Archive for April, 2013

Movie Review – Paranormal Activity 3 (2011)

Like 2009′s Paranormal Activity, 2010′s Paranormal Activity 2 was also a hit in the movie theater.

The first film was a straight-up paranormal horror film where a demon terrorized a young couple.  We knew that the young woman, Katie, had something mysterious in her part, but it really wasn’t explained.  Paranormal Activity ended with Katie being possessed by the demon and killing her boyfriend, Micah.

Paranormal Activity 2 takes place a couple of months before the events in Paranormal Activity.  The sequel stars Katie’s younger sister Kristi as she and her family are terrorized by a demon.  We learn that people can make deals with demons and exchange a first born son for wealth and power.  We also learn that Hunter, they baby boy in the film, is the first male son on Kristi’s side of the family since the 1930s.  Paranormal Activity 2 ended with Dan, Kristi’s husband, sending the demon out of Kristi’s body and to her older sister, Katie.  The next night after Katie kills Micah, she kills Dan and Kristi and then steals baby Hunter.

Enter 2011′s spooky horror film Paranormal Activity 3.

Set mostly in 1988, Paranormal Activity 3 explains why the adult versions of Katie and Kristi are so fearful of demons and the darker side of spirits.  We see clips from a collection of VHS tapes and learn more about the family’s past along with the girls’ connection to a certain demon.

Directed by Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman, Paranormal Activity 3 stars Chris Smith as Dennis, Lauren Bittner as Julie, Chloe Csengery as Katie, Jessica Tyler Brown as Kristi, Dustin Ingram as Randy, and Hallie Foote as Grandma Lois.  The film also brings back Katie Featherston as Adult Katie, Sprague Grayden as Adult Kristi, and Brian Boland as Daniel.

Paranormal Activity 3 (2011) – (c) Paramount Pictures

Paranormal Activity 3 begins in 2005 as Daniel (Brian Boland) records himself and Kristi (Sprague Grayden) preparing the nursery for the unborn baby Hunter.  Katie (Katie Featherston) is visiting the home, and at some point she drops off some boxes of old VHS tapes.  She claimed that they were in Grandma Lois’s possession for the longest time, and Katie acquired them after Grandma Lois died.  Katie, in turn, is passing them to Kristi.  It’s not mentioned if Katie has viewed the tapes or not.

About a year later the family is out having fun and their home is ransacked.  Nothing of value was taken.  In this film it’s revealed that the box of VHS tapes was stolen by the mysterious intruder.  Perhaps something interesting was on those tapes . . .

Paranormal Activity 3 jumps back in time to September of 1988 as we begin to preview those lost VHS tapes.  Katie (Chloe Csengery) is celebrating her birthday and there’s a big party for the girl.  We meet her mother Julie (Lauren Bittner) along with her new boyfriend Dennis (Chris Smith).  Dennis is the main person behind the camera in this film.  We also meet Katie’s younger sister Kristi (Jessica Tyler Brown) along with Grandma Lois (Hallie Foote).

Dennis works as a film editor and has an editing studio in the house’s basement.  He and his partner Randy primarily film weddings and compose souvenir videos for the family.  We later learn that he doesn’t make a whole lot of money with his business. Read more…

Book Review – Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child’s “Reliquary”

Back in 1995, authors Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child presented the literary world with Relic, a thrilling story that placed a killer creature in the depths of the prestigious New York Museum of Natural History.

The sinister Museum Beast killed over forty people and wounded twice that many during a short span inside the museum.  Relic introduced us to Margo Green, a graduate student who worked in the anthropology department; William “Bill” Smithback, Jr., a nosy newspaper reporter; Special Agent Pendergast of the FBI; NYPD Lieutenant Vincent D’Agosta; and Dr. Frock, Margo’s advisor and director of that part of the museum.

As we know, those characters survived their horrific encounter of the Museum Beast.  The beast is ultimately killed at the end of Relic, but information at the end of the story leads us to believe that there’s still much more to the origins of the creature and its impact on the city of New York.

Reliquary begins several years after the events of Relic.  By now Margo Green has earned her doctorate degree and continues working with the Museum.  Dr. Frock has since retired, and Pendergast, Smithback and D’Agosta continue working for their respective employers.

The story begins as NYPD officer Snow is making his first dive as a new diver for the NYPD.  Lieutenant D’Agosta is on the boat when Snow and two other policemen dive into the murky waters in search of a stash of cocaine that was tossed into the water after a recent police chase.  Instead of finding the drugs, the rookie diver stumbles upon two human skeletons, both of them missing their skulls.  The skeletons are hauled on board the boats and later taken to the morgue for further analysis.

At the morgue, personal item on one of the skeletons identifies the remains as those belonging to Pamela Wisher, a young lady who recently disappeared.  Bill Smithback caught wind of the story about the young socialite’s remains being found in sewage, and his newspaper article caught the attention of Pamela’s mother, Anette Wisher.  She agrees to meet with Smithback and give him information as long as he prints more honest stories about her daughter, shying away from her night life and focusing on her schooling and numerous accounts of good deeds.  Smithback agrees and Mrs. Wisher informs him of her plan of creating flash mobs and putting pressure on the police department to help clean up the city.

Meanwhile, the doctor at the morgue notices strange markings on both of the skeleton remains, and Lieutenant D’Agosta sends the skeletons to the New York Museum of Natural History for further analysis.  He requests that Dr. Margo Green be part of the scientists analyzing the bones.

Sure enough, there are strange markings on the bones.  They almost look like puncture wounds, but further testing needs to take place before a final decision can be made.  Smithback tries to push Margo for more information, especially when the markings on the remains and missing heads sounds more and more like the Museum Beast’s method of killing.  But the Mbwun was killed years ago and its remains were destroyed. Read more…

Boston Marathon Bombing Conspiracies – From Saudi Arabia to West, TX

It’s been several days since the Tsarnaev brothers, Tamerlan and Dzhokhar, had the shootout with Boston cops and then put the city under siege and martial law until the surviving brother, Dzhokhar, was finally captured.

According to the media, .  The vast majority of news stories have painted the picture of two boys originally from southern Russia who came to America and later decided to strike back against this very country.  They allegedly became “brainwashed” with a radical faction of the Muslim religion and carried out a personal jihad against the USA.  The Tsarnaev brothers placed IEDs constructed from pressure cookers (as described in online publications), and detonated them near the finish line of the Boston Marathon.

It seems simple enough of a plan, especially when you look deeper into Tamerlan’s past including his mysterious trip to Russia that lasted for six months and the violence he’s used against his wife, a woman who was forced to convert to the Muslim faith.  New articles online hint that Tamerlan Tsarnaev may also be the person behind a that occurred back in 2011.

2013 Boston Marathon bombing

It seems so simple:  Construct pressure cooker bombs.  Start a fuse.  Place bombs amongst the unsuspecting crowd watching and cheering for the runners.  Walk away.  Flee with the masses when the bombs detonate.  Avoid capture and live to strike again (failed for these two starting with the chain of events that began early Friday morning).

But to many people, there’s much more to the Boston Marathon bombing than we’re being told by the media and politicians.

Saudi Arabia connection

Let’s start with a Saudi Arabian named Abdul Rahman Ali Issa al-Salimi al-Harbi. Read more…

Movie Review – Paranormal Activity 2 (2010)

The spectacular success of 2009′s hit scary movie, Paranormal Activity, could mean only one thing.

It’s time for a sequel.

Paranormal Activity 2 continues the story that was established with a demon haunting Katie and Micah from the first Paranormal Activity film.

As we see, about 95% of the events in PA2 actually take place a few months prior to the haunting and possession and then Micah’s murder in Paranormal Activity.  We learn more about the history of Katie and Kristi, and perhaps there’s much more to the hauntings than we previously believed.

Directed by Tod Williams, Paranormal Activity 2 continues with the “found footage” style of filmmaking used in this first film.  In addition to a hand-held video camera, the footage in PA2 also includes the footage recorded from the home’s video surveillance system.  Paranormal Activity 2 stars Sprague Grayden as Kristi Rey, Brian Boland as her husband, Dan Rey, and Molly Ephraim plays the role of Dan’s teenage daughter Ali.  Katie Featherston and Micah Sloat reprise their roles as Katie and Micah from the first film.

Paranormal Activity 2 (2010) – (c) Paramount Pictures

Paranormal Activity 2 begins in August of 2006 with the birth of Hunter Rey to the proud parents of Dan Rey (Brian Boland) and his wife, Kristi (Sprague Grayden).  Dan records footage of his new son along with his family moving into their new home in Carlsbad, California.  It’s a joyous event and the family, including Dan’s teenage daughter Ali (Molly Ephraim), seem pleased with the new home, especially the pool and hot tub. Read more…

2013 Boston Marathon Bombings – NOT International Terrorism (a theory)

While watching the news reports and reading more about the bombing that occurred on April 15th at the 2013 running of the Boston Marathon, I’m more and more convinced that the terrorist, whomever he may be, is NOT part of an international terrorism organization such as Al-Qaeda, Hamas or the Muslim Brotherhood.

My theory is that the bombing was carried out by an individual, a.k.a. “lone wolf,” and not from orders from a terrorist cell or organization.  Whether this person has sympathy for the terrorist organizations, or is somebody just looking to cause chaos is still to be determined.  But I’m confident that this act was not ordered from any of the big militant organizations.

What evidence supports this theory?

With all due respect to those who were injured and killed in the blasts, considering the size of the crowds at the Boston Marathon and the relative crudeness of the explosives, there should have been a much larger body count.  As of right now the death toll stands at three people.  That number is remarkably low considering that a large crowd of people were unprotected and just standing around the bombs’ locations when they were detonated.

Whenever you hear about suicide bombers in the Middle East, the death toll is usually higher than just a couple of people.  When car bombs are used in attacks, especially coordinated bombings, the combined death toll can reach a hundred or more people.  But as far as IEDs planted in busy areas, or suicide bombers wearing explosive vests, death tolls are normally quite a bit higher than what we saw at the 2013 Boston Marathon.

We also know that if a large terrorist organization tried to strike again in this country, the attack would be much bigger than the bombing we saw in Boston.  These are trained killers who think big.  A bombing as small as the one during the Boston Marathon would be the equivalent of “tipping your hand” in poker.

Why would a major organization go through all the trouble of placing and detonating an explosive, knowing full well the reaction that it would cause with the media, police, FBI, and everybody else, if it’s not going to have a high number of fatalities? Read more…

Book Review – Max Brooks’s “World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War”

Today I finished reading Max Brooks’s account of warfare, survivability, and a global pandemic in World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War.

This book is scheduled to be released in the zombie film World War Z in June of 2013.

World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War is a collection of interviews of the survivors, from doctors to politicians to the soldiers themselves.  The story behind the book is that years after the war, the United Nations Postwar Commission compiled a report from an agent’s interview notes.  The agent was angered that the Commission neglected to include individual stories from the war, so the agent’s supervisor advised him to take his notes and interviews, and make them into a book about the war.  That’s how we have World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War.

In World War Z, Brooks takes us throughout the worldwide struggle as his character interviews the survivors after the Zombie War.  We learn about the initial cases of people rising from the dead, how it was hard to identify the problem at first and ways to contain it.  One of the interviews is with a doctor in a remote part of China as he encounters “patient zero,” a young boy who was bitten while swimming with his father.  His father was never found, but the boy transformed into a zombie and began biting others, causing the terrible disease to spread.  The doctor watched as the Chinese government swooped in and launched a cover-up, going as far as instigating a crisis with Taiwan to make people look the other way.

Another case involves a doctor in Brazil who assists a cardiologist with performing a “black market” heart transplant.  The patient received the new organ from overseas in China (implying an illegal harvest, sale and transport of human organs; includes executing people for access to rare organs).  It turns out that the transplanted heart was infected with the killer disease, and since it was in a critical organ, the disease rapidly spread through the patient’s body.  He quickly succumbed to the disease and was a zombie by the next morning, going so far as killing the cardiologist before being shot and killed by another doctor.  The staff at the medical center were basically paid off to stay quiet about what really happened.

The outbreak of the disease in Africa, and thus dubbed “African rabies,” brought worldwide attention to the problem and the massive humanitarian problems that followed.  We hear about how people panicked and tried to flee Africa, stampeding each other and trying to scramble onto boats to escape the zombies.  But the zombies were capable of standing in water and still grabbing and killing people, and many boats were capsized and sunk by zombies.  Beaches quickly became massacre sites as people tried to flee the zombies. Read more…

Movie Review – Night of the Living Dead (1968)

Back in 1968, George A. Romero and John A. Russo shocked and terrified the world with their low-budget, black & white horror film that brought the dead back to life to kill and feast on the living.

Night of the Living Dead not only won acclaim as a top-rated horror film, but this became a groundbreaking film for the zombie craze as well.  Earlier films may have hinted at the notion of using zombies as horror villains, but Night of the Living Dead was the film that really got the craze rolling.

Directed by George A. Romero, Night of the Living Dead was also written by George A. Romero and John A. Russo.  The film stars Judith O’Dea as Barbra, Duane Jones as Ben, and Karl Hardman as Harry Cooper.  Supporting them are Marilyn Eastman, Judith Ridley, Keith Wayne, Kyra Schon, and Russell Streiner.

It’s a film basically driven by a cast of nobodies, but as we see, the strength of the horror story and the gripping terror of the horde of zombies continue to push this 1968, original version of Night of the Living Dead to not only the status of cult classic but also as one of the top horror films of all time.

Night of the Living Dead (1968)

Night of the Living Dead begins as brother and sister Johnny (Russell Streiner) and Barbra (Judith O’Dea) make an annual day trip to deliver flowers to the grave site of their late father on behalf of their mother who lives in Pittsburgh, PA.  They place the flowers on the grave and Johnny remembers how the two of them used to play in the graveyard.  He teases Barbra and scares her when saying, “They’re coming to get you, Barbra.”

Off in the distance there’s a strange guy (Bill Hinzman) dressed in a suit and stumbling around the graveyard.  Johnny teases Barbra about the strange man being one of “them” when the man suddenly attacks his sister.  Johnny tries to fight him but he’s pushed back and knocked unconscious when his head hits a gravestone.  Barbra panics and tries to drive away from the cemetery and the strange man, but she doesn’t have the car keys.  Johnny does.  When the strange man breaks one of the car’s windows and tries to grab her, Barbra releases the parking brake and rolls downhill.  The car eventually hits a tree and Barbra flees on foot to a distant farmhouse. Read more…

Book Review – James Rollins’s “Map of Bones”

Map of Bones, the second book in the SIGMA Force series of novels written by ace novelist James Rollins, takes readers into a mystery of biblical proportions as two teams race between ancient sites and solve riddles and clues.

One of the teams is focused on the grand prize of total world domination while the opposite team does everything in its power to stop them, even solving the riddles and jumping ahead of the other team in a race to the finish.

Map of Bones begins at a Catholic Church in Cologne, Germany.  What begins as an innocent midnight mass quickly turns to horror as a band of hooded monks seizes control of the service.  Most of the worshippers are electrocuted in an obscure method and the monks gun down the rest of the survivors, leaving no witnesses.  Except for one young man who crawls to safety and reports the horrors he witnessed.  Unfortunately for him, that young man is later killed as the evil doers attempt to wipe their path clean.

It’s the method of execution, not the mass murder itself, that draws the attention of SIGMA Force, a secret organization within the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).  How can a hundred or so people sit in wooden pews and suddenly become electrocuted?  How could some of the people not be electrocuted and have to be shot and killed by the killers disguised as monks?

Continuing from the events in Sandstorm, Painter Crowe is the new director of SIGMA Force.  This assignment is going to keep him mainly behind a desk and commanding the squad from his office in Washington, D.C., a position that Crowe despises greatly.  He wants to be out in the field where he feels like he’s more of an asset, and not stuck behind a desk.

As Director Crowe commands the squad from his desk, Grayson “Gray” Pierce leads fellow SIGMA Force members Monk Kokkalis and Kathryn “Kay” Bryant out to Cologne, Germany to investigate what happened at the church.  Out in Cologne they meet their contacts from the Vatican, Vigor Verona and his niece, Rachel Verona.  Rachel is an officer with the Carabinieri, serves under General Rende, and already had an attempt on her life by unknown forces in Rome, Italy.

Part of what makes the massacre in Cologne so unusual is that the culprits seemed to use the killings to cover up their true motive – a simple robbery.  Gold was not taken from the church.  Instead, it was the altar’s relic, some bones from the Magi (as in the Three Wise Men who visited Jesus Christ shortly after his birth) were stolen.  So why were innocent worshippers electrocuted and brutally killed? Read more…

Movie Review – History of the World, Part 1 (1981)

Remember all of those boring history lessons from your social studies and geography classes back in school?

Wouldn’t it be fun to sit back and poke some fun at those past events, shedding some light on some darker events just for a few laughs?

That’s exactly the premise in comedic legend Mel Brooks’s classic film, History of the World, Part 1.  This film takes a look at a few time periods from the Dawn of Man to the Roman empire and the French Revolution, and shows us that history can be rather hilarious even in some of our darker times as a society.

History of the World, Part 1 is a 1981 film written, directed and produced by Mel Brooks, one of the greatest when it comes to poking fun at other films and events.  Not only behind the camera, but Mel Brooks also stars as five different characters throughout the film, even playing a dual role during the French Revolution.  History of the World, Part 1 also stars Dom DeLuise as Emperor Nero, Madeline Kahn as Empress Nympho, Harvey Korman as Count de Monet, and Cloris Leachman as Madame Defarge.  The film is narrated by Orson Wells.  Along the way you may see other famous faces such as Mary-Margaret Humes, Ron Carey, Gregory Hines, Sid Caesar, Bea Arthur, Hugh Hefner and John Hurt.

History of the World, Part 1 (1981) – (c) 20th Century Fox

History of the World, Part 1 begins with the Dawn of Man.  In a parody of the opening of 2001: A Space Odyssey, we see apes stand upright and begin to move around like Homo sapiens.  Of course, this is a Mel Brooks film, so the apes don’t just move around like regular people.  They all furiously masturbate and then collapse to the ground once they’re finished. Read more…

Stupid Grammar Errors – Dave & Buster’s and Starz

The other day my girlfriend and I were walking through a shopping mall when a new sign for Dave & Buster’s caught our attention.  One word was definitely wrong but the advertisement was also in desperate need of some key punctuation marks.

Did you notice anything wrong with the grammar and punctuation?

How about now?

Obviously not every phrase and sentence on an advertisement like this needs punctuation, but you really need to have some punctuation in key areas like after asking a major question or stating a proud selling point.  As far as the your/you’re error, that’s a common problem for a LOT of people these days, and nobody seems to care about correcting it. Read more…

Experiences at Studio Movie Grill Movie Theater

In the past couple of weeks, my girlfriend and I have visited Studio Movie Grill movie theater twice, both times through a Groupon promotion.  We saw Olympus Has Fallen and then Evil Dead.  The location we visited is located in Duluth, Georgia.

Studio Movie Grill is part of a growing trend that combines a bar & full-service restaurant with that of a movie theater.  The front of the building has a bar and lounge area, and before and during a movie you can order a wide variety of snacks and food.  Of course, this is a movie theater, so don’t expect bargain or regular prices for any food or snacks.

A visit to Studio Movie Grill can actually begin several days before you go to see a movie.  You can go online and order tickets, and you can also reserve your exact seat(s) in the theater.  That alone is a mind blowing concept.  In each theater, each seat is identified with a row letter and a seat number, and you can pick your seat ahead of time if you desire.

The only minor issue with that is there’s a $1.50 ticket processing fee for online transactions.  If you want to reserve your seat ahead of time, then you have to pay the fee.  Otherwise you’ll pick your seat when you’re processing your tickets at the counter inside the theater.

When entering Studio Movie Grill you’ll need to head to the counter and have the workers process your tickets and give you a printed receipt.  This receipt is very important as it not only has your movie ticket, but it’s also connected to any promotions that you may be using.  For example, our Groupon deal was $5 for a movie ticket AND a free soft drink.  Near the end of the film we had to present the receipt with the promotion to remove the drink charges from our bill. Read more…

The Clueless Restaurant Owner, Part IX – What Does It Take To Fire A Worker?

Although it has been over a month since our last posting about a CLUELESS restaurant owner of a pizza buffet franchise within the metro Atlanta area, don’t think that things have been all well and dandy.

No, my friends, unfortunately that’s not the case.

As you can probably guess, conditions inside of the restaurant have continued to become more and more depressing as once again the amount of hours given to the workers are scaled back, and once again the restaurant’s owner fails in marketing the business and handling the problems inside of the restaurant.

For starters, the restaurant’s owner is a gutless coward for not pursuing the theft issue caused by the former shift manager, Blackshirt #1 (a.k.a. “Tamara”).  As we recall from our previous story, “Tamara” was basically caught red handed as she removed $50 that was in the restaurant’s safe.  She betted on nobody checking the safe after her previous shift (especially since the top manager, the assistant store manager (ASM), was not working that day).  This tactic normally worked for “Tamara,” but because of a fluke money issue with Blackshirt #2 (a.k.a. “Chris”), the extra money was discovered.  The next day the security camera in the office recorded “Tamara” taking the money and slipping it under her clothes.  Once the restaurant owner learned of this theft, “Tamara” was fired her next day at work.  Of course, the restaurant’s owner is a GUTLESS COWARD and chose not to fire this worker in person.  He made the ASM do this task.

That’s leadership for you.

Anyway, it turns out that the restaurant’s owner did NOT fire “Tamara” for the theft.  A different reason entirely was given for her official removal from position.  The kicker is that the reason given was so lame that “Tamara” could have fought the jackass for unemployment . . . and easily won her case!  The restaurant’s owner DID NOT contact the police as he threatened.  He simply removed the $50 from “Tamara’s” final paycheck (I later heard something about him actually paying her back that $50 later), and that was it.  It turns out that “Tamara” didn’t even need to collect unemployment as another fast food company promptly picked her up and gave her a job.

Are there any morals to learn from “Tamara’s” story?  Not as far as the restaurant’s owner is concerned.  Sadly, his lack of taking and pursuing problem employees is far worse than what we’ve seen with “Tamara” and the restaurant’s previous general manager.  Let’s take a few moments and tell some tales of “Señor.” Read more…

Book Review – Clive Cussler’s “Cyclops”

Last night I finished reading Cyclops, the eighth book in Clive Cussler’s main series involving Dirk Pitt.

Cyclops continues after the events in Deep Six, though the two stories aren’t really connected with each other.  The main reference point is when we’re reminded early in Cyclops that the current president of the United States was placed there because of the actions and sinister Russian plot in Deep Six.  Otherwise, it’s business as usual for Dirk Pitt, Admiral Sandecker, Rudi Gunn and Al Giordino in this story.

Like most Clive Cussler novels, Cyclops begins with a prologue involving a mysterious incident at sea.  This time around the incident involves a cargo ship named the Cyclops and its sudden sinking somewhere near the Bahamas in 1918.  A large rogue wave is the suspected culprit, but as one of the characters discovers, the cargo for the ship may be more mysterious than what caused its sudden demise.

Fast forward to today, October of 1989.

Dirk Pitt, hero and special projects director for NUMA, the National Underwater and Marine Agency, is off the coast of south Florida and competing in a windsurfing race.  He’s working his way to the front of the pack and going for the win when suddenly a massive blimp coasts overhead.  The airship appears to be pilotless and drifting towards a resort hotel on the beach.

Dirk abandons the race and grabs one of the blimp’s mooring lines and hangs on, trying everything in his power to climb into the control cabin and shut down the engines.  He’s knocked back into the water but still holds one of the ropes.  As the airship arrives at the beach, hundreds of shocked onlookers come to Dirk’s aide and together they stop the blimp before it crashes into the hotel.  Dirk is able to climb inside and shut down the engines.  The sight inside the control cabin is rather horrific as three dead people are still strapped to their seats.

The president of the United States is out on a golf course when he’s surprised by a man disguised as his usual golf caddy.  The man delivers the president news about a secret organization that managed to not only sneak scientists to the Moon after Apollo 17, the last manned lunar mission by NASA, but the scientists have built a colony and been living there for the past seven or eight years.  The secret lunar colony is simply known as the “Jersey Colony.” Read more…