about:stuff

“Avatar Day” was just Friday, August 21st for some but there was definite anticipation in the air for a select few people in theaters across the country. When the giveaway site launched Monday I had a choice between Albany and NYC as my two options and chose Albany has it’s half the distance. I registered enough for myself and some guests for both show times with the plan of giving away anything I couldn’t use. I planned on attending the 6:00 pm feature and doubted attending the 6:45 showing because ‘Inglourious Basterds’ started at 7:00 pm but that all changed when the theater changed it to 8:00 pm.

We poured into the IMAX screen (the smaller digital type that Aziz Ansari notoriously hates as do I) and were seated in the middle section. The glasses we were given seemed like your regular pair of of digital 3D glasses but they were cheap and didn’t even have hinges. Also worth noting was that the lenses were like plastic film, and not hardened plastic, basically they made the glasses we got at Pixar’s ‘Up’ look like designer frames. They did seem darker than any other I have seen or used so there was most definitely a shading effect when you looked through them and this may have led to a better outcome. The lights dim and onscreen comes the talking head of James Cameron with an intro to the film and a disclaimer about it being first half shots so there’s no major spoilers. I’ve included some screen grabs from io9.com and their breakdown of the trailer in order to help:

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One of the biggest Attention Whores out there, excluding celebs, is film critic Armond White. White continues to implant his often race-fueled agenda into many a movie review, the latest being ‘District 9′. He’s often the first on the scene with a negative review and he does it with a tenacity and ignorance that other AWs often times envy. There’s limitless speculation as to why White chooses to act out this way but the logical conclusion is that it’s a numbers game. If he’s single handedly driving traffic to his employer then they will continue to condone and defend him until people cease paying attention to him. Here is some of what White would say on ‘Avatar’ when it’s released:

AVATAR is nothing but an elaborate retelling of Walt Disney’s POCAHONTAS told through the veil of science fiction. It even manages to keep the lame cartoonish factor and predictable plot devices we’ve all come to expect from a Disney feature. It also keeps the same racist overtones.

Imagine a story where a group of people come from a distant place to a New World and find it violent and a practically inhospitable place full of danger and discovery. Further imagine this story as the lead character from this Old World becomes friendly and involved with a female native and a Shakespearean love feud commences between the two sides. This is further fueled by the fact the newcomers are in search for valuable materials found in the ground and the natives feel the oncoming threat and prepare to defend themselves and their homes from these alien intruders. Oh, and the lead male’s initials are J.S.

At first glance you might think that this is a fantastic new adventure never before seen or imagined. Others might look deeper and see an alien invasion story flipped on its head as humans are now the ones with the superior technology are are invading someone else’s planet and disguising themselves in fake bodies that resemble its inhabitants.

But you would be wrong.

It’s nothing but a more expensive rehash of one of the world’s classic culture-rape stories. In comes the white man to do what he wants with the colored natives, and in addition to stealing and thieving everything he can he might just stick around long enough to steal the hearts of the native women as well. It doesn’t matter if it’s Captain John Smith or marine Jake Sully it’s the same unoriginal story with borrowed theme after borrowed theme: A plethora of technologically superior white men arrive in strange looking vessels to rape and pillage the land and (in one movie literally) open Pandora’s Box.

Now these are not my views on it but the point is that it’s easy to bash something and twist it into negativity. In fact I wouldn’t at all be surprised if Armond White comes up with this very same idea which is why I’m writing it down now. He might bitch about predictability but in the wide wide world of film criticism, no one is more predictable than Armond White.

With his physical stature in mind, maybe Armond “I Wish My Last Name Wasn’t” White is actually the biggest AW on the internet after all. Here’s a listed example of his past transgressions, I don’t have a source on it unfortunately:

Also worth checking out is a previous entry from way back in March (opens in new window):

The Movie Critic: America’s Newest Trolling Attention Whore

Just updated:

Avatar Day Screening: A Complete Breakdown And First Impressions On 15 Minutes Of 3D Footage

Walking out of a movie theater mid-movie in some kind of passive protest does not make you a badass. It does however make you a giant asshole, and a stupid one at that. In fact it probably means you’re really bad at making decisions on top of the implication you tend to be prejudice. Yes that’s right, the defiant act of leaving a movie part way in only shows the world that you are an idiotic prejudging asshole, not some kind of moviephile elitist with only the highest degrees of taste in art and film.

I haven’t witnessed it too often but there is one slight exception, as was the case when I was at a Watchmen viewing. Being that a family removed themselves from the theater due to the fact they had small children with them. I don’t consider them to be assholes based on that, but I do hold them to a higher degree of stupidity than the normal walk-out. You see, it takes someone stupid to go to a movie these days with total ignorance about what it is they are going to be watching. Movies have reviewers and critics, a synopsis and a genre for a reason. To forgo these massive indicators and blindly walk in is moronic.

Now take that mindset and apply it to a parent or guardian that is responsible for young children. To take them into an R-rated film only to not realize your mistake when there’s an attempted rape scene blasting its way into their psyche forever, is well, really stupid. To take any sub-teenager into an R-rated film is setting yourself up for open mockery and at least a little ostracizing for being a fucking retard. However the plain, old-fashioned walk-out screams for people to give you attention. The whole “look at me, I’m above this, I’m above this wasting my time, look at you sheep, foolishly viewing such a piece of garbage, look at you all, you’re all sub-par to my ability to gauge a valuable use of time” facade you put on as you leave the premises doesn’t fool anyone. Every single person seated in the dark instantly recognizes you as the tool you are.

Now as if these actions weren’t bad enough, with the advent of the Internet as well as the increased usage of forums and the like, the self-promotion of this idiotic maneuver is rampant in the ‘tubes. To be so dumb to brag about a movie that was so “bad” you had to leave only reinforces the fact you are not to be credible as an opinion-giver. The moment you decide to admit or brag about this fact, everyone reading your comment(s) instantly recognizes you as the tool you are. Plus how would you know the movie was bad if you didn’t see the entire thing. This would baffle me the most except I try not to rationalize with the gutter trash of the Internet.

As for the rest of you dirtbags, stop bringing your kids to movies you know nothing about. I’m tired of hearing a crying baby during a bloodbath scene up on the screen because I envision the hellhole that kid must live in and how you’re so inept I’m tempted to just turn around and take the kid from you.

Like plenty of others I gave into the temptation and acquired the leaked workprint of X-Men Origins: Wolverine. This was one of the smarter moves I’ve made this month as it’s going to save me upwards of $20 for a pair of movie tickets on top of any concessions, we’ll say $25 even. Now I know some of you might scoff at the idea of me indulging in what you deem to be illicit and immoral behaviour but you’d be in the same sinking ship as my parents and pastors. Despite what their ideals were, I went ahead and chose to cross that line of ‘I’m not saving myself’.

To you this may seem akin to what premarital sex is to fundamentalists and pastors but to me it’s part of who I am as a human being, free to choose what to partake in and vice versa. I’m not killing Hollywood or stealing, I’m merely reading a contract to determine if I want to sign it. You see I like buying movies and TV shows on DVD/Blu Ray. I enjoy owning those, my collection isn’t snobbish in the least but it is picky. I love the act of popping something in, I love the special features and I love seeing movies how they were meant to be seen and it certainly isn’t streamed via HDMI from my laptop to my TV. However I will preview things to my heart’s content and if it’s crap I will not be wasting my money and I certainly won’t here with the case of Wolverine.

This paragraph will be spoiler free but the following ones will not. So if you’re planning on licking Fox’s asshole and don’t want that musky, fecal taste ruined for you I would stop reading after this block of text. I’ll also preface the preface by saying this movie cannot really be spoiled I mean, who cares what shit looks like? You’re not spoiling a friend or room mate or ratemypoo.com by sending in a picture or describing it to someone instead of allowing them to look at it for themselves. With this in the forefront of my mind this movie starts off unsurprisingly telling Wolverine’s story from the beginning, which apparently more than a hundred years ago. I’m not the biggest X-Men fan so don’t cry to me about my naivete on the source material. It follows his life through wars, I guess in some kind of attempt to show you how animalistic he is but that aspect fails where in X-Men 1 & 2 it did not. After a skirmish and some friendly casualties courtesy of Sabretooth’s rage they are met by William Striker who gets them to join his merry gang of mutant special forces which I guess escalates to a level of debauchery that Wolverine for some reason cannot. This completely contradicts what his upbringing had taught him and what the film tries to convey unsuccessfully and this is where the unspoilers end.

In Striker’s gang we meet Wade Wilson and others like Wraith, the Blob, etc. Wade Wilson becomes Deadpool in the comics and this was the only enjoyable part for me because he’s my second favorite comic book character other then Spider-man but Fox completely fucked that up for me. Wolverine walks away from that gang to pursue a quiet Canadian lifestyle with his girlfriend in some mountain cabin. He works as a lumberjack and appears pretty pussy whipped despite more than a century of ending thousands of lives along side his brother Victor (Sabretooth). She knows he’s special and a mutant because his nightmares bring out the claws but she loves him anyways.

The part that bothers me is he’s such a pussy the entire movie. He keeps getting broadsided and ambushed by everyone in sight. He’s this soft, lovable, homely guy despite the EXACT same childhood as his brother yet they turn out 100% the opposite in personality. They are supposed to be brutal and animalistic and there’s supposed to be this repressed “animal” side in Wolverine that just doesn’t exist. The Wolverine I know wouldn’t get his ass kicked by Gambit either but what do I know?

Ultimately it comes down to Striker and Victor working together harvesting mutant powers to input them all into one man to create a controllable mutant weapon, Weapon XI which Striker flat out names as Deadpool. He’s got Wolvy’s healing powers and his retractable swords for claws. He’s got Wraith’s vanishing act, Cyclop’s power blasting sight, and his mouth sewn and healed shut. I guess it’s implied he’s got the adamantium skeleton too but I’m not sure if that process was “complete” before they had to send him after Wolverine, courtesy of the laughable command line OS they use to control his actions like “destroy” or “decapitate”. It’s just so stupid apart from the fact they butchered the FUCK out of Deadpool.

And I know you’re thinking, “But didn’t Wolverine lose his memory?” Yeah he did, via two bullets from Striker’s adamantium six shooter at the very end of the movie. Wow. Really quite a cop out, Fox. It’s like you could almost see that meeting where they have the finished script and someone in the back of the room mentioned amnesia and they shat out a special gun for the purpose. This piece of shit is on par with Ghost Rider. Below Fantastic Four. Above no other super heroes. Fox you had a chance to roll with a Deadpool spin off. Because he’s easily the most likable type of hero/antihero archetype with funny one liners and a movie where the action star is breaking the 4thwall has UNLIMITED potential for greatness. But instead you create him in the final act of this movie as a part Wolverine, part Cyclops, and part Wraith and kill him via decapitation in the final battle scene.

Any critic who rates this movie positively needs to get punched in the jeans and a permanent vasectomy.

There used to be a time in my life where I could absorb a critic’s input with a sense of “Oh, well when you put it that way I guess I can see your point of view“. Now in the later stages of the Internet Age, top shelf critique of that nature is only reserved for the old timers among them. What’s left for us is the adaptive yet tragically hip critic-de-jour. The kind of person you’d avoid at parties, if they were ever to be present at one.

These evolved critics have been ambushed in one too many forum wars and emerged from the battle tainted with the seductive powers of the trolling movement. There are many definitions of a troll but one of the more clear and concise is found at Urban Dictionary and is as follows:

One who posts a deliberately provocative message to a newsgroup or message board with the intention of causing maximum disruption and argument.

The key wording here is deliberately provocative. The problem herein lies with greed. These bastards are all competing for worldwide attention and there are only so many ways you can say “I liked it” or “I hated it” in 500 words all the while sounding boring and unoriginal. So instead of writing what you really feel, you cater to your inner demons and write something so loud, obnoxious and fucking smug that people have no choice to pay attention. You can overlook 10 average Joes but the one Quasimodo to reach your peripheral vision will stick out like sore thumb. Same concept on the Internet, the louder and nuttier you are, the more people will look and the higher your name recognition gets.

Normally this would be so benign it would be irrelevant but when a bunch of unoriginal pussies gather ’round the ‘puter to type their two cents worth it turns into ‘Who can make it sound the worst’. If you frequent popular review aggregation sites like Rotten Tomatoes or any other similar ones, you’ll notice this quite often. They’re the ones from big metropolitan publications and their reviews are often muddled with so much obfuscation you start to question their credibility. This is where you look up their review history and see how the blatantly obvious GOOD MOVIES are stricken with their negative grunts and moans. I’m sorry but anyone who gives a negative review to The Dark Knight or Slumdog Millionaire or Iron Man is obviously trolling for recognition.

Ultimately this would be relegated to the Who Gives A Shit file but on a worldwide scale the impact sends tremors through premiers, revenue, future careers of parties involved, future studio decisions, the list goes on. It’s reckless and irresponsible and these pussies (many in New York publications, shame on you) are going to try and get away with it like all greedy ass mother fuckers do until it finally ends.

So do the world a favor, concentrate on making some valid points and less time on being a giant douchebag.

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