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It can be difficult to discern what excites Kathy Thorson more: helping people or promoting her community. The longtime business banker and newly-named community banking president of MetaBank, Sioux Falls, is adept at both.
Thorson has been with MetaBank since 2001. The bank, called First Federal Savings & Loan Association, based in Storm Lake, Iowa, at the time, recently had moved into Sioux Falls. The bank had a strong mortgage portfolio and roots in ag, but Thorson's forte was commercial lending. She'd come from Marquette just as it was being sold to Wells Fargo. Timing was everything. "There were lots of opportunities," she said. "We were making lending decisions around the table in the president's office and Sioux Falls was growing. It was fun growing the bank."
Her focus was on doing business with good people and strong businesses, developers who had "good projects," she said. "We have always been competitive on rates and terms, so we could do that."
Tyler Haahr, the bank's chairman and CEO, told Thorson he preferred stronger credits over numerous credits. He said he slept better at night with that approach. Throughout her tenure, she remembered only one credit that knocked them down a few notches, back in 2005. "That one taught us discipline and how to structure loans," she said.
Since being dubbed America's Boom Town, Sioux Falls has had years of low unemployment and annual inflows of people numbering in the thousands. Last year, new residents to Sioux Falls topped 4,000 and the U.S. Census bureau predicts another 3,200 people will move into town each year for the next 10 years. Lots of millennials, Thorson said. It appears so many young people who couldn't wait to get out of South Dakota now are more than willing to move back.
Thorson gets it. She grew up 20 miles from Sioux Falls and escaped to Dallas after college. "I couldn't wait to leave. But once I was gone, I couldn't wait to come back," she said. Sioux Falls, with its growth, its job opportunities and its youth, offers a "close-enough" homecoming for most — not a return all the way back to Milbank or Corsica or Chamberlain, not a return to homestead lands, yet back to the home state and a large community that has small-town sensibilities blended with the modestly urbane. "You need to come visit," she said.
All that growth has been a boon to what is now a $5.2 billion bank. Growth has also driven innovation. The name MetaBank was adopted in 2004 — the year the bank turned 50. That same year, the bank bootstrapped Meta Payments Systems, its prepaid card division. Meta Payments gives the bank low-cost, long-duration deposits, which Thorson points to as its competitive advantage in lending. Flush with the deposits, MetaBank was the first institution in Sioux Falls to offer 10-year fixed rate financing on commercial real estate.
Meta also offers a tax refund product, insurance premium lending and now gets a national platform for asset-based lending and leasing through its recently closed acquisition of Troy, Mich.-based Crestmark.
The need to manage all of this growth is why Thorson, who had already been market president of the Sioux Falls banking operation, was given the added responsibilities of overseeing the Des Moines, Storm Lake, Iowa, and Brookings, S.D., banking businesses. Haahr had been head of all of Meta's banking operations but the integration of Crestmark, with its $1.2 billion in assets, $900 million in loans and 300 employees fills his plate aplenty.
"I love being the Sioux Empire market president," Thorson said. "Hopefully I bring something to the table for those other market presidents."
Unconcerned that new responsibilities could overwhelm existing ones, Thorson said she will soon visit the other markets and talk with her fellow market presidents about their challenges. "I have done what they're doing; I am doing what they are doing."
Despite the evolution of MetaBank, now publicly traded and soon to be $6.6 billion, Thorson considers herself a community banker. She gets jazzed by meeting people, working with people, helping people. She volunteers with the Sioux Council Boy Scouts and serves on the boards for the Volunteers of America Foundation, the Sioux Falls Chamber and the Sioux Falls Development Corporation.
But she's more than community minded; she's vivacious and tenacious. "Some of my best customers have taken years to get to MetaBank," Thorson said. She tells her lenders: "You don't give up. You put their name down and reach out to them every three to six months, whatever that looks like, whether it's an email, a text, a thank you note or whatever." And when that customer calls, Thorson said, "you give them the best service possible. It doesn't matter when the call comes."


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The United States of America is a beacon of hope, in spite of where are current leadership appears to be taking us. Hence, the number of people that still long to make America their home. Our nation was designed like that... to be a vessel of respite for some but a more permanent answer to the dilemmas in their nations, for others. Because evil and deception has been in our past does not mean that its written on our future. Because we've failed before doesn't mean we make our abode in that failure.
Hope is not based upon what was.... hope is based upon what we foresee that things will be. I won't lose hope and we, as a nation, cannot lose hope. I still believe in the vision of so many who have gone before us. Abraham Lincoln and John Kennedy to be sure, were tools that God used to plant a seed of ever increasing hope. No seed manifests overnight. So, our eyes have to be set steadfast upon that vision, moving steady forward together as a nation... One nation, under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all.

subset: commoncrawl


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Dietitians are key in helping Canadians Unlock the Potential of Food this Nutrition Month.
This year, we showed Canadians how dietitians support them to unlock the potential of food. The campaign included reliable, evidence-based information, advice, delicious recipes as well as information about the many places dietitians work.
Member resources help make your activities and support of the campaign easier.
Here are the Nutrition Month resources:
Read about the Nutrition Month 2019 sponsors.
Read about the history of the campaign and Dietitians Day.
To use the Nutrition Month logo, read these guidelines.
To take part in the campaign, contact email@example.com.
The 2019 Official Nutrition Month Communications Ambassadors were the Canadian Nutrition Society, Diabetes Canada, the Nutrition Resource Centre, Obesity Canada, and Osteoporosis Canada. Communication Ambassadors are non-profit organizations that support the Nutrition Month campaign by sharing tools, resources and messages with their communities.
Nutrition Month was brought to you by Dietitians of Canada and thousands of dietitians across the country, in collaboration with the campaign sponsors. The official campaign sponsors for 2019 were Avocados from Mexico and Dairy Farmers of Canada. The supporting sponsor was Canola Eat Well.The factsheet sponsor was Loblaws Inc.
Updated April 1, 2019.


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Download And Install Windows 10 Technical Preview, Here's How To [Guide]
Officially, the Windows 10 TP (Technical Preview) has just arrived, and for those who are willing to try it on their Windows PC – you can now make it yourself be just following our precious step-by-step tutorial. It's an usual system of distributing pre-release software and one's available to everyone right off the bat. Actually, there's a Developer Preview followed by Consumer Preview and where the general users getting in on the act right after the initial announcement is basically unheard of.
With the courtesy of Windows Insider Program, anyone meeting the basic system requirements is permitted to test the Windows 10 Technical Preview on their PC. Windows 10 ultimately be Microsoft's single platform for developing apps across all devices, from Smartphones and tablets as well. And to make things nice and easy, we've got a short, concise tutorial on how to get started.
Basically, the Technical Preview is nothing but a smooth, refined end-user release and notably, there are technically still got bugs and issues in almost every corner. Codenamed as Windows Threshold, Windows 10 will come with customizable live tiles in the new Start menu, which will look familiar to Windows 7.
Features provide new options for re-sizing windows, multiple desktops, and a convitient "task view" to switch between them. The resizable tiles will let users a quick view of notifications from desired applications, such as details regarding new emails, Facebook Messages, weather forecast updates and et al.
Windows 10 is still in its early stages of development and is expected to ship in mid 2015. While the Technical Preview webpage on Microsoft's site, there will be lots of updates and changes over the next 6-8 months, and you don't to be a PC expert to download and install Windows 10 at its current duration. You'll only need to be component and familiar with ISO files, formating, backing up data, and trouble shooting.
Caution: According to the Microsoft, anybody looking to use the Windows 10 Technical Preview should not install it on a daily runner. You're also advised to retain from installing the TP, and if you don't have a spare machine around, then simply skip the installation and wait for the final release next year.
Windows 10 System Requirements:
Compatible machine needs with at least 1GHz processor, 1GB RAM (x86) 32-bit or 2 gigs on a 64-bit PC, and not less than 16GB of storage space. First and foremost, need a DirectX 9 or above graphics device, and Internet connection and a Microsoft account. Essentially, if you're running Windows 8.1, then you can easily update to Windows Technical Preview throuigh Software Updates.
How To Download and Install Windows 10:
Once checked and backed up all the formalities, now get started with.
Step 1: Head over to insider.windows.com and click on 'Join now' to sign up.
Step 2: Once signed up, you'll now need to click on the link to the ISO specific to your setup.
Step 3: Downloaded the ISO file, now, transfer it to a USB flash drive. Alternative way, you can also burn the ISO to a DVD using ISO burner and using any burning program. Best part here is burn Windows 10 via USB! You'll need a app like Microsoft's Windows USB/DVD Download Tool to burn the ISO file to an USB drive.
Step 4: With your USB thumb drive connected or your DVD now in the drive and loaded, boot up your PC from this installation media, and just follow the on-screen instructions to install it fairly.
You will now be running Windows 10 Technical Preview, and able to drive straight into some of the new features that Microsoft showcased just yesterday. Give the new OS a try and share your early impressions below.
Download Windows 10 Technical Preview [Official Download Links]


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The New Mix
It was time to update my blog. Giving it some face lift. Over the last couple of weeks I have been exploring other provider and looking around if it would be easy to port my blog.
Unfortunately it wasn't as straight forward as I thought.
My blog is now seven and a half years old with more than 1500 entries. It had been running on the Version 5 of Squarespace since day one. The current Squarespace version is version 7. I was given a special discount for a version 6 account after doing some beta testing for the company. And all version 6s were automatically upgraded to version 7. Version 5 however ran on a completely different architecture. Upgrading would take a lot of effort, not to mention having to reformat all my extensions and links. It was just an impossible task.
So, I explored format.com among others and felt that they had potential, and that was before I decided to have another look at my discounted account.
After fiddling with them for a while, I decided to run it as a parallel blog, concentrating on photography. And fotobyharis.com was conceived. To be honest I was rather surprised at what the new Squarespace features were capable of. The blog look mighty impressive compared to the basic tools of 2009. Editing was slightly complicated, but once mastered, it was much more logical than I thought.
For the time being, all the photoblog contents were the ones already uploaded to the main blog. But should there have any photography slant to them - which would be the majority - they get ported across to the photoblog, with higher resolution photos, as well as a more expansive layout.
The site still needed some tweaking, and I had been taking lessons from Lynda.com to sharpen up my skills. Hopefully with more practice, I could make the design look a lot better …..


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Experience is a unique thing. As Alejandro Sabella gave his team talk to his Argentina side in the World Cup final of 2014, you wonder if he drew on the Yorkshire grit that can only be acquired from playing in the second tier of English football during the late 1970s.
Sabella began his career at his hometown club, River Plate, and was part of a successful youth set up that produced other excellent players such as Néstor Gorosito, Pedro Troglio, and Norberto "Beto" Alonso. Despite his quality, Sabella struggled to stake a claim for the club's number 10 jersey during the Alonso era of the mid-1970s. In 1975, River won their first title in 18 years, and Alonso was crowned as the new king of Los Millonarios. Olympique de Marseille whisked him away to the South of France, and Sabella, long seen as the man who would be king, finally had his chance to prove that he could be River's creative lynchpin.
...Only it didn't quite work out like that. South American fans are notoriously fickle when it comes to new kids on the block with big reputations, and after an excellent season in 1977 which saw River win the league title, the team struggled, and the fans turned on him. Pace was never Sabella's greatest attribute, and he was dubbed 'pachorra', meaning 'sloth'. Under-pressure coach Ángel Labruna quickly brought Alonso back home to Buenos Aires after his brief spell with Marseille, and Sabella was sidelined again, being made available for transfer.
Sheffield United boss Harry Haslam was in Argentina hoping to secure the transfer of a 17-year old prodigy by the name of Diego Maradona. Living up to the thrifty reputation of Yorkshiremen, the Sheffield United board refused to pay the extra £40,000 needed to sanction the transfer, which would have been secured for £200,000. Haslam, determined not to return to the Steel City empty handed, came back with Sabella. Even the bemused security at Buenos Aires airport were reluctant to let him go.
"We get to the airport and the man who's looking at the passports doesn't want to let us out because we've got Sabella with us," said Haslam to a waiting press pack at Bramall Lane. The fee was £160,000, but the question remained- how on earth did Haslam persuade one of the top prospects in South American football to come to play Second Division football in South Yorkshire? Jaws dropped at training when Sabella would perform dazzling ball tricks. It was like a Martian had landed.
As part of the deal to bring Sabella to Sheffield, a friendly was organised which saw River Plate head to Bramall Lane just weeks after Argentina triumphed in the 1978 World Cup final against Holland. Sabella faced off against Alonso that day, as well as other World Cup winners Daniel Passarella and Ubaldo Fillol. The game ended 2-1 to River Plate, and gave the Blades fans a tantalising first-hand glimpse of world-class football.
Team-mate Tony Kenworthy told the Sheffield Star in 2014 that Sabella was a model professional, and integrated himself well into life in South Yorkshire. "The players took to Alex straight away. He was humorous, intelligent, and quickly picked up the banter. But mainly he focused on his football. As a neighbour, he would knock on my door and I'd go with him to the supermarket, stuff like that. We'd spend evenings together watching football videos. He was very serious about the game."
The gulf in quality between Sabella and his teammates and opposition was evident, however, and one United fan bluntly stated that he was like "a thoroughbred playing amongst donkeys". In today's era, he would have been snapped up by one of the top English sides, but back then, the larger British teams were not sending scouts to deepest, darkest Buenos Aires. Their loss was Sheffield United's gain, and Sabella played 76 times for the Blades, chipping in with a useful eight league goals. He is still remembered fondly by their fans as an able technician in an age of rough and tough cloggers.
Sabella would leave to play First Division football with Leeds United in 1980, with Sheffield United more than doubling their outlay on him, with the fee believed to be £400,000. Unlike his last transfer, he didn't have to travel far – just an hour up the M1 – and the merchandising geniuses at the club came up with 'Samba with Sabella' t-shirts to be sold in the club shop, perhaps hoping that nobody would notice that he wasn't actually Brazilian.
Of course, he wasn't the only Argentinian playing in English football, and when Tottenham Hotspur came to Elland Road play out a 0-0 draw, they brought with them Ossie Ardiles and Ricky Villa. The game was billed in the press as 'The Battle of River Plate', as Sabella lined up against his compatriots.
Despite the optimism after Sabella's move, however, Leeds won just one of their first 11 games, and manager Jimmy Adamson was promptly shown the door. Allan Clarke, a former legendary striker at the club, replaced him, and looked to shore up a leaky defence with a heavily defensive line-up. It was still very much the post-Don Revie era, and a silky ball player like Sabella was deemed a luxury they could ill-afford as the club battled to stay in the First Division.
He mustered up just 23 appearances for the Whites before he returned to Argentina with a move to Estudiantes. It's fair to say fans of Sheffield United have fonder memories of Sabella than Leeds supporters, and his career at Elland Road can probably best be described as 'wrong place at the wrong time'.
The Buenos Aires boy would go on to become Daniel Passarella's assistant at River Plate, and after a successful spell managing Estudiantes, where he won the league title and the Copa Libertadores, Sabella took the national team job in 2011.
Of course, three years later in that World Cup final, Mario Götze broke Argentine hearts with his goal in extra time; Sabella would stand down from his position as national team manager in the days that followed and hasn't managed since. But as with any long and storied career, it's often the road less travelled that creates the character that makes a manager.
We'll probably never know if Lionel Messi could do it on a wet Wednesday in Stoke, but his international manager in 2014 came close, playing for the Blades on a Saturday afternoon in October 1978 at Stoke's old Victoria Ground.
By IBWM Editor Thomas Barrett.
Header image: footysphere


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Hello! We're still wondering whether we already know everybody participating, but we'll see...
Paris and Jon are the co-founders the Secret Lab, a local game development studio that has been developing games (and apps, but mostly games) and running training for clients (e.g. ABC, CSIRO, Apple, Google, people from Pixar, and many many others) around the world since 2008.
We're working on several games –– including Button Squid, a puzzle game, Rocket Box, a economic space adventure, and Gnome's Well That Ends Well, for mobile devices.
We're trying to spend more time building our own games, and figure this is a great opportunity to do that...! Most of what we've built doesn't come out under our own name, and we'd like to address that.
We also write a lot of books for O'Reilly Media, and spend too much time speaking at conferences. We love to play board games (we have hundreds of them in our office), and drink whisky.
You can find us on Twitter at @thesecretlab, and also on Tumblr


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Photography became a hobby for me in 2016, when I spent a summer exploring my local area through nature photography. I mostly shot black and white until I met a woman on a bus who had a form of visual dyslexia that made it difficult for her to see complete blacks and complete whites. However, she had a wider colour gamut than the average human eye, so she could see more colours than you.
This amazed me so much that I started re-editing some images I took over the summer just to experiment with colour. Learning this kind of post-processing was fascinating and it was a critical part of my style when I moved to Reading to study graphic communication.
The following year, after getting my first DSLR and seeing the work of Liam Wong, I began to explore the town at night, shooting its alleyways, landscapes and music venues. Later that year, I moved to London to study film production and turn the capital into my neon playground.
Featured By
Vizual Noctem: Three Photos, Three Stories
Email me with any enquiries using the form below.
Thank you!


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Ukraine Celebrates 100th Anniversary of Marine Corps
Marines have grown stronger since Russia's intervention - Poroshenko
May 23 marks one hundred years since Hetman Pavlo Skorpadsky formed the Naval Infantry in order to guard the coastline of the newly-formed Ukrainian State.
The force was reborn in 1993 after Ukraine gaining its independence in 1991.
Ukraine's president Petro Poroshenko has said the marine corps has become stronger since the start of Russia's intervention in eastern Ukraine. He praised their efforts.
"Looking at you, dear marines, the whole country sees fighters – decisive and courageous, patriotic and cohesive, with a strong will and indestructible spirit, self-confident and victorious. Trained to carry out the most difficult, important tasks, both at sea and on land, in conditions of incredible physical and psychological stress. You are always there where the situation is the hardest, where you need courage and tenacity, speed and decisive, unbridled pressure," Poroshenko said.
The military has posted a video (see above) marking the occasion.


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Saturday, July 30, 2016
Jason Bourne Review
Yeah, there is a fourth movie in this series. But like everyone else, I'm going to mainly choose to ignore it. Why? Well, first off it's not really a Jason Bourne movie. It's an Aaron Cross movie. Paul Greengrass, director of Supremacy and Ultimatum, chose not to return as director and when that happened, Matt Damon chose not to return either. So we had a Jason Bourne movie without Jason Bourne. Jeremy Renner was cast as a Jason-Bourne-esque character named Aaron Cross and while he did a great job as the character, the movie spent the whole run time trying to justify why they were making a Jason Bourne movie without Jason Bourne instead of coming up with a good story. When you have a Jason Bourne movie with a poor story, that's a problem. The second half of the movie ended up being a ton of fun in terms of the action, but a decent action movie is all it was. It wasn't even a good thriller or a good character piece. I didn't hate the movie as much as some. I even gave it a decent review on this blog back when I was still fairly new to this movie reviewing thing. But I haven't seen it since theaters and I don't really have a strong desire to either because it's a very forgettable movie. All that really matters is our Matt Damon Bourne movies.
With those thoughts out of the way, it's time to get back to our real Jason Bourne movies. I was super excited when Paul Greengrass and Matt Damon decided to return for this fourth true Jason Bourne movie and thus this was one of my most anticipated movies of the year. The title announcement during that Super Bowl spot surprised me, though. They broke the trend of titling it "The Bourne _________" and just titled it Jason Bourne. They could've stolen another title from the book series. That's what The Bourne Legacy did. That fourth book and fourth movie literally have nothing in common outside that title. The fifth book is titled The Bourne Betrayal. That would've been a cool title. We also have a total of 13 books now (the last ten written by Eric Van Lustbader with the first three written by the late Robert Ludlum). We could've stolen a title from any of them. But no. Just Jason Bourne. Not bad, I suppose, since the books and the movies never really had a whole lot in common anyways. But I was stoked nonetheless. When I saw the score on Rotten Tomatoes for the first time, my heart literally sank. It's currently at 57 percent. That's only one percent higher than the 56 percent of The Bourne Legacy. I hate it when one of my most anticipated movies gets trashed by critics. Was this really going to be that bad?
I will say that Legacy spent the whole movie trying to justify the fact that they were making another Bourne movie without even having Bourne in it. They spent so much time doing that that they forgot to tell an interesting story. No justification here for Jason Bourne. They simply pick up a certain period of time after Ultimatum left off and continue the story almost as if they never missed a beat. Unlike Legacy, this feels like a Jason Bourne movie! We follow the same formula that made the first three movies a success and thus I sat back and had a great time. I don't know if the trilogy is old enough for me to feel nostalgic while watching this new movie, but those are the feelings I had. It was good to see the crew back together. It was great having Matt Damon back as Jason Bourne. And it looked like everyone was having fun making this movie. It didn't feel like a cash grab for the studio and Matt Damon didn't look like he was there for a paycheck. If you listen to interviews with Matt Damon, the guy loves playing Jason Bourne. He loves having the title of being Jason Bourne follow him around for his whole career. Some actors aren't a fan of that. Matt Damon is fine with it. He loves Jason Bourne and you could tell that from this performance. It felt like he was enjoying being back in this role and thus it was fun to watch him.
If I go back to the reasons why the Bourne movies are so great, we have three things. Great action movies. Great thrillers. Great character pieces. Once again, I'm not diving into super detailed specifics here, but I want to analyze Jason Bourne against those three aspects in order to fairly determine how it holds up to those movies. Legacy wasn't good because it only got the action right. It missed the other two aspects. Jason Bourne manages to successfully hit all three, but the issue is that it didn't hit quite as high in either category as I was hoping. Let's start with the action. One staple of the Bourne movies is the brilliant use of shaky cam. There's a lot of people that will say that this stylistic choice is inherently bad. I disagree. Is it overused sometimes? Perhaps. Is it always necessary? No. But it's not inherently bad and this franchise is a great example of that. Paul Greengrass does a great job of implementing the shaky and making it improve his movies. In my opinion, the shaky cam enhances the action sequences and makes the movie more intense. However, if you are one that got sick or dizzy watching the Bourne movies, I totally understand if you don't like it. If you were hoping that this one would be different, sorry. It's the same as the others, so proceed with caution. That aside, the actual action here was phenomenal... when it happened. Great opening sequence. Great closing sequence. A few fun fights in between. But we did go a long time without any action.
Finally, the characters. The Bourne movies always have great characters on both sides. Jason Bourne is trying to figure out who he is and why people are trying to kill him while the people on the other side have pretty dang good motivations for trying to stop him. In Jason Bourne, I loved all of our characters. But I didn't completely understand the motivations behind everything. Motivations were clear in the original trilogy. Here they weren't and thus with this specific element of the movie it felt more hollow and unbelievable than it should've. It wasn't bad. It just wasn't as compelling. But the actors did a great job with it anyways. As I said earlier, Matt Damon looked like he was having a blast playing this character again. Then we had Tommy Lee Jones and Alicia Vikander. Tommy Lee Jones played your typical old guy in a Bourne movie role. We have a lot of old crazy people in this franchise and Tommy Lee Jones just might be the best one. And Alicia Vikander just might be the most interesting part of this movie. I won't say why, but this girl is special. Ever since she made my jaw drop in Ex Machina last year, she has been on fire. She was great in The Danish Girl. She was great in The Man from U.N.C.L.E. She was great in this. She's definitely an actress who is going places.
The discussion of expectations are an interesting one. With Nerve this week, I absolutely loved myself. But I went in with really low expectations and that's probably a good part of the reason why I enjoyed myself so much. With Jason Bourne, I was slightly let down, but that's because Paul Greengrass and Matt Damon have proven in the past that they can team up and make a nearly perfect action thriller and thus when they don't hit that level again, it can be seen as disappointing. That's why I honestly think this movie has such a low score on Rotten Tomatoes. Expectations were so high that it's easy to trash the movie because it didn't live up to those lofty expectations. But yet this movie doesn't deserve to be trashed. No, it's not a great movie. But it's still a good movie. There's not as much action as I wanted, but the action that's there is still pretty dang good. Our thrill ride was disconnected frequently by another plot line that didn't belong, but it was still a good thriller. Our character motivations weren't as clear or interesting, but we still had great characters. Overall, I still really enjoyed myself with this movie, even if it wasn't as good as it could've been, and I hope another sequel is on it's way with this team. I'm going to give Jason Bourne an 8/10.
Thursday, July 28, 2016
Nerve Review
Due to the fact that this is not a big summer blockbuster and hasn't been heavily advertised, there's a chance that you have never heard of this movie. Allow me to explain. In this fictional, modern-day setting there is a game called Nerve. As the game itself describes, it's like truth or dare without the truth. It's mainly done on the phone and is about as popular as Pokemon Go is in real life. Everyone plays it. The options in the game are to be a player or be a watcher. As a player, you are fighting not only for honor and glory, but also for money. The riskier the dare, the more money you earn. But in order to keep that money, you have to keep playing and keep doing more dares. If you bail, you're out. At the end of a certain period of time, the two highest scoring players will go head to head in one final dare. The dares themselves are determined by the watchers and the creators of the game are an anonymous group that have kept this game a secret from authorities, so another rule is that you are not allowed to tell the police about this game. So yeah, this is super sketchy and I don't know why anyone would really play this if it were a real thing. But at the same time, I know people would play. And even more people would watch. And it would cause a ton of problems.
If you find this premise intriguing, I recommend you just go see it. Please don't watch the trailer for this movie if you haven't already seen it. Or watch like the first 30 seconds or so and then turn it off. After I first saw this trailer in theaters, I honestly felt like I had watched the whole movie and I found that frustrating. I remember a day where trailers would tease a movie and make us excited. But instead we live in a day where studios think they need to spoil their whole movie in the trailer in order to get people to go see their movie, especially if it's a smaller movie like this. I hate it because I want to be surprised by a movie and if all the big moments are in the trailer, it ruins my experience in the theater. With this movie, I was hoping that I was wrong and the whole movie wasn't in the trailer, but it is. Like seriously. The whole fracking thing. Our two main characters, played by Emma Roberts and Dave Franco, are both playing this game and end up teaming up because the watchers decide to set them up. And ever single dare they do in the movie is in the trailer. Every. Single. Freaking. One. And I'm not exaggerating. Just by reading my non-spoiler premise, you know that this is sketchy game and that bad things are going to happen. But if you watch the trailer, you know exactly what bad things are going to happen because it's all there. I was furious watching this movie because of that.
If I were to grade this trailer, I would give it a big fat F. A 0/10. Despicable. Disgraceful. I hate it. I hate this trend. But this review is not a review of that trailer. It's a review of the movie. Even though I knew exactly what was going to happen, I tried not to let my thoughts on that trailer determine my opinion of the movie. That wouldn't be fair. Especially because this is actually a really fun movie. First and foremost, all of our actors completely sell this premise. It could've been a really silly, cheesy premise, but it's not. While watching this movie, you totally believe that this is a super popular game that would actually catch on like a Pokemon Go. Because, come on. We've all played some sort of variation of truth or dare in our lives whether it be extreme and crazy or harmless and fun. Because of this, you know that a truth or dare app would be super popular if it existed. Now would it be as popular if it cost money to play, required you to enter all of your personal information, and was controlled by a mysterious, sketchy organization? Probably not. But there's a lot of crazy people in this world that would participate anyways, especially teenagers who don't think about consequences and are instead motivated by incentives of power, recognition, and money.
This caused me to think what this game would be like if it existed as is in real life. It would be insane, especially if the watchers got to choose the dares people did. A lot of the dares would be raunchy and dirty. And if not that, they would be super dangerous and violent. But people would do them anyways because pride, lust, and greed would get in the way of logic and morality. Thus I realized as I watched that this movie is actually pretty tame. It's not a violent movie. It's not a graphic movie. It's not a sexually explicit movie. The worst we got was Emma Roberts and Dave Franco running around a mall in their underwear because their clothes got stolen. But come on. Don't try to tell me that their next dare in real life wouldn't be to take off their underwear and/or make love right there in public. I'm perfectly glad that this WASN'T the case in the movie. They definitely were shooting for a PG-13 rating and a light PG-13 rating at that in order to attract a teenage crowd. We didn't need to be graphic and explicit with our movie. But I'm just saying that a suspense of disbelief is required here, especially when some of the later dares get a bit cartoonish and silly. And the execution by our characters was a little too easy. No way someone would survive some of those dares.
That said, despite this being a very tame movie where a lot of the dares towards the end got a bit silly, the movie actually did a great job of building tension and making the movie suspenseful. Part of this is what I said earlier with the cast. They really sell it. Emma Roberts and Dave Franco as our two leads especially do a great job with their characters. Emma Roberts is a very attractive female who is much more than just a pretty face to look at. She's likable and charming. My new celebrity crush? Sure. She's my age and Julia Roberts is her aunt. Both pluses, right? In seriousness, though, I do hope she gets more big roles because she was the best part of this movie. And Dave Franco was cool, too. I enjoyed him in both Now You See Me movies and I enjoyed him in this. The Franco brothers are both now on a role. The acting isn't the only thing that sold this movie, though. This was a well shot, well edited movie that had a great flow to it. Never a dull moment. The cinematography was great and we had an interesting neon color scheme that grabs your attention throughout. On top of this, the score is done very well and the soundtrack works, too. All this makes for some real honest tension and suspense throughout. Never once did I fear for our characters' safety, but I was nervous during most of the dares that were done and that's because of all this combined together.
The movie also provides an interesting social commentary on our society. I mentioned the greed and pride aspect already. How many people in our world are willing to throw values and common sense out the window in order to gain popularity and recognition? Way too many. The other interesting social commentary comes with the group of watchers. This is especially prevalent in the second half of the movie, so I won't dive into specifics, but how many people in this world are much more willing to do and say awful, horrible things when they are hidden in a crowd or are anonymous? Just go look at any YouTube comment section and you'll know what I mean. People on those YouTube comment sections are bitter, mean, brutal, racist, sexist, and have no respect for people's feelings. I've seen people get unfairly mauled and attacked with zero mercy shown for things as silly as a difference of opinions on a movie. Go look at a review for anyone who didn't like Batman v. Superman or go look at the comments to those Ghostbusters trailers. Would people say things like that in real life if they were face to face? No. But hidden behind the comfort of their own computer with an anonymous username and some people are completely different people. It's a shame and it's something this movie addresses in an interesting way.
Overall I enjoyed my experience with this movie. The performances were great. The movie was well made. There was a lot of honest tension throughout as the dares got more and more dangerous. The pacing of the movie was perfect. On top of that, there were several interesting themes that were discussed that are very relevant today, especially among the teenage crowd that the movie is hoping to attract. Where the movie unravels a bit is when I stopped to think about what I watched afterwards. I could've used more twists and turns. I could've used more shocking moments. Some of the specific dares were a bit silly and unrealistic. The resolution to the movie left something to be desired for. But these are all things that started to surface in my mind after the fact. During the movie I had no time to stop and think about things in depth or work out things logically in my head. I was thoroughly enjoying the ride! As I said at the beginning of this review, expectations probably had a lot to do with this. My expectations were very low and thus I found myself pleasantly surprised. In a summer that's been full of a lot of disappointing blockbusters, this is a little thriller that feels refreshingly entertaining and fun, which is what summer movies are supposed to be. I'm giving Nerve an 8/10.
Wednesday, July 27, 2016
Lights Out Review
Lights Out. It's just under three minutes long, but is a super effective little short film. I have it linked for you right there if you haven't seen it. Basically there's a mysterious figure that shows up when the lights get turned off, but disappears when the lights get turned on. When the lady in the short film keeps turning the light on and off, this creepy figure gets closer and closer. This feeds off people's fear of the dark, making it unsettling walking through your house at night when the lights are off. This is why it's so effective. It made its rounds on the internet and social media and got popular enough for it to be adapted into a feature-length film which was just released this past weekend. The advertising has smartly been pushing producer James Wan, who is a horror master, but the cool thing is that this movie is written and directed by David Sandberg, who is the man who wrote and directed the original short. Now he gets to expand his little story from three minutes to 80 minutes. This was a risky venture because some short films are better as short films as opposed to feature-length films. But Lights Out is an example that works well as both. It's a good short film and a good feature-length film.
As with the short film, Lights Out is about a mysterious, demonic woman figure that shows up when the lights are off and disappears when the lights get turned on. But it's also a whole lot more than that. First off, yes this mysterious demon lady is deadly. If you let her get too close without shining a light on her or turning the light on, she will grab you and hurt you. I'm not going to spoil if she actually kills anyone or not, but that's a definite possibility. Demon lady aside, the core of this movie is actually about a family. Yes, it has a plot! And a surprisingly good one with great characters. We have a mom who's a bit crazy, a young boy who lives with his crazy mom, an older sister who is grown up and living on her own, and a boyfriend to that sister. Mom spent a lot of time in a mental hospital when she was younger and is not doing well, so it's not a good situation for young boy. Older sister lives a bit of a sketchy life, but she sees this issue and is trying to get young boy to live with her instead of mother. The sister's boyfriend, who is NOT useless, plays the voice of reason in all this as he's trying to talk a bit of sense into his girl when she does things on a whim without thinking them through. On top of all this is the demon lady showing up and messing with their lives even more.
All these main actors need to be mentioned by name here because they all did a great job. Our most recognizable name is Teresa Palmer as the older sister. She's had a handful of misses recently, so it's good to see her finally catch a break by being in a good movie again. Previously she has been most known for her role in Warm Bodies in 2013 as well as I Am Number Four and The Sorcerer's Apprentice before that. I've liked her in every movie I've seen her in and this movie is no different. She does a good job. Our young boy is played a kid named Gabriel Bateman. He's played a handful of small roles from movies and TV shows I have not seen, most notably being Annabelle. A good child actor can be hard to come by, but this kid holds his own and does a job. The boyfriend in the movie is played by Alexander DiPersia. Most impressive with him is that usually the boyfriend/girlfriend is the throwaway character destined to die and usually it's a very unemotional death used to scare our main character. Not the case here. He has a lot of charm and charisma and, as I said before, is the voice of reason. I appreciated that. Last but not least, the best individual performance of the movie came with our crazy mother played by Maria Bello. She comes nowhere near the performance of the crazy mother in The Babadook, but she does crazy decently well.
Now for the horror aspect of this movie. Story and characters are fantastic and I definitely appreciate that they are given attention in this movie. But if we're a horror movie, the most important part is the horror, right? Unfortunately this is a bit of a mixed bag for me. Mixed in with the great plot and interesting characters is a whole slew of horror cliches. This demon lady is honestly creepy and I'll get more into that in a second, but there are so many jump scares in this movie. I was disappointed that a movie with a concept so intriguing relied so heavily on jump scares. Jump scares in a movie aren't inherently bad. Don't get me wrong. But I appreciate a horror movie where jump scares aren't the focus. My favorite horror movies are the ones that are creepy and unsettling without having a ton of jump scares, but that's not what this movie is. It's jump scare after jump scare after jump scare. It got a bit old. The other thing is that they tried to give this demon lady a backstory, but they did a pretty cruddy job of it. If you're going to explain the villain, make sure its a well-written villain. I won't dive into spoilers, but this is a pretty poorly written villain and that made the second half of the movie a lot less scary. It would've been better if they just left that demon lady a mystery.
No, this isn't the best horror movie of the year. But it's decently effective. I was creeped out by the demon lady and I loved our storyline and characters. It was refreshing to see a horror movie take time to flesh out a story and characters because that doesn't happen super often in horror. Sure, I would've appreciated it if the movie were a psychological horror instead of a supernatural horror. I think they shouldn't have tried to explain this demon lady and I also think they shouldn't have relied so heavily on jump scares. But that's just a personal preference. It's worth noting that I was in a sold-out showing and almost everyone else there was jumping, yelling, screaming, and panicking at every little thing that happened and several rounds of applause broke out when a character did something good. They were all so into the movie that it was actually rather distracting and I found myself laughing at how scared everyone got and kinda wished that I was watching the movie in an empty theater. But at the same time, it showed me that despite my personal opinions, if horror movies make you jump easily, this one just will get under your skin fast. But back to my personal opinion, compared to other horror movies this year, this doesn't shine a candle to The Witch, but it's better than The Conjuring 2 and about on-par with The Shallows. Thus I will give Lights Out an 8/10.
As with the short film, Lights Out is about a mysterious, demonic woman figure that shows up when the lights are off and disappears when the lights get turned on. But it's also a whole lot more than that. First off, yes this mysterious demon lady is deadly. If you let her get too close without shining a light on her or turning the light on, she will grab you and hurt you. I'm not going to spoil if she actually kills anyone or not, but that's a definite possibility. Demon lady aside, the core of this movie is actually about a family. Yes, it has a plot! And a surprisingly good one with great characters. We have a mom who's a bit crazy, a young boy who lives with his crazy mom, an older sister who is grown up and living on her own, and a boyfriend to that sister. Mom spent a lot of time in a mental hospital when she was younger and is not doing well, so it's not a good situation for young boy. Older sister lives a bit of a sketchy life, but she sees this issue and is trying to get young boy to live with her instead of mother. The sister's boyfriend, who is NOT useless, plays the voice of reason in all this as he's trying to talk a bit of sense into his girl when she does things on a whim without thinking them through. On top of all this is the demon lady showing up and messing with their lives even more.
All these main actors need to be mentioned by name here because they all did a great job. Our most recognizable name is Teresa Palmer as the older sister. She's had a handful of misses recently, so it's good to see her finally catch a break by being in a good movie again. Previously she has been most known for her role in Warm Bodies in 2013 as well as I Am Number Four and The Sorcerer's Apprentice before that. I've liked her in every movie I've seen her in and this movie is no different. She does a good job. Our young boy is played a kid named Gabriel Bateman. He's played a handful of small roles from movies and TV shows I have not seen, most notably being Annabelle. A good child actor can be hard to come by, but this kid holds his own and does a job. The boyfriend in the movie is played by Alexander DiPersia. Most impressive with him is that usually the boyfriend/girlfriend is the throwaway character destined to die and usually it's a very unemotional death used to scare our main character. Not the case here. He has a lot of charm and charisma and, as I said before, is the voice of reason. I appreciated that. Last but not least, the best individual performance of the movie came with our crazy mother played by Maria Bello. She comes nowhere near the performance of the crazy mother in The Babadook, but she does crazy decently well.
Now for the horror aspect of this movie. Story and characters are fantastic and I definitely appreciate that they are given attention in this movie. But if we're a horror movie, the most important part is the horror, right? Unfortunately this is a bit of a mixed bag for me. Mixed in with the great plot and interesting characters is a whole slew of horror cliches. This demon lady is honestly creepy and I'll get more into that in a second, but there are so many jump scares in this movie. I was disappointed that a movie with a concept so intriguing relied so heavily on jump scares. Jump scares in a movie aren't inherently bad. Don't get me wrong. But I appreciate a horror movie where jump scares aren't the focus. My favorite horror movies are the ones that are creepy and unsettling without having a ton of jump scares, but that's not what this movie is. It's jump scare after jump scare after jump scare. It got a bit old. The other thing is that they tried to give this demon lady a backstory, but they did a pretty cruddy job of it. If you're going to explain the villain, make sure its a well-written villain. I won't dive into spoilers, but this is a pretty poorly written villain and that made the second half of the movie a lot less scary. It would've been better if they just left that demon lady a mystery.
No, this isn't the best horror movie of the year. But it's decently effective. I was creeped out by the demon lady and I loved our storyline and characters. It was refreshing to see a horror movie take time to flesh out a story and characters because that doesn't happen super often in horror. Sure, I would've appreciated it if the movie were a psychological horror instead of a supernatural horror. I think they shouldn't have tried to explain this demon lady and I also think they shouldn't have relied so heavily on jump scares. But that's just a personal preference. It's worth noting that I was in a sold-out showing and almost everyone else there was jumping, yelling, screaming, and panicking at every little thing that happened and several rounds of applause broke out when a character did something good. They were all so into the movie that it was actually rather distracting and I found myself laughing at how scared everyone got and kinda wished that I was watching the movie in an empty theater. But at the same time, it showed me that despite my personal opinions, if horror movies make you jump easily, this one just will get under your skin fast. But back to my personal opinion, compared to other horror movies this year, this doesn't shine a candle to The Witch, but it's better than The Conjuring 2 and about on-par with The Shallows. Thus I will give Lights Out an 8/10.
Friday, July 22, 2016
Star Trek Beyond Review
First I must explain that Star Trek is a franchise that I grew up loving. Do I consider myself a trekkie? I don't know actually. I don't think I'd meet the minimum requirements to officially dawn that title. But I will say I'm a Star Trek fan. I grew up watching The Next Generation with a little bit of Voyager and Deep Space Nine. Have I ever watched all episodes of those three shows in order? No. But I enjoy them nonetheless. Note that I didn't include The Original Series in that. I didn't grow up watching that one. But before you have a heart attack, know that in my adult years I have dove into The Original Series and gained a very high appreciation for it to the point where if you make me pick my personal favorite Star Trek series, I'm going to go with The Original Series. When it comes to the now 13 movies, well, it's been a bit of a rough ride to say the least. In my humble opinion, the only three great movies are The Wrath of Kahn, The Search for Spock, and First Contact. I also enjoyed The Undiscovered Country and The Voyage Home, although I'd classify those two as good, not great. The Motion Picture, The Final Frontier, Generations, Insurrection, and Nemesis are all either bad or sub-par in my opinion. So no, not every Star Trek movie is created equally.
Then we have our reboot movies. I'll get to Star Trek Beyond here in a bit, but for now I will continue to build anticipation to that and focus on Star Trek and Star Trek Into Darkness for a second. I don't like either of them. Star Trek put us in an alternate dimension, but did so in a weird, convoluted way that in my opinion is more of a cop-out than an interesting story choice. I liked our intro with Chris Hemsworth as George Kirk, but Chris Pine's James T. Kirk is an abomination in that movie. I hate how they made him a spoiled, unlikable brat that joins Starfleet on a dare and becomes captain because his dad was a war hero. On top of that lame story, the villain was dumb and the Spock/Uhura love story was awful. Not a good movie. But Star Trek Into Darkness was a whole heck of a lot worse. Why? So many reasons, but if I'm being brief, it's a cheap, second-rate remake of The Wrath of Kahn, which is the best Star Trek movie. A completely copied story with characters I didn't care about and a watered-down version of Kahn that was much worse than the original Kahn. Cumberbatch did the best with what he was given, but that wasn't a whole lot. The death of Kirk was cheap and frustrating because they completely copied it from The Wrath of Kahn and was made worse by the fact that they didn't have the guts to keep Kirk dead for longer than 10 minutes.
The reviews came in strong as it's currently at 89 percent on Rotten Tomatoes. But that didn't convince me. Those same critics also gave 2009's Star Trek a 95 percent and Star Trek Into Darkness an 87 percent and I just told you what I thought about those movies. I couldn't even trust the YouTube critics that I follow because they're in the same exact boat. So despite a whole bunch of reviews in, I essentially went into this movie completely blind and totally expected to hate it. I had my roast-fest all planned out in my head and I was going to unleash this angry demon inside of my soul on this new franchise. But yet I always have the philosophy of going into every movie with an open. So I did. But at the same time, I also had fresh on my mind my reasons for liking Star Trek as a whole and thus there were certain checkpoints that this movie needed to meet in order to get a pass. To my huge surprise, this movie actually met them! I'm totally serious. J.J. Abrams doesn't know how to make a Star Trek movie, but apparently Justin Lin does. No, this movie doesn't have a lot of depth or emotion to it, but it's a fun little Star Trek adventure that felt like a solid filler episode of the TV show. For the first time in this reboot series, it felt like I was actually watching Star Trek. That made me happy.
In thinking about what it is that makes me like Star Trek, I decided that the most important thing is to have a crew that I care about. This is something that The Original Series, The Next Generation, Voyager, and Deep Space Nine all had. Good crews with characters that I care about. Leading these crews has to be a solid captain. William Shatner as Captain Kirk and Patrick Stewart as Jean-Luc Picard are perfect examples. Both of these men are phenomenal actors that make for great captains. William Shatner as Captain Kirk especially has so much charm and charisma that makes him so likable. He has plenty of character flaws, but that allows him to go through so much growth. This is what the reboot series was missing in the first two movies. Chris Pine's Kirk was an abomination. My favorite part of Into Darkness is when Cumberbatch was beating the crap out of him. It made me happy. It wasn't Chris Pine's fault, though. It was how he was written. Concerning the rest of our crew, Zachary Quinto didn't quite sell me as Spock and the romance between him and Uhura totally ruined both of their characters. Karl Urban was a little over the top as Dr. McCoy. All he did was complain and whine. Same thing with Simon Pegg's Scotty. The only two main characters who nailed their roles were John Cho as Sulu and Anton Yelchin as Chekov.
First order of business for Mr. Lin: fix our crew. Check. Starting with the top, Chris Pine's Kirk is no longer crybaby Kirk or spoiled-brat Kirk. He's Captain Kirk. He acts like a really good, likable captain. Does he have the charm and charisma of William Shatner? Heck no. But in fairness, not many people can match that. But he does take a huge step forward in this movie. Whereas in the first two movies I cheered when he got beat up, in this one I actually cared for his safety. Next up, the Spock and Uhura romance gets axed in the beginning and Zachary Quinto does a much better job of acting like the emotionless, logical Spock that Leonard Nimoy did so well. Him and Kirk make a great team like Kirk and Spock are supposed to. Karl Urban is toned down a bit as Dr. McCoy and Simon Pegg as the writer of this movie was able to write his Scotty much better. Zoe Saldana doesn't have much to do as Uhura, but at least she doesn't negatively impact the movie like she did in the last two. Sulu I was ready to complain about because they announced recently that he was gay and I had George Takei's disapproval to back me up on that, but that reveal doesn't occur. And finally, every scene with Chekov totally broke my heart. Anton Yelchin does such a great job in all three movies. He was taken from this earth way too soon. May God bless him and his family.
The final aspect of Star Trek that I love are the intellectual, thought-provoking messages and themes spread throughout the series. Yes, this movie had a good crew with characters I cared about. It had some great character moments with plenty of good one-liners. And it had a fun space adventure. But did it have this final element that would be the frosting on the cake? No. That's what I would say the biggest flaw of this movie is. Yes, it is fun. But no, it's not a deep movie. There's not a ton of strong themes. It doesn't make me stop and ponder about the messages it's trying to portray. It's simply a shallow, fun adventure. That's why I said it's like a solid villain-of-the-week episode. Idris Elba plays our villain and I actually enjoyed him much more than Benedict Cumberbatch's Kahn and Eric Bana's Nero from the first two movies. It does take us a little too long to learn what's up with Idris Elba's villain, but the final act with him is pretty solid. Throughout the middle of this movie, Justin Lin does a great job with the action, which was too be expected from our Fast and Furious director. But if fun action is all we're getting throughout the second act of a Star Trek movie, it still leaves me a little disappointed. Star Trek isn't supposed to be just fun. It's supposed to be fun AND thought-provoking with great character moments. Thus I say I was pleased with this movie, but not blown away.
In the end, I will say that I was pleasantly surprised with Star Trek Beyond. Given my dislike of the first movie and my bitter hatred towards Into Darkness, I was totally expecting to dish out an all-out roast fest with this review, especially since the trailers were pretty bad. But this turned out to be a decent adventure. I have now learned that Justin Lin knows how to make a good Star Trek movie, something that J.J. Abrams failed miserably with in his two attempts. We had an original story that wasn't copied from a previous Star Trek movie. A lot of the character traits with our crew that bothered me in the first two movies were fixed and I actually found myself caring for Kirk, Spock, Bones, and company. I certainly wasn't cheering for the villain here like I was in our last movie. It misses the intellectual, thought-provoking element of Star Trek and goes mainly just for entertainment as it's just a simple, shallow movie that's nothing special. But it's a huge step forward from our previous efforts. If I were to give grades to the other two movies, 2009's Star Trek gets a 5/10 while Star Trek Into Darkness gets a 3/10. So the fact that I'm giving Star Trek Beyond a 7/10 should be seen as a generous compliment. I'd say it's the sixth best Star Trek movie. I'll put those rankings in the comments below.
Friday, July 15, 2016
Ghostbusters Review
To say that this is the most controversial film of the year might be putting things nicely. When the first trailer came out, people were so horrified with what they saw that this quickly became the most hated trailer in YouTube history. Ever since that trailer, there has been a ginormous internet mob filled with an unprecedented level of anger and hatred towards this movie that has not been kind to anyone. Shortly after the trailer release, Dan Murrell from the YouTube channel Screen Junkies did a video where he suggested that maybe we should give this a chance. There's been many times where a good movie was preceded with a bad trailer. Paul Feig and Melissa McCarthy have had a pretty good track record, so maybe there's a chance that this could still be a good movie. Yeah, Dan got viciously destroyed by this angry mob for saying that to the point where that video became the most disliked YouTube video in Screen Junkies history. And if you follow Screen Junkies you'll know that they have a pretty rabid fan base that will often tear apart their videos. It's a little ridiculous. But that's been the story everywhere with this movie. It should be no surprise that the movie held a 4.1 on IMDb with 15,000 votes on the Thursday afternoon before the movie's release to the general public.
What did all this do to me? Honestly this made me gravitate towards the movie a bit. I hated the trailer, too. But I mean for crying out loud a trailer is a trailer. I've been preaching for several years that you shouldn't base a movie on its trailer. Every year I see countless examples of great trailers that led to bad movies and awful trailers that led to good movies. After seeing all this footage and witnessing the angry reaction, I actually came to the conclusion that I didn't think this would be a bad movie. I didn't expect to enjoy it, but I also didn't think that this would come close to making my worst movies of the year list at the end of the year. And that was before all critic reviews started to come out. Basically I concluded that I didn't think that this movie was going to deserve all this negative publicity. That said, I fully expected the critics to destroy the movie. I was rather shocked to find out that a lot of the early reviews were positive. But maybe it will drop? Nope. The movie is now officially certified fresh. But then a thought crossed my mind. How many critics out there gave a positive review because they were afraid of being called sexist if they gave a negative review? I doubted there were many, but I did see early comments from some people that said they felt obligated to be excited for the movie because they were feminists. A lady one of the Schmoes' live shows said that. And she's not the only one.
That said, was the fact that our Ghostbusters were female the reason why I was dreading this movie? Absolutely freaking not! There have been a lot of people, feminists especially, that have assumed all the anger and hatred towards this movie has been because of the female cast alone. This position makes me almost as furious as the people hating the movie without even seeing it. I say this because that is an extremely ignorant stance that has absolutely no back towards it. Is the sexism and misogyny there? Sure. But it's a lot smaller than some people have made it out to be. For me personally that was a total non-issue. And I think if you go read the reactions to this movie, you'll find that a lot of people were with me on that. Sure the specific cast members had me nervous, but not because of their gender. There's two main reasons why I was not excited for this. The first was the idea of rebooting Ghostbusters in the first place. It's no secret that I'm not a fan of reboots. If the original was just fine, why make the movie again? Hollywood needs more original ideas and less reboots. The second big reason that I was nervous about this movie is because it did not look funny and it did not look entertaining. Thus I felt like this was going to be another useless remake.
I was wrong, though. This movie was a huge surprise for me. Perhaps the biggest surprise of the year. A perfect movie? Heck no! This movie does have plenty of problems, but given the fact that this movie had a trailer that became the most hated trailer in YouTube history, this is definitely not deserving of all of that hate. Because of that, you'll probably find me leaning more positive with my comments because I want to try to convince you to give this movie a shot, especially if you were part of the group that was previously planning on skipping this altogether. Now if you were a part of the angry internet mob that has been preaching hellfire and brimstone towards this movie and you've already left your hundreds of angry YouTube comments as well as given it your 1/10 on IMDb without even seeing it, then perhaps you were bound and determined to hate the movie and nothing I say will help. But if you're like me and you like to go into every movie with an open mind and do your best to enjoy it, then I would recommend you go into this movie with that open mind and give it a shot. If you do so, I honestly think there is a chance that you will enjoy it as well. No, it's not as good as the original. But it's a serviceable Ghostbusters movie in my opinion.
Returning in this movie are most of the main original cast. As cameos playing new characters. This is not a passing of the torch movie and is certainly not a sequel. This is 100 percent a reboot. The events in the 1984 movie did not take place in this new Ghostbusters universe. And yes, our new Ghostbusters are all female. And yes, all the males in this movie are portrayed as big, dumb idiots. Why this movie felt the need to take its feminism theme that far is beyond me. Why can't we have strong female characters AND strong male characters? But whatever. As it turns out, the best part of this movie is definitely the cast. I'm not as big of a Melissa McCarthy fan as some others are. Admittedly there are several of her movies recently that I have skipped because I don't like raunchy comedies and that's a lot of what she does. But still. From what I have seen, I'm not a huge fan. And Saturday Night Live for me is very hit and miss. And that's me being nice. So having our cast be Melissa McCarthy with two SNL girls and Kristen Wiig, a former SNL girl, did not excite me. But these girls surprised me. They have great chemistry as a group. Not only did they provide a lot of laughs, but it was fun to watch them fight ghosts and experiment with gadgets.
The problems I had with this movie were not our team of Ghostbusters and it wasn't the humor. It was the plot. This felt like one of our average superhero origin stories. We spent a ton of time setting this team up and not enough time out hunting ghosts. In the original Ghostbusters, our ghost-hunting team was set up pretty quick and after their first fight with ghosts, they had everything down and the whole city loved them, thus allowing for most of the movie to be spent on these fun, silly adventures. I don't know the exact timing with this new movie, but man they dragged this out quite a bit. It was as if they thought that no one knew who the Ghostbusters were, so they needed to spend a whole movie meticulously setting up this universe and explaining every small detail. They ran into one ghost early on, defeated their first ghost towards the middle, and then didn't really do any ghost fighting until the finale. On top of that, the angle taken here was that the city was not on their side. They spent the whole movie trying to earn the respect of the city, which wasn't as fun for me. Finally, the villain here was a cliche, I hate the world and want to destroy it, type of villain. He decides to start the Ghostocalypse as I call it and thus we get another cliche villain destroying the world story. Yawn.
Overall, though, I was a lot more impressed than I thought I would be. Yes, the tone and feel of this movie was a bit different than the 1984 original, but I mostly appreciated that because they tried to do something new and different instead of making a carbon copy of that original. This was still a fun movie, though. That's what Ghostbusters is supposed to be. A fun, enjoyable ride that you shouldn't take seriously given the premise. The ghosts were a little more creepy than in the original, but that was okay. Speaking of ghosts, the special effects on the ghosts were pretty darn good and certainly a huge improvement over the original. But that was too be expected. If your special effects aren't significantly better than a movie that came out 32 years earlier, there's a bit of a problem. I liked our team of female Ghostbusters. They worked very well as a team, were quite funny, and were entertaining to watch. Chris Hemsworth was also fun as their dumb secretary. I didn't like our plot or our villain. And I didn't laugh as much in the second half of the movie as I did in the first half. But I was pleasantly surprised with this as a whole. Not a great movie, but a fun ride that's not deserving of the hate it's been getting. I'll give our new Ghostbusters movie a 7/10 and say bring on the sequel!
Friday, July 8, 2016
The Secret Life of Pets Review
The Secret Life of Pets is about a young boy named Andy who owns a collection of toys that he loves. His favorite one is a cowboy named Woody. He's loved Woody for a long time. But on his birthday, he gets a new toy named Buzz Lightyear. Well, these toys have a secret life when the humans aren't around and Woody is not happy. Woody and Buzz end up hating each other because of it and due to a series of events, this leads to both of them being lost in the city and they need to learn to work together to get back home to Andy. Wait. Shoot. I got the wrong movie there. My bad. That's not The Secret Life of Pets. That's Toy Story. Let me get my thoughts straight and give you the premise of The Secret Life of Pets. This movie is about a girl named Katie who owns a dog named Max. Katie loves Max and Max loves Katie. But then one day Katie comes home with another dog named Duke and Max is not happy. Max and Duke end up hating each other because of it and due to a series of events, this leads to both of them being lost in the city and they need to learn to work together to get back home to Katie. Wait, what? Is it just me or did I just describe the same movie twice? Did Illumination look at Toy Story and decide to pitch the exact same movie, but with pets instead of toys?
Okay, I'll stop playing dumb here. Toy Story with pets is the very first thing that I thought of when I first saw the teaser for this movie. But hey, that could work, right? It's not going to be the exact same movie with the exact same plot. They're going to have their own fun, unique spin. That would be really dumb, otherwise. Ha. Ha ha. Ha ha ha. Yeah... Exact. Same. Plot. To a t. We just have Max and Duke instead of Woody and Buzz and they are two dogs instead of two toys and their owner is a girl this time around who is a bit older. I was really kinda dumbfounded. And when we weren't following Toy Story to a t, we were following the exact same plot of every other movie where the pets are lost in the city and have to make their way back to their owners. Homeward Bound and Oliver and Company are two that initially came to my mind. But there's lots of them. And The Secret Life of Pets makes zero effort whatsoever to do something unique and different. Zero. And it literally took me out of the movie. Granted kids that watch this movie aren't going to care about this. That's why I said they'll love it. But for me as an adult, plot is important to me. It frustrates me when I watch a movie that I feel is a complete rip-off of something else and thus I found little entertainment value in this movie.
No, this is not unwatchably bad. This is not as bad as other animated movies from this year like Norm of the North or They Angry Birds Movie. I just expected a lot more from this. There were plenty of chuckles along the way. Some individual clever moments or funny lines. But there was no gut-busting laughter. I wasn't laughing hysterically throughout like I was during Finding Dory and I didn't feel charmed like I did while I was watching The BFG. It was just very average and very meh. And there's a few things that they did towards the second half of the movie that I need to point out. If you remember my Finding Dory review, I mentioned that there was a moment at the end of that movie that goes full-out Fast and Furious. Same thing here. Except multiply it by ten. It got a little ridiculous. The Finding Dory scene entertained me. This one was a little over the top. The other thing I have to mention is that Illumination literally advertised for their next movie inside of this one. And it wasn't subtle. In December they have this movie called Sing coming out, which is a like an animal version of American Idol. There is a Sing movie poster on a bus in this movie that they show several times. I've never seen that done that blatantly. It caught me off guard.
This is not a bad movie by any means. I just don't think there's too much cross-appeal to kids and adults this time around for Illumination. Now if you're an adult and you loved this movie, don't take any offense to what I just said. Obviously there are going to be plenty of adults who love this and plenty of kids who don't. But in general terms, I think this is going to be a movie that has a lot more appeal with the kids. If you're a parent, your kids will love this. You should show it to them eventually. But I think it can wait. Buy this on DVD and use it to distract them in the mornings when you have stuff to do around the house. That would be a great use for this movie. Outside that, though, I really don't think there's much else to this. If you are single or don't have kids, I think there are plenty of other movies that are more worth your time this summer. It's a fun idea. The animals are all great. The voice acting is spot on. The animation is well done. But the story for me gets a big, fat F from me because of the serious lack of originality or creativity. And there's not enough laughs or emotion to make me overlook that. Illumination wasn't able to harness their inner Pixar this time around and thus I am going to give The Secret Life of Pets a 6/10.
Wednesday, July 6, 2016
The Legend of Tarzan Review
Did we need another Tarzan movie? Perhaps not. But we got one. Sometimes I find myself complaining about all these unnecessary remakes. Other times I just accept their existence and move on with my life. I've always been intrigued with the idea of The Legend of Tarzan. When I heard about the cast and crew here, that's what got my attention. Then the trailers came out and I thought it could be cool. However, I thought I was in the minority with this. No one seemed to be excited for this movie. But yet the aforementioned box office totals suggest that the phenomenon of the silent majority was in play here. I wasn't the only person looking forward to this. Other people were excited, too. They just didn't vocalize their excitement. Or at least not as loudly as those who weren't excited. Speaking of Disney, though, it is worth mentioning that this is definitely not a specific re-imagining of Disney's Tarzan. This goes back and remakes the original stories of Tarzan that Disney strayed from, like they always do, and does so with a very dark, serious tone. I would make a guess that that was the root of many people's worries. The dark, serious tone that is. I mean, heaven forbid a Tarzan movie be any fun, right? We are talking about a man raised in the jungle by apes, aren't we?
I will admit that as I was watching this movie, I found myself a lot more interested in the flashbacks than the sequel story of Tarzan returning to the jungle. I almost wish that we had actually had been given this story first before as a movie before we dove straight into this sequel. Those scenes were all super intense and dramatic. They had my undivided attention. We all know that Tarzan was raised by apes. Disney went with gorillas. The original stories weren't gorillas, but were close to gorillas. So to be safe I am going to call them apes. And these apes are super scary, much like full grown gorillas and chimpanzees are in real life. You know that story of the silverback gorilla that got shot in the zoo? "Oh but he was just going to take care and love the child that fell in his cage and those mean zookeepers shot him unfairly." Ha ha ha ha ha!!! Yeah, not to get political, but that's a ridiculous stance. These are scary animals in real life and they're definitely terrifying in this movie. The ape that the original story, as well as Disney, calls Kerchak is a terrifying beast in this movie. Kala acts as a nice motherly figure in this, but I was scared of Kerchak. We didn't anthropomorphize them like Disney, so they don't talk. But they don't need to. You knew Kerchack was angry and you knew why. There's also some serious drama that goes on between Tarzan and these apes that I was fully invested in.
So yes, this backstory that the movie was telling us was fascinating. I loved it and I kinda wanted a full movie with just that backstory. The sequel story wasn't quite as interesting. Not at first, anyways. But then we finally came full circle. When Tarzan goes back to these apes, it's not a friendly reunion and thus you know that some crazy drama went on and when that's finally revealed, this movie, both in the flashbacks and the current story, gets pretty good. The movie doesn't anthropomorphize the apes. But there's definitely some great emotion. In fact, one of the best character arcs in this movie is one of the apes. That ape and the leader of the native tribe, played by Djimon Hounsou. I will say no more, but yeah, Djimon Hounsou is one of the several side characters that stole this movie right away from Alexander Skarsgard and Margot Robbie as Tarzan and Jane. But native tribesmen? Yeah, like I said, this is not Disney's Tarzan. We have a couple different tribes as well as a whole assortment of animals including lions, wildebeest, ostriches, elephants, hippos, crocodiles and more. It's not just Tarzan and the apes. We're in the African Congo! Thus even though we know the story of Tarzan, we don't know where this specific story is going in either timeline. So this isn't as predictable as you might think. And there's a lot of emotion.
How about these visual effects in the movie? Phenomenal! I saw this movie in 3D IMAX and even though I wasn't initially excited for that part of the movie, it ended up being the best 3D IMAX movie that I've seen this summer. Granted, its only competition was Alice Through the Looking Glass, Warcraft, and Independence Day: Resurgence as I didn't see Captain America: Civil War or X-Men: Apocalypse in 3D IMAX. But regardless, this was pretty good. It actually effectively used the 3D when Tarzan was swinging on vines through the jungle and fighting various opponents. It wasn't over the top or distracting. But it was enough for me to be entertained by the 3D, which is hard to do nowadays. And the IMAX part was great. The score of the movie is fantastic, which in my opinion is the most important part of an IMAX adventure. A giant screen, fun 3D, and great visuals are nice, but if you don't have that good score, then it's a waste of an IMAX ticket. This movie has that and it's a score that is done by Rupert Gregson-Williams, who is known for scoring a bunch of Adam Sandler movies and that's almost it. Impressive, though, because when I was looking up who did the score, I was expecting a big name composer. And yes, the visuals in this movie are great. It's amazing what we can do with CGI today. You would think that all of these animals are real, but they're not.
No, we probably didn't need another Tarzan movie. But that's the case with most of these live-action Disney remakes. We don't really need any of them. If you hate the fact that they exist, well you're in for some trouble because there will be a lot more them done by Disney themselves as well as others. So even though this movie wasn't necessary, we got it anyways. Turns out it's a pretty solid Tarzan movie. If you're a fan of the character like I am, you'll be happy to know that they did him justice. The cast of the movie is perfect. Alexander Skarsgard and Margot Robbie were great as Tarzan and Jane, even though they did get overshadowed slightly by the excellent performances from Samuel L. Jackson and Djimon Hounsou. Christoph Waltz was a slightly forgettable villain, but he still did his best with what he was given. I was worried about the serious tone of the movie, but it worked. The action sequences are great, the visual effects are phenomenal, the movie has a good amount of emotion, and a story that sucked me in. Sure, it took a while for me to get invested in the present timeline as I was more invested in the flashbacks at first. But in the second half of the movie I was invested in both timelines and I thought they tied together very effectively. So yeah, this movie was a pleasant surprise and thus I will give The Legend of Tarzan an 8/10.
Friday, July 1, 2016
The BFG Review
Before I go any further, I want to make it clear that I will be reviewing the movie The BFG and not the book The BFG. Zero comparisons will be made between the two in this review simply because I have zero knowledge of the book. I do know Roald Dahl and some of his other works, but for some reason I went through life not even knowing that The BFG novel existed until the first teaser for this came out and everyone started freaking out. And no, I didn't bother reading it or even researching the plot before seeing the movie, so I went in completely blind and thus I will be talking solely about my movie going experience with this story. If you want a book/movie comparison, feel free to find another friend who could help you out there and let me know what you come up with. However, even though I had no knowledge of The BFG, I was still excited for this movie. I mean, this is Steven freaking Spielberg we're talking about. I, like everyone else on this planet, love Spielberg's movies. One of the many great things about him is that he has something for everyone. Movies like Jaws, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Jurassic Park, and Schindler's List are some of my favorite movies, all for different reasons. And a John Williams score to go along with it? I'm so down!
As far as the plot goes, this movie is about a young girl becoming friends with a giant. She's an orphan and she really doesn't like it too well at the orphanage. One night she hears something and wanders over to the window to see what it was and she sees the giant. Because she saw him, he feels the need to kidnap her because he's afraid she'll tell everyone about him. She thinks he's going to eat her for dinner, but she quickly learns that he is in fact a big friendly giant, so she calls him BFG. The two become friends rather quickly and are quite the charming pair. We also learn quickly that BFG isn't the only giant out there. The others aren't quite as friendly. They're more like BFI's, big freaking idiots. They're the ones that actually are the mean, child-eating monsters and children all over London have been going missing because they get kidnapped and eaten by these other giants, which is kinda disturbing when you stop and think about it. Good thing we aren't shown any of that. But that does lead to our conflict in the movie. It's BFG vs. the other giants and BFG and the girl have to figure out what to do. As I said, they make quite the team. It's a lot of fun to watch them interact and talk with each other. They go on several fun adventures and the compliment each other quite well.
I will admit that I am still kind of mad that Mark Rylance won the best supporting actor Oscar earlier this year over Sylvester Stallone. I mean Mark Rylance did a good job in Bridge of Spies. But Sylvester Stallone in Creed was incredible and there will never be another chance to reward Stallone for his great performance as Rocky Balboa. Sorry for bringing that up, but that's what I think about now when I see Mark Rylance and I had to get that out of my system. But now the other thing I will think about when I see Mark Rylance is his incredible performance as BFG. Not only was the motion capture element of this great, but so was his overall performance. BFG is not very good at English and because of that he is always stumbling over his words or making words up as he goes. The little girl spends a lot of time correcting him on his English and helping him to become better. It was rather charming to watch and Mark Rylance just rocked this character. He was so good. As so was our little girl for that matter. Her character's name is Sophie and the young actress is a girl by the name of Ruby Barnhill. It's rare to find a great child actress and we've found another one here. She is such an adorable little girl and does such a great job.
No, this movie won't be remembered as one of Spielberg's masterpieces. But I appreciate the fact that he can still feel comfortable with toning things down and making a solid movie that the kids will enjoy. That's what this is. Regardless of overall quality, another thing I love about Spielberg is that he always makes well-crafted films. Spielberg has the art of filmmaking down to a science and it's been this way for many years, which is why it's always great to watch a Spielberg movie. And a John Williams score is something that I always love. The man is 84 years old, so I don't know how many more films he has in him. But I hope it's still a lot. His scores have been some of my all time favorites and I look forward to many more. So yes, there's a lot to love in this movie. It's a well-crafted movie with a beautiful score. Mark Rylance is amazing as the BFG and Ruby Barnhill is equally as great as Sophie. The two of them are just charming to watch. The movie overall is nothing special and I was bored a lot more than I should've been in the first half. But I still think this is a good family film worth seeing. Even if you don't have the means to see it in theaters, I'd recommend you renting it at some point. My grade for The BFG is a 7/10.
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text: With PechaKucha PowWow 2018 just around the corner, there is one particular person that must be recognized. For her crucial organizing efforts and her unwavering positivity we put this week's special PechaKucha People spotlight on one of PK HQ's original members (back by popular demand!), Tomoko Kagawa. It is her natural perseverance and optimistic personality that makes her an irreplaceable part to our team and a key to the success of our Global Organization. From the entire HQ, thank you for your endless hard work and awesomeness, Tomoko!


text: Share: Comments Print December 31, 2014 at 12:55 PM Video: Seahawks receiver Doug Baldwin on Jim Harbaugh — "Go Buckeyes" — and more Posted by Bob Condotta Seattle receiver Doug Baldwin was among players who met the media prior to practice today, with the Seahawks on the field today and tomorrow to get in a little work before taking the weekend off. Along the way, Baldwin got in a little parting shot as his former college coach, Jim Harbaugh. Asked what he thinks of Harbaugh leaving the 49ers, he said: "I wish him the best of luck. I know he's anxious to get that program turned around and do some great things at Michigan. So I wish him the best of luck. And go Buckeyes." Just to make sure it's not missed, the last statement was a reference to Michigan's rival, Ohio State. Baldwin was smiling a little (I think) as he said it. But Baldwin has not been shy about stating that he had some issues with Harbaugh during his time at Stanford (Baldwin was recruited there by Harbaugh's predecessor, Walt Harris). Here's a transcript from before the NFC title game last January where Baldwin talked about that at length, including that he thought about transferring to Vanderbilt for his final season, saying in part that: "All of you guys know that Jim Harbaugh and I did not have the best of relationships while I was at Stanford, but all of that stuff is settled now. I was immature, I was a young athlete who thought I knew everything so we clashed at times, and I was dealing with injuries so that kind of held and prevented me from performing how I wanted to on the field. So a lot of things went into it." Baldwin also talked about the advantage Seattle has in getting a bye week. "I don't know how comfortable it is," he said. "I do know that it's a necessity for us to get healed up because we had such an early bye, mentally and physically. However, we are anxious to get back to the grind. We are anxious to get back to playing football because we know where we are right now." You can watch more of what Baldwin had to say in the video below, including his thoughts on whether the Seahawks had a Super Bowl hangover this season: Comments


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On January 25th, 2017, we celebrated the 75th Anniversary of the duPont-Columbia Awards. That night, we honored not only our fourteen winners (see the full list here), but distinguished past winners as well, including veteran journalist Bill Moyers.
You can listen to his remarks on this episode of On Assignment, along with remarks from the two other honorees that evening (fellow journalists Ira Glass and Christiane Amanpour), or read the transcript of Moyers' remarks below.
Bill Moyers' full remarks from the 2017 duPont-Columbia Awards.
"You're never too old to say wow, or to feel the wonder of the moment that inspired it. And I feel the wonder of being up here with so many talented young journalists out there, and with my colleagues Jane and Lester, and with all of you who have contributed to my understanding of the world.
I'm really over-age for this gathering, as I am for these times. I don't belong in the Trump World. I grew up in a normative world—not a beautiful world—but a normative world, and the norms are being severed by the phenomenon of this time.
When I became White House press secretary against my will, in 1965, my father, a Baptist deacon, sent me a telegram saying, "Bill, tell the truth if you can, but if you can't tell the truth, don't tell a lie." He had a fourth grade education and was the most honest man I ever knew. I did my best to honor his wish. It was hard, but even then our credibility was so bad we couldn't believe our own leaks.
It was just as hard when I came back to journalism. There were still problems after I gave the commencement one year at Dartmouth, and a young student a graduate student came up to me and said, "Mr. Moyers, you've been in both government and journalism. That makes everything you say doubly hard to believe."
I've tried to stay humble, because it's necessary. Sixty-seven years ago this June, on my 16th birthday I went to work for the daily newspaper in the small East Texas town where I grew up. It was a good place to be a cub reporter. Small enough to navigate and big enough to keep me busy and give me something to learn every day.
I travelled long, far and wide as journalism became my continuing course in adult education, with someone else paying the travel and the tuition. Sometimes my journey brought me here to this campus and several times to this podium. I always felt as if I were entering a sacred place. "The High Church of Journalism" is what my friend and mentor and soulmate Dean Joan Connor used to call it. The high church where the principles of our craft are exalted and the flame of inspiration never flickered.
I'm grateful for those visits here as I'm grateful to be back tonight. We journalists need each other. An alien force has arrived from the galaxy Orwell, making false claims on democracy, waging war against the press, littering our public agencies with "No Trespassing" signs. Alternate facts have become the opioids of politics. It's a dangerous world, a disfigured world, marked by lies and threats. This evening at least six of our media colleagues face up to 10 years in prison and a $25,000 fine after being arrested while covering the unrest at Donald Trump's inauguration. So this occasion, and your work, are charged with urgency.
You have a mission to fulfill: to get your readers, listeners and viewers as close as possible to the verifiable truth. And you have promises to keep to your audiences, to yourself, and to one another. We journalists need each other.
As my own journey rounds the last curve, one thing I have learned in both government and journalism remains the unshakable certainty of my own education. Democracy can die of too many lies. A student once ask my friend and colleague, the historian and journalist Richard Reeves, "What's your definition of real news?" And Richard said, "The news we need to keep our freedom." So good luck to all of you. It's been a great honor. It is a great honor, to have traveled so far in the company of so many kindred spirits. Thank you."
Since the awards' founding in 1942, the duPont-Columbia Awards have honored accurate and fair reporting about important issues that are powerfully told. The first awards ceremony honored radio broadcasting, and radio reporting remains a crucial platform for the duPonts.
Find out more information about the Awards at www.duPont.org.
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