Super 8 Review

Let me just say that films like Super 8 are the reason I love movies so much. This movie was absolutely great. The film takes places in the late 1970’s and focuses on a group of kids trying to make a horror movie, however little do they know a real life horror movie is unfolding around them. They witness a train crash while shooting a scene and things go straight to hell from there.

The movie does a good job of keeping you in suspense, wondering what’s coming next, what’s really going on in this small Ohio town. It keeps you waiting in anticipation until the end. I really loved how the camera work was done; giving you small glimpses of the creature but it’s never truly revealed until the end. You may say, well that’s been done before. Yes it has, but this movie did it right in my opinion.

Another aspect of this film that I enjoyed was that the main starring roles were given to kids. You really don’t see that very often. I think the kids in this movie all gave terrific acting performances, some of the best I’ve seen. All of them were well casted for their roles. Watching them trying to make their movie as the action unfolds around them was quite entertaining.

Super 8 really draws you into the story of these kids and their film. A lot of movies made today have a lot of action but lack in their story. This movie limits the action only to when it’s appropriate. Overall it’s just really well done and I hope to see more movies like this in the near future. I highly recommend this movie to everyone.

My score for Super 8 is 5 out of 5.

- Shane

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides Review

I just got back from seeing the new Pirates of the Caribbean movie “On Stranger Tides”. I went in knowing it probably would not be as good as its predecessors and unfortunately I was right. This film goes in quite a different direction than the last three. The original trilogy relied heavily on CGI effects to create memorable characters like Davy Jones. On the contrary, Blackbeard in this movie is very forgettable.  

The movie didn’t use too many spectacular special effects at all really. The main focus being on the “mermaids” however don’t let that title fool you, the creatures in this movie are not actually mermaids. They’re more like vampire/piranhas which have the ability to take down entire ships! Unlike any mermaid I’ve ever heard of.

The plot of this movie focuses on finding the fountain of youth. Of course everyone knows a fountain of youth is no good unless you’ve got some mermaid tears to go with it, oh and the tears must be fresh to work. I’d like to know who thought that one up. The whole plot is rather silly and seems rather pointless to me.

The dialogue and soundtrack for this movie both seemed to be lacking. As for dialogue, Jack Sparrow did not have nearly the same amount of witty lines or comebacks that he did in the previous films. Johnny Depp’s performance seemed to be on cruise control throughout the movie. The music in the movie wasn’t really bad; it’s just that there was nothing new. It seemed like the same soundtrack as in the previous movies just re-mixed.

I know they’re planning to yet make two more of these movies in the coming years, I can only hope they look back at their previous more successful works for their future ventures. I personally really loved the very first Pirates movie. I thought it was innovative and a fun ride in general. The second one wasn’t bad either really; I still enjoyed it quite a lot. The third was decent but the plot had some holes. Now the fourth is just rather disappointing to me.

For my score I’ll give this movie 3 out of 5.

Harold Camping, the relentless fool

So Harold Camping was originally wrong in 1994 when he first predicted the end of the world…and nothing happened. Then he thought to himself, being wrong once wasn’t enough I’ll make a fool out of myself for a second time. Let’s go with 2011 this time. So May 21, 2011 came and went and of course not a single thing happened. Camping claimed a “silent rapture” occurred. Give me a break. There was one volcanic eruption but that doesn’t count.

So now what does Harold Camping do next? The civil thing to do would be to simply apologize and say something along the lines of “sorry for misleading you and taking all your money”. If he was really nice he might even give some money back to the poor people that he tricked. But no, instead he has decided to keep playing the end of the world game, now saying the end of the world will come on October 21, 2011.

Come on Harold! How many times do you think you can get away with this deception anyway? How dumb do you think we are? If anyone is actually still following this man they have to be the biggest idiot on the planet.

I’ll be honest, when I first started following Camping at the beginning of May I was quite interested in the topic, but it’s really getting old now. This will most likely be my last post on the topic. I just felt like voicing my opinion on this never ending stupidity. 

- Shane

Judgement Day? Or gullible idiot day?

Well here it is, May 21, 2011. Judgement Day! At least it was supposed to be Judgement Day. However as I predicted all along, not a single thing has happened. Harold Camping you lunatic, you really had us all going there didn’t ya? Just because he has hosted Open Forum for 50 years so many people were ready to believe whatever he told them, despite the fact that he already screwed up his first prediction.

This guy has been preaching on his show for years that the world was going to come to a harsh end on this very day. As a result, he received millions in donations from his loyal followers. Some people even quit their jobs and gave up their life savings to support Harold Camping’s cause of advertising the end of the world. I wonder where these poor jobless people are now?

Religious fanatics in general tend to annoy me. Harold Camping in particular kept my interest because he was so sure of himself and was so adamant about getting the word out. I am still not entirely sure why he did this, was it really just all about the money? How many lives do you have to ruin just to give yourself a nice retirement fund?

Well it’s over now; I can only hope people come away from this being wiser and less likely to believe nut jobs like Camping in the future. The fact is, there is no way the end of the world can be predicted by the bible. The world will end in billions of years when our sun becomes a red giant. Odds are humans won’t make it that long anyway.  

As for 2012, don’t expect the end of the world then either, especially not a biblical end of the world. Sure, a natural disaster cannot be ruled out. However that really goes for any year, 2012 is not really special in any way, just as today was not special. Use logic my friends, do not fall for deception. 

- Shane

Is the world ending this Saturday?

Harold Camping, a Christian radio broadcaster and president of Family Radio claims that the world will be coming to an abrupt end this coming Saturday, May 21, 2011. He also predicted that the world would end in September of 1994, however, surprise surprise,  that prediction did not come to pass. He blamed his previous failure on a mathematical error. Yeah right.

He’s basing his second end of the world prophecy on several mathematical calculations which you can read about further here. If you ask me these are just numbers with no real significance of their own. Anyone can manipulate numbers to work in their favor if they play around with them long enough.

Camping also has his own Youtube channel that he’s been using to countdown to Judgement day. In his latest video he talked about how the acceptance of homosexuality was a sign of the end. Really Harold? The acceptance of others for who they are is a sign of the end of the world? I think not. It’s a sign of a more civilized world, a sign that people are finally breaking free of religious intolerance, but certainly not a sign of the end.

Camping claims that this Saturday at 6:00 PM there will be a catastrophic earthquake in every city around the world. I am not sure why 6:00 PM exactly, apparently God wants to interrupt our last dinner. It also makes absolutely no sense for earthquakes to happen in an organized manner. Earthquakes happen randomly and without warning.

The Family Radio network has been receiving loads of donations due to Camping’s claim. I have to ask myself why would anyone donate to them if the world is ending in a few days? None of it makes any sense. It’s a good money making scheme. Tell your followers that the world is about to end and they’ll send you money. Then when it doesn’t happen, run, hide, and hope they don’t find you!

Camping says “I know it’s absolutely true, because the Bible is always absolutely true”. However the bible is not absolutely true, the majority of it is fiction. I’m hoping on May 22, more people will understand this. You can’t just go around telling everyone the world is going to end because you have a hunch. Some people are ignorant enough to believe it.

In truth, there are many ways that the world could actually come to an end. I’m not going to start listing them here, but I can assure you, when it does happen it will not be because the bible said so. Everything has a beginning and an end, that’s how everything in the universe works. That’s just science. 

- Shane

New posts coming soon!

I know I have been seriously behind in keeping up with this blog. However I am now getting re-focused, I plan to start making new blog posts as often as possible and making some new Youtube videos as well. I would love to hear some suggestions for videos or for topics to write about. You can post comments here or you can also contact me at ShaneD3488@gmail.com.

- Shane

Halloween is weird

I love Halloween, it's always been one of my favorite holiday's. You get to pretend to be a scary creature, then you go knock on people's doors and you get free candy, it doesn't get any better than that right? Still though, when you think about it, Halloween really is just downright weird! 

Originally people started dressing up as frightening creatures because they believed on this day, the spirits of the dead came into our world or something like that. Our way of fooling these spirits was dressing up like them so they would leave us alone. However nowadays it seems that people dress up as pretty much anything! I'm really not sure how dressing up like celebrities or famous people is supposed to be scary. Unless it's a dead celebrity...then maybe...an undead Jim Varney would scare the hell out of me. Or you can dress up as Spongebob...but maybe have a meat cleaver in his head.

Another thing about Halloween that's strange is for this one day out of the year, begging for food from complete strangers is completely acceptable. Imagine on any other day of the year if you tried putting on a hockey mask and went knocking on someone's door at night begging for stuff. You'd probably get whacked upside the head.

As I said though I really do enjoy this holiday no matter how strange it may be. I love getting scared and it's so much fun to scare others...plus ya'know, free candy, you just can't beat free candy. Happy Halloween ya'll.