INSTANT MOVIE REVIEW: BAD BOYS 2 Jerry Bruckheimer must be stopped. He is a bad, bad man. Lest you think I exaggerate, consider this string of crimes against our culture: “Armageddon,” “Pearl Harbor,” “Gone in 60 Seconds,” and “Coyote Ugly.” Yes, it’s true that he made “Top Gun,” which is generally considered one of the greatest movies of all time, but certainly the grace period for that isolated moment of genious has past. Besides, he negated “Top Gun” when he made “Days of Thunder,” which is also known as “Top Gun for Rednecks.” This time, Bruckheimer, and his evil minion Michael Bay have done it again, with “Bad Boys 2,” a loud, annoying and ridiculous monstrosity. Consider that in it, one person is butchered, a truck full of corpses is dumped on the highway and run over (one is decapitated. . . thanks Jerry!) and drugs are fished out of corpses in the morgue by Will Smith. All of this is in service of a plot which involves Smith and Martin Lawrence (our bad boys) fighting a slimy latin drug dealer who is importing Extacy into Miami. Whoop-de-do. I give it a 2 out of 10. Fuck you, Jerry Bruckheimer!
Archive for July, 2003
I was surfing the Minneapolis Public Library’s site today when I came upon this page, which gives the library’s stance on the Patriot Act. For those of you who don’t know, the USA Patriot Act is Attorney General John Ashcroft’s euphemistically named permission slip to investigate, among other things, what books people are checking out of the library. Without getting into the specifics on why the Patriot act is or is not a stupid idea, I just wanted to comment on how Republicans are wresting control of words and subverting them for their political agenda. What they are basically saying is that if you should have the gall to be against the Patriot Act, you are unpatriotic. Personally, this kind of politics of language reminds me of WWII fascist propaganda.
Why Microsoft sucks This is a quote from David Pogue’s review in the NYT of PPC2003: “Clearly, Microsoft still thinks about simplicity and directness only as an afterthought, if at all. (After my review of Pocket PC 2002 last year, a public-relations representative asked me, ‘What areas do you see for improvement – apart from, you know, that user-interface stuff?’)”
Follow this link to hear some tracks from the Bottom Line’s cd, Jain’s Addiction. This includes a solo by yours truly. Enjoy.