Fast Five.

Hiding out in Rio (seems to be a theme this year) our bad guy anti-heroic heroes find themselves in desperate need of cash. Taking what was supposed to be a simple job stealing some cars leads Dominic and Brian into over two hours of nonstop betrayal, shoot-em-ups, surprises, best laid plans laid to waste, the biggest score of their lives, and chased by local cops, DEA, The Rock, and Rio's crime lord.

I was a little confused at what was going on. Part of it was that I had only seen the first Five movie many years ago. So I didn't get the references to the previous movies. The the car stealing on the train also had me very confused. Dominic, Brian, and Mia thought they were stealing the cars from some playboy millionaire, but they were in possession of the DEA, for whatever reason Mia takes off with a car and Brian and Dominic are betrayed by the guys hired to help them because they are being paid by Reyes. The DEA agents are killed by Reyes's goons and The Rock thinks it was Dominic and Brian.

I think I got it.

….

…..

…..

No, I'm still a bit lost.

Any-hoo. This movie did tend to drag on because a lot of concentration was put on coming up with plans of attack just to see them thrown out. From stealing the cars, to collating the money, to winning fast cars that weren't fast enough, to stealing cop cars, just to have The Rock bust in at the last second and then Reyes makes a mistake of attacking The Rock as he was leaving with Reyes's headaches.

If they had just cut the obstacle course bit and went straight to stealing the cop cars, this would probably have been worth watching at full price.

Instead matinee.

Sure was nice to see The Rock in a movie that didn't tank after five fast minutes.

It's all my fault.

I admit it. I'm the one responsible. ME! ME! ME!

Recently Blogger went down. I had something to do with it. I guess it's my tendency to write these posts two and three weeks in advance that screws with Google's servers.

Totally me and no one else. Am I going to learn a lesson from all this? OF COURSE NOT! I'm going to see if I can do it again.

Ravy 2011 Pg. 20.

Click Here.

My Mom also said to always have a clean pair of underwear. And I do. Usually in the glove box.

IPad in my hands.

Local Best Buy had some IPads on display. Tried it out for the first time. Took me awhile to figure things out. Like Angry Birds wasn't on it. The icon was there but it wouldn't start up. Being a desktop guy I'm used to scrolling down or grabbing the slider on the side of a page and pulling it down to make the page go up. Instead you have to slide you finger up to make a page go up. Zooming was difficult for me. Using my thumb and index finger and twisting my hand to do so was very uncomfortable. Using my index and middle fingers seemed to work best. While doing zooms there's a tendency to click a link. So maybe zoom buttons would be helpful.

Aside from that. I was impressed. I went to nascar.com to test it out. I was thinking of getting this for my dad. Everything came up just fine. I could read and zoom in on stuff okay. Double-tapping became second nature after only a few seconds. (I realize the double meaning of that phrase.) Turning the IPad from portrait to landscape automatically adjusted the contents to fit just right. I found for me keeping it in portrait mode is the easiest to handle.

I find that if all I'm ever going to do is surf the web, watch YouTube, go to Facebook, and play Angry Birds this is a great little device. However I'm not spending $500 for 16 GB. Be nice if there was a SD Card slot. I understand that Apple doesn't want people sticking hacking programs on a card and playing NES roms, but hey, if Nintendo can lock out the DS OS...

Ultimately my dad won't use it. He's not into all the peripheral stuff Nascar does. He just wants to watch the race and some of the interviews and hope that Junior will finally win one.

Sucker Punched.

Having watched this movie, I then read the reviews. They all got it wrong. The first one, well, I don't know what it said. It droned on and on. It was like watching a politician answering a yes or no question. The second review hated Sucker Punch because the girls were wearing lingerie. The third hated Sucker Punch because it was about an insane asylum being run as a brothel. Close, but not quite there. He mentioned at being confused at the action sequences.

That's where things were screwed up. The action scenes while masterfully choreographed and beautifully animated. Some of the best and most realistic animation since Star Trek 11. Also very clever in the use of them to cover up the real action. Quite frankly they dragged this movie down. They were too long and too many. Predictable and therefore boring. So boring that during the train sequence I went to the bathroom and when I came back I felt as if I hadn't missed anything. I pretty much knew that something was going to go wrong, it had to. The others went off without a hitch.

The part that bothered me the most, and I know coming form me this will sound weird, was the constant references to anime, TV, and movies. If you don't watch any of these you will be confused. If you have watched entirely too much anime, TV, and movies, you will spend time trying to pick out the references, and being very confused as to why Sailor Moon, Saber Riders, Evangelion, and Flyboys are duking it out in All Quite on the Western Front. Then The Hobbit versus Lord of the Rings with Black Sheep Squadron. Terminators guarding the train from Undersiege 2 inside the movie Unstoppable.

It was like The Matrix but without anybody saying don't do that. A fanfic really. Or even a web comic that collates a bunch disparate characters and sticks them together in situations that make absolutely no sense. (cough)

It was a case of misplaced priorities. What should have been concentrated on was the asylum/brothel.

The story of a girl framed for the murder of her little sister by her evil step-dad. Dumped off at an insane asylum to cover the crime. The conditions there were so wretched she in her mind conjures up a brothel fantasy to cover the horrors. Then sacrifices herself so that a friend could be free. THAT'S the story that should have have been told. That is what had me interested. Reminding us that at one time mental hospitals were once this bad. We must be on our toes to prevent this kind of thing from happening again.

Admittedly Sucker Punch Out still would have bombed. But at least it would have been worth watching in the dollar theater. Wait for it on cable.