Maybe it's too much to ask of the movie adaption of the peg-based guessing game to have a plot or make sense, after all, there wasn't much to work with. Note to the people who make these decisions: you could have just made a movie about ships and saved yourself a lot of money.

However, I don't think I would have expected aliens would be involved:

A contemporary story of an international five-ship fleet engaged in a very dynamic, violent and intense battle against an alien race is known as The Regents. They come from a world similar to ours, and aren’t actually looking to take over humanity or the planet Earth. Instead, they’re on a mission to build a power source in the ocean, which is where they come in contact with a navy fleet. The film will also show us both sides of the story—from the aliens’ perspective, as well as the humans.

I'm glad someone is finally is going to present the perspective of the aliens. It just seems unfair that the otherworldly invaders never get their say on why they came here to pillage our resources and discard us like trash. I still won't see this movie, of course, but I appreciate balance.

Tonight's news on the death of Richard Chavez reminded me of the saying that death comes in threes.

This past month, the Chicano community has lost three important figures — artist Gilbert "Magu" Luján, three-time Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter, columnist and Los Angeles Times editor George Ramos and tonight, Richard Chavez, kid brother of Cesar Chavez, who also dedicated his life to the United Farm Workers union.

From the Bakersfield Californian:

Richard and Cesar Chavez grew up in Arizona in the 1930s and, when their family lost the farm they owned, they moved to California where they worked in fields, orchards and vineyards up and down the state.

In 1949, according to a biography of Richard Chavez released by the UFW Wednesday, the two brothers left farm labor to work in lumber mills. In 1951, Richard Chavez started a carpenter's union apprenticeship program in San Jose and got work framing suburban homes.

By 1952 he had moved to Delano and was president of the Delano chapter of the Community Service Organization, a Latino civil rights group.

He continued to work as a carpenter, building schools, homes and other structures as his brother Cesar began to build the organization that would become the United Farm Workers union.

By the early 1960s, Chavez was donating all of his free time to his brother's cause, the UFW biography states, and in 1966 he quit his job to commit himself full-time to the farmworker movement.

Richard Chavez worked as a union organizer, planning grape boycotts in New York and Detroit in the 1960s and 1970s and also negotiated and administered union contracts.

Chavez retired from the union in 1983, his biography said, but stayed active in the Cesar Chavez Foundation and the Dolores Huerta Foundation as well as building a tract of homes in Tehachapi and custom homes in Los Angeles.

It was Richard Chavez, Rodriguez said, who brought him into the union and became his mentor.

"He taught me how to be strong and, at the same time, caring," Rodriguez said. "I've got to tell you that, when I came into the organization, I had no intention of this being my lifetime work. But Richard had a way" of changing minds.

Camila Chavez, executive director of the Dolores Huerta Foundation, said her father taught her about activism and social justice.

But he didn't do it by sitting around a table talking about the theory of how to care for other people.

"It wasn't that he told us that. It was that he showed us that," she said. "If you see homeless people, and you have take-out with you, you give it to them. Or maybe he would invite them into our home for dinner."

Rev. Chris Hartmire, who helped rally the religious community behind the UFW during the early years of the union, remembered Richard Chavez as having a heart for people.

"He's just a totally good human being. Caring. Open. Willing to speak up on issues in the union when other people weren't," Hartmire said. "He and Cesar were very close but they were very different. (Richard) wasn't as driven. He cared a lot about justice for farmworkers and making life better for people. But it wasn't a fire in his belly."

After Cesar's death in 1993, Richard Chavez crafted the simple wooden coffin that carried his brother to rest in the La Paz compound in Keene — the UFW's current headquarters, said Rodriguez.

"He made Cesar's coffin from scratch. He was a great carpenter," Hartmire said. "That was what his gift was."

While it looks like it's still playing the festival circuit, I'm hoping Hit so Hard, a documentary about the career of Hole drummer Patty Schemel, will eventually make its way to our lovely Loft. Not that I really want to find myself sucked into Courtney Love interviews like a freak-show voyeur, but anything that tells the story about a woman drummer and offers more from other women drummers is a documentary worth a dozen stinky quips from Love.

From the LA Weekly:

There is a segment in the riveting new documentary Hit So Hard- The Life and Near Death Story of Patty Schemel that explores the concept of "Saturn Returns" (the astrogical phenomenon which is said to influence and test a person's life development beginning at 27 years old; the exact age that rock n' roll icons including Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, Brian Jones and —as is intimately recalled in the film by those who were there— Kurt Cobain and Hole bassist Kristin Pfaff died). Friends feared Schemel might end up another victim of the "27 Club" and talk about it in the film. After all, the Hole drummer not only was a full-blown heroin addict at 27, she was forced to deal with the deaths of two of her best friends, removal from her band's anticipated follow-up record, homelessness, and (maybe most challenging) the intimitable Courtney Love.

She survived and even thrived, telling her story (which ends happily, in fact) in the film. The same obviously can't be said for Amy Winehouse, who was also 27. Winehouse's death this weekend reiterated a sad reality of rock n' roll: Rare talents and tortured souls often go hand in hand. It's a recurring thread in many of the films offered for this year's "Don't Knock The Rock," the 7th annual music-themed film festival created and curated by director Allison Anders and daughter Tiffany Anders, at the Silent Movie Theatre.

Director P. David Ebersole told us Hit So Hard, (which sold out last Thursday night and added a second screening) has been picked up for major theatrical release and even if you're not a Nirvana or Hole fan, you must see it. It's easily one of the most touching, honest, funny, refreshing and simply badass films of its kind. (We've seen a whole lotta rock docs, so we don't say this lightly). It chronicles the meteoric rise of Hole before and after Live Through This and Celebrity Skin, via tour footage and interviews (Love, Eric Erlandson and Melissa Auf de Maur all weigh in), Schemel's relationship with Kurt, Courtney and baby daughter Francis Bean (via intimate, pretty amazing home movie footage), the challenges of female drummers everywhere (interviews with Gina Schock, Debbi Peterson, Roddy Bottum), and her rebellious childhood in Washington, growing up as lesbian punk chick (her mom's interviews nearly steal the movie). The story has a dark, even clichéd, arc, but throughout, Schemel's raw and uncensored recollections and enduring humor make even the rough stuff absorbing. Love, looking clownish in a wild multi-colored ensemble and chomping cookies throughout, is highly entertaining, of course.

I appreciate novelty records more than nearly anyone, but Joe Pesci's 1998 album Vincent Laguardia Gambini Sings Just for You was probably a bad idea, even considering the two tracks dedicated to his role in My Cousin Vinny. Nice sample of "Rapture", though.

[Egotrip]

"Carnival Mask" from Tuzampa, Veracruz, Mexico, is on display in Faces of Transformation: Mexican Masks from the Lazar Collection, through Sept. 18, at the Tucson Museum of Art, 140 N. Main Ave.

As part of my weekly appearance on KFMA, Fook and I discussed the Cameron Crowe directed documentary marking the 20th anniversary of Pearl Jam. The film comes to the Loft for one showing on September 20th.

The trailer:

Tucson's Home Instead Senior Care office is holding a recipe contest to encourage families to invite their senior relatives over for dinner, especially if those relatives live alone.

More from Home Instead Senior Care:

What does an older adult who lives alone want most for dinner? The answer may surprise you.

According to new research, an overwhelming majority of seniors say that having someone to share their meals with makes those times more satisfying for them. The survey of seniors age 75 and older who live alone showed that:

· Seventy-six percent of these seniors eat alone most of the time.
· Two of five seniors who live alone have at least four warning signs of poor nutritional health.
· One in five seniors says he or she sometimes or most of the time feels lonely when eating alone.
· Seventy-eight percent of these seniors wished their families shared more meals together.

That’s why the Home Instead Senior Care office serving the greater Tucson area has launched a new program called Craving Companionship — which encourages families to dig into their recipe box, find that favorite dish and share it with their senior loved ones.

We also are asking families to enter that recipe in our Homemade Memories Recipe Contest which runs through September 15, 2011.

Enter the contest through the Homemade Memories Facebook page.

Down on the Range, we’re all for the Freedom of Information Act, because making requests for information often leads to those details public officials would rather you didn’t know. But this mess Republican Tyler Vogt created for himself after getting e-mail correspondence from Tucson City Council members Paul Cunningham, Shirley Scott, Steve Kozachik and others, as part of an Arizona Public Information request, isn’t making him too many friends during his run for city council against Ward 4 incumbent and Democrat Shirley Scott.

Because Vogt solicited campaign contributions using the e-mail addresses he compiled from the correspondence, the Pima County Democratic Party is accusing Vogt of breaking the law.

It also accuses him of violating the city charter, because those messages included city workers’ e-mail addresses and it’s a no-no to solicit city workers using their official addresses during work hours.

“First he announces his candidacy with a menacing e-mail, trying to extort Council member Shirley Scott out of the race. Next he wastes city employee time to work on his campaign, illegally hits them up for money and spams the rest of the list,” Pima County Democratic Party Chair Jeff Rogers stated in the press release.

Even Vogt’s fellow Republican Steve Kozachik is getting in on the complaints. Koz sent this e-mail to Vogt:

“When your campaign requested a list of our constituent e-mail addresses, I objected on the grounds of wanting to protect their privacy. I was told by the City Clerk and City Attorney that I could not withhold that information and therefore they turned over the list to your campaign.”

And by the way, the Koz want his Ward’s e-mails off Vogt's list, too:

“I continue to believe your having accessed those e-mail addresses constitutes an invasion of the privacy of the people now receiving your campaign material. I request that you identify those e-mail addresses secured from the Ward 6 list and delete them from your list serve.”

Vogt responded that an opt-out link was on his spam, but wasn’t working. Regarding the Koz’s opinion: “I will choose to let the individuals make the decision whether they wish to continue to receive e-mail from my campaign and I will respect thier decisions,” he wrote.

Other than a need to use spell-check, Vogt may also need to check in with the city attorney about bad spam.

City Councilman Paul Cunningham weighed in on the matter in his June newsletter:

FOR YOUR INFORMATION

Please be aware that a private citizen on behalf of his political campaign has requested via a Freedom of Information “…the email addresses from all the individual wards in the city to send out candidate information.” Personally I feel it is inappropriate, since these emails are used to provide updates on City business only. Unfortunately, our City Attorney has advised us that we are required to release the list. If you are disappointed in this, please call the requestor at 520-971-4481.

Maybe there are perks for political stupidity. Like Senator Al Melvin, Vogt now gets to claim a Facebook book page created in his honor. Melvin's page is called Oh Captain, My Captain — The Al Melvin Fan Club, while Vogt's new page is I've Been Spammed by Tyler Vogt!

You might not think you'd be interested in a comic book about the life of Adam West, but what about a comic book about Adam West in which he takes a surreal, metaphysical journey into the mind?

My vote for the best show (not involving former cast members of the Real World, at least) on television won't be back on the air until 2012 unfortunately, but you can watch Mad Men's first four seasons on Netflix Instant starting today, which is of some comfort. Now you can watch the story of Don Draper from the beginning, complete with children playing with dry cleaning bags and large amounts of liquor. If you enjoy television as a medium at all and you continue to refuse to watch Mad Men, even when they make it as easy as possible for you, I'm not sure we can be friends any more.