Wednesday, January 28, 2009
I FINALLY got to see Trouble Man last night. This movie has to be one of the most slept on blaxploitation pics i've seen. I thought Robert Hooks was pretty bad arse as Mr. T. I also saw a couple TV faces too! Gordon Jump (Mr Carlson from WKRP) was a spineless criminal on the streets and William Smithers (Jeremy Wendell on DALLAS) was the police captain who was on T's case throughout the movie. The movie could've used a little more in the babe quotient but it had enough swearing and violence to tide the viewer over.
The story is nothing too special and kind of formula but Hooks as T was a strong enough prescence that it worked. The story essentially has two gang leaders named Chalky (Paul Winfield) and Pete (Ralph Waite)enlisting the services of one Mr. T as there seems to be masked men breaking up their floating crap games and stealing all their money. T goes to one of these games where the masked men appear again, well one of the masked men ends up getting killed but it's all a set up as the guy that's killed is a henchman of the rival gang lord Mr. Big. (Julius Harris) It's up to T to keep the peace and get the cops off his back as well.
I especially liked the last 15-20 minutes of the movie a lot of course Marvin Gaye's score sure helped out a lot. I can confirm that indeed, Marvin redid almost everything for the studio cut of the soundtrack which was a lot darker and was avant garde jazz. The movie soundtrack had traces of it but Marvin veered more towards a blaxploitation sound and i'm glad he went with his artistic sensibility for the album. Only one cut sounds as good in movie form as it did on the album and that's "T Stands for Trouble" which played throughout the last 6-10 minutes of time before all the bad guys were killed.
Overall, if you like blaxploitation and never heard of this movie then you should see it. Some movies get a bad rap for whatever reason and can't shake it off and unfortunately this is one of those movies. I recommend it for fans of the genre and I give it about 2 1/2 stars.
THE GOOD: Strong lead character, great soundtrack and some better then average acting for a movie of the genre.
THE BAD: Not enough heart, a bit formulaic
RENT OR BUY?: rent if you're not a fan of the genre but a definite buy if you are.
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Posted on December 31, 2008 at 07:47 PM.
....Because CN is doing a Looney Tunes marathon on New Year's Day as a test run to see if there's enough interest in putting the WB cartoons back in rotation on CN or Boomerang. Now I realize most of you will either be hung over or watching the Bowl games but if any of you have Nielsen boxes have that TV tuned into CN.I mean, most other countries in the world has the classic WB shorts showing somewhere yet in the US it's not being shown AT ALL. That has to be some kind of crime or something.
Oh, and happy new year
Friday, December 26, 2008
So Christmas Eve I experienced full blown kidney stones. Let me tell you it was the worst thing ever. Now to please Mr. The C i'm not going to go into TOO much detail
Let's just say I had chills, fever, so much pain that I felt like death was an option and crawling to my toilet bowl to puke and then laying on the washroom floor for 20 minutes crying my eyes out.
Yep, not exactly the best X-Mas Eve ever.
On top of that my X360 decided to die exactly one year to the day I got it. I came home last night from a family party to play the Lost video game. I put the game in and everything is working fine then BAM! as soon as I was going to click the start button to play the game everything froze up. I power up the console again to see the 3 red lights. (Thank God it wasn't the full blown RROD) So today I sent for my coffin from MS. Hopefully things will go relatively quickly and I don't have to wait 2 months or something crazy like that.
Other then that I had a great Christmas with family. The young cousins in my family love me to death. They just love getting me involved in their activities and one of them decided to use me as his personal monkey bars so to speak LOL!
I came home with a bit of an irritated back but it was worth it. I love to see family, especially the younger ones being happy. That's one of the great things about having a large extended family IMO.
I hope everyone had a great Christmas.
Thursday, December 4, 2008
Let's face it, cable news today is only a step above the yellow journalism of the Hearst newspapers of a century ago. The main difference is that at least all three networks have some credibility in some areas and will produce some interesting programming especially the long form documentary programming. It's also virtually impossible to be unbiased in anything. Even the acclaimed news programs that OSers talk about such as the BBC has a history of being criticized for bias. The BBC is a UK government funded news agency and for YEARS people over there have complained about the network being too tightly tied to the government. So in essence what we get from their international news broadcasts are seen through the prism of UK governmental policy.
Going back to CNN though, you may hate their editorial slant but there's no single news organization on this continent that has the resources, the people on the ground and the coverage that CNN does. CNN is still the best at covering breaking news. FNC has to rely more on opinion makers and less on actual news gatherers on the ground. More often then not FNC has to lean heavily on other FOX owned foreign news outlets to get the pictures and sounds of what's going on on the ground. That's not to say CNN doesn't do that, because they do but CNN more often then not actually has someone working there whereas FNC doesn't have a very strong international news bureau which is surprising when they make money hand over fist.
As to the positives of the cable news outlets? CNN and MSNBC/CNBC have very strong documentary divisions. (though MSNBC just slashed their longform budget substantially)Both networks have strong ties news magazines (Newsweek for MSNBC, TIME for CNN) and both have a versatile group of opinion makers and analysts. FNC is brilliant at channeling the news through the prism of its editorial vision. Surprisingly, for such a successful news network they're devoid of actual good newscasters/hard journalism types. Brit Hume is retiring and the only other one that is serious with journalism is Chris Wallace. FNC has a small cadre of opinion makers/analysts who are very good distilling the news into the cauldron of conservatism. Most of these people are dye in the wool right wingers who are stringent in their dogma. The main personalities of the network are essentially nothing more then over caffeinated editorialists.
One last thing about FNC. It's a little disturbing how one sided the network is, out of all the main personalities on the network only one is an out and out democrat/liberal and that would be Geraldo Rivera. The other left leaning personality Allan Colmes has decided to leave the network. At least the other two networks have people who go against the grain of the overall editorial policy. Lou Dobbs at CNN and Joe Scarborough of MSNBC. (although Scarborough has softened considerably)
In the end we can't just sit there and hope for unbiased news on TV. The best thing anyone can do is to watch all three networks when it comes to a single topic, read the blogs, read some online editions of newspapers and listen to the radio. A lot of people don't bother to do that and it leads to fragmentation, especially those who watch FNC. I believe I saw a statistic where 80% of FNC viewers use that network alone to shape their opinion on the news. That's pretty disturbing and probably explains some of the tunnel vision that you get with some conservatives. All in all, all three networks have a distinct personality. CNN is middle of the road leaning left and doesn't really have a true identity but is still the best in terms of resources, MSNBC is like a young activist shouting out his/her opinions. The network has created the image of one that's very politics oriented and finally FNC is the brash, somewhat bullyish guy with big opinions and is not afraid to air them.
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
Now here's why the variety format can't work today, back in the day the format worked great because you had ENTERTAINERS. Today it's far too specialized. Singers are singers, actors are actors etc etc. There's no multi-dimensional people out there today. Back in the day even the comedians can carry a tune and do comedic things with music. You had guys like Dean Martin who could sing, do a little dance and perform well in comedic sketches and such. You also had eclectic acts who were unique because they were so different. Today we're in such a inter-connected world that even the unique acts seem a bit old hat.
I'm watching some of this Rosie stuff and the few minutes of comedic dialogue is painful to listen to. At least the acts that come on and sing or whatever are pretty good but the comedic bits and interacting with the crowd and TV audience just falls flat and that's one of the main points of the variety show. You need a host who can connect with the audience and has built in goodwill. Rosie.....is too divisive so it just doesn't work at all.
43,811 Forum Posts
44 Blog Entries
453 News/Blog Comments
1 Reader Score Votes
87 Friends
28 Chalkboard Messages
0 Screenshots
0 Videos
15,279 Arena Visits
SPTO's Blog Categories
SPTO's Xbox 360 Gamercard
SPTO's Screenshots (0)
SPTO does not have any albums to display.
More
SPTO's Friends
Recent Visitors
The last 10 visitor(s) to this Arena were:
SPTO's Arena has had 15,279 visits
SPTO's Arena has had 15,279 visits
Working...