o/~ He rode a blazing saddle... o/~

As promised a couple of times already, A Whole Lot Of Netflixing!!!

(And it's only because I'm at work with no Internet because we just moved to a new floor and half the
stuff doesn't work right yet. I'm doing this all from memory, until my Internet connection kicks in.
Oh, and the air conditioning isn't working quite right yet either, so it's warm in here!!)

Smallville: Season 4 - Discs 4-5-6 - Pascal and I are now all caught up on "Smallville"! Huzzah!
Boy, there was a couple of weirdo episodes in there. Like the super-dogs injected with meteor rock serum.
Curse you Luthor Corp.!! Yeah, yeah, according to some people, it's not the "real" Superman. I don't care.
I'm enjoying it. And Tom Welling makes for a really good teenage Clark Kent. He's the ultimate boyscout!

Gus Van Sant's Last Days - Oh dear god! This was boooooring! This was a request from the sibling,
because he's a Nirvana fan, and this movie was sort of based on the last days of Kurt Cobain, before he
shot himself. The movie is slow, with little dialogue, a lot of it mumbled. The scenery is nice though,
all green and woodsy and hilly, since it's in Washington State or Oregon. For Gus Van Sant fans only.

Goodfellas - I had never gotten around to seeing this flick, so I decided to remedy the situation.
I haven't laughed at a movie like this since "Harold And Kumar Go To White Castle". I stopped laughing after
the Joe Pesci character shot the kid in the foot. What a psycho little nutball! He really deserved that
supporting Oscar. Too bad they didn't give the best director Oscar to Martin Scorsese. And they still haven't.
Those bastards. Now, I need to rent the "Godfather" trilogy, and I will be caught up on my mafia movies.

Blade: Trinity - The third and (hopefully) final chapter in the Blade Trilogy. In case you happen to
forget that this is based on a comicbook, the movie takes every possible opportunity to remind you of that
fact. It's cartoony, comicy, explody, cliché-y, and apparently, all vampires are descended from a Predator.
Whoopsie! That was a spoiler. NOT! He's not really a Predator, he just sorta kinda looks like one. Blargh.

The Work of Director Stephane Sednaoui - another volume in Palm Pictures' "Director" series, focusing
on music video directors. Sednaoui is responsible for the Red Hot Chili Peppers' metallic desert video
for their classic "Give It Away" tune, along with other nifty stuff for Bjork, U2 ("Mysterious Ways"),
Garbage, and Alanis More-Upset (HAR! Gawd, she looks like a dweeb and a retard in the "Ironic" video).
There are 19 videos altogether, plus some short films. I'll be renting the Spike Jonze DVD pretty soon.

Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex: 2nd Gig: Vol. 1 - 1st DVD of the second season of GITS: SAC,
the hardboiled animated cybercop show based on Masamune Shirow's manga. The sibling actually sat down and
watched all four episodes on this DVD. He had refused to watch any of the first season episodes because he
had been so turned off by the movie "Ghost In The Shell: Indulgence", I mean "Innocence".
He likes the TV show a lot more, and so do I. Interesting first set of episodes. In the first one, Section 9
is pretty much back together and on stand-bye at the site of a hostage situation. The cops are already there
and negotiating with the terrorists. At the same time, Chief Aramaki, head of Section 9, is meeting with the
new Prime Minister, a woman, who replaces the old prime minister who was done in by a huge scandal at the
conclusion of Season One. Aramaki is essentially waiting for the PM to approve his Section 9 budget. The PM
decides to give Aramaki his budget if Section 9 can take out all the terrorists with no loss of hostage lives.
Ha! Piece of cake! Some major (har!) kick-ass action ensues. Oh yeah, baby!
The second episode was totally different. It had some interesting "Taxi Driver" overtones.
The third and fourth episodes were pretty good as well. I can't wait for the 2nd DVD to come out!

Avalon - And speaking of "Ghost In The Shell", here's a movie shot in Poland with Polish actors,
but by a Japanese film crew, and it's the "Ghost In The Shell" movie crew. Same director, same composer, and
it's cyberpunk too! In the near future, people play this online military virtual reality game called "Avalon".
It's outlawed, but people play it anyway, and some people are good enough at it that they make a living out of it.
One such person is Ash, a female player who's really good. The world outside the game is grey, and people seem
oddly still, as in, not moving. When Ash goes home to her apartment, she rides the trolley and she sees the same
people in it, standing or sitting in the same places. Ash has a pet, and it's a basset hound, of course.
Mamoru Oshii, the director, is obsessed with basset hounds. Ash sees a player in "Avalon" who's better than her,
so she tries to find out more about him, and he recruits her and sends her on missions. There's an element of
Phillip K. Dick-ness to the whole thing because you're not sure if the reality is really real.
It's not bad at all, and a lot less talky than "Innocence". It's pretty bizarre. Y'all should check it out.

Beat The Devil - a movie about Truman Capote will surface soon, so I was interested in his work, which
resulted in me renting this little gem from 1954. Capote wrote the screenplay with John Huston, who directed.
It stars Humphrey Bogart, Gina "hubba-hubba" Lollobrigida, Peter Lorre, and Robert Morley.
It's a parody of noir-style detective movies like "The Maltese Falcon", and yeah, it's pretty funny.

Rio Bravo - One good old movie deserves another. The sibling and I needed a dose of The Duke (John Wayne),
so I netflixed this 1959 masterpiece. John Wayne is joined by Dean Martin (people seem to forget he could act),
a really hot Angie Dickinson, and little Rickie Nelson, looking like Young Elvis Presley. Rounding out the cast
are veteran actors Walter Brennan as "Stumpy" (and he's friggin hilarious), Claude Akins, and Ward Bond.
Aside from some minor old western goofiness (like shooting people's guns out of their hands), it's pretty good!
Directed by Howard Hawks, who knows a thing or two about movie directing (grin).
Now, I wanna get more John Wayne flicks!


Non-Netflix

Shakespeare In Love - I heard good things about this one. My buddy, The Elusive Spino, owns it on
giant shiny disc (aka laserdisc), and Pascal wanted a tape copy of it for himself, so I borrowed it from
Spinotron and recorded it to VHS. Pascal pulled the tape from storage recently, so I decided to watch it.
It's indeed very good and quite a lot of fun. And it's also a little freaky too because the guy who plays
young William Shakespeare, Joseph Fiennes, well, he looks just like Spino!!!
So, for the whole movie, I didn't see young Bill Shakespeare, I didn't see Joseph Fiennes, I saw Spino!!
Judy Dench plays Queen Elizabeth and she's totally kick-ass! Gwyneth Paltrow plays the really cute, really
white chick that Bill falls for. And the guy who played Deja-Vu in "Top Secret" is in this too! He gets
to be the one who has to dress up as a servant woman for the "Romeo And Juliet" performance in the movie.
Highly recommended, and stuff. Forsooth!

Star Wars Episode III: Revenge Of The Sith - purchased the day it came out, $14.95 at my local place.
Widescreen, of course. 2 discs. Have watched the movie but not the extras yet. Don't really care.
The dialogue between Anakin and Padmé remains abyssmal. The starships and hardware remains kick-ass.
The spunky R2D2 remains amusing, especially the whole "Artoo will be here soon..." (WAAAAA-KLUNK!!!) scene.
So, I like it. It could be better, of course, but it ain't exactly Shakespeare anyway. I can live with it.

Batman Begins - purchased a few days after it came out by the sibling, who really likes it. I like it too.
This is the cheapo widescreen version with no extras. We don't really mind, as we're starting to think that
extras are overrated, unless they're bloopers, or good deleted scenes. The rest is just filler.
Christian Bale makes a good young Bruce Wayne, and Michael Caine is excellent as Alfred. Heck, the whole cast
is wonderful. This definitely washes away the bad taste left over from "Batman Forever" and "Batman And Robin".
Now, I'd like to see the Joker and Harley Quinn in the sequel, with a script by Paul Dini.
Dear readers, have you any thoughts on who could play Mr. J. and Harley?
(Mark Hamill with lots of make-up? Sandra Bullock? Joseph Fiennes? Michael Keaton? Audrey Tatou?)


Netflix in progress: "Bob Dylan: No Direction Home" - two-part documentary by Martin Scorsese.
So far, it's really interesting. Apparently, Bob Dylan was heavily influenced by Woody Guthrie, a name I had
heard before but a person I knew very little about. At one point during the DVD, I slapped my brother's arm
when Bob Dylan starting singing "In Constant Sorrow", which is the signature song from that Coen Brothers
movie we both like so much, "Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?".
So Bob Dylan is carrying the torch of Bluegrass and American Roots Music? COOL!!!


Whew, that's all for now!
Enjoy!