Walter White Wednesday 84

"And a Heisenberg in the Christmas tree!"

Greetings, Breaking Bad fans!  The "Walter White Wednesday" portion of this blog is about to go on a holiday hiatus to allow me to take care of end-of-semester things at the college, celebrate the holidays with my dedicated and exciting (rowr!) co-author, and work through the final proofreading check of Wanna Cook? prior to spring publication.  (Remember - we're available for pre-order at Amazon, Books-A-Million, and Powell's!)

But before I go away for a few weeks, let me say a heartfelt "thank you" to everyone who has read the posts, forwarded them along, commented, tweeted, +1d, and encouraged us.  Writing a book is an intense and often lonely job, even with two of us doing it.  Thank you for reminding us to take time to go look at the sunset, eat something that we didn't have to unwrap, and your kind, kind words.  The book isn't quite done yet, but it's soclose!  Of course, we'll be posting more about publication events and where to find it (and us!) after the New Year.  And the blog will continue - I'll still be posting about movies and TV here throughout the holidays; I'm just taking a Breaking Bad break from the Wednesday posts until the start of the New Year.

As the year winds down on the calendar, it's amazing to look back on where Vince Gilligan & Co. have taken us.  Walt's saga is over, but the lessons he taught us live on.  Many people have found unexpected wisdom and humor in Breaking Bad - here are a few of the resulting articles.  (Please note that I accept no responsibility for anything that happens as a result of following the guidelines in any of these.  I'm just the messenger.)

• Online relationship advice a la Heisenberg (or how to avoid becoming "The One Who Knocks")
• Walter White's journey as a model for entrepreneurs (or why picking the right business partner really, really matters!)
• Public relations lessons that can be learned from Breaking Bad (or why Tuco would be a lousy blogger)
• Stuck on a baby name?  Try Breaking Bad for inspiration! (or why "Ding!Ding!Ding!" is still better than anything cribbed from Twilight)

Of course, Breaking Bad has an official Christmas gift shop for all of your holiday needs.  (Guess it really will be a "blue Christmas"!)  Really - everything from an A1A air freshener to cuff links to some Los Pollos lunch bags can be yours!  Click here and happy shopping!

A Miss & A Hit

Well, they can't all be good.  Kick-Ass 2 tries hard to capture the bright-eyed, sharp-edged joy of the original, but falls short.  I'll admit - I liked the first one more than I thought I would and much of that was due to the performance of Chloe Grace Moretz as the deadly pint-sized Hit Girl. While the movie had a level of violence that many would find disturbing, especially involving a young girl, Kick Ass had a certain glee to it that carried the film beyond just being a series of fight scenes.

At its best, the sequel is meh.  Perhaps it's that what once was fresh is now stale.  After all, we've seen plenty of teenage superheroes and that's what both Hit Girl and Kick Ass have become in this film.  She's no longer a cute child who we want to somehow protect from this violent life and he's no longer a nebbishy nerd type whose desire to do good gives us sympathy.  The film also suffers from some extremely lazy writing - way too many people are in the film solely to give someone else a reason to exact revenge on the wrongdoers and John Leguizamo is criminally underused.  Mind you, I think Mark Millar (who wrote the original comics) has grown lazy in his writing.  He uses sexual violence so often it becomes cheap and it's downright disrespectful to female comics fans and yes - we do exist.  (That's not just my opinion by the way.  Click here.) Jim Carrey might have been dumb like a fox to disavow this clunker.  Honestly, this one isn't even a rental.

On the other hand, I watched Holiday the other night and enjoyed it thoroughly.  It's an early Cary Grant/Katharine Hepburn comedy, directed by George Cukor, who would work with these stars again in the nigh-perfect The Philadelphia Story.  (Cukor also directed Gaslight, which is a fun one.)  While the story in Holiday is fairly slight, the whip-smart dialogue and physical comedy made it a delight.

So the overall advice this week - skip the Technicolor cartoon and watch the one from the 1930s.