Movie Reviews Written Just For You

Salt: A Bloody Belly Flop

2010-07-22T23:20:00.000-07:00

Russia and America have to worry about agent Salt. Salt answers the age old question: What’s worse than an action movie with no plot?

CIA agent Evelyn Salt’s (Angelina Jolie) life is thrown into turmoil when her loyalty is questioned in front of her bosses by a man named Orlov (Daniel Olbrychski) who claims to be an agent high up in the Russian government. They accuse her of knowing about the murder of a Russian dignitary. Worse, she knows that her husband, a Mike Krause (August Diehl), a German arachnologist, is in danger from the people who think she’s betrayed them. Like a caged animal, she breaks out of her surroundings, to find her husband.

When I left the theater after seeing Salt, I all could hear was the eternally true expression; two wrongs don’t make a right. While the acting could pass as adequate, the writing and directing left that adage bouncing around my brain. The writing was shallow and lacking any emotional connection, even though it was obvious that there was an attempt to pull on our heart strings. Writer Kurt Wimmer tries to throw curveballs at the audience but only succeeds and t-ball quality pitches. The actions of the characters range from perplexing to downright strange.

The director, Phillip Noyce, couldn’t elevate the action scenes to a level to compensate for the thin writing. The actors, most of which were convincing and interesting, just had nothing to work with. They were like Olympic divers trying to do triple pikes off a six inch high diving board into a puddle; a bloody belly flop is inevitable.

Noyce should be nominated for the “Use of Stereotypes: Costumes Award”. One could create a drinking game around spotting a Russian. Every time he wants to plant an inference about Jolie’s character, or the other spy characters, there is a clumsy use of fur. American’s can’t be credited with the greatest international understanding, but even to us, using furry hats to tell us something about the character tells me that Noyce thinks we have the culture understanding of a bowl of soup.

I spent more time shifting in my seat than captivated. My fingernails suffered no nibbling from intense emotion but came out of the theater especially clean from the preening they experienced during Salt. I was so disinterested during Salt, I deliberately focus myself on the movie and had to stop myself from writing the review in my head in the cinema.

The ending of Salt left me shaking in fear. It was the only time in the movie that I felt truly, deeply rocked by emotion. Just as I could feel the wave of relief that the movie was finally coming to an end, the ending was a tsunami of terror washing away all my hope.

Angelia Jolie kicks major cross-continental ass, but the fight choreography and killings add nothing to the overall story. In the end she was the unfortunate Olympic diver. Salt’s answer the age old question: What’s worse than an action movie with no plot? A boring action movie with no plot.

The Last Airbender: It's Good, If You Don't Like Good Dialogue

2010-07-02T15:19:00.000-07:00

The Last Airbender does not just bend air to his will, he is in charge of keeping the world in balance – but he is not ready for the task. Atrocious writing is the pustule on a strikingly beautiful movie with decent acting and captivating action sequences.

While out hunting, Katara (Nicola Peltz) and her brother Sokka (Jackson Rathbone), of the water tribe, find a frozen sphere with a boy and his floating beast of burden inside. When he escapes the bubble, the brother and sister realize he is different. He is an airbender. Aang (Noah Ringer) is the last of the Air tribe. Aang is not just the last of his kind, he is what the world has been missing to keep the world in balance. When the leaders of the Fire Tribe realize Aang is alive, they dedicate their resources to hunting him down.

A bender is a person who can manipulate the elements of the earth. There are earth, fire, water and wind benders. They control the elements using what appear to be martial arts forms. Much of the movie is the characters using these forms. Occasionally the forms get a bit tiring because there is a disconnection between the motion and the effect, but generally, they are beautiful expressions of discipline. More than just the forms, the fight choreography is captivating. There are transitions between live and computer generated fights that are hard to spot.

In fact, there is no shortage of pristine aesthetics in The Last Airbender. Director and M. Night Shyamalan paid extraordinary and particular attention to the way movie’s visual story. The settings, across an entire world, are rich with cultures. Each group of people and place has their own clothing, terrain, and lifestyle. The differences between different places and people range from subtle to blaringly obvious.

Shyamalan’s most obvious point is that not respecting the sacred is not only immoral, but has world changing consequences. As an atheist, I spent the entire second half of the movie rolling my eyes at how evil those who do not respect the gods are portrayed. M. Night Shyamalan’s opinion about atheists is that 1: We put power first, 2: we don’t care about the world, and 3: we will take, take, take without remorse. It wasn’t enough for him to show spirits that show up for work, it was not enough to show the heroes as warriors of their spirits, no. He had to go a step further, showing those lacking a reverence for the supernatural beings of this realm as so ruthless that they are willing to sacrifice everything for power. Shyamalan can blame us evil atheists all he wants to, but he is only showing his complete inability to escape the restraints of his faith, not the truth of the matter.

The thinly veiled theological biases aside, The Last Airbender is full of lines dumped in the middle or end of a scene that make no sense. Twenty minutes will go by, I’d be lost in the beauty of the movie and the kung fu, when BAAM – a line, usually delivered with all sincerity but horrible timing, that made me go cross-eyed. In one particularly memorable scene, out of nowhere, one character waits fifteen seconds after the last line is delivered and then orders another character to do something so obvious, it didn’t need to be said. She might as well have said during a fight, “Hit that guy.” Every time one of those dump sentences popped up, I checked out for a moment, unable to suspend my disbelief. M. Night Shyamalan then had to earn my trust again, taking time and energy that should have been applied to being emotionally involved in the story.

If you are a theist who wants to watch fights in pretty places, The Last Airbender is just the movie for you. For my ten bucks though, I demand writing that doesn’t make it impossible to care about the story.

Kick Ass - It's fun but that's it.

2010-04-15T21:52:00.000-07:00

Tired of watching innocent people get hurt, an awkward high school boy takes justice into his own hands, invents a super- hero persona he calls Kick Ass, and heads off to fight crime. Even though it is a bit bumpy in places, the cheeky nature of combat makes Kick Ass a fun use of a couple hours.

Late blooming high schooler Dave Lizewski (Aaron Johnson) can’t seem to catch a break. Bullies make easy work of him. Frustrated with the abuse and injustice, Dave goes vigilante and becomes Kick Ass. His self-promoted celebrity does not go unnoticed by Mindy (Chloe Moretz) and Damon Macready (Nicholas Cage); a well trained father-daughter vigilante team armed to the teeth. Kick Ass’s interludes into crime fighting also catches the attention of a local crime boss, Frank D’Amico (Mark Strong).

All of us have felt the sting of injustice or have felt relegated to the humiliating circle of helplessness. I’d guess that 99.9% of us wanted to take action to correct it but because of the law or maybe just plain cowardice we took one for the “let’s be civilized” team. Kick Ass lets us play revisionist history and play out our butt kicking fantasies from the safety of a theater seat; good and bad.

Kick Ass is a pretty sincere look at what might happen if average folk went out and tried to stop criminals. Yes, it is wrapped in outlandish comedy, and sometimes over the top non-sensery but it is not a candy coated adventure for Dave. Things go terribly wrong. He screws up. Usually it’s a matter of passing importance, but occasionally, the mistake is immeasurable.

For the most part though, his dalliance into super heroism is a giggle-coaxing charm. His hero warm-ups are classic. His girl troubles are a relatable snicker-inducing mess and prove, yet again, that boys will do anything for sex.
On the other hand Mindy and Damon’s emotions run deep; their motivations are scars in their history. They have dedicated a great deal of their life’s energy to revenge and the utter destruction of their enemies. Their story has little levity, but gives weight to Kick Ass, even when he is unaware. The atypical parental relationship is tender, in a strangely brutal way.

The writing for both Damon and Mindy borders on displeasing, often not campy enough to throw it over the edge, but too campy to be taken seriously. There are no easy, unobstructed moments between the two.

My major complaint about Kick Ass is that it doesn’t merge the emotion of the two concurrent plot lines well enough. The Mindy-Damon story attempts to be heartbreaking and multi-faceted, but really only blossoms into a slightly more complex motive. When they finally meet, they still seem like they are running next to each other, not with each other.

There are no shortage of hand to hand combat and gun fights in this flick. The close quarter fight scenes made me feel like I was dodging fists. The weapons discussions, between allies and enemies, will make even the most hardened audience member laugh out loud. The final combat sequence is worth sneaking into the theater to see alone.

Kick Ass has one huge plus: a girl hero with her clothes on. Yes, she is a sailor-mouthed elementary school student. Yes, her childhood was unconventional. Yes, she is bad ass. Kick Ass proves that girls can kick down doors, shoot guns, swear and kick the stuffing out of villains without risk of wardrobe malfunction. Take note, other directors and writers, girls in clothing don’t just get raped or beaten up; they can also rat-a-tat-tat yo ass.

Kick Ass probably won’t go down as a classic comedy or superhero movie, but it sure is a fun way to spend a couple of hours. Giving yourself a brief glimpse of your superhero career and a few good laughs is worth the price of the ticket.

The Massive Boy Scout Sexual Abuse Cover-up and the Silent Acceptance Through Participation

2010-03-24T09:12:00.000-07:00

This week it came to light that the Boy Scouts of America have kept “Perversion Files”; thousands of files that outlined sexual abuse in the BSA and how they systematically covered it up. As the BSA propagated acts of prejudice against nearly a quarter of the country’s population by banning gay people and atheists from participating, they allowed the sexual abuse of children in their care. This cover-up and allowance of sexual abuse has been happening for nearly 90 years in the BSA, meaning anyone still alive today who was the parent of, a participant in or a supporter of the BSA has done so during this policy.

These allegations are especially cutting when one considers that the Boy Scouts allegedly allowed Scoutmasters who they knew were pedophiles to continue to lead while they turned away honorable atheists and gay people who wanted to be leaders. The Boy Scouts of America has, through their actions, demonstrated that they find atheism less “morally straight” (part of the Scout Oath) than sexually abusing the children in their care. This is a disgusting policy, one that should shame each and every person who has participated in the BSA in the last 90 years.

One must expect that sexual abuse and abusers will find their way to children, no matter the setting. The BSA must anticipate having child molesters in their ranks, given the scale of their organization and the number of boys in their group. The “Perversion Files” allegedly are not just a list of people of whom to not allow in the BSA because of their predilections, but also contains names of people the BSA let in, knowing their predilections. This extended implanted pedophilic action makes everyone who has given money to the BSA in the last 90 years unknowing participants in the sexual abuse of children. The American federal government, meaning the tax payers of the United States, have given money to the Boy Scouts for decades.

While American bigotry allowed the Boy Scouts to perpetrate acts of hate in the name of “being morally straight”, the resulting lack of examination allowed these crimes to continue. The pseudo-religious, paramilitary, “morally straight” organizational structure creates the perfect storm for concealing wrong-doing. When the moral standard of the organization is the purpose of its existence, it can only continue to thrive if the people the group serves, in this case, boys and their parents, and the overall community believe the organization provides a strong ethical structure for the group. Thus, the reputation of a group becomes more essential than the actual practices of the group. Anything that damages the reputation or image of the organization must be contained, to prevent exposure. In a press release the BSA reaffirms this point by discussing values, image, and ideals but not actions of the Boy Scouts of America.

While we are deeply disturbed by the actions alleged in this lawsuit, they do not represent the values and ideals of the BSA or its councils, professionals, members, or chartered organizations.

It is less important to groups like the BSA that their actions be “morally straight”, but that their image is “morally straight.” When a child comes forth with allegations of abuse, this one case becomes an overall case of brand image. As a consequence, the organization’s image and missions are entirely threatened. It is no longer an issue of child abuse or rape, but an issue of damaging the reputation of millions of people and the group as a whole. A well-meaning person could see it as doing a greater good to hush up the child.

When applied on the scale of the BSA or the Catholic Church, it becomes a systematic practice that harms thousands, maybe millions of children as well as their families. The only way to assure abuses do not becomes systematic is to ruthlessly decimate the false ultra-moral image of the BSA, demand transparency, jail those who covered up abuses and demand they comply with societal standards of behavior.
This is done most effectively by parasites, not attack dogs. People already inside the organization need to withdraw their children and financial support. They need to make it clear that they are leaving the group as long as there are “perversion files” and as long as all people are not allowed in their ranks. I suspect a 5% reduction in numbers would significantly damage the financial bottom line enough to get their attention.

Parents of young boys who have considered entering their boys into Boy Scout programs need to write and tell them that they will not be enrolling their child in the BSA as long as they have a policy of covering up the molestation of the children in their group. I suggest including a check for the enrollment amount with the word VOID written over it. Nothing gets a big organizations attention like a check they cannot cash.

Eagle Scouts (the highest rank in the BSA, a lifelong title that earns an instant promotion in the Army as well as other social considerations) need to come forward with the radical stance that molesting children is wrong, even in the BSA. If they actually believe in the title of an Eagle Scout and what it is supposed to mean, they need to come forward and act bravely, a demand of an Eagle Scout. Speaking directly to their local councils and demand they take a position on the “Perversion Files”, will make a contract with the boys in their charge to report any abuse to the authorities, require them to act within the law, will train Scoutmasters how to report abuse, establish a confidential abuse reporting service and force transparency on the national level. After discussing it on a local level, a council of Eagle Scouts needs to be conveyed independently to write a formal demand of the Boy Scouts of America.

Eagle Scouts need to refrain from participating in any BSA activities. This includes scout meetings, trips, jamborees, or any other event. I encourage Eagles to continue their activities informally until the BSA comes into compliance with common decency.

Scoutmasters, Assistant Scoutmasters, Cubmasters, Assistant Cubmasters and Den Mothers need to withdraw from the organization, with the same policy as the Eagles, until they condemn pedophilia, and commit to a culture of transparent inclusiveness. They need to do this for two reasons. First, it’s the morally correct position. Second is the matter of self-preservation. Until the BSA roots out all the pedophiles and pedophile enablers, the taint is on every single, individual Scout Leader, Assistant Scout Leader, Council Member, Den Mother, etc. The outside world should look upon them as potential threats, because they are, as long as there is an exclusionary, secretive culture in the BSA. Without a significant change, the image of the BSA will be that of NAMBLA, with the same connotations. They should join with the Eagle Scouts and write a separate formal demand with the same provisions as the Eagle Scouts.

I encourage the former scouts and their parents to write letters of disgust and support any demands for transparency made by people inside scouts. This policy put them or their children in danger. Even if they were not hurt, the policy did not assure the utmost protection for their children and violated the trust they put in the organization.

The Scout Law, “A Scout is: Trustworthy, Loyal, Helpful, Friendly, Courteous, Kind, Obedient, Cheerful, Thrifty, Brave, Clean, Reverent” is the perfect trap for a pedophile to lay. If a child actually believes these things, a molester and the BSA could use the law against them. A boy who wants to refuse a sexual advance is being disobedient. Then the pedophile can warn the child that if he tells someone he is not loyal to his troop or to the BSA by making the group look bad. Talking about sexual abuse is certainly not friendly or cheerful. Putting people in jail is not kind or helpful. Having sex before married or having gay sex is unclean and irreverent. If he goes against the wishes of Scoutmaster and tells someone, he is not being obedient. Trustworthy scouts would know how to keep secrets. Lastly, a brave child would deal with the sexual abuse themselves, without telling someone.
Without a significant change in the culture of the BSA, the pedophilia will continue, the cover-up will persist, and this cycle of violence will persevere. Refusing to take action against the BSA policies of pedophilia is to enable it to occur. Any Eagle Scout, Scoutmaster, Den Mother, Council Member, parent, child, supporter, or person, who cannot stand up against the molestation of children has no place in any organization with children.

The Boy Scouts have two choices: the status quo, or live up to their oath, law, slogan and promise. Continue to allow children to be abused or change. How could anyone who believes in any aspect of the Scout Law think covering up pedophilia or not speaking up makes a person, trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, or morally straight? I ask the Boy Scout community: do you pay these ideals lip service, be a hypocrite and do nothing, or act with bravery to honor the trust given by these boys, their families and the community? Will you do nothing to wipe the stain of pedophilia from the sash worn so proudly?

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/08/28/eveningnews/main3213145.shtml
http://chattahbox.com/us/2010/03/19/boy-scouts-let-confessed-pedophile-remain-as-scoutmaster/
http://scouting.org/News/Oregon.aspx
http://taxdollars.freedomblogging.com/2010/03/19/boy-scouts-kept-secret-files-on-molestors-lawyer-says/53597/
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_boy_scouts_sex_abuse
http://www.redwoodbsa.org/ContactUs.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boy_Scouts_of_America_membership_controversies#Position_on_atheists_and_agnostics
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eagle_Scout_%28Boy_Scouts_of_America%29
http://www.scouting.org/scoutsource/CubScouts/AboutCubScouts/ThePack/cmast.aspx

Diary of a Wimpy Kid - A Perfect Dump and Run Movie

2010-03-18T21:00:00.000-07:00

Sixth grader Greg Heffley learns important lessons about friendship, being a good friend and identity in Diary of a Wimpy Kid. A light-hearted, middle-school buddy movie, Diary of a Wimpy Kid is a perfect dump and run movie.

Entering middle school wasn’t as easy as Greg Heffley (Zachary Gordon) anticipated. Some of the kids are way bigger than him. The same things that are cool in elementary school become a badge of shame in middle school. Greg does everything he can to fit in and be a school favorite. He wants to change everything, including his best friend Rowley Jefferson (Robert Capron). The harder he tries to fit in, the worse the consequences to his image.

I was never an eleven year old boy but I can see how Diary of a Wimpy Kid touches on issues boys have during the change from a kid to a teen and what it means. A kid of either gender faces many issues as they experience changes in their body, and social lives. How do I become a successful teen? Why is my body doing that thing? How can I be stronger? Are my friends holding me back socially? Is loyalty more important than popularity?

Diary of a Wimpy Kid is an utterly sterile look at this change. There are no controversial moments, nothing that a PTA mother might find too mature for their child. Even the most uptight ninny of a mother should have no concern. The most deviant part of the movie is a scene where Greg is trying to avoid his brother but really has to pee, so he has to hold it for an extended period. The horror. Diary of a Wimpy Kid is an innocent examination of the age and sense of self felt by tweenie aged children.

Controversy and conflict are how more in-depth moral issues are examined on film, so adults may find the glossiness of Diary of a Wimpy Kid like wading through an intellectual kiddie pool. Then again, like kiddie pools, Diary of a Wimpy Kid isn’t for adults.

It is the non-odious script that makes it a perfect movie to not see with your tweenie child. Feel free to send your child into the theater with no fear of nightmares, offensive language or sexual content. If you time it right, you can see a rated R movie with your spouse, your kid can see the young buddy film Diary of a Wimpy Kid (without his stupid parents) and everyone can have a pleasant, age-appropriate time.

Just this once, you don’t have to feel guilty about dumping your kid and running off to do something grown up.

Shutter Island: You invest 2.5 hours and get 3 minutes in return

2010-02-22T22:08:00.000-08:00

U.S. Marshalls go to Shutter Island, a mental hospital for the criminally insane, to find an escaped prisoner and stumble across a bigger mystery. Brief, but frequent moments of shoddy writing and cinematography damage the experience of what might have otherwise been a memorable and insightful film.

United States Marshalls Teddy Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Chuck Aule (Mark Ruffalo) are dispatched to Shutter Island to investigate the disappearance of a patient who seems to have evaporated into thin air. Doctor Cawley (Ben Kingsley) shows them around, tells them about the facility and the patient, but seems to be hiding his true motives. While on the island, some of Teddy’s personal and war experiences come to the surface, affecting his ability to investigate effectively. A storm, both environmental and emotional, overtakes the grounds and reveals some painful truths.

Shutter Island has introspective moments that could shine lights on long forgotten skeletons in anyone’s closet. Sadly, just as one might be forced to ask themselves hard questions, the light goes out. Occasionally, it is because the writing or execution of the lines is unnatural. Even more frustrating are the dollar store green screen visuals.
Director Martin Scorsese and director of photography Robert Richardson pay meticulous attention to the lighting, framing and shadow in Shutter Island. Each location is lit to draw the viewers attention where the director wants it, where the story demands it be, and creates a deeply entrenching mood for the audience.

Then out of nowhere, while the audience is sitting obediently in the visual trench Scorsese dug for us, he throws dirt on our heads. The carefully lit scenery is replaced by green screen effects that would be rejected by the producer of any late night show. There are a few dream or fantasy sequences that are technically well done but leave the audience scratching their heads. Occasionally, Scorsese pays better attention to how the scene looks than how it is acted or written and it distracts from the overall film.

Much of Shutter Island relies on the relationship between Teddy and Chuck. For the most part, their relationship, streams smoothly across the screen. Just as you buy into the silky ride, Leonardo DiCaprio, Mark Ruffalo, and writer Laeta Kalogridis throw tires onto the road. They aren’t interesting; they are the nuisances of bad acting and unpolished writing. The phraseology used by Teddy is inconsistent and bizarre. Even when Teddy‘s dialogue is written within the believable range, DiCaprio occasionally overacts relatively tame scenes. Ruffalo and DiCaprio’s consistency lack chemistry or sincerity. As the film progresses, the nature of their relationship changes, but the feeling between them does not.

My biggest frustration when I reached the end of Shutter Island is that I never feel attached to the characters. The use of fantasy and the obvious secrets throughout the story made me feel like the filmmakers were keeping me at an uncomfortable distance.

Even given all the problems, Shutter Island does leave the audience with something to think and talk about at the end. For those of us who have skeletons hung amongst our skinny jeans, the ending may give pause and may even force introspection. My husband and I discussed the ending and its meaning for nearly two hours.

Shutter Island’s pay off did not feel worth the two and a half hour investment of my time. We can ask ourselves the same question and have the same honest discussion without the context of Shutter Island’s story. There is little, besides the last three minutes of the film, to really grasp onto as powerful, entertaining or interesting. It might be good for a discussion group but barring that, it has little to offer a general audience.

The Lovely Bones - Toothpaste and Orange Juice

2010-01-15T10:52:00.000-08:00

In The Lovely Bones, a young girl struggles to reach out to her grieving, self-destructive father as he tries to solve her death. Segmented bits of semi-connected subplots sever the audience’s connection to the story.

Jack Salmon’s (Mark Wahlberg) world comes crumbling down around him when his daughter Susie (Saoirse Ronan) disappears on her way home from school. Even as time passes, he cannot let her go and obsesses about where she is, if she is alive and who killed her if she was murdered. Susie Salmon chooses not to cross into heaven and to stay in her own world between heaven and the world of the living. She looks down on her father, occasionally able to make contact. They both are haunted by the life of her killer.

In an attempt to create a surreal experience, writer-director Peter Jackson and writers Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens make The Lovely Bones uncomfortable and unbelievable. Separately, the story styles may have worked: one a magical, overly-exaggerated, yet tragic world of grief and beauty; the other story a cutting examination of the power of grief to tear a family apart and strength of love to glue it back together. Together they are nothing less than a cinematic see-saw. When one side goes up, the other plunges down and the audience is left wondering what and where they should be paying their attention. The unpleasant confusion and the nauseating back and forth murder any of the pleasantries in the film.

The absolute worst part of The Lovely Bones is the non-heaven in which Susie lives. The landscape is always in transition and the meaning of the place seems to change. Susie speaks in riddles when the subject of the world creep forth. There is a cast of useless characters who visit Susie in her segregation. Her personal resting point was less ethereal and more commercial break.

The real shame of the really poor decision making by the director and writers is that it takes away from some surprisingly resonating acting. Mark Wahlberg’s grief requires no weapon to remove your heart from your chest. Rachael Weisz, who plays Susie’s mother, Abigail, has a breakdown that could anger the most stoic in the seats. I was most fond of Rose McIver, who plays Lindsey, Susie’s little sister. Her performance is subtle, but genuine. She reminds me a great deal of my own little sister, in personality, and courage.

Personal sentiment aside, The Lovely Bones is an exercise in toothpaste and orange juice. Both may be refreshing alone, but together, they make drinking bleach a real option – no matter how nice the packaging.

Red Cliff (Chi bi) - Exquisite

2009-11-19T22:11:00.000-08:00

In Red Cliff (Chi bi), the people of China’s southlands face a power-hungry Prime Minister bent on taking over the entire country. Compelling story telling, exquisite visuals, and captivating battle scenes weave together to create a brilliant cinematic tapestry.

After conquering the entire Chinese northlands in the name of the Emperor, ambitious and ruthless General Cao Cao (Fengyi Zhang), who appoints himself Prime Minister, sets his eyes on the southland. In order to get there, he has to enter the territory protected by Liu Bei (Yong Yu). Desperate to protect the lives of his people, Liu Bei asks his strategist, Zhuge Liang (Takeshi Kaneshiro) to ask the leader of the southern province Zhou Yu (Tony Leung Chiu Wai) for help. When it’s impossible to ignore the realities, Zhou Yu decides to join the fight against Cao Cao. They make their stand at Red Cliffs, their stronghold.

The plot flows like water from a pitcher. The writers, Chan Khan, Kuo Cheng, Sheng Hyu, and writer-director John Woo chose the speed and temperature of the water. As the audience sits and watches the story unfold, they can feel the warmth of the characters, the crashing of the shields and the cool calm of strategy. There isn’t much emotion they can’t extract from the audience. At one point I found myself with my mouth wide open, sitting on the edge of my seat, my heart pounding, and my eyes furrowed.

The costuming adds incredible depth to the film. The elite are so clean, their clothing flowing and regal. The soldiers’ uniforms are cheap and dirty looking. The soldiers’ shields glimmer in the beginning of battles and dull at the end. The subtle changes in costuming as the story moves on gives the movie depth and makes the story believable, because the unconscious red flags are not going off.

Woo takes the time introduce the ideas of formations, discipline and tactics to the watcher. They don’t just out-fight the enemy, they out-think them. He has enough respect for the audience that he is willing to cut them in on the how, as much as the what and why.

The war heroes in the story aren’t supernatural, they aren’t magical; they are just extraordinary men doing extraordinary things. Their hand to hand combat is noticeably better than all the rest of the soldiers but it doesn’t cross the line into fantasy.

The martial arts in Red Cliff kick ass. (Ok, I had to.) I found myself dodging spears, stepping left and right to avoid northern soldiers. Everyone who takes up most of the frame in any battle sequence knows how to get the audiences’ heart rate up. Heck, there is even a man who mows through horses like a dwarf – and that will make perfect sense once you see the movie.

There’s real humor in Red Cliff too. It is obvious that Woo doesn’t throw it in there just for the sake of making the story funny, but that even in little slices of life, like those in Red Cliff, life presents little bits of humor. In order to make a complete story, even a war story, humor must be present.

Girly-girls will enjoy the sensual and romantic aspects of the film. More non-traditional women will enjoy the active role women play. There are two women in the movie, one with unrestrained femininity and one tomboy. Both do their part for the war.

The battle scenes captivate, not only because of the graphic violence but because of the subtle emotion, steely strategy and attention to visual details. Do not miss this movie. It’s worth the time to go to the small-run theater and see this film. Man or woman, old or young, everyone will enjoy this masterpiece.

Twilight: New Moon - Yeah, like, whatever

2009-11-19T22:04:00.000-08:00

Twilight: New Moon is a 14 year old girl’s dream movie. It reminded me of the romances I had as a teenager – a wreck.

Something happened before Twilight: New Moon began, what that was, the audience doesn’t know. It’s obvious there is a romance between Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart) and Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson) and they really love each other. Oh yeah, and Edward is a vampire but we never actually see him chew on anyone so we know that because…they told us so. All of the sudden, Edward leaves Bella unprotected from Victoria (Rachelle Lefevre) but it’s not clear why. The whole Cullen family is there, but I don’t know why they matter. Then Edward get sad. There is Jacob Black (Taylor Lautner) who Bella leads on for most of the movie. He has a dark secret. Then Bella, Jacob and Edward do some stuff and get ready for the next movie. Uhm, that’s like…pretty much it.

Now before you ask me, “Didn’t you see the original?”, no I didn’t and that shouldn’t matter. I have a ten buck rule. If I have to pay ten bucks, it better be worth ten bucks. If I have to pay to rent the movie before, and then pay to see the movie, it’s not worth it. Each movie, even a sequel, has to have a beginning, middle, and an end. Twilight is one hundred percent middle. It’s insulting to the audience that they can’t be bothered to put together an entire movie.

The one plus side is there is a pack of half naked hunky-boys that run around the forest. Unfortunately for me, they are playing teenaged kids, so it’s hard to think of them of as sexy little beef cakes without feeling dirty.

What they do put together is a slapdash bit of soap opera drama. There is no real drama, no real romance, no tension, no real danger, not much of anything. The only thing is has in spades is intense eye contact.

They stare at each other from afar. They stare at each other up close. Their eyes dart back and forth. Their eyes melt. They go cold. They open wide. They close. In extreme cases, they turn away. I’m going to watch the out-takes on the DVD because I will bet dollars to doughnuts there are moments where the actors couldn’t hold it together when they were close and staring at each other and started to break up laughing. It will probably be the most entertaining part of the DVD.

There’s just nothing to Twilight: New Moon. There’s no plot and horrible acting. There is certainly nothing worth watching.

Who is the newest writer for Skeptical Inquirer? I AM!

2009-11-09T01:48:00.000-08:00

Over the past few weeks I've been talking with Skeptical Inquirer Magazine about writing reviews for skeptics on their website. I'm elated to say the kinks have been worked out and it's official; I'm their voice in the dark (theater). This is a fantastic opportunity for me to write for people like me and I couldn't be more excited that it is with SI. It's more than a little embarassing how much I've been dancing around my house, the store, in bed, at the DMV, and in my car.

This is a huge opportunity for me, no only because this jumps me from strictly online reviews to potentially print but it also puts my foot in the door to write about things that really matter to me in the future. I am by far the most average person at the magazine, which is mostly written by phd's, professors, and well respected scientists, etc. It essentially spring boards me into a new league of both writers and skeptics. It is an amazing jump in status, credibility and opportunity. I'm psyched.

I hope you read some of my reviews or even subscribe to the magazine.

http://www.csicop.org/publications

A Christmas Carol - More Like a Christmas Crisis

2009-11-05T18:27:00.000-08:00

Animated and in 3D, Charles Dickens’ beloved holiday story, A Christmas Carol, spills onto screens again. A garish demonstration of the capabilities of the new 3D technology, the story only pops out when it possesses an opportunity to show off the technology.

Scrooge (Jim Carrey) is a miserly old man who holds tight each penny in his pocket. After his business partner, Marley (Gary Oldman) dies, Scrooge loses all perspective, turning even surlier than he was before. Devoid of all Christmas spirit, Scrooge tries to drain the spirit out of everyone around him. The spirits of Christmas Past, Present and Yet to Come (All voiced and drawn to look like Jim Carrey) warn him about the consequences of inhospitality and holding on to his money too tightly.

Robert Zemeckis should hold his head in shame for such a disgusting display of technology driven plot. He both “wrote” and “directed” this version of “A Christmas Carol.” A responsible director-writer would make Marley, the Spirits and Scrooge feel like they within hands reach by re-arranging the 3D to places in the plot that are enhanced by the extra dimension. Instead, he created a masturbatory mess.

The plot is carved back to the bare minimum and stripped of all opportunity to connect with the audience emotionally. In fact, Zemeckis relies heavily on that fact that A Christmas Carol is so ubiquitous that he commits the sin of Cliff’s Notes. Taken on its face, having no prior knowledge of A Christmas Carol, a viewer would see it as shallow and infuriating. The plot is replaced with scenes meant to show off the remarkable 3D technology. 3D Scenes drone on twice as long as the plot they are supposed to enhance. The floor drops away, fingers are pointed at the audience, and characters are dangled from different angles. In fact, no opportunity to sacrifice the plot for the technology was missed.

Even still, the 3D is so good, it might have been fun to watch this tech demo if the voice acting was varied, interesting and sincere. It wasn’t. Jim Carrey plays Scrooge in all five stages of his life, as well as the Ghost of Christmas Past, Present and Future and he does it terribly. Scrooge lacks any depth, has no resonance, all changes seen seem forced and shallow. The Ghost of Christmas Past can only be appreciated by a herpetologist or a speech pathologist and I am neither of those. The Ghost of Christmas Present’s insipid laughter made me consider leaving the theater, but that would mean abandoning my mother-in-law in her seat, and even I’m not that mean. The only saving grace in Carrey’s performance is that the Ghost of Christmas Future barely talks.

Radio Disney brought teams of children to see A Christmas Carol at the press screening I attended. There were scenes that frightened the tiny so badly that they began to cry, scream and cuddle up in the arms of their mothers. There were times during A Christmas Carol I considered jumping into my mother-in-law’s lap and cry like a baby.

This may go down as a rumble worthy topic at family holiday parties because my hubby’s-mummy liked A Christmas Carol. I suggest instead of wasting money seeing such a despicable waste of a classic story, spend the same money seeing the play at a local theater.

Cirque du Freak – The Vampire’s Assistant

2009-10-23T10:04:00.000-07:00

Marvelous reckless abandon in Cirque du Freak – The Vampire’s Assistant, falls prey to an invisible, ill timed hand of meaningless restraint. The restraint is not only unnecessary, it puts a lampshade over the brilliance in this movie.

Goodie-two-shoes Darren Shan (Chris Massoglia) and his bad influence friend Steve (Josh Hutcherson), sneak off to attend Cirque du Freak, a traveling freak show. Amongst the standard freak show staples is a beautiful dancing spider, Octa owned by Larten Crepsley (John C. Reilly) and Darren is instantly hooked. His obsession with the spider leads him down a path that changes his life forever.

I don’t know if writers Paul Weitz and Brian Helgeland were fighting with the studio or with each other, but there is an obvious push-pull in Cirque du Freak – The Vampire’s Assistant which leaves the viewer with whiplash. There are times during Cirque du Freak – The Vampire’s Assistant that I felt I was watching inspired film making. At other times, the inspiration is sucked into a vacuum of despair.

As is the theme with Cirque du Freak – The Vampire’s Assistant often, the conversations bounce between freakishly hysterical, and, not a moment later, is so bad the entire audience groaned, out loud while slapping their foreheads in disbelief. Literally.
At times, visuals were creative, interesting, glittering and spectacular. The exaggerated sets and stunts are almost enough to make me giggle like a little girl. Just as quickly as the child-like snickering came, it disappeared, and all that was left were loud colors and dreadful purple lighting dimly illuminating half-developed characters.

It may not have even been that the colors were dreadful, but that the scenes lasted way too long. Every aspect of Cirque du Freak – The Vampire’s Assistant lingered on screen long beyond its expiration date. In fact, each exaggerated aspect takes up so much time, the filmmakers didn’t have time to include a complete plot. They ended the movie somewhere around the middle of the plot, without a real climax and while leaving the door open for a sequel.

Cirque du Freak – The Vampire’s Assistant strives to satisfy one’s senses of whimsy, adventure, and fantasy with a bit of cinematic candy but the filmmakers leave it in the mouth so long, it becomes nothing more than a gag.

How the History of Credit Cards Matters to the Future of Health Care

2009-09-18T19:14:00.000-07:00

How the History of Credit Cards Matters to the Future of Health Care
Interstate politics, federal regulation and oversight can teach us which direction we should go in, which we need to avoid and provides much needed wisdom to the discussion.
http://www.associatedcontent.comarticle/2190289/how_the_history_of_credit_cards_matters.html

Love Happens - Unfortunately

2009-09-17T21:00:00.000-07:00

Even motivational speakers can be stricken with bouts of insecurity and Burke is no different. Love Happens’ flat main characters are almost saved by complex and well portrayed secondary characters who steal the scenes whenever they are on screen.

After the death of his wife, Burke (Aaron Eckhart) shares his grief with other people who have lost their loved ones by creating a self help program called A-Okay! While traveling to Seattle for a conference, he meets the beautiful and interesting florist Eloise (Jennifer Aniston) and is instantly struck by her. It isn’t until she sees his interaction with the conference goers that she becomes interested in return. One of the conference goers, Walter (John Carroll Lynch), is drowning in the depths of his grief. Neither Walter nor Burke will admit the extent of the help that they need.

The writing in Love Happens left me feeling jerked about without regard for brain injury that might occur. One minute Burke and Eloise are engaged in a tedious banter of blossoming romance that could make even the most determined insomniac nod off and make the rest of us grind our teeth. Just a second later, there is a poignant interaction between Walter and Burk that reduces the audience to tears. Then, out of nowhere, comes a scene with Burke’s agent, Lane Fucking Marshall (Dan Fogler), that made me want to poke myself in the eye with a coffee stirrer.

In fact, if Love Happens had been exclusively about the emotional struggle that Burke suffered after his wife’s death and the relief he finds from his clients, it might have been a powerful and moving story with lasting impact. Writers Brandon Camp and Mike Thompson couldn’t leave well enough alone and slapped in an unnatural, ineffective, emotionless, pseudo-love-story that turned me off to everything else.

It wasn’t just a failure of writing; Aaron Eckhart and Jennifer Aniston lack the chemistry necessary to make the struggle between the two believable or even palatable. Individually they don’t reach an emotional tentacle out to the audience whenever a secondary character isn’t on screen.

By far the best performance in Love Happens is John Carroll Lynch as the devastated father who lost his son and everything else. He reached into my chest and stole my breath and at times I thought my heart actually tore in two. His story felt so real it was almost tangible and his tears made my shirt wet.

Those moments of deep emotion and undeniably monotonous scenes are sandwiched between endless, unabashed, unashamed brand placement. Eloise obviously works in a florist shop, not because it’s relevant to the story, but because it is a great way to get a huge floral network’s brand in front of the right audience at least ten times during the movie. Burke stays at a nice hotel, not because it’s the best hotel in town, but because we can see their brand all over every wall, in every conference room and in every hallway, even though it adds nothing to the story.

I’d rather watch a ten minute short movie about Burke, Walter and their struggle through grief than a two hour movie that is 90% filler, flowers, marketing and cuddles. On the plus side, your vocabulary will come out bigger than when it went in, if you ignore my warnings and go to this movie anyways.

Lake Local School District in Ohio Makes Belief in God a Goal

2009-08-29T14:22:00.000-07:00

There are few things that can get under my skin like the education system in America. We do not do enough to teach our kids about the real wonders in the world through logical inspection and we fail miserably to teach them to respect or understand history. Schools that respect the secular requirements of our government fail to impart the importance of these subjects. What education are we denying children when they are educated by a school district that makes “belief in god” a goal in their mission statement?

Lake Local School District in Ohio dismissed the constitution, and the history it is based on, and wrote in their mission statement, “belief in god” as a goal for their students. Not only is this illegal, it is intellectual negligence on the part of the school district.

It’s imperative that American students understand why the First Amendment was written and the continuous reinforcement of its wisdom that has happened since its ratification. It is impossible for a school district properly impart that knowledge when it thumbs its nose at the law it has the duty to teach.

I’m not the only one to notice the failure of the Ohio education system in the area of history. The 2006 report from Fordham Institute on education excellence gave Ohio a D for their Social Studies Content Standards which covers United States History.

I can only guess what the science curriculum of a school district which pushes belief in god looks like, but in order to meet their goal of “belief in god”, there must be academic skimming taking place. Any conversation about the scientific method must be free of any god slant or it’s not the scientific method. It is impossible to critically examine the world with the presupposition that god exists. When there is a conflict between god and science, which wins when belief in god is a stated value of the school district?

It’s the responsibility of everyone who cares about the education of our children, as well as the future of our society, to take seriously these incursions into the academic system. Slipping the children of Ohio into a dark age is not just disastrous for them. It’s disastrous for all of us.

Having pockets of populations that are less education than others in the same country can not only lead to government issues, but it can lead to exploitation of the people of lesser education. School districts that allow religion to influence their teachings have higher teen pregnancy, teen STD, and dropout rates. Due to the gaps in their education, they are more vulnerable to financial predators, religious exploitation, and exploitation in personal relationships. They also lack perspective to vote in their best interest and the best interest of the country.

A school district that disregards their duty to their pupils should not be met with simple silence. They need to have the consequences ring in their ear. We, as caring, involved citizens need to speak out for the health and well-being of these children. We must tell the Lake Local School District that their unethical, illegal, immoral behavior has not gone unnoticed and will be met with the resistance it deserves.

I already wrote the Lake Local School District, my letter is below. Please take the time to click the link at the end of this article and write a polite but passionate letter to the Lake Local School District. Together we can apply the pressure to stop the intellectual hemorrhaging in Lake Local School District.

Contact Lake Local School District

Hello Lake Local School District,

It disappoints me whenever I hear about an elected body disregarding the constitution of our country, but it shocks my sensibilities when it is a public school district, like Lake Local School District. A school district should concern itself with teaching what is reasonable, provable, and factual. It is utterly unethical, not to mention illegal, for you force even the most sanitized version of religion on your students. It may go against your personal beliefs, but everyone in this country, including your students, has the right not to believe in god.

It seems that you should be aware, as a public education district, that this country was founded on the idea that government and religion should not mix. History has spoken with a bull horn about the consequences of blurring the line between religion and government. It horrifies me that children in your district may not be taught to respect their own rights and the rights of others because you taught them that it has no value.

How can you, with any sincerity, teach the true meaning of the constitution if you so willingly take no notice of it? How can you teach your students to be law abiding, constructive members of society, if you so willfully ignore the first law of this country?

I value the constitution and our free education system. Do not dismiss your duty to your pupils because you can’t separate your personal convictions from your duty. If you were unable to do your duty as a government official, you should not have run for office. Once elected and put in office, you have a duty to all the citizens of this country to do the right thing. I trust, now that you have been made aware that you have violated the rights of your students, you will quickly abandon this effort and act in the manner they deserve.

I will leave you with the words of some of our founders that I hope you take their words to heart.

“As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion..." - Treaty of Tripoli signed by President Adams and ratified unanimously by Congress.

“Question with boldness even the existence of a god." - Thomas Jefferson (letter to Peter Carr, 10 August 1787)

I await your changed decision,
LaRae Meadows

http://lake.stark.k12.oh.us/home/contactus/contact-form/

http://www.examiner.com/x-2044-Atheism-Examiner~y2009m8d27-Ohio-school-district-lists-Belief-in-God-as-key-value

Is it Ethical for the Free Thinking Community to Bite Our Tongues and Allow the Religious to Stop Progress?

2009-08-23T22:59:00.000-07:00

I wrote an article against Kissimmee Florida’s City Council’s attempt to put “In God We Trust” on their city seal. The day after the article was written the Kissimmee City Council decided to quash the motion and their attempt to make their town a mini theocracy ended. A few days later, a man from Georgetown, Texas named Dave Atkinson wrote me a series of emails on the topic. His comments summarize the fear that many atheists have about being tolerant of even the nicest religious ideas. He left me asking myself; is it more damaging to society to refuse to confront religious ideas or to greet them with hostility?

The first email from Destructive Dave, as I call him, arrived on August 8th. At first he does not sign his name at the bottom of his emails.

To: LaRae
From: Dave
Sat, Aug 8, 2009 at 2:23 PM

LaRae Meadows, you are an over educated idiot. People like you should be kicked out of the country, in the near future that might be possible. I cannot wait until that day..............

http://laraemeadows.vox.com/library/post/kissimmee-fl-wants-to-add-in-god-we-trust-to-city-logo.html

To: Dave
From: LaRae
Sat, Aug 8, 2009 at 5:54 PM

You have such a problem with the fact that I've read the constitution and know the history of this country that I should therefore should be kicked out of the country? That makes perfect sense. You know who should stay here? People who love the country enough to not read the constitution, not understand its founding and have no education. Sounds like a winning plan. You inspire me to think less, understand less and be more of a patriot for doing so.

LaRae

PS. What is the appropriate level of education? At what point does someone become "over-educated" to participate in discussions important to the future of their country?

To: LaRae
From: Dave
Sat, Aug 8, 2009 at 5:57 PM

remember the day will come, and we will look for you...........................................

To: Dave
From: LaRae
Sat, Aug 8, 2009 at 6:07 PM

Are you threatening me? I'm terrified. Or are you speaking to me of the rapture? If you are speaking of the rapture, you obviously haven't read the book that explains what will happen. You won't look for me, nor will god. You'll go to heaven and I'll stay here. Bummer. All the "over-educated idiots" will be here on a bigot and Christian free earth. Sounds like everyone wins! Oh, and let me add........................................................................................................................................ as that seems important to you.

Best Wishes on the Rapture,
LaRae

At this point I became interested in who was writing me and I Googled his email address. I wanted to know who I was talking to and if I should be worried that he might actually try to come for me in the future(not a concern anymore). I found out his vital statics and a bit more. It is also right about here that I lost my patience.

To: LaRae
From: Dave
Sat, Aug 8, 2009 at 8:37 PM

Let me get this correct, you are a Christian, and you are against having "In God we Trust" on a city seal. It sounds like you are the enemy within- that has too much time on her little hands. Without these words the US is already on her ride down hill and will continue to fall into the hands of the people that will take away your rights to setup web sites like yours-yet you fail to recognize this. That's what I mean about being over-educated with very little common sense. I know you struggle with this as do many people; you lack the ability to get the big picture- you simply run your pie-hole and should be in the kitchen cooking something to eat. You truly must be from California, a state that is about to go bankrupt with the world's 5th largest economy? Gee wonder how that happens, must be that your people out there lack common sense- to balance a budget? We can go back and forth forever but you are still an educated idiot with too much time on your hands. The majority of people will keep “In God we Trust”- even on our money and no matter how much you protest this, it will continue to stay there. So blog and blog but “In God we Trust” will remain and people like me will be your opposition….........

To: Dave
From: LaRae
Sun, Aug 9, 2009 at 7:57 PM

Dave,

I know how to read books - even the bible. Important books are good to read. Not just books though, I suggest reading important historical documents, like say, the Constitution. It's obvious that LBJ High School didn't teach you enough.

You might consider picking up a history book and see what happens when you combine religion and government. It's happened over and over again in the world, with deadly results.

Our founders, who gave us the right to be free from religion in our government, knew what they were doing. They took the time to become "over educated idiots with too much time on their hands." You cannot love your freedom to practice your religion if you do not understand that the separation of church and state is what allows you that freedom.

You don't have the right to make the government adhere to your religion. No one does. Your right is the opposite. You have the right to go to the government and be free from religion. So, no one can force you to pray to Allah, Zeus or chant a Buddhist chant. I'm sure you don't want to go to the city council and pledge allegiance to the flag, under Allah, do you? I don't think you'd want the government in your church, would you? Once a cucumber becomes a pickle, it can never be a cucumber again.

Yet, you demand that the rest of society pray to your god, that you violate their right, a right you so freely enjoy. This separation protects everyone else from having to pray to your god, against their will, when conducting the business of government or participating in government. My rights aren't protected by letting zealots force me to pray to their god, it takes my right to separation of church and state away.

It's the first law of this country. Along with the freedom of the press, it was so important at the founding of our country that the founders put it in the first law. The first one. They didn't wait until 2 or 3 or 4. Even though they had such diverse ideas about religion - all the way from atheists to devout Christians, they could agree that their religious ideas had no place in government.

You seem scared that storm troopers are going to go and gas a church and lock the doors so you can never enter again. No one is taking your right to pray away, no one is stopping you from going to church, or praying at home, or by yourself. Could you please show me one single example of a Christian being told they couldn't pray - except as a government agent?

Today, our mixing of religion and government has damaged our country. I think a man who hails from Georgetown, Texas, the state with the highest teen pregnancy rates, teen STD rates, one of the highest crime rates and per capita poverty rates should see what religion is doing to the government of his state. While you wave the morality flag and the religious high ground, you commit acts of terrible negligence against your citizens. So while you're going around, worrying about our state, you allow your state to wallow in griefs that could be fixed if you just learned something about how humans behave and what actually works.

Yes, California is in a terrible budget problem. Mostly because we pay more in taxes to the fed then we take back. States like yours take our money to pay for your religiously driven neglect, while giving more to charity, volunteering more, giving our citizens a better quality of life, producing most of your food, giving most of the industry start up money for the country, inventing more and housing most of the brains of this country. I'd put my bankrupt over-educated-idiot California citizen against your meagerly educated religious citizenry.

People like you don't deserve to live in this country. You suck up its rights, do nothing to protect them, try to erase them from other people while giving yourself lordship over them. You think you know what's best but you don't take the time to learn. That isn't what America is about. If you took the time to become a slightly less uneducated backwater hick from America's intellectual dumping ground, you'd see the value of the separation of church and state.

LaRae

To: LaRae
From: Dave
Mon, Aug 10, 2009 at 6:45 PM

Mrs. california-Larae,
You’re a real nice piece of work that should stay in cal because that is where you belong, history is one of my favorite subjects, loved it in college. I am proud to be an educated Hilly Billy, and I am very aware of what the constitution says and very aware of what can happen if state & church get too mixed. I still believe that you have too much time on your hands, and you need another hobby instead of protesting "In God We Trust". To research me must mean that I got under your skin, your lecturing me is actually kind of funny and means that you are not used to getting any opposition to your web site and statements. No matter what you say your educated state will go bankrupt and ours will survive, with all the amenities that go with it, crime, pregnancies and STD's. On the other hand your bleeding heart state will fail in the near future and all your efforts will have been in vain; thus, "In God we Trust" will remain. Sounds kind of neat. Come on you know that all democracies’ have a life expectancy and usually end up in dictatorships, regardless of what is done- remember "Rome"- Julius, etc. You appear to be a young lady that believes that your protest will lead to something- (change) and that you will have made a difference, but in the end it is out of your hands- just like mine. Most people just read your protest and kind of feel sorry for you, and the people that agree with you-- because the high probability that Kissimmee will add “In God we Trust” to their logo- will be successful - and you probably cannot stop it- regardless of your effort. Therefore you should embrace it- and this will make you feel better inside, your quick anger and detail of me means that you are obsessed with this activity. Being so obsessed about not having “In God we Trust” written on anything “state” will cause you to have health problems in the end. I make a motion that you support “In God we Trust” and you will be spiritually enhanced. Your present status will leave you unhappy and unsatisfied……….

Dave

To: Dave
From: LaRae
Mon, Aug 10, 2009 at 8:18 PM
Mr. Georgetown Texas Dave,

The day after I wrote the article, Kissimmee quashed the motion to add "in god we trust" to their logo. The mayors office wrote me personally to tell me they aren't doing it anymore. So, you are wrong, yet again. I'm not surprised. It seems to be a theme. So yes, what I did mattered, gave me joy, and didn't change a thing because we have a separation of church and state. I just defended it as we all have been called upon to do.

I find it deeply horrifying that you know what happens when you mix religion and government and you still want to do it. You know it's wrong and you want to do it anyways. You know its results: unchecked power, killings, murders, war, famine, fear, hunger, tyranny and yet, you still want to do it. You know history has judged such nations as monsters who must wear badges of shame and disgust for generations, and you advocate to do it anyways. That is the textbook definition of a sociopath.

You are a perfect example of why people like me are scared of religious folks. When you think the end is coming, when you honestly believe it will happen in your lifetime, your priority isn't preserving this world or ensure peace or freedom for your people. You can do whatever you want because it won't matter when the Apocalypse comes. Honor - who needs it? Duty - for idiots. Morality - I'll just repent when Jesus comes. What does it matter that your behavior is both criminal and harmful when you know you are with god and the world won't be here anyways.

I have higher moral standards than you. I believe I have a duty to my co-citizens, my country and my earth. God or no god, we have a responsibility to the people around us to act with care and concern. I refuse to discard the greater good because some unsupported book from two thousand years ago has been taken to say that some day soon the world will end. The apocalyptic world view reeks of moral decay and it damages our country.

People like you don't deserve to live in America. You toss away your rights as quickly as you were born into them and strive to strip the rights from others who value them. It is repugnant.

Rev. LaRae Meadows

If you would like to use my title in the future it isn't Mrs. It is Rev. Please get it right or don't use it at all.
I am in fact a reverend of every church that will ordain me online. There are six. So I am a reverend six times.

To: LaRae
From: Dave
Mon, Aug 10, 2009 at 9:49 PM

Mrs. Larae,
like I said your type needs to stay in cal/ny where you belong, your life is spent typing words and reviews, you may win a few battles here and there like in Florida but that does not mean that you have won. yes, you should be concerned, honestly. now we are getting to your real thought process behind your agenda "some unsupported book from two thousand years ago" that's all I needed to know because that is where your heart is and that is where you stand and that is who you are; and that is why you are easy to deal with...........................

Dave

Mrs. or Rev? it does not really matter now does it........................

To: Dave
From: LaRae
Mon, Aug 10, 2009 at 10:44 PM
Mrs. davE,

I wasn't aware there was a hidden thought process behind my agenda and reviews. I wasn't hiding anything. You scare me. Your beliefs are dangerous. As long as I can, I'll defend the rights of all citizens, even while petty people misspell my name, threaten me and call me by the wrong title.

I will continue to "type my words and reviews" and making people like you face the consequences of your actions. Your beliefs are harmful to the world and to this country. You know what damage you are doing and you do them anyways. That is a disgusting snub at your own humanity and shows little regard for humanity as a whole.

There will come a day when you wallow in a puddle of your shame, just like your parents did about segregation, their parents did about equal rights, their parents did about suffrage and their parents did about slavery. I can say with all confidence that your day of reckoning will come long before mine.

LaRae
- End Emails

Destructive Dave never wrote back. Much to his credit, he allowed me to have the last word. His disturbing emails inspired deep introspection on my end. I have been fiddling with my tolerance of theists for about a year. I strongly believe that people should have the right to practice their religions peacefully whenever and however they choose as long as they don’t try to use the government to promote their religion, but a democracy can’t be separated from the beliefs of its people.

I know that a self-governed country will always be influenced by its citizen’s personal beliefs. So, even if a government takes no official stance on religion, religion can still significantly influence the government. As history has shown time and again, when you allow religion to creep into government, the results are catastrophic to a particular group, or the whole society. Do we, as “over-educated idiots” neglect our country and society when we fail to confront religious beliefs as we would any other beliefs? Can we afford to allow these ideas to breed in our country, even though, by their nature, they are destructive? Do we encourage or entice the animosity toward non-theists when we treat such a vital part of their identity with no more respect than we would any other beliefs? Are we selfish when we consider our own personal treatment, bite our tongues and choose not to confront these beliefs?

Spelling was cleaned up in the emails.

Doctors Say Yes To The Public Option

2009-08-23T15:08:00.000-07:00

On August 20th, a collection of doctors in Santa Rosa, California, assembled on a corner and lobbied the public to support the public health care option. EmpireReport.org reporter, John Stiffler, interviewed some of the doctors and created a video. What do you think?

Doctors Demonstrate for a Public Option in Health Care Reform!!! from Jon Stiffler on Vimeo.

Inglourious Basterds Review: Bloody Good

2009-08-20T22:03:00.000-07:00

The Inglourious Basterds are sent into occupied France to “kill Nazis”, and killing is what they do; along with everyone else in the movie. Quirky dialogue, multi-dimensional characters, and special attention to the aesthetics wraps the audience in a unique movie-going experience.

Lieutenant Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt) assembles a team of Jewish-American soldiers called the Inglourious Basterds, to be dropped into France to commit guerilla attacks on Nazis. In nearby France, perfectly mannered, linguistic master Nazi Colonel Hans Landa (Christoph Watlz) has been tasked with seeking out and exterminating all of the Jews left in France. It is in this roll that Shosana Dreyfus (Mélanie Laurent) meets Colonel Landa. It is the crush German war hero Fredrick Zoller (Daniel Brühl) has on Shosana that throws all the characters together in a horrific series of events that only war can justify.

The first ten minutes of Inglourious Basterds will rile even the most stoic. It’s calm dialogue and sparkling appearance drives the overall tension to an almost unmanageable level. By the end of the first scene, I was confused about the morality of the situation, angry at almost all involved, and had given myself sore arms from clenching my fists. Tarantino pulled his line and I was hooked.

There is no shortage of dark in Inglourious Basterds. People get their faces blown off, Wild West techniques of enemy torture are used, and historic sore spots are poked with pointy emotion sticks. Even though scenes erupt into violence with notice and foreshadowing, a gasp could be heard from across the audience. Writer-director Quentin Tarantino doesn’t shy away from exaggerated, unflinching expositions of violence.

Col. Hans Landa, played by Christoph Waltz, is repugnant, ruthless and vicious. His dialogue is frighteningly elegant, and is nearly always disturbingly calm. Yet, every time he is on screen, there is yet another reason to admire him. This adoration left me feeling dirty and a bit disgusted with myself. There is nothing more disturbing than finding something commendable in a character you want so badly to condemn.

Landa, Raine, The Inglourious Basterds, Shosana and Zoller are woven into each other’s lives one string at a time. It isn’t until about halfway through the movie that the audience really understand the scope of their relationship and its consequences. It isn’t until the end of the movie that the true nature of all of the characters is confirmed.

Inglourious Basterds’ cinematography makes it almost possible to smell the blood and perfume. It’s easy to feel like you are actually in the presence of evil or beauty when the camera refuses to look away from the violence or glamour. There is a ruthless use of angles, lighting and shadow to create a world almost impossible to escape.

The graphic depictions of violence might be difficult for many thinner skinned people to handle without complaint. Still, the depth of character, quirky interactions and stunning visuals might win over many people who would otherwise be put off by the violence.

Inglourious Basterds’ unmistakable visual style, off-kilter dialogue, unfolding story line and violence is a feast and an embrace of our savage nature.

District 9 Review - Pretty and Plot-thin

2009-08-17T17:16:00.000-07:00

District 9
When aliens come to earth and are unable to leave again, they are forced into a slum in Johannesburg, South Africa, in an area called District 9. Amazing visuals allow District 9 to capture the audience’s attention in an inescapable trap. The shallowness of the plot may be the only tool given to the audience to get out.

Aliens land on earth, malnourished, and their mothership in shambles. They are herded into a tin hut community while humans try to figure out what to do with them. After twenty years of tension between the aliens and the humans, the government gives full authority to MNU, a multi national corporation, to evict the aliens to a tent community two hundred kilometers away. They put a sniveling, weakling, corporate bureaucrat, Wikus Van De Merwe (Sharlto Copley), in charge of the move. Due to international law, MNU must notify the aliens of their eviction and Wikus is sent into the field to do the notifications. While out in the field, Wikus gets new insight into the needs and plight of the aliens, even though he struggles not to submit to his feelings.

The aliens in District 9 are computer generated into live action scenes. The team of alien animators do an extraordinary job of making the aliens seem as tangible and realistic as the human players on screen. The lighting of the prawns (a slang term for the aliens) in many of the scenes give texture so real, it is as if they could reach out and you could feel their exoskeleton roughly rub against your skin.

District 9 is shot in a mix of documentary and live action styles, blended seamlessly together. The documentary is about Wikus and how he is betrayed. This documentary gives perspective to the story of the aliens, and invests the audience in both sides of the story. At first it seems a bit piecemeal, but by the end, the reason for the mixed style offers the audience something to take away.

Even given the emotional investment by the viewers, the story is little more than a two hour long chase scene with explosions and firefights. There is an emotional component, but it reaches as deep into the audience as body lotion. Every time it seems there could be a question of morality, or a moment of emotive genius, it is blown up, shot or runs away. The take away at the end of the movie I mentioned earlier is as valuable as what you’d probably get as a wedding favor at a redneck wedding.

A thinking person would find District 9 wanting more and frustrated with the half-given plot. A person who just wants to watch things blow up, see things go boom and escape their lives for a couple of hours will have a great time at District 9.

One, Two and a Few Sentence Movie Reviews

2009-08-17T16:24:00.000-07:00

It has been a crazy couple of weeks and writing has not come easily so I just threw together these short reviews of GI Joe, Julie and Julia, Away we Go, and Aliens in the Attic.

Aliens in the Attic
After an hour of dimwitted dialogue, the alien planet the antagonists hail from becomes a viable option to escape the mind-numbing effects of this movie.

Away We Go
A surprisingly mature look at love, relationships, successes and changes in life with poignant acting that leaves the audience completely satisfied.

Julie and Julia
A sort of sweet movie, that is sort of entertaining with a sort of interesting cast about sort of interesting people.

GI Joe – Rise of the Cobra
When some super weapon is stolen from a battalion of American army soldiers by a woman in 3 inch wedges attached to a low cut, skin tight, patent leather one piece jumper, the GI Joes are assigned to get it back. Nearly every character has a flashback, some have multiple flashbacks. Yeah, that’s pretty much it – that’s the whole thing. GI Joe? More like GI Joke.

Open Call For New Local Contributors

2009-08-02T12:18:00.000-07:00

EmpireReport.org is a non-profit, micro-local news agency that relies entirely on our community of volunteer writers, photographers and videographers. We are looking for new volunteers to expand the scope of Empire Report. We want different age ranges, political views, genders, sexual orientations and ideals to join the team of volunteers. We are looking for people to write about local sports, politics, wine, events, business, and entertainment or anything else you are passionate about.

We want to hear your special stories. For example, have you been arrested, survived cancer, are a teenager, lost your job, have a special needs child or another special story.

We also have a need for people in each geographic region – such as Sebastopol, each section of Santa Rosa, Cotati, Rohnert Park, Cloverdale, Asti, Healdsburg, Windsor, Roseland, Petaluma, Penngrove, or any other town or region.

Volunteering for Empire Report is a great way to stay connected to your community, gain recognition, and make a difference to everyone in your area. It is our goal to cover those issues that are important to our community. If you are a Petaluma pothole expert, we want to read your report. If you have strong feelings about annexing Roseland, we want to hear your opinion. Your view matters to us and to the people in your community.

In return for your expertise and efforts, you will get a page where you can give a bio, a link to your business or group, and the opportunity to write about things the other local news sites would never publish.

If you are interested in contributing, please write larae@empirereport.org and tell LaRae what you would like to cover, if you would like to write, do video or take pictures and a little bit about you. Thank you in advance for understanding that we are all volunteers and can’t offer payment to our contributors at this time.

Thirst (Bakjwi) Review - Seat Squirming Sensational

2009-07-31T15:03:00.000-07:00

When the Catholic Church in Korea tries to cure a disease, the treatment has unexpected consequences: vampires – of a sort. Unconventional, uncomfortable, shocking, hysterical, and fantastically entertaining, Thirst (Bakjwi) made me squirm with stomach-turning delight.

Unsatisfied with his life, Father Sang-hyeon (Kang-ho Song) agrees to volunteer for a life-threatening medical experiment. The experiment goes as planned but the treatments have a serious side effect for Father Sang-hyeon; it turns him into a vampire with thirsts for more than just blood. The Father does his best to feed his hunger ethically, but eventually, he abandons ethics and begins to make more and more morally ambiguous decisions, the worst of which surrounds his childhood crush, the beautiful, Cinderella-esque, Tae-ju (Ok-vin Kim). Tae-joo has lived with her drunken, slightly masochistic mother-in-law Lady Ra (Hae-sook Kim) and her sniveling, snotty, sickly son Kang-woo (Ha-kyun Shin) since she was a girl.

Thirst does start off slowly and dares the audience to believe that this will be a run of the mill, mystical Catholic-Church-creates-vampires movie. Slowly, the director, actors and writers walk the audience down a seemingly safe path of overplayed mediocrity. It isn’t until I walk directly into their trap that I realized I’d been duped. Not only is Thirst the most original vampire movie I’ve ever seen, it manages to do so while still covering necessary vampire themes and disarms the audience by making their seat feel like it shifted underneath them.

Director and writer Chan-wook Park and writer Seo-Gyeong Jeong never miss an opportunity make the audience squirm in their seats. There are graphic, yet ill at ease sex scenes that barely register as sexual at all. The relationship between several of the characters left me wondering if the lot of them had been dropped on their head as babies. By far, the most discomfort I felt was when I was laughing at things that in real life are not supposed to be funny.

Chan-wook Park and Seo-Gyeong Jeong turn scene after scene from tragic to tickling. Anyone who isn’t a sociopath will laugh, feel guilty about laughing, the laugh some more. Most specifically, any scene with blood was at the same time horrifying and hysterical. Where the vampire is in relation to the blood-letter takes the edge off the fact that the vampire is sucking vital blood from the person’s body.

As soon as the laughter has ceased though, serious topics slip in. Questions of killing, domestic violence, sexual abuse, faith, or a lack thereof, and unexpected changes in the personality of characters seep in through the skin like a salamander breathes. Due to the unconventional story-telling, it’s nearly impossible for an audience member to defend themselves from the revolting myriad of incoming emotions.

My usually stoaic husband wiggled as much as I did, often covering his mouth because he was utterly floored by some of the kill scenes in Thirst and he wasn’t alone. Most of the audience was clinging to their partner, shifting in their seat, giggling, breathing heavy and holding their hands up to their eyes with their fingers spread. “Eeew” and “ha-ha” could be heard at the same time by viewers unable to control their reactions.

There is a strange attention to how Thirst looks by the director. He doesn’t shy away from strange camera angles, movements or settings. Innocent props become sinister. There is a simple change of scenery late in the movie that changes the entire mood and symbolizes a change in the direction of the characters.

During some parts in the beginning, the acting by Kang-ho Song and Ok-vin Kim leave much to be desired. I don’t know if the director wanted them to be horrible on purpose to take the audience off their guard, but it really just came across as ridiculous, kludgy and strange. If you hang in there, I promise, the movie picks up and will shake the senses of even the most reserved.

I have never had so much fun being revolted. Every time I think of the movie, I shift in my seat and think ICK with a smile on my face right before I get the chill up my spine. This subtitled Korean gem, Thirst, will satisfy those who love a good story and those who love good horror. Spine crawling, seat jerking and satisfying, Thirst is a must see! If your local small run theater is not showing this, call them and demand they do!

Kissimmee, FL Wants to Add "In God We Trust" to City Logo

2009-07-28T13:56:00.000-07:00

City Commission of Kissimmee, Florida, will vote to modify its city logo to include "In God We Trust" to voice objection to the “socialist” leadership of the country.

Commissioner Art Otero recommended this affront to the American Constitution. "This nation has been moving toward more liberal postures such as homosexuality, gay marriage, abortion and the legalization of marijuana. I'm against that way of thinking. Those are not the values upon which this nation was founded. I think we need to fight for the values we're losing."

The Mayor, Jim Swan said he would pay $250 of his own money to engrave it on the seal in the commissioners’ cambers. It turns out that $250 is how much Jim Swan is willing to spend to set the Constitution on fire and disenfranchise 15% of his constituency.

Oh, and the total estimated cost of changing the logo is $200,000. So, not only are they willing to put aside their duty to their country as elected officials, they are willing to sacrifice vital city services to do it.

This should upset non-Kissimmee citizens because they aren’t just spitting in the face of the Kissimmee citizens, but every American who hold the Constitution dear. They refuse to uphold their oath to the country that has granted them office through the process outlined in the document they willfully ignore.

Please, use your constitutional rights and write the Kissimmee Council and let them know how you feel about putting “In God We Trust.” Please take the time to write your own letter.
This is the letter I sent. It would mean the world to the citizens of both Kissimmee and the US. Please, bcc me at laraemeadows@gmail.com so I can see your letters. Pass the request on to like-minded friends.

Hello Elected Officials,

It makes me sad that we even have to have a conversation about how little a city like yours respects the Constitution of the United States. We were founded on the idea that governments, even little ones like yours, didn't have the right to impose a religious idea on anyone, and no one had the right to impose one on you. You seem to have a misunderstanding of the founding of this country or the the Constitution because I can't imagine that someone who took an oath to protect the Constitution would intentionally do something so blatantly against it.

Many of our founders were not Christians, in fact, the majority were not. More importantly than their own religious beliefs, they made it clear during their lifetimes that America was not a Christian nation, nor a nation of any other religion. Religion was to be left outside the doors of government, even a little one like Kissimmee.

"As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquillity, of Musselmen; and as the said States never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mehomitan nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries."

This quote, was part of a Treaty of Tripoli and was signed by President Adams. I think we can agree that there is no ambiguity in this statement, and Adams was certainly a founder of this country. So, what will you say to the memory of our founders, including Adams, George Washington, and Jefferson? Will you, in the face of your oath to all of the citizens of Kissimmee and loving citizens of America, spit on the Constitution and memory of our founders? Will you, as representatives of your citizens break the first law of this country, the country we share, as an officer of the government? Do you think so little of our country, or do you believe you should not be subject to her laws and appreciate her protections?

Additionally, you have $200,000 to waste on this project plus the court costs in the future? May I have some for your roads, schools, police and firefighters. That way all your citizens will have the benefit of their government.

LaRae Meadows
True American Citizen

http://ffrf.org/action/2009/KissimmeeActionAlert.php
Mayor Jim Swan
101 N. Church Street
Kissimmee FL 34741-5054
Phone: (407)973-5226
Fax: (407)847-8369
Email: jswan@kissimmee.org

Vice Mayor Jerry Gemskie
E-mail: jgemskie@kissimmee.org

Mayor Pro-Tem Cheryl L. Grieb
E-mail: cgrieb@kissimmee.org

Commissioner Carlos L. Irizarry
E-mail: cirizarry@kissimmee.org

Commissioner Art Otero
E-mail: aeotero@kissimmee.org
Media Contacts
Orlando Sentinel
Letters to the Editor
633 N. Orange Ave.
Orlando FL 32801-1349
Fax: (407)420-5286
Email: insight@orlandosentinel.com
(Note: Letters must be signed with an address and phone number, and kept under 250 words for publication.)

The Miami Herald
The Reader's Forum
One Herald Plaza
Miami FL 33132
Email: HeraldEd@MiamiHerald.com
Fax: (305)376-8950

The News-Journal
PO Box 2831
Daytona Beach FL 32120-2831
Fax: (386)258-1577
E-mail: letters@news-jrnl.com
(Note: Include name, address and phone number. "Clear, brief letters on a single subject are most likely to be published. Please include your letter in the body of the e-mail. Attached files may not arrive intact. Your address and phone number will not be published.")

Hockey Mama for Obama Jabs Palin with Song, Again!

2009-07-19T11:30:00.000-07:00

Jim Wilson/The New York Times

Less than three weeks before the 2008 Presidential Election, real life hockey mom Sandy Riccardi and her moose Richard Riccardi (SanRich) aimed their musical weapon at Sarah Palin and took the internet by storm. Some have credited their song, Hockey Mama for Obama with clinching the election for Obama (but they don’t.) After Palin’s sudden resignation, SanRich had enough ammunition for another humorous lyrical mugging. Gleefully, SanRich released Sarah Palin Resignation Song; a ditty set to I Feel Pretty from the musical West Side Story on YouTube.

Sandy impersonates Palin at her now infamous resignation press conference and Richard revisits his role as the piano-playing moose. The melodic lampoon starts with the line, “I feel quitty” and ends with the YouTuber laughing.

Sandy and Richard granted me an interview about Sarah Palin Resignation Song, politics, and religion.
"I Feel Pretty has been dancing around in my head for a while in regards to Sarah Palin. It just seemed to work,” Sandy explained. “Other contenders were Send in the Clowns and I Dreamed a Dream.

When asked why they decided to write another song about almost-former Governor Palin now, both explained they just wanted a straight answer to the question of why Palin resigned.

“We all know she's running in 2012, and she doesn't have much time to get actual Washington experience. So she has now quit her job, left her sticky time-and-money-consuming problems behind her, not to, as she claims, heroically protect Alaska from her costly legal woes, but to start pushing her energy agenda through to Washington, thereby getting "experience" in D.C. There's nothing wrong with her plan; run for president if you want to. The part that leaves the bad taste in my mouth is the way she makes it all seem like she's quitting her job early selflessly, for Alaska's sake, not once mentioning her insatiable ambitions for the presidency.”

“Palin has never made a direct comment or statement, much less anything resembling a complete sentence, and there is a ploy here to defuse not only Alaskan citizens but the population of the entire country,” elaborated Richard.

The resignation may have been the Palinism that finally motivated SanRich’s song but Palin hadn’t gone unnoticed by SanRich since the election. Even though both insist they do not think Palin is stupid, her attitude, personality, speech patterns and politics have continued to provoke irritation in the pair.

“If she followed a liberal agenda, expressing a passion for civil rights and education and health-care reform and global cooling, I might not roast her at all,” Sandy explains, “but I would question her ability to comprehend the issues due to her clear lack of education. Yes, I know she ‘got a degree’ [but] that doesn't mean she is an educated person. Frankly, the folksy way she talks is a real turn-off to me. If she were to spend the next 10 years really educating herself (with a lot of help from advisors) she might come out with more universal public appeal. But I still wouldn't like her politics. I would like my president to be a cut above us regular folk. I think the job demands it… I would hate to see the first woman elected to the presidency be someone with her lack of statesmanship.”

Richard said it a bit more succinctly, “I want a true statesperson to lead this country.” He specifies, “I would refer to her religious sanctions, if we can call them that, as dangerous because she would be led so easily by her beliefs. This is not necessarily stupidity, and is much more frightening than pure naiveté. Her ‘good old boy’ style of address is a ploy which reaches a surprisingly large proportion of the country. Thank goodness there are enough intelligent people to see through it.”

A recovering fundamentalist from the south, Sandy’s feelings about Palin are influenced by her past and her personal political evolution. “I think my fundamentalist religious past offers me a glimpse into her psyche and decision making process. She'll fight abortion, gay marriage, and think she is sanctioned by God to do it. Maybe my past has me extra vehement about keeping her out of office. She can't be open-minded. She will think her very opinion was given by God…. And even our country, if led by religious extremism, will resemble the countries we fear the most. And a leader, who feels she is God’s chosen voice, is truly to be avoided at all costs.”

SanRich’s first video stirred thousands of conversations on YouTube and blogs across the cybersphere. Their comments ranged from personal attack and praise to policy conversation. The pair hopes that with the release of Sarah Palin Resignation Song, a conversation about finding a moderate Republican leader will be roused.

Sandy asked, “Will the real spokesperson for moderate Republicans please stand up and be heard? We need two parties to make our country work, but the pickins' have been slim for the thinking Republican.”

Even though Palin has inspired more than her share of SanRich songs, they haven’t shied away from other politicians and events. Other victims of their musical skewering were Newt Gingrich and Dick Cheney. There is even a tribute, of sorts, to John McCain.

“McCain seemed to be the best the Republicans could muster. There clearly is no one on that side of the fence who can intelligently balance,” Richard concluded.

SanRich hopes to continue writing satirical songs and shooting videos together. Sandy jokes, “Richard must love me a whole lot in order to put a moose hat on and go national, not once, but twice.” In retort, Richard remarked, “I’ll do it again, anytime! Sandy must love me a whole lot to ask me to wear that moose hat and go national!”

About the Musicians

Sandy and Richard are both highly trained professional musicians. Sandy, who has a master's degree in music from Manhattan School of Music, performs jazz, cabaret, musical theater and classical music. Richard is a Mr. Holland's Opus Award winning music teacher with a degree from Oberlin and Yale and works as a professional pianist and conductor.

Read their previous interview with LaRae about Hockey Mama for Obama here.
Visit their YouTube channel here.

Harry Potter and the Half Assed Film

2009-07-14T16:39:00.000-07:00

Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince is the sixth movie in Harry Potter film series. Too dependent on previous films or expecting the audience to have read the books, Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince fails to develop into a complete movie.

Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe) is whisked away by his professor and fellow wizard Dumbledore (Michael Gambon )to meet with Horace Slughorn (Jim Broadbent) to encourage him to return to his professorship at Hogwarts School. Harry and Dumbledore continue to attempt to find a way to defeat Lord Voldemort and prevent him from returning to the living world. Ron Weasley (Rupert Grint) and Hermione Granger (Emma Watson) dance around their feelings for each other and engage in typical teenage romance melodrama. Draco Malfoy (Tom Felton) sneaks around, waving his wand at bookcases in dark storage rooms, spiraling down an emotional whirlpool.

As an added bonus for the audience, the director and writers have left bonus loose ends for the audience to enjoy. The extraneous footage includes destroying mystical stuff, a girl who has a crush on Harry, some broom related sporting events, potions, and curses. The cinematic loose ends fray long enough to braid and be sold as rope to climbers heading off for K2.

Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince reminds me of leftover casserole. Leftover casserole is made by taking the remnants of a week’s worth of food, layering it in a casserole dish and hoping it tastes good enough that your family won’t run out on you. If you sprinkle it with parmesan cheese, it can look delicious, but it almost always tastes like week old, reheated donkey-butt stew. Director David Yates and writer Steve Kloves take a bit of left over the Sorcerer’s Stone, covers it in Order of the Phoenix, slathers on Chamber of Secrets, dumps in Goblet of Fire and sprinkles Prisoner of Azkaban, bakes it with parmesan on top (the special effects) and thinks we will eat it.

It shows a total lack of cinematic integrity to assign the audience required reading or mandatory viewing in order to understand anything that is taking place on screen. It is perfectly rational to expect a first time Harry Potter viewer won’t get every mention but they shouldn’t be completely lost. It is not too much to ask for a bit of recap, artfully worked into the story so new viewers can understand what is going on. It irritates me to no end that David Yates, and the production staff think we should pay full price for a half a movie. In one of the more “intense” scenes in Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince, Dumbledore says, “Once again I must ask too much of you, Harry” but I think it’s the writer and director who have asked too much of the audience by hiding the casserole behind a smoke screen - literally.

Smoke comes out of the water, goes into the water, is outdoors, is indoors, and seems to follow Harry and his compadres, regardless of their travels. Harry would be the alpha caveman of any cave based solely on his ability to attract fire to himself. Based solely on the beauty of the smoke, Harry Potter is a stunning movie.

All of the effects in Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince shimmer almost brightly enough to make one blind to the disparities in the plot. Well lit sets are set against green-screen created backgrounds that seem to flow naturally into each other. While some of the scenes don’t work as well as others, they all work well enough to suspend disbelief and make wizardry riveting.

Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince has no beginning, nor an end; it is only a middle. With nothing to tell the audience what has happened up until now and an unraveling carpet for an ending, it fails to offer the audience a reason to sit through the film. It should be renamed to Harry Potter and a Half.

Brüno: A Hilarious and Terrifying That Brought Matthew Shepard To Mind

2009-07-09T20:20:00.000-07:00

Austrian fashionista Brüno sets off to become the most famous Austrian in history. Hilarious and terrifying, Brüno is an insightful look at American culture.

After the flamboyant, ultra-gay Brüno (Sacha Baron Cohen) loses his job as a fashion commentator on Austrian television, he sets his sights becoming world famous. He finds inspiration from the world of politics, Hollywood and history. He brings his assistant’s assistant, Lutz (Gustaf Hammarsten) with him to America where he sets many plans to become famous into action. His plans take him around the world and back again. Except for Brüno and a few establishing characters, all of the people they interact with are not acting; they are real people with genuine reactions to Brüno. Famous politicians like Ron Paul and personalities like Paula Abdul are stunned, on film and caught fully exposed (socially, not physically).

More interesting than the famous people are the average global citizens Brüno rubs against, the most extreme of which are the Americans. Between the laughter, scene after scene, my heart broke. As a citizen of America, I am personally mortified by the behavior of some of my co-citizens. There is a scene with a woman and Brüno that if the roles were reversed, would be called a sexual assault.

After seeing Brüno, I am officially afraid of Arkansas, and the rest of the Midwest, for that matter. Redneck, white trash, nitwitted boobs, pumped up and ready for blood become thoroughly unzipped by Brüno. Knowing that they were not actors, their behavior was so shocking, I was overcome with both fear for the actors and disgust at the Arkansasans simultaneously.

In Brüno, it isn’t just the good ole boys who show no noticeable remnants of humanity. What could most kindly be described as an ethnically diverse rabble at a low-brow setting verbally attacks Brüno viciously for being gay. Even though Brüno does provoke a bit of well deserved anger on their part, the audience disproportionately reacts, making themselves look like fools and staining the fabric of America.

It would be easy to fall into the trap that Baron Cohen sets for the audience. Amongst the wagging penises (of which there are many), raunchy gay jokes and “faggy” stereotypes, Baron Cohen slips in a message about American society, written by Americans. By the end of the story Baron Cohen recorded, I couldn’t laugh anymore – I was angry.

During Brüno, and after, when I considered the film, I kept coming back to the story of Matthew Shepard. In 1998 Matthew Shepard was kidnapped, beaten and tortured within an inch of his life and tied to a fence in Wyoming. He later died from his fractured skull. The “good ole boys” who killed him, Russell Henderson and Aaron McKinney later said it was because Shepard was gay.

More than a decade later, America should be ashamed to be standing under the flag with these Henderson and McKinney knock offs. Easily incited, willing to submit their minds to their faith, uneducated and brain dead, they troll the American heartland – unchecked pre-murderers waiting for their opportunity to pistol whip, beat, torture, tie to a fence and let die someone who offends their “sensibilities.”

Before you stand pompously in a state, like say California, and say that could never happen here, I have two words for you: Proposition Eight. Just like the people mentioned above, we might not have attacked gay people or Brüno physically, but we allowed our co-Californians to do it legally.

Brüno definitely has its moments of levity, but they are wisely placed, to encourage the audience to lower their guard and look in the mirror. What will you see when see Brüno staring back?

Day Watch - No.

2007-06-02T12:31:00.001-07:00

Day Watch or Dnevnoy dorz is the second in an “epic” trilogy. Day Watch left me spending most of my day looking at my watch.

I sat through this movie, having not seen Night Watch, completely lost. I honestly had little idea what was going on. Here was the best I could get from the movie. Some guy, Anton (Konstantin Khabensky), has a trainee and a flashlight. They run around avoiding mosquitoes and try not to slip into another dimension or level of some kind. He realizes his son is actually a super dark force, his trainee Svetlana (Mariya Poroshina) a super light force and if they ever were to meet, it may be the end of the world. He tries to obtain the Chalk of Destiny (Why chalk, I do not know) so he can go back in time and make everything right. The leader of the darkies frames him for murder of another vampire or dark person. There is something about a trial, a yo-yo and a very big Ferris Wheel.

There is a recap at the beginning of the movie that is only to remind those people who have already seen the previous movie, not to inform those of us who haven’t. It whizzes past things in rocket speed with nary an explanation to enlighten us newbies. I was paying unnaturally close attention because I hadn’t seen the first movie and I was painfully lost from the word go.

Day Watch felt like a two and a quarter hour, cheap knock off of a La Femme Nikita episode, in Russian. Both have secret agencies whose motives are never clear, background stories that occasionally ooze out, and actors who can’t do anything other than Ben Stein impressions. La Femme Nikita doesn’t last two and a quarter hours.

Mariya Poroshina who plays trainee Svetlana looks just like a younger Kim Cattrall. She is beautiful and never gets dirty. Beautiful is the best I could say about her. She is essentially the pretty object in the movie. She killed, and skinned Cookie Monster and wore him through most of the movie. We are supposed to believe she is madly in love with Anton but her emotions run as deep as the dry creek in my back pasture. She couldn’t well up with emotion if her father was set on fire in front of her. Passionless expression is practically epidemic in Day Watch.

Konstantin Khabensky’s performance is equally uninspired. When he sees his son or confesses his love for a woman, there are no sparks. His vacant eyes make him look like he has had his soul sucked out by one of the dark side people in the movie. By the end of the movie I wanted the vampires to eat him.

This movie is beautiful looking, though. Director Timur Bekmambetov knew what he was doing when he hired Sergei Trofimov as the cinematographer. The gritty and dank look gives the audience a nearly hopeless feeling. The use of lighting in the movie is outstanding to accentuate the point the script is trying to make at the time. It isn’t until the end that the visuals of the movie were enough to overcome the weaknesses of the plot and give the film a redeemed quality. It finally becomes a visual splendor, not just an enjoyable watch. You should shut off the sound and just watch the story unfold, for about ten minutes. For those ten minutes, it is a wonderful movie.

For a movie that is supposed to tell the story of an epic battle between light and dark, good and evil, it has no feeling of grandeur. An epic battle doesn’t usually use intra-species law to start a war. Evil things are evil, so they would just start a war to be evil. The administrative bull in the plot makes it as scary as DMV administration.

Day Watch…no thank you.

Mr Brooks Goes Boom

2007-06-01T22:11:00.000-07:00

Mr. Brooks could be called a twisted, modern, lesser version of Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde. I call it a disappointment.

Kevin Costner plays Mr. Earl Brooks, a much adored father, husband, business man and philanthropist who is hiding a terrible secret; he the notorious Thumbprint serial killer. Brooks managed to keep his identity secret until the voice in his head, Marshall (William Hurt,) talks him into another killing. Soon Mr. Smith (Dane Cook) and Detective Tracy Atwood (Demi Moore) are hot on his tail. Always one step ahead, trying to evade capture, Mr. Brooks does his best to not slip up.

Mr. Brooks won't be winning any awards for best movie but it does have some pleasurable aspects. Much of the movie is a conversation between Earl Brooks and his split identity Marshall. He has conversations with him when other people are around; they talk to the audience but the other characters can't hear. Often the discussions they have are so ridiculous and quirky you can't help but laugh out loud. There is one scene where they say something like "He wants to kill us," and then both break out into almost synchronous laughter. Every single time there is this synchronous laughter, I felt a chill go halfway up my spine as I too laughed with the characters.

Kevin Costner and William Hurt have great chemistry. It isn't just the comical scenes that often work, but also the serious ones. They have conversations as if they are old friends with no secrets. Marshall will occasionally have an adult version of a temper tantrum. He never goes too far as to turn off the audience, but he goes far enough to make it a little disturbing that the character is having a fight with himself. Kevin Costner never takes Brooks out of his nearly stoic demeanor. Their conversations were my favorite part of the movie.

Demi Moore's performance is a quality teeter-totter. Sometimes she is ultra-fun-bad-ass but other times she is blathering boob. Her character is going through a divorce and her "emotional" scenes feel as forced as a raw potato through a colander. She also does that masculine walk that is supposed to tell us she is tough. I would love to see a woman who still walks like a woman and doesn't have to become a man to be a force to be reckoned with.

Bruce Evans makes some cinematic mistakes. There is a strange use of music and change of style in a few scenes. There is a gun fight and he uses music and style that seems like it is attempting to make it a gunfight – Hackers style. Evan's attempts at edgy coolness are misplaced in a movie that up until that plot point, not style driven. It is more than a little jarring and moderately confusing.

Except for the scenes where the Evans gets caddywhumpus, the movie is pretty straight-forward looking. The plot moves laterally to the twist ending. Done just a little better, it may have been a fantastic twist but instead it is about as twisty as elbow macaroni. I figured out what the twist was going to be about 20 minutes before it happened.

There is relationship between Brooks and Atwood that is severely undeveloped, to the detriment of the story. I think the writers were attempting a Silence of the Lambs-esque affection for the detective.

Mr. Brooks is a fantastic example of a movie that does not trust the audience. Writers Bruce Evans and Raynold Gideon took what might have been a B rated movie and made it a D movie by thinking we are too stupid to get it. The writers walked up to the top of the Empire State Building, opened a window, stuck their head out to see how high it is, and chucked the ending out the window. At maximum velocity, the script, and consequently the movie, is eviscerated on the cinematic cement.

Mr. Brooks is especially frustrating because it was ok, until the ending went kablooey.

Wednesday Discussion - 12 Angry Men

2007-06-01T01:08:00.001-07:00

I'm sorry I missed this wednesday, no good reason, just busy.

Wednesday's Discussion is "Twelve Angry Men"

Twelve Angry Men (1957) is an exceptional film. If you haven't seen this one, see it for the discussion or because you want to be enriched by a movie going experience.

netflix
blockbuster

1957 NOT 1997!

Abigail Breslin in American Girl Movie

2007-06-01T00:35:00.000-07:00

Abigail Breslin (Little Miss Sunshine) will be starring in Kit Kittredge: An American Girl Mystery. The Academy Award nominated actress has already begun filming the first American Girl book series film adaptation. Breslin will be playing Kit Kittredge, a ten year old girl during The Great Depression in Cincinnati.

Read my article on MonstersandCritics.com

Gracie - Not so Graceful

2007-06-01T00:11:00.000-07:00

Gracie tries to inspire us not to be limited by the past, through soccer. Gracie is a beautifully shot movie, packed with only slightly veiled metaphors and full of clichés that don’t resonate emotionally or develop into a film worth seeing.

After a death in the family, Grace Bowen takes it upon herself to find redemption for the soccer team her loved one played on. She asks her father to train her, he refuses because she’s a girl and isn’t “Tough Enough.” Her mother tells her that she should just “take a bite of a shit sandwich.” Her brothers mock and ridicule her. Detoured by her family’s emotional slap down, Grace turns to a life of mischief, falling grades and boys. After coming to the self realization that her life will go nowhere if she continues on this path, she returns to her goal as a varsity soccer player.

Gracie is beautifully shot. Chris Manly, the cinematographer, has an understanding of light and composition that is obvious during the entire film. The rain is beautifully drippy. The dark scenes don’t lose the characters because of lack of light; they are still crisp and clean. I kept returning to how beautiful the movie was when I was too bored to pay attention to the characters in the movie.

Gracie is not beautifully acted. Carly Schroeder, who plays Grace, is awkward and unnatural in her skin. She can emote effectively, but the movie is nearly entirely difficult scenes and Schroeder can’t seem to hit the proper emotional cord. Watching Schroeder attempt adolescent anger reminds me of listening to a third grade school band attempt to play The Nutcracker Suite. You can generally grasp which song they are trying to play, but the execution leaves you wanting industrial strength ear plugs.

The supporting cast is equally lackluster. The usually spot-on Dermot Mulroney‘s portrayal of a lost father, has succumbed to grief and stuck in dated thought, lacks any stabbing or penetrating quality to make the performance enter your psyche. Grace’s love interest, Kyle, played by Christopher Shand, would be more believable if he were made of ketchup. He can’t convincingly be sincere, aggressive or affectionate. Shand looks too old to be in high school.

The only character that I felt any emotional sincerity from was Elizabeth Shue as Grace’s mother. Sure, there is one ridiculously written super-speech that is meant to bring tears to our eyes and falls flat, but it doesn’t ruin her overall performance. She does seem to be emotionally aware that her character is deeply in love with her children and husband. Lindsey Bowen, Shue’s character, has the widest range of emotion and depth. Shue performs beautifully as a mother who settled for a life well below her dreams. Shue was not the cause of the movie’s scab picking quality.

A great deal of the problem with the acting lays at the writers’, Chris Frisina, Karen Janszen and Lisa Petersen’s, feet. This movie is bulging with half baked lines heard in every B rated movie for the last ten years. The writers even pepper in a few worn out visuals that make the movie uninteresting to watch, even though it is beautifully shot. My favorites sounded like they were taken out of the mouth of Vince McMahon and Stone Cold Steve Austin in a WWE pre-match psyche-out banter; “You’re not tough enough.” “I am tough enough.” Then there was the typical, pre-equal opportunity; “A girl?” Nearly all the important dialogue could have been taken from any book or movie. The themes of the movie make me reminisce about every story in every story telling medium to which I’ve been exposed.

Gracie tries to be a movie with heart, but as with so many things, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Gracie is a shameful example of acting and writing. It would be in everyone’s best interest if this movie flopped in the theater as quickly as possible. We don’t want movies like this to influence the cinematic sphere at all.

IMDB
Official Site

Bug - One of the scariest movies I have ever seen

2007-05-28T16:41:00.000-07:00

Bug is a surprisingly fantastic thriller that left me guessing the truth until the end and is one of the scariest movies I have ever seen. When a lonely bartender meets a war veteran, their lives intertwine and create a terrifying gradation.

(This movie is extremely hard to describe without giving away the ending, so I suggest watching a trailer after reading my meager attempts at a plot explanation. The visuals in this movie are just as important as the plot points.) Slightly self destructive and lonely Agnes (Ashley Judd) is a bartender at a local lesbian bar. She lives in a tiny room in a rundown motel. One night her friend R.C., (Lynn Collins) brings by Peter (Michael Shannon) for an evening of partying. Agnes allows Peter to spend the night and their relationship blossoms. Agnes and Peter start finding bugs all over their room and eventually begin to put the pieces together of where the bugs came from. The audience and the characters spend the majority of the movie questioning their own sanity.

Director William Friedkin and writer Tracy Letts do a great job of making the characters’ ambiguous emotional status as mesmerizing as a ten car pileup. You can’t believe what you are seeing, you know you should look away and yet you can’t. In every scene, the characters’ motivations are clear and yet, the audience has a difficult time understanding the characters completely. Much of the drama of the movie is wondering if what Agnes and Peter are experiencing is real. All of the characters have two personality traits that are not only diametrically opposed but mutually exclusive. It makes these simple people complex and is really freakin’ scary.

The cast is limited, with only five characters. Each of the performances is more disturbing and mesmerizing than the next. William Friedkin should be commended for not only finding such a great cast, but a cast who has such great chemistry together.

Agnes is a complicated character with emotional depth and rich development. Ashley Judd does a remarkable job of making Agnes pitiful and strong; sane and insane. Agnes easily, under a lesser actress, could have become a wayward bunglement of emotions. Judd makes her a perfect mess. Near the end of the movie I wanted to hug her to comfort her and slap the sense back into here.

Michael Shannon can best be described as innocent and creepy as Peter. During the entire length of the movie you can tell he isn’t a bad man, but you wonder if he is badly designed. He is so scary without being malicious that the two sides of your brain have a hard time rectifying the dichotomy; in a good way.

The other three cast members are perfect seasoning for the incredibly delicious dish Judd and Shannon created. R.C. (Lynn Collins) is softness, wildness and sanity. Collins’ short performance is incredibly controlled. Jerry Goss (Harry Connick Jr.) is crazy, abusive and loving, in a demented way. Connick’s performance is frightening because he only almost loses control. Dr. Sweet (Brian F. O’Byrne) lends credence to either of the theories of the characters and highlights the mental misfiring of the characters. O’Byrne made a chill run up my spine because he never, ever, gets rattled.

My hat goes off to the writer and the director for understanding the speech patterns of people in Oklahoma. Usually when a movie takes place in a region outside of California the screen writers don’t bother to make the dialogue regionally appropriate. Letts and Friedkin do not overlook this important detail.

The end of the movie has visually distinctive scenes that create deeply haunting moods. The use of light is the most unique and imaginative I have seen in years. The lighting alone is enough to tell us we should be in a state of paralyzing dismay. Not only does it lend exactly the emotion necessary for the scene, it doubles the effectiveness whenever another character enters the room.

This movie snuck up, lulled me into a false security, kept moving so I never got my footing and then broadsided me with a Mac truck. I was astonished, bewildered and the more I think about the movie, the more I love it. Don’t miss this movie if you love to be scared.

IMDB
Official Site

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End

2007-05-24T17:08:00.000-07:00

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End is chalked full; full of action, full of sub-plots, full of mistakes and full of fun. It reminds me a little of when I was 12 years old and ate an entire chocolate bunny. I didn’t regret how yummy and delicious it was, but the stomach ache didn’t feel so good.

After promising his father he would save him from servitude to Davey Jones, Will Turner (Orlando Bloom) sets forth a plan to save him. At the same time the council of pirate lords needs to convene to save pirates from extermination. Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp), sentenced to suffer in Davey Jones’ locker, is one of the pirate lords and therefore must be saved so the pirate council can be called. There is much back stabbing, personal motivations and tons of attempted plot twists.

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End has an endless number of betrayals. There are several negotiation scenes, especially at the beginning of the movie, which are confusing, and who is doing what to whom is unclear. The negotiation scenes are convoluted and I could smell the gears in my head starting to smoke as they continued on. The confusing nature of the bargaining left me wondering who I should be rooting for in the movie.

There is a great amount of computer effects in the movie and often the effects are wonderfully believable. Davey Jones’s face, with the exception of his eyes, is completely computer generated. It is hard to make a mystical creature seem realistic but the animators made the kraken face not only believable, but magical.

Even though some of the effects are wonderful there is a great deal of problems, as well. In many of the scenes the real characters are surrounded by computer generated characters. I haven’t seen effects of this quality since the Brownies in Willow. It is a big part of the movie and they should have spent a little more time and money to make the extra characters look better and more believable.

The actors in Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End didn’t shame themselves, but they didn’t make it into LaRae’s Book of Fantastic Acting, either. Often, the writing makes the scenes downright trite, and the acting is the only thing that saves it from being monstrously stupid. The acting, equally, can make a well written scene of eye rolling quality.

Johnny Depp perfectly revives Jack Sparrow. The always nearly-drunken state Sparrow wanders around in as he spouts wild wit walks the fence between brilliance and clown school. In At Worlds End, Depp often falls on both sides of the fence and sometimes both at once. Many of the scenes he is in feel like set ups for dumb jokes, and if those jokes are good enough one time, they are good enough twice (a problem throughout the movie.) Depp has a hard time pulling off the second joke as easily as he did the first, or giving it that something special that makes it rise above the first gag.

The secondary characters have a lot more face time in At World’s End and they make great use of it. They may be what lengthens the movie, but I laughed more at them than I did at the main characters.

By far, the best character in the movie is Jack. Not Sparrow, Monkey. Jack the Monkey may have been a cheap gag, and I don’t care. He is adorable and every scene he is in made me laugh. There is a scene where he is sitting next to two of the secondary characters and I couldn’t see them because I was so focused on how cute he was.

For all of its faults, the end of the movie finally gets to what we really wanted to see, swashbuckling goodness. There are sword fights, cannon fights, and banter. What is a pirate movie without explosions and stabbings, really? Finally, the betrayals are explained, characters make choices, and lives are changed. It almost makes the rest of the movie worth seeing, almost.

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End is way too long, has way too many subplots and there weren’t enough laughs or action to make it a must see but the problems don’t make it a must miss.

IMDB
Official Site

Severance - A Horror Comedy Corporate Holiday

2007-05-19T22:36:00.000-07:00

Severance: the movie that tells us what happens when you take the characters from The Office, send them on a team building holiday and throw in some eastern European serial killers. A little quirky, and even though the humor/horror mix is just a little off, Severance is still a pretty fun movie.

International contractor, Palisades Defense, sends seven of their employees on a team building excursion in Eastern Europe. When the road is blocked, on sage advice of the boss, the employees abandon the motor-coach and head down a heavily wooded road to find their luxury lodge. Little do they know a killer is waiting around the corner, bent on killing each of them. In proper British style, victims die with a stiff upper lip and killers kill in ridiculous ways. Don't worry though, not everyone rolls over and accepts their fate.

Severance's biggest problem is that it can't really decide if it is a dark comedy or a horror movie with brief moments of levity. There are a lot of bloody scenes but I can't think of an explicit death scene. Just before the death, the camera pulls away and sometimes returns just after the death, so it doesn't feel like a strict horror. There are a lot of attempts at comedy but only a few will leave you laughing out loud, so it doesn't feel like a sinister comedy. Director/writer Christopher Smith and writers Toby Stephens and James Moran would have benefited from having an accomplished comedic writer there to touch up the scenes that were attempting humor.

Severance isn't completely void of humor. There is a scene that will redefine the expression "Heads will roll." Later in the movie, there is a scene that made me laugh so hard at the misfortunes of the killer. The end of the movie made me laugh with reckless abandon. The scene that takes the cake involves a mini-fridge, a shoe and slippery fingers. I didn't want to laugh, because it was just wrong, but I couldn't help it! After the movie is over, stick around for the credits; they are brief but the character names of the bad guys are funny enough to make the credits worth watching.

Andy Nyman, who plays Gordon, was my favorite male character. Gordon is an annoyingly optimistic character, much to the chagrin of the other Palisades employees. He tries to make every negative a positive. I wanted to strangle him about three minutes into the movie. I think he was fantastically written. I believe that the writers were trying to make him painfully cheery and they accomplished their goal with flying colors.

There is a moderate amount of creativity in the kill scenes. They took all of the instruments of death they could think of, threw out the quiet ones, tossed the ones that wouldn't create a mess, and scrapped the Plain-Janes, and were left with a collection of mercenary style implements of doom! Sure, there are knives and guns, but the kill scenes that use the classics aren't done in the same-old ways. There is a scene where hundreds of people are killed and I snickered, rolled my eyes and finally gave into the laughter pushing its way up!

I wish there had been a little bit more attention to the actual deaths of the characters. As I mentioned above, I can't remember a single scene where you actually see someone die. I feel a little funny saying this, but it's a horror movie, show us the money. I can't believe that someone is actually dead unless we see them dead. In the horror movie rules it goes, 1. Never say "I'll be right back." 2. Never investigate a weird or strange noise, especially alone, and 3. Don't assume they are dead unless you see them dead, and maybe even not then. How can I believe that the killers actually killed the victim if you aren't following the rules?

As always, I love it when there are bad ass bitches in horror movies that refuse to wait for some man to save them and Severance has its share of whoop-ass women! Not all the women survive but their attempts at survival are memorable and commendable.

This movie would benefit from a re-visitation by someone a little more skilled at finding the proper mix of humor and horror. This may be the only time you hear this from me but I can't wait until an American film maker finds the time to remake this movie. Even still, Severance is worth seeing, flaws and all.

Shrek the Third

2007-05-17T23:13:00.000-07:00

Shrek the Third is the latest in the Shrek series of movies. A cute, fluff, 3D cartoon, Shrek is a good find for five year olds.

When King Harold (John Cleese) of Far Far Away is on his death bed, he asks Shrek (Mike Myers) if he will take over as ruler of Far Far Away. When Shrek wavers, King Harold offers an alternative, Fiona's Cousin Arthur (Justin Timberlake). Shrek, Donkey, (Eddie Murphy) and Puss (Antonio Banderas) head out to find Arthur. Just as he is pulling out of the harbor, Fiona (Cameron Diaz), tells Shrek that she is pregnant. While Shrek is off to find the next king of Far Far Away he attempts to come to terms with the news that he will be a dad. Prince Charming (Rupert Everett) attempts to take over Far Far Away while Shrek is gone. He brings with him all of the fairytale villains.

Shrek the Third is packed with entertaining little scenes. There is an amusing scene where the gingerbread man recounts his life. Pinocchio has a very funny scene where he steals the show. There are also several scenes where the fairy tale princesses refuse to wait for rescue and take it upon themselves. Any scene with the fairytale babies will make you go "Aaaah." The dragon/ donkey children made me smile every time they are on the screen.

There is a character you meet later in the movie who I think steals the show. The character used to teach Arthur but has gone a little crazy. Everything he does is just plain off kilter. I expected him to start singing "What a lovely bunch of coconuts."

The quality of the animation in Shrek the Third is surprisingly inconsistent. The scenery, the lighting and shading is marvelous. There is a scene with a horse that made me want to reach out and stroke its hind. The textures of all of the characters and scenery makes them look rich with depth and beautifully sensory. Dreamworks obviously made the way the characters look a priority. They did not, however, make the way the characters move a priority.

All of the characters that walk upright have a rigid stiffness that makes believing they are real a little challenging at times. The characters move like wooden artists models, unnaturally swinging from the joints in a way that would probably hurt a human being. Their steps are labored, lumbered, and even for Shrek, heavy. If they put half as much effort into the way the characters move as they did the way they look, the movie would have flowed considerably better.

When I saw Shrek the Third, the theater was packed full of children, some too small for elementary school. I was surprised that there was nearly no fussing, crying or screaming through the movie. Most of the children were completely enthralled by the movie.

Shrek the Third attempts several morals of the story. Shrek needs to embrace fatherhood, the women are all about taking care of themselves, there is talk of how one becomes a villain, violence is not the answer, and the moral that runs most through the movie is "you are the only one in your way." I think most of the themes will be easy enough for a child to grasp except Shrek's trek to fatherhood. Being a father should be the last thing on a five year old's mind.

The double edged sword with any movie packed with celebrities is that their celebrity is a distraction. The movie has a smorgasbord of recognizable voices. At times the myriad of familiar voices distracted me while I tried to place where I had heard them before. Especially difficult for me to place was Rupert Everett and as a consequence, every time he was on screen, I was trying to figure out where I had heard the voice before.

There is nothing particularly impressive about Shrek the Third but I didn't find anything monstrously awful either. This movie is definitely not one that parents will enjoy watching over and over again but then again it is a movie for children. As a children's movie, I think it is just fine.

IMDB
Official Site

LaRae Meadows

28 Weeks Later- A good zombie movie

2007-05-14T23:05:00.001-07:00

28 Weeks Later is the sequel to 2003's 28 Days Later. 28 Weeks Later accomplishes the rare sequel feat of being an interesting movie on its own and still having the essence of the first movie.

Tammy and Andy are sent to repopulate Britain and reunite with their father Don, after the people infected by the rage virus die of starvation. An unfortunate break in security causes a re-infection and the re-inhabitants are left to try to survive. Many of the character's past and current situations haunt them during their quest for survival. Meanwhile, the American military, which has been charged with the well being of the people who are repopulating, is making decisions about their lives without their permission.

I was impressed that 28 Weeks Later could stand alone as a movie. 28 Weeks Later's antagonist is less the zombies and more the interpersonal and policy problems. Dad, mom, son, daughter, military, and humanity all struggle against each other to find the proper balance and to figure out the most humane solution to the infection problem. The writers' (Rowan Joffe,Enrique Lopez Lavigne, Jaun Carolos Fresnadillo and Jesus Olmo) decision to abandon the characters in the previous story line and pick up with new characters makes it easy for a viewer who missed Days still understand Weeks. For those of us who had seen Days, Weeks did not forsake its predecessor. Weeks uses many of the storytelling elements of the previous movie. The music, some of the themes and a lot of the visuals are taken directly from the previous movie. It has the proper mix of novelty and familiarity.

Robert Carlyle plays Don, the dad, with an emotional precision unusual to zombie movies. Don's character is multi-faceted, with surprising depth. There is an apology scene when he must essentially beg for forgiveness from someone who probably should not forgive him. His admissions are heartfelt and his emotions honest. He leaves you wondering what you would do in the same situation; another feeling you almost never get in a zombie movie.

The writers also did a great job of figuring out how work in British people who had never been in contact with the infected. Sent away on a school trip, the children, Tammy (Imogen Poots) and her little brother Andy (Makintosh Muggleton) had no exposure to the infected or the horrors they caused. It was a fantastic way to introduce characters who would be horrified and have no jading.

Imogen Poots is remarkable as Tammy because of her ability to go a little bit crazy and also to stay strong in the face of what they to endure to survive. There is a scene in the dark near the end of the movie that could have gone a little cheeseball if Poots wasn't able to restrain her emotions to a controlled frenzy.

For sheer pinchability, Jeremy Renner takes the cake. Renner plays Doyle, a soldier in the protecting American Army. His character faces a unique moral dilemma in the film, first be a soldier or first be a person. For a soldier he is incredibly tender and sweet. I wanted to cuddle him.

Like in all zombie movies, there is a great deal of "what the heck" moments. As my friend Eric says, "The military treats every problem like a nail because they only have a hammer." The short sided policies of the military are stunning and they do a great number of downright stupid things. In one scene they lock the front door but don't lock the back door. In the military's defense, no one else in the room encouraged the closing and locking of the back door either. People succumb to the infection much faster than in the first movie. The "twist" of the movie can be figured out if you understand foreshadowing and can count to three. The flaws weren't enough to make 28 Weeks Later unenjoyable.

I had real fears that this movie would try to play too much on the heart strings, using the children for false suspense or drama. Much to my surprise and glee, 28 Weeks Later did not put its predecessor to shame.

LaRae Meadows
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Delta Farce - I love you enough to see this movie

2007-05-14T22:51:00.001-07:00

Delta Farce is the spring cinematic monstrosity spectacular. It strives to answer, "What happens when you have inconsistent characters, no character development, drinking, the army, no decision on type of humor, fart, food, discomfort and gay jokes made into a movie smoothie?"

Three dirt-for-brains, rednecked idiots serving in the National Guard are dispatched to serve in Iraq. Seriously unfit for duty, a Sergeant takes it upon himself to, over a weekend, get these three soldiers ready for their trip to Iraq. After their extensive re-training they are put on a plane on the way to Iraq. During the flight they are accidently dumped from the plane in their sleep. When they wake up they don't realize they aren't in Iraq; they are in fact in Mexico. In full soldier mode, they begin to treat the citizens as if they are in Iraq. They go as far as to attempt to stop "insurgents." Oh the trouble they get into.

Comedies that strive to pop the top of convention by being incredibly outrageous can sometimes make you laugh at things you thought could never be funny. Comedies that strive to pop the top and instead poke holes in the bottom leave you feeling every filling in your mouth. Delta Farce is the latter.

The characters in Delta Farce have incongruent personality traits. They all are dumb as a sack of rocks; the only difference being the weight of the sack. Yet, they all can spit out specific legal language or something remarkably smart. It isn't used as a tool of humor; it occasionally just spills out of their mouths as naturally as their gay jokes. There is one scene where arguably the stupidest of the group can recite the Geneva Convention language. I was left shaking my head.

I thought evolution favored the stronger and smarter. When I watch Delta Farce it makes me wonder if there is a god because there is no way that evolution could pop out the cast and crew stupid enough to make a movie as laced with such should-be evolutionary rejects. The writers, Bear Aderhold and Tom Sullivan should have their index fingers removed so they can never type out such a horrific cinematic mutation again. Director, C.B Harding, should have his eyes gouged out for having seen this movie in production, pre-production, post-production and still not fighting tooth and nail to have it shelved. If I hear him say he is proud of the movie, I may have to encourage more serious punishment. Bill Engval, who plays Bill, DJ Qualls, who plays Everett, and Larry the Cable Guy, who plays Larry, should be sent to Iraq to serve the terms of duty as set out to their characters. Might I suggest the human mine sweeping job or the suicide bomb tester? Either one of these jobs would be a great use of these human resources but also good for the human gene pool.

Producers Alan C. Blomquist and J.P. Williams need a lecture from their mothers about acting morally. The discussion should go something like "Son of mine, I believe I have taught you well enough to consider other people when you make decisions in all aspects of your life. When you make the choice to produce movies, you should consider the audience's well being. I think you should pay for the dental work for everyone who saw this movie because you knew what you were putting out when released it. I am ashamed that you hired a cast, a crew, and post-production staff for this movie. You put all of their careers in jeopardy because they worked on this movie. You also are helping with the stupefaction of the human race by hiring hairy-knuckles Oakies that should have starved to death long ago. Don't you know that fart, gay and redneck jokes have all been done before and no one finds them funny anymore. I don't know if you should come to Christmas anymore." Maybe they will listen to their mothers.

It is impossible laugh when all you can think about is calling your dentist. There is not one redeeming quality in this movie. The bad guys, the good guys, the military, the main characters, the story, the cinematography, etc, makes me wonder why movies like Idiocracy go strait to video but Delta Farce gets wide release. I need to raise Darwin from his grave; he has a lot of 'splaining to do.

LaRae Meadows
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Jindabyne- A movie gem

2007-05-14T22:21:00.000-07:00

Jindabyne tries to grey the areas of good and bad. An Australian setting is a beautiful backdrop for this remarkable story.

Four men, Stewart (Gabriel Bryne), Roco (Stelios Yaikmis), Carl (John Howard), and Billy (Simon Stone) set off on their annual, no girls allowed, fishing trip. Much to their chagrin, on Friday a murdered dead girl floats up in their section of river. Not to let a tiny thing like a murdered woman spoil their trip, they tie her to a tree, floating in the river and continue their weekend fun. On Saturday night, Billy aka "the kid" tells the older men in the group he's leaving to get help for the girl, even if they don't come. So on Sunday all the men finally pack up and head back to their car to call for help. The media and their wives learn of the terrible choice they make to leave the dead girl while they fish and their relationships with the town, their spouses, each other and themselves is monumentally altered.

While the men are away on their annual fishing trip, the women are home to sort some emotional and family things out. Claire (Laura Linney), Jude (Deborra-lee Furness), Carmel (Leah Purcell) have dinner and talk about the past. Claire, wife of Stewart, learns she is pregnant, which is very bad news.

When you first meet Stewart and his wife Claire Laura Linney, she comes across as a loving yet a little unstable wife and Stewart a distant yet stable husband. As the movie progresses it is obvious that Stewart is the unstable one and even though she has a history, Claire's behavior is rational.

Jindabyne is a beautifully written story about the monsters that reside in the hearts of seemingly average men and women. The inaction of these perfectly average men feels like a passive endorsement of the murder of this innocent woman. It leaves the audience to wonder what they or their fathers, brothers and husbands would do if faced with the same situation. The story is even more troubling because they weren't faced with a true moral dilemma. There was only one right thing to do and they didn't do it. Does this one bad decision make these men bad men or is it just plain stupid and heartless this one time?

The men aren't the only ones whose morality is ambiguous. The women in their lives responses range from outrageous to understandable. The one woman of the group of spouses who attempts to apologize for her husband and her friends is outcast by the rest of the group. One woman defends her husband ferociously, even against the other women. The morally correct response is less clear for the women. It left me to wonder if I would stay with my husband after they did something so disgusting or if I would be bothered by it at all. When the women don't punish their husbands, are they also lending passive endorsement to the murder?

The settings in the movie are beautiful and very special. The town where the men live is very small and full of character. The river where the woman is found is majestic. The calming settings make the behaviors of the men even more unsettling. Amidst the calm and beauty are these minor demons and an innocent victim.

Jinbadbyne is a true movie gem.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0382765
http://www.april.com.au/home.html

LaRae Meadows
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Spiderman 3 - Cinematic Chinese Food

2007-05-05T16:47:00.000-07:00

“Spiderman 3” is the Super Villain packed installment of the Spiderman series. This movie reminded me of Chinese food; looks great, tastes great, sadly never makes you full and does bad things to the end result.

Director Sam Raimi did a great job of preserving the comic book feel of the movie. Many of the fight scenes, the looks on the bystander’s faces, and bad guy close ups screamed comic book to me. There is a scene where Sandman is going through a transformation that struck me as perfectly comic-ish. Raimi did a good job of keeping the lighting bright but not making it feel sterile.

The special effects were exceptional. Honestly, there isn’t much more to say on the subject.

There are a series of scenes in the movie where Peter Parker lets his hair down and becomes a different man. He looked like Willard (From “Willard”) or Le Chiffre (“Casino Royale”) and has the personality of a used car salesman. Even with the dreadful beatnik look dawned by our hero friend, the transitional scenes are funny. They probably would upset true fans of Spiderman, but I found them a charming addition.

There is no wonder that Kirsten Dunst seems cold to the idea being Mary Jane Watson in another Spiderman movie. Her part could be done by taking the raw footage from movies one and two, and changing the green screen background. There is a terrible scene where she is being jostled in a car, where she is going one way and the car is going another. She is flopping herself about wildly. Still, Dunst’s acting (aside from her attempt at stunt work) is pretty solid. Her sadness, love, frustration and anger are not unclear. An actor is only as good as her script and Dunst’s is a lead weight around her ankle.

Topher Grace’s performance disgraces his last name. If I were in charge of the English dictionary, the entry for annoying would have the word spelled “T-O-P-H-E-R” and there would be a full color picture of him as Eddie Brock and Venom. Right next to the picture would be a caption reading “Professional photographers do not use plastic cameras and actually use the viewfinder.” Grace’s (should we even call him that anymore?) is so unrestrained, he seems like his arms should be waving about wildly at the shoulders when he talks.

Tobey Maguire’s is pretty fun as Spiderman. For some men, the crying might get a little bit much but I was impressed by how easily and naturally the tears flowed from Maguire. There is nothing special about Maguire’s performance as compared to the other movies. I speculate that it is less because of Maguire’s skills and more because of the quality of the script.

There is an endless supply of bad guys and drama in “Spiderman 3.” It seems that with every change of scenery there is an introduction of a new villain or melodrama. There are no less than three villains. The movie does not give them super villain names but my extensive research has uncovered their names as “Venom,” “Sandman,” and “New Goblin.” Also making a brief appearance is the un-credited Creepy, Black Asteroid Goo. That is just the bad guys. There is Peter and Mary Jane drama, Peter and Harry drama, Harry’s personal drama, Venom’s personal drama, Sandman’s personal drama, Mary Jane and Harry drama and Peter’s self drama. “Spiderman” three tries to pack too much plot into this comic book movie. Each of the bad guys would have been a fine movie unto themselves. For some reason, not apparent to anyone with sense, they thought one bad guy wasn’t enough. Would Spiderman really be any less bad-ass if he only fought one super villain at a time or any less human if he only had one or two dramatic incidents to deal with? Do people demand so much from the wildly popular “Spiderman” series that a super hero can’t just be super; he has to be super duper?

I want to know why no one puts two and two together. Mary Jane Watson keeps getting kidnapped by the bad guys and no one in the media or in the entire world is smart enough to put two and two together? For a great deal of this movie, Spiderman has his mask off, sitting in costume on a roof, overlooking the city. Does no one have a telephoto lens? Does no one see him when he webs up there? Are the people of New York in Stan Lee’s world really that stupid?

It takes a great deal of skill to create movie after movie about the same characters and make it feel like a new movie with familiar characters. Even though I found “Spiderman 3” reasonably entertaining, I left feeling unimpressed. I could hear the sizzle from the kitchen, I was hungry, but there was nothing in the pan.

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