We went and saw John Carter last night, and while I was a little disappointed, I don't think it deserves the fate it was handed as one of the biggest flops (in the financial sense) in history. Going in, I wanted to feel that director Andrew Stanton would clearly be the victim of studio honchos who felt that calling a movie "John Carter" rather than "John Carter of Mars" or "A Princess of Mars" was a wise marketing decision. Someone on my Twitter feed said that'd be like renaming Raiders of the Lost Ark "Henry Jones". Anyways. The movie had three separate beginnings, never a good sign and not one that helps vindicate the director, and was that Michael Chabon I saw sharing the screenwriting credits? And having just watched 4 seasons of The Wire it was a little jarring seeing Officer McNulty being, uh, whoever Officer McNulty was trying to be. Though it was fun seeing Julius Caesar and Marc Antony reunited- not to mention Posca! I do want to say that the Tharks were pretty much Tars-tastic. And they were pleasantly faithful to the source material, as pulpy and muddled as it was, so really, I guess I should just be thankful they didn't cast Rosie O'Donnell as an adorably spunky sidekick to Tarzan. I mean, John Carter. Speaking of flops, I just read Nathan Rabin's My Year of Flops. As well as his memoir, The Big Rewind. My Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast pals are all friends with him and always borrow (ie steal) his ideas. So I thought I'd go to the source and read his actual books. Who would have guessed that the guy who came up with the term Manic Pixie Dream Girl led such a shitty life? Not shitty in the filled-with-terror-but-also-crazy-adventure way that Jeannette Walls describes in The Glass Castle. Just shitty in that he was so very angry and had no one on his side and thus wound up in mental hospitals and group homes. The sad thing to me is that not even Nathan is on Nathan's side, or it seemed to me anyways after I finished the book and couldn't really think of a single redeeming thing to say about him- not because there are none, but because Rabin himself seems to have gone out of his way to avoid pointing any out. Here's another flop, starring me! Someone took this video at work. The star was supposed to be the truck driver, who is a new trainee and also the brother of the guy taking the video. You know, take a video of the kid brother at his new job to show grandma kinda thing. I guess this would be an outtake.