The new age of friendship

Dear potential Facebook 'friend',

I wanted to let you know why I ignored your friend request, twice.

You were a total heinous 'yotch to me in Junior High. After that we lost touch, I know, I was partly to blame. You were probably busy with your remedial classes and bullying, and I was busy trying to avoid you - it looks like I still am.

Granted, I surely had my moments of cattiness in school, but I'm not trying to 'friend' any recipients of my past trangressions.

I can only hope that you try to friend me again so that maybe this time when I ignore your request, after you can't find as many people you met once at that AA meeting or from the summer you worked at Pizza Hut to randomly friend, you'll notice and get the goddamned hint.

P.S. - Congratulations on getting really fat. Did you have 5 million kids, or did you do that all on your own?

Land of the Lost

It's too bad that I didn't watch this series as a kid. The strong feelings of nostalgia would have most likely helped me to enjoy this movie more. Bummer, because I really wanted to like this one.

Combining the special effects necessary (even nostalgia wouldn't excuse a claymation dinosaur from the old series in this adaptation) for today's audience with over-the-top cheesy costumes and high-school play caliber set props was a difficult gig to make work from the get go. They did what they could, but ultimately even the actors didn't seem to be having much fun with it, and I didn't either.

Dangit!

High points: Danny McBride getting in a few good one-liners. Matt Lauer's surprise spot.

p.s. - I know the list for remakes is getting shorter and shorter, but if somebody tries to remake The Waltons, I'm gonna straight-up hate on that from day one. Nobody remakes the Waltons.

did you ever have to make up your mind?

Oooooooh, what to see this weekend? What to see, what to see? Three movies are competing for my attention this weekend as The Hangover, Land of the Lost, and My Life in Ruins are all opening. Right now, Land of the Lost has the early lead because of the absolute brilliance of Danny McBride. He is the highlight of anything you spy him in. His series on HBO, East Bound and Down, never fails to shock me and make me laugh at something entirely innappropriate (like snorting cocaine on the down-low next to an eleven year old in the middle of a junior high cafeteria, or getting back at your enemies by throwing them off the back of your jet ski and into painfully shallow water). Extra bonus points if anybody can recall what he yells right before activating the explosives in the opening scene of Tropic Thunder. He makes lowbrow humor a higher art form.

After that, I will have to appease my X chromosomes and see My Life in Ruins. Unlike every other female in the US, My Big Fat Greek Wedding didn't knock my socks off. Somehow I still want to see this movie, if only for the sweet beard on the love interest. I fully expect to hate myself after seeing this one.

The Hangover is tempting, but I have a feeling that it blows its comedic load in its commercials.

I'll update as I knock some of these out this weekend.

My summer of blockbusters, part two!

Star Trek

I have to hand it to JJ Abrams: he not only managed to resuscitate a kitschy old media franchise, he whipped it into shape and got it a nose job too. The amazing thing about this movie, is that it is not only a great standalone movie and works well within the Star Trek universe, but that it compelled my movie-going friends to go back and watch the Wrath of Khan (they hadn't seen it before). That kind of cross pollination is what marketers dream about for most of their empty, soulless lives.

I am also a fan of the small details that help to build the characters in a movie. All of the close-ups on Chris Pine - who plays Kirk, show every skin flaw possible, but it works because he's a cheeky wise-ass with a checkered past. Our first scene with him involves him being drunken, sweaty and swaggering, and still disarmingly charming. On the other end is Zachary Quinto's Spock - with porcelain skin and perfectly cut hair. I'm fairly certain that the makeup crew was manscaping the back of ZQ's neck every five minutes to keep it that inhumanly impeccable. This lends itself well to Spock's tightly-wound persona. The character depth and inner conflict that was imbued in Spock's character was a really fantastic surprise as well.

Uhura's long fake eyelashes and constant cat-liner were kind of distracting - but hey, they're paying homage, so I'm not going to bash it.

I liked this movie so much, I won't even spoil it for you. It was awesome. I can only qualify that by saying I'm not a Star Trek fan. What also impressed me was that the big name actors played their roles so well that when the credits rolled, folks were like "Where was Winona Ryder? Eric Bana was in this movie?" It was also fantastic to see Karl Urban on the movie screen again - as he had a certain something as the smoking Russion assassin in the Bourne Supremacy. Let's not forget Simon Pegg or Jonathan Cho who both helped to round out and shape this movie. It's all about the team here.

Go see it, twice. Nerds.

My summer of blockbusters!

Since I can't sleep due to worry about heading in to a hellacious day at work tomorrow, I will keep you updated on my summer movie watching progress. I have no impulse control, so the plot is pretty well laid-bare below. You have been warned.

Wolverine

I have enjoyed all three of the X-Men movies, which require the ability to seriously suspend your logical thought for about two hours. (If all Storm is gonna do is eventually zap somebody with a bolt of lightning to kill them, why the hell doesn't she do it at the beginning of the movie, instead of near the end of the movie - after getting the crap kicked out of her? Also, why doesn't she whip up some freezing weather at the end of X-2 in order to freeze Alkali Lake, or why doesn't Freez-o boy freeze the lake in order to save everyone from being drowned? Oh right, so Jean Grey can step outside of the ship to do it, and 'die' in the process. I guess they needed some emotional immediacy. Rant aside, I dig the series thus far.) I was also looking forward to Wolverine due to the Hugh Jackman factor. If anybody can look nice with that wierd haircut, it's him. In fact, he looks kind of prissy when clean cut, so he should never be allowed to shave beyond a 5 o'clock shadow, in my opinion.

However, Wolverine....ech. It was a combination of totally illogical strangeness and empty characters that failed to pull me into the movie. So, Wolverine and his brother not only heal from just about everything - but they don't age much past late-twenties adulthood either. After living for a couple hundred years, you would think they had bank-rolled enough dough so that they could support some sort of playboy lifestyle. Apparently not so in that they really dig fighting in wars, on the US side of things. They are their own men, they are rebels, until they are recruited by a shady military officer for a special ops mission and then they blindly follow along, killing possibly innocent civilians without any sort of objective for the mission. Wolverine can't take it, so he leaves the group. Flash forward a decade or two, Wolverine's brother Sabretooth is taking out members of the old rogue military unit. The shady military officer shows up to warn Wolverine, telling him about this special procedure that could make Wolverine more deadly than Sabretooth. Wolverine declines the offer...but hey, Wolverine's special lady gets offed by his brother, so then he agrees to the medical procedure in a fit of vengeful rage.

So if this wasn't spoiler enough, let me just lay it all out there. Lady friend isn't dead, it was all a setup to get Wolverine to undergo the metal-bonding-to-skeleton procedure. She's a mutant that can hypnotize with her touch. Then the procedure was all a setup to get Wolverine's DNA to make a superweapon? If all of these things were a setup - then why kill the other members of the special ops unit? Why not just get the love interest to love-hypnotize him into getting the procedure done? Why not just get his DNA in a less obvious fashion. They can get it off of a drinking glass for crying out loud.

Essentially, it was all an elaborate setup so that the series could try to explain why Wolverine has metal shooting out of his hands. Ultimately I didn't care. Since I was already watching the X-Men series, I'm already on board with buying that metal blades can shoot out of Hugh Jackman's hands. If I wasn't watching the X-Men series, because the metal-hands thing is too outlandish - Wolverine is not the movie that will bring me into the fold.

Also, Sabretooth is creepy. His special powers include growing gross yellow fingernails, quadripedal running, and growing totally inappropriate sideburns. There are also shots of his hands where his fingertips are huge and puffy, and reminded me of the worst creature special effects from those Leprechaun movies you've peeped on the USA channel when you're bored in October.

At one point in the movie, a doctor tells Wolverine "Focus on the reason you came here, that will help you through this procedure." I tried, but not even a nearly naked Hugh Jackman could save this lead-sinker.

Rating: Like gargling with salt water, kind of unpleasant and disappointing.