Celebrity Splash

Celebrity Splash is a thing that exists.

It's a show on Channel 7 where celebrities jump off of diving boards into a pool and are marked on their technique and their courage. That's it. Ratings have been alright but not great.

It's been eviscerated by critics for being a terrible idea for a show. It is shallow (hi-oh!) and pointless. I don't know who many of the contestants are and it's hard to see why I should care about any of this. It's ridiculous. I spent weeks seeing the advertisements pop up and laughing deridingly.

But the show is perhaps the most honest thing I have ever witnessed. It's people who you've seen on the telly before climbing up a ladder and jumping off. They get shit-scared and then they get wet and then they have a laugh about it. There aren't any booming voiceovers promising a dramatic twist that will crack the Internet in half.

Celebrity Splash is clearly a signpost indicating that we're near the end of the road for this society - that we've all opted in to a group narcotic that will lull our souls into the great beyond. But the show is so comfortable in this that it's somehow immune to criticism. It's not any fun to pay out that dumb kid swinging a cardboard lightsaber; neither is it satisfying to rail against Celebrity Splash. But mustn't we? Does it not deserve scorn and endless jokes about taking the water out of the pool next time?

This is a recursive loop from which I cannot escape.

Review: Iron Man 3

One of the most impressive feats of engineering within Joss Whedon's Avengers film is the climactic action scene in which a handful of weird heroes flex the full extent of their strength against an alien army.

The sequence is backed up by character work, obviously, but there's a certain fist-pump inherent in seeing, say, Iron Man streak across the sky blasting everything that moves.

If you're worried about the implication of starting a movie review by saying I really loved a different movie, well, yep. I was disappointed by Iron Man 3. It contains a lot of wonderful material that doesn't quite coalesce into a strong story.

Iron Man 3 is as much a continuation of The Avengers as it is the next Iron Man chapter. Tony Stark struggles with PTSD after nuking aliens right in the wormhole while he struggles to cope with the monsters created by his asshole past self. Traditional comics nemesis The Mandarin appears as an Osama analogue with Guy Pearce as a sleazy business science suit dude with literally the best hair in the Marvel universe. Gwyneth Paltrow and Don Cheadle both reprise their supporting roles and get some good material.

Shane Black directs the film with a strong authorial voice. It's unapologetically his film and that's to be admired. It's no surprise the man behind Lethal Weapon injects great energy into characters' banter but the level of humour and confidence in some great reveals was a pleasant surprise.

What I felt myself wanting when I left the theater though, was that fist pump of seeing Iron Man unleash at full force. Iron Man 3 tests Tony Stark mostly by taking away his toys. It's a usual 'part three' problem - just having a hero win things with their abilities is no longer enough - but dammit, 12-year-old inner Stefan wants to see Iron Man in action (and that dude runs my whole life). 

I feel bad making that complaint, as the scenes where Tony needs to succeed without his armour are some of the film's best. His infiltration of a complex using hacked together explosives and such is particularly strong, as is having to fight with one boot and one glove.

So what worked? 

Mandarin is amazing. The character has loomed over this series - they were never going to be able to import him straight from the books, given that he's a Yellow Peril stereotype that uses martial arts and magic rings. The approach here is a masterstroke of awesomeness over fan service and worthy of applause.

This is an enormously funny film: many laughs to be had. 

Robert Downey Jr remains excellent as Tony Stark. Much of the second act rests solely on his shoulders and he carries it well. 

That bit with the plane was pretty damn impressive.

There's a moment where Tony runs out of a bar and gets in his suit which shows it's just parked there on the street like a car. I love that. It's a great touch of world-building which reinforces something I really enjoy about the Iron Man franchise, which is there is no secret identity or even a hero identity. This is a story of Tony Stark, a man with amazing suits.

What didn't work?

Guy Pearce and his Extremis team were not very exciting in ability or motivation, especially when they're sharing screen time with Mandarin.

The movie gives the impression that the Iron Man suits are made of tinfoil always seconds from breaking.

A few things - such as Tony's emotional problems - weren't really resolved, and the ending was a bit rushed, conceivably to adopt a finality to the end of the trilogy.

In adopting the conventions of a shared storytelling universe, the Marvel movies have benefited from a momentum that transcends each individually. Interestingly, they've also encountered some of the issues comics have struggled with for decades. Once you start stacking stories on top of each other, how can you make sure everything makes sense? Once Iron Man tag teams an alien death ship with the Hulk, how do you make helicopters seem like a threat? By turning off his boots? 

Verdict: Iron Man 3 is a good movie that suffers mostly from me being a huge nerd who stamps his feet and says things like 'Jarvis controlling all those suits devalues the essence of the Stark character' when I should really be able to admit that it is a great, funny time and leave it at that.

Words out of nowhere!

I haven't posted here in over three years.

There's a grandiose post a little down the page that says I stopped posting to concentrate on bigger projects. I did not do this. I did, however, change city, job and profession. So that's something.

Top Three Things a person learns upon revisiting their blog after three years:

1. People love lists (and Arrested Development). My only post with a title approaching anything like good SEO practice, "Top 5 TV Villains: Lucille Bluth", still gets visitors every day. Also, my post Sporting Memorabilia gets a lot of visits, which I feel quite guilty about. Surely that's not what they're after.

2. I am not the best at spellcheck.

3. I am not an entrepreneur. It's interesting to me to see posts here that are attempting to do the things that twitter and instagram would do so well - but didn't work very well on blogger with a pre-smartphone phone. Sadly, I had the desire to present things in a new way, but missed the part of my brain that realised a tool to do such a thing would be popular and lucrative. Once I signed up to twitter though, my blog evaporated swiftly, as my itch to deliver zingers to a digital audience had been scratched in a more efficient fashion.

The quietest time of the day

Blogged from the hip

DO WANT

Blogged from the hip

"Great" advertising

I can't help but read this as them knowing it's a bad city gig.

Blogged from the hip

At Big W, they sell items for both girls and boys

Blogged from the hip

Hey Hey it's controversy

VIDEO: Hey Hey it's controversy

Shared via AddThis

So Hey Hey It's Saturday came back, and Red Faces featured a skit where dudes dressed up as the Jackson 5. They wore blackface.

I thought iSnack 2.0 was embarrassing.

State of Play

Greetings spurned readership!

As you may have noticed, my rate of posting has slowed to the point of nonexistence. More likely you have moved on to one of the other 70 bajillion blogs on the internet and are not reading this right now. But I digress.

I started this blog as a way of keeping my writing fluids pumping. I did not anticipate that it would be read and enjoyed - a welcome boon indeed.
At present I hunger for projects with more focus, and am turning my attention to a couple.
I still intend to update this blog, but am officially freeing myself from the self-imposed daily schedule. I obviously did this unofficially some time ago, but hey, I'm here now.
The invention of Twitter was quite a blow, as it provided the ability to share randomness and immediately generate discussion that I found here. It also unfortunately demonstrated that much of the 1,000-word posts I had created could be just as effectively conveyed in 140 characters.

I really do want to thank everyone who has ever read any of the words here, and I hope you've enjoyed some of them. I especially want to thank anyone who commented, as I am man enough to admit that such validation keeps me going.

So I will continue to live here - I still visit every day so feel free to say anything you like in the comments of this post. If I post something of note I shall make a note of it through Twitter and Facebook.

Also, how good was Arkham Asylum? Really good.

My only regret ... is that I have ... boneitis.

Thank God. (From io9)

Futurama has signed a deal with Fox that will see the original voice cast return.

My initial, ecstatic joy at hearing that my favourite cartoon ever had been renewed after a too-long absence was immediately crushed under the news that pay disputes may have meant the cast would not be coming back.

That would have surely created a Pet Cemetery situation, where my loved one would return .... wrong.