Monday, September 28, 2009

Roman Polanski

Shouldn't the U.S. have sent out assassins to get this bastard by now?

That is all.

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Because, You Know, Rapists Want to Prevent Rape

Via Alas, a bunch of rape-prevention tips that are guaranteed to work, because, you know, preventing rape is the foremost goal of the person committing rape.

The reason why most advice on preventing rape is given to potential victims rather than potential rapists is the same reason that advice on preventing computer virus infection is given to potential victims rather than the people writing the virus. Namely, because they are the ones with the incentive to prevent it.

The only situation in which giving a potential rapist rape prevention advice makes sense is if that person is either at risk of raping "accidentally" (i.e. they get so drunk that they atack someone without knowing what they are doing), if they are engaging in activities that make them more aggressive with greater potential for attacking someone (e.g. taking steroids) but are ignorant of how that might affect their sexual behavior, or if they are truly ignorant of the requirements for consent.

For most rapists, who either want to violate their victims or who are simply indifferent to their victims' desires, such advice falls on deaf ears and is more feel-good pablum.

I previously made fun of this sort of thing here.

More on this later.

That is all.

Saturday, September 12, 2009

Review of G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra [SPOILERS]

Overall, it was a very decent film.

It did something that Transformers (the first film, I am not paying for a movie ticket to see the sequel to such trash as the first movie) did not do; namely, it managed to transpose the characters from the cartoon into a slightly more realistic-feeling setting quite believably. And it did not get lost dealing with the exploits of new characters created just for the movie or with unimportant side characters.

The movie is very big on special effects, and not very big on introspection or on the analysis of war, but, if you want to see that, don't go to a movie based on the 80s version of a toy franchise.

However, there were a few flaws.

I didn't like the Baroness' backstory. She should be German/Russian with a heavy accent, and should have chosen to be evil. The idea of her as one of the good guy's former love interests, and as a mind-controlled pawn, really don't do her character any good. She's supposed to be a former sudent radical with the hots for the chrome-domed one, for Pete's sake!

At the end, Cobra Commander was given a voice that should have gone to Destro. Cobra Commander should have had a higher-pitched, whinier voice, like the original Chris Latta voice. That's one of the iconic aspects to the character. But the backstory makes more sense than the Cobra-La backstory of the cartoon.

There is an implication that Cobra Commander's nano-facial surgery put Destro under some form of control at the end - maybe not mind control, but it is implied that he has Destro at his mercy and can give Destro great pain if he so wishes. That would be a bit of character decay, as Destro has always been portrayed as being very independent-minded. But the idea of Destro having a metal face rather than actually wearing a mask makes sense - his original appearance, with a fully-expressive metal mask, realy can only be duplicated by him having a metal face.

Finally, I think that Zartan should have had the mask/eye tattoos/whatever that he had in the original series, and that the long hair/hood that he wore would have been good as well. At least he should have had it in one scene, to make the connection with the cartoon counterpart more explicit.

I hope that if there is a sequel that we can see more of Dr. Mindbender. And he reall does need his monocle and menacing moustache.

That is all.

Thursday, September 10, 2009

Thinking About The Boondocks

A year or two ago, I watched The Boondocks on Cartoon Network a lot.

One thing that struck me was, for all of the supposed liberal slant of Aaron MacGruder, a whole lot of the commentary seemed to be criticizing the detrimental aspects of black culture and in trying to suggest to black people to get their acts together.

Moreover, a lot of the more biting criticism at white people seemed to be directed particularly at the Stuff White People Like Crowd.

For example, one of my favorite moments occurs after Uncle Ruckus gets up on stage and starts singing "Don't trust them new n*****s over there." All of the white people at the posh garden party stare at each other, and then someone pipes up "I think it's okay when THEY say it." Suddenly everyone looks relieved and begins clapping mindlessly (previously they were all applauding all of Huey's paranoid rants while obviously ignoring their content).

I can think of very little that is as funny as skewering the effete.

That is all.