2023: A new movie (or similar) every day

Trying this again. Last year I only made it to mid-April I think, but I did catch up on everything MCU at the time.

Will update this post very frequently!

January 2023:

1. The Incredibles
2. Strange World
3. Incredibles 2
4. Incredibles 2 bonus features (almost two hours, not including the full commentary track!)
5. Dan in Real Life
6. DuckTales the Movie: Treasure of the Lost Lamp
7. Toy Story 2
8. Toy Story 2 bonus features

Religulous

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Current mood:amused

I saw this movie on Monday in Pasadena at Laemmle Theatres.

Chances are, if you're going to go out of your way to see it (and you have to), you're probably already going to love it. I know I did! My cousin... not so much, but then again he didn't even like Bowfinger or Ong Bak, which clearly means he's the one with weird-ass tastes, not me.

The wiki entry is informative enough, so here's what I remember and / or care to write about:


Christianity -
- Jesusland
- Some dumbass Arkansas senator who misused words (like "literacy" instead of "literalism")
- Singer-turned-preacher who obviously got rich doing what he does and sees no disconnect between his wealth and the fact that Jesus is supposed to be for the poor
- Gay-to-straight guy
- The Spanish-speaking, self-proclaimed "Second Coming of Jesus" (Maher doesn't count "dubious descendant" as "reincarnation")
- Creation Museum, with Ken Ham saying there's a "conspiracy among scientists" to keep creationism down

Mormonism:
- Much of the craziness was already documented by South Park, but I didn't even know God lived on another planet!
- Also amusing was that they believe "dark skin was a curse, but through faith (or something) they can attain lighter skin"... here they showed Michael Jackson.

Islam:
- The violence we all think of when we think of Islam is not motivated by religion, it's "political." (my ass!)
- Muslim guy: "Oh, no, we do allow women here. They have a special corner."
- Also amusing was some Muslim guy's cell phone going off during an interview - to rock music, no less. "Damn this 21st century!" says Maher.

Judaism:
- There was a store with crazy-ass gadgets allowing Jews to do things otherwise forbidden on the Sabbath. Like dialing phones. The guy running the place says "the loopholes were there on purpose for emergencies."


The last 10 minutes of the movie is where Maher makes his points:

1) Why is religion bad? The religious right has a frightening control over government (recent example), these religious assholes can see a silver lining in, say, nuclear war (it's when Jesus is supposed to come back), and that because these religious assholes believe in "End Times," they won't care to improve the quality of life right now.

2) The non-religious should speak out more. At 16%, they surpass other minorities, but they don't even have government lobbies that get everything their groups want.


All in all, it's very similar to The God Who Wasn't There, but not quite as good IMO.Religulous has its points, but it's 90% "LOL they believe in this shit!?" and 10% "Okay, now here's the problem with all this." TGWWT makes its case throughout, and the people interviewed aren't nuts but people who know what they're talking about; Sam Harris made the point about the "silver lining of a mushroom cloud" very well. TGWWT and Religulous both made the point about how the story of Jesus had a lot in common with other religious tales (check out Osiris), but only TGWWT mentioned the Church's official stance regarding this - namely that Satan "counterfeited the story in advance." Heck, TGWWT even has a cool soundtrack which is still available for download.

Religulous does a few things I can't say I'm a fan of. First, there's the Family Guy-style cutaway scenes, though they may be wholly appropriate, and I realize they're for comedic effect. Second, according to Wikipedia, while filming the documentary, Maher used a fake title. This was dishonest in Ben Stein's Expelled, and it's dishonest here.

If TGWWT was a 5/5, I'd give Religulous a 4/5. Maher is a funny guy, but I liked TGWWTbetter, even if it wasn't (intentionally) funny. Plus Maher is still kind of an asshole for all his work for PETA.

On top of all this, I'm excited that I now know about a theater where I can see foreign and independent films; I was so impressed with the trailers, I regretted not having a pen and paper handy to jot down the titles! I'll have to keep an eye out for The First Basket and Let The Right One In. Often I'd watch At the Movies with Ebert & Roeper, but I'd ask myself where the hell I'd get to see those films with "limited showing." Now I know.

Movie reviews

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Current mood:accomplished

Just some quick reviews of movies I've seen in the past two weeks...

Harold & Kumar 2 - I was afraid it wasn't going to match up with the original, but I'm glad to say it surpassed it with more raunchy humor and what has to be the sweetest ass anyone has ever seen.... ever. And as an aside, this movie and this thread made me want to start writing poetry. Not lame emo poetry, but funny and / or sardonic poetry. And limericks are pretty funny by themselves, so...

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly - Watching a scene of this movie from videogrunt made me want to see the whole picture, and a few movies down the Netflix queue and it arrived. It was nearly 3 hours which almost made me want to skip it, but I was working on my kanji project and it helped pass the time. At first I was wondering why some of the voices seemed dubbed, but then I looked at the wiki and saw the words "Italian epic spaghetti Western" and it, surprisingly, made perfect sense. It's probably the best movie anyone will ever see... ever.

The Forbidden Kingdom - Now this was a disappointment. The ads on TV made it look like a totally awesome kung-fu flick starring two superstars, and in the commercials when Jackie said "We can kill each other later," I thought it was going to be some awesome-but-uneasy partnership, not unlike The Good, the Bad and the Ugly... or that one G.I. Joe episode. Instead, moviegoers were fooled into seeing something resembling a Karate Kid rip off, with a kid even more unlikeable than Daniel-san, that took a HUGE detour, with fighting scenes that weren't all that spectacular (it ain't Iron Monkey) or even necessary. And for a movie with Jackie Chan, it was surprisingly unfunny; there were exactly TWO funny moments, and I'm being generous here because I don't even remember one of them. I almost cringed when some kid I've never even heard of is shown in... surprise... a training montage (queue the "montage" track from Team America). And we're supposed to believe he's a match for the same bad guys that give Jackie a hard time? Perhaps the only saving grace is the beauteous Li Bingbing, but if you've ever attended community college, you've met hotter women. I gotta say, that's the last time I leave the movie choice to my cousin! And I wanted to see Forgetting Sarah Marshall.

Ong Bak VS Tom Yum Goong

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I was watching Ong Bak again yesterday and I'm going to have to reverse my opinion stated on LiveJournal: Ong Bak is better than Tom Yum Goong. The stories are pretty much the same. In Ong Bak, Tony Jaa goes after the stolen head of his village's Ong Bak statue. In Tom Yum Goong, he goes after his family's elephant. Both are sacred, but Ong Bak's story sounds just a little bit cooler... and the jaded viewer in me couldn't help but remember a certain Simpsons episode ("Where's my elephant?"). I definitely prefer the music in Ong Bak to Tom Yum Goong's. Ong Bak just seemed to have more... I don't know... martial arts-sounding music. Not that Tom Yum Goong's music was bad - it was definitely appropriate. I can't put my finger on it, but the action sequences in Ong Bak were better than Tom Yum Goong's after all. I remember watching Ong Bak in the theater and being amazed at not only Tony Jaa's moves but also how quickly he returned to his fighting stance. His form was absolutely flawless. I think he also hit MUCH harder in Ong Bak with his elbows and knees. I can't help but think he had to tone it down a bit for the Austrailian crew in Tom Yum Goong. Then again, Tom Yum Goong had the 4-minute no-cut action scene, the guy who looked and acted just like Eddy Gordo, and the bone breaking moves. Tom Yum Goong was supposed to be an international movie with more variety everywhere and they've succeeded. I think Ong Bak is better as a whole. In Ong Bak, Petchthai Wongkamlao (Hum-Lae) actually had a pretty big role; his role was rather cursory in Tom Yum Goong despite shooting a few bad guys. He was funnier in Ong Bak too. Tony Jaa was pretty much perfect in Ong Bak, but in Tom Yum Goong, he had about ten lines... and most of them were either "Where's Johnny?" or "Where's my elephant?"... and what did happen to Johnny anyway? At least everything was wrapped up nicely in Ong Bak. So to put this in Tekken terms: Ong Bak is like TTT in its prime, whereas Tom Yum Goong is like T5 in its prime... whenever that was.