American Horror Story: Pilot

Episode 1: Pilot
This seems like an appropriate series to start on Halloween. It certainly is creeping me out, and not all of it is from the intended story, or maybe it is. I was warned by my friend about the spooky-cam effect. I didn't know what she meant at first, and then there it is, that kind of double or triple take, really a stutter-take if you will. Ya, that's annoying, though it did give me a bit of a Max Headroom flashback. Then there is the other spooky-cam effect of stuttering zoom-in.
And then suddenly I'm looking at Dylan McDermott's ass. So, I guess the show has got that going for it. And as a bonus we get to see it again while he's jerking off. Now, that is something you don't see in a television show every day.
So, we've got this neighbor, played wonderfully by Jessica Lange, who is the force to be reckoned with in the show. And we've got this housekeeper who appears different to the husband than to the wife. There's the gimp, the brain cancer suffering murderer, the psychotic kid patient, and the apparitions.
But the people that are really fucked are the family. They're all three so malleable to the setting they've found themselves in that you know it is going to eat them alive and spit them out dead or wishing they were dead.
Spooky-cam aside, there is a story-telling mechanism that I really find annoying - the scene ends sharply, sometimes a second or half-second too early and we got a black screen for almost a full second before the next scene picks up. The last 15 minutes of the show I thought credits were going to roll each time.
This show does not suck, but I'm through with it. I know it's Halloween and if there is any night when horror movies or television shows should be watched, it's probably tonight. But you know what, and I am not afraid to admit this, this genre is not so fun when you're watching a show by yourself. I'm all for paranormal themed shows, and I certainly watch enough procedurals with killers waiting around every corner, but horror is different. Now, I have it on very good authority that by the end of the season all of my questions will be answered, that the rules of the game will have been explained and that you'll start having those 'ah-ha' moments where you suddenly realize what happened three episodes earlier makes perfect sense in the American Horror Story universe. But, I'm not going to make it that far.
I guess I'm giving this show the highest honors I can. It's decently acted, there are pretty people to look at and it does what a horror story is intended to do, which in fact it does so well, that I'm not going to find out how the other 11 episodes go. I'm okay with this decision. I watch shows for entertainment, and sometimes anxiety can be entertaining, but too much anxiety and I might as well spend the 50 minutes banging my head into a wall as hard as I can, over and over and over, because that's how satisfying it is in the end, except that when you bash your head into hard things repeatedly, you're likely to at least pass out, whereas at the end of an anxiety session, I still feel anxious and it starts spilling over into the rest of my life. Nobody needs that.

American Horror Story at IMDb

Rock of Ages (2012)

Did I enjoy this film? Yes I did. Am I nostalgic for the music in the movie? Not particularly. I knew (almost) all the words to all the songs, but that doesn't mean that I liked the songs. It's kind of a thing with people my age to admit their love for the classic 80s hair bands, well, all I have to say is... fuck off. I ain't ever gonna do it. I feel like I might as well come clean - dear facebook, I never liked Def Leppard, still don't. I know all the words to all their songs because my brother, the same brother who loved Richard Marx and Billy Joel at other points in the 80s, loved DL and played them over and over and over and over. To this day, when I hear "Pour Some Sugar On Me" or "We Didn't Start The Fire" I get really pissed off. And it didn't stop with Def Leppard. I did not/do not like Poison, Bon Jovi, Ratt, Quiet Riot or Motley Crue. There are probably some others. That's not to say that I don't have my share of hair band memories - Whitesnake, though they were more metal, Great White and Aerosmith and of course Guns 'N' Roses got my fandom. But, really I was more into other stuff, like this little band from L.A. called Red Hot Chili Peppers, and another little band, this one from Boston, called the Pixies, and then there were a whole bunch of British and East Coast New Wave bands like the Talking Heads and Blondie and a bunch of California punk bands that I heard on AM radio. Oh, and as long as I'm coming clean, I did love me some Go-Go's and some Bangles. But this was just the contemporary music. I was busy discovering the Doors and Pink Floyd and Jethro Tull and the Beatles and Simon & Garfunkel and Neil Young and Bob Dylan at the same time.
I was so disappointed when for my 15th or 16th birthday, a friend of mine gave me Bon Jovi's "Slippery When Wet" and whatever the concurrent Poison album was and then I was expected to listen to them while he was still there and profess my gratitude. This was like when my dad gave me that Crystal Gayle album for Christmas, but at least that was mitigated by also giving me a Laura Branigan album.
While my little backwater town was in love with hair bands and also Metallica and Billy Idol, I was exploring rock and pop and folk and classic rock and classic pop and punk and New Wave and the new funk scene in L.A. and rap out of New York and loving it. I never listened to the loud, in-your-face dj on the popular radio station all the other kids were listening to, but instead to the classic rock station until midnight when through some trick of the atmosphere and AM stations around it cutting back their power, I could get the alternative rock station out of Portland. If it was before midnight and I didn't think I could take listening to another Rolling Stones or Rush song, I would tune in the Portland community run station - the one that is non-profit but not affiliated with NPR (KBOO) - and listen to crazy jazz bhikus and Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention.
There were like two people in my school who got the music, understood the need to listen to good music whatever the genre, and interestingly, while I don't think they even knew each other, they both had the same name. I think a lot of people knew I was a little different, but not how - I was on the Debate team and in band, so I was just dismissed as a nerd, but they had no idea. Oddly enough, even though we had really different tastes in music, I think my brother got it. He knew that I had a really broad, yet discerning taste in music. I think he, if anyone, probably knew that there was this point where I just decided it was easier to grin and nod and stop arguing about music because I had figured out a secret - I was going to graduate from high school and move away and go to college and meet people that I could talk about music with and explore music with and never go back to that shitty little town except to visit.
Yeah, so I liked the Journey and Foreigner songs just fine. Even though the big duet had already been used for almost the identical purpose on Glee. But that's not all bad. Even the songs that I didn't like, I liked hearing sung by these stars. There were a couple of points, where after 25 years or so I finally knew what the lyrics were.
Speaking of the cast, I'm not familiar with the two kids in the lead roles of Drew and Sherrie, but everyone else I knew and thoroughly enjoyed watching and listening to. If I don't watch myself, I'm going to end up a fan of Tom Cruise, who I thought played the role of Stacey Jaxx perfectly. Alec Baldwin singing...in long hair...that was pretty cool. Russel Brand playing himself (again), ya, okay. And Mary J. Blige, wow. Catherine Zeta-Jones, wower.
The music of this film wasn't as good as All Across the Universe, because to be quite frank none of these bands were even remotely as talented as the Beatles. But, the story and acting were better. I guess they balance and I recommend to anybody who likes pop musicals to watch them both.

Rock of Ages at IMDb

The Casual Vacancy

The Casual Vacancy
by
J.K. Rowling
read by
Tom Hollander

People have been funny about this book. Instead of being treated as the eighth book by Rowling, it has been more treated as her Sophomore effort. I've read several previews that are at their core, "she wrote Harry Potter, but can she capture the magic again" pun intended by them, I'm sure. They treated here like she had written one little book that had been mildly popular and wondered if she could live up to the bar she set for herself, modest as it was. This really pissed me off. She did write seven fantastic books, and let me remind you, as I'm positive that you already know, they were no thin tomes. I was fairly confident going into this book that it was going to be well written. It is a little ironic that the pretics (preview critics) were right about her setting the bar for the Casual Vacancy, they were just wrong at how high it was. If you're the author of the most beloved young adult series of all time, how amazing does your next book after finishing that series have to be to not be considered a failure? And does it have to be even a little more because it's not a YA book? The pressure, both internal and external, must have been nearly unbearable.
Do note that I said previews above and not reviews. I divided early on that I didn't want to know any spoilers about this story. I also didn't want to know if the critics that I occasionally to regularly read thought this book was brilliant or thought it was crap. It was enough to know that the book was 'Fiction' and was aimed at adults instead of young adults. I also knew from a very early interview that Rowling gave about this book that it had nothing to do with magic or wizarding and was set in a fictitious small town.
While I was able to keep away from print and radio reviews, I did hear people coming into the library and discussing the book. Fortunately, the remarks were generally along the lines of "I loved it" or "I hated it". There were two or three elaborations of the dislike that amounted to, "this is NOT Harry Potter", by which I assume that they meant not the lack of magic, but that this book dealt with more mature subjects and was not black and white.
I liked this book. No, more than that, I really liked this book. All of the characters were flawed and very human, often times painfully so. There were characters to despise, not because they were evil, but because they were selfish which manifested itself in several different ways depending upon the characters. But you develop empathy or sympathy, sometimes both for all of these most flawed characters. I found myself becoming emotionally invested in all of players in this story, cheering some and hissing at others. I love books that do this to me.
I'm not going to go into the plotting of the book as I feel to give a faithful synopsis would require pages and pages and then still leave out important things. You want to know what happened? Visit Wikipedia.
I listened to this book, so before starting not only was I wondering if the Casual Vacancy would stand up to the Potter books, I wondered how Tom Hollander would do compared to Jim Dale. I thought Hollander was a very good fit. By the middle of the first disk, I'm guessing, I had stopped thinking about this completely until writing about it now. That seems like a good thing to me. While I'm sure Dale would have done just as good of a job, it would have been weird to hear him utter phrases like, "You fucking bitch!" and "She's got a giant pair of mams." I know I'm being a little naive and selfish, but it's nice to have Jim Dale's voice associated with the Harry Potter books and not with this. The voice of the reader is so important to the mood and feeling of a story. It's nice to have two distinct mood/feelings for the Rowling books.

The Casual Vacancy at Amazon.com

Murder in Sububria Season 1, Disc 2

Murder in Sububria Season 1, Disc 2

Episode 4:
Well, today I got online and discovered that this show only lasted two series. And even worse than that, the library only has one. I'm making a frownie face. No, I know that I always look a little like I'm making a frownie face, but this is a really obviously frowning face I'm wearing with my lower lip jutting out and everything.
Ash has a new boyfriend, Alex the Cryer. He's very in touch with his emotions and very stressed out by Ash talking about her job all the time. As counter-poste, Scribbs is going to the wedding of her ex-beau, the one that left her for best mate and then had a fling with her right before gettting engaged to her previously best mate. And the whole time, boss man is playing cheeky with the ladies.
I know this show is called Murder in Suburbia, but they really do seem to only investigate the murders of the upper middle class and above. Maybe in the U.K. in Middleford at least, those are the only people that get murdered? Who am I to judge?
There is a gala ball thrown so that we get a chance to see Ash and Scribbs all dressed up in fancy outfits and their boss in a tux. Sure, the scene is written to confront the murderer at her most vulnerable moment, but I think it's an excuse to show off the various actors ample boobage, particularly the murderer. I've got to say that in the show they play up Ash being the more attractive of the two attractive detectives, but I think Scribbs is the closet hottie and I'm not afraid to say it.

Episode 5:
As if they were lulling me into writing that this show was only about the rich people, they spring an episode on me about working class to middle class folk. Very sneaky of them.
This was also the first episode where Ash and Scribbs were not talking about specific boyfriends or former boyfriends. For the duration of this episode, or at least most of it, Scribbs is being pointed toward the local reporter that sometimes appears in episodes. Ash thinks they would make an interesting couple, meanwhile Ash and the bossman are having more knowing exchanges. I wonder where that's going if anywhere?
In what turns out to be an episode of firsts for Murder in Suburbia, they did something new with the way a clue was revealed to the viewing audience. We know from the opening scene that a car was used as a murder weapon in a fatal hit and run accident. When our coppers are leaving the house that had belonged to the victim and is not occupied by her sister, the camera follows the gals as they walk away, but then it stays on the car for a couple of seconds after they have left the screen. Very cheap. Hey, guess what producers? I didn't need the obvious hint. I had already picked the car out when they walked up to the place, because we see the sister coming to meet them and getting out of a different car. Please, do not assume that this is the first television murder mystery I've ever seen. Even if this were the first series, I would already have seen four episodes of this very show. And if it is literally my first show, why the hell didn't you explain what DI, DS and CID mean?

Episode 6:
Again with no boyfriends for our detectives and again in a working middle class part of the suburbs. Well, huzzah! Not that I have a problem with seeing the rich off each other, but it's nice to see a broader cross section of the suburbs being represented.
Ash and Scribbs each end with their boss at their flats under different circumstances, neither of which were expected nor I am assuming where what they would have wanted considering their on-going banter about DCI Sullivan. Ash ends up really stepping in it as far as Sullivan is concerned but he forgives her by the end. Usually it seems that Scribbs is the one that leaps before she looks. It was nice to see a bit of a change up.
There was lots of misdirection and subterfuge in this episode. It turned out to be who I thought it was, but there were a couple of times towards the end when I did doubt my choice until I realized they were just red herrings. I also thought I might be wrong because they waited so late in the episode to reveal the murderer, I thought that they were actually going to have the series finale be a cliff-hanger with the real murderer revealed at the start of the next series, the one that I don't have access to.
I'm a little sad that my time with Ash and Scribbs is done. I actually quite like this show. I described it today as being on the Midsomer Murders end of the police show spectrum when it came to grittiness, with the other end being cop shows like Prime Suspect. I do like the gritty shows, but I think I actually like the nicer, for lack of a better term, shows such as Midsomer Murders and New Tricks. When did I become so soft? Who am I trying to kid, I've always been a big softy. You can hardly call CSI or NCIS gritty shows, certainly not Criminal Minds or Bones, and yet I love those shows. They are graphic, I'll give them that. But if you're going to investigate a murder and the clues to solving it are often contained on the body or with the way the murder is executed, you have to get graphic. Murder in Suburbia, New Tricks and Midsomer Murders are less focused on the physical evidence than their American counterparts and less susceptible to 'drama via action or danger', but that gives them more time for character interaction and is probably why I love these shows. And I'm not ashamed to admit it.

Murder in Sububria Season 1, Disc 1

Murder in Suburbia Season 1, Disc 1

Episode 1:
We meet Ash and Scribbs as they show up at the scene of a murder. An attractive young blond woman lies stabbed to death in a pool of her own blood in the living room of her house. There is no sign of forced entry and the murder weapon is near the body.
That's it. That's all the introduction we get before the two, who turn out to be Detective Inspector Kate Ashurst and Detective Sergeant Emma Scribbins, start working on solving the crime. We watch as two female detectives do their thing in what is awfully reminiscent of an American procedural. Except they're British and are a lot more self-effacing than any American show would be.
Over the course of the investigation of this woman, her fiancee, her ex-husband, her best friend and the singles club that ties them all together, we learn that Ash and Scribbs have worked together for a number of years on the Middleford police force, and that both are what you might call unlucky in love.

Episode 2:
This time round, Ash and Scribbs have traded the sexy singles club for the wife-swapping ways of a group of upper middle class charity minded couples. Of course, none of them are up front about the wife-swapping nor with anything else. And every time one of them is asked why they didn't come clean, they answer by saying that they didn't think it was relevant. I've noticed that this answer gets given a lot in British police dramas.
Meanwhile, we learn that Scribbs has been seeing a married man, and while she wants to break it off with him, she just can't bring herself to do it, until Ash finally convinces her to do it by text message. This whole back story would not have happened in an American cop show, or if it did, it wouldn't work out the same way, where Scribbs doesn't really want to break it off, but she is because the guys wife seems normal.
The first time out, Ash has the a-ha moment, but in this episode, it's Scribbs. It is nice to see the writers being equitable. I am liking this show because while there is that moment of insight, it's because they've been doing police work - interviewing witnesses and suspects, going over physical evidence, discussing important matters with their hunky DCI.

Episode 3:
It's DS Gavin! Wait, they're calling him Simon for some reason. Oh, that's right, this isn't Midsomer Murders, it's Murder in Suburbia. One of the things I love about British television is that you see actors popping up all over the place, in each others shows, in mini-series and made for television movies. Very different from American television where it's only acceptable to appear in various shows if you are either a relatively unknown actor, or a character actor that specializes in playing one-shots.
On their way to solving the murder of a former professional rugby star whom no one seems to terribly mind is dead, we get a peak into Ash's personal life and her maybe boyfriend whom she has lied to about her profession and told him that she's a doctor. Of course that ends badly but he does come around and asks her out again, but ruins it by wanting her to dress up in her uniform with a pair of high heels. This is not the kind of thing Ash goes in for.
This show is very reminiscent of Midsomer Murders in the way Ash and Scribbs do their policing. There is the same witty banter that reveals imperfect personal lives. Neither show is in your face and both feature cops that will do what's right by the law solving the crime, even if it is not personally advantageous. Let's hope that Murder in Suburbia is as well received as Midsomer Murders. It's something I would definitely watch, but I suspect it isn't on any more.

Adventures in Babysitting (1987)

Oh my god! That was Vincent D'Onofrio! And Bradley Whitford! And Penelope Ann Miller! Holy crap. Wait, does this mean that I'm a lot closer to their age than I thought? In 1987, I was 15 and Elizabeth Shue and Penelope Ann Miller's characters are supposed to be 17, so maybe they were between 17 and 20 (okay Wikipedia says they're __ and __ respectively). They're only two to five years older than I am? I always thought it was more on the scope of ten. And I had never seen Whitford or D'Onofrio with so much hair, well D'Onofrio's may have been attached to the hat he was wearing. I thought both of them were 10 to 15 years older than me (okay, Wikipedia to the rescue again, they are __ and __ respectively).
This was a totally silly movie. Highly improbably, Blah blah blah. But, it was totally fun. There were lots of doofy and incompetent villains to harass the kids. There were plenty of minor villains with a heart of gold, too. Everybody got what was coming to them, whether they deserved good or bad. It's kind of nice to every once in a while watch a film that is completely predictable, yet still entertaining in it's execution.
If I had seen this film when it came out, I would have had the biggest crush on Elizabeth Shue. Now, it seems kind of wrong. Sure, Shue is my age, roughly, but in this film where she's totally a cute girl, she's way too young. When she and I start dating, we can watch this and joke about how young she was, then it will be okay, or something. No, I don't live in a fantasy world. It's more of a fantasy universe to be precise.
The friend who recommended this to me was quoting it to me this afternoon. I knew that they were quotes from a movie I had never seen, because I'm not totally oblivious, but we did then discuss Thor which I thought may have been flowing from discussing the next Iron Man movie, but now I realize that she was really making allusions to this movie but lacking the context, I plugged them into the other readily available framework. Just when I think I know what's going on, I don't.
I would be remiss if I didn't mention that I thought the coolest cat in this movie was the car thief, Joe Gipp, who is one of the aforementioned minor villains with a heart of gold. With his long hair pulled back in a pony tail, lack of facial hair (including sideburns) and non-flashy leather jacket, he was very un-80s. He was also cool because he was nice to the kids because it was the right thing to do, and he wasn't an in-your-face-thug like almost all of the other young people met in the city. It's funny the things that you take away with you from a movie.

Adventures in Babysitting on IMDB

Dark Shadows (2012)

I am too young to have seen the original televsion series, Dark Shadows. I know from a story on NPR around the time that this movie came out in theatres that the original was a television series, a night time soap opera that almost didn't get off the ground until they added a supernatural flare in the form of Barnabus Collins, vampire. I don't know if this incarnation bears any resemblance to that original series, but I suspect past character names and overall plotting, not too much is the same. But, that's okay.
This film has that unmistakable Tim Burton look to it, starting with the star of the film, Johnny Depp. Part of it is the color scheme, but I think one of the things that is Burton's calling card are insane little details, like all the wood work in Collinswood. There is also a certain amount of playfulness in his films, even though they often seem serious or even dire.
The cast of the film is great. It's kind of funny that the American actor (Depp) is playing the role of the British character and the British actors (Carter, Miller, Lee) are playing the role of an American character. They pull it off pretty well, though. But, I expect no less from any one of them. This may be Michelle Pfeiffer's best role yet, as I did not find her character annoying at all. Not even once. She is also aging quite gracefully and I will go so far as to say that the mature Pfeiffer is at her most beautiful now.
The screenwriter of Dark Shadows is the author of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies - Seth Graham-Smith. I think that he may have found his niche, the tongue-firmly-in-cheek horror mash-up genre, though this film is more of an 'inspried by' deal.
Now to the important stuff. What is up with this kind of vampire? He's not the Twilight kind of vampire, nor the True Blood kind. Sunlight burns his skin but not quickly enough to be accidentally fatal. He is also self-proclaimed to be effected negatively by silver. We never find out about stakes through the heart, beheading or crucifixes. We do see that he is not terribly concerned about fire, whether of natural or supernatural source. He is strong and fast and can fly not to mention easily mesmerize humans. you don't really see the whole mesmerism/hypnosis in most modern vampire films, Bram Stoker's Dracula being the exception. It's almost as if most modern vampires are either godlike *cough* Twilight *cough* or super-charged zombies, by which I mean they only serve as super killing machines. The Dark Shadow's vampire seems to be pretty close to what I think of as a vampire which is somewhat of a relief. I was worried that I wouldn't see another vampire on screen that fit what I think of as a vampire.

Dark Shadows at IMDB

Religulous (2008)

I have thought about watching this several times over the last couple of years. In the end, I always put it off until there wasn't anything else I hadn't seen. Not because it's a documentary, I waited on watching this film because of Bill Maher. He can be a bit of a prick. I don't care how much I agree with someone or think that they have a valid argument (not saying that I necessarily agree with Maher), but someone who is being conftontational seemingly just to be confrontational makes me feel very anxious. For that reason, listing on the box of the DVD that Larry Charles who directed Borat also directed this film was one of the main things holding me back. No I haven't seen Borat. Yes, I know what Borat is about, and have seen the Ali G show and listened to many interviews with Sacha Baren Cohen.
I don't feel uncomfortable when reporters are talking to people, even the in-your-face investigative type of reporters. I do feel uncomfortable when Jon Stewart of Steven Colbert has a guest on their show, or does a bit with a guest who doesn't know what they've signed up for. This is the reason why I do not watch Curb Your Enthusiasm, which my friends who have recommended it to me are amazed to hear that I don't like. I tried watching the first season and got through about 15 to 20 minutes of each of the first several episodes, but they made me feel so god-damned uncomfortable that I had to stop them. That is not entertaining to me.
For all of the preamble I've just given, I didn't hate Religulous. Parts of it were quite funny because the people Maher was interviewing were just so completely ridiculous. He seemed to be pretty up front about why he was talking to these individuals, yet they were down with it. I felt kind of sorry for the people who tried to stick with their faith in light of his questions and comments, but there were a couple of blokes who were just full of shit - the former member of the Daptones, the dude who claimed to be the 2nd coming of christ, the Islamic scholar who spoke with Maher at the temple of the stone. They were slippery and kept changing their answers. But the worst, the ones that if I didn't know better I would think were actors, were the Jew-for-Jesus and the Anti-Zionist Rabbi. Wow.
The discussions about Scientology and Mormonism would have sounded made up if I hadn't known better. If you want to hear some weird shit, hang out with ex-Mormons or ex-Scientologists. Because of my own life experiences, these didn't shock me. But, I also don't think they necessarily furthered the thesis of the movie. If you pick extreme or fringe groups, necessarily you will get extreme or fringe views. If you really want to prove to me that religion is bad, show me examples that are the most germaine possible. I'm pretty sure that they're out there. I think Bill Maher is a pretty intelligent and articulate guy, so I think that he should be able to sit down with individuals representing mainstream Catholocism and Protestantism and who why Christianity doesn't hold up to serious scrutiny. He could then do the same with Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, etc. Oh that's right, Maher only talks about he Abrahamic religions, especially Christianity. Well, he is an American, making a film for an American audience, so I guess these are the big three.
Maher has some good arguments for peole who claim the bible should be taken literally, but there are plenty who think that some parts are metaphorical or allegorical and I didn't see him willing to talk to these people. What he never discusses is the dualism of science and faith. If you weight fact versus fact, science beats religion every time. But how can you prepare facts with faith? Personally, I believe in many things that I have no factual base to believe in, nor do I have any factual reasons contradicting my belief. I think Maher avoided this for the film because it might be a bit too much navel gazing for a mass audience. But, it might also just be a fallacy in his argument.
I'm not quite sure if Maher is anti-religion, or anti-belief in god. I am fairly confident that he is intelligent enough to see the difference in the two. I am also savvy enough to think that he purposely ignored this to more easily make his point. I have to wonder at what he's trying to do here. I have seen enough clips of him throughout my adult life to know this is a topic that he regularly speaks on, but I also know that he is a professional entertainer. I'm not saying that just because he makes a joke abou religion that he can't also be passionately anti-religious.
I guess for me this is a serious enough topic that I think Maher should put his money where his mouth is. If he want's the non-religious to be taken seriously as a minority, he should start the ball rolling. He has the money to start a PAC, to get meetings and debates scheduled. I think it's fair to say that I'm not interested in the humorous documentary as being a valid argument. If he wants my support, he needs to earn it. I would also appreciate if he had ennunciated his own beliefs. I know that he said, "I doubt." but he sounded pretty sure about some things. If you're an athiest and you come out dissing people for being theists organized into sects, at least have the balls to tell us you're an athiest and not just playing the devil's advocate.

Religulous at IMDb

Prometheus (2012)

So this was the big prequel. Or maybe that should be a question? Prequel, sequel, schmequel. I don't think it really matters. With the possibility that a few names may have been used throughout the saga, and the fact that the dates are set before Alien in this film, it could be a sequel.
That's the problem with doing prequels in this genre - the movie tech today is so far beyond what it was when the original was created that it can't help but look more recent, regardless of when it was set.
This film was not as gritty or as scary as Alien. In and of themselves this does not make Prometheus either better or worse, just different. This film was iconic in its portrayal of the aliens and horrible tings happening to people in space suits, but other than that, it was much more straight up sci-fi, as opposed to the suspense sci-fi of the original.
The big stars of the film did as one would expect big stars to do and with the exception of Guy Pearce as Weyland, they were a pleasure to watch. Of course Noomi and Charlize were a pleasure to watch, I guess that probably went without saying. My problem with Weyland isn't really anything Pearce did or didn't do, it's the fact that he looks like a young or middle-aged man in old man make-up. Very old man make-up. It's funny but of all the things one could have a problem with in this movie, that' this is what gets me.
What does the ending of the movie mean? Are there going to be another set of movies that stand beside the Alien quadrilogy? One could easily follow the Shaw character through several more films. Personally, I would watch them.
While I was watching, I kept thinking of something Scott said not too long ago, that Alien (and Prometheus) take place in the same universe as Blade Runner. When I saw the way that Theron was playing the Vickers character I entertained the idea that she might be a replicant, especially when the captain asks if she's a robot. What if she is and just doesn't know it? That could mean that the outcome to the film is not quite what it seemed for her character. Or was Scott just saying this as a matter of world building that will really have no effect on the film franchises. Maybe he's setting something up for the new Blade Runner film he's working on.
Okay, you thought I was going to end without bringing up something very important to the film, but I'm not. What does Prometheus do to the whole Alien Vs. Predator story arc. I realize those take place several hundred years before Prometheus, and that's okay. What isn't okay is that they're explanation for the Aliens differ from what was put forward in this film. Though, you might be able to reconcile them. Scott didn't mention anything about those films, so I'm just going to pretend that they don't exist in the same universe. It's my blog, I can do that if I want to.

Prometheus on IMDb

The Last Boy Scout (1991)

I saw this when it first came out on video. I remember thinking that Bruce Willis was such a bad ass. It seemed with Die Hard and this flick that he was now the preeminent action star on the planet. Somehow it didn't work out that way, which is kind of too bad. This film had some things going for it that Die Hard didn't, but for some reason wasn't the big success that everyone thought it would be. I can't figure out why not, except maybe what I said in the first line that I saw this as soon as it came out on video, not when it played in the theatre.
I also thought this should have been the movie that set up Damon Wayans as a legitimate action movie star. I thought that he played very well against Willis. At the end of the movie they even set it up to make one or more sequels. If they had made them, and presuming they still had Wayans and Willis, I would have watched them.
I wonder if the problem was that this film came out after Die Hard 2? The second DH movie had a lot of nice explosions, but it wasn't very good. Admittedly, it was a lot better than the third one which could have rocked, hell, should have rocked since it had Samuel L. Jackson alongside Willis.
One of the reasons this film didn't shine at the box office was definitely not the decisions made on who to cast as the "family" that Willis would interact. I thought that Chelsea Field as the wife and Danielle Harris as the daughter were great choices. But, I had to look in the credits to find out their names, so this film didn't launch them into superstardom.
Was this film jinxed or something? Maybe this is one of those films that will be looked back on by a tabloid television show in another 9 or 10 years, as the movie that ended careers. It stopped Wayans and Field and Harris from hitting the big time, it forced Willis to do Die Hard 3, it led to conspiracy theories speculating on why this film wasn't as successful as it should have been. You know. That kind of thing.
Every time I try to watch a Bruce Willis film to find some reason not to like them, or maybe it's not to like him, I'm not sure, I find myself liking it at least enough to not think of it as a waste of time and sometimes like with this film, liking it a whole lot more. Maybe I've tricked myself was some kind of intellectual bull shit rationalizations for why I want to watch Bruce Willis movies? Instead of just saying, "hey, I wanna see ol' Bruno kick some ass tonight." I invent some load of crap about trying to out the film as not high-brow enough. Who am I trying to fool? There's no one to answer to for my film watching. Not once has a librarian ever commented about any of my movie choices other than to ask what I thought of the film - they're pretty cool like that, though there is one who will tell you if she thinks a movie sucks and in fact will announce it loudly for the whole world to hear. There is no one at home to tell me they wish I had gotten another. Therefore I conclude at this moment that I need to get over myself. It is kind of ironic, because now that I appear to be coming clean about my Bruce Willis movie addiction, I think I've watched all of them.

The Last Boy Scout at IMDB

Secretary (2002)

Lee is portrayed at the outset as the 'crazy' one, just getting out of an institution and all the stuff she does at her sister's wedding. But, in very short order we are shown that she's at most one of many. Her family is a bit, um, shall we say, functionally fucked up. She's really just a confused young woman.
E. Edward Gray, Attorney at Law, appears to be the opposite of Lee. He's confident, well-dressed, knows what he wants. But, really he's just as confused as she is. It just takes him longer to figure it out.
It's not until after they both figure out what is up with themselves, i.e. that they don't know what is up, that they can leave the confusion behind. It's really a very touching story, and I'm not one who normally goes in for a romantic film.
I adore Maggie Gyllenhall. She is so sweet and vulnerable as Lee Halloway. One of the barometer's I use for how good of a job an actor is doing, and how good the film is as well, is how long before I forget I'm watching so-and-so and just see the character. It's not the only thing I use, there are some actors that I can never forget who they are, but like their films just the same, like John Cusack. But, in Secretary, by the time Lee has fled the wedding and gone upstairs into her room and taken out her little kit, I only saw Lee. This was such an intimate role, I don't imagine most actresses would ever even consider a taking a role where they are not wearing make-up and flattering clothes.
James Spader was an interesting choice, and no, I never forgot he was James Spader playing Mr. Gray, but that' alright. I thought I didn't like Spader. I know I certainly disliked films he did in the 80's, films that made me dislike Demi Moore and one ore more actors named Judd something-or-other. Because of this I probably missed out on some great legal dramas. He was okay in this film. I believed his character, and that's enough to kind of put aside the James-Spaderness of James Spader.

Secretary at IMDb

Date Night (2010)

Oh my god. This was funny. I think this might be the perfect comedy model. Take some well known wits, cast them as John and Jane Everybody and then put them in a ridiculous situation. Add in some well known action types and some well known hipsters playing goofballs and WHAM!
Now granted, I am a fan of Steve Carell. Now matter how similar his characters are, he always gives 110%. He seems like such a nice guy, too. And Tina Fey...I love her. I'm not even being very hyperbolic. I will watch anything that she is in, has written or produced. The same goes for books she's written, et cetera, et cetera. I just think that she is fantastic. And hot.
There are several supporting cast members that I am rather fond of; James Franco, Mila Kunis and Mark Wahlberg. I watch pretty much every thing they are in, and them all together in one film is perfect. In fact, this afternoon when talking about this movie and movies to watch in general, I recommended movies mentioning two of the three. I'll let you pick which two.
This movie is so improbable. That is a big part of what makes it work. No matter how outrageous it gets, the couple from New Jersey never turn into action heros. The closest it ever gets is when Phil hits one of the bad cops with an ore. Unless you count Claire dressing up the way she does in the Peppermint Hippo.
I don't really have anything critical to say about this film. Not that I need to say anything critical. But, I was going to dis Mark Ruffalo, except that he didn't totally annoy me. If he had been in the film longer he probably would have, but he didn't. It might have been offset by the fact he was playing to Kristen Wiig, who I didn't much care for on SNL, but have really liked in the various movie roles I've seen her in.

Date Night at IMDb

At Home: A Short History of Private Life

At Home: A Short History of Private Life
by
Bill Bryson
read by
Bill Bryson

A quarter of a million buried in sight of his house? Holy crap.
We start off looking at the "Great Exhibition" in 1851, with Bryson explaining how the Crystal Palace came about as well as comparing and contrasting with with parsonages in the English countryside.
Before getting us into the house, Bryson takes us on an adventure of why we even have houses which includes a discussion on corn and potatoes along the way. We do finally get into the house where we move to look at the Hall. Thanks to Mr. Bryson I now know where the term "board" from room and board, came from as well as why the Chairman of the Board is called thus. I'd always wondered why they were called what they were called.
Bryson spends a chapter talking about lighting in homes from medieval times to the present. It appears that I like many before me believed erroneously that it wasn't until the invention of the modern oil lamp in the 19th century that everyone just went to bed early, but it seems that they kept hours not very different from those people keep now. People just did everything in a lot less light. I could not imagine trying to read by candlelight for more than a few minutes at a time, not for hours every day. This leads naturally into a conversation about petroleum and petroleum products. It's interesting to note that kerosene was the desired product and not gasoline in the very beginning. It is hardly that way now.
What really gets me is how many times throughout our history - being European and American history as the story is being told thus far - people with little or no experience in a given area come up with an amazing solution, one which should make them rich and famous, but doesn't because industry just steals their ideas and refuses to pay them. It seems the men die horrible deaths, penniless after as often as not spending their lives in the court system trying to get what should be rightfully theirs. I also really like that Bryson pronounces 'patent' with a long "ay" sound for "pay-tent".
And just when you think you're all safe listening to a great history lesson, he springs epidemics and rats at you. I did not need to know that every year in the U.S. 14,000 people are attacked by rats, nor that one quarter of all housefires without an obvious cause are attributed to rats gnawing through the electrical wiring. No. I did not need to hear that at all. But the rats compare little to the talk of all the insects and microbes. Just always remember to close the lid before flushing the toilet.
Bryson spends quite a bit of time on gardens particularly in his native Britain. As someone who spent a considerable period of time with a Landscape Architect, I found this particularly interesting and found myself wishing that I had known the history of Landscape Architecture years ago. Or, as I will think of it for a while, Landskip.
Bryson moves smoothly from Landscape Architecture to Architecture itself. He starts in Italy with Pilladio and how he shaped Architecture starting in 16th century influencing the Western world. He traces Palladianism into the New World with Monticello, through Jefferson's eccentricities on to the problems between Britain and America that led to the Revolutionary War and then on to Washington's home, Mount Vernon. Where Jefferson was the tinkerer, Washington was the pragmatist and a surprisingly good architect.

At Home: A Short History of Private Life at Amazon.com

Hot Tub Time Machine (2010)

Is this movie predictable? Yup. Does that really matter? Nope.
I forget exactly the conversation that led to me putting this movie on hold. It was something high-falutin' about the intricacies of time travel and the philosophical paradoxes that this can create. Something about timelines and knowing one timeline but living in another. Something. But, my friend failed to mention to me that this was a stupid, dorky, geeky comedy that was as much an homage to the 80s as anything else, not just the era, but the music and films of that era. And since it stars John Cusack, a lot of this is self-referential.
In short, this is an awesome movie. Maybe not for everyone, or maybe even not for me at another time, but tonight - yeah, it was good.
You know how it is, sometimes you find yourself in a particular state of mind and through the twists of fate you end up seeing or hearing exactly what you need to get through it. I was having this amazing day, actually like two days in a row, which is very rare for me. For once all the various computer things were going great. Working on the rewrite of my book has been going well, for actually a couple of weeks now, I was having good conversations with my usual crew online. And even most surprisingly I was doing okay in real life. But this afternoon, I somehow worked myself up into...something. I just went to a dark place. I took off instead of staying until the end of the day, where I knew I would get a ride and a chance to talk with my friend. By the time I was home, I was all convinced how I needed to stop doing everything I was doing because there was no point in anything. I put on some music which I hoped would be soothing, but really it probably just fed the whatever, and then I curled up on the couch, turned off the light and tried to keep from bawling my eyes out and mostly succeeded. Somehow I got the energy to eat some dinner. I say that like I often miss dinner, but anyone who has ever seen me knows that I have missed very few meals in my life, and in fact has taken on some extra ones just in case one gets missed in the future. The important thing here is that instead of eating my soup in the dark, I put in this movie. It did it for me.
And then, you couldn't possible know anything about this, but it's October 13, 2012 and I'm listening to the broadcast of the radio show, Live Wire. I turned it on just in time to hear author Daniel Smith talk about his new book, Monkey Mind which is his memoir about dealing with a life of anxiety and how he has mastered it.
I don't believe in coincidence. I really don't. I get what's going on right now. I might not remember it later. It's kind of like one of those epiphanies you get when you're high, that later seems like gobbledy-gook. Except I'm not high. I will admit that maybe my brain chemistry is out of whack. But, I can read everything I wrote and recall the thoughts, so there you have it.
You probably think, all three of you who have ever read this blog, that I have strayed farther afield than normal from this movie, but other than half a dozen allusions to oral sex, I really haven't. Don't believe me? Watch the movie then re-read this.

Hot Tub Time Machine at IMDb

The Scorpion King 2: Rise of a Warrior (2010)

This film wasn't quite the same as the first Scorpion King, maybe because it didn't have any pro wrestlers in starring roles. Randy Couture is no Dwayne Johnson. Couture is not a great actor, but he delivered his lines clearly and articulately and can certainly handle himself physically.
The first part of this film and the last part reminded me of the Scorpion King if it had been the Prince of Persia, but not a good kind of hybrid. The middle part was pretty much Percy Jackson and the Scorpion King, isn't that the fourth book in the new series?
The three main characters are all rather young and so were the actors that played them. Nothing wrong with that, just thought I'd mention it as that is part of what led to a feel of Percy Jackson-ness. Really, what this movie could have used was some Peter Jackson-ness, but couldn't most fantasy movies? I would watch this group again in the Scorpion King 3, and from the way they end it, I likely will.
If this were to be a better movie, well first you would need a better script, but you could also stick in a tried-and-true veteran actor into the mix so the young actors would have someone to compare to and hopefully live up to. Also, I would move out of the range of PG-13 into R, or at least be the PG-13 that has more graphic violence and some brief nudity. I hate to say this, hell, I hate to even think this, but if this film was more Michael Bey and less straight-to-video, it would have been a better film. Now I feel dirty.

 The Scorpion King 2: Rise of a Warriorat IMDb

Machine Gun Preacher (2011)

This is the mandatory God/Jesus movie for 2012. I mean for me watching. To be honest, I didn't set out to watch a movie about a thug who found Christ. Nor did I set out to watch a movie that was based on a "real-life hero". Gerard Butler is a bad-ass for the lord. Bad is the operative word.
So, white man goes to Uganda, wants to see about the fighting in Sudan, and decides to spend all of his money on building an orphanage. Then of course there are the machine gun fights, which of course is how we get the name of the movie. At some point be builds a church across the street from his house in Pennsylvania and becomes a preacher because the speaker doesn't show up and then all the crap he sees in Sudan.
I don't really want to come down on this movie - it's about a real dude dealing with some real bad shit. I get that and respect it. Hell, I made it through all the way to the end of the film, so I guess it's not that bad of a movie. I just kept waiting for the other shoe to drop and it never really did. I mean people die and he goes through a rough spot with his marriage, I guess, I'm thinking there were probably a lot rougher spots that didn't make it into the movie, especially when the credits roll and they show us the real Sam Childers and everyone else and mention that he and Lynn are still together.
There is one good reason to watch the whole thing through, and that's when the credits are rolling and we're all seeing the pictures and videos of the real people portrayed in the movie, Chris Cornell is singing the song, and he's back to his routes in rock instead of the dancy hip-hoppy whatever his last album was doing. I guess for me that makes it worth sitting through.

Machine Gun Preacher at IMDb

Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol (2011)

My first reaction was, "it was better than the last one I saw with Cameron Diaz in it". Then, I realized that I was thinking of Knight and Day, which I believe had been a Mission Impossible movie until it was disavowed by the Secretary and they were forced to change Hunt's name to Knight. Come on, who are you kidding? We all know who he is.
This movie was more about action and less about well planned out ruses than the others I've seen. Not that this earlier films didn't have their share of action, it's just that it was usually more involved with intricate and clever plans with cool gadgets. I get that the point of this film was that they're all superstars even more so because they had one equipment and logistical failure after another. I just wish that more time had been spent on the rivalry between Hunt's IMF team and Cobalt; less time running and driving through the sandstorm.
This MI film wasn't better than the previous ones, nor was it worse, it's kind of like watching a Bond film - you expect a certain amount of cheese and in actuality look forward to it (Daniel Craig's Bond withstanding). Pegg's character brought more humor to the film, and while that's appreciated, I would gladly trade away some of it for some more high-tech wizardry and tricky spy stuff.

Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol at IMDb

Midnight in Paris (2011)

I wanted really hard to like this movie. Time travel. Owen Wilson. Paris. This should totally rock. Yet, it doesn't. The first fifteen minutes of this movie were the longest fifteen minutes in a very long time. Then I remembered that I'm not smart enough or maybe I'm not cool enough. Well, I'm definitely not cool enough for Woody Allen. Perhaps I just lack the intellectual prowess. I definitely lack the intellectual prowess.
How many Woody Allen movies have I seen? Too many. I keep hoping that one day they will just click and I will see the true genius behind the witty banter. But I never do. I always just find it a little banal.
But, on the plus side, the music in this movie is great. It's kind of an upbeat jazzy guitar thing. Allen uses it during cut scenes and movement scenes. I wish the movie itself was more like the music.
I know that I've said that I think that Allen's films rely on banal dialogue, I"m sorry, I mean genius dialogue that I don't understand and think is banal. This film in particular though is incredibly pretentious. Again, I must apologize, I mean this film is genius, but my limited cognitive abilities can only see it as pretentious. I mean if Woody Allen thinks that he can write his normal characters, plus write dialogue that is spoken by Hemingway, Picasso, Fitzgerald and others; then he must have nailed it because he is the premiere intellectual movie makers ever.
meh.
It sucks being so stupid and uncool that I don't get how brilliant this movie is.

Midnight in Paris at IMDb

NaNoWriMo 2012 wrap up

November is over, as you have undoubtedly heard by now. The fact that I'm here means that I survived it, so here's what happened to me during the 2012 National Novel Writing Month.
For the first time in the nine years that I've been doing this, I wrote every single day for at least three hours. In the past, I've always taken off Thanksgiving, but that's such a bad thing to do, because one little day away from the schedule leads to more days away from it. For me, this has not been about making my word count. I have that whole fifty thousand word thing down, I think. I'm not bragging, because we all know that quantity does not equal quality. My goal is to actually finish a story in 30 days, with the assumption that I will make my word count. In past years, I've written outlines, I've not written outlines, I've written character bios, I've not written character bios. You get the idea. What I did this year was write an outline that was broken down by days, well actually sessions, instead of by story. Some days had two subject areas, some days were the continuation of the previous day. This worked brilliantly for me. Mostly. There were a couple of days that the writing was just not flowing, even though I forced myself to remain at the task, and I got a day behind. I think I've stumbled on the trick for future NaNoWriMos.
I can't tell you if the book was good or bad. Seriously. I, somehow, managed to keep the internal editor off for the whole time I wrote, and he's still off because I'm still taking a break from novel writing. It turns out that it's much easier to write a complete rough draft if you are not spending the last ten or so of the 30 days second guessing everything you've written. I suspect I will be changing lots of things, especially since I haven't yet achieved a final draft for the manuscript that this year was a sequel to. The plan is to finish the current draft on book one, before starting the second draft on this book, so it will remain my Schrodinger book for a while. Until I read what I have written it will both be brilliant and shite.
Another first this November was getting up to write at 5 am on 29 out of the 30 days. Well, maybe 28. On the first, I started writing at midnight and wrote until I was too sleepy to keep going and then went down for a little nap and got up at five, at least that was the intention. I might not have. Let's say I did. On Thanksgiving, I definitely did not get up at five because I didn't set the alarm clock. The whole getting up early thing was brilliant and I am so glad it's over. It is much easier for me to get in that extra hour of writing on the top of the day instead of trying to make room for it at the bottom of the day.
Closely tied with my five am wake up calls, was a change in my radio listening habits. I only listened to NPR from five to six until the last five days when I listened from five until seven. Typically, I listen until 8:30 when I go on my walk. When I wasn't listening to the radio, I had prepared playlists for each of the narrators. They were somewhere between the music I thought the character would prefer to listen to and the music I liked that I thought best evoked the character. This is definitely a trick I will use in the future, with the exception of the classical music playlist. The classical music playlist was a fail, not because I don't like classical music, but because I hadn't listened to the music before. I checked out some from the library, put it on my iPod and let it rip. The music just distracted me. I know you must think that NPR would distract me, and it does at the beginning of the morning, but then I was still eating my breakfast. It's more of the hosts voices soothing me because they're familiar, not unlike favorite music.
I was the last person of those that I followed during the month to actually submit my words for an official count to be declared a winner. It seems to me that if your goal is tor write fifty thousand words, then as soon as you're done, sure, verify and win. But, if you're goal is to write a story, maybe not so much. Even if I had finished a day or two early, I would have gone back to some of the skimpy sections and added more.
I will do National Novel Writing Month next year. A friend and I had an exchange about doing NaNoWriMo and why we continue to do it, and I wrote that I will continue to do this crazy yearly writing rush until I am in a position where an editor has me writing something that keeps me from doing it. That seems a pretty fair trade-off.

The Avengers (2012)

All bow before the mighty mightiness that is Joss Whedon!
How long have I been waiting to watch this film? 10? 15 years? When did the first X-Men film come out? I've been waiting since then. I think I've secretly been wanting one since I saw that 80s-something Captain America movie and the David Hasslehoff film (made for television film maybe?) where he plays Nick Fury. I say secretly because both of those movies totally sucked, though I will admit here to the world that I've seen the Captain America movie twice. I didn't want an Avengers movie that sucked. So, we get that X-Men movie and it was pretty good, and I really liked the first Spiderman, so then I was all like, ya, now we can have an Avengers film.
Of course, I would have cast the Avengers differently - I don't mean the actors whom I am pretty much okay with - well let's say on balance I'm okay with them. I guess I really mean the line-up. Where's Dr. Pym? Where's his lady love, Janet VanDyne? It seems kind of weird to have an Avengers without Antman/Giantman/Goliath and the Wasp. At least they got Iron Man, Thor and Captain America, all of whom are essential. I'm okay with Hawkeye and Black Widow. I guess. Hulk? Not so much. I understand this venture is as much about a movie franchise as about anything else, so I understand why they want to tie their lines together. And I'm a big fan of the Iron Man movies - and I liked both Captain America and Thor. Heck, I even liked the Hulk movie. Both of them. The Hulk is not a franchise I'm terribly interested in, especially hearing that the next Hulk film will reboot him once again. But, you know what would really rock? A movie about Vision and the Scarlet Witch. You could bring Pym in through that, and that's how you beef up the ranks of the Avengers without the Hulk.
You know what I really liked about the Avengers comic books? You're really bring together already established heroes, so when they're together they have a whole bunch of baddies that allow for match-ups you would never see in the individual books. Plus, back in the day, it was not uncommon for the Avengers to cross paths with both the Fantastic Four and the X-Men. Throw Spiderman into the mix and you've got all the big names of the Marvel Universe. I know this leaves the Hulk out, but every once in a while you can use him as a foil for The Thing or for Thor. And lest you think I forgot about Daredevil, he can guest star in one of the Spiderman movies, and maybe even get a spin-off, but only after we've spun off several mutant teams.
Which reminds me, why the hell is there even one Ghost Rider movie? Now two of them! That is a crime against nature. There are so many worthwhile comics that can be made into film...like instead of giving me these crap Ghost Rider and Blade movies, give me something Alpha Flight flavored, please. Notice, I'm not hating on the Punisher movies. The Dolph Lundgren outing aside, they're actually pretty good, I just don't happen to really like the Punisher.
Okay time to actually get to the casting of the Avengers. Scarlett Johansson - really? She didn't suck as Black Widow, but the casting was a move not unlike casting Jennifer Garner as Elektra. They're both decent enough actresses, but so not the best choice for those roles. Or you know what while I'm on this subject, Halle Berry as Storm. Berry is competent and cute and everything, but so not Storm. Everyone knows that Angela Bassett should have been cast as Storm. She would have kicked ass! I guess now I've got to supply answers to the obvious questions of who I would have cast as Black Widow and Elektra. Elektra is easy - I would have cast Angelina Jolie. She's a little old now, but when Daredevil and Elektra came out, she would have been perfect. Then maybe Ben Afleck would have gotten together with her and Brad Pitt would have stayed with Jennifer Aniston. Oh the world would be a different place. For Black Widow, I wanted someone sulkier and silkier - I mean she is the ultimate femme fatale, not the dangerous school girl. Now that I think about it, I wouldn't even have used Black Widow, I would have stayed more true to the Hawkeye angle and use Mockingbird. I'm not trying to sneak out of answering this - I would have gone with Kate Beckinsale as BW.
The other actor I'm not fully on board with is Mark Ruffalo as Bruce Banner. Don't get me wrong, I like Ruffalo and he does a good enough job, but he just doesn't look like Dr. Bruce Banner. You know who would have been an inspired choice? Joseph Gordon Levitt. I'm not just saying that for my librarian, I really think he would be good.
I really liked this film. Except for the bit about Phil. Phil! What will we do now?

The Avengers at IMDb

The Breed (2001)

I'm a sucker (no pun intended) for movies set "In the Near Future". It's often a set up for a dystopian tale, or an urban fantasy masquerading as a science fiction film. In the case of The Breed, it's both.
The main character, Grant (Bokkem Woodbine), is an NSA agent, but I'm not sure that NSA is meant to mean the National Security Agency, which in the real world is known for it's spooks - he's more of a noir homicide detective slash U.S. Marshall. The society is very "Brazil" but of a Soviet vein instead of the British-style bureaucracy.
The foul-mouthed Grant and his partner Phil (Reed Diamond) are working with the police to find a serial killer that is taking young women and draining them of their blood. Through luck they happen upon a van suspected to have been used by the killer, and indeed it had been for the killer is still in the near-by building with his latest victim. Grant watches as the man he shot dead gets up and rips out Phil's throat before climbing up a sheer wall, which Grant sees from the trash bin he has been thrown into. He reports to his superiors everything he saw, including the killers fangs; and when called into the director's office expects to be dismissed out of hand but is instead brought into the cabal of those that know that vampires walk amongst us. By this point, Grant has said 'fuck' a dozen times, including directly to the director and we're only a little over ten minutes into the movie. Now, I'm not one of those that thinks this word should be avoided - if the character needs to say 'fuck', the character needs to say 'fuck'. I get that. But, what I don't get is that only Grant says it, well at least at this point in the movie he is the only one to have been using it. If this is how they're going to show that Grant is a bad-ass or a free spirit, it doesn't bode well for the next hour or so. And to some extent this is what they did. Ho-hum.
At the NSA offices, between propaganda messages playing in the background, Grant is read into the secret and introduced to his new partner, Aaron Grey (Adrian Paul), who just happens to be a police detective for the vampire police. I know Paul for his work in the show Highlander, so of course immediately begin to draw comparisons between one immortal character and another. He's playing roughly the same character, but no complaints as he acts circles around Woodbine. Grey is a relatively young vampire only 80 or 90 years old if the near future were to happen today. He has flashbacks to his days being persecuted by the Nazis and later tells Grant his origin story and reveals that the leader of the vampire people's himself, Cross (Peter Halasz), turned him.
The outcome of the movie is predictable - the leader of the opposition, a vampire named West (Zen Gesner), is a red herring and the leader Cross, is of course the real baddie. Grant's vampire love interest Lucy Westenra (Bai Ling) follows a similarly predictable path lover-traitor-true patriot-lover. All the while I am left thinking that minus the fucking constant fucking use of the fucking f-word and the five seconds of naked boobs and naked butt (both on women of course - who would ever want to see a man's naked butt?) that I am likely watching the pilot for a television series, especially when the film ends with Grey coming to Westenra's place to collect Grant to go investigate a murder. The quality of the special effects and acting would certainly bear this out, but since I haven't seen anything like this since the film came out, which kind of surprises me. It they did make a series based on this premise, especially if it starred Paul, I would watch it.
The one thing that surprised me about this film was the way that it dealt with Grant's initial desire to kill all the vampires, which is the feeling that much of the NSA carries through to the end. It didn't treat it as heroic, but instead compared it to the racism that was exhibited by the Nazis. They did this with a heavy hand, and I can only imagine that they felt that such an explicit comparison was necessary for their desired audience, Grey at one point says to Grant, "You're a racist, just like the Nazis", an audience which I imagine to be comprised of Gen Xers and Gen Yers who may or may not know their history and who are more likely than not less than sober. Actually, profanity aside, I felt like this film should have proceeded by an ad saying, "From the writers who brought you Highlander and the producers that brought you Xena and the Adventures of Hercules".

The Bread at IMDb

Wrecked (2010)

So, I think we can all agree that Adrian Brody rocks, can't we? Sure. I think we can also agree that just because a good actor is in a movie that it does not guarantee that the movie will be good. It will likely be better than if a crappy actor were filling the role, but not a sign that it's good. Can you see where I'm going with this?
She tells me, "I'm not familiar with this, but 'that-one-guy' recommends it. Rotten Tomatoes didn't like it, but 'that-one-guy' did." So, she wasn't exactly forcing this down my throat. Lesson learned. If 'that-one-guy' likes a movie, but Rotten Tomatoes doesn't, I'm going to go with Rotten Tomatoes. Aren't you impressed with me for one, not using 'that-one-guy's' real name, and two for not going agro on this dude?
Meh.
The only real question is why I watched the whole damned thing, though I did start writing this while it was still playing and go and get myself a snack and opened up the laptop to move some files onto a memory stick.
I'm debating with myself, well by the time you read this, I will have already decided I suppose, about whether to critique the film, or just let it pass that you shouldn't watch it. Okay, but just the biggies.
The whole movie, but in particular the last third, the director has a hard time the narrative device - is it first person or is it third person or is it third person omniscient? It just goes from one to the next without rhyme or reason and little exposition. It's almost like someone took a class on the possible camera angles and then focused on using all of them without thinking once about how it effected the story telling.
Music was another problem. You don't hear any for the first 45 minutes or so and you're cool with it, because no music fits the story style, but then all the sudden there's background music like any other movie. It's jarring.
Let's see, I made a little promise to myself that I would only talk about three things, so the third thing about this movie that bothered me was that it was utterly predictable. I felt like I was watching some drama on television where you know the only reason they're telling you something is so that in a little while they can reveal that reality is the exact opposite. Once you've figured this out, you know exactly how the movie is going to go.
I think I've now spent as much time thinking about this as the director did.
One aside, there are only 8 cast members and two of them are named Adrian. What are the odds of that? Also, why didn't they give the animals credits? Um, crap. That's four complaints. There is a dog that has a significant role, but no credits for her.

Wrecked on IMDb

Mirror Mirror (2012)

I have to start this out by saying I was predisposed not to like this film. I am not really very much of a Julia Roberts fan, but I'm not sure that it's entirely her fault. My first exposure to her was in Pretty Woman, which a girl in my dorm owned and played all the time. I can't think of how many times I got stuck watching part of that film. No really, I can't think of it, because it will make me digress or something and I'll go all batshit crazy. Still, maybe that wasn't as bad as our one term RA, one term because the first term RA who coincidentally had the same name as this guy, totally sucked at this job, but now I really am digressing (and you thought I meant regress), but this guy would play the Sound of Music every Friday and Saturday night - for three months straight - to draw in the unsuspecting drunk girls who were wandering around in hopes that he might get lucky. I can not make this shit up. I wish I could. On several occasions I went looking for a particular drunk girl who was affiliated with me and found her there and on at least three other occasions was contacted by my peers to intercede on their behalf and retrieve their drunken, bewildered lady friends. I was a junior still living in a dorm at this point, so was like the old man of the castle so to speak. In those days I literally did not know what fear was - anxiety...humiliation...sure, but not fear. I would march in and retrieve the half dozen or so girls and make sure they all got home. I don't know what this dude would have done if he had ever ended up with one of these drunken girls alone. Part of me says he was such a bumpkin that he wouldn't have done anything, but the other part of me - the part of me that has come into being since those long ago days - thinks that any man who cooks up a way to attract drunk girls to his room so he can fool around (the worst kept secret, at least among the guys, in our dorm) probably doesn't have a lot of scruples. It does help to know that the last time I saw him, the plumpish doofus who was never as smart as he first seemed, was devoting his life to selling business cards for a living and had become outright round and was going bald, all of this only four or five years after graduation.
Anyhoo, that movie strongly influenced me against Julia Roberts. Yet, I have seen her in films and can admit that not only did she not suck, that she was indeed quite good. I particularly her in the Ocean's Eleven franchise and Pret-a-Porter. But not in this movie. Sorry, Julia. If you had that certain je ne sais quois that Nathan Lane possesses, I could have bought a campy, evil queen and actually embraced that as it would have more matched the feeling of other parts of the film. But, she doesn't have it, and even though Lane does, the scenes in which they are together just accentuates her lack of this stuffness. Maybe Joan Cusack has it, or Kristen Wiig. But, Hollywood doesn't think them beautiful enough to pull off the "fairest of them all". Maybe they can't, but if you're going campy with your movie, then go campy.
I also had been told this was not the greatest movie. I know that one should go into these things with as little preconception as possible, right? Or not. I trust my friend's opinion on these matter, particularly concerning fairy tales and fables. But, I wanted to see for myself. It could be good, or at least have some hidden gem moments. I am right, because it totally did. But, she was also right. Not that good of a movie.
There is also a third reason, and until George Lucas did his Star Wars prequels, I would have called this the Scrappy Doo effect. This is a reference to a reboot of the classic Scooby Doo comics in which they changed a lot and added a munchkin by the name of Scrappy Doo. In case you're still wondering, I think he totally sucked. Lucas changed all of this by raising the bar, or should it be lowering the bar on how something can suck by changing a formula that works by taking out some essential, if minor, elements and adding a totally annoying character who is unaware of any faults he may have. Yes, I mean Jar-Jar Binks. These are really just two obvious examples of a phenomenon in popular media endemic to the United States since World War II that is trying to add a touch of comedy to a serious story to take the edge off. This is why there is Orko in He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, or Snarf in the Thundercats, or any of the Witwickys in the Transformers cartoons from the 80s, or most any Eddie Murphy movie where Eddie is both the serious character and the comedic distraction. I hate to say it, but it's Brighton, Nathan Lane's character in this film. Don't get me wrong, I love Nathan Lane, but his character in this film is a comedic distraction to keep the queen from being just detetably evil, hoping to make her tolerantly evil - tolerant enough to sit through the whole film. I thought this every time I saw a trailer for this film. But, I kept hoping that it would be more campy, in which case Brighton would not have been out of place and thus not served the same purpose.
There were two things during the film that I didn't like, and oddly enough one was the special effects. Well, not all of the specail effects. Most of them were quite good. But when the queen goes through the mirror - which was very cool and a cool concept - the huts on the lake look like CGI huts. They can look real, or look cartoony, or look like they're made of plastic, but they can not look like they are CGI. Can not.
The other issue which bothered me were the dwarves on stilts - which are another cool concept and looked cool - there are scenes of them doing their thing and the stunt people do not look like the actors playing the dwarves. Sure, they were dressed up the same, but they were in general thinner and in general possessing arms of a longer proportion to their bodies than the actors. This is one of those little things that I should never notice, just like the CGI.
I did watch it all the way through, though. It does have some things going for it. There was more than a nod to an Alice in Wonderland a la the cartoon version look. Obviously the party that the queen throws is this theme, but the gentry's hair and clothing styles throughout the whole film lived up to this and I thought were quite good. I also like watching the Prince and Princess interact. If they had more screen time, it would have been a better movie - I mean more screen time together with appropriately witty banter of course.
Then comes the ending of the film. I liked the servants on ice skates at the wedding of the queen and the Prince. When I first saw them, I immediately thought of Mel Brooks and Hitler on Ice. And then I thought that this movie likely would have been a whole lot better if it had been a musical. It would ahve solved so many problems. First and foremost would have been a different actress as the queen. It would also pretty much have guaranteed the campiness needed for this film to have succeeded.
As the story resolves, lo and behold if the King ain't really still alive and it's none other than Sean Bean. What a pleasant surprise. The actor, 'cause the King still being alive was not a surprise. I really like Bean who hasn't done me wrong yet. Sure, the films don't always work for me, but he does.
And finally the finale...here's the musical that I wanted. I almost thought it was going to go a Bollywood route, which would have been sweeeeeeet! Instead, we got a Shrek style ending if Shrek had used an original song and been live action. This did keep me from hating this film. Well, this and Sean Bean. And the dwarves.

Mirror Mirror on IMDB