Flick? Flick who??

Guns n' Media. Not quite roses.

Why, oh why do people not use technical advisors (who actually know something) for movie or television?
It’s bad enough that guns in “real life” get such a bad portrayal by media, but that representation is compounded by Hollywood over and over.
For instance, remember that freakish knife attack in New York little over a year ago?
A guy walked behind the counter of a Texas Smokehouse restaurant, swiped four knives and started slashing and attacking people walking down the sidewalks. Finally, an off duty cop took him out. Of course the media, in its default “guns cause all crime” mode, said, “Other cops arrived, along with paramedics. The woman and Singh were rushed to the hospital, as was the gunman.” Gunman?
I took a screen shot of that one.

Guns in movies have all these supernatural powers that guns in real life apparently don’t have. You can see their muzzle flash in broad daylight, you can shoot more than a dozen times with a six shooter, sometimes they fire when no one is touching them, there are 12 gauge shotguns with zero recoil…it’s amazing.

One of my favorite “catches” is the semi-automatic handgun unexpectedly going “click” at someone when it’s empty. See, how it really works is, when an auto fires its last round, the slide moves backward and locks in a very open position. There’s no way the shooter would not know that his firearm was empty and there’s no way the intended target would not know…if Hollywood was just a teensy smidgen more accurate.

Most of the time, you’d find that all the threatening, pointing, and shotgun play is done with an empty chamber. You find that out after the fact because at the end of whatever confrontation is going on, the shotgun gets “racked” for effect when it’s pointed at somebody up close and personal. Don’t get me wrong, that “shick-schick” is very intimidating and also a very cool sound (especially in surround sound), but it’s a little anti-climatic to realize that up until that point, nobody had a round chambered and if a trigger was pulled nothing would happen.

Then there’s just obvious crap that even the novice can catch…scope caps still covering the lens, scopes on backwards, or even upside down like in the freeze frame captured from Flash Point:

Another of my favorite catches is somebody cocking a firearm more than once.
OMG that aggravates me something fierce! I guess I’m not the only one, because someone made this awesome video! Watch it!

Everybody's Doing it.

Thanks for the heads up from Dan at LITGMW!
I've seen a bunch of them, but after seeing Dan's I decided to do my own.

I’m Wired Differently

At least, I think so. There are so many things that people seem to pick up on that I don’t. And conversely, there are many things that I see as blatant object lessons that others miss. Once in a while, it makes me feel like I might have a unique perspective on a situation, but most times I just feel frustrated and out of the loop. Annie's Chaos. That’s the address name of this little corner of the net, and man do I mean it.
Meet the way my brain works:

All jumbled and disorderly. Not really a rhyme or reason to any thought process. When I see something or meet someone, I just seem to look at the whole and reflexively allocate information into two categories: Surface and underlying motivations.
The surface is exactly what it's meant to be. A "show" for whoever is looking. The sublayers are often missed because sometimes that "show" is an awesome sight to witness and it throws you off track because it's very attention grabbing.
Except for the way my brain picks up on it... I seem to flip to the second level first; that one that's the driving force for the "show" on top and the very thing that spurs the show into its grand performance. You can gain a lot of insight about the reason people do things if you look at them in a sort of backwards way. I know it's not normal and I don't know why I work that way.
The same thing happens for me with popular culture; songs, books, movies...
For instance, let’s take the current Batman movie. I knew I’d see it eventually, so I skipped all the reviews and commentary written all over the net. I avoided conversations about it, but even trying to stay away from spoilers I still heard little chunks about it.
We went to see it last night and after we got home, I opened up a bunch (about 20-25) reviews and threads on forums discussing it. They all have a theme that’s similar;
Good vs evil… cool gadgets…HeathLedgerHeathLedgerHeathLedger.
The movie I saw was completely different. It was all about the complexity of human nature. The duality within all of us; good and evil co-existing…it wasn’t a struggle between the two for society as a whole, it was a struggle between the two for the individual. The line from the Joker “I won’t kill you, you complete me” got a chuckle from most of the theater, but I really didn’t find it funny. To me it was more like the answer to his makeup…he couldn’t be who he was without the Batman. It wasn’t really a movie about good vs evil, but more one of a co-existing of both, like I said. One needs the other to be able to define itself. In the end, we’re all Bruce Wayne… sometimes making the wrong choice for the right reason… having to harbor our insecurities and pull inside our private place with them…and being forced to run only because we must be chased, and for no other reason – so says society.
In the end, we’re all the Joker…letting something in our past drive us a little bit nutty and turning our insecurities into odd strong points…forcing the hand of those around us who we deem “more good” than ourselves to get a glimpse of how we’re measured by the standards of others…and that can really make you do crazy things when you don’t see the answer you want.
Anyway, like I said; I think I saw a different movie and probably really didn’t *get it* the way everyone else did, but that’s the movie I saw.

Charro! (1969)

The only movie that Elvis Presley didn’t sing in. He sang the theme, but that’s it. Probably why I liked it more than any of the others. He really showed that he had real acting potential.
Plot Summary:
Jess Wade is innocently accused of having stolen a cannon from the Mexican revolutionary forces. Trying to go straight, he tries to find the real culprits, a gang of criminals.
Give it a chance...

Dan In Real Life

Last night, the spousal unit and I took MiniMe and one of her friends to go see this movie. I intentionally did not read reviews because I knew I’d eventually see it and I wanted to go into viewing it open-minded.
First of all, the movie was clearly written so that you’d feel things from Dan’s perspective. I get that. It was hard to keep that focal point for me though, because I was sort of a character in that movie. I mostly was putting my emotions into a different channel because I am the “Anne Marie” that was Juliette Binoche’s character. I truly was “brought home” and introduced to my (then) boyfriend’s family, and spent tons of time with them reaching for a connection I’d lost for a time with my own. I was a thousand miles from my own family and friends. Although I really liked the guy, I didn’t love him. I did fall for a family member of his who really clicked with me on so many levels. Same sort of background, same tastes in movies and music, great sense of humor, attractive to me physically and mentally… he was the real deal cowboy from his Texas twang right down to his dusty boots. The more time I spent around him, the more clear it became to me that I had to sever my ties elsewhere.

I read the reviews for this movie after we got home and I don’t understand why it received so many unfavorable ones that mentioned the “cheesy” way the family interacted. It was called “unrealistic” and “out of touch”. It was written that there aren’t “real families that act that way”.
Well, yes there are. My side of the family (extended) has always done things extremely similar to the events in this movie. We perform skits to entertain each other, make up silly songs, share inside jokes, play games together, pick on each other playfully, yet we’re there for each other whole-heartedly if they need us to be. It may be cheesy and unrealistic, but it’s a fact that some people do have it. I do.
The greatest part about having that is that no matter what happens with whom, your family loves you and accepts you.
JL’s family is not like that. When I ended my relationship with the boyfriend, and let it be known that JL was the object of my affection, it destroyed his family ties. I wasn’t accepted by them at all. Ever again. To this day. And neither is he.
It’s a good thing I do have a cheesy unrealistic family that loves me so much because they love him, too. That’s what family does.
The thing in the movie “Dan in Real Life” that resonates loudest with me is the line; “I’ll forgive you your past, if you forgive me mine.” Sometimes you just need it. Sometimes you just need to give it. When that happens, it’s really good.