(no subject)

Finally saw Joss Whedon's "Much Ado About Nothing". Its a cute little movie, and Amy Acker looks mad cute, as per usual. Lots of people from Whedon stuff- besides Wesley and Fred, there's Coulson, Castle, Topher, Simon Tam, Reed Diamond, Tom Lenk, as well as Chrissy Seaver, Finn's mom, the kid from Gladiator (what the hell, he's like grown up now!) and whichever of Garfunkel and Oates that's not on Raising Hope. (is it confusing to mix characters names with actors names when listing? Or saying Castle, instead of saying roles Nathan Fillion had in actual Whedon productions, like Mal or Captain Hammer?)

I'm not familiar with the play, nor the movie from the 90s, but I hear its pretty true to the source (despite taking place in modern times), with one supposedly subtle change, but more than that later. Since they talk in that old English style, I had a little trouble following. Like Nathan Fillion is playing Dogberry, who in the original play uses a lot of malapropisms. And like I caught some of them, but I have no idea if there were some I just failed to pick up on because they're talking all Shakespearean and shit.

But I got the gist of the movie, even if there were some dialogue I found hard to understand. Benedict (Alexis Denisof) and Beatrice (Amy Acker) hate each other, but some of their insults, I was all, "what the hell are they talking about?" And then their friends think they are way too obsessed with each other, and with nothing else to do, decide to trick them into falling in love with each other. Here's the change I hear that was subtly introduced in the beginning of the movie- Benedict and Beatrice had a former dalliance, but I guess it ended badly, which is why they're always insulting each other? Whereas in the original work, I guess they just hated each other? It was totally cute how dorky they got when they thought the other was in love with them. And then in the end, with the scheme revealed, even though they totally are in love with each other now, they still try to deny it, but thankfully finally admit their feelings.

But I guess the overarching story was that Don Pedro (Reed Diamond), Claudio (Fran Kranz), Benedict, and Don Pedro's brother, Don John (Sean Maher) visit Leonato's (Clark Gregg) villa, whereupon Claudio falls in love with Leonato's daughter Hero (Jillian Morgese). And all the while Benedict and Beatrice (who is Leonato's niece) talk shit about each other. Claudio asks for Hero's hand in marriage, and as I said previously, out of boredom since they apparently don't have anything better to do before the wedding, the rest of them decide to get Beatrice and Benedict together.

Well, Don John has other plans. He wants to ruin the wedding, so he sends his man Borachio (Spencer Treat Clark) to bang Hero's maid Margaret (Ashley Johnson) in Hero's room, while wearing one of her dresses. And Don John's all, "Oh, your betrothed is a slut! Don't believe me, spy on her window tonight!" So they do and Claudio and Don Pedro are livid. So Claudio for some reason the best way to handle it is to go through with the ceremony, but then publicly embarrass her. Like he's all weird and awkward, and everyone thinks its some sort of weird joke, but then he goes to Leonato, "Take your whore daughter back, because she's a whore!" She faints over the whole deal and Claudio and Don Pedro take their leave

And what the frick, I suppose it was olden times, but instead of believing his daughter, since Don Pedro and Claudio are men of honor and thus would never make something up (or be wrong!?), he's basically, I wish you were dead for bringing shame upon the family. Its like, screw these dicks! You're going to believe them over your daughter? And you wish her dead?! Eventually he relents, but still! In any case, the priest is all, "She should pretend to be dead and then if Claudio really loves her, he'll feel totally bad!"

Meanwhile some constables happen upon Borachio telling Conrade (Riki Lindhome) the scheme, so they arrest them and Dogberry and Verges (Tom Lenk) get the whole story and tell Don Pedro. Meanwhile, Beatrice is all, "if you really love me, you'll kill Claudio for slandering my kinswoman!" to Benedict. At first he's all, "That's crazy, plus, he's my friend!" but eventually he acquiesces because he does love her. Which is kinda disturbing for a romantic comedy- "Oh, this guy totally humiliated my cousin! Hey, guy who I used to hate but now love, if you want to prove you love me (and show that you're a real man!), you'll kill your friend!" But I guess that was more acceptable back then or something?

And its like, after Don Pedro finds out the truth, there's no scene where they tell B&B what happened! He did like challenge his friend, and its good he was all, "I shall duel you on the morrow!" because one could have killed the other, making this romantic comedy take like a dark and tragic turn. But yeah, when Don Pedro and Claudio go to see Leonato after Benedict's challenge, since he revealed Hero is dead, he's all, "See, you were tricked by your brother schemes! Thanks for killing my daughter, dicks!" So they're all wanting to do anything to make up for it. Leonato is all, "If you want to make up for it, you'll marry my other niece whom you have not met and no one has ever mentioned up to this point (but is really Hero in disguise)!"

Claudio agrees, and on the day of, they're all, "Gotcha! Even though you publicly shamed my daughter, the fact that you were willing to force yourself into an arrange marriage makes everything alright!" And then Benedict and Beatrice wait for the other to make some big overture to the other and ask the other to reveal their love, but they're both being stubborn asses, so the rest of the gang have to show them letters the other wrote talking about how in lurve they are with each other! So its two weddings!

But like I said, despite me knocking some parts of the story, I did enjoy it.

(no subject)

So they finally released some info on the upcoming Samurai Warriors 4. In addition to bringing back previously cut characters (Goemon, Musashi and Kojiro) and the characters from Samurai Warriors Chronicles 2 (Takatora Todo, Naotora Li and Munenori Yagyu), they're adding at least two new ones- Yoshitsugu Otani and Nobiyuki Sanada.

Heh, this shows how much more familiar I am with the Dynasty Warriors games than I am with the Samurai Warriors games. Like the only name I recognize of the non-SW1 to SW3 characters is Nobiyuki Sanada and I guess Munenori Yagyu sounds somewhat familiar. But apparently most of them have been generics since the beginning. But yeah, I guess I just don't recognize the npcs in SW as well as I do in DW. Nobiyuki makes definite sense, being Yukimura's brother and Ina's husband. I think that's part of the reason I don't know SW as well- the ones I did play the story is all over the place since everyone has their own unique story, compared to DW where the story follows the factions. Like Yukimura and Ina being in-laws is only mentioned randomly in like one character's story (and its not Yukimura or Ina's!) Plus DW, I've read RotTK and played the games enough I know everything by heart.

As I said in a previous post, I wonder if they'll come out with a WO4 in a couple of years with the DW8 and SW4 people added in? Of course, if they do, there will prolly be a DW9 and SW5, and those will have new characters that won't be included. Of course, they really are starting to scrape the bottom of the barrel for new DW characters. Like I said the only characters of the original main three families I can think to add is Cao Hong for Wei (being the last great Wei general who's still a generic) and Jiang Qin (being Zhou Tai's fellow pirate buddy) for Wu and Sha Moke (because he has an interesting name and description in RotTK) for Shu. The rest would be "Other" faction. I mean, Hua Xiong to give Dong Zhou another bad-ass warrior (even though he didn't last too long in the books), Wen Chou and Yan Liang for Yuan Shao (again, described as being pretty tough, but then Guan Yu makes short work of them), Zhang Bao and Zhang Liang to give you a non-generic to fight during the Yellow Turban Rebellion besides Zhang Jiao and it seems there are plenty of guys in Nanman who would be pretty interesting, they'd be all barbarian looking. Oh, and Huche'er even though he only played a tiny role in the books, because he looked all ninja bad-assy in DW7. It was like one of the more unique generic looks, its too bad the later iterations of him went back to looking totally generic.