chezapocalypse:

On Friday, Mara (who is far more active than I in nonprofits and volunteer works) pointed me towards Astoria Recovers, which was organizing volunteers to go down to the Rockaways and help out down there.  I’d tried signing up with other organizations, which hadn’t gotten back to me, so we went with this one.  The recovers people are part of a greater, more spread out movement called Occupy Sandy (if you’re not in the Northeast you can donate to them here.  There was hardly any FEMA, LIPA or NYC sanitation presence in the Rockaways.  While, as I do believe, these companies are doing a modestly okay job with the resources they have, the Occupy people have been far more proactive in getting resources to the people who have been devastated by the storm. I also talked to a very friendly and generous group of Sikhs from a coalition of Queens gurdwaras who practically forced a plate of (very tasty) hot food on us.  Churches were also out in full force as well; there were many generous groups offering food and help.

Speaking as someone who has never been in a disaster area before, it’s hard to imagine until you’re actually there.  We saw all of these images from Katrina, and perhaps being inundated with images like that from the likes of Roland Emmerich and Michael Bay our whole lives, the seriousness of the actual situation perhaps loses saliency when you see those images on the television and online, and not in real life.  I think that was the case for me; one hears about the tragedy in New Orleans, or in Haiti a couple of years ago, or in Japan last year, the list goes on, but there’s a lack of subjectivity when you see it on a screen; images of disasters that look familiar, as we’ve seen similar in movies.

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Hey there everyone.  I’m back and blogging again, not that any of you even care I’m sure.  Sometimes I wonder if anyone would even bother reading this.  Most likely they won’t.  But you know what. Fuck it, I’m still typing.

So why did I decide to get back into blogging?  Simple, I’m fucking bored.

Goo Man here.

I just want to say a few things regarding these 3 movies.  August 13-15 weekend box office results show that The Expendables dominate with $35 million and placed 1st. Eat. Pray. Love brought $23.7 million and placed 2nd.  Unfortunately, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World became a box office disappointment with $10.5 million and placing 5th. 

Now how could such a great movie like Scott Pilgrim do so bad at the box office?  One word: demographics.  The Expendables appealed to the entire male population while Eat. Pray. Love appealed to the entire female population. 

What did Scott Pilgrim appeal to?

Well it wasn’t the entire nerd population, which is kind of small.  It appealed to the nerds who have either A) read the graphic novel series or B) are fans of retro video games.  That’s a very tiny demographic and is the only thing in where this movie fails (personally, I say the other demographics fail because they’re too stupid to appreciate those things.  But I digress).

Now out of all three of these movies, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World was without a doubt the better movie.  It was well-made by Edgar Wright, had a great cast aside from Michael Cera(he still did an alright job), great story, great adapting from the source material, great visuals, great music, etc.  Now don’t think I hated The Expendables.  I really did enjoy that movie.  However, the only reason I enjoyed it was because of the all-out action scenes.  Other than that, the movie was really corny and cheesy, plus it could have done a little better if it was just about 25 minutes longer(there was potential that could have been expanded upon with a little more runtime).  As for Eat. Pray. Love, I didn’t see it and have no intention of seeing it because I’m not a fan of romantic comedies or Julia Roberts.  I know I’m being very biased and everything but even if I did see it, I probably still wouldn’t have liked it.  Sorry ladies.

Anyways, I had to get that off my chest because I keep reading articles of how Scott Pilgrim was a disappointment because of it’s box office performance.  I say fuck you to that.  There are so many movies that didn’t do well with the box office and are still considered great films.  Now I hate to use this movie as an example because I think it’s overrated, but it will help get my point across.  Citizen Kane was a box office bomb and the American Film Institute considers it the greatest film of all time.

Well that’s all I have to say.  Goo Man out

Hey there everyone, it’s your favorite Goo Man.

Finishing off my summer viewings for 2010 is the action-packed film directed by Rocky Balboa himself.  The Expendables is an all-out brawl containing an ensemble cast of action stars past and present.  Sylvester Stallone can sure as hell kick some ass even at his age as well as the rest of the cast.  This movie makes men proud to be men.  With lots of testosterone and adrenaline pumping, the action does not disappoint.

The entire cast did a great job in kicking the shit out of people.  Hell, some were pretty good when there wasn’t action.  Stallone and Jason Statham did a good job as the two close pals.  It was interesting to see Mickey Rourke in a sort of mentor role as the retired merc.  Jet Li really didn’t do much for me except when he was fighting Dolph Lundgren.  Speaking of Lundgren, it was nice to see him back in a mainstream film, although his character really was expendable which kind of disappointed me.  Randy Couture, like Li, was only good when he was kicking somebody’s ass.  Despite his character lacking good screentime, Terry ‘cheeseburger eddy’ Crews makes great use of it by blowing the fuck out of shit.  Stone Cold Steve Austin was just meh.  Seeing Arnold back on screen for a few minutes was pretty entertaining.  As for Bruce Willis, even though he had a small cameo appearance, I couldn’t help but feel something lacking in his minor performance.

The action was just straight-up awesome.  What more can I say?  However, there were a couple lame effects.  It was real easy to notice the CGI blood and body parts in some scenes.  All I can say is that this kind of movie requires little to no CGI.

Now the story was pretty much the weakest part of this movie.  The plot is pretty straightforward and kind of dull.  The subplot with Jason Statham and Charisma Carpenter was pointless.  The subplot between Stallone and Giselle Itie was also pointless.  They could have used the time in these subplots to develop Li’s and Couture’s characters a little better, and also give Terry Crews more screentime.

But then again, that’s to be expected from action movies like this.  It expects all the action to make up for the weak storytelling.  Luckily, this movie is able to do that really well.  I enjoyed this movie very much and recommend all the men in the world to see this at least once.  My rating for this movie is going to be an 8.5 out of 10.

So that’s the end of my summer movies.  Tune in next time when I bash the hell out of The Last Airbender….just as soon as I get around to finishing that piece of shit.

Till then, Goo Man loves ya.