Santa Clause: He spies on you when you're sleeping, he knows if you're naughty, he sneaks into your house to eat your cookies and leaves some slave made stuff, under your pagan tree. Sometimes he kisses the mom of the house. He makes fun of deformed rain deer. He hangs out at malls and charges for pictures with him. Skips right over the Jews, and poor kids in Africa, dying of hunger. Total sell out, puts his face on everything. Randomly crashes parties. Makes Christmas all about him instead of Jesus Christ's birth. I'm starting to think handing out the toys is just a publicity stunt to make it seem like he's a good person. How does he sleep at night? Who is this man?
Also, I've been noticing gnomes. Well, a gnome looks a lot like Santa Clause but has elfish features. You do the math. Doesn't that seem fishy to you? A bunch of gnomes literally traveling the world (see Travelocity ads) because their the illegitimate children of St. Nick and elves?!
Movie idea: like Inception but at the end the person wakes up pregnant. I call it "Gina Be Trippin'" and I'm hoping Tyler Perry likes it. Gina may have to be played by a man just for added comedic affect and maybe the plot revolves more around Gina dealing with being outrageous in a white man's world.
holy pants
Do people that wear those holy, beat up looking, washed with rocks pants, iron them? If so, why? Wouldn't that be...dumb?
I like to think this style will eventually bleed out to other facets of fashion. All of a sudden your piece of crap car will be the cool thing. What about the housing market? All those haunted houses would be filled with people from Express and Forever 21.
X-Men: First Class
For some reason I like to give reviews that nobody is asking for and probably are as inconsequential as can be. But, in keeping with the tradition of this blog's existence and lack of focus, I will give my opinion on a movie I saw for a dollar last night.
The stage was set to give a new boot to the flailing franchise. They set out to rejuvenate the significance of being a mutant, i.e. different. These identity ideas keep the film afloat among the randomly terrible acting and action scenes.
As the movie depicts a post WWII America and a rising Cold War, the antagonists try to escalate the war so as to gain power over the humans after they have killed each other. Kevin Bacon is distracting at times but a solid villain that a Nazi background and was responsible for Magneto's rise to an avengeful life full of pain and power seeking.
As the movie depicts a post WWII America and a rising Cold War, the antagonists try to escalate the war so as to gain power over the humans after they have killed each other. Kevin Bacon is distracting at times but a solid villain that a Nazi background and was responsible for Magneto's rise to an avengeful life full of pain and power seeking.
Professor Xavier is the bright spot of the movie and keeps the integrity of the film's wandering ideas grounded while not being too uppity and elite.
So, what did I think of it? It was good and sometimes terrible. The characters are so easily convinced and often change so fast that you would think it was their superpower to develop so fast without any real depth or sincerity.
Mostly, I like movies for their social commentary when it comes down to it. This one is full of the idea of acceptance of being different that you wish you were more different just to fit in with these characters. The not so subtle "coming out" as a mutant was awkward and had tremendous overtones of the plight of gays. Especially when it was discovered that the C.I.A. had mutants in their service unknowingly (don't ask, don't tell). The theme has been in every X-Men. And Magneto summed it up when talking to a young Mystique- "How can you expect the world to accept if you can't even accept yourself?" Paraphrasing.
Continued Review-
Views on acceptance are thrown around a lot. Xavier from the school of thought that mutants should accept those that don't accept them nonviolently versus Magneto's view that there is no hope in changing the nature of men and its a violent world that will seek to contain and control those that are different. Something he learned from his youth as a Jew in Germany during WWII.
The young Xavier hardly was accepting of Mystique in her natural blue nakedness physically. As well as declined obvious inclinations from her to engage in a romantic relationship. He flirts with other "normal" looking women within an earshot of Mystique. Finally she finds an accepting friend of her natural look in Magneto. Mystique's self esteem surely had been damaged and often in such cases are people more easily influenced to join the ranks of anyone that will seemingly appreciate them. As we see in later films, Mystique works for Magneto and becomes an enemy to Xavier's cause.
Every villain starts at a point of being lost and hurt, until finally finding power in identity and purpose by channeling their anger for all their problems, on a person or group of people. As the saying "hurt people hurt people" shows, we who are vulnerable seek power to compensate for our helplessness. Victims become villains. Not being accepted leads to not accepting the unaccepting.
As Vil Kilmer's Batman in Batman Forever told a young and avenging Robin about killing the person who killed your parents won't bring peace, so does Xavier advise Magneto. Nietzche said "Battle not with monsters, lest ye become a monster, and if you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." At the climax of the film, Magneto battles the monster and then becomes the monster. Magneto did say earlier that "peace was never an option."
As Vil Kilmer's Batman in Batman Forever told a young and avenging Robin about killing the person who killed your parents won't bring peace, so does Xavier advise Magneto. Nietzche said "Battle not with monsters, lest ye become a monster, and if you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." At the climax of the film, Magneto battles the monster and then becomes the monster. Magneto did say earlier that "peace was never an option."
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