by A.J. Wood

Movie Review – The Truth About Charlie

Mich3lle & I went to see “The Truth About Charlie” last night. I should’ve paid attention to the gut check I got when Mich3lle said “I really don’t expect this to be good”, but I had already clicked on the “BUY THIS NOW” button on Cinemark’s website. What an absolute waste of time. Now I don’t mean this in the torturous sense, I wasn’t screaming at the movie characters like I did when I watched “Battlefield Earth” over at Geoff’s place, it’s just the movie dragged on like a Sunday morning sermon about abstinence.

There wasn’t any action, just a lot of threatening looks, a couple of dark alleys and Mark Walberg as the guy who’s “conveniently” everywhere you’d expect him to be. Oh and all the bad people star dying off once you’ve passed the 2/3 mark in the movie. As slow as the pace was I hoped for spectacular deaths (anything to keep me from snoring), but at best there was a car collision (shot off camera with sound effects), a man dying of a heart attack (oooh, make me see the pain) and another guy who was beaten, but that happened off camera as well and you only see him for a second.

For our movie twist the writer threw in a crazy parent who had nothing to do with the plot, but then that was a surprise wasn’t it? I can’t really say the acting was all that bad because I don’t believe there was anything for the actors to work with. Mark Walberg was two steps ahead of the poor loser in “The Musketeer” although I did find it refreshing that Thandie Newton (from Mission Impossible 2) had a very plain jane look throughout the film. In fact that’s probably the only thing I did like. Newton’s character wasn’t overly glamorous, although Meg Ryan does a better job of pulling off the girl-next-door-sex-kitten look.

No DVD sale on this one.

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 by A.J. Wood

When Do We Get Treated Like Adults?

The way I see it if a video game doesn’t play well then the novelty of seeing some nude characters won’t last long. Is it really necessary to have a ban on something like this? Well, at least I don’t live in Greece…

I find it interesting that on one hand Corporate America actively markets to younger audiences in hopes to groom the consumer, but then attempts to stick a hand in when it feels parents aren’t up to the task. Maybe that’s why so many movies & DVDs get edited to bits in pre-production just so there’s a sweet PG-13 rating for all the kiddies. Kinda sucks that the movie would have been a helluva lot better under the original director’s vision which touted an R rating, but then where’s the money in that?

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 by A.J. Wood

Greek Law Bans Electronic Games

Can you believe this?

A new law passed in Greece bans the use of ANY device that allows electronic gaming. This includes Game Boy consoles (or any variation), cell phones, computers and the list goes on & on.

Many people including tourists have been fined heavily or even been sent to jail for violating this law. The most common violation is having a cell phone (those new Samsung phones have a fighter pilot game).

The part that’s troublesome about this law is that the government enacted it based on the fact that its law enforcement personnel were unable to distinguish between video games and electronic gambling machines.

Unbelievable. If you’ve never been politically active, you might take this as an extreme example of what happens when you don’t pay attention to your governmental politics.

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