Ein Kleine NetFlixingen

Howdy y'all!
I never seem to have time to type in silly little posts in this LJ anymore.
So I'm gonna make the time. And make a dent in the big ol' pile of Netflixing I have sitting here.
Gene Wilder, come on down!!

The Adventures Of Sherlock Holmes' Smarter Brother - written/directed/starring Gene-Gene The Wonka Machine!
You know, you figure that a movie with half the cast of "Young Frankenstein" (Gene Wilder, Marty Felman, Madeline Kahn)
plus veteran Brit oddballs like Leo McKern and Roy Kinnear, plus a very thin Dom DeLuise, would be hilarious.
But it's not. It's really clunky and all the jokes come courtesy of Western Union. This is not a Mel Brooks film.
And Gene Wilder seems to suffer from "GottaSingGottaDanceitis", making this movie almost a musical.
It's a pity that Marty Felman's own "The Last Remake Of Beau Geste" is not available on DVD yet.
I think it's a much better and much funnier film, and the cast is unbelievable.
So anyway, TAOSHSB is not really worth digging up, unless you're a fan of Leo McKern.
His portrayal of Professor Moriarty has a neurotic bundle of nervous ticks and assorted complexes is quite amusing.
And Madeline Kahn is HOT, rest her soul.

The French Connection II - which is annoying because I told Netflix to send me "The French Connection" first!
So I presume this picks up where the first one left off, and since this isn't a soap opera, I was able to just jump
right in and enjoy the movie. All you need to know is that Detective Jimmy "Popeye" Doyle didn't get the big French
heroin-pusher at the end of the first movie, so his superiors send him to Marseilles, France to find him.
The entire movie is shot in location in Marseilles and Gene Hackman, who plays Doyle, finds himself lost in a sea of
non-English-speaking Frenchies. And there are no subtitles for all the Frenchism, which amused me.
Directed by John Frankenheimer in a somewhat abrupt style, and with the technical advice of the Corsican Mafia for the
look and functionality of the heroin processing lab and the methods used for smuggling the drugs in.
(Don't mess with the Corsicans, they're tough sumabitches. Napoleon Bonaparte was Corsican. 'Nuff said!)

Howl's Moving Castle - Hayao Miyazaki's newest fairytale gets not one, but TWO screen legends in English!
Miyazaki is a bit like the old Walt Disney of Japan: he makes really cool animated fairy tales.
I've seen just about everything he's ever done and am quite fond of "Nausicaa" and "My Neighbor Totoro".
I enjoyed his "Princess Mononoke" somewhat, and enjoyed "Spirited Away" more, but this one I like even better!
There's all sorts of wonderful and wacky ideas in there, like the castle's main door, and steam-everything.
And the storytelling is different from the norm, with characters who change role as the film progresses.
Also, Miyazaki doesn't know about the "90-Minute Rule" of animated films. "Howl" is two hours long.
So, the screen legends I mentioned earlier. For the English version, the studio got Jean Simmons and Lauren Bacall.
Like, wow! Jean Simmons voices the "Grandma" version of Sophie while Lauren Bacall voices the Witch Of The Waste.
Christian Bale voices Howl and Calcifer, the fire spirit thing, is voiced by Billy Crystal (and is not annoying!).
John Lasseter and Peter Doctor worked on the English script, and they did a wonderful job.
I highly recommend it.

Doom (Unrated) - which is as bad as you think it is, and mostly misses the point.
So basically, in a nutshell, somebody decided to make "Resident Aliens". Game over man, game over!!!
Doom-stuff in the movie: guns, narrow corridors with lots of uneccessary twists and turns, monster closets,
zombie marines, zombie sergeant, imps (sort of), pinky demon (Doom 3 style), gore, the BFG, 1st-Person Mode.
Doom-stuff not in the movie: spaceship to get to Mars, portal to Hell, the whole concept of Hell itself,
the rest of the Doom creatures, anything from Doom 1 or 2.
Non-Doom-stuff in the movie: virus, teleportation unit on Earth pointing to Mars, gratuitious female nudity,
ancient Martian civilization, sibling angst, bad writing, The Rock.
Avoid.

France France Révolution

My eMusic downloads refreshed themselves today, so I went NUTS!!!
I got Hybrid's "Wider Angle" after listening to all the 30-second snippets.
I had my eyes and ears opened for anything by Hybrid ever since grooving to "Unfinished Symphony" in the SSX games.
There's two whole CDs' worth of fine tuneage there!

Sony seems to be bent on continuing the fine tradition of high quality electronic music in the WipEout series of games,
so I just had to get the Wipeout Pure Soundtrack. Some nifty stuff in there, including two tracks by Paul Hartnoll (Orbital).

I cherry-picked various tracks from this label because all this stuff used to be out on the Eye-Q Records labels:
Harthouse and Recycle Or Die. I've been collecting Eye-Q CDs since 1994 and I thought I had all the ones I wanted.
But I found some extra tracks and remixes I didn't have on eMusic. Way out, daddy-oh!!

I didn't get this but I might later. I mean, chamber music versions of Aphex Twin tracks? WTF?!?!?
Somebody on my Friends list was recently wondering what Aphex Twin tracks would sound like as performed by a
symphonic orchestra. Was it you, paka?? Well, there you go! Though the orchestra is smaller.
There's also a nifty orchestral version of "Icct Hedral" by Philip Glass on the Aphex Twin "Donkey Rhubarb" CD EP.

I have a lot of stuff saved to a list and I'll get around to downloading them later.
For now, I'll go enjoy my new tunes.