"ALRIGHT! CLOSURE!"

LAST TIME, IN THE THIRD ROW

(...OK, do I really have to recap this?  Really?  It wasn't even 24 hours ago!)

AND NOW, THE CONCLUSION

As some of you may have likely guessed by now, yesterday's entry was...to put it bluntly, a ruse, a cunning attempt to trick you.

"Oh come on, some of you laughed."

The Third Row does not, nor has it had to this point, any sort of sponsorship.  Nor would I pursue sponsorship from the CoS due to my own personal ideological issues with them best reserved for another forum.  (editor's note: They kill people. For real)

For those who are then wondering just what inspired this particular shenanigan, there IS a particular background event that inspired it.  This entire idea started after learning about last week's Scientology sponsorship debacle from The Atlantic.  You can learn more about that here if you'd not heard of this before:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/120420141/The-Atlantic-14-January-2013-David-Miscavige-Leads-Scientology-to-Milestone-Year

and

http://twitchy.com/2013/01/14/the-atlantic-runs-fawning-sponsor-content-glorifying-scientology-disqus-employee-overrides-comment-moderation-writers-balk/

Further, I do not feel this movie has been wrongly aligned.  In fact, while rewatching it for material for this shine job, I actually found it even WORSE than I had remembered.  I had remembered a script riddled with holes and John Travolta hamming it up so badly that I started to wonder if this movie was kosher or not.  On this rewatch, along with this, I found myself exposed to Barry Pepper clinching his Worst Supporting Actor win, even MORE plot holes I'd forgotten the first time around, and some of the worst camera work I have seen in just about anything too date.  The one consolation I took from this was when my utter astonishment at the appearance of then-future Oscar winner Forest Whitaker, who at least managed to make the most of his time by becoming the personification of the internet meme "LOOK AT ALL THE FUCKS I GIVE!"  It didn't really save the movie, but it at least made his involvement less painful when paired with the knowledge his career got pretty awesome after this.

and you, John...you were...
...well...
...I'm gonna have to get back to you when I can find a diplomatic way to sum this one up.

Whew...I now need to decompress.  This article actually started to hurt after a while.  Seriously, trying to make this film smarter than it really is was making me scream on the inside.

All in all, this was worth it for an experiment to see if I could do it...but DAMN, I don't think I have it in me to do this kind of bluff again any time soon.

...so yeah, in conclusion, this was all a warped nod to the CoS's PR flub, I haven't actually gone completely mad or been dabbling with any number of recreational drugs, and Battlefield Earth is STILL a terrible movie.

God is in his heaven, something something, everyone turns to Tang.

...to make up for this, I promise the next review we have is for a bad film that will get both barrels here.  That said, I'm going to warn you now.  For the abuse I had to stay on this write-up, that one may be a bit blue.  Especially based on what I'm seeing of this movie so far.

So yeah...this next entry may not be suitable for young audiences.

On a final note - this look took 12 years, but Peter Jackson finally redeemed it with the Great Goblin in The Hobbit...
...OK, maybe redeem isn't the right word, but at least it's in a better class of movie.

EDIT:
For the record, I officially tip my hat to The Onion, whose own response to this mess handily one-ups mine.

http://www.theonion.com/articles/sponsored-the-taliban-is-a-vibrant-and-thriving-po,30910/

Well played, clerks.  Well played.