Dredd; 2012

If you like graphic violence porn and pretentious slo-mo effects, Dredd is for you.  But not for me.  

I really wanted to like it, partly because of the Training Day meets Die Hard potential**, but mainly the parts of it where people get to, y'know, act?, are pretty good -- what Karl Urban does just with posture and the lower half of his face should be required viewing***, his rapport with Olivia Thirlby made me forget my wish to see their roles gender reversed, and Lena Headey makes a great villain.  

** Instead, all too often I felt like I was watching a rip-off of The Raid: Redemption.  

*** I'd really like to see the alternate reality in which Karl Urban was the Batman in the Christopher Nolan films.

Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated

This David Willis post convinced me I needed to see Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated.  Unfortunately, twelve episodes in, it's far from perfect.  It's not even the best incarnation of Scooby-Doo**.

While there are flashes of brilliance, the problem is that it doesn't commit wholeheartedly to a direction for the show.  On the one hand, it gets wacky, is full of pop culture and self-references to the earlier incarnations of Scooby-Doo, and mercilessly treats Fred like an idiot.  On the other hand, it tries to tell an ongoing mystery and flesh out the backstories of the characters and explore their relationships.  These are not compatible directions; you can either go all Harvey Birdman or all Veronica Mars, but unless you're a genius and the stars align, you can't go all-out in both directions, and so the show comes across as halfhearted and a bit slapdash. 

Since A Pup Named Scooby-Doo already covered the "let's get wacky" ground about as well as it could be covered, I think this series needed to commit wholeheartedly to completely rebooting Scooby-Doo, writing a good season-long storyline and taking all the characters of Crystal Cove a little more seriously.  Then we might have something both brilliant and new in the Scooby-Doo universe.

Still, it's moderately entertaining, and through twelve episodes, Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated hasn't fallen into the trap that the live action movies and many of the direct-to-videos features have fallen into.  It's deep in the subtext at times, but as I've said before, one of the enduring values of Scooby-Doo is the triumph of Reason.  It's good to see the SDMI folks seem to understand that.

** That would be the original Scooby-Doo, Where Are You?.  While repetitively episodic with cheap animation, an irritating laugh track, and dumb mysteries, the original Scooby-Doo series had strongly written characters, good voice work, good sound effects, and good music -- there's nothing subtle here, but it sets the tone for each scene and clearly signals how you're supposed to react. 

Wedding Crashers (2005)

I hate to admit it, because I thought it would be terrible, but I actually liked Wedding Crashers.  I don't remember why it went in the queue, but Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn have good chemistry, and the raunch is an occasional injection, rather than a constant factor.  Oddly enough, my favorite thing about the movie is Bradley Cooper (whom we knew as Will Tippin), who steals every scene.  I *hate hate hate* the character (I mean, we're supposed to, but still), but he's absolutely amazing in walking the fine line between playing a character so despicable that it brings the comedy down and going not quite so far over the top that he's simply ridiculous and can't be taken seriously as an impediment to the romance.  Also great is Rachel McAdams (whom we knew as Irene Adler from the Downey, Jr. Sherlock Holmes), though maybe I'm just reacting to how they've done her up so that she looks like an all-American daughter of Cora Crawley.

Captain Vorpatril's Alliance; Lois McMaster Bujold; 2012

I was up until 2am on a work night finishing Captain Vorpatril's Alliance; isn't that enough of a recommendation?

Bujold's latest in the Vorkosigan saga takes us ever-so-slightly back in time to events before Cryoburn.  It's a relatively lighthearted "Ivan, you idiot"**-centric novel that answers once and for all whether this generation's greatest Barrayaran ladies' man will ever settle down (the fact that "alliance" is "dalliance" without the "d" seems particularly appropriate).

While the Vorkosigan saga has yet to regain the heights attained in the mid-to-late 90's, with A Civil Campaign*** its crowning achievement, Captain Vorpatril's Alliance has all the Bujoldian hallmarks: tight plotting with subterfuge, quick thinking, and action at the right leverage points; a great cast of characters that has us rooting for the good guys and the we're not-quite-sure-they're-so-good guys all at once; fan service, largely consisting of the continuing development of "old friends" in the cast of characters, that therefore manages to add to the story; and, of course, putting Our Heroes through hell in a handbasket... though I don't think it spoils anything to say that Ivan only gets lightly singed.

** though, quite brilliantly in the continuing evolution of her characters, this catchphrase is uttered once, by Ivan, silently to himself.

*** this deserves its own post, but for now, will you take a look at the cover art shown on the Wikipedia page for A Civil Campaign?  Is there another writer as good as Bujold whose books get cover art this consistently awful?  Can you imagine Lord of the Rings art showing Frodo taller than Boromir?  That's what this is.

Leviathan; Scott Westerfeld; 2009

There has been a trend of YA Nebula finalists in recent years, and this is pretty good YA steampunk, with inventive fabricated beasties and interesting characters to follow.  The novel doesn't really conclude; the ending is more of the "we'll see you in the next novel" variety that works best for me when I have the next novel at hand.  Sigh... I don't, and the library's copies are out, but at least they're in print.

One other thing that feminist readers might as well be prepared for going in:

She glared at the three boys riding in the front of the bus [...]. The tallest hardly came up to Deryn's shoulder.  They couldn't be so much stronger, and she didn't credit that they were as smart or brave.
(page 24 of the Simon Pulse 2010 paperback)

Based on the rest of the novel, I get the impression that Deryn is supposed to be particularly skinny and so this is a reasonable thought, but in that moment in the story, this reads as a casual assumption that possession of a penis necessarily makes one stronger, which is simply not true (as opposed to more likely, which is).  I disbelieve that Deryn has this misunderstanding.