On movies and nerdery (sort of)

I've seen a fair number of movies in the past four days (five, as of this evening), so I figured I might as well write about those. Why not?

Obviously, there are spoilers below.

Transformers II: Like Pimp My Ride, but better

....There is so much I could say about this movie. First, its subtitle: "Revenge of the Fallen", which, okay, sort of implies that all the "fallen" bad guys from the last movie are going to....you know. Get revenge. No shit, right?

Wrong. The Fallen apparently refers to a single, prehistoric robot who was for some reason more powerful than his six robot brothers and then betrayed them and made them turn themselves into a tomb for a little pointy thing called the Matrix of Leadership (WTF). But I digress--my problem with this title is that they couldn't call him The Traitor. The Backstabber. The Heartless Bitch Who's Up In My Grill.

No, they have to call him the Fallen, even though he didn't fall from grace and in fact rose to power. And did I mention he is Emperor Palpatine but more metallic and Davy Jones-esque and less like an old man's wrinkly butt? Because he is.

Also, what is with the ornery Australian stealth plane/robot turncoat? EXCUSE ME, LET ME RIP OUT MY STILL PULSING ENERGY SOURCE AND GIVE IT TO YOU BECAUSE I THINK YOU'RE SO AWESOME BECAUSE YOU'RE SOMEHOW DESCENDED FROM THE SEVEN ORIGINAL ROBOTS.

This? This was bad decision making, even if it did spawn the Pimp My Ride comment in an amazing sequence.

And check off another point for Optimus. This is the second time he's died....and then gotten revenge on the robot who killed him. As the Badass of the Week site correctly says, this is pretty damn cool. To be honest, I watch these movies for the trashy special effects and the shiny robotic badassery. Plot? Not so much.

I will admit, however, that every time Starscream came on with his little cowering, whimpering, I'm-so-useless act, I wanted to flip a shit. Excuse me--this is the second in command of the second in command of the Evil Robotic God. So....Judas (which is fitting, considering Starscream would as soon kill Megatron as help him, canonically), but more hardcore. Imagine if all the early Christians were five-story robots--that Judas. He shouldn't be so pathetic!

Finally, every time Bumblebee has to save Shia's sorry ass, complete with screams for help from the weaker party, they wound up staring into each other's eyes. Hello, robo-bromance. Robomance. Robromance. Something. I sort of wanted to laugh, because they had more chemistry than good ol' Megan brought to the party. Considering this is a teenage boy and his first car/transforming robot pet/bodyguard....that's pretty damn sad.

And wow, I've written an epic just for this first movie. How am I going to get through another two?

Star Wars: Pornos! In space! Made easier by the conspicuous lack of underwear!

So much innuendo. So much win. But the best part, by far?

Episode IV. Luke fires his proton torpedoes, and then throws his head back as he experiences sexual pleasure for the first time in his life--I mean, feels them penetrate deeper and deep--um.

Right. So one could assume that he's simply happy. Or one could look closer, read deeper, and see that he's very...happy. Blissful. You can practically see the cigarette.

And, after all, think about the scene. He fires his load into the shaft, pulls out, and gets high off of thinking about how his missiles are penetrating the core. I'm not the only one who reads that and does a double-take, right?

Though I've got to say, this go around I was actually really into the more romantic love story. Han and Leia are probably one of the most badass fictional couples ever, and they're ADORABLE. It's sort of like what they tried to do in the Mummy, but Star Wars did it better and the girl wasn't a pathetic whiner. She just had anger-management issues.

Anyways, there's not much I can say about Star Wars that hasn't already been said a thousand times. But it will always be my favorite, and let's be honest--as amazing as Star Trek was, I am a Star Wars fan before all else.

Inkheart: I'm not sure why I watched this, but it was less painful than the book

My story about Inkheart goes like this. I tried to read the book multiple times after having it be highly recommended by many close friends. I got about 20 pages in, realized the only character I remotely liked was Dustfinger and his role wasn't big enough, and stopped reading. The main characters left me yawning, and the names Meggie and Mo made me wince.

So I had no idea what the plot really was except for "and then they read characters into existence and some of them are evil". And it turns out this is basically the whole plot. Also there's a really, REALLY girly-looking Arabian dude from Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves. And Dustfinger needs to be hotter (granted, I imagined him as really hot). And the ferret makes me cringe, because I hate ferrets as plot devices, and they ALWAYS ARE. And the climactic battle scene actually had the potential to be incredibly epic, but they screwed up the editing and the camera angles and so it was super slow and kind of the worst part. And why did the dad speak in an American accent while his kid spoke in a British accent and his wife didn't speak at all?

In conclusion--only the minor idol worship between girly Arabian dude and Dustfinger was good. The rest made me go "meh". But at least I finished it, which puts it above the book.