Industrial Waste

I always feel a bit weird when I don't like a movie. Eshi mentioned that we watched The Stepford Wives a couple days ago, and it left me with a feeling of despair. When I see a movie and don't like it I feel like I must have missed the point of it. That it is somehow my fault that the movie is bad, like my perspective is wrong somehow. Regardless of my selfhate-y shit, this particular movie had me on this bend a little more than usual and it made me think more on what a good movie is.

TSW had a lot of jokes that I have seen in other movies that worked well in those movies. All of the actors are good actors I have seen do amazing work. The director Frank Oz has a good list of work (He directed The Dark Crystal and Little Shop of Horrors. Also he was Yoda!). This movie has all of the ingredients of a good movie "should" have and I think that is the problem. I feel like a group of people got together at a studio needing to make a movie and picked an old movie to remake. Then they decided to make it a comedy because it would reach a larger audience. They decided to make the movie a summer blockbuster movie that had a ton of big name actors in it so that it would grab even more people. How could a movie with all of these big name actors be bad?! And then it was (Welcome to the basement has a term for this: Talent Bomb.)

This movie had no soul.  I think this is one of the many things that makes bad movies bad. I feel bad for shitting on this movie after Eshi did on Monday, but this is a problem that's not just from this movie. A good movie is something made with some kind of passion, not just shit out as a money making scheme. Hollywood is an industry though and unfortunately sometimes that side wins out over artistry and or originality.

So Bad It's... Nope, Just Bad

I was coerced into watching The Stepford Wives yesterday, and boy was that not good. Christopher Walken didn't save this movie. Matthew Broderick was just as affectless and baffled as ever, Nicole Kidman's character was completely loathsome regardless of which completely different personality is presenting, and easily half the cast was superfluous. Glenn Close is in this fucking movie, and it doesn't seem to appreciate that.

The overall theme in this thing is probably feminism. I say "probably" not because I feel in any way ambiguous about it but because the way they handled feminism in the movie is so shit-fingered and pigeon-holey as to be insulting, and I say that from the depths of my pasty white, middle-class penis. Undeterred by circumstance or consequences, Kidman's character is kind of a cunt through the entire movie, only at the end does she seem to actually change. Not that she stops being a cunt, just that now she appreciates her manipulative, bitter, cowardly shit-pile of a husband.

The gay "wife" is, to quote Brian, "The gay version of a minstrel show," and that is apt. And where he is flashy and dramatic his partner plays the equally cliché constervative power-top. Actually, there is no subtlety in this movie at all. At all. Even if somehow the whole thing were some layers deep meta-cross-commentary arthouse fucking pretension, that would still be a shitty, shallow cliché.

Weekly Cinemeh

Hello, and welcome back to Weekly Cinemeh, were two nerds talk about stuff they watched. This weeks theme was Tom Hanks comedies from the late 80s. Mostly because we watched one (The 'Burbs) and thought it was good so we looked for more. On to the List!

1: The 'Burbs
This was a movie about a bunch of suburbanites not trusting weird people who move in next door, and how gossiping can make things way worse for everyone. To be fair, they are odd people, but the crazy military type neighbor and the pot stirring neighbor are probably worse. Ultimately, it is a movie about questioning perceptions of people and how paranoia can get out of hand quickly. It was funny and Tom Hanks was good. His neighbors Bruce Dern and Rick Ducommun are good, if a little over the top, Carrie Fischer was a welcome surprise and did well as an S.O. fed up with a paranoid and stressed partner. While not as funny as the other two movies on this list, it holds up as a silly comedy of errors and is worth a watch.

Eshi: The 'Burbs was a lot of fun in that distinctly 80's way. Carrie Fischer was a delight, as usual and Tom Hanks was pretty solid. That said I kinda hated every other character in the film. I spent the whole movie wishing someone would just break the tubby neighbor's jaw and relieve us of the stupid fuck. I get that he's like that by design but after a certain point in a movie that character needs to either get killed redeeming themselves or get unfucked before they drag the story down with them. Of the movies we watched this week, this is the least recommended.

2: Dragnet
I love this movie. I saw it when I was a kid, and thought it was silly, but after seeing some of the show it was based on (A hyper right wing/conservative cop procedural filled with straight edge characters with sticks up their asses) the satire was far clearer and the references are funnier. Dragnet is about an uptight cop (played by the fantastic Dan Aykroyd) who gets a new partner who is far less serious (Tom Hanks) and they are both drawn into a mystery involving the evil organization P.A.G.A.N.. Antics ensue. Tom Hanks and Dan Aykroyd are great together and fun to watch, though I think Tom Hanks was a bit too hacky, but it was a fairly campy movie so that might have been on purpose. Its a fun movie, give it a shot.

Eshi: I've never seen the Dragnet show, from what Brian says I'm glad of that, but I feel like I have absorbed enough of the references to have gotten the gist of the satire here. Mostly because it is relentless. I feel like there isn't a single frame of this movie that isn't burning the show in some way and I dig it. I enjoy Dan Aykroyd and Tom Hanks at least makes it work, he doesn't carry this movie the way he does with most of The 'Burbs, but he's got some fun lines. I get the impression someone told Hanks to just aim at ridiculous and lean in, if for no better reason than to foil Aykroyd's impenetrable straight man and it could have done with less of that. By and large this was a good way to burn an hour and a half.

3: The Man With One Red Shoe
This movie was based on a French comedy "Le grand blond avec une chaussure noire", which I have not seen. It was funny, though only because of how incompetent the CIA is in it. It is about a CIA power struggle in which an acting CIA director gets into a battle of wits with the director he is trying to replace. The current director tries to create a diversion by making a random person seem like an informant that would hurt the acting Director. This random person is a concert violinist (Tom Hanks). The CIA agents working for the acting Director try to follow him and kill him. The antics in this movie are great, it was a lot fun. Carrie Fischer is also in it, and is very funny. Jim Belushi plays Hank's best friend who is also pulled into the drama, and ends up being one of my favorite things in this film. Its a fun comedy of errors that should be watched with some friends.

Eshi: Brian did the importance of context a little while ago, The Man With One Red Shoe out of context is fucking scary. It's a CIA recon/assassination job with a random innocent civilian as the target. It is, however, denied that harrowing fate by the likes of Jim Belushi, Tom Hanks, and Carrie Fischer. The careful balance of frightening competence and complete stupidity makes for a great payoff. This was my favorite movie this week, give it a shot.

You've Got Red On You

So Eshi and I watched a movie a couple weeks back that we didn't end up doing a weekly cinemeh entry. Since we have been trying to keep to a theme we don't always talk about all the movies that we watch, which in this case it was kind of a shame because its a good scapegoat for a major problem in action movies in general. Fake Blood.

Centurion could have been an OK action movie. It was a run of the mill "people on the run from a force that is better prepared to deal with the environment and situation than they are". Its a lot like the movie The Grey (some of the scenes are exactly the fucking same), which also fell into this category. Nothing to write home about. What kept it from being just OK and made it kind of terrible was the fake blood. We have talked about special effects and how practical effects can look far more real than CGI, but CGI also has its place. Both are necessary for realistic looking scenes in big action-y movies. The fake blood in Centurion detracted from the movie. It looked like someone was making a youtube video.

Did you see that shit? It looks like it was added in by someone who had better things to do. Shit, it might have been, I don't know.

This might seem like a dumb thing to be upset about, but it seriously pulled me out of the movie because it was so fake. They spent a lot of time and money making this movie, but this was just lazy. They could have left the blood out and the movie would have been better. I swear, I have seen cracked videos that used the same effects. John Wick, a good dumb action movie, suffered from the same problem. Its a disappointing effect that only hurt the movie, and its sad that it does because action movies are thought of as cheap and dumb by a lot of people, but they have the potential to be good (maybe even great) movies.

See Spot Run... Into The Woodchipper

So, I'm not going to be covering anything super special today. Which is depressing, because today I want to talk about plot-killing dogs. Short of movies actually about killing evil dogs (and Old Yeller), no one is ever really down with a dog dying on film. Its almost never justified to murder a puppy for story, its not a plot-crucial action, just blatant, cheap emotional manipulation. Movies and shows kill animals to demonstrate how cruel a villain is or vengeguffin for the protagonist in whatever hackneyed premise the author has devised.

Contrary to how it sounds, my problem today is not so much that they do it, its that they still do it. So much so in recent years that I'm beginning to suspect some kind of Jon Petersesque situation where some big name producer just has the most massive hard-on for killing man's best friend. I get why they do it, a dead dog is a surefire way to get the audience in the feels. The cheapest, most disrespectful way to force emotional investment in the audience next to rape (which is also disgustingly clichéd these days). It works, even if we hate it, even if every reviewer ever has commented on how lazy and contemptible it is. I have to admit, I don't have a solution here. Even if we did start boycotting (lol) movies and shows that kill the dog for cheap pathos, they'd just find another easy target. I just hate the intellectual sloth that this kind of thing demonstrates and what it says about the way we go about entertainment. I'm all for telling a story, just maybe have enough respect for your audience to earn their attention.

Weekly Cinemeh

Hello, and welcome back to Weekly Cinemeh. Each week Eshi and I watch a few movies and talk about them here. This week we decided that being depressed is a good thing, so we watched a bunch of war movies.

1: The Deer Hunter
This movie doesn't spend too much time in battle, it mostly deals with people experiencing the worst of it, and what its like trying to cope with the aftermath. It is a very heavy and powerful movie, not just emotionally, but in its depictions of violence and the struggles people have with PTSD. Its a movie about three friends from a small Pennsylvanian town who go to war, get captured and then separated. When one of them, Michael (De Niro), gets home he finds out that one friend has returned and the other is still in Vietnam, so he goes back to find him. Streep, De Niro, and Walken are powerhouses: carrying a lot of the emotional weight of this movie, and doing it well. Everyone knows about the Russian roulette scene, but it is disturbing actually watching it, I haven't felt that uneasy about what was going on onscreen in a while (since our David Lynch week probably). Its a fucked up movie, but that is not a bad thing, it shows the human costs of war, and that is very important. Well worth the watch.

Eshi: If we hadn't recently watched The Wind That Shakes The Barley, this week would have been unbearably bleak. This movie is heavy as shit. It's bleak, almost plodding, in tone and doesn't really make any attempt to lead the viewer. Not so much that you have to find your own way through the story as much as it feels as though the story itself is wandering through a haze. Don't take that the wrong way, by the way, the film is really, really moving and very good. Robert De Niro and Meryl Streep are both super engaging but Christopher Walken, unsurprisingly, steals the fucking movie. He's charismatic, sympathetic and when he falls it is a thing of abject agonizing defeat. I hesitate to recommend any of the movies this week, not because they aren't good they are, but because oh my fucking god its so heavy. So, watch this but be prepared.

2: Full Metal Jacket
This movie is odd since it is essentially two movies in one. The first is a movie about boot camp and what it means to turn young people into weapons. Mostly how it makes a person go crazy by mentally and physically torturing them while telling them that their only purpose is to kill. R. Lee Ermey is amazing as the drill sergeant (especially since he ad-libbed most of his lines) and D'Onofrio as Gomer Pyle showed some pretty excellent range. The second half of FMJ is not quite as impactful as the first, it's a move that takes place during a war on the battlefield, showing these trained killers and how they have become disillusioned with the war. Joker (Mathew Modine) represents this disparity via his job as a war journalist, who basically works for the people in charge of keeping the war going as a propaganda writer and the peace symbol pin on his body armor. This self expressed duality is also shown later in the film in a scene that is disturbing, not because of the violence per se, but because of the juxtaposition of the subject matter. After executing (see mercy killing) an NVA soldier in a way that was described as "hardcore" by his squadmates, Joker and his squad march through a ruined city singing the Mickey Mouse club theme song. Kubrick has always been a master as far as I see, and this movie is no exception to that. Kubrick is good at creating powerful scenes that influence the culture as a whole, and this movie has certainly left is mark

Eshi: The first half of FMJ is spectacular and deeply painful to me. Watching a bunch of meatheaded kids loose their humanity, The Goddamn Master leading us through the reprogramming of these boys. I fucking dig Vincent D'Onofrio, he's the perfect blend of detached intellectual and primal fucking lunatic, and he's pretty good in this film as well. The second half of FMJ always feels a little phoned in to me, which is disappointing. Also, I don't like Adam Baldwin. He bugs me and I feel like he detracts from the end of this one. Still, damn fine movie.

3: Saving Private Ryan
This movie excels at showing the relentless violence that happens in war. The Normandy landing scene is brutal, and the way the violence was displayed in such a matter-of-fact sort of way mirrors the message the rest of the movie tries to portray. Killing is an easy answer, but preventing death is both costly and the only redemption from the darkness that is war. Every time they try to prevent death it results in more death. Normandy, tons of people die. Assaulting a machine gun emplacement so it doesn't kill more people, people die. Letting a prisoner go instead of executing him, he kills some of them later. Trying to get a kid home, results in the death of tons of people. Its a fucked up problem. All of these movies have the same theme, maintaining humanity during war is fucking hard, if not impossible. There are costs to doing the right thing, but doing the right thing is what keeps us from being monsters. Regardless of the bleakness of the movie, it is a good movie. Spielberg is a good director (though maybe a little Flag-wavy since there are only American soldiers in the movie, even though there were a lot more Brits and Canadians in the assualt) and Tom Hanks is a fantastic actor. Its a good movie.

Eshi: I'm glad we ended on this one, it was the least bleak to me. I feel like WWII was the last time the U.S. ventured out into the rest of the world with a motivation not entirely fucking exploitative, and the fact that non-americans played such an insubstantial role (either as a hindrance to the mission or as fucking Nazi's) came off as very disrespectful to me. That said, this isn't about joint operations or bringing people together. This is a movie about an unsettling number of people grinding themselves to hamburger in an effort to do the right thing. It was moving, painful, and the dialog was entirely to fucking quiet (almost blew out the speakers on my TV trying to balance the whispered fucking speech with goddamn mortar fire). I do feel the need to let some poison out at this movie so look out, spoilers ahead. The last words Tom Hank's character says are to Pvt. Ryan, are "Earn this James.... Earn it." And that is the most fucked up thing I've ever heard out of a human being's mouth. You just put the weight of dozens upon dozens of lives on the back of a kid who is maybe, maybe nineteen. It ruins him, the last scene is of Ryan as an elderly man begging his wife for solace, begging to be told that he'd done enough to make up for the lives lost to the mechanisms of war and the guilty consciences of old men. The worst case of crippling survivors guilt I've ever seen on film and it could have at least been mitigated by one (sympathetic, kind, highly humane) character just not being a cunt as he died. I love Tom Hanks, but man fuck his character in this movie.

Out of Context

I think that its important to view things within the context of the thing. This sounds weird, but what I mean is the suspension of disbelief and how, without that, a lot of fiction is at best meaningless and at worst stories about people being monstrous. The force is a power that flows through everything and can be used by people fluent in the ways of the force to do cool shit. Out of the world created by the people who created it, Jedi are just space wizards. Removing context removes the meaning behind a lot of material.

I was planning to just talk about stories out of context because it was fun, but it struck me as interesting how necessary the suspension of disbelief is and how bad it is when a movie/book/media doesn't hook you in. It seems fake. Its one of the reasons I don't like reading fantasy-type fiction most of the time. A lot of it seems like bullshit decorating poorly conceived plot devices. This is why I love it when a world drags me in (The Hobbit was the first book that did this for me). That being said, just for fun let us look at a couple movies/books/video games out of context.

1: A thief uses an enslaved magical being he stole from a ruin to try and get into a princesses' pants.

2: A mentally damaged former soldier lies about his military past and helps an eco-terrorist group escape from a major city after blowing up a power plant.

3: Two buddies Lie about their identities and trick emotionally vulnerable women into having sex with them.

4: A rich man from a good background assaults disenfranchised poor people to work out aggression from a childhood trauma.

5: A woman forsakes her family, her voice, and subjects herself to torture to try to fuck a stranger.

Answers: Aladdin, Final Fantasy VII, Wedding Crashers, Batman, The Little Mermaid

Weekly Cinemeh

Hello, and welcome back to Weekly Cinemeh! This week's theme was sci-fi/things where they do not belong. In this case dinosaurs, alternate realities, and shitty CGI.

1: Jurassic Park
I loved this movie when I was a kid (in 1993 I was 7), because really what kid wasn't in love with dinosaurs at least a little bit. It is a movie about a theme park owner who wants some scientists to sign off on his newest theme park, where he has genetically resurrected dinosaurs wandering around in pens. A tropical storm plus sabotage leads to some violent dinosaur antics, it's great. I was a little more into it than other kids (I wanted to be a paleontologist for as far back as I can remember) and this movie just added to that. It also started my love of Michael Crichton's fiction. The movie still holds up pretty well, the practical effects are fantastic. The biggest disappointment to me isn't really it's fault. CGI has come super far since then so when you go back to a movie that is using CGI for the first time it's kind of shocking to see the difference. The acting is also a little off, though I loved Jeff Goldblum. Its a fun movie, with some great dinosaur action and some pretty good use of practical effects. Watch it.

Eshi: We got to talking about how nervous we are for Jurassic World and it inspired us to watch the only good film in the series. Jurassic Park is fun, well cast, and the practical effects were revolutionary. Seriously, you haven't seen this yet you are bad at movies. It's like five bucks to rent, so... uhhh. Find a way.

2: A Sound of Thunder
I love Ray Bradbury's work, though I have never read this story, but this movie was terrible. The story is about a time travel safari company who fuck up and ruin earth, because time travel is a fucking bad idea. The green screen and CGI are so horrid, it was offensive. I have a feeling that they spent all of their money getting Ben Kingsly and just used whatever was left (not a lot) and patched together cheapo effects with no real effort. The acting was also very bad. Multiple characters die in front of the main character and he doesn't react at all. His friend from childhood gets eaten in front of him and he doesn't bat a fucking eye. This movie is bad, straight up. Watch Jurassic Park instead.

Eshi: I suggested this one and I was wrong. I feel bad about it. Do not waste your fucking time. This movie was a ham-fisted, cliche, and the actors spent so much time alternately chewing the scenery and staring dead-eyed at each other that I can't help but feel that whatever money they didn't spend apologizing to Ben Kingsly was blown on cheap drugs. It would have been cheaper to just go to Bradbury's house and shit in his mouth.

3: The One
This is another movie that I saw when I was younger, though its not as old as Jurassic Park. Its a movie about a killer that is jumping around alternate realities and killing other versions of himself so that he can become stronger by their energy being redistributed to their alternate selves or whatever. Unfortunately, his last victim is just as strong as he is, and the two fight for supremacy to become "the one" version of themself? Himself? Himselves? The movie kind of holds up, the action scenes are fun, but it was nowhere as good as I remember it being when I was a youth. The music seems out of place. I get that they are trying to be hardcore and reach out to the young people, but I don't think that Let The Bodies Hit The Floor and kung fu really mesh well together. The CGI is also a little bad in this movie. All in all a bad week for CGI.

Eshi: I like The One, mostly because I love to watch Jet Li hit things, and this movie is a whole lot of Jet Li hitting shit. He kicks the shit out of a couple cops with their own motorcycles. The premise is kinda laughable and the way they go about trying to describe all their hand-waving unscience is almost threatening. Like they're daring you to call them on how absurd it is. The whole story seems kind like someone had two ideas for a pen and paper game and was like, "Fuck it, I'll just make a movie". That said, I enjoy The One, have a couple drinks and give it a shot.

Citation Needed

I wanted to try something new this week, so I decided to share some of the random trivia I've picked up over the years, combined with some random shit I made up. See if you can figure out which is which without googleing it.

*A woman once caused a two car pile up because she was shaving her pussy.

*Roald Amundsen, the first explorer to reach the south pole, wrote his name on the pole with his piss. Thanks to Antarctica's low annual rainfall it can still be seen today.

*The phrase "A dingo ate my baby" originated as a punchline in the Australian comedy skit show "Crikey". Unfortunately, the prop baby used in the scene was eaten by a dingo.

*A pregnant female goldfish is known as a twit.

*Moray eel's are the only non-mammalian vertebrate to lactate. They use it as a way to blind prey before killing them.

*Female ferrets die via overheating if the don't have sex while in heat.

*Bats always turn left after exiting caves.

*The reason the French call orgasms "le petit mort" is because they take 3.8 hours off of your life ever time you have one.

*There was an octopus in Germany named Otto who juggled his tank-mates, used rocks to try to break the glass in his tank, and shot water at lamps to turn them off because he didn't like being out in the light.

*The stat that every year the average person eats 5 spiders in their sleep is skewed by a group of spider farming Appalachian hill folk who have a very rare form of parasomnia which forces them to eat spiders while sleep walking. Accounting for this group the actual number is .0000000001 spiders per year.

Winning the War on Goats

Alright, so it's been hot around here, not like Devil's Valley hot or anything, but hot enough that my tubby Scandinavian ass is melting. As a result, I've pretty much only been able to think about how fucking hot it is and how spectacularly I disapprove of that fact. So today I'm going to talk about why I don't like goats.

1. Goats are Smug:

Look at that fucker. Sitting there with its stupid fishy fucking eyes. Judging. Like a fucking goat knows what the world is like. The pressures we face! With their stupid, shitty little horns and their "cheese". Dicks.

2. They're Creepy: Did you know that goats can climbs trees? Yeah, fucking tree climbing goats. Oh, and they fucking scream, and not just the tree-climbers. While that can be really funny when properly framed, imagine it echoing out over the fields in the dark of an autumn night, row upon row of dead, flat-head eyeballs gleaming hungrily in the starlight.

3. Seriously, Look At Those Fucking Eyes: Goat eyes are fucked up. Rectangular pupils give these little bastards a roughly 320 degree field of vision with no frontal blind spot. They also make a visual organ into a hideous, half-open portal to some barnyard hellscape.

Fucking goats. I'm going to go tape ice cubes to my head, hopefully we get some rain so I can write a coherent post next week.

Weekly Cinemeh

Hello, and welcome back to another installment of Weekly Cinemeh. This week's theme was people doing stupid things because of money. Money is a powerful motivator, and these movies show the lengths people will go to for it. To the list!

1: The Grand Budapest Hotel
I know we just did a Wes Anderson week, but it put us in the mood for this movie. This is about a concierge and his lobby boy apprentice stealing a painting and the adventure that surrounds it. Much like the rest of Wes Anderson's work, this movie is beautiful, funny, and tragic. Like I mentioned last week Anderson's work is like a moving storybook, and GBH is a great example of this quality. I don't feel like I can give enough praise over how beautiful this is. It is gorgeous. Ralph Fiennes is fantastic as the concierge Gustav H. and had great chemistry with Tony Revolori who played his partner in crime, Zero. This is a great film, watch it.

Eshi: Its hard for me to review this movie, mostly because language doesn't seem sufficient to encompass how it makes me feel. The story is beautiful, the characters are vibrant and engrossing, and the setting is simultaneously bleak and powerfully hopeful. Willem Dafoe is still weirdly charismatic even as the cro-magnon henchman, Jeff Goldblum is great, but Raplh Fiennes steals this whole damn movie. He's both pornographically competent and unwaveringly human amongst the frantic backdrop of the film. Even if you aren't big on Wes Anderson, watch this movie, and if you don't like GBH you are wrong and you make me sad.

2: The Big Empty
I was not sure what to expect from this movie. I am a fan of Jon Favreau but his work has been kind of hit or miss for me. We were lucky though, this movie was fun. While not the most complex movie, it definitely was a good time. Its the story of an actor who is in a ton of debt who takes a job that will clear that debt. Along the way he meets a series of wacky characters in a small town where he is supposed to meet "The Cowboy". It seemed kind of like a David Lynch film. Wacky people in the a small town. A mystery that needs to be solved. Decent movie to watch with some friends while drinking.

Eshi: Brian has a pretty solid handle on this one; it does feel like a David Lynch film, if it was done by Kevin Smith. I have weird feelings about Favreau, I find him almost boldly unlikeable but he's also a relatively talented actor when well directed. Fortunately this is a well made film, so he manages. Sean Bean doesn't die in this movie, which is always nice, and Rachael Leigh Cook is enchanting as always (though she plays a teenager which is uncomfortable). Amazon fucking ruined this movie for me, and I'm not telling how, because it would ruin it for everyone else. When you go to watch this one just close your eyes and click, otherwise you get all primed and it fucks up the tone.

3: Stretch
This movie was more of a surprise than the last one. I am not really a fan of Patrick Wilson but he was pretty good. Chris Pine as an eccentric, hedonistic, and fucking insane millionaire was probably the best part of the movie. This movie is about an actor turned limo driver who is in a lot of gambling debt which is being called in. He goes out to pick up a rich guy who is known for tipping big, but is also a handful to deal with. Antics ensue. This was a fun movie to watch, with a ton of "did that just happen" moments. The love story on the side is 100% superfluous though and wasn't even fulfilling in the end. Good bit of fun to watch with some friends.

Eshi: Stretch is a movie about a charismatic NPC becoming a Player Character. We've talked about how enjoyable PCing is before and this story does not disappoint on that front. Chris Pine as a buttfuck crazy capitalist is delightful and Ed Helms as audience surrogate is a pleasure. Give this one a shot, its definitely worth it.

B Movies Aren't Always Bad

Eshi and I talk about movies a lot on this blog, we love them. One of the many cinematic styles that I love is the B movie. We have talked about Bruce Campbell on here before, but I'm not going to talk about him today, after all we devoted an entire week to him. Instead I want to talk about the merits of the B movie and why they can be far superior to the big name movies.

When a mainstream blockbuster gets made it needs to conform to what major production companies/studios want. Product placement, actor/actress selection, story changes to make the movie more in line with the type of movie that the studio wants to make, and the occasional monomaniacal asshole insisting on giant robot spiders. Studio interference is why there are three Hobbit movies, Spider-man fought too many villains in two Spider-man films, and why Die Hard started getting shitty after the first movie.

The advantage that B movies have over mainstream movies (independent films also fall under this to some extent) is that they don't need to worry about being funded by a studio. This means that they can do a movie the way that they want to. This allows them to take more risks when it comes to stories and ways of shooting. It doesn't always work, but there is more heart in a B movie that is made by someone who wants to make a movie. Its not all sunshine though, after all they still need to get funding and the lack of capital tends to force them to use bad actors (though not always, see: Bruce Campbell). This does force them to jerry-rig a lot of gear and come up with interesting ways of shooting scenes that would usually require advanced gear or special effects.

Yes sometimes B movies are bad, but sometimes they are wonderful works of art. Don't let preconceptions of what a B movie is dissuade you from watching one, they are not always bad.

Pissing away the Future

So here's the deal. Climate change is a thing, its a big thing and by thing I mean problem. Now by problem I don't mean, "oh we're gonna have to have some really uncomfortable discussions." I mean the world as we know it is changing at a frankly alarming pace and if we don't, as a species, do something drastic about it with a fucking quickness a horrific number of people are going to die. It might not seem like it but I hate to soapbox about this, and not just because I think humanity could probably benefit from a bit of a pruning. I hate to get into the climate change thing because talking about it is largely a meaningless proposition for someone like me. Either you agree with me that its a problem and are taking steps in your own life to do what you think can help, you don't care either way and just want to get on with your business, or you think all this "climate" nonsense is just a conspiracy to control the populace or what the fuck ever. If you fall into that last category, by the way, we can't hang anymore and I sincerely hope you die in a painful and culturally scarring fashion, that others may learn from your failing.

The reason I feel the rather rare desire to approach this topic is because of something said on The Nightly Show last week. Usually, I really enjoy Larry Wilmore, he's witty and direct. But to see him flipping shit to the people trying to come up with solutions to a problem that has been plaguing California (not to mention huge swathes of the rest of the fucking planet) for years, a problem that even more of us are staring down the barrel of, pissed me pretty badly off. All water is recycled. Water treatment is a colossal part of the world we live in and people have been doing it in one way or another for a very fucking long time. Some people feel icky about the prospect of drinking water that used to have shit in it and to some extent that makes sense. Unfortunately for these folks pretty much all water has had shit in it. A goodly amount of it has probably been piss. Odds are you drank a little formerly-piss water today even. That's why filtration systems exist, so that by the time you drink it, your water doesn't bear any meaningful resemblance to the piss (or commercial waste, or industrial run off) that it used to be.

I'm hitting this one pretty hard but its not just water. A while back the U.N. suggested people start phasing insects into their diet to prevent against possible insecurity in the food supply. Of course it was kinda laughed off, but livestock is hard to raise, and costly, and if something goes wrong (like the world smolders and livestock becomes too resource intensive to keep alive) a huge number of people are going to be fucked. We can't afford to laugh off solutions at this point, no matter how icky it makes us feel. There are problems amassing in the world, too many to face down and certainly too many to ignore, and its not just irresponsible to keep calm and carry on, its self destructive.