What grinds my gears

I have commented in previous posts, how among "armchair movie critics" and internet reviewers it seems to be an unwritten rule that if the majority of other people detest a particular movie (or franchise) then everyone must detest it, lest their credibility be tarnished. There are many, many examples of this. For instance, you absolutely must detest the Star Wars prequel trilogy (especially the first film), the second and third Matrix movies and, as a more minor example, the Battleship movie. If you don't, then you are strange and without any credibility. Personally I would add the Twilight saga to this list. Especially the first movie. It's, once again, one of those movie franchises that everybody must hate, because everybody else also hates them. It's not even allowed to say "it was ok." Even that's too much. I'm not saying that the Twilight movies are the best masterpieces ever made (after all, only an extremely small minority of all mov...

It seems to have been a trend during the last decade or so that every time they make a movie that's a remake or adaptation of a story, they always modernize it to happen in the modern world, even if the original story is set to happen many decades ago. It doesn't really matter if the original story is set to happen in the 1980's or the 1920's, the trend seems to be to always adapt it to happen in the 2000's. Sometimes this has no big impact in the story, so no bad consequences follow this modernization. However, oftentimes they have to bend over backwards in order to make the adaptation work. A very typical example is that 20+ years ago almost nobody had a cellphone, while nowadays it's rare for somebody to not have one. Thus if the story relies on people being stranded or otherwise cut from civilization or the authorities, the adaptation needs to go to extra lengths to try to explain why the cellphones aren't working or why they don't have them. And...

When interacting with people in real life, some people have a slight misunderstanding about how to apologize to someone properly. (By the way, this post wasn't prompted by anything that has happened to me recently. I have simply been thinking about it. This kind of situation has happened to me in the past several times, though.) When someone wants to apologize to someone else, for example because they had an argument or the person making the apology acted in a very inconsiderate manner, a relatively common way that people do this is to first apologize and then ask something like " friends? " or " are we ok?" or something similar, and often accompanied with an expectation of shaking hands or whatever. They usually do this with good intentions. They want to apologize for the negative thing they were involved with and want for the relationship to return to normal. However, they have misunderstood a bit how this kind of apology should be done. You don't...

I have written about this in the past (especially in my old "blog" at my homepage), but I think it deserves repeating. There isn't a single movie that properly captures the essence of Batman in the comics (at least not any professionally-made big-budget one.) The only non-comic artwork that I have encountered that really captures this spirit is the Batman: Arkham Asylum and Batman: Arkham City video games. They are dark, gritty, violent and badass... yet they still somehow retain the kind of "innocence" of the comics' world. The characters feel like the characters of the comics, and the entire setting and atmosphere feels like the ones from the comics. In my opinion, not a single movie has ever succeeded in doing this. So, what do I think of Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy ? The first movie follows a rather clear three-act structure, not only in its contents, but also in its quality. The first act (which shows Bruce Wayne's background...

Never mind HL2 Episode 3 becoming a new Duke Nukem Forever... I'm not here to talk about that. I'm here to talk about the naming of the trilogy. I have never understood it. After the success of Half-Life 2, Valve started developing a direct continuation to it, in the form of smaller games in an "episodic" format. The original intention was that instead of spending two or three years to make one big game, they would publish smaller games at a faster pace. Of course we all know what happened to those plans (while Episode 1 was slightly delayed, it was more or less in par with the plans; Episode 2 was way, way delayed; but neither compares to the ridiculous delay with the third one) but as said, I'm not here to talk about the delays. From almost the very beginning Valve announced that when the three episodes got published, they would effectively constitute Half-Life 3. So it puzzles me to no end why exactly they are named " Half-Life 2 Episode 1 " et...

There are many hobbies that people engage in, and that do not require much talent or expertise. The main point is that they are fun. In some cases these hobbies may be fun to watch too. Air guitar is not, in my opinion, of the latter kind. It may be fun to prance around in the rhythm of a groovy guitar solo and pretend to play an imaginary guitar, but watching it is not very fun. It actually looks ridiculous. Pretending to play a guitar is not a talent, it does not show anything interesting, and in fact it looks ridiculous and obscene. At least with a real guitar it doesn't look like you are playing with yourself, but without it... It just looks horrible, and I really don't want to watch that. What's worse, some people take it way too seriously. Heck, there are world championships of air guitar. WTF? People argue that it's all about the show. Fine, but if you want a dance show, then make it a dance show, not a pretend-guitar-playing show that doesn't requ...

In the world of music, there have been and are really extraordinary talented performers who have contributed more than just music and songs, but have helped pioneer entire styles and genres. They are truly music legends, the people who set the standards, who not only composed and performed individual songs, but who developed music styles further and even invented entirely new forms. Such legendary musicians often get such a cult status that they get a free pass on everything they have done, even if it doesn't really compare all that well to later developments. Criticizing their work, comparing it as inferior to later works, seems tantamount to blasphemy. To take one particular example, consider the song Unchain My Heart , originally performed by Ray Charles, and later covered by Joe Cocker. Ray Charles enjoys such a legendary cult status. He was certainly a pioneer of soul music, and helped define an entire new genre. Thus it's no wonder that many people will say things l...