The Book Of Eli (2010)

On paper this film has everything. Denzel Washington, a post-apocalyptic setting, and Fallout-style visuals. Unfortunately this movie has no plot, stupid characters, and incredibly boring scenes where nobody says or does anything and the actors stare at the camera like they're trying to remember their lines.

The movie starts off with Denzel shooting a cat with an arrow and killing it. He then takes shelter for the night in an abandoned house where he cooks and eats the cat. He drains the oil from the cat to use as a skin moisturizer. As he's eating the cat, he notices a mouse in the corner of the room. He gives the mouse a small bit of cat meat and wishes it well.

Before he sleeps that night, Denzel listens to an iPod and reads from his book. This is presumably the titular book of Eli. Also we learn from a nametag on Denzel's coat that his character's name is Eli. Things are starting to make sense. So what is this book? Where is Denzel going? What's his mission? Immediately the viewer is drawn into these mysteries that have been expertly presented from the setting and actions alone. There's no need for a voice-over explaining how the nukes killed everything, etc. We can infer everything by ourselves.

Next comes the random encounter. The computer spawns seven level 16 Raiders including a level 18 champion Raider wielding a +2 Chainsaw of Dismemberment. They gank Denzel at a highway overpass, demanding all his money and equipment.


Denzel rolls a 20 on initiative and critically hits Raider leader, slicing his hand off.


In a horribly cliche moment, the leader yells "GET HIM YOU IDIOTS", and Denzel proceeds to kill all 7 raiders with his machete. The raiders attack him one at a time. Denzel leaves the chainsaw raider for last because it's more dramatic that way. Then Denzel loots the dead bodies.


This is where the movie starts to turn bad. It's only about 20 minutes in, and it get much worse than this. First of all, this scene is completely ridiculous. Even before any fighting occurs, they drag out the scene by ten minutes with stupid cliche lines and inane dialogue which goes something like this:

Raider Leader: Well look what we have here boys.

Denzel: I don't want any trouble.

Raider Leader: Give me your pack of equipment and any water you have.

Denzel: No.

Raider Leader: I said give me the pack, man.

Denzel: I can't do that.

Raider Leader: Are you fucking stupid? Give me the FUCKING pack.

Denzel: No.

Raider Leader: *Looks around in astonishment* We'll kill you, man.

Denzel: I can't give you my pack.

Raider Leader: Give me the fucking pack.

Denzel: Can't do that.

Raider Leader: *Looks bewildered*

This is seriously how the scene plays out. Each party just repeats their demands over and over. Do all people in the wasteland talk like this? I understand that human contact is diminished, but I'm pretty sure all the stakes were clearly laid out on the table when this guy popped out:


Actually, now that I think about it, Denzel Washington is a master in scenes where somebody wants something from him and is going apeshit, but Denzel calmly refuses:



So the Raiders completely surround Denzel and attack him from all sides but seemingly all die because Denzel is a trained Wuju swordsman or something. This completely ruins any sense of realism or suspension of reality because you can see the perfect choreography and the queue for each raider to attack one at a time. In real life Denzel's head would be on a spike hanging on the overpass. This doesn't even happen in Fallout.

So now that we've established that Denzel is a combat mastermind, he goes to some shanty town where there appears to be some civilization.


This is where the plot takes a nosedive, mainly because you soon realize that there is no plot. Denzel goes to the local tinkerer's shop to recharge his battery on his iPod. Denzel then barters KFC clean wipes for a recharge.


This makes absolutely no sense. What is the use of a sanitary wipe in an post-apocalyptic world? You'd be clean for about 2 seconds before you're covered in radioactive ash. In fact while they're bartering the shop keeper refuses to take a lighter and oil for the battery recharge, two items that would probably come in handy considering that there's no electricity anywhere in the world. Now you may say that the wipes aren't actually meant to be used, but are simply a form of currency, as they may be rare. But this isn't true because in the begining of the movie you can see Denzel using a wipe before he goes to sleep, and there's another scene where someone buys shampoo and uses it to wash her hair.

So after recharging his iPod, Denzel goes across the street to the bar to fill his water bottle. There he is ganked by 20 men who want to kill him again.


Denzel then starts reciting lines from the Bible which sounds really badass but takes a long time and if all 20 men jumped him at that very moment while he was talking they could have actually killed him instead of all getting horribly stabbed with Denzel's machete. Oh yeah, Denzel kills them all single-handedly. Why not.

After Denzel kills everyone in the bar the bad guy who runs the town comes out and instead of shooting Denzel, the bad guy tries to hire him, because he knows Denzel has a special skill that causes enemies to attack him one at a time. The bad guy, who's name is Carnagie, explains that he wants Denzel to kill his enemies so that Carnagie can create an empire of little towns under his control. Also, Carnagie is searching for a VERY IMPORTANT BOOK that he is devoting all his resources towards finding. Geez, I wonder which book it is. Carnagie gives Denzel a room and food for the night to persuade him to join the cause. Also a whore named Solara:


Of course Denzel refuses to sleep with Solara, and instead reads to her the Bible. That's right, the book Denzel has been carrying around all this time is the King James Bible. This is also the book that Carnagie is going apeshit over trying to find. Now before this point, you are thinking, "yeah, there's really no plot here, we don't know who Denzel is, what he's trying to do, why he has the book, or what the book is for, but I bet it's really great." This is the point where all expectations just disappear, because you realize that,

WHOOPS, YOU'RE WATCHING CHRISTIAN FUNDAMENTALIST PROPAGANDA

Denzel vaguely explains to Solara that all Bibles were burned either before or after the war that killed everything. Bible-thumpers rejoice. The salvation of humanity resides in the last Bible on Earth. This is where the movie just unravels into a heaping pile of horse shit.

This is further emphasized in the next scene by Carnagie explaining to his second in command why he wants the Bible. He wants it so that he can instill a sense of purpose into his citizens, so that civilization is not just mindless living in bombed out buildings and eating rat meat and cannibalism.

Then Denzel and Solara start praying, because now the screenwriters just don't give a shit anymore and decided that if the movie is going to be about Christianity, they may as well blatantly shove it down our faces.


Now if you thought there was no plot before because they didn't explain it, here's where you realize there's no plot because the writers couldn't think of one. Denzel explains to Solara after their prayer session that he was in a bomb shelter when the nuclear war started and after he came out he wandered around until a voice in his head told him to get a book. Under the guidance of a mysterious voice, he found the Bible under a pile of rubble and then the voice told him to "go west". That's it. That's what Denzel has been doing for the last 30 years, trying to transport the Bible west for some reason, to someone.

That's not a plot, that's just a series of vague ideas that the writers came up with after they had filmed all the scenes where Denzel kills everyone with his bare hands. Then they tried to slap on some Christianity philosophy in there to create some deeper meaning but instead ended up being gigantic douche bags.

This is also where the writers decide to take part of the plot of The Transporter and have Solara join Denzel in his quests for no other reason than the Hollywood rule that you must have a hot chick accompany the main character, even if she is worthless to everyone.


Actually, Solara isn't worthless, she hurts Denzel's cause by revealing to Carnagie that Denzel has the Bible. So Caranagie goes into WTF cliche mode and orders his men to "FIND THE BOOK AT ALL COSTS". Denzel and Solara escape the town together and the rest of the movie is them running away from Carnagie's men. Oh yeah, during the escape, Denzel kills about 50 men with his knife and also shoots a bunch of people in the head with his pistol, beyond the pistol's maximum accurate range. Also he never needs to reload. I guess God did it.

Let me reiterate again that Solara is completely fucking worthless. She has no idea why she is following Denzel on his quest, other than that her mother "thinks she will be safer with him". That's why the very next scene is where Solara gets HORRIBLY RAPED BY RAIDERS.


Carnagie and his men finally catch up to Denzel and corner him and Solara in a house. Carnagie brings out a giant machine gun and shreds the house until nothing is left except Denzel and Solara, who inexpicably survive the bombardment despite the wooden walls of the house providing no protection at all against machine gun slugs.

Carnagie threatens to shoot Denzel unless Denzel tells him where the book is hidden at, because for some reason Carnagie thinks Denzel has hidden it. just as Carnagie is about to pull the trigger, he says "Dammit you are the only one who knows where the book is, I can't kill you." This is despite the fact that Carnagie sprayed the entire house with machine gun bullets haphazardly, and could have killed Denzel at any time. Then Carnagie says he is going to kill Solara unless he gets the book. This is the first time this situation has ever happened in movie history.

Denzel breaks down and says the book is hidden in the TV in the house, which it is. Carnagie gets the book and shoots Denzel in the abdomen anyway then drives off with Solara. Solara kills the driver in the car despite her weighing only 80 pounds and having no arm strength whatsoever. She then drives back to the house where she DOESN'T find Denzel laying there bleeding to death from a terrible abdomen gunshot. Somehow Denzel is fine and is walking westward on the highway. She picks him up in the car and they drive west, not knowing where they are going or why.

The scene then switches to Carnagie who is obviously excited about finally obtaining the book so that he can preach to his citizens so that they may follow him. He opens the book and realizes that it's in braille.


This has also never happened in movie history before, where the bad guy finally gets what he is searching for, but turns out to not be what he expected. Incidentally, Carnagie has a blind wife and he asks her to translate the book. She says "no" because she hates him, and the scene ends. I did not make any of that up. Unfortunately that is exactly how it happened in the movie.

The stupidity isn't over yet. Despite not knowing where to go, Denzel and Solara drive all the way to San Francisco and row a boat over to Alcatraz for no reason at all. There they find some old guy with bad hair that explains that the island is a giant library with a printing press and that their mission is to preserve the knowledge of humanity. How this place exists or how they got the equipment, books, printing press, or personnel is never explained.


But wait, Denzel lost the book to Carnagie. How is he going to give this old guy the bible? This is the final nail in the coffin. For no reason at all, Denzel starts reciting the bible line by line FROM MEMORY. The last scene is the old guy who still has no name putting the King James Bible on a shelf in one of the libraries on the island. How the book will save humanity is never explained.

So 1 hour and 40 minutes later the message is clear: the Bible is the most important thing in the world. Thanks for church.

Jakob The Liar (1999)

Hulu has recently seen a large influx of free full length movies. This old Robbin Williams movie was my first choice out of them. He plays a Jewish man stuck in a Polish ghetto where he and all the other Juden have become accustomed to scratching out a meager existence. Although they still have their shops and homes, the ghetto is closed to the outside and the people have become destitute and constantly hungry. Suicide is rampant. One day, for being outside after dark, he reports to the commendant's office for routine corporal punishment and overhears a war bulletin on the radio. The Nazi oppressors are losing ground to the Russians, and the front line approaches from only 400 kilometers away.

The approach of the Red Army means impending salvation for the Jews. He tells this story to his friends to cheer them up and eventually the rumor of rescue spreads around the ghetto folk. The suicides stop. The people ask Jakob for more information about the Soviet advance, but he has none, so he makes up stories to give them the hope and drive to keep them living for as long as possible. He uses extravagant stories and humor to...wait a minute isn't this is the same story behind Patch Adams and Good whatever Vietnam and every other fucking Robbie Williams movie? Does Robin Williams ever expand his acting repertoire ever?

Anyway in the end, well, everyone pretty much knows what happens in the end. These historical events are common knowledge. But they say, "It's easier living the lie."

Too depressing for casual viewing.
Rating: 50%

The Mosquito Coast (1986)

They literally do not make movies like this anymore.

The Eighties was a decade whose artistic values and contributions are, in this age, unattainable. In some ways (fashion and hairstyles, mostly) this is a good thing. In most ways, however, it's unfortunate. We live in a digital age, and looking back on films from the Eighties you can see how they are distinctly analog. There's a grittiness and a realism to them that doesn't exist in today's era of CGI special effects and editing techniques.

Mosquito Coast is a Harrison Ford film that is rarely mentioned nowadays, due to the fact that Ford has been making blockbuster movies for 30 years and some of his smaller works get lost in the panoply of Star Wars, Indiana Joneses, Fugitives and Air Force Ones.

The story is based around Ford's character, an obsessive genius who lives as an inventor. He rages against 80's American culture, decrying its absence of character and values. He gives passionat speeches to his son, River Phoenix, about the banality of its consumer culture, fast food restaurants, its soulless music and the laziness of its populace. He also predicts America's imminent doom by atomic warfare, which is always a good thing to tell your kids.

When his employer refuses to acknowledge the genius of his newest machine, a Doc Brown-ish device that makes ice from fire, he gives up and dislodges his entire family to go live in the fictional country of La Mosquetera, deep amongst the jungles of South Africa where they will build their own civilization and live by their own means. A lot of it involves convincing the locals, a strange ethnic mix of blacks, hispanics and native indians, to obey his whims.

Ford's motivations are very Objectivist, but the fact that he's a lunatic keep it from being a Rand-fest. What follows is a mix of Swiss Family Robinson and Heart of Darkness. This movie blew my mind, and the zeal of Ford's character is amazing to watch. I can't remember another movie where he has put this much effort into a character.

Men of the Yamato (2005) 男たちの大和

This is about the WW2 Pacific theatre. As most people already know, the Imperial Navy lost badly to the American combined fleet and had their prized flagship sunk late in the war. This is basically Pearl Harbor in reverse.

From a strictly American viewpoint, this was ridiculous. Most of the movie is spent talking about ritual suicide and all these fucking weird things the Japanese culture is known for. Far too much screen time is spent watching people yell stuff like "YOIIIII" or screaming "goodbye world" off the side of the ship.

What about the good points? People persisting with anti-Japanese sentiment will find this movie appealing simply because a bunch of Japs die in droves. It's similar to watching the second half of Titanic, but with a ship chock full of screaming Japanese men. You get to see people die in every conceivable way. The naval combat action, and the whole point of this movie, was merely satisfactory.

The great thing about watching the fighting from the opposing side is that you get to see them lose. Losing a war is many times more gruesome than winning and is therefore many times more interesting to watch. Many people, especially Chinese nationals, derive enjoyment from watching Japs die because of lingering bitterness over unresolved war atrocities. For these, most of the culpability falls to the Japanese Army. The Japanese Navy was much less oppressive. Nonetheless, both the Imperial Army and the Imperial Navy are usually held equally responsible. For this undue blame, I think those guys deserve a break.

Story Rating: 0%
Action Rating: 75%

Poisoned by the Red Tide

I got sick eating at a seafood restaurant on Pier 39.

For those not in the know, Pier 39 is a tourist concentration camp on the Northeast corner of San Francisco where your welcoming attitude to foreigners goes to die. It gets trampled under the boots of a million camera-clicking French, Filipino and Japanese people who want nothing more than to get in your way.

It's because of places like this that all the small-towners who visit big cities like New York, Paris and SF leave with the impression that cities are packed shoulder to shoulder with seething masses of loud and quite possibly homosexual people. In reality, the problem is the out-of-towners themselves who feed the tourist trap with their money and turn it into an inescapable hell-hole of tacky businesses and shady restaurants.

The restaurant I went to was called Fisherman's Grotto, a nice-looking if huge restaurant packed behind a fake fish market and next to some falling-apart docks. It may be because I ordered 2 pints of beer within the first 10 minutes of my stay, but the food didn't seem bad. The only thing memorable about it was the price, which was enormous and unwarrented. Such is the way of Pier 39.

The first symptom I had was a night-long bout of physics-defying gassiness. My intestines, sensing the parasitic corruption, attempted to convert all the solids of my meal into gaseous form so that I might release them harmlessly into the atmosphere. Unfortunately the poisons were able to re-enter my system through my nose and lungs and allowed them to infect my brain more easily.

I was unable to sleep until 4 AM despite going to bed at about 11 PM. My nervous system jacked itself up to keep me from slipping into a fatal coma so I could do nothing but writhe around and vent deadly vapors while feeling my intestines deflate and re-inflate.

This morning I woke up with the feeling that my brain was lifting off from the inside of my skull to parts unknown. I felt ambivalent towards everything, including my vision blurring and my ears ringing at random intervals.

After my bowel decided to jettison everything in a last-ditch attempt to keep me alive, I decided to go jogging to sweat out the remaining toxins. While I was running I had the interesting sensation that I couldn't feel anything but my face. I had to clap my hands together to prove they still existed.

All in all, totally worth it. A little Red Tide is nothing to be afraid of when you're hungry for bottom-feeders. Next time I'm trying the crab.

Left 4 Dead 2 Boycott Ruined By Stupid People

I love boycotts. When done right, they can cause companies a ton of grief, generate controversy, and divide a community until one side becomes analogous to Hitler. In this case, supporters of buying L4D2 are the Hitlers because their blind support of Valve is the same as hard core fascism. Unfortunately, the boycott failed miserably due to the two shitbags who led the boycott, going by the names Walking_Target and the other guy. I don't know the other guy's name because it doesn't really matter: both are scumbags who wasted a perfectly good boycott opportunity.

So a few months ago these 2 dipshits created the L4D2 Boycott Steam Community Web Group Forum Twitter Page and got something like a million members championing the cause of not buying L4D2. This was a great time. Just going to the L4D steam forums the first 3 pages would be filled with whines about L4D2, complaints about the lack of support for L4D, and general FUCK U VALVE!!!!!! threads. I wanted to join in the bitch fest, but I didn't want to receive another 4 point(s) infraction from Rotten Dude:

So I just sat back, relaxed, and watched Valve's consumer support wither away from under them, as the boycott anger and strength grew with each passing week. Now you can guess where this was headed. In September, this message was posted on the boycott group page, along with this picture with the lead designer of L4D2 which seriously was the sole inspiration for this post:

Boomer!

Steam flew the two scum sucking boycott leaders to the Valve HQ for a private tour where they could preview L4D2 and directly discuss the game and their concerns with the L4D2 staff. That's where they took this picture with the fattest, ugliest boomer I've ever seen. They probably did stupid shit all day like treat everyone with respect, ask a bunch of insightful questions, etc. etc.

If you didn't want to read that entire post, I'll summarize the important parts for you:

"Over the last week or so, we've been hinting at something big. A few days ago, a potential technical difficulty forced us to say that this announcement might be postponed – which we took even more heat for."

Translation: Valve hit us with a non-disclosure agreement which we lapped up like dogs because we wanted to sell out and go to Valve HQ

"Facta Non Verba is a Latin phrase meaning quite literally “Deeds, not Words”, or “Actions speak louder than words”. This is ironic in more way than one."

Translation: This is ironic, because quite literally, I'm a pompous asshole.

"Valve took the course of Facta Non Verba in dealing with myself and Agent of Chaos. Rather than trying to explain everything via email, they invited us out to their offices in Bellevue, Washington. That alone speaks of a developer that really does care about its fanbase. So, after making arrangements and booking the time off of our jobs, we flew down for a day to take a quick tour and talk with the guys at Valve."

Translation: We creamed our pants when the fat bastards at Valve actually spoke to us. The Valve accountants decided that the boycott was going to make them lose their bonus money, so they told the HR department to order the Developers to entertain us for a day. We told our bosses to suck it because we hit the big time. Just kidding, we don't have jobs.

"We can't get into details, but we can definitely say that support for L4D is NOT being dropped by Valve and that they are actively pursuing bug fixes for Left 4 Dead. We're going to continue to talk to Valve and ask questions as needed, however if the frantic pace which we had seen people working at is any indication, we're not going to be left in the dust. The staff seemed to honestly love the original 4 Survivors and many said that “we're not done with them yet”."

Translation: The catered lunch was really good and I actually got to shake the fat developer's sweaty hand.

"As for L4D2, things seemed balanced and 'tight' and did not feel like a rushed job. While we were visiting their offices we personally witnessed what can only be called a small army of artists, coders, mappers hard at work, which explains the rapid transformations in artwork that we've all seen."

Translation: Despite the graphics of L4D2 being identical to L4D, I actually got to shake the fat artist's sweaty hand.

"We're not giving up just yet though, we will both be here up until our individual concerns are addressed and sticking with you folks."

Translation: We gave up.

"We'll be doing write ups about this tomorrow, Thrusday and Friday as well as answering questions. We will not be around that much tonight as we both have to fly back early tomorrow morning"

Translation: We will be justifying our selling out to the outraged millions of group members Thursday and Friday.

"As a collective we have done more than achieve a few goals, we have paved the way for Developer-Community relations in the future. No matter what the press or other gamers say, we have made an indelible mark upon the future of this industry. You should all be proud, we certainly are."

Translation: We've proved that all it takes to end a boycott is for the corporations to shell out a few hundred bucks to cater to two impressionable asswipes in order to avoid millions of dollars in lost revenue. Gamers have a say in what happens unless one of the boycott leaders gets to hold the golden crowbar.

Ever since the boycott effectively ended with Valve glad-handing the boycott leaders, sales of L4D2 skyrocketed. This is despite the game being priced at $50, full price for a brand new game, NOT an expansion. But wait, Valve wasn't done with those two talking heads just yet:

"We understand some of you have a problem with its price tag. Personally, I’m quite surprised with the discount on pre-orders; A 4 Pack bundle brings it down to only $33.75 for each person. I see many people took advantage of this including "boycotters", but to be honest that’s a fair price. In other words, that’s what expansions cost. You can’t blame them for making this decision."

Yes, a 4 pack bundle will only cost $33.75 each. What a great fucking deal, except that you need to buy 4 of them and you need to convince 4 friends to actually sit down all at the same exact time and play this game. And who would want to play with these two guys anyway? How do I know they won't shoot me in the back because the zombie leader gave them a tour of the zombie HQ and catered a free brain lunch for them?

"I'm sorry, but the zombies are really nice people and they are working hard on this!"

What a disappointment. I should follow more promising boycotts like Minute Maid. FUCK YOU MINUTE MAID.

The Sniper (2009) 神鎗手

lol this movie has been posted everywhere. This is the first time I've watched an HK movie without subtitles, so I probably missed some of the subtext, but I get the picture. It starts with a bunch of guys on a Chinese SWAT team that are competing to become the best sniper. They would say stuff like "chinese china bunch of chinese TOP SHOOTER! more chinese" and I would smirk. It's not long before friendly competition turns into enraged rivalry during real police action and soonafter they turn their sniper rifles on each other. It's so dramatic!
This is also the returning debut of Edison Chen after fleeing HK in disgrace due to the untimely leak of his homemade porn. He looks good. Acting still sucks though. Thing is, when I see him on the screen I just can't stop thinking about the photos of his sexual tryst ahahaha they got him good. Stuffed bear in the background watching them bahaha!

Rating: 40%