Frankie Goes to Hollywood

Freedom (and heavily opinionated mini-movie reviews!)

No, this is not a thought-provoking blog post, nor will there be photographs or youTube fodder. Instead, I just want to wish everyone a happy belated 4th of July. What did I do for the 4th, you might ask? Well, I cleaned the kitchen, changed some diapers, fed a baby a few times, took a nap, and eventually left Juston and Frankie at home and went to the movies because I needed to get out of the house. I rounded off the evening with a potluck and some fireworks on TV. Yes, let freedom ring.

I saw "Sicko", which is Michael Moore's new documentary about the state of U.S. healthcare. No new surprises, our current system is terribly broken, probably beyond repair, and it needs a complete overhaul. While I'm not sure that universal healthcare is all puppies and rainbows and happy smiling children, I think that it's definitely and infintely better than our current system. As a parent, I worry that perhaps we'll discover some health issue that we can't resolve with our insurance carrier and that we'll be stuck choosing between bankruptcy and death. I know it's a worst case scenario, but it does happen, and something must be done. Let's just say it's one of my bigger issues for chosing a candidate when voting next year. As always, Moore skews the facts to compliment his own agenda, but this is nothing new in documentary filmmaking; even Eskimos in the 1920s were made to seem like a happy family, when, in fact, Nanoook and his cohorts were really just the best-looking Eskimos hired to re-create scenes of arctic life. Health care an important issue, and anything to document the crisis in a way that screams "we need change!" is alright in my book. But be warned, it'll probably manipulate you into being mad.


And for good measure, I saw "Transformers" on Monday night at the drive-in with spouse and kid in tow. Actually, I was the one 'in tow' because I really didn't want to see the film. It was a Michael Bay movie (ick), full of fast cars, giant robots, big explosions, and excessive cleavage. I was completely bored, but Juston loved it. I think you either have to be a male in your mid-twenties to mid-thirties, or have some other kind of nostalgic tie to Transformers in order to appreciate such a terrible movie. The effects were okay, but really, once they got to the good effects parts, I was too bored and tired to care! I found myself counting product placements, because in my mind, Michael Bay is synonymous with obvious product placement. Beyond the TITLE of the film and the PLOT being a massive toy-tie in, there were many others. When you get bored as you are forced to sit through it, make a game of it (this tactic really works well with any overblow Hollywood Blockbuster, but Michael Bay has a special way of putting the products in your face.) Waste of two and a half hours of my life, waste of $7. The things we do for love, or at least to keep the ones we love appeased.