He's a superflix! Superflix! He's superflixy, ow!

Greetings!
It's time to update.
So first up, movies-movies-movies!!


Netflixing!

Mr. And Mrs. Smith - which sounded like a fun concept, but just didn't live up to its promises.
Okay, so, Angelina Jolie (she of the huge lips) and Brad Pitt (he of the big pecs in "Troy") play a married
couple living in suburbs and they've been married for 5 (6) years and they don't talk about work because
each one happens to be a hitman (hitwoman) for separate agencies. Awkward! Vince Vaughn is in this movie,
and he gets on my nerves. The movie is kinda amusing at first and it's got its moments, but let me tell you,
I sure am glad I did NOT pay full-price (or matinée-price) for this when it came out. It's a mediocre rental.

Yukikaze Vol. 1 - which deserves to be nicknamed "Ace Combat: The Movie" much more than "Stealth".
It's a classic animé story: bishonen boy loves military jet with smarter-than-average-AI AI.
Squadron leader loves bishonen boy but bishonen boy doesn't notice. Aliens are mysterious and no one knows
what they really look like but it looks like they can take human guise (much like Chicken Boo).
Oh yeah, and they're hostile, and for some reason, called The JAM (after the English band?).
They opened a dimensional vortex over Antarctica and attacked. An elite squadron of united nations pilots
pushed them back to their homeworld, called "Fairy" for some reason. So now, the war continues on the
alien homeworld. Which has breathable air. And looks kinda like Arizona.
The jets are all CGI and futuristically-designed. They look nifty. The enemy jets have rearrangeable wings
and strange swirly patterns on their surfaces. The radio chatter seems lifted straight out of "Ace Combat".
This DVD contains two episodes. Volume 2 will be out shortly.
If you like animé and the aerial ballet of high-performance combat aircraft, grab it like a rabbit!

The Village - another opportunity for M. Night Ramalamadingdong to mess wit' yo head!
When I heard that M. Night Shyamalan was working on a new movie called "The Village", my first thought was
"Oh shit! He's doing 'The Prisoner'!". I am such a geek. (The "M", by the way, stands for "Manoj".)
I like his work. I've seen all his movies (which is only 4, actually. He's got two more I haven't seen,
but one is unfindable and Indian-centric, and the other is a coming-of-age movie called "Wide Awake").
So it's about a village surrounded by woods, woods that nobody is supposed to go into, because there are
dangerous creatures in there. The villagers have made a deal with the creatures: people stay in the village,
creatures stay in the woods. The village seems to be located in New England somewhere and the time period
seems to be somewhere in the 1800's. So everything is cool until some darn fool kid enters the woods,
briefly, to mess with red berries, which are of the forbidden color. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention the
forbidden color. FOr some reason, there can't be anything red on display in the Village anywhere.
So you watch the movie and try to make sense of it and keep an eye on Plot Twist 1.
Meanwhile, Plot Twist 2 is sneaking up on you and about to tear your throat out.
I pretty much had guessed Plot Twist 1, but Plot Twist 2 nailed me.
Great cast, excellent performances, it's worth seeing if you like thrillers.

From Dusk 'Til Dawn - "You got vampires in my gangster film!!" "You got gansters in my vampire film!"
Caramba, it's Roberto Rodriguez and his gang of troublemakers doing the weird mash-up thing!
George Clooney, Quentin Tarantino, Harvey Keitel, Juliette Lewis, Salma Hayek, Danny Trejo, Cheech, Cheech,
and Cheech (I wonder if he got three paychecks for his three different performances).
George and Quentin are two brothers on the lam. Quentin busted George outta jail, causing some collateral
damage, and now half of Texas is looking for 'em. So they head for Mexico, kidnapping Harvey and Juliette
and a kid and using their RV. Little do they know that their rendez-vous point is a rough, tough, mean
biker and trucker bar with a side order of prostitution. Oh, and it's a vampire hide-out.
That's when things get REALLY weird!
It's funny, violent, it's old Tarantino, so you know the drill. It's kinda like a Tex Avery cartoon.
I had fun watching it!

War Of The Worlds - ever wondered what a "real" desintegrator beam would do to a human being?
This new take on the H.G. Wells classic answers that question and more. And my reaction was "holy shit!!"
Steven Spielberg is getting mean and creepy. "Minority Report", "A.I.", creepy and mean stuff.
This, however, is not necessarily a bad thing.
This movie was one big gauntlet for Tom Cruise and his kid co-stars. I mean, it doesn't stop!
It's like "Saving Private Ryan", without the light-hearted humor!
I heard people were disappointed by the movie. "You don't see the military fight the aliens!" or something.
I'm guessing they wanted "Independence Day" or "Armageddon". They wanted big sprawling battles!
What they got was "Signs" and "Deep Impact": a more intense, more personal version of the drama.
There are images in this movie that will take me some time to put out of my mind.
Like the out of control Amtrak train engulfed in flames. It's a complete throwaway scene, but man...
Do not view if faint of heart or disturbed by large-scale destruction of lives and habitats.
I did not expect the movie to be that engaging, that disturbing. And that made it better to me.
And yes, as one gentleman noted, it's sometimes a bit like watching "Half Life 2: The Movie". :-)


Blockflixing!
Thanks to Slickdeals.net, I got me a promotional code to get 4 free weeks of Blockbuster DVD rental,
the same kind of service as Netflix. So I'm using it to rent stuff that Netflix won't ship right away.
And on the fourth week, I shall drop them like they're hot! 'Cause Blockbuster sucks. Anyway...

Sky High - in which the concept of a high school for superheroes is, urrrr, tackled.
The first trailer for this made it look cool and fun. The second trailer sucked and made the movie look bad.
The first trailer was right. It IS cool and fun! It's got some good casting, check this out: Ken Russell
(doing Disney movies again), Lynda Carter (as the principal), Kelly Preston (who had the misfortune of being
in "Battlefield Earth", but we won't hold that against her. Know why? She was in "From Dusk 'Til Dawn".
She played the body-count-obsessed TV newswoman.), Bruce Campbell (yes!), and two guys from "Kids In The Hall".
And Cloris flippin' Leachman!! She plays the slightly loopy (but fun) school nurse. I did not recognize her.
Written by two guys who worked on the RGBs (aka "The Real Ghost Busters") and "Kim Possible", and directed
by a guy who directed several episodes of "Greg The Bunny" (which was, actually, somewhat amusing).
I found the movie soundtrack to be a little disconcerting. It was all '80s music, but not performed by the
original artists! I checked the end credits and I had never heard of 75% of the performing artists.
I'm guessing they're kiddie bands and Radio Disney pop creations, or something. Weird...
So yeah, overall, for a kid's movie, it's pretty good and nicely comic-booky. And cheesy. Which is fine.

L4yer CakE - British gangsters have a style all their own...
This movie stars James Bond, Chief Miles O'Brien, and Professor Albus Dumbledore.
Whoops! I mean, Daniel Craig, Colm Meany, and Michael Gambon.
The producer of "Lock, Stock And Two Smoking Barrels" and "Snatch" takes a stab at directing.
And he does a pretty good job, for a first effort. The cinematography is interestingly different at times.
It's sometimes hard to understand because of the language and noise level, but you can still follow the story.
If you need a Brit gangster fix, this will do in a pinch, guv'nor!


IMAXflixing
Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire
Yes yes, the sibling and I treated ourselves to the latest Potter on the REALLY big screen!
Holy crap, the mumbling! The accents! We couldn't understand what the hell they were saying at the start
of the bloody movie! "It's the mubblewabble of fneeblwack!" "Oh yes, the fnoogark of flerb!" WHAT?!?!?
And yes, we've seen the other three movies, thank you!!!
We felt like the SS Minnow, when the weather started getting rough and the tiny ship was tossed.
We were tossed about by the pacing and the reckless tossing of plot lines and characters. Oy!!
And what's this? Hagrid has a girlfriend? Who's French? And taller than him? Ooh la la!!!
So eventually, it settled down a bit and started making sense, and look, someone else escaped from Azkaban!
Good going guys! When is the new revolving door being put in? HAR!!
Moaning Myrtle's back and still totally cracks me up.
And Lucius Malfoy just made Forbes' special list: "The Fictional 15" (the fifteen richest fictional characters in the world).
Pascal and I liked the movie. 'Nuff said.


Next time, I'll post about last weekend's LOSCON excursion, and there will be pictures!

LOSCON and Bike-along Cassidy

So Last Saturday, I went to LOSCON.
What is LOSCON? Here's what their website says:
"Los Angeles, home of the world's oldest, continuously-active science fiction club (LASFS),
is now home to Loscon, the oldest, continuously-held SF Convention in Southern California."
It's a literary sci-fi con held on Thanksgiving Weekend, so it's definitely more relaxed.

( LOSCON report inside, with crappy cellphone photos! W00T!! )

In other news, I got a $25 Best Buy gift card at work Friday, so I dragged the sibling to the local Beast Buy.
We wound up buying the new Kate Bush double-album ("Aerial") and a DVD of Orson Welles' "Touch Of Evil",
which is awesome and really ahead of its time, except for having Burt Lancaster play a Latino detective.
I'm happy to report that the new Kate Bush is kick-ass, and eventhough it is on Columbia Records (aka Sony),
it does NOT contain the evil Sony DRM thingy that foobars your computer!! W00T!! Both CDs are single-session
(ie: there's no computer data on them) and it's not listed on the official Sony DRM exchange program list.

This weekend has been slow, yet filled with various activities. On Saturday, I almost went to a LUGOLA meeting,
but there was a miscommunication and some bad timing, so that fell through. Instead, I biked to the local
bicycle store to get me some gloves. I put a lot of weight on my palms when I ride, so I was looking for some
appropriately-padded gloves. I found some nice black and blue fingerless ones, in size XXL. They fit great!
Then I biked to the hardware store to get a new lock for my room's door. We don't have a key for the current
lock, and there's a bit too much traffic at the ol' place these days, so a new lock was in order.

Today, Pascal and I biked to the bicycle store again, this time to get him some gloves.
He can bike, but he can't put both hands on the handlebars for too long (left arm still tender from operation).
We found him some nice orange Kona gloves, then we saddled up and headed for the local Target.
Pascal veered oddly towards the Taco Bell as we approached it. Guess he was hungry.
We stopped to get a little somethin' somethin'. Chicken quesadillas, y'all! Taaaasty...
After this culinary interlude, we set out once more Targetwards.
I was on a mission to get me a new watch. Unfortunately, I ran into a little snag: none of the watches had
wristbands big enough for my wrist. And yet, I've replaced the wristband on my faithful Casio G-Shock from
1992 about 5 times, and each wristband was big enough. I guess I need to go back to the place where I get my
wristbands from (a watch store on Olympic and Westwood) to buy a watch there. If the wristband is too small,
odds are they will have larger replacement wristbands on hand to do a hot-swap while-I-wait.
I looked at other watches, including Timex, but the wristbands were also too small. Curses!!
We then hit the Ross to see if they had anything interesting. There's usually nothing my size there,
but sometimes, I get lucky. I once found 2 Nike and one And1 t-shirts in 4XL for, like, $8 each. Score!
There was nothing. I looked at their watches, but they had even less than nothing. Blargh.
We put our bike lights on, saddled up, and headed for home, in the sunset, like in the cowboy movies.

Whew, that was a whole lot of typing!!
See you next time!