Let’s get some Shut Eye on the way to the Westworld of Wayward Pines

Well crap.

The internet and the growing ability of casual viewers and fans to experience whole shows by the season to be watched whenever and however they feel like it, has left me both missing and catching up on shows that I thought were lost to history. But thanks to this modern marvel of the “internet” I can actually watch shows that are over 20 years old… and man is it GREAT! If you ask me its a long time coming.

So because of this and because HBO has finally stopped being, for lack of a better term, Doody Heads, everyone can now watch their favorite HBO shows now streaming on Amazon for a modest fee of like 7 or 8 bucks a month (in my opinion a much better solution than illegally downloading the seasons so you can watch them, but I already wrote about that). And thanks to Amazon, Hulu, and Netflix I have watched a lot of really good TV lately.

And lets start off with the three from the title of this particular blog Shut Eye, Westworld, and Wayward Pines.

First off Shut Eye.

© Hulu 2016-

 

Ever since I fell in love with the show Burn Notice I have been a fan of Jeffrey Donovan. The guy has some serious natural charisma and it shows up in the first few minutes of the pilot episode of this show. This show is a Hulu Original and it only has a 10 episode 1st season run so far.

It starts with Charlie (Jeffrey Donovan) as a former stage magician who now works for a Roma (ethnic Gypsy) guy named Fonso (Angus Sampson) as a Psychic. Now the show goes to pretty big lengths to show that these guys are not the nicest people in the world, in fact they are all pretty hardened con artists that don’t give two shits about their clients except their money and how much they can get out of them. This is shown by Charlie charging $800 bucks for a prayer candle early in the first episode, $800!

The really crappy thing about this is my wife and I have family members who have visited psychics and paid a LOT of money doing it. So this show kind of started off on a rough foot for us, in fact about 30 minutes in we weren’t sure if we were going to finish the episode much less watch the whole series.

But we stuck with it, and we found that Jeffrey Donovan did exactly what you’d expect a leading man to do. He held the show together. There were rough parts here and there, there were events and characters that we just didn’t like, but through it all Jeffrey held us to the show. We watched it to see what was going to happen to him. At one point because of his natural “cold reading” abilities he accurately surmised that the husband of one of his clients was cheating on her…again. This led the husband to ambush Charlie and beat him up pretty good.

This beating resulted in a head injury and from that injury he is now able to see premonitions of the future. Yes, Charlie can now do what he has been conning people about for years, he can actually see the future.

I could write on and on about what happened and why we became so invested in Charlie and why we soon began to dislike his son and wife but that would be spoiling it for the rest of you!

Seriously if you don’t have Hulu yet, get it, and give this show a watch. It’s an interesting premise that is played pretty straight and at the end of the day it was entertaining. I hope they give it a 2nd season although, season one does “end”, with just a little teaser for what might happen in season 2. So, even as a single season run it feels like a complete and finished narrative, not quite as complete as the first season of True Detective, but complete enough so that if it doesn’t get a second season I could still watch it again and I’m not going to be pissed off about the lack of a definitive ending.

 

The second show up for a brief review is Westworld.

 

© HBO 2016-

 

This show is a HBO series and we watched it on Amazon Prime for a small monthly fee. This show was produced, and directed by Jonathan Nolan. Yes, that Jonathan Nolan who also brought us that really good TV show called Person of Interest.

So, If you are familiar with this franchise at all, it started as a movie written and direct by Michael Crichton in 1976, starring Yul Brynner reprising a pseudo- satirical, villain take on his character Chris from the 1960 film The Magnificent Seven. He wears a very close, if not the exact same, costume in the two movies.

© 1960 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. © Yul Brynner MGM 1973

 

In the movie and the TV show we are shown a massive amusement park where guests get to live out their wildest fantasies. Whether this be sex, killing, booze smuggling, bar fighting, street duel shootouts, you name it and it can happen. Made possible by special robots built for the park and special weapons that only work when pointed at a robot, so humans and robots alike can’t shoot other human guests by mistake or by design.

The whole point of this show is that the robots in the park, as well as us human beings are stuck in our “loops”. We wake up everyday, we go to work, we drink with our friends, we have sex, then we go to sleep, only to repeat it over and over at nauseum. The robots are shown to do the same things, stuck in similar “loops”, except their loops come from their narratives. They are the whore in the saloon, the gun runner/gang member, the bank robber who is killed over and over again by park guests just before the big heist is carried out, that bank robber robot never gets to see, nor does he ever get to see…(maybe?) the inside of the safe that he risks his life to steal over and over again.

The show goes about stating that humans don’t really have an excuse for us staying in our loops, but we do and if it’s ever pointed out, we make excuses as to how we can’t break out of said loops.

The narrative loops and reusing the same robots, after refitting for different narratives or different characters plays a significant role in what happens to the core programming and other programs and code written into the robots throughout the series.

There are a lot of message boards out there of people arguing back and forth as to if this show is really as good as people are going on about.

In my humble opinion this is one of the best shows of 2016. If you haven’t watched this show yet, you should. It’s a great ride, its writing is of the highest quality that I have come to expect from the Nolan brothers. The acting from the entire cast is great, highlighted by great performances from Anthony Hopkins and leading lady Thandie Newton. Its a thinking person’s show and if you let it, it may change how you see yourself and what role you function in this crazy world of ours. And any show that can make me contemplate my place in the universe is definitely worth a look.

Finally that crazy off the wall concept that actually got made: welcome home to Wayward Pines.

© 2016 Fox Broadcasting Co.

Ok, so this is the only show that I haven’t finished watching yet. But from what I’ve seen it’s pretty crazy.

We have Terrence Howard playing a pretty intimidating dheriff in a small mountain town (South Park?) And like South Park, things in Wayward Pines is a bit…off. People are way too friendly, everyone knows who everyone is, people don’t seem to need or use money… and, oh yea there are these public executions of people who just so happen to raise a dissenting voice or violate the rules, like talking about their past…crazy.

There is a really interesting duel timelines thing going on and I have only watched 6 or 7 episodes so I have a lot more to go. But the narrative doesn’t stay in the strange mountain town in Idaho for long. The narrative follows Matt Dillon for the most part of the early episodes and he is trying to escape this crazy town.

As I was watching the first few episodes I was reminded of a 1967 single season British show called The Prisoner. In that show the main character Number Six played by Patrick McGoohan is a “retired” special agent, I believe from MI-6, who has been shipped off to “The Village” where he is constantly interrogated for “information”. Every time he tries to escape a giant bouncing ball thing pursues him and catches him, depositing him back inside The Village. Crazy concept but a damn good show from what I can remember.

Wayward Pines had a very similar feel for me for the first episodes. I’m not sure how the show is going to pan out but it was created by Chad Hodge and several episodes were directed by M. Night Shymalan . So that was a good enough reason for us to start watching the show and we are enjoying it. For those of you who have already watched the whole first season…don’t tell me how it ends. I want to find out for myself 🙂

I haven’t seen too many movies as of late. I just don’t really want to drag myself to the theater for a movie that I only halfheartedly, at best, want to see. I last saw Split which was pretty good and I enjoyed it. I haven’t seen Rouge One and probably wont see it, I haven’t seen any superhero movies since Batman v Superman and that wasn’t as bad as people gave it shit for but it wasn’t good by any stretch either. Honestly I think I’m done with Marvel movies at this point. I haven’t seen Logan or any X-men movies since First Class, and I didn’t see Avengers II, seeing a pattern here yet?

I think that TV really is taking over as the deeper thinking person’s choice for entertainment. With the high production value and better crop of television actors out there, directors are not as restricted with TV casting as Hollywood directors are and we are seeing some great multi-ethnic talent out there that are doing really good work. The shows look great, the writing is really good in a lot of cases, and TV allows us time to get to really know characters and decompress stories. Whereas alot of movies these seem to feature a glut of two dimensional characters

So, I’ll stay home from the theaters for a bit, watch some good TV and try to ignore that a live action Ghost in the Shell movie exists.

Power Rangers Reboot! ITS MORPHIN’ TIME!

© Saban Entertainment.

I have just watched one of the most awesome, childhood vindicating things, something that made me legitimately happy that I was a bit of a nerd growing up. I am talking about the new Power/Rangers reboot fan film!

Now there has been some controversy over this video. I was lucky enough to see it. If you haven’t and manage to find it somewhere, then definitely check it out. I have to admit it was, “dark as f*ck” as some people have described it if a little over the top with the violence, but then again what do you expect from a movie that is little more than a short story, and runs at just under ten minutes film time, the other 4 – 5 minutes is mostly credits.

 

http://io9.com/holy-hell-this-power-rangers-reboot-is-dark-as-f-ck-1687689958

 

Ok, so why am I writing about this little piece of awesomeness? Weeeellllll……… It has some problems.

Now before you run at me with pitchforks and torches threatening to burn my house down, understand this…I liked the hell out of this little video! And if I find it again I will watch it again.

But there is a lot of things wrong with it.

So let’s kick this off with the biggest things wrong with it…I quote Mr. Plinkett,

 

“Number one: everything.”

 

Yes, everything is wrong with this video. And I hate to put it out there like that but its true!

Okay, the video opens with the Power Rangers caught in some battlefield with automatic rifles running down some rocky gorge with things that look like Zords fighting in the background.

Then we get to James Van Der Beek, who looked fantastic in this video. I’ve never been a fan, but he has matured into a pretty intimidating man. I appreciate that he has matured and still looks that good. He is playing the character of Rocky and this is the first problem with the whole concept of older Power Rangers.

 

By being in the movie Rocky messes with a whole load of stuff!

Rocky didn’t become the Red Ranger until the second season when Jason (Austin St. John), Zack (Walter Jones), and Trini (Thuy Trang) moved on and let Rocky (Steve Cardenas), Adam (Johnny Yong Bosch), and Aisha (Karan Ashley) take over. So, by that reckoning we can already see that this little video includes that fact that the Power Rangers powers and morphers get passed along every so often to other teenagers.

What does that mean? In the future in a future war against machines, Rocky, Kimberly, Tommy, and Zack would have been left behind long ago and a new set of teenagers would have been chosen and given the powers of The Power Rangers and their Zords.

But, even if that wasn’t the case, there’s more  that tears away at the mythos and the story that this short video is trying to open up to us.

The other thing that’s also a cock up is Kimberly and Jason after they are married in the pickup truck. If Rocky is the Red Ranger, then Jason wouldn’t have his powers unless you take him as the Gold Ranger who came in much later. So, if that is the case, then why does Jason go for a sword on the dashboard? Because if we have to go by the tenant that Tommy is the Green Ranger and Zack is still the Black Ranger then Jason would have to be the Red Ranger. Where does Rocky come in?

So, the entire cast of characters for this reboot would not have been Power Rangers as adults. There would have been a new set of Power Rangers and Rocky, Tommy, Jason, Kimberly, Zack, and everyone else in this wouldn’t have been fighting the machines as adults in the first place.

The next thing that’s almost as bad is Tommy.

Yes, the Green Ranger and teen heartthrob Tommy. In the few seconds of flashback in the video we see Tommy kissing Kimberly, the Pink Ranger. As the green Ranger, all well and good. But then we also see Tommy, as the Green Ranger, holding Kimberly’s dead body, as the Green Ranger.

This wouldn’t be so bad, except that Rocky (James Van Der Beek) just minutes before runs us through how Tommy is central to the machines’ plan. That, and for some reason Rocky wants to kill Tommy… We’ll get to that.

Rocky states, “He lost his powers, then regained his powers…”

Everyone who knows anything about Power Rangers knows that Tommy lost the Green Ranger powers. When he regained his powers, it wasn’t as the Green Ranger. He inherited the powers of the White Ranger, with the really cool talking, flying, dagger Saba and the White Lion Zord. Tommy became the White Ranger.

And yet in the future battle Tommy is still the Green Ranger, making a mess of Rocky’s rundown of Tommy’s history!

The last thing that is kind of a cool twist, and a bit creepy as well is the introduction of Rita Repulsa. Now, I can’t remember if she had the ability to shape-shift into other things. I certainly do not remember there being any attraction between her and her puppet the Green Ranger. When Tommy was first introduced in the five-part saga, “Green with Envy” he was a brainwashed/mind controlled puppet of Rita’s. His sole purpose was attacking the other Power Rangers.

After Zordon and the gang free Tommy, Rita seemed more pissed that she lost her most powerful creation then any kind of attraction.

And where is Lord Zed? Rita eventually married Lord Zed to join with him to destroy the Power Rangers. So I never saw that and that might be a cool twist in a reboot project. But here too, Rita is a couple thousand years old, when she escaped from her dumpster on the moon upon which she swore revenge on Zordon for imprisoning her.

That’s pretty much it though as far as my gripes go. I like the concept of the Power Rangers losing. I like the fact that they kept Zack’s whole, “Hip Hop Kido” thing intact although even the show didn’t keep that up past the first episode I think.

In the above article, the Adi Shankar said, “I eventually came to the realization that high school students weaponized to fight an intergalactic threat would turn those kids into some seriously disturbed adults with severe PTSD.”

I hate to point this out, but nobody died in Angel Grove or even got really hurt. The Rangers all survived to pass on their powers to other teenagers. The Rangers wouldn’t have PTSD. The show showed them laughing and having fun even after a grueling battle where they had to pull out all the stops including the ultimate Zord to make the “whatever whatever Mega Zord”. They fought putties for Pete’s sake.

Nowhere in the show or even in Turbo: A Power Rangers Movie (where Amy Jo Johnson and Austin St. John come back to Angel Grove) are they ever shown really suffering. They don’t have PTSD even when they have been mind controlled to kill the rest of the Rangers. Maybe that would give you PTSD but what do I know? I’ve never been brainwashed or hypnotized to kill my friends either.

I do like this take on the Power Rangers. I think that a few tweaks here and there could make this a very good concept for a movie. I like the dark version and I like that some of the Rangers get PTSD and are adrenaline junkies. I don’t like the fact that some of the Rangers do turn against humanity. How are you gonna have Billy, the Blue Ranger, sell out like that? Wasn’t there some kind of test that Zordon put them through, like with the Ninjetti thing in the first movie? Or was it really just, “Find me five teenagers with attitude?”

If you’ve ever watched VH 1’s I Love the 90s where they had Walter Jones on for commentary you’ll realize why I’m having a hard time seeing the character as a coke head. And where the hell  is the Yellow Ranger? I know that Thuy Trang’s death makes this a touchy subject but still a mention in passing to honor her memory at least would have been nice.

I would hope that an ageless being of immense power would be able to pick a few people that were pure of heart or loyal or some other tenant of the faceless hero from Jung.

Still I do like that this cheesy part of my childhood has been treated with as much respect as this video demonstrates and I hope that after all the lawsuits and copyright stuff this concept does get turned into a movie that treats this material as seriously as those who grew up watching it, has always wanted it to be.

Piracy

OK Ladies and Gents

It’s a New Year right? “Should old acquaintances be forgot and …” nobody knows the words after that.

Anywho, listen I got a big beef with people. I have had this argument any number of times in the past few months and I have to get it out there.

Downloading movies for free through torrents or websites is not only illegal it is immoral!

There I said it, and I’ll say it again, downloading movies for free is immoral! And it’s wrong and illegal in every definition of the word. Getting something for free that wasn’t given to you is stealing, that was decided by the Supreme Court when Napster had to become a paid service, along with Morpheus and more recently Megavideo.

Well, that’s all well and good right? I don’t download movies from any torrent site. I get it from my friends. File sharing from someone who did is also not particularly savory.

Now I have gone up against everybody I know that openly admits to doing this. I always get the same lame excuses, “Well if I watch a downloaded movie and I like it then I’ll buy it. But if I don’t like it than I know I don’t have to spend money on it.”

I can’t tell you how bassackwards that answer is. First of all you still watched the movie for free from someone who stole it and gave it to you, that makes you an accessory to the theft. Second, this person just admitted that they are too stupid, or can’t bother to do a little bit of research into a movie and will watch anything because they can’t be bothered to make a decision.

If you don’t like a movie, or actor, or director, or producer or whatever, then don’t pay to watch the movie, don’t illegally download it, and then pat yourself on the back because you somehow think you are cheating the system and getting one back on ‘The Man’. Or you could wait until it comes out on video and pay Amazon or Redbox a measly 2 or 3 bucks. These days that waiting period for that has radically shortened and almost as soon as a movie has made it run in the theaters it is out on DVD. 

In 2006 the movie industry claimed a loss of $6.1 billion dollars. To put this number into perspective the GM bailout a few years ago cost $11.2 billion…TOTAL! So the Government paid the car industry that much as a one time thing, and the movie industry loses that every two years, and the numbers are growing, scary stuff.

So, why do I care?

I’ve heard it all, actors make too much money. Hollywood can handle it. I’m not going to pay $30 bucks for my wife and I to go and watch movie or $40 if it’s in 3D. Hollywood deserves to be taken down a peg. They make too much money anyway.

These are all excuses to alleviate guilt from people’s bad and illegal behavior. If you think Hollywood is making too much money DON’T SUPPORT THEIR PRODUCTS! Pure and simple. If you steal money and the studios can prove that they lost revenue due to piracy and illegal downloads, then you haven’t done anything because they will get that money back through insurance and lawsuits and tax write-offs.

Which means you paid for it anyways!

 

If anything you have made it worse on the rest of us because the ticket prices will go up and their insurance will have to continue to make pay outs to cover their loses. People are right about one thing Hollywood will get its money; too bad it’s at the expense of honest movie goers who actually PAY for their ticket.

Now you may be asking yourself why in the blue hells am I ranting about this stuff?

I’ll tell you.

One, because I still appreciate and love the country that I was born into. I’ve seen a good deal of the rest of the world and we have it pretty good here. If I lived in, say…China, I wouldn’t be able to blog and share my opinions with those of you who care to read it. (BTW I really appreciate those of you that do stop by every once in a while:)

Second, because like or hate it, one of our, the United States, exports to the rest of the world is movies and entertainment and social media, our culture. Movies are a big part of that; look at any given movie at Box Office Mojo, the international money is pretty significant in a lot of cases.

So here’s the whole point. I was in Korea a few years back participating in a Korean Government sponsored scholarship called TaLK (Teach and Learn in Korea). I had a great time. I taught for about 30 hours a week and in between a wrote, played some computer games, studied Hop Ki Do which I earned a purple belt in four months, pretty proud of that. Every Friday I had the best tasting fried chicken I have ever had that came with this amazing sweet and spicy sauce that I couldn’t get enough of, even though it ripped my body apart every Saturday morning. Ahh…good times.

Any way back to the story. So while I was there I was introduced to Korean cinema. I had seen “Old Boy” before I left but I thought that the Korean Film industry was something small that did some Indy films here and there.

When I got there, there was TV shows, soap operas that had been running as long as WWE Raw, they had new movies coming out almost monthly and I mean like four or five new movies a month, kind of like here. I watched a movie called The Host and it was really well made. This movie was Korea’s Titanic. It broke all kinds of box office records. It was a huge hit. You can go buy it on Amazon right now.

So, I wanted to bring home some uniquely Korean things for Christmas for my family, and I thought The Host would be the perfect thing, right? Well, after two months of searching in about twenty different stores in various malls and shopping complexes, not counting all the sub street vendors and stores, (I lived in Ulsan, nowhere near Soul) I could not find a single copy.

To put this in perspective, I’m pretty sure you can find a blue ray copy of Titanic or Gladiator in any given Wal-Mart even now fifteen years after their respective release. The Host was only a year or two old at that time.

So after becoming severely frustrated, I asked around and did some digging. Do you know what I found out? Turns out that illegally downloading movies has become such a problem in Korea that the government and the movie studios have stopped trying to do anything about it. They have simply stopped producing hard copies of media.

This was also the reason as to why I couldn’t find a single hard copy of Star Craft II Wings of Liberty when it was just released in Aug of that year. Koreans LOVE Star Craft and I, the dumb American couldn’t buy a hard copy because they didn’t sell any hard copies, you had to download it and if you don’t speak Korean good luck trying to navigate that mess. (I didn’t even have a digital copy of my Korean address so I couldn’t even ship it to myself from America)

“The global digital living room device market reached close to $145 billion in 2010, according to BCC Research. The market is forecast to expand at a yearly rate of over 9% to reach almost $226 billion in 2015.” http://www.reportlinker.com/ci02092/Dvd-Blu-Ray.html

So looking at the numbers above, hard copies of digital media is still a very big part of American culture and our economy. Think about how many people are employed by that industry. For all you guys out there that think you are getting one over on “The Man” stop and think about the guy whose making $30-40 thousand a year trying to feed his family. Every time you steal a movie you are stealing from those people. Those people are the ones who will get laid off because of a down turn in profits. Sony is going to be alright, but John down the street will be without a job because 1% more of the population decided to download their movies illegally, instead of paying for it.

Apparently Sony has said that they will not greenlight a Zombieland 2 project because the original Zombieland was the most illegally downloaded movie at the time and Sony estimated that it lost over $20 million in revenue. So for all you guys out there that wanted to see what rules 5-16 are, too bad Sony said no because it lost too much money. That’s fact, take how Sony dealt with it how you will but that’s the excuse that they gave the fan base.

In relation to what happened to Zombieland  most of the movies that’ll get hit harder than movie events like the Avengers or the new Star Wars movie will be the cult hits.  The  former will make their money back several times no matter what. The ones that only take in a 100 million or so at the box office are the ones that are vulnerable.  Those kinds of movies are gambles for the studios anyways and when people cut into their profit margins by illegally downloading that shit it means sequels to such films will never get made.  Family Guy and the Austin Powers franchise thrived on fan support.  Right now Dredd is stuck in limbo, but there can be a franchise if enough fan support turns out, downloading it and giving the studios a reason to not greenlight it would be a tragedy. And if I find out that people downloaded that too, so help me God…

 

So unless you want to see Transformers Part 10: Crouching Autobot Hidden Decepticon then by all means continue to shaft the little guy in all this.

Bottom line, if you steal; the corporations will get their money by charging more for those that honestly pay. More people steal, more people get laid off. We have a high enough unemployment rate in this country. Do you really want to be part of the problem? Support Americas economy, support the artists you care about, don’t support those you don’t by not watching their movies, not making some lame excuse as to how you are the righteous few that steal instead of paying.

If a few people steal, we all end up paying, one way or another.

 

P.S.

And by the way I am NOT NOT NOT NOT defending bullshit like what happens in this comic and the kind of crap the music industry used to pull who in hindsight created the very conditions that led to pirating music.

From the Oatmeal

 

In that case the music industry needed a vicious kick in the ass to change its predatory practices especially in regards to the artists they signed on.

 

 

The Broodwich vs The Killer Tomatoes

Friends and readers all! It has been another year.

Another long 365 day year. A lot has happened this year, the rise of ISIS, Republicans have taken over the House and Senate, The NFL looks like something nobody predicted. I mean, The Seahawks? really? If the playoffs happened today they wouldn’t even be a wild card team! Crazy year!

And I thought what better way to commemorate this insane year than with another completely insane battle between two blood thirsty opponents?

This culinary abomination was forged in the most evil of all the levels of Hell. It is the most evil of all sandwiches. It is the best tasting, most soul destroying sandwich ever created. It is impossible to resist. It can not be taken apart, or disassembled. It is the Broodwich!

And what other food could possible be evil enough to stand toe to toe with such a…an…evil opponent?

They came from a horrible scientific experiment gone wrong. All they were trying to do was make a bigger, tastier tomato. Instead they unleashed a Hell on America that could not be turned back! A more convincing argument against GMO’s has never been made! Unleash the Killer Tomatoes!!

FIGHT ON!

The Broodwich is another idea from those crazy guys who brought us Aqua Teen Hunger Force. In the episode simply titled, “The Broodwich” is where we get the background and origin story for this amazingly evil, complex, and yet at it’s heart simple lunch item. Great for long picnics in the woods, or just for enjoying with some friends and those little fried burrito things…what? Oh… they’re spring rolls? Oh, well excuse me…geez…Sorry folks, they were spring rolls. But I digress.

The Broodwich is immortal. It cannot be killed or taken apart. As long as you don’t ingest it, you’ll be fine… But beware! The broodwich is made of the finest ingredients in all the Netherrealms.

Forged in darkness from wheat harvested in Hell’s half acre, baked by Beelzebub, slathered in mayonnaise beaten from the evil eggs of dark chicken forces into sauce by the hands of a one-eyed madman, cheese boiled from the rancid teat of a fanged cow, layered with six hundred and sixty six separate meats from an animal which has maggots for blood, Dijon mustard, lettuce, and of course sun dried tomatoes.

The one thing this evil sandwich does not have?…Bacon. And why no bacon you ask?

BECAUSE THERE ARE NO SWINE EVIL ENOUGH TO SACRIFICE UPON A BED OF EVIL…and lettuce

Therefore it is impossible to resist by any who even get a faint whiff of this all powerful sandwich…ahem, sorry… all powerful BROODWICH! Beware! Once one eats all of the Broodwich they will suffer the wrath! They will experience a world of skinless, blood-soaked nightmares clattering from the deep and clattering for the meat of the guilty!

Of course, you know, Jerry is a decent guy once you get to know him.  He might even take you to a little place he frequents, Merry XXXmas, it’s a gentleman’s club of some renown.

Once the Broodwich has chosen a victim the only way for said victim to remove the curse from themselves it to find another with an appetite for insanity!

 Against such evil temptation what could possibly stand up to this awesome item of evil infused deliciousness?

The Killer Tomatoes

In a widely known but seldom viewed and, in my humble opinion, under appreciated movie released in 1978, Attack of the Killer Tomatoes with a budget of around $100,000, audiences were introduced to a plant so evil, so destructive it took over the whole of the United States in a matter of weeks. Written and directed by John DeBello this satire on the horror genre has become a cult classic and spawned three theatrical sequels as well as a t.v. cartoon titled, Attack of the Killer Tomatoes which aired on Fox Kids from 1990-1991.

The Killer Tomatoes have become a recognized movie icon but it only garners a 4.6 on IMDB. Travesty!

From an US department of Agriculture GD-3 Project Experimental field they came. They came up through garbage disposals, through open fields, cropland, through back city alleys. No one knew where or why. They killed by flying into helicopter engines, they killed by their poisonous tomato juice, they killed by eating poor little TIMMY!!! Nothing can stop them, chemicals, bugs, bullets, nothing! They swarm and kill all those who would stand in their way!

Through out the film they are seen killing various people and causing havoc wherever they go. Most of these deaths do happen off-screen, however. I think this only adds to the ridiculous comedy of the movie. They kill innocent swimmers in a very Jaws like scene. Bullets and even army artillery can’t stop them.

We do see some federal agents fend off a small approaching wave of tomatoes with a shotgun as the shotgun buckshot completely obliterates the poor harmless fruits. We never do get to see if the tomatoes are hurt by a flame thrower. That might have been fun to see.

In the helicopter crash scene, (which was a real crash that just so happened to get caught on film) we learn that what caused the crash was not the tail rotor bouncing off the ground, no! The crash was caused by a kamikaze tomato that flew right up into the helicopter engine knocking it out of the sky and killing the pilot! Yes, Virginia tomatoes can fly!

They can strike without warning anywhere! You may be driving your car when the diabolical soft skinned fruits will block you in a back alley! They will find you in the woods! They will find you when you hide a large group of people in a football stadium.

The Killer tomatoes are a bit susceptible to disguises, though. Much like the Shawn of the Dead and Zombieland zombies can be easily fooled if you dress up and act like them. When Sam Smith, disguise expert, dresses up as a giant tomato he easily infiltrates the Killer Tomatoes forest camp. He would have gotten away with it too, if he hadn’t forgot himself for a moment and asked the tomatoes around him, “Could someone please pass the ketchup?” Sam Smith will be remembered in our hearts for his brave sacrifice.

Their only weakness, the one thing that can stop them? A little known hit from that bygone era of music from a small rather unknown artist, Ronny Desmond. The song is called “Puberty Love” and it is the only thing that can stop the onslaught of the tomatoes. Little known fact, Ronny Desmond was voiced by Matt Cameron, you know the drummer for Soundgarden and now Pearl Jam? Yeah that guy. This song renders the tomatoes small again and allows any normal person to simply squash the fruits into pulp!

So who wins?

You’ve met both the combatants. Now, in the words of Ken Watanabe from the 2014 remake of Godzilla, “Let them fight!”

First off the advantage has to go to the tomatoes. I mean they can move. That’s a pretty big advantage in any fight, right? The tomatoes can read and they can think too.

In the climax of the film one last giant tomato has Lois Fairchild cornered in an underground tunnel. Why didn’t it shrink like all the other tomatoes? It was wearing earmuffs! It couldn’t hear “Puberty Love” playing, GWAHAHA! But then Mason Dixon comes to Lois’s rescue by pulling out a piece of paper and holding it up to the tomato. The tomato stops and shivers in horror as the camera focuses on the piece of paper Mason is holding. It was the sheet music for “Puberty Love”! The tomato shrinks and gets squashed!

The Broodwich is immortal and does come back in later episodes of Aqua Teen Hunger Force. But even the Broodwich is not completely unbeatable. Its very weakness is the same ingredient that is its opponent today. The sun dried tomatoes can, and have been removed from the Broodwich in the past.

But the Broodwich cannot be taken apart or disassembled you may be saying to yourself. And I answer in the words of Master Shake, “Well I guess it can, cause I just did.”

The Killer tomatoes has various ways of killing it’s prey as I pointed out, it flies into helicopter engines and even it’s juice is deadly. While the Broodwich only really kills you by proxy by sending you to the skinless realm where Jerry axes you to death. So the Broodwich doesn’t even really kill you. But Jerry’s ax kills lots of people, and I’m not messing around with Jerry, or his ax!

The Broodwich is delectable and even without bacon, the best sandwich you could ever eat, while the Killer Tomatoes are not very edible at all and just kill people because…they don’t have a reason, they just do. I mean even Jerry has problems with his job every once in while. It’s not like has a crazy ax wielding psychopath all the time for no reason!

So, who wins?

Well since this is a one on one fight, (sorry Jerry) I have to give this bout to the Broodwich 10 out of 10 times.

So why the Broodwich? How can a sandwich fight a giant mutated fruit when it can’t move? The Broodwich is immortal. It can’t be killed. The tomatoes can’t squash it, a helicopter crash wont kill it, the tomatoes can’t feed their deadly juice to it, as it has no mouth. The only method the Killer Tomatoes have to fight this opponent is by eating it and as soon as they do that, they are sent to the skinless world where they lose their tough skin and meet Jerry’s ax. Even though the Broodwich’s one weakness, the one ingredient that it can be separated from is its sun dried tomatoes.

So, like it, love it, hate it, or question it, that is my answer to who wins this fight.

Happy Thanksgiving everybody!

 

New Casting: Ghostbusters

Courtesy brandedinthe80s.com
© Columbia Pictures.

“Oh I get it! I get it! Ohhh very cute.”

Yes friends and readers it is time once again for another epic recasting. And in the spirit of Halloween I thought what is more Halloweeny than ghosts?

And if you remember from the first post I’m not saying this movie should be remade, in fact I am hoping it wont be. I mean come on! There is no way in hell you could even try to retell the story of Ghostbusters and come anywhere near CLOSE to the success of, or the audience reaction and staying power of this beloved film that is the classic from 1984.

But if I had the chance to remake this film this is who I would cast.

Peter Venkman: Paul Rudd

 

So this casting was tough. Honestly how can you possibly even try to recast someone as brilliant as Bill Murray? You can’t, so I didn’t even try. My new casting definitely has a different feel from the original cast and being that Venkman is the front man for the group I needed someone who was affable, good looking, and of course has a good sense of comedic timing, (I Love You Man, Role Models, anyone disagree?). Nobody…let me say that again NOBODY  could ever replace Bill Murray. But if the world decides to take a HUGE nose dive and tries to remake this movie I would cast this guy as the lead.

 

Egon Spengler: Neil Patrick Harris

Courtesy http://www.downtownsantacruz.com/

 

This one was actually pretty easy. I wanted him to be a little bit older. He is the veteran scientist that has been doing his job for a while. He’s the guy that the other two go to for guidance and Neil Patrick Harris will give this role the same weight that Harold Ramis brought to it. We can buy him as a scientist and he will play beautifully off of Paul and the guy who will play Ray.

 

Raymond Stantz: Andy Samberg

Courtesy http://www.craveonline.com

 

I know he is a little manic in his comedy but with this cast I needed a guy who is a little manic. Andy will bring some over the top comedy and some quirkiness to the group that a remake will have to have if it has any real chance to stand on its own as a comedy. Besides who doesn’t like Andy Samberg? I also feel that while he can be over the top he can also tone it down for somber moments and with his performance on Brooklyn Nine-Nine I believe that he will be able to pull off the eccentric scientist role, embodied by Dan Aykroyd,  and give some fun comedic moments playing off the other two.

 

Dana Barrett: Emily Blunt

Courtesy People Magazine online edition,

 

So alright I’m playing a bit of favorites here. She was really good in Edge of Tomorrow and it was a complete 180 from her debut role in The Devil Wears Prada  proving that she’s capable of both comedy and action/drama and is able to melt into a role.  I think she would make a great successor in light of that to Sigourney Weaver who also did the whole bad ass action girl as Ripley from the Alien franchise and then turned on a dime to do comedy.

 

Louis Tully: Joe Lo Truglio

Courtesy spinoff.comicbookresources.com

This guy is sooooooo totally Louis Tully. He is the right age and looking back at the way Rick Moranis played this character I can’t think of another comedic actor that can play the somewhat socially awkward, well-meaning but hopelessly clumsy guy better than Joe Truglio. His performance on Brooklyn Nine-Nine is great and I can see him giving a memorable spin on Louis that would stand up to , and compliment the great performance that was given in 1984. That and he has an extensive resume working with Seth Rogan and company in Superbad and Pineapple Express.

Winston Zeddemore:  Terry Crews

Courtesy arewethereyet.wikia.com/wiki/Terry_Crews

I always pictured Winston, played by Ernie Hudson as a blue-collar guy who got a job with the Ghostbusters because he was either laid off or he was in search of a better paying job. His line of, “If there’s a steady paycheck in it, I’ll believe anything you say.” Speaks to this as a guy who is looking for a decent job which pays good. He’s not a crusader or a scientist. And to that end Terry Cruz is perfect. He can bring his blue-collar attitude from Everybody Hates Chris but from his Old Spice commercials we know that he can be just as over the top comedic as Andy Samberg when he wants to be. He will also bring “muscle” to the group that will make some of the later scenes in dealing with Walter Peck just a little bit more tense. Terry will add some bite to the character of Winston which I think will be great to see on film.

 

Janine Melnitz:  Stephanie Beatriz

Courtesy… um *cough*
http://www.hawtcelebs.com/category/stephanie-beatriz/

She is still something of an unknown actress. First first acting credit according to IMDB is in 2009 on The Closer.  She has had a pretty full last couple of years. I LOVE her on Brooklyn Nine-Nine. She plays the hard detective that grew up in the ghetto very well. And while most times she wears a constant scowl on her face it makes the few moments when she does smile that much more special. I think she is very attractive with great comedic timing and a flair for drama if need be. This is all that’s needed from Janine, originally played by Annie Potts, and I think that she would fit in great next to Truglio, Samberg, and Crews.

 

Walter Peck: Ralph Fiennes

Courtesy fanpop.com

So maybe this is a little too obvious. I mean could you imagine seeing Ralph Fiennes walking into the Ghostbusters’ firehouse and saying he’s from the EPA? Yeah, total bad guy alert. Ralph Fiennes is an amazing actor and he can be very affable and a nice guy too. Walter Peck, originally played by William Atherton,  thinks he is doing the right thing by shutting the Ghostbusters down.  Fiennes will bring the kind of conviction to the role that few actors could match. He has a great resume and did a phenomenal job in In Bruges. In thinking about who should play Walter Peck I can’t think of another actor who could nail it the way this guy could.

That’s my new casting for the movie Ghostbusters. Once again I’m not saying this movie should be remade. I just think it would be really fun to get this group together alone in a room and see what kind of comedy comes out. I would love to see all these guys together and see what they come up with. But this is just a fantasy of mine that will never see the light of day.

It’s nice to dream.

And yeah, I know that I cast four people from Brooklyn Nine-Nine but so what? Both Bill Murray and Dan Aykroyd both came from Saturday Night Live and the original casting was going to be almost all SNL alums but then John Belushi died so we got the cast we know and love now. So I don’t see an issue, besides we know they already have chemistry from the TV show and that can only make the cast more comfortable and able to play off each other on-screen.

 

 

Why Guardians of the Galaxy Works For Me.

So I haven’t been very active in the movie going scene this summer. In fact, I have only watched two or three, to include Edge of Tomorrow.

And I may be a little late into this discussion, but I was pleasantly surprised by Guardians of the Galaxy.

Why did it work for me?

Sure the comedy was there. I enjoyed the dry humor and the misunderstandings between Star-Lord and his compatriots. I thought Star-Lord, Peter Quill, telling Gamora about Footloose was hilarious. There you are in the theater rolling your eyes at whole thing thinking no one could possibly be seduced by this and he mentions that the people of the town, “…all walked around with sticks up their butts…” only for Gamora to interrupt with, ‘Who put the sticks up their butts? That’s cruel.”

Totally turning something that was cheesy into a genuine comedic moment.  The movie was peppered with such moments throughout. But that is not all it was.

When I saw the trailers I thought this movie was going to be a shallow comedy with not much going on. I don’t go the movies for comedies, I wait till they come out on Netflix or Red Box. So I wasn’t too impressed with what I was seeing in the trailers. In fact, the biggest question I had before I saw the movie was why did they cast Bradley Cooper as Rocket the raccoon?

In a regular comedy usually this character would be there purely for funny moments, or as a gag. I wondered why they went with Cooper’s voice and didn’t pick something a little more high pitched like just about every cartoon squirrel, mouse, rodent out there. I was a little sad that they didn’t cast someone like Dwight Schultz in the role.

And then I watched the movie and when he and Drax go at it outside the gambling den he has legitimate gripes with the group. Gamora called him vermin and Drax called him a rodent and he was genuinely hurt by and pissed off about it, especially since it was he who saved their butts and facilitated their escape from the prison. That is what, to me, a character in this situation would be feeling and be pretty upset about. Rocket was an actual character with funny moments, as opposed a funny moment trying to be a character. His anger and hurt were deftly expressed by Cooper’s voice acting without turning into hysterics.

As I was watching this movie I couldn’t help but make comparisons to the old Sci-Fi channel TV show called Farscape. Now I did not watch this show during its original run from 1999-2003. I have been watching it on Netflix recently and for the life of me I can’t understand why it has an 8.3 rating on IMDB. I think Farscape was trying to be what Guardians of the Galaxy accomplished: an irreverent Sci- Fi yarn composed of a barely held together rag-tag group with conflicting personalities. A key factor in why one worked for me and the other didn’t lies with the main characters. 

John Crichton comes off as a huge asshole multiple times throughout the run of the show. There are times, very few beyond the first season, where he is the glue keeping the crew together. But then he turns around and is hugely emo and wants to throw people out of the nearest airlock. One minute he wants to fight everybody and he leaves Moya  and she starbursts away, due to unforeseen circumstances, and he is left on some planet stranded. When his crew shows up in an attempt to recover him, he acts like they shouldn’t have come, he is happy where he is living Sasquatch style with a terrible beard and a bunch of racist caricatures of Polynesians. Talk about being an ungrateful git.

Star-Lord is consistently the guy that holds the group together he is consistently written. He keeps Drax and Gamora in check and he’s even empathetic to Rocket without threatening anyone or putting Rocket in a choke hold…which John Crichton does regularly to Rygel.

We also don’t see Star-Lord in his being flagrantly promiscuous, unlike say, Chris Pine’s CPT Kirk. I hate that we have to see Chris Pine get out of bed with a girl in every film, or two cat girls like we saw in Into Darkness. Yeah, we GET IT he’s totally hetero and doesn’t have the GAY and btw neither does Spock ’cause he’s in a drama llama relationship with Uhura.  Star-Lord’s female companions and exploits are kept in the background, like having a girl suddenly pop her head into the cockpit after he blasts off from that first planet. And while it is implied that this was just some random woman he picked up if you closely examine the scene that’s not exactly explicitly said. She could be anyone, it is up to us to interpret that. Whereas John Crichton, on the other hand, can have as many girls on the side as he wants and he still has Aeryn Sun waiting in the wings for him. (God forbid he even gets a hint of the idea that Aeryn might have prostituted herself to Crais in order to save their lives. And never mind the fact that he shows jealousy, not concern, over whether or not someone close to him is implied to have prostituted herself.) Star-Lord doesn’t parade his sexuality around and even when he gets close to Gamora his ridiculous attempts are undercut by something even more ridiculous which is refreshing.

The characters in this film have real arcs, they are developed characters before the film starts and they continue to grow throughout the film. Drax is different at the end of the movie from when we first met him in the prison. Star Lord gets a little more information as to why he has been thrown into this reality so far removed from his former life on Earth. Even Groot and Rocket get fully realized arcs and motivations. Tell me how often that happens in a film. Groot’s vocabulary consists of exactly five words, Groot, am, are, I, and we. And somehow he travels a believable character arc… with FIVE words of dialogue. It reminds a little of Kurt Russel’s character from Soldier. He only had 104 words and he had a fully realized and believable and arc as well. But Groot does it with five. Rocket also grows and changes with the story. He goes from only caring about the big score to actually breaking down at the thought of Groot sacrificing himself and instead of running away, or taking care of himself at the end of the film, he joins with the rest of the team in the friendship wall to defeat Ronan.

I liked this movie a lot more than I did The Avengers because of the characters and the arcs that they progress through. The Avengers was fun, sure. But the characters had almost no growth from beginning to end. Captain America was the same at the end as he was in the beginning. I think Tony was really the one to grow the most. That movie was more about them coming together as a team and I guess that is a kind of an arc but Guardians did the same thing and managed to take the time to have each character grow as individuals as well.

Yes, there were tragic back stories but unlike other franchises super hero or not Guardians didn’t disappear up its own ass through heavy handed grimderp. As Rocket pointed out to Drax, “We’ve all got dead people, but that is no reason to revel in nihilism and seek out death”, and in Drax’s case nearly cause the death of everyone involved. People don’t stop laughing, making jokes, and getting into stupid situations just because something terrible happened to them. They also don’t stop making friends.

I wish that the movie took a little more time to get away from so much CGI. I think that CGI is what is slowly killing Science Fiction in Hollywood. Everything looks the same. Guardians of the Galaxy also looks a little generic to me. The set pieces looked pretty cool, but the space battles looked a little too familiar to me. We’ve seen it a hundred times since Independence Day, through Ender’s Game. I wish for a time where the directors and producers really put in the time to make their movies and their ships look distinctive in some way: The Enterprise, Star Destroyers, the Sulaco, the Nostromo, and the ORIGINAL Galactica. These ships are vivid in people’s minds and memory’s. Can you really recall what any ship in Ender’s Game looked like? So I think Guardians of the Galaxy suffered a little from that but its a small gripe.

The trailers had this “generic” old music playing which I didn’t like. I mean, come on? There is no reason in hell why they should plaster an old song like, “I’m Hooked on a Feeling” by Blue Swede, all over the trailers except for some kind of gimmick. The trailers obviously had the exact opposite effect on me that the marketers would have wanted. Absolutely NOTHING from the trailers worked for me on ANY level.

Then…I watched the movie. And yes “Totally Awesome Mix 1” was revealed. I’m not saying I agree with the songs on the mix as being anywhere near MY top ten or even twenty but the reason behind it was explained and it wasn’t just shoe horned into the movie as a gimmick. It allowed us, as the audience, to grasp just how important Star-Lord’s relationship with his mother really was.

That is rare in movies like this. Usually the character just kind of moves on and becomes some kind of flagrant or ruffian with no ties to his past, his home, or his family, but somehow is placed in a situation where he can save the day and be the hero. This movie used that music and the “Totally Awesome Mix” to show us just how much his mother and their relationship meant to him. Something that I thought was just a trailer gimmick turned out to be pretty important to the main character and to the story as a whole. And that really hit home with me.

The very real characters and their motivations are what makes this movie work for me. I’m not going to claim it is an instant classic, it does have some issues as I’ve mentioned above, but maybe it’ll have some staying power. I hope the sequel maintains the direction set forth by this one.

I could see myself buying this movie. Over the last few years, I haven’t added many summer movies to my collection. So, me saying I might buy it, is pretty high praise.

Emerald City Comic Con

 

In case you haven’t already figured it out, I’m a bit of…well…a nerd. And I jumped at the opportunity to go and see some of the celebrity guests that showed up at the ECCC this year.

However, with the good must invariably come the bad so let me get that out of the way so I don’t end this post with a bad taste in my mouth. One of the glaringly huge black eyes that this convention came with was that it was hosted in Seattle. I wasn’t born here in the Northwest. I just live and work here, for now God willing, and this pathetic excuse for a, “city” is just that, a tired grouping of buildings just hanging out by the bay that somebody, somewhere decided to call a city.

I would like to think of myself as pretty well traveled. I’ve been all around this great big country of ours and to few places in the world. (Although i still haven’t been to Europe, go figure) I’ve been to South Africa and New York, Seoul, and lived in Ulsan, Korea for a time. I’ve been to South America and Nova Scotia, Canada and what I have found is that Seattle is on the bottom half of the list of best to worst cities I’ve been to. Some of you may say that I’m just hating on Seattle because I don’t know how awesome and beautiful it is to live there? Seattle ain’t got nothing on this place.

Franschhoek, South Africa everybody,

And..

Cape Town! Seattle eat your heart out.

My other pet peeve was that: THERE IS NO STREET FOOD HERE!

Seriously how can you call yourself a city when there is not a single street food vendor to be found anywhere! Especially since you’re hosting one of, if not the, biggest cons in the Northwest?! Every other major city I’ve been to, New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Seoul there are mounds of great, cheap street food to be had into the wee hours of the morning. If you know where to look you can get a piddly little hot dog in New York City at 3:00 am. But here in Seattle? Right next to the famed Market on Pike street, on a Friday, the Chipotle right up the street closed at 8:00 pm.

8:00 pm!!

On a Friday, during a huge tourist attraction! Does this makes sense to anybody else?

The only things open were mediocre restaurants masquerading about with 5 star prices and 45 minute waits! Even something as basic as a bagel or sandwich was close to 5 bucks and for some unspeakable reason extremely hard to find and tasted bad!

Of course Seattle is not all bad. The hotel we stayed at was fairly close to the convention Center and we were able to walk from our hotel so we didn’t have to pay for additional parking…that’s ok cuz the hotel charged us over $70 bucks for the two days of parking we were there!!! Seriously?!! This is how great and awesome the city of Seattle is? It’s so pretty here…but you’ll only see the ground because every time you turn around you’re getting bent over and EFFED RIGHT UP THE ASS!!

I CAN’T WAIT TO SEE THIS PLACE IN MY REAR VIEW MIRROR AS I DRIVE AWAY…FOREVER!!!!

…….whew….Now that that’s out of the way we can start talking about stuff that made me smile and forget, at least for a while, where I was.

Friday Morning was a bit of, “OK, cows lets keep her moving in the corrals” And if you have never been to one of these try to picture a queue line at your favorite theme park then picture it about 3 times as wide with people being told to shove as far forward as they can. But hey we got these rare limited print ECCC, “Walking Dead” comic books 😀

I don’t even have to name and any names when it comes to this guy, but nonetheless I squeed anyways when Michael Biehn was called up to the stage for the first panel of the day and convention.
He’s a bit older now but I still saw Kyle when he spoke. There was the obligatory gratefulness that he felt toward James Cameron and how he appreciated and really felt like Kyle, Hicks, and Jonny Ringo from, “Tombstone” were his most favorite roles and the ones that he feels resonates most with his fan base. I couldn’t argue with that.

He did confess that even though he played a variety of bad asses he never really saw himself that way. A fan asked, “If he felt that way then how did he do all the stunt work or did he use a stunt double in, “K-2.” Michael immediately stood up and pointed to the microphone, “This is the camera, ” slammed it down on the ground and dropped onto his stomach. Then he proceeded with, “climbing” the floor. It was fairly lol worthy look into actors who, “do their own stunts.”

Then we sat in on the Dwight Schultz panel. If you don’t know the name off hand don’t feel too bad. But you should remember Mad Eye Murdock! He was much more controlled but very funny. He told of the story of how he got the role of Barkley in Star Trek TNG. Apparently, he was friends with Whoopie Goldberg and he told her how much of a huge fan he was of the show and when he got back to his home his agent called him and told him that there was a script waiting for him.  He asked if he had to audition and the answer came back, “No, you don’t need to audition for this.” This was intriguing because he told us that he had only gotten 7 jobs from auditioning  when he went to pick it up he realized it was the Star Trek script. He had imagined playing the part of a dashing space hero only to realize as he read the script that Barkley was an uber nerd. Nonetheless, he graciously accepted the role and the rest, as we say, is history.

He spoke at length about how he approaches a character. This was in response to a question about his character on the show ,”Chowder“. For him, the character starts with the voice. So he tries to imagine what a small excitable animal whose heart is beating a thousand times a minute would sound like and out came this insanely high pitched voice. Of course he did preform a little for the audience as well by answering a few questions in character as Mad Eye Murdock. This was prefaced by a hilarious imitation of Sharlto Copley, the actor who assumed the mantle of Murdock in the 2010 film of, “The A Team“.

And then there was the great and stunning Nichelle Nichols. If I had to sum her up in one word it would be, “generous”. I mean she has been going to cons; Star Trek, Sci Fi, comic book, and probably just about every other con there is for the last 30 years. She has told these stories a thousand times or more and when I was watching her on stage it was like she was telling the story of how she met Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. for the first time.

My wife and I went to see her for an autograph signing (I mean how could you not?) and my wife couldn’t help herself, and complimented her on just how beautiful she still is. Nichelle stopped mid scrawl, looked up said, “Hearing that from a true beauty like you is a real compliment”.

I have never felt quite like I did in that moment.

We saw Michael Dorn as well. I have to admit I was expecting him to be a bit…well…bigger. I mean I was expecting, “Worf”. I was!

Michael is not Worf but he is every bit the gentleman.

He did tell of this brilliant moment he and Patrick Stewart shared on the bridge of the Enterprise. See, he got to stand behind the bridge where he just got to see the tops of everybody’s heads. And Patrick Stewart would sit in his chair very regally and so one day, after the set had been cleared of just about everybody, Michael in a very dramatic, Worf voice declared, “The King SITS on his throne. But little does the king know that awaiting him from the treacherous shadows of the fair court lies DEATH…from…this…BOTTLECAP!!”

And then these two grown men proceeded to play make believe and for 20 minutes Patrick Steward died, spewing purple faux- Shakespearean prose everywhere, “Ah, how gruesome does this traitorous wind fell my beating heart. Shall death grip and rip my beating organ from its place in my proud chest!” .

And none of it was caught on tape.

Such a waste.

I am a big fan of, “Dredd” and so when Karl Urban came out on stage I squeed again! I mean this guy is so awesome! It did take a little bit to get used to his New Zealand accent since I’ve only seen his stateside work.

He opened up by preempting everyone’s questions about another, “Dredd” movie and a second season of, “Almost Human” with a, “I got nothin.” He said that the producers were in talks with Fox over a second season and that the answer would be known in about four weeks. So for fans of the show keep your fingers crossed! As for another Dredd movie that’s a lot less clear. It hasn’t been shot down but it hasn’t been put on anyone’s table yet. The DVD sales have spoken to the studios though and hopefully the post theatrical enthusiasm from the fans will carry the franchise back into theaters with a sequel.

He did have a bit to say about making, “Dredd” though and ranted about a certain actor wanting to play Dredd with their helmets off, “NO!! Not that! Not (a very good Stallone imitation and yell) ‘I AM THE LAW!!”

When we got through his queue line for an autograph he looked me up and down and complimented me on my Solid Snake costume. I could only thank him and say that I appreciated his compliment. This is Dredd complimenting me on my costume!…God I am such a nerd sometimes:) He also complimented my beautiful wife. Sometimes I feel like the luckiest and the most fortunate man alive.

But after all that the best part of the con for me was getting to see Ron Perlman and meeting with him.

 

He talked a bit about how he had no idea the, “Sons of Anarchy” would have been as popular as it is. Is it OK for me to confess that I have not watched a single episode? He was such a presence up on stage.

I mean the man was genuine and honest and he didn’t try to put on a show for anyone. A young girl got up to microphone and asked him very simply what was the best part of playing, “Hell Boy“?

“Pizza”.

And that was his answer. He was smiling and after a minute he did expand a little on the answer, “And also the cigars.”

He couldn’t seem to talk enough about how much he was indebted to Guillermo Del Torro and what a great visionary and artistic director he was. It was through his force of will and vision that, “Hell Boy” was ever even conceived as a film project in the first place. “It may not have the fan base of, “Avengers” or, “Iron Man” or any of those other “bullshit franchises” (that is a direct quote) “But the die hard fans of Hell Boy deserve a third movie because that is what the character arc of Hell Boy needs and what the fans deserve”.

I don’t see Ron Perlman as a guy who pulls his punches, do you?

I went up to him to get his autograph and his hands are just as big as you would think, at least twice as big as mine, but the guy is not pretentious at all. He said to my wife, “How you doing, doll?” and it sounded just as natural as any other greeting, but only Ron could have pulled that off. I told him how disappointed I was when I found out that he hadn’t gotten to play the role of Odin in “Thor”.

He said, “Yeah me too…who ended up getting that role anyway?”

My wife and I both answered, “Anthony Hopkins”.

Ron shrugged his shoulders and cocked his head a little, “Oh, well… I mean if I’m going to lose to anybody it may as well be Tony.” Just how cool is this guy!

So I think I’ve gushed enough for one post. I hope it was entertaining at least. I had a great time at the con, could have done without Seattle but hey what can you do? The costumes by and large where great and very well done I got a few pictures, not nearly enough it seems, looking back but then I could have taken a hundred and it still wouldn’t have been enough. That and I really didn’t want to just go around taking pictures of everybody, that would have been creepy.

I guess all that’s left is to keep our fingers crossed for a second season of “Almost Human”, keep an eye out for news of a,”Hell Boy 3″ and, “Dredd 2” and who knows maybe Michael Dorn will get that Worf spin off TV show he has been developing and is in discussions for? We can only hope.

Buried Moments

You know the ones I’m talking about, those strange small moments that were so awesome but didn’t really seem to fit? Or just moments that for you personally really made an impact but everybody else just seemed to forget about or not care?

It’s bothered me for a little while now. Why is it that some moments, like in certain movies, stick with us. Why do we remember a particular thirty second stretch of film over the rest of the two hours? Why do some movies only have one or two good moments in a little over an hour and a half, while other three-hour plus movies are filled with great moments that people remember equally?

There are moments in some movies that are just damn cool. Some of you will shoot me for this but I have to say that, “Highlander II: The Quickening” has one such moment.

I have always loved this moment! Is this a good movie? No. Does its plot have more holes than a block of Swiss Cheese? Yes. Does it feel anything like the first Highlander? No. But this moment is great. Yes it’s cheesy, yes it’s a complete ass pull, but that doesn’t take away from how great the moment is.

Now do you need to sit through the whole Highlander II movie to enjoy this one unhinged, come from out of nowhere moment? Not really. This moment has no real significance or connection to the rest of the movie. Ramirez has his katana in that little shaft with him when the fan drops. Yet, Connor (Christopher Lambert) has it for the final fight with Kitana (Michael Ironside)? It was a flash of genies writing that somebody somewhere said we need this in the movie somewhere. So they contrived this little trap room and had all three of the characters enter it, just so Sean Connery could deliver that awesome line.

This movie is old but I put that particular quote up on a white board once and people read it and really liked it and commented  about it being really deep. Even a really crappy movie that probably shouldn’t have been made can leave a mark or two.

On the other hand there are those moments in some movies that you do have watch the entire film. Those moments that seem to be written for that movie and if you don’t watch the whole thing from start to finish the impact of that scene or moment will be totally lost.

I speak in particular of, “Boondock Saints 2 All Saints Day“. Not a particularly good movie. It was in fact a complete rehash, redress, repackaging of the original but in all the wrong ways. There were insights into Billy Connolly’s character’s back story that were interesting but that’s about it. The moment that made this movie not a complete waste of my time and glad that I watched it, was this scene.

This scene on its own doesn’t have nearly the impact as it does when you watch the whole movie. This comes at a time when the brothers just watched one of their Boston cop friends, Greenly (Bob Marley) just get shot and killed. They are questioning everything they have done and everything they still wanted to do. Are they really the righteous holy avengers that they always assumed themselves to be? Are they wrong? Are they no better than the people they have killed so far? Is the cost too great?

In that dream sequence David Della Rocco showed up and reassured them that he had chosen to follow them and that the decision was one he made for himself, absolving the brothers’ of their guilt.  For me it was a strangely kind of emotional moment.

This is a weird and out of left field comparison but, “The Muppet Movie,” had a similar moment where Kermit the frog is having a crisis of faith.

Kind of the same thing. Kermit’s friend’s didn’t go because he told them to but because they believed in the dream. Just as with David Della Rocco, he didn’t follow the MacManus Brothers because of them, he believed in what they were doing. Or, I might be putting too much thought into some popcorn flicks and a family film from 1979.

Another such moment which feels, at least for me, that the whole movie was building up too was in, “Gangs of New York“. After watching this 2 hour and forty-seven minute film there are some really great, memorable moments, mainly by Bill the Butcher (Daniel Day Lewis). But toward the end of the film after Leo DiCaprio gets his face scarred and Cameron Diaz nurses him back to health. There is this moment.

The whole character of Bill and the rest of movie could be said to be building toward this moment. Amsterdam facing Bill in broad daylight, Bill looking completely unconcerned about this rather large funeral procession walking past him and he responds to Leo’s one word with two equally cool, but far more powerful words, “Challenge accepted”. You see this in the trailers but I didn’t know just how much those two words would stick with me after the end credits rolled. You had to watch the whole movie for those two words to make sense. The apex moment in a great period piece film.

And who can forget this little piece of awesomeness!

I mean come on! Who can say they are a fan of the Predator franchise or Science Fiction in general and not love this! I’m not saying, “Predator 2” is good or bad. It does have some cheesy moments in there, but this one victory scream and taking a bolt of lightning almost wipes out all the cheesy moments, almost. This movie is worth watching just because of this moment! I don’t say that all that often but after watching it the first time 10-15 years ago I didn’t remember much except for this moment. And really this is all we ever needed from the Predator. Looking bad ass with weapon drawn in one hand, and in the other a skull with back bone still attached.

And then there are the moments that don’t really make the movie. There have been a few movies that I loved when I first watched them but they have since fallen out of favor with me over the years. One such epic which I haven’t been able to finish in over a decade is, “Braveheart“.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the music and the first half of the movie is awesome. But then as the 2 hour and 57 minute long epic keeps going it becomes tired for me. I just can’t seem to stick with it. The opening shots are so beautiful and the music is so powerful.

And when his dad dies, “Your heart is free. Have the courage to follow her,” and of course Uncle Argyle, “playing outlawed tunes on outlawed pipes.”

These moments all happen within the first half hour and the movie never hits me like that again. It’s like Mel Gibson blew his load and then made another 2 and half hours of movie hoping that the wave of that first 30 minutes would carry us through to the end. But if you’ve seen it once is sticking around for the rest of the ride a second time really worth it?

Of course epics are not the only type of movies that suffer from this. Braveheart is a good movie overall while, “The Shadow” isn’t all that great. For my part I like this movie. I own it and count it as a gem among my collection. I like the music and Alec Baldwin in the title role. But it does have a lot of problems. It also suffers from what I just mentioned about, “Braveheart”

This scene takes place very early in the film and the movie never gets back to this type of atmosphere. The Shadow is in complete control and the gangsters are debilitated by fear. This is what the Shadow should have been doing throughout the film. Instead the movie just kind of goes along, riding the crest of those really great early scenes hoping that it will carry the audience the rest of the way through. Like I said, I like this movie but most people didn’t. However some people who have seen this scene really liked it. If only the rest of the movie could have held up by comparison.

Also in this vein, but to a lesser extent in, “Patton.”

This moment is one of a few really memorable moments in the film. This is a really good movie but it’s close to 3 hours and after you watch it the experience of it stays with you but not a whole lot of individual moments.

This leads me into another medium altogether. Poems.

I have read a few epic and short poems in my time. There is one I was introduced to a while ago by one Dan Simmons who wrote a 4 book series of science fiction called, “The Hyperion Cantos“. This where I was introduced to John Keats. He took an excerpt from one of Keats poems and put it in the, “The Fall of Hyperion“.

“Who alive can say,
‘Thou art no Poet may’st not tell thy dreams?’
Since every man whose soul is not a clod
Hath visions, and would speak, if he had loved
And been well nurtured in his mother tongue.
Whether the dream now purpos’d to rehearse
Be poet’s or fanatic’s will be known
When this warm scribe my hand is in the grave.”

That was all I needed and those words were so powerful I almost immediately memorized them. But if you read the whole poem:

http://www.john-keats.com/gedichte/the_fall_of_hyperion.htm

Those words get lost in the sheer immensity of the poem itself reducing whatever impact that first stanza may have had.

“The Wheel of Time“, does this too. After 15 1000+ page books it’s finally over. It only took Robert Jordan dying for it to get finished, which is more than I can say for, “A Song of Ice and Fire,” which will never get finished before Martin dies and probably not even after he dies either.

But in, “The Wheel of Time” I remember some moments but the only direct quote I can remember from all those books? “Responsibility is like a mountain and only after death can we set that mountain down,” said by al’Lan Mandragoran to Rand in one of the earlier books I think it was, “The Dragon Reborn,” but I can’t remember. This could have been a really spectacular story that was accessible to just about everybody. But the sheer weight of 15 books is a turn off to a lot of people. Few people want to get involved with a story that will take that long to read and has that many books. There are some great moments and some great characters but they get lost under the mass of other useless side characters and frivolous chapters. Did we really need 15 pages to tell us that Matt went out and bought a piece of wood for a bow shaft and a horse?

And on and on and on it goes. The world is filled with really great moments, really deep scenes that stay with us and are worth sharing. I can’t help but make a comparison here to all of our social media. If someone goes on a trip to the Himalayas and takes a few pics and posts them to their wall, great! that is cool and worth sharing. posting pics of you getting drunk and making out with a same-sex friend are not really necessary to share.

We have buried our own worthy memories under mountains of frivolous shit that needs to be waded through to find the gems. There was a great Naruto + Black Parade video that was made a long time ago on YouTube. 3 months after I watched it the first time, I couldn’t find it again because of the mountains of crap videos that other people had put up. Sometimes it was just a scene they clipped straight out of the series with the song laid over it, and the scene didn’t even have anything to do with the song at all!

I treasure these movie moments as memorable to me. You may have others you remember for different reasons. You may think I’m completely insane for remembering these moments at all. I guess this is why we all remember old movie quotes and quotes from poems and stories because they meant something to us at the time.

One of my favorite and one of the best cameos in film has to be Sean Connery in, “Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves“.

Who didn’t give a gasp or a little squee of joy when you heard that Scottish voice and then the camera panned over and we all saw Sean Connery himself dismounting his horse? It’s good to be the king.

From that same movie is one of my favorite training montages. Yes even over all the Rocky montages.

I think this is the perfect montage. It has a great piece of upbeat music. It shows Kevin Costner and Morgan Freeman, but it focuses on the nameless villagers. We see their journey from simple farmers to competent swordsmen and archers. This is less than two minutes long and it is perfect being that short. We get a lot of information in a short amount of time

I always get a weird look from people, or a crooked smile from people when they ask me what my favorite movie is. My favorite movie is and always has been “The Neverending Story“. This movie had everything for me. It has the hero’s journey. It has loss, anger, but still even after the movie goes to complete black we are shown a glowing hope, a single grain of sand. A single idea where our dreams can be born again. This coming after the Childlike Empress tells us that their world is in danger of disappearing.

I could go on about how much this movie means to me and how it is still relevant today. Can anyone really look around at some of our cities like Detroit and Chicago and say that there are a good many people in the country who have lost hope and have forgotten their dreams?

But for me the one moment that sums up the film and my favorite movie moment of all time is this one.

“I never knew it was that beautiful.”

And that beauty is something that will be forever the standard by which all other beautiful movie moments will be judged…at least by me.

And hey maybe none of these moments did anything for you. That’s OK. Our movie moments, those that we remember is a personal thing. Hold on to those moments, they don’t come around all that often and honestly there has been less and less moments like these for me in the last couple of years. There are still some decent movies out there but the last movie I saw that would be worth buying was, “The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug“. It was great and as soon as the extended cut comes out I’ll buy it for sure. But we are three months deep into the new year and nothing has caught my attention or left much of a mark on me.

But I have hope that movie moments like these, personal moments that I will remember for years, will be made again. I just have to wait and keep my eyes open because moments don’t last for too long. Maybe that’s why I find them so incredibly cool!

“It’s a far better thing I do, than I have ever done before. A far better resting place I go to, than I have ever known” (Charles Dickens; A Tale of Two Cities)

I stopped following “The Following”

And you can too!

Yes, I have to admit that my time with this stupid t.v show is now over. I didn’t watch the first season as it aired like most people did. But I was caught up in the mysterious promos and commercials for season two that have been playing pretty much throughout the bottom half of the football season.

I was, I have to admit, intrigued by the visual style of those tv spots. Hearing Kevin Bacon narrate to us about Joe Carroll and with his profile turning towards the camera, shifting from the shadows to reveal the villain instead. (At the time I didn’t know who the “other guy” was) It looked like a mystery thriller that might be worth watching. So my wife and I started watching Season 1 on Netflix.

For the first 4-5 episodes I was genuinely interested in what was going on. The idea of this well thought out plan by Joe Carroll (James Purefoy) and the execution of it by wide eyed admiring college kids was interesting. The down and out, drunk former FBI agent, Ryan Hardy (Kevin Bacon), haunted by his own admiration for Carroll, and subsequent failure to save the lives of the women he killed, was a bit cliché but Kevin Bacon made it work. The character didn’t feel tired to me. The FBI was portrayed as having some intelligence but the plan that was put in place years ago was just out of their reach.

But then the 5th or 6th episode happened. You know, the one where the three college kids are locked up and surrounded in the farm house, people are getting shot and somehow guys come from out of the word work to shoot SWAT team members in the back, dirty cops shoot down other cops and Emma (Valorie Curry) still makes it out of the farm house with little Joey in tow.

The show has been on a steady down turn since that episode. I diligently watched the rest of the first season hoping that things would get back to those first 3 or 4 episodes but it never did. In fact the show, to uphold Joe Carroll as this brilliant mastermind (which he is NOT) let the FBI sink into further and further depths of blind incompetence in order to lend the villain some kind of credibility.

Nowhere was this more painfully obvious than at the finale of Season One. Ryan and Claire (Natalie Zea) are standing in a darkened room. Claire goes off to take a shower and Ryan accepts take out from the guard at the door. He puts the food down on the table and gets stabbed by his next door neighbor with benefits, who in turn stabs Claire as she runs blindly into the room.

This might have been all well and good as far as shocker endings go for cheap slasher flicks. Except…this is so colossally stupid it insults the audience and makes me question the competency of the writing staff!

How did this woman get into the goddamn house?

The FBI would have done an exhaustive sweep of the entire house before letting anyone stay there, and they would have identified any points of entry. That is of course if the FBI would be stupid enough to let Ryan Hardy and Claire stay there knowing that there were people out there gunning for them. They would have been spirited away into witness protection ASAP.

We have already seen through flashbacks that this girl, Molly I think her name was, has visited Joe at least once in prison, because we see her talk about moving to New York and then again about wanting to be the one to kill Ryan. Either way in that very first episode Ryan Hardy orders a complete list of everyone who has talked to Joe in prison and especially those that visited him more than once. There was something like 47 people who had visited with another twenty something more who had visited him more than once.

In all that time you’re telling me that Ryan Hardy never looked at the photos of those people? Even after the fact that “the plan” had been in place for over two years? He never bothered to take at look at those people and say, “Oh, hey this girl is my fuck buddy next door neighbor”?

Never mind that once it was established that Joe Carroll cult had many sleeper cells embedded in all walks of life,how is it that FBI didn’t launch a background check on everyone and their associates that Carroll was known to be obsessed with like say… RYAN FREAKING HARDY, the guy who took him down?!

That was the end for me. I did watch the first two episodes of season two and once again Ryan Hardy is acting like a complete and total moron and insulting everything I know about how real police and FBI go about their work. He should never go into a building alone without some kind of backup. He should never try to take down this obviously huge criminal organization by himself. And yet that is what the show is trying to feed us?

Also I don’t know about you but I sure as hell wouldn’t snuggle up to some body right after he killed a man, even if the deceased was a dirty preacher who regularly saw my prostitute mother. Would you?

This whole show has some semblance of following the Manson family and their little cult of death and murder. But here’s the thing. Every single serial killer who has a distinct and theatrical MO, like what Joe Carroll’s followers are portrayed as having, gets caught. No ifs, ands, or butts about it. Charles Manson, Jeffery Dahmer, Ted Bundy, the Summer of Sam guy, the list goes on and they are all behind bars or dead.

The FBI is not stupid. They follow procedure. Sure, there’s some discontent over the mountains of paperwork and the rule of, “you’re not supposed to kill anyone” and ,”everyone has their rights to a free and unbiased trail.” I’m sure you’d be hard pressed to find a single FBI agent who hasn’t, at some point, got fed up with the bureaucracy and wanted to go rouge and just kill the bad guys then and there.

But they don’t. Say what you want about our justice system. For the most part I have to believe it works. These people who fill these jobs are smart. Smarter than most criminals and they have resources and a whole bunch of people to rely on. Something that serial killers and cults just don’t have.

If this shows lasts past it’s second season I will be surprised. I find it hard to believe that a film veteran like Kevin Bacon would even want to be a part of this project for too much longer. But then again I guess actors need work and he’ll probably just ride this till it crashes and burns.

I hope for his sake the show doesn’t kill his reputation. Unfortunately it killed my interest a long time ago.

Faran Tahir and Hollywood

Wow, ok so this might seem like another heavy topic for me to be tackling so close to my last heavy post. It was a bit long that last one and CHOCK full of great stuff if I do so myself. But, this post is less me being on a soap box and just wanting to point out a few of my hopes for the future of Hollywood, and maybe Americans, in general.

So about four or five years ago I started watching the SyFy network. It used to be the SciFi network by I guess the channel heads or whoever calls the shots wanted to be more “hip” and “with it” for the newer, younger generation. Stupid, I know but what do you expect from people who are so far removed from reality? All they have to go off of is focus groups and surveys. Bean counters run the world I say BEAN COUNTERS!! We’re all DOOMED!!…. But, I digress.

So, yes started watching SyFy and a show called, Warehouse 13. This led to me watching another show called, Sanctuary and, SGU Stargate Universe which was really bad, by the way. Anyway,

Anyway back to Warehouse 13. About halfway through the first season they introduced a character that was full of on-screen charisma and presence. This guy quietly said his lines but with such gravity it was like how most people feel when they hear Morgan Freeman talk. But this guy was brown (as in not black). The character’s name was regent Kosan or

About halfway through the first season they introduced a character that was full of on-screen charisma and presence. This guy quietly said his lines but with such gravity it was like how most people feel when they hear Morgan Freeman talk. But this guy was brown (as in not black). The character’s name was regent Kosan or Adwin Kosan though I don’t remember anyone calling him by his first name. This guy quickly became my favorite reappearing character, yes even over H.G. Wells although she had a pretty cool character arc as well.

His name is Faran Tahir. You may remember him from, Iron Man as Raza, the leader of the terrorists who kidnap Tony Stark early in the film.

On, Sanctuary, after the first season, the character of Ashley was replaced with Kate Freelander played by Indian actress, Agam Darshi. For me, the character was a little flat. I didn’t buy her “hard” street tough past that the show, for good or ill, tried to pass off on us. The character was written as a stereotypical white chick and she was given a horrendous wardrobe that looked like something out of Oliver. She looked a little dumpy like her clothes never really fit her.

Her character was written badly in my humble opinion. They had a very attractive ethnic woman and no real way to write her with any panache or sense of her ethnicity. Now in the “Kali” three parter they did address some of her westernization and in those episodes she was well written. It was because of those episodes I was torn for a long time on if I actually liked her character or not especially when the audience had to compare her to the woman who played Kali, Sahar Biniaz.

This woman exuded elegance and refinement easily and the writers took advantage of that in crafting the character of Kali. They also knew how to dress her, too. I know that Kate Freelander couldn’t be running around in sewers in a beautiful sari like this; however, it was painfully obvious that the clothing department knew what to do with Kali but not with Kate Freelander and as a result Agam Darshi suffered in a side by side comparison with Biniaz on screen.

Around this time, I began to refer to the SyFy channel as the unofficial ambassador to Bollywood. Here in just two shows around the same time period of one or two years I saw more ethnic actors carrying their own weight next to the likes of Kate Mulgrew, Anthony Michael Hall, and Amanda Tapping. It was a trend I had hoped would last for a while. Which it didn’t, until Sleepy Hollow and, Brooklyn Nine-Nine came along that is.

So, back to Faran Tahir. After I saw him on, Warehouse 13, he started popping up all over the place. He was in an episode of Burn Notice as a dying drug lord who for all his faults was a pretty decent dad as evil drug lords go. He was in Star Trek 2009 as the original commander of the USS Kelvin, who gives Kirk’s father command before he goes over to Nero’s ship.

But then he shows up as a main character, or at least a main secondary character in the movie, Escape Plan with Stallone and Schwarzenegger and not only does he hold his own amidst the likes of these two titans and Jim Caviezel, but at least for me he stole the show! He even got a noble death scene, sacrificing himself, so that at least somebody could get out of the prison and tell the world about it.

For some of you out there this might be the biggest endorsement I could give to this awesome actor. For others, you might really question my sanity, and for still others you won’t care and that’s fine too. I believe in this guy so much that if I was in control of casting a new Dune movie I would give him the role of Duke Atreides. I wouldn’t even need to audition him! That is how powerful I find his performances. That and if I had that kind of power I would love playing with the ethnicities  of the characters (I think Frank Herbert would have been totally keen on that anyways). I loved Idris Elba as Heimdall in Thor even though Heimdall is said to be, “the whitest of the white” and I would love to see other such castings, you know, kind of the EXACT OPPOSITE of what J.J. Abrams did with Kahn in, Star Trek Into Darkness.

I promised I wouldn’t get on a soap box, so I’m stepping down now. I hope that we, as American movie audiences, can learn to appreciate the skills that ethnic actors bring to the table. Hell, Stephen Spielberg cast mostly Bollywood actors in Indian Jones and the Temple of Doom and people still look back on that movie with great memories and a fondness that will, in my humble opinion, withstand the test of time.

Where is the blending and mixing of cultures that we Americans used to be so proud of, the whole “melting pot” phenomenon? I think Hollywood is big enough for all cultures and all types of actors from across the world. Was Jake Gyllenhaal really the best actor to play, The Prince of Persia? Could Hollywood have not gone out there and found a Persian to play the role? Did they have to settle for white boy Donnie Darko?

David K. Zandi: A real Persian Prince

I hope more Eastern actors are given the opportunity to portray meaningful roles in our movies. If we are to be part of a new global community then shouldn’t our art start reflecting that we are willing to reach out globally and put these people and at least in part some of their culture on screen, interacting with our own?