Let's try this again.

I was going to post on Monday, as I normally do, but this site locked up when I hit the "publish" button after spending 30 minutes typing. My whole post was lost as was my patience for this blasted site. Of course, now I can't really remember what I was typing about on Monday anyway, so this could either be a much better, or a much worse post. You'll never know.

I talk about movies on this site quite often, because between that and toys, I know very little. Now, I know more than most of my friends, but I attribute that to their lack of ambition and inability to read. I'd draw you all characatures narrating my entries, however I can draw about as well as a can weave a Navajo basket out of reeds. So, in the theme of movies, I'd like to say a bit about a new release coming out tomorrow.

Miami Vice. Now before you bash this film, take not that Michael Mann is directing this. I feel that he's one of the best directors around right now. He's the writer and director of the classic as film Heat, and he's directed The Last of the Mohicans, The Insider, and one of my all time faveorite films, Collateral. The visual style Mann uses in Collateral is simply stunning. If you haven't yet seen Collateral, I reccomend highly that you rent it, or buy it. It won't be money wasted. Yeah, I've heard people say that they won't see Collateral because Tom Cruise is in it and they hate Tom Cruise. Yeah, Mr. Cruise may be a freak, but that doesn't mean you should shun him as an actor, especially when the overall product is amazing. These same people said the same things when War of the Worlds and MI-3 were released. Sure, War of the Worlds sucked, but it wasn't due to Tom Cruise, and MI-3 was pretty darn good. However, I've stopped talking about Miami Vice, so I'll move back to that topic.

Miami Vice looks dark, gritty, and hardcore. All the things a movie of this type should be. No flashy scenes or stupid-ass jokes like the Bad Boy movies have. Sure those movies aren't horrible, but they're not even close to being equal with a Michael Mann film. Also, the cheesiness that the original series had is now gone, replaced by solid characters and visuals that immerse you in the seedy underbelly of Miami. What, did you think I was going to say Detroit? Also, I've always wanted to use the term "seedy underbelly" in a sentence. It isn't just the visual style that makes me want to see this film. I also want to see Colin Farrell and Jamie Foxx. Jamie Foxx has won an Oscar and Colin Farrell hopefully will at some point in the future, for I think he's that good.

Forget the trailers that you've seen that may make this movie look uncertain. Take my word for it: This movie is going to kick ass. I'll get off my freakin' soapbox now.

Well I honestly don't have much else to say right now, so I'll move on the the DVD releases. I'm a bit late, seeing as how they were released 2 days ago, but you're all poor SOBs and haven't bought any yet anyway. Here goes:

• Animaniacs: Volume 1 - Come join the Warner Brothers, and the Warner sister Dot, just for fun they'll run around the Warner movie lot. Alright, I won't sing anymore of the theme song, but I know it all just in case you're curious. You would be the dumbest person on the planet to see this on the shelf and not buy it, unless of course you need the money for food. But even then, your excuses mean little to me. I still remember watching the 1st ever episode and hearing Slappy the Squirrel say "Let's not get anal here," and wondering how in God's name that made it to broadcast television.
• The Benchwarmers - I have nothing against comedies, I just have something against stupid comedies. When I'm picking out movies at Blockbuster, this one will be true to title and sit on the sidelines.
• Final Destination 3 (Widescreen) - I too had a premonition. In mine, I saw this movie, and my head exploded out of sheer amazement that they even made this piece of shit.
• Hudson Hawk (15th Anniversary Edition) - This is one of those comedies that you either "get" or "don't get." Personally, I think it's comedy gold and the decapitation scene, and Bruce Willis' following one-liner, makes me laugh every damn time. If you've never seen it, then go do so. It's quirky sure, but mighty entertaining.
• Pinky and the Brain: Volume 1 - To prove their mousey worth, they'll overthrow the Earth. This Animaniacs offshoot is pure hilariousnessicity in its highest form. The Wizard of Oz spoof episode is one of my favorites, although I'm not sure if that's on Volume 1 or not.

That's really all that came out this week. Next week is pretty good too, including a movie that I'm eagerly anticipating owning, so come back next Monday and read my blog, or else two dozen tiny weasels will gnaw through your car's brake lines.

Don't make me send the weasels.

Peacefull slumber my ass!

Sleep is supposed to be peacefull right? So why is it I can't dream about anything good? Sure, on occasion I have the dream involving a hot bikini model who just wants to have sex, but honestly, those types of dream are quite rare and that's really quite dissapointing. Maybe once every few months I'll have a dream where I'm a James Bond type who has to shoot a bunch a people for some save-the-world type reason. I like those dreams. For the most part though, those aren't the dreams I have. I dream about High School quite a bit for some reason. Let me be perfectly clear. I HATED High School. Some of the classmates I miss, but not the environment. At least once a week, I have a dream where I'm back in Mr. Schiwsow's history class listening to him drone on about the civil war while Mike Grummert makes a stupid joke. All those types of dreams accomplish is to depress me, and when I wake up, I feel like I'm headed off to High School for another day. I liked my time spent at college, but for some reason, I never dream of college. Just that shithole called Meridian Public School.

The second type of dream I have more often than the happy sex dreams are the "water" dreams. I'm not conciously afraid of water. I like to swim and showers are quite refreshing. I don't scream everytime it rains, yet I have nightmares involving water. Usually, I'm driving along and there's a huge flood and the road is covered in water, yet I can't turn around. I have to continue. If this scenario happened in real life, it would probably be quite scary, so I can see the realism in this dream. The second type of water dream I have involves toilets. Yeah, that's right, toilets. That's ok, you can laugh. I know it's really god damn stupid, but for some reason, my repressed fears manifest themselves as toilets. Some of the toilet dreams involve me really having to go, but all of the toilets all filthy. I'm talking shit on the seats, floor covered in puddles of piss filthy. The second type of toilet dream involves the toilet overflowing. Toilet overflows are by no means frightening, but in the dreams, I'm terrified. Like I said, laugh all you want, because I too admit that it's stupidly funny. These toilet dreams in no way have any bearing on real life fears. I have no idea what my brain is trying to tell me and I'm not sure I want to know.

Now I'm not saying I have these types of dreams every damn night, but I have them more often then dreams I'd like to have. Dreams are supposed to be the mind's way of escaping, yet my mind retreats into a shitter. Great.

Well, at least the DVD releases for tomorrow are pretty good. Let us bask in the gloryness of the DVD goodness which is Tuesday the 18th.

• The Adventures of Briscoe County, Jr.: The Complete Series - What mook doesn't like Bruce Campbell? A fuck-mook that's who. This short lived series was only on for one season but it sure was damn funny. I highly reccomend this purchase, or at least rental, to anyone who enjoys good television.
• The Best of She-Ra - Princess of Power - As with He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, I'll wait until the complete seasons are released and skip the "best of" discs.
• Carnivale: The Complete First Two Seasons - This series looked twisted and cool at the same time. I want to watch it, but I'm told that it ends in an unresolved cliffhanger due to the shows early cancellation.
• The Incredible Hulk: The Complete First Season - YEAH!!! I'm sure a lot of these episodes are pointless and cheesy, but you'd have to be a Commie to hate the Hulk. Hulk would smash puny Commies. You better believe he would.
• Jack of All Trades: The Complete Series - Another Bruce Campbell series. I never watched this when it was on the air so I'm not sure if it's any good or not. The revewers on Amazon seem to like it so I'll try to rent it when I get the chance.
• Ren & Stimpy: The Lost Episodes - You would be an EEDIOT not to find the comedy stylings of Ren and Stimpy entertaining and juvenile. Oh how I long for a Powdered Toast Man movie.
• She's the Man (Widescreen) - I wouldn't watch this movie even if Bruce Canpbell was in it. Unless he was in it naked. Then maybe.

And thats it. Next week we have some more goooood shit coming out. I'm talking some Take Over the World good if you're pondering what I'm pondering.

Excellent.

Rub my Pegleg...

No, the one in the middle.

Saturday night was a Pirates of the Caribbean: Dean Man's Chest viewing opportunity and by Jove, I took it. Some critics are bashing it, and I can kinda see where they're coming from, but it's still a good movie.

The first one is better, I have no problem admitting it. Some are saying that as sequels go, this one reminds them of Empire Strikes back, both because it's that good and because it ends in somewhat of a cliffhanger. I wouldn't go that far. I quite enjoyed POTC 2, but since it's more of a "part 1 of 2" kind of thing, that's exactly what it feels like, so the movie seems kind of pointless. It feels more like a "set-up" than it does a film with it's own plot.

The movie-going public doesn't seem to care though seeing as the film blew everything, including Spider-Man, out of the water in terms of box office sales this weekend. I knew that was going to happen when the 6:45, 7:10, and 7:45 showings at the Castle Rock theatre were all sold out. Since it's a smaller town, when three showings are sold out there, you know it's raking in the bucks.

One last thing on this film: I was told to stay through until the end of the credits for a final little scene. Don't stay. It's a fucking waste of time. At least the after-credits scene in X3 was a crucial bit of info.

I'll close this review with a pirate joke:

A pirate walks into a bar with this enormous steering wheel stuck down his pants. The bartender can't help but ask, "What's with the steering wheel?" "ARRRRGGH," the pirate answers, "it's drivin' me nuts!!"

On to the DVD reviews for tomorrow's releases:

• Basic Instinct 2 - Does anyone still care about what Sharon Stone looks like naked? I'm looking forward to Basic Instinct 3 starring Betty White.

That's really all that's being released this week. Don't cry though, because next week we have a release starring the best actor I've ever seen: Bruce Campbell. You won't want to miss that.

Behold My Return!!

Yes, I am back from my vacation. And oh, was it a good one.

I got $1300 of G.I. Joe stuff for $100. Well, Shane and I split it, so I got $650 worth of Joe stuff for $50. I found a few other toys I needed along the way. I also found Andy a TMNT fig he needed. I am almost as happy as he is to have found it. I mean, I've been looking all over Denver for the last year to find the bastard for Andy and to actually find it is like a little treasure hunt. I found it in Marysville Kansas of all places. When we stopped by my parents house on the way back, my friend Brian dropped off his comic books that he's selling me. There are a shitload of books in there from the 60's and 70's and a few from the 50's. Sure, a bunch of them have corners chewed off from mice and the other various wear marks that 40+ year old books have, but it's a great addition to my collection nonetheless. The trip topic conveniently leads into...

Stupid MotherFucker of the Week:
It seems as though all of the previous Stupid MoFo's have won their awards at retail outlets such as Wal-Marts or Targets. Today's winner is no different. This freakin' dumbass astounded everyone around with her Wal-Mart Self-Checkout tomfoolery. You see, there was a line of people waiting to use the self checkouts, where, I can only assume, alot of dumbasses can be observed on a daily basis. After scanning her entire cart full of items, she taps the Proceed to Payment button. The electronic voice tells her, and the people in the near vicinity, that her total is $236.65 or something like that. This woman then proceed to take out her cash and feed $1 bills to the machine, taking time after each bill is fed to make sure it went through. ONE DOLLAR BILLS!!! ARRRRGGGHHHH!!!!!!! After about 5 minutes of this, the Wal-Mart employee manning the self-checkouts just said to hell with it, flagged her over, and cashiered the transaction from her podium/station. I almost expected the stupid bith to pull a jar of pennies out of her purse and start feeding those into the machine. Here's to you ya frackin hoo'er.

I'm going to take the next few seconds of your time to review Superman Returns, which I saw a few nights ago. Now, there may be spoilers or there may not be. I haven't decided yet, but consider this a warning. Also, never get involved in a land war in Asia. Not really a warning, but good advice regardless.

I thought Superman Returns was a good movie, for a Superman movie. What I mean is that I've never really cared for Superman all that much. Batman, The X-Men, and countless other superhero peeps are so much more dynamic. Superman is just kind of boring because he's so powerfull. His only real weakness is Kryptonite so if you want to hurt the Man of Steel as a filmaker, you have to resort to Kryptonite again and again. This film resorts to Kryptonite. Superman II actually gave Superman not one, but 3 villians who were just as powerfull as he so sometimes Kryptonite isn't used, but honestly, there isn't much you can do with the Big S.

Routh does a great job as Superman and he is the perfect choice. There were a few moments in the film where Routh looked freakishly like Christopher Reeve and I kinda liked that link to the previous films. Whether this is a sequel to the first two or not is open to debate but it's nice to at least get someone who harkens back to the good old days of Reeve, barring of course Superman III and IV. Keven Spacey is excellent as always and his protrayal of Lex also mimics Gene Hackman's Lex. Kate Bosworth is perfectly fine as Lois. And everyone else is good as well, except for Kitty's character which I'll explain here in a few sentences as to not test your limited attention spans.

The film is a bit sappy at points with its Superman/Clark/Lois/Perry's Nephew romance subplot, but it has to be done, so I accept it. There are bits of humor thrown in here and there and those work fairly well. The only major problem I have with the film is it Hammyness. I don't mean that it's full of Hamsters. That would be freakin' sweet however. Superman battling thousands of Hamsters would be a grand spectacle to behold. What I mean is that it's hammy, plain and simple. I'm sure that's what Singer wanted as a director. In a way, it reminds me of the old time Superman shows with George Reeves. But in this movie, it's just cheesy. It works in a movie such as Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow becasue in that film, the time period and settings are supposed to be hammy as well. In Superman Returns, it comes off to me as being dumb because it's supposed to take place in the present day world. It's supposed to be Superman here and now. I'm supposed to believe that this is taking place and the hammy dialog just doesn't cut it. Parker Posey as Kitty Kowalski has some of the worst lines in this film and I feel for her. I cringed inside during her "rescue" scene after her automobile "issue" because her lines were just fuckin' dumb.

A minor problem I has was the pacing of the film. Sure, it wasn't horrible, but the airplane rescue at the beginning of the film felt so much more climactic than anything near the end. Yeah, the ending had Superman facing great odds, but the scenes of him saving the aircraft were amazinging awesome and I was hoping for some of that iconic imagery to round out the film.

It was a good film, but it could have easily been better. I enjoyed watching X3 more than I enjoyed watching Superman Returns, but I expected that going in.

But of course, you need to see it for yourself to form your own opinion. As for the DVD releases for yesterday, I'll tell you what to think.

• Charlie's Angels - The Complete Third Season - If you buy this, you deserve a swift kick to the gonads. And believe me, I have no problem giving it to you.
• Doctor Who: The Complete First Series - I missed a few episodes of this first season but what I saw of it was pretty good. There are some crappy episodes, but that's the case with most British sci-fi. The season finale was actually quite good and has me looking forward to season 2.
• The Matador (Widescreen) - Critics seem to like this film and it looks quite entertaining. I plan to rent it this week.

That and about 5 other items were all that was realeased yesterday. Normally dozens of items make it to the shelves on a Tuesday, but being a holiday, yesterday was sparse. Next week sucks too.

I leave you with a Chuck Norris fact, just becasue I can:

Chuck Norris destroyed the periodic table, because Chuck Norris only recognizes the element of surprise.