I've been encouraged a few times by a couple of people to devote a blog (or at least, some blog space) to a couple of my pet peeves--namely, ill-informed comments on political articles/blogs and ill-informed netflix reviews.
For the former, all one needs to do is start reading comments on CNN's
Political Ticker to get your blood boiling, no matter which candidate you support. Today's installation, however, comes from Jake Tapper of ABC's blog post on
Clinton's attempts to be the first to be right about Iraq. As might be expected, in thecomments Tapper receives quite a bit of grief for being critical of Clinton. Here is a gem:
To Jake: By now the Hillary bashing is really ad nauseam. When are you going to stop? Why don't you, FOR ONCE, tell the truth about Barack Obama. He isn't even black. He is 47.5% ARABIC. No wonder HAMAS has endorsed him.
47.5% Arabic, you say? So 19 out of every 40 of his ancestors is a semitic language? Interesting...!
Ah, netflix reviews. It's not as much people's poor taste that gets me. It's their attempts to convey poor taste as good taste with supposedly insightful comments, their illogical criteria for ranking movies, and their inability to use anything available to them, like say some source of information that is road-like or, dare I say, web-like to find out anything about the movie they are about to watch. Some examples that I have been able to dig out of my email archives:
On
Disturbia:
This movie was just cheezy. I guess I wasn't aware it was kind of a teenage flick. I was expecting a more true remake of Rear Window. The girl who plays the lead character's love interest made far too many cliche "I'm sexy-crazy-cutesy" facial expressions while delivering her lines. I gave this movie 3 stars because I didn't fall asleep.
Clearly this person never caught the
trailer. Also, how does their star rating read? 1 - Fell asleep during the opening credits. 2 - Fell asleep halfway through. 3 - Did not fall asleep. 4 - Only needed one Red Bull to stay awake. 5 - Made it through film with only sugary snacks as my sustenance.
On
The House of Mirth:
I found the movie visually stunning. The period was accurately portrayed in costume and set. However, the plot was intense and in the end, just not interesting enough to hold my attention.
Ah yes, the boring intensity of period dramas...
On the Oceans XX films:
Oceans 11 was completely fantastic. Oceans 12 was terrible. Oceans 13 finishes just a bit above Oceans 12. Just didn't break any new ground.
This person demands a lot of his third installments.
And finally, reviews of the film
Grizzly Man:
This film is not really about bears. There is little information about bears...their diet, habitat, life cycle, or anything else scientific. This film is really about a confused California man with a serious identity crisis who decides that he would rather live with the bears in southern Alaska than with other humans in society. Watching this film will sadly teach you very little about bears. It will teach you something about how isolation can deteriorate the human mind. The saddest part was that he also destroyed someone else's life in the process. Watch it to learn about humans...not bears.
I'm really glad this person had the courage to tell the world that this film is not about bears, despite being called "Grizzly Man," and given a blurb by Netflix reading:
Renowned nonfiction director Werner Herzog chronicles the tragic and untimely death of outdoorsman Timothy Treadwell, who devoted his life to studying grizzly bears living in the Alaskan wilderness -- only to have one of them maul him to death. Pieced together mainly from Treadwell's own video footage, this fascinating documentary goes deep into the wilderness of one man's mind to uncover how he spent his final days.
That is all for today. Perhaps I will be back with more in the future. Perhaps I will have an aneurysm before I have the chance. Cheers.
