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Here we go… I believe new jersey wanted something like this, and even in the late 80s there was enough outcry to put a stop to it.
But we didn't have the evil spectre of cybercrime (OH NO!) hanging over us to scare people into surrendering their liberties.
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serving a warrant in an apartment building, cops saw a dude in the hall who WASN'T the guy they were looking for and didn't even live in the same apartment.
They literally beat the shit out of him, and he lay on the ground in his own defecation for over a day until someone else found him.
They lied on the police report and said he wasn't injured too.
He was never arrested.
Officer Craig Taylor should not be an officer. In my opinion, he seems like a lying thug.
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FUCKING EPIC. HAIL SATAN. This is the most hilarious facebook screenshot I've ever seen. It's all text, actually.
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Argentina joins Mexico.
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Utterly ridiculous. The police union is suing to remove dashboard cameras? Unions are a good thing, but like political parties they become corrupt. This is ridiculous. Police need to be monitored as much as any other public expense. To remove recording of their activities is to literally induce violence and abuses of authority.
Their excuses are piss poor too. All departments have methods to include anonymous tips. Or you can call 911 — tho you will probably be recorded there too. (Payphones are nice–too bad they are going away.)
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bwahahahahahahahhahahahaha……{takes breath}… ahhahahahahah. Thanks L Dubs!
August 2009
Monthly Archive
August 29, 2009
August 29, 2009
VIDEO: MOVIES: REVIEW: Crank 2: High Voltage (2009) – a good sequel
Posted by Claire CJS under Carolyn, Clio, Media, Movies, People, Reviews, Video[9] Comments
[IMDB link] [Netflix link] Yay sequels! But some endeavors can never be repeated again. I personally found Crank 1 to be groundbreaking; quite possibly my favorite action movie ever. Incredible style and energy. And for the most part, the Chelios character is an excellent anti-hero — committing incredible and brutal atrocities and murders, but pretty much being morally justified at all times because it was all in self-defense. Good stuff!
LIMERICK REVIEW: There once was a frenetic film named Crank,
about a man with the constitution of a tank.
Sequels are more of the same,
This one certainly wasn’t lame.
The filmmakers I would still like to thank.
HAIKU REVIEW: It sucks to be you.
Someone replaced your damn heart
with a battery!
PEOPLE: Same directors as the first movie. Jason Statham (The Transporter, Snatch, Lock, Stock And Two Smoking Barrels, The Italian Job) returns as Chelios. I sort of consider him “the white Jackie Chan”. Amy Smart (Just Friends, Scrubs, Robot Chicken) returns as Eve. Dwight Yoakam returns as Doc Miles, and it is revealed that the way he lost his medical license was [highlight for spoilers]→ botching his wife’s vaginal rejuvination surgery in his basement. Efren Ramirez (aka Pedro from Napoleon Dynamite) plays Venus, the brother of Chelios’s friend from the first movie. I did not even recognize Corey Haim as Randy, the mullet-sportin’ redneck stripper-pimp(?) character! But I did recognize Geri Halliwell (aka Ginger Spice) playing Chelios’s mother in a childhoold flashback. I should have recognized David Carradine, and I certainly should have noticed Troma founder Lloyd Kaufman‘s cameo. Ron Jeremy was, of course, hard to miss. And I recognized Jenna Haze… partially from the help of John The Canadien’s blog :)
QUIRKS/VISUALS: All the same quirks as Crank 1. Insane frenetic surrealistic on-screen visuals meant to simulate what it’s like to be Chelios. It works well. This is another style-over-substance success. The visuals aren’t quite as good as Crank 1. Carolyn said they used them more gratuitously and unnecessarily — yet I remember more of them in Crank 1, which may just mean that Crank 1 used their visual effects in a less gratuitous / more appropriate manner.
Definitely less video game references than the first movie. They only appear at the very beginning. You get to see the last scene of Crank 1 as if it were a 16-bit Nintendo game.
MORALS: When you’re dying, every action you take is morally justified as self-defense. Thus, we find an anti-hero who murders people and commits horrible atrocities, but is completely justified in most of what he does. If it wasn’t for the mile-a-minute action, there might actually be time to have some interesting thoughts and discussions about ethics and morality. But none of that! Here comes a fist at your face! Breakneck pace is what Crank movies are all about!
BAD STUFF: If Crank 1 was ridiculous, this was ricockulous. There is a scene where he is so juiced up that they show it as a 1960s Godzilla-style spoof. We kind of looked at each other like, “What … The … Fuck?“. Undoubtedly that is the moment the franchise jumped the shark for many people, but we know this movie isn’t supposed to be realistic in the first place. It’s like they wanted us to step back and realize that this movie is not to be taken seriously. Then they had the childhood flashback dream sequence where Chelios is a kid on a talk show about troubled kids. (His mom is Ginger Spice.) The Godzilla scene in particular would have been better as ANYTHING else… But it was only about 1 minute long anyway. So we moved on. :)
Also, the ending is VERY abrupt. But more scenes appear throughout the credits, so you really have to stay to the end.
CONCLUSION: Netflix: 4/5 stars. IMDB: 8/10. Not that this makes logical sense, but even if this were the EXACT same movie as the first, it would not score as high. You just can’t repeat the feeling of seeing something that’s like nothing you’ve ever seen. And it’s kind of hard to top Crank 1 in that respect. If Crank 1 didn’t exist, and this was the first Crank movie… Who knows, maybe I’d have rated it 5/5 stars, or at least 9/10 on IMDB. But alas, you just can’t repeat some things twice.
But they did a good job keeping up the insane frenetic feel, the anti-hero who does horrible things for all the right reasons, and repeating a lot of similar situations from the 1st movie (on purpose–for example, sex in front of a lot of people).
And I’d still watch Crank 3 if it ever comes out. And 4. And 5. etc etc. I just wont expect to eve be blown away as much as I was during Crank 1.
RECOMMENDATION: See it!!!! But see Crank 1 first, and don’t expect this to be as good. The reason I like sequels is not because they are better, but becuase they are more. More… versus nothing. I’ll take more over nothing, as long as it doesn’t totally suck. (more…)
August 28, 2009
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I don't really need to add a comment here. Due process exists for all humans — not just American citizens.
Both the constitution and the declaration of independence are very specific about when they say "all persons" versus "citizens". Even the Magna Carta grants more rights than these people have. Murderers and child molesters get more rights than these people have.
CIA PDF included.
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baby polar bear?
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But he still may be charged under municipal law that is routinely ignored when people post "lost pet" flyers–proving it's political. Gotta agree with PrisonPlanet here. Cops watched him do it and did nothing. Cops do nothing for lost pet flyers. But dare and make your flyer political, and now the law will be selectively enforced against you.
Statutes don't mean much when the real judge & jury is who decides whether to charge you with them. If they started prosecuting people who posted lost pet flyers, you can bet there'd be a shitstorm. Pick and choose: Either everybody gets to post what they want, or nobody does.
Selective enforcement is a way to have censorship without it being put on the books.
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Which country has the bigger tobacco lobby, though? And which country has the more insane drug policy with regards to abstinence vs harm reduction?
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It's not every day that you hear about a new sex act. Ginger? Up the ass? Ohhhkay. Guess one can't really knock it til one's tried it. Wow. People sure are imaginative.
August 28, 2009
VIDEO: MOVIES: REVIEW: Crank (2006)
Posted by Claire CJS under Carolyn, Clio, Media, Movies, People, Reviews, Video[8] Comments
[IMDB link] [Netflix link] Been meaning to watch this one for a couple years now. The premise is that the main character is given a synthetic Chinese drug that will kill him in an hour. But as long as he can keep his adrenaline up, he can extend his life long enough to exact his revenge, and keep his girlfriend from being tortured/raped by the guy who killed him.
HAIKU REVIEW: Instant, crazed action!
Ultimate anti-hero!
Fucking amazing!
PEOPLE: Jason Statham (The Transporter) is great, and does his own stunts. He’s the white Jackie Chan. Amy Smart plays his girlfriend. Directed by relative newcomers Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor.
QUIRKS: Highly-stylized film. Instant action. Non-stop action. Amazing anti-hero.
Also, keep a watch for Berzerk (the Atari 2600 game) and Robotron: 2084. They are subtly referenced in the movie. They also use Google Earth several times!
NOFX‘s “Kill All The White Man” is used in the soundtrack, but so briefly that never noticed. The soundtrack has 32 songs, including some fast punk songs. Yay!
VISUALS: Shaky cameras and surreal effects help keep the viewer inside the mindset of our main character/anti-hero. For instance, he yells, “Do I look like I have ‘cunt’ written on my forehead?” during one scene — and the word is written on his forehead, and slowly fades. Or he’ll be on the phone with someone while driving, and you’ll see the reflection of that someone in his rear-view mirror. Or he will start to fade away, and you’ll see his view, with everything distorting due to his condition. The entire movie is just a non-stop attempt to put you in the head of the main character. And it works.
MORALS: Morally, our main character goes on a literal rampage — injuring people, destroying property, committing armed robbery, the works. And yet, he is completely morally justified in everything he does. While nobody would want to trade places with a dead man walking, you can’t help but be jealous of someone who can commit armed robbery in order to steal a bunch of Red Bulls, and be completely morally justified in it. He is in a rare predicament — one which makes us question our morals. If you only have an hour to live, you sure as hell are justified in not allowing the police to arrest you for speeding. If someone in a criminal organization is going to rape and torture an innocent girl, you sure as hell are justified in putting a bullet into peoples’ heads to make them stop.
BAD STUFF: You would expect a pure action movie like this to be full of flaws which the viewer must ignore. When he got in the back of a taxi, I yelled: “Plot hole! How is he going to keep his adrenaline up if he’s just sitting in a taxi, not even driving it insanely?” But then he forces the taxi driver to crank Achy Breaky Heart to full volume, and bangs his head into the seat repeatedly. I’m pretty sure that song at full volume would raise anyone’s adrenaline; our military uses that song for psy-ops! The only real flaw is when he gets defibrillated — I don’t think that speeds up your heart. That either starts it, or stops it. There are a few over-the-top moments that aren’t as believable as the rest of the movie. Killing someone within 50 ft of your girlfriend, and her not noticing. But she’s this ultra-oblivious, optimistic stoner, so they at least found a way to make her naivete and obliviousness plausible.
CONCLUSION: This might just be the best action movie I’ve ever watched in my life. Not in terms of “feel good”, but in terms of raw, frenetic, non-stop, crazed action. Action that, with the combination of stylized shooting/effects, puts you right in the head of what may just be one of the most desperate fights any man has ever fought in film history. I had no choice but to rate this 5/5 stars on Netflix and 10/10 on IMDB. While action movies may not be as deep as movies that focus more on story — this movie really doesn’t let up, not even for a second. I can find no fault in this, not even enough to lower it’s rating to a 9/10. This is a top-tier action movie, for sure. And there’s going to be a sequel — but it doesn’t look nearly as good. It looks like it’s going to be more on the ridiculous side. You really can’t follow something like this. Ever.
Damn we loved this movie! Best movie I’ve seen in 2009 so far (this review was written on 2/18/2009).
RECOMMENDATION: OMFG!!! SEE THIS!!!
Watch it on a big screen, while not sober. This will help put you into the headspace of the main character.
And if you have a nasal spray prescription (like Nasonex), or illegal stimulants — wait until you watch the movie, and do them at the same time the character does. Audience participation! (NOTE: If these instructions are illegal in your jurisdiction, do not follow them.)
And make sure to see the “Crank as a Nintendo game” bit after the end of the credits.
SIMILAR MOVIES: Shoot ‘Em Up is a pale echo of this movie. It’s the over-the-top not-trying-to-be-at-all-realistic laughable version of Crank. Crank 2 just might be that as well.
MOVIE QUOTE:
Chev Chelios: What is this stuff?
Doc Miles: Synthetic ephedrine diluted with some saline.
Chev Chelios: Feels sort of good.
Doc Miles: Yeah well. I got a little Meth in there too, so that’s the endorphins you feel running to your brain.
Chev Chelios: Wait a minute so I’m not better?
Doc Miles: Fuck no you’re not better. You’re in such shit shape it’s stunning. I can’t believe your heart’s still beating. Shit should be in a fucking medical journal.
FRIENDS’ RATINGS: Jordan liked it. I’m surprised more people haven’t seen this. (more…)
August 27, 2009
COMEDY: MOVIES: Uncomfortable Plot Summaries
Posted by Claire CJS under Comedy, Media, Movies, Video[122] Comments
I’ve been inspired by the hilarious Uncomfortable Plot Summaries for movies blogpost. Inspired enough to have read all *361* comments on it. But comments are unfortunately closed, so I didn’t get to add my own! WAH! Plus, a lot of people don’t quite get the spirit of it. It’s not about a quick summary. It’s supposed to make it more awkward/uncomfortable as well.
So I will use this post to add my own (probably as comments) later. I’m also going to start adding these to my movie reviews…but those wont show up until 2010.
Caution.. spoilers ahead.
Brazil (my favorite movie ever): [highlight for spoilers]→ Typo kills man, causing another man to refuse a promotion, assist a terrorist, and get tortured until he is insane.
Oldboy: [highlight for spoilers]→ Incest tattle-tale solves mystery of why he is punished; eats live squid and rips out own tongue.
Sympathy For Lady Vengeance: [highlight for spoilers]→ Wrongly imprisoned ransomist engages in group vigilante justice, and eats cake.
Gummo: [highlight for spoilers]→ Rednecks make life difficult; especially for chairs and cats.
Aachi & Ssipak: [highlight for spoilers]→ Drug addicts poop for more drugs.
A Scanner Darkly: [highlight for spoilers]→ Paranoid stoners trick friend into going insane to bring down corporation.
Fanboys: [highlight for spoilers]→ Friends use friend’s cancer as excuse to trespass on celebrity property.
Miss March: [highlight for spoilers]→ Friend use friend’s coma as excuse to trespass on celebrity property.
(^^ One of the tropes used in the original article is multiple movies having more or less the same awkward summary.)
Rules Of Attraction: [highlight for spoilers]→ Virgin falls for detached drug dealer, boyfriend forgets who she is, so she gets raped instead.
Donkey Punch: [highlight for spoilers]→ Sexual deviance with strangers leads to complications.
(^^ One of the tropes used in the original article is things “leading to complications”.)
Hardware (1990): [highlight for spoilers]→ Government policy for allocation of scarce resources leads to complications.
Escape From New York: [highlight for spoilers]→ Government policy for allocation of scarce prison space leads to complications.
Repo! The Genetic Opera: [highlight for spoilers]→ Government policy for allocation of scarce organs leads to complications.
That’s all I’ve got for now. (more…)
August 27, 2009
MOVIES: Possible answer to why Sisterhood Of The Traveling Pants is a worse movie title than Dorf On Golf
Posted by Claire CJS under Clio, Eve C, Media, Movies, People, Video[2] Comments
Disclaimer: I have seen neither, and this is only a possible answer.
Dorf > sisterhood
golf > traveling pants
golf > sisterhood
guys looking ridiculous > sisterhood
kneeling on pants > traveling pants (more…)
August 27, 2009
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This was once called a "conspiracy theory", and only appeared on "conspiracy" websites. Now it's mainstream. Who's laughing now? Not the inmates…
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Quite an interesting take / viewpoint on depression! Anyone who's ever been depressed should probably read this.
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Nice!
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What's that? The trillions we've spent on the war on drugs is worth it, you say?
How laughable. Prohibitions don't work. Especially when they are so easily circumvented. Especially when it gets even easier than it was in the 1990s!
"The pills are crushed, combined with some common household chemicals and then shaken in the soda bottle. No flame is required."
Wow. It just got easier.
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I don't see a conflict of interest here, either, since they don't exactly benefit from our system one way or another. Good stuff.
August 27, 2009
JOURNAL: DREAM: 20090827: I hate eating glass.
Posted by Claire CJS under Clio, Dreams, Journal, People1 Comment
Dreams where I eat glass are SOO not cool. Gagging and not knowing if it’s safe to swallow or if I still have little bits of glass in my mouth. Ugh. All this while trying to go to an outdoor class that seemed to be at the Brushwood main pavilion, except it was a singing class. I was living with my Grandma. Huh?
“Dreams… They’re the hurricanes that wash the soulfilth from the superdome of our nightminds.”
-Xavier:Renegade Angel (more…)
August 26, 2009
RANTS: Response to the Twilight haters on rec.arts.movies.current-films, alt.cult-movies, and alt.slack
Posted by Claire CJS under Media, Movies, Rants, Video[19] Comments
I actually don’t see what the big deal is. It’s a different take on vampires. Are we so close-minded to different experiences that all vampires must be alike? What about the zombies that run in 28 Days Later? Are they ruining zombies for everyone?
Twilight isn’t a vampire horror movie, it’s a vampire romance movie with interspecies sexual tension.
I liken the story to what it would be like if I fell in love with a delicious taco. It would be so hard not to eat this sexy, talking taco. I would love this taco, and pet it, and marry it, and name him George, and give it sexy taco-flavored kisses. But it would be really hard not to eat it.
And there’s the story. Nothing to do with the horror angle, really.
Twilight isn’t a great movie, but not terrible either. I tend to think it is not worthy of either the denouncement OR the praise that it receives.
http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.movies.current-films/browse_thread/thread/270d0cbf38127adc/8e1f77da9650bc85 (more…)
August 26, 2009
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FDA paving way for clinical LSD trials. We're finally over Timothy Leary making LSD "bad" (even though that was never his intent). It's not the harmful drug the establishment has tried to stigmatize it as.
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On Veoh, not Youtube, so I need to save the link or I'll forget it exists.
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I keep forgetting which site is my technical-favorite video website. Oh yeah. It's veoh. Where I go to upload videos that are greater than 10 minutes, or that are so large I need resume capabilities. Which so far just include me & Carolyn's high school graduation, and Brent & Kim's wedding.
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Carolyn's graduation ceremony…. Tho we started taping mid-way through.
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Okay. First we had blogging. Then we had microblogging (twitter/facebook status updates). Then we had nanoblogging (flappr, but it was only a joke — KIM GET COFFE).
Now we have MACROblogging: WOOFER. 1400 character MINIMUM.
It's like having your own blog, only you can't write something that's only 1300 characters.
Of course people are just tweeting and then filling the rest of the space with randomly generated characters.. haha.
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WIN!!!!!!!!!!!!! This is single hugest piece of techno-freedom news this year!!! Let's hope they follow through!
The market doesn't fix everything. Adam Smith's "invisible hand" was actually God, according to him. And we're pretty sure God doesn't exist, and that if he did, he would have better things to worry about than managing markets.
Anyway, a lot of people are very surprised by this news. Let's hope it's not more Obama Administration grandstanding. Let's hope they put their money where their mouth is, so to speak.
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MORE AWESOMENESS
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AWESOME.
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Ahh, the tolerant teachings of Jesus.
Good people usually do good things, bad people usually do bad things, but religion causes good people to do bad things.
I don't need a messiah to know that violently expelling people over silly beliefs is wrong.
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Human nature cannot be stopped. After spending millions to shut down the Pirate Bay, not only did it come back up a few hours later, but now there is a torrent of The Pirate Bay itself floating around, and anyone can resurrect the site at any domain at any time. Throw in unbreakable encryption, and there's nothing you can do about it. Prohibitions don't work.
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Yes. Let's re-appoint the republican who played a central role in the recession and banking panic. Let's re-appoint those who fucked our economy up so bad that we enacted a failed bailout that basically cost more than every war we ever fought. Let's keep the shitty people employed. Hell, he was appointed by George W. Bush. I guess that's good enough for Obama!
Wow, Obama. Disappointment after disappointment after disappointment. I'm glad I voted 3rd party. Yet another example of Obama == Bush. Is he a closet republican or something?
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This is exactly what all the democrats and liberals complained about with the Bush Administration — sending prisoners to other countries where they will be treated differently (badly), in order to get them talk.
They say they will ensure they wont face torture — which is better than Bush's *secret* prisons — but wouldn't the best way to avoid torture be leaving them in the US?
Same shit different president. Baby steps toward the right direction will never, ever, ever get us there.
The Bush Administration also gave assurances against torture — which turned out to not be true. Obama == Bush in too many ways, way too many ways.
August 25, 2009
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Good. FUCK toll lanes.
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Our tax dollars paid for these roads so that we could drive on them.
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Having to stop and pay a toll just restricts movement, slows us down, and makes traffic worse.
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And it’s a re-taxation. Except it all goes to a private corporation who then owns the road.
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Oh, and repainting 2 lanes into 3? Great. Just what we need. A tractor trailer 1/3rd of a lane closer to slamming into me (again).
August 24, 2009
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Despite being forced to edit the movie in a 36 hour rush, I still think Fanboys nonetheless came out a 5 star movie, one of the 3 funniest comedies of the last 50 I've watched.
August 23, 2009
VIDEO: MOVIES: REVIEW: Legend (Director’s Cut) (1985)
Posted by Claire CJS under Carolyn, Clio, Media, Movies, People, Reviews, Video1 Comment
[IMDB link] [Netflix link] Upon news of a Director’s Cut being released, I knew it was time to revisit this movie. Carolyn had never seen it! And now it’s 24 minutes longer than the US theatrical release.
HAIKU REVIEW: It’s been a long time.
I barely remember this.
Prob’ly a good thing.
PEOPLE: Tom Cruise. Mia Sara (who went on to play Sloane Peterson in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, and then a bunch of crappy movies). Tim Curry (not very recognizable as he is in full makeup AND his voice has been changed).
QUIRKS: Fantasy world. Forced marriage. The last unicorns. Vanquishing enemies on a quest. Mia Sara (who was only 15 at the time of filming) reminded me of Parthena several times in this movie, especially when she was dressed “evil”. Original non-Tangerine Dream soundtrack restored to Jerry Goldsmith’s original score (not that I noticed). Different ending.
VISUALS: It’s a fantasy world, so the visuals are a big part of what the movie has to offer.
BAD STUFF: Hardly anything happens! I can see why the movie went from 150 minutes to 113 minutes (this version) to 94 minutes (theatrical version). This is one of the few movies, due to a thin plot, that I think greatly benefits from cutting stuff out. I usually demand all deleted scenes be re-inserted to their original position, which is why I prefer fan edits for some movies, such as the Harry Potter movies. For this, however — we were both bored during a lot of it! An hour in, you could verbally sum up what happened in 10 seconds.
CONCLUSION: Not nearly as good as I remember. I begrudgingly gave it 3 stars on Netflix, but wonder if I should have given it 2 stars. 5/10 on IMDB. I’m trying to be charitable here, since I liked the original cut back in 1985. This might actually deserve 2/5stars on Netflix and 4/10 on IMDB, but… I do like fantasy quests and foreign worlds.
RECOMMENDATION: Watch Krull instead. Same difference, faster plot. The fantasy world in Krull might not LOOK as good, but the movie is simply better. They are, largely, the same thing: Fantasy quest to save chick who’s being forced to marry an evil dark lord.
SIMILAR MOVIES: Krull is SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO similar to this. The Last Unicorn also deals with the last unicorns, as this movie did. All 3 movies came out within 3 years of each other.
MOVIE QUOTE: The Lord of Darkness: “I require the solace of the shadows and the dark of the night. Sunshine is my destroyer.”
FRIENDS’ RATINGS (almost definitely only for the non-director’s cut): Christie & Chris H loved it. Ian really liked it. Benj liked it. Dave O rented it but hasn’t rated it, and it’s in Christian D‘s queue. Beware, guys! (more…)
August 22, 2009
Star Wars Galaxies – M.C. Chris Fett’s Vette
A remix of the famed MC Chris song set to animation from Star Wars Galaxies.
August 22, 2009
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That's pretty funny that even Jobs is unwilling to put up with his own company's restrictions. Talk about hypocrisy!
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This mentally-disabled woman (hit by a truck on her prom night) has a plate in her shoulder making it impossible to move her arm behind her back and shows her medic ID to prove it.
Not surprisingly, Officer Nicholas G.Parks tasing her once, twice, even 3 times doesn't doesn't change this. He repeatedly ignores her pleas to look at her medic ID card which explains her conditions.
The charges against her were dropped and the city settled her lawsuit for $65K.
Due to her mental disability, she doesn't even remember it happening. She likes to hula hoop in the median of a road while playing a radio. Of course, radios are bad because they make noise, and everyone's right to quietness trumps anyone's right to make noise, even tho the natural state of activities IN THE MIDDLE OF A ROAD is for lots of cars with noisy engines to drive by.
I wonder how this would play out in other societies?
Full size video at http://hamptonroads.tv/hrtv.php?id=2353850
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That's…. really awesome.
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Nice that they point out that the U.S. government has a patent on cannabinoids as neuroprotectants, despite not wanting people to use pot because it "damages your brain". (Which actually isn't true, but alcohol does. Oh sweet irony.)
Anyway, these results are not surprising given the Israeli study a few years ago that showed that marijuana exposure after being exposed to nerve gas helps mitigate the brain damage of being exposed to nerve gas. 'Cause, y'know, Israeli thinks about nerve gas attacks more than we do.
This also explains why some people have the urge to smoke up after a long night of drinking.
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Update on the last link. It's not just pot they decrminalized. Opium, cocaine, heroin, LSD, meth, ecstacy… all included.
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This is pretty damn big news.
Mexico's been having several thousand deaths — way more than 9/11 — every year due to trying to stomp out drugs. It's not working. Now they're giving up.
The tide is inevitable. Prohibitions do not work, and marijuana is less harmful than alcohol, cigarettes, and prescription drug abuse.
Looks like Mexico vacations are about to get more interesting…
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I didn't expect one of my flickr pictures to show up HERE. Hahaha!
August 21, 2009
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Actually funnier than I expected — the guy who animated this really knows how cats act!
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This took me a second to realize what was happening. It helps to read the filenames above the pictures!
Cameron Diaz, tho — I don't see what's so wrong with her picture there. Maybe they sent the wrong one?
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There's so many potential implementation problems with this. Marijuana can be detectable for up to 30 days after use, so detecting it doesn't mean you are driving while impaired.
I've said it before: The future of the drug war is unmanned aerial vehicles with real-time gas chromatograph spectrometers. Scary.
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A hilarious but obvious read about the 10 worst designs in Star Wars.
For instance, why don't light sabers have hand guards?
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A video we found online of a NoMeansNo concert we were at. This is Rock N' Roll hotel, right? The guy said it's 9:30 club. My records indicate he's wrong. Then I see what appears to be Carolyn, bouncing the way Carolyn bounces at shows…. Other friends there also think they see us. Plus, the stage setup was identical. And they didn't play at 9:30 Club… like.. Ever, to my knowledge.
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Oops. Officer Matthew Kirk Shelton was caught in a lie! His taser camera caught him beating a cooperating suspect. He is now charged with assault with a deadly weapon, assault by a peace officer, and falsifying a report.
Looks like the cops thing this cop is an authority abusing liar!
He also shot a knife-wielding mentally-disabled woman to death previously. I wonder if he would have been cleared if THAT was caught on camera? And where the hell was the taser THEN?
The victim never complained; this is an example of gun-cameras/taser-cameras working the way they should, and police properly holding themselves accountable. It's a Christmas miracle!
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I'm so fucking sick of Joe Arpaio. You must be a real piece of shit for some guy on the east coast to hear about you 20+ times in 3 years.
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Things that are in public view have always been considered photographable — until the Bush Administration / Patriot Act / Homeland Security, anyway. Of course, no real law has been cited: They are charging Mr. Thomas with nothing related to his actual filming.
Think this will stick? I don't. His last charges (related to the same building) were mysteriously dropped without explanation
Disorderly conduct? I don't see anything disorderly about filming in public
Failure to comply? Not if the order isn't lawful in the first place.
Impeding duties of a federal officer? If the officer's job is to arrest people, isn't he actually helping the officer fulfill that job? hahaPrime example of a police state: Google maps can show something in plain view, but when a civilian tries to take the same picture, he gets his camera stolen. Sadly, this is also another example of how corporations have grown to have more rights than citizens.
August 20, 2009
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Remember the Pac Man / Twitter comic? This is the website of the guy who posts 'em. Something to RSS-subscribe to. Google Reader should make me laugh more :)
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NoMeansNo fans rejoice! Tons of NoMeansNo & Hanson Brothers videos on this guy's youtube channel!
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Wow. A Flickr group dedicated to getting 3 passive-aggressive comments on your pictures. For people who really like punishment. It's amusing clicking some of the photos and checking out the "PAC" (passive aggressive comments). haha
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A great post by a friend of mine showing how Germany's health care is better than US health care in many different ways.
Sometimes "socialism" works. You seem to enjoy that road you drove on today.
"Socialism" is not automatically evil. The problem is that in the past, it has been tied to totalitarianism, which makes any system bad. If Hitler and Stalin had ran capitalist societies, they'd still have been evil. You can manipulate any system.
Sorry, getting off topic. Christina's post is informative, thought provoking, and relevant to America's current health care "debate".
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The newest site from the LOLcat/I Can Haz Cheezburger people.
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Poor dogs. hahah
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Even our favorite websites regularly practice censorship. This is not the first time flickr has engaged in political censorship. They explicitly allow people to post explicit, pornographic, and offensive images.
Hiding behind racism or copyright is a total guise; this is an attack on free speech. Political speech, especially, has been given the widest berth in relation to free speech.
And when you look up the word censorship: No, it isn't just limited to the government.
Flickr deleted Shepherd Johnsons entire photostream — because he posted comments critical of the official white house photostream. Which is pretty hypocritical, since all anyone has to do is block someone to prevent them from commenting.
BTW, flickr has tons of copyrighted images posted by people who don't own the copyright. TONS.
It's another example of how rules are selectively enforced when Obama is involved — just like the flyers in Florida.
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Damning allegations — made under penalty of perjury. This is what the Bush Administration has done with our tax dollars.
August 19, 2009
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It's no rendered CGI, but to be able to doodle in 3 dimensions at such speed is quite impressive!
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It's just melatonin, rose hips, and valarian root. Funny that people think it's like liquid pot. Still, I wonder if you can get this locally…
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He beat a suspect, falsified reports about it, was arrested, was fired — and got his job back due to arbitration, which always falls in favor of the cops. Get this: He used "unnecessary" but not "excessive" force. Hah!
NOW GET THIS: He was *already* fired for workers compensation fraud, having stolen $9,624.59 of taxpayer money by lying about being more hurt than he was. But he was re-instated then as well!
The thin blue line: Bad cops protected by society itself.
Let's not forget the involvement of Officer Louis J. Schwartz and Kurt Graham as well.
Both of these thug pigs should be fired, barred from working in any sort of thug capacity for life, and jailed — as well as the taxpayers getting their money back.
Police Chief Delsa Bush wants them to stay fired, but the Palm Beach County Police Benevolent Association WANT pigs that beat people and lie about it and defraud taxpayers out of their money on the force. How exactly is that "benevolent"? John Kazanjian is evil!
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Especially interesting was that it seemed to lower the risk even for people who also smoke and drak.
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Wow. An off-duty cop brandishes his gun in a mall, scaring them into calling mall security and getting him arrested.
Because he's a cop, he gets off scot-free.
Now he's suing for emotional distress, because apparently we're supposed to let people brandish guns unnecessarily!
What hubris. I would hope "bringing bullshit lawsuits against your employer" would be a legal reason to ultimately fire him, once he loses the lawsuit.
August 19, 2009
All dreams are weird! I was hanging out in a cul-de-sac area in front of some house that wasn’t mine. Carolyn and some faceless friends were there. (I don’t imagine faces…Even when reading a book, I just imagine voices). I was listening to a jet engine, and then I noticed that I was hearing it putter and start and stop.
Suddenly, I noticed the jet plane near the horizon. It was LOW, and pretty damn close. The length of the plane was at least as wide as a nearby house. It was headed to the left, but also dropping. (I think I’ve had this happen in several dreams before!)
Realizing that a) it was going to crash, b) jets travel at ~550MPH, c) it wasn’t headed directly away from us, d) it’s hard to know precisely what direction an object up in the sky is going, and e) I was the only one who was really noticing it — I basically screamed and yelled at all my friends there. “That jet is going down! Get the FUCK behind the house NOW! Go! Go! Go! Go!” I was running, and pushing my friends, who didn’t seem to be so concerned about it, manifesting more of a “it probably isn’t going to hit us” attitude.
We went to the house we were at (whch was no particular house in general), running underneath it (it was on stilts) and then to the back patio so we could watch the plane hit. It was no longer at the “north” end of the cul-de-sac, but was now at the “west” end (azimuth of -90 degrees to its original position) in the backyard of the house.
It hit the ground and there were SO MANY EXPLOSIONS. Everyone realized I was right, and even I was surprised at how many explosions there were, thinking we probably should have stayed underneath the house, and not on the back patio (which had another floor of the house over it, protecting us MOSTLY). Most of us had to cover our face with both arms, and I stepped in front of Carolyn to protect her from explodiness. It was around the last explosion that a hot spark hit the back of my head. I wasn’t burned, but it was really annoying. I wasn’t sure if it was imaginary or not at the time, since there was no damage. It was really just more “I told you so!” fuel for me.
So then we were hanging out inside the house. There was a relatively large hangout — me and my friends, and then someone else and their friends. It reminded me of years ago at Shannon & Christian’s when Summer lived downstairs and her friends would be hanging out at the same time we were. “The others”. We had the news on to hear if there was anything about the airplane crash.
After the news went through its important stuff, they started talking about goth culture and industrial music. Then they just had a goth/raver chick dancing to KMFDM‘s “Sex On The Flag” song for like the entire song. As music, it was great. As news, it was kind of like… WTF? Why are you spending so long on a KMFDM song? This isn’t normal news! (The song was almost definitely playing in real life, as it’s in my playlist currently and we have speakers on the ceiling over our bed.)
Then they briefly interviewed the chick, who had fur on her outfit covering her arms. She talked about how the reason for the fur being there was because “it felt cool”.
I was looking up Fox and ABC news in the yellowpages, wondering if I should call them and tell them how I was an eyewitness to the plane crash. I mean, I could be on TV!
Then one of “the others” was there, and I went through a book I had given someone that had a bonus section of stickers with letters on them. His name was Chris, so I gave him the “Chs” sticker.
Yup. It just got weirder.
“Dreams… They’re the hurricanes that wash the soulfilth from the superdome of our nightminds.”
-Xavier:Renegade Angel
(more…)
August 18, 2009
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And framing people just became that much easier. Want to make someone disappear? Fabricate some DNA evidence. Granted, there are easier ways to do this — I'm fond of drugging someone and leaving them at the murder site — but this is just another way in which people may be framed. Unfortunately, justice isn't as easy as CSI makes it look.
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The poor really get the shit end of the stick, justice wise. Three months in jail for breath mints? That's a real sign of a police state.
It's been known for quite some time that police field tests are inaccurate. It was demonstrated in front of congress that some drug field tests would even call *air* cocaine.
Given that these were actually mints, does anyone actually believe the officer when he says he saw the man buying drugs? And that the man voluntarily admitted by buying them?
Sounds like a lying cop to me. Why would anyone admit something that puts you them jail, makes them lose their job, their car, and their apartment?
Anyone want to take a bet that the victim is not white?
Claire's blog 
