The Wall Street Journal headline I saw for half a second while walking to get my free Friday donut (chocolate - yum!) said "Arab Unrest Spreading." It also said something about Egypt below a picture of angry people with signs, the universal symbol for civil disruption.
This is where I'd usually make a cheap joke about pyramids, mummies, or - if I was trying to show off my book learnin' - the Ptolemaic dynasty.
However, at least once in the history of this blog, someone from Egypt visited Bad Ideas. Perhaps it was a member of the rebels (I don't really know what the issue is, so I've decided it's like Star Wars), looking for a quick laugh as they assembled a homemade assault rifle; maybe it was a soldier in the Imperial guard, who mistakenly ended up up here as he Googled "bad ideas for what to wear at a riot."
Then again, this is the internet; someone probably typed in "dog boners" and was whisked by the pagerank fairy to my fair HTML home. Sorry friend! Due to the injunction, I had to shut down that part of my blog back in November.
Whoever you were, Egyptian viewer, I wish you nothing but success in your quest to overthrow your President/God emperor, or your efforts to quell dissent/brain a rioter with a half-brick!
Skyline is a movie about a group of people you don't like endlessly making the same bad decisions with the same predictable results; it's a lot like going out to dinner with your family.
"I wish everyone but me would die," she thinks.
In this film, a group of "cool" twentysomethings alternate between hiding from the aliens, running outside with the aliens, and standing on the roof of their building so all the aliens can see them. Each time this cycle is completed, more people die from horrible, horrible alien vaginas.
I am not kidding about that last part; these aliens are from the planet Vagoo, and have developed vaginas in their heads, hands, and bottoms, all to swallow men whole. Each type of alien is a glistening, outer space man trap.
My theory is that one of Skyline's writers got drunk, picked up a chick at the bar, and woke up next to one of those metal squids from the Matrix. Or, whoever designed the aliens from this movie dropped some LSD and stared at Georgia O'Keefe paintings for hours. Even H.R. Giger thinks the aliens from this film are too suggestive.
"These guys have issues." - H.R. Giger
The protagonist - which is what I'll call him because I can't remember his bland name, and "hero" certainly doesn't fit - is a cool graphics designer from Chicago, or New York, or somewhere where graffiti is a viable career choice. He's taking his cool dead-eyed girlfriend with inflatable lips to Los Angeles, so they can visit his cool friend who made it big in the...CGI industry?
Is that a thing? I know someone has to make all the pretend aliens that Will Smith fights, but do you really get a sports car and a bitchy blond bikini girlfriend when you do?
Wait, looks like the movie was written by the Brothers Strause who have done just that. If that works, I'm writing a movie about an awesome librarian who gets a hot girlfriend and fights evil around the world by using his extensive knowledge of random trivia!
Later, the cool kids have a pool party whose sole purpose is to inform us that Turk from Scrubs is banging his hot assistant (True to life, eh Brothers Strause?) and inflatable lips girlfriend is pregnant. This latter revelation drives the rest of the movie, serving as our emotional tie to these characters. However, the characters are about as interesting as a Metamucil commercial, so it doesn't work.
Thank God the aliens show up, in all their vagina bearing glory. The central conceit is that the aliens are capable of projecting a blue light that pulls a Siren's call on anyone who looks at it. The light either atomizes or paralyzes you, depending on what the writers aliens want it to do.
Right now it wants $7.50 to leave your bank account.
Random movie producer guy is the first to go, followed by Turk, followed by...you know what?
Fuck it.
We've all seen this movie - or at least movies so much better they appear as Platonic ideals compared to this one - and we know where it's going. Eventually everyone dies from stupidity except the protagonist and the love interest. They survive, not because they weren't monumentally stupid, but because they're the butt monkeys the script is hitched to.
The protagonist has gained some body horror superpowers by repeatedly being exposed to the blue light, which is like getting superpowers because your mom did shots of paint thinner while pregnant and you somehow made it through. He goes all Mel Gibson in The Patriot on Flying Ladyparts Scout #43bee56, and I wish I could reach through the screen and do the same to him.
or, as Mel Gibson calls it, Tuesday
The movie succeeds in one area, and that's the one I'm about to ruin for you. Think of it like having surgery; it sure does hurt when Mr. Doctor cuts that weird mole off, but it's better than going through the rest of life with it growing a face. (That's what happens, right?)
Some films are so good at creating tension that it remains even when you watch the movie again. I've seen Back to the Future over and over again, but each time I'm convinced I've gotten a never-before-seen cut of the movie where the Delorean doesn't start at the end.
Skyline, creates a lot of a tension, which it resolves in a simple way: the writers don't save the characters. Protagonist McGee gets his brain ripped out, and Inflatalips Babycarriage is sucked into the moist jaws of an alien octopus robot.
"Don't look up." Mainly because that's where the screen is.
Aboard one of the motherships, we see the aliens wipe the brains and insert them into new bodies, with the implication that it was repurposed human brains hunting down their former peers. It's a downer ending with a sickening twist!
Well done, Skyline! If you didn't succeed as a heroic film about worthwhile characters battling extraterrestrial oppression, at least you gave us a bunch of unlikeable dickholes getting backwards prison raped into being on the aliens' side.
...but then comes the coda, in which the film goes from being grimdark to a Saturday morning cartoon. Apparently - and I say this knowing the only people this is apparent to are the paint huffers that made this film - Protagonist McGee was rendered immune to the alien's mindwipe by virtue of being in TRUE LURV.
pictured - protection from psionic assault
He then uses his new CGI alien meatsuit to rescue Inflatalips, and has a series of one-panel adventures fighting more different aliens to generic action music. No, really.
...
In conclusion, Skyline was a film with an interesting premise and a sweet twist ruined by unsympathetic characters and an ending that came five minutes too late. If you must watch it, watch it drunk; the drunker the better.
While reading an article in the online edition of my local paper, I noticed an ad on the side of the page. I usually don't see ads, thanks to AdBlock and years of training, but I think it was the double pair of staring eyes that did it:
Who is this ad meant for, I wondered? Is there some insomniac woman out there, up to her wrinkled eyes in mortgage debt, so hobbled by her bad joints that she can't fight the insurance companies that are screwing her?
After a moment of thought I concluded, probably, yes.
That's the human condition in a nutshell, with the exception of the woman who's on the Spice (the dermatologists are scared because fear is the mind killer.) The only thing missing is the ONE SIMPLE SECRET a LOCAL MOM used to make her teeth TEN THOUSAND TIMES whiter, so white they travel in time and have adventures.
like this
Thank you, Adblade; you're doing God's work. May your monumental quest to end all human suffering be accomplished quickly! I for one welcome the Advertising Eschaton.
As an Earth human, it's time for me to hijack the changing of a digit to buoy my incredibly weak willpower and lie to myself. Like so:
This year, this year, things will be different! 2011 will be a banner year for me, and all because it's one number different from 2010! You know, the year I'm already looking at like it was a bad one night stand, quite possibly a dude.
Here are my New Year's resolutions, because lying is so much easier in list form.
(Fun game: Can you spot the real resolution amongst all the fakes?)
1.) Stop drawing my number sevens like little guns.
2.) Stop drawing a tiny caricature of myself under the seven guns.
3.) Save money by buying the $2 scratch-offs instead of the $5 ones.
4.) Use extra money to visit scenic Cleveland and finally finish "Cities of Ohio" diorama.
5.) Discover my family's history, hide all war crimes.
6.) No more rentboy gigs unless the money is decent.
7.) Spend more time with the three f's: family, friends, fantastic strip clubs.
8.) Stop answering yes or no questions with "Lady Gaga."
9.) Invent Five Loko.
10.) Replace bad habits with arrogance towards those who still have bad habits.
11.) Volunteer at suicide prevention hotline, play inspirational Van Halen song.
12.) Patio furniture is not for molesting.
13.) Patio furniture is NOT for molesting.
14.) Cross "make a bucket list" off my bucket list.
15.) Start program for inner city kids, "Lunches not Punches".
16.) Improve marriage to Rita Handowski.
17.) Pursue dream of whittling all the presidents.
18.) Finish what I st
19.) Find an effective ADD medica
20.) Stop using the same joke over and over again.
21.) Stop silently judging people who pronounce the "t" in "often".
22.) Organize my closeted homosexual friends.
23.) Cease my "pelvic thrusts instead of high fives" initiative.
24.) Rescue Princess Leia from the Galactic Empire.
25.) Create firm boundaries between fiction and reality.
26.) Become morally perfect, the Benjamin Franklin way!
27.) Recycle more - let others use my sex slaves once they're broken in.
28.) Stop collecting Seth Green's old q-tips, using them to make "Seth Green-tip".
29.) No more hilariously named illegitimate children.
30.) Earn nickname "The Cockpunch Kid."
31.) Less pillaging, more looting.
32.) The blood of my conquered foes is a "sometimes" food.
33.) Start gardening. Plants are like friends that can't testify against you.
34.) Know when to hold 'em.
35.) Know when to fold 'em.
36.) Stop trying to mail snapping turtles to my ex-girlfriends.
37.) Drink only on days of the week with "s" in them.
38.) Maybe eat some rice or something. I don't know.
