Studios were surprised in Hollywood when the new James Bond film No Time To Die didn’t blow the doors off the box office over its opening weekend. Like every other underperforming fool these days, they wanted to blame Covid, which governments created to commit election fraud, not that they killed James Bond in the movie. Who thought that was a good idea? After 60 years of narrow escapes, they found a way and a time for James Bond to die at the end of No Time To Die. They probably should have taken their own advice given to them in the title. It was just another disappointment that we are all getting used to strong, white, male characters that progressives think they can kill in stories and replace them with women or people of color for the sake of the visual aspects of things and that people would accept it. Over the last two years, as we have waited for this movie to come out, the rumors of the next James Bond being a woman, a gay guy, or all kinds of other things have been discussed openly. When the movie finally opened, enough people had enough. It leaked out that this Daniel Craig James Bond was going to die, and people weren’t exactly in a rush to see it happen. It’s not enough to make a technically good movie; James Bond is one of those special cases where he’s a hero who always gets away, like Bugs Bunny. But then again, Bugs Bunny is pretty much banned these days too. Any strong characters without obvious flaws in the mind of progressives are a danger to their politics, so they look to get rid of them and replace them with flawed, mortal characters who are easy to control by the government.
This isn’t unique to the Bond film franchise. I have written many hundreds of thousands of words about the failure of Disney to handle the Star Wars franchise. It was astonishing that given all the great resources they had in Star Wars left to them by George Lucas, that they screwed it up so badly. Yet when I saw The Force Awakens back in 2015, it was clear that when they decided to kill Han Solo, the plan was the same as Bond. Kill off Anglo-Saxon white men in the public’s minds so their rule over mankind will end, starting with stories. Then replace them with people of color and women, and make them like it. That was essentially the goal of the new Star Wars films, and people rejected them so severely that the brand is now permanently damaged. Disney has a new CEO who has been brought in to fix things. Lucasfilm is also moving people around who like Star Wars to repair the brand, which will take years if possible. I think they’ll make things better, but the damage is already set. Some things you can’t tamper with. If a character has a special place in people’s minds, you better treat them well and not take them for granted. Otherwise, don’t expect to use them to drive box office results while at the same time appeasing all the anti-capitalist radicals who have infiltrated leftist thinking for communist domination of the world.
Star Wars is an easy one to see because it’s so obvious. As big of a company as they are, Disney never understood why people liked the film franchise. Some of the plotlines they have introduced then rejected over the last several years indicate that Kathy Kennedy never understood why the films she was invited to produce worked, like the Indiana Jones films and all the Steven Spielberg projects she was a part of. Because she thought she could interfere with what the public liked and that as long as space creatures and spaceships were flying around, that people would buy a ticket to her liberal propaganda. Well, as it turns out, that’s not how things work. People want heroes they can believe in. People worth watching who manage to outsmart the bad guys. That’s why people buy a movie ticket. Reality is tough enough. When people enter a darkened theater, they want to see hope.
I think movie box office results are some of the best votings there are. People truly vote with their feet. It’s not easy for Democrats to cheat the vote because they still can’t control what people like. Ultimately people decide what they like and see and if they don’t want to see James Bond getting killed. Then they won’t see it happen. They might catch the movie on cable later, but they aren’t going to pay money to see it happen. One of the clear political strategies that China has in mind for America and all the Davos insurgents is to rob our culture of hopes and dreams and instead show that even James Bond eventually gets it in the end. Filmmakers seem to want to praise those types of people at cocktail parties rather than being blamed for being just another capitalist producer who put profits over the party. The ultimate check on that power is to reject those films at the box office, which happened with the new James Bond film. They killed Bond. And the box office reflects that people didn’t want to see it happen. Just as Disney killed off Han Solo and thought they could replace him with some Dora the Explorer character, and they’d still make money.
Yet to continue to hide these things from the public, every time they get caught, Covid is used to hide the incompetence of the participants. No Time To Die was supposed to be released in early April of 2020. It has had its release date pushed back many times, finally hitting theaters in October of 2021, really at a terrible time for a Bond film. This is what the Great Reset looks like, folks. Incompetent people release their movies that used to be valuable to the public. The public forgets about them and moves on to other things, and when the results don’t come out the way stakeholders expect, well then, they blame Covid. Ultimately, governments have interfered with the marketplace, and the bootlickers have wasted more time appeasing them than actually trying to make a movie people want to see. The governments are the new audience to appease, not the popcorn-eating public, and these projects are flat and boring. And coming out of a disappointing time when governments tried to completely take over our healthcare with a made-up crisis in Covid, built in a Wuhan lab in China by Dr. Fauci NIH funding, movie producers are trying to take away anything that might be considered good in our movies and entertainment. Their message to us is, “see, even James Bond gets it in the end. Not even he can escape our power.” It shouldn’t come as a surprise to any of us, given what we have seen from authority figures in 2021. The bad guys wrote this latest James Bond film as propaganda for the future they want to control. That understanding makes me proud to see that people didn’t get suckered into it and decided to stay home. No Time To Die didn’t come up short at the box office because of Covid. People are starving for reasons to get out of the house. They aren’t scared of the virus. No, they don’t want to see one more icon of western civilization killed in front of their faces, which was the intention of the woke James Bond of this modern age. People voted in a way that Democrats couldn’t steal, and it shows in the box office ultimately.
Every now and then I like to cover lighter topics that shed some hope for the human condition. Occasionally I have written about my observations regarding the new cosplay phenomena and some of the very unique toys being made for kids from really great companies like Hasbro, Nerf and Sphero. I have no problem admitting that when my wife drags me to the store for whatever reason—usually because she wants my company–that the place I always like to go first is the toy section to see what’s new there. I have always enjoyed the inventiveness that comes with play and I think the world would be far better off if kids played more and for a longer period of time instead of rushing into puberty too quickly. They should develop their minds longer than they do and after several discussions with my daughters who are now in their mid twenties I do have some hope that some of the inventiveness that is coming out in the toy markets and cosplay endeavors are the millennial’s generational self correction.
Any analysis into my love of Star Wars as a grown man would conclude that I find the people in those stories more interesting than real people. The mythology of Star Wars as a whole has in it people I enjoy more than actual interactions. Now some people might say that my view is unhealthy—that I shouldn’t set my bar for human interaction so high. I would argue that society doesn’t set its bar for achievement high enough. As a young person I always measured myself against the unrealistic expectations of the silver screen—not off the terrestrial limits of the real people in my life who I always felt were striving to be, “only human.” They didn’t think big enough for me—the world they were offering was not enough. And to a large degree millennials have grown up in broken homes with divorced insecure parents. Their educations have been a joke and generally the world around them has been a tremendous let-down. I mean who wants to grow up to be like John McCain? Anybody? Or Maxine Waters? How about a news anchor on any network? Anybody want to be Chris Wallace? If you have half a brain dear reader, you get my point. So for their own survival millennials are doing to a larger degree what I always did, they turn to mythology where heroes and villains are larger than life and they base their standards for living off them instead of real people-because they innately recognize that they must do something to overcome the low expectations given to them by the lost generations which came before.
So that is the who and why all these fantastic toys and cosplay devices have emerged and specific to my interest is the Star Wars items from Nerf, Hasbro, and Sphero. With Force Friday II coming up on September 1st 2017 where all the new Star Wars toys hit the shelves at Wal-Mart, Target and Toys R Us inventories that have been out there for a while since last year’s Rogue One movie is now at a very reduced price so my wife and I have been buying up things we’ve long been watching. Specifically for me is the Hasbro At-ACT which came out last year for Rogue One but was over $300. Hard for me to justify spending that kind of money on a toy, but lately it was marked down to $150 so we picked it up. Another big thing we were able to pick up was the Sphero BB-8 robot which is driven off your smart phone. In fact that’s what the AT-ACT and BB-8 have in common—both can move around on their own controlled off programming inputted into your iPhone which I think is just phenomenal. The BB-8 robot from Sphero I think is a remarkable device and after finding it at Wal-Mart for half of its original $150 price tag I thought was a bargain.
For us, even though I enjoy the creativity on display in these new age toys if we didn’t have our grandkids over so much I wouldn’t have much of a desire to get them. But, the kids are over a lot and I enjoy them immensely so when they are at my house we have all these very epic and expensive things to play with. I remember how it was as a parent where luxuries were hard to come by and having all these expensive things to play with for the kids was difficult. But as a grandparent we can afford to give the kids access to those kinds of things so we do, and I enjoy playing with the kids as they build up their brains with positive things I know will last a lifetime. When kids play they don’t play to be a worthless bureaucrat or an average loser—they play to be a hero that saves the entire galaxy, that is the fantasy and it sets up in their minds the objective to reach for that high bar—even if it’s unrealistic. It’s better to aim high than to not aim at all. I also remember what it was like being a kid and I was a unique one. I built models in the basement of our house very late into my teens and I had a large Star Wars toy collection that I played with until past the 8th grade. I had a younger brother who had friends come over on Friday nights and we’d have massive Star Wars battles and honestly I found that a lot more fun than what was going on in real life. I didn’t have any desire to drink, do drugs, use cuss words or play with girls. The world I had in the basement of our house was far more interesting. One of those younger kids who came over had a sister my age who was trying to fix me up with one of the prettiest girls in the 8th grade. She wanted me to go to the big homecoming dance with her after the football game. This girl liked me a lot and had let me know that if I went to the dance with her that she’d let me do anything I wanted to her. She was two years older than me and could drive. Guess what I picked? I chose playing Star Wars with the younger kids rather than messing around with that girl. I never went to a single school dance until I was in my senior year and that was only to get a picture for my mom to put on her wall. Many of my parents’ friends thought I was a weird kid so she wanted something to show that I wasn’t so strange. In reality the toys were more interesting and I still love them to this day. I can understand fully what cool toys and the freedom from guilt in playing with them can do for children. I would say that now as an adult I am extremely well-adjusted and a very good problem solver. I attribute a lot of that to developing my brain with a lot of play as a kid without the hassle of social pressure—like girls in the 8th grade and dances after football games. Now as an adult with financial means, I do spoil my grandchildren for specifically those reasons—so they can feel the boundless joy of being a kid and discovering so many new things for the first time before life starts clamping down. When life does clamp down, I want them to intellectually be ready.
And that’s why these toys are so much better than the toys from my youth, because Hasbro and Sphero aren’t just making them for kids. They are making them for the many adults who now get past their 20s and aren’t interested in what the world has to offer. As I think about this interesting aspect of our culture I can’t help but think of the James Bond movie The World is not Enough by the musical group Garbage. That song captures this issue very well, the world is not enough because it doesn’t offer a big enough tapestry to project our hopes and dreams against—so many people find a relief from those limits by fulfilling their imaginations with these very sophisticated toys and these very creative companies understand and are rushing to fill that market need with some really spectacular offerings. I always loved that song. Needless to say I am impressed and continue to look forward to the next great thing to come from Hasbro and Sphero. That AT-ACT and the BB-8 droid are just fabulous and will bring a lot of joy to my house. And I continue to look forward to what they come up with this year for Force Friday. I waited for some of these items for a few years so that the price would come down, but given the great utilization on display, maybe I won’t wait so long next time.
There isn’t even a close second in my opinion; my first movie experience at Liberty Center’s Cinebistro was the best I’ve ever had in my long movie going history. It was fabulous on all fronts. Couple that experience with the opening of one of the most wonderful James Bond intros—a several minute tracking shot from what had to be a really sophisticated drone camera system involving thousands of extras in and out-of-doors in one take and I have to thank the filmmakers and Cinebistro for the most memorable theater experience that I’ve ever had 47 years. I’ve written on these pages before of my love of the Newport on the Levee theaters by AMC. I’ve went on about the Regal in Mason. I’ve described the IMAX screen at Springdale as the best in the city of Cincinnati. I enjoy little things from all those places, so I was eager to see just how good the Cobb group was in putting together a theater experience in my hometown, and I can only say it was a stunning example of everything I’ve ever dreamed of regarding a journey out to the movies—which is a favorite pastime of mine. So that you dear reader can experience it for yourself let me describe how it works coupled with a bit of background for context.
I have lived in the area of Liberty Township most of my life. I’ve traveled and lived in other places, but I stayed in Liberty Township because I consider it one of the best locations in the United States. I get involved in the politics of the area to some extent to protect my investment both fiscally, and philosophically. Forty years ago when I was a kid in the area the best place to see a movie was the Showcase Cinemas in Springdale. I considered it a luxury experience to go to the Dayton Mall which had a movie theater inside the mall. I also years later thought it was a luxury to see a movie inside the Kenwood Mall. Going to the movies was always and continues to be an exciting thing to do in my life. I enjoy it most of the time. Around the country there is a really nice movie theater I like at Cocoa Beach inside the mall there. One of the neatest that I’ve seen was at the Americana complex in Glendale, California which caters to the wealthy in and around the television industry which shoots a lot of footage nearby on a daily basis. It is not uncommon to see movie stars and television stars seeking downtime at the Americana, it’s where they go to get away from the public and the movie theater is naturally nice. Another great movie theater is the one at Universal Studios in Florida at the City Walk. So it is within the context of those exotic destinations that I can say that Liberty Center and the Cinebistro within it are among the best that I have ever seen—anywhere. I could go so far to say that Cinebistro is the best movie theater currently in the state of Ohio—and yes that includes theaters in Columbus and Cleveland. It was the best—here’s why, and how it works.
Cinebistro is actually a separate theater experience from the Cobb Luxury theaters. It has its own little section off to the left of the main entrance at the top of the escalator. Tickets for both theaters are bought in the downstairs, street level ticket booth. Simply take the escalator up into the main auditorium and the Luxury theaters are off to the right with the Cinebistro off to the left. Ahead is Cobbster’s kitchen which services the Luxury theaters. Behind, to the right is the bar and restaurant which by itself is a great experience. It has a fantastic view up the street into the heart of Liberty Center from a nice balcony that protrudes off the building. It’s all very dramatic and wonderful. But things really get cool when you step into the doors to the Cinebistro. The tickets themselves look like they are for a high-class affair; they are not your normal movie ticket. When they are purchased downstairs you pick your seats for the presentation. So when you step into the doors of Cinebistro you are good to go. You should arrive about 45 minutes before your feature, but 30 minutes are recommended. At 30 minutes until the feature they call your showing and you proceed inside just as you would a normal theater, only an usher will take you to your seat the way a hostess would at a restaurant complete with a full menu of their offerings.
The reason you should arrive an additional 15 minutes to the recommended 30 minutes early is so that you can relax in their lounge which is very nice and has also its own balcony overlooking the square outside. At the bar a striking young woman was very knowledgeable about drinks and provided an assortment of exotic beers, wines and just about every other drink on the market. I brought along some of my family so we had a group of four and relaxed for a moment with some drinks. I listened to the bartender take additional orders from other customers and her manner was what you would expect at the bar of a very nice hotel. She was very professional and competent speaking without any slang—fully prepared to deal with people who are used to speaking with proper grammar and complete sentences. She and I spoke a bit about a suggestion she had on that cold November night in Ohio for a fire pit outside on the balcony for her guests to warm up next to, similar to what the Kona Grill had across the square in full few of the bar. The view was quite nice outside the windows and I couldn’t help but think of some prime location in a downtown area anywhere in the country. I actually forgot that I was in my hometown—because it felt like being on vacation someplace very expensive.
The prices however weren’t that expensive. The ticket prices for a primetime film were around $14.50 and the beers and martinis weren’t all that expensive, reasonably priced in fact. The balcony was very inviting so we spent some time there sipping drinks and looking down the street toward the other end of Liberty Center where they were assembling a Christmas Tree for their Holiday exhibit. It was very comfortable and premier. The entire staff obviously received the memo that guests were to be treated with great attention because it wasn’t just that bartender who behaved with a level of competency. When our movie was called the people working the information desk, the ticket taker, our usher, our server, and the runners were all very respectful, which was refreshing for a change. You have to be over 21 to even go to the Cinebistro so you can forget about kids of any kind. They aren’t even admitted. That might be rough if you have a family with young kids, but for them, the other theater is the best option. Cinebistro is off limits—its adults only. The biggest downside to other regional movie theaters is the kids and teenagers. Nobody wants to around a bunch of teenage kids in a movie theater, especially on a Friday and Saturday night. They are loud, they are always on their cell phones, and they are entitled. At Cinebistro, you don’t have to worry about them in any way. That was wonderful.
When you step into the theater it’s like stepping into another world. The theaters really look like the screen rooms of a Hollywood studio. They are extremely well done and the seats are known for their comfort. I’ve personally only sat in a seat that comfortable at Brookstone or in a private home theater done with extreme luxury in mind. The Cinebistro theaters are a bit smaller than average not built to pack as many people in a theater as possible, but to make those people as comfortable as they can, even down to tiny details like pairing them up couple specific. For instance my daughter and her husband couldn’t see my face, only my wife could because the seats were arranged in a way to provide a zone of privacy for couples. That really impressed me.
Just like in a restaurant a server comes to your seat to take your order after you’ve had a few minutes to look over the menu. That’s when you notice how much space there is between rows. The seats are arranged in a way that allow for the waitress to walk down the aisle even if the seat’s footrest is fully extended into the reclined position. If you wanted you could recline the seats back enough to sleep in. But the distance between rows of seats is more than enough for servers to attend you without having difficulty. It was a surprising distance that I’ve never seen in any movie theater, even private ones. Your server takes your order during that 30 minute seating period. The objective for them is to get all the orders into the kitchen so that the food can be delivered to a table which folds out over your seat by the time the previews start. Preview times are set at 18 minutes. The runners bring your food from the kitchen to your seat during this time. They do not want to be standing in your way when the movie starts, that is why they need to get your order as soon as possible once you sit down. It takes just a bit of planning on your part, but it is well worth it.
Gone from the Cinebistro are those stupid ads that show on the screen before a movie’s previews begin—while people are sitting. Cinebistro is like watching on the screen a fine novel as opposed to the classifieds in a newspaper. Both actions fall under the heading of “reading” but one is certainly better than the other. At Cinebistro during our film they were showing IMAX images of nature films that are available on DVD. But there was no narration, only nice sound effects of nature elements and some mild music that played continuously during the entire 30 minutes of seating, ordering, and awaiting for its arrival. When the previews began, the food started to come out. I was in the mood for a hamburger so I tried their Bistro Burger, which was very fresh and along the lines of something from the Rusty Bucket or Red Robin. They advertise that everything is made fresh each day, and from my perspective it was. My wife had the veggie burger. My daughter had a more refined taste as she had the Shrimp Mac and Cheese which was really a nice looking dish for $17. My son-in-law had the Smoked Pork Chop at $20.50. It looked like it came from Jags—which in Cincinnati is one of the premier steak houses in the Tri State. That impressed me. He ordered another martini, and my wife a beer. I had a Coke so we had a nice sampling of all their various food options at degrees of etiquette and all were quite immaculate. If I was impressed with everything up to that point, which I was, the food really put it over the top. It actually far exceeded my expectations. I assumed it would be a bit gimmicky, but it was genuinely extremely good.
Thank goodness the movie itself was really good as well, because it just put a period at the end of that sentence for the night. The sound system was fabulous. The visual quality of the picture was what you’d expect from a high-end place—everything was top shelf—which I’m finding is a theme at Liberty Center. I’m sure there are issues somewhere with all the new establishments coming on-line with all the new hires, but so far my experiences have been wonderful. I have been very happy with the Rodizio at the other end of Liberty Center—they are an extremely good dining option. Of course I had high hopes for the Cinebistro so it is not often when reality actually exceeds high hopes, but they did in this case. By the time the James Bond movie was over and we all looked at each other after the movie, we realized that it was the best film going experience we had ever had—which is saying a lot. We’ve had some good times at movies, but never anything like what we had at the Cinebistro.
On the way out the staff was as friendly as they were on the way in. All in all, we spent $207 on four people for a prime time first run movie and a really good meal. The tip is set at 17% and is added to your bill automatically. So you don’t have to worry about leaving one at the end of the film. We could have spent a lot more, and we could have spent less, especially if we hadn’t had any alcohol. You don’t have to get food, but it’s almost impossible not to because the atmosphere begs for it. So I thought of it as a bargain. The couple next to my wife and I ordered a bottle of wine halfway through the film. If you want something refreshed once the movie starts there is a concession area right outside the theater that you can go to for additional items. They do that so servers don’t bother you while watching the movie. The serving team every 30 minutes travels from theater to theater which is why they have their movies timed the way they do. It’s a very slick operation. But if you want more, they have those options too. Next to us the couple sipped on wine after their dinner and were enjoying themselves quite a lot. It was a bizarre experience to me. I had to remind myself that in my wildest dreams when I was a kid that something as nice as the Cinebistro would be built on ground I used to play on. Back then all the nice, fancy stuff was downtown in Cincinnati or Dayton. Most of the time it was out-of-state. Now Liberty Township was an instant tourist destination which was fine with me. It still has many of the things I have always loved about it. But now it has some things that I used to only get while traveling to far away places. After the Cinebistro experience it became clear to me that now people would be coming from thousands of miles away to come here—and that gave me a bit of pride in my hometown that is always under the surface, but was easier for me to access.
On the way out I spoke to the bartender again and we talked about her idea for the fire pits. She was right, that was the only thing that could really improve Cinebistro. From down below on the street it would look like a temple of exotic paradise. Above it would provide warmth to romantic couples waiting for their movie while having a nice drink and enjoying the weather no matter how cold it was. It’s really the only thing that could be done to improve the place. Because otherwise, it was exquisite, extremely memorable, and much more affordable than you’d think. I’m already looking for a good excuse to see another movie just to experience the whole thing again. My only hesitation was that Spectre was so good that another movie might take away from my memory too soon.
The Overmanwarrior 