Claire's blog

POLITICS: Noam Chomsky: Obama’s Attack on Civil Liberties Has Gone Way Beyond Imagination

A great interview with a great man.

At least some people on the left can acknowledge that Obama is not really left or liberal.

The amazing part is how people just plug their fingers into their ears and pretend like none of this is real.

LINK URL: http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/noam-chomsky-obamas-attack-civil-liberties-has-gone-way-beyond-imagination?ak_proof=1&akid=.20860.o8hxm8&rd=1&src=newsletter831496&t=9&paging=off

TV SHOWS: Help TODD AND THE BOOK OF PURE EVIL Get Animated!

SHUT UP AND GIVE THEM YOUR MONEY.

This is the best live-action supernatural comedy series to ever be made, and it’s just unacceptable to have the ending cliffhanger never resolved.

This is the logical thing to do: An animated movie to end it all.

LINK URL: http://twitchfilm.com/2013/04/help-todd-and-the-book-of-pure-evil-get-animated.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TwitchEverything+%28Twitch%29&utm_content=Google+Reader

FREEDOM: New York City bike tour bicyclers not allowed to carry hydration packs for security purposes

Further proof that every time something goes bad, we respond to it by taking away freedom.

Remember how unfair it was when the teacher punished the whole class because ONE person chewed gum?

One would hope our leaders would be more mature than that.

One would be wrong.

Another city full of docile pussies who can’t stand up for their rights, and thus get them taken away in the name of safety.

I wonder how many more bombs have to go off before pockets are declared national security hazards?

LINK URL: http://www.designntrend.com/articles/4032/20130427/new-york-city-5-boro-bike-tour-facing-tight-security.htm

MUSIC: Los Colorados – Du Hast (Official Rammstein Cover)

I nominate this the most unlikely Rammstein cover.

LINK URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=a5xSxGhlHfc

CARTOONS: Aeon Flux:The Peter Chung Interview!!!!

FUCK how did I miss this Peter Chung interview posted to LiveJournal in 2006?!?!?!  He finally talks about hating the movie, and reveals “secrets” about the original MTV 1990s animation. Good stuff.

“Q: Trevor and Aeon possess antithetical believes about state policy and political identity. Are their views reconcilable? Could you say you identify with one stance more than the other?

No, they are not reconcilable. In fact, their existence depends on the eternal struggle between their respective views. They are aware of this “dependency” on the other, and that is why they can never bring themselves to destroy the other. 

Till now, I’ve resisted stating outright how I’ve defined the relationship between Aeon and Trevor in my mind, as I preferred to let the viewer decide. However, with the movie’s shot at a definitive explanation on view, and with 10 years for viewers to make up their minds, I suppose I might as well. In spite of what people have said, their relationship is consistent and makes sense. It is not only perfectly logical, but the only way it could be. Their respective personalities define the relationship and the relationship defines their personalities. 

Once and for all– Aeon is NOT out to kill Trevor. (Where do people get this idea?) Even in the Pilot, she refrains from shooting him in the elevator. 

LINK URL: http://monican-spies.livejournal.com/44607.html

[IMDB link] [Netflix link]

UNCOMFORTABLE PLOT SUMMARY (inspired by this): Fuck Gods.

PEOPLE: From the director of The Transporter 2 and The Incredible Hulk (2008) (the Ed Norton one), and who watched the original movie a lot while growing up. Perseus is played by Sam Worthington (Avatar, Terminator Salvation). Zeus by Liam Neeson. Hades by Ralph Fiennes (Voldemort from Harry Potter, The Hurt Locker, Cemetery Junction, Sunshine). Io by Gemma Arterton (St. Trinian’s 1 & 2). Big cast, actually. Lots of characters that you don’t even really get to know.

QUIRKS: A remake of the 1981 movie. I watched the original sooooooo many times. In fact, when I was a child, the only action figure I ever bought new was a Perseus action figure from the original Clash Of The Titans movie. However, this remake’s plot is quite different from the original’s.

VISUALS: Way better than the original. Seeing it in 3-D would probably be cool, but we only saw it in 2-D. I hear they only converted it to 3-D after the fact. People whine about that. But I saw Nightmare Before Christmas in 3-D, and it was AMAZING. That movie was not shot in 3-D either. After-the-fact conversions *do* work, so I’m not going to automatically discount the 3-D version. Maybe someday I’ll watch this in 3-D at home, when we have a 3-D setup.

The original… looks like an episode of Land Of The Lost! It’s very obviously like… clay model monsters. If put in theatres today, people would laugh hard.

WILHELM SCREAM: One (we didn’t notice).

MORALS: Fuck gods.

BAD STUFF: The standard “worst movie ever” type hate that EVERY movie remake or book/comic/video game adaptation gets. The very fans that inspire remakes are the ones who criticize them the most. They’re lame. I mean — the movie was made by someone who watched the original a lot while growing up! Then again, maybe they have a point. And it WAS rushed — it could have been 45 minutes longer and not felt so rushed. I’m still not super critical with eye-candy fantasy-action movies. They’re obviously popcorn entertainment, and we were definitely entertained.

More hate here and here.

CONCLUSION: Tough to say how I feel; my judgment is clouded with comparisons to the original, even though watching the original today would be like watching Land Of The Lost (i.e. laughably bad special effects). The eye candy was certainly better (HD vs the VHS I watched the old version in *every day for a full summer*). But it seemed to be missing SOMEthing. Not sure what. Maybe it was simply that I was not watching this as a child.

One thing to note — I have not seen the original in decades. That way, I didn’t get all pissed off when things worked out differently.

RATINGS:

Clint: Netflix: 3.4/5 stars (high 3). IMDB: 7.4/10 (high 7). I was tempted to give this 4/5 stars (“really like”) and 8/10, but ended up with 3/5 (a high 3), 7/10 (a high 7). I’m not sure if I’m really being consistent with myself — I wrote this review weeks after watching it, and the post-movie high has faded. Carolyn dropped her rating too. Maybe we just forgot the good parts? I mean, Hades was pretty cool.

Carolyn: Netflix: 3.6/5 stars (low 4). IMDB: 7.6/10 (low 8).

The native public rating for this movie is: IMDB: 6.0/10, Netflix: 3.5/5 stars (Netflix‘s predicted rating for us was 3.6/5 stars).

RECOMMENDATION: Watch it for popcorn entertainment. DO NOT HOLD IT IN COMPARISON TO THE ORIGINAL. It’s best that you consider it a completely different movie, not really a remake.

SIMILAR MOVIES: I don’t quite see why this is necessary — but there’s going to be a sequel in 2012. Also, check out Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightning Thief. It’s basically Clash Of The Titans meets Harry Potter.

MOVIE QUOTE: Perseus: If I do this, I do it as a man.
Draco: But you are not JUST a man!

FRIENDS’ RATINGS: Ian‘s review here. (He didn’t like it.). Bunny Day says: “the original is so intensely important to my formation that i’m not really sure how to articulate it.”

OTHER REVIEWS:
Outlaw Vern likes it a lot. (more…)

ABUSE OF AUTHORITY: CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS: Police perform house-to-house raids in Watertown MA ripping innocent families from their homes at gunpoint

You know what’s worse than 3 people dead and 176 injured? Millions of people thinking they have constitutional rights, but finding out they actually don’t.

And a right that the government can selectively take away when it feels like it? That is not a right. At that point, it’s simply a privilege. 

Pointing a gun at somebody IS violence. This is violence against citizenry. At this point, it’s almost a collective punishment for allowing a terrorist to attack.

The worst part is how many people are lined up saying this is okay — Americans have completely and utterly forgotten what freedom is supposed to be.

They now just want a security force that keeps the maximum bodies alive, regardless of consequence to free will.

Fuck that, and Fuck Boston, city of pussies. From the great boston tea party of the 1770s to the pussydom of today, there’s no city in the country that’s pissed harder on its own legacy of freedom. 

Adding extra insult to all this? The raids made no difference. The suspect wasn’t in a house, and was found by civilian tips. The police made little difference. This was about training people to obey Big Brother.

LINK URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=2LrbsUVSVl8

THIN BLUE LINE: Officer who put camera in Glen Burnie High bathroom won’t be charged

In a police state, there are two sets of laws. One for “us”, and one for “them”.

If one of “us” were to install a hidden camera into a bathroom at a public high school – We’d go to jail, register as a sex offender, and possibly be forced to live under a highway overpass with no prospects for a job.

But if a cop does it?  The system protects him, gives him some kind of “punishment” so people can argue justice was served, but DOES NOT PRESS CHARGES. No sex offender registration for this seemingly-pedophile piggie.

And that’s what’s wrong with this situation, and to a further extent, this country.

LINK URL: http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2013-04-16/news/bs-md-glen-burnie-camera-0417-20130416_1_anne-arundel-county-police-police-powers-camera