The title is perhaps misleading because more likely than not this won't continue as a series on the grounds that I will almost never be able to consistently update this blog, nor do I possess the desire to do so.
I guess the disclaimer here is that I'm writing this without any sort of research being done on my part. I don't think the average movie goer would care for any of that so I don't either. The point of this review is to give a mixture of objective reasons why the movie was good/bad and subjective reasons that I feel are significant enough or common enough to be assessed as well.
"Eye in the Sky" is a movie about, bluntly, drone warfare. The movie features a very impressive ensemble cast consisting of Alan Rickman, Helen Mirren, Aaron Paul and Iain Glen (Jorah Mormont). Less well-known Somalian-American actor Barkhad Abdi and the Scottish actor Richard McCabe also did a great job. Helen Mirren's Colonel Powell is the closest the film has to a main character I suppose, but Alan Rickman's Lieutenant General (of the RAF? He could be in the British Army) Frank Benson was my favorite character by a good amount. The best line of the movie goes to his character,
"Don't ever tell a soldier he doesn't know the cost of war"
I guess that's a dead giveaway that he's in the Army now that I think about it.
In all (and with the intention of being succinct) I would give this movie a solid 92/100. The acting was superb, the suspense just builds and builds from the very beginning and it all leads up to a very well-used moment of silence just as shit FINALLY goes down. But that's also where the majority of the points get taken off. There could be a good 10-20 minutes cut out of the film in scenes where minor characters are given backstory only for the movie to be done too quickly to warrant those valuable minutes. I know it sounds hypocritical to say the movie finished too quickly and therefore should have just cut more out, but it makes sense if you think about it. The alternative would be going for 2+ hours and some serious character development, but with the multiple characters in multiple locations that this movie weaves a story around it doesn't seem feasible. Nevertheless, I thought that the pace of the movie was good and the addition of some moments of comedy were a vital offset to the fact that this movie does seem to suffer from a "The Color Purple"-esque series of unfortunate events unfolding one after another. Also, points off for onscreen text telling the audience where the shot is. Come on. It's not that hard to put it in the dialogue, and when it comes down to it it makes more sense to leave a place unnamed than to waste time on panoramic shots to put the text over.
I suppose I just don't like being treated like an idiot, but for the majority of movie-goers it probably helps.
To sum it up in one sentence, "Little girl's life depends on how fast she can sell bread"
Saturday, April 16, 2016
Thursday, March 10, 2016
The Goat-Gland Doctor
Quoting from Wikipedia: "John Romulus Brinkley (later John Richard Brinkley; July 8, 1885 – May 26, 1942) was a controversial American who fraudulently claimed to be amedical doctor (he had no legitimate medical education and bought his medical degree from a "diploma mill") who became known as the "goat-gland doctor" after he achieved national fame, international notoriety and great wealth through the xenotransplantation of goat testicles into humans."
But wait! The story doesn't end there. Mr.Brinkley's father was a "poor mountain man" who served as a medic in the Civil War on the Confederate side. After his first marriage was annulled because he was underage (which, in 1860's North Carolina, he must have been, like, 5 year old) he married and outlived 4 more "young, pretty wives" (Wikipedia again) but this is where it gets really interesting...
"In 1870, at the age of 42, [Brinkley's father, also named John Brinkley] married Sarah T. Mingus. Later, the 24-year-old niece of Mingus moved into the house: Sarah Candice Burnett...Sarah Burnett gave birth out of wedlock to John Romulus Brinkley in the town of Beta, in Jackson County, North Carolina, naming her son after his father, and after Romulus, the mythical twin suckled by wolves.[1] Sarah Burnett died of pneumonia and tuberculosis when Brinkley was five."
This is where the story of our hero begins. Born to the niece of Papa Goat-Doctor's wife in 1885 there was nowhere to go for young John Romulus "Named-after-the-mythical-founder-of-Rome-but-actually-just-the-child-of-a-Confederate-mountain-man-and-his-niece-in-law" Brinkley but up.
Without telling too much his life can be summarized in a few buzz-words: Diploma mill, con-artist, bigamist, prison, actual sortof-okay doctor, and finally, Goat testicles.
Brinkley began fixing men who were "sexually weak" by transplanting goat testicles into their nether regions, summarized on Wikipedia thusly, "At his clinic, Brinkley began to perform more operations he claimed would restore male virility and fertility through implanting the testicular glands of goats in his male patients at a cost of $750 per operation[17] ($8,900 in current value). Following one of his crude operations, the body of a patient would typically absorb the goat gonads as foreign matter. The organs were never accepted as part of the body since they were simply placed into the human male testicle sac or the abdomen of women, near the ovaries. Unsurprisingly, in light of his questionable medical training (75 percent completion at a less-than-reputable medical school), frequency of operating while intoxicated and less-than sterile operating environments, some patients suffered from infection, and an undetermined number died. Brinkley would be sued more than a dozen times for wrongful death between 1930 and 1941"
Though he died penniless and forever known as "The Goat-Gland Doctor" his life is an eerily similar mixture of Orson Welles' actual life with that of the character Citizen Kane, with just a tad more goat testicles. Dr. Goat testes ran for governor of Kansas, had his own radio station, and even got a real medical license, which was later officially revoked by Benito Mussolini, although Brinkley ignored this and kept on claiming to have an Italian medical license because A) you could do that in the 1930's and B) when you are the goat-testicle man your boldness knows no bounds.
(Sidenote: I started writing this before midnight right before I was about to go to sleep when a fly attacked me. Maliciously. Multiple high-speed flights directly into my face. It took about 2 hours but eventually I killed it and one other innocent fly that I mistook for my assailant. I believe this attack was in retaliation to a mercy-killing of a wounded fly a few days ago which was apparently mistaken as an act of war against all of fly-kind. If I live through the night they have not yet organized to such an extent as to be able to kill a human while they sleep. If I don't make it....may God help us all.)
P.S. FUCK THIS FORMATTING IT'S TERRIBLE AND I CANNOT DEAL WITH THIS SHIT AT 3 A.M. FUCK YOU BLOGSPOT THIS IS WHY I COULD NEVER ACTUALLY BE A BLOGGER
But wait! The story doesn't end there. Mr.Brinkley's father was a "poor mountain man" who served as a medic in the Civil War on the Confederate side. After his first marriage was annulled because he was underage (which, in 1860's North Carolina, he must have been, like, 5 year old) he married and outlived 4 more "young, pretty wives" (Wikipedia again) but this is where it gets really interesting...
"In 1870, at the age of 42, [Brinkley's father, also named John Brinkley] married Sarah T. Mingus. Later, the 24-year-old niece of Mingus moved into the house: Sarah Candice Burnett...Sarah Burnett gave birth out of wedlock to John Romulus Brinkley in the town of Beta, in Jackson County, North Carolina, naming her son after his father, and after Romulus, the mythical twin suckled by wolves.[1] Sarah Burnett died of pneumonia and tuberculosis when Brinkley was five."
This is where the story of our hero begins. Born to the niece of Papa Goat-Doctor's wife in 1885 there was nowhere to go for young John Romulus "Named-after-the-mythical-founder-of-Rome-but-actually-just-the-child-of-a-Confederate-mountain-man-and-his-niece-in-law" Brinkley but up.
Without telling too much his life can be summarized in a few buzz-words: Diploma mill, con-artist, bigamist, prison, actual sortof-okay doctor, and finally, Goat testicles.
Brinkley began fixing men who were "sexually weak" by transplanting goat testicles into their nether regions, summarized on Wikipedia thusly, "At his clinic, Brinkley began to perform more operations he claimed would restore male virility and fertility through implanting the testicular glands of goats in his male patients at a cost of $750 per operation[17] ($8,900 in current value). Following one of his crude operations, the body of a patient would typically absorb the goat gonads as foreign matter. The organs were never accepted as part of the body since they were simply placed into the human male testicle sac or the abdomen of women, near the ovaries. Unsurprisingly, in light of his questionable medical training (75 percent completion at a less-than-reputable medical school), frequency of operating while intoxicated and less-than sterile operating environments, some patients suffered from infection, and an undetermined number died. Brinkley would be sued more than a dozen times for wrongful death between 1930 and 1941"
Though he died penniless and forever known as "The Goat-Gland Doctor" his life is an eerily similar mixture of Orson Welles' actual life with that of the character Citizen Kane, with just a tad more goat testicles. Dr. Goat testes ran for governor of Kansas, had his own radio station, and even got a real medical license, which was later officially revoked by Benito Mussolini, although Brinkley ignored this and kept on claiming to have an Italian medical license because A) you could do that in the 1930's and B) when you are the goat-testicle man your boldness knows no bounds.
(Sidenote: I started writing this before midnight right before I was about to go to sleep when a fly attacked me. Maliciously. Multiple high-speed flights directly into my face. It took about 2 hours but eventually I killed it and one other innocent fly that I mistook for my assailant. I believe this attack was in retaliation to a mercy-killing of a wounded fly a few days ago which was apparently mistaken as an act of war against all of fly-kind. If I live through the night they have not yet organized to such an extent as to be able to kill a human while they sleep. If I don't make it....may God help us all.)
P.S. FUCK THIS FORMATTING IT'S TERRIBLE AND I CANNOT DEAL WITH THIS SHIT AT 3 A.M. FUCK YOU BLOGSPOT THIS IS WHY I COULD NEVER ACTUALLY BE A BLOGGER
Friday, March 4, 2016
Just some statistics...
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All those people who searched "Sexy Onesie" and ended up here obviously thought this was something else entirely.
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