Humor Boss Poem
This Friday, while you are shifting through the huddled masses of frenzied shoppers — all of them beady-eyed and borderline dangerous in their search of a good shopping deal, just keep reminding yourself that it’s worth it.
Sure you may be risking life and limb as your engage in mortal combat with fellow bargain-hunters over who will grab the last three dollar toaster at Target, but at least you’ll be saving yourself a handful of cash — with your self-dignity being your only expense you can’t redeem a coupon for.
To assist you in your shopping adventure, I present a couple of seasonal diversions: a Christmas poem celebrating the joy of materialism and a holiday movie that should have been aborted at conception.
Enjoy.
Friends Don’t Buy Friends Full-Screen DVDs
A Christmas Poem by Robert Saucedo
Every nerd down in nerdsville liked widescreen DVDs a lot.
In the nerds’ hearts of hearts, the DVDs held a spot.
But the Grinch regarded letterboxing with distrust.
He saw the enormous black bars and was filled with disgust.
The Grinch hated anything less then a full image on screen.
Unless he had “Pan and Scan,” he would make a nasty scene.
Come Christmas Eve, at the market the Grinch stood.
Lord only knows, he was up to no good.
His cogs were a-turning, his mind scheming a scheme.
He bought for his friends DVDs fully full screen.
He clutched in his hands pan-and-scan gifts.
Paying for the abominations, he let out a sniff.
“Bah, humbug to letterbox,” he snarled with a sneer.
“On widescreen a pox,” he let go with a leer.
He purchased full screen, despite the loss of detail and depth.
For such a massive mistake to make, one must be on crystal meth.
“My friends won’t care if half an intended shot is missing.
For the director’s consent, I was not fishing.”
Jerky movements mar a pan-and-scanned disk.
The loss of story info will often be missed.
Without widescreen, 45 percent of the visual is lost.
Those “two black bars” are well worth the cost.
Letterboxing gives viewers the original aspect ratio.
Filmmakers agree full-screen versions must go-go-go.
After one hour of widescreen watching, the bars are soon forgotten.
It’s easier than you think to ignore black bars top and bottom.
Despite a smaller visual proportion, you see more of the frame.
Full screen, my friends, is quite simply not the same.
None of this concerned the Grinch.
Ignoring valuable facts, for him was a cinch.
Come Christmas morning, the Grinch’s pals woke to presents a-gleaming.
As they opened their gifts, two words stood a-screaming.
“Full Screen” was stamped on their DVDs labels.
Their viewing pleasures were forever disabled.
“What about the original aspect ratio!” His friends let out a cry.
“You stole half of my movie,” his friends sobbed, as they dabbed at their eyes.
Friends don’t buy friends full-screen DVDs.
The reasons are obvious to even the birds and the bees.
Come Christmas time, take note as you shop:
Nobody likes movies that come from the box cropped.
I apologize for any trauma reading that poem may have given your Christmas spirit. Nobody said I was a poet. But if you thought that was bad, you haven’t seen the movie version of Elf Bowling.
There have been some pretty bad video game-to-movie adaptations released. And then there’s Elf Bowling: The Movie.
Based on the briefly popular Internet game/work productivity dampener that saw Santa Claus cruelly using his elf buddies as pins in a game of bowling, this CGI animated movie takes that basic premise and stretches it to the point of ridiculousness.
Seriously, this movie is so loopy I honestly think it was made on a drunken bet.
The film’s story reimagines the legend of Santa Claus to include pirates, gangster penguins, union labor strikes and the island of Fiji.
As the movie begins, Santa and his brother Dingle Kringle are two toy-thieving pirates who sail the high seas making mischief — always finding time, though, to enjoy some bowling.
While Dingle is unrepentantly evil, Santa yearns for a life where he doesn’t need to make a living from stealing children’s toys and then selling them back to the kids’ parents.
Santa, I realize that being a pirate may sound cool and all but if you have some moral issues about stealing kids’ toys (and you should) there are other jobs you can take. You like the oceanic — and slightly homoerotic— lifestyle of piracy? Join the Navy.
It doesn’t matter, though, because when the Kringle brothers’ penchant for cheating at bowling is discovered, an outraged crew mutinies and makes the duo walk the plank. Eventually, the siblings wind up in the North Pole and encounter a band of elves, including one that apparently has use of the Force. After some good ol’ fashioned exposition, Santa is hired on as the official leader/spokeman for the elves.
He then proceeds to harness the elves’ deep-rooted desire to make toys and molds them into a work-force to rival any found in a Nike sweatshop. Using the elves, Santa seeks to repent for his toy-stealing ways and embarks on a new life as a once-a-year worldwide gift-giver.
Unfortunately, Dingle grows jealous of Santa’s success and seeks to overthrow his chubby brother and take over the Christmas business for himself.
Oh, and the elves apparently enjoy being used as bowling pins. Seriously.
What it says about an employee’s self-esteem when his biggest sense of joy comes from having his boss hurl a heavy ball at him, I’m not sure. Bowling for elves, though, is a huge source of bonding between Santa and his pint-sized staff.
This, unfortunately, is not the stupidest part of the movie, though.
There’s also a wide-collection of half-assed songs, there’s some truly adult-oriented humor that most parents would find objectionable at the very least, and then there’s the movie’s off-putting insistence at utilizing a racial caricature for one of the elves. Wrapple, the rappin’ elf, is a black elf (seemingly, the only one) who pops in and out of the movie to offer an “urban” perspective on things — including, but not limited to, suggesting out-of-nowhere that Detroit could use the magical powers of an elf to clean up things. Weird.
Despite all this, I can see why a movie like Elf Bowling was released.
With the commercialization of Christmas at an all-time high, there are an increasing number of Christmas presents that people need to buy. Once you buy all the important people in your life gifts, you still have to find crappy stocking stuffers to hand out to the rest of the world. Elf Bowling is that perfect gift for such an occasion.
Just thoughtful enough to not be thoughtless, giving a young distant relative the movie is the perfect way to say “you’re not as important to me as my own kids but I thought you should have this terrible movie so that your parents think I’m a swell guy.”
When not composing Christmas poems that would make Rudolph’s ears bleed, Robert Saucedo is an occasional freelance writer whose work appears regularly in The Bryan/College Station Eagle, Dryvetyme Online and mysteriously scrawled in blood. Visit him on the web at The Carrying On of a Wayward Son.
Last 5 posts by Robert Saucedo
- Confessions of a Spec Tater — Give the Gift of TV - November 26th, 2009
- Confessions of a Spec Tater — A Prelude - November 19th, 2009
- Bad Movies Done Right — Sex, Drugs & Rock and Roll - November 17th, 2009
- Bad Movies Done Right — Love and Vampires - November 11th, 2009
- Bad Movies Done Right — On the Road Again - November 4th, 2009
Plot
The first half follows Superman’s origin pretty closely. The Planet Krypton ‘splodes and baby Kal-El is rocketed away to save his life and he lands on earth, growing up an honest youth in Smallville, Kansas. After his father’s death, he travels to the big city of Metropolis to seek his future. Oh yeah, and Earth’s yellow sun gives him a hell of a lot of super powers. Taking on a “mild mannered news reporter” disguise, he makes a big debut where he flies around the city in a cape and tights, fights crime, has a reporter fall in love with him and gains the attention of Lex Luthor, the greatest criminal mind of his generation.
Characters
Jor-El: Marlon Brando (yes, that one) plays Superman’s doomed father. Stern-faced and trying to warn his people of the impending danger, he’s not in the movie for very long, but after baby Superman is sent into space, he continues to be a presence because he’s recorded himself into the computers that Kal’s got with him.
Kal-El/Clark Kent/Superman: This is the movie that put Christopher Reeve on the map. (Young Clark was played by Jeff East) Reeve does a great job with it too. As Superman, he looks the part with his square jaw and honest features, but really, he also pulls out a great performance changing back and forth from Clark to Superman that goes beyond just taking off the glasses. There’s a whole body language and tonal shift that he pulls of effortlessly. For the purposes of the movie, he is Superman, pulling off a great and convincing performance that’s pretty badass in its own right. I should also mention that veteran actor Glenn Ford played Jonathan Kent, his Pa who instilled the down-home values onto him, and he gets a very moving death scene.
Lois Lane: Margot Kidder is great as the ace reporter who befriends Clark but falls for Superman. Lois was updated from the “woman always getting in trouble that Superman rescues” to a more modern, initiative taking, ball busting scrappy newshound whose ambition to get a great story…always get her in trouble… and Superman… rescues… her. Um… It works better here, trust me. There is, however, one catch, and that’s the infamous flying scene (which is great at first). In it, Lois starts reciting a poem in her head about what she’s feeling and its cheesy as all hell.
Perry White: Jackie Cooper plays the boss of the Daily Planet, a straight-shooting, somewhat hyperbolic newshound. He gets some great lines but doesn’t do a whole lot.
Jimmy Olsen: Marc McLure plays the iconic young photographer, but like Perry, he’s not that important to the story. He certainly doesn’t seem like “Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen.”
Lex Luthor, the greatest criminal mind of our generation: Gene Hackman’s fantastic as the incredibly hammy, toupee-wearing Lex. The performance is fun and his self-awareness of his own evil is a great contrast to Superman’s wholesome goodness. The scheme that Lex cooks up is thoroughly elaborate and outlandish, and he’s helped by two henchmen, the simpleton Otis (Ned Beatty) and Eve Tessmacher (Valerie Perrine). Lex is awesome in this.
Visuals/Effects
Richard Donner did a fantastic job of making good on the tagline of “You will believe a man can fly.” Considering that this was ‘78, the effects are generally really good, but more than that, the whole visual style of the movie is fantastic. The overall effect is a mythologizing one. The movie is full of light moments and quite a bit of humor (like whenever Lex opens his mouth) but everything about Superman himself is played totally straight, and it works. I’m not that big a fan of the extremely crystalline look of Krypton and the Fortress of Solitude, but that’s just personal interpretation.
Writing
Jerry Siegel and Joel Shuster, two Jewish kids from Cleveland, OH (as a Clevelander, I feel obligated to point that out), came up with Superman back in 1932. The script for this version came from David Newman, Leslie Newman, Robert Benton and Tom Mankiewicz with lead story credit going to Mario Puzo (Yes, THAT Mario Puzo, who wrote The Godfather). The movie itself divides into several sections. The Planet Krypton going boom, Clark’s arrival on Earth and his youth, Clark Kent’s arrival in Metropolis, and then the conflict with Luthor. All are classic beats in Superman’s origin, and they all get some fine spotlight time. The pacing does feel a little bit slow, especially after the explosion of Krypton, but as far as origin stories go, this one handles things pretty well.
Not everything’s perfect. Lex, while a really fun character, just doesn’t really feel like a serious threat to Superman, despite doing some pretty heinous stuff. The ending of the movie, too, stretches things a little too far past what would be reasonable. Just because Superman was capable of doing some pretty physically impossible stuff during the 50 and 60s doesn’t mean it should be played straight in 1978. Flying in space is one thing (Supes can do that just fine without a suit), but how the movie resolves the ending is just a little too farfetched in a “modern” Superman take.
Sound
John Williams.
Oh, you want more? Okay. The "Superman Theme" is one of the best cinematic fanfares around, and the whole movie has musical moments of awesomeness. That better?
Conclusion
Superman the Movie is a legitimately fun movie that I would say was an early success of the superhero genre. It slathers the source material with love, but isn’t afraid of doing some self-aware poking fun at the genre either. There are a couple of “what the hell?” moments and some of the effects haven’t aged well, but the good stuff generally overshadows the bad. A very fun movie and definitely recommended.
Yes its an American Express commercial, so what? Its amusing.
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