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Monte Amende

Monte Amende

Monte is is a sad, sad little man. Born and raised in Belle Fourche, South Dakota, he now lives there with his beautiful wife, Michelle Deyo-Amende, and two clever, healthy children, Miles and Madeleine. Sad. He is creative director, and a partner at TDG Communications, a successful advertising agency. See, sad.

December 18 2011

THEY SHOW US THE ONCE-LER IN THE GOD DAMN PREVIEW!

Why would this upset me so?

First off, I can't read this story to my children without choking up a little remembering my mother reading it to me. I had so much fun just imagining what the Once-ler might look like. The mystery of the Once-ler's appearance made the character really, really engaging and got me asking how can he be doing this bad stuff when he's so smart. Look what he can do, what he can create, the cool stuff he can invent like the super-axe hacker. Why isn't he listening the the Lorax?

I identified more with the Once-ler than the kid in the story, partially because I saw what the kid looked like. He was just some run of the mill curious kid.

I learned a great deal about obsession, ethics and responsibility from the Once-ler's mistakes. The Once-ler is Howard Hughes, Orson Welles, Preston Tucker, Victor Frankstein, not some lanky-looking teenager!

To be clear, this upcoming movie might be cute, but that the producers failed to recognize the perfection of the source material's ambiguity and brevity is a sad irony in itself. I'll spell it out. As I understand the point of The Lorax is don't do stuff to excess just to make money and just because you can. So the filmmakers take a short story, expand it into a full length movie with big-budget computer animation because they can and because they hope it's going to make a shit load of money. 

Yup, that's cynical, but that doesn't mean it's incorrect. 

No, I don't think the film makers had bad intentions and in the end children will probably still get a positive message from the movie - whatever that means I just couldn't say.

September 9 2011

After a summer of deep-fried, chocolate-dipped sugar balls, 'Contagion' is a real pallette cleanser. No explosions, superheroes or magic – it's just a movie that doesn't pretend to be too smart and therefore comes across as anything but stupid.

September 4 2011

It might seem like I dislike all the movies that the mainstream loves and I love the movies the mainstream hates. But that isn't true. I just don't like hype.

When mainstream audiences flip for a movie, it is deemed a great movie -- except most of the time it's just an average movie. When mainstream audiences hate a movie, it's deemed a rotten movie -- except most of the time, again, it's just an average movie.

August 28 2011

I've always been a sucker for the Planet of the Apes movies because I've never had to pay to see any of them, that's until recently. With this latest outing, I mostly feel suckered. 

June 13 2010

In my last post I ranted long about the overuse of the term fanboy, how its misuse resulted in trivializing their psychosis while elevating their status as barometers of pop culture. My claim was that Hollywood has made true fanboys far more influential than what they are due. And I stated that I have proof.

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