This is NOT a political blog.

(It’s a blog run by a thoroughly irresponsible guy who can’t remember to update often enough and overcompensates by making “comeback” posts about hot-button news topics, but NOT a political blog.)

Which is why I generally don’t do political posts unless they have something to say “on topic.” But, given that the major political story of the moment is now starting to spill over into the entertainment/film biz, I think I have some wiggle room to say something on this that doesn’t sound like just me using my soapbox to foist my opinions upon my readers/visitors. Although – and listen carefully here – I’m not going to give you MY opinion on this matter, because I’m not really interested in the philosophical debate… I’m interested in the very REAL clash thats going on in the wake of it.

Just so we’re all up to speed: Earlier in the year, the California Supreme Court ruled that homosexual couples had the right to enter into legal marriages in the state. A contingent of anti-gay activists, primarily backed up by the financial clout of the Mormon Church, lobbied successfully to get a constitutional amendment which would effectively ban such marriages – thus eliminating the newly-legalized right – added to the ballot in the recent elections. In a close vote of 52% to 48%, the measure passed banning same-sex marriage in the state.

Anyway, as one can imagine people are pretty heated about this on both sides, and this week it started getting REALLY ugly. Protests outside of churches are turning aggressive, and enterprising activists have taken to “outing” supporters of the ban. That last part has begun to hit the entertainment industry hard since, let’s face it… Hollywood ain’t a place where you want people to know you’ve got something against gays.

This sort of thing, of course, has thoughtful people – particularly thoughtful people who SUPPORT same-sex marriage, in this case – feeling slightly uneasy. Here’s Jeffery Wells of “Hollywood Elsewhere,” a vocal supporter of the cause, voicing his conflicted feelings on the story of Rich Raddon, the well-liked director of the FIND L.A. Film Festival who has found himself the target of a pending boycott after it was revealed that he donated $1500 to the “Yes on 8” effort: http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2008/11/turn_the_other.php

Naturally, a controversial topic is going to lead people to reevaluate their opinions toward folks they “thought they knew” upon learning that they differ on such a profound issue… but NO ONE worth taking seriously likes the idea of people being shunned at work or “outed” for political beliefs. It’s the sort of thing that brings to mind words like “witch hunt” or “McCarthyism.” And, of course, it goes without saying that the folks who are becoming violent or intolerant in their anger toward Prop8 supporters should be condemned ESPECIALLY if one agrees with their stance, since they do their “side” no favors by acting this way.

BUT… here’s the thing, and here’s where I come down on the matter: This ISN’T just a simple matter of people offering a different opinion. Proposition 8 WASN’T an opinion poll of how you feel on the issue of equal-rights-for-homosexuals – it was an amendment to the constitution. It changed a law. It had a real, tangible effect. If you voted for it, you did NOT merely vote to register your moral opposition to homosexuality… you voted to take something away from people. Right or wrong, people tend to get MAD when that happens to them. You would if it happened to you.

I’m not here to condemn you if you support Prop 8 either in actuality (i.e. you’re in CA and voted for it) or just philosophically. I don’t really care, that’s your business. What I WILL say to you if you fall into one of those camps and are now feeling bad that people are angry at you: Grow a pair. This ceased to be a nice debate among fellow citizens the moment YOU started spending money and effort NOT merely to voice your opinion but to literally take a right away from a fellow citizen. It’s unreasonable for you to expect that the people you worked to take a right from wouldn’t be angry at you. This is no longer about philosophy or academic disagreement – it’s about very real concepts of tangible loss and gain – it’s a FIGHT… and the principal consequence of getting into a fight is that you might get knocked around a bit. If that’s not what you wanted, you never should’ve put on the gloves, never should’ve stepped into the ring and NEVER should’ve punched the other guy first.

Don’t believe the haters: “Changeling” is a really good, intellectually-satisfying, quietly powerful drama. Working against it mainly are the misleading trailers and title, which both wrongly imply that the film is chiefly a melodrama about Jolie’s character and the “fake” son when in fact that story is just the “human-level” anchor for a multi-level, multi-storyline, multi-character True Crime saga revolving around a hopelessly corrupt police department. It’s not the best thing anyone involved has done, but it all works and you get A LOT of movie for you’re money: It’s at once a missing-child weepie, a women-in-prison thriller, a detective story, a crime saga, a social-activism fable and even partially a pretty grim horror film. It’s unfortunate that “I want MY SON BACK!!!” has become something like this years “I wish I knew how to quit you!!!” when A.) the actual scene, in-context, KILLS and B.) Jolie’s performance otherwise is a marvel of restrained, internalized acting.

“Madagascar 2” is about what you’d expect: Every funny bit from the first movie gets trotted back out to overstay it’s welcome (even the crazy old lady who got into a fight with the lion is back!) and the funny new material… isn’t very funny. It’s not bad, but it’s just a quick paycheck for everyone involved.

“Zack & Miri Make a Porno” is cute and, thankfully, hysterically funny in spots. It’s nice to see Kevin Smith SUCCESSFULLY branch out, though it does seem kind of perfectly appropriate that this newest “break” from his View Askew franchise is largely a story about, yes: a schlubby, bearded slacker who finds direction and fulfillment by shooting a no-budget movie at his workplace starring his buddies. There’s really no antagonist or much tension as to whether or not what we all know will happen will happen, but it’s good-natured. The big revelations are, in order… #1: The new ‘cleaned-up’ Jason Mewes actually CAN act and be engaging as a character that isn’t just a caricature of himself – in fact, he walks off with huge chunks of the film. #2: Brandon Routh? Good at comedy, alarmingly tall – alarming in the sense that you wonder “why didn’t they take advantage of that stature in ‘Superman’ where he always appeared to be of average height?” #3: Justin Long? Yes, he can be more than “a Mac” – he’s fantastic. #4: Real-life porn starlet Katie Morgan? Button-cute, funny as hell, solid comic actress and instantly likable (though those of you who’ve seen her various jokey HBO specials already knew that.) A mainstream comedy film career is hers, if she wants it.

Hey! New episode, at last…
http://gameoverthinker.blogspot.com/2008/11/episode-fourteen-did-ya-miss-me.html

So… did anything ELSE of major historical significance that many of us probably never thought we’d see in our lifetimes happen tonight? 😉

Yeah, wow.

Here’s Episode #2 of “The Escapist Show,” with your’s truly popping in at the tail end for a review of “Eagle Eye.” I come in at about 7:30, but you should watch the whole thing. These guys are working hard, and doing a fine job:

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/the-escapist-show/332-Episode-2-Vicious-Cycle-Eat-Lead

And hey, if you like the show, me-on-the-show and you want to let The Escapist know about it, I’m sure they’d be glad for the feedback: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/contact/

Wow, this is cool. I’ve had to wait awhile to tell anyone about this, but now that I can I’m still pretty overwhelmed by it.

“The Escapist” (http://www.escapistmagazine.com/) is best known these days as the website home of video-game critic Yahtzee Croshaw’s hugely popular “Zero Punctuation” weekly series. But it’s ALSO a full-blown webzine of it’s own with lots of other content. As of this week, that content now includes a weekly gaming/geek-culture news series called “The Escapist Show.” You should be watching, it’s awesome.

Anyway, “The Escapist Show” features along with it’s regular content and contributors short humor segments provided by independent web guys, and next week (episode #2, tentatively planned to air on November 4th) the contributor will be… ME! I’ll be doing a movie review – can’t tell ya which movie yet. Cool, no?

I encourage everyone to check this out. Not just for me – the series looks really good and off to a great start. And if you like seeing my stuff on there, send some feedback over to Escapist telling them so, and maybe I’ll get asked to come back for more. Look for it next week!

The computer is basically back to life, yay. Need new printer and to fix something stupid I did trying to re-install Windows, but otherwise not bad. Updates should become frequent once more.

BTW, this damn thing might actually get fixed soon. Yay, fixed.

I’m pretty sure I was done taking the “Saw” movies seriously after #4. It’s not a bad franchise, just desperately played-out. #5 is basically 4 all over again: Lots of dull policework, increasingly uncreative traps, too much backstory on Jigsaw. Can this be over, now?

Hey, look! It’s working for another five minutes or so tonight!

I’m going to say that “W” is worth seeing, though it’s really not spectacular or incendiary enough to be any kind of classic. It’s basically a re-enactment of “big moments” we all remember hearing about, with acors playing the now-infamous big player parts – think SNL meets downtime at an Oscars telecast.

You’ve heard by now that the supposed “surprise” is how affectionate the film is toward George W. Bush as a character – displaying an obvious fondness for his black-sheep-made-good origin story and treating his self-willed triumph over alcoholism and Christian re-birth in sincere, non-mocking terms – presenting him as a decent if none-too-bright man who dug way, way, WAY over his head in an attempt to please his father. It’s all true, but what seems to be missing is how “fair” Oliver Stone’s film plays it with nearly ALL of the main-characters. As it unspools, not only Dubya but also Paul Wolfowitz, Karl Rove (!), George Tenet and especially Collin Powell are the largely-sympathetic “good guys” of the piece while Rumsfeld, Condoleeza Rice and (of course) Dick Cheney are the villians. Rove’s defferential presentation is what stood out the most for me – it’s easy to villianize him as a character, but here he comes off as a brilliant yet unfairly-overlooked political nerd for whom a symbiotic relationship with the charismatic but details-challenged Bush was his overdue ticket to the big time.

It’s also pretty intriguing how the film ends up in ADORATION of Bush the Elder despite the broader theme of Dubya immolating himself in plea for fatherly approval, setting him up as a Truman-esque missed-opportunity historical figure: The Republican president who shunned the Religious Right and knew the wisdom of not trying to occupy Iraq the first time. Fascinating stuff, overall.

VERY QUICKLY before this peice of shit computer crashes AGAIN:

A little under 2 months ago there was apparently so little news going on that I was interviewed about the “Game OverThinker” video series by LB Jeffries of PopMatters. The interview – the first time I’ve ever been interviewed by a national (international, really) publication Internet or otherwise – is now up at their site. Link here: http://www.popmatters.com/pm/feature/64317/the-new-youtube-game-criticism-an-interview-with-moviebob/

No time for any more cleverness on my part except to say… wow, this is pretty cool.

This is going to get me cyber-lynched, but it’s a necessary preface: Whatever you think of her philosophical ideas, as a novelist Ayn Rand was kinda scattershot. She had her strong suits – story structure, scope, management of characters, Dickensian bad guy names (Ellsworth Tooey?) and an undeniable skill for stories of slowly-revealed systemic collapse. But, on the other hand, she quite simply seldom – if ever – cared to grasp not only how actual people behave or speak… but how characters in hyper-real books/movies behave or speak. It’s one thing to have your characters exist primarily as avatars for philosophical ideals, it’s another to have them act like walking speakerphones. Her characters don’t speak, they ORATE in every situation regardless of context.

Which is why it was probably NOT the best idea to have her write the screenplay for the (appropriately wacky) 1949 adaptation of “The Fountainhead” and DEFINATELY not the best idea to agree to let her have absolute final-say on dialogue (though, given then theme of the work what the hell else would you expect?) And it’s also why the only part of the film where the dialogue and mandated-delivery really WORKS is in the climactic “summation” scene wherein Gary Cooper’s Howard Roark defends himself in court for the charge of destroying a building he’d been comissioned to designed after discovering that the agreement that his edgy, ultra-modern design not be altered without his consent has been violated (the book/character are basically a lionizing of Frank Lloyd Wright, if you’ve not read it.)

It still doesn’t FULLY fit – this clearly isn’t Cooper’s natural diction and it’s obvious he (and the rest of the cast, really) are working heavily from memorization. Still, it’s quite a moment overall and, while I can’t really get behind Objectivism in total THIS one speech is one I find to be a pretty fine presentation of ideas I’m generally pretty down with. Taken as a statement of personal integrity in general and the rights of artists/creative people in particular, I’d even call it somewhat inspiring. In any case, it’s been on my mind, it says things I’d like to say better than I can say them, and it IS kinda the only part of the movie anyone needs to see. So, if you’ve never seen this, give it a watch (it’s only about five minutes):

P.S. The YouTube link is the best-quality clip I could find, if you click it and the guy who put it up has other stuff on his setlist that you don’t like I’m not endorsing it and I’m not responsible for it.