Sex and the City 2 - Zowie!

Interesting review of Sex and the City 2:

SATC2 takes everything that I hold dear as a woman and as a human—working hard, contributing to society, not being an entitled cunt like it's my job—and rapes it to death with a stiletto that costs more than my car."

Burkas and Birkins

Making Fun of Michael Moore vs Actually Fixing Our Problems

When I'm tired of playing fetch with the dog, I'll begin to pretend I've thrown the ball. You know - fake a hard toss to the other room, then sit back and chuckle as the dog searches high and low for the missing orb.

Good times.

In listening to reviews of Michael Moore's new movie, Capitalism: A Love Story, I'm getting the idea that most reviewers are picking apart Moore's film rather than debating the key points he's trying to make on-screen. For example:

"The explosive Capitalism: A Love Story is Moore's call to arms against the robber barons who shamelessly empty our pockets while we do nothing about it. Why? Because we want to get in the pants of the upper one percent and rub up against expensive stuff just like they do. Some love story!" - Peter Travers, Rolling Stone

"Surely what spun out of control because of government indulgence and indolence needs to be repaired by government regulation and ingenuity. Squatting in your repossessed home won't get the trillions back. In "Capitalism: A Love Story," Moore has cogently and passionately diagnosed the disease. But for a cure, instead of emergency surgery, he prescribes Happy Meals." - Richard Corliss, writing at money.cnn.com

"The biggest strike...with this film is its hypocrisy. Here's a man taking shots at capitalism, and he's the biggest capitalist in Hollywood." - Kevin Carr, 7M Pictures

"While it’s amusing to watch Moore on camera plaster the entrance to the New York Stock Exchange with crime-scene tape, when Moore goes through his customary security-guard harassment in another segment, it’s hard not to think: Here we go again." - Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune

As Matt Taibbi points out in his True/Slant posting:

The reaction to Michael Moore’s new movie, Capitalism: A Love Story, reinforces a suspicion I started having a few years back: that most of us Americans are much better at being movie and TV critics than we are at being political organizers. When we come out of a film like this, we find ourselves focusing on the flaws in Moore’s moviemaking and not on the film’s content, which just happens to be the reality of our own day-to-day political existences.

We’re not thinking about how to fix our lives, in other words, but how to fix the movie about our lives.

Taibbi is spot-on with that observation. People, how hard is it to keep your eye on the ball, here? The fundamental issue is not whether you approve of Moore's approach to film making, or the routines he uses to make messages clear. It's a continuation of his never-ending story of power and greed that dates back to Roger & Me.

The rapid coagulation of wealth among an increasingly smaller segment of our population is a horrifying tale, and a system rigged to ensure the survival of the very framework that rewards perilous risk-taking by the few to the detriment of the many could not be any more frightening if the main characters appeared on screen, dancing with Michael Jackson and the rest of the undead.

The decomposing corpse of fairness and equity is on full display in Capitalism: A Love Story. I only hope that more people can look past the screen.

Going to Movies Really Stinks

It's a rare occurrence that we paint the town with dinner & a movie on a Saturday night, but feeling cheeky, we took in the new Tarantino movie, Inglourious Basterds, rather than executing our regular waiting-for-home-video operandi.

What made it spectacularly plucky was the second venture into the local cinemaplex in the same week, which almost never happens. Perhaps we were seeking to expunge the earlier funk of GI Joe from our brains by attempting another foray into corporate moviedom, or maybe our subconscious has sufficiently buried the horrors of General Hawk, Snake Eyes, Duke, and Ripcord and we were ready to love again. We also weren't taking a 9 year old to his choice of films, which helps.

Seeing two theater movies a week calls attention to everything that's wrong with going out to see movies these days. It used to be an occasion. Now it's an ordeal.

Taking the MovieTickets.com route to purchase tickets seemed the intelligent option. Who wants to stand in line on a Saturday night, especially for a new release? Unfortunately, AMC Theatres did everything possible to thwart enjoyment of the pre-movie experience.

AMC Easton in Columbus has four - count 'em - four ticketing kiosks, each with four automated-teller gizmos to either purchase tickets via credit card, or to pick up tickets purchase online - from MovieTickets.com, for example, rather than snaking through the maze to hand your cash to a live person. It's an excellent concept, poorly executed.

For the second time in a week, nearly all of the ticketing kiosks were out of paper, rendering them as impotent showtime viewing screens and nothing more. One out of sixteen was operational, so we stood in line, for the second time in a week, to pick up tix we had pre-purchased online. Sort of defeats the entire advance-ticketing process, me thinks.

Riding the escalator to the upper level lobby, the spectacle of the newly-designed concession area unfolded. Gone is the wide expanse of counter, with patrons queued up for crates of popcorn and barrels of beverage, replaced with a smaller area to order your regular popcorn offering to free up space for the shelves upon shelves of pre-wrapped, high-margin gourmet popcorn, fancy boxes of candy, and machines that jizz out fake butter, nacho cheese sauce, pickle relish, and gosh knows what else.

So rather than twelve semi-orderly (but slow) lines of folks gathering their grub, it was a hundred-person free-for-all of self-service remisicent of an old-time demolition derby. What's slower than 15 concession workers getting your popcorn, drinks, and Milk Duds? 100 untrained consumers with nacho cheese on their shoes, schlepping toward the multitude of registers prepared to take your debit card, providing you can extract it from your wallet with fake-butter-coated fingers crusty with fine salt granules spilled by the snacking hordes.

Once seated, we endured an endless loop of the very same advertising that assaulted us four days previously. Do you know what would prevent me from ever following in the footsteps of Microsoft and SMC and hosting a meeting at an AMC Theatre? Being repeatedly forced to watch (and listen) to how wonderful it is to host your corporate gig at an AMC Theatre. Oh, and ABC? The shows I might have watched on your network will never be viewed in my house. The more clips I saw while waiting for the movie to begin, the more lousy your new offerings seem to be. Blame exposure therapy.

Minutes past scheduled showtime, the lights dimmed, and we were assailed by more advertising, even before being subjected to the very same coming attraction trailers seen earlier in the week. I didn't pull out my iPhone to check the time - being a courteous movie-goer - but I estimate Inglourious Basterds commenced nearly 20 minutes after the time printed on my stub.

I get it. I'm a captive audience. In order to get a decent seat that won't result in some freaky neck injury from staring straight up at the massive screen, I need to arrive 10-15 minutes prior to the posted showtime, or be satisfied with the leftovers. But can we cut a deal?

Can you publish the actual time the movie will start? Not when the ads start, or the coming attractions begin, or the dancing popcorn box busts a move. And enough with the cutesy reminder messages of how annoying crying babies and ringing cell phones can be. Anyone who has been alive since 2002 understands.

Make it easy for me to get my tickets. Streamline the process that allows me to spend way too much money on overpriced, highly-profitable snacks that are terrible for my health. And when I finally park my ass in the butter-slimed chair and plant my feet on the Coke-drenched floor, spare me the revenue-generating visual annoyances on the big screen.

I paid too much for the tickets, and too much for the snacks. Stop trying to squeeze the last cent of potential gain out of me.

Just show me the damned movie.

"The Dude" Gets a Key to the Universe

I didn't even know there was a real dude behind the character portrayed by Jeff Bridges in the 1998 film The Big Lebowski. But there is.

His name is Jeff "The Dude" Dowd, and he just received the Key to the Universe at the Lebowski Fest.

Click here if you want more info, if you're not into the whole brevity thing, man.

Image by Sleeper Cell via flickr