Movie Review: 'Jack the Giant Slayer' - Herndon, VA Patch

By the time the bombastic yet tragic minor-keyed Lord of the Rings-type theme music swelled to accompany Jack The Giant Slayer's climactic battle scenes, I was tempted to flamboyantly roll my eyes in slow motion. I couldn't have cared less. ?

This new release, that was slated for last summer and tellingly sat on the shelf until now, is exceedingly straight-ahead, uninventive and laden with special effects. It leaves the audience feeling like it spent an evening at an expensive restaurant expecting to taste some delicious, innovative dish, only to find themselves digesting a bland, flavorless Betty Crocker casserole. Not only is the cuisine uninspired, ultimately, it doesn't amount to a hill of beans.

Something new? Not hardly. Jack buys beans, a stalk grows into the sky, where a land of giants just biding their time for another chance to take over the world below awaits. There is the addition of a princess who yearns for adventure, runs away from the castle and the tool of a future husband to whom she has been promised and winds up accidentally carried up the beanstalk in Jack's humble cottage. The giants capture her. They love humans? with a side of hollandaise. ?

It is up to Jack and the leader of the King's men, Elmont, to rescue the princess. That's basically the whole story, and there's nothing in it we haven't heard somewhere before, delivered with far more panache.

The actors can't be blamed. Nicholas Hoult, who is riding on a romcom zombie high with the well-attended, well-reviewed Warm Bodies, does sincerity proud as the title character. He gets a lot of mileage here from that "gee whiz" grin we're all growing to appreciate, and he carries off the perfect mix of awkward outsider and leading hero. ?

Ewan McGregor as Elmont, the swarthy knight who laughs at fear, and Stanley Tucci as Roderick, an over the top villain hungry for power, do their level best with the endless string of cliched lines they are given. Despite unfortunate costuming that brings to mind Shrek's Lord Farquaad, Ian McShane is a fittingly regal and believable king. Unfortunately, Eleanor Tomlinson, who has the one female role that lasts through the movie, playing Princess Isabelle, is a bit of an empty shell. She has little to do as she is forever getting rescued, providing scant inspiration to little girls looking to damsels in long dresses for empowerment. Shrek's Fiona she is not.

The special effects are one good reason to check the movie out. The diverse environments and the many examples from the species of giants are rendered in extreme detail, although the first panoramic view of the land of the Giants we see had me muttering, "Welcome to another tweaked New Zealand?" ?The giants are filthy, badly mannered grumpuses who can track Jack's crew by sniffing the air. They have been tracking and snacking on people for eons, as the remains we see in old cages and scattered hither and yon attests. ?It is hard not to find it entertaining, the way they pop various secondary characters like Tic Tacs or crunchy stalks of celery. To see them do it in 3D is even more hilarious.

The real and enduring problem is the script. Had the filmmakers gone for a pithy Princess Bride vibe, developing cameo characters and a slightly more off kilter or inventive storyline, they really would have had something. These are the usual suspects for an action-adventure flick, all speaking lines we fans of that genre could say in our sleep.

Bryan Singer has had some great hits and created some wonderful movies we can watch over and over again. He should be looking ahead. We all have high hopes for the X-Men: Days of Future Past because it will be bringing together members of the older cast and the younger one, and utilizing time travel in ways he won't yet share.

So. My advice to you, movie lovers who want to see great things from director Bryan Singer, is to look forward to the great cast of X Men being released in 2014 and which starts filming soon! For now, pull out your copy of 1947's Fun and Fancy Free where you can see the cartoon classic Mickey and the Beanstalk. How can anyone top a cast featuring Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and Goofy? You can't.

Source: http://herndon.patch.com/articles/movie-review-jack-the-giant-slayer-2da1c16e

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Everyone hates the sequester, but it's here

By Walter Shapiro

The most ominous sign in Washington this week? The speechwriters have simply given up.

There is nary a new argument, thought or metaphor to emerge from the White House or Capitol Hill as the dreaded sequester?D.C.?s version of a slasher movie?is slated to take effect late Friday night. With the indiscriminate slice-and-dice power of a Veg-O-Matic, Congress will chop $85 billion from the current federal budget, affecting everything from the Pentagon to the Centers for Disease Control.

In a rare show of political unity, no major figure in either party believes that this complete abdication of priorities (federal meat inspectors are treated the same as tourism planners at the Commerce Department) is a sane way to do budgeting. And in a typical show of Washington paralysis, no one seems willing to do anything about it.

Instead of round-the-clock negotiations, we get round-the-clock talking points. In his opening statement at his Wednesday briefing, White House press secretary Jay Carney sang nine times about the virtues of a ?balanced? plan to reduce the deficit. In a Wednesday night speech to the Business Council, Barack Obama warbled about, yes, ?a balanced approach to deficit reduction.?

John Boehner is equally culpable in abandoning any attempt at originality. In his press conferences and TV appearances, the House speaker keeps harping on the same argument that he used with reporters on Tuesday:? ?Where?s the president?s plan to avoid a sequester? Have you seen one? I haven?t seen one. All I?ve heard is that he wants to raise taxes again.?

Wow. An oratorical choice worthy of Churchill: ?A balanced approach? versus ?Where?s the plan?? Small wonder that Washington is far more riveted by journalist Bob Woodward?s exaggerated claim that he felt threatened by a White House economic adviser than the debate over the looming budget sequester.

Beyond the well-deserved ridicule and the pointless suffering (fewer air traffic controllers are a real but over-hyped example), there are serious factors here that are apt to cast a pall over the next four years in Washington. The budgetary thicket seems inescapable. And neither party is likely to gain enough seats in the 2014 elections to cut through the underbrush.

So, what we are left with are these dismal realities:

Both parties have abandoned economic growth: More than a half century ago John Kennedy ran on the slogan we need to revive in 2013: ?Let?s get America moving again.? Now, sadly enough, that line sounds? more closely connected with Michelle Obama?s anti-obesity initiatives than economic policymaking.

All the tedious green-eyeshade arguments over budget arithmetic totally neglect economic growth. A sharp drop in the unemployment rate would do far more to reduce the deficit than all the current fiscal shell games in Washington.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke testifying this week before Congress warned that the economy would face a ?significant headwind? from the draconian budget cuts, especially since they come so soon after year-end tax increases. Companies like Walmart have already cited the end of the temporary 2 percent payroll tax holiday as a cause of diminished profit estimates. And the consensus of private forecasters is that actions by the government (the automatic spending cuts and the tax increases) could slice as much as 1.5 percent from 2013 economic growth projections.

It would be bad enough if Washington (the Federal Reserve aside) were doing nothing to aid the sputtering economic recovery. But what is actually happening is far worse?the deadlock of democracy pitting the White House against Congress is destroying jobs rather than creating them.

In truth, the blame falls more heavily on congressional Republicans than it does the White House. Peddling tax cuts as a solution for all human maladies including writer?s block, the GOP has thwarted every effort by Obama since the 2010 elections to stimulate the economy. Oddly enough, the Republicans were happy to join with the White House in jettisoning the one tax break that helped all working Americans?that 2 percent payroll tax cut that expired at the end of 2012.

But Obama does not deserve a free pass, either. Too often the White House has appeared more interested in scoring political points than in negotiating. The president is also complicit in accepting the idea that a grand bargain on long-term spending cuts is somehow necessary before the economy gets back on its feet.

The result is a bipartisan doctrine of austerity that has enshrined budget cutting as a major activity of government. Too often the political argument is over what to cut rather than whether such slash-and-burn tactics are appropriate at this moment. The problem with austerity is that it creates an austere future for millions of Americans. It is tragic that the unemployment rate remains at nearly 8 percent four long years after the financial meltdown.

Democrats are from Jupiter, Republicans are from Saturn: The sequester was calibrated with the precision of jewel thieves constructing an explosive charge to blow up a bank vault. The theory was that there were enough ticking time bomb provisions in the legislation to make both parties recoil in horror. Democrats supposedly would agree to anything to prevent the cuts in domestic spending from taking effect while Republicans would wave the white flag before sacrificing the Pentagon budget.

This 2011 deal?hammered out against the backdrop of the irresponsible GOP-inspired debt-ceiling crisis?was based on faulty assumptions. Since entitlements like Social Security and Medicare were protected from the budget knife, Democrats have been so far willing to grit their teeth and accept automatic trims in domestic spending. For their part, Republicans have proven less wedded to protecting every line item in the Defense budget than Democrats ever anticipated.??

As a consequence, both sides are going through the motions and negotiating only when the cameras are rolling. The no-chance-it-will-actually-happen sequester will have become the law of the land by the weekend. What started out as a poison pill has become the Washington blue-plate special.

The larger implications are that Democrats and Republicans not only disagree but they also completely fail to understand each other. Maybe this is a reflection of the polarization in Washington or the decline of negotiation as a way to pass legislation in Congress. But in a crisis nothing is as potentially scary as misreading the intentions of your opponents.

In the end, the most dangerous implications of the sequester are psychological rather than budgetary. During all economic confrontations in the past four years, there was always a last-minute settlement or, at least, a postponement. When the curtain came down, invariably the debt ceiling was lifted and the government was funded. The preliminaries were often ugly and the economic consequences were sometimes depressing, but there was a semblance of rationality to the exercise.

This weekend, as the government arbitrarily cuts funding for domestic and military programs?regardless of merit or logic?it can truly be said that the inmates are now running the asylum.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/the-sequester--how-a-poison-pill-became-a-delicious-blue-plate-special-100730021.html

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In search of 'swag'

To me, it meant stolen goods; but what did it mean to my teen son?

By Robert Klose / February 28, 2013

How rich American slang has become. I feel as if I am hanging on for dear life as the language shifts and morphs around me, leaving me at sea in an increasingly unfamiliar vernacular. Such are the wages of the passing years.

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The latest fragment to arrive on the shores of my ignorance is "swag." When my 16-year-old son first uttered it, I was caught off guard. Here's what he said in reference to one of his friends: "Jesse's got swag." Now, in my experience, swag has two meanings: It refers to either stolen goods or a collection of goodies, such as the boxes of toiletries that colleges distribute to students at the beginning of the school year. But when I said to my son, "Where did Jesse get it?" he regarded me with a pained expression and asked, incredulously, "What are you talking about?"

When I explained what I understood "swag" to mean, Anton laughed ? laughed! ? at me. Then he shook his head. "OK," I said. "Then what does 'swag' mean?" His answer: "If you had it, you'd know."

There it was: I had to first have swag in order to know what it meant. A perfect Catch-22. So I sought another route to enlightenment ? the seventh-grader I mentor in the local middle school. During one of our sessions, as we pored over his Spanish homework, I broached the delicate topic. "Do you know what swag is?" I asked him. "Sure," he said. "It means that you're cool."

Ah, so simple, but yet so proprietary that my own son couldn't admit me to the cabala of its meaning. Pressing my luck, I swallowed my dignity and quietly asked my mentee, "Do you think I have it?" Without taking his eyes from his work, he shrugged, "Yeah, you've got a lot of it."

Glowing, I communicated this intelligence to Anton at my first opportunity. "Ricky said I have swag," I announced as he hovered in front of the open fridge. "A lot of it."

Anton shook his head, as if he didn't know what he was going to do with me. "How old is Ricky?" he asked.

"Twelve."

Anton let out a deprecating breath. "Twelve?" he echoed. "What does he know!"

Hmm ? swag was clearly in the eye of the beholder, and seemingly difficult to earn or get credit for. The next day, as I was chatting with my students in the college biology class I teach, I was moved to ask them about this word. They were, of course, familiar with it. Then one of them asked why I wanted to know. I didn't feel it appropriate to tell them how haunted I was by the realization that I might not possess swag, so I dodged the inquiry and commenced the lesson.

Well, no matter, I told myself. I had lived in blissful ignorance of my swaglessness until now, so I was sure I could continue on intact. But some perceptive, caring soul in my class must have detected my note of despondency in mentioning the elusive quality. The next day, when I came to school, there was a multicolored sticker affixed to my office door: I'VE GOT SWAG.

Need I mention that when I returned home I lay in anxious wait for Anton? As he came through the door, I accosted him with, "Someone put a sticker on my office door. It says, I'VE GOT SWAG." What I didn't add by way of emphasis was, "So take that!"

"It doesn't matter," said Anton as he headed for the fridge.

"Doesn't matter?" I already felt my heart sinking.

"No," he said offhandedly. "Swag is out. There's a new word now."

"A new word?" I echoed. "What is it?"

Turning to me, Anton's eyes were once again filled with pity. "You mean you don't know?"

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/8W1UikBBU_0/In-search-of-swag

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ASUS MeMo Pad Smart 10 review

ASUS is looking to bring down the cost of owning a full-featured 10-inch tablet, but can it overcome the inherent issues with the form factor?

When it comes to 10-inch Android tablets, there's no doubt that ASUS has been leading the pack when it comes to features, build quality and choice of form factors. From the Google-sanctioned Nexus 7 to the highest end Transformer Pad Infinity, the manufacturer surely knows it's stuff. While other manufacturers seem to make Android tablets as an afterthought, ASUS puts a lot of weight behind its entire tablet lineup.

With this, the MeMo Pad Smart 10 (and smaller brother the 7-inch MeMo Pad), ASUS is hoping to offer the same appealing package of quality specs and build of its high-end devices, but cut back in just a few areas to make it more affordable. The MeMo Pad Smart 10 is retailing at just $299, which certainly sounds like a great deal, so stick around after the break and see how it holds up.

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Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/androidcentral/~3/bhTLTtt7gLo/story01.htm

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