Total Dismay

Iraq has been on the verge of Civil War off and on for the last few years. America had its own civil war a short time ago and the end of this clip has some interesting commentary about the senselessness of people killing each other because of some silly geopolitical situation. The words are a little sappy and over-simplistic. that doesn’t mean the scriptwriter wasn’t right.

I don’t know if this movie is going to stay up on Google. I haven’t watched it yet, but I did watch an excerpt of it on YouTube a few months ago. Basically it is some small time movers and shakers that got schmoozed and later spurned by the Clintons. One of them is Spiderman creator Stan Lee. Since these are Hollywood types, they have one recourse that the Clintons may have failed to consider when they wrote them off. They made a movie.

I always thought Stan Lee was a little weird because he sometimes drew really bodacious tatas on Aunt May. Maybe I was a little weird for noticing. Maybe I am more than a little weird for remembering it for a couple of decades and then blogging about it. Anyway, the Clintons aren’t very nice.

edit: I have watched 26 minutes of the 90 minute movie. It is pretty unrelenting and illuminating. It paints a much broader picture than I had anticipated. One of the tarriest brushes is wielded by none other than Anne (shudder) Coulter, who benefits from a skillful editor in this movie. Someone who honestly believes that the enemy of their enemy is their friend cherry picked a number of reasonable and believable sounding quotes from the awful harpy. I had to stop watching after 26 minutes, if I can bring myself to watch more, I will update again.

2nd edit: I watched another few seconds of the movie, but I was asked to pause it. I went to Wikipedia to refresh my memory about a key Clinton basher known as Peter Paul. This man is a convicted criminal and has repeatedly committed fraud in various ways, shapes and forms. If he is the driving force behind this movie, I don’t think it deserves that much attention. Maybe the Clintons are guilty of carrying out character assassination on their enemies, but Paul’s character has been dead man walking since the 70s.

Human beings actually seem to seek out a certain level of risk. If you make the roads smoother and straighter and wider, they will drive faster. If you build a railing around the Grand Canyon they will lean on it. Hannah Montana and her Achy Brakey Dad are being criticized for being in a movie scene without any seatbelts. Disney made Lindsay Lohan wear her seatbelt all through the filming of Herbie Fully Loaded and we all know how things have been going ever since.

The list of movies and TV shows that are banned in China is surprisingly short on IMDB.com. I do not know why that is. It could be that Hollywood is doing business with the huge market in much the same way as Google. They might typically only shop acceptably pre-censored versions of their most salable products to the Chinese government. One very interesting trend on the IMDB involves movies that feature strong, violent female lead characters.

They like to ban Mel Gibson movies, too. They also banned Brokeback Mountain.

I noticed the Banned rating when I was researching a movie from 2005 that starred Ellen Page, who is everybody’s favorite actress these days.

This video has nothing to do with this subject…

This is not meant to be a parody of the movie Babel. It is simply a tower of YouTube videos that replicates the effect of the movie. Juxtaposing widely divergent cultures is a very easy way to send sheltered, fearful American viewers on a head trip. I have to admit that the original movie was faithfully recreating these environments in a work of fiction, which is harder than just doing a few searches. Playing all three videos at the same time creates a pretty neat effect.

Alien Versus Predator, AVP for short, made some money at the box office. $171,181,096 to be exact. I predict that the sequel will not do quite as well. I’m guessing that the budget might have been a little smaller for the ‘requiem’ of the original matchup to ensure a profit. AVP cost $70 Million to make.

There is actually not much that you can do to cut corners on these kind of movies. The leading roles do not require big name actors with big salaries, and lighting is cheap since they are filmed almost entirely in the dark. I have one suggestion, they can cut the CGI bill in half by using a two dimensional animated character as one of the battling creatures…

I just watched Babel. I didn’t enjoy it. It is not a CRAPPY movie. I think it is the best example of a movie that is trying hard to meet the specific needs of a very specific group of people. I like a lot of independent film. I like movies that challenge me. I think Babel has a pretension of being exclusive and avant-garde. I think it excluded me and I resent this. That being said, there are good performances and gripping scenes. If you are someone who subsists on a steady diet of passive entertainment, you might find it very refreshing.

I have made several YouTube videos that comprise an eclectic hodge podge of music, animation, heavily processed voices and some very strange premises. I am pretty happy with some of the results. Sometimes Catherine has to politely ask me to stop watching them over and over and to get on with my life. What she actually says is “Yes…you’re brilliant.”

The real reason I do all this crazy stuff and freeze up Windows Movie Maker a half dozen times in a night is because I have crippling anxiety if I just try to talk at a web cam. There are a few examples of this on my blogs. I also made the mistake of buying a very cheap web cam. I don’t know if I have it configured wrong or if it just really sucks.

I have decided that I have to work through this problem. I might start doing video blogs about nothing in particular as practice. I guess there are two problems in a way, because when I am suffering from anxiety I seem to transmit it to everyone around me. That’s just not good.