All I Can Stands

Conditions: Chaotic

Bang, Pow, Right To The Moon

I’ve written before about this idiotic idea to send a bunch of people off to Mars to die, and I assumed that it would just fizzle out and that would be the end of it. But no, the whole thing is still inexplicably on, and there's an interview with one of the female contestants, who is married. And he ain’t coming.

"He once told me he'd love me to the ends of the Earth and beyond, no matter what. We didn't anticipate that the 'what' would be going to another planet."

Stanford, meanwhile, refers back to their marriage vows.

"Contemplating a life without your life partner is a daunting thing, but then I went back and re-read the marriage vows looking for an out-clause - and there was no asterisk," he says.

"I promised to support her in whatever adventures we chose - we actually explicitly said that our lives would be an 'adventure' - and this is what she has chosen as her life's goal."

- bbc.com

Well I read this and I think “marriage problems”. These two aren’t getting along, and so she’s decided to ...go off and die on Mars. That seems kind of an extreme alternative to a simple divorce or trial separation. What amazes me, truly amazes me, is that everyone seems so supportive. Oh yes, isn’t she great, isn’t she wonderful. She’s going to get cancer and die in a tent on Mars. Doesn’t anyone care? These are the people who should be taken off the streets and locked into padded rooms, for their own protection. Instead they think they’re some kind of human ambassador. Those reality TV execs sure can pick ‘em.



Film Review: The Expendables 3

You know, the only actor who gets out of this with any credibility is Mel Gibson. He is able to play menace so well that you could almost believe he’s not really acting. And that, after the shooting is done for the day, he’s busy cutting Sylvester Stallone’s brake lines. Amazing, I know. But apart from Mel intimidating the hell out of both the audience and rest of the cast, there’s really not much to the 3rd movie in this franchise.

And it really has devolved into a franchise at this point. The plots are all the same, the character beats are all the same. And the little things dropped in to try and shake things up are all depressingly familiar and old hat. It’s another revenge mission, with a twist, again. Barney reacts to the amazingly reasonable event of one of his team getting shot on a mission by dumping his entire team and then hiring younger versions. Given the name of the team, how obsessed they all are with death, and the not unimportant fact that they’re constantly having millions of bullets fired at them, it’s a little difficult to understand what all the hubbub's about. Of course the new ones all get captured by Mel, so the old team gets back together for yet another last big action sequence. Meh.

The only thing I learned from this movie is that Harrison Ford is starting to stoop in his old age. That’s kind of sad. Look, the first film was kind of interesting, they all seemed to be taking it seriously. But since then it’s fallen into a bunch of jokes and cameos. I know what the point of all this is: we are literally watching these guys cash in on what’s left of their names. We’re just not getting enough in the exchange. Also there’s an astonishing lack of actual death in these movies given how tough everyone seemingly is. It’s all just far too tame to care about. One blank stare out of five.



- Peace out