It’s no surprise that FilmJabber supports Barack Obama in his bid for Presidency, but if you’re 18-years or older, and an American citizen, you have a right and privilege to vote and should take advantage of such. Your vote does count (well, in some states more than others), and by not voting, you’re saying, “I don’t care.” Furthermore, you have no right to complain over the next four years regardless of your political leaning.
So vote today as this is one of the biggest elections ever to occur in this country. Our election does truly affect the world - not just the United States - and you have the chance to have a say in such a thing.
My friend Jessie forwarded me this video the other day, called the Sarah Palin Song. The video is basically two (very bad) singers serenading how ridiculous Sarah Palin is, and I tend to agree. Anyone who describes the Vice President’s job as “in charge of the Senate” (and no, not just to 3rd graders) and doesn’t believe the dinosaurs existed just shouldn’t be in any office of power. I wouldn’t have nearly as much of an issue with John McCain if he had picked another running mate, but since he went with the Republican token female who refuses to do interviews (though I don’t blame her after the Katie Couric incident), I couldn’t possibly vote for him: after all, the risk of him dying and Palin becoming the most powerful person in the world is just too great.
So come on, people. Vote for Obama. You may not agree with all his policies, but few would disagree that he’s a smart guy. I know that’s not enough to warrant becoming President, but even you Republicans have to be hesitant about a McCain/Palin presidency. Anyway, here’s the Sarah Palin Song:
An adamant John McCain supporter and recruiter was attacked recently by a 6′4 black man while getting cash at an ATM. This horrible black man, supposedly upset that this girl was stupid enough to vote for John McCain, etched a “B” into her cheek with a knife and told her that she was now a Barack Obama supporter. Of all the things to do!
Of course, police became suspicious after ATM video footage didn’t confirm her story - and the fact that the “B” was etched backwards on her cheek.
And, as it turns out, the 20-year old girl made it up, and while she’s not sure why she did it, she in fact carved the “B” into her own cheek, presumably in a mirror. Because if you weren’t looking in a mirror, how could you be so stupid as to carve the “B” backwards? Dumb ass.
This is just the latest race-related item to come up in this Presidential debate, which is as disturbing as it is funny.
In lighter news, watch George W. Bush endorse Governor Palin and John McCain on Saturday Night Live:
Despite Raffaello Follieri being sentenced to 4 1/2 years of prison, Anne Hathaway has said that the former couple is looking to rekindle their relationship. OK, not really, but I wanted to point out that Hathaway, as she must have realized by this point, has really bad taste in men. Sure, the guy could have been a druggie or a girlfriend beater (normally called wife beater, but that doesn’t really apply in this case), but a scam artist responsible for duping investors out of millions of dollars is almost as bad, no?
“I dishonored my family name and embarrassed the church I love. I’ll never be able to wash away that stain, and I will have to live with it the rest of my life,” he said in an AP interview. Yes, way to embarrass the church. Because the church can’t do that well enough on their own.
When do you think Anne Hathaway figured it out? When he started buying her elaborate gifts without having a real job? Or when he told her that he was the Vatican’s chief financial officer? Or when he showed her a letter written personally by John Paul II?
Or when the cops showed up at his door one day?
It’s OK, Anne. I’m available and ready, and I’m not that bad. But then again, maybe that disqualifies me.
Oh, Beyonce, how I loathe the. I’ve never been a fan of the smiling beauty and probably never will be, despite her being ridiculously hot and slightly younger than me. I don’t know why, but there’s something about her incessant need to smile - and her attempts at an acting career (I was not tricked by Dreamgirls like so many other people were) - that just drives me up a wall. And now… Sasha Fierce.
My frustration with Sasha Fierce does not have anything to do with Beyonce; it has to do with musicians choosing foolish names. Sure, authors change their names sometimes, but I’ve never understood that in most cases, either. Branding is important - and you don’t want to confuse your readers by doing a trashy romance followed by a murder mystery - but why, if you’re creating material for the world to read, would you not want people to know your real name, the name your mother gave to you, the name your friends know you by, the name your teachers will recognize and your fans know for eternity? The music industry takes this concept to a new extreme, as it seems almost wrong to use your real name. Again, I can understand if your name is Danza Krakenpoofheisen or something, but most people’s names are not that bad.
And now, Beyonce, for her new record, is calling herself Sasha Fierce. In fact, the title of the album is “I Am… Sasha Fierce.” Jesus Christ.
“I have someone else that takes over when it’s time for me to work and when I’m on stage, this alter ego that I’ve created that kind of protects me and who I really am,” Beyonce said in a Reuters interview. “Sasha Fierce is the fun, more sensual, more aggressive, more outspoken side and more glamorous side that comes out when I’m working and when I’m on the stage.”
I’m sorry, Beyonce, do you have a split personality? Do you have a serious psychological issue that compels an alter ego to get her day in the spotlight? And you do realize that Sasha is also a guy’s name, right? Stupid, stupid move. And slightly creepy.
Legendary actor Paul Newman has died at the age of 83 after a battle with cancer. And no, to those readers who haven’t appreciated my fake articles, this is no joke.
He had most lately been attached to a project to direct Of Mice and Men in the fall, but dropped that earlier this year for “unspecified health reasons.”
I just watched Cool Hand Luke the other day (review coming soon), but Newman is known for a lot more than just that film. I have to admit that, having grown up in the 1980’s, I really haven’t seen that many Paul Newman movies for some reason, but he’s always been considered one of the classiest and most respectable actors in the world… and that guy on the salad dressing bottles.
Anyway, I won’t drag on any long emotional thoughts as that’s not my thing - but it’s a sad thing to wake up to on this Saturday morning.
What a wonderful month September has been. I say that with all the enthusiasm, exciting and sincerity I can muster.
There have been successes. At work (no, not FilmJabber, but real work), I helped launch a new product and get a partnership off the ground. But the weeks leading up to it were busy. Real busy. I’m not complaining, as I love being behind on things because by being behind, I have no excuses to waste time or tinker around on the Internet. I put my head down and that’s that. At the same time, I don’t come up for air, and I just keep pushing, pushing and pushing some more.
Thank God my home computer - the computer I source my movie reviews, movie updates and everything FilmJabber related from - decided to go whacko on me months ago. Thank you, Lord, for giving man the knowledge of the computer and Internets, because only you know what animalistic monsters we would be without them. Thank you for creating devices that can work seamlessly for years and then decide one day to roll that big fat middle finger out and give their own the big “FU.” Hell, couldn’t mine have at least lasted a year?
For the record, I’m pretty good with computers, or at least I used to be. I can install my own parts and knew more than I should have about computers growing up thanks to a short-lived obsession with video games. Since I was little, I’ve never had serious computer issues. In fact, while my friends have pulled their hair out - and subsequently forced me to do the same as they turned to me for help - as their computers coughed, sputtered and clawed their way to destruction, my computers have always worked well. My latest, purchased and assembled only last year, continued that trend… until the beginning of the summer, when Vista or the hardware or something decided that karma had to come back around.
After months of on-and-off again problems that neither I nor my techie roommate could figure out, I finally gave in and made a deal with the devil: I decided to pay to get it fixed. Specifically, I took it into a store to get the battery checked. That turned into preliminary diagnostics, and then paid diagnostics. Paid diagnostics! Money! Crap. But slow down there, partner. You pay, they at least find the problem, right? Right! Wrong, biotch!
The tech guy spends two days “attempting” to find the problem, but his testing pretty much involves running a DVD and waiting for it to crash. He doesn’t see anything wrong, he tells me. Yes, I bet you do, you snarky bastard. The guy laughs about it and makes me sound like I’m some desperate idiot, and ignores my best efforts to explain that the guy who looked at initially was able to make the computer crash repeatedly within the first few minutes of looking at. Sixty dollars later and my computer is no more fixed, I’m pissed off and…
Oh, and I’m moving! In a rash decision, my roommate and I decide to upgrade apartments and move all our crap 15 miles from Bellevue to Seattle, Washington. The moving is pretty seamless, other than it taking longer than expected and us not being able to fit everything into the truck. Once all is said and done, and our friends are sitting in our apartment waiting to have some much deserved food, my roommate and I go to take the Uhaul back. The Uhaul dude, who clearly has nothing better to do than to waste our time, tells us that our attempts to refill the gas tank to its previous level was not good enough, and he sends us back out on the road to our second gas station in ten minutes. Son of a bitch.
To make matters worse, the next day, I wake up with a big, four-inch bite across my ribs and some pain to go with it. Over the course of the day, a headache develops, then a fever. By nighttime, my body aches all over, and by the time I climb into bed to sleep it off, I’m burning up real good and shaking like a supermodel in a hurricane, only a lot less pretty. When I wake up Tuesday morning, Peter Parker transformed I am not, but my alleged spider bite has spread, so now parts of my chest are pink and hard, but not in the muscular kind of way.
The brown recluse, some coworkers suggest, even though the brown recluse isn’t much around these parts. A tick, my mommy chimes in. Lyme disease, she warns, to look out for. I know it’s neither, but I go to the doctor anyway. By end of the week, things are fading, but the doctor, who barely looks at the bite and doesn’t have much of a clue about what attacked me, throws some antibiotics at it and sends me on my way.
Now I’m here, sitting on my floor because I don’t yet have a desk, watching Cool Hand Luke on my laptop while I lean uncomfortably against my bed frame to work on this desktop computer that could crash at anytime, writing this blog post to tell everything that I’ve returned and should pick up the pace with this movie blog. You can now rejoice and hold hands and hug and send praise, because the one true blog is back in action.
That is, at least, until I go to Cancun in two weeks.
The Seattle Seahawks. Once again expected to win the NFC West and go to the playoffs for Mike Holmgren’s last season. Seattle sports fans have anticipated the beginning of football season for months, not because the Seahawks have consistently been our sole quality franchise over the last five or so years, but because we’ve already lost a basketball team and seen a potentially good Mariners team turn into the worst in the American League. Needless to say, I, along with many other fans, have been frothing at the mouth for this day.
I don’t follow football in the off-season too much, so I figured that the Buffalo Bills were going to be a pretty easy win for the Hawks. At the very least, going in, I expected an even-handed match. But Jesus Christ, the Seahawks looked like the Mariners: they were God-awful. Sure, the team has some excuses - Hasselbeck has been injured for weeks and has neither practiced himself or built up trust with his receivers; the receivers, of course, are a cluster, as both Branch and Engram are injured, leaving only Burelson and a bunch of rookies. But no one could have predicted a 34-10 ass raping.
Granted, the Bills look good. While they started off as poor as the Seahawks, they finally picked it up in front of their home team and went on to dominate in passing, running and defense. But the Seahawks looked downright terrible. When Hasselbeck had people open, he’d fail to convert. The receivers dropped what seemed like a hundred passes, and only so much can be blamed on rookie mistakes. The defense, understandably, got worn down as the offense failed to give them a rest, but things just went from bad to worse as the game went on. Ultimately, this was one of the worst Seahawks game in recent memory… what a way to start the season.
It was announced today that Tommy Lee Jones, who, ultimately, turned out to be a completely useless character in No Country for Old Men, is suing Paramount Pictures, the makers of No Country for Old Men, for over $10 million dollars from the film.
Jones is asking for “significant box-office bonuses” and other compensation he says are owed to him from the Oscar-winning movie, which went on to make over $160 million. Apparently, according to him, there were known errors in his contract as the film went into production, and he wants an external auditor to look things over and assess what he is owed.
How come every year lawsuits come up like this? Maybe it’s not that uncommon as there are plenty of B2B contracts that go to court, but it always seems like some big name actor or director (I’m thinking of Peter Jackson here) is suing a studio over money that wasn’t paid to them. You have to think that in the day and age of immediate visibility and legal scrutiny that major disputes - such as over millions of unpaid dollars - wouldn’t happen. How does this happen? Are the studios simply naive to think that people who are used to making millions of dollars a paycheck won’t notice if they aren’t paid? Or do the plaintiffs and their lawyers not examine their contract enough? Either way, isn’t the contract supposed to clearly define the amount or percentage an actor, writer, director or crewman is supposed to make?
It seems clear cut to me, but then again, I don’t work in Hollywood.
What is the world coming to? It has been a crazy couple of weeks in the world, with some stunning sports developments, hideous murders, new wars and more. Not all of the news has been bad, but when it has, it hasn’t been crazy.
The Olympics kicked off on Friday in stunning fashion, with a spectacular opening ceremony by the Chinese. We all knew they were not to be outdone, and it may be some time before we see something as grandious as the $300-million production that featured countless fireworks, amazing video screens that seemed to come out of everywhere, artistic performances that would be unimaginable in any other part of the world (how many performers were there in the ceremonies, altogether?), and so on and so forth. I absolutely love the Olympics, and am happy they are here. It’s the only time I watch so many diverse sports and actually get into them all - I’m watching USA vs. Japan women’s volleyball, and the Japanese are looking good (against a supposedly better U.S. team). I’m actually looking forward to basketball (go Redeem Team!) despite my lack of general interest in the sport, as well as gymnastics and a variety of others. There are going to be hours of lost productivity over the next couple of weeks.
I try to watch the Olympics on CBC, the Canadian channel, rather than NBC, where they seem more content to bring up politics and conflict in a passive aggressive kind of way toward any country they choose to ridicule. Not too mention that they show less sports (on the main channel) and more commercials. Of course, it was classic seeing President Bush glance at his watch halfway through the opening ceremonies. seemingly bored out of his mind.
Of course, the Olympics have been scarred by a series of events, not exactly the seamless launch China was so desperately hoping for. In the days preceding, China was attacked by a small rebel force - a rarity for the country. Beyond that, though, they had little control over a seemingly deranged man stabbing the parents of a former U.S. Olympian just miles from the Games, killing one and seriously injuring the other before jumping to his death, or the suddenly profound Russian vs. Georgia war, where thousands have already died. So much for an Olympic truce, and the timing seems more like convenience than coincidental, as the Games have attracted so many heads of state to Beijing.
Beyond war, reporters have been busy the last few weeks, especially in North America. It was announced to day that Bernie Mac has died - while I was never a big fan of the comedian, it was definitely a bit of a shocker. While both Pineapple Express and Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2 beat out The Dark Knight on Wednesday, it looks like the Batman movie will once again conquer the weekend box office. More importantly, we’ve seen the mysterious Anthrax case that, in its outset, caused paranoia throughout the United States, to come to a close with the suicide of the FBI’s only suspect. Questions remain, but unless we’re looking at a major government cover up, the late scientist seems like he was a troubled man. Beyond that, Canada and the U.S. has been captivated by the absolutely disturbing stabbing/decapitation/cannibalizing of an innocent, random victim on a bus, by a man who no one - even his wife - would have predicted.
As I’ve said, it’s been a crazy couple of weeks in the world, and there were several other stories not mentioned here.
