This Saturday, Tammy went to Disciple Now, a youth retreat that almost all of our “kids” attended. I took the opportunity for a little movie time. I got out my trusty IMDB movie list (movies I want to see if I ever get the chance) and picked a few.

Now, I’ve been going on a lot lately about tHGttG. I had a vague memory of seeing a little bit of a BBC TV version back when I was a kid. So I gave it a shot. I asked the clerk about it and, low and behold, they have just released a two disk DVD version of the 1981 BBC mini-series! w00t!!

The DVD contains all six episodes of the TV series, so it’s a little disconnected; nothing like watching a movie. The acting is… well… BBC, and the special effects are as much a source of laughs as the show itself. What a gas!

I had a great time watching this and it got me back up to speed on tHGttG. It’s only a thin slice of the BBC radio series, which was a pretty thick slice of the book.

It has quite a few Monty-Python-Holy-Grail type scenes. You know, stuff that’s only funny because it’s completely off the wall and devoid of logic. None the less, I really recommend this campy, off-beat, and very enjoyable little show. If you take pride in you geek-hood, then you really need to see this. I give it a solid three grins.

There is a new “exclusive internet only” trailer for “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”. (I may have to start using an ultra geeky acronym for this one too! tHGttG? Sure. Why not.)

This new trailer is much better than the theatrical trailer and gives a little more of an idea of what tHGttG is all about.

I’m getting very excited about this. It might just be one of the very few movies I go see on opening night.

*Marking calendar… April 29th*

Did anyone miss the Oscars last night? I didn’t…. I didn’t watch them, but I sure didn’t miss them.

I did see about 5 minutes of the show while flipping channels. I saw the make-up award recipients make a speech in the aisle (Wha??) and I saw most of Robin William’s “Sponge Bob’s not gay” shtick.

I read some of the news about the show and it sounds like I didn’t miss a thing. It got good ratings, but critics ravaged the show. I did run across a site with video-low-lights and I watched a couple. That was all it took to confirm my suspicion that 3 hours of Hollywood patting its own back is 3 hours I would rather spend plucking out my toe nails with pliers.

I guess I would have been more interested if they had nominated any movie I even had a desire to watch. That’s the only reason I watched the last three years… yeah, I know… I talk way to much about Lord of the Rings, but honestly, that’s the only reason I watched. I don’t even remember who hosted last year.

I will probably leaf through the “worst dressed” magazine features while I’m in line at the grocery store, but other than that, who cares? By the way, do any of my readers actually enjoy listening to Star Jones? I can’t even stand her commercials. Whenever I see her fawning over some self-important hollywood starlet, I think, “Girlfriend! In what box of cracker jacks did she find her back stage pass?”

Oh, and one other thing. Does anyone else think Chris Rock has monkey hands? Weird weird weird.

All links courtesy of Drudge.

CAUTION: The following review is rife with conversational ramblings and far too much personal information that have nothing to do with the movie being reviewed. You have been warned.

At this years super bowl party, Tammy won the pool (the betting kind, not the chlorine kind) and came away with a gift card to Blockbuster Video. (Tammy has a knack for winning things that really bothers me, as I am a student of math and probability which she somehow always outwits. But that’s a story for another day.)

I’m not fond of Blockbuster. I appreciate that, as a company, they do what they can to help out family values, such as refusing to offer NC-17 movies. But on the other hand, I’m cheap and renting at Blockbuster isn’t. We don’t have a membership at Blockbuster, so what the heck were we going to do with the gift card. We finally made a trip into the store to see what we could barter. They had a sale going on pre-viewed DVDs and we bought three.

I’m also not fond of buying movies. I don’t watch movies often, and I certainly have no need to own a movie unless it’s something I might invite friends over to watch, like LOTR. It has to be a really great movie for me to want to buy it.

Tammy likes to buy movies. Nothing wrong with that. She likes to watch movies that she enjoys and often spends a rainy Saturday watching a feel-good flick that she’s seen a dozen times. It’s logical and I don’t hold it against her. Sometimes she wants to buy something because she’s heard it’s good, even if she hasn’t seen it. Such was the case with “Dodgeball”. We’d heard the youth kids going on about it and decided, “What the heck. It’s basically free anyway.”

Okay… now to the actual review.

The kids were wrong. This movie sucked.

I have said before that I like Ben Stiller‘s comedic style. I have to qualify that statment now. I like Ben Stiller’s average guy that can’t get a break style, made famous by “Meet the Parents”. I really hate his “Zoolander” type comedy. It’s dumb. Not “Dumb and Dumber” dumb. It’s dumb like that guy in your office who thinks he’s really funny and always does that same little joke, accent, or quip that wasn’t really funny to anybody but him the first time but he keeps doing it anyway dumb. It’s not funny and it’s annoying that he thinks it is funny. “Dodgeball” is “that guy”.

The story is fun enough. A lazy, fun loving, warm hearted guy runs a shabby fitness gym populated by all manner of social out casts. Across the street, Stiller’s character runs a huge, high dollar, trendy fitness club. Let the trite plot line begin. The protagonist, played by Vince Vaughn, is going to lose his gym to the snobbish yet stupid antagonist, Stiller, unless he can come up with a load of cash. Low and behold, there’s a national dodgeball tournament coming up and the prize money is, to the penny, the amount he needs to save his gym. I’m sure you can figure out the rest of the movie. (I have a feeling a chimp with a brain tumor could figure it out.)

There were a handful of jokes that did get me to laugh out loud, simply because they were so far out in left field. (“If you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball… CLANG!”) But the minutes (which seemed like hours) in between those few jokes were not just not funny, they were border-line insulting. Am I really expected to laugh at a redneck lusting after a male cheerleader wannabe while he wash’s the redneck’s big ol’ 4×4? That’s not funny. That’s disturbing. And please, please, please, someone tell Hollywood that there is nothing funny about a geriatric with a bondage fetish. Ick.

One out of a possible five grins. ‘Nuff said.

I’m so excited about the new theatrical version of “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”. The new trailer is on Amazon.com.

Check it out.

I have to be honest. I never finished reading the book. But I did listen to the entire 13 hour BBC Radio version.

Yes, I know “Along Came Polly” is more than a year old. Yes, I’m sure most of you have already seen it, or decided not to. Sorry, I don’t usually see movies in the theater. You will come to learn that all my reviews are this way. Get over it. Jeez, sue me.

When I saw the commercials for this romantic comedy, I really wanted to see it. I like Ben Stiller’s comedic style and even if she can’t act, Jennifer Aniston is hot. (Ooh… Did I say that out loud? Sorry, Tammy.) Unfortunately, all the best jokes were in the commercials. I still laughed out loud at a few of them, they’re that funny, but my hopes that there would be other laugh-out-loud moments were dashed.

The basic story is that Stiller, a seriously paranoid insurance risk analyst, meets and marries the girl of his dreams, only to find her… ahem… knocking flippers with a French scuba guide while on their honeymoon. Struggling to cope and move on, he runs into Aniston, a free spirit that he knows from his grade school days. She leads him on several misadventures that go completely against his obsessive nature.

There are several side plots that, in my opinion, distract from the main story, going down long rabbit trails in search of a laugh or two.

The final verdict is that, while the movie is enjoyable, it’s barely worth the “New Release” rental rate. It amounts to an average, predictable, romantic comedy with just enough laughs to keep you from being mad about wasting two hours, which earns “Along Came Polly” two out of five grins.

While in Amarillo for Christmas, I went with my father-in-law to see “Flight of the Phoenix”, a remake of the 1965 film of the same name. I’ve never seen the Jimmy Stewart original, but from what I’ve read, it is almost identical to this version which, in my opinion, takes most of the wind out of the sails of the remake.

The basic plot is that a group of oil field workers are leaving their drilling site in the desert aboard a cargo plane. The plane crashes in a sand storm and when all hope of rescue is lost, they decide to build a new plane from the wreckage of the first one.

What a great plot, eh?! Add to that all sorts of character conflicts in the cast and this should be a real hum-dinger. However, comes out flat.

You can’t blame the actors. I felt that every part was played to perfection. You can’t blame the effects. This show has one of the best plane crash sequences I’ve seen.

So, if the plot is good, the acting is good, and the effects are good, what could go wrong? How about a script? I’m not sure this movie had one. I envision the cast, before each scene was filmed, gathering around a little TV and VCR playing the original movie and saying, “Yeah, let’s do that.” There is no character development, the plot is handled like a rollercoaster, and the dialog sounds like a top-notch junior high drama club play. (“I think a bee stung you on your big dumb ass.” Oh, if only I were making that up.)

In the end, you have a very entertaining story being told rather badly which earns “Flight of the Phoenix” two grins out of a possible five.

Alas, the Lord has heard my whining and granted a reprieve. We did not go climbing last night. Instead my dear wife and I sat on the couch from 6 to 10 and watched my new movie, ROTK. (Yaaay!)

Need I bother with a review? Well, of course! It RAWKED!! There were a couple of scenes in the extended edition that left me confused. It has been about three years since I finished the book and my memory is fading, but I’m pretty sure they changed some things. I’ll be taking some free time (Good Lord willing) over the next couple of days to reread a few passages of the book.

The acting in this last chapter of the LOTR trilogy was really moving. As doom closes in and all seems lost, we get to see the tender, emotional side of all the key characters and they all do a grand job. Sean Astin, as Samwise Gamgee, has already proven himself in the previous movies. More than any other character, I believe he deserved an Oscar.

The one that really struck me was Billy Boyd, playing Peregrin Took. His character is the child of the fellowship and always the one getting in to trouble. Up to this point in the story, he’s been almost entirely carefree. But in this last edition, he really goes deep with the character and does it with excellent results.

Many of the actors had to do scenes in which they had to tell the story without words. There are many long close-ups that serve only to express the emotion of the moment. Any actor can tell you that is the hardest kind of scene. And they all pulled it off wonderfully.

And so, I risk setting a dangerous precedent, but I feel it’s only just. For my very first movie review, I award the LOTR trilogy a perfect score of 5 grins.

Now look what you’ve done. You’ve gone and made me start thinking about movie reviews. I’m going to have to create a whole new post category and post reviews of all the movies I’ve seen in the last few months. Shame on you. Now go to your room.

Just incase you were looking for more signs that the end of the universe is just around the corner…

It’s official, Warner Brothers is slated to release a movie version of “The Dukes of Hazzard” in 2005. Yes, the show that brought us the worst cultural stereotypes in history is going to the silver screen. And it gets worse, as hard as that is to believe.

	Seann William Scott (aka Stifler from American Pie) as Bo		Johnny Knoxville (aka Jackass) as Luke		Jessica Simpson (aka the worst airhead in America) as Daisy
	Willie Nelson (aka the nastiest long haired man ever) as Uncle Jesse		Burt Reynolds (aka should have retired after Smokey and the Bandit 2) as Boss Hogg	Stifler, Jackass, Jessica “Chicken of the Sea” Simpson, Willie “Wash your hair” Nelson, and Good ol’ Burt doing Dukes of Hazzard; proof positive that there is no God in Hollywood. I can’t wait. This is going to be the most sucktacular movie of all time!

(Kudos to Apropos of Something for the tip.)