Welcome back, everybody! I decided to title this week's post after my soon-to-be-released Orlando travel guide, "Welcome to Mickey Mouse Hell." Keep an eye out in your local bookstore's travel section. Well, I guess if last week's post really didn't have anything going on, this week's will have only slightly more. As your conduit to the world of pop culture, I made my trip to the movies on Saturday a double-feature. I also got to check out a new TV show and a new CD that both came out last week. And, as usual, I have a "Woman I'd Stalk If I Weren't So Lazy." So, good times all around.
Movie Reviews- Kingdom of Heaven (4 1/2 out of 5 Owls)
The first movie I checked out on my Saturday double-feature was the Ridley Scott Crusades epic "Kingdom of Heaven." As a part-time history dork, the Dark Ages and the Crusades is not a time period I normally study, so I was interested in checking it out. Of course, the last movie of this type that I saw in the theaters was the tedious "Troy" so anything would be better than that dreck. But, "Kingdom of Heaven" was really a great film. The story revolves around Balian, a French blacksmith who discovers that his father is a nobleman in the court of the king of Jerusalem who has come to ask his son to join him to protect the holy city from war. From there, we go through the motions of an average man overcoming his own self-doubt and nobility of the court looking their noses down at him to become a hero. Ridley Scott is the director of "Gladiator" so the war scenes in this movie can be heavy on the blood, but it's a lot more important tool to show the brutality of battle than say a movie like "House of Wax." But definitely, "Kindom of Heaven" is for those who like history. If you're looking for action and war like "Gladiator", well there's a lot of down time in between the battle scenes that'll probably bore you. If you're a woman who's wanting to check out Orlando Bloom, well if you liked seeing Brad Pitt in "Troy" than maybe you'll dig it. I loved it, and I think others will too.
- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1 1/2 out of 5 Owls)
Well, maybe this movie suffered from seeing such a great film before it, but "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" did absolutely nothing for me. The film, based on the series of books by Douglas Adams, chronicles the voyages of an average Englishman who's plucked from our planet just seconds before it's demolished to make way for an intergalactic highway. I haven't read the books, but I've always heard great things about them and the excerpts that I've read have been hysterical. And, it seems like any remote use of humor that was in the books was dropped from the movie adaptation. It started out with great promise, as the opening credits are sung by dolphins shortly before they evacuate the planet (as they are the second most intelligent species on the planet while humans score third) to a song called "So Long and Thanks For All the Fish." It's that type of quirky humor that I love. But then, "Hitchhiker's" quickly devolves. Much of it just seems like things are dropped for time, like why it was important for them to get salt in their systems before going into space, why towels are so important, why some intergalactic preacher wanted to send the heros of the film on a trek for a gun, blah, blah, blah... When you're looking down at your watch to see how much longer a movie is within the first half-hour, it's not a good sign. The only moments that made this movie somewhat redeemable were the chronically depressed robot Marvin (voiced appropriately by Alan Rickman) and the fact that the intergalactic president who's clearly not 100% together (probably 20%-25% tops) seemed to be based on our glorious commander-in-chief. Other than that, the movie was dumb, unfunny, and made no sense. But, considering how much I appear to enjoy the small bits of the books that I've read, it has definitely made me want to read them because I feel that the movie is not a good substitute.
Maybe I'm Just Losing My Sense of Humor
Another show that I had been anticipating because it just seemed totally aimed at me was the new MTV2 show Wonder Showzen. The show is a twisted view of Sesame Street, with kids and puppets exploring "adult" topics. This is like a great new thing that I love, taking TV shows of my childhood and distorting them with an adult sense of humor (isn't that pretty much the basis of most of adult swim's programming?). But, Wonder Showzen just tries to play on the shock factor leaving you to wonder if half of the things were even supposed to be funny. One episode even played on a theme that I love to mock, White People, and it still wasn't even remotely funny. Just entirely LAME! Instead of this, maybe we can get some Sifl & Olly reruns??? Please!!! That was a pretty funny show, and now that MTV2 seems to be in competition with their sister network in how "little" music they'll show during their broadcast day, it'll definitely plug some holes in your schedule instead of six hour Pimp My Ride marathons.
May the Licensing Rights Be With You
Man Lucas, how much money is enough? Well, considering that I read in one of your interviews that following Episode III, you're going to be returning back to the arty movies that you've always wanted to make, maybe it's OK to pad your financial reserves. I guess you just had to grow up in the '70s to have any inkling what "THX 1138" is about and all of the nuance and stuff in it. I just see it as about two hours of my life that I'd like back after watching it on AMC a few months ago.
Anyways, the latest in the Lucas marketing machine is that new commercial for Burger King. In it, Darth Vader has a breathe-off with that creepy new Burger King mascot. E!'s The Soup poked fun at the M&M's commercial with Vader in it, and last night's Family Guy had an ending straight out of the original Star Wars (coincidence that Family Guy comes on FOX, which happens to be owned by the same company releasing the new Star Wars).
And in a weekend when over 100 Iraqis have been killed in various terrorist attacks throughout the country, it's good to see that our local FOX affiliate here in the Bay Area, WTVT, devoted the last ten minutes of their evening newscast last night to probing in-depth why Darth Vader is such an iconic figure in American pop culture. This week, I doubt any media outlet will be immune to the "overwhelming" public interest in the final Star Wars movie... At least, that's what they'll tell you. I mean, I love Star Wars, but I can really do without stories on the news that follow the careers of the stars of the original Star Wars trilogy (I hear Harrison Ford is still making movies). Anyways, I'm going to see it on Saturday afternoon with my little brother, so I'm sure I'll have a movie review for you next week.
Random Thoughts
- It's that time again that all women across this great land dread... This week's "Woman I'd Stalk If I Weren't So Lazy." As always, I need to preface this with the fact that IT'S A JOKE! I'm not some creepy stalker type guy because, in reality, I'm too lazy to really muster the willingness to do anything stalker-ish. Anyways, with that being said, last week I wrote about how excited I am for the new Yahoo! 360 platform that will offer blogging and such with other features, and I mentioned that currently you can get to the 360 pages of Yahoo! employees who are testing the new service. I also pointed out how hot some of these women who work for Yahoo! are. In following up on some of the links I posted, one really stood out... So this week's "Womand I'd Stalk If I Weren't So Lazy" is Katleen (no "h" for goodness sakes!!!). I was all set on a different woman this week, then I checked out Kat's blog where she posted pictures from her trip last weekend to SBC Park in San Francisco where she wears a t-shirt that says "Go Beers!" and I was instantly in love. For those who don't remember or ashamedly have never seen it, that's a shot-out (whether she knows it or not) to one of my favorite movies "BASEketball" where the team was called the Milwaukee Beers. So, she's really cute, has a sense of humor, and is really cute (what can I say, she appears to be half Vietnamese and half El Salvadoran, which is hot). Plus, she has a cute baby pic (when I get my 360 account, I'm putting up my Disco Owl picture from 1979). So, Kat (no "h"), you're this week's "Woman I'd Stalk If I Weren't So Lazy." Feel free to contact me through AOwL.com or just come over to Florida to collect your prize.
- Well, I just got the bi-monthly "keep your Internet usage at work business related" speech. But, I'm here to keep you, my loyal readers informed of whatever it is that I feel like writing to you about because that is what I do!
- To keep bobbing on Yahoo!'s knob (hey Kat, I'm a huge Yahoo! mark, does that give me any in with you), I tried out their new music service Yahoo! Music Unlimited. They're currently giving one week away free, so I'm still trying it out, but for the most part I liked it. For current releases, I was able to download entire CDs for the most part. I tried to download Beck's newest, but his current release E-Pro wasn't available which I believe is because it's covered under an exclusive contract with another provider. But, it was easy to use, download times were pretty quick with my DSL connection, and the music quality was excellent. So, I recommend taking it for a test drive and use that free week offer to check it out.
- After ripping the local Fox affiliate here in Tampa for running a feature piece on Darth Vader, I've gotta give a hand to the venerable Nightline for dedicating their entire show Friday night to Beck. To be fair, Nightline normally does great work and they usually do some soft piece on Fridays. But I love that in the piece, hosted by John Flansburgh of They Might Be Giants, they actually point out the media hype that the record label is trying to generate around Beck's new album as if the whole Nightline piece wasn't part of it. Love Beck, love Nightline, but c'mon... News programming shouldn't be an infomercial for someone's new album.
- Using the new Yahoo! Music Unlimited, I got a chance to check out Weezer's new album Make Believe. I'm a huge Weezer fan, but this album kind of snuck up on me which usually isn't a good sign. In the early days of Weezer, there was usually about three years in between albums and when one was released it was a big deal. Now they've pumped out three albums in four years, and you can definitely tell that maybe the creative process isn't what it once was. While I liked Make Believe, you can combine it with Maldroit and the Green Album, and they're all pretty much the same. The Blue Album and Pinkerton were both excellent and distinguishable from each other with a different style. Maybe it's that Pinkerton wasn't a commercial success that they decided to go back to what made the Blue Album so popular and then repeat it again and again. But, before the Weezer geeks come down and brand me with a flying "W", I would probably give Make Believe, if I were using the 5 Owl movie scale, 3 1/2. It was pretty good, but it just wasn't great. That can happen, though, when bands start churning music like they're working on an assembly line.
