Posts Tagged ‘hype’

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ALSO PORN

by Tom on February 8th, 2010
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ALSO PORN

For me, watching football is like going to church. I do it once a year and I don't pay attention.

It's kind of hard for me not to get wrapped up in the Super Bowl, though. I have a lot of positive memories attached to previous contests. I've had a lot of fun hanging out with people who genuinely care about the game and watching them was almost as much fun as watching the game - if not more so. Since then, I've just kind of added it to the "tradition" file.

It was funny reading everyone's tweets and status updates on Twitter and Facebook yesterday. Almost everyone I know said something to the effect of "Today is the Super Bowl. I don't care."

Now, I've certainly been guilty of this from time to time. A couple of weeks ago when they were playing the AFC and NFC Championship games, I commented to Cami "Aren't you glad I don't care about sports? Seriously. Because if I did, you wouldn't see me on Sundays, ever." I've even posted my own "What's the big deal?" tweets and status updates in the past to this effect.

But reading the cacophony of disdain from my circle of friends regarding the Super Bowl made me wonder with whom were they trying to earn "Cool Points?"

The posts that kind of made me bristle a little bit were the ones that basically communicated "People who watch the Super Bowl for the commercials are dumb!" Maybe I just took the observation personally since the commercials are my favorite part.

I mean, I realize that it's sad that I've been conditions to eagerly anticipate commercials. It just goes to show how deep marketing executives have their hooks into me. But you know what, tonight I'll leave the TV off and read a book instead. Karmic balance: ACHIEVED.

(For the curious, I'm currently reading Chuck Klosterman's "Eating The Dinosaur.")

I've always looked forward to the commercials in part because it was always great one-stop shopping to watch the trailers for all of the upcoming blockbusters. I remember a few years ago when the trailer for Iron Man came out and I basically ordered everyone in the room to shut up before cranking the volume. People actually cheered for that trailer after watching it. Badass.

But this year, it didn't seem like there were any trailers to get excited about. I saw spots for The Last Airbender, Prince of Persia: Sands of Time and Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland.

I'll admit to not being as invested in these movies as much as I was for Iron Man (how could I be), but none of these trailers connected for me. I'm not excited about any of these movies!

As I was thinking about this disconnect, it occurred to me that there really is no point in getting excited for these trailers during the Super Bowl because they've already been online for months. Oh, internet. Is there nothing you can't ruin?

I shouldn't blame the internet. Really, I have only myself to blame. Obviously I'm more connected to what's happening online than most people. So if a new trailer hits, I'm probably watching it the second it comes out. I'm sure for some, the trailers shown during the Super Bowl were phenomenal. But for me, I've lost one of the tethers that convinces me to plop down in front of the television for three hours and watch a sporting event I really have no stake in.

That said, it was a good game. I wanted to Colts to win for no other reason than they represented the Midwest. That and also because all of the commentary beforehand led me to believe that Peyton Manning was the most important thing to happen to football since shoulder pads.

Since I have no stake in the outcome of the game, it would have been easy to root for New Orleans after Tracy Porter ran for a 74-yard touchdown after intercepting a pass from Manning. But it's pretty much been our tradition to pick a team and stick with them, even when you don't know what's going on. It creates the illusion of a vested interest in the game.

What about you guys? Did you watch the Big Game last night, or were you too cool for the room? What did you think of the commercials? What did you think of the movie trailers. If you must, tell us what you thought of the game. Leave your comments below!

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SLUMMING

by Tom on January 27th, 2009
Posted In: Blog
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As Cami pointed out, we finally got around to seeing one of the five Best Picture nominees this weekend: Slumdog Millionaire.

I've been kind of wrestling with this movie a little bit. Like Cami, I thought the performances were winning and the child actors in particular were amazing. I thought it was well directed, tense at times and very engaging. But it didn't quite make my heart soar like all everyone said it would.

It was difficult for me to get caught up in the movie's tale of star-crossed lovers because the film does not pull any punches in it's depiction of India's poverty, squalor and corruption. Maybe this is the wrong thing to focus on, but it left me feeling guilty for accepting the story as entertainment. I left the theater thinking about what I could do to help.

I'm not completely naive. I have heard about orphaned children being maimed and put on the street to beg. But later I became conflicted and started to wonder if the movie was promoting some kind of stereotype. Isn't India one of the largest growing business centers in the world? What about their advances in education?

Turns out I'm not alone. Time Magazine recently published an article that tackles the same question.

I know it's not fair to ask one movie to provide a thorough examination of the social and economic strata of the entire sub-continent. Especially when it only wants to tell the story of two people. I mean, I doubt non-American audiences watch movies like Goodfellas and assume that the country is overrun by gangsters. I'm just saying it was a distraction, that's all.

Slumdog Millionaire is a good movie. Experty assembled and told with an effective time-bending narrative. Will it make you shoot rainbows out of your eyes after you see it? Well, in my case it didn't. In that respect, it didn't live up to the hype. Ignore the critics and commercials and see it with reasonable expectations and you'll have a good time.

EDIT: Here is a another article written by Slate's Dennis Lim that confronts Slumdog Millonaire's confounding moral compass. Lim says a few things more acutely than I could in my review.

"If Slumdog has struck a chord, and it certainly seems to have done so in the West, it is not because the film is some newfangled post-globalization hybrid but precisely because there is nothing new about it. It traffics in some of the oldest stereotypes of the exoticized Other: the streetwise urchin in the teeming Oriental city... And not least for American audiences, it offers the age-old fantasy of class and economic mobility, at a safe remove that for now may be the best way to indulge in it.

Slumdog has been so insistently hyped as an uplifting experience ("the feel-good film of the decade!" screams the British poster) that it is also, by now, a movie that pre-empts debate. It comes with a built-in, catchall defense—it's a fairy tale, and any attempt to engage with it in terms of, say, its ethics or politics gets written off as political correctness.

A slippery and self-conscious concoction, Slumdog has it both ways. It makes a show of being anchored in a real-world social context, then asks to be read as a fantasy."

Food for thought.

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