Deathly Hallowing

Time for some first impressions on Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, which I finished reading about an hour ago. I’ll color-obscure the text here, so you’ll have to highlight to read it.

Oh, and for the purposes of the comments thread for this post, I grant full spoiler power, seeing as how I’m writing spoilers in the post itself. So if you don’t want spoilers, don’t highlight the text below, and don’t read the comments, either!

These are all just random thoughts, which I’m plopping out there as they come to me.

:: I love that Rowling had it come down to Harry versus Voldemort, for all the marbles, in front of everybody. That was a masterstroke.

:: There’s a little too much deus ex machina in the front half of the book. Too many times Harry and company seem to get the key bit of information by sheer luck, with one particular instance — when they just happen to be huddling somewhere in the countryside under the Invisible Cloak when a group of people who happen to know an awful lot about what’s going on just happen to pick that exact spot to sit down and have a long conversation — standing out.

:: Hey, David Weber! This is how you stop your final battle in order to have an infodump. JK Rowling has her stylistic faults, but she is the simple best writer on the planet at conveying plot information without grinding everything to a halt while she does so.

:: The single best thing in the book, and maybe the best moment in the entire series, is the moment of Severus Snape’s death. He expires as he gazes one last time in Lily Potter’s eyes (since we’ve been told many times that Harry has Lily’s eyes).

:: Snape was a good guy after all. I always thought so. Except for when I didn’t. However, it didn’t play out the way I thought it might: turns out that Dumbledore didn’t need to swear Snape to an unbreakable vow in order to commit Snape to killing him. (Of course, the interesting question there is, what if Dumbledore had not been already doomed to die?)

:: At times, the Death Eaters seem like Imperial Storm Troopers, don’t they?

:: Well, a Weasley had to die sooner or later, right? I’m surprised Rowling didn’t mine that for one last bit about everyone’s inability to tell them apart.

:: I knew Neville would have some big role to play! Yay!

:: I was completely wrong about the Dursleys! Boo! I thought for sure there’d be some small way in which they turned out to be important in the end, but not so much. Just a bit of character growth for Dudley. (But I do think Rowling missed an opportunity here. In the Epilogue, it would have been cool if another of the new students heading to Hogwarts had been Dudley’s, yes? Another Muggle-born?)

:: I liked that the events of Dumbledore’s life as depicted in the tell-all book are true, and that it’s all left up to interpretation.

:: What’s next for JK Rowling? Hogwarts: The Next Generation? Something else entirely? Or will she just put down her pen and bask in the fact that she’s made Harold Bloom’s life miserable? No idea, here — but for my part, thanks, Ms. Rowling. You told a hell of a tale here.

And there it is. So long, Harry. It’s been fun.

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Yippee-kiyay….

I just e-mailed this to a friend, but I figure it warrants posting here too: via Michael May’s Adventureblog, I see Ten reasons why John McClane is more bad-ass than Optimus Prime.

Well, duh. I think the real question is, who’s more bad-ass: John McClane or Jack Bauer? For instance, John McClane never has to torture anybody, and while he might be racing against time, he never seems all angsty about it the way Bauer does — I mean, Bauer’s always barking to somebody about how “he’s running out of time”, whereas McClane just keeps chuggin’ along, making one wisecrack after another.

How about you all, folks? Terrorists are gonna do some really bad stuff, so who do you want after them: McClane or Bauer?

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Hideous Arse Candles!

John Scalzi received some low-grade snark today, and decides to grade it for effort and effect. Sadly, the snark doesn’t come out so well, only meriting a C-, but it does yield what is sure to enter the lexicon of all good Blogistanic insults: “Hideous Arse Candles”. Now, that’s just classic!

I hope Scalzi doesn’t object, but I couldn’t resist the urge to look through some of the photos that he’s posted to the Whatever over the years and, well, adjust them according to his newfound status as High Priest of Hideous Arse Candlehood.

Yup. You can tell I am in “holiday mode”!

UPDATE: Ha! I thought that would get a link! Welcome aboard, Whateverites. Feel free to hang out a while. Put your feet up. Check out the archives. And don’t worry about breaking anything; most of my shit’s been broken already. It’s not yours until you break it, after all.

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Making it up as he goes….

OK, this is all over the place, but I’m probably not a geek in good standing if I don’t post it too, so: Indy’s back.

I’ve generally been ambivalent about a fourth Indiana Jones movie, but if they can make another good one, then I’m fine with it. I loved all three of the originals, although I don’t like Last Crusade as much as I did initially and I’ve found that Temple of Doom is actually better than I thought it was when it first came out. Raiders is, of course, a classic — and by pure chance, I listened to its score last week and was struck anew by how good John Williams was between 1975 (Jaws) and 1985, when he was just cranking out one amazing score after another with almost no let-downs.

I’m also kind of curious to see what happens when Indy IV comes out. If it’s good, we’ll hear about how Spielberg and Harrison Ford still got it, but if it’s a clunker, I’d bet real money that the villain is somehow George Lucas.

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Look at all the pretty spaceships….

I was just reading a message board thread somewhere — never mind where, not important — where several folks hold forth on the notion that the opening space battle in Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith is hard to follow because there’s so much visual stuff going on. I can only read that and wonder if they bothered trying to pay attention, or if they just closed their eyes and thought of England or something.

I saw that thing twice in the theaters on opening day, and even on DVD at reduced size, I’ve never had problems following that space battle. In fact, Lucas makes it easy to follow by putting his two hero Jedi in spaceships that are totally unique in the entire battle, designing those ships so their cockpits resemble those of the TIE fighters we know so well from the original trilogy, giving those two ships helpful little tongues of blue flame jetting from the engines (possible because the battle takes place in upper atmosphere), and he cuts to dialogue that explains what the hell’s going on. Anakin says something like, “We’re heading for the ship that’s crawling with vulture droids!”, and then the very next shot shows a ship that’s crawling with droids, and so on.

What I actually admire most about that space battle is that it seems to correct a problem I had with the spaceship effects in The Phantom Menace, in that too often the ships appear to move in a way that’s independent of the fact that the ships have mass. Compare the Queen’s starship lifting off from Naboo with, say, the Millennium Falcon lifting off from Mos Eisley or Hoth and you see what I mean. However, by the time of Revenge, the ships all seem to have quite a bit of weight involved. If that makes sense.

Anyway, geek moment over.

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How ’bout a sequel series called “The Mezzos”?

I never watched a single episode if The Sopranos, because quite frankly I’m just not interested in stories about the Mob or organized crime. I just find those kinds of tales generally wearisome and uninteresting. I know, The Sopranos was incredibly well-done and all and I should and could like it on that basis, but mob stuff just isn’t my cup of tea. (The only mob tale I remember really liking was Road to Perdition, and I remember getting really frustrated when it turned out that the shadowy force behind the law firm in Grisham’s The Firm was just your typical mob family.)

Having said all that, I find it interesting that so many people were shocked by the show’s apparent non-end ending. The best characterization I’ve read — and I can’t remember where — is that it’s still going on, we just can’t watch. This is apparently stunning creativity at work — but then, it isn’t, really. Both Cheers and Frasier ended on similar notes that made us wonder what happened after the final fade-out, and fantasy readers have debated what happens after three men see a riselka ever since Tigana came out. Heck, in eighth grade I remember having to read “The Lady and the Tiger”, which is the canonical non-ending ending.

I’m not expressing an opinion of any kind here, except to note with bemusement that all the debate about how it would end never seemed to consider the possibility that maybe it wouldn’t end at all.

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100 Things that I love about The Simpsons

Tosy and Cosh just did this. It’s not a blog-meme thing, but it’s just too good an idea to let pass. Soooo, here we go! (Quotes are approximate.)

1. “You must avenge my death, Kimba — I mean, Simba.”

2. “Check it out, Lis! If you play it one frame at a time, you can freeze the exact moment his heart breaks in pieces.”

3. Maggie’s enemy, the baby with one eyebrow.

4. Gerald R. Ford moving in across the street: “Homer, would you like to come over for beer and nachos?”

5. Homer’s inability to stop thinking of Flanders in his ski suit: “It’s almost like I’m wearing nothing at all!”

6. “An all-syrup Super Squishy? Such a thing has not been done!”

7. “Remove the Stone of Shame. Attach the Stone of Triumph!”

8. Leonard Nimoy’s introduction of the X-Files crossover episode: “All the things you are about to see are true. And by ‘true’, I mean, ‘false’.”

9. Tomacco.

10. “Me, fail English? That’s unpossible!”

11. “Come on, people! This poetry isn’t gonna appreciate itself!”

12. “Oh look, there’s Mount Carlmore.” “What does Carl think of that?” “Strangely, we’ve never discussed it.”

13. “For fifty bucks, this better be the best beer ever! [sips] You got lucky there, Moe!”

14. The Flaming Moe.

15. She-Hulk versus Leon Spinks: “Worst crossover ever.”

16. “Pray for Mojo….”

17. Homer walking through the paper walls in Japan.

18. “Hi, ev’reebody!” “Hi, Dr. Nick!”

19. Bart, human interest reporter: “Joe Banks… 82 years young has come to this pond every day for the past 17 years, to feed the ducks. But last month, Joe made a discovery… the ducks… were gone! Some say the ducks went to Canada, others say Toronto. And some people think, that joe used to sit down there, near those ducks. But it could be, that there is just no room in this modern world, for an old man… and… his ducks…”

20. “Yar, she blows!”

21. Springy, the Springfield Spring.

22. “Smithers, there’s a rocket in my pocket!”

23. Mr. Burns, after listening to The Ramones: “Have the Rolling Stones killed.”

24. “Will you take us to Mount Splashmore? Will you take us to Mount Splashmore? Will you take us to Mount Splashmore? Will you take us to Mount Splashmore? Will you take us to Mount Splashmore? Will you take us to Mount Splashmore? Will you take us to Mount Splashmore? Will you take us to Mount Splashmore? Will you take us to Mount Splashmore?”

25. “Press any key? Where’s the ‘any’ key?”

26. Nelson’s rationale for letting Bart handle his BB gun: “Sure, it never hurts to have another set of prints on a gun.”

27. Nelson turning out to be a devoted fan of Andy Williams.

28. Mel Gibson’s ultra-violent remake of Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.

29. Cletus, the slack-jawed yokel.

30. Kwyjibo.

31. “And I, for one, welcome our new insect overlords!”

32. “Yoink!”

33. “Ahoy hoy!”

34. Bart gets a nice photo of himself made for his mom for Christmas.

35. Jasper as a substitute teacher during the teachers’ strike: “That’s a paddlin’.”

36. Any time Homer screams.

37. “Okily-dokily!”

38. The church congregation holding up candles and lighters in honor of the organist’s rendition of “In-a-gadda-da-vida”.

39. Great opening sequence: the “Powers of Ten” zoom, from the Simpson’s living room out into space and then back into the world of the microscopic and back in the Simpsons’ living room. Homer: “Wow.”

40. The verb “embiggen”.

41. Principle Skinner trying to convince Superintendent Chalmers that he refers to hamburgers as “Steamed Hams”.

42. “We’re gonna paint that wagon, we’re gonna paint it good!”

43. “Who controls the British crown? Who keeps the metric system down? We do! We do!”

44. Bart distracting Sideshow Bob by betting him he can’t sing the entire score to The HMS Pinafore.

45. Sideshow Bob and rakes.

46. The Simpsons enter the Witness Protection Program: The Thompsons!

47. Yvan eht nioj!

48. Homer’s run as Springfield Garbage Commissioner: “I can’t believe we’re moving the whole town!”

49. Barney gives up booze…so Moe gets him addicted to cappuccino.

50. The ‘J’ in Homer J. Simpson stands for…Jay!

51. “Homer, this is the worst thing you’ve ever done!” “Marge, you’ve said that so much it’s lost all meaning.”

52. “Dad, do you even have a job anymore?” “I think it’s pretty obvious that I don’t!”

53. Flanders, after Homer’s raided his garden: “But did you have to salt the earth so that nothing will ever grow there again?” “Heh heh…yeah.”

54. Homer as football coach: “This is the easiest part of the coach’s job: the cuts!”

55. “Luke be a Jedi, tonight!”

56. Ralph Wiggum: “That’s where the leprechauns tell me to burn things!”

57. Y2K: Dick Clark’s robot self melts and explodes.

58. Bart trying to impress his older female babysitter by wearing a smoking jacket and “smoking” his bubble-pipe.

59. The Springfield Isotopes.

60. Homer’s inventions: electric hammer, recliner/toilet, chair that won’t tip over.

61. Homer’s sub crew singing “In the Navy”.

62. “We’re in international waters now, Bart! Look over there! That boat is rebroadcasting Major League Baseball with implied oral consent, not expressed written consent!”

63. Smithers feeding Mr. Burns spanish peanuts: “Skin!”

64. Frank Grimes.

65. Homer walking backwards all the way home after he sees Apu having an affair.

66. Jasper freezing himself at the Kwik-E-Mart.

67. Krusty’s Comeback Special: “Send in…the clowns….”

68. Bart drinking twelve glasses of water to ensure he gets up early Christmas morning, and his ensuing surreal dream about having to go to the bathroom, with cheerleaders screaming, “Give me a P! We’re number One! Go go go!”

69. Nelson as Lisa’s first boyfriend.

70. “Marge, I’m not gonna lie to you. Well, goodbye!”

71. The Simpsons run out on Jeopardy! after running up a huge tab. One of Trebek’s goons: “She ain’t gettin’ the home version.”

72. The Springfield Symphony Orchestra, playing the shower scene from Psycho on the bus home.

73. The missile destroying the only bridge out of town when a meteor is going to hit Springfield.

74. Homer’s bowling-ball beer bootlegging scheme.

75. Stealing the Springfield lemon tree.

76. Personages from PBS, including the Teletubbies, chasing Homer after he welches on his pledge-drive pledge.

77. “Listen to those bassoons! John Williams is rolling over in his grave!”

78. The Canyonero.

79. “Bart, do you think you can stop the casual swearing?” “Hell, no!”

80. The little city Lisa grows in a petri dish, which later dispatches a tiny spaceship to destroy Bart.

81. “Well, crying isn’t gonna bring him back, unless your tears smell like dog food. So you can either sit there crying and eating can after can of dog food until your tears smell enough like dog food to make your dog come back – or you can go out there and find your dog!”

82. “The Simpsons are going to ______!”

83. Homer on medicinal marijuana; he cuts himself shaving and bleeds little rainbows.

84. Abe Simpson dosing little Homer with Ny-Quil.

85. Maggie’s first word, unheard by anyone else.

86. That Texan guy who fires off his two six-shooters pretty much at the end of every sentence.

87. Fox Mulder’s ID badge, juxtaposed with a photo of himself in a Speedo.

88. Dana Scully, watching Homer on a treadmill: “His fat…it’s like watching a lava lamp.”

89. Homer’s failure to get Mr. Burns to remember who he is.

90. Homer’s ill-advised attempt to demonstrate to Lisa that Simpsons are not doomed to failure: “Should’ve researched this plan a little, eh, Dad?”

91. Bart gets a credit card.

92. Homer, after seeing Maggie all made-up by Lisa and her slumber-party friends: “OK, I’m goin’ to Moe’s.”

93. Homer’s time-traveling toaster, in which he flees a timeline where it rains donuts.

94. Bart as The Fly.

95. Lisa on jazz: “You have to listen to the notes that he isn’t playing!”

96. Marge’s crush on the Brawny paper-towel guy.

97. Maude Flanders’s dream, the amusement park Praiseland, with the ride where a giant animatronic King David reads all of the Psalms to the captive riders.

98. Bleeding Gums Murphy.

99. Abe Simpson always falling asleep in mid-sentence.

100. Slurm. (Oh, that’s Futurama. My bad.)

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I’ll take Door Number Three, Monty!

The other day I posted about my take from my local library’s quarterly book sale, a post which I titled “Monty Haul”. In comments there, Redsneakz asks about that title:

Is the phrase “Monty Haul” common koine? The only place I’ve seen it used is the infamous and uproarious “Bimbos of the Death Sun” by Sharyn McCrumb.

I’m not familiar with “Bimbos of the Death Sun”, but I came across the term “Monty Haul” in some of the old Advanced Dungeons and Dragons literature I used to own. I don’t remember which book this was specifically in, but the term refers to an AD&D campaign which basically boils down to “Kill the beastie with relative ease, take home the enormous treasure, lather, rinse, repeat”, with no real attention to storytelling or plot or role-playing. An extreme example would be a party of third-level characters coming across three or four kobolds, killing them in three or four combat rounds, and then finding that the kobolds had a million gold pieces and five scrolls each with one “Wish” spell on them.

A more detailed explanation of “Monty Haul” can be found here. I was lucky in that neither of the campaigns I played in college were “Monty Haul” campaigns. My first DM placed a far higher premium on role-playing (his earlier, high-school experiences with AD&D involved him and his fellow friends from the drama club using AD&D to hone their improvisational theatrical skills) than my second DM, who was more into action and puzzles. But both were good at making the rewards for action commensurate with the difficulties involved in the struggles.

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I thee web

So. Spiderman 3.

Here be Spoilers! Major Spoilers! I hold nothing back!

(But before I start: Hey Jen, was that you I may have glimpsed emerging from the theater with three people? I only got a brief glimpse before your party (if that was you) headed across the parking lot, and I wasn’t about to shout out “Hey Jen!” if you weren’t there and it was someone named Ashley or Morgan or something like that.)

And now, onto the movie.

I said, “Onto the movie. Here’s where I start SPOILING things. I’m not holding back. I’ll put all this in my pseudo-invisitext, but really — SPOILERS!

Once again, my reaction is split down the middle. Maybe not exactly down the middle, but I’m of two minds here. One mind loved the movie and had a blast watching it. The other mind — my inner Comic Book Geek — kept ticking off the things that annoyed me about the way these movies keep re-jiggering the whole Spiderman backstory.

I read some reviews the indicated the the film was overstuffed with plot, and it probably was; surely one less villain would have been fine. I’d have been OK with saving Venom and the whole black suit thing for Spiderman 4; Thomas Haden Church’s Sandman is compelling enough, and he continues the fine tradition in these movies of giving the villains reasons for their villainy — i.e., no one in a Spiderman movie is evil for the sake of being evil, which is very welcome. With both Sandman and Venom here, I thought that both characters ended up getting a bit short-changed — especially since you can’t have Venom until late in the film, after Peter has worn and rejected the black suit.

And it’s not just Sandman and Venom. We’ve also got the standard trials-and-tribulations of Peter Parker, because one of the best things about the whole Spiderman character was the conceit that while Spidey’s this awesome hero and stuff, in his everyday life, Peter Parker can never quite get his shit together. His love life and professional life and school life are always seemingly on the verge of snowballing out of control. I love that, and the movie wouldn’t have been a Spiderman movie without that stuff — but it adds running time. Plus, there’s the Harry Osborne storyline that’s been simmering for two movies already; they couldn’t put that off another movie. And then there’s Gwen Stacy — but we’ll get to her in a bit.

So yes, the movie is overstuffed. It’s very well done, so I was generally unaware of the overstuffing. Sam Raimi keeps things moving, and whenever things start slowing down, he either tosses in one of those signature action sequences or — even better — gives us a bit involving the frankly wonderful supporting cast of quirky characters that fill the margins of the movie. (Seriously, this movie is worth seeing just for the supporting cast — and there is one cameo appearance to which I almost cheered. ‘Nuff said.)

As is usually the case with movies like this, the best performances came from the villains. I knew that Topher Grace was in the movie, and I was a big fan of That 70s Show, so it shocked me to realize that I was watching Grace’s second scene in the movie before I realized it was him as weaselly Eddie Brock. Church was also superb as Sandman, and it was a shame that neither got really enough screen time. At least with Sandman, Raimi finally managed to break his long-standing habit in these movies of killing the villains so they can never be seen again.

(Really, what’s up with that? One of the charms of the comics is recurring villains, and now we can’t really see Doc Ock again. That’s a bummer.)

And now it’s time to really geek out a bit. Two things kept bugging me about this movie. First was the revisiting of Uncle Ben’s death, and the other was Gwen Stacy.

Everybody knows that the most important moment in Peter Parker’s life, when he learns his Great Life Lesson, is when Uncle Ben is shot at the hands of a two-bit crook whom Peter had let get away just hours before. This is when Peter learns that “With great power comes great responsibility”. However, in Spiderman 3, it’s revealed that the crook that had been identified as Uncle Ben’s killer in the first movie was actually just an accomplice for Flint Marko, the guy who becomes the Sandman. So in the movie, Peter is somewhat obsessed with catching and killing Marko — until the end, when Peter forgives him, and lets him go.

I had a hard time with all of this. Granted, the major bulk of this is spun out while Peter’s using the black costume, which feeds his hunger for vengeance, but I just didn’t like how they decided to retcon Uncle Ben’s death. The central guilt Peter feels for his uncle’s death is by far one of the two most important factors in the psychology of the character, and here the film seems to imply that no, maybe if Peter had stopped Marko’s accomplice, his uncle would still have been killed. This isn’t stated explicitly, but the implication is there, and it troubled me. Peter Parker should always be thinking, in some tiny part of his mind, “If only I’d stopped that guy.”

And then there’s the other most important component in SpiderPsychology: Gwen Stacy.

First of all, they got her looking perfect in this movie. That’s exactly how I always figured Gwen Stacy would look in real life. They even got her trademark black headband in there.

But…I’m trying, folks, but there’s a big chunk of my GeekBrain that will not accept a Spiderman reality in which (a) Gwen wasn’t Peter Parker’s first true love, and (b) Gwen doesn’t die at the hands of the Green Goblin. The first movie bothered me in this regard as well, when it constructed its climactic battle scene to resemble Gwen’s death in the comics (Green Goblin, the Brooklyn Bridge), but with Mary Jane as the damsel in distress and with her surviving. But now, in Spiderman 3, along comes Gwen, the real deal. And the first time Spiderman has to come to her rescue, it’s because she’s falling from a great height, and he snags her with his webbing to break her fall.

So again the Spiderman movie people tease with elements of Gwen’s iconic death scene — but they couldn’t kill her now, because the movies have already established that MJ is Peter’s first true love, not Gwen. So as pretty as Gwen is, she’s just not Gwen Stacy. Not in the true sense. The producers could just as well have named her Carolyn Smith. She doesn’t even have that much screentime, so having Gwen Stacy here doesn’t really serve any purpose except to add a damsel in distress.

If I have another complaint, it’s a fairly minor one — but a lot of the film’s plot developments hinge on pure chance (a meteor hitting the Earth just thirty feet or so from where Peter and MJ are cavorting in the woods), or on characters’ relationships going awry and having those characters refuse to just speak up and explain themselves. And there’s a moment when Harry Osborne’s butler or manservant or whatever he is finally comes clean with some information he’s apparently been sitting on for years; I wanted Harry’s response to this to be something along the lines of, “You know, had you said this years ago, you might have saved me a whole lot of trouble.”

On the whole, I enjoyed the third movie more than I did the first, but not quite as much as the second. I’ll take it. And really, it’s worth seeing just for the amazing Sandman effects alone.

OK, we’re done with spoilers. It’s a very fun movie. A great time was had by all.

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