Joshua Valett's Junk Drawer

Taking a hand from Movie Bob over at the Escapist, I've decided to do a sort of Junk Drawer episode, where I address a couple of things that wouldn't have made it into full posts. You'll be able to see where one topic ends and another begins by the presence of the ~



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The Word African-American.

Let's stop using it, shall we? Before I get all SCREEEEE-YOU-ARE-NOT-POLITICALLY-CORRECT screaming, stop and think about this word for a second. African-American.

Are you researching this person's past before calling them this? Assuming that just because someone's skin is darker that they come from Africa is more racist than calling them black in the first place. Would you call someone Swedish-American just because they were white?

I'm not black (Ah! Personal Information!) so I don't have a great view on this, but that makes a lot of sense to me.


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Grammar (No 'e' in there, folks)

I'm not saying that you have to spell-check and grammar-check every single thing you write on the Internet. I get it, this is your free time and you don't want to spend it like it is English class. Folks, I understand all of this; enough is enough though.

Use full words. Don't use 2 for to or too. Use correct form of their, there, and they're. It just makes everything easier. You saving twenty milliseconds will take a reader a hell of a lot longer to decipher. But no one is going to listen to me on this, so I'll just keep correcting your text messages and facebook posts.

Also, stop using the phrase 'Grammar Nazi'. It's just crass.


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Movies

This is the only one of these that I considered fleshing out into a full post, but I'm not sure how long or good it would be.

Why is it that movies are considered the dominant form of media? You might not think much about it, but our culture says that movies are the most prestigious.

You ever see a book turned into a video game before a movie? (Witcher series was made into a movie, in case you were going to say that.) How many of you can't wait to see the TV series adaption of your favorite novel (Game of Thrones and a couple others aside, more common nowadays than in the past)? Video game novels? Please, those are only for the diehard fans of the series. TV video games? Lame knock off tie-ins for the quick buck.

Whenever a book/video game is finished, you'll often see things on sites that say, "WHO WE WANT TO PLAY X PART IN Y MOVIE". Why? I don't like the fact that movies are taken for granted as the best form of media.

When something works as a game or as a book, it doesn't mean it will work as a movie. Take the Hunger Games series, por exemple. I really enjoyed the series (well, mostly the first book) for its sense of isolation and one-person-against-the-world survival story. I'm not saying that this couldn't be portrayed well in a movie, but I'm doubtful (Though the producers aren't: they've already commissioned the second book to be made into a movie)

Let's remember the importance of specialization, folks: not every great book or game needs to be a movie. I understand that movies are generally easy for everyone to watch and pay attention to for two hours, but that doesn't mean that EVERY book has to be one. I would never want to see a The Road movie, for example.

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The Military Scandal

There was recently a scandal in the media over a photo of some US soldiers appearing to pee on the corpses of some slain soldiers in a US-occupied country. There have been mixed responses to it; some people say that you can't curb this kind of thing when you are trying to convince soldiers to do this kind of thing you must dehumanize the enemy.

But think about this: What would happen if it was the other way around? If some Afghanistan soldiers took a picture like this?

The country would ERUPT. Think about it. This behavior is ridiculous and terrible, and I want these soldiers on administrative leave at the best.

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The Hobbit Rises

I can't find it in myself to muster any excitement at all for The Dark Knight Rises. I really like the Nolan brothers, especially Jonathan as a writer. It's just... Tom Hardy as Bane and Anne Hathaway as Selena Kyle don't blow me away like The Joker and Scarecrow did in the first two films.

I haven't seen it though, and I will see it and give it a chance, but... meh.

Also, I could not understand a word Bane said in that trailer.

The Hobbit movie, on the other hand, looks like its doing great. Shine on, Peter Jackson, shine on.


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SOPA

Not gonna spend much time on this, as most people already know about it. It was shelved recently, and I don't see it coming back any time soon.

Woo!

But MegaUpload sites were recently shut down due to a crapton of copyrighted content on those sites. MegaVideo in particular had a lot of free movies to watch. If YouTube doesn't keep up its rigid protection of this kinda stuff, it could definitely get the banhammer.

My favorite part of this story was that there was a website apparently called MegaPorn under that label. I find that really funny.


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I guess that's it for my first Junk Drawer. I might update this later with a couple more, but probably not. Comment and tell me if you like it, folks! I'm out of here.


Thanks for reading and considering,
-J. Valett