I watched Knockaround Guys tonight. It was actually pretty good. You have these sons of mob bosses that really want to prove themselves. They get in a bit of a perdicament and end up in a small Montana town. The great part is they think everything works the same as it did back in Brooklyn - bribes, bosses, etc. I guess it's understandable, if I were to go into their world I'd have no idea how it really functioned. Anyway, I had a good time.

But the whole movie really becomes worth it for one scene. Vin Diesel plays a mob enforcer (side note: he played the best bad ass character Hollywood has come up with in a long time in Pitch Black.) When they're in the small Montana town the local tough guy comes up and tries to start something. Vin steps forward for the following (all of Vin's lines are in that deep calm voice of his.)

Vin: Five-hundred.

Dumb-ass local: Five-hundred what? Douche bag. [Spits on Vin's leg, then laughs confidently.]

Vin: Five-hundred fights. That's the number I figured when I was a kid. Five-hundred street fights and you can consider yourself a legitimate tough guy. You need 'em for experience, to develop leather skin. So I got started. Of course along the way you stop thinking about being tough and all that, it stops being the point. You get past the silliness of it all. But then, after, you realize that's what you are.

Same Local - Now Slightly Smarter: Look, I got no problem with you, alright?

Vin: I tell you, you learn a lot of things on the way to five-hundred. None more important then this. [Vin turns the guy into a bloody pulp.]

Seinfeld is cool.

There are guests just about every episode and it turns out a lot of them are a bit more famous now (see my earlier post about Lauren Graham.) Tonight "The Pothole" was on, which is one of the all time great episodes.

Jerry drops his girlfriend's toothbrush in the toilet and she uses it before he can tell her. She gets back at him by putting one of his things in the toilet and Jerry goes crazy trying to figure out what it was. George drops his keys in a pothole that gets filled in and jackhammers them out. Kramer starts doing litter control on milepost 114 and makes his freeway a luxurious wide lane cruise zone. And Elaine can't order a flounder from a Chinese place because her side of the street is outside the delivery zone (she has to get it delivered to avoid eating at the restaruant by herself like a "loser.") All of these things converge and Jerry's girlfriend gets drenched by an exploding toilet ("Have a nice life" he says) and Newman's mail truck get's set on fire on milepost 114 ("Oh, the humanity!")

Anyway, it's a good episode. The point of all this is Jerry's girlfriend is played by Kristen Davis, who is now known for playing Charlotte on Sex and the City.

Ok, I'm a bit dissapointed.

You see once upon a time I lived in London for a few months. And as many of you know I'm not just an avid movie fan, I watch a fair amount of TV as well. Let me tell you that the TV in London pretty much sucked. They carry some of the better US shows, but I was hoping for some original stuff - especially since I'm a fan of a lot of English movies. Well, the only show I really enjoyed on TV there was the Ali G Show. So, imagine my happiness when I saw that Ali G is getting a new show on HBO.

I watched the first episode on Friday and well, it sucked. However, I am more hopeful for this week's episode and will give it another try Friday night. Though I can't really recommend it yet, if he pulls off this weeks show then I might change my mind on that. Similarly, Bill Maher is back with a new HBO show in the time slot right before Ali G. This was much better and also makes me happy since I liked his old ABC show, Politically Incorrect.

Side note: Bill used to always hammer conservatives looking for the answer to two questions:

1. Why is pot worse then alchohol?
2. Why is homosexuality morally wrong? ("Because the Bible says so" doesn't count.)

He never got good answers to those questions and I've yet to come up with any that really seem plausable. If you feel like you can answer them then by all means, send me an email.

Wow, it's been a busy week. I'm down in California visiting my old stomping grounds (Cal Poly.) It's great, the weather is awesome and I'm getting to visit with some long time friends that I don't see enough (a continual state of affairs.)

Not much to write since the start of the week was way hectic and I didn't have a lot of spare time, and I'm spening more time in the sun then in front of the screen now. But I did do some thinking about comic book super hero movies and I have a revised list. So here you go, these are the movies in that category which I consider worth watching:

Superman 2
Batman (my favoririte)
SpiderMan (sitll my least favorite on this list.)
X-Men
DareDevil
The Mask (yes, it was a comic book...)
The Crow
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (this was a wonderful book and a very underrated movie)
Men In Black (although this one is a bit looser on the super hero front.)

And then I have to give my mention to Unbreakable, which I still consider to be on the the best movies about comic books and super heros. But as before I won't expand on that to let you have a fair take of the movie if you go see it.

There you go. If you enjoy comic book and super hero type stuff you should make sure you see all the movies on that list. Of course if you wholeheartedly disagree with me I'd like to hear your thoughts.

Until next time,

It's kind of cool being a movie fan who actually enjoys a lot of Hollywood stuff. Granted, I can usually come up with ways the average Hollywood movie could be better, and I do enjoy a lot of the edgier indie stuff. But in the end I like action/adventure movies and no one does those like Hollywood. That said it's usually about this time of year that I start getting excited for the summer season. Typically the teaser trailers start running about now and there's usually one or two solid attempts that come out around now. We already got DareDevil last week. So in no particular order outside of how they come to me here's my thoughts on what's coming.

My favorite Hong Kong stars are both back. Jet Li is in Cradle 2 the Grave (Feb 28th.) To me this looks infinitely more promising then Chow Yun Fat's effort, Bulletproof Monk (April 18.) No, I'm not kidding about the title, and yes Sean William Scott (aka Stiffler) plays his sidekick. Unbelievably this isn't the worst title and concept in the near future (I rank it 3rd worst, see below.) But I'm quite scared. The whole thing is like amateur night. According to imdb:

The only thing the director has done is a Mariah Carey Video.
The writers have only written for TV.
The martial arts choreographer has only done stunts - on Mortal Kombat - Annihilation (cuz that was a winner...)
John Woo is sort of connected, but only as a producer. Meaning he didn't actually do anything.

Be afraid, be very afraid.

My award for second worst goes to Shaolin Soccer (April 11.) According to Reel.com: "Martial arts and sports collide in this wacky comedy about a kung-fu master who takes a job coaching a soccer team and teaches his players some very unorthodox moves." Although since this was done in Hong Kong it can't be totally bottom barrel, otherwise a US distributor wouldn't have picked it up. I will say that it has the capacity to be better then Bulletproof Monk, but at least Monk has Chow Yun-Fat...

But the worst has to go The Core (March 28.) The theaterical trailer for this is laughable. Go watch it when you want a break in your day. Seriously, "The earth has a deadline"? Who greenlighted that one...

Now on to sunnier pastures. The Life of David Gale comes out on Friday and has definite potential. If nothing else because we get to be impressed by Kevin Spacey again. Then on March 7th we get to watch Bruce Willis do what he does best (try to keep moral superiority while he kills lots of people) in Tears of the Sun. Moving on, Tommy Lee Jones has to catch a crazy talented hitman in The Hunted (March 14.) Bonus points because it's in Oregon, and I can't wait to hear something along the lines of "I tought him everything he knows, but not everything I know" or "I made him so I know how to beat him." And on April 4th Vin Diesel will try to expand his range a bit (but not much) in A Man Apart.

Closer to the summer you get Jack Nicholson and Adam Sandler in Anger Management (April 11) for those of you that want Adam to get back to his roots after Punch Drunk Love. The Hulk will try to keep the solid superhero movie streak going strong on June 20. Jim Carey's star vehicle Bruce Almighty (May 23rd) has a wonderful trailer. And the non-action film I'm looking forward to most this year is Kevin Smith's new effot, Jersey Girl, which doesn't have a set date yet.

But in the end this is going to be a year of sequels. You have Terminator 3 (this will likely be horrid, Linda Hamilton didn't take the role because she thought the script was terrible and her career isn't exactly soaring, plus Arnie is a bit old to still be the Terminator), then Dumb and Dumberer, Bad Boys 2, Charlie's Angels 2 (at least there's eye candy, if not mind candy), and The Fast and the Furious 2 (is it even worth it without Vin?)

There are two that show more promise though. X-Men 2 comes to us on May 2nd and has even more of your favorite super hero's in it then the first one. Could be bad, but it could also be really good - I'm holding out hope for the later. But easily the most promising of them all is The Matrix Reloaded. All I can say about this is I know where I'll be at 12:01 am on May 15th.

Then we get more goodness at the end of the year with The Matrix Revolutions and Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King among others. But there's a whole summer to get through before we can worry about those...

Increasing Quality by Lowering Expecations.

I'm trying to decide if that's why I had such a fun time seeing DareDevil tonight or if the movie really did stand well on its own. I really wasn't expecting much from this one. I've found that traditionally that's the way to approach action/adventure movies this time of year (although I guess I'm starting to do that all year round now - I'm getting jaded...) Back to DareDevil: I had a great time, that's all there is to it. This was quite simply a super hero movie done well. I will qualify that a bit though - your friendly super hero isn't always so friendly in this film, and there is a serious body count. So if you can't handle senseless killing and some "not graphic on screen but they didn't leave any doubt about what happened" nasty violence then you might want to stay away - or at the least leave it for DVD. It will be less imposing on a smaller screen. Other then that you have everything you need: standard super-hero creation stuff, people filled with vengance, a guy who can't live a normal life because he has this gift he uses to do good - the norm. The key is everything was done with skill, and I'll even give the actors credit for some half decent martial arts stuff. Although, the fight scenes did suffer from low light (there's a plot reason for this) and choppy editing (there's a resource reason for this - Ben and Jennifer can't do the stuff the pro kung fu guys can do.) Overall it get's my seal of approval and goes into the ranks of the good superhero movies, although in the end I guess the bar for entrance to that club is pretty low given the competition.

Speaking of I was actually coming up with a list of the good superhero movies on the way out of the theater. Different people like different things but the best I can come up with is Batman (my favorite), Superman 2, X-Men, and SpiderMan (which I liked the least out of this list.) And really while I'm there I should say I consider Unbreakable to be a wonderful superhero movie but I won't expand in case you haven't seen it. Am I forgetting any solid superhero movies? I'll let my brain chug on that one for a few days...

Which leads me to my last rant. DareDevil really reminded me of how screwed up the MPAA rating system is. And I don't even have to go into the ridiculous distinctions they have between sex and violence. DareDevil has a huge body count. It has a scene where the good guy could obviously save someone but lets him die instead. It has a character that explicity states he kills for fun, has absolutely no concious, and leaves a swath of innocent bystanders dead in his wake. And like I hinted above there are lots of nasty things that happen where the audience knows full well what's going on, but the camera cuts away for the moment of truth (OT: I'm reminded of Steve Martin's talk of the money shot in Grand Canyon.) In short this doesn't feel like a movie that should be rated PG-13 - it's one of those that technically complies with the rating but certainly not its spirit.

Well, I guess that's enough for now. The bottom line about DareDevil - if you like superhero movies go see it, if you don't it'll be there for you soon enough on DVD and you can grab it when you don't want to think too much. But either way give a little shout out to Kevin Smith when he makes his cameo!

So I went to see a play last night. It was The Suicide at UW. And wow, it really wasn't very good. I can't really point at poor acting - although there wasn't really any standout acting. I think it's more the direction and the general subject matter. It basically revolved around a down and out guy who's contemplating suicide. And there are all these groups out there who want to take advantage of his possible suicide by making him a martyr. At this point it isn't terrible. It's a comedy that might have worked as a dark serious comedy, but instead it was this surreal thing with goofy comedy all over the place. And the change of moods just didn't work for me - I never had any empathy for the characters. It also didn't help that there were 19 people in the play (no, I'm not kidding) and that it was 2.5 hours long.

I understand that comedy is a terribly hard thing to do. But I just saw the Reduced Shakespeare Company last week and had a much better experience. There were a few slow spots but overall they were funny and entertaining - comedy done well.

In the end I really need to make it to the theater more. But I have to remember that just like bad movies, there are bad plays. I even had some thoughts last night about why I tend to like bad movies more then bad plays, but I'll save those for another time.

Just this weekend I was looking up Lauren Graham from the Gilmore Girls to see if she'd been in anything else. The only thing that was really of interest is that she guest starred in a 1997 episode of Seinfeld. The really wierd thing is yesterday that episode, "The Millennium", showed up on my Tivo. I like watching old Senfeld episodes - so Tivo grabs many of the repeats for me. But I just thought it was too strange to have that episode play just after I looked it up.

For those that are wondering, it was a great episode. Lauren Graham plays Jerry's girlfriend and Jerry competes with her step mother for placement on her speed dial. Meanwhile Newman and Kramer are making plans for their Millennium new years parties, almost three years in advance.

And if you've never watched the Gilmore Girls you should give it a try. Granted, it's a bit girly - but the show has fantastic dialog. Just be ready to pay attention because it zips by and there are tons of great pop-culture and literary references. Every now and then I feel the need to pause it (go Tivo!) and go look something up. It plays Tuesday nights at 8:00 on the WB network.

Well, I had this whole custom solution that I'm 90% done with. But you know the way it works with software. I keep working on it and keeps not being done (punk.) So I decided I should go with an intermediate solution to get some content out while I crank on the other stuff.

So it was Blogger to the rescue. Hey, if it's good enough for Bubba and Dave Barry, then I guess it's good enough for me. Now I just have to integrate the other pages I already had written so there's some stuff here besides my ramblings.

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