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patrickjcareyiii
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MythBusters: Blow Your Own Sail (2011)
Worst episode of an otherwise excellent series
This particular episode made me angry.
I love watching the mythbusters do incredible things especially in slow motion.
I am also an accomplished sailor, who understands the basic premise behind sailing upwind - you have the wind pushing the whole system generally backward - you have a keel reacting to that force by providing an equal and opposite reaction force.
It's one thing to investigate stupid claims like they did with the perpetual motion machine episodes... It's quite another to entertain freaking retarded claims and devote an entire episode to them.
All they needed to do was show a vector on screen to explain how sail power, upwind, ends up in a net forward force.
Instead they spend the whole episode making dumb people dumber.
This episode - to me - was right on par with ancient aliens.
What a waste of time to watch.
Resident Evil: Afterlife (2010)
The Matrix: Afterlife
The first thirty minutes are The Matrix (original), but only the best parts.
I LOVE the Resident Evil franchise. The first three movies were amazing, and the video games are pretty awesome too. This one is bad because it reaches too far. We're led to believe at the end of Extinction that there might be a colony in Alaska that's still functional... you'll have to get through the first 30 minutes of contrived CG before that even gets addressed. There is actually a scene where Milla Jovovich asks "do you know who I am?" This is not "The Matrix" and Milla/Alice is not "The One." And it goes downhill from there.
I mean seriously, who wrote this, Michael Bay? It's bad. It ruins me for the whole franchise. They start using the cliché'd Blair Witch Project self shot scenes in the middle - IN THE MIDDLE, AFTER YOU'VE already gotten angry about the Matrix ripoffs! This could have and should have been so much better.
The only nice thing I can say about this movie is that the CG at the end is as good or better than the CG at the beginning.
The Book of Eli (2010)
"The Book"
I am a huge fan of post-apocalyptic stories. This movie doesn't even come close to "The Stand" or "Swan Song." It is entirely a biblical fiction - for Christians - I assume Muslims would say the same of a movie based on selected passages from the Quran, as would Jews say the same based on selected passages from the Torah. This movie makes no pretense of indoctrinating disciples based on biblical text (i use that phrase as loosely as it applies) - it's a premise in the movie, "the book" for American audiences is obviously supposed to be born again christians.
I love post disaster fiction. I want to see ONE story that treats the end as it really would probably work out - human people coming together to solve really terrible problems - i haven't seen that since the late 80's.
in the meantime, if you aren't a sycophant, you should skip this movie.
Dreams with Sharp Teeth (2008)
Interesting, informative.. also funny!
I've only read a couple of Ellison's stories ("'Repent, Harlequin!' Said the Ticktockman", and "I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream", maybe one or two more that I don't remember). I wasn't interested in this documentary because I'm a fan. I have a family connection to an editor of sci-fi work from the period where Ellison was living in and publishing out of New York, and I was curious about whether that connection was mentioned at all. That is the sole, presumptuous, and completely narcissistic reason I watched this film.
It was, regardless of the lack of mention of my niece's grandfather, thoroughly entertaining and informative. Ellison has a knack for storytelling even when he's not telling stories. It's worth watching... for those two or three people wondering whether to watch it or not.
The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day (2009)
Not THAT bad
I expected much worse having read the reviews. It wasn't awesome but it wasn't terrible either.
I could have done without the mediocre filmography... what's with the old-timey 8mm special effects with some of the flashbacks? There are places in the film where it's totally obvious that this was intended for limited release or direct to disc. Closeups on characters faces where the original would have had a wide angle view instead are a dead giveaway that when this movie was filmed, no one knew whether or not it would make it to the big screen.
I also could have done without half the soundtrack. Some of the music was inserted where it was not necessary or useful to forwarding the story... in some places it took away from the storytelling.
It's also loaded with curses without clever usage... they don't even fit into the story, they were just superfluous and stupid. "We got prison ******... in the ***".
Not necessary and it removes quality from the final product.
All that said I did like this movie more than I thought I would. There are a few aspects that redeem it, in particular those places without background music, and without campy dialogue... where they just focused on the conversation and the story.
This could have been better. Overall, its flaws remind of the old adage 'too many cooks stirring the pot'. But I did like the movie despite it's problems.
Would I buy a copy and watch it over and over again, like I did the original? No. But I watched it on Netflix and it didn't disappoint me with regard to entertainment value. It's worth watching once or twice.