I don't believe in guilty pleasures. Six years of studying literature at the university level taught me many things, and perhaps the most important thing it taught me is something that seems obvious in retrospect, but that most people have difficulty applying in their daily lives: not everything you like is good, and not everything you dislike is bad. We don't need to feel guilty or ashamed because we like something we know is not necessarily of the highest quality. Still, most of us, myself included, fall into that trap from time to time.

For literary folks, especially here in Canada, guilty pleasures often come in the form of genre fiction, like romance, science fiction, or fantasy (though, strangely, mysteries tend to be pretty accepted). When our writers produce works that would fall into those categories, our inner snobs emerge to label them "dystopias" or "magic realist" or some other such bullshit. Code words for the literati, for the most part. We don't want to be mistaken for the kind of people who read books with airbrushed paintings of dragons on the covers, do we? Hell no. Some of my best friends read books with airbrushed dragons on their covers. I'm not sure how this plays out in other jurisdictions—perhaps its a matter of geek community politics; I'm okay with being a book geek, but I don't want to qualify for Beauty and the Geek—but I think here in Canada it has a lot to do with wanting to be taken seriously. Being taken seriously is a national obsession for us even outside the book world, and as Brian Busby has noted, we've been pretty good about deliberately marginalizing pulp and genre publishing in this country, Harlequin being among the few notable exceptions. Why we think this makes us look good is beyond me, but then so many things are.

I'm not falling into that trap anymore. Here it is, for all the world to see: I read books by David Eddings, China Miéville, Neil Gaiman, Ursula K. Le Guin, R. Scott Bakker, Phyllis Gotlieb, Raymond Chandler, Ian Fleming, Bernard Cornwell, Patrick O'Brian, Phillip K. Dick, William Gibson, Alan Furst, Guy Gavriel Kay, H.P. Lovecraft, Douglas Adams, Neal Stephenson, John MacLachlan Gray, Simon Scarrow, Frank Herbert, Arthur C. Clarke, Jack McKinney, Robert E. Howard, Robert A. Heinlein and Harlan Ellison, and I enjoy them, even with the odd airbrushed cover. But, you say, with newspapers now covering comic books (oops, sorry, graphic novels—can't actually call the damned things by their true name), an admission like this, that includes some pretty famous, respected names, isn't so big a deal. You're probably right. Let's talk TV.

I watch a lot of television, and if you're keeping track of folks in Canadian publishing via Twitter, you'll know that so do a lot of "book people". From what I can tell, the programmes they watch tend to come in two categories. They either watch the new breed of high-budget, critically acclaimed dramas like True Blood, Mad Men and Dexter, or trashy, low-budget reality television like American Idol, So You Think You Can Dance, and Canada's Next Top Model. I suppose this is progress. A few years ago, before programmes like The Sopranos and The Wire brought television drama to a new level of quality (or, rather, got it more attention—there were a handful of shows before them that came very close to the same quality), I think you'd have been hard-pressed to get a lot of die-hard book people to talk TV around the water cooler. I can't imagine them being excited to talk about last night's episode of Fraiser, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, or LA Law.

What I wonder about is why there's so little discussion of trashy television drama. There are a number of shows on right now (Legend of the Seeker, Spartacus: Blood & Sand, Burn Notice, Leverage, White Collar, Castle, Eureka) that may sometimes have decent budgets, but where the writing and acting aren't quite up to the level of something like Deadwood. (And then there's shows like Supernatural, which started out as a monster-of-the-week dramedy, but over the last four and a half years has morphed into one of the smartest, funniest, and best-executed things on TV, though nobody seems to be watching it.) There's still some folks who don't watch television at all (like Rebecca Rosenblum, who seems to be one of the few people who can say that without sounding like a hipster snob—which I can assure you she is not), but what really interests me is why there are so few people who watch—or will admit to watching—those trashier dramas. Is there a stigma attached to them? Does watching trashy reality TV seem so much like a guilty pleasure that it's excusable, while watching, say, Spartacus (like Legend of the Seeker, it's from Sam Raimi, the man behind Hercules and Xena) might be mistaken for something you would watch for genuine, non-ironic enjoyment?

I think that it's good people are more open about the television they watch these days, because the medium has come a very long way in the last decade, to the point where I think a lot of the lower-quality dramas are now as good or better than many of the higher-quality dramas from only fifteen or twenty years ago. So to give some love to the trashy dramas, I will admit: I watch Legend of the Seeker (and apparently so does Amy Jones; the leather, it creaks), Burn Notice, Eureka, Leverage, and pretty much every show I've mentioned in this post (except the reality TV; for some reason the closest I can come to watching reality television is Mythbusters and Top Gear, which don't really count).

Step out into the light, Book People. There's no such thing as a guilty pleasure, no matter how many people deny that The Year of the Flood is science fiction. You don't need to hide anymore! Now that I've opened the floodgates, you can expect posts about television programmes in this blog's future.

Well. I'm almost speechless. Let's just start with the verdict and work from there. Ultraviolet is the second-worst film I have ever seen. The worst was Batman & Robin. The only reason I didn't walk out was because, let's face it, Milla Jovovich's rear-end displayed ten feet high in glorious digital is not something you get to see every day.

After this tragedy I am now confident that Kurt Wimmer is not a filmmaker, he is a fashion designer. The only compelling thing about this film was the costuming, which was astonishingly good. Equilibrium was alright, but certainly not the brilliant film that many college-aged viewers hail it as. But it was fairly well put together. Ultraviolet was not. The opening action sequence was so poorly animated that I kept expecting to actually be able to see wires or the green screen or something. Wimmer employed the soft-focus technique, although to a lesser degree, used in Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, not so much to create a sense of nostalgia as to disguise the fact that his CG team didn't know what the hell they were doing.

Continuity was a mess. Sets bore no obvious relation to each other and were often so outlandish that they could have appeared without shame as part of the 1960s Batman television series. Characters moved from one location to another in the course of what should have been a few seconds in the timeline of the film with enormous discrepancies even in terms of whether they were indoors or outdoors (jumping from outside in what could have been suburbia to what was obviously well underground, etc). Also, the headquarters of the Archministry (?) was for no reason at all changed from a fairly cool looking building shaped like the biohazard symbol in the beginning to a horrible parody of St. Peter's cathedral at the end.

And the dialogue poor Milla had to say! I was embarrassed for her and the other actors. Speaking of the other actors, was is just me or did they all seem to have stepped out of Dolce & Gabbana ads? Wimmer didn't cast actors, he cast models.

I know this is kind of a disjointed review, but it was a disjointed film. Nothing made sense! I'm all in favour of non-linear films (I've even made one), but only if it's done on purpose. This was not done on purpose, and it would have be hard to find a less non-sensical plot. Mr. Wimmer, please explain to me why, despite his vampire powers, a doctor has the martial arts skills to take on a woman who kills probably several hundred people over the two days (more or less) that the movie takes place in.

Milla's hotness aside, it's not even worth the rental.

Seriously. (via Nikki)

LINDSAY LOHAN: You're just...it's...um. I'm...nothing. I really should go say hello to Meryl --

SHARON STONE: FUCK MERYL STREEP I'M TELLING YOU THINGS.

In connection with my last post, I'd like to draw your attention to Joe Morgenstern's essay in the Wall Street Journal on how the critic's perspective differs from that of an ordinary viewer, not because of specialized training or a certain background (although those are factors as well), but rather because of the timing; critics see these movies before the hype machines have really started to roll. We see them after.

The Morning News has a great little entry on bad reviews of films that were otherwise much lauded. Read it, and read it now.

With Crash taking the Best Picture award this year I very nearly lost all faith in American cinema. This review says almost everything about the film that I could possibly want to say. ("Contrived, obvious and overstated, Crash is basically just one white man's righteous attempt to make other white people feel as if they've confronted the problem of racism head-on."). Crash was horribly obvious. In fact, I think the only way it could have been more obvious is if Paul Haggis had actually stood behind me in the cinema and screamed "I'm dealing with racism!" while striking me on the head with a book about racism. Not to mention that the cinematography and editing of this film made it very clear that Paul Haggis wants to be Steven Soderbergh when he grows up.

This entry is perhaps a bit late, but there was a major personal crisis in my life, and I was unable to work for a time.

I saw the recent adaptation of The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy on opening night, at one of the tremendously over-priced Silver City cinemas owned and operated by Famous Players. The critics had prepared me for the extra material, and Sam Rockwell had already leaked a tremendous amount about what he was "going for" in his portrayal of Zaphod Beeblebrox. Those things, coupled, of course, with my prior experiences as a fan of the radio show, novels, and BBC television series, obviously made it difficult for me to go into the cinema without any kind of expectations.

The opening sequence was stupid. The "So Long and Thanks For All the Fish" song was clever and funny, the cinematography and editing were both top notch, but it was just a tremendous waste of screen time for what would ultimately wind up being a not terribly important joke. Time, or rather timing, would ultimately turn out to be the only problem with this film that couldn't safely be ignored, and as all the world knows, in comedy, timing is everything.

One of the tremendous things about Douglas Adams' humour is that he was never frantic. He always took his time with a joke, letting it age, settle, and ultimately become all it could be before releasing it into the world. His humour is in that respect far, far different, from, say, your average American sitcom or slapstick Wayans Brothers farce, which generally launch so many jokes at the audience so rapidly that even the twenty or thirty percent that are genuinely funny rarely have enough time to sink in properly. This film was quite simply too fast. It never quite reached the rarefied levels of the average American sitcom, but it also never allowed the truly clever jokes to sink in.

Sam Rockwell was another problem, although if the film's timing had been better I probably wouldn't have noticed. Rockwell's intent was to portray Zaphod as a kind of interstellar Elvis figure, full of gusto and a kind of absent-minded, innate coolness. What he actually achieved, however, was Sean Penn circa Fast Times at Ridgemont High; a moronic, unlikeable jerk who wasn't so much absent-minded as genuinely stupid. Given how Zaphod developed in Adams' work, a genuinely stupd Zaphod is far, far less effective than an absent-minded one.

Mos Def's Ford Prefect was another story entirely. I don't generally approve of musicians moving into acting, mostly because they tend to not be able to play anyone but themselves. Mos Def, however, did an excellent job as Ford. He wasn't exactly how I had pictured the character in my head, and he was a tad bit too soft-spoken and timid, but he filled the role so well that I can't really think of anyone I would have preferred for the part.

About Martin Freeman (Arthur Dent) and Zooey Deschanel's (Trillian) performances I can say absolutely nothing bad. They both nailed their characters with impeccable and humane talent, and both were exactly on rhythm for the entire film.

I could go on and on about the special effects, the absolute mangling of the plot (much of the original material wouldn't have worked on screen, so I can see changing it, but not in the ridiculously commercial ways the filmmakers chose), and so on, but by this time you've probably had your fill of such things in the commercial press.

Thing the first:

I just returned from my first screening of The Two Towers, and while reactions to this film have been overwhelmingly positive, I have mixed feelings. One of the strengths of the first film was how closely it followed the book(s), with the possible exception of Tom Bombodil, who is a delightful character, but ultimately serves a function unnecessary to the film. At the same time, the actors were allowed to do their jobs, which is to create believable characters through, well, acting. The Two Towers does not follow the book quite so closely, particularly with the addition of the scenes with Liv Tyler. I think this is a good thing, because it humanizes the relationship (and its potential problems) between Aragorn and the Horse-Princess, and makes Aragorn's moral dilemma quite sharp in our minds. We feel for these characters in ways the book does not allow us.

Sadly, the rest of the film distances us in ways the first did not. The first film was very human, very real, very much alive. This film is not. It seeks to be grandiose and full of fear and glory, and while it succeeds, it does so only to a point. Just like much of the book(s), it became simply an exercise in deus ex machina, which always struck me as rather sloppy on Tolkien's part. I have always felt that deus ex machina is a tool for the weak writer, unless said writer happens to be penning an ancient Greek play. By the end I was sick of watching characters in hopeless situations being saved by extremely powerful coincidences (involving, for the most part, very powerful beings or many armed men).

I was extremely impressed by Peter Jackson's sense for space and texture. I could see pores, dirty cuticles, dust, dirt, sweat, hair, grass, chips, scratches, tears; I could see everything, and it looked real. These didn't look like actors in costume, they looked like people in the world. Likewise with distances: I didn't once get the impression that there was a camera in the room with the actors. It seemed like the characters could touch all four walls, pick up all the props, touch all the statues... It was a real, three-dimensional world.

Thing the second:

Jim recently accepted a challenge to post 100 times in a single twenty-four hour period. He did it, and many parts of it were extremely amusing. But I think it's a bad idea, and here's why.

When I looked back at my daily blog before revamping it, at first all I thought of was how ugly it looked, and how inefficient it was. I was also ashamed at how infrequently I updated it. But the more I examined it, the more I realized that it wasn't the number of times I updated that I was ashamed of, it was the quality of those updates. I had not taken the time to think about why I was posting, and I posted more about myself than about my interests, but worst of all, those posts about myself were not amusing, and did not speak to my audience.

How does this relate to Jim? Well, Jim is a great writer (he lacks self-confidence, but he has a clear voice and a clear mind, both of which make up for his lack of faith in his own abilities). But he's a great writer because he takes the time to think about what he's writing, and why he's writing it (he often claims he doesn't, but I think he's lying). With his one-hundred posts in twenty-four hours project, he had to post an average of 4.16667 time per hour, which I don't think gives him a lot of time to think about what he's posting, or why he's posting it. In other words, he can't play to his strengths. It was an admirable experiment that had some interesting results, but ultimately I would rather wait a week for a new, well-thought out entry than have him post twice as often but with lesser quality (potentially: like I said, the experiment did yield some good things).

Of course I'd like to remind folks that experiment or no, Jim is one hell of a guy.

Thing the third:

Laura Trippi has moved to a new location. She bought a domain! You should go read her work at http://www.netvironments.org. She has also undertaken the monumental task of teaching me something about zWikis, but seeing as how she does that sort of thing for a living, I have high hopes.

Julianne and I went to see Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets tonight at Silver City. It was good (probably better than the first), but (maybe because I was a little used to the world) didn't seem to have the same sense of awe and wonder in it that the first had. Better acting and f/x, though. Kenneth Branaugh (sp?) wasn't at his best, but it was a surprise to see him in it to begin with. I'm looking forward to the third movie, but it's not going to be the same with a different actor as Dumbledore (sp?).