152 insights into my soul

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.

Ah, so the first DLC for Assassin's Creed 3 came out today. It was basically (most of) the various pre-order exclusives, so the colonial assassin outfit, a few extra weapons, a couple of new privateer and naval missions, and the redcoat chick character for multiplayer. Oh, and I guess they do give you one more naval convoy slot as well as increase the capacity from 10 to 15. Not that I need money for anything anymore in this game.

Anyways, the redcoat chick is actually a cool design, too bad I don't play multiplayer. But the new privateer missions are fun, I actually felt threatened for once. Mostly because I got a little cocky and the frigates' faster rate of fire was actually an issue.

But the extra missions and finding the pivots should tide me over until ME. (And there's always more people try and max out in WO3) Though the fact that the pivots only show up every 20 minutes is annoying. But tracking down pivots is a little easier than I thought. I thought you had to randomly plant pivots and hope the new pivot happened to be in the area enclosed by the points. But putting two in a line will at least indicate which side of the line the pivot. And then you triangulate from there.

TV commentary:

Raising Hope- Call me lame, but I thought tonight's Raising Hope ending was incredibly sweet. The bed intruder reference and Filthy Phil from SoA showing up was kinda random. Wait, was he playing his character, just clean shaven?

Hart of Dixie- This show! I coulda sworn Wade's feelings were pretty clear at the end of last season, and its aggravating that Zoe doesn't realize it yet. I literally shouted at the screen when she thought Wade was bored there in the beginning. At least it seemed to sink in for her before the opening credits.

Wow, this kinda sucks, so I'm here alone in the NOC right now, still having to struggle to talk, because the other guy on shift is on vaycay (which I did know about), but the student assistant is also not coming in because of a conference or something. Hopefully the other student will be here at noon. Though I'm unable to discuss the last couple eps of Gossip Girl with her because its still hard to talk.

TV commentary:

Raising Hope aav('Whaaaatttt?!') ( spoiler cut )

Justified- Interesting end to the season. ( spoiler cut )

Glee- So next week's episode will be a tribute to Saturday Night Fever. It looks like the music will be mostly Bee Gees (along with If I Can't Have You, Boogie Shoes and Disco Inferno), so that's totally awesome. Which Bee Gees songs? How Deep Is Your Love, More Than a Woman, Night Fever, Stayin' Alive, and You Should Be Dancing? Ah can't wait!

So, there's no Glee live tour this summer? Its disappointing, but understandable. Regardless of what you think of the show, it still has one of the hardest, if not the hardest working casts in the business. I mean, in addition to the usual stuff you do for a TV show, they also have to go into the studio to record, and the dance room to learn the choreography for the numbers they're doing on the show. Its not uncommon to see the cast tweet about still being on set until late at night. Though not in a complaining sort of way, because it seems like they love what they do, despite the hours. But I digress, the fact that they go on a multi-city international tour after filming these past two seasons is intense. I think they deserve a break!

Anyways, since there were a lot of awesome moments on the shows I watch this week, let me break down my favorites: (warning, spoiler heavy!)

Gossip Girl- As I said, I was expecting to be sorely disappointed with this week's ep. That it would be more of the same teasing with no payoff that's been happening week after week on this show. But then Dan and Blair finally kiss (which was totally unexpected!) and it looks like they're finally moving forward on the Dair front.

Raising Hope- Hey, that ending was one of the greatest things evar! That has gotta be one of the all time best scenes for a couple getting together on a TV show.

Once Upon a Time- Hey, I thought the Rumbelle stuff was nice. Wasn't sure how it was going to work out by having Rumpelstiltskin be the Beast, but the stuff with Belle in Fairy Tale land was nice, and brings a whole new interesting side of Rumpel's character.

Other mentions: Really good episode of Glee, probably the best of the season so far. The songs were all good, all the plot stuff was good, and Brittany and Santana get an actual real on screen kiss, satiating the fans who complained lesbos weren't getting any love and the show only focuses on heterosexual and homosexual male couplings.

Grayson's proposal to Jules on the return ep of Cougar Town was pretty sweet, but unfortunately, that Raising Hope thing happened, and it just doesn't compare.

On Justified, I enjoyed the "shades of Crank" with Dewey Crowe and the kidney stuff. Also, Raylan shooting someone center of mass THROUGH someone was cool. Less cool was that it was Jules from Psych. How could one do that to such a pretty little sweet-talking thang!

Missteps of the week: Revisiting Ted and Robin on HIMYM. We know she's not the mother, so why continue to go down that road. (Oh, BTW, I find it hilarious the writers were apparently considering having Lyndsy Fonseca be the mother. The scenes with Ted's kids are apparently stock footage, and now that Lyndsy's older, they were thinking maybe she could play the mother since she would obviously look like the daughter. Ida know, there's something about that that just seems totally wrong.

The ending of this week's Castle. So the guy they found is supposed to be some genius spy who managed to hide and lay low for several years. Now, I know he realized they had realized he had walked into a trap, but instead of telling Castle and Beckett, aav('Its a trap!') and trying to warn them so they could make an escape, he friggin freaks out and runs into the middle of an open area?! He should've known he would've gotten his ass sniped. It does not make cents!

Breaking into the Russian consulate on Hawaii Five-O. This isn't 24. And even though Jack Bauer gets results, we're supposed to see him as this flawed individual who goes too far at times. But on this show, they constantly do effed up things! I mean, they once strapped a guy to the hood of a car and sped through the streets to get him to talk. WTF! And they act like the governor assigning them Lori as a liason to reign them in at the beginning of the season was total BS. I think they kinda need it. Too bad she did a piss poor job at reigning them in, so her resigning is probably best.

But yeah, they're all "F U, Russians, for not turning in this rapist guy who we have no solid evidence on!" and friggin drive a truck rigged up to look like it might be a WMD through the front gate of the RUSSIAN CONSULATE. Just so they would evacuate the guy, and they could ambush the car he was in once it was outside of the consulate so they could illegally grab him from a diplomatic car (granted the guy left the car, but still).

Yes, we know the guy did it, and he killed that one woman to cover up raping her sister. But they had no proof, so they had no right to demand the consulate give him up, and then engineer a plan to grab him when they wouldn't. Now, I'm fine with it on shows like 24 and Nikita because grabbing possible bad guys from other countries who don't want to help is their purview. Secret government spies and assassins can do that. But not the friggin cops! Its one of the effed up things with the Closer. I'm fine with the idea of people doing bad things for the greater good, but only when its dark/grey characters who realize what they're doing is wrong and brood over it. Supposed white hats doing that? That's not right. Or at least have them feel really bad about it and have an arc where they have a huge moral crisis over what they did. The non-effed up big hero type doesn't do such things and act like everything is fine and dandy afterward, like they did nothing wrong.

I rag on Superman and Captain America and other lame goody goody boy scouts, but you need such heroes. You can't have them killing unarmed men or torturing people for information or engineering their deaths because they can't be brought to justice!