The Sky Has Limits

For crying out loud, Democrats

Caucus, shmaucus.  If being a registered Democrat means my phone is going to light up like a Christmas tree for the next 5 days, I will be changing my designation when this is over (though I fear an independent would receive twice as many calls).  In the last 24 hours, I have had 8 calls from unknown or unavailable numbers, including two phone messages.  I am all for the messages, please provide one--then leave me the fuck alone.  3 calls in under an hour?  Really?

Part of the problem is that I will not answer my phone when I don't recognize the number, so I'm sure they just really want to talk to me in person, but holy crap.

On an Obama note, there are some intelligent articles at the WSJ about the likelihood for change if he is elected and how little we should trust the ridiculous amount of polls this year.  I actually really like the message of the second article, as it points out how important your vote can be, and that listening to our country's sad excuse for televised journalism can cause misinformed problems.

I am becoming a bit concerned about how long it will take to actually place my vote, though.  While I doubt Omaha's (relatively) small and extremely white population will cause me any problems, I would rather not stand in line for 2 hours.  This will be the first presidential election I've voted in (though I did vote for the first time in '06) and I've read enough horror stories about voting snafus to make me anxious.

Also, the thought of placing my vote in a movie theater (the 20 Grand) leaves me with a strange feeling of dissonance.

Any of you older hands at this have some experiences to relate or words of encouragement?

Iraq doesn't really want us there forever, either

I just read an article from the Wall Street Journal about Iraq's concern over the wording of our departure agreement.  I can't say I blame them for being skeptical of making deals with the legal devil.  While Nick Naylor is my fucking hero (I feel I missed my career calling),I understand completely that he represents a very scary part of America.  I'm not talking about bombs, I'm talking about lethal pieces of paper.

One of the more interesting things about this article is the mention of how Iraq doesn't want us attacking neighboring states from their country.  Hmm.  That's like the Mayor conducting raids on your neighbors using your house as a forward base for the surveillance and police force.  You're not down with helping someone piss off all your neighbors?

"If you argue correctly, you're never wrong."

Why IS the U.S. fighting?

After seeing an interview on The Daily Show of Eugene Jarecki, I found out he did an interesting documentary called, Why We Fight.  I am very impressed by this work, because it seems a bit more objective than most of Michael Moore's films.  Although we still have the guy who lost his son in 9/11, he has a much stronger purpose than to just invoke sympathy.  And while Jarecki still shows us some grisly footage from Iraq, the point of how ugly war is becomes much stronger when you see interviews with many, many intelligent and educated people all ramming home that our fight is not the one we think it is.  Christ, he has a five-star Brigadier General who worked for the DoD telling us that we are in a war for the wrong reasons.

If you saw Moore's movies and liked the imformation, but felt the presentation was a bit heavy handed, I cannot encourage you enough to make room for 100 more illuminating minutes.  Hopefully, if enough of this stuff is made, our country will start to pull itself back to our roots, rather than follow Rome.

Speaking of illuminating minutes, I followed the end of this movie with the South Park episode, "Major Boobage", and about pissed myself laughing at what has got to be the most definitive representation of the Heavy Metal movie I have ever seen.  I have found that I can handle the more depressingly informative cinema if I splice it with mindless toilet humor.  That's a tip.

The Evolution of a TV Series

Having finished X-Men: The Animated Series, I am now delving into X-Men Evolution, another animated romp that began in 2000 and lasted four seasons.  This bout was intended for a younger audience and views the X-Men as teenagers, growing into their powers.

Higher quality animation and better direction are the two most obvious things about this series, despite its interpretation of the comic series.  I wasn't sure if I would like it at first, but it has proven to be entertaining.  Now that I'm into the second season, things are starting to warm up, and I'm actually very impressed by the depth of the characters in the episode I just saw.

In this series, the love triangle develops between Rogue, Jean Grey and Cyclops (Scott).  Because this is about the genesis of the X-men, Cyclops and Jean Grey are not a couple quite yet.  Scott, who only  has eyes for the perfect Jean (all-star athlete, A-student scholar, and stunningly beautiful) tries to out-macho a jock at school also vying for Jean's attention.  Rogue (who is dark, moody, and emo) assumes she will never have a chance with Scott, so she buries her feelings.  Meanwhile, Jean, who is always trying to be Super-Woman, is loosing control of her power and ends up in a coma, with surges of power swirling around her and tearing things apart.  To save her, Rogue must touch Jean to temporarily sap her energy (and personality) so Scott can focus her attention and bring her back to reality.  But the brilliant writing comes in when Scott is forced to talk to Jean through Rogue, giving Rogue a moment of bliss as Scott expresses himself to her (Jean).

It's kind of amazing to watch how well thought out the characters are, even though they are not following cannon perfectly.  The show has decided that it's more important to stay true to personalities and the natural situations that would develop from those, rather than force the pre-constructed scenarios of the comic onto their new interpretation.  For instance, Kitty Pryde (Shadowcat) is portrayed as the valley girl and Kurt Wagner (Nightcrawler) as the flirty goof-ball.  At first, Kitty wants nothing to do with Kurt, but over time, they develop a relationship due to the similar nature of their powers (being able to go, basically, anywhere they want).  Very cool.

That being said, it is very obviously a show about teen angst, with everyone's maturity being parallel to the control they gain over their powers.  Still, for a show targeted at teens, it's pretty smart, and not afraid of gentle subtlety and nudging to tell the story.  If only that could be said for some adult TV series.

Let the horror show begin

As the demonic day approaches, I notice some interesting things at Rotten Tomatoes.   I decided to explore the upcoming menagerie of crappy Halloween horror/suspense flicks and, surprisingly, this year we are very shallow in the shallow cinema.

Fears of the Dark (Trailer) - French animated ghost-stories film by 5 graphic artists.  While RT seems to give it a thumbs up, the reviews say that it is beautiful to see, but does not jump-start the heart (though that may be because we require more to get us riled up, these days)

Saw V (Trailer) - This seems like our generation's Nightmare on Elm Street or Friday the 13th.  While I have yet to see even the first (which people tell me is really the only one that might be worth your time) I guess the fifth is inevitable.  I feel like I'm letting my people down because I have seen all of the movies in the other two series... (blush) including the cross-over.  No reviews yet for this one, but I expect it to follow the rating trend for iterations II (36%), III (26%), and IV (19%).  Somehow, they keep making money.

Let the Right One In (HD Trailer) - A vampire as seen through the eyes of a child and all the wonder that kind of innocence invokes.  I guess it's Swedes all around for us on the 24th, though I'm unsure if this is actually in Swedish, or just directed by one.  After seeing what the Russians could do, I am extremely excited about this, and while I wait until a film has at least 10 ratings on RT before I start assuming a trend, so far this movie has scored perfectly with 11.  I hope we get this around here.

The Haunting of Molly Hartley (Trailer) - Teen "haunted" (double entendre) by her psychotic mother's choices.  Here lies the true stinker, destined to prove--yet again--that when you base a movie's success on its cast, there isn't much else there worth watching.  Normally, I laud the use of a PG-13 rating in movies like this, because it means we won't have another gore-porn fest.  Unfortunately, it seems pretty obvious that this was done to capture a broader (read: younger) audience.

Splinter (Trailer) - A criminal car-jacking couple and a young camping couple hole-up in a deserted gas station to face-off against a strange moster-thing (See?  The hyphens are like "splinters"!).  Here's the obligatory new creature feature of the season, and while the plot premise sounds ludicrous, the trailer has me intrigued.  Ever since Aaron made me watch Slither, I realized that to enjoy movies like this, you have to kinda put your rationality aside and just go with it.  If it entertains, then it's good.  If not, it's bad.  You can't judge monster movies by too many other standards, because they will always fall short.

Repo!  The Genetic Opera (HD Trailer) - Oh.  My.  God.  Go watch the trailer, right now.  Just go watch it.  A sci-fi rock-opera about a future where financing organ loans is what saves humanity from extinction (and legalizes murder).  Frank Miller-esque visuals on top of a Rocky Horror Picture Show idea.  Award winning opera singer, Sarah Brightman?  Anthony Stewart Head?  Paris fucking Hilton??  Sign me up!  How this slipped under my radar is beyond me, but I will travel as far as Chicago if i have to, on my own, to see this movie in theaters.

So concludes my assessment.  I have, for the sake of civilized decency, skipped the most horrifying of them all.

Adult film about adult film

Kevin Smith's new movie, Zack and Miri Make a Porno, is set to drop in two weeks on Halloween:

I can't decide if I'm going to love it or hate it.  As a firm believer that Kevin Smith is one of the world's finer filmmakers, I have faith that it will at least excite, in more ways than one.

"Pot--this is Kettle. He's black."

I just caught a whiff of the Google/Yahoo search cooperation at Wired.com in an article about how Microsoft's lobbying may be causing Google a lot of trouble.

It is insanely ironic to me that the largest software company in the world, whom is considered the standard for computer system software, is crying "monopoly!" to someone else.  Not to mention that the more successful lobbyist is the one regularly criticized for it's work, rather than the one that's lauded for it.

Why the complexity of gas pricing/money lending is evil

This post was my 2-cent response to an article Aaron sent me regarding the structure of gas prices.  I declare that the title of the article, "Gas Prices:  Why Is Gas So Expensive?" has very little to do with what is in the article; it should read:  "How Gas Prices Are Determined, And How They Make Money".  I can tell you why gas is expensive: because the people involved can charge whatever the hell they want and Americans will pay it.

I actually knew a lot about how complex gas prices are, but I was not aware of the price-gouging stuff.  It still doesn't matter.

Something that a free market supports (and our government still needs to figure out how to fix) is that the "superior" product will eventually dominate, and therefore become a dependency.  Whether the product is actually superior, or the company was simply better at manipulating the market (advertising, lobbying, etc) is a moot point unless we figure out a clever way to restrict market manipulation.

Regardless, this country runs on gas, and the only really great thing I've seen about the "Going Green" movement is that there seems to be a very strong variety of alternative-fuel vehicles arising from it.  That is, not just hybrids, but flex-fuel, bio-diesel, electric, hydrogen, etc.  Everyone talks about what we would use instead of gas, and my answer is that we should use them all.  Electric for your commuter, bio-diesel for your goods-transport, gas for your SUV/mini-van vacation vehicle, and so on.  But it's a pipe-dream because we are so entrenched.

Another facet to this gas fiasco is that it's a foreign dependency. It's interesting to me that our economic snafu right now is causing ripples around the world because the U.S. is a foreign dependency for everyone else.  It teaches me that we really have moved into an era where we have a global economy.  I wonder how long it will be before some sort of "world-government" is established (and subsequently manipulated, corrupted, etc) to try and regulate all the bull-honky that's been going on.

Going back to the gas, I think that the average American's awareness of the kind of tactics used by this industry to yank money out of their pockets is growing, just like our awareness of how financial institutions yank money out of our pockets is growing.  Hopefully, this means that even though OPEC thinks they are getting away with it, the U.S. is starting to realize that we don't really like being forced to put up with that, and companies are spending money seeking out alternatives simply to avoid being scalped.

Here's hoping our understanding of the drowning political system (and the ensuing response) is also getting better.

Back in Black, Part 2

*POSSIBLE SPOILER ALERT* --But not really...

I sit her pondering my mix of emotions, and I'm not really sure where to start.  This show is royally pissing me off.  The rollercoaster of writing is not as much fun as the ride.  As wonky as the premier was, I am willing to swallow it, as they had some ground they wanted to cover.  But episodes 2 and 3 are bad, and by bad, I mean atrocious.  Heinous.  Abominable.

But episode 4... oh, my.  The diamond in the rough.  It's almost as if they fired the guy for the first three and called someone who has a clue.  They tease us with the concept that Cameron is not just a Terminator, but a new and improved class of infiltrator, and the short circuit she experienced earlier has tapped into some prior programming we (and John) did not know existed.  Incredible acting from Summer Glau, something Arnold could never have done (though his halted English will always trump her in the Terminator voice).

Alongside Cameron's sojourn down memory lane, we see Sarah in contrast to the typical young pregnant mother, and it is played off very well.  Sarah is hard, brittle; cold as ice.  Her new neighbor is insecure, scared, and seeks comfort and protection.  But we see just past the surface of Sarah's confident facade, if only for a second.

This episode almost forgives the odd juxtaposition of emotion in the season premiere, except for two things:  1) If Cameron was really channeling the prior programming at this time, it was out of place;  2) I will be damn mad if they don't go somewhere with this plot element and are simply using it to explain the first instance.

Regardless of how things turn out, I will be following, if only for the hope of another rewarding episode.

Back in Black

It's strange how a site like ISOHunt can actually keep me as up to date on things as normal TV.  During my last visit, I noticed that one of the top 10 searches was for "Terminator" which made me realize that there was a new season of Terminator:  The Sarah Connor Chronicles up and running.  A quick peek at some reviews was enough to pique (zing!) my curiosity, but more than anything, I just wanted to see Shirley Manson on TV again.

This show drives me nuts!  It's so close to greatness, and yet so far.  Cameron is given a limp to pay homage to the original film, which has a strangely convincing affect despite Summer Glau's petite frame.  And then they shoot themselves in the foot not five minutes later with a strangely emotional terminator, sobbing and begging for her life.  They have been teasing us almost the entire first season with the concept of Jon and Cameron's "relationship" which I really do think was a beautiful thing.  But to beat me over the head with poorly written scripts and out-of-character acting is just sad.  It's also a shame that we see less than 10 minutes of evil Cameron on camera (oh, snap!).  They could have built a whole season out of the torture John deals with fighting something he has grown to respect and love(?).  Instead, they choose to leave this loophole that can be exploited at any time, by forcing the audience to question whether Cameron is really fixed or not, which does not in any way mask the type of writing it is:  crappy.

I find it ironic that this show is starving for ratings (from the network's broken metrics) which is probably the reason it has the shallow writing to make it more accessible.  The stark contrast between T:tSCC and shows like Lost and BSG is interesting, because while BSG is fighting the same broken metrics war, it and Lost are both considered highly successful, and they have some of the deepest writing I have ever seen.  I think it's too bad that some producers/directors/writers can't understand that the populace is starting to crave a higher quality of entertainment.

But, I still have five more episodes to watch before I'm caught up, and a blonde beauty awaits me in there somewhere, so I'll keep watching.