30 Rock

Even though The Simpsons was my first and favorite foray into the world of non-children's television, 30 Rock always feels like my first real sitcom. Oh sure, I watched reruns of Seinfeld, Everybody Loves Raymond and, uh, The Nanny in syndication, but 30 Rock was the first I actually followed while it was airing. It was just about the funniest live action TV show I'd ever seen in my life. I grew up loving cartoons (still do!) and steadfastly refusing to really watch any non-cartoon TV shows going into high school. With this in mind, of course 30 Rock was going to be the show to hook me, because it's probably the closest a show can get to being a cartoon, minus the animation.

Obviously I have a lot of nostalgia about this show, which is why tonight is kind of bittersweet. After 7 seasons and 136 episodes, 30 Rock is finally hanging it's slogan bearing trucker hat. Originally a critical and ratings failure, it's hard to believe the show was not only able to hang around for such a long time but be consistently really funny, give or take a season four. Not only that, I would go so far as to say that it's final season has been one of the strongest runs of television in the past couple of years, up there with season two of Community and season five of Mad Men.

Moonrise Kingdom (2012)

The other day a friend of mine and I were talking about the most recent work of Quentin Tarantino, Django Unchained. Unlike most people and critics, I really didn't like the movie that much. I thought it was good, and there were a lot of performances I liked, but I found it kind of boring. Since Kill Bill onward, Tarantino's movies have had one major theme running through them; the oppressed (women, Jews, African slaves) taking revenge on their oppressors (men, Nazis, southern plantation owners). There's nothing wrong with that theme, in fact it's one that can make a hell of an interesting movie. The problem is he attacks it from the same angle every time, with a bloody-as-hell, guns ablazing comeuppance at the end. The most interesting parts of his recent output for me was when he strayed away from that to try other stuff (Shoshanna's plot during Inglourious Basterds being the best example), but at the end, it goes back into the same stylized violence.

My friend pointed out, very smartly, that the same criticisms could be made about Wes Anderson, a filmmaker who's most recent movie, Moonrise Kingdom, was one of my favorite movies last year. That's somewhat true, in so far as that he has a very distinct style that he doesn't deviate too far from. The difference, however, is the material he tackles using said style. Unlike Tarantino (who, for the record, is responsible for some of my favorite movies), Anderson's movies continue to be similar stylistically but differ far more in their material then Quentin's. Tarantino is painting the same bowl of fruit in several different styles while Anderson is painting different objects the same way.

Anderson, as a filmmaker, is very much like a painter. Meticulous and detail oriented, he stages his movies in a way that goes against the typical realist style. His characters often look directly into the camera, as if they are speaking directly to the audience. He often employs a narrator, almost like a placard next to a work in a museum. He acknowledges the fourth wall, but doesn't necessarily break it. Sometimes this style doesn't work, and can make his stories seem cold and calculated. But at his best, like in The Royal Tenebaums, it can make the audience connect in an incredibly strong way. If I had to hold up a film that presents itself as the best example of Anderson's style and how it works, I think I'd choose Moonrise Kingdom.

Synecdoche, New York (2008)

I'm going to start this a little pretentiously, but considering the film we're talking about today, I think that's appropriate. The original reasoning behind the Wicker Scale's grading method (which, I want to reiterate, is dumb) was to avoid having to give movies a grade. I hate grading movies because I feel as if it's kind of derivative and makes the conversation switch from "You gave that a B+??? It was totally an A-!!!" to actual discussion. I still felt like I needed some simple way of differentiating movies I liked and didn't though, so I came up with the scale.

The problem with it, besides everything, is that it still puts it on a binary. Every movie has to be "good" or "bad" overall. Some movies don't really fall into one of those two categories, like Synecdoche, New York. To be fair, I'm giving my opinion on this movie after only watching it once and this is a movie that just begs to be watched multiple times so every frame can be analyzed, so I may be missing a lot of the nuances that would definitively put the movie into the "good" or "bad" camp. But while watching this I couldn't decide if what I was watching was a brilliant, postmodern, surrealist take on death and our attempts to give life meaning or if it was nothing but self indulgent bloat too far up it's own ass to see the point.

Dexter's Rude Removal

If you lurk in the corners of the many fandoms revolving around cartoons, (which I really don't recommend) you are likely to find that each of them has some sort of "lost" episode attached to it. There's the ones that are outright banned, such as the infamous Pokemon seizure episode, and occasionally the episodes that weren't ever meant for airing, so the rumors say, but were instead made to distract the network from other things they wanted to sneak by and/or for the crew's own private enjoyment. These are usually just urban legends, like the supposed Spongebob episode where he dies, because realistically who would want to put the effort into making something nobody is ever going to see, especially back in the days before the internet.

One of the more infamous ones out there is an episode of the Cartoon Network show Dexter's Laboratory. Called "Dexter's Rude Removal," this episode was supposedly a super raunchy 10 minutes created by the crew with absolutely no intention of it ever getting on air. The most often cited source for this supposed episode was this forum post at Big Cartoon Forum by user TyphoidTimmy. According to him, Dexter's Lab creator Genndy Tartakovsy brought a copy of the short to Comic Con years ago, where he showed it after making sure everybody 18 and younger left. It's just THAT crude.

Pitch Perfect (2012)

About halfway through the 2012 comedy musical Pitch Perfect, the female lead Beca, played by Anna Kendrick, is talking to her love interest Jesse, played by Skylar Astin. Jesse wants to be a film composer/arranger and is trying to tell Beca why this means so much and the power music in film can have. Beca rolls her eyes, saying she doesn't really like movies because they are so predictable and she never seems to get to the end. It's a pretty clever, self aware moment in the movie, basically telling the audience to expect the happy ending forthcoming. There's not going to be any tricks, you all know it's going to end with a smile and a trophy, but that doesn't mean you can't enjoy the ride.

Unfortunately, pointing this out doesn't help if the rest of the movie is willing to stand up to scrutiny. It's one thing for a film to acknowledge it's cliches, but another entirely for it to transcend them. Telling us the labored nature of the setup only works if the punchline kills. Pitch Perfect, while a fun movie that would be perfect for catching on cable Saturday afternoon, isn't able to get there, though it does find itself awfully close at times.

Zero Dark Thirty (2012)

One of the most satisfying feelings in the world is when somebody receives a well deserved comeuppance. It's the basis of our legal system, the idea that when somebody does a bad thing, they deserve to be punished accordingly for it. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. As a result, it's one of the most common themes in media. We're taught it from an early age, with every Disney movie we watch where the bad guy falls to their death for their fight against the forces of good. It surrounds us every day, the idea of karmic punishment, the belief that bad things will happen to bad people. Look at Django Unchained, or Jack Reacher. The most popular movie of last year was called The Avengers. There is a show on TV right now literally called Revenge. It's a comfortable feeling, knowing that at the end of all things, those responsible for bad deeds will get punished. It feels right.

But what does it change? When a person is punished does it take back the bad things they've done? Does it make it all better, wiping the slate clean? That's what Zero Dark Thirty, Katherine Bigelow and Mark Boal's follow up to 2009's The Hurt Locker, is asking. It's hard to talk about this movie or go into it without some sort of opinion already formed because it's been picked apart endlessly for months now. It it pro-torture? Is it responsible to make a movie like this after the whole thing in Libya? How much of a partisan bias does the movie have?

If you do want to see this movie, however, I would really recommend disregarding all of that beforehand. Because this is not just about Osama bin Laden's hunt. It's about an angry country. A country so blinded by anger that they are willing to do whatever it takes to get that revenge, the karmic balance it's been promised has to exist. It's about the cost of that promise, if it was worth the damage it did on our souls. The brilliance of the movie is that it asks us this without giving us an answer.

The Great Mouse Detective (1986)

The other day we talked a little about the monotony of motion picture animation. This was especially true in the mid 1980s, when animation was a far more riskier enterprise than today. The golden age of Disney was over. The company hadn't had a real hit since 1967's The Jungle Book, their latest release, The Black Cauldron, was a box office bomb, and for the first time the company had real competition. Recently fired Disney animator Don Bluth had released The Secret of NIHM a couple years earlier to general acclaim and had just partnered with megaproducer Stephen Spielberg for his next movie, An American Tail. The company was in turmoil both inside and out.

What the company needed was a hit, a movie to restore confidence in it's animation department and bring in their next run of critical and commercial hits. Instead they got The Great Mouse Detective.

Ghost Mine

We all know ghosts don't really exist. Okay, maybe you are one of the people who do honestly and truly think they do, but at the very least we can agree that if ghosts do exist, it probably won't be proven on a cable reality show. The same goes for bigfoot, the Loch Ness monster, and any other paranormal phenomena. These are discoveries that, if found, would cause quite the ruckus. If the existence of ghosts, and therefore an afterlife, was ever shown without a shadow of a doubt it would basically mean so much that we assume in science is probably wrong. It would literally change the world.

Ghost Mine on SyFy isn't going to do that, but it might change some half-drunken late nights while channel surfing. To start off with, it's a show called Ghost Mine, and it's about a haunted mine. Even though we live in a golden age for TV, we also live in an age where reality programming is a thing. Ghost Mine is a mashup between two distinct reality subgenres; shows following hard working blue collar workers doing their thing (Deadliest Catch, Ice Road Truckers) and shows about ghost hunting (Ghost Hunters, Most Haunted). It doesn't do a great job meshing these two halves together either, making it feel like you're occasionally watching two different shows with two far different thesis, which is assuming Ghost Mine has a thesis to begin with, which is probably giving it far too much credit.

The Secret of Kells (2009)

In Disney's 1959 adaptation of Sleeping Beauty, a large emphasis was put on the art direction of the movie. The movie differed from the typical Disney house style, instead taking great inspiration from medieval art and tapestries. It was far more stylized, with a much sharper look when compared to, say, Cinderella. The movie is considered to be a classic of animation today, but at the time of the film's release it was a commercial failure. Disney wouldn't go back to making fairy tales for the big screen until The Little Mermaid.

Ever since then, American theatrical animation has looked kinda samey. Almost across the board animated features have roughly the same art style as everything that came before it. They don't look bad or anything, but it can sometimes be difficult to differentiate movies from studio to studio. There's a reason you grandma thinks every computer animated movie comes from Pixar; it's because nobody wants to deviate too far from the norm. Studios know that audiences expect their movies to look a certain way and straying from that path risks alienating them.

The Secret of Kells, a 2009 Irish-French-Belgian co-production, has much more in common with Sleeping Beauty then it does with most modern animated features. It's also kind of it's antithesis. Where Sleeping Beauty focuses on the more ornate aspects of medieval times (castles, princes and princesses, gigantic feasts), The Secret of Kells is much more interested in the natural, with a rather bitter view on the towers and walls Sleeping Beauty fetishized.

Wet Hot American Summer (2001)

I never went to a sleepaway camp as a kid. When I was little I went to our town's camp for a couple weeks every summer, and in middle school I would go to a theater camp I eventually would be a counselor for in high school, but those were all day camps. The only experience with an overnight camp that I have is second-hand stories from my cousins and my sister. But you don't need to go to camp to appreciate Wet Hot American Summer, though a familiarity with summer camp movies probably helps.

Along with Pootie Tang, which was released in the same year and is way better than it's reputation, Wet Hot American Summer is probably one of the weirdest comedies to get to theaters in the 2000's. A parody of movies like Meatballs and Indian Summer, Wet Hot follows the teen counselors, played by a cast clearly far older then the characters, as they navigate through their last day at Camp Firewood. The movie had a fizzling 30 theater run, where it made little money and was released to overwhelmingly negative reviews, but became a cult classic based on it's considerable pedigree. Much of the cast and writers come from the amazing MTV sketch comedy show The State, as well as appearances by lots of future comedy stars, including Paul Rudd, Amy Poehler, Bradley Cooper, Elizabeth Banks, Ken Marino, H. Jon Benjamin, and Christopher Meloni, who's not really a comedy star unless you think Law and Order: SVU is a wacky farce.

Director David Wain, who would later co-create Children's Hospital on adult swim, is in full alt-comedy mode here. Wet Hot American Summer was part of a wave in absurdest comedy films, movies with a heavy parody elements very willing to break from reality in service to the jokes. Austin Powers, Anchorman, and the Scary Movie series are all examples of this type of film, and it would be the prevalent form of Hollywood comedy until Judd Apatow and The 40 Year Old Virgin changed that. These movies tend to follow the Mel Brooks and Zuckers Bros. mode of comedy, where you throw everything at the wall and hope what sticks is stronger then what doesn't. They don't have an internal logic to them, everything is done with a wink and a smile. When done wrong, it's one of the worst type of movie out there, and if you don't believe me go watch Epic Movie. But when done just right the results are sublime, and Wet Hot is a great example of this.

The Golden Globes 2013: An Exercise In Pointlessness

Really, all award shows are pointless. Grammys, Tonys, Oscars, Emmys, all of that are all pointless. Winning any of those isn't a guarantee of quality. For fuck's sake, Crash won an Oscar, and the Grammys have nominated Nickleback six times. But even with that caveat, the Golden Globe awards are a special kind of meaningless.

Quickly, without looking on Google, tell me what movie won the Best Drama Golden Globe 10 years ago. How about five years ago? How about last year? Chances are your mind is blanking out. That's because absolutely nobody cares about the Golden Globes. With the Oscars you can at least say that people will remember them, or that a nominated movie will get more attention from John Q. Public. I'm betting a lot of people are going to be seeing Beasts of the Southern Wild now that the Oscars have given it a nod (and that's a great thing, because it's a movie well worth seeing). But nobody is going to be rushing out to watch Salmon Fishing In The Yemen because it got a Golden Globe nomination.

So why do we humor this show? Why is it broadcast nationally and then picked apart and dissected by the media for a day or two before it goes back to being forgotten? I don't know the exact reason, but I'm guessing it's because it's been around for long enough people consider it a tradition and because the awards it gives out only focus on the big stuff. No technical awards here. It's the product of our obsession with celebrities, where we are content just watching them get awards from the least essential arbiters of quality ever. Oh well, at least Tina Fey and Amy Pohler are fun to watch. Can they just host every award show ever?

Twilight Zone Sundays: "Living Doll"

We live in what's possibly the most progressive and experimental time for television ever. Thanks to the rise of cable and premium networks like HBO, TV is able to experiment with the form. However, back in 1959, there was a show already making television like no other. The Twilight Zone is possibly one of the best TV shows of all time, and it's anthology style makes it unique (Besides Alfred Hitchcock Presents, The Outer Limits, Night Gallery, Tales from the Crypt...okay maybe not that unique) in that every episode is it's own self contained story. Over 50 years after it's premiere, the show holds up incredibly well. So because this is my blog and I do what I want to I'm declaring Sunday to be the day I watch old Twilight Zone episodes on Netflix and do mini reviews. It'll be like my blog's Sabbath.

Why are dolls so scary to us? The creepy doll is a cliche at this point, with Child's Play, Poltergeist, Trilogy of Terror, Goosebumps, and many more all employing them at one point or another. The Simpsons even parodied it with it's amazing Treehouse of Horror segment "Clown Without Pity," which was directly inspired by The Twilight Zone episode we'll be talking about today, "Living Doll". Yet what is it about the idea of killer toys that's so frightening? Is it the fact they're so close to our children? That they usually are right smack dab in the uncanny valley? In "Living Doll," writer Jerry Stohl, who's ghostwriting here for Charles Beaumont, suggests an alternative explanation. We are afraid of dolls not because of what they are, but what they represent.

Rosemary's Baby (1968)

Okay, here's your word of warning: it's almost impossible to discuss Rosemary's Baby and Roman Polanski without talking about rape. Now last year we all learned this topic is a big trigger for people so if you maybe don't want to read a big fat essay about rape from somebody who's thankfully never had an experience with that and think I'm in way over my head then here's your chance to turn back. 

Roman Polanski has got to be one of the most controversial figures in film history. A Polish man born in France, he's without a doubt an accomplished and skilled director. Chinatown is a stone cold classic and I'd argue his Macbeth that he made for Playboy is one of the best filmed Shakespeare adaptations out there. Of course, his infamy in the pop culture landscape is due to different, darker reasons. In 1969 his eight month pregnant wife, Sharon Tate, was killed by Charles Manson's cult in one of the most high profile murder cases of all time. Nearly 10 years later, in 1977, Polanski allegedly drugged and definitely raped a 13 year old girl during a photo shoot. After pleading guilty, he fled to Europe where he's been living in exile ever since. He's still directing, and he's still pretty great at it, even winning an Oscar for The Pianist in 2002.

As a result of this, Polanski's been a figure whose work is incredibly hard to discuss without it eventually dovetailing into arguments on that case. Some allege that the girl was consenting and it was merely statutory. Others say that enough time has passed for him to be "forgiven" and allowed to come back to the United States. Myself, I don't claim to be an expert on the case or anything, besides what I've read here and there, but the fact remains that he definitely unlawfully and forcibly pushed himself onto this girl and then ran away before he could be convicted. Is bringing him back to the US and locking him up the solution? I don't know, I don't know if it's possible for there to be a solution to something like this. 

Despite his moral misgivings, and they are sizable, you really cannot deny that the man isn't a master filmmaker. His directing style is meticulous and detail oriented, so not a single frame of his films is ever wasted. The films he makes often have a psychological bent to them, and you can see that he clearly understands his characters intimately. Rosemary's Baby, his Hollywood debut and arguably his best film, is no exception to this. It's a masterpiece, beautifully acted and shot in a way that, although it has no jump scares, has an unsettling horror to it that lingers with you for hours, if not days, after watching. Part of the reason it does this because it taps into a very human fear, a fear that Polanski himself would exploit a decade later: the loss of control.

Freaks and Geeks

WARNING: SPOILERS FOR A 13 YEAR OLD TV SHOW
A lot of plot threats in the last episode of the 1999 cult TV show Freaks and Geeks don’t feel quite resolved, like Nick's feelings for Lindsay still hanging in the air and the future of Daniel and Kim's relationship. Hell, the last we see of Ken is him being thrown out of a disco. All fine for a season finale, but a little lacking for the cap to the whole damn show. The very last scene, on the other hand, is the perfect end to the series that I can imagine. Lindsay Weir is just about to leave for an exclusive academic summit she has been nominated for by her school. It’s an incredible boost to her transcript for college and a once in a lifetime opportunity, but she’s been ambivalent about attending. Her teachers and her parents have been telling her how great and important this summit is for her over the course of the episode. As she gets on the bus she looks back at her family.

“Hey Mom?” she says.

“Yes sweetie?” her mother replies, beaming.

Lindsay pauses for a moment before putting on a little smile. “I’ll see you soon.”

“Okay honey,” her mom says through tears.

Of course Lindsay never goes to the academic summit. She never even planned to. As “Ripple” by the Grateful Dead plays, she gets on the bus only to get out a couple stops away, where she meets up with her friend Kim and a minibus full of Deadheads. We’re not worried about her, we know she’s going to be fine. She’s a smart kid, and she’s about to have one of the best summers of her life, following the Dead on tour. She’s made her choice, finally thrown off the shackles and pressures she’s been feeling grow heavier and heavier on her. Her exchange with her mother so wonderfully captures a moment everybody has gone through with their parents. Lindsay knows she’s going to break her mom’s heart by doing this, and she wants to apologize, try to explain to them why the summit is wrong for her and why she has to do this, that she’s not the perfect little girl whose in the mathletes. She’s changed, or perhaps she’s been this way the whole time but hasn’t been able to throw off that label till now.

Looper (2012)

Time travel stories are difficult to pull off well. Explain too little and you get nothing but plot holes, explain too much and it turns into technobabble. Also hard to pull off: genre films intended squarely for adults. You can quote as many "Pow! Zing! Comics Aren't For Kids Anymore!" articles you want but the fact is the majority of sci-fi, fantasy, superhero and horror movies are aimed squarely at teenagers. Which isn't to say those movies are bad or anything, but they are usually fairly shallow.

In fact, Hollywood doesn't make any movies for adults period. Besides Argo, I can't think of many studio backed movies with major release dates that were tailored for an adult and weren't comedies. Ever since Star Wars, the blockbusters are for the teens while the dramas are saved for awards season. That's fine, there's good and bad examples of both, but it can get monotonous after a while.

So it's nice to see when a movie mixes up that dynamic just a little. Looper is one of those movies. I have no idea how it ever got past pre-production, not because it's bad or so crazy to be plausible or whatnot, but because it is just not the type of movie a major Hollywood studio makes. It forces you to pay attention, is surprisingly dark, and is filmed and staged like no other sci-fi film to come out of the studio system. It's also probably one of the best films to come out last year

Free Money (1998)

There are two types of "so good it's bad" movies. There's the ones that clearly has a film crew behind it trying to make the best movie they can but just lack the talent/self examination to do so (Troll 2, Plan 9 From Outer Space, The Room). Then there are the movies that are trying to be bad, knowing their audience is going to be stoned college kids watching their movies on Netflix that the filmmakers create while giggling to themselves (Snakes on a Plane, all the Leprechaun movies, anything Tommy Wiseau has done after The Room). The difference between the two is usually that the former are discovered years after they came out as some weird anomaly while the latter force how wacky they are down our throats.

With these choices in front of us, I have no idea which camp Free Money falls into. It's labeled a black comedy, it's clearly trying to be funny. Yet it's also trying to be the type of arty action thriller people in the 90s thought was really cool. It desperately wants to be Pulp Fiction or Fargo. Instead it's a poorly structured, fairly dull movie.

Except for one thing. The thing that turns Free Money into an unbridled gigglefest, that makes the stupid into the sublime, that uses a taser on Charlie Sheen to punish him for farting in Church, which clearly needs to be on some sort of AFI list. That force of nature is none other then Marlon Brando.

Doc Martin

More like Doc Fartin'

Urgh.

URGH.

This fucking show. This stupid fucking show.

To anybody out there who watches Doc Martin and enjoys it, I completely understand why you do. It's not bad...well actually okay it is bad but it's not aggressively terrible or anything. It's not Two and a Half Men. But my reasons for not liking this show are twofold:

1. It's boring, repetitive, smug, repetitive, has an aggressively unlikable mean character who we are supposed to be sympathetic with, and did I mention it's repetitive?
2. MY ENTIRE FAMILY HAS BEEN HYPNOTIZED BY IT AND HAVEN'T STOPPED WATCHING IT FOR WEEKS

Bernie (2011)

When you see a movie that has Jack Black in it (with the exception of King Kong I suppose) you know just what you're going to get. Some singing, some overconfident bragging, him doing that thing with his eyes, happy ending, we all go home.

This thing

This isn't a criticism either. I like the guy, for the most part. But he's typecast. The last thing I would really expect from a Jack Black movie is, well, Jack Black NOT being Jack Black. Out of all the potential candidates for the "comedian to SUPER SERIOUS ACTOR" transition I would not have bet my horse on Mr. Black. So it was a pleasant surprise to see his performance in Bernie be such a delight!

The Wire, Seasons 1 & 2

Speaking of depressing HBO shows...

In the last decade or so television has evolved in a way where it's now able to tell stories in a way that simply wasn't possible beforehand. Yeah we have our Honey Boo Boos and our Real Housewives churning out trash TV, but we also have shows that are reaching levels of ambition that match some of the best films out there, both from a thematic and a production standpoint. Off the top of my head, you have;

• Breaking Bad
• Mad Men
• Game of Thrones
• Deadwood
• The Sopranos
• Community
• Louie

I could go on but then we'd be here all day. You get the point though, TV has grown up almost across the board. But as great as all those shows are, and believe me they are great, none even come CLOSE to being as ambitious as The Wire.

Mission Statement: What is The Wicker Scale

Last year sucked hard for me.

This is a weird way to start of a blog that's going to be mostly movie and TV reviews, but I think it's an important thing to know before we start this. Besides, like most things created after New Years this will probably disappear in a month or two. But yeah, last year was horrible for me. To name a few things, I dropped out of school. Well, that's being generous. I flunked out of school because I was so depressed and confused I didn't leave my dorm room all day and instead marathoned through The Sopranos, and even though it's an amazing show, it's main thesis is essentially "people won't change no matter how much they want to because it's easier not to." Not exactly the best thing for a depressed kid to watch.

Oh, and I also, you know, changed my gender identity and have been going to therapy about it and came out to my parents but not many other people in my life know about it. So that happened.

Anyway, the point is that last year sucked. I had to leave school and move back in with my parents just in time for all my friends from home to move out, get a job at a crummy convenience store that doesn't give me enough hours to justify me working there, and watched a whole lot of Fraiser.

Actually, I watched a whole lot of things, really. In the past year I probably haven't sat on my butt and done nothing but watch movies and TV shows this much since, well, 2011. The thing is, despite all this, nothing came out of it. I watched stuff, maybe posted a tweet about it, and that's it.

Well this year I'm going to change that. I'm super cereal about this. So I made this little blog to do so. And a REAL blog, not a Tumblr I use to pretend I write stuff but really just use to repost a picture from Ghost Trick or something. On this blog, I state that I will review EVERYTHING that I watch out of a screen. It doesn't even need to be super analytical or anything, just something that says "Hey, I watched this, and here's an opinion nobody cares about but at least I'm keeping it REAL."

You may be wondering "why are you calling this The Wicker Scale?" Well, as long time viewers of my old deleted blogs (i.e. nobody) know, The Wicker Scale is something I use to differentiate the good from the bad instead of something boring like 4 stars or 10/10 or something like that. Basically it's asking whether the movie in question is closer to the original 1973 version of The Wicker Man (interesting, original, entertaining) or closer to the 2006 remake of The Wicker Man (boring, derivative, awful to watch).

Is that a confusing and flimsy basis for evaluating a piece of art? Yes! So onward and upward I say!