Jar Of Eyeballs

Here’s something that’s been bugging me for a while, and so far nobody has provided a satisfying answer. It concerns Lord Of The Rings, more specifically Return Of The King. First of all, I love these movies. Truly epic masterpieces. I have attempted to read the books several times, but every time I stopped reading for some reason and by the time I picked it up again, I lost track of the story. I hope to finish all books one day, because there’s a lot of stuff in there that didn’t make it into the movies.

But here’s what’s been bugging me. They have to take the ring into Mordor and throw it into the lava in Mount Doom. The problem is, Mordor is surrounded by mountains and swarming with orcs. Good thing, because without all that it would have been a pretty boring journey (probably consisting of Sam asking Frodo “Are we there yet?” every five minutes). Whe  they finally make it and manage to destroy the ring, Mount Doom erupts and they are trapped on a rock, surrounded by lava. Luckily, they are rescued by Gandalf who comes to their aid on a huge bird.

So that’s where the plothole comes into play. Gandalf can apparently get help from giant birds; he used them once to escape from Saruman’s tower. But why the hell didn’t they just use these freaking birds to get to Mordor? Just hop on one of them, fly to Mordor, drop the ring into the crater and voila, bye bye evil lurking presence of the Dark Lord. Since I haven’t read the books yet it might end differently there (if it does, don’t tell me!), but at least in the movies, it’s a gigantic, unforgivable mistake. Peter Jackson could at least have thought of a different escape route or explained why they didn’t take the birds in the first place.

Can someone answer this for me? Why didn’t they take the birds to get the ring into Mordor? Was the “Eye of Sauron” on his tower equipped with some sort of laser beam to shoot down the birds? Did the orcs have surface-to-air missiles (and don’t tell me they would have shot down the birds with bows and arrows, birds of that size could easily fly high enough to be out of range; besides, Gandalf didn’t seem to have any trouble escaping Saruman’s tower, even though it was surrouded by Orcs)?

I went to see Transformers today. Even though I liked the movie, there are a few things that made me wanna throw up. Few movies escape from them: clichés! Of course, Transformers had a few of them and all of them were lame as hell. They were the kind of clichés you see coming from far away and are very predictable. Here are the absolute worst:

• The pain-in-the-ass government official. You have the good guys who are very dedicated to their job, and then some arrogant government official in a suit shows up who’s only purpose seems to be to make their task as difficult as possible and to be an annoying pain in the ass. Usually he will get disposed of in some hilarious way.
• Resurrection by love. If someone dies, don’t bother with reanimation. It won’t work. Instead, ask his girlfriend to whisper “I love you” to him and then kiss him. Don’t wonder how he can hear her even though he’s dead. And make sure the girl is crying, otherwise it won’t work.
• Retards who are supposed to be funny but aren’t. I’m talking about the twin autobots. Clumsy, stupid characters that don’t die, even though their stupidity would get anyone killed in a few seconds. Characters like that aren’t funny, they are annoying and embarrasing! Remember Jar-Jar Binks? You probably do, but wish you didn’t.

I wonder why directors insist on putting this crap in movies. All of these situations are predictable, done too many times and plain and simply stupid! I once read a book titled “The big book of Hollywood clichés”. A better title would have been “Things you deserve to get shot for if you’re a movie director”.

Ask ten geeks their favourite top ten movies, and you’ll probably hear this one a few times. It’s definitely one of mine! To be honest, I had never heard of it until it appeared in an article on Digg. It’s one of those movies that never became a box office success, but got a cult-like following later. This review will contain a few spoilers, so consider yourself warned. Let’s start with the story.

Peter, the main protagonist, is a programmer who’s working on banking software. He hates his job and, most of all, his boss. His friend Michael hates the fact that his last name is Bolton and everybody asks him if he’s related to the singer Michael Bolton (who he describes as a “no talent ass clown”), while his other friend Samir gets angry when people can’t pronounce his last name (it’s Nagheenanajar). Instead of working, Peter spends most of his time just staring at his computer, pretending to work and hoping his boss won’t ask him to work on saturday.

One day, Peter’s life changes dramatically. When his therapist hypnotises him, tells him to forget all of his worries and then dies of a heart attack, he stops caring about his job and feels happier than ever. He ignores his boss and bossy girlfriend (who dumps him for doing so) and even stops going to work, only showing up every once in a while. At the same time, his company hire consultants to find out who they can fire. Instead of firing Peter, he gets promoted, because the consultants think his current job doesn’t motivate him enough. His pals Michael and Samir aren’t so lucky, though, and that’s when Peter gets an idea.

Michael once told him he could rip off the company for millions if he wanted to. The only thing that stopped him was the fact that he had a good job and didn’t want to risk it. Now that he’s fired, Peter convinces him to go through with it. The idea is to write a computer virus that takes tiny amount off every bank transaction and tranfer it to their bank account. Michael writes the virus, Samir uploads it, and then they wait for the cash to flow in. And flowing in it does, but a little bit too fast…

It turns out Michael misplaced a decimal point and instead of tiny amounts that nobody notices, several hundreds of thousands of dollars disappear in a matter of days! There’s no way they can keep this a secret and after a lot of panic, Peter decides to confess and take the blame. At night, he writes a confession note and drops it off at his boss’ office, together with the money they stole. The next day he goes to work, expecting to get arrested. Things turn out a bit different, though…

Milton, a quiet guy who gets pushed around a lot, breaks into the boss’ office to get his favorite stapler back. He finds the enveloppe with the money and then does what he mumbled about to himself several times before: set the building on fire! When Peter arrives, everything is ablaze and all the evidence is destroyed.

Ok, spoiler alert is over here. About the cast. Not too many famous people. Probably the most well-known cast member is Jennifer Aniston, who plays a waitress that Peter has a crush on. Stephen Root and Richard Riehle, who played two of Peter’s coworkers, also appeared together in the sitcom Grounded for life.

Like I said before, the movie wasn’t really a box office hit but got a cult following later. One scene in particular is very famous: the “going away present”. Apart from Bill Lumbergh, their boss, there’s one more thing Peter, Michael and Samir hate more than anything else: the printer! It jams all the time and displays cryptic error messages that don’t make any sense (such as “PC load letter”, wich apparently stands for “paper cassette load letter format”). When they are fired, Peter steals the printer and they all beat the crap out of it. A parody of it was even made on Family Guy. Another memorable thing from the movie is the term “TPS report”, wich is a popular term for any sort of pointless paperwork. It stands for “Totally Pointless Shit”. It was even featured in the first season of Lost.

If you haven’t seen this movie, do so now. Buy it, rent it, download it, whatever, just watch it. It’s full of the workplace-related agony we face on a daily basis (annoying bosses and coworkers, paper jams, slow computers) but turns it into something funny. And it shows things we all dreamed about but never had the guts to actually do.

IMDB entry for Office Space

I first saw this movie about ten years ago, when we went to a video store and my dad recommended it. It’s a war movie about a nuclear war between the USA and the Soviet Union and the aftermath in a town near a missile base in Kansas. It starts with the Soviets surrounding West-Berlin in order to intimidate the USA and force them to leave. When the USA doesn’t give in, the Soviets invade Europe and things quickly escalate. The USA launches tactical nukes to stop the advancing Soviet forces, who in turn react with a nuclear attack at the NATO headquarters. The buildup of tension of brought mainly as news clips throughout the movie.

As tensions continue to rise, a full-scale nuclear exchange is launched between the USA and the Soviet Union. It is delibirately kept unclear who actually initiated the attack. Residents of a town near a missile base watch in horror as missiles start taking off all around them, realizing the same thing is happening at the other side of the world. Half an hour later, nukes start raining down on the city. It starts with a single high-altitude bomb wich disables all electricity, followed by the main attack.

The nuclear attack scene consists of real footage from nuclear tests and views of the mushroom clouds. These had to be custom made for the movie, since they didn’t get permission to use real footage of actual nuclear explosions. They were made by injecting oil into a tank of water. The effect is quite convincing and even terrifying, although some other effects look quite weird. The entire scene is plain and simply horrifying.

The most disturbing part of the movie, however, takes place after the attack, when the survivors are confronted with the devastation. With all water, electricity and communication destroyed, they are left in a nuclear wasteland, plagued by starvation, radiation disease and chaos. The movie ends with a survivor trying to contact someone over the radio, without succes. After the credits, a message is shown saying a real nuclear war would probably be much worse than the scenes shown in the movie.

This is a movie everyone should see. It may look dated, but it’s probably the most realistic movie about nuclear war ever made.

IMDB entry for The Day After