Telling You What to Watch...

We at State Controlled Media Were compiling our Best Christmas Movies Ever This Year list; while we were doing that we decided to check out some HBO. Turns out there is a movie starring Justin Timberlake on; In Time is a Sci-Fi thriller about the future of mankind. I mean the movie poster is epic! How could this movie not rock? The plot goes like this, when we turn 25 we stop aging and we only live one more year; that is unless you work, or gamble, or fight for more time. When you run out of time you jkust die out the spot. Money is gone and everything you need comes at the cost of your life, albeit in small increments. Justin’s mom was played by Olivia Wilde, yes that Olivia Wilde (Or more precise this one):

 (she is supposed to be 50 in the movie)

You ask how the movie could not have a huge Oedipus Rex conundrum. Well they did and they quickly solved it by killing mom off. Justin then meets Amanda Seyfried and they decide to take justice in their own hands and redistribute time to everyone. They proclaim that no one should live forever and all have the right to life! They were like a modern day Bonnie and Clyde mixed with a little Robinhood and spoiled daddy’s girl…Oh Amanda was a rich girl and her daddy had over a million years of time which they stole.

The protagonists are a cop with no motivation to continue his dogged chase other than he is supposed to and a gang member who steals time. The cop has a great confrontation with our heroes toward the end when all three are about out of time, but then he just dies and all the other cops just give up enforcing the law. We still had hope for the gangster though. Through the whole movie the characters referenced “fighting” for time. Justin said his dad died accidentally fighting for time. He promised his mother he would never go to the fights. Then in his confrontation with the gangster he has to fight. I cannot describe what the fight was so I am going to show you a picture:

Ok so we lied, you can describe it. They shook hands. They shook hands until one of them died!

The movie lost all creditability with us. We are sure there was some existential point about how we are NOW trading our life for stuff and junk we don’t need, and no matter how well we do, things just get harder to compensate. Doesn’t matter. They shook hands. The epic showdown was a cordial greeting.

So watch In Time and the part where the showdown happens just close your eyes and imagine this:

Things that make you go....

What the hell did I just see???!?!?!?!?

The following story is true (unlike most things we say). No exaggeration was needed.

There we were Mrs. PSBE and Myself. watching a television program, recorded on DVR so we could view it a a reasonable time as opposed to when the big corporations demand that we watch it. and at the end of the show there was the news promos. We saw this:

Some of the context is lost so let me paint you a picture. These two hard-working gentlemen are cleaning dead deer carcasses of the road. The banner you see says More Meals. and right about when I hit pause to snap this photo  the anchor man was saying "there are now more meals for the elderly in Mid Missouri". We wil let you draw your own conclusions.

For the Last Time, Its Merry Christmas...

For the Last Time, Its Merry Christmas!!!

　

It is at this time of year that whenever I hear Happy Holidays, I get mad. I know that it is an attempt at corporations to squeeze as much money out of us exploiting our religious beliefs while making it generic enough not to offend people who don’t think/believe the same as me. Ass. Everyone knows that Happy Holidays is an assault on Christians everywhere! Christmas is the pinnacle of our faith and is universally recognized by true believers!

SCM Staff: Uh PSBE, actually the most strict religious sect in the history of the United States the Puritans were opposed to celebrating Christmas, in fact they outlawed it (I.e. it was illegal to celebrate). They said there was no scriptural justification for the holiday and it was a paganism and Idolatry. It wasn’t until the federal government made it a national holiday that the most Christian of Christians acquiesced.

UH, Well it still isn’t right. we have moved on from that and it wasn’t until the nogoodnic Perry Como started singing that song Happy Holidays in the 50’s hat the phrase started to take hold. And that album Season’s Greetings from Perry Como, How secular can you get? Don’t even get me started on season’s greetings!

SCM Staff: Actually, that song was written by Irving Berlin…

PSBE: HAH! Berlin! Told you! NAZIS!

SCM Staff: Uh Huh, anyway, It was written for Bing Crosby in 1942 for the movie Holiday Inn

PSBE: Bing?

SCM Staff: Yes. Furthermore, Happy Holidays was first seen in print in 1890 in Good Housekeeping…

PSBE: Liberal Media!

SCM Staff: Yeah…also Season’s Greetings goes back a long ways as well and has been used by many U.S Presidents as the main holiday greeting to encompass Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years. Even Dwight D Eisenhower used it.

PSBE: IKE?!

SCM Staff: Indeed. Season’s Greetings became popular in Victorian England as a less bawdy and offensive way to wish someone a Merry Christmas, you know as public merriment was considered lewd behavior. In Fact many religious groups over the years have proclaimed that using the term Christmas was blasphemy as the feel that it is taking the lords name in vain.

PSBE: Saying Merry Christmas breaks a commandment?

SCM Staff: Maybe. Additionally if you got rid of Season’s Greetings and Happy Holidays. You might as well get rid of most other Christmas traditions as well.

PSBE: No, no, no. It is in the bible that we have to celebrate the birth of Jesus by sitting around a tree in our house that is mimicking being on fire while we chant songs and hope a man will come bearing gifts to reward us for good behavior.

SCM Staff: Um, PSBE its not in there.

PSBE: Its not?

SCM Staff: No, in fact the church moved the Christmas date to December to encompass those very pagan ceremonies you just described, hoping more people would convert if they got to keep there rituals. Like the Yule log.

PSBE: What do you mean?

SCM Staff: The Yule celebration was a tradition of Anglo-Saxon Paganism. The ancient Nords would burn a giant log (the Yule Log) and celebrate for days until the fire was extinguished, signifying the start of winter.

PSBE: So what you are saying is that Happy Holidays has been around a long time and has never been an attempt to secularize a quasi pagan celebration, and that Season’s Greeting is a much more conservative and restrictive season’s blessing. And that maybe its not such a bad thing to have a greeting that is inclusive and doesn’t cause people to be separated at a wonderful time of year and that maybe by being inclusive instead of confrontational about what we believe others may be swayed to becoming interested as to why when we say Happy Holidays we really mean it and there is power in the words?

SCM Staff: Sure, Merry X-Mas PSBE

PSBE: Happy Boxing Day staff!

Telling you what to watch…The American

We at State Controlled Media were feeling nostalgic and decided to watch the ubiquities 80’s movie Romancing the Stone.

It seems every time you turned on the TV it was playing.  It was so quintessential 80’s; bad hair, bad clothes and bad music. So, we settled down with a snack and started in on a journey to Cartagena Columbia. Wow, the movie was pure Cheese. At one point we were sure that if a plate of corn tortilla chips were place in front of the official State Controlled Media TV it would turn into a righteous plate of nachos. About a 1/3 of the way through we had seen this movie enough (also we got really bummed that the main characters were younger in the movie than we are right now.) So I looked through the HBO Queue and found The American.

It stars George Clooney as an aging hit man trying to pull off one last job in Italy. This type of description makes us think of only one type of movie:

 The Italian Job. The American did not disappoint. First a warning, we will be discussing the movie in great detail and giving away plot points even though it was released in 2010, you may not have seen it and you can stop reading right now (although you may thank us if you keep reading). In the first few minutes George is nearly taken out by a hit man while he and his girlfriend take a stroll on what appears to be a frozen lake. Clooney daftly found cover for him and his paramour. Then, with the skill of a finely honed assassin kills the hit man. Meanwhile the girlfriend is clearly not aware of a reason why someone would want Mr. Clooney dead. He tells her to call the police and when she runs toward their cabin Clooney guns her down! Holy SPIT! Holy SPIT! Holy SPIT! Holy SPIT!

Off to a roaring start! Only ten minutes in and we were on the edge of our seats. Clooney finds the next hit man and takes him out. Then he goes on the run to save his life, as you just saw he will do anything to stay alive. He calls someone (maybe his boss/handler it was never really established) he was given a place to stay and a new assignment. We could not wait to see where it went! Clooney gets to the town and then…. 

Nothing.

It’s funny that The Never Ending Story came to mind, because that is what this movie felt like. It clocks in at 106 minutes (that’s 1hour 46 minutes for those of you using Math Investigations). It felt longer. I had to check the clock and the movie runtime just to be sure. Sure there was Clooney’s relationship with an Italian hooker which led to gratuitous nudity, which usually enhances any movie. However, I don’t think we needed to see old man butt Clooney. He had workout scenes to show he was in shape but he looked just gaunt. Oh then he died at the end. Everyone was unhappy or dead.

So there you have it. The American… Unhappy or Dead.

Anti-Joke with PSBE

Words of wisdom...

Telling you what to watch…

Looper

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We will be discussing the plot of the movie and the ending. If you do not want to know that the main character killed himself at the end then you should have not read this far, we did give you fair warning that the little boy has super powers and grows up to be a super criminal.


Looper, starring Bruce Willis And that guy from 3rd Rock from the Sun with the long hair:

Um, no this guy:

So he plays a hit man who kills people sent from the future. The gangsters of the future send people back to be killed. You see time travel is so illegal in the future they us it constantly to  cover up murder. The hit-man kill people who are sent back and then dispose of the bodies in the past. At some point their “loop gets closed where their future self is sent back to be killed by themselves. I see what you are thinking, why not send them back to be killed by a different hit-man as during the movie it is shown that when it comes time to kill themselves mishaps happen and trouble often follows suit? Well…there wouldn’t be a movie if there wasn’t any screw ups now would there? Wait…would there?

Back to that in a minute. So long hair has to kill his future self (Bruce Willis) who is hell bent on killing the future crime boss who sent him back to be executed while he is still a child. It turns out that his attempt to kill the child would result in the kid becoming the crime boss which would lead to him sending Bruce Willis back in time to die which would lead Bruce Willis to want to kill the kid which would lead to the kid becoming the crime boss…you get the point.

Long haired guy sees this loop as well and decides to stop his future self by killing his present self. He shoots himself and Bruce Willis disappears. The end, right?


Well, let us ask you this. If the kid never turned into a crime boss then Bruce Willis was never sent back necessitating that the long haired guy kill himself to stop him, so none of the things we just watched would happen…so we didn’t really just watch a movie?

Couldn’t the long haired guy just say to himself “Don’t kill the kid in the future” and achieve the same thing? Anyone who watched Bill & Ted knows this can be done. 

We would say watch the movie but we are not sure there is a movie to watch…