Despite all of its flaws, and there are many of them, I can’t hate The Newsroom because I realize that it’s much more than its sense of self-importance, or the intellectual hockey, or how he uses girls for the LOL effect.¹ And though it tends to make its characters unrealistically stupid or out-of-touch for the sake of comedy, it does hit the nail on the head sometimes. Which is to say, it pinpoints focuses our attention on important issues, even though they are from the past, and shows us how great news—the real, gritty kind—can be. Also, some of the characters are quite intriguing and enjoyable to watch.

There are a number of basic spoilers here, but I urge you to still watch it because it a beautiful thing to see onscreen.

In this week’s episode, “Bullies,” Will McAvoy (Jeff Daniels) visits a psychiatrist for some help with insomnia, which he suspects is the cause of his flubbed lines and his calling himself some other person’s name on-air. (A recap detailing all Idiotic Incidents in episode 6, courtesy of SF Weekly.) He gets there with his incredibly witty bodyguard, assigned by the network’s insurance company after he received a death threat, only to find that the shrink he was paying for four years has died two years ago. His practice taken over by his 29-year-old son. Will is reluctant, but relents, as they try to get to the bottom of his lack of sleep.

Whew. There is a flashback of the last few days, and it’s a heartbreaking reveal. Will hates it when people are scared of him, and we find out why. As a victim of child abuse and domestic violence, he is “hard-wired” to hate bullies and in turn, hates to be thought of as one. And yet, his lack of sleep seems to point out that he has been stomping around like a big bully, too.

Without giving too much away, he rails on Sutton Wall, Rick Santorum’s campaign adviser, who is openly gay and black. Will asserts at the irony of this as Santorum is notoriously anti-gay and latches onto Wall like a Rottweiler. Wall is possibly inspired by Robert Traynham, who is an openly gay, black former aide of Santorum, and his brush with Chris Matthews. The fictional Wall thundered:

“I am more than one thing! How dare you reduce me to the color of my skin or my sexual orientation. There are people who look just like me, thousands and thousands who died for the freedom to define their own lives for themselves. How dare you presume to decide what I think is important.

I am not defined by my blackness. I am not defined by my gayness. And if that doesn’t fit your narrow expectation of who I’m supposed to be, I don’t give a damn, because I am not defined by you, either.”

Another stellar subplot involves Sloan Sabbith (Olivia Munn), whom we have seen just a little of in the past few episodes. In “Bullies,” she shines. Replacing Elliot as the host for his night show, she makes a colossal mistake on-air with a Japanese rep of TEPCO, as she forces him to reveal to the public what he had privately shared with her, off the record, as Will had unwisely advised. She even breaks into Japanese during the broadcast, causing Don Keefer (Thomas Sadoski) and Charlie Skinner (Sam Waterston) to blow their respective gaskets. Sloan’s altercation with Charlie is one of the more thrilling moments of the show, with a distraught Sloan ending it outstandingly with “Don’t call me girl, sir.”

She is suspended with pay, and further upset when she learns that the rep she had spoken to, who was a good friend, had resigned from his post in shame, apologizing to his family and his country, in typical Japanese fashion. Despite being suspended, Sloan feels responsible for her friend’s resignation and asks how she could fix everything.

Charlie finds a way out: Sloan will apologize on air for mixing up the Japanese when she attempted to bypass the translator and speak to the rep directly on air. It is an error that is easy to make for someone with subpar Japanese, but a hard mistake to admit to when your Japanese is fluent and excellent, as Sloan’s is. It’s a moving moment when she realizes that she would have to deny all her achievements—of which she was shown to be most proud, in the earlier episodes—and admit to spreading “incorrect” information to save the TEPCO rep’s job and the network’s reputation.

I look forward to a new episode of The Newsroom every week, because although there are some sentimental moments that are so distracting that they pull you out of the whole situation, I know that Sorkin will deliver stories of the fall and triumphs of the human spirit. I know that he has made these stories out of love and yearning for what America could possibly be.

More of this, please.

———
¹ For all his brilliance, Sorkin does not know seem to know how to write great women characters, or that he keeps them there for (unnecessary) comic relief. These are Peabody-wielding, PhD-swinging HBICs, and you mean to tell me that they can’t send a private email from a Blackberry without broadcasting it to the whole company. Or that they take “You’re expanding” as a dig at their weight gain? No.

When Maggie (Allison Pill) mistakes Georgia the country for Georgia the state, it’s a little endearing, but thinking that LOL means “lots of love” is a little hard to believe. Sure, she was just an intern mistakenly promoted to Will’s assistant, and then promoted as an assistant producer, but I’d like to think that she’s smarter than that.

The post The Newsroom: 1×06, Bullies appeared first on Nothing Spaces.

I have a ton to say about HBO series, Girls, the seeming T.V. underdog turned sensation. What is it about this show that has drawn the attention of so many people, even those that are outside of its apparent demographic. I’ve seen a lot of people talk about Girls, heard them talk about it, and I have always wanted to talk about it myself.

The first thing people ask you about Girls is if you like it. There is an extreme polarizing reaction to the show—dividing camps between people who love it and people who absolutely despise it. Rarely have people fallen on the exact, thin divisive line of “it’s okay,” and people who do say this often lean towards one reaction.

The second thing people ask other people about Girls is, “So which one are you?” That’s probably the hardest thing to answer accurately, because they are all awful and freely picking one to embody yourself is a hard and unattractive decision. They are awful, though, in the way that you get, in the way that you can maybe sympathize with. What I see when I see the Girls girls are the worst versions of ourselves, the parts that we try to hide or deny, amplifed and glaring on your T.V. screen for half an hour each week.

We get to know the self-absorbed best friends and roommates: shrill, uptight Marnie and perennially unemployed Hannah (played by Lena Dunham, the twenty-six-year-old female creator of the show—but that’s another story) who recurring character, Elijah, said that were cut from the same selfish cloth. Marnie is fickle and juvenile, though she likes to think of herself as grown up. Hannah seems to have very little self-worth, and likes to pretend she knows what she’s doing when what she really is is lost.

There’s well-traveled, liberated, reformed wild child Jessa who gets by as a good looking nanny with very little to lose. Then, there’s Jessa’s cousin: sheltered, inexperienced Shoshanna, who dubbed her virgin self a Samantha Jones. (Shoshanna is actually not that mean. She is very, very endearing, and I think I would want to be her the most.) These people seem to be oblivious to their own flaws, which is what I find a little hard to believe. But, people do have their own blind spots; it’s just so hard for me to believe that theirs can be as glaring and obvious as they are.

There’s very little that’s aspirational about the Girls characters, but I think that’s why I like them so much. A lot of people have been put off by this plain Jane, awkward version of the New Yorkian stories that HBO seems to make every once in a while, but I like it because it makes you uncomfortable in a way that’s not horrific, but just earnest and real—shame and secrets shoved right up there in your face.

I love it because it gets to the meat of things, even though the truth is often awkward and strange and horrible, instead of beating around the bush for oh, I don’t know, seven seasons. Do I like the “ugly people sex”? Of course not, but it’s a part of the show and it works because it exposes everything, much like how every ugly thing about these people are exposed, too.

Another thing that I really like about Girls, as a show, is that they make no excuses for the awfulness of their characters. It really doesn’t care if you end up liking them or hating them for what they do. What happens is that you develop some empathy or compassion for some of them, because you’ve been there, too. Maybe not in exactly the same situations, but maybe steeped in the same feelings. I find that, as we see more episodes of Girls, their characters enough space and enough layers to be believable as people.

I saw episode 7, “Welcome to Bushwick a.ka. The Crackcident,” last night. I have never been to a warehouse party in Bushwick, but I roared with laughter and I felt for them. Maybe because I’ve done things that I’m not proud of. Maybe also because I have felt as betrayed, as wounded, as discarded, and as embarrassed as they have. Not in the same exact way—I have never faceplanted the pavement falling off the front wheel of a bicycle—but in a way that’s enough.

Plus, it was way funny.

Girls is more than just “Sex and the City for ugly people,” and it’s hardly the voice of our generation. What it is is a damn good show where we see lost twenty-somethings, in their complexity and depth, unafraid to show the ugly, broken bits that a lot of us would love to hide instead. It’s too early to tell what kind of people they are, but each week, another layer is uncovered. Right now, it’s about horrible people-in a real sense, not in a Joffrey Baratheon sense–that you end up rooting for because, sometimes, you can actually see them (secretly) as you.

The post Answering the question “Which ‘Girls’ Girl are you?” appeared first on Nothing Spaces.

March closed with a screenwriting workshop, led by Aaron Rahsaan Thomas, who’s now a supervising producer for CSI:NY. I’ve never watched an episode of CSI:NY and I tend to shy away from programs like that (which are called procedurals) because I tend to favor character-driven shows. The real reason why we even went to that two-day workshop was because Aaron Thomas was a staff writer for Friday Night Lights, even writing two episodes during his stint.

It’s been almost a week since we left that workshop and I don’t even have notes or a vague idea for a story. It’s kind of depressing. Watching behind-the-scenes footage and extras on DVDs made me really want to be a part of something so completely collaborative, like television. In particular, the footage from the LOST DVDs that featured the writer’s room and a big binder of notes they kept for six season’s worth of continuity. It seemed like such a great thing to be a part of, especially someone like me, a big fan of television.

Aaron talked about the structure of a procedural—an episodic series divided into twenty-two or so 40-minute, goal-oriented episodes—and we sort of got to write the teaser (the segment at the beginning, before the credits, where the main premise of the episode is revealed) and Act One (the first seven-or-so-minute chunk before a commercial break) collectively.

It was hard to get a general concensus, because everyone had their own ideas that they seemed to fixate on. I kind of just quietly sniggered and sighed, being in the midst of a lot of professional writers and such who already worked for local networks. It seemed unnecessary to speak just so I could complain about ideas instead of being constructive. Anyway, most of what they threw around and played with were not my cup of tea. I already saw the disparity between the shows that are locally produced (telenovelas, the kind of humor they liked, etc.) and the shows that I enjoyed, and it made me sad that it didn’t seem like they intersected at all.

Because a really big part of me wants to work in television, but it doesn’t seem like local television has room for the shows that I want to make.

I am moved by series that center on coming-of-age, especially those that confront issues in a raw and honest way. I love it when shows speak to me through the characters, genuinely and believably. I love the brutality of feelings, the tragicomedy of high school, the overwhelming weight of things that matter now.

To tell you the truth, I have no idea what I used to be really sad about when I had been growing up. But we get hurt as we grow older, and we heal. We forget, or we think we forget.

These shows that I love so much, they’re reminders of the things that had mattered in the moment, and how intensely they felt to us at the time. I think I want to create stories that allows people to look back on—or experience at once!—these growing pains. To take those hurts and feelings of weightlessness, and preserve them in stories people can look back on, alone, together or apart. To remember, and maybe to forget. To detach or reacquaint ourselves with the very things that first taught us how to feel.

I digress, because I sought out to write about the workshop and how different it is where he is from (Los Angeles) and how it works here in Manila. But, I ended up talking about feelings and growing up, and that’s what I would love to write about. That, or something else wholly consuming, a web of stories, characters, and relationships that you grow and fall in love with.

I’m not interested in pushing the drama to ridiculous points to rake in ratings, and maybe that’s where I would falter if I worked here. I’m interested in making stories and using television as a way to share them with people. Sadly, it feels as though there is little room in the Philippines—maybe the world—for this kind of creating and collaboration.

I want to have a voice, but I’m not exactly sure where to start.

The post Screenwriting for Dabblers Like Me appeared first on Nothing Spaces.

The Hunger Games (2012)
Director: Gary Ross
Starring: Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson, Liam Hemsworth

There isn’t much to say about the film adaptation of the first of Suzanne Collins’ dystopian trilogy, The Hunger Games. I wouldn’t go as far as to say that it was a brilliant piece of cinema, but I believe that it held its own. While the story moved along fairly well, there was too much pre-game and too little of the Games itself, something that had bugged me when I was reading the novels. This had been true for the film as well.

For those not in the know, the story occurs in Panem, the post-apocaplyptic incarnation of America. After the rebellion of the 13 Districts of Panem against their government, the Capitol has decreed a “treaty of peace,” ordering the remaining 12 Districts to offer up Tributes, a male and female between the ages of 12 and 18, to fight to the death in the middle of an arena. These games are televised, much like today’s reality shows, and are played up. People are horrifyingly eating it all up, placing bets on the Tributes, picking the strongest contenders to sponsor. The Games are intended to be a reminder of the Capitol’s power over its people, but is paraded as a display of honor, courage, and sacrifice.

It was an odd sensation—feeling like you were just watching something unfold before your eyes. There was very little that was engaging or moved me to care. Though it mostly felt like it hit one note, it had a few really beautiful moments filled with pathos and emotion. These moments were obvious ones—The Reaping, the first moment of the game around the Cornucopia, Rue’s death, District 11′s riot—but everything in Panem is tinged with hopelessness, anyway. There was just a bleakness that made everything overcast, but there was barely any sense of urgency that sometimes, you kind of forget how awful everything has been set up to be.

At some point, President Snow tells Seneca Crane that nobody roots for the underdog. A little spark of hope for the citizens of Panem—this story’s underdogs—comes in the form of Katniss Everdeen, the female Tribute from District 12, and you can’t help but root for her, too.

Jennifer Lawrence is flawless at her portrayal of Katniss. She is serious, focused, able and compassionate. While the rest of the actors were passable at being their characters, Lawrence practically carried the weight and tone of the whole movie. She is so perfect for this role, I have trouble picturing her as anybody else.

The cinematography was stunning, as were the transitions and editing. Aside from Lawrence’s brilliant performance, those visual elements stood out the most. The cuts and framing of the shots—swift, refreshing and distinctive—certainly left an impression on me. I appreciate the effort that was made to set this movie apart from the typical teenage franchise. It’s so easy and tempting to just be uninspired and unoriginal, especially when you have a best-selling series to adapt, since everybody already likes it. But they really set the bar high up. It was a really unexpected but welcome visual treat.

As a reader of the books, I was rooting for Katniss and Peeta (Josh Hutcherson), and yet their chemistry in the movie was so laughably absent that I kind of want her to end up with Gale (Liam Hemsworth) instead. The other “complaints” are really just nitpicks, such as: How come they’re so clean when they’ve been roughing it out in the wild—and deliberately wounding each other!—for days? Weren’t they supposed to see the other tributes’ eyes in the dog mutant things? How come she found water and food so quickly? How come this is not the Peeta I have come to know and love?

On that note, I was one of the Hutcherson!Peeta advocates, since I loved him in The Kids Are Alright, but I was honestly underwhelmed. I don’t know if it has to do with the screenplay or the direction, but I was definitely less endeared by Peeta when I watched him than when I read about him.

All in all, it was a really good production, but I don’t know if it is, in the end, a satisfying story. Lately, I’ve been obsessing over CBS’s long-running reality show, Survivor. While it had a lot of similar elements with The Hunger Games, it got me to thinking about how ruthless people are willing to be when the prize in the end is literally outlasting everyone. It’s such a horrifying thought, but it doesn’t seem to truly translate in the film, save for a few brief moments where the scenes are so obvious that you can’t help but remember that the players in the game are actual people.

But after all that’s been said (by me, lol), I still am anticipating the release of the other films. I’m hoping they pull the others off, because the first film has a lot of great potential for something truly epic for the trilogy.

The post Honor, Courage, and Sacrifice: A Review of The Hunger Games appeared first on Nothing Spaces.

I rarely ever write about television anymore—or any form of popular culture, for that matter—and I don’t necessarily engage in fandom as much either, but I’ve been faithfully watching something kind of vapid with my sister. This week, Pretty Little Liars‘ second season came to a close. And now you know why I have been painfully carrying this obsession. And now I am going to take a break and write about this dumb show that I love watching so much.

It’s not like I have gone over the deep end, constructing theories with ‘A’-like meticulousness and attention to detail, but it’s practically the only show that I watch the minute my download’s done. I’m not here to generously reveal this weird side of myself that derives a weird sense of pleasure from watching teenage girls be emotionally blackmailed. Nope, I’m mostly here to rant about that dumb finale!

Season 2 began with the promise of the revelation of the show’s biggest secret—the identity of the all-knowing, mysterious ‘A,’ who has basically been torturing these girls for a whopping 44 episodes because of the shady circumstances of their ringleader’s death. I didn’t plan on sticking around to find out more. The characters were “one-dimensionally diverse,” where they are all just seemed to be different stereotypes instead of different people. The anonymous text messaging felt a little too Gossip Girl as well. And yet.

For 44 episodes, my sister and I tagged along on their journey to closure, falling for each and every red herring and screaming at their reckless lack of caution. Nancy Drews they are not. Aria, Hanna, Emily and Spencer (my favorite) do not seem to know the meaning of the word ‘danger,’ constantly falling into A’s traps. Can you imagine how frustrating and annoying it is to tail four teenage girls in pursuit of a good mystery to solve? And yet, we tailed them, hoping for a satisfying conclusion to this cat-and-mouse chase. Let me tell you, it was not worth it.

I started watching this show when it aired, mostly out of curiosity, and when I’ve weaned myself off of television (opting to watch them in huge chunks instead), this one clung to me like barnacles. I could not resist the mystery. Despite the weekly cliffhangers and palpitations, my sister and I were suckers for this crap. We loved every minute of its creepy, stupid storyline. I don’t even know who else still watches this show, but we get a kick out of it every single time.

It has its moments—the characters are surprisingly funny at times—and even with the overly convoluted plotlines, I enjoy it extremely. Funnily enough, their last episode (until June!) is perhaps the least riveting and exciting, failing to tie up the seven billion ends they have loosened over the 44 episodes we endured. The “Mastermind” of the whole Creepy Operation was obvious, clichéd, and kind of a dud.

I don’t know. I just needed to rant about something I wouldn’t get in trouble for ranting about, I guess. I mean, after all’s said and done, I still can’t wait for the third season. I haven’t read the books this series was based on, so I have no clue what else is in store for us T.V. viewers, but I hope there’ll be something to at least make our toes curl or scream in genuine surprise, which the show has done, to its credit.

Ugh, I just hope this season’s ‘A’ is a joke. That’s a red herring that I wouldn’t mind at all.

The post CARINA’S SECRET T.V. SHOW OBSESSION. appeared first on Nothing Spaces.

I have really, really mixed feelings about this movie.

I think that it’s probably why it has taken me so long to write this review. I watched Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Part One) on Thursday night. It is currently Sunday, and I still haven’t gathered my wits about me to write a ‘real’ review for it. As a fan, I think I’m predisposed to love it automatically. But let me quote the teen classic (LOL) 10 Things I Hate About You to illustrate what I felt when I was watching the film, “I know you can be overwhelmed, and you can be underwhelmed, but can you ever just be whelmed?”

The past few days, I am usually in that place where even though I am not super satisfied with the film—but this just might be because they left out this one part that I held dear and found really crucial to the story so I just might be resentful—I also want to maul and attack everybody who says that they found it dull, boring, and dragging. Much like this dude.

My Harry Potter film reviews always seem to turn into a long list of all the parts left out from the movie, so I’m going to try and not do that this time around. I think that because this series really, honestly means so much to me is why I am so protective of how it is being portrayed and adapted. And when people write it off, I get defensive because I truly feel like I am being personally attacked, even though I obviously am not. (My issues, not yours, don’t worry. I’m trying to get past~ this.)

One of my favorite parts of the film was something that wasn’t in the books, but encapsulated just why I loved Harry and Hermione’s friendship. It was when they were dancing to a song by Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, inside a tent in the middle of nowhere, after being abandoned by Ron. I am definitely not a Harry/Hermione shipper and, even though people might read this scene that way, I feel like it was really such a great depiction of their sibling-like relationship. The song choice was also perfect, speaking about living with circumstances that they could not help.

To display that complexity, and reduce it from a book that is a few hundred pages long is a really hard thing to do. They obviously tried to condense it to fit as much as they could in such a short amount of time, but I really feel like a lot of the tension and moral dilemmas and character layers were glossed over and lost. Speaking of moral dilemmas, I loved what they did with the Malfoys. I really have got to hand it to Draco, and obviously, Tom Felton. It was one of the better performances in the film, for me, and I’ve always loved how they got into Draco’s character. Such a great source of tension—you can really see the fight going on in his head.

One particular subplot that I had been waiting for since the release of The Half-Blood Prince (book) was the story of Sirius brother, Regulus. To me, he was one of the most interesting characters of the book, which is saying a lot given that he had very little interaction with the rest of the characters we already knew, and given that he was given so few words. But I thought his story was so beautiful, and even though it made me sad, his involvement was so crucial to me, and I can’t believe that they did away with it entirely. Choosing that, they have also reduced the redemption of Kreacher’s character.

I think, though, that one of the film’s greater successes is its portrayal of the Trio. The friendship, loyalty, bravery, and love between the three of them was so apparent, and I think that maybe this is what they decided to spend time on when they made the adaptation. I liked how their time together and apart erased all doubts between them. And how their dynamic really works with each other. One of the lines that I really loved, in the book, that they left out of the film was said after Ron came back and was lamenting the fact that Dumbledore left him the Deluminator because he knew Ron would leave, and Harry tells him, “No, he must have known you would always want to come back.”

There are so many things to like about this film, so I kind of feel bad that I had to pick at the film and dig out the parts that I thought were weak. But seeing as the only people who complained about the lack of Regulus are me and my friend Yun’er, I guess not a lot of people minded that it was gone.

I don’t know. I feel like I can’t successfully word everything that I feel about this film in one measly post. And I feel like I will have to get back and write more once I get around to seeing it again, or write about a purely fangirly post about the little things and little jokes that they included, and squee about the lines and moments that made it through the cut. I have so many things left to say, but I feel like I am not in the right mindframe to get into them. There will probably be a re-review—one that has more flail-y bits and incomprehensible keyboardmashing. Maybe! I don’t want to be a hater no mo’!

Prisoner of Azkaban is still my favorite adaptation. I felt like Cuaron really made it his own, but didn’t take too much away of the themes and events. Yeah, the book was considerably shorter, and he did cut out a lot of the things from the book, but I felt like it was the film that felt whole; a film in its own right, and not just a disjointed combination of scenes from a book.

And I do realize that no adaptation is perfect, but I feel like this one comes pretty close. The thing is: I really don’t think anybody could do anything that would make me hate this series. It is such a big part of me, and just the act of seeing it unfold before me makes me really, really glad.

The post Half of an End of an Era: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Part One) appeared first on Nothing Spaces.

On one fateful day in May, I was all set to watch an obviously non-cerebral, funny-ha-ha Filipino film called Here Comes the Bride. While I wasn’t buzzing with excitement and anticipation, I was, on some base level, looking forward to it. I mean, I guess. I wasn’t prepared to arrive at the cinema and… be faced with Miley’s big mug.

But, alas, the world has its ways of turning a night filled with the potential of senseless humor into one filled with a lot of confusion and questions (i.e. “Why?” times infinity, and “How did you get made, movie?”).

As a movie person (not a buff, just someone who enjoys watching movies in general), I’ve come to the realization that I shouldn’t really expect much from Nicholas Sparks adaptations, especially those that he’s written to maturate Hannah Montana’s “squeaky-clean image.”

There are several things that are “wrong” with the movie, and very little “redemptive” elements. The characters were, in fan-fictional terms, “Mary Sues”¹ with certain character quirks meant to wow the audience, but resulted in turning me and Raymond into a groan-y and eye-roll-y mess. Oh, she loves sea turtles and reads Tolstoy on the beach, oh, he loves sea turtles and quotes Tolstoy in its original, untranslated text. Give me a frakking break.

The movie was so unremarkable that I needed to Wikipedia the main characters’ names just to be sure that I remember them. (It turns out that I do.) Ronnie, played by Miley Cyrus, is this rebel-IDGAF-but I’m talented on the inside classical pianist with a penchant for the environment, lost causes and shoplifting. She meets Will (Liam Whatshisface) when he is playing beach volleyball and crashes into her and her milkshake. Cue painfully unfunny banter.

She got into Juilliard School², but doesn’t want to go because of Daddy Issues with Greg Kinnear (who was awesome, obviously). He got into Columbia, but is being pressured by mommy and daddy to go to Vanderbilt instead, as it is their family tradition. Oh, my sorrowful life. What a frakking tragedy.

The movie stretches to great lengths, focusing on an on-again-off-again, I-love-you-no-I-don’t love affair, complete with random, hormonal outbursts care of Miley. The supporting characters were also cookie-cutter and annoying, serving no other purpose than furthering the “plot” and filling in the non-kissy gaps. See, there was a fire in a church, a dead brother, an ungrateful friend that needed to be saved from Bad News Boyfriend, a “precocious” (but actually annoying) kid, hot ex-girlfriends, and a barely-there mother played by a high-profile-ish actress.

I get the intention of “off-beat” characters, I really do. But the movie does nothing to make any of these work. Out-of-place quirkiness is what I’d probably call it, because the film spews so many details that has no place in the story. I mean, so what if she’s vegan?

Such tired clichés that have been inserted so the movie has some semblance of substance is what ruins it, ultimately. The problem with Nicholas Sparks films is that he uses the same elements over and over again, and because of the frequency of his film releases, people begin to see the patterns form into their heads. Sparks movies capitalize on sap, and (usually) attractive lovers overcoming the “odds.” In other words, they are unabashedly formulaic.

The film could have worked if there was some sort of connectedness of all the tiny little details that could have been wonderful. What could have worked as a totally different, lovable film (because I honestly believe that it could have been one) did not. The Last Song was inauthentic and lacked a lot of heart. My favorite parts were the baby sea turtles and the raccoon that was trying to eat them. I mean, I don’t know about you, but I think that that’s an indication of a movie failing to deliver.

In the end, after much snickering and wisecracking, we still didn’t know what we were watching, and we weren’t sure if we wanted to find out.

If this review and low ratings on Rotten Tomatoes and IMDB don’t convince you to avoid wasting your money, just make sure you bring somebody with you to snicker with, or a vial of enough fuel to write a whiny review after you’re done seeing it.

———
¹ A Mary Sue is, “a fictional character with overly idealized and hackneyed mannerisms, lacking noteworthy flaws, and primarily functioning as a wish-fulfillment fantasy for the author or reader.” (Wikipedia. It’s a credible source, shut up.)

² Despite its average 7.58% acceptance rate in real life, Juilliard School in the Fictional Realm has accepted Ronnie Miller (Cyrus in The Last Song) and Sara Johnson (Julia Stiles in Save the Last Dance). It has also given scholarships to Ryan Evans and Kelsi Nielsen (Ryan Grabeel and Oleysa Rulin in High School Musical 3: Senior Year).

The post The Last Song (I Hope) appeared first on Nothing Spaces.

Making a Blue Roast video… Or trying to. Stay tuned for it!

I already posted one over here, but it’s so fun to use to write or draw with. Try it!

 
Gifts!
My friend Carla found this little gem and gave it to me. I was super happy because I’ve never seen a license plate with my name on it (I usually end up getting ‘Samantha,’ which is my second name). So, thanks, Carla! I really love it so much, I could cry.

The post Things I Love Thursday: March 25. appeared first on Nothing Spaces.

You could say that, at one point in my life, I was a pretty big Gleek. I can’t help it; the show has appeal. It’s like High School Musical, but with songs I already know, sung by mostly good self-deprecating teenagers and also, it has Jane Lynch. Glee has been on hiatus for months now, and will be until April, so in some weird, desperate need to get a fix, I started watching reruns. And as I watched it again, I stood by as what seemed to be the most promising show in television today crumbled right before my very eyes.

To say that Glee is a terrible show is unfair, because it does have its merits. But Glee capitalizes on the knowledge that their songs are catchy and their leads, attractive. The ensemble cast is funny enough, the milieu is safe enough (Come on, who doesn’t like a good coming-of-age setting?), and the song choices are also pretty palatable to the ear. The show is so complacent in its obvious appeal that it neglects real and solid character and plot development. The characters are caricatures that exist only to sing and make jokes, and to sometimes add in a few minor plot points, some of which seem to have no bearing, at all, to the general, encompassing story, and are not even referenced again.

The characters are vague and stereotypical, it’s easy to write in whatever sort of personality to them, making it convenient for the writers to put in whatever sort of tension that they need to keep things interesting. In “Mash-Up,” the show introduces the Rachel/Puck angle… and abandons it, completely. It makes you root for Will and Emma, because Emma is likable and Will’s conniving wife, Terry, is her complete foil and has no redeeming qualities to her, whatsoever.

This wouldn’t be such a problem, since good, well-sung songs and humor seem like sound qualities to build a show on. But because it seems that Glee is trying to make a connection with the actual, alienated teenagers that they try to portray. These characters exist for the audience to be able to relate to them. But the problem is that there is no consistency to their characters and the things that they do. The third episode, “Acafellas,” which aired prior to Kurt’s coming out to his father in “Preggers,” shows us that his father disapproves of his homosexuality (he took away his car!), but we see them bonding the episode after, and beyond, particularly in epsiode 8, “Wheels.” Jane Lynch’s character, Sue Sylvester, is portrayed as a jerkface but humanizes her in the same episode by giving her a sister with Down syndrome, and then the show steals back the humanity almost instantaneously when Sue sabotages the Glee club by leaking their set list to their competitors in “Hairography,” just because she can.

Glee is funny, and I really do admire this kind of humor, having been a fan of creator, Ryan Murphy’s previous teen-oriented series, Popular. But it seems like the show often overshoots and misses the mark. Buried in the songs and the jokes are “heartfelt” and “touching” scenes end up seeming like affectations. It seems like the show’s creators know where they want the show to go, but add so much extraneous details that cause it to look overworked, uninspired and just messy. They tackle issues such as premarital sex, disabilities, popularity and infidelity, but they take them so very lightly. These issues are usually approached humorously, and it is unnerving because there is a certain disconnect, with what it seems they are trying to do — which is communicate and connect with their audience.

There is also very little extended narrative, and it bases the progression of the story on what would likely be the most well-received stories. As if to say, “Never mind the already established relationships and backstories, we give the audience what they want.” And it’s just so messy. It feels, to me, that the awards that Glee has won are premature. There is a lot of space for Glee to grow, and I do think that it has potential, but I don’t think they deserve their awards just yet.

I’m still going to be watching, because I’m a sucker for musicals (and Lea Michele is fantastic as Rachel Berry). Hopefully things will turn up, by the time the show starts up again, because I genuinely think that Glee could be much, much better than what it is now.

———
And this scene from Community‘s 18th episode, “Basic Genealogy,” just because it’s funny and timely:

capped by JP del Mundo

Pierce: It’s okay, it’s okay. Let it out.
Jeff: We always used to watch the shows she wanted to watch. I hate Glee.
Pierce: Eh, I’m not crazy about Glee either.
Jeff: I hate it. I don’t understand the appeal at all.

The post The Problem With Glee. appeared first on Nothing Spaces.

Ever since November 2009, I have been itching to write this entry on Doctor Who. The thing is, I couldn’t because I hadn’t finished viewing all of series 1 (traditionally, series 27) through 4. I was taking a television class under Andrew Ty last semester, and before I knew it, I was hooked. We ended class, exactly, with the last episode of series 2, a two-parter that left me wanting to find an empty bathroom stall and just cry.

THE PREMISE OF THE SHOW: Doctor Who isn’t about any doctors, ironically. In case you are not in the know (which, I find, most people outside of Britain, including me, are), Doctor Who is about an unnamed character simply referred to as The Doctor. He is a Time Lord from a planet called Gallifrey, and he goes traveling in a blue Police Box called the TARDIS, or Time And Relative Dimension In Space. Essentially, it is a time machine.¹ Occasionally, the Doctor has a companion with him. The Doctor’s companions are usually there to help him “operate” the TARDIS and go traveling with him, but more often than not, they end up assisting him in, usually, saving the Universe.

If you’re going to start with Series 1, then the companion you will meet is Billie Piper. (If you don’t remember who Billie Piper is, let me refresh your memory.) The Doctor is played by Christopher Eccleston, who is brilliant in his portrayal of the Time Lord. He is menacing and endearing at the same time, simultaneously beautiful and terrible.

However, the most famous and iconic regeneration (we’ll get to this in a while) of the Doctor in recent years is played by David Tennant, who also played Barty Crouch, Jr. in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Before I prattle on and on and on, here are five reasons why you absolutely must watch Doctor Who. In list form, just because I love you.

Why you should watch Doctor Who:

1. IT’S IMPORTANT.
   This is kind of a lame reason, but it’s true. Doctor Who is a British television series that began in 1963, went on hiatus in 1989 and was resurrected in 2005 by BBC. It’s important because majority of the people who grew up in London, grew up with Doctor Who.

   Now, Reason Number One isn’t necessarily a “convincing” criterion, in terms of why you should watch it, but it’s something to be considered. Discounting 7th Heaven (because it is obviously crap but that is a different story altogether), most shows that last this long do so because they are integral to popular culture as well as society. They perpetuate some longstanding legacy, with a “character” that develops alongside the context within which it operates.

   People have been watching Doctor Who since the 1960s. There have been ten (eleven in April) reincarnations of the Doctor, by way of regenaration, which is a process Time Lords undergo in order to somehow “cheat death”. I won’t go into the specifics, but that’s a basic explanation as to the change of casting for his character. Fans have their own favorites, and have dubbed each of them, fittingly as “my Doctor.”

   There are also, in existence, several Dalek (Time Lords’ sworn enemies, basically) costumes, and cookies, as well as recreations and references to the TARDIS, like such:
   

   

   Pretty much, all I’m trying to say is: it’s a pretty big deal. And there’s a good reason why.

2. IT’S FUN.
   Come on! Time-travel. History. Aliens. Bad Guys. Good Guys. Silly Guys. Meddlesome (but somehow charming) Family Members. Running, lots of running. Chaos. Madness. Explosions. Suits. A Police Box Flying Through Space. Space! Seriously, how could you ever have resisted?

   Any way you look at it, there is really just an inherent fun element in Doctor Who. There’s usually a bunch of new characters (although sometimes they reprise bad guys and other familiar faces), new settings, and new old settings in an episode. There is also always some ridiculous element that somehow works to the advantage of the show. The TARDIS itself, when you think of it outside of the context and the developed “lore” of the show, is pretty ridiculous. However, this peculiarity gives character to the show that is so distinctly itself.

   And while Doctor Who is decidedly a science fiction show, which puts a lot of people off because they think that it is largely set in outer space (i.e. Battlestar Galactica), it actually explores and speculates already established historical events such as the fall of Pompey, Shakespeare’s lost play, the origin of werewolves and the disappearance of Agatha Christie.

3. It’s funny.
   I’ve tried very hard, but I can’t put my finger on why Doctor Who is funny, or in what way it is. I’ve chalked it up to the fact that the Doctor is an alien. So he’s naturally funny. (Flawed logic, I know.) But, sometimes, it just really seems as though he does not mean to be funny at all.

   How to describe it? Some of the companions are funny (Donna is my favorite), and they poke fun at everything. Their mannerisms, scripts, speculations almost always have humor. The aliens are sometimes funny (The first meeting with the Ood in a series 2 episode, “The Impossible Planet,” always has me in stitches), as are some of the guest/minor/recurring characters. It’s silly, obvious fun, but never of the slapstick kind.

   If you would be so inclined as to direct your attention to this spoiler-free collection of funny clips that I did not make:
   

   And this other one, just because it makes me giggle:
   

4. It’s interesting.
   Aside from the stuff I’ve mentioned, there’s more to Doctor Who. Loads of themes are explored in the series that are dark, serious and, surprisingly relevant. Although contextualized in an often alien environment, issues like slavery, morality, ethics, existentialism, family, loneliness, technology, the abuse of power, and so on, are actually sort of illuminated very effectively. Even though they’re set in a different context, there is still some sort of familiarity present because they’re tackling issues that could very easily have been experienced by the audience.

   The program also lends two perspectives: a more removed, learned and strange one from the Doctor, and a humanized and emotional one from the companion. Because there is a certain detachment from the issues, we are given the opportunity to confront them in a much different way than we do in real life.

5. It’s not the kind of show that takes itself too seriously.
   Let’s face it: the downfall of a lot of television shows that are currently on these days is the constant pursuit of Being Taken Seriously. Good news is that Doctor Who doesn’t really care whether or not you take it seriously. While difficult themes are tackled by the show in each episode, Doctor Who is not afraid to laugh at itself.

   The show effectively combines humor, science fiction, theoretical physics², drama, adventure, and suspense (I’m looking at you, Steven Moffat) altogether, resulting in a very lovely hour each week. The scripts are well-written, the actors are brilliant, and it approaches each episode with a certain playfulness that doesn’t sugar-coat the dark stuff, but also doesn’t present them in a melodramatic manner, or as an affectation.

   In many ways, the show is like the Doctor, who bears such a heavy burden on his shoulders, has had such a dark history, and has lost a lot of what he holds dear, and yet: he manages to crack up a smile, and carry on.

If you’ve read this far into the entry (meaning, you actually finished it), it means that you are interested, even if only vaguely, in the show. Do yourself a favor and watch it already. Allons-y!³

———
¹ It is also bigger on the inside!
² I might just be making this up.
³ This is French for “Let’s go!” Ten says it all the time.

The post Allons-y!: Five (Thorough) Reasons Why You Should Watch Doctor Who appeared first on Nothing Spaces.