Goldfinger- No, Mr. Bond, I Expect You To Dye

Goldfinger is the ultimate Bond film. Sean Connery, an ejector-seat laden Aston Martin, Alotta Fagina and Random Task Pussy Galore and Oddjob, it's all there and more. And unlike Skyfall, Goldfinger has a evil plot with some real ambition and a tolerable theme song. (Paul McCartney's Live and Let Die and Madonna's Die Another Day are the only Bond themes which should ever be heard outside a theater and then very, very rarely.) There are many potential topics from this movie, but today we will focus on the logistics of painting a woman to death without making a mess.

First of all, the idea that covering someone in paint will kill them is MtyhBusters certified busted. (Although it will cause Adam to break out in anal sex jokes.) Mystiques have worn nothing but paint through four X-Men movies and all have survived. Sports Illustrated has yet to kill any of the girls they paint. "Skin asphyxiation" simply does not exist because skin does not breathe. Heat stroke might be a problem if you went for a jog after a total body paint job and if the paint had some toxic properties, like a good old-fashioned lead base, you could be in danger of being poisoned, but your skin will continue to not breathe as well as it has always not breathed. For the rest of this post, we will assume that a good paint job is lethal and discuss how it could have happened.

Let's set the scene. James and his new fuck buddy and future corpse Jill are hanging out in a hotel room. James dares to insult The Beatles and is justifiably knocked unconscious by Oddjob (or possibly Alfred Hitchcock, we'll never know for sure) and when he wakes up he is alone with a naked Golden Girl (insert mental image of Bea Arthur here), the room is tidy without a stray drop of paint, the paint on Jill is completely dry and Jill is completely dead. That was some knock on the head because I am estimating that this murder is no less than a three hour job.

The logistics of this homicide get easier if she is killed elsewhere and the paint is dry before she is brought into the room, but dragging a super sexy, nude, golden body through a hotel lobby is likely to attract some attention, so she must have remained in the room.

The easiest method for a whole body paint job would be dipping into a bath of wet paint, but there is no way to pull that off in a hotel room. Spray paint would be quickest, but a quality sprayer is bulky and noisy equipment completely unsuitable for a covert killing in a crowded hotel and canned spray paint never seems to get a smooth, even coat and should not be used indoors. (You could kill someone.) It would also be difficult to get the level of neatness that Goldfinger demands. (He is very picky about the cleanliness of his murders.) Besides, a close-up of Jill's face shows what is clearly brushstrokes.

Bond makes no mention of any wounds or bruising on the victim. Nor did he mention sedation or poison. Only paint. So if we believe that, then for several hours while conscious and being murdered very slowly our victim did not cry out, break a lamp, throw paint, and patiently waited for several coats of paint to dry. A truly extraordinary level of cooperation that implies that Jill in fact wanted to die in the shiniest possible way. I will set aside the assisted suicide theory here and say at this point Oddjob probably injected her with a sedative that Bond was unaware of or chose not to mention. (Maybe Bond got a shot of it as well. Oddjob would be so embarrassed if he was caught gold handed in the middle of undressing and coloring another man's girl.)

As far as we know, Oddjob acted alone but that would have meant either hauling in all of his supplies (paint, brushes, painter's suits, gold panties and tarps) while also sneaking around and knocking out a super-spy or making another trip or two out to the car after rendering James and Jill unconscious. An extra man or two would certainly made the agonizingly slow murder easier and more enjoyable. Ya know, someone to have a beer with while waiting for the paint to dry.

So, now that we've got it all planed out it's just a matter of painting by murders. Step one: cover the bed and surrounding floor with tarps. Apply do not disturb sign to door knob. Put on painter's suits. Do not leave the tarp covered area or touch any uncovered surfaces or items until the murder is complete. Step two: undress the victim. Step three: lay her on the bed face down. Step four: Apply smooth, even brushstrokes across your victim's body remembering that every inch of her skin must be fully covered, so make sure to get the soles of her feet, armpits and butt-crack. Step five: wait one to two hours for the paint to thoroughly dry. Step six: turn over the victim and paint her front side. Again make sure to pay special attention to all the naughty bits. Step seven: wait one to two hours for the paint to dry. If you have done well, your victim should now be dead. If not, repeat steps three through seven. Step eight: lift body off tarp, fold tarp on bed and place in transport bag. Place victim back on bed and apply golden panties. Pose seductively but with all naughty bits covered. Step nine: Remove painter's suits and place in transport bag. Wash hands and brushes in sink making sure that all of the paint flushes down the drain. Fold up all remaining tarps and place them in the transport bag. Step ten: inspect the area for any additional clean-up necessary and perform said clean-up. Also verify that the victim is deceased. Step eleven: leave hotel without drawing any unnecessary attention.

Or you could just get a gun and shoot her.

Skyfall- The Bond Villain Guidebook

For the first time in fifty years, James Bond has failed, bringing his total win-loss record to 22-1. However, it is worth noting that Silva, the villain in Skyfall, had the least ambitious goal in the history of the franchise. All he wanted was to kill M. That's it. No global domination, no controlling the global oil supply, no starting a nuclear war. Just one simple assassination. While assassinating the head of one of the world's premier spy agencies is a fairly lofty goal for a regular villain, to a Bond villain it is called step one. Next, Blofeld would replace her with a robot and turn all of MI6 into unwitting agents of SPECTRE. It's going the extra mile that separates the villains from the supervillains.

Rule number one in The Bond Villain Guidebook is that unnecessarily elaborate murder plots are bound to fail. (This rule may be restated as Scott's Razor: When you want someone dead, just grab a gun and shoot them.) Rule number two is do not reveal your evil plan. Rule number three is if you try to kill someone make sure they're dead before walking away. Rule number four is make your prison escape proof. All Bond villains violate at least two of these rules and it leads to their downfall. Silva defies all logic by creating the most insanely elaborate murder plot in movie history and it eventually (sorta) succeeds.

Part one of Silva brilliant plan involves stealing a list of every spy in the world. Not for its enormous economic value or an ideological "kill all spies" purpose. But because it's a really embarrassing thing to lose and it will get M in trouble with the higher ups. Eventually, it gets M dragged before a Parliamentary panel despite the fact that we are assured that the government wants to keep this quiet because this list shouldn't exist and they really don't want anyone knowing they lost it.

Part two begins while M is being chastised for the whole lost list thing. During which time, Silva hacks into MI6 and sets off a bomb in M's office making sure to check her calender first so that he won't disturb her busy day by blowing her up. (Hi, SAM.) That's right. Silva's entire purpose is to kill this woman and he plants a bomb in her highly secure office and intentionally sets it off when she's not there. This is where Scott Evil needed to intervene (at 1:50 in this video).

Anyway, his part two goal of move MI6 to the tunnels of London is accomplished and he begins part three of his plan, which is to get himself captured by Bond and brought to the shinny, new and very rapidly built MI6 HQ. Silva once again hacks into the MI6 mainframe to begin his escape which was "years in the planning." He also takes the opportunity here to reveal his evil plan. His escape involves repeated split second timing including dropping a subway train on Bond's head. (The London tube time tables would fill Mussolini with envy.)

Part four of Silva's plan takes place at M's Parliamentary hearing which we were told earlier wouldn't happen and is going on during Silva's escape. In this most brilliant portion of his plan, Silva gets some guys and some guns and breaks into another high security building to shoot M. Yes, years of planning to get them both in the same room in the most improbable fashion, theft of super top secret information from an intelligence agency, twice breaching physical and electronic security of and a daring escape from said intelligence agency (MI6 needs a serious security review.), and another breach of another secured facility all just to shoot someone in the face. And when the critical moment comes, Silva hesitates allowing M to escape.

Skyfall is a classic example of a Planning Paradox. Silva's plan is too intricate to work without detailed advanced planning but relies on too many intricate details to have planned in advance. You can't drop a train on someone's head as a witty retort without knowing exactly when the train will be there but the position of the train is unknowable in that detail. In a less extreme example, Silva is not in control of the hearing schedule or the exact time of his escape, but both must be simultaneous for his plan to work. Silva must either be a psychic with advanced knowledge of the future or a wizard conjuring whatever he needs for the next step of his plan.

From this point on, Silva goes improvisational. Improvisation which includes hiring a bunch of guys with guns and renting a helicopter with a kick-ass sound system. (Where does he get the funding?) Unsurprisingly, this more direct approach actually succeeds in killing M which just goes to show you that the simplest plans are usually the best.

Star Trek: First Contact- Corrupted Data

The Borg are incredibly stupid.

At Wolf-359, the Borg proved they are pretty much capable of destroying the entire Federation with a single ship and they start Star Trek: First Contact by pretty much proving it again. But instead of trying a radical new plan like sending two ships, they go with the next logical step: time travel.

Ok, so going back in time and destroying an enemy before they can be a threat to you is not such a bad idea, but the implementation was terrible. They fly towards Earth, wreaking all the colonies they can find, and generally attracting Starfleet attention, and then moments before they get blowed up they launch their time travel Sphere. It's not like the Borg thought "Hey, this whole direct attack thing isn't working too well, let's invent time travel in the next quarter second and kill Zefram Cochran." Time travel was clearly part of their plan from the beginning, so why did they bother with the whole wreaking the Federation part and attracting the Starfleet reprisal which nearly stopped their plan before it began? They are going back in time to prevent Earth from getting warp drive and starting the Federation. So why not go back in time first and then head unopposed towards a Federationless world free of warp drive? The point using time travel to destroy an enemy before they are a threat to you is that they can't stop you.

Then there is the matter of why the Borg care so much about Earth anyway. The Borg are centered in the Delta Quadrant so they are expending a lot a resources and energy to get to Earth. The Federation is technologically inferior to the Borg as evidenced by nearly destroying them twice with a single ship. And every time they speak to a Borg, all they can talk about is the biological and technological inferiority of the Federation. The Borg have committed themselves to a costly, far off, war of choice with no clear gains, or timeline for withdrawal and a native population fiercely and philosophically opposed to occupation, but whom the Borg Queen claims will greet them as liberators. Earth is the Borg's Iraq.

After jumping back to the past and just before they get blowed up for the second time in thirty seconds because they just had to make a big, flashy entrance, the Borg beam over to the Enterprise and attempt to assimilate it. Which, again, is not a terrible plan and it seems to be going well, until the Borg make another horrible tactical decision. After taking control of half the ship and effectively disarming the crew by adapting to their phasers, the most powerful ship the Federation has ever built containing more than enough advanced technology to conquer the war-torn, divided and relatively primitive inhabitants of Earth, the Borg decide to stop and try to call for help. Help that at Voyager speed will not arrive for 75 years. The Enterprise crew was Earth's last line of defense and if the Borg had pressed their advantage, they would have certainly fallen. Then, with the crew dead or assimilated and the Enterprise under Borg control, the Borg would have had effectively infinite time for reinforcements to arrive for the assimilation of Earth. (Not that they would be necessary.)

Apparently, the hive mind is not all it's cracked up to be. But the combined individual minds of the Enterprise crew aren't much better, as they keep relying on a piece of equipment that routinely malfunctions and threatens their lives. I am speaking of course of Lt. Commander Data. At a critical point in the movie, Data is tempted by his new fleshy penis to join the Borg Queen and Picard is completely unsurprised by this turn of events because in no less than 13 episodes Data disobeys orders by deliberate choice or malfunction. (The Naked Now, The Schizoid Man, The Measure of a Man, Pen Pals, The Offspring, Brothers, Clues, Redemption, Cause and Effect, The Quality of Life, Descent, Phantasms, and Masks) That's 8% of all the episodes. And that doesn't count the times part of his personality tried to kill Worf on the Holodeck, he gave a town radiation poisoning, or he destroyed another town's well. Data is even worse in Star Trek: Insurrection when he takes a planet hostage and then participates in an...oh, what's the word for it...an act or instance of rebelling against a government in power or civil authorities. Would you keep a guy around that could bench press a bus and call Stephen Hawking a total moron, if he was trying to kill you 8% of the time? The dude's got an off switch. It's time to use it. (Data finally takes care of his malfunctions permanently by blowing himself up in Star Trek: Nemesis... after disobeying orders.)

I Want Candy- On Second Thought, I'll Pass

Let's be honest here. I didn't watch this movie for complex plot development, well-drawn characters, or even a good laugh at some low humor. I watched I Want Candy because I wanted to see some boobs, specifically Carmon Electra's boobs. Any boobs would have been nice, but not a single nipple was to be found. The truth is a heterosexual male will watch any piece of crap with a BPM (Boobs Per Minute) of at least 0.07. (That's one nipple every 15 minutes in a 90 minute movie.) But you didn't need me to tell you that. Without the support of undone bras, the direct to DVD, commercial-free cable, and horror genre would have revenue streams limper than audiences about 15 minutes after the start of a porn film. So why, in this era when any level and style of pornography is instantly available for free any place on the planet, does this bad-but-with-boobs genre of film persist? Because these movies are as close as we get to what the protagonists in I Want Candy claim to have made and what is so desperately needed: porn that's watchable as a movie.

It wasn't always this way. The most famous porno of all time is Deep Throat and it is an actual movie with an actual plot that is actually watchable. This one isn't entirely the MPAA's fault, but they did have a hand in it. When the videocassette was born, the porn theater died. (Which was a good thing, cause ewwwwwwwwww.) Then came Blockbuster, which crushed all the small time video stores (and were subsequently crushed by Netflix), and one of their keys to success was, unlike the little guys, they didn't sell dirty movies, so they could set up shop anywhere without legal troubles or moral rumblings. At this point the porn market, became the sleaziest of males, who were and are the only ones which would frequent an adult book store. And that's when porn stopped trying. With movies like I Want Candy, Hollywood is attempting to fill that hole as hard as it can, but with its obvious inadequacies (commercial concerns and the MPAA) it just can't satisfy us.

It's not like hardcore scenes couldn't be worked into a Hollywood film. Sex scenes are common and often fairly graphic. Many times directors have to contort themselves into unusual positions in order to stay on the commercial side of the NC-17 line. Scenes in Traffic and Requiem For a Dream come to mind.

Yes, there are pornographic films, both hardcore and softcore, that have some semblance of a plot, but the non-pornographic scenes are unwatchably terrible. Much worse than the level of bad in a Hollywood film. It's partly a problem of effort, but the porn industry also has a serious personnel problem. Top female porn stars are every bit as attractive as their Hollywood counterparts. If they could act, even at a Kristen Stewart level, they'd catch a bus across town to start earning that Hollywood money and prestige. And, I suspect the writing staff is similarly challenged.

Then, there's NC-17, but that rating is not free reign. Most of the films in this rating class are good movies, but pornographically they are little more than softcore. And as no theater chain will show them, they are a guaranteed commercial disaster.

As weird as it sounds, the porn industry is dying. Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free? This is a niche that you can still market, smut-makers. You can't stop downright piracy, but you can cut into the 5 minute free clip market, if you can offer something worthwhile during the recharge phase. Take the time an effort to make a good film that happens to be pornographic. Invest in some acting classes for your stars. Hire some real writers that are between projects. There are always scripts on the market that you could make work. It doesn't have to be Hitch-cock. It doesn't take much to make a movie as minimally watchable as I Want Candy and then stick in some dick. If you build it, they will cum.

The Jazz Singer- Back in Black-Face

This is the 50th movie to receive the No Spoiler Tags treatment and it is nearly the one-year anniversary of this blog, so it's great that The Jazz Singer offers me the opportunity to discuss movie history, old-timey racism, and to revive the theme that inspired this blog, the ending scene that ruins it all.

The Jazz Singer has a legendary place in movie history as the very first talkie. But watching it, it is actually less "talkie" and more "singie" as almost every word in the film is in musical form. Most of the film is in the silent picture speech card style. The real promise of the medium is only revealed in a brief song break when Jackie has a short conversation with is mother. A real conversation with rapid back in forth banter and not flapping lips followed by a card. All the intonation of actual speech is there. There are no missing lines as is common in the speech card format. For just a few seconds, The Jazz Singer feels like a truly modern movie.

The plot of the film follows a young man who is thrown out of his traditional Jewish home because of his love of jazz. He travels to London, changes his name, meets a girl and gets his big break back in New York. (As we all know, no new musical form can receive a widespread American audience unless it is stolen from black people and sung by a white guy from the British Isles.) The climax of the film comes on the night of his big debut on Broadway when Jackie must chose if he will be a jazz signer or a cantor. Unfortunately, this scene takes place as Jackie is applying black-face.

I think old-timey racism is hilarious. Not real, damaging racism, like the denial of rights and property and the treatment of minorities as second-class citizens, but blatant in-your-face racism that serves no purpose other than to insult, like black-face, is pretty funny in retrospect. It's funny because it highlights the stupidity of bigotry and winds up being more insulting to the bigot than their intended target in hindsight. Of course, these racist caricatures are still around today (For an example, see Nacho Libre. On second thought, don't.) and it is my sincere hope that one day we can all come together in a spirit of friendship and laugh at how ignorant we were now.

All that is to say that when Jackie, covered in black shoe polish, exclaimed, "I feel the call of my race!", I literally laughed out loud, but then I started thinking about the symbolism of the scene. I realized that the black-face was not specifically black-face, but represented the make-up and masks of the theater, the appeal of becoming someone else, and the joy of acting and singing. The scene was about who he wanted to be the tradition-bound cantor's son, Jackie Rabinowitz, or the jazz singer, represented by his theatrical make-up, Jack Robin. The black-face representing his false self covering who he truly was.

Eventually, Jackie chooses to sing at the synagogue, winning back his father's love, and shunning the theater. If only, the exit music started with the hand of the Cantor's ghost on his son's back. But there was one more scene, one where Jack Robin is back in black-face singing about his mammy on stage headlining a brand new production and completely ruining the ending. First of all, this is a significant plot-hole as his producer had made it perfectly clear that if Jackie skipped the opening night of his staring role on Broadway, that he would never be given another chance in the theater and the producer would have been totally in the right for ruining him. Secondly, after making a great sacrifice to finally earn back his father's love, Jackie has chosen to spit on his father's grave by once again defying his wishes. This also leaves us with an unanswered question of what happened to the congregation who are apparently once again without a cantor. And finally, the use of black-face here, without the symbolism of the previous scene and with the additional racism of singing about mammy, makes me think I gave The Jazz Singer too much credit in the previous paragraph.

And now in No Spoiler Tags, I don't have an ending tradition...AC/DC!

The Rise of the Planet of the Apes- And Then The Bombers Came...

Although I had never seen it before tonight, The Rise of the Planet of the Apes (or more specifically its trailer) was one of the movies that inspired this blog. From the trailer alone, I could spot two critical errors which would make this film ridiculously stupid and stopped me from watching this movie earlier. (You don't often meet SAM six months before the movie is released.) And although there was a twist which almost cleared up these errors, they were still there and they made this film ridiculously stupid. Play along and see if you can find them.

The answers are it would be out of continuity with the original movie it was supposed to be a prequel of and there would be no realistic way that the apes could take over the world.

In The Planet of the Apes, we learn that the humans blew themselves up into near extinction after the astronauts blasted off during a still raging Cold War and in the absence of humans the apes evolved and took control, (That's not really how evolution works, but that's another rant.) but they are still not as smart as humans. Here is were the twist comes in and they release a deadly virus that opens up an opportunity for the apes. So, its not really The Rise of the Planet of the Apes so much as its The Rise of the Deadly Virus Accidentally Released by Unethical Biomedical Researchers Operating in Violation Safety Guidelines And I Almost Forgot There Were Some Monkeys, Too. The ending of The Planet of the Apes was to send a message that continued nuclear brinksmanship would inevitably lead to the destruction of mankind. But setting The Rise of the Planet of the Apes in the post-Cold War era leaves us with the unanswered question of why did we finally do it? Us maniacs! Why did we blow it up? Ah, damn us! God damn us all to hell!

The virus makes it a bit more realistic that the monkey revolution could have succeeded, but the concept still fall well short of the laugh test. The fact is humans have millions of years of experience and development into new and better ways to kill each other and a vast numerical advantage over the apes. We've got nukes, fighter planes, 7 billion soldiers, and Sun Tzu and the apes have feces throwing. (Our biowarfare programs are a bit further along.) The fact is the most realistic continuation of the story by the end of the credits the Air Force flies over the forest and ends the monkey threat. Unless the apes are Lawnmower Man smart, there is nothing they can do to stop that. (Evidence indicates the apes are around normal human intelligence and magic-powers-smart would be another strike against continuity.) There are between 170 and 300 thousand Common Chimpanzees left in the wild and even with a deadly virus outbreak, with a numerical advantage of more than 23,000:1, I think humanity has a good shot at taking out 300,000 Lawnmower Monkeys in an all out war.

P.S.-I know the difference between a monkey and an ape. I just don't care.

The Amazing Spider-Man- The Lois Lane Game

It seems only yesterday we were saying hello to Tobey Maguire as Spider-Man and now we have a new Spider-Man, a more accurate to the comics Spider-Man, a better than 3 but not as good as 1 or 2 Spider-Man, The Amazing Spider-Man. I liked that Gwen and Doc Connors finally got some screen time and that the web shooters were mechanical again, but everything else could have been better.

Let's start at the end. The Lizard is about to turn the populous of New York into lizard creatures until Spider-Man switches the lizardizing serum for the back-to-humanizing serum thus exposing the entire populous of New York, of which only a tiny percentage were lizard creatures, to a powerful mutagen. This serum has not been properly tested for effectiveness at its intended purpose (i.e. curing mutant lizardism) nor have any side-effects been determined. And the effect on unaltered humans is completely unknown. All that is really known about this serum is that it dramatically alters DNA, so of course, it is perfectly safe to indiscriminately scatter over one of the largest cities in the world. This scene turns on its head what was otherwise a cautionary tale regarding the need for rigorous study regarding scientific, especially biomedical, research. Spider-Man should have stopped the lizardizing machine, cured Dr. Connors, and then tracked down the rest of the lizards and cured them one at a time. It's a more difficult, slower and more dangerous method and there are bound to be civilian casualties from rampaging lizards; however, New York City won't have cancer in five years.

Other than the fact that Spider-Man has probably killed thousands, this movie has a serious Lois Lane problem. Lois Lane is billed as the world greatest reporter, but she can't figure out that the guy she works with, the guy that keeps coming up with lame excuses to suddenly leave, the guy that is never around when Superman is, and the guy that looks an awful lot like Superman with glasses is in fact Superman. This huge blind-spot makes me question not just her ability as a reporter, but if she is intelligent enough to care for herself. So with that in mind, let's play The Lois Lane Game and figure out how long it should have taken various characters to guess Peter Parker is Spider-Man.

People on the Subway- Peter demonstrates his strength, stickiness and agility to a car-full of people. No one on the train recognizes him, but one of the passengers sells their story to a tabloid and the security cam footage goes viral on Youtube. Peter is recognized within three days.

Peter's classmates- Peter humiliates Flash using strength, stickiness and agility. He later throws a football so hard that it bends the uprights. Someone puts it together ten seconds later.

NYPD- A vigilante is targeting criminals with a very specific appearance. The police run a database search on people which match said description and find one is suspected of murdering Ben Parker. Police arrive at the Parker household and see that Peter matches the height and weight of Spider-Man. It takes a week for the pattern to emerge and Peter is under arrest within an hour.

Luckily, clouds of untested mutating agents raining down from above have never been proven to cure Lois Lane Syndrome. Side-effects include Hulking-out, Flaming-on, and slow and painful death.

The Lion King- The King of White Pride Rock

The Lion King is the greatest animated film of all time. The music, the characters, the Hamlet inspired story, and the incredible artwork combine to create something truly wonderful beyond any of the individual pieces. This magnificent piece of art represents thousands of hours of work by numerous extremely talented artists, musicians, and actors. I've seen this movie more times than I can count, but the opening sequence still gives me chills.

When I talk about traditional animation being innately better than computer animation, this is what I mean. Look at the detail in the illustrations and the expressionism in Rafiki's eyes. They can't do that with computers. These drawings have soul. That comes from a lot of hard work and love from the illustrators. Hand drawings can't fall into the uncanny valley like computer animation can. Brave may have been the prettiest computer animated film to date, but there's nothing in that film that comes close to the opening of The Lion King.

With all that said, this blog has delightfully perverted the way I watch movies and it is now apparent to me that The Lion King is so racist it could have been written by Walt Disney himself.

In the opening minutes of the film, we are told that all creatures have their place in the great circle of life, but seconds later we are informed that hyenas are not permitted on the lush prairies of the Prideland. (Prideland **Nudge** **Nudge** **Wink** **Wink** Know what I mean? Know what I mean?) They must be forcefully kept in their place. The hyenas are constantly battling starvation on barren lands while the lions live in opulence.

When Scar, takes power he's portrayed as evil. Why? Because, he supports desegregation. (Ok, so he did kill Mufasa, but that bigot had it coming.) When Simba returns, the Pridelands are dying, but it's not because the hyenas have over-hunted the land as the lions would like you to believe. It's because the savannah has been struck by a terrible drought. There is nothing Scar did or could have done to cause that. In fact, in a time of drought, a little extra hunting would relieve some of the demand for water and thus make the environment healthier, at least in the short-term. Scar and the hyenas are being scapegoated for a natural phenomenon so that the lions can justify their racism. Scar, by the way, is the only brown lion. All the other lions are blond (Aryans).

So while Apartheid was ending in South Africa, Disney was making a movie about how desegregation would destroy Africa. It's good to see Walt's legacy lives on.

Oh, and some of it might have been stolen from Kimba the White Lion.

I'm furry for Nala. That is all.

Brave- One Small Step for Woman...

Disney heroines have a long running theme of needing to be saved by a man. Sleeping Beauty and Snow White are the most literal manifestations of this theme as they are trapped in a perpetual slumber until their Prince Charming kisses them and brings them back to life. (Move along, no symbolism to see here.) The Beauty and the Beast has an even more dangerous theme: it doesn't matter how much he yells and hits you, if you love him enough he will become Prince Charming. The moral of The Little Mermaid is that you should change everything about yourself to get a man. And even Mulan, with its ass-kicking warrior princess, hides that Little Mermaid theme under its girl power exterior.

But with Brave, Pixar shatters this theme that a woman needs a man both with word and deed. And Princess Merida thoroughly denounces her need for a man before saving the day...with sewing.

 

Oh well, that's progress, I guess. Women in the workforce and all.

Princess Merida does display an extraordinary amount of courage standing against tradition and a giant bear. But really, why sewing, Pixar? It kind of undercuts the message. Don't you think?

Okay, so the way the movie is cut it was probably the apology that cured the queen, but still that is radically different than how a male hero would have come to the rescue. Can you imagine Mufasa descending from the clouds to tell Simba, "Have a nice chat with your uncle and if you can gently remind him that renewable resources can become overtaxed if they are improperly managed. And remember [echo] it's your mom's birthday next week. You should give her a call. [Long echo and fade away.]"

With its castles, royalty, and magic, Brave is the Pixar movie which looks the most like a Disney film and it borrows heavily from several of them. The trailer promised Mulan with a Scottish accent. The deal with the witch is a callback to The Little Mermaid. The archery contest is out of Robin Hood.  But surprisingly, the Disney film it's most like is the one that effectively killed their traditional animation department, Brother Bear.

I shouldn't have to tell you it's good. Of course, it's good. It's Pixar. If things were fair, it would probably win Best Picture, but the Oscars have a terrible bias against animated films, comedies, and films intended primarily for children. But I doubt I will see a better film this year. [Update: I was wrong. Life of Pi should but won't win Best Picture.]

And it's beautiful, too. I had Lord of the Rings flashbacks during the landscape shots early in the film. The rules of 3D were followed almost perfectly. There were just a few shots with overly rapid movement. There were a number of dark scenes, but they never got too dark. Few films have ever used the 3D medium better.

Now, the updated Pixar rankings.

1. Toy Story 3

2. Toy Story

3. Up

4. A Bug's Life (Has been way underrated)

5. Finding Nemo

6. Brave

7. Toy Story 2

8. Wall-E

9. The Incredibles (Has been way overrated)

10. Monsters University (A high achievement in low comedy)

11. Ratatouille

12. Monsters Inc.

13. Cars 2

14. Cars (Will being about Pixar's inevitable demise)

Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted- Your Most Recent Common Ancestor Would Be Ashamed

I was a little reluctant to see Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted. I found the previous Madagascar movies to be very uneven. In the earlier films, the main characters were consistently unfunny. They were also weighed down with annoying lemur, but peppered with uproariously funny spurts of penguin. So, I went hoping to find enough penguin to salvage the rest of the film. The previous films were filled with verbal gags and reference humor which rarely landed, but the third movie completely shattered the old paradigm, opting instead for an explosion of rapid fire sight gags. The main characters worked much better when they had less to say and the lemurs were nearly cut out. It was a manic journey of light and sound. And it worked pretty well. Rarely have I seen a movie so blatantly and delightfully divorced from all sibilance of logic.

But for a film with such a geographically based title, it fails the subject pretty badly. The animals' first stop in their journey though Europe is the city of Monte Carlo in the independent state of Monaco. This is were we encounter our primary antagonist, DeBois, who is repeatedly referred to as French. She is clearly not part of an international unit as evidenced by her encounters with Italian authorities. So either she is an immigrant to Monaco, which is an unnecessary, confusing, and unexplained bit of backstory, or the filmmakers should have bought a map. This is why our kids our falling behind in geography.

We like to be open minded here at No Spoiler Tags. We approve of interracial and homosexual relationships and even polygamy, if it is truly consensual and involving partners of legal age. However, this film must be condemned for blatantly advocating a most wicked lifestyle choice: inter-species sex. We believe that a species is a group of genetically isolated individuals capable of producing genetically viable offspring and that attempting to produce hybrids makes a biologist's life harder. As it says in Darwin 3:14, "That's just icky." On the day of the Great Taxonomy, Almighty Linnaeus will cast the hybridizers unto the clade Hexapoda where they must spend all eternity amongst the Arthropods. Man-on-dog is the road to santorum. And furthermore, how does a lemur have sex with a bear, I mean physically, how does that work? He must have to stand on a table or something.

Yes Man- The Joys and Dangers of Living Weird

Here at No Spoiler Tags we fully support the concept of living weird. We believe "normal" is an insult and we crave new adventures. Yes, this site is primarily devoted to shining the cold, calculating eye of logic and science onto other people's imaginations and I've written a completely non-satirical piece on why you should give up on your dreams, but that is because we also believe that peculiarity must be tempered with practicality. Yes Man is a surprisingly not terrible movie about a man who cannot find the proper balance between the two.

Carl begins the film with a stick firmly implanted up his rectum. His friends, fed up with his constant dodging, are ready to dump him. He has closed his mind to the possibilities.

Then, he goes the other way. He becomes the embodiment of spontaneity and finds it exhilarating, especially as it involves fucking Zooey Deschanel. However, he is also repeatedly robbed, scammed, raped by an old lady, and generally taken advantage of by friends and strangers alike. Everything works out in the end for Carl, but in reality he would be broke in under a day (as he must buy everything an ad tells him to), fired in under a month (a lot of those loans look terrible and somebody's bound to use the opportunity to rob the bank), and probably dead in under a year (some combination of alcohol, drugs, and exhaustion, if nothing else). So, there is a serious downside to this lifestyle. (On the other hand, fucking Zooey Deschanel.)

Zooey Deschanel is actually the role model to follow in this movie. She embraces living weird, but maintains touch with reality. She knows no one wants to buy her crappy photographs or listen to her shitty band, but she contributes(?) to the local art scene because she loves it. This is what I meant in my give up on your dreams piece. You can be a rock star in your own mind, but know deep down in your soul that you truly suck. (For the record, my only readers are Russian spambots and I like it that way.)

The No Spoiler Tags Guide to Weirdness:

1. Weird is a choice.- You will never be bizarre if you don't put in the effort.

2. Remind yourself to be strange.- I watch one of these get out and do something movies, like Yes Man, about once every six months to shame myself into trying something new. (I signed up for golf lessons as soon as the film ended. Not that strange, but it is new.) Some better movies with a similar theme include The Dead Poets Society, Garden State and Stranger Than Fiction. I also happen to own the watch from Stranger Than Fiction (I had it before the film came out.) and I live in fear everyday that it will throw me under a bus if I disappoint it. You may find it useful to attach a death threat to a totem of your own.

3. Don't think, Just do.- If I give myself a chance to find a reason to back out, I usually will. So, I find a way to commit myself before I get a chance to think about the consequences. Buy your plane ticket and figure out how you're getting to the airport later. Yes, this is a contradiction to the first half of this piece when I encouraged insanity based on sanity, but you will usually know when something is bound to end poorly right away and can avoid the bad decision.

4. You will get hurt.- Last night, a pocket of air was begging to receive a double flying kick. (The air knows what it did.) The air, being a compressible fluid, was unharmed by my powerful blow. My leg, on the other hand, received a sizable gash as it caught on a sharp edge on a counter-top. I won't tell you to not perform impractical martial arts on fantasy opponents or even to check for sharp corners before moving spastically, that would defeat the purpose of such an action, but just know at some point you will get hurt. Physically, emotionally, financially. At some point, being weird will hurt. In the long run, I firmly believe weirdness will always pay off, but you'll get some scars along the way.

5. Don't listen to me.- This is your ride, baby. Don't be content to follow my rules or anyone else's. Find out just how far you can push the envelope. (Philosophical question: If you follow this rule, are you breaking this rule?)

Back to the Future: Part 3- No, You're Not Thinking Fourth Dimensionally

One of the basic tenants of the Back to the Future series is that the DeLorean does not travel through space as it travels through time. This is a major plot point in Back to the Future: Part 3 as Doc Brown must pick places to travel through time which he knows will be safe to travel to in the destination time. But, an effective time machine must also be capable of moving instantaneously through space as well. (And as space and time are actually different ways of perceiving the same thing known as space-time, a device capable of instantaneously moving any direction and amount through time should be capable of doing the same in space.)

The general problem is clearly illustrated in this comic.

It's easy to forget, but that thing you're standing on is always moving. The Earth orbits the sun at about 66,600 mph. It rotates at about 1,040 mph. There is also the matter of eccentricities in the Earth's orbit and rotation. And plate tectonics are not a trivial consideration, if you want to see some dinosaurs.

If you want to safely return to the Earth after a journey though time, you must hit a target that is a thin roughly spherical shell between the surface of the planet and about 20 feet above it. (Too low- materialize within the planet and get crushed; Too high- fall and then get crushed) And as you probably wish to land over a solid surface in one of the habitable zones of the planet, your target is even smaller. The idea that you could simply return to the same point relative to the surface of the planet without moving through space, as suggested in the movie is ridiculous, no matter how short the jump. To safely travel though time on the surface of the Earth, you must move relative to the surface of the planet based on a fixed reference at the center of the Universe. And if you can do that, you don't have to worry if a bridge will be finished by 1985 because there's no reason you can't just land on the other side of the canyon. The calculations for changing the destination a few feet would be very simple in comparison.

At this point, you are probably redesigning your time machine to function of part of a spacecraft, but that only solves part of the problem. The Sun orbits the center of the Milky Way at 486,000 mph and the Milky Way is moving way from the center of the Universe at 1,234,789 mph. In other words, unless you move relative to a fixed reference frame, you will be lost in space and be in danger, Will Robinson.

One final thing to consider: momentum. We are unaware of all this motion, but if we carry any momentum into the journey, as the DeLorean clearly does, any accelerations (exiting one time or entering another) would likely be fatal, or more accurately, liquifying. And it's unclear how time behaves during the trip, which would have a significant effect on the safety of time travel.

For further reading on the subject, consult the works of Professor Eric Idle.

The Hunger Games- A Cautionary Tale

First of all, I'd like to thank the MPAA for giving this tale of teenagers hacking each other to death a PG-13 rating.  It is perfect commentary for a moralistic story about a society desensitized to violence. The Hunger Games may not be the most violent picture ever made, but no amount of pure violence can garner an R rating. But, fuck, this fucking sentence is rated R. Show a nipple? That's an R. Gay stuff? NC-17. The MPAA has an anything goes attitude with regards to violence, but treats sex and cursing like cardinal sins. This is not how the rating system should work. They should be rating violence more restrictively than sex and far more restrictively than language.

What struck me watching the film is how poorly designed the Hunger Games were for their intended purpose. The Hunger Games are supposed to be the circuses part of the old Roman bread and circuses style government, but how they were managed the games were more likely to cause a rebellion than prevent one.

The first mistake of the Panem government is the hunger part of The Hunger Games. The Romans may have been brutal conquerors, but they were surprisingly benevolent governors. The Romans knew that hungry people are angry people. They always made sure that the basic needs of their people were met. The Capitol did not have such regard for their citizens.

In The Hunger Games, 24 children are taken away from their homes and forced to fight to the death. No matter how apathetic the people get, one of the few things everyone is willing to fight to the death for is their children. You want to get people angry? You want to start an insurrection? Try randomly kidnapping and executing the most adorable kids you can find. Just look at the riots in District 11 over cute, little Rue being cutely speared in the chest.

After snatching the children from the poverty and starvation they have been living in, they make sure they experience the finest side of Capitol life. They are given more food than they can possibly eat. They live in total opulence. They are given a true first-hand view of the great inequity of Panem society. And then, knowing that they are likely to die very soon, they give them the biggest microphone imaginable. They are put on live, national TV for days on end on a program certain to be viewed by nearly everyone in the country. They are offered effectively unlimited time to rail against the oppressive government and wealth inequity. And what could the government do to shut them up, kill them? Shut off their mics? They are probably dead already. And stopping them like that would only prove them right. The government could go after their family which is probably what keeps the kids in line, but at some point one of them will take the risk because the government has so effectively demonstrated how little they had back home and how much there is to fight for. 

So for any aspiring dictators reading this, I suggest using adult prisoners of below average intelligence for your gladiatorial games. The criminals should be guilty of serious, violent offenses. This will prevent backlash at their deaths. It should also provide a higher level of competition than randomly chosen children. Should they chose to use the forum politically, which is unlikely from the less intelligent members of the prison community, they will probably be ignored. I'm not saying you should brutally oppress millions of people, but if you do, please be smart about it.

Now, all of this might have eluded me had this film not had one of the worst SAMs in cinematic history. A SAM, or Stupidity Awareness Moment, is the instantaneous conversion of a movie from an entertaining film into a laughable mess of illogic. A Stupidity Awareness Moment is a moment so stupid and illogical that it causes you to question not just the logic of the scene it is in, but the logic of every moment of the film. The SAM in The Hunger Games comes as Katniss is being chased by a pack of other kids and chooses to climb a tree. Katniss choosing to trap herself in a tree is SAM worthy in and of itself, but the true SAM comes a few seconds later when the pursuing gang after missing with a few arrows just stops firing. Here they are with their enemy trapped in range of a projectile weapon with effectively unlimited ammunition and they don't finish her off? It is the worst strategic planning I have seen in any movie. And, then they further compound their mistake by all taking a nap. One of the primary reasons for the gang to exist is that they can sleep in shifts and they all go to sleep within sight of the enemy? It is perfect execution of the very rare triple-SAM. For the record, this SAM is also in the book and it is the principal reason I never read the later books.

The Artist- It's Quiet...Too Quiet

Oh, This is so unexpected...I'm so excited. Where do I begin? Well, first of all, I'd like to thank the Academy for the re-release of The Artist. One of the problems with Denver being a smaller market, is that limited releases tend to get here later, run on fewer screens, and leave pretty quickly. All that is to say I wanted to get to it the first time around, I just didn't have a chance. If you haven't gotten a chance to see The Artist yet, do so. It is very good and like a big 3D event movie, like Avatar, this silent film will not translate well to DVD.

The Artist is not truly a silent film. In fact, it uses sound more effectively than any film I have ever seen. The music is so engaging and the actors are so expressive that dialogue feels unnecessary and unwanted. Sound effects are rare and where they are it is typically as an outward expression of the protagonists fears. The first sound effects we hear are literally a nightmare with the cacophony reaching deafening levels while George is himself silenced. (See, I can do serious analysis. I choose not to.)

Up next for discussion: Is Peppy insane? She flirts with George between 1927 and early 1929, but the relationship doesn't quite get romantic before their live start to drift apart. During their last conversations in the twenties, George makes it pretty clear he hates her. But in 1931, she buys up all his things and then his Clifton. All to make him happy. When she takes in the injured George in 1932, we are getting into Misery territory. All of this could be dismissed as not totally unrequited love, if it wasn't for one little thing: her mole. George first drew on her beauty mark early on in the film and we see her apply it a few times later on before going to work, but towards the end of the film she is wearing it all the time in scenes where she is clearly not in costume or had her hair done. The perpetual mole and her obsessive tendencies towards a man she has not talked to in three years indicates a clear break with reality.

After George fired Clifton, there were a couple minutes I thought Clifton might get preserved in dolomite, baby.

The silent nature of this film also made me keenly aware of a grave threat to our nations multiplexes: Old people pointing out the obvious. What is it about being over 50 that gives you the license to talk during a movie? Is it one of the benefits of AARP membership? It might be different if they felt the need to point out subtle gags such as George waking under a sign which reads "Lonely Star" or they were making acute and cutting observational comedy. But senior citizens only feel compelled to speak when what they have to say is incredibly obvious. Here are some peanut gallery observations I was treated to during The Artist: "That's the dog.", "Noise.", and "It was her car hitting the tree, not the gun, that made the bang." Thank you, geriatrics, I could not have gotten those on my own.

Die Welle- Lost in Translation

I will keep this short because I'd much rather you read this account by Ron Jones, the teacher who started The Third Wave, than anything I could ever write.

Die Welle, or The Wave for those of us that don't know German, is a dramatization of an accidental social experiment which got out of hand as a teacher created a dictatorship in under a week. That part of the film is completely true and is incredibility frightening. Unfortunately, instead of telling a true to life accounting of events, like this one, the filmmakers felt it was necessary to crank the drama up to eleven.

Die Welle could share an opening scrawl with The Men Who Stare at Goats: More of this is true than you would believe. The problem with films that are based on actual events is the farther away from the real events the story drifts the more the audience believes that none of it is real. And, what happened in during The Third Wave was remarkably terrifying in its simplicity and the events should be much better known than they are.

The most obvious change from the real events was changing the location from Palo Alto, California in 1967 to modern day Germany. And while my personal prejudices says that this relocation, makes the story more likely and thus less scary, but Germany has its own unique history which makes it particularly cautious of dictatorships so all-in-all the change in location is basically a wash. And of course, this is a German film, so the German setting would have a greater impact on its intended German audience.

The movie was filled with obviously dramatized events: the logistically impossible graffiti, the financially improbable embroidery, the physical violence, the murder-suicide, and the teacher's arrest. And since none of these things actually happened and could be so readily picked as fictionalizations, it undercuts the reality of the true story at the base of the film.

Read it already.

The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King- Fly Like An Eagle

Normally, No Spoiler Tags finds tiny flaws in otherwise solid movies and harps on them relentlessly until the whole film falls apart. But, today we flip the script and defend The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King for a perceived logical flaw that isn't a flaw at all.

Talk to someone who hasn't read the books about The Lord of the Rings and they will inevitably ask you this question, "Hey, you remember those eagles that picked up Sam and Frodo at the end of Return of the King? Why did I have to sit through fourteen hours of hobbits walking when they could have just flown in and wrapped things up in ten minutes?" The short answer: This...

That is called a Fell-Beast and to a Fell-Beast giant eagle tastes a lot like chicken. (A giant chicken, I tell you!) Had they tried to fly into Mordor, they would have had Nazgul all over them before they crossed the Black Gate. Tolkien was explicit about this in the books while Peter Jackson never chose to broach the subject probably because he felt it was mind-numbingly obvious.  After all, it was pretty clear that the hobbits only made it to Mount Doom because they were able to travel inconspicuously. But one should never underestimate the stupidity of the movie-going populous, how else can you explain the fact that they are making a Transformers 4 (or the fact that I will probably go see it). So, the eagle question persists.

Let me put this in terms of Where's Waldo, as that is likely the reading level of the people who cleverly think they found a huge flaw in this movie. Trying to find two four foot tall hobbits walking through Mordor while wearing Invisibility Cloaks is like trying to find Waldo in this picture.

Whereas, flying elephant sized eagles through the skies of Mordor is like finding Waldo in this picture.

If you are thinking, maybe they could have gotten in anyway may I remind you of the humongous, orange glowing eyeball constantly searching Middle-Earth for the One Ring. The Eye of Sauron is not going to miss it if the One Ring buzzes the Tower of Barad-dur on a symbol of Mexico larger than Rhode Island. (It was also explicitly noted in the novels that nothing, but the Fell-Beasts fly in Mordor, so the eagles would stand out even more.)

Well, time is slipping, slipping, slipping into the future, so take us out Steve Miller.

Update: I have gotten into several conversations lately with people who had trouble getting into these films/novels because they found the Ring of Power underwhelming as a MacGuffin. What's a MacGuffin? I'm glad you asked, guy I made up as a literary device. Here is a couple lines from the MacGuffin Wikipedia page explaining what it is and the views of two influential directors: In TV interviews, Hitchcock defined a MacGuffin as the object around which the plot revolves, but as to what that object specifically is, he declared, "The audience don't care". In contrast, Lucas believes that the MacGuffin should be powerful and that "the audience should care about it almost as much as the dueling heroes and villains on screen". I have to agree with Lucas on this one. If the audience doesn't care about the MacGuffin, it means they aren't invested in the story. I also agree with the people who found the Ring of Power unimpressive, but only because the novels did a poor job explaining the true power of the One Ring (and the movies did it even worse). So here is the clear cut explanation Tolkien and Jackson didn't give you: The primary power of the One Ring is not invisibility, it is an amplifier of magical/spiritual powers. In the movies/books, we only ever see the ring used by hobbits so it's essentially just multiplying by zero, but if the ring was on the finger of someone with real power like Sauron or Saruman, it would become a powerful weapon. So that's why it was worth the fourteen hour walk.

Star Trek 4: The Voyage Home- It's Just A Jump To The Left And Then A Step To The Right

Star Trek 4: The Voyage Home begins rather unsurprisingly with a voyage home. Upon reaching Earth, they find an alien probe destroying the planet because of the lack of extremely large krill eating aquatic mammals. Let's just pretend that makes sense and move on. (The film did.) So to solve the problem, Kirk does the Time Warp again. (They did it in the series.)

It's just a flight to the sun.
And then a spin right.
With your ship in warp.
You can change the night.
But it's the calculus.
That really comes from Spock's brain.
They did the Time Warp again.
They did the Time Warp again.

The problem of course is that it's a way too easy time travel devise, just like the Time Turner. I will now make a brief list of when the ability to travel through time would have come in handy: every movie and every episode of every series. But this flaw goes much deeper than the Time Turner flaw in the Harry Potter series, because while the Time Turner was clearly a rare, if not one-of-a-kind devise,  warp capable starships, which are all that's needed to activate Time Warp, are extremely common in the Star Trek universe. They are used by the Federation, Klingons, Borg, Romulans, Ferengi, Dominion, Cardassians, Xindi, and pretty much everybody else. The series Enterprise occasionally had episodes dealing with something called the Temporal Cold War, but logically if time travel was so simple in the Star Trek universe, the Temporal Cold War would have permeated every bit of the franchise.

It should be noted at this point that according to the Theory of Relativity, any wessel capable of traveling faster than the speed of light is also capable of traveling through time. However, it is at least implicitly clear that the warp engine operates in such a way that it ignores relativistic effects and is not capable of time travel unless it's in the plot.

Now, let's discuss the serious flaw in their plan. They needed a humpback whale to save the planet and could have gone to any time to get one. Humpbacks have been around for a long time, possibly as long as 10 million years ago; however, Spock sets course for 1986 when the human population of the world was 5 billion, they were capable of detecting their spaceship, and the whales they were hunting were facing extinction. He could have just as easily gone back before the invention of radar during World War II and eliminated their chance of electronic detection and with 4 to 6 billion less eyes on the planet the odds of being sighted would also be significantly reduced. Even better, they could have gone back to before the onset of large scale commercial whaling in the 1600s to make it easier to find a whale. Better still, had they chosen a date before Columbus set off the Age of Exploration, the chance of setting off any temporal paradoxes by being sighted while flying over the Pacific drops to almost zero.

Now, you might be thinking that if they had gone back much earlier than 1986 they couldn't have gotten the materials for the whale tank and that's true, but the tank wasn't really necessary. After all, beached whales can survive for several days and when they eventually die, it is from a combination of dehydration, starvation, and sun exposure none of which should be a significant problem in the cargo hold of a Klingon Bird of Prey in the hour or two it would take to fly to the sun and back.

As it turns out, their poor planing works in their favor as they need to find a nuclear wessel to get back to the future. (Doc Brown's Pro Tips: Always keep your plutonium in your time machine and watch out for Libyans.) They are able to find a nuclear wessel and everything else they need through the magic of product placement with the Yellow Book ad being both a solid comic moment and a great example how avoiding a generic non-realism through product placement can make a movie better.

Chekov is captured and injured during his hunt for a nuclear wessel. And thus, Chekov's stupidity leading to his capture, questioning, and near death becomes both alpha and omega to the Genesis plotline. Six, Chekov, all you had to do was count to six.

Tag Key

An explanation of the tags used on this site:

3D- Discusses the 3D trend.
A long time ago in a movie far away...- Star Wars posts.
A Wrinkle in Time- Problematic cinematic time travel.
Accidental horror- Scary implications of something which wasn't supposed to by horrifying
Accidentally profound- The film makes an interesting philosophical point which is usually exactly opposite of the one it tried to make.
Adaptation comparison- What it sounds like.
Bait-and-switch marketing- A movie that was very different from what was I expected in a negative way.
Boldly going to the cinema- Star Trek posts.
Disney- About a certain movie studio.
Favorites- I loved writing these posts and I think you'll enjoy reading them.
Films- This motion picture is a film as defined in the welcome post.
First viewing log- A list of every movie I've seen for the first time since late September 2011.
Generic non-realisms- Use of a generic term that breaks the suspension of disbelief. Complete definition in the Tron post.
Glaring logic errors- Something that doesn't make sense in the reality of the movie.
Good concept/Poor execution- It was a good idea, they just didn't pull it off that well.
Good Movie/Bad Ending- A good movie ruined by a terrible ending.
Harry Potter and the Adaptation of Rowling- Harry Potter posts.
Movie rules- How I, someone with no film making experience who is not a professional critic and has never even taken a film course, think movies should be made or watched because I totally know better because I have a blog.
Movie-bending- My film adaptation outline of the TV series Avatar: The Last Airbender.
Movies- This motion picture is a movie as defined in the welcome post.
MPAA sucks- Comments about the actions of the Motion Picture Association of America
No Complaints- A good movie which isn't hurt by whatever the post is about.
Pixar- Glowing praise for a studio which has done no wrong. (Statement valid until Planes comes out in 2013. [Update: So it looks like Pixar is going to let Disney take the blame for what is sure to be a terrible mess.])
Planning Paradox- A plot too detailed to plan, but too detailed to work without planning. Skyfall is a good example.
Politics- Warning: Exposure to political content can be hazardous to your soul.
Read This First- The welcome post which you probably should have read before I ruined that movie for you.
Reality fact-check- Something doesn't make sense in the reality of reality not explained away by the reality of the movie.
Recursive commentary- Commentary about commentary.
Scott's Razor- Unnecessarily elaborate murder plots. Defined in Skyfall. Perfected by Goldfinger.
Self-help section- Actual advice that can be actually used in actuality.
Stupidity Awareness Moments- Moments of utter inanity which cause you to become hyper-aware of any other flaws in the film. Definition in The Hunger Games post.
Sudden endings-.
Tag Key- Click this link and you will divide by zero and destroy the universe.
The Bond Villain Guidebook- Every villain in Bond history (and many non-Bond characters) have violated at least two rules listed in the Skyfall post. Make sure your evil plots are compliant with these rules.
The Forky Problem- A continuation which has no storytelling reason to exist. Defined in The Offical Pixar Rankings.
Traditional animation rules- About the innate superiority of hand-drawn animation over the computer generated stuff.
Warning: Science content- Discussions about science which may or may not be humorous.
Weird omissions- Something missing from the film that really should have been there.