Movie Review: Ender's Game (2013)

I know i'm a little late to the band wagon, but i feel i really needed to get on here and post something new and this movie sticks vividly in my mind since my last post about it last may. The movie has come and gone, it is now available on all the mediums we've come to know and love/hate depending on how comfortable you are with the internet (if you know what i mean). The first thing i've got to reiterate from my last post is the fact that i am in the process of reading the Ender's Saga in chronological order according to the canon. now keep in mind that there is a lot of time travel involved in this series which shows itself in the form of light speed ships ( going off Einstein's theory that the closer to the speed of light you get the slower time goes) so it's a little hard for me to really sink my teeth into the chronological later books a little since it jumps around a bit. None the less, the 2013 movie adaptation of the most popular "middle-of-the-canon" book and also the first one in the saga to ever be published (and even that started out as a short story in a magazine before it became a book) was without a doubt one of the best movie adaptations of a book i have ever seen. Please understand me, did they mutilate the book beyond recognition? yes. Did the brutally dismantle the original literature for the movies so that i would be extraordinarily difficult to make any of the other books aside from the original three(Ender's Game, Speaker for the Dead, and Xenocide)? Absolutely. But did they convey the messages they needed to convey in the time they had? Most definitely. Ender's Game is a movie adaptation of a book where you walk in knowing it's not going to be the same as the books because the trailers show that and once you start watching you really just can't will yourself to care. The characters are all there, they all do their inevitable job, they show the critical points in the plot, and at the climax you'll cry like the little bitch that you refuse to acknowledge that you are because even with all the extra information cut out and even with a lot of the build-up that leads to some of the key points missing, they still manage to give you that emotional connection to Ender and his merry men and you still feel just as betrayed as him when you know what happens. All in all, i would highly recommend Ender's Game for those who have and have not read the book, it's a fantastic movie that's full of fun, action and emotion. Really good job converting this iconic text to film.

Movie Review: Star Trek: Into Darkness

I want to preface this review with the fact that i spent six months of my life passionately watching everything ever created in the legitimate Star Trek canon. As such, i guess i can be considered as an extreme fanboy. Truth be told, i'm going to try and be as unbiased as possible, but chances are a lot of my nit-pickings are not going to matter to anyone else lol.

Star Trek: Into Darkness is the second in what i hope is going to be at least a trilogy of films that reimage the entire Star Trek original series from the late 1960's by the use of a handy little thing called an alternate timeline. I know there's a lot of controversy surrounding whether the new movies are a true alternate timeline or whether it's just a specific point in time that was altered and everything else in the history of ever still remains the same. In my mind, this movie pretty much settles those arguments and makes it pretty cut and dry that it is a true alternate timeline (not necessarily an alternate universe, but definitely an alternate timeline). That's all i'll say about that.

As for the actual movie itself, it stands on it's own two legs just fine from the first movie, Aside from having to know who is who, if someone with no star trek knowledge were to walk into the movie theater and sit down, they would be able to pick up this movie and dine upon it's fruit without any confusion. Events that happen in the beginning of the movie are pretty much the only events that are mentioned with the exception of a certain admiral giving a certain something to a certain captain. (those of you who have seen the first movie will wonder why i'm being so blatantly vague). The special effects are as always amazing, and Benedict Cumberbatch does an amazing job at his roll as the anti-hero. They let him on to be a samaritan at the beginning of the movie, only to turn that good deed around into something so horrifically sinister that you feel horrible for ever feeling warm about him.

The journey of the crew leads them straight to the Klingon homeworld in which we finally get our first glimpse of the re-imaged klingons. this has to be my only major beef. The klingons were very well covered in the original canon, explaining that their entire body was filled with double and triple redundancies so that klingons can take inordinate amounts of internal and external damage and still be strong enough to stand and fight. Their ridges were a sign of how pure their klingon blood was. The taller your ridges the more noble your blood essentially. But without revealing too much, the klingons in this movie look like the Persians from 300 only with v-shaped gold studs in their foreheads. it's kind of a grotesque sight (as if the original ridges weren't... i know) and they didn't come off as proud and war mongering like the original species. I digress though, this is an alternate timeline, something may very well have happened somewhere that caused the to behave differently in face to face confrontation.

lastly i'd like to discuss the dialog. Aside from punching in the token catch phrases of every crew member, the dialog was pretty much amazing. very well written, very well thought out. Only one line, belonging to Uhura, was really cheesy in the sense that they made it a hair too dramatic. And of course those of you who have seen the original 6 motion pictures will surely be looking forward to the words "Second star to the right, and straight on till morning." But please, don't get your hopes up like i did. it's not coming.

Have you seen Star Trek: Into Darkness? what was your take? I'd love to see what some non-giga-geeks like me think haha.

Enderverse and It's Movie

I've been spending an awful lot of time reading recently. For some of you, i'm sure that sentence doesn't even compute, for me an awful lot of reading is anything more than one book a year, but after finding out that there was a Movie component to Ender's Game coming out, i felt compelled to read the series. Still i didn't actually have any of the books and i wasn't about to go illegally download a book i might not enjoy. So i went talking to a few friends and finally found one that was willing to loan me their copy of Ender's Game.

Even with the book in hand and the desire to read it, it took a little building up steam for me to actually want to read it. I read the first 4 chapters in one sitting and then preoccupied myself with other matters for a few months. Finally around my 21st birthday, my father wanted to drive out to vegas which is an 8-ish hour drive for us. So i monopolized that driving time to continue reading this book that i kept telling myself i really needed to read.

Sure enough i was hooked quickly and now i can't stop reading the damned things. As the ender's series stands, in July there will officially be 14 books in the series and half as many short stories. All of them contributing weapons-grade awesome to the overall canon. As of last night i've finished my 6th book, and 3 short stories down. It's been a crazy last few months of my life but the entire collection is intensely gripping.

Being completely obsessed with the series and having read all of the 3 books that take place at the exact same time as the movie, i was of course leery about how they planned on executing the movie. I've never heard of the movie's director and i wasn't sure i could pin down who the screenwriter was, so naturally, like every other movie adaptation of a book, i was afraid they were going to butcher the book and stray away completely from the original plot. We've seen this happen with The Hunger Games series, the Lord of the Rings, and many others. Chances are, if you can name a book in which a movie has been made out of it. The book was disgraced by the movie piece.

It was only yesterday that i found out, through some very professional, P.I. grade google snooping that the author of the entire Enderverse, Orson Scott Card, is the writer of the screen play and i also discovered a quotation from him in interview about the movie adaptation where he explains the changes he made to the script and why. I don't know why this made me eccstatic, but it did. If you were to ask me now, after having read that, i would tell you that i firmly believe that all film adaptations of the movie should be prefaced with an interview from the screenplay writer. It doesn't have to be a video interview, it doesn't have to be an audio interview, it doesn't even have to be put in with the movie itself. Every movie has a fan page it seems like.It could be some terrible movie like Racist Assholes 5: The Quest for Hitler's Illegitimate Daughter. and at the end of it's terrible and terribly racist trailer there'd be a website link "www.illegitimatedaughterthemovie.com."

So back to my argument about the interviews. Just post the transcription of said interview on the movie's website, and have the screenwriter explain where he went with the script in relation to the original work, and why he went there. If we can see some form of reasoning as to why things were left out or changed up even in the slightest, then we know what to expect, we're prepared to see something that is not verbatim with the book counterpart.

Either way, that's my rant about the Enderverse and it's upcoming movie slated to be released November of this year.

How do you feel about my idea of having the screenplay author do an interview as a sort of caveats to why the movie is different from it's book counterpart? What do you feel was the absolute worst movie adaptation of a book?

Movie Review: Oblivion (2013)

I'm just going to open this blog with a little forewarning. I'm a whore for great musical scores. And by great musical scores, i don't mean your generic Sex Pistols sound where your pounding on a guitar with a hammer and occasionally changing the tone by randomly detuning the strings. I mean, harmonious musical compositions that use, for lack of better words, the musical literary devices. I say literary devices because at it's most fundamental level, music is the universal language of the world. an 1-3-5 chord progression will communicate in the same ways to someone in the United States as they would in Uganda.

I say this because it plays a big part in the review of the new Tom Cruise movie Oblivion. Now that we have that understanding in place allow me to open up by saying that Oblivion appears to move slower than it actually is. Without revealing too much, the movie starts with the first half hour covering the day-to-day routine of Tom Cruise's character with only the subtlest of undertones about what exactly is happening. As a matter of fact, it was not until a specific pool scene around 45 minutes (if i had to make a guess) that the pieces of the puzzle were all fleshed out and the movie almost begs the viewers to begin speculating about what exactly is going on with the world it presents you with. And it's done so smoothly that you really don't even begin to think about it until it's too late and the speculation is made.

Oblivion is a Science Fiction movie based somewhere around 2068 where the entire world is in ruins. Partly because an alien race tried to glass the surface of the planet, and partly because that same alien race shattered the moon causing tidal distress and severe earth quakes along all the fault lines of the world. It is supposedly 60-ish years after the events that left the world the way it is, and now the human species lives on Titan, one of Jupiter's moons and a space station shaped like a pyramid that is in orbit of the planet. Tom Cruise plays a maintenance man with some insane firearms and flight training who is tasked with repairing security drones.

Diverting from the plot-line before i say too much, i just want to go on record stating that the scenery in this movie is compelling. I would even be so bold as to say it's breath taking. The characters are surprisingly well developed, even though some of them only have a short screen life, and the music really seals the deal. The music to me was a nice, inspiring mixture between what Daft Punk made for Tron: Legacy and some of the exploratory music of EvE Online. Combine that with some of the eerily calm yet desolate scenery the movie provides with you, and the very powerful plot twist that will take all of that speculation it invited you to make and throw it out the window without a care, i would give this movie a very strong recommendation and suggest that anyone who wants scenery that will blow you away just like the world of Tron or the Lord of the Rings, definitely go and see Oblivion, the next chance you get.

Movie Review: Evil Dead (2013)

I know it's a bit late in the game to be doing a review of the reboot of Evil Dead, but I figured I wanted to chip in my two cents about the movie.

For those of you who don't know, the original Evil Dead movie was released in the year 1981, starred the king of B movies, Bruce Campbell, and was kind of cheesy. The basic plot was that 5 friends traveled to a cabin in the middle of the woods, and somehow accidentally release demons possessing the corpses of the dead. The movie was best known for Bruce Campbell's Chainsaw for a hand.

As for the new boot of the movie the plot is generally speaking, the same. 5 friends go to a cabin in the middle of the woods for a drug intervention and to help one of them go cold turkey on some hardcore shit, and they somehow accidentally release a demon that possess people and feeds off their souls to release satan back on the world. All fine and good, a lot of the appeal to this movie was for the nostalgia of the original movie that the directors and producers seemed bent to avoid at all costs.

It was a generic slasher flick where the horror is brief and usually consists of Idiot A goes off by themselves, Demon B magically appears unexpectedly and feasts on Idiot A like a fat kid at a HoHo factory. The redeeming factors was that it lacked that nostalgia factor from the original movie which in my mind showed that it was trying to be it's own movie instead of trying to be some retarded prequel or some even more retarded and much to late sequel. That and the special effects were good. Something tells me that for the most part the movie producers went old school and avoided CG as much as possible as a lot of the really gory stuff looked pretty real.

The plot is predictable, you can easily pick out who is going to live and who is going to die within the first 3 minutes of the movie, you can expect almost everything that happens 30 second before it happens which ends up making all the scary stuff comical.

So all in all, I'd recommend waiting for this movie to come out on Red Box, Netflix, the 5-dollar bin at Walmart, or your local dollar store. Because in all seriousness, the dog is the best actor in the whole movie.

Movie Review: Prometheus

So i know it's been some time since i last posted anything and part of that is due to my spending 3 weeks away from my computer getting some much needed R&R. As such, i figured i'd ease myself back into the flow of things with a movie review of a movie that i'm probably a little late to the game when it comes to seeing. Prometheus which is developed by Ridley Scott, director and, sometimes producer, of the Alien quadrillogy, Blade Runner, the cult classic Thelma and Louise and Gladiator is a science fiction horror which seems to be Sir Ridley Scott's favorite genre. And a good one at that. However, like the consummate movie critic that i like to pretend i am, i did have a few issues with the movie as a whole but we will approach those at a later time.

I would more narrowly classify this movie as a Sci-fi drama with thriller aspects to it. Staying with the Ridley Scott status quo, the movies are a little slow to start but once they start climbing the tall mountain to the climax, it starts picking up very quickly to where it goes blindingly fast then begins to slow down towards the end; giving you just enough time to come up for air. Which brings me to my next point, this movie is very gripping. Even though half of the cast was a bunch of unknowns to me, i found everyone's performance to be superb.

Also, as with any sci-fi from the, what must be a terrifying, mind of Ridley Scott, you will see more than your daily recommended dosage of freaky fucking aliens which are hell bent on slaughtering the human race. There are some 9 foot tall giants, some aliens that look like a cross between a cobra, an electric eel, and ugly (I worms or anything that looks like worms), some aliens that look like squids and plenty of horrific deaths to sate the pallet of most sadists. As overly dramatic as i may have come across there (have i mentioned i hate worms?) the implementation of these Aliens are used tastefully and the first half of the movie keeps you in suspense about what's going to pop out of where.

I really did find myself sitting on the edge of my seat and white knuckling my hands together so i didn't end up accidently giving the poor soul next to me some serious bruises. That being said, i would like to address a few of my complaints with the movies.

I vividly remember reading in several places that Ridley Scott was fairly insistent that Prometheus was NOT going to be a prequel of the Alien Quadrillogy, however there were some pretty blatant signs pointing to the notion that this was exactly what the movie was, a prequel to Alien. The events of this movie take place only a few years (if i have my time scale correct) before the events of Alien. The corporation that is funding the events that occur in the movie is the Weyland Corp. In Alien, the Weyland Corp had merged with Yutani Industries to make Weyland-Yutani, as shown in the previews, the giant alien ship that is crashing to the ground IS the giant alien ship that is wrecked and re-discovered by the Nostromo in Alien. There are several other telltale signs but for the sake of anyone who hasn't seen it and still wants to i don't want to throw in any spoilers. Not to mention that if this is a prequel like they're claiming that it isn't they've left some pretty big discrepancies in the original story arc.

My next beef is that the storyline is pretty procedural when it comes to Ridley Scott sci-fi's. The best way to describe Prometheus's story arc would be Alien with a touch of Aliens and a surprise twist ending.

All in all, I think it was a fantastic movie which anyone could sit down and watch without having any prior knowledge of the Alien Quadrillogy. And as Sci-fi thrillers go, it does it's job extremely well compared to most of the shit that Hollywood pumps out and calls entertainment these days. Definitely go and see it if you're in the mood to go check out a movie. Probably not good for dates though.

Youtube Partnership 2: Live Action Filming

In the previous episode surrounding the circumstances in which one can attain a youtube partnership, i outlined how to kickstart yourself into stardom by way of doing commentaries of all kinds. whether they be video commentaries, vlogs or tutorial videos. However, that spectrum of videos is very narrow and may not be the best choice for everyone who wants to attain youtube partnership status. As such, in this episode we will be going over a few video capture techniques as well as some different types of videos that users can create to add some popularity to their page.

Youtube is a diverse community that has a new video submitted almost every minute. As such there is quite a lot of variet and unfortunately it becomes extremely difficult to get any corner of the market that has not already been covered before, in every way imaginable. If you manage to come up with a truly unique idea that doesn't yield any results when searching for it on youtube, then by all means, pursue that as hard and as fast as you can because with no good coverage on a certain niche, it becomes very easy to take control of the game and get all eyes on you.

I was fortunate enough to be inspired by the discovery of the then incomplete programming language Small Basic which was developed by Microsoft as a programming language geared towards complete beginners, but as with any programming language, instruction is always desired as it's not like someone can magically pick it up and know how to write properly. When i started recording Small Basic tutorial videos, there were no other tutorial videos, just lots of videos of people showcasing these complex programs that they had written from scratch but never how to make them. So that was/still is my niche appeal. My videos are in high demand because it's extremely difficult to find a series of programming tutorials for Small Basic, let alone one that talks you through from point A to point Z with as much layman speak as humanly possible.

However, tutorial videos may not be your path of choice, a lot of the people have the abilities required to teach the content but just don't have the silver tongue of a teacher. Don't be offended, it's not for everyone. Only people who are okay with making next to nothing and working more than the average human being. Like charity work. For other people there is a greater call to action as we envision cinematic scenes of consuming emotion, gripping action, and gut-busting laughter. For those of us who envision these things, this blog is for you.

When first envisioning your idea for a live action film, you want to write down the core concept of the idea, if you have a good memory, you can expand on the core concept to your entire idea. Most of the time, these small idea fragments are not going to be the entire story arc, a lot of times people are privy to just imagining up the climax of the story as a whole. This means you're not even close to being ready to start filming.

Once you've got your idea down on paper, it's time to expand on this. Remember if you're creating a new youtube account, your account will not be allowed to host videos longer than 10 minutes, so the emphasis on this next point is critical. The more intricate you want your story arc to be, the more spartan your writing has to be. By spartan writing i mean in the same writing motifs as Ernest Hemingway who was famous for removing any excess from his writing. If it was not in his book, it was not needed in his book. No fluff. So instead of having your hero travel across the lands, meet 16 friends and then get into a big fight with the big baddie, start the book with your hero and all of his friends and have them travel to the baddie and fight him end of story. Small adjustments like that will remove fluff. Going to meet up with his 16 friends at 16 different locations adds nothing significant to the story that could not be solved with a paragraph at the beginning of the story arc.

Got your script written? Now is the true acid test for whether i will make the 10 minute cut or not. Get you and a couple friends of your to recite the script. It's not necessary to add any emotion to the script, it's not necessary to memorize the script. Just recite and time your run and see if its finished in about 9 minutes. Why 9 minutes you ask? An optional 30 seconds for an intro animation to the video if you choose and a mandatory 30 seconds for credits.

If it doesn't make it in your 9-9.5 minute limit, take the script back to the chop shop and see what you can cut out further. Rinse and repeat until you have a finished produc that makes the 9-9.5 minute cut and flows well.

Next up we need to storyboard the script. Storyboarding requires a little bit of artistic ability, the images in the story board can be as intricate as concept art or as basic as stick figures and boxes. It all depends on what you're comfortable with doing and how much time you want to spend on the storyboard. The concept for a story board is to create a single frame drawing to sum up each scene in your video. A scene is from camera record to camera cut. Unless you're intending to record the entire video in 1 continuous shot, this always remains true.

After you have a storyboard, assemble your cast and show them the storyboard. Make sure everyone understands what the idea is, what you want the end result to look like and make sure everyone memorizes their lines before you take the time to film the shot. I say this because scripts in a movie look hideous, unprofessional and strip any and all emotion from the video. A lot of what forms human emotion is facial expressions and it's difficult to capture of portray them at all if your nose is in a stack of papers.

Post processing of the video and uploading it to youtube are the last two steps in the process and post processing can be a bear. Depending on how much post processing you have to do, it could take you 20 minutes, it could take you just as long as the entire process up till now (a few days). There are some low-quality, free video editing software out there that would be a poor substitute to programs like Sony Vegas or Adobe After Effects, but if you need to use them, by all means, use them. A lot of times you've got to work with what you've got and do the best you can. However, you want to make life easier on yourself and are truly dedicated to devoting a large chunk of time to doing this in the future, i would strongly suggest investing the capital into either Sony Vegas or Adobe After Effects as they are both industry standards and will make your life worlds easier once you understand their UI's.

Once again i want to emphasize quickly that the chances of you being an instant success over night after your first video is uploaded are slim to none. You will need to keep working at it and let it happen naturally. If by chance you do become an instant success, the subscribers you get from your viral video will demand more equally quality content. If you don't provide, you'll be throwing that success down the drain.

Lastly, i did want to outline a list of professional filmography tools that you can make alternatives to for extremely cheap

• SteadiCam - SteadiCam is a trademark company name that offers a series of camera apparatus' that helps you in the steadying of your camera motions. This helps aleviate a lot of camera jitter caused by shaky hands. Their cheapest models go for around $150.00 and i've seen models sell for as high as $6,000.00 from manufacturer. Naturally, most aspiring filmographers don't have $150-$6,000 to just magically blow on one piece of equipment. So there are dozens of youtube videos on how to make one yourself with about $20-$50 with of PVC, epoxy and gym weights.
• Fig Rig - A fig rig is another camera stabilizer that very much resembles a steering wheel of a car. The camera mounts in the center where the horn or airbag would normally be. An industry standard Fig Rig will cost you about $300.00, you can make one for about $20-$40 dollars worth of PVC piping and epoxy.
• Dolly Rigs - Dolly rigs are used a lot in modern film, specifically when the hero is sprinting through a forest and the camera is staying close to him perfectly to give the movie the feeling of speed. Sufficed to say, a professional dolly rig is no the cheapest thing in the world. In fact, it's one of the most expensive rigs for camera available on the market. However there are plenty of tutorials to show you how you can make your own dolly rig for about $60.00 a square meter of track using 2x4's some railing and a home made dolly.

This blog is getting long so i'm going to end it here but sufficed to say, any type of rig you might need to record that project you imagined up, you can find an alternative that is several times cheaper than industry standards. So get out there and start filming!

Have you ever wanted to record your own videos? what is the main reason that has stopped you from doing so?

Movie Review: Conan: The Barbarian (2011)

Today my blog is going to be a little bit different from the norm as i really wanted to take some time to review the reboot of the Conan series that originally start Arnold Schwarzenegger in 1982. The original movie series wasn't much to write home about in my personal opinion, it was a cult classic to some and developed a rich pre-midevil (earlyevil?) world and clearly drew the lines in the sand between the warring factions enough to create an MMO that funcom proceeded to screw up in there classic style of messing up wet dreams.

The reboot to the series, like the originals weren't much to write home about. The story was dramatically different and took a completely different turn, however the landscapes were clearly and obviously chosen for their resemblance to the MMO's locations. Certain scenes and certain story points were obviously made to emphasize why the world of Age of Conan is the way it is.

All in all i truly felt that the movie was just cliche ridden and was a $90 million B-movie. I did not see any lush story or character development that merited an additional $70 million tacked on to the original cost of producing the original movie. The cast had a few big players such as Ron Perlman (Hellboy, Hellboy2) and the lesser known Stephen Lang (Avatar, Men Who Stare At Goats) but the rest of the cast is B-movie material at best and hence why the movie plays out like one really expensive one.

If the new Conan is to show the shape of things to come for the long slew of Schwarzenegger reboots that hollywood plans to usher out like waste from their colons, i am going to be highly disappointed. It's incredible that the screenwriters guild stiked for raises so they could just reboot old bad movies with potential, rescreen old good movies in 3d and write new scripts that aren't worth the time it takes to write them.

Have you seen this movie? What were your thoughts on it?

Hollywood Abuse

I went to see John Carter a second time about a week ago, being one of the few people who didn't think it was a terrible movie i guess. I wasn't intending to see it again but I got the movie times mixed up with another local theater and ended up missing the movie I had originally intended to see. I hadn't originally seen the movie in 3D and quite frankly didn't intend on watching it in 3D because i find the whole concept a scam.

It didn't come as a shock to me when i realized that the movie, with the exception of one scene, wasn't filmed for 3D. However it did get me thinking on the concept of the different constructs that Hollywood uses like they're going out of style. 3D being the shining piece of fecal matter atop the pile.

It's a well known and well satired fact that Hollywood loves to make cliches. They catch a line in a certain movie that works really well, or a certain story point and it becomes an industry standard for the ages. One of the most recent one's i've seen was the cliche of a man who shows a picture of his sweetheart back home to anyone during war will most certainly die before the end of the film. I'm almost positive that this Cliche originated in the long stream of World War 2 movies that came out during and after the fact. It added drama back in, but now it almost becomes comical.

My friends and I went to see Red Tails a month ago and not only did it scream cliches from the start, it delivered on them. By the time we were 10 minutes into the movie we were placing bets on which cliches were going to happen and when. There is a man in the movie who falls in love with an Italian girl who is apparently oblivious to the war going on around them, and he begins bragging about her to all of his squad mates. Sure enough *spoiler alert* he dies by the end of the movie. He's one of the half dozen or so people to die from the allied fighter squadron.

Another clearly abused item is a writing style. The world famous author Homer, who wrote the Illiad, The Odyssey, and Perseus: The Hero of Ithaca, created a story structure called the hero's call. It begins as the hero minding his own business, going about his daily life, then he gets a call to action of some form, the story builds up to the climax, then settles back down into the ending. Recognizing this story arc is crucial for my next point: IT IS THE STORY ARC STRUCTURE FOR EVERY MOVIE EVER PRODUCED BY HOLLYWOOD. with the exception of a handful of films who dared to be different and failed, that's how movies play out. If you don't believe me, watch your top 5 favorite movies, then your top 10 if you need more convincing. You'll be enamored by how consistent it is.

Let's take some random movies i can think of off the top of my head for example.

1. Dumb and Dumber: two friends who are rooming together can't hold a job to save their lives. Call to action is to leave the state and go somewhere else for a job. Climax: They end up thwarting a drug syndicate.
2. Lord of the Rings: Hobbit child is born to the bearer of the 1 ring to rule them all. Call to action: the ring must be destroyed and task is placed upon Hobbit, his fat hobbit friend, his two idiot hobbit friends, and an entourage of professional killers. Climax: book 1: Frodo gets stabbed by the nazghoul. Book 2: helms deep. Book 3: the return of Aragorn.
3. Unbreakable: average joe goes to work day in day out has a family to go home to every day. For some reason he can lift super-human amounts of weight and never gets sick. Call to action: get's harassed and eventually forced into his call to action by his arch nemesis. Climax: average joe finally buckles when his son tries to shoot him (vat a twist!)

Without beating the horse to death, i think i've made my point clear. Hollywood hashes, bashes and rehashes the same story arc dozens of times every year and it never phases anyone.

Finally there's the topic of 3D movies. Does anyone else remember when the only good quality 3d was IMAX? or when the only thing IMAX showed were educational videos about sperm whales that costed hundreds of thousands of dollars? I sure do. I also remember when Real3D was first released and the movies for it were actually recorded in 3D. But now companies record movies traditionally because it's cheaper, then adapt them to 3D to milk more money out of the gravy train.

I know the most immediate opposition would be that it's not true, the extra money that goes into every ticket is to counter the cost of the glasses. I'll play the devils advocate for a minute and give you that point. Even so, with the mass production of those standardized, ABS Plastic, polarized 3D glasses, each pair probably only costs companies about buck in total. They tack on 2-3 bucks to RENT the glasses which you're expected to return after the movie so they can sterilize them, and repackage them for a quarter then hand them out again. Tell me those figures add up and i'll show you to someone with a 4th grade math education.

No matter how you slice the pie, there's still a wad of cash that doesn't go towards recycling these glasses. With the pathetic wages movie theater employees get paid, it certainly isn't going towards them. Besides, their wages are covered in standard ticket fees. It's not like they get bonuses for selling 3D tickets, or i promise you they'd be strong arming you into the 3d showings as much as possible. So where does the extra $1.80 per recycled pair of glasses go? You tell me because i've already got my ideas of where but i'm always open to suggestions.

The Money-Hungry Games

So i just got back from watching the midnight release of the movie adaptation to the New York Times Best Seller "The Hunger Games". I read the trilogy immediately after the third book was released as i don't really like the prospect of twiddling my thumbs for a year before i can pick up the series again. And i certainly don't like paying full price for anything at all (call me frugal).

Basically i'm going to break this down as plainly and unbiased as possible for anyone who is just picking this up without having read the books or watched the movie. So bear with me as i wade through gory details. And if you're not a fan of spoiler alerts, now would be a good time to go elsewhere because i can't be held accountable for what i say from here out.

Let me start off by saying that the movie was mediocre. Approaching it from the standpoint of someone who hadn't read the books, you wouldn't have the slightest clue of what things were happening and why they were happening and how they came to be. The reason for this is because Suzanne Collins, the author of the hunger games, went into great detail surrounding the universe and what happened leading up to where the book really starts as well as putting a definite bold, underline surrounding the hardships of the districts.

I went to see the movie with my two siblings, both who had only read the first book and i bring this up because i want to outline the extreme differences between my understanding of the events in the movie (having read all 3 books) and their understanding. Both of my younger siblings were constantly leaning over and inquiring as to what was going on, why things were happening during the early events of the first book i had to explain things to them vaguely using my knowledge of the second and third books to get them to understand without ruining the excitement for them to read the last two books themselves.

Coming at the movie from the perspective of a person who read all three books, there were several minor subtleties inside the film that made me smile inside. Subtle foreshadowing during Katniss's trackerjacker trip which she envisions District 12's ultimate destruction, the emphasis of Haymitch's reactions to what Katniss is experiencing and showing brief snip-its of his hard work behind the scenes to get her the items, the scenes inside the control center for the arena and showing how the workers alter the atmosphere, time of day, and employ the traps to liven things up. Also, with the scenes from inside the control room there is brief foreshadowing as to the fact that there is an outer rim to the arenas. This comes too early in the movies if you ask me. It sets up dramatic irony, which is often far too over-used in hollywood, in exchange for the feeling of endlessness that Katniss feels when entering the arena and trying to find water.

Moving on from there, unfortunately the rest is all downhill. With the artistic liberties taken with the movie, came the chop shop. chopping the original text so that it's pheasable within a 3 hour time span is understandable but they cut it into an irreparable mess that will make the last 3 movies very difficult to sell. The cuts include but are not limited to:

1. All information regarding Tesserae which would have sufficiently explained why gales name was placed in the drawing 42 times.
2. Madge does not exist at all. The largest point to wrap my head around as Madge and her family play a crucial role later in the series.
3. Almost all of the violence was avoided to make it acceptable for a younger crowd.
4. All of the heartless kissing was removed (i could care less about this one really. It added no motion to the plot at all)
5. they abbreviated everything inside the games to a whopping 4 or 5 days whereas in the books it was a matter of weeks.

Wrapping this up so i don't bore people to death. There were a few artistic liberties taken which enhanced the story, however they just were not enough to offset all of the plot moving points and story critical characters that they've removed completely from the story.

No mention of the Avox even though she becomes Katniss's silent counselor in some ways, No mention of the head peacekeeper which plays a crucial role in the second book. No mention of Madge or Peeta's Father, the tension between Katniss and her mother is non-existent, and as far as i can tell the Seneca Crane gets killed? That pretty much stops the other 3 movies dead in the water as his role is sitting very close to the core of the story.

 Either way, don't waste your time with the movie. Waste of my money even though it will probably break the bank, it's really not worth it's 2 cents.