I Wish I Could Quit You, Netflix!

           When Netflix announced back in July that it was splitting its streaming and disc-mailing services and increasing monthly prices by 60% as of the September billing period, many people were outraged.  There were thousands of articles about the death of Netflix and the emergence of other home-viewing alternatives that would further drive it into the ground.  Many customers threatened to cancel their subscription, and some even did.  Most subscribers just changed their plan to either just include streaming, just mailed discs, or streaming and one mailed disc at a time.  I was just as outraged as everyone else when the news was announced, and even considered scaling back my plan as well.  However, I just could not bring myself to do it.  I decided to bite the financial bullet and keep the plan I had since I became a subscriber three years ago for one reason only: I am a Netflix junkie.

            Yes, even though Netflix is doing everything it possibly can short of threatening physical violence against its customers to make them terminate their subscriptions, I have chosen to stand defiant and pay the now twenty dollars per month.  I view it as a statement that I am pathetically unemployed and am solely reliant on Netflix to get me through these tough times.  If that isn’t a ringing endorsement of Netflix, then I don’t know what is.  Reed Hastings, look into your heart and make that part of your effort to turn around the public image of your company.  I guarantee that shares in Netflix will rise from the 50% decline they have undergone since you raised your prices.

            The main problem facing Netflix now is that it is no longer cool.  Everything that has happened over these past few months reminds of the scene early in The Social Network when Mark is telling Eduardo why Facebook cannot have advertising because that would not be cool.  Like Facebook (which is currently having some “coolness” issues of its own), Netflix was incredibly cool.  There was no outside advertising on the website, they had an incredibly efficient business model, an unprecedented selection of titles both on disc and streaming, and it was affordable enough for tens of millions of people to subscribe to it and enjoy its wares.  Also like Facebook, “Netflix” became a verb, the ultimate sign of cool.  If someone wanted to check out a movie he or she heard about from a friend, he or she would just “Netflix” it.  I could not go anywhere without running into someone who was a Netflix subscriber.  Talking about our respective queues made for passable small talk.  Being part of Netflix was the being in the popular group in high school if the popular group consisted of half the school instead of a select few.  Unfortunately, Netflix’s entire coolness quota vanished the second it revealed that it was not only going to split streaming and disc-mailing services on our bills, it was also going to split the services into two separate websites as well.  The streaming would still be Netflix, but the mailing service was now called The-Website-That-Must-Not-Be-Named-Because-It’s-Such-An-Abominable-Name-For-A-Website-That-It-Makes-Me-Think-Reed-Hastings-Watches-Too-Much-Jersey-Shore (phew).  Seriously, I will never say the name of the true name of that site, yet I won’t call it TWTMNBNBISAANFAWTIMMTRHWTMJS either.  We’ll call it Prickster and leave it at that.  What makes Prickster even more uncool is that it does not actually exist yet!  At least when you announce something is launching, you should give a date for when it is coming (see new IPhone), but Netflix has not even given its customers that courtesy.  I honestly looked around the web for a good fifteen minutes for anything about when Prickster would go online, and all I found was that some guy had The-Website-That-Must-Not-Be-Named as his Twitter handle (for his own sake, I hope he changed it).

            And yet in the wake of all these horrible things I have just said about Netflix, I just can’t quit it.  It still has a wider selection of DVDs and streaming titles than its competitors and the discs still ship in only one business day.  But most importantly, Netflix has been the key in expanding my entertainment horizons and giving me a passion for the arts that I hope to preserve for the rest of my life.  Without Netflix, I would not have seen thousands of wonderful films that have contributed to my enriched cultural palette, and I look forward to seeing thousands more. Unless, of course, they raise the prices again, but they couldn’t be THAT stupid, could they?  Could they?  Oh, screw it, at least they have Breaking Bad on streaming now.

My Review of Madden NFL '12

I would like to say that I haven’t written anything in the last two weeks because I have been so overwhelmingly busy with important things, but unfortunately that has not been the case.  Other than helping my old roommate move into his new apartment, I’ve been as lazy as a stoner on Zoloft.  Every day consists of me waking up to sit in front of the television, watch Sportscenter for a couple hours, eat breakfast, and watch some more television.  I might have gone for the occasional run and hang out with my friends a few times, sure, but most days, I wouldn’t shower until 4 in the afternoon and even then, it was only because I had gotten sick of smelling like toxic waste.  In order for me to be able to write at the mediocre level that I do, I have to be in a certain state of mind.  I don’t just want to write every day just to say that I got a few hundred words out.  I’d rather never write again than be one of those people who blogs like they tweet, just spewing out random personal bullshit that nobody should hear or care about.  I want those words to feel like they came from a somewhat elaborate thought process that led to a piece that contained some interesting points and ultimately made me feel better for writing them.  Of course, I’m committing that very sin as I’m writing this, but it’s to illustrate a point, specifically that when I write about pop culture, I want it to come from the heart instead of it having to feel like I’m filling a quota.  So today, after a two week hibernation, I have finally found something that has impassioned me enough to write about it, even though it has heavily contributed to my lack of productiveness over these last two weeks.  Of course, I’m talking about the new Madden video game.

First, a little personal history: I have been playing Madden for the last fifteen years for four different game consoles (N64, Xbox, Gamecube, Xbox 360).  I’ve played it for so long that I played it before they had cover athletes and the subsequent jinx that went with being one of these athletes.  To me, playing Madden is second nature at this point, so for me to be thoroughly impressed with a new Madden game is like Leonardo DiCaprio trying to be impressed by his newest girlfriend (Side note: I am very impressed with Mr. DiCaprio’s new girlfriend, the lovely Blake Lively).  I’m so used to playing a high-quality video game that the next one always feels the same as the previous model.  Sure, each year, the makers of the game tout new improvements to the game that are supposed to contribute to a more realistic gaming experience, but they are never major enough for me to take notice.  Until this year.

The most striking change that Madden has made this year is to its Franchise mode.  It had admittedly gotten stale over the years, having remained mostly the same since its inception, but this year, the experience is much deeper and truer to the real-life experience of compiling a championship-caliber team.  The most noticeable of these new changes is the rookie scouting system.  Previously, I never needed to scout rookies in order to draft well, but this year, it’s essential in order to know the caliber of playing you are drafting.  But perhaps an even cooler element to the game is the incorporation of undrafted free agents, which is something that had always been missing from the game.  Franchise owners can now go through every week of the pre-season and cut down their rosters week by week from 75 players to the final 53 man roster.

Another major difference this year is Dynamic Player Performance, which reflects how players perform in games.  For example, if Adrian Peterson has a bad game, in the next game, it will be more difficult for him to have a great game because he is affected by his previous performance.  All players have hot and cold streaks which directly reflect on how well they are playing.

But this version of Madden is not the best one yet because of all these big changes.  I love it as much as I do because of the subtle details that have made playing Madden so much more enjoyable.  From the epic title sequence scored to “Mind Heist,” that famous song from the Inception trailer, to the authenticity of the player introductions for every team, this version of Madden gets almost all of the little details just right so that the player feels like he or she is completely immersed in the game as they would be if they were watching it on television.  Over the years, I’ve had people much older and less game-savvy than me walk by while I was playing Madden and mistake what they saw for an actual football game, and I scoffed at them for being so oblivious to the obvious differences between the two.  But now, I would completely understand if someone confused the two, because the way the camera moves around the players on Madden in the pre-game warm-ups uncannily mimics real-life camera footage one would see on Fox or CBS.  This also applies to touchdowns and their aftermath.  Cameras always attempt to get in on the celebration after a player scores a touchdown, and in this incarnation of Madden, the creators aim for the same immersive quality of a real football broadcast.

While these improved details are all well and good, there are still some flaws in the game itself, mainly with the gameplay itself.  While the makers of Madden fixed the running game, which had been annoyingly difficult in the past, they compensated for it by making the passing game incredibly difficult.  I cannot begin to count how many times in the week that I have been playing the game how many times I have had balls knocked down by defenders because I could not throw a touch pass to a receiver, even if I tap the button to throw.  In order for a receiver to catch the ball, he has to be open by at least five yards on all sides.  This complaint is not from someone who plays the game on the highest difficulty setting, either.  Passing is a problem no matter what difficulty setting is being utilized, and this is the one thing that takes away from the fun of the game.  I want to be able to chuck it forty times a game and get 400 yards passing, but the AI in the game is almost too good to the point where it becomes detrimental to player enjoyment.

I will still most likely play Madden for many months to come, and I will continue to buy the game for many years to come, I do not think that I will find it so addictive that it will make me a less productive member of society.  It will instead provide a wonderful diversion from the harsh reality that I still don’t have a job while not preventing me from finding one.

Why People My Age Should Be Watching Louie

MTV’s Jersey Shore and FX’s Louie are both currently airing in the 10:00 PM ET hour on Thursday nights, and the strength of their ratings could not be more disparate.  For the new episode two weeks ago, Jersey Shore had almost 7.5 million viewers, making it the highest-rated show of the night on cable, with 3.7 million of those viewers coming in the coveted 18-49 demographic (the other 3.8 most likely came from endangered souls under 18).  Meanwhile, Louie, which aired two new episodes that night,  had only 733,000 viewers, with 400,000 of those coming in the 18-49 demographic (the other 333,000 viewers most likely are enlightened souls over 50, like my dad), but I could not find the ratings of the second episode.  I bring up this comparison for a couple of reasons.  One is to marvel and shudder at the power of Jersey Shore still going strong in its fourth season when the creators and stars are so obviously becoming more increasingly desperate to keep their fame and money train rolling by switching the setting to Italy.  People who know me know how I feel about Jersey Shore as someone who was born in New Jersey and who loved vacationing to the Shore as a child, so I won’t bother to elaborate.  The other more important reason I bring up this comparison of ratings is to both understand why more young people do not watch Louie and to appeal to them to do so, and I will cite the episodes that aired that week to show them what they are missing (mainly because I still have not caught up with the most recently aired episode, and will not be able to until next week’s new episode airs because FX doesn’t put their shows up on demand until then for some strange reason).

Before I go into what makes these particular episodes of Louie so fantastic, I want to establish a base of understanding for those who might be interested in watching the show.  It is a semi-autobiographical portrait of Louis C.K., the highly respected standup comedian who writes, produces, edits, and directs every episode.  The show, like Seinfeld, frames scenes of C.K. doing standup within the stories in the episode.  Some of these episodes have one narrative that encompasses the entire half hour, such as the one featuring Joan Rivers earlier this season, but most of them have two stories that each take up about half of the episode and are almost totally unrelated to one another, such as one involving a flashback to Louie filming a sitcom and in the other story, he appeals to Dane Cook for Lady Gaga tickets for his daughter’s birthday.  Many of the episodes are incredibly funny and crude, but some are also quite dark and remarkably poignant, which brings me to the two episodes I would like to discuss. 

The first episode, titled “Come On, God,” falls squarely in the category of funny and crude.  Louie goes on Fox News to defend masturbation against Ellen, a very attractive woman who is a spokesperson for Christians Against Masturbation.  After a very heated debate in which Louie grows increasingly incredulous at this woman for her beliefs, he reluctantly accepts an invitation from her to go to a meeting for her organization, but not before he goes home that night and tries to masturbate to a woman he’s imagining in an elevator.  After he attends the CAM meeting, he goes out for drinks with Ellen and then goes up to her hotel room, where she gives a very passionate and rational speech about why she is against masturbation.  The episode is peppered with incessant dick and masturbation jokes that appeal to the teenager in all of us while simultaneously shooting at a target that all liberals love to make fun of, evangelical Christians.

While “Come On, God” is an episode of Louie that has a more traditional sitcom plot, the following episode, “Eddie,” operates in much darker and complex territory.  The plot of the episode involves the reunion of Louie and his old friend Eddie, whom he had not seen in twenty years.  The two were up-and-coming comedians together who were really close until Louie achieved a modicum of success while Eddie continued to tour the country doing small-time gigs.  Eddie certainly looks worse for the wear, but Louie decides to hang out with him anyway, and after an episode at a liquor store and a random venture into an open-mic night in Brooklyn where Eddie does a very funny routine under a foul-mouthed alias, the two are standing at Eddie’s car, which he’s now living out of, and Eddie tells Louie something nobody wants to hear.  Eddie is going to kill himself.  He has no money, no family, no security in any aspect of his life, and he just wants to drink himself to death.  Louie finds himself facing the difficult dilemma of whether to let Eddie end his own life or convince him not to.  For a show that is considered to be a comedy, Louie is unafraid to deal with very serious issues in the most uncompromising fashion.  We are not supposed to feel one way or the other about Eddie.  While suicide is universally frowned upon, Eddie actually makes a compelling case for why he should not be alive, and Louie wrestles with his preconceived feelings about suicide with Eddie’s sound reasoning.

These two episodes are perfectly representative of why more people my age should be watching this show instead of that soul-sucking cyst of entertainment better known as Jersey Shore.  Even though a lot of the comedy in the show is about Louis C.K. dealing with being middle aged and a divorced father of two, it does not mean that he is not a relatable character for young people to grow attached to.  What makes Louis C.K. such a fascinating subject for television is his ability to tackle all issues that he faces in an honest way, even though the situation itself might be absurd, a common occurrence on the show. 

Another key reason that Louie appeals to my generation is the show’s incredible ability to be self-aware.  A great example of this postmodern trait of self-awareness is his meeting with Dane Cook in an episode I briefly referred to previously.  Cook, one of the most popular and simultaneously reviled comedians of all time, has been accused in the past of stealing jokes from Louis C.K., and these accusations have hurt what was once a career destined to launch him into the stratosphere of movie-star comedians.  In the scene where the two speak, Cook finally gets the chance to defend himself, not just against Louie, but against all of the people who accused of stealing jokes.  The scene was most likely scripted by C.K., but both actors appear honest enough in their convictions that the audience actually believes that this conversation these two guys are having is not just a scene in a television show, but a real honest-to-goodness heart-to-heart where two men are trying to resolve a long-standing conflict between them.  It is one of the more remarkable things I have ever seen on television because both men are just self-aware, but painfully so to the point where I find myself sympathizing with Dane Cook, which makes Louie an even more remarkable achievement as a piece of entertainment: a show that can make audiences view taboo things such as masturbation and Dane Cook in a whole new light.  I know that asking young people to use their brains while watching television is a potentially fruitless request, but I want to make it anyway in support of this show, because people might be surprised by what they find.

They Got It Wrong: Step Brothers

Welcome to They Got It Wrong, where I look at a film there was either universally praised or dismissed by critics and argue that the critical consensus for said film is wrong.  This week, I look at the 2008 Will Ferrell comedy vehicle Step Brothers.

In this week’s segment of They Got It Wrong, I wanted to finally do a film that was unfairly criticized after using my first two segments to criticize films that were overly praised, and I scoured the recesses of my brain to find films that I loved that were critically panned.  I found that unfortunately, the list of movies that I could come up with was rather short (read: nonexistent).  I find it much easier to find films that are overly praised because usually when a film is bad, most people agree with the fact that it’s bad.  Green Lantern had a 26% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and while I did not outright hate the film, I had no problem with critics who did, because for the most part, their criticisms were correct.  So I was struggling to find an under praised film to write about when suddenly, fate reached out and extended its porcelain-skinned hand.  I was flipping through channels the other day and wound up watching the beginning of Gangs of New York, and I remembered that John C. Reilly had a small role in the film.  As I saw him on screen, in my head, I started thinking about Step Brothers, one of the funniest films of all time, thanks largely to Reilly’s transcendent performance.  For some heretofore unknown reason (my Internet surfing pattern is very bizarre), I decided to look up Step Brothers on Rotten Tomatoes, thinking how it must have at least a 70-75% approval rating like most funny comedies do.  However, when I pulled up the page, I was mortified to discover that the film’s approval rating was a measly 54%, and from there, this column had written itself nearly a full week before it had actually been written.  I did not want to talk about this film, seeing as I had already discussed one of its direct predecessors, Anchorman, but this offense was too great to ignore.  I have to set the record straight for my own peace of mind.

            I have said this to my friends many times before, and I’ll say it again in written form: Step Brothers takes stupidity and elevates to an art form on par with Picasso’s blue period.  This film is relentless in its stupidity and has no great ambition or desire to make a grand statement about life (I’m looking at you, Annie Hall).  If I were to measure comedy by the number of laughs in a film’s running time and the ferocity of said laughs, Step Brothers would easily be one of my top three favorite comedies of all time.  Watching Step Brothers requires an oxygen mask on standby because of the constant threat of losing my breath from laughing too hard.  To look at the film’s surface elements like plot and character development is to view the film in the wrong way.  While those elements are incredibly important in comedy, the most important question to ask for any comedy is does it make you laugh?  While the aforementioned Annie Hall does have a plot that flows well, has two great, fully-developed characters, and makes me laugh quite a lot, Step Brothers makes Annie Hall look like a Merchant-Ivory production by comparison.

            Perhaps what I love the most about Step Brothers is the same thing I loved about my favorite Will Ferrell film, Elf: the completely overwhelming and endearing innocence of its lead characters, Dale (Reilly) and Brennan (Ferrell).  It is truly liberating to watch two men in their forties throw all the confines of adulthood aside and wholeheartedly embrace their inner child.  They think before they act, they primitively insult each other; they fight over things as small as a drum set, and they are completely clueless about the intricacies of adulthood.  To them, being an adult is no fun when karate in the garage and looking at dirty magazines in a tree house are activities easily available to them. But when their inevitable transition into a form of adulthood finally arrives, it is portrayed as a form of imprisonment, so when Dale and Brennan perform on stage at the fucking Catalina Wine Mixer, it is a glorious return to their childlike enthusiasm and it brings out the same enthusiasm in everybody else present.

            I truly believe that the reason this film was not highly praised within the film criticism community is because the majority of them reviewed this film like they would any other.  They saw this film with their checklist in hand of the things they feel all competent movies must have: high production value, compelling plot, good performance, etc.  But Step Brothers deliberately laughs in the face of the rules of good storytelling and instead aims merely to cram as many gut-bustingly hilarious jokes into its 98-minute runtime as possible.  For critics to frown upon that ambition is unfair and, most importantly, unconstitutional.  In these depressing times, entertainment like Step Brothers should be valued like the paintings of Van Gogh and used to bring joy to the millions of people who so desperately need it.

Why Can't I See Attack the Block?

For months, I have been hearing buzz about a film called Attack the Block that involves a group of working-class teenagers in south London taking up arms against alien invaders.  The film has been a massive hit on the festival circuit, winning audience awards at the South by Southwest and LA Film festivals.  Critical consensus has been overwhelmingly positive (as of right now, the film has an 89%  approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes) and the film is produced by Edgar Wright, the director of the cult hits Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, and he has turned over the directorial reins to his friend, first-time writer-director Joe Cornish.  The film also stars one of the breakout actors from those two films, Nick Frost, and features a cast of up-and coming young actors as the teenagers.  Yet the film has only been released in 7 theaters in 6 cities nationwide (in Austin, Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, San Francisco, and Seattle) and in nearly two weeks, it will open in Philadelphia after fans decided on Facebook where the film should premiere next.  For a film with this strong of a premise and this strong of a word of mouth, the studio should be trying to squeeze a profit out of this film.  It only cost $15 million to make, so even if they make a mild marketing push and release it in about 1,500-2,000 theaters, with the great word of mouth that it’s getting, Attack the Block could easily turn a profit for them. 

The film that signals the possible success for Attack the Block is J.J. Abrams’ nostalgia-fest, Super 8.  It’s about a group of kids (portrayed by unknown young actors) trying to survive an alien attack, and possesses strong action and comedic elements.  It was made for a relatively modest sum for a major studio production (around $50 million) and due to strong word of mouth from critics and audiences, the film went on to gross well over 100 million dollars and become one of the most beloved films of the summer.  Attack the Block shares so many positive attributes with Super 8 on the surface that it seems criminal that the film cannot be seen by more people like me nationwide.  I have a couple of ideas why Attack the Block might be having trouble reaching a wider audience and reasons why those arguments do not hold water.

It’s British

It is incredibly rare for a film that was not financed stateside to make money here (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and The King’s Speech proved to be the overwhelming exceptions), so even though the film is in English, the fact that it was not backed by any American studio from the beginning makes it difficult to see Attack the Block making a profit in this country.  For some reason heretofore unknown to me, the mass American movie-going audience seems averse to foreign-made films.  Subtitles are a distraction from the film itself and cultural differences can get lost in translation.  Even when characters with foreign accents are speaking in English, many Americans (even ones that I know) complain that they cannot understand what the actors are saying so they decide to ignore the film and go watch the next Michael Bay movie instead.  To those people, I say, what a load of poppycock.  As several of last year’s Best Picture nominees can attest, a strong and engaging premise can make up for lack of major studio clout and lead to financial success if enough people can get behind it.  From what I have heard, many critics are wholly behind this film, and the strong per-screen averages on the theaters it has been released in so far signals that Attack the Block can succeed if the right people are willing to put it out there for more people to see.  Just because the characters talk in funny accents does not mean that the film does not have commercial potential.  Again, it will not take much for this small-budget film to make money.  Just put it out in more of the major metropolitan areas and watch the money roll in.  Trust me.

Another Alien Invasion Movie?

In the past year alone, the following movies about alien invasions have been had wide theatrical releases in the United States: Skyline, Battle: Los Angeles, Paul, Super 8, Transformers 3, and most recently Cowboys and Aliens.  That doesn’t even include two other upcoming alien invasion films: The Darkest Hour in December, and Battleship (yes, it’s based on the freaking board game) next summer.  Trying to add another similarly themed film into the mix when the genre seems to be wearing thin with moviegoers does not seem to be the best idea for someone looking to make a profit.  However, to reemphasize what I have already said, if critical consensus on a film is positive and word of mouth from advance screenings is strong, then a film can reach a large audience successfully.  Even though Attack the Block is another entry in a genre that is starting to get beaten to death, it stands out because of its super-low budget, uniquely British sensibilities and, like Super 8, the film apparently pays homage to some of its sci-fi predecessors in an affectionate manner.

In the end, I’m mainly bitter that this film is not coming to the Twin Cities anytime soon, and I just decided to vent my frustrations about that by contemplating why I can’t see this awesome-looking film, especially in the wake of my great disappointment with Cowboys and Aliens.  In the meantime, I’ll just have to live off Netflix until Drive comes out on September 16^th.

They Got It Wrong: Brokeback Mountain

Welcome to They Got it Wrong, where I look at films that were either universally praised or dismissed by critics and argue that the critical consensus for said was wrong.  This week, I look at a film many people felt should have won Best Picture in 2006, Brokeback Mountain.

            I have to admit that I actively tried to avoid watching Brokeback Mountain for a long time, and it had absolutely nothing to do with the subject matter.  When I saw trailers for the film, they did not resonate with me on an emotional level and the film looked downright dull to me.  So I was shocked when I found out that nearly every critic out there was completely over the moon about it.  The film looked like classic Oscar bait to me: an acclaimed director (Ang Lee), big stars taking on meaty roles (Heath Ledger, Jake Gyllenhaal), a period setting, and a buzzworthy and controversial love story, and critics and audiences responded in kind.  The film grossed over 80 million dollars from a 14 million dollar budget and received eight Oscar nominations and winning three, including Best Director for Mr. Lee.  I finally watched the film a few months ago for a film course I was taking, and I was disappointed to see that my initial suspicions about the film were correct.

            That is not to say that there are not some fantastic things about the film.  My favorite aspect of the film was the cinematography of Rodrigo Prieto, who was nominated for an Oscar for his work.  There some absolutely gorgeous shots of the vast Wyoming landscape that give the film the epic scope it tries to embody in the narrative, but when the focus shifts from the natural world to the lives of the characters, the magic goes away almost completely.  Yes, Heath Ledger has some great moments in the film, particularly the heartbreaking final scene, but too often, he is hamstrung by his grumbling speech patterns and while most people saw his character as someone who spoke that way because he had a grown up finding it difficult to express himself, I just found his voice gimmicky.  It made Heath Ledger seem like he was “acting” instead of completely losing himself in a character as he did in The Dark Knight.  Jake Gyllenhaal was even guiltier of this than Ledger.  It felt as though he was playing a type instead of a character.  He plays the obsessive, whiny wife to Ledger’s gruff, stone-faced husband, and playing these types removes any chance that the two can have real chemistry with one another like all great screen couples do.  None of the other characters in the film, even those played by talented actresses like Michelle Williams and Anne Hathaway, can rise above the restrictions of the type they have to play and infuse their characters with any life at all.

            While the actors all underachieve, they are not done any favors by the story given to them.  On the surface, the concept of forbidden love between two men who cross paths over the years at the possible expense of their normal lives is an intriguing one.  However, the Academy-Award winning screenplay actually does the love story a disservice by making it completely unrealistic.  I know that in some films characters can fall in love very quickly, but in this film, Ledger’s and Gyllenhaal’s characters, Ennis and Jack, start their intimate relationship very abruptly with minimal development.  We do not really see the mutual attraction between these two people until they have already started getting busy in the tent, so when they inevitably drift apart at the end of the film, it feels unfortunate but not tragic. 

The homosexuality was a complete non-issue for me because love is universal across all genders and orientations, so when a homosexual relationship is portrayed poorly on screen, it deserves to be pointed out the same way that a poorly conceived heterosexual relationship would be.  While most critics probably legitimately enjoyed the film, I cannot help but think that some might have been afraid of a slap on the wrist from the PC police and went easy on the film because it was about a gay couple instead of a straight couple.  Would Brokeback Mountain have gotten the same reception if the two lovers were a male and a female?  We will never know, but I cannot help but feel that people would rate the film properly instead of praising it much more than it deserves.

Polar Opposites: Doctor Who and The Wire

            Albert Einstein and Kim Kardashian.  America and North Korea.  Men and women.  These comparisons can all be defined as “polar opposites,” two people, places, or things that share basic superficial qualities yet otherwise could not be more different.  Over the past week or so, I have been completely lazy and just sat around in my sweltering apartment watching two television shows that I have come to realize as polar opposites: The HBO program The Wire and the BBC programme Doctor Who.  Before I go into detail explaining why these two shows are so different from one another, I would like to start with their similarities.  Both are critically acclaimed television shows in the English language that have body counts too high to concern ourselves with.  Now comes the fun part.  I am going to list the five most important reasons (in no particular order) why Doctor Who and The Wire can be considered television’s polar opposites:

 Portrayal of Reality

This is the most obvious difference on the list, because while The Wire portrays a world as steeped in authenticity as any television show ever created, Doctor Who throws all concepts of reality into the loo.  I mean, for God’s sake, it’s about an immortal humanoid alien who uses a telephone booth to travel across all of space and time, encountering thousands of different planets and creatures along the way.  If The Wire had a character that was an alien, it would be the greatest “jump the shark” moment in television history.  The term “jump the shark” would have been renamed “cap the alien.”  Doctor Who takes the audience to all of these planets, but none of them, not even present-day Earth, can match the veracity of the world portrayed on The Wire.  The characters on Doctor Who do not have to concern themselves with the minutiae of everyday life with all of the aliens running around, yet one can argue that the characters on The Wire are in worse shape because their problems cannot be contributed to beings from another world.  They only have themselves to blame for the decay of their city.


Portrayal of Violence

Both shows contain a lot of violence, yet their portrayals of the violence could not be more different.  In Doctor Who, characters can die in all kinds of ways, but almost all of them leave very little mess.  Even when one race of aliens wears human skin as a disguise, when these creatures remove the skins, there is no blood.  Instead, it just looks like they are simply taking off their clothes.  By contrast, every death on The Wire is gruesome and brutal and, most strikingly, every death is shown to have a noticeable effect on another character.  Not every death in Doctor Who is important.  It seems like there are so many, that I can imagine that as a rite of passage, all wannabe actors in Britain must have a death scene in an episode of Doctor Who before they can move onto the next step of their careers.  Sure, some deaths resonate with the characters in Doctor Who, but on The Wire, every single death, even if it takes place off-screen, provokes a strong emotional response from at least one character, and eventually, every character in the show becomes hardened and cynical due to the rampant violence.  Doctor Who remains fun even in the face of a massive death toll.

Details

As I briefly mentioned before, one of the most striking qualities of The Wire is the show’s maniacal attention to detail.  In almost every episode, a character explains a process of some kind, whether it be legal procedure or how to operate a complex wire-tapping device or explaining the inner workings of how to run a mayoral campaign.  Everything has to be explained in detail to the point that it almost becomes a flaw of the show.  The audience has to retain so much information that it’s no wonder that this show had such a small audience.  Most people just want to sit back and escape into another world and not have their world thrown in their face, and that is where Doctor Who enters the picture.  The show cares so little about attention to detail that there is never a clear explanation of how the Doctor’s time machine actually works.  We see him pulling levers and pushing buttons, but it is never explained what any of those buttons and levers are for, they’re just there and they help him travel through space.  The writers of Doctor Who realize that if they try to explain the details of time travel and how the machine works, none of their viewers will understand or care, so they choose to ignore these big details and just expect the audience to play along.

  Pacing

Critics of The Wire have accused the show of being too languidly paced for mainstream audiences to enjoy, and while they are correct in stating that the show does move along at a modest pace, this actually helps the show instead of hindering it.  Creators David Simon and Ed Burns have said on many occasions that they consider each season like a novel, and novels are inherently more slowly paced than films or other television shows, but what novels and a show like The Wire may lack in pace, they gain in character development and world creation.  No show in the history of television has had as many incredible characters as The Wire.  In fact, it is hard to single out a poorly-drawn character from the dozens that populate the show’s universe.  In the vast Universe of Doctor Who, only the Doctor and his companions are given the same level of character development, but that is not necessarily a detriment to the show.  While The Wire is very deliberate in its pacing, Doctor Who is equally furious and lightning-fast in its pacing.  Every episode involves characters in high-pressure situations (usually the end of the world/universe) and a race against time to stop whatever malevolent force is threatening the existence of Earth.  In each season of Doctor Who, over the course of 13 or 14 episodes, there are roughly eight to ten different times where creatures are threatening to destroy the world or the universe and the Doctor always saves the day.  In the Wire, a problem might not even get solved over the course of a 12 or 13 episode season.

Tone

While the difference in each show’s portrayal of reality is most obvious, tone is the most striking and all-encompassing quality that indicates how these two shows truly are polar opposites.  First, Doctor Who is a family fantasy show (even though there is a lot of death), so there are little to no sexual references and the worst word uttered on the show is “hell.”  By contrast, The Wire is a gritty crime drama in which the characters use every bad word under the sun and take part in nearly every R-rated act one can think of such as drug use, homosexuality, graphic violence, adultery, and the list goes on.  Another tonal difference between the two shows that strikes me is how humor is used.  Both shows can be very funny but the tone of the humor in each show is completely oppositional to the other.  Doctor Who’s humor is very cheeky and whimsical while the humor in the Wire is very cynical and dark.  A third key difference in tone is the usage of music on each program.  Doctor Who makes great usage of score throughout each episode, manipulating the viewer’s levels of tension and excitement, while the Wire uses very minimal non-diegetic sound and the vast majority of scenes have no music at all, instead choosing to task the actors with conveying the appropriate tone of the scene.

I enjoy both of these shows greatly, and though I think when I measure them up against each other, The Wire is a better television show than Doctor Who, but both are equally enjoyable, even though they are polar opposites.  I could pompously attribute my enjoyment of both of these shows to my sophistication as a viewer of entertainment, but I think that it actually indicates that I, along with everyone who watches television, am truly blessed to have the choice to watch and enjoy such diverse programming instead of being one of those moronic vessels that watches “reality television” all the time.

They Got It Wrong: Anchorman

Welcome to They Got It Wrong, an weekly series where I look at films over the years that have either received too much or too little praise from critics and audiences and attempt to argue why the consensus is wrong.  More often than not, I will be examining films that are overrated by critics, but I will also attempt to give some respect to films that may not have received it on initial release.  The entire history of cinema is fair game, so expect to hear me talk about films that came out when even movie studios saw 3-D as a gimmick.  The first film I will be examining is the one that has given me the most grief from my peers through the years, the 2004 comedy Anchorman.  I remember seeing it when I was on vacation in New Jersey with my mom and brother and hating it, but I figured it was because they did not like it either, so I decided to give it another chance after taking so much ribbing in school (it worked for Dodgeball). Almost a year later, I saw it again with about twenty or thirty people who all loved the film, and I realized that I was mistaken the first time: Anchorman is awful.  

And yet, the film was both a critical and financial success, garnering a 63 rating on Metacritic and a user rating of 7.1 out of 10 while grossing 84 million dollars domestically from a miniscule 26 million dollar budget.  Almost everyone I know absolutely loves this film and cites it as one of their favorite comedies, and on the surface, I can understand where they are coming from.  The film has so many elements that should work.  The producer, Judd Apatow, had already been an instrumental part of three beloved TV shows (Larry Sanders Show, Freaks and Geeks, Undeclared) and with the release of his directorial debut, The 40-Year-Old Virgin the following year, he would go onto become the biggest name in film comedy.  First-time director Adam Mckay was a long-time writer for Saturday Night Live and would go on to direct Step Brothers, one of the funniest films of this or any generation.  The cast was first-rate and up-and-coming, with stars such as Paul Rudd, Steve Carell, Vince Vaughn, and the lead, Will Ferrell, who had just finished a legendary career at Saturday Night Live.  The premise was promisingly zany and original.  A parody of chauvinistic 1970s' newscasts?  Completely out of left field!  

Alas, none of these supremely promising elements contribute to a cinematic comedy experience worth a damn.  This film is messier than the NBA labor situation.  There is no semblance of a coherent narrative, and the film is 94 minutes of letting the actors improvise and hoping something sticks to the wall, and unfortunately, none of these incredibly talented comedians comes away unscathed in this film.  Will Ferrell as the lead seems to operate under the notion that smugly gliding through every scene, preening for the camera, and talking in a different voice is hilarious.  On the contrary, it's rather insulting to the viewer's intelligence and, most damningly, it's lazy.  The rest of the cast indulges in similar mugging with the exception of Steve Carell, who as dim weatherman Brick Tamland goes in the complete opposite and aims for over-the-top earnestness and naivete but actually becomes a vacuous black hole of humor, believing that saying something that makes absolutely no sense in the scene is somehow funny.

The one funny scene in the film is probably its big centerpiece: the epic street fight between all of San Diego's news teams.  It maintains a wonderful balance between absurdity and reality, and the cameos by Luke Wilson and Ben Stiller as anchors for other stations are fantastic.  This scene would have been great as a sketch on Saturday Night Live or Funny or Die, the website Ferrell and McKay co-founded a few years after this film.  However, once the fight ends, any momentum the film had built up in that brief amount of time came to a screeching halt as we returned to Ferrell and company mugging for the camera.

Of course, all of this would have been forgiven if Anchorman had followed the golden rule of comedy: it has to make the viewer laugh.  The only time I laughed out loud was during the aforementioned fight scene, and the rest of the time, I found myself looking at my watch wondering when the film was going to end.  

I am going to cite Step Brothers, the third McKay-Ferrell collaboration after Talladega Nights, as a film that is in many ways similar to Anchorman, but is a much more pleasurable viewing experience because it made me laugh until I could not laugh anymore, and then it made me laugh some more.  Both films have obnoxious premises with ludicrous protagonists and rely heavily on improvisation from the actors.  But what makes Step Brothers much more successful than Anchorman is the sincerity of the performances from the films leads, Ferrell and the great John C. Reilly.  Anchorman is a very cynical film filled with cynical characters, and while that can work in comedy (see: early Woody Allen), more often than not, it's condescending to the audience, and I feel that is Anchorman's greatest crime. The film is too in love with its premise to bother creating characters we can both laugh at and laugh with.  No character establishes an emotional connection to the viewer, and therefore, he or she has no investment in the eventual fate of Ron Burgundy.  Comedy cannot solely rely on gags for it to be funny (which is why The 3 Stooges does not hold up well).  What films like Anchorman fail to realize is that character development is not just important in drama, it is equally important in comedy as well.  A character can do crazy things and spout humorous lines, but without a narrative arc, those jokes are rendered irrelevant. 

The Truth about Bieber

Last Wednesday, with absolutely nothing better to do, I decided to watch the pre-show for the ESPY awards to see which athletes and famous people would show up.  While some of the sports world’s finest, such as Aaron Rodgers, Dirk Nowitzki, Ray Allen, and Jimmie Johnson showed up, the only person any of the broadcasters could talk about was not an athlete at all.  Sure, he had won MVP honors at the NBA Celebrity All-Star Game, but that was not on merit, but because the only people voting were 13-year-old girls.  Of course, I am talking about the biggest recording artist on the planet right now, seventeen year old walking hair product advertisement, Justin Bieber.  I found it absolutely stunning to see the likes of Hannah Storm, Erin Andrews, and Colin Cowherd bow at the altar of Bieber and throw all notions of objectivity to the wayside.  The way these professional broadcasters talked about him, one would have thought that Barack Obama was attending the event, but this unapologetic idol worship of this diminutive pop star got me to thinking about Justin Bieber, and I found myself asking this question: how could someone who so obviously lacked elite musical talent become the most popular recording artist on the planet?  This is a question that requires so much analysis and research that it could fill an entire book.  What is the impact this notion has on our society?  What is the significance of the fact that grown adults are obsessing over a child?  Is Justin Bieber the right person to serve as a role model for children?  All of these questions and countless others merit discussion, but none of them are really concerned with what made Justin Bieber so popular in the first place: his music.

            I decided to attempt to objectively listen to some of Bieber’s most popular songs, both recorded and live, to understand why so many teenage girls fanatically follow his every move.  Of course, I understand that I might not be the best person to judge Bieber’s merits as an artist.  I am a 22-year old male with a preference for classic rock and rap, so my taste in music does not reflect that of Bieber’s target audience, but I feel that my knowledge of musical forms that I have accumulated over the years can contribute to building an informed opinion of his work.  Also, it was just over ten years ago when I was the age that Justin Bieber’s fans are now, that I was listening to the likes of N’SYNC and the Backstreet Boys, arguably Bieber’s late-90’s equivalents from a popularity perspective.  However, after listening to some of Bieber’s biggest hits, I found that my initial judgment was in fact correct: he truly lacks extraordinary musical talent, or even average talent for that matter. 

In all of his songs, he uses auto-tune, the increasingly abundant crutch that many artists today lean on to correct their pitch to the right key.  However, what Bieber and other artists fail to realize is that while auto-tune might technically correct pitch, it removes the aspect of music that allows it to profoundly affect its listener: emotion.  Auto-tune makes the artist sound more robotic, as though he or she is merely singing in the style of a young pop ingénue instead of inflecting the song with true emotion that allows the listener to associate a feeling with the music. 

For example, the hit single “Never Say Never” is supposed to be a rousing motivational anthem encouraging the listener to follow their dreams and not give up.  However, the way Bieber sings, the message comes across as hollow because the auto-tune removes any semblance of conviction from Bieber’s voice, and the message of perseverance ultimately rings hollow. 

But a recording of a song can only measure the caliber of the artist to a certain extent.  What separates the ordinary artists from the extraordinary ones is their ability to perform live, and Justin Bieber’s skills in this department are not even average, they are undoubtedly abhorrent.  Even with auto-tuned microphones, as I watched several YouTube videos of him performing live, it became clear that Mr. Bieber even lacks the primitive ability to carry a tune for three minutes.  Yes, he occasionally hits a note on pitch, but the vast majority of the time, his pitch is excruciatingly flat, though judging by the cavalcade of cheering tweens in the audience, I seem to be the only one who notices something wrong.

Since Justin Bieber became a star back in late 2009, I have heard plenty backlash among my peers who share the same opinion of his talents as I do, but the media has failed to produce even one solitary voice of dissension against Mr. Bieber.  The broadcasters at the ESPYs should have made him a footnote and kept the focus on the athletes, but much like the minds behind the NBA Celebrity All-Star game, the only things that the brass at ESPN saw when Bieber decided to attend the awards ceremony were dollar signs.  His appearance on any talk show or at any arena brings extra money and, more importantly, ratings to anyone who can procure the pleasure of his company.  He can walk on stage without saying a word, and people of all ages will turn into teenage girls. 

But the idea that the media views him as a cash cow obscures the true reason that it avoids criticism of him, one that I can understand, even if I do not agree with it.  The real reason that the media does not criticize Justin Bieber’s talent is because he is a seventeen year old kid.  His youth makes him critic-proof because nobody wants to be the person who calls out a child for their lack of talent.  Adults would find it unfair to be so hard on him, and kids would just think it was wrong to criticize their idol.  For the media to cop out like this exposes a double standard.   An artist who is of age, like Britney Spears or Fergie, can be criticized for making bad music or having a bad live performance, but Justin Bieber cannot be accused of the same mistakes because of his age.  In all fields, as people climb the ladder to the top of their professions, prepare themselves for a greater level of responsibility and the criticism and increased focus on their every move.  Since Mr. Bieber is at the top of the music world right now, why should he be treated differently than a CEO of a Fortune 500 company?  We should be more critical of him because his level of exposure is so high, and yet the media has retreated from its responsibility as the dispensary of truth.  Hopefully, when he actually becomes an adult in five years and loses the safety net of childhood, critics will reveal their true feelings about Justin Bieber and recognize him as just another wannabe musician without the talent to stay at the top.

What Happened to Tom Hanks?

Last weekend marked the release of Tom Hanks’ newest starring vehicle and sophomore directorial effort, Larry Crowne.  While some people were excited by the prospect of Hanks and Roberts teaming up for a romantic comedy, it turns out that very few people were actually interested in seeing it.  The film garnered mediocre reviews and less than mediocre box office its opening weekend, grossing only $13 million over the holiday weekend while the latest Transformers sequel earned the equivalent of the entire GDP of Botswana.  This paltry showing from Hanks would not have seemed possible ten years ago, when Hanks was the king of Hollywood.  Throughout the 1990s, Hanks battled Tom Cruise for the title of biggest movie star on the planet, and while Cruise’s films made more money, Hanks’ films were not just financially successful, but critically beloved as well.  His consecutive Best Actor Oscars for Philadelphia and Forrest Gump are well-documented and cemented his legacy forever, but Hanks was also nominated twice after that in the same category for Saving Private Ryan and Cast Away.  However, since the release of the latter film eleven years ago, Hanks has failed to garner an Oscar nomination and his filmography has been much more inconsistent.

            From the release of Catch Me if You Can on Christmas Day, 2002 to the current release of Larry Crowne, one could argue that the only film that truly lived up to Hanks’ untouchable run in the 90s’ was 2010’s Toy Story 3.  However, that film was the finale to one of the most beloved trilogies of all time and the first movie in the series since 1999, so the anticipation by fans and critics was enormous.  Other than that, the other films that he starred in which made money were not very well received by critics and audiences equally.  The aforementioned 2004 double bill of Steven Spielberg’s The Terminal and the Coen Brothers’ The Ladykillers were both underwhelming from both critical and financial perspectives, garnering Rotten Tomatoes aggregate scores of 60 and 55 percent and earning 78 and 40 million dollars respectively in domestic box office.  While one can consider The Terminal’s gross respectable, one has to factor in the 60 million dollar budget and the film’s other marketing costs, and all of a sudden 78 million does not seem that impressive.  The other film starring Hanks that was released in 2004, Robert Zemeckis’ animated Polar Express, grossed $180 million on a 150 million dollar budget and received a middling critical average of 56% and gained notoriety for its motion-capture techniques that made all of the characters look like soulless, murdering robots. 

For the first time since Hanks won his second Oscar, he was beginning to receive criticism for his performances.  While one can’t help but admire him for wanting to stretch himself and play honest-to-god “characters,” the reason that Tom Hanks became America’s Biggest Movie Star is because he was the next Jimmy Stewart: a true Everyman who could occupy the soul of the collective American spirit while never seeming to take himself too seriously.  When he played these types of roles, Hanks was unstoppable.  In films such as Apollo 13 and Saving Private Ryan, he was able to make people in abnormal situations relatable to audiences.  If we could ask for anyone to lead us through the horrors of World War II, it was Tom Hanks because we could look into his eyes and believe that everything was going to turn out alright (though in that movie, things didn’t turn out great for him).  We believed that no matter what his character did, the audience would go along with it because Hanks was something that actors are not supposed to be: sincere.

After 2004, the next role he took on seemed to be a step back into the kinds of everyman heroes he portrayed in his prime.  Based on the international bestseller, The Da Vinci Code was supposed to establish Hanks as the thinking-man’s action hero, and while the film made over 200 million dollars in the U.S. alone, many people were critical of the film, Hanks’ performance (as reflected by its pathetic 25% RT score) and, most deservedly, his hair.  Watching the film, it seems like Hanks is disinterested in the journey of his character.  The audience should want Robert Langdon to solve the mystery, but Hanks does not carry the same swagger and charisma that he would have had he played the role a decade earlier and for the first time in his career, one can argue Hanks phoned in a performance.

The next year, 2007, Hanks took the title role in the Aaron Sorkin-scripted Charlie Wilson’s War, and on the surface, it would seem like a home run: Hanks was playing a charismatic and capable authority figure with a wry sense of humor opposite fellow Oscar winners Julia Roberts and Philip Seymour Hoffman in a true-life story.  It was positioned as an awards contender and seen as Hanks’ best shot at a nomination since Cast Away.  Unfortunately, while the film received an 81% aggregate Rotten Tomatoes score, it was unable to make back its $75 million budget and the only Oscar nomination for the film went to Hoffman for his supporting turn.

The next year saw the release of Angels and Demons, Hanks’ second go-round as symbologist Robert Langdon, and it was an even bigger disappointment than The Da Vinci Code, grossing little more than half that its predecessor did domestically from a $150 million budget.  With this and the box office disappointment of Larry Crowne, it seems like Hanks, at 55 years old, has lost the desire to play truly compelling characters.  His passion for moviemaking is still alive and well as evidenced by his involvement in several critically acclaimed HBO miniseries, but it just does not appear that he wants to really involve himself in a role like he did in Cast Away.  We can only hope that his next two projects, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close and Cloud Atlas represent a return to form for the actor America could once proudly say was one of its finest.

The Job-Search Paradox

Like many fellow recent college graduates, I have begun the long and arduous search to find a job.  Some seek out professions that will lead to a career while others are looking for part-time gigs just to have a little cash to spend.  I fall into both categories at the moment, though more of my focus is on the latter right now.  My feelings about the process can be summed up thusly: I hate many things in this world (bros, politicians, the New York Yankees to name some), but there are very few things I hate more than the job searching process.  Not only is it tedious, but, more importantly, it is also relentlessly humiliating.  I understand that rejection is a natural part of life, but walking into a potential employer knowing that will be the last time I ever see them is borderline unbearable.

One would think that bars couldn’t hire enough bartenders right now.  The country may be in a recession, but the bar business is taking advantage and making a profit off of everyone’s misery.  Whenever I walk into a bar or a nightclub at peak hours, customers are barreling over each other just to get to the bar to order rounds for their buddies and the bartenders look they wish they could grow two extra arms to serve everybody.  So one would think that the demand would be very high for someone who wanted to work as a bartender like myself, especially in the summer, when college students don’t have homework to worry about and they can instead go out drinking every night without having to suffer the consequences the next morning (obviously, many people do this during the school year anyway, but discussing the behavior of college students isn’t worth the skin on my fingers).  However, over the last month since I graduated from bartending school, I have probably applied to about a dozen places, only one of which I would venture to describe as “high-end,” and not one of them ever called me back for an interview or a job offer.  Of course, one might think I am just bitter about nobody wanting me to work for them, but in reality, the problem is much bigger.  The entire process is inherently flawed due to a paradox in the job-searching process.

I have looked at countless Craigslist ads searching for bartenders and about 75 percent of them ask that applicants must have a certain amount of experience before considering sending in an application.  This is quite problematic because due to the lack of jobs in this economy, it is remarkably difficult to find work. So the question becomes: how can a company seeking bartenders ask for significant experience when they aren’t willing to hire anyone and give them experience in the first place?  I feel that there are a couple of reasons that this paradox exists.  The primary reason is laziness on the part of the employer.  The less work the boss has to do, the better his or her job is.  They don’t want to hire someone who is passionate but green because that means that they would actually have to train their employees how to do their jobs better and make their business more efficient (in other words, make more money).  What potential employers fail to realize is that the “experienced” people that they hire had to start somewhere.  They were given the opportunity to gain experience so that when they wanted to move on to another job in the same field, people would be more willing to hire them.  Unfortunately, businesses like bars are unwilling to take a chance on someone who is a quick and eager learner who might have more potential to excel in that position, which leads to the other key issue for potential employers.  They do not want to hire someone who could take their job down the road.  Nothing scares employers more than ambition because they do not want to be passed over by someone younger and smarter than them.  Bartenders may have bubbly personalities, but there are very few bartenders who have much intellectual substance to them, and therefore, they do not pose a threat to the management team.  They just stand behind the counter and pour drinks for \people with money to burn looking to wind down after a long day, no questions asked.

Of course, this entire diatribe could be seen by some as coming from the perspective of someone who thinks too highly of himself and is just resentful that nobody else feels that way, and I understand that.  I am angry at the process and cannot understand why getting a job as a bartender should be so difficult.  I am bitter that I may have wasted a large amount of money on bartending school for no reason at all.  But this issue is way bigger than me.  People all over the country feel the exact same way that I do about the process, yet we keep on attacking it until someone finds room in his or her heart to hire someone who is actually capable and willing to learn on the job.  While I understand why some jobs would require a certain level of experience in a particular area of study (i.e. medicine), the vast majority of jobs are not intellectually taxing enough to pass over people who lack experience in that field.  The worst thing that can happen to an employer who hires someone inexperienced and trains him or her to do the job correctly is that the boss can fire the employee if they do not meet the basic requirements of a functional worker.  The business will not suffer in the long-term, and that should be the most important concern: long-term profits are the chief reason that businesses of all sizes stay open for many years.  Whatever happened to giving someone a chance?  These shortsighted employers seem to forget that they were once in the same position as the people walking through the door asking for a job (unless they were beneficiaries of nepotism).  Unfortunately, employers only look at the piece of paper that lists your job history and make their decision solely off of that instead of analyzing the potential employees as human beings.  Then again, that would be too much work.