Tag Archives: Movies

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hopefully he’ll never be known for Potter

Sorry, Wand Goon Squad, you can’t have him.  He doesn’t belong to you.  Any more than Alec Guinness belonged to Star Wars.  Because both men were cut from the same mold, and it showed in the way they lived, and in their best roles.

alan rickman.jpg

But sorry, Potter was not one of his best roles, and it’s not how he should be remembered.  I’ve never read the books, so maybe Snape is more of a relevant presence in there.  But in the movies (which I was forced to watch) Rickman‘s talents are devalued on a character who’s about as critical as a coat stand.  Even Snape’s death scene in the last film feels like it’s completely wasting Rickman‘s immense talents, like they’re just going through the motions.

snape

Don’t get me wrong, the Potter films aren’t completely horrible, they’re fairly decent.  There are some really, really powerful scenes in there.  But claiming Rickman’s life over them isn’t right.  Guinness didn’t want Star Wars that way either.

So where do we place Alan?  Best villain of all time?  Yeah, maybe that’s a start.  To me, the best villain of all time knife fight might be between Hans Gruber and the Sheriff of Nottingham.  Who would win?  Us, by watching it.

hans gruber.jpg

Just drink in this deleted scene longer clip from the Robin Hood extended edition.

This was the film era where a villain was fun, sharp, cool, even bordering on campy.  But you knew they meant business.  They also had motivations behind their actions.  Both Gruber and the Sheriff’s purpose make sense as Rickman skillfully reveals their character.  Whereas nowadays most villains are just stark-raving-mad-brutal-psychopaths.

And yet, I think Rickman wouldn’t want to be known for these either.  He was always afraid of being typecast and having these two lovely roles ruin his range and reputation.  He did theater, did it superbly, but also painted and was in general (as most like him) a true artist.

But more than anything he was just fun, fun to watch, fun to listen to, fun to see.  And you can tell whether he’s poking at himself in Galaxy Quest or acting in the oh so weird but delightful Alan Rickman Tea Time, that he’s having fun too.

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what if the force is not with you?

I find it hard to get excited over movies now.  Everything kind of blends together.  It’s all kind of the same, nothing’s really unique.

Even stuff I’ve loved for decades, like the James Bond series, has become tired.  I should have known better, but I actually got really excited for Spectre, and it wasn’t all that good.  I was genuinely bored watching Spectre.  Even during the mind melting action scenes with planes and cars and speed and action?  If I had a wristwatch, I’d have looked at it repeatedly.  Don’t get me wrong, Spectre isn’t awful, but there’s just nothing exciting about it.

I have the same feeling with Star Wars.  I think I’d walk out of the theater and be like, “Eh, that was okay, I guess.”  Part of the problem is I feel like I already know what the plot of the movie is seeing as how we’ve all been bombarded by trailers and merchandise ads for like seventeen months.  And now that I know the plot, I’m kind of already bored with it:

Rebel spy meets little girl who find Han and the Falcon, get attacked, we eventually see the Rebels (Not Rebels) again and there are X-Wings and another Death Star (checks watch) and a whole bunch of lightsaber fights (checks watch) and a big battle at the end.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure it won’t be awful, but there’s just nothing exciting about it to me.

It’s like they’re just going through the motions.  Probably because JJ Abrams is just going through the motions.  It’s the safe bet.  This movie will make over $2B provided JJ just feeds a serviceable movie to the viewing public.  As long as he totally doesn’t screw it up, they’ll do alright.  It doesn’t have to be a masterpiece, it just has to not be bad.  After the total disaster that was the prequels, folks will be glad to settle for decent, I assure you.

But what if the force is not with you?  It’s not really with me, so I’m not even sure if I’ll see it in the theaters.  I probably will, but I guess I’m just not feeling excited about it.  That’s a bummer.  Oh well.

jj-abrams-shows-off-first-footage-of-x-wing-in-star-wars-episode-viiMy the cash be with you.

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were it not for Duracell; Obi-Wan would have slain Vader

Somebody who’s actually seen the newest Hunger Games or has read the books is going to have to tell me if they have Dodge cars and trucks in there. As in, do the stormtrooper-based Hunger Games goons drive around in Dodge trucks? Or does Jennifer Lawrence lead her militant-teenage-love-army into battle in a Dodge Challenger? I ask this most important of questions because I saw this ad where they show various Hunger Games trailer shots alongside Dodge cars.

If I had to guess, I’d say that Dodge isn’t in there. So then why exactly does Dodge desire to be associated with a story that has among other things genocide, starvation, murder, and other lightweight topics that typically encourage people to go joyfully buy cars?

I don’t know what they call these things? Joint ads? Dual commercials? Future obliterated Earth tutorial?

The first one of these I saw was in 2009 when all of a sudden they shoehorned in an ad for Avatar interspersed with clips of the World Series. Joe Buck got tasked to narrate the thing. It literally broke my brain. I was like, “Eh, is there a baseball league on this mysterious alien world? Did Joe Buck misplace his brain medicine? Should I stop drinking now?” The commercial was almost entirely over before I figured out it was a deliberate dual ad.

So this is the way it’s supposed to work, I guess:

1) You like The Hunger Games

2) You see an ad of The Hunger Games alongside Dodge

3) So you like Dodge now

4) You go get your $

5) You use $ to go buy a Dodge vehicle

Or, simply replace the words Dodge and The Hunger Games to have the opposite reaction.

This is the most basic and simplistic advertising campaign imaginable. It basically devalues the audience (you) into nothing more than a partial-corporeal-ape-like-creature. How did this juvenile campaign work in 2009 and Avatar? Well, the success of that simplistic ad helped equal $2.79B. So I guess it works? I think?

So now it’s all over the place. They’re doing it for Star Wars too! Gaze upon this disgrace to humanity, only this time it’s Fiat.

I have it in my mind that they need to go back in time to 1977 and redo all the trailers for the original.

They can show Obi-Wan and Vader dueling, and Obi-Wan’s kicking Vader’s ass. Vader’s lightsaber keeps malfunctioning, and Obi-Wan’s just toying with him. Instead of finishing him off, Obi-Wan keeps kicking Vader in the shins and smacking him in the face, laughing. But then Vader has an ah-ha moment, whips out some Duracell batteries, puts them into his lightsaber while epic music plays, Vader viciously slays Obi-Wan, and then looks directly at the camera with Obi-Wan’s mangled corpse behind him: “The Force is no match for the power of the Copper Top!”

But of course this didn’t happen, for Star Wars 1977 was before the time where everybody was a sell out. A simple, glorious time when movies were still pure. And so you see, and, oh, oh no, please no.

vader

“You don’t know the true power of The Dark Side, only Duracell does.”

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we nitpick the worst trailer in screen history

If it is indeed true that all good things must come to an end, then it’s assuredly also true that all bad things never seem to end, or that things that were once good, but became bad, must last forever.

Were you once a young-degenerate-loser too?  I sure was (past tense, I swear).  Remember when this show was actually good?  I bet you don’t.  For if you saw the last few seasons / movie you undoubtedly came to the realization that when a show doesn’t end at the right time, it becomes horrible.

I’m not quite sure what Fox is thinking, other than that they’re banking on many degenerate-losers at least viewing it for nostalgia sake.  But the last movie was awful and made no money.

If they want more money, they sure got off to a bad start.  With the most boring trailer I’ve seen in a long time.  Even the music sounds like it was written by a failed engineering student turned high-art-musician.

Eh, whatever, let’s have at it!

 

why the name

Why do they have to show her holding the phone with his name on it?  Can’t they just have her answer and we hear his voice?  Then we know it’s Mulder, without actually seeing the text.  Do they think we forgot his name?  Are they trying to trigger the part of our brains that’s activated by textual memories in addition to visual memories?  Get outta my head, Fox!

 

he's right there

But this is all besides the point because in fact, he’s standing right there!  He’s thirty feet in front of her!  Why is he even calling?  He could just tap on the glass.  If you rewind, you see from the aspect of her eyes that he is clearly inside the 45 degree arc that enables most humans to notice when another human is creepily standing in front of a glass door without knocking.  What’s going on here?  We haven’t even started and already I have no idea what’s going on again.

 

evil drone

Evil!  Drones are so evil.  They’re the new black unmarked helicopters.  Do you get it?  Evil!

 

then do something about it mulder

“Then do something about it, Mulder?”  Uh, hey Mitch, you’re like the Assistant Director of the freaking F.B.I.  Why don’t you do something about it for a change?  Don’t you have like 3K goons on speed dial?  How about you take care of this one instead of outsourcing the planet’s problems to a vicious-boring-sex-addict?

 

'splosions!

‘Splosions!  I’m so excited.  Nobody has ‘splosions on screen anymore.

 

boring mulder

“You don’t understand Scully, since the last time we slept together, I’ve become a vicious-boring-sex-addict.”  Hey speaking of that relationship, what ever happened to their kid?  Wouldn’t that, like, be kind of important to these two?  Seeing as how it’s been like a decade, they should probably go check up on him, maybe baby needs a new trike?  Seriously.

 

roswell

Roswell!  1950s!  Black suits and top hats!  Aliens!  [wipes brow; breathes heavily]  Oh, thank god, I was really worried they’d go with something actually interesting and original.
[smoking man

[unintelligible profanity]  You, have, got, to be… [unintelligible profanity]  What kind of c-grade nonsense is this?  When we last saw this dude, he was getting his corporeal form incinerated by helicopter gunship rocket fire.  How exactly do they plan to talk themselves out of this one?  Time travel?  Alien teleportation?  Intervention by the Divine Almighty?  Eh, whatever, I won’t be around to find out.

 

no, please no

no, please no

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nobody ever suspects the butterfly

I saw this dude twice today, if it was in fact the same dude.  When I saw him this morning I stared at him for about five minutes.  Then when he came back this afternoon I took a picture.  But it’s a bad picture on a phone (dude was just too fast), so you’ll have to play Where’s Waldo to find him.  For those of you too young to know, Where’s Waldo was an old smartphone app that’s lost it’s popularity.

butterfly

I have no idea what type of butterfly this is.  I don’t particularly care.  I was fascinated by the complexity of God / Nature that made this little thing to eat while also expending limitless energy to fly around flowers.  This thing weighs less than a penny, but can fly all day and eat and be good to go.  We don’t appreciate it, but little things like this are freaking miracles.

My family’s been through hell and I’m hesitant to talk about it even to my own brain.  But my brother, for intermittent laugh purposes, brought up this Simpsons joke.  I have no idea why.  I didn’t care.  I laughed.  It was enough.  This clip sucks [thanks Fox copyright assholes] but you get the idea:

Then today I saw the butterfly and remembered my brother’s reference from a few days back.  I laughed.  And then I watched the beautiful butterfly.

My other brother (I have two, blessed by God) kept flipping to Gladiator the other day while the family was together.  For those who have seen it, Oliver Reed / Proximo has one of the greatest lines of all time:

“…we mortals are but shadows and dust…”

Yeah, we are.

Nobody ever suspects the butterfly.  That it could remind you of what you are.  But in a good way.  The butterfly is a freaking miracle.  And so are we.  But we can also do poetry, write songs, and drink beer.  So we’re better off than the butterfly.

But next time you see the butterfly?  Stop what you’re doing.  And watch for a few minutes.  You’ll be glad you did.

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Omar Sharif is The Most Interesting Man in The World

– Royal monarch visits his childhood home regularly

– Connoisseur of insanely beautiful women

– Able to converse in half-a-dozen languages

– Hooligan of mediocre EPL team

– Frequent French casino patron

– Mythically talented actor

– Drinking buddy of Peter O’Toole

– Accomplished bridge player

– Called a swanky hotel one of his homes

– Human in greatest movie entrance of all time

omar sharif

I don’t always applaud legends.  But when I do, I prefer Omar Sharif.

RIP my friends.

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I’m glad science is finally paying us back what we’re owed

Let’s humbly acknowledge our role in paying for all of this. Our carefully appropriated research and development funds took 38 years to yield a functioning speeder bike. And 26 years for a hoverboard. So we should all expect a check in the mail in the next week or so.

 

Hoverbike

Coming soon to a wooded National Park near you; a 700% increase in death by tree strikes

 

Coming soon from Lexus (ignore unrelated smoke-like appearance)

hoverboardlexus

[lunatic wide eyes] Baaatttterrr Up!

 

But I want to know where the hell is the rest of our damn money. Our funds have led to a whole bunch of projects and I’m just sitting here, waiting, drinking beer, and tapping my finger on the table. I paid $4 a seat many years back, and I still don’t have:

 

– Skyways & Hover Conversion; 26 year delay

docbrown

“I’m on it, I’m on it, [shifty eyed] I know I promised these by 2015, but I’ve been, a little backed up lately. I saw Breaking Bad, and decided to get into the meth business, so I’m running behind on the car.” [panting] [panting] [panting]

“Doc are you getting into your own stash? Doc? Doc?!”

 

– Upgraded Dialing Machine; 33 year delay

et phone home

If this piece of shit could communicate between freaking stars, and all they did is upgrade it, I could harness the technology to solve minor problems like cold fusion. Also, does anybody remember TI Speak & Spell!?!?

 

– Self Driving SUV; 22 year delay

Google’s self-driving clown car is a joke. Where’s my autonomous SUV that’s so durable it can mostly survive a vicious assault from a deranged creature seven-hundred times it’s size?

jurassicpark-trex-footmud-full

Uh, he can probably see you even if you don’t move. You should run. Like, honest. “Go. Go now!” It worked out well for the other guy.

 

– Buildings on Sky Stilts; 52 year delay

It worked for Cloud City, it’ll work just fine in Frisco.  What could go wrong?  It must be done.

JETSONS

 

– Man Portable Death Ray; 29 year delay

death ray

If the machines took over tomorrow, what are we supposed to defend ourselves with? America’s existing 300 million carbon based firearms? Ordinary journeyman and teenaged-girl-stalker Kyle Reese made himself pretty clear that all those ordinary guns are ineffective against the machines. And so, …

bale

Oh.