Nice Soup Strainer

I don't usually watch anything on CBS, because I think 99.9% of their programming is shit. (Shark being the one show I do watch on a regular basis.) However, CBS was on the breakroom TV at work the other night, and I happened to catch bits and pieces of NCIS.

The only thing I have to say about this is: What's up with the moustache on Mark Harmon? For a guy who has never really rolled with any facial hair, it looks odd on him. Kinda makes him look like Sgt. Tate from Silence of the Lambs. (You know: "It's Jim Pembry! Now talk to him, damnit!" That guy.)

I'd shave it off, if I were him. If he wants to keep his tenuous hold on his "sex symbol" status (he was People's Sexiest Man Alive 20 years ago, after all), he may want to lose the Sam Elliot look. Not very becoming.

Tyra Banks: Fat?

The only thing I've heard about the last week is Tyra Banks. Whether it's some magazine calling her a "fatty," or her throwing a "kiss my fat ass" tantrum on her show, Tyra's weight gain is all the rage right now. And, of course, since her "fat ass" is being shoved in my face on a constant basis, I have an opinion on this matter.

First off, Tyra was never skinny. Being 5'10", 130 lbs., is not skinny. But it's all how it's proportioned. Take Gabrielle Reese: 6'3", 160 lbs., and built like a brick shithouse. That's not skinny.

But then, Tyra doesn't need to be skinny. She's not a model anymore (whom we prefer to be skinny); she's a talk show host (and there is no such thing as a skinny talk show host).

The thing I don't get, and this applies to every woman in the media, is that we only seem to care about weight gain or loss. We don't care about those who have always been skinny ("Kate Moss: What A (Stick) Figure!") or fat ("Camryn Mannheim: Still A Blimp!"). We only bring attention to those who lose weight ("Star Jones: Hot New Beach Body!") or gain weight ("Oprah: Pigging Out!"). Even after the media pushes "thin" like they're selling it, they draw attention to those they deem "too thin" ("Kate Bosworth: Not Hot At 85 Lbs!").

So, is Tyra "fat"? Having seen her on the cover of last week's People and the thousand other appearances she's made over the last week, I'd say "no." Looks pretty good, actually. (I will admit that those photos that started this whole stink feature a very unflattering bathing suit.) But, that being said, she'll go one of two ways: become "obese," just to throw it in the face of her critics, or, she'll cave and lose a ton of weight ("Tyra Banks: (insert witty weight loss quip here)!"). Either way, we'll still have to deal with her grating personality, which is waaaaaaay worse than whatever her weight may be.

Last Five Movies

I'm in a movies mood, so I'll do another one of these.

House of 1000 Corpses (2003)
I recently rewatched The Devil's Rejects, and it's such a well-made film that I thought maybe my initial assessment of Corpses (that it was terrible) was wrong. So, I watched it again. And still the same piece of shit that I originally thought it to be. Time changed nothing.

The Queen (2006)
This pretty much seals the deal on Helen Mirren winning an Oscar. Good flick, even if it does seem about an hour too long. I also noticed that The Wife was the youngest person in the theatre by about 20 years; I came in a close second.

Smokin' Aces (2007)
Does Joe Carnahan not realize that Pulp Fiction came out 12 years ago? Making a Pulp Fiction ripoff is soooo 1996. I think there should be a moratorium on massively cast, dialogue-driven gangster movies. Tarantino pretty much put that whole genre to bed. Oh, and even though Jason Bateman's only in this movie for about two minutes, he steals the whole fucking thing right out from under everyone. It may be worth a watch just for him.

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning (2006)
I must have some sort of mental illness, thinking that this might be even marginally watchable. It's a Michael Bay production, which means it's the opposite of watchable.

An off-beat choice, but...

Pan's Labyrinth (2006)
Del Toro has never done me wrong. And his newest movie is as good as all of the buzz it's getting. The thing about this movie (other than I don't think anyone realizes it's in Spanish) is that people seem to think that it's some sort of kids' movie, along the lines of that Muppet movie Labyrinth. The little kids in the theatre when I saw this were treated to graphic scenes of war, torture, murder, and a man sewing his face back together. Needless to say, it's not for kids. But any adult should most definitely see it.

Good flick; check it out.

The Annual Oscar Post

Since I've done an Oscar nom post the previous two years, I believe that makes it an annual thing. Here's another:

Best Supporting Actor
Djimon Hounsou deserves to win this. That being said, it'll probably be Eddie Murphy, whose ego will proceed to outgrow George Clooney's. And what's Mark Wahlberg doing in there? Seriously: Marky Mark?

Achievement in Makeup
Click had makeup? Huh.

Best Animated Feature Film
Cars. Duh.

Best Supporting Actress
I'd love to see the little girl from Little Miss Sunshine win, purely because her routine in the movie was more offensive than everyone else's. But she won't. Probably Jennifer Hudson, finally capitalizing on her American Idol failure.

Best Documentary Feature
Just give Al Gore the fucking thing. (softly crying in corner)

Achievement in Sound Mixing and Sound Editing
They couldn't decide which had better sound, Letters from Iwo Jima or Dreamgirls, so they put one in each category. The other four nominees are the same in both. Odd. Even odder if those two were the winners. I smell a conspiracy...

Best Original Song
It would be funny if something from Dreamgirls didn't win.

Best Foreign-Language Film
There's usually one slam dunk in this category. And that would be Pan's Labyrinth. Or "Mexico," because this award is for the whole country, ya know. (I find it somewhat odd that Letters from Iwo Jima was ineligible for this category, even though it's entirely in Japanese, and was even filmed in Japan. Damn Clint's luck for not being Japanese.)

Best Actor
There are at least three in this category that I'd like to see win (and yes, one of them is Leonardo DiCaprio). Just, please, sweet Jesus, don't let Will Smith win. Seriously: The Fresh Prince?

Achievement in Cinematography
Nice to see that both turn-of-the-century magician movies made it.

Best Actress
If Helen Mirren doesn't win this, they may just want to not have the Oscars anymore. No point, really.

Best Original and Adapted Screenplay
These are always tough. As long as Babel loses, I'll be happy with anything here.

Best Director
This is Scorsese's year. I know I said that two years ago, the last time he ran against Eastwood, but Clint won't win this year, namely because no one's seen his movie. (Nice rollout on that one, Warner Brothers.) Plus, he's already got already got four Oscars; time to give Marty one.

And that would make our Best Picture winner...
The Departed. It's a great movie that was also a box office hit, which always contributes. Unless the Academy gives it to Babel, this year's overrated, white-people-should-feel-bad-about-themselves spoiler movie, there's your winner.

Finally: Hiatus Season Is Over

A few months back, I lamented the fact that the networks have chosen to put shows on hiatus rather than show a handful of reruns during the season. Well, after months of wondering where the hell all of my favorite shows went, hiatus season is finally over. And I still hate it.

Someone mentioned that it helped continuity, because you don't lose the storyline following, say, a post-sweeps rerun block. But how does it help the continuity of a show like Lost, which is in the middle of a three-month layoff? Or Heroes, which took a month and a half off before showing the next six episodes, only to take another month off before the final five?

I can see delaying the start of a show, like 24, which is showing 24 episodes in a row. Sure, it starts later, but there's a new episode every week. But what does taking a couple of months off accomplish? What you end up with is the same amount of episodes in the same amount of time, but with no reruns. Which means a shitload of downtime and me not remembering what happened on the show last time it was on.

That's why I like networks like FX, which, in their "money" timeslot (Tues 10/9c), rather than ever show reruns, they air series with half as many episodes. Every week is a new episode, and, when they run out of episodes, they start a new series. Last year, in that single timeslot, FX aired full seasons of The Shield, Thief, Rescue Me, and Nip/Tuck. Nearly fifty episodes and no reruns. In that same timeframe, ABC showed 20 episodes of Lost, 14 of which aired before June.

The networks totally got this thing under control. No wonder most of their programming sucks.

Jim Kelly: Living Vicariously Through Lesser Players

I was watching TV the other day, and happened to catch a new "Men of the Square Table" Miller Lite commercial. In it, former Buffalo Bills quarterback asks whether or not it's acceptable to leave a game in the fourth quarter to beat traffic. Someone mentions that it might be acceptable if a team is down by 30 points. Kelly rebuts by referencing the '93 AFC Wild Card game, in which the Bills overcame a 32 point deficit to beat the Oilers. Kelly is an expert on this game, as he was a Pro Bowl quarterback on that team.

Unfortunately, he didn't play a single down in that game. (He was injured in the previous game.) What Kelly and no one else who actually saw that game seem to have forgotten is that it was Frank Reich, "The Other Mr. Comeback," who was the quarterback in that game. In fact, Reich won the divisional playoff game as well. When Kelly came back in the AFC Championship game, his under-whelming performance caused Steve Christie to kick five field goals to win the game (actually, Miami was so bad, Buffalo would have won without the field goals), and his completely inept performance in the Super Bowl had a lot to do with their 52-17, third straight Super Bowl loss. That's nice, Jim: Way to bring up a game that you had nothing to do with, because the ones you were in sucked.

I think this calls for a new Man Law: No Man shall bask in the reflected glory of a team's win if he did not play in said win. Sure, you may have gotten them there, but holding a clipboard on the sideline didn't win that game.

So it is written, so it shall be done.

Iron Man Officially Fucked

As a kid, Iron Man was my favorite superhero. Sure, he was just a guy in a metal suit with no powers, but, well, he had the coolest metal suit ever.

That being said, needless to say, I'm interested in any movie adaptation of Iron Man. And today, they announced some new casting info that makes me think that the movie version will really suck balls.

Apparently, Gwyneth Paltrow has signed on to play Tony Stark's (Iron Man's alter ego) secretary, "Pepper" Potts, which, well, it's Gwyneth Paltrow; need I say more?

But that's not the worst thing with this movie. No, it's not that they've got Jon Favreau directing, even though the only action movie he's directed is Jumanji 2. It would be the fact that Robert Downey, Jr., is playing Iron Man.

Robert Downey, Jr.

What...the...fuck. Downey's a great actor, but there's, well, approximately every actor in Hollywood I'd pick before him in this role. You thought George Clooney was miscast as Batman? He'd actually be a better pick for this role than Downey. (He's too "important" to star in action movies anymore, though.)

Although I seriously doubt it, maybe Iron Man will turn out to be all right. But I'm not holding my breath.

Isn't This Bitch Dead Yet?

Most of the entertainment headlines today read "Lindsay Lohan, 20, Enters Rehab." I think the world in general would have been better off if they'd read "Lindsay Lohan, 20, Found Dead in Ditch."

Honestly, there is no celebrity on the planet more deserving of the sweet release of death than Lindsay. She contributes absolutely nothing to society, other than to shittily star in the occasional movie; she's had four hospital stays in the past year (as opposed to me, who has not had four hospital stays during Lindsay's lifetime); and she's apparently dating Joe Francis, the Girls Gone Wild guy, which is just the guy any young woman should be dating. And now she's in rehab.

That's a drag. The chances of her chasing 100 Valium with a bottle of Everclear just went down by half.

Apple: Much Too Predictable

Nearly a year ago, during a comment on Apple's somewhat irrelevant iPod Hi-Fi, I made a facetious comment about Apple being so unoriginal as to come out with an iPod that was also a phone.

And then, on Tuesday, they did.

I'm not so much bothered by they fact that they actually came out with the iPhone; it's that they've already tried it twice before with mixed results. (Anyone remember the Motorola RCKR and SLVR? Yeah, no one else does, either.) But, those were actual "phones," with some iTunes functionality. The iPhone isn't even a phone. It's an iPod with some phone functionality. If you put a phone on a toaster, does it become a phone? If the PSP had some phone function, would PSP stand for "Playstation Phone"? (I find it humorous that, excepting the phone thing, the PSP actually appears to have more features than the iPhone. And I thought Sony had the market cornered on over-hyped, under-developed devices.) It all just plays into my theory that people don't actually want a phone; they just want some little thing to fuck around with.

That being said, I don't see how anyone would be able to afford one of these "multimedia devices." They start at $500 for a 4GB, $600 for the 8GB. While this is not the most expensive "cell phone" ever (the Motorola "Brick" cost $1000 when it was introduced back in the early '80s), it is probably the most expensive, non-jewel-encrusted phone currently available. And much like the PS3 v. XBox 360, HD-DVD v. Blu-ray face-offs, price is a big factor on what is bought, regardless of technological superiority. If Sony was to actually add phone function to the PSP and add $100 ($200, even) to its $200 pricetag, I think we'd have a new winner in this technology segment. (Not that Sony would do this, as it would mean doing something smarter than their competition. And that just doesn't happen.)

But, all of this bitching is probably for naught, as, I'm sure, when this thing comes out in June, they'll sell a shitload of them. And, honestly, it does look pretty fucking sweet. Not that I'd buy one. I've got a phone. I've got an iPod. I don't need another one of each.

Evangeline Lilly: Not In It For The Fame

About a year and a half ago, I commented on the fact that Evangeline Lilly appeared in commercials for the fairly sleazy Livelinks phone service, even though she was enjoying some degree of fame on Lost, one of the most popular shows on TV.

The other night, I was watching TV, and happened to catch another commercial for Livelinks, and, no surprise, it did not feature Evangeline Lilly. (Actually, it was a much hotter girl, which is what actually caught my attention, but that's neither here nor there.) I thought, "Good for her; way to not be associated with that shitbag anymore." But, out of curiosity's sake, I went to Livelinks' website, and there she is, right on the front page. Not moving in up as much in the world as I thought.

But then, maybe Evangeline just does this acting stuff for the love of the game; she doesn't care about the fame. She's about the only actor on Lost who hasn't attempted to parlay their fame into other gigs. She doesn't seem to care about being famous, or with what her name is associated. She's just happy on her TV show and with dating a Hobbit. Personally, I would have filed a cease-and-desist order against those scumbags. I am in it for the fame.

But, that's just me.

Going Straight To Video Waaaaay Before Its Time.

About six months ago, I saw a poster for Idiocracy, Mike Judge's new movie, in the local theatre. Now, where I live in The JVL, which is so far away from the pulse of America that I sometimes wonder if it doesn't exist in an alternate dimension, if a movie isn't going to be showing at that theatre, they don't advertise it. Mike Judge has never failed to make me laugh, so I was pretty geeked to see it.

Time came and went, the poster came down, and the movie never showed. In fact, I never heard about it getting released anywhere. I kinda forgot about it, actually.

So, I'm at Blockbuster the other day, and, there it is: Idiocracy, new to video. Totally bypassed the theatre, as far as I can tell.

Here's what I don't get: 20th Century Fox, who released Idiocracy, will give a 2500 screen rollout to The Marine, a moronic Commando-ripoff starring vehicle for the WWE champion, yet will throw a movie that might actually be enjoyable to watch directly into the DTV bin. I just don't get it.

BTW, the movie's hilarious; check it out.

Improving Universal City, And Destroying History In The Process

During one of the random clickathons that comprise my typical internet session, I happened upon this, the NBC Universal Vision Plan. In a nutshell (to save you the trouble of having to read the whole thing), Universal City, NBC Universal's home base, has decided to give back to the City and County of Los Angeles, and open up their somewhat private "city" to housing development and mass transit opportunities. Honestly, it's a pretty good idea, except for the fact that they'll have to destroy movie history in order to do it.

Part of the "Plan" is to add a housing development called Universal Village on 120 acres of Universal City's land. Unfortunately, this 120 acres happens to be a good portion of Universal Studio's backlot. In order to make way for this development, they'll have to get rid of the famous attractions that happen to reside there. Like the giant water tank that current houses the Ark from Evan Almighty; the Jaws ride; the ancient street set that houses both Desperate Housewives and Ghost Whisperer; the remnants of Whoville; the massive War of the Worlds planecrash set; and the Bates Motel and Psycho house (possibly one of the oldest things on the backlot). All of these things will go the way of the MGM Studios lot, just so Los Angeles can have some more fucking houses. (That state can break off the US and sink into the ocean any time now.)

Oh well. In the meantime, enjoy Your Studio and You, a celeb-filled promo video (which features some of the sets that are going bye-bye), made by Matt Stone and Trey Parker, commemorating Seagram's acquistition of Universal Studios in 1995. Needless to say, it never saw the light of day.

Ruining College Football, One Bowl Game At A Time

The New Year is upon us, which means the college football Bowl Season is well under way. I personally do not follow college football, as my alma mater hasn't had a football team since 1960, but, even if they did, I don't think I would follow it, due to the absolute bullshit postseason system that college football follows.

Unlike every other college sport, post-season college football is not organized by the NCAA. It has been outsourced and privatized, so to speak. And there is no tournament, as in every other sport; the national championship is determined by winning the Tostitos Bowl (not to be confused with the Tostitos Fiesta Bowl), the participants in which are determined by a complex computer formula. (This is at least better than previous years, where it was possible to win the "National Championship Game," and not win the national championship. This system is on the same complexity level as rocket science.) So, basically, if you don't get "picked" to play in the Tostitos Bowl (which will be called the Allstate Bowl next year, by the way), there's no way to win the national championship. No Cinderella stories, no spoilers, no upsets. But, just because you don't get picked for the Tostitos Bowl doesn't mean you won't get some post-season play; quite the contrary, actually.

Remember when there used to be like 10 bowl games? Well, if you do, that means you're getting old, because, now, there's 32. Thirty two bowl games. With 119 teams in Division 1-A football, that means more than half of the teams in Division 1-A are going to a bowl game. More than half. Even before a team plays a fucking game, they have a better than 50% chance of ending their season with a bowl game. The NCAA basketball tournament actually fields more teams (65 v. 64), but there's well over 300 teams vying for those 65 spots, and getting into the tournament actually grants you a shot at the national championship. With college football, if you're not playing in the Tostitos Bowl, you got no chance at the title, but, you will get a shitload of money.

For merely participating in a bowl game, win or lose, each team is given a cash prize, which, if a team is affiliated with a conference, is split up amongst the teams in that conference. (Unaffiliated teams, like Notre Dame and Army, get to keep the entire payout.) The fact that this money goes to the conference means that a team needn't even play in a bowl game to get paid. This is a pretty sweet deal for teams like Mississippi State, who went 3-9 and didn't go a bowl game, but will get a shitload of money for sitting at home, due to the nine other teams in the conference that are going to bowl games. Pretty nice.

As you may have figured out, the whole thing is about money, which is why there'll never be a college football tournament, because, well, that's pretty much playing for the love of the game. All the money for these games comes from corporate sponsorship, who, in turn, are given the naming rights to the bowl game, which serves as nice product placement. (Remember the Citrus Bowl? It's the Capital One Bowl now.) And the willingness to sponsor a bowl game is prolific and almost completely random, which is how we ended up with the Chick-fil-A Bowl and the Papajohns.com Bowl, and a dozen other ridiculously-named bowl games. (Not the Papa John's Bowl, but the Papajohns.com Bowl. A bowl game sponsored by a website.)

Seeing as they add a new bowl game about once a year, I'm sure we will reach a point when almost every Division 1-A team will get to play in a bowl game. It will be nice to see New Mexico State and Eastern Michigan play in the Ty-D-Bol Bowl in 2010. That will be a good time.

Ren & Stimpy - The Lost Episodes That Should Have Stayed Lost

The '80s were a bad decade for cartoons. They started with cheaply-drawn Hanna-Barbera cartoons, and ended with insanely intricate Japanese-made cartoons that were just as inane as their American brethren. It was enough to put everyone off cartoons forever.

Then came Ren & Stimpy.

This oddball, seminal cartoon singlehandedly changed cartoons. Now, it was alright to be gross. It was alright to be overtly weird. It was alright to be adult. You can still see the influence of Ren & Stimpy in Adult Swim's lineup of cartoons.

The problem with having a show that originally aired on Nickelodeon, very much a network geared toward children, is that you can't necessarily get as outre as you might like. So, nearly 10 years after the show went off the air, John Kricfalusi, the show's creator, decided to make a batch of new episodes for Spike TV, stuff that Nickelodeon wouldn't let him do during the show's original run. And now, having seen these episodes, that were recently released on video, I can honestly say he shouldn't have bothered.

Ren & Stimpy was a weird show. A good show, but probably the goofiest cartoon ever made. These "lost" episodes are even weirder. Everything has been cranked up to 11. What was once pushing the envelope is now cramming that envelope right down your throat. Everything is so over-the-top that it's almost painful to watch. Imagine Al Pacino at his most manic, and you might begin to have an idea of what these cartoons are like. And adding profanity and heaps of cartoon boobies really don't add to the viewing experience; they just make it more mind-hurting. (Yes, I just made that word up.)

I think the thing that hurts these episodes the most is the absence of Billy West, who was the voice of both Ren and Stimpy. If you can impersonate Larry Fine, you can do Stimpy, and the guy who does the voice is capable enough. But Kricfalusi's attempt at Ren's voice just doesn't cut it. This is odd to say, as I'm talking about a cartoon dog, but his Ren just doesn't have the same subtlety as West's. West is the only person I know who would think to combine Peter Lorre and Burl Ives to voice a cartoon dog. And Kricfalusi just don't cut it.

So, if you're a Ren & Stimpy completest, check these out. Even if you hate them, you'll get to see some bouncy cartoon boobies. But I still don't think that's worth a watch.

It's That Time Of Year Again...

...when Ken Griffey, Jr., gets a season-shortening injury. He usually waits until later in the season to do this, but, this year, he's decided to do it before spring training even starts. Yet another in a long line of Griffey injuries.

Griffey is a player whose potential talent has made him one of those Possibly The Best Player to Ever Play the Game, If Only He Played in Every Game. The thing with Griffey, though, is that, even having missed nearly four seasons worth of games due to injury, he still has had a Hall of Fame career. If he plays for four or five more years, and can remain relatively healthy, his stats will easily merit him a first-ballot Hall election.

It gets scary when you average his stats over those 500+ games he missed. He'd have a stat line pretty close to Hank Aaron's by the time he played 20 years. Yet, like Mark McGwire, who hit 580 homeruns in 500 fewer games than anyone else who's ever hit 500, his injury-riddled stats are still good enough to put him in the Hall. (Although, with McGwire, even if you average his stats out for however many fucking games you want, I still don't think he's good enough to go to the Hall. He hit homeruns. That was it.)

We'll see if Griffey can come back in time to salvage at least half a season. The last time he broke his hand, he missed almost all of the season. He'll still get into the Hall, even if he never plays another game. And that's some quality shit.

Coming Soon To Theatres Waaaaay Sooner Than Expected

So, I'm watching The Good Shepard (which really wasn't that good) the other day, and I saw a trailer for something quite surprising. I mean, I knew this movie was coming out, but I guess I didn't realize that it was finished and only two months away from release.

The movie? Why, it's Hannibal Rising, the movie adaptation of the Thomas Harris novel of the same name. It's not that I'm surprised this book has become a movie, as all Hannibal Lecter properties are always hot, and all of Harris' previous books (a whopping four) have been made into movies. What surprises me is that the movie is coming out in February, and the book came out in December, like three weeks ago. (There's even a promo for the book at the end of the trailer.)

In order for any of this to work, the book has to have been complete for quite some time, as it takes at least six months to make a movie from start to finish. What's even odder is that Harris also wrote the screenplay for the movie, which means he must have written the book and screenplay almost simultaneously. (This is the only logical way for this to work, as any other screenwriter would have had to read the entire book in draft form and then cranked out a screenplay in about five minutes.) By whatever means, I think this is probably the fastest turnaround in history.

What it all comes down to is I've got about a month and a half to read the book before I see the movie. Hopefully, Harris chose to faithfully adapt his own book, and not bitchify it like the screenwriters of Hannibal did to that book. I'm guessing he chose correctly.

Just as a sidenote, I'll also mention I saw a preview for a Mark Walberg movie called Shooter, which appears to be a movie version of the first season of 24. No word on whether or not Marky Mark will have an annoying wife and child to chase around.

The Day Will Come...

While we're on the subject of trailers, I saw a trailer for the remake of The Hitcher the other day. You all know how I feel about remakes...

What's scary about this one is that the original Hitcher came out a mere 20 years ago. With the exception of Red Dragon (the unnecessary remake of Manhunter, which only took 16 years to remake), I can't think of another movie that has hit the remake bin quicker. (I'm not counting American remakes of foreign films, as they get remade as soon as the rights can be secured.)

It doesn't surprise me that this remake Hitcher is the brainchild of Michael Bay, who, when he's not directing his own shitty movies, produces shitty remakes of old horror movies. (Although, if you haven't seen the new trailer for his Transformers movie, prepare to have your head fucking explode.) Because it's not enough to leave something the fuck alone; it has to be given to a new audience years later, to milk as much money as possible from a dead property.

As I said before, what scares me is that The Hitcher came out when I was a teenager, and now I have a remake in my lifetime, which is bad, considering I'm only in my early 30s. We're quickly approaching what I've long predicted as the worst future possible: where all movies are remakes, remakes of remakes even. The Front Page has been remade several times; who's to say that The Amityville Horror doesn't have another remake coming 10 years down the road?

It's a good thing I see as many movies as I do, since I foresee me not watching anything within the next 15 to 20 years. I can't wait.

New Grindhouse Trailer Online

Check out the new trailer for Tarantino and Rodriguez's Grindhouse. I'm still very much up in the air on this one, but, if the movie's anywhere near as cool as the promotional material (like the faux '70s-era lobby card above) they're releasing, I might not be disappointed.

We'll see.

Poor Man's Versions

In this post, I mentioned the concept of Poor Man's Versions: B-list version of A-list stars. Well, Stuff magazine has latched onto the idea and run with it, with some terribly mixed results.

Some of their comparos are really good, like Skeet Ulrich for Johnny Depp. Others are really terrible, like David Keith for Patrick Swayze. (Considering Swayze's recent output, I think they've got this backwards. But, all things considered, like the caption mentions, I'd take Keith David over both these guys, even if he is the Poor Man's Lawrence Fishburne.) Some are head-scratchingly dated. Lori Singer? Is she still alive? Where's the Meg Foster for Kirstie Alley comparo?

And, with all of these other errors in judgment, they attempt to improve on a classic comparo, by pairing Tom Cruise with Scott Wolf?!? Seriously, if you've ever seen Peter Facinelli, you'd know he is Tom Cruise. Just at a bargain basement price. There is no room to improve on that.

Nice try, Stuff; too witty by half. Maybe you'll do better with your guide to "Those Guys": actors like Colm Feore and Zeljko Ivanek, who are in everything, yet no one knows their names. I sense another Keith David reference coming on...

"Coming Soon To Home Video..."

Every time I go to Best Buy, I take a look at their massive TV show DVD section, seeing what series have made their way on to video. And I'm always astounded by what I see.

I don't understand why shows like Acapulco H.E.A.T. and Men Behaving Badly, shows that didn't deserve to be watched when they actually aired on TV, get DVD releases, while shows like Birds of Prey and Robbery Homicide Division, shows that probably should be watched and got their plugs pulled too early, are nowhere in sight.

From time to time, the studios surprise us, and release shows like Action! and Freaks and Geeks, much to the joy of their deprived fans. But for every one of those surprises, we get two or three Complete Series of Stacked or Greg the Bunny, which, well, have no fans at all.

And while I'm on the subject, where is the Second Season (or the Pilot Episode, for that matter) DVD release of Twin Peaks? Twenty episodes of the most cult-followed show of the last 20 years are absent, with no release date to speak of. Oh sure, it is possible to find them on video, but that would mean finding the now-extinct Complete Series VHS boxset. And they ain't cheap, depending on where you look.

I'm actually kinda glad that not everything gets released to video. If it did, I wouldn't have anything to bitch about. And that would make my life Hell.