Out of the Past is a 1947 noir thriller so brilliant I cannot do it justice. I would definitely recommend it, particularly if you’re working with…
Characters
Plots
Accidental deaths falsely claimed as murder-suicides
Double-crosses, triple-crosses, and maybe a quadruple-cross depending on how you interpret a self-defense kill with a fishing reel.
A complex plot that is extremely easy to follow as it unfolds.
A character falsely disgracing himself for the greater good, but more smoothly and dramatically than Batman taking the blame for Harvey Dent in Dark Knight. This is straight-up tragic.
Hackers with a Stark-like appreciation for AC/DC have apparently let Iran know about their musical tastes. “[Iranian nuclear facilities] have been hit again by a bizarre attack forcing nuclear plant workstations to pump the song Thunderstruck by heavy metal band AC/DC through the speakers at full volume.” Among other things, this would suggest that the scene in Avengers where Tony Stark hijacks the PA system on a helicopter (to blare AC/DC) is plausible.
Unfortunately, it’s really just a generic “here’s what you should do to be ready for any disaster” plan with zombies thrown in for fun. Food and medicine are great, but let’s be honest: You’re not actually ready for a zombie apocalypse until you have a machine gun and two bullets for everybody in the county. (In case you miss, silly).
My zombie defense plan is counterintuitive, but it’s the most popular one in the world.
BBC: “The thieves were assaulting a German medical exchange student in Sydney, but the alleyway where they struck was next to a school for ninja warriors.” Guys, when you make sure there are no witnesses or security cameras nearby, you might want to take note of the ninja school next time.
As far as supernatural fantasies starring teen heroines go, this is pretty close to perfect. But red-blooded Americans of the non-girl variety would probably like this better. The bloody handprints were a cheery touch.
And here’s probably the funniest Hitler-themed video I’ve seen in, umm, ever.
Here’s an amusing excerpt from a Washington Post article…
“We are at a point where no one could have even imagined 15 years ago,” said Albert J. Lurigio, a professor of psychology and criminal justice at Loyola University who has written about electronic monitoring and privacy since a New Mexico judge, inspired by Spider-Man comics, became the first to sentence a defendant to home confinement with an electronic monitor.
This paragraph appeared in a Washington Post article about a miserably incompetent bank giving hundreds of millions of dollars in bonuses: “The rhetoric grew so heated yesterday that Sen. Charles E. Grassley suggested in a radio interview that AIG executives ought to ‘follow the Japanese model… resign, or go commit suicide.’ An aide later explained he does not actually want executives to kill themselves.” Good to know!
In Brookfield, Wis., no restaurant has triggered more calls to the police department since last year than Chuck E. Cheese’s.
Officers have been called to break up 12 fights, some of them physical, at the child-oriented pizza parlor since January 2007. The biggest melee broke out in April, when an uninvited adult disrupted a child’s birthday party. Seven officers arrived and found as many as 40 people knocking over chairs and yelling in front of the restaurant’s music stage, where a robotic singing chicken and the chain’s namesake mouse perform.
“The biggest problem is you have a bunch of adults acting like juveniles,” says Town of Brookfield Police Capt. Timothy Imler. “There’s a biker bar down the street, and we rarely get calls there.”…
In Toledo, Ohio, four women were charged with disorderly conduct after a melee erupted at a Chuck E. Cheese’s there last year. According to police reports, it started when parents complained to the restaurant manager that children were loitering at the drawing machine…
“I thought they were going to attack me,” says Sheri Kellar-Raab, the first officer who responded…
The company stationed armed security guards inside the restaurant in an effort to make it safer.”It was like something out of a Quentin Tarantino film,” says Mr. Zielinski, referring to the “Pulp Fiction” director. “What parent is going to take their kids to a place where there is alcohol and pistols get brandished?”
A friend of a friend (who graduated from a pharmacy school with a 2.5/4.0 GPA) has supposedly been offered $3 million to spend six years as a permanent resident in a remote region of Alaska. Is that remotely believable?
I can definitely relate to the protagonist of this article.
Arizona State University student Alex Botsios said he had no problem giving a nighttime intruder his wallet and guitars.
When the man asked for Botsios’ laptop, however, the first-year law student drew the line.
“I was like, ‘Dude, no — please, no!” Botsios said. “I have all my case notes…that’s four months of work!”
Police said Gabriel Saucedo entered Botsios’ apartment through an open window early Thursday morning. When Botsios woke up, Saucedo threatened him with a baseball bat, police said.
He was just like, ‘I’m going to smash your head in,'” Botsios said.
At that point, the law student wrestled the bat away and began punching Saucedo, Botsios said.
“I basically grabbed him and threw him this way, and he held onto the bat so it threw him to the ground,” he said.
Police said they took Saucedo to the hospital for stitches before they arrested him on charges of armed robbery and kidnapping. Other than a bruised knuckle and a few scratches, Botsios was unharmed.
When a network decides at the last moment to use another episode as the pilot, it’s essentially admitting that the first episode is too awful to air. So they switch to something that was never meant to be used as a pilot in the first place. Smooth. That would be like an NFL coach telling his quarterback that he didn’t like the way he was throwing with his right arm, so he should play the next game with just his left. A surefire plan for success!
The New York Times confirms that the Alaskan state trooper in “Troopergate” is actually Matt Parkman, a former police officer best known for his psychic abilities and contributing to the rampant power inflation in the second season of Heroes. She probably had him fired after he tried to give her some of the African crazy-beans that he’s been gorging on for the last two episodes. “They’ll let you see the future!” Riiiiight.
The Associated Press reports that a judge in Ohio offered to cut a fine for blaring rap music if the defendant listened to 20 hours of classical music. The defendant lasted 15 minutes.
Today we got an e-mail that asked “who’s paying you to crank this [expletive] out, the CIA?” Well, no. As far as I know, the CIA doesn’t offer grants for superhero novels, even kickass ones with accountants and mutant alligators from Homeland Security. In fact, judging by my ramen account, it looks like no one is paying us to write this novel.
–There’s intense violence but not a lot of feeling here. It’s not a very exciting movie. But it’s functional. It’s frequently tedious (especially the political sermons), but rarely boring. It’s definitely a huge improvement over the first movie. –Most of what sucked about Suicide Squad 1 was an overfocus on soulless authority figures. Sidelining Waller […]
1:30 – 6:55: Cyborg sees his Mother Box acting up. Then Mera sees her Mother box acting up. Then Amazon guards see their Mother Box acting up. Also there’s a Lex Luthor flashback where the computer shows him that Mother Boxes are plot relevant in case you missed that. PS: In the first 8 minutes […]
–Wonder Woman 1984 is not nearly as good at the original. Pluses: the cast is still very charming, and a few of the fight scenes are effective. I did actually like most of the first hour of the movie. –Setting: In the original Wonder Woman, the WWI setting contributes to a hard bleakness which effectively […]
In Griftlands, Rook finds a rebel map with FRPERG ONFR written on it and chuckles. The writing doesn’t explain this, but it’s a crude cypher for SECRET BASE. Solution: rotate each letter 13 digits. E.g. the secret message starts with F, the 6th letter of the alphabet, and adding 13 turns it into S (the […]
1. I don’t know where to start with Captain Marvel. So many things went so wildly wrong that we’d need a presidential commission to get to the bottom of it. It’s like the Chernobyl of superhero movies. 2. If at any point you feel like your action movie would benefit from a character whose main […]
1. This version of Spider-Man is a useless toolbox who actively avoids doing interesting things, and what he does attempt is usually wimpy and/or incompetent. 2. Unlike most main characters, his choices don’t matter much. For example, he chooses to leave his supersuit at home (but his aunt sneaks it in anyway) and he tries […]
We’re up to 72 superhero movies since 2000 (current as of November 2017). You can download the full data here. Some observations: R movies are making up the quality gap with PG-13 movies. Superhero movies are improving. Over the last 5 years (2013-2017), the average superhero movie is averaging 70% on Rotten Tomatoes, up […]
