i feel like shit

memory is shit, isn't it?

i just finished binge watching a Japanese Drama called "The Memorandum of Kyoko Okitegami"

the premise is simple: Kyoko Okitegami is a very good detective, her only problem is that everytime she sleeps, her memory resets, makes her forget everything, with her memories prior to the accident remains. she keep notes about who she is in her bodies, from her name, her job, her circumstances, etc.

then there is this dude, Yakusuke, with such a bad luck, everytime there is a case, he is always the number 1 suspect, and he always needs the detective to help him.

you know where this is going right? the man remembers everything, then he fell in love. the detective remembers nothing, so everyday is a new day for her.

bad luck continues, they meet almost everyday, until one day, one case, she sees him differently, she feels she can trust him, then before she gone to sleep, she adds another notes, "i can trust Yakusuke"

now everytime she wakes up, she saw his name, without knowing who he is, and why she put his name there, and everytime she meet him, eventhough it's for the first time, now she's trying to find out why his name is there, and at the end of the day, she decides that it's worth it, she keeps the name.

there's something profound there, isn't that how we form relationships? of course her case is an extreme example, but the basic is there: we don't know the person, after few interactions, we decide that he/she is worth keeping, and every interaction after the decision, we still trying to decide what's their level: is it just colleague? friends? or even lover?

it is our job to try our best, and let others decide.

but she have one advantage: she has no preconceived idea about who he is. she only know his name. our past is the best and worst of our life.

i'm fucking mellow right know, who knows watching a detective/comedy series would remind me of fucking 50 first dates and made me feel like shit.

Everything wrong with review aggregator.

in the midst of BvS rotten tomatoes shitfest, i want to talk about it, about review aggreator sites be it Rotten Tomatoes or Metacritic, but especially Rotten Tomatoes.

i always find review aggregator site absurd.

art is a subjective matter, and some piece of art, only get appreciated by the critics and people alike few years - decades, even - after the supposed release dates.

art is an expression of the artist, and to reduce it to a mere number, or worse, a fresh or rotten tomatoes is insulting to the art and to the nuance of the critics itself.

now the question arise, are there such thing as bad art? depends. in painting, Pollock's splash of colour - not that this is a derogatory, merely simplifying Pollock's art to the uninitiated - is regarded in the history of art at the same level as Picasso's Cubist painting. BUT, there are bad cubist painting, and there are good cubist painting, what constitutes a bad or good cubist painting, that i do not know.

the key point is in genre.

you compare classical music to another classical music, what is a good classical music? i have no idea, but it'll be stupid to compare say, Kreisler's Liebesleid to Daft Punk's Something About Us.

now, movie is a weird case for me.

what constitutes a good movie? 

now for me, what constitutes a good movie, technically, is screenplay, acting, editing, sound, cinematography, and story in general. and finally, when the movie successfully to be what it's trying to be.

now a good movie is different than movie that YOU enjoy.  and this is completely subjective. 

my point is, i believe, as a critic, they should review movies - or art, in general - by first and foremost knowing the purpose of the movie, and whether it achieve it or not.

my problems with critics nowadays, it's just that they're more of a reviewer, instead of a critics. they tell their readers whether they like it or not, not the technical aspects of it.

because BvS is the most recent example, i will use it as an example.

most of the criticisms of BvS revolved around whether it was their Superman/batman/wonder woman or not, whether it was "fun", whatever fun means nowadays.

almost nobody talks about actual things, like plot? is it too busy or not, i accept that it is too busy, but it is not stupid and full of plotholes. the editing? it was jumpy, because WB asks snyder to cut 30 minutes of it.

just because BvS is a superhero movie, they compared it to another superhero movies, which is stupid. imagine in the 80s when people read Watchmen for the first time, and compared it to previous superhero comics before it, and said it was not fun.

now the problem with review agreggator: because review now is completely subjective and sometimes banal, to reduce it to numbers is insulting to critics. do RT really think that Richard Roeper opinion is hold at the same level as some 20 something blogger from fucking Buzzfeed?

reviewer comes from different kinds of background, and just to ignore that nuance to a mere yes/no algorithm is stupid.

i mean i just found out that Jumper is at 16% at RT, when i watched it years ago, i enjoyed it immensely. i mean there's no fucking way the sharknado - at 80 something - is better than Jumper, from technical level and story.

nerd culture is not that mainstream

in the past decade - less than a decade, actually - we always hear about how nerd and geek culture becoming mainstream, hence, all the movies adapted from said culture. it's all good and fancy right? now those people who didn't/couldn't/wouldn't touch a nerd media in their life, can call themselves geek/nerd just because they read one or two books about superheroes, and always in line to watch the next big blockbuster superhero movies.

then Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice came.

the general audiences are adapted to linear storytelling, popularized by marvel, where the main character(s) go from point A to B to C, then after all the individual movies, we get the climax, the Avengers movie. then you feel geeky when the culmination movie made reference to previous movies

then Zack Snyder came, and fuck you in the ass with references that only, ONLY, comics book nerds who dedicated their resources to this world will understand.

imagine when your only experiences with comic book characters are from marvel movies, you came to this movie with a preconceived idea about how superhero movies should be, then BvS punch you in the tit.

spoilers here.

imagine, the movie starts with another depiction of the Wayne's murder, you thought "oh Pete's sakes we know how batman's parent die"

then MoS climax from Bruce's perspective, "what? I only watch MoS once, what is this?

then after that is just a barrage of reference.

dead robin's suit, probably Jason todd, the reason why bruce is cruel, people who never touch a comic book doesn't know the significance of the suit.

then boom the flash with his ol am I too soon bongaloo, you think, "what is that? what? what the fuck?"

then wonder woman, then doomsday, then middle finger from zack, putting after credits in the middle of the movie.

one of the criticisms for BvS is that it tried to juggle too much, 4 stories into one? we got bruce, clark, diana, lois, and lex? 5 story arcs into one, and it's too busy. well well well, if you read comic books, sometimes they juggle more than that, plus the crossover books - try read all those civil war arcs with all its crossover, you'll have to spend months - and we're adapted to that.

plus the themes and allegory. the simplest question it asks is; "what if superman exist in our society?" in that movie, how people react to supes mirrors our real reaction if superman really does exist. we will fear him, our notion of sovereignty, our belief system, will crumble.

Neil DeGrasse Tyson sums it up in the movie, when darwin gave us the theory of evolution, it removes us human from the center of the universe after copernicus removed earth from the center of the milky way. the existence of superman means all religions in the world are false, there is no god, there is a "god", and he is a man and he can't save everybody.

then lex brings the god theme, god is tribal. muslim thinks their god is the best, so does christians and other religions, god takes sides, and if god takes sides, then god is not all good, thus not all powerful, it's basically epicurus argument.

what made DC movies post Man of Steel is so polarizing and uncomfortable, is the fact that it paints society as it is, cynical, afraid, and selfish. and it deals with consequences of being a hero, and not just in love life - my love life sucks because I'm a superhero - but consequences to the world.

and comic books deals with this theme since its inception, comic books always relevant to the context of  its time. and nothing is more fitting, that the magnum opus of comic book movie adaption, trying to be relevant - and successfully achieving it - to its context of time.

it might not be the best superhero movie, but it's the boldes, bravest, and most relevant.