Better left alone

Not surprisingly, no one is reading my little blog. Maybe talking about something new and fresh will bring in the readers. I know! The new Indiana Jones flick. People love Indiana Jones.
I saw the new Indiana Jones movie opening day and I've been wanting to write about my thoughts on the movie. First off, I had absolutely no hope for this movie. Why? Remember the Star Wars prequels? Yeah, those movies sucked. They had some good parts, but overall they were pretty awful. I figured that a new Indiana Jones movie would have the same pitfalls from before. After watching the movie I would have to say that I would watch The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull over any one of the prequels.
That said, I have to let you know that I did not care much for this new Indiana Jones adventure. It definitely wasn't the train wreck I thought it would be. I had Marina Trench expectations for this one. The movie was enjoyable as long as you didn't use your brain. There's an overwhelming neglect of the laws of physics in many scenes. On the other hand, the CGI wasn't as out of place as I originally thought it would be.
So what were my main problems with the movie? Two things:
First, everything felt shoehorned into the movie. It felt like the film's writers sat around one day talking about all the things that were awesome in the original movies and decided to write those things into the script. I imagine that the writing sessions went like this:
"You know what was awesome? When Indy jumped on that truck and threw all the Nazis off of it! We should have him do that three or four times! That would be awesome!"
"Remember when the Nazis opened the Ark and the wrath of God came out an melted their faces? That was awesome! Someone needs to get their face melted or exploded in this one, too!"
Writers love to talk in exclamation points turns out. Anyway, all the action scenes simply felt like a rehash of scenes from the original movies. Besides that, the action scenes were completely superfluous. Many of them have no effect on the plot at all. I suppose that this is forgivable since the action is probably the main attraction of an Indiana Jones movie. It seems they could have put a little more effort in explaining the couple of times Indy's party is suddenly attacked by native inhabitants. That really just goes back to my point though. Indiana Jones was attacked by indigenous peoples in the first three films so it must happen in this one.
On to my second major complaint. Shia Lebouf. I really, really, really hate this kid's acting. I'm making this judgment based on the small list of films I've seen the kid in. They are in short order Transformers, Disturbia, and a few minutes of Holes. I think I'll go into detail in another post on how those movies all worse off (amazing I know) due to his presence.
Indiana Jones the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is no better off. I'm just going to say I feel that Mr. Lebouf is miscast as a "tough," motorcycle riding, greaser kid. He has a couple of scenes that I would like to call "Anakin moments" that make his character grate on my nerves even more. An Anakin moment would be a scene in which an annoying character performs an amazing feat that is supposed to make said character more heroic. The best example would be from the Phantom Menace, specifically the scene where little Anakin accidentally takes a spacefighter into space, accidentally crashes onto the enemy's starship, and then accidentally destroys it. Force shmorce, that was awful. Now that I think about it, I could call this a Jar Jar Moment since Phantom Menace had that awful scene in which Jar Jar accidently destroys a fair number of the droid army. But Anakin gets the title since the greater crime was making Darth Vader suck.
Mr. Lebouf's defining Anakin moment would have to be the scene of him swinging through a jungle Tarzan like with a small army of monkeys at his side. If you haven't seen the movie, the scene is even more ridiculous than it sounds.
The writers also pitted me against this movie by bringing to life one of my major fears for the film concerning Shia Lebouf. Here's a spoiler alert for you. Seeing the ads I began to worry that Mutt (finally remembered Shia Lebouf's character's name) would turn out to be Indiana Jones' son. And man can I call them. This actually ties into my previous point of the movie trying to recreate things from the earlier films. It seemed to me that the relationship between Mutt and Indy was an attempt to recreate the father/son dynamic that Ford and Connery had in The Last Crusade.
The whole son situation left me wondering the whole movie how Indiana Jones could have such a wiener of a kid. I guess all the genes that make him so awesome are recessive. It reminded me of Kirk's wiener kid in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn. You know, the guy who wraps a sweater around his neck the first chance he gets. That and the perm. Also, Kim Bauer sucks. Apparently all Bauer awesomeness is carried on the Bauer Y chromosome. The point is, Indiana Jones should not be having wiener kids.
Although better than I expected, I still found this latest entry into the Indiana Jones saga more than a bit disappointing. I just hope they won't try to continue the franchise with Shia Lebouf stepping into Ford's shoes as the surprisingly tough archaeologist. But if George Lucas can make Darth Vader into a pansy I guess no character is safe.

If someone could explain...

Here's something that has perplexed me for awhile. The game Half Life 2. I've heard occasionally that it is the best video game of all time. I never touched the game until my roommate bought the Orange Box that includes Half Life 2 and its two sequel episodes. I started playing through Half Life 2, but somewhere along the line I got really bored with the game. If you ask me, it's just a derivative version of Doom with better graphics and less interesting monsters. Even the plot is basically the same: an interdimensional portal is opened and monsters come out to kill people.
Anyway, I've just always wondered what the appeal of the game is that garners it the title of best game ever. I guess you could mod it on a PC, so maybe that had something to do with it. All I know is that the hot re-bar throwing crossbow is the stupidest variation of a sniper rifle ever. High projectile speed is usually desirable, isn't it?

The rest of the dominoes will fall like a house of cards. Checkmate!

I'm already posting again. Why? Because today my job entails sitting behind a lighting console and making sure the lights don't go out for 12 or 13 hours. So I thought I'd talk about Futurama.
I remember when Futurama premiered on Fox. It was pretty highly anticipated where I lived. In my high school we had televised announcements. The day after the premiere the opening sequence featuring the Planet Express spaceship flying through New New York was on the announcements. I watched the show a few times before deciding it was a disappointment that did not live up to its predecessor The Simpsons. At this point you should realize that in high school I was kind of an idiot.
I'm a totally different idiot now. I started watching Futurama on Adult Swim four years ago and I had trouble figuring out why I didn't like the show when it began. It dawned on me that the first season was spent getting used to the atmosphere of the show. I've noticed the same thing in most animated shows. It seems to take about one season for the voice actors to really get into their characters. Futurama was still funny its first season, but it didn't feel as natural and polished as the later seasons. And it is these later seasons that, in my opinion, Futurama became a better show than the Simpsons ever has been and here's why: When Futurama aimed for sentimentality, it actually worked.
Simpsons occasionally pulled of some moments that I have no better way of describing as sweet. Futurama on the other hand has a couple of episodes that almost leave me in tears. tears never actually leave my tear ducts because my Dad's the type of guy who doesn't let his emotions come through like that and that trait passed on to me through either genetics or emulation on my part. That said, I'll lay out my policy on crying for men and women: Be a man, ya wuss. Almost crying is okay though.
This post has rambled on long enough so I'll just list two episodes that really get me on the edge of crying and revealing to the world how much of a wuss I am. The ending of the episode "Jurassic Bark" which follows Fry's attempt to clone his fossilized dog. The show bounces back and forth between contemporary New York and New York 1,000 years in the future. The flashback sequences show us Fry's relationship with Seymour while in the future, Bender becomes jealous of Fry's attention to his soon to be reanimated pet. Spoiler alert I guess. In the end of the episode, Fry finds out his dog lived a full life after he was frozen and decides not to clone the dog supposing Seymour had forgotten him. After that, we are treated to a time lapse of Seymour waiting the rest of his life in front of the pizza place Fry worked hoping his owner will return. It's probably one of the saddest things ever.
Another episode that really gets me is "The Luck of the Fryrish" which follows Fry in an attempt to reclaim his septuple leaf clover. The clover always gave Fry good luck. The episode plays out like the "Jurassic Bark" episode. Fry searches for the clover in future New York while flashbacks detail the many lucky things that happened to him in the past whenever he had the clover on his person. The flashbacks also explore the relationship between Fry and his older brother, Yancy, and their continual sibling rivalry. Despite being the older sibling, Yancy was constantly copying Fry. In the future, Fry finds out that Yancy apparently stole Fry's clover and identity after Fry's disappearance. Fry sets out to find his brother's grave in order to reclaim his lucky clover. I won't rehearse the ending for this one, but I will say it is probably one of the most heartwarming things I've ever seen on television.

Let's fill up the internet.

Here's another useless blog on the internet. I really want to do my part to clog up the inter-tubes. With this post the web is just that much fuller.
What's really awful is that I have absolutely no predetermined purpose for this blog. Some people blog about movies, other people blog about cute animals and in the process butcher the English language. That's not to say I won't be doing any butchering myself. There's no purpose to this blog. I'm just killing time at work. It's most likely that I'll only use this site a handful of times then lose track of it completely. Kind of like how I managed to lose my myspace account. Yep, I lost it. I used myspace maybe five times over the course of two years. After an undetermined amount of time without using myspace, I can't even find myself. I type in my name, a bunch of jerks show up and I'm not one of them.
People tell me I'm better off without myspace. Everyone's telling me that facebook is the way to go. I keep telling them that's stupid. It's the same thing. It's ketchup and catsup if you ask me. I once asked a girl on a date if she knew of a difference between ketchup and catsup. Turns out that's a strange question to ask someone on a date. Hey! I found a theme for my blog! Stream of consciousness blogging. I'll just write whatever stupid thought comes to mind.
That'll draw in the readers, I'm sure of it.