Grassroots Movement

68. Step Brothers.
It's not a secret that Will Ferral has turned himself and his preferred style of comedy into a money making machine that churns out movie after movie riffing on the same things just with different backgrounds. Step Brothers is right in line with most of this, but veers off into a more "adult" direction. I say adult because he just cusses more and has some brief, yet funny, scenes of man danglies. The basic plot is two adult men who refuse to grow up and enjoy video games, kung fu, rocking out, and general silliness. Somehow I broke down the walls and connected with these two dueling personalities. It was a stretch, dear reader, but I made that leap. Very funny at times, and overall enjoyable. Though I was glad to only pay $5 for it, since there was really nothing in there that needed viewing on a big screen. It also achieved status of a movie that Adie would be embarrassed being seen at by her students/parents. Though that list continually grows when she's out with me.

69. Sex and the City
Yes, I know how unlike me it was to watch all the shows and the movie. Yes I know that my masculinity can be called into question because of all this. And No, I didn't start peeing sitting down while I took these in. As some of you may or may not know I have a fairly addictive personality. Once my mind grabs onto something I grab all I can until I have either finished or super saturated myself. So once I got the SATC bug with Kristen at the start of the summer, coupled with the interwebs available to me to acquire what I needed, it was a foregone conclusion that it would be all over for me. So once the movie came out and I was able to aquire it, I waited until I was done with everything else. As was my habit with SATC, I generally only watched them when I was alone, and could watch like 15 episodes in a row. So one day when Adie was away I fired up the movie to finish this odyssey. Surprisingly, I felt more like simpson than homer throughout.
The movie took some criticism from the critics because it was too long, had cheesy voice overs, and had no strong male characters. Of course this is exactly what made the show popular, and if the movie makers had veered from their formula they probably would have had a riot of horny middle aged housewives on their hands. The movie effectively continued the overall story arcs of all the characters, and wrapped up in a predictable fashion that both tied everything up neatly, but also left the door open in case they make a sequal(read:want to make lots more money). My one complaint in the context of the stories is how they wrapped up Samantha's storyline. They spent the better part of the last season and movie establishing how she had grown and changed, only to erase it all for no real good reason.
Now excuse me while I go pee sitting down. SHIT!!! My secret is out.
(It was also a coincidence that SATC was the 69th movie of the year)

70. Hannibal Rising
Another one of my obsessions is the acquisitions of DVD's. I have over 500 when you factor in box sets. And inevitably I buy DVD's that I have never seen, but that I have a feeling I will enjoy. So when I found Hannibal Rising, the prequel if you will to the Hannibal Lecter story, for a cheap price one day at Blockbuster I snatched it up. So one day when a buddy came over to watch a movie, I let him pick. He picked this one as he was also a Hannibal fan and it was on my DVD's I own that I have never seen list. Well we are both are horror movie buffs and were ready to see what Hannibal was all about. We quickly realized he was all about his creators cashing in on a big check. His back story was very convoluted and pretty dumb. The whole movie was basically his revenge on some people that wronged him and his sister when they were little. But it was boring and dumb and very predictable. This had something to do with the fact that of course we knew Hannibal was never going to die, because he appears in several movies that are set after this. This is one of my main complaints with dramatic situations in series. Such as 24. Everyone knows that Jack Bauer isn't going to die in season 3, when season 6 is already out. Even if you haven't seen a second of it, you know whatever sticky situation Bauer gets himself into, he'll survive. Anyway, back on point. One good part of the movie was the unknown french guy they got to play young Hannibal. He was quite good at emulating what Hopkins had earlier done with the character. He did the best he could with a sub-par script. Skip it if you can. I also quickly sold this DVD after we watched it, which marked a rarity for me where I get rid of DVDs.

71. Cracker: A new terror
As I've reviewed before, this is a BBC series starring Haggred. This one was good and dark as it covered some PTSD of war veterens while also touching on the Iraq war and it's potential consequenses on the soldiers that are fighting. A former soldier snaps one night while flashing back to some war time experiences and starts killing people. Haggred tracks him down and tries to help him, but he's to far gone. This was a very dark and powerful movie, which again confirmed to me that the British can put together much finer psychological dramas than Americans on TV.

72. Wire in the Blood: Time to Murder and Create
Just as I compliment the Brits, I follow it up with a damning post. Another one of my favorite BBC series is wire in the blood. To date I've watched 14 in this series, each one that clocks in at 1:30. But for the life of me I can't remember what this one was about. Even my very basic search of wikipedia and imdb about this episode gave me nothing to jog the memory. This is one of the problems with not updating the blog as I watch things. It's lost in the ether somewhere. I dont' remember hating this one, but I can' tell you anything about it. I'll need to work on that, as one of the main reasons besides sharing with my dear readers my very important ramblings, it is an effective way for me to chronicale what I media I take in in a year and remember what I thought about it for later reflection.

74. Ghost Rider
Another of the DVD's that I thought I would like, but ended up not. Though to be fair this was recomended to me because it was so terrible. And man were they not kidding. Nic Cage has no place doing action movies anymore. I know he did this film because he's a huge comic book nerd, but really he didn't have anything to do with the production and script. But man it's laughably bad. Avoid, even if you like comics and ghost rider. I also promptly sold this one too, so not only can I mark it on the list for the year, I can remove it from my DVD list. Booyakasha!!!