The Green Lantern

Fuck this shit

It only took a couple hours for my lovely wife to call me out on my post from yesterday.  In the evening yesterday, I saw a preview for a new movie coming out based on the comic book the Green Lantern.  I'm not going to lie, it looks fucking terrible.  Like, the worst possible movie of all time.  Great for the kids, perhaps?  Great for the comic book nerds, perhaps?  For me?  God no.

First off, I hate movies based off comic books.  The main reason is because all these movie studios just grabbed up any and all comic book and made them into massive blockbusters, and it's just such a rehashed idea to me.  I understand there is a huge legion of comic book fans out there, one of which I am not, by any stretch of the imagination.  I think I owned two comic books growing up.  They were Batman.  Batman is cool.  Batman was on TV and shit.  Who the fuck is the Green Lantern?  I believe he was on some fighting game I had for the Sega Genises back in 94 or something, but he didn't have his own TV show.  Not one that I ever saw anyway.  So no, I don't give two fucks about the Green Lantern in the first place.  Not that I have to give a fuck about what a movie is about to enjoy it, but it helps.  It really helps.

So anyway, there was some CGI monster thing in the preview and Ryan Renolds looking all buff and what not.  All I saw was a bunch of special effects thrown together, and cash registers cha-chinging in the background.  The Green Lantern movie to me is the Backstreet Boys and New Kids On The Block tour.  CA$H GRAB, Y'ALL.

The point here is that I tweeted about how terrible the movie looked, and my wife says "you're a hypocrite!" No, I clearly said this yesterday, which makes me not a hypocrite in this situation:

 Not that Fast 5 is necessarily a bad movie, I just know already that that is not my type of movie.  Neither is Thor, by the way.  I generally like every movie I've ever seen, to be honest, but maybe that's because I'm picky when it comes to which movies I watch.


See?  I didn't say I like every movie.  I only like the movies I choose to watch.  There are hundreds of movies (each year?) that I will never see because they look like a total fucking waste of time.  This movie, The Green Lantern, is one of those movies.  


So there.  ::sticks tongue out::

(Something happend to my font up there and I can't fix it.  So...sorry about that.)

My Chevy Took a Shit

I watched the movie Escanaba in da Moonlight last night, and I would have to say I wasn't too terribly disappointed, as others have told me I would be.  I guess going into it knowing it's kind of weird in the first place, I was prepared for some strange things to happen in the B-movie.  Boy am I glad I was prepared.  I can't imagine the people that saw it when it first came out, or what they must have thought of Jeff Daniels' movie.  For those of you readers that have never been to the U.P., it's a special kind of place, and when something happens, like a movie about it or takes place in it, people get pretty excited about it. Like, everyone up there owns a copy of Anatomy of a Murder.  Seriously, everyone.  Now that I live in Nashville, there is that same feeling here as well, it just happens more often.  Like, if a local gets national attention, the local media covers it.  Well anyway, I'm sure you could understand peoples disappointment when a movie finally gets made about the U.P., with a real Hollywood actor, and it kind of sucks.

I didn't think it sucked all that bad.  I guess I see where some people would complain, like, the aliens and what not, but all in all, the movie captured that huntin' camp vibe without being Jeff Daniels just acting out a Da Yoopers song.  As we watched, my lovely wife pointed out that it had a feel of a play, and not so much a movie.  When she pointed that out, I realized that too, the scene changes were very infrequent.  At one point, they stayed on the same scene for a good five minutes, going on and on about the oldest one to never bag a buck.  I'd have to totally agree that this looked distinctly like a play adapted for the screen.

But there were some funny parts to it.  The plot was pretty good, the comedy parts were pretty good.  The only parts that were losing me were the parts that weren't meant to be funny.  All in all, going into it with bottomed out expectations, I couldn't be let down, and I wasn't.  I liked it, actually.  Three out of five stars for me.

I Watched A Movie

I tell you what, I really enjoyed the movie The Social Network.  Not because I thought it was groundbreaking or innovative in film making or anything.  I didn't think the actors were exceptionally amazing, even though they were quite good.  No, it was more of a feeling of, the events of this movie happened just a couple years ago.  Do I believe that Mark Zuckerberg acts that way or talks that way?  No, not really.  I believe it was a movie.  But the fact that Facebook was invented in early 2004, that just sort of blows my mind.  I mean, I could know that fact without watching the movie, but when you watch a movie based on a true story, it usually happened in the long, long ago.  Like a World War II movie or a movie about Vietnam.  I don't know why I went straight to war movies, but you get my drift, right?  It just amazes me that something that was invented seven fucking years ago is such a part of everyones lives now.  It's like, a TV, or a refrigerator.  Nearly everyone is affected by Facebook in some way, shape or form.  Keyword: Nearly.  But you know what I mean.  It's like the Telephone then text messages and then Facebook.  Amazing to me.  Facebook is great because we all are connected by it now. It's probably the most convenient way to communicate quickly with acquaintances.

Well, it must have been a really good movie because I keep thinking about it.  That happens when I watch movies I really like.  It sticks with me in my brain.  Like the movie Seven.  Man, that movie is still in my thoughts after all this time.  In fact, the day I finally watched Seven, that was early 2004, right about the time Facebook was invented.  That wasn't that long ago, folks.  It really wasn't.

I don't know, I just have a totally different prospective when I go to Facebook now.  I just think about the movie.  It doesn't cause me to visit the site more or less than before, it just makes me think about the movie.

I liked it a lot.  You probably would too if you watched it.

Predictions in Film/the All-Timers

Saturday mornings. Love it. I love working by myself. I really don't like people all that much. Well, I hate people but I love gatherings.

"You know, there's a million fine looking women in the world, dude. But they don't all bring you lasagna at work. Most of 'em just cheat on you." -Silent Bob

I was thinking about Clerks randomly this morning. I really like that movie. It got me thinking about where it would rank in my list of all-time favorite movies. As I was thinking about it, I realized that I don't watch a whole hell of a lot of movies, and I sure as hell don't go out buying DVDs, like some people do. I own a very small number of movies, because I'm just not that interested in watching a movie more than once or twice. That being said, it would take an especially good movie for me to not only own it, but be able to watch it at any given time, on any given day, during any given circumstance. When I think about my all-time favorite movies, a few immediately pop into my head. Fight Club, Back to the Future (all of them) and Clerks. Fight Club, I always loved that movie, but the book is honestly better. Chuck Palahniuk is easily my favorite author, and it was because of this movie that this is the case. I watched the movie back in 2000, and have basically been a big fan of it ever since. I owned it on VHS, but never bought it on DVD. That's a great movie, but probably not my favorite of all-time.

So it comes down to Clerks or the Back to the Future trilogy. While I know many lines from Clerks, and can say them along with watching the movie, I pretty much know every line from the Back to the Future trilogy by heart. I could honestly watch the movies in my head, without missing any parts, if I wanted to. It's pretty easy to pick Clerks as your favorite movie. It's an indie film, so that gives you cred. It's smart, funny, and a cult classic. It's a movie I can watch with friends and they will all enjoy it. This can also be said about another classic that I would throw into the conversation if I knew it stood a chance of winning the argument, which is The Big Lebowski. Another cult classic, and another easy, respectable choice for all-time favorite. I have some great memories of watching that movie, especially with TJ. But I know that won't win as my all-time favorite.

No, the winner of my all-time favorite movie(s) is the Back to the Future trilogy. It's the obvious choice. I could watch the movies anytime. They're funny, they're exciting, they have everything. Time travel has always been a fun concept to me, and these movies do it great. The only problem I have, when looking at the movies now a days is, when you think about it, the entire part 2 needn't have happened. Travel to the future to prevent an incident from happening that HASN'T EVEN HAPPENED YET? You know how to prevent that? Keep the incident in you mind for the next 30 years, and when the day is coming up, just tell young Marty Jr. not to go to the Cafe 80's. Tell him that Griff is a bad dude and you don't need to be hangin' around that sort of riff-raff. Even Doc Brown admits that the future hasn't been written yet and your future is whatever you make of it, "so make it a good one" at the end of the third movie. So They didn't need to go to the future, but for good cinema, they wanted to show you what the future will look like.

Also, in Back to the Future part 2, the future scenes take place in the year 2015. That's only 5 years away and it's looking like they're not even close on their prediction of flying cars. Speaking of movies that predict the future, there's another movie that may have been way closer to getting it right, though it's too far off to tell at this point. The movie is Demolition Man, with Stalone and Snipes. For a very interesting look at the predictions made by the movie, please check out this website. I recommend it highly! Highlights from the list "As of 2003, the parole system as you know it was made obsolete." They also mention the "Schwarzenegger Presidential Library," which in my opinion is a pretty good prediction in 1993. I don't think anyone would have predicted at the time that he would eventually go on to become Governor of the state of California. So that's pretty neat.

Movies are great. Sometimes. Usually I'm just too ADD to sit down for 2 hours with a movie. But when I do, I'm usually happy I did.