Saturday, November 08, 2008

Splinter

This movie is fucking brilliant. It's an 82 minute long thrill ride and you only have 5 minutes of not on the edge of your seat time. The creature is brilliant... a cross between night of the living dead and John Carpenter's the Thing. The characters actually do the smart thing (most of the time) as they try to outwit an efficient killing machine. Clearly made cheaply, but shot slickly. There are a two sequences where we the audience have no fucking clue what's going on cause there are all these half a second jump cuts... I'm assuming this is cause they didn't have the dough to show us what they wanted to (can't wait to get this one on my TV with slo-mo). That being said there are no other flaws with this genre movie. It amazes me after watching this that it was not picked up by a major distributor, cause it is 10 times the horror movie than the usual crap Hollywood rolls out. There are a few grisly effects that are used briliantly... to both scare and make the creature more "real" in behavior.

It's a limited release but if you live near can drive to a theater showing this one, and you like horror... go see it. Click the link below to watch the trailer.

Thursday, November 06, 2008

Obama

So Tuesday I laughed... I cried... I got real drunk. Seeing all those folks back home in grant park made me swell up with Chicago Pride even more than I usually feel. It was a grand moment in the history of our country. I went to bed with a smile on my face and (this is gonna sound cheesey and I want to puke as I write it)and hope truly in my heart.

I woke up Wednesday with a big fat hangover. Tried to go to work but couldn't write or speak coherently. I went home and tried to sleep it off... but I feel the weight of what's happened now. I feel the responsibility of it, and as a simple citizen my responsibility is not the great responsibility. If Barcak Obama goes down in history as the first black president we have (and he has) failed. The election was but a moment in time... and had the stars not lined up just so, it would not have happened. But now with all that hope and energy given to him by the people Barack has to govern... and not just those who voted him in. We will not know... not really till we see how he deals with his first crisis, how he deals with the first accusations, how he deals with congress whether or not he deserves the faith we have place in this man. If he's remembered for his color it will be because he did not succeed in accomplishing his vision. It will be because all the glitz and glamor that comes with an Obama, a Kennedy, a Bill Clinton, hides the scary truth, that almost any human who seeks such power does so because they want power. Men hungry for power are often not the best. In my field of science people I know to be hungry for recognition, more than hungry for knowledge, are often the leaders of the field. I have watched as scientist confounded the field to keep their outdated ideas in the spotlight for a few moments longer, I've watched men and women use their status to abuse the trust, hard work, and admiration of those under them, and I've watched these folks lose a sense of what it takes to be on the bottom... all due to their own vanity. If in a field of nerds we get this behavior, what might those hungry for the power of government be capable of.

I was told that Obama does have humility. That he is too intelligent to make the mistake of running left. I'm not so sure. But I do still hope. I hope Obama means the retoric. I hope that he does govern from the center even though his belief is on the left. I hope he has the integrity that he seems to. I hope he has the strength to nominate many republicans to his white house. I hope he meant the line "And to those Americans whose support I have yet to earn - I may not have won your vote, but I hear your voices, I need your help, and I will be your President too." I hope that for all the power that Obama wakes with today... that power does not have to corrupt. I hope that America has chosen a new direction regardless of whether or not Obama is the leader of that new Direction.

Ahhhhhhh the Audacity of Hope.