Here’s how tired I am:

After I recapped Eleventh Hour, instead of deleting it off my TiVo, I watched some parts of it AGAIN last night. WILLINGLY. AND I WAS AMUSED. It’s a dark time, you guys. But I did catch a Science Alert I forgot the first time around!

SCIENCE ALERT: When dogs die, they turn into pinatas.

Seriously, that’s the worst dog mockup I have ever seen. When Rufus pulls the fungus off its teeth, the whole dog rattles.

I am starting to warm to this show, but I know it hasn’t gotten any better. It’s just Stockholm Syndrome.

Later today I have a story about my torrid weekend affair. Because I’m a nerd.

ETA: Holy crap, CBS agrees that the fakeout was the best moment of the show and put it online! Please note that she’s concerned his theory won’t hold up because the paralyzed family “didn’t have wine for breakfast”. She’s crafty, that Agent Marley!

…for values of “Agro” which mean “The One That’s Just Like an Episode of House”.

So, not content to imitate bad episodes of CSI and Law and Order, this week Eleventh Hour imitates an episode of House. I didn’t do a play by play because the frame plot bored me a lot. Just know that it involves accusing some fourteen year old of poisoning her family even though she failed chemistry twice, a farmer who just this year paid off his farm (not at all suspiciously), and a dad coming home to his family convulsing in piles of their own vomit. SCIENCE!

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Last night I got to see La Traviata at the Met. I took the super-cheap seats in the nosebleed section – absolutely last row, approximately half a mile above sea level, holy crap. I am not afraid of heights, but even I spent a moment hoping that, despite the flaky ceiling, the place would not collapse. That’s a long fall.

Anyway, the cheap seats are also where the students sit when their teacher makes them go see an opera so that can talk about it in their European Lit seminar. The place was overrun with expensively-dressed adolescents swapping spit in the middle of Violetta’s heartbreaking confrontation with Alfredo’s father, where he asks her to leave his son so his daughter’s engagement isn’t called off. Weeping, she reveals she’s dying of The TeeBee and couldn’t possibly leave Alfredo, and Dad’s like, “Oh, that’s sad – so, can I help you pack?”

(Anja Harteros knocks this out of the park, by the way. Most gorgeous Violetta I’ve ever heard. If you can spare 15 bucks, totally go.)

By the end of the second act (a huge set piece that looks like an honest-to-God ballroom, covered in extras, all with gorgeous costumes – Franco Zefferelli, ladies and gents) Alfredo and Violetta have violently parted – she for his sister’s sake, him because he’s a total assface and throws money at her in the middle of a party.

Intermission. The lights go up. Teenagers pile out of the cheap seats to go make out noisily in the hallway instead of in the seats.

One girl turns to her friend. “God, I hope they get back together soon!”

So, it was clearly somebody’s first opera last night!

Best part – in the last act, Violetta is in the last stages of The TB. The doctor says she has only a few hours to live – but she’s feeling better! She’s sad – but then Alfredo shows up! They’ll be together forever – coughing fit! Nope, nope, she’s fine, she’ll make it, oh bliss! – hang on, gotta sit down – What’s this? Strength fills her, she can take on the world, life is going to hand her every – FALLS DOWN DEAD.

So that girl had a really rollercoaster set of fake-outs, which was fun. (For me.)

My article “10 Fantasy Movies that Ruined it for the Rest of Us” is up at Fantasy!

This article was a blast to write, and I had a hard time winnowing down the list. The sheer volume of shitty dragon movies could have scuttled the entire genre for the next hundred years, no joke. I maintain there has only ever been one good dragon movie ever made, and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the entire movie is animated.

I’ll be writing a follow-up column about Legend, which some people seem surprised to find is not on this list. I’m surprised people think it should be, but I’ll get into that later.

I’m seeing Ladyhawke mentioned a lot, also, but I can take care of that here: Ladyhawke didn’t go on the list because it was a relatively sleek fantasy movie for its time.

-It used minimal special effects, which I think is key, because looking at a real wolf and a real falcon will always be nicer than looking at the CGI version.
- They used Rutger Hauer, Bad Guy Extraordinaire, as the hero Navarre. Automatic dark side. Love it.
- His hilarious thief sidekick was not a moron, which helps – he can be trusted with things, he’s smart enough to save his own skin, he grows and changes just as Navarre slowly grows and changes.
- The dialogue is really sharp – they keep the “thees” and “thous” to a minimum, try to cut out the most modern idioms, and let the rest take its course.
- Michelle Pfeiffer, who can act more then people seem to think, brings enpough life to her part that you can see not only the sorrowful woman she is now, but the joyful and snarky woman she used to be. The part could have been a cipher, but she knocked it out of the park.
-The bishop, aside from casting the initial spell/curse, has nothing but human greeds and foibles – he keeps a harem and wakes up sweaty from night terrors, and is really no more evil than many other men of power who had no spells at their disposal at all.

Is it flawed? Absolutely. Was Matthew Broderick annoying sometimes? Absolutely. Is the synthesizer music dated? Absolutely. Does the movie still hold up as an excellent example of low-budget, well-written, character-driven “realistic” fantasy? Absolutely. It’s a crossover fantasy that worked 23 years ago, and still works better than most modern fantasy movies. It doesn’t belong on my list, and I didn’t put it there.

So, usually when a franchise property gets its movie rights snapped up, they hire eight or nine writers to slap together some canon plot from the comics/books and then write in more leather bustiers and explosions.

Here’s what I think happened to Aeon Flux. Some poor sci-fi fan wrote a perfectly serviceable low-budget science fiction movie about a futuristic city and someone who finds out its inhabitants are clones of themselves. It was a character-centric, quiet movie, Gattaca-style. He sold the rights for seven grand. He went out and bought his friends a bunch of drinks.

Then he found out they were taking his treatment and using it for Aeon Flux, because this one time Aeon Flux also had an episode that was sort of about a clone! And they were going to cast Charlize Theron! And there would be more leather bustiers and explosions!

Then he kept drinking and hasn’t stopped. You can still see him today out of the corner of your eye when you pass a dark dive bar; he’s muttering “BUT IT WAS ABOUT HOW HUMANITY PERSEVERES!” and weeping into his hoodie. And, you know:

…if I were that guy, I’d be crying, too.
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