starmanmatt Reviews

Naked and Afraid XL (2015– )

Educational Content Sacrificed for Edited Trash TV

[1/10 · 20 December 2015]

I loved the early seasons of the original Naked and Afraid because they taught honest survival skills. That slowly got scarified in favor of more forced drama as the show went on before culminating in Naked and Afraid XL, where they allowed clearly unqualified contenders to return and set about trying to push their buttons.

Case in point: Shane, the so-called "Alpha Male". In his first challenge, he broke his foot and spent most of the challenge being nursed by his partner (a wilderness survival skills teacher) as he whined about how women have no business trying to make it in the wild that everyone under 30 is useless.

So who do they pair him with? A twenty-something vegetarian EMT and a tough-as-nails Texas rancher who was the first person to survive the original 21 day challenge solo.

The two of them disprove his theories about how everything is supposed to work just by existing and he starts having a nervous breakdown almost immediately, because these two women don't consider his whining about being abandoned as a child and bragging about being told it was a miracle he wasn't a serial killer by his shrink to be a turn-on.

The sick thing is that his fans started sending rape and death threats to these two women IRL as the show was going on, after Shane abandoned them, went off on his own, proved incapable of constructing his own shelter and so incompetent that he couldn't make a fire. The women did just fine without him and no F***s were given when he came back, with no apology, and said he had decided they should work together.

The same thing happens with the high-strung Honora - the one returning survivalist who didn't succeed on the original Naked and Afraid. She gets paired with two arrogant men used to doing things their own way, who know full well that Honora washed out on her first challenge and treat her every suggestion with derision.

It's around the fifth episode that the show's editing becomes clear, as a group of two men "just happen" to come by at that moment and welcome Shane into their group. And all seems well and good... until the bromance is ruined as another group of five contenders show up, half-starved, just after they made their first successful kill.

Now, ignoring that four of the people in these two groups had appeared together in previous challenges (Eva/Jeff and Laura/EJ) and that there is no reaction to these former partners seeing each other... what are the odds that this group of five people showed up at that moment? About the same as EJ and Jeff showing up to save Shane from the mean girls, I reckon.

And that's ignoring how neatly butchered all the eels that Jeff "caught" seem to be and how Jeff is suddenly some kind of master hunter, despite being utterly incompetent in his first challenge, where most of the food was caught by his partner Eva. Of course devout Mormon Jeff took credit for her success, crediting his praying while trash-talking feminists.

There's a lot of things that don't add up and the show was clearly edited to paint certain people as heroes and villains, with Shane being painted as heroic and self-sacrificing as he climbs a tree to gather fruit for his starving teammates while Honor is painted as an idiot for trying the same thing. (For the record, truly selfless people do not talk to a camera about how God is blessing them for being selfless.)

What's really vexing is how the final Team of Six get written off as lazy and selfish when they're the ones who practiced smart, real survival techniques while everyone else was wandering around the woods failing to hunt or showboating for the camera. I will give credit to EJ, however, for noting on his social media that there was a lot more sharing between the two camps than the show depicted and indeed he singled out Alana and Danielle for sharing their fruit rations with him and Jeff in exchange for the eel - something that was cut from the show entirely because it would have destroyed any attempt to make the selfish veggie girls look evil.

N00b Chronicles (2013– )

Not Your Average "Let's Play".

[10/10 · 7 October 2013]

What separates The N00b Chronicles from other Let's Play videos is its' focus on the player rather than the game. Jessica is an inexperienced but enthusiastic console gamer, who is still finding her way around. There's something amusing about watching her work her way through the introduction to a classic game - in this case, the original Bioshock - and commenting upon how unclear the objectives are while trying to figure out which items can be picked-up and manipulated, as we all do when we're playing a new game for the first time.

The late Roger Ebert once said that his greatest wish would be to watch his favorite movie of all time like he had never seen it before. I think that same desire lies at the heart of what makes most geeks so open about sharing our favorites with other people and what makes The N00b Chronicles so enjoyable. We may not be able to recreate that magic moment when something first captured our heart and imagination but we can remember the sensation as we see another going through the same experience for the first time. Through Jessica's eyes, everything old is new again and that alone differentiates this from the common clay of Let's Play videos.

Barbarian (2003 Video)

I don't know what's worse...

[9 August 2004]

... the fact that this movie was a remake of the original "so bad it's good" Deathstalker movie and manages to be even worse... or the fact that about 1/3rd of the movie seems to be stock footage the original Deathstalker.

The sharp-eyed Corman enthusiast can probably name all the other movies which got plundered to make this monster (I spotted a scene of Margaret Markov from "The Arena" at one point) As for the original elements, all that this movie has is some badly dubbed Eastern-European actors and an Ewok-like creature whose existence might be justified if this were a children's picture. As every woman in the movie, except for the witch, appears topless at least once, this is unlikely.

The movie does best the original Deathstalker in at least one respect: it had an actual ending. Granted, it is an ending where the hero makes out with the princess in front of her father and the amazon warrior he bedded, who did everything she could to get him THAT far... but it is an ending.

Still, that and a tribute to Barbarian Queen star Lana Clarkson in the extras on the DVD menu prove that the makers of this film had their hearts in the right place... even if their heads are shoved someplace painful.

Jersey Girl (2004)

Different from Smith's early works, but not bad at all.

[9/10 · 28 March 2004]

Out of all the professional reviews I read for Kevin Smith's new film `Jersey Girl', which opened this past weekend, I saw very few which said anything at all about the movie and how it made the reviewer feel. This includes, I mention lest we start making any broad generalizations about my view of the small press and big media, both the mainstream and independent operations.

There was quite a lot about why Ben Affleck is the worst actor in recent memory. A fair spattering about how Jennifer Lopez is in the film briefly and how the two are married in the movie and how funny that is now that they are broken up. There was quite an obscene amount of talk about how Kevin Smith is, alternatively, a total sell-out, a complete hack incapable of making a mainstream movie and a man who has sold out his fanbase in favor of respectability.

While this kind of thing may appeal to the huddled masses of Indie film freaks who quoted `aintitcoolnews.com' like bible verse before it became mainstream and accepted by the huddle masses who get their big movie news from `People Magazine' and `Entertainment Weekly', it fails to tell us anything about the flick itself, the performances of the actors besides the Allmighty Affleck and the feelings it inspired.

I laughed the least at this movie compared to any of Smith's other works. This is not because it is not funny, but because it is a different kind of funny; the funny jokes that makes you smile and rejoice in your life rather than the `I can't believe they just did that' shock jokes that fill so many other Smith films.

While the film has much quieter laughs, the laughs that are there are priceless such as the moment in which young Gertie tries to imitate her dad, gesture for gesture, as she gives him the same dressing down for `showing his parts' to a girl he isn't married to that he gave her. While the laughs were not as frequent as other works, they were much longer lasting.

In contrast, I did become full blown misty-eyed and cried like a baby at three separate moments throughout the film. And whoever arranged the music for this movie deserves an award for their work. Music fills this movie, highlighting practically every scene. And while in a lesser film this might invoke the feeling of a giant music video, it never quite reaches that point here. It seems perfectly natural and completely appropriate that Fleetwood Mac's `Landslide' plays in the background as Ollie visits his wife's grave as he ponders a fight with his daughter.

Ben Affleck, as usual, seems to give a much better performance here than he does in the big Hollywood productions that he does when he isn't working with Smith. Take my opinion with a grain of salt, as I am one of the few people in comic fandom who thought Ben was a competent Matt Murdock, but I think this is easily one of Ben's best performances ever and his best one under Smith's direction. And the supporting cast match him note for note.

George Carlin is an amazing supporting player, proving the old adage that most comedians make fine actors in any genre. While there is always a danger that comedians can take their lines and make everything a wisecrack, Carlin builds a really deep character in `Pop', who is equally able to dote on his granddaughter and give his son a dressing down for his selfish attitude. Rest assured though comedy fans, that Carlin does get to crack wise as well but overall proves himself as worthy of an Oscar nomination as other comedians gone dramatic like Robin Williams and Bill Murray.

Liv Tyler also is given a chance to shine like never before. I've been a big fan of Liv since `Stealing Beauty' and it was nice to see her given something more substantial than standing around and looking tormented, yet inhumanly beautiful as in `The Lord of the Rings'. Her `Mya' invokes the same spirit as other Smith heroines like Alyssa Jones and Gwen Turner, not just for her disarming openness but also in her ability to see through the B.S. that the hero feeds himself and the world.

Raquel Castro is a wonder and just when I think that Smith has gone too far in how many big words he can put into the mouth of a seven year old girl, she does something so genuine that I can believe that she writes the very intelligent speech about her family that opens the movie.

And to my surprise, Jennifer Lopez does a good job in her brief time on the screen. I will go so far as to say that this is perhaps the most genuine acting I have ever seen from her.

I fear this message may be all but lost in the all the Sturm und Drang of the media machine that has surrounded this movie and will likely continue so long as it is in theaters. But those of us who can take joy in the idea of `God, That's Good' from `Sweeny Todd' being performed before the audience of a private Catholic school will find something much more valuable and enjoyable here than gossip and trash-talk.