Thursday, June 12, 2008

The AMA Alliance Sounds Stressed, Maybe They Should Smoke A Cig

"Shame on 'The Incredible Hulk' for unnecessarily adding smoking to a sequel that would have been just as exciting and believable without it," said Dianne Fenyk, President of the Alliance. "Universal Studios and the other Hollywood studios should be especially embarrassed for using comic book movies, which they market to children and know youth will want to see, to promote tobacco."

The above quote pretty much sums up a press release by the American Medical Association Alliance, which is riding the coattails of a big budget movie into the news. Saying that a character promotes cigar smoking by simply having one is as sensible as saying that the Hulk (the protagonist lead) is promoting running from the law by... running from the law. Maybe the cigar in the movie shows something about the character, like how he is old fashioned and inconsiderate of others' well-being.

In a related note, I have a theory about why crazy people are often in leadership positions of otherwise sane organizations. Maybe I'll share it sometime.

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Friday, April 4, 2008

Declassified Story from Work and Other Notes

  • I was in the breakroom and saw that someone had left some Diet Pepsis up for grabs. I desperately needed the caffeine so I took one. It tasted awful! Thinking quick, I grabbed a packet of sugar from the coffee bar and poured its contents into my soda. "Success!" I thought as I tipped it towards my mouth. It erupted into a growing mass of brown foam which went all over the counter. I turned and saw a few coworkers as they just entered the room to see me make a mess.
  • Netflix finally sent me Justice League: The New Frontier. My brief review: it's incredible. I totally have to buy the DVD for my collection.
  • Super Smash Bros. Brawl for the Wii is also incredible. Pretty much an encyclopedia of all things Nintendo disguised as a fighting game. I'm especially pleased by the super old-school Mr. Game & Watch, based on the silhouetted star of various primitive LCD handheld games from the early 80's. My brother and I used to play one in particular a lot, Octopus. Lo and behold, Mr. Game & Watch transforms into the titular creature for his final smash move. Ahhhh the nostalgia. Now if only I had some Brawl friends to play with...
The Octopus is back!

{Rawr.}

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Saturday, December 8, 2007

It Was Gravity Killed the Beast

Kristin's schedule takes her out of the house a lot of the time so my Netlfix queue has changed from anime to feature films. In telling you what I think about them, I'm introducing a new movie-reviewing criterion: the moment when I wanted to stop watching (but didn't). So far I've seen:

Apocalypto: I don't see what the anthropological fuss is about. I think it's assumed that a work of fiction is fictive, otherwise it would be a documentary. I was disappointed by how un-epic the film was. It pretty much throws in the audience's face that the movie is about government excess leading to the fall of the empire. Except, we never see that. The movie is actually about this guy who loses his village to the empire and kills the people who were directly responsible. Imagine if Star Wars had Luke lose his family, go to the Death Star, and then... kills the stormtroopers who killed his aunt and uncle. Very underwhelming indeed.

Moment I wanted to stop watching: Ten minutes into the film after I realize that it showing every tiny piece of the hero's village life. Seriously, setup is very unnecessary in a film. In contrast, let's look at a masterpiece: The Seven Samurai's premise is that a village is attacked by bandits and desperately hires some samurai for protection. The opening scene? The village decides to hire samurai for protection. I don't need to know how they make breakfast.

King Kong (Jack Black edition): One of the top three movies that address the issue of gorillas fighting dinosaurs. It's also a very unnecessary remake. What King Kong does have going for it is that the action scenes are very well done. Unlike virtually ever other action movie I've seen in the last ten years, I can tell exactly what is going on in a fight between five individuals.

Moment I wanted to stop watching: Five minutes in when Jack Black shows up. I forgot he was in it, and he is intensely annoying.

Live Free or Die Hard: The first Die Hard is unique because it took a pseudo-realistic take on action movies. Glass shards hurt. The enemy's liberated clothes don't fit the hero. The sequels have strayed from that gimmick, and now it's just another Bourne movie. This movie also suffers from too much setup. It should start with John McClane picking up the hacker. Seeing the crazy evil hacker group first takes the realism right out of the film in minute one. And seriously, these hackers have a computer secretly rigged with plastic explosives? Trust me, anyone who likes computers enough to be a hacker knows exactly what is inside their machine, especially brown bricks labeled C4.

Moment I wanted to stop watching: Five minutes in when John McClane's daughter is being forcibly felt up by some dude. Why am I watching this?

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