• After the Lucasfilm logo faded, the film opens with an computer-animated groundhog and I knew right away I had wasted my money. The film was rife with cutesie CG animals making stupid faces and noises. It’s Jar-Jar Binks all over again.
• Indiana Jones just happens to find himself in the middle of a nuclear testing site, just minutes before a bomb is tested. How does he survive? By locking himself inside of a refrigerator. While the entire town is melted down in the blast, somehow this single refrigerator is hurled thousands of feet — maybe even a few miles — and crashes down on rocks, breaking open. Indy exits the ‘fridge completely unharmed, just in time to observe the mushroom cloud in the distance. Come on!
• The mummified remains of an extra-terrestrial have a magnetic effect strong enough to pull lighting fixtures, but only when it’s convenient. Opening the crate containing the alien causes guns and swords and loose change to fly out of pockets and stick to the container, but only a few minutes later everyone’s guns work just fine. And why weren’t the lights already bending into the direction of the crate?
• The accents are all over the place. Cate Blanchett flip-flops between a British accent and something from a Boris and Natasha cartoon. The rest of the bad guys waver between bad, fake Russian accents and bad, fake German accents. And the double-crossing good/bad guy can’t decide if he’s English or Australian.
• And speaking of accents, we’re obviously in the McCarthy era, since Indiana Jones is being treated as a possible communist defector, but the actual communists — complete with ridiculous accents — have no problem socializing inconspicuously at the diner, or just wandering around town.
• The green-screen is painfully obvious through most of the film. Scenes occurring in large, open spaces have the entire cast bunched into small spaces. While it’s bad all the way through, the worst is at the end when the Mayan pyramids crumble and swirl in a vortex, with huge debris floating past Indiana Jones, but not so much as a speck of dust manages to hit him.
• The beards are crazy. After they leave civilization, Harrison Ford goes from clean-shaven to five-o’clock-shadow, to two-day growth, back to five-o’clock shadow, then to three-day growth, then down to next-day hangover stubble. Meanwhile, Shia LeBouf grows a dirty upper lip for five minutes and then spends the remainder of the film with a ridiculous stubble shaped like a Fu Manchu.
• The “big damn ants” managed to build a ladder out of themselves in order to reach Cate Blanchett who is hanging from a tree above them.
• After driving an amphibious car off a cliff, the crew lands safely below in a river. That’s might have been fine, but then they pilot the floating car over not one, not two, but three waterfalls of increasing size. The car incurs no damage and all five passengers emerge each time, completely unscathed — some of them still in the car!
• The punching sound effects get really old. It’s one thing to hear that loud meat-packing sound when you’re watching a close-up of a guy taking a hit. But when Indy is out fighting on the hood of a truck and the camera is following the passengers inside of the truck, the blatant punching sound effects are just too much.
• How long have the natives been hiding in the trees and in the ceiling, and basically everywhere that people don’t normally go? When do they eat? Go to the bathroom? Get exercise? What the fuck was that all about?

When I think of the great wastes of potential in history, tons of examples come to mind. I think of all the expensive, high-powered, imported sports cars that will never be pushed over 55 miles per hour because they’re purchased by bald men in their 50s. I think of the Betamax video players that collected dust while VHS was tops for two decades. I think of the last 50 years of Chicago Cubs baseball.

None of those scratches the surface of the atrocity that is 88 Minutes. Never mind the low-hanging fruit of a big name like Al Pacino, this movie was actually ripe with talented supporting actors who have been impressive behind the stories in many other films.

But just like a wealth of talent isn’t enough to make the Detroit Lions a good team, neither is it enough on its own to make 88 Minutes a good movie.

I have never seen such horrible scene-cutting and forced dialog in such a high-budget film. Unlike many Hollywood let-downs, 88 Minutes is dead right from the start, and then is spends the ensuing hour-and-a-half violently twitching and convulsing on the floor, heaving and bleeding out slowly but never surely.

Given the choice between watching this film or Battlefield Earth, I’d have to choose Battlefield Earth. Okay, that’s not true — I’d actually just kill myself. But I’d give serious consideration to Battlefield Earth before I pulled the trigger.

In fact… I was considering going into detail about all the elements that make this film such a bad movie, but I think I’m actually managing to successfully repress those memories. Besides… what fool would willingly relive them?

Expelled has been exposed. Ben Stein’s godawful tragedy of a mockumentary has been revealed for the blubbering nonsense it really is: lying theist propaganda. The emperor has no clothes, Ben.

The strange thing is, all the awful reviews it is receiving actually make me want to have a look at this nonsense. Maybe it’s morbid curiosity. After all, I enjoy Bruce Campbell movies, too.

This weekend I watched Street Kings. After seeing the commercials, I expected it to suck. Let’s face it; you put Keanu Reeves and Forrest Whitaker into any movie, and you’re pretty much asking for a lousy movie. But then fill in the cast with bit parts played by Hugh Laurie and Cedric The Entertainer, and a handful of no-name gangster rappers, and I’m starting to believe you’re just trying to fulfill P.T. Barnum’s prophecy about the birth rate of suckers.

Fortunately it didn’t full-out suck, so I suppose you could say I was pleasantly surprised. You know, in that same way that you’re pleasantly surprised to find out that the burning sensation when you pee is an STD, but it’s treatable with a shot.

Right. So Keanu Reeves plays the role of maverick-risk-taker-with-no-personality. No surprise. If you’ve seen Point Break, Speed, Johnny Mnemonic, Chain Reaction, The Matrix, or Constantine, then you know what I’m talking about. This time, however, the writer and director weren’t sure that we would get the point, so they made a repeated effort of actually spelling it out to the viewer. “Tom, you’re the only guy crazy enough to do it. You’re like a guided missile.”

There were a few interesting plot turns, a handful of quotable one-liners, and some uniquely intense action scenes that really made the audience feel the bones breaking, and those are the details that kept this movie from being a total suck-fest.

The majority of the film is completely forgettable, but there is one moment I’ll always remember. It’s at the end of the movie, where Keanu is playing talentless-actor-trying-to-look-betrayed, and Forest Whitaker is playing the part of overweight-guy-who-exaggerates-every-body-movement, and I’m about ready to go watch the paint dry in the lobby when I look up and make a startling realization…

Forest Whitaker is Mr Potatohead.

I am growing more and more convinced that the CSI franchise is the worst thing to happen to television since the A-Team. Why do people swallow this steaming load of horse excrement?

I’ve mocked the lousy acting and cheesy one-liners of CSI:Miami for quite some time. And I’ve always thought it was funny how productive the CSI crew manages to be in a city as corrupt and useless as Las Vegas. But the true gravity finally hit me during last night’s episode of CSI:NY.

Never mind the bad dialog and the overly dramatic acting gestures before key lines (like the coroner, who violently disassembles his eyeglasses before alerting the investigators to the cause of death). And I’m going to ignore the “cosplay dance club”, where people were just a little too normal, danced a little too well, and there was no Hello Kitty, or Han Solo, or Pink Power Ranger. And I’m even willing to overlook the fact that the NYPD crime lab — a small division of a taxpayer-funded public service — has a three-panel CISCO videoconferencing room.

World’s greatest hacker
The suspect is a computer super-hacker who is also a contract killer, and she drums up business by running a packet-sniffing spider that grabs key words and phrases from emails. The logistics of such a technological feat are mind-blowing at the ISP-level, yet nobody seems bothered by the crime lab’s inability to trace any of this.

They are, however, quite impressed by her ability to create and use an untraceable email address! And then, in spite of the seeming impossibility of creating an untraceable email address, the very next scene shows the lead investigator ordering a CSI to create six of these impossible to trace email accounts!

A really keen sense of smell
Even with their technical ability to deduce mind-blowing things from a vial of trace chemicals, the biggest break comes from a hunch about a gun being hidden in a speaker at a public speaking event.

So how do they find the hidden weapon? With a gun-sniffing dog! Are you kidding me? I’ve heard of suspension of disbelief, but are we seriously supposed to buy this crap? Dog’s can’t sniff for guns!

Who’s in charge of whom?
And now, with the evidence and the motive established through extended use of Deus ex Machina, the forensics lab (after all, that’s what CSI is) sets up a sting operation. The forensics lab! And the lead forensic investigator is barking orders at uniformed cops, undercover cops, a SWAT team, and even FBI agents!

Worse than Charlie’s Angels

Now, with the sting in action, the suspect catches on and runs away (in four-inch stilleto heels!) and not a single one of the officers surrounding the area is able to catch her.

This isn’t a problem, though, because the lead investigato, who is orchestrating the operation from atop a building while watching through binoculars, manages to get down to the ground and is the only person who is able to catch up to the suspect, who has deftly stripped off her outer garments to foil the description they’re looking for.

And now, while outrunning everyone in four-inch heels and stretch pants, she reaches into the back of her pants and pulls out an enormous gun, complete with silencer attached. Where the hell was that hiding? And worse, when she fires it, it makes gunshot sounds, not silencer sounds.

It’s all a bunch of crap
Week after week, all of these shows depict city police crime labs using technology that is more advanced than NASA to create holographic reconstructed faces. They use computers more impressive than the fiction in Minority Report, capable of doing face-recognition from a database of millions of people in mere seconds.

The characters know everything. You casually mention a rare, complex chemical and they’ll smugly ask you, “oh, you mean that rare, untraceable nucleotide used by midget amputee sherpas to regulate the glucose level in their yak milk at high altitudes?”

The CSI franchise takes the ridiculousness of A-Team, mixes in the foolish sagacity of MacGuyver, adds the writing talent of Star Trek, shoves it all into the south end of a north-bound cow, and then craps it out all over your television screen.

That would have been a good name for this movie, echoing perhaps the most quotable line of dialog from the film. But to be honest, it wouldn’t have mattered what the title was — you could call it “Milk and Cereal” and it would have still been an awesome move.

Based on the trailers, I expected a more mature attempt at Blair Witch filmmaking, with something of a sci-fi suspense twist. In a way, I was right, but also in a way I was completely wrong.

This movie is like nothing you have ever seen before. It defies all genres. I walked out of the theater amid a sea of voices muttering things like “wow. what did we just watch?” This is film history. In a time when everything coming from Hollywood is just a rehash of something else Hollywood gave us years ago, Cloverfield is the birth of something truly unique.

The true genius of the film is in its synergy of iconic elements from the history of handheld video cameras, as well as a few what-ifs, imagining how something might have looked if it had been seen by a camera. It’s Blair Witch meets America’s Funniest Home Videos, meets Godzilla, meets 9/11 documentary, meets the Zapruder film, meets Titanic, meets King Kong.

Basically, it’s like everything you’ve ever seen before, yet this film is like nothing you have ever seen before.

I went to the midnight showing of I Am Legend on opening night and loved it. So much so, that I went and saw it again Saturday at the IMAX theater.

Will Smith has been one of the hottest actors in Hollywood lately, with everything he touches turning to gold, and there is no better actor in all of Hollywood to play the role of Robert Neville.

Will Smith is the only actor I can think of who has the ability to give heart-wrenching sincerity (Ali, The Pursuit of Happyness) while also possessing the ability to be the only actor on the screen for large portion of the film (Men In Black, I Robot).

The director deserves credit as well, for providing the angles and cuts that tell the story, but the truth is that Will Smith pulled off a last-man-on-earth portrayal that makes Tom Hanks in Castaway look like the amateur hack actor I think he is. If it weren’t for the SFX creatures in the movie, I think Smith would be a shoe in for an Oscar.

It was obvious to me that he put serious work into understanding the mind of a person who has been alone and looking over his shoulder for three years. He talks to mannequins, keeps detailed journals, and is meticulous about where every little thing belongs, even down to moving his coffee cup and glass of orange juice into their expected places.

In his most impressive scene, he gets no help from the cameramen, lighting crew, or director, and has to carry out the implicit action while selling the emotion using only his face… and he does it triumphantly. In a closeup shot with only his face, Smith manages to tell the audience every sad and painful thing he’s doing off screen, while revealing the torturous consequences it has on him.

Once you’ve seen it, you’ll know exactly what scene I’m referring to. Both times I’ve watched it, that audience let out a sigh of anguish at the end of the scene. Marvelous.

Wow, I’m noticing a follow-your-dreams theme in my writing today.

I picked up this little book last night called It’s Not How Good You Are, It’s How Good You Want To Be, by Paul Arden, and read the entire thing on my train ride home.

Arden instructs readers to aim high, set lofty goals, and accept nothing less. He says to be who you want to be, instead of who you are: talk big, and make it happen. He talks about how to please your clients and earn their trust. Most importantly, he encourages you to take responsibility for yourself, and constantly push forward, rather than becoming complacent and settling for less than what you truly want.

The book is filled with zen-like truth that applies to today’s world. It’s straight to the point, and brutally honest. Some of the advice is obviously related to advertising and creative endeavors, but the wisdom in this book is universal. I’ll read this again and again.

Have you ever sat and watched two people argue? You know, one of those really ignorant arguments where neither side is listening to what the other says? I’m talking about those really heated arguments, where a lot of things get said in really creative ways with a lot of beautifully poetic language but it’s all wasted on someone else who’s just doing the same thing.

Sure, when you’re in the argument, you’re totally in favor of taking up sides and fighting to the teeth for what you believe in… but if you’re not a part of that argument — if you’re just a spectator — it gets really boring, really quickly.

That’s how I felt about Lions For Lambs. I watched for 88 minutes as two sides of an argument were bantered back and forth, dishing out the same rhetoric I can get on CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News. Hell, next year is election year, I can get this same script on every channel while Hillary and Rudy drone on and on with each other, talking all night but never saying anything.

There wasn’t even a plot. It’s just a pair of contrived situations designed to facilitate the argument, spliced together, with occasional war footage mixed in just to give the audience some token violence for buying their tickets.

Adding to this heaping helping of steaming film excrement is the low quality directing and producing work. A major portion of the movie centers around dialog between Tom Cruise and Meryl Streep, but it’s obvious that the two were never in the same room together during the making of the movie! Both are acting to the camera, and they’re never in the same shot together except for a few short seconds.

Also, speaking of cheap film editing, every helicopter scene is so blatantly computer generated that I, as one of the 9 audience members in attendance at this suck-fest, was offended at the film maker’s low standards. But why should I be surprised? The film maker in question is also the third star of the film: Robert Redford. I can’t help thinking that the making of a movie was only a formality, nothing more than a tedious detail in getting toward his real goal of putting his face on a big screen and whining about politics to people who payed $10 in hopes of being entertained.

Don’t waste your money.

I like data mining. I like numbers. I like indicators. I didn’t realize it, but I like economics.

Freakonomics is a look at some of the issues of the real world through the eyes of an economist. Morality is irrelevant. Common wisdom is useless. All that matters is data.

The authors find some interesting answers buried in data. They find evidence that a child is significantly safer in a house with a gun than in a house with a swimming pool. They give valuable insight into why a child’s name matters. They also reveal data which shows that legalized abortion has been the single most effective thing we’ve done to lower crime in America.

In addition to the stunning revelation about the very positive effects of legallized abortion, I was also quite impressed with the data analysis showing which factors matter regarding the raising of a child and which don’t. They reveal that having a full-time, stay-at-home mother made almost no difference, whereas the age when the mother had her first child make a huge difference — one that cannot be corrected for later. Likewise, frequent visits to museums had no relation to a child’s education, whereas parent involvement in PTA did. Also interesting was the data which showed that urban children generally test higher than suburban and rural children.

When you look at life through the realistic eyes of an economist, rather than through the filters of morals and common wisdom, you begin to see a very different world. I, like many people I know, always thought that having a full-time parent, or frequent visits to museums were important to a child’s development, but now I see that those beliefs are quite plainly wrong, and that those things are irrelevant. Far more important are the education of the child’s parents, their involvement in PTA, and the age at which the mother had her first child.

Moreover, it seemed clear that these things are not causes, but rather indicators of the real cause: breeding. In fact, on the whole, it seems that there is very little you can do for your child once it is born. The best chances of raising a smart child seems to come from your choice of mate more than anything else.