tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-53189127408253776762024-03-15T03:06:55.716-04:00The TaglineVisit every Tuesday and Thursday when I will review whatever movies strike my fancy at that time, and Saturdays for themed posts! Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger326125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5318912740825377676.post-24168917997412200652015-07-22T22:12:00.002-04:002015-07-22T22:12:17.165-04:00Ex Machina<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJ6KEnxXYmCwz5_B3LqryuQiv8VfOe1rYGl6u1vAc1JJxQMHIREujWgErH36tuxxNsq4C3n9zKcBCDuXzRBnh6kmCJvdTwoMbD4-DCfqnJr3FoZ-ZBh_ZF3VDQXWv6HrSdX3YqVlIGrM8/s1600/ex-machina-official-poster.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJ6KEnxXYmCwz5_B3LqryuQiv8VfOe1rYGl6u1vAc1JJxQMHIREujWgErH36tuxxNsq4C3n9zKcBCDuXzRBnh6kmCJvdTwoMbD4-DCfqnJr3FoZ-ZBh_ZF3VDQXWv6HrSdX3YqVlIGrM8/s320/ex-machina-official-poster.jpg" width="216" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Robo Sexbot: the Movie.</td></tr>
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"What happens to me if I fail your test?"<br />
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Hello my dear friends and imaginary new readers, welcome back to another thrilling trip down Tagline lane. Today I'm going to take a break from time travelers who speak poor English to talk about non-time travelers who use their position as the head of notgoogle to create robots. So it's sort of the reverse of what they were trying to do in Terminator Genisys, which was try to blow up notgoogle before they invent Skynet. I'm talking about Ex Machina, the April sci-fi suspense film that asks the question "well can I fuck the robot?" with a resounding "of course." Ex Machina stars Domhnall Gleeson (who I guess is also going to be in the new Star Wars) as Caleb, an employee of the fictional Google stand-in Blue Book. He is invited by the company's reclusive but brilliant founder Nathan (Oscar Isaac, also in Star Wars go figure) to his middle of nowhere hyper secure and high tech home/research compound, so that he can participate in Nathan's research. We discover that Nathan has created an AI housed in a lifelike human frame, named Ava. Caleb's job is to evaluate her, and see if she passes their modified Turing test, to qualify as a truly self-aware AI.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiRP1zrKk4CEAV7ZQrpMB0RhwzIf5ELi88m_SXySbZroOBup_5bRGojGd7t0j6nDYYAoatp0PaGozN2V7EWIm5BNLJK1XvX7TzghsQOW0QNdAL9AKpMzrOtNbic2oiqEYBw_CrFaS7vJk/s1600/ex_machina_oscar_isaac.0.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiRP1zrKk4CEAV7ZQrpMB0RhwzIf5ELi88m_SXySbZroOBup_5bRGojGd7t0j6nDYYAoatp0PaGozN2V7EWIm5BNLJK1XvX7TzghsQOW0QNdAL9AKpMzrOtNbic2oiqEYBw_CrFaS7vJk/s320/ex_machina_oscar_isaac.0.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Here hold this robobrain.</td></tr>
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Now Caleb does this through a series of interviews, which Nathan observes remotely. It becomes apparent very quickly that Nathan isn't a super cool guy that you'd want to trust with... anything. He is secretive, domineering, get's black out drunk often, and displays the sort of disturbing and anti-social behaviors that might make you concerned about any AI he was cultivating under his care. Caleb for his part seems... well weird. For someone who is supposed to be fairly intelligent and observant, he seems surprisingly dense about the situation he is in. While he shows an appropriate amount of apprehension, I felt like he was spectacularly bad at not telegraphing every single thought he had to Nathan. That's not a criticism of the movie, I just at times was frustrated to view the world through Caleb because he was profoundly naive. That is perhaps the point though. That covers two of the three primary characters, so now let's talk about Ava (portrayed by Alicia Vikander). We only see Ava through Caleb's interactions with her. She is a mystery, in much the way as I suppose any new acquaintance is. She has decidedly human motivations, curiosity, fear, the desire for self-preservation. Desire in general, as yes she seems to have a robo-sex drive, or at least the appearance of one. Her motivations and intentions are perhaps the most important details in this movie, which explores the nature of artificial intelligence, but maybe more importantly of human nature. I think the movie is of the mind that, the nature of the machine is a distillation of human nature (the AI is crowd sourced from search results as the groundwork of it... consider what that would be like).<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDCuwYFUoeobr71yFQ6B0W7U3145pW_1JDxusnVgo4D-oa3rJS7xFsvpzwuCzypt4Pm1e1PTTWQoN7hw9l1qMkUJQ0ZgzYc6nmSz2tntO-D8tTpIreCU01vNmcVwLAoUqP-5azvIlkgbg/s1600/love.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDCuwYFUoeobr71yFQ6B0W7U3145pW_1JDxusnVgo4D-oa3rJS7xFsvpzwuCzypt4Pm1e1PTTWQoN7hw9l1qMkUJQ0ZgzYc6nmSz2tntO-D8tTpIreCU01vNmcVwLAoUqP-5azvIlkgbg/s320/love.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This is Nathan's mute sexbot Kyoko.</td></tr>
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The final conclusion is pretty grim in this movie, and I'll get to that in just a second. So I like the premise of the movie, and for the MOST part I really like the way that it's executed. I don't care for the seemingly mandatory slow-cut, laconic pacing of the dialogue, which must be in some sort of "making profound and hip movies" handbook. Why can't people just have conversations, why does it have to always be a kinda slow dumbstruck guy talking to a pushy fast talking person. This is a legitimate question I want to know what impulse drives directors to do this. I don't think I need to mention that Ava's robo-body is cool, but it is. It looks pretty darn cool. Also I'd love to have a super secret compound, EXCEPT for one reason that will be apparent when you watch the movie. There are drawbacks to cutting yourself off from basically all contact, like if something goes wrong people might not notice right away. There is maybe something being said here about a person becoming less human while at the same time a machine becomes <i>very</i> human.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoJs9SZtG9sQjJjS2FRk3miA1RNcBCau35DoF0foNOkAqmQ7Rugb7_gX3j56_rJYVxKVfq5V1y8djsf_ay9ZLWLhX70yYmC0FlH3caPgDQzZlyM8DsN1sbWagl9CCA-AQpx4vT-JOAPak/s1600/ExMachina4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="224" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoJs9SZtG9sQjJjS2FRk3miA1RNcBCau35DoF0foNOkAqmQ7Rugb7_gX3j56_rJYVxKVfq5V1y8djsf_ay9ZLWLhX70yYmC0FlH3caPgDQzZlyM8DsN1sbWagl9CCA-AQpx4vT-JOAPak/s320/ExMachina4.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Enter surreal dance sequence.</td></tr>
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But not in a way that is pleasant. The film has a decidedly dark outlook on both the deepest nature of man, and possibilities for any intelligence born of man. This is not a story about a boy who meets a robot girl and the two come to understand each other and it opens up new possibilities for the future. A new future might be born at the end of this film, but it doesn't look encouraging for mankind. There are some actions Ava takes that are clear and easily understood. Nathan is a bastard even by the most generous metric, and he has imprisoned and taunted Ava since before she existed. He intends to effectively wipe out her existence, and furthermore he displays a grotesque sexual predation towards his all female robot ensemble. Even given all this, there seems to be some degree of remorse and horror from Ava. Ava's actions towards Caleb, and her feelings about him are more ambiguous. He is seen perhaps as complicit in her imprisonment (although he is initially unaware perhaps of exactly what is transpiring, and seeks ultimately to end the situation). I thought Caleb's position is a really interesting look at how being an essentially well meaning part of a bad system still makes you guilty of the things the system is doing. It is telling that some of the cruelest and most horrifying things Ava does makes her seem the most human.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4zPaycM5J43G9OBjMhhS4LFZgf_XjMLpsHBGKKhllMk1xqspRuVcTWPH_rmYATEJ4fC8qwbe9QJb9E3rjAJfZ8R8S7tZJMhS9ttCXTQEBnolb_47sRhhWjreBsweSoSl-2TfgUci0FMQ/s1600/Ex-Machina.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4zPaycM5J43G9OBjMhhS4LFZgf_XjMLpsHBGKKhllMk1xqspRuVcTWPH_rmYATEJ4fC8qwbe9QJb9E3rjAJfZ8R8S7tZJMhS9ttCXTQEBnolb_47sRhhWjreBsweSoSl-2TfgUci0FMQ/s320/Ex-Machina.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">If you feel dirty well... I mean you should.</td></tr>
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So I think this is definitely a good movie, but it is also in its way very bleak. It looks at something that has the potential to be remarkable and wondrous, and comes to the conclusion that by accomplishing it we will essentially sign our own death warrants. The question that you can ask yourself though is if this movie is a prophecy or a warning. I like to think that the director doesn't think that as a race we're irredeemably callous. Either way this is a fantastic movie that might make you think. If this is putting you to sleep, don't worry! I promise next week to talk about miniature men who fight other tiny men. Join me again then!</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5318912740825377676.post-87820414553592468532015-07-15T21:39:00.001-04:002015-07-15T21:39:12.450-04:00Timecop<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8Eo5GrHpwjL5-ZQS7ofxzwwpLXMMqGtlRr5pKuKSo-qazf8j01E5A88uxAf10sv5XVx62qW56dv0eJ1IxUfbReZI358ZZEcceknjnVJS4uu1OPYJPXWavFj__RrQz28R5ET8GReLUlx4/s1600/220px-Timecopposter.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8Eo5GrHpwjL5-ZQS7ofxzwwpLXMMqGtlRr5pKuKSo-qazf8j01E5A88uxAf10sv5XVx62qW56dv0eJ1IxUfbReZI358ZZEcceknjnVJS4uu1OPYJPXWavFj__RrQz28R5ET8GReLUlx4/s320/220px-Timecopposter.jpg" width="214" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sort of futury guns here I come.</td></tr>
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"Turn back the clock, and you're history."<br />
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Hi friends, welcome back to the Tagline, where there's never enough time to watch all the cut-rate movies I would really like to. Last week we went on a journey through time, into the future, where it seems inevitable that no matter what we do we'll be forced to do battle with Matt Smith and an army of laser robots. This got me thinking about difficult time situations, and naturally that led me to a path that ended at Jean-Claude Van Damme's doorstep. As such, today we will explore the many splendid wonders the the 1994 classic Timecop, a film that critics raved "was no Terminator, but for those willing to suspend disbelief and rational thought, Timecop provides limited sci-fi action rewards." Now if you can't get really excited about a movie with an awesome line like THAT riding on its back, you must not have a pulse! Seriously though, I think that critics are being a little unfair here. Sure, Van Damme has what could be described as a tenuous grasp on the English language, and I will GRANT that he cannot act worth a Jean-Claude God Damme. All of those things are true. Also true is that in the same year, Mr. Van Damme appeared in the cinematic fuckfest that was <a href="http://everysinnerhasatagline.blogspot.com/2013/06/street-fighter.html">Street Fighter</a>, so maybe that can help you put Timecop into perspective (though I will also grant that in 1994 there were lots of fantastic movies, but none about time travel!). Regardless of what the critics thought, I can still enjoy a bad movie, and I've seen worse movies that did involve as much cool high-kicking. SO LET'S GET LOST IN TIME.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Man remember when we all drove these in 2004?</td></tr>
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This movie was, I did not realize at the time, actually based on a Dark Horse comic, but I suppose everything is based on a comic, either secretly or now, in the future, very publicly. Timecop takes place in the distant future year of 2004 Max Walker is a officer for the TEC (Time Enforcement Commission), a government agency created to prevent criminals from travelling through time to do bad time stuff, like steal confederate gold and use it to buy nuclear bombs. Ten years earlier, when the program was started (so in this world time travel was invented in 1994) Max's wife was murdered, but he was never really clear as to why. When Walker apprehends a former co-worker in the 1920s who is supposedly there working for a senator involved in the TEC program, things start to get ugly. I know, who would have ever thought that a bunch of senators on a sub-committee couldn't be trusted to safeguard the world from time travelling crimes? I certainly trust anyone who is shifty looking and seems to be constantly berating his subordinates/brutalizing them in a self driving car. Sure he wants to kill me and maybe killed my wife, but I'm sure its for the good of America. Anyway senator assface Mccomb is really sick of this French guy named Max Walker constantly being in his American way, and so starts cooking up time ways to get rid of him, preferably involving time travel, because competent hit men evidently don't exist in the futurepast.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Look at those sweet effects.</td></tr>
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So the thing you have to understand about the plot of Timecop is that, unlike last week's Terminator, which has SOME weak areas/plot holes, this movie is essentially made out of those. I mentioned before that time travel is tricky, and this movie proves that, by playing by a set of arbitrary rules that only ever seem to apply when it is convenient for the political sci-fi B movie plot. The logic that allows characters to be doing stuff in the past that changes the future almost always results in a situation where that person shouldn't be there in the first place, but that never seems to happen. There is essentially no way to justify this, and the movie never even really tries. So long as you don't actually stop to think about it too hard, this is usually okay. Time travel is simply the vehicle by which Van Damme's kicks are delivered to bad guys throughout history, although honestly for a movie about time travel they spend most of their time hanging out in places that all look more or less like the 90s (I suppose that's fair when you have a kind of smallish budget). The movie also sports some of the most ridiculously "futuristic" cars that you could hope to see, I'm not sure why weird asymmetrical shapes like the surface of a star destroyer is a sign of being futuristic, but I don't think that the future is going to look like a monochrome version of Tetris, as played by someone who sucks at Tetris.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This could all be yours.</td></tr>
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Even though it is pretty bad, I still like Timecop because it's also fun. It changes history, but only in ways that seem to directly influence the life of Jean-Claude Van Damme. Mia Sara gets blown up. Van Damme does a split on his kitchen counter in his underwear. This is quality, family friendly entertainment at its very best people. Also there is this REALLY cool guy, who is clearly the inspiration for how <a href="http://everysinnerhasatagline.blogspot.com/2015/03/chappie.html">Ninja</a> from Die Antwoord dresses. He has a super cool hair cut and also neato... shinguards I guess. You'll know him when you see him. Timecop is not the greatest thing that happened in 1994, but I would still stay it's worth a watch if only for the super 90s effect of a guy melding into himself and dissolving into a gross blob.<br />
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That's it for today! Join me again next week folks!</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5318912740825377676.post-37870559648338461072015-07-10T15:48:00.002-04:002015-07-10T15:48:53.377-04:00Teminator: Genisys<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhA3Fg0qcnSvgUTPR2j5MqlN_OgVBGh63WclZutRS2i3PNR9P6U28otwGrEEal1_do5YlAFS1UEHl5xZ29FiImaX7DI4znG3Bec-os9wOvfNeX2GGGeqiqf1w_Xvpy2ioAa4VN_C8eSqi4/s1600/t-genisys-connor-poster-gallery.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhA3Fg0qcnSvgUTPR2j5MqlN_OgVBGh63WclZutRS2i3PNR9P6U28otwGrEEal1_do5YlAFS1UEHl5xZ29FiImaX7DI4znG3Bec-os9wOvfNeX2GGGeqiqf1w_Xvpy2ioAa4VN_C8eSqi4/s320/t-genisys-connor-poster-gallery.jpg" width="218" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Terminator: Cornfyld.</td></tr>
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"The rules have been reset."<br />
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Hello again and welcome to the Tagline! In an ongoing trend where it almost seems like it is the flagship goal of my blog, today I will be discussing a movie and more or less directly disagreeing with nearly every critic that gets within viewing distance of whatever movie I happen to be talking about. Today that movie is Terminator: Genisys, a film with a title that is moderately less stupid once you're actually watching the movie. I mean, there's at least an explanation, but it's still a sort of dumb thing to call yourself. This latest Terminator does the cool thing to do this decade and reinvents the mythology, sort of pulling a Star Trek and sidestepping the existing canon. Admittedly the context there is very different, and Genisys doesn't throw everything out the window. Starring Jai Courtney as Kyle Reese (you saw him here recently as a massive dildo in <a href="http://everysinnerhasatagline.blogspot.com/2015/04/insurgent.html">Insurgent</a>) and Emilia "my name is Daenerys and not Khaleesi" Clarke as a Sarah Connor, who in this continuity is kind of messed up from when her parents got blown up, but is under the protection of a terminator that was sent back by an unknown party to protect her. The mission as Kyle understood it has changed, and together they now attempt to stop Skynet from being created (again) with a new obstacle barring their path.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Terminators age apparently? Who knew.</td></tr>
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So even in the best of circumstances, having a plot that centers around time travel can be... tricky. When you're dealing with events in a non-linear fashion, it can be difficult to try and keep things straight. Sometimes its best to abandon any attempts to really do that, and just accept that your story is a little wonky. Previously, Terminator movies operated under a time paradox scenario, where (if you don't know) Kyle Reese was sent back into the past by John Connor to save Sarah Connor, but in the process became the <i>father</i> of John Connor. In Genisys, Skynet changes its tactics, having been firmly beaten several times thanks to the efforts of John Connor et al. Instead of attacking John in the past, it attacks him in the future, subverting him using nano-machines (the sci-fi gimmick the series hasn't used yet), so that if John Connor is the deciding factor in winning a future war, then Skynet can benefit from having him on its side. There are of course issues with the film's continuity, for instance Sarah and Reese never have sex at any point, but for some reason John still exists in the future. He sort of acts as the movie's mouthpiece to explain that after jumping around so much, and because of their centrality to so many events and timelines, that John, Kyle and Sarah are persistent elements that wouldn't be written out by changes to the timeline. As excuses go that's pretty flimsy but... points for trying I guess Terminator.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0QGqIwtKxBaYaw2L6077b8rmiIpmfEER6D1xlrA_PJAGdzAyHXptVNy_BvRjAAFkcu1OHrYsfsxqrG0_G7DGm3fUPlQIPTknFnStQtgPd2UCkLk_fvTl7nWRMUqyn-epW1VRP0Z-ymCo/s1600/terminator-genisys-j-k-simmons.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="178" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0QGqIwtKxBaYaw2L6077b8rmiIpmfEER6D1xlrA_PJAGdzAyHXptVNy_BvRjAAFkcu1OHrYsfsxqrG0_G7DGm3fUPlQIPTknFnStQtgPd2UCkLk_fvTl7nWRMUqyn-epW1VRP0Z-ymCo/s320/terminator-genisys-j-k-simmons.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Also starring JK Simmons as a cop who believes in future robots.</td></tr>
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The thing though is that, while it is certainly true that Genisys has a kind of dumb story, that could easily be said of basically every other Terminator movie (except the first). I didn't go to see this movie expecting hard sci-fi, or the best plotting in the world. I expected to be entertained by some good action, some limited wit. and Arnold beating up a CG version of himself. I got a little bit of all of that. I thought it was cool too that this movie was doing its own thing but also included old style terminators, and T-1000s. It was a nice send-up and the whole thing was substantially less stupid than say... Terminator 3. Was reaallly not into that one. The effects in this movie are about what you'd expect, they look great, and the number of absurd things that happened was lower than I would expect if I'm being honest. All in all I thought this was a pretty enjoyable action sci-fi movie, and if you liked other Terminator movies you'll probably like this one too. Then again I even liked Terminator Salvation and as near as I remember everyone hated that movie so maybe I'm wrong. Also for all those wondering, Genisys is the cloud software that transforms into Doctor Who to bring about the apocalypse.<br />
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So that's about all there is to it! Join me again next week, where I anticipate we're going to probably be talking about something truly ridiculous.<br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5318912740825377676.post-51958008571410054842015-07-03T12:09:00.004-04:002015-07-03T12:09:51.131-04:00Pitch Perfect 2<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyHXZMO_zqtM24QiS5Ro3m5yHnWGIOmezEFarBOShCoXf0gs__WLwPpy7bHAMul3EN8JcOb2AE42IrwViSujIr_E5opX9gj1jvw9Kj7yUKjdXwNYshOP2f7ngZon-jyvXiZBbKWMHWxMA/s1600/Pitch_Perfect_2_poster.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyHXZMO_zqtM24QiS5Ro3m5yHnWGIOmezEFarBOShCoXf0gs__WLwPpy7bHAMul3EN8JcOb2AE42IrwViSujIr_E5opX9gj1jvw9Kj7yUKjdXwNYshOP2f7ngZon-jyvXiZBbKWMHWxMA/s320/Pitch_Perfect_2_poster.jpg" width="202" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Get it, it sounds like bitches.</td></tr>
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"We're Back, Pitches."<br />
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Hello remaining friends, welcome back to more thrills and spills on Double Dare. I mean The Tagline; I don't sometimes think I'm Mark Summers in 1992, that would be insane. Anyway this is not that, this is a movie blog where I talk about movies I watched, and explain why they weren't as good as Mad Max: Fury Road. No no I'm just kidding, sometimes I talk about other things, man I'm having a really bad day for separating reality and my bizarre fantasy life. Today I'm going to talk about Pitch Perfect 2, sequel to the unexpectedly really good <a href="http://everysinnerhasatagline.blogspot.com/2013/08/pitch-perfect.html">Pitch Perfect</a>, a movie that had a premise I didn't feel like I had even a remote interest in. I was wrong about that, and apparently if Anna Kendrick is involved I care about A Capella at least a little bit. In Pitch Perfect 2, the Barden Bellas are doing their victory lap after their triumph at nationals three years running. Unfortunately, a mishap involving Fat Amy (Rebel Wilson), her vagina, and president Obama, results in the group being nationally disgraced and barred from competing. This does not stop them from being able to compete at the world A Capella competition (which is a real thing I had to look it up). The Bellas are not allowed to recruit any new members, but do anyway in the form of Emily (Hailee Steinfeld) whose mother was in the group way back when. The situation is complicated however because Beca (Anna Kendrick) has other things on her mind, such as working for an asshole music producer.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9Mfo4KjDT0ZYHkbd9hmB5mTKlOtSeHX_I9Gl_rVc9UaI8NmPS3DWbiPs5cfbi6o3GlJ1pV5fC5GC4ZT0IuWXtOuD3FFYArw-Icu0RLEWV0vvdX8E7EXsqdfnkZa4YDCsogZYRXfS1_Yc/s1600/239B37B900000578-2854620-image-75_1417321170047.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="176" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9Mfo4KjDT0ZYHkbd9hmB5mTKlOtSeHX_I9Gl_rVc9UaI8NmPS3DWbiPs5cfbi6o3GlJ1pV5fC5GC4ZT0IuWXtOuD3FFYArw-Icu0RLEWV0vvdX8E7EXsqdfnkZa4YDCsogZYRXfS1_Yc/s320/239B37B900000578-2854620-image-75_1417321170047.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This also happened.</td></tr>
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That's an important thing we're ALL interested in though! It would be wrong to deny her that kind of a golden opportunity. Considerable internal strife makes a Bella victory seem unlikely, and this situation is FURTHER exacerbated by Das Sound Machine, a spooky German group that has taken the Bella's throne during their suspension, and also does tons of complex choreography. They are led by a terrifying and beautiful lady who the movie only ever identifies as Kommisar (who is portrayed by Danish actress Birgitte Hjort Sorensen, who recently appeared on Game of Thrones, and then got killed by zombie children), that Beca has sexually confused feelings about. Before the Bellas can beat their external enemies though, they have to overcome blablabla you get it you've heard this before.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8yeqpqPTiUFlHToGoh6FaDTgra1DYQoQKKI4x-gVGkFqFOSiUogXeILZFVlpK9C5vt-_TeDCM11UgqXGyB6LjWsdd12cQamxJ4bCEUSaHNpDChQDUqSznXqBSqE1eOh6Y0G84vptVrKg/s1600/pp3.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="179" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8yeqpqPTiUFlHToGoh6FaDTgra1DYQoQKKI4x-gVGkFqFOSiUogXeILZFVlpK9C5vt-_TeDCM11UgqXGyB6LjWsdd12cQamxJ4bCEUSaHNpDChQDUqSznXqBSqE1eOh6Y0G84vptVrKg/s320/pp3.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Better than sleeping head to foot I guess?</td></tr>
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This is sort of the thing with movies in this particular genre though, it's tough to do anything that REALLY feels original. The first Pitch Perfect had a sort of unusual subject matter, but in the end this plot formula is all too familiar. Sometimes that's okay though. Like I've said many times before, a movie that does something that's been done before might not be great, but if it's executed well it can still be pretty good. Pitch Perfect 2 doesn't really break any stunning new ground (as a comedy or as a sequel) but it is still entertaining, cleverly written, and features well coordinated and performed musical segments. Also a sequence involving some Pat Benatar and a canoe, so I guess that was sort of novel actually. The film also used its sequel capital wisely, and invested in Snoop Dogg and Keegan-Michael Key (you know from Key and Peele) as Beca's music producer boss who is funny like you would expect.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQJF-7mEz9u3P0PBWQxf0Wpz2X828Q6BU6o3bS7Ds2z0JoZWEyLL3qBJn98w4F5gmH44sbsE2VDoharMx3DP5Yr4jcqx0OOJPr8Lvq_LpMMnYcwPDAvFqwT18nj-8svVyanPyHdOxEsVk/s1600/rs_560x378-141120075524-1024.Anna-Kendrick-Pitch-Perfect-2.jl.112014.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="216" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQJF-7mEz9u3P0PBWQxf0Wpz2X828Q6BU6o3bS7Ds2z0JoZWEyLL3qBJn98w4F5gmH44sbsE2VDoharMx3DP5Yr4jcqx0OOJPr8Lvq_LpMMnYcwPDAvFqwT18nj-8svVyanPyHdOxEsVk/s320/rs_560x378-141120075524-1024.Anna-Kendrick-Pitch-Perfect-2.jl.112014.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">She's about to make a fart noise!</td></tr>
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My personal favorite detail of the movie I think was an underground a Capella competition that involved a variety of teams, one of which was just actually a bunch of the Green Bay Packers. Apparently at least some of them are singers, I don't know if that's a draft consideration or if it just worked out that way, but maybe they keep a serviceable A Capella group on the line up just in case it could help them win the Superbowl or something. Elizabeth Banks directed and produced this film, and also has a role as a podcast commentator on A Capella competitions alongside John Michael Higgins (who was Varrick on Legend of Korra? who knew!) and that's a pretty funny running commentary for a number of scenes in the film. Overall like many procedurally generated sequels, it isn't as surprising and exceptional an experience as the first, but it's still entertaining and worth watching. I have serious doubts however that this movie demands ANOTHER sequel, but god damn they're going to do it anyway. After all this movie is now the highest grossing musical comedy (cresting 278 million and putting School of Rock where it belongs, not in 1st place for anything). Admittedly that's a pretty narrow genre but I mean, still that's a lot of dollars.<br />
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That's about it for now! Join me next week for Terminator: Actually Not the Worst Movie Ever.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5318912740825377676.post-21884287782812964372015-06-24T09:09:00.000-04:002015-06-24T09:09:19.234-04:00Jurassic World<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZv_TrK2G6LCK823-uOv1ZEpvOd6YJQdTgFghEDhdXGy_cZkqSfXGUGs-FfTGHLxO52EP3ogFxKvWaTPzh5dYs2gyS3818WfozGEavE7TKt7fmtjY0RA3XCU5m44ZQIdOqgjm8cV_WOyQ/s1600/Jurassic_World_poster.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZv_TrK2G6LCK823-uOv1ZEpvOd6YJQdTgFghEDhdXGy_cZkqSfXGUGs-FfTGHLxO52EP3ogFxKvWaTPzh5dYs2gyS3818WfozGEavE7TKt7fmtjY0RA3XCU5m44ZQIdOqgjm8cV_WOyQ/s320/Jurassic_World_poster.jpg" width="202" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Raptor Squad: America Force</td></tr>
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"The park is open."<br />
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Hello people who were my friends before I wrote this, and welcome back to The Tagline! Today I thought I would stop putting off the inevitable with ridiculous movies about <a href="http://everysinnerhasatagline.blogspot.com/2015/06/wolf-cop.html">lycanthrope law enforcers from Canada</a> and talk about the recent box office smash Jurassic World, the latest entry into the Jurassic Park franchise and currently hanging out right underneath a billion dollars for worldwide gross. Congrats and party streamers to everyone involved for that, but I think that with Chris Pratt as the lead and some dinosaurs, no one doubted this movie would be profitable. Was it good though? Well depending on who you ask you might get a different answer. I did some looking around after I saw the movie to see what reviewers had thought, and I observed something kind strange that I've seen a few times before, I remember most notably seeing this with Avatar. Jurassic World has a 71% on RT, but a lot of the "fresh" reviews have opening lines like:<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">"Not the most stimulating S'berg project." "Jurassic World offers one-dimensional characters, misused actors, nonsensical motivations, retrograde gender politics, insipid pseudo-science and a whole lot of fun." "If you limit your expectations for Jurassic World to "more teeth," it will deliver on that promise. If you dare to hope for anything more-relatable characters, narrative coherence-you'll only set yourself up for disappointment." "At its best, it's good enough to take your mind off its worst, which is saying a lot."</span></div>
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Well those sound like really inspiring endorsements to me. Now don't get me wrong, I get it. Not every movie is going to be poetry in motion, and it doesn't have to be. At the same time, sometimes a movie is just not very good, and I think it's okay to say "hey, this movie is kind of shitty, even though there are parts that are okay." I understand that we all love Jurassic Park. I'm going to go so far as to say I liked The Lost World, mostly thanks to its enhanced Goldblum content. All that aside, being a fan of a franchise does not mean you have to defend every shitty movie released under the header. I love Star Wars to an embarassing degree, but let's face it, I'd be lying to myself in an insane way if I tried to tell you Episode III wasn't a steaming pile of bantha poodoo. I feel compelled here too to admit that Jurassic World is a turd of Brontosaurus proportion, and no amount of "good for what it is" talk will convince me that I shouldn't expect more out of this movie.</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgV8dS7URVm3kcKJCpVqIIJJi0ILdYBmcvCYnfJFLiVwSAtP2UUIL5dHfD0Xth-Uuo7x8ly8ogtucT7wsSHKHbGz7KtoMFXJzf67cAPtGgVLZAKUKMtaMRjCo020zOEkt6cQaq536l13KE/s1600/bjwax76bjjl4i19u72dy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgV8dS7URVm3kcKJCpVqIIJJi0ILdYBmcvCYnfJFLiVwSAtP2UUIL5dHfD0Xth-Uuo7x8ly8ogtucT7wsSHKHbGz7KtoMFXJzf67cAPtGgVLZAKUKMtaMRjCo020zOEkt6cQaq536l13KE/s320/bjwax76bjjl4i19u72dy.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Super Monkey Ball gone wrong?</td></tr>
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I'll start by talking about the things that I thought were neat, because there were certainly aspects which were endearing about the film. I actually think this movie thought of details that were relatively high level, while neglecting the foundation of the movie. It's interesting for example that this movie takes place in continuity with the others, where the original park disaster was covered up for dollar bill reasons (very believable in the world we live in) and the park has adopted <i>relatively</i> stringent safeguards to make itself into a successful attraction. I thought it was kind of cool that they give a nod to the fact that dinosaurs probably didn't look this way, basically saying that all the animals on display are designer babies, made to look cool and like people expect, rather than true to history. I even think that the callbacks to the original were nice touches <i>most</i> of the time, but that's where I start to have problems. See this movie knows that people loved Jurassic Park, and it is not afraid to exploit that fact at every opportunity. What percentage of the movie do you figure is scenes of people trying not to move while a dinosaur (mostly A SINGLE DINOSAUR) slowly lowers its big scary jaws down next to them, and then something violent happens? This happens maybe a half dozen times in the movie and like... okay we get it. T-Rex. Raptors. Slow burn before jump scare. Great. Also help yourself to an incredibly indulgent setup, where the sweeping shot of the island at long range lasts foreverrrrrr until finally cutting to some raptor hangout time.</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjA7Uy0K7kx6mBjvzPSXek97ZXFt9dyHeSYerHwG0sisB7N-lWwRdBHPTEj5LumFyrdzUuEovedhJJF8h6N4FrGBTFAPsqUDndoVXTJDqjOj2XKUREYrpxZ07PJJtN3n19RPdUlU3vFpKU/s1600/640_jurassic_world_embed1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjA7Uy0K7kx6mBjvzPSXek97ZXFt9dyHeSYerHwG0sisB7N-lWwRdBHPTEj5LumFyrdzUuEovedhJJF8h6N4FrGBTFAPsqUDndoVXTJDqjOj2XKUREYrpxZ07PJJtN3n19RPdUlU3vFpKU/s320/640_jurassic_world_embed1.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sea World is getting pretty metal.</td></tr>
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I am going to talk more about the fucking raptors, but I want to save that for last, because it is integral to the fuckfest that is the film's conclusion. Let's talk about the characters first instead. I use characters generously here, because honestly I could not tell you what any of their names were. There was two kids... really emotional mom, icy aunt who will later have her heart thawed by children... Chris Pratt... some guys from Law & Order (a conspiracy between BD Wong and Vincent D'Onofrio, should have known guys come on). Everyone was written as if it was a terrible chore to have actual characters in a movie, and I assume that an intern wrote the script in about ten minutes, because it was terrible. I don't actually find it endearing when some guy in a bungalow hits on his boss in a very blatant way, no matter how sure I am that she'll come around later. It is really pretty weird, and like... this lady is your boss dude. It's okay though, because he is the raptor whisperer, and everyone clearly knows what an awesome badass he is... even though we only get vague snippets about who he is or why he can do all this shit. All you need to know is if you don't listen to him you're definitely getting killed by fucking dinosaurs. The movie could not be LESS subtle about dinosaur related fatalities. Everyone knows Vincent D'Onofrio is getting ganked by a raptor before the movie is over. Chris Pratt knew it, his buddy knew it, the raptors definitely knew it... I felt like even he sort of knew it. Also scene where Chris Pratt and fat security guy go into the cage together I WONDER WHOS COMING OUT OF THIS ONE ALIVE.</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhntVF62u7yXsC8S5qvy2d6erdPXHwUvC6ldcjeIHwnPBRlFUG86N38lzU84U_sYMueEg_z7R_9eJE4oiVk3743cmPE93BaOBCCSqnPzVhYID7i3aYoPF5sjCia4e1sMtnWV77ww_Jhei8/s1600/JWSuperBowlTrailer-Raptors1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="160" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhntVF62u7yXsC8S5qvy2d6erdPXHwUvC6ldcjeIHwnPBRlFUG86N38lzU84U_sYMueEg_z7R_9eJE4oiVk3743cmPE93BaOBCCSqnPzVhYID7i3aYoPF5sjCia4e1sMtnWV77ww_Jhei8/s320/JWSuperBowlTrailer-Raptors1.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The now memed raptor scene.</td></tr>
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You know who else doesn't get to live? People who don't love kids apparently. The biggest theme of this movie seemed to be that if you don't love kids more than anything, then you're a fucking asshole and you better change your mind or you're getting chomped by every dinosaur this movie could find. Like the 'bitchy' assistant, who is supposed to literally babysit one sullen, horny teenager, and his spastic little brother. Yeah well if you were the assistant of the director at fucking trillion dollar dinosaur park, you might feel like being kind of a bitch too if you were told to play nanny for the week. I could kind of see where she was coming from, and we only saw her for a total of maybe like five minutes, so I didn't think she especially deserved the squirm-worthy, drawn out death scene, where a flying dinosaur carries her off and throws her down and grabs her again and then they both get eaten by the sea monster. Come on Vincent D'Onofrio's character was a huge asshole who we saw a bunch of, and he basically got an off-screen death. We can assume I guess that while a war-profiteering shitbag, he likes kids okay. Also the most important part of the aunt's character arc was when she realized that she should stay with Chris Pratt's character, presumably to make babies and do family woman stuff, not be some DUMB EXECUTIVE ICK WHO EVEN CARES ABOUT THAT. Thanks for all THAT shit 1950!</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8s-PEbnZT5IUtO_M_a_adVfYusOajpBGIK0VPB9uU6linzEKYixtjoE9EV-IuRjheq_1G6p1nDpD27rkxLUZz-BbUlHXd8lxKMKstZY873G7hwX2xtm_x0auGzFeh53GKMVWxY0ZEoGY/s1600/o-JURASSIC-WORLD-facebook.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="160" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8s-PEbnZT5IUtO_M_a_adVfYusOajpBGIK0VPB9uU6linzEKYixtjoE9EV-IuRjheq_1G6p1nDpD27rkxLUZz-BbUlHXd8lxKMKstZY873G7hwX2xtm_x0auGzFeh53GKMVWxY0ZEoGY/s320/o-JURASSIC-WORLD-facebook.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This is a job for Bert Macklin: FBI</td></tr>
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I could nitpick a little more, and I will, like why is the T-Rex cage conveniently right next to Starbucks? That seems a little out of place given all the other dangerous dinos are on the far side of the island. How come the best containment plan for an escaped dinosaur is "send like 6 guys with non-lethal weapons and hope shit works out"? Did that fucking work in the first movie? These could have justifications alone, but they sort of pile up as the film wears on. Anyone could see this death trap coming if they weren't too busy making women feel threatened in the workplace.</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikXkijpG0G3z-PZaxqbW1B-TkwCgETCUsQ47QxLdcGhx3uCkQmK7uj-l7ef1uqn7FfCQad0_CUzZrAhE7Z3ocscdZJhHAYshQSF4dbfPNkbrLecoqqaZGJduOJsqLYpdJheB_HsO2W0-c/s1600/JURASSIC-WORLD-8.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikXkijpG0G3z-PZaxqbW1B-TkwCgETCUsQ47QxLdcGhx3uCkQmK7uj-l7ef1uqn7FfCQad0_CUzZrAhE7Z3ocscdZJhHAYshQSF4dbfPNkbrLecoqqaZGJduOJsqLYpdJheB_HsO2W0-c/s320/JURASSIC-WORLD-8.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Worst vacation ever.</td></tr>
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It's okay though, because there IS one other alternative plan. RELEASE THE RAPTORS. After all, Chris Pratt has demonstrated an extremely tenuous ability to dominate them, so let's set them the fuck free. Now I'll grant that even most of the people in the movie thought this was a dumbass idea <i>BUT THEY DID IT ANYWAY DIDN'T THEY. </i>Basically everything that happened after the raptors were led out was clearly happening only to fit in as much dinosaur fighting as possible before the movie finished, to make up for a distinct dearth of dinos in the front end (don't get me wrong, T-Rex fighting super-dino with raptor backup gets the attention of the kaiju lover in me) THE BIG ONE IS PART RAPTOR, and then the raptors obey it for a while. Then they change their mind, and then Bryce Dallas Howard runs in high heels (as she has been the whole movie) the short distance to the T-Rex/Starbucks, so she can wave her nostalgia flare and lure out the T-Rex. Sure we know this thing can haul, but not faster than a woman can run in high heels after standing in awe for like 30 seconds. I guess. Anything to set up dino super fight. Then once the T-Rex leaves, it basically fist bumps the raptor, and they all just piss off, because why bother eating the tasty frightened humans at that point. It's been a long day after all, though there's still time to fit just a little more terrible dialogue in.</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEintWzn3MKjj1LgBT4J5bfI-ez2It6RK06v6s9e-tuKniNAaq5cvCo94TNuYrLD5GTUSdizFb5co3rl5tZbu8Ht7aHowlVF84HM94WD_TIxIymcqmzCXCyY0tv_oauO-98d128kY_Q-hZk/s1600/jurassic-world-image-4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="159" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEintWzn3MKjj1LgBT4J5bfI-ez2It6RK06v6s9e-tuKniNAaq5cvCo94TNuYrLD5GTUSdizFb5co3rl5tZbu8Ht7aHowlVF84HM94WD_TIxIymcqmzCXCyY0tv_oauO-98d128kY_Q-hZk/s320/jurassic-world-image-4.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Delicious morsels ala carte!</td></tr>
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Now I get it man, you want to like Jurassic World. Dinosaurs are <i>cool</i>. Everyone knows that, and I liked watching dinosaurs chase people, or a T-Rex fight a SUPER T-Rex. I like watching raptors get up to crazy raptor hi-jinks. All of that is true. It doesn't excuse a movie that is generally awful though. A movie that is frequently dumb, poorly written, and filled to the brim with offensive gender crap so blatant that it just can't be ignored. It tries to be clever about things like corporate greed and sponsorship, while in the same breath filling the movie with actual name brand placement, basically punching you in the face with a 3-D Mercedes emblem. In the same season as <a href="http://everysinnerhasatagline.blogspot.com/2015/05/mad-max-fury-road.html">Fury Road</a> was released you aren't going to tell me that this is the best I can hope for. I know that we could hope for better, and it shouldn't have been that hard. They had all the pieces, and chose to make <i>this. </i>If dinosaurs in a terrible movie is good enough, then I'm not here to shame you or dissuade you, but I'm also not going to say that I thought this was anything but a bad movie, and I won't waffle on the fence and say "this movie was dumb as shit, but its fun because dinosaurs" and then give it a gold star.</div>
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I believe that is everything I have to say about the matter, and hope that you either found this post amusing, or can learn to forgive me. Join me again next week, when things get sexy... or not.</div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5318912740825377676.post-85114948826815565062015-06-18T09:14:00.001-04:002015-06-18T09:14:13.776-04:00Wolf Cop<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfiEamHY94MmK3nWorMk819krlMzNZV6KiqAgTybonhfzE_idsAGqjbac7Uo3mUOebn1DSXi3s2HT5Tyg9RkfQyfcGCCpSxqaQixUVyNSC2grypbTolHofugKve5xKwr7Sg_cW8bNL9Tk/s1600/wcposter.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfiEamHY94MmK3nWorMk819krlMzNZV6KiqAgTybonhfzE_idsAGqjbac7Uo3mUOebn1DSXi3s2HT5Tyg9RkfQyfcGCCpSxqaQixUVyNSC2grypbTolHofugKve5xKwr7Sg_cW8bNL9Tk/s320/wcposter.jpg" width="220" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Now THIS is a poster.</td></tr>
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"Here comes the fuzz."<br />
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Hello friends, welcome back to the best part of the WHOLE fucking week, The Tagline. Every week I pick a movie out of my movie hat and talk about it. Today I venture north once again, to embrace my destiny and watch a goofy and intensely gross horror comedy film. A Canadian on... so like really really gross. This particular cinematic masterpiece was released around this time last year, and it's called fucking WolfCop. So here goes; WolfCop is about a small town police officer alcoholic, named I shit you not Lou Garou. He spends most of his day drinking and sleeping on account of he's an alcoholic and really what is happening in Canada middle of nowhere that requires a police presence. Anyway, after being cursed with lycanthropy, he becomes a werewolf, only he retains his personality (which is a drunken gunslinging maniac wolfman). He continues to perform his job as a police officer... only also he is a werewolf. I know this seems simple but... it gets weirder from there.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnzm0d5IuMOtleZf-tLEck7QrVPl-VAMFOMluTGMTXnN37Ta6P4VdNbnnoUl0pUg1Bd2d42bjDyoneWOEGXa7hCbvQImbvdbNy6wDYJi6rPP3XrLamYyiGs4CH1HtpyDte60EN7C5XJ34/s1600/WolfCop-2+%25282%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnzm0d5IuMOtleZf-tLEck7QrVPl-VAMFOMluTGMTXnN37Ta6P4VdNbnnoUl0pUg1Bd2d42bjDyoneWOEGXa7hCbvQImbvdbNy6wDYJi6rPP3XrLamYyiGs4CH1HtpyDte60EN7C5XJ34/s320/WolfCop-2+%25282%2529.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Come on Canada you're clearly drunk.</td></tr>
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Okay so as anyone who has seen a single one is aware, that at least once in a werewolf movie there is a scene of graphic, blow all your budget wolf transformation. This movie also features such a scene but first...okay. So something else you should know is that Canadians love to make some seriously gross fucking movies. I think they feel like, if they don't have a scene where someone pisses blood, that they've wasted the whole movie. I don't really share their feelings, but it seems to be pretty much unanimous among directors of this particular... flavor of movie. WolfCop is no exception. Far from it, WolfCop gleefully goes all in on both accounts, providing a gruesomely gross transformation scene involving pissing blood, wolf fur, and an animatronic wolf penis. Yeah you read that right don't worry, you aren't going crazy, someone in Canada just did. Now when you go to watch this movie you'll know that at some point a robot wolf dick is going to launch a sneak attack on you, but I won't tell you when.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJMMNLN1okKRBVHWsxbWfGEI2j__D9lR0Dm_vcBaPFs8e5I3qgMPh5g0yMdDNMoLbqKwz6CNVIRD94KtkAQo3OLC5orJEQMDKtyccw80pDBqfGQjMwk3xeHyCLvSBfmFRDoda3TNLoqA4/s1600/wolfcop-2+%25281%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="168" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJMMNLN1okKRBVHWsxbWfGEI2j__D9lR0Dm_vcBaPFs8e5I3qgMPh5g0yMdDNMoLbqKwz6CNVIRD94KtkAQo3OLC5orJEQMDKtyccw80pDBqfGQjMwk3xeHyCLvSBfmFRDoda3TNLoqA4/s320/wolfcop-2+%25281%2529.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">See? I knew it, Canada is super drunk.</td></tr>
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I can't even claim that this was the only bizarrely gross thing that happens in this movie. Not even close to it. I think it was the grossest, but I mean, a quick glance at the Netflix preview screen will reveal to you that there is a wolf sex scene, and that is absolutely as absurd as it sounds. Is the lady he has sex with a porn actress taking a step... well sideways I guess? I can't say for sure, but signs point to yes. A steady stream of media exposure has led me to believe that all that really is important to Canadians is making media involving metal music, ladies with big tits, and really gross horror stuff, preferably all in one place (if you want to see what I mean watch Todd and the Book of Pure Evil). Healthy doses of violence are of course also essential, and there's plenty of that to go around. Sure WolfCop could just rip you in half, and chances are he probably will, but also there's a decent chance he will first shoot you with his big old revolver. Also he might quip at you, and drink some more, because as we discover, his super powers (super even when compared to other werewolves) are derived from the fact that he is a barely functional alcoholic.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjZ3lKOZestcO5yg4G7jH106u0VntyQzORfIORNz0XD0CAxYTV4vfQy9Ng5eWKL3pSOJI5dRjHcppE57wdya7gjsum4rkSwWJ4Sx08415BjyREgJcjv2tVPBR-dcETquOkRyMR-bSl1Cs/s1600/wolfcop-2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="177" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjZ3lKOZestcO5yg4G7jH106u0VntyQzORfIORNz0XD0CAxYTV4vfQy9Ng5eWKL3pSOJI5dRjHcppE57wdya7gjsum4rkSwWJ4Sx08415BjyREgJcjv2tVPBR-dcETquOkRyMR-bSl1Cs/s320/wolfcop-2.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Please drink responsibly people.</td></tr>
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To give a little more detail on the plot, ole' Lou Garou becomes caught up in a plot involving a secret society that wants to use him as a sacrifice to cement their hold over the small nowhereville that they all live in. This also seems to be a theme of Canadian Horror Comedy. Now being a spooky cult making sacrifices is pretty cool and everything, but not nearly as great as them being SECRET LIZARD PEOPLE. Yeah it goes full blown Illuminati/New World Order up in Saskatchewan when the cult is discovered to be comprised of shape shifting lizard people go figure. ISN'T THAT JUST ALWAYS THE DAMNED CASE. Can't get away from those lizard people am I right? The movie is surreal and ridiculous, but that's the whole point, and if you can't get behind werewolf law enforcement, then really what CAN you stand for? The best part of WolfCop is that it is on Netflix, so if you already have that service this movie can be for your enjoyment, with no charge. Just spend the time it takes to experience the <i>magic, </i>and also maybe <i>throw up a little</i>.<br />
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If you watch this and like it, good news! There's a sequel coming in 2016, so there's something to look forward to! That's it for this week, join me again next week when I express unpopular opinions that make people want to not be my friend anymore.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5318912740825377676.post-64321623179659837112015-06-10T09:42:00.000-04:002015-06-10T09:42:07.908-04:00Hot Tub Time Machine 2<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQTQ-8o9L-rx5_qYiNhDI28kz4VSHrwUt25ZL8HcEWW03pWhz-zSDvr39pNG7djzosLum6eyEtQQ2DwZSlxB7CdDy3xVL_PsmDcWbZ_OGiBiiW4kxfK8tvB9IbJ61pR4oetk_KsV0aiH8/s1600/hottubtimemachine2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQTQ-8o9L-rx5_qYiNhDI28kz4VSHrwUt25ZL8HcEWW03pWhz-zSDvr39pNG7djzosLum6eyEtQQ2DwZSlxB7CdDy3xVL_PsmDcWbZ_OGiBiiW4kxfK8tvB9IbJ61pR4oetk_KsV0aiH8/s320/hottubtimemachine2.jpg" width="204" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Released in February huh? Who knew.</td></tr>
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"The laws of space and time are about to be violated"<br />
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And that is not the only thing. Hello friends and welcome back to the Tagline! Today I'm going to be talking about the not at all anticipated Hot Tub Time Machine 2, the sequel to the surprisingly not shitty Hot Tub Time Machine. For those not familiar, the original focused on a group of 3 friends (and also Clark Duke) who go to a ski resort they once frequented back in their youth, and end up going back in time to the 80s (using a hot tub obviously). The film worked very well because in addition to being quite funny, it was the perfect parody of 80s era romantic comedies, not to mention that they had John Cusack along for the ride, and he appeared in more than a couple of the movies being played off of here. The second film picks up where the first left off. Lou (Rob Corddry)has made himself insanely wealthy by stealing the ideas for a whole bunch of shit that didn't exist in the 80s, while Nick (Craig Robinson) has built a successful music career by stealing other musicians songs. Meanwhile I don't know what Adam (John Cusack) has been doing, because he is notably absent from this movie (although he has a brief cameo at the end). </div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAKhuwppgsUbkjPZ5XET831nHPvDlRe44TNVwshZgRjIrpbwe9CSz4Bq12gG25Eqhc0D4MjdyCZaj4Ol8CoTy58RSKL903KYoPsFc0QIf5SoNWCRxv7DoDv_2mPf3PsjqilrMqmV5Thik/s1600/hottubtimemachine1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAKhuwppgsUbkjPZ5XET831nHPvDlRe44TNVwshZgRjIrpbwe9CSz4Bq12gG25Eqhc0D4MjdyCZaj4Ol8CoTy58RSKL903KYoPsFc0QIf5SoNWCRxv7DoDv_2mPf3PsjqilrMqmV5Thik/s320/hottubtimemachine1.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The hot tub in question.</td></tr>
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So if they went to the past in the first movie, obviously in the second movie they go to the future. After Lou gets shotgunned in the dick, Nick and Jacob (Clark Duke who we now know is Lou's son, and also apparently his butler) take him to the hot tub and attempt to travel back in time to stop his death from happening. They instead end up in the future, in a divergent time line where Lou was alive, but where something happened to cause his death. This is easy to imagine, because Lou is a massive asshole. In the future, they meet Adams son, also Adam (played by Adam Scott, so it's Adam cubed). Needing to find Lou's killer, they drag Adam along and get into all sorts of predictably fucked up shit. I say predictable because the movie pretty much proceeds exactly as you would expect. It is still funny, don't get me wrong, but it is definitely paint by the numbers.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwHq_us2kGA_WKMXvEWgr9NSlUcxJsNDDXBF6BseVneY_6hky_edBUuPGlFmjo_jmVChZH4_v_nqn2YDB3wfmSHP4ZHhNk7-4BHTBVXLnUDc6s4XldIAJl0hK_Q8yafwuACWBz19K7JoI/s1600/hot-tub-time-machine-2-gillian-jacobs-adam-scott.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwHq_us2kGA_WKMXvEWgr9NSlUcxJsNDDXBF6BseVneY_6hky_edBUuPGlFmjo_jmVChZH4_v_nqn2YDB3wfmSHP4ZHhNk7-4BHTBVXLnUDc6s4XldIAJl0hK_Q8yafwuACWBz19K7JoI/s320/hot-tub-time-machine-2-gillian-jacobs-adam-scott.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Look at this nerd.</td></tr>
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This really makes it different than its predecessor, which was as crude but more intelligent and also had the benefit of being unexpected. HTTM the first was a movie I had zero expectations for, but which ended up being hilarious, as well as being a brilliant parody (Crispin Glover as the bellhop, I mean come on). It took a stupid premise and did something surprising and entertaining with it, and stood on its own merits. In comparison, Hot Tub Time Machine 2 relies heavily on the original not just for its legitimacy, but also for its plot in general. While the movie is definitely simple enough in terms of plot that you could determine what was happening whether you'd seen the first movie or not, most of the jokes that made the movie entertaining, and details that made up the best parts of this movie were callbacks to the first movie. Without that background, most of the best gags of the movie would fall rather flat.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtosIYSVtzVvCHy2lcrr0WyP42l1HclJV1BwyUtFEtQA9aEY37QhCCtPjjXeptXSYmKvUdCCVzj63gmDgqFO5EOhZ5e2sJwbYA_HWG6PI7D2-X084LBF5hd9FLqWxw6imwBTbFbqi0oEY/s1600/_1423721344.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtosIYSVtzVvCHy2lcrr0WyP42l1HclJV1BwyUtFEtQA9aEY37QhCCtPjjXeptXSYmKvUdCCVzj63gmDgqFO5EOhZ5e2sJwbYA_HWG6PI7D2-X084LBF5hd9FLqWxw6imwBTbFbqi0oEY/s320/_1423721344.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A butler in a top hat no less.</td></tr>
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While this was amusing from a Back to the Future 2 kind of perspective, HTTM 2 is just an inferior movie in every way when compared to the first. It's still funny, especially if you've seen the first (and really you SHOULD see the first) but it has little to compare it favorably. This movie knows where its limited strength lies, and it plays to them almost exclusively. The fact that this film relies so heavily on its predecessor doesn't make it a bad movie, but it does make it weaker overall. If you liked the first, than I can honestly recommend it, it isn't the terrible film that reviews painted it as. Unfortunately it also isn't Hot Tub Time Machine.<br />
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Now I know that this seemed like a gross and stupid movie, but I promise next week you'll think it seems pretty smart when I review fucking Wolf Cop.</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5318912740825377676.post-66183142874552332332015-05-21T00:19:00.003-04:002015-05-21T00:19:42.576-04:00Mad Max: Fury Road<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-1iIJhyphenhyphenGgh11Fe1lklNyliXTFNfUAiyQEBH5JdhEZ_7W2IzEK92OpvehQI8i7A8ysSYhzcRRxGD7aRuOs8ed_4WJO1T64bzJQ4lN5cn7p6V6wX1yWvhsbXoM8EHMZuYmqIqZm_Av9EvY/s1600/mad-max-fury-road-poster2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-1iIJhyphenhyphenGgh11Fe1lklNyliXTFNfUAiyQEBH5JdhEZ_7W2IzEK92OpvehQI8i7A8ysSYhzcRRxGD7aRuOs8ed_4WJO1T64bzJQ4lN5cn7p6V6wX1yWvhsbXoM8EHMZuYmqIqZm_Av9EvY/s320/mad-max-fury-road-poster2.jpg" width="216" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Is it? IS IT?!</td></tr>
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"The future belongs to the mad."<br />
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Hello friends and welcome back to a new week of tags, lines, and the tags that are also lines. That's right, it's the Tagline! Over the weekend I got out to that most sacred of places, the movie theater, and saw Mad Max: Fury Road, not to be confused with my anthro fanfiction Mad Max: Furry Road. Starring Tom Hardy as Max Rockatansky, former law enforcer, former family man, current wasteland wanderer and serious hallucinator. During his almost 100% insane wandering through the irradiated wasteland that is the outback, Max is set upon by the warboys, servants of the legit nuts Immortan Joe, a demagogue who is a divine figure for his followers. Max is used as a living blood bag for a warboy, and taken along in pursuit of Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron), one of Joe's enforcers who has gone rogue and abducted Joe's child brides, in an attempt to lead them to the green place, which we can all assume probably doesn't exist. Max is caught up in this extremely violent desert chase, as you are no doubt familiar by now this is a common occurrence in his life out in the Australian desert hellscape.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRp5GsElD-JVVWeN5vdRS3TNe9tgSOsgbFDyqbbivBmsMIUpapjE6hcA01dRxRPNP2ihs05w2Au6fbAPZBY-5nBTZBE1FofbURCWCWcqVGw049JjQMKRkMiJxtZFEbaW0g01B1sXtHfTg/s1600/mad-max-fury-road-tom-hardy-3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRp5GsElD-JVVWeN5vdRS3TNe9tgSOsgbFDyqbbivBmsMIUpapjE6hcA01dRxRPNP2ihs05w2Au6fbAPZBY-5nBTZBE1FofbURCWCWcqVGw049JjQMKRkMiJxtZFEbaW0g01B1sXtHfTg/s320/mad-max-fury-road-tom-hardy-3.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This is a troubled man.</td></tr>
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Now let's talk about the dumbass things that people have said about this movie on the interwebs before I talk about my own thoughts on the movie more extensively. The most telling comment someone actually REALLY made was that the movie was one long car chase. Well yes genius, it was mostly a big car chase because WHAT ABOUT MAD FUCKING MAX DON'T YOU GET. The second movie was called The Road Warrior for fuck's sake, implying that a notable factor of his personality IS FIGHTING ON THE FUCKING ROAD. *ahem* anyway, that is a really stupid thing to think about the movie. Another perhaps equally stupid thing that people said about the movie was that it was somehow not a good movie because it wasn't enough about Max (I won't even acknowledge the lizardmen who were mad because it featured Furiosa too prominently because she's a woman). Anyone who believes that this is true A)lacks any understanding of this franchise and probably hasn't seen any of the other movies and also B) lacks even a rudimentary understanding of character development. So let's talk about that.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdot4aXDznowEEP5i_rfiAtT_iZA_Vp7cLSNdMmbRD5dWZfwJ7ycOv0RgkLy-H9vfYjldziemTRaPir9VBDBxi_C-aewOi9iKYgue-FRWYKqTgunIHEuhG8HBIdLx4EIWx8KjrLBM-Ym8/s1600/Mad-Max-Fury-Road.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdot4aXDznowEEP5i_rfiAtT_iZA_Vp7cLSNdMmbRD5dWZfwJ7ycOv0RgkLy-H9vfYjldziemTRaPir9VBDBxi_C-aewOi9iKYgue-FRWYKqTgunIHEuhG8HBIdLx4EIWx8KjrLBM-Ym8/s320/Mad-Max-Fury-Road.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">She is one seriously bad lady.</td></tr>
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<br />Aside from the original Mad Max, I don't think that any other movie in the franchise is MORE about Max than Fury Road. Spoilers ahead, but after the events of the first movie, and the death of Max's family, he becomes basically a being that exists only to keep existing. This is the person we meet at the beginning of Fury Road, someone who remarks that "hope is a mistake." The events of the movie are important because they help to bridge a gap that a lot of people felt existed between Max's personality in The Road Warrior, and his behavior in Beyond Thunderdome. Judging by the fact that Max begins Fury Road with his car, and sporting injuries fresh from The Road Warrior. The movie rather adeptly explains how Max becomes the person we see in Bartertown. While the main action might not be about Max, and while he might not be personally invested per se, the movie is very much a journey for him as a character.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSMGzz7VkYVwTzf89_imLwxrdzGsc2hifQ7Tg9oHPk6R6kbdvO5Jb4kSWZq9LBCwHgTDbLhAr0hhtTKbrHvGC3a3hwSDn_1f7auNTKP3IQm5amH-saOus92dOzethOhMZycwEaQ4J245w/s1600/8KnsNIj.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="259" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSMGzz7VkYVwTzf89_imLwxrdzGsc2hifQ7Tg9oHPk6R6kbdvO5Jb4kSWZq9LBCwHgTDbLhAr0hhtTKbrHvGC3a3hwSDn_1f7auNTKP3IQm5amH-saOus92dOzethOhMZycwEaQ4J245w/s320/8KnsNIj.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Immortan Joe? Or Toecutter?</td></tr>
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Now that I've talked about that, let's talk about the kick ass action in this movie, and the insane things that were done to achieve it. It's good to know that there wasn't a ton of CG involved in this movie, or at least not as much as you might think. That giant truck covered in subwoofers with the blind guy playing a guitar that was also a flamethrower? None of that was an effect. A guy was strapped into that thing spewing flames while he was shredding. If that doesn't strike you as insane and also awesome, then you don't get it. You might NEVER get it. I heard someone complain that the whole post-apocalyptic thing is cliche, and that's... wow. The REASON this sort of thing is cliche is because of Mad Max. It would be like complaining that The Matrix was cliche because of slow bullets and black trenchcoats.<br />
<br />The point is, Fury Road accomplishes what many movies try but few ever manage. It is an amazing action movie, of singular purpose that also is a fantastic character study. It also features a stunning female lead who is just a plain stunning lead. That all by itself would be worthy of note, but it's so much more than that. You should see it. You should see it many times. Go now.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5318912740825377676.post-40279209207364650782015-05-13T21:42:00.001-04:002015-05-13T21:42:02.355-04:00Avengers: Age of Ultron<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFSILUEa5NA3CCS9Uz2wlmsg8dZvLEToBWa5IsiRfE4JfP4EERBUdA7Vhu2v-VCB2QvfW6JxlTQGfGt1N_PrCRFgqSgsAZs6pmZ5aPLp02enkf18VQLm8Qum8MGEHXq6_BPVyzQVO2ezc/s1600/Avengers-Age-Of-Ultron-Poster-2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFSILUEa5NA3CCS9Uz2wlmsg8dZvLEToBWa5IsiRfE4JfP4EERBUdA7Vhu2v-VCB2QvfW6JxlTQGfGt1N_PrCRFgqSgsAZs6pmZ5aPLp02enkf18VQLm8Qum8MGEHXq6_BPVyzQVO2ezc/s320/Avengers-Age-Of-Ultron-Poster-2.jpg" width="213" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">WELCOME TO THE NEW AGE OR<br />WHATEVER.</td></tr>
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"A new age begins"<br />
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Hello everyone, welcome to the Tagline once again! Today, I will finally make good, and review that massive action blockbuster, that you already no doubt have seen, but I'm going to review it anyway, just try and stop me. Picking up chronologically after Thor 2 and Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Age of Ultron opens with the Avengers assaulting a Hydra base, one of many they've attacked while searching for the scepter that Loki used in the first Avengers movie. If you remember from the end of Winter Soldier (or if you had missed out here's a little recap) the scepter had fallen into the hands of a Hydra-ish bad guy with a menacing accent and I think a monocle? I feel like there was definitely a monocle involved. Anyway, that guy is studying the scepter and playing babysitter to the Maximoff twins (that's Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver) when the Avengers come knocking, with like Thor's hammer and stuff. After recovering the staff (because of course they would) Tony Stark and Bruce Banner discover an AI that they try to use to resurrect the Ultron program, a peacekeeping robot program that was supposed to act as a security system for the whole planet. This goes immediately south of the border, as Ultron needs all of 10 minutes alone with the internet to determine that the entire human race needs to be eradicated.</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjA-GOaH2UC4ngQhAlveyPqAjpnBCeTiSGTPtlrY4wmKIXdafenBrApNdxQdLC0pBM0XSMutANiw0tC76ybhF6xdqHTFh7PSqz9lSkyZbOD4jve8SpstEVgjXM0mCCB7WKBlCtvQin_Bg/s1600/Captain-America-Lifting-Thors-Hammer-Avengers-Age-of-Ultron.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="165" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjA-GOaH2UC4ngQhAlveyPqAjpnBCeTiSGTPtlrY4wmKIXdafenBrApNdxQdLC0pBM0XSMutANiw0tC76ybhF6xdqHTFh7PSqz9lSkyZbOD4jve8SpstEVgjXM0mCCB7WKBlCtvQin_Bg/s320/Captain-America-Lifting-Thors-Hammer-Avengers-Age-of-Ultron.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Whosoever pulleth this hammer from the coffee table<br />shall be king of all Asgard.</td></tr>
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So with the stage set for a super confused robot to destroy the world for ambiguous reasons that even he doesn't seem sure of. Of course he has the help of some disgruntled superbeings in the Maximoff twins, particularly Scarlet Witch messing with everyone's minds in order to get the Avengers fighting each other. Admittedly it doesn't take much for that plan to really gain some traction, particularly because the entire crisis was caused by existing communication issues. This brings me to problem number one that exists within this movie: It sort of hits the reset button on most of the characters development, or at least that's kind of how it feels. Admittedly, the group was sort of slapped together in the first Avengers, but they go to pieces and are at each other's throats with the drop of a hat and some subtle encouragement. Cap and Iron Man are back to fighting about who loves freedom the most or... whatever, Hulk is scared of being too much of a Hulk, Thor acts like he's better than everyone, and Black Widow is sad that she murdered a lot of people. The major difference comes from Hawkeye, who in place of being brain fried in the last film is instead the only stable member of the group. That was actually really nice, considering that he was forced to essentially sit out roughly 2/3rds of the first Avengers movie.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9Pd_Tmkq4TU2i0jpnnkRhtCH2i49Wogz5jpMzbg_R_hd38aLq30RSVcXInj5D__gIFJLavgZxi5RRCEHNlL10EvQXxtPM4pshPi1XX3mj5BP2bFHHrvlbbkZgGT6rfu3XWQnXt0hSUFY/s1600/Vision_in_Avengers_Age_of_Ultron_poster.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9Pd_Tmkq4TU2i0jpnnkRhtCH2i49Wogz5jpMzbg_R_hd38aLq30RSVcXInj5D__gIFJLavgZxi5RRCEHNlL10EvQXxtPM4pshPi1XX3mj5BP2bFHHrvlbbkZgGT6rfu3XWQnXt0hSUFY/s320/Vision_in_Avengers_Age_of_Ultron_poster.jpg" width="219" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Oh I forgot the Vision. Guys there was this<br />vision and he used the hammer.</td></tr>
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So okay, the above oversimplifies the characters, but I felt like some of their behavior occurred largely for the convenience of the plot. I thought that the romance subplot between Bruce Banner and Black Widow sort of came out of nowhere. There was admittedly never any real on-screen time together except some brief interactions in the first movie (when he was recruited for instance), but that's sort of the problem. Age of Ultron starts and its like "Hey! Look at that these really obvious romantic overtones between these two characters!" I think the sub-plot worked for the movie, but it could've been more subtle. There are also other elements of the plot that felt like a rehash, a little bit like the movie was just playing by the book it penned with Avengers. Open with a scene of action, involving a glowy blue artifact, have someone get their head messed with, introduce bickering while nefarious bad guy unfurls his master plan, leading up to a big battle... the resemblance was more than passing.<br />
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All of these things aside, I don't want you to think that I didn't like Age of Ultron, or that I thought it was a bad movie. I did like it, and I was still pretty impressed with it, all flaws aside. Making a movie with this many leading characters work is tough, and for all its production value and flash, you can really feel the craft and effort that Joss Whedon and the many, many others put into its creation. It advances the overarching Marvel plot, sets up future movies, and does so with heart and of course a sense of humor. The fact of the matter is that even if this movie had been AS original and inventive as Avengers, it would not have been as impressive, because we've already been there. I'm still sort of impressed that the Marvel movie universe has managed to go this long without punting one of these movies, and I'm interested to see if they can pull off Civil War, a storyline that went over kind of rough even in comic form.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-DaDdtoXdjOBwrP_l8eHFMu0y4w_LuxQwt70xLZq5xcMTXRRqPscd4EXT9Gwef3kasu3mncYr1BKa_ZfwmIbwBSMvM6ip4gHWkuQZJmd0Vhn62ZjS-3tOhBdt2X_cSUR9xrMhSO7-bB0/s1600/maxresdefault.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-DaDdtoXdjOBwrP_l8eHFMu0y4w_LuxQwt70xLZq5xcMTXRRqPscd4EXT9Gwef3kasu3mncYr1BKa_ZfwmIbwBSMvM6ip4gHWkuQZJmd0Vhn62ZjS-3tOhBdt2X_cSUR9xrMhSO7-bB0/s320/maxresdefault.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">gotosleep<span style="font-size: 12.8000001907349px;">gotosleep</span><span style="font-size: 12.8000001907349px;">gotosleep</span><span style="font-size: 12.8000001907349px;">gotosleep</span><span style="font-size: 12.8000001907349px;">gotosleep</span><span style="font-size: 12.8000001907349px;">gotosleep</span><span style="font-size: 12.8000001907349px;">gotosleep</span><span style="font-size: 12.8000001907349px;">gotosleep</span><span style="font-size: 12.8000001907349px;">gotosleep</span><span style="font-size: 12.8000001907349px;">gotosleep</span><span style="font-size: 12.8000001907349px;">gotosleep</span><span style="font-size: 12.8000001907349px;">gotosleep</span><span style="font-size: 12.8000001907349px;">gotosleep</span><span style="font-size: 12.8000001907349px;">gotosleep</span></td></tr>
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I'd be remiss too if I didn't mention how badly you can tell Joss Whedon wanted to kill Hawkeye. He wanted to kill Hawkeye, have his family find out, and then kill all of them too. He wanted to have Hawkeye's ghost watch. If this were 2006, they would have all died in explosive, creative ways. At the very least, he managed to stay true to himself by tormenting characters on screen romantically, which I suppose will have to do this time. I was sort of sad that Falcon and War Machine didn't get more on screen time and respect, but I imagine one or both of them probably will in Civil War, and I'm looking forward to that.<br />
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That's it for now folks! Join me next week for possibly furious roads!</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5318912740825377676.post-26866457791955717232015-05-09T12:59:00.000-04:002015-05-09T12:59:53.762-04:00Radical Jack<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgVekNlKahF2-5rriAtVj33SS49SLhdqYsfPgrA_JcMWMdKnRoMb6V2rtSo9W0bztX3AjdTzic3XBMbt8ybHITHeaUn2gSzbBPaR31LX_9d6lDYY0hrixmK0cDpjevsHPcWpHU4KCOT_4/s1600/MV5BMTY2NTU1ODA3Ml5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTgwNTIzOTk1MDE@._V1_SY317_CR4,0,214,317_AL_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgVekNlKahF2-5rriAtVj33SS49SLhdqYsfPgrA_JcMWMdKnRoMb6V2rtSo9W0bztX3AjdTzic3XBMbt8ybHITHeaUn2gSzbBPaR31LX_9d6lDYY0hrixmK0cDpjevsHPcWpHU4KCOT_4/s1600/MV5BMTY2NTU1ODA3Ml5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTgwNTIzOTk1MDE@._V1_SY317_CR4,0,214,317_AL_.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8000001907349px; text-align: center;">Yikes.</td></tr>
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"No one can hold him back"<br />
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Hi folks, welcome to another riveting edition of the Tagline! I know what you were thinking, "Oh hey Justin's totally going to review Age of Ultron this week!" THINK AGAIN SUCKERS I'm going to review this fucking piece of steaming garbage. What's better than a stupid movie about a CIA ninja soldier man? A movie about that where the supposed badass is played by Billy Ray Cyrus. Yeah that's right, welcome to my nightmare. This film was released in the year 2000, when the world was kind of ridiculous, and it's called Radical Jack. It doesn't 'star' anyone per se, but features Mr. Billy Ray "Achy Breaky Heart" Cyrus as the eponymous Radical Jack, which is his very real sounding code name, and definitely isn't reminiscent of any<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Lambton,_1st_Earl_of_Durham"> British statesmen</a>. Anyway, Jack used to be a Navy Seal, but now he's double fisting booze and hanging out in a bar somewhere, until he gets called out of his... deep drunk cover to take a new mission, one that will give him a chance to get even with the man who took everything from him (you know murdered his wife and kid naturally). So without further explicit telling of everything happening in the movie with awkward exposition, Jack heads to the small town of Who-Gives-a-Fuck, Vermont, where he poses as an extremely conspicuous bartender at a local roadhouse. In addition to exciting the lady bartenders, Jack's other job is to locate a local arms dealer, who for some reason does all his business in the middle of nowhere, I mean I don't know who he's selling illegal arms to in the woods but... we'll overlook that I guess for now.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwItF7aq2ThekQ_S4Han_xkXn_Dsjj0GXGfCaAtjirWQVbCAAU2_GJHsdWgG6nhWyoN2pVLoaPV5MBqa5Z7b-gnFW_qkSTTUPJ3P1DeYuOaEl9D__GhA-hoMoiBrJ2fbs8vM-uXS0EWc4/s1600/hqdefault.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwItF7aq2ThekQ_S4Han_xkXn_Dsjj0GXGfCaAtjirWQVbCAAU2_GJHsdWgG6nhWyoN2pVLoaPV5MBqa5Z7b-gnFW_qkSTTUPJ3P1DeYuOaEl9D__GhA-hoMoiBrJ2fbs8vM-uXS0EWc4/s320/hqdefault.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8000001907349px; text-align: center;">Finding screenshots of this gem was tough...</td></tr>
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Of course, the story wouldn't be complete if there wasn't a lady that Jack could fall in sex with, despite his anguish over his dead wife. In a better movie, this role might be played by a famous person, but here we'll just have to settle for a lesser <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0679410/?ref_=tt_cl_t2">Pfeiffer</a>. Because in poorly written fiction coincidence is king, Jack's love interest Kate is also the very recently former mistress of Rolland, the son of the aforementioned arms dealer, and also a massive tool. This establishes that Kate has absolutely miserable taste in men, and therefore makes her intense interest in Jack a lot more believable, despite the fact that his heart is so achy breaky. Also he has a super cool mullet did I mention that? Well he does, it really completes his radical look. Kate's best friend keeps trying to warn her that Rolland is maybe a bad guy, because you know he is a well known criminal, murderer, woman abuser, adulterer, just generally the worst kind of person imaginable, but it takes Jack, another man, for her to finally make that leap. Rolland is not impressed, and responds with some good old fashioned lady beating, but not before Jack does some good old fashioned Rolland beating.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBlmNBRe6mxCfQwbFnGjKq32EwtZosceJR1rPg-YgRzSmNJ8iwWmy0T9vqBchu2TLWFw-3eERUxvcyBiomPaF9oukU3PpCm1RTibatxl-j099R6hhBa8p40wQL_wGlAvyk_IsCQdX0yp4/s1600/028676_18.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBlmNBRe6mxCfQwbFnGjKq32EwtZosceJR1rPg-YgRzSmNJ8iwWmy0T9vqBchu2TLWFw-3eERUxvcyBiomPaF9oukU3PpCm1RTibatxl-j099R6hhBa8p40wQL_wGlAvyk_IsCQdX0yp4/s1600/028676_18.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8000001907349px; text-align: center;">Who would change their stage name to Dedee honestly.</td></tr>
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This brings up a really important point about this movie, and that's that the action is really pretty bad. I suppose that's to be expected, but I mean... if this is how navy SEAL/CIA special agents are trained, I'm surprised that we haven't lost every military engagement our nation has ever been involved in. His training apparently involved things like, sloppy fist fighting, getting beat up by common thugs, walking into obvious traps, and spying on people so near to them in broad daylight that you would need to be dead not to notice. I'm really serious about that last one too, there's a scene where he's watching Rolland from his jeep about maybe 10 feet away from him, but somehow no one notices, perhaps because Jack is secretly some sort of redneck Jedi who uses a mind trick on them all. Needless to say, but Jack is one radical, gnarly, totally tubular dude, who knows how to get into sort of drunken brawls in the parking lot. Imagine Roadhouse, but only really terrible, and you have a pretty good idea about what to expect.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitXDmFp6G_dHD7O9vu2Rno5lmBamJPyRiD8878u8XIpaWgrGBzAjDhLyz_jeZIkVKX5EUH7vkNB27I6w3nOSqTd8Cih6NwiOIwoxjuF04sZnbwUzyXAI6loG9Cpq_ksvq0B7BQJaWLoDQ/s1600/radical-jack.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitXDmFp6G_dHD7O9vu2Rno5lmBamJPyRiD8878u8XIpaWgrGBzAjDhLyz_jeZIkVKX5EUH7vkNB27I6w3nOSqTd8Cih6NwiOIwoxjuF04sZnbwUzyXAI6loG9Cpq_ksvq0B7BQJaWLoDQ/s320/radical-jack.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8000001907349px; text-align: center;">Y'know, I think he's almost TOO radical.</td></tr>
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A direct to video garbage movie wouldn't be complete without awkward near nudity and really strange almost-sex scenes. Jack keeps trying to stave this off, because he can't engage in kissy-type behaviors without launching into uncontrollable flashbacks of his dead wife and family. Still, there's some time for some sleezy sex followed by murder, to establish that this movie wholeheartedly subscribes to the idea that woman exist to validate men, or be used and then disposed of. Basically they're cheap props and plot devices, and not actual people or characters. That said, they're more than capable of killing guys with guns, even if they've never touched one in their life. Basically anyone who picks up a handgun becomes a skilled assassin, if we can judge by Kate's kill count in the final warehouse confrontation.<br />
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Other highlights of the film include the old arms dealer dad, whose teeth are so horrifying that it will keep me up at night for weeks, and also the ruthless wife of the dead young sheriff, who has no compunctions against banging some murderer who killed her husband, if it means she might be able to get in on some of the hot criminal action. I think the only thing that could have made this movie better was if Billy Ray had taken some time out to sing some country music at the bar. That's it for now! Join me next week when I will actually review Age of Ultron.<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5318912740825377676.post-29120635798612075982015-04-29T20:35:00.005-04:002015-05-12T10:13:42.485-04:00Lucy<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9YdEOIELZxjZ4PkTYCGwix9NzRe3WAUs4driZ2Je2u1ry7pgzeqQUim5U_UmS0ggU0Y03s8QXiMdRClxDfq7YV9RzlqgpoL1dgX6y5y8QOXF4iU9-vfErQZZvZxxR45zCGM9kJY10_6Y/s1600/lucy2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9YdEOIELZxjZ4PkTYCGwix9NzRe3WAUs4driZ2Je2u1ry7pgzeqQUim5U_UmS0ggU0Y03s8QXiMdRClxDfq7YV9RzlqgpoL1dgX6y5y8QOXF4iU9-vfErQZZvZxxR45zCGM9kJY10_6Y/s1600/lucy2.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Spooky Eye: The Movie</td></tr>
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"She has the Power."<br />
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Good afternoon friends, and welcome back to another stirring edition of the Tagline, where movies are still king, or possibly queen as the case might be. Today I will be going back a little bit to talk about the recent Luc Besson film Lucy, a movie that I avoided seeing for a while because I wasn't sure I needed to see Scarlett Johansson hurricanrana another person. As it turned out, I really didn't but she mostly hurts people in different ways, so that was a real relief. Lucy is a movie about a girl, who as you may have guessed is named Lucy. She is kind of a dumbass, For starters, she hangs around with a seedy crowd, including her super awesome boyfriend who essentially sells her as a drug mule so that he can try to get out of a bad debt he owes to some Korean crime boss in Taiwan (where they are). This doesn't really work out great for him or his splattered brains, but he was an asshole anyway so really who cares. Lucy on the other hand... doesn't end up much better off, having her abdomen stuffed full of drugs and then getting kicked in her drug bag, which seems like a dumb plan on the part of her captors. Large amounts of the drug are absorbed by her system, which causes her to freak out and then does what every drug addict dreams about: gives her super powers. Despite her enhanced abilities and telekinesis and other crazy shit, Lucy's body is rapidly deteriorating, and so she attempts to locate the rest of the drug mules so she can juice up some more. Also she contacts well known wise person and maybe god Morgan Freeman so that she can try and figure out a way not to literally disintegrate on an airplane.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhS5tybqt0spzgftc3vR6HyviEPyQ6DOk7MlOeRKlXvzUrrVNPJTq_2Q0EP1kamme6yBhlzEkjyzbEjEFLIZPh2ba3vj6lzm5YsjZ__ReoLbNv_R4cJm8lIfxmQ7k1Fl33D9z9HUzEuQfg/s1600/lucy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhS5tybqt0spzgftc3vR6HyviEPyQ6DOk7MlOeRKlXvzUrrVNPJTq_2Q0EP1kamme6yBhlzEkjyzbEjEFLIZPh2ba3vj6lzm5YsjZ__ReoLbNv_R4cJm8lIfxmQ7k1Fl33D9z9HUzEuQfg/s1600/lucy.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Time to sexgun.</td></tr>
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Being as this movie is directed by Luc Besson, Lucy's journey is filled with flashy bursts of intense violence, some gunfights, some car chases, it hits all the high notes you'd come to expect from that kind of movie. This is fortunate, because beyond the action, this movie is maybe the most incomprehensible and ridiculous plot Besson has produced (though certainly incoherent in a more entertaining than <a href="http://everysinnerhasatagline.blogspot.com/2015/04/insurgent.html">Insurgent</a> say). Let's start from the beginning of dumb and then make our way gradually from there. The movie relies upon the perennial favorite of science urban legends, the "humans only use 10% of their brain and if they could use more they'd be psionic demi-gods" myth. This isn't the first time a big budget movie has based itself on that, as 2011's Limitless also utilized the "x% of your brain is unused" premise as the basis for its plot, though granted in a probably less stupid way. Of course, any theory, no matter how asinine, sounds more plausible when its being expounded on by Morgan Freeman in front of an audience in an academic looking setting. This is I assume the primary way people figured we'd accept the horseshit happening in <a href="http://everysinnerhasatagline.blogspot.com/2014/01/now-you-see-me.html">Now You See Me</a>.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJQy6teTezj5sPJ9-Zuh9BoR_K5na2YIpMDuj0gySTMTdBLRxS81lAVwctKPiIc7yIeVVhsi0x-ZLeSnAUoiX5AROvnaAuXlqvDYimz91DhMqevV-cgtO_1BMbtRrNSE1-dTGE2WP11a8/s1600/lucy3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJQy6teTezj5sPJ9-Zuh9BoR_K5na2YIpMDuj0gySTMTdBLRxS81lAVwctKPiIc7yIeVVhsi0x-ZLeSnAUoiX5AROvnaAuXlqvDYimz91DhMqevV-cgtO_1BMbtRrNSE1-dTGE2WP11a8/s1600/lucy3.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Who told you I was in Wanted?</td></tr>
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I'd like to say that the movie starts with a kind of silly premise but builds on it in a smart way, but that would make me a huge liar, so I'm not going to tell you that. From its dumb premise, the movie piles pseudo science on top of more pseudo science, until you're only vaguely aware of what is supposed to be happening, because it only makes the vaguest kind of sense. The movie also commits one of the absolutely most dire of all cinematic sins: using stock animal footage in any way whatsoever. This movie does it quite a bit too. I'd say maybe a fifth of the movie's run time is stock footage of animals doing stuff. There is essentially never a good excuse for doing this, and I'm sure there was a more elegant way to express whatever sentiments they were trying to get across with pictures of two lions humping or whatever.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSfy9xnLHxEpxxaW-LUueKj_Be_5xraGhDeesnwYIBQLOf33ibWjGUlss_RcFOGUWWKcktGwd0leWo2HDa6q9jZYQp7GXSJW6mVLkgAhAKXY30c1YotdOQnCwMY70k0mhHcwk9N_AVZ7Y/s1600/lucy4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSfy9xnLHxEpxxaW-LUueKj_Be_5xraGhDeesnwYIBQLOf33ibWjGUlss_RcFOGUWWKcktGwd0leWo2HDa6q9jZYQp7GXSJW6mVLkgAhAKXY30c1YotdOQnCwMY70k0mhHcwk9N_AVZ7Y/s1600/lucy4.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">She can see the code of the matrix or something,</td></tr>
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On top of these missteps, this film also suffers to some degree from <a href="http://everysinnerhasatagline.blogspot.com/2009/08/equilibrium.html">Equilibrium Syndrome</a>. This is to say, Lucy becomes a super powered killer person, who is less and less human, and also essentially unstoppable by any force on the Earth. While it's cool to watch her beat dudes up and later to just knock them out with her spooky mind powers, you end up losing most, if not all of your suspense and tension. The movie admittedly tries to stave this off by implying that Lucy is just going to disappear in a poof of smoke if she can't figure out some way not to, but even then her super perfect mental faculties make the chances of that outcome remote as well. All powerful characters can be fun, but they don't usually make for compelling protagonists, especially if one of their quirks is "loses their humanity and essentially becomes a robot".<br />
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Now I've taken a lot of digs at this movie, but it wasn't a movie that I hated while I was watching it. Rather as I thought about it afterwards, more and more ridiculous details became apparent (I mean most of them are so blatant that it was obvious even as I was watching that this was a super stupid movie). Still the sharp camera work and action sequences made this movie (which is only an hour and a half long) tolerable during its run time. Except for the stock animal footage, what the fuck. I'd say if you haven't seen this yet, you can go ahead and skip it. Go watch Nikita or something instead.<br />
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That's it for today! Join me again next week for Furious shit.</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5318912740825377676.post-1125862730180517442015-04-16T00:21:00.002-04:002015-04-16T00:21:06.255-04:00Insurgent<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-X-fKxoeO30q4uB1uz97RiQfWHYL8nb_8NQDu9wrQwFDgoQDfDwUUd0biH6q7T6BOVWsaM1D5BPQgZOzZUKc7qsNIOZAY5pqctv44kAl1bz9hx_1V9WoyFsaatGpHRAUZ_iQngAqj67E/s1600/Insurgent_poster.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-X-fKxoeO30q4uB1uz97RiQfWHYL8nb_8NQDu9wrQwFDgoQDfDwUUd0biH6q7T6BOVWsaM1D5BPQgZOzZUKc7qsNIOZAY5pqctv44kAl1bz9hx_1V9WoyFsaatGpHRAUZ_iQngAqj67E/s1600/Insurgent_poster.jpg" height="320" width="216" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Glass breaking everywhere.</td></tr>
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"One Choice Can Destroy You"<br />
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Hello my friends, welcome back to the Tagline, where I promise I haven't forgotten about you all. Today, just as in the days of yore, I will discuss a piece of flaming hot trash that I recently saw in the movie theater, where they no longer let you put your feet up apparently. I will be talking this time about Insurgent, the stunning sequel to the smash<a href="http://everysinnerhasatagline.blogspot.com/2014/04/divergent.html"> lunch time bullying after school special Divergent</a>. Take a moment to acquaint yourself and then we'll continue. Good? Okay. There are many reasons that I feel compelled to review movies that are invariably going to be trash. Sometimes I fear others will see them and be disappointed at how awful they are. Other times it's just really funny to watch how comically bad something is. Still other times a movie can be bad in a way that tells us how other movies can be good. Every now and then you get a movie that adroitly does all of these things, and this is one such time. Insurgent takes up where the first film left off, with Tris (played by the preeminently unlikable Shailene Woodley) and her grossly older boyfriend Four (Theo James) on the run from Jeanine (Kate Winslet) who is trying to hunt down all the Divergents because she thinks they're bad, and also is a wicked bitch. She heads up the Erudites, who are the caste of smarty-pants that in the first movie led a coup against the nice guys. In the process they murdered the parents of Tris, and she is as a result lookin' for some of that sweet sweet revenge.</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMY5amR8u-LvG_tuTFY8m1BYC3nV1UfnKyd1Ejk_KAMEB93Q2UAoNVYnCzNkQoR1pd-k8aWbqkiMc_cdGBZzkihbB7vDPklX4Di11dYxv49znMj0kjo9dPQ9H8GeBnApAJQhxuS0bdDKk/s1600/Insurgent-fourtris.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMY5amR8u-LvG_tuTFY8m1BYC3nV1UfnKyd1Ejk_KAMEB93Q2UAoNVYnCzNkQoR1pd-k8aWbqkiMc_cdGBZzkihbB7vDPklX4Di11dYxv49znMj0kjo9dPQ9H8GeBnApAJQhxuS0bdDKk/s1600/Insurgent-fourtris.jpg" height="213" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">So is that your dad or...?</td></tr>
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Now you need to understand some things. Things that the movie isn't terribly eager to share with you in any coherent way. For starters, Tris and her Dauntless pals are blamed for an attack on the Abnegation caste, which was orchestrated by Jeanine and her Erudite lackeys, through use of crazy future mind control technology. Unfortunately, no one is really aware of this except for the completely discredited outlaws. I will now explore in detail the first reason why this movie is garbage, and that is the sci-fi word salad plot. It would not be wrong to say that Divergent is about how Bella Swan gets entered into the Hunger Games, and then becomes a Maze Runner. This all takes place in the city from the Aeon Flux movie. What I mean to say is that this movie (and I assume at least in part the books) don't so much borrow as they poach wholesale most of their ideas, and not in an especially clever or inventive way. Generally speaking, if I'd cared enough to I could probably ask "why is any of this happening this way?" and I'd have no good answer. I'd have no good answer because mostly there wasn't one. Things kept happening, in rapid sequence, for seemingly no better reason than that it was what was <i>supposed</i> to happen next. </div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-aj-gTa6AUIP9YbXa_bhwnzgMvBZd2ZmAQJ3q9oR-BJWbSXU0hWZ2CvqSAneQAwOl5hLkg-gWIwJi7B8F0WgLElggvILN_v7Sm1kwAm6QAHS0mKQXgBsaz0ASM7-NMmwQVl6FEGf55qM/s1600/Insurgent-Still.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-aj-gTa6AUIP9YbXa_bhwnzgMvBZd2ZmAQJ3q9oR-BJWbSXU0hWZ2CvqSAneQAwOl5hLkg-gWIwJi7B8F0WgLElggvILN_v7Sm1kwAm6QAHS0mKQXgBsaz0ASM7-NMmwQVl6FEGf55qM/s1600/Insurgent-Still.jpg" height="266" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Hunger Games? could be...</td></tr>
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This brings me to the second reason the movie is terrible, which is that it was as poorly edited as it was poorly written. It is not uncommon in movies (especially action movies) for jump cuts to fly fast and furious (oh hell I need to see <i>that</i> don't I?) but it's very important for those jump cuts to flow in a way that makes sense. This film fails miserably in that regard, with jump cuts leaping between character groups and locations in a pell mell fashion that causes confusion as much as a well composed movie would keep you engaged with anticipation. There were several scene jumps where I wasn't sure if I were watching a flashback, or dream sequence, or if things were actually happening. To make that even worse, this movie is one of the few I can remember that actually seemed to have some continuity issues. The worst of which involved a single support character who I swear died twice and then was still in the background afterwards. It might have been a different person but... honestly I'm pretty sure it wasn't.</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihUmE3X7rC4WM-UnR7nw17k2JCKjbWrvIqwmrioLfXylxZ4kAo1Ey-s0qGfoJJIYyHQO2KVj04WolalLsvKF2WaQwgfpDJb-3-WRefTP8pLX3eOvJ4WdFDoj6LJBG7sbMJPtZ7nULPyrs/s1600/insurgent_trailer_still.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihUmE3X7rC4WM-UnR7nw17k2JCKjbWrvIqwmrioLfXylxZ4kAo1Ey-s0qGfoJJIYyHQO2KVj04WolalLsvKF2WaQwgfpDJb-3-WRefTP8pLX3eOvJ4WdFDoj6LJBG7sbMJPtZ7nULPyrs/s1600/insurgent_trailer_still.jpg" height="180" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">It was really hard to not burst out laughing during this scene.</td></tr>
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Bringing me to reason this movie is garbage number three.While the material is not exactly grade A, and the direction is also shit, the actors are not without their own share of the blame. Shailene Woodley is neither a good dramatic actor, nor is she a good action star. She is stiff, awkward, and generally just kind of weird looking. She constantly looks like she is on the verge of a sneer, except when she should actually be sneering, then she looks like she's pretending to be a troll or something. There is a slow motion scene where she is like... trying to make a snarling face or something, but it's just totally ridiculous. Her boyfriend is starkly older looking than her (and I think he really IS way older than her) and he has a mom who shows up in this movie and looks to be about the same age as him, which is weird (Naomi Watts I'll grant is actually 12 years older than him, but still, that's about the age gap between Theo James and Woodley). Also I couldn't help but be weirded out by the fact that Tris' brother is played by none other than her super tragic love Gus in The Fault in Our Stars. So it was just weird relationships all around I guess.</div>
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I would be remiss if I did not also mention that this movie has the 3D stink on it bad. In addition to scenes that just GENERALLY didn't make sense, this movie was also rife with scenes that didn't makes sense in order to be SUPER THREE DEE. The 3D bullshit wave is finally subsiding, but it was still pretty strong in this shitstorm of a film. We can all learn a lot from Insurgent, which is to say that it is a textbook example of how not to write, act, or direct a movie.</div>
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That's it for today! Join me again next week where I will hopefully talk about cars being dropped out of airplanes.</div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5318912740825377676.post-66602252721108097802015-03-25T23:00:00.003-04:002015-05-12T10:07:27.771-04:00Jane Eyre<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWFj8gzhwuX0prgyL1l8R-GMgKSmt96FSLS-JNWbwP9ZXCiHasyq-MVMe5sPwGO-TMS9g_BTkwpnICg3lDcg7g7rLIY057jz6maGD7D5zGx1zyF5CWWCOxYBZ9UcMHRb638EuetIs_wNU/s1600/Jane_Eyre_Poster.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWFj8gzhwuX0prgyL1l8R-GMgKSmt96FSLS-JNWbwP9ZXCiHasyq-MVMe5sPwGO-TMS9g_BTkwpnICg3lDcg7g7rLIY057jz6maGD7D5zGx1zyF5CWWCOxYBZ9UcMHRb638EuetIs_wNU/s1600/Jane_Eyre_Poster.jpg" width="217" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Just let the sad sink in.</td></tr>
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"Even for me life had its gleams of sunshine.”"<br />
Hello Friends, it is that time again! Today I am going to discuss one of my favorite pastimes. See sometimes in the summertime, I like to watch morose movies about English moors and brood about them. Okay, so I like to do it even when it isn't summer, but in this particular case it was summer. The nearby art cinema a town over was showing Jane Eyre, probably my favorite work of gothic fiction, and I had nothing to occupy me for the afternoon (a state so long past that I can't even remember how it felt). Obviously Jane Eyre has been adapted numerous times, but I'm talking about the 2011 film, direct by Cary Fukunaga, probably best known now for True Detective. This film starred <a href="http://even%20for%20me%20life%20had%20its%20gleams%20of%20sunshine.xn--ivg/">Mia Wasikowska</a>, whose name I will literally never spell right on the first try, as Jane Eyre, and <a href="http://everysinnerhasatagline.blogspot.com/2013/01/x-men-first-class.html">Michael Fassbender</a> as Rochester. I haven't been shy about my feelings for Wasikowska, and the types of characters she gravitates towards, but I'll make a rare exception for Bronte, and maybe Crimson Peak when it comes out. Not for another goddamned Alice in Wonderland movie though. Fuck that. Enough about her though, let's talk about Jane Eyre. I'll give you a brief intro if you haven't read it first, and we can go from there. Jane Eyre is a novel written by Chalotte Bronte, about an orphan who experiences a typically miserable and dreary childhood in the late 18th century, being sent to Lowood school for girls, which is bleak and awful, are you sensing a theme. She eventually leaves to become a governess at the home of the eccentric and secretive Mr. Rochester.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5TTL7O4kIIqOvWOTVvHP35twzQQbVRPAElebNHHrdyxkIMesL9i95p6VJrareZHls4Dgqp8BjeIsC6DooP6utVHmjuN6_OVzZQSe9nH0cdNux2Rqz-JuhOpmlAZM43JdBmNhcgeVj-_A/s1600/JaneEyre1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="176" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5TTL7O4kIIqOvWOTVvHP35twzQQbVRPAElebNHHrdyxkIMesL9i95p6VJrareZHls4Dgqp8BjeIsC6DooP6utVHmjuN6_OVzZQSe9nH0cdNux2Rqz-JuhOpmlAZM43JdBmNhcgeVj-_A/s1600/JaneEyre1.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">You can just TELL things are going to be sexy.</td></tr>
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The film starts as a flashback to Jane's youth, before then jumping forward to her appointment at Thornfield Hall, where she is to be responsible for Adele, a young French orphan girl. For the most part, Jane keeps company only with Adele and Mrs. Fairfax (Dame Judi Dench) but after some time meets the master of the house, Edward Rochester (who she first meets when she causes him to fall off his horse by standing around in the road). Rochester is an off-putting and temperamental fellow, but not without his virtues, and he and Jane gradually fall in love, in the dreary and dim confines of Thornfield Hall. Naturally a gothic novel couldn't have people being happy, and so intervening between Jane and happiness are Rochester's betrothal to Blanche Ingram, who is a twit, and also mysterious misfortunes that occur in the manor, that seem to indicate someone else lives in the house, or perhaps a ghost that sets fires (and certainly given the atmosphere you couldn't rule that out). As a woman of morality and also reason, Jane is torn between her passions and her sense of self-respect, an issue I never have especially when I'm at a Chinese buffet.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUalN8LOYD6Y8rJ_ylpMW1Z9E_Ab7Uf6Fweep784GXk9kOcRhzxkw05CIKF03gXhVp1UbVjsoCC8pROvM6wRO0UpBHvmfITWkfhjsovxvWrHegz9-Vezrl9fizduAu_C1gxizdf_d6sV0/s1600/8039018_orig.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUalN8LOYD6Y8rJ_ylpMW1Z9E_Ab7Uf6Fweep784GXk9kOcRhzxkw05CIKF03gXhVp1UbVjsoCC8pROvM6wRO0UpBHvmfITWkfhjsovxvWrHegz9-Vezrl9fizduAu_C1gxizdf_d6sV0/s1600/8039018_orig.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Fog is the only weather here. And cold dampness.</td></tr>
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The circumstances of Jane's life are simultaneously extraordinary and mundane, alternating between fortune and extreme misfortune. As I mentioned above, one of the central conflicts of the novel (and therefore the film) is of a conflict between what is right, and what is expedient and what a person wants. There is also a strong theme of atonement, and the inevitable price that one must pay for their transgressions (and believe me, everyone gets what they have coming to them in this film one way or another, usually not in a subtle way). All of this is great, but I will grant that none of it is unique to this adaptation. These are all things that the movie inherits from its source material. So what distinguishes this film from other adaptations?<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRZqdZ3xDSYoD-hEqgYaLnuzmQ-gsAAjy7uABsPPBFXzPN85xRaGXfuuJmoftai6Y3wSZc7nCS7wV4WmG4glxpJHIKjOwbjRRjC_jK-DVRddy7n4vXUYJCCCSjYGO1Txlyv-lz4FdJx60/s1600/MEEEEE.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRZqdZ3xDSYoD-hEqgYaLnuzmQ-gsAAjy7uABsPPBFXzPN85xRaGXfuuJmoftai6Y3wSZc7nCS7wV4WmG4glxpJHIKjOwbjRRjC_jK-DVRddy7n4vXUYJCCCSjYGO1Txlyv-lz4FdJx60/s1600/MEEEEE.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This man is in love with her. Also he doesn't realize they're<br />
actually cousins. Oops.</td></tr>
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For starters, the movie is paced outstandingly. While I like gothic fiction at least as much as the next guy (probably more let's be honest) it doesn't always translate into gripping cinema. The fact is that the slow burn is one of the defining characteristics of the genre, and while that's great in a book it can lead to a plodding chore of a movie. This film uses clever framing and scene composition to sidestep this problem, keeping the plot flowing and twisting without feeling like it is in a rush. This plotting is accompanied by the sort of gorgeous and melancholy scenery and cinematography that I so enjoy, and that really sells the setting. The performances are also just fantastic, and as annoying as I frequently find Mia Wasikowska, she absolutely IS Jane Eyre, and Michael Fassbender is an excellent Rochester, simultaneously likable and imposing, oscillating between charming and brooding in the space of a scene.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzEwEbPSaIb1kRQHD0JXygzI5BYgGCnJVeDrij9_pL5Gk0VvPtcBE1SA3Emmhh91nJxFlvUhBgccN_YiJ-Jav6hvJwGKijLqZ4eIXVApbBTamSxY6wZwRfu4PWV5rXDZY3GGF2Ie15Ur4/s1600/jane-eyre.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="172" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzEwEbPSaIb1kRQHD0JXygzI5BYgGCnJVeDrij9_pL5Gk0VvPtcBE1SA3Emmhh91nJxFlvUhBgccN_YiJ-Jav6hvJwGKijLqZ4eIXVApbBTamSxY6wZwRfu4PWV5rXDZY3GGF2Ie15Ur4/s1600/jane-eyre.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">You can be happy after your house burns down.</td></tr>
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So basically what I'm saying is if you like gothic stuff, if your favored movie setting is a foggy moor where sad British people talk about their duties and stuff, then this is it right here. This is what you need to be watching.<br />
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That's it for today! Join me next week, for a special...treat.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5318912740825377676.post-35259330338718723992015-03-18T20:15:00.002-04:002015-03-18T20:15:26.076-04:00Chappie<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfNGAly7IgkCcMTXRK88jFp6E6jN3Edt7CHZt_9R9f7SeU94BHX0tUMlFr5FxKJ-cnmg-eGwIw5ZtzRZXOysVBnF7A8iO5oVlRZ9dN0No8BwFlNFLKzUOxSjG643Q3Y6prxWkawRpwXok/s1600/chappie_ver2_xlg.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfNGAly7IgkCcMTXRK88jFp6E6jN3Edt7CHZt_9R9f7SeU94BHX0tUMlFr5FxKJ-cnmg-eGwIw5ZtzRZXOysVBnF7A8iO5oVlRZ9dN0No8BwFlNFLKzUOxSjG643Q3Y6prxWkawRpwXok/s1600/chappie_ver2_xlg.jpg" height="320" width="215" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">I'm glad my parents aren't hyper-criminals<br />who are also Die Antwoord.</td></tr>
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"I am discovery. I am wonder. I am Chappie."<br />
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I feel like this tagline is a bit misleading in terms of the movie's tone, but then again I've never especially gotten the impression that tagline writers have any idea what movies are about. Welcome back to THE Tagline, where robots get set on fire just to watch them burn. Over the weekend I got out to the movies, because there was something that I actually wanted to see, and that was Chappie, the latest from South African-Canadian pain artist Neill Blomkamp, a man romantically involved with cinematic misery, and also science fiction I suppose. His last fictional foray was the aggressively unpleasant and almost completely unnecessary <a href="http://everysinnerhasatagline.blogspot.com/2013/08/elysium.html">Elysium</a>, a film where Matt Damon portrays a low-life who enlists the help of bigger low-lifes, to bring down the biggest, meanest, low-lifes of all, who live on a magical paradise in outer space. What you may be detecting is I didn't think much of Elysium. While still kind of a bummer, I found <a href="http://everysinnerhasatagline.blogspot.com/2013/12/district-9.html">District 9</a>, his first major theatrical release, to be substantially less shitty, and so with these two experiences from the director behind me, I figured that I had a 50/50 shot of either liking or hating Chappie, a movie about a police robot that gains sentience, in the caldera of violence and shittiness that is Johannesburg. How did I end up liking it? Well things went about 50/50. Let's start off with the basics.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4NMmqdtYpIMeAKqHYnRbpMoHvYlXauj3yn9ictzDeOg3JT7QOVTF7DDkGRR5fwrga0NKLhzF7JL8osCRiINZVztS2H0H5_vLANm_FNA2saE6B5jRw_uE0TLrTsU3v4PjL_N6D4J8wkys/s1600/chappie-gunz.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4NMmqdtYpIMeAKqHYnRbpMoHvYlXauj3yn9ictzDeOg3JT7QOVTF7DDkGRR5fwrga0NKLhzF7JL8osCRiINZVztS2H0H5_vLANm_FNA2saE6B5jRw_uE0TLrTsU3v4PjL_N6D4J8wkys/s1600/chappie-gunz.jpg" height="195" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This is not a guy you reason with.</td></tr>
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While it is his third major studio film, Chappie's concept was derived from Blomkamp's first short film, about humanoid police robots being deployed to enforce law and order in Johannesburg, which as you may have noticed in District 9, kind of makes urban crime in America look like a joke, and bears a striking example to some shit out of Borderlands. You get to see more of that in this movie, with crazy guys without shirts shouting in Afrikaans while they fire golden AK47s and neon yellow AR15s. It's the sort of thing where it's clearly supposed to be the sort of messed up future, but at the same time it just looks like a slightly worse present. Chappie starts following the widespread success of the humanoid scout patrolbots, having been innovated by Tetravaal employee Deon Wilson (Dev Patel, perhaps best known for his performance in Slumdog Millionaire). This has earned the company success, but also earned the ire of weapons developer/Australian maniac Vincent Moore (Hugh Jackman) whose wildly excessive Moose prototype has been shelved in favor of the scouts, which don't fire cluster bombs, presumably making them more useful as law-enforcement tools. Moore's machine looks more like those monsters from <a href="http://everysinnerhasatagline.blogspot.com/2014/02/robocop-2014.html">Robocop</a>. Behind the scenes, Deon is working at home to try and create a true artificial intelligence, and is on the cusp of doing so. That's great an all, until Die Antwoord gets involved.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiP-Ae3TIBivHpqCvTyHfgz9wZL8-q5zAhStphMsLzWnvA3mwmwXfFfVk8Ay2VyFVCWcGb-1k2hGztz-GBjstGTPRbGhp0efJ7JvxKkMbibvKO94UM8TY4zhBzu1x4X34plzE5tfYUJMrc/s1600/HughJackmanChappieBlomkampTrailer-619-386.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiP-Ae3TIBivHpqCvTyHfgz9wZL8-q5zAhStphMsLzWnvA3mwmwXfFfVk8Ay2VyFVCWcGb-1k2hGztz-GBjstGTPRbGhp0efJ7JvxKkMbibvKO94UM8TY4zhBzu1x4X34plzE5tfYUJMrc/s1600/HughJackmanChappieBlomkampTrailer-619-386.jpg" height="199" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This is how you have to dress Hugh Jackman to turn the<br />audience against him.</td></tr>
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No seriously that's what happened. So let's go to plot B, which becomes inextricably tangled with plot A. Ninja's gang, which includes Yolandi of course (for those who don't know, Die Antwoord is a... like South African Rap/Rave group basically) is in trouble with the previously mentioned shirtless golden AK wielding maniac, a guy named Hippo. They need to get him 20 million rand by the end of the week, after a drug delivery goes south or he's going to kill them (though personally I think he's going to kill them regardless). They decide the best way to get the money is to knock over an armored car, but they know the police robots will just appear and massacre them. To get around this, they set out to try and find a way to deactivate the robots. They figure kidnapping the guy who designed them is a good start. Just as they do this, Deon is taking home a chassis slated for destruction, to use secretly as the test bed for his AI program. He is forced to activate it under less than ideal circumstances clearly.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7J_YmhJP7pcvatEP9QZCpn3yHqq6mOptQwpSWVZQbcZqcWX7AseD6alUsJea2Z-w3LReejR6trly9AFDTKDsOJEPJCZP5YOnrbnCqW3sdvN02TeZR2M_SoO8jUyhKi3794P9yFK2N6Vw/s1600/Chappie--2nd-trailer.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7J_YmhJP7pcvatEP9QZCpn3yHqq6mOptQwpSWVZQbcZqcWX7AseD6alUsJea2Z-w3LReejR6trly9AFDTKDsOJEPJCZP5YOnrbnCqW3sdvN02TeZR2M_SoO8jUyhKi3794P9yFK2N6Vw/s1600/Chappie--2nd-trailer.jpg" height="213" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Cool is... different in South Afrika I guess.</td></tr>
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Chappie is what Yolandi dubs the bot once it activates, born as a super-smart baby and voiced by you guessed it, Sharlto Copley (because how could he not be in a movie directed by Neill Blomkamp). Chappie is a blank slate that acquires information like a sponge, but Ninja isn't amused by any of this baby-time bullshit, and immediately sets about <i>teaching</i> Chappie about guns and crime and shit, by dumping him among some hoodlums, who do what is only natural and savagely beat the robot, and set him on fire. This segment begins some of the most upsetting sequences in the film, because... I mean gosh they're just really not nice to this robot. I get the narrative reason why bad things have to happen to Chappie... but at the same time I feel like those sequences could have been shorter and still gotten the point across. This general enthusiasm for brutality was the segment of the film that reminded me most of Elysium, which is like Chappie minus anything good that could happen, or any good people. Awful criminals with nearly no sense of morality though they may be, Ninja, Yolandi, and their pal Amerika are all better than the least villainous characters in Elysium, showing at least sparks of humanity amidst their general awfulness.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjduDzR6gCKB3xAEzVC8uz-QIsMdiaf0XFn8nZNmr0QL9Oao9JpxVmu8j8QKwabYCcIbLXDE2aJ8H5CEBVFNSm2FelkSnJAiaYD4I-DjlGvrgO9rHTQ4Z_irt9_kvofu8NQEoKEuWZmhT8/s1600/chappie-image-5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjduDzR6gCKB3xAEzVC8uz-QIsMdiaf0XFn8nZNmr0QL9Oao9JpxVmu8j8QKwabYCcIbLXDE2aJ8H5CEBVFNSm2FelkSnJAiaYD4I-DjlGvrgO9rHTQ4Z_irt9_kvofu8NQEoKEuWZmhT8/s1600/chappie-image-5.jpg" height="167" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">I get that it's probably hot but like... put a shirt on.</td></tr>
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I'd read reviews that this film was pointless and brutal, and I have to disagree. I think it had a pretty decent point actually, but yeah it was still pretty brutal. That said, of the three Blomkamp movies it has the least depressing narrative arc, and it has interesting things to say about human potential, character evolution, and also cool robots. Also it has a lot of guys getting shot or occasionally torn apart and blown up, so if high concept science fiction isn't your thing don't worry, there's also buckets of violence, because savagery is the name of the game in Jo'burg. The effects, particularly the scouts and Chappie himself, are incredibly cool, and you really have every sense that Chappie is real and not just some souped up special effect. I was never once distracted from the film by the fact that the primary protagonist was a robot. No doubt as the director intended, he was maybe the most human character in the film.<br />
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I was scared like a Chappie set on fire, but in the end this movie proved itself, and I can recommend you go see it, though you've been warned about how rough it can get. Also be ready to be exposed to Die Antwoord directly, which can be extremely traumatic. That's my update for the week. Join me again next week, and thanks for hanging with me.</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5318912740825377676.post-73946916414906089642015-03-11T00:35:00.004-04:002015-03-11T00:35:49.159-04:00The Grand Budapest Hotel<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj87vORALXXc0XpUAhQVt2t1r51EtfIYeA4USO01SutC2rJUGiFWdAPFGRplsBb2QAA1Ag7Wj1LUUiAogU2g7hT76_mwRIRawMRzb25vbJL15wmCxss7PS-ZD1yGR8uciYW8OitF5m3SQA/s1600/tgbh.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj87vORALXXc0XpUAhQVt2t1r51EtfIYeA4USO01SutC2rJUGiFWdAPFGRplsBb2QAA1Ag7Wj1LUUiAogU2g7hT76_mwRIRawMRzb25vbJL15wmCxss7PS-ZD1yGR8uciYW8OitF5m3SQA/s1600/tgbh.jpg" height="320" width="213" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Pink Hotel.</td></tr>
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Hello everyone, and welcome back to the Tagline. The week is new, and at last we can almost see the ground, emerging from the hellish permafrost that I feel has engulfed us for an eternity. I know that February is the shortest month out of the year, but I swear it dragged on for months. Enough about that though, let's focus on what's going on <i>inside</i> of movie theaters specifically. today I will be talking the recent effort from that most...I don't know what word I'm searching for, but it falls somewhere between pretentious and whimsical, of directors, Wes Anderson. I am talking of course about The Grand Budapest Hotel, a film that was recently nominated for nine Oscars (four of which it won, although best picture eluded it). I wouldn't take it too hard though Wes, this is the same academy that last year nominated Gravity for best picture, which I feel the need to reiterate, <a href="http://everysinnerhasatagline.blogspot.com/2014/04/gravity.html">I FUCKING HATE</a>. I'm not sure this is a body you can trust, though I guess it's better than the AACTA, which actually AWARDED best picture to Gravity. That's awful, but don't worry, that's enough about that garbage. Instead we will talk about The Grand Budapest, a film starring Ralph Fiennes as Monsieur Gustave H, the concierge at the Grand Budapest. This story is a framing story, within another framing device, being a story that an author is telling, about a story he was told by the owner of the Grand Budapest to him in the 60s, about when the OWNER was a young lobby boy in the late 30s.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">There it is. The very image of class.</td></tr>
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So as a lobby boy, Zero worked under Monsieur Gustave, who represents a sort of bygone age of decadent service (as does the Grand Budapest itself, existing in a sort of liminal space) and personal attention. Gustave in particular pays attention to vain rich old ladies, but in general represents a high standard of professionalism, and also (of course) eccentricity. The Grand Budapest occupies the imaginary European nation of Zabrowka, ravaged by war and poverty, and on the eve of what looks to be a fight between communists and fascists (which seems appropriate given the era). This is the backdrop on which the movie opens, and in this climate, one of Gustave's old rich paramours dies suddenly, and so he rushes to her estate to pay his respects. There he discovers that he is to inherit a priceless painting, boy with apple. Of course the deceased Madame D's son Dmitri (Adrien Brody) is none impressed with Gustave, and is eager to solidify his inheritance and wrest the painting from Gustave (who immediately absconds with it, with the help of Zero). It is at this point that it comes to light that Madame D was in fact poisoned, and Gustave is being set up to take the fall for the deed. This starts a story of intrigue and conspiracy, as Gustave attempts to prove his innocence (with the help of his protege of course). Amidst these events Zero also meets Agatha (Saoirse Ronan) the love of his life.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihdal_cGgYqjz-5i4TUvchUxn3mzCwc5jURAqgU7LM7o0Db1rKuTSIRIU_08ibzEtLf_2wWU_fSePuFlKWPIsAlePpEB0GXd9BLIQRU1mjZkHR4Cj94vUxMwWK9_YFXPGuHHcLHzBlNoU/s1600/film_review_the_grand_budapest_hotel_89664785.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihdal_cGgYqjz-5i4TUvchUxn3mzCwc5jURAqgU7LM7o0Db1rKuTSIRIU_08ibzEtLf_2wWU_fSePuFlKWPIsAlePpEB0GXd9BLIQRU1mjZkHR4Cj94vUxMwWK9_YFXPGuHHcLHzBlNoU/s1600/film_review_the_grand_budapest_hotel_89664785.jpg" height="185" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Look how floury she is! A vision of loveliness</td></tr>
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If you have seen anything directed by Wes Anderson ever, then you have a pretty good idea already about the sort of tone the movie will strike (Rushmore, Moonrise Kingdom, The Darjeeling Limited), a sort of juxtaposition of bleak circumstance and brightly colored scenery. There is a sort of deliberate haphazardness to the movie, and it is broken down into five main segments, along with a prologue and epilogue. While there is always a degree of pretentiousness to Wes Anderson movies, I still found this one to be particularly entertaining and enjoyable. Ralph Fiennes is amazing as Gustave, and together he and Zero (18 year old Tony Revolori) have a real buddy movie thing going on. They make for a very amusing pair, and are backed up by a fantastic cast, including Edward Norton (who was all over Oscar movies this year, also featuring prominently in Birdman) Tilda Swinton, Willem Dafoe, Jeff Goldblum and Jude Law to name a few.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj463gdbrID6sOQAlns5yFFQmgLuOkVLKYI7bJ_Avu4ce6nj6HNpJgSEttFXjXOUBp9EFfC_cGu5UCe8sBy-GppsiXxLZUJ0P74zOq1s6C42R8VzbGGxqQFBGJm5WMGh7OWI_7YMBrVi9A/s1600/grand_budapest_hotel_426.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj463gdbrID6sOQAlns5yFFQmgLuOkVLKYI7bJ_Avu4ce6nj6HNpJgSEttFXjXOUBp9EFfC_cGu5UCe8sBy-GppsiXxLZUJ0P74zOq1s6C42R8VzbGGxqQFBGJm5WMGh7OWI_7YMBrVi9A/s1600/grand_budapest_hotel_426.jpg" height="213" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">They're basically nazis.</td></tr>
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I went into this movie not entirely convinced that I would like it, but it more or less immediately won me over. As a enjoyable movie that entertains without being oppressive, I can definitely recommend you see this movie. It is worth the hour and a halfish runtime and then some (it goes without saying I think but this movie grossed around 175 million against its 30 million dollar budget, so good for it). Also this movie had less of a weird pedo vibe than Moonrise Kingdom, so that was nice. Anyway that's it for today! Join me again on Thursday for maybe something weird?Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5318912740825377676.post-87832611084100163802015-03-05T23:30:00.003-05:002015-03-05T23:30:24.458-05:00Taken 2<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrI_lKzlIORV4gwD5cA52dzpykwRM3gfyX1i_DJwmSMDBvx8ISAD6U0CBt-QtlsMQF_w25YTLw97YakEajvETPDp7ckaFbAvSmK9JGFTHnAhlMpEOI5_eAAL61W0dT48wJA5eCWZ3PvTY/s1600/MV5BMTkwNTQ0ODExOV5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwNjU3NDQwOA@@._V1_SX640_SY720_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrI_lKzlIORV4gwD5cA52dzpykwRM3gfyX1i_DJwmSMDBvx8ISAD6U0CBt-QtlsMQF_w25YTLw97YakEajvETPDp7ckaFbAvSmK9JGFTHnAhlMpEOI5_eAAL61W0dT48wJA5eCWZ3PvTY/s1600/MV5BMTkwNTQ0ODExOV5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwNjU3NDQwOA@@._V1_SX640_SY720_.jpg" height="320" width="216" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Badideas.com</td></tr>
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"They want revenge, They chose the wrong guy."<div>
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Now there is a true Tagline. Hi folks, welcome to the Tagline, where I needed to take a break to actually watch some damned movies so I could go back to REVIEWING those same damned movies. Today I'm going to do what I do best, and talk about a movie where a guy kills a whole bunch of other guys. Think back a ways, to 2008, and you'll remember Taken, a film where Liam Neeson plays former CIA operative turned private security Bryan Mills. One fine day his daughter goes on an unsupervised trip to godless and lawless Europe (France specifically) where she is abducted by sex traffickers. That probably seemed like a great idea to them, but Bryan happened to be on the phone with her when it happened, and despite the taunts of her kidnapper (who only says "good luck") he DOES in fact have good luck. See sometimes you kidnap a girl and her father is a professional murder man. As a no frills action/vigilante revenge fantasy movie, Taken was wildly successful, grossing well over 200 million worldwide on its 25 million dollar budget. As such, they could hardly be expected to risk making a sequel (or two actually). Taken 2 brings us back into the world of Bryan Mills, trying to be a less shitty dad while still doing security on the side. This film opens as Albanian mobsters, relatives and associates of the MANY people Mills killed in the first film, commend what's left of their friends and family to the earth, and swear revenge on the man who put them there. Now, if you've seen the first movie, this probably instantly strikes you as a not awesome idea on their part, but hey, they're used to having it good and probably don't know any better. But they're going to learn.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Just look at his face. This is an annoying mindless chore to<br />him, like taking out the trash. He's probably thinking about lunch.</td></tr>
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Bryan has a job taking him to Istanbul, you know because he is still private security. His ex-wife Lenore's marriage is conveniently falling apart, and after a particularly big row with her soon to be ex-husband number two(?) Bryan offers to have her and his daughter Kim come visit him in Istanbul for a fantastic vacation/opportunity for some Albanians to get some revenge. At least that's what they think, as they bribe and torture their way into tracking down Bryan. It's like fighting and struggling so that you can fall into a spike pit full of wolverines. Anyway, Bryan and Lenore are TAKEN, and Kim evades the kidnappers. Bryan escapes and then it is high time for murder time. This is I feel like the logical resolution to the situation, and I don't really know what these Albanian guys were really expecting. If I found out that someone I knew, or even was related to had been electrocuted in a makeshift electric chair because they'd kidnapped some guy's daughter, and that he later had gone on to kill like three dozen other people, my first instinct would not be to go after the guy and his family again. Maybe that makes me a coward, but I notably haven't been shot and stabbed by anyone yet this week, so I guess there are pros and cons. The point is these guys clearly didn't get the pretty specific message he sent in the first movie, and put good money/bodies behind bad, in a revenge attempt that I think you can all guess goes pretty poorly.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">She has the good sense to change outfits shortly after this.</td></tr>
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So for starters, how does this film stack up to its predecessor? Well it's not as good, because it is obviously kind of a retread, but it still entertains if you're looking for the aforementioned "bad guys get what they deserve from Liam Neeson" type of film. Predictably, Liam Neeson is the best part of the film (and of most films he appears in) although everyone turns in a respectable and super serious performance. Famke Janssen doesn't get a lot to do other than be kidnapped, but it was nice to see Kim (portrayed by Maggie Grace) get some screen time doing things other than being a helpless victim. In particular the super intense "driving lesson" scene was pretty great, demonstrating that there are worse things that can happen to you in a car than your driver's license test. Like being chased by Albanians. I have to imagine after these two movies though that Albanian crime rates dropped significantly, as they now have no criminals left.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The accelerated Drivers Ed course is brutal man.</td></tr>
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While he didn't direct it, Luc Besson co-wrote this movie (as well as the first and third Taken movies) and so it bears many of the signs of his handiwork, which is to say it is long on action and not as much on the cerebral side of things (some time I'll talk about Lucy, and what happens when Luc Besson tries to branch out a little). This movie is exactly what it seems like it will be, and if that's not what you're into, or what you're in the mood for, Taken 2 won't win you over. If you want to watch Liam Neeson brutalize some criminals though? You won't be disappointed.</div>
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That's it for today! I'll see you all on Tuesday.</div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5318912740825377676.post-43345480595959447132015-02-28T14:06:00.002-05:002015-02-28T14:06:22.852-05:00Birdman or (the Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFjuP42CkHOqbhUnAVXBMmuaDVjkNLffA9bOoLB_zPJDBL2OllZC5pcuXEE3lb7mfqjz56evonOeJdYcJ-DTxhPeygyi_n6bebjb77Ia85ucWVnTVOyXbYm3KV4v1OpGuXVN-fvgtA7IU/s1600/birdman-poster.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFjuP42CkHOqbhUnAVXBMmuaDVjkNLffA9bOoLB_zPJDBL2OllZC5pcuXEE3lb7mfqjz56evonOeJdYcJ-DTxhPeygyi_n6bebjb77Ia85ucWVnTVOyXbYm3KV4v1OpGuXVN-fvgtA7IU/s1600/birdman-poster.jpg" height="320" width="208" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">BIIIRRRDDMAAANNN</td></tr>
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Hey friends, welcome to another swinging night at the Tagline! Today I'm gonna be talking about Birdman, a movie that shockingly is not based on a Hanna Barbera cartoon. Is that disappointing now that I think about it? Well... maybe a little. At any rate, we're talking about Birdman or the Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance, starring Michael Keaton as Riggan Thomson, a Hollywood Has-been who was best known for his portrayal of the superhero Birdman, in blockbuster films of days gone past (Michael Keaton in real life was, as you may all remember, the original <a href="http://everysinnerhasatagline.blogspot.com/2014/11/batman-1989.html">Batman</a> on the silver screen). In an attempt to make a comeback, Riggan is putting on an adaptation of Raymond Carver's <i>What We Talk About When We Talk About Love,</i> and has invested essentially everything he has left in the effort. Also involved in the production are his girlfriend Laura (Andrea Riseborough apparently destined to always be the <a href="http://everysinnerhasatagline.blogspot.com/2013/04/oblivion.html">other woman</a>), first time broadway actress Lesley (Naomi Watts) and through Lesley the eccentric and off the rails Mike (Edward Norton), who is a Broadway veteran that Riggan hopes will lend credibility to his show in the eyes of the critics. Also on the production are Riggan's lawyer Jake (Zach Galifianakis) and Riggan's recovering addict daughter Sam (Emma Stone being as mean as she can be), Jake as production manager/Riggan handler and Sam as Riggan's assistant/surly daughter not doing much. That's the players assembled, and basically the movie centers around Riggan's attempts to prepare the show to open, leading up to its first full performance for the public.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This seems totally normal to me.</td></tr>
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Of course, all is not well in paradise, given that nearly everyone involved is a borderline psychotic. Riggan in particular is a house of cards just waiting to fall into a heap on the ground. For starters, Riggan is tormented by the voice of Birdman, who harangues him for abandoning his roles in Hollywood, and constantly belittles him, and denigrates everyone and everything in Riggan's life. Riggan also perceives himself performing feats of levitation and telekinesis, but it is never entirely clear whether this is another delusion of his (of which he has many) or if he actually can do these things. For his part, Riggan considers resorting to those tricks (whether he can do them or not) as being a cheap way out, and so refuses to rely on them, instead believing that he can prove himself as a legitimate actor. Of course to elitist performers like Mike and critics like Tabitha Dickinson (who is apparently well regarded enough that she could kill a show with a single bad review) Riggan is a clown, and basically nothing he could do would persuade them otherwise. Meanwhile Riggan is trying to cope with his kind of whacko girlfriend, who may be pregnant (and who frankly he's a total dick to) his daughter teetering on the edge of relapse and meltdown herself, and of course Mike, who does his best to ensure every preview showing of the performance is a disaster in some way (he sexually assaults Lesley on stage during one scene, which I'd say is taking method acting a bit far).<br /><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7khbrwTqd5O8Tv1iKJpdd1tlOa4btmJ4WYUPCLEgX9dYjtGMQe-CfvrsVEkzwwjPjzQyUePhiZaIk7e7GIiswzqfwcrysTr9k2BHfS79I6skw5t9Zh37aG5epa-XfgjkwmgTCPoQ3Cdc/s1600/birdman-movie-poster-9.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7khbrwTqd5O8Tv1iKJpdd1tlOa4btmJ4WYUPCLEgX9dYjtGMQe-CfvrsVEkzwwjPjzQyUePhiZaIk7e7GIiswzqfwcrysTr9k2BHfS79I6skw5t9Zh37aG5epa-XfgjkwmgTCPoQ3Cdc/s1600/birdman-movie-poster-9.jpg" height="172" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">It's all about sex appeal.</td></tr>
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In the forefront of my mind, you have to appreciate the performances on hand in this film. Michael Keaton is brilliant even as his character is kind of 50/50 between loathsome and pathetic. Actually many of the characters have that going on, Edward Norton's character is aggressively unlikable but also kind of pitiful too. The whiff of desperation is detectable on basically everyone in the film, but then that's where a lot of the comedy value comes from (though there is still a dark streak to the whole proceedings) The ambient music track consists of a lot of jazz drumming but... I don't know if i was totally into that. I think it was really fitting for the movie though.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzKLlvqNHkDVZkIsrEwroZSJpOrGi-_FnteHT1uwtFNPkey4jFOsvlBsTrLkJXLd0ffSSN7CcmKYamZifv9MgjIyshYuBgeB0lHohk3B9VOfxyY8OxE5QRncHWvfafKZ3dPY_8lYrZk2Y/s1600/birdman-movie-poster-4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzKLlvqNHkDVZkIsrEwroZSJpOrGi-_FnteHT1uwtFNPkey4jFOsvlBsTrLkJXLd0ffSSN7CcmKYamZifv9MgjIyshYuBgeB0lHohk3B9VOfxyY8OxE5QRncHWvfafKZ3dPY_8lYrZk2Y/s1600/birdman-movie-poster-4.jpg" height="172" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Who knows what really happened.</td></tr>
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The way the movie was shot is one of the more interesting things about it. Whereas most movies are composed of many short shots, this one is almost entirely one uninterrupted shot, meaning that the cast spent a lot of time rehearsing so that they could perform through the scenes without cocking things up. The continual shot creates a kind of closeness for the viewer to the proceedings, and led to some really fascinating cinematography. I found it really refreshing and enjoyed the uninterrupted view of the proceedings it provided. It sort of suggested to me, along with the fact that the movie was about a Broadway performance, that the whole movie had a kind of theater quality to it, particularly because the movie was principally concerned with character study rather than plot. All in all the movie was excellent from beginning to end, and while it isn't the sort of movie you'd want to watch all the time, it's nice to watch a movie now and again that challenges the audience.<br />
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That's all for today! Join me again next week for more garbage probably.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5318912740825377676.post-61103257287511004722015-02-23T23:10:00.000-05:002015-02-23T23:10:34.163-05:00The Cable Guy<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKMtefmXp78c3t7GQwtJ9BaSftCXkjomPeBVenBXfNl_v9Ck9vqrEKhemGW-DZMhGcGn7Q6s-phmLQlfPB63Fc-m4Y9CDpvlsymHBf9f8ZRy4joJXmzTDjxEOmOyl2erW76si4ubw3ilU/s1600/13490469581.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKMtefmXp78c3t7GQwtJ9BaSftCXkjomPeBVenBXfNl_v9Ck9vqrEKhemGW-DZMhGcGn7Q6s-phmLQlfPB63Fc-m4Y9CDpvlsymHBf9f8ZRy4joJXmzTDjxEOmOyl2erW76si4ubw3ilU/s1600/13490469581.jpg" height="320" width="219" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">HYSTERICAL AM I RIGHT?!</td></tr>
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"There's No Such Thing as Free Cable"<br />
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A point I feel Comcast is constantly trying to establish by alternatively letting my cable go out and then increasing rates. I feel like I should pay them for 2/3rds of the month, which is the percentage of the time that I actually have functioning service. BUT THAT IS A STORY FOR SOME OTHER TIME. Welcome back to the Tagline, where I am the submissive and you are all my dominant. Or something. I assume there will be a point in the future where I stop ridiculing 50 Shades for being the worst piece of garbage ever, but that time friends is not now. In the meantime let's talk about something else. Have you folks ever seen the Cable Guy? You know, that movie about the guy and the cables? Well we're talking about that today, so tune in and listen up. The Cable Guy is weird from beginning to end, and goes to a dark place... a place many of us have been really. For starters, this movie was directed by Ben Stiller (who also appears in the movie... twice technically) and produced by Judd Apatow, which probably explains why Leslie Mann is here. Also Jack Black but back to the movie. The Cable Guy stars everyone's... favorite guy Matthew Broderick as Steve Kovacs, who following a failed proposal is on the outs with his girlfriend Robin (Mann) and so moving into his own apartment. He gets some questionable advice from Jack Black about convincing his cable guy to let him steal some movie channels on the cheap, but his cable guy Chip (Jim Carey) hooks him up, making him a "preferred customer". He also convinces Steve to hang out with him the next day. Shit pretty much goes all downhill from there.</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhydH8rzIkkt3XtDaU1rtKU0VqhHBBKFrxHRvd-Q7PkZg6RZiB4SCxeF_NcNNnezdQahWJa93nLsZ2r6hbhc0Iis33qHpWy_2fPA4QjGdElVh9xNtcdEiFKTSyYTBqWEBQhxdW_n42PGlU/s1600/Jim-Carrey-as-Chip-Douglas-in-The-Cable-Guy-jim-carrey-16426004-1152-656.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhydH8rzIkkt3XtDaU1rtKU0VqhHBBKFrxHRvd-Q7PkZg6RZiB4SCxeF_NcNNnezdQahWJa93nLsZ2r6hbhc0Iis33qHpWy_2fPA4QjGdElVh9xNtcdEiFKTSyYTBqWEBQhxdW_n42PGlU/s1600/Jim-Carrey-as-Chip-Douglas-in-The-Cable-Guy-jim-carrey-16426004-1152-656.jpg" height="182" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">PUT ME IN COACH.</td></tr>
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You see, what Steven doesn't grasp yet is that Chip is basically a habitual stalker. He picks someone to fixate on and then... fixates. Steven for his part is pathetic enough that he doesn't hesitate to go hang out with his weirdo cable guy and go on a road trip with him to an unknown destination, so really he isn't blameless here, but he seems like kind of a hopeless dipshit so you can't really blame him too much. Steven rapidly loses what little control he still imagined he had over his life, and becomes drawn into the utterly bizarre and kind of scary world of Chip (and of course that's not his real name). So the question is, does Stevie-boy ever escape Chip's web of lies, fear, and lisping TV references? YOU'LL NEED TO WATCH TO FIND OUT. This movie is technically a comedy, and while it certainly is funny (and Jim Carey brings his usual manic styling to the performance) it is also pretty dark, and has a definite horrific streak to it. For starters, Chip's personality might be mostly played for laughs, but he is also seriously disturbed, and not above beating the crap out of some douchebag played by Owen Wilson, if it suits his purposes. At the time a lot of people might not have expected a movie with that kind of dark undertone out of Jim Carey (the mask has some violent characters in it but Jim Carey's isn't one of them really). </div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhALOYiyds4EAT_kP5mPfMEX0BhvZr85VMExfldoEqpayY2WiidsyRva19xncVNPYc_eyqWfpbXqQl_oDWy8T2jzk3ccvBVawbGieZtoNeBEJ13MQk5Cl2Tm96dsiy_w7oa5TUCtE45YkQ/s1600/The-Cable-Guy-DI.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhALOYiyds4EAT_kP5mPfMEX0BhvZr85VMExfldoEqpayY2WiidsyRva19xncVNPYc_eyqWfpbXqQl_oDWy8T2jzk3ccvBVawbGieZtoNeBEJ13MQk5Cl2Tm96dsiy_w7oa5TUCtE45YkQ/s1600/The-Cable-Guy-DI.jpg" height="179" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This is a little... awkward...</td></tr>
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More than just the characters and the plot though, I think this movie is dark because while certain aspects are probably more outlandish than you'd be liable to experience (It is likely that you wouldn't end up locked in combat with your cable guy stalker at a Medieval Times for instance) on the other hand Chip's pattern of behavior is not so ridiculous. I think a lot of people have at one point or another had their own cable guy, with varying levels of severity. Sometimes people just don't... <i>get the message</i> you know? Sometimes you don't want to be friends with someone, but they <i>really</i> want to be friends with you and... well people all handle rejection differently. Some set you up and get you sent to jail and take pictures of you with women you didn't realize were prostitutes (really these are things that happen in the movie). The moral of the story is if you're Matthew Broderick and some sexy lady seems to want to immediately have sex with you, do a quick check. Is this movie <a href="http://everysinnerhasatagline.blogspot.com/2013/03/godzilla.html">Godzilla</a>? No it isnt? Then she's probably a hooker. See how easy that is Matt?</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtttcA1UOh48AyI5YJFBhsL5n9lp2xlw8gV6wvdhcXNGbo-aS8hrCZ3ozKSfEDS6xIYkNt1ya2_KmFFy_HHZD7H_MM753vn9CMFJs7LX__EUy9j2nym59W2LkiHFrTwk8VLCbCVAXgC8w/s1600/jim-carrey-as-chip-douglas-in-the-cable-guy-jim-carrey-16532973-1152-656.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtttcA1UOh48AyI5YJFBhsL5n9lp2xlw8gV6wvdhcXNGbo-aS8hrCZ3ozKSfEDS6xIYkNt1ya2_KmFFy_HHZD7H_MM753vn9CMFJs7LX__EUy9j2nym59W2LkiHFrTwk8VLCbCVAXgC8w/s1600/jim-carrey-as-chip-douglas-in-the-cable-guy-jim-carrey-16532973-1152-656.jpg" height="182" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Who doesn't want to drink a flagon of Coke?</td></tr>
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Ultimately what you get is a black comedy that is worth watching (and I mean its only a 90 minute sitting so) just be ready for some pretty weird, kind of creepy stuff. Also if you are being stalked actively, like right now, this movie is not going to help you unwind. To the contrary, it's going to remind you that Jim Carey might ALSO be stalking you. Can stalking be a team sport? I guess sometimes it can, who knows. Critics were really torn about this movie, some thought it was great and others thought it was garbage. I think it's pretty good, and you'll like it so long as you're a little twisted like me. I assume you are, or why would you still be reading this?<br />
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That's it for today, join me again on Thursday for heads and cones.</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5318912740825377676.post-49631256995841683732015-02-16T21:57:00.001-05:002015-02-16T21:57:13.334-05:0050 Shades of Grey<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuWcjVBv6XpFBWq6N8kjObRfXPTJNuClvk8npf55deerwpI524N1gFeGSejC2k9Uc1XeZLVDLXV-J0xN0Hnp3VFkC2GmKm9PgNb8RVaweqzrLeOgCaQswAErX8zA-YtU7FTRa1WoA2XrA/s1600/001_50shades_poster.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuWcjVBv6XpFBWq6N8kjObRfXPTJNuClvk8npf55deerwpI524N1gFeGSejC2k9Uc1XeZLVDLXV-J0xN0Hnp3VFkC2GmKm9PgNb8RVaweqzrLeOgCaQswAErX8zA-YtU7FTRa1WoA2XrA/s1600/001_50shades_poster.jpg" height="320" width="225" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">I'm very important and stare out the window.</td></tr>
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"Mr. Grey will see you now."<br />
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Hello friends and welcome. After a brief hiatus, I did some soul searching, and then decided that there was only one right thing to do on the night before Valentines Day. Call up my male friend, and go see 50 Shades of Grey. You fucking people asked for it, so I did it, god help me I did it. Before I even talk about the movie... and I have plenty to say there, let's talk about the experience of physically attending a showing of this film, which was surreal in and of itself. For starters, having to actually buy a ticket to see it was the first time I'd experienced real embarrassment over such a thing in approximately ever. I felt a mixture of shame and annoyance, because I was actually paying money to see what I knew would be a pile of garbage, based on its premise alone. Once inside the theater I found myself no less unsettled. My friend turned to me and asked "Notice anything interesting about the audience? Like there's... a certain kind of person here?", and right he was. I would say the theater was composed roughly 50% of what I would describe as tweens, girls who one would have to imagine were almost certainly there with a mom chaperon. Every part of that sentence makes me feel seriously grossed out. Worse yet I noticed these girls were dressed like... what I imagine a 15 year old might think was sophisticated (one girl kept stumbling in high heels down the stairs to leave the theater, it was awkward). So now I'm sitting in a theater with my friends and mostly teenage girls and their moms, watching a movie presumably about a man having sex with some girl and hitting her until he cries. What a Friday night.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisBOZwlBxAmI1sApXJyxxtdaVeVi8Ix8GCmX2MVEIZA9Is5OgOF5ZcHBksJhH-QiKJ5vCAwdftz03yfS76Of5gPezFque8TgX5bdm1K19vnyC-M6ODYpZY6X5uzp9i-lihjavUnQG-ksw/s1600/fifty-shades-of-grey-movie-trailer-large-2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisBOZwlBxAmI1sApXJyxxtdaVeVi8Ix8GCmX2MVEIZA9Is5OgOF5ZcHBksJhH-QiKJ5vCAwdftz03yfS76Of5gPezFque8TgX5bdm1K19vnyC-M6ODYpZY6X5uzp9i-lihjavUnQG-ksw/s1600/fifty-shades-of-grey-movie-trailer-large-2.jpg" height="179" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Is that receptionist lady from Tron? I think she is.</td></tr>
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It's only fair to mention that I have not read the book. One can only expect so much of me. I have read excerpts, and that was similar to how I imagine I'd feel after being exposed to large amounts of radiation. I felt drained and powerless, and intensely ill. Anyway, I mostly base my observations strictly off the movie. That being said, I have experienced the shittiness of the book, in brief. Now let's talk about the thrilling movie itself. For the uninitiated, 50 Shades of Grey is a film that started out as a piece of AU (Alternate Universe) Twilight fan-fiction. So this is a sort of fucked up secondary consequence of Twilight happening. This original piece was called Master of the Universe, and was written by author EL James, under the username Snowqueens Icedragon. No I'm not fucking joking. Anyway, this piece evolved into the book 50 Shades of Grey, and its two horrid sequels, about a young hot billionaire bachelor who has a chance encounter with a liberal arts undergrad, who is intrigued by his forbidding asshole exterior. Little does she realize that beneath that kind of douche exterior, there is a COMPLETE SHITBAG who is into S&M stuff, mostly the S part. We will talk more about that part in a bit. First let's take a quick look at the characters as they are presented. We know of Christian that he has a detailed set of likes and dislikes, and that he has a long and storied past. We know of Ana (Anastasia Steele god help us) that she likes books in that vague "oh I'm a book girl" way that bad characters are, and that her mom gets married a lot. Amazing. This is a familiar pattern and makes perfect sense considering that Ana is based on Bella. Still, Ana is probably the most bearable part of the movie, when she is not being actively seduced and boned by Christian. Either by design or because of the sheer ludicrousness of her lines and the movie, Dakota Johnson injects a fair dose of sarcasm wherever possible (how do you think Don Johnson feels about this role?) and this leads to some of the least terrible moments in the film, particularly I enjoyed one scene where she was drunk and mocking Christian and basically the movie, almost as if the film had become self-aware. Alas these moments were few and far between.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6G8wTSMClO9drn1GjXuUpfg72dWc-OBN4-LV6rzSJv1MKbZTUTe_CVN0X7FhAj-loznuowmeuPa0hD6k1so7ZkAPcNIEdfCUQ2cjmVTR9sPU-NbKID4dx-JNGRwwqLvbil0TISmKlBMI/s1600/1D274906429135-x_tdy_fifty_shades_trailer_140724.blocks_desktop_large.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6G8wTSMClO9drn1GjXuUpfg72dWc-OBN4-LV6rzSJv1MKbZTUTe_CVN0X7FhAj-loznuowmeuPa0hD6k1so7ZkAPcNIEdfCUQ2cjmVTR9sPU-NbKID4dx-JNGRwwqLvbil0TISmKlBMI/s1600/1D274906429135-x_tdy_fifty_shades_trailer_140724.blocks_desktop_large.jpg" height="180" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">He had just hit her over the head with his club.</td></tr>
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Mostly what we were treated to was boredom, and some of the most implausible and terrible dialogue I have ever had inflicted upon me. It is a mark of their craft that any of the actors in this film could deliver their lines without bursting into laughter and tears, because I don't think I could do it. My friend kept jokingly finishing Christian's lines, but then he'd actually say those things. After watching this movie I decided that from now on when anyone asks me if I do a thing, I will instead answer "I don't do X. I fuck. <i>hard</i>." I would say this because that is an actual line that an actor had to say, in a deadly serious manner. Then he had to go "I'm fifty shades <i>of fucked up." </i>I know it sounds like I'm making these things up, like this couldn't possible be true, but it really is. Where was I though... oh right boredom! So this movie is incredibly boring, and maybe it's just me but no matter how much sex is happening I just don't find it sexy when the girl is constantly crying because of how mean and rapey her boyfriend is. Or not boyfriend because he "doesn't <i>do</i> romance." See what he does instead is give Ana a contract where she will be his full time sex slave, and get out of it I guess the joy of being a spanking fuck toy for some asshole rich guy. Wonderous. By the end of the movie we had seen a lot of Dakota's boobs, a fair amount of both their butts, and some thrusting and like spanking or whatever. It was about as erotic to me as a bowl of cereal, but not a really good bowl. Like plain corn flakes maybe. Only there would have to be a girl crying because she was just savaged with a belt by someone who claimed to care about her. So not a balanced breakfast overall.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_uiYdiy0-RXvejewoWj7x2mxA9UAoAoNANP5qTDxATJdIBVOqoY8PqV03A3cyf0NschWzPyFUb1ZDimd-CL-N2AoOW2FDj9Vaak88KrsFCwx8XapeY0iEXAeUppojrzNwMVB-z8I7nBM/s1600/HT_fifty_shades_of_grey_trailer_sk_140724_16x9_992.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_uiYdiy0-RXvejewoWj7x2mxA9UAoAoNANP5qTDxATJdIBVOqoY8PqV03A3cyf0NschWzPyFUb1ZDimd-CL-N2AoOW2FDj9Vaak88KrsFCwx8XapeY0iEXAeUppojrzNwMVB-z8I7nBM/s1600/HT_fifty_shades_of_grey_trailer_sk_140724_16x9_992.jpg" height="180" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sexy kiss, or sexual assault? Her hand makes it tough to tell.</td></tr>
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Now that I have explored briefly how ridiculous and shitty the movie is, I can talk about how <i>offensive</i> it is. Make no mistake too, as human beings we should <i>all</i> be offended. This movie is not about BDSM. It is about a bunch of really textbook psychological cases crashing into each other at high speed, under the guise of BDSM. Christian Grey is a man who was orphaned by his crackwhore mother at age 4, adopted by rich parents, and then sexually abused by a sadomasochist woman when he was 15, and for six years afterwards. He developed into a controlling narcissist who derives pleasure from dominating and inflicting pain upon women. Bondage is merely the tool he uses to do this. Anastasia Steele is a young woman with no particular aspirations or drive, with a mother who's been divorced three times and can't be bothered to fly out for her own daughter's college graduation. This is all starting to line up right? What you also have to understand, is that this movie is telling us that BDSM practices are part of how messed up Christian is, and if Ana can just make him act like a regular person then he would be free of his dark past. So the liner notes are 1)if you are into anything kinky you are a rapist deviant who was probably molested, and 2)a truly devoted woman can cure a man of his being abusive and twisted, by loving him enough. Both of those are really repulsive ideas, and the fact that this movie is sold as some sort of saucy romance is abominable. The movie watches more like a really boring episode of Law & Order SVU more than anything else.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4J30Z_c92KiRBTB5_rjIuQkhmgKeSQzFsUjXsI3LYw-AVv6RJ-B6AMyZyrYpLgRA-JMy4ct7Ot35k9IkRmM54GANnAIZc1K4NS4Npv7xcIrpNukeiLd6CnyOJzF6jQ0j1qFRAmFqQuYg/s1600/1415227674492_Image_galleryImage_50_shades_of_grey_Rita_Or.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4J30Z_c92KiRBTB5_rjIuQkhmgKeSQzFsUjXsI3LYw-AVv6RJ-B6AMyZyrYpLgRA-JMy4ct7Ot35k9IkRmM54GANnAIZc1K4NS4Npv7xcIrpNukeiLd6CnyOJzF6jQ0j1qFRAmFqQuYg/s1600/1415227674492_Image_galleryImage_50_shades_of_grey_Rita_Or.JPG" height="263" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">These are people too I guess.</td></tr>
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Given my extensive exposure to Twilight, it was easy to see how the main characters translated into their Twilight counterparts. Christian is broody and doesn't sleep, and plays the piano a lot. Ana is a listless enabler dope. Jose is Ana's close friend who she just doesn't like that way, which means he is obviously Jacob. Still... and I'm so mad I have to say this... the characters in Twilight are much better. Edward is creepy controlling jerk, but he is essentially boyfriend of the year next to Christian Grey, and I just... can't believe I've been forced to compare something unfavorably to Twilight. At least Edward has impulses to hurt Bella that originate from him being a vampire, and not just an asshole. Speaking of, the scene where Christian gets immense sexual pleasure from brutalizing Ana is one of the most uncomfortable things I've ever watched... and I briefly wrote a column where I reviewed hentai so... yeah think about what I'm saying.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh23_hZoq-vWHWKyxv1iCODTErdVM3weVJhhdaOua1U6josRLaesdS9iaWHVeibZaKUkgf_i0VL5Lj37wqy8Vur8YHdoa9fAuma4WW2u9BNnwGOb-TreJKOtjrAGcHQsrAepLz3QnEGML4/s1600/50-shades-800.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh23_hZoq-vWHWKyxv1iCODTErdVM3weVJhhdaOua1U6josRLaesdS9iaWHVeibZaKUkgf_i0VL5Lj37wqy8Vur8YHdoa9fAuma4WW2u9BNnwGOb-TreJKOtjrAGcHQsrAepLz3QnEGML4/s1600/50-shades-800.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Imagine this scene with <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7JQXgn-cubQ">this</a> playing.</td></tr>
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On a final note, I found it hilarious that this movie was scored by Danny Elfman. Now I know, he's scored all SORTS of movies, but I just couldn't stop thinking about 1) Oingo Boingo and 2)The Nightmare Before Christmas. Then I imagined Ana doing "what's this" in Christian's Dracula Sex Dungeon. The takeaway here is that this movie was impossibly terrible, on virtually every metric that a work of fiction can be terrible on. The fact that this is a fantasy so many people have had that it rose from fanfiction to a movie grossing no doubt hundreds of millions of dollars is absolutely wretched. Can't you at least have a sexy fantasy about a rich hot guy who treats you nice? Or maybe you're the rich one, and you just have sex with whoever you want, and have crazy helicopter adventures because you're so goddamn rich. Have better fantasies. That's all for today, join me again on Thursday when I end this romance nightmare, and review something else. Don't you dare miss it, or I'll take you across my knee (real dialogue I'm not kidding).</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5318912740825377676.post-91922321730396579602015-02-11T23:32:00.000-05:002015-02-11T23:32:56.410-05:00If I Stay<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRUQwxDTzY6I9VRJ7EaakBtKYFrpEisIhi5r9NBaL36rrXftCW38zTitj8B3GZDmt6USNvoHEf-8yLSXdTcjBUSkBnXXc2B8ddw27oT7ba7wjgUDPki13wTyiKJdFvbKpy_AgqrTweEVg/s1600/10215818.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRUQwxDTzY6I9VRJ7EaakBtKYFrpEisIhi5r9NBaL36rrXftCW38zTitj8B3GZDmt6USNvoHEf-8yLSXdTcjBUSkBnXXc2B8ddw27oT7ba7wjgUDPki13wTyiKJdFvbKpy_AgqrTweEVg/s1600/10215818.jpg" height="320" width="253" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Ghost Girlfriend: The Movie.</td></tr>
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"Live for Love"<br />
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Hello friends, I know you must have been concerned that I died, and then had flashbacks in limbo about my daring and tragic life filled with love cut too short, but actually I was just really backed up with work, and that cut into the time I normally use to watch movies about exploding Draculas and girls crying about boys they like. Rest assured however that this doesn't mean that crying exploding Dracula girls are not still number one <i>in my heart</i>. With that out of the way, welcome back to the Tagline, where we are still in the middle of Romantic Romance Month, don't think you're off the hook. Last week we looked at the Fault in Our Stars, a movie about having cancer sort of, but mostly a movie about using the cheapest methods possible to elicit an emotional response from the audience. This week we visit a movie which is... well frankly not much better in that regard. I'm talking about If I Stay, a film based on, you guessed it, a young adult novel, and also about out-of-body experiences. This adaptation in particular stars Chloe Grace Moretz (you know the one who is going to <a href="http://everysinnerhasatagline.blogspot.com/2012/11/let-me-in.html">murder</a> <a href="http://everysinnerhasatagline.blogspot.com/2013/08/kick-ass-2.html">you</a>) as Mia Hall, a girl who really likes classical music, and plays the Cello all the time. She is your regular girl music prodigy-who-might-go-to-Juilliard and part of a regular kind of hippie former punk rocker family. Okay so nothing about her life is ordinary, but at least they're not trying to convince me everyone has cancer! Anyway, her life is changed forever when she meets Adam, the frontman for a local up-and-coming band that has prospects of blowing up. The two begin one of those super intense high-school relationships, but their own extraordinary lives begin to pull them apart. One day Mia goes on a trip with her family, and then they get in a super bad car accident and Mia wakes up outside of her body. Yeah that's a little out of left field right?</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7W-iv2YugX9uhmt1TuDUH0kqO-DBfFR-CXpY3Sd8iogg3uoxfbvj8sFWIWJYWv5_HAcY1Wvtg77ue542k8oR-8lRZMl8Jd5X4Sh4ayd0mDFC18xHeBoiY04D5t4jGzDYzrK7AWDlTCSk/s1600/if22f-6-web.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7W-iv2YugX9uhmt1TuDUH0kqO-DBfFR-CXpY3Sd8iogg3uoxfbvj8sFWIWJYWv5_HAcY1Wvtg77ue542k8oR-8lRZMl8Jd5X4Sh4ayd0mDFC18xHeBoiY04D5t4jGzDYzrK7AWDlTCSk/s1600/if22f-6-web.jpg" height="212" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">DRAMA. ACTION. GHOSTS.</td></tr>
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Well so it is with this film, and as Mia stalks the halls of the hospital she's dying in, flashing back to significant moments in her recent life, and wondering if it's worth fighting out of her coma. The bulk of the movie is given over to the flashbacks, which are punctuated by updates in the hospital. Are her parents and brother going to pull through? How are Mia's other family and friends handling things? Furthermore where is Adam? There are a lot of things that are kind of weird about this movie, so let's go through the list and start with the out of body angle. We are never really clued in as to why this is happening. Does everyone choose to live or die, or is Mia special somehow? The movie isn't letting us in on the secret, and sure I can hear some people saying "well do ANY of us really know?" No I guess we don't but that is the magic of FICTION. Playing the "great mysteries of life" angle to just never explain one of the central features of your movie is just lazy storytelling. "Things just are that way" is not an amazing plot device. While we are talking about that, it is also unfortunate that the "stay or go" plot point is more or less presented as the central conflict, because it is the most arbitrary and least relatable conflict IN the movie.</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEia9K6PLfqn0fHXs_L6oe7YU2DtvSkETI36CeKQsB_owO0LuaqVnxvuC9yFAc9jhMn4ntk88hT0mvzQQVOTXax-FyFwpvA1LEvJLDprlIwSDYjfVjwhAgAukBbcSzN_U88OMo5OSgUlF_o/s1600/kypdpi2t7xwe98buwzfa.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEia9K6PLfqn0fHXs_L6oe7YU2DtvSkETI36CeKQsB_owO0LuaqVnxvuC9yFAc9jhMn4ntk88hT0mvzQQVOTXax-FyFwpvA1LEvJLDprlIwSDYjfVjwhAgAukBbcSzN_U88OMo5OSgUlF_o/s1600/kypdpi2t7xwe98buwzfa.jpg" height="192" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">There was that... what was she a cellist in Portland?</td></tr>
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Now I understand that the central conceit here is the whole "what would you do if the option was presented to you", but I think this gets into that "can this effectively be adapted into a movie" territory that I've considered in the past. Some ideas, while neat to explore, don't pan out well as a feature film. There are certain things that function better as a written narrative than as a movie. When we read a story, the action is ALL taking place in our minds. We naturally add something to the experience, our own imaginings and embellishments. I don't know about you, but when I watch a movie I am absorbed by it and observe what is presented. I might ask questions and extrapolate after the fact, but I rely on the film to tell me certain things, and feel like the movie isn't playing fair when it takes the low road and uses death again as the major emotional fulcrum (just like The Fault in Our Stars did). The real shame here is that i don't feel like this movie even had to do that.</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJLGRagvV-5wdHqFHvDTQ_NVbiAg1UCoFhjRXY7m_ZTlCcDZu0zfQu3nljy3QWr4TSidI-fMxkSPSfjxwW-QQmeHhYHTMua8NkLdV3UwytpV9Wi4i_zGs4wFw_xC3hyip5REV2ylvkefQ/s1600/if-i-stay-ftr.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJLGRagvV-5wdHqFHvDTQ_NVbiAg1UCoFhjRXY7m_ZTlCcDZu0zfQu3nljy3QWr4TSidI-fMxkSPSfjxwW-QQmeHhYHTMua8NkLdV3UwytpV9Wi4i_zGs4wFw_xC3hyip5REV2ylvkefQ/s1600/if-i-stay-ftr.jpg" height="213" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Man life is just... its awful isn't it.</td></tr>
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As a coming of age story about not just romantic relationships, but interpersonal relationships and how we balance our ambitions with them, this movie fares a lot better. In addition it is populated with actors who all but forth earnest and genuine performances, and in that regard I found the movie actually pretty engaging in spite of myself. The conflicts that Mia and Adam weathered as they tried to find a way to stay together despite their lives pulling them apart... that was pretty real, and the movie wasn't cheap or sappy about it. Sometimes life is really shitty and you aren't equipped to deal with it, and I thought that at least was a point that was well made. It just then transitioned into a not very good Twilight Zone episode about being a almost ghost. I was sort of unsure about that conceit when The Lovely Bones did it, and it just seemed really forced in this film, like being a story about people trying to cope with life just wasn't <i>edgy</i> enough, so there had to be a ghost girl.</div>
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So this was a movie that kind of couldn't get out of its own way, I enjoyed parts of it in spite of itself, but ultimately it succumbs to the temptation of getting a cheap rise out of you with something SO TRAGIC. All it needed was some kind of apocalypse to happen and it would have been the ideal YA movie adaptation. Didn't these guys get the memo? This does bear out the hypothesis that YA sells though, as the movie was shot for 11 million and pulled in 78. That's a pretty healthy return I'd say.</div>
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That's it for today and sorry for the interruption in our regular programming. Next week we will hopefully be treated to some crappy sci-fi, as we put kissy heart day behind us.</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5318912740825377676.post-11983216307410554872015-02-03T14:56:00.000-05:002015-02-03T14:56:45.345-05:00The Fault In Our Stars<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDT1zAwunihESd0zcQd_BUCIG3PAaxF_EtSOc8ARQbsvTdKqbD1KyldxgJGaScDDrUOXChMlH2nWPNkbuwPjHfHS5MKo7IQG91S1sBUQIaihb_1nd9PWjbu4jYLe7-J7VFUE8twAtSjp4/s1600/tumblr_mydouiYnl31sfevmio2_500.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDT1zAwunihESd0zcQd_BUCIG3PAaxF_EtSOc8ARQbsvTdKqbD1KyldxgJGaScDDrUOXChMlH2nWPNkbuwPjHfHS5MKo7IQG91S1sBUQIaihb_1nd9PWjbu4jYLe7-J7VFUE8twAtSjp4/s1600/tumblr_mydouiYnl31sfevmio2_500.jpg" height="320" width="180" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Fortunes fools?</td></tr>
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"One sick love story"<br />
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I picked the above tagline because nothing says "taking things seriously" like making a pun about cancer. That's the sort of quality you can expect out of today's Tagline, in honor of the spectacular commercial romance that is Valentine's Day, I'm starting off the month of February with TEARJERKER SADTIME ROMANCE WEEK. To that end I started off by choosing The Fault in Our Stars, a movie that critics and moviegoers wet their pants over when it was released, and starring my favorite galpal <a href="http://everysinnerhasatagline.blogspot.com/2014/04/divergent.html">Shailene Woodley</a>. The Fault in our Stars presents the age-old story, told time and again, of a girl who falls in love with a boy, only they both have cancer. Also Willem Dafoe is there as a drunk guy who wrote a book they like. There are nuances and wrinkles to the story, but I have just encapsulated the big picture. The boy in question in this case is Augustus Rivers (played by Ansel Elgort, who I last saw when he was being brutally killed in a paranormal bloodbath in Carrie, the remake one), who lost his leg to cancer but now is on the mend and living life bravely and eccentrically, as any good movie boy who explodes into the life of a hopeless girl. His offbeat outlook and lovable quirks initially cause friction with Hazel (Woodley) but naturally over time and wild antics the two come to love one another, despite the dire circumstances of Hazel's life.</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDur49dwFg-ZgAAiDnCB4AZcF291PDQa8A3QBfAh8C4Dc7tfhSDFE4uP3XpQjdlTl3EbyENkttHM2bQZFvAqJ4_8e0No6GCSh1UF-1XZcIvyMsTdzRZjVHPqRm2g0T-euevhJ4LVXiyxQ/s1600/tfios2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDur49dwFg-ZgAAiDnCB4AZcF291PDQa8A3QBfAh8C4Dc7tfhSDFE4uP3XpQjdlTl3EbyENkttHM2bQZFvAqJ4_8e0No6GCSh1UF-1XZcIvyMsTdzRZjVHPqRm2g0T-euevhJ4LVXiyxQ/s1600/tfios2.jpg" height="213" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Egg your ex's car, because she's done uncool stuff.</td></tr>
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So okay, nothing even noteworthy here except for the whole extra super mortality angle of the main character having terminal cancer. The movie introduces some other action by way of a book that Hazel is obsessed with, written by some guy who never wrote anything ever again. Hazel introduces Gus to the book and he is also enthralled by it, and naturally show-stealer that he is decides to email the author's assistant to try and arrange a meeting (despite the fact that he lives in Amsterdam). Both Gus and Hazel want to know what happened to all the secondary characters after the end of the novel, a book which sounds by all descriptions to be as IMPORTANT and GRAVE as this movie/book is. The complication of course is that Hazel has serious respiratory issues (one of the fun souvenirs of her disease) so a trip to Amsterdam will prove difficult at best. Of course they find a way though, and it is romantical and enchantical as you'd expect, despite the author turning out to be a spectacularly huge nob and drunk (and it is obvious to everyone except the characters in this movie that he behaves this way because HE TOO lost a loved one to cancer). Then it's time for the doubletwist SPOILER ALERT: despite what the movie wanted you to think, Gus actually has super bad cancer and is going to die before Hazel. So there you go, if all the near death wasn't getting your emotions going by forcing you to face the idea of mortality, maybe a different character than the one you expected dying will do it instead.</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYvGk2KzgpaQJOo43rCvLQxX7aaDVUueBOPD3jXapHr10YrF97p6-d5lYlYIQxkjsjz-Ri6qM3WFxxc-sAMA9P2MKaK_yUZfI6czOgkOrNsmKPmHNnD5VhiM4NAM6CA8-BqPIH55wUaB8/s1600/the-fault-in-our-stars.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYvGk2KzgpaQJOo43rCvLQxX7aaDVUueBOPD3jXapHr10YrF97p6-d5lYlYIQxkjsjz-Ri6qM3WFxxc-sAMA9P2MKaK_yUZfI6czOgkOrNsmKPmHNnD5VhiM4NAM6CA8-BqPIH55wUaB8/s1600/the-fault-in-our-stars.jpeg" height="180" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">I... I don't actually have a good snark for this one. Make your own.</td></tr>
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I saw a lot of reviews that said the movie was never cheap in its emotional evocation, but I don't see how you could possibly think that. Everyone knows that the cheapest way to get a rise out of the audience is to kill someone, and this movie runs from beginning to end with the grim reaper tagging along for the ride.The story is trying to say that this is all very tragic and meaningful, and I suppose that's true as much as any other story about young love lost, but it's also not particularly unique, or even sort of unique, except that it is most likely difficult to relate to for the majority of audiences, at least in its particulars. Most of us will probably be at least lucky enough to not simultaneously have cancer, and fall in love with someone with WORSE cancer, and also our mutual friend is blind because of you guessed it, cancer. I suppose all these things COULD be true, but this movie never rose above the level of forcing people to stare death in the face to try and get some sort of response.</div>
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYh0-45Nfs1M5XZwjjZ6ccxkRS1UwKV8hLq11MGJXAL-TVmlCcCwpbjJeOma2Hsdf7HpzsdNH8FwXwgY_IqQ1hWXr3ZVyQNiaN2RiOoppnRejI0hq9XCskiit4d2JGNtbaoZT6hbozLSk/s1600/the-fault-in-our-stars-shailene-woodley-texting.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYh0-45Nfs1M5XZwjjZ6ccxkRS1UwKV8hLq11MGJXAL-TVmlCcCwpbjJeOma2Hsdf7HpzsdNH8FwXwgY_IqQ1hWXr3ZVyQNiaN2RiOoppnRejI0hq9XCskiit4d2JGNtbaoZT6hbozLSk/s1600/the-fault-in-our-stars-shailene-woodley-texting.jpg" height="180" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Does this look like a Sprint commercial to anyone else?</td></tr>
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Of course I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that oh yeah I loathe Shailene Woodley, so having her featured as the protagonist didn't exactly endear the movie to me to begin with. I think that this movie was probably the best performance I've seen out of her, but Divergent does make me feel like punching something whenever I think about it, playing in theaters forever and ever. Critics disagree, they mostly felt this film was powerful and special and touching and a bunch of other words meant to tell you EMOTION and IMPORTANT. I didn't watch that movie. I watched a movie that made me sad, and caused me to think about how fragile life is, but no more than if I'd been exposed to any other thing that involved a reminder of our inevitable mortality. If you felt something deep and significant while watching this movie, chances are that feeling was inside you already waiting for any excuse to come out. Don't give the credit to Shailene Woodley. That will just encourage them to MAKE 100 MORE DIVERGENT MOVIES.</div>
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Anyway, that's all for today my teary eyed friends! Join me again on Thursday for more sad almost dead girls! </div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5318912740825377676.post-13195690734158478402015-01-31T17:06:00.001-05:002015-01-31T17:06:45.660-05:00Batman Forever<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJE1es6UndpTn5JnxsrHbr2D-SDNI99bwk6pEeOqE2CBAmcZCd91fUK-v71_cnZWt-qonLItEBTfJwpcksf7mP-7bRqfsz0p7KuZrHTCSQ2sqibQ0PysLz1kCqf9ouv9kpNxl7j0-lk24/s1600/11164555_800.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJE1es6UndpTn5JnxsrHbr2D-SDNI99bwk6pEeOqE2CBAmcZCd91fUK-v71_cnZWt-qonLItEBTfJwpcksf7mP-7bRqfsz0p7KuZrHTCSQ2sqibQ0PysLz1kCqf9ouv9kpNxl7j0-lk24/s1600/11164555_800.jpg" height="320" width="213" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Batman for... a while at least.</td></tr>
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"Courage now, truth always...."<div>
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I know, I've been working up to this for a while, and now here it is! A special Saturday Tagline for you all today, and I'll be talking about a very difficult topic that we all have to try and cope with. Sometimes it can be difficult to admit to yourself that an old, trusted friend has become somebody else, and it can be even more difficult to confront THEM about it. That's how I think we all felt when we saw Batman Forever. We were two good Batman movies in, maybe felt like we could rely on those good times, and then... this happened. Thank Warner Brothers for that. They decided after the release of the fantastic <a href="http://everysinnerhasatagline.blogspot.com/2014/12/batman-returns.html">Batman Returns</a> that it hadn't grossed enough money, and that if it were more "mainstream" it would do better. To this evil end, they gave Burton and his Gotham City the boot out of the director's chair (though Burton had been lukewarm about even doing a <i>second</i> Batman) and tapped Joel Schumacher to direct, with Burton restricted to producing. This film struck a completely different tone from the previous two, with villains so flamboyant that they make Jack Nicholson's turn as the Joker look positively subdued. This movie also introduces the character of Robin, portrayed here by Chris O'Donnell, although originally Marlon Wayans was cast. Presumably he was replaced because Hollywood is intensely racist. Anyway, the most important swap out here was Michael Keaton, who opted not to appear in another Batman because he didn't like the new direction (though apparently he still considers himself to be the ONLY Batman), was replaced by Val Kilmer. Now I enjoyed Top Gun at least as much as the next guy, but that is not an equation with equal values on both ends of it. That being said, Val Kilmer is still a much better Batman than <a href="http://everysinnerhasatagline.blogspot.com/2012/07/batman-robin.html">George Clooney</a>. Squaring off against the new caped crusader are Two-Face (portrayed in explosively red tiger-striped fashion by Tommy Lee Jones) and The Riddler/Edward Nigma (here played by Jim Carey). It seems like the common wisdom is that unless the primary villain is the Joker, there must be at least two villains on the stage at any given time (and in The Dark Knight even there was still Two Face) Okay, the stage is set, now let's talk about this FANTASTIC MOVIE</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiy6jcO2JWhhHtwgExRteOrZ1G-mWFFD5f-bQo029HHzc4dZrD51pN7vHtMS_FJscerFUIV4WtsK7PZugzHqT5m5bSAYxRTAMUiRHucCzLAuIX6fr9jo10BLlIuusMD9cByBQB6yw_azGc/s1600/3838396-diamond.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiy6jcO2JWhhHtwgExRteOrZ1G-mWFFD5f-bQo029HHzc4dZrD51pN7vHtMS_FJscerFUIV4WtsK7PZugzHqT5m5bSAYxRTAMUiRHucCzLAuIX6fr9jo10BLlIuusMD9cByBQB6yw_azGc/s1600/3838396-diamond.jpg" height="218" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">My favorite movie couple.</td></tr>
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The film begins somewhat in medias res, with Batman immediately engaging in battle with Two Face and his two face themed gang of criminals/bank robbers/general goons. The general impression to be gained here is that Batman is a bit outgunned and outnumbered, and that he could really use a best bud sidekick to help him crime fight. I think that the core issue with that is that a lot of the conflict and core of the previous two movies was that Batman was perpetually alone, because of the dual life he led. This was somewhat alleviated in this movie as Batman attempts to come to grips with his own fears and motivations, and while the execution isn't great it was at least a somewhat seaworthy concept (this conflict, or any relevant character conflict, is notably absent from Batman and Robin). Still, it seems like more and more people are in on the big "secret" and that becomes a problem too. Anyway, there are a lot of really awesome "WORLD'S GREATEST DETECTIVE" moments in this film, particularly at the beginning of the movie when Bruce Wayne first meets Edward Nigma (who works for him) and is presented with two facts that anyone with a pulse could immediately glean. 1)Edward Nigma is legitimately batshit bonkertowns 2)He has created a device that lets him hijack people's brains and mess with their thoughts. As a bonus 3)He has a really weird name that just makes him SEEM like a villain. Now I understand that you can't get out in front of every supervillain origin story, but I really think that once you begin contending with some mysterious deaths and a villain manipulating people's brainwaves, that maybe, just MAYBE you'd remember the bizarre, some would say DISTURBING interaction you had with a guy named EDWARD FUCKING NIGMA. I guess that might be a little Monday Morning Football, but I think it is a reasonable suspicion.</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-BvM-3AcY0_rgVmaYU1n5QlcL2WjNrXPJD1MiMf4glM40TTqadWkKI72htza2kGDeyp5R54U6GOXZ4lsEbviGcWVR4-ueB2o26n5kY-0A98aDuzecJjgW2JTNMG1P8no92wcLp4PPwX4/s1600/Batman-Forever-still-2.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-BvM-3AcY0_rgVmaYU1n5QlcL2WjNrXPJD1MiMf4glM40TTqadWkKI72htza2kGDeyp5R54U6GOXZ4lsEbviGcWVR4-ueB2o26n5kY-0A98aDuzecJjgW2JTNMG1P8no92wcLp4PPwX4/s1600/Batman-Forever-still-2.png" height="180" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Who like... makes all this stuff for these guys? Don't the guys<br />commissioned to make a million neon light ?s get kind of<br />suspicious that maybe their client is the fucking Riddler?</td></tr>
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In addition to the primary good guys vs. bad guys plot, there's of course a romantic sub-plot between Batman/Bruce Wayne and Dr. Chase Meridian (Nicole Kidman) and also Batman's messed up childhood trauma. In addition there's also ALSO another sub-plot, about Robin and him coming to grips with the death of his family and whether or not he should pursue bloodlusty vengeance against Two Face. What you might be gathering is that this movie is packed to the nosebleeds with characters and sub-plots, and it gets kind of crowded by the time they're all piled on. I think it would be reasonable to suggest that either of the villains could occupy their own movie if you really wanted to make it work, and that trying to cram this much into an even two hours is just not a good idea. You end up with... well Batman Forever. It's also clear that no one learned anything from this movie, as the origin story for Electro in The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is more or less identical to the Riddler's, only one of them involved electric eels or something stupid. People really need to be nicer to downtrodden mentally unstable scientists is my point.</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhicVhVeFycX-UY73tK885_ok9GefVVPYqhMBcd94fM_DmQFya9WDrkEgwbTzfhLfkuBYjtG5pw2koZ5BSwgLWk3z1_kgejn8fENUF0Sg_NzQkS5IXqnPZ7ObSsX7FZaCVfLX5s8SZyBz4/s1600/Batman-Forever-nicole-kidman-24568426-1280-720.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhicVhVeFycX-UY73tK885_ok9GefVVPYqhMBcd94fM_DmQFya9WDrkEgwbTzfhLfkuBYjtG5pw2koZ5BSwgLWk3z1_kgejn8fENUF0Sg_NzQkS5IXqnPZ7ObSsX7FZaCVfLX5s8SZyBz4/s1600/Batman-Forever-nicole-kidman-24568426-1280-720.jpg" height="180" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Quick everyone look bored!</td></tr>
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Now there's just no two ways to slice it: this movie blows. It is admittedly not NEARLY as awful as Batman & Robin, but that is saying very very little for it. The most you can say is that Tommy Lee Jones and Jim Carey seem to be having a really good time hamming it up as bad guys, but beyond that I found very little to redeem this film, as it is a ridiculous and ham-fisted mishmash of plots and characters that sort of relies on the audience already knowing who all the characters are. This movie also introduces the famed nipplesuit, as well as those stirring bum/package close ups we all know and love. They scream superhero. There are also some really spectacular early CG sequences of Gotham that look like cutscenes for a Command & Conquer game, so that's something to look forward to. Despite it being a piece of trash, this movie actually DID gross more than Batman Returns, which is absolutely despicable.</div>
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That's it for today! Join me again next week as we all drown in snow, and in the meantime enjoy this:</div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5318912740825377676.post-12369432987323328842015-01-27T17:57:00.004-05:002015-01-27T17:57:42.551-05:00Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2014)<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJphZBwfQjOLVnahQvy7AjvvX4H-O1A-X_EsDScp41AI4ujZg2djxWK5aMc6SiR_JkGQ4vYZAvMd72aOgat5mwAdqgxNJd8uRGe3i47Dk0Sr26ZOWf2SiHQ_9J6NttZeZqBe-dDE_2ZhY/s1600/large_njH0vF9FyTGluny7FklPlkAZ6ex.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJphZBwfQjOLVnahQvy7AjvvX4H-O1A-X_EsDScp41AI4ujZg2djxWK5aMc6SiR_JkGQ4vYZAvMd72aOgat5mwAdqgxNJd8uRGe3i47Dk0Sr26ZOWf2SiHQ_9J6NttZeZqBe-dDE_2ZhY/s1600/large_njH0vF9FyTGluny7FklPlkAZ6ex.jpg" height="320" width="213" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">EXPLOSIONSSSS</td></tr>
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"Mysterious. Dangerous. Reptilious. You've never seen heroes like this."<br />
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Reptilious huh? WELL THEN I guess it must really be an exceptional work. OR WAIT MAYBE IT'S STUPID BULLSHIT. Well hello everyone, I'm buried in like three feet of snow, basically in a frozen tomb, and it is time for the Tagline. Today, as I have long hinted, I will be talking about the most recent Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie, you know the one with Megan Fox in it. That's right gang, it's time to pay the piper at long last. First a little background, and then right on in to the good stuff. So for those not in the know about Ninja Tortles and all their tortings, go <a href="http://everysinnerhasatagline.blogspot.com/2014/12/teenage-mutant-ninja-turtles-1990.html">here</a> and read about a much better movie about heroes in a half-shell. It's okay, I'll wait. All set? Alright then, back to the horrible present. THIS iteration of the Ninja Turtles was conceived into being shortly after Nickelodeon acquired the rights to the franchise, and was co-produced by Nickelodeon movies and Michael Bay's very own studio Platinum Dunes, which I'm sure just filled everyone with so much excitement. After all, who could forget the stunningly brilliant and exciting Transformers movies? No one can, because they won't stop fucking making them, one after another. What are there like five of them now? Anyway This movie doesn't have Marky Mark in it, but it DOES have Megan Fox, and I mean a LOT of her. I think she gets more on-screen time than any other character in the movie so... we'll talk about that in a second. Anyway this movie is a re-reboot, ignoring the mediocre and financially middling movie from 2007, and teaching us that it's never too soon to get another origin story, again. That actually brings up a good point, about constantly redoing origin stories. See the way I see it, the first movie with a character is not the most interesting one. I understand that sometimes a story is so fucked that you have to redo it, but I think we can safely assume that like, everyone knows who the ninja turtles are, and make a movie about something other than "their first momentous fight against Shredder". Particularly because they already made that movie, everyone liked it, and you probably won't do it better a second time around.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitqFIeTYk-88NHetnAM2m3PFTsav1j5rbRBHgCwRn8m1-FWEqQYSKpz_mTSLmgjL0TGMsz6U8g-g8y7-HPiqUjeQwAS9edi3TaO9GDKxUSpzK3s5QIV47HpZRo4biIMMyd4dqROQUQkOE/s1600/1407371057000-XXX-TEENAGE-MUTANT-NINJA-TURTLES-MOV-JY-1478--66316298.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitqFIeTYk-88NHetnAM2m3PFTsav1j5rbRBHgCwRn8m1-FWEqQYSKpz_mTSLmgjL0TGMsz6U8g-g8y7-HPiqUjeQwAS9edi3TaO9GDKxUSpzK3s5QIV47HpZRo4biIMMyd4dqROQUQkOE/s1600/1407371057000-XXX-TEENAGE-MUTANT-NINJA-TURTLES-MOV-JY-1478--66316298.JPG" height="180" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Does this make your shell feel tight? : (</td></tr>
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These guys didn't get that memo though. Instead the memo they got said "hey, let's make a TMNT movie, but the story will mostly be about April O'Neil. Also let's have Megan Fox carry basically the entire movie." I assume this memo was sent from a lunatic who worked in the mail room or something. Anyway, April is pretty much the crux of the plot, and the turtles are apparently her childhood lab friends? That makes everything else that happens weirder. The turtle designs are... better than initial exposure led me to believe, but they still kind of look like weird Shrek turtle-aliens. I can say that I found the way they blended into the world around them pretty impressive actually, but that's more a testament to good CGI than anything else, and was only impressive for a few minutes before the sheer mind numbing quality of the movie cut through. Also the general grossness because like... for some reason Mikey keeps making gross sex jokes about April? I don't know who these are aimed at but like... that isn't what I want in my turtles movie. I NEVER want that, ever, and I don't want to meet the sick fuck who does. While not directed by Bay himself, this movie still bears some of the slow-motion, spastic action fingerprints that his latter day works have become known for, but I confess that this movie is no Dark of the Moon at least.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCdsY0HmVB0DWiAhjBkq6gBBMC-sDEaTzyH3sPJutRunT7KW0i_pdd9IVsMEXP12t3LFlBgdy1-8NnKt26BOWLPzc6Wp-HSLhw426jFOxmUyd2FayJOxuWCim5MumeesD-lvCJWjy2jWo/s1600/29906170001_3719637754001_Screen-Shot-2014-08-07-at-2-38-18-PM.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCdsY0HmVB0DWiAhjBkq6gBBMC-sDEaTzyH3sPJutRunT7KW0i_pdd9IVsMEXP12t3LFlBgdy1-8NnKt26BOWLPzc6Wp-HSLhw426jFOxmUyd2FayJOxuWCim5MumeesD-lvCJWjy2jWo/s1600/29906170001_3719637754001_Screen-Shot-2014-08-07-at-2-38-18-PM.jpg" height="180" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">HOW DOES SOMETHING THIS SIZE SNEAK.</td></tr>
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The problem is that this is all been there done that. Like I said before, they already made this damned movie, and I liked it better then. Megan Fox does the best she can but 1)she isn't that strong a leading lady and 2)to be honest she doesn't have a ton to work with to begin with, given the generally weak ass script and generic super-villain plotting. I think she did a pretty admirable job all things considered, but it's sort of a weird choice to make the characters of the turtles not actually central to the movie. The movie doesn't take any chances, and that made it just pretty forgettable overall. Believe me, if there was a person who would cut this movie a break it would definitely be me, but it just assembles a pretty average cast of support actors, throws them into leading roles, and then gives them nothing interesting to do (as funny as Will Arnett often is). William Fichtner just isn't that scary a bad guy, and a robot clad and generally non-character Shredder isn't either. In the original live action movie I just felt like the Shredder had a much less stupid plan than "nearly destroy the world and then rule what's left of it". He seemed less like a James Bond villain and more like a legitimately bad guy, who was going to take advantage of wayward youths to build an army. As plans go you could do worse.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimmJ5tIG_RqlQ_MLnlH5tSnlrwwK8Ac5PqOm4NjJwBq6rlYucOJMIMtflWPlew_rEJlTikemSWi_KC_gfCsnokkDmdXpboF_JTznWhjU65eK_INJjDCQ8GMTp9GUMev38U6Jt1Id9DVNA/s1600/teenage-mutant-ninja-turtles-april-oneil-1920x1080.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimmJ5tIG_RqlQ_MLnlH5tSnlrwwK8Ac5PqOm4NjJwBq6rlYucOJMIMtflWPlew_rEJlTikemSWi_KC_gfCsnokkDmdXpboF_JTznWhjU65eK_INJjDCQ8GMTp9GUMev38U6Jt1Id9DVNA/s1600/teenage-mutant-ninja-turtles-april-oneil-1920x1080.jpg" height="180" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Action news is on the scene.</td></tr>
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So swing and a miss with new ninja turtles. There's nothing here you haven't seen before, except proof that literally any male creature, even a giant mutant turtle, will take a few cheap passes at Megan Fox if given the opportunity. Also briefly Whoopie Goldberg for some reason is in the movie. Maybe she had nothing to do that afternoon. Despite negative reviews like the one I just gave, this movie pretty much killed it in the box office, ending out at around 477 million, recouping its fairly large budget about 4 times. That's not half bad, so I have to wonder if we'll get a second helping of mediocrity. That's all for today folks! Join me again on Thursday, assuming we don't all freeze to death.</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5318912740825377676.post-75160463575559455472015-01-22T20:41:00.002-05:002015-01-22T20:41:28.684-05:00Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEic-wMILzOHQGoKOiXiBN6zINFL8BJdvIgEokJYOyqrOtwQPPZEtWKhnw4B0Ao3X5myIh9b0PwCcYf_iFdzKtHkZTClw_HutLTD7i251xKQfS9Bjyd9DsM17LcK4mXSRwhmPTa5LoIoQr8/s1600/Paranormal-Activity-The-Marked-Ones-Actividad-paranormal-los-marcados-710x1024.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEic-wMILzOHQGoKOiXiBN6zINFL8BJdvIgEokJYOyqrOtwQPPZEtWKhnw4B0Ao3X5myIh9b0PwCcYf_iFdzKtHkZTClw_HutLTD7i251xKQfS9Bjyd9DsM17LcK4mXSRwhmPTa5LoIoQr8/s1600/Paranormal-Activity-The-Marked-Ones-Actividad-paranormal-los-marcados-710x1024.jpg" height="320" width="221" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">See, like this.</td></tr>
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"Sequels Literally Forever"<br />
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Okay I just made that up, but there was no actual tagline. So sue me! Hello friends, welcome to another fine Thursday at The Tagline, where I babble about movies and you continue to fail to voice increasing suspicions that I may actually be losing my mind. I know I promised you bad bad turtles, but I thought I'd save that good shit for next week, and so instead you'll be getting horror sequel part 100, with Paranormal Activity: THE MARKED ONES. Though really I think I definitely prefer "Actividad Paranormal: Los Marcados" as a title. Anyway, this... fifth film in the series is technically a spinoff, so characters from the other movies only make brief cameos (mostly just Katie Featherston, who is the only one to have appeared in every instance of the franchise). The movie follows recent high school graduate Jesse, and his two friends Marisol and Hector, as they are first messing around with a camera and decide to see what sorts of weird shit their downstairs neighbor Ana is getting up to. Everyone thinks she's a witch and SURPRISE she totally is a goddamned witch. If I've learned anything about California from these movies, it's that the female population there is at least like 25% witches and demon worshipers. Anyway, Ana winds up murdered, presumably by a classmate of Jesse's and then stuff starts getting weird around Jesse's house. He acquires some neat magic tricks, and the trio slowly come to realize that this new juice Jesse has going for him is coming from something that seems to be hanging around with him, following him and communicating its displeasure through a Simon (you know the light up game thing). This movie offers a lot of object lessons for the audience, and I will enumerate them as I go further into my thoughts on the movie.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1vcSOhkV5RTK8aF1sk5R4YjuDJVQBoJ-CFibmn8aHVBSU6XZAhCAP2phvbPhpdNjjSpFmyq3Y35FrU69SUgGHU6zkIbWzTmGGHdrITOr-eFrYx64NNONXoFGCPX3LWlo9P2RwTXm_7RA/s1600/maxresdefault.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1vcSOhkV5RTK8aF1sk5R4YjuDJVQBoJ-CFibmn8aHVBSU6XZAhCAP2phvbPhpdNjjSpFmyq3Y35FrU69SUgGHU6zkIbWzTmGGHdrITOr-eFrYx64NNONXoFGCPX3LWlo9P2RwTXm_7RA/s1600/maxresdefault.jpg" height="180" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">What nice sisters they are!</td></tr>
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For starters, I always suspected that Simon was an evil device created by the devil, but now I have concrete proof of it. People said I was crazy, and I was banned from Toys R'Us but now I think we all can see that I was wasn't the crazy one after all was I?! Uh... anyway, Jesse starts to get even weirder than that stuff I just said, and through some creepy book that they find in Ana's house they determine that Jesse was marked from birth to become a vessel for a demon. Now I'm not sure why you'd want to deliberately summon one of these goddamned things, even if you were an evil devil worshiper, seeing as the only thing they like to do as near as I can tell is tear people to pieces and do freaky supernatural shit to them. Maybe the witches are possessed too though so they're down with that I don't know. At any rate, Jesse and his friends commit increasingly desperate acts in an attempt to prevent the finalization of the possession. This includes Jesse's abuela using her spooky catholic santaria to try and exorcise the demon out of Jesse, which seems as it often does to succeed only in making the demon super pissed. Good try though abuela, you did your best, and tried to warn them not to speak to the devil through that Simon.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKx3NL5JMxQmRNY8-vGrhqEBPyVzWw3sat-_apq9-khjRQ3IB0ogG6RX6enoTFbu8A4tjqsH5XNklp9lp2EflGFysmM8xDXKjjf7ED99vs6XDmznJgEl6ql9_qrW1GUT1-E3DOL1-oawo/s1600/movies-paranormal-activity-the-marked-ones-2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKx3NL5JMxQmRNY8-vGrhqEBPyVzWw3sat-_apq9-khjRQ3IB0ogG6RX6enoTFbu8A4tjqsH5XNklp9lp2EflGFysmM8xDXKjjf7ED99vs6XDmznJgEl6ql9_qrW1GUT1-E3DOL1-oawo/s1600/movies-paranormal-activity-the-marked-ones-2.jpg" height="179" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">God, to live a full life having never seen shit like this.</td></tr>
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Here's another free piece of advice. No matter how sexy a time you had at that super cool party, it is never a good idea to try and hook up in the abandoned apartment of a dead witch, or anyone else for that matter! It is a good idea to try and have sex in an abandoned building I would say exactly 0% of the time. I have never watched a film where some teens snuck off into a spooky abandoned building, got busy in some empty room, and then Megan Fox did not EAT THE GUY ALIVE IN A NOT SEX WAY. Also if you were in an empty room, of an apartment of a dead woman, at night, alone, and a mysterious trap door popped ITSELF open, would you lean over the opening and just like, stick your head down there? If you answered yes, then nothing will happen in this movie that you don't approve of. Everyone will behave in a manner that you find appropriate, and will die just like you've no doubt always dreamed of.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitR98LbCiajlGawFhgV27Iy13sxETJKLyq19RAza-3r2HNBxbeZeP4PD-Zz_lEUnDodOxckm7eXr28M7zH7-hBKGDIpnXOGwx1-Ei2VCMd-hwNluPXUwBcLT1HG4h5IroNwNHSFdopf_U/s1600/maxresdefault+(1).jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitR98LbCiajlGawFhgV27Iy13sxETJKLyq19RAza-3r2HNBxbeZeP4PD-Zz_lEUnDodOxckm7eXr28M7zH7-hBKGDIpnXOGwx1-Ei2VCMd-hwNluPXUwBcLT1HG4h5IroNwNHSFdopf_U/s1600/maxresdefault+(1).jpg" height="180" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Man, he needs to stop throwing tantrums and grow up.</td></tr>
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The final lesson we learn, and at great cost to one of our main characters, is that if you see a scary weird door with freaky runes on it, don't go through the door. It is not a magical portal to safety. It is a magical portal to the opposite of safety. You know this for sure because of the fucked up pentagrams and stuff covering the frame of it. Hector unfortunately works this lesson out a little late. That's not really his fault though, because he was just trying to get away from demons and scary witch cultists and stuff, and who can fault a guy for that.<br />
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While there are only so many movies you can watch about having a camera while the devil torments you in your bedroom (it's different when you're lost under Paris honest!) this movie has a bit of a different atmosphere and setup than the other Paranormal Activity films, and managed to be a lot fresher than say PA4, which I found to be thoroughly not interesting. This movie of course lacks the pure horror of the original, but it is still freaky, and entertaining. That's good enough for a Netflix watch. For the record they are planning a REAL Paranormal Activity 5 so... I guess look out for that. That's it for today, join me again next week for turtles. Honest.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5318912740825377676.post-36179202587078695262015-01-20T11:59:00.002-05:002015-01-20T11:59:11.911-05:00As Above, So Below<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjvtxU3FVkNiCPo9oferZyZfvBDqX5ITUEJgXcCIwss1IL8F4eiGNQlKt6FhbRbqEjGsTAreaAVZGj8cxzYlA8lreQ8j0PnJtWEeJoPPjV4jobsVUnMR0SVCXgsdICb_WAAZmoX-G59io/s1600/before-you-see-as-above-so-below.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjvtxU3FVkNiCPo9oferZyZfvBDqX5ITUEJgXcCIwss1IL8F4eiGNQlKt6FhbRbqEjGsTAreaAVZGj8cxzYlA8lreQ8j0PnJtWEeJoPPjV4jobsVUnMR0SVCXgsdICb_WAAZmoX-G59io/s1600/before-you-see-as-above-so-below.jpeg" height="320" width="202" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">They really need to clean up Paris.</td></tr>
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"The only way out is down."<br />
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Too true guys, too true. So welcome back to a new week of The Tagline! Today it's going to be some more horror, as I dip back into that much maligned genre, the found footage horror movie. Today's offering is As Above, So Below, a film about a group of people who descend into the catacombs beneath Paris in search of the Philosopher's Stone. As we all know from watching the first Harry Potter movie, The Philosopher's Stone was the end goal of all alchemy, and it was rumored that Nicholas Flamel succeeded in its creation, achieving immortality along with his wife. For anyone sort of curious, Flamel's reputation as an alchemist was <i>extremely</i> posthumous. He lived in the late 14th and early 15th century, and accounts of his alchemy legend originate more than 200 years later. At any rate, in this movie he really IS an alchemist, and the main character, a woman named Scarlet, finds evidence in Iran of where the philosopher's stone might be. Why is there something in Iran written in Aramaic that tells the location of Nicholas Flamel's Philosopher's Stone? I have no idea, but it did so yeah, Scarlet follows this evidence to Paris. There she realizes that the evidence points to a secret chamber somewhere beneath Paris, deep in the catacombs that crisscross the city's below. While attempting to determine the location of this chamber, a mysterious individual suggests they consult with an amateur catacomb delver named Papillon, and then disappears of course. Papillon and his hipster friends lead Scarlet, her documentary camera guy, and her reluctant ex-boyfriend into the necropolis, Where shit promptly starts to get weird.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">When I hear burning and think I'm in hell, I don't investigate.</td></tr>
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For starters, when there are weird ladies in robes singing spooky hymns in red candlelight, I take that as a sign to just go back up and call it a day. I guess that's just me though. Not that invested in finding magic rocks under the earth. I'm more concerned with not being trapped in tunnels made out of human bones beneath the earth, alone with my worst nightmares. Undeterred by good sense, reasonable fears, or any of that other shit, the group continues on, and eventually find that the tunnels are not as Papillon remembers them, and the group is forced into a tunnel that looks a lot like one that Papillon said no one has ever come back out of. As you might have guessed, shit takes a predictably bad turn after that, tunnels start collapsing, people fall down holes, and eventually they find themselves staring down a tunnel with an inscription that matches the one over the gates of hell in Dante's Inferno. Do they go through it? Why OF COURSE THEY FUCKING DO WHY NOT RIGHT WHAT COULD HAPPEN.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Best advice of the whole movie, don't follow this woman.</td></tr>
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A few things about this movie. If you hate found footage stuff, as a form (and I totally wouldn't blame you for being sick of it) then don't bother with this film. It is not going to dissuade you of your prejudices if you loathe the very form itself. That being said, this is definitely a not contrived usage of the form (it is after all an expedition for ostensibly anthropological purposes, and so bears filming) and the camera never feels intrusive. Early on the cameraman installs networked cameras on everyone's head lamps, so that the issue of how we are seeing everything never needs to be addressed again. We aren't left wondering why in the name of common sense they are still bothering to film as they fight for their life (I'm looking at you <a href="http://everysinnerhasatagline.blogspot.com/2013/08/cloverfield.html">Hud</a>, you piece of garbage). Also the movie resorts to a general minimum of jump out horror, with most of the fear coming from the fact that you are riding along with a bunch of people who are lost in claustrophobic tunnels, and are possibly in literal hell. While Scarlet manages to be persistently reckless and generally causes most of the danger by being a dope, this is an avowed characteristic of hers from the start, so it doesn't come as some surprise. In general this movie has an interesting premise and kept me engaged throughout. It kept me feeling anxious right until the end, and I honestly didn't know how things were going to turn out. </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">What about this led you to believe you WOULDN'T be<br />crawling over mounds of human bones?</td></tr>
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Definitely worth noting is that, the movie looks so authentic because it was actually shot in the catacombs beneath Paris. This was the first movie that got permission to do that, and it definitely adds gravity and realism to the film. I imagine a lot of the fear and panic was easy to generate for the actors, because they were actually underground beyond cellphone reception and without electricity. Just whatever equipment they brought down with them. If that seems scary then... I mean I think that's a pretty reasonable fear. Reviews for this movie were not nice, but I expect that for any movie that's found footage. If you want critics to loathe you, basically just make a found footage movie. It's easy mode for wanting to fail.</div>
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That's all for today gang! Join me again on Thursday for turtles possibly. Turtles? Could be.</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0