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Smallville’s Lois & Clark – Evolution of a Punch

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So there was a video that was posted over a year ago after the episode Rabid aired (that I don’t think got enough attention) that got me thinking of it after a comment made in a post over on LJ, as well as something I noticed in the episode Booster this week as well.

The video is called “Smallville: Lois & Clark (Evolution of a Punch)” and can be found here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLd5Gvj8-uY

In it, it traces almost all the instances where Lois on SV has punched Clark on the arm, up until Rabid where, for the first time ever, he finally stops her from doing it. (There are two punches missing from the video – there was one at the start of the episode Lucy in season 4, and there was another one on the street in the season 8 episode Stiletto, but all the others up until Rabid are in there which makes the point). And this moment, along with the moment in the rain, are my two most favorite Lois & Clark moments of that season, and are up there for top of the entire show. Because both moments, IMO, said so much with just little – to no – dialog.

After Rabid, Lois only punched Clark on the arm one more time in season 9 – that was in Idol. She punches him, turns to leave and then changes her mind, kicks the stack of newspapers over to him to stand on and kisses him.

Lois’ shoulder punches with Clark have always been about breaking emotional moments with him almost all of the time. This was especially evident in Apocalypse and Idol IMO. For me, I have always pin-pointed Apocalypse as the episode were Lois’ feelings for Clark began to grow more than she was ready to face at the time. Where she started to see him a little differently. Hence the quiet, awkward moment before she uses the shoulder punch to break the tension, and set things back to “yeah, he’s my friend” mode for her.

What’s telling in Apocalypse is that Clark seems to really – for the first time ever – suspect what Lois is doing by punching him like that. And, at the time when I first watched the episode, I wondered – was Clark really noticing Lois doing that – and suspecting why – in the script, or was that a directorial decision by Welling?

What got me wondering about it now is because, I think for the first time since they became a romantic couple – who are engaged to boot – Lois punched Clark on the shoulder again in Booster. And not only did she do it, but Welling, as a director, choose to – IMO – make note that she did by having the camera cut to a wide shot of them as she did it, before going in on a close up of Clark afterwards.

http://youtu.be/Ta4-vtMwNqw

Skip to 1:24 to view the moment.

She’s not trying to break an emotionally intense or awkward moment for herself here. At least, from what I can see. Is she trying to break one for Clark, who really is off-put by the idea of being a “bumbling” guy to disguise himself? (Which is a whole other subject that I wont get into here). I think one thing this moment clearly shows is that, even though they are now lovers and engaged to be married, they are still very much friends as well. They still banter and snark, and even get annoyed by the other on occasion. They are two people who have a crystal clear view of who the other person is, and accept each other fully on that. As Tom Welling said in the TVG interview, Lois and Clark clearly enjoy each other’s company.

And it’s little things like this that make me wish we had gotten to spend more time with them as a couple this season.

(post x-posted to LJ and Tumblr)

JRPGs can be very deceitful

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So I just had the worst experience while playing a video game. And no, it had nothing to do with Xbox Live.

For a few weeks now, I’ve been playing though Dragon Quest 8, I game I bought over four years ago but never finished because I got lost in what I was supposed to do after a specific point, and so stopped. But I picked it up again a few weeks ago and started over from the beginning, to see if I could finally finish it.

So I got past the part I originally got lost at (which probably had more to do with the fact that I have more skill playing JRPGs now than I did when I first bought the game), and entered the dungeon where the main bad guy was. Now, I knew the fight wasn’t going to be the final one between my characters and this guy – there where way more places in the game I hadn’t been to yet, or in some cases didn’t even have access too yet. So this was just going to be the first of what would probably be three or so more fights between me and this guy.

What I didn’t count on however was that the bad guy would pull a total One Winged Angel on me and change forms, then force me into another fight after the first one. There I was, all happy because I had survived the first really tough boss fight in the game, and the game goes and pulls a bait-and-switch on me, with a leveled-up boss fight directly after the first one. On top of that I had absolutely no chance to heal in-between the fights – so some of my party had half or low health, or were running out of magic. It’s because of that – and because I had to spend so much time healing – the second fight took over an hour. While the first one lasted ten minutes at most.

I was so pissed off I almost threw my controller at the TV.

If you don’t know, I love RPGs. Especially JRPGs, which the Dragon Quest series is one of the most famous of. It’s not that well known in America, but the series is huge in Japan. So much so, the Government had to ask Enix (now merged with Squaresoft to be known as Square-Enix) to not release the game during the week because too many people were taking off from work or school to play it. Hearing this is what sparked my interest in playing the series. And, up until now I was finally having fun with this game. The fact that I’d played more JRPGs before I picked it up again has helped in that regard.

But that? Pulling that with that boss? That was just mean. And yes, I have the strategy guide for the game, but it never even hinted that such a thing was going to happen.

And you know you’re talking it all a little too personally when you’re yelling and cursing at the screen after you win and not all “yes!” about it. :p

Entertainment Today

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Is boredom with things in entertainment today a sign you’re getting older? Or is it a commentary on the state of Entertainment today?

As I was making dinner today, a trailer for the new movie Arthur came on. Except this “new” movie isn’t “new” at all. It’s just a remake of the classic film with Dudley Moore and Liza Minnelli from 1981. I remember that movie from when I was a kid, not because I saw it at the time (I was way too young) but because it was the movie with that song that had the line “If you get caught between the moon and New York City” in it. (Otherwise known as “Best That You Can Do” or “Arthur’s Theme.”)

Anyway, my mom was with me when the trailer came on and she couldn’t believe they had remade the movie, because she didn’t think the original was all that, even if it is a classic. But what I couldn’t help but think is – how many people my age or younger even remember or know of the original movie? I’m talking causal movie people, not film fans and buffs. Because I’m pretty sure Hollywood didn’t decide to remake this movie because the original was considered terrible and they wanted to try and do a better version or something. (See the original Ocean’s Eleven with Frank Sinatra for an example of a bad movie remade better). I’m pretty sure they remade if for one of two reasons:

1. It has a recognizable title of some type for some people (as I said, I know about the original and I was 3 or 4 years old when it came out) so there may already be a built-in audience for it and,

2. Doing a remake of this is less time consuming than coming up with some original story or screenplay and filming that instead.

I used to be a huge movie buff. Huge. Heck, I like to think I still am. There was rarely a weekend that I wasn’t going to the theater to see something. Now however? It’s not just the economy that has me deciding to save my money. It’s that there is hardly anything that’s come out in the past two or three years that I have been interested in seeing – to the point that I would actually fork over $10 for it.

I remember sitting dumbfounded the first time I watched the trailer for The Smurfs movie on YouTube. This was beyond my eye-rolling at the Alvin and the Chipmunks movie(s) and The Yogi Bear movie trailer. My brain actually could not process the fact that they took the Smurfs and made a live action CGI (and 3D! Don’t forget that!) movie out of it. And it looking like it lack every ounce of charm the original animated cartoon had.

I’m not a movie snob. I enjoy a good summer blockbuster just as much as I enjoy serious Oscar-bait movies. But even the Oscar-bait films have been rather boring me – those films have their own kind of formula, and I’ve seen enough of them that I can usually predict what’s going to happen. But there hasn’t been a film recently, since Star Trek in 2009, where I have felt a sense of “OMG, I have to see that.” Maybe Toy Story 3, but that’s all, and even that I didn’t see on opening day. Even with Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows it felt more like “Well, time to wrap this all up.” I didn’t even go see it the week it opened. I waited until the following weekend because – get this – I didn’t feel like going out to see it while it was raining.

Yeah.

I have recored each Oscar ceremony, in full, starting from the 1991 show until the 2010 one. That’s almost 20 years. I would religiously follow Oscar buzz, critics awards, all of it, faithfully. (And hey, living in the LA area it’s really easy to follow that stuff.) This year? I didn’t DVR it at all. I didn’t follow it much at all. Because I honestly didn’t care enough about any of the films to do so, even though I liked both The Social Network and Inception . . . both of which I didn’t see in the theater, but on DVD. And when The King’s Speech comes on DVD that’s when I’ll see it too. I didn’t rush to see any of them in the theater. Because I just feel so bored with it all. But about three years ago? Yeah, I would have.

Apparently about 96% of all films released in the last two years have been either remakes, reboots or re-imaginings. And I think it’s hard to get excited about many things when the majority of them are just remakes or reboots of things you’ve already seen.

If anyone is still curious, I’m still working on finishing my write-up of how I would have done SV differently. I’m going to try and post it sometime net week, before the show comes back and starts airing it’s final episodes.