Reasons Why Oscar Wilde was Made of Awesome

1. He was a writer who wrote poems, books and plays, mostly dark comedy. He used the rules of the Victorian era as a joke in most of his works, hence "satire". The Victorian era was obsessed with rules and courtesy, and the works of Oscar Wilde are obsessed with criticising them.

2. His works are actually really funny. You can look at them as social criticism, but it's not hard to simply appreciate the humour as well, though the subject matter may in fact be rather dark (like blackmail, for instance).

3. He was a style pioneer. He invented the style "dandy" in the Victorian era. You work those giant bow ties, Oscar Wilde.

4. He was gay. Now I'm not saying he was awesome just because he was gay, because it actually really irritates me when people do that  - you're not equalizing gays when you do that, you're actually belittling straight people when you claim that you're automatically cooler just for being gay - but the thing is that he was arrested for it at the time, because this was, you know, the Victorian era. After he was set free he moved to France, because they were, let's say, more open-minded. But I kind of admire him for this because even being arrested for his sexuality didn't stop him from expressing it, he just went somewhere where it wouldn't be an issue. 

5. I guess you could kind of say from all of this that his life was kind of devoted to defying the social conventions of Victorian Britain. And not in an anarchal way, he wasn't trying to overthrow the goverment, which would inspire less respect from me. But just by writing about it, and in doing so spreading his message to a wider audience and letting them recognize the absurdity of some of the things the Victorian era did, which is much more admirable just because it's smarter. This is a man who was intent on expressing himself.

6. This is somewhat less deep, but it's kind of my favourite thing. Supposedly, when he was moving to America, while at customs they asked if he had anything to "declare". You know, items and stuff like that. To which Oscar Wilde responded, "I have nothing to declare, except my genius." 

Which is totally his style, and that just makes me grin every time. 

And that's why Oscar Wilde has become one of my heroes. 

P.S That's actually one of my favourite quotes of all time, right up there with Bram Stoker's "I sometimes think we must all be mad, and that we shall wake to sanity in strait-waistcoats" and Spike's "love's bitch" speech on Buffy.

Wedding Daze: Review-ish Type Thingy

You know, a movie that we found on Netflix that I'd never heard of. Romantic comedy. The description involved strangers getting engaged "on a whim". Needless to say, I didn't have a whole lot of hope for it.

It wasn't bad though. It was enjoyable enough. I mean, it followed the typical romantic comedy formula: each half of the couple have wacky friends or family (in this case it involves circus freaks, a father who's been in jail for who-knows-how-long, the all-too-perfect and weirdly fixated on charades ex-boyfriend, and the awkward, way too openly sexual parents), one half of the couple (generally the girl, though not always) is eccentric and living in a fantasy the entire time while the other one is going the entire movie in a perpetual what-the-hell-is-going-on, one or both of them humiliate themselves in some way, they end up getting into a fight that breaks up their budding relationship until they finally realize that wait, what a mistake that was, get back together, kiss passionately and live happily ever after. There's probably some awkward sexual implications thrown in there in places as well.

This movie was all of that. I'm talking, you can pinpoint the exact moments/characters that this guy talks about in this movie (except the chase scene, which this movie didn't really have).

But the thing is that, even though, okay, fair enough, I wouldn't see this movie a second time because oh my god half of it was just insane and what the heck is going on. The guy's mom threatening to cut the girl with a broken plate? What? All getting arrested and shooting at cops (which, sidebar, I'm almost like 98% sure one of them was played by the same guy who played Principal Snyder on Buffy OKAY I'M SORRY) and the guy seeing visions of his dead fiance.... look. A lot of the movie was just crazy, okay? It was all over the place.

But as I watched the movie, I kind of got the feeling that that was on purpose.

Usually, when I'm watching a movie, especially comedies, especially romantic comedies, I'm not thinking too hard about symbolism or theme or any of that stuff. But a lot of what they kept talking about was that love is terrifying and insane, but with that comes beauty. You can't have one part without the other.

The girl's mother was scared of the passion that came with seeing her first husband, so she abandoned him and got married to someone else, who supported her and her back, but there was no passion in that relationship, and then she was horrifically bored with him. Meanwhile, the guy's parents were absolutely insane and made no sense at all, but clearly had a very well-functioning, romantic, loving and exciting relationship. Examples like that show up a billion times in the movie, just about.

And I think that the movie itself is supposed to sort of replicate the insanity that comes with love. There is so much stuff in that movie that just has you going "Why on earth would they keep that in there? What the heck is going on?" Half the time no one in the movie even knows what's going on. But it's thematic, and representative, and I think once you realize that it makes a lot more sense.

I think that if I were to pick a theme for this movie, it would be something like: True love is only possible once you've embraced the fear that comes with it.

I'm not saying I think that's true - how the heck would I know about something like that? - I'm just about 98% percent certain that's what the film is trying to convey.

So when you look at it from that perspective, and realize that the story's actually probably supposed to be that erratic, it actually becomes a better movie. So I appreciate it for taking its message to such an extreme and making an amusing movie in the process.

Oh, yeah. And also there were actual funny parts. I mean, I don't laugh out loud at movies that often, but I did at this one. So that's a plus as well.

3.5/5 stars.

Typical Obsessive Post #????

I just discovered recently that MyMusic has its own Wiki site, where one can learn about everything MyMusic (or edit it if something's wrong or extremely badly worded, as I've been doing). And it just fills me with glee because there's a random button that takes you to any random page on the site where it talks about some aspect of MyMusic or the fandom, and it just makes me laugh because it just sounds so ridiculous to anyone who's not in on it. I mean, on what other wiki page are you going to find this entry?

Honestly. If you're a fan of MyMusic check it out, because you will discover things about it that you did not know (people ship Metal and Idol?!) and if you're not a fan of MyMusic you should check it out too, if only to entertain me with your reaction to the ridiculousness of it all. Just press the random button and see what happens.

Here, I'll even help you out. :)

http://mymusic.wikia.com/wiki/MyMusic_Wiki

P.S Flowcharts and Intern 2 are like my number one pairing for life. They just understand each other. :')
http://youtu.be/G1hGAseSQXM?t=6m24s

Spike's Character Study: Part 3

I know. I'm sorry. Not really.

The thing is that Spike just has so many layers to him that it's hard to cover it all in one post. The first one was mostly focused around the fact that Spike is the only character on the show who is so perceptive and intuitive and desperately helpless when it comes to love. Which is something interesting to contemplate, since he doesn't even have a soul (I explored this in more detail in a speculative document on my laptop, and if I ever start posting those I will post that one - 'cause, y'know, we need more Spike posts on this blog). And then the second one was focused on the fact that in spite of this, it is foolish to forget that he is still evil in nature, and particularly twisted, even for vampires. So now I'm going to talk about this little interesting tidbit, which is the fact that Spike is a huge loser and that's at least partly why we're sympathetic to him.

Think about it.

Joss Whedon made Buffy the Vampire Slayer originally to tell stories about the horror that is high school (couldn't agree more, Joss). Everyone who really connects with the show is someone who... wasn't top dog at high school. Hence the main characters are Xander, the quirky loser who just isn't cool enough to ever make it higher in the heirarchy no matter what he does, Willow, the girl who cares more about learning and school than she ever will about clothes or dating, who is shy and uncertain, and Buffy, who is attractive and trendy and all-around pleasant, but is always around when something unpleasant or weird happens, spouting about more unpleasant or weird stuff, and has practically no social life outside of high school (these descriptions are all based on the high school years of the show, mostly season 1 - obviously the characters developed majorly since then).

My point is that the show is told from the perspective of people who are constantly outcasted from...... I'm just going to go ahead and say it, "normal" people. You know what I mean. That's why Buffy's a geek show. Ya think a Cordelia is going to connect to a story told from this perspective?

So when Spike gets introduced into the mixture, he starts off as something that the Scoobies are meant to overcome. See, Spike was supposed to be a disposable villain - you know, give Buffy hell for a string of episodes and then get killed off. So, because the plan was for him to be gotten rid of, they started with him being built up as the coolest cool that ever cooled. Symbolically, I think he was basically supposed to be that bullying kid who leads the rest of the people who are too afraid of him to refuse. You know, that guy? But then he'd get killed off - the struggle would symbolically be overcome - and all would be fine. So he begins his first episode by getting out of a car with kick-ass guitar grinding in the background, smoking a cigarette, and then goes on to kill The Anointed One, thus making him the new leader. At the time, there was no problem with making him this powerful, or this awesome.

But then the writers discovered that they liked the character. Wanted to keep him on.

Which meant that they had to pull Spike in a radically different direction. Because the only way to justify keeping a character on this show is to take him down a peg or six. Otherwise it kind of defeats the point. Even if no one was supposed to like Spike, you can't just have him sauntering around the show like he owns the place like he was in the first few episodes, because then you can't justify not killing him.

So then, blow by blow, they started to beat Spike down.

First he got injured and had to have the wheelchair. Then Drusilla and Angelus started getting all touchy-feely pretty much right in front of his eyes. So he escapes the slaughter by teaming up with the Slayer, who he loathes, knocking out his girlfriend and escaping to South America. Humiliating.

And then the next time we see him, it is literally a parody of his entrance in the first episode. His first entrance: car smashes into the "Welcome to Sunnydale" sign, you've got guitar grinding in the background, he steps out of the car, and the camera pans up from his dark boots to his leather jacket to his vamp face. "Home sweet home," he says sardonically.

Lover's Walk, a car smashes into the "Welcome to Sunnydale" sign, guitar kinda drones in the background, car door opens, bottles smash to the ground, soon followed by Spike falling bodily out of his own car. No vamp face this time. And Spike lies on the ground, looks up. "Home sweet home," he slurs drunkenly, sorta laughing like drunks do, and then collapses back onto the ground.

It was written deliberately so that it would be a parody of his first entrance. And that whole episode was just awesome and hilarious, and is definitely one of my favourites ever, but it was also part of the process of beating Spike down - what kind of badass vampire mopes around because his girlfriend broke up with him?

And then, when he returns to Sunnydale, he's with Harmony. That in itself is still bringing Spike down a peg. And then the chip gets put in his head, and he's so pathetic that he ends up asking Harmony for help and gets refused, so pathetic he goes to the Slayer for help.

And from then on out, this is when it really began to happen. This is when Spike officially became the biggest loser there. Because, the thing is, Buffy was written for the losers. Xander and Willow and Buffy represent the outcasts and the losers. But then they started writing it so that Spike couldn't be accepted ANYWHERE. He was cast out by the outcasts. He's below them on the hierarchy, which is not something that we were totally aware existed before now.

Then this whole "We're above Spike" thing became a sort of trend. It started in flashbacks. In the utterly brilliant episode "Fool for Love", it showed in a flashback that when he became a vampire he was constantly ragged on by Angelus for being too careless, and really was only tolerated at all because Angelus and Darla found Drusilla useful, and Spike was Drusilla's...... what? Mate? Kinda like that.

In the parallel episode of Angel (what's awesome about Buffy and Angel is that all their episodes run parallel, so there are a few storylines that are really only complete once you've seen both series), there were flashbacks of Angelus and Darla talking. In one of them, Darla goes "While Spike - SPIKE! - was out KILLING A SLAYER, you were saving people?!" The utter contempt in Darla's voice when she says Spike's name along with the incredulity to the fact that Spike killed a Slayer kinda makes that sentence delicious. But apparently, he's always been contemptible to everyone around him, even in his glory days with Darla, Angelus and Drusilla.

And they just kept writing it that way. In season five it got worse for him, if anything. I mean, the fact that he's below them in the hierarchy was more or less stated outright in "Fool for Love". "You're beneath me," says Buffy to Spike, who has just been pushed to the ground by her, and then tosses his money at him with disgust. Cause it's one thing if you're not accepted into the Scooby Gang and you don't want to be. He hated them in season four, so while he was still obviously below them in the hierarchy, he really didn't seem to care. But then in season five he fell in love with Buffy, and he started trying to be recognized as a not-so-bad-guy, which got him precisely nowhere. If anything, he was cast out even more, what with the un-inviting left and right, and the amount of disgust towards him increased dramatically among the Scoobies.

So, though I don't think it was quite their intention, they started writing Spike as the character who gets cast out by the outcasts. He's too much of a loser for what is more or less Sunnydale High's loser club.

That's sad.

But it's also partly what makes us so sympathetic to him. Because A) We can see the effort he puts in to being accepted, B) he has feelings for the leader of this group, and C) it is pretty darn clear that he's horribly underappreciated by everyone. I'm not saying we shouldn't be cautious around Spike, because one should be, but I am saying that when he genuinely does good, mostly he gets complained at and rejected, never mind whether or not he may have just saved their lives.

And it's at least partly because of this little dynamic that makes people love Spike. It's in our blood to root for the underdog, and Spike is the underdog. The Scoobies are supposed to be, and they still are, but at the moment Spike is kind of a level below them, making him a bigger underdog than the Scoobies. So, added to the fact that he's the funniest character on the show, followed closely by Xander (seriously, if you search up "Fun Buffyverse Moments", about seventy percent of them are Spike) OF COURSE we're going to root for the guy.

And, maybe this is just my personal preference, but if you are stuck with the idea that Spike is a cold-blooded murderer and nothing more, you're kinda missing the point. No, you're really missing the point. Spike is a fantastic character because of the amount of layers he has. Yes, he's a killer, but he's also a lover, and a warrior, and an outcast, and sometimes, even a friend. He can be quite insightful about other people and why they do the things they do. Not everything he says or does is completely evil. That doesn't erase the fact that he's definitely a killer, but it'd be stupid to say that that's all he is.

Spike is an incredibly well done character, for this reason. You don't want to like him. But you end up liking him in spite of yourself. He's a bad guy, which is made plain, but you like him anyway. That's a well done character for you.

Have I mentioned that Spike is by far the most interesting character on the show?

P.S This doesn't have that much to do with this part of Spike's character study (except it kinda does..... bear with me here), but does anyone remember in my first character study of Spike, when I mentioned that when Spike first came to Sunnydale, he was with Drusilla, and it was pretty clear that he was kinda taking advantage of her?

I was wrong about that. He wasn't taking advantage of her.

She was taking advantage of him.

Yes, our Drusilla, the crazy one, the one who talks about naming all the stars (while staring at the ceiling in the middle of daytime) and talks to her toy dolls and says cryptic things like "Little toy soldiers played with your head" or whatever. That one. She was taking advantage of him.

Which is both really sad and really really funny once you realize it.

Poor Spike. What a loser.

This is why we love him.

Favourite Thing of the Week #6

The Vitamin String Quartet.

Usually I wouldn't be able to stand stuff like this for more than two minutes, but the thing is that the Vitamin String Quartet's sort of mission statement is about "applying rock n' roll attitude to classical technique".

Which means that they are a string quartet who do covers of rock and pop songs. Like Radioactive by Imagine Dragons. And Sweet Child O' Mine by Guns N' Roses (THAT one is awesome). And Bad Romance by Lady Gaga. The one that got me into them was their cover of Thrift Shop by Macklemore. Can't stand the actual song, got addicted to the Vitamin String Quartet version.

My current favourite at the moment is their cover of Boulevard of Broken Dreams by Greenday. I didn't have a lot of confidence that they could pull that off without an electric guitar, but it's actually quite pretty.

Also their version of I Write Sins Not Tragedies by Panic! At the Disco is pretty amazing as well.

My thing is that I've been searching for good homework music for forever. The problem is that if I listen to boring music (like regular classical music) it's practically the same as not listening to music at all for me, but if I listen to my regular music I end up singing along and not focusing.

And Vitamin String Quartet solves that problem for me because it's close enough to classical music that I can focus and close enough to music that I actually enjoy for me to... well, enjoy it. So I spent one evening just finding every cover Vitamin String Quartet has ever done that interested me and now I have an hour's worth of it on my iTunes. I'm so prepared for homework now. Boo yah. Problem solved AND awesomeness discovered.

I don't know, maybe I'm just a music geek? I get the feeling other people don't find VSQ as awesome as I do.

Oh well. Music geeks for the win.

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter - Review Thingy

I know what you're thinking and no I'm not kidding. I am dead serious.

I saw the title and immediately thought "OH MY GOD I MUST SEE THIS MOVIE AS SOON AS POSSIBLE".

So tonight I did.

Honestly, as far as what I expected..... I expected more of it.

See, from the trailer it was very obvious that this movie took itself super seriously, which is exactly why I was so eager to see it. It's bound to be hilarious, right? Such a stupid concept combined with such a dead serious tone is just a recipe for laughs, I think we know that by now. And there were a few times where it actually was really freakin' funny. Like, the part where they're fighting in the middle of a horse stampede (and somehow no one's getting trampled or anything like that) and then the vampire grabs a running horse by the legs, swings around and flings it at Abraham Lincoln. I will admit, I laughed for five straight minutes at that, it was just the funniest thing. And then Abraham Lincoln's silver dipped ax also conveniently converts into a gun if you pull off the blade. Seems legit, right? I laughed so hard. Not to mention all the fight scenes where for some reasons the lights turn off when the fight happens and turn back on the minute it's over, with the random guitar riffs in the background. You better believe I laughed.

The problem is that there just wasn't enough of that stuff for me to enjoy it as much as I'd anticipated. I mean, there aren't many times where you're going to see me dissing a movie because it wasn't stupid enough, but seriously, this movie wasn't stupid enough. The thing is, if you're doing a movie about Abraham Lincoln fighting slavery not because of, y'know, equal rights and abuse and all that stuff, but because all the Confederate slave owners were vampires, you need to go all out with it, okay? Don't be stopping short at, well, at anything. We need more vampires flinging horses around. I mean, how about instead of that cliche fighting on top of a moving train, why don't we just have a vampire throw the train at someone? THAT would have been great.

Now, my reading of the (utterly FANTASTIC) novel Dracula, along with my unhealthy obsession with Buffy the Vampire Slayer kinda means that I have a healthy library of knowledge about the mythology of vampires, okay? For instance, fun fact, the original vampires were probably just people with rabies or similar diseases, because rabies would A) make people bite other people, B) Make them sensitive to sunlight, and C) Make them sensitive to garlic. Wasn't that fact fun?

And this was completely not the point of the movie at all, but it irritated me because they got the mythology of the vampire TOTALLY AND COMPLETELY WRONG.

Silver does not hold off a vampire. Silver will hold off a werewolf, not a vampire. Therefore, a silver dipped ax (that converts into a rifle) will not be any more effective than an ordinary ax (that converts into a rifle). Silver bullets will kill a werewolf, not a vampire. I mean, you've got your holy water, your crosses, your garlic. Why not dip your ax in holy water? Whatever.

Also, just repeatedly chopping an ax into a vampire, as bizarre as it seems, will not kill it. The ONLY way to kill a vampire is to get them in the heart with a wooden stake, get them in sunlight long enough to burn them to death (the vampires in this movie had no problem with sunlight whatsoever though so whoops) and cut off their heads. That's it. Stop making stuff up, for god's sakes, the mythology of the vampire is already kinda out there, and there's no need to tamper with it.

Also... vampires can be good.

Now that's been a running theme in recent vampire mythology, but the thing is, even in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, whose good vampire character was extremely bland and boring (at least on the original show.... his spin-off kinda made him a much easier character to watch) at least it stayed true to the original mythology, because the thing is that vampires lose their souls. They lose what makes them human. That's what makes them demons. DUH DOY. They have the skills and memories of the original person, but lose their soul, which as far as I can tell, entails their conscience and anything that makes them willing to do good, or even willing to avoid badness. Literally all vampires are inherently evil, okay?

So how is it that this vampire character in this movie can just make a snap decision to be good and hate his kind after he was turned? And why aren't other vampires the same way? And the thing is, he still kills people though. I mean, rapists and similar assholes, but he's still killing people. Apparently, since Abraham Lincoln's like his bestie and never makes a move to kill him ever, he's perfectly fine with that.

But whatever. One should probably not be questioning the logic of a movie such as this one.

The real problem with this movie is that I was looking forward to something like Rocky Horror Picture Show and ended up getting Sherlock Holmes: Game of Shadows. If you don't know those movie references you need to start watching some movies.

Took itself way too seriously. That was the problem. And that was part of the reason the funny parts were funny, but it just tried way too hard.

Plus, it wasn't even THAT good of a story.

I feel sad because I was really expecting to like it more.

Oh well.

2.5/5 stars.

P.S This is the second movie I've seen where the guy who plays Wash on Firefly plays a racist asshat. In this movie he's a politician trying to do away with the abolition act, and also in the movie 42 (which is a really good movie that I seriously recommend you watch - it's about Jackie Robinson, who was the first black major league baseball player) he plays a baseball player who continually shouts the N word at the black player.

I'm not sure what exactly this says about the actor, it's just an observation.

Guess What? I Gots Meself a Life!

Not really though.

I'm just saying that my blog posts are going to be a lot more infrequent because ME AND JACEY ARE FINALLY PUTTING A FILM PROJECT INTO ACTION!!!!!!! :D

So, due to the nature of the project (a spoofy Hunger Games, turned into a musical by using High School Musical songs [It shouldn't work as well as it does]) I'm going to be very occupied with other things. Jacey's writing the scripts, but I'm arranging all the music, which is effortful. One day a week we're going to be working on it, alternating between recording the music for the scenes one week and filming the scenes the next. So between arranging, recording, filming and holy freaking cow the editing, I'm going to be busy.

Also, I guess homework and martial arts and all that jazz. And riding my bike every day. Well, as soon as I have a functioning iPod that'll be happening again, anyways.

Hey, want a sneak preview?

That's kinda too bad. We're not starting the thing from scratch, but what we did last year is kinda useless since it's just us two now. (We figured that it was more of a chore for our other friends when we got them involved, so it was better only to involve people who are passionate about the project).

You'd think that it would be harder with only two people playing every character and doing all the filming and everything, but it's really not! Actually, I legitimately think we're MORE productive when it's only us two. Last week we managed to film three scenes with a musical number each, throughout which I had four costume changes and Jacey had two, all in less than three hours. (And keep in mind that we had to do every scene and every musical number at least twice due to the costume changes.) I am damn proud of us.

But anyways, if you want a gist of what it looks like, I'll show you the original with our friend Alexis:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZw0Or7mQuI

I'm actually proud of that scene, even if we're not going to end up using it. That was my first time I really utilized the transitions in order to adjust the mood of a scene. Also the first time I tinkered with lighting to adjust the mood.

Perhaps I'm just an artsy fartsy brat, but I legitimately think I'm growing as a filmmaker. Which makes me very happy. :)

Anywho, the point is, I'm going to be busy, and I know you all wait on the edge of your seat to read my stupid opinions, but odds are, they're going to be a lot more infrequent. Sorry. Do check back once in a while, because I haven't stopped writing them completely, it's just going to be more infrequent.

Ta ta for now.