A carnival of technology

I suppose I should provide an update on crane guy, since I have been informed that some news outlets are already offering a revisionist account, making certain details more palatable to those who recoil from accounts of treachery or the use of force. This whole situation had taken on a rather comical aspect, and it’s finally over, with crane guy safely and healthily on the ground.

Crane guy first climbed up on the crane around 4pm on Wednesday, and he was taken down from the crane a little after midnight on Saturday morning. The APD continued to offer him food and water throughout the ordeal, and my assumption that this would prolong his stay atop the crane may have been hasty, since it turns out that the police may have a bit duplicitous in their gestures of hospitality. I was told by someone that his descent was described as “[coming] down for a glass of water”, but this isn’t the whole story. He did accept a glass of water, but was still on top of the crane when he did so. When he reached for it, they tasered him. And thus ends this season’s first high-profile threat to jump off of something over a major road.

Mac & Me is a classic example of 80’s pulp: it’s an obvious ripoff of another, better movie, right down to the product placements; it has a differently-abled character to make the cast more diverse, but presented in such a way to make it totally meaningless; and the plot completely stops about two-thirds of the way in for a dance scene. Mac, the Mysterious Alien Creature, attempts to capture the charm of E.T., but fails to do so from the very start with two very unfortunate features: he’s hideous and he’s dumb. The aliens have a more human appearance, possibly to make the costumes cheaper, and the result is a grotesque caricature of E.T. The unchanging goofy expressions permanently plastered on their rubber faces does nothing to make them more appealing. The movie opens with one of these monstrous members of Mac’s family walking through the barren landscape of Mars and sticking a straw into the ground for water. Apparently this comprises most of their days. These primitive E.T. rejects can’t even get to Earth without the help of a NASA rover.

In all, the memorable parts of Mac & Me are all accidental. Wheelchair-kid falling off the cliff was a good scene. The unending use of Coca-Cola was amusing, right up to the scene where Coke saves the aliens. The explosion towards the end was kind of cool, but confusing, since the building they blew up, unlike the gas station next to it, didn’t seem particularly explody. And, of course, the almost threatening “We’ll be back!” at the end was hilarious, since they almost certainly will not.

Oh holy jesus. I knew not to expect much from an obvious ET ripoff, but this was much more painful than I could have imagined. The alien suits were really creepy. Wrinkly skin, belly pooch ala starving Ethiopians, puffed out cheeks, and enternally pursed mouth-hole. This is the stuff of nightmares, I tell you, and we’re supposed to think they’re cute? Seeing them dressed up in human clothing at the end was the most disturbing thing of all.

This is pretty much your standard “kid and friends help wacky alien/animal/fairy thingie find family/home/dream car” fare. Only on some kind of psychoactive drug. Highlights include a sing and dance number in McDonald’s, useless 80’s power ballads, a kid in a wheelchair going for a jog with his mom, and shameless product placement. I give this one a 1/10, purely because no one ever drank anything other than Coke.

How two boys worlds apart became the best of friends

Rated PG.

Starring a bunch of people never heard from again, some freaky alien puppets and suits, and a billion corporate sponsors.

Viewed 2005-05-17 by dshea, dcantrell, mimamura, susi, and dane.

What starts out as a modern-day Grapes of Wrath adaption turns it to a whirlwind of plot holes and disjoint scenes. The family is moving from the dustbowl that is Chicago to California because mom has landed a dream job at Sears. Back up a little more to get the aliens to Earth. NASA sent a probe to a planet to apparently collect things. The probe sucks the aliens through its vacuum hose (we learn here that they have no endoskeleton) and starts to malfunction, so it launches itself off the planet and heads back to Earth. OK, so we have aliens on Earth now.

At NASA they manage to break out and run all over the place. Most of them head to the windfarm in Livermore, CA (probably) and the tiny nameless one heads to the other side of suburbia to look for a family. Hilarity ensues.

The acting is mostly absent, but that’s to be expected with kids. It’s obvious the goal of this movie was to promote ice-cold delicious Coca-Cola and hearty nutritious McDonald’s meals. The kids’ lines are forced and timing is off. Not to mention to absolutely scary scene involving the wheelchair kid rolling off a cliff and in to water about 50-100 feet below. This is a family movie? What were they thinking?

Most of the rest of the movie involves fish-out-of-water scenes. They take the alien to McDonald’s where there’s a huge birthday party going on. The alien family goes to the grocery store. And so on.

Some confusing things about the movie… why does moving in to a new house involving using power tools? Not just drills, but saws and such? The alien planet is a wasteland, like Utah, but the tiny alien brings nature in to the house which one would guess is his attempt to make it more like home. But his home didn’t have trees or shrubbery.

I give this movie a 1/10 because it was better than Cat in the Hat, but not by much. Nothing happened and it ended with a giant, “what the hell?”