Or maybe I just think he's an excellent actor.

Does anybody else remember watching this or have an opinion on the subject?

And I don't care what the hell anybody says, I still am interested in seeing Sauna.

Twitch, have you heard anything about a movie called Black Belt? It's up for pre-sale on the Asian DVD sites and I hadn't heard about it during it's theatrical run.

But in all seriousness, I would really like to see this film.

Having veiwed so many American gangster films, I would love to see if there are differences in how they are handled across the pond.

Chipps, if beer can't help a bad movie get better, then what hope is there?

So the wife and child get a plane for Florida in a couple hours and I'll have the house to myself. I think personal hygiene may suffer this weekend.

You can also crank the volume and not worry about waking wife or teeny.

Good times!

I used to make them and charge $25 bucks per unit.

Easy to do and I had beer money every weekend.

It will blow your mind how hard those things will sling a potato (or wet sock, apple, newspaper, potato with nails in it, etc.)

I put a bolt into a potato and fired it through the outer door of a truck. It even tore up the interior panel of the door.

Tonight I go home to Cruzan rum and pizza and watch Hellboy 2, Wanted and Hancock.

Tomorrow I wake up, give the shower and razor the finger, make a five cheese omelet and watch The Fall, Forbidden Kingdom, Mongol and Night/Day Watch. Beverages on tap tomorrow include Corona, UFO Raspberry Wheat, Guinness and Sierra Nevada.

Then on Saturday I watch some college ball, Get Smart, Don't Mess With the Zohan and The Incredible Hulk. At this point I'll be drinking whatever's left.

And finally on Sunday it's off to Charlotte to watch my beloved Panthers put a beat down on Kansas City. I might have to shower for that one.

I think I should have gone into demolition.

Kiss of the Dragon was a very well done movie. Totally took me by surprise, as I had seen it playing on cable every other day it seemed.

I finally sat down and watched it and very much enjoyed it.

You poor miserable lactose intolerant bastar. To save my plumbing, I just may go squat in the woods behind my house.

I haven't watched Kiss of the Dragon since it came out. It was that good? I remember nothing about it.

That guy was fucking unreal and yeah the fights actually looked a bit more real due the fact that they were tossing each other around instead of looking like they were doing a karate demonstration.

I have trouble putting on mass, so maybe I should look into it.

Kiss of the Dragon is now in the queue.

Anybody else's 401K taking a beating?

I had it at right below the middle of the road (medium risk, medium reward so to speak) and it is still floundering.

It'll be like the Legend of Wooley Swamp, but with explosives rigged up.

P.S. Hey, all. Good afternoon on the right, good morning on the left. G's up, ho's down and whatnot.

While I ate my fish and chips, I watched The Darjeeling Limited, which I liked very much.

Mmmmm... grease.

I'll be needing a skin-tight black outfit (ninja style), some rope, one of those suction-cup diamond cutters to make neat holes in windows, a set of top notch lock picks, and one of those aerosol sprays that let you see laser beams.

I have always wanted to be a cat burglar.

Must not get caught posting.

That son of a bitch is nucking futs even for a cat.

I reckon maybe you'd get 50p for each one. Doesn't seem worth it. The lottery tickets are definitely a better bet.

I could do some 2Pac, Ice T, Ice Cube, NWA, Dr Dre, Snoop, and also I would mix things up by throwing in a little Wu Tang here and there.

"Kiss my ass, fool I'm the illest, bulletproof, I die harder than Bruce Willis..."

Plus they are easy to store in small backpack and hide.

And Darjeeling is a very fine, touching film. I love all things Wes Anderson and its nice to see him get some love once in a great while....

I'm representin' to the fullest givin' devil slugs.

I'm on the block slangin' drugs with the young thugs."

I may have a problem with some of the lyrics. Many peop,e don't take kindly to white guys using what is politely referred to as the 'N-Word', even if I am simply quoting a Thug Life classic.

Maybe we should do a deal. You send me a Moons Over My-Hammy and I'll send you a bag of cod and chips. I'm sure there'll be no problems with sending fast food through the international post.

P.S. I'm also a huge Wes Anderson fan. Some people hate him, but I can't get enough. He has yet to put a foot wrong, in my opinion. I spat a chip across the room with laughter when Jason Schwartzman said, "I love you, too, but I'm going to mace you in the face!" So funny.

Or, just a hard-up white guy try to make a few extra quid doing Big Daddy Kane songs for the public.

"'Cause my rhymes are like spandex, they make any ass seem good."

I think catfish and hushpuppies is our version of fish and chips.

But I guess I really thought about international impacts of it.

Sort of like an Irishman singing the blues..."Ummmm..I'm a wee bit depressed I think...)

Fucking pricks.

Is it any good?

It is going back down now though, as out biggest employer shut their doors. About 1,300 lost jobs.

We have the highest unemployment rate in the state and I think the state leads the nation.

Yikes...

I've made my own hush puppies and also had some almost the size of apples.

Good God I love those things with some catfish, tartar sauce, ketchup and hot sauce.

What the hell is an edible hushpuppy? I can't get the image of Americans eating some kind of shoe-shaped food out of my head.

Little deep fried balls of dough. So fucking good.

401K is now the 301K. I can't believe the money market or CD's is a better option right now, let alone the 529 plan we setup for my daughter. Fuck!

I've never had hushpuppies.

I am thinking very hard about a delicious omelette right now, because that is what a healthy fellow like me eats for tea. Not deep fried balls of dough, no matter how delicious they look.

Mmmmmm... deep fried balls of dough...

If it's dry, you're not doing it right, mate.

Oh well, at least you've put me off the hush puppies.

You'll be drinking in no time at at all.

Also break one in half, or take a baite and put a little sauce in there, as the bread will absorb it.

Mmmmm.

That perfect ass...that tiny waist..

Bastard always keeps us till 9:15..

The common public does not know how their very own lives...the fabric of society..can improve with even one single viewing of The Protector.

Just think, we are a whim away from having the ENTIRE planet ruled by Jaa.

Even animals would bow down to him like the Beastmaster.

Of course they will be stuck there and it will look like he is always trying to start 'Thw Wave'.

I'm going to try one the next time I'm in a tussle. I'm pretty tall, so if I can get close, I think I can give it a shot.

I swear I think I remember seeing this...

It would make a riiippp sound.

You can't get fish and chips round these parts. And cod is an OK substitute but haddock is the real deal.

I could rotate between fish and chips, pesto and pad thai every three days for the rest of my life and be happy.

Hush puppies are tasty but they have to be fresh.

Akira statue thing? Whaaaaa?

One more hour to go before I head home and begin the debauchery. I had to hang a bucket under my maw today to catch the saliva as I thought about rum and Ron Perlman, James McAvoy and Will Smith saving the world.

UConn is playing UNC this weekend? Huskies are going to get Tarheeled, Pillow. I love the ACC!

Uconn has their backup QB playing the rest of the season now, which might not be a bad thing actually.

I can't believe I have to go to class tonight.

For the record Chitty and Hawaiian since you'll both be having a good 'ol time while I'm stuck in my dumb class: you both suck.

If I was sitting next to someone who was cheering on Palin as she mumbled, I think I'd be unknowingly stabbing them repeatedly and only when there was a blood curdling cry from one of the other guests would I realize what I was doing.

I went to the Sideshow Collectibles website. Mercy, it's like soft core porn over there.

Warwick Davis 2012!

Thank Jebus we have basketball to fall back on.

And yes, I do suck. The sweet tasty Corona out of the bottle that is.

All you will see is a cloud of dust and titties, peckers and piss fenders.

I will running along the top like a circus bear on a big beach ball, waiting for a nice tight, wet jizz trap to make a couple of rounds and then time my jump perfectly...

You're killing me, Chitty. I can't type through the laughter and tears.

Cocaine wasn't bad at all, but I was hyper enough and my high was lasting way past everyone else's..

Ever come off a high like that and have someone wide open and going nuts?

Yeah me neither, but they said I was crazier than Kevin Bacon when he was going off his end in that warehouse in Footloose.

Yeeeehaaaa Kitty Kitty!!!!

What's all that about then?

I can't believe Goldfrapp haven't done a Bond. Listen to a track like 'Pilots' and I can hear Bond all over it. I'd also like to hear Lisa Gerrard have a bash - she can do a smoky croon, as evidenced on 'Spaceweaver.'

Weak.

Where are you, fellow English film nerd slackers?

How the hell am I supposed to ask you questions about the Iron Man DVD when you are sleeping like a milk-drunk baby in your soft American bed, made from the supple flesh of Taiwaneese children?

I demand to know about the commentary track! Politely, of course, on account of I am English.

I try to use this at least once a day.

I think that if you're going prospecting for fish oil in Wasilla then the only way you can respect her bat shit crazy ideas is to use one of these "natural" condoms.

Not only are the chances of it not working fucking high, but it doesn't hurt the environment and is downright filthy and degrading. Especially if you fuck her crack whore daughter (in the ass, natch) first and don't wash it.

No. I do not like this woman.

I am sicker than necrophilia and they won't extend my date.

Wankers.

Shitheel.

I still think they should throw money at Massive Attack to do one.

Better to just jid into a sock, I reckon. More dignified.

Instead, I'm staying in to watch Recount (written by Jonathan off Buffy!) and then the vice-presidential debate. Mind you, from what I've heard on the news this morning, nothing all that special happened. I was sort of hoping her head would split open and a crab person would crawl out.

Oh well, maybe it'll send me off into a nice, peaceful sleep.

Second, the fool that I am, I picked up the bare bones edition of Iron Man, and while I didn't search through the disc (since I'm a lazy bastard and was tired as a little Taiwaneese child, I don't believe it has a commentary on it. Which would seem utterly impossible.

Though his heart was in the right place, someone must pay for the traffic.

Sorry professor, say hello to my little friend..#2 papermate.

The crowd has to chant "$15 million well spent" in time to her groans.

Strange, that.

I think it's because I may have been harsh on it. Or not harsh enough.

I may have to have a guinness during lunch today.

this laziness/ cheapness ruins the Guinnes. Wankers. Pencil Jihad on them.

Taking her from behind, but you have to wait till she says "don't Y'all come inside me, us Hockey Mums get pregnant at the drop of a hat and I can't have an abortion because god hates that" Then agree. Just as you're about to shoot, pull out and spit on her back. She'll turn round thinking that you're done and you unload 2 barrels of man custard into her stupid face.

No, I really do not like this woman.

Someone had better appear or I'm going to post more Alaskan based filth. And this time I'm going to link pools of semen to oil spills.

I think I've seen too many deconstructions for this one to grab me.

More!

A poorly done Watchmen will have the fanboys in such a rage, not even Ghostbusters 3 will calm them down.

I just don't like doing it alone *sniff*.

I think it's because the liberal media keep picking on me.

I mean really think about it. There have so many, I can't even begin to count them.

Why doesn't Hollywood redirect this effort to more Dragon movies?

Dragons + nudity = $$$

I'm not even going to revisit the novel, just going to watch the movie and see what happens.

I might give it a go, though, because there's not too much I'm that excited about for next summer. Assuming it comes out next summer.

I'm looking forward to seeing the film again, though.

Yeah, Favreau and Downey Jr. could have been a great commentary.

And, that's right, I said COMIC. Graphic novel, my ass.

Maybe it's a mint film and I just didn't realise it.

I look forward to re-discovering The Dark Knight as a serious crime thriller. A serious crime thriller with ACTION FIGURES!

Don't they?

Not to mention stubborn.

It’s been sixteen years since Steven Seagal enjoyed the biggest success of his career with “Under Siege” — one of the best offerings of the one-man action thrillers that followed “Die Hard” — and thirteen years since its lackluster sequel “Dark Territory” signaled a slow, steady decent into the world of direct-to-video features.

But now, with the former action heavyweight looking to climb his way back into multiplexes, could a long-awaited “Under Siege” threequel be in the offing? It sure can. “There are offers and we’re looking at them,” Seagal told MTV News. And he even has some ideas…of a more alien nature.

“I personally want it to be something more modern,” said Seagal, giving us his thoughts on potential storylines. But it’s one specific angle that will probably have fans intrigued, to say the least.

“In other words,” Seagal began, “I wouldn’t mind if it was about something more mystical or…maybe extraterrestrial in nature. Some real government top secrets instead of just the typical.”

Well, here’s hoping. So what say you, Seagalogists? Could you see Casey Ryback tossing E.T. through a window? Let us hear your thoughts in the comments below.

Also, it's no fun around here unless you stir up a few arguments. These hijacked TBs we get on are nice and all that, but it's a little too cozy sometimes.

Is that less cozy for ya? Cunt?

If Jar Jar exists in the same world as the ETs (and The Phantom Menace confirms that he does), I see no reason why some kind of intergalactic time travel doodad couldn't bring him to Earth for a showdown with Seagal. It would be hilarious. He'd be executing his meticulously prepaired plan while also knocking stuff over and stepping in poop and whatnot.

Seagal won't know what's hit him.

A) Good, or;

B) Quite preposterously bad.

Daredevil isn't either.

I do like Jennifer Garner in it, though. Great midriff, as I believe has been established before, plus she does that adorable nose crinkle thing really well.

Midriff. Nose crinkle. Best parts of Daredevil.

Or nose crinkle?

Ooooh, I've never got a Charlatans reference into a TB.

And I still haven't. It should be North Country boy. But Frank is from the west.

And it looks like I did get a Charlatans reference into a post. Even if I had to do it by referring to an inaccurate reference.

Clever, am I.

However, Alba, regardless of the horrid acting, is a absolute joy to watch. Much better than dog face.

I concur, the FF films are better than Spidey 3.

Alba> Dunst.

I may be stubborn, and I may be from the west country, but I do have feelings, you know.

Bunch a cunts.

My ranking of the three would be:

1. Spiderman 3

2. Fantastic Four

3. X3 (the Indy IV of the X-Men trilogy)

"Bunch a cunts."

Here's a tissue...cunt.

That is a just a beautiful, beautiful thing. Jessica Alba's ass, bobbling away underwater. Lovely.

After reading that, I'm not sure that's true because that actually terrifies me. But there was no dancing in X3, so it gets the nod.

Anyway, the west country is dangerously near Wales. And nothing good comes from Wales.

I would say Juggernaut, Angel existing for no reason other than to look pretty on the posters, Rogue giving up her powers and abandoning the team, killing Professor X just because you have no idea what the fuck else to do for drama, and making all Wolverine fights scenes repetitive, tired, and dull-- are far worse offenses than anything in Spiderman 3.

Us Bristolians steer clear of Wales at all times except for Christmas, when we all like to pop over to Cardiff for shopping.

Also, I once saw Faith No More in Newport. They were great.

Can you tell I'm looking for another job?

I just don't fucking care anymore.

X3 looks great compared to them.

She could eat corn through a tennis racket.

What do you hate so much about Superman Returns.....other than the fact its just a rehash of the same ideas we've seen in previous films.

2) Uncle Ben being killed by the Sandman. You know, Raimi you helmet, Spidey does not have to be personally connected to every villain.

3)Crap CGI. It cost HOW MUCH?

4)Dunst singing. Twice

5) Dunst Singing.

6)Emo/ homo Peter strutting his funky stuff like some reject from Saturday Night fever

7)Venom. Not big. Not clever. Just a confusing fucking mess

8)Sandman turning into Godzilla. Fuck off.

9)Power Ranger Goblin (see previous comment)

10) Harry and MJ making breakfast. Did I need to see this? no. Did I care? no.

11)Sandman's dying daughter. Do I need to feel sorry for the Villain?No. Did I care? no

I can go on and on with this, but it was, frankly, fucking dreadful.

Any of the dancing/singing scenes horrid, as was the 'bad' Peter strutting down the street. Considering what came before in the two movies, this extreme campyness was out of left field. And the fact that there was more than one singing and/or dancing scene...awful.

The initial fight sequence with Spidey vs. Harry...Spidey is not indestructible. Sorry.

The whole Sandman tied to Ben storyline...dumb. Not every villain needs to be tied to the hero.

The killing of Prof X..didn't happen, as he switched bodies at the end. I don't have a problem with that one. The cyclops death was stupid, as was the whole Rogue storyline. Day to Night - ridiculous.

You know the way you feel about Indy 4. That's how I feel about Superman Returns. It was SHIT.

Maybe there's something wrong with me.

Just to be clear.

I wonder if they can also help with my Gilmore Girls addiction? Not that I want help, because Gilmore Girls is awesome.

I did enjoy the airplane sequence though.

Hilariously, I nearly typed "Golden Girls" in there.

No, only joking. I had no strong feelings one way or another about that one.

Golden gate bridge sequence-- equivalent to Shia swinging on vines.

If Harry uses the phrase, or some derivative of the phrase "It just kind of worked for me" then the film is garbage of the lowest kind. Because that is Harry making excuses for stuff he knows is substandard but is still determined to like.

It's never failed me yet.

It just makes a nice change from the stuff I usually watch.

Also, agreed, Lorelai Snr does have a wonderful ass. So that helps.

Now I realize a lot of those CW type shows have very spankable babes in them, but holy fuck on a stick are those horrid things to sit through. My wife will watch some of those now and then. Not even sure which ones they are, maybe the new zip code show and some other one. I don't know, they all involve hot rich white people.

I have saved up three whole episodes of Gilmore Girls to watch on video, too! Lucky, lucky me.

Good weekends to all. Even the cunts.

But I think Singer executed the film just fine. And I really like Routh. He should have just demanded a better script. Something fresh....not the same fucking real estate scheme from Luthor. Fuck Luthor-- get a villain that can actually beat the shit out of Superman for cunt's sake!!

Sloppy, stupid film-making.

And we'll agree to differ on SR, because I don't think my blood pressure can take it- but let me put it this way, I would rather sit through 50 consecutive episodes of Coronation St without a toilet break or a cigarette break than watch it again.

And I think I would have a more enjoyabe time sitting in a puddle of my own piss, suffering through nicotine withdrawl in front of a serious that's been clinically proven to induce suicide in monkeys than I would watching Singer's wankfest.

Good laaaaaawwwwwd.

I'm amazed this was never explored in any of the movies.

I would fly over football stadiums and let the shit rain down.

And palin watched. Obviously.

Is this you sticking your head in for a second or can you really post today?

So did Danny win the Seagal set?

And I'd spend a few moments blowing a superload through Palin's left eye. Just for fun.

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/t hread/17504

It's really annoying because I've got something I want to post as well, and I said I'd comment, and don't want to look like a lying toerag. I'm not a politician

This weekend will be the first in a while that we do not have 1,000 things to do, so I will get to give feedback tonight whilst I drinketh me Pumpkin Ale.

God bless you. I'm lucky I wasn't eating when I read your trampoline post.

I liked the Hulk too, but don't feel compelled to buy it immediately.

Hellboy 2 and Wall-E are must haves though.

All around me, a million cops in their absurd post-9/11 space-combat get-ups stand guard as assholes in papier-mache puppet heads scramble around for one last moment of network face time before the coverage goes dark. Four-chinned delegates from places like Arkansas and Georgia are pouring joyously out the gates in search of bars where they can load up on Zombies and Scorpion Bowls and other "wild" drinks and extramaritally grope their turkey-necked female companions in bathroom stalls as part of the "unbelievable time" they will inevitably report to their pals back home. Only 21st-century Americans can pass through a metal detector six times in an hour and still think they're at a party.

The defining moment for me came shortly after Palin and her family stepped down from the stage to uproarious applause, looking happy enough to throw a whole library full of books into a sewer. In the crush to exit the stadium, a middle-aged woman wearing a cowboy hat, a red-white-and-blue shirt and an obvious eye job gushed to a male colleague they were both wearing badges identifying them as members of the Colorado delegation at the Xcel gates.

"She totally reminds me of my cousin!" the delegate screeched. "She's a real woman! The real thing!"

I stared at her open-mouthed. In that moment, the rank cynicism of the whole sorry deal was laid bare. Here's the thing about Americans. You can send their kids off by the thousands to get their balls blown off in foreign lands for no reason at all, saddle them with billions in debt year after congressional year while they spend their winters cheerfully watching game shows and football, pull the rug out from under their mortgages, and leave them living off their credit cards and their Wal-Mart salaries while you move their jobs to China and Bangalore.

And none of it matters, so long as you remember a few months before Election Day to offer them a two-bit caricature culled from some cutting-room-floor episode of Roseanne as part of your presidential ticket. And if she's a good enough likeness of a loudmouthed middle-American archetype, as Sarah Palin is, John Q. Public will drop his giant-size bag of Doritos in gratitude, wipe the Sizzlin' Picante dust from his lips and rush to the booth to vote for her. Not because it makes sense, or because it has a chance of improving his life or anyone else's, but simply because it appeals to the low-humming narcissism that substitutes for his personality, because the image on TV reminds him of the mean, brainless slob he sees in the mirror every morning.

Sarah Palin is a symbol of everything that is wrong with the modern United States. As a representative of our political system, she's a new low in reptilian villainy, the ultimate cynical masterwork of puppeteers like Karl Rove. But more than that, she is a horrifying symbol of how little we ask for in return for the total surrender of our political power.

Not only is Sarah Palin a fraud, she's the tawdriest, most half-assed fraud imaginable, 20 floors below the lowest common denominator, a character too dumb even for daytime TV -and this country is going to eat her up, cheering her every step of the way. All because most Americans no longer have the energy to do anything but lie back and allow ourselves to be jacked off by the calculating thieves who run this grasping consumer paradise we call a nation.

The Palin speech was a political masterpiece, one of the most ingenious pieces of electoral theater this country has ever seen. Never before has a single televised image turned a party's fortunes around faster.

Until the Alaska governor actually ascended to the podium that night, I was convinced that John McCain had made one of the all-time campaign season blunders, that he had acted impulsively and out of utter desperation in choosing a cross-eyed political neophyte just two years removed from running a town smaller than the bleacher section at Fenway Park. It even crossed my mind that there was an element of weirdly self-destructive pique in McCain's decision to cave in to his party's right-wing base in this fashion, that perhaps he was responding to being ordered by party elders away from a tepid, ideologically promiscuous hack like Joe Lieberman -- reportedly his real preference -- by picking the most obviously unqualified, doomed-to-fail joke of a Bible-thumping buffoon. As in: You want me to rally the base? Fine, I'll rally the base. Here, I'll choose this rifle-toting, serially pregnant moose killer who thinks God lobbies for oil pipelines. Happy now?

But watching Palin's speech, I had no doubt that I was witnessing a historic, iconic performance. The candidate sauntered to the lectern with the assurance of a sleepwalker - and immediately launched into a symphony of snorting and sneering remarks, taking time out in between the superior invective to present herself as just a humble gal with a beefcake husband and a brood of healthy, combat-ready spawn who just happened to be the innocent targets of a communist and probably also homosexual media conspiracy. It was a virtuoso performance. She appeared to be completely without shame and utterly full of shit, awing a room full of hardened reporters with her sickly sweet line about the high-school-flame-turned-hubby who, "five children later" is "still my guy." It was like watching Gidget address the Reichstag.

Within minutes, Palin had given TV audiences a character infinitely recognizable to virtually every American: the small-town girl with just enough looks and a defiantly incurious mind who thinks the PTA minutes are Holy Writ, and injustice means the woman next door owning a slightly nicer set of drapes or flatware. Or the governorship, as it were.

Right-wingers of the Bush-Rove ilk have had a tough time finding a human face to put on their failed, inhuman, mean-as-hell policies. But it was hard not to recognize the genius of wedding that faltering brand of institutionalized greed to the image of the suburban American supermom. It's the perfect cover, for there is almost nothing in the world meaner than this species of provincial tyrant. Palin herself burned this political symbiosis into the pages of history with her seminal crack about the "difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull: lipstick," blurring once and for all the lines between meanness on the grand political scale as understood by the Roves and Bushes of the world, and meanness of the small-town variety as understood by pretty much anyone who has ever sat around in his ranch-house den dreaming of a fourth plasma-screen TV or an extra set of KC HiLites for his truck, while some ghetto family a few miles away shares a husk of government cheese.

In her speech, Palin presented herself as a raging baby-making furnace of middle-class ambition next to whom the yuppies of the Obama set -who never want anything all that badly except maybe a few afternoons with someone else's wife, or a few kind words in The New York Times Book Review -- seem like weak, self-doubting celibates, the kind of people who certainly cannot be trusted to believe in the right God or to defend a nation. We're used to seeing such blatant cultural caricaturing in our politicians. But Sarah Palin is something new. She's all caricature. As the candidate of a party whose positions on individual issues are poll losers almost across the board, her shtick is not even designed to sell a line of policies. It's just designed to sell her. The thing was as much as admitted in the on-air gaffe by former Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan, who was inadvertently caught saying on MSNBC that Palin wasn't the most qualified candidate, that the party "went for this, excuse me, political bullshit about narratives."

The great insight of the Palin VP choice is that huge chunks of American voters no longer even demand that their candidates actually have policy positions; they simply consume them as media entertainment, rooting for or against them according to the reflexive prejudices of their demographic, as they would for reality-show contestants or sitcom characters. Hicks root for hicks, moms for moms, born-agains for born-agains. Sure, there was politics in the Palin speech, but it was all either silly lies or merely incidental fluffery buttressing the theatrical performance. A classic example of what was at work here came when Palin proudly introduced her Down syndrome baby, Trig, then stared into the camera and somberly promised parents of special-needs kids that they would "have a friend and advocate in the White House." This was about a half-hour before she raised her hands in triumph with McCain, a man who voted against increasing funding for special-needs education.

Palin's charge that "government is too big" and that Obama "wants to grow it" was similarly preposterous. Not only did her party just preside over the largest government expansion since LBJ, but Palin herself has been a typical Bush-era Republican, borrowing and spending beyond her means. Her great legacy as mayor of Wasilla was the construction of a $14.7 million hockey arena in a city with an annual budget of $20 million; Palin OK'd a bond issue for the project before the land had been secured, leading to a protracted legal mess that ultimately forced taxpayers to pay more than six times the original market price for property the city ended up having to seize from a private citizen using eminent domain. Better yet, Palin ended up paying for the fucking thing with a 25 percent increase in the city sales tax. But in her speech, of course, Palin presented herself as the enemy of tax increases, righteously bemoaning that "taxes are too high," and Obama "wants to raise them."

Palin hasn't been too worried about federal taxes as governor of a state that ranks number one in the nation in federal spending per resident ($13,950), even as it sits just 18th in federal taxes paid per resident ($5,434). That means all us taxpaying non-Alaskans spend $8,500 a year on each and every resident of Palin's paradise of rugged self-sufficiency. Not that this sworn enemy of taxes doesn't collect from her own: Alaska currently collects the most taxes per resident of any state in the nation.

The rest of Palin's speech was the same dog-whistle crap Republicans have been running on for decades. Palin's crack about a mayor being "like a community organizer, except that you have actual responsibilities" testified to the Republicans' apparent belief that they can win elections till the end of time running against the Sixties. (They're probably right.) The incessant grousing about the media was likewise par for the course, red meat for those tens of millions of patriotic flag-waving Americans whose first instinct when things get rough is to whine like bitches and blame other people -reporters, the French, those ungrateful blacks soaking up tax money eating big prison meals, whomever -for their failures.

Add to this the usual lies about Democrats wanting to "forfeit" to our enemies abroad and coddle terrorists, and you had a very run-of-the-mill, almost boring Republican speech from a substance standpoint. What made it exceptional was its utter hypocrisy, its total disregard for reality, its absolute unrelation to the facts of our current political situation. After eight years of unprecedented corruption, incompetence, waste and greed, the party of Karl Rove understood that 50 million Americans would not demand solutions to any of these problems so long as they were given a new, new thing to beat their meat over.

Sarah Palin is that new, new thing, and in the end it won't matter that she's got an unmarried teenage kid with a bun in the oven. Of course, if the daughter of a black candidate like Barack Obama showed up at his convention with a five-month bump and some sideways-capwearing, junior-grade Curtis Jackson holding her hand, the defenders of Traditional Morality would be up in arms. But the thing about being in the realitymaking business is that you don't need to worry much about vetting; there are no facts in your candidate's bio that cannot be ignored or overcome.

One of the most amusing things about the Palin nomination has been the reaction of horrified progressives. The Internet has been buzzing at full volume as would-be defenders of san-ity and reason pore over the governor's record in search of the Damning Facts.

My own telephone began ringing off the hook with calls from ex-Alaskans and friends of Alaskans determined to help get the "truth" about Sarah Palin into the major media. Pretty much anyone with an Internet connection knows by now that Palin was originally for the "Bridge to Nowhere" before she opposed it (she actually endorsed the plan in her 2006 gubernatorial campaign), that even after the project was defeated she kept the money, that she didn't actually sell the Alaska governor's state luxury jet on eBay but instead sold it at a $600,000 loss to a campaign contributor (who is now seeking $50,000 in taxpayer money to pay maintenance costs).

Then there are the salacious tales of Palin's swinging-meat-cleaver management style, many of which seem to have a common thread: In addition to being ensconced in a messy ethics investigation over her firing of the chief of the Alaska state troopers (dismissed after refusing to sack her sister's ex-husband), Palin also reportedly fired a key campaign aide for having an affair with a friend's wife. More ominously, as mayor of Wasilla, Palin tried to fire the town librarian, Mary Ellen Emmons, after Emmons resisted pressure to censor books Palin found objectionable.

Then there's the God stuff: Palin belongs to a church whose pastor, Ed Kalnins, believes that all criticisms of George Bush "come from hell," and wondered aloud if people who voted for John Kerry could be saved. Kalnins, looming as the answer to Obama's Jeremiah Wright, claims that Alaska is going to be a "refuge state" for Christians in the last days, last days which he sometimes speaks of in the present tense. Palin herself has been captured on video mouthing the inevitable born-again idiocies, such as the idea that a recent oilpipeline deal was "God's will." She also described the Iraq War as a "task that is from God" and part of a heavenly "plan." She supports teaching creationism and "abstinence only" in public schools, opposes abortion even for victims of rape, denies the science behind global warming and attends a church that seeks to convert Jews and cure homosexuals.

All of which tells you about what you'd expect from a raise-the-base choice like Palin: She's a puffed-up dimwit with primitive religious beliefs who had to be educated as to the fact that the Constitution did not exactly envision government executives firing librarians. Judging from the importance progressive critics seem to attach to these revelations, you'd think that these were actually negatives in modern American politics. But Americans like politicians who hate books and see the face of Jesus in every tree stump. They like them stupid and mean and ignorant of the rules.

Which is why Palin has only seemed to grow in popularity as more and more of these revelations have come out. The same goes for the most damning aspect of her biography, her total lack of big-game experience. As governor of Alaska, Palin presides over a state whose entire population is barely the size of Memphis. This kind of thing might matter in a country that actually worried about whether its leader was prepared for his job -but not in America.

In America, it takes about two weeks in the limelight for the whole country to think you've been around for years. To a certain extent, this is why Obama is getting a pass on the same issue. He's been on TV every day for two years, and according to the standards of our instant-ramen culture, that's a lifetime of hands-on experience. It is worth noting that the same criticisms of Palin also hold true for two other candidates in this race, John McCain and Barack Obama.

As politicians, both men are more narrative than substance, with McCain rising to prominence on the back of his bio as a suffering war hero and Obama mostly playing the part of the long-lost, futureembracing liberal dreamboat not seen on the national stage since Bobby Kennedy died. If your stomach turns to read how Palin's Kawasaki 704 glasses are flying off the shelves in middle America, you have to accept that middle America probably feels the same way when it hears that Donatella Versace dedicated her collection to Obama during Milan Fashion Week. Or sees the throwing-panties-onstage-"I love you, Obama!" ritual at the Democratic nominee's town-hall appearances.

So, sure, Barack Obama might be every bit as much a slick piece of imageering as Sarah Palin. The difference is in what the image represents. The Obama image represents tolerance, intelligence, education, patience with the notion of compromise and negotiation, and a willingness to stare ugly facts right in the face, all qualities we're actually going to need in government if we're going to get out of this huge mess we're in.

Here's what Sarah Palin represents: being a fat fucking pig who pins "Country First" buttons on his man titties and chants "U-S-A! U-S-A!" at the top of his lungs while his kids live off credit cards and Saudis buy up all the mortgages in Kansas.

The truly disgusting thing about Sarah Palin isn't that she's totally unqualified, or a religious zealot, or married to a secessionist, or unable to educate her own daughter about sex, or a fake conservative who raised taxes and horked up earmark millions every chance she got. No, the most disgusting thing about her is what she says about us: that you can ram us in the ass for eight solid years, and we'll not only thank you for your trouble, we'll sign you up for eight more years, if only you promise to stroke us in the right spot for a few hours around election time.

Democracy doesn't require a whole lot of work of its citizens, but it requires some: It requires taking a good look outside once in a while, and considering the bad news and what it might mean, and making the occasional tough choice, and soberly taking stock of what your real interests are.

This is a very different thing from shopping, which involves passively letting sitcoms melt your brain all day long and then jumping straight into the TV screen to buy a Southern-Style Chicken Sandwich because the slob singing "I'm Lovin' It!" during the commercial break looks just like you. The joy of being a consumer is that it doesn't require thought, responsibility, self-awareness or shame: All you have to do is obey the first urge that gurgles up from your stomach. And then obey the next. And the next. And the next.

And when it comes time to vote, all you have to do is put your Country First -- just like that lady on TV who reminds you of your cousin. U-S-A, baby. U-S-A! U-S-A!

And that article is great- It's the same one that I saw in Rolling stone- the whole thing is worth it for that "Gidget addressing the Reichstag" line. Magic.

http://www.newyorker.com/humor /2008/09/22/080922sh_shouts_sa unders?currentPage=all

I'm a bit ashamed of that,

http://tinyurl.com/4pm4oq

He would rip all 80 lbs of Tony in half and piss on his remains.

He would literally grab Jaa and start biting, chewing and swallowing.

Seagal would get through eating then burp and look at the camera and say something like "I love Thai food."

It's trying to punch through a nine-layer wedding cake.

While you are wrestling your fist from the grease-powered force field around him, he has already chopped your throat and the fight is more or less over.

Fuck.

I will miss the paycheck, but that is all. I was not really meant to be corporate drone anyway.

Maybe this is the shove I needed to get out and find something better.

Trying to stay positive.

Seriously, that fucking suck. I certainly wish you the best in finding another job. You have the CoC's good wishes.

Plus it will feel fine knowing I'm leaving two month's worth of mess to clean out of our server right now.

Hack, hack, hack...

Just say neigh and the CoC might will be unleashed and the seeds of your employer's destruction will be sown...

did I mention how hot Claudia Cardinale is?

Theurapuetic to say the least.

This is your last warning. No bailout could save us from that foul creature.

Like it'll help.

Shit I needed that.

That movie is gonna rock.

And imagine the look on his face when he screams it-- http://tinyurl.com/54m77c

http://www.tronguy.net/images/ headshot.jpg

"As much as when you see a blonde with great tits and a great ass, you say to yourself, 'Hey, she must be stupid or must have nothing else to offer,' which maybe is the case many times. But then again there is the one that is as smart as her breasts look, great as her face looks, beautiful as her whole body looks gorgeous, you know, so people are shocked." –in an interview with Esquire

http://politicalhumor.about.co m/cs/schwarzenegger/a/aa080703 .html

"I have inhaled, exhaled everything."

The Man: [Satan bumps into a skateboarder who is wearing a "Satan Rules" shirt] Hey kid, nice shirt.

Skateboarder: [Looks Satan up and down] Fuck you man.

[Skates into the road]

The Man: [Whispers] Hey Kid.

[the skateboarder looks around and gets hit by a bus]

The Man: ...Nice shirt.

Best part of the posts today, that Im so sorry I missed were all the talk of hush puppies. Hush Puppies are like a food from heaven, if heaven has a deep fryer, which I hope it does, since then my cholesterol won't matter. I loved how franklin was skeptical, and then saw the pics and was like I want one now.

If we ever have a live in-person, FOES/COC convention, we are going to have to have one meal of Everclear and Hushpuppies...and some fried ocre. It is decreed.

Oh, any of you fellows in the New England area? Im crusing up there(really, on a cruise ship) starting the 12th.

Chitty, sorry about the job. I was there two weeks after my daughter was born and that was tough. It pushed me to start writing the scripts I had in my head though.

One of my best friend's dad died last night so that news has hit me hard and made for a strange day.

So I haven't watched everything I had planned but I've watched enough.

Hellboy 2 was mediocre. The Fall was fantastic. Mongol was even more fantastic. The Forbidden Kingdom will quickly be the forgotten kingdom. Hancock was a bomb. Zohan was idiotic to the extreme but it hit the right note for me and I laughed the entire time. Run Fatboy Run was cute but forgettable. Get Smart had one of two moments but was worthless. The Dark Knight? Where is all the love coming from? That movie had more plot holes than the case to invade Iraq. So far the worst of the bunch. Total shit for me. And lastly, The Incredible Hulk is pretty good. Overall, this much praised summer is a letdown of epic proportions so far. Speed Racer is still the champ and fuck people for making it the biggest bomb of the bunch. And Iron Man which I saw last week was just OK.

If I have time I'll squeeze in The Mummy 3 when I get home from the game tomorrow and hopefully that will redeem this horrible taste I have in my mouth.

The Fall is the best movie I have seen of 2008 so far, and Speed Racer is the second best one.

What plot holes in the Dark Knight are you talking about Hawaiian? I'm just curious, because I probably missed some stuff. It does deal with a lot of things throughout the film, and it was a lot to take in.

I'm sorry to hear about your friend's dad too man. Damn, I feel like it has been really rough on here lately. People losing jobs and everything. It's a bit surprising to me too how big of a toll all of this takes on me. I wish the best of luck to everybody in what seems like may be a pretty hard time.

The CoC will prevail in the end.

The Joker, a sadistic psychopath being left alone in a holding cell with one guy? Once again, do they not see what we see coming a mile away?

And putting that much explosives in a hospital AND two ferries and nobody sees anything?

I know it's a comic book movie but Nolan is trying to create a comic book movie that is closer to existing in the real world than any comic book movie before it. The writing is just lazy and flimsy.

Because Spider Man is way more cartoonish, I can buy Doc Ock having all that gear delivered to an abandoned warehouse without the FedEx guy asking too many questions, but the new Batman universe is aiming for too much real word to let those kinds of loose ends fly.

And you know, that ferry boat sequence just didn't work for me at all.

Maybe it's just that I've got movie overload going on because that was a dozen movies in two days but TDK and just about everything else was a letdown.

How freaking sad is it when Don't Mess With The Zohan was the highlight of a day with a Batman, Hellboy and Hulk movies.

I'll actually have to watch TDK, The Hulk, Get Smart and Hancock again because my wife wants to see them all and maybe one at a time they will come off better (well, not The Hulk, that actually was a darn entertaining movie in the end so I won't suggest it needs to get better), but right now things look grim.

The Fall, Mongol and Speed Racer all the way. I'm still holding a shred of hope for The Mummy and Western Django.

It's just odd to me Hawaiian. Usually you make such a point of liking all these movies regardless of their flaws. I just figured you would have just let more go.

The Dark Knight complaints have some ground, but I think it's being a little nitpicky too. Sure the caravan guys knew it was going to be ambushed. That's why there were a bunch of other guards riding with them, Batman showed up almost immediately, and even Jim Gordon was waiting in the passenger seat to bag the Joker. So what are you complaining about? And yeah, leaving one guy with the Joker was stupid. That guy was stupid and he let himself get carried away and the Joker's ploy worked. That was the whole point.

I'm not gonna defend it too much, because I respect your opinion so much. I'm just offering up some discussion I guess.

Overall, half were good to great so 50% is probably pretty good considering movies today.

In about an hour we have a first big group movie night with 20 some people attending and we are showing City Lights followed by The Fall(my fave of the year thus far), so I can see what a larger group thinks of it.

HOD, Im a bit surprised by your Dark Knight and HB2 reactions, as they were two of my fave summer films, but to each his own.

Hustler, I just watched Devils on the Doorstep last night.

First, to all on here, Mori you too, if you haven't seen DOTD check it out. It's not my find, but Kung-fu's. Directed by Jiang Wen, it's a black and white film made in 2000 and yet, it's artistry, it's use of sound, and it's cinematography make one think that it could have been directed by any of the asian masters working during the 50s and 60s. The premise is simple: during WW2 a peasant in a chinese hamlet is given custody of two japanese prisoners, and the mystery man who gives them to him, says he will return for them. When he doesnt, the town finds themselves responsible for the men.

The oddest part was the use of satirical humor in the midst of warmer human drama and then darker tragedy. The last twenty minutes of so of this movie were grueling, and in retropsect, I'm glad I watched this before my wife, because that drastic tonal shift without warning probably would have ruined the movie for her.

It's a great find though, and if Im being vague, it's because the real joy comes from watching it. It's a masterpiece.

City Lights and The Fall were total hits. Im surprised since there were many there with really mainstream tastes(one couple was actually advocating the watching of Mean Girls at a future movie night) and everyone stayed long after the fact talking about the films. So, mission accomplished.

Our next night falls on Nov 2nd(due to my wife and I being away for vacation) and it's going to be The Orphanage and Something Wicked this Way Comes. I think those might honestly be harder sells, due to our group's aversion to horror films. But everyone got excited over the Something Wicked trailer, so there is hope.

Fuck you all!

No, only messing. You're alright, you lot.

No, I didn't mean that. You're all good folks.

I feel that this deserves a good old fashioned changian flying possum attack.

Nothing is as frightening as being assaulted by 1007 airborne screaming possums all armed with freshly sharpened #2 pencils.

It isn't perfect, but it still rocks.

The Insomniac Hustler

I just saw Natural Born Killers for the first time. I think I need to rewatch it though since all the cacophony was a little disorienting. I liked the social commentary though, and the romance between the two killers. Not a bad movie, I think.

Also, it was good to see HOD agrees with me on the over-rated-ness of The Dark Knight. Still, I'm not going to argue about that this week. Enough with that nonsense. I need something new to stir things up.

Most of you probably know Hertzfeldt from his "Rejected" cartoon (if you haven't seen it, it's on youtube). It's hilarious. but lately, he has gotten into some much more serious stuff. It's still funny, but deals with some difficult issues, like death and sanity. hell, one of his shorts is called The Meaning of Life.

On another interesting note, I checked online before I went to the screening, and was surprised to see that Hertzfeldt's tour will also apparently be going to Austin Texas, and his stuff will be screening at the Alamo Drafthouse!!! So that's cool. i wonder if any of the big guys will post anything on it.

I did tape Romance & Cigarettes and Secretary, but I haven't seen them yet so my opinions are not fully formed. I'm going to assume they're both good, though.

Moriarty, if you're there...

Best movie for a drinking game, and what is the drinking game? Criteria is it's a movie that gets better the more drunk you are, and there's something in it to get shit faced to.

Go.

It's pissing me off that I can't find it in the TV guide.

Toodles

You all draw characters and have to drink every time one of them says their famous line,

And Regarding TDK. It is overrated, no question about it, but it's still fucking good.

I'm considering getting an internet connection at home just so I can download the telly I don't want to have to wait a year to see.

As to Heroes, you're a braver man that I. I just can't watch that shit. A friend of mine loves it and she's always on at me to give it another go, but I saw the first four or five episodes of season 1 and I hated it.

I know almost nothing about Ramance & Cigarettes apart from it has James Gandolfini in it, and I liked him very much on The Sopranos. I hope it's not shit.

I also have The Island on tape, but I don't know why. Sometimes I just tape stuff in case I'm ever stuck with nothing to watch, but the last time that happened I ended up sitting through Intolerable Cruelty, which is a horrible film.

Secretary is VERY heavy, it isn't easy watching, but has a great performance from James SPader, and although she is one of Talkbacker's favourite kicking targets Maggie Gylenhall.

Intolerable Cruelty is SHIT. There's no getting round it.

And it didn't.

It's also the only thing I ever watch on ITV, apart from their occasional boxing coverage and the odd film.

Otherwise, I avoid them like the plague, partly on account of growing up with two younger sisters who watched musicals all the damn time.

It's horrid- appropriatly enough it is the comedy equivalent of Heroes.

Plus, who the fuck does Sarah Palin think she's fooling with that aggravating, down-home, folksy "you betcha" shit? Jesus Harold Christ, she's annoying. She even winked at the camera at one point. Winked at the fucking camera!

Is this really want people want from a politician?

Why am I even asking that question. George W Bush - two term president and king of folksy, down-home bullshit.

Jarv, how was your weekend?

drinking game. Hmm, get a bunch of average joes, show Eraserhead and take a drink everytime someone exclaims WTF?

Or watch a Cuba Gooding Jr. movie, and drink everytime he puts his hands in the air and does that scream thing of his. Best part is in the end you won't know if the nasty headache and vomiting is from the alcohol or the movie.

Also, the last bit of voicework for Vincent Price I believe.

Anyone see anything good over the weekend.

The new stuff I saw was Devils on the Doorstep(masterpiece), Isle of the Dead(interesting and a bit creepy), and The Leopard Man(actually pretty good, but it's no Cat People).

Mind you, you'd be bolloxed very quickly if you did that. Maybe even dead.

Every time that gargantuan asspiece Rob Schneider annoys you- Drink.

I do expect death within the first 10 minutes.

So I watched Sympathy for Lady Vengeance last night, and I have to say I think it's my second favorite out of the trilogy.

The bleach for 3 years....I thought that was pretty damn funny. Though the whole content of the crimes committed by the teacher greatly disturbs me. I tell ya, I've definitely become more sensitive to movies that have little kids in them since I've had a daughter.

I'd like to watch all three of those again at some point.

But the first one I thought was actually pretty funny.

Let the insults and doubts about my sanity commence!

I like to laugh, and I see nothing wrong with that.

I will always like coming here to the AICN, but it's a little less entertaining without Vern.

Where are you, Vern? We need you to provide your hilarious and surprisingly insightful views on the films of cinema!

Anyway, I am checking out early for more job-hunting adventures. I will be back tomorrow to rattle on (whether your interested or not) about what I thought about Secretary.

Man, I hope it has nudity. I love nudity.

Kind of like a palin fantasy- you tie her standing upright in a seedy toilet, spank her for a bit and then beat one out onto her abused butt.

And that is actually a scene in the film.

And like I said earlier, Zohan had me giggling non-stop. It was possibly the most idiotic movie ever made and I'll never watch it again, but considering I had just learned my friend's father died, it supplied the laughs I needed.

I'll also fairly forgiving when it comes to hyper violence too, which is why I enjoyed Crank and Shoot Em Up so much.

I'm not going to say anything else about TDK until I watch it again. I guess all the massive expectations I had going in were not going to be met even had the movie jettisoned hundred dollar bills at me every 5 minutes. For a movie of such lofty aspirations, it sure did feel like they left too many gaping plot holes out there for the viewer. Maybe I won't mind them on the second viewing.

I'm fairly certain Hellboy 2 will get better with a second viewing as there were a lot of amazing visuals there to blow your mind.

Hancock and Get Smart will not get better however and I cannot stress enough how they should be avoided at all costs.

And this group will probably be 50/50 on the Incredible Hulk.

Jarv, get well good sir. Go home and make the couch your domain and have Mrs. Jarv pamper you.

I hope Chitty is doing OK.

I got cooked like a lobster at the Panthers game yesterday and my voice is gone.

I have zero desire to do any work today. Coming down hard from all the incredible booze I slammed back over the weekend.

Derek calls into work and says to his boss "Sorry, I can't come in today I'm sick"

"This is the 20th time this month you've called in ill, how sick are you?"

"Well, I'm in bed with my 12 year old sister, is that sick enough?"

Thanks, I'll be here all week.

Although I haven't seen them I'll take a large bet that it's better than Zohan, Hancock, Get Smart and Hulk.

I don't recommend anyone in the group but Franklin watches Zohan as you all all despise and loathe it on a level you don't even know exists. In the real world it probably isn't a good movie but it provided a much need relief considering my mental state.

Your boss is a scumbag. Do to him what Jason Lee did to Michael Rooker in Mallrats.

It's a farce.

Smack talking Fred

Mavra-- Its okay if I didn't win the dvd's...as long as I still have you.

Ang's Hulk was fucking beautiful. I loved everything about that film.

Norton and French guy's Hulk was fun, but it was on par with a Spider-Man movie to me. It doesn't move me at all the way Ang's did. But that final Hulk/Abomination fight fucking creams the lame ass end fight of Iron Man. CREAMS IT!!

If Ninja Fred can be of any use, only ask. Still licking wounds from the Uzbek/Russia/Georgia rescue mission of Dirk, but will pull out the shurikens for a friend anyday.

I saw Nick and Norah's this weekend with Mrs. Dick Blood. Its a fantastic little movie. Very fun and sweet. The story and pacing sorta reminded me of Can't Hardly Wait, another favorite of mine in that genre.

I'm ill and I've got to go to somen godforsaken "industrial estate"- compelete fucking misnomer that, it's just a fucking horrible prefab office building gulag where no industry happens- to be lectured by a pointy headed fuckmonkey about databases.

I'M ILL YOU FUCKERS.

tsk tsk

Fred feels pity for HoboCode. Only thing in Pittsburgh lower than Browns fans, is Ravens fan (or West Va.).

Hee hee

The characters were nailed. I had some minor issues with the tinkering of the story, and the Mach 5 should have been the ONLY car, but still it got enough love that I could almost forgive the Mach 6 (not quite though). It simply worked for me, just like Iron Man did (until terrible ending). I am a very long time IM fan, and they nailed it with that movie.

TDK was very flawed not just plotholes, but logic and writing. I refuse to go over all the reasons once again, but all that being said, I still enjoyed the hell out of it. I saw it both times on IMAX - maybe that made a difference, and when I see it at home, I will feel differently, but for now, it was a flawed but still highly entertaining fluff piece.

SEND ME HOME BASTARDS.

Second, the whole ferry sequence was silly. Evacuation of a city of millions by ferry? Come on. Really? And convicts gets evacuated before more civilians?

I could go on and on but I'll stop as I need to watch it again. I feel I haven't given it a fair shake yet.

Yeah, the Hulk was mediocre until the Abomination fight. That was unreal.

I loved everything about Speed Racer, Node. I loved the family dynamic, the racing sequences, the way they captured the feel of the cartoon perfectly, the casting, I loved it all.

The German robot guy in Hellboy annoyed the piss out of me. And they seemed to re-write the rules as they went along. And for all of Harry's salivating over the market scene, I found it very ordinary.

Wright says he is developing a script and pre-visualisation sequences for a pitch to studio Warner Bros. Pictures.

Ang Lee's Hulk was the exact same!

And I totally bought Dent's. It is clear from the start he is so bent on bringing down the scum of the city-- that he is a little dangerous. Extremely passionate people can quickly turn to psychos when pushed.

I believe something was mentioned about the convicts leaving because they thought Joker would free all of them, right? Its not like they were doing it to be nice.

And the Tiny Zeus moment....I fucking loved it. I saw it at The Dome in Hollywood opening night and the whole fucking theater went crazy when he threw the control out the window. Everyone was cheering and feeling good that Batman was right....there is some good left.

The hospital being blown up, the helicopter not spotting the road block ahead - even though helicopters can see for miles when airborne - Joker alone in Penthouse. Prison ferry scene. Dent Transformation. Batman taking blame for murders (that one really ticked me off) Ok, I said I would not go into the whys. But you pulled me back! These were some of the things that irritated me as sloppy writing, and it was excused because it was a comic book - fluff.

And the Tiny Zeus moment was fantastic. One of my favorite moments in the movie. But I don't remember there being any reason for them giving preferential treatment to convicts in evacuating them first.

And if that's the case then it becomes nothing more than a plot device to show a convict chuck a detonator out the window to reveal that everyone is capable of good. And those types of lazy plot devices are the stuff you usually loathe in movies.

And dammit, here I go again even though I promised I wouldn't. The Joker has blown up a hospital, a police station, Rachel, and has called in a bomb threat for the bridges and warned that anyone left in Gotham is doing so at their own risk and yet, with all that precedence, the authorities don't bother to check the ferries for explosives? It doesn't occur to them, "You know, this tricky devil is blowing stuff up all over town, let's do a quick sweep of the only two forms of transportation out of town that's he's left us with." That's really lazy writing.

All I could think while watching it and the plot holes that popped up every ten minutes was, "What movie did everyone else see this summer?"

Vader needed to be evil, and remorseless, I get that. But going from being a Jedi - a true Jedi and protecting life, then hating the Jedi? Ok, maybe I can but that. But not killing the children. That requires a mindset of a completely different order. They tried to justify it by his killing of the entire village of the (whatever their names were) that kidnapped and killed his mom. But this time, he had to cold-bloodedly kill totally innocent human (and alien) children who trusted him, and did nothing to him. All because he hated the Jedi? No. That was total shit.

Yes, the hype was hysterical, that beiong said, it did not detract from the movie, but I could see it for what it was. I still enjoyed it, but X2 remains the Gold Standard for me.

And with Anakin killing the kids. I don't think its just a matter of him being angry and brainwashed and suddenly he flips and kills all The Younglings. Its not that simple. I think once you submit to the dark side-- once you embrace it, you are no longer the same person. You become something else.

I ask you: Which one did you find more believable?

Has the world gone mad?

I agree that kidnapping the kid was a bit much, but it's like comparing a shot of vodka to drinking kerosene.

If that makes sense, which I'm not sure about. I feel a little bit high at the moment.

The cartoon was better, frankly. Although Kelly Hu makes me happy in the pants.

And I wasn't expecting the Godfather, I was just expecting a movie that didn't fall into every movie convention there is. I thought Nolan would be a little more original in getting from point A to point B.

A second viewing will probably improve it, but not by a great deal I fear.

Pity about the rest of the film

Dark Knight is solid

X2 is bland

Indy IV can cause chronic rectal prolapse

Regarding Henry is a gift from the creator

But concentrate on the story, it was fully fleshed out, great charcater acting, confiodent directing, everyone was on. I just loved every minute of it - with one large exception -Wolvie crying about Jean.

Danny's reserving a special kind of hatred for X2 that I didn't think was possible so I think it's best if we all agree to disagree.

If TDK made people happy, then mission accomplished.

The differences in our movie opinions is amazing though. The way that Danny and I can see eye to eye on Speed Racer yet be polar opposites on TDK is worthy of a research paper.

Toad-- You really think X2 nailed the X-Men characters? Really? You think Cyclops is a well written character in the films?

Rarely does a movie fall apart in the third act like that one did.

Watch it again HOD. Was it a legit release or some murky bootlef you watched?

cause that will surely make a difference. Hellboy 2 was just pure fun for me, like Speed Racer, and I thought it was a huge improvement over the original.

X2's biggest problem, paradoxically is that after that incredible all-action opening the film just seems lacklustre.

Toad, I'm not a comic geek, but I'm pretty certain that Nightcrawler wasn't some sort of self-harming fuck up, and when you take that with the botched Cyclops then you really can't say that it nailed the characters.

The only thing a second viewing will do is allow me to go into it with much lowered expectations. But the plot holes will always be there.

Node mentioned how it smashed all comic book conventions and I don't see that. Hellboy 2 smashed conventions with the exception of the retarded cliche buddies getting drunk and singing a crap song scene. TDK used every convention in the book.

No one has really responded to my glaring issues. Unconventional would have been a ground transport that was a decoy as Dent was transported in the air. You can't tell me that there wasn't a single person in the theater that didn't see the ambush coming.

And then there is the biggest convention in all of film history. Putting your villain alone in a room with one guard and having the villain taunt the guard to the point where he's going to beat the crap out of the villain. Did not one of you see the next scene coming? Oh look, the Joker overpowered the guard and how has him hostage. Damn Nolan, that's some fine unconventional writing.

And see my ferry comments above for more conventional writing.

I'll watch it again with my wife as she enjoyed Batman Begins, and I do suspect a second viewing will be kinder, but I'll still be left wondering how people can be so harsh on other conventional movies with sloppy writing and yet call TDK the year's best movie. I understand to each his own and I'm not trying to piss in anyone's corn flakes but for a movie that aims to be taken more seriously than more comic-y fare than Spider Man or Fantastic Four, the writing left a lot to be desired to me.

OK, I refuse to get pulled back into this. Until I come back after my second viewing, I won't discuss the film anymore. Even though I was only a modest fan of the first movie and not super keen on the second movie, I will give Del Toro mad props for what he's done with Hellboy. Neither of those movies has been conventional in any way and the haters can accuse them of many things but not being fresh isn't one of them. They just haven't been overly coherent and maybe that's the rub. How do you make something that breaks all conventions but is also laid out clearly for the audience?

And you said yourself you hated it from the start. Its just too difficult to be completely fresh and open minded after there has been so much discussion and hype.

The way Danny goes on about the warehouse ambush scene in MI:3 being shot from a completely fresh perspective, the same would have worked here nicely.

I think I'm completely alone in this, but I actually reckon that the sequences in the real world were better than the fantasy.

The dude that played The Captain was ace.

'Yeah, it was like totally the most perfect film I think in the history of cinema'.

'Yeah, I thought so too'.

'So, uh, yeah, uh, you know, I can't wait until Star Rambo V!'

'Yeah, me too!'

'Only two years'

'Yeah, so, uh, wasn't Star Rambo 4 great?'

I wouldn't say I hated TDK from the get go. I really went into it expecting to love it. But 15 minutes in I found myself very restless. And then when the plot holes started appearing, I had trouble staying focused. But Danny, you're right. I read parts of that huge TDK thread where everyone gave their thoughts, avoiding the posts that revealed plot points and mainly sticking to the discussion about how it was a Bush propaganda film (and now that I've seen it I can safely say that nutjob comparison is totally out to lunch). So maybe I was my own worst enemy. I should have avoided everything.

And I enjoyed the real world parts of the movie more as well. The whole part where the resistance chick cuts him up and walks away trying to escape, looking over her shoulder trying to maintain an air of normalcy. Solid flick.

I'm not making sense here,

And I love TDK. And I can't really say Dent's transformation is too over-the-top considering this is a guy who had half his face burned off and now walks around with an open wound just waiting to get infected! Cover that baby up...geez...just think of all the flies around it.

BTW Danny, too bad you didn't get the Seagal pack.

I was sad all weekend. I told my wife about it last week and on Saturday she told me to go on and check to see if I got it-- and I came on and my heart was shattered. SHATTERED!! I couldn't eat that entire day.

Zelda and Mario Kart are both very good.

I heard from a friend Force Unleashed rocks, but I have yet to play it.

Good to see people enjoy TDK, but at the same time acknowledge that end-of-the-world-level hype can change how one goes into a movie, as opposed to no hype at all.

Rounders had this effect on me, as I picked it up one day, not knowing what I was going to see.

Loved it.

Awwwww.

Zelda was one of my alltime favorites, as well as Contra (get the floating "S" for the spread gun)

I wonder if he ever gave it away then.

I'll still take it though.

Its true though-- Nintendo has this childish spirit of adventure the other systems lack. I can give a fuck if it looks realistic when you blow some fucking Vietcong up. I would much rather squirt Donkey Kong with a water gun from a Go-Kart.

Drank beer, whiskey.

Smoked cigarettes.

Went offroading.

Went to local strip club.

Got free lap dances from redhead.

Drank more beer.

Masturbated. Twice.

Shot firearms, but no propane tanks were around. Fuck.

Of course she then wanted $10 not to tell the bouncer. Bitch.

Just like he was trained to do.

Damn good pooch.

Firing weapons - YES!

I usually don't ask and so far nobody has had the gumption to question him.

You should have seen the bloodshed after that vacuum cleaner salesman decided he wasn't going to take no for an answer before he came to our door.

That was the night that I saw a shopvac used on the salesman.

Irony at its gory best.

I've had drivers tell me they can hear the clammoring of claws on pavement and teeth clicking on sheetmetal.

Also his grasp of the U.S. Penal Code rivals that of Bonnie and Clyde's.

Pan's was overrated though - but very good.

"So Series, that concept art for the Pixar/Mario Bros. thing sounds crazy. I can't believe its really happening."

Being sick sucks.

Mind you, wouldn't anyone love a film where a secretary sends a worm through the post to get her boss's attention, so he jids on her back as punishment, then she masturbates in the bathroom while saying 'Mayonnaise'?

I think they would.

What the hell is wrong with them?

Are they douches?

She's a good actress.

"Once it hits your lips, it's so good."

I would definitely recommend Secretary. If you are a fan of darkly funny films about strange relationships, it is the film for you. Also, it is oddly sweet, a nice little ode to the importance of self-acceptance, both for your own health and for the health of your relationship.

Plus, there are boobs near the end.

So what's going on in the world.

British banks are bringing the European market down.

David Duchovny is out of sex rehab.

The new Oasis album drops today and it's dreadful.

Jarv, you'll be happy to hear FIFA president Sepp Blatter has called for stricter rules on foreign ownership of clubs in the UK and abroad.

Get well soon, Franklin. You too, Jarv. And Danny, my condolences to your rectum.

Maybe I'll watch it if Palin is not involved. I never thought I would come across a fictional female character who would make me want to throw stuff as much as Juno, but it has happened with this awful Palin woman. And yes, I believe she is fictional. No one is really like that, are they?

I have half a bottle of rum for tonight's debate.

Have you seen Sherry Baby, Hawaiian? Secretary has put me in a Maggie Gyllenhaal kind of mood, so I'm thinking I might check that one out.

Thanks for the get well, by the way. The sooner I stop collapsing into coughing fits the better. That is fucking annoying.

Don't know if I already mentioned this yesterday, but it still haunts me. Made of Honor...holy fuck. What a disgustingly bad movie. Even my wife thought it sucked horrendous amounts of suckage. Well, she said "that wasn't good", but I know she implied that it was a gigantic ostrich turd. I'm positive.

I think I'll setup my own drinking game. I'll have to take a swig everytime the words "muthafucker" come out of my mouth after McCain says something else...

The debate tonight is between Obama and McCain and it's a town hall format where people in the audience get to ask them questions.

I don't know which is worse.

Fuck conventional romantic comedies, anyway. One of the (very few) benefits of being single at the moment is I don't have to watch them. If I want to see a love story, my vote is for Wild At Heart every single time. Jesus, that film is so fucking good."Rockin' good news, peanut!"

Kevin McKidd deserved so much better.

It was only one notch better than What Happens In Vegas and that movie causes sterility and boils.

What kind of heartless bitch would ask a guy to be her maid of honour? Why not just cut his balls off? And why the fuck would a guy want to marry a woman who thinks of him that way?

I am never going to watch this film.

The worst is when you have to see those things at the cinema. I remember being dragged to How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days, and I think I was actually dying right there in the audience, like those guys who make it up to a certain height on Mount Everest and their bodies start shutting down. Kate Hudson and Matthew McWhatsit were actually killing me. Probably.

Hudson and McWhatsit were much, much, much more eye gouging shittiness in Fool's Gold. And the Heartbreak Kid was another rancid piece of cattle shit.

In many ways, you are like a superhero.

Shit, I'm bored today.

I love a good rom-com. It makes for a great evening with my wife. The problem is so many of them are cookie cutter garbage that rom-coms have the worst good:bad ratio of any genre. Definitely Maybe is the best one I've seen in quite some time. I think the last rom-com I watched in the theater was Addicted To Love and that was how many years ago now?

Saints had to lose so that Carolina could be tops in the NFC South.

Definitely Maybe was okay, but I preferred Next Stop Wonderland, Dan in Real Life, and P.S. I love you.

But seriously...the Bluray pimping has gotten to a point where I want to fucking barf. Knocked Up and 40 Year Old Virgin? Forget the fact that its Apatow....pimping the Bluray releases? What the fuck for? So I can marvel at Seth Rogen's gut in hi-def?

I love college.

It is a lonely experience.

I don't know why it's so quiet here at the moment. Yesterday, I was so bored I tried to start a fight in the Batman TB, but no one would go for it. Can I not rely on a good argument at the AICN even when I suggest that Joel Schumacher take over the Batman series? What on earth is the world coming to?

I saw a few episodes of Lost in HD, and I was impressed with how clearly I could see each individual leaf in the jungle, but is it really worth me spending a few hundred quid on it? I don't think so.

I realise this has nothing to do with films and whatnot, but - fuck - I'm just really fucking bored today. More than usual, maybe.

I'm still cross because my salary reflects my employer having to pay an agency for me, despite the fact that the agency had bugger all to do with me getting hired.

So I hear that both England and Canada are dropping their interest rates in response to our Fed dropping ours. I'm no rocket surgeon but doesn't that only have a positive effect when the banks are will to lend money? From what I hear Bill Gates couldn't get a loan right now.

You English gentlemen feeling better today?

No way we keep up with the political TB today.

Do we need a topic to discuss?

What stand alone movie that doesn't require a sequel would you like to actually see a sequel to because you want to spend more time with the characters?

So Ranieri gets to live another day, Jarv. That's a lot more confidence than American teams show their coaches.

Did AoD arrive yet, Jarv?

Mrs. Jarv is now fully converted to the genius of Changian doctrine and now accepts that salvation lies in following the teachings of the holy trinity and their sacred dwarf.

Also, she accepts that "Hail to the king" was undeserving of the ban on bedroom priveleges that it got me, and was in fact funny and should have been rewarded.

I walked in holding a pizza with some mates and more beer and opened my stupid trap to say "Hail to the king, baby".

Unimpressed doesn't cover her reaction.

GD political TB is going to suck our numbers again. Hell, it's even worked it's wily ways on me to contribute.

Alas, Mrs. Pillow is hopeless is this regard. Excuse me while I weep at my keyboard...

That's one movie where I would love to see old Elvis fighting a whole bunch more monsters. Hell, have him team up with Ash in an ultimate dimension, fighting alien necronomicons. I would pay top dollar for that shit. Oh, and they should make it a musical while they're at it.

That's one movie where I would love to see old Elvis fighting a whole bunch more monsters. Hell, have him team up with Ash in an ultimate dimension, fighting alien necronomicons. I would pay top dollar for that shit. Oh, and they should make it a musical while they're at it.

Be back when I got off work.

Where the hell is everybody?

I hope to watch Devils on the Doorstep this week.

Also, I can't post at work. (a) The work server can't handle the lunch time rush, I can't get on ANY website let alone AICN. (b) Going on DURING working hours will result in dismissal - I've seen it happen to colleagues. Internet use gets logged and anything over 10 minutes will land us in the shite. (c) When I get home from work I've been writing. (d) When I get on late - ie: now - everyone is gone!

I'm amazed you guys can post freely at work. You must have caring, sharing employers...

It had one of the worst trailers ever - in that the whole plot is given away in the trailer. You've got the whole movie in 2 minutes. Not only did it show the climax of the film, it showed the epilogue as well! Carpenter must've had a heart attack when he saw that because I can't believe he would've okayed it.

Like the look of Abrakadabra as well - funny, plus the music kills me for some reason!

The DVD package is shite. No making-of the movie on 2 discs, just the film twice with a different (worse) ending. Unacceptable. I only need the film once - then alternate ending as a deleted scene. A ROM link to online bonus features - also unacceptable. "Almost 50 minutes..." should be on the DVD.

Apparently, having given I Am Legend a big marketing push on Blu-ray and got the title selling big - they've announced a forthcoming "special edition" Blu-ray release. Unacceptable rip-off. Glad I haven't gone Hi-Def.

Anyone know?

Goodnight, folk.

Fucking Red Cliff I have it I know I can watch it and I keep putting it off. Yet here I sit watching new episodes of Viva Pinata. Seriously I need more fucking movie watching time, like my cable just needs to go out for the night or something. Plus now I have to cater all my movies for my lady friend.

I do find it funny that the Turtles are dominating Saturday morning cartoons again, there are like three shows of theirs going on at once.

I do have a favorite TV show. The Venture Brothers. I fucking adore that show. I can watch any episode no matter what, and it will always put me in a better mood. Can;t wait for Season 3's release. Holy shit am i excited.

But I agree. The Warcraft episode was on tonight. Genius.

Venture Brothers....I don't know man, I feel like there is just something I am missing with that show. I like it, and will watch new episodes but for the life of me I just don't find it that funny. Part of it feels like it continues from episode to episode but most of it feels like ever episode is stand alone. I know there are a lot of references to older shows that I miss. I liked season 1 but 2 and 3 haven't really stuck with me.

Same goes for Venture Brothers. Every episode is so full of homages and allusions to other materials that just getting what they are talking about all the time is a treat in itself. It's easily the best comedy show on adult swim. Its characters actually develop as the show progresses and the plot is full of twists and turns. And yes Series, it helps if you are watching them in order, as most episodes usually contain allusions to previous episodes and occurrences. Also, the writing and dialogue in the show are better than most prime time shows. I defy you to not fall in love with Henchmen 21 and 24. They are the fucking AICN members of the Venture Brother world.

And yes, Mission Hill and Oblongs are both unfunny turds.

Family Guy has been hit and miss since it came back on air. And the one really funny joke in Blue Harvest was them getting the couch back to the Millenium Falcon. Other than that I barely even smiled. Believe me, I wanted to laugh, but nothing came. I even chugged a few beers after the first fifteen minutes. Nothing.

As many have said before me, that video is at least a year old. Which makes this post extra fucking stupid and irrelevant.

Just had to get that off my chest.

Which wouldn't exactly be gutting.

My employer is good about stuff. I'm on her a lot but I get my job done so I do what they ask of me.

Speaking of TV, anybody watching John Adams yet? It's only 7 episodes at an hour each so you can watch it in a week. I cannot emphasize enough how important it is that everyone sees it.

I got a kick out of Blue Harvest but I think the Robot Chicken farce of SW was brilliant.

It's nice.

How is everyone doing today? I am refreshingly free of goo, which is good because I have an interview next monday and I was not relishing going to it while dripping snot all over the place. That is a bad first impression, I reckon.

I haven't seen any of it yet, but I've been taping the episodes and saving them for the next empty, money-less weekend I have to get through.

Hopefully, it's good. I'll watch pretty anything with Paul Giamatti in it. That guy is great.

There's a scene where Adams confronts King George and it is played with such earnest passion that I had to watch it a dozen times. Easily one of the greatest moments ever put to film.

Glad to hear you're on the mend, Franklin.

How are you feeling, Jarv?

I thought Band of Brothers did a great job of showing the day to day life of a soldier. And that concentration camp episode had me sobbing like a girl.

Sounds like I'll enjoy it.

SOUTHLAND TALES

Which is pretty good, right? Now I have a solid scale to work with. Cuckoo's Nest all the way up at one end; Southland Tales all the way down at the other, a kind of absolute zero of film quality. It's like with the hotness of women scale - Eliza Dushku at the top, margartet Thatcher at the bottom. Southland Tales is to cinema what Margaret Thatcher is to hotness.

I saw it last night and my jaw was on the floor for most it. I really could not believe what I was watching.

Anyone else seen it? Thoughts and whatnot?

Its a phone conversation:

M: Paul, I'm concerned about your weight.

Paul: What about it?

M: I think you are putting on too much weight for the role.

Paul: I didn't know you wanted a leading man type of guy, I thought you want an everyman.

M: Well you are fine as you are. If you put on anymore weight you're not an everyman, you're suddenly too heavy to be an everyman.

Silence over the phone..... Paul: I fucking hate this.

And he hangs up....

I haven't heard one good thing about Southland Tales so I'm avoiding it.

On Southland Tales, I recommend seeing it just so that you can witness how terrible it is. Terrible of this type is rare and should be seen by everyone. Richard Kelly seems to be a guy with a lot of semi-interesting ideas and no idea whatsoever about how to articulate them in an engaging or coherent manner. It's a terriblle, stupid, misguided mess of a film, but, like I say, I'm glad I've seen it because now I know the face of truly awful film making.

I hear there is a longer and even less coherent version of the film out there somewhere, which is going to drive me nuts because I want to see it SO DAMN BADLY. The idea that there exists a film that is even worse than Southland Tales - and that that film is Southland Tales - may well drive me around the bend.

Oddly enough....he was originally thinking of Costner for the role and he was interested, but he was just taking too long to get serious about it.

Its a fascinating book. A sports journalist guy contacts M. Night asking him if he can shadow him throughout the Lady production, he goes everywhere with him. His meetings......dinner with his family....rehearsal. Its very cool, and very objective.

Did you see the bit in her autobiography when she went nuts at Gordon Brown for opposing a raise in Minister's salaries?

The fuckers are only paid £120,000 per year and her salary was double that, and the greedy cunt wanted more. Fucking twat. (Caveat- Jarv would like it noted that he got this infor from The Sun so is uncertain as to its reliability- but Jarv hates Cherie Blair so much that he is willing to bet that it is true)

What ever happened to public service?

This is a line from Lady In The Water when Story is telling Vick he must finish the book he writing....

"A boy in the Midwest of this land will grow up in a home where your book will be on the shelf and spoken of often. He will grow up with these ideas in his head. He will grow into a great orator. He will speak and his words will be heard throughout this land and throughout the world. This boy will become leader of this country and begin a movement of great change. He will speak of you and your words. Your book will be the seeds of many of his great thoughts. It will be the seeds of change..."

I diagnose you as suffering from too much politics.

i agree, though. Cherie Blair is a greedy cunt.

Have you ever read The Devil's Candy? It's about the making of Bonfire Of The Vanities (another bad film) and is hands down the best 'behind the scenes' book about film making I've ever read. If you ever wanted to know how it is that big budget studio films go so horribly wrong, The Devil's Candy is definitely worth reading.

Should you be out with some friends, enjoying a good old-fashioned drunkening and whatnot, and you come across a chicken whom you suspect of being infected with the avian flu, you can now feel free to suffocate that feathery little bastard with whatever method you find most effective. Strangle it until it is good and dead, and the coppers cannot touch you for it.

Oh, brave new world, and whatnot, etc...

It was actually pretty brave of de Palma to allow the book to be published, because he doesn't always come off too well in it.

And this fecking flu won't piss off. Why am I in work?

P.S. Sorry about the continuing illness. You should go out and suffocate yourself a chicken. That's bound to make you feel better. It's legal, too.

I suppose every film has someone who likes it, but these people are stretching that idea a bit. They're like those women who still love their husbands even though they beat the shit out of them every time they get drunk.

I don't get it.

Not to mention the fact that they all shag sheep.

I asked in the pub what was happening, and was told that I could see in because the light they use for the film made the curtains transparent and they didn't know this.

Why do Sumo wrestlers shave their legs?

And Catherine Zeta Jones doesn't count. She's a genetic fluke and (this is important) abandoned the shithole before the tide of grease could overtake her.

Those TEETH!! Dear God those teeth!!

I can't wait for the weekend.

Good work.

Paul Giamatti attended hoity toity upper crusty private schools and graduated from Yale himself. That's not exactly the resume of a lunch pail family.

Don't get me wrong I like Paul Giamatti. He seems like one of the few decent people in LA. He's a great actor, usually the best thing in any movie he's in, even the bad ones. Giamatti really shined in John Adams.

Ah, Southland Tales, by the end of that fucked up mess I started to hallucinated that parts of it were good. Listening to Buffy the Vampire Slayer talk about getting corn holed was sureal and seemed self revelatory. I bet Freddy Prinze JR is a booty bandit. I thought he was bone smuggler myself but I gues I was wrong.

And Freddie Prinze.....he just likes to fuck. Any hole with a bit of spit and he's ready to boogy.

LA in my post should have read Hollywood, my mistake I rushed, but I stand by my statement.

Just Pillow Talk there has been a 2for2true sighting in the Testee TB. Nothing to exciting.

The 'director's cut' of Donnie Darko I thought was utterly pointless. Perfection already achieved with the theatrical version, no matter what Kelly thinks. A superb, original film. But, yeh, hope is diminishing for my eventual viewing of Southland Tales.

I've got nothing against the Welsh and there are some beautiful places to visit. But Cardiff City fans are a bunch of maniacs!

You might also like 'Thunder Rock,' a 1942 film directed by Roy Boulting and starring Michael Redgrave. He plays a bloke who moves into a haunted lighthouse. Really classy and subtle.

Also picked up 'The Gunslinger Born' and 'The Long Road Home,' both hardback compilations of the 'Dark Tower' adaptions. Not started those yet either!

I'd like to read that 'Man Who Heard Voices' book too. Just wish there was a visual document...

Goodnight.

You're the first person to clear up the Welsh hatred. I get it....they are sorta like "The South" of America. All the stereotypes of being inbred and stupid and fucking their moms and shit. I get it now...

And HOD, if you want to talk asian movies, just drop me some emails. I can talk asian film forever. I've got some reccomendations for stuff you probably haven't seen either.

For the record, Im completely done with HOD pack 2. It was a doozy. A perfect primer for someone to get into asian film. Open City I didnt care too much for, but like the least of these movies, it was decent, nothing abominable.

As long as you send, I will watch, and report back like a good soldier.

I have since watched The Body Snatcher which was just a great little horror. Another film on the level of the two aforementioned movies, with great acting by Karloff and some great moody sequences. Really captured the essence of that short story perfectly.

I Walked with a Zombie is a masterpiece to be sure. I think it's right there with the Cat People as the best of the set(so far).

Which brought me to this weekend, when I decided to catch two more of the five I hadn't seen. I picked Isle of the Dead because it looked like it might feature a vampire and it had Karloff in it. At first I was a bit underwhelmed, as the writing didn't seem as strong as the others, and the plot seemed very thin. Even Karloff wasn't grabbing the movie and carrying it. And then, when the plague hits the house, the mood of the movie changed and it started working on some other levels. And to be honest, I was getting lulled by it's provincial rythyms and was probably close to sleep, when that blood curdling scream and coffin sequence happened, and it scared the crap out of me. Not just that scream, but the images on screen and the way it was done, and the reality of what happened. That might be one of the most chilling images in old b&w horror I have ever seen. It ended a bit quickly, but I gotta say that Isle, while maybe the least of the ones Ive seen so far, is still a creepy little tale Im bound to rewatch.

That lighthouse film is going on my netflix queue immediately if it's available.

Also saw The Leopard Man, There, and I think I preferred it to Isle. Had more of those creepy night chases like Cat People and once again had the horror of a cat at the center of the story. Tons and tons of great atmosphere in that one. I really really liked it, and look forward to showing it with a group. The scene where the girl is trying to get back into her house, with her mother and brother right on the other side of the door, and something in the dark slinking closer and closer. Truly creepy.

I have Ghost Ship, Bedlam and The Seventh Victim as the final three. And I gotta say, the set has already proved it's worth with the first six films.

There, have you seen the other 3?

Also, Jack Brooks just hit dvd. Check it out, y'all! It's fun.

But ST, which showed promise, is rubbish. It's not even quite a bunch of skits run together. It takes a very eclectic cast, and some Philip K Dick ideas, and just runs them through the mud with a film that would make Amazon Women on the Moon look like a thought-provoking masterpiece. It is just one off the cuff thing after the other, but unlike other films that do this, it all falls flat. It isnt cool to look at, it isn't clever to think about, and it has zero lines that are worth repeating. Even the naysayers of Donnie admit the film had some good lines. It seriously makes me reconsider Richard Kelly. I'll reserve judgment until I see The Box, but consider Southland Tales( a movie I had braced myself to defend when I found it brilliant) a giant bomb. A huge pile of rubbish. What. a. Waste.

Here it is:

http://www.asian-horror-movies .com/wool.php

Movies I rented and plan to watch soon are Paul Newman's Hombre, Do the Right Thing, The Glass MEnagerie (which I'm watching just because I felt like watching Katherine Hepburn act her ass off), Barton Fink, and Bubba Ho-tep. I grabbed them all randomly off the shelves. The only one I have seen before is Bubba Ho-tep, which I just felt like getting because I was having a bad day at the time, and it's sort of a comfort movie for me. Anything by Bruce Campbell is.

Also, another Campbell film you might have missed: Sundown:The Vampire in Retreat. It's on dvd now, so it is available. It's from the early 90s. After ED2 but before Army.