Best Buy

broderic on June 29, 2007

Stopped by Best Buy on the way home, because I wanted to burn the gift cards I had received from WaterLili for the last two Christmases. This is my third time in the new Best Buy just down the street from me, but it’s my first time walking away with some product.

Of course, I looked at the DVDs. Bought a three. Went to pay for it. Find out that I had a total of $45.00, so that I have some money still left on it.

Dang!

I hate getting DVDs at Best Buy. It’s only good when you know exactly what you want, and what you want is a very popular release like Dumb and Dumber the Dumbest edition or Ants in your Plants of 2006. If you want something off the beaten path, you’re SOL (for the kids!).

Plus browsing is plain hideous. Perhaps, I am used to web where I can follow any path through Amazon. I can start at one link and take another link upon my choosing. I am not boxed in by categories. I can easily search for something that pops into my head. If an idea develops, I can follow it until I find the movie that I know will compliment my DVD collection.

Best Buy is so analog.

At Amazon I can find almost any DVD.

Buying it from there is another blog post

On the Road. Rain, Rain, Go Away

broderic on June 28, 2007

I’ve ridden so many times at home that I am sick and tired of it. So I hit the road for the BWI trail. I rack the bike this morning in order to ride after work. It’s a dicey proposition as the summer brings thunder storms. That worries me as I don’t want to have my bike soaked. But it happens and my bike gets soaked in an afternoon thunder storm.

Coming Soon

broderic on June 27, 2007

I usually don’t like watching a show at The Charles because it’s so far away and antiquated. Except they have a couple of movies playing that I really would like to watch, Paris, je t’aime and Once. They may be only playing for a limited time so I think I need to hurry up.

Also, The Charles is having a film noir retrospective until the end of summer. There’s some films there I want to see. In particular, Double Indemnity on the big screen would be rather cool. You know why.

Of course, also this upcoming week is a big movie one. Die Hard 4 is opening up today, Ratatouille for the weekend, and Transformers for July 4. That’s a lot to see in the theatres.

I hope to get to some of these.

1408

broderic on June 26, 2007

You may wonder if 1408 is Steven King revisiting his seminal work, The Shining. In a ways it is. Creepy hotel. Creepy hotel workers. A writer loosing his mind or is he? All themes and signs that King has worked into his writing throughout his career. If I told you that 1408 was nothing more than a cheap imitation of The Shining, would it surprise you when I told you it isn’t? Perhaps not, but you can still guess all the plot threads in this film.

John Cusack is an unheralded writer in the throes of finishing out his career as the go to guy for ghost hunter guides. He debunks supposedly haunted places. Out of the blue, he receives a card not to spend a night in the titular room of the Dolphin Hotel in New York. After researching it, he has to find out why he shouldn’t and visits anyway. He spends the night in the hotel room. Does he get scared out of his mind? He goes crazy for the hour. And the ghosts and the room get to him.

I read a lot of ghost stories in my time. I can imagine this one as a story rather than a movie. It would seem to have fit in with the later day stories. Not the Victorian ghost stories that I dearly love. They all have a sceptic who falls into a frightening place, and eventually comes to believe in the supernatural.

This movie had some scares. I am glad for it. Because of the prevalence of the new wave of slasher/torture pics coming, the horror genre didn’t seem to be for fun. The movies have been given to being about the violence. Like pulling the wings off a fly for the sake of being sadistic. 1408 was a throw back to just plain atmospheric creeps. No cutting throats or half-sawn faces. Just trying to say, “BOO.”

BOO!

It won’t scare you, but it will on occasion make you have goosebumps. And that’s good enough for me.

3 of 5 stars.

E = MC^2

broderic on June 26, 2007

80% Geek

Those questions were kind of lame. They asked when did I start playing computer games, but didn’t even have the 70s. That would’ve shot me up at least an extra 5%!

From Margeaux.

100 movie 100 years the list

broderic on June 21, 2007

Here’s the list of AFI’s 100 movies of 100 years. I’ve counted mine and seen 51% of the movies on the list. I probably seem to have seen at least another 10 more, but I don’t count those.

1. Citizen Kane (1941) (1)
2. The Godfather (1972) (3)
3. Casablanca (1942) (2)
4. Raging Bull (1980)(24)
5. Singin’ in the Rain (1952)(10)
6. Gone With the Wind (1939)(4)
7. Lawrence of Arabia (1962)(5)
8. Schindler’s List (1993)(9)
9. Vertigo (1958)(61)
10. The Wizard of Oz (1939) (6)
11. City Lights (1931)(76)
12. The Searchers (1956)(96)
13. Star Wars (1977)(15)
14. Psycho (1960)(18)
15. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)(22)
16. Sunset Boulevard (1950)(12)
17. The Graduate (1967)(7)
18. The General (1927)
19. On the Waterfront (1954)(8)
20. It’s a Wonderful Life (1946)(11)
21. Chinatown (1974)(19)
22. Some Like It Hot (1959)(14)
23. The Grapes of Wrath (1940)(21)
24. E.T.: the Extra-Terrestrial (1982)(25)
25. To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)(34)
26. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939)(29)
27. High Noon (1952)(33)
28. All About Eve (1950)(16)
29. Double Indemnity (1944)(38)
30. Apocalypse Now (1979)(28)
31. The Maltese Falcon (1941)(23)
32. The Godfather Part II (1974)(32)
33. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975)(20)
34. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937)(49)
35. Annie Hall (1977)(31)
36. The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)(13)
37. The Best Years of Our Lives (1946)(37)
38. Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)(30)
39. Dr. Strangelove (1964) (26)
40. The Sound of Music (1965)(55)
41. King Kong (1933)(43)
42. Bonnie and Clyde (1967) (27)
43. Midnight Cowboy (1969)(36)
44. The Philadelphia Story (1940) (51)
45. Shane (1953)(69)
46. It Happened One Night (1934) (35)
47. A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)(45)
48. Rear Window (1954) (42)
49. Intolerance (1916)
50. Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)
51. West Side Story (1961)(41)
52. Taxi Driver (1976) (47)
53. The Deer Hunter (1978)(79)
54. MASH (1970) (56)
55. North by Northwest (1959) (40)
56. Jaws (1975) (48)
57. Rocky (1976) (78)
58. The Gold Rush (1925) (74)
59. Nashville (1975)
60. Duck Soup (1933) (85)
61. Sullivan’s Travels (1941)
62. American Graffiti (1973)(77)
63. Cabaret (1972)
64. Network (1976) (66)
65. The African Queen (1951) (17)
66. Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) (60)
67. Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966)
68. Unforgiven (1992)(98)
69. Tootsie (1982) (62)
70. A Clockwork Orange (1971) (46)
71. Saving Private Ryan (1998)
72. The Shawshank Redemption (1994)
73. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)(50)
74. The Silence of the Lambs (1991)(65)
75. In the Heat of the Night (1967)
76. Forrest Gump (1994)(71)
77. All the President’s Men (1976)
78. Modern Times (1936) (81)
79. The Wild Bunch (1969) (80)
80. The Apartment (1960)(93)
81. Spartacus (1960)
82. Sunrise (1927)
83. Titanic (1997)
84. Easy Rider (1969) (88)
85. A Night at the Opera (1935)
86. Platoon (1986) (83)
87. 12 Angry Men (1957)
88. Bringing Up Baby (1938) (97)
89. The Sixth Sense (1999)
90. Swing Time (1936)
91. Sophie’s Choice (1982)
92. GoodFellas (1990) (94)
93. The French Connection (1971) (70)
94. Pulp Fiction (1994) (95)
95. The Last Picture Show (1971)
96. Do the Right Thing (1989) (2nd review)
97. Blade Runner (1982)
98. Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942) (100)
99. Toy Story (1995)
100. Ben-Hur (1959) (72)

Recently Seen In Theatres

broderic on June 19, 2007

Fantastic Four: The Rise of the Silver Surfer.

The first one was boring, but given that it has to establish the characters, their relationships, and the milieu they’ll be functioning in, it can be slightly forgiven for being too expository. Slightly. But I’m not the one to accept it. The first one was listless and the plot stank.

Sequels should be much better. There’s no longer a need to establish the situation. They should hit the ground running and therefore they should generally be a rocking good time.

This one wasn’t. It retained the boring, listless atmosphere of the first one. It also makes the mistake of making the Silver Surfer into the most boring of characters. I mean, come on, the Cosmic Force. What happened? Also, Galactus as a cloud was plain stupid. That was really the reason why I wanted to see it. I was interested in who would be playing Galactus. I was hoping for Bruce Willis, but a cloud of smoke. It seems that Lost’s smoke monster has got a really good agent. Coming soon to the multiplex near you smoke monster in Dukes of Hazard 3!

Jessica Alba with blue eyes is extremely disturbing to look at. She should not act anymore. She should just be a Maxim girl. The dude who played Reed Richards, Mr. Fantastic, was struggling to put on brave face. The show must go on.

The problem with the Fantastic Four franchise is that the writers and director do not believe in the comic book. They seem to have abandoned the stories of the comic for something not quite like it. A fake and a no good facsimile of the Fantastic Four just plain sucks.

2 of 5 stars.

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End

What can be said about this third installment? It’s a bloated, disjointed movie. I couldn’t keep up with the various double crosses throughout the movie. Who was backstabbing whom? I don’t know nor do I care. It left me pondering what happened to the fun and exciting pirates of the first movie. Then it left me deducing that hoboes are the new pirates and the old pirates are just world weary sailors.

I can’t wait for Hoboes of the Railyards: The Black Pearl.

2 of 5 stars.