Between "Short Wait," "Long Wait," and "Very Long Wait" screwing up my queue, NetFlix sending me the wrong volume disk of What's New Scooby Doo (it's labeled wrong in their inventory, and the delays I experience in turnaround... Well, I may go ahead and try the Blockbuster version of the mail in rental. And I hate Blockbuster. What is it? 90% of users get their movies with only a one day turnaround? Well, my movies used to have a two day, one-way trip (which meant 4 day total turnaro...
Last Letters Home - Voices of American Troops from the Battlefields of Iraq Category: Documentary "Touching and powerful, Last Letters Home is an emotional documentary that features 10 families reading aloud the last letters they received from loved ones who lost their lives in Operation Iraqi Freedom. Presented in a suitably straightforward, unembellished style by director Bill Couturié (director of HBO's Dear America: Letters Home from Vietnam), the film displays close-up pictures o...
The King of Masks Category: Foreign, Foreign Drama Nearing the end of his life, Wang (heh) -- a locally renowned street performer and wizard of the venerable art of mask magic -- yearns to pass on his technique. But custom prescribes that he can only hand down his craft to a male successor. Anxious to preserve his unique art, the heirless Wang buys an impoverished 8-year-old on the black market. When the child divulges a dreaded secret, Wang faces a choice between filial love and soci...
Murderball Listed in the Documentary section. Recommended because I liked: Memento and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Description: Rugby-playing quadriplegics compete for the Paralympic gold medal in this documentary about an amazing sport and the strong-willed athletes who play full-contact rugby using specially designed wheelchairs. The film follows the U.S. Quad Rugby Team as they compete in the 2002 World Championships and the 2004 Paralympic Games in Athens. Murderball w...
Delicatessen Listed in the Foreign section. Recommended because I liked: Yojimbo , Trainspotting , Being John Malkovich , Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind . Description: Gentle clown Louison (Dominique Pinon) moves into an apartment building with a deli on the ground floor and falls for the butcher's daughter, Julie (Marie-Laure Dougnac). It's soon discovered that Julie's father (Jean-Claude Dreyfus) is actually butchering people ( a la Sweeney Todd) and selling the meat to ...
There are a number of trends in computer animated children's/family movies. One is the "rip off" trend. Madagascar->The Wild, for example. The other is the "squirrels are teh funny" trend. There are more examples of this strewn through the genre recently. Ice Age and Ice Age: The Meltdown feature Scrat, a sabretooth squirrel. Following on his heels is Twitchy from Hoodwinked. ("I don't drink coffee.") The squirrel from The Wild had a thing for an unlikely female character... and ...
I had actually rented most of the stuff I listed last time much earlier in the week. Middle of the week, I got another batch: Constantine, Lord of War, and Jarhead. Based on the Hellblazer graphic novels published by DC Comics, Constantine is about a sort of paranormal detective fighting the forces of evil. Bearing little superficial resemblance to the comic character (who is a blonde Brit), Keanu Reeves still puts in a Keanu Reeves performance (fluffy but enjoyable) as the titular ch...
Hasting's has an introductory membership offer: not only do you get a free 2-liter of Coke (long gone, now), but you have 1/2 off movie rentals for the first two week. That first week was taken up by a spring break and a lot of G and PG movies (my favorite of which was Wallace & Grommit: Curse of the Were-Rabbit; I especially liked the way the 3-year old I was hanging with said the movie title). This week, now that I'm alone again, I've been renting more grown-up movies. (No, I'm not that...
Last Year: Link This year, the WWE superstars made their way to Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan. Even if you don't like professional wrestling, the non-wrestling segments interspersed with the handful of matches were actually the highlight of the show. WWE's production staff do a good job of putting together a presentation showing their superstars interacting with soliders and airmen in Afghanistan. There are a lot of WWE fans in the military, and everyone enjoys a good show......
A quote: "It's not about making sense. It's about believing in something and letting that belief be real enough to change your life. It's about Faith. You don't fix Faith, River. It fixes you." I really needed that episode when I saw it.
Fiction?: Man: Here, son, hold this dollar. When the waitress comes back and gives us our food, give her the dollar as a tip. Son: What's a tip? Man: In some service industries, it's customary to provide extra monies to the service personnel as a tip, or gratuity. This is generally seen as a reward for better than average service, although it has mostly devolved into an entitlement. Meanwhile, the boy has been spinning around, holding the dollar and looking at it, until dizzy. Man:...
Most stupid thing I've heard in awhile: On CNN's "90 Second Pop" segment on their morning show, the pairing of Pitt and Jolie was referred to as "Brangelina". And I've heard some stupid things lately.
From WWE's official site, and the archive of last week's RAW (27DEC04) Link : "Earlier in the night, Muhammad Hassan and Khosrow Daivari interrupted Stacy Keibler when she was revealing her New Year’s resolution, and berated the crowd, telling them that they are all prejudiced towards Arab Americans. They then took their tirade to the announce booth and started pushing around good ol’ J.R. and the King. They later complained to Eric Bischoff, requesting a match against the two, but Bisch...
Aired on 23DEC04, this is a nice nod to our deployed troops by WWE, Inc. Even if you don't like wrestling, it was a pretty good show. Besides, there was only four matches in two hours, so the sports entertainment wasn't too overwhelming anyway. I was going to try a full write-up, but I had to accept the fact that I'm not CRZ Link . I wouldn't be able to do justice to the matches, but you can read the summary on the WWE website Link . I would like to say that this was great for them...
So, forces have conspired to put me on this topic, today. First, we talked about it at work. From the upcoming Batman movie Link starring Christian Bale, to McG (of Charlie's Angels "fame") being off the Superman movie. Of course, it's comic book day today (Wednesday is the normal day that comic books arrive at local comic book specialty shops, barring holidays and acts of Busiek). So, I wound up talking about this subject down at Book Stan'. From Catwoman (Halle Berry in an apparently...