Review – Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

After reading my posts about Wolverine and Star Trek you’ve probably guessed that I’m an action movie junkie. Nothing is more fun than wasting two hours downing handfuls of popcorn and sipping on a Big Gulp sized soda while vicariously saving the world, winning the girl and re-gaining the respect of family and friends. That is as long as the “Big, Dumb, Action Movie” is anywhere remotely close to decent.

The original Transformers movie was fun. Sure it had it’s moments of way-over-the-top stupidity, but those were tolerable. The action was fun and the special effects were awesome. The only real complaint I had with it was the strobe-light effect and choppiness in the fight scenes at the climax. It was hard for me to watch and gave me a headache by the time it was over. Other than that it was an OK movie. Not a good one, but OK. Maybe a 2.5 or 3 out of 5 stars.

The sequel? Save your money. Like way too many Hollywood “Big Dumb Action Movie” sequels, this one isn’t even worth getting out of bed for. Look, I didn’t go expecting Inherit The Wind or Raging Bull. It was a summer action movie. I know what those are. Big, dumb and supposedly fun. This one was all of the first two descriptors but none of the third.

The Good

OK. I will admit that the special effects were even more awesome than in the first movie. There were some incredible jaw dropping moments. The got rid of the strobe-light effects in the fight scenes so no more headache. They actually put the “bullet-time” effect introduced in the Matrix, to good use here. I can not fault the movie at all when it comes to the special effects. There were plenty and they all worked very well. But Hollywood needs desperately to learn that special effects do not make a movie work.

The Horrible

Think of every god-aweful cliche’ you’ve ever seen in a movie or read in a book and, like Prego, it’s in there. I mean everything. From boy goes to college and meets sexy, aggressive college girl and computer geek-internet weirdo roommate, all the way to the “This is my time, now” redemption of a discredited hero, they are there in all their excruciating infamy.

Thirteen year old humor also makes its presence known. Like a person with no social skills dumped into the middle of a cocktail party, the stupid humor barges in on nearly every decent moment the movie could have had. The worst of it was found in the two robots known as the twins, who were constantly beating up on each other and talking bad jive-talk. It was like being caught in some kind of surreal racist nightmare that constantly displayed the very worst of African-American culture and reinforced Black on Black violence. It wasn’t at all funny. It was disgusting and reveals the true attitude toward race that abounds in Hollywood.

The Pathetic

Just when you think things couldn’t possibly get worse, the movie sinks to a new all-time low. The pre-pubescent toilet humor in the movie simply knows no bounds. From the opening shot of Megan Fox with her rear-end blatantly stuck in our faces, to another character giving targeting instructions to the captain on a destroyer by saying he is standing under the Decepticon robot’s scrotum while we are treated to a shot of a pair of metal balls hanging loosely and banging against each other between the robot’s legs. This kind of “humor” is not funny. Not funny at all. It is completely unnecessary and a total in-your-face disrespect for common decency. I could have tolerated it if these attempts at potty humor occurred only once or twice. With a roll of my eyes I would have dismissed it. But no, the writers had to push and push and push with all kinds of stupid, gross, inane attempts at getting cheap laughs.

Don’t hold back, Dave. Tell us what you really think about the movie.

OK. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is a movie made by a no talent, disrespectful, pathetic excuse of an entertainment industry that should bow its head in shame and get out of the business as quickly as possible. Out of 5 stars, they owe me 6 for being stupid enough to give them my money.

Picture by flicker user chanchan222 under Creative Commons License. Use of this picture does not constitute an endorsement by chanchan222 of the ideas in this post.

The Big Question (Part 3-A)

Learning from the Secular Side: Introduction

What is the meaning of life? In the past few posts I looked at the religious side of the issue, specifically from the source materials provided by the Christian religion. Now I want to look at the secular side of the question. Before I begin, though, let me make a few points by way of introduction.

First, I’ve stated that the secular answer seems to be predominated by the idea that we make it up as we go along. To some degree I believe this. Not necessarily as stated, but in essence. What matters most when we ask the question is that we find an answer that satisfies. Until then the question haunts us. So we search for a way to scratch the itch. Once the itch is successfully scratched, the question ceases to take on any further importance. The question is silenced and we begin the process of pursuing that particular end.

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SNJ06-27-09: A Night of Jazz Waltzes

One of my Twitter friends (Bruce Carlson – Thanks, Bruce.) wrote to me the other day and suggested that we do a set of jazz waltzes. Until that time I didn’t even know that there was a genre of jazz waltzes. I’d heard much of the music listed tonight, I just didn’t know that they were referred to as jazz waltzes. Ya learn something new every day.

Anyway, I liked the idea and did a little research and came up with this list. There’s some great talent here and some wonderful music. I hope you enjoy these pieces. I know I did as I was reviewing them. Have fun and as always, I’m open to suggestions and requests. Just drop me a line or leave a comment.

Alice In Wonderland by Dave Brubeck from “Greatest Hits“

Baubles, Bangles, and Beads by Wes Montgomery from “The Best of Wes“

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4 Reasons Why Liberty is Vital to Your Life

If you’ve read much of what I’ve written lately, or observed my Tweets on Twitter, especially over the last few days, you’ll quickly learn that liberty is very important to me. It’s a topic for which I have great passion. I am always reading liberty-oriented books, articles, and blog posts. I listen to liberty-oriented podcasts and enter discussions concerning liberty with whoever wishes to explore the benefits and inherent responsibilities of our freedoms. In other words, I think liberty is important.

Why? Let me give you four reasons out of the many I could list and then make a few observations.

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FriendFeed Discoveries

Nope. I haven’t abandoned FriendFeed. Not at all. I love how I can spend hours and hours exploring what others think is valuable. Unfortunately I can’t spend hours and hours doing that so my time on FriendFeed is a bit limited. Nevertheless I often find quite valuable blog posts and other articles that inform, motivate and entertain me. So I thought I’d share some with you today. I hope you enjoy, and if you get a chance, check out FriendFeed. It’s a great service.

Blogging:

The Ultimate Wordpress 2.8 Optimization Guide via Nilesh — Good advice on making your WordPress 2.8 site operate at the fastest speed possible.

An Audience is an Audience, Be it on FriendFeed or Anywhere Else via Jorge Escobar — An interesting commentary on FeedBurner’s inclusion of FriendFeed subscribers into your FeedBurner subscriber count.

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The Big Question (Part 2-C)

You know how some people will go on and on about something and then finally will tell you, “I’ve said all of that to say this…”? Well, I’ve written all of the past three Big Question posts to say this:

Part 2c: Conclusions from the Religious Side of the Question.

Part 1 of this series set up the question “What is the meaning or purpose of life?”, and discussed the general observations that religious dogma usually answers the question with the idea that God will somehow let you know and that the secular dogma is usually centers around the concept that “you make it up as you go along.”

Neither of these options are very satisfying, so I decided to look a little deeper and see if it were possible to come up with answers that were a little less problematic and a bit more helpful.

Parts 2a and 2b took a look at the source material for the Christian religion (the Bible), seeking to see what it actually said rather than what Christian’s claim that it says. In these two parts we saw that the Bible is actually a spiritual history of the Hebrew people. It’s not necessarily a literal history, rather it’s a history designed to focus on certain events and people in order to communicate spiritual truths.

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SNJ06-20-09: A Night of Guitars

I’ve always liked the guitar. Assuming you can play one decently, if you pick one up and start strumming, pretty soon you’ll draw a crowd. There is something magical about the instrument that stops people in their tracks and fills their spirit. Even when the tune is melancholy there is still an enchantment that comes with playing this powerful instrument.

Tonight our focus is on guitarists who love jazz and there are plenty. From ballads to funk, the guitar has been around in the jazz world for decades. Its value to that world is inestimable. I hope you enjoy these artists and their music as much as I do.

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Liberty in Iran?

I needed at least one more week to prepare for a new series of posts for Freedom Friday, so I was searching for something that would be interesting yet stay faithful to the topic of the day. Ironically, it was Iran, a theocratic dictatorship, that supplied the necessary item for today’s post.

It’s easy with our Western perspective to jump to conclusions about what is going on in that part of the world. We want so desperately to see those in that area experience a taste of freedom from both religious and political tyranny. It’s easy to confuse the current protests in Iran with the struggle our Founding Fathers faced in their battle for freedom. Though the two may have some surface similarities, they might not be as identical as we would wish. Read the rest of this entry »

Unplugging and Boredom

Charlie Gilkey over at Productive Flourishing posted a interesting article entitled A Weekend Unplugged. I highly recommend that you check out his site and especially read that article. I like the way he thinks and many of his articles provoke thought (which is kinda what Tuesday Thoughts is all about).

Anyway, the article is an account of how he spent a recent weekend unplugged from his computer and all the other electronic distractions our culture so worships (cell phones, TV, Radio, CD & MP3 players, etc.). As I read the article, I was reminded about a while ago I lost power at the house for close to 48 hours. Apparently some squirrel had gnawed on some critical piece of equipment and blew out a transformer our great and wonderful technicians from PG & E took their sweet time getting things back to normal (We’re PG & E. We’re a government granted monopoly, we don’t have to care.)

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The Big Question (Part 2-B)

The Religious Side of the Question (Part B)

By way of brief review, in last week’s post we saw the Hebrew people lead by God into a land where they were free to pursue their hearts’ desires, guided by conscience and participating in celebratory rituals that reminded them of their unique and positive relationship with God.

Having rejected that life for rule by a King, turning the celebratory rituals into religiously strict duties and leaving wisdom and conscience to become completely self-absorbed, God sends prophets to warn the Hebrews of coming judgment and destruction.

At the end of the Old Testament God has only one message to the Hebrews. It goes something like this (and I loosely paraphrase): “I’m fed up with you people and your hypocrisy, your injustice and your self-absorbtion. Your religious rituals are meaningless to me and I’m done with you. I’m going to wipe you out except for a small minority who have remained faithful to the life I wanted you to live. From them I’ll create a new relationship and a new age of prosperity and peace. Return to me and the life I intended for you or die.“

The New Testament: Jesus of Nazareth and the New Age

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