harmed by watching this movie. It was just a pretty bad movie. Inoffensively so - don't get me wrong. But even setting aside that these were the Ninja Turtles and that I loved the Ninja Turtles growing up and all, I mean, it just wasn't very funny or entertaining or memorable. This is no affront to decency; it's more of a straight C-minus or D-plus - which some of you will surely agree is far worse to watch than an F, really.

Hot Rod

Not great, and its biggest crime was probably an inconsistent tone. Sometimes went for clever jokes, often went for simple and stupid. What piqued my interest most here was what a strange time warp it was, in many ways. (Holy shit, 2007 was nine years ago!) You've got annoying SNL-era Andy Samberg, obviously, but surrounding him are pre-breakout Bill Hader, virtually then-unknown Danny McBride, and peak (pre-Sacha Baron Cohen) Isla Fisher. Tack on an out-of-nowhere fantastic and completely against-type performance from Ian McShane - Al freaking Swearengen - as Samberg's incessantly disappointed stepfather, and this was a really entertaining look back on different careers crossing trending in different directions. And it honestly wasn't a bad movie - certainly not as bad as its box office numbers.

Philomena

Here's a formulaic 2010s-era Oscar-baity movie. Based on a true story? Of course. An anecdote that serves to tell the untold stories of a very specific and overlooked group of people? You bet - unwed Irish women forced to give up their babies for adoption in the 1950s, to be specific. Invested primarily in actors and dialogue? Yup. Totally straight-laced and vanilla shot-blocking and camera-angle staging? Entirely. No interesting editing or directorial flourishes in sight? Not one. Bad? Hardly. Memorable? Not at all.

Short Term 12

Brie Larson's performance as a social worker with the patience of a saint and a few personal demons of her own is probably the best thing about this movie taking place in a troubled youth home. I dunno, call me a cynic - I just feel like I've seen "this movie" a dozen times over already. Angry kids, caregivers and foster parents who care deeply for them but have mixed results breaking through to them, horrible but understandable tantrums, lashing out, depression, suicide. None of this is to say that Short Term 12 was a bad movie - it was well-made and powerful enough and worth seeing, for sure. I'm just not sure it brought anything new to the table. Hardly a crime!

Compliance

Holy hell - a perfect example of a movie "based on a true story" where you think, no, impossible, there's no way a group of people could have collectively been that irresponsible, ignorant, or stupid - and sure enough, you race to Wikipedia and the rest of the Internet once it's over and learn that, yes, this really did happen, more or less beat for beat the way it did in the movie. I'm being vague, I realize, but this seems like a movie best entered cold. You know how it's going to unfold within about ten or twenty minutes, and there's no big trick or anything - you just keep realizing, oh man, there's too much time left - this situation is going to get even worse. And, yes. It does. Repeatedly. From a technical standpoint, it's a fine-but-not-great movie. There's a wooden performance or two - most disappointingly from Dreama Walker, the most recognizable name in the movie playing the character who probably deserves the best actor - and the ending feels simultaneously rushed and unnecessary. They also "reveal" the antagonist long after such a revelation should be capable of surprising anybody. But enough of the negatives - this is worth a ninety-minute watch. On Netflix, of course.

Selma

Credit where it's due - I expected another soft Oscar-baity biopic and was pleasantly surprised to see how violent, raw, and emotionally gripping this was. And it wasn't just some big puff piece on MLK, either. His reputation as a philanderer was addressed, if only briefly, and he was shown to be indecisive and argumentative on a number of occasions. LBJ also came out looking like a near-total asshole - in a movie loaded with murderous and vile bigots, no less. No wonder his estate wasn't pleased with this movie! But yeah, this was an all-around solid movie with way more to it than I had been led to believe.

Sunset Boulevard

It's always good to mix in an old classic every now and again, right? Here's a famous noir-like dark comedy from 1950 that holds up about as well as any movie from 1950 could be expected to hold up today. You're probably familiar enough, in broad strokes. A wealthy older actress plans her comeback after an eighteen year hiatus from the movie industry. The character - Norma Desmond - is luxurious and sultry and a total diva. In short, she's crazy - and perhaps the origin of her own very archetype. As always seems to be the case when I watch anything more than, say, thirty years old, I'm sure this was once in fact a fantastic movie. Hey, if nothing else, it's great to grow familiar with the classics, right?

Cabin Fever: Patient Zero

Total inconsequential crap. I kind of alluded to it above in my Ninja Turtles paragraph, but there's a big difference between fun bad movies and boring ones. When something's an absolute trainwreck, it's entertaining to watch. Find the plot holes, laugh at the acting, and so on. But when something's competently made and still completely mundane, why bother with it at all? That's the case with Cabin Fever: Patient Zero, the third movie in the Cabin Fever franchise - the second one sucks too, by the way. Nothing scary here, nothing fun, and nothing particularly memorable. There's a flesh-eating-virus-based oral sex scene played for squeamish laughs, but it just feels like a diminished version of a better gag from the first movie. This is an early but strong candidate for worst movie I see all year.

Inside Llewyn Davis

I think I love the Coen brothers, but honestly? They're a bit hit-or-miss for me. I mean, mostly hits, for sure, but every now and again one of their movies just leaves me cold. One such movie was O Brother, Where Art Thou? - ironically, the second time I saw it. (Liked it just fine the first time, but was also twelve years old.) So how did I enjoy this largely non-violent and straightforward music-driven nostalgia trip? A lot, actually! The folk music was pleasant, the tone was perfect, the story was simple but the themes it explored were deep. I have nothing bad to say about this one at all. In fact, I loved it!

The Comedy

This one hit a little close to home for me. It's a character piece that looks at a bored thirty-ish well-to-do white guy and how detached he is from everyone and everything around him. What makes this film different though, from so many "bored and depressed" movies like Garden State and the like is that this guy isn't really despondent or sad or in need of being saved; he's just completely sarcastic and ironic and either unable or unwilling to treat anyone or anything around him with any level of earnestness. He's got his circle of friends, but all they seem to do is make fun of things - themselves included - and riff on one another. I heard the movie best described as one in which "everyone is joking and nobody is laughing." It's not an exciting movie, nor does it really have any characters you want to root for, but it's an interesting and slightly cautionary look at how viewing the world around you with nothing but cynicism is a really shitty way to live.

The Hateful Eight

Saw this just earlier today, so perhaps I haven't fully digested it yet. Bear with me! First of all, I nearly always love Tarantino's work and I knew going in that I would love this film. It's vintage Quentin; the first hour and a half is almost entirely comprised of dialogue. Tense, wonderful dialogue. And then of course the bullets and the blood begin to fly and we jump back in time in order to explore a different point of view and by the time the dust settles and the movie ends, it isn't entirely clear what the point of the story was. If anything, I'm left wanting more. That's not to say I didn't thoroughly enjoy this movie, nor is it to say it wasn't what I expected it to be. But by the eighth go-round, I just thought Tarantino would have something to say, either overtly or within the subtext, and there just isn't much of that here. It's as straightforward a tale as Reservoir Dogs was - not that there's anything wrong with that! The acting and writing are absolutely perfect here; I just hoped this would be deeper or more challenging in some way. This is the first time I came away from a Tarantino movie really wondering, "okay, he's amazing at doing exactly this, but can he do anything else anymore?" I know some people got there years ago.

Alright then. Bye for now!

Ash vs Evil Dead: Season 1

Sidebar: I don't know how I feel about all these "dumps." It's like we're literally shitting on the blog. What ever happened to thoughtfully crafting out individual posts for our respective content? Then again, I seem to clearly lack the amount of content everyone else is devouring. Moving on!

The man. The legend. The chainsaw. Groovy.

Evil Dead was the movie that really made me consider getting into movies. Paul Berard first showed me these films back in middle school. I watched it in glee with the realization that if a bunch of schmucks from nowheresville Michigan can follow their dreams and make a campy horror film, then anyone can. (Much easier said than done.) Still, for better or for worse, the Evil Dead franchise will always stand near and dear to my heart for inspiring me to follow my foolish whims and earning a useless screenwriting degree. Thanks fellas!

This past Halloween we were welcomed back to the world of Ashley J. Williams... only to find out that after nearly 30 years, Ash has not changed in the slightest bit. Still on the hunt for the next easy woman he can bed. Still working retail at dumpy department stores (sadly, no longer S-Mart). Still the same old shitty person. Then one night, while trying to woo some poetry-chick, Ash smokes a joint and has the brilliant idea to read from the Necronomicon Ex Mortis (roughly translated, the Book of the Dead). And, sure enough, Ash accidentally releases the Evil back onto Earth. Teaming up with two young employees from the department store he "works" at, Ash must put a stop to the Evil, once again. Or at least think of a really good escape plan.

This show has three things going for it: blood, humor, and more blood. When you watch this show (and I encourage everyone to do so), you'll get the same ol' cocky Ash that only Bruce Campbell can delivery on. Throwing out quippy one-liners to slicing off deadites' heads, no one does it quite like Bruce. And in between all of the fights scenes -- or even during them -- you'll be laughing at how ridiculous the stakes become. 

Is this show perfect? Far from it. You'll spot plot holes coming at you a mile away. But, then again, none of the movies were "perfect" either. They were about entertainment. Let's take you to a dark, eerie cabin far, far away where we'll watch some clueless buffoon get relentless tortured by all the things that go bump in the night. That's what the films always represented to me... and that's exactly what show delivers on. 

For diehard fans (such as myself) you'll be excited to hear that the original director of the films, Sam Raimi, also directs the pilot episode to this series. You'll also be saddened to hear that's the only thing he directs. While I wish he would have left his thumbprint on more of the series, I wont complain about what we have here. The rest of the crew really steps up and the season carries the same energy that Sam first lays down in the pilot. 

Even if you've never been interested in the franchise, I would still encourage you to give this show a try. Sure, I'm biased as all hell, but it's also something truly original for television. A slasher/horror/dark-comedy TV show?! Where else will you find this concoction of entertainment. (Ok, people have told me of another slasher/horror TV show, Scream Queens. But where Ash vs. Evil Dead scores a 98% on RottenTomatoes, Scream Queens pulls in a measly  59%. Enough said.) Support the arts -- or lack thereof --  and watch Ash vs. Evil Dead.

With a second season already confirmed, it shouldn't be long before we see our bumbling hero back up and running away from his responsibilities like the hero he isn't. 

LittleBigPlanet 2

LittleBigPlanet was the first game I played and beat for the PS3 some five years ago or more, and I liked it enough to eventually buy this sequel. The good news is that I think I liked the sequel even better. The bad news is that so much of the appeal of these games comes from the community aspect of creating, sharing, and exploring with complete Internet strangers - and that ship sailed a long, long time ago for this 2011 title.

I'd have loved to play LittleBigPlanet 2 with friends in a four-way cooperative frenzy, but it just never caught on. B-Town played it at some point - and, being his PlayStation Network friend, I was constantly shown his high scores and achievements on the levels I played - but I don't think any of the rest of you guys got into this franchise. And I can't blame you! Sackboy is adorable and the games are cute and delightful, but they're slight. With so much emphasis on building and creating levels and challenges and such, there's very little in the way of a lasting and memorable campaign mode. I don't think I could describe for you, with one hundred percent certainty, a single level from the first game - and I'm sure this one will fall by the wayside in short manner as well.

One last thing worth noting, though. It really is impressive how varied and interesting the gameplay can get here given such a simple set of controls. You can move around and jump and use one all-purpose "action" button - yet in the story mode alone I found myself playing a racing game, a third-person shooter, a rail shooter, a puzzle game, pinball, soccer, and of course a good old-fashioned side-scrolling platform game.

Solid game! I just think I missed its window.

Workaholics: Season 5

It's funny - I really do enjoy this show, but I can never allow myself to rank it very far above the very bottom of my year-end review lists. Sweeney agreed with me when I brought this up earlier today, and suggested that this is likely due to how old (and stale) the show has grown. I don't think he's wrong, but looking back, I'e been watching this show for years now, and it's never been something I've ranked highly. Yet year after year, I enjoy DVRing it and watching it and while there are a fair share of duds every season, I have to say I genuinely laugh out loud more at Workaholics than I do at a ton of other comedies.

So what's the deal? Is it simply that Workaholics is small in scope, void of thematic depth, and unmarked by any long-term arcs whatsoever? Probably. Look, for whatever reason, I'm high on Workaholics right now and I think I've been underrating it for far too long. I've got nothing else!

Do the Right Thing

Even though I watch a fair amount of movies, I'm embarrassed to say that I'm relatively unfamiliar with Spike Lee's joints. Aside from Inside Man and Malcolm X, I haven't seen anything else from his filmography (well... I remember snippets from He Got Game, but only the scene where an incarcerated Denzel Washing throws a metaphoric basketball through the wall of his prison-court and it floats over to his son playing basketball out in the free world -- likely watched this movie with my parents as a kid, half falling asleep on the couch). Many of Lee's films seem to tackle subject of racial discrimination and civil rights, and while he's not the first and certainly not the last to dramatize these subject matters, he's certainly dropping some critical thought-provoking genius in this gem, Do the Right Thing.

It's a simple story. Mookie is your typically young black adult residing in a sleepy, slummy neighborhood of Brooklyn. Between his sister, his girlfriend, and his job at the Italian-American owned pizzeria at the end of the block, Mookie just seems to be trying to get by, much like everyone else. This film has a wide cast of distinct characters. Some characters might fit the stereotype role hard, such as the asian family running the neighborhood convenience store, while others are just unexpected, like Smiley, the white mentally-challenge man who strolls the sidewalks selling photos of MLK and Malcolm X. While everyone goes about their lives, we are constantly beaten over the head that it's going to be a hot day with the heat only getting worse. It's pretty obvious that this forebodes to the anger and violence of racial tensions that are boiling up in the neighborhood. 

And, boy, does the steam cooker blow or what...

Now, I'm going to assume most people have seen this film as it's classic at this point. (And if you haven't, let me take this time to encourage you to watch it. It's powerful stuff.) But this allows me to jump right into my critique of some of the film's messages and some questions I still can't figure out. 

First, I was talking with Sween the other night, telling him I just finished the film, and he asked "Why do you think Mookie threw the trash can into Sal's Pizzeria?" Great question. While I think it's difficult to definitively break down this film to one central message, for me, that message is that we all (regardless of race and color) struggle between our internal conflict of good and evil, love and hate... doing the right thing versus doing the wrong thing. And this is made no clearer then after the huge altercation at Sal's where the police accidentally kill Radio Raheem (the guy always blasting NWA out of his oversized boombox). Shit goes down. And in the lull where Sal's standing outside his story arguing with the neighborhood, explaining the altercation, Mookie could have done two things: defend Sal while attempted to diffuse the situation from getting an worse, or lead the charge into battle by starting a riot. Mookie chooses the latter. Sal's store burns down. Raheem dies. No one comes out ahead. 

And in the following scene, Mookie sits on the curb with this thousand-yard stare looking at the wreck of Sal's place (his former place of work) clearly distraught by the whole situation. Then it's obvious, for a brief moment, hate took over love in his internal battle of good and evil leaving violence as the consequence. However, I'm not sure I completely understand what Spike is trying to say here about humanity. You see, I don't recall one character who's completely good or completely bad. Everyone seems to be a mix in some way or another. Even Smiley, the harmless, mentally-challenge guy takes part in the riot and is responsible for starting the fire that burns Sal's to the ground. Smiley! The one guy I assumed at the beginning of the film was this weird metaphor for innocence, yet he arguably causes the most destructive damage. 

In the end, all I can take away is that Spike may see this world (its racial tensions in specific) as having this yin and yang relationship. Good doesn't come without evil. Love doesn't come without hate. As much as we try to be kind to one another, eventually we'll turn for the worse and do something violent. Just like on the flip-side, if we're constantly bad we'll do something good -- much like Da Mayor (the neighborhood's drunk) is responsible for saving a kid's life from getting struck by an oncoming vehicle. This love and hate relationship is reasserted in the last moments of the film where we're given two civil rights quotes from MLK and Malcolm X. MLK has a message of pure peace, which is juxtaposed with Malcolm X's message that violence (while not desirable) is sometimes necessary. Then we see the photo -- the same photo Smiley hangs up in the ruins of Sal's pizza shop -- of MLK and Malcolm X smiling and shaking hands. Two different forces living together with one another. For better or for worse. I guess... it's just life?

As a quick side-note... I can't help but think that Spike also succumbed to this analogy. Remember the shooting of Trayvon Martin? Spike lived out Mookie's poor decision when he posted on Twitter the address of Martin's shooter, George Zimmerman. Only, Spike got Zimmerman's wrong address and accidentally channeled the country's outrage to an innocent elderly couple who were forced to flee their home amid unwarranted harassment and misdirected hate. Spike did apologize and made some sort of financial settlement to the couple, but still... None of us are immune from hate it seems. 

Ok. After rambling on here, I'm going to release this full disclosure: I have no clue what Spike meant audiences to take away from this movie, nor do I know what would be a textbook understanding of this film. But here's my personal takeaway...

Everyone in this film is an asshole. 

Yup. I said it. Everyone is an asshole. You want to know why? Because this is a world where people are shoving their thoughts and opinions down each other's throat regardless of personal respect for their neighbor. While on the flip-side, this is also a world where people cannot take people shoving crap down their throat... hence the heated friction that eventually blows up. You don't believe me? Let's just take a few examples: 

• Sal hangs a Hall of Fame on his wall with all white heroes, forcing anyone who visits his establishment to view his personal opinion of people that should be admired. 
• Buggin' Out, a patron of Sal's Pizzeria, at first cannot take Sal's opinion of heroes, and then later forces his opinion that there should be black people also posted on this Wall of Fame.
• Radio Raheem struts around with his boombox blaring NWA for all to hear, regardless is they want to or not. 
• Smiley runs up to people constantly trying to sell photos of his heroes, Malcolm X and MLK.

Most of the main cast in this film wear their identity on their sleeve, not just for all to see, but for all to deal with. While I root for individuality and having every person having the freedom and intelligence to pursue a life and identity that makes sense to them, there's a respectful way to do it and a disrespectful way. Most characters in this film chose to express themselves in the disrespectful method. I think the best example of this is the scene where the kids break open the fire hydrant and have a water party out in the street. When an car approaches them, the driver asks to not get his car wet. The kids promise they wont. Then, sure enough, as the car rolls past them, they unleash a torrent of water soaking the convertible and the driver understandable pissing him off. Yeah, this scene could seem like nothing more than kids being kids, but I think it sends a larger message -- we force our neighbors to experience our beliefs through our words and actions, and (most of the time) the recipient has no desire to take part in that experience. But, hey fuck 'em. You cross my path, then you better be ready deal with whatever shit I'm going to throw in you face. 

To be simple, it's just a world of bad manners. Bad manners leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. And hate leads to the dark side... I mean police brutality and rioting. 

There's a lot more I could speak to this film, but with so much said already, I'll bring this post to a close. I will end with this: This film made me think. It made me questions. And it was damn, fucking entertaining. Definitely among the best films I've ever seen and is clearly a masterpiece. 

PS... For a follow-up conversation, what the hell was the character Smiley suppose to represent? 

Sweeney's TV Dump: December Post-Podcast

I'm back! A combination of trying to focus on more significant video game reviews for another site as well as starting up grad school, and generally life getting more busy, all made me want to take a hiatus from the Back-Blog. Since then Stan's started doing these combo-posts, and I'm a fan of the style, so I'll try it out myself. This first post will focus on seasons of t.v. shows I finished between our year-end tv podcast 2 weeks ago and New Year's Eve.

Homeland: Season 5

While I caught the flawless first season of Homeland almost immediately after it first aired, it took until the fifth season before I finally watched the show live, and to piggyback on what Stan mentioned in his post, I think the show is really helped by watching it live over the course of the season. This was the most invested I've been in Homeland in years, even if the show definitely has its share of flaws- Quinn basically spent the entire season getting the shit beat out of him and doing little else, and several main characters made uncharacteristically dumb decisions just to ensure the season's main antagonist stuck around in power up through the finale. Still though, I really enjoyed watching paranoid Carrie, stern Saul, and their crazy and topical espionage adventures in Germany.

Bojack Horseman: Season 2

The first season of Bojack Horseman was a decent but insignificant watch for me, one that took a few attempts to really get into. While the first season felt like a generic send-up of life in Hollywood, the second season grew into something much better, looking at the depression of a washed-up celebrity who finally gets the comeback role of his dreams only to find his life still painfully empty. I thought the addition of Lisa Kudrow as an owl who just got out of a 30 year coma really helped fill out the cast, so I'm hopeful she comes back in some way for season three. There were still a few awkward moments (Aaron Paul's Todd just doesn't quite fit yet) but Bojack definitely made some major improvement in its second season- I'll marathon season three when it comes out next year.

Transparent: Season 1

This show has earned a stellar reputation, tackling head-on a taboo that not many shows are willing to go anywhere near- coming out as transgender. Jeffrey Tambor stars as Maura, transitioning to be a woman in her late sixties, and before I watched the show I assumed the main focus was just on the obstacles one would encounter when transitioning. Not the case! Honestly, the show seems to focus on Maura's son and daughters' relationships and their own sexual hang-ups just as much if not more than Maura's. I also assumed that as a comedy with Jeffrey Tambor that all sorts of wacky hi-jinks would ensue, but most of the time the humor in Transparent is a bit more subtle. I respect that this show is doing things no other shows are and still presenting it in a way that's pleasant to watch, but I'm not yet convinced this is one of the best shows on t.v. Still worth watching though!

Peep Show: Series 1

Peep Show is a show that I've seen and heard recommendations for for years- it's on something like it's ninth (and potentially final?) series right now I think, so I might be jumping in a little too late. It's a low-stakes British comedy about two young guys moving in together and just experiencing life as a couple of young bachelors- there was really no unifying theme here, as some episodes focused on them trying to get better jobs, hook up with women, and throw a party. The jobless slacker Jeremy has some great moments, but already it feels like the breakout star has to be dorky Mark- he really nails a level of awkwardness that toes the line between relate-able and cringe-worthy. Oh yeah, the show also relies on a gimmick where every shot is a first-person point of view, a fact that I quickly forgot about unless some rapid-fire changes in point of view were happening. The series are a mere six episodes each, so I'll probably burn through the rest of the show pretty quickly.

Making a Murderer

Here's Netflix's first foray into true-crime documentary series- Making a Murderer, the true story of Steven Avery and his ridiculous battle with Manitowoc Wisconsin police department. To spoil a little bit, Steven's a bit of a troublemaker and not too bright, but in the 80's he was sent to prison for a sexual assault he didn't commit, getting out 18 years later when new technology helped prove his innocence. The whole case was handled sloppily and is frustrating enough to watch, but by the end of the first episode Steven's finally free in 2005 and on his way to a multi-million dollar lawsuit. This is when things get much, much worse, as he's again accused of a major crime by the same police department, again with little to no evidence. Almost everything that happens in the ensuing investigation and trial is fishy and perplexing. While the show does feel very biased, and I still haven't made up my mind over what actually happened, the series made me extremely angry over how clearly the justice system failed Steven and his family over and over, and the potential conspiracy theories tossed out by some of the talking heads don't feel all that far-fetched. But don't take my word for it, watch it now! Everyone else is!