Politics

Heads of State – JenEric Movie Review

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Hello Cinephiles,

Today we’re talking about the 2025 film Heads of State.

Story

The perfect meld of comedy and action with a story that keeps you guessing and never condescends.

Score: 1

Characters

This movie would have been interesting with one well fleshed out character but in a film with this much action it’s rare to get three mains and a half dozen others with realistic motivations and nuanced backstories.

The three main characters not only hold the film together, they make it both entertaining and interesting.

Score: 1

Dialogue

A lot of the dialogue is hammy but done in an intentional way. The trailer shows a lot of these lines without the buildup which made seeing the whole thing more interesting.

There are a few lines that really stand out because of their delivery. The British PM is complaining about how bad a day they’re having in the middle of the banter and the American President replies with something along the lines of tell that to all the people who died. It’s an exchange that starts out funny but reminds both the characters and the audience about the stakes of the movie. It also shows the kindness of the president and helps to build character.

Score: 1

Visuals and Music

The movie avoids the sin of shaky-cam and uses some extraordinary pans. The cinematography matched the tone and the events in the film, leaning into the comic book action when needed and then the more dignified when it became more serious.

The song choices were perfect, really focussing on what was going on and not just going for the feeling of a scene. The score was good and its use was fantastic.

Score: 1

Fun

Witty banter, silly fights, a hopeful message, and lots of social commentary. It was lots of fun. The whole family liked it.

Score: 1

Overall

A film that balances humour, action, and hope in a way that I wish more did. This is a movie that believes humanity can be great but only if we work together, without being preachy or ignoring our faults. It’s cheesy, funny, and the three leads are fantastically charismatic.

Final Score: 5 Stars out of 5*

*A 5 star review doesn’t mean the movie was perfect nor that it is perfect for everyone but it is a movie I believe is as close to perfect as possible.

Allegiance to the Truth?

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Hello my Friends, Family, and Fans,

Last week I made the foolish mistake of commenting on a comment. The original post was a variation on, “Always punch Nazis,” and the comment was something along the lines of, “Come and punch me.” I decided to be snarky and say, “Wow. Admitting to being a Nazi… wow.”

I should have ignored it. He and the other people who commented didn’t want to have a discussion, they wanted to be angry. They seem angry that people call them Nazis or dismiss their beliefs because they’re associated with Nazis. (At least that’s what I get.)

I tried to reason with them and say that they just have to keep hate groups out of their protests and that’s all there is to it. (Before you ask. Yes. If I’m ever in a protest and the person next to me flies a Nazi or KKK flag, they’re going into the trash, and the flag too.)

This is obviously an extreme example, but it illustrates a trend. I like to be right, I also like to know the truth, but most of all I hate false information. It often gets me in trouble like I said in this post. The misinformation itches like a rash and I need to say something.

Unfortunately, people don’t see correction as a dislike of misinformation, but as a personal attack.

The want to be precise is something that runs in my family. Persnickety is a family hobby and it’s both frustrating and understandable. Sometimes you just want to get to the message and when people nitpick the details, it feels like they are purposely missing the point. (I also realize this is all a trait of neurodivergence but that’s a whole other post.)

Hank Green is a Youtuber I’ve been following for almost twenty years and I’ve always had a great respect for his dedication to the truth, to the point of making correction videos when he gets things wrong.

He posted these two videos recently discussing the truth and the quest to have an allegiance to the truth. Basically fact checking yourself and making sure you’re not just accepting things that fit into your bias. They are extremely entertaining to watch and I love that he is able to admit when he was wrong.

With the American elections last week, the upcoming Canadian federal elections, and the upcoming Ontario provincial elections; we need to be on our toes to avoid getting caught up in bias, falsities, and outright lies.

In this age of near infinite information at our fingertips, it’s important that we check to make sure we aren’t propagating false information.

But what do I know?

Stay safe and be kind,

Éric

Tomorrowland – JenEric Movie Review

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Hello Cinephiles,

Today we’re talking about the 2015 film Tomorrowland.

Story

It’s a little heavy handed in some aspects and takes way too much time getting to Tomorrowland. I know there was limited time, but I would have liked to know more about what happened to Tomorrowland itself. It seemed to go from clean and heavily populated to some sort of fascist police state.

Score: 0.5

Characters

I liked the characters but it took a long time for them to get to the point where they get over themselves and start working toward a goal.

Score: 0.5

Dialogue

There’s a lot of funny, interesting, and deep quotes. The dialogue rolls well and is mostly logical.

Score: 1

Visuals and Music

The movie is absolutely beautiful. The cinematography, locations, and special effects are top notch.

The music does it’s job but isn’t particulary impressive.

Score: 1

Fun

This might be a silly gripe on my part but I wish more of the movie was in Tomorrowland. I get it’s a metaphor for needing to strive but I wanted to spend more time in the beautiful hopeful world.

It was fun and action-packed but felt like it got lost in the journey and didn’t give the characters a chance to shine.

The rest of the family really enjoyed it.

Score: 0.5

Overall

An uneven movie that brings the thrills, the wonder, and hope. The movie is a visual feast with fast-paced action and a simple message that more people need to ask; “What can we do to fix it?”

Final Score: 3.5 Stars out of 5

The Beekeeper – JenEric Movie Review

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Hello Cinephiles,

Today we’re talking about the 2024 film The Beekeeper.

Story

This was a pretty standard action movie but it did have an fun twist. Following the FBI agents that are trying to catch him was an interesting study in morals, justice, and law. The main character is mostly treated like a force of nature, so much of the character growth is put on the two FBI agents.

Score: 0.5

Characters

The Beekeeper is a natural disaster and is established early as nearly unstoppable. He has no character development after the first twenty minutes.

The FBI agents have significantly more and they’re really the audience stand-ins.

The antagonists are pretty one dimensional but extremely hateable.

Score: 0.5

Dialogue

Quippy action movie dialogue punctuated with so many F words that the script probably looked like a Jack Torrance manuscript.

The more moralistic dialogue is well done and certainly more than apt with today’s political atmosphere.

Score: 0.5

Visuals and Music

Jason Statham still has an impressive skill set and the choreography in this is amazing.

The music wasn’t bad but wasn’t particularly memorable.

Score: 0.5

Fun

This was a lot of fun. It’s cathartic to watch bad people get what they deserve. I watched this on my own, thankfully, and I enjoyed it a lot.

Score: 1

Overall

There’s a wonderful feeling of joy in watching Jason Statham beat the crap out of fraudsters. The movie is pure action with lots of swearing and a tiny bit of philosophy.

Final Score: 3 Stars out of 5

I’m scared but I have hope

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Hello Friends, Family, and Fans,

I’m back at work today, Dragon goes back to school, and life restarts after an extended break.

As I write this, I just finished reading the comments section on a Facebook post from Ottawa Public Health. I see in the comments a combination of anger and fear that is extremely familiar. Those that aren’t fake are people trying to come to terms with a world that seems to be falling apart. I understand the anger, I understand the frustration, and I understand the helplessness.

Unfortunately, we are in the golden age of cults. Yes, cults. From Dictionary.com, “An instance of great veneration of a person, ideal, or thing, especially as manifested by a body of admirers”.

Cults used to need to isolate and cut people off from their support systems in order to take advantage of them. In our curated digital world, it’s easy to find oneself isolated into specific communities with extreme ideas. My tik-tok is heavily queer, neurodivergent, writerly, and ttrpg based with a smattering of food and nutrition. I doubt that’s others’ experiences.

What this means is that we’re seeing more polarization and more us-vs-them and a lot more confusion. When everyone around you says the same thing and suddenly others are saying differently, it’s jarring and a little scary.

It’s a form of Cognitive Dissonance. That gut instinct of “am I wrong?” followed by either doubling down on your beliefs or challenging them. Unfortunately, there’s a lot more doubling down, especially when you are scared.

Basically, what I’m saying is that social media is a grade school rumour mill taken to the extreme. What that means for humanity is still to be decided.

No matter how hard it is to see, there is hope. Change is slow, social change doubly so. But every generation pushes it further. For every cult leader out there, there are people working to debunk their lies. For every 10-50 hate-filled comment, there are real people sharing their truths.

Hope in and of itself is powerful, with hope we can find the good. Without it we are lost.

What we can do is hard and doesn’t always work, but we can be kind. We can help those in need. We can tell the stories that need to be told. We can defend those who need it. And most of all, we can question everything.

That’s enough rambling from me.

Be kind and stay safe,

Éric

Comments, Politics, and Entertainment.

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Dear Imaginary Friends,

I have an unhealthy obsession. I’m a little ashamed of myself actually. I just can’t seem to stop… reading the comments online.

I know I really shouldn’t but there’s a weird fascination to seeing the worst of humanity interacting. I’m fascinated, repulsed, and I feel a little gross after.

My particular weaknesses are looking at comments on stories relating to Doctor Who, Captain Marvel, CW’s superhero shows, and Canadian politics.

Comic Showing an archaeologist looking at Egyptian hieroglyphics and saying, “I should know better than to read the comments section.”
Comic from Rhymes With Orange

The comments are a squirming cesspool of humanity’s worst qualities and worst arguments. One that I’ve heard a lot lately is that there’s too much politics in entertainment. Make me think of the old Peanut Butter cup commercials, “You got peanut butter on my chocolate.”

Unlike chocolate and peanut butter (yummy), the idea that you can have any form of entertainment devoid of politics is laughable. Even when you think something isn’t political, it is.

The reason most people don’t notice is that the politics align with theirs. If you’re a straight, white, cis, middle to upper class person, you won’t notice any politics in something like Friends, Big Bang, or How I Met Your Mother. You might glance over the commentary on sexism or classism in those shows as just normal everyday stuff. Just because you don’t see it doesn’t mean it’s not there.

I can hear the “Well actually, it’s more blatant” and that’s bullshit. If you’re one of those people who thinks old shows didn’t make political comments, you weren’t listening. Star Wars, Diehard, North by North-West, all had political messages in them. It’s nearly impossible to separate politics from art because it’s impossible to separate belief from creation.

Those complaining that things have become too political aren’t complaining about politics. They’re complaining that they aren’t seeing their politics reflected back at them.

Later Days,

Éric

This Guy Sat Down to write a Deep Philosophical Post. What Happened Next was Shocking!

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Hello,

I’m feeling Clickbait-y today. (Insert Evil Laugh here.) That makes me think I should record my own evil laugh for these moments…

I wanted to talk about voting, harassment, or the horrible things happening with #GamerGate. But to be completely honest I don’t think I can add anything to the discussion. Here are my basic opinions:

  • Voting Good, Vote gorram you!
  • Harassment is BAD. Stop it!
  • No seriously, STOP IT! There is never any reason to threaten someone’s life. Never

So since I’m not feeling up to being deep, here’s a basic update.

Coffee

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You may know that I love coffee. It’s something that I’ve gone from appreciating to truly enjoying.

If you follow me on Facebook,(or read my post about Can-Con) you might know that I’m trying to create my own flavoured coffee.

So far it’s worked swimmingly. I purchased a $15 hot air popcorn popper and experimented with how long and how much to roast in it. It worked amazingly. The coffee came out as a Full City+ or Medium-Well roast. It’s the perfect roast, in my mind, since it’s mellow and a little sweet.

I used Sumatra mostly and really like the flavour or the roasted beans.

Talking about flavours, I bought some flavour oils and flavoured the beans at different times in their cooling. I’ve tasted of the 5 batches. The 2 day cooled and the 1 hour cooled. Unfortunately despite smelling like the flavours, the taste didn’t penetrate the bean (sounds dirty.)

I’ve set up 3 others at ½ hour, 10 minutes, and right out of the machine. My worry is that I might need to combine the flavouring with some sort of bonding agent that will force it into the bean. Frankly I have no idea how to do that.

Oh well. I’ll let you know more once I’ve taste tested more coffee. It’s a hard life isn’t it?

Writing Editing

Just a quick word on how the writing and editing is going. Slowly.

Ok a few more words. I’ve been trying to edit Parasomnia but having issues with attention span and distractions. I’m still hoping to have it done and in the hands of my first beta reader / The Weditor by early November.

Once that’s done, I’ll start a quick re-edit of A Study in Aether and then I’ll find some fresh beta-readers for more help with the editing. I’d like to resubmit this by Christmas.

And finally when I’m done with all this editing, I’ll start writing Welcome to Everdome! The fraking story has been running through my head and it’s driving me nuts. I’m looking forward to actually writing it.

What’s your favourite type of coffee, or tea?

Would you like to be a Beta Reader for either of the books?

Let me know in the comments.

Éric

Why I LOATH Strategic Voting

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Hello Imaginary Friends,

In this post I’ll be talking a bunch about Canadian and Ontarian politics but I think it should apply to any form of democratic elections.

What am I talking about

Over the past few years I’ve noticed a big push towards movements like ABC (Anything but Conservative). At first I thought it was a cool idea and something that would get people interested in voting.

It took a few years before I realized why it bugged me. It wasn’t until someone told me not to vote for a certain party because it would be “wasting my vote”. In Canada and Ontario, each electoral district has multiple candidates from different parties. There are only four parties that run candidates in each area across the province of Ontario. If you vote for a party that doesn’t have much chance of winning people will tell you that your vote is wasted.

When that person told me not to vote for a certain party (It was the one I was going to vote for by the way) I was insulted. It wasn’t because I’m deeply partisan and was insulted for my party. I don’t belong to a party and I probably never will. I was insulted because the person was saying my opinions didn’t matter. That’s a form of strategic voting and I’ve come to loath it.

Voting in the Real World

In a perfect world, everyone who can vote reads the political agendas and plans and vote according to their belief system. We don’t live in that world. In Canada and Ontario, less than 40% of people voted in the last federal and provincial elections.

That means if you ask 10 people on the bus (And they tell you the truth) if they voted, 6 of them would not have voted. So the party that won with 30% of the vote actually won with about 13% of the population who could vote.

What’s Strategic Voting

So it makes sense that when you have a Party, who is disliked you’d try to make sure they don’t get elected right? So let’s say the Darth Party is in power and their strongest political rival is the Vulcan party. You don’t like the politics of either but you’ll vote for the Vulcan party because you really don’t want to get the Darth party elected. You really preferred the politics of the Browncoat party but were told that they would never be elected and you didn’t want to waste your vote.

Guess what happens? The Browncoats get less votes and a party you didn’t believe in was elected. Maybe the Darths don’t win and you feel validated or maybe they do and you feel you’ve at least done your duty in fighting the Empire. It’s a false sense of accomplishment. Next election, after some stupid moves on the Vulcan’s part you realize they’re all scum and decide to vote Darth to make sure the Vulcan’s don’t get elected.

Why I Loath Strategic Voting

What you did was vote negatively. You didn’t vote for what you believed in, you voted against something you didn’t like.

Let’s say out of the 40% of people who voted, 5% of the 40% voted strategically instead of voting for what they believe in, we could theoretically have a completely different election result.

With the exception of some rare elections, especially in Canada, the deciding outcome is decided by a staggeringly small number of votes. And even the elections that look like they were complete unalterably wins are decided by a less than a hundred votes.

What’s my Point

In the short term, strategic voting sounds like the best policy, get Vader out of power and deal with the rest later. But it encourages an unhealthy way of looking at politics.

If you look at what’s happened the past 3-5 Federal Elections you’ll see the true cost of Strategic Voting. The political parties have decided that it’s more effective to paint their opposition as horrible monsters, or completely incompetent, than it is to have a well thought out platform.

Strategic voting is the best way to screw up the electoral process. All we end up with is a party we hated less than another.

Is that what you want? To always get something you sort of are ok with?

Thomas Jefferson is credited with saying, “The government you elect is government you deserve.”

Change can only happen if we trust in ourselves and each other to do the right thing, not just the least objectionable.

Well My Imaginary Friends, I firmly believe that we deserve to vote with our hearts and that in the long run it will not only make for better politics but for a better world.

What do you think?