Andrew J. Roback | PhD Candidate – IIT

Driving in Chicago

I don’t usually clog up my blog with personal anecdotes (I find them tedious to write about), but I have been reading the really excellent blog written by Dmitry Samarov (Hack: Stories from a Chicago cab) and it inspired me to share some recent stories of mine about driving in this city.

I used to bike and take public transit for the most part, but I hurt my right knee bicycling a few years ago and I have never really been able to recover (my cheap-ass student health insurance does not pay to fix things like this). As such, ever since my knee injury a few years ago I have been mostly a driver, sometimes taking public transit. To get to work, I have to take the green line on the CTA, and, due to my late hours, there are a lot of interesting characters (some drunk, some violent) on the trains when I go home. As such, I have pretty much settled into a much loathed routine of driving to work.

This summer, Nicole and I are both teaching six-week summer session courses. She teaches on the far north side, and I teach on the south side. We settled on trying to car pool on days when we teach, even though her class is later than mine so there is a lot of time spent waiting around. The sad fact is that with our Ultralow Emission Vehicle (which is consequently very fuel efficient at around 32 mpg city) it is cheaper to drive than to take any other travel option. Consider the following:

Nicole Drives and pays to park, I take the CTA	$7 + $5.00 = $12.00
Nicole and I both take public transit	$5.00 x 2 = $10.00
I drive Nicole to work, drive to my office, pick her up later and drive home	(~15 mi. [max] / 32 mpg) x $4.59 (avg. gas price/gal) = $2.15

Anyway, now that I’ve justified my laziness and ruining the planet, here are my stories:

***

I almost hit a pedestrian yesterday. I was driving up Loomis from the south side on my way home and I was passing through Pilsen. As I was going north through 22nd street, I saw a girl with a huge fro dart behind a car stopped in the opposite lane of traffic that was waiting for a pedestrian to clear the crosswalk before executing a right-hand turn. Luckily I had my full attention on the intersection (there is a school nearby and there are usually a lot of kids crossing the street) and I caught her out of the corner of my eye as I was in the intersection. I was probably doing about 30 mph (the speed limit) which, given the length of the intersection, gave me about 2-3 second to react. I thought she couldn’t possibly decide to run in front of my vehicle, but she did, and I jammed the breaks, screeching to a halt and narrowly missing her. Judging from her pace she was either late or trying to make a bus. She didn’t even look at my car or seem to notice how close I came to hitting her.

***

I almost ran over someone’s dog today. I was up very late last night and as I was driving home, I missed my alley so I had to circle back around onto a street that is midway between two arterials. Chicago has major arterial streets (with two lanes in each direction) spaced roughly every eight blocks (or about one mile). In between those arterial streets are halfway streets, which are wider and could thus still accommodate a street car (or trolley as some might call it: Chicago once had the largest network in the world).

The street was torn up. I had seen a large number of vehicles yesterday when coming home from work (the street was closed) but I thought it was someone shooting a movie, which seems ridiculous given where I live (East Village). Judging by the strip of pavement ripped up down the middle of the street and filled with quickset, it must have been a water or sewer issue.

I weaved in an out of the massive potholes and construction equipment and pulled in the H-shaped alley from the side street just south of where I missed the first entrance. As I turned the corner of the H, I saw someone’s dog almost run directly into my car. A long-haired man with no shirt on came out and shouted, “I got him, I got him!!” I couldn’t tell if he was mad at me, but he couldn’t have had cause as I was probably going less than 5 mph (the alley hasn’t been paved since I moved in almost 5 years ago, and the hard winters have disintegrated it). After I passed I noticed in the rear-view mirror that he released the collar on his dog and let him run down to the end of the alley where cars regularly gun it.

***

I saw someone being a dick to a bicyclist today. Driving up Sheridan Road towards the far north side I was stopped at a traffic signal in the left-hand lane. The road is two lanes in either direction and it’s an urban feeder that carries traffic flow from Lake Shore Drive, Marine Drive, and Broadway up to Uptown and Edgewater after Lake Shore Drive ends.

In the nearest lane opposite me I saw a bicyclist with his left arm outstretched, properly signaling a left hand turn. This area of Chicago is home to the petite bourgeoisie: a lot of people too old or too poor to live in the Gold Coast or Streeterville. The numerous condominium buildings on the east side of the street have circular driveways (the bicyclist was trying to turn down a street that runs to the lakeshore parks).

When the wealthy retirees want to turn in from the southbound side without any left-turn lane, they back up traffic on Sheridan for miles. The bicyclist happened to be blocking a motorist who wanted to go through the intersection, and in less than half a second after the light turned green (the cyclist had appropriately waited for his traffic signal) the lady in her black Mercedes laid on the horn with a look of utter contempt, probably angry she couldn’t make headway two blocks further south where she would jam up traffic for a mile trying to turn into her luxury condominium circle drive. To his credit, the cyclist was patient and stoically posed with his left arm outstretched.

***

The last vignette seems a bit vitriolic rereading it, but if I haven’t seen the worst driving, I’ve come close.

I worked for two summers as a manager at a state-funded traffic study organization, collecting traffic data in suburban Cook and the collar counties. I alternated between taking the CTA to my loop office and driving 4-6 hours a day visiting field sites, collecting data, and checking up on interns in the field to make sure they weren’t drinking on the job or otherwise endangering their lives or wasting company time.

In that occupation I saw a lot of silly behavior and one death on the road. However, in the past few years driving to and from work in Chicago I have never seen such anger in other drivers to the point where one wonders about the sanity of their fellow motorists. Take this bit of old-man sounding advice from me Chicago motorists:

I’ve seen a lot of accidents and even been in a couple, and I can assure you no one ever thinks that he or she is going to be the cause of a life-ending maneuver on the road. It sadly happens every day. Recognize that you are operating a lethal weapon when you drive, and remain vigilant. Most accidents happen because of the complaisance that we are all guilty of (including me).

Watch for pedestrians and respect their right of way in the crosswalk, no matter what the dick behind you starts honking about. Stay off your mobile phone, especially when making a turn (I almost bought the farm down by Union park four years ago when a motorist executing a left turn nearly hit me while talking on his phone).

Remember that bicyclists have the same right to the road as you, and give them a break as you are driving a half-ton or better machine and a collision with them will most likely be fatal.

No one lives to get out on the road and drive. Everyone just wants to make it home (even people who drive for a living). Pay attention, remain calm, and give the non-drivers a break.

Tonoharu: Part One (2008)

cover By Lars Martinson, Pliant Press, 116 pages

In his seminal work, Comics and Sequential Art, Will Eisner describes the relationship between illustrator and writer as the fundamental tension in comics. The writer pushes for a more developed story line, meaning more panels and more room for text boxes and speech bubbles. The artist pushes for high quality, beautiful art, meaning more splash pages (full page panels) and more room for artwork. An emphasis on writing leads to a plot driven story, while an emphasis on art leads to an image driven story: the former creates narrative, the latter creates atmosphere.

In the case of comics where the artist and writer are the same person, it’s not unusual to encounter a work with beautiful detail and a well developed story. The only problem is such a work might take a decade to complete.

With this in mind, Tonoharu: Part One by Lars Martinson did not surprise me with it’s brevity (it’s a lean 116 pages, mostly four panel pages) and spaced out volumes (four years later, only two are finished). Priced above your standard short-form, serial novel entry, it’s tempting to criticize the author for stiffing the reader out of story content.

In what is promised as a four-part series, part one introduces us to the life of an Assistant English Teacher in rural Japan: a mostly brainless and thankless position where the only real challenge is avoiding the crippling isolation of being the sole Anglophone in a foreign country with no companionship or understanding of the culture. This is a position on which Martinson can speak authoritatively, having lived the experiences of his protagonists (however, it should be noted he claims on his blog “This is the most fictional comic I’ve written in years”).

The narrative is divided into three parts (including a prologue that introduces us to a narrator–the successor of the protagonist in parts one and two of the first volume–who abruptly vanishes). There are long conversations that span pages and pages, pausing only to depict awkward silences that follow awkward conversations. While a few scenes drag on punishingly (especially an encounter between protagonist Dan and a mysterious group of European ex-pats living in a Buddhist monastery), I suppose I can give this volume the benefit of the doubt as “part one” of any series is saddled with the double burden of providing an entertaining story while finding a way to develop characters for subsequent entries.

The artwork is beautiful and full of intricate cross hatching. It reminds me of a woodcut (an art form that the Japanese mastered), and at times threatens to make the frames too busy; the relief comes from cartoony people who seem too squat for their environment. The white space in their faces and the molded, dome-like manga hair (which reminded me of my Mii as I read) provide the counterpoint to their painstakingly hatched clothing. This contrast of figure and ground produces, for me, an image of likable characters in a harsh environment, something which perhaps (for westerners) builds some pathos for the hapless Dan, whose sluggish disposition and lack of effort to grasp the Japanese language and culture fuel his sense of alienation. The mix of slacker and “fish out of water” tropes are combined brilliantly at times by Martinson, who creates a universe of uncomfortable situations for his character to traverse (one which teachers will be familiar with is depicted above).

Does art triumph over story? It seems premature to judge, and I feel compelled to read the next volume before I pass judgement in that respect. After a rereading, I find that the atmosphere Martinson creates in this first part lingers and that I am looking forward to exploring this (limited) universe further.

AV Club: B-
Amazon: 4/5 Stars

Me: B+

The Cabin in the Woods (2012)

poster Dir. Drew Goddard, 95 min., In theaters

Before seeing this film, I suggest you watch the trailer, then prepare to seriously adjust your expectations for what you are about to see.

In my mind, a serious problem with most trailers is that they give away far too much. When I was waiting to see this film, I saw the trailer for the upcoming Sacha Baron Cohen film, The Dictator, where I witnessed what will likely turn out to be fully 75% of the funny moments in the film.

You will not have that problem with The Cabin in the Woods.

From the trailer, you can tell that five college students will end up at a cabin in the woods that is mysteriously controlled by suits in some kind of bunker, but that’s all you get. What you will actually watch is a meta-commentary on the horror genre, a deconstruction of the archetypal characters of said genre, and what can only be described as a comedy.

Because much of the delight in this film is in not knowing anything going in, I can’t really discuss the plot other than what I said above. The characters heading to the woods include a jock, a ditsy blonde, a stoner, and the matched pair of an a nerd (with glasses) and “virgin.” The reasons why there is one person of each type in this friendship clique are flimsy (much like every horror film), but their inclusion becomes readily apparent by the end of the film.

Similar to Cabin Fever (2002), this film smartly invokes cannonical entries in the horror genre, and it manages to avoid the problem of having to finesse in awkward meta-discussion (see the Scream tetralogy). This film is more of an exercise in analysis, culminating in an orgiastic merger of every type of horror film into one; as Ebert puts it in his review, “This is like a final exam for fanboys.”

It’s hard to believe you could stumble into such a great find, but it happened. If you are a lover of horror films, you will be able to appreciate the multitudinous references (as Nicole did when we were watching). Can this film be considered a success outside of a meta-commentary on the genre? Yes, but not as a horror film. While it approaches horror tangentially at points, the scares and gross outs dwindle as the plot progresses and there is no real sense of terror: they do not succeed in making the subject of the film strange or disturbing through atmosphere or exposition.

It’s not hard to imagine why this film sat on the shelf for two years before release. It doesn’t fit neatly into either the horror or comedy genre, but films that successfully combine the two are often instant classics. I’m not sure if this film will enter the pantheon of cult horror, but after leaving the theater I immediately wanted to watch it again.

Metacritic: 72
RT: 93%
IMDB: 7.7

Me: A

The Gate (1986)

As I had some time recently, I thought I would start up my blog again briefly. I probably won’t have much time to post on pop-culture ephemera until this summer, but since my series about my father’s health and the healthcare system is on hold for the time being, I figured I would pick up where I left off, which would be (of course) with some trashy films.

The Gate film poster Dir. Tibor Takács, 85 min., Netflix Instant

This is a spring break film if ever there was one: short, badly awesome, and done. The main gist is that a boy, Glen (Stephen Dorff), accidentally digs a hole to hell in his backyard which releases a whole variety of demons to torment himself, his junior-metalhead friend Terry (Louis Tripp), and his teenage sister / babysitter Al (Christa Denton).

If you grew up in the 1980’s there’s a lot of nostalgic moments, including model solid fuel rockets, some eighties Celtic demon metal (with spoken word incantations and a spell book LP insert), and plenty of bad clothes.

As a side note, I was too young for most of these trends; however, one time I did have a mullet. My brothers took me to Super Cuts in Crystal Lake after we finished work. I was around six or seven, and they told me it looked cool (which it totally did). I think my Father almost punched a hole in the wall when he found out (he served in the Army, and hair that brushed against the collar was unacceptable in our household). The people in the film are far more glamorous, in a Family Ties way where the fashions are just devious enough to suggest popular youth culture, but only tangentially approaching punk rock.

The overall feel of the film with its claymation demons and weak visual effects suggests that it’s not trying very hard, but the film definitely takes a couple of turns toward serious horror. The cold open with young Glen walking through a deserted house in a dream sequence certainly suggests that there will be some scariness, and in a later scene Takács prefigures del Toro’s monster from Pan’s Labarynth with the palm-of-the-hand eyeball, but the film quickly turns into a campfest/gross out that is equal parts kid flick and teen comedy. I got a strong vibe of Adventures in Babysitting (1987) crossed with your standard Disney movie of the week.

As you might guess, those rocket models play a crucial role in both the reconciliation of Glen with his sister AND the slaying of the mega-demon who comes to steal the souls of teenage girls and nerdy hair metal children alike. If you miss the 1980’s so much that you want to barricade yourself in a darkened room and replay endless films that enshrine your lost era, this film is a worthy addition; however, you might see more comically oversized spectacles on a walk through Bucktown than in this film, so maybe you are one 10-year fashion cycle away from pining for this type of nostalgia.

As for Tibor Takács, he went on to direct such gems as episodes of The Red Shoe Diaries and, quizzically after that last credit, Sabrina the Teenage Witch. I think I also saw a film starring Rutger Hower somewhere in there.

Metacritic: N/A
RT: 33%
IMDB: 5.4

Me: C-

Blog hiatus – My Father’s Health

As you probably noticed I have not been writing, and I’ve determined that my blog is on de facto hiatus.

My father took seriously ill on a visit to Chicago, so I have been helping my family deal with the many complicated and time-consuming tasks associated with prolonged illness and recovery.

When I come back, I plan to tell my story of the great achievements of modern medicine as well as it’s faults and failures, the essential need for family to supervise and assist in care for loved ones, and the many frustrations and indignations that my family and I suffered at the hands of the health insurance system. The only reason I have refrained from writing is that I am devoting all of my energies to my family, work, and trying to retain some semblance of normalcy in my life.

Thank you to all–family, friends, co-workers, students–for your kind wishes and for keeping my family in your thoughts.

Labor Day

I was doing some (very light) research on Labor day yesterday because I was not really sure what the origins of the holiday were. I knew that it had something to do with organized labor unions, but I was a little off in my assumptions as it had more to do with an appeasement strategy to prevent further nationwide strikes and disruptions in big industry (see the Wikipedia article). The obscurity of history prevents us from learning the origin story of such holidays.

It is the universal right of workers to organize, collectively bargin, and strike, no matter their profession and what a government determines is legal.

In this work environment, which is all too reminiscent of The Grapes of Wrath where employers cheat their workers out of the basic rights of laborers through systematic oppression, we have to remember that we may collectively and righteously employ the tactics of so many ignorant legislators to stop this country and force the government and employers to recognize the power and value of labor.

Finally, to demonstrate that I am a dangerous, leftist radical, here is a Woody Guthrie song about striking workers. Happy Labor Day everyone!

Sending and receiving IIT email through Gmail

Since OTS did not post instructions for adding a new “hawk.iit.edu” email address to Gmail (at least not that I could find), I thought I would post the server names/ports and some instructions for how to do it in case anyone is interested. I’m assuming if you’re reading this that you activated your account in myIIT.

If you are my student, I highly recommend doing this so that you view emails from me in a timely fashion. In addition to posting notices on my course website, I send emails regarding class to your university account, so you will need to check it regularly.

Firstly, you need to sync your Google apps for education password with your myIIT password since they are not the same for some reason. You can do that in the ‘training and support’ tab in myIIT (there is a link to sync the password in the right hand pane).

Next, log into your “hawk.iit.edu” email address. In mail settings under the ‘Forwarding and POP/IMAP’ tab, click on the button to enable POP for all mail.

Log into your personal Gmail account and in mail settings under the ‘Accounts and Import’ tab, click on the button to add a POP3 email account. Here is the server information:

Email address: [your myIIT user name]@hawk.iit.edu

Account Name: full email address Password: IIT password Mail (POP3) Server: pop.gmail.com Port: 995 Use SSL: Yes (check the box to use a SSL connection)

I think it’s a good idea to check the box to apply a label to mail so it’s easier to keep accounts straight, but it’s not required.

To send mail from your IIT email account, follow the instructions that Gmail gives you to verify your account. You can choose to send mail using SMTP through that mail server, or you can just use your personal Gmail account to send mail. The only difference I noticed is that the ‘From’ information in emails you send will look like this:

From: Andrew J. Roback aroback@iit.edu via gmail.com

rather than this:

From: Andrew J. Roback aroback@iit.edu

If that bothers you, here is the outgoing mail server info:

smtp.gmail.com (use authentication) Use Authentication: Yes Port for TLS/STARTTLS: 587 Port for SSL: 465

As a final word of warning, OTS said in their email that all mail would be forwarded to your new email address. That was not the case with me, as I received an email to my old address and it was not forwarded. I deleted my old POP3 import settings, then had to set it up again when I saw I was still receiving mail at my “iit.edu” account. I would recommend leaving your old POP3 accounts in place (I plan to, at least for a little while).

Rear Window (1954), Beauty and the Beast (1991)

Rear Window (1954)
Dir. Alfred Hitchcock, 112 min., DVD

rear window movie poster Watching Hitchcock’s films might be considered by some a master class in pacing and suspense, but for my money it’s a dead ringer for the difference in how writers and directors delivered a story now and fifty years ago. There are not many films of comparable pacing that I have watched from the last ten years of cinema that hold so much for the end, except perhaps the works of Christopher Nolan.

The film, by all contemporary standards, proceeds at a glacial pace, and if I take that metaphor to an annoying level, the glacier of pacing is slowly melted away by the heat of action (boo, boo, terrible!!!). Garbage metaphors aside, the heat does figure prominently as noted on a recent episode of Filmspotting, playing a pivotal role in the main action of the film (the peeping of the protagonist into open windows).

Jeffires (James Stewart), an injured photographer who is confined to a wheelchair during his convalescence, is visited accordingly in day and night by his nurse Stella (Thelma Ritter) and romantic interest Lisa (the stunning Grace Kelly). The film works equally well as a thriller and a class study, with Jeffries peering into illicit behavior and peoples’ personal class afflictions in equal measure. Jeffries avoids marriage to Lisa (in what Adam Kempenaar calls the most unbelievable bit of acting ever) on account of her “Fifth Avenue” lifestyle being incongruous with his various rugged, masculine photography assignments. Jeffries early on notices unusual behavior from one of his neighbors which prompts him to bring in his police detective friend Doyle (Wendell Corey), an antagonist for the speculative trio of Jeffries, Stella, and Lisa.

Through twists and turns, the murder is both proven and disproven through vivid imaginary crime reconstructions by the trio (reminiscent of the climax of a Sherlock Holmes novel) and the deflating detective work of Doyle. Perhaps the most arresting theory behind the film is that of surveillance, and what it does or doesn’t tell us about people. Seeing actions disconnected from context and without explanation offers a glimpse of private life that goes beyond suspicion or blind speculation, yet is no more factual or truthful than either. On a meta-level, it comments on the film viewer’s voyeuristic tendencies, the watching of someone who is incapable of watching you. The exquisite tension that lingers with me is the peril of unobserved observation, that the object may turn his gaze on you, shattering the barrier that makes surveillance a passive activity–much like an actor breaking the fourth wall. A brilliant and elemental foundation for a plot.

The slow, slow pacing is alleviated by the masterful set in which the entire action of the film takes place. Apart from a single room in Jeffries’ aparment, the entire setting of the film is the view through the vibrant courtyard and alleyways that provide access for the protagonist and viewer to the unsanctioned glimpses into open windows. It functions as a self-contained universe of intrigue and interaction: a microcosm of a metropolis housing a multitude of sin, intrigue, and suspicious imagination.

A-

Beauty and the Beast (1991)
Dirs. Gary Trousdale & Kirk Wise, 84 min., on the Disney channel (of all places)

I have a certain fascination with films for children, in that they must both entertain the child as well as not be abhorrent to the adult paying for and accompanying said child to the movie theater. In addition, they must be entertaining to children ranging from 3 to 12 years old, a range marked by radically different interests and cognitive levels. If a film rises to the pick of the litter (in 101 Dalmations parlance), it is rewatchable by the adult for nostalgia and enjoyment purposes for many years after the initial viewing, and may be imparted on a subsequent generation.

I was watching the film Tangled with my niece the other day and I noticed that computer animation is a totally different experience from the hand drawn animation of my childhood: the lines are crisp and clean, voices are perfectly matched, scenes are crisp and bright and almost bursting with color. But there was definitely something unsatisfying about the film.

I’m the very last person to say everything old is good, everything new, bad. But there are some substantial changes which are worth noting.

Beauty and the Beast was the forerunner of future animated films with the first in-company use of a computer animation sequence in a feature film (the scene where Belle dances with the Beast in the ballroom). In a film where there are tens of thousands of expertly hand drawn cells animated into a feature by what was, at the time, one of the most expert production crews in the animation business, the computer animation looks shoehorned and does not fit the aesthetic of the film. By today’s computer animation standards, the product is quaint and is reminiscent of a scene from the early computer game Rift.

Nevertheless, this embodies the spirit of the zenith of Disney hand-drawn animation that included The Little Mermaid (1989), The Rescuers Down Under (1990), Beauty and the Beast (1991), Aladdin (1992), and The Lion King (1994). These films also represent the run up to a fully computer animated film, with each film incorporating more sophisticated computer-aided animation techniques.

The film also represents a golden era of sorts that contains conventions that current films abandon. For the most part, the actors in this film are Broadway voice actors, the most notable exceptions being Angela Lansbury and Jerry Orbach (whose French accent makes his grumbly Dirty Dancing and Law and Order personas unrecognizable by comparison). The songs are practically written for a Broadway musical, and one might call this an animated musical rather than an animated feature since the songs take such precedence. According to IMDB trivia, Lansbury suggested that the title track be sung by a professional singer, but she recorded one take to appease the production staff, and that take was ultimately used in the film. By comparison with computer animation, there’s something charming about the slapdashedness of such a gargantuan project as drawing and animating tens of thousands of still frames combined with rock and roll snap takes.

Pixar films are clinical in their mechanized precision, and do not have run-over coloration in the stills, mismatched voice and character movement, or reused animation: flaws that endear an audience. Outtakes are manufactured, but are the simulacra of imperfection. The voices are supplied by Hollywood stars who most likely record several hundred, heavily-edited takes: as Jon DiMaggio (Bender from Futurama) pointed out in his interview with AV Club, they are brought on cast to sell tickets with their names, not give quality performances. Beauty and the Beast is a nostalgic trip back to before the tipping point where animation became a fully computerized and (comically) further commercialized art form.

B+

Using reCAPTCHA to prevent spam on your WordPress blog

Recently I have been getting about one spam comment a day on my blog from robots, but today there were three, which was enough for me to take action to stop it.

I checked quickly and found that there is a reCAPTCHA plugin for WordPress that only takes a few minutes to install. If you have not heard of reCAPTCHA before, it is the image with scrambled letters and an associated text box that you have to fill in before you can submit a form on a website. In the past few years, they have added a refresh option that lets you see a new image if you can’t decipher the current image, and there is also an audio option for persons with low or no vision. Also, I discovered that you can use the plugin to generate standards compliant XHTML 1.0 Strict if your WP installation has standards compliant code (that is a project that I hope to finish this year).

The instructions for installing it are here, but they leave out a few steps so I will add them in for your benefit. Note: these instructions are for blogs hosted on your own server; on a free WordPress site, I would imagine you can search for the plugin and follow different steps to install it.

Download the zip file from the plugin site.
Unzip the directory and ftp it to your WP installation: $/wp-content/plugins/
Log in to your WP account and go to the dashboard, then click on the Plugins link.
Find the reCAPTCHA plugin and click the ‘Activate’ link
You should see an error message that reads: “You enabled reCAPTCHA, but some of the reCAPTCHA API Keys seem to be missing.” followed by a link that reads “Fix this.” Click on the link.
That link will open up the WP plugin settings page which contains a link to a page on the reCAPTCHA website where you can generate your public/private key pair.
NOTE: You may have to sign up for a reCAPTCHA account if you don’t have a Google account, otherwise you should be able to just proceed to this step if you are signed into Gmail. Confirm your URL and generate the key pair on the reCAPTCHA site and then, paying attention to which key is public and which is private, carefully copy and paste them into the corresponding text boxes in the WP plugin settings page.
Fill out the other options and, if you run a standards compliant blog, check the box to make the code generated by the reCAPTCHA plugin standards compliant. Don’t forget to click the ‘update’ button to save your settings.

That’s it. Now, before an unregistered user can submit a comment, they must complete the reCAPTCHA field. If you want to see what it looks like, click on the ‘leave a reply’ link below. I chose the “clean” theme for this site, but there are three other options to choose from. Feel free to leave a comment and let people know how to set up reCAPTCHA if you use a free WP site hosted on the WordPress domain.

Captain America: The First Avenger (2011)

Dir. Joe Johnston, 125 min., in theaters

I had originally intended to see Bad Teacher today, but due to a theater mix up, we ended up seeing Captain America instead. This wasn’t the worst two hours of my life, but it won’t rank up there with the best either.

The title does nothing to hide the fact that this film is essentially another cog in the Marvel machine that will eventually churn out The Avengers (2012), a combination of Iron Man, Thor, Hulk, and the titular hero of this film. Despite my affinity for graphic novels, I never really immersed myself in the Marvel universe other than the X-Men, and I have been known to mistake Marvel for DC and vice versa (the cardinal sin).

To be honest, I’ve pretty much lost most of my love for superhero movies. I grew up in the late eighties/early nineties, an era when there were few, if any, great superhero films to watch. I saw every Superman movie, but apart from those films I can’t remember much in the way of superheroes. My superheros were mainly action starts like Harrison Ford, Sylvester Stallone, and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Thus it must be a real thrill for comic book fanboys who have been loyal for years to see their childhood heroes finally represented in a big way on the big screen, but the thrill is mostly gone for me. After suffering through films like X-Men: The Last Stand (2006) and Spider Man 3 (2007), I started to wonder what it would take to produce a film that was just great without having it do double duty as a marketing device. The final entry in the X-Men film series terminated interesting characters with extreme prejudice and slammed any future writer’s fingers in the door. Likewise with the final Spider Man film. Someone along the way decided that there should be only three films in a series.

Until now. Beginning with last summer’s godawful Iron Man 2 which by all accounts (except the mo$t important) was a failure, it was clear that a mega movie was in the works that would combine multiple Marvel action heroes, and in order to do that someone decided that we must meet each individual component of the forthcoming Avengers film in their own feature, hence this year’s Thor and Captain America.

In the car ride home, I explained to Nicole and Teresa how sick to death of origin stories I am at this point. My sentiment, especially with regard to this film, is that the first third of each origin story is essentially a pathos building machine so that we can root for the superhero; unless you’re one of the Nazis that Captain America dispatched in this film, you are going to root for the superhero. This film very clumsily shows us things, then tells us them, then shows us them again in case we missed the first two character building events. If I were to chart out the beats that the origin story portion gives us, it would look something like this:

Our hero is: scrawny, patriotic, scrawny, awkward, patriotic, determined, scrawny, determined, patriotic, awkward, determined, kick-ass, patriotic, finally Captain America

If Kenneth Branagh or Ang Lee has to direct a superhero film to avoid this problem, I’ll take that any day.

Joe Johnston could almost be described as schizophrenic in his successes: he has flopped out at least three times (The Rocketeer, Hidalgo, and The Wolfman). I didn’t even know he was the director behind The Rocketeer, but it seemed somehow only logical given the depiction of the 40’s–to put it nicely, he “returned to some of his original ideas.” Something was just wrong in terms of authenticity and depictions of World War II. I realize this is a fantasy, but I still expect some engagement with the settings. War torn Europe seems less like the setting for the story, and more like the cardboard facades of a TV wild west town.

For everything that is wrong with this film, there are some highlights. Dominic Cooper gets more and more entertaining as Howard Stark (read Howard Hughes), and pretty much every scene that he’s in makes the film much cooler. The lab scenes are reminiscent of the Manhattan Project, and I would probably watch a film with just him. At least Captain America throws his shield more than once, though many of the film’s action sequences are crammed into an aggravating montage that robs filmgoers of what they pay to see, action.

Without spoiling the ending, there will not be a true sequel for Captain America. The sole function of this film is a lead up to next year’s The Avengers, which will hopefully be origin story free. Luckily, The Amazing Spider Man will be there to show us how Peter Parker becomes Spider Man, again.

C+