Alphabetical Movie – Hot Shots!
With the benefit of hindsight, I can’t help but watch Hot Shots! and wonder when Charlie Sheen began his inevitable slide into Charlie Sheenness.
Here you have a kid who folks thought should have been nonminated for a freakin’ Oscar for Platoon and he turned into the best punchline for celebrity gone horribly awry since Lindsay Lohan. Even while Robert Downey, Jr. gets to celebrate a career pulled from the ashes of his own addiction, Sheen seems committed to find new ways to embarass himself.
Alphabetical Movie – Hot Fuzz
What is the difference between movies like Hot Fuzz and Young Frankenstein and the Scary Movie franchise? Aside from the fact that ten years from now, those two films will still be funny and the Scary Movie films still won’t?
I mean, the Scary Movie films come from what I would consider to be a great pedigree of screwball comedies like Airplane, Hot Shots and Top Secret. Yet they are – and I’m sorry if you like those movies – absolutely horrible. They fail at satire, they fail at comedy, they fail at titilation. Their only success is that they can be made so cheaply that they make money in spite of themselves.
Alphabetical Movie – Home Fries
The reason I own Home Fries has nothing to do with how much I enjoy the film. The first time I watched it, I enjoyed it a lot. Subsequent viewings have not been so kind.
One thing about the film does hold up and it’s the reason I keep it around. I own this film because of Catherine O’Hara.
A New Portrait
I was at Anime Detour this morning acting as a judge for Iron Artist. I was the surly French Art critic Pierre Lebat. I was joined by Kelvin Hatle as Death and Evan M, who was pressed into service as an Ewok. Lou Frank, one of the fine artists, finished his drawing early and prepared this portrait of the judges.
Thanks Lou!
Shit that pissed me off this week – 3/30
Anti-Gay group starts Dump Starbucks Campaign
You know, the whole “we don’t hate gay people” drumbeat gets pretty old when you keep doing hateful bullshit like this. The campiagn is in response to the following:
On January 12th, 2012, Starbucks issued a memorandum declaring that same-sex marriage ‘is core to who we are and what we value as a company.’
As annoyed as I am at this petition, I note that some other folks have started a “send a thank you card to Starbucks” campaign, which, as of this morning, had almost twenty times as many supporters. Their initial goal was 40,000. They are almost at 500,000, which doesn’t piss me off – it’s fantastic.
If you haven’t followed the link and thanked Starbucks yet, make sure you do. They earned it.
Alphabetical Movie – Home for the Holidays
Every time I watch Home for the Holidays, I enjoy it. When it comes time to watch the film again, I have absolutely no desire to do so. I’ve never been able to figure out why I respond that way.
Why are some films so re-watchable while other, arguably better, films are watched once and then all but forgotten? A lot of it is personal preference but still, I own a lot of movies that are better than The Mummy and yet, I’ve watched The Mummy more than most of them.
Don’t buy gas because…um….what?
I can do math. That skill can be a problem when confronted with something like this:
Don’t pump gas on April 15th, 2012
I’ll do it! If running low, just get your gas the day before, on April 14th or the day after, on April 16th.
…
If all users did not go to the pump on April 15th, it would take…almost 3 billion out the oil companies pockets for just one day.
Racism and Making Excuses
The world of social media is amazing. Over the last few weeks, there has been a ton of information about Trayvon Martin. Lots of details are emerging. Was he a victim of racial prejudice? A scared kid trying to defend himself? Was he a violent aggressor? I don’t know all the details and nobody will ever know all of them because the victim is dead and he can’t tell his side of the story.
All of this information is playing out in real time and you can find new details about the case emerging by the minute. Here’s what bothers me, though.
There should be no question that Martin’s race was a factor in this situation. He was a black youth out past dark in a predominantly white neighborhood. It doesn’t matter what anyone says to come up with some other “reasonable” justification. Martin is dead because he was black.
Thank you Adam Savage
This weekend, the Reason Rally took place in Washington D.C. I wish I could have been there because I would love to have been a part of such a large gathering of people with whom I have so much in common. It’s what makes CONvergence such an amazing experience every year.
Shit that pissed me off this week – 3/23
Pro-Life Advocates are Now Pushing a ban on Abortions if you can hear a Heartbeat
Are you fucking kidding me?
I am unapologetically Pro-choice. I don’t write about it much because it is such a useless debate. Both sides are so entrenched (myself included) that there is nothing to discuss.
But look – abortion is legal. Just barely.
Passing a law that says, in effect, “yeah, you can get an abortion right up to the point you actually know you are pregnant” is pretty shitty, isn’t it? It’s like saying “yes, you can have this ice cream cone unless you actually want the ice cream cone.”
I’ve got an idea for pro-life folks. How about a companion bill that says you can’t execute someone so long as they still have a heartbeat?
Grail Diary 