42

There have been more than a few "Yaay black people" movies in the past few months. First came Spielberg's Lincoln, then Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained (which wasn't so much of a "Yaay black people" movie as it was a "F**k white people" movie), and now 42, the annual heartwarming baseball movie.

Before I get into this review, I want to say that it was a really important thing to make a movie about Jackie Robinson. The entire anti-segregation movement was an unparalleled moment in American history where people stood up against redneck hicks and started to push back old white people whose grandpas had fought for the Confederates during the Civil War. That said, 42 is pretty one-dimensional. I've always said that a great movie needs a great villain, and this simply didn't have that. It's the same problem I had with the aforementioned Django Unchained, which made its villains so repulsive that the  audience gets some really weird thrills out of seeing their heads get blown off.

Graham Vert

Clearly, 42 didn't have any head-blowing-off-ness (but I would like to see Tarantino's version of the story). What it did have was 120 minutes of feel-good moments where Robinson steals bases, hits home runs, and laughs in racists hick's faces. And it's a LOT less interesting than it sounds. After watching virtually two hours of the same set of scenes OVER AND OVER AND OVER AGAIN, there is literally not an ounce of suspense.

This movie could have had great moments, where Robinson is attacked outside of the baseball park by racists, or where his wife actually has some DOUBTS about what he's doing, instead of being an emotionless prop who does nothing but give little motivational speeches every ten minutes. But that's just not the kind of film it was. It's a PG-13 movie about a much heavier subject. It was canned, corny, and featured some incredibly crappy acting from some of the supporting cast.

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They also ripped off the Skyfall poster... just sayin'.

Of course, Harrison Ford and Alan Tudyk don't fall into that category. It was good to see Ford playing the old guy he really is instead of riding horses, fighting aliens and Russians, and teaming up with Shiia Lebouf. Plus, Alan Tudyk (who Firefly fans will remember as Hoban Washburn) plays the racist coach for the Philadelphia Phillies. Which is really interesting to watch, seeing as he's married to a black woman in Firefly... actually, go watch that show instead of this movie. It's better.

In short, 42 was entertaining enough, but a story like this deserves better treatment. Hard to believe that the man who once wrote the screenplays for LA Confidential and Salt directed this Disney-like feel-good movie. How the mighty have fallen. On the plus side, Chadwick Boseman is perfectly cast as Jackie Robinson. If only the other actors had put in as much effort as he did.

Final score for 42? I'll be generous and give it 6/10 stars. Unless you're a baseball fan, this isn't really a must-see film. And I'm sure I'll get flak from people who say that it's an important Civil Rights movie, but seriously? We're making movies about Jackie Robinson and not Rosa Parks or MLK? It's like Robinson himself says in the film-- "I'm just a ballplayer."

Bye!

Game of Drones

I went on a long-ass field trip today, and it was pretty boring... at least up until our resident bumbling idiot fell out of a tree. Somehow, that made sitting on a bus for two hours all worthwhile. Also, we got to see a bunch of pigs on a farm and yell "BAAAAACOOOOON!!!" at them.

But I could really care less about what I did today, because I just saw the MOST F**KING AWESOME THING I'VE EVER SEEN on the internet today: The government has created a prototype hummingbird drone. Yeah, that's right. A DRONE that looks like a HUMMINGBIRD. This is some next-level s**t. Now Obama can be peeking in yo' windows and snatching yo' people up.

A lot of people have been questioning the legality of drone warfare, but I'm all for it. In the future, national heroes won't have run into combat guns blazing; they'll be some asshole in his mom's basement in Pasadena who subcontracted out to the military. Of course, to take someone out via drone, they first have to be declared an enemy combatant. But you can REALLY stretch the definition of 'enemy combatant.' Graham Vert


Case in point: This week, some people tried to get the Tsarnaev brothers, the pair who bombed the Boston marathon, dubbed as ECs. Which is really dumb, seeing as we have literally no evidence that they acted on the urging of terrorists or because of their own geopolitical/religious beliefs.

But speaking of the bombers, for some reason, a few congressmen have said that the bipartisan immigration reform bill currently on the floor should be looked over again... because the bombers were Chechnyan. Seriously, that's the only reasoning they gave. You know, while we're at it, let's just not allow any Chechens into the US. Is that a good idea? Plus, let's keep out all the Japanese... they bombed us at Pearl Harbor. And we shouldn't allow British people in, because they fought us in the Revolution.

Bye!

Oblivious

We're doing something called The Food Project in my class, where we're assigned a food and have to tell everyone why it's good/bad for them. As part of it, today we watched a video in the theater about how meat is raising cancer rates, milk is feeding diabetes, and the entire animal-based food industry is killing us slowly. I don't give; I'm having hot dogs for dinner. YAY, teenagers!

It's been a while since I've been to a movie theater, seeing as Iron Man 3 doesn't come out until next week. But to tide me over, today I went to see Oblivion, the latest Tom Cruise Tom Cruise-fest. I had heard mediocre things about it, and so I went in with low-ish expectations. After all, who gives a flying f**k about Tom Cruise? But I was pleasantly surprised-- Oblivion is easily the best movie I've seen this year.
Graham Vert
Okay, it's April, and the only other one I've seen is A Good Day to Die Hard, so there's not much competition. But Oblivion, minus the Tom Cruise part, was an entertaining, visually stimulating thrill ride that featured never-ending plot twists. It's some pretty absorbing sci-fi.

         
However, this wouldn't be a real review of mine if I didn't list everything wrong with the movie. On the other hand, the problem here isn't so much what's wrong with it as it is what's RIGHT with it. Specifically, this movie ripped off every single science fiction movie ever made. The only mildly original parts are where it pays tribute to other Tom Cruise movies, like Top Gun (repeated shots of aviators) or A Few Good Men (baseball and glove sitting in his house). So for your reading pleasure, I will now list EVERY MOVIE THAT OBLIVION RIPPED OFF!!!

• Moon/The Island: Infinite clones, one guy trapped on a barren world? Please, it's too obvious.
• The Matrix: Thousands of Tom Cruises sitting in tanks, all over the wall. Just substitute Keanu Reeves (an even worse actor), and you've nailed it.
• The Phantom Menace/The Avengers: When the alien ship is destroyed, all the baddies die seconds before they're about to wipe out our heroes. How convenient. Plus the drones were highly reminiscent of Darth Maul's droid-thingy. Yep, I'm a nerd.
• Alien/Aliens: Cryostasis freezing lasts 60 years... because plotline.
• Prometheus: Not many people might agree with me here, but sometimes it seemed as if the panorama shots in this movie were the exact same ones from the opening of the Alien saga prequel.
• 2001: A Space Odyssey: The evil robot looks and acts exactly like HAL, plus the spaceship they ride to the alien ship on is highly reminiscent in design to the Discovery. Oh, and it's also called The Odyssey. So there's that.
• Independence Day: The entire alien ship looked identical to the one in this classic disaster flick, from the triangular doors to the hollow interior.
• Return of the Jedi: Good guys dress up in full-body armor and wear voice scramblers to disguise themselves.
• Attack of the Clones: Clone army. That's all I'm gonna say.
• Total Recall: The man's memory is wiped, and he is then placed in an awkward situation between his wife and his random girlfriend. However, Arnold Schwarzenegger's acting is far more versatile than Tom Cruise's.
• Wanted: Morgan Freeman plays essentially the same character in this 2008 thriller as he does in Oblivion.
• The Book of Eli: This might be the weakest connection here, but the two movies have the same tone and general plot points-- plus Tom Cruise finds a book in the ruins of a library that he carries with him through the movie.

Anyway, although Oblivion is shamelessly derivative, it's hard to come up with truly groundbreaking sci-fi these days. It borrowed heavily from far better sources, but what it did with that material was pretty gripping. Although most of the dialogue stank, and the acting (besides the obvious exception of Morgan Freeman) offered nothing interesting, no one watches Tom Cruise action movies for their fantastic scripts. Final score: 6/10 stars. Worth a viewing, but not necessarily in theaters.

Bye!

An Earth Day to Die Hard

Hey, remember yesterday when I talked about my Vertco Theorem for finding out which news stories are the most important? Well, today a factory collapsed in Bangladesh, killing 100 people. But the HEADLINE on Google News is "Gwyneth Paltrow Voted World's Most Beautiful Woman." Yeah. Did I call it or did I call it?

Monday was Earth Day, as opposed to every other day of the year, which I guess is just "F**k The Earth Day." However, I guess that didn't coincide with my school's schedule very well, so we had our Earth Day celebration today. It was long, exceedingly boring, crowded, and the food sucked. However, I got a free frisbee. So it was a good day.


Any day with frisbees is a good day.

Sometimes I get really pissed off with all of the 'Save the Earth' hippies, and sometimes I'm on their side. But this was not one of those days. Today, I was 100% pissed the living f**k off. Because we were given a 2-hour lunch period, I guess the teachers decided that they had been nice enough to us for one day and didn't let us go off-campus. So, being the rebel that I am, I walked over to the edge of school grounds and stepped outside the gate. Bad-f**king-ass, I know.

They didn't stop with that, though-- Every day since August 2012, I have gotten up at 7:20, showered until 7:30, gotten dressed and eaten breakfast between 7:30 and 7:45, and then left the house to walk to school at 7:50. This is only possible because my house is quite literally right across the street from my high school, and it takes me only two minutes and 40 seconds to get there. I know this because it's roughly the same length as the Beatles song In My Life, which I listen to every day. Yeah, I have a routine.

Anyway, I showed up at school today and the parking lot was deserted. Apparently today was a 'No Cars on Campus' day, and a bunch of embarrassing parents were standing in the way of traffic holding signs. When I walked past them, they started cheering me so loudly I could hear them over my iPod. And if you know me, you know how loud I listen to my iPod. So they must have thought that I had gotten up at 6:00 and trekked to school for 50 minutes just so I could proudly say that I didn't drive to school that day. LOL no.

People piss me off when they do stuff like this. If my school gave a rat's ass about the environment, they would shut off the parking lot entirely. But I guess my principal needed somewhere to park her Chevy Tahoe.

Bye!

Twits

OH MY GOD!!! THE WHITE HOUSE HAS BEEN BOMBED!!! OBAMA IS HURT AND POSSIBLY DYING!!! THE STOCK MARKET IS PLUNGING!!! SWARMS OF LOCUSTS ARE DESCENDING UPON THE MIDWEST!!! SOCIETY IS RIPPING APART AT THE SEAMS!!! THIS IS THE END!!!

Sorry, my blog was hacked. Apparently there's a lot of that going around these days, seeing as the Associated Press had their Twitter feed hacked, leading to an erroneous report that the White House had been attacked. Or maybe someone at FilmDistrict was just pushing Olympus Has Fallen. Either way, it's an uncool thing to do. If it had been me hacking them, I would have reported that my high school was closed for the week due to a gas main leak, and see if any of the teachers didn't show up the next day.

Unfortunately, Rupert Murdoch doesn't have this excuse, seeing as one of the newspapers in his Galactic Media Empire reported that two teenagers were responsible for the Boston bombings, forcing those teens into hiding. Of course, f**king Crocodile Dundee over there refused to apologize, saying that the images provided were courtesy of the FBI.

What shocks me is that, although the Twitter feed hacking wasn't even REAL, it still made top headlines across all the major news networks-- AND MY BLOG. So somehow, one misleading 140-character line of text is more important than ANYTHING else happening in the world right now. Yeah, that's right: Anything.



So here's what it comes down to: The Vertco Theorem for Divining the Importance of News!!!

10,000 Massacred Congolese = 5,000 Drowning Bangladeshis = 1,000 Slaughtered Iranians = 500 Starving North Koreans = 100 Genocidal Serbians = 50 Car-Bombed Europeans = 10 Car-Bombed Americans = Whatever Hugh Jackman did today.

Depressing, I know, but if you look at the news, it's the inescapable truth. However, on the upside of news today, France has finally legalized gay marriage. So it's just a matter of time before religious ultra right-wing nutballs start killing people THERE.

Bye!

Pulpit Friction

I finally got back my epic, 100-page novel for English class, and (big shock) I got 100% on it. Actually, that is a big shock, because NOBODY gets a grade like that on a novel. Especially one about people going to kill Hitler and blowing people's heads off with rocket-propelled grenades. So if I get to write Tarantino-style gorefests and get an A++ on it, sign me up for more English class!

Meanwhile, other people's lives aren't nearly as good. Case in point: In West Virginia this week, an 8th grader has been suspended from school and put in jail-- all because he refused to take off an NRA t-shirt at school. Now, I'll negate the obvious 1st amendment problems here for a second and focus on the fact that school dress codes are, 9 times out of 10, absolutely f**king moronic. My friend Connor was once forced to remove a 'Legalize It' shirt, even though he's never smoked weed in his life... or so he claims. This is pure and unbridled censorship of people's political beliefs, and I won't friggin' stand for it. It's not like the shirt was emblazoned with a racial slur or some inflammatory statement. It was just the logo of an American lobbying association.

Although I don't support the NRA at all, I do believe in freedom of speech for all people. Of course, I also think that teenagers should be allowed to vote, so maybe I'm just an idiot. But this isn't the first time that BS like this has happened. In one school, a student was suspended for making what the teachers thought was a gun... out of mashed potatoes. What's next? Every school in Florida being locked down because the state "Kind of resembles a gun?"


We're keeping an eye on you, Florida... you just watch yourself.

Moving on to non-depressing news, it seems as if Pope Francis is going to be a little more of a reformer than his creepy predecessor, Pope Molestationcoverup I (as he shall henceforth be known). Francis has recently announced that he will be clearing the Vatican and the church's holdings around the world of hypocrites and priests who covered up the rape of little kids. So you wouldn't think that this would be such an explosive issue.

But the Catholic Church, much like the Republican Party, has been doing s**t the same way for centuries, and apparently clearing the air about molestation just isn't their MO. He's also reforming the church's hierarchy to ensure that there won't be so much infighting. To give some perspective, that's like someone walking into AIG and saying "Gee, what you guys are doing is wrong." And then people start yelling "HOLY S**T!!! WE HAD NO IDEA!!!"

You can probably tell that I have little to no faith (so to speak) in our world religions, but who gives a f**k. I believe that everyone is entitled to my opinion.

Bye!

The Machine That Travels Through Time

Well, they've finally caught the Boston bomber. And no, it was nothing like 24. It took them THREE WHOLE DAYS!!! Jack Bauer would have gotten that s**t done in 24 hours. Still, I'm happy, because not only did they find the guy, but they were able to take him alive. He's in custody now, but has sustained multiple throat wounds, so he may not be able to talk. Which kind of defeats the purpose. But still, we now get to see a little insight into the mind of a terrorist.

Of course, now that the 'exciting' part is over, nobody cares. As of this writing, the main headline on Google News is "Jennifer Lawrence Debuts Shorter 'do at GLAAD Awards". So kudos to the news media for handling this so professionally. I know that this was some imperative s**t that ABSOLUTELY COULD NOT HAVE WAITED ANOTHER SINGLE F**KING DAY.

It seems that these days, all that happens in the news gets overshadowed by BS like "Farmer Grows Jay Leno Look-Alike Eggplant," or "Pope Agrees to Perform at New Jersey Teen's Prom." So let's talk about a news story that's been put out of our view for a while now: In Iran, a scientist has announced that he has invented a 'time machine' that gives users a view of the future. Although it's not a time machine in the traditional sense, the device gives you a look at the next five to eight years of your life with 98% accuracy.













H.G. Wells would have been proud.

Anyway, he won't let it be used by the public, and he won't tell anyone how it works. Because apparently if he does, "the Chinese will steal the idea and produce it in millions overnight." Which, in his defense, is probably true. But then the lead paint will chip off and f**k up the space-time continuum, and nobody wants that. Plus, they'll probably make some sort of manufacturing plant that belches deep-space tachyons into the atmosphere.

Anyway, if this is true, it revolutionizes the stalemate with Iran. Now Mahmoud Ahmadenijad probably knows every move we're going to make in the next decade. If something isn't done, we could face global annihilation, or even worse...

A TIME MACHINE GAP!!!

Bye!

Boston Gets Jacked

STAR Test, Version 1, World History: CFCHCFDHCHDGDGAHBJAGDJCHDGDHCHDF
CFDGCFBHBGBHCJCFDFCGCHCFDJBHDGCGDF!!! Yowza!!! And we're STILL not done with this bull crap! As always, I guarantee nothing about these answers, but they should get you a good grade. Or maybe I'm just f**king with your head... MWAHAHAHAHA!!! And here's Earth Science Version 1: CCHDJDJAJAFBHAHAGDFBGDJBHBHAGDHAFCHDHDGDGCGCH
CGAHCJDGDFBJBJCFCGDHCF!!!

God, this is so pointless... but the STAR Test is over anyway, so it's not like these are worth jacks**t. But there have been a few unusual developments in the past 24 hours that are really quite disturbing, and I'd like to turn your attention to them. Remember the Boston Marathon bombing? I assume you do, as CNN simply won't let you forget it. But the Boston CTU has located the suspects.

Apparently, two brothers knocked over a convenience store, then proceeded to steal a guy's SUV. When the guy refused to get out, they told him that they were behind the bombs, and shouldn't be f**ked with. And so ensued the greatest car chase that the city of Boston has ever seen, up until the older brother was shot, taken to the hospital, and eventually died. His bro, however, is still at large, but police think that they've cornered him in a house in Watertown.


In other words, it's 24: Season 9 over there, complete with ludicrous plot twists, shoot-outs, and suspiciously stereotypical villains. These guys are from Chechnya, which is a part of Russia near the Caucus Mountains that wants to secede. So I think we can rule out any kind of political terrorism, seeing as neither Chechnya nor the US are very big fans of Russia.

However, what did catch my attention about this was the fact that Chechnya has a high Muslim population, and that the brothers' parents are both highly practicing Muslims. So now everyone's assuming that Muslims have blown us up... AGAIN. I'm not going to say either way, partly because I don't want to cast generalizations, but also because (if this is really a continuation of 24), there's probably going to be a final plot twist in the season finale where these guys are just pawns, and the real villain is the president's wife. At least, that's the way it was in Season 2.

But that's not the only TV show connection I can make about recent events. Remember the ricin poison that was mailed to Obama? That same s**t was used in Breaking Bad to kill Tuco and Gus (although it didn't quite work either time)... NOPE! NO SPOILERS!!! So now we know who we're looking for: A scowling, angry bald guy. Which narrows it down to practically everyone in that show.

Bye!

Ricinister

Today's STAR Test answers are for the Geometry 9th Grade Version 2 test: BFCFBHBFAJBJCF DFDGAGAJCGDHDFJHDJBJCGAHDGAJAGCFAHBHDHDFDHAGAJBGAGBFDH
CFB!!!!!! I sincerely hope that you people appreciate the lengths I go to in order to give you these. Maybe someone out there will read this, find a pattern, and I'll be able to kick back and relax while taking the STAR Test from now on.

But moving on, there's apparently been a break in the Boston bombing case. Seeing as no one has yet claimed responsibility for the attack, it's clearly not Al Qaeda or anything like that. And someone looking suspicious was caught on video camera where the bomb went off. By 'looking suspicious', of course, we mean wearing a hoodie, holding Skittles®, and black. Oh, never mind... this isn't Florida.

However, there's been another case of domestic terrorism-- someone mailed ricin-laced letters to a Mississippi senator and President Obama. Ricin is a toxin derived from the castor oil plant, and is poisonous if inhaled, injected, or ingested. At least that's what Wikipedia says. I, for one, hadn't heard of this s**t until today. But someone out there has been busy, and they're apparently targeting our marathons and virtually unknown senators.


Oh, yeah, and the president...

And do I think that these attacks are linked? F**K YEAH! It's been, what, four years since anything major like this happened, and then both of these attacks occur within a three-day time period? HA! Coincidence? Yes.

I wonder if anyone ever bothers to read the letters that these guys send in. They might say something interesting. Or maybe they just put them under those metal domes and blow 'em the f**k away. No matter what they did, the letters never reached Obama; the anthrax scare about a decade ago took care of that. Now all the letters are screened somewhere in Virginia. So you wonder why these people even bother.

Bye!