C'est Non Un Blog

——Walking Tall——

(B)

This movie is an interesting breed: its closest relation would be the glut of exploitation drive-in movies of the 70’s and building on that concept, this film feels like a Cliffnotes version of Bufford Pusser’s life. Don’t expect deep character development or, well, any character development that doesn’t directly relate to some ass kickin’. This movie is less concerned with making the motivations of The Rock’s character believable than with brushing aside boring plot to get to the next set piece. And on that level this movie really works. It’s not deep. It won’t leave you thinking once you walk out of the theater. Some things (like the completely unnecessary and rushed romance) are going to seem really silly. But honestly, if you are watching this movie are you looking for deep Oscar worthy writing and acting, or do you want to see the Rock kick some ass and get all the bad guys? That’s what I thought. The Rock delivers in spades, and his performance in this film (combined with everything else I’ve seen him do so far) makes me really hope to God that he becomes the next Arnold.

——The Girl Next Door——

(B)

This movie starts off a little rocky but by the end you totally warm up to it. That is, if you don’t find the whole teen sex comedy genre vomit inducing, which I thankfully don’t. It is stupid at times, it loves the whole porn star plot a little too much, and it isn’t incredibly original. Somehow it manages to remain funny and charming though, probably because it never really takes itself too seriously. The turning point of the film is really when Elisha Cuthbert’s ex-producer comes to bring her back to the biz. The actor who plays him reminds me of Ryan Seacrest combined with Bill Paxton (and is just as hilarious to watch as Paxton), and if you find that image as amusing as I did you’ll love this film. It’s not great, but entertaining enough to make me feel like I got my money’s worth.

And then there is Cuthbert, who is just…hot. Hot, hot, HOT.

——Kill Bill Volume 1——

(A+)

——Kill Bill Volume 2——

(A+)

I got my copy of Volume 1 in the mail just in time to watch it before going out to see Volume 2 for the first time, which was great because these films really two parts of a whole and not just two separate films. Watch one without the other and you may find some things lacking, but put the two together, yin and yang, and you can really start to appreciate the genius that is Tarantino’s ode to grind house cinema. It’s all just amazing from start to finish.

Watching Volume 2 for the first time was a bit of a surprise, since it was so completely polar opposite to Volume 1. 1 was almost nonstop relentless violence, one amazing action sequence after another, with the segment with Sonny Chiba being the only real part of the film that was just talking that led to no one dying. 2 is almost the exact opposite, being mostly talking with occasional explosions of violence. Any other director and I’d think that would be disappointing, but Tarantino fills each sequence with such explosive energy that you really don’t care that it is almost two hours before Uma kills someone. Mucho kudos goes to David Carradine, who fills each word with a viper’s touch that whenever he talks it is almost like watching another fight.

The other great thing about this film is how Tarantino plays with the genre conventions. Everything is like something you saw in another movie, only cooler and done with much more purpose. The structure of this film is genius. In Volume 1 let the audience know how bad the Bride wants revenge, then in Volume 2 surprise the audience by showing them how much is really at stake. It’s pretty much the reverse of the normal formula and dammit if that just doesn’t work better that way. When Uma finds her daughter instead of Bill when she enters his place it just knocks your socks off.

Not surprisingly, all of the actors are awesome. Gordon Liu is genius as Pai Mei. Darryl Hannah just builds on her great performance from the first film, and she has the only real fight in the whole film. And what a doosie of a fight it is. You’ll be hard pressed to find another fight out there just as brutal. Carradine and Uma light the place on fire. The real surprise though is Budd, Bill’s little brother. I still don’t really know what to think of him. He’s obviously one of the bad guys, but he’s a cowboy wearing a white hat and overall he comes off much better than anyone else in the films. He’s a mystery though, and a damn fun one to try and figure out.

I could go on and on about these movies, but why should I? They’re awesome. Go see them. Go see them again. Have a good time.

——Musa, the Warrior——

(B+)

This is a really cool Korean film, set in medieval China with lots of great fights a la something like Gladiator or Braveheart. It’s shot well, acted well, and the action is really cool. The only thing is, when I got done watching it I was still wondering, “What the hell was this actually about?” I still have no idea what the whole point of the thing was. Don’t help the Chinese or you’ll all end up dying? That’s about the best I can do. Still, if you have a craving for some cool feudal violence, check this movie out.

So I finally picked up the new Kylie Minogue CD, Body Language, today. I had been putting it off for a while, mega Kylie fan that I am, because honestly, I’m not the BIGGEST fan of her last album, Fever. I mean, it definitely has some good songs on it, but the rest of it is really more funny than quality music. And come on, I wouldn’t be fooling anyone if I said my Kylie obsession had to do with anything other than the fact that I find her fuckin’ hot. I’ve probably watched her music videos on my computer more times than I’ve actually had the CD in the CD player.

That said, her new album kicks ass. Her style has changed from dance pop to this combination of techno/New Wave/hip hop and it sounds great. Viva la Kylie obsession!

Man, I’ve been lazy about posting lately. Two late Monday Movie Reviews. I still haven’t posted about my trip to Bard (I’m working on it, I swear!). And, well, you haven’t been getting much else about my life lately.

Which, in a way, might be a good thing. I mean, it means that I’m spending a lot less time just sitting on my ass doing nothing. I’m actually doing stuff. I work. I get out. I see what few friends I actually have around here. That’s good.

And yet I should give every little detail of my life to you, my two loyal readers. Definitely should be doing that instead of wasting mucho time (and money) on eBay. eBay is my joy and my bane. You can get stuff so frickin’ cheap! You can also spend your next two paychecks in little to no time. With my 401k and insurance, plus taxes eating away at my weekly earnings, this is not a good thing. Plus, I should really be watching the movies I buy. I’m pretty sure I’m almost at the point now where I’m spending more time buying movies than actually buying them. Crazy.

Let’s keep you up to date, and then slowly move our way back. Yesterday I had the day off and decided I’d see The Punisher for shits and giggles, so I kind of made a day of it, going into town to cash my check and then going to Walmart to buy CDs with money I don’t have. Good times.

Of course my house is still pretty cool from all of the chilly weather we’ve been having lately, so when I get in my car to go out, even though I know spring is here and it is warmer out, I can’t figure out why the hell it is so hot in my car. I’ve got the windows all the way down and my hair is whipping around my face (a new experience) and it is STILL hot. But not too hot. Which is why I was completely fucking surprised when I got home and saw that it was freakin’ 91 degrees out, a new high. You know, with the wind and no humidity, 91 degrees ain’t that bad.

So I went to Walmart and picked me out the new Modest Mouse CD (great title: Good News for People Who Love Bad News) and a new Who compilation of their hits, both on a whim. (I was looking for some other stuff, but unfortunately they were edited.) Then walking past the discount DVD bin I spotted Raising Cain, and not one to let go a $5.50 Brian De Palma film, I picked that up too.

Today I planned on going to see Kill Bill Volume 2 again with Jeremy from work, but since I couldn’t get him on the phone and I could get Harry, who said that he was going in for surgery on his kidney stones the next day, I decided to spend the day with Harry. Much fun was had playing Vice City and Tekken 4, plus he showed me probably the MOST insane anime series I have ever seen. I’d go into what it was about, but I don’t feel like writing for another four days. It was fucked the hell up, and that’s all you need to know.

Came home, caught up with the ‘rents, caught up with the TV, and here I am. In work news I sold my first 321GS this weekend, which was awesome because I totally made that sale happen, and I actually did pretty well when I had to do my show for all of my co-workers during the morning meeting. I earned some pretty good bonus points there.

Life’s good. It could be better. I could have no time to write this because I’m too busy running around having fun, or I could be hitting it off with some cute girl, which I’m not, because this place is dead, but all in all things are definitely better than before. It’s good to be busy.

That’s all for now. I’ll leave you to your malt beverages.

For reasons unknown even to myself, I’ve been listening to a LOT of Kiss FM lately. Pray for me.

Man, the old C’est non un Blog has been quiet recently. I’m sorry! I can’t help it. I’m lazy. Oh so fat and lazy. Well, maybe not fat so much. It’s not like I’m not trying. OK, that’s a lie too. I don’t want to be fat. I don’t much like eating. Damn eating.

…uh, ANYWHOO…

Yes, yes, I should be posting more. I swear I’ve got a big post on my trip to Bard that I’m still working on. I am easily dis…oh, shiny…NO!…tracted though.

I’ll give you a little nugget though. Last Saturday I sold my very first Lifestyle system at work. I know, this means nothing to you. To put it in layman’s terms, I popped my Bose cherry. I’m officially a contributing member of the team. Yeah for me! So that was cool.

Now I’m going to go sleep though. Sweet, delicious sleep.

Oh, I love it when it is all warm and rainy like it is now. That spring rain at night when the rain stops and it is just dark and the air is moist. I love it. It makes me feel all good inside. It’s like heaven.

——3 Evil Masters——

(C+)

3 Evil Masters starts out cool enough: This kick ass kung fu master decides to take on the 3 Evil Masters in a café for, well, being so damn evil. After a really amazing fight sequence where it looks like he’s going to kick all their asses the bartender, who’s apparently working with the Evil Masters, stabs the good guy in the side. That’s when the movie goes downhill. The rest of the movie involves a Chinese pretty boy actor who is picked on by his fellow students and sucks at kung fu because his teacher is a moron until he happens on the injured master who teaches him how to really fight. Blah blah blah, enter many lame plot points. He defeats the 3 Evil Masters. Yea. This movie would have been so much cooler if it were called the 3 Evil Masters vs. the 1 Good Master, because the actors who played them were so awesome. Everything else about this movie sucked.

——Champ Against Champ——

(D+)

Other than the fact that this movie has a guy who breathes fire for no apparent reason, this film pretty much sucks. The plot is moronic, and on top of that hard to follow. The sets and special effects are beyond cheesy. The actors’ kung fu is beyond pathetic. Major pass on this movie.

——Mr. Nice Guy——

(C+)

I like Jackie Chan, but I’m not really a big fan of Samo Hung’s direction style. He really seems to like to speed up or slow down the film at really inopportune times, and it always looks like crap. It also doesn’t seem to help that Samo hired the worst actors in Australia to act opposite Jackie. The movie is pretty fun at times though and Jackie’s stunt choreography is awesome, as usual. Just not his best film though.

——Dawn of the Dead——

(A-)

I’m not sure why, but this movie just seemed a whole lot better the second time around. Maybe it was because I was more willing to just accept some of the movie’s weaker points without going on and on with a fanboy’s zeal. Like the head security guard I didn’t think this time was such a dick. Maybe that has something to do with knowing how the film is going to end, but I was more willing to forgive his asshole attitude in dealing with the people breaking into the mall because this time I honestly felt more like, well, that’s what I would do. Save yourself, fuck everyone else!

The special effects are used to an excellent degree, by far making this the best looking zombie movie yet. And the credit sequences (both of them) are just brilliant, probably the scariest parts of the film. So what if this doesn’t have the social commentaries it should have, and so what if it really has nothing to do with the original aside from sticking random people in a mall together, this is still a damn fun ride.

——Hellboy——

(B)

The visual effects for this movie are both beautiful and amazing. And Ron Pearlman completely steals the movie away with his representation of Hellboy. He acts nothing like how you would expect him to just by looking at him, and that’s what makes him so funny. Unfortunately, other than the above-mentioned points, there wasn’t a whole lot much more going for this movie. It was so completely overwhelmed by exposition that it was really hard to actually get into the movie and just have some fun. You know, I don’t really need to know every little detail from the comic to have a good time. Just bring on the ass whupping and I’ll figure the rest out on my own. The movie could be really boring at times and it was only Ron Pearlman and the insanely cool visual effects that saved this movie from being a snoozefest.

——One Million Years B.C.——

(B)

This movie is like if a director was given two projects to do at the same time, a documentary on prehistoric man and a beer commercial, only instead of doing them separately like he was suppose to, he got really fucking high one night and made both films simultaneously. This movie would probably suck if it wasn’t so insanely bizarre, but since it is so wacked out it is actually pretty fun to watch.

The movie is completely devoid of any dialogue (they grunt caveman-type words and point) and almost lacking a plot. A prehistoric man gets kicked out of the violent Stone tribe by his power hungry brother only to wander into the Shell tribe, a more peaceful and civilized society. There he meets Raquel Welch, who looks so fucking hot in this movie, and they fall in love (kind of, if you can call it love). That’s about the gist of the plot.

Where the movie gets awesome is in the details. Like the fact that all of the women in the movie are apparently supermodels modeling their new line of fur bikini swim wear. Or the fact that whenever the plot seems to be moving a little too slow, a claymation dinosaur just pops up for a couple minutes to chase them around. Or the fact that using trick photography to make an iguana or tarantula appear to be forty feet tall automatically makes them dinosaurs. Or the fact that instead of resolving any sort of plot, the movie just ends with a volcano erupting and a giant earthquake that kills almost everyone. It’s hilarious. You want to watch just to see what’s going to pop up around the corner next. Oh, and did I mention than Raquel Welch is frickin’ smoking in this movie?

——Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind——

(A)

I want to start off by saying that I don’t think anyone other than Michel Gondry could have made this movie as cool as it is. The screenplay is the sort that with any other director it probably would have fallen to pieces and felt like pretentious, asinine bullshit. Gondry finds this rhythm in the words and images though that somehow holds the whole thing together under its own kind of dream logic. It’s amazing. It’s funny and personal and bizarre all at the same time. And most importantly, Kaufman’s scripts in the past have usually been so brilliant that they were completely unique unto themselves, but then they usually kind of fall to pieces in the final act. They work, but you are never one hundred percent happy with how they turn out. Not so with this film. All of the separate threads actually come together in the end and work without really trying. It’s really a great ending, the perfect way to end the film. It all comes together as this great love story that uses elements of science fiction and philosophy throughout without ever feeling preachy, and I’m highly recommending you all see it.

——The Alamo——

(C+)

This movie unfortunately is one where the sum of its parts is actually greater than the whole. There are some great sections in this movie (mainly any sequence with Billy Bob Thorton as Davy Crockett) but the rhythm and editing is just so choppy and inconsistent that you can’t ever really get into the movie. It’s like the director is never really sure what it is that he wants to highlight in the film, hence you get a lot of scenes of background information that never gel together or contribute to a theme for the whole film. Worse yet, after building up and building up the final battles don’t last very long at all. Instead of making some point about how heroic the men in the Alamo were their sacrifice doesn’t really seem to mean much at all, a point that is only magnified after the Texans defeat Santa Anna in a battle that seems more like a senseless massacre of innocent human lives than the Alamo itself. The whole project ends up feeling like a TV movie…informative but not particularly entertaining.

You’re probably wondering where the fuck I’ve been lately. Don’t worry. Crazy details to come…

Holy shit, did you all see the world premiere of the Spiderman 2 trailer on the Apprentice? My God. I’ve never seen a trailer before that showed you every major plot point of the whole movie and yet still made you want to know more. What an awesome freakin’ trailer. From the looks of it, 2 is going to blow the original out of the water. I was never pumped for the movie before, but now I’m super pumped.

Man, work was slow today. Jesse and I invented Bose Penny Tossing. The premise is pretty simple: you take about ten pennies and chuck them at three stacked Bose mugs, trying to get the pennies to stay in the mugs. Three points for the mug on top, one point for each of the two mugs on the bottom. To keep the pennies from sliding out of the mugs so easily we put a piece of paper towel in there. Knock the top towel into one of the bottom cups and get two points. Get a penny into the tiny hole in the podium and get ten points (obviously this one is very dependent on having a small hole available.)

Anyway, it was a pretty fun way to pass the time. Of course I haven’t thrown anything in like forever, so now my arm hurts from penny chucking of all things. God, I should really work out some, no?

The O.C. is just awesome. I love, love, love, LOVE it. If that makes me any less of a man, well then FUCK YOU!!! 🙂

My life is rated NC-17.
What is your life rated?