Because someone asked for it

I threatened a review of Sucker Punch. I'm going to keep this simple. There's one thing Sucker Punch does well, and that is catering to the fantasies of 13-year-old boys. And Zack Snyder--I forget who said it this weekend, but someone suggested that a studio gave him money to make two hours of masturbation material for...Zack Snyder. I think that's probably accurate. But this movie has everything anyone has ever thought was cool in a movie: faux-retro costumes, steampunk, zombies, mecha, robots, alien worlds, orcs, knights, dragons, hot girls with guns, samurai swords, giant stone warriors, mystical mentors, girls in schoolgirl getup, asylums...let me think, am I missing anything? The battle scenes that make use of these masturbatory objects are well done, and were you to chop them into standalone segments, you'd have a handful of interesting music videos. Not that songs as old as "White Rabbit" need them, but still.

The problem with Sucker Punch is, well, everything else. The basic conceit of the movie is that a girl, Babydoll, is dragged, unwilling, off to an asylum by her stepfather who has bribed an orderly to see to it that she is lobotomized so she can't testify against him. In the asylum, she and we ever-so-briefly meet the other ladies who will be our heroine's cohort. And by "briefly," I mean that we really only ever see one of their faces. I have to take it for granted that one or another of the ratty-haired, dirty, screaming women in the short introduction to the asylum make up the team. The only one we make eye contact with is Sweet Pea (if that is her real name).

The plot, such as it is, revolves around a five-day window that Babydoll has in order to escape before she is lobotomized. ( This tension is repeatedly betrayed by the movie that follows. )

Uh, massive SPOILER warning for that cut.

There, it's done. Now back to my daily scheduled drooling over other movies more worth my time.

This is some bullshit

A new version of the Kindle will be cheaper because it'll come with ads.

No matter how I tried to calm myself by muttering to myself about books have always had ads in them--mostly for other books, but still--and so on and so forth, I fucking flipped about this. I think this was made worse for the fact that I watched a TED talk where some speaker put up a picture of a town in Brazil that had banned outdoor advertising. It may have made me a little sensitive about advertisement culture and how unwillingly I am stuck in it. Especially in this city.

But, really, ads on the fucking Kindle? Is there NO PLACE you can avoid ads? Not even reading a book? This is exactly what I don't like about reading on the internet. Worse, can't you just picture how very invasive those ads will get over time? The internet had banners. Then it had side ads. Then ads embedded in the articles. Then ads that if you accidentally moved your mouse over them would pop up larger and start playing movies and/or music. Ads are fucking metastatic cancer--they don't ever retract.

The best point about this is that it doesn't save you nearly enough money to compensate you for what will undoubtedly be a barrage of ads. You want a fancy-pants e-reader? Pay for it. Save yourself.

To cheer myself up

I didn't want to squee aloud at work. I did anyway. This little girl has the right idea, says I. I love that she entirely boggles the host, though he recovers admirably.