Was Amos and Andrew a Real Movie?

From Netflix - When renowned African amiercan playwritght Andrew Sterling moved into an all white suburb, his suspicious new neighbors mistake him for a burglar and promptly call the police. 

SLJ and Nic Cage in a movie together when the fuck did this get green lit sold and made and why wasn't I told about this.  Why didn't I go see this?  Look how pissed Sam is.  Is this just like the Burbs?

Popcorn

So I was watching 4 months 3 weeks etc, I had my big ass bag of popcorn and I wondered should popcorn be considered abortion.  Would corn think it's wrong?  Should all biology be created equal?

Movies that make you not want to do ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________!

Let me just preface this by saying movies do kind of fuck you up psychologically if they hit that chord with you.  You know how you watch a scary movie, makes you double check that you locked the door and shit.  But there are just some movies that after I see them I can't do a certain thing for a really long time, because they did it in a movie and it just made me sick to my stomach to even think about doing it.  And it takes a special movie to do something like that.  Like Boogie Nights didn't make me want to stop coke or doing porn etc.  So here are my all time movies for that:

Leaving Las Vegas - Didn't want to Drink for a Really long time...

This film will always hold that special place in my heart for being the first movie to do something like this to me.  If that's part of what they were going for, then way to go.  You probably made a lot of alcoholics stop and I commend them.  Honestly when he made that 99 to 1 perecent screw driver in the shower I almost puked.

Owning Mahoney - Made me want to stop gambling.

This is a very underrated classic from Phillips Seymour Hoffman's cocoon to butterfly stage.  Basically from 2000-2004, PSH fucking owned acting but no one really gave him credit for a lot of things he did.  You had Love Liza, this, Punch Drunk Love (best part), 25th hour, Cold Mountain, Red Dragon, Almost Famous.  But that is why he is kicking shit right now and why everyone sucked his dick with Capote.  That was the years he was honing his craft.

This really showed that gambling is the sickest addiction you can have because anyone can have it really.  You kind of have to climb a mountain of failure to get into coke and heroin, but gambling is so easy and it is there and you think you always have it.  Think about it, how much are you up on the house, how entertaining is that for you??

I can't really explain it but Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back made me realize that the girl I was currently dating that it would never work out between us.  She wasn't even watching it with me and I don't know what it was.  Partially due to Shannon Elizabeth's entrance okay.  But I ended up not breaking up with her for another 2 years so you can tell how well that turned out for me. 

What are some of these movies for you?

What did people think Eyes Wide Shut was going to be?

Do you know who Stanley Kubrick is? 

X-Men First Class Trailer

So they just released the trailer for X-Men First Class yesterday.  They were going to release a TV spot during the Super Bowl, but they wisely held off to do a full length one.  I mean was anyone excited by the 30 seconds of Super 8 or Captain America?  Not only is it a waste of money, but unless you buy a minutes worth it's almost impossible to get people amped up for it.

Anyway, this trailer actually looked pretty decent.  I went into it expecting it would be stupid, even though it started a little slow.  I think Matthew Vaughn is a good director, he has his head and heart in the right place.  I love how he is anti-hollywood.  I was disappointed with Kick Ass which is another reason why I didn't expect much from this, but I'm pretty excited for this movie now.  And as much as I hate the idea of rebooting a franchise almost within a decade of the first one (see Spider-Man), I think this one needed a little new blood to keep it going especially after Wolverine and X-Men 3.  Are they actually considering this a prequel, or is this a reboot?

No one was as ramped up for first X-Men movie in 2000 as me.  When I finally got to see it, I brought my camera, and ended up making an album out of the time I got to see X-Men.  As much as I loved it though, I always thought something felt amiss with it, maybe it needed one more action sequence, or 20 more minutes.  I realize how hard it is to make an X-Men movie, you are basically creating an ensemble action movie within 2 hours.  Hopefully this takes X-Men to the next level and realizes that they don't really spend so much time on exposition, I think most of the people seeing this will already know the stories. 

Does anyone remember that TV movie in the 90's Generation X with that guy from Honey I Shrunk the Kids, Matt Frewer.  I kind of liked it.  Why haven't they done that with a comic book?  Even as there have been some effective super hero movies, can you really tell the story arc of a hero in a 2 hour movie, even if it is a trilogy?  With the progression TV has made, maybe it is the right time for a live action, well known, Super hero coming to the small screen, and I'm not counting Lois and Clark.  Batman the Animated Series was one of the best things to happen to TV ever.

PS it was always my dream since I was a kid to fly an SR-71, is that still possible?

Half Baked Pro Pot or Anti Pot

Half Baked will be one of my all time favorite comedies probably until the day I die, great sequences, good mix of random moments, visually striking, and has one of the legends Dave Chappelle.  But I was recently thinking was this setup as a pro pot movie or anti pot movie.  I could see certain elements relating to anti-pot since the studios financed it and wouldn't want to come off as pro-drug for financial and commercial reasons.  There seems to be somewhat of a character arc for Thurgood going from complete Stoner, to seeing the seedy underbelly of drug use and coming out clean in the end.   

Reasons for Anti

• Mary Jane makes Thurgood quit smoking in order to be with her and he does
• Mary Jane's father is in prison for selling it
• None of them have any "high" society jobs, and the only one that does somewhat, Kenny, ends up in prison, the rest have stereotypical stoner jobs, fast food, janitor, record store clerk
• There is a part where they say marijuana effects the memory
• They are labeled potheads during a negative connotation scene
• The one who smokes the most, Sir Smokes-a-lot, is a complete wreck, needs a backiotomy, is impotent and they seem to relate it to that he smokes a pound a week
• The cops almost don't bust SAMPSON! because they are too high 
• While they are selling it and meeting all the different stoners none of them, except maybe Snoop and Willie, seem to mentally be stable.  Thurgood and Scarface are a little scared of the creative and enhancement ones.  
• They are 4 adult humans living in a tiny cramped apartment with no bedrooms and a dude perpetually passed out on the couch
• It takes them a whole night to realize that Kenny is gone, maybe even more since Kenny seems to go through the whole judicial process overnight
• They don't get laid as often as they like, until Thurgood meets Mary Jane but he hasn't had sex since high school it would appear

 Reasons for Pro

• During the addiction meeting people call Thurgood out because it is only marijuana.  Someone even says marijuana is not a drug along with did you ever suck dick for coke
• It makes up most of the movie obviously
•  As a rebuttal to the one above, Sir Smokes-a-lot is also the best one off financially
•  There is a pharmaceutical lab (Frankensense and Burr) conducting experiments with it to show that it may have many different uses
• A grandma is smoking, saying how good it is for her glaucoma and arthritis
• I bet most of the actors, writers, crew working around the movie were pro-pot, and some were on weed and they were able to make a movie, which is a hard thing to do
• Everyone thinks that Brian is a crazy stoner, until his magic pouch ends up actually saving the day
• They all have jobs period, except the dude on the couch
• The detectives all seem to care about Sampson selling the cocaine and heroin
• Which they end up quitting to start their own business 
• They are 4 friends living together and enjoying life until one goes to jail
•  They are 4 stoners who end up taking down a major drug cartel

 I don't know, maybe it's both though, maybe both is happening at the same.  I think it says it's okay to smoke weed, it's fun, makes life a little bit better, just do it responsibly, don't let it consume your life like Sir Smokes-a-lot.  Yeah.  

El olor de una mujer

What Scent of a Woman in spanish, it is quite the trip especially if you don't know what they are talking about. 

Why didn't they put the Lysine Contingency into effect?

Why didn't they? It was the most logical solution. Who cares about dinosaurs? I guess since Hammond had said that he was there at the birth so maybe he was attached, but he had all the embryos to breed more.  Samuel L. Jackson and that Austrailian guy would still be alive. Never listen to Richard Attenborough, not even if he is directing you in Ghandi.  But maybe it wouldn't have worked anyway since "life found a way" to breed they probably found a way to get lysine. 

Speaking of which how come no one went back to see if Muldoon was okay or still alive they just assumed he was dead and took off.

Fun fact the real life Robert Muldoon was the 31st Prime Minister of New Zealand, not sure if they named him after that.  

The Digital Effects of Jurassic Park

Jurassic Park came out in 1993 and its special effects are still considered some of the best ever done in film.  The key to it and what Spielberg has become famous for since he "mastered" it in Jaws, is less is more.  The movie is 127 minutes long but the actually dinosaurs make up a very small portion of that.  It is more built on what is in the forest, what is on the other side of the door, and it works pretty well. 

Back when I was first obsessed with this movie as a kid I had read an article about the dino effects in the movie and they said it was only a few minutes of dinosaurs.  That didn't seem right so I watched it with a stop watch, every time a dinosaur was on screen I timed it whether it was computer or animatronic.  I can't remember the exact figure but it was about 8 minutes 40 seconds.  Now taking into account digital/computer generated shots you are looking at about 200 seconds give or take several.  What they did was certainly a feat for its time, but when considering only 200 seconds have a digital effect in them, you can understand that the artists were allowed to take their time and make every frame as good as it could be.  It would be about 4800 frames of shots.  A team of 10, each doing 20 frames of day would get it done in under a month. 

If Jurassic Park was made now, how would those numbers look?  It would probably be triple that, for frames to do it, plus more projects, equals less time to spend on each individual effect.  As a kid this was the perfect movie, but a part of me wishes they would have done a little more.  Then again that's what happened with Lost World, and while it was decent it didn't live up to this one. 

What happened at Site B?

So we all know about the huge fall out from the first Jurassic Park on the first island, dinosaurs broke out and it was abandoned.  But what was the case on Site B.  For all intents and purposes that seem to be running just fine we never heard of any accidents, but in the 2nd it is completely abandoned and there are no bodies to be had.  That might be a good idea for a 4th movie.  Show what happened at Site B and why it was abandoned by all the scientists.  Unless Hammond decided to just pull the plug on everything after the first one.   

Why does he pull the plug so easily?  He made dinosaurs, one hiccup, and he quits, how did he become a billionaire.  He is even still defending it to Malcolm in that bunker talking about Pirates of the Carribean, but then 20 minutes after that, lets forget about everything on the park.  Something doesn't sit right.  I guess he has that part where he wants to go back when they are taking off in the helicopter, but that's it?  Just send a team in take down the T-Rex, forget about the raptors, or genetically engineer them to be smaller, just make brontosaurus and shit.  It could at least be a decent vacation resort.  I'd probably go there even if there weren't dinosaurs, he had a pretty good setup and good locales.  You have a secluded island go with it.  Turn it into the America's version of Bali. 

How many people died that we know of, maybe 5 (worker in the beginning, Nedry-deserved it, Muldoon, Gennaro, Samuel L)?  How many people died building the Panama Canal?  Great Wall?  So basically these people will have died for nothing by just abandoning the park.  Run the park, get revenue, give a portion to those families, and you could build great charitable organizations through the revenue of it.  "Nature is too awesome to control"  they are just dinosaurs, animals, just need to have fail safes so someone from a single computer can't turn off the power to everything.

 The raptors were a huge fucking mistake.  The worked well and looked sweet for a movie, but for a theme park maybe not.  They are not as mad as the Xenomorphs, but looking how they go in the movie (except the 3rd), they are closest thing on earth.  Plus they just put them in that pen, how are people going to see them and interact with them.  

Or why not forget about the dinosaurs just turn it into a genetic research facility, develop cures, stem cells, engineer organs.  You have millions of dollars worth of equipment.  Put the Lysine contingent into effect, keep around some dino embryos just in case, and start on a new project.  What a quitter. 

How did they clone the plants?

They never brought it up, and I can't remember if they ever explained it in the book.  According to the way they cloned the dinosaurs I would think it was impossible to do but as Ellie says about that one plant that it has been extinct since the cretaceous period.  It's probably not the only one.  Me thinks that Hammond didn't clone the dinosaurs at all and merely stumbled on this island so that he could call the animals his had to figure out a way to patent them.  After years he genetically modified them to adhere the way he wanted but he didn't originally create them.  Big corporate cover up. 

The Exam

Yeah that Exam was pretty fucking stupid, yeah all these weird caricatures for a job interview.  Gee I wonder if it will be a trick question and the boss man is in the room with them.  But it’s okay I bet they didn’t make him stick out like a sore thumb. 

I appreciate taking the simple idea, and the independent nature of it.   The chick who won just annoyed the hell out of me, and she is the one who decides fate now?