I knew this episode of Survivor was going to be money.  It had previously had its way with a much more difficult audience–my mother.  That fact, combined with the fact that every Survivor family reunion episode has completely and utterly destroyerd her in the past, made this one a pretty safe tear bet.

Here’s the scene that got the tears flowing.

Watched “Eagle Eye” last night. After the big twist that comes around half way through I started mumbling “oh you can’t be serious” and contemplating reading a book in my room.

There was a brief scene that managed to make the wife cry. It’s a funeral scene where the protagonist, Ethan, is saying goodbye to his twin brother who lies in an open casket at the front of a church. Ethan, dressed in a suit and crying over his dead brother, tucks a little paper airplane in the casket under his arm. Obviously this scene is going to elicit some tears. I’d give it a 3/7 for intensity (he cheeks were both quite wet).

And now that we have the tears out of the way, let me tell you why this movie sucked as much as the last movie I watched–Synecdoche, New York—sucked, but for totally different reasons.

[Spoiler alert]

The plot goes something like this: an ordinary American man comes home to his apartment one day, to find it full of terrorist weapons and bomb making material. His cell phone rings and a voice at the other end tells him to do what he is told. His first instruction is to run away before the FBI arrives in 30 seconds. He fails to run away and the FBI takes him in. He’s broken out of FBI custody by what seems to be hackers (instructions flash on billboards) and he meets a woman in a getaway car in a similar situation (she’s had calls from the voice too). The voice on the cell phone helps them to evade the police by changing street lights (smash, boom, bang) and eventually takes them to a wrecking yard where the remaining police cars are picked up by cranes and are crushed/thrown into the sea.

At this point I’m annoyed because, well, because it’s stupid. No hacker would be able to manipulate that many systems so quickly and so perfectly. Not if they had planned and tested everything for months in advance. At this point I’m preparing myself for another stupid Hollywood “hackers can do anything” movie… but it turns into something MUCH worse. It’s a pathetic “when computers go bad and take over everything” movie. Damn.

As the plot stumbles on, we learn that the FBI has a secret program wherein a massive computer system collects data and analyses relationships between people to identify possible threats. Only the computer somehow also acquired a will to uphold the constitution and sees its own government as a threat to the people of the United States, so it goes rogue, killing its operators and plotting a regime change. High ranking government and military officials will be eliminated.

Ok… so it’s bad and lame at this point. But it gets worse. I hate it when writers get simple things confused. Simple things like the difference between a complex machine that executes simple instructions and an evil genius who comes up with diabolical schemes.

vs. 

In Eagle Eye, this is the plan the computer designs and attempts to execute in order to kill the president and the heads of state (because this time,  changing the traffic lights just won’t do).

1. intercept a military grade exploding crystal which is detonated by a particular sound frequency.
2. send the exploding crystal to a jeweller, and force him to cut the crystal and set it into a beautifully crafted necklace.
3. have the jeweller send the necklace to a high ranking government officer who will later kidnap a woman and force her to wear it to a meeting where her son will be playing the national anthem with his kindergarten classmates.
4. send the sound activated detonator to another man who will steal the boy’s trumpet, implant the detonator, and then get the trumpet back into the boy’s hands. the detonator will activate the crystal when the boy plays a  high F# (the note comes at the crescendo of the national anthem. because the computer is REALLY freaking worried about assassination style points).
5. kidnap the boy’s mother and have the kidnapper giver her the special exploding crystal necklace. hope like hell that she wears it.
6. seat the mother with the exploding necklace in the meeting where her son will be playing trumpet for the president.
7. when the last few notes of the national anthem are played, the trumpet will activate the crystal, and BOOM, target eliminated.
8. communicate the entire evil scheme to helpless onlookers with snazzy graphics.

This is also set in modern day America, not in the future and the film is also sure to include a plethora of flag waving moments of patriotism, as well as a lovely Danny Tanner Full House moment at the end where the audience is instructed that sometimes, the government’s plans to protect civilians goes too far and freedoms are lost. Ugh. Thanks for that.

Oh, and the computer has a giant eye, communicates flawlessly in English, and understands how the twin brothers are different in motivation and personality by watching videos of their childhoods. UGH! Oh, and the computer dies if you stab it in its giant eye… which is nothing at all like thinking that you can totally destroy your computer by throwing your webcam on the ground.  Ugh.

To see where were actually at in the modern world of A.I., check out this video of Asimo learning the names of objects.

Hi Guys,

So I’m a new contributer on the site. I too have a wife that seems to cry really quickly, you’ll see as more posts go on.

Let’s keep the first post simple. This video, 5.5/7, she was a wreck.

The Amazing Race season 14, episode 1. There’s a mother competing with her deaf son.  Watch the scene.

This scene produced two sets of tears. A couple light ones when the host whipped out the sign language (which you must admit was very sweet) and a second set of harder tears when the deaf fellow explained why the contest was important to him. I’m rating it a three (1 for the first set of tears, and 2 for the second set of heavy tears).

Tear Factor: 3/7

We picked up Ugly Betty season two for a remarkably good price in China. I think the show is pretty good, but the wife just love, love, loves it. Last night she was watching it in the bedroom (Season 2 Episode 11) with a notebook computer on her chest whilst I read my Huck Fin.

Eventually she emerged with puffy red eyes and reported that the episode was about girls in school wanting to be cool and skinny, and about how chubbly little girls were not having any fun at the swimming pool, so Betty puts on a “real woman” fashion show featuring plus sized models to show the kids that real women can be big and beautiful.

And she confessed to crying on four seperate occasions. I do believe this is the new standard for comedy show tears.

You may remember that the wife was reduced to tears the first time Danny sang Hero on Idol (it was the way he threw his arm out at the end of the song). We watched the voting results show (truly pathetic, I know. watching an hour long show to see  voting results for a talent show…) Danny gave a repeat performance of the song from the previous night (again. I feel pathetic admitting that I watched it.) But the wife cried all her tears over the song the previous night… right? No one cries twice for the same cheesy cover song two nights in a row… right?

WRONG. When the camera pans to Danny’s friends, one of them pulls out a wallet-sized picture of Danny’s deceased wife.

This was “unfair” according to the wife.

Wife Tears: 2/7

We’re addicted to American Idol much in the way I imagine people of certain ethnicities can become addicted to food that smells like decomposing bean paste (it’s ok to like these things as long as you acknowledge that you’re weird for liking them).  Tonight the new season 8 hopefuls took to the stage; they were largely atrocious, and the whole show had a certain karaoke feel to it that I don’t remember from previous seasons. I feel sorry for poor Randy Jackson at times like these. Unlike Paula, he actually has an ear and can tell when people suck, and unlike Simon Cowell, he actually has a heart and doesn’t enjoy breaking people’s hearts in front of millions of people. But tonight, people really did suck. Even the band sucked. Poor Randy Jackson.

Anyway, tonight’s last American Idol performer was a 28 year old church music director named Danny Gokey. His Idol angle is that he lost his wife earlier this year. He’s been fantastic in the tryouts so we had high hopes.  Danny chose to sing Mariah Carey’s “Hero” tonight (What in the devil’s hot hell are you doing Gokey???).  It actually turned out better than expected, and at the end of the song I glanced over at the wife: she had a quivering lip and tears welling up. This surprised me (it reaaly didn’t feel emotional to me at all). A little talking was certain to yield a plentiful harvest of tears.

–So… what part got ya? Is it because he lost his wife?

–No…. It was the way he flung his arm out at the end!

Wife Tears: 2/7 (for intensity)