Hello to all those faithfully reading and hopefully enjoying this effort to make even the worst horror movie more watcha... aw, screw that - I'm not that good. If a movie makes you cringe because yet another batch of unlikable teens that are pushing 30 are inching toward their deaths, having a party no one does anywhere ever, a paranormal movie is boring you to tears with unending pans of empty rooms, or thanks to CGI technology when people finally bite it, their blood squirts everywhere except on the victim, the ground, the people next to them... you're in good company and this is the right place for you.

Monday, April 27, 2015

OH BOY I DID IT!!! OH BOY... I DID IT... WHAT THE HELL DID I JUST DO?






The YouTube World

Well, I finally took some pretty good advice about not hiding from the world and started up my channel on YouTube. Since Google allows you to have a channel with your account I gritted my teeth, got some pretty decent equipment, now all I need is courage...

I did put up an introductory video (they said keep it short - that's hard for me). I explained that the channel was for three things:

1. Brief movie summaries with a link to the blog page the complete review is on

2. A Fibromyalgia diary to let people know what 15+ years with this crap is like and how other people seem to view it

3. A chance to rant about certain things, like, oh, I don't know, maybe BEING KICKED OFF OF FACEBOOK AFTER OVER FIVE YEARS BECAUSE THEY 'VERIFIED' I WAS FAKE

That last one couldn't have come at a worse time too. Last week my hubby's family suffered a tragedy. Because all my contacts with local people are gone I couldn't let people know for him. That's one more thing I'll never forgive you for Zuckerberg, you pompous ass.

But, will the channel (and having me <gulp> in front of a camera) be worth the time and embarrassment?

We'll see, I guess.






                      

Thursday, April 23, 2015

HERE'S A MEDIOCRE STORY THAT COULD HAVE HAD SOME ORIGINALITY BUT THEY GOT REAL LAZY ABOUT IT...







Antisocial (2013) Canada

Oh boy. Another movie about the possible mental effects of social media. <YAWN>

This Canadian walk-through is about an unscrupulous company that runs a mass media program called Social Redroom (looking at you Zuck). Don't expect non-stop excitement, I mean they used the last picture at the end of the movie as their poster - what does that tell ya?



This Facebook-like program has been experimenting with updates to increase the number of posts and people who join. Apparently they DON'T kick off people just because their name sounds funny (looking at you again Zuck). 




But oh my, their updates have been getting more and more intrusive on the personal lives of their users (still looking at you Zuck... ah hell, you're ugly - I can think of much better looking men to stare at). Finally it comes to a point where they make a big whoopsy, and those who use their program become bleeding, nasty, violent killers (still looking at... uh... Eric Balfour - sorry Eric).

This is in the vein of several movies in several different countries giving us warning signals that hey, maybe we shouldn't depend so much on social media, put down our phones and just TALK to each other. Too much?


Let's just get this weirdo non-action film over with. Ya got your teens (pushing 30 no doubt) in college and they're all on Redroom - whether it's the smartphones they cart around or both the phones AND the laptops (still looking at... the ground 'cause Eric shouldn't have to appear so much in movie reviews he didn't even star in). Our main girl, who's pregnant (Canada seems as lax with birth control as the US) just got dumped, by text, by her boyfriend.


But hey, it's New Year's Eve and they're having a party and convince her to come. We end up with the requisite five or six people, now let the action begin! I SAID let the action begin! I SAID... never mind. If you want a movie with almost no action but is a lot smarter, may I suggest you watch Pontypool (2008)?

Sam (Michelle Mylett), the aforementioned pregnant reject goes to the party and is there when things go awry. I would say go apeshit but any action is 'reported' on their TV which is always on (At a party?) or by others online so... yeah.


Those who use Redroom (I keep wanting to say Redrum - maybe I've got 'the electronic virus' - oh no, that's right, no more Facebook for me 'cause my name sounds funny, thanks Z - what was your name again?) first get nosebleeds and also blood comes out of their ears. It is explained that the 'update' stimulates a part of the frontal lobe, actually forming a growth that eventually will cause their heads to explode. No, we don't get any Scanner-type action, just a hole goes poof from their heads and this bloody tendril comes out.



Somehow after death those who got the 'bug' and died of it still continue to 'post' pictures of what their dead eyes see. Duh. And the Social Redroom dude did all this on purpose. Duh again - and watch it Zuck.


So after waiting an interminable amount of time, Sam is pretty much on her own and gets to perform self-surgery with a drill. Fun! Afterward she wakes up to a day where the affected have all died from the extra brain tissue exploding their heads. But now they're undead and they're telepathically linked. Uh-oh.

There's a sequel to, I guess, see what these linked zombies do, but I don't have much interest to find out. And that's all I have to say about that.






                      

Tuesday, April 21, 2015

I KNOW, I KNOW, AND I'M WORKING ON IT, HONEST...






Facebook Does It Again


I think I know how to make videos for my new YouTube channel (I'll print the location when there's something to see) but in the meantime, another Native American has been booted off Facebook because her name is Brenda Happy Cloud. Don't know how long she had an account, but in order to get back on she was forced to use her husband's name - even though they are divorced:

http://www.kptv.com/story/28853494/salem-woman-denied-use-of-facebook-because-of-native-american-name


So let's review. Here's mine:

http://www.katu.com/news/problemsolver/Locked-out-of-Facebook-because-of-her-name-says-local-woman-296953531.html



Here's another - a lady in Calgary, Alberta named Deloria Many Grey Horse-Violich who had her account locked out:
http://www.alternet.org/comments/media/native-americans-protest-after-facebook-deletes-users-who-have-indigenous-names#disqus_thread


And here's what some people are doing and why the hell didn't I figure this out myself?

https://www.takepart.com/article/2015/04/22/native-american-facebook-users-are-changing-their-online-surnames-zuckerberg


Here's a couple more of the more prominent ones who state they are pursuing a lawsuit:

Dana Lone Hill:

http://venturebeat.com/2015/02/10/facebook-reignites-real-name-controversy-after-suspending-native-american-authors-account/


Travis Suazo:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8WI5W7u-To





Shane Creepingbear:

http://metro.co.uk/2015/02/11/native-americans-booted-off-facebook-for-having-fake-names-like-creepingbear-5057955/





Mike Kinney:



In the meantime:




ZUCK YOU SUCK!!!!






                      

Tuesday, April 14, 2015

I SALUTE YOUR SOLUTION (BUT NOT YOUR LANGUAGE), AND YES I KNOW THIS MAKES NO SENSE, JUST KEEP READING...







The DUFF (2015)

I can imagine the horrified looks on your faces as you realize I'm about to review a PG-13 teenage romcom about 20-something high school kids and how they can be cruel to each other. No, really. Teenagers are mean, they really are - 'cause movies say so. Oh and by the way, since I forgot to mention it when I posted this, DUFF stands for Designated Ugly Fat Friend. Nice.

So what the hell man? Why am I attempting to review something that I usually would pay money to NOT have to see? Well, there's a story here that will probably be longer than the review but stay with me, it's pretty funny. At least I thought so, and it made for one fun weekend.






Salute Your Solution
By Jack White and the Raconteurs

I think I gave a lot of problems my consideration...
...But not for me they always seem to be for someone else
I find myself just looking worthy of my best intentions
Ignoring any kinda pause I might receive at all
All others seem to find a road that's tough to satisfaction
I find a ridicule that isn't cool for me at all

And I got what I got all despite you
And I get what I get just to spite you



Now to start, being a 'movie critic' is not for those who want to be popular. Just the two words put together can get you the most horrible looks, not to mention comments. But I'm just one tiny fish in a large ocean, so nasty comments are very few. Usually if someone happens to read a review of mine of something they were involved in, they take the good, they take the bad, they take them both and there you have the facts of life... sorry 'bout that. My brain has been on massive duh mode for a long time now.


I've screwed up before, and will admit it publicly. I remember one film from the UK that I liked because it had a different kind of feel, and cool camera work (which I usually don't comment on) but I TOTALLY got the name of the actress wrong. Like, I wasn't even close. Someone from the film actually read the review and told me - so immediately I wrote of my mistake and corrected it, thanking the person on my blog for letting me know. I was actually kind of tickled that they read it.


Old horror movies are usually no problem - either because people don't have strong opinions about them one way or another or (sorry) the principle people involved are all dead. But newer horror films? Do the ones involved with those read my reviews? Nope. Um, wait, I mean not usually. Now this is MY freaking blog, so if someone takes umbrage with my opinion, too damn bad. My opinion is MINE and I'm keeping it, popular or not. 


Mr. Wylde says shut up... whoops, sorry, that's
Torgo. (True bad horror fans know him very well.)
So... the weekend was not kind to me. Instead of finishing the movie I have to clean up and publish, plus the stack of really REALLY bad horror movies that I was going to do in a kind of Crapathon, I was laid out and feeling pretty dead. Sometimes I wonder if instead of Fibromyalgia I've actually got Narcolepsy or I-Don't-Give-A-Damn disease. But I try, even if it's just for a little while, to check things out at night before taking my evening pills and crawling back into bed. I had a message from someone I didn't know that said... umm... let's just say it was three words, and invited me to perform a sexual act on myself.


Chris Wylde
Totally perplexed (and giggling a little) I learned who this message was from and what movie it was referring to. Turns out it was actor Chris Wylde, who starred in the movie The Revenant (2009) that I had reviewed in December of 2013. I can't remember movies I reviewed last MONTH. So I read the review again and my giggling got a bit louder. Safe to say that Mr. Wylde was pissed for a pretty good reason - in the review I stated I wished his character dead instantly. Somehow actors don't like that. 

If you want to read the whole thing, look up the review. He said I wasn't a "real" critic, and that the "real" critics on Rotten Tomatoes liked it. Well, 50% anyway. Does that mean that only half of their critics are real? (rim shot)

To be fair, Chris Wylde is liked by a lot of people. And, again to be fair (this time), the movie I ripped to pieces so brilliantly DID receive accolades and he himself won an award for his performance. But I personally didn't like the movie and I stand by that. However I also didn't want to "fight" with anybody, and hoped to bring this situation to a, shall we say, more civil conclusion? 


I'm not sure if I succeeded or not. I really wish it had been one of the "up" weekends where my brain works and I'm able to do things for more than a few minutes at a time. I did have a freaking good time exchanging barbs with him - I really hope he realized that during our tête–à–tête (yes I know that means private conversation but I like the word) I was figuratively beating him with a sponge, not a rock. But I'm extending an olive branch here and decided to check out his newest movie The DUFF, but I do not promise to give a good review just because a cute and famous guy verbally jousted with me. And here we go:


The DUFF (2015): So as with all teenage stories, no one in this movie appears to be under 21, so what, are you going to kiss this Wylde guy's ass now just because he swore at you AND you're going to call him cute?


Dammit hubby, I told you not to touch my stuff while I'm in the bathroom. And enough with The Simpsons jokes. Besides, how bad can it be? Okay, okay I'll watch a couple of trailersohmygod somebody shoot me now PLEASE! 


Maybe I can pop a couple of tabs of acid and re-watch The Remaining or The Reverend, or whatever the hell that movie was called and do an all-out sweet review. No, unfortunately the combination of my great powers of prose that works only intermittently and my diminishing brain power are not strong enough for either street drugs or fake reviews. Dammit. 



I've revised this twice now, once 'cause the hubby wanted a Simpsons Duff picture and I picked the wrong one (of course), then again when I found the right one, I thought what he was trying to say was no matter how we look on the outside we all come from the same place. Nope, wrong again (and you're not surprised). What he MEANT was that all these teen movies, although they have different titles, are all the same crap. Actually both analyses are pretty damned accurate.

Y'all know my horror movie worksheet (patent pending), right? This ain't officially a horror movie but it scared the shit out of me - AND my worksheet was completed just by watching the incredibly awful trailers. 



Here's the movie in one sentence (without watching the film and no peeking at the wiki - I promise): 

A movie-ugly girl asks a popular boy to make her movie-gorgeous and she'll help him pass a class, there's all kinds of dumb jokes and tearful moments about girls and what bitches they are in high school, but in the end, the MU girl is now MG and the popular boy now wants to be her boyfriend and everyone learns an important lesson - no, wait, they don't. 

Every high school is the same. It was the same when I went, it was the same when my husband went and it will be the same when somebody else's kids and grandkids (we have neither) go.


So let's see the movie and find if my guesses were true or false (search your feelings, you know it to be true). We've got cute as hell Bianca (Mae Whitman) but uh-oh, trouble. She doesn't have her hair up or wear glasses but she does wear OVERALLS and REGULAR CLOTHES and the kind of makeup they use in movies that makes it look like you don't WEAR makeup. Eek, and she's shorter than her friends so she's got to be the MU girl. True? DING!!!



A friend of Bianca (I saw the term "man-whore" a lot when looking around afterward, WTH?) when they were small but friend no more because of his popular status, Wes (Robbie Amell) is the football star who's in danger of being cut because he's flunking science (her best class). He agrees to help her dress better and get more popular if she helps him pass the class. Though they hate each other, in the end, they fall in love each other. True? DING!!!

And the rest... are of course the popular bitches. They wear expensive clothes and makeup and carry their iPhones around like they're glued to their hands. Oh, and they're all taller (or at least wear high heeled shoes). You can't be MG unless you meet a minimum height. True? DING!!!

After some more conflict, we get down to the payoff which has to be very public so the whole school can watch. Let's guess, oh, a dance. Bianca shows up at the dance so incredibly MG that Wes dumps his popular girlfriend Madison (Bella Thorne) and he and Bianca dance happily into the credits. True? DING!!!


Huh. Looks like I'm gonna get cussed out some more. I thought geez, the woman who wrote this was supposed to tell a visceral account of a teenager's angst? It's just another formulaic version of many other teen angst movies that have cluttered up the movie screen for years. Sort of. This was not entirely author Kody Keplinger's fault. Apparently the book she wrote is waaaay different from the movie. Duh.

In the book there's sex. Lots of it. A frenemies with benefits kind of thing. That doesn't really translate to either comedy or a PG-13 rating. They also took great liberties with the plot, adding characters, taking away characters, and adding numerous social media references to the script (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) since the book was written in 2010 and this is 2015. 



If there is anything genuine and realistic about this book, it's the fact that the author actually wrote it when she was a senior in high school, at the age of 17. And while she is beautiful, I bet she was NOT considered the MG girl in her class.

Now THAT is freaking genuine - But I wonder if she really was as happy about the changes they made to her true-to-life account of the woes of a misfit teenager as she appears?

Sooo... what have we learned here today class? One, Miss Murder is not a bedtime story lady, she is a cranky critic whose whole intent of starting a blog was to cut apart and make fun of horror films, bad or (supposedly) good, not watch romcoms that are incredibly unrealistic.

Two, Miss Murder, while not liking to be cussed and 'yelled' at, will not change her blog. Now Facebook says I'm not real. I shit you not. I've told you guys how I was kicked off for being Native American and since two groups were targeted (the other was the LGBT community) I, of course, belong to the one that doesn't garner a whole lot of media attention. I lost that one - and the account I had for over five years.

NOW apparently I'm not a 'real' critic. Okay, if there's a club or a guild or something that you have to sign up for, then I'm not 'official' but I AM real. My birth certificate says so, at least. And I'm going back to bed.

Oh and Mr. Wylde? Thanks for trying to tell me how awful and imperfect I am but honey, I already knew that.






                      

Saturday, April 4, 2015

MARCH, MARCH, MARCH, MARCH, MARCH, MARCH, MARCH... OH DAMMIT IT'S APRIL! STRANGE THINGS ARE AFOOT AT 'I WATCH 'EM SO YOU DON'T HAVE TO'... BUT MEANWHILE, HERE'S SOME REALLY DUMB STUFF CELEBRITIES HAVE SAID...






Why she didn't make the list, I honestly couldn't tell ya...
No, I'm Not Lazy, I'm Scheming...

I realize it's already the fourth and I didn't get that one last March movie finished in time (you're welcome), but I've been working and planning and trying to get my health better (And I finally have what seems to be competent help with that, yay!) but I'd rather not reveal anything until I'm sure it's actually going to happen (re: I'm actually going to be able to pull it off) so for now, thanks entirely to and credited to the YouTube channel WatchMojo.com (SUBSCRIBE! SUBSCRIBE!) which has some of the most hilarious top 10 lists I've ever seen, here are:



10 Dumbest Things Said By Celebrities (And a sarcastic word or two by Miss Murder)


10. Brooke Shields: "Smoking kills. If you're killed, you've lost a very important part of your life." (Apparently she was killed at birth.)


9. Kanye West: "I won't go into a big spiel about reincarnation, but the first time I was in the Gucci store in Chicago was the closest I've ever felt to home." (Hey, be thankful they just used one - it could have been the whole freaking encyclopedia of Kanye.)

8. Alicia Silverstone: "I think that the film Clueless was very deep. I think it was deep in the way that it was very light. I think lightness has to come from a very deep place if it's true lightness." (Be thankful I didn't tell you about how she describes - in her words - how she is the 'potty whisperer'.)

7. Tara Reid, star of Sharknado 1-1,000, was the champion of this list in my opinion, but they chose instead to put her at number seven and created my favorite duh moment:




Too bad she didn't seem to hear that Tiger Shark remark, I would have loved to hear her mating theory on that one...

6. Jaden Smith: Everything he's ever said on Twitter (example), "If a book store never runs out of a certain book, dose (sic) that mean that nobody reads it, or everybody reads it?" (No Jaden, those kind of remarks usually mean that your parents are brother and sister.)



5. Sean Connery: "I don't think there is anything particularly wrong in hitting a woman." (He later amended that, saying you would use an open hand, not a fist. That's okay dude, as long as you remember that it is legal for women to carry guns... and we're not laughing WITH you, we're laughing AT you...)

4. Jessica Simpson: "Is this chicken, what I have, or is this fish? I know it's tuna, but it says 'Chicken By the Sea.'" (I... I really don't know what to say for this one... but it's no surprise that the reality show of her marriage was short - and so was her marriage.)

3. Justin Bieber: "Anne (Frank) was a great girl. Hopefully she would have been a Belieber." (Yes, I can totally see that. A starving and dying little girl tottering around the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, singing to herself 'Baby, baby, baby, baby, baby...' Dude, you are a freaking douchebag. Wait a minute, are you competing with Kanye per chance?)


2. Charlie Sheen "I'm tired of pretending like I'm not bitchin', a total freakin' rock star from  Mars." (No argument here Carlos, I'm tired of pretending like I'm not the hottest woman on the planet, a total freakin' horror movie reviewer genius...)

And finally, the woes of a woman who has everything in the world and has never even had to work for a stick of gum:



1. Paris Hilton "Everything bad that can happen to a person has happened to me." (That includes wealth, fame, super expensive everything, tiny dogs, famous friends, and oh yeah, my favorite scene from the awful 2005 movie House of Wax...)