My My, Hey Hey, Power Rangers are Here to Stay

Title:  Saban’s Power Rangers Lost Galaxy: The Return of the Magna Defender

Actors/Director/Anything Worth Mentioning Right Away:  Nope, same as the first.

Introduction:  I got this at Good Will for less than a dollar on VHS.

Location:  More or less where the other one was.

Plot:  This picks up where the other Lost Galaxy story left off except it jumps right into it.   When I pressed play, I literally thought I’d walked in on the middle of a movie.   Then everyone is all like, “It’s the return of the Magna Defender!” like this is some sort of sequel or something.   But it’s not.  He was just stuck in a hole for the past three thousand years.  The only thing is that he happens to fight a lot like Leo’s brother, and well, a lot of speculation comes in as to whether or not it is his brother.   This reminds me a lot of a certain plotline in Speed Racer, but, you know, what can you do?

Did I happen to mention that the most awesome part of this whole thing is that the Magna Defender had a kid?   Now, Magna Defender is basically like a jacked up Power Ranger only with horns.   His son looked like a smaller version of him.  As if the whole horns-on-mask thing didn’t remind me of lucha libre enough, now we have a mini-Juvi.    It’s just so funny you can’t not laugh at it, but at the same time, MD is telling you the story of how his son was taken away from him.   It’s like, you want to feel badly for him and all, but the kid just looks so funny you can’t pay attention to the dialogue or anything else really.

Acting:  You know, more of the same over the top lines like “I work alone” and “That’s none of your concern”.

Production:  Again, looks like it was for television.

Sex/Nudity:  No, thank goodness.  That Magna Defender was one love scene away from being the most disturbing Power Ranger ever.

Special Effects:  they’re actually pretty cool considering the Magna Defender is in here with The Lights and all.

Overall Verdict:  So, after Magna Defender realizes that he can’t use The Lights as his way of revenge (Because they only work for good, not for evil), he decides to tell Leo that he is indeed not his brother, but his brother is very much alive.   Basically, MD was living in the hole that Leo’s brother got sucked into and then MD took Leo’s brother’s power so he could get out of the hole.  But if Leo kills MD, then his brother will return.  Leo refuses to kill, so MD sacrifices himself somehow and Leo’s brother, Mr. Goodhair, returns and hairstyling costs go up ten times.   It should be noted, though, that no one actually addresses the question of what they will now do with two Red Rangers, which some may argue is two too many.   But this movie has a great fight scene in it that takes place in a city, much like what you think of when you think of Godzilla fighting, so I’m going to go ahead and recommend that you watch it.

Hey Hey, My My, Power Rangers Can Never Die

Title:  Saban’s Power Rangers Lost Galaxy

Actors/Director/Anything Worth Mentioning Right Away:  It’s the Power Rangers, duh, and they’re in a lost galaxy.   There aren’t really any known actors in this, but that doesn’t make it any less fun now does it?

Introduction:  This was purchased as a VHS tape from Good Will for less than a dollar.  You’ll need to get used to me typing that.

Location:  In a lost galaxy, duh.   Haha, but no, really, this movie starts on what I presume is Earth (or some other planet about to be destroyed) and then moves onto other planets, lots of spaceships and cracks in the ground.

Plot:  This is the origins story for this particular group of Power Rangers who are in the “Lost Galaxy”.    This movie starts with a sort of lottery where people must receive passports to board ships that are going to take them away from a doomed planet.   One kid is mad he doesn’t have a passport, so he kicks a building.   Then he manages to fight off three hoodlums and save an old woman’s passport from being stolen.   In a genuinely funny moment in this movie, you expect her to say what a good person he is and how he deserves to go to this new planet more than her, but no, she might throw him some compliments but she never hands over her passport.  I guess that’d be too easy.    This kid then becomes a stowaway, which I guess is slightly less immoral than stealing from the elderly.   Then we have this whole Logan’s Run-esque chase scene where they’re trying to track down this stowaway… who somehow manages to end up in their version of the space army.   For the next few scenes, this movie pays homage to Starship Troopers and the stowaway is revealed to be the future Red Ranger’s brother.  Dun dun dun.    So the Pink Ranger is a scientist on the ship or something- some plain looking blonde girl with glasses- and the Blue Ranger is an Asian guy who seems to be the hardass of the group but really isn’t defined otherwise.    The Green Ranger actually is a janitor or something.   Then the Yellow Ranger is some cave-like girl who comes from some other planet and the other four (Well, five with the brother) must help to save them.    So there are these swords no one can pull out of this giant stone and the people I just told you about manage to get them out so they can become the Power Rangers.   It’s totally Sword in the Stone, as if I needed to tell you.   But then during a fight, the Red Ranger goes down a hole and as he’s holding on, rather than try to be rescued and pulled up to his safety, he makes his younger brother, Leo, take his sword.   So, wait, they can save the sword but not the human?  Makes sense to me.   So now Leo becomes the Red Ranger and must fill his brother’s footsteps.   Blah blah blah, fast forward to some bad guys, a kaiju fight and then they win and save the day setting the standard for the new group of Power Rangers.

Acting:  As usual, it’s over the top bad, but we’re not here for the acting.  We’re here for the fight scenes and choreographed backflips.

Production:  This looks like it was made for television and it probably was.

Sex/Nudity:  No, but the outfits have the Charlie Brown stripe which is HILARIOUS.

Special Effects:  They are what you’d expect:  Lasers and guys in costumes standing in front of small scenery pretending to be giants.   It’s Ultraman for the U.S.

Overall Verdict:  As a kid I loved the Power Rangers.   As an adult, I find them to be unintentionally hilarious with action scenes that are what make me love kaiju.     It’s just too awesomely cheesy for words.

I Will Run (I Can No Longer Walk)

Date: Tue, 4 Oct 2011 10:57:45 -0500
Subject: Out of the Darkness Community Walk
From: afsp.houston@gmail.com
To:

Our walk committee is working on a project that will be on display the day of the walk. We see that you have registered as an "individual" walker and are not associated with any walk teams.  Please reply to this email and let us know the name of the person you are walking in memory of.

--
Thank you,

Gina Rodriguez and Beverly Garza,
Houston Walk Chairs
www.myspace.com/afsp_houston
www.facebook.com/afsp.houston

Out of the Darkness Community Walks
http://www.outofthedarkness.org/

American Foundation for Suicide Prevention
http://www.afsp.org/

When I first received this email from ASFP Houston I was both a little bit shocked and offended.   Last year, I participated in the ASFP Out of the Darkness Walk, something I firmly believed in and still do.  My only real problem last year was that I felt awkward and rather out of place amongst the sea of signs and blue balloons with the pictures and names of people on them who were no longer a part of this world.    My feelings basically were as such because of the term “survivor”, which when talking about mental health and suicide can mean two different things.    It seemed as if most of the activities for the day were geared around the survivors who had lost someone.   Whether or not this was completely true, as someone who was the other kind of survivor I did feel very out of place.

                To me, mental illness is a disease.   That is the best way that I can describe it, and really one of the only ways that it should be described.   This disease is treatable, yes, but you have to choose to seek treatment for it.   That can be an overwhelmingly hard thing to do in a world which has the beliefs that no such thing exists and people are just sad or lazy and need to get over it.   Taking medications for mental illness also comes with a lot more of a stigma than, say, being treated for cancer.   No one will ever say to you: “Why do you need chemo?  Is your body really that weak that you let it get cancer?  Man, you’re a loser”.    Yet, for people to have that mentality when mental illness is concerned is something that we still need to overcome as a society.

                Using cancer as an example, which in a lot of ways is what I liken mental illness to so people without it can understand it, if I was participating in a walk to promote cancer awareness, do you think that email would have been appropriate?   Basically, the email would be implying that even though you beat cancer, who cares, you’re not a surviving family member of someone who has died from it so we have nothing for you.     This again goes back to the stigmas and stereotypes society has when it comes to mental illness.   I’m not saying that someone with mental illness is the same as someone with cancer.  You can get cancer a number of different ways, but there are people who just develop it in their systems and have no real explanation as to why.   This is what mental illness is like—something in your body that you were born with and there’s no exact reason behind it.   Sure, it could be hereditary, but when you trace it back to its roots you’ll find no reason for it originating.    It could also be seen as something you’re missing that other people have, but that’s really one of those glass half empty/half full things.

                I ultimately feel like there is too much work to be done and too many people who are ignorant to mental health issues for there to be an “us” and a “them” within this community.    Yes, there are those who understand it (Whether they have been affected by it in some way or not) and there are those who don’t, but we shouldn’t be drawing lines between those of us who actually do get it.   To go so far out on a limb and past the term “survivor”, what about those who just happen to be opposed to suicide and mental illness?   You don’t have to have personally known anyone or been affected by, say, cancer, AIDS or whatever else to walk for it and know that it’s bad and a serious threat to our world.    People can wear pink to promote breast cancer awareness with only the mindset of “I like boobies”.  But if you’re going to distance one side of the people who understand mental illness- the survivors who have attempted suicide and been to that dark place only to be saved and seek help- then what does that say to those people who have never tried it nor known anyone who died from it?    This is mainly just seeming a lot like a place for people to get together and grieve, which is fine, but no one should feel isolated or left out (Especially when we’re talking about mental health issues like depression and social anxiety) and I just don’t feel like this email or the lack of response to it when I inquired makes anything feel warm or accepting.   You say you want to educate people and promote awareness, well, that’s hard to do when you’re seemingly excluding people.    Maybe over the next year or so you can find a way to remedy that and I’ll walk again, but this year I will no longer be walking or raising money for a cause I no longer fully agree with.

X-Men Don’t Fly Coach

Title:  X-Men: First Class

Actors/Director/Anything Worth Mentioning Right Away:  No, not really.   It’s just another chapter in the seemingly endless movies made about these mutants.

Introduction:  I got this from the library for free, ‘cause, yeah.

Location:  It goes all over, so, you know, they had a budget.

Plot:  This movie starts with a young Magneto being power-raped by Kevin Bacon and, well, from there it’s kind of downhill.   Magneto and Charles Xavier are friends, but this movie chronicles their falling apart and choosing the good versus evil sides.  It is an origins story, and yes, very easily could have been called “X-Men Origins: Magneto”, but you know, “First Class” is better than coach and apparently this movie is on a plane.  My biggest complaint with this plot is that, while predictable (I mean, who really thought they’d stay friends in the end?), I really wished it was more like the X-Men Evolution animated series.   This just kind of bored me.   Kevin Bacon’s character paved the way for Magneto going evil, while they recruited fellow mutants such as Beast, Emma Frost, Mystique, Havok and Banshee.   The funny thing is that there was one mutant they brought in called Darwin, who I’m pretty sure was made up for the movie, so of course he dies.    But yeah, if this movie was made first it would have been acceptable, but putting it out after four other X-Men related movies just makes it seem like overkill.

Acting:   I could just not be in touch with mainstream film, but the only actor I really recognized in this was Kevin Bacon.   Of course, that is to say aside from James McAvoy, who I had a HUGE problem with playing Charles Xavier.   Forget the fact that I best know McAvoy as being in that other comic book movie, Wanted, and forget that I don’t really like him as an actor in general, but they could have just found someone that fit this role better.  I had no real problems with any of the other actors, just James McAvoy.   Nothing was right about this guy being in this movie.

Production:   Yes, it was a mega-budget film.

Sex/Nudity:  No, not so much.

Special Effects:  They were what you’d expect.

Overall Verdict:  While I really liked the first two X-Men movies, I felt like Last Stand lacked a certain something in depth, where it just felt forced, like, “Let’s wrap this thing up so we can do something else with these characters”.    Then Wolverine’s solo movie was just its own thing.   But this is definitely, of all now five X-Men related films, my least favorite.  Why?  Mostly because I feel like it was pointless.   I also feel like it’s not going anywhere, like we won’t see a lot of these same characters reprise these roles again (Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing).   I wonder why when we have characters like Gambit, Cable, Bishop, Stryfe and countless others out there that have never had a movie before… Why not put them in their own movie?   Or have a couple of them together at least.   But, I mean, the X-Men in general just seem so burnt out.   The only thing I’d really like to see related to the X-Men is a Storm origins movie done right.  Otherwise, everything else in this little world here needs to be left alone for a good couple of years (Maybe even three to five).

Thor Rhymes With Bore

Title:  Thor

Actors/Director/Anything Worth Mentioning Right Away:  Natalie “I Ruined Star Wars” Portman and Kat “I’m Not Emma Stone” Dennings are in this with some guy as Thor, which was probably the right casting choice.

Introduction:  I got this from the library for free.   You shouldn’t pay more for it.

Location:  All over planet Earth and Asgard. 

Plot:  Thor comes to Earth, befriends humans and has to find himself before he can swing his mighty hammer.   You know, throughout the various comic books and animated series out there, I feel like we’ve seen this story told far too many times already.   This does not make me look forward to learning what I already know about Captain America.

Acting:  The acting is good.  I have no complaints.

Production:  Yes, it had a big budget.

Sex/Nudity:  No, not so much.   But the dude playing Thor looks like Kurt Cobain on steroids.

Special Effects:  Yes, they were what you’d expect.

Overall Verdict:   As I’ve recently been watching older movies in the “fantasy” era, while the special effects might not have been as good, I really would have loved to either see this made around the same time as Dragonheart and movies of that time frame, or at least have this one look more like a tribute to that time when movies were being made.   But, no, this is pretty much cut and dry for what you’d expect for a movie about Thor made by Marvel.   It seems like a necessary evil since all these movies will eventually link together to form the Avengers movie next year, but skipping a Thor origin story wouldn’t have killed that movie.  Black Widow and Hawkeye are both going to be in the Avengers movie without an origins story, so who knows.    But I’d go see a Hawkeye movie just to make fun of it because boy do I hate Hawkeye.   What a useless character that guy is.   But to end this review on a good note, I did like the overall character of Loki.   He actually has a much better role in this movie than Thor himself because he’s just this out of control-insane type character that seems so hard to stop (and even shows he can’t be stopped after the credits).    This movie should be renamed “Loki” because it made me a fan of that bad guy more than it helped me feel any differently about Thor, a character I already like.

This Movie is the Troll

Title:  Troll Hunter

Actors/Director/Anything Worth Mentioning Right Away:  It’s from Magnet, so I thought it was worth a look.

Introduction:  From the library for FREE.

Location:  Mostly in the woods, like the Blair Witch Project.

Plot:  This movie starts with some people hunting bears, but eventually we end up following this one guy whose hunting trolls instead.   It’s shot documentary style and even has a disclaimer at the beginning like “This is the footage that was recovered”.   No one believes this is real, much less really cares about it.

Acting:   It was dubbed, so you know.

Production:  It was shot like a documentary, which is just a cheap way of saying they don’t have to spend a lot on production value.

Sex/Nudity:  No, I don’t think so, but I kind of tuned in and out during the slow parts.

Special Effects:  The only redeeming quality of this movie is that the trolls themselves look kind of cool.  Otherwise, this movie’s got nothing.

Overall Verdict:  I think that as a film-watching community, we should come together and form a set of guidelines and unspoken rules for the film-making community.   After I watched The Last Exorcism, which I enjoyed, I voted that we no longer make movies about exorcisms.   (Funny, that movie was also shot like a documentary)   Now after seeing Zombie Diaries, of course The Blair Witch and so many others, I think we all need to come together and say that we no longer wish to see documentary style movies (That aren’t real) so the film-makers should stop making them as such.   It’s a cheap way to get out of having to shoot a visually appealing movie (“It’s supposed to look grainy” is no longer cutting it)  This movie is also a lot of running through the woods with a shaky camera and green light.   This movie is basically the modern version of the Blair Witch Project, which is just sad.   After Hobo With a Shotgun and Rubber, has Magnet lost their touch?

A New Game Show Revolution

                Recently I thought about what it actually means to be smart, in the literal sense of what knowledge you know and, perhaps more importantly, what knowledge you truly need to know.

                In a world full of game shows and other events based around petty trivia (Jeopardy!) and sometimes meaningful trivia (Rock ‘n’ Roll Jeopardy!), I wondered how much of this really mattered in the real world.   In all honesty, 99.9% of life’s questions (if not a straight 100%) can be answered by simply typing your question into a search box on a website such as Google. 

                With that being the case, I thought up something along the lines that the truly knowledgeable people are those who knows things which you cannot find by asking Jeeves.   I think the real test as to what we truly know or don’t know can be determined by how we react in a situation where we need help but simply do not have an iPhone at our fingertips to figure out the answer.  

                This lead me to two good ideas for television game shows- though I honestly think that they should be merged into one to make it even better.

                For the first half of the show, the contestants would be asked a series of trivial questions.   The answers would basically be based around the fact of who could type the fastest (and most accurately) to pull up the results on a webpage.    But the thing is, this round would have to be like math class—you’d have to show your work.   So, for example, the winning answer could be by Bob who typed in “How do you change a tire eHow” to Google and came up with the correct result.   If you simply know the answer, you can’t just blurt it out.  It has to be a form of search mission in that way, as well.

                The second half of the show is where it gets good.   Do you know how long a person can go without drinking water?   Sure you don’t, nor do you care because if it really pertains to you, you can always Google it.   But what if you weren’t able to use Google?  What if you were in an undisclosed location and forced to answer questions based on your own wits alone?  Do you have the survival instincts to do it?   What if the challenge was that you must decide- with no help from anyone or anything else- how long you could live without water and whatever your answer was would determine whether you lived or died.   If you said that the human body can stay alive for a week without dehydrating, guess what?   You just died.   Worse than that, you died by your own ignorance.  

                The point of all of this, really, is that there have always been two types of smarts—book smarts and street smarts.   You’d throw people who were only book smart out onto the street and watch them grasp at straws for answers while they get carjacked, mugged, raped and left for dead.  Yes, I fully agree that people need book smarts to a certain extent.  No one should have to using their calculator on their phone (or Google) to find out how much two tacos will cost if they’re $0.69 each.   (Though I bet some people can’t do that in their head, so maybe I should’ve went with a 2 + 2 equation instead)  But at the same time, we rely on the internet as a resource far too much in this day and age.    While it doesn’t really matter whether or not you can pull the name of the 14^th President off the top of your head or you have to Google search it, I think there needs to be a certain amount of basic survival instincts still kicked into people.  One day, if we have some kind of apocalyptic type catastrophe and we’re all left without the internet we’ll see who lives and who dies.