Things I'll miss about Kalifornia

Indiana Jones 4 (no spoilers)

I was excited when I first heard that there would be another installment in the Indiana Jones series. I saw it tonight on the big screen, and it was OK. I think that because it's been so long since the last one, people are willing to endure anything in order to see Harrison Ford dress up as Indy one more time. If this had come out after Temple of Doom, it wouldn't have been received as warmly, and wouldn't have been considered as good as The Last Crusade. If I were to rank the movies, I would say:

The Last Crusade >= Raiders > Crystal Skull >> Temple of Doom

The latest installment is definitely a cut above Temple of Doom (which I consider to be only slightly better than the Alan Quartermain movies), but it is definitely behind Raiders. I consider Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Last Crusade to be on par with one another.

What wasn't so hot?

• Pretty much everything about Cate Blanchette's character sucked. Her makeup, her fake wig, her accent, her acting, and her script. You never really feel her character is evil, just kind of bland. She's never cruel or mean, just there. BORING.
  
• Shia LeBoeuf. He was OK in parts, but there was some definite over-acting, especially at the beginning, which was dumb. Harrison Ford is there, acting like he's a real person, and Shia is there acting like he's in a high school musical. Terrible.
  
• The CGI. It's Indiana Jones, not Star Wars. A couple of the CGI scenes are just stupid. CGI looks fake at a certain level, and until the technology improves, it always will look fake.
  
• The main plot device. I can't say anything more about it without giving away some of the plot, but I will say that the 'artifact' that Indy is after is too Sci-Fi and leaves you wondering if you just left a Kubrick film. The sad truth is that you aren't really sure why they're after what they're after in the end. At the end of Raiders, they found the Ark. At the end of the Last Crusade, they find the Holy Grail. Even in Temple of Doom, they're after some sacred stones. But this? Well, it's a little strange and you're never really sure what the purpose of the film is.
  
• Marion. She's back, but turns out to be a shallow, fat, giggly girl. How fucking boring.
  
• The fucking gophers. They were given only seconds of screen time, but the instant I saw them, I was thinking "Oh shit, it's another Jar-Jar." Fortunately, this didn't pan out.
  

What's great?

• Harrison Ford. He really carries this film. He can act, and he's perfect in the Indy role, even at 65.
  
• The action scenes. For the most part, they are well done. Unfortunately, action scenes don't make a movie.
  
• The way the action scenes glue the movie together. The first three string action scenes together to move the movie along, but they are held together by an underlying plot. This movie has less of a plot, but the fact that it moves from one action scene to another keeps the movie rolling along, quite surprisingly. It's rare to see this happen in a movie without it turning into a turd.
  
• The Russians. There are some Russians in uniform, and they did them right. They hired real Russians so the accents would be authentic. I saw this movie tonight with a Russian, and even he was impressed. Too bad they couldn't say the same for Cate Blanchette.
  
• Family history. You get to see a little family history of Indy, and some of the story of Indy's life unfolds.
  
• Nostalgia. There are numerous homages to previous films, and previous characters that we have all fallen in love with.
  

Apparently there were supposed to be 5 Indiana Jones films originally. It'll be interesting to see if Harrison Ford makes another one. Perhaps it'll be Indiana Jones and the Bottle of Blue Pills. I'm guessing it will come out right after Sean Connery makes his last Bond film, Octagenerian Pussy.

This makes my day

Check this out. Not only are the zookeepers incompetent at keeping their animals inside, but the tiger killed one person and injured several more. The tiger was eating Californians and instead of giving it a medal like it deserved, they give it a bullet. Far as I'm concerned, they should have locked the zoo and let the tiger feast on all the assholes inside it. Or why bother? Just leave the gates unlocked and let the tiger wander about freely on the streets of San Francisco. After eating one or two people, it'd be so high from the ingested THC that it'd be quite lazy. Either that or it'd get the munchies. I guess it's a win-win situation.

I don't understand why the people think that it's so horrible that a tiger we are keeping in captivity escaped and mauled some people. No shit, that's what tigers do. They should have hit it with a stun gun and put it back in the cage. Oh yeah, some dude was getting mauled. Guess what? Human life isn't that precious. There's tons of us, but the Siberian Tiger faces extinction. They just significantly decreased the tiger gene pool while extending the idiocy of the human one.

I think we should build a monument to the tiger for being a servant of humanity.

Socks

I was sorting my laundry tonight and looking at my socks. I've got several different kinds, some from accidentally buying the wrong thing, some from when WalMart was out of whatever I regularly bought, some were black for concerts. It occurred to me that when you reach the point in your life where all your socks are the same kind, it's time to die. You're just too damn boring.

I'm not the most interesting person in the world, but at least I've got several kinds of socks.

The Carcinogenic Lightsaber

The other day I was watching some Star Wars video on YouTube, and it occurred to me that there are some physics problems with the lightsaber. Of course, there is a large amount of pseudo-science surrounding physics, construction and use of the lightsaber. The lightsaber is purported to generate an 'arc wave energy field' and has an infinite cutting edge.

Apparently, "Other than emitting a colored light, a lightsaber blade was a massless form that neither radiated heat nor expended energy until it came into contact with something"^[Ref], which stinks of bullshit. If it is emitting light, it is, by definition, expending energy. It is emitting light energy. The 'arc wave energy field' apparently emits that buzzing sound you hear in the movies. Isn't that sound energy? Wait. I think I have more plausible explanations for all of this.

First, the lightsaber is purported to have an infinite cutting edge. We can deduce that it is no smaller than the atomic level, as a swipe of a lightsaber doesn't incite nuclear reactions/explosions by splitting the nucleus of an atom. Since the lightsaber doesn't expend energy unless it comes int contact with something, it is reasonable to assume that the energy being emitted, such as the light energy, and the crackling sound energy comes from the 'arc wave energy field' coming into contact with molecules of air (nitrogen, CO₂, oxygen, etc.). The crackling noise is probably due to molecules of air being ionized by the lightsaber beam, just like high voltage power lines crackle when molecules of air come in contact with them and become ionized.

This brings me to my next point: if the lightsaber is ionizing air, then it is necessarily a source of environmental pollutants and health hazards. Think about it. High voltage power lines produce ozone. Ozone is a major lung hazard, decreasing lung capacity, causing emphysema, and other problems. Ozone in the environment causes decreased metabolism and reproduction in plants, which will effect crop harvests and kill vegetation. Those farmers near a Jedi training ground should beware.

Of course, high-voltage power lines contain much less energy than a lightsaber (just ask any Star Wars fan). Perhaps rather than simple ionization of oxygen, there is enough energy to ionize the nitrogen in the atmosphere as well. Most of the atmosphere is nitrogen, so many more molecules of nitrogen get hit with one swing of the old lightsaber. Ionization of the nitrogen will produce nitric oxides like those found in car exhaust (NO_x gasses, like NO, NO₂ and N₂O₄). These are much more acute toxins and many times more damaging to the lungs. These are the brown gasses that give smog its color.

So what does this mean? Well, you'll be able to smell when a Jedi was around. The whole place will probably smell like Los Angeles on a good day, or perhaps a room with one of those ozone generators sold by Sharper Image (also known as the Ionic Breeze). It also means old Luke probably has emphysema and perhaps a bit of lung cancer.

Where's the evidence for this you ask? Take a look at Yoda. There's a reason Yoda moved into the woods: he needed more oxygen and his emphysema was too bad to continue screwing around with that lightsaber. Then Luke comes along, he turns on the lightsaber to train him, worsening his lung problems by more exposure to lethal gasses, and then he expires a short time later.

And what about Darth Vader? Some of his breathing difficulties are probably due to breathing in so many pollutants over the years, in addition to that nasty wound on that volcanic planet. And I'd bet a dime to a dollar that his breathing device has an ozone filter on it.

Perhaps new lightsabers need to come with a label: "This device is known to produce chemicals known to the state of Kalifornia to cause cancer."

Student Quotes

One of my friends is a high school English teacher, and assigned a paper on the accuracy of web-based sources. Here's a couple of good quotes:

• "The source looked reliable because the person used big words."

• In reference to a web site: "I think it has good info but the web site seems a little unreliable but I would still use it."

You know why it's not a good idea to cite sources from the web? Because of things like this.

Then, a few more quotes from her freshmen, based on different papers on Shakespeare, etc.

• "Puck was being a goodie tissues."

• "You shouldn't take things for granite."

• "He felt bad about himself because he didn't have a good self of steam."

Ah, thee youth of America; still loosing there chances too have a good self of steam. :)

The Brave One

[No spoilers]

I saw the trailers for this movie online and thought it looked interesting. I was curious to see the movie, for it promised a bit of revenge, good acting, action, and some introspection on the consequences of being a vigilante. I was a little worried that all the action and revenge were contained in the trailer and that I might be going to watch some sappy, teary-eyed drama that whined about the personality failings and told some sob-story about Jodie Foster's character. I was also a bit worried that it might be some vehicle for anti-gunners out there or some other idiotic political action group.

Let me tell you: my worries were never more unfounded. This movie was revenge, action and good acting from beginning to end. It was Death Wish but with Jodie Foster instead of Charles Bronson. Fucking awesome. It was a terrific role for Jodie Foster, as her character was not a weak-willed victim, but a hard, vengeful killer. You'll delight as she blows away the bad guys. Even better, it was actually pro-gun, if you can believe that. Not overtly so, which would have pissed me off as a vehicle for the NRA, but only so because it is very true-to-life.

Despite all the action, the movie isn't mindless. I found the main character's development to be fascinating. The movie does a good job in showing the radical change in her mentality and does a good job in making you think about her position and wonder what's going through her head. I like the fact that it doesn't draw conclusions for you or try to railroad your thought process through some 'message' that the producers want to get across. In a lot of ways, it's actually a feel-good movie about revenge.

Unfortunately, the movie stops short of an action masterpiece, such as Man on Fire or Ronin. Sadly, it had the potential to be excellent, as the cast was up for the job, but the script was lacking a bit. There were a couple of corny lines in the movie which made you shake your head. There were two or three that stick out in my mind, and, while not nearly as corny as those horrible lines from Schwarzenegger in his bad action movies ("Stick around!" as he nails a guy to the wall), they are a little too much to be saying as an exclamation (as they are in the movie). The plot fell down a bit near the end, where I think Hollywood producers took control of the script for about 45 seconds, but their control is fortunately wrested away and the movie comes to a better conclusion a few minutes later. The only other somewhat weak part of the movie is at the very end, when Jodie Foster narrates a bit. She talks about her feelings and how she changed from suffering the attack; while it attempts to reflect on things, it ends up bringing more of a 'no duh' reaction from the audience.

Interestingly, there were parts of the movie that were laugh-out-loud funny. The audience cracked up 3 or 4 times in the theater, and it wasn't at the crappy one-line exclamations. While some people might say that humor this brazen doesn't have its place in a serious movie, I would disagree in this case. While I agree that it has to be handled delicately, I think that this movie used humor appropriately. The humor was usually dry, and wasn't from an overt joke; usually the audience was laughing at the nonchalance with which the seasoned New York detectives met a gruesome scene, or the attitudes of the general public toward a vigilante. The movie made you ride an emotional roller coaster, from fear and revulsion at the initial attacks to sadness at the results of the attack, and then to suspense and excitement at the victim revenging herself. In there, you occasionally laugh, too. It's as if you're experiencing the emotions of the main character all in the span of two hours. Unlike some movies where the entire point was to leave you feeling one way or another, and the plot is irrelevant compared to the way the filmmaker wanted you to feel, The Brave One hits some of these emotions to better connect you with the main character, ultimately adding a little extra dimension to the movie.

Overall, this movie is highly entertaining, and I want to see it again to see what else I pick up the second time through. Definitely worth seeing in the theater, even here in the People's Kommunist Republik of Kalifornia for $9.50.

Overall, 3.5 out of 4.