Extremely Depressing and Incredibly Painful

I am going to start this review with a lesson from my upcoming book “How to Make Movies that Don’t Suck”.  The lesson is this: no matter how good the story, acting, direction, filming, or editing is, if you make the movie about 9-11 then the biggest American tragedy of the 21st century is going to overwhelm the story and plot in a depressing gloom and actually annoy the hell out of your audience.  It’s like if you set out the world’s finest buffet table, with sushi, caviar, and all the best foods possible, set it out on a table covered with flowers, fine china, and a silk tablecloth, but then dead center put a big platter of dog feces.  No matter how good the food may be, the very fact that it sat on a table with dog crap is going to put a lot of people off even touching it.  Furthermore, when someone looks at your beautiful buffet their eyes will be drawn to the crap in the middle and they will want to look away.  Some people might start on one end of the buffet and not notice the dog crap until halfway through, but as soon as they see it the food they have collected will end up left untouched on the credenza, while others will have been chased from the room by the smell wafting through the air alone.

Thus we come to Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, a movie about a troubled kid dealing with his dad dying on 9-11.  I am not actually saying that this movie is the greatest buffet of all time except for the dog crap salad at the center.  It has plenty of other issues, most related to pacing, but I can see what director Stephen Daldry (The Hours, Billy Elliot, The Reader) was trying to accomplish.  However, it does have elements that in a movie without the dog crap centerpiece would have made for an excellent cinema experience.

The funny thing is at first I thought this movie was treating 9-11 as a main issue without forcing the audience to sit through it, to it’s benefit.  The death of the father was related via expository scenes rather than footage of the Twin Towers falling.  However, as the movie progresses through a never ending Vortex of Flashbacks we are subjected to everything from that day I never wanted to see or hear about again.  I don’t even want to talk about it here.  I watched all that stuff live on TV and still get the chills.

The story is basically As Good as it Gets meets Stand by Me set in the City of Lost Children.  Tom Hanks plays super dad to his highly intelligent but disturbed kid Oskar (no other real credits).  They play games and Tom’s character Thomas likes to give his son puzzles like a scavenger hunt to solve.  Thomas dies in one of the towers and the kid has a breakdown of sorts.  He finds a key in his dad’s possession and decides it must be part of the last game Thomas was setting up for him.  He blows off his mother (Sandra Bullock-she is excellent in this movie, BTW) in a big way and undergoes an OCD inspired quest to find what lock the key fits into.  Along the way he meets a ton of people, deals with his own phobias and issues, alienates his long suffering mother, and meets up with a creepy older man (Max von Sydow-Minority Report, Shutter Island, the Exorcist) who is mute and writes everything down on a piece of paper.  The plot plods on and on like me trying to push my ’79 T-Bird to the gas station, with lots of boring non productive scenes punctuated by temper tantrums from the kid.  The kid in a weird way describes a perfect character arc.  At the beginning of the movie I found him painfully annoying.  Towards the middle I kind of really got to like him and his eccentric ways.  Then towards the end I found him really annoying again.

The story is obviously about the character development in the kid, and in it’s own way does an admirable (if boring) job of portraying it.  The problem is the 9-11 basis for the story so overshadows everything else that you really couldn’t care.  I will say the story managed to not step in any other major quagmires.  While the ending was a little fanciful it did not really bend my mind accepting it.  The acting was very good, and the dialog decent.  If the story had been about about a kid dealing with his dad dying in a tragic Segway accident it would have been a decent, if slow, movie.

The stars.  Acting was decent all around, although in spite of getting top billing Tom Hanks was only in about 15 minutes of the film and more or less played a grown up version of Josh Baskin from Big.  I thought Sandra Bullock did a particularly good job.  Two stars.  For the most part I liked the characters, especially the mute old man.  One star.  The movie did what movies should at least try to do: actually have a character show some form of development (for most of you directors out there this phenomenon is called “character development”) and truly describe a true story arc.  One star.  Overall of a quality I wish more filmmakers would aspire to.  Two stars.  Total: six stars.

The black holes.  9-11 based story.  Two black holes.  The story kept coming back to 9-11.  One black hole.  Pacing felt like my mother was driving the movie.  Sluggish and boring.  One black hole.  Total: four black holes.

So a total of two stars.  I honestly did not want to see this film when I saw the trailers, and only “professional” obligations got me into the theater.  Now that I have seen it I know I was right in that assessment.  If you think enough time has passed and you are not disturbed by images and stories set on 9-11 then by all means go see it.  You will probably enjoy it, but you won’t be invited to any of the wild parties I throw on a regular basis (the last one was in 1998, I think.  Party like a Vulcan image courtesy of the Spock T Shirt category).  I think the acting will carry this movie if you can ignore the subject matter.  The kid is talented, and Tom Hangs and Sandra Bullock have a good chemistry together (I thought so when I reviewed Larry Crowne).  However, overall the entire movie was pretty much a bummer.

Thanks for reading, as always.  Follow me on Twitter @NerdKungFu.  Nothing really on deck until Friday, so I think I will take a break and let Jason post more of his short rants.  Talk to you soon.

Dave

So after I read Dave’s review for Tree of Life months ago I went and saw it to see if he was right on how bad it was.  It totally sucked.  I’ve seen YouTube videos that had better plots and stories.  How can the morons at the academy give a Best Director nomination on a film that was a random pile of weird footage?  Dave’s probably smarter on movies than I am and he couldn’t figure out what the damned point was.

This is a pretty good sign that the academy is chock full of pretentious a-holes who use their position to try to prove to the rest of Hollywood that they are smarter than they really are.  The question on my mind is if this is so why do they bother with such blue collar awards like best special effects?  Shouldn’t they be focused on which movie had the best caviar at the catering trucks?  If Tree of Life actually wins either of these awards I am going to set up a camera at the dog park near my house and submit whatever random footage I get as the animal movie of the year.

By the way, I don’t think Starfleet Academy is full of pretentious a-holes.  This shirt from the Star Trek T-Shirts category was the only image I could find with the word academy on it.

Jason

Decent movie, but don’t see this if you actually love horses.

This movie was actually better than I expected.  Sure, it’s Spielberg, but I had just been disappointed with Tintin and as masterful a storyteller as he is, he has a tendency to let his story dip into the sappy zone and hover there, like in E.T.  However, while the sap was there (lots of young boys snuggling horses) the story, after a sluggish start, really drew you in.

Spielberg appears to be using this production as a tool to show the horror of WWI like he did with Saving Private Ryan.  However, in spite of a much more terrible war (WWI was way more brutal than WWII.  WWI is why they created war crimes) it does not come even close to how well Private Ryan did.  The blame for this I put firmly on the PG-13 rating Spielberg bends bars to maintain.  I am not one of those guys who feels the need for gore and blood in everything, but the impact of a battle scene loses something when nothing brutal is shown.  Guys get shot and just fall to the ground.  One of the main characters gets caught in a gas attack and in the next scene, instead of showing him lying in a cot coughing himself to death (mustard gas) he has a bandage over his eyes.  There was none of the horrific desperate attempts to hold your own entrails in, or guys getting their limbs blown off.  It was almost sanitized, like a video game, and that sensitization kind of washes away a lot of the impact.

However, as kind as Spielberg was to his human characters he makes it up in his treatment of the horses.  Through a series of really good puppets and camera work with very little CGI he shows all kinds of horrible things happening to horses.  To be honest it was more than a little stomach turning, and I had to look away during a couple scenes.  A horse is a noble creature, and should not be shown in extreme pain and horrible situations.  I can’t actually call anything that happened animal cruelty, as none if it was malicious or intentional, but just really hard to watch.  This goes out to my horse loving friend Lauren in particular.  Don’t see this if you have a love of horses.

Anyway, the movie, with a few spoilers.  It follows the life of Joey, a thoroughbred horse born on a Scottish farm prior to WWI.  His birth is witnessed by young Albert Narracott (Jeremy Irvine-no other film roles), who takes an instant bond with him.  The horse goes up for auction and Alby’s drunken father Ted (Peter Mullan-Trainspotting, My Name is Joe, Boy A) makes the mistake of buying him for a very large amount.  This is going to cause them to lose the farm, literally, unless Alby can train Joey to pull a plow and can then plow the most rock filled field in all of Scotland.  He does so and all seems well until the crop is ruined from a storm.  Ted is forced to sell Joey to a cavalry officer (Tom Hiddleston-Loki from Thor, Midnight in Paris, Conspiracy), who takes him to France where he learns what happens when sword wielding cavalry charges machine guns.  Joey is captured by the Germans and put to use hauling ambulances.  He then goes through a long series of owner changing, from two German deserters, a French jam maker and his granddaughter, and a German artillery officer who seems to relish putting down injured horses.  He finally breaks free in a panic and runs out into No Man’s Land and gets caught up in the one scene I had the hardest time watching.  He gets rescued by a Scottish corporal with the help of a German infantryman (a love of horses supersedes the need to kill each other) and is eventually reunited with Alby, who apparently joined the infantry while all this was going on.  Some other drama goes on before the end.

The stars.  Decent if sappy story.  One star.  Amazing camera work and visuals.  Two stars.  While not graphic enough to really impact, the fighting did illustrate a lot of the horror of WWI.  One star.  The uniforms and equipment seemed correct, including the German spiked Kaiser helmets, and the entire film was very well within period.  One star.  This is something only a treadhead would appreciated, but they actually did show a rhomboid tank (I think it was a MkV Heavy, but they didn’t really show it off entirely).  I don’t know if they found a functional unit (there are a few in the world) or just built a replica, but really cool.  One star.  The horse handling, puppets and special effects were stunning.  One star.  I don’t want to get into it too much, but this movie did manage to draw out an emotional response from me.  One star.  Overall good movie.  Two stars.  Total: nine stars.

The black holes.  Stomach wrenching horse-in-pain scenes.  One black hole.  For the most part, all the characters seemed flat and uninteresting.  I don’t know if this was the writing or the fact there doesn’t actually seem to be a real protagonist.  The focal character changes every 15 minutes or so, never allowing you to connect with any of them, and Joey the horse does not show enough of a distinctive personality to really connect with.  For the most part he acts like a horse and a horse is a horse (of course, of course).  One black hole.  Each sub-character seemed to have a whole new sub plot that disappeared with that character.  One black hole.  What could have been a great R rated war movie got a PG-13 rating tied to its feet.  One black hole.  Total: four black holes.

So a grand total of five stars.  Decent movie in all regards, and well worth watching.  I will also say that the visuals are amazing, and if you don’t see it in a huge theater you will not get the full effect.  Go out and see it.  I don’t know how this would work as a date movie.  Sure, it has horses, but it also has a lot of other stuff that might turn a girl off.  She might respond well to the ending, but I personally don’t like to leave stuff like that to chance.

That’s it for now.  I have a freakishly busy weekend coming up (party, party, dinner with friends) and don’t know if I will get to see anything.  It might be Monday before I blog again.  (Party Like a Vulcan image courtesy of the Star Trek T Shirts).  Thanks again for reading.  Talk to you soon.

Dave

The warning stroke of the Star Trek franchise.

I can’t keep putting it off.  I promised I would do the entire series and am at the dross of Star Trek.  This is like dinner as a kid, when I would rush to eat all the delicious mac and cheese and be left staring at a bowl of steamed spinach and broccoli.  The fun is over.  Time to put the work in.

Ugh.  Where to begin.  I suppose I should just do what I have been doing so far and talk about what happened in 1994.  Tonya Harding went nuts.  Nelson Mandala became president of South Africa.  The US invades Haiti.  The Northridge earthquake hits LA (I slept through it).  OJ is arrested for the murder of his wife and her lover.  A Finnish ferry sinks, killing over 900.  NAFTA is signed.  Most of Montana burns up in a wildfire.  No one else in the US notices.  Java is released as a programming language.  The Channel Tunnel is dug.  Other movies included the Lion King, Forest Gump, Dumb and Dumber, the Mask, Clear and Present Danger, and Pulp Fiction.  Popular music included Beastie Boys, Snoop Dogg, Rod Stewart, Sting, Bon Jovi, Aerosmith, Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains, Rolling Stones, Celine Dion, Sheryl Crow, and Boys II Men.  Television was Law & Order, Ren & Stimpy, Beavis & Butthead, Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, Frasier, Star Trek DS9, and the great X-files (one day ask me about my Scully fantasies).

(Generations image courtesy of the Star Trek t shirt category)

While TV was doing OK, I think it pretty obvious that movies and music had both hit a slump.  Paramount needs another hit Star Trek film.  However, as the last one has more or less shown, the cast is well past their prime and not likely to appeal to the modern generation (haw!).  The obvious solution would be to create a Next Generation movie.  However, anti-movie producer Rick Berman failed to have enough faith in the TV show he produced for years to believe it could stand on it’s own, and like attaching water wings to a young (or severely disabled) child managed to convince the TOS stars with the least respect for their characters, Walter Koenig, James Doohan, and of course, Bill Shatner, to step in and make their TOS roles look even stupider.

So, the story.  A giant space ribbon is tearing ass across the galaxy and sucks up Captain Kirk or something.  Still not sure what happened there.  Later, Picard comes across Malcom McDowell (remember that really cool movie he did a while ago about a violent sociopath?  The movie with the great story that made sense and came from a book.  I’m talking about Tank Girl, of course), who wants to get sucked back into the Nexus (the name of the ribbon) again because for some mysterious reason that is like Heaven, where you can do or be anything you want (my plan is to become an erotic dancer named Destiny).  The only way he can do that is to attract the ribbon, and the only way to do that is to blow up a star with a populated planet around it.  Picard and his crew do what they can to stop him, but fail.

So Picard gets sucked into the Nexus, where he gets bored of Heaven pretty quick.  He runs into Guinan, still wearing the dumb hats, who explains that she is not really there but is a shadow and Picard can exit the Nexus anywhere he chooses, at any time he chooses.  So he wants to go back to stop Malcom, but needs help.  He recruits Captain Kirk, who was happy just chopping wood.  Together they get into the lamest geriatric fight action sequence of all time (think a less coherent Bum Fight).  Kirk dies, but Picard succeeds.  Then, Picard leaves Kirk’s body to the rats as he goes rushing off to more adventure.

That’s pretty much it.  I don’t want to get too deep into the what it had and didn’t have, although the value of what it didn’t have grossly outweighs what it did.  What is specifially didn’t have was Mr. Spock or Dr. McCoy.  Leonard Nimoy and DeForrest Kelley both either had too much integrity or they hired a third grader to read the script and let them know it was a steaming pile of crap.  Uhura managed to miss it too.  Sulu they only got by promoting him.

What the movie had was some massive, gaping plot holes you could fly the Enterprise through.  Let me go into a couple.

OK.  You are Captain Picard.  You are in the Nexus, and need to stop Malcolm McDowell.  You can come out at any point you wish.  Why would you pull an old man out of retirement and then appear 2 minutes before Malcolm launches his doomsday rocket?  Why would you not show up three days earlier on the bridge of the Enterprise and just throw his ass into the brig right then and there?  Or paste his little base from orbit?  Or transport to the surface with like 100,000 security guys?  How dumb are you, man?  He could have saved his brother’s life too

What the hell was Worf doing on the Enterprise?  Wasn’t he supposed to be on DS9?  And if he somehow transfered back, why was he still wearing his DS9 uniform, along with about half the crew?  Was the costume budget so small they had to recycle old uniforms from other shows?

So Malcolm is about to launch his death rocket.  According to Worf, it will impact the sun in something like 11 seconds.  Assuming, since everyone can breath on the planet, it is a class M world similar to earth, that means it is 8 light minutes from the sun.  This rocket would have to be able to do warp 46 to get there that fast.  Lazy writers piss me off.

Why didn’t Picard recruit like 100 people to help him?  For that matter, if time has no meaning in the Nexus why not enjoy a few million years of happiness and hair before dealing with the problems at home?

The planet’s ionosphere prevented the Enterprise’s sensor from detecting Picard?  How lame are these sensors?  This planet has an ionosphere.  Also, given that we can now read a credit card from space couldn’t you just have the computer visually look at most of the surface, searching for the distinctive reflection off Picard’s shiny pate? How about getting off your lazy, bearded ass (yes, Riker, you) and send down a couple shuttles to look around a bit?  I mean, it’s just the captain, right?  He’s not really critical to the operation of the ship.  No way he has broken a leg and is currently dying of thirst.

Why would Picard pick Kirk anyway?  It’s not like he needed Kirk’s years of experience.  He basically needed a red shirt to distract Malcolm and die while Picard saves the day, which is pretty much what Kirk did.  While I do find irony in Kirk finally going down like a red shirt, it still bugs me that Picard didn’t recruit some kind of young combat guy or something.

What was the point of Data and his emotion chip, other than to completely annoy and distract the audience from the rest of the plot?  Actually, now that I think about it, given the quality of the rest of the plot I don’t know if that was such a bad move.  Still, it sucked.

If after Picard failed the first time and he and Malcolm were both in the Nexus, what was to prevent Malcolm from going back in time and killing Picard as a child, then jumping back into the Nexus at the first point he encountered it?  For that matter, why didn’t he just fly up to it in a ship and shoot himself at it inside a photon torpedo?

Why did Picard leave Kirk, a galaxy wide hero known across Star Fleet, buried under a pile of rocks?  His ship was about to pick him up.  Are coffins so expensive in space?  How about a nice memorial and tomb for him?  I hope your final wish was to be eaten by alien worms on a forsaken planet, James.

What’s the deal with everyone in the universe being totally familiar with Tri-Lithium when it is an experimental compound the Romulans (not well known for sharing secrets) were experimenting with?  Also, if it is such a rare, exoctic material, why did they have to come up with such a common sounding name?  Lithium is pretty commonplace, and Tri-Lithium sounds like you just packed three of them together.  Why not a Romulan name?

Did any of you ever watch the TV series?  Apparently none of the movie producers did.  Remember when Picard had to change his pants after being given a 12,000 year old “curlin nescar” (I don’t know how it’s spelled) and has a whole speech about how priceless it was?  Well, why then would he drop it on the floor of his wrecked ready room and leave it for future archeologists after picking up his stupid photo album?  For that matter, why the hell was his photo album and curlin nescar (Curling NASCAR?  Maybe it had something to do with that weird Olympic sport where you sweep the ice combined with stock car racing) in the ready room and not his quarters?  Isn’t that where he is supposed to keep important personal items?

Actually, the list goes on and on.  The script was stupidly and lazily written, the TOS charactes were really out of place, Shatner’s overacting totally clashed with Picard’s Shakespearean training, Data acted completely out of character, and more or less the movie experience sucked.  Of course, was it the worst of the Star Trek movies?  Nope.  It was more the harbinger of more pain to come.

Follow me on Twitter @Nerdkungfu.  Thanks for reading.  Talk to you soon.

Dave

I admit I have been putting this off a bit, as this is the last of the “good” Star Trek movies.  After this the franchise stops circling the drain and finally goes down.  By no small coincidence it was directed by Nicholas Meyer, the man responsible for all the best Star Trek films.  They were pretty much done with the actors directing films by this point, although Nimoy did a decent job.  (The Undiscovered Country image courtesy of the Star Trek t shirt category)

I have fond memories of this film, and enjoyed seeing it.  However, this film really drove home the fact that instead of the young action figures I was used to seeing I was watching some older men kind of fumble around on the screen.  When James Doohan was the one to save the day at the end I knew the action days of the Star Trek crew were pretty much over (we’ll talk about Kirk fighting it out with Malcolm McDowell in Generations later).

What was happening in 1991?  Well, I was a sophomore in my second try at college.  I was grinding my way through the mechanical engineering program and hating it (I would later switch to Studio Art).  We attacked Iraqi forces in Kuwait in Operation Desert Storm (good thing we were done there and never had to go back.  Oh, wait…).  Iraq also agreed to eliminate all WMD’s and, as far as all evidence since has shown, complied.  Russia has its first free elections and votes in Boris Yeltsin.  A big fire in my home town of Oakland, CA burns thousands of houses.  The Prime Minister of India, Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandh, is assassinated.  South Africa adopts a new constitution that was multicultural.  The Balkan war started.  Mike Tyson was arrested and charged with rape.  The phrase “going postal” started up by a postal worker shooting up a bunch of people.  Freddie Mercury died of AIDS.  The Rodney King video tape is shown.  The Internet is opened to the public and has over 1 million computers on it (ha ha ha ha aha ha).  The first web browser is released.

Movies were kind of ok.  Good ones included T2: Judgement Day, Silence of the Lambs, Backdraft, Father of the Bride, and Thelma and Louise.  Less good ones include Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves, Hook, the Addams Family, Beethoven, Beauty and the Beast, and the Naked Gun 2 1/2: the Smell of Fear.  Popular music included Pearl Jam, Brian Addams, Phil Collins, Guns ‘n Roses, Metallica, Gloria Estephan, R.E.M., U2, Van Halen, the Clash, Garth Brooks, and Nirvana.

So, the Undiscovered Country.  The Klingon moon Praxis (by the way, there is a series of books called Dread Empires Fall that talks about the Praxis as a philosophy.  Great science fiction, especially if you like space battles that actually take most real physics into account) blows up and more or less wrecks the Klingon Empire.  They sue for peace and send Kirk to transport the Klingon ambassador even though it is known that he hates the Klingons for killing his son David, who he knew for all of 2 weeks or so.  Kirk is framed for killing the guy, and surrenders to the Klingons.  He and McCoy are convicted and sentenced to a prison gulag.  Some prison stuff happens, including an attempted escape with the help of a shapeshifter who really plans to kill them.  Spock beams them out after he discovers what really happened.  They find two assassins dead but trick their accomplice to reveal herself.  Turns out it was Samantha from Sex and the City.  Anyway, a bunch of Klingon, Romulan, and Federation officers are working together in a conspiracy to prevent the treaty that would allow them all to work together(?).  The crew finds the cloaked Bird of Prey that did the original attack and blow it up.  They all beam down to the conference and save the presidents life.

What it had:

The full crew.  Captain Sulu.  Captain Spock.  Captain Scott(?  I guess all the S names got promoted).  Some cool space battles.  A decently complicated plot that didn’t drive me berserk.  Some decent humor.  An illustration of the bonds of friendship between the crew that was organic and not shoved down our pie holes in the form of an awkward dumb speech made around a campfire.  A dumb cameo by Christian Slater.  Super hot Imam as the shape shifter.  A shockingly large number of minor continuity failures. A generally good movie experience.

What it didn’t have:

Sulu on the bridge with the rest of the crew.  That’s pretty much it.  I can’t think of a lot from this one.

So a very positive experience, especially given the dross we were forced to watch in the last one.  Unfortunately this would be the last positive Star Trek film experience, pretty much for ever (and don’t give me any crap about the J.J. Abrams movie.  If you are really a Star Trek fan than you know it’s garbage).  I warn you now that the following retrospectives, starting with (de)Generations, are going to take a much darker and bitter tone so if you feel you need positivity in your life you might want to skip them.  It’ll be a couple more posts before I get to it, especially since I am about to go see Friends with Benifits and expect it to burn up my bile reserves pretty easily.

…Or, Transforming a Franchise that Sucks into Something Moderately Tolerable

Do any of you remember a couple weeks ago when I reviewed Super 8 and said the train explosion was so big it would have embarrassed Micheal Bay?  I rescind that statement.  There isn’t an explosion big enough for Micheal Bay.  If he could figure out a way to have an explosion explode he would.  I am totally convinced that if he weren’t a movie director he would be a serial arsonist.

Before I get into this review, let me reiterate this point.  In Transformers Dark of the Moon EVERYTHING blows up.  A snake like Decepticon punches through a corrugated steel warehouse wall.  The wall blows up.  An Autobot punches a concrete wall.  The concrete blows up.  A ship filled with giant robots who have no need whatsoever for any kind of atmosphere crashes on the airless moon and in spite of the fact that there is no oxygen present and never will be still manages to blow up in flames.  In the world in Micheal Bays head everything is made of plastique, TNT, and nitroglycerin.

Anyway, the movie.  Was it better than Revenge of the Fallen?  Yes, but that is like asking if losing one testicle in a tragic lawn mower accident is better than two.  Better does not equal good.  Is it exciting and fun?  Yeah, kinda.  Are there any problems?  Oh, yeah.

The major problem the movie suffers from is the same problem the other two suffer from: too much of the humans and not enough of the Transformers.  In my mind the scenes with humans are like the “acting” scenes that clutters up otherwise perfectly good porn.  You are there for one thing.  I liken the scenes like Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf) getting bitched out by his parents for not having a job to the scene expositions you get in video games while the next stage is loading.  It can be good if you are into the story, but if not it’s a great chance to use the restroom, get a snack, and return some phone calls.  This movie actually has a little more Autobot character development, but like another 30 minutes of goofy Sam-trying-to-make-his-way-in-the-world crap.

Speaking of annoying humans, Megan Fox completely flushed her own career by bitching out Michael Bay and has been replaced by the slightly less hot (I really do like brunettes) but less slutty Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, who plays Sam’s love interest.  It first I thought she was a slightly better actor, but then I realized I was being sucked in by her English accent.  The sad fact that anyone with an English non-Cockney accent always sounds better in movies than an American.  As the movie progressed I thought she might actually be another human form Transformer like in the last movie, as she had a really robotic delivery.  Also, her character and motivations to do anything (especially date a whiny loser like Sam Witwicky) are horribly two dimensional, and Micheal Bay might as well be shooting porn with the inventive ways he finds to linger on her body in every scene.  I will be the first to admit a little eye candy can add a lot to a movie, but it seems pretty obvious to me that if Micheal Bay were not a movie director or serial arsonist he would be a stalker with a laundry list of restraining orders against him.

Anyway, the story, for lack of a better term.  I won’t throw in too many spoilers, but this plot (ah ha ha ha) is so dumb you won’t miss much.  Autobots have joined the CIA and are doing covert missions for the USA, or as covert as a 100 foot robot painted bright yellow or red can be.  Sam has graduated college and is such a spazmo he can’t find a job (here’s a tip, kids.  If you are going to a job interview with a major corporation wearing jeans and a sports coat is a bad idea, even when the job market was good).  Somehow he has the hottest girl on the planet in love with him who not only gives him sex but pays all his bills.  Over the last couple years of collage he did a transformation of his own, from a kind of cool kid with a cool car into a uptight, whiny bitch with a self important attitude and a tendency to occasionally turn into a loud mouth jerk who thinks yelling will do more than calling ahead.  He discovers that the only job an Ivy League graduate can get is in the mail room of an accounting firm (I guess he should have done more internships) in the worst go nowhere sub plot in cinima history.  In the second worst go nowhere sub plot in cinema history a fellow coworker (Ken Jeong, Mr. Chow from The Hangover) stalks him and passes on some crotch notes (no joke) about humans being killed all over the world in a homophobic scene that just drags on forever.  Anyway, turns out an Autobot ship crashed on the moon and the government knew about it all along.  They go to the moon and find Sentinel Prime (voiced by the great Leanard Nimoy.  Spock image courtesy of the Star Trek T Shirts category), Optimus’s predecessor.  Robot battle hijinks ensues.  Most of the world blows up.  Sam’s super hot girlfriend manages to avoid the advances of her boss after he gives her a $200,000 car (isn’t love grand?).  Between the Autobots, Decepticons, and human military about 14 of the all time worst battle plans are devised.

The stars.  Transformers.  One star.  Leonard Nimoy as Sentinel Prime.  One star.  Lots of action (the final battle seems to go for like an hour).  Two stars.  The action is generally great.  Two stars.  Great special effects and CGI.  Two stars.  Super hot girl on screen.  One star.  Alan Tudyk (Wash from Firefly) as Dutch.  One star.  Megatron comes back from the dead a third time, looking cooler than ever.  One star.  Two of my favorite Transformers, Shockwave and Soundwave, show up, although only Shockwave gets what I consider a fair treatment.  One star.  As worthless as his sub plot was, I always enjoy seeing John Malcovich.  One star.  They didn’t pull back on the killing Transformers (or, for that matter, civilian humans) although as per usual none of the main good guys died.  One star.  One decent plot twist.  One star.  Buzz Aldrin makes a cameo.  One star.  Total: 16 stars.

Now the black holes.  Agent Simmons is back, and twice as annoying as he ever was before.  One black hole.  A whole slew of unnecessary and ultimately worthless sub plots and minor characters.  One black hole.  I will award one black hole for every ten minutes I feel the audience was subjected to of worthless human interaction (cough cough filler cough cough).  Three black holes.  Alan Tudyks fake German accent and dialog made me want to stuff Junior Mints into my ears until I could either hear nothing or suffered a debilitating brain aneurysm.  He really isn’t great as a straight man.  One black hole.  More small (even smaller) really annoying comic relief Autobots who may or may not be based on racist stereotypes.  Two black holes (one each).  As much as I love explosions, I have to award a hole for overuse of pyrotechnics (you know, there are some circumstances where a robot can punch something and not have it blow up).  One black hole.  Optimus Prime is less the wise sage and more the bloodthirsty jingoist, and at one point has a little hissy fit and sulks.  One black hole.  Plot holes you could transport Cybertron through (wouldn’t transporting another planet into orbit around our planet more or less destroy both planets?  Why say the Autobots have no way of getting off the planet when just a few minutes ago they flew one of their own ships to the moon and found an even bigger ship?  If the Decepticons have been working with humans secretly for decades why did they do nothing to help Megatron the last two times he tried to take over the planet and kill the Autobots?  Could they really anticipate him coming back to life three times?  If every Autobot is equipped with super advanced rockets and can assault with speed why do they need a human team to sneak in and shoot the big bad thing with a lame human rocket launcher?  The list goes on).  One black hole.  They did that thing that annoyed me so much in Battle: LA where the aliens (or in this case, robots) are unstoppable killing machines at the start but by the end of the film are getting knocked over by human spitballs and bad breath (seriously, a few special forces guys were killing them off left and right.  If their plan was to conquer the planet it would seem a well equipped army could really put a hurt in their plans.  Also, why is it they can shoot down aircraft with practiced ease but are unable to do anything about a few Tomahawk missiles?).  One black hole.  If there is one the we all learned from 9/11 it’s that buildings with breaks in the middle have little to no structural stability whatsoever.  Apparently Michael Bay and all of his writers have no idea how architecture works.  One black hole.  There is a decided lack of concern for Sam or his girlfriend, as it is painfully obvious that nothing bad is really going to ever happen to them.  This sort of action-without-consequences writing really robs the action of any of it’s punch.  I would be more excited by a less epic building collapse if I believed that there was a chance someone important or that I had identified with could die.  One black hole.  Total: 14 black holes.

In the irksome-but-not-black-hole-worth category I have quite a few.  The main one has to do with the treatment of the Decepticon characters.  One of the great things about the Transformers cartoon was it really was about the Transformers, not the Autobots with the Decepticons as only their enemies.  I mean, each of the Decepticons had a distinct personality that was presented almost as much as the Autobots.  Megatron as the ruthless general, Starscream as the cowardly and treacherous second-in-command, Soundwave as the loyal and worthwhile minion, etc.  In the movie not only is there no attempt to present any of the Decepticons as more than just spear carriers, they all even look exactly the same (silver and spikes are in this season) and are portrayed as growling, animalistic primitives.  Second, there was a pretty serious death that was never even mentioned by the good guys.  In fact, there was a scene that could have really impacted the audience and eliminated a lot of the action-without-consequences issues had Michale Bay had the balls to shock the audience, but he wimped out.  I’m trying to stay done bitching about 3D, but the 3D effects in this movie did not really add a lot IMO.  The sound track was pretty amateurish, with all the subtlety of a frying pan to the face.  Also, I should have given them a black hole for stupid title of the movie.  Dark of the Moon?  What the hell does that mean?  It’s not even acceptable grammar.  I guess they couldn’t call it Dark Side of the Moon without running into Pink Floyd, but if they had all it would have taken was a little money paid to the band.  Might have even helped solved some of the soundtrack issues.  Also, what is the deal with Transformers aging?  Do they really grow crusty beards and wrinkles as they age or were some of them built looking twice as old as the rest of them?  Finally, when did Sam’s chihuahua turn in to a St. Bernard?  I guess since his character had turned into such a girly man they felt he needed a more manly pet.  Either that or Michael Bay thinks we are all idiots.

So, a grand total of two stars.  At least they stayed positive.  Will you enjoy it when you see it?  Yes, probably.  The more you can turn off your thinking brain and just use the stem the more you will like it.  See it in 3D on the biggest screen you can find.  I just don’t see this thing doing much in repeat business.  By the way, there is supposed to be something after the credits, but after 157 minutes of mass explosions I had reached my sensory saturation point and bailed.  I’ll YouTube it in a month.

Now to the good stuff.  As important and groundbreaking as the Motion Picture was, ultimately it was really a horrible movie, and not just for Shatnar in a body stocking.  Overall it was as bad as the most mediocre Season 3 episode (cough cough Spock’s Brain cough cough), only with better special effects.  However, it opened the door for TWOK, and for that I will always be grateful.  (TWOK image courtesy of the sci fi t shirts category)

So, it’s now 1982.  Gene Roddenberry, after the mediocre production of the Motion Picture, was more or less forced out of the movie.  The great Nick Meyer was tapped to write and direct the film (this entire blog series, by the way, was inspired by an interview I heard with Nick Meyers on Geektime, Howard Stern’s nerd program on Sirius Satellite radio, where he talked about working on this and all the good Star Trek films (the even numbered ones.  2,4, and 6)).  He wrote the script in 12 days.  They worked on a shoe string budget, recycled miniatures and footage from the last film, and somehow produced brilliance.  TWOK set a record for first day box office gross (which I contributed to) and was the first movie to use a sequence entirely done with computer graphics (suck it, Lucas).

What was happening in 1982?  Well, I was in Jr High, the only two year period of my pre-collage education that didn’t resemble a year long water boarding experience.  Reagan was president, and in spite of my father’s (a lifelong Democrat) objections seemed to doing good stuff for the country.  All nine planets in our solar system aligned on the same side of the sun, and the longest lunar eclipse of the century occured yet in spite of mass doomsday predictions the planet did not blow up.  Our good friends to the north were made completely independent from England.  The Vietnam Memorial was dedicated.  Thriller by Michael Jackson became the biggest selling record of all time (I admit it.  I owned a copy).  The Commodore 64 was released.  And Argentina invades the Falklands Islands, sparking a minor war that was more or less treated like Monday Night Football by most Americans.

Overall, it could be called an ‘up” year, for lack of a better term.  The only real downer was the big Tylenol scare, which was like the lottery only the prize was death.  I think the cultural time was right for a movie that was, for lack of a better term, kind of a bummer.  I am man enough to admit that I cried like a little girl when Spock died, and even to this day I get a little teary when I think about it.  Sure, they stuck in that scene with his coffin on the Genesis planet (actually forced in by the studio over Nick Meyers and Leonard Nimoy’s strenuous objections).  Nimoy only agreed to come back if they gave him an epic death scene that would end his character forever (I guess money cured that problem for him).

I won’t waste our time going in to the story too much.  If you haven’t seen TWOK I don’t know what the hell you are even doing reading this blog.  Odds are you should be watching Paris Hilton’s rereprehensible reality show.  Khan Noonien Singh was dropped off on a planet by Kirk 15 years ago and then left to rot when the planet turned into a death world.  He captures a ship and proceeds to use it to wreak havoc in the universe and track down Kirk.  Stuff explodes.  Ships fight.  Spock dies heroically saving the ship, breaking my heart in the process.

I will say this about the story.  I am not unsympathetic to Khan.  No one really goes into it too much in the movie but Kirk royally screwed him and all his people.  One thing you can say about this movie is that everyone’s motivations are “as clear as an unmuddied lake.  As clear as an azure sky of deepest summer.”

Here’s what TWOK had:

The full cast.  A great story.  Khan Noonien Singh (I just like saying his name), played by the amazing Ricardo Montalban.  Decent low budget special effects.  A creepy creature that controls your brain from inside your ear.  A call back to a great TOS episode (Space Seed).  A non-Hollywood lame happy ending.  The great Kobayashi Maru test (which Kirk beat).  A great death scene. Kirks long lost son.  A cool constructive tool used as a weapon of mass destruction.  A computer animated scene.

Here’s what it did not have:

A lame excuse for Kirk to fight Khan face to face (they never actually meet).  Annoying new characters, like the now obligatory hot chick for sex appeal (there were a couple, but they didn’t annoy me).  Any hesitation to beat the hell out of the Enterprise.  Body stocking uniforms (I actually like the Star Fleet uniforms from this film a lot.  The best, IMO).  Unnecessary aliens (as any zombie movie will teach you, the worst enemies humans have will always be other humans).

The story is tight and clean, with no extra stuff crow-barred in except for the Spock body/Genesis planet at the end.  At the time (age 11, crying my eyes out, feeling like my best friend had just died and nothing on the planet was worth doing ever) I grabbed onto that scene like a drowning man grabbing a life saver, but with an adult eye and considering what would come to follow I think Nick Meyers was right and they should have let the scene stand alone.  They could have probably forced his resurrection without it, and it would have made for a better stand alone movie.

Honestly, for me Spock’s death was when the series more or less ended for the TOS crew.  Sure, there were some decent movies coming up, but the difference was this is where Spock (and to a lesser extent the rest of the crew) transformed from vibrant action stars and turned kind of into old men.  In the following movies Spock would have to be the intellectual backbone, and in my opinion never really recaptured the Spock I grew up with.  I’m sure there are those who will disagree with me, but that’s just my opinion.

Anyway, that’s the Wrath of Khan.  Next up, Star Trek caters to fan boys (like me) with the Search for Spock.

OK, you’ve set up the date, picked a movie, and are ready to watch the movie with your amour.  The question that arises is if and when to put one arm around the girl.

This is really a puzzler, to be honest.  Given the fact that you are on hopefully your 3rd, 4th, or 5th date (by the way, never try to make movie night your first or second date.  It will fail miserably, and if she suggests it it means she has the “let’s-be-friends” main gun locked and loaded) and she is willing to sit on a couch in a dimly lit (by candlelight or just the screen glare) room with you very strongly suggests she is comfortable enough with you to get a little closer.  However, don’t forget one of my earliest dating lessons: as much as women want to be in a relationship and this particular one may or may not like you, they are skittish on a level that makes deer look like sea turtles and are eagerly searching for an excuse to dump you and run.

That being said, it is also likely she expects some action and would be disappointed if you didn’t try something.  The first step is doing the old “arm around the shoulder” move.  How best to accomplish this?  And when is the best time?

In my experience, you want to get your arm around her before the movie even starts.  This establishes the tone (something I like to talk about in my movie reviews) of the evening from the get go.  The safest way to do it (you wimp) is to sit on the couch before she does with space on either side and put one arm up on the top of the couch.  She knows what you are doing and if she is into it will sit in the crook of your arm without hesitation.  Normally at that point you lower you arm gently (<–important) onto her shoulder.  Odds are you will both share some kind of meaningful look or something and start the movie. If she is not into it she will sit on the other side and you can start enjoying your new friendship.

If, on the other hand, she beat you to the couch, or you just brain fizzled or chickened out, and the movie starts without you accomplishing this otherwise trivial goal, you are in trouble.  If there is one thing girls hate on a date it’s the scent of awkwardness, and you are stuck hip deep in the awkward swamp.  Here are a few ways to get around it.

The yawn-yes, this is really, really dumb move straight out of Happy Days.  That’s why you don’t do it seriously.  You so over exaggerate it that it will be obvious that you are making a joke.  With luck she will laugh and let you proceed.

The creep-I don’t actually recommend this one, as it can be as creepy as it sounds.  This is where you try to casually work your arm over the top of the couch and over the course of a couple hours lower your arm onto her.  In addition to being kind of creepyish (think boa constrictor stalking it’s prey) it also looks extremely timid and ball-less.  However, if you could accurately be described as timid and ball-less, or you have pretty much run out of options, than roll with it.

The break-this is where you get up to use the restroom, and when you return you just slide your arm around her like it was there before.  This takes a little practice in order to make it look natural and not like a WWE move, but it can work very well.  Unfortunately it is also the technique most likely to get you kicked out or punched, so be sure you know what she is about before you go for it.

The ask-this is one I have had decent success with.  This is where, as the opening credits are rolling, you look at her in the eyes and say in your most sincere voice “Would you mind if I put my arm around you?”  Most women are touched by this.  Also, if they have been kind of waiting for you to do something it will be a relief for them to have you finally get it going.  This also works really well if you are dealing with a woman who would describe herself as a feminist.  She will appreciate the respect you are showing her (I guess.  Who knows what really motivates woman, anyway?)

Rather than try all of these in the course of one evening, I would suggest picking one main and one backup and making those your thing.  Pick the ones that seem to fit in with your personality and/or the personality of the girl you are dating.  Good luck, and remember that if she is with you alone she wants to be there with you.

So this week I have been cropping images of a ton of new Star Trek t shirts and was struck yesterday by how many good and bad movies that franchise has spawned.  By that I mean one great one, two mediocre ones, and a whole passel of garbage.  Anyway, while cropping the image for Star Trek Nemesis it occurred to me that it would be fun to have a retrospective on my feelings for all the Trek films in order and what significance they had in my life.  I think I will be starting that up tomorrow.  I will have more dating stuck in there too as well as a couple more movie reviews.  I don’t know if it will suck or not, but I will enjoy doing it.  Talk to you soon.

They say a picture is worth 1000 words, but if you are clever, it can actually be worth 1001-1010 as you glean little insights into the personality, sense of humor, fitness, motivations, and general suitableness of your prospective procreation partner.

Picture with a cat (or cats). If this is a guy, either he thinks this is really clever and funny or is something that rhymes with “Tin the Bloset”.  If the first he could be a great guy to date, but you will never ever know for sure which of the two he really is.  If this is a girl first of all go back and reread my “More than two cats” rule for dating women.  If she is shown with only one or two cats then you can explore further, but know that she has probably made her cats her substitute children in a way that will absolutely drive you nuts at some point.

Picture from high school. Unless this person is actually 18 years old, steer clear.  Either they have hit the wall so hard that they have broken through (with their face) into new, unexplored territories of ugliness and this is the last time they took a good photo, or they were one of those super popular kids in high school who now feels a desperate desire to go back in time to when they were cool again.  If they only included the high school pic in addition to some more recent ones then it is probably is the latter case, but even then you will soon become thoroughly sick of stories that all start with “This one time in high school…”  Take it from me (the bitter troll that I am), if you took the total sum of all your accomplishments, parties, and popularity you had in high school it has the value of a wad of used chewing gum at the bottom of an empty grande latte cup from Starbucks the day after you graduate.  Move on.

Girl in group shot with other girls cheek to cheek. This inevitably means sorority girl (or the junior college or GED equivalent).  It also generally means she likes to party and wont have a real problem sleeping with you.  If she does love to party go back and look at the guideline I did for “Love to Party.”  Otherwise, as long as you aren’t a hard core GDI you should be able to date her and have fun, although I would not be surprised if she turned out to be a little shallow.

Guy in group shot doing the “hang loose” symbol with one hand, beer in the other, and his tongue out trying to touch his chin. Frat boy.  I don’t know why it is, but every frat boy I have even known has a biological imperative to turn profile, do the hang loose (thumb and pinky extended to the max), and stick out his tongue whenever they are in a group and someone points a camera at them.  They all have hundreds of these photos and love to post them on profiles in an attempt to show you what kind of a fun party guy they are.  If fun for you is watching him get hammered every night at the sports bar down the street with his Greek friends, than by all means go for it.  Also, most of these guys have a hat on backwards.  Not sure I understand the motivation there.

Girl in group shot where she is the hottest one. This girl is kind of a user and also has some self esteem issues.  She will most likely only be friends with women she thinks are less attractive.  All things are relative, but usually they are pretty hot and extremely well groomed.  They also tend to be pretty shallow and a little overbearing.  Odds are she is looking for a guy to hold her purse while she shops, so if you feel like you have an overabundance of machismo go for it.

Girl in group shot where she is obviously NOT the hottest one. This can be two different kinds of women.  Either she is a fairly cool girl who is OK with her appearance or she is a walking, talking doormat.  The first one can be very cool to date as they are interesting and opinionated.  However, they also tend to do stuff like get sick of washing their hair and cut it all off with clippers.  The second girl as been thrown on so many grenades by her girlfriends that she will probably be remarkably easy to date.  However, you will constantly be attracted to her friends and there is a reasonably good chance one of them might fool around with you just to reassert who the Alpha female is in her circle of friends is, so dating her can lead to some serious drama in spite of the fact that she herself is low drama.  Both of these girls are pretty low maintenance, in my experience.

Guy in a football uniform. This is always a high school shot (guys who played football in college generally don’t have to go online to date) so all the things I said above about high school photos apply.  However, this is a special case.  This guy desperately wants the world to remember that at one point he was an athlete.  However, they inevitably have gained about 50 pounds since then and the closest they have come to participating in sports in trying to sink wadded up paper in a trash bin.  If he were still in shape he would have a current shot of himself playing volleyball or something.

Girl in a cheerleader uniform. This is the female version of the guy in a football uniform, with the added need to show you that at one point in her life she was hot enough to be a cheerleader.  The one difference is once in a while you can get a woman that shows herself as a college cheerleader too.  Everything I said about the football guy applies here, plus she is probably much higher maintenance to date than most women.

That’s it for today.  More on this tomorrow.  Yesterday’s question, second fiddle Riker verses the extremely lovable Chief Engineer Montgomary Scott, has caused me a lot of angst.  I really, really want to say Scotty would kick Rikers ass, being a real man and all, but I can’t help but think that Riker is taller with greater reach and seems better trained.  However, Scotty worked in an environment where violence was more common (he did throw the first punch in the Trouble with Tribbles) and probably has a lot more actual fighting experience, so I am going to make myself happy and go with him.  The problem is I don’t believe it enough to put money on it.  It would be a close one.  (Riker image courtesy of the Star Trek t shirts category).

For today I present something that seems really obvious until you think about the kinds of fights he has overcome with his brain: who would win, Batman versus Darth Vader?  Think about it for a while before answering.

By the way, if you like my writing and are looking for someone to write blog articles or other online content I am willing to do some contract work.  Check out some of my product descriptions on the commercial site.  Email me at david@nerdkungfu.com.

Yet more odeak translations.  I seem to have a never ending supply of these.

“Social drinker.” Unfortunately this is a suspiciously vague term.  It can easily mean someone who has a drink while out on a Friday night, or a glass of wine with a nice dinner.  The problem is no one is ever going to put “Alcoholic” in their profile and will usually default to this term, so it can also be a prelude to Leaving Las Vegas.  You will have to dig deeper.

“Love to party!” For a girl this is just what it says.  She gets bored easily and wants to hit a different club every night.  Expect all kinds of fun and exciting adventures of the “and then I wrapped my car around a tree” variety.  The good news is you will never have to have a serious discussion with her about your feelings.  The bad news is she will probably get bored of you pretty easily and run off with a guy with a better car.  For guys, this usually is a code word for alcoholic or drug addict.

“Love to dance!” Most women love to dance, so this is a bit of a catch phrase.  Honestly, don’t read too much into it, unless it is combined with “Love to Party” in which case there is a pretty good chance she is a stripper.  Most men hate dancing, so if a guy uses this it probably means he is kind of a phony and trying to impress women.  If he honestly likes dancing double check to make sure you aren’t actually in the “Men seeking Men” category.  If he is strait and claims this to be honest you are required to test it to the max by dragging him to every dance club within 20 miles to see if he has the stamina and can actually dance.

“Love sports.” If this is a woman, it is very likely she grew up with multiple older brothers and is kind of a tom boy.  This is great, but be aware that she is probably both willing and capable of kicking your ass.  This can also be the phony equivalent of a guy claiming to love dancing, so if you meet her and she seems kind of girly ask her if she knows how many points a touchdown is worth (6, for those of you who don’t actually follow sports).  If this is a man than this guy has burned out multiple women in his dating history by choosing sports over his relationship and is desperately hoping to meet a girl who will sit there quietly watching football with him and get him the occasional beer.

“Love to travel.” For both men and women this is the equivalent of a station identification.  It really means nothing.  Everyone loves to travel.  However, be aware that both men and women who travel by themselves or with one or two friends of the same gender are generally going to other countries to have casual sex with foreigners (or locals, depending on how you look at it).  I would find out what countries the person has traveled to with what people and compare it to this article on Dating Guys and Girls in Foreign Countries.  If a guy tells you he loves to visit Thailand or Brazil make him wear two condoms.  If a girl tells you France or Italy you do the same.

“Very sensual.” I’ve never seen a guy use this description, but this is usually code speak for women that means really horny.  This is great, but be aware that this is often a phrase used by prostitutes and people that want to spam you with sex site emails, so be aware.  Women can more or less assume all guys are really horny.

“Really into my work.” For women this can often be translated into “I work too many hours and am feeling frustrated by my personal life.  My biological clock is ticking away and in order to be a complete person I need to have a child as well as be wildly successful in my career.”  If you date her you can expect a lot of scheduling conflicts and hassles getting her alone, but when you do she will probably jump your bones.  If a guy uses this phrase he is probably married and looking for a mistress.  Expect a lot of booty calls.

“In graduate school working on my masters or PhD.” Find out what field.  If it’s business, law,  or something technical than cool.  If it is something in humanities than expect to have him or her never be gainfully employed.  Also, if this is a second or more post-graduate degree he or she is working on than odds are this person is a perpetual student and in addition to never getting a real job has probably never had a real job.

That’s it for today.  Tomorrow I will talk about specific jobs and careers on profiles and what they translate into.

Yesterday’s question, Sandmen versus Red Shirts, is a puzzler.  The fact is the Red Shirts are actually trained for combat, while the Sandmen are trained to hunt down single people running away with a red crystal flashing on the palm of their hand.  However, Red Shirts are the Three Stooges of combat, and tend to die with alarming regularity.  I will have to bet on the Sandmen.  (Red Shirt image courtesy of the Star Trek Red t shirt category).

Today I will shift from Star Trek and ask what would happen if a squad of Sandmen went against half a squad of Stormtroopers from Star Wars.  Who would win?