Family Guy: Volume 12

In 2002, back when Family Guy was in its pre-cancelation "Golden Era" of sorts, Fox refused to air an episode called "When You Wish Upon a Weinstein." It did eventually air on Adult Swim, and a few years later on Fox itself, and of course there was buzz and promotional interest in this forbidden episode. This was Family Guy, after all, easily the most offensive and controversial show on network television, so for something to be deemed to inappropriate for Family Guy was a big deal. So, just what was it about this episode that had pushed the envelope too far?

Some potentially anti-Semitic content. The gist of the episode is that Peter does something foolish with his money, then decides he needs a Jewish guy to look after his money, then decides that Jews are great and that he needs to convert his son to Judaism, then ultimately gets talked out of all that in a fairly standard episode-ending "everything is back to normal" discussion with Brian or Lois or the Jewish guy or some combination of all three. It's actually amazingly vanilla stuff, especially when you compare it to other content Family Guy "got away with" both before and since that episode didn't air. By and large, the episode treated the Jewish guy as the straight man and Peter as a buffoon, as always. The episode has found its way back into syndication and DVD releases, and if you were to see it today without knowing about its initial controversy you wouldn't think anything of it at all.

I bring this up just to serve as a remarkable contrast to "Turban Cowboy," an episode of Family Guy that aired in 2013 without any fuss whatsoever. The set-up is fairly similar, in that Peter makes a new friend with different religious beliefs and then makes a misguided attempt to convert his family to that religion - in this case, Islam. There were two enormous differences in the way the two episodes unfolded, though. Where Peter wanted to become a Jew in 2002 because he admired their intelligence, he wanted to become a Muslim in 2013 because of how subservient Islamic women are to their husbands. Yeesh. And then, where Peter gets talked out of becoming a Jew through a somewhat formulaic conversation, he only decides not to be a Muslim once he realizes his new friend is a member of a terrorist cell.

So, to reiterate, in 2002 an episode was deemed unfit for TV broadcast because there were a few Jewish stereotypes in it, but in 2013 it was cool to depict American Muslims as womanizing terrorists? There's got to be a reason for this. Have broadcast standards fallen that drastically since 2002? Are the big wigs at Fox far more willing to denigrate Muslims than Jews? By the way, I'm not suggesting that "Turban Cowboy" should have been banned or anything - I'm just sort of amazed that it wasn't, given that "When You Wish Upon a Weinstein" once was.

I've now rambled way too much about one specific episode on this volume of television, but then, what else am I going to say about a stale cartoon Ive discussed four times previously on this blog? I'm already as bored with this post as I was by most of these episodes, so rather than highlight some of the good stuff - and there was some good stuff here - I'm just going to call this one finished and move on.

Dust: An Elysian Tail

I still can't believe what a good deal "Games with Gold" can sometimes be. Once again, the deal is that two preselected games a month are available and free to download for any Xbox Gold subscriber. While the  deal has filled my backlog with more than a few duds, I've recently tried only to acquire and play games that I've at least heard of. Dust is one such game, a side-scrolling hack-and-slash indie RPG.

All in all, it was a fine game. Could have been a little better, but given the free price point and the independent studio behind it, I can't complain. You play as "Dust," a mysterious warrior who doesn't even know his own origins. You're aided by a talking sword and a miniature flying cat-bat hybrid thing named Fidget. Fidget was… a little too "furry fuel" for my comfort, with the voice of a giddy Japanese school girl and oddly voluptuous hips. The whole game was full of anthropomorphic animals. It was a design element I couldn't quite ignore.

Mostly, this one fell right in the middle of the pack as far as Xbox Live Arcade games go. It wasn't Bastion or Braid or Shadow Complex, but it wasn't Shoot Many Robots or Harms Way or A World of Keflings, either.

A Short History of Nearly Everything

Those of you with long-term familiarity of my book backlog know that one of the most stubborn categories I've been unable to even attempt progress on, for years, has been "science books." It looks like August, 2011, was the last time I read one, which is both amazing and shocking to me. No matter - I'm back in the saddle now, at least for one post.

Bill Bryson has written a number of things I've read over the years. This is the sixth book of his I've finished, but only the first in the Back-Blogged era. The man is a talented author of all things nonfiction, from travel memoirs to autobiographies to popular science. A Short History of Nearly Everything is, in fact, more or less what its title suggests. It's only 500 pages long, yet it covers a whole lot of ground from the origins of the universe to our solar system to plate tectonics to the oceans and skies to bacteria and dinosaurs and cells and DNA and human evolution. Bryson spends about ten to twenty pages each on covering thirty or so topics in a neatly arranged and loosely organized manner that does indeed seem to cover nearly everything. The whole thing is very conversational and approachable. This is not, whatsoever, heavy science. In fact, if anything, I was often bored not by scientific detail but by all the historical anecdotes Bryson threw in there to liven things up for a general audience.

I started reading this book well over a year ago, but must have stopped abruptly at some point along the way for unknown reasons. (Once again, 2013 was just a terrible year for book reading on my end of the blog.) I can't think of any specific impetus that drove me to resume reading this book, so I'll just credit the Neil deGrasse Tyson Cosmos revival for rekindling a general interest in me for the history of science. Kudos!

Hugo

Simply put, this movie did nothing for me. I've come to expect more - or at least something entirely different - from Martin Scorsese. Some say this was his attempt at a Stephen Spielberg pastiche. Lonely orphan, animatronic robot, fantasy elements - it's all there, and it's all just fine. It just didn't quite resonate with me on any level, and while it was by no means a bad movie, I'm left without much of a positive reaction to it all the same. I wish I could elaborate more, but I'm not even inspired to comb through my own reaction to this one and pinpoint strengths, weaknesses, highlights, or flaws. This was just a nice and easy PG movie without much of a statement beyond the idea that old films should be preserved. Hot take, huh?

God of War: Ascension

I am a huge proponent of the God of War series. With Ascension, I’ve beaten each game in the series including every game on the PSP (and I replayed them on the PS3). This is a prequel story I think. It takes place “before the time of the Titans” as Kratos breaks his blood oath to Ares, whatever that means. Because he does this, he gets pursued by what I think are three (maybe just two) sisters who have the power of illusion and the power to summon bugs. With giant bugs and tricking Kratos into thinking his family is alive, these sisters plan on keeping Kratos chained to Ares for life. SPOILER ALERT: IT DOESN’T WORK supposedly even though it seems like it does based on the games that come after this one chronologically. What all this amounts to is a game that doesn't quite feel as epic as previous iterations. Yes, it still has the giant set pieces and it still makes you feel like an almost god-like warrior, but there's just something missing when the main evil isn't Zeus or Hades or someone awesome like that. 

As you can see, this is the hardest story to follow. Also, the variety of enemies just isn’t up to par with God of War 3 and what enemies this game does have are kind of lame. There are a lot of bug enemies which don’t really fit into this universe to which I had been introduced in previous games. Moreover, the controls have changed from previous installments to incorporate a new feature in which you can harpoon your enemies and hold onto them as you battle other enemies. It's cool in theory but not as fun as I would have hoped. Because of it, I was constantly getting confused with how to do some moves that were previously second-nature to me. On top of that, this game went from having 0 puzzles to having a shit ton in the final hour or so. Lastly, the final boss is pretty lame. Though this is my least favorite of the God of War games, it's easily the best looking (probably the best looking game on PS3). The sound is incredible. The actual gameplay is as fun as ever. If you consider yourself a God of War fan, play this game. Just temper your expectations just a little bit. But damn it feels good to beat another God of War game.

Gladiator

 

When Danielle came home from Italy she immediately asked to watch Gladiator. Boy was I excited. It’s just such a good movie. Russel Crowe and Joaquin Phoenix are just so damn great in this movie. But we all know how goddamn good this movie is. It’s one of the most goosebump-inducing movies of all time and has arguably the best heroic speech of any movie of all time (although my personal favorite happens in Braveheart). On a side note, I hate when people say goose pimples or chicken skin. Thank god R.L. Stine doesn’t say that shit.  Anyway, this movie holds up and flies by despite being 2.5 hours long. My biggest problem with this is the transfer. For a Blu-ray, it looks like dogshit. Apparently Dreamworks offered a replacement with a better transfer of which I never took advantage so I’m stuck with this junk. I would like to rebuy it one day with a better transfer, but not today. It just blows my mind that a movie like this could look this bad. It looks worse than the DVD. Anyway, great movie. If you haven’t seen it you’re dumb.

Rachel Getting Married

It's pretty easy to compare this movie to the entire first half of Melancholia, as both films take place during some posh and elegant wedding weekends and both directors just kind of dove right into those wedding sequences to immerse the audience in the festivities and simply observe all kinds of different characters and their interactions. The comparisons more or less end there, though, as where Melancholia was dark and depressing, Rachel Getting Married gave off an indescribable inviting warmth of sorts.

That's not to say this was a bright and happy movie. Characters have all kinds of baggage and familial histories, grudges, and rivalries, and lots of Rachel Getting Married is just adults yelling at each other. Anne Hathaway plays Kym, the little sister and maid of honor to Rachel, who, of course, is getting married. Kym is selfish and unreliable, but she's also a drug addict struggling in rehab. This puts her in sharp contrast to the responsible and generally even-keeled Rachel, and the two spend a great deal of the movie arguing with each other and unloading years of baggage. Mom and Dad get in on the arguments, often turning on each other, and even a few bridal party members find the time to have some words. Still, while there's plenty of dysfunction here, it's such an honest and realistic dysfunction. These aren't bad people and their relationships aren't ugly.

Anyway, this isn't for everyone and I can't even say that I genuinely loved it, but I was in the right state of mind when I saw it, and for reasons I still can't fully articulate, it really worked, from my perspective.

Young Adult

Charlize Theron and Patton Oswalt were terrific in this way-beyond-coming-of-age comedy about a thirty-something woman on an ill-advised quest to reconnect with her high school boyfriend, a married man who has just had a child. One thing I really appreciate about this one was how honest and reasonable it felt. A much simpler movie would have made the wife of the aforementioned ex-boyfriend an obviously terrible match, allowing the audience to easily root for her marriage to fail. A darker movie more interested in making Theron's character an anti-hero would have featured the actress just dripping with sex appeal and wrecking the shit out of that ex's home. Instead, the joke here is on Theron's immature character; the ex is perfectly happy, and although both he and his wife initially welcome his old flame back into their lives, that flame never comes close to being rekindled, at least on his end. Because this was a movie, and because we're trained to expect certain things from movies, I won't pretend I knew all along that nothing would happen between these two characters. But when nothing did happen - and when it happened in spectacularly embarrassing fashion for Theron - I was very happy with the movie's restraint and straightforward frankness. This is a sad, lonely woman, after all, and not some star-crossed lover who deserves this particular happy ending.

Theron plays Mavis, the one-time homecoming queen turned ghost author on a failing young adult series, with a perfect ice cold bitchy demeanor that surely would have fallen flat in the hands of a less talented or less beautiful actress. She's a genuinely bad person, openly flirting with her old flame in front of his wife and nurturing a disgust for being back in her hometown, which is the one place some people still recognize her for being such a popular high schooler. Yet underneath it all is an unconcealable emptiness; just about everyone around her has moved on, the way people tend to do at some point between senior year of high school and their thirty-fifth birthdays, but Mavis is clinging to that entitled popular girl attitude because, really, stuck in her arrested development, it's all she has.

Young Adult was a great movie. It wasn't drop-dead hilarious, and its "some people need to grow up" theme wasn't very original either, but this was still a fresh and enjoyable take on some old cliches. I'd see it again, gladly.

Super Mario Bros.

Rest in peace, Bob Hoskins.

Alright, so I knew going into this one that it was really, really bad. I was very prepared for a bad movie, I assure you. But I expected, say, a bad kids movie. I expected to smile a little bit at a few references to Super Mario and the Mushroom Kingdom and maybe roll my eyes at some plot inconsistencies. I did not expect woefully bad science fiction with such minimal awareness of the Super Mario franchise. I knew this movie would not be good. I didn't know it would not be fun. Since it serves no one's interest for me to ramble on and on with nerd rage over something that happened twenty years ago, I'll just leave a few observations in bullet point format and move on with my life afterward.

The following are all unfaithful adaptation decisions made by the movie:

• Mario is depicted by a man in his fifties, and Luigi by a man in his twenties. While they were still ostensibly brothers, and while the duo have always had ambiguous ages, they have always been depicted as being relatively the same age. (Games that came after 1993 would depict the two as being babies simultaneously.) It was just a werid creative liberty to take, to turn Mario and Luigi into essentially an uncle-and-nephew type of pairing - not quite father-son, but certainly mentor-apprentice in some way.
• Although the brothers don their overalls and signature red and green shirts and hats late in the movie, Mario spends more than half of the movie in an olive green jacket and Luigi spends the same amount of time in a maroon sweatshirt. What a senseless oversight.
• Here's one where two wrongs inadvertently make a right. The movie's damsel in distress isn't Princess Toadstool (which is what Princess Peach was called back then), but Princess Daisy, instead. Furthermore, it's Luigi who's interested in saving her and in the same process courting her. Yes, Luigi and Daisy is technically a canonical pairing, but in Daisy's only appearances prior to 1993 she had only been another princess saved by Mario; if you want to give this movie credit for predicting or even creating the Daisy-Luigi pairing, fine, but the Daisy in this movie had blonde hair and was clearly just Princess Toadstool with a different name and the opposite brother as a love interest. Whatever.
• King Koopa - not Bowser, even though that had become the character's canonical name long before 1993 - was not an oafish snapping turtle with a spiky shell, but instead a human descendent of a Tyrannosaurus rex. His only reptilian feature was a long, pointy tongue.
• Goombas were not little walking mushroom things, but instead massive creatures with human bodies and tiny little heads. They were heavily armed with guns. You can find pictures of them all over the Internet. It's almost unbelievable.
• Toad existed, nominally, at least. Toad was a Goomba with a harmonica. Nice to see him get name-checked, I guess?
• Yoshi also existed. Yoshi was a small velociraptor-like pet of Koopa's. Again, why make the reference only to completely butcher everything about the character? (This movie came out two weeks before Jurassic Park, which really highlights the night-and-day difference in the quality of the dinosaurs.)
• The movie didn't take place in the Mushroom Kingdom or in Subcon, but instead in Dinohattan, which is Manhattan in an alternate dimension where the entire planet, outside this city, is a giant desert.

The following are examples of terrible science in a science fiction movie that didn't have to be a science fiction movie at all:

• Dinohattan exists in an alternate dimension that was made into an alternate dimension when a meteor hit the earth 65 million years ago. In our world, mammals thrived and went on to evolve into humans, but in the other world, dinosaurs thrived and went on to evolve into humans. Like, the exact same humans, except one of them has a pointy tongue.
• These dino-humans are somehow more technologically advanced than real humans despite the complete absence of oceans or any discernible biosphere outside of Dinohattan.
• The dino-humans have created an "un-evolving" ray or some other horseshit that essentially turns you into a different animal from further up your own evolutionary tree. This thing is used to make Princess Daisy's father - the king - into a sentient sprawling mess of fungus. It is later used to make King Koopa into a puddle of goo.
• The gun is used on a human being at one point, and he turns into a chimpanzee. Chimpanzees are not evolutionary ancestors of human beings, and this was well known even back in 1993.
• Some female bad guy gets shocked by a bunch of electricity and immediately becomes a fossilized skeleton embedded within a rock wall.

Here are some more cringe-worthy elements of the film. There are plenty to choose from, but these stuck out:

• Plot hole! If you are going to turn the king into sentient fungus, why not just take the extra step and turn him all the way into a puddle of amoeba goo? That's what happens to Koopa, so we know it's what the technology can do.
• The entire reason Koopa kidnaps Princess Daisy, through an inter-dimensional rift, is so he can obtain a meteor fragment necklace she owns, which will allow Koopa to reopen an inter-dimensional rift, ostensibly to take over our own dimension, even though he's already running the show in his own dystopian universe. Also, how did his henchman get to Daisy in the first place, in another dimension, if the only way to cross dimensions is to use the necklace that Daisy had with her? It just doesn't make any sense! And this is the basic, basic plot!
• Koopa lives atop the "Koopa Towers" a partially destroyed and burnt-out looking World Trade Center. Yeesh.
• There's a scene where Mario and Luigi get arrested in Dinohattan and sent to jail. The officer booking them does so from behind a desk, and throughout the scene, a woman standing on the desk is just digging her heel into the officer's neck and shoulder. It's completely ignored by every character on screen and never referenced again, and it appears to serve no other purpose than to garner a "WTF?" reaction from audiences, as if the absurdity of the movie has not yet registered for some. Consider the target audience, and know that the film was rated PG.

You know what? Just watch the thing on YouTube. Skip around and find whatever bits and pieces are enough to satisfy whatever craving you had to see this film.

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGGS0YozIgk)

NBA Hangtime

After realizing this game came out on PS1 as well as N64 I immediately downloaded it to play on my PSP. It’s essentially NBA JAM with create-a-player and what I think is a better announcer. Upon completion, what I’ve discovered is that this game is amazing with four people, but it’s downright unenjoyable as a one-player experience. The reason for that is simple: the CPU manages to be incredible as an opponent but doesn’t bother playing defense as your teammate. What that amounts to is that I have to chuck up threes all game to make sure that I score more despite making fewer shots. The CPU never misses. Ever. I have to shove them multiple times to cause turnovers. Also, I only managed to win one tipoff despite the 40+ games I played. Also, the CPU gets the ball at the second and fourth quarter no matter the result of the tipoff. Large Marge was eventually large enough to beat all 29 teams and be declared “Grand Champion,” but not before some of my love for this game was choked out of me.  Now that I’ve beaten all 29 teams, I get to play random teams with randomly generated Create-A-Players. Those teams are even harder than the goddamn deadly Jazz combo of John Stockton and Jeff Hornacek. I’m a bit ‘timed out at the moment, but will get right back into it when I finally drag my N64 from CA to MA. REJECTED!