By now you have no doubt heard that according to astronomers and anthropologists, December 21, 2012 correlates to the “end” of the Mayan calendar. And, despite having repeatedly heard about this for many, many years now, it is also very probable that you still have no idea exactly what this means. The reason is because it’s very complicated. To even begin to understand it you need to look to the Mayan myths of the Sacred Tree and understand their incredibly complex Long Count calendar of tuns, k’atuns, and b’aktuns as well as their concepts of the Great Cycle, the Great Great Cycle, and cycles within cycles. You’d also need to understand astronomical occurrences involving the precession of the equinoxes and the conjunction of the sun at the intersection of the plane of the ecliptic and the Milky Way. You can do all that, or, you can simply read my interpretation of this summer’s Green Lantern movie, which shares the same message as the Mayan mythology. [Read more →]

Tags: movies, religion & philosophy by Marc Oromaner
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Recent demonstrations by the disaffecteds occupying Wall Street and calling themselves the 99%, coming as they have on the proverbial heels of another populist revolt, the TEA Party, suggest that one thing is clear: people on the left and the right have had it with the status quo in Washington D.C…

…or have they?

Not likely…and I blame The Lion King. [Read more →]

Tags: art & entertainment, movies, politics & government by Jay Baldwin
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Tags: movies, politics & government by Alexander Thorburn Hoffman
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Shark Night, 3D came out a few months ago, you know. I saw in a preview commercial — just one time. Didn’t go out to see it. What I gathered is this: it is a movie about a night with lots and lots of sharks who come at you in 3D. Oh, and there are girls in bikinis — who, I imagine, come at you in 3D as well, but that is neither here nor there. 

It might have been a great movie (though I doubt it).  [Read more →]

Tags: artistic unknowns by Chris Matarazzo, movies by Chris Matarazzo
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You know what I am sick of? George Lucas bashing. That’s what I am sick of. That said, I don’t think George Lucas is the Jesus of movie makers. I like Star Wars well enough. I really like Indiana Jones. The guy is great, but I’m not going to declare him the Shakespeare of Hollywood. He makes good, entertaining films with enough depth that they hold up for numerous viewings. What more can you ask?

But can we admit something, please? The original Star Wars trilogy is not the apex of film-making. Are those films the equals of Citizen Kane or Lawrence of Arabia or, heck — Schindler’s List? No. Of course they are not. [Read more →]

Tags: artistic unknowns by Chris Matarazzo, movies by Chris Matarazzo
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It seems to me, doesn’t it to you, that a lot of the public squabbles we incessantly hear of do not arise from mere differences of opinion but from a seemingly primal urge we humans have to tell other people what to do. It’s not enough to be secure in our own certainty. It’s not enough for us to tell other people how right we are and how wrong they are. It’s not even enough for us to simply tell others what to do. We have to tell them what to do and, if they don’t comply, try to force them to do what we say through state action or the courts. It’s a sickness, a human design flaw, I think. I’m not immune. Frankly, I’m writing this to tell people to stop telling other people what to do, which kind of defeats my purpose. But wouldn’t the world be a more peaceful place if we adopted a more ‘live and let live’ attitude; if we curtailed our pursuit of power over others through government fiat; if we were just more accepting of differences in lifestyles, values, and beliefs?  [Read more →]

Tags: movies, politics & government, religion & philosophy by Jay Baldwin
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Last Thursday night, I was one of the first in line to watch the final installment of the new Harry Pooter movie, “Harry Pooter and the Deadly Gallows Part 4,” and I was so excited, as you probably guessed already. I had on all of my wizard gear, such as my magic wand, and the muggle, and my quiddick things. Also, I had on a cloak, and my Pooster glasses. I loved this last and final Harry Pooper movie before the reboot, because it is just exactly the movie that fans of this long-running, unique fantasy series deserve. It had all the wonderment of the other films of the series, although I was surprised by the part when Harry Pookie died, but I especially loved the part where Harry pooped in Hermiony’s mouth. Even though I think that they stole my idea for a movie where people poop in each others’ mouths when they have romantic relations, I still loved it because that is how real wizards would be romantic with each other, and also share their magical secrets, by trading the magic that comes out of their butts (“potters”), and putting it directly in the mouth of the other wizard (“consumption”).

But what really made me excited was that the new “Dark Knight Arises” teaser trailer was released at the same time as the new Harry Pooted movie. This created quite a dilemma for me, as a fan of both this unique movie series about a school for magic and a “chosen one” who has to do a lot of magical stuff and avenge the deaths of his family by a fearsome villain who seems to be unstoppable, and a fan of the other, Batman movie series about a superhero whose parents are killed so he goes out to avenge their deaths by doing a bunch of stuff and he learns how to be a hero because he’s a designated heroic person who has to save everybody. [Read more →]

Tags: art & entertainment, movies by Ricky Sprague
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10. A love child from the future came back and tried to terminate the pregnancy

9. When the doctor delivered him, he slapped the doctor back

8. In the neonatal unit, he kept hitting on all the female babies

7. His mom had to buy baby food by the case

6. He always babbled in a thick Austrian accent

5. His mother always referred to her son as “my little ‘hasta la vista’ baby”

4. At three months, he was bench-pressing his crib

3. If you tried taking candy from this baby, you’d come back with a bloody stump

2. In his first-grade play, he couldn’t act to save himself

1. He was just offered a position as the new head of the International Monetary Fund

Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.

Tags: Bob Sullivan's top ten everything, movies by Bob Sullivan
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Last month, a writer at Moviefone unleashed upon the internet a definitive list of the top 25 comic book movies. The piece candidly acknowledges the difficulties in undertaking such a task:

The trouble with making a Top 25 list is how you judge the entries. Do you do it by box office receipts? Or critical consensus? What about the quality of the script, or how well a movie has aged? We took all of these factors into account while making our list, with one more criteria [sic]: how significant is the movie? Where does it stand in the history of comic book movies? These twenty-five entries are the 25 most significant comic movies, with a few entries you’ll recognize and a few that you should seek out immediately.

Box office receipts, which I assume here is intended to mean the number of tickets sold, is something that can be quantified. Calling his list the “top 25″ rather than the “25 best” suggests that he should probably just have gone by the amount of money each film has earned. Of course then you get into the problems of rising ticket prices, DVD and blu-ray sales, rentals, the amount of money the films earn on pay-per-view, pay cable, basic cable, networks, and syndication. That’s pretty complicated, and movie studios are notoriously creative in their accounting practices. [Read more →]

Tags: books & writing, movies by Ricky Sprague
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If you’re thinking of going to the time, trouble, and expense of attending the new “Green Lantern” film, you should probably read the comic below, in preparation. Not to be melodramatic, but if you don’t, you won’t know what’s really going on:

[Read more →]

Tags: books & writing, movies by Ricky Sprague
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