Your friend in the movie business

Let me start out by mentioning that I had a very serious tooth-ache while attending this musical film.  Infact, I am still under the effects of said tooth-ache along with a consistent 800mg dose of ibprofin every 5 hours and a head cold.  I am not a happy camper.  Did this cause me to have a lean when considering the pro’s and con’s of said movie?  Very likely, yes.  So when reading this review, first imagine that you can’t breath, your nose is dribbling, your mouth is dry, your brain wooley, your tooth hurts like a bitch and to top it all off, you’ve been on a lot of drugs for the last week.  See there?  Now you see where I’m coming from and can once more appreciate the brilliance of my review of “Mamma Mia: Sex and the City for 12 year old girls”.

Now, I’m sure this movie seemed like a very lucrative idea at it’s conception.  Sex and the City + High School Musical = $$$, right?  Rule #1 filmmakers… don’t mix your demographics.  Try to please everybody and you’ll end up with everyone hating you.  This movie relates to Sex and the City by trying to pull off the same brand of “female perspective”.  Men are merely distracting nuisances that you may deign to notice if you’re feeling generous.  Like a dog… or children.  The funny part however is that the women are portrayed as borderline retarded, all of which couldn’t make a rational decision if their lives depended on it.  I suppose if you’re going to be sexist, you might as well go both ways.

As for HIgh School Musical, it’s not only the musical portion of it that I’m thinking of but more the cheesey, picturesque element incorporated into the musical.  Because everyone knows that in Greece, all men look like Brad Pitt without spending a second inside a gym and all women have D-cups with perfectly flat stomachs and absolutely refuse to wear bra’s until they’re 40.  Most modern film-makers have figured out that lead characters need small physical flaws to make them stand out against the extras; make them memorable.  Apparently the memo wasn’t sent out before casting however and now I can’t remember the lead’s face, nor that of the supporting groom.  The only faces I do remember are those of the six 40-50 year-old characters.

This movie was terribly produced.  I have a mind to look up who did produce it and keep a safe distance so as not to catch his sickly amount of fail.  A midnight opening the same night as The Dark Knight?!  I have a hard time believing that anyone actually went to see this movie the entire opening weekend with such an obviously superior alternative.  It doesn’t even matter if you chose your opening night first.  The Dark Knight gets dibs, you change yours accordingly.  You just can’t compete with that and trying to is a surefire way to make everyone forget about your movie before they hear about it.  Also, where was the advertisement?  I saw no tv ads, no theatrical trailers, certainly no viral marketing.  The only posters up at all were inside the theaters and completely overshadowed by far larger posters for Tropical Thunder and The Dark Knight.  I wouldn’t have known that this movie existed if not for my friend’s unexplainable excitement toward it.

I hated the singing.  Normally I don’t mind -or even enjoy- musicals.  The problem with Mamma Mia was that nothing at all was accomplished by the songs.  They would have normal dialogue propel the plot forward with a line and then simply reiterate that single line over and over again for 10 minutes.  Then one more line of dialogue and 10 more minutes repeating that line in the form of a song.  I found myself dreading the start of each new song because they all took so long and they all meant absolutely nothing.

The actors were mediocre on all accounts, the writing cliche and cheesey, the setting unrealistic, the premise was pointless, the goal of the plot was undertermined, the characters were vapid and MY TOOTH REALLY HURTS!

To the film’s credit, it had some beautiful cinemotography.  Given a similar beach in Greece I probably could’ve accomplished the same with a disposible kodak, but hey, whose judging?

Writing- 4

Performance – 7

Technical – 3 (I just can’t get over that terrible producing)

Overall – 4 out of 10

I find it amusing that apparently every single person in the U.S. has such a passionate, unwavering opinion about global warming, one way or the other.

The simple truth is that man-made influences on the climate are theories. Could they be right? Certainly! Could they be wrong? Yes. Everyone needs to stop acting like motherfucking pricks because you have access to super-secret confidential high-toxin bar-graphs and “OMG 76 thousand scientists agree with you!” You know what that statement means, by the way? It means that 1 or 2 scientists came up with a theory or counter-theory, gave a fuckton of presentations to a bunch of different colleges and told you that every person that attended their lectures agreed with them. And is a scientist. An environmental-specializing scientist.

Absolutely nothing has been proven. This issue is big because some politician (Al Gore you fucknut) found out that scaring people makes votes appear. Then said politician searched around for a doomsday theory mildly believable and made it their campaign slogan. 15 years later, a politician who people give a damn about (not Al Gore) took up the torch and here we are on our precipice of panic.

If the brightest minds in the world in those specific fields don’t fucking agree with each other about global warming, what the fuck do you all have to say about it?

For the sake of space and time, we assume various beliefs to be true, as follows:

-Sin is defined as the absence of God, hence, God cannot sin… Him being God and all.

-Man is imperfect; no exceptions. (Jesus is to be considered a God for the sake of the paper).

-All hierarchies are inherently flawed in some way. (no system is perfect)

-A “true church” would be defined as the manifestation and tool of God’s will on Earth.

-God would not allow the manifestation of his will to be used for evil purposes. Or rather, it being God’s will, evil cannot be born from it, nor could it be used as a tool for evil (see first “belief”).

-Hence, religious hierarchies are man-made and therein imperfect, and therein, a potential tool for evil.

Hence, any law or rule not explicitly given individually to men, from God, cannot be held as doctrine (or a matter of the soul) unless given without the medium of a specific religious organization. If religious organizations are man-made, then God could not give credit to any given organization by giving them exclusive religious insight without causing his message to eventually be warped and potentially abused by the mortal hands of man.

Hence it is my belief that if God did give man rules to abide by, they are those held consistent throughout the various religions around the world (given broadly so as not to give any one organization the power to distort): compassion, a sense to preserve life, honest dealings (all those things that ultimately lead to ideal communities and a solid social structure).

Anything more specific I believe to be the workings of said individual organizations seeing as the majority of these beliefs do not carry across cultures/religions. Hence, not real matters of the soul, nor rules given to us by God, but rather, by other men.

In conclusion, why would you trust another man to tell you what God is saying? Too much power is given to men/organizations in that single act. Once you give them your full trust, your life is no longer yours. If God wants to talk to you, or if you want to talk to God; do so. No man is given abnormal religious attunement superior to any other man, if our beliefs are to be believed.

Instead of finding your religion among man’s creations, find your religion with God, and keep it between God and yourself, lest others think to give you their lives.

I hate the lead role actor in this so much.  He was terrible on an “Alexander” level.  And that’s a terrible feat to accomplish.  If it happens once more in film history, the earth will suck the souls out of all living beings to fill the void of awful directing, casting, and acting.

Angelina Jolie was the single saving grace of this movie.  And she is getting older.  No she’s not “old” but you can tell, even after make-up and editing, that her skin is turning to leather.  Her performance was on par with all of her films(besides Alexander, of course), although not as good as Mr/mrs Smith.

Morgan Freeman apparently didn’t find his character as he didn’t actually act in this movie.  After seeing this, I can’t help but think they paid him 2 million to read lines off the teleprompter.  The only movement he ever actually did was curving the bullet.  Otherwise, he stood there with his hands behind his back the entire fucking time.  More proof that he read his lines.

This wasn’t a mindless action movie either.  Shit, there’s not even any good action scenes.  In fact, the only good scene in the entire damn movie was the 4 frames of Jolie’s ass.  Too much fucking slow-mo(an excuse for filming action sequences because your lead’s so untalented he can’t even tape at a semi-normal speed and make it look good), music changes and the movie’s pace were extremely infrequent and often, making the movie’s rhythm jump around so that you walk out thinking the entire thing took 35 minutes.

The plot was dumb and suffered from a serious case of Star Wars mimicry syndrome(which doubtless was a copy itself, knowing George Lucas).  Inconsistencies threw me off constantly… He can apparently hit a bullet out of mid air, but can’t hit a large target, in the open, at 100 ft and unloaded an entire clip at a guy from 20 ft away without touching him… Right.  And the rats?  In the apparent span of 20 seconds, a bunch of rats manage to scale a castle and insert themselves into every crevice.  And what, because he released a bunch of rats, everyone stopped shooting?  Oh noes, we’re doomed!  Add to the fact that his big ass rat plan amounted to jack shit as it didn’t seem to actually kill anyone or destroy anything at all…

I could go on, but I’ll end my review.  You get the point.

Writing – 6

Performance – 5

Technical – 6

Overall – 6