Writer's Block: No reservations required

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Rick Castle. Best-selling writer/Nathan Fillion? Relevant to my interests.

Also, Abed from Community. Damnit, I want to know his thoughts on yaoi. Plus, no awkward silences when there's Abed/Castle bantering to be had.

P.S. Can we go to one of those places with unlimited dinner rolls/breadsticks?

Also, persecuted religious minority orcs. All in the backstory.

So I went to the theater to see Sucker Punch (still haven't figured out why it's called Sucker Punch. After all, if twelve of your fellow Commie terrorist robot slaves have just been blown up, sliced apart, and shot by a group of hallucinating mental patients/sex workers/...Power Rangers? Then surely the punch you get should not come as a surprise). And I noticed this in the lobby.



1. While an ideal way to hide the piss-poor animation, I can't help but notice this exact pose is ripped off from the Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle poster. And it can't be a parody, because I'm pretty sure it's illegal to parody something after eight years.

2. Cheech and Chong are listed in the credits. Not Cheech Marin and the other guy. Cheech and Chong. So... did the characters from an series of stoner films spring to life and suddenly decide to get jobs in the children's entertainment industry? Because that seems like a much more interesting story than a sequel to a rip-off of the sequels of Shrek.

ETA: Also saw the Captain America trailer. It's really been a while since I've been this jazzed. Did you see the Red Skull? They did that all with make-up and just used CGI to take out his nose. Why is that so awesome to me? And aren't you glad they're not having a whole team of superhero Invaders and are just doing a bunch of other soldiers helping Cap out? A year ago, this smelled like a clusterfuck, and now it's doing trailers that are 75% D.J. Qualls and we're loving it.

Monsters

Finally, a movie that dares to ask the question: Who are the real monsters, giant alien land-octopi that eat people, or people who are against immigration?

Okay, so this movie starts off with Random Douche in Mexico to escort Poor Little Rich Girl back to America. You wouldn't know it, but that sentence? Has fifty plot holes. What's Rich Girl doing in Mexico if it's such a urine-soaked hellhole (and it has monsters in it. *ducks rotten vegetables*)? Why does she need Random Douche to hold her hand? Did he just happen to be in Mexico or did they buy him a plane ticket and send him down there? Because here's the thing, you hear he's a freelance photographer and you're thinking Indiana Jones, knows-a-guy-who-knows-a-guy-in-every-hole-in-the-wall, haggles like a champ, carries a gun up his sleeve. This guy? Is the biggest fuck-up ever. He doesn't even speak Spanish. HE DOESN'T EVEN SPEAK SPANISH. Basically, 16-year-old-me, fresh out of Spanish II, could do a better job than this guy. At least I'd know better than to lose my passport. Yes, that happens.

Anyway, this is all to get the story to the point where they have to go through the infected zone. Because apparently Mexico doesn't have planes. Or boats. In fact, there's no planes or boats anywhere south of Mexico either. You have to walk through monster country or you can't get into America. It doesn't matter if your dad is rich (because they don't have wire transfers in Mexico either).

You know, maybe it would just be easier, in this big metaphor for immigration, to just have the heroes be immigrants? They don't want to live in a monster-soaked hellhole, so they're going to America. There. I already sympathize with them more than THE GUY WHO CAN'T SPEAK SPANISH.

I appreciate what the movie is trying to do, in delivering the subtext with a semi-light touch and having a show, don't tell approach to the characterization. But this is stuff that you have to think about and carefully construct. You can't just improv it. So, naturally, the entire movie is improvised. And you can tell. Like, there's this subplot about how Random Douche is a monster because he takes pictures of tragedies for a living. Then, later on, I'm pretty sure the movie is filmed in places hit by Hurricane Katrina to pass for landscape devastated for an air strike. That's not hypocritical at all. Did I mention the hero can't speak a word of Spanish, but the heroine can, yet for some reason she needs his help to GET OUT OF A SPANISH-SPEAKING COUNTRY. That doesn't make any sense and it's the premise! It's the first thing they wrote! Or improvised, whichever!

Also, wouldn't you know it, those bastard Americans built a wall at the Texas border to keep the giant hell-squids who smell fear out. As our heroine notes, "it's like we're boxing ourselves in."

Building a wall to keep out illegal immigrants: Controversial.

Building a wall to keep out kaiju-sized hentai beasts: GOOD IDEA. UNEQUIVOCALLY GOOD IDEA. YOU FAIL METAPHOR FOREVER.

Then, in a "deep" line, someone says that "the wall looks a lot different from the other side." NO IT DOESN'T, IT'S A WALL, IT LOOKS THE SAME FROM BOTH SIDES.