review: TRON: LEGACY

SPOILERS!!!!

I see it's been a while. When you get to see only one movie a year out in a theater, you have to choose wisely. The Husband and I, faced with a Morton's fork of HARRY POTTER or TRON, went with TRON, seeing as it was in 3D for three bucks. And frankly, no matter how stinky, you can't beat it for the price.

At lunch/dinner afterward, I had to rehash the plot of the first film to The Husband, because he didn't remember it. It seemed to me a lot of the new film contradicted that first movie. Also, the second movie made no sense. I'm not an idiot, but I don't expect to have to be Neil deGrasse Tyson to go see a three dollar movie. Seriously, isotropic whatchamacallsits? Midi-chlorians what? They had computer programs with DNA. How do computer programs get DNA? Apparently, they appear out of thin air with it. And THIS WILL CHANGE EVERYTHING. How? Why? Hell if I know. Just go with it, okay?

Anyway, here's the deal: Kevin Flynn disappears as video game inventors/billion-dollar-company-running-CEOs/beach bums tend to do. He leaves behind a son from God only knows what groupie hanger-on...WHOOPS his wife. Son grows up a raging loner asshole despite being taken under the wing of the awesome Bruce Boxleitner. There's a page, and the son finds an underground secret office, and gets sucked into TRON WORLD, and there's awesome fighting and DAFT PUNK and lots of crazy Buddha talk and then "Here, give me a hug" and then bike ride and THE END.

And seriously, while watching it, it wasn't that bad. I mean, this movie...if you look up EYE CANDY in the dictionary, there's a picture of the Tron poster right there. It would have sucked so hard missing this one in the theater. Although, boy, was it dark. I've heard this complaint about a lot of 3D movies, and having only ever seen CORALINE and BEOWULF in 3D, both totally animated, I can't compare. But to give you an idea, The Husband and I arrived right after the movie itself started, and we had to use the flashlight feature on his phone to find a seat, it was that dark. The rest of it was BAD ASS, though. Lots of crazy MATRIX-y fighting with slow-motion kicks and guys flying through the air. There was one character who stays masked the whole film, and I thought for sure that it was going to be Ray Park under there, but no, it was some other guy, Anis Cheurfa. They need to get him into more movies kicking ass STAT.

The funny thing was, at one point in the movie, after Sam Flynn finds his dad, Kevin Flynn (and I'm sure this isn't spoiling anything for you), they're eating dinner in the matrix--this huge roast pig--and Sam says, "I have one question..." His dad says, "You want to know why I never came back." The Husband and I were like, uh, no, where the hell'd that pig come from? Did Flynn, who's some omnipotent god-like god guy, just conjure this pig out of thin air? Do they have replicator-type things?

And for that matter, there's a club in the matrix. Do programs go to bars? Do they drink? The Husband said they probably need to do something with their idle time, but this leads me to the problem I have with this whole thing in general:

WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON IN THIS WORLD?

Am I to believe that the matrix is populated with copies of Windows 7 and Java and Firefox 3.6, and they go to work like we do, sitting in cubicles while I'm typing up this review, thinking, "Fucking users, calling me into work at 8pm on a Sunday when I could be illegally patching into a stream of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition." And then when I'm done and I publish this post and then turn off my computer, they all go, whew, finally, and take the solar sailer home or to the club where they hook up with their mates Flash and Shockwave and make googlie eyes at the cute little script in the corner: "Did your user code you as non-interactive, because you've been running in my background all night long."

And also, Flynn has the power to make pupu platters appear out of thin air. Why didn't he just use the power of his mind to fuck some shit up once he realized he was stuck in the matrix? Seriously, everyone calls him THE CREATOR of everything: he walks into a bar and raises the ambient lighting with the power of his mind. Everyone bows as he walks past. Multiple times in the movie, he makes stuff happen by waving his hands around and willing it to be, and you tell me for TWENTY YEARS he sat on his hands? DURING A GENOCIDE, where all the DNA-infused programs are wiped out?!?!? And it seems like all this came to pass because he'd at some point adopted a pacifist attitude. And he felt guilty because he was able to come to some realization about himself that the program he'd modeled on himself would never know. So the whole movie becomes about Flynn's quest to apologize to "himself" for his overly naive and idealistic dreams of youth. Or whatever.

Which leads again back to my problem with the movie. According to the original movie (and please, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong), the matrix already existed when Flynn was sucked into it. The whole reason he was in Encom was to break into the mainframe to locate his CLU program. But in this movie, they make it seem like Flynn went into the matrix and THEN created CLU. Or something. And they were going to make it all better. Or not. Make what better? And he's completely clueless about wifi and stuff. The matrix goes from like five programs to stadiums full of hundreds of thousands of programs. Wouldn't he have guessed what had occurred on the outside? Wouldn't someone have told him? Can't you just plug into an outlet somewhere and download some CNN?

Of course, I would be remiss if I failed to mention The Husband's biggest complaint, which was that Flynn kept saying, "Gnarly," and "Radical," and "Gag me with a spoon." Which was kind of annoying.

But the soundtrack was AMAZING. And the movie made me really want a Ducati motorcycle. So I guess as a marketing vehicle, the movie was five stars.

HEY THERE, LONG TIME, NO SEE

There's nothing like reading old blog posts to make you think, "Wow, I totally don't remember any of that."

THEY STOLE MY IDEA

Many moons ago, I told you about the movie I was going to make, an epic on the scale of Independence Day or anything else with Will Smith in it. You may have thought I was a one-trick pony when it comes to film making, but I have other ideas up my sleeve.

Once upon a time, I lived with a Good Friend who had a crush on Jeff Goldblum. Not having any skills relating to successfully stalking people, we decided that the best way to meet Jeff Goldblum and showcase Good Friend's wonderful personality, startling intellect and charismatic street-smarts would be to write, produce, direct and star in our own movie, which would also somehow involve Jeff Goldblum. So that the meeting and the stupefying could commence unimpeded.

What movie did we come up with? We didn't really have a name for it, but it was a bit of a political thriller/tearful coming-of-age story/breezy romantic comedy/feel-good event of the summer kind of movie. The plot was such:

Good Friend and I star as friends (such a stretch) who, concerned by the thousands of deaths/thousands of debilitating head injuries each year, decide that what needs to happen in the US is for a law to be passed mandating that everyone, from infancy to death, be required by law to wear a helmet. Seat belts alone are not the answer! Helmets while bike riding don't go far enough! What if you slip in the shower? Fall on ice? Tumble down stairs? Get pushed over at an Aerosmith concert? No, the only way to keep Americans safe is mandatory helmets.

Now, the big point I've left out is an important one: these helmets are not just any helmet. See, the helmets Good Friend and I designed have a bump on the front. So the helmet sort of looks like it has a big, bulbous bill on the front. This is so that should you fall forward while wearing your helmet and you land face down in some body of water like a puddle or a small pond or whatnot you will be protected from drowning by the bubble on the front of the helmet. It keeps your face out of the water, you see. This is especially important for babies, because statistics show they apparently are susceptible to drowning. Or so I've heard.

So Good Friend and I start a grassroots campaign that takes us all the way to the hallowed halls of Congress, where we meet with our State Representative Jeff Goldblum, and his intrepid personal assistant Whichever Celebrity I'm Currently In Love With. Lots of comedic hijinks ensue. Everyone falls in love, and everyone else avoids irreversible brain damage. THE END.

So today while surfing the Internet, I discovered that a company has created helmets for babies. And while there isn't a bump on the front to prevent drowning, I'm sure it's on someone's drawing board somewhere.

So I'm putting it here, on the Internet, so that should you see a baby wearing a helmet with a bump on the front to prevent drowning, you'll know where it came from and where to send the royalty check. And also where to let Jeff Goldblum know who he needs to get in touch with if he ever wants free sex. I have Good Friend's number, if he wants it.

BOOYAH

YOU'VE GOT TO FOLLOW YOUR BALLOON

Okay, this is some truly scary, fucked up shit right here. At first, I thought this was an April Fools joke because it was in this month's WIRED next to some famous April Fools jokes. But apparently it's totally true, and no one is reporting it.

HELIUM, IF CONSUMED AT IT'S CURRENT RATE, IS PROJECTED TO RUN OUT IN NINE YEARS.

Can you fucking believe that? NO MORE HELIUM. And apparently you can't just make more of it if you run out, because it's produced over millions of years of radioactive decay.

We're going to RUN OUT of an ELEMENT in NINE YEARS.

What the FUCK?!?!?!

Okay, maybe the article says it'll run out in Texas where they make it in the US, but still.

IS THAT MINE?

There's nothing like working your way through yummy Bob Evans turkey dinner leftovers, only to find a gigantically long hair in the mashed potatoes.

It's probably mine, but still...yuck.

At least the dinner roll wasn't touching it. Mmmm, fluffy dinner roll.

JUMP UP AND DOWN AND CLAP A LOT

I don't know how long this will be online, and I can't figure out how to host it...

Saturday at Comic-con, the entire cast and crew of X-Files made their first ever convention appearance together. I'd joked to The Husband that I was totally going to go, because this was a once-in-a-lifetime event. Seriously, David Duchovny AND Gillian Anderson, on stage, together? But unfortunately I forgot all about it and didn't go, hahaha. But someone was nice enough to record the teaser trailer for the new X-Files movie that they apparently showed, and they stuck it on YouTube.

By the way, I totally got chills when Mulder and Scully appeared on screen and everybody started cheering.

Oh, and YAY BILLY CONNOLLY.




ETA: TOO CUTE.

SHE GOT BETTE DAVIS EYES

I'm listening to random stuff while I work on the bindery shipment.

Kim Carnes's "Bette Davis Eyes" just came on.

For some reason, I always thought the line was, "She's precocious, and she knows just what it takes to make a crow blush."

The hell? How did I ever convince myself that that made any kind of sense?

THIS IS A TEST

Today, I've run headlong into the hell that is piracy and Hollywood's life in the dark ages.

(This is going to involve me admitting something I'm incredibly ashamed of, but please don't mock me. Or at least, don't mock me a lot.)

For some bizarre reason, I've been particularly determined to watch EMPLOYEE OF THE MONTH. I've seen it before, it's a silly movie. But for some reason I've REALLY wanted to watch it. I've been to two Targets trying to find a copy. And wouldn't you know, they had it on sale, but only in full screen.

So I go on the internets and try to find it streaming somewhere. I'm in the Hulu beta, but there aren't any movies there. It's on iTunes, but I need the newest version. There's an entry on Amazon's download service, but I need their player. Same for CinemaNow. I'm like, ALL I WANT TO DO IS WATCH THE FUCKING MOVIE HOW MANY THINGS DO I HAVE TO DOWNLOAD AND HOW MANY HOOPS MUST I JUMP THROUGH!?!?! Like seriously, I'm willing to pay and everything. Just put it on my computer already.

Argh. I was seriously like, fuck it, I'll go on Pirate Bay and get the fucking thing on Divx. But then I was like, fuck it, I'm not going to prison just cuz I'm desperate for some hot Dane Cook action.

So I'm sitting here waiting for some stuff to finish installing. CinemaNow allows you to burn the movie to DVD and it includes all the same extras that are on the store-bought movie. Plus it has a menu and box art if you want to dress up your disc.

I will let you know how it goes.

If I spend an extra couple of bucks, Dane Cook's ass is in GOOD LUCK CHUCK. But I probably shouldn't press my luck right out of the gate like this.

I'M LAME.

How sad am I that I got REALLY excited when I saw this?



Ahhh, boxes of X-Files magazines...how I wish I had you back.

Okay, not really.

Please, New X-Files Movie, I beg of you...please don't suck.