Knight and Day (Red)

If you're wondering what (red) means, I'm trying to tell you not to watch this movie. If you need a better explantation click here.

When I go to see a summer action movie with Tom Cruise in it I have certain expectations. One of them is action. The other one is not a bunch of jokes.

And yes I did see the trailer before I saw this movie and yes there are a bunch of jokes in the trailer but I expected a good balance of action and comedy. There was no balance. It was a fantastic disappointment.

This is the structure of this movie.

Each scene started out with some witty banter. They would attempt some jokes, they would try and create some chemistry, the bad guys would come and they would find themselves in an impossible situation from which there is no foreseeable escape. Then Cameran Diaz would get drugged and pass out. The screen would go black and next thing you know they are out of peril and on to the next scene.

Repeat this five or six times and you have the entire movie.

There are two kinds of endings in classically told stories. The protagonist gets the object of desire or they don’t. In summer action movies starring Tom Cruise he always gets what he wants by the end. It’s always a happy ending. We don’t go see these kind of movies cause there is a chance he might fail. We go to see it to see how he does it.

That’s the part of the movie that gets skipped over in Knight and Day.

Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz are surrounded by gunman and there is no possible way for them to escape. Tom randomly druggs Diaz and she passes out. The next scene shows that they some how escaped from the bad guys but we have no idea how. Instead we are left with the thought, “it would have been cool to see how they got out of that impossible situation but I guess I’ll just have to be satisfied with these not-as-clever-as-they-think conversations they are having.”

They are being shot at by an enemy aircraft so they have to run along the beach until they get to the hidden helicopter so they can shoot down the bad guys and run away. Except that Cameron Diaz gets drugged before we can see any of the really cool stuff.

It’s too bad one of the few original stories of the summer is so crappy. There is nothing in this movie worth watching.

The Last Airbender (Yellow)

If you're wondering what the (yellow) thing is all about click here.

The Last Airbender is a bad movie but not so bad that you should never watch it. Just wait for it to come out on DVD.

The boring parts are plentiful. The only parts of the movie I enjoyed were the element bending parts but they can be pretty spaced out. And the space between is filled up with characters talking about things we already knew.

This is the perfect movie to go to if you have a small bladder. You can go to the bathroom multiple times without having to pause the movie; I say pause because you should rent this movie not watch it in the theater. The characters are always talking about what they are doing but they never change what they are doing so they are always talking about the same thing. Over and over.

The acting in this movie is no good. I don’t know anything about acting and I can still tell it’s no good. It looked like the actors were struggling to remember their lines and where their marks were.

But it’s not like they had much to work with. There is zero character development. They try to create an arch for the Avatar but it doesn’t work. They try to create a love story in the final act but it doesn’t work.

The only thing that comes close to working is the fire prince's story but even though that was the strongest character and plot of the movie it still doesn’t work.

The only reason to watch this movie is for the cool fight scenes. And that’s just because they look cool. Don’t spend too much time thinking about why they have to break dance to use their bending powers. If you do you will ruin the only good part of the movie.

This movie only got 8% on Rotten Tomatoes. There is no way this is an 8% movie. It is not the worst movie I have seen this year (that goes to A-Team… so far). I think the main reason this movie got such a bum rap is because everybody likes to hate on M. Knight Shyamalan. This movie is way better then his last few attempts at film making. I'd say it's 30% or 40%.

I enjoyed it enough to want them to make the sequels just so I can see the cancer patient learn to bend more things. Ya, I know, I could just watch the TV show but anime scares me. Their eye’s are way so big and hair is long and pointed in weird directions, constantly wind tousled. Terrifying.

Also, I guess the thing the Avatar fly's around on is cool looking. It's like a cross between the luck dragon from The Never Ending Story and a beaver.

The Saga of Seven Suns, Book 1: Hidden Empire (Yellow) by Kevin J. Anderson

If you are wondering about what that (Yellow) means then click here. I haven't used it for a book review yet but the traffic light system can be applied to anything. My breakfast of Honeycombs this morning was (Green)

So the only reason I bought this book is because it is the first book in a series of seven and it’s spine is bright orange. I saw half a row of bright orange books and decided to stop and check them out. Turns out it was a science fiction series written by Kevin J. Anderson.

Before this book I hadn’t read a Kevin J. Anderson book since I was a kid. It was the Jedi Academy Trilogy and the only thing I remember about it is that I thought it was awesome. I decided I could trust him enough to read the first book in the series. Plus, I was intrigued by the plot description on the back.

Turns out the book was a huge disappointment.

There are some cool things about this book but there are way more bad things.

First bad thing: way too many characters.

For a story like this a lot of characters is necessary. You have humans and these alien allies called Ildiran’s so naturally you will need some characters from each group. But then the humans get even broken down into even smaller groups. The members of the Hansa organization who are kind of bad guys but only to certain people, the Roamers who are a group of space MacGivers who can survive any environment, and the people of Theron who have very interesting skills involving trees. I’ll get more into these people later.

Each of these groups are represented by multiple characters and it seems like none of the characters are more important then the next. In other words, there is no protagonist.

It also makes it hard to even follow the characters, especially the alien ones. Some crazy thing will happen to the alien leader but then you won’t hear from him for a whole bunch of chapters so that by the time you do get back to him you’ve forgotten his whole story line and he becomes less important.

The structure of the book is way off. Too many characters spread out too far. Because there are so many characters it takes forever to get their individual reaction to these awesome event s that are happening. Example:

The book is about an alien race’s reaction to accidental genocide. The aliens are called the hydrogues and they live inside gas giants all over the galaxy. The Hansa accidently destroy a bunch of hydrogues in an experiment to turn a gas giant into a new sun (in the Hansa’s defense no one knew the hydrogues existed).

The accidental genocide happens about twenty or so pages into the book. The hydrogues don’t start attacking people for another 150 pages. That’s a 150 pages of being introduced to a dozen or so new characters.

It doesn’t work.

I’m fine with soft science fiction but there were some things here that even I couldn’t look over. There were people breathing the “air” while mining hydrogen. There is no breathable air in gas giants.

There are other things like this that take away the readers ability to surrender disbelief. I could go into more detail but I don’t want to ruin things for you incase you do decide to read this.

But as lame as some things are in this book there are somethings that I thought were cool.

The space MacGivers, the Roamers, were interesting. Just the way they were able to build something out of nothing was interesting. Too bad the Roamer characters that are featured are way boring and make predictable choices.

The human’s on the planet Theron are also cool. Certain groups on this planet have the unique ability to talk to The World Forrest. They can actually talk to trees. It makes their skin turn green. Not only can they talk to trees but as they spread the trees to other worlds they, who call themselves Green Priest, can talk to each other and relay messages. It a cool idea that adds some uniqueness to this universe.

The last cool thing is these weird insect like robots that are all over the place. There are thousands of them all over but no one knows where they came from. The alien race who built them is long gone. As early humans started exploring the universe they found these robots on random planets. They are mysterious and some people don’t trust them. Their story is interesting and to be honest it’s the only reason I started reading the next book.

Extreem caution when reading this book. It’s not as good as you think but there are good lessons here for you to learn from if you are looking to write your own science fiction book someday.

For starters, Orbit will publish crappy science fiction.

Mystery Beard

I didn’t work for a whole week. I knew I had to take advantage of the situation and get to the bottom of a mystery that has been troubling me for a while now. Is my beard coming in grey?

The trouble is I can’t have facial hair at work. I work in an oil refinery where I need to be able to put on a respirator in case a deadly cloud of noxious gas wants to kill me. The respirator won’t be able to seal to my face if there’s hair in the way. You can’t even get into the refinery if you have facial hair (kind of… but that’s another story).

At most I’ve been able to go three or fourish days before I need to shave. One day on one of these forth days I noticed something disturbing. My hair was an abnormal color. It had been so long since I had grown out my facial hair that I couldn’t remember if it had always been this blond or if I was starting to go grey in the beard. I desperately needed to find out the truth.

A week off from work would provide me with facial hair long enough to get the answer I needed. These are the results.

I wasn’t able to ask a lot of people but my parents say it’s blond. I couldn’t tell if my mom was horrified or excited at the possibility that it was grey. My uncle Jay Dee says it’s blond.

What do you guys think?

The A-Team (Red)

Find out why (Red) means you should see this movie. Click here.

Drop dead A-Team.

You suck.

There are zero relatable characters. There’s an old guy, a womanizer, a BA who isn’t BA, and a crazy dude who is more annoying then anything. Just horrible all around.

The first part of the movie shows how the A-Team comes together. Kind of. Mostly they come together because they were the only Rangers in Mexico. One of them was dishonorably discharged and the other one was found in the psychiatric ward.

Despite the fact that two of them aren’t even Rangers anymore they all go over to Iraq and fight in the army and what not. They do “cool” things and make “witty” comments. To bad the cool things aren’t as cool as they think they are and the witty comments just make them look like idiots. They spend a lot of time laughing at nothing and slapping each others backs.

It’s all about the plan. They always talk about making a plan to get the job done. What they don’t tell you is that they have to come up with the most complicated plan they can think of. It’s so complicated it makes them look stupid.

You will constantly be asking yourself, “Why did they do that?”

The plot doesn’t make sense. The bad guys are the CIA who are trying to steel templates so they can print their own money. What? Feel free to explain to me why a government intelligence agency needs to steel templates to print their own money.

B.A. was a horrible character and deserves special mention. In this action flick they tried to weave in this lame subplot where B.A. randomly decides that he doesn’t want to kill anyone. I guess it’s supposed to be a big deal. He won’t even shave a mohawk because if symbolized how bad he really was. When he finally does shave the mohawk (was there any doubt he would?) the reveal is supposed to be cool but it isn’t. It’s loud and confusing.

Which is what most of the movie is.

I didn’t think this was going to be an awesome movie but I didn't think it would be this bad. When I saw the trailer I was excited to see the tank flying through the air. I thought, “Hey that’s clever. I bet they have other clever action sequences.” They didn’t. That tank part is the only good part of the whole movie and it’s in ever trailer.

Nothing in this movie isn’t something you couldn’t have come up with on your own after thinking about it for a couple minutes. It wouldn’t surprise me if this script was written over one weekend.

And don’t get me started on the container ship where’s-the-ball game they try for the climax.

Good grief.

The Karate Kid (Green)

It's the first (Green) movie of the year. Find out what it means here.

No more AC/DC on movie soundtracks. Okay? You got that? It’s been done to death and now whenever I hear them it just makes me mad. So it needs to stop.

Plus, it’s The Karate Kid. Why would you play AC/DC on The Karate Kid?

But other then that this was a solid movie.

I called it before the movie. I knew they were going to climb a mountain. They always climb a mountain in these types of movies. Apparently the best way to train for anything is to climb a mountain. And they don't just climb a mountain they climb to the highest part of the mountain. The most scenic part. It always looks fake.

Except for in this movie. In this movie they do all of that but it's looks real because in China they have a mountain that has a staircase that goes all the way to the top. You can't call fowl on that because that's what the characters really would do. That's making conventions work for you.

It’s over two hours long but it doesn’t feel it at all. I was never bored or checking the clock. Going into the movie I didn’t have high hopes for this rehash but I came out surprised by how much I enjoyed it.

There are two things that could have made this movie better. Get rid of AC/DC (when you watch it you’ll think I’m being picky because they only use one AC/DC song and they only use it once) and the other is to not call it The Karate Kid.

I didn’t catch on to this until two days ago so it might be old hat for you but why the heck is the KARATE kid learning KUNG FU? They should have called it The Kung Fu Kid. It’s not like it had any ties to the old movie. None of the characters had the same name and the setting is way different. It’s annoying how much studios depend on built in audiences.

I’m glad that white kid at the beginning didn’t become a main character. It would have been stupid to be surrounded by chinese people and not have any of them as friends of the protagonist. Remember on Tokyo Drift. That took place in Japan but none of the good guys were Japanese. That hick protagonist made friends with every one but the indigenous people and it looked really fake.

Jackie Chan was cool in this movie. It’s the one role where it looks natural for him to be there. His accent finally fits in. There’s no blooper reel at the end to stick around for.

Jaden Smith did fine as the lead. He’s well on his way to following in his father’s foot steps. He even does a song for the movie. And he does the song with Justine Bieber.

It's a fun movie. The action was intense. The fight scene between Jackie Chan and the gang of kids was funny. I'm surprised he would show such restraint. Those twerps would have felt my wrath if they had done that to me and if I knew karate-I mean kung fu.

The fights were hardcore. They were doing flips and all that jazz. I thought because they were twelve year old kids it would be lame but they impressed me. They had cool moves.

One final thing, if you hate movies theaters that are too hot go see whatever movie is playing in theater 8 at South Edmonton Common. The air was cool and it circulated well. Seriously, you could have flown a kite in there.

I Do Like Some Movies

Click here to see how my traffic light rating system works.

Last week I had several people ask me if I liked any movies. I love to talk about movies but there are so many bad movies out there that it seems like I hate most movies. A while ago I made a list of a bunch of movies and gave them a traffic light rating. You’ll notice that there are some (green) movies on this list.

Beowulf (Red)

Black Hawk Down (Yellow)

Ghostbusters (Green)

Ghostbusters II (Green)

Gymkata (Gred)

Ratatouille (Green)

Get Smart (Green)

Hellboy 2 (Green)

Hot Fuzz (Yellow)

Iron Man (Green)

Mega Shark Vs. Giant Octopus (Gred)

Poseidon (Yellow)

Rescue Dawn (Green)

Serenity (Green)

Speed Racer (Yellow)

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Green)

The Dark Knight (Yellow)

The Incredible Hulk (Red)

The Marine (Gred)

The Orphanage (Green)

The Perfect Storm (Yellow)

The Prestige (Green)

The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift (Green)

Valkyrie (Green)

Wall-e (Green)

Up (Green)

Star Trek (Green)

Fast and Furious (Red)

Terminator: Salvation (Red)

Transformers 2 (Red)

Slumdog Millionaire (Green)

One Week (Red)

Twilight (I like to pretend it doesn’t exist or that I watched it)

Knowing (Red)

Defiance (Red)

Taken (Green)

Paul Blart: Mall Cop (Red)

Fan Boys (Red)

Bed Time Stories (Green)

Seven Pounds (Red)

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (Red)

Yes Man (Red)

Day the Earth Stood Still (Red)

Quantum of Solace (Yellow)

The Notebook (Green)

12 rounds (Red but very close to being Gred)

V for Vendetta (Red)

The Fast and the Furious (Yellow)

The Happening (Red)

2 Fast 2 Furious (Red)

Happy Gilmore (Green)

Billy Madison (Green)

If anyone wants an explanation for any of the color ratings I gave just put it in the comments and I'll write up a review for it.

Chortle, Girth, and Sunday Naps

I blame my Sunday nap for this post. It’s two in the morning and I’m bored. So I decided to write on m blog for some reason. Here are some random facts about my blog’s title.

If you google “chortle girth” my blog is the first thing that comes up. There are only 16,000 words. I guess not many people know how cool those words are together.

If you google “chortle” my blog is on page 25 and there are 1,020,000 results.

If you google “girth” 74 pages of results come up but my blog isn’t on any of them. But that might be a good thing because turns out “girth” is associated with a lot of scandalous websites.

There are no results for youtubing “Chortle Girth”

When you youtube “chortle” the first video is some British dude doing stand up but the video and sound sucks so I didn’t even finish watching it.

Youtubing “Girth” brings up more scandalous things. It’s too bad Youtube and Google are sullying such a fantastic word.

www.dictionary.com is a great way to interrupt the silence in the schools computer lab (I’ll tell you some awesome stories later). When you look up a word a voice will pronounce the word for you. Some times it’s a man and sometimes it’s a woman. And sometimes it’s an effeminate man.

Chortle is a woman’s voice.

Girth is a woman’s voice as well.

Chortle is a verb that means, “to chuckle gleefully.”

Girth is a noun that means, “circumference.”

If your looking up words on www.dictionary.com to see which voice is used then it’s time for bed. Good night.

The Greatest Website Ever Made

http://edmonton.ab.hotwings.ca/

It’s not just a chicken wing website. It’s the best chicken wing website.

If you are ever in the mood to go out for wings all you have to do is check this website and it will tell you what day of the week eatery’s have their wing night on. Pure deliciousness.

It even ranks them from cheapest to most expensive. I’m looking at it as I write this (on a Wednesday) and it looks like I can get 10 cents at a place called Brooklyn’s Lounge. When I click on the restaurant I can can see what kind of flavors they offer, a link to the map so I can find it, what kind of amenities this joint has, and it has reviews on the quality of the chicken wing eating experience.

That’s probably the best thing about this website. You can go out for 10 cent wings but if they suck then what’s the point, right? It’s good to get some feedback from someone who has already tried them out.

The only draw back to this site is that there aren’t enough reviews on it. It says that Brewsters near my house has the third best wings in the city. I was excited because it’s right down the road. Unfortunately, they aren’t that great. I’ve had tons of wings better then theirs.

So that means everyone who reads this has to go out for wings once a week for the rest of their lives and they can’t go to the same place twice until you’ve gone to them all. Then you have to review every meal. That way I’ll have a better idea of where to go.

So far my recommendation is Fargo’s on the East end of the city by Capilano Mall.

All this chicken wing talk is making me hungry.

Disco Ball or Bust

This is the wristband from the second Our Lady Peace concert they played a month ago. Yes you are correct. I have worn this on my wrist for over a month. The concert was on May 8.

I went with all my siblings. We had a competition to see who could wear their wrist band the longest without it breaking. Almost everyone was gone by the next day. By the end of the weekend it was down to two people. It was just Derek and I left.

And that’s the way it’s been for a month.

It was awkward at first. People kept asking me what was up with it. People at church looked worried because it says “Drinking age verified” on it. But after a week or two everyone in all my social circles were up to speed on my ambitions to win the contest.

But what’s the prize?

Last week or so Derek stumbled upon the prize for the winner. My brother found a disco ball in the ditch. And yes, that is the coolest sentence I have ever typed. It was decided that the disco ball would be the prize for whoever was the last man with the wrist band on.

My wristband is looking weak. The white parts are no longer white. Every time I take my coveralls off at work it looses a little more strength. The end is near. I only need to last a little bit longer.

Right now the wrist band is messing with my mind. I have to force myself from not ripping it off. It’s made out of paper! How can I resist its taunts?

The other day I thought I heard it talking to me. It's soaked up so much chemicals and such from work it’s either turned into its own life form or my brain is slowly being poisoned.

Whatever. It doesn’t matter.

What matters is that I win that disco ball.