6 Things I Learned Doing Nanowrimo

I was one of 315,904 participants in National Novel Writing Month or Nanowrimo.  The basic goal of the month is to generate a first draft of a story consisting of 50,000 words or more (roughly 1667 words a day).  It can be a grueling marathon, one that drains your mental facilities as you try to figure out what to do next with your work.  I have done it the last two years and somehow come out victorious both times.  It’s not easy, so here are a few things I’ve learned that hopefully aspiring writers can consider getting ready during the next 11 months.

1.       You Will Exhaust Your Initial Ideas Early, and That’s Okay.

Going in you may think you have all of the ideas for your novel knocking around in your head and all you have to do is put it to paper.  When I did Nanowrimo last year I had been thinking of my story idea for the prior two and a half years.  Before I sound like I was super prepared, I didn’t get that far.  In fact I hit the wall hard sometime around the end of week two both years.  That’s okay.  Even a 200-300 page novel is going to have more than you can keep going in your brain at the same time.

Don’t let that discourage you.  Getting those ideas out is good because it will make room for new ideas.  After you write everything you can think of think about what happens next and how to connect them all, and it’ll help strengthen your writing.  No writer has every single idea ready to go on the outset.  Some ideas will only come out during the writing process.

2.       Embrace Your Inner Swooper

When I try to write, it’s hard not to feel a little like Nicolas Cage’s Charlie Kaufman in the movie Adaptation.  There are so many options with writing a story it can be easy to get overwhelmed and constantly criticizing yourself for not writing the great American novel.  Countless stories never get told because the writer can’t get beyond these insecurities.  Following the Kurt Vonnegut model of swoopers (those who write prolifically and edit later) and bashers (those who write and scrutinize all the way), I’m a basher through and through, and I have to imagine a lot of Nanowrimo participants are bashers as well.  But to win Nanowrimo, I had to try to think like a swooper.

So it makes sense that one of the things Nanowrimo encourages is to allow its participants to give themselves permission to write crap.  This may seem counterintuitive: why bother putting in all this effort into a subpar product?  However, letting the bad ideas flow allows all ideas to flow.  Nanowrimo is all about getting in motion all the people who keep saying they’re going to write, but never get around to putting those ideas out because they get hung up on it not being a complete novel the first time out.  With editing, no one has to know about the cheesy dialogue, scenes that go nowhere and characters who don’t add anything.  How I got to the ideas isn’t necessarily important to the reader.

3.       Having a Plan Is Helpful, but Always Leave Room for Improvisation

During Nanowrimo I met someone.  Her name is Charlotte.  She’s about my age, British with long black hair.  She knows how to use a sword and is a little hyperactive.  She also was barely in any of my outlines for my story up until I started writing this year’s Nanowrimo.  One of the joys of writing is discovery; stumbling upon some idea that you never would have thought of before you started writing.  George R.R. Martin has a quote attributed to him classifying writers as being either architects (ones who intricately plan every small detail) or gardeners (ones who plant a seed and see what happens).  It’s similar to the “swoopers and bashers”.  Of course a good novel will need structure with its story, character arcs and plot progression, but as I wrote I needed to allow myself the freedom to explore and take risks because I could find something better than what I originally set out to do.

4.       Being Open to New Sources Helps

It’s a logical conclusion to want to avoid consuming other stories during Nanowrimo out of fear of being too influenced by whatever you’re reading.  Certainly spending more time writing will limit the amount of time you have to read, watch TV and consume stories anyway, but writing in a vacuum is generally a bad idea.  Aside from maybe ancient cave paintings, art is influenced somehow by other art.  The best way to combat being too influenced by other work is to consume a lot of different types of work.  Read high fantasy, true life stories, beach read murder mysteries, classics, graphic novels and read with an eye as to how things function in the work and how you can figure out what works in your writing.  To be honest I didn’t read a whole lot going into last year’s Nanowrimo.  However in 2013 I vowed to be different and I’ve read a lot, from several Vonnegut novels to Neil Gaiman to graphic novels like Fables.  All writers read and it’ll make your work richer the more you can fit in.

5.       Writing 50,000 Words and Being a Winner Are Not Mutually Exclusive

Technically speaking, if you write 50,000 words you won NaNoWriMo.  It is a huge achievement to generate that much over only a month.  However, sometimes people take shortcuts to get to that magical number that may cheapen the victory.  There is a thread in the Nanowrimo forum all about tricks and cheats participants can use to boost their word counts.  To be fair, there are tips that can be helpful, like writing in a character’s backstory or writing out your thought process as you work out elements in your story.  Then you get tricks like not using contractions, always referring to characters by their full names or having characters repeat things for characters who are, for no practical reason in the story, hard of hearing.  For those who use these tricks I have to ask: what are you really getting out of it?  Are these things making your writing or your work ethic regarding writing any better?  These tricks will be the first things cut from any revision you make, so why even bother putting it in in the first place?  Sure, there are instances where it makes sense not to use contractions or have characters repeat themselves, but if you have unnatural sounding dialogue spoken by a bunch of Jimmy Two Times, who is going to want to bother slogging through that?  Unless you’re doing it for a school assignment, these cheats can’t be truly helpful.

It’s a bit like Rocky (or for a more contemporary version, the Late Night trilogy episodes of Louie).  Where (SPOILER) both Rocky and Louie don’t get what they want, yet both end on notes of triumph because they gave it everything they had, and really, doing everything you can is the only way to combat regret.

6.       The End of November Is Just the Beginning

Some people hate Nanowrimo.  Like really hate it.  I can see why, with publishers complaining about December submissions clogging up their inboxes written by at best naïve and at worst delusional would be authors.  For some, once Nanowrimo’s done they think they can just throw in the raw word file out to a publisher and think that JK Rowling money is going to roll in.  For people who claim that they love writing, they aren’t really applying themselves.

As much as Nanowrimo emphasizes revising and editing, it’s hard to ignore that some of the sponsors of Nanowrimo are enabling the idea that what you wrote in November is a final draft and is ready to go on December 1^st, not to mention Novel Writing is in the full title (I guess “National First Draft Writing Month” isn’t as snappy).  It’s not that easy.  I’ve participated in Nano the last two years and you know how many people I’ve had look at my two drafts: nobody.  It’s not even close to being ready for anyone but me.  There’s still characters and story points that need clarifying and it needs to be put together into some cohesive whole.  There’s a lot of work ahead of me, but I think I’m closer to it than I was before Nanowrimo 2012.

Yes, there have been novels started in Nanowrimo that have been best sellers like Water for Elephants, but those writers no doubt put in the hours making them coherent novels before they were ever published.  You may be that one genius out of a million who can churn out a novel fully formed, but odds are you are not.  That type of writer is generally a creation of the movies (written by people who know better).  If you want to work as a writer, you have to respect and obey the work ethic of a writer.  That means reading a lot and writing a lot.  If you want to work as a writer, you need to treat writing like work.

Gravity Review

Easily the most welcome news in movies this fall has been the success of Gravity, the latest from Children of Men director Alfonso Cuaron.  It’s been discussed to death how much mainstream Hollywood is relying on making nearly everything a franchise—glutting cineplexes with remakes, sequels, prequels, reboots etc.  It doesn’t help when originals like Pacific Rim and Elysium fail to live up to (admittedly) high expectations.  To see Gravity not only succeed but become a genuine hit and have some genuine Oscar buzz is a welcome refreshment for a dreary movie year.

It’s also great to see a film that is somewhat unorthodox do so well.  The cast, aside from a faceless extra and some voice actors, is only two people, seasoned veteran astronaut Matt Kowalski (George Clooney) and emotionally fragile newbie Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock).  The two are working on a space station when space debris destroys their vessel, kills their crew mates, and leaves them adrift in space with limited oxygen and another space station a considerable distance away.  On top of all that, they have to get there before the debris makes another round as it circles the earth.  The destruction, sold brilliantly in easily the best trailers of the year, gives us stakes that couldn’t possibly be higher.  I know a few people who decided not to see the film because the trailers were a little too effective in their selling.

It can be easy to forget how simple the storyline is thanks to the magnificent spectacle on screen.  The film is beautiful to look at; it’s the most realistic space cinematography ever shot for a film not actually shot in space (this film is a lock for most of the technical Oscars).  Along with the likes of Hugo, Avatar and Life of Pi, Gravity utilizes 3D in a way where it’s part of the storytelling and helps make it feel all the more real.  Cuaron’s penchant for long takes is in full effect from the opening 17 minute long shot, submerging us in the world and allowing the 3D to be most effective.  The long takes throughout are welcome amongst rapid fire editing that bogs down many action films.  I will echo the statement made by the legion of this film’s fans: see it on as big a screen as possible and in 3D.  It made me a little seasick, but it was worth it.

What really struck me were the themes of perseverance.  The end of the world has been a popular topic for a lot of films lately, not to mention all the films that have used 9/11-esque imagery to reinforce how high the stakes are.  However, it can lead to a lot of tough films to sit through, especially ones generally considered lightweight popcorn.  Gravity has both emotional devastation that sets up Ryan’s mindset going in and the physical devastation that is the catalyst for the film’s plot—albeit on a smaller scale than most of this summer’s blockbusters, but it never forgets how surviving these ordeals make us stronger.  Rebirth is a major theme, with a lot of womb imagery throughout.  And I think that feeling is one of the reasons why Gravity has been so successful.  The well-executed effects and visuals are amazing to look at, but the story at the center of it is simple and resounding.  While most of us won’t be in a scenario as perilous as the one in the film, we all at some point will find ourselves adrift after a disaster and we grapple feelings of hopeless after such a loss, but we have to survive because we have to move on, to find that other station.

Grade: A

Observations (SPOILER ALERT)!

*I’m not the first to say so, but Clooney really looks like Buzz Lightyear.

*I definitely wasn’t expecting Clooney to die that early on in the film, and it basically becomes a one woman show for Bullock, likely one that’ll get her a few award nominations.  It is really her story from the beginning, as she is the one who is less experienced in space travel and her feelings about losing her child inform her motivations.  Also, losing the calm and collected veteran raises the stakes even higher.

*The effects are superb, from the realistic space setting, to the way the camera goes into their suits during some long takes to give us a POV shot without cutting.  True great effects are often the ones you never notice, but there is that other group of great effects that work like a great magic trick, leaving us wondering “how did they do that”.

*The corpse popping up in the wreckage of their shuttle was clearly an homage to Jaws right?

*There are a few lines of dialogue, like Ryan mentioning she hates space after an encounter with the debris, that don’t quite work in the film.  I see they were trying for some comic relief, but they didn’t land.  This is a minor qualm though.

*Another great thing about the film: 91 minute runtime.  No bloat to be seen.

Orange Is the New Black Season One Review

So far, Netflix’s original programming has left me feeling underwhelmed at best.  Of their four shows, I’ve only finished half of them (still have four episodes of House of Cards, and abandoned Hemlock Grove after two.)  House of Cards, while well acted and well made, feels a little too much like leftovers from better anti-hero shows.  Hemlock Grove feels like the worst parts of every contemporary popular horror series duct taped together.  And Arrested Development, well we know how disappointed I was with that.  I was ready to write off Netflix’s originals until Orange Is the New Black, the latest from Weeds creator Jenji Kohan.  I’m happy to say Orange has proved me wrong and is a great addition to the non-cable supported television movement.

The series, a fictionalization of Piper Kerman’s memoir of the same name, is about privileged WASP Piper Chapman (Taylor Schilling) who finds herself in prison for fifteen months because of a crime she committed a decade earlier.  On top of the fish out of water story, she’s dealing with an increasingly strained relationship with her fiancé (Jason Biggs) and her concerns her girlfriend at the time of her crime (Laura Prepon) sold her out.  The show tells its story in a series of flashbacks that jump all over the timeline, but it never gets confusing.  Also, taking a page from Lost, each episode besides the pilot and finale feature flashbacks from a specific inmate’s history, usually culminating in how they got to prison.  As it worked for Lost, it works here, giving us context to why the characters are the way they are now.

The cast is exceptional, with plenty of memorable characters: Natasha Lyonne as recovering addict Nicky, Uzo Aduba as the unstable Crazy Eyes and of course I can’t mention the cast without spotlighting Kate Mulgrew, who is my #1 pick on my Emmy fantasy ballot for next year, as the Russian cook Red.  I could easily list off most of the cast.  Considering the environment of a prison, it’s one of the most diverse casts I’ve seen on a TV show recently and like diverse shows that work, the diversity isn’t a transparent act of patronizing the audience.  Also, I think there are some networks that don’t have as many compelling female characters as Orange does.

With it being set in a women’s prison, women’s issues are a major piece of the show.  There’s a transgendered inmate, an inmate set to be married who’s involved with another inmate and an inmate who finds herself romantically interested in one of the guards with some horrifying consequences.  Some of the crimes the inmates committed involve women’s issues, or they wound up taking the fall for a man.  Not to mention the guards are primarily men, a mix of insecure men like Healy (Michael J. Harney) or cruel like Mendez (Pablo Schreiber).  Between this an Orphan Black, it’s refreshing to see such good entertainment with an emphasis on strong female characters at the center.  It shows those sexist dummies that so long as there are well written characters, it doesn’t matter who the story is about.

As it has been with all of Netflix’s originals so far, the entire first season was released in one day, trying to capitalize on the trend of “binge watching”.  As you can tell by the introduction, none of the shows really got that urge for me to binge watch because I actually wanted to until Orange.  Although I parsed my viewing out—not more than two a day—it wasn’t out of not wanting to see more.  This was the first Netflix show where I was actually looking forward to seeing the next episode.  Unlike its other shows, Orange Is the New Black doesn’t feel like a show that’s trying to be a great show.  It just is.

Grade: A-

Notes: (SPOILERS)

I don’t know if this is a problem with the way I saw it on (Roku box), but for some reason there were no subtitles during the scenes where the characters weren’t speaking English unless I turned on the subtitles for the entire episode.  There has to be some way to work around that or I’m missing something, right?

I have to imagine this was in the promo material, but I didn’t know Alex was a prisoner with Piper until it happened on the show.

Top 5 characters I want to see flashbacks from who didn’t get them in season one: 1) Crazy Eyes, 2) Taystee, 3) Poussey, 4) Sister Ingalls, 5) Morello.

Like many children of the 90s, it was a little weird to hear Patty Mayonaise’s voice coming out of Yoga Jones’ mouth.

One thing this show did really well were the transitions.  A favorite of mine (I think it was in “Moscow Mule”) involved the camera craning around a box of produce to a flashback.

Really found the friendship between Sophia and Sister Ingalls surprisingly effective, especially since it was started because Sophia wanted Ingalls’ hormones.

That throwaway line early on about Larry and some trouble with a webcam was a shout out to American Pie, right?

Favorite needle drop: “Sunday Morning” by Velvet Underground.

I like that Regina Spektor theme song a lot, but I don’t know how I feel about the montage in the opening credits.

I hope that’s not the last we see of Miss Claudette, though it sounds like it might be.

Poussey is the inmate that grew on me the most as the season progressed.  Really loved the season later on between her and Taystee when Taystee found herself back in priosn.

I’d love for this to set the stage for a comeback for Natasha Lyonne.  I have to imagine she mined a lot of her real life troubles for the role of Nicky, and it pays off in a big way.

Loved silent Norma singing in the Christmas pageant.

I wonder how they decided who was going to be a credited lead character, considering most of the large cast appeared in every episode.

It felt like the new administrator subplot was underserved this season.  The series in general had a lot to juggle and did it well,, but I imagine we’ll hear more from this story next season.

I wonder how long this series will go on for.  Season one covered 3-4 months of Piper’s 15 month sentence.  She could get more time because of her pummeling Pennsatucky in the finale (who knows how that’ll play out).  Season one definitely felt like one part of a bigger story, with a lot more left in the air than I’d usually like.  Regardless, I’ll be there whenever they put out season two.

Sharknado Review

Warning (?): Spoilers for Sharknado abound here.  Suffice to say spoiler free, if you want a perfect movie for good bad movie night, look no further.

Most movies that fall into the “so bad it’s good” category tend to be ones made by people who think they’re making masterpieces, but completely fail to deliver on every level; the filmography of Ed Wood or The Room for examples.  Then you get Sharknado, the latest in Syfy’s original movies, a film that blew up Twitter with its ridiculous title as the premise.  A movie that’s well aware it is no budget schlock, but embraces what it is and takes it to its extreme.  The film is poorly directed, edited, acted and written, with special effects that are better suited for a Nintendo 64 game than a movie.  And, like many good bad movie fans, I loved every awful, stupid minute of it.

To explain the plot reminds me of the “disclaimer” before Huck Finn, but I’ll make an attempt anyway: surfer Fin—yeah, it’s that movie—tries to make his way to his wife and daughter and later on son amidst a massive storm that deposits sharks throughout Los Angeles via the eponymous sharknado.  Tagging along are his best friend, a waitress that’s feels like is supposed to be Fin’s love interest until they decide to make her Fin’s son’s love interest & John Heard, who I’m pretty sure is actually drunk as his character is, wondering how he wound up in a movie with Tara Reid and Ian Ziering.  Throughout the film he has this bizarre compulsion to stop what he’s doing and save random strangers, including one scene where he must’ve spent several hours lifting one by one an entire busload of kids driven by Cousin Oliver from the Brady Bunch.  That’s about as much character development as you’re going to get, and the plot doesn’t fare much better.

This is a film that not only completely disregards the rules of gravity and physics, but also how humans, the world, weather and movies generally function.  Here’s just a few examples of ridiculous things that happen in this film:

·         A shark attack early on in the film is juxtaposed with stock footage of people at a day at the beach hanging out like nothing’s wrong. 

·         They didn’t bother putting in background in the scenes where the characters are driving or in a helicopter, so everything outside the vehicles is white.

·         Sharks pounce on people like cougars and devour them in seconds or in one case, swallows a few whole without biting them at all.

·         A house, on a hill no less, floods and by doing so collapses.

·         A car randomly explodes for no reason. 

·         This whole thing is blamed on global warming (needless to say scientific accuracy isn’t a concern). 

·         The pointless prologue about fisherman looking to get in the business of shark fin soup with a buyer who just happens to be there.   

·         An airplane tarmac has a home supply store just next door to the hangar. 

·         A Ferris wheel rolls through a city and smashes into a large office building, destroying the building. 

It’s tempting to write this review entirely in italics and in exclamation points because of its relentless insanity.

Oh, it gets crazier.  Rather than, say bunker down in a shelter to avoid the tornadoes filled with sharks, Fin and his crew decide to fight the sharks using shotguns and handguns.  This movie had to have been a zombie tornado initially, but they just search and replaced zombie with shark right?  Zombie tornado must be in the pipeline.  Somehow they are able to kill sharks with handguns from the ground, but it doesn’t stop there.  Even after all of that, Fin decides he and his family need to fight the tornados using homemade bombs.  They even use chainsaws that slice through these sharks like a hot knife through butter, one doing so from the inside.

Movies that are “so bad it’s good” generally are made by people who lack the self-awareness that they’re making a bad movie.  However, there are a few that are “so bad it’s good” because they are one hundred percent committed to making the choices good filmmakers won’t.  As much as we want to see films that get things right, sometimes we want to see a film get everything completely, hilariously wrong, and that can be almost as satisfying.

Actual grade: F

So bad it’s good grade: A

Much Ado About Nothing Review

It can be easy to fall in love with the work of Joss Whedon, or at least admire his work ethic.  While it seems so many marketable names can succumb to making paycheck movies once they’ve gotten big, Whedon’s still interested in making stories about characters.  For his follow up to The Avengers, the 200 million dollar blockbuster that broke a billion dollars worldwide, he staged a secret low budget, black and white adaptation of Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing, shot at his home in California and starring mostly people he’s worked with in the past.  The result is a little wobbly, but a welcome and charming side project.

The film sticks to the original play and language, while updating the setting into contemporary times (though an iPod is used, modern technology is kept to a minimum).  Once it started, I immediately wished I’d read the play beforehand, but that’s more on me.  I’ll surely check it out on home video with the subtitles on.  Regardless of my difficulties fully getting in to it (mostly my fault), you can follow along to any good Shakespearean adaptation if you can understand half of what they’re saying and by following the actor’s cues  as you can here.

Shakespearean text is often the toughest material to deliver without sounding like it’s being read for English class, but this cast largely pulls it off.  Alexis Denisof is fun as the arrogant Benedick and Nathan Fillion continues his streak of being awesome as Dogberry, but it is Amy Acker who is the true standout of this cast.  Acker shines as Beatrice, a head strong, independently minded woman that fits well within the Whedon canon.  Of the actors she handles Shakespeare’s words the best and brings a real emotional depth to them.  Not to mention her chemistry with Denisof is undeniably strong.

Though the film has all the staples of a Shakespearean comedy; the large ensemble of characters, said characters plotting against each other, mistaken identities and characters falling in and out of love, it owes a lot to the screwball comedies of the 30s and 40s.  Besides the black and white photography, there is some great physical comedy here, like when Denisof poses/exercises Ron Burgundy style for Acker, a certain pratfall involving a stairway and two scenes of characters eavesdropping, fully utilizing Whedon’s home as a locale.

There is this great sense of “What the hell, let’s put on a show”, that makes this film endearing.  They lack the huge budget and certain production values, but you can tell the actors were having fun.  Of course, this film could easily fall into the vanity project filmmakers are prone to making once they become successful, but this is pretty far from flying his friends to an exotic location with a half-baked script in an attempt to pass off his vacation as a movie.  Like Dr. Horrible’s Sing-A-Long Blog, Whedon’s low budget, do-it-yourself fare is a refreshing alternative to certain bloated, excessive films some of his peers are making.

Grade: B

In Memory of My Dad

A little over a week and a half ago, my dad passed away at age 60.  Since then it’s been strange: I’m beginning the long process of realizing he’s not here anymore and dealing with how to go back to my regular life.  I’m also trying to figure out what to say about him.  Of course my dad taught me a lot about life and how to be a good person.  However, I think the thing I got the most out of from my dad was his ability to try to experience as much culture as he could.

My dad was the kind of person who could talk to anyone, a trait I always wished I had.  This lead to his three decade long career in radio, from working on air as a newsman (I certainly inherited his deep voice) to selling advertising over the radio.  It was work that took him from Connecticut to New Hampshire to Boston and back to New Hampshire again.  He saw a great many changes over the years as the idea of a rock station saw the advent of FM radio to the rise of corporate ownership to the new frontier of online radio, he saw it all and always looked for what was new and interesting.

One of the things I always loved about my dad was his ability to embrace new things.  When I was a teenager, he’d borrow my Beck and Radiohead CDs for his car.  After watching the Fatboy Slim video “Weapon of Choice”, he gave me money to buy the album because he wanted to hear it.  Sure there were times when he might’ve played along because that’s what parents do, but my dad definitely found plenty to enjoy in music outside of what he listened to while growing up.  It lead me to be open to his suggestions as well, giving his old favorites a chance when he finally got them in CD format.

Thanks in part to his work in radio I spent a good chunk of my teen years going to concerts.  One high school friend, while offering his condolences, reminded me of one such show where he got us a limo to take us to a show.  It culminated when we went to the infamous Woodstock 99 festival.  Although it’s impossible to think of that event without thinking of the sad aftermath, that weekend is one of my most cherished memories of my dad, from laughing at the stoners or beating the heat in the shadow of the rising platform MuchMusic used for their dispatches or seeing Elvis Costello, one of his favorites (he owned a poster, which has to be at least five feet by seven feet, for at least 20 years), do a low key set Sunday afternoon.

In his later years he’d continue to explore, going to art shows, concerts and films, often at the nearby Yale campus, where he was a student in the early 70s.  Though we’d separated geographically, we kept in touch thanks to a weekly phone call I’d make every Sunday or through instant messages, texts and even some Skype video chats.  Since I’d found my own tastes, I’d be the one to recommend stuff back to him.

His tastes certainly influenced mine, from exposing me to Monty Python and science fiction (both good and the hilariously bad), to taking me to see Nights of Cabiria or renting Dr. Strangelove for me when I was in high school.  While I may have been too young to grasp fully what Fellini was going for in that late neorealist gem, seeing it early and with plenty of other films he loved set the stage for me being up for anything.  My Netflix DVD queue has never dipped below 485 since starting it, with everything from bizarre arthouse fare to big blockbusters, and I have to thank my dad for giving me that insatiable thirst for the diverse world of popular art.

Of course I’m still coming to terms with what happened and what I’ve lost: my dad, but also my guide.  He was my first template into how to interact with the world and he left me, as well as my sister and anyone who knew him, with a great philosophy of trying to go into life ready to experience the multitude of things even the most humdrum of existences can afford.  In a way, it also reminds me of the passing of Roger Ebert, one of my pop culture heroes.  He spent his life opening up the world of movies to a mass audience, and although it is certainly sad that he is gone, his legacy in those whose lives he touched is immeasurable and helped make them better, more thoughtful human beings.  My dad’s influence is pretty clear on me: besides how I look, my voice and other genetic things, he raised me to be a student of life, and my life is richer for it.

Rest in Peace Dad.

This Is the End Review

I’ve really been looking forward to a good Hollywood comedy, but unfortunately most of the post-Bridesmaids fare hasn’t worked for me.  To prove my point: my two favorite “comedies” from last year were The Avengers and Django Unchained.  Unfortunately the Apatow boom of the mid-00s has waned as most comedy movements do and I felt a little of that going in to This Is the End, the latest from Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, who both also directed.  Although the buzz was great, I couldn’t help but feel a little like I would’ve been more excited for this if it came out in 2008.  A high concept film with the cast playing versions of themselves?  Not to mention it’s another apocalypse film (there’s still one more to go this summer).  This could’ve been a disaster, but luckily I was dead wrong.  This Is the End is a blast, a strong contender for funniest movie of the year.

This film stars Rogen and Jay Baruchel as two friends who’ve drifted apart.  Rogen’s more successful, and Baruchel finds the Hollywood scene and Rogen’s new friends annoying.  Despite Baruchel’s reservations, Rogen drags him to a party at James Franco’s house when The Rapture and subsequent apocalypse happen, forcing the handful of survivors to hole up in Franco’s fortress of a mansion.  Despite the larger than life stakes outside—which claim the bulk of the celebrity cameos in the first act—it’s a relatively small film, taking place mostly within that set.

With most of the cast playing themselves, it can easily devolve into being too self-indulgent, but the film is so funny that never gets to that point.  The cast is in fine form from Jonah Hill behaving like South Park’s Cartman when he’s sucking up to authority figures to Michael Cera’s drunken creep to Danny McBride, basically playing Kenny Powers and annoying the other survivors.  Although the film goes a little longer than I like for comedies, I could’ve seen at least five more minutes of the cameos at the party in the beginning (I expect there will be a lot of deleted scenes when it comes out on home video).

Even if you don’t get the references (though people who get them will enjoy it more), the film still works on a solid structure.  It’s not relying solely on improvisation, something that sinks so many comedies.  The film is basically about a friendship in turmoil as one friend gets successful and makes a new group of friends that clash with the first friend.  There’s also stuff about selling out and making fun of over pampered celebrities.  It also has a strong heart at its center with a good message of living well.  It’s almost like Hollywood taking a crack at a movie usually made by Christians for Christians.

Following some of the casts questionable career choices, you get a feeling this film is a back to basics move and it works.  This film is consistently funny and gets right what a lot of the stars’ recent comedies have gotten wrong.  There is some less than impressive CG, but it’s easy to forgive given the budget and the feel that this film was a labor of love.  It is the refreshing jolt of life mainstream comedy films so desperately needed.

Grade: B+