I've seen a few movies recently, and I thought I would write a bit about them here so that everyone can gibe me for it.

Peter Pan

Abby really likes Disney's animated Peter Pan, and I was surprised to see a preview last year of a live-action version of Peter Pan coming from Universal.  The movie was just recently released on DVD, and even if it was as potentially scary as the previews let on, it would hopefully be a good film for Abby when she got older, so I bought it.

I watched the movie this weekend, and it was not too bad.  It strayed slightly from the familiar plotline in the animated film, but only far enough to freshen the story.  For example, in the animated version, Wendy tells many stories about Peter Pan before he shows up, but in the live action version, Wendy tells stories about Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, and the like, which all include pirates in her telling.

I liked that the villainous Captain Hook was portrayed by Jason Isaacs, the same guy who plays Mr. Darling, the childrens' father.  This is similar to how Hook's voice actor is the same as Mr. Darling in the animated version.  In the animated version, we're left to possibly infer that the whole thing might have been a child's dream, since they start off the adventure from sleeping in bed.  This is not the case in the live-action movie.

The visuals were pretty good, and the movie wasn't particularly scary, although there was a lot more getting shot than in the Disney film, which probably earned the PG rating.

This movie dealt a lot less with the themes of growing up and jealousy, and more with the theme of love between Wendy and Peter.  Kind of hokey, but whatever.

Dirty Pretty Things

I must admit that I haven't yet finished Dirty Pretty Things, but it shows promise.  It's filmed in a strange way that reminds me of anime, but just slightly slower paced.

Anyway, I get the idea that somebody is operating an illegal organ donor operation or something.  Seriously, I need to watch the rest of the movie.

Van Helsing

"That rocked.  This is the best movie I've seen all year."

Ok, that's not exactly true.  I guess my big issue here is that Van Helsing is a very underdeveloped story that could have been more than "James Bond meets every classic horror monster".

Here's an example- In the real Frankenstein book, the monster is quite misunderstood.  The whole novel is a quest for him to live and take revenge on those who would dare take the power of creation into their own hands.  There is a serious mood here, a serious theme, one that makes this book a classic.

My point is that if you're going to draw on the classics, then your story should at least be worthy of them.  This movie draws on two classic stories and folktales of werewolves, and doesn't bother to present more than a tired "Dracula wants babies for his cranky wives" plot.  Next time, let's get Frankenstein's monster and have him tap dance to "Puttin' on the Ritz" and see if that does any better.  At least you could bill it as a comedy/parody as opposed to action/adventure and get away with it.  Maybe if you cast him next to Gene Wilder or something.  Hmm...

I don't feel bad in spoiling the secret that Dracula and his wives (who are cool, but really stupid for vampires) attempt to use Frankenstein (and his monster) to give their babies life.  That was the secret all along - electrocute Franky's monster to hatch the vamp kiddies.  Hey, where did these babies come from anyway?  That's a lot of eggs.  Somehow I don't imagine those vampire chicks laying them.

Moreover, if Dracula can create vampire spawn like his wives, then what the heck does he need the flying imp babies for?  Imp babies that routinely explode, I might add, and could only deplete the supply of blood that Dracula and his wives need to live.

Hey, was the origin of Van Helsing and his memory loss revealed?  Tell me what it was, if you can.  Why was his ring's symbol the one found on the map that was the door to Dracula's castle?  Why did Dracula encase the anti-werewolf juice in a jug of holy water, if his intent was to use it to prevent his own death at the hands of a werewolf?  Wouldn't he have to break through the holy water?  Maybe I'm just imagining these loose ends here...

And what was with the score?  I admit, I was grooving the first time they played the Van Helsing theme music, but cripes!  The soundtrack to this movie must be five minutes long.

The effects were good.  This happens when you spend a gajillion dollars on them.  Give me a gajillion dollars and I will produce good effects, too.  No, really, give me a gajillion dollars.

Here's my thought: Anna should have killed Van Helsing when he killed the first vampire wife.  Then Anna could have killed Dracula, her brother the werewolf, and the stinking Frankenstein monster.  That would have been cool.  Her character was so much more interesting than Van Helsing, and not just because she had...  a nice figure.  Although that did help.

Do you know who was cooler than Van Helsing?  Gr�goire de Fronsac.  I rest my case.>

s little I dislike more than a movie with good potential going to waste because of limp writing.  See also: The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen plus Tom Sawyer.  Feh.  Rubbish.

And on top of all of that, Berta fell asleep in the middle of it, so it couldn't have been that riveting.

I wasn't expecting a lot from this movie, and I was still disappointed.  I suppose that if I'm going to go out to see a movie, I should probably leave all of my preconceptions at home.

The Rundown

The Rundown is a movie that got away from me when it first came out.  This is the one where The Rock goes to South America to retrieve the son of a mob boss who doesn't want to come home.

The first scene in this movie in which Beck (The Rock) gets medieval on the offensive line of this football team while they're partying at a club is pretty cool, I must admit.

This movie is mostly a testosterone-powered action film, but there is a bit of comedy supplied by Seann William Scott (you know, Stifler from American Pie) during his hunt for a priceless artifact.

Christopher Walken gets his in the end.  Maybe I was just in the mood for mindless entertainment, but there is something to be said for a movie that is so disconnected from things that drawing parallels isn't possible.  This movie wasn't trying to be anything or compare itself to anything other than the movie that it was.  The acting was pretty good, and the story was a little far-fetched, but still within reason.

Upcoming Movies...

Here are some films that I will be interested to see when they come out so that I can also give them bad reviews:

Shrek 2

 Shrek was good, but can the sequel be as good?  I doubt it, but I'll want to see this anyway.

The Day After Tomorrow

This looks like a neat apocalypse movie.  I'm sure it will have the same tone and bad story as Armageddon.

Harry Potter and the Prizoner of Azkaban

I have yet to conceive of a way this movie could be bad, but hey, I've been disappointed before.

Around the World in 80 Days

Hopefully this isn't just a comedy, and actually tries to entertain more than with Jackie Chan getting hit repeatedly in the jewels.

Spiderman 2

The first one was ok.  This one looks cool.  But I'm a sucker for a good trailer.

Here are a couple of movies that I don't want to see:

Troy

This is another one of those movies that can be nothing but eye candy because we already know how it ends. Something about a horse?

Chronicles of Riddick

Let's all watch Vin Diesel suck in another sci-fi film with a plot from a bar napkin.

The Terminal, looks kind of interesting.  I think it might be based on a true story.  At least, I've heard of a guy that this happened to.  It could all be fiction.  I suddenly feel like I've been the subject of viral marketing.

It could be the Excedrin I just took, but I'm feeling pretty good right now, in spite of the fantastic day I've had so far.

Sometime, maybe Friday, Berta's car started making a funny noise whenever you started to slow down.  It was a strange kind of fluttering.  Combined with the awful screeching that the car made when you turned sharply, I was sure it was a serious problem.

After suffering through the weekend with just my car (and let me save some article space to tell you how excited I am about Abby's habit of filling pockets and shoes with sandbox sand and climbing into my car for transport), we all got up early this morning to convey Berta's ailing transport to the repair shop.  I started it up and drove it to the end of the block, and by that time, I knew something was very wrong.

I put the car in park and walked around the outside to see what was going on.  The front passenger-side tire was completely flat.

Shanahan students whizzed by on their way to school while I pondered my next move in this building fiasco.  (When does school start for these kids?  They really push the limits driving down my street at 8am if school starts at 8am.)  Instead of blocking up the building traffic, I sent Berta and Abby on to work and school, and used a lull in the traffic to back the car up into a reasonable parking space.

Most new cars have jacks built into them in a storage compartment somewhere, so I searched the car for the one in the CR-V.  I remembered that CR-Vs have a table in the trunk, for what purpose other than simply having a table I can't say, and so I pulled up the carpet in the back.  I lifted the table out of place, and found only the storage area (remind me that there is stuff in there, clothing, of interest), but noted that there was a label specifying "JACK" that didn't really point anywhere.

I pulled on the little metal loop affixed to one of the screws that fastened the plastic of the storage area to the car body.  The screw ripped out.  I think they're supposed to do that.  I pulled out the other three and lifted the plastic, revealing - a jack!

Our neighbor across the street - I think his name is Dunn, a guy who I've never really been involved with - was very generous in offering his hydrolic jack to raise the car.  Honestly, I don't like those cheapy screw jacks either, so I was glad for his assistance.

I pumped the jack up, lifting the car, and then removed the old tire.  I rolled the spare into place, and lifted it a bit to fit it on the axle, but the bolts were already too low.  The car wasn't jacked up high enough to get the new wheel on.  And now, it wasn't high enough to put the old wheel back on, either.

I ended up sliding the old wheel under the axel so that I could remove the jack and prop it up with some bricks I retreived from the garage.  After two tries (don't ask), I finally got the car up high enough to put on the spare.

"I'm going to need to rent a car," I told the guy who answered the phone at Enterprise.  I spent quite a bit of time on hold, like 20-30 minutes, trying to get a car for at least the day, if not the duration of the repairs, which I imagined would be immense.  While on hold, I invisioned the jovial mechanic at the desk of Goodyear laughing his jolly laugh, "That'll be $5 billion dollars - Ho ho ho!"  There goes Christmas.

"Sorry, we won't have anything back in until one o'clock."  Gee thanks.  You'd think that a car rental company, whose chief business is essentially renting cars, would know well enough whether they had any cars available to be able to tell me so when I first quieried them.  Whatever.

Berta came from work to meet me at the garage and cart me off to work.  So begins the humiliating life of the suburbanite with no car.

Fortunately, a call from Goodyear revealed that the repairs were minor (less than $5 billion, but close), and they ended up completing them before noon.  Berta picked me up again at work and we ate lunch at Wegman's after picking up the fixed car.

I turned sharply into the parking space in the Wegman's lot to the sound of a faint squeal from the tire area.

Lunch with a human (especially Berta) was fun, and I think I have finally figured out the secret of the cheap by-weight Chinese buffet.  Noodles, not rice.  Drain sauces.  Take only half of what you think you can eat.  Big bottled water.

Re-enter the world of the zen PHP coder and his personal conveyance and all is at peace.

I'll tell you now about my own near death experience, which happened while driving, of course.

I had just started working at the new job within the week, and hadn't quite figured out the best way to get to the building yet.  The way that I had taken is much different (and surprisingly less interesting) than the route I take now. 

You might enjoy a diagram:

The green line in the diagram shows my current route to work.  The intersection through which the green arrow turns now has a traffic light, which wasn't there when this story takes place.

I was headed in to work following the path of the yellow and red arrows.  You can see the little dot of my car circled in the satellite picture on the right side.  (How can I tell if it's so small?  Trust me... If there are only two cars, the right one is mine.)

As I have said, there were no traffic lights on the road, nor were there stop signs or any kind of sign.  Traffic was known to go far too fast on this road, much in excess of the suggested 45 miles per hour.  I was slowing down during my traversal of the road (near the yellow arrow) so I could complete my turn when I looked in the rear-view mirror.

In my mirror, the car behind me was approaching very speedily.  In fact, it did not seem to me as if the car might not intend to stop.  But I figured that he still had a while before he got too close, and I could probably make the turn in time to avoid him.  So, looking up toward the next intersection, I checked for oncoming cars.

Here's the dilemma- a car was approaching from the other direction.  As the oncoming car got closer, the car behind me seemed more intent on not stopping.  Finally, it became a question of whether I wanted to risk cutting off the oncoming car or get crushed by the guy behind me.

I quickly whipped the car around the corner, no doubt surprising the oncoming car, but avoiding him by a reasonable margin.  The car that was behind me didn't fare so well.

As I continued down the road toward the office, I saw the guy who was behind me suddenly try to avoid me at the last moment.  He swerved to the outside and caught his right-side tires in the grass  and gravel on the side of the road (the X on the map), and then couldn't escape them as half of his car headed up the hill.

The speed combined with the elevation flipped the right side of his little black Ford over the left, and he skidded on his roof all the way to the next intersection as the weight of the transmission slowly crushed the car down onto the weak car body.

I was a little panicky when I rolled into the office.  I didn't know how to use the phones yet, and there was a whole strange discombobulated exchange between myself and the receptionist about calling 911.  We finally worked it out and I gave the details to the operator. 

The whole situation was very surreal.  I had just escaped >something< and was calling to report what had happened to someone else as a result.  And then just followed through with the rest of my day as normal.

I wrote this little anecdote in response to something I read elsewhere.  I was recently reminded of it when I encountered this comic from benisadork.com.

A heartwarming TP story

Being the constant complainer that I am, I never bothered to confront my girlfriend about her preference in TP winding, feeling that I would just be adding to the long list of dumb things that I bitch about.

After we were married (some years into our relationship) I did bother to ask her why she preferred to install the roll to reel under-wise. Her response was that since she had started doing it that way and I didn't complain, she just kept doing it - even though she prefered it the other way.

We've been reeling the TP over ever since.

Moral: Just because someone does something in a way you don't like, that doesn't mean that they aren't open to change.

Also: Wy wife is très spiffy.

Oh, spring is upon us,
with flowers in bloom.
The birds all are singing
their colorful tune.

The kids behind school desks
just can't wait until June.
And every morning
we wonder how soon
'til the blasted TV weatherman is going to stop forecasting the god-awful 40-degree cold and rain.

Yeah, needs some work.