psykotedy.com

Okay, I’ve decided to start using Tumblr, and I’ve added the resulting tumblelog to my sidebar. We’ll see how long it lasts.

It seems that we’ve all decided to stop calling shoes shoes because someone was upset about sandals being left out, so now we have to refer to anything that goes on our feet as “footwear,” as speaking otherwise is intolerable. Sounds silly, right?

Well, Merry Christmas to you, then because you know that when I say that I don’t mean that you’re Christian nor that I think any religious holiday that you might observe is bad, but I generally mean “tidings of joy to you!” So don’t freak out on me and start explaining to me in detail the practices of Kwanzaa or Hanukkah or Squidmas, just smile and wave and know that I’m too stupid to know any better, but my heart is in the right place. If you can’t do that, fuck off and die.

It’s not that I don’t care, it’s that I’ll not exert any more tolerance for your ways than you exert for mine. And who the hell really thinks that Christmas is about anything other than the great American religion of Capitalism, anyway?

I saw Beowulf and I have to say that I was somewhat disappointed. I don’t know what I went in looking for – maybe a deeper story, maybe more convincing acting, maybe a happy ending – but whatever I was looking for in it, it wasn’t there. Which was further deflating because I was so looking forward to the movie being great. Here’s a list of the good and bad:

• My first bitch is that it was animated. The style used was really cool back when Final Fantasy: The Spirit Within came out, but leaves me feeling like I should’ve saved my money and waited for video now, six years later. Also, it seemed to detract from the ability of the actors to convey emotions, which leads me to…
• The acting. The depth of the characters was lacking to put it mildly. I know Beowulf was a badass, but I know nothing of the other characters in his tale, and the movie left me feeling like they are all as flat as the pages on which the poem was originally written 1500 years ago. I expect more from the likes of Anthony Hopkins and John Malkovich. To top it off, the voicing was not only bad, but the accents were inconsistent, which brings me to my final complaint…
• Crispin Glover’s speaking as Grendel. Now, I thought that there was no way I would be unable to understand an actor after The Usual Suspects , but boy was I wrong. Grendel’s voice is a mix of Gollum and Fenster with a little Germanic-based something-or-other mixed in there for good measure. What it all adds up to is a character that you can’t fucking understand!!!! Hello! Who thought up that great trick? I mean, at least with Fenster, you didn’t need to understand him to figure out what important information was being passed to certain major players about events! I respect Crispin Glover as an actor and artist, but there’s certain things you don’t do in a major role in a movie, and one of them is speak unintelligibly.
• On the flip side of all of that, the action scenes were second to none. I don’t want to put any spoilers in this review (and I hope I haven’t screwed up on that count during my little rants above), but the action scenes are amazing. There is just the right amount of gore to be real enough (with much more elluded to, which might be worse to people with vivid imaginations and weak stomachs) without going overboard.

I haven’t read the poem yet (it’s on my reading list, and I’ve even excavated the Seamus Heaney version out of one of my book boxes), so I can’t say how closely it follows the traditional story. I will say that the movie was missing something. I don’t know if it was the script trying to stick with the original story and not translating to the screen well, or if it was Neil Gaiman’s early habit of writing characters with which readers don’t connect rearing its ugly head, or if it was Roger Avary sucking (which wouldn’t surprise me since he’s climbing his way out of the pit of despair that was Silent Hill), but whatever it was, it cause a gaping hole in the movie.

If you’re looking for really well-animated graphic battle scenes, this is it. If you’re looking for something deep and fulfilling, skip it and go see P.S. I Love You or something.

I have received a few feature requests for this blog, and the only two I remember at this time are an email notification of updates (which should be arriving shortly, as soon as I devise a way to collect a legitimate subscription from the page) and a LiveJournal simulcast (which I haven’t to foggiest clue how I’m going to pull off). If anybody has any other requests, I’d love to hear them (please save the “take a fucking English class, asshole” and “stop posting book and movie reviews” requests for personal meetings because “up yours” just doesn’t have the same gravity – or satisfaction – via written word).

I just finished reading Fish! which was a delight to read. As the description on Amazon states, it’s the tale of a manager who has to pull a department out of the dregs of low morale and lack of energy. Frankly, this book holds some huge tools in its mere 115 pages, covering everything that a manager of any level needs to promote and coach employees to perpetuate an environment that is great to work in.

Now, I have recently found out that a happy work environment does not always equal higher productivity, but I, personally would rather go to work somewhere I like to work than somewhere I can’t stand not that I haven’t kept jobs despite loathing the work environment, but we all need paychecks, right?).

All in all, I highly recommend this book to anyone who has to work for a living. It unveils tools to make workplaces better, tools that are at the disposal of anybody and everybody.