Too much going on in my head

I have been too busy to sit and write for a while, as I expected I might be. I have been too busy to even write down some of the ideas I have had to write about lately, forget about sketching them out in outline form. So, due to the overwhelming stress these unwritten ideas are causing me, here comes the Brain Dump!

Man takes Gore Verbinski out to the woodshed, film at eleven.
I just watched the latest Pirates of the Caribbean movie last night and I want my one hundred and fifty minutes back. Director Gore Verbinski has taken an interesting movie about a lovable scoundrel, Captain Jack, and turned it into an epic trilogy filled with distracting special effects and a boring story with a meandering plot line. Sure, the whole Davey Jones' Locker extrapolation was interesting, but each time Davey Jones appeared on screen I was mesmerized by the tentacles hanging from his face. How many of those thing were there? I tried to count each time, but they kept moving and i couldn't keep up with them. What? A story line? Did I miss something? Two and one half hours after this snooze began, we wind up with the most major faux pas any movie can make: a CLIFFHANGER ENDING. Only TV shows are allowed to write cliffhanger endings into their stories, keeping us engaged until the next week's episode. That's just the way it is. Movies aren't supposed to do this. ESPECIALLY when the follow-up won't be released for an entire year after the last.
The Matrix did something like this, but each movie really was a capsule of the story, and can stand alone (with some minor explanation) without the other films. The Star Wars Trilogies may have left us wanting more at the end of each movie, but they did nothing like what this film did, cutting us off at the knees, waiting for some resolution. Gore might have been better off if he had yelled "CUT" in the middle of the last sentence and wrapped it right then. The viewer left with the same unfinished, unsettled feeling. The ONLY movie to have ever done the cliffhanger right was the Back To The Future series, but the simple reason for their success was releasing the third episode only ONE MONTH after the second. We really don't have to wait very long for the exciting conclusion.
Bah. I expected more, and was left wanting still by the movie's end. Leave this one on the shelf.

Oprah spends her money the way she feels like it, insults millions.
Ok, so Oprah spends $40 million on a school in South Africa to enable 150 girls to get a better education. Maybe I'm a bit naive, but that's quite a tuition! Ok, sure, there is a beauty salon and a yoga center on the campus, but so what? These elite students are here to learn right? I wonder what else is available for these lucky 150? I have heard that the student class size will grow to be almost 450 some day. That's just so inclusive, isn't it? Maybe i really don't understand what it costs to educate the nations youth, but I feel like that is a steep bill to pay to do so much for so few.
Really, it wouldn't bug me much except for what she has done to mischaracterize the youth in America's "inner city schools". The way she has labeled the inner city youth as "not wanting to learn" and materialistic, is ironic. Oprah, you should be ashamed of yourself for using such a broad stroke brush to paint these kids in such a way. You have just alienated all of the hardworking, good students struggling to succeed in the environment you see as so awful.
In a speech she made regarding the opening of the school, she says "her whole life had led her to this moment." Wow. What's next? I'm sure she is spending some money in her home state of Mississippi, but I never hear of it because none of it generates so much publicity. The problem with her current Cause is that it emphasizes her own materialism, underscores the flagrant materialism on her TV show, and could ultimately promote the same sense of materialism in these special 150 students she has chosen to attend her special school for girls.
Oprah says that all these girls really want are uniforms so that they can go to school. Hopefully they won't wake up and start demanding Ipods with their plaid skirts.


...it's late. More to come soon.