|
|
 |
 |
Get this... it was a CHICK!
Part of the problem with being a director known for making movies with surprise twists is that your set up this expectation that your movies will, in fact, have surprise twists. Then viewers go to these movies expecting such a twist and, if they have more intelligence than the average bowl of jello, figure out the twist ahead of time.
This is not bad if they audience has discovered the twist due to your carefully laid hints and foreshadowing. It is bad, however, if the audience has a theory about what the plot twist is due to the trailers before they even step into the theater and has that guess confirmed by the establishing shot of the movie. Then that particular audience member will spend the next two and a half miserable hours of their life watching a movie they already know the ending to and picking up on stupid inconsistencies along the way.
Add in a hepaing dose of awful melodrama, and the whole experience becomes akin to paying $9 to have someone smash one's nuts in repeatedly with an eggbeater. Of course, the going rate for that is $20, so I guess you could consider The Village a bargain.
You are number six.
Sadly, despite the name, The Village has nothing to do with Patrick McGoohan and never reveals who Number One is. I would have much preferred a movie where Rover runs around and engulfs people in silent white desperation than this plodding yawn-fest.
It reveals no secrets to tell the reader that this movie involves a small group of settlers who have moved out of 'the towns' in order to form a more peaceful union. They do ordain and establish a small village (hence the name) surrounded by a small wooded area. The wooded area is home to giant bipedal creatures with giant porcupine quills and a penchance for the color red. The creatures stay in their part of the woods, and the villagers stay in their valley, and everybody is happy.
Thus begins The Village, with so far a reasonable premise with which to build upon. What follows is late 19th century angst and two hours of hiding a plot point so obvious that when it was revealed nobody in the theater so much as blinked an eye. Normally when a "twist" is revealed, especially in a crowded theater such as the one I was in, there is an audible "Ohhh!" from the crowd. This time, silence. Or perhaps a few resigned groans. As if to say "Hell, even *I* had that one figured out, and I still get surprised whenever someone tells me there is no Santa!"
Meep Meep!
Of course, things happen and people whisper and everybody runs around scared. Dead animals turn up and the elders of the village blame it on coyotes. Coyotoes that stand upright, open doors, and have learned how to paint. So we're talking the Wille E. Coyote type here.
Near the end plot devices start dropping left and right and it gets so bad that the directory literally has to explain how the plot is even mildly coherent. No, I'm not joking. The director spends a good two minutes chatting away at a throwaway character for no other reason than to close up gaping loopholes in the logic. That's the mark of a good movie, that.
All told, this movie had the grace, wit and charm of a pissed off crack whore. Given the choice between watching this waste of film again or cleaning out a McDonald's grease pit with my tongue... Well, the grease wouldn't leave as bad of a taste in my mouth...
Posted at 11:08 pm by plki76
One can only expect so much...
"Extra fuel-efficient humvee"
The other day I was passing by a table in the hallway that was proferring up to me all manners of unhealthy items. The main component of this lard-fest was the much revered Krispy Kreme doughnut, about which I could write volumes. To be sure, this little morsel of sugary goodness does instill within me a certain amount of anticipatory giddiness that can only be sated by the glorious comsumption of glazed confections.
It is not my intent, however, to fill this precious portion of the internet with my laudations of baked pastries. No, while that is nobel, pure and necessary in today's world it is not the nature of this space to wax poetic towards foodstuffs. Let me instead direct your attention to the carafes of coffee which were sitting next to the heavenly treasures.
There were three of them. Coffee containers that is, not heavenly treasures. There are at least four heavenly treasures, five if you count pictures of Melissa Joan Hart naked. But I digress. The point is that there were three caffiene containers upon the table, each bearing a sign stating their contents. Upon one thermos was written "Normal" and another bespoke "Decaf". It was the third, however, that caught my eye.
This particular sign proclaimed that the coffee contained within was "Extra Strong Decaf". WTF? How in the hell does one have extra strong decaf? Isn't that what we mere mortals simply refer to as "coffee"? That's like saying "extra fat skim milk", "extra dark lightbulbs" or "extra smart republican". It's an oxymoron, a logical impossibility and most of all just plain stupid.
Speaking of stupid, I had the misfortune of watching "The Core" today. If you ever have the oppurtunity to watch this movie or rip your lips off with a pair of rusty garden shears I expect to see you with bandages on your mouth the next day. This movie is just that bad.
You spin me right round, baby, right round
The premise of the movie is that the core of the Earth has stopped spinning. This is bad for a number of reasons, the primary one being that it led to the creation of this movie. Since the core of the Earth has stopped, a team of brave heroes will need to travel to the center of our planet and detonate a bomb. This will somehow cause the core to once again begin spinning and generate millions of dollars worth of popcorn sales, not necessairly in that order.
This movie is to cinematic history what The Spice Girls were to classical symphony. To make a movie with more bad science would have required getting technical advice from Dan Quayle. In order to travel to the center of the planet, the government goes to the desert to check out the experiments of a crazy man who has developed a laser that can blow a hole through a mountain. This laser apparently requires almost no power supply and is relatively portable, which does nothing to explain why this man wasn't killed long ago after the government came in and stole all his research.
Like Deja Vu. The feeling, not the strip club.
The characters are all recycled from other equally as formulaic movies. They require almost no introductions, because you already know them from the other films. After picking up the Old Crazy Man(tm), the Nice Veteran Doomed to Die (tm), the Wacky Foreign Scientist (tm) and The Woman With Something To Prove (tm), the government needs to, of course, find The Teenage Hacker Who Can Do Anything With Computers (tm). They have no motives or needs that do not tie directly into the plot, because the film doesn't have any time for that.
People die, stuff blows up, and the main characters cheerfully stand surrounded by lava and discuss the fact that the ambient temperature is 5000 degrees. I'll take some more of that sunblock please.
Oh well, I guess one can only expect so much from their movies. I suppose it could have been worse. They could have made me stare at Academy Award winner Halle Barry's droopy boobs again. Oh wait... that's this Friday.
Posted at 10:01 pm by plki76
Play with my body, not with my mind
Everyone has played a game at some point in their life. Whether it be a solitare, a board game, a sport or something as simple as "Duck Duck Penguin", all of us have participated in some kind of recreational gaming activity. Not all of us, however, approach games in the same manner. There are two basic types of game players in this world: the casuals and the hardcore. The two different types of gamers are polar opposites, and don't generally mix very well.
A casual gamer is one who will pull out a board game maybe once a year and push the pieces around without really considering what they're doing. Sure, they'd like to win, but if they don't it's not really a big deal. They derive their satisfaction from the mechanical portion of playing the game and if they lose then at least they had fun playing.
The hardcore gamer, on the other hand, carefully considers their moves and the moves of the other players in order to gain some kind of advantage. Winning is the ultimate objective and mercy is not an option. The mechanical aspects of the game are just there to enable them to crush the opposition, and they are disappointed if they ultimately do not achieve victory.
Shocking, I know
For the majority of my life I have been of the hardcore persuasion. When I play a game, I play to win, and I must say that I'm pretty darn good. Without sounding like I'm tooting my horn too much, I must say that I have a natural aptitude towards gaming, especially strategy gaming. This has not always gone over well with those around me. I used to play a WWII simulation game (no, not Axis and Allies, it was "Command Decision") and, being as my name and heritage are German, I played the Germans.
Dear reader, imagine if you will the following scene: A group of WWII afficianados get together to play a WWII strategy game in which they will recreate some of the great British and American victories. A young lad would like to play, and he'll play the Germans, which is great because the Germans always lose and nobody wants to play them. The terrain and units are set up in accurate historical detail and everyone is ready for a German slaughterfest.
Only, it turns out that the British commander doesn't manuever well. His spotter and general have raced ahead of the batallion along with a troop carrier, wanting to establish an early vantage point on a nearby hill. The troops and the general race out of the APC and encounter light resistance from the german infantry. Then the mortar stirke is called in.
You can't make an omlet without ham and cheese... or something like that.
"Wait! You can't mortar your own troops!" Ha. Watch me. I'll trade five grunts for your general any day. Goodbye British command, and welcome to panicville. The British flank rolls up under the onslaught of the dreaded King Tigers while entrenched infantry sacrifices themselves against the American armor long enough to collapse the rear and ensure a decisive victory for the Germans.
I'm not sure if it was the fact that the American's lost or the constant barrage of German trash-talk ("Vill you surrender? Vhy so quite? Deutschland uber Alles!"), but the group only played once or twice more before I was curiously not invited back.
I try to be fair. I will help out a novice player for the first few games, but after that it's no holds barred. My philosophy is that if you continue to enable them to play weakly, they have no incentive to get any better. Besides, it's funny to watch a four-year-old cry.
She turned me into a newt! ... I got better...
Ok, maybe I'm not quite THAT terrible, but it is close. I have made a concious effort in recent months to tone this down as much as possible. It's been difficult, but I think I'm getting better. Just the other day I was playing "Lionheart" and I completely resisted the urge to jump up and do the "Medieval Victory Dance" when I won. See? That's progress!
Posted at 11:25 am by plki76
I have been officially requested to never ask this question again:
"Would you say that your belief in a religion is founded upon a complete lack of understanding of science or merely a futile attempt to maintain hope in a world run by tyrannical despots?"
Posted at 05:49 pm by plki76
Where does it hurt?
I recieved an email the other day informing me that there would be chair massages being offered to relieve the stress of daily life around here. Contrary to what the name might imply, a chair massage does not involve someone rubbing down a chair, much much like Girl Scout cookies containing no actual Girl Scouts or Compassionate Republicans containing no actual compassion.
A chair massage is actually a massage given to an individual who is sitting in a contraption straight out of "Medieval Hellish Torture Monthly" (I have a subscription). The victim straddles a bar whilst resting their legs behind them at an angle. The sufferer's face going into this little halo-looking device and the arms get positioned in from on a miniature shelf-thing. In this manner is the sucker's back and kidneys fully exposed to whatever malevolent desires the massage practicioner may have.
No Mammaries to Speak of
I arrive at the room a few minuites early for my appointment and discover, to my great dismay, that the massager is a man. Well, damn. Here I was with a mental image of a leggy blonde named "Bunny"dressed in skipy clothing oiling up my back, and I get some old dude named Steve with an evil gleam in his eye.
Well, whatever, it's disappointing but hey... free massage. Steve asks me to sit in the chair, and I do so. As it turns out, when I place my face into the (much oversized for anyone whose head is not pumpkinish) facehugger I find that my gaze is now directed squarely at Steve's crotch. Oh joy.
I keep repeating my mantra of "free massage" over and over as I close my eyes and wait for Steve to begin. Steve starts off by putting his elbows on either side of my neck and attempting to drive my clavical through the floor.
Ich heisse Helga, und ich hole die SCHMERZ!
Hey, I'll be the first to admit that I haven't had a lot of professional massages in my life. Ok, before today I had none. But I have recieved massages from other people on occasions, and they generally didn't hurt like hell. In fact, they felt pretty darn good. This though. This was just REALLY DAMN PAINFUL. But who am I to say anything? Steve is a professional and must know what he's doing, right? Maybe it's supposed to feel good later or something.
So I'm expecting that at some point Steve-O will start with the actual massaging stuff. You know, moving the hands in circular motions, all that jazz. Like those chairs at Sharper Image, only better, right? No. Steve decides that he is going to lift my arm and move it in little circles while squeezing my shoulder.
It is at this point that I decide that I am in some kind of bizarre human psychology experiment. Steve is actually Dr. Svenson, head of the Institute of Behavioral Science. There is a camera in the room recording my facial expressions and somewhere there is a guy in a little room wondering how long it will take me to tell Dr. Svenson that he is a quack and should release my limbs from his grasp.
And I never saw Steve again
Sadly, Allen Funt never emerges from his hiding place and instead Steve informs me that my time is up. My neck was still as stiff and sore as when I entered, despite the fact that I filled out a little questionare asking me what area I would like him to concentrate on. Of course, given what he did to my shoulders, I'm not sure I could have survived whatever torture he had in mind for my neck...
Posted at 05:03 pm by plki76
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
|
|
