Immortals

A few years back, the Clash of the Titans remake shook the world with its blandness and predictability. Now, a suspiciously similar film titled Immortals has arrived in the cinema near you. Do you dare risk it and go see this movie? Could it actually be better than Clash was?

As far as I'm concerned, it's not. Not only is it shit, but it's shit that tries to be something really epic, and looks doubly bad due to reaching for the skies.

Immortals is about Theseus (no relation to the Greek mythic character), played by Henry Cavill, who'll be Superman in the upcoming Man of Steel film. He's a bastard borne of rape, brought up by his mother and taught combat and ethics by the only really good thing about the film, John Hurt. Why does John Hurt teach him combat and ethics? Well, because he's Zeus (no relation to the Greek pagan god) in disguise and wants a mortal warrior who can save humanity from itself. So why does Theseus' mother let John Hurt teach her son? Theseus very aggressively declines an invitation to join the army early on in the movie, so why is he learning how to fight? I have no idea! I guess it's not important to know the basic premise of the plot very well.

Meanwhile, King Hyperion (no relation to the Greek mythic character), played by Mickey Rourke, is conquering the world, set on releasing the mythic Titans and thus reigning supreme over god and man alike. You see, when gods discovered they could kill each other, they started killing each other, and the losers were locked away in a little cage underground. Hyperion wants to free these imprisoned gods because... uhh... umm... then he'll have dozens of gods running around, killing everyone, instead of like five of them sitting in Olympus and staying out of humanity's way?

These aren't even spoilers. All these plot holes happen in the first twenty minutes of the movie.

So yeah, it's stupid and nonsensical, but is it entertaining? Yes and no. The performances are okay, the action scenes are good (really good when gods are involved), the special effects aren't half bad, and even the 3D is pretty cool when it's noticeable, but somehow the story and pacing manage to kill all of this. I was entertained for more than half of the movie's running time, but I still left out feeling disappointed (which is saying something, considering I was expecting this film to blow), because all it adds up to is nonsense. The Three Musketeers may have been dumb, but at least it never shied away from having fun. This film tries to be serious and meaningful, in denial about its own nature.

Immortals is made with a certain aesthetic vibe to it, an artistic cinematography, costuming and directing which at times gives it a feeling of otherworldly beauty. However, most of the time it just looks ridiculous. I might look at the gods' ridiculous outfits without sniggering if their "dramatic" dialogue wasn't overblown and melodramatic. I might not roll my eyes at the bright red robes and veils of the oracles if they had an actual reason for wearing those things they never wear in any other scene. I'll admit that the locations are pretty cool most of the time, but I'd have preferred to get a good look of that big city near the end, instead of just seeing it in the horizon.

By the way, if you saw the trailer for this and thought: "That magic bow looks really cool! I bet this movie will do all kinds of cool stuff with it", DO NOT BE FOOLED. Every single scene where anyone fires the magic bow is in the trailer. It's not the hero's signature weapon. It's a MacGuffin.

I can't recommend this movie for anyone. It's just no worth seeing. Simple as that.

The Adventures of Tintin

Hey! Finland got a cameo in this picture.

AT LAST! Us Europeans get a movie almost two months before the North Americans do! I feel so vindicated for having to wait half a year for Princess and the Frog to come out. I guess it figures. After all, The Adventures of Tintin is based on an European comic. In fact, this film redeems Franco-Belgian comics in Hollywood from the wake of the lame live-action Asterix films. Let us never bring those things up again.

Tintin is a reporter of ambiguous nationality who has a tendency to get into an adventure pretty much any time he opens his front door. While browsing a flea market, he buys the miniature of an old wooden ship. This causes him and his helpful dog Milou (I refuse to use translated names for these characters, by the way) to be dragged into danger's way. He eventually teams up with Captain Archibald Haddock in a race to find all the clues to a fabulous treasure before the bad guys do.

I was at first pretty sceptical about this movie. Not because it's CG (though a cartoon movie could have worked better), but because I thought they might try to alter the premise to sell it better to audiences who are used to "comic book movies" like The Dark Knight. However, I should have put my trust on Steven Spielberg; Tintin is perfectly in tune with its adventurous roots, and captures the feeling of a children's comic book almost spot-on. And as for those who are sceptical of the CGI, I think that the film looks pretty good. The characters' skins are a bit too unsmooth and blemished for my liking, but it wasn't really distacting. As far as stylished CGI goes, I prefer Tangled, but this is a not-so-close second.

There are so many big names attached to this picture, and most of their individual little touches can be felt throughout. Tintin is a Spielberg producation throughout, complete with music by John Williams. I might be bold enough to call it Indiana Jones 5. Peter Jackson is the producer, will direct the sequel if one is made, and brought along Andy Serkis (Gollum from The Lord of the Rings trilogy) to play Haddock. Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz) co-wrote the script, and his BFFs Simon Pegg and Nick Frost voice bumbling detectives Dupont and Dupond. I can't help but get this funny image of Spielberg inviting people to the pre-production table and yelling: "And bring your friends too!"

The action scenes in Tintin are great, with really imaginative scenarios and a damn good balance of serious and silly to them. They get a little cluttered at times, but never descend to incomprehensibility. I think that near the end, the action focuses too much on Haddock and too little on Tintin, but it's all well and good because Haddock is damn entertaining. He's like that character we've all seen a million times, the one who always screws everything up, but he still manages to be endearing and funny when he messes around. However, one thing that I really didn't expect to amuse me so much as the slapstick. I don't think I've ever seen such well-executed physical humour in a motion picture. This isn't your Disney movie where for every punchline the comedy foil says he also has to get hit in the head once, so that audience members with no sense of humour can also find something to laugh at. Here, the slapstick is an end to itself, and the hurt is set up and handled with excellence.

I'm not going to criticise Tintin for having an overly convoluted plot and contrived action scenes. It's an adventure story: people in these things can't file taxes without having to solve five riddles. fight off eight henchmen and escape three death traps. What I am going to criticise it for is having a weak pacing. This is probably a result of the comic adaptation, but that's not an excuse. There's too little rest between action scenes, and at times the plot is unveiled too quick for my taste. At one hour and fifty minutes, this is already a pretty long animated movie, but I think the script needed some work to make it more balanced and less exhausting.

That's... pretty much it. It's a solid adventure film with good humour, and lots of talented people behind the scenes. I didn't really read Tintin as a kid, but I read Uncle Scrooge comics, and the feeling of adventure in this movie makes me tingle with nostalgia.

People in the movie indstury I'm a fan of #1

Tintin premiered today in Finland. I'm seeing it soon with my dad, who's a fan of Franco-Belgian comics in general (and Lucky Luke in particular). I'm going to pretend the short delay is a big deal. Have a non-review post to hold you over!

I was going to make a list of ten movie people I'm a fan of, but when I started writing I realised that the finished article would be uncomfortably long. I decided to stop a little less than halfway through, and see if people like it before writing more. I may make this a continuing sub-series here at Imamobi.

I'm trying to focus on people who aren't exactly household names. Bruce Willis is definitely awesome, and a great actor too, but I think he's gotten enough lauds without my humble blog joining in on the choir too.

Without further ado, I give you...

People in the movie industry I'm a fan of, part 1:

If eyebrows could kill...

Michael Ironside - Film and voice actor
Live-action roles: Total Recall (Richter), Scanners (Darryl Revok), Starship Troopers (Lieutenant Rasczak), Highlander II: The Quickening (General Katana)
Voice roles: Splinter Cell (Sam Fisher), Superman: the Animated Series and Justice League (Darkseid)

Michael Ironside was born to play villains. His distinctive, vicious-looking face and his deep, growly voice make him perfect for any director's B-actor needs. In Scanners, his character uses telepathy to blow up another man's head five minutes into the movie. That's pretty much all you need to know, but I'm going to keep going anyhow.

Aside from his villain roles, Ironside has played military officers in like fifty films. Check out his filmography on IMDB some time, and you'll see at least half his characters have names along the lines of General Badass or Lieutenant Mofo. Heck, he was in both Terminator Salvation and X-Men: First Class as a random navy officer with no personality, just because by this poiny Hollywood knows him as "that guy who looks really authorative in a uniform".

The dude's a decent actor too, aside from his general awesomeness. Watch Scanners some time, and check out how convincing his rage at being compared to his father is.

Quote of choice: I am many things, Kal-El, but here... I am God.


David Cronenberg - Director and writer

His appearance fits his filmography.

Movies: The Fly (1986 version, director and co-writer), Scanners (director and writer), Naked Lunch (director and co-writer), Dead Ringers (director and co-writer), Spider (director and producer), Eastern Promises (director)

And speaking of Scanners! David Cronenberg. The undisputed master of body horror in cinema. That scene where Michael Ironside blows up a man's head? That was my first impression of The Terror of Toronto. I was something like ten when I saw that film. Good times.

Cronenberg's 70s and 80s production is a testament to two things: he knows creepy, and he wants to share creepy with you. The Fly is all about making Jeff Goldblum even uglier than he normally is. The effects for that movie are still phenomenal today, and the resraint shown in utilising them is damn near ingenius.

When he isn't doing something that involves a person physically becoming a monster, Cronenberg does a break by making a movie about someone becoming a monster in their mind. Dead Ringers and Spider are great psychological thrillers and character studies, and the lead performances by Jeremy Irons and Ralph Fiennes respectively are damn near perfect.

Nowadays Cronenberg has moved to a more artsy medium, starting with Spider. I've yet to check out most of his 2000s production, but I'm sure to get to it when I've got the time.

While checking the wikipedia article for Cronenberg during the writing of this article, I discovered that he was at one point directing a sequel to Total Recall. I bet it would have starred Michael Ironside as an armless zombie-Richter with psychic powers.


Jeremy Irons - Film, TV, stage and voice actor

Live-action roles: Dead Ringers (Beverly and Elliot Mantle), Lolita (1997 version, Humbert Humbert), Reversal of Fortune (Claus von Bürlow, Oscar for Best Actor), The Kingdom of Heaven (Tiberias), Die Hard 3 (Simon Gruber)
Voice roles: The Lion King (Scar)

So yeah, once again I find myself mentioning the next item on the list in the previous entry. Jeremy Irons' portrayal of the identical Mantle twins in Cronenberg's Dead Ringers was insanely good. Not only do the fantastic special effects make it hard to remember that Irons doesn't have a real-life dobbelgänger, but he plays them as fundamentally different people in a very convincing way. A big point of the film is that Elliot and Beverly sometimes switch places and act as each other, and Irons manages to play Elliot who's playing Beverly, and vice versa, without it being obvious or too unnoticeable.

Most people of my generation will know Irons as Scar from The Liong King, though. Such irony in casting a Shakespearean actor in a cartoon adaptation of Hamlet. Aside from being a honestly good dramatic actor, he makes a helluva good hammy villain. Scar is such a complete and utter drama queen, and belongs to that list of classic villains. I don't have much to say about that particular role, but I do have on Die Hard With a Vengeance.

Die Hard 3 (or as I like to call it: Jeremy Irons acts like the smarmiest, most self-satisfied asshole Brit ever for two hours) is my personal favourite in the franchise. Aside from Bruce Willis and Samuel L. Jackson having great chemistry with each other, Jeremy Irons plays one of the best villains ever as Simon Gruber. Die Hard 1 started the craze with intelligent, suave villains, but in my opinion Die Hard 3 perfected it. Simon perfectly balances the elements of being really smart and manipulative, but too sure of himself and underestimating of his enemies. Charismatic, but evil.

I'm seriously considering checking out the fairly recent TV series The Borgias, where Jeremy Irons plays the freaking pope.

Quote of choice: Go back to your room and never... NEVER come back until I call you!


Keith David - Actor and voice actor

Nice suit.

Live-action roles: John Carpenter's The Thing (Childs), They Live! (Frank Armitage), Platoon (King), Men at Work (Louis Fedders)
Voice roles: Gargoyles (Goliath, Thailog), Coraline (the cat), The Princess and the Frog (Dr. Facilier), Dissidia: Final Fantasy (Chaos), Mass Effect (Captain Anderson)

The man with the second-deepest voice I've ever heard (number one on that regard may yet feature in a future installment of this listing), Keith David sounds like the most badass motherfucker you've ever heard. He mostly works as a voice actor in video games and cartoons nowadays, but being in two John Carpenter movies definitely qualifies him as a Hollywood personality worth knowing of.

They Live! is a movie which is only really memorable for two things. One is the hilarious, adlibbed catch phrase "I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass... and I'm all out of bubblegum." The other is a scene where the main hero (Roddy Piper), wants his friend Frank (Keith David), to put on a special pair of sunglasses. Frank doesn't want to put them on, so the two end up fighting. The original script called for a brawl of one to two minutes, but Piper and David coreographed five minutes of fighting on their own and acted it out. The scene that ended up in the film is insanely hilarious due to its many fake endings and completely unnecessary premise. These two guys are beating the shit out of each other, never giving up, because they disagree about whether Frank should try the sunglasses or not.

David's most notable voice role was his starring role in Disney's animted series Gargoyles (one of my favourite children's cartoons ever, despite the fact that I first heard of it when I was eighteen), which gained a huge cult following and made him a nerd cult icon. For a guy in his fifties, he seems to be a real sport about a bunch of sweaty teenagers worshipping him for voicing a blue adonis, since he has attended Gargoyles conventions and mingled with the fans.

My favourite role by David is definitely in The Princess and the Frog, though. Not only does he play a slimy, conniving witch doctor really well, but he sings "Friends on the Other Side", one of the best villain songs out there. The short featurette Disney released shows how David's physical performance while recording was used for his character's facial moves. They totally copied the gap between his teeth too.

Yeah, he can sing. Can he ever sing!

Quote of choice: "There are several sacred things in this world that you don't ever mess with. One of them happens to be another man's fries. Now you remember that, and you'll live a long and healthy life."
 

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Leave a comment, tell me what you thought of the experimentation. I rather liked writing it, and I'll add more people to my list if I get positive feedback.

The Three Musketeers

Is it me or do they look like vampires?

It baffles me to think that of all the Pirates of the Caribbean rip-offs and cash-ins of the past few years, Pirates 4 has been the least good. Oh well...

So yeah, Paul W. S. Anderson's The Three Musketeers is an action-adventure movie with snarky characters set in a historical period, vaguely based on some previously existing intellectual property (I think there will be seen as their own genre when we look back twenty years from now). The work being loosely adapted this time is Alexandre Dumas' novel by the same name.

Not having (yet) read the book, I can't say how faithful the movie is to it, though the Wikipedia summary of the novel's plot does look vaguely familiar. I was going to keep a mental count on all the anachronisms, but I gave up ten minutes into the movie. It wasn't the underwater crossbows and 17th century scuba gear that broke me, though. You see, the opening action scene is set in Venice, where the heroes are sent to steal the archives of Leonardo da Vinci. If you, dear reader, ever decide to involve da Vinci in your story in some way, please note that he lived in Florence. Italy has more cities than Rome and Venice, you see.

Most of the plot revolves around political intrigue between King Louis XIII (Freddie Fox), Cardinal Richelieu (Christoph Waltz), Queen Anne (Juno Temple) and The Count of Buckingham (Orlando Bloom). Richelieu and Buckingham want to take over France (even though Richelieu rules in all but name, as he did in real history) and chew scenery, and keep scheming against each other and the French royal couple to accomplish that. They employ the director's wife a seductive spy and agent called Milady (Milla Jovovich, who is much hotter here than in The Fifth Element) to accomplish their tasks.

Did you notice that I didn't mention the main characters in that last paragraph? There's a reason for that. The Three Musketeers (and d'Artagnan) themselves are just pawns for the plot, and are basically bribed to take part in it at all. In the second act of the story, they're cast out of their own movie for half an hour so the important characters can advance the story for a change. I'd list the actors for the four, but they honestly left so little impression on me I might as well not. Most of the time, the characters aren't even given much to do, and don't partake in almost any character development. In fact, d'Artagnan is the only one to get an arc, and it doesn't really go anywhere. He starts out as a hot-headed, cocky asshole, bound to get himself killed if he doesn't grow up, and he just kind of... becomes a dashing hero in the finale for no reason.

The other actors are great, though, and the funniest moments of the movie come from performances rather than writing. Freddie Fox manages to be ridiculous, and yet very sympathetic and honest, as the bumbling King. Jovovich oozes charisma and wittiness. And the villains... how do I put this? Orlando Bloom is a more entertaining villain than Christoph Waltz. That's right. Legolas just beat Hans Landa. You see, Bloom's previous resumé is filled with boring, straight-laced, nullodramatic heroes. Now we have him playing the cackling, villainous foreigner with a wacky accent and an even wackier mustache. It's gloriously amusing. Waltz is good as well, though he doesn't ham it up as much as a movie of this... campiness, would justify.

The action is so over-the-top I don't blame the guy two seats right from me for giggling like a lunatic for most of the film. Now, the sword-fights are actually well coreographed and shot, and look pretty restrained as far as swordfights in action-adventure movies go. The other action scenes are basically whatever the writers could think up at any given moment. There's scenes where Jovovich is basically redoing her fights from the Resident Evil films, except now she's wearing a dress, and near the end the movie turns into a rip-off of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. I'm not even making that up.

Ridiculous, dumb, simplistic, hyperactive, anachronistic, shallow... yeah, this is a blockbuster, all right. I liked it, though I have this itch its charm won't persist on a second viewing. They're obviously setting up a sequel, and they can count me in.

Oh yeah, and this movie was this 3D. Wait, it was? I could hardly tell...

Drive

Drive is a movie about the Driver (Ryan Gosling), a man without a name or a past. He works as a stuntman in Hollywood films, a mechanic in a garage and a getaway driver for mobsters and robbers. By coincidence, the Driver happens to befriend the girl next door and her young son, and is motivated to pull off a gig to help them out in a tight spot. One thing leads to another, and he finds himself in deep shit, being chased after by hitmen and gangsters aplenty.

I want to stress something out for you: This is not an action movie. There are chase scenes in cars, and gory executions outside them, but they are not the focus of the plot, and if you're only going in to see cars and violence, you'll be let down. In fact, I'd be willing to say that the second-biggest problem with the film is that it does many things well, but doesn't focus on any one aspect of itself well enough. It doesn't go "all the way" with the action, the drama, the crime plot or the characterisations, but feels like all the different subplots were intentionally left half-finished.

Here are the things that Drive has going for it: the Driver is a well-crafted enigma, whose true nature will be up to debate for years to come (my money's on him being autistic); the cinematography, directing and editing are top-notch, and manage to really imprint emotion into scenes and shots where almost nothing is happening; the setting somehow manages to be triumphantly eighties while actually setting place in the modern day; the driving and violence, while short-lived, is fantastically executed (no pun intended); and finally, the soundtrack is really good, though most of the music genres presented aren't really my bag.

Aside from the great main performance, the actors are kind of hit-and-miss. Carey Mulligan as the love interest is very underplayed and ordinary, which is kind of the point, but I don't think her character just has chemistry with the Driver because he's underplayed for completely different, better, reasons. Ron Perlman is the world's most bitter 59-year-old mobster, who's trying very hard to act like a twenty-something gangsta. It is glorious. Albert Brooks (who played the villain in The Simpsons Movie) is the straight-laced businessman gangster, who won't lose his cool until it's really effective to do so. I swear I've seen the exact same character somewhere, but I can't tell where...

To give my main criticism for Drive, I'm going to have to break my own rule and go into spoiler territory. Therefore, SLIGHT NON PLOT-RELATED SPOILER-ISH MATERIAL EXISTS BEYOND THIS SENTENCE. The film doesn't have a climax. It kind of slows down for the final twenty minutes, and then stops. End credits. There was no way to actually fit it into the plot, but I really could have used another chase scene somewhere in there...

SPOILERS END HERE.

I can't really give a definite "go see this" or "don't" about this movie. It depends so much on what you're in the mood for, and whether you can tolerate a little slower and more atmospheric moviemaking. If you can actually enjoy how a movie is shot and edited... this'll be a treat! It's the closest thing to a Grand Theft Auto: Vice City movie we'll ever see.

13 Assassins

These guys? You don't want to fuck with these guys.

Takashi Miike's 13 Assassins is what 300 should have been. It's a violent, historical action movie about the few facing impossible odds, but still has personal drama and character arcs to it. It uses shocking imagery and gore to great effect, instead of just splattering it around to appear edgy. It's made by people from the country it takes place in, so it doesn't neuter the setting to make it more relatable to modern (Yank) audiences.

And I was expecting this movie to be really bad, because I'm still bitter about Ninja Assassin sucking balls. There aren't even any ninja in this movie.

13 Assassins is set in 1844, during Japan's Shogunate period, and the last days of the samurai. Lord Matsudaira Naritsugu is a shogun's younger brother, and will soon ascend to being shogun himself, which doesn't sit well with his subjects-to-be. This is mostly because he's an almost comically heinous monster who uses his high position as an excuse to rape, murder and torture people left and right. The shogun's advisors decide that something must be done, and hire Shimada Shinzaemon, a veteran samurai, to assassinate him. Shinzeamon recruits a ragtag group of warriors to achieve the task, knowing full well that even if they succeed at their task, they will have to give up their former lives for good after having assassinated the shogun's brother.

Now, as much as I like to laud any movie for not treating its viewers like idiots, I have to admit that there is such a thing as expecting too much of them. The early parts of the movie are filled with exposition about the current situation, and you're expected to remember a lot of names and faces to keep up with who's doing what and what their relations to the others in the room are. After about a third of the movie has gone, the planning stage starts, and the pacing gets better. I don't want to spoil anything about the action climax, but let me just say... they're going to have to rename that rule "The Inverse Samurai Law", now.

Aside from the pacing issues and some really shoddy editing, the movie succeeds at being exactly what it wants to be: a shocking, grim action drama where a lot of people get cut up with katana, and the essence of bushido is inspected and questioned.

I saw this movie at the Helsinki International Film Festival, a Finnish event where non-mainstream movies are shown in big cinemas. It premiered in Japan about a year ago, so I don't know if it's running in the cinema near you. If it is, I highly recommend it.

I wish Takashi Miike the best of luck with his next project: The Phoenix Wright film adaptation. (I'm not making this up.)

Midnight in Paris

The best movie poster yet on this blog.

Gil Pender (Owen Wilson) is an indecisive, gibbering Hollywood screenwriter, and a hopeless romantic. While visiting Paris with his fiancée Inez (Rachel McAdams) and the in-laws, he realises that he's in love with the city, its rich culture and history. This annoys his missus-to-be, as she's planning on moving to Malibu. When taking a walk on the streets at nighttime to escape Inez's annoying acquintances, he stumbles upon an antique car that takes him to 1920s Paree, where everyone is famous and restaurants serve free champagne to bohemian artists and authors. Gil embarks on a journey of reflection and discovery, and has to come to realise how what he sees in the past applies to his own life.

Midnight in Paris is the first Woody Allen film I've ever seen. Despite having this hole in my filmbuff-cred, I'm aware of Allen's style. The character of Gil is obviously written to be played by the director's younger self, and Owen Wilson was only hired as a stand-in. Wilson himself hasn't been in a single good movie before this that I'm aware of, but he's not that bad an actor. I love his body and facial acting, but the character can get a bit grating over time due to the neurotic tics and stuttering Allen is famous for.

The real showpieces of the movie are the music, the costuming, the supporting actors and Paris itself. The way the city is shot is like a really well done ad for tourism, and I won't blame anyone for wanting to visit Paris after seeing the film. The scenes taking place in the 1920s really have a sense of energy and a lust for life to them, and all the actors playing famous people from the past are magnificent. Corey Stoll as Ernest Hemingway will make you to ask: "Who is this actor and why isn't he in more movies?" Adrien Brody gets a one-scene part as Salvador Dalí, and he's by far one of the most memorable and hilarious things I've seen in a film in some time.

I know that all this talk about early 20th century culture may make some people nod their heads politely and start looking for another movie, but this film isn't really snobby or pretentious, per se. It's about a pretentious snob, to an extent, but I never felt like it was trying to distance itself from the laymen among the audience. In order to enjoy the movie, you don't really need to know more of Hemingway, Dalí, Zelda Fitzgerald and Pablo Picasso than that they existed, and were artists.

It's a mood movie, all about imparting the right emotions upon the viewers, but alas, it seems to take that as an excuse to neglect its story and characters. For a film that does a great bit of gushing over how great the artists of the -20s were, and honestly admiring the depth their works held, Midnight in Paris is a very straightforward movie. There is almost no ambiguity or subtlety about it. The main theme of the story is outright stated ten minutes before the credits, and the resolution is quite predictable. I dunno, maybe putting Hemingway in your movie makes me expect too much out of it, but I was kinda left asking: "That's it?"

So, to sum up, I liked the film. I can see why others would find it boring or annoying, but I still recommend giving it a chance if you think there's a chance you'll find it entertaining. As far as romantic comedies go, one could definitely do worse.