Tag Archives: summer movies

Hollywood, Uncategorized

Motion Picture Fail

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I realized on my way home today that I came up pretty short on viewing all the movies I wanted to see this summer.  True, there weren’t that many that I was interested in back in May, but I have not even hit the 50% mark.  District 9 just came out to some box-office avail, but here we are, August 17, and the only movie I saw after Memorial Day was a random weekday viewing of Harry Potter 6.  Here are the ones that I’ve missed.  Let me know if I’m truly “missing” something, or if I can just let it go until it shows up on Netflix (which, at the rate I get through my queue, would happen sometime in early 2012).

PS – I’m kinda depressed that half the movies I’ve seen this summer were Wolverine and Terminator 4.  Yikes.

I’m sleepy.  Are you sleepy?

Hollywood, Uncategorized

Reviewing T4

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Terminator: Salvation was OK, but definitely the weakest of the series to date.  Yes, I’m including T3 in that statement.  No, I don’t think the third one was awful.  Yes, despite Claire Danes in an action flick.  No, I’m not kidding.  It was a decent conclusion (or restart, depending on how you look at it).

This latest one did alright maintaining some believable continuity with the timeline established earlier in the series, but how many more screen-hours of humans running from terminators can we reasonably take?  The “redemption” storyline with the terminator hybrid was pretty weak and cliched.  But honestly, it followed such an obvious and predictable sequence, to stretch it out more would have made it much worse.  The chases, the explosions, the post-apocalyptic landscape of southern California, all combined for reasonable levels of excitement, even if they did nothing innovative.

Bottom line: this flick plays to that lowest common denominator of action movies, and will make plenty of money in the process.  If you’re looking for an exciting adventure this summer, though, I’m gonna give my early vote to Star Trek. Even that Transformers shite might jump ahead of T4, given that they’ve got Hollywood’s king of gratuitous excess, Michael Bay, at the helm.

I’ll give it 5 out of 10.

General, Hollywood, Sports, Uncategorized

Long Shots

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I looked at my sad little list of tweets on the front page today and it made me feel kind of bad.  Really just haven’t had a lot of blogocity flowing of late.

Anyway, later on this evening I will be taking in a second screening of Star Trek with some of the geek men from MKE.  We caught Watchmen as a group, too.  I’m going to turn in a little earlier than I usually would on a Friday, because I have to head over to the Wordell house in the Falls tomorrow to work on a computer; want to get said work done in the AM hours, so I’ll need some good sleep…

Went out and took some pictures last night after the sun went down.  Been meaning to do some night photography with my new camera, but this was my first chance.  Picked up a couple tips from Wordy on how to make some of them look better (I only uploaded a few of the decent ones).  Tip #1: remember that when you’re doing a 5-15 second exposure of a building and you’re zoomed in @ 300mm, you’re asking for blurring.  It’s just gonna happen.  Good point there.

What’s with the Brewers lately, eh?  They started slow, but things are looking up after a 5-1 homestand that came on the heels of a 3-1 road trip.  Brewers have won 6 series in a row, and they go to St. Louis this weekend playing for first place in the Central.  Yeah, it’s still early, but I see signs that the team is more relaxed and grown up than people were counting on.  I hope they don’t lose it, and they remember what is working during this good stretch.  Oh, and having Trevor Hoffman to handle the 9th doesn’t hurt, either.

I’ve got 2 weeks to go @ UWM before heading back to Osh Vegas for work once again!  How bout them apples??

What’s new with you?

Hollywood, Uncategorized

On the Topic of Summer Movies

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Yeah, so thinking about a new ‘X’ prompted me to check out the balance of the summer schedule. This is shaping up to be a very geeky summer at the movies for me…

May 2 – Iron Man. I know, we’ve been very disappointed by the non-Spidey-or-X-Men offerings coming out of Marvel in the past, but I’m willing to give this one a shot. I was never even into Iron Man as a character, but I have enjoyed Robert Downey Jr. and Jon Favreau in the past, so…

May 16 — Prince Caspian. I wouldn’t characterize The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe as a picture that I didn’t enjoy, but frankly, trying to be The Lord of the Rings all over again is a bad move, and really tough to live up to. When I read the Chronicles of Narnia as a kid, I think this was my favorite of those books, so I’m looking forward to seeing it on the big screen.

May 23 — Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Are you frackin kidding me? Indy 4, ’nuff said. Geeks have not anticipated a movie this much since 1999. We’re just hoping for a better outcome. Lucas didn’t direct, so that’s a start.

June 13 — The Incredible Hulk. I know, I know… just see notes on Iron Man above, replace Downey Jr. and Favreau with Ed Norton. Also see trailer.

July 18 — The Dark Knight. Here’s one to get seriously, legitimately (and mainstream-ed-ly) ramped up about. My expectations are extremely high. They were also really high for Batman Begins, and that delivered.

July 25 — The X-Files: I Want to Believe. As I’ve recently stated in other forums, “I have to believe this will be better than the series finale. Which was ass.”

Six movies is more than I’ve seen in one summer for a while. The bummer part is that out of all of them, I expect Michelle to be interested in roughly 0% of them. Reckon that’ll leave me dateless for most of my movie viewing this summer… but isn’t that sort of what being a geek is all about?

Hollywood, Uncategorized

News to Me

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Sometimes, all those random, bizarre emails that I get from Justin, et al. are actually worth something.  I found out about this, which had COMPLETELY evaded my radar.

If I’m not mistaken, the discussion of an X-Files sequel started somewhere around 122 minutes after the premiere of the first film.  For a variety of reasons, it took some time for it to come to fruition.  But the simple fact that it’s now about 12 weeks from opening and this is the first evidence I’ve seen of an actual movie being produced…  Well, that just speaks to how out of touch I’ve become with Hollywood.

I’ll add it to my list of stuff to check out this summer, though.  And speaking of checking things out–if you hurry, you might get to watch this before the YouTube Police take it down.

Want to Believe?

General, Hollywood, Sports, Uncategorized

Beginning of the End

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Started my last week at UWO today. I feel remarkably normal about everything. Had a couple people ask me today if I was nervous about starting a new job, or excited to be leaving Oshkosh. Had to say neither. Maybe it just won’t seem as “real” until I start in MKE, but for the time being, I’m feeling fine about the whole thing…

I forgot to bring new coffee filters in for the second day, and I tried to make due with about 3 cone filters cut up and arranged inside the basket. That didn’t work, either. I put a ziploc bag full of filters on the steps so I won’t forget them on the way out tomorrow.

The steps are nice and clean, too; I had to give the apartment a nice little ‘once-over’ this evening, cuz my landlord is showing it tomorrow. It made me think about some of the shit holes that I’ve looked at while searching for apartments. I know that I probably won’t meet ANY of these people, but I really think you need to have some pride, a little self-respect, and try to make it look like you don’t live like a complete slob. Even if you do sometimes. So I did the floors, wiped the counters, washed all the dishes, and spot-cleaned the bathroom. Everything looks better.

Brewers won their 4th game in a row tonight. That’s also 12 out of their last 15. Pretty impressive. Still room on the bandwagon, folks…

I heard an interesting story over the weekend, wherein Steve Schrubbe’s car burned to the ground. That’s right– his car.

I also saw the third Spider-Man installment, and I’m giving it a 6-out-of-10: entertaining, but with some glaring holes/points of contention for the casual comic book geek (which I am). I’m a little too tired to chart the exact measures on a graph for you, but from the rough sketch below, you can see that some slight geekocity will allow you adequate background to enjoy the film, but as geekitude exceeds 50%, the issues with Spidey 3 rapidly approach infinity. I’d mark myself as about half-geek, so I guess the chart is skewed a bit through my perspective. But you get the idea (clicky for biggification).

OK, night-night time then.