Plot Update Banners Help Audiences Reach New Low

Alarms go off. A computer voice calmly says, "Warning, full database selected." I burst out laughing. Yes - I saw Surrogates. Just as I was about to count my lucky stars that my old and klunky, consumer class computer isn't sophisticated enough to fire up a siren every time I hit Ctrl-A something even better happened. The movie began displaying written statements of what had just been said - outloud - and updating the audience on the plot's arc.

Here's a tip: If you're directing a movie and you can't tell the story without writing the dialog and the action on the screen, you're doing it wrong.

Speaking of doing it wrong, this device has three wires coming out of it, the screen says its plugged in, why is this woman trying to screw it into the bloody desk? Epic story telling fail. As an aside, I can't help but wonder how the top-secret-doomsday-device is so effortlessly plug and play.

This third shot was confusing. Is the director actually recapping what just happened or is this an unbelievably detailed computer warning message which coincidentally describes the near unfathomable events of the story? Either way it doesn't hide the star trek themed man/robot infographic (whose icons, by the way, really are from a star trek video game I played when I was fifteen).

If you laughed as hard as I did during this movie you'll love Day Breakers.

As another aside, I animated the mokey's robotic arm at the beginning of the film in 2006 for a documentary named Robosapien. I'm glad to have been a part (uncredited) of this film.

Dystopic Future's Chewing Gum Ad

Saddest Doublemint gum twins ever.

'Surrogates' is slightly less funny than 'Day Breakers'

Do you suffer from road rage?

Tired of that long, boring subway commute?

Well, now there's CAR SURFING!

Daniels' cannon ball ethnic slur just covers his colleagues with career splash-damage.

Lewis Hamilton savors the sour, sour taste of victory.

Q: How many surgeon's does it take to change a light bulb?
A: Five. Jenson (reflected left) ponders his team's next move.

Emotionally hollowed scientist sees in palantir glimpse of enemy's plan, tells Sauron nothing of The Ring.

Timmy's heart sank; his ammunition and hope both spent. Now he too, would be assimilated.

Scientists now believe that dinosaurs may have been extremely ugly and probably purple. Analysis of fossils, hundreds of millions of years old has shown that the prehistoric reptiles daintily crowded small patches of grey fuzz while precariously peering over the edges into a large, menacing white abyss.

Cold, mutilated corpses still surprisingly hot: shoppers

Tiny suitcase lock writes worlds cutest memoirs, "Emotional Baggage".

ummm... Doesn't the ship fly forwards?

"Moon acquired! Fire at will, Grandpa!"

The Nazis' unrequited love for Nietzsche

Sometimes one observes something so wrong, so openly, so glaringly and so blatantly wrong, it almost becomes difficult to breath. All of one's arguments and reasons and frustrations collide, just a fraction of a second after one's mouth is opened, and fall embarrassingly short of explaining the depth of the fallacy and instead one just sort of pants, open mouthed and blubbers, "That's so wrong."
I don't mean wrong in a moral sense. Not wrong as in, "murder is wrong." or "wasting electricity is wrong" or "wearing that skirt with those shoes is wrong." It's not even wrong in the sense that 2 + 2 = 5 is wrong. I mean wrong on the sort of incalculable scale that 2 + 2 = 4,523,917.2333333333 is wrong.
I mean the kind of wrong that makes you laugh at first because logical, deductive reasoning dictates that it must be a joke and then makes you laugh again with a touch of insanity at the mere notion that it isn't. I'm talking about a type of wrong that first dwarfs then rises above, renders useless and effectively decommissions the very word, "wrong" in it's normal sense because it is THAT wrong.
What I'm trying to describe is a perversely off-target untruthfulness; a profane inaccuracy.
Am I getting through?
This "wrong", if one can even call it that, hurts - and someone published it on the Internet.

http://www.humaneventsonline.com/article.php?id=7591

To use their own devices, I would summarize it as a conservative excrement. It is a frightfully subjective list of the "top ten most harmful books" published in the last 200 years. There's much I can write about it but it speaks for itslelf. Nietszche's "Beyond Good and Evil" is right up there with Hitler's "Mein Kampf" which is second only to Karl Marx and Freidrich Engels' "The Communist Manifesto." In the summary for "Beyond Good and Evil" the author writes, "The Nazis loved Nietszche."

(sigh)

Charles Darwin's "The Origin of Species" received an honorable mention - for being harmful.

Cliché

“Then you’re just re-inventing the wheel,” he said. “I hate that saying,” I interrupted, “it’s so cliché. All you’re saying is that you can’t think of a better way of communicating an idea other than to copy someone else’s simile.” He definitely didn’t expect me to hijack his technical conversation nor the personal attack and so sat back, a little stunned, while he visibly processed what I had said. I pressed, “It’s the same as when people say, ‘think outside the box.’
“Thinking outside the box and re-inventing the wheel are totally different things, Grae.”
His condescension boiled my blood a little. “Maybe he doesn’t know what a simile is,” I thought to myself. I sighed loudly and rolled my eyes. It seemed to take him forever to finish that sentence.
“They mean different things but are both clichés and they are both annoying.” It was then that everyone who had been listening to what I said, including myself, realized my whole point in this digression was to be cruel. But maybe no one actually was listening; we were drunk.
“It gets the point across. What’s wrong with it?”
“It’s totally thoughtless. Why not say it in your own words?”
“Like what? It’s a perfectly encapsulated idea in,” he paused to silently count to three, “three words.”
“Like anything original.”
“You want me to come up with a new way of saying something just for the sake of originality? Then you’re just re-inventing the wheel.”

1984

Wow.
This is 1984, aka the Korean Central News Agency of DPRK (Democratic People's Republic of Korea) aka North Korean government-run news.

http://www.kcna.co.jp/index-e.htm

Here are two hair raising excerpts, considering this missle crisis, from an article about a recent anti-U.S. rally in Pongyang:

"The U.S. has persistently pursued its hostile policy to isolate and stifle the DPRK and provoke another war against it, keeping south Korea under its military occupation for more than 50 years after the war, far from drawing a proper lesson from the shameful defeat it suffered in the last Korean war. "

"Poem "We will Settle Accounts" was recited at the rally. The poem reflects the solemn declaration of the army and people of Songun Korea that should the U.S. imperialists use nukes against the Korean nation, they will make hundreds of times stronger nuclear strike at them and thus inflict final destruction upon the aggressors. "

Wow.

Headline avoids sentence structure, meaning ambiguous

“Boost stroke care to prevent disability, save billions: report” CBC headline confuses?

Headline deceptively induces glorification, mystification: opinion

Headlines, sexy to sell, producers, doctors agree

Source obscured: headline

Headlines dramatized news trailer?

Read like sci-fi robots, increase efficiency, confuse, entice readers: headline writers

Proud be Yoda would

American Officals: Cry for help just "attention-getting" tactic


On Monday, 29 May 2006, the CBC reported:

Dozens more detainees at the U.S. military base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have joined a hunger strike that American officials say is an "attention-getting" tactic.

Navy Cmdr. Robert Durand told the Associated Press that the rising number of people taking part in the hunger strike was an "attention-getting" move.

Most of the Guantanamo Bay inmates have never been charged with any offence, but the military insists they would be threats to American security if they were released. Durand said the tactic may be related to a May 18 incident at the base that left six inmates injured after a clash with security guards.

After much consideration I have to say that I agree with Cmdr. Durand's lucid, articulate and well-deduced conclusion that a hunger strike by uncharged prisoners is, in fact, motivated by a hankering for publicity. I would also add that it is this same childish cry for attention that one so often finds these days in 911 distress calls, flare guns and National Hurricane Center warnings.

Now, it's common for a politician or a military spokesperson to say something blindingly obvious but it's his "I'm-totally-for-real" tone that makes me wonder what the blog Cmdr. Durand imagined the general public thought was behind this hunger strike which spurred him to speak to the associated press.

"Alright everyone, listen up! They're not fasting for personal or religious reasons, OK? They've assured me the food is quite tasty. They're just whining about being kidnapped and indefinitely imprisoned and tortured without a trial, that's all. Really, the food is actually quite good. This is just an attention getting tactic and nobody's falling for it."

"[The hunger-strike] reflects detainee attempts to elicit media attention to bring international pressure on the United States to release them," Durand said.

The detainees probably could not have said it any clearer or better, what with being gagged, and hooded.

I also wonder if anyone in the history of strike quelling has ever blundered their way into a baitless trap so neatly. I'm sure the 75 men who are now refusing food at the high security prison are contemplating appointing Cmdr. Durand their new key spokesperson, citing the extent of his public reach, his ability to embody the hypocrisy that keeps them under lock and key, and also the ease with which he has unwittingly become their thoughtless pawn.

Durand blurted further, "The hunger-strike technique is consistent with al-Qaeda practice..."

Really? I didn't know Gandhi had ties with al-Qaeda. Why, that freedom hating son of a bitch!