Odds And Ends

We haven’t been here in a while, so lets clear out the junk drawer, shall we?

First, big props to the men back home:

Best. Arena. Football. Game. Ever. I’ll leave it at that, because those of you who haven’t seen Arena Football live just wouldn’t understand. Seattle needs an AFL team something awful – but once again, it’ll never happen because the Key eats wang when configured for hockey, and that’s what you have to do to be able to fit the AFL field. (Configure for hockey, not eat wang, you perverts.) Special thanks to Barry Ackerley for that one, you polesmoker.

Okay, onward. The summer movie season seems to be in FULL effect, so I thought I’d comment on a few I’ve seen, and what I want to see:

Watched Dodgeball yesterday. About what I expected: group of loveable losers makes good with the help of a cute chick, but with enough of a sense of humor about itself to be worth the time invested. Rip Torn is always funny (hell, just saying his name is pretty damned funny), and the cameos in the last half hour, and the wrapup in the last 10 minutes (which would OTHERWISE be totally formulaic crap, unless you read what was printed on the treasure chest, which makes it all totally okay) is actually worth the fairly insipid buildup. (But not $8. See a matinee or rent the DVD.)

Today’s feature was the controversial Fahrenheit 9/11. Usually I can leave Michael Moore to his business, but I’ve heard enough conflicting opinions about this flick that I figured I should see it myself and make up my own mind. And my mind’s made up: I was right the first time. Not a thing here I didn’t already know: Moore spends the first half of the movie using preroll footage of Gee Dub to make him look like a ninny. Here’s a tip from someone who knows a little something about television: when you have footage of someone who doesn’t know the camera’s on him getting ready to go on camera, you can pretty much make ANYONE look like a ninny. If they had TV back then, I could get you B-roll of FDR that would make him look about as Presidential as Carrot Top. Of course, it helps that Gee Dub IS IN FACT a ninny, but, again, Moore could have done something other than take the easy road out and I would have respected him a little more.

He then goes on to show us that the war in Iraq was started for pretty much no good reason. Well, duh. Finally, he wraps up with a Michael Moore trademark: he follows politicians around with a microphone asking questions that no politician in his right mind would answer, and thinks this proves a point other than that politicians know better than to spend time on camera talking to Michael Moore, because he would twist a lunch recommendation around to make them look bad.

So, I left the movie with about the same feelings I had going into it: the President is an idiot, the war is stupid, and Michael Moore has become a lazy filmmaker. The only reason I can think they they would award this the Palme D’or is that it’s a French film festival and the movie makes Bush look stupid. Of COURSE they love it.

Upcoming: Spiderman 2 is a no-brainer. I thought the first one was pretty good, but the Green Goblin just isn’t strong enough in terms of personality to make a compelling filmatic bad guy out of. Alfred Molina as Doc Ock, on the other hand….GENIUS casting. Nicholsonesque, if I may say so.

Finally, and I know it’s not gonna have a thing to do with the actual story, but I wanna see I, Robot. But I’m gonna go into it expecting not a good sci-fi story, but tons of special effects, lots of cool future-lookin’ sets, and His Royal Freshness blowing shit up. So I should be okay.

And now I get to go downstairs and be trained on the proper procedure for issuing a new CD key. I don’t issue CD keys myself, since I don’t deal with customers directly anymore, but I figure it can’t hurt to brush up on procedure, so I don’t write something that throws the techs under the proverbial bus. So, until next time…