We’re gonna miss our flight! Who cares? WATER!

I am passionately in love with the man known as Jerry Seinfeld. This movie isn’t really a movie. It’s JerJer’s final stand-up show he did, and it’s about the best thing I have ever seen. There are so many golden nuggets of wisdom in it.

Jerry Seinfeld is the last known survivor in an age of truly great comedians, none of whom, as far as I know, are doing the stand-up thing anymore. I’m speaking mainly of Paul Reiser (I loved Mad About You!), Larry Miller, Garry Shandling, Jay Leno (who was funny before he did The Tonight Show). And then there’s Jerry Seinfeld.

The “movie” starts out with a little sequence where they’re setting the viewer up. Seinfeld is having a funeral with a casket full of audio cassette tapes and all the jokes he’s written down. There is a host of other comedians (see paragraph above) at the funeral, all with their own little cameo, Larry Miller shedding a tear, Garry Shandling nodding solemnly when Jerry mentions the Ventriloquist Scare of ’84. It’s comedic gold. At any rate, I’m kind of stretching for a synopsis, but there really isn’t one.

The point of the blog is Jerry Seinfeld is simply the funniest person known to man. And he’s funny on his own merit. He doesn’t fart, burp, talk about farting or burping, but uses real life situations and reminds you of how hilarious human nature is. I almost pee my pants every time I hear his bit about expiration dates because he reaches into my brain and spills all of my deep dark secrets. He just gets me. He just gets people. And it’s good.

So basically, I love Seinfeld. I love this “movie,” and I love the TV show in all of its pointless glory. And I don’t mean to brag or anything, but I found the sixth season (the last remaining season that I was missing!) on sale at Black Friday. And you can’t put a price on a find like that. Except you can. It was $7.99… eight dollars of pure awesome.

Now if you have a soul, you will click this link: Do YOU have milk?

I’m prepared to lose a few with you?

Ironman

So this movie was www.thebomb.com/incredible. I loved it for a ton of reasons and we’ll go over those in a bit.

Ironman is placed as a preamble to a series of movies leading up to another movie which will also be awesome. The movies in this series goes in this order: Ironman, The Incredible Hulk, Ironman II, The Mighty Thor and Captain America. The movie that they are introducing is The Avengers.I now own all but 2 of these films. The second installment of Ironman and Capitan America are on my purchase before The Avengers comes out list. I tell you this not to boast but as a way to inform you of my nerdiness. This review will make me sound like I’ve lived in my parent’s basement my entire life, have never conversed with a member of the opposite gender consensually and call my room the fortress of solitude.

There’s this guy named Tony Stark. To put in terms that you not comic book loving people can understand he’s like the marvel version of Bruce Wayne. He’s insanely rich, crazy smart and fights crime and evil as a hobby. The difference is that Tony isn’t a pedophile that had a boy in a spandex jumpsuit following him around. Tony is the owner of a weapons design and manufacturing company called Stark Industries. He does what he wants when he wants without worrying about the consequences.

Tony also has his flaws mingled in with all of his external awesomeness. He has a drinking problem and is a womanizer as a hobby. This is why I think that Robert Downey Jr. was the absolutely ideal actor to play this role. Tony has a drinking problem, RDJ has a drug problem. Tony sleeps with as many women as will allow him to sleep with them, RDJ has used hookers in the past. Tony is arrogant, RDJ is too. I Really think that RDJ should change his name to Tony Stark and call it good. He really is the character incarnate.

Story Line!! Tony goes to sell missiles to the gov in the middle east. He gets kidnapped and placed in a cave. The kidnappers try to force him to make the missile that he was demonstrating. He decides to build a mechanical protective suit in order to escape. He escapes. He goes home and builds an even better model of the suit and plays around with ideas on how to make it even more awesome. He does. He goes and blows the guys that enslaved him to smithereenies. His Old business partner turns on him and tries to kill him. Ending of the movie happens. Roll credits. I know that the break down was really vague and all but trust me, it is a LOT more awesome than  what I wrote down here.

The reasons why I love it. It is the beginning of an era of awesome movies that all lead up to a movie that will be even more awesome than any other movie ever. The casting was PERFECT, the effects were breath taking Paul Betany is the voice of his super computer named Jarvis.

I would go into more detail on each of those topics individually but I am crazy tired and need to finish this book that I’ve been reading. I hope that you do go buy this movie and enjoy at the very least half as much as I did because it is one of my top 10 movies of all time.

Tune in next time for The Italian Job reviewed by hot sauce Mcgee. Pas afuera!

Not even a little excited?

The Incredible Hulk

This has to be one of my favorite superhero movies of all time. I always felt that if I were to be a superhero that I would be the Incredible Hulk. Don’t ask me why…because I’m going to tell you right now. As Mr. Blue put it he never thought to see this unexpecting man. People look at me and expect a not so tough push over short fella. Well, they couldn’t be farther from the truth. Even though I don’t look like it, I’m quite strong.

Enough about me, let’s get back to the movie. *Bruce Banner is a brilliant scientist that is working on a project for the military when something goes wrong. You see the project that he was working on was similar to the project that gave Captain America his powers. The difference was that Bruce decided to try it on himself. Using gamma radiation technology he sets off something that cannot be stopped. He demolishes that laboratory and severely injures the woman he loves putting her into the hospital for quite a while. He goes to visit her when he is accosted by the general that commissioned him to start the project in the first place. Bruce runs*.

The movie really starts off in Brazil where he has decided to hide himself from the government. Excelling at the local Guarana Soda factory he has a tough time fitting in. He does however learn Portuguese while living there which just goes to show his genius level. One thing leads to another and the G.I. Joes end up finding him. He goes into a fit and turns into the Hulk and completely decimates the professionally trained killers. He runs without knowing it.

You see the thing about when he’s the Hulk is that he has no recollection of what happens. So he has no idea where he ends up when he runs. After this particular episode he ends up in Guatemala. He makes his way back to his home where he runs into Betty Ross, the woman he loves, who also is not to be confused with the american icon Betsy.

She gets him the data from the experiment so that they can go see Mr. Blue who is going to help Bruce cure himself of the Hulk. Then the military finds out that he’s there and they try to capture him. He Hulkifies and all sorts of ruckus ensues. A helicopter crashes and blows stuff up and the Hulk saves Betty and runs off to the mountains.

They decide to go to New York to meet Mr Blue. While they’re there the military finds out where they’re going and tries to intercept. They do but in the mean time Bloncski, military man who is obsessed with fighting, gets a hold of Mr. Blue and makes him turn him into The Abomination. The Hulk and the Abom fight in one of the most impressive superhero battles of all time (at least the best in my eyes).

This movie is the best superhero movie ever. Well… it’s definitely up there. I love it because of it’s trueness to the comic and stunning computer generated imagery. I would recommend it to anyone and everyone that has the desire to see complete and utter awesomeness.

Tune in next time for the next review which will also be mine because my wife gets impatient and posts her’s out of order. Peace out people.

*this all happens during the opening credits, I’ll represent the end of the credits stuff with another asterisk. Thank you for paying attention.

I dunno, something amazing, I guess…

Don’t get excited, Steve is posting his review on The Incredible Hulk shortly. It’s just that for all Avengers-type films (can’t wait for Iron Man!), Steve gets a little bit OCD about his review. He wants it to be just right. So regardless of the fact that we watched it, and he has started several reviews of it, I guess his current draft is not good enough for the big green guy yet. So I’m skipping ahead and reviewing the movie we watched the other night, The Incredibles.

Let’s not kid ourselves here. Everything that Pixar creates is cinematic gold, and The Incredibles really is no different. Every time a new Pixar movie is created, I have a new favorite movie until the next one is released. (Although, for eight years running, I admit to being a little bit more than obsessed with Finding Nemo, with no replacement–not even another Pixar–in sight.) Anyway, despite all that… The Incredibles is good.

So The Incredibles follows the story of a superhero (Mr. Incredible) who is forced to suppress his “super” identity, and he settles down with another super and they are raising three super kids. He’s coerced into taking a job from a kid who was once his biggest fan but now has unfortunately turned into a super villain set on destroying the world. When Mr. Incredible finds out who his boss/arch nemesis is, and finds out that he’s evil, he realizes he’s got some problems on his hands. His superwife and superkids come to his rescue and it is really supergreat.

I like everything about this movie. For one thing, Pixar’s animation is so flawless I nearly forget that it’s animated. Seriously. I’m an idiot. But I really do. And the whole time I’m watching this movie, I’m thinking, “Who is playing the role of Mr. Incredible? I know that face. What else is he in?!” And then I remember that it’s computer generated and my dreams are dashed. (By the way, the face looks kind of familiar because he looks kinda like my brother. Sup Brett.)

I also like the basic setup of it. I don’t know what you would call that. But it starts out with documentary style interviews with some of the superheroes when they were still allowed to be super, which I think is just neat. They also did this great movie that was a huge success (well, I don’t know how huge or successful it was, but it gets an A+ from us!) and they didn’t have to stuff it chock full of big names. Another thing I like was that animated or not, every character is just so gosh darn believable. You know, if you can believe that superheroes exist among us and are just being forced to suppress their superhero awesomeness. Which I definitely can.

Well, you’re in love. Have a beer.

Hell Boy II

Most would say that this is probably the most recent B movie made but, I like it.

The movie make-up and costuming is pretty neat. It’s the same guy that did Pan’s Labyrinth Which means one thing. AWESOME. That guy has some weird imagination but holy poop does it ever look stunning on screen. It takes a dive right into the most messed up visions of someone having an acid trip. He put some interesting spins on the movie monster field. Like think about when monster movies were big, the make up technology sure sucked but the ideas and vision of the artists weren’t even close to what he’s made it. He dives right inside you nightmares and brings them to life. It’s really incredible.

The acting is… well… a little bit… total crap. Seriously! I’ve seen better work on an afternoon lifetime special. You know one of those all-men-are-evil-and-want rape/murder/beat-you-to-a-pulp kind of movies. that’s pretty shady but at least you get some emotion out of those cheap actresses.

This next sentence is for my wife. Ahem… I didn’t like the cinematography.

The story is alright. Here’s a synopsis. Once upon a time there was a big red demon guy that just wanted to be like everyone else. Sadly though, he couldn’t because he was big red and demon like. One day a pasty ripped man from the sewer doesn’t like people and wants them to stop existing. Demon, his flaming hot (literally a flame and hot as in temperature-wise) girlfriend and his fish man buddy find out the end of the world might happen and that they’re the only ones who can stop it from happening.  They do battle with captain pasty muscles fight for control of the army that could possibly bring about the apocalypse. Demon wins. Earth is safe and his fire woman is having twins at the end of the movie. Happy time to be had by all.

When I explain like that it doesn’t sound awesome. Not one iota. However I like it because it’s all comic bookey. It’s a good movie and think you should see it if not for the movie but the monster make-up alone.

So that’s all for tonight my friends. Have a good one and enjoy the next movie… or at least try to. He’s just not the into you. I shudder to think about having to watch it again. Good night e’erybody!

between what is right and what is easy

No, we’re not slacking off. Not really. We just decided that we would watch all of the Harry Potters before reviewing them, and then we would just review them all together. Isn’t that great? Dumbledore is amazing. The subject of today’s blog is an excerpt from one of my favorite quotes in the movie. The one where Cedric Diggory dies. Did I give something away? I can hardly remember the order of the movies, but I would have to say my favorite one is The Order of the Phoenix.

Another lovely quote from Albus Dumbledore goes something like this: “It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.” For a fantasy book aimed primarily towards young adults, they and the movies have so much wisdom to glean from them that not reading the books or seeing the movie is a total shame in my opinion. They are #2 on my list of books that I must absolutely read to my babies from the time they are just wee. (#1, in case you were curious, is the Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis, which my mother read to us when we were little, along with #3, The Lord of the Rings Trilogy. I owe my excellent reading skills that I have had since the ripe old age of four, I think, to the fact my mother read to us every night. Thanks Mom!)

Anyway, although I feel that a synopsis in this case would be worthless, I will provide one nonetheless. The Harry Potter series follows the story of Harry Potter, a young boy whose wizard parents are killed by a vicious evil homicidal wizard when he is just a baby. He grows up under the tyrannical guidance of his aunt and uncle, who are awful and never tell Harry that he is actually a wizard. Harry eventually discovers the news when he is a little tween boy living under the stairs at his uncle’s house, and all of a sudden life makes sense. He starts attending Hogwarts, a boarding school for young wizards and witches, and discovers a whole new life he never knew. The wizard who killed his parents decides to finish the job he started when Harry was a baby and kill Harry Potter, which Harry is not okay with. So year after year, Harry has a show down with the evil wizard overlord and foils the lord’s plans for Harry’s demise. Then he comes back every year to do the same thing. In different ways. But ultimately the same thing.

So basically it’s like every misunderstood teenager’s dream come true. My parents don’t understand me, no one understands me, life is hard, life is hard, why don’t I have an owl for a pet? Typical teen complaints, and then boom! Oh, I’m a wizard? Well that makes more sense. Essentially, it’s all pretty fantastic (as in unbelievable) (as in wouldn’t happen ever in a million years) but that’s pretty much what makes it worth the read. Or since we’re reviewing the movies here, makes it worth the watch. Harry Potter, for all the irritation and anger he stirred up in me when he starts being a piece of crap arrogant snotface in pretty much every book/movie after the first one, is a symbol of escapism. (He starts out being a really lovable character in the first book and by the end of the last one I can hardly stand him.)

Where was I? Escapism, yes. Sure, he goes through a lot of stuff to get to where he gets. But ultimately his life is a series of escapes. Some narrow, some not, but they all started with his escape from the regular world where people don’t fly, and when stuff gets us mad, we really have very little recourse, into a world where he is a champion flyer, a celebrity everywhere he goes, and when he gets mad, people almost immediately feel his wrath, because wizards have very little control over their magic and when they get mad, bad things happen, and people get boils or jell-o arms or get snatched up by dragons and stuff.

Then there is a series of narrow escapes by Harry and the ultimate wizard who is trying to kill him, and nearly does so at the end of each book/movie. And he escapes it every time! A lot of other people don’t, but Harry is special because he has a scar that keeps him connected with the Dark Lord and all of his evil plans for death and destruction. This and his courage-slash-stupidity keeps him from dying in every instance possible. So yeah, the ultimate escape. We can be rude to our friends, we can be arrogant and stupid and have snot running down our faces, and we will always be applauded because we escaped being murdered in horrendous ways seven times!

The series really is good. For all of the things that Harry doesn’t quite adequately show a great example of, there are a host of other characters that demonstrate all sorts of good qualities and quality life lessons. From Ron, you learn that sometimes nice guys do finish last, and redheads will ultimately always get the girl, because red hair is awesome. I always have rooted for the underdog, and Ron Weasley is my favorite of the Harry Potter characters. He’s not the best at magic, he gets into a lot of trouble, and he’s super accident prone. But he is incredibly loyal to his friends (even though Harry is a git), and tries hard. From Hermione, we learn to always be respectful to authority and our elders. Stay in school, follow the rules, and try to see the best in everyone.

And then there’s Dumbledore, and he’s just awesome. Here are some other awesome things he said:

“We’re in a time when we must choose between what is right and what is easy.”

And possibly my favorite:

Harry: “Is this real? Or has this been happening inside my head?”

Dumbledore: “Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?”

I’ll show you a rockslide!

There are very few things to enjoy about Fantastic 4: Rise of the Silver Surfer. At least if you are a girl, enjoy good acting, want the movies you watch to not be cheesy corn dogs of disaster, or have good taste in movies.

Seriously, the movie was cheesy. It follows the shenanigans of four superheroes as they attempt to defeat a silver eunuch who flies around on a surfboard. You can’t make this stuff up. One is a big rock guy, like the rock mountain on Neverending Story but with legs. One guy is made out of rubber, a power that he uses to text crazy fast and to wrap his legs around people at dance clubs. (For some reason, the people at the club thought this was cool rather than creepy.) One can turn himself into a fireball, and the fourth one creates force fields.

Now we know the players. The story goes down like this: There is a silver eunuch floating around creating trouble and craters in places, freezing the ocean, and then he meets the Fantastic 4. The Fantastic One with the force field powers has a tender moment with the surfer, who tells her that he works for the Destroyer but he is really just a nice guy trying to get back to his girlfriend on his planet. Original.

So they’re helping this guy, and they are persuaded that partnering up with the villain who tried to kill them in the first three movies would be a good idea. Little hint here: Partnering with a villain who tried to kill you at any time, ever, is probably not a good idea. I don’t have to call Dr. Laura to figure that one out. Moral of the story: Villain tries to kill them a fourth time, and the eunuch survives. It’s a story I’m sure we’ve all heard a million times.

In addition to the subpar story, the acting was bad, and gosh, I always thought Jessica Alba was supposed to be a good actress. She’s not? Wasn’t she nominated for an Oscar for her work in the first 500 Fantastic 4 movies, The Eye, or at least for The Love Guru? Shucks.

The one redeeming quality of the movie? Some of the special effects. I haven’t seen special effects like that since the original Clash of the Titans (which I will remind you, was reviewed on this very blog if you care to read over it). At one point I thought that a GI Joe had been sent hurdling through space. That was a good time.

Dragonball Z

We’re going to do better. We have been slacking off on the movie blog because we’re lame and tired, and we’re getting married in 31 days and that thought pretty much consumes our whole life.

Unfortunately, I have no witty quotes to put down for the subject line of this review. I remember very little of this movie, since I seemed to have blocked out the whole of it as soon as it was over. All I remember was that it was ridiculous.

A (very) brief synopsis is as follows:

There are some androids going around killing everyone in the world. Trunks (ridiculously short) and Gohan, two anime  guys, are sitting around eating dinner as Gohan flirts with Trunks’ mom. Gohan is Trunks’ taller and older friend and I suspect that Gohan only hangs out with the little twerp Trunks because he’s got a mom thing, and Trunks’ mom has got it goin’ on.

So the androids are killing everyone and from what I can surmise, Trunks and Gohan take it upon themselves to kill the androids. The androids say ridiculous things, like the following dialogue (the only gem I can remember from the waste of time that was this movie):

Android 1: Hey, did you kill those people?

Android 2: I dunno, I think so, why?

Android 1: Because now we’re not going to know if we killed them.

Redundant dialogue = awesome. Right?

So we have androids versus Trunks and Gohan. Gohan loses an arm somehow, which is pretty amusing rather than really dramatic and/or devastating. He’s just cruising around with an empty sleeve. Great.

This movie gets absolutely no thumbs up. On the other hand, I get two enthusiastic thumbs up for watching it and taking an interest in Stephen’s interests. You’re welcome!

we could also be anime characters. by abbie warnock.

From Batboy to Batman

Batman begins. Good film in my point of view, however the Brittany may not feel the same. I do understand that it is long. I also understand that it goes WAY in-depth on how he got his start but in all honesty it’s an amazingly done, superb piece of cinematic greatness.

It starts out how many great stories should, from the beginning. It starts with him having a nightmare of  when he was a small boy and obtained his greatest fear, bats. The experience itself really gives some insight on how we, as humans need to embrace our fear to a) overcome them and then to b) become stronger as individuals. If this were the way we became super heroes then I’d be Spiderman. Spiders are icky. It’s true. They are.

MOVING ON! His training method is depicted as an intense gauntlet of beating after beating. Truly life is just that beating after beating and we need to follow Bruce Wayne’s example and get up after each one so it isn’t as bad the next time. I’ve used this example in other online literature but I love this line despite how cheesy and silly it sounds.

“Why do we fall down Bruce? So we can learn to pick ourselves back up.”

We really do this! We fall to learn about ourselves and know how to not fall for the same thing twice. Who would have thought that you could learn a valuable life lesson from a super hero movie?

Then the cookie cutter super hero movie stuff comes in and people get beat up, things get blown to smithereenies, the bad guy loses and the superhero goes home without the girl so she doesn’t get hurt. That part is masterfully done, despite the generic stylings of the  story line.

The music is great, the costuming is well done, the fight scene choreography is jaw-dropping and the cinematography is excellent. 5 stars in entertainment value, 4 stars in story and 3 stars in acting. Katie Holmes sucks as an actress. Completely. It hurts my eyes and my heart to see that someone with so little talent can make so much money at something that I could do so much better. Anger. There are so many times that I hear her say a line and I think “An actual person would not talk like that. She’s a rhitard.”

Christian Bale. Looks the part and can act Bruce Wayne well enough but I HATE the Batman voice. Batman was mysterious and stealthy. You can’t be mysterious and stealthy when you sound like you’re about to snap into a Slim Jim. You just can’t. It’s impossible. Everyone knows when Macho Man Randy Savage is around. It’s the voice.

Morgan Freeman and Michael Caine are superb so I won’t say anything aside from they were the perfect choices for their roles. I just thought though, you don’t go to see this type of movie for the acting. You see it to watch justice get served in the most violent way possible.

So there you go. If you can handle Macho Bat Brucey Wayne and an emotionless Katie Holmes then go ahead and watch this. If not Go ahead and watch this. It’s a good film. If you need me, turn on the Bear signal and I’ll come running. As fast as I can. Winter spring summer or fall, all you have to do is call and I’ll be there. Yes. I will. You’ve got a friend. Goodnight interweb!