So I went to see the Prometheus film. The remake/prequel film of Alien, made by non other than Ridley Scott himself, the maker of the original Alien. It wasn't as bad as I had feared, not as bad as lets say the Aliens versus Predator films or Aliens Resurrection but no where near as good as the original trilogy. My overall reaction is pretty much "meh" a mediocre CGI-scifi film. The film had potential to be as a good as the original, but it fell apart with its overly complex story lines and absence of characters that you would care about. These are the two things that annoyed me the most.
The story basically delves into the origins of humanity and the point of view chosen here is the Intelligent Design. Essentially a species called the Engineers, for reasons unknown, decided to create a bunch of clones of themselves on the planet Earth. Over the course of the film we learn that humans are a DNA match to these Engineers, which generates a whole bunch of questions that are left unanswered. The biggest being, if these Engineers created humans in their image, as the physical commonalities displayed in the film would suggest, where did Chimpanzees and Gorillas come from? Humans share a 96% of genes with chimps, so did the Engineers just fuck up the couple of the first attempts at creating humans and the failed patches became other species of primates or did they just think it would be fun little mind fuck to play on humanity by creating genetically very nearly the same species with the punch line being "hehe, if we do this when they become advanced enough to figure out genetics, they will think that chimps share a common ancestor with them"?
This sort of a story discussing Ancient Aliens and origins of life on this planet would have been a fairly good story, but they had to complicate the plot needlessly by the rich dying dude's quest for immortality, that gets introduced way too late in the film and is rushed through at the speed of light, without giving the audience the chance to actually get to know the rich dying dude or the underlying themes of human mortality and facing death. This would have also been material for an interesting plot, but too bad that it was rushed so fast that by the time you start wrapping your head around it, its thrown into the dust bin. It would have been so much more satisfying if we as the audience would have gotten to know the rich dying dude and see this frail old man grasping for that one final straw to prevent the inevitable end. Fear of death is something every human being can relate to and not exploring this theme is probably the greatest wasted opportunity in this film. It feels almost like they had two scripts and instead choosing between the story of finding out the origins of life/human civilization or the quest for immortality, they decided to blend the two into one, leaving the both plots either rushed or full of unanswered questions. The biggest being, what exactly happened on the Engineers' ship to cause the massive amounts bodies the audience was shown?
The character department was equally full of wasted opportunities, considering the actors they had casted for the roles. Most of the cast composed of no-name red shirt cannon fodder, whose only purpose was to die in order to create the appearance of a threat. Two named scientist red shirts, who apparently had some character development but those bits ended up in the editing room floor. Charlize Theron played the mandatory Evil Corporate Person, who was so obvious in the role that they might as well have played the Imperial March every time she walked into the room. Too bad she pretty much amounted to a red herring since she didn't really do anything in the film, besides participating in the only genuinely funny moment, where the ship's captain delivers what must be the greatest pick-up line in history. But all in all she was a poor substitute for Paul Reiser's excellent Mr. Burke from Aliens 2, who starts off as a nice guy and slowly descends into a corporate sociopath who wants to weaponize the aliens and tries to infect Ripley and Newt(an 8 year old girl) as well as being prepared to murder a squad of marines to achieve his goal.
The female lead was the inferior Ellen Ripley clone, nothing much to comment there. The only beacon of shining light was David(the name is another Aliens reference), the android, played by Michael Fassbender. A good performance at playing an android, almost reminded me of Brent Spinner's superb role as Data in Star Trek. All though he did appear to express annoyance of the things that made him different from humans. What made Data wonderful as a character was that he was completely incapable of feeling emotions, he could understand what love, hate and sorrow were on an intellectual level but he couldn't experience them on any level. Fassbender's David seemed annoyed at most of the times at not being human enough or being given in spite of his enormous capabilities relatively menial tasks. But all in all my favorite character in the film.
The one thing that really started to annoy me as the movie went on were the near constant aliens reference. Ridley, we get it, you are making an Alien remake, you don't have to remind us every fucking 10 minutes. Probably the worst was the entire sequence at the life boat after the Engineer ship explodes and crashes. The whole point of that sequence was to give the audience the shot of the Thing-that-looks-like-the-alien-but-for-copyright-reasons-isn't-the-alien, just so that Ridley could hammer it into your head that he is making an Alien prequel/remake, just in case you missed the fucking 30+ other clues. You could cut everything related to that and not losing anything important to the plot.
All in all not a very good film, certainly not when compared with the original, but at least it didn't evoke the same levels of fan boy rage as the Thing prequel did.
lauantai 30. kesäkuuta 2012
torstai 9. helmikuuta 2012
Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol - Bland as a Ghost
This movie sucked.My main problem was that they couldn't settle on the tone of the film. The plot was pretty simple, Bad guy wants to start a nuclear war to destroy the world. Sounds familiar, where have I heard this before. Try most James Bond films, most of the series 24 and a lot of spy films in general. Not only does this film rip of the classic Bond plot, it also rips of the setting, the USA vs Sovi... sorry Russia, the classic plot of Cold War era spy film plot. This wasn't a problem for me, this idea has generated some pretty awesome films in the Bond franchise as well as a few movies with a more serious tone, like Sum of All Fears.
The problem was that the movie was trying to capture a part of that Bond nostalgia, but they failed in the execution. They tried to balance between the Bond films and the more modern serious spy action films and series like 24, the Bourne trilogy or the Sum of All Fears. For a serious nuclear threat film its not serious enough and for Bond nostalgia its not insane enough.
In many Bond film the plot is that the Evil Mastermind has a nefarious plan to start a nuclear war or destroy the world and these plans are generally insane. Here is few examples.
Moonraker The Bad Guy has built several space shuttles, a massive launch facility for the shuttles in the Amazon and space station. The plan is to use neurotoxin from a rare orchid to wipe out all human life on the planet so that the Bad Guy can repopulate the planet with his perfect super race of humans.
The Spy Who Loved Me The bad guy says "fuck it, stealing launch codes or single warheads is lame, I am going to steal entire nuclear missile submarines and use those to start the nuclear war" He does this with a specially constructed oil tanker, in an operation that is conducted from his secret undersea base.
You Only Live Twice The bad guy tries to incite nuclear war by interfering with the space race. He does this by kidnapping American and Soviet spacecraft with his own purpouse built spaceship.
Diamonds are forever The bad guy has a diamond encrusted satelite dish in space which is used to direct sunlight into nuclear weapons causing them to explode.
This film is about a lone insane professor trying to start a nuclear war between US and Sovi..., sorry, Russia, because he believes that mankind will evolve as a result. Pretty lame compared to some of the stuff we got from Bond films made 40 years ago. They tried going a more conservative route but the film wasn't serious enough for that. Just watch the Sum of All Fears and you realise what I mean.
Not only is the basic plot pretty lame compared to the Bond films. The action is as well. The Bond films usually ended pretty epicly, in a massive all out battle scene where Bond takes on the Bad Guys secret lair with an army of helpers. Again examples,
Moonraker Ends in an insane battle in SPACE, when US Space Marines(I am not even kidding) attack the bad guys space station from a space shuttle with jet pack and laser guns. The battle ends with the space station being blown to bits. The action is pretty realistic(for a film with lasers and space marines), when you see guys being hit wirh lasers to their oxygen tanks spinning out of control.
The Spy Who Loved Me Involves a full out firefight when the captured submarine crews start taking over the oil tanker of doom. The battle involves flamethrowers and a scene where Bond MacGyvers a nuke into being slightly less destructive in order breach the enemy's defenses.
You Only Live Twice Ends with Bond attacking with the bad guy's lair, which was built into a volcano with ninjas equipped with katanas, shurikens and guns that fire rocker propelled exploding bullets.
Diamonds are forever Has a full on airmobile assault with Huey Gunships against the bad guy's base on an oil rig. Enough said. Only thing that would make that scene more awesome if it had Ride of the Valkyries blaring on the background.(Yes I know Apocalypse Now was made 8 years after Diamonds are Forever, but I can still dream)
Mission Impossible Ghost Protocol had Tom Cruise battling the traffic in India and having a fist fight in a high tech parking garage. This is pretty lame even compared with the original Mission Impossible, which had a Helicopter chasing a TGV bullet train in a fucking TUNNEL.
From the trailers I was half expecting this to be a more serious side of a spy film, like the Bourne Series. The guys were basically disowned by their government, the movies slogan even includes "no backup", so I was expecting that they were going to be left to their own deviced without the technological gizmos they usually have and instead rely on their wits and skills, like in the Bourne series, where Jason Bourne for example makes a bomb out of a toaster, a news papers and a gas line. It would have been cool to see the tech guy MacGyver some listening devices from cell phones or something like that. But no they get their gizmos handed to them in the armoury of plot convinience.
To make the film feel more serious they would have needed to drive home the idea of how horrifying the prospect of full scale nuclear war or even the detonation of single nuke in a populalated area is. But I guess the had the idea in their heads that the audience has seen this they know what it is all about. Wrong. We need to see what the consequences of failure are. In Terminator 2 you got a real sense of how important it was for the heroes to succeed precisely because they had a very well made scene of a nuclear explosion vaporising a playground full of kids, this single scene sets up the-desperate-fight-for-survival-of-the-human-race feel of the film perfectly. Similarly in the Sum of All Fears there is a nuclear explosion scene that illustrates the effects that nuclear war would have, adding weight to the future decisions of the characters.
These are the reasons why I didn't like the film, not serious enough to be a serious film about nuclear war and not epicly crazy enough to be anywhere near as good as the Bond films that it tried to emulate. I would love if someone would make Bond-homage film similar to the Expendables was for 80s action films.
The problem was that the movie was trying to capture a part of that Bond nostalgia, but they failed in the execution. They tried to balance between the Bond films and the more modern serious spy action films and series like 24, the Bourne trilogy or the Sum of All Fears. For a serious nuclear threat film its not serious enough and for Bond nostalgia its not insane enough.
In many Bond film the plot is that the Evil Mastermind has a nefarious plan to start a nuclear war or destroy the world and these plans are generally insane. Here is few examples.
Moonraker The Bad Guy has built several space shuttles, a massive launch facility for the shuttles in the Amazon and space station. The plan is to use neurotoxin from a rare orchid to wipe out all human life on the planet so that the Bad Guy can repopulate the planet with his perfect super race of humans.
The Spy Who Loved Me The bad guy says "fuck it, stealing launch codes or single warheads is lame, I am going to steal entire nuclear missile submarines and use those to start the nuclear war" He does this with a specially constructed oil tanker, in an operation that is conducted from his secret undersea base.
You Only Live Twice The bad guy tries to incite nuclear war by interfering with the space race. He does this by kidnapping American and Soviet spacecraft with his own purpouse built spaceship.
Diamonds are forever The bad guy has a diamond encrusted satelite dish in space which is used to direct sunlight into nuclear weapons causing them to explode.
This film is about a lone insane professor trying to start a nuclear war between US and Sovi..., sorry, Russia, because he believes that mankind will evolve as a result. Pretty lame compared to some of the stuff we got from Bond films made 40 years ago. They tried going a more conservative route but the film wasn't serious enough for that. Just watch the Sum of All Fears and you realise what I mean.
Not only is the basic plot pretty lame compared to the Bond films. The action is as well. The Bond films usually ended pretty epicly, in a massive all out battle scene where Bond takes on the Bad Guys secret lair with an army of helpers. Again examples,
Moonraker Ends in an insane battle in SPACE, when US Space Marines(I am not even kidding) attack the bad guys space station from a space shuttle with jet pack and laser guns. The battle ends with the space station being blown to bits. The action is pretty realistic(for a film with lasers and space marines), when you see guys being hit wirh lasers to their oxygen tanks spinning out of control.
The Spy Who Loved Me Involves a full out firefight when the captured submarine crews start taking over the oil tanker of doom. The battle involves flamethrowers and a scene where Bond MacGyvers a nuke into being slightly less destructive in order breach the enemy's defenses.
You Only Live Twice Ends with Bond attacking with the bad guy's lair, which was built into a volcano with ninjas equipped with katanas, shurikens and guns that fire rocker propelled exploding bullets.
Diamonds are forever Has a full on airmobile assault with Huey Gunships against the bad guy's base on an oil rig. Enough said. Only thing that would make that scene more awesome if it had Ride of the Valkyries blaring on the background.(Yes I know Apocalypse Now was made 8 years after Diamonds are Forever, but I can still dream)
Mission Impossible Ghost Protocol had Tom Cruise battling the traffic in India and having a fist fight in a high tech parking garage. This is pretty lame even compared with the original Mission Impossible, which had a Helicopter chasing a TGV bullet train in a fucking TUNNEL.
From the trailers I was half expecting this to be a more serious side of a spy film, like the Bourne Series. The guys were basically disowned by their government, the movies slogan even includes "no backup", so I was expecting that they were going to be left to their own deviced without the technological gizmos they usually have and instead rely on their wits and skills, like in the Bourne series, where Jason Bourne for example makes a bomb out of a toaster, a news papers and a gas line. It would have been cool to see the tech guy MacGyver some listening devices from cell phones or something like that. But no they get their gizmos handed to them in the armoury of plot convinience.
To make the film feel more serious they would have needed to drive home the idea of how horrifying the prospect of full scale nuclear war or even the detonation of single nuke in a populalated area is. But I guess the had the idea in their heads that the audience has seen this they know what it is all about. Wrong. We need to see what the consequences of failure are. In Terminator 2 you got a real sense of how important it was for the heroes to succeed precisely because they had a very well made scene of a nuclear explosion vaporising a playground full of kids, this single scene sets up the-desperate-fight-for-survival-of-the-human-race feel of the film perfectly. Similarly in the Sum of All Fears there is a nuclear explosion scene that illustrates the effects that nuclear war would have, adding weight to the future decisions of the characters.
These are the reasons why I didn't like the film, not serious enough to be a serious film about nuclear war and not epicly crazy enough to be anywhere near as good as the Bond films that it tried to emulate. I would love if someone would make Bond-homage film similar to the Expendables was for 80s action films.
sunnuntai 5. helmikuuta 2012
Suing the Devil - I wish a I could sue the makers of this film
Oooh God did this suck. I mean bad. The website of this film claims that it is "An epic, spiritual battle in the courtroom, Suing the Devil, is a high concept, faith-based, legal thriller that will leave you breathless and cheering". Yes it left me breathless and cheering, breathless on how stupid it was and cheering that it was finally over. Most of it happens in a courtroom and it is epic in its stupidity, but a legal thriller this is not nor is it very spiritual. Since this movie wants to be a legal thriller I will use other legal thrillers as points of reference and since it wants to argue theology/philosophy, lets talk about that as well.
Lets get this over with. The basic premise of the plot is that a law student, who's life sucks, decides that it is all Satans fault and like any good lawyer decides to sue the 8 trillion dollars. Satan accepts, for whatever reason, the film did really explain why, and the legal drama begins. Satan hires the "best" trial lawyers in the world to represent him and to really drive home the fact that well-paid, well-dressed lawyers are EVIL, these people defended nefarious groups like Big Tobacco, Big Oil, Air Lines etc. This from the start is slightly idiotic. Lawyers as group of professional are guided by a set of ethical principles(I know hard to believe right) chief of which is that they are required to zealously defend their clients case in court, whatever the case maybe. This is to insure that no matter how heinous the crime you are being accused of, you will be adequetly repressented by a zealous attorney. Its a staple ethical problem in legal dramas when the lawyer's professional and personal ethics come into conflict, not that anything like this would be in this film.
I am getting ahead of myself before the trial can begin our protagonist have to serve a subpoena to the Devil and this where the rather simplistic ethics of this start appearing. The protagonist makes copies of the summons and starts flyering various places where Satan might be found lurking, like a law firm(I don't get this lawyer bashing, I mean isn't the hero of this film working very hard to become one), a strip club and a group Heavy metal fans, who like all heavy metal fans do wear satanic imagery. The dude even asks these guys "do you worship Satan?" and like any self respecting heavy metal fan would, they give him the finger. So this movie's idea of evil things in this world are, law firms, strip clubs and heavy metal. I am going to make list of all the things this movie thinks is EVIL at the end of this review.
Being a legal "thriller" (its not really a thriller, since there is nothing thrilling about it) most of the movie takes place in a courtroom and in which court room you might ask is the Trial of the Century being held. In a very vague Court of Human Rights. I am not a lawyer, but I am under the impression that when someone sues somebody else for damages, its a civil case tried in a civil court. Nevermind. The venue is the least of our problems when it comes to court room procedings. This case should be very simple, the hero has to proove that Satan is responsible for his own misery and the misery of the entire humanity. Satan's team tries to defend against this. Nothing resembling a clear case with any form of evidence emergece from this pile of shit. What mostly happens in the court is that the hero calls various priests on the stand talk about the Bible and quote it(Which proves what exactly?). Satan's defence team objects A LOT, sometimes 4 lawyers at a time and almost without a fail the the objections are rejected by the judge.(It would appear that the film makers idea of a good lawyer is that he/she yells OBJECTION a lot) Absolutely no case or argument comes to forth during the court room scenes and who is leading the trial boils down to a popularity contest, not on the merits of the arguments.
There is the mandatory "evil-lawyers-dig-up-your-dirt"-scene, where, OMG you won't believe this, the protagonist of this film has viewed Internet porn, used the word fuck and ethnic slurs.(Yay, more things to the list) Holy shit, he is such a bad person. For fucks sake, do I even have to explain how dumb this is and more to the point WHAT FUCKING RELEVANCE DOES THIS HAVE WITH THE FUCKING CASE? My god is this dumb, this is again a staple of legal dramas, attack the accuser, but in much better legal dramas it is done to undermine the credibility of a witness with something slightly more substantive than fucking internet porn and foul language.
Lets talk about the Devil for a while. He is played by Malcom McDowell and even he couldn't save this carbage largely because the script has managed to remove all sense of menace and evil from The Prince of Darkness. He behaves mostly like an asshole and McDowell seems to enjoy playing this role. There are several a few ways that Satan is depcited in films, either as some evil demon-thingy or as a seductive tempter. This film attempts the tempter bit at one point, when the hero owns Satan's ass by reading the Bible, he offers the hero money and riches if he drops the case and gives him his soul. Now I am going to do what the film did, randomly introduce a bit of info, the hero's girl friend/wife/fuck buddy has a brain tumor. Now wouldn't the fucking obvious thing to offer been to take the tumor away, to offer the man something he really cares about, instead of money. This would have injected a much needed moral dilema into this so called spiritual film. How much would you be willing to sacrifice to defeat Satan? Would you give up your soul to save a loved one or another human being in general? This lost opportunity remined me of a great film that had a similar dilemma, Michael Clayton, a very good legal thriller. The titular character Micheal Clayton has a choice, he can do the morally right thing but at the expense of sacrificing a large part of his own happiness and well-being. A clear moral choice with huge consequences.
Satan also has this weird rant scene, which is a stand in for the climax of any legal thriller, the scene where the lawyer breaks the key witness/suspect and introduces the conclusive piece of evidence or a confession. In this film, instead of using clever questioning, it is done by using faith and reading the bible to get Satan to hump you from behind. He rants about how he hates humanity and he delights in causing havoc and the things he created, like noise, car alarms, gangsta rap, techno music, customer service, automated anwsering machines, unjust bills, parking tickets, utility companies, apparently to make us miserable.(Wow, A lot of stuff to the list). Euhm, utility companies, like the companies that provide electricity, water, gas and heating, are evil. The companies that provided me and alot of other people with electricity that powers the lights and the laptop I am using, with the water that I use for cooking, drinking and washing, that warm my house to a comfortable +20 celsius instead of the ball-freezing -28 celsius, are FUCKING EVIL AND CREATED BY SATAN. Oooh God is this dumb.
This scene is the only court scene where something gets proven, Satan pretty much confesses to doing all sorts of evil things. And in the next Satan's A-Team manages objects and in some bizarre fluke the judge throws the previous testimony out, because Satan was insane at the moment. Do I even have to explain how dumb this is? Not that it really mattered, since the hero wins anyway. Not that this mattes either since it was all a dream. A fucking dream. I would be angry, but I lost hope in this film, at the scene, where a little girl goes to ask Satan for an autograph(WTF!?!), Satan rebukes him and the little girl kicks him in the leg and runs away, like a boss. At that point the Satan character was reduced pretty much to a joke. Here is this movie's top tip on fighting Satan in your life, forget chanting some exorcism ritual or holy water, kick him in the leg and run away.
The legal thriller parts of this film failed pretty badly. It collects a bunch of cliches from other, much better films and mashes them together into an incoherrent mess. The film actually has the balls to quote the famous "you can't handle the truth"-line from A Few Good Men. The parts that fail even more are the movies attempts at being spiritual. These would be the scenes where the Bible gets quoted, with the message being Satan BAD, Jesus GOOD. There is no great moral dilemma, there is no real debate on the underlying issue, are we responsible for the evils of this world or is it Satan's fault? The main character learns a lesson in the end, which boils down to stop looking at stuff that you have lost or don't have, instead focus on what you have. Not a bad moral lesson to give, but this has again been done much more effectively in It's a Wonderful Life, fucking 6 decades ago.
There other weird things in this film as well, like the where the fuck did all the Satan groupies come from in the court room scenes? Where the fuck are all the christians of this world, you would think that they would take the opportunity to fight Satan himself and score some God points? Why does the "demons vs angels" scene come so early in the story? Why is Satan's legal A-Team so incompetent? Why does Tom Sizemore have role as retarded talking head? Why does the protagonist look like a demented mad man in the owning Satan by reading the Bible to him scene? And more to the point why the fuck do I keep thinking about this film? FUCK THIS FILM, I am going to watch Rainmaker now.
As promised the list of EVIL things according to this movie
Lawyers with professional ethics
Law firms
Oil companies
Tobacco companies
Air Lines
Strip Clubs
Heavy Metal
Cussing
Internet Porn
Racial slurs
Car Alarms
Gangsta Rap
Techno Music
Customer Service
Utility Companies(gas, electricity, heat and water services I pressume)
Automated anwsering machines
parking tickets
unjust bills
Used car salesmen
Lets get this over with. The basic premise of the plot is that a law student, who's life sucks, decides that it is all Satans fault and like any good lawyer decides to sue the 8 trillion dollars. Satan accepts, for whatever reason, the film did really explain why, and the legal drama begins. Satan hires the "best" trial lawyers in the world to represent him and to really drive home the fact that well-paid, well-dressed lawyers are EVIL, these people defended nefarious groups like Big Tobacco, Big Oil, Air Lines etc. This from the start is slightly idiotic. Lawyers as group of professional are guided by a set of ethical principles(I know hard to believe right) chief of which is that they are required to zealously defend their clients case in court, whatever the case maybe. This is to insure that no matter how heinous the crime you are being accused of, you will be adequetly repressented by a zealous attorney. Its a staple ethical problem in legal dramas when the lawyer's professional and personal ethics come into conflict, not that anything like this would be in this film.
I am getting ahead of myself before the trial can begin our protagonist have to serve a subpoena to the Devil and this where the rather simplistic ethics of this start appearing. The protagonist makes copies of the summons and starts flyering various places where Satan might be found lurking, like a law firm(I don't get this lawyer bashing, I mean isn't the hero of this film working very hard to become one), a strip club and a group Heavy metal fans, who like all heavy metal fans do wear satanic imagery. The dude even asks these guys "do you worship Satan?" and like any self respecting heavy metal fan would, they give him the finger. So this movie's idea of evil things in this world are, law firms, strip clubs and heavy metal. I am going to make list of all the things this movie thinks is EVIL at the end of this review.
Being a legal "thriller" (its not really a thriller, since there is nothing thrilling about it) most of the movie takes place in a courtroom and in which court room you might ask is the Trial of the Century being held. In a very vague Court of Human Rights. I am not a lawyer, but I am under the impression that when someone sues somebody else for damages, its a civil case tried in a civil court. Nevermind. The venue is the least of our problems when it comes to court room procedings. This case should be very simple, the hero has to proove that Satan is responsible for his own misery and the misery of the entire humanity. Satan's team tries to defend against this. Nothing resembling a clear case with any form of evidence emergece from this pile of shit. What mostly happens in the court is that the hero calls various priests on the stand talk about the Bible and quote it(Which proves what exactly?). Satan's defence team objects A LOT, sometimes 4 lawyers at a time and almost without a fail the the objections are rejected by the judge.(It would appear that the film makers idea of a good lawyer is that he/she yells OBJECTION a lot) Absolutely no case or argument comes to forth during the court room scenes and who is leading the trial boils down to a popularity contest, not on the merits of the arguments.
There is the mandatory "evil-lawyers-dig-up-your-dirt"-scene, where, OMG you won't believe this, the protagonist of this film has viewed Internet porn, used the word fuck and ethnic slurs.(Yay, more things to the list) Holy shit, he is such a bad person. For fucks sake, do I even have to explain how dumb this is and more to the point WHAT FUCKING RELEVANCE DOES THIS HAVE WITH THE FUCKING CASE? My god is this dumb, this is again a staple of legal dramas, attack the accuser, but in much better legal dramas it is done to undermine the credibility of a witness with something slightly more substantive than fucking internet porn and foul language.
Lets talk about the Devil for a while. He is played by Malcom McDowell and even he couldn't save this carbage largely because the script has managed to remove all sense of menace and evil from The Prince of Darkness. He behaves mostly like an asshole and McDowell seems to enjoy playing this role. There are several a few ways that Satan is depcited in films, either as some evil demon-thingy or as a seductive tempter. This film attempts the tempter bit at one point, when the hero owns Satan's ass by reading the Bible, he offers the hero money and riches if he drops the case and gives him his soul. Now I am going to do what the film did, randomly introduce a bit of info, the hero's girl friend/wife/fuck buddy has a brain tumor. Now wouldn't the fucking obvious thing to offer been to take the tumor away, to offer the man something he really cares about, instead of money. This would have injected a much needed moral dilema into this so called spiritual film. How much would you be willing to sacrifice to defeat Satan? Would you give up your soul to save a loved one or another human being in general? This lost opportunity remined me of a great film that had a similar dilemma, Michael Clayton, a very good legal thriller. The titular character Micheal Clayton has a choice, he can do the morally right thing but at the expense of sacrificing a large part of his own happiness and well-being. A clear moral choice with huge consequences.
Satan also has this weird rant scene, which is a stand in for the climax of any legal thriller, the scene where the lawyer breaks the key witness/suspect and introduces the conclusive piece of evidence or a confession. In this film, instead of using clever questioning, it is done by using faith and reading the bible to get Satan to hump you from behind. He rants about how he hates humanity and he delights in causing havoc and the things he created, like noise, car alarms, gangsta rap, techno music, customer service, automated anwsering machines, unjust bills, parking tickets, utility companies, apparently to make us miserable.(Wow, A lot of stuff to the list). Euhm, utility companies, like the companies that provide electricity, water, gas and heating, are evil. The companies that provided me and alot of other people with electricity that powers the lights and the laptop I am using, with the water that I use for cooking, drinking and washing, that warm my house to a comfortable +20 celsius instead of the ball-freezing -28 celsius, are FUCKING EVIL AND CREATED BY SATAN. Oooh God is this dumb.
This scene is the only court scene where something gets proven, Satan pretty much confesses to doing all sorts of evil things. And in the next Satan's A-Team manages objects and in some bizarre fluke the judge throws the previous testimony out, because Satan was insane at the moment. Do I even have to explain how dumb this is? Not that it really mattered, since the hero wins anyway. Not that this mattes either since it was all a dream. A fucking dream. I would be angry, but I lost hope in this film, at the scene, where a little girl goes to ask Satan for an autograph(WTF!?!), Satan rebukes him and the little girl kicks him in the leg and runs away, like a boss. At that point the Satan character was reduced pretty much to a joke. Here is this movie's top tip on fighting Satan in your life, forget chanting some exorcism ritual or holy water, kick him in the leg and run away.
The legal thriller parts of this film failed pretty badly. It collects a bunch of cliches from other, much better films and mashes them together into an incoherrent mess. The film actually has the balls to quote the famous "you can't handle the truth"-line from A Few Good Men. The parts that fail even more are the movies attempts at being spiritual. These would be the scenes where the Bible gets quoted, with the message being Satan BAD, Jesus GOOD. There is no great moral dilemma, there is no real debate on the underlying issue, are we responsible for the evils of this world or is it Satan's fault? The main character learns a lesson in the end, which boils down to stop looking at stuff that you have lost or don't have, instead focus on what you have. Not a bad moral lesson to give, but this has again been done much more effectively in It's a Wonderful Life, fucking 6 decades ago.
There other weird things in this film as well, like the where the fuck did all the Satan groupies come from in the court room scenes? Where the fuck are all the christians of this world, you would think that they would take the opportunity to fight Satan himself and score some God points? Why does the "demons vs angels" scene come so early in the story? Why is Satan's legal A-Team so incompetent? Why does Tom Sizemore have role as retarded talking head? Why does the protagonist look like a demented mad man in the owning Satan by reading the Bible to him scene? And more to the point why the fuck do I keep thinking about this film? FUCK THIS FILM, I am going to watch Rainmaker now.
As promised the list of EVIL things according to this movie
Lawyers with professional ethics
Law firms
Oil companies
Tobacco companies
Air Lines
Strip Clubs
Heavy Metal
Cussing
Internet Porn
Racial slurs
Car Alarms
Gangsta Rap
Techno Music
Customer Service
Utility Companies(gas, electricity, heat and water services I pressume)
Automated anwsering machines
parking tickets
unjust bills
Used car salesmen
tiistai 24. tammikuuta 2012
The stupid things that True Finn fanboys and -girls do
So its election time again and the election time stupidity has reached new hights. I found a blog called natsivahti and a Facebook group called Jussi-Halla-ahon-kootut-sanansa-syömiset. The first translates roughly to Nazi Watch and the second to "the collected statements said and withdrawn by Jussi Halla-aho". Both are basically collections of screenshots of Facebook discussions on the very much public walls of True Finn fanboys and girls. I have no problem with the content of the messages, if being a racist homophobe is your thing, then good for you. This is not the stupidity I am talking about.
The stupidity I am talking about is the apparent intent of the said True Finn Fanboys and girls to press a class action law suite for defamation of character against those two sites. This is double facepalm worthy stupidity on so many levels that I don't really know where to begin. Well here is a start, how about the fact that in Finland you can only start a class action suit in consumer protection cases even those suits are lead by the consumer protection advocates office. So there is no way, no how this law suite would ever make it forward.
Moving on. Not only is this lawsuit impossible to file on due the legal technicallity described above, they are basically sueing the sites for publishing things that they themselves said and published on their apparently very public Facebook profiles. So the defamation of character comes from things that they said themselves. So under this logic could they maybe sue themselves? I don't think these people have any concept of how media works, let alone how social media works. I was under the impression that most of our media revolves around reporting what various, usually famous people, say and do in public and occasionally in their private lives. Lets take an example of the more traditional medias, couple of months ago Alexander Stubb, a Finnish Minister involved in foreign relations, said something like "Fuck this shit" when refering to the Nordic Council meeting he was attending. So under the TF Fanboy and girl logic, Stubb could have sued every single newspaper, TV channel and radio station that repeated the story of his little FUBAR.
This effect is even more enhanced in the social media, where basically anyone with a computer, smartphone and camera can become a reporter. So when you say and do stupid shit either in public or on Facebook, it shouldn't come as a surprise if someone records it and shares it to the rest of the planet. I mean that's what the bloody social media is about, having the ability share information, thoughts and ideas online. If you don't want your stupidity made public, don't do stupid shit in public.
The stupidity I am talking about is the apparent intent of the said True Finn Fanboys and girls to press a class action law suite for defamation of character against those two sites. This is double facepalm worthy stupidity on so many levels that I don't really know where to begin. Well here is a start, how about the fact that in Finland you can only start a class action suit in consumer protection cases even those suits are lead by the consumer protection advocates office. So there is no way, no how this law suite would ever make it forward.
Moving on. Not only is this lawsuit impossible to file on due the legal technicallity described above, they are basically sueing the sites for publishing things that they themselves said and published on their apparently very public Facebook profiles. So the defamation of character comes from things that they said themselves. So under this logic could they maybe sue themselves? I don't think these people have any concept of how media works, let alone how social media works. I was under the impression that most of our media revolves around reporting what various, usually famous people, say and do in public and occasionally in their private lives. Lets take an example of the more traditional medias, couple of months ago Alexander Stubb, a Finnish Minister involved in foreign relations, said something like "Fuck this shit" when refering to the Nordic Council meeting he was attending. So under the TF Fanboy and girl logic, Stubb could have sued every single newspaper, TV channel and radio station that repeated the story of his little FUBAR.
This effect is even more enhanced in the social media, where basically anyone with a computer, smartphone and camera can become a reporter. So when you say and do stupid shit either in public or on Facebook, it shouldn't come as a surprise if someone records it and shares it to the rest of the planet. I mean that's what the bloody social media is about, having the ability share information, thoughts and ideas online. If you don't want your stupidity made public, don't do stupid shit in public.
perjantai 6. tammikuuta 2012
Review of the new Vares film.
Tonights film was the latest edition in the series of Vares films. If you haven't heard of these and don't live in Finland, no worries it is because its a Finnish film, made in the Finnish language. Then again not seeing this particular film is no great loss since at best it was a mediocre detective film and at worst an ungodly abomonation of a film.
The main problem I had with this film was pretty much what was my problem with the previous Vares film. The film isn't what it claims to be. The advertising and promotion of the previous films promised to me a classic femme fatale detective story, where a sexy female villain seduce men to their doom. Had they made even a half hearted attempt at making such a film I would have been happy, but no, they made something else, I can't really remember what it was about, so that should be an amble testament of how memorable it was. This one promises to be about a murder that happened in a ultra-religious ultra-conservative rural community, which offers a pretty juicy possibilities for the plot, but no instead we are handed your basic extortion plot that has been used time and time again in nearly every single detective and cop show ever made.
At the beginning of the film Vares, our hero, who in between his drinking sessions, works as a private detective, is hired to look into a murder of a young woman that happened in a ultra-religious ultra-conservative rural community. The movie tries to portray the community as oppressively religious but it fails to do so miserably, largely because instead of showing the audience the oppressive aspects of it, all we ever get is a few exposition dialogous of how religous and oppressive the place is. The closest thing to a scene like this is the local law enforcement coming to complain about hard liqour being sold with out a license at the motel Vares is staying, not that it prevents the owner from selling the liqour to Vares anyway.
Another trait that movie tries to establishe for the village is that it is weird and yet again it fails at this. The only hint weird is the local village nut who wears a WWII era Gerbirgsjägers great coat and introduces himself to Vares by sitting down at his table while carrying a chain saw, who after a while turns out not be a nut at all. By and large the people in the village appear to be rather normal ordinary people who belong to a certain religious community, not that you see the people of the village anyway. The makers of this film fail at the basic principle of screenwriting, show don't tell. Film is a visual media, so if you want to create an impression on the audience you have to show it to them in a scene.
In the end the religious nature of the village is completely useless detail, inspite of the film trying to make it a big plot point. The whole plot revolves around an extortion scheme that the local business man is running. His victims are the head of the religious movement and the head of the local asylum, who also appears to be the only doctor in the community. The idea is fairly simple, the pastor lures rich old people into leaving their posession to the church in a will, who then sell them of to the business man at a low price. The business man then sells the property, usually land, for a higher price with gang pocketing the difference. The doctor is there to essential murder the scam victims, if the gang needs some quick cash. The doctor and the pastor go along with this, because the business man has some compromising fotos of them having sex with the murder victim.
The three villains of the film are rather pathetic, there is no aura of menace about them. The pastor is basically a drunk and spinless toad, the doctor isn't that better either and the business man we never learn anything about expect that he needs money badly and is ruthless enough to come up with the plot above. There is also a pointless side plot of Vares having sex with the pastors wife, which doesn't really add anything to the story expect injecting a couple of sex scenes into the film and establishing the pastors wife as a slut, which would have added depth to character, if that wasn't the only characteristic she had in this film. Again we are told how important and well respected she is in the community but we never really get to see her doing anything else except having sex with someone or trying to have sex with someone.
All of this is very frustrating since the whole setting offered opportunities to explore the nature of cult like devotion to a religion and the power it can have over people. The movie could have reflected the recent pedophilia scandals in one Finnish ultra conservative religious community, the main villain could have been a Jim Jones like cult leader, who's brainwashed minions keep an iron grip over the village by exacting divine retribution on anyone who breaks the cults tenents, with scenes where actual oppression happens. Like a scene where a heavy metal listening school kid gets bullied by his more religious peers, because according the cults teachings Heavy Metal is satanic. Or a scene where a recently divorced single mother washes the word Whore, that has been painted with big red letters, off the wall of her house, or one where the cult members verbally assault anyone buying beer from the local supermarket. These types of scenes would have established a really oppressive atmosphere and made you think that yes, these guys could easily murder someone. The dark secret behind the murder would have been to cover up the ongoing sexual abuse of children in the cult. That is a movie I would have loved to see.
The missed opportunities weren't the only problem with the plot, there were several stupid scenes that were predictable. The scene where Vares gets drugged is the worst example. In this scene at a village dance the doctor offers Vares some booze, when literally in the previous scene Vares had issued pretty clear veiled threats at the doctor. This scene was so stupid and foreseable that I was half expecting Admiral Acbar to pop-up and say "It's a Trap!". The climax of the film was equally stupid, the murder goes into the basic villain exposition monologue, while preparing an acid bath for Vares. I fail to see why the guy just didn't kill Vares and then disolved the body in the acid, classic Bond villain stupidity that isn't even funny anymore. The audience pretty much guesses in about 10 seconds, that Vares is going to be rescued and who the rescuer is going to be. After this stupidity the movie ends, without ever explaining what happened to the villains or the village now that the scandal pretty much laid waste to all of its social and economic foundations.
To those who don't know the Vares films are based on a series of books and since I am not a big fan of the detective novel I haven't read them, but what I hear is that they are fairly popular. This is why it saddens me that the Finnish film industry is falling to the Hollywood like trap of making half-assed movie versions of popular books. What really pisses me off is that carbage like this got 375 000€ of funding from the taxpayers. Rest assured makers of this film, the next Vares film that you spew out, I won't be watching. As the saying goes, fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me.
The main problem I had with this film was pretty much what was my problem with the previous Vares film. The film isn't what it claims to be. The advertising and promotion of the previous films promised to me a classic femme fatale detective story, where a sexy female villain seduce men to their doom. Had they made even a half hearted attempt at making such a film I would have been happy, but no, they made something else, I can't really remember what it was about, so that should be an amble testament of how memorable it was. This one promises to be about a murder that happened in a ultra-religious ultra-conservative rural community, which offers a pretty juicy possibilities for the plot, but no instead we are handed your basic extortion plot that has been used time and time again in nearly every single detective and cop show ever made.
At the beginning of the film Vares, our hero, who in between his drinking sessions, works as a private detective, is hired to look into a murder of a young woman that happened in a ultra-religious ultra-conservative rural community. The movie tries to portray the community as oppressively religious but it fails to do so miserably, largely because instead of showing the audience the oppressive aspects of it, all we ever get is a few exposition dialogous of how religous and oppressive the place is. The closest thing to a scene like this is the local law enforcement coming to complain about hard liqour being sold with out a license at the motel Vares is staying, not that it prevents the owner from selling the liqour to Vares anyway.
Another trait that movie tries to establishe for the village is that it is weird and yet again it fails at this. The only hint weird is the local village nut who wears a WWII era Gerbirgsjägers great coat and introduces himself to Vares by sitting down at his table while carrying a chain saw, who after a while turns out not be a nut at all. By and large the people in the village appear to be rather normal ordinary people who belong to a certain religious community, not that you see the people of the village anyway. The makers of this film fail at the basic principle of screenwriting, show don't tell. Film is a visual media, so if you want to create an impression on the audience you have to show it to them in a scene.
In the end the religious nature of the village is completely useless detail, inspite of the film trying to make it a big plot point. The whole plot revolves around an extortion scheme that the local business man is running. His victims are the head of the religious movement and the head of the local asylum, who also appears to be the only doctor in the community. The idea is fairly simple, the pastor lures rich old people into leaving their posession to the church in a will, who then sell them of to the business man at a low price. The business man then sells the property, usually land, for a higher price with gang pocketing the difference. The doctor is there to essential murder the scam victims, if the gang needs some quick cash. The doctor and the pastor go along with this, because the business man has some compromising fotos of them having sex with the murder victim.
The three villains of the film are rather pathetic, there is no aura of menace about them. The pastor is basically a drunk and spinless toad, the doctor isn't that better either and the business man we never learn anything about expect that he needs money badly and is ruthless enough to come up with the plot above. There is also a pointless side plot of Vares having sex with the pastors wife, which doesn't really add anything to the story expect injecting a couple of sex scenes into the film and establishing the pastors wife as a slut, which would have added depth to character, if that wasn't the only characteristic she had in this film. Again we are told how important and well respected she is in the community but we never really get to see her doing anything else except having sex with someone or trying to have sex with someone.
All of this is very frustrating since the whole setting offered opportunities to explore the nature of cult like devotion to a religion and the power it can have over people. The movie could have reflected the recent pedophilia scandals in one Finnish ultra conservative religious community, the main villain could have been a Jim Jones like cult leader, who's brainwashed minions keep an iron grip over the village by exacting divine retribution on anyone who breaks the cults tenents, with scenes where actual oppression happens. Like a scene where a heavy metal listening school kid gets bullied by his more religious peers, because according the cults teachings Heavy Metal is satanic. Or a scene where a recently divorced single mother washes the word Whore, that has been painted with big red letters, off the wall of her house, or one where the cult members verbally assault anyone buying beer from the local supermarket. These types of scenes would have established a really oppressive atmosphere and made you think that yes, these guys could easily murder someone. The dark secret behind the murder would have been to cover up the ongoing sexual abuse of children in the cult. That is a movie I would have loved to see.
The missed opportunities weren't the only problem with the plot, there were several stupid scenes that were predictable. The scene where Vares gets drugged is the worst example. In this scene at a village dance the doctor offers Vares some booze, when literally in the previous scene Vares had issued pretty clear veiled threats at the doctor. This scene was so stupid and foreseable that I was half expecting Admiral Acbar to pop-up and say "It's a Trap!". The climax of the film was equally stupid, the murder goes into the basic villain exposition monologue, while preparing an acid bath for Vares. I fail to see why the guy just didn't kill Vares and then disolved the body in the acid, classic Bond villain stupidity that isn't even funny anymore. The audience pretty much guesses in about 10 seconds, that Vares is going to be rescued and who the rescuer is going to be. After this stupidity the movie ends, without ever explaining what happened to the villains or the village now that the scandal pretty much laid waste to all of its social and economic foundations.
To those who don't know the Vares films are based on a series of books and since I am not a big fan of the detective novel I haven't read them, but what I hear is that they are fairly popular. This is why it saddens me that the Finnish film industry is falling to the Hollywood like trap of making half-assed movie versions of popular books. What really pisses me off is that carbage like this got 375 000€ of funding from the taxpayers. Rest assured makers of this film, the next Vares film that you spew out, I won't be watching. As the saying goes, fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me.
perjantai 30. joulukuuta 2011
The adventures of James Bond's grand dad
Today's movie was the newest installation of Guy Richie's Sherlock Holmes saga and I am calling it a saga because the ending had epic amounts of sequal bate put into it and why not, since Richie has managed to create a fairly entertaining action film adaption of the classic detective novels. Yet again there will be spoilers.
Basically the movie revolves around Sherlock's epic war against his arch-nemesis Professor Moriarty. Moriarty naturally has a diabolical plan to acquire wealth and power at the expense of the rest of humanity and naturally Sherlock is stop Moriarty's plan. Asside for a few homages to the original stories, the plot has nothing to do with Conan Doyle's famous stories. That is not necessarily a bad thing since the mystery novels would be hard to translate into an action film. Overall the plot is fairly predictable, to the point that you can pretty much guess what is going to happen next, based on the less than subtle clues that the movie throws in your face. Plot isn't really this film's strong point and its not really trying to offer anything new, instead of settling on offering us what anyone who has seen most of the James Bond films have come to expect.
What makes this film gets right is the humorous interaction between Watson and Holmes. Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law play their roles extremely well and Downey Jr. seems to take real pleasure in dragging his sensible comrade through some pretty bizarre situations. The humorous banter between the two provide most of the entertainment in this film. Most iterations of the famous detective portray Holmes having some sort of mental illness, Jeremy Brett's Holmes was Manic-depressive, in the new series he is sociopath and Downey's seems to suffer from ADD. Law's Watson follows the traditional faithful Watson who suffers through Holmes's insane plans as a loyal friend should.
The other characters are OK, but nothing truly memorable. Moriarty is sophisticated, intelligent and ruthlessly evil. I liked the Moriarty in the new modern version of Sherlock Holmes more, who was bat shit insane. This films Moriarty went down the traditional path. Other character Richie failed badly with was Irene Adler, the only woman capable of outsmarting Holmes and the only woman he has ever been attracted to. She is dispossed of early in the film and Holmes shruggs of her apparent death without much adoo. I am generally against needless love plots, but in this case the amount of attention the relationship between the two deserved a better ending. Especially since the only motive for having her killed was plot convinience to give room for the new female lead, who's name I can't remember(as you can see this move worked brilliantly well). Adler was a part of Moriarty's organization so being torn between her love for Holmes and her obligations to Moriarty, would have offered potential plot points that were left unexploited.
The action scenes were fairly well done and were pleasent to watch. I liked Richie's style of first showing the fights in slow motion, describing Holmes's analysis of the likely outcome of the fight, before he shows it in high speed. The only scene I didn't really like was Holmes & Co escaping from Moriarty's weapons factory, where there are slow-mo shots of them being shot at by a wide variety of weapons, ranging from pistols and rifles to mortars and howitzers.
The one thing that started to bug me in this film was that it was set in 1891 and it featured a crap ton of weapons that were anachronistic. Most notable of being the Mauser C96 pistol, which wasn't produced untill 1896, a model 1895 Maxim machine gun, the Big Bertha-looking Howitzer which wasn't built untill 1914 and some type of submachine gun again not invented untill WWI. Another weapon really out of place was the Gatling Gun, a weapon that was obsolete in 1891 was being actively built at a modern weapons factory.
Another thing that really bugged me was Moriarty's grand plan, which was basically to take over a company manufacturing war materials and starting World War I to make a profit by selling supplies to all involved, basically by orchestrating basically a fictional version of the events that started the real WWI. There are few massive flaws in his plan. The greatest being that his main factory is Germany, so when Germany goes to war with France they are just going to let you ship vast quantities of war materials from Germany to France? I think not.
It isn't necessarily the most profitable plan to have a weapons and ammo factory in country that is in war, since governments in war basically tell you the price their are going to buy the materials from you, if you refuse they will just send some troops to take over the plant and let someone else run it. Also during war governments want cheap, functional weapons and equipment in bulk, with low profit margins. They are not interested expensive and complex weapon systems and even if they are, their faults are easily discovered by testing the weapon in actual combat conditions. The threat of war, that fuels an arms race, is the best time for the weapons industry, that is the period of time when governments go for the expensive fancy weapons system to get ahead in the arms race. Moriarty could make some profit, but most likely the countries involved would takeover his factories. Generally weapons industries are thightly controlled, especially in war time.
But I digress, overall the film was relatively good light action entertainment in the tradition of the James Bond films of my childhood. If you liked James Bond films by Roger Moore, then you will probably like this film.
Basically the movie revolves around Sherlock's epic war against his arch-nemesis Professor Moriarty. Moriarty naturally has a diabolical plan to acquire wealth and power at the expense of the rest of humanity and naturally Sherlock is stop Moriarty's plan. Asside for a few homages to the original stories, the plot has nothing to do with Conan Doyle's famous stories. That is not necessarily a bad thing since the mystery novels would be hard to translate into an action film. Overall the plot is fairly predictable, to the point that you can pretty much guess what is going to happen next, based on the less than subtle clues that the movie throws in your face. Plot isn't really this film's strong point and its not really trying to offer anything new, instead of settling on offering us what anyone who has seen most of the James Bond films have come to expect.
What makes this film gets right is the humorous interaction between Watson and Holmes. Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law play their roles extremely well and Downey Jr. seems to take real pleasure in dragging his sensible comrade through some pretty bizarre situations. The humorous banter between the two provide most of the entertainment in this film. Most iterations of the famous detective portray Holmes having some sort of mental illness, Jeremy Brett's Holmes was Manic-depressive, in the new series he is sociopath and Downey's seems to suffer from ADD. Law's Watson follows the traditional faithful Watson who suffers through Holmes's insane plans as a loyal friend should.
The other characters are OK, but nothing truly memorable. Moriarty is sophisticated, intelligent and ruthlessly evil. I liked the Moriarty in the new modern version of Sherlock Holmes more, who was bat shit insane. This films Moriarty went down the traditional path. Other character Richie failed badly with was Irene Adler, the only woman capable of outsmarting Holmes and the only woman he has ever been attracted to. She is dispossed of early in the film and Holmes shruggs of her apparent death without much adoo. I am generally against needless love plots, but in this case the amount of attention the relationship between the two deserved a better ending. Especially since the only motive for having her killed was plot convinience to give room for the new female lead, who's name I can't remember(as you can see this move worked brilliantly well). Adler was a part of Moriarty's organization so being torn between her love for Holmes and her obligations to Moriarty, would have offered potential plot points that were left unexploited.
The action scenes were fairly well done and were pleasent to watch. I liked Richie's style of first showing the fights in slow motion, describing Holmes's analysis of the likely outcome of the fight, before he shows it in high speed. The only scene I didn't really like was Holmes & Co escaping from Moriarty's weapons factory, where there are slow-mo shots of them being shot at by a wide variety of weapons, ranging from pistols and rifles to mortars and howitzers.
The one thing that started to bug me in this film was that it was set in 1891 and it featured a crap ton of weapons that were anachronistic. Most notable of being the Mauser C96 pistol, which wasn't produced untill 1896, a model 1895 Maxim machine gun, the Big Bertha-looking Howitzer which wasn't built untill 1914 and some type of submachine gun again not invented untill WWI. Another weapon really out of place was the Gatling Gun, a weapon that was obsolete in 1891 was being actively built at a modern weapons factory.
Another thing that really bugged me was Moriarty's grand plan, which was basically to take over a company manufacturing war materials and starting World War I to make a profit by selling supplies to all involved, basically by orchestrating basically a fictional version of the events that started the real WWI. There are few massive flaws in his plan. The greatest being that his main factory is Germany, so when Germany goes to war with France they are just going to let you ship vast quantities of war materials from Germany to France? I think not.
It isn't necessarily the most profitable plan to have a weapons and ammo factory in country that is in war, since governments in war basically tell you the price their are going to buy the materials from you, if you refuse they will just send some troops to take over the plant and let someone else run it. Also during war governments want cheap, functional weapons and equipment in bulk, with low profit margins. They are not interested expensive and complex weapon systems and even if they are, their faults are easily discovered by testing the weapon in actual combat conditions. The threat of war, that fuels an arms race, is the best time for the weapons industry, that is the period of time when governments go for the expensive fancy weapons system to get ahead in the arms race. Moriarty could make some profit, but most likely the countries involved would takeover his factories. Generally weapons industries are thightly controlled, especially in war time.
But I digress, overall the film was relatively good light action entertainment in the tradition of the James Bond films of my childhood. If you liked James Bond films by Roger Moore, then you will probably like this film.
torstai 29. joulukuuta 2011
Customer service and Social Media
This is something different after the string of movie reviews, we will be discussing customer service and the effects that Social Media has on it. The rise of Social Media has made providing a good customer service experience ever more vital. If your customer is an avid user of Twitter or Facebook and an owner of a smart phone, any failure or success can be reported to the world at large instantly. This can be a powerful marketing tool that gives potential customers real life reviews of your products and services by actual users. In my personal experience I would trust more in reviews made by users and customers like me, than on reviews made by journalists. One great example from my life is Deus Ex: Human Revolution, a game that I purchased based on a Lets Play video on Youtube by some random guy I have never met in real life. This is the first game in years that I bought that wasn't from the bargain bin and it solely happened due to me seeing someone else having a good time playing it.
On the downside negative experiences shared can have devastating consequence to your business. For example if I were to invest my money on something, the last place I would go to is Alexandria Bank, largely due to learning from customer experiences of other people. Based on customer comments I see Alexandria as a cut-throat sales organization that is looking only at their own bottom line. That doesn't sound like the type of people I want managing my investments. But these experiences are not what inspired me to write this. Alexandria isn't the worst example out there, they are a successful banking company largely due to them being cutthroat sales people. No there is an infinitely worse example how bad customer service and online PR can lay waste to your tech start-up.
Enter Ocean Marketing. You can read the whole story here. For any studying marketing this should be hilarious. http://venturebeat.com/2011/12/27/ocean-marketing-how-to-self-destruct-your-company-with-just-a-few-measly-emails/
Not only do these people completely fail at communicating with their customers, they also manage to piss of the founder of an influential gaming site, a rather important communication channel for a start-up that is trying to market a gaming peripheral. To add to compound their disaster nearly all of the emails are possessed by the sort of bad grammarz that are prime building material for internet memes. And guess what a bunch memes have been spawned out of this incident , here is one of them.
When your business has failed so badly that you are the unwitting father of several not so flattering internet memes, it is time to say goodbye to your career in e-commerce and find a new one. The amount of stupid shown by these people it is clear that a good career move would be to become a test subject for psychological experiments on human stupidity. Failing that other types of medical experiments would work as well. This way these people would contribute to the society at large in a more meaningful way than just being a cautionary tale for marketing textbooks and an internet meme.
On the downside negative experiences shared can have devastating consequence to your business. For example if I were to invest my money on something, the last place I would go to is Alexandria Bank, largely due to learning from customer experiences of other people. Based on customer comments I see Alexandria as a cut-throat sales organization that is looking only at their own bottom line. That doesn't sound like the type of people I want managing my investments. But these experiences are not what inspired me to write this. Alexandria isn't the worst example out there, they are a successful banking company largely due to them being cutthroat sales people. No there is an infinitely worse example how bad customer service and online PR can lay waste to your tech start-up.
Enter Ocean Marketing. You can read the whole story here. For any studying marketing this should be hilarious. http://venturebeat.com/2011/12/27/ocean-marketing-how-to-self-destruct-your-company-with-just-a-few-measly-emails/
Not only do these people completely fail at communicating with their customers, they also manage to piss of the founder of an influential gaming site, a rather important communication channel for a start-up that is trying to market a gaming peripheral. To add to compound their disaster nearly all of the emails are possessed by the sort of bad grammarz that are prime building material for internet memes. And guess what a bunch memes have been spawned out of this incident , here is one of them.
When your business has failed so badly that you are the unwitting father of several not so flattering internet memes, it is time to say goodbye to your career in e-commerce and find a new one. The amount of stupid shown by these people it is clear that a good career move would be to become a test subject for psychological experiments on human stupidity. Failing that other types of medical experiments would work as well. This way these people would contribute to the society at large in a more meaningful way than just being a cautionary tale for marketing textbooks and an internet meme.
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