DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> DC Viking: March 2007

Wednesday, March 14, 2007

NCAA Basketball Haiku


My bracket is done
Beer, hardwood, gambling and beer
I've got Friday off

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posted by DC Viking at 9:21 AM 1 people of discerning taste are saying

Monday, March 12, 2007

This! Movie! Stinks!

For the first time in my life, I wanted to get up and leave a film before it was over. ‘300’ is one of the worst things I have ever paid money to watch, and I saw ‘The Last Action Hero’ in the theatre. The only thing that kept me from leaving the Saturday night showing and stepping into the bar down the street was the fact that the rather larger group I ate dinner with before the show was spread out all over the theatre. At the time I deemed it too rude to shout a suggestion that they join me at the bar, but in retrospect most of the audience would probably have understood if I had run to the front of the theatre and screamed, “Guys, this is movie is horrible! Let’s go get drunk!” In fact, some people that I didn’t eat dinner with would have probably joined us in flight.

Where to start?

The acting was atrocious, but it was hard to know whether this was caused by the actors themselves or an underlying deficiency in the script. I’ve finally decided to hold the actors and the writers responsible, as there’s plenty of blame to go around. The dialogue was sophomoric, and the delivery was at turns wooden and hyperbolic with no in between. The Spartans are continuously screaming about freedom in the most clichéd manner imaginable (the queen actually says 'freedom isn't free'), but I never understood nor saw what kind of freedom they were referring to. Beyond King Leonidas telling his troops that Freedom is the reason they are going to take on all of Persia, the movie doesn’t give the viewer a single hint regarding the fabulous liberties that these men are ready to die for. As near as I can tell, the Spartan Bill of Rights consists of; The Right to Forced Military Service (at seven years of age), The Right to Ridiculously Defined Abs, The Right of Eugenic Selection, and The Right to Use Improbably Attractive, Severely Drugged Women as National Security Advisers.

The director was apparently compensating for a lack of character development or any semblance of dramatic tension when he edited the film. Slow motion cuts of Spartan warriors slaughtering Persians, elephants, rhinos, and deformed giants were used often enough to add a good 30 minutes of screen time to this clunker. Every 5 seconds of battle footage shown at regular speed was followed by about 15 seconds of over-stylized slow-motion. The secret of the Spartan warriors has been revealed. They utilized a primitive version of the flux capacitor to slow down time and carefully plan each sword stroke. This technology was lost to the ages until Keanu Reeves used it in ‘The Matrix’ to dodge bullets and seduce Carrie-Ann Moss.

I’ve read several reviews that declare the cinematography and imagery to be the single redeeming quality of this movie. These reviews are totally wrong. The redeeming feature of this movie is not its special effects, which can be found in some of the better video games currently available. No, this movie is redeemed by its progressive attitudes regarding gender roles. This movie is, to my knowledge, the first ‘major’ motion picture that somehow manages to be homoerotic and homophobic at the same time. In one representative scene, King Leonidas of the Spartans flexes his massive abs, poses to further accentuate the ludicrous leather cod-piece he is wearing, and then proceeds to tell his similarly flexing, cod-piece wearing troops that they are far manlier then the ‘boy-loving’ Athenians. How very broad minded.

The most horrible aspect of this movie is that there is a good story in there somewhere. The ‘Battle of Thermopylae’ could make for a decent war movie if a different director gave it the generic ‘Saving Private Ryan’ treatment and a little bit of subtlety. This movie, for all it's hype and billing as a revolutionary war/action movie, has the least interesting violence I've ever watched. Unfortunately, the fans of the graphic novel upon which this drek is based turned out in numbers to give this relatively low budget flick a good opening weekend. I am fully expecting to see more movies that adhere to this style of film-making which is long on cliché, CGI, and hyperbole and short on actual entertainment. The other downside is that I’m going to have to start doing a lot more sit-ups.

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posted by DC Viking at 1:24 PM 9 people of discerning taste are saying

Tuesday, March 06, 2007

Top 5 things I daydream about while I’m riding the Metro

5. Playing center field for the Minnesota Twins.

4. Surviving a Zombie apocalypse and being forced to flee into the ruins of the Metro system before finally enacting my plan of vengeance against the undead hoards that stole my life.

3. Going back to bed.

2. Sharing a car with Dick Cheney and stealing his metro-pass, forcing him to beg for release from the station.

1. Neko Case.

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posted by DC Viking at 12:33 PM 4 people of discerning taste are saying

Monday, March 05, 2007

We interupt your regularly scheduled snark...

For the past few weeks, Hilary Clinton has been dancing around the technicalities of whether or not she is sorry that she voted for the Iraq War Resolution. This seemingly small, press-driven, mini-scandal perfectly encapsulates why I’d vote for Jessica Simpson before I’d nominate Hilary to represent the Democrats in the 08’ election.

Hilary has made several statements that seem to hint at her regret for voting in favor of providing the President with authorization for the use of force in Iraq. But she refuses to come out and say as much. On the surface this issue is trivial hair-splitting, the equivalent of Bill Clinton defining ‘is’, and unworthy of such media attention. But if you dig a little deeper her unwillingness to apologize for something widely recognized as ill-advised hints at how far she is willing to go to protect her image of toughness.

Fact #1 - Women are perceived by many voting Americans as being the weaker sex.

Fact #2 - Democrats have been painted as soft on the issue of national defense since the Carter administration.

Fact #3 - Hilary Clinton is a woman (pretty sure, the jury is still out on the whole cyborg thing) and a Democrat (technically).

When I accepted these facts I came to the conclusion that Hilary might be more dangerous than the current President when it comes to foreign policy. Consider the following scenario; Hilary is elected and inherits the Iraq War from the previous administration. Bush obviously has no interest in leaving Iraq and being labeled as a cutter and/or runner, so whoever wins in 2008 is going to have it dropped at their feet. If it’s Hilary in the White House, she’s going to be forced to act against the better angels of her nature. It will be impossible for her to pull U.S. soldiers out of Iraq, even if it becomes obvious to everyone but Joe Lieberman that the troops need to come home. She’s simply too afraid to be painted as a weak woman and Democrat, and as a result, she’ll lack the toughness to make any kind of concession.

I can see this playing out in any number of other geographical hot spots. Despot A makes inflammatory remarks, Republican mouthpiece B says that Clinton is weak if she does nothing, first female president C overreacts and weakens the standing of U.S. in the global community. Rinse and repeat as necessary. That's why when the time comes, I'm casting my vote for the Japanese guy from Heroes.

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posted by DC Viking at 1:12 PM 5 people of discerning taste are saying