Random thoughts on 2009

Oh 2009, its been a wild one. I’m glad to see you go and I’m looking forward to 2010. 2009 was a year of mixed feelings. Some good, some bad.

-My niece arrived in July. She just turned five months today and it seems like every time I see her, she’s getting bigger. Little Lainey is awesome times infinity. I think she’s managed to bring our family closer and she has no idea she’s done it.

- I got to go to Mexico for the first time back in April. Cabo San Lucas was amazing. I hope to get back there someday, though I doubt I’ll ever be able to stay at the Palmeia again. That place was so ridiculously nice and EXPENSIVE. It’s no wonder its a vacation spot that many celebs choose to go to while in Mexico. Did I mention I met Paul Rudd while there? Very cool guy.

- My dad and stepfamily moved back to town after living in North Carolina for sometime. It’s been so great having my dad back around. Even though he’s living in Bellevue, which from where I live, it might as well be North Carolina.

- Not everything was awesome. I made some decisions regarding the people whom I have been friends with. I’ve kind of gone cold turkey on a few of them and I think I’m better for it. It’s so hard to explain especially in a blog but I feel a little bit liberated and it seems like a lot of drama was instantly lifted off of my shoulders. I just could keep up with the constant mood changes and just pure ungratefulness from a few of them. I kind of wish I had the ability to go back in time and tell myself just to snap out of it, but I can’t. We live and learn.

- I had my 10 year high school reunion this year. It was cool seeing some of the old people I went to school with. Yes, I still had trouble talking to some of the girls I had crushes on. There’s still some out there that I really need to pony up the courage and say hey too. Ha!

The reunion also kind of squashed my fear of everyone else being successful. It’s somewhat comforting to know that a lot of other people are in my same shoes. We’re all grateful to have jobs. So many others don’t and we’re all just trying to make the best decisions we can. I wonder where we’ll all be at in 10 more years.

- It’s now time for my yearly list of my favorite movies of the year. I have a feeling this year’s list won’t be very long compared to years past.
1.Watchmen- Probably the best graphic novel adaptation ever with the exception of Sin City.
2. Star Trek- How the heck J.J. Abrams did it, still baffles me.
3. The Brothers Bloom- Great movie I bet a bunch of my friends haven’t seen. Do yourself a favor and watch it.
4. Drag Me to Hell- Sam Raimi made a return to his genre.
5. Up- Pixar is still kicking butt and taking names in animation dept.
6. The Hangover- I’m still sticking by my opinion that Zach Galifianakis is only a few short years or movies away from being an Oscar nominee for something.
7. Away We Go- Was not expecting to like it even though John Krasinski was in it. I loved it though.
8. Public Enemies- I loved the way this movie was shot and the gun battles were easily some of the best I’ve ever seen in a movie.
9. 500 Days of Summer- Proves once and for all that women are mostly insane in the brain.
10. Inglourious Basterds- Tarantino does what he does best.
11. Zombieland- I love how they took a genre movie and made it fresh, funny, and awesome.
12. Avatar- I now know what it must have been like to see Star Wars for the first time in a theatre. While the story might not be the most original(Star Wars wasn’t really original either), the technology used to create this movie just amazes me. This movie is just beautiful and makes it hard to say “That effect looked dumb.” I can’t wait to see how future movies adapt James Cameron’s camera tech for their own.

- Celebrity deaths sucked this year. Brittany Murphy died today. Who in the world saw that coming?!
Pat Hingle
Ricardo Montalban
Natasha Richardson
Bea Arthur
Dom Deluise
David Carradine
Ed McMahon
Farah Fawcett
Michael Jackson
Karl Malden
John Hughes
Les Paul
Patrick Swayze
Billy Mays
Steve McNair
Brittany Murphy
Chris Henry
Roy E. Disney
DJ AM
Walter Cronkite
Ted Kennedy

I’m sure I’m missing others but for now, these are the ones I immediately thought of. Just crazy. I hope Hollywood fares better in 2010!

Well, thats about it for now. I really need to get back into the old blogging habit again. I just don’t find enough time to do it. I’ll try and change.

Where the Wild Things Are

This guy pretty much hits the nail on the head when it comes to how I felt about “Where the Wild Things Are”….

From Aintitcool.com’s Masswyrm,

“WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE is not what any rational person would call a fun movie. It is not a happy joyous celebration of youth. It is not an adventure film. It’s not a family film. It’s not even a kids film. Oh sure, it looks fun as all hell. Big, fuzzy monsters, poppy hipster music and credits written like they were scribbled in on a Trapper-Keeper during 7th grade math class. The advertising speaks to your youth, your dreams, everything you thought childhood should be. Hell, my wife giggled excitedly every time the trailer came on.

But what Spike Jonze has done with WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE is nothing of the sort. In fact, he took a magical, wondrous book and made a very somber, downright depressing film about what childhood is REALLY like. It is a film about the loneliness of being misunderstood and mostly unlikable, a film about that weird kid in your class who always acted out and who many parents nowadays instantly believe Ritalin can cure (or at least should be prescribed to.) I get Max, I really do.

When I was a kid, I was Max. I was that lonely weird kid who was always writing weird stuff in notebooks and reading at recess and acting out mostly for attention. There’s no doubt where this kid is coming from and I love that Jonze went there. This isn’t the typical “lonely misunderstood but secretly cool” kid that we see in most other kids films. Max is an attention starved brat, an uncontrollable pain in the ass that desperately needs to work his shit out.

Enter the Wild Things, which are of course the whole reason you want to see the film. At first they are fantastic – marvelous, wonderful beasts that bring to life everything you ever imagined they were like. Until, that is, you start listening to what they are saying. These beasts are wild. They are unruly. And they are also the whiniest, sorriest, most pathetic imaginary group therapy session of all time. The island Max has sailed to isn’t a magical land of wild beasts. It is a group home for malcontented creatures.

And I get it. What Jonze does here is put Max on an island and forces him to watch his whole home life play out before his eyes in terms he can understand. And whether you want to believe the island is real or something playing out in Max’s subconscious is up to you. And the way he does it is marvelous. The eloquence in which he boils down the loneliness we all experience at one time or another is nothing short of brilliant. I fully understand why the people who LOVE this movie love it. But everyone else?

They’ll be bored to tears.

Nothing happens in this movie. Nothing. It is one of those rare films that can be completely summed up in one or two lines without skipping any major details. When things get too boring, one of the monsters grabs Max by the hand and takes him somewhere on the island to show him something. Or one of the monsters throws a fit. Or we get another pop song fueled montage. And when the boredom passes, Jonze puts that back in his bag of tricks to randomly draw from again when things inevitably slow down. Again. Because really, nothing happens. The film is a two hour metaphor for a 9 year old boy working out his shit.

Spike Jonze has taken a relatively respectable budget and created an arthouse film about childhood that had our family-filled audience buzzing with chattering, bored children. Don’t get me wrong, as an arthouse film it is brilliant. If you go into it with that mentality, you’ll come out feeling like you’ve been taken on a profound tour of childhood that will take you back in (potentially) bad ways. But you won’t have fun. You won’t walk out humming a great tune and feeling like your life has been reaffirmed. You’re gonna walk out thinking about your own dejected, maladjusted childhood. Or that weird kid in your class who Max reminds you of. Or a brother or sister who acted the same way.

And that’s not the film they’re selling. It’s not the film people are expecting. People are ready to watch monsters joyously run through the forest with a little boy to the soundtrack of JUNO while feeling warm and fuzzy about being a kid. And while those moments are here, they are fleeting. What Jonze does, both brilliantly and frustratingly, is take the magical and over the course of two hours make it mundane. He seeks to strip every bit of magic out of the Wild Things and make them as patently uninteresting as a troubled bible study group.

Now, it can be argued that this is pretty much what the book is about and that Jonze simply added an extra layer of subtext to the original intention. But the book is 40 pages long, comprised of exactly 10 run-on sentences and in actuality only one of those sentences remains intact and relatively unchanged. There are a number of scenes that have been added that have nothing to do with the book not – not to mention those that were outright changed – so if someone were to ask “Couldn’t Jonze have added something interesting without compromising his vision of the theme,” the answer would be yes.

Instead, every conflict in this film is emotional and entirely banal. As a representation of a young boy’s psyche and the worries that trouble him, it is an achievement. But in the context of being a film outside of the arthouse circuit being marketed as a fun, adventure film? Absolute failure. There’s not a moment of adventure here. Not a moment of fantastic danger. Not an instance in which we feel our hero is in any kind of real jeopardy. Nothing that will bring audiences back again and again. This isn’t WILLY WONKA AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY or THE IRON GIANT or CORALINE or even WATERSHIP DOWN. This isn’t a transcendent family film that will become deeper and richer as you grow from child to adult. It is THE 400 BLOWS with monsters. It was never meant for families. It was meant for critics.

Lyrical in its poetry and beautiful in its melancholy, this will play strong to those going in with an understanding of what Jonze wants to show them. But anyone looking for a good time has signed on for the wrong boat ride to the worst possible island. Beautiful enough to see on the big screen, but not powerful or moving enough to recommend, I find myself very conflicted and foresee a film that will be lauded by critics and snubbed by the bored masses. But as the dust settles, I think I’m going to find myself with the masses on this one. I wanted to love it, I really, really did, but I was just too bored to.”
-Massawyrm

Here’s the link to the original review.

I started to write out my feelings about what I took away from Wild Things and I couldn’t seem to come up with the right words to describe it. I then found this review and it was almost exactly how I felt. Massawyrm did a brilliant job with this review in my opinion. I grew up loving movies with Henson like creatures. I went in hoping that I might see a new movie using those types of creatures brought to a new generation. Not a movie with a ton of CGI’d characters but real creatures that actors actually had to interact with. I was hoping for a movie with a sense of imagination and kind of fantasy. When I read the book as a child I imagined wanting to go to a far off place to escape all the people that annoyed me. I was hoping for that movie. Instead I felt like I watched an arthouse indie film that should have played at The Belcourt. I didn’t think it was a bad movie and I thought it was very well made, but I didn’t enjoy virtually any of it. I can’t imagine kids enjoying or understanding it. Maybe I need to see it again to try and understand it more. I don’t know.

My thoughts on Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

“Hm.” That was my reaction after coming out of the screening of Transformers:Revenge of the Fallen. Just “Hm.” I really don’t know how to convey the right overall thoughts about it.

I guess the only thing I can do is just highlight certain feelings I have about it. I don’t want to ruin any of the movie for anyone. The only spoilers might be when I write about the humor. I also want to make it clear that I did like it. It just has highs and lows and its up to each individual person to figure out if some of the lows outweigh the highs. So here goes….

-Transformers 2 clocks in at about 2 and half hours and it feels like 2 and a half hours. There wasn’t a time that I was wishing it would hurry up and end, but it still felt long.

-This movie feels epic. I thought the last 20 minutes or so of the first movie was impressive. This has a ton of action sequences on that level. The movie felt like they used every penny of the $150,000,000 plus that it cost to make. Visually just absolutely amazing. The epic scale and action sequences of the movie alone make it enough to possibly outweigh what is bad about the movie. Hence my problem with trying to explain why I liked the movie even though I have quite a few complaints.

-Story wise, its on the level of the first movie. It’s not an impressive story and I felt like I was just following along just waiting to get to the next big action sequence. That actually surprises me considering the guys that wrote this movie also wrote Star Trek, which had a great story.

-I thought the first Transformers movie, had just enough humor. It didn’t feel overdone. It was just the right amount. This movie to me however, has WAY too much humor. (SPOILER) From the two dogs humping, to the little decepticon humping,to the mini decepticons that act like Gremlins, to the mom and the pointless scenario she gets into at Sam’s school, to John Turturro beneath Devastator, to the two autobots that have make a wisecrack every time that speak. Some of the humor does work. The scenes between Sam and Bumblebee are great. John Turturro and Sam’s new roommate are funny. Sam’s parents are funny most of the time. It just seemed like the movie somehow over did it this time.

-Humor leads me to my next point about the twin autobots, Mudflap and Skids. If these autobots were real people, they would be Eddie Griffin and maybe Mike Epps. You can easily tell that these two are supposed to be like two black or hispanic sidekicks that make wisecracks every time they speak. Nothing against Eddie Griffin or Mike Epps, but those are the characters they typically play. Yes, they are both voiced by Tom Kenny who also voices Spongebob Squarepants and is white, but its very obvious in the movie what I’m talking about. One of them even has a gold tooth. They also make quite a few crude jokes that kind of surprised me. In the end, I just kind of felt like these sidekick type characters could have been written and played out better.

-I loved the ways that Optimus Prime, Megatron, and Starscream were handled. I loved the scenes between Starscream and Megatron which we didn’t get in the first one. It felt like scenes from the cartoon. Optimus just seemed more hardcore here. He had the guns blazing and had no remorse for slicing a decepicon’s head in half.

I can’t wait for more people to see it to hear their reactions and thoughts. I will post more later as I have more time to let my brain digest the movie.

Thoughts on Star Trek

I finally got the chance to see Star Trek. Once on Saturday in 35mm and then again on Monday in IMAX.

Let me start this off by saying how much I have loved Star Trek growing up. As I said in my previous post, I grew up on The Next Generation. I watched it every week and I’ll still watch it if its on. I own every special edition of every Star Trek movie. I have been to two Star Trek conventions here in Nashville where I got to meet James Doohan and George Takei. I think I know my Star Trek history. When I visited Las Vegas back in 2002, I and two buddies made it a priority to go to the Star Trek Experience at the Las Vegas Hilton.(very cool,btw) So, yes I would consider myself to be a trekkie/trekker to some degree.

When I heard about J.J. Abrams directing a new Star Trek movie centered around the TOS(the original series) cast, I was very very nervous. I remember having conversations with others that also loved Star Trek, about how scary of an idea this was. To most of us, this idea was either succeed or fail. There was no real in between. Either it works or it becomes a bigger joke than the humpback whales. I wanted to have faith in J.J. based on how much I loved LOST, Alias, Cloverfield, and even Mission Impossible III, but I also remembered reading about his draft of Superman he had written a few years back. To make a long story short, he had written a first draft of a potential script for a new Superman movie that was crazy. He had supposedly written a draft with all sorts of wild over the top action and story lines that were never part of the Superman mythos. For example, in his draft Krypton never exploded and Lex Luthor was eventually revealed to be a second son of Krypton aka. an alien. It was all of course a first draft and sure enough it leaked out on the interwebs. Abrams has since come out and said that because it was a first draft, he wanted to make it so over the top just to see how far they could take it. After this, you can see why someone might have some fears about him “rebooting” a franchise.

I tried to keep a positive attitude about it. When I heard that they delayed the film for around 6 months due to the writers strike, I started to have more hope. Apparently they didn’t want to rush any of it because of the strike, which I agree with. As pictures and trailers were released over the last couple of months my fears receded even more. I actually tried hard not to read any spoilers about it. I wanted to go into the film knowing only what I had really learned from the trailers and maybe a few interviews I had seen on tv or online. In today’s online world, thats almost an impossible task. Well, all the waiting paid off and the worrying turned out to be for nothing other than just not wanting to see something I loved go down the toilet.

J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek is wonderful. It’s magnificent. It’s joy. It’s everything I wanted it to be and more. I am just so thrilled to know that Paramount didn’t just throw it out there to any ole director to try make a few more bucks off of a franchise that had somewhat of a life threatening wound. No, they handed it over to a group of guys that wanted to make something special and boy did they succeed.

The movie is so beautiful to look at. Every scene whether it be on a ship or an a planet is beautiful to look at. The colors used in the movie are so vibrant. It doesn’t have the dark colors that TNG and the other shows used. The ship is so nice to look at. They gave it an updated yet still classic look. I loved seeing engineering look like engineering. It was just a bunch of touch screen pads. The bridge had a classic and simple yet updated look. I do agree with those that have said the bridge kind of looks like Apple designed it. Just about everything in the film you see in the movie is nice to look at and gives you a good feeling. It gives you this overall feeling of hope that I think Gene Roddenberry was going for when he created the series back in the 60’s.

The actors are great. Who ever was in charge of casting did an amazing job. Most of the cast were able to take traits from the original characters that everyone knows and loves and then make them their own. Everyone does a great job of getting you to love their character again. When I heard Karl Urban was playing Dr. McCoy, I thought “WHAT?”. I didn’t think he couldn’t do it, but I just couldn’t imagine him doing it. After seeing the movie, I am just blown away at how well he did it. It wasn’t just him though. Zachary Quinto as Spock, Chris Pine as Kirk, Simon Pegg as Scotty,etc…they all just nailed the parts. Granted, they’re not doing impressions of the original actors but they nailed the characters and aspects of the characters that we all grew to love. Chris Pine is in no way William Shatner but he has that swagger and confidence that Kirk has. Zachary Quinto does a great job as Spock. He really brings new elements to the character that is different than the way we’ve seen Leonard Nimoy portray Spock. Considering he had to be in the same movie as Nimoy, he did a great job overall portraying the character that has become as much of an icon as Kirk. Eric Bana as the villain Nero is good. Nero isn’t your typical Star Trek movie villain. He’s not the smartest or the most over the top, but he is sincere in what he wants. He doesn’t kill everyone in sight unless they’re in the way of his overall objective. I won’t go into main details about the plot mainly because I don’t want to ruin the experience for anyone.

The story overall worked well. One of the biggest questions on every fans mind going into this has been, “How will this work in the continuity of the Star Trek universe?” Well, thanks to a very clever time travel storyline, they managed to go back and basically start from scratch. The beginning of the movie basically tells the audience that the timeline they know has changed. We still have the same characters but now everyone’s destinys have changed. Overall, the story works. Abrams and his crew of writers have managed to give themselves a clean slate in the Star Trek universe in which to work. In this timeline, Kirk has yet to go up against Khan. They haven’t made their peace treaties with the Klingons. Now, they might not have to go back in time to bring back humpback whales. You get my drift.

I am kind of torn about this. I would love to see what kind of movie these guys can make with a new Khan storyline(btw,the writers have been quoted as not ruling Khan out for the sequel). At the same time, this movie was so good that I don’t want them to make a great movie that might tarnish the image of the original Khan movie. Its kind of like Batman in a way. Until last year, Jack Nicholson was THE Joker to many people. Then Heath Ledger came along and threw that character on its head and he is now THE Joker to many people. As of now, Ricardo Montalban is Khan. To a lot of Star Trek fans, The Wrath of Khan is their favorite Star Trek movie. I guess I’m just a sucker for originals. I honestly feel that these new Batman movies are making people forget about how classic the ‘89 Batman movie truly was. I just don’t want to possibly tarnish the image of an already classic movie like Khan. Then again…most fans didn’t think that replacing Shatner and Nimoy would work out well and well, we were wrong.

Overall, Abrams’ Star Trek is a breath of fresh air to sci-fi films. I think I enjoyed more in these screenings than I did in any of the Star Wars prequels and I would consider myself to be a big Star Wars fan too. I honestly think I enjoyed this movie more than any movie in the past year since The Dark Knight came out. It all JUST.WORKS. I’m really excited to see where they take this franchise now and I do have faith overall that whatever direction they go in, it will work.

By the way, if you get a chance to see it in IMAX, then do yourself a favor and see it. Seeing the ships and space battles on that big of a screen and hearing the sound in a large theatre is so very cool. Definitely the way to go!

p.s. I’m already jonesing for the blu-ray version of this movie. It’s going to look beautiful!

Rumblings of the Day 4/30/09

-I guess its safe to finally say that I saw Wolverine. Initial thoughts? The trailer plays games with you when you watch it. You see all these cool action scenes and completely forget that the X-Men movies are not like “Iron Man” or “The Dark Knight”. I didn’t think Wolverine was bad. I thought the first X-Men was good, X2 was great, and X3 was like that family member you don’t want to acknowledge but you know they’re still around. Wolverine fits in between the first and second movies for me. Hugh Jackman is great as he usually is, but the other characters/actors, I really didn’t deep down give a crap about. Sorry. My gut tells me that Hugh Jackman/Wolverine is probably the only character people care about. I’ve heard talk about a Magneto movie or another “X-Men Origins” character movie. I honestly don’t think people will respond to them unless Hugh Jackman is involved. Thats just my opinion and I hope I’m wrong.

-Hopefully, I’ll be seeing Star Trek within the next 48 hours. Either in IMAX or good ole 35mm. Honestly, I don’t care how I see it. I just know I WANT TO SEE IT. I’m so happy to be excited about a Star Trek movie again. I grew up watching TNG. I knew who the original cast members and characters were based on the movies, but it was TNG that got me hooked. I think I was around 6-7 when it first airing on TV. It is probably the first tv show I ever watched on a regular basis. Every Saturday afternoon/evening, I was in front of that TV watching TNG on ch.17 or ch.30 here in Nashville. When the show ended, I remember hearing about the first TNG movie and I was SO excited to see it. I’ve loved every minute of Star Trek anything I’ve seen especially TNG, and while yes I’m sad that the time of TNG and Rick Berman is about 99.9% over, I’m super stoked to see what direction J.J. Abrams takes Gene Roddenberry’s idea in. I have yet to read a bad early review about the new film which gives me some relief but at the same time, I need to try and not get my expectations to high.

- Some posts back, I wondered about my neighbors upstairs. They were always there. They were always outside smoking and they unintentionally talked loud with southern accents. Really nice people, but confusing people overall. Anyways, they moved out yesterday. It will be a quiet for a little while thank goodness. Hopefully, the new people will be nice whenever they move in.

- My dad is trying to move back home from North Carolina. He’s been a chef my entire life and he’s had some really great jobs with some GREAT perks(Cabo!), but over the last few years he’s worked his butt off to finally get a college degree and also a masters degree. Well, as of last month, he finished. Now, he’s taking a huge leap and changing careers. I’m so proud of him. He’s an inspiration to anyone that if you want to do something you can do it. I know its a big risk changing careers like that and I just hope he knows that we’ll always be here no matter whatever.

- For the past two weeks, The Office has been really great! Not that the rest of the season hasn’t been great, but it’s had some down moments. These past two episodes though have been just stellar in my opinion. They’ve felt like older episodes that made the show what it was.

- The jury is still out for me on Parks and Recreations. I like Amy Poehler but I can’t decide if I like the show. It’s trying to be like The Office but in a different way and I can’t tell if that’s hurting it or helping it. I’ve watched all four episodes and I still cannot get a definitive feeling about it.

- I’m really hoping NBC doesn’t cancel Chuck. Its such a great show. I know it has its problems but overall I like it. I’m actually preferring it over Heroes. With Jay Leno doing his thing next year, I know NBC is going to have to cancel some stuff. I know it hurts to say it, but I would kind of prefer that Heroes be cancelled before Chuck. I know it’s not going to happen because NBC already announced it was coming back, but I think Heroes has used up all their chances trying to make it a hit show. They will be going into their fourth season next year and I still don’t think they know what they’re doing. Whereas LOST has a definitive story to tell, Heroes seems like they literally make up stuff each week before it airs kind of like South Park.

- Enough about TV and movies. I’m really excited about some of the draft choices the Titans made this past weekend. I think the Titans have worried for so many years about their defense and they’ve cared enough about the offense. For years, during a lot of games they’ve scored just enough to win. And for Titans fans, its aggravating. Getting down to that stadium in downtown Nashville is not an easy task on gameday and to get down there and watch them play just enough to get by, stinks. I’ve prayed that they would finally start getting some wide receivers that would make other teams worry and yet we’ve never had it. Every time the Titans have tried to get a big name receiver, that player gets hurt or just doesn’t live up to expectations. I’m hoping that this will be the year that we continue to see signs that Titans are working their way towards that explosive offense that a lot of Titans fans haven been dying to see.

- There are a ton of good big name shows coming to Nashville over the next few months and I can’t seem to afford any of them. They’re all so expensive. Even Metallica with their advertised economically affordable tickets are still a minimum $50 before ticketmaster starts adding all of their stupid fees. Its aggravating. I don’t know how people are buying multiple tickets to the big name shows coming to town.

Thats enough for tonight. I have to get up early tomorrow morning. Goodnight.

p.s. Here is your obligatory mention of “Swine Flu”.

Trek Yourself

These things are pretty funny!
Trek Yourself

Ramblings of the Day 4/17/2009

- Woke up today not feeling good….first time for that in a long time. I decided to use one of my coveted sick days and stay at home in bed. Well, after sleeping for most of the day, I woke up late in the day feeling a lot better. I guess I must have eaten something bad last night or something. Seeing how I was feeling much better, I grabbed something light to eat and then I made my way to a late screening of ‘Crank: High Voltage” or as most people will call it, “Crank 2″.

Overall it was an ok movie. I think it suffers from the same problem that the “Saw” movies have faced. The first “Saw” was crazy. It was different. It had an ending that completely shocked you. As soon as “Saw 2″ came out though, everyone had such high standards for it and it just didn’t deliver. You went into “Saw 2″ expecting a twist somewhere. It wasn’t a surprise like the first one. The first “Crank” was this way. It was a different movie going experience than what people were used to. I for one loved how crazy it was. Now with “Crank 2″, I went in expecting it to be crazy and completely off the wall. I wanted to watch it and be completely into it the same way I was with the first one, but I wasn’t. Instead of being in shock like I was during the first one, I just kind of sat there not feeling anything. I wanted to be excited during the movie, but because I knew it was going to be crazy and they were going to go above and beyond to try and shock me, I wasn’t. I guess overall, its not a bad movie but its also not something I will make an effort to watch again. I’ll just stick with the first “Crank”.

- Over the last 4 weeks or so, I’ve managed to watch all 3 seasons and the all of the current season 4 episodes of “How I Met Your Mother”. Wow, it is such a funny show. I’m actually amazed I like it. I haven’t really been able to watch a sitcom in years probably since Seinfeld. (BTW, I loathed “Friends”) I guess I’ve just outgrown studio audiences and stage sets. That or I’m just spoiled with so many great comedies like The Office or Arrested Development that film in a completely different way. Anyways, HIMYM has a new fan now. As soon as I watched 1 disc of season 1 from Netflix, I immediately fell in love with the characters and the overall story. I like that it has a story that is gradually going somewhere. I love how I can relate to the group of friends and the main character. I can see my friends and myself in their group of friends. It sounds odd I know, but I do. Maybe, its just because I’m in the same age bracket as the characters. Whatever the reason, I really like the show and I really hope it does get renewed for a fifth season. I was so happy that Target ran a sale right as I was getting into the show. I was able to buy each of the first three seasons for $12.99 each. A steal in my opinion!

- I was able to watch some Charlie Chaplin films on TCM yesterday. It was Charlie’s 120th birthday and they ran an all day marathon of his work. I actually had never watched a Chaplin film until yesterday. He’s obviously a noticeable icon of movie history but still I had never seen any of his work. I must say, I am quite amazed at how much I didn’t know about him. I always though he was just a Three Stooges type of actor, but he was so much more. After I watched a few of his films and read up a little more on him, I went to Blockbuster and rented “Chaplin” with Robert Downey Jr.. I’m still amazed at how much more there was to Chaplin than just “The Little Tramp”.

I was quite happy to have my own little personal Nashville Film Fest on my projector screen that was mostly free. I was really excited about going to see some films at this years Nashville Film Fest(going on now), but when I saw that tickets were $11 a person per movie, I said forget that! I’m not paying $11 to see an indy film. The Belcourt Theatre doesn’t charge that much for indy films. $11 is just absolutely ridiculous in my opinion. I guess if you’re one of those people in town that thinks your taste in movies is better than everyone else than I guess you should have no problem paying that price.

I’m pretty wide open about my taste in movies. I have no problem with watching an indy movie that hardly anyone will see and then going to see a current blockbuster movie. It always surprises me though that we still have critics that write and think the way they do. I’m also surprised that people still read their reviews. I just don’t think film critics have any knowledge about what most people like. Granted its their opinion, I’ll give them that. I’ll never forget walking out of a press screening of “300″ though and hearing some of the Nashville film critics just say terrible things about it. I really wanted to turn around and tell these guys to get off their high horse. Obviously they had not seen the same movie that I or most everyone else saw. I guess if Zach Snyder had managed to make “300″ more like “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” then maybe these critics would have changed their minds. I’m not trying to say that I’m right and they’re wrong, but I get really frustrated at film critics. Not all of the Nashville critics are bad. Some of them are cool to talk to about movies. Then there are some who must think that they’re writing for the New York Times and they treat you like you are some sort of peasant. I really want to tell the ones that act that way, “You realize you live in Nashville and not New York or L.A., right?” There are the few that I do enjoy reading and I do value their thoughts, but some of those others I feel for. I respect their opinions but they must think they live and think at a higher level than most of us other normal movie folk.

- I haven’t really blogged about my trip to Cabo San Lucas. I’ve told my friends about it but I haven’t had the chance to blog about it. Overall, it was AMAZING! I’m so lucky my dad asked me to go with him. I’m also very grateful to Nestle Professional for paying for it all. They really know how to treat their customers!

I know it might look like a cheesy touristy kind of video, but here it is anyways….My slideshow to Cabo.

- I’m going to have to get a second job at some point. It sucks. I’ve got to come up with some extra cash to start saving. This whole wonderful economy is just reeking havoc on just about everyone’s billfold. Companies are raising their prices. Credit Cards are raising their rates. Yet, their customers can’t pay for it all. I’m still amazed at the amount of business we still do at my current job. Our prices are SO ridiculously high and yet people still fork it over. Anyways, if you have an opening somewhere and you want to give me a heads up, feel free to let me know! I’ve got certified references, that will tell you how awesome I am!

- I’m finally starting to see more of my friends (and even my sister!) join Twitter. Now if I can only get them all to start posting frequently. It’s such an addicting service. I think I use Twitter more than Facebook and definitely more than MySpace. I think I’ve logged into MySpace once in the past month and half. Its just kind of become a dirty trailer park whereas Facebook is like a clean neighborhood. I really don’t know what to compare Twitter to. Its fast, simple, and easy to use. I think the only thing you have to learn about Twitter is how to do @replies. I think overall, a monkey could learn to use twitter. Don’t be surprised if anyday now, a zoo does train a monkey to do it. Twitter has an interesting effect on you. You start meeting people that you don’t know in your normal everyday life, but you start learning stuff about them. Pretty soon, you start to feel like you know these other twitterers. I can name you things that I randomly remember from other twitter users that I’ve never even met outside of Twitter. Its a weird feeling to have. Surely, I’m not the only person to do this. If you get a chance, join up!

Be sure to follow me at twitter.com/billyhammock

That’s enough for tonight. I can’t believe I’m actually off all weekend. I am going to soak it all in!

Ramblings of the Day 3/12/09

- I think my neighbors live outside more than they do inside. It seems like every time I leave my apartment, they’re outside smoking. I would love to know how much they spend on cigarettes. They’re always there too. I’m curious as to what they actually do for work and how they pay their monthly rent. They’re nice people so don’t get me wrong. These are just odd things I have noticed.

If you haven’t seen this by now, then please watch. It’s the Jim Cramer vs. Jon Stewart interview from the Daily Show. If you’ve ever seen Jim Cramer’s show on CNBC, then you know he yells, throws stuff, and basically makes a spectacle out of giving “financial device”. It’s funny to watch Jon Stewart basically go “To Catch a Predator” on him. Stewart makes this loud mouth guy seem like one of those predators who is trying to come up with words quickly to get himself out of trouble. I’m not a big fan of either The Daily Show or Jon Stewart but this is pretty good.

I am kind of addicted to listening to this. It’s called “Freedom Writers” and it’s from the group “Two Steps from Hell”. The song is also in the new trailer for Star Trek. They basically make trailer music. You can’t buy it on cds or online. They only sell their stuff for commercial use and that sucks. Luckily, I found a place online that had quite a large collection of their material and I have been listening to it. While you don’t recognize most of their stuff, listening to it still makes you want to do something epic, lol.

This one is called “Down with the Enterprise”. It was featured in the first Star Trek trailer.

Ramblings of the Day 3/11/09

I watched “Dear Zachary” last night….. WOW. What an intense documentary. It’s really haunting. I don’t want to say too much about it other than that its a documentary that was meant to be a letter to the child of the best friend of the film maker. If you have netflix, PLEASE get the dvd or add it and watch it instantly on your computer or Xbox360.

Here’s the way I watch American Idol: I skip all of it until it gets down to the final 12 or in this case the final 13. For me, the auditions were funny the first two seasons, but then they just became stupid. Instead of having people that don’t think they stink but actually do stink try and audition, it’s become just a big circus. A circus full of people who just want to get on TV. Its ridiculous and I just don’t find it funny. If I do decide to watch one of the auditions, I watch it after its aired. That way, I can fast forward to the people who can actually sing. I usually skip the auditions and then all of the “Hollywood” weeks. To me, when it gets down to the final 12/13, you actually see people that might actually see in the future. We’ve never heard of 99% of the people who didn’t make it to the final 12. So who cares about those people?

My thoughts on tonight? I really have no opinion on Jasmine. There was nothing special about her and I don’t care that she’s gone. I am glad Jorge is gone. I thought most of the performances were bad the first night and he just didn’t impress me at all. He actually kind of creeped me out. Between him and that punk rocker guy Adam, they both creep me out. Adam has that really girly voice and he just reminds me of one of those emo “Hot Topic” kids you just want kick the crap out of. I do really hope he’s not the next David Archuleta, aka. the one all of the girls go crazy for.

I really don’t have a favorite yet. I was glad to see David Cook win last year as he was the one I rooted for during the season. I guess we’ll have to see a few more weeks for me to decide.

Chef Marco Pierre White hosts “The Chopping Block” on NBC. This guy is one of the most intimidating people I have ever seen. He’s the kind of guy that you would NEVER want to give bad news to. The show reminds me kind of like a mixture of The Apprentice and Top Chef, which I like.

The first episode was definitely entertaining. The premise is that eight couples compete to win their own restaurant. In the beginning, they were divided into two teams of four couples each. Each couple had a chef and a partner who regardless of their background, was a member of the wait staff. Each team had 24 hours to clean up and open a restaurant. They then opened and had a dinner service. Each restaurant was secret shopped by a professional food critic who then decided in the end which team won. Chef Marco then eliminated one couple from the losing team. The first episode did have a good twist at the end which was sad but interesting.

I really kind of wish deep down that Chef Marco was hosting The Apprentice instead of Donald Trump. He makes Donald Trump seem like your boss who is actually your buddy. Whereas, Chef Marco is that boss you don’t ever want to come in contact with because you know its gonna be bad. Anyways, I’m going to keep watching this one. BTW, I do think it’s funny that these chefs who host these cooking competition shows do nothing but say how horrible the food is 90% of the time. Is it really that bad? I doubt it. My dad is a professional chef and I could never imagine him being so negative like most of these chefs are.

South Park’s season premiere cracked me up. They made fun of Disney and The Jonas Brothers which was hilarious. If you get a chance to see a replay, try and watch it. The stuff they do with Mickey Mouse is great.

I have this thing where I can’t finish reading books. I buy a book that I think I’ll like, read a portion of it, and then just for some reason stop reading it. The only books I’ve read from beginning to end really in the last few years have been the Harry Potter books, The DaVinci Code, Twilight (yes, I read it), and The Last Lecture. That is not a lot of books. Even with this problem, I’ve kind of become interested in Amazon’s Kindle 2. I kind of want one. I think it would really help me get into reading more often. The problem is that I have a hard time ponying up $350 for a device that I can’t physically see a real life demo of. You would think that Amazon would have signed a deal with Best Buy or somewhere to at least have demos of the devices in their stores. Instead, Amazon set up a message board where you could go on and find people in your state that have one. Then you could go meet that person and see their Kindle if they so choose to show it to you. To me, thats tacky. I really don’t want to go meet someone I don’t know just to look at their $350 electronic book device.

I don’t understand some of the hate that people are having for “Watchmen”. It’s almost funny if you think about it. Whenever Hollywood reboots/remakes/reimagines something, the first thing we naturally do is compare it to the original source material. I can understand everyone doing the same thing for Watchmen. Its just funny that they have tried making a movie of this material for years and yet when they finally do and its by someone who loves the original material and it is about as faithful as you’re going to get for a movie, people still want to bitch. I just don’t understand it. If they had made it and it wasn’t as faithful as it is, people would have bitched. In my opinion, Zach Snyder did an amazing job taking a long graphic novel, cut it down to two and half hours, and keep a lot of the ideas the same. Every other version of this movie that they have tried to make up until now, has bastardized the comic SO much worse. Yet, Zach Snyder puts the page on the screen and its not good enough. Is it perfect? No. I had my nitpicks. Nothing ever is 100 percent perfect, but it was as close as anyone is going to get. I didn’t care for some of the music choices. I didn’t think it was necessary to have Dr. Manhattan be naked as many times as he was seen, but then again they were being faithful to the comic. I didn’t care for the bad old age makeup. But those things, are just nitpicks and they don’t take away from my overall feeling about the movie. I think the ending was better than the comic in my opinion. I think seeing a giant squid alien thing would have looked weird on screen. I think they went the right route and still conveyed the message of the comic. I just think some people are complaining just to complain. I’m really happy also that quite a few of the people that I thought wouldn’t like the movie, have actually loved it.

- It was nice to wake up this morning and have maintenance guys in my apartment fixing my AC. For the past week, my AC has been doing this weird thing where its comfortable during the day and then burning up at night. Shouldn’t have been the opposite?!

- I was finally going to watch “Australia” today but I’ve decided to wait and watch it on the plane to Cabo San Lucas. I didn’t realize that it would be a long flight and a three hour movie will help. Especially one I’ve never seen.

- I don’t understand this messed up weather here in Tennessee. Yesterday, you could have worn shorts and a t-shirt. Today, you need to wear warm clothes and a coat because they’re calling for possible sleet, ice, and snow tonight. WHAT THE HECK?!

Ramblings of the Day 3/10/09

-I need to make a conscious effort to try and blog a little more often. More posts, more readers.

-I am so glad to be off for 2 days. It hasn’t been incredibly busy at work, it’s just been having to be at work that tires me. I’ve had to work for the past 7 days and I’m just ready for a small break. Too bad I have things at home I NEED to take care of. On my days off though, I just end up wanting to do nothing at all. It’s so hard to force myself to get things done. I went on vacation last month and I told myself that I needed to clean out my apartment. What did I do all week? Pretty much nothing at all. I did go to the gym almost everyday but thats about it.

-I really want to try and lose 10 pounds before the end of the month. I think I can do it. I have lost over 55 pounds in the past year, so 10 pounds in completely doable. I just have to tell myself to keep drinking water, watch the calories, and force myself to hit the gym even on days I feel tired. Especially days when I have to work. I can do it. I’m currently at 184. I would like to get down to 174 or even 170 if I really work at it. I want to hit Cabo San Lucas and feel awesome.

-I’m not really looking forward to April and May at work. May is just going to be really busy every weekend. I honestly think May could end up being busier than the rest of the summer. April is going to suck just because ticket prices are going up again, which mean more upset customers and more needless things that my company is going to want us to do. I would love to know who makes the operational decisions for our company and I would love to see inside their heads. They come up with these “brilliant” ideas, but don’t put any thought into how they’ll affect the business as a whole. Some of their ideas are good, but when they want you to execute these ideas and then complain because you spent too much making their ideas come to fruition, its frustrating. Enough complaining about work. It just irritates me.

-I’m going to watch a couple of movies tonight. First, I’m going to watch “Dear Zachary” and then “Australia”. Most people that I have heard talk about “Dear Zachary” say it will tear you up on the inside. I’ll try and post about both movies after I see them.

- Have you seen the latest previews for…

Terminator Salvation? Very cool looking!

Star Trek? This movie looks EPIC. As a Star Trek fan growing up, I cannot WAIT to see this!

Wolverine? X-Men was good, X-2 was awesome, X-3 was turd on a dirty bathroom floor. I’m hoping Wolverine is awesome. Hugh Jackman is one of my favorite actors and he IS the best part of the X-Men movies.