Notes From My Department Meeting, 6.28.05

Any time Kim, the department head, says we're about to learn something "incredibly interesting," you know she's full of crap.

A picture of Kim: Baby Spice's older sister, beaten by time and booze.

CFD has questions about the presentation we just saw. She always has questions. Curse her.

My boss Jennifer sometimes reminds me of E.T., or actually E.T. with a bad haircut and a cornflower sundress. And a massive underbite. And a lazy eye. Ultimately, it's a pretty disturbing visual.

We are given the password to the company's pay-subscription site and told not to sell it because some libraries pay $10,000 for entry into the site. I accept cash or check.

Linda, in her 40s, has a tattoo around her ankle of a rose. This pretty much convinces me that from 1987-1991 she was a groupie for Guns N' Roses. She always flinches when I say "Axl."

Having Joyce here is like letting a homeless bag lady onto the Senate floor and giving her a mic: too much exposure, too little cognitive function. (Although I guess that applies to more than a few senators.)

Clickety-click, folks.

Right here.
[Link goes to pajiba.com]

[N.b.: "Clickety-click" is just another stupid way I came up with to say "Click here." It's not meant to represent, as some might interpret, the sound of a rollercoaster.]

Let's go shopping at the Battery Hut.

Notes From The Fun Committee Meeting, 6.23.05

Yes, you read that right. A committee designed for fun.

Maureen suggests dressing up and having a Renaissance-themed day. I'm not surprised, because I've seen her wear a dress before that looks like she wears it to Renaissance fairs on the weekends. So I'm not shocked by her suggestion, just really, really sad.

It's "for all intents and purposes," not "for all intensive purposes." And while we're at it, jive, jibe and gibe are three different words.

Friday is apparently Bring Your Pets To Work Day. Rather than reflect on the inherently lonely nature of the idea, CFD launches into stories about her cats. She's only in her 20s, and already she's the weird cat lady whose house you don't walk by at night.

Another suggestion for a "fun" day at the office: dressing up like different decades (e.g., the '80s). When asked how I and the other men would respond to the idea, I reply that I'd probably wear normal clothes and say I didn't feel like participating. This takes some of the wind out of the sails of the full-tilt insane women on the committee, but it doesn't stop them, just slows them down.

Shawnna, dumb as a bag of rocks, also makes various suggestions throughout the meeting, but they're so embarrassing that I've already willfully forgotten them.

Kosher Nouns

North Atlantic scr-d

trip-d

lightning r-d

yard full of s-d

hotr-d

Apple iP-d

Ra, ancient Egyptian sun g-d

Review: Batman Begins

Batman Begins
Starring Christian Bale, Katie Holmes, Gary Oldman
Directed by Christopher Nolan

3 stars (out of 4)

Batman Begins is a fitting title for the fifth film about the Dark Knight; in an era of tentpoles and franchises, when studio heads are looking for the next Harry Potter or Wolverine, the latest film from Christopher Nolan (Memento) feels laden with the hopes and fears of CEOs across Hollywood. As I write this, accountants across Southern California are wringing their hands at the 17th consecutive week in which box office attendance is down by 9% and revenue 6% from last year. Batman isn’t a superhero, but a commodity designed to resuscitate a limp box office and begin a new series of films that promises enough ancillary tie-ins and DVD sales to boost revenues in a losing business. Ah, the glorious innocence of the dream factory.

Nolan, who’s grown more linear and mainstream with each successive film, succeeds here in offering the ultimate summer movie for boys of all ages. I’m not ashamed to admit that I found myself grinning like, well, a little boy at several scenes, particularly the Batmobile’s rampage along the rooftops (yes, rooftops) of Gotham City. A heartfelt ode to the Y-chromosome, Nolan has brought us a gritty world of steel skyscrapers, heroes in tanks, and women that never talk. There’s only one female role in the entire film with more than two or three lines, and that honor falls to Katie Holmes, whose character is written with all the bludgeoning precision that can be expected for such a clichéd role. Rachel (Holmes) is a placeholder, a space filler; she represents all women and the hero’s interaction with them. And while young Bruce Wayne’s father is a saint, a righteous doctor and caring philanthropist, his mother’s a mute: the only time I can remember her speaking in the film is when she screams as she and Bruce’s father are gunned down in an alley as 10-year-old Bruce stands helplessly by.

Bruce grows up in the care of family butler Alfred (Michael Caine) before running away and eventually winding up in a Bhutanese prison camp. The script from David S. Goyer (Demonic Toys, all three Blade movies, Kickboxer 2...I think you get the picture) moves quickly through the necessary exposition. While most people know about Bruce Wayne’s motivation to become Batman, Goyer and Nolan still have run through the story anyway, and it’s a testament to Nolan that these scenes work so well. He is freed from the prison by a man named Ducard (Liam Neeson), who claims to be a representative of Ra’s Al Ghul, the leader of a group of ninja assassins calling themselves the League of Shadows. Bruce trains with them and leaves on less than pleasant terms, and spends the rest of the movie putting together his suit and car and stopping an evil plot by Dr. Jonathan Crane (Cillian Murphy), a.k.a. the Scarecrow, who uses people’s fears against them. Just when things seem to be getting wrapped up with that plot, the one with Ra’s Al Ghul reemerges, as it must, but the dual meandering storylines push the runtime to 2 hours 20 minutes. A little streamlining, or at least some tenuous connection between the villains, would have gone a long way here.

Does Batman survive? Does he stop the bad guys? Does he take a few setbacks but still learn from them in the end? If you really have to ask, then I can’t help you.

Tim Burton’s films (Batman, Batman Returns) were built on rubber and steel, all blacks and cold grays. Joel Schumacher’s films (Batman Forever, Batman & Robin), if they could be called such, were mindless orgies of comic coloring, senseless spectacles attempting to dazzle the viewer into, if not forgetfulness, at least forgiveness. But Nolan and production designer Nathan Crowley (Nolan’s Insomnia) have managed at last to create a more believable Gotham City, forged in ambers and greens. There’s always a golden sheen to the light reflecting of Batman’s body armor, a dirty golden brown that lends Bale a weight and a presence that Kilmer and Clooney never had. It’s this subtle distinction, the feeling that this just might be happening somewhere in the world, that turns Batman from a freak in a costume to a genuine superhero. The slums of Gotham, called the Narrows, are patterned after Hong Kong tenements and Blade Runner, one of the many details that makes this Batman film the most believable yet.

Fantasies like Batman work best when the myth walks hand in hand with the personal. If a story engages on the personal level but doesn’t make the myth believable, you wind up with an oddly costumed melodrama (TV’s Lois and Clark springs readily to mind); on the other hand, if a story’s myth works well but leaves no one to care about on a personal level, you’re stuck with an epic bore. (Examples of the latter include all three Star Wars prequels and Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings series.) In recent years, only Spider-Man 2 has been able to successfully combine the mythic arc of the hero’s journey with the personal trials of young love to ascend into the upper echelons of pop storytelling; not since The Empire Strikes Back has Hollywood produced such an intersection of the epic and the everyday. It’s this search for and lack of balance, unfortunately, that holds Batman Begins back from being truly great pop filmmaking. Bruce Wayne deals with his parents’ murder remarkably well, turning out more pissed off than emotionally scarred, and his mission seems less driven by a desire to make sure crimes like his parents’ murder happen again and more by a general playboy malaise: young, rich, and with plenty of leftover toys from an abandoned Wayne Enterprises military contract, Bruce in Nolan’s film is just a ninja with a good arsenal. I almost prefer the inventive basketcase, the borderline schizophrenic with deep-seated emotional issues, that Tim Burton and Michael Keaton brought us in 1989 or that Fox brought to the animated small screen in the mid-1990s. Rachel wanders through every cliché available to superhero-story screenwriters; the audience is too busy assuming she’s Bruce’s love interest to ask where the actual love is. Bale and Holmes exhibit the kind of chemistry underwear models might display in an ad, which is to say not much.

But all this comes after, and is only something that can be realized after the credits have rolled. While you’re on it, Batman Begins is the most enjoyable summer ride in years, a great example of popcorn Hollywood and a solid action movie. It’s only when you stop to think about it that you realize what might have been.

"...consider the bright side of this scenario: If we post enough reviews, we may just get the movies we want. Start typing."

Here's the rest.

Ten Movies You Should See, Pt. 5

I've rounded up ten more titles that, for one reason or another, seem to be underappreciated by my generation. [Click here for the first, second, third, and fourth lists.] Enjoy.

[In no particular order:]

1. Bowfinger (1999)
2. In America (2003)
3. The Laramie Project (2002)
4. Liberty Heights (1999)
5. Primer (2003)
6. Quiz Show (1994)
7. Swimming Pool (2003)
8. The Virgin Suicides (1999)
9. Wag the Dog (1997)
10. You Can Count On Me (2000)

Notes From My Department Meeting, 6.14.05

A woman is brought in to explain how to use our new office chairs. (1) Who actually needs help figuring out how to sit down? (2) Why is this woman so nervous and out of breath? She's got the easiest job in the world: telling employees how to use chairs. "You just sit down in it. Don't lean too far forward or you'll fall out. Okay, I'm going on break."

Two men from another supply company give us the rundown on how to use the new arms on which our computer monitors are mounted. One of them refers to either himself or their team (hard to tell, I'm not really listening) as MacGyver. Joke bombs.

Joyce again announces her intent to use the men's restroom if the women's room is occupied. If I ever walk in on that, I'll drive straight home and kill myself in the slowest, meanest way possible.

June birthdays are announced, including mine. They're going to sing for me in two weeks. I'm getting really bad at looking surprised and enthused at the office.

Complaints of elevated temperature in the room end the meeting 10 minutes early. I'm not hot at all, so maybe the complaints had more to do with the predominantly middle-aged women in the room than the thermostat.

The company picnic is this Saturday. A lobotomy and a toddler and I'd be the perfect attendee.

I've decided to keep an online version of the list.

Notes From My Department's Mid-Year, Day-Long, Suckfest Of A Meeting

We tour the newspaper plant where the Ventura County Star is manufactured. It's a standard, fairly mundane tour until Christian Bale and Bill Pullman jump out from behind the presses and start singing. Then it just gets awkward.

There's such a huge disconnect between the way management perceives us to be (happy) and the way we actually are (suicidal).

We eat lunch at some bad barbecue place that refers to brisket as "tri-tip" and offers me Mr. Pibb instead of Dr Pepper. Stupid bland-food state.

After lunch, my department is assembled for what many of assume will be bonding and/or sharing exercises. I form a murder-suicide pact with a nearby coworker.

We are split into pairs and told to list our accomplishments to our partner for 3 minutes. Our partners are supposed to listen and make sure we say positive things about ourselves. I use the opportunity to go to the bathroom.

My department head gives a brief speech about how happy she is that we all have such a good time at work and with each other. She gets choked up several times. I wonder if it's possible to make myself pass out just by willing my brain to shut down.

Another group activity: we are split into teams and given a hypothetical situation in which our group has inherited 10,000 washing machines. We are assigned to create a print ad or 30-second commercial to sell the washing machines. I am appointed the spokesman for my group, maybe because I'm tallest. I fail miserably at every attempt to hide my disdain for the entire sad display.

How I looked all day:



How I felt all day:

Navel Gazing

New essay up.

Follow the links. [Link goes to www.metaphilm.com. No registration required.]

Chuck Colson And Pat Buchanan: Towering Monuments To Douchebaggery

Click it up.

This one too.

Because It's Thursday

Enjoy.

Other Pornographic Nicknames For Deep Throat That Are Significantly More Cumbersome Than "Deep Throat" And Would Have Been Downright Inconvenient

Behind the Green Door Lies the Truth of Watergate

Debbie Does Dallas (and when I say "does," I mean she sheds valuable light on White House conspiracies)

The Opening of Congressional Hearings for Misty Beethoven