"The Hurt Locker" Wins Best Picture. Na'vi Everywhere Are Pissed!

 "KATHERYN BIGELOW IS NO JAMES CAMERON!" Na'vi warriors chant after Oscar thievery. 

Na'vi all over the planet are enraged that the 2010 Academy Awards chose to give their greatest prize to a flawed movie about a guy who would rather face the prospect of being blown into tiny pieces than go home and be a father and a husband.

Yes, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences chose to give the Best Picture award to "The Hurt Locker," a movie that, by some strange twist of fate, did not have a single Na'vi warrior in it.

Word has it that Na'vi activist groups are scrambling to protest the outrageous decision. For the Na'vi, giving the Best Picture to the ex-wife of their deity, James Cameron, is tantamount to inter-species racism, and the Na'vi are considering a fatwa on the Academy, if they only had a word in their language that meant "irrational anger at anything that does not conform to your culture."

Reports are coming in from London, Cairo, Sydney, and New York city of people witnessing various groups of Na'vi warriors flying their winged beasts and shooting arrows at random civilians. 

One Na'vi warrior was interviewed by CNN, and he said, "We do not accept this travesty of nature, this Bigelow person, as being a better diety than James Cameron. We will fight for his honor by killing everyone we can find until this decision is overturned. We have much work to do." After that, the Na'vi warrior killed the reporter.

No word on how long the Na'vi will persist in their struggle, but I, for one, want to welcome our new Na'vi overlords and I want to offer my services as a blogger to help them take revenge against the followers of the Anti-Cameron. 

 

Olympic Observations From the DMZ

Random Blasts about the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics

1. A luger from the country of Georgia died after he overshot a turn and flew into a concrete barrier. Yeah. This one hurt. Watching an athlete die in the way this Georgian luger died was about the biggest buzz-kill the Olympics could have experienced. I felt horrible for his family, but I asked myself why there were concrete barriers exposed at that turn? This was Vancouver's first embarrassment, and unfortunately, it cost a precious life for them to erect a safety barrier. Unconscionable.

2. The Opening Ceremonies were fun up until the end when four famous Canadians, including Wayne Gretzky and Steve Nash, stood with separate torches awaiting the emergence of four towers that would comprise the Olympic Cauldron. The only problem was, it didn't happen the way it was planned. One of the towers was unable to raise, so three towers formed the impartial Cauldron. Three of the four Canadians lit their torch, with poor Catriona LeMay Doan standing with nothing to do. Catriona, a Canadian speed-skater of great renown, was left holding a torch that didn't light anything, and Canada was left with a very awkward end to a day that began in sadness.

3. Before the Olympics, Canada promoted an "Own the Podium" campaign to encourage Canadian medal wins. Apparently, in the last two Canadian-hosted Olympic Games, Canada won a whopping ZERO medals. So, Canada spent billions of dollars trying to "Own the Podium." In response, one US athlete remarked, "We'll be renting their podium from them for the month of February, and after that, they can have it." Nice. Don't you just love the neighborly attitudes? I sure do.

4. Let me just get this out of the way. While I do respect the athleticism of figure skating, it's not a sport that I enjoy very much. Figure skating involves a certain physical excellence, but how many legitimate sports require MUSIC as a crucial part of the competition? Figure skating is only one of MANY Olympic sports that are judged by a panel of observers. I make no apologies when I say that I really do not like judged sports. I dislike EVERY judged sport from mogul skiing and olympic diving, to boxing and synchronized swimming. Nothing aggravates me more than watching a sport where an athlete performs a spectacular routine, and then must wait for a panel of snooty experts who knock heads to determine exactly how good that routine was. That's why I like timed events, or team sports with goals, baskets, and clear points being scored that any layman can understand. When the US Men's Hockey team won their game against Canada, no one could argue the fact that the US won the game. However, when Even Lysacek defeated Evegeny Plushenko in Men's Figure Skating, the voices of protest against Lysacek began before the medal ceremony began. Rather than awaiting the judgment of a panel of faceless, nameless, and self-important men and women in suits, divining who should win and who should lose, I prefer to watch the sports that are scored on the field of play. It's ridiculous. Sports should have an inarguable winner and loser.

5. Our local NBC affiliate, KNBC-Channel 4, starts its evening newscast at 11:30pm, and goes through a virtual half-hour of Olympics coverage. To KNBC, no other news is happening than the Olympics. KNBC-TV in Los Angeles apparently does not realize that there is a massive military operation in Afghanistan. That's American news for ya.

6. I love Canada, but I want them to lose the gold in Men's Ice Hockey. I don't even need the Americans to win. As long as the Canadians lose, I'll feel better. Why? Canadians are too freaking cocky about their hockey. Let's bring them down a few notches and make them humble. Let them win the curling gold, and the USA can have the hockey gold medal.

7. NBC's coverage is not live, which comes as no surprise to those of us on the West Coast. To you East-Coasters, you are fortunate to get live events. Those of us on the West Coast need to wait THREE FREAKING HOURS after an event ends to actually see it. For that, I say that NBC should burn in sports broadcasting hell for all eternity. No. Really.

8. NBC's coverage is sickeningly America-centric. Essentially, every American athlete is given preferential treatment, long segments of American athletes. This is patently absurd. Give me stories about the champions regardless of nationality. NBC needs to get its jingoistic head out of his ass.

More later . . .

"Transformers" Strikes Chord With Stunningly Beautiful Megan Fox; Fails Like Moldy Cheese Otherwise

I just saw the first "Transformers" movie because I'm a sucker for Megan Fox's lovely face, but I have to say that Explosion Bay (my name for director, Michael Bay, whose movies tend to be two and a half hour explosions,) disappoints yet again. Oh sure, there are awesome effects, Autobots morphing, Decepticons . . . . deceiving . . . and tons of destruction and mayhem. But where the fuck is the plot? Hmm? Anyone?

Let's start from the beginning. Sam is played by Shia However-the-hell-his-name-is-pronounced. Sam scores an A- on some test which is the agreement he had with his Dad that would get him a new car. As it turns out, this new car is a clunker of an old car with a tendency to do things on its own.

Whatever. I'm just waiting for Megan Fox to come on the screen. (Well, not literally, but that would be fun to watch as well.)

So, Sam gets a black and yellow Camaro and drives it to the park where Mikaela (Megan Fox) is hanging with her boyfriend. Sam is now face-to-face with Mikaela's jock boyfriend, who wants to turn the nerd into hamburger. Mikaela stops anything from happening before Shia, er, Sam gets turned into nerd-meat.

Next, Mikaela is being talked down to by her boyfriend, so she leaves him. What follows is every nerdy guy's ultimate dream: Sam offers to drive Mikaela home, and she agrees. Cut to some awkwardness as the Camaro decides to take Sam and Mikaela to a lookout and cuts the engines.

Okay. Now all of this would be interesting to me if I gave a shit about Sam, which I don't. He's portrayed as a guy with desperate needs. AND he's a nerd. A needy nerd is not an interesting character in my book. But, I'm hoping for Mikaela (the aforementioned Megan Fox) to sex up the screen and that keeps me watching.

As this is going on, a US military base in New Mexico . . . err, um, I mean, "Qatar" (wink wink) is attacked by shape-shifting robots that cannot be stopped. These things are pissed and they seem to want to kill everything in sight. That is, until some midget robot starts downloading data from the military's computers.

Cut back to Sam, where he finds out that his own car can drive itself. Sam tails his own car to a remote location where he watches his car "transform" (Get it? The name of the movie?) into a robot so it can shine the Bat-Signal, or Hasbro's Transformers logo up into the clouds above him. Lame.

Anyway, Sam is suddenly attacked by another robot who had morphed into a police car and demands to know where some cube might be hidden. Cut to big battle chase scenes with crashes and precious shots of Sam screaming, dodging, sliding, and cowering. Sam's yellow Camaro comes to the rescue, as does several other robots, led by one robot who clearly won the Coolest Name in the Universe contest: Optimus Prime.

Optimus tells Sam about the cube, about how Sam's own grandfather discovered a frozen robot named Megatron in the Arctic Circle, and that Sam's grandfather also discovered the location of this precious cube. Now, I've seen the movie and I still don't know what this cube is for, other than the bad guys want it, the good guys want it, and Optimus Prime vows to destroy it no matter the cost. (The classic "I-Don't-Give-a-Shit" Quest.)

At this point, there is far less Megan Fox than I would have liked. She actually tags along after Sam when he's running away from the Decepticon cop car. Why she suddenly decides to ditch her friends and follow Sam is never made clear, but who cares when Megan Fox is on the screen again? Not me, I assure you.

So, the gist of the plot is this: The good guys are Autobots. The bad guys are Decepticons. They both want this cube thingy from their home planet of "I was so bored I forgot the name of their stupid planet." Why they want it, I don't know. What it does, I have no clue. And Sam is crucial to the story, why? Because when his grandfather discovered the frozen Megatron, the man was struck by a beam that imprinted Megatron's location on the grandfather's glasses. How the Autobots knew that is beyond me. We're just simply supposed to nod and wait for more Megan Fox.

Moron Quest #1? Find Sam's grand dad's old glasses. Cue some silly bits about the Autobots stepping on the lawn of Sam's parents' house, and hiding under a patio roof to avoid detection from Sam's parents, and you get an idea of the ridiculousness of this movie. Anyway, glasses are found, and then suddenly, Sam and Mikaela are arrested, and the Camaro, heretofore known as "Bumblebee," is captured.

I'm even skipping over the whole Secretary of Defense and his gaggle of investogators, but I don't mind because it's a stupid subplot.

At any rate, Sam and Mikaela find themselves being shown super-duper-secret stuff hidden near Hoover Dam to hide these things from . . . who knows what? Apparently, when Sam's grandpappy found Megatron, the US Government's super-duper-secret agency that no one knows about took a frozen Megatron and the big, bad voodoo cube, and dropped them into this underground facility. As we are told, every piece of modern electronic or computer technology on Earth is due to the reverse engineering of Megatron. Mmm hmm. Now if only they reverse engineered this plot. They'd come up with the basic plot of a Thomas the Tank Engine show.

Okay. So, they've found the glasses, and they've found the cube. What's next? Well, we see a frozen Megatron. Wouldn't it be cool if something happened to thaw him out? You don't think so either? We'll, neither did I, but they did it anyway.

Bumblebee touches the Cube and it shrinks from the size of a three story building to the size of a square football. Megatron is thawed, and once again, mayhem ensues.

As Sam and his buddies try to drive away with the Cube to nowhere in particular when the Decepticons attack, and much mayhem ensues. Buildings are rattled and crumble, humans are flicked away, people run in vain, and Sam is given the duty of running to a rooftop to, what? Hand the Cube over to Black Hawk helicopters? Give me a break.

I don't even remember how it ended. All I know is that Megan Fox kisses that dweeby Shia kid at the end, and my stomach started turning. It made no sense. Where was the attraction? Where was the romance? Where was the . . . Oh yeah. That's right. It's not there. We're only supposed to imagine it's there.

"Transformers" is an Explosion Bay production, so it's pretty much a given fact that the movie will have no discernible plot. But I was even surprised to learn that Megan Fox added very little sex appeal to the movie. The CG effects were great, but so what? I didn't care about these people any more than I cared about whether California is a blue state or a red state. (In fact, I don't know which is which.)

So, two hours have been wasted for which I will complain about for many months until Mr. Explosion Bay gives me back the money I spent on the 2-disc DVD piece of shit.

Grrrrrrrrrr.

~Out