Month: March 2015

Healthier Eating Advice That Isn’t Bullshit

· Leave a comment ·

51bf07194b4ecf9dae4caafe45ffb2cfMorning ladies and gents,

Before you bite into that scone or donut, hear me out. I’ve been in shape since I was 18 and here are things your body doesn’t need and things that can be cut. Losing weight has little to do with fitness. Working out helps but shedding pounds comes through a healthier diet. Making better choices with what you pick up with your hands and shove into your mouth. There isn’t a more accurate saying out there than “You are What You Eat”. That milk shake or grilled cheese will make your ass shake for hours. The good looking cooks on the Food Network(the few) don’t eat the entire entree they “test” on television. It’s a marketing ploy. Do what’s right for you and eat better. Start now. (throw the diet coke away too).  (more…)

The Judge Aims For The Heart And Hits

· Leave a comment ·

tumblr_static_akra23p54fco00kw4wk4g8oooSome movies aren’t designed to win Oscars or be particularly groundbreaking. Sometimes, they are simply engineered to make you feel something or take you back to a place where movies were simple and provided escapism. They may remind you of something in your life or someone else’s.

The Judge is as sappy as a brand new bottle of maple syrup, but the performances of Robert Downey Jr. and Robert Durvall elevate a been there seen that script and plot and take it to another level. As a father and son colliding over a murder case after the mom dies, Downey Jr. and Duvall make you feel everything. We may not see them do this again so this film is a real treat.  (more…)

Serena is a lukewarm mess

· Leave a comment ·

serena-poster2-600x450Serena is stinky bad. The kind of film that smells for days. I can smell it in my inbox right now, burning a hole in my Gmail trash folder. The film wastes a lot of premium talent and stinks of something left out since 2012 to dry out and die. Predictable, depressing and worst of all, a complete bore. By the time it slogs to its inevitably sad finish, the face of your watch will be tired of seeing your eyes. Director Susanne Bier blamed a lack of proper dubbing for Jennifer Lawrence for the film’s delay to theaters. Wrong. Next time, try dubbing in a better story and a pace that doesn’t make the actors resemble stuck bodies trudging through quicksand.

There were warning signs. The film was shot in 2012 after Lawrence and co-star Bradley Cooper made Silver Linings Playbook. The magic they created in that Oscar nominated gem is nowhere to be found here because the people they are supposedly playing resemble cardboard boxes. Hollow, bland and not interesting at all. Their characters first encounter is on horseback, where Cooper’s George Pemberton tells Lawrence’s Serena Shaw that they should be married. Your audience deserves a better film next time. A hop, skip and a jump later, the two are married, working together in George’s timber business and the road to ruin begins. Deceit, betrayal, some sex, and murder follow. It’s all pretty cut and dry. (more…)

Banshee Finale(We All Pay Eventually) Recap-Reloaded

· Leave a comment ·
Gregory Shummon/Cinemax
Photo Credit-Gregory Shummon/Cinemax

It’s only been four days, but for the first time in three months, there isn’t a new episode of Banshee to look forward to this week. That’s sad and makes me long for an antique violin to strum on my deck, but let’s go back to Friday’s finale and have some fucking fun. I wrote my official reviewcap then. This is a more of a bang for bang, whatever said goes, funny, dark, light, mindfucked take on my favorite show. Why write more? I have two hands and this show gets to me, Let’s fire it up with the pre-credits sequence.

Tick…tick…tick…20 second countdown sequence. It all makes sense now. All the images click. Lucas with the gun, Kai staring up at the cross, Rebecca at the mass, Job in the chair, Burton closeup. All the images that have racked our brains for weeks now all carry a special identity.  (more…)

The Slow Death Of A City I Love

· Leave a comment ·

AP_FERGUSON11_140814_DG_4x3_992All I can think about right now are two parents who will wake up tomorrow without their four year old boy. It’s Friday, and that’s always a big deal when you are a kid because the school week is over and it’s almost time to play. The hours fly by and it’s almost time to be free again. After reading this beautifully written piece about a young boy dying in North St. Louis City this week, I had to write about the madness that is overtaking my city. This violence probably happens elsewhere in the country and the world, but these crimes in my city feel close and personal.

(Photo Credit-Robert Cohen, STL Post Dispatch)

The saddest part is I am not even there. I am currently in Little Rock, Arkansas. Every time I hear about a senseless death, I tighten up and become full of rage. It could be the innocent hotel manager dying at the Drury Inn in South City weeks ago because a man decided to walk in, pull a gun and destroy lives. It could be the two cops who were shot last night outside the Ferguson Police Department. The violence in Ferguson that repeats itself due to one kid, Michael Brown, dying. A kid who wasn’t a saint or perfect, but since people need an agenda to push or get behind, they support the protesting and scream things like, “If you had taken care of this two months ago, this wouldn’t happen” in the video taken as the shooting broke out last night outside the Ferguson PD.  (more…)

God Doesn’t Know What To Make Of Banshee

· 2 Comments ·

Banshee-Season-3What-Banshee/ Where-Cinemax/ When-Friday night

Review of Episode 309-“Even God Doesn’t Know What To Make Of You

Directed by Loni Peristere

Written by Jennifer Ames and Steve Turner

It’s a common thing on Banshee to be mindfucked by the past. No matter how far or how fast the characters run, the past is sprinting way ahead of them, sitting down and sipping a drink, waiting for those tortured souls to arrive at the next brutal punching of the clock. “Even God Doesn’t Know What To Make Of You” taught us that no matter how we try, the hardest thing in this world is changing what you are. Switching from something that previously defined you and moving into a whole new skin. Asking for another hand from the dealer or requesting a redo or description of the blue pill. We are who we are in this world. Kai Proctor(Ulrich Thomsen) learned that in the hardest way possible this week.

It’s one thing to be mercilessly beaten half to death by a punch of large suited men, but it’s even worse when you have no idea why. Last week, Proctor was reunited with his family and welcomed back home by his father. He was connecting with his youth and finding love in Emily Lotus. It all went up in smoke when The Black Beards hauled him and his new love away like bodies being retrieved by their souls. Kai had no idea Rebecca(Lili Simmons) was dealing under the table with the Salvadorians. When the leader(who just had to be blind and carrying the voice of Louis Gossett Jr. with a couple pulls of reverence added to it) told him what his sweet little niece did, the resignation on Kai’s face was fatal for that brief glimpse of optimism that walked into his life. It dimmed for good when The Black Beard told him he would repay this lapse in judgement with his life. Kai may be a man capable of violence, but he has always retained a principle in his dealings. I love Peristere’s intercutting here with what seemed to be Kai’s internal struggle. Seeing him approach the room of prayer and worship slowly over the episode while being splashed with the final look on Kai’s face. Peristere did it in Evil For Evil in Season 2 and shows us a man in Kai who is slowly slipping back into the skin he has grown comfortable with for the majority of his life. Last week, he was smiling and had a few buttons opened on his shirt. He was loosening up and going warm, not soft. This week, he went back to being cold blooded and wound tight, never to return to his mother’s wishes or his father’s comfort again. Kai Proctor is a man apart. (more…)