often seen in the street without a hat

It was a travesty, as I had expected. The underlying film was mediocre, which was better than I had expected. There were several parts I actually laughed at, and I did like the plot part of the cool/outsider positions being reversed now that teen culture has moved on. BUT IT WAS DREADFUL. Mostly it was just very dull.

( Terrible Jump Street film. )

* I love shots with peoples heads together like that, I have about a million screenshots of Paddy and Tucker doing it, and several thousand of Cybill and Maryann.



( Peter DeLuise has joined twitter. )

I started to write a post about the 21 Jump Street travesty at work, and emailed it to myself. Then I found that my work email blocked it for containing excessive profanity.

The thing that got me out of bed this morning was that my phone wouldn't play the Hobbit trailer, and my laptop was in the living room. I quite liked the trailer, but I everything I thought about it has been pushed out of my head, because the same page linked to the trailer for the 21 Jump Street film. (No caps and exclamation mark for the film. Those are for proper JUMP! Street.)

I haven't been following the development of the film, because I knew I would just find it wrong and upsetting. In the snippets of interview I have been unable to avoid seeing, Jonah Hill has revealed he knows nothing of the true heart of JUMP! Street, seeing it as some sort of source material to be funny about. The trailer continues this exposure of igrnorance. There are some major errors that are revealed through even a cursory watching of the trailer.

JUMP! STREET IS NOT A MINDLESS COMEDY. It is a tough, sometimes gritty show that showcases hard-hitting issues and emotional turmoil. There are funny bits of it, because the actors are awesome and cannot help but be hilarious a bit of the time. The underlying themes, though, are deadly serious. I could make a humorously dismissive list of apparent messages: drugs are bad; killing people is not on. Booker is a fucking dick; it is perfectly normal for grown adults to inveigle their way into the lives of teenagers in order to betray their trust, and the appropriate response when said teenagers discover this duplicity is relief. All true. But also: sometimes you will make errors of judgement, and people might die; it is hard to form relationships when your work is so intense; the death penalty is a horrible tragedy and yet you can't stop it; young people are preyed on; family relationships can be more toxic than nurturing; Booker is a fucking DICK.

JUMP STREET IS NOT A PUNISHMENT FOR INCOMPETENT POLICE OFFICERS. Admittedly, it feels a bit like a punishment for Hanson in the first episode, but that's because he wants to be a proper beat cop like his father, and feels like a personal failure. His arrest goes awry, but because he was a bit too earnest and young to handle it, not because he's incompetent. The JUMP! Street programme is an ELITE squad of baby-faced cops. They are the best of the (baby-faced) best. They have a great success rate!

JUMP STREET IS NOT A TWO MAN SHOW. It was a beautiful, beautiful ensemble. The Captain was on their side. Jenko, the first captain, was overtly so, he was hip, hep, groovy, and much cooler than the kids. When Fuller took over it seemed at first that he was going to be much tougher and against them, but he proved to be firm but fair, and to care just as much for the officers in his programme as Jenko, despite their very different methods. There are four main officers, Hanson, Penhall, Ioki and Hoffs. Hanson and Penhall do get more than their fair share of attention, but they all work in different configurations, and get their own episodes to carry. And oh my god Hoffs is a brilliant character.

PENHALL IS NOT THE UGLY COMIC RELIEF. DOUG PENHALL IS AMONG THE MOST BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE EVER TO HAVE LIVED. Happily, the film people have realised that no-once could ever match the glory of actual Penhall and Hanson, and the two guys are Jenko and Schmidt. Unfortunately, I think that Jonah Hill might intend them to be Penhall and Hanson-a-likes. THEY ARE NOT. What they are is a shorter, fat, unattractive man, and a taller, slim, attractive man. Both of whom are apparently incompetent idiots.

I still am going to go and watch it when it comes out (which is not until March, according to imdb). I think that it is sufficiently different that I won't think that it is being wrong about JUMP! Street, just that it's not trying properly, and there will be enough hints at the actual show to make me fondly reminisce. The taller one's name is Jenko, which is the first Captain's name, so maybe there will be a plot at the end where he finds out that his Dad was the first Captain, and starts to want to live up to it. Also, in the trailer there are some shots which are identical to the shots from the pilot episode where Hanson shows up at school in his car for his first ever assignment and starts a fight with Reggie.

(But it's going to be a terrible film. Even if I didn't know how much Jonah Hill doesn't get JUMP! Street, the trailer shows that it's going to suck.)

(I quite liked the Hobbit trailer. Bilbo looks quietly hopeful. Gandalf looks a bit weird around the face. The sets look amazing.)

In 2005 I went to Connotations with Jen, Alice, Liz and Sarah. (Other people were there too, but the car was filled with us.) Jen and Alice, I think it was, wanted to do the fandom secrets thing that was then not quite as overdone as it can be now, and had a little bit of wall for it. I found them recently, and went through and picked out my favourites - basically the ones for which I know the fandoms. Lots were from SG1 and SGA, which I don't know so haven't scanned.

( 10 postcards to characters. )

Yeah. It's ages ago now.

Taken from just about everybody: Look at your LJ "interests" list. If you have fewer than 50 interests, pick every fifth one. If you have between fifty and seventy-five interests, pick every seventh one. If you have over seventy-five interests, pick every tenth one. If you have fewer than ten, pick all of 'em. List them on your LJ, and tell everyone exactly what it is about these things that interests you so much.( I only have about 35, and these aren't what I would call my main ones. )