The NRA Can Eat a Bag of Dicks

The National Rifle Association has done a fine job of making a fool of itself since the Newtown massacre. Just the other day a new commercial hit the airwaves. It consists of simple visuals with a voiceover attacking President Obama. Here’s the text of the ad:

 

Are the President’s kids more important than yours? Then why is he skeptical about putting armed security in our schools, when his kids are protected by armed guards at their school? Mr. Obama demands the wealthy pay their fair share of taxes. But, he is just another elitist hypocrite when it comes to a fair share of security. Protection for their kids, and gun free zones for ours.

This ad hits some great notes. The tax language communicates to the right wing that this ad is for them, while calling the President an elitist is a classic frame used to attack liberalism. Finally, the NRA has been attacking gun free zones as part of the problem, arguing that if staff are allowed to be armed, school shootings would never occur (ridiculous). But it’s the main message of the ad that has set off so many alarms. Continue reading “The NRA Can Eat a Bag of Dicks”

Dredd

“Let’s finish this.” Really? Still, it’s good. Trust me.

Blink and you would have missed it. Dredd, written by Alex Garland and directed by Pete Travis, went in and out of movie theaters so quickly this fall that by the time I realized it had been released, it was already gone. Maybe it was a failure of marketing, maybe it was a lack of interest in the characters, maybe it was just fatigue after a summer filled with overwrought comic book adaptations which kept viewers away. And, it has to be said, maybe it was the hard ‘R’ rating the film earned. Whatever the reasons, one or a combination of all of these and more, Dredd was a flop. Which is too bad, because it was the best of the comic book films released this year, and one of the best comic book films I’ve ever seen. Continue reading “Dredd”

Which Guns Go?

This video points out some of the absurdity in proposed weapons bans in the aftermath of the Newtown massacre. The video’s creator is not in favor of weapons or magazine bans of any kind, it seems, and points out that at least one proposal, on magazine size, is functionally useless. Well then, he has made a very strong argument that soft measures are pointless, so it’s time to get draconian. Continue reading “Which Guns Go?”

Runaway Train

1985’s Runaway Train is a very unique film. It’s American made, filmed in the white wastes of Alaska, but in a blind taste test, cinephiles would swear it was a Russian film. The film stock, the cinematography, set designs, costumes, etc., all scream that the film was made on the other side of the Iron Curtain. That’s not by design, but a result of the film being helmed by Andrei Konchalovsky, who, until the 1980s, was a Soviet filmmaker. Continue reading “Runaway Train”

Punished Innocence

I wish I could write that I was shocked or surprised by the school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut. But I’m not. Anyone in this country who is surprised by a mass shooting hasn’t been paying much attention the last thirty years. Mass shootings, and the grief and death they bring with them, are a part of American life now, occurring with more frequency than the Super Bowl. So no, I’m not shocked or surprised. I’m disgusted. But as the days go by, I’m more and more horrified at shooter Adam Lanza’s choice of victims. I would like to pretend that all life has equal value, that a mass shooting at an elementary school would be no more tragic than at a factory or retirement home, but that’s just not the case. Not one of the child victims of this shooting was over the age of seven. Most were six. The beauty of youthful innocence is not in its lack of sin, but in its capacity for unpunished naiveté. The hard lessons of life have yet to be learned for most children the ages of the Newtown victims. We look at young children and can’t help but remember how blissfully unaware we were at that age of the cruelty with which we dance as adults. Continue reading “Punished Innocence”

Savages

SavagesTaylor Kitsch just had a bad year. He starred in three major release films. How can that possibly be bad? The three films were Battleship, John Carter, and Oliver Stone’s latest ham-fisted effort, Savages. Three films, three disappointments, and Mr. Kitsch has suddenly moved into Ryan Reynolds territory as the latest bankable star that turned out to be not so bankable. It isn’t all his fault, though. John Carter was doomed from the start, and Battleship was so awful, a cavalcade of thespians from the Royal Shakespeare Company couldn’t have saved it.

Which leads us to Savages.

Occasionally Oliver Stone gets an itch to make an over-the-top movie full of extreme violence and outrageous criminality. When that has happened in the past, he gave us Natural Born Killers and the screenplay to Scarface. This year it was Savages, adapted from the novel by Don Winslow, which tells the tale of a California airhead and the two drug dealers who love her. Continue reading “Savages”

Here We Go Again

Election day is upon us at last. The older I get, the shorter the years seem to get. Except for presidential elections. They just seem to keep getting longer, and longer, and longer...No matter. Hopefully, there will be a clear winner tonight, and I, along with the rest of the country, will get a bit of a breather before the politicians and the media begin gearing up for the 2014 midterms. How tragic that we have such a dynamic democracy, but it wears us down so much.

Like Super Tuesday, Missile Test will be updating live tonight, until the race is called, or I’m either too tired or too drunk to continue on. Continue reading “Here We Go Again”

Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers

Halloween III was a big bust. A successful horror franchise ditched its most marketable characters because series creators John Carpenter and Debra Hill were tired of the idea. I suppose it was a laudable decision from a creative standpoint, but if you’re going to ditch Michael Myers and Laurie Strode, perhaps the greatest on screen villain/scream queen pairing in Hollywood history, it’s probably a bad idea to name your new film like it’s a sequel. Carpenter and Hill learned the hard way that the Halloween brand was in its characters, not its name. Halloween III is not a bad movie. It’s just not a Halloween film. Continue reading “Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers”