Neill Blomkamp

If someone were to ask me who my top 3 most despised directors were…

Neill Blomkamp would be #2 right behind Tim Burton. This guy is THE most one-notes director I’ve ever seen! He specializes in Sci-Fi it seems and was an impressive Visual Effects artist… but his foray into actual directing… that’s where he leaves much to be desired.
He has so far made three full length feature films, one of which has been released. You all know it, the grotesque travesty known simply as District 9.

So let’s get down to the real issue I have with this guy… All of his films are underhanded political statements against apartheid!!! I’m serious, watch District 9 and then watch the previews for Elysium. It’s a movie about a group of elite people who live in paradise while everyone else of a specific type are living in squalor… sound familiar?

I wouldn’t mind so much except that he masks his political docu-dramas as intense-looking Sci-Fi/Action stories. District 9 was grotesque and just unpleasant to watch on all levels. Though this one has some credibility in Matt Damon, I just don’t think I’m going to be seeing this one. Usually I’m not one to hold one flop against someone, but when you make a movie and deceptively market it as something other than what it is, and then it makes its way on to my top 5 worst movies of all time, yeah that’s when you enter unforgivable territory.

Neill Blomkamp, we get it, you’re a South African who saw and experienced the horrors of Apartheid, we get it. Now it’s time to GET OVER IT! You’ve made your docu-drama, now move on to something else. Otherwise, eventually your audience is going to catch on!

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0088955/

Plot Contrivance: The Character Balance Rule.

Has anyone ever noticed that in every decent story, there is what I refer to as a ‘character balance?’ Simply put, whenever a character dies or is killed off, usually they need to be replaced. This not only applies to on-screen killings, but also off-screen ones. One other thing you’ll notice is that they don’t always play the same role: Most commonly, a mentor can be replaced by a love interest, or by a friend or Friends, or even a future disciple in some cases. The purpose of this character is usually either a replacement sage, a new direction for the main character’s feelings, or just to keep the number of main characters up in some cases.

You especially see this in people who suffer from the Obi Wan Kenobi persona:
Examples:

Obi Wan Kenobi (DUH!) – You could make the case that he is replaced in Episode 4 either by Princess Leia or Han Solo.

Qui Gon Jin was (mercifully) a later example of this, being replaced by either Anakin or if you look at the bigger picture, Mace Windu.

Yoda is replaced by Emperor Palpatine (Technically he wasn’t replaced so much, but given that this was a sage to sage deal, and we all saw this movie before the other three came out, I’m counting it.)

In the Terminator series, Sarah Connor would be rather egregiously replaced by the red head who plays John’s wife.

… Pretty much every Rocky Mentor: Mickey> Apollo> Duke, and then Rocky’s voice of reason was replaced Adrian> Robert.

In LOTR Gandalf the White replaces Gandalf the Gray… I know, I know, same person, but there are differences between the two characters. Read the book for more info on this.

In the Lion King Mufasa is replaced by Pumba and Timone.

In Bambi, his mother is replaced by… well his father.  

 In the Star Trek Movies: Captain Decker> Savik> The Whale Biologist> (Let’s skip Star Trek V for Sanity’s sake)> Lt. Valeris.

Heck even I unintentionally did it a lot in the story I’ve been working on… a couple times in fact! Father Antonelli> Nicolas/Gregory> Federico> Adaline.

 

Now are their movies out there which do not do this? Sure, most horror movies just kill people off left and right and usually do not refill the empty slot. On occasion you may see a best friend replaced with a love interest or something of that nature, but it’s rare. It also seems like that besides the horror movie exception, few movies can get away from this plot contrivance without losing a lot along the way. Few movies actually come to mind that were any good after killing off a main cast member and not replacing him/her.
So what is it about our stories and our movies that makes such a plot contrivance necessary? Why do we feel the need to build up a character, make others feel strongly (either like or hate) and then kill them off simply to replace them with someone else in the name of furthering the plot? I’m not complaining by any stretch as, obviously, I am admittedly guilty of the same thing, but I don’t know why it’s an almost constantly reoccurring device.

Top 10 Christmas Songs on my Christmas sh*t list!

I started a tradition of posting songs on FB up until Christmas a few years ago. This year, I decided to start the countdown with the 10 worst.  The results were impressive. So without further hold up… the top 10 worst Christmas songs of all time:

Number 10:
The Chipmunk Christmas song at normal pitch and speed. I know, this isn’t how the song is meant to be listened to, but this has gone viral in recent months… so it’s being put on the list… I think my soul died a bit from listening to it…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8FxOu2gg10

Number 9:
Do They Know It’s Christmas Time
You can’t go to a major retailer without hearing this song at least twice on the speaker. It’s like it’s a law that it has to be played. My wife and I disagree on this one which is why it’s so low on the list. She hates it… I don’t mind it. At the very least, it’s an uncomfortable chuckle…
I really don’t think that these guys have ever actually been to Africa, and I’m fairly certain that many people of African decent would, and definitely SHOULD be offended by the lyrics…

There’s a world outside your window
And it’s a world of dreaded fear
Where the only water flowing
Is a bitter sting of tears (ouch!)
And the Christmas bells that ring there
Are the clanging chimes of doom
We’ll, tonight, thank God, it’s them
Instead of you (Oh come on, seriously? That’s just mean spirited!)
And there won’t be snow in Africa this Christmas time (BECAUSE IT’S 100 FREAKEN DEGREES ALMOST YEAR ROUND IN MOST OF AFRICA!!!)
The greatest gift they’ll get this year is life
Where nothing ever grows, (really!?) no rain or rivers flow (cept the Nile, blue Nile, Niger, Congo, Limpopo, Cuando…)
Do they know it’s Christmas time at all?

Seriously, I know I would be offended if someone wrote a song like this depicting Ireland as a doom ridden wasteland… You ‘give the world a hug’ hippies need to open a book before you open your mouths.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=to652Gy9blI

Number 8:
Santa Baby
This song is the stuff grinded teeth is made from. I get it’s a classic, but… it’s a freaken song hitting on Santa Claus. Yeah, it’s a song about hitting on a ripe jolly old elf, that’s really what I want my son listening to when I put the Christmas Carols on the radio… No thank you!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DeNhjPaP53I

Number 7:
God I hate this one, but other family members think it’s funny so it has been engrained into my memory. Grandma Got Run over by a Reindeer.

If you haven’t heard it yet, you wanna laugh, I know you do. What kind of sick individual would actually count this as a christmas classic? This is without a doubt one of the worst Christmas songs I’ve ever heard!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TfSb6J4jhcU

Number 6:
Dominic the Donkey
This one was kind of a tough choice for me and I know it has a following, but I can’t stand it. Which is surprising because I do love most things Italian. But the song is dumb, pointless… and just strikes me as a failed attempt at marketing a Donkey as a symbol of Christmas, it’s not cute, it’s not entertaining, but God Damn is it catchy. One listen, and you’ll be singing it well past Christmas, so be warned before sampling it below:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ok5rOO2v2dU

Number 5:
I want a Hippopotamus For Christmas
… You’re kidding me right? Someone didn’t actually write a Christmas song that was called this, right? That was my reaction when I first heard the song title, and then I heard the song itself. Seeing what it’s about, you pretty much know that the song is dead on arrival. This is the type of thing that makes DJs want to cut their wrists at Christmas time, unless they’re wise asses trying to piss their fan base off. So yeah, if you want to spread a little Christmas rage, this will do nicely.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7oOzszFIBcE

Number 4:
But Baby It’s Cold Outside
Yeah… nothing says Christmas like a song about date rape. I know, some of you must be saying, “WTF is he talking about right now?”
Look at the lyrics before asking:

The neighbors might think – Baby, it’s bad out there
Say, what’s in this drink – No cabs to be had out there
I wish I knew how – Your eyes are like starlight now
To break this spell – I’ll take your hat, your hair looks swell
I ought to say no, no, no – Mind if I move a little closer
At least I’m gonna say that I tried – What’s the sense in hurting my pride
I really can’t stay – Baby don’t hold out
Ahh, but it’s cold outside

Yeah, way to stay classy their people. In addition to being offensive to the ears, this song is offensive in general. Ugh… moving on.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTNheCEUP_A

Number 3:
Waitresses Christmas Wrapping
This one, I’ll admit until I told my wife I was doing a Christmas sh*t list, I didn’t know about. She insisted it be pretty high on the list and while this is more of a concession to her as I don’t think it’s really all THAT bad, I can certainly understand why she hates it.  The whole song sounds like some drunk valley bimbo talking on her phone to her friend that someone decided to put music to. It’s tough to follow, but if you can get what the continuous verses lacking any type of cohesion are about, it’s basically a song about a girl being alone on Christmas… three guesses as to why she’s alone. This one is definitely offensive to the ears. If you can count it as a Christmas song.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARq6uYSsUq0

Number 2:
Merry Xmas (War is Over)
I just know I am going to get some hate mail for this one…
Let me preface this by saying that I am one of the few out of the closet people who can’t stand John Lennon’s later work. Personally, I thought the beatles were an overrated British Invasion version of what the bands like the Backstreet Boys were during the 90s…. except that they actually played/wrote their own music and actually credible talent. They did contribute heavily to the history of Rock and Roll, but I can’t think of a single song of theirs that I actually like.

…

So the Beetles break up and John Lennon goes of with that… wife of his and turns into a political activist. From that point on it seems, he fell in with the Jane Fonda crowd and wrote ‘Merry Xmas (War is Over). A song that, to this day hippies, new age beatnicks, emos, and hipsters still sway back and forth to in their weed polluted air.

Look I get that John Lennon strongly opposed Vietnam, but did he really have to turn EVERY LITTLE THING into a political statement? Seriously, people like him founded the emo/hipster crowd, all of whom don’t seem like they will ever be happy until every smile is completely crushed because their are problems going on elsewhere in the world.

John, maybe if you had a sunnier attitude during the latter years of your life, you might not have needed all the drugs you and Yoko were on… actually the same could probably said for what ever need you had for Yoko as well.

It’s Christmas, it’s supposed to be a time of joy, celebrating, and coming together with the ones you love. Is it too much to ask to put away the soap boxes for just a couple of days?

So yeah, this is basically the Christmas song the PC and emo/hipster crowd flocks to every year. I still remember seeing a lot of them in college listening to it as they smoked up around Christmas. It’s a tooth grindingly bad song that seems to continue to pop up on the radio and is nausiatingly depressing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yN4Uu0OlmTg

Number 1:
And so we reached the bottom of the barrel, the creme de la creme of  the worst Christmas has to offer. A song so bad that it appears on almost all top ten worst Christmas songs, and is actually heralded by many to be the worst SONG ever written, not just the worst Christmas song…
This one should really be a surprise to no one, The Christmas Shoes…
Like I really need to go into ANY detail on this one, you either really like this song, or really hate it. But despite the fact that the hate crowd seems to strongly outnumber the likes, this song still appears on the radio every freaken year. It’s another depressing song written by masochistic @$$holes who need to lined up and shot because they feel the need to make people sad at what is supposed to be the happiest time of year…. but I digress.
In addition to being sad, poorly written, and having an awful message, it spawned one of the most misguided Christmas Movies ever. A movie that tells you that you’re an uncaring jerk for devoting most of your life to work because your priviledged wife doesn’t want to get a job to share the financial burden despite your kids being old enough to take care of themselves. But I’ve already reviewed this movie, so back to the song.
Christmas shoes is basically about consumerism. This poor kid is wasting his mother’s last few hours out buying her a Christmas Present. Kid, go home, spend time with her. You don’t have much left, shouldn’t you be home with your family?
That’s not even the worst thing about this song. Look at the last few lines…

I knew I’d caught a glimpse of heaven’s love
As he thanked me and ran out
I knew that God had sent that little boy
To remind me just what Christmas is all about

Oh God really? You think that God decided to damage to a family that clearly is already having a hard time and probably scar a kid for life, just so you could be taught a lesson about what Christmas is all about!? You believe in the Old Testament vengeful God, don’t you?
Yeah, this is awful. There is nothing pleasant about this song. It is very poorly written and executed… and the worst part is that it has a huge following! Seriously, go look at it on Youtube, the people who love this song, really love it. I don’t get it… Why!?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJcPVB-we7g

So that’s my list for this year, Merry Christmas everyone, no NOT Happy Holidays, MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!

Tim Burton

Okay… I have reached one inescapable conclusion…

I CAN’T STAND Tim Burton!

His films are extremely linear and seem to only cater to the hipster/hot topic crowd. It’s always the same dark, dismal, atmosphere that only someone who was puffing a peace pipe would come up with. He always seem to cast the same people in every freaken movie. I will give him credit, he did give Johnny Depp his start, but that’s where the fairy tale ends.

You can only make so many sequels to Edward Scissor hands before it gets old… how many are there now?
Edward Scissorhands
Edward Scissorhands 2: Headless in the Hollow
Edward Scissorhands 3:  Edward and the Chocolate Factory
Edward Scissorhands 4: Edward Becomes Barber (again)
Edward Scissorhands 5: Edward Takes Wonderland
Edward Scissorhands 6: The Vampire Strikes Back

Also, I know people love the whole Nightmare Before Christmas movie. Yes it has a big following… but you… you really don’t know any better people, you don’t. Just because a movie pioneers a new type of animation DOESN’T MAKE IT GOOD BY DEFAULT! The story is stupid, the sets dreary and the characters are just unpleasant to look at and very often disgusting.
The main problem I have with this is that it’s Tim Burton’s staple for animation.

Finally… HOW MANY MOVIE ADAPTATIONS HAS THIS MAN RUINED? Sleepy Hollow was boring and pointless, and the story wasn’t even close to the classic tale. James and the Giant Peach… I loved the book and read it before seeing the movie. The movie was grotesque and downright offensive to the eyes to the point where I can’t even read the book anymore!

Yes okay… he did have a few good movies… 25 years ago! Batman and Beatle Juice are timeless classics and everyone will always love them, but then Burton went and screwed up Batman by releasing Batman Returns… yeah anyone who could look at that perverted Penguin character for more than 2 minutes is a better man than I am.

So what is his latest set of monstrosities? Your kidding… something called Frankenweenie that I won’t be seeing and… what!?!?!?

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter?  No… no…. no no no no no no no no no… no… no… no no!

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000318/

Plot Formulas

Okay, so today I’m going to go over a few formulas I have for a good movie, as well as a couple of character study aspects. Let’s start with the formulas shall we?

1. Dark/Sad ending =/= bad movie.
Okay I know a lot of us grew up on Disney movies and are used to the happy endings. So when we get a movie that doesn’t have said happy ending, it messes with us. It makes us mad, shocks us, but they make us think.
A good example of this would be… and I hate making this reference, The Butterfly Effect. There are three endings to this movie the happy one, the dark (original) one, and the neutral (theatrical) ending. Now let me just say that keeping the dark ending wouldn’t have saved the movie, but it would have made it a little less unwatchable. In that ending, the main protagonist goes back in time to when he was born and sacrifices himself to save his friends by making himself a still-born. This makes you think because the mother mentions how she has had other still-born babies, which we can now assume had similar stories. Again, this doesn’t make the movie good, just a little less completely awful. But if you can get past pedophilia, brutal animal abuse, murder, etc, give it a whirl.

Another good example is the ending to Star Wars Episode III… I know, I know, no one likes the first three movies, well I like this one and I consider it part of the good Star Wars movies. It could not have had a darker ending. I would argue that the ending, thus the movie, would have been more powerful if the audience DIDN’T know what was going to happen beforehand, but that’s an argument for another day. Also, I want to touch on this later, so I’m going to move on for now.

2. Good Villain = Good movie.
This has been proven time and time again, I don’t care what anyone says to the controversy, you can have a movie that completely sucks, but it will still be watchable if it has a decent villain. I don’t know what’s been going on with the generations lately, but we are far more interested in the development of the villain and their descent into darkness vs. the stale, albiet time-honor developement of the hero.
A perfect example of this would be The Masters of the Universe… This movie took a bashing at the box office, it was considered corny, and the gay overtones were practically in your face. That said, Frank Langella as Skeletor. I really don’t need to say anything more than that. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S87lvHz1qoM
This, to me was a powerhouse performance and kept the movie from being a complete disaster. It’s also the reason that this movie is a guilty pleasure of mine. It really shows just how intense Frank Langella, a very underrated actor in my opinion, can be.

Another perfect example of this would be “The Dark Knight.” No, I’m actually not talking about the joker. I’m talking about Harvey Dent AKA Two-Face. While of course the Heath Ledger Joker surprised everyone and made the general public finally realize (albiet too late) that he was more than just another pretty boy that made the teenie boppers scream, Harvey I felt was overlooked and his story was actually the more powerful one. The Joker was there to be the bad guy, his mission was to wreak havoc… no rhym or reason for it, no back story or explanation of his madness, at least none that can be corroborated. Some argue that this makes him all the more scarey being shrouded in mystery, I think it’s a weak plot device.
Two-Face on the other hand has a very dynamic story. Batman is batman and ends the movie as batman. The Joker is the Joker and end ths movie as… you know I don’t think they ever really established what happened specifically.
Harvey by the end of the movie was Two-Face. You watch as a small quirk in his personality begins to manifest itself as the madness that turns him into the villain he inevitably becomes. This is one of the few characters that you know is going to fall from grace, but he’s such a great character as a good guy that you don’t actually want to see it happen. I guess you could argue that he has a Darth Vader complex in this way (we’ll touch more on this later).

3. $$>Storytelling = Bad movie.
Yes I know, no one works for free, I get that, we’re all out to make money, but there is a difference between doing something well and doing something with dollar signs in your eyes. Allow me to explain, George Lucas wanted to make money. There’s no real way of debating this, he maintained all the international copyrights on everything Star Wars. However he also spared no expense when he made his movies. He dumped everything he had into them, knowing full well that if they flopped, he’d be out on the streets begging for change. It’s a risk, but the payoff was well worth it.
Now let’s take a look at say… Dungeons and Dragons. I know, I bash this movie a lot, but it’s really the best target. The production company skimped on everything in this movie. The actors, the costumes, the set, the CGI… I think the only place they didn’t skimp was on Jeremy Irons. In addition to this, they did something that royally pissed audiences off with this movie: They didn’t end the movie. No I’m serious, they didn’t end it. They pretty much said, the story isn’t over and there is more to come… but guess what? NO SEQUEL WAS MADE!
The production company was banking on a sequel and making money so much that they forgot that the movie has to actually work before they make any!

4. They lived happily ever after… MEANS NO SEQUEL @$$HOLE!!!
Disney has been arguably the worst offenders in this case. Take any of their movies and look at the story. By the end, all the loose ends are tied up, all is as it should be, and the main characters can now focus on their lives together as their adventure is over… right? Yes?
Well the Walt Disney company didn’t think so. Instead, they rehashed several crap story lines, many were identicle to the original, and either used the main character’s child, or introduced a new villain, a new plot point, or all of the above. This wreaked of the bossmen saying “We want a sequel to this movie, come up with a story in 3 weeks and get it into production.”
I mostly just pretend these don’t exist. But they’re not the only ones… Avatar is coming out with a new movie from what I understand, Jaw (most famous for flopping in sequels) did it and suffered, and a multitude of others joined these movies in infamy.