An Anonymous Nerd Speaks

I have no idea if the allegations against Marilyn Manson are true. I won't say I don't care. The truth is that I kinda do care for a lot of reasons. And it wouldn't surprise me one bit if they were true. But I will say this: The main problem isn't him, it's us. (My headline's a little misleading -- obviously folks who behave like this are a problem but the bigger problem is us.) Think back to other music stars. Jimmy Page. Jerry Lee Lewis. Ted Nugent. Wolfgang Mozart. Niccolo Paganini. Nikki Sixx. All of them have been accused of something bad, and often things that are violent, abusive, manipulative, illegal or questionable at best, immoral by any standard, and so forth. A lot of the times they have not hidden it. This kind of behavior is not just excused when it comes from talented people, it's sought after and encouraged. We want it. We want out talented people to be like this, so when we encounter talented people we look for it and encourage it. The pr...

The basics of the Cinderalla story are pretty well known. The story nearly always is set in some fantastical version of either very early modern or (more typically) pre-modern times; the middle ages, the renaissance, something like that. A young girl (usually named Ella, Cinderella, or some variant) from the lower gentry loses her loving mother at a young age. Her father remarries, to a widow above his own social station. Cinderella's new stepmother brings into the household just about every negative aspect of upper class life – and an active, obvious scorn for her new stepdaughter. Cinderella's father dies, and her stepmother proceeds to turn her into a degraded servant, while pampering and spoiling her own daughters, who prove to share their mother's vile temperament. With the help of a fairy godmother, a good deal of faith and magic, and (sometimes) her own ingenuity, Cinderella, though in a degraded state, is able to attend a royal ball and attract the attention...

  Seventh Son had a lot going for it. It had an appealing cast. It had fantasy weapons that actually would work in a real medieval battlefield. (Well, most of them anyway.) If its swords clanged just from being moved, as is the case in too much fantasy even great fantasy like The Lord of the Rings , I missed it. (Seriously, swords should not make a clanging sound just from being moved around any more than guns should make the sound of a pump shotgun being cocked just by being drawn.) It had some good fight scenes. It had cool monsters. It had a surprisingly believable romance. It had the fact that I was ready to see a well made epic, medieval fantasy that wasn't based on JRR Tolkien, and that actually WAS a traditional fantasy, and not another Game of Thrones -esque effort to make historical fiction, plus magic, except that the magic makes things worse for people instead of better. And, finally, it had Jeff Bridges. However, Seventh Son also had a lot against it. It ...

Sometimes it helps to summarize a movie to its essentials, in order to help you conceptualize what it's about. The Lord of the Rings , for example: “A struggle to overcome a dark lord, with a storyline that unfolds on multiple fronts, as the dark lord is resisted in various ways.” The Princess Bride is about: “one man searching to reunite with his lost love, and one man searching for revenge.” Other than “ Strange Magic is a story about finding and avoiding love,” which doesn't even begin to cover the movie, I can't think of a pithy way to summarize it. Now sometimes it's bad when you can't reduce a movie that way, because it can show a lack of focus. Sometimes that's good that you can't reduce a movie that way, because it shows richness and complexity. So what about Strange Magic ? What's it mean here? All I can tell you, ultimately, is that Strange Magic worked, and I can't imagine it working as well if it were any easier, or any more di...