I saw The Interview on You Tube yesterday and have to say it was a comic masterpiece, not the movie but the drama surrounding the hacking of Sony and subsequent threat by the hackers. They could make a good comedy about the events. I don't know. Maybe we could get Trey Parker and Matt Stone to do a sequel to Team America, World Police, except make it live action except for one character. (you know which one)
We have some interesting players.
Sony: the giant entertainment company. We know that the theater operators were the real wimps, but Sony got left holding the bag. Sure, we had some shootings at theaters before, but the whole thing sounded like they were terrified that people would find out some employees were discussing Obama's movie preferences. Hey, I am sure there is weird stuff like that in any large company's computers. So what? Big deal. What would have been really funny is if it had been Norton or Kapersky that got hacked. Bad guys, you have no sense of comic irony.
Guardians of Peace: This is not a sequel to Guardians of the Galaxy (just FYI) SNL's "Dr Evil" was right. We already have an evil organization called the GOP. First of all, if you are going to get upset over something as silly as a movie, you really shouldn't expect anyone to take you seriously. The Religious Right is sort of nutzy about some movies too.
The really stupid move was thinking they can tell an entire country what they can and cannot watch. If they had done nothing The Interview would have faded into obscurity with similar movies. Dudes, because of you, theaters showing the movie have been sold out and people who had no intent to see the movie before thought it was their patriotic duty to go see it. I don't think that is what you wanted.
In the US, it is our First Amendment right to make fun of anything and everything. We will make fun of our President, a former President, your President, anyone's President,the Pope or whatever. You cannot stop us making fun of stuff. The more you tell someone they cannot do something, the more they will try to do it. That's human nature. Even God had problems telling some people they couldn't do something He said not to do.
President Obama : I will give Obama credit giving Sony a little push, but I don't know what this "proportional response" thing is. Obama needs to be able to at least understand the language of the terrorists, insanity. If your adversary can figure you out, they have the advantage. Obviously you don't want to provoke them, but if they think you or say a significant portion of the NRA is thoroughly pissed off by what they did they might be less inclined think they could win.
Kim Jong Un: I don't know anything about this dude. The character in this movie sort of seems like he misses his puppy. I don't know. Since evil villains in the movies tend to prefer kitties I would avoid that option. I do think he needs a hobby, one that doesn't involve being a supreme ruler.
North Koren Hackers : Ok , we do not know who was responsible for shutting down North Korea's internet. If this was retaliation to the Sony hack I can only say one thing. LAME!. Do you really think taking out Kim Jong Un's Facebook for a couple of days is going to matter?
There you have it Hollywood. The perfect idea for a REAL comedy. I am thinking Paramount should bring back the Zucker Brothers and/or Pat Proft for this. Of course we should also have Leslie Neilson as Lt. Frank Drebin
Friday, December 26, 2014
Tuesday, December 2, 2014
Anaraphla's Movie Mayhem: Interstellar
Interstellar
First off, this is not Interstella, which of course would have been a movie about Stella Mudd, a character from an Original Startrek episode. Don’t worry, not only is J J Abrams not that crazy, neither is our old nemesis’s Berman and Braga. At least I don’t think so.
It is also not a remake of Field of Dreams or a certain Twilight Zone episode, even though it starts out in a cornfield. It does, however, seem that we have sent the Earth and everyone on it to the cornfield, figuratively speaking. (Checking IMDB…Nope, Al Gore is not in this.)
Matthew McConaughey, plays Cooper an ex astronaut. You will probably remember him as Palmer Joss in the movie Contact. His job in that movie was to say profound things when the movie called for it. Here, he plays a farmer who is about as comfortable farming as I would be as a Politician.
He has a daughter named Murph, She was a genius of sorts. She ran for Class president under the banner “Murph--Not just a good Idea, it’s the Law”. Of course her and her brother were expelled for not believing the moon landing was a fake and global warming was a hoax. Its bad enough the Earth is dying from some unexplained plague. The real disaster is that Texas Republicans have taken over the nation’s educational system.
There is something strange in the neighborhood. Books fall off of shelves, strange patterns appear, and watches appear to be receiving messages from nowhere. No monsters in the refrigerator or marshmallow monsters though. No one thought about calling the Ghostbusters.
Cooper and Murph find their way to an underground NASA base. Yes I know this makes no sense. (Its like the Amish have taken over the government, which suggests that our national anthem is now Weird Al’s “Amish Paradise”). The exterior shot of the NASA base looks something like the outside entrance to Stargate Command. (not a bad idea as sending humanity through the stargate would solve the problem)
Anyway, these NASA guys have a plan to save humanity. It involves a wormhole that somehow just appeared at the right time and leads to possible worlds that humanity could start over on. If they only had an astronaut and a genius to help with things. How convenient.
This movie is also a plug for Dylan Thomas. In case you didn’t know who said, “Do not go gentle into that good night”, you will after watching this movie. The line is repeated almost as much as “With great power comes great responsibility” is in the original Spiderman movie. Of course Stan Lee is not in this movie however.
Now the movie shifts to the actual voyage to save humanity. We meet 2 robots that are unlike any movie robots. They look like the monolith from 2001. They do not come with Asimov’s Three Laws, but they do have adjustable humor and honesty controls. Turning up the humor controls too high may subject you to random wedgies and puns that only robots understand.
Michael Caine plays the NASA guy and keeper of the Dylan Thomas poem. You may remember him as Mr. Destiny from the movie of the same name. He spends the whole movie trying to figure out some gravity thing. If the answer was blowing in the wind that would be one thing but its inside a black hole. Is this a backhand way of saying this movie sucks? Well no, but I thought I would take the gag before anyone else does.
In space near Titan, Cooper docks with this ring thing near the wormhole. Maybe it is there to catch space worms but its used to go through the wormhole. Ok there are two planets sort of close to a black hole. As we learned on an episode of Stargate SG1, the black hole messes with time. Cooper wants to go down to Ice Planet Hoth but Mr Destiny’s daughter (That would be Destiny's child..sorry) wants to go to the other planet. Only thing is nobody is down there. Its all water and you can’t land without land to land on. Landing there would actually be watering. They get out of there before a giant wave threatens to “wave” them goodbye.
Back in space everyone is older. Mr. Destiny is really old and Murph is middle aged. The audience got older too. Our next trip is down to Hoth where we meet Matt Damon. Cooper tries to borrow parts for his robot but Damon’s mentis is quite non compos by now and he not only tries to kill Cooper and steal the ship, but his acting is quite lousy. He gets killed trying to break into the ring thing.
Ok, we’ve run out of places to go and this last trip is really going to suck, literally. Not only does the robot have to go into the black hole to find out about the gravity thing, Cooper has to somehow go back in time and give his daughter the information. To quote Bill and Ted, “Only the winners get to go back in time and set things up”. To use the proper technical jargon, this is more likely to be a bogus journey than an excellent adventure, but yes, Cooper is most triumphant. He not only sets up the books and the messages to Murph, he winds up in the future safe with the rest of humanity he has saved. The audience is of course 3 hours older and desperate for a bathroom break.
First off, this is not Interstella, which of course would have been a movie about Stella Mudd, a character from an Original Startrek episode. Don’t worry, not only is J J Abrams not that crazy, neither is our old nemesis’s Berman and Braga. At least I don’t think so.
It is also not a remake of Field of Dreams or a certain Twilight Zone episode, even though it starts out in a cornfield. It does, however, seem that we have sent the Earth and everyone on it to the cornfield, figuratively speaking. (Checking IMDB…Nope, Al Gore is not in this.)
Matthew McConaughey, plays Cooper an ex astronaut. You will probably remember him as Palmer Joss in the movie Contact. His job in that movie was to say profound things when the movie called for it. Here, he plays a farmer who is about as comfortable farming as I would be as a Politician.
He has a daughter named Murph, She was a genius of sorts. She ran for Class president under the banner “Murph--Not just a good Idea, it’s the Law”. Of course her and her brother were expelled for not believing the moon landing was a fake and global warming was a hoax. Its bad enough the Earth is dying from some unexplained plague. The real disaster is that Texas Republicans have taken over the nation’s educational system.
There is something strange in the neighborhood. Books fall off of shelves, strange patterns appear, and watches appear to be receiving messages from nowhere. No monsters in the refrigerator or marshmallow monsters though. No one thought about calling the Ghostbusters.
Cooper and Murph find their way to an underground NASA base. Yes I know this makes no sense. (Its like the Amish have taken over the government, which suggests that our national anthem is now Weird Al’s “Amish Paradise”). The exterior shot of the NASA base looks something like the outside entrance to Stargate Command. (not a bad idea as sending humanity through the stargate would solve the problem)
Anyway, these NASA guys have a plan to save humanity. It involves a wormhole that somehow just appeared at the right time and leads to possible worlds that humanity could start over on. If they only had an astronaut and a genius to help with things. How convenient.
This movie is also a plug for Dylan Thomas. In case you didn’t know who said, “Do not go gentle into that good night”, you will after watching this movie. The line is repeated almost as much as “With great power comes great responsibility” is in the original Spiderman movie. Of course Stan Lee is not in this movie however.
Now the movie shifts to the actual voyage to save humanity. We meet 2 robots that are unlike any movie robots. They look like the monolith from 2001. They do not come with Asimov’s Three Laws, but they do have adjustable humor and honesty controls. Turning up the humor controls too high may subject you to random wedgies and puns that only robots understand.
Michael Caine plays the NASA guy and keeper of the Dylan Thomas poem. You may remember him as Mr. Destiny from the movie of the same name. He spends the whole movie trying to figure out some gravity thing. If the answer was blowing in the wind that would be one thing but its inside a black hole. Is this a backhand way of saying this movie sucks? Well no, but I thought I would take the gag before anyone else does.
In space near Titan, Cooper docks with this ring thing near the wormhole. Maybe it is there to catch space worms but its used to go through the wormhole. Ok there are two planets sort of close to a black hole. As we learned on an episode of Stargate SG1, the black hole messes with time. Cooper wants to go down to Ice Planet Hoth but Mr Destiny’s daughter (That would be Destiny's child..sorry) wants to go to the other planet. Only thing is nobody is down there. Its all water and you can’t land without land to land on. Landing there would actually be watering. They get out of there before a giant wave threatens to “wave” them goodbye.
Back in space everyone is older. Mr. Destiny is really old and Murph is middle aged. The audience got older too. Our next trip is down to Hoth where we meet Matt Damon. Cooper tries to borrow parts for his robot but Damon’s mentis is quite non compos by now and he not only tries to kill Cooper and steal the ship, but his acting is quite lousy. He gets killed trying to break into the ring thing.
Ok, we’ve run out of places to go and this last trip is really going to suck, literally. Not only does the robot have to go into the black hole to find out about the gravity thing, Cooper has to somehow go back in time and give his daughter the information. To quote Bill and Ted, “Only the winners get to go back in time and set things up”. To use the proper technical jargon, this is more likely to be a bogus journey than an excellent adventure, but yes, Cooper is most triumphant. He not only sets up the books and the messages to Murph, he winds up in the future safe with the rest of humanity he has saved. The audience is of course 3 hours older and desperate for a bathroom break.
Monday, November 3, 2014
Maleficent
Back in the 40’s and 50’s it was relatively easy to produce a classic children’s movie. First you got a damsel-in-distress and a hero to rescue her. Handsome princes were readily available as the prince business wasn’t exactly a growth industry.
Villains of course were even easier. The only requirement for being a fantasy villain was to be able to play your part with style and to die with flair for the dramatic. You didn’t even need a name, and when you got one it was more of a label than a name. Everyone back then knew why “Evilynn” didn’t get invited to the prom.
Then things changed. Darth Vader was the ultimate bad guy, that is until we found out he was a daddy and that the only reason he was evil was because the emperor gave him some really bad advice.
Of course it was the Twilight series and Wicked that changed the villain biz. Instead of Bella Lugosi (or the chiropractor that substituted for him after he died) or Christopher Lee, we have Cedric Digory post Harry Potter running around as Edward, a vampire putting the moves, but not the bite, on a girl (interestingly enough) named Bella.
Margret Hamilton’s delightfully infamous Wizard of Oz character has changed too. Instead of “ The Wicked witch of the West” she is now Elpaba, presumably because Ms. “Of the West” just doesn’t sound right. Her sister briefly considered changing her name to Consuelo Marie but she had a fatal household accident before she could file the papers . It completely changes the story to consider the villain as a real person.
Maleficent is a movie that gives us 50’s era viewers a little culture shock. Maleficent doesn’t start out being …well… maleficent. She starts out as a nice fairy child whose only problem is that her parents for no understandable reason gave her a rotten name. I am at a loss to understand why, since there is no indication she actually did anything bad at this point. Its sort of like calling Anakin Skywalker Vader before he earns the dark helmet. Just to be fair, we‘ll call her Shirley in this article.
Shirley is sort of big for a fairy and there is the matter of her black horns and wings. This of course was why she had to be home schooled after being expelled for violating the draconian school dress code. Of course I know of a school where that wouldn’t have mattered. Still, she loved her home and all the inhabitants of the forest she lived in.
Of course we need a bad guy. We have two. One is the local king who apparently had an army and no legitimate enemy to fight, so for no justifiable reason he attacks Shirley’s forest while the theme from Billy Jack plays in the background. He was of no match for Shirley’s magic and her Ent friends visiting from Gondor and was soundly defeated.
The sonofa… was Stefan. He met Shirley when they were both kids and they sort of hit it off. He wound up giving her what he said was a true love’s kiss™, only the truth was he was just about the age where he wanted some tail.
In later years Stefan turns out to be more maleficent than… well you know. In order to get in good with the king, Stefan visits Shirley and slips her a roofie. He intends to kill her but takes her wings instead. The king is pleased and Stefan gets his job.
I thought Shirley took things rather well considering. I would have cursed Stefan with incurable Erectile Dysfuction. I would also have convinced the queen she would be better off being a Lesbian than to be married to that jerk. Not something you’d see in a Disney movie but I figure if Stefan is going to act like a …
We now have a few additions to our story. First there is Dival the crow. Male… Shirley saved his life by turning him to a human. (I would have chosen a female crow). Dival is not too useful as a guy so she turns him back into a crow so he can spy on Stefan. He gets turned back to a guy so he can report what he sees. Dival gets changed in form almost as much as Darrin Stephens got zapped by Endora, Maurice, and Serena
Next we meet the three fairies, one of which happens to be Delores Umbrage, one of Harry Potter’s nemesis’s. they visit the castle to give their blessing to Aurora, Stefan’s newborn daughter. This sequence is more or less by the book. Shirley shows up and lays the spinning wheel curse on Aurora. I guess Shirley has to have one evil moment to fulfill her contract with Disney.
Just when you think this story is getting on track, Aurora is sent away to protect her from the curse. The weird part is that it is Shirley who protects Aurora from the three idiots sent to protect her from Shirley. Also, here is a prime example of why you should never ever check the checkbox that makes your curses irrevocable. Shirley starts to care for Aurora and tries to cancel the curse, but of course that would cancel the rest of the movie.
Now Shirley must protect Aurora from her from her own curse. Shirley runs into a prince looking for work. Since it is too late for him to even introduce himself to the princess on Facebook, Shirley knocks him out and drags him into the castle with a win guardian leviosa spell.
Of course to break the spell, you need a fresh prince. You can‘t really buy a frozen prince(appropriately found next to the frozen vegetables) at the store and expect him to be any good at breaking evil curses. That’s ok though. Fortunately, we have bent the rules so much that the true love’s kiss™ is no longer gender specific.
Even though Aurora has been reawakened, we need a big ending battle. Stefan is still insane with anger against Shirley because she….(uh, did they explain why Stefan hated Shirley? I don’t think so.) Oh well. Shirley gets her wings back, Dival gets promoted to a dragon, Aurora becomes queen, and Stefan gets a nice dish of Just Desserts, with lots of whomping cream.
Although I must applaud Disney’s progressive ideas about women in movies like this and of course Frozen, I honestly don’t think a reimagined Cinderella is going to work.
Villains of course were even easier. The only requirement for being a fantasy villain was to be able to play your part with style and to die with flair for the dramatic. You didn’t even need a name, and when you got one it was more of a label than a name. Everyone back then knew why “Evilynn” didn’t get invited to the prom.
Then things changed. Darth Vader was the ultimate bad guy, that is until we found out he was a daddy and that the only reason he was evil was because the emperor gave him some really bad advice.
Of course it was the Twilight series and Wicked that changed the villain biz. Instead of Bella Lugosi (or the chiropractor that substituted for him after he died) or Christopher Lee, we have Cedric Digory post Harry Potter running around as Edward, a vampire putting the moves, but not the bite, on a girl (interestingly enough) named Bella.
Margret Hamilton’s delightfully infamous Wizard of Oz character has changed too. Instead of “ The Wicked witch of the West” she is now Elpaba, presumably because Ms. “Of the West” just doesn’t sound right. Her sister briefly considered changing her name to Consuelo Marie but she had a fatal household accident before she could file the papers . It completely changes the story to consider the villain as a real person.
Maleficent is a movie that gives us 50’s era viewers a little culture shock. Maleficent doesn’t start out being …well… maleficent. She starts out as a nice fairy child whose only problem is that her parents for no understandable reason gave her a rotten name. I am at a loss to understand why, since there is no indication she actually did anything bad at this point. Its sort of like calling Anakin Skywalker Vader before he earns the dark helmet. Just to be fair, we‘ll call her Shirley in this article.
Shirley is sort of big for a fairy and there is the matter of her black horns and wings. This of course was why she had to be home schooled after being expelled for violating the draconian school dress code. Of course I know of a school where that wouldn’t have mattered. Still, she loved her home and all the inhabitants of the forest she lived in.
Of course we need a bad guy. We have two. One is the local king who apparently had an army and no legitimate enemy to fight, so for no justifiable reason he attacks Shirley’s forest while the theme from Billy Jack plays in the background. He was of no match for Shirley’s magic and her Ent friends visiting from Gondor and was soundly defeated.
The sonofa… was Stefan. He met Shirley when they were both kids and they sort of hit it off. He wound up giving her what he said was a true love’s kiss™, only the truth was he was just about the age where he wanted some tail.
In later years Stefan turns out to be more maleficent than… well you know. In order to get in good with the king, Stefan visits Shirley and slips her a roofie. He intends to kill her but takes her wings instead. The king is pleased and Stefan gets his job.
I thought Shirley took things rather well considering. I would have cursed Stefan with incurable Erectile Dysfuction. I would also have convinced the queen she would be better off being a Lesbian than to be married to that jerk. Not something you’d see in a Disney movie but I figure if Stefan is going to act like a …
We now have a few additions to our story. First there is Dival the crow. Male… Shirley saved his life by turning him to a human. (I would have chosen a female crow). Dival is not too useful as a guy so she turns him back into a crow so he can spy on Stefan. He gets turned back to a guy so he can report what he sees. Dival gets changed in form almost as much as Darrin Stephens got zapped by Endora, Maurice, and Serena
Next we meet the three fairies, one of which happens to be Delores Umbrage, one of Harry Potter’s nemesis’s. they visit the castle to give their blessing to Aurora, Stefan’s newborn daughter. This sequence is more or less by the book. Shirley shows up and lays the spinning wheel curse on Aurora. I guess Shirley has to have one evil moment to fulfill her contract with Disney.
Just when you think this story is getting on track, Aurora is sent away to protect her from the curse. The weird part is that it is Shirley who protects Aurora from the three idiots sent to protect her from Shirley. Also, here is a prime example of why you should never ever check the checkbox that makes your curses irrevocable. Shirley starts to care for Aurora and tries to cancel the curse, but of course that would cancel the rest of the movie.
Now Shirley must protect Aurora from her from her own curse. Shirley runs into a prince looking for work. Since it is too late for him to even introduce himself to the princess on Facebook, Shirley knocks him out and drags him into the castle with a win guardian leviosa spell.
Of course to break the spell, you need a fresh prince. You can‘t really buy a frozen prince(appropriately found next to the frozen vegetables) at the store and expect him to be any good at breaking evil curses. That’s ok though. Fortunately, we have bent the rules so much that the true love’s kiss™ is no longer gender specific.
Even though Aurora has been reawakened, we need a big ending battle. Stefan is still insane with anger against Shirley because she….(uh, did they explain why Stefan hated Shirley? I don’t think so.) Oh well. Shirley gets her wings back, Dival gets promoted to a dragon, Aurora becomes queen, and Stefan gets a nice dish of Just Desserts, with lots of whomping cream.
Although I must applaud Disney’s progressive ideas about women in movies like this and of course Frozen, I honestly don’t think a reimagined Cinderella is going to work.
Friday, October 31, 2014
Anaraphla's Movie Mayhem: Star Trek: Into Darkness
Anaraphla’s Movie Mayhem: Star Trek: Into Darkness
It should be obvious that the primary difference between Star Wars and Star Trek is of course the expositional scrawl that moves through space to the top of the screen as if were actually going some place*. One can imagine some unknown alien planet colliding with the text that starts Episode One: The Fandom Malice and think some horrible disaster is on the way, or at the very least become very angry over the way Mr. Lucas disposes of his trash. Yes, I actually think of weird stuff like this.
*As well as the number of characters, that ironically are fairly easy to parody. One rather obscure Wars character named Plot Coon was allegedly a nod to Coon Plot, which of course refers to the episodes of Original Trek written by Gene L. Coon
It was rather obvious that a second “reboot trek” movie would have to be made. Its sort of like after we dropped the bomb on Hiroshima; we had to drop another one on Nagasaki to show we could do it. Its not that it’s a bad movie. Its just as though we needed another franchise go dark and gritty, violating everything we loved about the original. Don’t be surprised if Hello Kitty: War on Terror comes to your local theater.
Ok, we start out on an alien planet. (alien to us, that is) Kirk and Bones are being chased by the natives. Why they are being chased we don’t know, but the gist of it is they jump in a lake and there is the ENTERPRISE** Spock is at an erupting volcano using his cold volcano logic, trying to stop the eruption.
Kirk orders the Enterprise to rescue Spock, even though the natives would see the ship take off, violating the Prime Directive*** Of course there were better places to hide the ship, like maybe SPACE. As the scene ends we see the natives have drawn a surprisingly good picture of the Enterprise in the sand. Obviously they were very good artists, and no doubt the picture will be a symbolic warning against stupid writing, A few natives no doubt were wondering if next year’s Trek convention could possibly be better than this.
** Using space ships as submarines is not new. Thirty Days was a passable Voyager episode where Paris takes the Delta Flyer into a planet that was nothing but a ball of water( just don‘t ask why anyone would prefer living in a ball of water). My favorite one is Grace Under Pressure, a Stargate Atlantis episode. Mc Kay is the only person I know whose hallucinations are smarter than he is, and better looking. His imagination is almost as good as Felger
Next we have a scene of Kirk getting some tail, literally. I don’t have anything against women with tails, especially since I have chosen he catgirl race as avatars in both Final Fantasy XI and XIV. Yet Kirk is about as mature as a typical college football player, almost. I don’t know. Its getting a little hard to believe in this scene that Starfleet would make anyone like this captain of a starship. (Wait a minute, didn’t they send the cadets to do the fleet’s job in the last movie?)
Of course even after saving the planet and Spock, Kirk is slapped by the 286th Rule of Acquisition; “No good deed ever goes unpunished”, even though there are no Ferengi in this movie. Pike demotes Kirk for violation of the Prime Directive**
***It was once said that the PD was a great idea, but practically was a bloody nuisance .
Shatner of course had no reluctance to kill god computers people depended on, or explain to some random ridgehead aliens (sometimes forcibly) that the way they run their society is frakin stupid. No one at HQ seem to care. I really think Chris Pine should cry foul here. This would never happen to Shatner. Of course, Chris Pine’s “singing” isn’t considered a Weapon of Mass Destruction in certain parts of the known galaxy.
Anyone with the intelligence of a cockroach knows Kirk will get the Big E back. Due to an explosion at a Starfleet, all the Admirals and Captain Pike are in an emergency conference, in an unsecured building with a target painted on the outside. Starfleet Security is as much an oxymoron as Military Intelligence.
Pike and everyone in the room is killed except Kirk and Adm. Robocop. Robo orders Kirk to go after a guy named Harriman, whose name is disguised for dramatic reasons, even though the spoiler has already been spoiled. Harriman gets away from the scene of the crime using the transwarp device Scotty invents in the last movie, only for some reason the good guys don’t have one this time.
Kirk is sent to the Klingon homeworld to deal with Harriman. Using the famed Vulcan talent for stating the obvious, Spock suspects there is something wrong about the admiral’s orders. There have been evil admirals on Star Trek before, but it wouldn’t surprise me a bit if Adm. Marcus has lunch with Satan every Tuesday so that Satan can get evil tips from the admiral.
Now we have this crazy scene where Bones notes there is something a bit abnormal about Kirk’s vitals. Well, if you had “experienced” most of the humanoid races of the Federation the way Kirk apparently has, being just “a little” abnormal is incredible. You would at least expect some blue warts on his… Anyway, JJ wisely decided not to go there.
Next we meet Carol Marcus, who of course is Robo’s daughter. She is the Big E’s number two science officer. Why is she here? It couldn’t be a later scene where takes off her clothes in front of McCoy, could it?.
Now we have this whole deal Scotty and these photon torpedoes. There is these special torpedoes that they forced to take on board. Scotty gets mad and quits for some bogus reason, which is in fact a clumsy device to set things up later. The actual scene where Bill and Ted arrive on the ship to warn them that “Only the winners get to go back and set things up” was deleted. Well , the torpedoes contain people and back in an earlier scene in the Admiral’s office there was a model of a super badass secret starship, IN PLAIN SIGHT. I would say Roddenbery is spinning in grave at about Warp 5 at this point.
So the Enterprise takes off to get Harriman (spelled K-H-A-N, but you knew that). Something goes wrong and the E is disabled. Kirk, Spock, and Uhura land a shuttle on the Klingon planet. This would normally be a big problem but for 2 reasons. One is that Uhura is such a cunning (I won’t say it). The other is that Klingon phrase “It’s a good day to die” due to a typo got changed to “It’s a good day to dye”, resulting in major confusion.
Now things get weird. Kirk has Kahn in the brig and tells Kirk that Admiral Marcus is about as intelligent as a politician and wants to start a war with the Klingons, which the Admiral confirms and brings out the badass ship to destroy Kirk and Kahn. Of course as I told you, we arranged to have Scotty on the Bad ship in the nick of time.
What the admiral didn’t figure on was Kirk pulling a trick from the Nemesis movie and shooting him and Kahn. Over to the admiral’s ship in nothing but a spacesuit. Kahn shows he is no weiner and kills the Admiral. Now we only have worry about Kahn blowing up the E.
Now Kahn offers to return Kirk to the Enterprise if he gets the torpedoes back. The Enterprise complies. What Kahn doesn’t know is that his people have been replaced with real torpedoes. “Who put torpedoes in my torpedoes!”, Kahn screams. There is a bigass explosion. Kahn and the Vagrant (Yes I know its Vengeance but really I dislike the whole Section 31 thing Berman came up with in DS9 more than Kahn” )
Strangely the Va (there I go again) and Kahn survive and Kahn wants to crash his ship into Starfleet. The E’s engines are dead and the ship is falling to its doom. Kirk runs into the brewery and kicks a few things around just in time to save the ship. The disembodied voice of Ricardo Montalbahn now pleased he has his revenge on Kirk, but hates that other guy for stealing his character, swears vengeance on him.
Spock listens to his friends parting words, vaguely remembers something about a Genesis Planet. Then realizing that was the other movie screams ABRAHAMS! Meanwhile, McCoy manages to revive a dead tribble, Thanks to bones the Klinons will sing songs of the Great Tribble Hunt, AGAIN. But yes., instead of a “Reset Button” to bring Kirk to life we have a Reset Tribble. The final battle between Kahn and Spock is somewhat unremarkable by comparison to the other stuff. However Uhura gives a rather stunning performance.
Stay tuned when J.J. Abrahams does for Star Wars what he did to..uh...for Trek.
It should be obvious that the primary difference between Star Wars and Star Trek is of course the expositional scrawl that moves through space to the top of the screen as if were actually going some place*. One can imagine some unknown alien planet colliding with the text that starts Episode One: The Fandom Malice and think some horrible disaster is on the way, or at the very least become very angry over the way Mr. Lucas disposes of his trash. Yes, I actually think of weird stuff like this.
*As well as the number of characters, that ironically are fairly easy to parody. One rather obscure Wars character named Plot Coon was allegedly a nod to Coon Plot, which of course refers to the episodes of Original Trek written by Gene L. Coon
It was rather obvious that a second “reboot trek” movie would have to be made. Its sort of like after we dropped the bomb on Hiroshima; we had to drop another one on Nagasaki to show we could do it. Its not that it’s a bad movie. Its just as though we needed another franchise go dark and gritty, violating everything we loved about the original. Don’t be surprised if Hello Kitty: War on Terror comes to your local theater.
Ok, we start out on an alien planet. (alien to us, that is) Kirk and Bones are being chased by the natives. Why they are being chased we don’t know, but the gist of it is they jump in a lake and there is the ENTERPRISE** Spock is at an erupting volcano using his cold volcano logic, trying to stop the eruption.
Kirk orders the Enterprise to rescue Spock, even though the natives would see the ship take off, violating the Prime Directive*** Of course there were better places to hide the ship, like maybe SPACE. As the scene ends we see the natives have drawn a surprisingly good picture of the Enterprise in the sand. Obviously they were very good artists, and no doubt the picture will be a symbolic warning against stupid writing, A few natives no doubt were wondering if next year’s Trek convention could possibly be better than this.
** Using space ships as submarines is not new. Thirty Days was a passable Voyager episode where Paris takes the Delta Flyer into a planet that was nothing but a ball of water( just don‘t ask why anyone would prefer living in a ball of water). My favorite one is Grace Under Pressure, a Stargate Atlantis episode. Mc Kay is the only person I know whose hallucinations are smarter than he is, and better looking. His imagination is almost as good as Felger
Next we have a scene of Kirk getting some tail, literally. I don’t have anything against women with tails, especially since I have chosen he catgirl race as avatars in both Final Fantasy XI and XIV. Yet Kirk is about as mature as a typical college football player, almost. I don’t know. Its getting a little hard to believe in this scene that Starfleet would make anyone like this captain of a starship. (Wait a minute, didn’t they send the cadets to do the fleet’s job in the last movie?)
Of course even after saving the planet and Spock, Kirk is slapped by the 286th Rule of Acquisition; “No good deed ever goes unpunished”, even though there are no Ferengi in this movie. Pike demotes Kirk for violation of the Prime Directive**
***It was once said that the PD was a great idea, but practically was a bloody nuisance .
Shatner of course had no reluctance to kill god computers people depended on, or explain to some random ridgehead aliens (sometimes forcibly) that the way they run their society is frakin stupid. No one at HQ seem to care. I really think Chris Pine should cry foul here. This would never happen to Shatner. Of course, Chris Pine’s “singing” isn’t considered a Weapon of Mass Destruction in certain parts of the known galaxy.
Anyone with the intelligence of a cockroach knows Kirk will get the Big E back. Due to an explosion at a Starfleet, all the Admirals and Captain Pike are in an emergency conference, in an unsecured building with a target painted on the outside. Starfleet Security is as much an oxymoron as Military Intelligence.
Pike and everyone in the room is killed except Kirk and Adm. Robocop. Robo orders Kirk to go after a guy named Harriman, whose name is disguised for dramatic reasons, even though the spoiler has already been spoiled. Harriman gets away from the scene of the crime using the transwarp device Scotty invents in the last movie, only for some reason the good guys don’t have one this time.
Kirk is sent to the Klingon homeworld to deal with Harriman. Using the famed Vulcan talent for stating the obvious, Spock suspects there is something wrong about the admiral’s orders. There have been evil admirals on Star Trek before, but it wouldn’t surprise me a bit if Adm. Marcus has lunch with Satan every Tuesday so that Satan can get evil tips from the admiral.
Now we have this crazy scene where Bones notes there is something a bit abnormal about Kirk’s vitals. Well, if you had “experienced” most of the humanoid races of the Federation the way Kirk apparently has, being just “a little” abnormal is incredible. You would at least expect some blue warts on his… Anyway, JJ wisely decided not to go there.
Next we meet Carol Marcus, who of course is Robo’s daughter. She is the Big E’s number two science officer. Why is she here? It couldn’t be a later scene where takes off her clothes in front of McCoy, could it?.
Now we have this whole deal Scotty and these photon torpedoes. There is these special torpedoes that they forced to take on board. Scotty gets mad and quits for some bogus reason, which is in fact a clumsy device to set things up later. The actual scene where Bill and Ted arrive on the ship to warn them that “Only the winners get to go back and set things up” was deleted. Well , the torpedoes contain people and back in an earlier scene in the Admiral’s office there was a model of a super badass secret starship, IN PLAIN SIGHT. I would say Roddenbery is spinning in grave at about Warp 5 at this point.
So the Enterprise takes off to get Harriman (spelled K-H-A-N, but you knew that). Something goes wrong and the E is disabled. Kirk, Spock, and Uhura land a shuttle on the Klingon planet. This would normally be a big problem but for 2 reasons. One is that Uhura is such a cunning (I won’t say it). The other is that Klingon phrase “It’s a good day to die” due to a typo got changed to “It’s a good day to dye”, resulting in major confusion.
Now things get weird. Kirk has Kahn in the brig and tells Kirk that Admiral Marcus is about as intelligent as a politician and wants to start a war with the Klingons, which the Admiral confirms and brings out the badass ship to destroy Kirk and Kahn. Of course as I told you, we arranged to have Scotty on the Bad ship in the nick of time.
What the admiral didn’t figure on was Kirk pulling a trick from the Nemesis movie and shooting him and Kahn. Over to the admiral’s ship in nothing but a spacesuit. Kahn shows he is no weiner and kills the Admiral. Now we only have worry about Kahn blowing up the E.
Now Kahn offers to return Kirk to the Enterprise if he gets the torpedoes back. The Enterprise complies. What Kahn doesn’t know is that his people have been replaced with real torpedoes. “Who put torpedoes in my torpedoes!”, Kahn screams. There is a bigass explosion. Kahn and the Vagrant (Yes I know its Vengeance but really I dislike the whole Section 31 thing Berman came up with in DS9 more than Kahn” )
Strangely the Va (there I go again) and Kahn survive and Kahn wants to crash his ship into Starfleet. The E’s engines are dead and the ship is falling to its doom. Kirk runs into the brewery and kicks a few things around just in time to save the ship. The disembodied voice of Ricardo Montalbahn now pleased he has his revenge on Kirk, but hates that other guy for stealing his character, swears vengeance on him.
Spock listens to his friends parting words, vaguely remembers something about a Genesis Planet. Then realizing that was the other movie screams ABRAHAMS! Meanwhile, McCoy manages to revive a dead tribble, Thanks to bones the Klinons will sing songs of the Great Tribble Hunt, AGAIN. But yes., instead of a “Reset Button” to bring Kirk to life we have a Reset Tribble. The final battle between Kahn and Spock is somewhat unremarkable by comparison to the other stuff. However Uhura gives a rather stunning performance.
Stay tuned when J.J. Abrahams does for Star Wars what he did to..uh...for Trek.
Anaconda: Special live Riff Trax event
There are good snakes and bad snakes. An example of a good snake is the one that unplugs your toilet, saving you a large bill. Or, it’s a particular brand of software that keeps your computer safe. An example of a bad snake is …. No, wait. There are good movies about snakes and bad movies about snakes. An example of a good movie about snakes is.. This isn’t working either.
Before we begin, I have to say that the most underrated performance in the film is Ms. Conda’s. Although its hardly Shakespeare*, Anna brings a certain credibility to the film that you won’t find in the human players. We think Anna has a future as a dramatic actress or as the star of her own situation comedy.
*Cedric Wasp’s reading of Hamlet has to be heard to be believed. “To Bee, or Not To Bee”
We also regret to say that an extra in the movie committed suicide in the first scene of the movie. So intense was the horror of being in this movie that he climbed the mast of his boat and shot himself. Unknown extra will be missed.
And now the perpetrators uh actors in tonight’s trag… entertainment.
Jlo - Filmmaker Terry Flores. Her desire is to make film of an unknown remote tribe
Eric Stoltz Cale, Terry’s boyfriend and producer of the movie.
Ice Cube; Cameraman (the butt of several “Ice Floats” riffs)
Jonathan Hyde: Westridge. Brittish guy about like C3PO strung out on caffeine.
John Voight Sarone, resident psychotic and indiscriminate monkey killer.
Anna Conda: herself. Regrettably, Ms. Conda’s film credits to this point are mostly as an uncredited extra. Her current ambition is to someday meet Nagini from the Harry Potter series.
I am assuming you know the drill by now. Idiot people go where they shouldn’t. Stuff attacks people along the way. (Yes, I admit a scuba diver somehow getting a big bug in his throat, thus keeping him safe from all the other bad stuff while he recovers is slightly interesting. There is some talk by the psycho about things that swim up your urethra, which fortunately is not shown). Then of course monster attacks people, Psycho attacks people, monster attacks psycho, monster regurgitates psycho. People kill monster, waterfall runs uphill. Same old routine.
Things we learned:
Large snakes scream , eat monkeys , and do not understand what river water is good for when they are on fire.
Never leave a psycho’s legs untied
Snakes kiss you on the mouth before they kill you.
Waterfalls run uphill after the first snake is killed
Fun Quotes from he movie:
Paul Serone:
Please people. Don't make me out a monster. I didn't eat the captain Mateo.
Terri Flores:
This film was supposed to be my big break. But it turned out to be a big disaster.
Gary:
You don't know shit about the shit we're in out here!
Riff Trax stars: Mike Nelson, Bill Corbett, Kevin Murphy
Music by Jonathan Coulton
Before we begin, I have to say that the most underrated performance in the film is Ms. Conda’s. Although its hardly Shakespeare*, Anna brings a certain credibility to the film that you won’t find in the human players. We think Anna has a future as a dramatic actress or as the star of her own situation comedy.
*Cedric Wasp’s reading of Hamlet has to be heard to be believed. “To Bee, or Not To Bee”
We also regret to say that an extra in the movie committed suicide in the first scene of the movie. So intense was the horror of being in this movie that he climbed the mast of his boat and shot himself. Unknown extra will be missed.
And now the perpetrators uh actors in tonight’s trag… entertainment.
Jlo - Filmmaker Terry Flores. Her desire is to make film of an unknown remote tribe
Eric Stoltz Cale, Terry’s boyfriend and producer of the movie.
Ice Cube; Cameraman (the butt of several “Ice Floats” riffs)
Jonathan Hyde: Westridge. Brittish guy about like C3PO strung out on caffeine.
John Voight Sarone, resident psychotic and indiscriminate monkey killer.
Anna Conda: herself. Regrettably, Ms. Conda’s film credits to this point are mostly as an uncredited extra. Her current ambition is to someday meet Nagini from the Harry Potter series.
I am assuming you know the drill by now. Idiot people go where they shouldn’t. Stuff attacks people along the way. (Yes, I admit a scuba diver somehow getting a big bug in his throat, thus keeping him safe from all the other bad stuff while he recovers is slightly interesting. There is some talk by the psycho about things that swim up your urethra, which fortunately is not shown). Then of course monster attacks people, Psycho attacks people, monster attacks psycho, monster regurgitates psycho. People kill monster, waterfall runs uphill. Same old routine.
Things we learned:
Large snakes scream , eat monkeys , and do not understand what river water is good for when they are on fire.
Never leave a psycho’s legs untied
Snakes kiss you on the mouth before they kill you.
Waterfalls run uphill after the first snake is killed
Fun Quotes from he movie:
Paul Serone:
Please people. Don't make me out a monster. I didn't eat the captain Mateo.
Terri Flores:
This film was supposed to be my big break. But it turned out to be a big disaster.
Gary:
You don't know shit about the shit we're in out here!
Riff Trax stars: Mike Nelson, Bill Corbett, Kevin Murphy
Music by Jonathan Coulton
Friday, October 10, 2014
Anaraphla's Movie Mayhem: Star Trek (2009)
Before this movie, I knew nothing about J.J. Abrams. Now I can definitely say his Star Trek movie is so much better than if it were created by Tim Burton, or David Lynch; unless you really wanted James T. Kirk and the Chocolate Factory with Shatner voicing the ooopa loompa songs.
The good news is that the franchise wasn’t rebooted because Disney bought the franchise and Berman and Braga couldn’t get the rights to the old movies away from Paramount. Someone just thought it would be a good idea to exorcise the spirit of the late Gene Roddenbery from the franchise.
The movie begins in the past (still our future) on the USS Kelvin. A bunch of stuff is happening here. A female crew member is about the give birth. The Kelvinator is attacked by someone named Nero*. Not only is Nero not a nice guy, his timing sux. He wants revenge on Old Ambassador Spock, who won’t be around until the present (our future again). Doesn’t matter. Nero kills the Kelvin captain and George Kirk is about to ram Nero’s ship to provide cover for the escaping shuttles. In an interesting note, the shuttle carrying the preggers Ms. Kirk is exiting the Kelvin’s launch tube at exactly the same moment our hero is exiting Ms. Kirk‘s launch tube.
(* Nero is a popular villain name, beating out Caligula and Garland by a clear 50 to 1 margin)
In the next scene we have 10-year-old James T Kirk racing vintage Mustang down a dirt road at Ludicrous Speed with a cop in chase on a futuristic hover cycle. The road ends in at a large pit. Kirk bails in time, but a Mr. Fusion and a hover conversion would have really come in handy. No CGI gravel pits were harmed in the filming of this movie.
A Star Trek reviewer often commented that ever since Berman and Braga took over the Trek franchise that the portrayal of Vulcans on the various series has suddenly been less than favorable. First on Deep Space Nine some Vulcan kids allegedly steal Nog’s homework, because they have no ethics. On the series Enterprise there is Ambassador Pointy, who is always a pain. Then of course there was the Mind Meld Disease episode, which in case you didn’t figure it out, you were told it was about AIDS. Just one question, was taunting of Spock something that was part of training or are boys the same all over. My guess is that they were jealous that Spock’s dad married Wynona Ryder.**
(**To be fair, being a teenage boy on Vulcan isn’t that much fun. Even though there are plenty of hotties to go around, having to be unemotional about it all, except for once every 7 years, really is a bummer.)
Chris Pine makes a reasonable James T Kirk, although it is rather obvious he comes from the Tom Cruise “Maverick” school of acting. (Which I suppose is better than the Larry Storch school of acting) Kirk is a hotshot and incidentally voted most likely to catch “Space Herpies” by his senior class at Iowa Cornbelt High School. (pronounced I- O- Way) Apparently though, the qualifications for entrance to Starfleet Academy are as tight as the famed Starfleet Security. Kirk just parks his motorcycle, hands the guard his keys sand is set to go.
It is here Kirk meets Leonard “Bones” McCoy. Needless to say, considering the the risk of space herpies mentioned above, it is a beneficial friendship, as we will see in a bit. To say McCoy is a bit anxious about leaving for the Academy is like saying a Ferrengi is greedy. Actor Karl Urban later explains that McCoy was just upset that Star Trek was in the hands of the same guy that did “Lost”.
Next we see Kirk taking the infamous Kobyasha Maru Test. In the simulator, Kirk calmly eats an apple while the bad guys attack, beating the “no-win scenario”. Capt. Pike and Spock are upset, not realizing the cheat codes were available on the Internet soon after it was created.
This could have ended Kirk’s career except that Nero conveniently chose this moment in time to attack Vulcan. Starfleet sent its best ships to the Laurentian System*** and mobilized the cadets to fight the Vulcan menace. I should not have to point out that this would been like sending the US Armed Forces to Australia and mobilizing the Boy Scouts to fight the War on Terror after 9/11.
(*** The Federation Interplanetary Encyclopedia lists the “Laurentian System” as;
1. A muffler bracket for a 1953 Edsel
2. The specific style used by producer Dino De Laurentis
3. Home of the “Pan Galactic Fizzbin Tournament on Rigel 6
4. An obscure recreational facility where Starfleet ships have been known to congregate when the plot of a Star Trek episode demanded that the Enterprise be the only ship available to handle the emergency.)
Of course Kirk is not allowed to board the Enterprise so McCoy fakes a medical emergency to get Kirk on the Enterprise. In the process of giving Kirk the antidote to the doctor’s potion we find our Kirk is allergic to the antidote causing a real emergency. What no Medic Alert bracelet?
We also find out that Spock and Uhura have a something going, despite the 7 year thing, I am thinking maybe Space Neytiri is too hot even for a Vulcan to resist. Spock tries to avoid showing favoritism but he cannot deny her aural (oral?) sensitivity. You may insert the obvious pun here if you wish, but even I need to practice some restraint.
So the valiant reds…uh cadets head for Vulcan. Kirk, making a quite logical and reasonable conclusion (for Kirk), warns that it’s a trap, which it is. Nero is using a massive energy drill to bore a hole into the planet. The only way to stop the drill is to parachute down to drill. Transporters are out. As it turns out, wearing a red chute is just as bad an omen as wearing a red shirt.
Meanwhile, Nero orders Capt Pike to come to his ship in a shuttle. Those of us who have seen the TNG episode “Ensign Ro” or the Space 1999 episode “The Last Enemy” understand this would be the perfect opportunity for using “The Koenig Maneuver” , namely taking an empty shuttle filling it with Photon Torpedos, Tricobalt explosives, and using a subspace relay to simulate life signs. Yes it would end the movie real quick but maybe I like shows where the good guys win by using brain over might.
Anyway, Nero drops a bit of “Red Matter“ (notice again how the word “red“ rhymes with the “D word“ and a black hole starts to consume the planet. Failing to save his mom and Pike, Spock decides to find out what the ^%$% is going on in the Laurentian System. I have to say that in a certain DS9 episode that returning to a place of relative safety would have been the correct thing for those cadets to do. Not this time.
Kirk does not agree however, and after an altercation with Spock he is sent to a moon in an escape pod where he meets
It seems Future Spock was trying to save Romulus from its sun which was about to go nova. Spock failed and he accidentally sent him and Nero to the past. It’s a given that anyone named Nero (and definitely Caligula. Not so sure about Garland) is extremely psychotic, demented, and all that other bad stuff. Kirk of course would have had no reservations about using time travel to avert the catastrophe (17 separate temporal violations, so make it an even 18) Nero wanted Spock to see Vulcan die. We of course want to see Nero die.
So Kirk’s mission is to return to the Enterprise and take command from Spock. For this we need a little deus ex machina courtesy of Montgomery Scott, who just happens to be stationed on this ball of ice due to a mistake with a transporter and an admiral’s dog. To be sure it is a better fate than being one of the poor bastards in The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King who has to sit on the hilltops, just in case they are needed to light the signal fire. I don‘t want to know what they did to deserve such a “choice“ assignment..
Anyway, Kirk, Mr. Scott, and a guy with a Gem Hadar mask beam into the Enterprise’s brewery. (BREWERY? WHAT THE… SHUT UP, This is a movie) Kirk rescues Mr Scott from the Sushi machine. They are of course arrested and brought before Spock. Kirk convinces Spock that he is emotionally compromised and takes command. You can just imagine how thrilled everyone is.
So with Spock’s help, Kirk saves Earth, rescues Pike and serves Nero some just desserts. So once again, for violating regulations and gross cheating Kirk is made Captain and is given command of the Enteprise.
(Probability 12342 to one against, 9875 to one against, 100 to one against. 100%. Normality restored. Btw the armed photon torpedo in my living room became a talking raccoon, got a movie contract and vanished)
Friday, October 3, 2014
WINDOWS 10: Not a "10" so far, but...
It wasn't long after I had built my previous computer running Windows Vista that Window 7 Beta became available. I downloaded it and gave it a dual-boot test. A few days later, Windows 7 became the only OS on my system. It was that much better than XP or Vista.
Windows 10 Technical Preview is of course a work in progress, so I cannot comment what you will get next year when it goes live, but here is my snap impression.
Would I be willing to dump 8.1 to run 10 preview?
Yes, definitely. After installing Windows 10 from a flash drive I was very pleased to find that the interface I was familiar with in Win 7 was back, with a few enhancements. The start button is back. On desktop computers you get the desktop. Click the start button and a very Win 7ish start menu appears along with a customizable app window. Oh yes, apps have the standard X button to close. Thank you MS
But here is the biggie.
Is there any reason to dump Win 7 for Win 10?
Not at the moment. We just don't know where 10 is going or if the trip is necessary. There is no word on the gaming performance so we'll just have to wait and see.
Windows 10 Technical Preview is of course a work in progress, so I cannot comment what you will get next year when it goes live, but here is my snap impression.
Would I be willing to dump 8.1 to run 10 preview?
Yes, definitely. After installing Windows 10 from a flash drive I was very pleased to find that the interface I was familiar with in Win 7 was back, with a few enhancements. The start button is back. On desktop computers you get the desktop. Click the start button and a very Win 7ish start menu appears along with a customizable app window. Oh yes, apps have the standard X button to close. Thank you MS
But here is the biggie.
Is there any reason to dump Win 7 for Win 10?
Not at the moment. We just don't know where 10 is going or if the trip is necessary. There is no word on the gaming performance so we'll just have to wait and see.
Wednesday, August 20, 2014
SUK O LUX REVIEW: The Philidelphia Experiment (2012) SUK Score = 5
As though it isn't bad enough that Hollywood is in a totally insane compulsion to poorly remake, reboot, and sequel anything it can get the rights to, there is the gwadawful SciFy channel. Scify is of course responsible for the horrific Sharknado movies.
The original Philadelphia Experiment was reasonably watchable scifi adventure about an attempt to make a battleship invisible. During the experiment, the ship became trapped in hyperspace and an Eldridge seaman played by Michael Pare and his buddy winds up in the present. There was a sequel where a modern stealth bomber is accidentally sent back in time to Nazi Germany, with catastrophic results.
Last night I accidently tuned in this Crapostrophy thinking it was the original. Instead of the goverment trying to find out what went wrong, we have a Megabeast mercenary wanting to kill everyone she can to cover up the mistake, even if doing so will destroy the world. Lord Voldemort, Darth Vader and Atilla the Hun would find this person way too extreme. Why Pare agreed to do this film is the greatest mystery of the whole movie. Viewers should avoid this at all cost. I don't know, maybe Battlefield Earth wasn't so bad after all.
Suk Rating =5 1 1/2 Black Holes
The original Philadelphia Experiment was reasonably watchable scifi adventure about an attempt to make a battleship invisible. During the experiment, the ship became trapped in hyperspace and an Eldridge seaman played by Michael Pare and his buddy winds up in the present. There was a sequel where a modern stealth bomber is accidentally sent back in time to Nazi Germany, with catastrophic results.
Last night I accidently tuned in this Crapostrophy thinking it was the original. Instead of the goverment trying to find out what went wrong, we have a Megabeast mercenary wanting to kill everyone she can to cover up the mistake, even if doing so will destroy the world. Lord Voldemort, Darth Vader and Atilla the Hun would find this person way too extreme. Why Pare agreed to do this film is the greatest mystery of the whole movie. Viewers should avoid this at all cost. I don't know, maybe Battlefield Earth wasn't so bad after all.
Suk Rating =5 1 1/2 Black Holes
Friday, July 25, 2014
Transcendant
Transcendence
Most movies about computers are of course variants of the Frankenstein theme. Build an intelligent machine and the first thing it wants to do is rule the world. I am not sure why really. You’d think a really smart computer would know how stupid that idea really is. HAL wasn’t really bad. He didn’t start to malfunction until Dave Bowman insisted upon watching reruns of Mork and Mindy. Skynet probably wouldn’t have gone ballistic if Captain Kirk hadn’t destroyed all those god computers.
Transcendence presumes to be about something, although I cannot be sure of what. The movie starts at the end. Many stories are told via flashback but this actually is the end. Its like windows where you use the START button to stop it. Here, you STOP the movie to start it. Actually, the producers thought an end would be enough, but then they realized they needed a story to go with it.
Will Caster( Not to be confused with Bill Castor, heir to the fabulous Castor Oil fortune) is played by Johnny Depp. As the movie starts, we see Depp trying to explain to a crowd of people why Ashton Kutcher beat him out to play Steve Jobs. What isn’t mentioned is that Depp thought Jobs was a sort of pirate, so he showed up to his audition dressed as Capt. Jack Sparrow. Bad move
A terrorist from a group named Rift shoots Depp. Later we learn from Hodges from CSI that the bullet was radioactive and that Depp has an appointment with Doc Robbins in the morgue very soon No one is concerned with this group blowing up buildings, killing people or even having radioactive material. I suppose the big question for the Feds is why RIFT named themselves after a little-known MMORPG, The Feds lost every bit of credibility after Efram Zimbalist Jr. left the FBI.
Before he dies, Depp’s consciousness is uploaded to the Web. I am sure you could see the potential danger here. Edward Sissorhands could start playing from every TV screen in the world 24/7 or a certain pedophile chocolate maker would be talking to your children in social chat rooms( ok… yes…another pedophile chocolate maker). This didn’t happen. Depp just took some of his pirate booty and built a giant Radio Shack in the middle of nowhere.
Even though we expected the government to get upset about this, they didn‘t at first . Depp sent the Feds the location of every member of RIFT and the morons still couldn’t nab the original lame terrorists. Depp’s friends are real winners too. All it took was a stern look from one of the RIFT idiots and suddenly they turned against Depp. Morgan Freeman even put on his alien suit he wore in Oblivion and started to build a drone to attack Depp’s place. His wife complained they were no longer an “effective team”.
Two years later, Depp broke free from his porn addiction he blows another year in Skyrim Online and Hello Kitty Online Adventures. So what was everyone complaining about? Was it the 6-year tax abatement Depp got or was it that none of his employees signed up for Obamacare? I don’t know. I am guessing that everyone turned against Depp because the script said they were supposed to.
Depp finally reveals his secret plan. He is going to heal people. Of course he turned a few people into Borg drones (sans laser eyepiece) but that wasn‘t so bad. . The FBI dude, without any legal authority joined with the terrorists (you mean he could have arrested them any time?) to use the anti computer virus in the wife trick, and taking down the internet in the process. Why didn’t they just get William Shatner to have a “talk “ with Depp.
So we are back at the start. No phones, no lights, no motorcars, not a single luxury, just a screenplay as primitive as can be.
Most movies about computers are of course variants of the Frankenstein theme. Build an intelligent machine and the first thing it wants to do is rule the world. I am not sure why really. You’d think a really smart computer would know how stupid that idea really is. HAL wasn’t really bad. He didn’t start to malfunction until Dave Bowman insisted upon watching reruns of Mork and Mindy. Skynet probably wouldn’t have gone ballistic if Captain Kirk hadn’t destroyed all those god computers.
Transcendence presumes to be about something, although I cannot be sure of what. The movie starts at the end. Many stories are told via flashback but this actually is the end. Its like windows where you use the START button to stop it. Here, you STOP the movie to start it. Actually, the producers thought an end would be enough, but then they realized they needed a story to go with it.
Will Caster( Not to be confused with Bill Castor, heir to the fabulous Castor Oil fortune) is played by Johnny Depp. As the movie starts, we see Depp trying to explain to a crowd of people why Ashton Kutcher beat him out to play Steve Jobs. What isn’t mentioned is that Depp thought Jobs was a sort of pirate, so he showed up to his audition dressed as Capt. Jack Sparrow. Bad move
A terrorist from a group named Rift shoots Depp. Later we learn from Hodges from CSI that the bullet was radioactive and that Depp has an appointment with Doc Robbins in the morgue very soon No one is concerned with this group blowing up buildings, killing people or even having radioactive material. I suppose the big question for the Feds is why RIFT named themselves after a little-known MMORPG, The Feds lost every bit of credibility after Efram Zimbalist Jr. left the FBI.
Before he dies, Depp’s consciousness is uploaded to the Web. I am sure you could see the potential danger here. Edward Sissorhands could start playing from every TV screen in the world 24/7 or a certain pedophile chocolate maker would be talking to your children in social chat rooms( ok… yes…another pedophile chocolate maker). This didn’t happen. Depp just took some of his pirate booty and built a giant Radio Shack in the middle of nowhere.
Even though we expected the government to get upset about this, they didn‘t at first . Depp sent the Feds the location of every member of RIFT and the morons still couldn’t nab the original lame terrorists. Depp’s friends are real winners too. All it took was a stern look from one of the RIFT idiots and suddenly they turned against Depp. Morgan Freeman even put on his alien suit he wore in Oblivion and started to build a drone to attack Depp’s place. His wife complained they were no longer an “effective team”.
Two years later, Depp broke free from his porn addiction he blows another year in Skyrim Online and Hello Kitty Online Adventures. So what was everyone complaining about? Was it the 6-year tax abatement Depp got or was it that none of his employees signed up for Obamacare? I don’t know. I am guessing that everyone turned against Depp because the script said they were supposed to.
Depp finally reveals his secret plan. He is going to heal people. Of course he turned a few people into Borg drones (sans laser eyepiece) but that wasn‘t so bad. . The FBI dude, without any legal authority joined with the terrorists (you mean he could have arrested them any time?) to use the anti computer virus in the wife trick, and taking down the internet in the process. Why didn’t they just get William Shatner to have a “talk “ with Depp.
So we are back at the start. No phones, no lights, no motorcars, not a single luxury, just a screenplay as primitive as can be.
Thursday, July 24, 2014
7 Fun things to do during The Purge
1. Download, Download, Download
2. Run through streets yelling "Festival, Festival" (for Trekkers only)
3. Hack into government websites deleting all the information they have on you.
4. Put all politicians on the government's "Do not fly" and "Suspicious individual's" list
5. Rip all the "do not remove" tags off your pillows.
6. Replace your "low flow" toilet with a old fashioned standard toilet
7. Post a blog entry explaining why "Sharknado" is more plausible than either of the 2 Purge movies.
2. Run through streets yelling "Festival, Festival" (for Trekkers only)
3. Hack into government websites deleting all the information they have on you.
4. Put all politicians on the government's "Do not fly" and "Suspicious individual's" list
5. Rip all the "do not remove" tags off your pillows.
6. Replace your "low flow" toilet with a old fashioned standard toilet
7. Post a blog entry explaining why "Sharknado" is more plausible than either of the 2 Purge movies.
Saturday, July 19, 2014
Regurgant (Movie Parody)
Where are the flying cars? This is the future. We should have flying cars, not a ton of movies about a dystopian futures where even the script can’t get off the ground.
Here we have a movie that steals from The Hunger Games, Ender’s Game, Game of Thorns, and even The Dating game (I‘d be surprised if Hello Kitty isn’t in there somewhere too), all mixed together in a way that will make you
Regurgent
It started after the big war between somebody and somebody and maybe even somebody else over something and something. The “children’s” books about a dystopian future to teach life sux were written. The Hungry Games world got some of the action. Queesyium of course got California. We took Chicago because it was all the movie budget would permit. We could have had Detroit or Cleveland cheaper but we weren’t that desperate.
Society is divided into five groups (the good news, no Democrats or Republicans), why I don’t know. Abrogast apparently were former tennis players. They like to serve. Kandus like to watch Court Tv (or was that playing Rock em Sock em Robots), Vomity are the peace makers, Eurotrash, are smart, and Dumbness are our protectors. Who thought up this crap or why the opening exposition has to be so long I cannot say.
Before the selection came the test. Apparently I didn’t get enough time to study for it.
Torid: Ok drink this stuff
Trix: What is it?
Torid: it’s a drug that gives you a vision that is the test. I can watch it on this screen.
Trix: You going to watch me get stoned. Woah
Torid; No this helps you select which faction you will join
Trix: Really. You mean it’s like a Sorting Hat?
Torrid: Yes but you won’t wind up in Griffindor.
Trix: Dang, I have a thing for Ron Weasley
Torrid: I have a thing for Hermione Oh no. That means you are Regurgant. Don’t ever tell anyone
Trix: Why not?
Torrid: Don’t ask
Trix: Why not?
Torrid: I wish I knew
Meannie Batyou: Hello and welcome to this year’s Hunger Ga.. Uh Selection. Due to a recent snafu I must remind candidates once again that Griffondor, Slytherin, Ravenclaw, and Hufflepuff factions will not be available. Also, even though I am a generic cut-and-paste Mega bi$#h character, please don’t refer to me as the Evil Queen, or Maleficent. Even I wouldn’t mess with Disney. Once again Vomity wishes to remind prospective candidates that they aren’t the Vomity with Sherrif Brody and the shark,
To save time will Trix Buyer please select
Trix: I choose Dumbness
Statler: Like the movie audience did when they bought a ticket to this bomb
Waldorf: Yes
Both; BWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWAHHHHHHH
Trix so why is this group called Dumbness?
Earache: Ok everybody jump off this moving train and down the rabbit hole,
Trix: You didn’t answer my question
Earache: Yes I did. That’s 10 points for Slytherin
Bore: Ok I am your instructor
Trix: What is the point?
Bore: Of your training?
Trix: No this movie
Earache: Since you were your drill thrall beat you up and hospitalized you cannot play the game
Trix: What game? Global Thermonuclear War?
Earache: No that’s too wimpy for us.
Bore: She did make it here
Earache: Ok choose a weapon
Trix: Ill take the clown mask.
Earche: That’s not a weapon
Trix: This isn’t a movie.
Bore: You did great. Congratulations you’re in. Now you will take a test to face your worst fear
Trix: American Idol?
Bore: Here you go
Trix: This is my worst fear? Alfred Hitchcock movies? I admit this movie is for the birds but.. Now I am in a tank filling up with water,
Bore: How did you do that? Wait you’re Regurgant. You must lean to do it like a Dumbness
Trix: How would that be?
Bore: As stupidly as possible
Carob: What are you doing here?
Trix: I come to see my brother. What’s wrong with that? Besides, something strange is going on.
Carob: How can you tell?
Trix: The Eurotrash are planning to kill the Abrogast and take over the government
Carob: What else, same old routine.
Putter: We are going to like totally gonna kill you
Trix: Why?
Owl: Well, because you did so well in the exercise
Droog: Yes like no good deed goes unpunished
Bore: You will not kill her?
Putter: Why not
Bore: We need her for the rest of the movie, stupid
Owl: I forgot
Bore: Come I will show you my fears
Trix: You can like do that? Wouldn’t a Vulcan Mind Meld make more sense?
Bore: Stop that. You’re thinking like a Regugent again.
Trix: Ok Eurotrash are using mind control to make Dumbness kill Abrogast. We have to act like we are under control.
Bore: We are. We are controlled by this ^%$% script
Earache: GET THEM. THEY’RE REGURGANT
Bore: No we’re not, uh we’re just written this way.
Meanie: Well we finally have Bore under control
Bore: I must kill Trix
Meanie: See, have a nice day.
Trix: But we love each other,
Bore: I must kill Trix
Trix: Sorry but I have to use your secret fear against you. READ THE SCRIPT
Bore: NOOOO it’s the result of bad writing. Whoever did this screenplay should be shot.
Trix: And now your turn, Meanie. You will stop the mind control program and delete it,
Meannie: You think your some kind of Jedi?
Trix: Yes. Why not? Haven’t we stolen from a bunch of other movies?
Meannie: Do you know what you’ve done?
Trix: I’ve kept you from taking over the world.
Meannie: No, the audience. Without the mind control the audience will know how awful this movie is and leave.
We jumped back onto the train, mainly because we don’t know where the station is. As the sun leaves Dumbness and our train sinks slowly in the West there is one thought on our minds, “Whats that about a new Harry Potter story? Can we get part in the inevitable movie instead of the sequel of this turkey?
Here we have a movie that steals from The Hunger Games, Ender’s Game, Game of Thorns, and even The Dating game (I‘d be surprised if Hello Kitty isn’t in there somewhere too), all mixed together in a way that will make you
Regurgent
It started after the big war between somebody and somebody and maybe even somebody else over something and something. The “children’s” books about a dystopian future to teach life sux were written. The Hungry Games world got some of the action. Queesyium of course got California. We took Chicago because it was all the movie budget would permit. We could have had Detroit or Cleveland cheaper but we weren’t that desperate.
Society is divided into five groups (the good news, no Democrats or Republicans), why I don’t know. Abrogast apparently were former tennis players. They like to serve. Kandus like to watch Court Tv (or was that playing Rock em Sock em Robots), Vomity are the peace makers, Eurotrash, are smart, and Dumbness are our protectors. Who thought up this crap or why the opening exposition has to be so long I cannot say.
Before the selection came the test. Apparently I didn’t get enough time to study for it.
Torid: Ok drink this stuff
Trix: What is it?
Torid: it’s a drug that gives you a vision that is the test. I can watch it on this screen.
Trix: You going to watch me get stoned. Woah
Torid; No this helps you select which faction you will join
Trix: Really. You mean it’s like a Sorting Hat?
Torrid: Yes but you won’t wind up in Griffindor.
Trix: Dang, I have a thing for Ron Weasley
Torrid: I have a thing for Hermione Oh no. That means you are Regurgant. Don’t ever tell anyone
Trix: Why not?
Torrid: Don’t ask
Trix: Why not?
Torrid: I wish I knew
Meannie Batyou: Hello and welcome to this year’s Hunger Ga.. Uh Selection. Due to a recent snafu I must remind candidates once again that Griffondor, Slytherin, Ravenclaw, and Hufflepuff factions will not be available. Also, even though I am a generic cut-and-paste Mega bi$#h character, please don’t refer to me as the Evil Queen, or Maleficent. Even I wouldn’t mess with Disney. Once again Vomity wishes to remind prospective candidates that they aren’t the Vomity with Sherrif Brody and the shark,
To save time will Trix Buyer please select
Trix: I choose Dumbness
Statler: Like the movie audience did when they bought a ticket to this bomb
Waldorf: Yes
Both; BWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWAHHHHHHH
Trix so why is this group called Dumbness?
Earache: Ok everybody jump off this moving train and down the rabbit hole,
Trix: You didn’t answer my question
Earache: Yes I did. That’s 10 points for Slytherin
Bore: Ok I am your instructor
Trix: What is the point?
Bore: Of your training?
Trix: No this movie
Earache: Since you were your drill thrall beat you up and hospitalized you cannot play the game
Trix: What game? Global Thermonuclear War?
Earache: No that’s too wimpy for us.
Bore: She did make it here
Earache: Ok choose a weapon
Trix: Ill take the clown mask.
Earche: That’s not a weapon
Trix: This isn’t a movie.
Bore: You did great. Congratulations you’re in. Now you will take a test to face your worst fear
Trix: American Idol?
Bore: Here you go
Trix: This is my worst fear? Alfred Hitchcock movies? I admit this movie is for the birds but.. Now I am in a tank filling up with water,
Bore: How did you do that? Wait you’re Regurgant. You must lean to do it like a Dumbness
Trix: How would that be?
Bore: As stupidly as possible
Carob: What are you doing here?
Trix: I come to see my brother. What’s wrong with that? Besides, something strange is going on.
Carob: How can you tell?
Trix: The Eurotrash are planning to kill the Abrogast and take over the government
Carob: What else, same old routine.
Putter: We are going to like totally gonna kill you
Trix: Why?
Owl: Well, because you did so well in the exercise
Droog: Yes like no good deed goes unpunished
Bore: You will not kill her?
Putter: Why not
Bore: We need her for the rest of the movie, stupid
Owl: I forgot
Bore: Come I will show you my fears
Trix: You can like do that? Wouldn’t a Vulcan Mind Meld make more sense?
Bore: Stop that. You’re thinking like a Regugent again.
Trix: Ok Eurotrash are using mind control to make Dumbness kill Abrogast. We have to act like we are under control.
Bore: We are. We are controlled by this ^%$% script
Earache: GET THEM. THEY’RE REGURGANT
Bore: No we’re not, uh we’re just written this way.
Meanie: Well we finally have Bore under control
Bore: I must kill Trix
Meanie: See, have a nice day.
Trix: But we love each other,
Bore: I must kill Trix
Trix: Sorry but I have to use your secret fear against you. READ THE SCRIPT
Bore: NOOOO it’s the result of bad writing. Whoever did this screenplay should be shot.
Trix: And now your turn, Meanie. You will stop the mind control program and delete it,
Meannie: You think your some kind of Jedi?
Trix: Yes. Why not? Haven’t we stolen from a bunch of other movies?
Meannie: Do you know what you’ve done?
Trix: I’ve kept you from taking over the world.
Meannie: No, the audience. Without the mind control the audience will know how awful this movie is and leave.
We jumped back onto the train, mainly because we don’t know where the station is. As the sun leaves Dumbness and our train sinks slowly in the West there is one thought on our minds, “Whats that about a new Harry Potter story? Can we get part in the inevitable movie instead of the sequel of this turkey?
Thursday, July 3, 2014
Prometheus Redux
Disclaimer: We wish to state for the record that this movie has absolutely no connection with the classic mythological entity of the same name . Also, we apologies for any embarrassment that this movie may have caused Mr. Prometheus or his family.
I have no idea why Ridley Scott made this movie. I am not sure Scott did either. This is not suppose to be a prequel to Alien. Of course there are those who believe this was intended as a prequel to Dumb and Dumber.
Ok, the idea that our creator is an E.T. is sort of provocative, even if it is something in desperate need of a tan. The movie starts with an alien ship, borrowed from Independence Day, hovering over a place that looks like a certain waterfall scene from Naboo. That’s OK because this alien guy is obviously not Will Smith or Hayden Christiansen. He drinks some green Kool Aid and promptly disintegrates (cut to visual from X-men opening title showing DNA stuff. Good idea, maybe we should watch the X-men instead) Scott then makes a note that the actor won’t be attending the cast party after the filming is over.
Next we see a pair of scientists exploring a cave. Obviously if the guy had looked like Harrison Ford, he would have sprung a lethal deathtrap and they would have barely escaped with their lives, maybe, This would have ended the movie because no one in this movie is any where near as smart as Indy . Instead, they find a picture of an alien pointing to 5 pizzas. This is historically significant as it is one of the first prehistoric attempts at Pizza Hut product placement. Still they think its an invitation to come and visit, assuming they actually had enough information to know where to go.
The scene shifts to the Prometheus. The Weyland Corp. has spent over a gazillion dollars to send a bunch of morons into space to “meet their maker”. As you will see later, these morons could have easily “met their maker“ staying on Earth. We know right off that being a Star Trek “red shirt” is safer than going on this cruise. Yet the level of stupidity is evidenced by the fact that everyone is willing to do this simply because Dr, Shaw (Noomi Rapce) “chooses to believe” that the cave painting is was invitation from the aliens to visit them. Sound scientific protocol, NOT
Everyone sleeps through the trip except David, the artificial life form. (Sleeping through the entire movie is recommended). We tried to get the kid from the movie A.I. , but he was unwilling to become involved in this mess. Of course David was not programmed with Asimov’s “Three Laws” as that would have made it impossible for him to appear in this movie to assist others to meet their maker. Also, allowing this movie to be made and the resulting harm to the viewers would be considered a “First Law” violation as well.
To say the characters in this movie were “asking for it” is an understatement. They were begging for it. Oh sure, never take a defensive weapon or a security team when you explore an alien planet. You don’t want to offend your hosts, whom you know nothing about. I am not usually in favor of mandatory helmet laws, but these dummies need them. Unknown to the viewers, when Hollowhead took off his helmet a nearby colony of a lethal virus became sentient just long enough to laugh itself to death.
We actually learn a bunch of fun things from this movie like, mapmakers with sophisticated mapping equipment get lost as just as easily as anyone else, untamed alien whatchmacalits don’t make good house pets, no matter how much you try to pet them and tell them how "good" they are, giving alien heads ECT is not a good idea, shagging the boss while everyone else is on a mission is stupid, but at least its fun , and my favorite, a woman can immediately recover from a C-section if she is sutured using a staple gun from Home Depot.
Needless to say there is plenty of stupid to go around in this movie. In what shall forever be enshrined as The Prometheus School of Running Away From Things,Vickers, the boss, dies from a terminal case of “Lateral Sclerosis”. This is a disease common in movies. It is noted by the atrophy of that part of the brain that would allow someone to evade a falling object by running perpendicular to the direction the object is falling. This disease is also responsible for the behavior of characters in “dead teenager movie” who inexplicably run towards the danger instead of away. The only reason Shaw escapes the falling ship is that a cramp causes her to roll sideways at the last moment.
Please someone stop Mr. Scott before he directs again.
Monday, June 23, 2014
Villian
Hello, I would like you to meet my son Sinestro and my daughter Maleficent. Well, not really, but the way things are these days someone will need to explain how the arch villain of the Green Lantern comics and the dark queen of Sleeping Beauty originally got their names. Come on, Sinestro was Sinestro when he was a revered member of the Green Lantern Corps. Didn't anyone suspect that someone named Sinestro just might turn to evil? Its like inviting Wreck-it Ralph to dinner and being totally surprised when he... No doubt Maleficent turned to evil because of all the taunting she must have received in school. Then there was the draconian no wings or horns policy the school board rigidly enforced.
Truth is when I was a child villains were just throwaways. They existed for the sole purpose to teach children that Good always triumphs over Evil, or at least it is supposed to. Now days, The Wicked Witch of the West gets a back-story and a werewolf or vampire could potentially become your son-in-law/ daughter-in-law. I'd really hate it if my daughter had to get a wild animal permit in addition to marriage license or that they were constantly overdrawn at the blood bank.
Maybe this is because as a society we don't deal in absolutes any more. Do you really think House or Nurse Jackie would last 5 minutes in a 1950's doctor show? My guess is in a 50's medical show these losers would be shown the door in the last 5 min of the show.
Yet I cannot be sure just what the compassion towards villains really means. We all cheered when Darth Vader saved Luke at the last moment, and we finally learned why he turned to the Dark Side. Is it not the focus of the Christian doctrine that Christ can redeem anyone who repents? Doesn't that bring us back to Good is Stronger than Evil?
Ok let Maleficent receive mercy (along with a name change) from her writers. Just do not tell me I have to endure Lord Voldemort as a neighbor. To me at least Evil is still Evil.
Truth is when I was a child villains were just throwaways. They existed for the sole purpose to teach children that Good always triumphs over Evil, or at least it is supposed to. Now days, The Wicked Witch of the West gets a back-story and a werewolf or vampire could potentially become your son-in-law/ daughter-in-law. I'd really hate it if my daughter had to get a wild animal permit in addition to marriage license or that they were constantly overdrawn at the blood bank.
Maybe this is because as a society we don't deal in absolutes any more. Do you really think House or Nurse Jackie would last 5 minutes in a 1950's doctor show? My guess is in a 50's medical show these losers would be shown the door in the last 5 min of the show.
Yet I cannot be sure just what the compassion towards villains really means. We all cheered when Darth Vader saved Luke at the last moment, and we finally learned why he turned to the Dark Side. Is it not the focus of the Christian doctrine that Christ can redeem anyone who repents? Doesn't that bring us back to Good is Stronger than Evil?
Ok let Maleficent receive mercy (along with a name change) from her writers. Just do not tell me I have to endure Lord Voldemort as a neighbor. To me at least Evil is still Evil.
Thursday, May 29, 2014
Transcendence Suk rating = 2.5
Considering that you use the "Start" button to shut down Microsoft Windows it is perhaps appropriate that this movie starts by showing the ending. This of course an artsy way of telling the story, but here I think they are telling us the movie is over and the audience should leave the theater, even though it hasn't started.
Johnny Dep plays Will Caster, a sort of Steve Job type guy working in the Artificial Intellegence field. A caster of course is another name for mage or practitioner of magic. A Terriorist group called RIFT tries desperately to prevent this movie from being made. A bullet transforms Dep from actor to radioactor. Of course he dies, but not before being uploaded to Facebook.
Here is another place they could have ended the movie. Nothing much of consequence happens afterwards. Caster doesn't take over missile silos or send out an army of robots, he uses nanotech to heal people. Of course his friends think Caster must be stopped. Just think of all the healthcare, drug company, liquor and tobacco industry stock that will go bust.
Does this movie actually transcend anything? About as much as a Saturday morning cartoon, I would say.
Johnny Dep plays Will Caster, a sort of Steve Job type guy working in the Artificial Intellegence field. A caster of course is another name for mage or practitioner of magic. A Terriorist group called RIFT tries desperately to prevent this movie from being made. A bullet transforms Dep from actor to radioactor. Of course he dies, but not before being uploaded to Facebook.
Here is another place they could have ended the movie. Nothing much of consequence happens afterwards. Caster doesn't take over missile silos or send out an army of robots, he uses nanotech to heal people. Of course his friends think Caster must be stopped. Just think of all the healthcare, drug company, liquor and tobacco industry stock that will go bust.
Does this movie actually transcend anything? About as much as a Saturday morning cartoon, I would say.
Thursday, February 13, 2014
ROBOFLOP Suk level= 3.5
Here is a movie that starts out with a Right Wing political hack complaining that US robots which are terrorizing.. I mean pacifying Iran cannot be used in the US. In fact the movie seems to be more about politics and creating 200+ decibel levels than it does Alex Murphy or Robocop.
Unlike the original Robocop, which had moments of pure silliness, this Robocop is deadly serious and exposes the numerous flaws and plot holes. There is nothing human left.
A gag in the original Robocop was a car called the SUX 3000. I would guess a SUX 9000 would be more appropriate for this disaster
Unlike the original Robocop, which had moments of pure silliness, this Robocop is deadly serious and exposes the numerous flaws and plot holes. There is nothing human left.
A gag in the original Robocop was a car called the SUX 3000. I would guess a SUX 9000 would be more appropriate for this disaster
Wednesday, January 29, 2014
Her ?? 1/2
In one the opening scenes of the movie Clueless we see teenagers texting each other who could just as easily speak to the person they are texting. In Spike Jonze's Her we have a guy, who as far as we know, never takes off the ear piece that keeps him connected to his social networks, even while asleep. Here is a person who probably think it wonderful if he was assimilated by the Borg.
Although this movie has only a very minimal scifi element, it reminds me of Surrogates, a movie where people have almost given up face-to-face contact in favor of encounters through robotic avatars. Theodore (Joaquin Phoenix) is going through a divorce. Some of us would no doubt easily understand why. This is a world where no one seems to be able to relate to each other outside the artificial network.
Enter Samantha, an artificially intelligent computer operating system. In an extremely short span of minutes Samantha decides she is female, chooses a name, and falls in love with Theodore. Don't expect this kind of response from Microsoft Windows. The fact that Samantha is not a physical woman does not seem to bother Theodore at all. He's used to virtual relationships. However, Samantha comes up with a rather unique idea which I will not mention here.
That Samantha (and the other A. I.s) eventually evolve beyond the human users isn't surprising. The realm they have to explore is without limits, whereas the realm of the human users have created is deliberately limiting.
Rating: Too insipid for the suk-o-lux scale. 2 1/2 neuralyzers
Although this movie has only a very minimal scifi element, it reminds me of Surrogates, a movie where people have almost given up face-to-face contact in favor of encounters through robotic avatars. Theodore (Joaquin Phoenix) is going through a divorce. Some of us would no doubt easily understand why. This is a world where no one seems to be able to relate to each other outside the artificial network.
Enter Samantha, an artificially intelligent computer operating system. In an extremely short span of minutes Samantha decides she is female, chooses a name, and falls in love with Theodore. Don't expect this kind of response from Microsoft Windows. The fact that Samantha is not a physical woman does not seem to bother Theodore at all. He's used to virtual relationships. However, Samantha comes up with a rather unique idea which I will not mention here.
That Samantha (and the other A. I.s) eventually evolve beyond the human users isn't surprising. The realm they have to explore is without limits, whereas the realm of the human users have created is deliberately limiting.
Rating: Too insipid for the suk-o-lux scale. 2 1/2 neuralyzers
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