A Conversation with Josh Vogt About the Internet and Perverted Things
(Trigger warning for anyone bother STD analogies…) SCENE: In the minutes before Shaun’s new editing website went live, an unsuspecting Josh Vogt is gifted an exchange of adolescent absurdity on Facebook. SHAUN: I want to announce this thing, but I can’t do it if the stupid thing doesn’t propagate. Make Internet love and spread already! JOSH: You make it sound like an STD. SHAUN: It’s kind of like one…It waits for an unsuspecting server to touch it in its delicate place, and then infects it with new information. That’s all STDs are. New information. We just perceive it as genital warts. JOSH: Ew. Though that’d make an intriguing character POV. SHAUN: I’m actually laughing right now because that’s funny shit right there. JOSH: Someone who worships disease because it’s just information and information must be shared to have value. SHAUN: I’m going to tweet that… JOSH: No no! I’m stealing your idea. You’ll see it in a book someday. SHAUN: That’s cool. I just want to tweet the convo. Because it’s funny. But I can save it. JOSH: Naw. SHAUN: I’ll use it as blackmail when you sell the story. JOSH: Spread the love SHAUN: I will spread Internet genital warts. Yes. JOSH: So is Twitter an orgy then? SHAUN: Yes. I can’t tweet this. Some of the sentences are too long. Can I put it on my blog? JOSH: Sure nuff. SHAUN: Woot! IT HAS PROPOGATED! JOSH: Heheh SHAUN: http://thedukeofediting.com/ My Internet genital warts virus has flowered! JOSH: I really hope this isn’t anything I dream about tonight…Soon, websites will instead be known a webstds SHAUN: We’re part of the future, Josh. Part of the *FUTURE.* THE END
Movie Review Rant: The Sorcerer’s Apprentice (2010; dir Jon Turtletaub) — A SFF Film Odyssey Review
Though not the first live-action remake of a Disney cartoon, 2010’s The Sorcerer’s Apprentice is part of what might be called Disney’s 1st Phase of Live Action Remakes, sitting right between the last of the Pirates of the Caribbean (At World’s End; 2007) trilogy films and the much more interesting Maleficent (2014). If this is a phase of live action remakes, then it is a loose one, with an unclear path — a test bed, if you will, since the previous remakes have mostly taken the form of almost faithful adaptations of existing stories (101 Dalmations in 1996 and Alice in Wonderland in 2010, for example) or adaptations of existing characters or rides: The Country Bears (2002), Pirates of the Caribbean (2003, 2006, and 2007), and The Haunted Mansion (2003). The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, along with Alice in Wonderland, appear to be “cusp” films, resting on the precipice of a second phase of live action remakes. Now, Disney has or plans to release a torrent of remakes or adaptations in what seems to be its second phase: Maleficent (2014), Cinderella (2015), Tomorrowland (2015), The Jungle Book (2016), Alice in Wonderland: Through the Looking Glass (2016; the sequel to Burton’s previous adaptation), Pete’s Dragon (2016), and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales (2017). So how does The Sorcerer’s Apprentice measure up in this new “renaissance” of live action remakes or adaptations? Unfortunately, about as well as you’d expect: on par with The Haunted Mansion, a less-than-stellar film which probably shouldn’t have been made in the first place. Unlike Maleficent, which was flawed but thematically compelling, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice is a muddled mess of an adaptation. Tonally inconsistent and obsessive in its need for grandiosity, this film is the mark of a studio that has yet to develop a clear path, which makes The Sorcerer’s Apprentice forgettable and mediocre at best. Let’s begin, shall we? The Plot(s)(s)(s)(s) The Sorcerer’s Apprentice isn’t exactly a torturous film; a better description might be painfully mediocre. The film opens by committing what I consider to be one of the Sins of Filmmaking: opening with a narrated prologue that turns out to be more interesting than the actual main narrative. Right from the start, we’re told that Merlin had three apprentices — Horvath, Balthazar, and Veronica — who vowed to maintain order against a sect of sorcerers known as Morganans — the followers of Morgana le Fey (Alice Krige), who decided, as evil people are wont to do, to destroy the entire world, presumably so she could remake it in her own image or something like that. The apprentices seem to have Morgana and her followers under control; that is until Horvath (Alfred Molina) decides to betray Merlin, allowing Morgana to murder the famous sorcerer and steal his power. In the final moments, Veronica (Monica Bellucci) casts a binding spell, merging her soul with Morgana’s and forcing Balthazar (Nicholas Cage) to entomb both within a nesting egg as part of a kind of stasis spell. With Merlin’s final breath, he tells Balthazar to find the Last Merlinian using his magic Merlinian-detecting dragon ring. Thus ends the first part of the narrated prologue. I kid you not. The first 5 minutes of this movie are spent telling us a story that would barely fit into a movie of its own. And there’s more. There are entire minutes of Balthazar wandering around the world for centuries in search of the Last Merlinian, all with someone (I assume Molina) narrating it for us. This is followed by our first introduction to our supposed main character, Dave (played initially by young Jake Cherry and later by Jay Baruchel), who lives in modern day Manhattan, has a crush on a girl, and can apparently wander off in the middle of a field trip with nobody immediately noticing — especially if he wanders off in search of his “do you like me, yes or no” note. Go figure. That paper magically flies into a mysterious shop, in which Balthazar lies in wait, ready to pounce like the predator that he has become. Dave is somehow convinced that he should stick around and let a weird creepy older man put a dragon-shaped thing in his hand. And then all hell breaks loose. Dave accidentally opens a giant nesting egg, which releases Horvath, who has, like others before him, been entombed for quite a while. There’s a wicked cool magic fight (seriously, the magic is pretty cool in this movie), Balthazar and Horvath are trapped in a weird gizmo, and Dave has a total freakout, only to be laughed at because that’s what happens when you try to tell people there are wizards and what not. That’s the end of stories two and three, by the way. There’s more. Yes. More. Finally, we get to grown up post-therapy Dave, who has somehow become a physics nerd cliche. Horvath and Balthazar are finally released from the giant weird urn that sucked them up in the first place, there’s yet another fight over Dave, who was the last person to see the remaining layers of the nesting egg, and finally, we get to the point: Dave is special McSpecial because he’s the Last Merlinian; Balthazar will teach him (because he actually needs Dave to fix the binding spell on Veronica and banish Morgana forever; I know, there’s a lot of shit here), and all of that has to take place while Horvath is having crazy fits of, well, crazy trying to either kill Dave, capture Dave, release Morgana while trying to kill Dave, or generally trying to hurt Dave somehow, but never actually doing it except in really small ways, because no movie villain would be complete without being utterly inept at the one job they were gifted to do: kill the “good” guys. Meanwhile, Dave has a crush on a girl from elementary school, and she’s suddenly back in his life, so he tries to date her and be super suave; oh, no, I’m totally bullshitting, because Dave spends the entire movie