POLL RESULTS: The Killing Time Community’s Pick For Best Christmas Movie

After an intense session of holiday voting, the KT Community has spoken and our official Christmas movie of choice is…..the Chuck Jones animated version of Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas.  I will admit, I voted for The Nightmare Before Christmas, but I can hardly argue with this classic.  Who doesn’t know and enjoy the mighty, deep booming voice of Boris Karloff intoning, “You’re a mean one, Mr. Grinch…”?  A well-chosen pick, my friends.

POLL: What’s the Best Christmas Movie?

The season is upon us of carols, trees, presents and high-anxiety, intense SEASONAL CHEER!  There are certain things which always accompany the holidays and make things seem extremely more Christmassy.  There’s the decorations, the presents, the awkward holiday office party, the hijacking of completely normal radio stations with Christmas music and Christmas movies.  Which is the favorite of the Killing Time community?  What’s our seasonal fave?  Vote below and then in a day or two, the poll will be up on the newly-designed (thank you IT WIZARDRY MASTER-IN-CHIEF) homepage at https://sleeplessthought.wordpress.com.  We’ll reveal the winner on Christmas Eve which predestines a conversation in which I have to explain to my family why I am excusing myself for five minutes from INTENSE FESTIVE CHEER…time.  I do this for you, people!

VOTE ON THE KILLING TIME HOMEPAGE

Batman Makes Classic Scenes Better

Batman makes everything better.  It’s science.  Watch him improve classic movie scenes courtesy of PistolShrimp.

Movie Review: Olympus Has Fallen (2013)

So here’s the thing: I like Die Hard.  Die Hard was a great movie.  I like several of the other Die Hards.  People need to stop copying Die Hard.  It’s been 25 years and there’s a Die Hard copy once a year.  Die Hard on a boat, Die Hard on a plane, Die Hard for kids (cough Home Alone cough), and now we have Die Hard in the White House: Olympus Has Fallen.

The plot, such as it is, doesn’t deserve a lot of summarizing but essentially North Korean extremists (the new movie villains de jour) infiltrate a South Korean delegation to the White House and then in coordination with a small army that pops out of nowhere, take down the White House and have the President (Aaron Eckhart) hostage.  The implausibility of all of this is so ludicrous that it even by action movie standards, suspending disbelief is impossible.  The movie makes the Secret Service look like the most ineffective law enforcement agency in cinematic history.  Plus, I don’t know if the post-9/11 world we live in, or if I’m just sick of it, but I find watching national landmarks being destroyed by terrorists to not be entertainment so much as it is tap dancing on cultural fears.  Maybe that’s an overreaction, I don’t know.  If  others feel the same way, Roland Emmerich is completely out of work.

At any rate, Gerard Butler, playing a Secret Service agent (the only effective one) who made his way into the White House during the assault (because really anyone can get in there apparently) is now the only hope America has of not being nuked.  Die Hard in the White House.  I’m not sure how much longer Antoine Fuqua can get away with billing himself as “the director of Training Day”, but I think this would be as far as he can go.  But what do I know?  It’s doing well at the box office so it could just be me.

There’s nothing original here.  It’s trope after trope after trope.  There are multiple Oscar winners slumming in Olympus, so it’s not badly acted (though Melissa Leo was…not good….when she started belting out the Pledge of Allegiance at one point, I believe my eye-rolling was so prominent it was audible).  I like seeing King Leonidas kick butt to save President Two Face while Speaker of the House Lucius Fox leads the nation (I love that everyone has done a comic book movie by now).  It’s just dumb.  Not badly done dumb, but dumb nonetheless.  I’m rating it the same as I rated GI JOE 2, but at least that movie had an awesome 10 minutes.
3.75/10