Jack Reacher 2 Announced

Jack Reacher has promised to punish more people who have escaped the law, this time on Wall Street. In the new movie he will target CEOs whom the FBI cannot touch because they have paid off politicians for favorable legislation. A homeless man camped out in a park is half beaten to death by inside traders, and Reacher has been summoned to dispense justice just for us, and not them (ie. “just us” justice.) Can he Just Do It, or not? Watch the video below and see. (By the Way, Reacher is the creation of Lee Child, whom I once interviewed, and Lee’s fan club call themselves “Reacher Creatures.” Zombies? No, that would be those who buy guns thinking they need to protect themselves from the coming zombie apocalypse …instead of the collapse of the dollar due to catastrophic health care costs.) Thanks, Discovery Channel! Now let’s discover some viewers whose brains haven’t been eaten by TV.

Also coming, starring a woman who says she’s “too attractive to work:” NOTTING HILL 2

Bored? There’s a Widget for That

There’s a widget for everything, now. Or, as they say, “there’s an app for that.” Whoever they are. There are widgets for every possible interest or sport. If your life revolves around Scottish curling (and why shouldn’t it?) they have a widget for you to track those all-important scores 24/7. Our culture has largely given up on human progress (in favor of entertainment), and is instead engaged in finding a tailor-made escape from reality, with the help of advertisers who are all too willing to produce a feedback loop allowing you to avoid what you don’t care to hear about. (Listen to the audiobook Brandwashing and the even scarier The Filter Bubble to hear how people are encouraged to stay ignorant of their neighbors by ever-increasing customization and personalization, which facilitates antagonistic groups to believe they are superior, which in turn leads to violence.) Now, I’m all for entertainment. People have to unwind or they’ll pop like (any day) I expect Glenn Beck to do. You can’t blame them. People are bored silly by real news, and so they seek out all the mind-bendingly moronic special effects which clueless directors like J.J. Abrams foist on them. And these days you have to actually crash the Enterprise into the city where someone lives in order to keep them from nodding off. Blaster battles and supernovas in outer space just don’t do it, anymore. Or as The Filter Bubble puts it, “A squirrel dying in front of your house is of more relevant interest to you than children dying in Africa.” Wow. Maybe this is why Kim Jong un shoots off so many fireworks. And what happens when our attention spans reach zero? Maybe that’s when someone truly nuts pushes the button to end it all. (Never fear, Glenn Beck will volunteer for this, as a self-fulfilling prophecy.) I predict we may all, indeed, end with a bang AND a whimper…but please not before my final coffee at Starbucks. (We are programmed to march in lock-step there too, and need this caffeine kick in case NBC and CBS and ABC provide no new ass-kicking accident or scandal to rubberneck that day. Or as the song goes, “Kick’em when they’re up, kick’em when they’re down…We got a bubble headed bleach blonde who comes on at five…she can tell you ’bout the plane crash with a gleam in her eye…we can do the innuendo, we can dance and sing…when it’s said and done we ain’t told you a thing…all we know is that crap is king, give us dirty laundry.”) Starbucks should team with BuzzFeed and hit people three ways from Sunday when they enter their stores. As it is, they are too lazy to provide condiments like ketchup for the bland, dry egg sandwiches they said they’d never carry again. In the meantime, why do so many young people believe that the new Star Trek movie is the best ever (and not derivative)? For the same reason that many watch The Apprentice instead of trying to learn what “derivative” means…or “derivatives” (noun), those financial instruments of corruption employed by friends of The Donald after kicking your ass to the curb.  

 

SEA HUNT the Movie?

A feature film based on the classic TV show SEA HUNT is being pitched in Hollywood, but so far no luck. Producers are hoping that their appearance on Shark Tank will lure one or all of the sharks to bite, and that they’ll fund a sequel at the same time. James Cameron is a possible director, and could film both the original and sequel simultaneously (along with Avatar 2 and 3.) “He should be able to squeeze us in for a possible 2015 release,” script writer Walter Witty is suggesting. “If not, we’ll try for Woody Allen.”

Secret History:  Walter Witty, otherwise known as the Homeless Comic, purports to know the answers to all of life’s biggest questions. He’s not particularly proud of this, and just calls it “uncommon sense.” Go figure. But here’s the thing: the news media are starting to catch on. And they NEED answers badly. So while the police keep arresting him for acting like he’s an authority or something, (and telling jokes without poetic license or the use of talking fruit), Witty is being sought out on such wide ranging subjects as politics, culture, and (as Woody Allen puts it) “the ability of leprechauns to locate gold.” (Note: Woody was trying to say that leprechauns, vampires, and zombies don’t actually exist, so the referenced gold is fool’s gold…unless you’re a Hollywood producer, in which case the gold is real.) Witty is often forced to use disguises and pseudonyms such as Ryback Solomon (lending him the more respectable title “reporter,” which also sounds better to those geniuses on TMZ, who just stand around trading verbal snipes at celebrities while drinking soda.) Witty is the cousin of one Walter Mitty, although Walter would claim that this claim is a figment of his (Witty’s) imagination. To sum up, both nothing (and everything) anyone named Walter says can be construed as both fact and fiction, both satire and deep truth, but this particular Walter disclaims responsibility for any and all consequences resulting from incorporating his (or Entertainment Tonight’s) views into their personal value system…which system, as we know, is already pretty much written in stone, thanks to years of subliminal (or otherwise) advertising. Just so you know.

How to Prevent Military Rape

Air Force Lt. Col. Jeffrey Krusinski has been charged with sexual battery after a woman reported he grabbed her breasts and buttocks in a parking lot in the early morning hours of Sunday, May 5, before fighting him off. The kicker? HE IS A SEXUAL ASSAULT PREVENTION CHIEF. Wow, who needs to write satire anymore? The headlines themselves are a joke. What’s next? The Air Force is requesting jurisdiction over the case, a “move” that is described as their “standard position.” Gees, they gotta go by the E.L. James rule book? Maybe what these people need to do is read WASHINGTON RULES by former Col. Andrew Bacevich, who suggests voters change the rules. (Term limits are a start.) As it is, the Pentagon thinks that not punishing victims who seek treatment is “change.”

In future news, do not be surprised to see a new magazine intended to hook future sports addicts even earlier…it will soon be making the way into toy stores.  Bundled with baby rattles and pacifiers, SPORTS ILLUSTRATED FOR INFANTS will feature no words, only pictures of pitchers, umpires, quarterbacks, etc. Some mothers are outraged at those photos which depict chewing tobacco, beer swilling, and half-naked men in Lazy boys munching potato chips, but little do they know that a pilot program is in the works to subliminally broadcast ball games into the wombs of mothers who opt for ultrasound. Stay tuned.

Star Trek Into Darkness Attacked

J.J. is at it again. His Mission Impossible 3 was a good film (and his big screen career took fire when Tom Cruise picked him for that), but Super 8 was a flashy, ridiculous waste of good sets, on par with the great SET WASTE that is the second half of the movie Resident Evil. When was it that Abrams got lost? Maybe it was writing LOST TV scripts. (Explain the polar bears again? Left over from a Coke commercial?) Abrams’ series Alias was addictive, until they brought in vampires. Yes, vampires…in a spy drama. His co-writer Roberto Orci did the nutty Cowboys & Aliens, and is doing The Amazing Spider Man 2, while Abrams is slated to direct the next (and last) Star Wars movie. (God help us all.) This is the same guy who brings you Revolution, that dystopian epic which Newsday describes as having “an overwhelming been-there-seen-that feel,” and the Miami Herald describes as “a cowboys and Indians story for the end times.” No imagination, that’s J.J.’s problem. And Hollywood’s. Eat, fart, sleep, repeat. This is why we have sixty crime dramas on TV, all with the same plots and dopey cliché characters. Wrap all of them up together and they don’t equal a single really good film, like No Country for Old Men. On Star Trek Into Darkness, Slashfilm’s Germain Lussier says “it’s a fun but frivolous sequel.” And he likes the film. Other critics are considerably more dystopian. Silas Lesnick of ComingSoon says it’s a “nonsensical mess” and a “beat for beat remake of Star Trek Nemesis.” Ain’t It Cool calls it “misguided” and full of “shameless pilfering.” But enough about having no original story, what about those special effects? The Hollywood Reporter calls them “pale, thin, bleached out” and that it “takes a few steps back.” Sounds like solid advice: to take a few steps back. Maybe to Read a book. Otherwise we might be blown away at the box office like this…