The Donz Knows

Let me begin this post saying that I have seen a few episodes of the Nickelodeon animated series, but I don’t consider myself a ‘fan’. I think the animated show is mildly entertaining, and well animated with some great philosophical content to boot. That’s the end of that, now on to the movie.

The short review is this: the movie is nowhere near as bad as the critics have called it out to be. Could it have been better? Absolutely. And what ‘angers’ me is the fact that more time wasn’t devoted to the one element that we all know now as fact can make movies better: story. I understand that this movie is meant to be only Part 1 of this story, but not enough time was spent developing the characters and underlining the motivations as to why they do what they do. Then again, that is the danger of adapting TV shows into movies. The shows have the luxury of unraveling the story chapter-by-chapter over many episodes, giving you a lot of background story to appreciate the characters thoroughly. In movies, you have a limited span of time to explain to the audience the nuances of your story. Things that worked well, however, were the faithful representation of the characters with their animated counterparts. Here’s where there have been a lot of criticisms from the press involving “racism” issues.

Dev Patel as Prince Zuko

The simple answer is that the people who pull the racism card are people who haven’t seen the TV show and don’t know where the story is going. (Although part of this blame does go to M. Night Shyamalan for not taking the time in the movie to explain the motives clearly.) Firstly, if you scrutinize the movie well, you’ll notice that the entire cast is EXTREMELY diverse. There are whites, blacks, asians, indians and persians. If you listen to story closely, they speak of NATIONS. Just like in the real world, there are different ethnicities in different nations. Some prevail more than in others. Ang (whose proper asian pronunciation is “Ahng”–the movie got that right) is WHITE in the show. The reason why they picked the kid in the movie is because he’s a DAMN GOOD martial artist. Prince Zuko? Also white. I’m not entirely sure the reasons behind picking Dev Patel to play Zuko, but the main argument that critics have is that white casting was done for the “good roles” and dark-skinned toned casting was done for the “bad characters”. This is completely stupid because a). Zuko isn’t “bad” and b.) If they cast Patel as Zuko, then his entire family must also follow a particular ethnicity for it to be proper casting. (Also, if you look closely, the fire nation has a LOT of mixed races. Not to mention, Ang’s master was BLACK.) I don’t know what would motivate people to call this movie out on racism (perhaps something happened behind-the-scenes that I’m not aware of), but this movie is FAR from racist. In fact, it’s extremely well balanced.

Noah Ringer as Aang

The story, however, I’m not going to be so fair about. It needed to be ironed out a little more. Whether it’s the fault of the original show (which, again, isn’t anything to rave about) or poor adaptation, I can’t say for sure.

If you have kids, take ‘em to watch it. They’ll have fun. If you want to study what NOT to do on an action/summer flick, go watch it. Otherwise, rent the DVD.

3.5/5 ‘elements’

So this Friday is the LAST episode EVER of one of TV’s best shows: Battlestar Galactica. It’s hard to believe that five years have passed since I first started watching this show! I was still in college, and I remember my friend Roll and I would sit in front of my computer monitor and watch as many of them as possible back-to-back.

There were definitely some “coño” and “EAHH RAYO!!” moments that kept us awake all night discussing what had happened. I think the writers, producers and the talented cast have brought what otherwise could’ve been another mundane Sci-Fi (or should I say ‘SyFy’) show, into something truly special. When you have women, specially Moms, come up to you and say “You like Galactica too?!”, then you know that this isn’t your run-of-the-mill geek entertainment.

One of the things that appealed to me from the very beginning of the show, was the strong female cast that the show presented. Starting with President Laura Roslin (played with warmth and charisma by Mary McDonnell), we see how this character evolves from a scared, reluctant school teacher, to a sometimes steely decisive leader capable of surprising the audience at any given moment. Then we have Starbuck, (played by Katee Sackhoff) who is from the get go, a tough-as-nails, unrelenting force of nature that matures and grows over the series. We still have yet to find out ‘what’ she is exactly… :-/

I have organized a “Last Frakkin’ Party” event for those who wish to share the experience that is the last episode of BSG. It will be held at Duffy’s Deerfield Beach, on Friday, March 20th from 8:30PM to 12:01AM! Feel free to invite whomever you choose, but please RSVP to the following e-mail: thedonz@me.com. This way I can guesstimate the amount of people we’ll have at the event, and I can pass that info along to the Duffy’s staff!

On a final note, I wanted to honor a good friend of mine, who recently had the privilege of being an extra on the surprisingly good movie, “Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist”. Here is some of Carlos Aquino’s (The Aquine) best work:

The Aquine: Dancing Falmel from The Donz on Vimeo.