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This weekend, the wife and I took in a movie. Due to scheduling, we had to wait until 9:55 PM to see this puppy. The lines, even for the late showing, were overwhelming… starting in the front lobby, curling around all the way to the side exit, and doubling back all the way to the lobby… Listen, i know a few of you guys live in a town of about 3000 and your biggest theater has three screens or something… This theater has 18 screens, most of which are of the largest variety available. These people were absolutely insane, waiting in those kind of lines for a freakin’ comic book movie!

We, on the other hand, are civilized and proper. Waiting in NO lines to enhance our lives and see something worth the price of admission… Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed (okay, really it had nothing to do with how hoity toity we are, we were paying to watch it for school… but still, c’mon now).

Lets get serious for a minute… We rarely go to a movie, unless its at the dollar theater (which has 15 screens), largely due to the price of admission. But with Expelled, it was well worth it if only to show support in the box office numbers.

Most of you probably know a little of what it is about… The tension in the scientific world between neo-Darwinists / Evolutionists and those who support Intelligent Design (henceforth “ID”). Supposedly the story behind this is that Stein (well-known intelligent Jew who supports ID) heard of a scientist working at the Smithsonian losing his position for the slightest positive mention of Stephen C Meyer (Christian ID proponent, author, etc) and a small implication that ID may have some merit. The first thirty minutes of the film follow similar stories (with immense quickness) to show that this is indeed not an isolated event. I’ve gotta be honest with you… it was interesting, but just seemed like more of the same old tired “evolutionists vs creationists” debate only changing the players to “neo-Darwinists vs Intelligent Designists”…  eh… it was neat to see Richard Dawkins interviewed and hear some of the conflicting views, but so far I wasn’t entrenched in the story…

Then IT happened. You know that point in a film, fiction or not, where your head says “wait a minute… this changes EVERYTHING!” But it doesn’t stop with your head… your heart kinda skips a beat and your gut starts twisting in knots…  And you can see it in Stein’s face as well. Up to this point, it looked scripted all the way around, but out of nowhere you, the audience and Stein realize that this has nothing to do with Science and everything to do with world-views. …

Sounds too obvious to be the “IT,” doesn’t it?…

But it changes everything and takes Stein on a completely different gut-wrenching, hand-sweating, disgusting path, climaxing with a head-to-head with Dawkins, world-renowned atheist, hater of all things religious, and maybe one of the most influential people of our time (behind the scenes and through his books)… It may be one of the most beautiful interviews in a documentary I’ve ever seen…

Sure, Stein wants ID to win, but it’s not Stein who says the ridiculous things that Dawkins and other neo-Darwinists say. They shoot themselves in the foot, over and over and over again. Dawkins isn’t even the craziest one of the bunch, he just has the loudest voice in our society…

(i’m leaving a great deal out so as not to play spoiler, but at some point, i’d love to discuss it) …

So, boycott the long lines at Iron Man, and take in Expelled. It’s beyond worth it. When the DVD comes out, buy it… Do everything you can to help Stein tear down the walls… society will be in better shape for it…

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Category : Culture, Current Events, Empyreal, Movies, Reviews

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Christmas Text-fessional for 2007

Sunday the High Schooler’s met at 11 AM with the Jr. Higher’s. Andy LaChance leads the JH worship, but he asked me to play along on electric. I haven’t played electric with the band in several months. ‘Twas fun. Here is the rundown.

Blessed Be Your Name - G - I’ve never sang this song this low… That was a weird range for my voice… This is USUALLY in B for me, i drop it to A for flow purposes sometimes, but… dang… G was freakin’ low for this song. But was fun to play

Grandma Got Ran Over by a Reindeer - G- Andy pulled a fast one on the group and told everyone he wrote a song last Christmas that was really important to him, slowed everything down, brought the lights down, then sang the chorus to this song… laughter ensued… of course, we went into a punkish rendition of the song the rest of the way. Good times.

It Came Upon A Midnight Clear - Cm- So… i’m not sure what possessed andy to pick this one, and it didn’t take him long to agree during practice when he realized he had no idea how old-school language every verse other than the first is… he wanted to scratch it, I convinced him to keep it and I would perform the last couple of verses “edgar allan poe” poetry reading style… it was funny. I tried to convince some of the youth to come up, but alas, they wouldn’t. I’m sure had any traditionalists been there, they would’ve called me a heretic and said i was disrespectful… but hey… whatever.

Two movies watched via DVD this holiday weekend:

Hot Rod- Alright. I’ll admit it. I keep quoting it. I thought it was mildly entertaining, but more importantly, it has quotable power. It did NOT live up to the hype that my Bro-In-Law poured onto it, but the parts that were entertaining keep coming up in conversation and life. Dinner with the fam tuesday night had more references to this movie than I’d care to admit….

Happy Feet - I wanted to like this movie. I didn’t want my daughter watching an agenda driven movie with more sexual references than American Pie. The movie is really well done and has a lot of funny moments, but the negatives far outweigh the positives. It is extremely anti-religious, which isn’t always a bad thing, but its overdone here. Not that it threatens the way of following Christ that we are raising our daughter on, but there were some things I wasn’t too happy about.

It was very “green” in nature. Again, not a completely bad thing, but it pushes a lot of eco-driven stuff. I’m all for making this earth a better place to live, but it just got annoying after a while. It also played into a lot of racial stereo-types, but what we fail to realize is that EVERY kids movie does this.

Top it off with the major sub-plot centralized around getting action… *cough*sex*cough* and it was a pretty disappointing “family” movie… On a different scale (i.e. - reg. movie, not family movie), i’d probably score it a little higher. I just didn’t know I’d need to debreif my daughter so much after watching it…

And that, as they say , is that…

Read from my newly acquired bottle of Axe Body Spray (gifted from my dad of all people): If you spray it, she will come….

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Category : Current Events, Family, Movies

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The last time I was at work was August 10th and I have enjoyed my time off, but alas, I have returned. This may come as surprise to most of my readers cause generally bloggers are kind enough to say “i’m going on vacation.” The problem is I figured that I would post as normal during my 11 days off because I was at home for 8 of those days.

I guess I just wasn’t inspired.

Blogging has become more a part of a way to get through the work day than anything else, so perhaps a vacation from work translated to a vacation from blogging. I barely was on the comp at all really. It was nice… so, let me hit some quick highlights:

* In my brief time on the net I decided to look for professional athletes that have a blog. Not many out there, but I did find this: Alyssa Milano on Baseball. My wife says she’s actually a pretty good writer…

* Most of the week was family oriented. Our eldest starts 2nd grade next week so it was kind of a “One Last Hurrah” kinda week. We went bowling at the Main Event, Skating, and the highlight of the week for the family: Fossil Rim. I’ll probably post a handful of pictures from the Fossil Rim trip soon, but basically it’s a hands-on wildlife experience. The animals come right up to your car and often stick their heads in your window. It can be a little freaky, but it’s fun. Here’s my 7 yr old feeding a giraffe:

* The wife and I went to Corpus Christi for the weekend. We had talked about going Deep Sea Fishing, but decided it against it for a variety of reasons; not the least of which was the remnants of Tropical Storm Erin and the imminent threat of Hurricane Dean. Instead we went to the Texas State Aquarium, which was less than expected, but not bad.

* We went to celebrate our 8th anniversary.

* School officially started for me this weekend. The first class is online: Comp I, which for week one includes 70+ pages of reading from an English Comp book (exciting) and an essay. I’m about halfway through already because I’d like to stay ahead; I have a second class starting Thursday on campus.

* On the 6.5 hour drive home, we heard Fergie’s “Big Girls Don’t Cry” at least 6 times, four of those were in the morning. Did you know at any given time on Sunday mornings you can listen to 4 different “top 20 countdowns?” And did you know Casey Cassum (sp?) is still doing one?

* One Fantasy Football Draft down, 2 to go.

* We saw The Boune Ultimatum. Good good stuff. The character transistion in this one is top notch, but I wont give it away. And for those of you who rarely enter book stores, the author of the books (yes, they’re books) already has the fourth book out: The Bourne Betrayal. I’m not going to read it, but I hope they make it a movie.

Later folks…

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Category : Culture, Current Events, Eh... Whatever, Family, Football, Me Dang It!, Movies, Music, Photos, School, Sports

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It was nice to have a second PMDN (Poor Man’s Date Night) this week as the kids spent the night with the Mimi. We decided to finish up the original Die Hard trilogy in one fail swoop. I’ll start with DH2:Die Harder (1990).

A lot of people were telling me this was better than the original, and I have to disagree. Don’t get me wrong, I liked it a lot. Instead of telling why I liked it, lets talk about why I’ll take DH over DH2.

1) John McClane is more authentic every-man in the first as opposed to having a true hero “Cowboy” mentality in the second. Both are situations of desperation that he is thrust into, but he is a much more unwilling participant in the first one. In DH2, he forces himself into the situation and is more than willing to get involved. Both work for his character, I just prefer the attitude he had in the first.

2) The story line suffers quite a bit. I’m not necessarily one of those “realists” that doesn’t like a little poetic license in movies… give me ridiculous action and “that could never happen” moments. I enjoy them. But to me there were just too many things that didn’t make logical sense… seriously, I could list a very large handful.  No one in their right mind would make some of the decisions that the good guys in this movie were making. To top it off, I’d say it was fairly predictable.

3) William Sadler is not nude in the first one. And that’s a good thing.

Quickly, I’ll say despite these three things, i’d still give it about a 7 out of 10…  or 3.5 out of 5… or 1.4 thumbs up (out of 2) for its sheer entertainment value.

Now onto DH:With a Vengence (1995).

There’s really not much to say other than it is not near as good as either of the others. The riddles were cute and the bad guy was pretty clever, but the story line really began to suffer in this one. “Hey Zues” was a great character (Sam L Jackson) and their is a good deal more humor in this offering, but I just couldn’t connect what was going on with any sort of reality. I HATED the character John McClane became during the 5 year hiatus; not his bad-assness (which was still there), but the fact that his life had fallen apart. I much prefered the John McClane in DH that you could sense wanted to make things right with his wife; and I really liked the McClane in DH2 that genuinely loved his wife. What happened to that guy? So, bottom line, enjoyed the action, enjoyed the relationship between McClane and Zues, but can’t put it above 3 stars, teetering on 2.5.

So, there you have it… i’m much more cultured now. Looking forward to Live Free or Die Hard at some point.

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Category : Culture, Current Events, Family, Movies, PMDN, Reviews

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Die Hard (1988) 

So I was at Sam’s Club and saw the Die Hard trilogy on sale for $16… All three $16. Can’t go wrong there. I’ve never seen them, but Bruce Willis is the man and I’ve heard nothing but good… I’m a sucker for action anyway.

Let me just say… the first installment did not disappoint at all. From the early humorous exchange between John McClane and Argyle the Limo Driver all the way to the final credits… well, the bad guy coming out at the end was a bit cliche, but i wasn’t paying attention to that sort of thing in 1988, so maybe this was not cliche back then.

And it was actually pretty intelligently written overall. Some action flicks turn out to be so ridiculous that its all about the action and the plot / story suffers, but the script holds its own in this case… Now, judging from the previews of 4.0 i’m not sure how long this trend will continue as I catch up with series.

With the first watch, i’m going to definitely have to give this a 4.5 out of 5. The bad guy at the end just knocked it down a notch.

Yippee-ki-yay

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Category : Culture, Current Events, Movies, PMDN, Reviews

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The action sequences are pretty sweet, the story line is a bit “eh,” the love story is pretty lame / ridiculous, and there is plenty of cheese to go around. But…

The best way to judge any part of a trilogy / series is to imagine them strung together as one long movie. If its seamless, then how you feel about one should be how you feel about the others.

So, what’s up with all the bad reviews and smack talk on this movie?

It fits perfectly with the first two…

Seriously, the movies entertain me, but I cannot understand why the first two movies would get unmerited rave reviews and this one gets unmerited bad reviews. It’s Spiderman for gosh sakes! The acting has been mediocre, the bad guys have spewed cheesy lines, and the love story has lacked real emotion all from the inception.

So, cut #3 some slack. It entertains at the same level of the other two. And Emo Peter Parker is funnier than people give him credit for.

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Category : Culture, Eh... Whatever, Movies, Reviews

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The wife and I have designated Wed night as our “Poor Man’s Date Night.” Basically it’s a night just for us, after the kids go to bed… no working out, no church duties, no practicing guitar, and probably no 360 (dang).  This is night we generally use to watch one of our Blockbuster Online movies. We do the cheapy plan: One out at a time. This week:

A History of Violence (2005)
One of the very few pitfalls of online rental is the occasional memory lapse that your Q needs to be updated. We don’t get to see a lot in the theaters, so we should be updating it on a regular basis, but we don’t. Every now-and-again we’ll spend a good hour just rummaging through the available titles looking for possible gems we might have missed based on actors / directors we generally like… movies that got little play in theaters and were undermarketed. This is how we came across A History of Violence, starring Viggo Mortenson and Ed Harris… We like Viggo, my wife throws this on the Q months ago, suddenly it’s at our door due to lack of Q updating.

Anytime you start a review by stating “This is a 90 minute movie that seemed to last about 180″ you know something is wrong, but that is exactly what this felt like.  Sometimes a slow movie can still hold your interest, and this one did for about 20 minutes… or maybe it was 40… i’m not sure, it’s hard to convert actual minutes into “History” minutes.

After the initial set up, the plot twists are not really twists… more like straight dead end roads that are so predictably insipid my 1st grader could’ve seen them coming a mile away. About the only shocking moments in this movie is the sudden aggressive and violent sex scene that really doesn’t even fit… (hindsight suggest this isn’t too surprising as the director has at least one NC-17 movie on his resume along with a bunch of other ridiculously stupid movies). 

From a cultural and spiritual perspective, there is very little redeeming quality at all, only a glimpse of a daughter’s (roughly age 8) unconditional love and acceptance for her father when his spouse and older son have distanced themselves. Even still, you get the impression that it is less love and more naivety that drives the acceptance.

Bottom Line: Ignore the 7.5 out of 10 given on IMDB. This is a 3 / 10 at best.

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Category : Culture, Movies, PMDN, Reviews

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