Posted On: Saturday - February 9th 2019 2:28PM MST
In Topics: Humor Political Correctness Movies Orwellian Stupidity
(continued from Part 1)
The last post ended with my promising to bad-mouth the non-political aspects of the Oliver Stone-directed movie Snowden about, you guessed it, Ed Snowden. I did not mean to imply that the movie sucked by any means when I wrote that, along with the diatribe on the poltical slant of the movie (toward Ed Snowden, with which I agree, but toward the "mainstream media" with which I surely don't!).
This post is just about a some details that I was amused about, mostly involving the computer-geek screen scenes. If you've seen
The suspenseful scene near the end of Snowden had so much of the usual gimmicks, I figure these are written in some kind of geek-movie-makers psuedo-code or something. Look, geek-movie protaganists - if you find yourself in this situation, where you're still in the middle of hacking or downloading some files, and the mean-ass boss who will fire you or have you arrested is coming around the corner, here's what you do: MINIMIZE! MINIMIZE! oops, minimize. Maximize some window of your shopping cart on Amazon or the tracking info on your UPS delivery to "the focus". Anything! Oh, there's little pop-up windows, you say? Do you know how to run a process in the background? I don't know - you're the geeks! Just don't get me so worried next time! Every movie like this has got my heart rate up to 150 bpm and blood pressure up to 150 mm-hg as I fear "OMG! When will the program finish?! Your boss is 5 ft from your office and closing!" Geeez, that was close.
Listen guys, I don't like Windows any more than you do. Could you not get into the shell, or open up that "run" window that looks like the old MS-DOS? GOT
Oh, they want it like this?? NEVERMIND!
And another thing: There's the nice black guy who you know can do no wrong. Of course you've got to have that in any movie now, or you'll be called bad names and never work in dis bidness again. The problem is, that you know everything this guy's gonna do. They can't make the movie any differently for the scenes he's in. Well, of course this guy did the right thing and covered up Mr. Snowden's little jump drive that he dropped with his foot. I saw that coming, so I'm proud of myself. Now, this NSA geek knew sign languages in addition to 7 other verbal languages, per the scene below:
There's this big microphone hanging from the ceiling. Were there no little microphones existing in 2013, as I don't understand the big RCA radio microphone? Well, OK, there's a microphone hanging from the freakin' ceiling, so these guys got the bright idea to say their final goodbyes (as Snowden revealed his intentions to reveal the extent of NSA spying) in sign language! What about the, uhh, cameras, guys?! Just after a scene in which the boss appears on some giant-ass 120" TV screen, and the security is tight as a Hildabeast's ass, we are supposed to believe that there aren't cameras all over the place INSIDE the NSA offices. (I would guess even more than OUTSIDE NSA offices.) You suspense-movie makers need to up your game some.
You can get over that stuff. You can get past the glorification of the Lyin' Press, though that's a little off-putting and requires lots more suspension-of-disbelief (a term we use in the movie-review biz). It'd probably be best NOT to get all your history, recent or otherwise, from the movies, but the Ed Snowden story is worth learning about. He's cast in the movie as the perfectly righteous guy. That's not all the truth, of course. You may learn more elsewhere, but from all I've learned so far, the guy is a hero. I've maintained that since his revelations in 2013. Peak Stupidity wishes Ed Snowden a decent life in Russia, where he currently resides, and gives the movie two thumbs up.
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