I've Always Been A Fan Of Kitten Calendars

Recently, I thought "I really feel like seeing a terrible movie. But what's in that isn't worth seeing?" After much deliberation, I remembered "Oh yeah. There's another Transformers movie. Now I just need 'friends' to join me." So I called up some of my closest friends, and went out to spend $6.50 on a movie I actually didn't want to see. It was called: "Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen."

When I first read the title, I already didn't like it. Every time there's a sequel that has something after the 2, you know it's bad news. And revenge of the fallen sounds like someone got tripped, and is now not very happy about it.

Head up. There's about to be spoilers.

But no! "The Fallen," was one of the robots' names. What's that all about? That's like naming them "The Slightly Unbalanced." Although, "Revenge of the Slightly Unbalanced" doesn't roll off the tongue quite as well. Neither does "Revenge of the Mildly Inconvenienced." Or... "Revenge of the Guy Who Fell, But Is Back Up Again, So Heads Up Everyone." I can do this all day. But I won't.

Alright so the actual movie. I could just shpeal the entire plot out in a giant run-on sentence that explains every single little detail, but that would be too much of a spoiler. If you've ever been NOT under a rock, you can probably guess what happens though (Hint: Bad guys don't win). I'll just say that the first time you see Megan Fox, you're pretty much looking up her shorts. So if that's all you go to the movies for, then yes, go see it. But if that's all you go to the movies for, you need to get your head examined because I'm sure you can do similar things on a spiffy little thing called the Internet. Plus then it'll last longer.

Of course in the movie, the main bad guy has to be resurrected. So a bunch of Deceptecons go down in the ocean (five of them, I'm told) to resurrect him. Then one gets killed for parts, so there's four, and then they resurrect him (I can't remember his name right now. Sorry) and go back to the surface with six. Wait, what? That's not even a plot hole! That's just math! Four plus one is not six, no matter how hard you try. Believe me, I've tried. So the plot is lacking. At best. Nothing really surprising if you've been alive before. I've always been partial to complicated and non-linear plot lines so thick and sticky you'll get sucked in before you can say, "Wait. I don't get that part." In fact, after I saw this movie, I went home, locked myself alone in the basement in the dark and played the soundtrack to "2001: A Space Odyssey," and it had much more plot. It was also extremely creepy. I don't recommend it.

Now the dialogue, it was.... well, it was lacking as well. Nothing deep. Nothing surprising. A lot like "It's over! Oh wait, no it's not," for the entire movie. My favourite part by far is after Sam finds the Matrix or whatever, and it turns to dust, and Megan says "It's over!" and Sam says "No it's not!" almost as if he read the script and she forgot to, and he's just filling her in on what the movie is actually going to do. I guess if you're hot enough, you don't have to read.

However, if you just go to the movies to see shit get blowed-the-fuck-up, then this is the movie for you! Three and a half hours of more-or-less constant explosions, as far as I could tell. Someone may try to tell you it was deep and profound, but they're wrong. The explosions and fight scenes and CGI and stuff, though, were actually very well done. Only one or two scenes looked obviously green-screened, and even they were short enough to not really matter. I suppose that the movie is only supposed to be that: lots of action and explosions, and it does it's job very well. But if you're looking to see something that requires brain power, and isn't just sitting down to drown out your sorrows in computer-aided fireballs and noise, go see UP. Transformers is just lots of big booms and then credits.

Even the credits couldn't silence me because the music is just. So. Bad. Just SOOOO bad. Holy fuck. It was up there with the worst songs ever written by anyone ever in the history of history. If only it hadn't just been whining over a drum machine. Then I wouldn't be able to bash it nearly as much. I almost always sit there and watch the entire credits roll by, but this time I just couldn't. I'd rather do other things like listen to Nails on Chalkboards, the Musical.

There was one saving grace though, I feel. But only one. And that was the humor that was used. It's sort of subtle, but it's there, and it made me laugh. Take, for example, when the army guy says that the bombs will fall where the orange smoke is, and they're standing right next to the orange smoke, the other guy says "That orange smoke?" and the first guy says "It wasn't my best throw." No kidding dude, but still funny. Also when the bureaucrat guy pulls his chute in the plane, and the army guy goes "No not now! We're in a plane you dumb ass!"

Then the characters were flat and one-dimensional. I can't hold it against the robots, it's not their fault they're computer animated, but everyone else is boring. There's no other way to describe them. They don't change in the end, they don't learn anything, and.... that's all I got. I can't really describe how flat and uninteresting most of the characters were. Sam's roommate was annoying, though, so that's that one. Megan Fox was hot, but that's really all she had going for her in this movie.

In time, I could probably come to love this movie. But only if, during that time, I also received a frontal lobotomy.

Lat5,

My Kingdom for a Spock Glass

Today I spent my entire day tracking across four cities, over 200 miles, and to six different Burger Kings in order to locate a Spock and Kirk collector drinking glass.

“My God Sean, why exactly would you spend 24 hours of your life searching for two overpriced glass cups?” You may ask. 

Well despite me being an avid Star Trek fan, I wanted something to remind me of the most recent movie I have seen……… Fighting.

Before Star Trek had even been released to theaters I knew something was weird about it. Not only were the advertisements saying things like, “This aint your dad’s Star Trek.” But Chekhov was in the trailers. Chekhov! Any fan of the classic series would remember that Chekhov didn’t join the crew until the second season. Well the short answer, this really isn’t your dad’s Star Trek; the long answer is a script so convoluted that it makes Steven Hawkin's writings on universal time an elementary read.

If you haven’t guessed already the biggest problem with this movie is the script. Written by the same geniuses who brought us mission impossible two and transformers, this script in short is uninteresting, uninspired, and lacks the intellectual stimuli that made Gene Roddenberry’s show so interesting. The lines are boring and flat. The only time the dialogue truly shines is during the many Star Trek in jokes, and every time Scotty and Dr. McCoy were on the screen.

Our second major issue is the villain, Nero. Just about every Star Trek movie before has given us fully developed three dimensional villains, Even the giant space log from Star Trek 4 was more intimidating than Nero. Basically the only motivation and back-story we are given is that Nero is mad with Spock because he didn’t save his planet by using red matter to turn his planets star (now a super nova) into a black hole. I’d really hate to have to point this out to you Nero, but even if Spock did turn your sun into a black hole your planet still would have died, it just would have frozen to death instead of exploding.

Please don’t get me wrong however; I absolutely loved this movie, for its saving grace was the cast. From the truly phenomenal performances of Simon Pegg (Scotty) and Karl Urban (Dr. McCoy) whom just seemed to channel DeForest Kelley, to the less impressive roles of Chris Pine (Kirk) and Eric Bana (Nero) They seemed to fit the character they were playing, and even though the script was unimpressive the movie was still very enjoyable to watch.

It’s true that this isn’t the Star Trek I remember, but what it is; a re-envisioning of the series for a more modern age is fun. The best way to express my feelings about it would be to compare it to my own BK adventure; sure it can be tedious and might not always make sense, but the journey is fun and the payoff is more than worth it.

Now you’ve heard my opinions, I would love to hear from you on what you guys thought about it.

No Mr. Bond, I expect you to die

If I ever become a super villain I would have to say my first evil plan would be to create a laser that would destroy all hats. It would be called THE HAT LAZER! Think about it, people would become minorly inconvenienced; in the winter people's body temperatures would drop a degree or two, and in the summer all the balding men would get sunburns on their skulls. You may be asking, 

"What's your beef with hats anyway?" To which I would reply, 

"What are you talking about? I hate beef!" and speaking of segways I recently watched a movie and wanted to tell you about it, X-Men Origins: Wolverine. 

This movie was not good. Not good at all, and the problem with that is because I wanted it to succeed, I went into this movie wanting to enjoy one of my favorite comic series brought to the silver screen. 

Now the main problem I have with this movie is continuity, when I watch a story I want there to be a solid story not a mish mash of scenes that seems more like a bunch of snapshots from Wolverine’s scrap book. The movie would be a bit more coherent if the directors didn't attempt to make this a prequel for the X-Men movies. For instance we are introduced to Cyclops in this story at the age of 17, but the Wolverine movie is supposed to be taking place 20 years before X-Men one, which would mean that in X-Men Cyclops would be 37 which just didn't ring true to me. 

The character of Colonel Striker has got to be the biggest offender on these continuity issues, because in X-Men 2; Brian Cox gave the character a deep southern drawl, but in Wolverine the accent was nowhere to be heard. What did Striker go through a mid-life crisis and decide his life would be more exiting if he became Colonel Sanders? 

My second major problem with the movie is more a continuous problem with comic movies in general, and that is you will rarely see action from a comics transferred to film done well. The issue is that in comics there could be an entire page devoted to the action of a hero swinging his knee into the bad guy’s chest, and so you have directors either overusing slow-motion (i.e. Watchmen) or using really cheap effects. For example, every time Sabertooth wanted to run really fast he would pop onto all four legs, but seeing a human running like that is just laughable, especially when it looks like he's being zip-lined along the ground. 

Now the topping to this horrible cinematic sundae was the dues ex machina way of ending the movie so that Wolverine would forget everything, turning this whole experience into nothing but a complex dream. The question you may ask is, 

"How do you give an indestructible man like Wolverine amnesia?" Well clearly you shoot him in the head with an adamantium bullet. And I guess I wouldn't be so upset with that idea if it wasn't for the fact that IN THE MOVIE one of the doctors says, 

"You know that's not going to work?" to which Stryker replies, 

"Maybe his brain will heal..... but his memories won't." yes clearly SCIENCE. 

Well I believe I've ranted enough for one evening, this was my personal feeling about the movie, if you have a different opinion please feel free to tell me I'd love to hear it.