Christmas TV Movies Special: Christmas Twister

So, over Christmas I was staying with my parents and they don't have cable, just an antenna. So there are only so many channels to watch.

Which is the best explanation I have for how we ended up watching two ION Television Christmas specials. I wish I had some better reason, but they were on and that was it.

And I like to review movies, so here you go.

Christmas Twister

It was 11 p.m. when we caught the first few minutes of this one, and I have to admit that it was at least compelling (or terrible) enough that we stayed up until 1 a.m. watching it because we had to finish it.

That's about the best thing I could say for it.

About halfway through the movie, we were still blissfully under the assumption that it was made in the early 2000's, maybe even the late 90's. The basic plot is that global warming (I'm pretty sure nobody used the term climate change) has created a new weather pattern, which is causing tornadoes to hit Texas outside of tornado season.

Our hero, Ethan (Casper Van Dien), is the only scientist who believes this is real, and he predicts that on this particular day in December they're going to get a series of deadly tornadoes. The cocky weatherman (Richard Burgi) is in climate change denial and isn't having it. He broadcasts a report that they're all clear and everybody can get back to whatever fun they're having.

Of course, Ethan's wife (Victoria Pratt) is the newscaster for the same station, and so he keeps trying to convince her to broadcast a warning to save people and you've got the standard Jaws "we don't want to create a panic over nothing/this is a business decision/this guy is just a crackpot who wants to be right" storyline going on as well.

All of this, especially the half-cocked global warming is going to kill us all/global warming isn't real conflict, would have been acceptable and maybe even a little forward thinking if the movie had been ten years old.

But no, it was brand new. We were watching one of the first airings. I'm certain it was rushed into production after the more damaging than normal tornado season in 2011. But everything about it was rushed and half-done, and there was a lot of inexplicable stuff in there. How does a girl so stupid she's never heard of the Fujita Scale (if not by name, at least having heard of an F3 or F5 tornado) but has an internship with a tornado expert and storm chaser like Ethan? I get that she's an audience surrogate character designed so that the experts can patronizingly explain what's going on, but couldn't they have done that with an intern at the news station instead of an intern at a science lab?

In addition, the second she asks the dumb question of "what about an F6" you know the climax of the movie is going to be an F6 tornado, and I don't feel like I'm spoiling anything by telling you that. I'll just also say that after they describe it as "like a nuclear bomb" the destruction that it causes makes no sense whatsoever.

Also, there's a point in the climax where everybody is freaking out that the tornado may turn and head for a major power plant. It does, and then nothing happens.

Who in the world thought this script was ready for production? There's a dog that wanders through the plot for no reason, the teenage daughter wants to have a redemption arc but doesn't manage because she wasn't that bad and doesn't really end up doing anything that good either. Some of the actors do the best with what they've got to work with, including Pratt and Burgi. Some of them are better left unmentioned and made me want to hurl the remote at the television.

The effects are mostly terrible, but par for the course with this kind of made for TV disaster movie. The logic and physics that they ignore are ridiculous, and not even so ridiculous that they're funny.

If you're a fan of laughing at bad movies, then you might want to give this one a shot. But I don't think it'll even live up to the standards of bad disaster movies. I have a hunch it's going to be largely forgotten, even by enthusiasts. It's value is mostly in a "I can't believe I watched that" kind of thing.

Since this was longer than I planned, I'll get to the next movie next week instead of combining the two. Something to look forward to! /sarcasm

Doctor Who: The Snowmen

One of my new Christmas traditions is to sit down for Doctor Who on Christmas evening. When this first started, it was always very exciting and the episodes were fun and a bit epic and always ended the day on a great note. But lately, ever so slowly, that sense of fun and satisfaction at the end of the Christmas special has started to fade. It's the popular thing to gripe about, but back in the years of David Tennant, the Christmas Special was one of the highlights of the season. It wasn't just another episode, it was actually special. I haven't really felt that during the Matt Smith specials, if I'm being honest. A Christmas Carol was good, and probably one of the best episodes of that season, but I wouldn't put it near the level of Voyage of the Damned or The Next Doctor.

And it's really just been diminishing returns ever since. The Doctor, The Widow, and the Wardrobe was alright. It was at the level of a pretty good episode, but it just didn't do much for me. These days I have trouble even remembering much about it. Why weren't Amy and Rory around? Was that when the Doctor was dead? I really can't remember because it had that little impact on me.

So I went into watching The Snowmen in a weird place. On the one hand, so many years of enjoyable episodes made my expectations high. On the other, the previous year had been a let down so they were a bit low. Having a new companion appear made me excited for the possibilities, but after how much I enjoyed the first appearance of Oswin Oswald it didn't feel like much of an introduction, even if she wasn't the same exactly.

There are things I loved about The Snowmen. While they were vastly underused and underwritten, Madam Vastra, Jenny, and Strax are interesting additions to the pantheon of the Doctor's associates, though it was a bit confusing to have characters that previously had only been in one episode being treated like they were the Doctor's closest friends since that's where he retreated when he was "retiring."

I loved Jenna-Louise Coleman, I think the actress is really talented and I liked the way she took a few of the expected moments and turned them on their head. Once Matt Smith decided to stop moping and brooding, he was fun as usual. And there were plenty of quotable lines and moments that made great gifs on tumblr.

The problem really comes in a few ways. First, the moping and brooding. I don't know what it was about it, but I never understood The Doctor's relationship with Amy anyway. When Ten and Rose are separated at the end of the second series, my heart broke because I understood completely what they meant to each other. When Ten leaves Donna behind, I was furious at the writers, but I could completely see why he was so upset that he lost himself for a while and wanted to travel alone again. I understood his feelings over the loss of Astrid more than I really could get behind him deciding to give up everything he's been doing for a century because he couldn't see Amy anymore.

In the end, that was the problem for me. The Doctor has a long series of companions he's traveled with, sometimes only for hours, sometimes for years. They all leave eventually, one way or another. They walk away, he leaves them behind, they die, he erases their memories, they get stuck in an alternate universe. Sure, it happens a lot, and it's tragic every time, and that has to wear a guy out. But he just finished having this problem during the last set of specials before Matt Smith took over. Then, it was believable. Now? It comes across as pouting.

There were also too many loose ends and half finished threads in The Snowmen. It was just an hour that tried to pack three hours worth of content so they just chopped out anything that might have really gotten into any depth. What was the point of the father not being able to connect to his children? Why did it matter? What the heck was Clara's deal with being a bar maid and a governess and what does it actually say about her character? Why is Madam Vastra the gatekeeper for The Doctor anyway? Why does he even talk to her if he's so ticked off at her and again, WHY is he hiding out in this particular place if he's retiring? And why did he change the desktop theme in the TARDIS again if he's retiring? Almost everything he does only makes sense if you apply the "well, because it gets the plot going" band-aid.

And for the love of Gallifrey, why does the show think they need to actually have somebody say "Doctor Who?" in every episode? Seriously, stop it. Immediately.

The Snowmen themselves weren't threatening, and they felt like a villain that had been done before though I can't quite place where. The climax was not particularly interesting to me, and while the mystery that the episode sets up regarding Clara/Oswin is interesting, I'm almost in the mood for another companion that's actually a normal person. You know, a shop girl or a medical resident that was in the wrong place at the wrong time, or a temp that wants more out of life. That kind of thing.

In general, I will still watch Doctor Who and I still love it. But I'm just not excited about the new season anymore because The Snowmen just didn't do much of what it was supposed to do. It was alright, but it would have made a better mid-season filler episode than a Christmas Special.

Speaking in tongues

Sometimes I wonder if I'm actually speaking English.

But it's weird, because it's not like the people I'm talking to don't actually hear anything I say, it's like they only hear a few key words and the rest are something different.

So maybe I'm speaking English but I'm not actually using the words I hear myself using? I have no idea how that would work, but I'm not sure what other conclusion to draw some days.

For example, I spent a good five minutes explaining a particular issue I've been having with sleeping. I thought that I was being very exact about the problem, which was basically sleep paralysis and vivid dreams.

He seemed to understand, made a few notes, and then a few minutes later made an offhand comment that made me suspect that he actually thinks I'm sleep walking. What I was describing as dreams, where I thought I was very clear that these things weren't real I just thought they were, he took as me saying they were actually happening.

In a general context, this would be kind of funny. But half the time it happens to me when I'm dealing with medical issues, and the other half it's usually a problem at work. So while I normally would laugh it off if it happened with a friend, it's starting to really bug me.

Some days, like today, I think it's an issue that we're not really teaching communication skills in school anymore. Because nobody is being taught a set of rules or a certain way to behave in a professional context, everybody is just kind of making it up as they go along and then nobody understands each other perfectly.

Other days, I think it's that nobody wants to listen because they're too self absorbed anyway. Or maybe that they don't know what they're doing, so they ignore any indication that a problem is something outside their expertise so that they can fit it into what they know and deal with it, even if that means they're not actually dealing with the problem at all.

Personally, I've always been a big fan of trying to use the exact right word at the exact right time. I once spent twenty minutes arguing the difference between "can" and "may." So when I try so hard to carefully choose my words and then somebody doesn't really read or hear what I say, I don't really know what to do. I've already considered what I was going to say and sifted through my vocabulary for the best set of words, so how can I rephrase it?

Most of the time, if somebody is upset or offended and it was because they didn't really comprehend what I meant, I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and try to figure out how we can communicate. But it's started to happen so often lately that I'm back to the original thought: am I not speaking English or something?

Because if I'm not and I think I am, I think it's a sign of something serious and I should probably tell somebody about that.

You know, if I could figure out how.