Holiday Movie Marathon: Hobbit 3

The Staples Family is trying to catch up on their movie watching during the usually lazy second week of Winter Break.  These aren't holiday movies.  They are just movies that came out during the holiday season.  Today's Offering is Hobbit: Battle of the Five Armies.  Only three of the Staples were able to attend this PG-13 flick.  

I know I risk losing my geek card with the following comment: I have never read any of The Lord of the Rings books.  I have tried.  Believe me.  I own them all.  I've sat down multiple times to try to read them.  But, for some reason, I have not been been able to accomplish that mission.  So I have the unique ability to judge the LOTR franchise of movies as a sci-fi/fantasy movie fan bue without the (sometimes) annoying habit of holding the movies up to the impossible-to-reach standards of the books.  I knew next-to-nothing about the series when I went to see the first movie.  I just knew that people who like the same things I like really liked the books and couldn't wait for the movies.  I still remember when I went to see the first LOTR movie with my father-in-law.  I believe we both had worked all day and were already tired.  We decided to go watch a three-hour movie.  Not a great game plan.  When we walked out, we were silent through most of the parking lot.  Finally I looked at him and asked, "What the heck did we just see?"  "I'm not quite sure."

That is the feeling a lot of people would have about this franchise.  There are bizarre names and places.  There are different kinds of creatures that all look vaguely human.  And there are a lot of crazy plot elements that are essential to grasp, but hard to do so.  For a good stretch of time I thought Saruman and Sauron were the same person because I didn't catch that their names were different.  I was confused by a lot of stuff, especially late at night after a full day of selling furniture.

Fortunately, I didn't give up on the series.  I rewatched the first movie before the second one came out.  I absolutely loved The Two Towers.  I still feel it is the movie of the entire franchise.  The Return of the King won a covered wagon full of Oscars, mostly as a reward for the entire series.  And it had two hundred endings.  I kept thinking it was over and then here came another piece of closure for some third tier character.  I did really enjoy the movies, once I got a handle on everything.  I've seen them on television since then and they hold up well.  They are not my favorite franchise or in my top five - probably not in my top ten, depending on if your count all the Avengers character movies as one franchise or separate ones.

When The Hobbit trilogy came out, my oldest son was really excited to go.  He had started reading the book and his uncles all were big fans of the series.  So the crew of us went and caught the first installment.  I was a little disappointed by much of the movie.  It was a lot of "been there, done that" to the movie.  The landscape and massive scope were not as exciting.  They weren't things we had never experienced before.  And the movie itself took a long time to get going.  There seemed to be a lot of narrative and not a lot of action.  My son, on the other hand, loved it.  He couldn't wait until the second movie came out.  But we, for some reason or another, didn't get to see it.  We bought it on BluRay, but didn't watch it right away.  With PG-13 movies, we have to find times where the younger two kids aren't around.  By the time we finally sat down to watch it, we got a third of the way through and got interrupted.  And then my daughter asked if she could see it.  So we went back and watched the first movie (much better the second time through) and the second movie.  Many people had told me that Desolation of Smaug was better than the first movie.  They were right.  It was more action packed and exciting.  The characters seemed richer.  Although it didn't carry some of the emotional weight of the first movie (I still love the scenes with Bilbo and Thorin at the end of the movie), it was a good quality entry.  None of the Hobbit films come close to the LOTR trilogy, but they are good in their own right.

Now it is time to close the franchise.  The three of us traipsed off to the theater to take in the epic conclusion.  There were some interesting takeaways from the film.  Naturally, be warned about spoilers.  This is not just a generic review as much as a more detailed examination.

1. I think Martin Freeman is brilliant.  I love him in Sherlock.  I think he is an inspired Dr. Watson and a brilliant counterpart to Cumberbatch's Holmes.  I also think was an incredible Bilbo Baggins.  He could communicate more in a frown of his mouth than many actors could with a soliloquy.  I thought Elijah Wood was good as Frodo in the LOTR trilogy, but I much preferred Freeman as Bilbo.  There were so many characters in this third movie that it felt like Bilbo got pushed out of the center too much.  I missed him.  
2. My biggest gripe was that there was a lack of closure in this film.  I know, that sounds ridiculous when Return of the King was blasted for TOO MUCH closure.  But no one left that movie and asked, "What happened to...?"  But when I was talking to a friend yesterday about the movie, my first question was "What happened to the Arkenstone?"  It never showed what happened to this majorly important element! The last person holding it was Bard the Bowman, head of the people from Laketown.  But we never really saw what happened to them either.  They were kind of winning their battle against the Orcs, but we didn't see where they went from there.  We also never really found out what happened to the dwarves.  Did they take over the city in the mountain?  Who is their ruler, since Thorin and his cousins got offed?  Strange.
3. Speaking of Thorin and his bloodline getting sacked, I really liked this outcome.  No, I wasn't rooting for those characters to get whacked.  But we have seen so many movies where the heroes get killed, only to have them reappear in a different form or to come back to life (every Disney movie, X-Men, Avengers).  It was actually a relief to see a movie where the good guys didn't come back.  There was pain in losing those characters, but it didn't feel like a cheap manipulative tactic.  Kudos to Peter Jackson for sticking with that outcome.
4. My favorite scene in the whole franchise had to be when the gigantic eagles came flying in and started wrecking havoc on the Orc armies.  One eagle came in carrying the Skinchanger and launched him into the fray.  He transformed into a gigantic bear and starting going crazy, destroying Orcs.  I could have walked out right there happy.  Let me again explain in all caps.  A FREAKING GIGANTIC EAGLE TOSSED A MASSIVE BEAR INTO A BATTLE WHERE THE BEAR STARTED GOING CRAZY!!!  If that is not the most awesome scene ever put on film, I don't know what is.  I still get chills thinking about it.
5. Did anyone out-turd-blossom Lee Pace this year?  First, he was Ronin the Accuser in Guardians of the Galaxy, complete with his weird black oozy mouth and his refusal to participate in dance-offs.  Then he was the arrogant punk woodland elf king Thrandruil in The Hobbit.  He does a great job being a jerk.  Don't know if that is what he is going for, but he is quite successful at it.
6. I know that Tauriel, played by Lost's Evangeline Lilly, was not in the book.  But I honestly thought her character was one of the best things about the trilogy.  I really liked just about every scene she was in.  Remember, I didn't read the book so I was okay with creative license.  
7. Who exactly were the five armies?  We were trying to figure this out last night.  There were the woodland elves, the dwarves, the humans, the orcs.  Was the fifth army the other orc army?  Or was it the eagles?  I never was completely sure who it was supposed to be.
8. For six movies we were tantalized with how awesome Galadriel (Cate Blanchett) is.  She is this massively powerful elf thingee.  But, unless I'm missing something, the movies never really showed that.  Well we finally saw her unleash her fury.  It reminded me of some sort of 1970s drug induced movie scene.  But there was little doubt she was an extreme bad butt.

Overall, I liked the third Hobbit.  It brought things full circle to the start of LOTR.  There were some very exciting scenes and a lot of emotional heft.  There was a lot of violence, even for a LOTR movie.  As usual, the blood was kept to a minimum, which is how they retained their PG-13 rating.  That and the fact there is so little offensive content in the other categories (language, adult situations, sexual situations).  I actually look forward to having the kids watch the original trilogy now that they have seen this trilogy.  I will say this for Peter Jackson - he managed to do what few people have been able to do.  He crafted a six-part movie franchise and didn't have as stinker in the bunch.  If you ranked the entire series, whatever you had as the worst movie would still be a really good movie.  Star Wars couldn't pull that off (Episode II).  James Bond couldn't do it.  I would even argue that a consistent series like Harry Potter didn't pull this off.  Its worst movie (Half Blood Prince, for me) was a bigger drop from its best movie than the LOTR series.  And it never reached the heights of Jackson's series.  Remember, all three of the first movies were nominated for best picture, with the third one winning.  Even though The Hobbit didn't get nominated like that, it still was a very good series.  That is truly an amazing feat for the creative team.  

It is always hard to say goodbye to a really good movie series.  I have felt that pain when Harry Potter ended, when Christopher Nolan said goodbye to Gotham, when Oceans Eleven quit robbing people.  And there is a loss knowing there will not be another entry in this franchise.  It can kind of be summed up in a conversation between the elves Tauriel and Thrandruil in The Five Armies.  For most of the movie, he sees her as a problem.  But here she is desperately hurting after losing someone she loves and he stands there watching her.  "If this is love, I don't want it.  Why does it hurt so bad?"  In a rare moment of civility, he responds, "It's because it was real."  Real love leads to real pain when it ends.  And there are millions of people who loved the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit franchises.  Seeing them end is going to be hard for them.  I count myself as one of those people.  Well done, one and all.

Alphas is the Show Heroes Should Have Been

I remember the first time I ever heard about the show Heroes coming out.  I was in a theater in Asheville, North Carolina waiting to see Talladega Nights (don't judge me).  There were posters for this television show all over the movie theater.  They had Heroes printed on the popcorn and drink cups.  There were promotional flyers in the theater.  In the pre-movie time killer, they had a little trailer for it.  It looked awesome.  I started hearing more and more about the show and saw more commercials.  I couldn't believe this was actually happening.  There was going to be a weekly, live-action tv show about superheroes!  I couldn't wait. And it seemed like I wasn't alone.

Heroes was, in some ways, going to be a small screen version of X-Men.  It was the tale of what Marvel Comics has always classified as mutants - people who, through a mysterious benevolent mutation, have developed skills and abilities greater than the average human.  As any comic book fan worth his salt knows, X-Men is one of the biggest comic franchises out there.  It has spawned three good movies (and two lousy movies).  The animated X-Men tv show from the 1990s was incredibly popular and well done.  The X-Men arcade game was and is a classic.  So the chance to see something resembling that on primetime television was about all this geek could handle.

When Heroes premiered, it was great.  The whole concept was mysterious.  There was this eclipse that caused all these people to suddenly develop crazy powers.  They could fly or absorb powers or heal themselves or freeze time.  There was an evil government agency that was tracking these people.  There were secrets and twists and turns.  I remember actually writing this at one point early on in the season: "Heroes has officially surpassed Lost as the best show on television."  And I believed it.  It was one of our go-to shows.  Can't miss television.

Then something went wrong.  Maybe it was the crazy inconsistency of plots.  Maybe it was the fact that there were just too many secrets and cover-ups.  Maybe it was the inexplicable network necessity to turn popular bad-guy characters (Sylar, Horn Rimmed Glasses Man) into tragic heroes.  The season started to drag.  It wasn't fun any more.  It became extremely violent.  Characters didn't act in ways consistent with how they were created.  Massive story arcs panned out to be pointless.  Too much attention was paid to Sylar.  But I stuck with it, hoping what every fan of the show hoped for.  The finale was going to be epic.

The whole season was building to massive showdown.  Sylar was accumulating so much power that he had to be stopped.  I remember the last scene in the penultimate episode - Sylar got the radioactive powers and stood there looking at the city.  He just said, "Boom!"  It was evil and set the stage.  It was apparent that the good heroes were going to have to have a massive throwdown with Sylar.  The Petrelli brothers, Hiro, everyone came together for the big battle.  And then when the massive fight happened...  Well, it never happened.  It was the least satisfying climactic battle scene I can remember.  I looked at my wife and she looked at me.  "What?!?"  That was it?  It was the exact opposite of how Lost handled their seasons.  Sure, they may meander and have some clunkers.  But they always delivered the goods in the season finales.  Heroes just flopped.

We watched the first couple of the new season and they were horrible.  A couple of times I considered going back to the show, but everything I was reading was so negative.  I didn't even realize that the show had a third season until I started reading about the upcoming series finale.  I didn't even bother.  How did a show with so much promise, that started off so well, end up fizzling out?  NBC obviously took a big risk on the show and dumped a lot of money into it.  But it just couldn't stand up for the whole season.  Such a disappointment.

Fast forward a few years.  SyFy Channel has been started putting out original series.  They are fun and entertaining.  Eureka was a solid comic, action, sci-fi entry for several years.  Warehouse 13 upped the mystery and at-times creepiness factor, while keeping the humor and homages to sci-fi classics (especially in their guest star casting).  Last year they introduced a new show, Alphas.  I am a pretty loyal viewer and will give networks, movie studios a shot on their new products if they have been consistently reliable.  I'll see every Pixar movie that comes out.  I'll at least try every new USA Network offering (an usually like them).  So I went ahead and watched Alphas.  The synopsis sounded familiar.  A group of people have started to be discovered that have powers greater than normal humans.  There is a government agency involved.  Mystery surrounds the "alphas" and how they came to be.

From the very outset, it became apparent to me that this could be the best entry yet in the "benevolent mutation" genre.  Yes, even, perhaps, better than X-Men.  We are greeted with a person who isn't in control of his actions.  But he knows he is supposed to kill someone.  With his enhanced skills, he is able to use a sniper rifle to shoot a man in a closed off interrogation room through an air vent.  The whole scene was crazy and compelling.  We are then introduced to Dr Rosen - a psychiatrist with sympathies for "alphas" and his special team of "alphas."  They investigate crimes that appear to be caused by other "alphas."  Each member of the team has a power - what would usually be called a superpower.  But, it comes with a twist.

One of the things about Heroes and even X-Men that is hard to deal with is that these supers have these awesome powers that have no explainable origin.  That is something that always bugged me about Superman.  I can understand the yellow sun giving him enhanced strength, super speed, and maybe even the laser eyes.  But how does it give him x-ray vision or super freezing breath.  And how can he fly?  That isn't something that is a natural progression.  A flying person is a cool concept.  But HOW can they do that?  What allows them to completely ignore laws of physics?  Their bodies are not more streamlined than other people.  They don't have wings.  So how can they manipulate air currents when an average person can't?  Like with the Hulk, he can jump insane distances to where you might think he was flying.  But that isn't what Superman does.  He doesn't push off of the ground so hard he breaks gravity's power (or the concrete would crack).  He doesn't jump off a building and catch a current.  Heroes had the same problem with Nathan.  How did he fly?  If someone is going to have a mutation, it should take the form of an enhancement of a normal ability.  Claws shooting out of your hand?  Doesn't qualify.  Neither does turning your skin into diamonds or metal, teleporting, or growing wings.

With Alphas, though, that is exactly what happens.  They take a normal human function and ramp it up.  Bill, one of the leaders of the good guys, has his normal "fight or flight"reflex on supercharge.  Whereas a normal person may be able to run faster in a threatening situation, Bill is able to run faster and hit harder.  But, it doesn't last long.  And he, along with all the others, has a negative side effect.  His heart is wearing out from the pressure of overusing it.  It is a brilliant and "more realistic concept.  Rachel has super senses - she can amplify her hearing, smell, sight to identify things far beyond a normal person.  But that ability brings with it a crushing fear of social settings.  Even a whiff of cologne can give her a headache.  She can see bacteria and germs, so she hates eating out.  Nina can "push" people by staring them in the eye and making them do what she wants through suggestions.  But she has used it so much that she never knows if someone really wants to be with her or if she is making them feel that way.  One of the most interesting team members is Gary - an autistic young man who has the ability to "see" electronic communications.  So he has the ability for unusual communication, but is almost unable to communicate with others.

Every "alpha" we meet fits into this pattern.  Their abilities are amplified versions of normal human functions.  One guy can rub his hands together with the resulting friction causing sparks.  Another's metabolism runs so fast that he can move super fast - only he ages at a ridiculous rate.  One guy can use acid reflux to spit acid at people.  Another can learn virtually anything in a short period of time at the expense of her long term memory.  One of the more fascinating character is played by Summer Glau.  She can see the patterns of how objects piece together, giving her mastery of machinery.  But she has no order in her life.  She keeps moving around, has trouble working with others, seems to be destined to chaos.

The regular people are at first oblivious of the existence of these enhanced individuals.  The government is well aware and are terrified.  They usually banish them to a shady mental institution and try to keep them under control.  Last season ended with Dr. Rosen going public with the existence of these "alphas."  He ended up in trouble for it and the government kicked into overdrive with controlling the "alphas."  A new big bad has arisen, Stanton Parish - someone with enhanced healing abilities.  He sees the rise of the "alphas" as inevitable and is trying to bring it about.  Rosen is trying to get them to live in harmony with the humans and has struck an uneasy peace with the government to keep the peace.  What?  You say that sounds familiar?  You're right.  Parish=Magneto. Rosen=Professor Xavier.  It is almost like we have that realistic version of the X-Men that Heroes was supposed to be.  Some of that could be attributed to the fact that Alphas was created by Zak Penn, writer of Avengers, X-Men 2, and X-Men 3 (maybe that isn't the best example).  Like with X-Men, you can tell a war is coming.  This time, though, there is a slow burn.  But it isn't accelerated like in the first season of Heroes.  There is a story of the week format, with them all fitting into the larger Stanton Parish problem.

I also feel the characters in Alphas are better developed.  We don't just care about their abilities; we care about them.  They are extremely well written and have multiple layers.  Cameron - the assassin from the pilot episode - is now on the team.  He had been under the control of a mind controlling "alpha," so he was released to serve on the team.  He has such a tragic back story.  He used to be a pitcher and had thrown two perfect games, thanks to his ability to see angles and trajectories.  But he was a drunk.  He lost his career, lost his family, was working in a grocery store.  In addition, he had become such a mess that he couldn't even use his abilities.  Now he seems to be getting his life in order, but not in that "everything is better after one season" manner that other shows resort to.  He still makes bad choices and gets waylaid by strong influences.

Overall, I have been very pleased with Alphas.  I like the creativity of the different characters and how they keep coming up with different powers.  I am invested in the recurring characters and their story.  I also want to see where the show goes with everything.  It looks like a war is coming soon.  And I can't wait to see how that looks.  The actions sequences are very good in the show.  Will they be able to come up with the action necessary to reflect a big war?  We'll see.  How do you stop a person who can't be killed?  Also, how can the "good guys" battle Parish's recruitment campaign?  The government has already proven they can't be trusted.  It will be a big challenge to get people to side with them.  It makes for compelling television.

Alphas airs on Monday nights, at 8:00pm, on SyFy.

Where's the Mystery

I threatened numerous people that my next post after the award winning Reunion Files would be a list of my favorite superheroes.  BUT, I lied.  Sure, this probably will reference superheroes, but the actual list will have to wait for another day.  Instead, I am wanted to address something that has been bugging me for a while now.  It started as a Facebook status update.  But, when I realized that it was going to take a paragraph to explain, I knew it had to go somewhere else.

TO THE BLOG!!!

[Side Note: Facebook friends, if you feel it necessary to write a full column for your status update, can I suggest you perhaps turn that into a note?  Then I will at least know what I am getting into.  I don't mind a short paragraph.  Everyone knows that I have written my share of long statii.  If the status ventures into needing its own ISBN number, go the Note route.]

I have reached the end of my tolerance of movie and tv spoilers.  There was a time, not too long ago, where I enjoyed the random spoiler.  I liked to know some information about where a show was heading, or what treats may pop up in a movie.  When Lost was on air, I would visit many sites to figure out what just happened, what it meant, what was coming.  I like to know the random detail about a television series.  We watch Burn Notice every summer and winter.  It left us last year with some big cliffhangers last season, so I was naturally curious about what was going to happen.  I did at some point go onto ew.com and see how long a character would remain in jail.  But that is a big difference from the spoiler madness out there.

The reason I even thought about this was that one of my regular entertainment sites - not even a normal spoiler site - had a post up about who Joseph Gordon Levitt was playing in The Dark Knight Rises.  This is the thing.  Christopher Nolan is notoriously secretive about his movies.  And he is even more paranoid than he usually would be because of the way people now desperately want to ruin films.  I love Nolan's films.  I like the intrigue and surprise of them.  If you allow yourself to, you will be kept off guard the entire time.  This has been his hallmark from the early films on through the Batman movies.  Memento, Insomnia, The Prestige, Inception.  All of those are complex stories that require the viewer to remain in the dark.  I loved those films BECAUSE I didn't know what was going on.  The experience would have been ruined if I had known spoilers.  Nolan's ability to make intriguing movie trailers without giving away plot points is almost as breathtaking as his ability to make the movies themselves.  I remember seeing the Inception trailer and thinking it was incredible.  I started to wonder what was going on in certain scenes.  And then when I saw the movie, I was completely wrong about everything I had guessed.

Now, I know that massive movies like Dark Knight Rises do not allow for complete secrecy.  You can't hide filming a giant vehicle racing through downtown Chicago or a bomb exploding on a football field.  So there is going to be paparazzi shots of those things online.  But if the filmmaker is going out of his way to keep SOMETHING secret, let him do that.  There is probably a good reason.

J.J. Abrams is another director that gets labelled "notoriously secretive."  But he has to his credit some really twisty surprising stuff that would not have worked if everything was out in the open.  When a director fights the intrusive nature of modern media, it is almost they get a target on their back.  Now it becomes an accomplishment to get set photos, script peeks, or character bios.  This is happening to Abrams now on Star Trek 2.  He went so far as to rent giant cargo carriers to surround the shooting area because he got tired of seeing every little thing plastered on the web.

I guess I don't see the point of all of this.  I suppose for the photographers there is some kind of thrill in breaching security.  Maybe it is the modern equivalent of a photo safari in Africa.  But for the moviegoing fan, does this actually help the moviegoing experience?  Do you enjoy a film more because you know everything about it?  I know that I don't.  I want to be surprised.  It may not ruin the entire movie, but it isn't as good as it could be.  Heather and I were watching the series premiere of a show the other day on television.  There was a big twist at the end where a character dies - someone you never would have imagined was going to bite it.  The only problem was that I already knew that.  I wasn't looking for information on the series.  I was just reading an entertainment story about the premier (which we were watching on DVR the next day).  There wasn't any warning or anything.  And this wasn't like I flipped out because someone told me the secret in Psycho fifty years after it came out.  This was the next day.  So what did I think about the whole episode?  "So when does this dude die?  How does that happen?"

The thirst for secret information combines with some of the worst journalism since newspapers were called newsrocks and the fact that you can get information anywhere, any time.  This is a perfect recipe for disaster.  The writers are so desperate for scoop to drive traffic to their site that they don't care if their information is damaging to anyone.  Here are some recent examples that I will put SPOILER WARNING in front of, just in case you have missed stuff.

• After The Avengers, entertainment sites were flooded with people discussing the details of the monster film.  Ordinarily, I would have been right there opening weekend and been in the discussion.  But I couldn't make it until the second weekend.  I actually had to completely avoid any story with Avengers in the title because so many of them had spoilers in them.  One of the most grievous was on blastr.com (a major offender).  They ran a photo gallery of the most shocking deaths in Joss Whedon's film career.  The picture to promote the gallery was of the character who shockingly died in The Avengers.  
• The massive response to Avengers led to people searching for information on the next Marvel film - Iron Man 3.  Sure enough, out comes a picture of a red, white, and blue Iron Man suit.  It gets plastered all over the place: blastr, yahoo, ew.  Who is this?  Is it Iron Patriot (from the Dark Avengers storyline)? Is it War Machine?  The very fact that this discussion was happening may have ruined a major story arc in the movie!  
• Ridley Scott is one of the original secretive directors.  With Prometheus, he tried to keep as much information under wraps (until it was time to super-promote the film by apparently telling everything that happened).  The movie had barely hit theaters before multiple sites were talking about what was said in a conversation at the end of the movie.  Of course, the conversation gives away massive information.  

It used to be that you had to hunt for information about a movie or a show.  Now you have to actively and intentionally avoid it.  And it is getting worse and worse.  If you don't see a movie opening night, be prepared to have all the secrets ruined the next day.  I have gotten into the habit of just avoiding sites altogether until I can see a movie.  More than that, though, I go into total media blackout.  I remember back when Independence Day came out, I didn't want to know anything more than I had to.  I wouldn't even look at the toys until I saw the movie because I didn't want to accidentally see the aliens.  Back then it was a different story.  To not get information, you didn't go to the toy section and didn't read insider magazines.  There was no Internet.  

Today, it is a real challenge to not see a movie spoiled.  Take Dark Knight Rises.  I am so excited for this film.  First of all, I am a major Batman fan.  Second, I love Christopher Nolan.  Third, I have thoroughly enjoyed Nolan's Batman series.  Fourth, it looks like it may be harkening to the Knighfall comics arc, which was one of my favorite.  It is an excitement on par with Avengers.  The original trailer came out and didn't show much - just enough to excite fans everywhere.  Then a second trailer came out and gave more information.  Then multiple viral campaigns got started.  Then there were the onslaught of television commercials.  At this point I already have seen more than I wanted because I know there are two different Batmobiles and there is a Batplane.  I have tried to avoid a lot of the spoilers out there, but there have been intense online discussions about what the Selina Kyle character is all about, if Joseph Gordon Levitt is playing a good guy or bad guy, if Talia Al Ghul makes an appearance.  Not just that, but when you go to the toy store, there is a whole line of toys with characters and vehicles that I wouldn't know existed without watching the movie.  [Similar problem with The Avengers, when Lego brought out sets that showed the aliens that Whedon had worked so hard to never show.]  It becomes tons of work to NOT see anything that will spoil the movie.

I really miss the older days when you knew a movie was coming out, you saw the trailer, there may be a magazine article and that was it.  Now we are so saturated with a film and its coverage and its tie-ins that the film itself almost becomes a second thought.  It makes me wonder if the marketers behind all of this thinks it is successful.  Was The Avengers successful because it was marketed to high heaven and had relentless coverage?  Or was it because it was a very good movie that tied together several other really good movies?  Is Dark Knight Rises going to break records because it has been promoted non-stop for the last month?  Or is it because it probably is going to be beyond amazing?  The thing is, even with all of this promotion and marketing and coverage and "leaked info" and snoop pictures, the moviegoing audience can still identify junk and avoid it.  John Carter, Battleship, Dark Shadows were all promoted to a ridiculous level.  They all had the same level of pubic recognition.  And they all bombed because they were awful.  

The is a fine line between spoilery information that will attract and info that will ruin.  I want to know what JJ Abrams' show Revolution is about.  I think it looks very cool and I plan on watching it.  I don't think that it hurts to know Elizabeth Mitchell has been cast as the main kids' estranged mom - even though I didn't know those kids had an estranged mom.  Knowing Mitchell is on board is another draw.  But if they start telling me a bunch of information about everything, that is going to turn me off.  Of course, marketers would probably label me an "educated viewer."  That doesn't mean schooling, it means that I know a lot about entertainment and the like.  With a show like Revolution - like with Avengers and Dark Knight Rises - there are three groups of viewers.  There are people who are on board no matter what.  There are people that won't go no matter what.  And there are those who need swayed.  Just about all of these efforts I've talked about are aimed at that last group.  With the new Batman movie, the first group was won over when the movie was announced.  But the blockbuster status of the film will be determined by just how many of the last group can be swayed.  The problem is when the powers that be, the media, those who are obsessed with information actually damage the interest of the fans to gain fringe viewers.  [You could actually argue that Apple has been walking this line for a while, and failing from time to time.  Their desperation to pull in new users with things like the new MacBook Pro and Final Cut Pro updates actually alienated long-time Apple devotees.]  That may make business sense, but it stinks for those people who really support projects.   

I know this isn't going to change any time soon.  It actually will get worse.  Everyone has a phone with a camera.  It is so easy to post news.  Real journalism is being run out of town by entertainment media and gossip sites.  And movie and television studios have to have MEGA-hits to justify their costs.  Everything has to be big now.  I have never seen so many $100 million and $200 million grossing movies labeled bombs as I have this year.  We have seen shows that consistently pulled in over ten million viewers weekly cancelled for poor performance (Alcatraz, Terra Nova, Rob!).  It is going to become harder and harder to control how much information we get about entertainment.  I'll guess I will just have to expand my media blackouts even more.  I can only imagine how bad it will be by next year's Man of Steel.  But if you happen to know anything in advance, just keep it to yourself.  

The Episode Glee Needs to Make

I used to watch Glee.  I even wrote a review of it on this very blog.  Over time, I have become quite disgusted with the show.  Part of it is that the showrunners and I have different political views.  They have an agenda and push it regularly.  I don’t appreciate that.  And, yes, that is part of the reason I started to drift away from the show.  The other big reason is that I think the storylines, acting, and writing is abysmal.  It used to be much better.  Now everything revolves around pushing agendas, finding ways to cram popular songs into stories, and creatively coming up with ways to make Darren Criss stay appealing to straight teen girls while he is playing a gay character.  

All that being said, Glee has positioned itself as the show most willing and able to actually address important issues with young people.  The shows on Disney and Nick are just fluffy entertainment and training grounds for the next generation of teenaged singing actresses.  Glee, for all its flaws and faults, is not afraid to address tough teen topics like bullying, teen pregnancy, eating disorders, teen sexuality, texting while driving, and becoming a male stripper.  But there is one issue that they have never addressed.  The sad thing is, it affects more teens than most of the other issues they have sung about.  And Glee is the perfect show to actually broach this issue.  So why haven’t they?

I am talking about teen domestic violence.  A study by the University of Florida in 2007 reported that 25 percent of teens who have been in a serious relationship acknowledged that they had been hit, slapped, or pushed in their dating relationships.  Read that again.  TWENTY-FIVE PERCENT.  That means one out of every four teens are getting smacked around during their dating years.  Another study puts that number at 33 percent.  And another has the number as high as 50 percent!  Forty percent of teen girls know of friends who have been abused.  Compare those numbers to some of the other issues I mentioned earlier.  I guarantee they are as high or higher.  So why hasn’t Glee even come close to dealing with this?

I understand the basic challenge of attempting to deal with this issue - and probably the reason why Glee hasn’t gone there.  The person who becomes violent will instantly become one of the most hated characters on television.  It is a throwaway role - not something that could be attributed to one of their series regulars.  But, for the storyline to be effective, it can’t just be one of those high school quickie romances.  It really needs to be that the character is introduced, incorporated into the group with the expressed plan to turn them into the bad guy.  This isn’t someone that is just easily going to be redeemed three episodes later.  I don’t think they can even pull a redemptive arc like they did with Max Adler’s Karofsky.  In addition, there is a stigma that will follow that actor/character.  The fans of the show will probably have trouble separating the two.  I know it took me two years of watching Burn Notice before I didn’t think of Jeffrey Donovan saying, “This is what I’m about.  Power suit, power tie, power steering,” as the d-bag from Hitch.  And I’m a grownup who knows better.

If you want to get right down to it, has there really EVER been a show that dealt with a domestic violence story arc?  You have your usual procedural shows that will dabble in it from week to week - things like Law and Order SVU, Blue Bloods, CSI.  And there are some news magazines that have focused on it.  Of course, Lifetime made so many movies about the topic that Jim Gaffigan once joked that you can’t turn that station on without seeing a woman getting hit by a rod - a strange pull for a station targeted to women.  But I can’t remember many series actually having a character involved in an abusive relationship.  Roseanne dealt with it in season five, where her sister became a victim of abuse.  But I am having trouble remembering other shows - especially ones about teens.

So it is a challenge, to be sure.  However, if Glee wants to market itself as a show that pushes the boundaries and deals with the tough topics, then it should address this topic boldly.  I know that the Glee showrunners don’t need my advice, but here is some anyway.  Next year is going to be one of upheaval.  At least half of the original cast is graduating, which means that they will need to have new characters brought in.  One of those new guys needs to be the guy.  He can either make a play for one of the new girls coming in, or target one of the girls who are sticking around (not Brittany, too easy to write off as a flighty thing).  At first, he will be charming and attentive.  But he will start to be controlling and rough.  It shouldn’t just be isolated to one episode, either.  He will become increasingly disturbed.  The girl should start withdrawing and having unexplained marks.  Then they can have the “big episode” where everything comes to its head.

Now, I know Glee can’t do a “message” episode without suitable music.  I even have figured that out.  Of course, the obvious one would be Eminem and Rihanna’s “Love the Way You Lie” as a powerful song between the couple.  The girl can dip into the country world with Faith Hill’s “A Man’s Home is His Castle” or Martina McBride’s “Concrete Angel” or Shania Twain’s “Black Eyes, Blue Tears.”  And there are other choices by Alice Cooper, Nickelback, Dixie Chicks, and Xtina.  It wouldn’t be a hard episode to write.  You can imagine the ways different people respond.  Mr. Schue would get his serious face on and try to encourage the girl to be strong and to sing about it.  Emma would have some helpful pamphlets.  One of the guys would fly off the handle and go after the abusive guy.  It really could be a powerful episode - and one that could open some eyes to the reality of abuse in the average high school.  Even I would come back from my self-imposed exile to catch that one.  

Next Iron Chef: Final Four

I made sure that I didn't allow myself to write weekly recaps for Next Iron Chef: Super Chefs - even though I wanted to.  The series has solidified itself as one of my favorites during this fall season.  It has more drama than most shows on network television.  And some of it is funnier than any sitcom.  And, the way the judges blather on about the food, it is like some sort of romance....  That's just weird.  Anyway.  Let's really quick run a comparison of my picks to how things have panned out:

MY PICKS

1. Geoffrey Zakarian
2. Robert Irvine
3. Anne Burrell
4. Marcus Samuelsson
5. Michael Chiarello
6. Alex Guarnaschelli
7. Elizabeth Falkner
8. Beau MacMillan
9. Chuck Hughes
10. Spike Mendelsohn

ACTUAL RESULTS

1. ???
2. ???
3. ???
4. ???
5. Anne Burrell
6. Marcus Samuelsson
7. Beau MacMillan
8. Chuck Hughes
9. Robert Irvine
10. Spike Mendelsohn

Yeah, I haven't done so well.  Only one of my final four is still left.  The thing about this show is that the level of cooking is so insane that on Sunday a guy almost got eliminated because he put powdered sugar on a souffle and one judge didn't like it.  Alton Brown (in a rare moment of non self aggrandizing clarity) asked him, "Are you seriously prepared to eliminate someone because you didn't like the fact they used a dusting of powdered sugar?!?"  The judge replied that in this competition something like that could actually send someone home.  And the crazy thing is that he's right.  So far, no one has had that classic train wreck day where they completely bombed something and got booted.  Every elimination was extremely difficult.  Anne Burrell summed it up best on her way out this week.  "Usually it is whoever sucks less stays.  But in this it has been who is less excellent."  I have a couple of observations before I do a quick evaluation of the remaining chefs.

• Food Network is NOT rigging this competition.  My rankings were based partly on the cynical opinion that the Network was directing the judges (at least somewhat).  They were worried that an early exit could hurt the legitimacy of one of their "face" judges.  Or they were trying to push someone into a higher level of notoriety. Or that they were going to favor their own chefs over Top Chef contestants.  All of those were wrong.  One of the biggest faces of Food Network went out in the second show.  One of the biggest Top Chef contestants is still left - and probably the favorite at this point.  Aside from the slightly annoying way that the females have gotten more breaks, the show has been surprising fair.
• The Females Have Gotten More Breaks.  At the halfway point, Anne Burrell noted that all the ladies were left in the competition and none had been in the bottom two.  Sadly, that isn't because they have done the best.  It seems like Food Network would REALLY love to have a second female Iron Chef.  Personally, I think Guarnaschelli should have been out a couple weeks ago.  And Falkner should have followed her out.  But they are still here.  And, at this point, they have as good of a shot as anyone - if not better.
• I Was Really Wrong About Beau MacMillan.  When I first reviewed this show, I commented on how I didn't like Beau.  I thought he was arrogant and wished he went home early.  Well, I was wrong on that.  When he finally got eliminated, the judges all looked at each other and said how incredibly nice he was and how they hated to send him home.  And it was obvious on the show.  He was the most gracious of the contestants.  And his cooking was great.  It made me think that the reason he was SO bad on Worst Cooks in America was because it was so against his character, instead of because he was just bad on camera or a pompous turd.  
• These Chefs Can Really Cook. Sometimes you have to wonder just how good a television chef is.  Are they really THAT amazing?  Or is it the huge test kitchen, the sous chefs, the infinite budget that makes them great.  That is one of the great things about this show - and shows like Iron Chef.  After watching Bobby Flay for years on Iron Chef and Throwdown (and eating at Mesa Grill twice in Vegas), there is no doubt this dude can cook.  Some of these celebrity chefs or tv judges - we've never seen them do anything.  So to see them on a show like this?  It shows you just how talented they are.  Geoffrey Zakarian is the best example of this.  For years on Chopped and 24 Hour Restaurant Battle, he was just this older judge.  Who the heck is this guy?  Then he competed on Celebrity Chopped and destroyed people.  The other chefs were terrified of him.  Then he gets on this show and has been heads and tails above the others - when it comes to technique and flavors.  Similar story with Michael Chiarello.  It makes you realize just how these chefs got to where they are. 
• Very Talented People are Often Arrogant Jerks.  I hate listening to some of the arrogant comments coming out of these contestants' mouths, though.  Anne Burrell has always been like that.  It is part of her, uh, "charm."  I hate it.  I have no doubt it my mind she is a crazy good chef.  But I hate her arrogance.  On this past episode, she had the chance to put one chef into the elimination round.  She was rude about every dish she tasted - far more critical than the real judges. (Falkner wondered if her taste buds were compromised from having just cooked three dishes with sardines.  Good question, in retrospect.)  Then SHE got voted into the elimination round and was sent home.  She had her arms crossed, had a rude look on her face the whole evaluation time, was very ungracious upon elimination.  It made me glad she was out.  I know that talent and arrogance often go hand in hand.  Doesn't mean I have to like it.

Okay, so there are just four chefs left: Geoffrey Zakarian, Michael Chiarello, Alex Guarnaschelli, and Elizabeth Falkner.  And I think two get eliminated this week, which will set us up for the final.  Below is my scouting report on the last four.  I'm going to include their highlight moment, what could send them home, and their odds on winning.  Of course, remember I didn't do so great predicting.  So don't blame me if you lose all your money betting on them in Vegas.

1. Michael Chiarello  It is hard to decide what his best moment has been.  So far, he has been in the bottom two only once.  In that episode he made handmade pasta and a pesto using peanuts.  In thirty minutes.  The other chefs were incredulous.  Then on Sunday he made a lobster risotto.  In twenty-five minutes.  Risotto takes forty-five minutes.  He did it in almost half that time.  I don't know how.  Maybe he has a time turner.  He doesn't have a lot of flaws.  His biggest problem is that he does not listen to criticism AT ALL.  But, he doesn't get criticized a lot.  It is hard to see what he will do to get eliminated.  Odds: 2 to 1
2. Elizabeth Falkner  She is a pastry chef, the underdog, underestimated by the others.  We know this because she says it EVERY EPISODE.  Frankly, I'm tired of her schtick.  And so are the other competitors.  She has made exemplary food.  BUT, it always seems to be more highly rated because "she's just a pastry chef."  It is like the judges are impressed, but more so due to her background.  That's not to say she doesn't do hard stuff and do it well.  Burrell made the comment, "She's made three ice creams and a souffle.  When is she going to make some real food?"  If the judges pick up on this, that could (and should) derail her.  But they seem to be oblivious so far, and blinded by her ability to do things outside of her comfort range - even when they aren't.  [Good example.  Sunday, she made a tuna jerky souffle.  (yeah, gross)  It was superb.  She got raves, again partly because "she's just a pastry chef."  Zakarian did some amazing, intricate, wonderful beef dish and it was like, "Well he runs a steakhouse.  Of course he did it well."  And then when he made a souffle for the elimination, no one made a big deal about his ability to make such a great dessert when "he's just a steak guy."]  Odds: 4 to 1
3. Alex Guarnaschelli  She's good.  (Her sausage and peppers meal at the ballpark was phenomenal.)  And she's lucky.  And she the judges cut her too much slack.  Every time she has botched her meal (at least three), someone else botched theirs worse.  Or one element of hers was so good that it made up for the one that wasn't.  She's never been in the bottom two - and if she was, I think she would lose.  She gets panicky very quickly if something goes wrong and overwhelmed, but somehow finishes.  If she was to have two things go wrong, she would crack.  And with such a small set of contestants, it won't be as easy to hide her mistakes.  She would have been in the bottom two last week and probably gone home, if it wasn't for the fact that one spot was filled by Burrell's pick.  Like I said - lucky.  You can look at that two ways.  One, luck runs out.  Two, a run to a championship usually involves a little luck.  Odds: 7 to 1
4. Geoffrey Zakarian  If this was a straight up cooking competition, he would have already won.  The other chefs would have quit.  Michael Symon said this the other day.  "Your technique is so consistently good that it makes me hate you sometimes."  He has never really misstepped on a meal.  Any grievances were tiny - and should have been dwarfed by other major miscues of other chefs.  Yet, somehow, he has been in the bottom two three times.  I think two things can derail him.  First, things come so easily to him that there isn't a "Wow Factor" for him.  Falkner impresses by being outside of her comfort zone.  To Zakarian, everything is in his comfort zone.  So they blow his errors out of proportion and minimize his successes.  Second, he doesn't follow the rules.  When they say, "Make one dish" he makes three.  When they put their goofy rules on a competition, if he doesn't like them, he doesn't do them.  He came the closest to elimination on the ballpark challenge because he refused to make ballpark food.  I can totally see him getting kicked out because he is stubborn.  And too good for his own good.  Odds: 3 to 1

FERRET FIVE: Christmas Album Wish List

"Oh, no he didn't.  He went and resurrected the Ferret Five lists!!!"  Yes, yes I did.  The whole idea behind the Ferret Five list was a little list of something I was thinking about.  Like most of my blog ideas, I never saw it through to a regular feature.  But I just had to bust it out for the holidays.

Christmas albums.  I like them.  We usually buy a couple every year.  You have a few classes of them.  There are the classic ones with famous takes on Christmas songs.  I would throw things like Bing Crosby's "White Christmas" and Ella Fitzgerald's "Baby It's Cold Outside" and Trans-Siberian Orchestra in there.  These are the essential Christmas albums that get played to death by December 11.  Then you have the quality or fresh tak Christmas album, where a famous artist actually puts some thought into crafting a Christmas album.  Faith Hill's "Joy to the World" is a good example of this.  Then you have the money grabbing album by an artist.  Everyone knows it isn't really an artistic album and is just a cash move.  They are like glorified karaoke albums.  (Or they are by an artist that makes you go, "Huh?  Do they even celebrate Christmas?"  Like Lady Gaga or Gwar.)  Justin Bieber's "Mistletoe.  Enough said.

Every year there are dozens of albums that come out.  And I have tons of them.  As I wrote in my post on multiple song versions, I have like 25 versions of "Silent Night."  (Why does everyone do THAT song?)  As a frequent purchaser of Christmas music, I feel that my voice is important when it comes to who should put out Christmas albums.  As I was listening to the 24-hour Christmas station, it popped into my head who should be the next Christmas album generators.  So, these are my five most wanted Christmas albums.  Get on it, record labels.  I want to see these next year.

1. ADELE - I don't think there is any argument here.  The woman has incredible pipes, amazing emotion in her music, and couldn't be any more popular than she is right now.  She could totally get away with this move.  The biggest glitch is obviously her throat problems.  But I can't imagine how amazing her Christmas album would be.  Think of her singing "O Holy Night" or "Joy to the World."  Then think of what she could do with original Christmas music.  Who says holiday music has to be happy?  I think this would be a huge hit.
2. The Avett Brothers  - They have one song on a compilation album that came out this year.  But I think they could do an incredible job with a whole album.  At our church, they have several worship bands that are in a similar neo-bluegrass genre as The Avett Brothers.  And their Christmas stuff is brilliant.  The advantage the Avetts have is that they also can completely wail like rock artist - remember they were in a punk band before their current music turn.  So they could really come up with a diverse roster of songs.  
3. Coldplay - Their first foray into Christmas music was last year's "Christmas Lights," which quickly became one of my favorite Christmas albums.  They could pump out a couple of other genius original songs and then do nice takes on some standards.  They are very versatile and could really do a good job.  They don't shy from doing live cover songs - and usually do a phenomenal job with it.  Their collaborations (Jay-Z) and remixes could yield some neat results.  Plus they are one of the biggest bands out there, so there it would be a surefire sales success.  (I don't want to waste the spot, but this entire argument could be made for U2 as well.)
4. Bruno Mars - I really think that Mars is in the class of Michael Jackson and Stevie Wonder as far as talent and sound goes.  Motown has always done a great job with Christmas albums.  So have Doo Wop bands.  Mars easily slides into both of those genres.  He could do wonders with fun songs and then completely wail on powerful ones.  Plus he teams up like crazy.  Who the heck else (besides Rhianna) could easily pair up with Eminem, B.O.B., Twilight, and Leonard Nimoy?  Plus he can mix things up and do acoustic and play everything himself.  This would be brilliant.
5. Shania Twain - She never did a Christmas album.  Doesn't even make sense.  She's done songs on collaborations, but never an album.  Wha?!?  Faith Hill's was incredible.  And just about every Country female singer has AT LEAST one Christmas album.  I can't imagine a better way for her to re-enter the music scene.  She doesn't have to write much, if that is a problem.  She has the voice and the performance ability.  Why hasn't this happened yet?  

Those are my top five right now.  What are yours?

Second Verse, Same as the First

I'm kind of getting into a groove with my writing/blogging lately.  By "a groove," I mean that I am more writing for myself than for the six people who read the blog.  I have often heard that writing needs to be practiced if you want to get really good at it.  And I have found that to be true - when I get out of the habit of writing, I have a harder time getting back into the swing of it.  I also think my writing is rougher when I get back into it.  So I'm pretty glad I am starting to get back into the swing.  (You may not be, but there are plenty other options out there for you.  Like THIS for example.  See, now I'm not such a bad option.)  Of course, me writing more often means that you will probably be subjected to my oft-threatened "Why Green Superheroes Don't Work on Screen" post.  Win some, lose some.

The other night, I was watching a riveting football game between national powerhouses (that was a lie - I was watching Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban for the fiftieth time).  A commercial ran for Like Crazy - a movie starring Chekov from the new Star Trek movie that I will never even think about watching, even under duress.  In the background of the commercial, I heard a somewhat familiar song playing, but being sung by someone I hadn't heard before.  I did a quick Google search and found out it was Ingrid Michaelson singing "Can't Help Falling in Love" - alson known as "Fools Rush In."  I went ahead and got the song on iTunes and it was really good - a completely original version that really added some touching depth to the song.

It got me thinking.  I have four versions of that song in my iTunes library and really like all of them.  (There are probably several hundred takes on that song in existence.)  Do you have songs like that, where you have multiple versions that are equally entertaining?  I'm not really talking about Christmas songs.  I have nine versions of "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen," fourteen versions of "O Holy Night," twenty-one versions of "Silent Night."  There are only so many Christmas songs to record, so there is going to be a massive amount of duplication.  You have the same situation with hymns and praise songs.  I have multiple recordings of "Amazing Grace" and "Come Thou Fount" and "I Could Sing of Your Love Forever."  I'm talking about regular songs that have been recorded several times, but where the artist brings a fresh take to it each time.  I'm a sucker for remakes, especially really good ones or ones that salvage a cruddy song.  (Go listen to U2's version of Gloria Estafan's ridiculous "Everlasting Love" or Chris Daughtry's acoustic "Poker Face.") If an artist I like does a remake on some obscure album, I usually get it (find Coldplay's live take on REM's "Everybody Hurts").

It is pretty common to have two versions of a song.  Remakes happen frequently - especially in the age of shows like American Idol, X Factor, and Glee (especially Glee).  But I think it is much more rare to have a song with three or more versions.  It is also hard to find songs that are uniquely and creatively remade.  Take "Unchained Melody."  Tons of people have done that song, but most of them aren't very original - they just sound like a bad karaoke version of The Righteous Brothers.  So I went through my iTunes library to find out which songs I had multiple versions of and decided to evaluate why in the world I own them all.

• "Can't Help Falling in Love" - 4 versions - Elvis Presley, Bono, UB40, Ingrid Michaelson - This is one of those rare songs were each version is a winner.  Obviously, the original Elvis version is a classic.  Bono recorded his version for the movie Honeymoon in Vegas with Nic Cage, SJP, and James Caan (forgettable movie indeed).  It was beautiful, with Bono's falsetto floating in during the last third to add a tenderness that wasn't there in Presley's.  Right after that UB40 recorded the song for Sliver with Billy Baldwin and Sharon Stone.  (Okay, the song doesn't have a great movie track record.)  The reggae twist on the song almost transmits a joyfulness in the singer's inability to quit loving this person.  It isn't mourning or longing as much as professing love.  Then Michaelson's version is just incredible and lovely - full of aching and desperation missing in each other version.  I love all four.  
• "For Once In My Life" - 3 versions - Frank Sinatra, Michael Buble, Stevie Wonder - Right off the bat, my problem is that I am sucker for Motown Stevie Wonder.  I think his version of this song is just amazing.  It is pretty special to have a song that can hold up to a Motown treatment and a too-cool Jazz version.  I'm not always the biggest Sinatra fan, but he does a decent job.  Buble is giving his version of Sinatra's version.  (When you get down to it, isn't Buble's entire career his version of Sinatra?)  To me, the Stevie song is by far the best take.
• "Hallelujah" - 6 versions - Leonard Cohen, Jeff Buckley, kd lang, Jason Castro, Rufus Wainright/John Cale - I'll admit it.  I never had heard of this song before Shrek.  I fell in love with it in the film (Cale's version).  The CD came with Wainright instead - another good version.  Then I got Jeff Buckley's absolute home run of a version - the one most people recognize.  Finally I purchased the Cohen original and kind of wondered how it had spawned so many remakes, unless people just were convinced they could do a better take on a beautifully written song.  Jason Castro has a surprisingly nice, but not groundbreaking, recording of it.  And kd lang's from the Winter Olympics is glorious.  This is one of those songs where all of them are going to be somewhat similar - haunting, moving, powerful.  There will be degrees of those things.  You probably won't hear a reggae version, thank goodness.  (Well, I won't buy it if there is one.) Personally, I would rank them Buckley, Cale, lang, Cohen, Rufus, Castro.  
• "How Can You Mend a Broken Heart" - 3 versions - BeeGees, Melinda Doolittle, Michael Buble - The last season of "American Idol" we really were into was Season Six.  I even got the CD at the end of the season, which is why you will see Idol versions of several songs.  This song is one of my favorites.  I love the BeeGees version.  It carries with it a level of sadness and pain that is not always evident in the disco loving group.  Buble's take is smoother, but it also incorporates the BeeGees falsetto throughout the last third - a nice move, I always felt.  Doolittle's song is stupid.  She refused to sing "how can a loser ever win" because she didn't like calling people losers.  That alone disqualifies the song.  She also sang it in her too-characteristic milquetoast style.  (I still think if she had embraced her inner Tina Turner she would have won.  Her best performances were the rocking ones.)  Admittedly, I don't have the Al Green version.  I'm probably missing out.  But I never claimed to be authoritative on music.  And his is over six minutes - a big dragged out.
• "I Heard It Through the Grapevine" - 4 versions - Gladys Knight, Marvin Gaye, Creedence Clearwater Revival, California Raisins - Another brilliant song.  I'm not a huge CCR fan and I am a HUGE Gladys Knight fan.  Even today, Gladys Knight could sing most divas under the table.  I think it is a riot when they bring her onto a show like Idol and she humiliates whoever it is she is supposed to duet with.  Then she kind of gives them a "nice try" look and walks off stage.  So you can guess where I land on this.  But, the Marvin Gaye version was also incredible.  I have a Motown Classics Gold album with the forty greatest Motown songs (not at all subjective).  It includes BOTH Knight's and Gaye's version - one right after another on the album.  That doesn't happen often.  The CCR version is fine with a nice Southern rock twist on the song.  But the real winner, obviously, is the California Raisins.   
• "I Want You Back" - 3 versions - Jackson Five, The Waiting, Smokey Robinson - The Jackson Five version is awesome.  The Waiting version is fun.  The Smokey one is slow and too mellow - like a lot of Smokey's stuff.  Again, just my opinion.
• "I'll Stand By You" - 3 versions - The Pretenders, Gina Glocksen, Glee - This is one of those "what the heck?" songs where having multiple versions don't make sense.  I never was a huge fan of The Pretenders version.  It was a bit much for me.  I got the Glocksen one on the aforementioned Idol CD.  It sounds like karaoke.  Then I got the Glee version on one of their CDs.  It was one of the dumber songs and one of the dumber sequences in the show.  Finn sang this to an ultrasound of his unborn child that wasn't really his.  Why do I have three versions of this?
• "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" - 6 versions - Judy Garland, Straight No Chaser, Israel Kamakawiwo'ole (2 versions), Glee, Matthew Morrison and Gwyneth Paltrow - Here we go... This is probably the quintessential remake song.  Yes, I have six versions.  You have the original one made famous by Wizard of Oz.  Obviously a classic that has led to countless remakes and redos.  Then, along came Israel Kamakawiwo'ole and his absolutely brilliant Hawaiian ukelele version.  That completely changed the song.  The Straight No Chaser version is a mashup with Jason Mraz's "I'm Yours" that owes more to Iz's classic than Oz's.  Iz himself released two takes - one stand alone and one incredible mashup with "What a Wonderful World."  Then you have the Glee version that Matthew Morrison sang at the end of Season One.  I have to give Morrison credit; he did a good job.  It is basically a remake of Iz's take, complete with ukelele.  But Morrison's voice is less island, so it makes it a little blander.  His duet with Paltrow on his solo album is kind of a mashup of both the Oz and Iz versions.  It is good, but I don't think it is as good as the Glee version.  All in all, though, you have at least two very distinct takes on the same song that are both very good in their own right.  That puts it in the class of "Can't Help Falling in Love."
• "Imagine" - 3 versions - John Lennon, Blake Lewis, Glee - This is where I get in trouble.  I hate this song.  I don't care if it is one of the most popular songs in history or that it was written by Lennon.  I hate it.  I have always hated it.  Part of it is that I don't like some of what it says.  I can get on board for prayers for world peace.  But Lennon puts out that the way to accomplish that is get rid of a whole bunch of stuff - including God and religion.  Obviously, that kind of hits close to home for me.  I did not purchase any of these versions - they came on collections that I wanted.  I'll move on before I get blasted by the pro-Imagine crowd.
• "In Christ Alone" - 4 versions - Travis Cottrell (2 versions), Page CXVI, Avalon - Technically, this would fall into the praise and worship category.  But it is also a very good example of how different takes can completely alter a song.  The Avalon version of this song is the pretty standard version that has been heard in churches all over the country.  It is a good song with a great message and powerful emotion.  The Page CXVI is very low key and mellow.  Personally, I think it really robs the song of its power, but some people love it.  The Travis Cottrell version is incredible.  He mashes it up with "Solid Rock" and brings in a praise team.  I have two different live versions of his of the song.  Both are great and extremely moving.  One of the big challenges of praise music recordings is to make it recognizable, but also unique.  Cottrell definitely pulls that off.
• "Jesus Freak" - 4 versions - dcTalk, dcTalk (live), dcTalk (lounge joke), Newsboys - It is perhaps dcTalk's most famous song - a great song.  I love it.  The live version is just a more frantic version of the album version.  When Michael Tait of dcTalk became lead singer of Newsboys, they recorded a version of it.  It sounds just like the dcTalk version, except with Tait doing all the voices - which actually hurts the song.  The only version that really brings any freshness was actually put on the Jesus Freak album as a joke.  It is a lounge singer version, which I have always thought was both hilarious and clever.  
• "My Deliverer" - 3 versions - Rich Mullins, Ragamuffin Band, dcTalk - When Rich Mullins died, he had a very rough copy of his next album recorded on tapes.  It was truly a shame because it was an AMAZING album.  So, posthumously, the album was released on two CDs - the original rough recordings by Mullins and then fully recorded and mastered versions put out by his backing band and industry friends.  The song "My Deliverer" is just an incredible song.  I prefer Rich's original take, but the full album version is also very good.  It is more upbeat and polished, which doesn't actually help it.  When Prince of Egypt came out in theaters, dcTalk made a version of this song with the lyrics changed a bit to make it more about Moses than Jesus.  I never liked the lyric alteration, but the take itself is pretty good and unique.  It adds a rock flavor, which makes it more a celebration of victory.  Rich's original was quieter, like he was reminding himself that rescue was coming and to not give up.  Each subsequent version brought less of that wounded perspective.  I have always been partial to the original - but I also like the middle movie in most trilogies the best.  I'm weird.
• "To Make You Feel My Love" - 5 versions - Bob Dylan, Billy Joel, Garth Brooks, Adele (2 versions) - Another song where every version seems to be a complete home run.  Dylan's folk take, Joel's powerful 80's piano rock version, Brooks' country ballad, and Adele's Motown diva longing. I love all the versions of the song and each artist completely makes it their own (in the words of the Idol judges).  If you didn't know better, you would think that each artist wrote it.  I first heard Joel's song and thought it was his - until a friend corrected me about Dylan.  I had another friend who swore Brooks wrote it - until I corrected him about Joel and Dylan.  And there are people who swear that Adele wrote it.  It's one of those cases where the perfect person for each generation remade the song.  (Adele is really good at this - her version of Bonnie Raitt's "I Can't Make You Love Me" absolutely nails it.)
• "Somebody to Love" - 3 versions - Queen, George Michael, Glee - There is the Queen classic.  There George Michael trying to replace Freddie Mercury (impossible) with the rest of Queen in a decent, but subpar, version.  And there is Glee mangling the Queen version.  If anyone could have replaced Freddie Mercury, it would have been George Michael.  Which shows you just how awesome Mercury was.
• "Sway" - 4 versions - Rosemary Clooney, Michael Buble, Melinda Doolittle, Glee - Yeah, I don't understand this one either.  I can't really identify which one is better.  They all are virtually the same take.  And all of them are pretty stupid.
• "You Really Got Me" - 3 versions - Van Halen, Sanjaya Malakar, The Chipmunks - Speaking of stupid...  What a perfect way to end this examination.  Van Halen's song is hardly a classic.  But it is typical 80s David Lee Roth led Van Halen.  Then you have the complete trainwreck Sanjaya's inexplicably bad karaoke song that really could be used as punishment.  Then you have The Frigging Chipmunks putting out a take that would be considered torture by the Geneva Convention.  This song epitomizes the hit and miss nature of multiple song versions.  You have some songs that are like a framework that a talented artist can conform in any number of directions. Then you have some songs that are like trying to bend concrete.  

Those are what I have to offer.  Feel free to hit up the comments to list your favorite song with multiples - or to let me know which ones I missed.  

Next Iron Chef: Game Changer

I certainly never intended to do a weekly recap of Next Iron Chef: Super Chefs, but that was before two things happened in this last week's episode.  First, the show positioned itself to become the greatest competition show in the history of Food Network.  Second, my entire set of picks from week one got completely turned on its head.  I realized that there actually is not an ulterior motive driving this show.  Literally, anyone can go out at any time.  And it got proved this past week when my top two landed in the bottom three and the person many expected to win went home.

Just to recap my picks, I had projected the following order:

1. Geoffrey Zakarian
2. Robert Irvine
3. Anne Burrell
4. Marcus Samuelsson
5. Michael Chiarello
6. Alex Guarnaschelli
7. Elizabeth Falkner
8. Beau MacMillan
9. Chuck Hughes
10. Spike Mendelsohn

Needless to say, I am a little bit nervous now.  The bottom three were Zakarian, Irvine, and Chiarello.  Burrell got throttled for playing it too safe.  Samuelsson got reamed out again for making too many dishes.  And Guarnaschelli, who looked completely outmatched last week, sailed to the first place finish without a single negative comment by any of the judges.  In fact, the top three were Falkner, Guarnaschelli, and Hughes.  MacMillan still is kind of floating around, limping on his injured ankle - which is kind of a metaphor for his involvement in this whole show.

The battle was to take stadium food and reinvent it as Kitchen Stadium Food.  (Ha, clever.)  I thought the judging as a whole was a bit odd.  Zakarian admitted that he doesn't have a freaking clue what constitutes ballpark food.  So he just made this two ridonkulous dishes that were labeled by the judges, "The best food we've eaten in this entire competition."  That earned him a seventh place finish.  Meanwhile, Hughes tossed out this hoagie that was so messy and disorganized that they could barely eat it.  Naturally, he came in second.  The only intelligent rankings were Guarnaschelli first and Chiarello last.  

The last place finish allowed viewers to finally see the reason why I can't stand Chiarello.  He made some bizarre dish and topped it off with a raw egg yolk in a shell.  The judges hated it and told him so.  Then Alton Brown, being the snotty arrogant turd he is, went on to lecture Chiarello by holding up his egg and allowing the whites to drip off.  "If you are going to use raw egg, you certainly need to make sure it doesn't look like this (whites drip off for effect).  An inability to separate an egg is hardly characteristic of an Iron Chef."  The camera cut to Chiarello.  "You didn't like the egg, fine.  Tell me and move on.  No need to beat it into the ground."  Now, don't get me wrong, I wish someone would punch Alton Brown in the mouth for his self- absorbed schtick.  But that is what he does.  That is why the Food Network put him in this position.  Brown truly believes he is smarter and better than everyone else in the food universe.  You need someone that delusional to stay tough as the host with these big shot chefs.  If I was Chiarello, I would have bristled too.  Then I would have calmly walked to the end of the table and slammed Brown's head and his ridiculous fedora into the plate of food.  It is just that every single time they interviewed Chiarello, he was basically taking the stance that there is no way he should be in last place.  There's a fine line between confidence and cockiness.  All celebrity chefs are confident.  Some are cocky.  I can't stand those guys.  Don't ask me to define it.  Using the cop out the Supreme Court created, "I just know it when I see it."

Anyway, the final showdown between the bottom two was Irvine and Chiarello.  They had to use peanuts and had thirty minutes to create a dish to highlight this.  Apparently this is is extremely difficult since all of the chefs had their eyes bug out like in a Looney Tune cartoon.  Irvine came up with a fish dish - halibut crusted with peanuts on a peanut hummus with a peanut sauce and sauteed vegetables.  It looked awesome - like something he has pulled out of thin air numerous times on Dinner Impossible.  This is exactly why I expected him to win.  He has made a career out of this kind of stuff.  

Chiarello decided to make a fettucini with peanut pesto, along with a side tomato salad.  Take a second and read that again.  He made a fettucini with peanut pesto.  No, he didn't crack open a box of Ronzoni.  He freaking MADE PASTA.  In thirty minutes.  That means he made it from scratch.  The other chefs were just stunned.  Just about every single one of them said they couldn't believe he was making pasta.  In thirty minutes.  This was the moment when I knew Irvine was going home.  You can't compete with that.  Chiarello didn't even blink about the concept of pulling it off either.  He broke down the time and just did it.  He deep fried the peanuts (What?!?) and then used them instead of pine nuts in the pesto.  Then he tossed that with his HOMEMADE PASTA.  (I still am thrown off by this.)  Wham.  

The judges didn't know what to do.  Both dishes were superb.  Irvine ended up getting voted off 2-1 because his peanut hummus was a little too gummy.  And probably because they realized that Chiarello had MADE HIS STINKING PASTA.  The rest of the chefs were visibly shaken when Irvine left.  I think that all of them thought he was going to be in it for the long run. Plus, Chiarello made a great point at the end of the show.  He said that he wasn't upset to be in the bottom two.  That had given him one more experience in a Kitchen Stadium setting than the others.  He is more of a force than I thought.  Actually, it is obvious I don't know anything about the show.  My entire evaluation structure got turned on its head.  There are several things I realized this week.

1. Zakarian is this year's Ming Tsai.  Last year, Tsai could cook circles around everyone.  But the reason he lost was because he too often didn't follow the exact wording of the challenges.  Zakarian is in that boat.  He has more cooking ability than anyone else there.  That's obvious by the way the judges respond to his food.  But if he doesn't stick to the rules, he will get booted out.
2. Marcus Samuelsson needs to settle the heck down.  So far, the chefs have had to create four dishes - Samuelsson has had to do five, since he was in the bottom last week.  Samuelsson has made eleven.  He always does extras, just to impress the judges.  The problem is, they aren't impressed.  They even went so far as to say that the next time he makes extras, they are going to make him tell him which ones to judge and they won't taste the others.  
3. Alton Brown gets more annoying every year.
4. There is a big difference between cooking for "regular people" and cooking for judges.  This is the biggest variable I missed last week.  The challenge this week was crafted for Robert Irvine.  It was basically the same thing he has done before on Dinner Impossible.  You go raid the vendors at a ballpark and come up with dishes with what you find.  I've seen that show.  Irvine excelled and everyone raved.  But, in that case, the Everyone raving was a group of regular people.  It is easier to impress regular people with cooking than experts.  Think about it - when Irvine cooks for three hundred construction workers, do you really think some foreman is going to tell the camera the flavor profiles weren't consistent?  One of Irvine's dishes was a Hot Burg.  He took hot dogs and ground them up and mixed them with the hamburgers he was making.  Brilliant.  Alton Brown said it was great.  It would have killed with average people.  But the judges were unimpressed.  That was Irvine's downfall.  He is the best chef on Food Network's roster when it comes to knowing what average people wants.  That is how he is so successful with Dinner Impossible.  That is how he does such a great job in helping people fix their restaurants on Restaurant Impossible.  That is why he is such a great coach on Worst Cooks in America.  It really is why I like him so much.  And that is precisely why couldn't be the Iron Chef.  They don't want someone who will impress the masses.  They want someone who will wow the food judging elite.  
5. This show is going to be a LOT more exciting than I thought it would be - and that is saying a lot.  There aren't many shows that I watch live any more.  I'll let it record on my DVR and wait fifteen minutes just so I can fast forward through commercials.  The only shows that we, on a regular basis, are too excited to wait the fifteen minutes.  The first is Castle on ABC.  The second is Burn Notice on USA.  And the third is Next Iron Chef.  Pretty elite company in our house.

Now in 3D!!!

A couple weeks ago, we all went to see Lion King 3D during its "Not As Limited As We First Thought Engagement."  My wife and I were huge fans of the original.  I remember seeing it in the theater when it first came out.  I was home from college during the summer of after my sophomore year.  It was maybe the only movie I ever saw with both of my parents in the theater.  I loved it.  My mom wasn't that big of a fan of it.  I don't remember what my dad thought.  I bought the soundtrack and had the movie on VHS when it came out.  I had hoped my kids would like it too.  We have the DVD and they've watched it before.  But the chance to see it on the BIG SCREEN - and in 3D!!!  Plus we had some Disney movie vouchers and ten bucks on my AMC Stubs card.

My wife and I were taken in all over again.  The movie is so majestic and incredible.  The score and soundtrack and phenomenal.  And the story is very powerful - with elements of Star Wars and Macbeth woven throughout.  It was beautiful in 3D.  But it reminded me of those old Viewmaster discs that made a "three dimensional" picture that looked suspiciously like a pop up book.  It worked better than some newer 3D movies, though.  It didn't resort to cheap tricks like things flying at the screen.  But it didn't take me in like I was hoping.  It probably was because the film was a 2D classical animation, and you just can't make that completely 3D.  The other reason is because Lion King was about the closest thing to a 3D movie as you could get without it really being one in the first place.  The attention to detail and the depth of the original film was already engrossing.  Scenes like the animals coming to see the newborn Simba, with Zazu flying overhead was already powerful.  In 3D it was even cooler.  But I didn't walk away saying that it improved the movie that much.  I would have enjoyed seeing the original on the big screen anyway, so the 3D was kind of icing.

[Side Note: Josiah loved the movie.  Natalie didn't like it because it was too dark and violent.  Gabe didn't care for it at all and spent most of the movie crawling all over us and playing on Heather's phone.  I had forgotten just how dark the movie was.  That's probably the reason I liked it so much.  Of course, I was 20 the first time I saw it.  Soooooo....]

It made me think about 3D movies in general.  Lion King 3D was a runaway success.  It took in 90 million dollars during its brief run.  New movies would kill for that kind of box office.  This was a movie that had been out for sixteen years and was coming on Blu-ray three weeks later.  Disney spent about $10 million on the 3D transfer and maybe another $10 million on promotion.  So a $70 million profit isn't a back month for the Mouse.  That doesn't count the increased sales of the Blu-Ray packs that came from the new generation of fans from the re-re-release.  (It had previously been re-released on IMAX in 2002 and took in $15 million there.)

We have been inundated with 3D movies.  The reason why is obvious.  It's all about the green.  The average movie can be transferred to 3D for between $2 million and $5 million.  Movie theaters charge an extra $4 per 3D ticket.  So that means that a movie can generate an extra $20-$50 million from that small investment.  The problem is that most of these 3D titles aren't delivering on the added cost.  So we are seeing the box office of 3D movies dropping.  Movies that were expecting boffo 3D money are underperforming pretty consistently.  Many in the industry have wondered if it is the death knell for 3D movies.  I don't think it is.  Have you ever known Hollywood to leave money on the table?  Even an underperforming 3D movie (think Harry Potter 7.2, Pirates 4, Green Lantern, Green Hornet) can pull in an extra $20 million from that small transfer.  Would YOU give up $20 million?  Yeah, neither would the movie studio.  [Another Side Note:  I'm not saying Harry Potter 7.2 underperformed.  $1 billion worldwide box office is NOT underperforming.  Its 3D numbers were disappointing to Warner Brothers.]

From what I've seen, there are three types of 3D movies coming out right now:  the 3D Film as Investment, the 3D Film as Experience, and the 3D Film as Event.  To me, the breakdown is probably about 70/20/10 for those three categories.  And that is probably why we are seeing such a backlash against 3D movies in general.

The 3D Film as Investment is the movie where the studio executive is saying, "You know, we could do a 3D transfer on this movie and make an extra $30 million.  We're already going to make a lot.  Let's make more and improve the movie's bottom line.  Maybe I can buy another BMW."  These are movies like Captain America, Alice in Wonderland, Clash of the Titans, Harry Potter, Despicable Me, Gnomeo and Juliet.  The movie doesn't really get any better through being in 3D.  It may have a few extra moments that feel cool.  There are some 3D gimmicks thrown in.  But your feeling for the movie isn't going to improve much wearing those glasses.  In fact, it may actually HURT the movie.  Take Captain America.  I saw this movie twice this summer - once in traditional format and once in 3D.  And I saw them in that order.  I loved the movie.  It really exceeded my expectations.  I liked the performances, the characters, even the look.  The 1940s scenes had an old time hue to them.  It almost had a washed, sepia tint that you didn't even notice until the 2011 scenes.  The whole movie looked different.  It was a nice visual element.  In 3D, though, I kept noticing the annoying stuff.  When Cap was racing on top of a train, it looked like an action figure on a toy train.  It made all the FX look faker.  It actually made the film LESS believable.  I probably would have not had such a high opinion of the film if I had seen it in reverse order - 3D first and 2D second.  Actually, I may not have seen it twice at all.  If that had been the case, the theater really messed up their accounting.  Getting two tickets is better than getting an extra $4 on one ticket.

Generally, I avoid this type of 3D film.  It's not worth it.  It takes your brain and eyes a while to buy into the 3D format in the first place.  Some elements don't work and seem clunky.  And the gimmicks are just insulting.  I usually will just see the 2D version of this movie.  I saw movies like Thor, Harry Potter, Toy Story 3, and Cars 2 in traditional format.  It just wasn't worth the extra money - especially when you are talking about that surcharge on every ticket (between two and five, depending on who in our family went).  I usually can tell what stuff they stuck into a movie to make it "worth the 3D upcharge."  In Harry Potter 7.1, I sat there and pointed out seven different scenes to Heather that were filmed for the 3D transfer that they ended up not doing.  I did the same thing with Thor.  I don't find that endearing.  I find that insulting.  Make a good movie.  That will suck me in.  I don't need gimmicks.

The 3D Film as Experience is a movie where your experience is actually improved by the 3D format.  You know, the kind of movie that this was developed for - the kind that they should limit 3D movies to.  Usually, this kind of movie is not transferred to 3D; it is actually filmed in 3D.  (Although that is not always the case.  For example, there was no way to salvage Pirates 4, even though it was shot in 3D.)  Movies in this class are films like Avatar.  The movie was made in 3D and was designed to be experienced in 3D.  I would argue Tron: Legacy would fall into this category.  I actually really liked that movie.  The scenes in the "real world" were shot in traditional 2D.  When they went into the computer world, it became 3D.  And it BECAME 3D.  It sucked you in and you were IN that world.  The movie was better that way.  These movies are hard to come by.  Truthfully, documentaries seem to do this better.  I will be more willing to see this type of film than the first type.  The new Amazing Spiderman 3D looks like it will fit into this category.  It is being filmed and created in 3D.  One of the goals of the filmmaker is to actually let the viewer feel like Spiderman as he swoops through town.  The first preview showed some of that.  That's a movie worth seeing in 3D - if they can pull it off.

The 3D Film as Event is the rarest of the 3D crop.  This is a movie that becomes a "must see."  You could argue that Avatar moved into this category after its release.  Everyone was seeing it.  It was the highest grossing movie of all time.  So, even though it was an experience, it became more than that.  People felt left out if they didn't see it.  (And the backlash hipster crowd refused to see it BECAUSE everyone saw it.)  Lion King would definitely be in this category.  Beauty and the Beast also fell into this group when it came out in 3D a few years back.  You often will see a re-release of a big movie fit into the Event category.  Coming up next year, you will see more films fall into this group.  Titanic is coming to 3D on April 6, 2012.  That movie was such a mammoth event when it came out that I fully expect it to do big business.  Plus, James Cameron is THE king of the world . . . of 3D.  So, expect it to deliver the goods.  Star Wars begins its trek to 3D, and its eventual release on 3D Blu-Ray, next year.  Episode 1 hits theaters on February 10.  The plan is to release the entire series, one per year.  But, recent buzz has been that George Lucas may not follow through if Episode 1 bombs.  (Brilliant strategy, leave the fate of the series in 3D to arguably the worst film of the series.  Don't start with Episode IV or anything.)  Personally, I don't know if I will see Titanic when it comes out.  I liked the movie, but I'm not in love with it.  My son and I are already making plans to see Star Wars, though.

I don't think 3D movies are going anywhere.  There is too much money in the format.  In addition, with the growing market of 3D Blu-Ray players, 3D televisions, and 3D tv stations, it just seems like it will hang on for a while - even if it doesn't deserve to.  I think we have seen a movement where moviegoers are expressing their distaste for stupid 3D releases, just like they revolted against unnecessary IMAX movie offerings.  Those special formats are best left to movies that deserve the added attention - movies that are Experiences or Events.  Those are the kinds that I go to.  I already have trimmed back my moviegoing in general.  I don't go to everything that comes out.  Lots of movies look just fine on my tv and I can handle the $1 redbox rental much easier than the $10 ticket price.  I'm not going to waste even more money on 3D gimmicks.  It's the same message we've been telling studios for years.  But some effort into your films.  Make something we want to see, that is worth seeing, and we'll watch it.  Instead of putting an extra $2 million into a transfer, put it into screenwriting or directing.  If the studios want to see their ticket sales go up, their 3D sales improve, make movies that are worth paying for.