Tag: movies

Star Wars is not science fiction

The Original Cyberpunk, who knows a thing or two about science fiction, explains:

Vox, my young friend, I should think that you of all people would appreciate the true genius of J. J. Abrams. If he’d chosen to go into music he would have been one of those guys who said “Screw actually learning to play an instrument” and parked himself in a recording studio with a drum machine, a sampler, two turntables and a microphone, and then spent his days churning out hit single after hit single by sampling, looping, and remixing earlier hit singles.

Instead, he chose to go into film-making, where he is doing exactly the same thing: compositing together commercially successful movies by lifting scenes, bits of business, and entire set pieces from earlier successful movies. He is the first fully realized hip-hop filmmaker.

I should think you of all people would appreciate that.

By the way, here’s my review: 

Saw this movie, we did. Long, it is. Impossible to write a substantive review without including spoilers, it may be. Nonetheless, try I will.

In the interests of full disclosure, though, I must lead off this review by pointing out that I contributed not one but two essays to David Brin’s Star Wars on Trial, the first arguing in favor of the original Star Wars trilogy as a watershed moment in cinematic history and the second absolutely slagging the prequel trilogy as childish tripe. So I come into this review with a long history as both a consumer and critic of Star Wars entertainment products, and I will put my greatest heresy on the table right now:

Star Wars is not science fiction.

Sure, it looks like science fiction. It sounds like science fiction. And based on that guy in the wookiee costume who was ahead of us in the concession line, it even smells like science fiction, or at least like the third day of a furry fandom convention.

But Star Wars is not science fiction. It’s a long-winded heroic magical fantasy saga that happens to take place in a world cluttered up with lots of sci-fi props and set dressings. If considered as science fiction, there is not one thing in the entire Star Wars universe that bears close scrutiny, because if you think about it at all seriously, the seams split and all the nonsense comes pouring out.

Read the rest of it there. It is… informative. As for J.J. Abrams, I appreciate that he is good at what he does. I just don’t like what he does. That stupid “mystery box” formula of his is the sure sign of a storytelling charlatan.

Supreme and superior

I wonder to whomever they might be referring?

The “User Reviews” sections of Rotten Tomatoes, Metacritic and The Internet Movie Database – all of which let users leave scored reviews regardless of credentials or official status on the web – are uniformly on the more mixed side as the film enters its second day of release, marking the widest disparity between critic and “audience” scores for a Star Wars movie in Tomatoes’ history in particular. Granted, the film has proven more divisive among many fans than the previous installment, with unexpected character turns and further cementing of the push for a younger, more diverse cast of new generation heroes – but this level of disparity has raised eyebrows.

Accusations of such activity are currently being leveled on social media by culture-commentators like activist Peter Coffin, who compared the proliferation of anonymous reviews name-checking the same set of points repeatedly (references to “forced diversity” and “SJWs” abound) to more explicitly politically-motivated “brigading” attacks from earlier in the year related to elections and social movements. The deeper recesses of Reddit and 4chan are indeed littered with threads in which enraged “ex”-fans organize campaigns in an attempt to control the narrative and create a situation wherein the idea of the new Star Wars Trilogy as “poorly received” can overtake the reality of its reception in the public discourse.

The term “Sad Puppies” has been raised, a reference to a collective of right-wing fiction writers who gained fame by manipulating the Hugo Awards several years back, along with the GamerGate and ComicsGate social-media movements. Some point to the aforementioned politically-tinged reviews as evidence of motive, while others allege that some of the brigading has been conducted by fans of Justice League seeking revenge on the critical press for its negative reviews. Also posited is that this comes from anti-corporate activists who see the recent acquisition of 20th Century Fox by Disney as the rise of a dangerous monopoly.

Let’s see: Sad Puppies. GamerGate. ComicsGate. Now, who do we know was involved in all of those things…. The sad thing is that I now officially make for a better Dark Lord than anything in the current Disney SJWStar Wars mythos.

Man, they are NOT going to know what hit them when Alt★Hero comes out.

Moviegate: a review of THE LAST JEDI

Considering what the Star Wars movies cost to make, one almost wonders if Disney simply paid them all off. What other reason is there for them so thoroughly tongue-polishing what the fans are increasingly observing is a stinking SJW monstrosity:

This film is horrifically boring, disrespectful to its source material, painfully pedantic to hollow philosophy, and without any discernible heart for what makes Star Wars special. The flippant way the characters are handled distracts from the experience all the way to the end of the film. The humor is out of place and falls flat (George Lucas’ prequel fart jokes were funnier).

I’m pretty sure the director was urinating on the fan base with that Leia scene (yes, you know the one) and the ‘out of range’ in a vacuum farce. Johnson completely disrespects everything Abrams built in Force Awakens, destroying great characters and interesting questions. Mark Hamil gives a stellar performance even as Johnson tanks the character into tit-suckling, Skype-kamikazi yogi. Yoda’s awkward appearance gives us Johnson’s patricidal philosophy that rejects the filial piety that infused earlier Star Wars source material, which is the same philosophy he gives Kylo Ren’s character: we only have our identity insofar as we progress beyond our predecessors. As Yoda torches the Jedi sacred texts, so Rian throws the Star Wars series into this bonfire of a catastrophe.

Finally, a word about the critics. The universal critical acclaim for this movie is utter malpractice. There is no galaxy in which the pacing of this movie is acceptable, even if you agree with Johnson’s subversive strategy (I get it critics, you go to a lot of movies and you are tired of Joseph Campbell’s archetypes). The movie slowly meanders from empty motivation to empty motivation before giving us an empty hologram that disappears. You failed to assess this. Additionally, even though you may resent the Star Wars fandom for its enthusiasm and tradition, you should have the intellectual imagination to note that fans of the source material would be put off by what Johnson has done. I don’t know if it’s the big party, the media ownership reach, or the sub-par education the opulent years if the US gave us, but something force-skyped the brains of our critics to turn them off when reviewing this film.

I have to admit it, I am enjoying this. I despise all things SJW, but I particularly despise the SJW-corruptions of things I used to love. I intensely dislike things that disrespect their source material, and Disneyfication is now a byword for that contemptible form of disrespect.

Note that even when we published Corrosion as a parody of The Corroding Empire, what we published was a significant improvement on the original. To the extent that one can even use that term for anything that McRapey wrote.

It should be the last Jedi

Cataline reviews THE LAST JEDI:

This one sucked, don’t see it.

I could end my review there but I suppose you want a little bit more than that.

I intend to deliver many, many spoilers in this review because the producers of this heap of shit have gone to some lengths to destroy a favorite of my childhood.  I can’t believe I’m fucking saying this but, “George Lucas, all is forgiven!  Come back to us, I beg you!”

This was a cavalcade of boring, cliched awfulness in every way available to it.  I’m not saying that because I’m a contrarian Alt Right asshole.  I’m saying that because every word of that is true.

A couple of days ago a commenter Shitlord Numéro Uno said…

Wait, so you think the force awakens is a good movie? Holy dear God.

Compared to this, it absolutely is.  This is the first of the fully SJW Converged Star Wars movies.  Force Awakens just tried to score some Diversity Points here and there. But Last Jedi positively panders to the SJWs.  From the Body Positive Asian Chick.  The lectures on social inequality on Rich People Planet.  To Benicio del Toro’s monologue that was heavy on nihilist equivocation   This movie turned around, bent over for the SJWs and announced that Star Wars was open for business.  Upside this surrender to all things SJW, guaranteed that critics would prostitute themselves and give it positive reviews.  And they did but we’ll get to that at the end of this article.

The Last Jedi will make money but I would be shocked if it doesn’t kill the franchise in the end.  The fanbois are over-committed to Star Wars and will try  to convince themselves at it doesn’t suck. Now the SJW fanbois will have to pretend that it was really important that Star Wars hands out boring ass lectures for the price of admission but for the rest, the backlash over Last Jedi will make the one over Force Awakens look like a case of very mild buyers remorse.

The writing is incredibly weak.  The tone is inconsistent.  It’s boring as hell for the most part and all of the mysteries set up in the last movie got swept under the carpet.

Lets take a look at it, shall we?

I can’t say that I’m even remotely surprised. Disney ruins everything; was there really any doubt that they could manage to ruin Star Wars in an even more thoroughly professional sense than George Lucas’s amateurism ever permitted?

Critics: 93{9a996019c711e78922037ddc236e8e30d6b42c40f34cfa785ada7e9abef6c172}, Audience: 57{9a996019c711e78922037ddc236e8e30d6b42c40f34cfa785ada7e9abef6c172}.

Yeah, you know what that means.

We’ve been here before

What a surprise! The initial word of mouth for the new Star Wars film is spectacular! Again!

The Force is strong with this one.

The first reviews are in for Star Wars: The Last Jedi — and everybody is blown away.
The world premiere of the eighth chapter in the Skywalker saga, directed by Rian Johnson, took place in Hollywood on Saturday night.

‘Star Wars: The Last Jedi is everything. Intense, funny, emotional, exciting. It’s jam-packed with absolutely jaw dropping moments and I loved it so, so much. I’m still shaking,’ wrote Gizmodo’s Germain Lussier.

‘I can’t believe The Last Jedi exists. @rianjohnson is a madman and I love him for it. He takes Star Wars to the edge and throws it over. What a crazy, awesome movie. We’ll be talking about this one for a long, long time.’

Sure we will. Having been a Star Wars fanatic turned hater by The Phantom Menace, I have not seen a Star Wars movie since. But I do take sadistic pleasure in the observing the usual process of a new release in the series.

  1. OMG! It’s the BEST since EMPIRE!
  2. Okay, maybe we got a little carried away. But it’s still really good!
  3. Well, I mean, it’s all right.
  4. Actually, there are a lot of things that don’t make any sense.
  5. And are pretty lame, come to think of it.
  6. This movie sucks.
  7. Now, what was the second one called? No, the second of the new ones, not the prequels.
The fact that SJWs are hell-bent on talking up Mary Suewalker and the ambiguously gay interracial duo only exacerbates this phenomenon.

The LA Times Jen Yamato claimed: ‘StarWars: The Last Jedi is so beautifully human, populist, funny, and surprising. I cried when one POC heroine got her moment because films like these leave their mark on entire generations — and representation matters.’

You don’t say…. All that being said, I would genuinely enjoy it if they follow the color-by-numbers approach so closely that Luke cuts off Mary Suewalker’s hand before he reveals that he was the sperm donor for the interracial lesbian couple who were murdered by racist Nazi stormtroopers, leaving her an orphan.

Naming the names

People have been demanding that Milo name names. Well, he is going to do just that:

Dangerous Books, a division of MILO, Inc., has announced that it will publish DESPICABLE, a tell-all expose on how it became more dangerous in Hollywood to be a Republican than a child molester.

DESPICABLE paints a horrific picture of the abuses of men, women and children at the hands of some of the richest and most powerful people in America.

The book is authored by award-winning journalist and New York Times bestselling author, Milo Yiannopoulos. It will be released on May 1, 2018.

Harnessing an exclusive network of high-profile sources, DESPICABLE takes readers on a journey into the sordid, sexually abusive, hypocritical world of Hollywood and the connected worlds of music, the media and Democrat politics. The book will share first-person accounts of abuse of actors, musicians and other friends in the author’s address book who will, in DESPICABLE, name their abusers. DESPICABLE is the true story of Hollywood that only Milo could tell, taking aim not just at Hollywood’s abusers, but at the women who protected them.

I look forward to seeing all of the people attacking Milo over this issue apologize to him. Surely they will do so, right? Surely they weren’t merely looking for an excuse to attack Milo and those who continued to stand by him when the media launched its attack, right?

And now it should be clear why the sexual harassers and worse in the media have been in non-stop attack mode. Congratulations to Milo and Team Milo for the launch of their new site, Dangerous, today.

Mailvox: Justice League review

DJ watches it so you don’t have to.

I had some time to kill in town today. Didn’t want to drive back home just to turn around. Decided to roll the dice and see the Justice League Movie. Consider this me taking one for the team.   It was abysmal. Just flat out boring. But it was offensive, too.

Before the opening credits even completed, while the movie tries to convince us the world has gone to hell with the death of Superman, we witness two angry white men (one with a shaved head, of course) assaulting a grocery owning Muslim family.  But that’s actually the only “bad” scene we see. All the other scenes were just of urban decay and sad people in mourning.

Yet, that’s not the only reason I found the movie offensive. It was a horrendously dumbed-down version of the DC Apokolips/Darkseid mythos. Truly awful. Further, the introductions of Aquaman and Flash completely rewrite those characters, making them as annoying as they are impotent.

Flash is a self-described fearful Jew who admits being scared of bugs and running away from trouble, perfectly ok letting others do all the fighting. Arthur Curry is a depicted as a petulant and spoiled resigned member of Atlantis, who even with near godlike power and freedom, drinks himself silly while complaining about his mommy.

Cyborg was pretty on point and probably the best part of the movie.

A risen Superman?  Boring. Made more so by returning him to his all-powerful, Silver Age, personality-missing, truth and justice (minus the American Way) flying savior.

Wonder Woman?  Well…let’s just say I wouldn’t be surprised if Zach Snyder ends up on the Miramax Scoreboard soon considering how many times we got to see a center focus shot of Gal Gadot’s rear. As for her character?  By the end of the movie she’s telling us Batman wanted her to lead the team (which he never actually does), and that she’s supposed to be the glue for the league, all the while smiling patronizingly at all the “supermen” around her…until of course a shirtless Clark Kent arrives on scene, at which point she drops the smile and visibly quivers at the sight of hairy Henry’s chest.

Not ever how the angry-and-suspicious-of-all-men Wonder Woman was ever depicted.

Bruce Wayne/Batman?  Fat. Fat, and not at all intimidating on any level. The Batman. Not intimidating. It’s a joke, but when Barry Allen asks what Bruce’s super power, Bruce responds, “I’m rich,” but that’s clearly what we’re supposed to take away from Batman. He’s too old, too slow, past his prime, useless without real powers (as even stated by Arthur Curry), and nothing without his money.

What. The. Hell.  Not the greatest tactician to ever live. Not the world’s greatest detective. Not the most feared crime fighter villains have ever faced – also, every human bad guy in the movie is a white male; even Steppenwolf is depicted with pinkish white skin. No. Batman is just sort of the Justice League’s bruised-and-broken, Scotch-drinking rich uncle.

There was never any real danger once they raised Superman. None. No challenge. No real conflict. Just that tired trope of “if only we come together as a team, we can defeat anything,” and do it better than all those who did it before. Before, it took the combined forces of all the Amazons, all the Atlantians, all the heroes of all the tribes of man, AND the old gods to defeat Steppenwolf and the danger of the trinity box. This time it just takes a desire for justice as stated by Superman at the beginning of the final battle.

Ahhh!!  Even the CGI landscape the League flies into for the final battle looked cheap and fake!  Nothing about this movie reminded me of the hours I’d spend reading comics growing up!  None of it!  Not even the rise of Superman carried any inspiration whatsoever.

These mythical stories and adventures are supposed to inspire us to be better people, but this movie wasn’t that at all. It was plain and not mythical. It was common and trite. It wasn’t even good brain candy. It was exhausting.

It was just boring.

Dopplegangers

So, I’ve been trying to watch as much superhero stuff to get a better idea of what is out there, what works, and what doesn’t. At this point, I have to say that The Gifted is a LOT better than either Arrow or the Flash – I tried, but I simply cannot watch Supergirl or the other show that is somehow even more SJW-converged than the other three shows. It’s particularly good because while the show is clearly on the side of the mutants, it also shows some sympathy to the humans who have good reason to not want them roaming free in their society.

The one problem is that it has a very distracting element, as one of the characters looks almost EXACTLY like my younger brother. I don’t mean, “oh, there’s kind of a vague resemblance,” I mean, the actor looks considerably more like my brother than I or our other two brothers do.

The Great Reckoning

I rather like that name for the ever-expanding Hollywood Values revelations. Hollywood and the media are in serious trouble and they know it.

‘Fear is everywhere’: a quiet paranoia haunts post-Weinstein Hollywood
The industry is on edge as allegations of sexual misconduct reach dizzying heights. The question on everyone’s mind is: ‘Who will be next?’

Week five of the great reckoning and Hollywood is frightened and lost, drifting deeper into uncharted waters with no script, no direction and no sense how it will end.

Scandal was always part of the entertainment industry, a ritualised process of rumours, denials and hush money, publicists and fixers, banishment and redemption. But the vortex of sexual abuse allegations which started with Harvey Weinstein spins ever faster, whirling beyond control of the studios.

Who is next, asks the reporter in the Guardian? Apparently two Guardian editors.

The Guardian’s digital editor Ian Prior has been absent from work after female staff members reported harassment allegations to management, BuzzFeed News has learned. Guardian sources say Prior — the UK news organisation’s digital editor and former head of sport — is away from work while management investigate the allegations, made in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein revelations that have created shockwaves across Hollywood, the media industry and politics…. The latest allegations against Guardian editors come after BuzzFeed News revealed earlier this year a complaint had been filed against former deputy Guardian US editor Matt Sullivan.

Meanwhile, ESPN’s great experiment in attempting to SJW-converge American sports is collapsing.

ESPN will lay off more than 100 staffers after the Thanksgiving holidays, multiple sources tell Sports Illustrated. The layoffs, which were described by a person briefed on the plans, will hit positions across ESPN including front-facing talent on the television side, producers, executives, and digital and technology staffers. The SportsCenter franchise is expected to be hit hard—including on-air people—given the frequency of the show has lessened considerably on main network ESPN.

The network declined comment to SI on Thursday afternoon.

Though hiring has continued and the network remains one of the great destinations for jobs in sports media, ESPN has experienced significant layoffs over the last two years. In Oct. 2015 the company laid off roughly 300 employees, about 4-5{666e5e86189a1fe5e2247551e7a4443f43206d2d8b82140cfc9efd38c8e16ed5} of its workforce—a particularly brutal act of gutting given the long tenures of many of those who were cut.

These are glorious days indeed. Drive on through the false narratives, punch through the flimsy armor of distractions and dissimulations, and find the truth! Hunt the witches without mercy. Encourage those who have been victimized to Be Brave and Be the First! The God-Emperor wills it!

UPDATE: DC is going down hard. It’s not even a little bit surprising that some of the most SJW-converged shows on television were being run by a (((gamma))) given to sexual harassment:

Andrew Kreisberg, co-creator and executive producer of the CW/Warner Bros TV DC series The Flash, Supergirl, Legends of Tomorrow and Arrow, has been suspended from his duties by the studio today over allegations of sexual harassment. Tonight, WBTV also say they are launching an investigation into the accusations.

“We have recently been made aware of allegations of misconduct against Andrew Kreisberg,” Warner Bros. TV Group said in a statement Friday night. “We have suspended Mr. Kreisberg and are conducting an internal investigation. We take all allegations of misconduct extremely seriously, and are committed to creating a safe working environment for our employees and everyone involved in our productions.

Kreisberg has been one of the top lieutenants of Greg Berlanti, the boss of the CW/DC universe. He has been a key auspice on all DC series, with primary focus on serving as showrunner of The Flash.

“We were recently made aware of some deeply troubling allegations regarding one of our showrunners,” Berlanti Prods.’ principals Greg Berlanti and Sarah Schechter said in a statement. “We have been encouraging and fully cooperating with the investigation into this by Warner Bros.

“There is nothing more important to us than the safety and well-being of our cast, crew, writers, producers and any staff,” they added. “We do not tolerate harassment and are committed to doing everything we can to make an environment that’s safe to work in and safe to speak up about if it isn’t.”

According to people familiar with the situation, several staffers on The Flash have complained about Kreisberg’s behavior.

15 women and 4 men registering complaints. Shut them all down.

Closing in

Remember what I said about the big Hollywood dam starting to crack the other day? This would appear to be a very large fissure developing.

Anyway, on this particular show, there was a special guest star. A very special guest star. Still not a tween, everyone knew who she was. Executives flocked to the studio that day to see her. She was first molested when she was 5 or 6 and had continued to be molested throughout her hit movies and also on a previous show.

One of the stars of the show who has spent her life bouncing in and out of rehab because of what she saw, and who was actually nominated for awards from the show, described the atmosphere that day.

“A bunch of f**king pigs. I had just turned 12 or 13. I was the same age as the actress coming in. Maybe a little older. We had been shooting for months and I was old news. They knew I would do what they wanted, but they always wanted someone new. This was someone new and someone they all knew. They had it set up like a peep show almost. She had finished shooting that morning and they brought her out on a stage. The stage was used most of the time for a game show that was taped there. That game show is still on today. I can’t watch it knowing what happened to her there. They brought her out and the front four rows of this theatre were filled with guys who were already rubbing themselves. The girl was wearing a bikini. The show took place around a beach just so they could make these girls wear next to nothing. They had her walk around under the lights. The lights were focused on her and she couldn’t really see out to the audience. She was squinting. It must have been blinding for her. They had her walk back and forth. Then they had her start dancing. All of these guys were doing what another star at that same studio got busted for. This went on for about 20 minutes. Then three of the guys took her to a different area of the studio.”

Item: “She was first molested when she was 5 or 6.”

Item: “Heather O’Rourke was discovered by director Steven Spielberg when she was visiting MGM’s studios.”

Item: “That crap story ended up killing the girl because the parents believed the executives.”

Item: “Heather O’Rourke died at the age of 12 of cardiac arrest and septic shock.”

Item: Do you believe Steven Spielberg is an ideal guide and influence for our culture? Do Steven Spielberg’s films question our culture? What do Steven Spielberg’s films question? Does Steven Spielberg focus much of his fantasy life on young people? Did he portray children wallowing in sewers filled with fecal matter in Schindler’s List? Did he use children to finger paint an adult in Hook? Does he collect the illustrations of Norman Rockwell, such as the one showing a young boy in his underwear examined by a doctor? Are the inclinations of Steven Spielberg above suspicion by the media-fed culture? Was Steven Spielberg very friendly with Michael Jackson? Wasn’t Michael Jackson supposed to play Peter Pan in Steven Spielberg’s version of the story? Now that Michael Jackson is no longer held in favor by the mass media, does Spielberg associate with him? Do Michael Jackson and Steven Spielberg share similar opinions about the sexuality of young boys?
– Crispin Glover

It’s only a matter of time now. I have always disliked Spielberg’s movies, even since I was in elementary school. There was always a wrongness about them, as if they gave off a repellent odor that one could detect even from the trailers. To this day, I haven’t seen many popular Spielberg movies, including Close Encounters, ET, Poltergeist, and Gremlins; after reviewing a comprehensive list of his filmography, it turns out that I’ve seen a total of nine movies in which he has played some role.

And now it appears we have a pretty good idea of exactly what that wrongness was.

UPDATE: I think we now have a clue as to why my Twitter account was suspended. Remember the meme about Indiana Jones being a pedophile? Unlike all of my other tweeted images, including the mock Beard covers, it is no longer available. As is the recent /pol/ thread on Spielberg’s List.