SPOILER ALERT!

I’m sure most people have seen the bitter, perpetually-bullied nerd character on television or in movies. You know, the guy whose only recourse against the abuse he gets is to curse his tormentor under his breath as they leave. The bully turns back and says, “Did you say something?” and the bully meekly replies, “No.” The nerd then goes home and dreams of the magical day when the tables turn and he can get his revenge against all those that have done him wrong.

This is the main character of the movie, “The Day the Earth Stood Still.” It wasn’t Keanu Reeves, Jennifer Connolly, any other human actor, or even any of the computer-generated alien characters, though. It was a bitter environmentalist screenwriter who, driven mad by the fact that fact that humans are destroying the planet and won’t stop or even listen, has no other recourse but to create a fantastic story where incredibly powerful aliens come to Earth and forces us to do what he wants. You might have to look hard, but this character can be found in every scene. In the scene where the alien incredulously asks “Your planet?” when a questioner asks him why he visited Earth, you can practically see the screenwriter mouthing the words. In the scene where the alien states that he cannot allow one species (humans) to destroy the valuable planet, you can almost see the screenwriter wagging his finger at mankind.

I don’t know who wrote this movie or how close it follows the book; I’m just saying that’s all I could see while watching the movie. I don’t know how else to explain the movie. If you strip out the movie stars and the special effects, the plot to this movie is very simple: Aliens travel to Earth to save it from being destroyed by wiping the planet clean of all humans. At the last moment, the aliens see that humans have some potential for “good” and decide to spare us. But on their way out, though, the aliens destroy all human technology — even down to wrist-watches. Who could up with such a plot?

There is one funny aspect of this movie, however: Product placement. For a movie with such an anti-man, anti-capitalist message, it certainly had a lot of products out for display. At one point when Jennifer Connolly reaches to her cell phone, there’s a closeup that lasts just long enough for everybody to clearly make out the “LG” logo. When the military leaders meet a table with a surface screen, I could swear that I saw a Windows logo. And maybe this stuck out to me because I’m a big Honda fan, but a couple scenes where Jennifer Connolly drives Keanu Reeves around in a Honda Accord look like they came out of a Honda tv ad. Who knows, maybe seeing the Honda Accord’s great gas mileage showed the aliens that humans are really concerned about saving the environment?

Anyway, I recommend not wasting your time on this movie. This movie is nothing but a two-hour attempt to guilt its viewers into how horrible they are for living at the expense of the planet. And that “good” that the aliens saw in humans? It’s our potential to acknowledge just how depraved we are. Stay away.

This post contains my thoughts about a movie I saw this weekend, The Happening from M. Night Shyamalan. Just mentioning the theme of the movie, in combination with the seeing the trailers, is enough for any Objectivist or rational person to accurately predict the plot, so here’s your warning:

HUGE SPOILER ALERT!!! STOP READING NOW IF YOU REALLY WANT TO SEE THIS MOVIE!

I’m also going to try to employ the “more” blog tag for the first time. So if you’re reading this in a RSS reader, you’ll probably have to click the header and go directly to my site to read the post. Sorry, I know it’s a pain, but I’m trying to follow movie-ending-giveaway etiquette.

More »

I’ve had another busy week again, but not busy enough to keep me from buying 300 and watching it for the third time. I’m going to watch it again this weekend with the commentary on, but I’m a little worried that the makers of the movie are going to ruin it for me. It would be very disappointing if I hear that the movie makers didn’t have the good ideas I thought they did when they made the movie.

If you haven’t seen the movie yet, you really should see it. Yes, it is a somewhat-gory action movie, but there are a lot of good ideas to be found in it. I can’t think of another movie that I’ve gotten more out of in the past ten years than this one.

During my honeymoon, I had the time to do something I’ve never found the time to do before: Read Michael Crichton’s “State of Fear.” The book was a big deal when it came out a few years because the villians in the book were environmentalists who were trying to cause deadly weather events to try to scare people into believing that man-made global warming was real. I hope I’m not giving away anything here, but one of the events the environmentalists were trying to plan was a giant tsunami that would have killing thousands.

After finishing the book, I saw a preview for “Evan Almighty.” For those that don’t know, the movie stars Steve Carell as a man who is instructed by God to build an ark like Noah. At the end of the preview, there is a short clip of a huge wave taking the completed ark. Then it clicked in my mind:

This is going to be an environmentalism movie.

Here’s my prediction: God comes down to Steve Carell to tell him to build the ark as a way to raise awareness of how we’re damaging the environment. It will end with some type of “abrupt climate change” in the form of an enormous flood or tsunami, which will conveniently also have no casulties.

The movie is being billed as a comedy with no reference to environmentalism, but just watch.

I’m disappointed that I wasn’t able to pick up on this without a big clue like Crichton’s book, but at least I figured it out before I was halfway through the movie.

I’m surprised that there are people who are against Canada passing a law that outlaws camcording in movie theaters. Has the idea of “fair use” and the desire to create “backups” extended to where some people think an individual is within his rights to record what he sees in a movie theater?

From michaelgeist.ca

The question demonstrates the impact of the media blitz on camcording – there has been no independent evidence put forward about Canadian industry or government losses (nor any reference to India that I can recall) yet that is how the question is framed.

I don’t think there is any “independent evidence” about losses taken on by the movie industry that would stop movie pirates from copying movies. I also don’t know how the movie industry determines what is a “loss,” but I wouldn’t be surprised if the movie industry loses more than it claims. When movies are copied and distributed online without permission, the movie industry loses more than the just price of the tickets they would have sold had a viewer saw the movie in the theater. They lose their right to the movie itself. People who want to see the movie no longer have to deal with the movie industry to watch a movie; they can instead just go online and get a copy from a pirate. The movie is, in essence, taken out of the free market.

Sure, the percentage of people who would watch a movie online illegal is pretty low. The vast majority of people are still going to meet the movie industry’s terms if they want to see a movie. However, if governments do not protect intellectual property, I think it’s only going to get worse.

And by the way, what “media blitz?”

A question that needs answering is not whether camcording is a good thing – it obviously is not (particularly in the way that it degrades the quality of the film) – but rather whether there is an impact on the Canadian film industry such that this issue should leap to the front on the line for the Minister of Canadian Heritage.

Note how the main objection the author raises about the illegal copy is its quality.

I think it is valid to question whether a law against movie camcording should be enacted, but only on the grounds that camcording in theaters is already made illegal by existing copyright law. And, most importantly, that the government of Canada enforces that law.

The Canadian government is considering a law to ban camcording movies shows in theaters. Not surprisingly, piracy advocates are unhappy. The first sentence I read about this is the funniest:

From p2pnet.com:

Can you castigate an entire nation for the ill deeds of a few? Hollywood says you can and so, apparently, does the current Canadian government.

Castigate? How will a law that criminalizes the recording of illegal copies of movies “castigate” the entire nation? How many people use a camcorder in movie theaters for legal reasons? How many people use a camcorder in a movie theater at all?

But wait, the author of the above quote states how it will:

I’d also suggest the techniques being used to apprehend the alleged criminals are likely to cause more trouble for the audience than the bad guys.

Sending ushers equipped with night vision goggles creeping down corridors trying to spot camcording criminals is far more likely to interfere with the audience viewing pleasures than to result in the capture of illicit copiers.

I’d say that the cause of the night-vision-equipped ushers were the illegal recorders. But this example of his is not a real, and piracy advocates are not trying to save movie-goers from Rainbow Six ushers. They want to prevent the passage of laws that will explicitely forbid this obvious method of violating the property rights of movie makers.

I saw Spiderman 3 this weekend and posted my opinion on the Forum. In line with what is becoming my policy of writing on someone else’s site and then copying my post on my own site, here is my short review:

I thought Spiderman 3 was absolutely horrible. This movie ruined every good plot line set up from the previous two movies, turned the “black suit” story-line into a bunch of nonsense, and made the hero out to be a wimp who can’t tell right from wrong. This movie turned the Spiderman trilogy into one that that’s a lot like the Matrix trilogy: A series that starts off well, but declines so fast that by the end of the third movie you wish you (and the makers of the movie) hadn’t wasted your time.

It’s almost frustrating how bad this movie was because it didn’t have to be. I probably shouldn’t go into many details here, so I’ll just say that I think there are many scenes that could have been cut, scenes that could have been expanded, or small edits in the story line that would have made the movie make more sense. I’m not a huge Spiderman fan, but the black suit story I remember made much more sense. It’s almost like the makers of the movie deliberately made changes that could only make the story more confusing.

I wish the movie makers would have taken the movie seriously. The Saturday Night Fever scene, the scene where he combs his hair differently, the piano bar, the local news broadcast, the message the bad guy leaves for Spiderman, the butler’s speech, the meteor, the bridge scene… give me a break. What was he point in any of that?

I thought the funniest part of the movie was when it ended and people started to get out of their seats, only for the acutal scene to come up. Most didn’t bother to sit back down.

I think there are some real problems with the ideas this movie pushes. It’s hard to make too big of a deal out of the movie when it’s obvious that the movie makers didn’t take it seriously, but I think there is some real confusion between the concept of “vengeance” and “justice.” Also, the movie seems to also talk about the importance of the choices you make, but then the movie ends with the bad guy…. argh, I can’t say without spoiling it.

I was really looking forward to seeing this movie, and I was let down. I will never see this one again.