Trashy sci-fi hack novelist David Weber has just exposed his true colors as an anti-fan writer. ON Facebook, Weber posted that no matter how despicable a writer may be, its wrong for a fan-run convention to disinvite that person no matter how horrible a person that writer turns out to be. This showed Weber's anti-fan bigotry.
Weber is just another Baen Books sleazy hack writer whose crudely written works are chock full of spelling and grammatical errors. Its not surprising that he feels this way since his publishing company continually puts forth books that are racist in the extreme.
Naturally, Weber looks down on the fans and wishes that they get on their collective hands and knees and grovel and kowtow to him.
What needs to be done is for all sci-fi fans to boycott all Baen Books and put that illiterate company out of business for good.
Tuesday, May 22, 2018
Elon Musk, Union Buster
Corporate Scofflaw Elon Musk has been exposed as a Union buster. The Tesla electric car company is a place where Musk has engaged inthe worst sort of anti union bigotry. He has a defender in the form or milionairess "musician" Grimes who also hates unions and called all reports of the couple's anti union activities "fake news."
What needs to be done is for Tesla to be subjected to a consumer's boycott to bring the evil corporation down to its knees.
California Boondoggle Still on Fast Track
Despite the fact that it is nothing but a pork barrel project the California Bullet Train that has far exceeded what the politicians said was its projected cost, the politicians refuse to talk about it on the campaign trail. What that means is that no matter who wins the governor's race, its a done deal that this monumental waste of the taxpayer's money will be finished and the common citizens will be royally screwed.
Movie Review: Alien Apocalypse (2005 TV)
As previously related in the review of the pathetic flick The Man with the Screaming Brain,
actor Bruce Campbell struck what many observers considered to be a questionable deal with
producer Sam Raimi. Campbell would have starring roles in several low budget productions
made by either Sam Raimi or some of Raimi's friends. One such production is the made for TV
movie at hand, Alien Apocalypse that premiered on the Sci-Fi Channel earlier this year and is
now out on VHS and DVD.
Alien Apocalypse is a piece of hack work. The basic plot has already been used in numerous flicks before and will likely be used in many more movies. Essentially, this made for TV movie is about astronauts Ivan Hood (Bruce Campbell) and Kelly (Renee O'Connor) who return to Earth after a space mission only to discover that in the meantime, aliens from outer space who look an awful lot like giant termites have invaded and taken over the world. Their reason for doing so is that they are attracted by Earth's bountiful forests and the aliens' home planet is almost all out of wood. Now it is up to Hood and Kelly to lead the oppressed human population in a bloody uprising to overthrow the evil alien conquerors.
In the advertising for Alien Apocalypse that ran on the Sci-Fi Channel, this TV flick was promoted as being a comedy. Actually, Alien Apocalypse is anything but that. There are some witty lines but the overall effect is dullness. Bruce Campbell has practically nothing to work with. The ending is flat.
Basically, the production standards especially the directing and photography are comparable to an episode of the Hercules & Xena TV series that Raimi used to produce. There is plenty of music and stock footage from the Hercules & Xena series in Alien Apocalypse.
However, the writing lacks the quality that marked the Hercules series. The writing in this TV movie is flawed, stupid and not funny at all.
The acting in Alien Apocalypse is generally bad. Bruce Campbell looks bored and not interested throughout it. He simply is not at the top of his game here. Renee O'Connor tries her best, but since she has zero talent as an actress, that adds nothing to the movie. When the humans and aliens engage in battle, it is so fake that it is almost painful to watch.
The level of the makeup and special effects in Alien Apocalypse is low even by Sci-Fi Channel standards. The wigs worn by the humans in this TV movie are downright awful to look at. Some of the fake facial hair looks like it is on the verge of falling off. There is a half-naked girl whose skin is smooth and hairless so much so, when must have a huge quantity of razor blades stashed somewhere.
Alien Apocalypse is an awful piece of celluloid. It has zero scientific credibility. The aliens supposedly conquered Earth, but whenever we see any combat, the alien’s weapons fail to work and/or are extremely inaccurate. Huge numbers of aliens perish in combat while hardly any humans die in these battles. Alien Apocalypse is a flick that needs to be avoided like the plague.
Definitely not recommended.
Alien Apocalypse is a piece of hack work. The basic plot has already been used in numerous flicks before and will likely be used in many more movies. Essentially, this made for TV movie is about astronauts Ivan Hood (Bruce Campbell) and Kelly (Renee O'Connor) who return to Earth after a space mission only to discover that in the meantime, aliens from outer space who look an awful lot like giant termites have invaded and taken over the world. Their reason for doing so is that they are attracted by Earth's bountiful forests and the aliens' home planet is almost all out of wood. Now it is up to Hood and Kelly to lead the oppressed human population in a bloody uprising to overthrow the evil alien conquerors.
In the advertising for Alien Apocalypse that ran on the Sci-Fi Channel, this TV flick was promoted as being a comedy. Actually, Alien Apocalypse is anything but that. There are some witty lines but the overall effect is dullness. Bruce Campbell has practically nothing to work with. The ending is flat.
Basically, the production standards especially the directing and photography are comparable to an episode of the Hercules & Xena TV series that Raimi used to produce. There is plenty of music and stock footage from the Hercules & Xena series in Alien Apocalypse.
However, the writing lacks the quality that marked the Hercules series. The writing in this TV movie is flawed, stupid and not funny at all.
The acting in Alien Apocalypse is generally bad. Bruce Campbell looks bored and not interested throughout it. He simply is not at the top of his game here. Renee O'Connor tries her best, but since she has zero talent as an actress, that adds nothing to the movie. When the humans and aliens engage in battle, it is so fake that it is almost painful to watch.
The level of the makeup and special effects in Alien Apocalypse is low even by Sci-Fi Channel standards. The wigs worn by the humans in this TV movie are downright awful to look at. Some of the fake facial hair looks like it is on the verge of falling off. There is a half-naked girl whose skin is smooth and hairless so much so, when must have a huge quantity of razor blades stashed somewhere.
Alien Apocalypse is an awful piece of celluloid. It has zero scientific credibility. The aliens supposedly conquered Earth, but whenever we see any combat, the alien’s weapons fail to work and/or are extremely inaccurate. Huge numbers of aliens perish in combat while hardly any humans die in these battles. Alien Apocalypse is a flick that needs to be avoided like the plague.
Definitely not recommended.
Monday, May 21, 2018
FanX Salt Lake Comic Convention
As of May 21st when this was written, there
is another fan run convention that is under attack by elitist pig professional
writers. This is the FanX Salt Lake Comic Convention. Basically, what happened was that an
allegedly bestselling author named Shannon Hale made allegations about sexual
harassment that a friend of hers, who has gone unnamed, supposedly experienced
at last year’s convention. Evidently,
what happened was that a local writer Richard Paul Evans hugged the female in
question, thinking that it’s a friendly gesture as any reasonable person would.
However, Shannon Hale is not a reasonable person. She is a professional writer who is always
out for maximum publicity even if she comes across as an absolute jackass in
the course of doing so. The wild
allegations of so-called sexual harassment that she has made after her friend
was hugged have won her tremendous publicity at the expense of what is
generally regarded as being one of the very best fan-run comics conventions
around.
Hale has undertaken this course of action
despite the fact that her friend went through the official procedures for
handling matters such as this. The
convention has two women in charge of handling sexual harassment
allegations. They investigated the allegations
and concluded that Hale’s friend was wrong, no sexual harassment took
place. Of course to an extremist like
Hale, that was not good enough so she went public with her allegations.
Great News: Romantic Times Kicks the Bucket
The Witch is dead. Romantic Times, the semi-literate rag that gave us Natalie Luhrs is dead. RT was so highly beloved by the culturally illiterate such as Sarah A. Hoyt, Mary Robinette Koval and Laura Resnick will no longer be able to pollute the culture with its mindless drivel. Hopefully, this means that the whole rotten romance novel genre will be going down the tubes as well.
Movie Review: Grindhouse (2007)
During the 1970's, it became common in some circles to refer to small
budget movies aka B Movies as being "grindhouse" flicks. Just how and
why this term came about is unclear. What is clear is the fact that
despite the low budgets and near complete lack of big name acting
talent, such movies found a receptive audience that very much enjoyed
them. One big reason why audiences liked these movies is that they often
were much more original than the all too often formula driven
productions that came out of Hollywood.
Although the Drive-Ins and the big city theaters that constituted the B Movie Theatrical Circuit have largely gone by the wayside, there is a great deal of nostalgia out there for the low budget flicks of the past. This nostalgia has led to the tremendous success of low cost DVD packages such as the Mill Creek line of 50 and 100 movie packs where the prices are about 50 cents or less per movie. Of course, these are all public domain flicks, but one reason why they are public domain in the first place is that most of the low budget production companies went out of business during the transition period between the days when B Movies were released to theaters and the development of the original movies direct to the public via the DVD & VHS market. Extinct companies do not renew copyrights.
The other reason is that before it became clear that there was a healthy market for B Movies on DVD/VHS, many of the low budget production houses did not renew the copyrights on their creations. After all, TV stations and cable channels rarely ran "grindhouse movies" with the result that there was no real financial incentive to renew those copyrights. This success of "grindhouse" flicks on DVD has not escaped the attention of Hollywood. However, instead of paying attention to why folks would prefer the low budget movies of the past over the big budget flicks of today, the big shots in Hollywood got it in their heads that the way to capitalize on the success of grindhouse flicks would be to take the grindhouse name and use it for their own ends.
In other words, instead of abandoning the tired old formulas and embracing new, original ideas, Hollywood decided to make a typical piece of hack drivel and market it under the name "Grindhouse" and hope that the American people would fall for it like a bunch of suckers.
In the case of Grindhouse, the American people proved the Hollywood conventional wisdom wrong. Despite a slew of positive reviews, written by critics who would not recognize a genuine B Movie under any circumstances, the viewing public stayed away from Grindhouse. Despite the fact that this movie was made on a huge budget that combined with the budget for advertising and promotions added up to over $100 Million, Grindhouse grossed less than $30 Million world wide. As it happens, the movie audience was right to stay away from Grindhouse as it is a truly horrible flick.
Grindhouse was billed as a tribute to the "grindhouse" movies of the past. There was a great deal of inconsistency at work here as Grindhouse was made at a budget massively larger than what any of the low budget flicks that it claimed to pay tribute to. Likewise, Grindhouse had none of the inventiveness of the grindhouse movies and those low budget flicks rarely had big name acting talent associated with them while Grindhouse the movie is practically overflowing with it.
As final proof of the awfulness of Grindhouse, consider that the geniuses behind it have announced that instead of releasing Grindhouse on DVD in the form that it was originally released to theaters, it will be divided into 2 different features entitled "Deathproof" & "Planet Terror." Obviously, the studio bosses are attempting to avoid the stigma attached to Grindhouse and are trying to sucker the public into buying this garbage by pretending that these are 2 different movies that have absolutely nothing to do with each other.
Irregardless of whatever name(s) that it goes by, Grindhouse is trash and ought to be avoided as such.
Although the Drive-Ins and the big city theaters that constituted the B Movie Theatrical Circuit have largely gone by the wayside, there is a great deal of nostalgia out there for the low budget flicks of the past. This nostalgia has led to the tremendous success of low cost DVD packages such as the Mill Creek line of 50 and 100 movie packs where the prices are about 50 cents or less per movie. Of course, these are all public domain flicks, but one reason why they are public domain in the first place is that most of the low budget production companies went out of business during the transition period between the days when B Movies were released to theaters and the development of the original movies direct to the public via the DVD & VHS market. Extinct companies do not renew copyrights.
The other reason is that before it became clear that there was a healthy market for B Movies on DVD/VHS, many of the low budget production houses did not renew the copyrights on their creations. After all, TV stations and cable channels rarely ran "grindhouse movies" with the result that there was no real financial incentive to renew those copyrights. This success of "grindhouse" flicks on DVD has not escaped the attention of Hollywood. However, instead of paying attention to why folks would prefer the low budget movies of the past over the big budget flicks of today, the big shots in Hollywood got it in their heads that the way to capitalize on the success of grindhouse flicks would be to take the grindhouse name and use it for their own ends.
In other words, instead of abandoning the tired old formulas and embracing new, original ideas, Hollywood decided to make a typical piece of hack drivel and market it under the name "Grindhouse" and hope that the American people would fall for it like a bunch of suckers.
In the case of Grindhouse, the American people proved the Hollywood conventional wisdom wrong. Despite a slew of positive reviews, written by critics who would not recognize a genuine B Movie under any circumstances, the viewing public stayed away from Grindhouse. Despite the fact that this movie was made on a huge budget that combined with the budget for advertising and promotions added up to over $100 Million, Grindhouse grossed less than $30 Million world wide. As it happens, the movie audience was right to stay away from Grindhouse as it is a truly horrible flick.
Grindhouse was billed as a tribute to the "grindhouse" movies of the past. There was a great deal of inconsistency at work here as Grindhouse was made at a budget massively larger than what any of the low budget flicks that it claimed to pay tribute to. Likewise, Grindhouse had none of the inventiveness of the grindhouse movies and those low budget flicks rarely had big name acting talent associated with them while Grindhouse the movie is practically overflowing with it.
As final proof of the awfulness of Grindhouse, consider that the geniuses behind it have announced that instead of releasing Grindhouse on DVD in the form that it was originally released to theaters, it will be divided into 2 different features entitled "Deathproof" & "Planet Terror." Obviously, the studio bosses are attempting to avoid the stigma attached to Grindhouse and are trying to sucker the public into buying this garbage by pretending that these are 2 different movies that have absolutely nothing to do with each other.
Irregardless of whatever name(s) that it goes by, Grindhouse is trash and ought to be avoided as such.
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