Monday, May 21, 2012

So We Went to See The Avengers…


…and I didn’t like it.

No, I’m not a film snob. My proof? I enjoyed Nacho Libre and have watched it at least a dozen times. Really.

I was disappointed with The Avengers despite already being predisposed to liking it. For starters, I tend to enjoy just about anything Joss Whedon touches, my favorite being his Firefly series and then his subsequent Serenity film. And lest it be assumed, I’m also not averse to superhero flicks. I didn’t watch all of the individual films leading up to it, but I did watch a few. Iron Man (the first one) and Captain America were awesome. Thor I skipped, because frankly, Norse mythological figures don’t seem to translate well on film. Okay, the truth is that I haven’t seen many film depictions of Thor and Loki, and to be fair, the films depicting them that I have watched have had them visiting modern day America, and that automatically introduces the cheese factor (The Son of the Mask is one such atrocity). Frankly, I think these gods fare better in Asgaard and should stay there. And yes, I know, I know…these characters were a Marvel interpretation of these figures, but still. I guess this is where I admit that I have never been a comics fangirl. I did enjoy reading a few of the Archie comics as a kid, but that’s the extent of it. Oh, and I didn’t see a single trailer for The Avengers, nor did I read a single review, for fear that it would sabotage my film-going experience. I wanted to go in as fresh as possible, and without ridiculously high expectations.

So what didn’t I like about it?

Honestly, I felt it dragged. Most of the film involved just gathering all of the Avengers together.

I still don’t like Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury. Didn’t like him much as Mace Windu either come to think of it.

Wait, were there aliens in this movie? I was all excited about the aliens, but then there weren’t any aliens, i.e., until the very end. I realize that there wasn’t time to go into the backstory here on the Chitauri (this particular race of aliens), but that didn’t really matter to me. In the film, they kind of reminded me of the army of clone troopers in Attack of the Clones, providing a legion of paper targets for our superheroes to crush. For the record, I really disliked the Star Wars prequels.

The problem with getting this many characters together in one film is that you don’t have much time for character development. Ultimately, I felt that there wasn’t enough heart, and this bothered me most of all.

Loki. ‘Nuff said. Too much camp. I enjoy camp. Sometimes. But I like my baddies to be bad, and menacing. Three-dimensional baddies are best. Loki was just plain silly.

Thor. Every time he was on the screen, I kept thinking “Fabio” and his “I can’t believe it’s not butter,” line. Yeah, that was kind of a bummer.

Dialogue that often felt like a formulaic series of “Insert sarcastic quips here.”  Tony Stark had the best lines, obviously, but I was expecting them, and they fell short. Thankfully, the rest of the audience in the showing I attended wasn’t as jaded as I was and laughed heartily and often. Good for them. Really.

The Tesseract. What? Another cube? Is this Transformers or something? I kid, I kid! Actually, I’m aware that this is like the Cosmic Cube and that this is the sort of powerful object that played a part in the comics. And oddly enough, it didn’t bother me at all in Captain America. Go figure. I guess the connection I felt with the story in that instance, kept me from dwelling on it too much. I guess this may be a silly critique, seeing as I knew it would somehow factor into this film, but again, the story at large didn’t capture my interest this time around, and I was just plain uninterested in the darn thing.

The plot. I didn’t care for or understand Loki’s motivation, and the conflict resolution just wasn’t believable. I mean, it’s fantasy, yes, but even in the world of the movie, I was left unconvinced.

The superheroes. On their own, they’re great. I couldn’t help but feel that they lost so much of their, um, uniqueness (?), working as a team.

The Hulk in particular. I was really looking forward to him. And I liked him. I really did. BUT, he didn’t grow larger the angrier he got. And then all of sudden, later in the movie, it seemed like he could control his anger perfectly well, when just earlier in the film he lost it big time on Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow.

There’s more that I didn’t like, but I’ll spare you. Perhaps if I was an avid Avengers comics reader I may have applauded along with the rest of the people at my screening. I am not beyond thinking that perhaps I’m missing something big here. Perhaps I do have to have more of a familiarity with the comics to enjoy this film. Really, the amount of hype and love being strewn about the net with regard to this movie is unreal. But hey, I’m happy for them. There’s nothing worse than alienating diehard fans. Joss Whedon appears to have given the mega-fans exactly what they wanted. I’m obviously in the minority here.

All that said, there were a few bright spots for me. Granted, very few. And here they are:

Mark Ruffalo. I enjoyed him as Bruce Banner. He was infinitely better than Bana and Norton. Infinitely. He was subdued, and funny. Actually, I thought that of all of the superheroes, he was the most likeable.

Jeremy Renner. Okay, I may just like him, period. And I can’t say that I hated him as Hawkeye. In fact, it was quite the opposite. I sort of like the lonely brooder skilled type of superhero. It’s funny though, because after the film, my kids mentioned him as the guy that shot arrows. There wasn’t much time spent on him as superhero Hawkeye, but rather, evil minion Hawkeye. Really, he was kind of the forgotten hero here. Not much screen time, and no story building for him. BUT, I don’t mean to go off on a negative tangent again. I’m just lamenting the fact that there wasn’t more of him. The bits that were in there, I enjoyed though.

Oh, and I liked seeing the Black Widow kicking butt. I love it when women can hold their own.

Tuesday, May 15, 2012

"Shaolin Family" Experiment Update, Take One

Sheesh! I've been MIA, and I'm sorry. Lots of stuff going on in my head and in my life. Nothing major, but definitely time consuming. Even my precious Korean dramas have taken a back seat. And if that doesn't tell you something, nothing will.

This whole "Shaolin family" experiment (in reference to a previous post in which I shared my lofty goals on how we were to address the needs of our bodies, minds, and spirits) has been tough, yet unbelievably rewarding. Finding time for everything is challenging, and we haven't stuck to it as closely as I would have liked. More often than not, it's the physical/body stuff that gets tossed to the wayside. We really need to work on that. That said, our prayer life is AWESOME. We went from a few prayers said at bedtime and before meals, to (recently) starting Morning and Evening prayer (Lauds and Vespers) using the Shorter Christian Prayer book, followed by a Morning Offering, Trinity Prayer, and Guardian Angel prayer. At noon we say the Angelus, at 3:00 p.m. the Divine Mercy Chaplet, and then we recite the rosary in the evening (as well as Vespers as mentioned before). That sounds like a lot, but it's really been such a great change for us. It has introduced a steady rhythm to our days, one that we had been lacking. And in addition to that, it has also given us all a sense of calm. The peaceful reflection, particularly in the morning, just feels right. We feel more capable of managing whatever the day brings with it. It's kind of hard to put it into words, but my soon-to-be 16 year old said, "Mom, this feels great," and I agree with her.

In addition to the above, my plans for personal spiritual enrichment have also included making adoration once per month, and finding time for more spiritual reading. We made it to adoration on the first Friday of the month, and I hope that this remains consistent. The spiritual reading however, hasn't actually happened yet (aside from the Divine Office that is). Again, I think it's more of a time management issue.

As mentioned above, my plans for how to address the physical/body bits of this whole undertaking are sorely lacking. I've determined that perhaps I was being too ambitious. Understatement alert! Rather than fit it ALL in, i.e., conditioning, tai chi, forms, weight training, etc., I'd do best to just choose one or two on which to focus each day. Being up early for Lauds really helps with the morning alertness factor, and makes me more likely to just "do it already." I also figured that I could give us some days "off" on kung fu class days. Okay, so technically, those really aren't off days at all since we'll be in class later anyway.

As for the mind bit of this lofty plan, things are moving along nicely. Another positive that has come out of this is that I'm realizing just how much time it takes us to do things. Some of those realizations have been positive, others haven't been exactly positive, but rather, enlightening. For instance, I've found that my son is lagging considerably behind his sisters when it comes to written work. He composes well, it's just the physical act of writing that is arduous for him. I can't decide if it's a perfectionist trait, or if he just finds it genuinely difficult. I always knew that this was an issue, but I didn't realize just how much of an issue, or how time consuming a problem it was until now. It doesn't appear to be dysgraphia either. He doesn't reverse his letters, and he's generally neat, with all of his letters being of consistent size. He's also a decent speller, with a broad vocabulary. I find that when he's composing something and writing it as he goes along, he is faster than when asked to recopy what he's written, as in the case of writing a final draft. We'll be taking him in to get his vision checked as well, in case it's a tracking problem, or just that he may need vision correction, and in the meantime, I'm checking online for ideas on how to address this issue (i.e., what I can do here, or where I should go for help with this). What's weird is that he doesn't seem to have a fine motor skill problem either. He's a tinkerer, and he puts models together with small pieces, and he's able to make the tiniest paper airplanes known to man. Seriously! He also handles his utensils properly, even chopsticks. Frankly, I'm confused by all of this. This week, we'll probably be focusing on handwriting, and I just may make it into a game or something as a motivator.

There's more to share, but I'll save it for another post and another day. ;-)