Sex: the Annabelle Chong Story mini review

The story of the original world‘s biggest gang-bang and its star. In real life she is Gace Quek who was a USC student at the time of the gang-bang, and is from London. The film contrasts her strict upbringing by Singaporian parents and her career in the porn industry. The crew follows her before and during the taping of the gang-bang and afterwards, showing the animosity of others in the porn industry and the craziness and sleaziness of her pornographer boss. It also talks about her drug addiction and a rape experience in London’s underground. It also plays off her academic/intellectual side and her porn side. From watching the film one is lead to conclude that she is a pretty messed up person.

Devil’s Playground mini review

Of the three documentaries that I watched yesterday, this was by far the best one. It explores the Amish custom of Rumspringa “running around,” which is the period after when an Amish child turns sixteen until they decide to join the church or become “English,” and remain on the outside world.

According to the film, the main belief that caused the Amish to be persecuted and move to America in the late 17th, early 18th century was the idea that baptism of children is wrong, and that only an adult can decide to join the church. The rumspringa is a period when the Amish children are allowed to explore the outside, or English world, and decide if they want to join the church or not. The film follows a few different teenagers through their running around period and shows how most of them come to accept the way of life that they have been conditioned since birth to accept. The film says 90% of the children born in the church will go on to join, and it is easy to see why. Since most of them live at home with their parents during this period the pressure to give up the devil’s world and join the church is intense.

The thing that I think is the most disheartening about the whole thing is that the only things that the children relate that they will miss are things like television and cars (the boys usually have a vehicle during this period, but the girls do not, likewise the boys will often dress English, while the girls will not), none of them seem to know anything about ideas or experiences they might have outside the Amish community, which is not surprising since they are expected to leave school after eight grade since education leads to vanity.

It is a very devious thing of the church indeed to not outwardly support the boozing and partying that the children undergo, but knowing that most of them will come to a realization that they cannot live this sinful life if they want to get into heaven.

This film shows the pressures involved in a heavily religious community and shows me at least why I want no part of such a community.

Half Past Dead mini review
starring Steven Segal, and Ja Rule

There are bad films and really bad films, and then there are the so horrible you almost have to feel sorry for the actors involved. Guess which one this is.

The premise, Segal is an undercover FBI agent trying to get close to Ja Rule’s boss whose underling car-jacked Segal’s car and shot him and his wife. Segal went “Half Past Dead,” but returned from the grave after 22 minutes, but his wife died. Later he goes into deep cover in a renovated, supposedly high tech Alcatraz (Though the only evidence of that high-tech is some monitors and handprint/voice identification terminals, and the Slaughterhouse 5, an execution chamber). Inside we meet the horribly steriotypical Hispanic warden, who likes to speak in Spanish, as well as other inmates. The rest of the story is that on the eve of his execution a man who knocked over 200 million in gold from a government train still refuses to tell anyone where he stashed the loot. Commando style bandits parachute in and attempt to make him divulge the information by variously threatening innocents there to witness his execution including the Supreme Court Justice who sentenced him. I am unclear why the warden has such a close relationship with the condemned, or what the relationships are between some of the other characters in this film, such as the head commando and the owner of the island or Mayor or whoever the hell the old guy with the mustache is.

Enough of the plot already, I don’t think even the writer/director paid that much attention to it, it was just an excuse for some thrilling prison fighting action, right? Wrong. Even the fights in this film aren’t very good. They tend to be between no-name baddies and Segal, and when Rule gets to fight, he invariably gets thrown into a wall, or gets his ass handed to him.

This is a bad, bad movie. Stay far away from it.