I’ve decided that the time has come to officially retire Blurred Productions – for good.

This was not an easy choice for me to make but it is one that is very much bowing to the reality of the situation. The blog has been virtually dead since fall/winter 2010 (in a proud BP tradition, there was even some intra-contributor snark about this situation). We (pretty much, I) long ago surrendered our small voice within the comic book blogosphere. Quite wisely, several of the key contributors have set up their own personal corners of the internet. About two years ago my life (thanks to Graduate School) got very busy and I let my posting here slag and slag and eventually fade away. My attempts to spark some life back into this blog have fizzled. Several times over recent months, I’ve started writing a post but allowed it to sit in WordPress’s “drafts” folder. The dead weight of this blog’s long past and my guilt over my key role in its gradual demise were huge stumbling blocks to getting this place lively again.

It was not easy to come to the decision to retire this blog for good. Blurred Productions has been a part of my life since I was fourteen. As pretty much anyone reading this by this point well knows, BP began as a virtual way for me to distribute my (terrible) fiction to my friends and acquaintances. Later that website grew into a way for me to keep in touch with my high school (even later, undergraduate) friends. For about a year, Blurred Productions went down because of a falling out with our webhost. Then, a little over five years ago, I relaunched BP as a blog.

I stand by what we published here during Blurred Productions: The Blog Years. Tito and Psycholarry both published some truly great things (that perennially continue to bring traffic here). Doctor Brown and The Kaiser always brought sharp analysis to the table with  the great pieces they contributed here. I even stand by nearly everything I wrote here – especially about comics (even with the countless spelling/grammar errors & typos). We had a good run as part of the (often acrimonious) debates over gender in comics and other issues that continue to plague the comics industry today. Some of the most fun I’ve ever had on the blog were during those heady days. All and all, this blog was central to my intellectual and cultural development.

Because of this I will not be removing the archives or deactivating Blurred Productions’ history in anyway. While there will (likely) never be new content here again, the old content will remain here for good.

I’d like to thank the good folks of Progressive Ruin, Ragnell, Randy Lander, When Fangirls Attack, and Kalinara for bringing us much needed traffic and links.

But have no fear, if you truly love reading the analysis, snark, and opinion of the contributors here, you aren’t out of luck. Many of us moved on to bigger (and much better) things and have set up new homes in fresher, smarter corners of the internets. For as they say: the king is dead, long live the king.

New Homes of all of your Blurred Productions favorites:

• Smith Michaels
• Psycholarry
• Tito
• The Kaiser

[SPOILERS & ALL]

Thor was likely the best of the bunch – though to be honest I only saw about half of the film. While not a good movie nor Shakespeare, the Thor film is a perfectly serviceable adaptation of a relatively difficult comic book source material. The thing I liked most about Thor was the way the CG scenery didn’t overwhelm you – even though much of the movie was high-level computer graphics. One never got the impression that the whole movie boiled down to an actor standing on a green screen plantform.

Unlike, say, Green Lantern which was completely and totally overwhelmed by its special effects. Ryan Reynolds fought an extremely stupid looking smoke monster with the POWER OF FEAR for the last 20 minutes of the movie. Much, perhaps all, of the movie felt and looked fake. This not is not to say that the GL movie was the worst comic book adaptation I’ve ever seen (X3) and the film was not the Geoff Johns inspired Rainbow Bright nightmare I was expecting. In fact, GL film was a relatively serviceable action movie if you could get past the fact that much of the film was Ryan Reynolds “emoting” at nothing (better actors that Reynolds have failed in similar situations). And the fact that they forget that their villain has mind control powers. And that one could remove Carol Ferris from this movie and lose nothing.

Arguably the worst film I have seen this summer is Super 8 – which was not at all what I was expecting. The first, say, 2/3s of the film is quite excellent. It is my sort of “horror” and “thriller” film, relatively character based and where the violence is more  implied than explicit. There were some truly great character bits – especially that scene in the diner between all of the teenagers and the middle of the film confrontation between Coach Taylor and his son. And yet, in the end it was all an for naught.

What Super 8 was really about was making E.T. for the 21st century.

Of course, since this is the 21st century, it is not a happy story for our visting alien. Instead of being welcomed by cute children, poor E.T. is welcomed by our ever-loving military which proceeds to torture and experiment on him. This leads, of course, to his eventually escape and consumption of human flesh. Luckily, the alien encounters (because the alien wants to eat his girlfriend) a young boy who lost his mother. This encounter teaches E.T. a powerful lesson: “We all suffer.” Thankfully, lesson learned the alien decides not eat said boy and his girlfriend and goes home. Que credits.

This strangely sentimental ending does not entirely click with what has come before; for if you want to make the killer alien sympathetic, you really should spend less of the film treating it like the T-REX from Jurassic Park. This gives Super 8 experience a deeply disconcerting feeling. By the end of the film, one is left not knowing exactly how to feel about anything you just spend the last 90+ minutes watching. The final shots do nothing to help this unease – for they bounce from sentimental closure to pot jokes.

That is what makes Super 8 much worse than the GL film or Thor. For Super 8 could have really been something but in the end it just ends up being a huge mess of nothing.

Cruising is a charming little undercover police story where Al Pacino has to infiltrate the seedy and dangerous world of gay S&M clubs to stop some gay murders.  As a film, it’s a bit of a mess and the protests by gay groups did not make a huge impact on the straight public.

Tagline: Al Pacino is Cruising for a killer.

Synopsis: A serial killer brutally slays and dismembers several gay men in New York’s S&M and leather districts. The young police officer Steve Burns is sent undercover onto the streets as decoy for the murderer. Working almost completely isolated from his department, he has to learn and practice the complex rules and signals of this little society. While barely seeing his girlfriend Nancy anymore, the work starts changing him.

Interesting Fact: Most of the nightclub scenes were shot in real New York S&M clubs and the extras were largely actual patrons directed to act like they normally would in the club.

Objectionable material: Tons of dude butt, ass-less chaps, implied anal fisting, aggressive straight sex, a fairly bizarre idea of the psychology behind the gay leather community, a whole lot of shirtless hairy sweaty dudes being very sexual, Paul Sorvino, a poor understanding of the rules of pool, innuendo all over the place, somewhat graphic murders, jock straps, drug use, the implication of lots of homosexual sex and sex acts, cross-dressing

Disturbing Quote: All [smoking] is is anal regressive. If you want to quit I suggest you try another form of childhood stroking.

Screaming Girl: It’s been awhile since I have written one a Crossing the Line entry and what a movie to start with! Cruising is the story of a police officer trying to climb the ranks by going undercover in the gay S&M community in order to catch a murderer. After the movie I have a few things I feel obligated to point out…

Number 1: Now I’m not a police officer, nor have I ever been one but I’m pretty sure that going undercover in the gay community (or any community for that matter) means establishing relationships with members of said community and gleaning information from them. Not making friends with one gay guy and then using the rest of the time to have a bunch of gay sex with random men. But that’s just a hunch.

Number 2: As I have referenced before in the Salo or 120 Days of Sodom post written in the very beginning of our little controversial adventure. I have some background with the S&M community. This movie only encourages the stereotype that sadomasochists are cruel, torturous, murdering, creepers. This is in fact not the case, and as my past research and interviews have confirmed the sadomasochistic community is a very loving and welcoming, if not litigiously aware group of people.

Number 3: I’m pretty sure that having a giant black guy in a police cap and thong beating the hell out of suspects (who later turn out to be innocent) is considered police brutality. Likewise, going into a person’s apartment and rummaging through their psychotic letters to their long dead father would be considered illegal search and seizure. Both of these things are inadmissible in court and can cause your case to be thrown away.

Number 4: Now, I’ve heard a lot of stereotypes about where gay men like to meet up to have sex: bath houses, airport restrooms, Lady Gaga concerts, parks, etc. While you can find some truths in stereotypes I really can’t imagine that once the sun goes down every park across the country becomes a big gay sex free-for-all for every gay person in a 100 mile radius. I mean seriously, these fields were so packed with gay men that I was fully prepared for a musical number.

Finally Number 5: I know that in the 80’s the general public was not as informed about the gay population as it is now. But I don’t think that I am asking too much when I request that my film writers/directors/producers/actors do a little research about the population that they are going to portray. If I knew nothing about gay people and I used this as my gauge I would assume that all gay people go to bars or parks every night to have nameless, faceless sex. Gay people have jobs that allow them to be either musicians, actors, dancers or prostitutes. Every gay man likes to dress as women or cops. Gay men scream like girls. And all gay men live in a part of town that only gay men live in nor do they associate with non-gays.

On the whole, cruising was psychologically dull. I find it mostly controversial because of it’s glaring stereotypes (see Soul Man) and less because of it’s content. It may have been a much bigger issue 30 years ago but looking at it now it’s just sort of insulting. I really believe that society as a whole (except Tea Partiers) would look at this movie and laugh at it’s glaring inaccuracies. I’m sure it was unintentional but I feel as if the film writer caused more harm to the gay community by encouraging these stereotypes.

Mind Fuckability Rating: College experimentation may cause you to become a murderer.

MBRFT: William Friedkin’s “Cruising” takes us wrist-deep (literally) into the ‘70’s New York leather scene, where the only part of the body anyone tries to keep covered is their upper lip. Beyond the endless scenes of dank dungeon bars and brawny mustachioed men, there’s a loose framework of plot involving an undercover cop and a lot of dead-eyed staring. Pacino’s methods of probing this underground sub-culture include standing in a corner and occasionally making eye-contact. He acts more like a pubescent boy at a 7th grade dance than a seasoned police officer. A more accurate title for the film would be “Creeping.” At one point he might even partake in a back-alley BJ with another leather-clad fella. I say “might” because the film makes all of this as ambiguous as possible and effectively muddies anything that the original story might have been trying to convey. Friedkin seems to be more interested in documenting the leather scene than trying to effectively develop his main character. And he’s clearly very good at it. The gritty urban cinematography makes you almost smell the ball sweat. But it seems like an awful waste of Al Pacino in his prime. And if I just wanted to see homoerotic photography, I’d go to a Mapplethorpe exhibit.
The controversy over “Cruising” stems from its portrayal of the S&M culture. Critics at the time doubted any film could tackle the subject of this specific fragment of the homosexual community without generalizing and creating a homophobic backlash. The film never outright claims that it’s representative of the entire gay community, but it also gives such little guidance that it becomes entirely unclear what anyone should take from this. Pacino is supposed to be the ordinary guy whom we can identify with in this strange world, but his actions become increasingly obsessive and bizarre, alienating the viewer. There are thought-provoking ideas in this film that are largely discarded by the time the credits roll. A moralizing serial killer, seducing gay men before he kills them, is an interesting dichotomy that should be explored, but this is largely brushed aside for more shock scenes of anal-fisting in a club. The few tidbits of back-story and character development we get are often surreal and disjointed. There’s no need for any spoiler alerts because I’m not sure I even understand what happens in the last ten minutes.

PsychoLarry1: Cruising is a movie with nothing to say and a whole lot of time to say it.  Sure it was only 1 hour and 40 minutes long, but the movie is content to plod from grungy bar to grungy bar with an aimless inertia rather than build up any kind of suspense.  At some point Friedkin and the producers must have decided that actually make a coherent and engaging film was to much work; opting instead for a vague sort of meandering parade of attempts to shock and scandalize hetero-American viewers.  The nightclubs are indistinguishable and all look like a collision between a Judas Priest show and a white power rally.  I dunno, maybe the S&M culture really was just a bunch of dudes fisting each other in a bar while wearing Freddy Mercury’s mustache, aviators and a traffic cop hat, but as a visual theme it became kind of dull and boring. Most movie is shot in a smokey blue haze, and the only color you get is black leather, black hair (apparently leather daddies can’t be blonde?), and pasty sweating skin.  I suppose some people might have been scandalized by the intense and aggressive sexuality or by the depiction of the subculture as a bunch of perverted deviants and murderers, but in all the film just seems lazy and completely lacking depth.

If you wanted a police thriller you won’t get it.  Pacino is dropped into the S&M scene without any sort of introduction or even a basic 1980s training montage.  From there he sulks his way through a bunch of nightclubs until he stumbles on the real killer almost entirely by accident and without engaging in any sort of real undercover work.  The killer’s motive is some sort of half explained nonsense about a dead father, and in the end he’s given a deal to plead down 5 or 6 cold-blooded murders to seven years in prison.  There’s a sub-plot about abusive patrolmen who sodomize cross dressers that never comes close to resolving, and a half-assed teaser that doing dudes has turned Pacino into a copy-cat killer.  The movie is doused in so much ambiguity and half-formed plot points that create far more questions than answers, and the filmmakers seem terrified of actually making any sort of meaning from the events on screen.  You could call it subculture porn: a trip through the meatpacking (no, really) district and all the steamy dude on leather on dude action it entails, with no depth or reason behind it.

Best Album

5. The Arcade Fire – Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)

With the Arcade Fire, I think I prefer Win Butler to Régine Chassagne. No disrespect to the latter, I just prefer his voice to her more breathy approach. Now to completely contradict what I just said, the songs Régine sings alone are some of the best the band has done, specifically “Haiti” and “Sprawl II”. I’m really not sure how both can be true, but I suppose that it’s just a testament to how effectively the rest of the band can play off her strengths. “Sprawl II” effectively encapsulates the rest of the themes found in The Suburbs, including middle-class resistance to the artistic/bohemian lifestyle and malaise with the widespread sameness of suburbia. Sorry if that description drifts too close to the “pretentious things” mentioned in the opening lines.

4. Janelle Monáe ft. Big Boi – Tightrope

I had serious trouble deciding on a Janelle Monáe song to highlight. The whole album is phenomenal (see above), but “Tightrope” is the single for a reason; and it’s not just because Big Boi is a bigger name. The song is insanely catchy. There is a weird, distinct, and simple dance, which is a good thing, since this song will make you want to dance. Monáe does some impressive vocal gymnastics throughout. Big Boi’s guest spot adds variation, but it’s certainly not necessary since there are plenty of creative flourishes all over the place. It’s just a great song.

3. The Roots ft. John Legend – The Fire

I have to give it to The Roots. After they became Jimmy Fallon’s house band, I had pretty much written them off as effectively retired. Yet somehow this year, they managed to release a double whammy – the excellent How I Got Over and another album of covers with John Legend. To clarify, this collaboration with John Legend is an original song off How I Got Over. It’s also one of the best the band has ever written. “The Fire” is a song about inspiration and motivation, and I can’t think of too many other unrelentingly positive songs (especially in hip-hop) that convey their message so clearly and effectively without ever feeling sappy or trite.

2. Cee-Lo Green – Georgia (link isn’t just to Youtube… it’s a free download)

I know, I know. Everybody loves “Fuck You.” And for good reason. I’d love to be a fly on the wall at the meeting where Cee-Lo told his record label the name of his first single. But the track from the former Goodie Mob frontman that really blew me away was “Georgia,” Cee-Lo’s ode to his home state which didn’t even make it on to the final version of The Lady Killer. Now just to be clear, I’ve had three types of experiences with Georgia: a layover in the Atlanta airport, an afternoon spent in Savanna, and driving through on my way to Florida. I have absolutely zero emotional investment in the state. And yet even I’m a little bit moved by how earnest and heartfelt Cee-Lo’s tribute to the place that “even raised to the people that raised me” is. It doesn’t hurt that he’s a damn good singer either, and is clearly giving it his all here.

1. The Black Keys – Howlin’ for You

What an earworm this track is. This comes at the end of the opening four tracks of Brothers, after the also amazing songs “Everlasting Light,” “Next Girl,” and “Tighten Up”. Those four make for one of the strongest beginnings of any album I’ve ever heard. By the time I got to this song, I realized there was something seriously wrong with me for not paying more attention to The Black Keys before. “Howlin’ for You” features an irrepressible fuzzy bass line played on a normal guitar (sort of like in the White Stripes’ “Seven Nation Army”) in a call-and-response with another guitar playing high-pitched four-note flourishes. It’s distinct and catchy, and has one of those perfect blues set-ups where the song could easily continue endlessly with infinite variation.

Remember when we had that Top Fifteen Best Simpsons Episodes list? That was pretty great!

The entire cast was on in this episode. I especially liked Alec Baldwin’s attempt at gay seduction. And hey! There were no jokes about how fat and/or ugly Tina Fey is. The best part of the episode was how well they were able to massage the fact that Matt Damon needs to go off and be a movie star. They managed to write him out in a way that doesn’t forclose future plot lines. Because really, who doesn’t want Liz Lemon to be happy? Only heartless bastards, I am sure.

I really don’t have much to say about this episode. It was almost too good to review and my love for this show has been stated again and again. So, there’s not much more to say.

Except that I’m not sure the whole Pete and his wife joke worked. It was kind of awful. It may have crossed a line? (It did cross a line…)

[An index of our Fall TV 2o1o coverage can be found here]

Besides, each new season is like seeing old friends again.

The season seven premiere was very good. From the cold open (which managed to be funny and tell us a bit about each character) to it’s final moments, this episode brought some of what was missing from the previous season. First of all, it was nice to see Pam actually get a featured role. Outside of the baby arc, we got very little of her last season which was a shame. It was also nice to see Dwight with a fresh storyline. It often felt like Rainn Wilson was phoning it in last season, thus it was nice to see him bring his A (or at least A- game) in this episode.

But most of all, it seems that Steve Carrell leaving the show has brought a new energy to the show. Carrell’s performance was sharper (and spanking his nephew was weirdly hilarious), the writing was more focused, and the storyline seemed to have more weight. Carrell leaving could be the best thing that’s ever happened to this show. If they play it right. (Well, they are bringing Holly back…)

Of course, I’ve been fooled by this show’s season premiere’s before (I liked last season’s). So we will just have to see if they squander the great energy of this episode. I hope not.

[An index of our Fall TV 2o1o coverage can be found here]

As of the premiere the producers seem to have decided to become a meta, network TV version of Its Always Sunny. Which is great. Always Sunny has a lot of fans (I am not among them). But really, did they have to be such a dick about it as they embraced the new direction?

At many moments the writer of this episode seemed to be laughing at the audience while chuckling, “How could you idiots become emotionally invested in these characters?” You know how, writer man? Because of storylines in your own damn show! The writers/producers are the ones who created the Britta/Jeff storyline in the previous season. They are the ones who asked the audience to become invested in their storylines. It was not some lonely person on the internet shipping away at two improbable characters but the actual writing on the show the created the connection between them. No reading between the lines required!

I have no problem with the direction Community has decided to go. They want to make more episodes like the Paintball one from last season? Great! I enjoyed that episode a lot. But they don’t need to be such a dick as they turn the page. Nothing bothers me more than when creators spit (especially so openly!) in the face of their fans.

My opinion of this episode wasn’t completely dour. I thought moments were pretty hilarious (especially the twitter account for Chevy Chase’s character or the excellent Twilight joke). But as I said in the beginning, the episode left a bad taste in my mouth.

[An index of our Fall TV 2o1o coverage can be found here]

As for the season premiere, there is really nothing unexpected here. The new status quo is established, (Chuck looking for his Mom/Sarah Connor), the obsession with Yvonne Strahovski’s body continues, and Zachary Levi remains as charming as ever. Basically if you are looking for some escapism, Chuck remains a good choice.

However, if there is one thing the producers need to learn is that the Buy More is played out. Constantly returning to that damn Best Buy knock off does not keep the show grounded, instead it keeps the show repetitive.  Besides as of this season the original shtick of the Buy More (i.e. will Chuck keep his job despite his spying?!?) is completely gone. What the producers should know by now is that it is not the “grounded”  nature of the show that makes Chuck work but Zachary Levi’s chemistry with the rest of the cast. Oh, and Adam Baldwin. (For a differing opinion, see Charlie Jane Anders’ review at io9)

But that aside, Chuck remains the same as ever. Which is (mostly) a good thing.

[An index of our Fall TV 2o1o coverage can be found here]