Aileen Senecallaframbo

Today’s Featured Cause:
The Rock Baptist Church – A "Come As You Are" Church located ten miles north of Columbus, Georgia.

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The sniper is one of the most interesting warriors in the history of combat. \xA0More assassins then soldiers, they rely on elaborate camouflage and stealth to achieve a single kill.\xA0 I particularly recall one day when I was playing the Xbox game Halo against a friend where he managed to pin me down by getting to a high place and shooting me in the head every time I tried to charge his position.\xA0 Eventually I managed to hit him with a very well placed rocket shot and take his position. \xA0When he respawned he immediately picked up another sniper rifle again and tried to pin me down again, this wasn?t happening, but he kept picking up the sniper rifle. \xA0Bored by the repetitive direction the game was taking I asked him: ?why do you keep going for the sniper rifle?? \xA0He responded by saying ?I like sniper rifles; they encourage cheap-ass-ism.?\xA0

Indeed sniping is really cheap, and in general it?s pretty hard to put a sniper fight on the screen. \xA0The 1993 film Sniper probably disappointed many with its less then Schwarzenegger level body count, but it managed to surprise more discerning audiences by being smarter, better written, and better acted then the average Reagan/Bush era action movie.\xA0 The new film Shooter has action that is fairly successful but has an awful, uninspired script that anyone who?s seen a thriller will be a mile ahead of.

Mark Wahlberg plays Bob Lee Swagger (no I?m not kidding) a retired marine sniper who has basically turned into a survivalist nut in the mountains after his partner was killed on a secret mission because the army pulled out rather then rescue them, proving once again the adage that you never want to share a bunker in a war movie with the guy who keeps a picture of his wife with him. \xA0He is visited by Danny Glover, a man in black type dude, who asks him to find out how to kill the president and report his findings so they?ll know how to stop an actual assassin who may come up with the same plan and kill the president at his next public appearance. \xA0\xA0As anyone who?s seen a shadowy government agency in a movie can tell, Swagger is being set up to be framed as the assassin. \xA0Swagger surprises them escapes, humiliating rookie FBI bystander Nick Memphis (another name I?m not making up) played by Michael Pe\xF1a. \xA0
Memphis eventually becomes obsessed with the assassination and begins to uncover a conspiracy. \xA0Meanwhile Swagger decides to drive all the way from Philadelphia to Kentucky on the off chance that his old partner?s widow (Kate Mara), who he?d never met in person, would be able and willing to dress wounds he received during the assassination.\xA0 Swagger must then uncover the identitiy of the true assassin in order to restore his name.

Antoine Fuqua is one of many seemingly talented directors who seem to have no idea how to find an intelligent script. \xA0Shooter is a stupid and formulaic action movie pretending to be an intelligent political thriller.\xA0 The Bourne series, which this film desperately wants to emulate, is an excellent example of how this type of espionage man on the run type film can work well and still be thoughtful and character driven. \xA0This film however seems aimed at the people who read Soldier of Fortune magazine; its view of governmental corruption and conspiracy theorizing would make Oliver Stone blush.\xA0 Aside from the politics this is a run of the mill ?wrong man? formula.

Wahlberg?s acting seems to be on auto-pilot, there?s nothing wrong with it really, but nothing special either. \xA0Danny Glover and Ned Beatty are both fairly forgettable villains, and Michael Pe\xF1a is fairly average. \xA0The real healingly bad performance comes from Kate Mara.\xA0 In Mara?s defense, she is playing a poorly written role that serves no purpose in the story other then to provide a tacked on (and half assed) romance sub-plot, and to become a damsel in distress in the film?s pen-ultimate action scene.\xA0 However she also has an absolutely horrible southern accent which brings the movie to a screeching halt whenever she?s on screen.

The action in Shooter does occasionally deliver. \xA0The film had the sense to go with an R-rating, which is important because it?s hard to show a sniper bullet hit without a decent blood splat. \xA0The action tries to look very real, but the things being done are very unrealistic. \xA0Case in point, in the opening scene we are shown a fairly realistic depiction of sniper tactics, the shooter is concealed by camouflage and relies on a spotter to tell him when to shoot, but later in the scene he shoots down a helicopter with a shot to the rotary blades, and act most videogames know is too stupid to be believable. \xA0Still, if you can get past the unreality, there are fairly enjoyable set pieces. \xA0These action scenes are why this film is somewhat worthwhile; the best of them are brutal and intense. \xA0The biggest of these, where Swagger and Memphis ambush an ambush at a country home serves as an excellent vehicle for some good shooting and at least three excellent explosions. \xA0Unfortunately this isn?t the finale of the film, as there are a handful of false endings before it does come to a close

Shooter is not good, but there are definitely movies made with greater incompetence. \xA0I wouldn?t recommend spending full price on this film, but it could be a decent way to kill two hours on a Saturday afternoon at matinee prices if there?s nothing else playing and you?re willing to overlook a lot in the name of escapism. \xA0

** out of four

I was pleased to see that CourseSmart has acknowledged the issue of\xA0 the inaccessibility of their e-textbooks and have a page on their site with an apology and a statement concerning their intent to change the format of their e-textbooks to become Section 508 compliant.\xA0 The page also lists the links to the permission forms for their publishers.\xA0 I am hoping that as more universities and colleges are leaning towards using open-course content and away from using standard textbooks, CourseSmart will fear the loss of income and speed up the process towards compliance.

DISCLAIMER STATEMENT: The views and conclusions expressed in this blog are those of the author and not necessarily those of Landmark College or its officers and trustees.

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Anne Scripps Douglas

Anne Scripps Douglas stories
A daughter reflects on ‘Our Mother’s Murder’
After Scripps Slaying, Families Clash Over Custody of Child, 3
Custody Claim Withdrawn Over Slain Heiress’s Child
When the scandal described below hit, Judge Braslow responded by HIRING A PUBLIC RELATIONS FIRM!.

Movies/Documentaries
Our Mother’s Murder

Anne and Scott Douglas

*NOTE FROM BLOG OWNER*

Just a reminder that I, the blog owner, am not related to Anne Scripps-Douglas, nor do I know her or her family. Every time the movie shows, I get emails about this, thanking me for sharing the story of my mother’s murder. However, Anne was not my mother. Nor does this stie belong to her daughters nor do I know how to reach them. I apologize for any confusion.

UPDATE 9/25/2009
Unfortunately, it appears that this family has another tragedy, as it appears that Anne’s daughter Annie Morrell has committed suicide. Please pray for this family and keep them in your hearts. I also want to remind everyone that I cannot reach the family, and in this case, nor would I. Please respect their privacy as this is a very difficult time for them. If you want to leave a note of condolence, fine, but I will not try to invade their privacy to give them messages.

TZB suicide believed to be daughter of murdered Bronxville heiress

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Warning: here be ENORMOUS SPOILERS. See the list below for details: if you’ve played those games, or don’t care, read on.\xA0 However, if you’ve played only some of them, or if you want them individually gift-wrapped (ooh, get her) here are some TV-Go-Home-style jpegs:

Assassin’s Creed ? Uncharted ? GTA IV ? Fallout 3 ? Metal Gear Solid 4

Anyway.\xA0 Where were we?

Back at the dawn of time, in about 1983, the idea that a videogame could tell a story was virtually unthinkable. These days, of course, the debate is not about whether they can but with what kind of cut-scene, and while some rare and wonderful games actually know how to spin a yarn, most of them don’t: bad dialogue, lumpen exposition, tacky characterisation and outright cinematic illiteracy are not the worst we’ve come to expect. But some games make such a spectacular pig’s dick of it that they’re worthy of special mention.

They’re also ripe for a spot of idle and entirely speculative script editing, because some bad stories can point to the ones they should have been. (Even good stories too: consider, say, Heat, in which the wrong man dies.) Which brings us inelegantly to our first candidate for the story-surgeon’s hatchet, which is – what not a surprise:

ASSASSIN’S CREED

How it goes:

Reluctant guinea pig Desmond Miles’ medieval ancestor Alta\xEFr is an awesomely cool assassin who trips up over flowerpots while his numpty descendant “synchronises” with their shared genetic memory, or some such sci-fi phooey…

Miles’ scientist-captors, meanwhile, may be working for a shadowy international conspiracy of, er, Masons and Templars called Abstergo.\xA0 At the end, once Miles has completely synchronised with his ancestor, he is left in his sterile lab-cum-prison by his captor, Dr Vidic, and his assistant Lucy Stillman, who simply exit stage left. Lucy, incidentally, is revealed to be an ally, and Miles can now use his ancestor’s “eagle-vision” to see invisible Masonic/Templar/Illuminati gibberish scrawled on the walls.

End credits roll, then back on Miles, and then… nothing. He walks about, trapped, unable to do anything, except replay old memories.

I mean, huh? What was that? Some kind of art-game existential joke?

What should have happened:

The gradual series of modern-day reveals – and also, obviously, the fact that Miles acquires one of Alta\xEFr’s skills – suggest that by the end, Miles will become an assassin like his ancestor. It’s what I was expecting, anyway: Miles even wears a similar hoodie.

So that, in our alternative ending, is exactly what happens.\xA0 Miles and Lucy both know he’s for the chop.\xA0 As she leaves, she passes him a pen…\xA0 (If we want all that tinfoil conspiracy stuff, Miles can see the glyphs as before, but I’m with the Foucault’s Pendulum answer to that: fuck you, there is no map.)

Moments later, Abstergo hit-men come to drag him away – but Miles has acquired his ancestor’s assassin skills. (Whoa…\xA0 I know kung fu…)\xA0 Using the pen as a weapon – pen, sword, geddit? – Miles butchers the hit-men with maximum stabby violence, \xE0 la Alta\xEFr… and escapes the lab.

Divers alarums – and just like one of Alta\xEFr’s own escapes, Miles legs it through the building, despatching baddies as he goes – he gets a knife from somewhere – the kitchens, natch – and goes all Banlieu 13 on his way to the exit… out the back of the building… Where more Abstergo goons are waiting.

Miles goes all parkour-assassin-psycho on them and makes it out to a street – a normal city street, thronging with morning commuters. Putting his hood up like Alta\xEFr, Miles blends in with the crowd and vanishes. Fade out. Credits.

Original? Not particularly. Satisfying? Uh-huh. Better than the actual ending? Take a wild guess…

An obvious alternative is that Lucy leaves a door unlocked, which Miles uses to effect his escape. Perhaps at some point in the break-out, Miles should encounter both her and Vidic, whereupon she gets to break Vidic’s neck, or at least spong him in the bollocks with his own pen. Proper assassin move, that.

Anyway, on to the next victim:

UNCHARTED: DRAKE’S FORTUNE

How it goes:

White man Nathan Drake, a man who clearly admires himself in the mirror, runs around Panamanian ruins shooting hundreds of, wait, exclusively black or Latino mercenaries/hoodlums/gangsters/local colour/you get the idea.\xA0 Oh, and some zombies too.\xA0 Which makes it all OK.\xA0 Drake, meanwhile, cracks wise, gets the treasure and the girl, and sails smugly off into the sunset.

What should have happened:

Drake returns to California, where he’s kidnapped by some black and Latino dudes who take him out to the desert, empty seven hundred rounds into the spunk-haired git, and leave his corpse to the coyotes.

Chance, fine thing, etc. There’s nothing narratively wrong with the existing ending apart from, you know, massive clich\xE9 – but didn’t anyone else notice how, erm, Zulu-esque that game was?

Speaking of ethnic cleansing…

GRAND THEFT AUTO IV

How it goes:

Serbian ex-militiaman Niko Bellic makes a choice between two mobsters - either Dmitri Rascalov or Jimmy Pegorino – that has more or less the same result: hitmen turn up to serial fuckwit Cousin Roman’s wedding and shoot either Niko’s girl Kate or Roman himself. In revenge, Niko deletes whichever villain was applicable, before mumbling something gloomy about the American dream under the Statue of Happiness.

The trouble is, an operatically tragic scene that alludes to The Godfather Part II, or possibly III, doesn’t even come close to squaring with the gameful of murderous mayhem that precedes it. And the final cut-scene plays like a wet fart.

What should have happened:

Bellic is shot dead at the church. Seriously. Kill your protagonist. If Fallout 3 can do it, why not GTA Glum? That gives plenty of easy inversions (a wedding for the comic foil, a funeral for the tragic hero) and irony (Bellic dies at the moment of someone else’s supreme happiness). It would also be consistent with the pall that hangs over its guilt-wracked anti-hero, whose story aims to be a kind of cynical, gangsterish update of Algren and Miller. (And no, that’s not overstating it: whether or not it succeeds, it’s the first videogame ever to try to be a social document – for which, wow.)

What should have happened if Niko weren’t such a miserable sod:

Bellic has struck it rich, and is living the American dream of guns, drugs, money, real estate and strippers. But he’s still as down as a dog with no dick. Worse still, he’s deserted by his allies, his enemies are massing against him for all the shit he’s caused. Then, in his darkest hour… his mum turns up: not the simpering mama from those emails, but an absolutely, bed-wettingly ferocious diva – complete with Slavic mafia hairdo, trophy boyfriend, and a clutch of Shih Tzu dogs. (Even Little Jacob, the only likeable character in the game, thinks she’s fierce.) She clips the boys around the ear, duly gets their shit together, and we can see perhaps how Niko turned out the way he did.

Then… Mallorie gets iced by Pegorino’s mob. Roman goes hog-wild for revenge, and then – at whatever location: preferably somewhere nice and rich, they’re attacked en masse. Niko’s mum goes all Charge of the Valkyrie – along with her son and Roman, of course, who gets shot somewhere comical such as in the brainpan. If you want alternative endings, Niko has to choose between his mum and Kate. If not, they just blow the fuck out of all the bad guys.

Epilogue: Niko’s mum finally meets Kate properly. They instantly hate each other, start arguing, and are interrupted by the UL Paper guy, who tells Niko his criminal record’s been wiped, but only in return for another favour. Niko mumbles something about how the past hangs around his neck like a nagging wife – wife? screams his mother – You’re getting married? Omigod omigod…! CIA guy (smirking, to Niko): Well, you fucked that up… Niko: Shut the fahck up. I wish I were dead like my cahzin. Laughter track, applause, credits.

GTA IV was also begging for a mission involving a Liberty City Senator who fulminates against people who sell adult content to minors – corrupting their fwagile minds – and who is then found up to his (or her) neck in whores, cocaine and, er, hot coffee. Blackmail comedy ensues.

Next up…

FALLOUT 3

How it goes:

Halfway through the game, your character ends up at a ginormous tub of radioactive muck, and has to watch their father Die for the Greater Good. At the end of the game, the same thing happens, except that you are now the one who can optionally die.\xA0 If you don’t commit the ultimate sacrifice suicide, you get a marginally different voice-over (Ron Perlman!) telling you how the whole world thinks you’re a bit of a bastard. There are variations, but that’s the gist.

The “good” ending involves an act of Christlike forgiveness to all the mutant scum who’ve spent the whole game trying to rip your limbs off. After the great rebirth, everyone lives happily ever after. Huh?

What should have happened:

Dad doesn’t die half way through. Either he plods along as an ally (lame) or is captured and carted off by the villains, who want to exploit his scientific genius (better). You, meanwhile, are left to finish the rest of the game, slog your level up to 20 or whatever, and then embark on the last mission.

Which is when you’re confronted with a real moral choice: either you or your Dad have to die. Dad, naturally, doesn’t want to live to bury his only kid, so the only way you can stop him from stopping you is to shoot him in the leg, which also suggests the Bergmanesque possibility that you cap him in the head and then top yourself.\xA0 If you opt to live and let your Dad die (you bastard!) at least we should see the protagonist shed a tear.

This, of course, only works in the game’s proposed moral framework. What might have made us care a bit more was if Dad had actually mattered to us in the gameplay itself, like saving you from death a few times, or giving you better weapons or a free skill point or two – or even if Neeson had sounded like something other than being curled up on the sofa with a mug of cocoa. You know, less of a saint and more like just some guy who’s a bit of an Einstein on the side.\xA0 Come on, Liam.\xA0 You did it in Kinsey….

Gloomy buggers these videogames, aren’t they? And it’s not going to get any more cheerful:

METAL GEAR SOLID 4

How it goes:

Pretty much like every elegiac Western, only filtered through the mad, syncretist imagination of Hideo Kojima. Solid Snake, ageing fast, limps his arthritic way through his final mission: to kill his long-time arch-enemy Liquid Ferret, who works for FRUITBAT. Helped by famous Otaku Roland Emmerich, he fights off nanotech mechazoids called PMTs and armoured Skink units working for Preying Mango. Then he meets an arms-dealer called Leslie Drebin who injects him with raw crack. Aided by scientist Naomi Silverstreep, he finds a building and has a lie down. Then he has to fight some cyborgs called Laughing Squid and Hidden Dracula, and then fights an even bigger walking giant borgzilla and then he discovers he’s a living weapon who ages very quickly because of a genetic modification by Liquid Stoat who is trying to turn him into Dead Dad so that he can take over a big sky-satellite called Sponge of the Patriots that controls every weapon in the whole world even things like broken beer bottles and grapefruit. Solid Snake’s mum has big boobies so she helps him not to die until she is killed.

Naomi Silverburp kills herself for being a naughty lady and Ninja Raiden bleeds a lot of silvery stuff that looks like blood or something and Solid Snake has to help him but he can’t because there are more scary robots called Roy and Siegfried and a screaming lady who was sent to bed without any supper. And then there’s this big ship thing called Secret Haven and they have to do this thing with an illness to make it die so the bad men don’t get the big weapon and then there’s a big fight with the old man and the bad man on top of a chimney and then they get married on the back of an aeroplane on the runway and then the old man goes to a cemetery…

…and then the old man and the bad man aren’t dead cos there’s another old bad man who was the bad man but he wasn’t and then the bad old man is killed by the bad man and then the bad man dies and they are all smoking which is very bad for you and naughty.

What should have happened:

Fuck knows. Did you understand any of it?

We Are Marshall True Story

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Kourtney Kardashian Baby Bump

RT Kourtney Kardashian is pregnant and showing the baby bump! See the first pictures of the baby bump! http://tiny.cc/6sngm