This will be a post on more than one topic, so I will try to break it into chunks if you want to skip one part or more.

Topic #1 - Redbox DVD Rentals.

I am almost quite certain that this is a well known thing, since they now have one in the Wal-Mart in Pittsburg. For those that haven't tried it out, I would highly recommend it though. Imagine a Blockbuster, with only the new movies, without clerks or always-in-the-way-of-the-movie-you-want customers. The process is simple enough, touch-screen interface in which you browse the catalog of available movies, select desired flick, swipe credit/debit card, and recieve movie. One day=$1 per movie, plus tax of course. I find this route of recieving movies preferable to netflix or any other online/real world movie rental site for one reason. Money. In the real world I pay for a 5 day, or in the case of new releases significantly less days, but same price, viewing fee. Why? I will watch the movie once and send it back. Same for the online services. It is my understanding that for those you pay a membership fee, then go through the hassle of mailing the stuff back and waiting on your next selection to arrive. Maybe I'm just weird, but that sounds kind of like a pain when I could just pay a $1 for a movie I will watch that night and then return the next day.

Topic #2 Wedding/float trip.

Thanks again for the wedding invite Mike. I had a blast, and thanks to Riley's inability to stop using pronouns, laughed histerically for like 20 minutes. I could've used some hard liquor and "of age" women that weren't afraid of just dancing with guys, but hey, now you know what to look forward to if I ever find a women insane enough to marry me. The next day I was awake at 7:30 AM for one last float trip of the summer, and I was able to take out my drunken everclear rages on Jim and Nancy Evans canoe. Let me fully explain. We started off the day great, drive up drinking beer and listening to Rodney Carrington. We arrive at Noel and I decide to mix the half pint of everclear I have with a 2 liter of Coke. This will come into play later. Since we arrived late we had to miss the full 12 mile float and they set us up on the 8 mile float. I decide that I shouldn't pace myself and finish the two liter in about 45-50 minutes. I got schwasted. After about 3 miles the Missouri Water Patrol pulls us over. I started to laugh histerically because the time that I actually get stopped I am 21, and that is a miracle in itself. It wasn't a miracle though for the three people that got M.I.P.'s in our group, all of which will remain nameless so they don't bite my damn head off. And Robert got a $50 littering ticket for losing a beer can in the river (they were watching us for a while). Now because of my everclear induced drunkennes, my memory of the rest is a little fuzzy, but there is one part that clearly stands out. I had fallen off of the raft I was on and the assholes in that raft decided it would be a hoot if they just kept on floating. Jim and Nancy Evans decided to take pity on me. They pull up in their canoe and tell me to get in, I tell thim this is a very bad idea because I know what will happen. They persist, and I tell them "Allright, lean very hard to the left." They did not lean very hard to the left and I procede to drunkenly throw all of my body weight onto the right side of the canoe. Needless to say it capsized and we then procede to drag the canoe to the side for draining. I tell them that I was sorry and sarcastically tell them to use more left leaning. Jim seemed to be ok and laughed with me about it, Nancy was seething, SEETHING, anger, and I still feel bad about it.

Topic #3 me being a racist

I mean really. Me? I strongly realize that I have some views that some people might consider racist. But at the same time I wonder why I am labeled as one. A Racist discriminates against all people of a certain race, no matter age, sex, or social stature. And normally a racist thinks their own race is superior to one, many, or all races. I don't think that the white race is superior to any, or in reality that any race is superior to any other. We all have our strengths and weaknesses and maybe, NOW JUST MAYBE, those strengths and weaknesses are exhibited in the vast majority of people of a certain race. I just think that sometimes using a persons race in an argument against said individual is appropriate based on what point you are trying to make. Like in the R. Kelly argument that Nolan linked to. Allright when I wrote that I was pissed, and rereading it now I may have made some grammar choices that were not benficial to the argument as a whole. But the point I was trying to make was valid. Race was a factor in that case, Just like O.J. Simpsons case. And the argument of the team of high-priced lawyers confusing the jury is a valid one to, because it is a possibility. I'll just leave a link to kind of state what I am trying to say, but says it better. LINK

You cannot tell me if you watched the whole video that the white people were not pissed and the black people were not ecstatic. There was not one single white person on a camera with a smile on their face unless it was a lawyer and it meant payday. Thats just the point I try to make when I bring up race in an argument, that it still plays very strongly in all of our day-to-day relations with other people, whether we admit/realize it or not. But if I am a racist, who am I racist against? I still am in contact with my black friends from Thomas Jefferson Middle School in Jefferson City, MO, and the kids from the abused children shelter in New Orleans that I took a mission trip to in highschool, most of which were black. I am friends with Ankit, the Arruda's. I've hung out with people of many different races, and didn't judge them unless I actually got to speak with them. I don't judge any situation unless it is just extremely blatantly obvious that race played a part, then I might let slip something racist in anger, but if it's a racist situation, then by God it deserves racist remarks.

Topic #4 Vantage Point

This is the final topic and actually deals with the title of the post. I used the Redbox DVD rental service to check out this movie. I had only seen the trailer and it looked like it would be worth the view. Nolan said it great in these three lines when describing the telegraphed pass in a movie.

"1) Fake us out.

Or

2) Throw that pass while doing a backflip to a receiver who just barely gets their feet in-bounds before scoring."

SPOILERS AHEAD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

For those that still want to see this movie you can skip the rest of the article because I ruin it

Vantage Point threw the be-all end-all hail mary 99 yard bomb in the first 10 minutes of the movie. And it almost works. It starts off with the President getting shot, a couple of bombs, and what would appear to be the makings of a great movie. They then over the next hour of the hour and a half  movie show that same scene not 3 or four times, but more than double that (I lost count after six because I quit caring). The whole point of the movie was that the first ten minute scene was the whole point, and that different people who saw different things or that had different "Vantage Points" had to piece together what happened. It would have really worked if it had not been for the presentation. Explosions are alot of fun, but you can't show me the same god damn explosion more than six times in a movie over the course of an hour and expect me to be as interested as I was at the beginning. In the last 20 or so minutes they try to get me reinvested with a car chase and some good shooting violence, but it was way too rushed and just seemed like they tried to overwhelm me instead of win me over. All in all, if they had done the tarantino time jumps, and not shown the same god damn thing but the intro and outro to the same god damn thing, it would have given me plot without boring me to tears, and it would've worked. But they didn't and I'm out a buck. Oh well.

I learned many, many years ago that when a franchise movie is bad you need to just deal with it. It's one of the most difficult things a person has to do when dealing with the reality of an object they love failing them utterly.

So, yes.  The X-Files: I Want to Believe is bad.  Let's have a spoiler-filled look at how this happened.

I don't want to waste a ton of time reviewing the film... or telling you why it sucks.  Actually, the wonderful Alexandra DuPont of Ain't it Cool News does a GREAT job of telling you why this movie goes wrong.  Unless you see me directly contradict something from that review, consider it a great layout of my opinions (right down the comments about werewolves, Robert Patrick, and that God-forsaken last shot).

Six years ago the greatest television show ever went off the air.  Now, I feel perfectly justified saying that.  When it comes to television, there's some sorta crazy formula of quality balanced over quantity that allows you to be "the best".  The X-Files perfected that.  Don't tell me how awesome Firefly is.  It didn't even have a full season of episodes.  It never had to say, "how do we keep this fresh?"  That doesn't mean it isn't awesome.  It just means it can never be as awesome as The X-Files.  Did the show suffer some as it went on?  Yes.  The mythology episodes became very weak in the middle of the show. When I was younger, I thought the show died an awful death at the departure of Duchovny.  Upon re-viewing the show, this is not the case.  While it isn't as great as the heyday of seasons two through four, (where we truly trusted no one, locked our doors a little more securely and feared the impending alien invasion), it's much better than it is usually credited with being.  The reason we hated it then?  We were damn near told to.  Instead of handling Duchovny's wish to breathe (which, after eight years, wouldn't you want to "try something different?"), FOX TV constantly dicked with us.  "IS THIS THE WEEK MULDER RETURNS!?"  Now, I don't know if Chris Carter's "crap, my stars are leaving" plan of a revolving door Law & Order style cast would have worked, but I will say that Robert Patrick and Annabeth Gish are both solid contributors to the show, and their presence is SEVERLY lacking in the movie.  No doubt 20th Century Fox said "replace those FBI agents with somebody hip... like AMANDA PEET".  *sigh*

But from the very beginning of the end, Duchovny and others said, "we're down for movies".  A whole lotta missteps later (including losing the outline to the super-secret script), and here we are. On the damned 100th anniversary of the FBI, the show that made the Bureau cool makes its big screen return.  Fight the Future (the 1998 film) is like a warm freakin' blanket to me.  No matter how many fine movies come out in the rest of my life, I'm comfortable saying it will always been in my top twenty-five.  So... how did we X-Philes come to the Alexandra DuPont camp on the sequel?

The Hollywood insider "Movieline International Report" said the following to theaters about what to expect this weekend: The popular TV series and highly successful 1998 theatrical release (10/11/98, $30 million opening, $83 million total) has generated interest with over 25 females who were fans of the TV series. Average or better business.
Now, aside from getting the release date of the first movie wrong (that was the DVD release, thank you), we setup that Hollywood intends for this to be a chick flick.  Now, many, many chicks watched The X-Files, but a cheap, $33 million (the reported budget for the movie) chick flick... no.  Not acceptable.

The movie starts right.  The music.  The scrolling "location" text in that bottom left corner.  The creepy vibe.  Sure, whatever the HELL happens with the arm and what-not at the film's outset isn't exactly the creepiest X-File we've ever seen, but it's an okay foundation.  Here we have the goodness.  Chris Carter and Frank Spotnitz truly ask, "what has happened in the past six years?"  And their immediate answer is one of genius.  Scully is finally a doctor, at a Catholic hospital.  She works to save lives, but she is still reeling from the decision to give up her son for his protection.  Mulder has become a bearded hermit, living away from society and clipping out weird stories from newspapers.  He's a sad, sad man... a man who has had everything taken from him.  Both characters are vunerable, lost souls.  And then the FBI comes knocking, offering to drop (bogus) charges (and a sentancing to death) against Mulder if he'll help them find a lost FBI agent.  The PROMISE of this movie is amazing.  Taking a pair of shattered icons on a trip down memory lane.  And they do it SO right.  Mulder can't say no to helping find a missing person, because he owes it to his dead sister!  Scully misses her child, so she immediately hates our weirdo psychic pedophile priest!  Every. Single. Character. Decision. PERFECT.  As a matter of fact, the worst thing to occur in the first thirty minutes of the movie is a tarnishing of the classic Mark Snow musical theme to make the most wacked out George W. Bush joke ever.  I cannot understand this joke for the life of me, and it is NOT a way to reestablish something that IS truly iconic.

From this point on, the "how" of doom starts to become apparent.  The villians aren't creepy enough.  The drama is too soapy.  But mostly?  Chris Carter is the EXACT OPPOSITE of George Lucas.  Now, I know what you're thinking; "that's gotta be a good thing, right?"  Sadly, wrong.  You see, when George returned to Star Wars after hiatus, he said, "I know what's right.  Screw you all.  I am a god."  But Carter has been abused.  The man has barely worked in the past six years.  The end of his show is considered by many a huge failure (and if we're only talking about the HORRIBLE recap episode that is the two-hour finale, then they're right).  I get the feeling that Chris doesn't get his phone calls returned much anymore.  So, he listens to the haters.  "Stand alone episodes are better."  And he makes a stand alone movie.  He listens to the fans.  "Mulder and Scully are truly together."  He listens to the studio.  "Xzibit!"  He listens to everyone.  Because he WANTS it back.  He NEEDS it. 

But there's the problem.  Who are these twenty-five year old women seeing the movie?  They are X-PHILES.  They want to be screwed with!  They want to be shocked and scared!  AND THEY WANT TO BELIEVE!!  There's nobody seeing this movie who doesn't have a pre-formed opinion.  I've heard ten people declare proudly to me since this movie went into production that they had never watched an episode of the series.  They are not gonna see this movie, no matter how many times you tell them it stands alone.  Then there are the people who NEED CLOSURE.  People like me who pray at night that come December 22, 2012 (if you don't know what that date is, sorry) Mulder and Scully will save us from colonization.  And we're split.  We're never getting together.  Example: have you seen the trailer?  There's that shot of the priest on his knees, blood coming from his eyes.  Now, the shot has been darkened in the trailer so that the blood almost looks black.  Like... the black oil, a central part of X-Files mythology.  So, anyone with any background goes, "OH MAN, THE BLACK OIL, SWEET" and is being lied to.  But everyone else is like, "I thought you said stand alone?  WTF?"

And that's where we are.  You can't change that.  You have a fanbase.  I've spent a couple hundred dollars on DVDs.  I'll see any movie that's put out.  And you give me a movie where Skinner only shows up in the last ten minutes, and you replace a role that was probably written for Robert Patrick with Xzibit.  And you do this the week after The Dark Knight so that you get the toughest, highest-expecting critics and crowds possible.  Great freakin' work 20th Century Fox.  No, really.  You have one of the most loyal fanbases in television history... a fanbase that truly helped to shape the show, and you're worried about appealing to somebody else after nine years of faithful viewing?  *double sigh*

As the movie drags on (and it really does drag), you keep wishing for something, anything to happen, but it can't.  The studios don't want it to.  Also, while Carter is in many ways a genius, he is no spectacular director.  Give us back Rob Bowman in the director's chair, please.  We're subjected to so many things that just don't work as this film goes along.  We don't have the money for any action near the film's end, so there really isn't any.  They throw a weird attraction plot in with Amanda Peet that about drives me bonkers.  And while the initial concepts for the "scary" plot are good (both the spiritual and scientific elements) we have to pull them off with crap.  Scully wants to perform an expirimental stem cell procedure?  She has to LOOK IT UP ON GOOGLE.  And then the revealing moment for what the spooky plot is comes from her finding that all of what she found on Google didn't print.  The same lament could be put to the film's romantic plot.  The first moment they show the dynamic duo laying in bed got a gasp from the audience (although for the life of me, I can't figure out why... I mean, are there really people who didn't get the memo that they were sleeping together in the last three seasons?), but then after a decade and a half of working well together they get into an argument and talk like a spat is enough to break them up.  I mean, how I see it, these characters have caused so much pain and grief for each other over the years but gotten through it together that their relationship should be the most solid relationship in the history of cinema.  Sadly this doesn't seem to be the case.

This movie lacks triumph.  You wanna talk triumph?  Watch the end of Fight the Future where a simple TELEGRAM makes crowds cheer aloud as the film goes to credits.  When this movie was over, people didn't know what to do.  They were like, "um... it's over?  Really?  That's it?"  We've been told by this show time and time again to expect more.  And to not give us any indication as to the current outlook on the title's sake (the X-files), is a pretty bad plan as well.  Heck, Amanda Peet's dialog reminding us of how many WAY COOLER psychics we've seen over the years of the show doesn't help anything either.  There's so much "meh" at the end of this movie, it's hard to describe.  And the epic-bad final shot.  I don't know what the demographic that needs to see Mulder and Scully row off into the sunny world is... but fuck you, demographic.  I mean, seriously.  I want these characters to be happy as much as the next guy, but that's a load of crap.  THEY WAVED AT THE CAMERA.  Like some damned fan fiction joke. 

I think the most painful thing about this movie was how much I needed more.  If I thought "The Truth" (the series finale) was a bad ending to a masterpiece... I Want to Believe is a doggone AWFUL ending.  It does not address the items that need addressing.  There is no triumph.  There is no victory.  Heck, I'd even take despair!  But there's nothing.  "And... we went on vacation".  No.  Screw that. We need another movie.  We need to get some of the old writers involved.  And we need to push for something more.  The X-Files damn near FOUNDED the current era of good science fiction TV and movies.  And it should go out with a bang, not a whimper.

“Hell No: A look at why Hellboy II let me way down”

“Oh crap.” –Hellboy

When you go to a movie, you’re entering a conflict on defense.  A group of people is going to come in front of you and display something to you, and you react.  Now, there are different kinds of movies, and many different expectations.

“Hellboy II” has an interesting mess of expectations going for it.  It’s based on a brilliant and reliable comic book, but the first film was at best “loosely” based on the comics.  Instead, it took some of the look, characters, and ideas and threw them somewhere fully different.  Hellboy doesn’t hide from the public, he isn’t madly in love with Liz Sherman, and he’s a lot more… mature in many ways.  Now, about that first film, it’s a good movie.  It sure isn’t great, because it has one of the most anti-climatic third acts EVER.  The movie deflates, imploding upon itself in a painfully dull fashion.  Which is a shame, because most of the movie was interesting enough, and it really does have some great moments.  And those moments are very well visualized by Guillermo del Toro.  His name brings a lot of expectations with this new film.  You can’t help but bring expectations based off of “Blade II” and “Pan’s Labyrinth” to the film.

So, with the offensive line revealed, let’s be blunt: “Hellboy II” is overrated.

I do not, at all, understand this heaping of praise coming at this movie.  I keep hearing things about “Star Wars”, and I just want to say to everybody making that comparison, you can shut the hell up before I shove a proton torpedo up your rear.  About the only two things those two movies have in common is a lot of cool real-world effects and a scary lack of black people.  Yes, “Hellboy II” looks cool.  If you liked “Transformers”, you may like “Hellboy II”.  But, if you saw “Transformers” as the vapid piece of junk it was… well, let’s have a discussion. 

Here come the spoilers.

Half an hour into “Hellboy II”, I was pretty sure I was in for some suck.  This was for three reasons:

1) We had zero “development”.  None of the characters had looked at each other long enough to evoke anything more than a passing conversation.  And the reverse-development of Manning (Tambor) and Hellboy (Perlman) with their working relationship from the end of the last film was baffling.

2) There was a scene where people argued in front of a council.  Let me give anyone out there who wants to make a movie a tip-- council scenes are VERY HARD to pull off.  George Lucas can’t do it.  The Wachowski brothers can’t do it.  Peter Jackson did it ONCE, and that was because 50% of the people in his council have some pretty serious acting skills.  Anytime you stick a bunch of important, stuffy people in a room to have an argument, it usually launches into one guy giving a speech and getting pissy, and ends very blah.  Even though this council scene ended in a bloodbath, I was still not amused.

3) They had already told me, rather explicitly, how the movie was going to end.  Much, much more bitching on this point later.

So, half an hour in, I’m sitting there pulling a Hellboy.  “Oh crap.”  And watching this movie play out is a damned train wreck.  It’s like Del Toro made a list of stuff that has an interesting idea, and then made it boring and didn’t explore it.  Don’t get me wrong here and defend him on this by saying, “oh, that’s the point- to make these extraordinary things common”.  I’m gonna lay some money down that I’ve probably read more Hellboy than you, and I understand the way “absurd” works.  Demons lamenting that they’ve lost an acolyte to pancakes is awesome. 

( http://www.brandonbird.com/photos/pancakes.jpg ) Pancakes are normal things.  A demon eating them is funny.  But the real home run comes from the “oh no” factor of the other demons realizing that they have lost one of their crew because he ate pancakes.  The emotional pay-off’s.

The EXACT opposite of this scenario takes place in “Hellboy II”.  About fifteen minutes in we’re told Liz Sherman is pregnant.  This gives us a TON of potential for pay-off!  There’s the “you’re carrying the child of a demon” thing, the “how does this affect your relationship” thing, the “I’m a working woman, how will this affect me” thing… and what do we get instead?  For NINETY MINUTES we get this instead:

“Hey, HB, I need to tell you something.”

“Sure, Liz, what’s up?”

*explosion, distraction*

“Oh, Liz, did you have something to tell me?”

“Yea, I--"

*explosion, distraction*

Taking ninety minutes to tell the title character something I’ve been told in the audience… this is not a good plan.  And when they DO tell him, it doesn’t really DO anything.  It’s sloppy.  Just like Liz knowing at the very end of the movie that she’s having twins.  HOW DOES SHE KNOW THIS!?  There are loads of unresolved, unexplained bullshit-- all of it set to bad music.  The bad guy talks about uniting his elf people for war.  We see his elf people at the council of suck.  And then… no more elf people.  Apparently, this royal elf is basically the prince of a machine army and nobody else.  I don’t understand this.

There’s so much wrong with this movie.  I mean, sure, I laughed some.  And yes, it’s nice to see a movie do effects that aren’t all CGI.  But I can’t like it.  Maybe someday, somehow I’ll get dumber.  But for now I just can’t grasp what the hell Del Toro is thinking other than that he wanted to make puppets.  Some people are really harsh on “Blade II”, and I understand why.  It’s a little disjointed.  Something about it doesn’t quite flow right.  It needs a couple more character moments, a few more breathers, and needs to try a little bit less to be cool.  But ya know what?  The basic plot of that movie is a few small shifts away from identical to this… and it was far and away better.  Because we see Blade and his crew experience some stuff.  Feelings happen.  Choices are made.  As it stands, I'm not looking forward to "The Hobbit", but then again, I was only fully devoted to the first "Lord of the Rings" movie, and more dedicated to screaming in rage throughout the second film.

“Hellboy II” happens.  And it doesn’t make sense.  I don’t understand why the previously human-run BPRD sends in someone new from DC to command its main office who is definitely in the “freak” category.  I don’t understand how any of the relationship struggles “resolve”.  I really, really don’t understand what the hell ANYONE was thinking in dismissing Marco Beltrami and his brilliant, quirky theme from the last film for an unceasing assault of Danny Elfman giving us his very worst. 

But most of all, I do not understand the telegraphed pass.

There we are, the defense, the audience.  Maybe you don’t have all the expectations I do.  You haven’t seen this offense before, you don’t know its moves.  But within the movie itself we are told at the very beginning “there is an army, and you can challenge the leader of the army… hey, are you listening, Hellboy?”  Hey, did anyone notice the fact that the bad guy has a twin with a physical wounding bond?  So… like, if you hurt one, the other would go down!  So, we know what’s coming.  We know what the third act is.  And that’s fine.  That’s more than fine, that’s great.  Because at the end of the movie, you SHOULD know what has to happen.  John McClane is gonna have to blow up the bad guy.  Neo is gonna end up being the One.  The great movies know this.  But when you telegraph a pass, you HAVE to do one of two things:

1) Fake us out.

Or

2) Throw that pass while doing a backflip to a receiver who just barely gets their feet in-bounds before scoring. 

Don’t do these things, and your audience gets BORED.  I WANTED the movie to end.  I did NOT feel the need to keep sitting there.  As filmmakers you either have to hit us in a way we aren’t looking for, or you have to make what we knew was coming so out-of-this-world amazing that we want to hit the instant replay because it was just THAT GOOD.  Anyone out there remember that title game in football between Texas and USC?  And near the end, you see that Vince Young is gonna run the ball himself.  And you knew it was coming.  You knew he was gonna do it.  But the way, and the confidence, and the finesse is just so amazing that you wanna re-watch it.  Yea, Hellboy doesn’t end like that.

It just ends.