Alarming News: I like Morgan Freeberg. A lot.
American Digest: And I like this from "The Blog That Nobody Reads", because it is -- mostly -- about me. What can I say? I'm on an ego trip today. It won't last.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: We were following a trackback and thinking "hmmm... this is a bloody excellent post!", and then we realized that it was just part III of, well, three...Damn. I wish I'd written those.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: ...I just remembered that I found a new blog a short while ago, House of Eratosthenes, that I really like. I like his common sense approach and his curiosity when it comes to why people believe what they believe rather than just what they believe.
Brutally Honest: Morgan Freeberg is brilliant.
Dr. Melissa Clouthier: Morgan Freeberg at House of Eratosthenes (pftthats a mouthful) honors big boned women in skimpy clothing. The picture there is priceless--keep scrolling down.
Exile in Portales: Via Gerard: Morgan Freeberg, a guy with a lot to say. And he speaks The Truth...and it's fascinating stuff. Worth a read, or three. Or six.
Just Muttering: Two nice pieces at House of Eratosthenes, one about a perhaps unintended effect of the Enron mess, and one on the Gore-y environ-movie.
Mein Blogovault: Make "the Blog that No One Reads" one of your daily reads.
The Virginian: I know this post will offend some people, but the author makes some good points.
Poetic Justice: Cletus! Ah gots a laiv one fer yew...
Inside a movie, there are objects. Characters are objects, the cars they drive, and the “maguffins” they steal from each other, are objects. These objects are stateful things. They are sane or they aren’t sane, living or dead, lit up with magic or not. When an object changes its state, you could say an “event” has taken place.
A character learning something is definitely such an event, since the knowledge-base of that character is a state. The audience has a knowledge-base too, so when something is revealed to the audience, that is an event. String together a bunch of events, and you have a story. Do it right, and you have a good story.
I’m not entirely sure if the time-honored tradition of telling a story in a movie is gone for good. But it certainly does seem to be on its way out. Let me see…what events happened in Resident Evil: Afterlife? There are quite a few deaths, but a lot of them don’t stick. I’m not talking about people dying and then becoming zombies; that would be two events. I’m talking about undoing the death event — “Marion wasn’t in the basket that went into the truck” and “We don’t know what death means to a Vulcan,” that kinda stuff. That’s cute when there are other, real, events driving a story. When there are few or no other events, it’s just annoying.
With only the minor characters dying and staying dead, we’re left with: Uh, not much. There was a tidbit of enticing information learned by the main characters about a boat; a plane was landed and took off; a plane crashed; another plane was flying and it landed on a building.
A bunch of people got together, and moved from Point A to Point B.
That’s about it. A selected group of badasses proved over and over again what incredible badasses they were. One character even ran up a wall & did a flip, to land behind the big bad guy who was chasing her into the wall. Wow, I’ll bet you never saw that before didja?
This movie’s primary strength is that of all the things it fails at doing, it never really tried to do. But you know what? That only excuses so much. The visual effects were great, but that only provides so much.
There just isn’t any substitute for a good, strong story. That’s why movies should not be made from video games…and for the foreseeable future, I think I’m done with them now.
Also, there wasn’t enough boobage.
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Ran up a wall and did a flip. Ha! Why doesn’t the person doing the chasing ever just stop, and say “that friggin’ moron is running straight at a wall. I’m gonna hang back here and see how this turns out.”
- Andy | 09/20/2010 @ 10:01