‘Pacific Rim’ film review

This is going to be short — really short — lest I waste anymore time analyzing a movie that’s already taken two hours of my life. I knew that “Pacific Rim” was going to, at best, include 1 1/2 hours of over-the-top CGI action porn, with shallow actors and a contrived, nonsensical plot. I knew that going in. But we got was actually more than two hours of action, most of it either under water or in the ocean, a boilerplate hey-look-it’s-another-white-guy-hero surrounded by a cast of forgettable token characters — the kooky scientist, his even kookier partner and, of course, black male and Asian female supporting roles.

The film lacked any discernible heart, depth and scant reason to care whether or not the robots succeeded in saving whatever generic Pacific city they were trying to save. My interest in the film, with still about an hour to go, tanked when the main analog robot, named Gipsy Danger (Wait, how or why would a robot from the year 2020 still be analog?) and the alien were fighting each other and destroying the city in their wake, crashing through buildings and chasing each other through the streets, presumably causing a shocking loss of life all the while. A few minutes later after the alien was defeated, we see the Jaeger team back at the base cheering in celebration after the victory, with no consideration of the gigantic number of people who were just crushed under the hero robot’s heel, impaled as the combatants tromped through the city or who simply fell from skyscrapers to their grisly deaths. Are we to believe that all 2 million people managed to find one of the Kaiju refuge stations in a matter of minutes? Hardly.

In any case, the action and effects were spectacular, but I judge all movies on the same criteria — acting, depth, emotion, character development, etc. — no matter the genre, and no amount of “CGI motherfucker, CGI!” can save a movie with a bland plot and lifeless characters.

Yorke releases album on BitTorrent

I’ve only heard the first track so far, but Thom Yorke continues to push the envelope, not only within the rock music genre, but in the music distribution market. Torrents as a means to share content has been a thing for years and years, but so far as I know, York’s new album and the aptly named, “Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes,” is the first album by a major artist to be released on Bittorrent as a method of distribution.

Here is Yorke’s justification for releasing the album on BitTorrent:

It’s an experiment to see if the mechanics of the system are something that the general public can get its head around. If it works well it could be an effective way of handing some control of internet commerce back to people who are creating the work. Enabling those people who make either music, video or any other kind of digital content to sell it themselves. Bypassing the self elected gate-keepers. If it works anyone can do this exactly as we have done.

In other words, it could provide a cheaper means for the consumer to get new music and for artists, it could serve as a workaround and alternative to distributing through a record company, which has its obvious drawbacks and limitations.

Ray Rice case and Roger Goodell’s failure

In this now notorious press conference, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell went on and on about the NFL’s lack of clear and consistent policies related to discipline and personal conduct that apparently haven’t been updated since 2007.

Seems like Goodell has had been plenty of time since then to revisit and modify any policies he deemed insufficient. Why were such important policies not being reviewed every year? The NFL certainly takes pains to review every nuance about the rules on the football field each season. Not even taking into account the Ray Rice debacle, seems like this oversight alone would be grounds for termination. Further, how does a league with an entire legal department at its disposal not know that you don’t conduct interviews with the victim and abuser in the same room?

There’s just so many elements in this case that don’t add up, and I think that, in part, fueled Bill Simmons’ also notorious tirade against Goodell. It’s clear to anyone paying attention that either Goodell, NFL executives, the Ravens or all three, have not been completely forthcoming with what they knew and when they knew it. Simmons, with perhaps a little too much impropriety in calling out the corporate suits at ESPN, just had the balls to say what everyone was already thinking.

And frankly, with the exception of Simmons — and it will be interesting to see what he has to say, if anything, once he returns from suspension — I can’t say that I trust the credibility of other ESPN employees commenting on the NFL because of the sports channel’s cozy partnership with the league on “Monday Night Football.”