Movie Review: Days of Thunder

Funny how as you get older and watch movies you have seen as kid many, many time, how things become clearer. Take Days of Thunder, for example.

I couldn’t even guess how man times I saw this movie as kid after it came out – a dozen, two. . . Back then, to me, it was just a story about a man’s dream to be a race car driver for NASCAR. Watching it again, I realized it is a story about a fear we all have in life – not the fear of failure or letting down the people who depend on us the most, but fear of the truth.

Who is to say what that truth is? All that anybody ever knows is that it is a true fear. Maybe this is missing the mark completely, but what I learned watching Days of Thunder is that the lead character, Cole Trickle, is afraid of wanting something so bad that he is willing to work his entire life – every waking moment –  to make his dream come, even if he knows that he may never be all that he wants to be. For Cole, it is being a race car driver. But how many out there have a dream, only to never make it a reality? How many have a dream only to never make it a reality even though their talents are above and beyond many who have broken through to make their dreams come true? There-in lies the fear. Failure is small potatoes, so is being good at something and being happy with what strides to success you have made, but to be really great and not being able to prove your skills to your peers could, to some, be truly devastating.

Along with Cole’s fear is his mechanic’s fear, Harry Hogge, who once made the mistake of allowing his driver to race even though there were hints that to do so might have devastating consequences. That driver, we later learn, smashed into a wall at almost two hundred miles per hour and dies.

Rating (out of 5):

District-9 Prequel, Maybe No Sequel

According to this article here, director Neill Blomkamp would be interested in making a prequel to District-9 but not necessarily a sequel. His reasons, he said, were the style in which the film would be shot. In his vision of a District-9 sequel it would be a traditional type project – alien shoot ‘em type thing – while a prequel would open up avenues of complete artistic freedom.

Whatever his reason, my two-cents would be that the story of the aliens coming back to not only liberate the captives remaining on earth but also to fulfill the promise made to Wikus is a story line with great potential and not to make a sequel and finish the story would do all District-9 fans a dis-service.

New Dune Movie In The Works; Asimov’s Foundation Trilogy Also Coming To The Big Screen

Read about it here. If this movie gets made it will be the second re-make. The article says that this new movie will try and keep – as close as possible – to the original form of the book.

From the same website is this article about a Foundation Trilogy movie.

Happy Birthday

At the time of South Parks 100th episode, the characters commented jokingly about how no television show should go more than 100 episodes. Today that show is at 195 episodes and still going strong. This blog debuted exactly one year ago today and has 183 posts to its credit, and hopefully will continue to go strong, even if it is mostly read by me and for my befit. If there is one thing that I am grateful for it is that I have kept with it after a year. As most aspiring writers will testify, the hard part about writing is doing so day-after-day until the story is completed, a goal not easily accomplished.

Shame on you Hollywood

I don’t imagine I will ever do this again but I felt compelled to speak up. Yesterday the Oscars released their Worst Actor and Worst Movie of the Year list. On the list of Worst Actor of the Year is Will Ferrell for his role in Land of the Lost, which also appears on the Worst Movie of the Year list. Now, the reason I say ‘I don’t imagine I will ever do this again’ is because I am not a Will Ferrell fan. Some things that he has done have been amusing, but most of it has been crap, most with the exception of Land of the Lost which I did a review on a few months before and found it to be a pleasant shocker in terms that it was both funny and entertaining, the latter of which has been lacking in many, many – wait for it – many Hollywood movies as of late. The fact that Land of the Lost appears on these lists proves to me that the critics in Hollywood and especially those that hand out the awards are out of touch with what it means for a movie to be entertaining and enjoyable.

This Hollywood trend started around 1997 when The Postman won Golden Raspberry Awards for Worst Actor, Worst Director, Worst Picture, Worst Original Song and Worst Screenplay for a movie that was not only well done, but was just a good movie all around. It is a shame that such a good piece of fiction such as The Postman, which was written by the great David Brin, would be dissed in such a way.

Shame on you Hollywood.

Movie Review: District 9

Since I never actually go to the movie theaters to see a movie (sorry, just way more than I can afford to pay), I, as usual, waited for District 9 to come out on DVD. However, from the moment that it was released into the theaters all the way up to just a few weekends back, I heard people say that they were surprised by the film, in a good way. Not surprised because the movie was better than they thought it would be – meaning that they thought it would suck and didn’t – but because it was genuinely a well done, all-around movie. After seeing the movie I couldn’t agree more.

The best part is that this movie has sequel written all over it. Now, somebody who is fed-up with Hollywood and its fascination with sequels that has in recent years resulted in nothing but sequels and re-makes, I am really looking forward to the next installment of District 9.

My initial reaction was this was going to me a movie that creeped me out more than anything. Aliens that looked like bug just sent chill down my spine. My fear was that this was going to be a shock movie which played on peoples fears of bugs and spider and have very little in the way of substance and plot.

I was wrong.

The plot was simple, but for me left plenty of elbow for the imagination while at the same time giving me all the fine details I needed to let my brain run wild.

The story starts with a man by the name of Wikus Van De Merwe who has been given the job a letting the population of District 9 know that they are being a evicted and relocated to a new camp – District 10. While serving these eviction notices and looking for illegal contraband at the same time, Wikus is sprayed with a unknown substance in a canister that unbeknown to him starts the process of his DNA being re-engineered to resemble that of the alien beings – the Prawns. running parallel to this plot is the sub-plot of the a company by the name of MNU – a weapons manufacturer - who is trying to re-verse engineer the alien weaponry. Their main problem is that the alien weapons have a bio-signature which makes these weapons only functional when held by a Prawn.

Now with Wikus’ transformation into a Prawn the ability to control these weapons is possible, but only after Wikus is cut-up, dissected, and murdered in order to find his secrets.

But he escapes, fleeing back to District 9 to hide.

Once there he meets the original owner of the canister that transformed him who tells him that the technology exists to transform him back to his normal state, but only if they can get their hands on the canister that started the whole mess, as it was a fuel source for a buried alien ship.

I can’t say enough good things about this movie.

Rating (Out of 5):

Obama wants to end NASA Moon Program

Today President Obama called for an end to NASA’s Moon Program and to stop development of the Constellation’s Ares I rocket. Here are some pros and cons as I see them:

Cons:

1. By abandoning the Ares program now, $9 billion in development and research will be lost from over the past four years, not to mention the $2.5 billion dollars that the tax payers will have to shell out in cancelled contracts with Lockheed Martin and Boeing.
2. This gamble might not even make it past congress since the President is asking for more funding for NASA in a time when many see government spending as out of control.
3. If this plan is initiated, privately held companies will take over and develop technologies related to space travel and rocket engines, meaning that NASA, who has developed such systems for over fifty years will be handing over the reins to a company that has substantially less experience in such fields.
4. What is the ultimate direction of this drastic plan. President Obama has made no indications of what direction NASA is to take after these systems are developed. A mission to Mars? Back to the Moon?

Pros:

1. This could re-invigorate a space program that has lain dormant for almost forty years, and spark the development of new technologies by replacing old technological feet’s from the 1960’s.
2. Increase in NASA funding from $18.7 this year to $19 billion next year, and finally to $21 billion in 2015.
3. Multiple countries would share costs.
4. Less pollution as manned vehicles will be able to re-fuel in orbit.

Further reading.

Book Review: The Talisman by Stephen King and Peter Straub

I hate do it, but this wasn’t my favorite book. In fact, I almost gave-up reading it a couple of times and moved on to something else. The truth of the matter is that the book had too many climaxes and low points that seemed to drag on for far to long. Yes there was great writing, not to mention that imaginative world where the story takes place and the skill to create such a world, but the story seemed disjointed and stop-and-goish.

The story begin when young Jack Sawyer meets an unusual custodian who he be-friends. Within a few short moments this custodian, who talks like he has known Jack all his life (we learn latter that he has) warns him that his mother is dying and the only way to save her is by travelling all the way across the country to California and finding the Talisman. He can make the trip one of two ways: the usual way, across the United States where a boy traveling alone while he should be in school might seem suspicious and will, in all likelihood, not go unnoticed, or, he can travel through The Territories, a land stuck somewhere between the middle ages and some fantasy world that one might read in a Tolkien book. Traveling in this mysterious land is probably the best bet, Speedy, Jacks new friend and custodian explains to him. In The Territories distances aren’t what they seem and traveling there means that you will cover more distance in the same amount of time. There is  catch, however, travelling in The Territories is fraught with danger as there are tree and mutant creatures that kill without a second thought.

Jack is able to flip into one world and out of another by the help of a bitter-tasting liquor provided by Speedy - although later, Jack will learn to make this transition all on his own without the help of the liquid.

As Jack encounters trouble he flips from one world to the other. For example, when under attack in The Territories, Jack flips to the real world, bringing Wolf his new companion with him. Once in this world Wolf and Jack continue their journey west, pausing for a few days when Wolf – a real life werewolf – changes from a boy into a wolf in order to feed. Once he has changed back they continue west but not before they find themselves in the clutches of Starlight Gardner who preaches the word of God but is himself more like the Devil.

And so the story goes all the way to the end. The story of howJack escapes Starlight Gardner is well written and keeps me on the edge of my seat, but afterwards the tempo of the book gets bogged down in background and history. Don’t get me wrong, history is always good, but there has to be something there to keep my interest, as well as a back story that relates to the overall plot. Maybe I am old-fashioned and like explosions and adventure from beginning to end in the stories I read?

In any event, like I said, there were highs and lows in the tempo of the book, although to me there seemed like more lows then highs.

Rating (Out of 5):

Brandon’s Adventure or Art Like Fiction

Nothing exciting ever happened to Brandon Armsted. And that’s the way he liked it. He was writer, nothing exciting was ever supposed to happen, and he didn’t want anything exciting to ever happen. All he wanted was too be left alone at home, where it was quite, so he could write. The characters in his novels that jumped out of windows and dodged bullets and even chased bad guys in cars travelling just shy of the sound barrier was all the excitement that he wanted in life – it was all the excitement he needed.

But that was all about to change.

Within a few short hours Brandon Armsted would be running for his life, driving down back alley’s at unimaginable speeds, much like the character Alex Harding did in his first novel about a spy in Vienna who uncovered a government cover-up of a high-ranking government official who killed his mistress when he learned she was pregnant. He would also be dodging bullets that whizzed by his head as gas canisters around him exploded, as they are sensitive to bullets.

But Brandon didn’t know that, not yet at least, and if he did why he just might lock himself in his basement. The basement that he was able to lock from the inside with a big steel lock until the afternoon of the next day when it would be safe.

Brandon loved to write about adventure like that, sure, but not live it.

Stargate Memorabilia up for auction

I know the show is no longer on but I was kinda hoping that they might do a movie here and there. I hope that even by selling all the set props means that this still might happen.