Morning/Evening Vent, 9 March 2010

Hey, I really like your... guns!

[Update at 18:20 PM: The DoL appointment went well; my DoL rep, Eve, is really nice, concerned, and helpful. I noticed with some annoyance that the public parking has gone up since they installed a fancy, new automated payment system. You slip your parking ticket in the slot, and it tells you how much you owe. Then, you slide bills or coins into their appropriate slots to pay. Last time, I had only a $5 bill, so the machine spat out several $1 coins, gold-tinted quarter-looking things. The attendant was still there, I guess for people who roll up with $20 bills... Progress, I guess.
    I forgot to mention yesterday, since I had a short segment on Bad Company 2, that WABC had come back on Cablevision in time for the Oscars. I stopped watching the Oscar show a long time ago, but this year's was notable for a truly shitty Avatar joke by Ben Stiller, who should have known better:

Utter Crap

    Maybe it would have been better if Avatar had beaten The Hurt Locker. Maybe the Academy decided to celebrate International Women's Day a day early. Maybe they decided James Cameron's work had been rewarded enough. Big and flashy isn't always better obviously. I haven't seen The Hurt Locker yet, but some vets have found it flawed, especially in its depiction of the way military units function. I like Kathryn Bigelow's directorial style. I love with the way she shoots a film, and two of her movies rank among my favorites: Near Dark and Point Break. But her movies, though luscious visually, usually have some huge-ass plot holes. Blue Steel, for example, is a visually striking film with a seriously flawed plot. It was basically a suspension of disbelief thing, as logic was violated all over the place, both in police procedure and basic psychology. Still a great movie, one that had a lot of sexy images, but it left me with a "WTF?" feeling on story.

    Don't get me wrong. I'm not as big a fan of James Cameron as I used to be. I think Avatar was a great-looking movie, but the Pocahontas retread plot just sucked. I was actually rooting for the Marines to fuck up Pandora out of annoyance at its Gaea touchy-feely bullshit tone. But that's just me. Sometimes things need to be rendered in fairy-tale black and white. I just think someone of Cameron's stature could have come up with something a bit more complex instead of making a $300 million movie with a $1.99 plot.]

    No vent today, as I have my DoL appointment with Eve this AM. If anything of note happens, I'll update it later.