Triple Double

So, that review I promised on Monday. HERE IT COMES PEOPLE. And it's a 3 in 1 deal. Lucky for all of you.

The Mist

"As a species we're fundamentally insane. Put more than two of us in a room, we pick sides and start dreaming up ways to kill one another."
- Ollie Weeks

I would consider myself well versed in the realm of paranormal disaster situations. I've seen/read many things about zombies and have developed a personal plan should the dead ever rise again. The Mist deals with many of the same things, just replacing zombies with some really freaky monsters that like to eat humans.

Based on a novella by Stephen King, there are plenty of themes and human tension mixed in with some of the strangest and bizarre creatures I have ever seen. Most of the film takes place with a small town under siege from a thick mist with monsters hiding in it waiting to eat them if they go outside. A large section of the community is at the grocery store restocking after a large rain storm from the night before when the mist hits and they are trapped inside.

Placing the characters inside a grocery store from the very beginning solves one of the greatest problems in a disaster of monstrous proportions right off the bat. With tons of available food, no one has to worry to hard about the basic necessities. They are all clothed, have a roof over their heads, and have plenty of food. Because the basics are taken care of, the people are free to let their minds destroy themselves while waiting and fighting off the monsters.
The monsters are the obvious villains in the film, but the true villainy takes place between the factions of people trapped together and forced to survive together. Human nature will trump paranormal beasts in terms of brutality any day.

The scenes with the monsters are some of the most nerve wracking I have ever seen. I could tell my blood pressure was rising on many occasions, culminating with one of the most intense and heartbreaking endings I have ever seen in movies.
This is a really good and thought provoking movie that was pigeon holed into being a horror flick because of the original material. And it has plenty of scares and gore. But it's not just cheap scares and flashy blood.

Forgetting Sarah Marshall

"I just went from Six to Midnight!"
-Mathew the Waiter

Another great comedy from the Apatow Gang. Really, really funny with just enough absolutely over the line humor to keep me engaged.

Dealing with breakups are common fodder for movies, but they are usually from the woman's perspective. This movie tells the tale of an overly sensitive composer who gets dumped by his famous girlfriend and can't quite shake it.

Jason Segel plays the main character with just enough whiny cry baby sniveling to make him attractive to the ladies. Some of the funniest parts of the film are his facial expressions and reactions to seeing his ex girlfriend over and over.

The movie culminates with a great scene featuring the puppet Dracula musical that is a main plot point. Rumor has it that based on this scene alone, the director and writers have been asked to make the next muppet movie. Which would be awesome.
Word of warning, there is man dangle repeatedly in the film. So be prepared.

Superhero Movie

"I can't breathe, your kneeling on my balls"
- Uncle Al

When this originally came out, I had read a few reviews that this was the best spoof movie to come out in the past few years. After seeing this last night, I think that's like being called the fastest swimmer with no arms or legs. It's just not that much of a compliment.

The one thing this film had going for it was that it stayed away from lots of pop culture references that will date it years down the road. Of course this is assuming anyone watches it years from now.

I may have laughed 3 times during this record breaking 1 hour and 10 minute "movie" You can also discount 2:30 minutes out of that for the opening credits. It did succeed in parodying super hero movies, but only because that over half the scenes were shot for shot remakes of scenes from Spiderman 1 and 2 and X-men 1 and 2.

It did have a cameo by Tracy Morgan, so at least that's something.

The scary thing about these spoof movies is that they seem to always make money, which means they will also always be made. According to IMDB, the budget for this was 35 million. I can't imagine what the hell they spent it on. But, it made close to $33 million worldwide in theaters. So all it has to do is sell half a million DVD's and there is a profit for the studio. Even if they make a few million off of each of these shit films, they keep pumping it out.

Tidbii

- I was chastised today for not blogging enough. Oddly enough it was by someone who themselves has slowed down in their blogging habbits. Suck on that one unnamed chastiser. So here is an update.

-Adie and I were invited to a screening of a documentary on Friday night. Adie's teacher friend's husband is a professor at IU who also produces documentaries. This was a near completed version of his latest doc about Veterans of the Vietnam War who have children in the Iraq War. It was well produced and thought provoking even in it's incomplete state. There was one of the Iraq vets who appeared in the film at the screening. He is a student at IU and was a very nice guy. Adie and I chatted with him after the film. He's a veteran, but younger than me. I'm thankful for those that chose to go into the armed service. It means I don't have to.

- We have a busy few weeks ahead of us. We are going to a wedding this coming weekend. Adie is going to another rowing meet the following weekend. Two weeks after that is the last rowing meet in Tennessee. I'm going to be turning up the tv and fan extra loud.

- I was hoping that it was just nothing, but Adie found mouse poo in the kitchen the last two days. It's more than a coincidence. So we purchased the old school traps and some poison today. If I thought there was any chance of us catching the thing alive I would, but having never seen any of it except it's leavings, the chances are slim.

- The Reds still suck. I could go on, but I think I've summed it up pretty well.

-That's all for tonight. I'll have a fresh review of the film I took in today in the morning.

Tidbits

I realize that I have not updated in a while about what's been going on outside of my movie watching. Rather than try and type out a coherent post with some semblance of a story to tell, I'm just going to give some bullet points about what's been going through my head recently.

- I go through fazes in my life where I fixate on a certain food item and crave it constantly. For a time after high school I would go to Morgantown IGA at least 3 times a week and buy a pound of hamburger. I would fire up the George Foreman when I got home and eat every bit of the meat. Of course I would be so full that I wouldn't eat dinner. And this went on for months. I still could eat Hamburgers most every day. In fact I'll probably make some tonight.
Currently my obsession is Corned Beef. Kroger has had it on sale the past two weeks, trying to get rid of their stock after St. Patrick's Day. It's fairly cheap, and easy to cook. I've made 2 roasts in the past 10 days, and once again, may go and buy one to cook today. Daddy Joe told me yesterday that Shapiro's has upped their prices on their corned beef sandwiches to $10. Their beef is the best I have ever had, but I can get close to five pounds and cook it at home for that price. bargain baby.
- I have seen the Reese's peanut butter commercial featuring the Easter chocolate bunny dipping itself into the peanut butter. It seemed like a really good idea. I tried it yesterday. It sucked. False marketing.
- Adie is chaperoning a field trip through school at bradford woods. She was gone last night, and again tonight. This will affect my sleep schedule until she returns. One of my main reasons for never taking a nap is that I'm constantly paranoid about sleeping in an empty house. I end up having really paranoid dreams about someone breaking in.
It makes me feel better if anyone else is in the house. But without that I have a hard time falling asleep. It didn't help last night that I had two pepsi's with dinner and the caffine kicked in at around 11pm. I know it's completely irrational, but I hate sleeping in an empty house.
- The Reds lost 3 in a row to the Pirates. inexcusable. It's gonna be a long season if they can't score consistently. On the flip side from last season, the pitching is vastly improved and have only been blown out in one game. All the rest of the losses are in close games where no one can score. Either way they are still playing .500 ball.
- I can't wait for the NBA season to be over. Then Fox Sports Indiana will start showing lots more Red's games instead of Pacer games. The pacers suck. Hopefully they dodge the odds and get a decent draft pick this year.

That's all I can think of for now. It's halfway through April and it's still cold. Spring will be a short season this year.

30 Days of Night

Another film that I knew I would love, was told I would love, but still managed to miss in the theaters. I think I would have enjoyed this one even more on the big screen with the good sound system.

Regardless this film hits lots of my criteria for enjoying a horror film. The vampires here are unlike any that I've seen in films. I really enjoyed their teeth. Instead of having the requisite two fang system, the vamps in this film were outfitted with all their teeth being sharpened. Imagine a set of shark teeth, and you are getting close.

The vamps were also much more savage and focused than in other tales. Gone are the romanticized Victorian sexually charged bad guys. These vampires just want to feed, and as quickly as possible.

There's some pretty gruesome stuff going on here, but it never goes into the realm of "pop up" horror. There's a lot to be frightened by without it popping up from off screen to get a cheap scare.

I also enjoyed this film because it had similar elements to The Thing. Bleak landscape. Weather as an enemy. And an unknown force threatening the good guys.

The Devil & Daniel Johnston/The Darjeeling Limited

I had two nextflix films, both with THE as the title. Spooky?

I decided to knock them both out on Monday in a fit of non-inspiration to do anything else. I have also fallen a smidge behind on schedule to keep up with my goal. So knocking two movies out in one day is a way to kick start the system. Of course I haven't watched anything else since then, so whatever. I did read a book for class in under two hours, so that was nice.

Anyway, we'll start with The Devil & Daniel Johnston. Daniel Johnston is a folk/indie artist who debuted on the Austin, TX scene in the early 80's. He was quickly accepted as a genius song writer and revered as almost royalty. He also was a severe manic depressive that had delusions of the devil infesting everything in his life. Raised as a Christian, these themes of angels and devils would continue to haunt him. He bounced around different mental hospitals all while recording an extensive catalog of his own music.

In one telling scene as Daniel prepares for his return to Austin after many years away, he decides to go off his medications because he knows that his performances will be more emotinal and raw if he is off of them. At this time his father is touring with him, acting as manager and giving Daniel his medicine. Daniel is secretly not taking them. On the plane ride back to their home, which was being piloted by Daniel's father in their small two seater plane, Daniel is delusional and thinks he is Casper. He takes the keys out of the plane and throws them out the window. He overpowers his father and forces the plane into a dive before letting go in time for dad to take back over the controls and crash into some trees. Both survived with minor injuries.

This was a very well put together doc about Daniel and his musical genius, but it also didn't try and hide or glamorize his condition. It talked and showed the many bad effects that mental illness can have on a person and their loved ones if it goes untreated.

Second up was Wes Anderson's The Darjeeling Limited. I am a big fan of all of Anderson's earlier works. I think he puts together stories with a real sense of heart and feeling along with an incredibly quirky sense of humor and timing.

This film though is my least favorite of his. It isn't a bad film, but I had higher expectations due to his previous work. Maybe a second viewing will help out, but it was hard to connect or see any subtlety in these charachters.

The three brothers are all emotionally stunted and it shows in the first half of the film. There are some funny moments, but overall it felt like I was being beaten over the head with the idea that these men had suffered something in their lives to stunt them emotionally. Over and over again I was hit with this, which is not subtle at all. About halfway there is the "climactic" scene where the brothers all endure a test of sorts and are instantly changed after.

It just seemed to obvious and forced of a point. It defiantly failed to charm me like Rushmore or Royal Tennenbaums. It is obviously an Anderson film, and I applaud him for shooting on location in India and working outside of his comfort zone. Unfortunatly by stepping out of that zone, the story suffered a bit because of it.

Quick note to all you readers out there. An update on the steps challenge As we enter the 4th month my step requirements have increased to 7500 3 times a week. I went yesterday to the Y and did 5000 steps as well as biking 4 miles. I'm counting that as meeting the requirement. k thx.

Where have all the Merrymakers Gone?

I haven't updated in a while because I really haven't done a whole hell of a lot. I did watch Sweeney Todd again. I liked it just as much the second time as I did the first time. I noticed the score alot more and how they used it to enforce what was going on in the scenes. I don't mean the actual songs, but the score.

So there was much fervor created around the house this week. Jula was down visiting for a few days when the news broke that Dave Matthews/Tim Reynolds would be doing a free show in support of Barack. All you had to do to get tickets was wait large ammounts of time to get your free tickets, and then wait another equally long amount of time to get into the show. Will, being a die hard fan, of course waited about 8 hours to score his two free tickets, but could not come up with anymore. Jula struck out down here, as we found out about it in time for the second day of ticket give away. By that time there were few left, and waiting in line would have been futile.

Fast forward to yesterday. I take Jula and Will to Assembly Hall around 1pm. Doors are supposed to open at 5:30 for the 7pm show. I thought this may be a tad early for them to go wait, but they wanted to get a good seat. Little did I realize that there would be around 2000 people already lined up. One of Will's friends from PU had been there since 10am, and was 7th in line. I drop them off and wish them luck. Ironically I was going to the library to change my voter district so that I could vote in the primary after I dropped them off. While I was in the library, I missed the call from jula. They had let a nice couple from Ft. Wayne cut in line with them and hang out. They had an extra two tickets that friends of theirs wouldn't be using and wondered if Will and Jula knew anyone that needed some tickets. According to Adie she about pissed her pants when jula called her with the news.

Adie and I rolled up around 5pm to a sea of people who were staggering around, attempting to look like a line, but effectively forming one giant, drunk tapeworm snaking itself all around the sports complexes of IU. Every once in a while there would be a small surge as the two lines would condense, but all in all it was just futile motions before the doors opened. I did get to witness one of the most forceful vomiting I had ever seen. A lady who had obviously imbibed a bit to much while waiting discretely tried to go hide behind some bushes to relieve her stomach of it's poison. Of course the bushes are only about shin high, so it didn't offer her much in the way of a shield. It started out as barely a trickle of what appeared to be rum and cokes, mixed with a little orange juice. But soon enough a geyser erupted from her went on for a full three heaves. Best of all, all the janitors had gathered on the second level from inside and were laughing their asses off watching her chuck in the grass. Not their problem obviously.

We ended up making it into Assembly Hall pretty quickly and ended up with pretty good seats. About 20 rows off the floor, right where midcourt would be. Had a nice angle on the stage. The show was pretty awesome. Dave was high as shit and was spouting off all kinds of hilarious shit. He talked about his son having a penis, exploding puppies, and fucking with his defenseless baby. And Tim Reynolds may only be about 5 feet tall, but he can wail on an acoustic guitar like no one I have ever seen live.

While at the show, it got me to thinking about other awesome concerts that I had seen. So here is my top 10 shows that I have seen in no particular order. If I can remember a funny anecdote about each, they will also follow.

1. Cake (murat egyptian room sometime 2004ish. I'm so good with dates)
Rob and I scored tickets to go see Cake. We got there pretty early to get a good spot in line so we could be close to the stage. This would kick start a streak where we would get really close to the stage for almost every general admission show we went to. Opening for Cake was a band called Beulah. We imediatly thought their name was dumb, and when they came out to play, we didn't think much higher of them. They had a weird sound, used two keyboardists, and their lead guitar player would also play the trumpet from time to time. We laughed about how they sucked, but of course as soon as we got home that night we started downloading some of their stuff. Pretty quickly they became one of our favorite bands and they still get heavy airplay through my speakers. And Cake was awesome. Seen them at least 3 times too.

2. Beulah (somewhere in Ohio 2005ish.)
Beulah was touring solo this time and it was rumored that it would be their last tour before breaking up. Of course Rob and I had to go to catch them one more time. We of course got there super early again, partly due to the time change that we hadn't factored in. We ended up being first in line. We heard most of the sound check from outside, and ended up front and center for an awesome show capped off by Rob and I getting taken up on stage to accompany the band on "Score from Augusta" Beulah was taking requests, and we won out with our suggestion. We even got pics from on stage during the song. The keyboard player grabbed our camera mid song and took a few shots of us with the crowd behind us. Probably the coolest thing that has ever happened to me at a show.

3. Foo Fighters/That Dogg (Murat Egyption Room 1996.)
My first concert that I wanted to go to. This was in support of the Foo's first concert and it was awesome. This would be the first of 3 times I have seen the Foo's.

4. Smashing Pumpkins/Muse (Assembly Hall 1997)
Smashing Pumpkins are in my top five bands of all time, and were definatly my favorite band at the time of this tour. This was the Mellon Collie tour, and they tore the house down. Probably their last good album before Billy Corgan got all industrial and experimental. Heavy on the Mental.

5. Red Hot Chilli Peppers/Foo Fighters (Assembly Hall/Deer Creek 1998)
This was two shows on the same tour. Though they were about three months apart. Great shows both times. Saw "Soul To Squeeze" performed live. Probably my favorite song ever, so knock that off the list.

6. TV on the Radio (The Vouge 2007)
Once again, I got to the show super early to get a good spot. This time it was with Adie, and we ran into Kelly Youck and her friend. We ended up about three rows back center once the crowd pushed forward. TVOTR are amazing, and put on a hard energetic show that didn't disapoint. Adie had never heard them before the show, but I made her go anyway. She thanked me later.

7. Old Crow Medicine Show ( Music Mill 2007)
Joe and I scored tickets for this show. While the Music Mill has awesome acoustics, the place itself is rather weird. But the show made up for it. The band played basically two whole seperate sets with a small break in the middle.

8. Nickel Creek (Axis 2006)
Front row center again. They put on an awesome show live. They played a cover of Britnay Spears "Toxic" which was awesome. And their bass player put on an awesome clogging routine.

9. Jimmy Eat World/ Tenacious D/ Weezer (Illinois State University 2005ish)
Got to fufill one of my goals and saw Weezer perform "Only in Dreams" live. Plus that lineup is killer. I would pay to see each of those acts individually, so lump them together and we are sitting pretty. Another great show Rob and I caught together. We logged a lot of miles in the Raspberry Dragon to see shows.

10. White Stripes (Murat Theatre 2006ish)
A sit down affair in the main theatre at the Murat. We had awesome seats, I believe 4th row center. It was amazing to watch up close how just two people can produce such a big sound. This was right after Hurricane Katrina and Jack did a haunting cover of "House of the Rising Sun" on the piano. We had seen them the year before in the Egyptian Room which was also an awesome show. That was the show that the speaker output cracked the plaster in the ceiling. But I liked the second show better. Mostly because there was no moshing due to the seats.

Honourable Mention: Beulah in Tennesee on their true farewell Tour, last night's Dave/Tim show, Kevin Smith, Comedians of Comedy, Lewis Black/Mitch Hedburg/Dave Attel, Cake/Cheap Trick.

This has turned into a short novel. I'm done now.