Holy Hollywood Hacker

The world was recently treated to unsolicited -but very much desired- nude photos of some of the most attractive women on the planet thanks to one enterprising individual, or individuals. The FBI are currently looking for those involved, but it's unclear as to whether or not they're going to arrest them or give them a medal. It's like Christmas for your penis.
Meanwhile, various news outlets are trying to play the blame game using every possible angle about the violation of rights and privacy. No one's really stopped to consider that we've pretty much seen these women 99.99% nude. Kate Upton's claim to fame is being as close as one can be to a centerfold without technically getting nude. She's something of an oddity in this day and age where anyone can access porn at any given time. I've been confused as to why people are obsessing over one semi-clothed woman in a sea of bare tits and labias. Obviously, I see the appeal, (her tits) but it's kind of a retro-hipster obsession. hearkening back to a Baywatch era, or maybe even Mariyln Monroe. The difference is that Baywatch stars and starlets like Monroe still did porn. Kate's kept clean, despite showing her nips through a wet T-shirt and such. Going from a semi-transparent top to no top isn't that drastic of a change for anyone.
As for Jennifer Lawrence, she was Mystique. She was basically nude already except for some blue paint. There's very, very little left to the imagination.
So why all the excitement? It's like the Kardashian, or Hilton scandals in reverse. Does anyone still look at those two and think about the cocks they've seen them take? Of course they do, but not 100% of the time. Most of the time they're just laughing at how fucking stupid and annoying they are. Jimmy Fallon isn't going to suddenly blurt out, "I saw your tits!" when he's interviewing Jennifer Lawrence, or call her movie, "Mocking BJ." Give people some credit.

How To Train Your Dragon (In Your Pants) 2

"How To Train Your Dragon 2" (The Quest for Curly's Gold) seemed a little over-hyped when the ads claimed it was "more fun than Frozen." Fuck that shit. Never compare yourself to Frozen unless you're "Frozen 2: Ice-Ice Baby."

Still, it was a good movie. I only have one weird thing to point out about it though: In a movie about tollerance, one character is alluded to being gay without actually coming out.

Seriously, every part of this moive is about accepting others. The hero even goes so far as to doom his entire village and his father just so he can try and reason with the bad guy. After the first movie, all the Vikings have fully accepted dragons, their former mortal enemies into theri lives, and it's all for the better. The hero wants to keep that going and expand that message to other lands.

Then there's one scene where a character says to the hero, "That's why I never married. Well... that and one other reason." Meaning: he's gay. He's gay and he can't even come out to one of his closest and most trusted friends. He lives in a world where literal monsters are accepted, but he can't like other men. He's followed the hero all the way through this change, but he can't even reveal himself, because it's a kids movie.

The hero might even be gay. He has a very obvious love interest, but he's not as into her as she's into him. He brushes off most of her advances, as if they make him uncomfortable. It could be because he's too distracted, or it could be because he likes the D. Who knows?

Anyway, it's kind of telling when we live in a world where characters in a kid's cartoon can only be alluded to as gay, and not openly gay. Rights and understanding haven't come that far.

The Biggest Problem with the New X-Men Movie

Everyone is nit-picking the little details in the new X-men movie because of all the time-travel and cross-movie franchise going ons. No one has pointed out the biggest thing about Quicksilve. When Quicksilver (although he's never called that in the movie because of liscencing bullshit) has his big bullet-time scene, he stops to put on his headphone and listen to Pink Floyd on his walkman because he has shity taste and it's the 70's. Only, he's going so fast that it'd be impossible for him to hear even a single note by the time he's done, even if he has the tape going fast-forward.
Also, fucking walkmans hadn't been invented yet. The scene takes place in 1975, and the walkman is first released in 1979.

A Newer Hope

Now that the cast for the next Star Wars installment has been announced, can I mention something about the first movie? On the Star Destroyer, the Empire is having a meeting. Everyone in the scene is inexplicably white and British despite being space aliens who lived a million years ago, and mutton chops are very much in style. They're gathered around a conference table, and the one dude decides he's going to call out Vader, the magic murder cyborg with the laser sword. Her'es how it goes down.
Motti: Any attack made by the Rebels against this station would be a useless gesture, no matter what technical data they've obtained. This station is now the ultimate power in the universe! I suggest we use it.
Vader: Don't be too proud of this technological terror you've constructed. The ability to destroy a planet is insignificant next to the power of the Force.
Motti: Don't try to frighten us with your sorcerer's ways, Lord Vader. [Vader walks toward Motti, then slowly raises his hand] Your sad devotion to that ancient religion has not helped you conjure up the stolen data tapes or given you clairvoyance enough to find the Rebels' hidden fort- [grasps his throat as if he is being choked]
Vader: I find your lack of faith disturbing.
First off, Motti works with Vader, and must have seen Vader force choke a dozen people by now over something as trivial as taking too long with his coffee order. He must know not to piss him off. He also has to know the Force is real. The Clone Wars where the last of the Jedi were killed off was only about seveteen years prior to this scene. It's not some, "ancient religion." It's a relgiion that controlled the galaxy by the time he was graduating from Space Douche Academy. Plus, he fucking works for the Emperor. Did he somehow think that Vader got less magic since the last time he saw him? Did the Force just suddenly vanish. Motti basically is displaying stupidity on a cosmic scale.

Movie Reviews!

I recently got out to see not one, but three movies. OMFG! In 3-D no less.

Walking with Dinosaurs
This was a real kid's movie that tried it's hardest to be as obnoxious as possible. The movie is book-ended with real-life human actors because a movie about dinosaurs killing each other apparently needs humans that aren't in danger of being eaten. This part of the movie is about a whiny bitch teenager and his Uncle trying to lead him and his little sister into the woods where no one can hear them scream. The kid's shrooms he took apparently before the movie started kick in as a bird starts talking to him then morphs into a prehistoric bird so he can narrate the whole movie in the inexplicable Mexican accent of John Leguizamo.All the dinosaurs have terrible voice-overs. It's like the old Garfield cartoon where Garfield's lips never move while he's talking, only Mondays haven't been invented yet. The voice-acting itself is attrocious. It's worse than early video games where the actors had no prep-time before being given the script and told to read their lines.
The entire film is set in Alaska, using actual modern-day Alaskan scenery, which kind of detracts from the uber-realistic CGI, which is the movie's only saving grace. It seems to suggest that topography and fauna hasn't changed in millions of years. It would have been interesting to see the megafauna of the past instead of the backdrop for Sarah Palin's Bridge to Nowhere, but what can you do? The movie follows the life of one dinosaur, which is like a Triceratops but isn't. The movie stops and shows the names of all the dinosaurs as it goes along, along with the name's definition -which is educational, but I forgot each name instantly. A lot of the Latin names are less than inspired. Edmontonsaurus means Edmonton Saurus? Tell me more! Yes, the movie is educational and goes into subjects such as herds, species, migration, and the differences between carnivores and herbivores. It'll probably end up being shown to Grade 6ers while the teacher goes out and smokes.
The narrator tells you what's going to happen before it happens, lessing in the impact so you care even less about a barely-there paint-by-numbers plot. "The sad part is coming up," he says at one part.
"Well I guess I'll go and get some more popcorn," I said.
The main character also keeps cutting into the narrator's story, which is bizzare, because it's being told from the narrator's perspective to the teenager by a magic crow, who shouldn't be able to hear the dinosaur.
The movie is about the story behind the fossil of a dinosaur's tooth, but the tooth itself doesn't come from the protagonist of the story. So really, the story isn't even about the story.
The whole time, you're thinking about how they could have taken all the CGI and made a new Jurassic Park. You technically still could. All you would need to do is CGI in Jeff Goldblum running from things and you'd have money up the ass. Or you could have used Morgan Freeman as the narrator doing his March of the Penguins shtick and classed things up.
How immature is this kid's movie? It has a dinosaur shitting on another dinosaur within the first ten minutes, then has about three minutes of dialogue about the shitting.
The movie is called, "Walking with Dinosaurs," and that's pretty much all they do. It's like Lord of the Rings without the Lord or Rings.
Honestly, if dinosaurs could talk, all I'd want them to say is, "Fuck you, other dinosaur! ROAR!"
At the moment, it only had a 4.7/10 score on imdb.com.

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug
That's a terrible and clunky title, but that phrase is actually in the movie. It's like in Family Guy, where Peter goes, "So that's where that came from," when he hears the name of the movie in the movie.

The movie theater was also serving alcohol, so I imagined a scenario where I'd drunkenly attack the screen trying to save Bilbo from the dragon, also like Family Guy.

So pretty much everything ever is like Family Guy. 

This movie had all the stuff you wanted to see in the first movie, but didn't because Peter Jackson like money. It had elves killing orcs, the dragon, a romantic subplot that made no sense and felt forced, and they actually get to the fucking mountain and find the dragon and the stone they're looking for. Then it ends like Matrix Reloaded and you realize you have to go see another fucking movie next year, and you should have waited for the Blu Ray box set and watched them all at once over an eight-hour marathon.

It featured the most batshit ridiculous fighting scene since the Big Wheel scene in Pirates of the Carribean: Dead Man's Chest, and also featured Orlando Bloom. 

In it, Bilbo and the Dwarves are riding a rapids inside of barrels while being chased by both orcs and elves, who are also fighting each other as well as the dwarves. Legolas shows up and start literally hopping on the dwarves' heads as he jumps from one side of the river to the other. One dwarf gets and arrow in the leg, which I beleive is the closest any of them come to dying in any of the three movies. When you think about it, that completely negates any drama in all three movies. The movies have a death toll in the hundreds, but not one of the heroes suffers more than a boo-boo. It's like every 80's action movie times 10.

I'm also curious as to why any of the dwarves bothered to go along with Bilbo, as the entire plan centres on him and him alone. They're really just there for moral support.

Frozen

Frozen is a classic Disney movie in the Pixar style. It's really about how every Disney Pricess is fucking stupid. The Princess falls in love after meeting a man for the first time then gets cursed by a sorceress. She has something that talks and sings that should do neither of those things because it's supposed to be an animal/inanimate object as her companion. That's 90% of al Disney movies. At some point, the movie collides with an 80's movie ala Sixteen Candles when she realizes that she's been chasing after the wrong man. The main difference between this and every other Dinsey movie is that the evil sorceress isn't evil. Somewhere in there there's a metaphor for Rogue and Iceman. I'm not joking.

The Princess gets the same white streak in her white hair. There's even a thing where the Ice Queen wears gloves to cover her hands and never wants to touch anyone because she doesn't want them to know she's abnormal.Also: What's with Marvel/Disney and chicks with red hair? In Marvel there's been Mary Jane, The Black Widow, Crystal, Jean Grey, Mystique, Phoniex (Jean Grey's daughter), to name a few. Surprisingly, the Scarlet Witch is a brunette. In Disney there's been Belle, Merida, Anna, Jessica Rabbit, Ariel, and Lindsay Lohan. Since the two companies merged, they've been producing more red heads than exist in the world today. It's extra weird because Anna is a redhead and her sister is blonde.

In a weird way, the movie's like a sitcom with the dialogue and plot points. You'd almost expect them to start dancing in a fountain with umbrellas and having wacky neighbours.

The biggest sore point for me is the villain of the movie. If the villain had done absolutely nothing, he'd proabably end up winning. Instead, he goes on a triade and goes overboard. His entire shtick was that he was pretending to be good and loving to become the King. If he kept with it, he'd either have an adoring wife and be King, or else he'd just be the King. Instead, he went overboard. He basically fucked up as bad as he could fuck up.Who was he going to marry if not Anna? 

To me, the greatest villain in Disney movies is Jafar. He wanted the Princess, the Kingdom, and infinite wishes, and he was a dickhair away from all of that. He had the broadest scope of anyone ever and he had a pretty damn good plan. The bad guy in Frozen just wanted a kingdom, and not a good one at that. Legally, he'd probably end up having to go through an ellection or else be cast aside by a distant relative of the Queen. 'Dem's the rules, fucko.

Super Spock

Composite Superman has green skin so you won’t mistake him for the wrong person at the right angle….

I was trying to decide if the reboot Spock was more like Superman, or Batman, and I decided he’s more like Composite Superman, which as you know is a cloned zombie Superman and Batman stitched together. Why? Let’s go over the checklist of what they have in common:

Superman:

• Alien
• Home world destroyed
• Super strength
• Wears blue
• Mild mannered
• Believes in truth
• Weakened by radiation

Batman:

• Saw mother die
• Will break your arm
• Logical
• Shows little emotion
• Control freak
• Knows an unbeatable fighting technique
• Bitchin’ ride

Startling Trek

I’m still thinking about the new Star Trek movie days later. Specifically, all the weird things about it. Anyone could go on about little mistakes, and I WILL, because it’s fun.

SPOILERS!

1: You have to watch the first movie in the reboot series, PLUS the Wrath of Kahn from the original run to fully understand the movie. Meaning it’s not as good independently. A lot of sci-fi movies suffer from this. Just look at Star Wars, the Matrix, etc. None of those movie sequels except the originals really hold up under their own weight.

2: Why did Kahn need the alias of James Harrison? Nobody knows who the hell he is. He’s been frozen for centuries. It’s not like he’s going to run into someone who’s looking for him.

3: Why are they still using hose reels for fire suppression hundreds of years into the future? Why has there been no advancements on that front? In the movie, Kirk uses a fire hose to take out a shuttle, which is stupid. He had a gun with him, which he could have fired directly at the turbines keeping the shuttle aloft. Instead, he finds a very unlikely fire hose reel and ties the gun to it and tosses it in there, which works. You can see Kahn glaring at him out of the window thinking to himself, “This is a superior opponent.” If it was John McCain, he would have tied a computer to it and dropped it on him. Seriously, has no one else noticed every single action movie has the hero using a fire hose to escape or to blow something up? They’ve never once been used to put out a fire.

Also, Kahn had opened fire on an entire room full of people with heavy gunfire. The entire building should have been cut in half. Instead, maybe two people die.

4: Why were Kahn’s crewmates inside of the photon torpedoes? It’s explained in the movie, but it’s a terrible explanation that makes no sense. Hiding anyone inside of an active missile is a pretty terrible idea.

5: Why would waking up the rest of Kahn’s crew from cryo-stasis kill them? It’s established that they’re all like Kahn and Kahn has super-healing powers. If a blood sample from Kahn can cure death by radiation, it could probably cure a case of frostbite. Kahn’s like the reverse Tony Stark in this movie. He’s captured and forced to make weapons, but instead of sneakily devising a means for his own escape, he goes ahead an builds the torpedoes. He could have used that time to find a way to thaw out his friends and revolt, but that never occurs to him.

6: Everything about Kahn’s plan makes no sense. Obviously, he wants revenge on Starfleet, but the way he goes about it kind of defies his whole, “Evil Genius,” status. He has a ring he can turn into a bomb when it comes in contact with water. Why did he need the one guy’s help with blowing up the “archives?” He could have snuck that bomb in a million different ways. He could have blown up the meeting too in the exact same way. Everything he does seems as if it’s designed to get him closer to getting his crew back, as well as the Starfleet warship. There’s so many points along the way where he could have literally no idea what would happen next, or if he’d get his crew killed. At one point, they were going to launch his own crewmates at him and blow everyone up until he surrenders. That doesn’t sound like a winning plan.

7: Why does the guy Kahn recruits as a suicide bomber send a note off before killing himself? The idea was to repay Kahn, without endangering his family. No one would have likely traced the attack back to him without the note as all evidence would have been blown up. Probably the only reason he went through with it at all is because he felt Kahn would kill his family if he didn’t, or if he went to the authorities beforehand. Telling people that Kahn was the one who talked him into it and supplied the bomb negates all that.

8: Why would Starfleet ever accept Scotty’s resignation? He’s the genius behind the biggest technological advancement since the Warp Drive. The fact they’d stick him on a ship instead of a lab is baffling in and of itself.

The Dumbest Ways Movie Characters Have Been Brought Back to Life

Science Fiction and Fantasy movies are notorious for shirking the rules of life and death, even within the confines of their own mythology. In the Harry Potter universe, for example, it’s supposed to be impossible for a person to be brought back to life, but then there’s Voldemort and a legion of ghosts. That being said, audiences hate to see their favourite characters and actors cut out of their favourite franchises, and everyone loves a happy ending.

Warning: This contains spoilers. See every movie ever released before continuing.

X-Men: The Last Stand:

X-Men: The Last Stand has the distinction of bringing not one, but two characters back to life in the same movie, at the bookends.

The character: Jean Grey

The death: Killed in a flood

How she came back to life: The Phoenix Force

In all fairness, fans of the X-Men comics were waiting for this event to take place. The death/life/death rebirth cycle Jean Grey goes through is considered one of the crowning achievements of a series that goes back to the 60’s. That being said, in the comics Jean is chosen as the vessel for a cosmic force that brings her back to life. In the movie, she reaches a new plane of telekinetic power and it’s not even clear if she died in the previous movie. Nobody bothered to check. Scott’s the only one who bothers to go looking, and that’s months later after he gets a telepathic signal. You’d think with the multi-million dollar super-jet and all their super powers that could have at least dredged the lake to look for her body. Or they could have reported her missing and let local authorities find the body for them. It’s not like she would have been arrested post-mortem for being a mutant. Jean still supposedly had family, who’d probably want her remains.

When asked how she’s still alive, she replies, “I don’t know.” That’s all the explanation beyond, “She’s a mutant,” the audience ever gets.

Come to think of it, how is anyone sure she’s dead at the end of the Last Stand? She survived being crushed under a tidal wave and drowned and then came back like she Jason Voorhees, why would being stabbed be any more effective?

The character: Professor X

The death: Being ripped to atoms by the Phoenix Force

How he came back to life: Mind-swap

Nobody in any movie ever has died as utterly as Professor X did in The Last Stand. Every molecule of his being is pulled apart and you see him torn to dust. After the credits roll, you’re treated to a scene where he’s entered the body of a comatose boy, an event which is eluded to earlier in the movie. This creates a weird implication that Professor X’s consciousness has always been separate and independent of his body, which means his powers function without his physical form. That means he might never have been a mutant to begin with.

Star Trek:

Star Trek: The Search for Spock:

The character: Spock

The death: Radiation

How he came back: Terraforming

Like the X-Men, characters in Star Trek are constantly dying and coming back to life.

At the end of the Wrath of Kahn, Spock dies heroically and is given a burial in space. That’s cannon. In the sequel, his body is brought to an experimental planet and is somehow brought back to life using a terraforming device which in no way is designed to do that. Not only does he come back, he’s a rapidly-aging kid again and his emotions (which he isn’t supposed to have as a Vulcan) control the weather on the new planet, Genesis. Then he goes back to normal, and resumes his old job as if nothing out of the ordinary happened.

Star Trek: Generations

The character: Kirk

The death: Saving Whoopi Goldberg

How he came back: Rescued by Picard from what was essentially his own personal Heaven, minus the green alien women. (Thanks Picard!)

If Spock’s resurrection made little sense, everything about Kirk being suspended in time/space for decades so he could team up with Picard made less sense. Since the pocket-dimension he was trapped in was a crucial part of the bad-guy’s evil plot, the movie itself made no sense. Seriously, what was the plan? The bad guy was going to blow up a planet to start a chain reaction that would let him access the Heaven-dimension and bring back his dead family, only he got a karate chop to the face by Kirk as a consolation prize. Kirk dies a few hours, if not minutes of being resurrected and gets buried on a lonely planet where no one will even visit his grave. To recap: Picard is a total dick.

Star Trek: Into Darkness:

Seriously: Spoilers. Skip ahead.

The character: Kirk

The death: Radiation. The exact same way Spock died.

How he came back: A blood transfusion

Typically, blood transfusions only work if you have a beating heart and every cell in your body hasn’t burst from radiation. KHAAAAAAAN’s blood is magic, though, and they decide to use it to save Kirk and not the dozens of other dead or injured people from the same attack. Bear in mind, Kirk’s already dead. In the extra feature to 28 Days Later, the directors discuss how they toyed with the idea of a blood transfusion as a cure for zombism, but decided that audiences would never buy it. Abrams knows better. His heroic death was just a role-reversal of what had already happened in another movie, meaning Abrams screwed audiences into paying to see something twice.

The Matrix: Reloaded

The character: Trinity

The death: Computer generated bullets

How she came back: THE ONE!

If you die in the Matrix, you die in real life. Unless you’re fucking Neo. Neo takes his hand and shoves it inside her (SFW) to remove the bullets and to BREAKOUT! KICKSTART MY HEART! Instead of resorting to CPR, he literally pumps her heart with his hand like he’s about to sacrifice her to Khali-Mah. Even with super-powers, it shouldn’t have worked, because her heart stopped in real life. She dies again in the next movie and Neo just kind of accepts it, even though he has super-powers in real life too (he can see even though he’s blind, and he can shoot out EMPs with his hands). Why it doesn’t occur to him that he’s essentially a God I won’t understand.

Superman:

The character: Lois Lane

The death: AVALANCHE!

How she came back to life: Time travel

Superman is expressly forbidden to use time travel by his father, who blabbed about it in the first place. Well guess what, dad? FUCK YOU! Supes spins around the world so fast it starts going backwards. This causes time to go backwards as well, instead of sending all the people, trees, oceans and everything else hurtling into space. His dad somehow magically appears and tries to talk him out of it, even though he’s just a recording on a crystal and not a Jedi. If you watch closely, you’d notice Supes only needs to go back a few minutes, but he spins the Earth around what must be several months. Still, he miraculously returns in the nick-of-time to save Lois, who doesn’t really understand she’s just been saved from certain death by a guy with about 1/16th of an inch of fabric between his Johnson and her. Is she really the real Lois Lane anymore, or just a different version from an alternative timeline? Super’s dick can’t tell the difference.

Crank: High Voltage:

The characters: Everyone

The death: Everyone

How they came back: Open-heart surgery/secret twin/head in a jar

Crank: High Voltage is better if you accept it as a parody of action movies. It uses every trick in the book to bring back every character that died in the first movie. Chelios is supposed to be deader-than-dead after plummeting out a helicopter while simultaneously succumbing to poison. He is literally scraped off the ground and has an artificial heart put in after some Chinese back-room surgery and aromatherapy. His gay sidekick returns in the form of a twin brother seeking revenge, who also has FBT (Full Body Tourettes). The bad guy from the first movie is back, but now he’s a severed head in a fish tank, hooked up to some tubes and shit. High Voltage is notable because Chelios dies several times in the movie after his artificial heart stops beating, and then again during the credits.

Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood

The character: Jason Vorhees

The death: Hung by the neck and drowned

How he came back: Girl with psychic powers

So there’s a girl with psychic powers and she’s having a tantrum, so she goes out on the dock at Crystal Lake and unleashes her psychic fury. Her telekinetic powers rock the dock and somehow brings Jason back to life. How? How the fuck should I know? Jason dies at the end of almost every Friday the 13th movies with a few exceptions, and since he’s a zombie to begin with it’s not hard to write in how he gets revived. In the past, lighting has done the trick like a Post-Modern Prometheus. The psychic-blast was a definite low-point in one of the most cheeseball franchises out there.

Peter Pan

The character: Tinkerbell

The death: Fucking with Captain Hook

How she came back to life: Clapping

This scene is replayed in a lot of different versions, where everyone has to say, “I believe in fairies!” and clap their hands, and I mean everyone. Even you, in the audience, are supposed to say, “I believe in fairies!” I’m pretty sure you have to do it when you read the book too. You wouldn’t want to be the one person who doesn’t. Imagine watching the movie with your kids and you didn’t say the magic words. They’d never trust you again. You’d be sitting at the dinner table and they’d be looking at you out of the corner of their eyes waiting for their moment to strike. You can’t just half-ass it either, like the National Anthem, or love-making. You have to feel it.

Snow White:

The character: Snow White

The death: Poison apple

How she came back: Date rape

Snow White wasn’t sleeping: she was fucking dead. Then the Prince rides in an gives her a kiss, and she magically comes back to life. How the fuck does that work? It wasn’t the same story as Sleeping Beauty, where only true love’s kiss would wake her. What would he have done if the dwarves and forest animals weren’t watching?

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

The characters: Megatron and Optimus Prime

The death: Michael Bay-PLOSION!

How they came back: Bullshit

Not one, but two characters are brought back to life in this movie at the bookends. Megatron is brought up from the ocean floor and revived like a zombie Bin Laden and then Optimus is brought back to life by Shia LeBouf’s terrible acting. This movie got a lot of flack, and rightfully so, for not giving a fuck about the audience’s limits for suspended belief. The worst part if how Optimus’s death almost mirrors the one in the animated movie from the 80’s which scarred a generation of kids. That movie was shocking in that it didn’t resolve Optimus’s death, and that you walked away knowing he was gone for good like Bambi’s mom (the TV series later revived Optimus). I realize they’re robots-in-disguise and that they’re essentially just machines that can be repaired, but the movie uses mythical artefacts and a “chosen one” to do the job a blowtorch and a wrench could have done.

Overthinking Cinderella

The Fairy Godmother:

Cinderella’s Fairy Godmother decided to make a carriage for Cinderella and she needed horses to carry it. She already had one horse, but instead of using him, she turns the mice into horses and turns the horse into the coachman. That’s like shanking someone on your first day of prison kind of crazy. She’s out to prove she’s not going to be fucked with by a bunch of fucking animals.

Cinderella’s father is dead and her life is dictated by an evil step-mother. Why is the Fairy Godmother, who’s supposed to be looking out for her, only showing up now when she’s about to miss a ball? Is it really the worst day in Cinderella’s life? Her best-friends are mice: that’s how bad things have got for Cinderella. The next day Cinderella’s locked in her room and the Fairy Godmother is nowhere to be seen.

Also: She tells Cinderella the magic will only last until midnight and it does, but her slippers stay glass. That means the Fairy Godmother had the power to make her enchantment last forever, but specifically chose not to. She intentionally wanted Cinderella to suffer. She’s basically no different from her evil step-mother.

The Mice:

Without Cinderella around to help them the mice would likely have been murdered by the cat Lucifer. They’d either have to move in to the palace with her, or be murdered, and how would Cinderella explain them? Imagine you’re the Prince and you found out the new bride you just met not only talks to mice, she makes them clothes. If she kept them secret, people would still think she’s nuts, because they’d catch her every so often talking to cups and holes in the wall. That’s when it pays to be a pretty blonde girl.

The mice are also probably the only ones in the bride’s party during the wedding. I don’t think Cinderella would have bothered to invite her step-mother and two step-sisters after years of abuse, and they were the only humans who even knew she was alive. Plus, Cinderella makes all the mice’s clothes for them. At her wedding they’re wearing elaborate formal outfits, meaning that Cinderella spent her one-woman stagette sewing mice clothes. That’s super-sad for her.

Prince Charming:

Everyone goes on about how Prince Charming can’t tell who Cinderella is without the glass slipper. He’s not the one going around trying the slipper on all the kingdom’s ladies, however, that’s the King’s right-hand-man doing that. Imagine how super-creepy that would make the Prince seem if he’s going door-to-door putting shoes onto women’s feet, like he’s using his nobility to indulge in his foot fetish. In reality, no one knows who Cinderella is. She’s a shut-in. Representatives from the King come to her house twice and they have to ask if any other women besides the step-mother and step-sisters live there, and they’re told no. She doesn’t even exist in a census.

The Step-Mother:

It takes the step-mother two seconds to figure out Cinderella was the woman with the glass slippers, even though it defies all logic. She doesn’t know where Cinderella would have gotten the glass slippers from, or how she was able to sneak out, but she distrusts her enough to believe.

Cinderella:

She makes a dash when it’s midnight, knowing she’ll never have another chance with Prince Charming. Her only reason for doing so is vanity. Without the spell she loses her Cinderella dress (which is literally named after her), and her hairstyle. That’s about it. Obviously, she’d have to explain to the confused Prince why she’s now magically dressed in torn clothes and looks like she spent all night crying in the dirt, but other than that she’s golden. She blows her one opportunity because she doesn’t want her future husband judging her on her natural look. What happens the day after their honeymoon when she has to show him what she looks like in the morning? Will she bolt then?

Comics vs. Movies Continued: The Marvel Edition

When I began writing about comic book movies, I forgot there was an infinite amount of comic book movies to write about, hence these posts will have to be spaced out.

Ghost Rider (2007)

This movie was the precursor to the moment when all movies became Nicholas Cage movies. Immediately after this movie was released, the Recession hit. Nicholas Cage lost millions due to bad housing investments and had to recoup his losses by acting in as many movies as possible. He’s been in at least 17 movies since this was released, according to imdb.com. That was six years ago. He’s closing in on becoming one of the most prolific movie actors of all time.

Ghost Rider is an easy plot to follow. Jonny Blaze, a motorcycle daredevil, makes a deal with the factual Devil and winds up becoming Ghost Rider, a flaming skull-headed, leather-clad demon who rides a motorcycle with hellfire for wheels. That’s pretty fucking awesome. Only, even when Nicholas Cage isn’t on screen, he’s still on screen because they digitally copied his skull and used it for the Ghost Rider CGI. You’d think a guy who jumps over rotating helicopter propellers for a living wouldn’t have anything to prove, but then you don’t know Jonny Blaze. They go out of the way to stay true to the comic’s cannon, and even create an origin story for his signature chain weapon. At the time, Jonny Blaze had long since been replaced as Ghost Rider back in the 90’s. At least the unlikely named Jonny Blaze and his equally obvious occupation as a motorcycle daredevil had an alter-ego with a life of his own.

Ghost Rider comics, strangely, has as weird as statistics as NASDAQ. Comic sales go up and down with the popularity of motorcycles themselves. Right now, there isn’t an ongoing Ghost Rider series. Go back a few years, though, and the series coincides with the popularity of reality shows about making motorcycles. It synchs up with Jesse James, the Terminator, Easy Rider, and others. Unless someone’s riding a Harley, Ghost Rider isn’t around. That new show about motorcycle gangs didn’t help anything because no one watches cable TV anymore, thanks to the internet.

You know what’s weird? Ghost Rider was mentioned in another comic book movie, The Crow, and was also featured on the same movie’s soundtrack due to a song sung by Henry Rollins. That song is awesome, though, and so it Henry Rollins.

I own Ghost Rider comics, and a legit Ghost Rider action figure. The movie is still pretty bad though. Imdb.com gives it 5.2 out of 10, which is a C- in laymen terms.

What people should hate more:

Ghost Rider: Spirits of Vengeance (2011)

In my blogs, I use a lot of colons. (So does your mom.) You know what else uses colons? Movie titles. Coincidence? (I fucked your mom in the ass.)

I didn’t see this movie. Therefore, I can’t critique it. Why was it made? Nicholas Cage. That’s the answer to that question. He was willing to give up his star power to make shit, and so we have shit. It got a 4.4 on imdb.com. At age 33. I can’t even bring myself to illegally download this movie and watch it. There’s no reason for it to exist, and there won’t be another Ghost Rider for decades to come.

Also:

X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009)

Hugh Jackman is an Oscar hosting phenomenon, like Seth Green. Did this movie really come out in 2009? That’s not too long ago. Still, it sucked. Yet, it stayed true to both the X-Men movie trilogy, and the X-Men First Class reboot/prequel. In this age of Netflix you can watch X-Men: First Class anytime you want for $8.99 a month. Still, you don’t. I’m using my mother-in-law’s account and I’ml not watching it.

This movie came out after X-Men: Last Stand, which tried to kill the franchise. Two X-Men movie with one yet-to-be-screen Wolverine sequel later, the franchise is still thriving.

The Wolverine movie came out after 18 years after X-Men comics peaked in popularity with X-Men #1 in 1991. Wolverine himself was once going to have been rejected as a character after his first appearance in a Hulk comic book, only to be brought into the X-men in Giant-Sized X-Men #1 in 1975. It would be seven years later before Wolverine got his own comic book. Consider that most comics titles come out once per month. That’s 84 chances for Wolverine to get his own title.

Wolverine, as a character, is awesome. He the character Batman wishes he could be. Wolverine is the dividing figure between Marvel and DC. In the Justice League side of things, nobody no matter how evil is ever killed for their crimes. Wolverine doesn’t give a shit about morals. He kills so his friends don’t have to. He does all the ditty work the Punisher and Deadpool can’t be bothered with.

This movie included a scene with Hugh Jackman running bare-ass naked into a barn. To this, I epically remarked, “That’s how the Swine Flue got started.” This gained points for being timely. Today, Swine Flu isn’t even a historical footnote. That’s the kind of joke Leno wishes he made.

The worst part of this movie is how it misused Ryan Reynolds as Deadpool, and misused Deadpool in general. It introduced the White Queen Emma Frost, which later re-appeared in X-Men: First Class, negating everything in X-Men Origins: Wolverine.

Ryan Reynolds ad Deadpool was a Godsend, which was misaligned by him being replaced later in the same movie by the guy who played Darth Sith. Deadpool became half-Cyclops, which made no sense to anybody; either the movie audiences, or comic nerds. Deadpool (who’s only power is mutant healing) blasted apart half-a-nuclear silo with his optic blast he stole from pubescent Cyclops.

Sabertooth, played by a massive, hulking figure with claws and low-morals, was actually done more credence than anyone in this movie, including X-Men where that character was blown off the Statue of Liberty. He was presented somewhere between a snarling beast and a conniver. The log-hut bar fights between Wolverine and Sabertooth came across as both real and brutal. The Alberta-climes almost came across as legit, minus the –32 degree temperatures. At this point I’m too drunk to critique this Wolverine movie further. I can’t even spell, “further.”

And so ends this great critique.

Holy shit, I’m trying to publish this and I can barely see the sceen.

Comics Vs. Movies

In the past decade or more, big budget movie adaptations of comic books have skyrocketed. The visual medium of comic books is little different from an actual storyboard for a movie. The iconic characters and action sequences are an easy draw for audiences. Why then, do so many movies get it so very, very wrong? If you ask people what the top ten worst movies of all time might be, there’s guaranteed to be at least three super hero movies in there.

As a comic nerd growing up, I was always insanely excited when I heard they were making a movie about a title I read. As a balding adult, I now know that turning a comic book into the movie is it’s death knell. It doesn’t matter who’s directing or who’s starring. It isn’t just the fanboy arguments of, “The REAL Spider-Man made his own web shooters.” Somewhere between the page and execution, something goes horribly wrong when Hollywood’s involved.

Movies Everyone Hates:

Marvel:

Daredevil (2003)

This movie starred Ben Affleck (more like, “ASSfleck”) back when he was making movies like Gigli and Jersey Girl. Bennifer was in all the tabloids over his whirlwind romance with Jennifer Lopez, (who likes taco and burritos) and then with his co-star and future wife, Jennifer Garner. More on her later. Bullseye was played by Collin Farrell at beginning of his downward spiral. He was actually a draw before he made this movie. I’m not sure if his performance in this film killed his career, or if his sextape, boozing and drugs did, but I’m going to say it was Daredevil. Kingpin was played by the late Michael Clark Duncan, a black actor playing an originally white character which set a precedence for future roles like Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury. This unfortunately exposed the inherent racism in both the comics and the readers: the comics by the fact there were no black characters, and the readers because of the outcry against a black actor. Michael was perfectly cast, as likely no other actor in Hollywood could capture the stature of the Kingpin.

When I bought this on DVD, I was warned at the checkout that it was a terrible movie. I’d just gotten a PS2, though, and I wanted to build up my DVD library. Still, I wasn’t prepared. It’s hard to put a finger on just what makes this movie so bad. For starters, though, Daredevil, the character, and his alter-ego Matt Murdock didn’t come across as likeable. When the movie’s called Daredevil, that’s a problem. Plus they tried to cover too much ground. The tragic love-story between Matt Murdock and Elektra was unrelated to the revenge story with Daredevil and Kingpin. That could have been two movies, if they had done things right. They didn’t. Bullseye was ridiculous. The Irish brogue was distracting, but not as bad as the Bullseye scar on his head. They kept Bullseye unmasked for the movie to capitalize on Colin Farrell’s good looks and acting chops, but then they had him shave his head and put a giant scar on it, and he flubbed the role. Since Daredevil’s blind, everything in the movie is dark. The night settings make it harder to follow some of the ninja action sequences. Action’s really all this movie has going for it, and if you can’t see that properly, what’s the point at all? The worst, though, was the CGI. For some of the impossible stunt sequences, they used half-finished CGI and made the lighting as dark as possible so you couldn’t tell. Of course, you could, because Daredevil suddenly turns into this early 2000 computer game character.

The movie people should hate more:

Elektra (2005)

This was the worst movie I’ve ever seen. I walked out on it, and I was playing it in my living room. It made me want to get up, and be as physically as far away from it as possible. Jennifer Garner was the only thing people really took away from the whole Daredevil experience, because of boobs. It was supposed to be a vehicle to kick-start her action career to become the next Anjelina Jolie, bolstered by her Alias TV series and Daredevil. Instead, it killed it. This was rushed into production after Daredevil as it’s own spin-off sequel of sorts. No one was exactly clamouring for it after seeing Daredevil. The plot made no sense. After dying in Daredevil she’s brought back to life by ninja assassins and trained to become a ninja assassin until she becomes a ninja assassin. Technically, ninjas are already assassins, so I guess that’s redundant. I guess if you’re already way into sais becoming a ninja is a natural career choice. I’m not sure if even one of the villains she faces in the movie was ever in the comics. Elektra was always sort of a c-list. Her character literally drops off the face of the world for years at a time, and I don’t think she’s had her own comic book series since the 90’s, aside from few miniseries. Still, a chick with boobs in tight pants fighting ninjas should have been a no-brainer.

Aside from the magic-tattoo dudes she’s fighting, the plot closely resembles The Golden Child, without Eddie Murphy crackin’ wise. There was a sort of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon vibe to the fight scenes, if you’ve only ever had that movie described to you while on medication. Honestly, this movie should never had existed. Bear in mind at this time there hadn’t been an Iron Man, Thor, Captain America of Avengers movie. Elektra, one of the more obscure Marvel characters had a movie made before all those greats, but then so did Howard the Duck.

Why is she Greek, by the way? I mean why does that factor in? That’s always been in her Bio, like the artist who created her couldn’t draw Japanese women, so he decided on her being Greek instead?

The Reboot:

The Incredible Hulk (2008)

I could go on at length about The Hulk, directed by Ang Lee, but I don’t have the time right now. (Ins’t it weird Ang Lee and Affleck both won Oscars this year?) I will, however, trash the reboot, which itself has been rebooted. This was the second instalment in The Avengers teaser prequels, and the only one that doesn’t fit in with The Avengers. Most of the movie takes place in Brazil, which doesn’t detract from the comic, really, as Hulk was a nomad by nature. That actually synch with the The Hulk, which leaves Bruce Banner in the Amazon providing charitable aid. Somehow, from that, he ends up working in a soda plant. They redid his origin, which didn’t need to be touched upon really. When Bruce Banner gets mad, he turns into the Hulk and smashes things. If you can’t follow that without a whole backstory about a science experiment gone wrong, you shouldn’t be in the theatre. Nothing about the Hulk’s transformation is logical, so you can’t explain it away with science. You could say he got bit by two snakes at once while bathing in Jello and that turned him into a Hulk, and it would be as acceptable as any other origin story.

His enemy in the movie is a Russian working for the U.S. Military, which makes no sense. He’s viewed as such a Patriot (despite being Russian), he’s transformed into his own Hulk. Apparently even the smallest dose of the Hulk’s blood will turn anyone into a Hulk. Having discovered this, the U.S. Military continues to try and destroy the Hulk instead of harvesting his blood to create an army of super soldiers. Literally: one drop. It’s like 28 Days Later, but with the results you want. It even turns Stan Lee into the Hulk.

The subplot, as always, is a love story, with a lot of sexual tension and the damsel in distress and all that nonsense. The saddest thing is that they try and set up a third Hulk movie by introducing the Leader, and then it ends with a cameo from Tony Stark.

On the Outs

It’s been a few weeks, but I only realized the Jodie Foster coming out speech at the Golden Globes could have had far-reaching historical impact… if it had been made, as she said, “since the stone age.” As you may remember, Jodie Foster, who’s apparently single and ready to mingle as long as you don’t have a dingle, was the object of obsession for John Hinckley Jr. (Sr. must be so proud), because of her role as an under-aged prostitute in Taxi Driver (technically there’s no legally acceptable “age” for a prostitute, but you know what I mean). Because of this, he shot at Actor/President Ronald Regan, who had nothing to do with Jodie Foster, or the movie Taxi Driver. If that makes sense to you, you’re John Hinckley Jr., and you’re in jail, reading this. How re you? Are you doing well? Are they treating you okay? I hope you’re getting the respect an attempted presidential assassin deserves in jail.

As an episode of American Dad pointed out, if Hinckley hadn’t tried to kill Reagan, Regan may have lost the election, turning the country into a Commie Paradise, bread lines and all. What if Jodie Foster had come out as full-blown gay back in the day? Would that have turned Hinckley off enough to stop him from his attempt? The entire course of human history could have been altered, unbeknownst to sexually-repressed and a little lonely Jodie Foster.

I read members of GLAAD were simultaneously applauding Jodie for coming out (kind-of), and snubbing her for not doing it earlier. Imagine what an openly lesbian actress in the early 80’s could have done for the cause? The Pride Parades could be celebrating their 30th anniversaries and…. I don’t know what else.

If anything, Jodie’s possibly America’s greatest hero for NOT coming out of the closet earlier, because of one crazy guy and a gun.

That’s Not True, That’s Impossible!

There’s a disturbance in the Force.

Star Wars: Episode VII. Brought to you by Disney, proud owners of Lucasfilms.

A new Star Wars movie every two to three years.

This hit the internet four hours ago and it’s long-reaching effects have yet to be felt. Many people who would likely chip-in with their opinions may be without power or the internet. They’ll emerge from Hurricane Sandy, look around at the devastation it left behind, and then be told the news. Major nerd sites are down, as are their servers.

It’s too early to tell what consequences this will have. Likely, it’s the Apocalypse. Many fans felt the series was destroyed by the prequels. Further sequels (three are confirmed), might destroy the fabric of reality itself.

Yet, there are countless books, games, comic books, action figures and fan-fic dedicated to a continuing series. Isn’t this just a natural progression of that.

Also: George Lucas himself has stepped away from major motion picture to dedicate himself to “hobby” films. His influence will only be felt as a homage.

Plus there’ll have to be a whole new cast. Anyone from the original series would likely only be as cameos.

Disney Wishland

I only just realized that Toy Story is Pinochio in reverse. It starts off with Buzz thinking he’s a well-rounded human being, and he slowly degenerates into a toy after his will is shattered. Woody is his evil, opposite Jimminy Cricket, who tells Buzz to do the wrong things, leading him further and further astray in his own reckoning of his humanity.

I was also thinking about how Disney movies prove that there’s no such thing as a benevolent God. Their movies are filled with God-like beings like Fairy God Mothers and Genies, but they have unreasonably finite powers. For instance, when Gepeto wishes for Pinochio to be a real boy, the Blue Fairy turns him into a half-real unliving monstrosity. There’s no explanation as to why she couldn’t out-and-out make him a real boy off the bat. She makes him jump through hoops just so he can live. She also makes a random insect his external conscience for shits’n’giggles, instead of instilling it in him herself. The cricket didn’t have a conscience to begin with, so why couldn’t she give it to Pinochio? Also, Pinochio is transformed into a donkey by drinking a magic potion, making him a flesh-and-blood living being, so its obviously not that hard to go from point A to point B. Bear in mind that the Blue Fairy is the only one who knows the rules of the game, and she could be making it up as she goes along. Everyone just trusts in her that she’s telling them the truth.

Modern Horror

I’ve noticed that the horror genre has changed over the last few years. The classic tropes highlighted and derived by the Scream trilogy are still there, but there’s a new genre.

Oddly enough, the plot to these movies closely resemble any episode of Scooby-Doo.

It begins with white people trying to unravel a mystery by investigating a ridiculous hypothesis, ie.: ”The house is haunted.” This usually involves using credible means, such as conducting interviews with locals and experts, and filming in hopes of capturing supernatural activity. Their suppositions, however, are batshit insane, and hence they don’t really believe in them at first. Then, after gathering more evidence, they gradually become more convinced, as does the audience. Despite their new outlook, they don’t bother with the necessary precautions a rational human being would, ie.: “Hey, this house is haunted, maybe I should get the fuck out.” They’ll continue to stay the course even if they don’t want to. Up until this point, the spookiness has really just been a series of random events that can easily be brushed off or forgotten. Then, something big and scary will happen, and then the fate of the people involved is left in question.

This theme is true for a lot of the, “Found Video,” movies out there, like the Blair With Project and all the Paranormal Activity movies that followed it. Its made its way onto the internet as well with the Slenderman videos on youtube.

The Dark Knight Rises (In His Pants)

I’ve only just watched the Dark Knight Rises in theatres, a month since it’s release and I’ve noticed strange things about the plot nobody seems to be talking about. After being one of the last people to see it in theatres, you have no excuse to cry about any spoilers, but I’ll say it anyway: SPOILER ALERT.

1: Robin:

Why is Robin (Blake) hanging around Wayne Industries, or why is he at Bruce’s funeral? There’s only one scene where they’re publically linked together as Blake and Bruce Wayne. That’s hardly enough to get your foot in the door at a multi-national corporation. Alfred has next to no idea who the fuck he is, other than the fact he knocked on the door and he answered. The ass-end of the movie sets up Robin to become… Robin, as he gets 15 seconds of hands-on training from the man himself before earning the Batcave as a type of inheritance. Bruce Wayne is trapped in the Pit for five months, though, where he has little to no time to set up anything for a successor. His only tip of the hat is to tell Robin he should wear a mask to protect his loved ones, which really didn’t work out too great for Bruce to begin with. The entire dénouement is of him hanging around Bruce’s old digs with no real explanation as to why he’s there. How is Wayne’s mansion even standing after the crisis in Gotham? Was it outside the city lines? Every other building was ransacked completely. Also, Bane was out to destroy anything with Wayne’s name on it, and the mansion was the last thing he had. Why not torch it like Ra’s Al Ghoul did?

2: The Motive:

The entire movie is about Bane and Talia’s revenge of Bruce Wayne for killing Ra’s Al Ghoul. Only he didn’t kill Ra’s. They don’t know he killed him, either, they’re just assuming he did. It was actually Gordon who killed Ra’s by blowing up the rail the train was riding along. There were no witnesses to Ra’s death and his body was likely never recovered from under the wreckage. The only evidence linking Batman to the death is hearsay. Based on that, they come up with an incredibly convoluted plot to destroy Gotham out of revenge, well after Batman has gone into retirement. Since he quit, Gotham pulled a 180 and stopped being the evil city Ra’s was out to destroy with his convoluted plot. Its not even clear to outsiders that Bruce even cares about Gotham anymore. Blake certainly doesn’t think so because he stopped funding the orphanage programs. Why attack a city directly to get revenge on one man, then move that man across the planet to a prison where he can only watch helplessly from a black and white TV screen? Bruce even breaks the TV near the end of the five months, so he has no idea what’s going on. With everyone in the prison presumably working for Bane, shouldn’t someone at least be checking on Bruce to see he’s watching? The entire punishment boils down to Bruce watching Gotham being destroyed on TV. Then what? Was someone supposed to kill him? Bane was going to kill himself in Gotham as well. The bad guys had no escape plan in place. They were supposed to be suicide bombers. Bruce could have potentially escaped after the bomb went off and went on to live out the rest of his life. Sure, he’d be living with the knowledge that he let Gotham be destroyed, but it wasn’t exactly his fault.

3: Talia:

Why does Talia fuck Bruce? How did that fit into her revenge scheme? Her plan was to leave Bruce in the Pit for the rest of his life, so he was never going to know who she really was. She was never going to get a chance to betray him, because he would never know, and she was going to die in the suicide attack along with the rest of Gotham. She fucks him seemingly for the sake of horniness. Also, she’s in his lair, and she’s sleeping while he slips away into his Batcave and goes on patrol. Wouldn’t that have been a good time to be evil? Bane wouldn’t have needed to break into the Arsenal because she’d have access to Bruce’s secret stash under Wayne Manor.

4: The Pit:

That one spot in the Pit where Bruce had to jump and kept failing… Why didn’t he bring something up along with him to form a bridge? There’s plenty of spare materials around to use, and he’s fucking Batman. Also, he has a rope. He’s connected by a rope to the top of the Pit. He could just climb up the rope. All that bullshit about being afraid of death, and not being afraid of death, and his father’s ghost was a little unnecessary.

5: The Joker:

We all knew the Joker wouldn’t be back, but what actually happens to his character between the two movies? Presumably, he’s in Blackgate when Bane lets out the prisoners, or he’s dead. With Gotham being Joker-free for eight years, you have to assume he’s dead.

6: The Leg:

Why is Bruce walking around with a bum leg when he has the special equipment he needs to fix it in his Batcave waiting for him, perhaps for eight years?

7: Gordon:

How stupid is Gordon for not figuring out the Bruce Wayne is Batman? Bruce even went into his hospital room wearing a ski-mask, and an Armani suit, and he couldn’t put it together, although in his defence he was probably high on morphine. Then when Batman gives him the last clue, it takes him longer than it took Katie Holmes to figure things out, and it took Katie years to figure out who Tom Cruise really is.

Robolution

Blockbuster isn’t a thing anymore. The near-total collapse came on quite rapidly, frankly. Just as Blockbuster put numerous mom’n’pop video stores out of business by promoting new forms of media, so too were they put out of business by downloadable movies. Ironically, I can find at least three or four independent video outlets around town, while Blockbuster was replaced by a novelty store, which also closed down, and now sits empty, because of Obamacare, presumably.

The new thing now are automated video kiosks. There was a new one right outside Wal-Mart, so the creepy people who hang outside Wal-Mart can gather personal information about you like a hobo-facebook whenever you use it. I assume when your video is overdue, the kiosk will transform into a killer robot and hunt you down, which is probably more entertaining than the movie you rented.

A creepy thing about them is that they literally seem like they’re from the future. They’re chock full of movies that shouldn’t be available on disc, as they just premiered in theatres a few short weeks prior. I saw Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter in one of them when I was sure it was still listed in the theatre schedule. With all the money spent promoting movies to get butts in sticky theatre seats, its strange to think that you can casually pick up a brand-spanking new movie while you’re getting baby wipes.

Stranger still is how they were obsolete before they were even made. Do people want to rent movies? Does physically renting something they’re forced to physically return appeal to people? Are we all sadists? I know a large majority of the population are fond of their DVD and Blu-Ray players, but this is 2012: Ice Age.

Why are we so attached to dead formats, aside from the obvious money invested in them? Are people still using Laserdiscs? I was trying to throw out our old VCR, but was told to keep it because we needed it to watch all of our VHS tapes, which we never watch, and also need to be thrown out. Half our collection is available on Netflix, which we can stream wirelessly to any room in our house. Still, we don’t watch the same old movies, because we’ve seen them a millions times.

The Greatest Movie EVER

I just thought up the single, most greatest idea for a movie ever, starring Samuel L. Jackson as himself.

While filming on location at a secret base for Avengers 3, Samuel L. Jackson blows up a container and releases a virus. This virus copies his D.N.A. and starts turning everyone in the world in Samuel L. Jackson. Now its up to the real Samuel L. Jackson to put an elite team together comprised of Samuel L. Jackson, Samuel L. Jackson, Samuel L. Jackson, and Samuel L. Jackson to stop the virus before the whole world is taken over by the evil Samuel L. Jackson.

The movie, of course, is called, “Muthafucka!”

I’ll wait until you’re done wiping up your jizz to tell you that this will also be the first movie ever guaranteed to be 100% Ben Aflek free. That means Ben Aflek didn’t star, write, produce, direct, make any guest appearances, or fuck any of the cast members. Starring a 100% all African-American cast, there will also be more Blackspoitation than Blackula and Roots combined.

Of course, all of Samuel L. Jackson’s most famous lines of dialogue will be referenced, and he’ll say, “Mother fucker!” exactly 666 times, opening a portal into the Netherworld, populated only by Samuel L. Jackson. And yes, he’ll be eaten by a shark, but the shark will also be Samuel L. Jackson.

For the ladies, there’ll also be a romantic subplot between Samuel L. Jackson and Samuel L. Jackson. It’ll progress into a love triangle, and Samuel L. Jackson won’t know if he should choose Samuel L. Jackson, or Samuel L. Jackson.

You’re welcome, Hollywood.

Babies Everywhere

I was trying to find something on Netflix to watch with my baby, and they just added the movie, Babies.

Having just gone through the initial horrors of having a child, I was wondering how babies fare in the rest of the world.

People were in an uproar when Britney Spears drove her car down her driveway with her baby in her lap. In Mongolia, they drive with babies being carried on the back of motorcycles with their firstborn clinging to the front, over a grassy plain. The mom couldn’t even get on the bike the first try, because she couldn’t balance the baby properly, and the dad’s already revving up the engine like he’s going to peel out. There wasn’t a helmet in sight. Presumably, the grassy earth would cushion any kind of crash they might have.

When you think about Africa, you might think about how impoverished it is. Babies don’t have diapers, or wet naps. There’s not even anything covering their asses, because anything you put on it will immediately become covered in shit, and there’s nothing to exchange it with, and no way to wash it. When the baby shit, it  shits, it shits all over the place. If you’re carrying a baby, the baby shits all over you. That’s why upon first evolving we were all hunter/gatherers. The men folk would go out an hunt and leave the women at home to tend to the babies, because the babies were shitting everywhere. In the movie, the African mother has to wipe up the baby’s shit off her leg with an old corn cob, seemingly used for this specific purpose of wiping up shit. They have to clean other people’s shit off themselves with rotting produce, which they must keep in their huts. If you’ve ever changed a diaper, you’ll know how much shit a baby can produce, and it’s questionable consistency. After a while, you’ll begin to wonder if your own newborn is secretly plotting against you because of the volume of shit coming out of it. Now imagine that shit being all over you and your things 24/7.

Bear in mind this wasn’t one of those starving babies they show you in those donation ads. This is a happy, healthy baby will a full tummy. Everyone’s happy and loving life. This is what’s happening in the good parts of Africa. Imagine the bad parts. Holy fuck.

Why Does This Keep Happening?

 

Why do C-List celebrities keep getting arrested for masturbating in porn theatres? Why does no one hear about regular people being arrested for masturbating in porn theatres? They’re porn theatres, not the opera. Are there police on stakeout in every theatre? Who gets assigned that job? Is there a second officer undercover in the theatre to keep tabs on the first officer to make sure he’s not masturbating? Who gets paid to clean the seats after? Does that job have a high turnover/suicide rate? What do they tell people their job is? What are they paid?

Most importantly, why are there still porn theatres? Everyone has the internet. You can look at porn on the internet for free, in the privacy of your own room. You could technically look at porn in a regular theatre on your wireless device, thus making it a porno theatre.

Why do people go to porn theatres if you can’t even masturbate, or be arrested if you do? Where’s the fun in that? Are you expected to simply rub your chin and ponder the underlying themes of the plot?

Is there a concession in a porn theatre? Do all the popcorn buckets come with a hole in the bottom?