MOVIE NIGHT:

Seeing as my last rant (seems so long ago) was about the Republican National Convention then I suppose it'd only be fair to give the Democrats equal time and talk about the shindig they threw for themselves last week.

"Yes Bill, I promise to keep Hillary out of the country as much
as possible. I know… I hate her too. Bros before hoes."

Okay, that's enough about that, this isn't a political blog after all. Perish the thought. Political blogs are serious deals with direction and purpose and credibility like The Huffington Post. All this blog has going for it is my penchant for boob references, my very short attention span and… 

Huff Post founder Arianna Huffington seen here with Scarlett Johansson's rack.
Proof that cleavage is all around us, you just have to stop and appreciate it. 

So I find myself alone this week, unsupervised, master of my domain as it were. No wife, no kid, no oversight of any kind what-the-hell-soever. And lest you take that last sentence as me suggesting that if my kid were around then he'd have some kind of authority over me then… yeah, you read it right. F@%king little stoolie.

Thus lacking any kind of supervision — adult or otherwise — and with a free evening to kill, I headed out to where any normal, red blooded, healthy American male in my situation would go. That's right, the local video store. That's normal, right? Single guys looking for a good time on a Tuesday night do that, don't they? I wouldn't know anymore, it's been so long. Although I suppose guys don't go to video stores anymore, these days it's probably all about the RedBox with its automated convenience or Netflix and its instant gratification. Kids today, they know how to have fun. 

Conveniently located on the corner of Sadness and Failure.

This being a Tuesday as I mentioned before, meant that it'd be 2-for-1 night at my local video store. Plus, with certain selections you get a free bag of microwave popcorn or a box of candy. My selections for the evening however, didn't get me any free stuff. Not unless you count the clerk's disdainful glances and outward derision as freebies. Actually, he didn't charge me for the condescension so yeah… BONUS! Hooray for me. 

In retrospect, it woulda been less shameful if I'd rented animal porn. 

Now back when Battleship was in theaters — and what a magical three days that was — I made a Facebook proclamation that I actually wanted to see the film. As expected, there were a few negative responses to my decree, I think one person even unfriended me because of it. But most of the negative responses were due to the fact that the movie was based on the board game of the same name. And it seems that feeling was shared by most people everywhere on Earth.

That's the thing I didn't understand. With all the crap that Hollywood's unleashed upon our collective senses over the past twenty years, Battleship was the bridge too far? Really? Look, I'm not here to get into just how f@%king ridiculous that thinking is considering the number of movies that have been made based on toy lines and video game properties. But to be fair, if you're a person who has never seen any of the Transformer movies, or any film based on a video game such as Tomb Raider, Doom, Prince of Persia, any of the Resident Evil movies (Seriously, what are they up to now, like eighteen of those things?) then you can thumb your nose at Battleship with a clear sense of superiority. Enjoy the moral high ground, watch your foreign films, sip your merlot and shut the f@%k up! But those of you who've ever let the likes of Michael Bay dry-f@%k the back of your optic nerve can just shut the hell up as well because you do not have a leg to stand upon. 

"Right over there, see it? There's several square feet of earth
I haven't blown up yet. Let's go get it!"

Besides, it really wasn't THAT bad of a flick. Not that it was a great flick either, but it held my interest, provided some laughs and I gave a shit about the outcome. Seeing how low the entertainment bar has been set these days, that's a serious accomplishment in my book. Besides, there were guns and bigger guns and aliens and jet fighters and a lot of shit blew up. How can shit blowing up ever really be a bad thing? 

See? The BOOM just makes it better, baby.

Going into it I had no idea what the game/movie connection was because they never spelled it out in any of the press that I had read — yeah, I took time to read about this film when it came out. Judge all you want. But when the aliens show up and unleash hell on our fighting seamen (heh heh), the peg-like shape of their WMDs and the way that they deploy and destroy is a nice nod to the source material. However, it's the method in which the sailors are able to track and likewise destroy an enemy that can't be seen on radar, that hammers home that connection. And I must admit that when it clicked I thought it was pretty cool. 

The true shame here is that as soon as the opening credits rolled and the narrator lays out the plot involving NASA giving a shout-out to extra-terestrial life with something called The Beacon Project, I knew that had this movie been named The Beacon, it probably would have done a little better than it did. Hell, they coulda named it Sea Wars and it couldn't have done any worse. Am I still on the name thing? Are you tired of hearing me go on about that? Am I just beating a dead hooker at this point? Yeah, I know the phrase is usually a 'dead horse' but hey, you work out your demons your way and leave me to mine.

As far as the acting was concerned, well I thought at least Liam Neeson would be awesome as usual, but he wasn't in the thing enough to even count. Probably filmed all his scenes during a layover on his way to do Taken 2. Either that or he had a few minutes to kill in-between filming The Grey and Wrath of the Titans. Dude's crazy busy. 

"Release the Kraken! Wait… that's not the line. Whatever, I'm late for a
Dark Knight cameo so just gimme my check, I got a plane to catch." 

Taylor Kitsch (who also played the lead in John Carter, BTW) is the star of the show as a typical dumbass, screw-up who eventually saves the planet. Alexander Skarsgård of True Blood fame, plays his straight-arrow brother with all the dramatic flair of an empty sock puppet. Swimsuit model Brooklyn Decker is here but never shows her cans so it doesn't really matter what she did. Honestly, I can't  remember if she even spoke. And of course, having Rihanna in the cast was a well publicized deal. I must say though that for a singer, she was pretty convincing as a shitty actress. I'll bet the producers thought that her signature line "Mahalo motherf@%ker!" would be a surefire catchphrase. Obviously they were stupid. 

"Say it again, I dare you! Say Chris Brown again, motherf@%ker!" 

Not to be a spoiler — as if you were gonna see it anyway — but there is a great sequence where a group of World War II vets gets involved and shows the young people how to kick-ass old school. And I gotta tell you, if you can watch this scene without being filled with an extreme sense of patriotism and thus moved to salute the screen, then your mama pushed a Godless commie out of her life-hole all those years ago and you both deserve to be locked up at Guantanamo. They're still open for business, right? Obama hasn't closed that down yet like he said he was going to, has he? Oh well, maybe he'll get around to it sometime in the next four years. 

"See I was gonna get around to closing it, but what had happened was…
I killed Osama Bin Laden, so kiss my ass and shut the f@%k up!"

Ooops, getting back on the political track here so I guess it's time to go. Oh yeah, about my other shameful selection, John Carter… THAT is a bad film. Whereas Battleship kept me interested and entertained despite its flaws, John Carter took those good feelings and dick slapped the piss out of 'em. I didn't make it twenty minutes with that one so there's nothing more to be said about it. 

Turns out that too much Taylor Kitsch is a bad thing indeed.

So until next time, mahalo motherf@%kers! (Yeah, I'm gonna make that work.)