Iron Man 3

First, the trailer roundup:

Until now, I was pretty convinced that “After Earth” was going to be another “I Am Legend” debacle for the otherwise-brilliant Will Smith. The trailer I saw today makes me think it might be worth watching.

I saw no sign of the U.S. military in the new “Wolverine” trailer, so hopefully they’re avoiding that whole can of worms (I almost walked out of the last one). Another maybe.

“Hunger Games” looks as moronic as ever. No thanks.

“The Lone Ranger” looks not-quite-as-awful-as-I-thought. Not “Starsky and Hutch” movie bad. Still nothing I have any interest in seeing. Too bad they won’t make a REAL Lone Ranger movie.

Now, for Iron Man:

I really liked it. I had a couple of quibbles with statements made (e.g., they talked science in the movie for literally about five seconds, and still screwed it up), but it’s still very low on my Hollywood quibblemeter. I went in prepared to HATE Kingsley as “The Mandarin” (I don’t know anything about this particular Marvel character), but the direction they took it actually surprised me. Well done.

My new hometown gets a quick shout-out. 🙂

The action sequences were excellent (Downey brings in a little of his Wing Chun), as was the dialogue.

The ending of the movie does worry me a bit, though–there’s a montage of images from all three movies, and the Marvel “credits surprise” revealed nothing about future movies. All-in-all, it felt like it was done to wrap up the Iron Man character, which would be unfortunate.

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The Evil Dead (2013)

You may all thank me; I have gone to see “The Evil Dead” so that you don’t have to.

But first, my Hollywood Crap assessment:

A movie poster was up for “The Lone Ranger”. Before you go walking too far down the thought-path of Hollywood possibly having made a watchable movie, you should know that the role of Tonto will be played by Johnny Depp. Who will be wearing a dead bird on his head. I feel that this movie may safely be added to the ever-growing pile of cinematic feces which I will never see.

Along that line, trailers were shown for two other movies, “You’re Next” and “Carrie”, which clearly demonstrate that Hollywood has still not managed to find a single creative writer, but that they have moved into full Christian-attacking mode. *gag*

As for the feature, well, the title was warning. But I decided to give it a try because, well, the original “The Evil Dead” sucked. It was a college film project, and I don’t know anyone who thought it was a great movie. The power of the Evil Dead series lies in the later movies–“The Evil Dead 2” and “Army of Darkness”. The title was a warning because “2” wasn’t a sequel, but a re-make; someone who really appreciated the franchise would have called this movie “The Evil Dead 3”–or better, have made “Army of Darkness 2”.

Instead, they re-created the original without any of the things that made the later movies successful. There was no camp or dark humor in this movie; just bad acting and an over-reliance on violence and gore. Gone was the implied horror; instead of having someone dragged into the darkness and leaving the viewer to imagine what was making those awful noises, every moment of every attack is shown in disgusting detail.

But the worst is that the mythology has changed. The Evil Dead series has always centered around the Necronomicon, placing it, however inexpertly, in the realm of the Cthulhu Mythos (this has been one of its biggest appeals to me). This new movie, however, has “the Evil Book”, which is quite clearly Satanic in nature (and I think as much homage is played to the cinematic adaptation of “The Exorcist” in this movie, as is paid to the original “The Evil Dead”).

This is a lazy, unintelligent “re-make” (of a re-make). I can’t recommend it to anyone.

Socialist Oligarchy

Someone on Twitter told me that part of my tag line, “socialist oligarchy”, was a dichotomy of terms. My immediate response was that that was an untrue statement, according to every socialist government which had ever existed.

But it is actually deeper than that: property is THE fundamental human right. What you have built, what you have worked for, naturally belongs to you, until you choose otherwise. To think differently is so evil, so alien, that it MUST be forced on people for it ever to be enacted.

No matter how many pseudo-intellectual academics swoon over the sophistry used to pitch socialism, it never happens until an “elite” have the legislative, military and judicial power to say “You have no right to own what you have made yourself. We are taking it for ourselves, to be handed out at our discretion, to buy votes to keep us in power. We now own you.”

The Marriage Agenda and Fear

So, now apparently the idea is to post pictures on the Facebook accounts of anyone who supports REAL marriage, accusing them of being “afraid”.

Never mind the big post I made yesterday explaining my position; ignore it, I can only be objecting out of “fear” (a la Michael Moore’s ‘Bowling for Columbine’). A variation of the more-often-used charge of ‘racism’.

So be it. I am afraid. I am as afraid of this attack on the First Amendment protection of religious establishments as I am of attacks on freedom of speech, the right to bear arms, and every other freedom we as Americans have secured in our Constitution.

Because I swore an oath to defend that Constitution from all enemies, foreign and domestic. And the observable increase, both in frequency and ferocity of these attacks, means that I am failing in that oath.

It doesn’t matter if people make these attacks out of ignorance of the Constitution, disregard for their consequences, or a willing desire to establish a totalitarian American regime. The end is the same.

If you believe that my fear to see that end for the United States, to fail in my oath, makes me a bad person, then so be it. I will accept your comments about “fear” and “racism” and “bigotry”. But I will continue to make rational arguments to support true freedom and the US Constitution, until they are safe or I am no longer able.

Of Nuns and Feminism

Covering the Vatican elections, CBS news this morning had a spot with a guest referred to as “the Rebel Nun” (I could only watch it intermittently). One statement that she made was “feminism is the radical idea that men and women are equal.” Not only is this statement incorrect, it is every bit as erroneous and mis-informed as my favorite pseudo-liberal quip, “One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.”

In this case, the idea that men and women are equal is actually a modern concept referred to as “Women’s Liberation.” “Feminism” is about irreconcilable inequality: it is the post-modern idea that women and men have a necessarily unequal, and necessarily adversarial, relationship. That any woman who is not actively working to undermine or destroy anything associated with “maleness” (including marriage and families, which require both men and women for their existence), is actively working to enslave women into the bondage of men.

Like all post-modern movements, it is by definition irrational, being based on rejection of the modern values of intelligence and reason.

Why Rove is Wrong

Karl Rove, et al., recently announced the formation of the so-called “Conservative Victory Fund”, with the stated goal of “helping the most conservative candidate who can win.” There has been a lot of debate on whether this is an anti-Tea Party group (it is), or whether it’s just a protection fund for establishment Republicans (a.k.a., “RINO’s”. It is.). Interesting points have also been made about poisoning the voter-well via the necessary infighting that will arise from such a group.
But here is the real reason that this group should be discouraged: because, by supporting “the most conservative candidate that can win”, they are substantively moving away from conservatism at all. Their goal is to win the votes of pseudo-liberals by promoting candidates with more psuedo-liberal ideas, rather than by promoting conservative ideas to make conservative candidates more appealing to the population at large. This means that, in every election cycle, the electorate will become increasingly pseudo-liberal by definition, and the candidates put forward will have to become more pseudo-liberal to appeal to them. Rove and his group are putting the idea of possible Republican Party victories above the values for which the Republican Party is supposed to exist.
The correct answer to America’s political and economic crises is neither lobbying groups (although they can work in the short term), nor this constant collapse of resistance to the pseudo-liberal ideological tyranny. The answer is, and always has been, the voters. American conservatives—hopefully by re-taking the Republican Party, but without them if we must—have to re-introduce the rest of the electorate to the value of human life. Uniting the Tea Party for fiscal conservatism is all well and good, but without a philosophical basis, “fiscal conservatism” is too easy to brand as “lack of compassion”. The message must be sent that the value of the individual is in the individual, and not in the State. We need to start acquiring media outlets to counter the vast pseudo-liberal movement in Hollywood and other places.
The bottom line is this: if we are truly concerned with the direction that our nation is going, rather than simply which team we are cheering for, then we should not be spending more money to elect LESS-conservative candidates. We should be spending money to educate the voters about conservative ideas.

Poème du Jour de Saint-Valentin Pour l’Ange Sauvage

I saw a Spirit soaring free,
And prayed it might alight near me.

“Oh, Valkyrie, where goest thou,
With fey war-paint upon thy brow?”

She said two words as she flew past,
And I knew my heart was caught at last–
The Wild Angel held it fast.

Qi Gong Continues to be Validated

A new study by the University of Texas finds that qi gong significantly improves quality-of-life of cancer patients over a control group. As a long-time martial arts practitioner, I have encountered the martial aspects of qi gong first-hand, and one of my great pet peeves is people–whether physicians, martial artists, or whoever–who dismiss it simply because they can’t quantify it.

Now, this is a very limited study, so it would be improper to generalize these findings for clinical prescriptions, just as the article said. However, it is a legitimate study of actual qi gong, which is rare in this field. Good science does not begin with a perspective of “I don’t believe in this, so I will ignore it or treat it stupidly.” Good science treats every study seriously, and sees where it leads.

Take My Rights, Please!

Wendy Button has written an op-ed piece for the New York Times asking the Federal Government to repeal the Second Amendment. Because like, one time, she was totally in danger, but, like, the police saved her, and she totally suffers from depression, so if she had a gun, she’d kill herself. And, like, lots of people have depression. So the government should absolutely take away the right to own a gun–she can’t just be responsible for not buying something she doesn’t want, can she? So, everybody who obeys the law should have their guns taken away. Totally.

Personally, if we want to set the precedent of changing the Bill of Rights from inalienable to optional, I think that the nation would be better served taking away her First Amendment rights rather than her Second. That way, nobody would be depressed about how idiotic you can be and still get your op-ed published in the New York Times.