#why is it always without fail like some fucking man in entertainment or media criticism like

[saltyfilmmajor]

Charlie Higson is going to lose his mind when he sees dead reckoning builds upon all the last films

[vorpalgatorade]

I’m sick and tired of the hate Trevor Noah gets for not being Jon Stewart

There’s a variety of versions of intent behind these words. First, of course, they’re always coming from people who think their stanky opinions matter- and I make no mistake about my own, but at least come up with something original, damn! How long has Jon Stewart been off the air? Shut the fuck up about it already, jeez. Nobody is forcing you to like his style or sense of humor. And I can’t prove you just don’t like him because he’s black, but you definitely get a whiff of that vibe from some people- But others, assuming their not racist, seem to hold Jon in this holy regard. Was/is he quite an amazing mind and person? Yes. Can we get over the fact that people usually don’t want to do TV shows until they’re 80 years old? Most viewers of media fail to realize the real work that goes into making their entertainment and simply want more, more, more. I get that. I sit here in my privileged world with an unending supply of fresh and vintage vibes. Trevor Noah’s got his own story, his own mind, he grew up in South Africa during the transition between apartheid to democracy. The material conditions and effect of racism of his life and perspective are mindblowing compared to anything white people can understand without actively learning about. But that’s digging in a little too deep with the “Why make everything about race” crowd- we know the biggest reason. The D-man. Trump came, Jon left, and all those Trump supporters who LOVED the Daily Show (even though it was always liberal (even perhaps a smidge leftist) and went against the Tucker Carlson-douchebag conservatives of yesterday who’ve stagnated for decades.)

I think what they fail to realize Jon Stewart would 100% have been speaking truth to power and criticize Donald Trump’s constant embarrassing qualities just like anyone else. The material is endless! Even if half the scandals were literally fake news, half of them aren’t. Jon’s game was always speaking up for the truth and calling out people who were shitty, just Trevor Noah does today, albeit with different values and jokes. If you’d like to learn more about South Africa in the 80s/90s and Trevor’s lived experience in it, check out Born a Crime, an autobiography that may broaden the horizons of anyone with an American perspective- and I think, too, that it’s been written specifically with an American audience in mind, he never takes it for granted that we need a lot of context to understand what was going on in his life in South Africa. Cheers! 

[donnerpartyofone]

i just got a whole bunch of new followers on letterboxd, and checking out who they all are really reminded me of why i don’t follow too many people on letterboxd. bad amateur writing is hard to enjoy even ironically, but there’s something about bad film writing that’s really harmful. i have hate-read so many of this one guy’s reviews that i feel embarrassed about it now. he describes himself as an “arthouse manager”, which i assume means he runs a theater, but it bothers me because nobody says “let’s go out to the arthouse tonight” without the word “theater” in there, it’s just unnatural and pretentious. so that’s red flag #1 right in his description, which is followed by red flag #2 about how he hates modern media, as if being a luddite or nostalgia freak automatically means you’re a sensitive genius. it’s probably worth mentioning a sub-red flag, which is that he also says he’s 27 years old, which has to mean that he either wants to be congratulated for being precocious somehow, or he thinks he’s going to get laid off this movie website where you can’t even post pictures of yourself, or both, i mean who fucking cares how old you are anyway, for what reason? then the first review is of DAYS OF BEING WILD, in which he describes Wong Kar-Wai as “seeking to understand what draws women to shitty, emotionally unavailable men”; i mean imagine being so full of shit that you project your own sullen incel-y “UGH WHY DO GIRLS ONLY LIKE BLAHBLAHBLAHBLAH” garbage onto whatever revered works of art show up on your tv screen? this guy goes on to reveal himself in almost a strip tease fashion across many of his reviews, breaking up his pompous analyses with macho mindbenders like “i have often said that being horny is the point of life” and biographical information like about his manipulative alcoholic father. i’m not trying to say that everybody with a delinquent or dysfunctional parent is destined to have idiotic and serial killerish attitudes about intimacy, because that would condemn pretty much all of us. but, i am sadly familiar with solipsistic assholes who brandish their alleged intellectual superiority in one fist while beating the dust out of their childhood traumas with the other, and just seeing his smug letterboxd reviews tells me everything i need to know about him. hopefully he just followed me in a spammy way to get attention and will never interact, or maybe i’ll say something he finds politically disagreeable and he’ll go away.

honestly finding anybody worth following on letterboxd is kind of hard. it can be nice to read stuff by people who are just having fun and shooting straight about what they’re watching, but the site is filled with wannabe J Hobermans and Lester Bangses who are just out to prove that they own a thesaurus. they’re practically all dudes, you can smell the old spice and maker’s mark wafting out of your laptop fan when you read some of this chest-pounding nonsense. not all of them have such toxic things to say as the aforementioned douchebag, but there’s a real preponderance of users who seem to think they’re reinventing the language. the sad thing is when they really like MY writing. there’s this guy i follow who i think used to write fairly clearly, but now everything he posts looks like a burroughs cut-up with really avant garde ideas about punctuation and adjectives, and unfortunately, i think it’s on purpose. i’d unfollow him, but i feel like i can’t, because he is as nice as literally anyone has ever been about my writing. he goes so far as to give me a hard time about why i’m not a professional film critic, he’s like a ~fan~...and then i gotta ask myself, how much is my writing like HIS writing? this is where the difficulties of letterboxd start to feel worth while, in a masochistic kind of way. like, how often do i write in the same wanky bombastic fashion as these shitty little internet valedictorians who i hate so much? probably a lot! i don’t like feeling that way but i have to admit that i’m grateful for the opportunity to check myself, and possibly improve.

however good or bad i am, letterboxd is still a better place to write than tumblr. i mean tumblr is less than optimal for long form writing anyway, but it’s also a question of who the majority population is here. the other day i got a comment on a pretty old post i wrote about ANNIHILATION, a movie i found kind of smarmy and shallow. the commenter said that my points about the movie were good, BUT they would all be negated by the content of the novels on which the movie is based, and they wanted to know why i deliberately omitted this material from my analysis, as if this were a conspiracy to be unraveled. they actually asked me what the point of my post was, like what was my goal in writing only what i wrote and leaving all kinds of things out. basically. this person COULD NOT UNDERSTAND THE IDEA OF A MOVIE REVIEW. i answered them, because they had tried hard to be polite, that my movie review blog is just for movie reviews, in which i talk about what i think about movies i watch. i’m not pursuing everything related to certain intellectual properties, nor am i invested in the logic and content of Extended Universes of whatever individual movies i’m watching. i’m not mad at this person, who was asking an honest question, but i was completely dumbfounded by the question itself. i mean imagine being SO INVESTED in fandom as like a type of lifestyle that you don’t know what a movie review is anymore? like every piece of media is regarded as some sort of municipality, that belongs to a state, and is governed by certain people, and its characters are like Real People who are available for friendship, dating and more. no piece of media is just entertainment, or even an artistic statement anymore. for this person, watching a movie is something like studying civic infrastructure, except with more DIY alterations and more fetishizing of gay men. i keep trying to imagine reading three paragraphs about some middling hollywood movie that amounts to something like “i did not enjoy watching this film,” and just having no personal frame of reference AT ALL for what it means when somebody writes that down. like just not knowing what a movie review is at all, and asking the author to explain the meaning of the bizarre behavior of saying you thought some movie sucked.

why DOES anybody write about movies though? if i don’t find it normal or desirable to watch everything with an exclusive filter for who do you want to fuck and who do you want to see fucking each other, then what else am i getting at? surely i don’t see myself as a potential roger ebert or leonard maltin, especially considering the extremely limited number of celebrity film critics in the history of mankind. i’m also not Pro- the idea of sorting all movies according to some rigid standards of technical quality and deservingness, like anybody needs me to grade them after they’ve performed the nearly impossible-seeming task of even making one single movie to begin with. sometimes i stupidly start complaining about stupid responses to my writing that i get once in a while from the internet, and my shrink asks me, “what are you up to when you post this writing?” she always says i’m “up to something” when i seem to be following but willfully ignoring my subconscious drives, which i think is pretty funny. but i don’t think i’m pursuing feelings of superiority, over movies or other writers. i think i’m just trying to figure out what movies are trying to say about human existence--and they all are trying to say something, are motivated by some angst, even the really insulting ones that only offer up wish fulfillment pablum. i’m constantly trying and failing to figure out my own existence, and i must sense that attempting to decipher movies is one way of getting closer to decoding my own experiences.

and on that note, now i have to complain about the fact that Lyft’s driver rating system includes “fun conversation” as one of the four factors in giving someone five stars. i rarely want a stranger to try to force me to talk to them, especially at 4am when i’m headed to the airport under a miserable pile of luggage. even so, i recently got into a car in such a state, with a guy who was clearly going for that five star rating, babbling loudly and convulsively at me all the way to my terminal. it would be one thing if he were just trying to be nice, but he was giving me shit about everything from my pickup location to what i had done in his fair city for a week and a half. i did not immediately volunteer how many movies i had seen at the festival i attended, because i probably intuited that when he did make me tell him, he would inform me that he doesn’t need to watch movies, because “I WATCH *LIFE*, MAN!!!” the irony was that this guy clearly didn’t watch life at all; he didn’t even have the ability to discern that i didn’t want to talk, or that i didn’t want him to insult my favorite leisure activity, and that probably NOBODY wants to listen to him talk about his shitty generic blues rock band for half an hour before 5am. so that’s the one thing i can say for even the most obnoxious reviewer on letterboxd--that probably they are TRYING to hone the art of observation, a dying skill. probably they are TRYING to train themselves to be an active audience that engages thoughtfully with the movie instead of just hucking rotten tomatoes at the screen OR passively allowing it to wash over them. even if i often hate the results, at least some of these guys seem be making an effort.

[thegraytalon-blog]

Nostalgia is a Hell of a Drug

Remember Chewbacca, everyone? Oh I ‘member!

Remember Stormtroopers everyone? Oh I ‘member!

Remember Darth Vader everyone? Oh I ‘ member!

Remember the Millennium Falcon everyone? Oh I ‘member!

Remember Super Mario Bros and The Legend of Zelda on Nintendo? Oh I ‘member!

Remember the original Game Boy and Game Gear? Oh I ‘member!

Remember Indiana Jones? Oh I ‘member!

Remember Sonic the Hedgehog and the Sega Genesis? Oh I ‘member!

Remember Mario Kart, Starfox and Goldeneye on the Nintendo 64? Oh I ‘member!

Remember the Sinbad pirate movie that we all swear exists but in reality doesn’t? Oh I ‘member!

 Above are just a few of the many vast examples of nostalgia in the form of media and entertainment for some of us who grew up in the 80’s and the ‘90’s. Now you might be asking yourself, how can a handful of random pop culture references have anything in common? The answer lies in that they all share one crucial thing that is very similar. That being they all represent a form of nostalgia for the most of us who grew up within this era. This is the era that represented the iconic heroes, symbolic artifacts and the rise of video game dominance that we all know and love today. Even such entities that do not really exist and are part of what is called the Mandela Effect, such as that Sinbad movie from the 90’s that we all swore a blood oath existed but have no concrete evidence backing up such a claim. Well, other than the fact that Sinbad himself used to dress up like a pirate and wear some really baggy pirate looking pants in the 90’s. 

So what is it about nostalgia that is such a driving force behind what compels our minds today in such forms of life as decision making and even to the point of crucial thinking? Well, let’s start from the beginning. The majority of the memories that we have stem from early childhood and carry on over into adolescence and lessen by the time we reach and are in our full adulthood. When humans are born and are children from the age of about 3 or 4 we begin to develop our brains more and begin to retain moments that transpire in the world and capture them into an ethereal bubble and store them in our memory banks to recall at anytime we want. That is, if the memory is worth recalling at all. While most forms of nostalgia are positive some memories are not always as pleasant as that moment when you picked up a Nintendo controller for the first time to play the very first level of Super Mario Bros or when you went into that creepy cave and an old man gave a wooden sword to a child because it was too dangerous to go alone into the wilderness in The Legend of Zelda. However, they are still considered nostalgic because they caused such a tremendous impact on one’s life. 

Let’s say Timmy is 5 years old and is learning how to ride a bike without training wheels. During his trials one day he happens to lose balance, fall off and cuts his knees and sprains both ankles at the same time. Timmy then decides he will never learn how to ride a bike again. It’s not a pleasant memory, but little Timmy may carry on this memory for the rest of his life as it had a big impact on his childhood. When he is older and if people ask him if he knows how to ride a bike, he can not only say no but recall the traumatic experience that shaped his bike riding fate into the present day. Now let’s say little Timmy started riding a bike with training wheels at the age of 5 and nothing went wrong and he eventually graduated to riding a bike with two wheels like a champion. Later on during his life if the topic of riding a bike came up, Timmy may not recall the exact moment when he learned how to ride a bike or even his age, just that he knew how to ride a bike and learned when he was a child. The devil is in the details so to speak and the more prominent the events that transpire in your life, good or bad, the more you will recall and retain them and with great detail. 

Now let’s shift our focus back to the positive aspect of nostalgia and what kind of effect it has on our psyches and even physical attributes over a prolonged period of time. I will be using many examples in the form of video games and media for the rest of this entry so strap in and brace yourselves for some serious nostalgic moments! 

Petey is a pre-teen boy in the late 90’s who indulges in a plethora of video games. Sometimes on a weekend he goes over to his relative’s house to enjoy the competitive elements that gaming offers in the form of racing and shooting. He partakes in numerous races of Mario Kart 64, dogfighting matches in StarFox 64 and the tactical espionage shooting of GoldenEye 64. After hours of racing, dodging shells, popping balloons, aiming true and losing friends with that infamous blue shell in Mario Kart and shooting down enemy starships in StarFox and cursing out the kid who picked Odd Job in GoldenEye (even though we said NOBODY PICKS ODDJOB IN GOLDENEYE you cheating, miserable fucks), Petey leaves his relatives house and returns home. The next day at school Petey is in class doing his assignments when he notices out of the corner of his eye a pencil about to roll off the student’s desk that is to the left of him. Immediately Petey jerks his arm to the left and catches the pencil before it falls off and reaches the floor. Petey did not realize it, but by him dodging those shells, lasers and bullets in the games he played the day prior, it allowed him to have a slight form of heightened reflexes as his brain and body worked in unison to move his arm and catch the object before it reached the floor more so than a person who did not attune their senses by engaging in a hobby that tested your hand to eye coordination like video games do. In most video games, repetition is key. By performing various tasks over and over again, a person trains their mind and body to react in ways that are almost considered unnatural by the laws of man. Now I’m not saying that gamers are all Spider-Man or Jedi Knights, but their critical thinking does improve as well as their reflex actions and allows them to think and perform outside of the box more than others from time to time. 

Speaking of critical thinking, let’s say that it’s a bright and sunny Saturday morning in spring of 1987. You are 7 years old and wake up, have your Cookie Crisp or Fruity Pebbles while you pop on some Transformers or Thundercats as you prepare for your day off from school. Then in the early afternoon proceed to your room and take out the gilded cartridge crafted with great care by the Hylian warriors of future’s past, proceed to take a deep breath and blow deeply into the bottom of the cartridge. You then insert the cartridge into your Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) and start to hear the whimsical and delightful music of The Legend of Zelda. As your adventure continues across the vast land of Hyrule, you seem to discover many dungeons along your path in which require you to solve puzzles and obtain keys to open your path to venture forward. Most of the puzzle solving includes memorizing geometrical squares or blocks to move them in such a pattern that they will allow secret passages and doors to open so you can continue your hero’s journey. After spending countless hours dungeon crawling , slaying mythical beasts, solving numerous shape shifting puzzles and obtaining the Master Sword to defeat the mighty evil lord Ganon, you put the game to rest for a little while. The next day, Sunday, you go over your friends house to hang out and he has something cool to show you. His mom bought him a new puzzle game called Simon. In this game you have to remember color patterns and memorize them to not fail and go back to the start of the puzzle. Your friend, who is not into video games as much as you, and proceeds to try out the Simon game with you. He gets a score of 4 turns without failing and you happen to score a whopping 12 turns without failing. Could it be that his memory is not as attuned as yours because you just spent the previous day playing The Legend of Zelda and solving pattern memorization puzzles in a plethora of different dungeons? It is indeed very possible and almost factual. Once again, repetition is key and it shapes the mind to retain and remember glimpses of imagery that will help you in such tasks as doing well in a memorization game or exam.  

Video games such as The Legend of Zelda are prime examples of how nostalgia not only plays a factor in critical thinking but also how our minds are shaped for when we become adults and how our way of thinking is affected by experiencing games like this in the past in our childhoods. For the most part, The Legend of Zelda series is aimed at a child base with it’s whimsical characters and environments and tunes. However, deep, beneath it’s surface, those games may contain such a deep nostalgic presence in the form of a darkened and twisted tone, that it can only be harnessed and resonated years to decades later as we reach adulthood and see how we use our intellect and minds to either provide rational thought or even something as trivial as conversing with someone and describing your likes and desires. For example, why do some of us migrate towards TV shows or comics or movies with such dark messages or that have a really sick and twisted meaning? I’ll use The Punisher and Fight Club as examples here. Could it be that our love for these 2 embodiments of physical and psychological warfare on the mind, body and spirit stem from our interaction with let’s say The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening on the Game Boy and/or The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask for the Nintendo 64? I know I am singling our Zelda games a lot but there’s a reason and method for my madness here, I promise. You see, both of these games in particular in the series have a deeply disturbing underlying message. In Link’s Awakening you play as the famed hero Link who awakes on an island with no memory of how he got there so his goal is to find a way off the island and get back to his homeland in Hyrule. Now SPOILER ALERT because I am about to fast forward to the game’s ending. At the end of the game, Link encounters the Wind Fish, who is a mythical creature and king of the island that informs Link he is part of some kind of deep REM like fever dream that once he wakes up from all of the creatures and inhabitants of the island he is presently on will cease to exist and die pretty much. The game’s theme and message here then becomes somewhat complex. It twists the plot and forces one’s mind into a psychosis that cannot necessarily determine fiction from reality. The same is present in that of the film Fight Club. Again, SPOILER ALERT here as the entire movie we cannot tell what is fact from fiction as the main character slips in and out of a deep schizophrenic psychosis that plays the duality of himself with a character who he may or may not have created, Tyler Durden, who was everything the main character was not. Like seen in Link’s Awakening, the focus of the story is shifted from reality to fantasy in the blink of an eye where you, the player and the main character in Fight Club and Link as well are uncertain whether the world they are living in and characters around or within them are all real or simply part of some kind of imaginative force. Nobody can really pinpoint the truth of the matters, only that there may be multiple outcomes for their unique situations. 

The Punisher and The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask are also similar in their own diverse ways. Now before I continue I want to go on record for saying I feel Majora’s Mask is the copyrighted and trademarked property of not only Nintendo, but Lucifer as well. That’s right folks, this game is possessed by the devil and I can prove that with hard concrete evidence. Just Google or YouTube “Ben Drowned” after finishing this and I promise you that you will not sleep well tonight after seeing that. Now for a hefty third SPOILER ALERT here as in Majora’s Mask many feel and believe that the story takes place with Link having failed in all his endeavors to stop Ganondorf from taking over the world, Princess Zelda, who he loved, was enslaved and Link himself was dead and the game takes place in the Hylian afterlife where Link has a finite amount of time to save that world from collision with a moon face who kind of looks like he is in the middle of taking the most constipated crap known to man. Now my point is here that Link is dead, he knows his world has ended as he knows it and is now just running through the motions doing what he can to survive while expelling the evil around him, doing and making whatever he can right, until death knocks on his door. The same can be said for the Punisher. The man known as Frank Castle is dead and has been since his family’s cold blooded murder, leaving behind a shell of the former man he once was and he is just simply doing what good he can, righting the wrongs of the world, while being consumed in the hell on Earth he is living in, the same as Link in Majora’s Mask, until that fateful day when the grim reaper comes beckoning. 

Therein lies our attraction to such nostalgic elements of the past to that of the present in a nutshell. But it is only a mere taste of the many nostalgic elements of the past that carry on into our present and future, forever shaping and molding both conscious and subconscious  states of our minds determining our focus and reality. 

Now in conclusion I would like to leave you all with a disturbing thought about a form nostalgia that can pander to even the most enlightened thinkers as hazardous and demeaning. How many of us grew up idolizing Luke Skywalker, Darth Vader, Han Solo and Princess Leia from a galaxy far, far away? How many of us used to cherish those films and even used to dress up like those characters for Halloween or even go to extreme lengths to cosplay at shows such as Comic-Con or just for fun and create videos and role play as them for blogging purposes? George Lucas created something unlike the world has ever seen and even with his infamously criticized prequels, the Star Wars franchise was still a force to be reckoned with and like the Force itself was a powerful ally of nostalgia indeed. Now fast forward a few decades to where we are now. That nostalgia of Star Wars with what once was so illustrious and fruitful has caused us to sheepishly support the ongoing cancer of the new modern world that is known quite simply as the sequel trilogy. The soulless embodiment of corruption, greed and rape of the Star Wars franchise known to man and the majority of us continue to witness the horror, which is the equivalent to watching a train wreck I guess because some of us just cannot look away. And why you may be wondering? That devil is in the details here. Nostalgia is a pathway to many abilities, like I stated earlier, and some are considered to be unnatural. The most frightening ability nostalgia gives us is the ability to go and pay hard earned dollars to experience something that is completely unworthy, unholy and just plain unnecessarily bad for our souls because nostalgia said it was a good idea! This is not only present in such forms of media as Star Wars but in other forms of entertainment as well. How many of us saw Batman VS Superman because we as teenagers or adolescents read Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns and thought it would be an exact rendition of that piece of art? Who saw Man of Steel only because they saw the Nolan Brothers names in the credits and thought it would be just as good, if not, better than The Dark Knight? How many of us flocked to theaters to see Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull because we loved Harrison Ford in the original adventures of Indiana Jones trilogy? Give me the total number of cattle who grazed their way to the theaters to see The Hobbit after the renowned success of The Lord of the Rings trilogy? And even in video games, who ran out and bought The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask because it took place in the same world and timeline as the famed The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time? The same with Nintendo and their consoles can be said. How many of you owned a Nintendo Game Boy and had to wait on line for 3 hours to obtain a Nintendo Virtual Boy due to the nostalgia caused by the Game Boy? On the other side of the fence, how many countless people purchased Sonic the Hedgehog for the Xbox 360 because of their fond recollections of Sonic Adventure on the Dreamcast? The list goes on and on and on. 

All of these newly released end resulted products listed above have ended in disappointment over their predecessors in some way, shape or form. These letdowns that I just stated cannot hold a candle to their nostalgic ancestral entities  of the past that brought us such warmth and joy. Simply stated, they just do not make them like they used to! So why do we continue to follow this systematic pattern? Does nostalgia alone drive our state of mind or is it something deeper and something even more psychological? I feel that there is another driving force that goes hand in hand in tandem with the nostalgia factor. I strongly believe that married to nostalgia is F.O.M.O. or the “Fear of Missing Out”, which is a syndrome created by chemicals in the brain that develop such an emotional fear that if they were ever to stop witnessing a piece of intellectual property they have invested so much time and energy into that they became terrified as to what the outcome may be, even if there would be no harm done to them physically. Emotionally speaking, these people are frightened to the point of stasis that if they were to miss out on viewing or playing or experiencing something they have dumped a large chunk of their lives to, their minds may collapse into themselves like a neutron star! It fascinates the very mind and can even warrant further study to what drives an individual to such lengths of commitment, with nostalgic fear being one of the leading factors and causes. A prime example of this would be the television show The Walking Dead, based on Robert Kirkman’s comic series. The show has been renewed for it’s 11th season and has long since lost my interest so I simply stopped watching. But I know people who continue watching even though the show has turned stale. Why? F.O.M.O! Godforbid they miss out on a morsel and crumb of walking down a barren road! And what about the next Star Wars movie? Episode IX is due out in December of 2019 and the majority of people I know are committed to seeing it even after they claimed Episode VIII ruined the franchise for them. Why? F.O.M.O!

  I will leave you all with this final thought to ponder: If one is to break away from the sheepish herd, they must first act and lead like a member of the wolf pack.

[narrowtriangle33-blog]

Quotes that accurately describe White Trump Voters.

"It’s not just that he’s white. White people sneer at, mock, ostracize, and generally hate on other white people all the time. It’s that he DELIVERS RACISM and THAT is the priority to his base. This is what gets me when writers and thinkers wring their hands in befuddlement, like Nichols is doing, about how Trump’s base can “vote against their own interests.” They’re not! They’re prioritizing the babies in cages, the “shithole countries” remarks, the deadly Charlottesville clashes with literal fucking Nazis, etc OVER health care, transitioning the economy away from fossil fuels, education, assistance to the poor, and whatever other liberal agenda items one would think would be natural, rational fits for the Cleti everywhere.

These people are absolutely voting in their own interests, and getting exactly what they wanted out of the Trump admin. He has been a tremendous success in their eyes because he has delivered racism since Day 1, and that’s what they want out of politics."

"This, They will never -ever- admit it, outside of trolling on the net, but Trump has done more to support their views and find great joy in it then any GOP member before.

He’s all but given up on the dog whistles, once he found out that the media will simply ‘tut-tut’ and that delights his base. Even when he does something that will fuck them over, they overlook it because he continues to advance their agenda with huge leaps. Most of the never-Trumpers discovered early on that going against him can lead to getting primaried and Mitch is content to let Trump do whatever the fuck he wants with limited disagreement, because he’s busy installing GOP goal friendly judges everywhere.

The DNC’s response has been to avoid rocking the boat as much as they can by offering up Joe with a bone thrown to black people with a possable black woman VIP. (If that even happens), but the chances are high that Trump will get another four years to continue to do as he likes. And what will the Dems do? Protest and throw shade and offer limited resistance that won’t slow down Trump for a second.

People don’t like to even entertain the idea that Trump will win, but without a huge number of people turning out against them, what else can they expect will happen?"

"My father HATED John Wayne with a burning passion that I remember from age 3-4! He loved Westerns but he would spend the entire movie foaming at the mouth at all the racist tropes and outright historical lies of each one of them! Honestly, although he loved thoughtful rap, I think he idolized Chuck D for simply uttering his infamous lyric!

Now that I’ve reached a certain age, I find I love Westerns too - but not John Wayne, Clint Eastwood or any old ones. I like the newer ones that speak to what deplorables white cowboys were: The Revenant, Bone Tomahawk, Hostiles and the like. They’re still white-centered and white-washed but any modern thinking person can see that the cowboy image should stand for nothing but a savagely cruel, thieving, raping murderer (and we’ve been consistently lied to)."

"Does Trump accept responsibility and look out for his team? Not in the least. In this category, he exhibits one of the most unmanly of behaviors: He’s a blamer. Nothing is ever his fault."

"This is nothing but rose-colored bullshit. Anyone who’s ever spent more than 5 minutes working in corporate life knows for the most part this isn’t how white men behave. Those offices are full of extremely mediocre men who are very confident and have nothing to back it up with other than their bluster, egos, and the generational wealth that allows them a leg up over others. That generational wealth allows them to go to the diploma mills that open doors for them. Admitting mistakes or even admitting just not knowing something in that environment comes off as weakness to them. They spend most of their energy trying to project the image of confidence and control, which is why they’re quick to rage when things don’t go their way. A good example is the douche bag running Quibi that gave that horrendus interview a couple of weeks ago. He was asked a couple of questions about why his company was failing while other streaming services are thriving, and where they might have went wrong in their business model. He didn’t accept responsibility for shit. He went into his hurt little feelings and attacked the interviewer, and tried to make the questions seem like they weren’t valid.

On steroids this white American exceptionalist world view is called patriotism. It manifests in the idea that we as a country can do things counter intuitive the rest of the world just because we’re the USA. More mass shootings by far than any other country? USA! Other countries have cheap/free education through college? So what, USA! Biden even displayed this during one of the debates when Warren pointed out the same disparity in our healthcare compared to every other developed nation. Guess how he responded.

I feel like I started rambling a little but what I’m trying to get at is that whiteness, toxic masculinity, and patriotism are so intertwined that its beyond the author of that Trump think piece."

"Funnily enough as the article and subject matter were in regard to racism in the US I didn’t feel a burning need to mention Indigenous Australians but to answer your question they are pretty much in the same boat as black Americans. Did anything I say imply otherwise or were you just fishing for an argument?

"Stupid as it is, “You’re a manly-man, right? So why is your manly-man leader such a cowardly little pussy?”

That’s not what he projects and that’s not what they see. They see him using aggressive and accusatory tones and language all the time and it makes him look tough."

They fall for the “Emporor Has No Clothes” routine because they never look at him critically. They buy the bullshit on the surface, and don’t see that his words never match his actions. He said on tv several times that if anyone in the country wants a Covid test, they can get tested. Ask them how many people they know whose jobs don’t require it, have actually been tested. He down played the death toll of this disaster every step of the way. Remember when we were supposed to be in church for Easter? As long as he lies with confidence, they’ll follow him to hell."

"I’m definitely tired, and frustrated, and everything else. I keep holding my nose and voting, and that only adds to the exhaustion and frustration because very little if anything seems to change, and in some ways we keep repeating the mistakes of the past. I’d never advocate for doing nothing, but trying to engage and challenge the average Republican-voting dipshit to think critically, and not keep supporting people and policies that perpetuate and exacerbate the problems this country has??? No thanks. If you’re not black, I so encourage you to take up that mantle, but for me as a black dude in this country I can’t. Talk about shooting the messenger. Plus, to keep it a buck, this is mostly white people’s mess, if not all. They need to fix it.

Honestly I feel like racism festers because most white people just look the other way. The racism of their peers/friends/relatives doesn’t impact them personally so they’re probably just people to be avoided. Why rock the boat when you can just avoid an uncomfortable topic? Joe might forward you Fox News and OANN stories, and racist FB memes, but he’s fun at Bills games. Well what if Joe is also a cop, or in a management position over minorities? You can bet money he takes those views you overlooked with him to his job. The PoC he interacts with won’t have the benefit of seeing him at Bills games, or might not even have the benefit of being seen as equals."

"People get so caught up in the blatant, mustache-twirling racism that they don’t see the subtle pervasive way it spreads like a cancer. For every Trump there are dozens Joes, and along with the Joes are the real problem: The people who ignore the Joes. The Joes and Karens go on to commit all kinds of microaggressions that Poc pretty much have to tolerate, and in Joe’s and Karen’s minds that’s just the way the world works. I deserved to get followed around Joe’s store. I came in wearing a hoodie and Adidas so I couldn’t be up to any good. Karen felt threatened when I walked into the building she lives in, so she felt justified to call the police, never mind the fact that I live there too. This is how deep this shit runs. It’s not just politics. Racism isn’t just baked into politics. It’s part of the flour the US was baked with.

So I appreciate you if you’re willing to call these fools out. I’m glad somebody is because I’m not wasting my breath. They won’t hear me anyway."

"I mean if Tom Nichols was in front of me and read this steaming pile of shit to me I would’ve slapped him silly and said the reason that people that look like you excuse all of his fuck ups, failings and mistakes is because well HE LOOKS LIKE YOU!!!! The question that none of these mouth breathing chud monkeys seem to want to answer or are incapable of answering is would you excuse any black, Hispanic or Asian man that had his resume? We know the fucking answer.

When this bloated piece of unseasoned chicken shut down the government in January of 2019 hurting his all white, poorly educated base the most a quote from a voter in Florida was burned into my head forever. She said upon not getting her government subsidized check (I mean they have no issues with the government helping them, it is those pesky brown people that are lazy and entitled) “He is not hurting the people he is supposed to be hurting.” Let that sink in. A voting US Citizen thought it was the job of the sitting *president to hurt people. That says it all. Their allegiance isn’t based in anything other than anger and hatred of those that they deem less than them. Fuck him and them and may they both rot in hell."

"“He is not hurting the people he is supposed to be hurting.”

That spontaneous, bewildered, stream of consciousness utterance by someone who doesn’t think critically but has an indwelt recognition of like-mindedness IS the Trump voter exemplified! A racist who found themselves too poor, too old and without the power to demand or protect the status quo and just wants to stick it to their perceived enemies while retaining ‘something’ for themselves.

That sentiment has fueled every waking thought, worry and action of an American white since the founding of this country.

So, it’s not just every Confederate flag waver, every neo-Nazi and every flyover state’er; it’s every aggrieved American white who had to accept the changing world around them; there’s no reasoning with them nor changing their minds.

My fear is that I’m becoming inhumane like them because I was soooo happy when he cut her Meals on Wheels and didn’t cut her Social Security check."

"I think you nailed this right on the head. All through the article, he keeps pointing out what we already know except for one thing. After all, why would white people elect someone who is so far outside of what they claim to be/stand for? He’s not conservative in any real way. Yet conservatives stand behind him. He’s not a Christian in any practical sense by his actions. Yet Christians say he’s sent by God. He’s not a good businessman, father, or even person. Yet here we are. The only answer that makes sense in any real way is that he is proof that to many people, any white man can do the same or better than even the best black man, woman, or POC in general. There’s always a backlash to progress both real and imagined. Trump is it."

"Also, a lot of the characteristics Nichols thinks represent the opposite of idealized masculinity are actually representative of masculinity as it is performed in this country. From my experience with men who lean into their masculinity, it is about performing dominance by antagonizing people, all in the service of making shallow, insecure men feel better about themselves.  Trump is a domineering asshole, which is what too many men think being a man is all about."

"It is fascinating how unbelievably brainless racists are. Many of the commenters and you Damon have pointed out the stupidity of racism. I mean this seriously, racists have absolutely abandoned intellect, progress, humanity or desire for real greatness that could manifest through equality, in order to hold onto the despicable delusion of superiority based solely on a human having more melanin than another. The sheer simplicity of the trick doesn’t even seem like it should work; but alas, all roads merge at Slave Rd. The dimwitted aptitude it takes for a person to actually believe stealing humans, beating, burning, assaulting, selling their children on auction blocks, splitting families (and more brutalities)...... all for greed born out of sheer laziness, and again stupidity is mindblowing. You literally must turn your brain off to be a racist, and you see it now. Millions of white people, with switch STILL off, courtesy of their forefathers, have continued down this same disastrous, nose-spite-ing road. There’s a lot of white people walking around with black kerchief’s, hiding the draining blood and a ragged hole where their nose once occupied, holding a tight grasp of their hate. Their greed. Trump finally allows them to remove that blood soaked kerchief with pride for all the world see their disfigurement. It’s stunning that there is pride where instead, their should be pure shame for then and for now."

[randomramblesandlearning]

10 Things I Loved About Mass Effect:Andromeda

Warning: Spoilers! And I wrote this on the spur, so there might be grammatical errors.

1.      I enjoyed the story. Yeah, people will say it recycles from the trilogy, but come on, people. Why are you surprised? Bioware recycles their plotlines all the time. It’s pretty much the same in all of their games. A protagonist gains special abilities and leads a Ragtag Bunch of Misfits team to defeat a big threat. And I’m not bothered by that. Sometimes familiarity in your franchise is good, just as long as you do new things to the formula, and I think they do.

What interested me the most was the theme of starting over. A lot of people in the Andromeda Initiative were former criminals or outcasts. The reason they joined was to start a new life, and it’s explored in the main questlines, the loyalty quests, and numerous side quests. I was worried about the game talking about colonization since humans are looking for a new home, but I was pleasantly surprised that the game made it clear that Andromeda is the angara’s home first, and humans and other Milky Way species will have to work with them. Thank god! No Mightey Whitey trope this time!

2.      Ryder as the player character. I honestly never thought I would love Ryder as much as I did when I played the game. Sure, no one will ever replace Commander Shepard, but Ryder isn’t meant to replace the Commander, rather show a different perspective in a new story. Commander Shepard is the hero we want to be while Ryder is more of a relatable character. Ryder has to learn through the entire game how to be a leader while going through the obstacles of their inexperience and youth so people will take them seriously. And it was compelling, uplifting, and at times amusing to see them become a hero in their own right and step out of their father’s shadow.

Also Sara and Scott felt like their own person. In the original trilogy, the player character is pretty much the same no matter what gender. But sometimes the dialogue can be different depending on if you play a male Ryder or a female Ryder. That’s because they are two different people who have had their own experiences and personalities. That really adds to the replay value!

3.      Female aliens everywhere! One of my major issues with the original trilogy was the lack of female Turians, krogans, and salarians. Sure we had asari an all-female race, and female quarians, but it felt weird that we met so many aliens with very few ladies. Not only do we get a female Turian squadmate, we also get plenty of lady alien NPCs gathered everywhere for random quests. We also have Kesh who works at the Nexus. And we get to see female salarians! And they kind of look the same as male salarians except with different voices. Thank god! It would’ve been horrifying to see salarians with boobs. Uh! And I’m pretty sure there were just as many female angara NPCs as there were males.

4.      The romances. Especially the queer ones. One of the things I love about Bioware games are the romance paths. Bonus points if there is a queer option. And as of patch 1.08, this game has the most number of queer romances in any Bioware game. I think my two favorite romance paths are with Sara and Vetra and Jaal and Scott. While representation for the LGBT community is improving in media, there’s no denying we still have a long way to go. And after again the crap year 2016 where we had a huge number of queer women characters die in tv shows, it was so wonderful to have a healthy and happy relationship between two women when I first played the game. And even if it wasn’t added until the patch, the romance between Jaal and Scott is absolutely sweet since we see two men show a lot of love and affection for each other which is rare to see in media.

5.      The Tempest Family. I adore every single character on the Tempest, and they really did feel like a family once you played further into the game. I am a sucker for found families, and to see these people who are trying to find a home ending up finding a home with each other just gives me so many feels!

Since there’s not really a huge crew in the ship like in the original trilogy when Shepard had an army of humans. In Andromeda, we have six squad mates, four additional crew members, and Ryder. And I think it made the family more intimate. It’s like our own little family lives on the Tempest.

Also I liked how there were more quests spread out throughout the game with the squad which I think was lacking in Inquisition. Plus. Movie Night is the best scene ever!

6.      In my opinion, the side quests were fun. I think this was one thing they improved from Inquisition. Inquisition side quests just felt like a bunch of fetch quests that got kind of boring pretty quick, and didn’t really add to the overall story. Some highlights from Andromeda were: Kadara, the angara reincarnation questline, the Turian jailed for murder, the anti-AI group, meeting Zaeed’s son, and those kids sending out a distress signal for a new light for their weed plant. HAHA!

They were compelling in their own right and included cut scenes instead of the Inquisitor going to some location like in Skyrim to do a thing come back to the quest giver saying, “I did the thing.” “Ok, good.”

7.      Unlike in Inquisition, there’s actual payoff for some of the quests you do. I don’t mean to be mean to Inquisition, I still love the game, but remember when we were promised that you had to build your forces up in order to defend against the main threat. Yeah, you built forces to get influence points to gain perks, and that’s it.

In Andromeda, while, yes. It’s not the same level as Mass Effect 2. When you actually complete quests and help out leaders, you can get different results during the final battle. Like, there’s a chance Captain Dunn may not survive.

Also, when you get 100% viability on all the planets, you get a special surprise on Habitat 7- being told that it will one day be habitable because of our efforts. Sure it was a side quest, but it just felt so rewarding!

8.      The climax was actually fulfilling and exciting. Again, something else Inquisition was lacking in. Seriously, when I first played Andromeda, I legit gasped when the archon was taking control of SAM node. The villain was actually living up to his threatening nature!

Just when we think we got everything under control, and are about to find Meridian, the Archon fucks shit up, and our sibling has to step up to save the day. Then we have to gather people we helped out and prepare for a final battle, and Ryder can finally prove themselves as a true Pathfinder and kick the Archon’s ass once and for all. People are saying the ending was as disappointing as ME3’s? Pfft…What are you even talking about?

9.      The angara. Bioware never fails to make me love an entire fictional species. Yeah, it feels a bit off that they pretty much have the same faces and the same 3 voice actors, but I really do love their culture. And I appreciate that they were clearly coded as POC while Andromeda didn’t go through with the whole Mighty Whitey Trope. The game wants you to respect their culture and to respect their home.

I love the angaran people are open about their feelings, I love how their religion believes in reincarnation, I love how we see angaran scientists, soldiers, merchants, mercenaries, and civilians. Also Aya and Hivraal are absolutely gorgeous!

And when Jaal finds out his people were created by the Kett, I was worried it was going to go the Dalish elves route, but Jaal points out that it doesn’t change anything about the angara. They are still their own people. And that was such an uplifting message.

10.  The overall light-hearted tone. I wrote a small post that got a good number of notes. (Probably the biggest number I’ve ever gotten), so to quote: “There was always this sense of hope and optimism about finding a new home. ‘Yeah, things may have gone totally wrong, but that doesn’t mean we can’t make them better’ was the overall message I got.

And really, with so many bad things happening in the world right now and too much of our entertainment supposedly being our escapism being dark for the sake of dark, this was something I think a lot of us needed.”

Mass Effect 3 had its light-hearted moments, and I love it, but man, that game was emotional draining.

It’s a bit discouraging to love something so much and get recommended videos on youtube pointing out the same flaws of that certain game, and why they thought it was a huge disappointment. Do I agree with some of their criticisms? Sure. Does the history behind the production explain the flaws? Oh absolutely.

           But people seem to forget that the original Mass Effect trilogy wasn’t without its flaws. I mean, sure everyone can agree on the Mass Effect 3 ending, but I could make a list of all the issues I have with the other Bioware games including Dragon Age: Inquisition (which despite winning Game of the Year, kind of suffers the same problems Andromeda had).

           So yeah, after the crap year of 2016, I was so excited to get a newly-released game that made me happy. And still makes me happy, and makes me in the mood to play another Ryder.

[betsynagler]

Don’t Worship, Discuss

Something there’s been a lot of talk about lately, since so many sexual harassment and assault scandals have broken, is how hard it is to have to confront the fact that people who have done terrible things have also created wonderful works of art. One article I read recently talked about this with regard to watching the work of Woody Allen, going into detail about how hard it is to now watch Manhattan in the post-Soon-Yi era (not to mention the post-Dylan-sexual-assault era, which is something the author spends less time on, perhaps because the parallels are not so direct).

But this makes me wonder not so much How do we watch it now? but, Why did we watch it then and not feel disturbed? Why did we not talk about how problematic it was that the film’s main character, the 40-something Isaac played by Woody Allen, was dating Mariel Hemingway’s 17-year-old high school student? Why did everyone in the film and by and large the audience just accept that without feeling icky? Sure, the film is partly about how the relationship between Isaac and Tracy makes Isaac uncomfortable because he knows she’s too young for him and their feelings aren’t mutual, but it’s not about the fact that that’s true because he’s an experienced adult having sex with an vulnerable teenager. On one level, you can look at this as just being part of Allen’s problematic oeuvre: he’s pretty consistently terrible at stepping outside of himself, which is why there’s almost always a character with Woody Allen’s mannerisms and preoccupations in the film, and why too many of his films become a quite obvious repetition of those same preoccupations over and over again. He may be our most self-conscious and least self-aware celebrated filmmaker, which is one reason why his films are so drastically uneven, and also probably why he can’t face up to the fact that there were some fucked-up choices in his personal life. I know many cinephiles want to think of the man as a genius, but why can’t we, instead, think of him as a guy who has made some films with wonderful aesthetics, some with ingenious storylines, some with insightful/hilarious dialogue, and some with all three, who is still just a guy with a lot of problems (which show up in his films) who, consequently, has done bad things — partly because our elevation of him to this pedestal is what allowed him, if not inspired him, to do them, and get away with it.

This is one good thing about working in the business: you learn very early on that very few people, if any, are worthy of being worshipped. At best, these celebrated artists — male and female — whose work you admire are very talented human beings who have all of the failings that go along with the human being part, in addition to whatever additional moodiness, egotism, and poor judgment may come with the talent. At worst, they’re total assholes, thanks in large part to the distortion of reality around them that fame creates. Most of them are somewhere in between, and the idea we have that they must be wonderful because they’ve created art that affected us strongly, often on an emotional level that we have trouble critically analyzing, is a terrible mistake to make. The fact that we want this to be true is understandable. If you can say people are good or bad in the same way that movies are good or bad in the same way that ideas are good or bad, it’s all much easier for our little brains and large emotions. But that’s not how it usually is, and our desire, against all logic, to see things in black and white — even if it’s gorgeous, wide-screen, high contrast, and shot by Gordon Willis —  is what needs to be dissected and challenged, because we should never have looked at them that way in the first place.

This is just one of many things we need to get past as a culture in order to make sense of things post-Woody, post-Cosby, post-Spacey, and post-whoever-is-next (I’d say Matt Lauer, but really, no great loss there). We need to start thinking more discerningly about the people we entrust with our admiration, be they actors, or directors, or public office-holders. We’d like to say that anyone who sexually harasses, assaults or abuses other people in any way should be erased from public life, which is what the entertainment industry is trying to do right now with Kevin Spacey and Louis CK (who I have worked with and am not a fan of, see here, in spite of never having been forced to look at his penis). But making them just go away without talking about what they did, the damage it inflicted, and what should happen next is going to make it impossible for our culture to take stock of where we’ve been that allowed these things to happen, and where we go from here. We need to think and talk about these men as human beings who did things we, justifiably, love, and also did things we, justifiably, condemn. Because loads of good things to do and bad things to do exist in every situation, and it’s going to be hard to teach anyone to choose one over the other if we don’t admit that each of us, no matter how brilliant or boring, is capable of doing both.

And most importantly, we need to talk about why women have been treated this way by so many men – and that means thinking critically about the art and entertainment they create, and how it often reflects and reinforces a culture that's just plain bad for women and girls. Visual media are incredibly powerful. They build our sense of what is normal and not normal. By just devouring the images they constantly feed us without questioning them, we’re ingesting them into our worldview. The only way we change that view is to talk about it, how powerful men control it, and how it portrays and validates them at the expense of the rest of us, particularly if we’re female.

Maybe if we hadn’t been so focused on Woody being a genius, we would have seen sooner that his flawed work reflects a culture that views teenaged girls as sex objects. Maybe Alabama would have paid attention sooner to the fact that Roy Moore was acting out those cultural fantasies. But before more women get hurt, it’s time to talk about the important differences between men like him, Donald Trump, Bill Clinton and Al Franken, but how they all reflect a culture that encourages men to perceive sex as a trophy to which they are entitled. We need to look more closely at how these fucked-up human beings reflect us, instead of choosing to look away.

[violent-optimism]

The Phantom Menace - Review (Lengthy!)

Hooooooo boy.....

Buckle up boys and girls, Sam’s about to share with you her new, updated, critical thoughts on what is widely considered one of the most horrible films ever made, and the movie that completely disrespected it’s own franchise:

Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace (1999)

So I will try to keep this review as concise and mature as I possibly can, although I do admit that I will probably fail at least a little bit. Go off on a tangent, get too irritated, etc. But other than that, happy reading! And let me know what you think, if you like. So, what did I think of this movie as a kid? I think I’m in the same boat as a lot of people when I say that when I was little, I actually quite enjoyed this film. I liked the visuals, I related to young Anakin, I don’t think I loved Jar Jar but I definitely didn’t hate him. Overall I think I found it pretty decent. However....this afternoon, I tried, I really did. I tried to ignore everything negative that Red Letter Media, Chris Stuckmann and pretty much everyone else on the internet said about this movie. And I really DO NOT care for this movie much, if at all.

There’s a lot to talk about so let’s get started, and as I usually do with my reviews, I’ll get the cons out of the way first, cause buddy, there’s a LOT of them. And while I could go on forever about every single tiny thing I disliked about this movie, I’m gonna stick to the main things that bothered me. Here we go!

Jar Jar FUCKING Binks.

So, what have I said about Jar Jar that hasn’t been said before? He’s completely annoying, a stupidly written character, he couldn’t even entertain a three year old and his role in the movie is completely pointless. However, the one thing that I discovered about Jar Jar that no one else had pointed out yet was the fact that he is completely INCOMPREHENSIBLE. Like, there were so many moments where I seriously, with my adult-ears, could not understand what he was saying. And I even wondered if I was supposed to? Was he just talking gibberish sometimes? Who the hell knows, not this girl!

Almost every actor is emotionless.

Besides Liam Neeson, Ewan McGregor, Ian McDiarmid and (I can’t believe I’m saying this) Jake Lloyd, pretty much every single actor or actress in this film has a very stoic, deadpan and wooden performance. They’re like god damn robots, reading lines off a script like a text-to-speech program. It doesn’t make the viewer feel very invested when the actors themselves do not seem to be invested. It’s just so disappointing because actors like Samuel L. Jackson and Natalie Portman DO have talent! I know they do! But this script is so fucking terrible and they probably loathed every second they were on screen that their line delivery ended up being boring and emotionless.

Too much CGI and BAD CGI.

Something I noticed while I was watching this movie, I already knew that the Star Wars Prequels generally suffer from an over-use of CGI (Computer generated imagery for those who don’t know), but the Phantom Menace’s CGI is by far the WORST of the trilogy. It just looks so BAD I can’t even put into words how ugly it is. It really makes you wanna cringe when you look at it, it’s almost like you stumbled upon something that was still in the early stages of development, except it’s NOT. This is the ACTUAL CGI from the finished film. No thanks, I’ll take my practical effects and CGI that actually looks GOOD (TFA anyone?)

The film’s pace is horribly inconsistent.

This is something that not too many people have really talked about regarding TPM. But I definitely noticed it this time around, the film’s pace is completely inconsistent and all over the place. It’s like it can’t decide whether to be fast or slow, and the slow moments go by fast and the fast moments go by slow, if that makes any sense. For example, the pod-race scene, while visually stunning, takes FOREVER to finish. Whereas the scene where Padme and Anakin have a conversation in the ship feels like three seconds. Basically, I found myself, saying out loud a lot of the time: “Oh my god this scene is taking forever...” or, oppositely, “this is going by too fast!” And lastly, nothing in this film makes hardly any sense!

A lot of people, including me, have a lot of questions about the plot of this movie, as there are probably hundreds of plot holes and things that don’t make a lot of sense, but if I went through all of them we’d be here all day, I’ll just take out a tiny sample:

Why is there a child sized helmet in the ship? Why the hell are mitichlorians a thing? What is the Trade Federation exactly? Why is the Jedi Council so strict and mean? Why is there a child sized helmet in the ship? Why did the Emperor want the Queen to sign that treaty so badly? Why the hell do they make Jar Jar a general? What are those pink barrier shields during the light saber fight? Why are they there? Why is Qui-Gon so reckless for a Jedi Knight? WHY IS THERE A CHILD SIZED HELMET IN THE SHIP??

You get my point, basically, I couldn’t go ten seconds watching this movie without going: “Wait, what? Why did that happen? I don’t get it.” Basically, Lucas is a much better director than he is a writer. And while he was a creative genius and really worked his magic with the first Star Wars, it’s clear that something went horribly wrong with his skills. This is what happens when a man with a lot of money and a lot of authority gets to do whatever he wants in a movie and no one questions him. I think if people had, these prequels would have turned out a lot differently.

Now there are two, yes, only TWO pros in this movie I would like to talk about. There are more, such as the film’s score and production design, but I just wanna focus on two cause this is getting to be pretty lengthy already.

At least this movie is original.

No one will ever look at the Phantom Menace and say “Oh it was just a copy of a New Hope!” The film makers didn’t stick to what they knew, they actually took a big risk, lots of big risks actually. Did it pay off? No, but I give them credit for at least TRYING, and I agree with George Lucas when he says that the film industry is “terrified” of creativity and they’re afraid to take risks, because for the most part that is true. There will never be another film like the Phantom Menace (thank god), but also because of how original and creative the planets, creatures and props are. The Phantom Menace makes us appreciate the Original trilogy better.

This is also true for the other prequels of course, but we are talking about this specific movie. Basically, as I watched this movie, it made me appreciate just how much better the Original Star Wars movies are. When I see Natalie Portman’s wooden, stoic acting, it makes me think about how life-like and stubborn Carrie Fisher was as Princess Leia (Rest in Peace). When I see glossy, fake, and perfect looking sets in TPM, I think about how cozy and rustic Yoda’s hut looks in the Empire Strikes Back. My point here folks, is that probably the best thing about The Phantom Menace and indeed, all the Star Wars prequels, is that they make us really appreciate and admire the old trilogy and just how basically perfect those films are. When this nightmare of a movie finally ended, what I wanted to do more than anything was pop in one of the old Star Wars movies, or heck, even the Force Awakens! It doesn’t matter which one I choose, I know it’s gonna be better than what I just saw.

So in conclusion, yeah this movie really sucks. However, I can see SOME people finding it a little enjoyable. The Pod racing scene is actually pretty good even though it’s a lot longer than it needs to be. The light saber fight is exciting and well-choreographed, and it’s always interesting to see new planets and people in the Star Wars universe. Unfortunately, it’s not enough to save this film from horrible CGI, wooden acting, an awful script and bad pacing. I don’t really recommend this film to anyone, unless your kids REALLY wanna see the Star Wars prequels. They might enjoy this film, but they probably won’t once they get older. I know I definitely won’t show this movie to my kids unless they beg me.

I will give Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace  2/10.

[jamiedeline]

When Prejudices Become Partisan: What Also Happened Last November

One year ago today, our nation experienced a shift that we will be doomed to analyze and re-analyze and over-analyze until the end of time. Have you ever been a student in a history class examining particularly bizarre or frightening eras from our collective human past and wonder, “How the hell did they let that happen?” I feel I’m currently living in one of those eras and I understand it even less. I recently watched the documentary 11/8/16, which follows various Americans throughout the country on that fateful day, and I believe Anthony Ray Hinton, a man exonerated after 30 years on Death Row now voting for the first time since, put it best: “I’ve done stuff and woke up the next morning and said, ‘Man, what have I done?’ I don’t know when, I don’t know how long [it’s] gonna be, but the American people are gonna wake up and say, ‘What have we done?’”

Obviously Americans take many different stances on last year’s election, as did the subjects featured in said documentary. But nearly all of us agree that things were said during the course of last year’s election that were disrespectful, misogynistic, racist, and for lack of a better word, stupid. I had long hoped (if not assumed) that the majority of the American people would draw the line at such blatant bigotry. Well, the majority of Americans did draw that line, but still not nearly enough to stop said offender from ascending to the Oval Office. When the polls closed, I remember not so much being shocked at the results, but more heartbroken, as my worst fears about my country had just been confirmed. So how did we get to a place in our nation where bigotry is brushed off, if not all out accepted, by so much of the voting electorate?

I’m not speaking about the radicals and reactionaries who will always be among us. I’m speaking about the majority of the American public, who I’ll assume, for the sake of my sanity, to be morally decent and good. (Donald Trump is not among the majority I’m considering.) So forget the alt-right and the old-school Nazis. To be fair and balanced, I guess we can forget Antifa, if you even remembered them in the first place.

Partisanship is not a new phenomenon in this country. It’s as old as our constitution. For various reasons, our nation divided itself into a two-party nation, and despite two dominant parties rising and falling and shifting in ideology over time, there has always been two on top. Any vote for a third party ultimately only helps one and hinders the other, because surely it will always be one of the dominant two in the end. I have often claimed that this is far from ideal, but that’s the way it’s always been, and it leaves ample room for in-fighting about the platform of each party (yes, I see you, Bernie bros) while plenty of people feel they cannot solidly identify with either.

With that said, I’m still not sure exactly how and when our partisanship got to be this bad. Yet I do know that it’s worse than I’ve seen it in my lifetime. Despite the cries of many who insist it to be so, I maintain that this is not and never will be politics as usual. I also believe one of the reasons we got here is that many Americans have been fooled into thinking this is the case, and Donald Trump is not the only reason for this. I may not know why and how it came to this, and any reporter or analyzer is welcome to take up the study, but I can present examples of its existence and argue why it needs to be stopped before this country really does go off the rails into total self-destruction.

A prime example was given by Republican Tim Miller in a segment brilliantly pinned “The Cuck Zone” in a summer episode of Lovett or Leave It (one of the many brilliant podcasts from Crooked Media). He referenced back to the 2012 debates between President Obama and Mitt Romney, where the latter made reference to his “binders full of women.” Miller reminded us that in response to this off-hand remark, many liberals pounced on Romney and labelled him a sexist, despite the fact that he’s been married to a woman with whom he shared his first kiss at age 16 for nearly 50 years, and he actually wanted to hire these women. Looking back at the time, I very well may have gotten swept up in the rhetoric in the heat of the impending election and been more critical than necessary of Romney in that regard, but I don’t think I believed him to be genuinely sexist. He’s certainly not the most progressive candidate for women’s rights, but I think at the time the comment and the subsequent jokes it produced was more entertaining to me than disconcerting. (See below for an example.)

Yet come four years later, when the Republicans have on their ticket a man who bragged about grabbing women by the pussy, stood accused of sexual assault a dozen times over, claimed that hiring women costs his businesses too much money, and practically confirmed that he would bang his own daughter if she were not, you know, his daughter - then what good was our outrage if we had already overused and misplaced it in previous elections? We are so bitterly divided in this country along political lines that we the people failed to recognize an actual danger to our democracy. We’ve been crying political wolf for so long, that when an actual misogynistic prick is running for the highest office in the nation, those who identify with his “side” do not take the legitimate gripes of the opposition seriously. At this point, it’s just another partisan divide. Not a threat to our democracy, not a threat to many of our citizens, but just Democrats vs. Republicans as usual.

When Trump was finally chosen as the candidate the Republican party would have to run for president, I did find it a bit of glee in it. Not only was this a time when I naively believed the majority of Americans would see through his bullshit, but it seemed to be poetic justice for the Republican establishment of the past eight years. So much of their party’s platform had become all about blindly hating Obama and everything he did or tried to do, with and (more often) without their willingness to work with him. It was also not lost on me that many of this vitriolic hate came from a place of pure bigotry. There were plenty of people in this country and in our Congress that resented the fact that a black man with Muslim relations was in the White House. Never mind that he was one of the most decent and intelligent human beings to take up the job in my lifetime, never mind basic political differences of opinion; too many of the people that opposed him were ruled by prejudice.

For all that they had done and refused to do, I thought Trump was the candidate they deserved. For their party’s anti-LBGTQ, anti-women, and anti-immigrant agenda, a bigot at the head of the ranks made sense. Now, I am not saying that all Republicans are inherently bigots, yet I do believe the Republican Party of the past decade is less in line with traditional conservatism and more in step with white male prosperity. Nevertheless, the Republican establishment stood ready to reject Trump. How could they be so shocked when the majority of their constituents drank the poison they’d been feeding them for years?

So life-long Republicans who did reject Trump were forced to make a choice; vote for the bigoted bully your party was now all but required to endorse, or vote for Hillary Clinton. Yes, Hillary Clinton. The lightening rod for conservative hate, despite her largely centrist views that has also made her a lightening rod of hate for the far-left. I’m sure most of my fellow millennials saw this GIF going around on their Facebook:

My first reaction was “Dude, you spelled Hillary’s name wrong.” My second reaction was “Heh, that’s funny, I guess.” But my third and most passionate reaction was, “Wait, are you fucking kidding me?” How is Hillary Clinton on the same level as Donald Trump?! How can you not make that distinction?

“But what about her emails?” “What about Whitewater?” “What about her speech at Goldman Sachs?” At the time, I believed this to be complete and utter partisan bullshit. While I recognize the legitimacy of some these gripes back then as I do now, one year of a Donald Trump presidency has proven my initial instincts to be correct. Watching the Trump administration not only have scandals of the exact same nature (and worse) as anything Hillary was accused of during the election and watching the Republican establishment look the other way has validated my initial inclination. Yet what would the Democratic Party do if Hillary had insisted on a Muslim ban? I’d like to think we’d rebuke her, and I know Republicans would tear her apart just because they’d have the opportunity. But would we still endorse her? Would I still vote for her?

I had a couple friends in France that weren’t so thrilled with their final two choices in their most recent election. Because France has a run-off system, their final two choices came down to, as one acquaintance put it, “An inexperienced businessman and a racist.” Yet to me, that choice was obvious! Do not vote for the racist! Thank God 75% of the country took my advice. Perhaps they learned from our mistakes. Americans should have learned from Brexit if the majority of us paid any attention to international news.

What it came down to was that the majority of Trump voters either brushed aside or excused their candidates racism when they cast their ballot. There are plenty of bonafide racists in his constituency, and perhaps even more that aren’t even aware of how inherent racism and misogyny are in our system that they do not recognize it in themselves, but I don’t believe the majority to have had malicious intent. Yet at the very least, they ignored this maliciousness in favor of his policies which supposedly were more in line with their political beliefs.

But does it matter where your candidate stands on the economy if he’s actively mounting a racist campaign? Shouldn’t we, the American people, know where to draw the line between politics as usual and flat-out prejudice?

Unfortunately last year, the answer was no. But we need to learn.

Prejudice on partisan lines is not exactly new in this country, either. We literally fought a war amongst ourselves because one half of us refused to acknowledge the practice of maintaining other human beings was immoral. To this day people still try to make excuses for that, right up to the president’s Chief of Staff! They claim the Civil War was about more than slavery, but rather states’ rights (ahem, their rights to own slaves), economic opportunities (i.e. refusing to give up their slaves), and Southern oppression (because they were being forced to give up their slaves... you see where I’m going with this). Never mind that these statues of Confederate generals were erected decades later as yet another reminder to African-Americans that their lives matter less. And when there is finally some push-back against these symbols of oppression, we end up with Nazis marching in the street. Nazis which the president refused to condemn because he knows they are his constituents! This cannot and should not be acceptable. Even if you voted for Trump on an economic basis, good and decent cannot stand idly by and be complicit in this hatred.

I’m sure there are many who voted for Trump who are now having second thoughts. Probably many of them won’t be willing to admit it, but I’m sure they exist. I’m also sure many of them continue to be in denial, lying to themselves and coating these lies with their daily dose of Fox & Friends. People don’t want to admit they made a mistake. Our nation has made many of them and yet we still make excuses for ourselves rather than acknowledging them. Certainly we on the left are not and will not be so forgiving. I myself find it extremely hard to forgive anyone who voted for Trump, even though several of my loved ones are among them. They must have known what they were voting for, right? Yet so many people have become so tribal that it’s blinded their ability to think critically about their choices. This isn’t a new phenomenon either. Countless studies have shown that human beings will pick their tribe before they pick their beliefs, and then their beliefs will subsequently fall in line with the pack. We as Americans, let alone as people, have come a long way in shedding our more primitive, tribal roots. Yet we have a long way to go.

We on the left can be kinder to each other as well. The truth is that there is often great tribalism among minorities against other minorities. Far more often than necessary, we are compelled to attack ignorance where an attack is not merited. Not everyone is coming from a place of maliciousness. More often than not, people just don’t know. We have to open to hearing other people speak their truths, even if the opinions they’ve derived from their experiences clash with our own. This is the only way we can truly learn from each other and grow. Yet if those who are more “privileged” than us feel alienated from the conversation, they will feel alienated from the movement and more and more reluctant to stand with us as allies.

Maybe with the shock of the election and the disaster of a first year for Trump’s presidency, the winds are starting to shift. Yesterday’s election garnered much more hopeful results. While there is little hope to be placed on Republican leaders Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan, there are still those in the party (though they won’t be there for long) willing to speak out. I don’t expect Sen. Jeff Flake or Sen. Bob Corker to start aligning themselves with Democrats on votes. They’re still Republicans and they have a different set of beliefs. Yet bigotry should never be a mainstay in any political party’s platform. It should be called out by all decent Americans, no matter where it comes from. Prejudice should not be a partisan issue. Let’s recognize that in our own personal politics and start voting only for the people who already do.

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6 Ways Movies Fool You Into Ignoring Bad Reviews

Terrible movies will always exist. They’re one of those unavoidable annoyances, like stubbing your toe or getting picked last during an orgy. Unfortunately, even when knowingly faced with a dud, studios still have to pretend they’re sitting on the Holy Grail of eye-blasting family entertainment — at least for the duration of the marketing.

So how does one polish a brawny turd in an age when resources like Rotten Tomatoes have made the average moviegoer hyper-aware of mediocrity? It’s not easy. And in a way, the ability to spin a piece of terrible entertainment as the next big Star War is an art in itself. Only instead of ink and light, these modern-day Rembrandts (had Rembrandt gone to Emerson and was nicknamed “The Donk”) are painting with beautiful lies.

6

Shitty Films Have Used “Joke” Reviews In Their Ads

Film studios want nothing more than the power to write their own reviews … something Sony actually got caught doing back in 2001, when it was revealed that fake quotes from a nonexistent critic named David Manning were used to praise masterpieces like The Animal and Hollow Man — the latter film featuring invisible gorillas and Kevin Bacon’s CGI dick muscles.

It was a ruse that would end up costing the studio over a million dollars in lawsuits, and so no other studio attempted such a blatant teabagging of the public’s trust. Instead, they did find a way to more gently dab our foreheads with technically-legal jest: They use fake critics under the excuse of “humor.”

Take the recent Lynchian abomination that was Nine Lives, a film about a rich and powerful Kevin Spacey being turned into a cat via Christopher Walken voodoo. The movie features all the things we’ve come to expect from a children’s film, such as existential torture, a cat getting drunk, and a fucking suicide fakeout. Needless to say, critics weren’t on board with it. And so TV spots opted to sprinkle the feline romp with hilarious joke reviews from places like “Vanity Fur,” “Meowsweek,” and the “Catfington Post.”

It’s exactly the kind of incredible wordplay you’d expect from this film about cat possession. And while there’s nothing wrong with including bullshit pun reviews as a joke, when you watch the ad in real time, it becomes apparent that chucklefuckery wasn’t the only motivation.

Read Next

5 Criminals With The Worst Luck In The Entire World

That’s right, each “review” flashed on screen for a nano-second while the voiceover quoted the fake praise without any context. Meaning that unless you paused your television, most people watching had no idea it wasn’t really a quote from Vanity Fair. But if anyone calls them out on their colossal horseshit (like right now), the producers are able to shrug and say it was all in good fun. It must be a coincidence that the only other film to use this technique was the exhausting Vampire’s Suck — a spoof “comedy” which, according to ads, were given standing ovations by such critics as “Hugh Jass” and “Oliver Klozoffe.” Jesus, you guys, could you at least think of bad vampire puns for your terrible film, like David Edelstake or Gene Siskill? It would have only taken a minute.

5

Studios Use (Misquoted) Reviews From Total Randos On The Internet

If incredulously scrolling Rotten Tomatoes fan reviews have taught me anything, it’s that audiences tend to be way more forgiving of shitty movies than critics. You could argue that critics are heartless pedants soured by their own career failures, or maybe accept that it’s possible to enjoy a film that also happens to be garbage. There are no villains here, but the important takeaway is that critics are hired and respected because most of them are able to judge a film from an objective perspective. This is why studios put their quotes on posters and trailers instead of those of some random jerk on Twitter, right?

Oh no. Turns out that’s no longer the case. It seems anyone can be a prestigious movie critic now, even @zoidberg95 talking about the unbridled joy King Arthur brings him. This isn’t an isolated incident by a long shot, as evidenced by the recent pullquote in the trailer for Broken City, a Mark Wahlberg film with a 28 percent on Rotten Tomatoes.

Sure, we can all agree that Mark Wahlberg is “bad ass” in the sense that assaulting a middle-aged Vietnamese man is both “bad” and an “ass” thing to do. And sure, there’s nothing technically wrong with giving the man on the street a voice of support. But here’s the thing: According to the source of that quote, he hadn’t seen the film. The studio used a tweet made about an entirely different Mark Wahlberg performance and used it in their ad. And they are somehow allowed to do this as long as they ask the author of the tweet beforehand. That’s it. There are no qualifications or confirmations beyond a polite message and digital contract.

Thanks to the crowdsourcing power of the internet, you can literally find anyone who is into any crazy thing. Studios know this, and are able to make a film seem like it has word-of-mouth appeal by scraping the bottom of the Twitter barrel to find faceless folks saying the right things. Or failing that, they find faceless folks saying the wrong thing and simply make it seem like they said the right thing.

After Batman v. Superman‘s Twitter account told us about the high praises of @raniaresh, someone pointed out that the now-banned account was only an egg icon with the profile: “I did NOT enjoy Batman v Superman.” The tweet was then pulled and replaced with yet another rando with the same basic praise.

Notice how it’s the same reworded “whoa my mind = blown” quote, only now attributed to someone else? Warner Bros. didn’t care where they were getting the quote; they just wanted some vague sentence calling their disjointed film “mind-blowing.” Chances are they tasked some hungover intern to scour social media for any kind of evidence of exploding brains and slap that shit on a promo shot, regardless of who said those words or what context they were said in.

But if you think this dirty process is safe from critics, you are not correct …

4

Advertising Perpetually Cherry-Picks Critic Quotes To Make Them Seem Positive

Writers write a lot of words, and it’s pretty easy to change what those words mean if you only take a few of them. For example, I earlier described the plot of Nine Lives as “rich and powerful,” if you ignore everything around those two adjectives. In the way Rock Bottom can turn Homer Simpson into a pervert, so too can studios make terrible reviews seem complimentary. For example, this glowing phrase about Rock Of Ages from a Guardian reporter …

… was in truth pulled from a one-star review quote: “It’s a very peculiar show indeed, with an unvarying and unpleasant tone of careless sexualisation. Rock’n’roll debauchery is presented as the pure and innocent way of dreamers.”

Seriously, they fucking did that. And the reviewer in question wasn’t too happy about it at all. And amazingly, this isn’t the only time The Guardian‘s deep disdain was twisted into cheerful praise, like a laughing clown puppet made from a child’s corpse. Check out this poster for Legend and its collection of four-star reviews:

Except that Guardian review in the middle? It’s a two-star review they made to look like four stars that had been obstructed. That’s honestly hilarious and brilliant and hard to be mad at, but the act of taking someone’s out-of-context words and slapping them on your poster or DVD case can go from cute trolling to downright infuriating very fast.

For example, the movie Accidental Love (which has a flatlining 6 percent on Rotten Tomatoes) underwent a horrendous production which resulted in a cobbled-together shitcircus disowned by its director. When reviewing it, The AV Club noted that the original version probably wasn’t all that great either, saying “there’s little reason to believe that the ideal, untroubled version of the material would have been a comedic masterstroke.”

And then this:

Yeah, that’s the back of Accidental Love‘s DVD case using The AV Club’s unfavorable description of a (still better) hypothetical movie as their review quote. You can imagine how that kind of insidious tangle of bull angered the original writer … or you can read his response here.

It comes down to this: Never trust a review quoted on a movie’s promotional material. Ever. The only information you’re getting is that those combination of words were somewhere in the writing, but in no way were they necessarily meant to describe the movie being advertised. Which puts a whole new light on posters like this:

3

TV Networks Will Misspell Their Shows’ Names To Avoid Bad Ratings

In the age of streaming, being a TV executive has the life expectancy of a docile classroom hamster. Their entire job can be summed up by a picture of a stargazing dinosaur on a suspiciously bright night. It’s totally understandable that networks would claw and gouge their way to profit in these uncertain times, and yet their sleazy resourcefulness still manages to surprise even me, an undercover diamond thief working the long con as a internet writer who broadcasts his diabolical intent all across the land.

To quickly set this up, you have to understand the Nielsen ratings. Every show undergoes the same measurement using a sample audience being monitored for what TV shows they watch. That data is calculated into a rating for each show, and the ratings are averaged into monthly or quarterly reports. Advertisers then look at these reports and decide what time slots to buy for their sexy burger or cartoon shitting bear commercials. Therefore, a show with a better average will get more money for advertising. With me still? It’s all a big wet fart of intrigue for your average consumer, which means few people pay attention to Nielsen ratings. But once you start to read daily reports on TV industry sites, you’ll start to notice something bizarre in the footnotes:

That’s right, in what seems like playground-level cheating, television networks can deliberately change or misspell their own shows if they anticipate bad ratings for that night. By doing this, that episode won’t be calculated into the shows’ overall averages, and their quarterly ratings won’t go down. And so shows like NBC Nightly News become “NBC Nitely News,” so that marketers don’t pull that sweet, sweet commercial dough.

How could such obvious semantic trickery go unchallenged? Well, it turns out you can do all sorts of amazing hogwash with human language. Ever heard of the show Bull? It’s a CBS courtroom drama co-created by, and inspired by, the life of Dr. Phil which exists for some unimaginable reason. It also airs something called “encore” episodes every now and then.

That’s not just the wording of the article, but the official CBS classification of a repeat episode of Bull. You see, a show’s ratings are calculated based not only on their first run, but also on (typically lower) rerun ratings. But if you call your rerun an “encore” episode, then it doesn’t get categorized with the original episode, thus avoiding a lower score. Yep, apparently you can change the words of things to completely redefine their importance, like calling bags of Funyuns under a co-worker’s desk “diamonds” and then telling everyone you’re a “jewel thief.”

2

When In Doubt, Simply Block Critics From Reviewing It Ahead Of Time

It’s the perfect crime. Critics can’t say your game or movie sucks if they can’t see it. So studios will simply prevent critics from seeing their work before it comes out. It’s like throwing bleach in your date’s eyes so they won’t know how ugly you are. And while sounding excruciatingly transparent, this technique works way more often than you think. It’s called an embargo, and it’s what Ubisoft did before Assassin’s Creed Unity, which ultimately received lukewarm reviews for being breathtakingly glitch-filled. Like, so glitchy it was a work of sinister art — like something the Joker would conjure up.

Ubisoft “How am I supposed to enjoy a carefree romp of clandestine murder after THIS?!”

Unfortunately for gamers, those reviews only came in after the midnight release — as ordered by Ubisoft when they first sent their early copies out. But it could be worse. You could go a step further, like Wild Games Studios did when they trolled through YouTube sticking copyright violations on any video which spoke badly of their new release. Or Sega, which used the same tactic to shut down bad YouTube reviews that didn’t even contain footage from their games.

In the end, this technique usually causes a huge and understandable backlash, on account of YouTubers being wicked blabbermouths about such injustices. But critic embargoes are so common that they’re considered normal. And most often, this isn’t nefarious at all, but rather a measure against premature spoilers or judgments before a film is locked down in post. Only every once in a while is this tool used to cover up true garbage. Pungent, salty garbage — the kind you can taste through your nose. Like, I’m talking alien-chasing-a-school-bus-driven-by-Judd-Hirsch level of garbage here.

Independence Day: Resurgence is a film I happen to enjoy that is also objectively terrible. And 20th Century Fox knew it was terrible, hence their American critic embargo lasted up until the day it was released — causing most audiences to buy a ticket without knowing its quality. Similar measures, which include completely skipping press screenings altogether, have happened for similarly bad work like Alien Vs. Predator and the G.I. Joe films.

Yes, you could argue that these films “weren’t meant for critics,” as a lot of executives often say. But that’s kind of like saying an apartment complex “isn’t meant for safety inspectors” or that your basement “isn’t meant for homicide detectives.” People deserve to know in advance if something sucks. But that doesn’t mean we won’t still enjoy it or flock to see it. And if all else fails, you can always do what China does and completely circumvent the pesky audience altogether …

1

China Will Hold “Ghost Screenings” To Make Films Look More Popular

As previously mentioned, China is quickly becoming the dominating money-maker for blockbusters. So it stands to reason that the country would also become the industry leader for blatantly fudging a movie’s popularity. But instead of relying on embargoes or misleading ads, Chinese studios have taken a much more direct approach: just buying tickets to the movie they made.

The Wall Street Journal “‘Best thing to ever happen to movies!’ raved one translucent women in a bloodstained Victorian wedding dress.”

It’s as brilliant as it is illegal. Instead of pouring money into television spots and bus stop posters, simply use that marketing money to buy out theater showings, and watch the popularity snowball. And to ensure profit, those purchased tickets can then be resold online to discount ticket retailers. It’s like stealing your own car for the insurance, and then selling that stolen car for a second profit.

Unfortunately for those cheating marketers, I wouldn’t be writing about this if people didn’t figure out it was happening. Ghost screenings were recently brought to light thanks to the film Ip Man 3, a martial arts biopic which bafflingly includes Mike Tyson playing an evil property developer who ends up fighting the hero in an epic battle of kung-fu vs. boxing vs. child endangerment.

Pegasus Motion Pictures Why this movie felt the need to artificially inflate its popularity is beyond me.

After the film’s release, a local news site posted screenshots of theater websites claiming to have sold-out screenings for showings that started within ten minutes of each other … in the same auditorium. Meaning that, save for some kind of multiple-dimension scenario caused by Mike Tyson punching time itself, someone was brazenly cheating in the laziest way possible.

When The Wall Street Journal dug deeper, they found it to be a regular (albeit short-term) strategy for film distributors to buy out fake screenings in the hope that sold-out shows would encourage audiences to assume the film is popular and therefore go see it themselves. It’s not very imaginative, but if studios were more creative, they wouldn’t need to do all the bullshit on this list to begin with.

David is a writer and editor for this very website that you currently read. You can follow him on Twitter.

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6 Ways Movies Fool You Into Ignoring Bad Reviews

Terrible movies will always exist. They’re one of those unavoidable annoyances, like stubbing your toe or getting picked last during an orgy. Unfortunately, even when knowingly faced with a dud, studios still have to pretend they’re sitting on the Holy Grail of eye-blasting family entertainment — at least for the duration of the marketing.

So how does one polish a brawny turd in an age when resources like Rotten Tomatoes have made the average moviegoer hyper-aware of mediocrity? It’s not easy. And in a way, the ability to spin a piece of terrible entertainment as the next big Star War is an art in itself. Only instead of ink and light, these modern-day Rembrandts (had Rembrandt gone to Emerson and was nicknamed “The Donk”) are painting with beautiful lies.

6

Shitty Films Have Used “Joke” Reviews In Their Ads

Film studios want nothing more than the power to write their own reviews … something Sony actually got caught doing back in 2001, when it was revealed that fake quotes from a nonexistent critic named David Manning were used to praise masterpieces like The Animal and Hollow Man — the latter film featuring invisible gorillas and Kevin Bacon’s CGI dick muscles.

It was a ruse that would end up costing the studio over a million dollars in lawsuits, and so no other studio attempted such a blatant teabagging of the public’s trust. Instead, they did find a way to more gently dab our foreheads with technically-legal jest: They use fake critics under the excuse of “humor.”

Take the recent Lynchian abomination that was Nine Lives, a film about a rich and powerful Kevin Spacey being turned into a cat via Christopher Walken voodoo. The movie features all the things we’ve come to expect from a children’s film, such as existential torture, a cat getting drunk, and a fucking suicide fakeout. Needless to say, critics weren’t on board with it. And so TV spots opted to sprinkle the feline romp with hilarious joke reviews from places like “Vanity Fur,” “Meowsweek,” and the “Catfington Post.”

It’s exactly the kind of incredible wordplay you’d expect from this film about cat possession. And while there’s nothing wrong with including bullshit pun reviews as a joke, when you watch the ad in real time, it becomes apparent that chucklefuckery wasn’t the only motivation.

Read Next

5 Criminals With The Worst Luck In The Entire World

That’s right, each “review” flashed on screen for a nano-second while the voiceover quoted the fake praise without any context. Meaning that unless you paused your television, most people watching had no idea it wasn’t really a quote from Vanity Fair. But if anyone calls them out on their colossal horseshit (like right now), the producers are able to shrug and say it was all in good fun. It must be a coincidence that the only other film to use this technique was the exhausting Vampire’s Suck — a spoof “comedy” which, according to ads, were given standing ovations by such critics as “Hugh Jass” and “Oliver Klozoffe.” Jesus, you guys, could you at least think of bad vampire puns for your terrible film, like David Edelstake or Gene Siskill? It would have only taken a minute.

5

Studios Use (Misquoted) Reviews From Total Randos On The Internet

If incredulously scrolling Rotten Tomatoes fan reviews have taught me anything, it’s that audiences tend to be way more forgiving of shitty movies than critics. You could argue that critics are heartless pedants soured by their own career failures, or maybe accept that it’s possible to enjoy a film that also happens to be garbage. There are no villains here, but the important takeaway is that critics are hired and respected because most of them are able to judge a film from an objective perspective. This is why studios put their quotes on posters and trailers instead of those of some random jerk on Twitter, right?

Oh no. Turns out that’s no longer the case. It seems anyone can be a prestigious movie critic now, even @zoidberg95 talking about the unbridled joy King Arthur brings him. This isn’t an isolated incident by a long shot, as evidenced by the recent pullquote in the trailer for Broken City, a Mark Wahlberg film with a 28 percent on Rotten Tomatoes.

Sure, we can all agree that Mark Wahlberg is “bad ass” in the sense that assaulting a middle-aged Vietnamese man is both “bad” and an “ass” thing to do. And sure, there’s nothing technically wrong with giving the man on the street a voice of support. But here’s the thing: According to the source of that quote, he hadn’t seen the film. The studio used a tweet made about an entirely different Mark Wahlberg performance and used it in their ad. And they are somehow allowed to do this as long as they ask the author of the tweet beforehand. That’s it. There are no qualifications or confirmations beyond a polite message and digital contract.

Thanks to the crowdsourcing power of the internet, you can literally find anyone who is into any crazy thing. Studios know this, and are able to make a film seem like it has word-of-mouth appeal by scraping the bottom of the Twitter barrel to find faceless folks saying the right things. Or failing that, they find faceless folks saying the wrong thing and simply make it seem like they said the right thing.

After Batman v. Superman‘s Twitter account told us about the high praises of @raniaresh, someone pointed out that the now-banned account was only an egg icon with the profile: “I did NOT enjoy Batman v Superman.” The tweet was then pulled and replaced with yet another rando with the same basic praise.

Notice how it’s the same reworded “whoa my mind = blown” quote, only now attributed to someone else? Warner Bros. didn’t care where they were getting the quote; they just wanted some vague sentence calling their disjointed film “mind-blowing.” Chances are they tasked some hungover intern to scour social media for any kind of evidence of exploding brains and slap that shit on a promo shot, regardless of who said those words or what context they were said in.

But if you think this dirty process is safe from critics, you are not correct …

4

Advertising Perpetually Cherry-Picks Critic Quotes To Make Them Seem Positive

Writers write a lot of words, and it’s pretty easy to change what those words mean if you only take a few of them. For example, I earlier described the plot of Nine Lives as “rich and powerful,” if you ignore everything around those two adjectives. In the way Rock Bottom can turn Homer Simpson into a pervert, so too can studios make terrible reviews seem complimentary. For example, this glowing phrase about Rock Of Ages from a Guardian reporter …

… was in truth pulled from a one-star review quote: “It’s a very peculiar show indeed, with an unvarying and unpleasant tone of careless sexualisation. Rock’n’roll debauchery is presented as the pure and innocent way of dreamers.”

Seriously, they fucking did that. And the reviewer in question wasn’t too happy about it at all. And amazingly, this isn’t the only time The Guardian‘s deep disdain was twisted into cheerful praise, like a laughing clown puppet made from a child’s corpse. Check out this poster for Legend and its collection of four-star reviews:

Except that Guardian review in the middle? It’s a two-star review they made to look like four stars that had been obstructed. That’s honestly hilarious and brilliant and hard to be mad at, but the act of taking someone’s out-of-context words and slapping them on your poster or DVD case can go from cute trolling to downright infuriating very fast.

For example, the movie Accidental Love (which has a flatlining 6 percent on Rotten Tomatoes) underwent a horrendous production which resulted in a cobbled-together shitcircus disowned by its director. When reviewing it, The AV Club noted that the original version probably wasn’t all that great either, saying “there’s little reason to believe that the ideal, untroubled version of the material would have been a comedic masterstroke.”

And then this:

Yeah, that’s the back of Accidental Love‘s DVD case using The AV Club’s unfavorable description of a (still better) hypothetical movie as their review quote. You can imagine how that kind of insidious tangle of bull angered the original writer … or you can read his response here.

It comes down to this: Never trust a review quoted on a movie’s promotional material. Ever. The only information you’re getting is that those combination of words were somewhere in the writing, but in no way were they necessarily meant to describe the movie being advertised. Which puts a whole new light on posters like this:

3

TV Networks Will Misspell Their Shows’ Names To Avoid Bad Ratings

In the age of streaming, being a TV executive has the life expectancy of a docile classroom hamster. Their entire job can be summed up by a picture of a stargazing dinosaur on a suspiciously bright night. It’s totally understandable that networks would claw and gouge their way to profit in these uncertain times, and yet their sleazy resourcefulness still manages to surprise even me, an undercover diamond thief working the long con as a internet writer who broadcasts his diabolical intent all across the land.

To quickly set this up, you have to understand the Nielsen ratings. Every show undergoes the same measurement using a sample audience being monitored for what TV shows they watch. That data is calculated into a rating for each show, and the ratings are averaged into monthly or quarterly reports. Advertisers then look at these reports and decide what time slots to buy for their sexy burger or cartoon shitting bear commercials. Therefore, a show with a better average will get more money for advertising. With me still? It’s all a big wet fart of intrigue for your average consumer, which means few people pay attention to Nielsen ratings. But once you start to read daily reports on TV industry sites, you’ll start to notice something bizarre in the footnotes:

That’s right, in what seems like playground-level cheating, television networks can deliberately change or misspell their own shows if they anticipate bad ratings for that night. By doing this, that episode won’t be calculated into the shows’ overall averages, and their quarterly ratings won’t go down. And so shows like NBC Nightly News become “NBC Nitely News,” so that marketers don’t pull that sweet, sweet commercial dough.

How could such obvious semantic trickery go unchallenged? Well, it turns out you can do all sorts of amazing hogwash with human language. Ever heard of the show Bull? It’s a CBS courtroom drama co-created by, and inspired by, the life of Dr. Phil which exists for some unimaginable reason. It also airs something called “encore” episodes every now and then.

That’s not just the wording of the article, but the official CBS classification of a repeat episode of Bull. You see, a show’s ratings are calculated based not only on their first run, but also on (typically lower) rerun ratings. But if you call your rerun an “encore” episode, then it doesn’t get categorized with the original episode, thus avoiding a lower score. Yep, apparently you can change the words of things to completely redefine their importance, like calling bags of Funyuns under a co-worker’s desk “diamonds” and then telling everyone you’re a “jewel thief.”

2

When In Doubt, Simply Block Critics From Reviewing It Ahead Of Time

It’s the perfect crime. Critics can’t say your game or movie sucks if they can’t see it. So studios will simply prevent critics from seeing their work before it comes out. It’s like throwing bleach in your date’s eyes so they won’t know how ugly you are. And while sounding excruciatingly transparent, this technique works way more often than you think. It’s called an embargo, and it’s what Ubisoft did before Assassin’s Creed Unity, which ultimately received lukewarm reviews for being breathtakingly glitch-filled. Like, so glitchy it was a work of sinister art — like something the Joker would conjure up.

Ubisoft “How am I supposed to enjoy a carefree romp of clandestine murder after THIS?!”

Unfortunately for gamers, those reviews only came in after the midnight release — as ordered by Ubisoft when they first sent their early copies out. But it could be worse. You could go a step further, like Wild Games Studios did when they trolled through YouTube sticking copyright violations on any video which spoke badly of their new release. Or Sega, which used the same tactic to shut down bad YouTube reviews that didn’t even contain footage from their games.

In the end, this technique usually causes a huge and understandable backlash, on account of YouTubers being wicked blabbermouths about such injustices. But critic embargoes are so common that they’re considered normal. And most often, this isn’t nefarious at all, but rather a measure against premature spoilers or judgments before a film is locked down in post. Only every once in a while is this tool used to cover up true garbage. Pungent, salty garbage — the kind you can taste through your nose. Like, I’m talking alien-chasing-a-school-bus-driven-by-Judd-Hirsch level of garbage here.

Independence Day: Resurgence is a film I happen to enjoy that is also objectively terrible. And 20th Century Fox knew it was terrible, hence their American critic embargo lasted up until the day it was released — causing most audiences to buy a ticket without knowing its quality. Similar measures, which include completely skipping press screenings altogether, have happened for similarly bad work like Alien Vs. Predator and the G.I. Joe films.

Yes, you could argue that these films “weren’t meant for critics,” as a lot of executives often say. But that’s kind of like saying an apartment complex “isn’t meant for safety inspectors” or that your basement “isn’t meant for homicide detectives.” People deserve to know in advance if something sucks. But that doesn’t mean we won’t still enjoy it or flock to see it. And if all else fails, you can always do what China does and completely circumvent the pesky audience altogether …

1

China Will Hold “Ghost Screenings” To Make Films Look More Popular

As previously mentioned, China is quickly becoming the dominating money-maker for blockbusters. So it stands to reason that the country would also become the industry leader for blatantly fudging a movie’s popularity. But instead of relying on embargoes or misleading ads, Chinese studios have taken a much more direct approach: just buying tickets to the movie they made.

The Wall Street Journal “‘Best thing to ever happen to movies!’ raved one translucent women in a bloodstained Victorian wedding dress.”

It’s as brilliant as it is illegal. Instead of pouring money into television spots and bus stop posters, simply use that marketing money to buy out theater showings, and watch the popularity snowball. And to ensure profit, those purchased tickets can then be resold online to discount ticket retailers. It’s like stealing your own car for the insurance, and then selling that stolen car for a second profit.

Unfortunately for those cheating marketers, I wouldn’t be writing about this if people didn’t figure out it was happening. Ghost screenings were recently brought to light thanks to the film Ip Man 3, a martial arts biopic which bafflingly includes Mike Tyson playing an evil property developer who ends up fighting the hero in an epic battle of kung-fu vs. boxing vs. child endangerment.

Pegasus Motion Pictures Why this movie felt the need to artificially inflate its popularity is beyond me.

After the film’s release, a local news site posted screenshots of theater websites claiming to have sold-out screenings for showings that started within ten minutes of each other … in the same auditorium. Meaning that, save for some kind of multiple-dimension scenario caused by Mike Tyson punching time itself, someone was brazenly cheating in the laziest way possible.

When The Wall Street Journal dug deeper, they found it to be a regular (albeit short-term) strategy for film distributors to buy out fake screenings in the hope that sold-out shows would encourage audiences to assume the film is popular and therefore go see it themselves. It’s not very imaginative, but if studios were more creative, they wouldn’t need to do all the bullshit on this list to begin with.

David is a writer and editor for this very website that you currently read. You can follow him on Twitter.

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