E.R. Torre's Blog, page 115

Alternative Facts…

A few days back (Sunday, to be exact), Presidential Aide (I don’t know if she has any other formal title) Kellyanne Conway, while on Meet the Press and while being asked about, well, see for yourself:

And thus a line I’m certain Ms. Conway would desperately love to take back, “Alternative Facts”, was born and much ridicule was to be had with her Orwellian use of language.

Speaking of which:

1984 Skyrockets on Amazon.com after “Alternative Facts” Controversy

Frankly, I don’t know what to make of Ms. Conway.  Maybe I’m projecting my own feelings upon her but, at least to me, she seems like a fairly smart person yet there’s something so terribly, so clearly …wrong… inside her.

Perhaps she’s like a lawyer who’s assigned to defend a client they know is guilty as hell and a terrible person, to boot, yet value their job to the point where they will provide as strong a defense as possible.  Perhaps I’m over-simplifying it, but it’s their job, not them.

Yet note the first things that come out of Ms. Conway’s mouth in the above extended clip, how she threatens the press right off the bat.

The ridicule heaped upon her and the administration for the things she said in the above interview, especially the “Alternative Facts” quote,  is well deserved, again IMHO, yet I can’t help but feel a great unease.  Are these people for real?  Just how far are they willing to go to argue their view of reality, which, of course, simply isn’t?

Unlike the ridicule coming from the internet, George Orwell’s 1984 was far from a “comedy”.  At its core it was a truly terrifying horror story.  The idea of a dictatorial government taking total control of its citizens and, effectively, making them sheep should terrify everyone, and the idea they can create their own reality and force their people to accept it is perhaps the most frightening idea of them all.

Up is down.  Black is white.  Fighting for peace…

Alternative facts, indeed.

We’re not even a week into this new presidency.  What exactly are we in for?

The Razzies…

Just before the 2017 Oscar nominees are named (which just happened), the 2017 “Razzies” were named.

The Razzies, for those who don’t know, are a tongue in cheek “award” for the “worst” films of the year.  The full list can be found here, though the headline spoils at least two of the films on the list:

Batman v Superman, Zoolander 2 Lead 2017 Razzie Nominations

When the Razzies first came to predominance, they were a funny lark.  They pointed out terrible films and, for the most part justifiably, roasted them.

As for this year’s nominees, I’ve seen only two of the “Worst Picture” nominees, and those are the two that are listed in the article’s headline. The others, which I have yet to see (and, frankly, have little interest in) are: Dirty Grandpa, Gods of Egypt, Hillary’s America: The Secret History of the Democratic Party, and Independence Day: Resurgence.

Of the two I have seen, I feel Zoolander 2 is, sadly, an appropriate choice.  I reviewed the film a while back (you can read the full review here) and while admitting to laughing at some of the movie’s jokes, ultimately felt it was one of the stupidest things I’d ever seen…and I do not say this as a compliment.

So we’re back to Batman v Superman.

It seems like I can’t get away from defending that film.  Today, many months after its release, there remain sharp divisions between fans of the film and detractors and I find it so damn curious.

I stated before that over time the film would get a re-evaluation and I remain certain this will be the case.

Yet I can’t deny the fact that those who hate, hate, hate the film seem to do so with a passion I’ve not seen directed at other films.

I suspect the reason is that we have three comic book icons presented, for the very first time, all together in a film…and instead of presenting us with a colorful, “fun” action-fest, we’re given a dour, at times dark and depressing work that is more meditative than action filled (there are long stretches of the film that don’t feature any action at all, while some of the bigger action sequences are very dark indeed).

If the film had featured three “new” superhero characters, I suspect people might not have reacted quite as negatively as they did, though that’s pure supposition on my part.

Regardless, for a large segment of the country, hating on BvS is something to do while, for people like me, defending the film seems to also be something people do.

I still think in time, when passions finally cool and people can look at the film with “fresh” eyes, they may come to realize its a far more ambitious -and successful- film than they thing it is.

Kill Command (2016) a (mildly) belated review

A couple of months ago and on a website devoted to upcoming films I read about a low budget indie film that was about to be released called Kill Command.  Here is its trailer:

I don’t know about you, but I loved what I saw.

The movie was released to VOD and was made available for purchase and I had her on my list of films to see via Netflix.  Yesterday, I finally had a chance to see the film and…

Not bad.  Not bad at all.

To begin, the film is indeed a low budget affair but despite this, and as should be evident in the trailer above, the effects are nonetheless quite impressive…for the most part.  I won’t lie: There are times the effects aren’t as good and this is when the homicidal machines are on the move or being shot at (in general the effects for the creatures when they’re not moving all that quickly are quite good.  When they’re moving quickly…not so good).

So how’s the story?

Pretty engaging, at least until the very end (I’ll get to that in a moment).

In the near future, a group of soldiers are ordered to train against robotic machines on an isolated island.  Joining them in the group is Mills (, who is quite good), a human with cyber “augmentations” which allows her to link up with machines.  The soldiers in the group generally don’t trust her and, once they arrive on the island, that trust is strained even more as outgoing and incoming radio communications are blocked.  The soldier group’s leader, Captain Bukes (, also quite good), suspects something is up and is very weary of Mills’ presence.

For her part Mills tries to help the others out.  She “sees” robotic machinery deep in the woods and, eventually, scout ships fly in (sometimes very close) to watch over what the human soldiers are up to.

Eventually, the soldiers’ target, a group of robotic armed soldiers moving along a path in the island’s forest, is spotted.  The soldiers set up an ambush and quickly get to the business of dispatching these machines.  While they do, Mills notices something off in the distance and behind their group.  She goes to investigate and finds a larger, frightening looking robot fighting machine.  She links up with it and receives odd messages and images before blanking out…

When she recovers, the machine is gone.

She returns to the group and they continue their movements…until it becomes clear the hunters have become the hunted.

Kill Command is certainly not The-Most-Original-Movie-Ever-Created™.  Indeed, the trailer above offers a positive review which, quite correctly, states the movie is something of a mash up of Predator and The Terminator, which to me is far from a bad thing.

The actors take their roles seriously and the threat -and suspense- becomes quite real.  Kudos to director/writer  for infusing his film with this palpable sense of dread and managing to get some top effect-work out of what was, again, a very low budget.

If there is one flaw in the film, for me it was the movie’s conclusion (told you I’d get back to this).  Given that talking about it will reveal some rather big SPOILERS, I’ll get to that in a moment.

In the meantime, if the above trailer intrigues you, I recommend you give Kill Command a try.  Its a damn good sci-fi/suspenser which may not quite be up to the level of either Predator or the original Terminator but nonetheless acquits itself quite nicely before that aforementioned ending.

Still not sure you want to see it?  Here are the film’s first few minutes (though there are a couple of scenes, if memory serves, not shown and therefore it is not exactly accurate that this is the first eight minutes of the movie):

Anyway, what follows are…

SPOILERS

YOU’VE BEEN WARNED!!

If you’re still here, I hope you’ve given the film a try or are genuinely not interested in seeing it and curious about what bothered me about the film’s end.

Here goes.

As the soldiers are attacked by the machines, they are picked off one by one (a rather standard, even cliched concept that nonetheless ramps up the suspense nicely).  The big mystery of what the machines are up to isn’t such a big mystery in the end.  Basically, the “main machine” behind the others is becoming self-aware and, as it was programmed to be a war robot, it has turned the tables on the human soldiers and made its robotic army use the humans for training.

Mills tries to break into the machine and make it stand down at various stages of the film, but she is unsuccessful.

By the end of the movie, three soldiers and Mills are all that’s left alive.  They set up a final stand and the movie’s climax becomes a “siege”, with the overwhelming number of robots coming in for the kill.

However, Mills at this point has an Electromagnetic Pulse bomb (EMP) which she tells Captain Mills will wipe the mad machine’s internal programming and, therefore, end its threat.  Only problem is that to do this she has to lure it close to the EMP and that, in turn might wipe out Mills’ cybernetic memory as well.

Captain Bukes, who started the movie off very weary about Mills and her place in this training mission, nonetheless now doesn’t want her to sacrifice herself.  Nonetheless, circumstances eventually dictate that both Mills and the killer robot be far closer together than hoped for when the EMP is detonated.

Both machine and Mills suffer serious injury to their cybernetic cortex yet the fight continues.  Mills, facing memory shut down, manages to lure the homicidal robot up into a building and, using her control over a sniper rifle, shoots the creature through its “head”.

As the creature dies and Mills’ memory is wiped, we see that the creature has downloaded itself into the now “blank” memory banks within Mills.

The remaining soldiers, thankful they have survived the onslaught, take Mills with them to their awaiting transport, unaware that she may now be carrying the homicidal creature’s mind within her.  However, she is still a human and we must assume that not all her personality is carried within her programming.  Therefore we’re left to wonder: What will this programming do?  What will happen from here on?

And that, my friends, is the type of ending that drives me freaking nuts.

They might as well put a giant “THE END….?” or “TO BE CONTINUED” title after the final fade out.

Frankly, I’m tired of movies pulling this too-ambiguous crap.

Is it so damn hard to give audiences a story which features a complete beginning, middle, and ending while resisting the temptation to add sequel fare at the very end?

Worse, this ending is an inverse copy of David Cronenberg’s famous 1981 film Scanners.  In that film we follow good and bad telepaths and, at that movie’s climax, they face off and use their psychokinetic abilities against each other.  The good guy takes the worse of it and his body disintegrates.  However, before its completely gone his mind “jumps” into the bad-guy’s body and takes it over.  Thus we have the good guy “win” in the end even though audiences see the bad guy’s *body* left standing.

We don’t know where Kill Command goes from here because there’s too much ambiguity about this programming jump.  Clearly we’re supposed to suspect things might go very bad when Mills makes it back to the mainland.

But, again, why do this to us?  Why not give us an unambiguous ending and perhaps hint that the machine is still alive elsewhere and in another of the robotic units?  Why go this route?

Sorry for the rant, but it genuinely hurts me to see a film that, IMHO, is 98% good/decent which then stumbles during its final five minutes.

About yesterday’s inauguration…

As many have noted, the crowds during Mr. Trump’s inauguration were significantly …less… than expected by the “big” man.  He proclaimed beforehand the crowds at his event would break records (they did, I suppose, though not the way he expected).

This is a popular comparison picture…

And considering many of the crowds that did bother to come were protest crowds, then things look even more dire, attendance-wise for the Trumpster.

As for the protest crowds, Slate magazine offered some of what they considered the more amusing protest signs…

The Best Protest Signs for the Inauguration of Donald Trump

They were clever, funny, and sad…all at the same time.  Among my SFW favorites…

Then there was this: White Nationalist Richard Spencer showed up at the inauguration and…

Sigh.

Look, I really don’t condone violence in any way, shape, or form and while one is tempted to applaud the fact that this man, who ultimately espouses hate, gets “what’s coming to him”, I can’t help but worry if this is a sign of things to come…and worry even more if we’re starting down a too-dangerous path here.

The blame, ultimately, comes right back to Mr. Trump.  During the campaign he played fast and loose with some dangerous statements and personalities while engaging in all to obvious verbal “dog whistles”.  While he was incredibly quick in recent days to condemn Representative (and Civil Rights Icon) John Lewis for publicly calling his presidency “Illegitimate”, try to find as strong a rejection of some of the white nationalists that have tried to cozy up to him.

It’s going to be a long four years…if the Trumpster makes it that far.

 

Miguel Ferrer, R.I.P.

Taking up where 2016 left off, yesterday came news of the passing of Miguel Ferrer, who was only 61 years old and suffered from throat cancer.

While his name may not be as familiar to the public as that of his famous cousin George Clooney, Miguel Ferrer, who was the son of noted actor Mel Ferrer and Rosemary Clooney, leaves behind a great body of cinematic and television role work.

Perhaps his best known role, and likely the one that catapulted him the most to being a “star”, may be that of the slimy, yet ultimately oddly sympathetic yuppie Bob Morton from the original 1987 RoboCop.  Here’s a behind the scenes examination of his character’s exit from the movie…

Mr. Ferrer would often play these arrogant, slimy characters yet manage to make audiences feel for them even if they are, on paper anyway, off-putting.

However, though perhaps known for that persona, Mr. Ferrer appeared in many other works and I’ll remember him for roles in TV and film as diverse as Deepstar Six (cheesy fun), Twin Peaks, Hot Shots Part Deux (he is quite funny in this somewhat forgotten Charlie Sheen starring Airplane!-like comedy), and The Night Flier.

61 years of age is far too young an age to pass.  Rest in peace, Mr. Ferrer.

Hello darkness…

So today, January 20th, 2017 we here in the good ol’ US of A inaugurate our latest president and we enter a new era full of optimism and hope that…

Who the f#$k am I kidding?

When George W. Bush was elected president following Bill Clinton, I feared the worst and it proved to be the case.  Not only did George W. Bush not get the popular vote, but there is still a legitimate, IMHO, case to be made he didn’t win Florida either.  It was the meddling of the Supreme Court, most specifically the conservative judges, who bent over backwards to give Mr. Bush his presidency.

Granted he won re-election but this too was a close shave and I know there are those (perhaps a little less legitimately) who suspect there was some hanky-panky going on in Ohio which gave him the edge over John Kerry (personally, I feel Bush the younger benefited mightily from shenanigans the first time around and a weak candidate in Al Gore and benefited from a weak candidate in Mr. Kerry the second go around).

Regardless, by the time Bush the younger’s terms were done, even the most steadfast Republican couldn’t even mention Mr. Bush’s name in any way, shape or form, lest they hurt negatives.

When Mr. Obama came into office, the country was a mess and, despite incredible odds, considering how much “help” he was afforded by the Republican side, he managed to clean up much of Mr. Bush’s mess.  I do not believe Mr. Obama was a perfect president, but at least he was smart and tried to do the right thing despite the wall of opposition he constantly faced.

Today we inaugurate a person that, incredibly, actually makes me long for Mr. Bush.

In Mr. Trump’s presidency, I fear we’re about to enter another period of great harm.  Even if we were to ignore the racist, misogynistic, narcissistic, and just plain stupid things Mr. Trump say, his cabinet picks are, for the most part, a damn unpleasant joke.

In his picks we have a who’s who of individuals who either have conflicts of interest (some very major), a history of sketchy financial dealings, or are idiots.  Rick Perry, the nominee for Secretary of Energy, admitted he didn’t know what the Department of Energy was about.  Every time Ben Carson opens his mouth, I wonder if his resume (he is supposedly one of the better neurosurgeons) was invented whole cloth…or if he’s one of those idiot-savants who knows one thing really well.  Then there’s Betsy DeVos, a woman who was nominated to be head of the Department of Education for no other reason than that her family is very wealthy and has contributed mightily to the Republican party (she’s also the one who felt guns should be allowed in schools because, I kid you not, they may be needed to repel grizzly bears).

It’s a complete shit-show and not only will the United States be dealing with this, sadly so too will the rest of the world.

I started this post with a famous movie quote and I’ll end it with another.

I’ll try to be optimistic.  I’ll hope Mr. Trump surprises everyone and turns out to be not as bugnuts crazy as he seems.   And if he is, I hope the darkness he creates is quickly followed by light.

Blood Father (2016) a (mildly) belated review

It is impossible to review a relatively new movie featuring without first addressing the controversy surrounding the man.  While what happened to him occurred a long time ago, there are many who still cannot stomach watching a film featuring the actor.

I can’t blame people for having that opinion.

It seemed Mel Gibson’s life went seriously off the rails at that time and he himself has stated he was in another frame of mind at that time and heavily into drinking…a mix that could have resulted in tragedy instead of what actually happened: Mel Gibson became a Hollywood pariah.

To some extent, he’s still there and the proof is obvious.  When Hacksaw Ridge, the critically acclaimed WWII drama he directed was released this year, TV commercials for the film stated something along the lines of: “From the director who brought you Braveheart” yet nowhere was it mentioned that director happened to be Mel Gibson.

So for those who simply cannot see a Mel Gibson film without being reminded of the things he did, Blood Father is obviously not for you.  For the rest, here’s my review…

Blood Father is a low budget “B” action movie featuring Mel Gibson in the title role.  His character, Link, is a curious amalgam of the “real” Mel Gibson and the types of characters he is best known to play.  Characters who hide an inner rage and may be just a little crazy yet are, in the end, noble and trying to do what’s right.  Like Mad Max or Martin Riggs, these people aren’t supermen.  They carry a lot of hurt inside and can barely contain it.  They will also fight for their loved ones and, quite literally, step in front of a bullet for them.

As the movie begins, we see Link in an AA meeting (here’s where real life, I suppose, mixes with fantasy).  Link talks before the group, offering a “state of the state”-type statement, that he’s been sober for two years and living clean.  Clearly the past has scarred him, bad, yet he’s fighting along, trying to do what’s right.

Link lives in a shabby trailer (not unlike Martin Riggs!) and works as a tattoo artist.  On the walls of his trailer are posters for his lost child.  Clearly, he misses her badly and wants to get back to her.

Meanwhile, we catch up on Link’s daughter, Lydia () and find she’s mixed up with the wrong crowd.  They’re a group of violent, drug dealing Mexican traffickers who are in the process of strong-arming (and killing) people who worked for them.  Lydia can’t handle the scene and, accidentally, shoots her boyfriend and flees his violent friends.

Having no one to turn to, she calls Link and asks for some money so she can disappear.  Link hurries to get her but soon enough he’s confronting the violent Mexican traffickers as well as the police while trying to save his daughter’s life.

As mentioned above, Blood Father is a low budget “B” action film and I suspect if it wasn’t for Mel Gibson’s presence, and pretty damn good acting, the film might easily have disappeared without much of a trace.  Mind you, the way it was handled by the studios did a pretty good job in burying it anyway (I heard almost nothing about the film until it was available on VOD), so any success the movie has -modest though it likely was- is a testament to the quality of the film alone.

And there is quality here.

For most of the film’s run I enjoyed the movie, though I have to admit I groaned more than a little at the way Lydia allowed the bad guys to track her (Come on, girl, its understandable your old man doesn’t know about modern technology but don’t you know Apple iPhones can be tracked?!).

Anyway, regardless of this, the film moved along well and the action sequences were tightly cut, exciting, and never over the top.  There is even one action sequence involving Mel on a motorcycle that echoed Mad Max in the very best way possible and was, to me, the highlight of the film.

But having said all that, the film did have issues.

The biggest flaw, to me was the casting of Ms. Moriarty in the role of Lydia.  Don’t get me wrong, Ms. Moriarty is a damn fine actress.  I think she played her role as well as she could.  But she just didn’t fit the part of a drug snorting/boozing runaway who was at the edge of a precipice and coming down the drugs/booze while in the care of her father.  In this movie she’s supposed to be a young version of Link, something her father is all too painfully aware of so he hopes to clean her up and offers her something he never had: A second chance.

Again, Ms. Moriarty, IMHO, is a good actress but she looked a little too “clean” for this role and I found it hard to believe she was someone who lived on the streets for several years before returning to her father.

However, this was a minor problem compared to the movie’s climax, which for me was something of an abrupt dud.

As I said before, this was a low budget film and the climax of the movie makes that all too clear.  The final shootout proved to be the film’s least exciting action sequence, and it boggles my mind that was the case.  There was little tension and a resolution that felt hurried and, ultimately, hurt the film more than the miscasting of Ms. Moriarty.

Sadly, one can have 3/4ths of a damn good film ruined by the last 1/4ths.  While I don’t believe the lame ending of Blood Father completely wiped the film out, it took all that good will and, unfortunately, squandered it in a less than exciting shootout.

I truly, truly wish the film had done something a little better here.

Regardless, while Blood Father may have its flaws, it is an exciting (for the most part) film that features Mel Gibson in a familiar type role, one that he handles quite well.  Considering some of the other “geriatric” action films of late, even with its missteps Blood Father is worth a look see.

Here’s the film’s trailer which, unfortunately, gives a little too much away…

The A.B.C. Murders by Agatha Christie (1936), a belated review

I admire the hell out of author Agatha Christie.  In her lifetime she released an almost obscene amount of novels (66) and short story collections (14) many of which, today, are considered classics in the crime/mystery genre.

During her lifetime she also created not one but two very famous “sleuths” to inhabit many of her novels.  The more well known of the two, Hercule Poirot (the other is Miss Marple), appeared in 33 of those 66 novels and some 50 short stories.  Like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot is a detective with an intelligence that is superior to those around him.  He makes all the connections between crime and murderer and solves crimes that leave all others baffled.  Curiously, also like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie grew to hate the character of Poirot, though unlike Mr. Doyle reserved the “last” Poirot case, Curtain, for release in 1975 (Mrs. Christie would pass away in 1976).

Over the Holidays, Amazon.com offered many books for sale.  Among them were several Agatha Christie novels, some of which I read and others which I didn’t.  I think I read her 1936 Poirot novel The A.B.C. Murders many, many years ago.  However, if I did, I recalled no details so reading this book was, essentially, like reading it for the first time.

The book is the 13th to feature Mr. Poirot in the lead and it is an interesting book to read, though because of my familiarity with Mrs. Christie’s writing style I found some of the bigger surprises not quite as surprising, I suspect, as most virgin Agatha Christie readers might find them.

To begin, the mystery presented is different from some of the usual Agatha Christie affairs.  Hercule Poirot, living in London, receives a strange letter from someone who signs it “A.B.C.”  The person states s/he will kill someone in a certain town (the town’s name begins with the letter “A”) and dares Hercule Poirot to find and stop him/her.

The police wonder if the letter is written by some crank and Hercule Poirot hopes this is the case while clearly worried it is not.  To make a long story short, a murder is committed and the victim’s last name also begins with an “A”.  Then a second letter arrives, indicating the next victim, who will have a “B” in their last name, will be found in a town that begins with the letter “B”.

What’s fascinating about this novel is that many of the Agatha Christie novels I’m familiar with tend to be murder mysteries revolving around a set of characters and this novel and this one hints at the possibility of Hercule Poirot going up against a serial killer.

What is even more fascinating, I found, is that at one point Mr. Poirot states something along the lines of wanting to get into “the killer’s mind”, a big plot device used very effectively nearly a half century later by Thomas Harris in his Red Dragon and Silence of the Lambs novels, both of which were eventually made into very good movies (I refer to the Michael Man directed Red Dragon adaptation Manhunter rather than the remake done post Silence of the Lambs).

As I read the novel, I was fascinated by how well Mrs. Christie writes.  She manages to say a lot with very little, often allowing the dialogue to propel the story along and giving us tasty hints as to what characters are all about.  I particularly enjoyed the way the character of Thora Grey was presented.  MILD SPOILERS In the end, the character was revealed to be a gold-digger and her plans fell by the wayside.  I suspect in other author’s hands the character would have been presented as much more nasty but Agatha Christie manages to show us the relative good in her even as she’s revealed to be a calculating woman.

Unfortunately and as I mentioned above, being familiar with Agatha Christie’s writing style, some of the bigger surprises the book offers didn’t surprise me as much as I would have hoped, though I would easily recommend this book to anyone interested in sampling Mrs. Christie’s novels.

To get into that, I’m going to have to get into some bigger…

SPOILERS

Still there?  Again, if you want to read the novel, I strongly urge you to look away from what I’m going to talk about.  Beware!

Still there, redux?

You’ve been warned!

The A.B.C. Murders tries to make us think we’re dealing with Hercule Poirot going up against a mad serial killer yet almost from the very first page I knew there had to be more to the story.  Again, I may have read the story before many, many years ago, so maybe its not so much that I’m clever but rather that I had details of the plot buried deep in my subconscious.

Regardless, from the moment we deal with the idea of a possible mad serial killer taunting Hercule Poirot, I somehow knew the murders he’d face were a distraction and that this whole effort to present the idea of a serial killer was, in reality, an effort to hide one particular murder.

Once you’ve put yourself in that frame of mind, as I did early in the novel, it was clear which of the murders (there are four in total), was “the” one.  It was easy to figure out as it was the murder that others had the most to gain from.  As in money.  Three of the victims came from simple means and one was a wealthy person who would leave behind quite a bit of money.

Once I determined the murders were a diversion, and this was well before that victim was named, I started looking for the clues to whodunnit and why.  It became a simple bit of deduction on my part and there were only two possible candidates for the role.  However, this was also where parts of the novel started to stretch credulity.

The idea of presenting us with a bogus “mad” killer is all good and well, but when you have an actual character presented in the book who is being framed for this, a character who is absolutely perfect for the frame (he’s a WWI vet who suffers from blackouts and therefore isn’t even certain if he committed some of the crimes), you begin to wonder just how much free time the real murderer had to a) find the patsy, b) plan out the elaborate charade, and c) commit the actual murders without being found out until getting to the one that was the true victim.

As entertainment, The A.B.C. Murders is nonetheless an enjoyable, entertaining novel whose biggest flaw is that it hopes readers will accept all the above and not question it…at least not too much.

While at times preposterous because of this, The A.B.C. Murders is nonetheless worth checking out.

Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie (2016) a (mildy) belated review

Confession time: I love the Absolutely Fabulous (or AbFab) TV series which originally ran from 1992 until 2012.

Like most British TV shows, the episodes presented each season were fewer than those found on U.S. TV shows.  AbFab’s first season, for instance, featured 6 thirty minute episodes.  Subsequent seasons ran between 6 and 9 episodes each, with the final “season” being a mere 3 episodes long.

After that last season, I figured that was it for Absolutely Fabulous.  Not so, as the above headline clearly makes obvious.  Here’s the trailer for the 2016 film…

Now, if you’re not a fan of Absolutely Fabulous and have no idea what the heck it is about…I suspect the trailer won’t do much for you.  Heavens knows, I’m a fan of the show and the trailer didn’t do all that much for me.

Alas, this trailer is, unfortunately, a pretty good indication of what you’re getting with the movie.  Let me reiterate: I’m a fan of the series.  I loved the misadventures of the ditzy Edina (, who created and wrote most of the series episodes and wrote the screenplay to the movie) and her best friend, the spectacular vampiric Patsy ( in the role of a lifetime…and several more!).

So, clearly, I hated the film, right?  It’s not worth it at all, right?

No.

There are funny moments to be found in the AbFab film and many of the cameos are quite funny.  But the problem is this film never really hits the “hilarious” stride I was hoping for.

While I’m glad to see the whole gang again -and then some- this movie moves along at a rather slow pace and some of the comedic set pieces work (the flight to France, a rather unique karaoke club, and the fate of Kate Moss) while others (Patsy dressing as a man, as seen in the trailer) absolutely…don’t.

The film’s biggest problem ultimately is that as good as the good stuff is, it simply isn’t enough to offset both the leisurely pace and the many parts that don’t work as well.

By the time the film reaches its climax and you expect things to get frantic, the film seems lost and, curiously, decides to crib its climax from The Return of the Pink Panther.  Don’t believe me?  Check out the AbFab movie trailer above and pay particular attention to the scenes where Edina and Patsy are in a very small red car…and what happens to them in it.

Now check out the scenes presented below from The Return of the Pink Panther.  Pay particular attention to what happens between the 49 second mark through approximately 1:50…

Strange.

Anyway, if you are a fan of Absolutely Fabulous, the TV show, you’ll probably like the film a lot more than if you’re a newbie.  However, even fans of the show, I suspect, will be surprised at how (by the Gods, I’m turning into Donald Trump!!!) low energy this movie is.

While the AbFab film is not a total disaster and there are some very amusing scenes, one nonetheless can’t help but feel this was a missed opportunity.

Too bad.

Consumer Reports vs the new MacBook Pro, part deux

A little while back there were shockwaves released in the tech world when Consumer Reports did not endorse the new MacBook Pro, citing very inconsistent battery life as a main problem.

Apple took the report very seriously and, together with Consumer Reports, apparently worked things out and now the venerable customer watchdog has issued the coveted “recommended” for the latest Apple product.

Consumer Reports changes mind recommends new MacBook Pro

However…

Despite getting the recommendation, it appears there remains ..friction… between Consumer Reports and Apple.

After issuing the recommendation, and according to the article above, Consumer Reports stated the problem with the MacBook Pro’s battery life was a result of a “bug” in the programming which Apple fixed.

Apple, on the other hand, stated the following:

Consumer Reports’ testing did “not reflect real-world usage”…(and) that Consumer Reports used a “hidden Safari setting” in its testing that consumers don’t typically turn on.

Interesting, though obviously very insider-type stuff.  Both sides essentially are arguing they were in the right and the other in the wrong.  Consumer Reports blames the problem on a bug Apple missed.  Apple, on the other hand, states the problem was a Consumer Reports screw up in the way they used the laptop.

As I said, interesting.  Very interesting.

No hard feelings, right?!