Jurassic Park 2

The second Jurassic Park novel is better than the movie because the characters and story make more sense. The divorce and relationships get better play, there's a black kid named Arby, and he gets into interesting predicaments, and John Hammond is still dead because the compies killed him. The characters seem more human in the novel, and I like it better. The movie is ridiculous and goes to a Godzilla story, which isn't what the book had.

Live Free or Die Hard

This movie suffers from the same paranoid mythology that my customers believe when they call me at call center jobs. Because they're national chain companies, they believe the company is a perfect entity that never makes any mistakes and that we always know what's going on all the time, about every one of our million customers. Nothing could be further from the truth. People slip through the cracks, computer systems are always malfunctioning, the supervisors are never there, so it's impossible to "have it your way." If we're that big, and "can't pull our heads out of our asses" as one customer said, what makes you think that the U.S. government is any different? Any giant corporate entity is made up of imperfect individuals trying to do their best of their abilities the only way they know how. They don't know everything. That's why when you call Visa and other companies, they put you on hold sometimes. The tougher the question, the longer your wait may be. That's why your calls often get dropped. Or your company will give you the "runaround." It's not intentional, we're just human and we don't know who you should speak to, so we tell you to talk to the guy who told you to talk to us. Maybe it's his fault. The only conspiracy, therefore, is incompetence. I'm certain that this is what happens in the government, too, nine times out of ten. From experience, I know people I can talk to can create a conspiracy out of nothing. People imagine conspiracies about me, in fact, when I'm really just not very good at my job. So I don't believe for a second that the chaotic Washington D.C. street system is set up on some super efficient computer system any more than the lousy K.C. street system is. I don't think that the madhouse we call the stock exchange can be completely controlled by computers, either, since someone's got to buy and sell and affect those numbers, and mistakes happen.

General Hospital

Normally, I try to ignore soap operas, but recently General Hospital has sunk to a new low. They introduced this scrawny nerd into the story. Women in the story magically fall in love with him due to flimsy plot devices. The whole storyline nauseates me, and every time he talks, I want to slap him. First of all, he's a nerd, and talks (and should talk) about subjects that extroverted General Hospital women should have absolutely no clue about. In other words, he should have little or nothing in common with the women he meets, thus lessening his chances of being seduced. Secondly, his nerd dialogue is as fake as the accent of The Closer, and he needs to stop talking about himself in the third person like Bob Dole because I want to slap him then. Third, I know that everyone that shows up on a soap is automatically seduced, but can't we, just this once, make an exception? He's the least deserving out of all soap opera characters. What's next? Jabba the Hutt? At least have the kid spend a couple seasons failing miserably. This is nothing but wish fulfillment. It's just as maddening as the conspiracy nut in Stargate SG-1 being found to be a real alien. No. He doesn't deserve it. It's not real. It's not the reality I understand to be real.

Fictional universes vs. fact

Due to the fact that I find movies and TV believable, it's important for me to make a list about the things that make them unreal.
1. Obviously, the time. Details like opening doors and putting on your socks are left out. In movies like Lord of the Rings, epic landscapes whiz by when you really want to stop and take them in.
2. People tell stories that are complete with music, sound effects and actors, giving no account for why the storyteller can remember all that dialogue so vividly, or how a pair of Asians with poor English skills can remember a salesman's conversation in its entirety.
3. The Joker cannot logically be both a 40 year old retired businessman who travels the country in a mobile home, a chemically scarred madman who tries to kill everyone in NewYork, and an obsessive compulsive novelist. Also, the schizophrenic insurance man who starts an underground fighting ring couldn't possibly be the same man who made scientific breakthroughs in the field of gamma radiation research and also be the man who created astounding magic tricks back in the 1800's. It's important to note that an actor will appear in movies that don't have any relationship to their previous movie, despite them being a person in that movie. It is analogous to an uneducated man in real life who has gone through an entire career in the IRS while simultaneously being a spy, a college professor, and a prominent neurosurgeon without the necessary transitions between the jobs.
More observations to come.

Prom Night

Prom night is one of the worst movies I've ever seen. The title is similar to campy, but better movies. The story is dull and pointless for half the movie. The killings aren't scary or realistic. The killer looks like the Unabomber, but does nothing surprising.
A pocket knife is the uninspired choice for a killing weapon. And there are large plot holes. Apparently the parents of those kids don't care that their senior prom is being held at a friggin' hotel. I guess they don't mind surprise pregnancies and dropouts.
The dialogue is cheesy. The black girl got complimented on her looks so many times that I began to question the truth of those statements. The prom itself contained so much sickeningly sweet sentimentality that I left the theater in search of snacks instead of enduring the lame dialogue and melodramatic moments.
The prom was glitzy, and unnecessarily so. Despite comments that so-and-so spent a million dollars on it, I didn't buy it. Their prom looked like the academy awards. Perhaps if you're on the rich side of California, it may be similar, but it stretches credibility to the extreme, especially with the addition of a hotel. I've never been to a prom and I didn't believe this one. It was that bad.
Cheap shots were abundant. The killer wasn't scary at all, so I never got truly worried about them. The blood was minimal and fake, as if the director were trying to keep a PG-13 rating on a horror movie.
The scenes of boys and girls being together in hotel rooms made the plot holes obvious to everyone. A sensible parent wouldn't let this sort of mischief happen at the prom, unless they're a fan of unemployment and teen pregnancy.
Everyone acted dumb in the story, too. The hotel manager reacted slowly to the missing staff people, with no explanation. He obviously didn't look busy.
The killer was shown too many times, doing stupid things that made me pity the guy rather than fear him.
The cop was also slow. The info dump at the police station was irritating, even with interruptions. I've seen this same story framed better in other movies.
The female protagonist was dumb. You'd think, when an entire hotel is being evacuated under suspicious circumstances, she'd wonder if the killer was around, even if she were taking medication.
The killer didn't need to kill the guy sent to check on the maid. He could have easily told him a better lie or "I don't know," and go on his way. People aren't that clever, so he would have gotten away with it. That would have made it scarier.
If he posed as a cop, that would have been better, too. Or if he had worked with the cops. None of that happened, though. He was just an ordinary human killer. He wasn't even a terrorist or tied in with the government to give it that international thriller feel.
The preppie prom thing was annoying. The rock and roll soundtrack was inappropriate. The prom "scrapbook" looked like a movie company made it, which was cheesy in and of itself.
Too much screen time was given to the prom deejay, and he didn't even get killed.
The ending was a disappointment. The girl fought back a little and the cop magically pops in and shoots the killer. It's disappointing because she didn't struggle enough with the guy. It wasn't scary and I didn't worry about her that much.
Overall, it was campy, melodramatic and fake. I don't know who picks out these screenplays for production, but this is the poorest choice ever.