i m N s h o

No, I'm not talking about the latest moron, whoever he may be, who's decided to recreate that "really cool" scene from Jackass: The Movie . Frankly, I've got a very Darwinian attitude towards this stuff. I figure if you're not smart enough to be able to tell movies from real life, then I can only hope you manage to off yourself before breeding thus sparing us (and the gene pool) your excessive stupidity. No, this is more for the idiot statements I keep hearing coming from movie directors that keep embracing bad ideas because they're more "real". The most blatant example of that these days has to be the dread handheld camera. Steadicam exists for a reason, people, but for some reasons, directors like this seem to think it's "more real" or "more immediate" if they're jerking the camera around so you can't focus on anything for minutes on end. I assume it comes from the world of documentary and news footage, but fra...

Yep, I've done it again… here it is, more than a month since I saw it and I've yet to post anything about the last Star Wars film ? God knows, you've all been waiting to hear what I think about it, right? (Of course, waiting this long lets me get away with talking about the ending and not worrying too much about yelling "SPOILER ALERT"… but I figured I might as well put it in anyway.) So, without further delay… Things that worked The overall story. From the beginning-of-the-end of the Republic and the betrayal of the Jedi to the revelation of the soon-to-be Emperor's real schemes and Anakin's fall to the dark side, the pieces of the mythology that we've been waiting 30 years to see are finally all here. And, for the most part, they work. Sure, there's the typical George Lucas clunky dialogue and oft-times incongruous jabs at humor (but don't knock it… at least he attempted some humor in this one!). But in the end, I have to say I liked it. (F...

'Cause I just can't resist the near- pleonastic "Ep III, Pt 2" title, and since this part of the post takes a big left turn (no pun intended) from my previous post on the topic, I figured I'd go ahead and break this into two separate posts… So what about the politics? There was all kinds of uproar right before Sith opened about Lucas' politics. The knee-jerk conservatives were calling him treasonous and urging boycotts, reactionary liberals were pamphleteering local theatres to call attention to parallels they could find to current Senate judicial battles. And you know what? The parallels are there if you want to see them. They've been there in all three of the prequels. And if you didn't notice them before and are just getting upset now, you weren't paying attention. But here's the thing… Thirty years ago, George Lucas set out to create a mythology, in grand SF Space Opera tradition (evil galactic empires, plucky rebel freedom fighters, FT...

I've been hearing forever about "damn liberal media" and been annoyed by the idea for nearly as long. I've gotten slapped around by friends for reading the Village Voice (okay, granted) and the New York Times (maybe, but can I simply say " Pulitzer Prize winning newspaper"?). And I've found it incredibly annoying in lieu of the overwhelming preponderance of conservative noise in the talk radio/TV world (one friend I know refers to it as Hate Radio—even as she listens to it regularly). Frankly, as with most of our currently polarized society, I think you hear what you want to hear and get worked up by what you choose to get worked up over. Complaints about liberal media come from people that feel their narrow worldview isn't represented by the press. Complaints about hate radio come from people like me that find all the noise coming from these clowns detrimental to our worldview of a place where people should be rational and tolerant… yeah, I'm...