The official site of Kelly Sedinger: Reader, writer, photographer, and dreamer
Oddities and Awesome abound!
:: The Fifteen Most Embarrassing Tom Brady Photos. Because mocking St. Tom never gets old! GO GIANTS!!!
:: In the unlikely event that I ever own a bookstore of my own, it will have a cat.
:: Here is the newest leader in my ongoing quest for the Greatest Thing Ever:
More next week!
Just a normal prompt this week! (Although I shouldn’t say ‘just’ a normal prompt, as a lot of times it’s been the seemingly simplest prompts that have tripped me up and made me take hours just to mull them over to come up with something.)
“And these are–?” asked the lady in the floppy hat.
“Peas,” said Farmer Jimmy, behind his stall at the market. “Two peas in every pod.”
“Two?”
“Two. Two peas in a pod.”
“Only two?”
“Yessum…but these peas are three inches in diameter.”
“These peas are genetically modified, aren’t they?”
“Don’t think so. Just good old SuperMegaTechnoCorp seed.”
“OK, thanks.” And the lady moved on to the next stall, not even looking at Farmer Jimmy’s football apples. The exact size and shape, naturally, of a regulation football.
“Hippie farmers with their organic food,” Jimmy growsed. “Probably wear tie-dye under their overalls, too.”
And hey, Centusians, feel free to participate in my twice-annual Ask Me Anything! festival, in which you get to…well, you know.
So usually I wait until the second half of the month to start giving answers to “Ask Me Anything!” questions, but Roger has a couple that are time sensitive, pertaining as they do to the impending Super Bowl. So here they are:
Why do you hate Tom Brady so much?
Hoo boy. You know, I was all prepared with this answer. I was going to write about how I don’t hate Tom Brady personally, because it’s not like I know him or anything, and that more than anything else, my hatred for Brady is the “sports fan’s hatred of the other guy”. You know, it’s how sports fans feel about that one guy who always seems to have your team’s number, no matter what. It’s like how Boston sports fans likely felt for years about Bucky Dent or Mookie Wilson.
But then, St. Tommy had to go and open his mouth at a Super Bowl press thing the other day, in the context of talking about how his father has made all kinds of sacrifices to follow his son’s football career:
“He’s been there every step of the way,” Brady said of his dad. “Then I went to school a long ways from home, and he and my mom were there at every home football game that they could possibly be at and a lot of road games, too. And even when I started my pro career, he traveled to Buffalo. I don’t know if you guys have ever been to the hotels in Buffalo — they’re not the nicest places in the world — but he would travel to those.”
Wow. Thanks for that, Tom.
Now, most of the folks I follow online – few of whom blog anymore, and most of whom are on Twitter, which makes me sad – are of the “Who cares what some football player thinks” camp, or the “Hey, he’s just telling the truth, because Buffalo kind of sucks” camp, or a combination of both camps. This goes along with “Geez, Buffalo, do you gotta get so upset any time somebody says something mean about your city?” And those folks are right.
But still…yeah. I hear you, folks. I really do. But still: f*** Tom Brady.
Here’s why: There was really no reason for it. He didn’t need to say it. Buffalo wasn’t part of the conversation in any way, until he cited it as an example of awful hardships his father has had to endure in the purpose of following his son’s career. “Hey, he’s come to Buffalo. That’s a commitment!” And he said it on an enormous media stage.
Look, I am well aware that Buffalo isn’t the nicest city in the world, or even the country, or even the state. I’m well aware that this city’s warts are openly displayed for all to see. I’m well aware that this city continues to rust and crumble while we continually shoot ourselves in the foot, development-wise. But that doesn’t mean that I should be happy to hear continued use of my city, my home, as a national short-hand for “crappy cesspool of a city” to which no one in their right mind would want to go unless it’s for business and you’re only going to be there for the shortest time possible.
Here’s the bottom line: We get to say these things. Brady doesn’t. At least, not for me. The “Brady is right and it shouldn’t matter” crowd will have to bear with me if I’m not willing to say “Thank you, Mr Brady, may I have another?” on this one. Harumph!
There’s also some rhetoric going around that this kind of thing – the impression our city makes on visiting athletes who are in town for a game – is part of what keeps star players from entertaining Buffalo as a possible spot for when they are free agents. To this I say, simply, nonsense. Look, I know that the view from the Kensington Expressway into downtown from the airport isn’t terribly inspiring. But in my experience there’s not a city in the world that doesn’t have such a route, somewhere. I read things like this – “Buffalo’s hotels aren’t super nice and the town’s nightlife isn’t terribly exciting” – and I think, “Huh. Does Green Bay hear things like this?”
Probably not…and the reason why is glaringly obvious. Why don’t star players avoid Green Bay like the plague and refuse to entertain the possibility of signing there? Because Green Bay has a team that wins. Buffalo does not. I guarantee that as long as the Bills are here, it won’t matter how the city looks: if the team gets good again, players will be more willing to sign here.
So: Why do I hate Tom Brady? Because he’s great and he kicks my team’s ass constantly. Because he lives a ridiculously charmed life. Because as great as he clearly is, I still think he’s overrated; he’s never really produced a signature win and a huge moment that will live in sports lore forever, there’s nothing he’s ever done that makes me think, “Wow, I remember when Tom Brady did ____”; I tire of the man-crushes that many sports commentators have on the guy.
Here’s a true story: I’ve always thought that NBC’s Cris Collinsworth has been overly obsessive about Brady, and that he brings Brady into conversations entirely too often, whether the discussion involves the Patriots or not. I mentioned this once on Facebook, and another friend disagreed, saying that Collinsworth simply has a lot of respect for one of the game’s best players. Fine. Except that during last year’s Winter Olympics, Collinsworth at one point presented a profile piece he’d done on short-track speed skater Apollo Anton Ohno, after which he said to Bob Costas and those of us at home, “Apollo Anton Ohno really reminds me of Tom Brady.”
GAHHH!!!
So there’s why I hate Tom Brady. (Kinda sorta. I mean, I’m sure he loves his mother.)
Oh, and a prediction? I really don’t like offering predictions, but I’ll offer a hope: Giants 30, Patriots 16. Not only do I want Brady to lose, but I want him to lose fairly convincingly. I want his defeat to be large enough that no one can whitewash this game for him if he does lose. I don’t think a blow-out is likely, but if Brady loses by 10-14 points and only puts up pedestrian numbers – say, 200 yards, 1 TD, 2 picks – it’ll make me feel all kinds of warm and fuzzy inside. But I guess it’s OK if he wins his fourth, tying him with Joe Montana and Terry Bradshaw. After all, neither one of those guys ever lost a Super Bowl.
And hey, folks, questions aren’t exactly flying in the door yet, so Ask Me Anything!
One of the people with whom I graduated high school was a guy named Dave Donavon. Dave was never particularly a friend of mine, but he wasn’t someone I disliked, either; for whatever reason, I just never got to know him all that well. We weren’t in a whole lot of classes together, and I wasn’t much of a social animal back then anyway, preferring to spend Friday nights hanging out at home. Dave was a good guy whom I didn’t know all that well. Come to that, virtually my entire high school graduating class was good people I didn’t know all that well. I’m not sure, now, how I feel about that. I don’t really regret hanging out at home, reading and watching movies and writing, but I do wonder if I missed out on some awfully cool stuff when I read people on FB saying things like, “Hey, remember when….”
Dave, sadly, suffered a heart attack and died earlier this week. Naturally, in this age we’re in, I learned about this via Twitter and Facebook, and a lot of the folks I’m friends with on FB from that era are posting their memories of Dave. I honestly don’t have any, but it still saddens me…Dave was 40 years old, the same age as me. Judging by photos, he had roughly the same body type as me right about now. And he is, to my knowledge, the first of our graduating class to die. I suppose we’re lucky in that regard, but it’s also a function of being a fairly small school where the graduating class numbered around 100.
I remember that Dave was into hard rock quite a bit back in the day, and really, hard rock’s a bug you don’t tend to get over, even as you discover other music later in life. According to my friend Andy — also from high school, and a guy who knew everybody — Dave’s favorite band was Van Halen, which means that Dave and I would have had some stuff to talk about right there, had any conversations happened. So, in memory of Dave Donavon, here is Van Halen with “Dreams”.
When last we left our intrepid Jedi – months and months ago – they they had just made their way through an immense space battle to land on General Grievous’s ship, through which they must now make their way to find the captive Chancellor Palpatine. This is pretty standard “infiltrate the enemy ship” stuff, but it’s all pretty fun to watch anyway, because Ewan McGregor and Hayden Christensen actually have pretty good chemistry together. In this whole sequence, I like how Christensen portrays Anakin as more self-assured, more confident, but less obviously-arrogant than he had been in Attack of the Clones. The effect goes a long way to highlight the tragedy of Anakin’s later fall from grace.
(Before I go on, I should note the very long stall in this series of posts, with an apology for those who actually enjoy reading this stuff. My reasons are the usual whiny “Nobody knows I’m doing this, but that Red Letter Media turd gets all kinds of love whenever he speaks!” stuff. So let’s just stipulate all that and move on, shall we? OK!)
R2-D2 is another part of the puzzle here, and he has his own problems. He is trying to lie low when a couple of battle droids enter the landing bay, but his efforts are stymied by the fact that Obi Wan keeps talking to him, very loudly, via the commlink. Thus R2 is distracted at several points where Obi Wan and Anakin would find having a droid plugged into the computer system fairly convenient.
All of this is pretty standard Star Wars derring-do as Obi Wan and Anakin make their way to the observation deck where they suspect Palpatine is being helped. I find it all a lot of fun to watch, and it could have been even longer, what with some deleted scenes from this sequence that are available on the DVD. In one scene, our two Jedi heroes wind up in the ship’s giant fuel pipes; in another, they are surrounded by droids and communicate with one another with baseball-coach type hand signals. These scenes are fun to watch, and I’m glad they’re on the DVD, but I don’t think they would have added much to the proceedings except for some fun action material. This entire sequence of the film takes an impressive bit of time, though, which is probably a good chunk of why it needed trimming.
Here again, by the way, we see R2 using his rockets that AOTC revealed, and yet another new gizmo: R2 has a supply of oil which he’s able to squirt on the battle droids and all over the ground before setting it on fire. As usual, a lot of Star Wars fans complained about this, but also as usual, I’m fine with it. For one thing, I rather like what is now something of a gag, which is that each time there’s a new Star Wars movie, we see something else that R2 can do. And what’s also nice is that really, none of these particular abilities is particularly outlandish given what an R2 unit essentially is: a robotic space mechanic. You know how, within reason and given the right set of attachments, you can do pretty much anything with a Dremel rotary tool or Multi-Max? Well, that’s what R2 is: a big, intelligent, Dremel tool. (Hmmmm…Dremel’s colors are blue and silver, not unlike a certain droid…hmmmm….)
The other thing that stands out in this entire sequence, once we land on the ship, is that there’s no music at all. We have music and all manner of sound effects when Obi Wan and Anakin are flying their ships through the space battle, but once we’re on General Grievous’s cruiser itself, there is no music at all: just ambient sounds of machines and distant explosions and wind in the elevator shafts and so on.
Our two Jedi reach the observation deck and find Palpatine there, restrained to a chair that looks a lot like the throne he will later use in Return of the Jedi. The room is bounded on all sides by giant windows that are overlooking the space battle. Now Dooku enters, and after a bit of preliminary boasting, the lightsaber battle begins:
OBI-WAN: (bows) Chancellor.
ANAKIN: Are you all right?
PALPATINE: (quietly) Count Dooku.
PALPATINE makes a small gesture with his hand. OBI-WAN and ANAKIN turn around. The elevator DOORS CAN BE HEARD OPENING AND CLOSING as COUNT DOOKU strides into the room. He is above the Jedi, standing on a balcony, with two SUPER BATTLE DROIDS. The Jedi turn to see him. He looks down on the Jedi.
OBI-WAN: (quietly to Anakin) This time we will do it together.
ANAKIN: I was about to say that.
COUNT DOOKU jumps down to the main level.
PALPATINE: Get help! You’re no match for him. He’s a Sith Lord.
OBI-WAN: Chancellor Palpatine, Sith Lords are our specialty.
OBI-WAN and ANAKIN throw off their cloaks and ignite their lightsabers.
COUNT DOOKU: Your swords, please, Master Jedi. We don’t want to make a mess of things in front of the Chancellor.
OBI-WAN and ANAKIN move toward DOOKU.
OBI-WAN: You won’t get away this time, Dooku.
OBI-WAN and ANAKIN charge COUNT DOOKU. A great sword fight ensues.
COUNT DOOKU: I’ve been looking forward to this.
ANAKIN: My powers have doubled since the last time we met, Count.
COUNT DOOKU: Good. Twice the pride, double the fall.
I really like this scene…all of it. Especially the little reference to their last confrontation with Dooku, at the end of AOTC, when Anakin decided to charge in by himself and got tossed aside for his trouble. They lost that duel because they didn’t work together; this time, Anakin is willing to wait. But he hasn’t grown up too much; he is still willing to boast about the growth of his powers.
What happens next is something of a pitched duel in which it still seems that Dooku is their better; he again manages to toss Anakin aside, and then he again incapacitates Obi Wan. But this time, Anakin is much stronger and holds his own…only merely that, until Dooku says something else:
COUNT DOOKU: (continuing) I sense great fear in you, Skywalker. You have hate, you have anger, but you don’t use them.
This goading of Anakin proves ill-advised for Dooku, as he immediately uses his hate and his anger. A minute later, he cuts off Dooku’s hands and takes his saber, now holding two blades at the neck of the helpless Count. He knows that a Jedi is probably supposed to be merciful in such a situation, but Palpatine, laughing, tells Anakin: “Kill him. Kill him now.”
This is a deeply chilling moment. Palpatine’s warmth – feigned though we know it was in the previous two films – disappears instantly as Palpatine says “Kill him.” And when Anakin hesitates, Palpatine allows his coldest, harshest tone to come forth: “Do it.”
And Anakin does. Right there, with Palpatine looking on and with Dooku’s eyes wide as he realizes he’s just been betrayed, Anakin beheads the helpless Count.
Now this dialogue:
PALPATINE: You did well, Anakin. He was too dangerous to be kept alive.
ANAKIN drops COUNT DOOKU’s lightsaber, moving to PALPATINE.
ANAKIN: Yes, but he was an unarmed prisoner.
ANAKIN raises his hands toward PALPATINE, who is strapped in the Admiral’s Chair. The Chancellor’s restraints pop loose.
ANAKIN: (continuing) I shouldn’t have done that, Chancellor. It’s not the Jedi way.
PALPATINE stands up, rubbing his wrists.
PALPATINE: It is only natural. He cut off your arm, and you wanted revenge. It wasn’t the first time, Anakin. Remember what you told me about your mother and the Sand People. Now, we must leave before more security droids arrive.
Something interesting happens here, something easy to miss. As noted, this scene takes place in an enormous observation room with giant windows on all sides, so that during the entire lightsaber duel, we can see the space battle raging in the sky beyond; and occasionally, we hear the sounds of ships as they fly by very close to the windows. At the moment that Palpatine refers to Anakin’s mother’s fate at the hands of the Sandpeople, there is a sound that could very well be a ship in space outside*, or it could be the cry of one of the Sandpeople. It’s a little aural reminder of what has gone before…and Palpatine is already starting to lay the groundwork for Anakin’s temptation to the Dark Side of the Force.
But what’s really interesting is that Palpatine allows Dooku to start that particular ball rolling, with his line about Anakin having hate, anger, but not using them. I always wonder…has Palpatine already decided to start working on Anakin’s conversion? Or has he just now realized the potential of what he has in Anakin?
In AOTC, Palpatine manipulated the Jedi Council to assign Obi Wan and Anakin to the protection of Padme following the assassination attempt. Was he doing that with the intent of pushing Anakin’s emotions to the fore, with temptation in mind, or was he simply working to sow seeds of dissent and distrust within the Jedi order? I might lean to the latter, except that we know that Palpatine has made good on his word to young Anakin from the end of TPM (“We will watch your career with great interest.”). It’s significant that Anakin has shared the dark secret of what happened to his mother – and what he did after that – with Palpatine.
As this scene ends, Anakin picks up the incapacitated Obi Wan and slings him over his shoulder, over Palpatine’s objections that they don’t have time to dally over him. “His fate will be our own,” says Anakin, and they start making their way back down to the landing bay.
Of course, this is a Star Wars film, so they don’t get there. They encounter some more trouble with elevators, this time when the cruiser they are on takes heavy fire and starts to aim straight down toward the planet, throwing off the perspective. Anakin and Palpatine enter an elevator shaft and start running down the walls, which are now the floors, since the ship is dropping straight down. But then the bridge crew gets things under control again, causing the ship to level back out again…which means that the walls of the elevator shaft are now walls again. Needless to say, they get out of this predicament, just as Obi Wan wakes back up; then they are back in a deserted corridor and trying to get back to the landing bay when they are imprisoned by something called “ray shields”. After Obi Wan protests “How did this happen? We’re smarter than this!”, Anakin suggests that they just patiently wait for R2D2 to come along and release them. Obi Wan is surprised that Anakin is suggesting patience, but the plan goes awry when R2 does, in fact, arrive…with a whole bunch of warrior droids with him. “Do you have a plan B?” Obi Wan asks…and that’s where I’ll stop for this time.
If it seems like I haven’t done much ‘fixing’ in a series called ‘Fixing the Prequels’, well, it’s generally because I think that the entire opening sequence of RotS is as masterfully done as anything in the entire Star Wars saga. There’s just nothing to fix here, but a lot to admire. Don’t worry, though; we’ll start fixing stuff next time out. In that installment we will deal with General Grievous, reunite two young lovers, and start to get hints of Darth Sidious’s plan to lower the shroud of the Dark Side over everything. Tune in! (And it won’t take the better part of a year to get there, either.)
* I know, I know, “Sound can’t travel in space”. For the purposes of Star Wars…actually, for most filmed SF in general…I just don’t care.
Yup, folks, it’s February, which means that it’s time once again for Ask Me Anything!, wherein I throw open the doors to all comers who may wish to pose questions of goofy sort, or serious sort, or any kind of sort you can imagine. All questions and queries are welcome, so bring ’em on! This is your chance, folks!
Questions may be left in comments to this post, or if you prefer, you can certainly e-mail me (jaquandor AT gmail DOT com). Or send ’em via Facebook. Or Tweet ’em at me (make sure to put the ‘@jaquandor’ thing in there, or I’ll never see it). Or even in comments on Flickr, if you like. Lots of options here to make things easy.
I’ll have more to say about it later in the month, but February 2012 marks ten years I’ve been blogging, so let’s make this iteration of Ask Me Anything! a real hootenanny! (Or a lollapalooza. Or a shindig. Whichever.)
So…Ask Me Anything!
I can’t believe I’m going to do this, but I just can’t resist it. I’m going to steal an entire post from someone else. And not just the idea for the post, but the entire actual post. I hope you don’t mind, Cal! (And if you want to comment over there rather than here, I’ll completely respect that.)
Anyway, here are some burgers. Assuming that (a) you eat meat, (b) you like burgers, and (c) you see these on the menu somewhere, which one do you order?
This ought to be my final word on A Game of Thrones for a bit, but it certainly warrants inclusion in my “Page One” series. So here it is: page one of A Game of Thrones.
…is not actually a long and thought-out blog post, but rather, a series of Internet meme-photos with the captions altered. So here are some Y U No… pics in honor of A Game of Thrones.
I’ve seen British period dramas referred to as “Bigscreen episodes of Masterpiece Theater“, which I suppose is kind of an apt description. But it’s something of a dismissive description, isn’t it? It seems designed to put off the kind of people who think that watching stuffy Brits on Masterpiece Theater is the stuff of torture. And it can be, if what’s on Masterpiece Theater isn’t all that good. But when it is good, what’s wrong with that?
This is what I kept thinking of while recently watching The King’s Speech: “This reminds me of Masterpiece Theater.” And not in a bad way, mind you, because I’ve always liked the good things on Masterpiece Theater. But it’s the air of the story: very little by way of visual invention; instead, it’s very solidly produced drama, with a good script, acted out by a great cast. Aside from a few stylistic things along the way, there’s no real feel of a particular “director’s hand” in The King’s Speech.
The story follows a particular Prince of Wales who is destined – although, being second in line, he doesn’t know it – to be King George V of England. This particular Prince has a deep problem that seemingly makes any public life nearly impossible: he has a terrible stutter. The King’s Speech would probably be the best movie I’ve ever seen about a stutterer, if not for A Fish Called Wanda. As it is, this movie runs a nice second.
Colin Firth plays the future king, Prince Albert, the Duke of York, who in the first part of the film is frustrated by his stutter when he needs to speak in public but is also thankful that as second in line, he isn’t called that often to perform acts of oratory. He seeks out some treatments, but none of them work; it is his wife (Elizabeth, the Duchess of York, played by Helena Bonham Carter) who visits yet another ‘expert’ on the treatment of stuttering, one Lionel Logue (Geoffrey Rush). Over the course of the film Logue provides Albert with treatments, most of which Logue has developed on an ad hoc basis over his life. And over the course of the film the two men develop a deep friendship, despite Albert’s insistence that they cannot (because of his station) and Lionel’s insistence that when the door closes in his office, and it’s just the Prince and Lionel, then it’s Lionel’s rules that must be obeyed.
Of course, we know – without even needing to consult the history books – that Prince Albert will, in fact, become King; we also know that he will be called to address his entire nation via the relatively new medium of radio, and that this speech will be either his big triumph or the hill on which he dies. How it goes really isn’t a surprise at all, and it shouldn’t be; for all the historical drama, Masterpiece Theater production full of Brits thing that this movie has going on, it’s pretty clear early on that The King’s Speech is simply a new version of one of storytelling’s most classic tropes, the student who must learn from an enigmatic and idiosyncratic teacher if he/she is to triumph over his/her foes. The only difference is that here, the foe that must be triumphed over is a part of Prince Albert’s own character. It’s an inner struggle, and it’s only in that that The King’s Speech differs much in structure at all from, say, The Karate Kid.
A problem is established for which a person needs help. The person has a tentative, untrusting meeting with a teacher who promises to help. The lessons begin, and they’re a bit confusing at first, both to the student and to us, watching it. But over time, as the connections begin to form, the lessons make more sense, and the story builds to the inevitable conflict, whether it be against a particular boxer, the rich blond black-belt karate dude, or against the expectations that the King will fail to deliver a stirring speech to his nation in a time of war.
Ultimately, what makes The King’s Speech compelling is pretty much what makes all movies compelling that tell familiar stories: the characters and the relationships amongst them. Albert and Lionel form a friendship based in deep respect for one another and, even, need, without ever really coming out and saying it. Albert, obviously, needs help with his stutter, but Lionel needs some kind of acceptance. Lionel, it seems, is an amateur actor who wishes to play the lead in something, anything, but who seems eternally relegated to secondary roles. In helping the future King, he finally – in some way – achieves his wish. I also like how the film makes a gentle feint in the direction of having the King turn away from his teacher, but this well-worn and frankly unsurprising turn is avoided by the two men having a frank conversation.
Tom Hooper’s direction is fairly understated; he seems content for the most part to let his actors do most of the heavy lifting after he decides where to put the camera or how to light the room. In fairness, there are a lot of interesting choices to be made there, and Hooper makes them. He rarely puts his actors in the center of the frame, for instance; they are always slightly off to the left, or close to the bottom. The lighting is generally bright and washed out; this is not your standard English drama with long walks in gorgeous gardens while everyone talks about God Save the King. After watching a bit of the film, I started to wonder why Hooper just didn’t go all-in and shoot The King’s Speech in black-and-white.
The King’s Speech won the Best Picture Oscar for its year. I’ve seen some evidence out there, amongst the various pop-culture and film-oriented sites that I frequent, that the general opinion is starting to settle that The King’s Speech was unworthy of that award, and that it should have gone to The Social Network instead. Speaking for myself, I personally found The King’s Speech far more engaging and interesting, particularly in its human interactions, than The Social Network, which largely left me cold. Obviously your mileage may vary…but The King’s Speech lingers in my memory much longer than The Social Network did.
(Apparently Tom Hooper is now helming the filmed adaptation, long-awaited, of the Les Miserables musical. Well, he’s got his work cut out for him. I’ve made that movie in my head to the point where I can read the credits over the final montage.)
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