RandomMuch

June 13, 2010

LIPSYNCALLSTARS.COM

Filed under: Personal Thoughts — Tags: , , , — Arturo @ 1:06 am

That’s right my friends.  It has gone live.  This is my contribution to the interwebs I love so much.  With any luck and hopefully your support, it will rival Google someday.  OK, maybe not.  But a guy can hope right?

It’s been a long time coming and to be honest I can barely believe it’s here.  But I intend to make this thing soar like an eagle or crash like a kamikaze.  Go hard or go home, baby

So tell your friends, tell your family, tell your neighbor, stop random people on the street and tell them.    ;)

June 7, 2010

I no longer want my MTVeeeeee…

Filed under: Celebrities, Movies, Personal Thoughts — Tags: , , , , , , — Arturo @ 12:42 am

These may very well be the ramblings of an aging cynic.  But it’s my blog and I’ll do as I please.  We’ve all had those moments where some one older than us goes on and on about how “back in my day”.   And at some point, we’ve all rolled our eyes.  And just as the sun shall rise tomorrow, the day will come when we will lecture in just the same way.  If we haven’t already.  Over the passed two or three years, my rantings on this very subject have become more and more pronounced.  And I shall consider this blog entry as my official step from still kinda-young-cool guy to old fogey.

Believe me when I say that the things I loved as a young man were offensive to the generation ahead of me.  My parents would have never approved of a lot of the things I hid from them, and didn’t much approve of the things that they did know about.  And the times that my grandparents felt the need to chime in were especially fun.  And just as they didn’t understand my generation, I don’t understand this generation.  Let us begin with MTV in general.  I loved MTV back in my day.  See what I did there?  I’ve always loved music and the opportunity to SEE the music that I loved to listen to was exciting to say the least.  And I totally understood the need to have breaks from the music videos and have an occasional show here and there.  But now, there are nothing but shows and no music videos.  Most of the shows aren’t even music related.  They have crap like The Road Rules Challenge, 16 and Pregnant, and my personal favorite to hate on, My Sweet 16.  Do NOT get me started on that show.  And the show they do, or did, have showing music videos is a top ten countdown where they show a clip of the video and then have the host make whatever comment or remark that will make the live audience scream their teenage heads off like if they just saw Justin Bieber walk in the room.  Don’t get me started on him either.  When VH1 first came out, I was all about Team MTV and screw them.  Then I started watching VH1 cause they were still showing music videos.  And now they’re just as bad as MTV.

Now, on to the Award Shows.  So the MTV Music and Movie awards have been the place for the people to vote rather than the critics or the Academy.  Granted, the more prestigious award shows are usually right in tune with the general populous, but I think it adds a special dynamic when we as fans know that the votes come from us directly.  But the choices being made now a days simply astound me.  I could nitpick each category of each show, but for the sake of time I will choose only one to rant about.  And the winner is, Best Female Performance on the MTV Movie Awards shown tonight(June 6, 2010).  The nominees were Amanda Seyfried for Dear John, Kristen Stewart for Twilight: New Moon, Emma Watson for Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Sandra Bullock for The Blind Side, and Zoe Saldana for Avatar.  And the award went to… *drum roll*… Kristen “Can’t Act” Stewart.  Really?  Seriously?  It goes without saying that Twilight is garbage, especially when compared to The Blind Side.  But let’s put that aside for a moment since this about Best Female Performance and not Best Movie.  On what planet does Kristen “Bella” Stewart compare to Sandra Bullock as an actress?  Yes, Sandra came out in movies like The Demolition Man.  But come on.  The Demolition Man was Shakespeare compared to Twilight.  Kristen Stewart isn’t even acting in Twilight.  She had to play an annoying female… she IS an annoying female.  Where’s the talent in that?  Sandra Bullock in The Blind Side played a middle class, suburban housewife, which she is NOT.  That alone means she deserves it more.  Let alone the fact that Sandra is a REAL actress.

I know in the end it’s just me being an old fogey and rambling about “back in my day”, but that’s a right of passage.  And I choose to exercise my right.  At the very least I can admit where I am wrong, and take the consequences like a man.  Any one that wants to bash me for my opinions here, go right ahead.  Just please don’t defend Twilight to me.  It will get you no where, fast.  I won’t even waste my time responding.

–

AC

P.S.

Just another quick example: Best Movie nominees were… Alice in Wonderland, Avatar, Twilight: New Moon, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, and The Hangover.  The winner, as you may have guessed, was Twilight.  Better than The Hangover?  Come on.  Better than Avatar.  Shut the Front Door on your way out.  Lame.  Lame.  LAME!

April 19, 2010

Motivation: It’ll only work if you use it.

Filed under: Personal Thoughts — Tags: , , — Arturo @ 12:49 am

There is a special woman who introduced me to my wife.  And although she has been involved in both our lives, I always referred to her as ”my wife’s best friend”.  I always thought it strange to think of her as anything else.  Even though I have always considered her a friend, this will be the first time I publicly state that I consider her one of MY closest friends.  She holds a special place in my heart and if I prayed, she would be in them every night.  That being said, she wrote a wonderful post on her website, MyriamTheGreat.com.  Found HERE.  And it inspired me to write the following post.

She speaks of motivation.  And challenges everyone to get motivated and not merely for physical improvement.  Hers is a message of motivation in general.  She is the type of woman who will encourage you to enrich your life in ALL aspects.  And in reading it, I found myself inspired to write about my own motivation.  I have NONE.  It’s sad, but it’s true.  I consider myself to be a fairly modest man, which in itself is a bit of a contradiction.  But I can sheepishly admit that I am a smart guy.  I do believe that if I had set my sights on something, I could have achieved it.  And I do mean anything.  My curse is apathy.  If you looked up the word in the dictionary, I wouldn’t be there.  Instead, the person whose picture WAS there, would pray to me every night.  That’s how bad I am.  But it got me to thinking of something I told my wife and a couple other people over the years.  And I use it as motivation for others to set goals and strive to achieve them.  My wife had a very long and difficult journey in acquiring her teaching degree.  It took more than the usual 4 years, due to financial problems and some self-doubt.  Even getting a job as a teacher has managed to elude her up until now.  But she has not stopped trying.  She’s needed a little push now and then, but she’s kept at it.  And the thing I told her was this.

I, that have no goals or motivation, think it is a waste for people to have dreams sometimes.  I hear people whine about how hard it is to get where they want to go.  How they don’t have time.  They can’t afford it.  It takes too long.  It’s too hard.  I would KILL to know what I wanted to do with my life.  I have had thoughts here and there about being a doctor, a lawyer, a Marine, a cop, a computer specialist, etc.  But I have never felt that any of those were my true calling.  But if I did ever find my calling, not Heaven nor Earth, nor Hell could stop me from achieving it.  And when I see people who claim that they know what they want to do with their lives, and find reasons to not do it, it disgusts me.  Give me your calling in life and I will not only get there faster than most, I will be one of the best at it.  Even if your dream is made fun of by others or thought of as too simple, never let anyone or anything get in your way of what you want to do.  If you want to make colorful curtains for blind people… then in the name of Holy Hal and his hovering hoolahoop, you be the best damn curtain maker this world has ever seen.  I want to hear about how your curtain designs were so awe-inspiring that God Himself came down from Heaven to shake your hand.  I know I’m getting a little silly, but that’s just me.  Seriously though, do NOT let anything stop you.  Do me and yourself a favor.  Even if you don’t like the movie, go back and watch Fight Club.  If you can’t sit through the whole movie, fast forward to the part where they go into the convenience store with a gun.  That scene is the encapsulation of what I am trying to say here.  Seriously, watch it.

I am 33 years old and haven’t done much with my life.  But I promise you that when my calling comes, I will get there.  And I will be one of the best, if not THE best, at it.  A wasted life due to lack of a dream is bad enough, but a wasted life due to lack of motivation is inexcusable.

–

AC

P.S.

And if anyone wants to get smarty pants with me… No, I was not motivated to write this.  As I said in the beginning, I was “inspired”.  Inspiration is defined as, “a product of your creative thinking and work”.  Motivation on the other hand is defined as, “the psychological feature that arouses an organism to action toward a desired goal”.  I’d like to say that writing this was a goal, but really it was me curing boredom.  I kid.  It was me getting on a soapbox and hoping I can inspire or motivate someone else.  Who knows, maybe that’ll be my calling.  ;)

April 8, 2010

You will Shutter on this Island

Filed under: Movies — Tags: , , , — Arturo @ 2:21 am

Sorry, that’s the best title I could come up with.  Let me start off by saying that I have never liked Leonardo DiCaprio.  I might have given him a pass for The Departed, but other than that, he had the second spot on my “I can’t stand this actor/actress” list all to himself.  Johnny Depp taking the number one spot, for those wondering.  But like I said, since he got that pass and since this is a Martin Scorsese film, I had to give it a shot.  How’d it fair?

The bad: I was sort of looking forward to seeing a bit of a thriller, semi-horror movie.  I wanted to see what Scorsese would do with that genre.  But as it turns out, this movie was NOT scary at all.  At least not in the traditional horror movie sense.  the trailer is a bit misleading, which I really don’t like.  But that’s about the only disappointment I experienced.  I guess the only other thing I can say is that the plot twist at the end was heart wrenching.  There’s a few of things I find VERY difficult to partake in, even in fiction, and this movie had one of them.  In spades.

The good: Great movie.  Regardless of how difficult the end was to watch, I am glad that I experienced this movie.  Leonardo was very convincing in this movie.  The whole thing was well acted.  It was well directed.  And I felt like I was immersed in the mini world of Shutter Island.  It was interesting to sit and watch it unfold before me.

This movie reminded me of The Sixth Sense in that, I cannot watch it again.  Once I saw the end, I knew I couldn’t sit through the movie ever again and have the same experience.  Not that that’s a bad thing.  It’s just that it will not have the same effect to see everything unravel and then hit you like a ton of bricks when you realize what’s going on.  According to my rating system, I give it a 4 and 1/2 stars out of 5.  It’s not a perfect 5 only because I can see there being some people that wouldn’t like this kind of movie.  And I think 5 stars are reserved for movies that cannot be missed by anyone.  And Shutter Island is not quite there.  I do, however, highly recommend it.

–

AC

Clash of the Preferences

Filed under: Movies — Tags: , — Arturo @ 2:01 am

It seems this year my birthday was split in 3 pieces.  Thursday afternoon, my wife and I just chilled out together.  Friday we got together with some friends.  And Saturday we had lunch with my mom and grandma.  I’m special like that.  The capper was an evening at the movies.  And I must admit I was a bit excited, but more skeptical.  You see, we saw Clash of the Titans and I loved the original.  So much so that I wasn’t quite sure I wanted to ruin the memory by watching the new one.  But I just had to and here’s how it went.

The good: As soon as I let go of my convictions, I actually started enjoying the movie.  There were enough changes in the story to make it almost a completely different movie.  But just enough similarities to remind you it is in fact a remake.  Visually, it was great.  I did not see it in 3D so I cannot really comment on that aspect.  Although I chose not to see it in 3D because I read that not only was it upconverted to 3D rather than shot in 3D, but it was done so in about 8 weeks prior to release.  Which is not a lot of time.  But I was very pleased watching in good, old fashioned 2D.

The bad: Just about everything else.  The actor playing Persius was not very convincing, especially with the unsure of himself attitude he portrayed.  He was motivated by revenge and was determined to avenge a great loss, but it seemed like he himself doubted he could pull it off.  In the original, Persius was a name-taker/ass-kicker.  But the new Persius seemed more lucky than good at what he did.  It was not the best time I’ve had at the movies in a while and it was punctuated with one of the most anti-climactic endings I have seen, maybe ever.  They did give one major nod to the original, but changed some things that I believe made the original a better movie.  This was a typical action/adventure movie, while the original was indeed a Greek tragedy.  This new version had some emotion in it, but nothing that Homer would write about.  And, no, not the fat guy from the Simpsons.  I could knit pick this movie ’til I turn blue but I’ll just say that I did end up more disappointed than pleased.

If you saw and liked the original, either avoid this version or go in expecting to see a very different movie.  If you never saw the original, I might actually suggest giving it a shot.  I’m too much of a fan of the original to give it any better than a 3 out of 5 stars.  I know that the stop-motion effects in the original are tacky in comparison but if given a choice to watch either of the two, I’ll stick with the original.

–

AC

April 3, 2010

Shame on you Christians

Filed under: Personal Thoughts — Tags: , , , — Arturo @ 1:41 am

OK, I’ve noticed that as of late, my posts have been mostly movie reviews.  With the occasional sprinkle of tech.  But today I got cheesed off in my usual fashion and decided to use my favorite medium.  So today’s rant is brought to you by the letter E as in Easter.  That’s right, I said it, Easter.  But what could anyone possibly have against bunnies, eggs, and pastel colors?  Well, there in lies the dilemma.  Those characteristics are exactly the problem.  What on Earth do those things have to do with Jesus giving his life to absolve the sins of mankind.  He allows himself to be tortured and killed in our name, and we commemorate him by pushing him to the side so little girls can wear pastel colored dresses and kids can run around looking for eggs and all while talking about an imaginary being called the Easter Bunny.  Let’s take a closer look at Easter traditions, shall we?

A long, long time ago, a lot of Romans converted from their poly-god worshipping, paganistic ways.  And when they began to expand their empire, they brought their new religion with them.  Think of them as the original Jehovah’s Witnesses.  The problem was that getting people to adopt a whole new religion out-right was proving to be difficult.  So, being the smarty pants they were, they decided to help people assimilate by incorporating already established traditions and symbols.  Rabbits and eggs are signs of fertility.  And many pagan religions view Spring as a highly fertile season.  Which makes sense, since that’s when the plants start to come to life and many animals come out of hibernation.  So to make the natives a little comfortable, rabbits and eggs were introduced along with the Christian holiday known as Easter.  Flash forward closer to the present.  The wonderful institution that is capitalism realize  the potential in such a holiday, much like Valentine’s Day and Christmas.  And what better mascot to appeal to kids than a huge rabbit that brings gifts hidden in eggs that they can run around and look for?

So, Easter, much like Christmas, has become more of an excuse to spend money than celebrate the life and sacrifice of jesus Christ.  And for this reason, I say shame on you Christians.  Christmas is NOT supposed to be about a fat guy in red velvet, and receiving gifts.  It’s supposed to be a celebration of the birth of the man that 30+ years later would make the ultimate sacrifice.  Easter being the recognition of that very sacrifice.  Jesus endured more pain and suffering than most people have ever or will ever know.  And bunnies, eggs and pastels are the best way Christians have found to pay homage?  Truly sad.  I don’t have a religion that I follow and even I find that to be disrespectful.  *tsk*tsk*

The saddest part is that so many pagans have been tortured and killed for worshipping false gods and prophets.  And then now Christians are doing that exact same thing.  In a word, “WOW”, talk about hypocritical.

–

AC

March 24, 2010

Nexus One: iPhone Killer?

Filed under: iPhone/Cell Phones, Tech — Tags: , , , — Arturo @ 7:30 pm

OK, so it’s been a while.  I hope you haven’t missed me too much.  Just FYI, things have taken a weird turn in my life and I was busy taking care of real life problems.  But I am back, although I haven’t thought of much that I wanted to write about.  I do have this one thing that I am now excited about… the Nexus One.

So, being the good tech geek I am, I broke down and purchased myself a Nexus One to tinker with since I plan to get one when they are released for Verizon.  So, a good friend of mine told me why not get it to test it out before I jump ship from AT&T, and that way if the Nexus One is a total brick, I won’t be locked in to Verizon.  That was all the convincing I needed.  So I bought it.  Set it up.  And went to town.  Here’s my final thoughts.

The Nexus One is by far, the coolest phone I have had… bar NONE.  It is SOOOO customizable.  It does everything well.  It gives you so many options.  The user interface is not as polished as the iPhone’s OS.  BUT, Apple has had more time to polish.  Let Google make some adjustments and Android will be just as smooth.  The NExus One is faster than the iPhone in almost all aspects.  The apps load quicker.  The web responds quicker.  I absolutely LOVED that I could setup all my emails and they ALL push.  I wasn’t limited to just ONE Gmail push.  Almost all the apps that I used on the iPhone were available on the Nexus One.  And I honestly cannot think of anything that I needed and missed.  The maps app is WAY better on the Nexus One as well.  It coms with turn by turn navigation out the gate.  It was so cool to be able to use ANY song I had on the Nexus One as a ringtone.  I could change the wallpaper to anything, even have a moving wallpaper.  Plain and simply, the Nexus One seems to be everything I thought the iPhone should be.  Apple loves to dictate what you do, and how you do it, and I don’t like that at all.

There are a few things that the iPhone does better though.  the keyboard is much more responsive and easier to use.  The coverage seems to be a lot better on the iPhone, but that’s mostly because the Nexus One that I got did not support 3G on AT&T.  And although the Nexus One is easy to manage due to drag and dropability, I did miss using iTunes to manage everything.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, there is no and will be no iPhone “killer”.  All phones are different.  Some do things better than others.  Period.  The Nexus One had the advantage of coming out after the iPhone and was able to take advantage of learning from the iPhone’s mistakes.  But that being said, the rumored iPhone 4G will have the same advantage.  In all reality, they will just go back and forth.  And in the end it is really a matter of preference.  My wife won’t even try using the Nexus One, she loves her iPhone too much.  Another friend of mine in Lubbock won’t give up his iPhone any time soon.  My best friend and I LOVE the Nexus One.  So in closing, this is how it goes down:  Some people will prefer the iPhone, some will prefer the Nexus One.  There is not iPhone Killer.  The iPhone does a lot of things VERy well.  But if I, personally, HAD to choose one phone, it would be the Nexus One.

–

AC

P.S.

Oh and as petty as it may seem, there is one thing that killed any iPhone love I had left.  I locked myself out of the Nexus One a couple days after I got it.  All I did was verify my email on the phone and I was allowed back in.  I switched back to the iPhone for personal reasons, and I happened to lock myself out of the iPhone.  I had to restore the entire phone in order to get in.  Losing recently downloaded apps and contact changes.  That was VERY annoying.  Go Nexus One!

March 8, 2010

The Oscars have made ME the grouch…

Filed under: Movies — Tags: , , , , — Arturo @ 10:26 pm

For many years, I had enjoyed watching the Academy Awards.  I liked the spectacle of it.  The glamour of it.  The grandeur.  Then as I got older I realized how strange it seemed that movies I thought were better than others were losing.  How actors that I thought were spectacular, lost to someone more popular.  So more and more I disliked the Academy Awards.  Not to mention most awards shows.  I whine and whine about it, but most of the time I end up watching anyway.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to watch the whole awards show, but I did see the end where Katheryn Bigelow won Best Director AND Best Movie.  I just about lost it.  I gladly admit that I did not see ALL the movies nominated this year.  But I have read a lot of reviews on the films.  I did see Avatar, The Hurt Locker, Precious, Up, Inglorious Basterds and District 9.  That’s 6 out of the 10.  From those I saw, I thought the 5 were better movies than The Hurt Locker.  And I had read RAVE reviews about Up In The Air.  Now, for some strange reason, I love war movies.  If it’s a mafia movie or war movie I will watch it.  And I usually like them.  But The Hurt Locker was NOT a great movie.  I enjoyed it.  And I’d gladly watch it again.  But it was NOT an Academy Award winning movie.  The Hurt Locker was slightly better than Jarhead, and there’s no way that Jarhead would ever win or even be nominated for  an Oscar.

I finally read about how the Academy selects movies.  Especially since I had heard and read for a while that there was a lot politics involved.  And it turns out that money plays a HUGE role in which nominees win.  And that was especially interesting to me since the company that put out The Hurt Locker, Summit, is the same company that put out those Twilight things.  Now if you think of how much money that Twilight crap has made Summit, imagine how much of that went towards promoting The Hurt Locker for an Oscar.

I am not sexist or racist in any way.  Before anyone starts with the political crap.  I don’t care if a chimp ends making the best movie I’ve ever seen, I say give him an Oscar and a banana for all I care.  But this Academy Awards thing and having seen Alice In Wonderland the day before has clouded my love of movies.  Luckily the summer movies extravaganza is ramping up and I should be able to salvage some of my movie love.

–

AC

March 7, 2010

Alice in Blunderland

Filed under: Movies — Tags: , , , , — Arturo @ 4:37 pm

Unfortunately I am not much of a reader.  I have given it a fair chance, but the truth is I honestly believe I have a reading disability.  I notice that I sometimes have to read sentences more than once to grasp the content.  Where as if it is said aloud to me, I comprehend immediately.  The reason I mention this is because, on top of the fact that I would love to read more, there are certain stories I would much rather experience in written form.  At the very least, before I see the movie.  Perfect example: I would have loved to have read The Lord of the Rings before seeing the movie.  I can die a happy man if I never get to read the actual book, but one that I will make a point to go back and read are the tales of Alice and Wonderland.  Before I say exactly why, even though it may seem obvious at this point, let’s get into the review.

The good:  It didn’t completely suck.  That’s the best I can say.  The only things that saved it for me, were Helena Bonham Carter and Crispin Glover.  Those two are almost to the point that they can do no wrong in my eyes.  I believe Tim Burton is pretending to be dark and gothy, whereas Carter and Glover are genuinely, dark and  unique people.  The best line in the movie is when Alice is told and later tells someone that basically it is OK to be “mad”, some of the best people are.  And that is entirely true about Carter and Glover.  The only other thing I might say is good, is that it has a few awe-inspiring visuals, but I believe they could have done more with them.

The bad:  Where to begin?  Since I left off the good with the visuals, let’s start there.  Like I said, there are some great shots in this movie.  BUT… I found it disheartening that this movie was not shot in 3D.  It was shot in 2D and converted into 3D.  That was very obvious when seeing it.  I told my wife upon our departure that this movie could have been for 2D, what Avatar is for 3D.  Instead, someone lacked the proverbial “testicular fortitude” to say, “NO!  We are making a 2D feature and will NOT convert it into 3D.  This movie could have accomplished so much more just being the best of the old and not trying to just, “fit in”.  Which is ironic, because that’s what I think Burton does, just tries to “fit in”.  He is not goth.  He is not dark.  And he is not that great of a director.  The only time he managed to NOT mess up a movie for me was when he told stories that were already dark.  Batman and Sweeney Todd.  Other than that, it seems like they come up to him and say, “We want you to do a movie about (insert plot here).”  And his response, “Oh oh oh, can I make it a “DARK” (insert plot here).  And with a rolling of the eyes the execs say, ” Yesssss Timmy.  Go ahead.”  He even has to go as far as to change it from Wonderland to Underland.  Really Timmy?  Seriously?  The actress that plays Alice has only two emotions: “poor little me” and “now I’m mad”.  She is very cute, but didn’t do very well.  Another thing, Johnny Depp is one of the most overrated actors in history.  The only role he knows how to play well is “weird”.  He did well as Carl Jung in Blow but that’s because he played a real person he didn’t have to interpret.  He was a walking corpse in What’s Eating Gilbert Grape.  Otherwise he does “weird” like no one else.  And not even a good “weird”.  Eddie Scissorhands, Crybaby, Willy Wonka, The Mad Hatter, Jack Sparrow… all weird.  The only other role that stands out is Sweeney Todd and that’s because he didn’t play weird, he just played sinister and angry.  Just because he stepped out of his comfort zone a couple times does not make him a good actor.  I found nothing to really enjoy about this movie.  For that reason, I look forward to making myself read the books so I cam wash this movie out of my head.  Edit:  I can’t believe I almost forgot.  I try not to say too much about the plot of the movie for the sake of those that read this and have yet to see the movie.  But here’s a bit of a spoiler.  They keep talking about a dance that The Hatter is good at, and then they finally show it.  WTF?!?!!  It is one of the, if not THE, stupidest thing I have seen in a movie… EVER!

If you are one of these little emo punks running around, or if you’re one of the fake goths, or if you are a die-hard Timmy Burton fan, then MAYBE you’ll like this movie.  If you’re an Alice in Wonderland fan, I can’t say from experience, but I think you’ll be disappointed.  If you’re just a movie fan, like me, I venture to say that you’ll be disappointed too.  According to my star rating,  1 star means “avoid at all costs”, and 3 stars is “watch it but wait for the DVD”.  This is right in between.  2 stars means “watch if forced, as in: on a date or you lost a bet”.

–

AC

P.S

I gladly admit that it might be my hatred for all things Timmy that makes my review seem biased.  BUT… I did like the 1989 Batman and I gave Sweeney Todd a try even though it was Timmy and I liked that as well.  I also liked Beetlejuice at the time, and I love Pee Wee’s Big Adventure.  So there!

March 5, 2010

Stepfather, Please Step Aside.

Filed under: Movies — Tags: , — Arturo @ 1:34 am

OK, my beloved followers, all three of you.  I apologize for leaving you without my rantings for over two weeks now.  I’m sure you were calling your ISPs(Internet Service Providers) to make sure that you weren’t getting faulty service.  But, not to fret, for I am back.  OK, so that was over dramatic, but so much fun to fantasize.  So, seriously here we go.

I have a goal set for myself to start watching more movies.  As I’ve stated before, I lost sight of my partaking in movies and I want to get back to one of my favorite activities.  I have a mental list of movies that I need to make sure to watch.  And one such movie was The Stepfather.  Upon seeing the previews, I joked that I didn’t want to see it because it looked WAY to Disturbia-ish to me.  I’ve noticed more and more lately, a sign of getting older, that more frequently I see movies being remade over and over.  Like if someone saw a movie, and said to themselves, “What if we take that movie, change _______ and ______?  We could make a fortune.”  And it comes to pass.  That is exactly what I thought of The Stepfather.  They took Disturbia and said, “Let’s pretend that the mom DID hook up with the crazy neighbor.  Let’s show what family life would’ve been like.”  Was I right or wrong?  Let’s find out.

The bad.  This movie was in fact that.  It was someone’s idea of what would’ve happened if Disturbia took that road I mentioned.  I mean down to the angsty teenager that’s a bit of a rebel.  The hottie girlfriend.  Psycho killer.  Oblivious mom.  All Stepfather needed to do was to kill the dad rather than have him divorc….. OH WAIT, they DO kill him.  Which leads me to another problem I had with this movie.  This psycho kills everyone.  If someone looked at this guy wrong, he just kills them.  Dog pees in his yard, dead.  Mailman drops off the wrong letter, dead.  Wrong order at the drive-thru window, dead.  I mean this guy kills his left foot for falling asleep on him.  OK… bad joke, but you get the point.  I even told my wife at one point that if he killed a certain character, I was going to be REALLY upset.  Not so much cause I liked the character, but because like I told my wife also, the movie leaves NOTHING to feel good about.  I believe there are two kinds of movies.  The movies that no matter how bad things get, there’s that light at the end of the tunnel and you walk away feeling OK, because it had a pretty happy ending.  Then there are those that are just hard movies, that leave you with a sense of dread.  No happy ending.  Perfect examples: Disturbia.  Psycho killer, kills a few people, but in the end he gets his due, the hero gets the girl and life looks like it will get better.  Then there’s Se7en.  Psycho killer kills some people, turns himself in, but still manages to get the best of the cops and although he dies, HE is still the ultimate winner.  No REAL happy ending.  The Stepfather seems to want to do both.  So many people died and he basically gets away with it all.

The Good.  I will admit that it had me watching intensely.  Although mostly to see who else they were gonna kill.  And how crazy this guy really was.  But mostly it just reminded me why I liked Disturbia so much and I am going to get Disturbia to watch again soon.  So that’s a plus, I guess.

In the end, if you want to see a suburban psycho killer movie, watch Disturbia.  The Stepfather was not the worst movie in the world, but there are plenty of other movies to please your craving.  According to MY rating system, 2 stars means watch only if forced by a date or on a dare.  3 stars is worth watching, but wait for the DVD.  At best, I give this movie 2 & 1/2 out of 5 stars only because if there’s nothing else at your local Redbox or Blockbuster, I wouldn’t blame you for picking it up just to scratch it off your list.  Just don’t plan your night around this ONE movie.  Get a couple of movies and watch this one first, so you can get it out of the way and end on a high note.

–

AC

« Newer Posts — Older Posts »

Theme: Shocking Blue Green. Blog at WordPress.com.

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 62 other followers