Darren Criss on Broadway!!!

...Well sort, of.  Darren, our most beloved and sexy crooner is not returning to the boards, but he did come to support his Glee costar Jane Lynch as she takes over for Katie Finneran in Annie.  Here are five photos, including two of Lynch with Darren.  Only twenty days until the concert!

OVP: Kon-Tiki (2012)

Film: Kon-Tiki (2012)
Stars: Pal Sverre Valheim Hagen, Anders Baasmo Christiansen, Gustaf Skarsgard, Odd-Magnus Williamson, Agnes Kittelsen
Director: Joachim Renning and Espen Sandberg
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Foreign Language Film-Norway)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

There are movies that you love the subject so much it's difficult to remain objective toward, even if you find that you must.  For me, this is a rare occurrence, as I rarely if ever care for true-to-life stories.  I might be more partial to an actor or director or genre, but subject matter is rarely the thing that drives me to celebrate a film or dismiss it.  That being said, there are few things that I am more mystified by than the adventurers, whether they be Amundsen or Armstrong, Hillary or Baumgartner.  And few make my heart swell more with beaming admiration than Thor Heyerdahl.

Heyerdahl's adventure is one of those ones that makes you rethink your entire life, and where you have taken it, as there are few things more daring, romantic, psychotic, and astounding than taking off in a balsa wood raft and crossing the Pacific Ocean to prove a theory that, even if you are successful, holds little water.  Indeed, while later genetic evidence has always pointed to Heyerdahl being incorrect about his hypothesis, I think it wasn't so much that he wanted to prove that he was right that Polynesia could have been founded by Peruvians, but that he could be right.

Whatever the reason, the voyage of the Kon-Tiki, along with the mounting of Everest and eventually the leaps into space taken by Gagarin, Glenn, and Armstrong, showed a new level of adventuring and the human spirit, and was to be greatly lauded.  It's sort of a wonder that a large-scale film about the Kon-Tiki similar to this has never been mastered before, and it's nice to know that it happened in the native tongue of Heyerdahl himself.

Of course, you wouldn't necessarily know this going into the film in the United States, due to the Weinstein Company's controversial decision to have the film released in English.  The movie doesn't suffer a lot from this decision, primarily because it isn't a dubbing-the film was filmed in both Norwegian and English, but it's a little weird seeing a Foreign Language Film nominee that is 90% in your native tongue (at least for an American Oscar-obsessive, it is weird).

The movie is structured fairly traditionally, with the first half being Heyerdahl (played by the ridiculously handsome Hagen-seriously, look at that picture) charming and scheming his way to become as famous as Charles Darwin, and eventually deciding upon what certainly appears to be a suicide mission-taking a raft across the world to prove a seemingly impossible theory true.  The movie assembles his motley crew, complete with a guy who has no business on this raft, a refrigerator salesman named Watzinger, who joins after listening to Thor dreamily musing about his journey one night in a bar.  This portion of the film hums, but seems to be a retread of every other adventure movie you've ever seen-the doubtful reactions, the determined main character bucking the odds.  There's a star-like quality that can't be quenched, primarily since we know what an unusual success the journey will be and because Hagen oozes charisma, but it's your routine set of scenes.

The open sea gets quite a bit stronger, and is the better half of the film.  The movie isn't afraid to make the audience petrified, and we are, though not just by the immediacy of the sharks and storms that ravage the crew, but also by the limitless ocean that surrounds them with no safety net.  The movie borrows heavily from the film Jaws (was I the only person who was positive that the score was taking a pluck from John Williams iconic ba-bump?), with the sneak attacks in the water, but it's still effective.  The first time the giant whale/shark (not 100% certain what that was) shows up, you almost scream in the theater.  It's a little less spectacular when the Great White shows up, since we're already on high alert and know it has to be coming, but the scenes still have an undeniable energy, partially drawn by how immediate the sharks are in what appears to be a relatively small raft, one that the sharks likely could turn over if they worked in tandem.

I wasn't wild about the madness elements that came out of these scenes, not because I didn't think they were a realistic idea (they were-over 100 days at sea has to be horribly monotonous, even if you're regularly struggling for your life), but because the film doesn't take enough time to address the crazy.  Watzinger, who is proven to be the doubting Thomas in the group, regularly alternates between wide-eyed idealism and complete disbelief at Heyerdahl, despite being one of the few who believed in him wholeheartedly in the beginning of the film.  There's no evolution in his character.  In fact there's rare evolution in any of the characters.  The movie would have done better to spend more of the film at sea, getting to know our six-man crew as individuals rather than one-man traits.

That being said, the film is splendid as an action film, and the visual effects, thankfully not a wall of CGI like most modern films, really add character and depth to the film, and truly add to the movie (and it's rarely clear which effects are real and which ones are fake, particularly with the sharks).  I was very taken with Hagen, not just the Jack Dawson-hair, but the sly, addictive way he approaches the camera.  There's a reason the film can't seem to stop turning to him, even in scenes where the supporting cast probably makes more sense.  Overall, a 5-for subject, but a 3-for execution, with a definite thumbs up on whether you should seek it out for yourself.

OVP: The Bride of Frankenstein (1935)

Film: The Bride of Frankenstein (1935)
Stars: Boris Karloff, Colin Clive, Valerie Hobson, Ernest Thesiger, Elsa Lanchester
Director: James Whale
Oscar History: 1 nominations (Best Sound)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

Following Whale's previous film, it took a surprisingly long time for Universal to follow-up with a sequel(considering how frequently the studios churned out film series in the 1930's thanks to the studio system, I find it odd that they had to wait four years to get a second film on the docket).  The sequel, far more comedic and generally considered the better of the two films, was the true film I was hoping to catch in the Frankenstein series.  Shall we see if I liked it better?

(Spoilers throughout) The movie shows us the moments immediately following the harrowing "death" of the monster in the last film, but quite instantly you can tell that the movie has switched its tone.  Gone is the heavy-handed attitude of Dr. Frankenstein and his persecuted science, and instead you are greeted with a batty old woman who embraces the Monster's death, and the parents of the young girl, who want to go in for a closer look and end up making it a three-for-one deal at the village cemetery.  The Monster has in fact survived the windmill attack, and goes on rampaging throughout the city.

Meanwhile, Dr. Frankenstein has recovered from what was initially assumed to be death and wants no more of his violent creation, but is forced back into the world of the undead when Dr. Pretorious (the campy Ernest Thesiger), shows him that he has created a series of homunculi (including a miniature King Henry VII, a mermaid, and a devil), and coerces him into creating a mate for the Monster.

The Monster spends this time becoming a bit more "cosmopolitan," aided by a kind blind man who cannot tell that he is a monster (am I the only one who expects Gene Hackman to be playing the character, despite it being forty years too soon?), giving him a penchant for cigars and drink, and this could have worked splendidly if two passersby didn't point out that the Monster was who he was.

The film concludes with the climactic title sequence, when Elsa Lanchester, who had played Mary Shelley in an earlier scene, appears as the intended for Frankenstein's Monster, but instead shrieks and recoils from him in horror.  Dr. Frankenstein and his bride (anyone know why Valerie Hobson played this part instead of Mae Clarke-share in the comments!) are allowed to escape, but the Monster, his bride-to-be, and Dr. Pretorious all supposedly perish in fire.

The movie is a treat, particularly the comedic flourishes Whale takes with the film.  Much has been made about the gay-themed content, due largely to Whale's real-life homosexuality and the campy band of characters, principally Dr Pretorious, but I have to admit that while I acknowledged it, I thought people might be reading into things a bit to see a larger gay-metaphor.  I loved the character choices that Elsa Lanchester made in the film, practically winking to the audience during the opening scene where she's being doted upon by Byron and her husband (...I'll be back!) and then going to the rafters with her Marge Simpson hair and exaggerated arm gestures.  They didn't have a Best Supporting Actress trophy in 1935, but if they had, I think that it would have made a fine addition to the Sound nomination the film received.

So yes, I did like this film better, though they aren't really in the same style to compare the two (comparing the film to Young Frankenstein may be more appropriate).  However, I'd love your thoughts on this classic film.  What did you think of our second outing with Frankenstein?  Did you like the comedic elements better, or do you prefer them to stick to Shelley's original work?  And what Universal Monster do you think we should conquer next?

Bechdel Test: New Girl Season 1

All right, so I've kind of become obsessed with the Bechdel Test lately, and while there's an awesome website that chronicles this test for films, there isn't really one for television, so I thought I'd give it a shot (it'll give me something new to look for in shows that I've watched a thousand times).  The rules of the test are fairly simple:

1. The film/TV show has to have two named female characters.
2. They have to talk to each other.
3. They have to talk to each other about something other than a man.

After this, arguably it gets a bit fuzzy, so I'm adding a fourth criterion to this, as I think that, since the goal of this isn't to be arbitrarily including a woman saying one or two sentences to someone else, I'm going to include a 30-second rule.  The women have to talk to each other for longer than thirty seconds about one of the billion topics that doesn't include a man (there can even be a man around for the conversation, they just can't be talking about him)-that's all it takes, sounds simple, doesn't it?  I'll be going through, season-by-season, different shows that I own the DVDs of, and giving each show a grade based on the number of episodes that pass this simple test.  Should be fun, right?

For our premiere installment, I'm going to go with the first season of New Girl for a couple of reasons, chiefly that I haven't seen it for a while.  It also was created by a woman, and of its five main characters, two of them, Jess and Cece (Zooey Deschanel and Hannah Simone, respectively), are female.  Theoretically, this should mean the show should pass on a regular basis-let's investigate...

Pilot (#1.1)
Does it pass? The only two interactions between between two women is Jess and Cece talking about her upcoming date and Jess talking to a waitress that doesn't get a name, so I'm giving this a FAIL.

Kryptonie (#1.2)
Does it pass? Jess and Rochelle briefly interact, but that lasts about seven seconds, so no.  Cece and Jess share several scenes, but they spend them entirely talking about men or speak less than thirty seconds to each other-FAIL.

Wedding (#1.3)
Does it pass? Caroline and Jess talk to each other, but about Nick.  Jess also talks to Brooke, but again, about Schmidt and Nick. FAIL

Naked (#1.4)
Does it pass? Cece and Jess talk about Nick, but that's their only conversation.  Jess talks to Amanda, but Amanda doesn't speak back, so that one doesn't count either.  Once again, FAIL.

Cece Crashes (#1.5)
Does it pass? I cannot believe this, but no.  The first episode of the show to really feature Cece, and while there are conversations between Jess and Cece, they either revolve around men or don't last long enough.  I didn't have the stopwatch out for the guys, but there's a possibility that the guys also don't pass the test.

Thanksgiving (#1.6)
Does it pass? Once again, nope.  Cece and Jess both feature, but their only protracted conversation is about Schmidt and Paul. FAIL

Bells (#1.7)
Does it pass? For the first time, yes-Desiree and Jess discuss the broken toilet, and Jess also converses with the other girls (Bianca and Krystal converse with Jess throughout the episode). PASS

Bad in Bed (#1.8)
Does it pass?  Nope-despite them attending a baby shower and Jess and Cece going shopping together, the shopping excursion is entirely focused on Paul, and the women don't actually address each other at the shower, just Schmidt (for the record, the men easily pass the test in this episode, despite this being a very Jess-dominated installment). FAIL

The 23rd (#1.9)
Does it pass? Cece and Jess converse quite a bit throughout the episode, but only twelve seconds (I timed it) was not about boys, so yes, it FAILS our Bechdel Test.

The Story of the 50 (#1.10)
Does it pass? Jess and Tanya talk about the confiscation station and locker-searching, before finally discussing the surprise party that Schmidt was getting, but they never discuss men, so we officially have our second PASS!

Jess and Julia (#1.11)
Does it pass? Leave it to the perfect Lizzy Caplan to not only get the show to pass the Bechdel Test, but to get it to give Jess a true story line that doesn't involve one of the guys (in this case, Jess trying to get out of a speeding ticket).  The show passed the Bechdel Test on six separate occasions (discussing each other, the speeding ticket case, tampons, and crocheting, amongst other things), and for the first time ever, Jess and Cece (with an assist from Dr. Sadie), passed the test.  Hugely successful PASS!

The Landlord (#1.12)
Does it pass? Not even a little bit-though Cece, Jess, and Kim have scenes throughout the show, they never share a conversation together, and therefore FAIL the test.

Valentine's Day (#1.13)
Does it pass? I'm going to call this one a PASS, though it's a bit of a tossup-Jess and Cece discuss a one-night stand, which would normally qualify under the man clause, but it was primarily focused on Jess's needs and her quirks in relationships rather than a guy, so I say it counts.  For the record, this is one of my favorite episodes of the first season-Ryan Kwanten is so much fun, and freakishly ageless.

Bully (#1.14)
Does it pass? Once again, we have another PASS, as Brianna, Jess, and Tanya discuss the science fair, Brianna and Jess for a good chunk of the episode.

Injured (#1.15)
Does it pass? Jess and Sadie do talk during this episode, but it's primarily talking about Nick and his potential thyroid tumor.  So it's a FAIL, but since this is one of the first episodes that Cece interacts with the guys in a non-goddess-y sort of way (well, Winston and Nick, at least), it's a bit of a step up from earlier episodes.

Control (#1.16)
Does it pass? Nope-Jess and Cece don't even share a scene in the episode, though they do both show up.  All-in-all, after a few weeks of the show both passing and taking some strides with their female characters, this took a huge step back, with Schmidt regularly being referred to as the show's "mom" and Cece essentially just being in two scenes where she exists simply as the girl Schmidt is sleeping with (yes, she's the one in control, but the show ends with Schmidt in charge there too, so the message is pretty sad).  FAIL

Fancyman, Part 1 (#1.17)
Does it pass? Tanya and Jess have one conversation, Jess and Cece have another, but both are about Russell, so we've got another FAIL.

Fancyman, Part 2 (#1.18)
Does it pass? Once again, Jess and Cece spend their only interactions discussing Russell.  And like "Control," we're taking a huge step backwards here-Cece and Jess are both changing to fit a man, and Nick and Dirk both spend a good chunk of the episode preying on college-age women. FAIL

Secrets (#1.19)
Does it pass? After four big fails, the show passes the Bechdel Test in the first thirty seconds, with Cece and Jess discussing their upcoming charity run.  They PASS it one more time later (when they are discussing Cece's secrets).

Normal (#1.20)
Does it pass? Cece and Jess have two conversations in the show, but they are both once again about Russell. FAIL

Kids (#1.21)
Does it pass? Jeanne Tripplehorn alert!  Sara, Ouli, Jess, Cece, and Chloe all add up to three Bechdel Test PASSes.  This is also one of the best illustrations of how, despite the fact that Cece is the only person who doesn't live in the lot, Winston is the outsider in the group-they don't even feel the need to return him to the loft before the end of the episode to involve everyone else in his journey.  He is very much the Phoebe of the group-still liked by fans, but the character that most easily lifts themselves out of the rest of the characters' drama.

Tomatoes (#1.22)
Does it pass? We get another dose of Jeanne, but she doesn't help too much with the Bechdel Test this episode.  There are definitely conversations between Jess/Ouli, Cece/Nadia, and Jess/Caroline, and for brief seconds they're even about things other than Russell, Schmidt, and Nick, respectively, but not enough to hit thirty seconds.  If you added them all up you might get to thirty seconds, but again, not in the spirit of the Bechdel Test and you shouldn't be able to add together the conversations to get to a pass, so it's a FAIL.

Backslide (#1.23)
Does it pass? An episode that starts with Joni Mitchell's classic "River" had better pass the Bechdel test, right?  Jess and Jen are a grey area, but there's enough of their conversation related to infidelity and to Jess thinking she's similar to Jen to qualify as a PASS.

See Ya (#1.24)
Does it pass? Jess and Cece have a quick conversation about Schmidt and Neil, but that's about it.  If I had proof that the coyote was a woman, it might count (as Jess oddly talks to the coyote for longer than she talks to her best friend), but without proof I cannot give it a pass, so the season finale FAILs.

Final Scorecard
Bechdel Test: 8/24 (33%)
Bechdel Grade: F

It should be noted that nearly every single episode passed the reverse-Bechdel (I believe "Cece Crashes" barely hit, which is the only one I'm not completely certain on).  Unlike Jess and Cece, the guys regularly discuss things other than women (their jobs, lives, friendships with each other, their respective quirks).  It's so sad, considering that in a show where the lead is a woman (and the title character!) and a show that was created by a woman, the show couldn't even hit 50%, much less a passing grade.  That said, I still like the show (clearly, I bought the DVDs), but am hoping that when at some point I grade Season 2, that our female characters grow a little bit to not just be about the guys.

And that's where I'll leave it for now-what do you think about the Bechdel Test, our new blog series, and the results?  Are you a fan of New Girl?  What other shows do you think we should investigate?  Share in the comments!

Iron Man 3 (2013)

Film: Iron Man 3 (2013)
Stars: Robert Downey Jr., Gwyneth Paltrow, Don Cheadle, Guy Pearce, Rebecca Hall, Jon Favreau, Ben Kingsley
Director: Shane Black
Oscar History: Obviously too early to say, but this screams a Visual Effects nomination, doesn't it?
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

It's been going on for several years, but I'm still trying to get my head around the Marvel universe that Disney has wrought, and in particular, what it means for the franchises as a whole.  While the Avengers are the biggest things on the planet right now, what's going to happen to these characters when the actors that play them decide they've had enough (it's hard to fathom RDJ ever wanting to give up the Fort Knox he's found in this franchise, but actors tend to move on, and they get older).  Are we in a Doctor Who/James Bond sort of situation where the characters stay but the actors alternate, or is this simply a brief moment where the Marvel universe runs the world, and then it passes into oblivion for another twenty years in a way similar to the Superman franchise?  We shall see...

In the meantime, my complicated feelings about the franchise don't just revolve around the eventual future of the series, but what the series means for the cinema.  There have been a lot of series in the past few years that have wanted to transform more into a television-style approach to their stories-multiple, sometimes endless tales that relate to each other, with the next chapter just around the corner, and occasionally spreading the films a little thin (Twilight, Harry Potter, Hunger Games, Lord of the Rings, Pixar, and even oddly The Hangover films all seem to fall into this unnecessarily long series mode).  No one has quite done it in the same fashion as The Avengers, however.  Not only have we received the phenomenally successful Joss Whedon film, but we also have individual outings from Iron Man, Thor, and Captain America (you have to feel a little bit bad for Black Widow, Hawkeye, and Mark Ruffalo's Hulk that they don't have the same sort of solo series cache).  These films all work on their own merit, but they also rely heavily on each other, and to miss one means to be left out of the inside jokes on a future film.  I'll admit that I like this better than the stretches that Twilight, for example, took with their source material when it wasn't necessary to make a fifth film-it seems more in-tuned with the core comic book mentality, where superheroes regularly visit each other (they live in the same world, after all), and yet also have their own adventures.  This true-to-the-source approach is, however, having a serious impact on my pocketbook.

But I digress, and should be getting to the film at hand.  While we last left Iron Man in the successful mission in New York City, the last time we left Tony Stark by his lonesome, I have to say I left the film quite disappointed.  The heavy-handed attitude of Iron Man 2 was out-of-character both for RDJ as well as for the approach filmmakers have taken for the Marvel franchises (this sort of self-reflexive, brooding attitude is more at home in the DC Universe).  This film, thankfully, got a lot more fun out of its superhero, and as a result felt fuller and more at-home stylistically.

(Spoilers throughout) Tony Stark, of course, does still have issues from his time in New York, PTSD that has developed as a result of his fighting off Loki and his band of evildoers, but that's more of a plot device than a plot driver, and we get to see him gamely flirting with anything that moves, and of course challenging bad guys and floating through the air cockily (or arrogantly, depending on your Downey tolerance level), and having a damn good time doing it.  Stark slowly starts to rebuild his post-Avengers lifestyle, and while PTSD is what he attributes it to, part of me sort of wonders if he is jonesing for the high of working with the Avengers again, wanting to return to that universe once more.  I felt as the film ended, at least, that this was what the writers were hinting toward (depending on how many Greek islands it's going to cost to keep Downey in the picture).

The film also has two villains, and one disappointment on that front.  Guy Pearce plays Aldrich Killian, who is a nerdy scientist who develops, along with his assistant, Maya (Hall) a virus that makes the user regenerate their own body parts and become practically invincible.  For a part of the film, you're sort of wondering why the movie isn't focusing on the clear villain, the iconic Mandarin from the comic books (played by Ben Kingsley), but slowly you realize that the Mandarin himself is nothing but a front, and the true mastermind of the evil plots is Pearce.  The Mandarin is just an actor playing the part of a terrorist, which makes for some hilarious scenes with Kingsley, though I'm a bit disappointed that they took the teeth out of such an important Marvel villain.

The film's battle sequences are epic, and though nothing quite hits the heights reached by The Avengers, this movie comes close with the great sequence destroying Tony Stark's house.  The movie never really takes a breather, but it feels well-paced.  I could have done without the heavy-handed lusting of Killian after Pepper Potts in one of the early scenes (couldn't just once we not have the villain and the hero falling for the same girl?), but the women in the film are actually relatively interesting, as opposed to some of the other Marvel movies.  A lot can be said about how well-cast Downey is as Tony Stark, but Paltrow is pitch-perfect as his gutsy, level-headed girlfriend/assistant/CEO.  Paltrow's gift has always been more in comedy than in drama (where she tends to get a bit melodramatic), and she effervesces in the film without ever lulling into a Mary Jane Watson teen-girl fantasizing.  Hall was also strong in her role as Maya, though even those who weren't familiar with her character from the comic books could smell that she was the "good-girl-masquerading-as-bad" a mile away.

The film's final scenes got too long (how many times can Stark or Killian come back from the dead?), and occasionally Stark's lack of humility wears thin (the trite scenes with the boy in the small Tennessee town were a bit saccharine for me), but overall this was Summer blockbuster fun without veering into too effects-driven or plot-deprived.  However, I'd love to know what you thought?  Do you like the direction Marvel is taking this franchise?  Do you also wish that they'd throw in a female-lead action adventure, rather than just giving the solos to the boys?  And should Iron Man remain a trilogy or should a fourth film be greenlit as soon as possible?

Ranting On...the Political Implication of Scandals

As you may have noticed, I've been hanging back a bit on the three scandals that are plaguing the President and Washington at the moment, mostly because I wanted to gain a little bit of perspective on them.  The GOP has so many different talking points out there, the president, slow on the response, didn't get his rebuttal in, and quite frankly I wanted to wait and see what we did and didn't know.

From the looks of things, we've learned a great deal in the past week, and while I'm going to hold-off a bit on what we don't know yet (as it isn't prudent to discuss things we don't know, despite the media's insistence that every Republican shouting "impeachment" is worth listening to), I think it's important for us to take a real look at the political impact of these scandals, and how dangerously the media is reacting to them.

Let's start with the actual scandals themselves: the attacks in Benghazi, the IRS investigations into the Tea Party-associated political groups, and the Justice Department's secret seizure of the Associated Press's phone records.  Of the three, from a political standpoint, the IRS scandal is definitely the most damning politically.  The reason for this is both that it's the easiest to understand (the nuances of Benghazi, coupled with the reasons behind the seizure of the AP's phone records), and that it has the most meat left to it.

Benghazi would seemingly be the most logical place for the Republicans to start, but in the past year, they've largely thrown this scandal to the red-meat wolves within their party, and it's nearly impossible for them to bring up Benghazi without it appearing overly partisan.  For starters, with the release of the emails, we've learned that while there were arguments between the State Department and the CIA over talking points, this was done at a much lower level than the President or Secretary Clinton.  Some may say "guilt by association" or "the buck stops here" works politically in this regard, but that's not really going to play since they've already used a lot of their traction with the scandal to keep Susan Rice out of running Foggy Bottom, despite the fact that, as the emails suggest, Rice was largely an innocent victim in the scandal.

Secondly, the scandal has become so partisan that it's difficult to see the Republicans gaining a significant amount of leverage out of it.  The reason it didn't play very long in the campaign season last year was that the Republicans jumped to too many conclusions-assuming a political coverup, and wanting desperately to throw it in a kitchen sink mode of an election that was slipping away from them.  The result was that they looked too political in the death of four Americans, and it likely cost them rather than have Obama lose credibility with voters and Americans.  Also, as Jon Stewart pointed out this week, when your mouthpieces about a scandal are Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, who started a ten-year war based on bad intel, you lose most of your ability to have shocked indignation.

The IRS scandal and the AP scandals both make the Obama administration look partisan and contribute to a "government-overreach" narrative, and so they are instantly more damaging to the President and those around him.  The Democrats are going to have to take a few bad news cycles out of this, but if you take an objective look at it, the Democrats seem to be in a far more controlled state than the Republicans.  Provided that no one outside of the IRS (the President, Geithner, or a top advisor) is implicated in the scandal, the Democrats plan of having members of Congress sharply go after the IRS specifically and Obama demanding the resignation of Steven Miller is likely the best steps that they can take to quell the majority of Americans (though Sarah Hall Ingram likely needs to go too).

The rest of the Democrats strategy is going to be to wait for the facts, and hope that the Republicans overplay their hand, which is looking more and more likely by the day.  Though it isn't of the severe nature that the Lewinsky scandal had on the country (the nation has not been following the scandals in the same fashion they did when Monica became one of the most famous people on earth in the matter of a week), the Republicans have not had a unified message on the scandal, and are starting to run into a "boy who cried wolf" situation.  You have people like Sen. Rand Paul proclaiming that Hillary Clinton shouldn't be president as a result of the Benghazi attacks, a comment that wreaks of political opportunism from a man who has been running for President since before he won his Senate seat.  You have Sen. Jim Inhofe and Gov. Mike Huckabee proclaiming impeachment is imminent.  You have multiple people comparing him with Nixon, despite many of the party's chief leaders (amongst them Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld) had a significant role in the Nixon White House (hey if the GOP is playing the guilt by association card, it's fair game).  While they may be on the fringe within their respective caucuses, titles like senator and governor imply credibility and the "party leader" label, and this is seen as overreaching.

Part of this is that the American people don't want an impeachment.  They just elected President Obama, and to impeach over something that we have yet to prove that he lied about or initiated (for the IRS scandal) is overreaching, and would be read by the casual observer as a rebuke more of their choice of Obama over Romney last November than a thoughtful and reluctant use of congressional power.  Reince Preibus even said this this past week, saying that evidence was needed before discussing impeachment.  The fact that this had to come up, though, makes it seem as if the impeachment-jumping damage has already been done.

There is also the serious risk of hyperbole, made all the worse by this being a long-line of scandals that are of questionable outrage that have come up in the past five years.  Everything from the Fast and Furious to birth certificate outrage has been lobbed at Obama over the past five years, and so unless there is something truly damning that comes out of these investigations, it's difficult seeing this escaping partisan lines.  Peggy Noonan's article yesterday proved how desperate the GOP is to make this an impeachable, destroy-the-Democrats sort of defense, comparing the IRS scandal to Watergate, and saying it is the worst Washington scandal since then.  Never mind the U.S. Attorney firings.  Or the lack of WMD's in Iraq.  Or the Lewinsky scandal.  Or Iran-Contra, which managed to implicate a Secretary of Defense and National Security Advisor before pardons were rushed out.  This, a scandal that the IRS took longer on forms for the Tea Party (all of which were eventually approved), and where the highest-ranking official to be removed from office (due to resignation, not criminal charges) is someone no one outside of DC city limits had ever heard of is somehow bigger than all of those scandals.

The fact is that the Republicans were calling Benghazi Watergate before suddenly the IRS was Watergate.  This jumping to conclusions before getting any actual facts has hurt them dramatically in the past, and will continue to do so again.  Your average American voter doesn't want a political party that instantly cries "impeachment!" the second a scandal, no matter the level or the involvement of the upper echelons of the administration, is brought up, and though it shouldn't be a part of this (as, theoretically, politicians should do their jobs without trying to profiteer off of them for electoral advantage), this isn't the cut-and-dry situation for the Republicans that the media has been willing to paint it.  Yes, today you'd rather be in John Boehner/Mitch McConnell's corner, but let's not forget what the Republicans did in 1998, when they impeached a president the country didn't want to impeach, and as a result nearly lost the House.  People like Rep. Jon Fox and Rep. Rick White lost almost certainly as a result of the Clinton impeachment hearings, and the Democrats bucked historical trends to gain seats in the House, despite the six-year-itch.  And if you want to find a way to motivate voters who only vote in presidential elections (primarily younger and minority voters), try taking out the President they overwhelmingly elected twice.

This isn't to say that the President isn't at some risk politically, but not from being removed from office, or even at this juncture, in losing an election.  Were it May of 2014, I'd say we could be in for a rough ride, but it's eighteen months until the next elections-ten lifetimes in politics.

Instead, it's the president's agenda that is in trouble.  Unless the Democrats are able to pull off the miracle and get Nancy Pelosi elected Speaker in 2015, Obama's lame duck clock is ticking.  Granted, I don't think he's "done" as some have proclaimed him (part of me wants to metaphorically punch the media for saying this, as they're contributing more to the laziness of Congress with these sorts of stories than they are commentating on them), but there is a limited amount of time that you have to enact major legislation on immigration, the budget, health care, the environment, and gun control over the next year, and there are millions of Americans who voted for the President and are counting on him to get this legislation through with all he's got.

And this is perhaps the greatest and most devestating aspect of the President's career, and the one that I am most upset by every time I hear bellyaching about him, as it's the one I most side against him on; the President can counter that he doesn't have a Congress that will work with him, but a strong part of that is on him.  The President, particularly when it started becoming apparent in 2008 and 2012 that he was cruising to a win, should have used more of his political muscle and stunning GOTV efforts to help Democrats further in 2008, 2010, and 2012.  The fact that he hogged DNC funds in 2012, that he has been practically invisible on the campaign trails over the past five years when he wasn't stumping for himself (compare that to a President Bush in 2002 and 2004, who knew that he needed a Congress to help him win), and you have part of what is causing these issues in Washington right now.  For example, there is no reason Obama couldn't have spared some more time for Shelley Berkley in Nevada in 2012 (he outran her by nearly eight points-clearly some more involvement from his ground team there would have made the difference).  Ted Strickland and Alex Sink both lost by two-points or less in states that Obama delivered both times.  We lost unforgivably close races for the Senate in Pennsylvania and Illinois (Illinois!) in 2010 that he should have had his team working on the ground for every day in liberal bastions driving up the votes.  These Senate and governor's seats cost us severely heading into Obama's second term (imagine how much more effective the Democrats would be if they had controlled redistricting in Florida and Ohio, or what a 58-42 Senate would be able to do for the Democratic agenda right now).  He still has the chance to do this right, as 2014 is a big year for Democrats with opportunities (particularly in governor's races) in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Florida, all states that the President won twice, but it would have been far, far better had he realized earlier on in his career that a Democratic Senate, House, and friendly Democratic territory across the country was just as important to everyone who voted for him as him winning the White House.  One of the biggest issues the Democrats have always faced is that they are not as good in a midterm at driving up their base as the Republicans are, and it's going to take a Democratic president who knows the vital nature of truly getting out into retail campaigning for Democratic candidates (again, similar to GW Bush in 2002 and 2004) to start to break down that thought process.

So, that's where I'm sitting right now on these scandals.  Obviously, there will be investigations and more gleeful dancing over at FOX News before all of this is done, but right now I think the Democrats best course-of-action is to wait-and-see.  Unless the scandals reach higher levels of government, this has yet to be the sort-of-scandal that is anything more than media-filler and red-meat for driving the GOP base (and making the President look bad), but we shall see what comes of them over the upcoming weeks.

Frankenstein (1931)

Film: Frankenstein (1931)
Stars: Colin Clive, Mae Clarke, John Boles, Boris Karloff, Edward van Sloan
Director: James Whale
Oscar History: No nominations, but it was one of the American Film Institute's Top 100 Movies, so general film history has been pretty kind
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

We all have huge gaps in our respective film-watching careers.  For some of us, it's that one nagging classic that you somehow haven't gotten around to for some reason that we can't 100% explain.  For others, it's a particular subset of films (people who have never seen a John Ford western, for example).  And on occasion, it's both.

This was the case for myself with Frankenstein, a legendary film that also happens to be a part of film history that I have largely missed-this is the first of the classic Universal Monster films that I've seen.  During the 1920's and 1930's, Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, and the Lon Chaney's (Sr. and Jr.) created some of the most indelible images in horror movie history.  The Hunchback of Notre Dame, the Phantom of the Opera, the Wolf-Man, Dracula, the Mummy, and the Invisible Man (Claude Rains, but let's not quibble) are a pretty stupendous lineup of great horror film characters, and over eighty years later we're still borrowing heavily from these films.

While I've officially added all of these films to my Netflix queue (I love that there exists a Netflix where you can add any movie from any year to your upcoming viewing list), it's a little odd to see Frankenstein for the first time.  Like other classic movies that you've never seen but are clearly familiar with, every scene is exactly how you'd expect it to be, and there are parts of it that, I have to say it, "come alive" as you're watching.

The entire sequence with the monster becoming part of life is thrilling-Colin Clive's electric call of "it's alive, it's alive" has the same impact whether you're seeing it for the first time or the thirtieth.  It just sparkles with that sort of movie magic that you can't duplicate or deplete, no matter how many times you see it or that it is mimicked.  This is the case with most every moment with the lumbering, terrifying Karloff.  Karloff's performance is excellent, with him resisting persistent talking, and still using his lumbering frame and heavy makeup to impose all of our fears onto the creature.  The movie manages to best use him when you can see his humanity, like the scene with the little girl, where he accidentally kills her and sets the city off on a terrible rampage.

The film is shorter than you'd expect from a classic (I'm always floored when a movie that is so revered clocks in at little over an hour), and despite the length, still has some dull moments.  Mae Clarke, for example, is a bit too damsel in distress for my taking, and any moment of the film that doesn't focus on the creature is very staged.  But the movie jolts and crackles when Karloff is guiding it (which is a good chunk of the film), and has made me excited to investigate the rest of the Universal catalog.

What about you-what films have you been putting off that you should have tackled years ago?  Do you have a favorite of the Universal monsters?  Share in the comments!