To Draw it down to Numbers
An American Carol Week Number One (1,639 Screens):
| $3,656,000 | 1,639 | $2,231 | $3,656,000 |
Sicko Week Number One (441 Screens):
| $4,501,712 | 441 | $10,208 | $4,616,786 |
There has been alot of noise about “Real Americans” and “Real America” these past couple of days. The McCain campaign makes much of the fact that their supports represent the silent majority or the moral majority of the Country. The Down-home Salt of the earth that make up the real body of the electorate. The Authoritarian Right would have you believe that Liberals make up a tiny black-hearted exceptional bump in the world, and that the Rock-Ribbed Conservatives are in the Majority (while simlutaneously telling us about how they are persecuted).
These discussions are sometimes referred to as culture wars, expressed in purchasing patterns and behaviors. I can think of no better illustration of how North American people are really split than their viewing habits. They have to pay to see these films, they sometimes have to drive over some distance to go there, more than television, movie habits reflect the will and tastes of the affluent west and these numbers don’t lie.
People in the Western World ARE Liberals. They are Liberals by choice and in vast numbers, and if anyone tells you otherwise, they are deluded and foolish. Now if only they could vote that way too.
Oh, and in case you don’t know, An American Carol lasted two weeks in Theatres and Sicko, 13.
Review: Meet Dave
Meet Dave
Eddie Murphy plays the dual role of “this generations greatest captain” and “the ship itself” in this Sci-Fi comedy about a crew of 3 inch tall aliens in persuit of a secret weapon designed to steal all of the Salt Water on earth.
Much has been made of how bad “Meet Dave” is, and like “Norbit” before it, most of the problems people have with it can be traced to the easy familiarity of the movie and not to any other quantitive problem. It’s trite and lazy; the plot is obvious and cookie-cutter easy. Aliens come to Earth and take on the attributes of humans, some get into rap, some go crazy and the ostensibly toughest guy on board is a flaming stereotype. Sigh, yawn, seen it before. There are no surprises here. The guy with a stick up his butt goes crazy, takes over the ship an alienates the “kid”. Yawn.
My rating: stars
The fish out of water story has been done to death, even by Eddie Murphy himself. This movie might even be best described as a family-friendly “Coming to America” with Arsenio Hall replaced with Gabrielle Union. It’s pretty much the same movie. Eddie Murphy’s character tries to blend in with the Humans, fails, falls for a local girl and finds love. It’s the same basic movie, without James Earl Jones and Sexual Chocolate.
Once again, we have a long-time movie comedian going back to the well for more of the same, hoping to win over his core audience, only to find out that his core audience has grown tired of his work and moved on to dirtier pastures. When Eddie Murphy tried to go back to dirtier roots (Norbit) they weren’t interested in that either. Which is a shame, because like Mike Myers’ “The Love Guru”, “Meet Dave” isn’t a bad comedy. I laughed at the predictable jokes and liked the ending. Yes, I saw it all coming when I saw the poster, but it didn’t make the ride any worse.
Audiences will go on the same Roller Coaster over and over again, hit the same drops and loops over and over and keep going back, why don’t they do the same for movies by established celebreties? They see the same stories over and over, the same themes. It’s not to say that “Meet Dave” is great, but it wasn’t as bad as one would have imagined. Eddie Murphy was funny, the relationship with the kid was “hearwarming” and the plot was straightforward. What more can one say about a family-friendly movie?
Why I Disliked Wall-E, Redux
To say that the movie lived up to my expectations is an extreme understatement. It completely blew my expectations out of the water. Everything about the movie was excellent. The animation was so flawless that I often found myself wondering whether we were watching real life landscapes. The only cartoon-ish aspect were the humans, but I think that was intentional. There were even lots of shaky, quick-zoom shots that gave certain scenes the look of being filmed with a handheld camera…and yet they were all animated. Mad props!
I don’t shy away from critics. I engage the Tomoatoes when I am about to go check out a movie that I haven’t already declared “too wicked to avoid for any rational reason” so the reviews, like the one above, mislead me about the quality of Wall-E and lead me to believe that the overgrown manandwomen-children who wrote these bits of fawning praise have taken leave of the hormones that allowed them to leave bald armpits behind.
Pixar is rapidly becoming the Apple of movies (if I remember correctly, it already is) where droves of fawning fans will crawl over each other to obtain the next bit of stuff that is farted loose from the bowells of the beast and they will love it because it is in a cute, non-threatening container, which Wall-E embodies almost as much as his erstwhile gal-pal Eve the I-Pod.
Then there is the heavy handed story, which I complained about previously, so I will only tarry on long enough to say that any halfwit who goes through that much for a “kiss” is not a romantic, they are an insanely focused stalker with serious emotional problems. Movies like this set me up for 5 years of emotional retardation and a firm belief that grand romanticism is what girls “wanted” (in truth they want to be treated like humans and occasionally like a princess or naughty slave girls or naught school librarians or naughty shop keepers … I’m getting off the topic here)
As I was saying, the critical response to Wall-E was overtly praise-laden and should have been reserved for the ressurection of Messers Einstein and Tesla in their all robot dancing girl review and kids fun-e-teria.
Review: Wall-E
Wall-E
A Walmart Brand robot develops a personality and deep emotional problems after 700 years of cleaning up world-covering garbage that appears to have miraculously avoided all advertising and signage
My rating: stars
Wall-E is one of those movies that people love to gush over; where a cute something with no voice of it’s own falls in love with the notion of love and then overcomes everything just to get his limited groove on. Sometimes there is dancing, sometimes there is singing, sometimes there is some chaste kissing; however it is always stulifying and boring. Great for the kids, right?
Let me summarize Wall-E for those of you who have not seen it or refuse to do so, as you are principled people who don’t need Cartoon Robots to feel good about
Hello Dolly Song !
Fly-in through Garbage
There’s alot of Garbage
More Garbage, set to Hello Dolly Tune
Big Wall-E! Big Wall-E
Fat People all over the place
Fat Babies!
More Garbage
Hello Dolly Tune
End.
I don’t know if that is what some people took from it, but that’s about it for me. There was no there, there. Even for a kids movie, this was pretty pointless. Pixar has been pretty good about avoiding the “Song And Dance” methodology of Disney flicks, but only through having soundtrack montages and so on. It’s still a baseless little story about a crazy robot who wants nothing more than to “hold hands” with someone. It’s like American Pie, without the Stiffler or the Shannon Elizabeth.
The empty story is dressed in some nice clothes, but it’s fairly empty. I know the guys at Pixar worked very hard to build pathos for Wall-E; but in the end he is just a malfunctioning robot who has become obsessed with fulfilling his own dreams. Wall-E isn’t saving humanity, that’s not even in his scope, he’s obsessed with achieving the one thing that he has built up over years of watching Hello Dolly over and over, holding hands. At least Eve focuses on her actual function over self-gratification.
The Animation is passable, but it’s not ground-breaking for 3D animation and does little to further 3D movies as an artform or medium. I didn’t find any portion of the film to be breathtaking (save breathtakingly stupid or vapid) and I couldn’t get over the details that ruined the whole premise. Why would the robot repair all of the advertising but not dig up all the garbage from around it? Why does the robot “go back” to his house rather than move to closer to his work site? Why didn’t the robot build a wind-proof baffle around his little home so that he could leave the door open? Why didn’t he build a shelter for Eve? These little things detracted from the experience, it’s just poor storytelling when you can actually visually build anything and don’t simply solve these little logical problems right there on film.
Wall-E is a film about garbage that barely rises above it’s oeuvre. I’d say it’s okay for the kids, but only the youngest seem to want to watch it over and over. Go watch Monsters Inc. or Iron Giant instead, there’s a movie with real heart and emotion.
Review: World Made by Hand
World Made by Hand
Robert Earle lives in Union Grove, a little piece of America touched by history, good fortune and the malaise of the collapse of modern society. After the Oil disappears and the age of Globalism is over the people make a living by digging out bits of the Modern world to rebuild a semblance of Post-Civil war America.
Robert Earle was a corporate executive with two kids and a family. He lived the high life, flying across the country 3 or four times a month, first class of course. After the Oil dried up and the Modern world collapsed in Nuclear Fire, Plague and ennui Robert was left alone in union Grove, his wife and daughter dead, his son long gone into the wilderness. When a group of strangers come to town led by a man as equally worldly as he is religiously ardent; Robert is caught up in the rapid changes that only new blood can bring.
My rating: stars
Before I being my review; I’d very much like to ask James Howard Kunstler to please sell the rights to this novel as a movie as soon as possible. A novel about a post-apocalyptic world that doesn’t simply descend into cheap nihilism is as refreshing as a cool breeze in summer and it has been a long hot summer this year.
I will have to admit that at points I had to restrain myself from siomply giving up and throwing in with some of the characters from the novel, they are a likeable and entrancing group. Brother Jobe and his New Faithers are a composite group that I have described to others as “Industrious Mormons who Drink and Fight Like Sailors” which I think is the most apt description. They arrive in Union Grove like shadows but bombastically “take over” helping revitalize a town caught in the doldrums of a slow death, mourning the lost world.
Robert Earle is one of the many single men in town, acting as the local carpenter and somtime lover to his best friend’s wife. He lives his life fishing, woodworking and playing in the local musical group. He tolerates the Former Bikers who have taken up as scrap merchants and archeologists, has an amicalable relationship with the local Laird, a plantation owner and is respected in the town. When a young man is murdered and it falls to the loca Laird to adjudicate, Robert finds himself thrust into more than one situation that requires him to be more than just upright and moral. A sometimes hero and sometimes confidant, Robert is a strong lead character. If I was to make any complaint, Robert (like many a post-apocalyptic hero before him) is an amzing man who cannot step through the day without being set upon by love crazed women; such is his sheer physical prowess. By the time he had bed his second woman, I was already tired of the concept. This stands as my only complaint about the novel and should be set aside as a personal complaint and no real black mark on the book itself.
Mr. Knustler has taken great pains to give some obvious archtypes voice without heavioy playing the statements; the denizens of the trailer park are rough red-staters who would claim that just punishment for their crimes was oppression (even as they are oppressing themselves and their clan), the government is staffed by people who look to others to solve their problems (but are quick to use force to prove a point), Religious fervor has replaced community in places and it is up to the common folk to solve their own problems regardless of how insurmountable they seem.
“World Made By Hand” was rewarding to read and I STRONGLY recommend it to fans of political fiction, dramatic fiction and post-apocalyptic faire. In a world where the sudden report of a radio tuned to static is an alien and foreign thing, Mr. Kunstler has crafted a believable and utterly fascinating novel that bears repeated reading.
LifeStream
-
Posted a tweet on Twitter.
Full Day over, stumped by a copy/paste error in the afternoon
-
Posted a tweet on Twitter.
New blog post: For Rememberance Sake and SSH in the Future http://tinyurl.com/6g2zbm
-
Posted a tweet on Twitter.
HTOP is the Shizz, that is all.
-
Posted a tweet on Twitter.
New blog post: Racist of the Week: Sad Bastard BNP Member http://tinyurl.com/5kcsdt
-
Posted a tweet on Twitter.
I had to use a MAN page to resolve a question and consult Kernel notes to verify something, truly this is a golden nerdy age.
-
Posted a tweet on Twitter.
Good Morning, took ages to get going today, hopefully the flywheel is up to speed now.
-
Posted a tweet on Twitter.
On the phone praying to the Insurance Gods and listening to the same 4 songs over and over again...and again
-
Posted a tweet on Twitter.
On the phone praying to the Insurane Gods and listening to the same 4 songs over and over again...
-
Posted a tweet on Twitter.
My Question is: Will Jello Biafra be okay with Obama "Not" walking to his inauguration? The constant threats hove got to considered.
-
Posted a tweet on Twitter.
Tragic and Entertaining - Tradgetaining http://tinyurl.com/5l75gl
