Movie reviews, Black Friday, "Mission Accomplished," Miscellaneous

It is time to hit the movie review thing again, but I have decided to get a little more detailed and scientific with my reviews. I will first give you the local movie review rating scale offered by William Kerns, and then I will offer how my scale works. While I realize Kerns has been at it for a number of years and is paid some reasonably good bucks for what he does, I think he leaves some stuff out that needs to be exposed to the public before they go an buy a ticket. While I have been at it as many years as he has I am not on anyone's payroll, so I can say what I wish or better still how I see it. The "Kerns Scale" is done is typical star rating: *****, Superior, five Star and it can't go any higher, he says, "Not to be missed. Beautifully crafted and award worthy. **** Four star, Excellent, Always a good bet. Extremely enjoyable and worth seeing. *** Three star, Good, Above average fare. Entertaining, but not flawless. ** Two star, Fair, Only a few good moments in a primarily disappointing effort. * One star, Terrible, Lowest rating. Awful! See at your own risk, only the popcorn can save the day. While I don't have a problem with this approach I will give a couple of reviews and show you how mine disagrees with his and you can make your own choice. Examples: "The Prestige", he gave it a four star ****, I gave it a two star **. I agree it was a well done movie, with a great plot with great actors, so what went wrong? Well the way they did the flashbacks it was impossible to figure out which flashback you were in. The great acting and story was flushed with the confusion on how the story was presented. Possibly he is just smarter than me and can figure it all out, but I ask others who saw it and they agreed with me. NaNaNaooooh,Mr. Kerns! "The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause," Kerns rating One star *, Greer rating, One star *-, really bad one. Kern's says it looks like the actors were even bored with the script. I couldn't agree more, BAD BAD SANTA(not to be confused the Billy Bob's "Bad Santa" of last year). "Man of the Year," Kerns gave it a Two star **, I gave it a **** Four star. Look at the definition above and this movie fits the description, i.e. excellent, always a good bet, extremely enjoyable and worth seeing. This movie fits that description and with the current National political scene it is refreshing and is what we hope could happen, but doesn't. I was for Kinky but knew he really had no chance, even Grandma beat him. But the money machine and party wins, no matter what. "Stranger Than Fiction." Kerns Three and half, ***1/2, I gave it Four stars **** simply because of the uniqueness in the way the story was presented. It was slow taking off but once you got into it, it was very good. Anything Will Ferrell does will put any critic on guard, since his bad is beyond bad, but this offering is beyond good. Now that you see how the system goes for my rating system, here goes for some recent movies I have just seen: "Santa Clause 3," One star * only because it is about ole St. Nick. Terrible movie, especially if you compare it to 1 and 2. "Happy Feet," **** Four stars, while I usually don't go to animated films I decided to do the peepaw thing and take 5 of my grandchildren, my daughter/husband and wife,and it was well done and enjoyable. My money was well spent, final tab was $98.75 for tickets, fresh popcorn, cold drinks, etc. Of course I realize most people don't have that many grandkids, but think about it, there were 8 others spread around the world. So,if they had been here the tab would have been double the above, or maybe they would have given me a volume discount. NOT, they don't do stuff like that. The good news is that there was no cost after the movie and I was destined to eat canned chicken noodle soup, crackers and water after returning to the canyons. Back to the film, this was a real cute film and had a great story. The animation of today is so much better than Daffy Duck of the past! "Casino Royale," Five star *****, has all the ingredients you look for in a movie, except it will not win any awards. This type of movie just doesn't win awards, but still merits five stars. While I am of the belief that Sean Connery is "Bond, James Bond!!" it also is a fact that he is in his mid seventies and just can't jump out of planes, off of cliffs, and into the arms of real beautiful naked women any more. Of course he can do the naked women in a more subtle way, but Bond must do it his way or nothing. This new guy is athletic, has chiseled good looks and body to go with it, acts good, and obviously can take care of the the beautiful "Bond" women in a way that makes them come back for more. The story is typical Ian Flemming. You know the really evil bad guy who either wants to take over the world, or the worlds money, has good looks but also a scared left eye that bleeds real blood when he is stressed, and of course a very good looking wife(a very frustrated wife, that Bond must do his duty to). The good news here is that our new Bond does have some kind of realness to him in that he falls in love(we think), but also gets captured. The bad villain then renders some torture to him that even made me re-adjust my skivies while it was being applied to the Bond body parts. This was unique, imagine a chair with the entire bottom cut out with a totally tied up, naked Bond sitting on it. Your imagination will allow you to see what was hanging below, then the villain takes a huge rope with a knot in the end of it and viciously swings it to hit the vital hang down parts of the body. Yep folks, you are taken to new heights in oriental torture techniques. The movie description says, "intense sequences of violent action, a scene of torture(way understatement), sexual content(Bond always has sexual activity), and nudity. What more could you ask for? But remember, "no bad language!" Typical Bond movie in that he does survive the torture and returns to his action in the bedroom. With the vital body parts that were being tortured I just had to wonder what his performance level was going to be, but from what I gathered in the concluding scenes he was "fine." DISCLAIMER: Let me comment here, my grandkids were not with me at this movie and I don't recommend kids for this movie.

When I saw the term "Black Friday" I thought the worst, new war in the middle east, new war in Korea, new eathquake in Hawaii, more tornadoes in the Midwest, or maybe a new hurricane in New Orleans,Texas Tech's Coach Knight had hit another player, or the Texas Tech football team had lost another game, but lo and behold it referred to a shopping day. The Friday after Thanksgiving is called "Black Friday." Guess somewhere down the line of life I have missed that term or just haven't paid attention. Why Black Friday? Here's the story: Historically retailer balance sheets move out of the red(profit loss) to the black(profit gains)as a result of the buying on the day after Thanksgiving. Again, all part of the psychological hype given to holidays to get us to spend, spend, etc. Here are the facts, over 137 million shoppers will hit the stores and spend an average of $302.81, or a total of $27.8 billion was spent in 2005. The final tab for 2006 has not been computed. Just think, in 10 years, using the above total sales, there will not be enough to pay for the deplorable war in Iraq. Whoops, forgot to mention I didn't do my part, since I did no shopping on Black Friday.

When the President of the United States, George W. Bush, declared "Mission Accomplished," referring to the war in Iraq, you just have to wonder what he was smoking or had he gone back to Old Crow. As I watch the slaughter that has gone on between the Shiites and Sunni's since the above statement, I stand all amazed of this terrible war. It may have been bad when Sadaam was in power, but at least there was no civil war and more importantly our citizens were not being killed and maimed. For the prez to be such a Christian and a man of the scriptures, it is amazing that he doesn't read the book of Genesis and see that the war between these people started back "then" and has never stopped. But, let's continue to have our soldiers killed, and crippled, spend billions of dollars, etc., and not accomplish one thing. Go figure!!

Trivia: Historically James Buchanan has always come in last on the Presidents of the United States rankings. With the performance of the current President I bet James is having a great laugh, he will finally move up one notch. The sad part is that Buchanan was the only president who never married(of course there was suspect he was gay, but never proven)so he has no living descendents to really gloat for him. Of course he is known for setting the stage for one of the greatest, if not the greatest, Presidents, Abraham Lincoln. I am currently reading, "Team of Rivals," by Doris Kearns Goodwin, on Lincoln and his rise to the presidency. This is a great book but very detailed and will take until the next century to complete it.

greerman