Simply put, Star Trek is better than I thought it could be. I'm not saying it's the greatest movie ever. It's not even the best Star Trek movie. I'm just saying that I figured if it was good, it would basically hit a quality wall which it would never get beyond. If I had to compare it, I rank it as equal to Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. It's a mix of exciting science fiction action, interesting characters and intelligent plotting that is found in your better action films. Oh sure, there comes a point where the "intelligent plotting" comes to a screeching halt, but we'll get to that.
There are changes made to the continuity and mythology of Star Trek itself but hey, it's not like anyone really gives a damn about all that stuff, right? I'm talking significant and catastrophic changes in the timeline that caused me to stay the hell away from any and all online forums, message boards and comments sections that had even a vague connection to Star Trek.
The movie starts as many Star Trek adventures start, with a Federation starship investigating some abnormal readings in some godforsaken part of the galaxy. The anomaly they're investigating turns out to be a rip in the space-time continuum through which a Romulan ship arrives. As always happens, some crewman yells, "SHIELDS DOWN TO 40%," after the first photon torpedo hits and the Romulan captain, Nero (Eric Bana), demands that the Federation captain come aboard his ship. Captain Anonymous Bitpart tells his First Officer, Commander George Kirk, that he's in charge. This was a bad time for Kirk as his wife is about to give birth but the Romulans don't seem to care about that so he takes the bridge. Naturally, everything goes to crap and George Kirk is called upon to sacrifice himself for the sake of the crew. He does get to hear the cries of his newborn son, Bronx Mowgli Kirk. But I kid, that's baby James Tiberius Kirk he hears over the radio just before his ship blows up.
We see little Jimmy grow up to look a lot like an actor named Chris Pine and be a rambunctious juvenile delinquent who one night starts chatting up a sexy Starfleet cadet named Uhura (Zoe Saldana) and ends up in a fight with her buddies. The fight is broken up by Captain Christopher Pike (Bruce Greenwood*) who encourages him to stop being such an angry young man and honor his father's legacy by joining Starfleet. Sure enough, we see him three years later at Starfleet Academy cheating his way to winning a supposedly unwinnable computer simulation called the Kobayashi Maru designed by a Vulcan named Spock. Kirk and Spock come into conflict over this so, gosh, I guess they'll never become friends.
Starfleet doesn't have time to kick Kirk out of the Academy because of an emergency situation that requires all available ships including Pike's Enterprise. Kirk recognizes the enemy as that which killed his father 25 years earlier so he sneaks aboard with the help of his best buddy, Dr. Leonard McCoy. We meet the rest of the original Enterprise crew along the way to Vulcan which is being attacked by Nero's ship.
This is where The Big Event happens. I don't know what else to call it since it shouldn't be revealed to those who haven't seen the movie but it's Big. Really, really Big. Star Trek's history changes and even the characters recognize that they're now in an alternate timeline and that their future is wide open for both them and the writers. A lot of people hated this but it didn't bother me a bit. Well, it did because it's a depressing event but not because things are now different. Up to this point, I believe the story made sense and successfully suspended disbelief. Unfortunately, there comes a point where it simply stops doing that. Coincidences start piling up. Kirk lands on a planet in the just the spot where he needs to have a fortuitous meeting with a familiar stranger. It turns out Nero is angry because, in the future, his planet Romulus is destroyed by a supernova but exactly how this happens is very convoluted and the solution (turn the nova into a black hole) sounds just as bad. I also found it hard to believe that 400 years in the future we travel faster than light, travel through time and have sensors that can tell us that two microbes are doing it in the Delta Quadrant yet we can't tell when a star near a populated planet is about to blow up.
Still, things get back on track, the action starts up again and Kirk ends up going from being a nearly-washed out cadet to Captain of the Enterprise in the space of a few days (don't ask).
Despite the dumb stuff, it's a very good and exciting movie. My advice to the world is: SHUT THE FUCK UP ABOUT THE CONTINUITY! It's an alternate timeline now. The filmmakers can now have Kirk order a pepperoni pizza without contradicting the 1966 episode where he said he hated pepperoni. If you liked the old Star Trek, it's still there. Rent the DVDs or just watch YouTube or Hulu or Netflix or iTunes or God only knows how many other venues have the last four decades of the various chapters of Star Trek available. Your world has not ended and your childhood is not ruined. The fact that, as far as Star Trek is concerned, you really can eat your cake and have it too doesn't seem to be good enough for a segment of the fan community but that's too damn bad. The new movie's a big hit which means more sequels set in the new world so it's time to get over yourselves and enjoy what you have.
Make it so! (A phrase that will now never, ever be said because Picard will probably never exist SO CHEW ON THAT FANBOYS!)
*You may remember the character being played by Jeffrey Hunter in the classic "Menagerie" episode. Greenwood's appearance in this movie should once and for all settle the age old "Is Greenwood or Hunter better as Pike?" debate.
Monday, May 11, 2009
Friday, May 8, 2009
Star Trek Fresheners
I'm home from having seen Star Trek. If I get some spare time I'll try to post a review later in the day. Until then, I've decided to write about what I will call Fresheners. These are reverse-spoilers; things that DIDN'T happen in the movie.
*Brannon Braga wrote that lizard sex episode and is one of the people responsible for the general suckiness of the Star Trek franchise from the mid 90s to today. There were a few bright spots (the movie First Contact for example) but mostly Star Trek movies and television have blown for more than a decade.
- No one tells a woman that her dead son would be pissed because she destroyed the Crystalline Entity, a genocidal alien who's responsible for the destruction over over a dozen worlds.
- No one makes a long, fruity speech about why it's a good thing to let an entire world die so the Prime Directive can be upheld.
- In fact, the words "Prime" and "Directive" aren't mentioned, at least not together.
- Two characters don't turn into lizards after reaching warp ten and end up having disturbing lizard sex. This is because no one with a writing credit has a name even similar to Braga*.
- No hot women decide to betray their races, values and everything they've ever known simply their panties got wet when they met James Kirk.
- On a similar note, no woman feels the need to ask, "What is...Kiss?"
- No one feels the need to deliver a long winded melodramatic monologue about they way in which whatever extraordinary science fictional situation they happen to be in that week reminds them of how their dads didn't hug them when they got good grades in math. SPOILER ALERT: In fact, when they have a chance to do that, they usually just yell, "FIRE PHASERS!" instead.
- And finally, there are no Frenchmen with British accents who extensively quote Shakespeare to prove that everyone with the exception of him is a complete dick.
*Brannon Braga wrote that lizard sex episode and is one of the people responsible for the general suckiness of the Star Trek franchise from the mid 90s to today. There were a few bright spots (the movie First Contact for example) but mostly Star Trek movies and television have blown for more than a decade.
Thursday, May 7, 2009
Right Wing Movie Reviews -- Wolverine
My ankle still hurts so it's fortunate that I was once again contacted by right wing blogger Gotterdamerung, a top conservative voice who from time to time demands space here in order to bring balance to some perceived bias on my part. Today, he offers his thoughts on Wolverine.
Hi all, Gotterdamerung here. Anyone who’s figured out that Global Warming is socialism disguised as nonsense will understand immediately that Wolverine is Communist Fascist Radical Environmental Tree Hugging Propaganda dressed up to look like a fun summer action flick that Hollywood really hasn't been able to make since Red Dawn. The subtext, as defined by the plot point of of the character Wolverine having molten metal poured into his body and bonded to his bones, clearly is meant to show how the cutest animals (Wolverine) are being endangered by the man-made warming of the Earth (molten metal). This warming is never openly blamed on man, but it no longer needs to be. Years of dishonest propaganda have laid that groundwork so well that Wolverine can toss off the warming fallacy in the most effective of ways: by looking at you funny and dismissing you as crazy (as Wolverine director Gavin Hood did to me when I saw him buying a six inch chicken teriyaki at Subway and started screaming at him about his liberal bias).
Propa-nonsense or no, the saving grace of any liberal message film in the guise of an action movie is whether the stunts and effects can rise above the leftist message bombs planted like IEDs throughout the movie. The problem here is that even the exciting scenes are loaded down liberal imagery and anti-American symbolism. Take, for instance, the scene where Wolverine is being chased by a helicopter through the woods while riding a motorcycle. The people in the helicopter are evil government operatives trying to kill Wolverine and are clearly meant to represent George W. Bush trying to wipe out entire races of innocent woodland creatures. Eventually, the helicopter explodes, belching out hot flames. Get it? Bush just made the planet warmer while trying to destroy nature.
Then there's the fight on top of a nuclear reactor when Wolverine and Sabretooth team up against a government created mutant killer meaning that the filmmakers hope that nature itself will rise up and destroy what Rush Limbaugh told me is perfectly clean and utterly safe nuclear power.
There's some truly disturbing imagery when a group of captured mutants has to depend on Wolverine to set them free from their captors. This is left wing Un-Americanism in its purest form. The movie's message here is: don't try to solve your own problems. Instead sit around and wait for a Messiah to come along, be it Wolverine of Barack Obama, and then do whatever the hell that superman tells you to do. If he tells you to hang back while he takes care of some of the guards, do that. If he tells you to let him regulate CO2 emissions or pass cap-and-trade legislation, do that too.
There are a few compelling moments in the movie's 107 minute run time but the overall narrative is episodic with too few wowsers for the eyes. But it is a film made for kids who will be enamored with the animals/super heroes, caught up in their plight, leave the theater thinking that things like the environment, gay marriage, universal health care and socialism are important and grow into another mindless minion in the forever secured Democrat majority.
Hi all, Gotterdamerung here. Anyone who’s figured out that Global Warming is socialism disguised as nonsense will understand immediately that Wolverine is Communist Fascist Radical Environmental Tree Hugging Propaganda dressed up to look like a fun summer action flick that Hollywood really hasn't been able to make since Red Dawn. The subtext, as defined by the plot point of of the character Wolverine having molten metal poured into his body and bonded to his bones, clearly is meant to show how the cutest animals (Wolverine) are being endangered by the man-made warming of the Earth (molten metal). This warming is never openly blamed on man, but it no longer needs to be. Years of dishonest propaganda have laid that groundwork so well that Wolverine can toss off the warming fallacy in the most effective of ways: by looking at you funny and dismissing you as crazy (as Wolverine director Gavin Hood did to me when I saw him buying a six inch chicken teriyaki at Subway and started screaming at him about his liberal bias).
Propa-nonsense or no, the saving grace of any liberal message film in the guise of an action movie is whether the stunts and effects can rise above the leftist message bombs planted like IEDs throughout the movie. The problem here is that even the exciting scenes are loaded down liberal imagery and anti-American symbolism. Take, for instance, the scene where Wolverine is being chased by a helicopter through the woods while riding a motorcycle. The people in the helicopter are evil government operatives trying to kill Wolverine and are clearly meant to represent George W. Bush trying to wipe out entire races of innocent woodland creatures. Eventually, the helicopter explodes, belching out hot flames. Get it? Bush just made the planet warmer while trying to destroy nature.
Then there's the fight on top of a nuclear reactor when Wolverine and Sabretooth team up against a government created mutant killer meaning that the filmmakers hope that nature itself will rise up and destroy what Rush Limbaugh told me is perfectly clean and utterly safe nuclear power.
There's some truly disturbing imagery when a group of captured mutants has to depend on Wolverine to set them free from their captors. This is left wing Un-Americanism in its purest form. The movie's message here is: don't try to solve your own problems. Instead sit around and wait for a Messiah to come along, be it Wolverine of Barack Obama, and then do whatever the hell that superman tells you to do. If he tells you to hang back while he takes care of some of the guards, do that. If he tells you to let him regulate CO2 emissions or pass cap-and-trade legislation, do that too.
There are a few compelling moments in the movie's 107 minute run time but the overall narrative is episodic with too few wowsers for the eyes. But it is a film made for kids who will be enamored with the animals/super heroes, caught up in their plight, leave the theater thinking that things like the environment, gay marriage, universal health care and socialism are important and grow into another mindless minion in the forever secured Democrat majority.
Wednesday, May 6, 2009
Ouch
Turns out the "injured foot" I mentioned yesterday is a rather painful sprained ankle. This puts me in a non-writing mood today. Hopefully the drugs will kick in and I'll be back here with some awesome new stuff tomorrow. Buh bye.
Ohhhhhhhh...all right, one little thing before I go rest my foot.
What is the deal with Fringe? Do people actually stay home on Tuesdays to watch it and get upset if it's preempted by things like a Presidential speech or the World Parrot Show Championships? I reviewed the premiere episode back in September and, while it has improved, it's still not something I go out of my way to watch. Mainly, it doesn't do what all science fiction must do: suspend disbelief.
The advanced scientific feats performed in this show never seem to have much of a purpose other than to piss off the FBI agents who have to investigate them. The bad guys basically get together and say things like, "Hey, let's combine human and squirrel DNA to create a race of nearly unstoppable Man-Squirrels that feed on human flesh." Why do that? Who knows. All we do know is that they don't feel the need to take extra security precautions so the Man-Squirrels escape and wreak havoc before the show's heroes figure out that the squirrels can be killed by some far out solution they pull out of their asses.
Oh well, no one is forcing me to watch it and I've yet to meet anyone who wants to engage me in a long, boring conservation about Fringe trivia so I suppose I can put it in the category of Mostly Harmless and move on.
Anyway, that's all for now. Hopefully I'll feel better tomorrow. If not, I'll let you know, mainly because I don't think anyone should be having a good time if I'm not feeling well.
Ohhhhhhhh...all right, one little thing before I go rest my foot.
What is the deal with Fringe? Do people actually stay home on Tuesdays to watch it and get upset if it's preempted by things like a Presidential speech or the World Parrot Show Championships? I reviewed the premiere episode back in September and, while it has improved, it's still not something I go out of my way to watch. Mainly, it doesn't do what all science fiction must do: suspend disbelief.
The advanced scientific feats performed in this show never seem to have much of a purpose other than to piss off the FBI agents who have to investigate them. The bad guys basically get together and say things like, "Hey, let's combine human and squirrel DNA to create a race of nearly unstoppable Man-Squirrels that feed on human flesh." Why do that? Who knows. All we do know is that they don't feel the need to take extra security precautions so the Man-Squirrels escape and wreak havoc before the show's heroes figure out that the squirrels can be killed by some far out solution they pull out of their asses.
Oh well, no one is forcing me to watch it and I've yet to meet anyone who wants to engage me in a long, boring conservation about Fringe trivia so I suppose I can put it in the category of Mostly Harmless and move on.
Anyway, that's all for now. Hopefully I'll feel better tomorrow. If not, I'll let you know, mainly because I don't think anyone should be having a good time if I'm not feeling well.
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
Been Down So Long...
...I don't know what up is anymore. Between a heavy workload and an injured foot, I don't have the spare time required to do this whole writing thing. As always, it is you, the readers, that suffer most. Seriously, I feel sorry for you. You're like Holocaust victims, only worse. Anyway, I will offer a few random observations.
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I love dirty sounding headlines that aren't actually dirty.
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My skepticism that Stephen King's The Dark Tower series can be successfully adapted to the big screen is about on the same level as my skepticism that the world will be destroyed by a giant marshmallow man. Still, the project seems to be in the hands of the Lost guys and they just managed to slap together what, by all accounts, is a decent revival of the Star Trek series so I'll keep an open mind. It's hard to keep an open mind on the internet, of course. The whole thing is designed to allow people to endlessly hold onto their unproven, half-assed assumptions.
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Now and then, Roger Ebert likes to tantalize me with some obscure film he says is the greatest thing ever yet never seems to be showing anywhere. One of the best examples of this is Gates of Heaven, Errol Morris' first documentary about, of all things, pet cemeteries. Now he's doing it with Sita Sings The Blues, possibly the most independently independent movie of all time. He wrote about this a few months ago on his blog and now he's talking about it on his front page. I'd managed to successfully forget about it and now Ebert has shoved this unattainable gem onto my consciousness again. Screw you, Ebert.
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Hmm, that's not a bad amount of content for someone who said he didn't have time to write. What the hell are you people complaining about?
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I love dirty sounding headlines that aren't actually dirty.
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My skepticism that Stephen King's The Dark Tower series can be successfully adapted to the big screen is about on the same level as my skepticism that the world will be destroyed by a giant marshmallow man. Still, the project seems to be in the hands of the Lost guys and they just managed to slap together what, by all accounts, is a decent revival of the Star Trek series so I'll keep an open mind. It's hard to keep an open mind on the internet, of course. The whole thing is designed to allow people to endlessly hold onto their unproven, half-assed assumptions.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Now and then, Roger Ebert likes to tantalize me with some obscure film he says is the greatest thing ever yet never seems to be showing anywhere. One of the best examples of this is Gates of Heaven, Errol Morris' first documentary about, of all things, pet cemeteries. Now he's doing it with Sita Sings The Blues, possibly the most independently independent movie of all time. He wrote about this a few months ago on his blog and now he's talking about it on his front page. I'd managed to successfully forget about it and now Ebert has shoved this unattainable gem onto my consciousness again. Screw you, Ebert.
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Hmm, that's not a bad amount of content for someone who said he didn't have time to write. What the hell are you people complaining about?
Monday, May 4, 2009
Woah-verine
Watching Wolverine, you get the sense that they weren't actually using a script and just had the actors improv things as they went along. The problem with that is that someone, for example, mentions an artificially constructed mutant killer and the filmmakers all slap their heads and work furiously to quickly add a mutant killer even though it really makes no sense. That also explains why some characters you thought were dead suddenly showed up. They probably just wandered onto the set and just made up the crazy explanations as to why they were still alive.
The sin of a stupid plot is hardly unique to Wolverine. Hell, Wolverine is a Mensa candidate when you compare it to Transformers. Whatever happened in Wolverine, it doesn't compare to the movie in which powerful, noble robots crossed the galaxy to complete their sacred mission of helping Shia LeBeouf outwit his parents and nail the hottest girl in school. The question is, as always with most high concept action films, does the movie's entertainment value overcome the gross stupidity of the writing? Let's find out.
The movie opens in the 1830s where we meet young James Howlett and a boy who turns out to be his half brother, Victor Creed. In a plot twist even Shakespeare wouldn't have touched, James ends up sprouting bone claws out of his hands and killing his own father. He and Victor run off into the night and grow up to become Hugh Jackman and Liev Schreiber. We see them fighting in every major American war over the next 150 years thanks to a wonderful collection of mutant powers that includes the bone claws (Victor sprouts them out of his fingers), animal senses and prowess and, the big one, a mutant healing ability that takes care of their wounds and stops them from aging. It even brings them back to life when they're executed after Victor gets the brilliant idea to kill a superior who tried to stop him from committing atrocities during Vietnam.
This brings them to the attention of William Stryker, an army major who's putting together a team of mutants to do army stuff. This is where Wolverine turns into a real name dropper. Any Marvel Comics mutant you didn't see in the three X-Men films shows up here. Were you always upset that you never got to see Gambit, Kestrel, Deadpool, Silverfox or Emma Frost? Well, fret away no more. This is like one of those historical movies where all the Founding Fathers make cameo appearances. You know, the characters are at some party and they befriend Benjamin Franklin who calls to another guy across the room, "Say Jefferson, how's that Declaration of Independence thing coming along?"
Anyway, if you're thinking that a guy willing to hire people who'd received the death penalty for war crimes might himself not be a very nice guy, you'd be right. Stryker leads his team to one of those African diamond mines run by slave labor to look for the source of some mysterious metal. When the villagers say sorry, we can't tell you where it is cause it's on sacred ground, Stryker orders the village wiped out. Victor's more than happy to wipe out innocent people but James (now also known as Logan) gets all picky about it and walks off in a huff, thus setting off the classic comic book plot dynamic in which close allies become arch foes.
So far, the movie's not too bad. The plot up to this point is fairly simple and straightforward and is a good frame upon which to hang action scenes and pretty explosions and, when people do crazy stunts that should shatter their spines, it's perfectly reasonable that they can get right back up because they have super powers. The problem is that, from this point on, madness lies. A bazillion different characters show up, sometimes out of nowhere. There are double, triple and quadruple crosses. It's hard to keep track after a while of who's friends and enemies with who and why anybody is doing what they're doing. Oh, if I may give a tip to the characters, if you are in a movie where someone has the mutant ability to hypnotize through touch, YOU MIGHT WANT TO NOT LET THAT PERSON TOUCH YOU.
And thus, we are brought back to, "The question is, as always with most high concept action films, does the movie's entertainment value overcome the gross stupidity of the writing?" The answer is no, oh no, Lordy Lord no. You might be entertained by the explosions and fights and Logan jumping onto a helicopter but it offers nothing more than that and even that isn't well done even by standards of previous X-Men movies. I personally found myself wondering why I had passed up what must comparatively have been the sheer awesomeness of Ghosts of Girlfriends Past, a movie that I think is the 1 millionth ripoff of A Christmas Carol, for this.
The sin of a stupid plot is hardly unique to Wolverine. Hell, Wolverine is a Mensa candidate when you compare it to Transformers. Whatever happened in Wolverine, it doesn't compare to the movie in which powerful, noble robots crossed the galaxy to complete their sacred mission of helping Shia LeBeouf outwit his parents and nail the hottest girl in school. The question is, as always with most high concept action films, does the movie's entertainment value overcome the gross stupidity of the writing? Let's find out.
The movie opens in the 1830s where we meet young James Howlett and a boy who turns out to be his half brother, Victor Creed. In a plot twist even Shakespeare wouldn't have touched, James ends up sprouting bone claws out of his hands and killing his own father. He and Victor run off into the night and grow up to become Hugh Jackman and Liev Schreiber. We see them fighting in every major American war over the next 150 years thanks to a wonderful collection of mutant powers that includes the bone claws (Victor sprouts them out of his fingers), animal senses and prowess and, the big one, a mutant healing ability that takes care of their wounds and stops them from aging. It even brings them back to life when they're executed after Victor gets the brilliant idea to kill a superior who tried to stop him from committing atrocities during Vietnam.
This brings them to the attention of William Stryker, an army major who's putting together a team of mutants to do army stuff. This is where Wolverine turns into a real name dropper. Any Marvel Comics mutant you didn't see in the three X-Men films shows up here. Were you always upset that you never got to see Gambit, Kestrel, Deadpool, Silverfox or Emma Frost? Well, fret away no more. This is like one of those historical movies where all the Founding Fathers make cameo appearances. You know, the characters are at some party and they befriend Benjamin Franklin who calls to another guy across the room, "Say Jefferson, how's that Declaration of Independence thing coming along?"
Anyway, if you're thinking that a guy willing to hire people who'd received the death penalty for war crimes might himself not be a very nice guy, you'd be right. Stryker leads his team to one of those African diamond mines run by slave labor to look for the source of some mysterious metal. When the villagers say sorry, we can't tell you where it is cause it's on sacred ground, Stryker orders the village wiped out. Victor's more than happy to wipe out innocent people but James (now also known as Logan) gets all picky about it and walks off in a huff, thus setting off the classic comic book plot dynamic in which close allies become arch foes.
So far, the movie's not too bad. The plot up to this point is fairly simple and straightforward and is a good frame upon which to hang action scenes and pretty explosions and, when people do crazy stunts that should shatter their spines, it's perfectly reasonable that they can get right back up because they have super powers. The problem is that, from this point on, madness lies. A bazillion different characters show up, sometimes out of nowhere. There are double, triple and quadruple crosses. It's hard to keep track after a while of who's friends and enemies with who and why anybody is doing what they're doing. Oh, if I may give a tip to the characters, if you are in a movie where someone has the mutant ability to hypnotize through touch, YOU MIGHT WANT TO NOT LET THAT PERSON TOUCH YOU.
And thus, we are brought back to, "The question is, as always with most high concept action films, does the movie's entertainment value overcome the gross stupidity of the writing?" The answer is no, oh no, Lordy Lord no. You might be entertained by the explosions and fights and Logan jumping onto a helicopter but it offers nothing more than that and even that isn't well done even by standards of previous X-Men movies. I personally found myself wondering why I had passed up what must comparatively have been the sheer awesomeness of Ghosts of Girlfriends Past, a movie that I think is the 1 millionth ripoff of A Christmas Carol, for this.
Friday, May 1, 2009
YouGoobs
I see YouTube is offering free movies now for your viewing pleasure. Other sites do that, including Hulu, but today I'm just going to concentrate on YouTube because, when it comes to internet video portals, they're NUMBER ONE, baby which means they also get the most attention and criticism.
Sites that do this always offer a very eclectic selection that consists of a few decent offerings mixed in with a massive crapload of totally ghastly offerings. It's free and no one is forcing anyone to watch anything and, unlike a great deal of YouTube's content, it's actually legal for them to show so really, why would anyone complain? Why? This is the internet and complaining is why it exists. Take away the complaints and the whole world wide web would never have evolved past Dancing Hamsters since, at the time that came out, 90% of all web content was people saying, "DANCING HAMSTERS IZ GHEY! :)" I figured today I'd select a few titles at random and see if we can gauge what sort of quality film viewing experience YouTube has to offer.
BLUE JUICE -- This caught my eye because I noticed how much the people on the poster looked like Ewan McGregor and Catherine Zeta-Jones and I foolishly assumed that a crap 3rd rate 90s surfing movie wouldn't have Ewan McGregor and Catherine Zeta-Jones, thus setting myself up for a crushing disappointment. The movie's IMDB plot synopsis contained one of my all-time favorite plot synopsis lines:
THE BLUE LAGOON -- This is the very pretty looking 1980 movie that catapulted the very pretty looking then-16-year-old Brooke Shields to fame. It's an awesome movie for people who think 16 year old girls should be presented on film as either scantily clad or totally naked objects of sexual desire. In 1991, there was a sequel called Return to the Blue Lagoon that opens with the grisly deaths of the two characters from the first movie and tells the story of their son who followed in Mom and Dad's footsteps by getting stranded on an uncharted island and nailing an underage girl who seems to hate clothes (then-16-year-old Milla Jojovich). It's probably time to carry on this proud tradition and make a 3rd movie in which Miley Cyrus receives her cinematic deflowering. Just a suggestion.
FITZCARRALDO -- Ah, a decent movie. This is Werner Herzog's 1982 classic about how a man whose obsession to fulfill his dream of building an opera house in the Peruvian jungle just about destroys him and everything around him. It's actually one of the more amazing technical achievements in the history of cinema because they actually pulled a 300 ton riverboat through the jungle without the use of special effects. There's even a documentary about the making of the movie called Burden of Dreams that's probably more interesting than the movie itself. Herzog had originally cast Mick Jagger as Fitzcarraldo's assistant but cut the character out when Jagger had to leave to go on tour. Fitzcarraldo stops just short of greatness but there are worse ways to spend your time than watching it. For instance, you could watch just about everything else on YouTube.
THE MOD SQUAD -- Okay, enough about good movies. Let's all gather around our internet box things and watch one of the stupidest movies based on a television show ever made. Dennis Farina's cop character gets the brilliant idea of recruiting criminals to serve as police officers and seems surprised when, at first, the whole thing goes to shit. Fortunately, their fate is controlled by the godlike powers of screenwriters so it all does come together even though these geniuses needed Farina to die first. This is especially memorable for the scene where Claire Danes drags a guy she barely knows into a dirty public bathroom for sex. I wonder if she's proud of that role.
Oh well, that's enough. I'm off to see Wolverine, a movie I'm sure will be more than worthy of being shown free on YouTube in a few years.
Sites that do this always offer a very eclectic selection that consists of a few decent offerings mixed in with a massive crapload of totally ghastly offerings. It's free and no one is forcing anyone to watch anything and, unlike a great deal of YouTube's content, it's actually legal for them to show so really, why would anyone complain? Why? This is the internet and complaining is why it exists. Take away the complaints and the whole world wide web would never have evolved past Dancing Hamsters since, at the time that came out, 90% of all web content was people saying, "DANCING HAMSTERS IZ GHEY! :)" I figured today I'd select a few titles at random and see if we can gauge what sort of quality film viewing experience YouTube has to offer.
BLUE JUICE -- This caught my eye because I noticed how much the people on the poster looked like Ewan McGregor and Catherine Zeta-Jones and I foolishly assumed that a crap 3rd rate 90s surfing movie wouldn't have Ewan McGregor and Catherine Zeta-Jones, thus setting myself up for a crushing disappointment. The movie's IMDB plot synopsis contained one of my all-time favorite plot synopsis lines:
JC has his own problems with Chloe: Will he stay with her and run a surfer coffee shop or travel around the world without her?I do have to wonder how it is that JC fucked up his life so badly that his options have been reduced to world travel or serving coffee to guys who call each other, "Bra." This all just screams "quality film."
THE BLUE LAGOON -- This is the very pretty looking 1980 movie that catapulted the very pretty looking then-16-year-old Brooke Shields to fame. It's an awesome movie for people who think 16 year old girls should be presented on film as either scantily clad or totally naked objects of sexual desire. In 1991, there was a sequel called Return to the Blue Lagoon that opens with the grisly deaths of the two characters from the first movie and tells the story of their son who followed in Mom and Dad's footsteps by getting stranded on an uncharted island and nailing an underage girl who seems to hate clothes (then-16-year-old Milla Jojovich). It's probably time to carry on this proud tradition and make a 3rd movie in which Miley Cyrus receives her cinematic deflowering. Just a suggestion.
FITZCARRALDO -- Ah, a decent movie. This is Werner Herzog's 1982 classic about how a man whose obsession to fulfill his dream of building an opera house in the Peruvian jungle just about destroys him and everything around him. It's actually one of the more amazing technical achievements in the history of cinema because they actually pulled a 300 ton riverboat through the jungle without the use of special effects. There's even a documentary about the making of the movie called Burden of Dreams that's probably more interesting than the movie itself. Herzog had originally cast Mick Jagger as Fitzcarraldo's assistant but cut the character out when Jagger had to leave to go on tour. Fitzcarraldo stops just short of greatness but there are worse ways to spend your time than watching it. For instance, you could watch just about everything else on YouTube.
THE MOD SQUAD -- Okay, enough about good movies. Let's all gather around our internet box things and watch one of the stupidest movies based on a television show ever made. Dennis Farina's cop character gets the brilliant idea of recruiting criminals to serve as police officers and seems surprised when, at first, the whole thing goes to shit. Fortunately, their fate is controlled by the godlike powers of screenwriters so it all does come together even though these geniuses needed Farina to die first. This is especially memorable for the scene where Claire Danes drags a guy she barely knows into a dirty public bathroom for sex. I wonder if she's proud of that role.
Oh well, that's enough. I'm off to see Wolverine, a movie I'm sure will be more than worthy of being shown free on YouTube in a few years.
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