I’ve seen quite a few movies lately but because a couple of them defy any reviews that could be written and because I’m a bit lazy right now, I’m simply going to give a score and a short summary behind the score.  That way, I don’t feel like a douschebag for trying to attach a score to The Dark Knight.

Pineapple Express- If you’re going to go over the top, you’d best fucking go over the top.  Pineapple Express shows us this.  Most people are going into this movie assuming that it is a “stoner flick” in the sense that to enjoy it you should be baked.  This is not true.  It is a movie about high individuals, not for them.  Due to clever dialogue throughout the film, it is better viewed with a clear comprehension of what’s going on.  Great movie.  Superbly over-the-top.

Overall 9/10

Tropic Thunder- Not as entertaining as Pineapple Express but still very entertaining.  Robert Downy Jr. completely steals the spotlight from Ben Stiller… which is fine by me.  A very quotable movie.  I foresee teenagers crying out, “I’M A LEAD FARMER, MUTHAFUCKA!” and “You don’t never go full retard” for years to come.  Ben Stiller was definitely great, if not on par with RDjr.  Jack Black was fairly annoying but did at least have one premium line while tied to a tree while undergoing heroine withdrawals.  Great cast, good movie.

Overall 8/10

The Dark Knight- Yeah.  Believe me, I know.  Reviewing this movie is on par with speculation that Bill Gates is in fact wealthy.  You all know what I’m going to say.  I won’t say it’s my favorite movie ever because it hasn’t had a chance to prove it’s long-term re-playability.  But it’s easily in the top 5.

Overall 10/10

Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants 2- I was forced under threat of death to go see this movie, I swear.  Anyway, all in all a pretty good movie.  Being a 21-year-old straight male, I’m not exactly the demographic they had in mind.  But while I can’t necessarily relate to estrogen-based humor, I can understand it, and for the most part it was funny.  Waaaay too many emotions in the movie though.  Somebody tell those women to chill the fuck out.

Overall 6.7/10 (I couldn’t really decide between 6 and 7).

Wall-E- Did I already review this?  I can’t remember.  Oh well.  My favorite Pixar movie to-date.  Animation was even better than their usual superb quality, characters were excruciatingly lovable, great story and setting… and as if Pixar needed to prove their brilliance, they pulled most of it off without dialogue!

Overall 10/10

I need to stop writing reviews when I’m tired… I refuse to go back and fix bad writing when my eyes are drooping.

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

Starting with Darjeeling Limtied, I like this movie.  It’s humor is more subtle than usual and often a little cynical or bitter but very amusing.  It’s extremely abrupt which plays a major role in making the film fun.  Other than that… I dunno what to say about this one.  It had a way of making you feel smart that you “got it” and, while Juno did the same thing, Darjeeling Limited did it in an entirely different way. That’s what I can say about this movie; it’s unique.  Not only in story and setting and manner, but it’s entire tone and even genre were undefined!  With so many films out each year and with such hard-set rules most film makers abide by, it’s an almost impossible feat to make an entirely unique one.  For that alone this film can be called nothing short of brilliant.

Hrm, turns out this is my first real film review… there’s way too many aspects of film to judge, so I’ll try to categorize the best I can.  Also, in parenthesis, I’ll include examples of what that category includes.

Writing(IE: story, dialogue etc): 9

Performance(includes the actors and directors): 9

Technical(Editing, cinematography, producing etc): 9

Overall: 9

Cloverfield… Hmm.  This movie was obviously an experiment.  The most obvious aspect of the “experiment” is the camera view; that being the view of a homemade video tape from start to finish.  I dunno, I liked this movie.  Some parts were annoying (camera view and the character holding it) but it was so intentionally built to focus on this tiny side-story of the 4-5 main characters while this epic battle for New York City vs some gigantic mutant mystery monster was largely ignored beyond being the catalyst.  Nothing concerning the larger story was ever explained and I believe that’s how the director (J.J. Abrams btw) wanted it.  He wanted us to feel like the characters.  Lost and confused.  No audience insider secrets here; we only know what the cameraman knows.  As far as that goes; very well done.  I can’t honestly say that I’d look forward to seeing that type of camera work done again any time soon though.

This one is hard to grade… because even though some things about the movie might have sucked, I can’t help but believe that every single feeling and aspect about that movie was 100% intended by J.J. Abrams.  Even the shitty parts like bad dialogue or an overly prolonged intro.  So how do you judge flaws that were completely intended?  Ugh.  Whatever, I’ll do this by pure opinion.

Writing: 7

Performance: 9  (sometimes annoying but always very believable)

Technical:  6, I guess.  Experimentation does not mean it was good.

Overall: 7

In light of my recent narcissism I’ve decided to make a pro/con list… about myself.  I care almost as little as you, I assure you, but it fills some space.  Some will be physical, some psychological, some trade traits, intelligence, and so forth.

Pro

• I like my eyes
• I like my hands.  They’re kind of soft but I hardly count that as a bad thing.  I’m not a fucking cowboy.  They’re still strong and very large.
• I’m very logical.  Even if my process doesn’t make sense to some people, my conclusions are always valid and often beyond the capabilities of most people
• I can follow Plato and Socrates.  And enjoy it.  And contribute. Freaky, I know.
• My hair is extremely thick.  The color is nice enough and I have no dandruff, greasiness, etc.
• My elbows aren’t dry.  I’m starting to realize how rare that is in guys… and dry elbows are disgusting.  And no, before you ask, I’ve never used lotion.
• I pride myself on acting like me, no matter what the situation.  I come off as odd to new people, but the ones that filter through like me that much more when they finally come to understand me.
• I built my own computer with absolutely no knowledge of how to do so.  Sure it’s just cord A -> slot A nowadays but for 9 years now I’ve been working on hardware issues with absolutely no help and I fucking win every time.  I’m proud of that.
• My priorities rock.
• Pragmatism, I think, is one of my strong suits.  It makes it so that I have to accept the bad with the good.  I recognize my superiority in many cases, but I also am constantly striving to better myself in those areas I am weak.  All the areas that I am weak.
• I can focus or broaden my mind whenever it suites me.  So while at work I may have to focus on what’s at hand to get the job done, in more leisurely times I can also follow some little thought off on a tangent that will become an extensive philosophy.
• I can do anything I put my mind to.  I know that’s so cliche but I’ve proven it’s true for me.  Anything in the world I feel I genuinely want to do, I can, and eventually better than anyone.
• I’m good at sports
• I’m good at computer games
• I’m good at card and board games.  Seriously, really good at them.  Mind you, that may just be me growing up in a Mormon society.  Too often these games are based in deceit… and well, that’s not exactly a Mormon speciality.
• I can be completely compassionate or uncaring.  Whichever I want, whenever I want.  It makes me feel a little inhuman though, being able to turn it on and off.
• There’s probably more, but I don’t want to go into specifics when this post could turn out waaaay too long.

Cons

• I think my head is misshapen.  Nobody has ever told me so, but it seems like it to me.
• I can never find any long-term motivation to work out.  I’m on my best streak so far but I’ve faded to working out maybe 2-3 days a week instead of the 5 I need to.
• I’m extremely pale.  I’ve come to accept that seeing as there’s a history of cancer in my family and I have no desire to tempt fate.
• I do something wrong with girls.  I don’t know what.  Seriously, I analyze my actions more than you can possibly know and I can’t pinpoint what I apparently do wrong.  I no longer see myself as needy, I don’t lack confidence, while I think I can be boring I can’t see that I’m more boring than the next guy.  The only conclusion I’m able to reach is that I really am simply setting my attraction standard too high.  Maybe I’m overreaching my boundaries.  The one thing I’ve never been able to determine is if I’m attractive or not.  I just… don’t know.  It’s like I’m so familiar with my face that I can’t analyze it.  It’s like judging your mom’s physical characteristics.  It just doesn’t work.
• I’m awful at math.  That seems contradictory to my pro of logic, but that’s just how it is.  I think it’s because while I’m logical, I’m not precise.  Mathematics are all about getting the exact number, while I often go with “good enough”.
• My voice might be annoying.  I’m not sure.
• I waste a lot of time and I slack off.  I’m getting better at that but it’s a little sad.
• I am not a douschebag to girls I date.  In fact, I could be described at a traditional romantic.  Not to the extent that I lack humor but I automatically open doors for women, I would go out of my way to keep them from harm, I give them as much attention to their opinions as I would to anyone else (more, usually).  It’s at times like this I remember the line from the film Waiting, “Girls like assholes.  Women like confidence.”  But then I think, holy shit, at the age of 21, according to that line, everyone around me is still a little girl!  When exactly are they supposed to grow the fuck up?
• Wait, crap, that was a pro.  Whatever, I’m not moving it.
• I’m living with my parents again.  Dammit I’m sad.
• Sometimes I’m an asshole to people.  Not on purpose… they simply just expect me to care about their problems and I don’t.  I don’t share my problems with anyone else.  After all, they’re mine and nobody else is going to fix them.  Why burden them with unnecessary stress, and why bother me with theirs?
• I’m often too blunt.  Tact is not a foreign concept to me yet as I grow, I find I care less and less about filtering my dialogue.
• I have terrible allergies for about 2 months per year.  It pisses me off horribly.
• I’ve never tried alcohol or drugs of any kind.  I’m not saying I wish to become like that; simply that it seems like a disappointment that at the age of 21, I haven’t tried.  My excuse for it?  I haven’t had a reason to yet.  Or closer to home, as far as they’re currently available, the con’s outweigh the pros.
• I watch too much TV, too many movies, read too many books and play too many videogames.  There, I said it and I won’t ever say it again.
• I’m so damn jaded.  Blame the internet.  On a related note, go to the encyclopediadramatica and search for “Offended”.  Fortunately I’m not that fucked up.  The chans are pushing me there though.
• I’m hypocritical, although I wouldn’t call it that.  I mean come on… if we both have the same problem, I criticize you for that problem, and you criticize me for being hypocritical because I also have the problem, it doesn’t erase the fact that you’re still a douschebag.
• I argue with my mother a lot.  I know she’s intelligent in her own way but I just can’t agree with her on anything and I’m not sure why.  What scares me more is that they say you will treat your spouse like you treat your mother… I can find reasons why that wouldn’t be true, particularly in my case, but that psychological analysis could have valid reasoning and I might find it to be true despite myself.  When it comes down to it though, I just have to work away from that result and I can beat it.

And again, that’s the point of this list… if I know my shortcomings, I can beat them.  Having it written out like this will make it easier to remember and I’m going to go to sleep for my meeting with a school advisor tomorrow, bye.

The first thing we need to do, I think, is define the difference between whore websites (myspace, facebook etc.) and blogging.  You can blog on myspace but let’s face it… you’re there because the 2613 people on your friends list make you feel like you matter, discounting of course the fact that 2612 of them don’t know or care who you are as long as your picture is gracing their own ego trips somewhere on page 53.

Blogs are a different kind of ego trip.  The mentality that what you say is relevant at all.  999 times out of 1000 it’s not.  Most bloggers are cookie cutter pastries of society saying what millions before them have already said better and to greater effect.  Are mine different?

  What have I written about?  Reviews mostly.  Places I go, stories I hear, people I meet.  Please keep in mind though that my blog was never intended to be original or inspiring or even remotely interesting to the casual passerby.  It was created so that if somebody already, or wishing to be, a part of my life, would like to know about me, they were given this option.  Since I am far more articulate at writing than speaking, it seems to me the best way.  Particularly since I loathe repeating myself, even when it’s about myself.  So are my blogs important or meaningful?  No, not to anyone who doesn’t already care.  Maybe I’ll change that later, but for now I have little unique to bring to the table.

This does however bring to light the question: Am I as big an egotistical douschebag as the rest of you?  Yes and no.  Nobody who knows me will ever praise me for my humility.  Nor should they.  If a person is humble, they are either insignificant or lying.  A waste of time.  I have strong traits and while I don’t linger on them, I’m certainly not humble.  Take my classes for example.  In any class I’ve taken to date, I am more intelligent regarding that subject than any other person in that class.  I don’t gloat about it (<—that wasn’t gloating, it was speculating) and on top of that, I realize that I am probably considerably more lazy than the majority of said people in most of those classes.  So what does that make me?  Egotistical or humble?  Pragmatic, perhaps?  Except that I’ll be first to point out examples of myself being quite irrational.  Few and far between, but they happen.  Or does that make me even more pragmatic to admit that? 

Hmm, okay, trailed off a bit at the end there; whatever.  Point is, my opinion does not count, but it still carries more weight than most of yours because mine actually have the potential to count because I’m a more intelligent person.  Done.

Hmm, was that egotistical or pragmatic?  I love combinations.

No, “Spring” is not a movie.  Spring is infact a season.  A bad, bad season for movies.  It’s like the directors see all the award ceremonies end and suddenly they don’t give a fuck anymore.  I figure movies can be made for 3 different reasons (or so I will lead you to believe for the sake of this post).  Money, artistic achievement, and acknowledgment for artistic achievement.  Not in that order.

Money comes foremost, because if movies didn’t make money, nobody would spend the money to make movies.  Simple enough.  Acknowledgment comes second and artistic value comes third and is greatly ignored.  I wouldn’t generally make such a pessimistic remark, but you guys kind of forced me to it with such a stony apathy about the quality of your post-ceremony productions.

A quick summary of my recent movies:

Doomsday: 2/10  Worst movie i’ve seen since Alexander.  Plot holes are one thing and can be ignored for the sake of action.  Plot contradictions are something else.  Did the survivors-gone-canabal-due-to-an-exhausted-food-supply just… overlook the five thousand motherfucking cows two miles outside the city?

Leatherheads: 6/10  Mediocre on all counts.  It was enjoyable enough, but I find that three days later I can’t recall a single specific scene… nor the actual plot… nor any of the actors besides George Clooney!  I’m half convinced that I never even saw this movie.  From what I can remember of it, it seems I only ever saw the preview.

The Forbidden Kingdom: 7/10  Also meh.  Putting Jackie Chan and Jet Li together in a single film should have been the most momentuous event to happen since Tom Cruise recieved his superpowers.  Instead the story was based on a white kid who travels back in time to free the monkey king…  I hate you people.  Action sequences were a bit tame compared to most modern eastern martial arts films and they didn’t happen frequently enough.  Too much focus on the retard white kid with the perfect triangle of chest hair.

*On a related note, what the hell is with all the Shia LaBeouf lookalikes popping up?

National Treasure 2 (whatever the hell the subtitle is… I dunno): 7/10  Good, not great.  I’m no Native American history major but… El Dorado the city of gold in South Dakota?  Correct me if I’ve wrong, but doesn’t that seems a… few thousand miles off?  Whatever.

27 dresses: ?/10  I do not remember this movie… only that I did in fact see it.  It keeps blurring together with previews for Made of Honor.

21: high 7/10  Actually a pretty good movie.  It wasn’t ground breaking material but I don’t think it was made to be.  A fun little film that you can add on a to-do list for a day off.

Vantage Point: 6/10  I can’t even imagine a method of storytelling to make me care less about the characters.  But at any rate it did fit together and there was a very good car chase scene… even if all of the plot twists were borderline retarded.

Altogether, a very dull season.  Summer shows some promise though.

Ok so, this ones proooobably not going to help many people because it’s local.  But it’s also the best damn italian food I’ve ever had.  Located at 300S. 279E. Provo, UT, Little Italy needs more business.  Which is why i’m writing this review.  Because a place with food this good cannot shut down.

When first walking into Little Italy you look around in confusion because at first glance it looks like an extremely tiny ice cream shop.  This turns out to be their selection of Gillato and is just one feature.  Asking to eat, they take you down a short flight of stairs into their dining area, small, with about ten to fifteen tables.  Perusing through the menu you can order one of their “meals” or mix and match your own noodles and sauce.  In addition to the standard italian pastas they’ve also got an extensive list of Panini sandwiches.

After consuming the best Italian food of your life, go back upstairs and have a look at their desert and gillato selections.  Featuring extremely thick and moist chocolate cake and Italian Creme every one of their deserts is worth a second or third try.

I’ve eaten there so far on a couple occasions and it’s been completely empty both times.  Granted, once was at around 5p.m. and then again at 3p.m. which are not exactly peak hours, but it does imply that you probably aren’t going to sit through a long wait, despite it’s limited space.

Now, this isn’t Chili’s and it isn’t fast food.  This place is good and it isn’t going to come as cheap.  For one meal plus desert it’s probably going to hit for over 20 bucks.  Not the worst price ever though, considering the food.  To those in Utah reading this, go eat there, now.  I command you!

Little Italy rolls up a 10/10

p.s.  I’ve heard wonderful things about their cheese.