Mamma Mia! Or in modern terminology - O.M.G. What were they thinking? They being the people who actually put forward the money to make this movie. The stage production was bad enough. Yes, there is some semblance of a story - albeit not very interesting - but the semblance is just not good enough. Three minutes into this movie, all I could think about was wishing I was watching “Rent” the movie.

That’s how bad it was.

Sophie (Amanda Seyfried) is getting married. She wants nothing more than her father to give her away… But who is her father? She has never known. Donna (Meryl Streep) kept a diary the year she was pregnant with Sophie. After Sophie finds the diary and reads it, she discovers that one of three men (Stellan Skarsgard, Pierce Brosnan, or Colin Firth) could be her father. So what does she do? She invites them all disguising the invite from Donna.

When all three men show up, Donna is thrown for a loop. She’s happy alone. Why did all these men have to come back? Chaos ensues and eventually each man steps up as Sophie’s father. Or at least they all want to give her away. What more could a girl ask for?

Only a Swedish group would set a tale on some remote Greek Island where everyone walks on rooftops and has one lone strand of hair dangling in the wind. But that’s not the problem. The problem is that the story is an excuse to sing the songs and after the first line you forget what exactly you are watching. Some strange music video? A commercial for deoderant? What? The songs are telling their own stories that are so far from the plot of the film that you forget exactly what you are watching.

Abba created many danceable tunes. “Dancing Queen”. “Fernando”. “Money, Money, Money”. (One horrible memory of the film is actually listening to the lyrics of that song. No other song so perfectly captures the fact that a second language speaker wrote it. Abba has succeeded in using every single word in the English language that rhymes with “money”.) And who can forget the ballad “The Winner Takes It All”?

I wish I could forget it. Meryl Streep standing on a cliff in probably the worst costume she’s had to wear since the get-up in “Death Becomes Her” that makes her head look like it’s twisted around three times.

I love Meryl Streep. I think she is probably one of the greatest actresses of all time. But whoever was the cinematographer on this film– Did he have some sort of vendetta against her? Her make-up looks harsh and she’s shot at all the wrong angles. Even her singing sounds horrible in this film and she’s supposed to be a trained singer.

I’m forced to talk about make-up because there really is nothing else to say about this movie. Julie Walters is campy. Christine Baranski has a good voice– too bad she wasn’t Donna. Pierce Brosnan can’t sing to save his life (although with looks like that it doesn’t matter). Amanda Seyfried was recently named one of the up-and-coming actresses under 25. And all I have to say to that is really? Really?

The best part of the movie is when Julie Walters is standing on a small boat getting ready to row herself out to sea. The water is calm and peaceful. Walters goes back and forth, back and forth trying to get her balance and eventually falls out of the boat. Simple comic genius right there, folks.

Save your money. Save gas. Do not drive to see this movie. If you have a hankering to see it, for God’s sake, wait until it comes out on Netflix. Let it at least come to your mailbox and then, only then, are you allowed to make the trip to pick it up.

Thank you for the music silence.

Rachel Oliva writes for the movie blog Reel Spice.

photo credit: David Boyle

Video: The new Harry Potter trailer, released yesterday.

The first airplane fatality.

Old-school alcohol advertising: “You know good bourbon, Dick.”

[Courtesy: Gawker, Moviefone, N.Y. Times]

Mainstream media’s repetition and sensationalism can make it hard to find news worth reading. So, from millions of web publications, we’ve culled the best non-traditional and/or non-corporate news sites and organized them according to our own dubious proclivities for your enjoyment. Our advice: read religiously, rinse, repeat.

1. Kottke - A link extravaganza with a healthy dose of annotation. Founder Jason Kottke has one of the sharpest eyes around for spotting compelling news and oddities, making his decade-old blog a must-read.
2. Gawker - What was once a site exclusively for “Manhattan media news and gossip” has become a bit more national in scope, while retaining its signature biting wit and playful contempt for the New York Times.
3. The Morning News - Humor and general-interest essays with a Gotham sensibility. Accompanied by daily-updated links to big or interesting stories around the Internet.
4. These Today - 5 daily (or mostly) “unmissable” stories from across the web, arranged from “highbrow” to “lowbrow.” Which sort of makes us uncomfortable; but hey, it’s their thing, and they do it well.
5. Salon - Former Salon Editor-in-Chief David Talbot has labeled the site a “smart tabloid,” but careful thought pieces and reporting on American politics cause us to overlook any tabloid tendencies.
6. National Journal - Read what they’re reading: the National Journal has been the go-to publication for Washington insiders for over 30 years.
7. Daily Kos - Staunchly liberal political blogging on steroids, powered by readers-turned-contributors.
8. FP Passport - Readers of Foreign Policy magazine, foreign policy enthusiasts, and anyone who loves a good slice of irony will enjoy the magazine’s blog, Passport.
9. The Daily Dish - The Atlantic Senior Editor Andrew Sullivan’s popular blog. Think of it as Kottke for the politically-inclined.
10. Boing Boing - In the occasional instance it fails to live up to its tag line as “a directory of wonderful things,” at the very least Boing Boing is a directory of random things, which we think holds its own merit.

photo credit: jenny downing

Some people intently watch ESPN to see which players will be drafted to their favorite teams, while I anticipate the time when Merriam-Webster adds new words to the dictionary (I am an utter word nerd and proud of it).

The last word party kicked off in 2006, when Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate^® Dictionary, Eleventh Edition was filled to the brim with over 100 new words. The “new” words are only two years old in dictionary years, but our language changes so rapidly, that it’s possible that these words are already “so last year.”

A little sampling of the new words on the block (as of 2006):

Technology and Computers
Mouse potato
Ringtone
Spyware

Science and Medicine
Avian influenza
Biodiesel
Gastric bypass

Pop Culture
Soul patch
Supersize

Entertainment and Leisure
Labelmate
Ollie
Wave pool

The Human Condition
Drama queen
Unibrow

International
Manga
Qigong

Business and Industry
Agritourism
Big-box

Nature
Aquascape
Coqui

Miscellaneous
Polyamory
Sandwich generation

There are some words on the list that I feel should have been added before ’06: “unibrow,” “drama queen,” “soul patch.” I’ve used the word “drama queen” for quite some time (flashbacks to middle school years when every girl was a drama queen and passing notes).

It makes sense that “supersize” was added at the same time as “mouse potato” and “gastric bypass.” The definition for “gastric bypass” should really read, “see ‘supersize’ for more info.”

Anyway, the real treat for me is reading this sample list of new words and building a picture of the person in ’06 (and maybe even now) that these words define. So here we go: In ’06 the “mouse potato” tried to delete his “spyware” while playing solitaire on the computer and changing his “ringtone.” After taking a break from his computer, he visited a nearby “wave pool” filled with “drama queens” that were mocking his “unibrow” and “soul patch.” He immediately left the “wave pool” and filled his car up with “biodiesel” before stopping by a local fast food joint, where he “supersized” his meal (which years later would cause him to need a “gastric bypass”).

Alexis Siemons writes for The Hatchet’s The Word blog.

photo credit: Nathan Borror

How Facebook killed the college yearbook.

A brief history of the flag lapel pin from Robert Redford to Richard Nixon to Barack Obama.

Video: Unlike this, what may legitimately be the world’s biggest drawing.

[Courtesy: Vanity Fair, The Economist, Time, Engadget, Trend Hunter]

Martian soil hospitable to plant life, asparagus in particular.

Ivy League education “a glorified form of vocational training.“

Water in photographs: touching, heart-wrenching, awe-inspiring.

About ten minutes into “Wanted,” I realized I wanted out. Sadly the one novel concept from Mark Millar’s original comic book series—bending a bullet’s path with equal parts telepathy and slider pitch—wore quickly, while the rest of the movie flirted with the line separating derivation and plagiarism.

As the story goes, one fortuitous day led a fraternity of weavers-turned-assassins to discover binary kill orders woven into their cloth. So far, so good (if a tad hokey). A few hundred years and one sex kitten (Angelina Jolie, in top form) later, The Fraternity still takes its orders from a magic loom, but have developed a host of tricks to train themselves and kill the bad guys, and this is where post-”Matrix” moviegoers will start to squirm.

Virtually no bullet, let alone gun sequence in “Wanted” escapes the now ubiquitous treatment of slow down, stop, reverse, pan, dissect, rotate: the Wachowski brothers had nothing on this (except originality). Every conceivable way of viewing a bullet in flight is exploited here, making “Wanted” come off as slow-motion pornography for the ammunition inclined. Did I mention some of these bullets even unsheathe mid-flight? Hot.

“Star Wars,” too, makes an appearance. Apparently Han Solo in a chic casing of carbonite is just the look director Timur Bekmambetov was going for when he concocted The Fraternity’s uncannily similar healing pits.

Not the most egregious swipe (I’ll leave that distinction for the bullet treatment), but certainly one of the strangest, comes when slacker-turned-Golden Boy of Death, Wes (James McAvoy), discovers his father’s penchant for bombs fashioned from live rats; and soon the movie is awash in the critters. Anyone who has seen “The Departed” will instantly recognize the symbolic link, yet I think Ralph from “The Simpsons” said it best: “The rat stands for obviousness.”

Indeed, if one flaw had to be singled out, a lack of subtlety and innovation must be it. This is a movie constantly looking over its shoulder at great cinema gone by, but one which never faces forward to make a mark of its own.

photo credit: Universal Pictures

“Shut the hell up”: a look back on Keith Olbermann’s career, and wondering if he might be changing news as we know it.

The perils of early adoption (in this case, regarding the iPhone).

A concert hall service remembering the late Tim Russert, with video.

[Courtesy N.Y. Times, The New Yorker, Subtraction.com, Washington Post]

The U.N’s Integrated Regional Information Networks (IRIN) has reported that inhabitants of the low-lying Carteret Islands, off the coast of New Guinea, have called for urgent assistance to help them combat the effects of climate change.

Seas levels have risen by an estimated 10cm in the past twenty years, and the rising waters have wrecked agriculture on the atoll by poisoning the soil and splitting islands in two. Inhabitants say they are fast running out of food including the staple of their diet, coconuts.

“Food gardens and coconut groves have been destroyed and children are going to school hungry,” Ursula Rakova, chief executive officer of Tulele Peisa, a local NGO advocating for the rights of islanders, told IRIN.

“It is extremely difficult now for food crops to grow on the atolls. Salt water seeps through the land making it impossible for food to grow,” Rakova said. “Breadfruit is seasonal and not as plentiful as it was 30 years ago and fruits are getting smaller in size … bananas struggle to grow in the salt-inundated land.”

Academics and climate researchers have long warned of the effect rising sea levels, linked to global warming, are having on low-lying islands such as the Carteret Atoll with reports appearing in the New Guinea newspapers The National and the Post-Courier in 2005.

The atoll’s 1,500 inhabitants are fast seeing their home disappear and have asked the world community to come to their aid. IRIN reports the islanders now fear a large tidal wave will completely inundate them, wiping them from their homeland forever.

“Carteret islanders are victims of climate change and rising sea levels,” Rakova said, “and industrialised nations have to support my people in their transition from the atolls to mainland Bougainville.”

“[We] need financial support and Tulele Peisa needs K800,000 [$280,000] to build 10 family homes on the land donated by the Catholic Church of Bougainville.”

The Papua New Guinea government responded to the islanders’ plight by allocating US$700,000 to assist in relocation programs in 2007 however this was “not enough to cater for all the atolls,” said Rakova.

The Carteret Islands are Papua New Guinea islands located 86 km (53 mi) north-east of Bougainville in the South Pacific. The atoll is a scattering of low lying islands in a horseshoe shape stretching 30 km (19 mi) in north-south direction, with a total land area of 0.6 square kilometers and a maximum elevation of 1.5 m (5 ft) above sea level.

The group is made up of islands called Han, Jangain, Yesila, Yolasa and Piul, and were collectively named after the British navigator Philip Carteret who discovered them in the sloop Swallow in 1767. As of 2005 about one thousand people live on the islands. Han is the most significant island with the others being small islets in the lagoon. The island is near the edge of the large geologic formation called the Ontong Java Plateau [source].

For further information see: Global warming effects on Carteret Islands Part 1

Global warming effects on Carteret Islands Part 2

Rich Bowden writes for The Hatchet’s Worldview blog.

Image: Carteret atoll as seen from the air. Credit: NASA

Obama’s conservative supporters.

The fate of reading following the Kindle.

How Google has scrambled our brains.

[Courtesy The New Yorker, The New Republic, Columbia Journalism Review, The Atlantic]