Oscar Wrapup

Well, that's that for another year. Here are a few random thoughts and observations.

Anne Hathaway was pretty good. James Franco inspired a million well deserved Twitter jokes about looking stoned. I wonder if anyone had the guts to mention that in the graduate class that James Franco teaches about himself. The show itself had a few decent moments but, taken in its entirety, it looks like they hired Max Bialystock to produce it.

I don't mind that The King's Speech won as it's a wonderful film. It certainly wasn't my choice for Best Picture though. I personally put Inception, The Social Network and Winter's Bone above King's Speech. Winter's Bone especially is the one I'd have liked to have seen take home the gold just because it was really the little movie that could. It's also a movie that everyone, no matter who they are or where they come from, seems to like when they get around to seeing it. The same goes for Winter's Bone actress Jennifer Lawrence. I don't want to trash Natalie Portman but I think Jennifer Lawrence's performance was nearly perfect. She really is a rising talent and could rise to the highest echelons of the acting profession. By the way, anyone know where to find naked pictures of her?

The Best Foreign Language Film category lost all credibility when they failed to nominate Human Centipede.

I cannot for the life of me figure out what I was talking about when I tweeted this:

Sadly, it could have been any number of things.

I congratulate Banksy for showing restraint in not tagging the entire city of Los Angeles after Exit Through The Gift Shop failed to win for Best Documentary. I was really rooting for that one, mainly because it was the only nominated documentary I had seen.

Best Animated Film was created so Pixar could win Oscars so it's no surprise that Pixar won for Toy Story 3. I just hope they aren't so arrogant that they're wasting time writing the acceptance speech for a Cars 2 victory.

I can't remember who it was that was lecturing the audience to see more short films but he/she/it was right. It really is a shame that we don't see more short films as some of them are wonderful. What's even more of a shame is that, in a few years, those who were nominated this year for Short Film Oscars will make deals to direct Dwayne Johnson in Squadron Cathouse, a movie that has Johnson playing a former Navy SEAL who's now in charge of taking a group of prostitutes and molding them into an elite fighting force.

In closing, I was reminded last night of something my father said to me when I left home. "Son," he said, "always bet on lesbian ballet dancers." Turns out Dad was wrong. His other piece of advice, "Always wear a cup," did turn out to be right so you're batting .500, Dad.

Hit Me Santa Baby One More Time

I was going to take the day off of blogging today in observation of Christmas but, instead, I've decided to dishonor Christmas and bring upon myself the ire of a billion Christians in order to talk about what I posted on Friday. Perhaps the memory of that has already been lost in the food/alcohol induced haze we adults imposed upon ourselves in order the to survive the sheer torture that is the most joyous time of the year and you have no idea that I wrote up one of my famous Liveblogs for your Christmas Eve pleasure. In this case, the poor, cinematic soul being stretched upon my metaphorical rack was Santa Baby 2 starring Jenny McCarthy. It turns out, much to my surprise, that movies, even one I don't like, are made by real people with real feelings who work very hard to entertain and are passionate about such work. That state of affairs led to an email I received from Brian Turner. One of Santa Baby 2's authors is listed as Brian Turner but I'm sure that's a coincidence and this guy's email is a spam trying to sell me an acai based antioxidant supplement that somehow got past my filter. Let's read his email, posted here with his permission.

Michael,

OH MY GOD, THAT'S ME. What can I do for you?

First off, we'd like to thank you for taking the time to review our movie. A year late, but better late than never right?

Second, we'd like to congratulate you on two key points that apparently ALL the other reviewers missed!
- Teri _should_ be in charge of Christmas!
- Why is it always sunny at the North Pole?

Garrett and I had long discussions after the drawn out rewrite process resulted in a script where neither Santa nor Mary actually wanted to run Christmas and the one person who had stepped up and was doing a great job was being painted as a villain for doing nothing wrong. Further, you caught the fact that both Santa and Mary systematically mistreated the Elves, ignoring their demands and not thanking them for their hard work.

Clearly you watched the film a lot closer than any of the other reviewers!

That's true, I am amazing.

As for the lights at the North Pole, Garrett and I had a discussion early on during the writing of Santa Baby 1 about this. Here's what we concluded:
- People are uneducated and we'd literally have to explain to them why it was dark all the time
- Shooting a holiday movie that takes place entirely in the dusk would be gloomy and difficult

So, while we both concur with how little Sun would actually be there, we went the route of all the other Xmas movies and made it look pretty.

Yes, I figured it was artistic license. I was being snarky though I did keep noticing it as well as the presence of lush looking forest land and the fact that no one was dressed warmly enough to survive the North Pole in summer, much less Christmas time. If I had liked the movie better, none of this would have bothered me in the least. It can all be easily excused as an attempt to make a fairy tale that would have been much less entertaining and light-hearted had the entire cast frozen to death on a landscape that looked more like the set of The Thing than a movie about Santa Claus.

On a third count, you are also the only one who caught that Teri was an elf. When we first say that Kelly had been cast, we thought it was a DEAD GIVEAWAY. The girl is something like 4'2"! Again, you're the only reviewer that picked up on it.

So, overall, nice work!

I don't want to claim special powers but I don't ever remember thinking she wasn't supposed to be an elf. I don't remember a line of dialogue saying, "Gosh Teri, you are totally not an elf," and she was short with a high pitched voice. Oh well, the rest of the world was fooled. I feel like one of those people you want to punch who like to claim that they figured out The Sixth Sense when Bruce Willis was in the restaurant.

Oh! And you got our names in there. Along with Santa's ass, but still! Thanks.

I did? (Quick re-read later) Oh, it was in the screencap. I actually intentionally left out the names of you and your writing partner. The reason is that I hardly ever like to blame writers for what I feel is wrong with a movie. If there's something wrong with the script, it was almost certainly something that the writers were told to do by someone higher up. There are too many legendary stories of a writer being told to take a perfectly good script and completely fuck it up in order to serve the whims of people who have no idea what they're talking about. If The King's Speech had been a big budget Hollywood film instead of being an independent production, the sensitive and intelligent screenplay would have ended up being an Adam Sandler comedy. The point is that, if someone is a good enough writer to rise above a group that consists of literally thousands of other wannabe screenwriters, they're probably smart and talented enough to spot things like weak characterizations and logical inconsistencies. If a script contains those things, it's because the people who sign the writers' checks wanted them in there. The writer then buys a house and pays for his kids' braces with the money and, hopefully, is happy to be able to make a living doing something that doesn't involve digging ditches or grinding on a stripper pole.

If we could ask one favor from you/ Kelly Stables (Teri/Phoebe) is a fantastic actress and a wonderful person. We feel strongly that she did an absolutely terrific job with what could have been a thankless role. And, though she's pictured in the review, you don't mention her by name. They say there's no such thing as bad press, so if you get a chance, can you just slip her name in there?

Thanks so much,
Brian Turner

No problem there. She was easily the best actor in the movie as well as being the prettiest female in a movie that starred a woman who was once Playmate of the Year. Don't believe me? This is what Kelly Stables looks like. The scenes with Teri/Phoebe were actually a pleasure to watch. She and some of the scenes with the elves (their dialogue was often hilarious) kept the movie above the, "Who the hell thought it was a good idea to make this" level and, if I ever meet Kelly Stables, I'll tell her so. Hopefully, I won't be drooling or have a massive erection when this happens but I'm not making any promises. (That line's going to really work against me if she writes to me next.)

Thanks for your thoughts, Mr. Turner. They were very helpful and I'm glad I stuck to my policy of polishing the ass of anyone who writes to me personally.

White God's Burden

You may have heard of the Conservative Citizens Council (CCC) before now. Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour created a bit of a stir on the lefty blogs yesterday when he favorably mentioned them although he called them by a different name. It turns out that, if you look these guys up on Wikipedia, you get redirected to this page. Before 1956, they were called the White Citizens Council, an organization that came into being when the Supreme Court desegregated public schools. When former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott was accused of being a racist, one piece of evidence supposedly proving this was that he had spoken to the CCC on five separate occasions. I had no idea until last week what they'd been up to since their name was used to end Lott's political career. Until last week, that is.

It turns out the CCC isn't just well monied racists who like to get together to bitch about their granddaughters dating black guys or how the kids these days all listen to that crazy rap music. Now we find out that they're also passionate fans of movies and comic books. They're such huge fans they insist that actors starring in movie version of their favorite comics not deviate in appearance from the way they are drawn. This is nothing new. It happened when Jessica Alba was cast as Sue Storm in the Fantastic Four movie although that tempest in a teapot died down when she dyed her hair blond. There are always nerds who don't understand the concept that the comic book and the movie are two different art forms and that what works for one doesn't necessarily work for another. It's why superhero costumes in movies these days are usually leather instead of spandex tights like they almost always are in the comic books.

Anyway, it turns out that the CCC has decided to take a break from whatever the hell it is they do all day to stand up for the artistic integrity of their favorite comic book. They are really cheesed over the upcoming movie adaptation of Marvel Comics Thor. What are they complaining about? Maybe they don't like that Thor has a beard because they prefer the 1960s Jack Kirby version in which he's clean shaven. It could be that they don't like that the movie will include Natalie Portman as Jane Foster, Thor's love interest who was written out of the story years ago. But no, it's none of those things. Should I say what it is or bury the lede some more?

The CCC is upset over the character Heimdall. Heimdall is the Guardian of the Bifrost Bridge, the link between Earth and Asgard, home of Thor and the other Norse gods. What has the CCC up in arms is that Heimdall in the movie will be played by Idris Elba. Idris Elba is an excellent British actor who distinguished himself in shows like The Wire and Luther. He's also of African descent. Meaning he's black. This has caused the totally non-racist the CCC to collectively crap their pants and at least throw their support behind this totally non-racist web site that's calling on everyone to boycott the Thor movie NOT AT ALL because they're a group of racist dickholes who think too much melanin in the skin makes one unqualified to play a fictional deity but because this is just another example of Marvel's liberal agenda.

Marvel has a history of advocating for the left-wing. In early 2010 they even used their Captain America comic to attack the TEA Party movement. Marvel front man Stan "Lee" Lieber personally funds left-wing political candidates. Now Marvel has inserted left-wing social engineering into European mythology, casting a black man to play a Norse deity.

The way the writer helpfully lets us know that Thor creator Stan Lee is actually a Jew named Stan Lieber is proof positive that they're not racist. A true racist would have denounced Lee for being Jewish while the writer never goes that far. He just puts up menacing square quotes around the author's pen name and lets us decide for ourselves whether or not he drinks the blood of Christian babies.

For some reason, the CCC and Boycott-Thor.com don't feel the need to complain about other changes the movie has made. For instance, Anthony Hopkins' Odin should have a much bigger beard than he does in the movie. Hell, Thor himself shouldn't be blond. In Norse mythology, he had red hair yet no one at the CCC has felt the need to get pissed off over that. And what about other superheroes? Why has there been no mention of the fact that the Hulk was gray when he first appeared and then turned green later? Why didn't Peter Parker have to get teleported to an alien world by the Beyonder to find the alien called Venom that he wore as a costume instead of it just landing on Earth? What non-racist reasons are there for not noticing any of this?

I'm sure all these questions will be answered soon. Let's just hope that the CCC doesn't notice that Nick Fury, played by Samuel L. Jackson in Iron Man 2, was significantly changed when taken from the page and put on screen. Yes, that's right. Nick Fury fought in World War II. He should be over 90 by now yet Jackson is in his 50s. Let loose your rage, CCC.

Seasonings

As I look into my magic mirror, I see far, far into the future, more than two months in fact. One thing I see is all the little children excited about the coming of Christmas and how they're deluding themselves into thinking they'll get decent gifts in this economy. What I want to talk about today, though, are the films coming out between now and the end of the year. I am now going to try and predict what will be the best movie to come out in this competitive holiday season and what will be the worst. These are both very difficult to predict as there are promising entries in each category and I'll almost certainly be wrong but it's Tuesday and that means I'm supposed to put something new up today and it may as well be this. First, the best.

I came close to picking Due Date, the new comedy from the people who gave us that instant classic The Hangover. Comedies don't get the respect they deserve since, to be good, they must look like they took no effort to make and the trailer for Due Date looks like Robert Downey Jr. and Zack Galifianakis got together and just casually and expertly ad libbing their scenes in one take. At the very least, I predict it will somehow manage to outshine Morning Glory and Little Fockers as the best comedy of the season. So, what will the best movie be?

This is the time of year is always loaded with Oscar hopefuls. This year, we have entries like Julie Taymor's rework of The Tempest and Miramax's attempt at Oscar #300,000 with The King's Speech. Naomi Watts playing Valerie Plame in Fair Game looks promising but it was directed by the guy who made Jumper. When I reviewed Jumper, my entire article was one paragraph long and was summed up by the unimaginative-but-true headline "Jumper Sucks" which is why Fair Game gets knocked out of contention. Another runner up is Darren Aronofsky's Black Swan but, admittedly, the main reason I'm looking forward to this is because of a reported sex scene between Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis. No no, I'm kidding. I'm looking forward to it because it looks like an interesting, artful look at a living nightmare and not because Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis will rub their sweaty, naked bodies against one another, heaving and thrusting until mutual ecstasy...um...living nightmare. Yeah.

In the end, though, there's only one choice, at least from the information I have, and that is the Joel and Ethan Coen remake of True Grit. This looks to actually outshine the original that earned John Wayne an Oscar. Jeff Bridges who, judging by this and the bits of him we've seen in the Tron promos, is now legally obligated to hold onto the look he had in Crazy Heart, was the perfect choice to step into the role of Rooster Cogburn and the Coen brothers are the perfect choice to do whatever the hell they choose to make a movie out of so yes, I'll be at a theater on Christmas day when this comes out. So, that's my prediction for the best. Whatever will I choose for the worst.

Naturally, there are way more candidates for worst than there are for best and it is so very hard to choose but choose I must else I fail to meet my arbitrarily set goal. This trailer for Yogi Bear jumped out at me when I first saw it but this looks like a dumb, harmless kids film. I've already mentioned TRON:Legacy but if I chose that it would mean Jeff Bridges was in both the best and worst movies of the season. It now occurs to me that I don't care if I do that or not but, I'm not choosing TRON. That's not even in the same timezone as some of the other selections.

For the season's worst movie, I look to Thanksgiving Day. That's the day we get both the winner and the runner up. The runner up is Dwayne Johnson's revenge film Faster. The trailer looks like both a very stylish and very stupid Deathwish ripoff that is poised to defy anything even vaguely related to reality and logic. Johnson's character will either be killed at the end or be allowed to go free after taking the law into his own hands and committing several cold blooded murders which means Faster should be a celebration of depression and pointless nihilism no matter what happens. So, what's worse than that? This.

Oh yes, my No-Prize goes to Burlesque. I simply can't figure how a major film studio like Sony was convinced to basically remake Showgirls. That movie at least had that tall girl from Saved By The Bell taking her clothes off. This new movie has Christina Aguilera. is she taking her clothes off? No. She's just singing forgettable songs when she's not playing a girl who is utterly entranced by the idea of singing burlesque songs while getting felt up by Stanley Tucci. This will truly be the most painful Thanksgiving ever.

The Fish Bites Back

James Cameron recently gave an interview to Vanity Fair about the re-release of Avatar but the money quote that's been making the blog rounds is this tidbit about other movies in 3D in general and one in particular.

I tend almost never to throw other films under the bus, but that is exactly an example of what we should not be doing in 3-D. Because it just cheapens the medium and reminds you of the bad 3-D horror films from the 70s and 80s, like Friday the 13th 3-D. When movies got to the bottom of the barrel of their creativity and at the last gasp of their financial lifespan, they did a 3-D version to get the last few drops of blood out of the turnip.

The other film that he not only threw under the bus but held it down as the bus stopped, backed up and ran over it again is Piranha 3D. I happen to agree with Cameron on this point. 3D first started in the 50s and enjoyed a brief revival in the 80s before the current incarnation started showing up a few years ago. What marked both of those eras was that 3D movies, without fail, were horrible films. Well, maybe not all of them. Creature From The Black Lagoon was shot in 3D but I bet you didn't know that because it's hardly ever shown that way when you watch it these days on TCM. The reason for this is that 3D was a cheap, cheesy, ugly and distracting process. It was used mostly on cheap, cheesy, ugly and distracting movies so they could slap the words "SHOWN IN 3D" on the poster but both times it was stopped when people realized that 3D sucked. Which brings us to Piranha 3D.

When I reviewed the film last week, I barely mentioned that it was shot in 3D. That's because it wasn't worth mentioning. In that movie, I'd classify it as Mostly Harmless because, for the most part, it neither added nor subtracted from the movie itself. I didn't care for it but that wasn't because of the 3D.

All of that brings us to this. In a turn of events James Cameron couldn't possibly have foreseen, Piranha 3D producer Mark Canton also reads Variety and happened to read Cameron's trashing of his movie. His response went like this:

Let's just keep this in mind Jim ... you did not invent 3D. You were fortunate that others inspired you to take it further. The simple truth is that I had nothing but good things to say about Avatar and my own experience since I actually saw it, and didn't damn someone else's talent publicly in order to disassociate myself from my origins in the business from which we are all very fortunate. To be honest, I found the 3D in Avatar to be inconsistent and while ground breaking in many respects, sometimes I thought it overwhelmed the storytelling. Technology aside, I wish Avatar had been more original in its storytelling.

You know Mark Canton, I too wish that Avatar had been more original in its storytelling and it's just great that I have you, the guy who produced the remake of 1978's Piranha, to speak for me. Who has more credibility and moral standing to rail on unoriginal films than the man whose latest cinematic offering gave us the wildly original story of an underwater monster that wreaks havoc on a modern day tourist resort that won't close its beaches because they'd lose money? I especially enjoyed the "guy who can't bring himself to tell the girl he loves how he feels and ends up connecting with her by risking his own life to save hers" subplot because we sure as hell have never seen that before.

Now now, Mark Canton, don't be upset. I kid because I love and there was one memorable 3D moment in Piranha 3D. That would be the time when Jerry O'Connell's penis gets chewed off by piranhas and bobs around for a bit before getting swallowed whole by one of the fish but WAIT that's not the best part. No no, the best part is when the damn fish burped it back up in the glory and majesty that is 3D. With that kind of cinematic quality backing him up, you can see why Mark Canton felt that he could go after James Cameron, the guy who directed the #1 and #2 top grossing films of all time. One of them even won the Oscar but the other one was only nominated so Canton will have even more room to talk when Piranha 3D gets nominated this year.

Twos-day

Two-day on this Twos-day I'm going two talk about 2 different sub-two-jects. I hope the rampant hilarity of this first line didn't cause anyone to pass out from laughter.

First, Lost. I'm assuming you've seen it, by the way. Don't go bitching about how you were saving the last episode for the 4th of July and now I've ruined it for you. Judging from Twitter/Facebook/message board reactions, it went over fairly well with the show's fanbase. Even people who thought the show started going downhill after that awesome first 15 minutes seemed to gain a measure of satisfaction and completion from Sunday's final episode. I can say I liked it a lot and was impressed at how much sense everything made in the end.

One of the biggest conclusions I reached is that Jacob did a lousy job in his role as island protector. It was obvious from the episode that showed us his origin that his mother didn't even intend for him to end up with the job. Hell, the first thing he did in that role was something his adoptive mother had told him not to do. As an act of revenge, he tossed his brother down the light cave and ended up creating a very powerful and pissed off enemy that was just as immortal as he was. Then Jacob decides to spend the next 2000 years trying to convince him of the sheer awesome swellness of humanity. You'd think around year 1200 he'd figure it to be a lost cause but no, he soldiers on. To me, the biggest unsolved mystery is whether the people who ended up on the island, including Desmond, were brought together as part of an intricate plan that Jacob concocted to put an end to the threat of the Man in Black once and for all or if he threw darts at names to choose his candidates and got lucky that everything worked out.

I'm not going to worry about the unsolved mysteries. If I ever meet any of the main creative forces behind Lost, I won't ask about polar bears or what was so great about Walt or if that Dharma peanut butter was smooth or crunchy. My question would be, "How close to your original vision of the ending did the actual ending turn out to be?" I'm curious about how much of the plot was planned from episode one and how much was just winging it.

Topic #2: I haven't given much space to Big Hollywood recently but this post today by Jeffrey Jena caught my eye. he claims comedian Elayne Boosler defriended him on Facebook for the crime of being a conservative.

I got “unfriended” on Facebook a few months ago by comedienne Elayne Boosler. Out here in the real world I wasn’t really “friends” with Ms. Boosler. We had met a few times and I think we may have shared a stage or two somewhere along the way but that was it. Our Facebook friendship was almost as brief. When I disagreed with one of her political postings I was soon scratched from her “friend” roster. It seems that Ms. Boosler does not like to have her opinions challenged. She is one of many “progressives” who believe in diversity of appearance but not of thought. Fair enough. You want to be narrow minded and intellectually lazy so you don’t have to defend your opinions, that is your right as an American. Second in my mind only to the right to be as stupid as you want to be is the right to put your fingers in your ear when someone who disagrees with you is so rude as to start throwing facts at you.

He then goes on to claim that another progressive friend also dumped him from Facebook and from these two incidents draws the conclusion that liberals are vicious and intolerant. What caught my attention, though, is that, in both cases, Jena doesn't show us the comments that were so offensive to liberal sensibilities. As you can see from the quote above, all he says is that he disagreed with a political post without a hint of whether he said, "I think tax cuts increase revenues," or if it was more along the lines of, "Why does Der Führer Obama think he can change our health care system when he won't even release his birth certificate?" He goes into a bit more detail in the second example in which he paints himself as a calm debater going up against an emotionally immature and out-of-control liberal but, again, he fails to show us the actual Facebook posts that set this person off. We only have his word that he is the sad victim of liberal intolerance.

On the other hand, we have Elayne Boosler saying he's full of shit. She pays Jena the courtesy of linking to what he actually said instead of providing us with her own vague characterizations of Jena's words. I also looked at some of her older Facebook posts and found this thread in which she criticizes Starbucks for allowing armed customers into their stores. In the comments, some guy states that we must allow this because a crackhead might someday find a gun while rooting through trash. According to Jena, Boosler should have lost her shit and defriended him. Instead, she disagreed and calmly stated that, if she encountered an armed customer in Starbucks, she would leave after registering her complaint to the management.

One more thing. I loved this statement Jena makes about the poor, persecuted Hollywood conservatives.

I look at folks like Dennis Miller, a guy who I have admired for years, and Drew Carey, and wonder what their brash conservatism has cost them.

Well, let's see. Dennis Miller now has a radio show because of his conservative beliefs as well as numerous tour dates. Drew Carey is an even sadder story. Because of his conservative beliefs, he was only allowed to make 200 episodes of his sitcom The Drew Carey Show. He now, tragically, makes an excellent living as host of The Price Is Right so yeah, let's all weep for Dennis Miller and Drew Carey.

A Distinct Lack Of Glee

I didn't care for Glee when it first premiered. I think the reason I didn't like it is because I was comparing it to a British show called Skins. With the exception of the last two episodes of season 4, Skins is, simply, one of the best things ever. I'm not exaggerating when I say it's one of the best written television shows in the history of the medium. It can be warm, harsh, funny and tragic, usually in the same episode. It's the story of teenage who actually seem like real people. Real people aren't usually as interesting as they are, of course. Real people aren't as clever or witty or lead lives packed with that much drama. One of the challenges of fiction is to make the unlikely events these characters live through seem natural and they pull it off.

And then there's Glee. When I first watched Glee, I kept thinking of Skins and Glee just didn't measure up. I've now come to accept Glee for what it is and I usually end up liking it. The kids are funny but not in that stupid sitcom way where 15 year old teenagers somehow have the world view and sensibilities of 30 year old standup comedians. They also do some pretty good musical numbers. Still, as I was reminded by Glee's most recent episode, it's not Skins.

One of the main plot points of last Tuesday's episode was when three of the main characters decided to lose their virginity. One thing I like about Skins is that they show's creators and, by extension, its characters, don't tie themselves up in knots about sex. It actually recognizes that a) lots of teens have sex and b) most of them, to varying degrees, seem to like it. Glee, unfortunately, is on American television and the biology of American teens is significantly different from that of their counterparts on British telly or, for that matter, their counterparts in real life. TV teens in America don't seem to particularly like sex and the only reason they bother with it at all is peer pressure from other teens. Why these other teens pressure their peers to do something that they, themselves, don't seem to like is a mystery.

Three couples this week decided to have sex and each couple had one virgin and one experienced partner. One couple was glee club teacher Will Shuster and guidance counselor Emma Pillsbury. Emma's OCD has kept her from having sex even though she's almost thirty so she, at least, has an excuse. They're adults though and I want to concentrate on the kids.

Series regulars Rachel and Finn, though their personalities are different, are crazy about each other and pretty much meant to be together. Unfortunately for them, they're in a TV series that gets a lot of story mileage from keeping them apart so now they've decided to lose their virginity to other people. Oddly, of the four people involved, only one really wants to have sex because he thinks sex is awesome and that guy is Jesse, Rachel's insensitive new boyfriend. Rachel doesn't want to but Jesse is pressuring her and she may as well get it out of the way. The fact that she likes Jesse and that Jesse is the kind of guy most girls would want to have sex with has little to do with it. Finn is an entirely different case. A cheerleader named Santana has offered to relieve Finn of his virginity for what are mainly political and status reasons. Finn decides to take her up on it. Why? You may think it's because she's hot enough to be in Maxim which, in fact, she was (Not Safe For Work link here) and that sex with a hot girl is an awesome idea. No no no, Finn decides to do it to make Rachel jealous or some stupid shit like that.

Predictably, Rachel backs out because this is American television and teenage girls don't really want to have sex. If they do, it's because they are sluts who have no respect for themselves like Santana. Speaking of her, Finn goes ahead with it and nails her in a sleazy looking motel. What does he do after? Maybe you're thinking he says, at least to himself, "Woo hoo, I had sex." You'd be wrong about that because this is American television and sex is wrong. Instead, Finn bitches about having done it while Santana looks bored and says she wants a cheeseburger. Again, Finn just had sex with this girl (again, for God's sake, don't click this link if you are at work or using your church's WiFi or anything like that) and all he can think of to do is complain. The reason he's whining about having had the greatest night of his life is because he's on American TV and the fact that he just had sex means that a puppy just died because SEX IS BAD and no one really wants to do it until they get married or move to England where kids can bang away in peace.

The Age Old Question

I was reading THR.com today and saw yet another article about Avatar. Since Avatar came out, I have come to truly admire James Cameron and this article only increased that admiration. Not only did he basically help create new special effects and 3D technology but he made sure the movie would look good whether you saw it on a 3d Imax screen the size of a football field or in the 100 seat theater movies go to the week before they finally leave the multiplex.

The version requirements were uniquely daunting for "Avatar," as the technically savvy Cameron entered uncharted territory to create the highest presentation quality possible.

"No studio has ever faced what we faced on this," says Ted Gagliano, president of postproduction at Fox. "Jim wanted the best, most immersive experience possible. So he pushed us to have a multiple-version inventory that would give each theater the best experience it could possibly deliver for that given theater."

Say what you want about Cameron but that's a filmmaker right there. He worked his ass off for years so schlubs like you and I could have fun for a few hours. Avatar is simply an amazing experience and I haven't even seen it in 3D. Directors usually get a disproportionate amount of the credit for the success or failure of a movie but really no one can doubt that the lion's share of the credit must go to James Cameron. His ex-wives talk about how his marriages have fallen apart because of his dedication to the craft of movie making.

Thinking about all this, I started to wonder. The guy spent years of his life making this movie. He pushed for the huge budget that risked not only his professional standing and reputation but the financial stability of the studio backing him. I'm not sure how he feels about "the little people" but I'll assume he's not a sociopath and at least has some regard for the people who would have lost their jobs if this thing had flopped. So, he took all that risk, expended all that time and effort and stood tall against the people who said it couldn't be done. Here's what all that makes me wonder and I say this as someone who saw Avatar twice and enjoyed it each time.

Why the hell would you do all this for a plot that basically a mishmash of Dances With Wolves and some 50s science fiction stories? Why would you go to unprecedented lengths for a story in which Kevin Costner's character is painted blue and plopped down on another planet? Why would you spend more money than had ever before spent to show us things that had never before been seen on screen and put those wonderful images into the service of a derivative plot? What not make a story and bold, innovative and original as the processes used to create the film's sights and sounds?

Oh well, this summer we have movies like Prince of Persia, The A-Team and Twilight 3 to look forward to. I'm sure Hollywood's saving all its fresh and original ideas for those.

Oscar Wrapup

This, perhaps, should have shown up a little earlier in the week. It didn't so you get to enjoy it now. You're welcome.

I still think Tarantino and Inglourious Basterds should have won for both Best Director and Best Picture but I won't complain about Kathryn Bigelow and Hurt Locker taking those prizes. She did a great job with very little money or star power and made a movie that managed to convince a large enough number of Academy voters that they should ignore the well regarded science fiction epic that became the highest grossing movie ever and vote for a small budget war drama that very few people have seen. Also, now that a woman has finally won Best Director, we don't have to let one win again for another 80 years.

I had a feeling that there would be some surprises this year and man oh man was I ever wrong. Conventional wisdom ruled this year. Chrisoph Waltz won this year's Christoph Waltz Award and Pixar won the award that was created so Pixar could win an Oscar. Sandra Bullock won the award that she really shouldn't have won. Her performance was much better than the movie she was in and it's nice she was able to finally take one of those statues home but there were better performances this year. Still, now that Sandra Bullock has won this, we don't have to let her win again for another 80 years.

I loved it when Neil Patrick Harris sang the opener. I loved it less when he stopped singing and Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin came out to give their hit-and-miss comedy routine.

When Jeff Bridges won Best Actor, I was going to go on Twitter and make a joke about how he should say, "The Dude abides," in his speech but was beaten by the 80,000 other people who had the same idea. Because of this, I will now say, "The Dude abides," whenever I see Jeff Bridges doing anything (which I did yesterday in reference to his appearance in the new Tron trailer). The only exception to this policy will be if he ever stars in a Big Lebowski sequel. I know I shouldn't be taking this out on Jeff Bridges but it's easier to retaliate against him than all 80,000 people on Twitter.

Speaking of Twitter, I loved this comment about "That Montana girl and that Twilight girl" from someone who has in her life had intimate knowledge of Humphrey Bogart.

When Roger Ross Williams won his award for Best Documentary Short, I honestly figured this would be a good time to heat up a pizza slice and go to the bathroom. How the hell was I supposed to know that an event people would call the Oscars' Kanye moment was about to happen? I didn't even find out about it till the next day. There's a lesson in there somewhere about life being full of surprises. Still, if the same thing happens next year where someone I've never heard of wins one of the less prestigious awards, I'll probably miss it then too so best not to ponder too much on the lesson.

Farrah Fawcett was apparently intentionally left off this year's memorial list since the producers decided she was more of a TV star than a movie star. This decision is rendered bullshit by the fact that Michael Jackson who starred in one movie his entire life was on the damn list. Oh well.

That's it till next year, kiddies. In 2011 I'm sure I'll be congratulating Megan Fox for winning the newly created Hottest Body category. Buh bye.

January Thaw

As I said yesterday, it's odd to see two movies coming out the first week in January that are being at least decently reviewed. This is not the natural order of things and I don't like it. In the beginning of time, God decreed that the worst movies of the year were supposed to come out in January yet Youth in Revolt and Daybreakers are both holding their own so far on the Tomatometer. Hell, Ebert even gave three stars to the Amy Adams rom com Leap Year. True, the majority of critics hate it but I agree with Ebert quite a bit of the time which makes me scared to see that now because I don't want to end up writing a review that reads, "Leap out of your chair and go see Leap Year." Something like that is even more likely because Amy Adams is in it and she and Rachel McAdams both have the ability to cloud my mind and make me give a movie they're in 14 stars out of a possible 4 even if it sucks.

The reason January always has the worst movies is because of the fact that everyone blew all their spare cash in the previous month on X-Boxes for their whiny little brats combined with high school and college kids being busy with school starting back up. This means that in December you get movies like Avatar and Sherlock Holmes until the calendar swings into January when you get new Dane Cook comedies and the latest Resident Evil sequel.

Despite some decent reviews for these movies, the list of upcoming films looks like a typical January. You have Book of Eli, a warmed over Road Warrior story, a story about crazy angels called Legion and The Spy Next Door, a movie that I want to like because Jackie Chan is in it but, come on. I mean, come the hell ON. An international super spy has to take care of some kids? Maybe they're thinking, "Cameron took Dances With Wolves and made loads of money with Avatar. Maybe we could take Vin Diesel's The Pacifier, redo it with Jackie Chan and make a billion dollars." Oh, let's not forget When In Rome which is Leap Year set in Rome with Kristen Bell instead of Amy Adams so, if nothing else, they can probably count on the three star Ebert review.

Who knows? Maybe all these movies will be good and HA HA HA HA sorry, I can't go on. No, this week was a fluke. Flukes happen. Soon the natural order will be set right and we'll be treated to junk January films that no one will see because they weren't really meant to see them. February will come and we may get decent movies again. Until then, we can all go see Avatar a third or fourth time. That is God's plan and we should not question it. So shall it be written, so shall it be done.

How Did We Let This Happen?

I just don't understand it. Things just aren't supposed to go this way. Life is unpredictable, true, but certain events are supposed to go a certain way. As sure as the sun rises in the East, some movies are just plain supposed to suck. I knew months ahead of time that both Transformers movies were going to be exercises in pain. I knew the same about Twilight and I knew that New Moon would be even worse. I knew the same thing about Avatar. For months now, I've been certain that Avatar would be both a boring ripoff of Dances With Wolves and an example of wretched and unchecked Hollywood excess.

Now it looks as if Avatar is actually going to be good. If you clicked on that link, you saw Avatar's Rotten Tomatoes page where, as of this writing, the movie currently has a 92% positive rating, a number that's actually higher than it was this morning.

Damn it, this wasn't supposed to happen! I was supposed to be able to write a review next week called "Ava-tard" and talk about how James Cameron couldn't have made My Dinner With Andre without spending $200 million. Now I'll have to marvel at the film's visual delights and maybe even talk about how I was touched by both the story's romantic elements and how I cheered when the aliens battled the invading human army.

Oh well, this was bound to happen. The upshot of all this is that we get to see the rarest of breeds, a good high concept studio made action film. Plus, it's not like we're going to run out of bad movies anytime soon. Next year, I'll get to take apart the new Macgruber movie, something that is guaranteed to be the worst piece of crap in the history of...what? DAMN IT!

Prediction

Currently, Avatar is being trashed in conservative circles because it portrays good, decent white humans as villains trying to steal the land of a non-white primitive people.

Unfortunately for them, most other critics seem to like it. This means Big Hollywood will adopt the strategy they used for movies like The Blind Side where they trash it for being politically incorrect then, when it becomes a huge hit, they backtrack and claim it's actually a win for conservative values.

Therefore, after they see that they failed not only to kill Avatar but to even blunt its box office, expect to see several Big Hollywood articles saying that it's a conservative screed that vindicates the Iraq War and that Sam Worthington's wheelchair bound character who enters an alien body clearly represents George W. Bush.

Another possibility is that it will make $300 million and they'll claim that they prevented it from making $400 million but I'm sticking with my first guess.

Stupid With A Capital V

Dear makers of the show V: FUCK YOU!

You're all total dicks. You're also huge douchebags. The only reason you're not bigger douchebags is because you're total dicks and it's been scientifically proven that a large, quantifiable amount of dickishness has the unintended benefit of limiting the level of douchebaggery so they lucked out there. When your dumb little show premiered, I was apathetic about it. It wasn't the worst thing on television. I could take or leave it. It didn't matter to me if it got canceled or managed to hang on for a second season. In fact, I didn't even see last week's episode and didn't care. I did, however, see this week's episode. Now I care. Now I'm passionate. Now I wholeheartedly root for its cancellation. Why? It's really more my fault than it is yours. See, the makers of V are shitheads and I hate shitheads. It's my problem.

I've never been one to be outraged by fiction. It happens from time to time. Movies like Bride Wars or the finale of Battlestar Galactica have been known to invoke a reaction that can be described as apocalyptic. Even then, I can pretty much let go any sort of political or social messages contained in fiction that either actually exist or, as is more often the case, people imagine are there. I've written many times about how annoyed I get when people who can't tell fantasy from reality hold up a work of fiction as proof and vindication of their worldviews. This has been the case with V. The fact that the show's producer is an openly gay liberal Obama supporter hasn't stopped people from seeing it as a strident criticism of the Obama administration. Ordinarily, I'd have commented on such stupidity but as I said, I simply didn't care enough to do so. Until now.

Tuesday's episode was a smorgasbord of dumb. I wonder why the aliens refer to themselves by their human names when they're alone since, for the most part, they seem to have at least a mild contempt (in some cases not so mild) for our species. I find it preposterous that humans are so incurious about where the V's came from and what their world and culture are like. We as a race seem perfectly content to allow powerful aliens to set up embassies, healing centers, soft serve yogurt stands etc. while knowing so little about them. Another storyline involves the human resistance led by Elizabeth Mitchell thinking it would be a good idea to let a dangerously unstable man take the lead in a plot to kidnap a V. There's also a story about a V impregnating a human woman without the aid of genetic engineering, something that Carl Sagan once said he found to be the least believable thing about Star Trek. This shows the scientific ignorance of the show's staff from the producers on down who probably think Africa is crawling with human/chimp hybrids. Anyway, all this was just run of the mill TV stupidity on par with generations of science fiction shows that have called a solar system a galaxy. What pissed me off? I guess I've buried the lede long enough.

The V's were attempting to infect humanity with something called R6. I'll be damned if I can remember what the hell R6 is supposed to do but I doubt it's good. Anyway, supposedly the V's were mixing this R6 in with some sort of super vitamin supplement when they were actually mixing it in with flu vaccine. Yeah, that's right, the makers of V decided to reinforce the fears of Jenny McCarthy acolytes who believe that vaccines are evil based mainly on evidence they found up their asses. It's very rare that you hear me groan at a television show's plot. The last time I did that was during the one and only episode of the now canceled Eli Stone I ever saw in which a lawyer receives visions telling him that vaccines cause autism.

I have no idea if the producers meant to send the message that people shouldn't take flu vaccine. In fact, knowing them, I'd say they put as much thought into it as they did the idea of human/alien hybrids. Still, we currently are in the middle of a global flu pandemic that is literally killing people and V comes along to tell the more ignorant members of our population who were on the fence as to whether they should take the vaccine that yes, the crazy paranoid cousin who said that the government is hiding the fact that vaccines make your belly button close up and cause your urine to catch fire just might have had a point.

So, I will now join the majority of the nation and stop watching V altogether. Until it's canceled, I will practice the dance I'm going to do on its grave.

He Has No Brains Down In Africa

Previously on Clear's Own:

Conservative movie critic and Big Hollywood contributor Christian Toto decided to take The Onion to task for writing a joke article about Ronald Reagan burying $20 trillion back in the 80s. This caused Toto to make this definitive declaration:

Week after week The Onion bends over backward not to satirize The One. That’s keeping in line with most of today’s cowardly comics, from David Letterman to Bill Maher.

That was an awesome observation except for the fact that it wasn't true. My response to that was to list numerous articles in which The Onion did, in fact, make fun of Obama and that was the end of that. He said something. I presented evidence that it wasn't true. Me-1, Big Hollywood-0. Right?

Well, no. This showed up in the comments from Christian Toto.

Christian Toto said...

Nice overheated rant.

I read the print version of The Onion every week ... that's what I based my commentary on. I'm assuming that's the definitive version of the paper of record. I should have made that clear in my post ...

Why The Onion saves the bits of Obama tweaking for the web-only postings is beyond me.

Each week I wait for The Onion's newspaper version, a generally terrific humor edition, to find something about Obama's policies and demeanor to mock. Unless I missed an issue since election day I've yet to see it.

Instead, they keep falling back on Bush and Cheney and other random topics. Nothing wrong with that, but they're missing quality humor targets. Just listen to Limbaugh once in a while and you'll see what can be done.

Even "SNL" screwed it up over the weekend. I thought their Obama sketch was lame ... the impersonation by Armisen is terrible and it read like a GOP talking point tally sheet. Nothing clever about it ... just mean, really. Made me feel sorry for Obama, and that's not the goal of sketch comedy.

As to the Bill Maher comparison, the day Maher tears into Obama with 1/1000 of the anger/invective/rage he saves for Bush, let's talk.

And you're not really addressing the cruelty inherent in making fun of Reagan's Alzheimer's. Guess we can differ on whether that's fair or tacky ... I lean towards tacky in the extreme.

The overall point of my piece, beyond The Onion critique, is that the humor world still is keeping, for the most part, a hands off policy on Obama. Presidents get mocked .. it's part of the territory, and Obama deserves his share of pies in the face like any other leader.

Jon Stewart has landed some comic blows against Obama, and good for him.

Letterman may be the worst offender here, but it seems he's been ... ahem ... busy on other fronts.

Where to begin? First off, I'm happy you and I could reach a bipartisan consensus on Fred Armisen and the major league suck factor of his Obama imitation. Lorne Michaels had the entire summer to find someone who looked and sounded vaguely like Obama and instead decided to keep the guy whose imitation reminds me more of Obama's dog than Obama himself.

All rightie, Kumbaya moment's over. Let's get down to business.

Mr. Toto, sir, I had no idea that the print version of The Onion was the Super Duper Ultra Mega Official Version That Supersedes All Others and that you referred to that and nothing else when you wrote your BH article. You even said you should have made that clear. I look like a complete jerk now. You Big, Me Small. Or, rather, that would be the case if not for those damn pesky Fact Clouds coming to rain piss all over your victory parade.

You're saying you only read the print version yet the Reagan bit to which you linked was part of the web version. How can this be? Simple. It was in both. In fact, most of what you read on the web was mined from The Onion's print version. The web publication even lets you know which print issue it was taken from. The Reagan article, for example, was published in issue #4538.

This brings me back to Print Master Toto and this sentence, "Why The Onion saves the bits of Obama tweaking for the web-only postings is beyond me." I listed nine links in my post. One was a radio clip, one was a Onion News Network video and another was part of a feature called "Obama's First Hundred Days" which I think was web only. That leaves six-count em-six articles that Toto says were never in the Divine Print Version he reads except that they were.

We also see that Toto read the previous comments where it was pointed out that his attack of Bill Maher in the same article in which he called him "cowardly" for never going after Obama is also a crock because Maher has gone after Obama, a fact confirmed in an article by Big Hollywood's Editor-In-Chief John Nolte. Toto's options at this point were limited. He could have dismissed Nolte as an unreliable member of the liberal media but, instead, said that sure, Maher went after but Obama but did so with insufficient vitriol and anger. The only satisfactory action would have been to take a crap and wipe his ass with Obama's picture on the air.

So, what have we learned? We learned that backing up opinions with real world facts is better than backing them up with facts you pull out of your ass. We learned that some people think their fantasies are real. And we learned that, if you say something to me that is a total crock, I will fight tooth and nail to find the truth even if it leads me to the gates of hell...as long as doing that doesn't take me more than 15 minutes which was the total amount of time I spent researching today's column. The truth is a wonderful thing, Christian. Hurry boy, it's waiting there for you. You should be frightened of this thing you have become.

Onion Makes Man Cry

Regular readers know that, from time to time, I love to comment on the goings-on at conservative movie site Big Hollywood. They like to do stuff like complain that the bad guys in G.I. Joe weren't Muslim, or that the bad guys in Inglourious Basterds weren't Muslim or that the title of Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs should have been called Cloudy With A Chance Of Evil Muslims Who Will Behead You In Your Sleep And Impregnate White Christian Women. I read them for the unintentional hilarity and I got boatloads of that on Thursday. All I had to do was read the headline...

Cowardly 'Onion' Ignores Obama, Ridicules Reagan's Alzheimers

...to know I had a good one.

It was written by Christian Toto, a writer who, most likely to preserve his anonymity, apparently writes under his drag queen pseudonym.

Week after week The Onion bends over backward not to satirize The One. That’s keeping in line with most of today’s cowardly comics, from David Letterman to Bill Maher.

Jon Stewart of “The Daily Show” has shown some interest in pursuing the president’s comic potential, but it comes in fits and starts. But The Onion’s latest attempt at humor is both vicious and wrongheaded.

He's talking about this funny bit from TheOnion.com:

U.S. Government Finds $20 Trillion Buried By Absentminded Reagan In 1987

This is especially well written because it combines a low brow jab at Reagan in the early stages of Alzheimers with what would almost certainly be a dead-on accurate portrayal of official Washington, up to and including Barack Obama, framing the burial of trillions of dollars as a sign of Reagan's foresight and genius rather than the actions of a sick, addled old man.

Christian Toto's response to this was what you typically get from Big Hollywood. He substitutes his right wing ideology for reality and ignores actual facts in favor of his made up ones.

The article tells how Reagan stored away a near endless array of Mason jars, shoe boxes and other small capsules with small amounts of money, keepsakes and other trivial goods toward the end of his second term.

The find means the country’s current economic crisis is over, we’re told, and the article further hints the nation’s money woes can be traced directly back to the 40th president.

Never mind Obama’s stimulus package has led to a ballooning of the national deficit to comic proportions.

Nothing worth satirizing there, folks. Move along.

This is a damning indictment of the liberal bias of nation's premier news satire site. It's also an example of ridiculous stupidity to anyone who has ever read The Onion. Toto made his point in the same way hucksters and demagogues have always made their points. He embraces the evidence that reinforces his assertion while ignoring the evidence that his assertion is a crock of shit. Here are some examples of stuff Christian Toto claims doesn't exist:

• 'Time' Publishes Definitive Obama Puff Piece -- Skewers the media's perceived deference to Obama, something they've done more than once.
  
• Obama Win Causes Obsessive Supporters To Realize How Empty Their Lives Are -- Pokes fun at the way some of Obama's supporters all but deified him.
• Obama Practices Looking -Off-Into-Future Pose -- Makes fun of Obama's "Hope and Change" routine, again something The Onion has done more than once.
• They have even made fun of Obama's nerdy image with an article saying he was upset that no one on his staff knew the plot of a 1977 issue of a Conan the Barbarian comic book.

And yes, they have made jokes about Obama's stimulus plan:

Taking his cue from President Obama's $800 billion stimulus bill, HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan goes on a spending spree not seen since the days of Caligula.

Toto could have found all this, of course. It took me 30 seconds. He simply chose not to because he wasn't interested in seeing if his bullshit view of the world was actually true or not.

Ultimately, Toto assumes that The Onion is doing what he would do in their position. He doesn't think that The Onion's staff gets together every day trying to figure out the best way to make their audience laugh. He thinks they meet up in their socialist collective and try to figure out the best way to advance their agenda, in this case a liberal one. Of course, if they did that, no one would read it because it wouldn't be funny for the same reason it wouldn't be funny if Christian Toto were The Onion's editor-in-chief and every day the front page included jokes that far right conservatives want to see like comparing Michelle Obama to a gorilla, photoshopping a watermelon patch on the White House lawn or saying that the President can't decide if his favorite book is Mein Kampf or the Koran.

Even if The Onion started tossing in stuff like that, it would do no good. Toto wouldn't be appeased unless The Onion became the official humor wing of the RNC and every day their front page had Obama spray painting a swastika on the American flag or that Obama should never be left alone with a fertile white woman lest his jungle nature assert itself. Until that day, Toto will have to console himself with the fact that at least he's not in Kansas anymore.

Mission Statement

It has been pointed out to me that this site is poorly designed. I actually already knew this but, since this is a low traffic hobby blog, I haven't really been able to bring myself to take the time to do so. The downside of this is that new readers don't really know what the hell is going on here. Hence ergo ipso facto, I shall now tell them.

This is a show biz themed blog centered mainly around movies and, to a lesser extent, television. I've actually been considering making some changes to that theme but, for now, that's what it is. I do movie and television reviews as well commentary and analysis of movie and TV news. My style is very irreverent and I add a lot of humor even when discussing serious subjects. The point of all this is to someday achieve world domination. See? That's some of the humor I was talking about. One of my favorite regular features is Movies I Haven't Seen in which I judge movies solely by their trailers, often months before they come out. I'm pleased to say that success rate of this series is 100%.

I try to stay away from politics here. Except when I don't. When I get political I REALLY get political though it's usually a reaction to what someone else said and that almost always consists of a right winger substituting his or her ideology for reality. The most recent example of this is this woman who said torture works and tried to use the torture scenes from Inglourious Basterds as evidence to back up that statement. Yes, she used a work of fiction and nothing else to prove that torture works. People who can't tell fantasy from reality disturb me on many levels and that's why I sometimes delve into politics. Other examples of this are the posts I've written about conservative movie site Big Hollywood.

So, now you know what's going on. Tomorrow I'll permalink this somewhere on the right hand side and I'll then never have to redesign this site so it doesn't look like crap. It's a win for me.

Glorious Stupidity

Something that really bothers me when I see it is the inability some people have to distinguish fantasy from reality, particularly those who use fiction to support real life beliefs and preconceived notions. If you watch a lot of porn and think that the girl who delivers you a pizza can be convinced to blow you, you're almost certainly in for an unpleasant surprise which will at best lead to you never getting pizza delivered again. If your favorite show of all time is According To Jim and you think it's a good idea to lie to your wife and tell her you're going to help a sick friend when you're trying to get out of chores and go bowling, you'll wind up either sleeping on the couch or Divorce Court.

Today, I have yet another example of a right winger who has decided to use a work of fiction to back up her worldview and this time it's not even from Big Hollywood. When I first saw Inglourious Basterds, I was wondering who the first right winger would be to hold it up as an example of how torture works. The winner is Melissa Clouthier. She writes:

1. Enhanced Interrogation works:

It does? cool. I can't wait for all the real life examples she's about to provide to back that statement up.

The reason William Wallace from Braveheart fame was so remarkable was because he didn’t break. Nearly everyone, eventually breaks. When one gets a bad guy to spill the beans, good guys get saved. It ain’t pretty. But sleep deprivation, psychological discomfort, and in Tarantino’s case, a public head bashing are very effective means of extracting information.

Huh! Ok. It's not a good sign when she starts using one of the most historically inaccurate movies ever made as a real life example. The only example throughout her entire post of torture working is the scene in Inglourious Basterds where Eli Roth literally cracks open a German soldier's head with a baseball bat, after which his men give Brad Pitt's character the information he wants. Had that happened in real life, the German sergeant would most likely have given false information rather than face death. Why? Because false information is what you get when you torture people. If you clicked on that link, you found a list of real life examples of the ineffectiveness of torture. Had I been Melissa Clouthier or some other right winger, I'd have probably linked to the 2007 Reese Witherspoon movie Rendition about a man who gives false information after being tortured by a U.S. ally. Why didn't I do that? Because, though it does attempt to be an accurate portrayal of real life torture techniques, it's a work of fiction and, unlike Melissa Clouthier, I didn't need to cite fiction to prove my point. Unlike her, I was able to stay firmly in the real world because I'm right and she's wrong.

Clouthier goes on to lament that the villains in the movie were Nazis and not Muslims and how Good is great and Evil is bad and, finally, gives a real life example of an Iranian boy who was sexually abused by his government's officials for participating in the recent protests*, an example that works against her whole, "torture is a wonderful thing on par with puppies and ice cream," premise.

Here's my favorite part of the post:

The left resisted efforts to get involved in WWII. They didn’t want to see the atrocities of Japan, Germany and Italy, especially, because it didn’t fit their never ending selfish narrative.

She is clearly referring to leftists like Gerald Ford, a fellow who would go on to become a Republican President but in 1940 founded the isolationist America First Committee along with many other wealthy Republicans. I suppose we should all be happy that Republican President Franklin Roosevelt was in office back then along with his Republican Congress to beat back the isolationists and win World War II.

At least Clouthier is original in that she's not citing 24 as the Ultimate Proof Positive that we should brutally torture brown people until the entire Arabian Peninsula is the 51st state. Still, in the end, she's yet another right winger who desperately needs her world view reinforced through fiction since reality ain't cutting it. Melissa Clouthier reminds me of the Baroness in G.I. Joe which, according to her, means she should be imprisoned until the nanomites can be removed from her system. I hope that didn't scare her since, knowing her, she probably thinks I'm serious.

*She cites this as an example of the evil that Muslims do and why they should be destroyed but ignores the recent story of a boy who was captured by the U.S. at age 14 and spent seven years being tortured by Americans even though it was quickly apparent that he was innocent. To me, Melissa Clouthier's silence on this issue means she thinks Americans are also evildoers who should have their heads bashed in with baseball bats. I don't know why she hates America.

September Mourn

September is one of my favorite months. The heat of the summer starts to break, the leaves start changing color (huge deal here in the Adirondacks) and you can start looking forward to Christmas. As a movie fan, however, I hate September in the way some people hate beets. Wait, that makes no sense. Some people like beets. I don't think they're all that great but I'll eat them if they're in front of me. This analogy blows but I ain't going back. MOVING ON!

September is traditionally one of the worst months for movies. This is because of a drop in attendance caused by the fact that people blew all their spare cash in the previous three months and that kids are going back to school and to college and are too busy trying to get back into that groove to go to the movies. This means that September generally has the year's worst major releases. (This doesn't count the smaller markets of prestige and indie movies released in September as they appeal to an older and more financially sound market than the people who line up hours in advance to see G.I. Joe and Transformers 2.) Resident Evil sequels, films based on video games and slasher movie remakes are your typical September releases. This September, though, seems to be a little different. As I look through the list of upcoming releases for September, I discover movies I actually want to see. Not many, of course, but it's way more the blank sheet of paper that normally qualifies as my "Must See" list for September.

The big one for the month is 9. A movie like this loaded with visual imagination, as far as I'm concerned, doesn't even really need a plot but it looks like they're tossing one in anyway. It takes place in a Terminator/Matrix type world where machines have taken over and wiped out humanity but darn it all if those clever humans didn't figure out a way to pass on some sort of spark or essence of human life into nine dolls that, somehow, will save the world. Yay! Either I'm wrong about the way this looks and it really, really sucks or the habits of the moviegoing public have changed in a way that could make 9 a hit and I didn't notice.

Another movie that might be good, though it doesn't inspire the confidence that 9 does, is the Mike Judge directed comedy Extract. Comingsoon.net's plot summary describes it this way:

In "Extract," writer/director Mike Judge ("Beavis and Butt-Head," "King of the Hill") returns to the fertile territory of the American workplace, rotating his perspective away from the white collar cubicle warriors of "Office Space" and towards a blue collar boss – a small business owner – who employs an odd cast of losers, loners and misfits in his flavor extract factory.

Personally, I think the guy's first mistake was populating his factory with, "an odd cast of losers, loners and misfits." I'd think you'd want competent employees but hey, what do I know? Extract stars Jason Bateman, probably Hollywood's most underrated actor, and it also has loads of other famous people and hey hey, Gene Simmons is in it too. Still, I'm worried that it's coming out the first week in September.

In case you were thinking, "Wow, this'll be the greatest September ever with no bad movies at all," think again. September is also giving us the movie Gamer in which Gerard Butler plays a guy in a simulated battle being controlled by by a video game player. Now THAT'S a September movie. Dumb plot, stupid dialogue (in the trailer anyway, maybe Tarantino wrote everything else) and cheesy looking sets and effects are what you usually see in this magic month. Also, an anti-video game movie? In 2009? What, couldn't get the film about the evils of the telegraph made so you did this instead?

We also have All About Steve starring Sandra Bullock. I'm tempted to really trash this movie but Sandra Bullock has had a habit lately of making movies that should have been godawful and having them instead be surprisingly watchable. The Proposal is an excellent example. That movie with its ridiculous premise should have been a viscerally horrific experience and instead it was...not awful. Still, I know for a fact that luck always runs out and I'm willing to bet that will be the case with All About Steve. Well, I wouldn't bet money. I'm not that sure.

And then there's Sorority Row, a movie where hot girls take off their clothes just before they get hacked to bits by a violent psychopath. Think that'll be good?

The Truth Is Out There

I have no desire to see a remake of Outland. It's not because I'm a huge fan of the 1981 original starring Sean Connery. It's the opposite. I think Outland is a stupid movie. It's basically a remake of High Noon and answers the question, "What would that Gary Cooper classic be like if it bore no resemblance to reality and everyone in it was an idiot?" The movie was set on a mining facility on one of Jupiter's moons. The miners were being given some sort of drug that was making them walk out of their headquarters and into the vacuum of the actual moon without a space suit. Eventually lawman Sean Connery shows up and ends up having a climactic shootout with the drug dealers even though he failed to get even a single one of the miners to help him.

Gary Cooper had the added dilemma of having to choose between a pacifist wife and his duty to the townspeople, a duty he still felt existed even though they had abandoned him. The folks behind Outland knew that character developments just get in the way so they didn't give Connery that problem. He showed up, swung his Scottish dick around for a while and had a shootout. No muss, no fuss. The people Cooper was protecting were salt of the earth townsfolk; farmers, bankers, shopclerks and such. It was understandable why they'd be afraid to face down armed tough guys like Frank Miller even if that meant leaving their friend to face down an armed gang alone. Connery, on the other hand, was among a group of tough guy miners far from civilization. It wasn't logical that each and every one of them would be wetting their pants at the idea of facing down the bastards who were responsible for the deaths of some of their fellow miners. Still, that's what happened. You also had one memorable scene of Sean Connery wanting to test the blood of one of the victims. Despite being dead for a couple of weeks, the blood flows out of the corpse in red liquid form the second Connery starts pulling back on the syringe.

I'm saying Outland was a stupid movie, a lame attempt to rip off a classic under the guise of science fiction. It was made by people who had zero respect for classic cinema and the genre of science fiction or, for that matter, logic or coherent storytelling.

As for the idea of a remake? Oh hell, go ahead and make it. I was about to write, "It couldn't be any worse," but then realized that God yes, it could be a metric crapload worse. It could be a Rob Schneider comedy or have Michael Bay as its director (Transformers Michael Bay, not The Island Michael Bay, a movie that was fairly decent). The main characters could be a teenage girl and a vampire. The lawman's partner could be a precocious kid. It could be worse. But you may as well do it. It couldn't be wor...damn it!

Kobayashi Moron

Today, I comment on yet another unintentionally hilarious article from conservative movie site Big Hollywood. They seem to be getting into a habit over there of favorably comparing Sarah Palin to famous science fiction characters. This time last month, Kurt Schlichter compared her to Obi-Wan Kenobi, a fellow who, against the advice of Yoda and the Jedi elders, insisted on training a kid who grew up to wipe out the Jedi Order and plunge the galaxy into decades of rule under a mad emperor. Hmm, that doesn't seem like a favorable comparison at all. Anyway, today we have another Big Hollywood regular, Leigh Scott, comparing Sarah Palin to Captain Kirk.

Then, as Sarah Palin announced her resignation, it hit me. Sarah Palin is Captain Kirk. Why? Because she just passed the Kobayashi Maru.

Oh goodie, another Big Hollywood attempt to spin Sarah Palin quitting her job as Alaska Governor as an act of victory and triumph by comparing it to something that never happened. In this case, that "something" is the Kobayashi Maru. For those of you who, unlike me, didn't devote your lives to Star Trek fandom, the Kobayashi Maru is a test given to Starfleet cadets to see how they handle unwinnable situations. It was revealed back in Star Trek II (and further dramatized in the recent Star Trek movie) that James Kirk became the only cadet in the history of Starfleet to beat the simulation after he rigged the program to make it possible for it to be beaten. Since none of that has jackshit to do with Sarah Palin quitting her job, you can see Leigh Scott's problem with trying to compare this fictional scenario to Sarah Palin's real life one. One does have to admire the mental leaps and bounds he makes, to do so. It's a type of thinking you normally only see in a schizophrenic.

Palin was faced with her own Kobayashi Maru. How could she effectively govern the state of Alaska while facing ridiculous ethics charges and the scrutiny of the national media? How could she increase her exposure in the lower 48 while staying true to the people in Alaska who elected her?...But Palin defied them. She changed not her strategy, but the very rules. She resigned her position, turning the state over to her loyal Lieutenant Governor to continue the plans and policies she put into motion. Like any good story, it was an unexpected twist, yet when viewed in retrospect it was the only way it could play out.

Okay, not bad, but here's the best part.

The notion that a candidate with scant command of policy, who either lacks experience or didn’t complete the duties of their elected position, is doomed to failure doesn’t take into account a little thing I call history. In 2008 this nation elected a President who spent the majority of his Senate term campaigning for his next gig. I only wish he had the class, respect, and decency for and towards his constituents to resign.

This is why I read Big Hollywood. When Leigh Scott boasted about his awesome grasp of history, it was one of the most unintentionally funny things I had ever seen on that site. Yeah, let's discuss this awesome thing called history. True, Barack Obama didn't have the, "class, respect, and decency for and towards his constituents to resign," his Senate seat while he campaigned for the Presidency. I can imagine Scott reading and rereading that sentence, probably using it as wanking material. What I'm sure Scott doesn't realize is that John McCain was also so lacking in respect for his constituents that he also neglected to resign his Senate seat when he ran for President, a fact that Master of History Leigh Scott was too busy jacking off to mention. And hey, history buffs, you know who also didn't resign from her job while she campaigned as McCain's running mate. Oh yes, Sarah Motherfucking Palin lacked the class, respect, and decency for and towards her constituents to resign.

Palin passed the Kobayashi Maru. She is qualified to command the ship. She has all the qualities we want in a captain; valor, principals, vision and most of all, the ability to change the rules.

...Go ahead. Write her off. Make a joke out of her. Be my guest. But that would be about as smart as marooning Captain Kirk on Seti Alpha V.

We all know how well that worked out for Khan don’t we?

Yes we do. Then again, Khan was a fictional character whose fate was controlled by a filmmakers who saw to it that James Kirk would be victorious over him. Sarah Palin, on the other hand, is a real person who doesn't have Gene Roddenberry looking out for her. She's a dingbat who can't even answer the question, "What newspapers do you read?" without embarrassing herself and thought that the American people would hand her the Vice Presidency if she just smiled, winked and implied that Obama was a terrorist. That worked out so well for her that she now has no political power whatsoever.

I'm sure history buffs like Leigh Scott can tell you what happened the last time someone tried this. Bob Dole resigned his Senate seat in 1996 to run for President, a move that worked out so well that he was beaten by a lecherous hillbilly. And that ends today's history lesson. Live long and prosper!