Author Archives: Jean-Paul

Movie Review: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

Jean-Paul’s Rating: 2/5 stars

Bottom line: Some good action.  Close to zero character development.  Close to zero laughs.

How do you make Will Arnett not funny?  Star him in “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles”.  Seriously, Michael Bay, how do you make Will Arnett not funny?  Joining Will Arnett in not being funny was everyone else in the cast.  The saddest thing was you could tell how very hard they were trying to make things funny, but there was no material to work with.  All the comedy was shoehorned in there along with a bunch of poorly executed nudge-nudge-wink-wink references to the old TMNT series.  Please tell me you made a lot of money on this movie, Will.

And then there’s the character development.  Or lack thereof.  You have April O’Neil (Megan Fox) whose entire schtick is telling people how she wants to be a serious reporter over and over again.  Then there’s Vernon Fenwick (Will Arnett) whose entire purpose is to drive April everywhere and pine for her.  There were also four turtles who we get to know by them repeating their names.  I’m Leonardo and I’m the leader!  I’m Michelangelo and I’m the goofball.  I’m Donatello and I’m the smart one, see, I have glasses!  I’m Raphael and I’m the broody one.

There are a few kind of cool action scenes.  The best is the one where they inexplicably choose a semi-truck with trailer as an escape vehicle and go sliding down an inexplicably snow covered mountain with other vehicles in pursuit.  The final battle against the Shredder was also decent enough before being ruined by some unbelievable silliness.

There’s not much to say about the plot.  The origin story is different than the TMNT of old, but it’s not so bad.  The Foot Clan is reduced to machine gunning mercenaries with a few ninjas thrown in for good measure.  Of course, Splinter almost dies and the Turtles need to save his life while simultaneously saving the world.  How they are able to save Splinter’s life is beyond idiotic.  They basically give him an infusion of their own blood because it has magical healing powers.  But, um, wouldn’t Splinter’s blood also have that healing power?  The answer is yes, yes it would.

“Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” is decidedly in the do not go to see category.  Save your nostalgia for a rainy day at home where you can loudly lament Michael Bay killing another childhood memory.

Movie Review: Guardians Of The Galaxy

Jean-Paul’s Rating: 4/5 stars

Bottom Line: A very enjoyable variation on the Superhero theme of movie.  Lots of likeable characters, some good humor, slightly touching.  The larger ship fight action scenes fall flat because they are mostly impossible to follow.

Well, Marvel has yet another winning franchise.  Who’d a thunk that a movie about a bunch of misfit heroes with pretty much zero name recognition would be both a success and as good as it actually was?  A lot of this has to do with the fine cast of second tier stars.  Chris Pratt started off a little soft and appeared to be a little uncomfortable as Peter Quill (Starlord), but he very quickly pulled it all together to create an incredibly likeable character.  The interactions between Gamora (Zoe Salander) and Drax (Dave Bautista) were entertaining.  Vin Diesel gives the acting performance of his life as Groot.  And Bradley Cooper steals scene after scene as the raccoon, Rocket.

The key to this film’s success is actual, honest to goodness character development.  Marvel seems to be really good at this, but this is really the first time they have gone full-bore introducing five new heroes and yet still cram the story full of character development for all five of them while at the same time telling a pretty decent story.  Another key factor to this movie’s success is the lightness of the story.  Yes, serious stuff is happening all around, but there’s also always time for a well placed and very well-timed joke.  Like when Rocket says he needs the prisoner’s mechanical leg to help them escape.  Classic.

The only real downside to the movie were the way too hectic battle scenes.  The close up action worked really well, but get more than a few ships speeding across the screen at the same time and you really can’t tell what’s going on.  Messy visual spectaculars are all the rage these days, unfortunately.  Of course, it doesn’t really matter what’s going on in those scenes so it’s easy to look past it.

Yep, there will be another “Guardians of the Galaxy” movie, you can all but guarantee it.  This one was too fun and appears to be as successful as it needs to be to make it happen.  It’s a great group of characters and I’m looking forward to seeing their next adventure.  In the meantime, I’m sure I’ll watch this movie again once or twice.

This Is What Progress Looks Like

EqualityChartB2014.07.28

I learned an interesting fact.  Illinois was the first state to rescind it’s anti-sodomy law back in 1961.  From there we had a gradual decline until in 2003 where the Supreme Court decision in Lawrence v. Texas ruled anti-sodomy laws unconstitutional.  Then, from that zero point, we quickly see growth in the legality of same-sex marriage and many anti-same-sex marriage laws being struck down by the courts.  I give it ten years tops before we see that graph hit 100%.

Movie Review: Hercules

Jean-Paul’s Rating: 3/5 stars

Bottom Line: After a disappointing start, this is a movie that is both entertaining enough and engaging enough to watch from the comfort of your own home.

Let’s get something straight right off the bat.  This movie is not about Hercules the Greek mythological being.  Wait, that’s not quite true.  This movie is about a man named Hercules who is both big and powerful and creates the myth of Hercules the Greek mythological being to help him and his crew of mercenaries land paying gigs.  After some initial disappointment of not seeing a movie based on Hercules’ twelve labors, I found that I liked what they did to spin Hercules’ myth around an all too human, if impossibly large, man.  Keep this all in mind if you plan to see the movie.

With that out of the way, what you have in “Hercules” is basically a better than average Dungeons & Dragons campaign.  You’ve got a rag-tag group of adventurers including a fighter, an archer, a barbarian, a thief, and a mystic who go on various quests for both gold and glory.  After completing a side quest, they are engaged in their main quest to save a village from an evil usurper intent on taking over a peaceful kingdom.  There are plot twists and betrayals and even some tying in character’s back-stories into the main plot.  Now I want to play D&D.

The humor in the movie is decent if a little over-acted at times.  The movie is also surprisingly endearing.  Hercules develops his mercenary followers by both helping them and treating them kindly and this is revealed throughout the movie.  How they do this is pretty cool.  The movie starts with a quick retelling of many of Hercules’ labors as the myths describe them.  Then, throughout the movie, you see the interactions between Hercules and his companions and get to know a little bit of how they came to follow him.  Finally, in the end credits, you are treated to a comic book retelling of Hercules’ labors showing how his friends actually helped him complete each of the labors.

“Hercules” is a fun if forgettable movie.  I don’t think I’d recommend seeing it in the theater unless you want to get your D&D friends together and geek out to it or if you just really like Dwayne Johnson.

All You Need To Know About Economics

There are two things I know about economics:

  1. Making money move makes money multiply.
  2. Money has a tendency to accumulate in one place.

Point number one is a variation on you have to spend money to make money.  The more any given dollar exchanges hands for goods or services, the more robust the economy is.  This should strike everyone as completely non-controversial.  Basically, if money is not exchanging hands, it might as well just be a paper weight.

Point number two is a variation on the rich get richer.  All things being equal, money tends to float to the top and into the hands of a very few people where a majority of it stops exchanging hands.  So what we get is a trillion dollar paper weight at the top of the economic pyramid.  This one is probably a little controversial, but there is enough history to show this to be true unless steps are taken to prevent it.

What do these two points mean?  Well, to me, it means that seeding the lower economic levels with money would lead to an marked increase of economic growth.  The poorest of the poor need to spend money.  They only don’t because they don’t have the money.  All that extra money circulates back into the economy immediately causing goods to be purchased which causes more goods to be made which causes more jobs to be created which causes rich people to make more money.  It’s the great economic circle of life.

So, what steps should we take?

Top on my list would be to treat all capital the same.  Right now, we have this backwards system of taxation that taxes money made from working a job at higher rates than money made from stocks and dividends.  Tax all capital equally and we create an economic playing field that is still woefully lopsided, but at least evens how everyone is taxed on that playing field.  Removing just the capital gains and dividend preferences would also give the federal government about $38 billion per year in extra income.  Next on my list would be raising the top income tax brackets back to the late 1940’s level.  That would make the top tax rate somewhere above 80%.  And before you go complaining that rates that high will hurt economic growth, average GDP growth during that time was over 15%.  That isn’t to say that the high rate helped economic growth, because there is zero correlation between the top tax rate and economic growth, it’s more to show that it won’t hurt it.

And what do we do with all of this extra money?  I’ve always liked the idea of a minimum income.  Every non-dependent adult receives $1,000 or so a month from the government.  Those that have a job would receive more, perhaps $1,500.  This system both provides for those who can’t or won’t find a job and provides an incentive for people to have a job.

I believe this system will prime the economic pump and cause the economic circle to keep rolling.  Booms may end up being less boomy, but busts would also become less busty.

Book Review: Dracula by Bram Stoker

Jean-Paul’s Rating: 3/5 stars

“Dracula” is a book with a really good premise written by a man with no idea how to tell a compelling story.  The story is equal parts brilliance and plodding nonsense.  It is written as a series of journal entries that detail the actions of the protagonists.  It’s an interesting literary device, but it mostly falls flat because of the fact that most action happens “off camera”, so to speak, with the journal entries retelling things that happened to other people.  This makes it very difficult for the reader to establish a mood.

Despite that, there are some great parts.  Right at the beginning, the retelling of Jonathan Harker’s journey to Transylvania and his encounters with Dracula and the denizens of his castle makes for some very compelling reading.  Another bright spot is Dr. Seward’s retelling of his encounters with Renfield, who is one of only two interesting characters in the book.  Other than that, there is strewn here and there tidbits of compelling reading, but it never lasts for very long.

To show just how poor Stoker’s sense of pacing is, he goes straight from Harker in Transylvania to an overly long description of Lucy’s courtship of three suitors.  The sole purpose of this is to establish how the three of them end up joining in on the hunt for Dracula.  So we get to read page after page of courtship nonsense just so we can be introduced to Jack Seward, Arthur Holmwood, and Quncey Morris.  Of the three, only Dr. Jack Seward has a real reason to exist as he is the connecting tissue between all of the main characters.  The other two are blandly one-dimensional window dressing.

Interesting character number two is Wilhelmina Murray, or Mina, as she is called throughout the book.  Mina is probably as close to feminist as female characters were allowed to be in the late 1800’s.  She is strong-willed, intelligent, and comes up with almost every breakthrough in the group’s hunt for Dracula.  Of course, it’s still the late 1800’s so she is also the plot device to keep what flimsy of a storyline there is going.  Time after time, we have the men praising her for her strength only to immediately backpedal and go with the “oh, but you are a woman and thus must be protected by us manly men” trope.

The story itself relies on a series of not fully explained details, like Jonathan Harker’s escape from Castle Dracula, and poorly reasoned decision making to keep things moving.  This turns what could have been a page-turning monster hunt thriller into an eye-rolling, saw that coming a mile away, yawn fest.

Despite the book’s many flaws, I can still see why hundreds of years later the world is still enthralled by Dracula and by vampires in general.  Like many good ideas with poor follow through (I’m looking at you H.P. Lovecraft), much that has come since is superior to the source material.  It is still worth while to read where it all began if to only see how far Dracula has come.

Stop Me If You’ve Heard This One Before

Everyone knows the twelve inch pianist joke.  It’s a mainstay of comedy.  But did you ever wonder what happened after the punchline?  Well, wonder no further!  It goes from the joke, to awkwardness, to sentimentality, to hilarity, and back to awkwardness once again.  It’s some brilliant writing.

Movie Review: Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes

Jean-Paul’s Rating: 4/5 stars

Bottom Line: A beautifully produced film that once again gets to show off the brilliance of Andy Serkis of Gollum fame.  Some third act implausibilities spoil the movie some, but it’s still a worthy successor to “Rise of the Planet of the Apes”.

Andy Serkis is pretty awesome.  He plays Caesar, the leader of the ape tribe that escaped in the end of the previous movie as it maintains its empire 10 years later.  Serkis does all of the acting for Caesar, the movements, the voice, the facial expressions.  He does such a good job that Caesar might as well be human.  That isn’t to say that the other apes are two-dimensional, but Serkis makes Caesar almost four-dimensional.

The other headliner apes are also well played and the personality of each was well fleshed out, all without words being spoken, but with sign language and facial expressions.  Not an easy feat.  My only complaint about the apes in general was the insistence of the director to adorn the female apes with jewelry so the audience could distinguish sex.  Maybe there’s something else going on there that I just don’t recognize, though.  It was also annoying how much of a backseat the female apes took given that I’m pretty sure that most ape societies are fairly egalitarian about such things.

While the apes definitely stole the show, there were some good human performances as well.  Jason Clarke and Gary Oldman play the leaders of New San Francisco, with Jason being the ape friendly one and Gary being the ape hostile one.  As with the ape society, the human society was very patriarchical with only one female (Keri Russel) given any real role to play.  At least they didn’t make her the damsel in distress, which they very well could have.

The plot is mostly believable except for a few sticking points.  There’s a part in the beginning where Ceasar claims they haven’t seen humans in 2 years which seems unlikely given how close New San Francisco is, but it’s really a throw away point that doesn’t add or detract from the story.  Then there’s the apes’ use of guns.  What do you think would happen if an ape society that has absolutely no experience with guns suddenly gets hold of an arsenal and attacks the humans with it?  The apes would pretty much accidentally slaughter each other in the attack.  But no.  In this, they are really good marksapes and are able to perform a successful frontal assault on the heavily guarded human position.  I know, this was for special effects fun and allowed the movie to keep moving, but it still bothers me.

Aside from those minor quibbles, “Dawn of the Planet of the Apes” is a good time and I would highly recommend it.  Be sure to see “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” first if you haven’t yet.  It’s not necessary to see the first, but it will add some context and it’s really a better movie in general.

I Bet You’ve Never Had This Dream

No matter how many weird dreams I have, I continue to be amazed at how weird dreams can be.  The one I had last night may be the strangest.

I was my adult self and I was playing kids games with all of my adult friends outside what I am pretty sure was my childhood home.  At some point during all of our frivolity, a large something falls down and hits me on my right upper arm.  The impact of this hit forces almost my entire humerus bone to be forced out of my elbow in some macabre Wolverine-like claw.

“Someone should probably take me to the hospital”, I state matter of factly as I pull the rest of the bone from the orifice.

What ensues is a giant argument among my friends as to who will take me to the hospital.  At one point they decide that they’ll all take me and pile into a sub-compact car leaving no room for me to fit in the car.  At another point, I somehow lose my erstwhile attached humerus and a great hunt commenced.  “Guys, if someone hid my humerus, this isn’t funny”, I said proving that even in my dreams I crack crappy puns.

I also remember being really weirded out by the motions I was able to still perform with my hand and that despite my missing bone, I was able to put pressure on my arm.  There was no pain and no blood to speak of.

I woke up before we ever figured out how to get me to the hospital.  Worst friends evar.

Weird Al Is Back!

This will probably go down as one of his best songs.  “Word Crimes”, sung to the tune of “Blurred Lines”.  Brilliant!

[youtube http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8Gv0H-vPoDc]