Reputation Management

Do you care about your outside or Online Reputation? Do you want to fight and combat the world wide disease and epidemic of slander? There is a new phenomenon that is prepared for this fight. There are leaders throughout history that would have enjoyed employing this service. Abraham Lincoln, for instance, would have contracted a firm to carry out this crusade to attempt to alter the opinions of the south regarding himself, of course it would not have been online. Online Reputation Management is a system of monitoring and following the actions and opinions of people. The focal point is to recognize the negative and positive opinions.

Reputation Management should have risen at the same time as the paparazzi did. Perhaps it did but it has not been given any credence on a wide scale thus far. This breed of management is the methodical operation of degrading or undercutting negative opinions and transferring these slights and criticisms into affirmative or uplifting ones. This is a heavy ordeal and it is not without its ups and downs. You may have to get your hands dirty because the opposing side is nasty. This does not mean you have to resort to the same tactics though.

The fulcrum of reputation management is to record and chronicle the viewpoints and motions while mimicking what you chronicle to initiate a feedback link. This is sort of a high tech or public dance but the public does not always know who is pulling which strings. It does not matter if this is an international conglomerate or your piano tuner; everyone wants their reputation and name protected. Tom Cruise’s character in Mission Impossible, Ethan Hunt, fought through this same ordeal on a fictional level and prevailed. But this sort of stuff occurs in reality as well. It would behoove Toyota to hire a reputational management company as we speak.

Cop Out

Can you laugh at a movie that is ridiculously phony but is supposed to be realistic? This is not as ridiculous as the 1980's law enforcement Police Academy movies but that is not saying much. The latter movies were hysterical at the time though.

Bruce Willis stars as Jimmy Monroe, a broke down police officer trying to pay for his daughter's wedding. He knows she wants an expensive wedding which to me indicates how out of touch she is to her status and the financial troubles so many people are in because of over spending.

Cop Out had its usual bad ass villains. How they took over a church is beyond me. I, and other baseball fans, do like this movie because one of its backdrops is a baseball card in particular and baseball collectibles in general. The charismatic gangster wants to buy a minor league baseball team after he gains lucrative information about this drug dealing opponents.

Ana de la Reguera, from the comedy Nacho Libre, plays the stunning Gabriela who resembles Penelope Cruz but beats her to the finish line. Which says something since Cruz is alluring as well. Gabriela is caught up in this mess somehow, the movie's plot is pretty complicated but like a movies of this caliber it does involve power and avarice. Blockbusters such as Spiderman, all three, or Iron Man cannot claim an actress which equal Reguera’s merit or stature.

Funny man Sean William Scott helps carry this movie. Dave is his character's name and he plays a neighborhood thief who is adept at jumping around things. He turns it into a science and his act is spontaneous and goofy. He is totally oblivious his life is a disaster. He is confident until he slips up and practically breaks his neck on a fence trying to perform a high risk favor for Jimmy.

The main plot is. Dave steals Jimmy's prized baseball card when he is about to sell it for about $80,000. This would more than cover the $48,000 wedding he is supposed to pay for. Dave sells this baseball card or trades it for drugs to the drug dealer who has a fondness for baseball. This is the same criminal consortium who shoots up a storefront and practically mortally wounds Paul. For this recklessness, Paul and Jimmy are suspended for a month without pay. Do they go home and read books and try to find a secondary source of income? No, like Eddie Murphy's Det. Axel Foley character in Beverly Hills Cop and every other detective in Hollywood, they continue to work on the case. Of course they prevail and the villains either flee but the main badass is destroyed.

After they are suspended, Jimmy and Paul are driving in the car together the next morning. This is unrealistic but I guess Paul has nothing else to do but to tag along to see if Jimmy can sell his baseball card.

The ending is enjoyable and hysterical. Jimmy's ex-wife's new husband, who has already proved he is a white collar classless yuppie, gets punked by Paul at the wedding in full view of Jimmy’s ex-wife. The funniest part in the movie is when Paul is in agony after being kicked in his privates by the city's most successful car thief, an 11 year old. Paul retaliates in kind, wow, the audience rolled over during that scene.

This is worth seeing; it is probably the funniest movie of the year. It may not be worth top dollar though nor is it on par with the riveting Brooklyn’s Finest.

I allocate this movie two stars.**