Attack of the Super-Duper Cute Bears!: Watching Return of the Jedi with Lily

Lily was looking forward to this one, because she had heard that it had Jabba the Hutt. I asked her why she was interested in seeing him, and she said it was because she knew he was "blobby" and that she likes "blobby" people, which also explains why we're so close. 

Someone I used to know had an uncharacteristically cogent observation about Return of the Jedi. "George Lucas could have given us anything, and he gave us Ewoks."

I think that really sums it up. It's fairly well-known among Star Wars fans that Ewoks were originally supposed to be Wookiees, and making them babbling arboreal midgets is the very definition of missed opportunity. (Though speaking of Wookiees, "Wookieepedia" is an awesome name for the Star Wars wiki). Only slightly less well known is the fact that the word "Ewok" is never spoken once in the series and yet it's a household word. Jen, hardly the biggest Star Wars fan in the world, knows what they are.

Now, mind the Ewoks are not an inherently bad concept. I mean savage, man-eating pygmies almost invisible in their natural habitat? They could have been terrifying if they were presented in the right way, like furry versions of the Predator. But they weren't and we got a bunch of yub-yubbing Teddy bears. The gulf between how cool they could have been could have been and how lame is they are is so vast that the difference in scale becomes a difference in kind.

Yub Yub

Also, Wicket the Ewok has a middle and last name. It makes me wonder if his mom took his dad's last name when they got married.  What the Fuck, Lucas?! Way to sell the myth of a galaxy far, far away.

As an aside, does anyone else remember the blacked out images on the back of the Jedi action figures? On the back of the packaging for the figures, they used to have a lineup of all the figures available for that set, and the Ewoks were so super sekrit that the images were blacked out. As a kid I assumed it was a printing error, but now I see that it must have been they were trying to keep a lid on what an Ewok was.

Okay, enough about the fucking Ewoks.

I was listening to the Return of the Jedi radio play a couple days before I saw the movie and it's really pretty good. The dialogue is generally improved over the the movie. I'll include a little commentary on the play as it relates to the movie throughout this review.

Radio Play: The radio play begins with Luke narrating the creation of his new lightsaber. I think it was a bit better than the movie opening, with its incongruous Wizard of Oz homage. This page says that someone named Joshua Fardon played Luke Skywalker and he really sounded like Mark Hamill.

I like radio plays. Because everything is done without visuals, the format lead to awesome lines like C3PO "Yes, Jabba the Hutt would be the huge, sluglike individual on the dais" or a cackling Palpatine on the Death Star exulting "Splendid! The son has struck off the father's hand!" The temporarily blind Han works, because he, like the audience, needs someone to explain to him what's happening. It was a pretty interesting cast, with Anthony Daniels reprising his role, Yeardley Smith (Lisa Simpson!) as a random droid in Jabba's palace, Ed Asner as Jabba and John Lithgow as Yoda.

Oh, here's an interesting bit of trivia:&nbspAlso introduced in the storyline is a brief appearance of a dancer named Arica in the palace of Jabba the Hutt... a character whose true identity is that of popular Star Wars Expanded Universe character Mara Jade, established to have been present there in the Timothy Zahn-penned novel trilogy starting with "Heir to the Empire". Yay for continuity porn!

The scene in the movie where Vader goes to oversee construction of the Death Star really works well. It has a zillion stormtroopers in the docking bay and "The Emperor is not as forgiving as I am" really sets up the Emperor as a figure to be feared. It's this scene that makes me think of Vader as the Imperial version of Harvey Keitel's character from Pulp Fiction. He's the guy they send in to clean things up when the situation is messed up beyond repair. And if you're the officer in charge, the last thing you want is this hyperventilating asshole showing up and bossing your troops around and probably strangling a bunch of people. (From the abridged script: Commander: "Greetings Anni. I’m so glad you could come here and kill those of us who fail you.")

I love it that Wikipedia has a List of Star Wars superweapons.

The first two movies were these epic adventures, this just seemed like someone's game session gone awry, the rescue attempt in the beginning in particular. Contrived way to get everyone in the party in the mix? Check! Needlessly complex plan that implodes almost immediately? Check! Chucking the plan and just killing everybody when that happens? Check plus!

Radio Play: I thought the radio version of Jabba's Palace was better than the movie. There was a quick scene with Han and Boba Fett after Han is thawed out with Han taunting Fett that he didn't really do all that much to capture him ("All you did was fetch and carry me") and Fett kind of shrugging it off "Tomorrow I'll collect another bounty and you'll be dead." I really liked that. He seems scarier because it's all business to him.

Leia as the Mighty Boushh is a gimmick that was surprising to an eight-year old Josh, but not something that holds up on subsequent viewings.

Lily liked it, though.

(I know the image is oriented the wrong way. Just tilt either your head or your computer.)

The Rancor looks like it came from the Land of the Lost, and I still feel bad for the Rancor Keeper when it dies. 

Lily was unimpressed with the Sarlaac. "It's just a mouth in the sand."

Radio Play: When Boba Fett falls into the Sarlaac, somebody yells "No one could have survived that!" which is a phrase that always makes me smile, because it's so awesomely corny and it means of course he survived it. The EU tells us that he blasted his way out almost immediately. (It also tells us that some 20 to 30 aliens survive the exploding sail barge, so take that for what it's worth.)

Radio Play: Flying away from Tattooine, Leia says "I'm going to find some clothes that don't require a cabaret permit," and Han is like "Hey, you're not going to throw those away, are you?!" *smile* "We'll see." I thought that was kind of cute.

As the Millenium Falcon was departing, Lily asked "Is the movie over already?" In doing a little research for this piece, I've found that this is not an uncommon question among kids, and it kind of highlights some of the structural problems with the movie. It's really almost three movies, one on Tattooine, one on Endor and the other on and around the Death Star. 

Lily asked "Why is Leia naked?" when we first see her in her metal bikini, and that element just doesn't seem to belong in the same movie as the Ewoks.

The scene on Dagobah

Yoda: Your father he is. Told you, did he?

Luke: Yes.

Yoda: Unexpected this is, and unfortunate.

Luke: Unfortunate that I know the truth?

Yoda: No! Unfortunate, that you rushed to face him! That, incomplete was your training! That, not ready for the burden were you.

I'm going to be as generous as possible here and accept Yoda's claims that to he was going to tell Luke that Vader was his father after his training was done. Doing it when he abruptly quit his training and ran off to confront Vader would have been the wrong time, so it's not so much "I'm sorry that you know" as much as "I'm sorry you had to find out like this."

That's overshadowed by the scene immediately following it, where Obi Wan tries to weasel his way out of the whole thing, "I didn't tell you an outright lie when I was trying to set you up to murder your father, so why are you getting so bent out of shape about this?" He should have just accepted that he was wrong, said he was going to tell Luke when he was ready and left it there. Trying to skate by an extremely dubious technicality is douchery of the highest order.

None of this occurred to Lily, however. Her first thought on hearing that Luke and Leia were siblings was to ask, "Does that mean Luke is a prince?"

What I didn't say: "No, actually the throne of Naboo is an elected position, not a hereditary one. Leia is considered a princess because she was adopted by Breha Organa, Queen of, and Minister of Education to Alderaan, and wife of Bail Organa, Alderaan's representative to the Senate," 

What I did say: "You bet!"

Lily liked seeing Mon Mothma, exclaiming, "A girl. Finally!"

Endor: I can almost imagine Chewbacca's player, when he gets the party snared in the net, saying, "But I was just role-playing my character!" 

"It is against my programming to impersonate a deity," (Radio Play: "Let me open you up and fix that.") This has been the source for countless jokes. Is this really a problem with protocol droids? I'm sure that my friends and I can't be the only one to observe that's an awfully specific prohibition. (It's possible that this falls under the umbrella of some broader behavioral guidelines, but the way it was phrased doesn't suggest that.) I'm sure the EU explains this somewhere.

Luke: Leia, do you remember your mother? Your real mother?

Leia: Just a little bit. She died when I was very young.

Yeah, like when you were seven minutes old. Come on! Yes, I know the prequels weren't yet written, but I wish they would have made at least a token effort to explain this part. 

Lily, unfortunately, loved the Ewoks.

Lily: I think the bear has a crush on her.

Me: It's called an Ewok.

Lily: Awww....the Ewok is cute.

Me: *Twitch*

Lily: It looks like a little Koala!

Later on, when an Ewok was tackling a stormtrooper, she pretended the stormtrooper was saying, "Ah! Get those super-duper cute bears away from me!"

And while I'm bitching about Endor, let's talk about the Tarzan yell. What the fuck was that about? I do have to respect Lucas, who must have been getting crap from fans like me for years and instead of giving the fans what they want, instead doubles down and gives us TWO Tarzan-warbling wookiees in the prequels.

I like Nien Nunb. He's Lando's goofy little alien sidekick. Admiral Ackbar ("It's a trap!") sounds more like Grover than Yoda ever did in the radio play, but the designs for both of them were top notch in the movie. (Speaking of Nien Nunb, I always think of this account of one of our Star Wars games when someone mentions Sullustans. "Well, the rebel base was compromised, so I went to a club and got lots of lap dances, while the Wookies hung out at the bar and killed Sullustans." The ideas our group came up with make Luke's plan for rescuing Han look like the heist from Ocean's 11.) Jen asked "Who's that?" when she saw him, and then cried a little when I said, "Do you you mean his species or his name?"

Speaking of Admiral Ackbar, Lily and I came up with a joke. (Though we came up with this independently, I can't imagine we're the first or only ones to make this particular joke.)

Knock Knock.

Who's there?

Admiral Ackbar.

Admiral Ack-

It's a trap!

Jedi's kind of crappy in a lot of ways, but the assault on the Death Star is really spectacular and off the top of my head, I can't think of a better space battle before or since. The music that accompanies it is my very favorite piece of work in a series distinguished by its excellent music. Wikipedia has a really good 

article on the subject. And there's Wedge as Red Leader! Hi, Wedge!

I kind of recall Lucas saying that arc of the movies was always about the fall and redemption of Anakin Skywalker. Sure, George, and they were always brother and sister. That said, I do think that is the element that works best in this movie. I like the scene where Luke and Vader are riding the elevator (In the special editions, the Girl from Ipanema is playing) up to Palpatine's throne room. 

Mark Hamill is certainly not the best actor in the series, but he has matured over the course of the trilogy, and he sells Luke's quiet conviction that his father can be redeemed. I didn't appreciate it as a kid, but he's on the Death Star as distraction, and he's there to redeem his father. He has no reason to believe either of them are going to live through this.

Radio Play: Palpatine was hamming it up. He was like Raul Julia in Street Fighter. It made Ian McDiarmid's performance in the movie look positively restrained. I could imagine him in the studio, milking the giant cow when he was delivering lines like "So the Jedi SUMMONS his lightsaber and it FLIES to his hand!" I thought he was going to break into song.

The prequels were an even greater missed opportunity than Jedi itself, but there is one element that adds to the appreciation of original trilogy. When Luke is being electrocuted by the Emperor, it parallels the scene when Anakin had to choose between helping Palpatine or helping Mace. He made the wrong choice then and it damned him. He makes the right one now and it redeems him.

Vader is played by Sebastian Shaw, but his power to absorb kinetic energy does him no good here.

Uh oh. I got your X-Men in my Star Wars. Wow, this is getting geeky even by my standards. Time to wrap it up.

I asked Jen what she thought and she said "Luke seems less whiny." It's an okay movie with a couple brilliant parts, but resent it for not delivering on the promises of Empire. Was it good? Sure. It was good. Was it great? No. And I was looking for a clever way to end this post and I couldn't think of one, but that's the perfect metaphor for Jedi. Sure, it ends the series and wraps up most of the loose ends. But it doesn't do so in an interesting or meaningful way. "First it started to fall over, then it fell over."

Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter: Watching the Empire Strikes Back with Lily

We continued our Star Wars viewing with the Empire Strikes Back. As with Star Wars, I hadn't seen it in ages. I had watched it once since Lily was born, but before that, I hadn't seen it since the Special Editions were released in theaters. It was always my favorite, but I found myself wondering if it was as good as I remembered or if that was just rose-colored nostalgia. So we watched it...




...and it was better than I remembered. I think it may be one of the very best science fiction movie ever made.

I don't want to say that this is the best of the series because it was the movie in which George Lucas was the least involved, but rather because he stuck to his strengths. He's credited with the story, and even his detractors admit that he's a great idea man, and here he delegated the screenplay and the directing to those who would do a better job. I don't want to rag on the man, so let me say that he still had perspective when he was producing Empire.  And it's awesome because of it.

Seeing the movie again reminds me of how influential it was on my childhood. On some level, I think of each costume change as a different person. When Han puts on his fur lined coat to look for Luke, in some way I perceive him as a different character entirely. And I know exactly why this is, because they were separate characters in the toy line. Funny how this lingers with me, though.

Speaking of the toys, I was huge into Star Wars, like every other boy in the 1980s. (Maybe girls were too, but I thought they were icky back then) I remember reading about Mnemonic devices around the time of the movie and I saw a toy called Cap 2 and I told my Grammy that the way she could remember was to visualize two bottle caps. I can't remember if I got the toy, but I still remember that mnemonic device twenty years later.

Vader orders Julian Glover to destroy the shield generators on Hoth. Though he was thwarted by the Doctor at the tail end of the 1970s, this time he remembers to bring his AT-AT.

Man, Scaroth really was scattered all over the place.

To digress for a moment, I've always like the AT-AT. (Here's a link to one made out of Legos!) Like so many things in Star Wars, they're striking and instantly recognizable. They're referred to as "Imperial Walkers" in the movie, which I think is a better name, because AT-AT just sounds silly if you say it out loud.

It's not the most practical weapon (AT-AT stands for All Terrain Armored Transport, which is clearly bullshit, because in a race up the stairs, it's coming in third after ED-209 and a Dalek), but my understanding is that they're intended as terror weapons to demoralize opposing armies/civilian populations, and it's no stretch at all to believe that.

NPR put together some radio plays adapting the movies, and I want you to remember that next time somebody talks about cutting NPR's funding.  For some basic details on the plays, go to this link: Star Wars Radio Plays.

I was listening to the radio play for Empire, and it's a lot of fun. Brian Daley did the work on them and I think he did an outstanding job adapting a series renowned for its visuals to a medium where he couldn't depend on those visuals at all.

In Echo base on Hoth, a nameless Lieutenant tries to convince Han not to go out after Luke.

    Han: It's cold out there.

    Lieutenant: (Deadpan) I'm aware of that, sir. I joined with the Rebels because I notice things.

    Han: If Luke dies out there, Chewie's going to get mad. Do you think General Rieekan wants a quarter ton of Wookiee rampaging through his base?

    Lieutenant: (Deadpan) I'm reasonably certain he doesn't, sir.

It's not that funny on its own, but the delivery made me laugh.

The scene with the tauntaun was as gross as I remembered. "And I thought they smelled bad on the outside."

As an aside, the Video Game based on this (Star Wars Trilogy) was awesome and the Hoth levels were the best. My college had a copy in the lounge and always set it to free play during finals week. Also, the old Atari game was a lot of fun, and we got a huge amount of play time out of it back in the day.

I didn't notice this during the game, but the bridge of the Ravager from KOTOR II was clearly modeled on the bridge of Vader's star destroyer. I don't mind, because it's an awesome design.

Yoda worked much better than I had been fearing. I mean he's a Muppet with the voice of Grover, neither of which is a recipe for gravitas. The lighting on Dagobah helped, but I think the thing that really made him work is that he really does sound wise. Too often, what passes for wisdom in the movies are simply Sphinx-like aphorisms "When you doubt your powers, you give power to your doubts", but Yoda really seems ancient and sad.

Unfortunately, Ben and Yoda are part of where the problems begin to creep in. Spinning a bunch of lies in order to get a kid to kill his dad is a pretty shitty thing to do, regardless of your "point of view".

When Luke is taking off for Cloud City and Obi Wan says "That boy is our last hope", and Yoda is illuminated by the light of the engines (love that part) and says, "No. There is another."

Jen asked me if fandom knew at this point that Luke and Leia were siblings. I said that I'm pretty sure that Lucas didn't know it either. He was clearly making up portions as he was going along. Otherwise, the bit where Leia sticks her tongue down her brother's throat would have been handled differently, and Ben would have left a lot more ambiguity in his statements about Vader. I don't think there was any specific person attached to Yoda's line. It's cool and it's deliberately vague, so they could plug in the appropriate character when they figured out who it was going to be.

Jen thought that Han was being a jerk when Leia tells him that she loves him and he replies, "I know," but I still like that line.

There's a weird transition in Cloud City that gets me every time. Luke walks in, a door drops down and cuts him off from R2 and then it immediately cuts to a platform rising up beneath Luke. He walked in, then rose up and it's like there's some intermediate step missing there.

Vader was a beast in this fight. I didn't appreciate until this viewing, but Vader is just slapping the shit out of Luke. It was like watching Mike Tyson go ten rounds with some guy at the gym. I remembered the battles in the original trilogy being kind of lackluster compared the wuxia spectacles of the prequels, but this one was tremendous. Pay special attention next time you watch. Luke has both hands on his lightsaber and he's swinging for the fences and Vader is parrying these ferocious cuts one-handed. He smacks Luke around a couple times just because he can and when he knocks him into the carbon freezing chamber and says, "All too easy," it really seems like it was.

I can't think of a time when I didn't know that Vader was Luke's father, but I probably didn't know it going in the first time. Lily did, unfortunately. She had been at summer camp and one of the other kids there had spoiled it for her. When I mentioned this on Facebook, my friend Dave asked if I were considering legal action.

I'm glad we got to show the trilogy to Lily, but there was no way she could have the same experience I did as a kid.  The gap between movies worked. It allowed the mythology to build. That was part of the reason why the early Dark Tower books worked and the later ones didn't. With the Dark Tower, there was an average of five years between installments for the first four books then bang-bang-bang (I'd say no pun intended, but that's a lie) all three of them come out within months. There was no time for the concepts inside them to build up resonance.

With Star Wars, kids spent three years (and a year is longer for a kid than an adult) debating if Vader was really Luke's father and why they would be going back to Tatooine. I love the internet, but it was different back then. Even if we had waited for a couple weeks or even months between movies, it wouldn't have been the same experience. I mean Lily had a t-shirt with Yoda on it for a good year before she ever saw the movie.

I enjoyed watching the first two movies, but I don't know how I can continue this with Jedi. There's a line from an excited nerd in one Simpsons comic, "This will make the Empire Strikes Back look like Return of the Jedi!" One or two things looked fake to an adult living in 2013, but this was still one of the best movies ever made. And sure, it's not unusual for a series to undergo a little bit of a decline. Return of the King won Best Picture, but I'm inclined to believe that this was awarded for the trilogy as a whole. (I happen to think Two Towers was better but not leaps and bounds better as was Empire over Jedi.) I mean, I guess I'll watch it and I'll try to appreciate the good parts.

Ultimately, I love it because the movie is full of real people doing real things, an element lacking in the prequels. Rogue 2 breaks into a smiles when he hears Han respond to his call, and that's exactly like what a real person would do there. Or when Chewbacca is flipping out on Cloud City and Boba Fett goes to shoot him and Darth Vader, who is standing next to him, just pushes the barrel of his gun down. He seems to be saying, "Relax, it's just a Wookiee." Or Han, butting it and offering his arm to Leia when he sees Lando offering his.

Okay, stay tuned for the recap of Jedi, whenever I get around to it. And may the Force be with you, always.

A long time ago in a galaxy with a six-year-old: Watching Star Wars with Lily

It's hard to find something to say about Star Wars. It's been so influential on my life (one of my earliest memories is seeing it at a drive in with my parents before they split up) and on film making, and, really, my generation as a whole. I can barely get through a conversation without dropping a Star Wars reference. We had previously tried to watch the movie as a family about a year ago, but Lily was just a little too young to appreciate it, so we shelved it after the trash compactor scene and never got back to watching it. We gave it another go last week. 

My friend Dave says the special editions show Lucas beginning to lose his mind, but they're prettier. (Personally I'm holding out for the EXTRA special edition, where Alderaan shoots first.) We didn't watch those. This was the original, Han-shoots-first, no-New-Hope-at-the-beginning-of-the-crawl version of the film. And it kicked ass, thank you very much.

Somebody pointed out that the original is the only Star Wars movie that doesn't take place in the Star Wars universe, and I think that makes a lot of sense. It stands on its own. I think that Empire is a better movie, but it wouldn't have been possible without Star Wars. The Expanded Universe, which is what the vast body of novels and comics and trading card minutia is called, is something of a mess. Take a random alien from the cantina. Odds are, somebody wrote a story about his twenty years of bounty hunting.

My favorite story about the EU is sadly apocryphal, but it's too amusing not to share. When Princess Leia first meets with Grand Moff Tarkin, she sneers at him, "Governor Tarkin, I should have expected to find you holding Vader's leash. I recognized your foul stench when I was brought on board." 

The way the account went is that there was allegedly this story where the author established that Tarkin suffered from "Tarkin's Syndrome", a disease that caused him to exude terrilbe body odor. Again, it's not true, there is no such story, but that's the kind of literal-minded explanations for things that don't need explaining that you find in the EU.

Speaking of Tarkin, Peter Cushing was wonderful. "Jesus, Vader, stop strangling all my dudes!" 

Sir Alec Guinness was awesome too. Seeing him again reminded me that Ewan McGregor did a great job emulating his mannerisms.So many of the quotable lines are his and it's strange to go back, and hear him talking about Mos Eisley being a wretched hive of scum and villainy when the line has been so riffed and referenced almost everywhere.  Lily says Ben is her favorite character after Princess Leia.

Speaking of whom, Carrie Fisher was really pretty excellent too. It's hard to believe that Princess Armadillo from the Planet Badactoria was supposed to be her mom.  Lily has welcomed her into the Princess Pantheon. She's right up there with Wonder Woman as "Princesses who aren't too fancy". 
 
She's not a fan of Chewbacca, however, whom she describes as "The gorilla that looks like it had its face cut off."

My friend Eric is fond of observing that Lucas's directing consists of "Faster! More intense!", but this was back when he was pretty good. He was never Stanley Kubrick, but he was once a competent director of actual human beings.
 
The music! That era was really phenomenal for movie music. I'm a big fan of John Williams. Back when I was doing surveys in college, my last name was too ethnic, so I had to pick a fake name and I went with John Williams.
 
It's really amazing how well nearly everything in the movie has held up. It doesn't look like a product of a specific era, and it looks "lived in" something that Lucas has said was one of his goals. The effects have heft. The movie was made on a shoestring, and I think that working around these limitations is what gives it such enduring appeal.
 
Lily really likes the trash compactor monster. (Feel free to drop by and tell me what its actual name is.) We were playing Akinator the online 20 questions came where a genie tries to guess what you're thinking. Lily tried to stump him with the Dianoga (oh, I already looked up the name. Too slow, nerds!), but he was too smart for us. 

She knew there was more than one movie, but she didn't have any ideas about what they contained. We had the following conversation.

Me: Everyone from Star Wars is coming back for the second movie!

Lily: Yes! Is Luke coming back?

Me: Yes.

Lily: Is the princess coming back?

Me: Yes.

Lily: Is Chewbacca coming back?

Me: Yes.

Lily: Is the mean guy coming back?

Me: Yes.

Lily: Is the guy who got his arm cut off coming back?

Me: You mean Ponda Baba. And no. Nobody gives a shit about him. Also, you are so my daughter.

Bonus! Links to some of my favorite Star Wars sites:

The Nitpicker's Guide to Star Wars: We kid because we love.
 
Star Wars Technical Commentaries: An actual astrophysicist looks at the science of Star Wars and tries to explain away some of the problems. Worth it for this quote:"If a source is uncomfortable or incongruent at face value, it is often possible to add background circumstances to alter its significance and give a more realistic perspective.", which is very similar to my stance and what the author did for the novelization of Revenge of the Sith. It's all good, but of particular awesomeness is the page where he points out the destruction of the second Death Star would have depopulated Endor: Endor Holocaust

50 reasons why Return of the Jedi sucks: It's certainly the weakest of the trilogy, but I have new affection for it in the wake of the prequels.

Abridged Script to the Phantom Menace: There are abridged scripts for all of the movies, but I think this is the funniest.

We've already watched Empire, so keep an eye for the post on Lily's impressions.

Gravity Falls Review: Bottomless Pit!

With "Bottomless Pit!",( much like Jeopardy, we mustn't forget the exclamation point), we get the first anthology episode of the series. I had never associated the show strongly with the Simpsons. Sure, it's an animated comedy series with a brother and sister and an overweight man-child but it's had a distinct enough identity to avoid such comparisons up until now. But the Simpsons is also renowned for its Treehouse of Horror anthology episodes, the fifth of which, the one with "The Shinning", Homer changing the future and kids being eaten in the cafeteria, is, in my opinion, one of the very best episodes of the series that has spanned twenty years.

This is by no means, a bad episode, mind you; it's very funny in parts,just not as consistently riotous as, say, the Time Traveler's Pig or Fight Fighters. It's a bit lackluster in parts, is all, and coupled with the fact that the format reminds me of funnier episodes from another series, probably makes me less charitable than it deserves.

The episode begins with Dipper, Mabel, Soos and Stan chucking items into a nearby bottomless pit, but the wind picks up and "an invisible pushing force" knocks them in.

As they're falling, Soos suggests they tell stories to pass the time. Dipper says "I've got a story! It's called the time Grunkle Stan got us thrown in a bottomless pit where we spent the rest of our natural lives!" and Soos strokes his chin and exhorts Dipper to "go on" in a such a way that does nothing to disabuse the viewer of Simpsons parallels. 

Dipper is up first and his story is called "Voice over," and is probably the weakest of the lot. After Wendy, Soos and Mabel put together a techno remix of Dipper's squeaky-voiced exclamations, Dipper resolves to change his voice. I do appreciate the absurdity of Kristen Schaal making fun of someone else's voice, however.

He runs into Old Man McGucket, who happens to be working on a voice changing potion. Dipper drinks it and his voice changes to a deep, resonant radio announcer's voice when he wakes up. There's a running gag where his friends beat him with blunt objects because they don't recognize his voice, but it's mostly a pretty flat installment.

I really liked the next one, though. 

"Soos' Really Great Pinball Story" (Told by Soos) Is That a Good Title? Do They Have to Be Puns or Whatever?

Soos is playing pinball on Stan's creepy old pinball machine, Tumbleweed Terror, and hopes to knock "POO" off the high score list. 

 When he can't do it, the twins recommend that he tilt the machine to give himself an edge. He gets the high score, but the vengeful talking skull inside the machine shrinks them down and traps them inside.

Dipper: Guys, there's an awful lot of green lightning coming out of that game.
Soos: Naw, that's a normal amount of green lightning.

At first they're excited, ("Hushed exclamation of wonder!"), but when they realize that the machine brought them inside to punish, the bloom some comes off this particular rose.

Soos knows where there is a manual reset, so after a brief flirtation with the pinball wench, he has Mabel arrange a distraction, ("Are either of you good at jumping up and down and making annoying noises?") so he could trigger it.

"My time has come."

He balks when he realizes that he'll erase his high score, but finally does the right thing when the twins are in trouble and resets the game.

Grunkle Stan has a very brief installment where he talks about how he won "The Football Bowl", which is self-aggrandizing and dissatisfying to the other listeners. I liked it, though.

Dig that Pitt Cola sign!

Mabel finished off the episode with the strongest story, "Truth Ache", where after Stan lies his way out of a ticket by claiming he has a doctor's note for a seeing eye bear after he's pulled over for trying to teach a bear to drive.

What seems to be the problem, officers?

Why, it's right here inside my jacket.

This offends Mabel's sense of justice, so she seeks out some magical teeth that force Stan to tell the truth all the time. Of course, telling the truth all the time when you have little or no concern for other people's possessions or emotions is a pretty bad idea, and Mabel and Dipper tackle him while he's in the process of calling the police station to admit his massive tax fraud.

At the end of the episode the pit spits them out right where they fell in, right in front of Gravity Falls' ubiquitous goat.

In this land of ours, there are many great pits, but none so bottomless as the the bottomless pit.

I enjoyed it. It was a nice change of pace and pretty funny in parts.

Movie Review: 50/50

Jen and I watched 50/50 last week and rather enjoyed it.

It's got a lot going for it. Angelica Huston adds a touch of class to any production that includes her (I didn't watch Ever After for Drew Barrymore, that's for sure), I've loved Seth Rogan since his Freaks & Geeks days, it stars my hetero-crush Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Anna Kendrick, who has been amazing in everything in which I've seen her and is the second prettiest person in the movie.

And shit, I already MADE that "second prettiest" joke in my Ten Things I Hate About You review.

Anyway, moving on.

It's a story of Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Adam, a healthy twenty-something who learns he has cancer, which is not, one would imagine, the most fertile ground for a comedy. But of course it works because of, and not in spite of the subject matter.

It reminds me of Stranger in a Strange land: "I had thought — I had been told — that a 'funny' thing is a thing of a goodness. It isn't. Not ever is it funny to the person it happens to...The goodness is in the laughing itself. ...it is a bravery . . . and a sharing… against pain and sorrow and defeat."

Gordon-Levitt's Adam is largely the straight man to Rogen's Kyle, though he gets in a few good lines on his own, (On learning he has cancer: "That doesn't make any sense though. I mean... I don't smoke, I don't drink... I recycle...) and on picking up girls:

Kyle: You could have totally fucked the shit out of that girl.
Adam: No one wants to fuck me. I look like Voldemort.

And speaking of people who look like Voldemort, Matt Frewer was in the movie.

When he came on the screen, I was like "Hey, look, it's Max Headroom! Ha ha ha! Oh...wait. It really is. Suddenly, my observation seems less funny."

I also like Bryce Dallas Howard as Rachel, Adam's girlfriend. I had only seen her in Spider-Man 3, and nobody came out of that looking good,

but she gives a great portrayal of a sympathetic...villain. And villain isn't exactly the right word, as the cancer is the villain of the story, but that's the only one that seems to fit.

I like the scene where Kyle, Seth Rogen's character, outs her to Adam about her infidelity.

Kyle: I was in the neighborhood - I was just on a date with Claire, the girl I met at the bookstore? My date did not go well, unfortunately, due to a lack of chemistry... and, I think, an overuse of profanity on my part. But, whilst on my date... I ran into Rachael.
Adam: Oh, yeah?
Kyle: And I would like to present to you what I am going to call Exhibit...[Shows Adam a picture of Rachael kissing another man] WHORE! Look at it! That's Rachael! And that's a fuckin' filthy, Jesus-looking motherfucker, and they're kissing! I did it! I fuckin' nailed you! I've hated you for months, and now I have fuckin' evidence that you suck as a person! Holy shit! Holy shit!

Some of the best moments in the film come from her performance. I like it when she comes by after the breakup to pick up her stuff and Adam, who had been relaxing on the couch with Kyle, instinctively reaches for his cap. Almost immediately afterward, she's so sincerely hurt that he would take her painting down.

She was out of love with him and cheating on him and ready to break up prior to the diagnosis, so she chose the lesser evil and stayed with him, because she still loved him enough to do that. But it was hard on her, as it is for everyone who has a loved one with a serious illness, and that's something that it would be easy for the movie to ignore. She's a selfish person and a weak person, but not a bad one. It's very easy to believe that she never wanted to hurt him.

Angelica Huston is of course, awesome, as if her treatment of Drew Barrymore in Ever After could ever leave one in doubt of that. She's taking care of Adam's father, who suffers from Alzheimer's, and she's the flip side of Rachel, the one who sticks with it even when it's the hardest thing she's ever done and her husband is incapable of appreciating all that she does do for him.

And the third woman in the cast is Anna Kendrick as Adam's therapist, Katherine. I love all of her mannerisms, and the details, like a screensaver on her laptop that reads Katherine's computer. She's believably awkward and genuinely likable. (And ludicrously unprofessional for falling in love with her third patient, but forget that.)

I do like that she calls Adam out for avoiding his mom when she could really use his support, though.


I'll spoil the ending.  Adam goes in for surgery because the chemotherapy was unsuccessful...






...and survives. Obviously. You don't kill off your main characters in a comedy unless you're making Harold and Maude.

I like it. It's a fun movie, and it could have veered into either saccharine sweetness or oppressive grimdarkness easily, but it strikes a solid balance, never being dismissive of the subject matter, but not letting it overwhelm the comedy either.