Logging

Films:  World War Z and Fruitvale Station

Universal City Walk might be the best place to see a double feature in Los Angeles.  All day parking works out to $2.  Lots of movies showing.  Showtimes posted above the theater doors.

World War Z isn't bad.  I enjoyed myself in the film.  The directing - especially in the beginning - wasn't very good, if you ask me.  Everything was super tight and it was difficult to comprehend space and speed and it just felt cluttered and messy.  It got better.

My big note on WWZ is that the human fighters did not take an offensive enough position.  Had I been in charge of military stuff, I would have used the fact that zombies were attracted to noise to create more traps for them -- hoard them into huge spaces like warehouses or fields -- and then blow them up or trap them inside and light a fire.  I would even use humans as bait if you needed to, since we were getting totally overrun.  They were just on defense all the time.

A similar note, at the end, Brad Pitt and them should have used diversionary tactics initially to get those last 80 zombies out of the facility, rather than sneak around them.  I suppose that's a different ending, but that would have made more sense.

Fruitvale Station was a buzzkill.  I wanted to see Lone Ranger of all movies, but the damn thing isn't hardly in theaters anymore.  Strange.  Anyhow, Fruitvale suffers from trying to build a movie out of an incident, so there isn't much in the way of story.  I was not a fan of the film.  I liked some of the Bay Area details (the use of "hella" in particular), but overall it suffered from what I'll call the "tyranny of sympathy" where certain types of films are obsessed with make you like a character.  The two bits that stood out as annoying:

The dog scene -- for some reason a random car runs over a dog and the main character chases after the car, yelling.  odd.

The waiting for the ladies scene - where the main character starts talking with a random guy and he offers to "help him in any way he can."  has this ever happened to anyone in real life?

And one last thing -- why when faced with police after a fight do all the guys start yelling at the cops and acting tough and getting up and taunting and fighting?  What is the point?  Why would anyone knowingly provoke anyone else with a gun - cop or not - white or black?  It's the height of stupidity...and yes...young men are as stupid as they come.  But is sort of makes the case for just everyone being involved being stupid.