Peter Fenzel hosts with Matt Belinkie, Mark Lee, and Josh McNeil to Overthink the new Three Musketeers movie, the new TV show Grimm, and some of the reasons why we aren’t watching Two and a Half Men.
Bonus Podcast Visual Aid: Belinkie, being a devotee of The Three Musketeers, has assembled a chart comparing plot points across the novel and 4 different movie versions:
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I haven’t listened to the episode yet but as I download it, I wonder if anyone mentions (or remembers) 2001’s “The Musketeer”.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0246544/
Oh, definitely. It’s in Matt’s table, and we definitely talk about it.
There’s a lot of love for Brotherhood of the Wolf among the overthinkers, and The Musketeer was definitely trying to Dante’s Peak that bullet-time/wire-stunt French swashbuckling Volcano, as it were. So we definitely saw it.
It isn’t very good.
Brotherhood of the Wolf is just awesome. Made me want to buy a quarterstaff.
I enjoy Brotherhood of the Wolf a lot, but I’ve always felt Mani and his Native American-ness was over-fetishized beyond exaggeration (and in multiple ways); but I’m not familiar enough with French cinema to know if I’m just being hypersensitive about it (I may not be Iroqois, but still- and magic potion? c’mon, seriously…), or if that’s at least not atypical or randomly culturally insensitive.
Iroquois*
Wow, that’s a real winner, there…
I haven’t listened yet either, but I would suggest an additional plot point for Belinkie’s chart: Richelieu’s death. I think it’s telling that he’s not killed in the original novel, but is killed in most of the adaptations.
It’s notable that he is NOT killed in the 2011 version. I was going to offer to write an article on how this movie is actually more faithful to the original story where Richelieu is more just an adversary (like a ‘heel’ in wrestling) than the embodiment of evil that you usually see in the films (especially Tim Curry in the 1993 version).
The 2011 film is attempting to rehabilitate his image to more conform with the actual history, where he is held in France as a progressive leader who contributed a lot to the development of the modern nation-state. The film clearly demonstrates that he is much better at actually governing than any of the nobles or musketeer-types.
I think whoever wrote the 2011 version is not shy about borrowing from previous movie adaptations. The ending is almost exactly the same as the 1973 version: the Musketeers get the diamonds back in time, but the Cardinal remains in power to plot another day. And I think Milady’s “death” scene (which she turns out to have survived at the very end) is a pretty clear homage to the Disney version. Athos is going to execute her, but can’t bring himself to do it, and she leaps to her death instead. That’s VERY different than in the book (where everyone really, totally wants her dead) but pretty much what happens between Kiefer Sutherland and Rebecca DeMorney.
I’m pretty sure the origin of Ghostface Killah is outlined in the Wu-Tang Manual paperback book from 2005. I’d consult my copy, but it’s locked up in storage right now. I’m pretty sure the name had to do with his reputation as a drug dealer in the Staten Island projects. According to Wikipedia, the name actually comes from a kung-fu movie called The Mystery of Chessboxing, which is part of the band’s cinematic reference library.
If you aren’t including The Three Amigos! you haven’t done a proper analysis of The Three Muskateers.
Hmm… Steve Martin also redid another classic with Roxanne… perhaps there’s some overthinking there about Steve Martin and classic literature?
I don’t know, ‘The Three Amigos!’ is really a version of the ‘Seven Samurai’/’Magnificent Seven’ plot. The only direct connection to ‘Three Musketeers’ is that there are three of them, and there’s no real D’Artagnan analogue.
Speaking of ‘The Three Amigos!’, El Guapo would be a great Halloween costume (along the lines of Vigo the Carpathian), as long as you could find a nice sweater. Would “sexy El Guapo” be redundant?
Sexy El Guapo could be redundant or cancel itself out, because the joke is El Guapo is very much not sexy. You’d have to do El Guapo trying to be sexy and being even more not sexy- so redundant in a good way, or go for the ironic actually sexy El Guapo which means you’ll probably be mistaken for just a sexy bandido- cancels out.
Wouldn’t the optimum strategy for Inky, Blinky, Pinky, and Clyde be to move directly towards the four Power Pellets and remain on them forever?
I mean, if you want the game to be utterly impossible.
I’ve always seen Nightmare Before Christmas as more of a Christmas movie than a Halloween movie. The plot is about how the power/magic of Christmas is so strong that even the Pumpkin King, ruler of Halloween, is drawn to/inspired by it.
That’s true, but it never gives me a heartwarming good-will-towards-men vibe. The movie clearly digs Halloween Town much more than Christmas Town. For what it’s worth, they initially released it right before Halloween. I guess it’s a Christmas movie for people who can’t stand the wholesomeness of Christmas, but keep in mind that for anyone under the age of 10, it’s legitimately scary. Personally, I split the difference and watch it on Thanksgiving. Lots of tryptophan-induced dreams of Oogie Boogie Man.
I dunno, I always watch it at Christmas because I kind of find it heartwarming. Two scenes in particular: when Jack first goes through the door the Christmasland and when Santa makes it snow on Halloween town. I’ve always looked at it as a movie that’s attempting to re-ignite the child-like love of Christmas among people that are burnt out on it. And by “people” I of course mean me.
I watch it at both, and I made my parents take me to see it twice when it first came out. I was in… second grade, I think?
Still one of my favorite movies, I have far too many bits of merchandise and editions of the movie and soundtrack.
I have a suggestion Slimer actually a chinese ghost
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungry_ghost
Scrooged is our Christmas movie every year. Every Christmas Eve we watch it.
One of my friends went to a Halloween party as sexy The Dude.
I actually sat here for a good ten minutes, debating the difference between “spirit” and “ghost” because my knee-jerk reaction is those adorable tree spirit things in Princess Mononoke. But that prolly doesn’t count for a favorite ghost in pop culture. For that, I’d have to say it’s a tie between 1) the ghosts in the Haunted House ride that show up in your seat. First time I went on that ride, I had just turned ten. I cried when I realized they weren’t real. And 2) Space Ghost.
Christopher Lee, AKA King Haggard…
The older movies with Oliver Reed are distinctly comical, as is the Disney version. I’m guessing the books aren’t all that funny, though?
I haven’t read any of Dumas’s books, but there’s a hot air balloon in the film version of The Count of Monte Cristo from 2002- which is anachronistic, so I’m assuming that was an addition in the movie. So perhaps there’s a theme of steampunkification of Dumas’s works going on.
And in the grand tradition of pop culture being made in clusters, you dudes watched Grimm while I’ve been watching Once Upon a Time, which shamelessly uses Disney-ified characters in its portrayal of classic fairy tales- like Jiminy Cricket and Maleficent. No Big Bad Wolves yet- the most interesting character so far is prolly Rumpelstiltskin. Or the kid- which, by the way, I think the “snarky smart little kid” trope gets rather old (but I couldn’t find anything about it on TVtropes.org when I looked after seeing the kid in the first episode- odd).
I ordered the ornament, since it’s almost the keychain I’ve been wanting all this time… ;p
I scheduled Sunday night TV with some friends to watch The Walking Dead and Once Upon a Time, otherwise I do all of my TV watching while getting ready in the morning or cooking- and I do it on my laptop, be it via DVD (BBT) or streaming. (This is also the usual time I listen to you dudes, which explains why sometimes I have way too much to say in the comments, while others, I have absolutely nothing- depends on how engaged in the primary task I am.)
A Disneyophite all the way, my favorite Halloween movie is The Nightmare Before Christmas. But Hocus Pocus is really fun, too, you know- veeeery close second.
I also chose Once Upon a Time over Grimm. Right now I find Once Upon a Time more visually captivating and intriguing, if insanely slow-paced. Grimm seems like a disappointing procedural with bland acting. Though, could a procedural be more disappointing than Unforgettable where the solution to the crimes don’t seem to really hinge on her memory? Could acting really be more bland than on Revenge? Yes, I may be dealing with issues from the snatches of shows my parents watch while I am in the room.
Gab, I just watched Hocus Pocus again last week. That is definitely my favorite Halloween movie. Oh, and I didn’t even catch how some of the fairytale references were specifically Disney. Well played, ABC. Well played.
Speaking of the Brothers Grimm, did anyone else see that movie with Heath Ledger and Matt Damon other than me? Yes, clearly I have a fairytale fixation/have been super-brainwashed by growing up during the Disney Renaissance.
Hah, as soon as the cricket was talking, I knew they were going to. In the second episode, when the queen went to her “friend” and fellow witch/sorceress/whatever’s place, I was literally waiting for it, and sure enough, she name-dropped “Maleficent” when they were talking. It was subtle, but yeah. Called it, wut!
I don’t know about you, but myself and all of the girls I played with when that movie first came out had totally ginormous crushes on Zack and Thackery. (Sidenote: Thackery? What the heck kinda name is that? Going for continuity, I suppose, Z/Thackary…)
And I love that movie. It’s by no means an example of “high cinema” or something, but it’s fun and witty and at least more than mildly entertaining. (And every time I watch it, I can’t help but think Lena Headey and Kiera Knightly could play sisters.)
Crap, and for clarification, although I’m sure you of all people know what I meant, by, “Haunted House Ride,” I meant the one at Disneyland.
Another vote here for Nightmare Before Christmas as best Halloween movie, though closely followed by a marathon of Simpsons Haunted Treehouse episodes.
I have some work to get done tonight doing a product photography shoot as a favor for someone, so I’ve been working in the nearly unused basement of my condo complex, with audiobooks of various horror and ghost stories playing in the background.
I’m extremely hard to spook, but I did keep thinking I heard someone in the hallway. Then I recalled what the room next to the one I was using as a studio used to be…
https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/kz_UL16HPRn3X5Loh83FFg?feat=directlink
A morgue. The building is a hundred year old hospital, converted to residential in the late 1980’s. The former morgue still has drainage grooves in the floor, but it’s a sort of hothouse now, where one of the other residents grows seedlings to plant in the garden.
Spooooky way to spend a Halloween I guess!
My dorm my sophomore year of college was a converted hospital. As a trade-off for the bigger rooms, residents had to agree to put on a haunted hospital every October.
I watch a ton of terrible TV just because it happens to be online or more particularly on hulu. Sometimes it works out and a show improves. Sometimes it doesn’t and I keep watching it. They aren’t in the survey but they seem reasonably popular. Bones, House, Castle, Human Target, Whitney, Happy Endings, Pretty Little Liars, The Lying Game, Covert Affairs, The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills… I am full of shame. I stayed with Royal Pains and White Collar far longer than I should have. Which was the first episode because those shows are atrocious.
Oh and as for the most ridiculous sexy costume, if anyone watches Suburgatory, I’m citing the “sexy mushroom”. Oh and Suburgatory is alright once you stop expecting it to be Mean Girls, Easy A, Awkward, Daria, etc.
I watch Castle, The Good Wife, and Pan Am, all of which weren’t on the survey.
And I had been interested in Suburgatory because of Alan Tudyk, but I just couldn’t bring myself to watch. Not that bad, then? Because you’re right, it looks like a terrible combination of all of the things you mentioned. The previews make it seem like it’s about a girl being miserable because she’s, gasp, forced to move into a big house in the suburbs…
Yay for Pan Am. Or, as the AVClub refers to it, Sky Spy!
I only watched the pilot episode of Suburgatory, but I was surprised by how pro-city and viciously anti-suburb it was, considering that most viewers will probably be watching it from the latter. The suburbs aren’t just boring, they are Stepford Wives creepy.
A subversion of the dominant paradigm?
Ah, Pan Am. Why am I still watching that? Oh right, because it’s in the Sunday lull when nothing new is on hulu. Everyone in the cast is far too young and immature. Maggie and Colette are the only ones with vaguely interesting backstories. Colette and Kate are the only characters I can really stand. Laura is UNBEARABLE. How can you be so needy AND ungrateful and high and mighty? The men are just ridiculous. Essentially, the subject matter is just being handled very clumsily which I think is reflected in the poor ratings.
As to Suburgatory, yes, Alan Tudyk and Cheryl Hines make it watchable. The lead girl did come across as incredibly mean and entitled in her own way but I’ve started to like her more as the show has progressed. Again, it’s about managing expectations. I only expect to laugh when Alan Tudyk and Cheryl Hines are on screen. I do not expect depth or pertinent social commentary. I expect something to keep me company while I do busywork.
“You’re wearing bunny slippers!”
“I like them!”
My soul hurt a little at that one.
Crap, I didn’t mean to hit reply yet. Ugh.
Anyhoo, I find following the actions of some of the characters kind of difficult, but overall, it’s not terrible. Is it great? No. I think they’re trying to create an aesthetic of outward polished romanticism, but they’re trying to “undermine” or “subvert” it with showing some dark happenings and what-not.
I still think The Playboy Club was the more interesting of the two…with equally terrible acting from the blonde lead actress. But at least it had Laura Benanti. Christina Ricci’s character is a weak, independent-brunette-clawing-her-way-to-the-top substitute.
Can it be argued, then, that The Three Musketeers (the book), is more akin to a serial TV series than a film because of its serial structure? There’s a meta-arc but they must deal with episodic events throughout?
Furthermore, has anyone read Twenty Years After? I’ve only read it recently and it has a really mournful tone regarding the failures of the musketeers to achieve their ambitions, and how politics will tear them apart. The moral ambiguities, which are present in the first book, are still more pronounced – the new Cardinal is diabolical but not as smart as Richlieu, the King has died and his son is too young to rule, the Queen has only grown more selfish. We see some of this in the film of the Man with the Iron Mask (the final volume of the third book, which I have yet to read – busy rereading the Chronicles of Narnia for a podcast, and then I’m spiting myself by reading Red Wheel II: November 1916 by Solzhenitsyn, the second of four books in the his masterwork series, but the last to be translated into English, so I’ll never know how it ends), but it would be more pronounced over the course of a series.
Yeah, I haven’t read The Three Musketeers in a while, but I remember it having a very “tune in next week for another episode” feeling. It could have gone on forever. And of course, Dumas’ third Musketeer book DID go on forever: 268 chapters.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Vicomte_of_Bragelonne:_Ten_Years_Later
I’m glad you brought up The Man In the Iron Mask stuff, because it really drives home the lack of a worthy cause in these Musketeer books. The king and queen hardly seem worth fighting for, and I’m not convinced that the boys have any great loyalty to them. In the big diamond necklace subplot, the Musketeers all nearly die in order to KEEP the king (their employer!) from learning his wife is two-timing him. They’re not really driven by duty or heroism. Rather, they are defined by friendship and a love of adventure.
That’s always a problem for Hollywood, which wants to give them a CAUSE the audience can get behind. The books are a little more muddled than “Let’s go save France!”
One very weird thing about Twenty Years Later is how pro-Royalist it is the English Civil War, in which France technically but in no way practically supports the King. Indeed, Mazarin, the cardinal, deals with Cromwell before the war is over. I’m still undecided as to whether this is because France was under the July Monarchy (as seen in Les Mis), and whether this continues into Vicomte, which was written when Napoleon III reigned. The whole business with the Fronde, supported by the least aristocratic musketeers, might be analogous to the situation building to the 1848 revolts across Europe, or it might just be that it was an exciting time to be around in France.
I admire Dumas incredibly because he wrote Three Musketeers and Count of Monte Cristo in a single year, and yet they persist as a pretty big part of the culture to this day. If I can even approach that success as a writer, regardless of the literary nature or otherwise, I’ll be very very pleased.
I would love to hear (or read) some overthinking on Two and a Half Men; I know a lot of people who have opinions about it (New York comedians) but very few people who have actually watched more than “part of an episode that was on while I was at the gym.”
I’ve actually been watching it regularly for a few years. The transition from the end of the last season to the premiere of this one was especially interesting in the context of the Charlie Sheen vs. Chuck Lorre. The Lorre’s vanity cards at the end of each episode (which are always a block of text you need a DVR to read) contained some oblique references to Sheen (some not so oblique); then the season premiere begins with Charlie’s funeral, well-attended by dozens of women who are only there to spit on his corpse. It’s a closed casket funeral, by the way, because of how horribly he was killed. Has a character ever been more definitively written off a show?
Just today, upon hearing the podcast, I realised I had notes from the last one (yeah, you’re the only podcast where I end up taking notes).
Last week, there was a call from Wrather about this being the popular culture which you’re overthinking, which in effect you’re validating. That means the Gossip Girls, the Glees, they’re all valid targets because they’re part of the popular culture. That does, unfortunately for you guys, mean the Two and a Half Mens.
The thing actually written in my pad from last week was, “Is Wrather saying that OTI’s mission statement is that he may not like Transformers 3, but he’ll defend your right to watch Transformers 3”?
So is it that because you guys apply the kind of merit and thought to say, Birdemic, that others might to art or to prestigious television shows, you’re elevating them to that level?
Finally, on the latter points on challenge vs. non-challenge – in our house we tend to watch about two hours of TV in the evening, between 8 and 10. The first hour will probably be something challenging, e.g. French crime masterpiece Engrenages. We’re about to start the apparently deeply difficult show The Shadow Line. The second hour will be much lighter, including shows like The Big Bang Theory and hosts and hosts of panel games, which make up much of British comedy television. So we tend to use the two types of TV in balance with one another.
I get the need for ‘non-challenging’ media. My problem with that idea is that my very standardised office job is stressful, but involves little more than the front brain. If I want ‘mindless’ then I’ll go to work.
I think there is a need for more overthinking on the subject of television. We have these ideas about the role that television serves, but I’m not sure they are correct. Fenzl has mentioned multiple times recently that television is intricately related with winding down after a stressful day at work. Which makes sense, given that the golden age of television paralleled the golden age of the working class. I don’t know about back then, but nobody I know now watches TV in order to unwind after a hard day at work.
Instead, television seems to be more closely related to evening boredom. The rise of the working class has left most of us with 4-5 hours of unstructured time between the end of work and bedtime. It’s too dark to mow the lawn or play a game of golf, so most of us are stuck at home with nothing to do. Even before television, radios and the evening newspapers played to captive audiences. Television was just more efficient, and more engaging. Of course the serialized programming on television was/is designed to be addictive, so you’ll keep filling your unstructured time with the same programs, week after week.
(On a side note, I think the diurnal activity cycle also explains why ancient civilizations were so obsessed by astronomy – after dark, there was absolutely nothing to do but stare up at the night sky until you fell asleep.)
The real benefit of Hulu and DVRs is that they allow you to shift programming so that it better matches your unstructured time, enabling you to watch later in the evening, or even the next day.
Anyway, that’s an alternate theory on the role of television for you to mull over.
I feel that one of the best Halloween movies is Hocus Pocus in all of it’s 90s glory. Not only do we get Sara Jessica Parker in a pre-Sex in the City role, but a movie from the Disney Channel when their monthy movies were still awesome (Brink and Smart House anyone?). And despite the fact that there are a few plot holes, like Billy still a slightly decayed corpse despite being dead for over three hundred years, it combined witches and zombies in a very entertaining way.
NCIS might be popular for Mark Harmon, but also the writing; the random bits of humor in the episode as well as the little inside jokes and running gags. Also how they show women is interesting because having watched it from the beginning I’ve noticed that the show doesn’t really like strong women. Sure they had Kate for the first two seasons, the Director for a time was a women and now Ziva but at the same time the two characters who were overtly feminine were eventually killed. Only Ziva who’s considered to be more “one of the guys” has been able to last the longest.
Granted it could be because Cote doesn’t want to leave, but at the same time her character lends itself to the theory that the more masculine a character on the show is the increased chance they have on surviving the season.
There’s the hot goth girl, but the writers do the standard trope of diminishing her despite fantastic competence by making her emotionally child-like and implying social adaptation issues.
And the couple of “hacking” episodes I have caught are freakin’ hilarious, especially when she and another guy use the same keyboard simultaneously defending against some kind of remote computer intrusion in real time.
Computers just aren’t very interesting in real life. Most of the things people do on computers make accounting seem exciting. Although they play a big part in our lives, it’s just dumb the way they get shoehorned into the sci-fi side plots of normal procedurals and mysteries.
Oh I think they can be done well in fiction, just aren’t very well filmed yet.
Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother is very realistic regarding crypto and various RFID tracking systems, in the context of a gripping story line. It’s probably capable of being filmed as well.
But as for computer security and intrusion, social engineering, shoulder-surfing and phishing are about it for realistic filmable stories. Compiling linux kernels, patching MS bloatware, and the elderly forwarding chain-mail trojans are hard to make exciting on film.
They do and they also make her have a unhealthy addiction to Caf-Pow (their version of a slushie) which makes it seem like she can only work with that as an aid and without it she’d be less than her “awesome” self.