Operation Rolling Thunder: First Wave

Been a while since I posted.
Got lots to talk about, so I'm gonna break it down into multiple updates.

First, the movie stuff:

I'm still working my way through the "The Persuaders" DVDs. The first few episodes were pretty
hokey, but once Tony Curtis and Roger Moore got used to each other, the chemistry worked much
better and the witty banter simply never stopped. Terry Nation stepped in as script supervisor,
so the storylines improved somewhat. The late Mr. Nation is most famously known for his work on
"Dr. Who" and for inventing the Daleks, so he can't be all bad. (grin)
Last night's episode dealt with a French baron with a peculiar German accent who was trying to
retrieve a Maltese Falcon of sorts: a small trophy topped by a very Teutonic-looking eagle.
Said trophy turned out to be a thank-you gift to the Baron for selling out France to the Germans
in WWII, and it was signed by Der Fuhrer Himself, Adolf Hitler.
You see!??!!? We didn't surrender! That rat bastard sold us out! Vive la Resistance!!

Timeline: based on a Michael Crichton book, so you know what that means:
technology goes haywire and some guy shows up to say "they tampered in God's domain."
In a nutshell, some guys build a machine to fax a box from New Mexico to New York.
They don't come out and say it, but it's pretty much a teleportation device. I hate those.
Anyway, they send a package from NM but it never gets to NY. It goes away for 6 hours,
then comes back to NM. So they send a camera instead and get back pictures of a pretty woodland
area. They send the camera again and point it at the sky. From the resulting pictures of stars
and constellations, they figure out the camera went back to Castleguard, France, in 1357AD. WTF?
They found a wormhole and it goes directly to the middle of the "100 Year War" (French VS English).
They send some archeologist dude and some plainclothes Marines to the timezone, but the old
dude gets separated and left behind. So they get his son and his buddies to go get him.
The movie itself is kinda cool. The French knights are definitely the good guys and the English
knights are shown for the assholes they really were. And don't give me that "noble King Arthur"
crap 'cause that whole myth is based on French folk tales! Ha ha suckeurs!! (grin)
The cast is mostly unknowns. I did recognize Lambert Wilson, the "Merovingien" from Matrix 2 and 3.
If you're a medievalist and/or understand French, you'll probably dig this.

Intolerable Cruelty: a Coen Brothers screwball comedy about matrimony lawyers and true love.
This one is just fun all around. It's got George Clooney, Catherine Zeta-Lambda-Jones, Billy Bob
Thornton, Geoffrey Rush and various cool supporting characters. The music's pretty good, the dialogue
amusing and the situations horribly contrived, as they should be for a screwball comedy. I dug this!

Matrix: Revolutions: which turned out to be better than I remembered in the theater.
Hollywood Homicide: hokey and brainless fun, and oh-so-L.A. For Harrison Ford fans mostly.
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: the remake. Not my type of movie, so I didn't watch it.
This was a special request from the sibling.

Returner: a fun Japanese live-action b-movie that blends "Terminator" with "The Matrix".
It stars the number one Japanese action star, whose name escapes me, and who shares the spotlight with
Jean Reno on the "Onimusha 3" videogame. A soldier from the future (okay, a young Japanese girl) is
sent back to prevent a war against nasty aliens who have transformable ships (I'm not kidding! These
guys have honest-to-goodness Transformers!!). She twists the arm of a super-cool hitman and gets him
to help her in her quest. Complications arise when a nasty gangster-type wants the crashed alien
ship for himself. Plenty of kung-fu, gun-fu, bullet-time-fu ensues. Lots of fun! Recommended!!

Hellboy: (Sony screening). I've never read the comicbook, but I've heard good things about it.
I enjoyed the movie a whole lot. The casting was great and the dialogue, especially Hellboy's quips,
was wonderful. The premise is right up my alley and gave "Return To Castle Wolfenstein" flashbacks.
I liked this movie so much, I saw it twice: the first time, I brought my brother. The second time,
I brought a friend. (I can only bring one guest at these Sony screenings, which sucks).

Starsky & Hutch: (Sony screening). I saw that last night with the sibling, who wanted to see it.
I don't dig some of the humor, especially the public humilation crap, so I just waited for those parts
to end. Otherwise, it's not a bad movie. It's a total recreation of the '70s, or at least some people's
concept of the '70s. I barely remember the series but I doubt that Starsky & Hutch were ever this _lame_.
As in, incompetent and bumbling and boneheaded. Somebody correct me if I'm wrong.
Snoop Dogg kicks ass. And I'm not just saying this because we're releasing a boxing game with his name on it.

The single trailer played before the movie was not updated from two weeks ago, which means that I had to
seat through the awful-awful-awful trailer for the equally awful-awful-awful-looking "White Chicks" movie
from those wonderfully brain-damaged, retarded, goofy-ass Wayan Brothers for A THIRD TIME!!!
(Remember, I saw "Hellboy" twice. "Starsky & Hutch" makes three.)



Well, that pretty much takes care of that.
In the next post, I'll talk about more personal things.

And now, LUNCH!!!!