Wal-Mart Movies

I was online recently and saw a post in Dr. Mercola’s blog about Wal-Mart. He is no fan of Walmart, as you can tell from the title of his blog post, “Wal-Mart’s Predatory Business Practices Exposed.” In his post he has a movie that was made by Robert Greenwald (also not a fan of Wal-Mart) called, “Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price.” He even has a page of parody commercials on his site.

I heard that there was a pro Wal-Mart movie coming out too and this one is made by Ron Galloway. It is called, “Why Wal-Mart Works & Why That Drives Some People Crazy.” This film is not available on Google Video (or any other site) like Mr. Greenwald’s film now is. Mr. Galloway is releasing a sequel called, “Wal-Mart Wars” that is scheduled to be released on DVD in March.

There are some pro & con Wal-Mart sites that you can find online. I found this interesting article called, “The Ultimate pro-WalMart Article.” I have shopped at Wal-Mart before myself and millions of Americans do every year. Wal-Mart has tried for years to put stores into New York City, but so far, every attempt has failed. They recently tried to put a store in Queens, but community resistance prevented that from happening. This has happened a number of times around the country. People are free to shop wherever they want to shop. Many people choose to shop at big box retailers instead of local mom & pop stores for a variety of reasons. Some areas don’t have a lot of locally owned stores nearby, but a Wal-Mart or similar big box retailer is nearby. Whatever the reason, people can, and do, choose where they want to spend their money at. In Dr. Mercola’s post, there is a debate going on in the comments that I thought was quite interesting. Here is the Wal-Mart post by Dr. Mercola.

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ATM Card Theft

I found this link on a local radio station’s website about ATM card thefts that might be happening in your area. It is a PPS file. If you don’t have Powerpoint, then you can download the free OpenOffice suite, which is compatible with Microsoft Office. Check it out:

Here is a link to a PowerPoint presentation that shows you how you can get messed up at the ATM. This is good information…check it out!

Click to see presentation

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Superman II: The Richard Donner Cut

Recently I purchased a copy of Superman II: The Richard Donner Cut while out shopping one night. It was released onto DVD on November 28. This is the version of the film that was not released into theatres back in 1980. That version was directed by Richard Lester after the original director, Richard Donner, was fired by the producers, Alexander and Ilya Salkind.

Director Richard Donner was filming both Superman and Superman II at the same time to save on the budget at the insistence of the Salkinds. He had finished about 75% of the second movie, but was fired after having arguments with the producers, before he could finish filming the rest of the movie. After this, they brought in Richard Lester to finish the second film, but he had to direct at least 51% of the movie in order to get credit for the film. So, many of the scenes already shot by Donner were re-shot or not used by Lester. The Salkinds also did not want to pay Marlon Brando 10% of the profits of the second film, the same deal he had for the first one. So they cut out the scenes of him and instead used Susannah York, who played Superman’s mother in the first film, to complete the re-shot scenes in the Fortress of Solitude. In Donner’s version, you see the interaction between father and son that was missing from the Lester version. The scenes already done by actors Gene Hackman, Ned Beatty and Valerie Perrine (Lex Luthor, Otis and Eve Teschmacher) were never re-shot, so they were used in Lester’s version. The remaining actors were not happy about Donner being fired and it does show in their performances when you view both versions of the film. You can read an interview with screenwriter Tom Mankiewicz, where he talks about this here. Warner Brothers held a premiere for the DVD’s release that you can read about here. Here is an L.A. Times article about the DVD’s release. You can read a review of The Donner Cut. Some of you may be wondering what some of the differences were in this version of the film. The following link is a 5-minute video clip from the Donner version that takes place shortly after a slightly different beginning of what many people have seen from the Lester version of the film. In this clip, Lois Lane attempts to unmask Clark Kent as Superman by jumping from a high-rise building. Take a look at the clip here. I do like Donner’s version better than the version that was released into theatres. It took years, but Donner’s version has finally seen the light of day. Pick up a copy at a store near you, you will be glad that you did.

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Pearl Harbor Day

Today is the 65th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor by the Imperial Japanese Navy. That day, over 1,000 men were injured and over 2,000 men were killed in the “surprise” attack. In 2001 a movie about the attack was released into theaters. This “surprise” attack was used by the U.S. government to justify America’s entrance into World War II. The U.S. government also used it as an excuse to put citizens of Japanese decent into concentration camps on American soil and to promote racist propaganda against the Japanese peoples. The government has apologized for these actions and even paid reparations to the families of those that were put into the concentration camps. Some American and Japanese veterans have reconciled with each other, and have some have even become good friends. There is some evidence that the attack on Pearl Harbor was not a “surprise” as has been promoted by the U.S. government and the media. There is some evidence that the Japanese naval codes had been broken and that the U.S. government had known about the secret Japanese plans to attack the naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. If this is true, then why was it allowed to happen? I came across some some articles about this from the archives of The New American magazine. Here are the articles so that you can make up your own mind:

Pearl Harbor

Scapegoating Kimmel and Short

Motives Behind the Betrayal

Pearl Harbor: The Facts Behind the Fiction

Why We Fought

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In suicide by fire, an unheard protest

I was glancing through a newspaper while on break at work earlier tonight and came across this article. Here’s an excerpt from it:

CHICAGO – Malachi Ritscher envisioned his death as one full of purpose.

He carefully planned the details, mailed a copy of his apartment key to a friend, created to-do lists for his family.

On his Web site, the 52-year-old experimental musician who had fought with depression even penned his obituary.

At 6:30 a.m. Nov. 3 — four days before an election caused a seismic shift in Washington politics — Ritscher, a frequent anti-war protester, stood by an off-ramp in downtown Chicago near a statue of a giant flame, set up a video camera, doused himself with gasoline and lit himself on fire.

Aglow for the crush of morning commuters, his flaming body was supposed to be a call to the nation, a symbol of his rage and discontent with the U.S. war in Iraq.

“Here is the statement I want to make: if I am required to pay for your barbaric war, I choose not to live in your world. I refuse to finance the mass murder of innocent civilians, who did nothing to threaten our country,” he wrote in his suicide note. “If one death can atone for anything, in any small way, to say to the world: I apologize for what we have done to you, I am ashamed for the mayhem and turmoil caused by my country.”

There was only one problem: No one was listening.

Read the rest of the article here.

This is an excerpt of a post I did on my Opera blog. Opera messes up a lot so I wanted to establish another blog that hopefully is more stable. I don’t know what all I will post here, but we’ll see as time goes by.

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