Art La Flamme

After the mental effort of watching the three Lord of the Rings movies, I opted to settle down on a Sunday afternoon with something pretty mindless: Vanishing Point.

This 1971 classic is all cal and culture. Our hero is the driver, Kowalski. He is a Vietnam vet, a former cop, a former race car driver, and former motorcycle racer. Everything he’s wanted to be and everything he’s wanted, he’s lost.

He’s left with delivering cars across America. Oh, and a pretty wicked amphetamine problem.

Kowalski had just delivered a car to Denver when he picks up a 1970 Dodge Challenger R/T for delivery back to SF. He should get some rest, but instead he takes off into the night to start the drive back.

And he drives like a bat out of hell. Police chase him, and the DJ talks about his adventure as Kowalksi heads to CA.

There are two reasons to watch this movie.

One is the debate over the ending. What’s it all mean? Does he die? What does the trip west mean, and how does that tie into the ending? The drugs, the hippies, the DJ and his message — it’s a lot of stuff. Sometimes I think this movie is entirely pointless, and the other times I see how profound it is, or can be.

The other reason is the car. Oh, baby. An alpine white 1970 Dodge Challenger R/T hardtop, four speed, with a big ‘ol V8 Hemi. And it’s awesome to watch. Great driving, great adventure.

If you see this, also see 2 Lane Blacktop.

Well, that’s about 10 hours of my life that I won’t get back.

In between papers and school and Quake and everything else, I watched the LOTR trilogy. Doing so is not for the fainthearted.

These movies are epic. That’s to be expected, I suppose — the novel on which they are based is epic, weighing in at just over 1200 pages.

And they are glorious. They are a truly romantic tale, in the classic sense. But at 10 hours of watching, they are an investment to watch.

Should you see these? Yes. Should you see these instead of reading the books? Absolutely, positively, no.

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First off, this post has a theme song. Go here and download it first. You’ll want to listen to it before you go any further. Yes, it’s a legal download. Three cheers for Creative Commons!

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Five things about Over Her Dead Body.

1. Chick Flick. No car chases, no running gun battles, no anti-tank weapons, no unnecessary boobies — actually, no boobies at all, I think. If these things are important to a film, look elsewhere.

2. Eva Longoria Parker, from Desperate Housewives, got top billing for this thing. Which is odd, since she is probably ranked #4 for amount of screen time an actor has in this movie. She might be the big name, but if you’re looking to see a movie that features her acting, well, this ain’t it.

3. Cynics of the world, unite! Paul Rudd plays the leading man in this, which is awesome. He’s a good actor, and it’s good to see him getting work away from the other members of Ron Burgundy‘s posse. He was on Friends for a long time, as Phoebe’s man, and he’s been in a ton of movies, from Anchorman to 40 Year Old Virgin. And he’s pretty good in this one, even if the role doesn’t play up his funniness.

4. Lake who? The psychic in the movie is played by Lake Bell, who you probably won’t recognize but will probably see more of. Apparently, she likes to be photographed not wearing much. She’s in Pride and Glory, which opens in a few weeks (24 OCT) and that looks pretty good.

5. Jason Biggs. You know him, you love him. And you’re probably not ready for him to be gay. Which is OK, because he’s not — not that there’s anything wrong with that. He’s the supporting sub-plot in this thing — our psychic doesn’t make enough money, so with her gay friend she opens a catering company. He just pretends to be gay because he’s been in love with her the whole time, and this way he can at least be close to her. Like, bubblebath close. He does pretty well in this movie, though not well enough that he’s a reason to go see this movie.

This is a movie that you get on Netflix s a surprise for the wife, and you watch it with her on a Friday night over a beer or glass of wine. It’s not horrible, and she’ll probably enjoy the movie, and it’ll even the score for her watching Saving Private Ryan with you, again.

Rmember how I said it would be best to skip Righteous Kill?

Yeah, uh, go ahead and skip Meet the Spartans, too.

This movie has a shelf life of six weeks. it makes a lot of jokes that are entirely based on current events, from Britney Spears going loony, to American Idol antics.

All that is lathered onto a base story that more of less mirrors the movie 300, poking fun at little bits throughout that story. It’s not 300 Spartans, it’s a dozen. They’re not brave warriors, they’re gay. It’s not a deformed Spartan who betrays them, it’s Paris Hilton. If you’ve seen 300 and you’re exactly 22 years old, you might find this funny. If not, well, no, it won’t be funny.

it’s as bad as it sounds. If you had no reason to see it when it was in the theater, don’t see it now. If it’s all that is on HBO late at night and you can’t sleep, read a damn book.

One of the benefits of being here for school is being able to do things like go see a new Pacino / DeNiro movie, on opening day, as a matinee.

The trick, though, is to try and pick a decent film. Righteous Kill is not that film.

People are going to flock to see this movie. Pacino and De Niro are getting old, and they’re not going to have that many chances to be in movies together in the future, much less be in movies.

And with these two titans of the film industry, just having them in a film suggests how great the film could / should / would be.

Don’t believe the hype.

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Calling this an El Mariachi film is a bit of a stretch. Really, it’s a Johnny Depp movie, as Sheldon Sands is the fiber that binds this movie together.

CIA Agent Sands has come to Mexico to kill a few people, and he’s hired, amongst others, El Mariachi to carry out his plans. On the one hand, he wants El to kill General Marquez, who killed El’s family back in the day. But he also want to kill Armando Barillo, who has hired Marquez to kill the Mexico President.

Really, it’s the CIA at its worst.

You can skip this movie, unless you’ve seen the other two in rapid succession. Really, it’ll be OK to skip this one. Depp does a great job, but it’s only tangentially related to the other two El Mariachi films.

Why is that? Well, Antonio Pendejo and Salma Hayek had both become big stars by the time he got around to making this third movie, and they just weren’t as available as he needed them to be. So, instead of making a sequel, really, he made another movie.

Really. As you watch this, see how many scene there are in which Antonio and Salma appear on scene, in frame, together. It’s few. Very few. As with the original El Mariachi film, he makes up for this though fancy editing, but really, for as fancy as this film is, the two should appear in frame together. But they don’t.

In all honesty, I love the Depp character. He’s awesome. I’d love to see more movies with the character. His riding off into the sunset, third arm flapping, is just classic, as is his hunt for the perfect puerco pibil — because, really, aren’t we all looking for the perfect puerco pibil recipe?

The take away from this movie isn’t the story; it’s the Cooking With Robert Rodriguez extra, about making puerco pibil. It’s not a bad film, it’s just not a great film, and it’s not much of an addition to the other two movies in this series.

I gave serious thought to putting off writing up this movie, until I had a chance to see it again.

It’s a Luc Besson film — I generally love his stuff.

It’s got Bruce Willis in it — hard to go wrong with him most of the time. It’s got Gary Oldman, who is always great, and Milla Jovovich who always plays kind of weird characters that usually work.

This, though, is a strange movie. I thought I was the last person on the planet to see this. It’s one of those films that just about everyone can and does make a passing reference to — except me, apparently. So, when I found out that it was LEGALLY online (here), I decided it was time to watch it.

Yikes.

Not really sure what to make of it. It’s a movie about saving mankind, about salvation. Something bad from out space, and a gun crew of aliens is suppose to come, along with the Fifth Element (actually Jovovich), to fire off a weapon to destroy the attackers. We’re to believe that this has been going on for thousands of years.

Jovovich’s Leeloo, in seeing humanity of the 23rd century, isn’t really sure they’re worth saving. For all the hatred, all the war, it’s indeed difficult to see what in mankind has a redeeming value. She finds that in Willis’ character — the ability to love.

Yes, it is that mushy.

Jovovich got high praises for her acting in this one. That, and the outfit that she wore, which seemed to be made out of heavy duty toilet paper. Really, it’s Oldman who carries the acting in this thing, with only a lackluster performance from Willis (at best).

The visuals also got high marks, and I would have to agree with that. It has a very different look, probably again due to Besson and his choice of French, and not Hollywood, behind-the-scene folks to put together the visuals and the costumes.

It’s legally online, so go see this one. Don’t think about buying it — it’s an OK movie, but it’s certainly not great. Different enough to be worth seeing, though. I liked it, but did not love it.

Nice outfit, though.

Doug Benson jokes that he saw Super Size Me when he was really, really stoned. And he didn’t think it’s be that bad to eat McDonalds every meal of every day for a month.

Of course not. He was really, really stoned.

What he also thought would be cool would be to do the same thing, just with marijuana instead.

So, he added that to his stand up act, and made a lot of jokes about it. Until a couple of guys approached him about actually making the movie.

And they were off and running. Super High Me.

I can count on my two hands the number of people whom I would tell to go see this movie. It’s a mix of three things — jokes about being stupid; a scientific look at what drugs do to the body; and a look at the role drugs, specifically marijuana, has had in our society.

Medically, Doug Benson gained 3% lung capacity in the first half of the movie — the first 30 days when he gave up dope. He lost two pounds — probably from less late night, drop-induced munchie fests on Doritos and the like.

But during the second 30 days, when he was smoking weed 20 hours a day (and the good stuff, from the medical community) his SAT scored went up and even his sperm count went up. And there was no difference in his physical, other than the small (but medically acceptable) dip in lung capacity. The movie makes a decent argument that smoking marijuana really has little impact, health wise, on its users.

The legal stuff was interesting, though probably more just for me than for most folks. Federal law outlaws marijuana, but states have legalized it. Which means that the feds can make arrests even when the States will not. We had a civil war one time over the difference of views on state vs. federal powers; it’s not a simple topic.

When it was over, I wondered more about why alcohol is legal when marijuana isn’t. They make a pretty good case in the film for legalizing it — not just for medical reasons, but for social reasons. Legalize it, tax the hell out of it, and get on with life. I’m not sure I’d ready for that — alcohol can be pretty evil for some people — but the do a decent job of looking at the issues.

And it helps having a comedian in the center of it all. He’s pretty funny, which makes up for a bunch.

After El Mariachi, Robert Rodriguez signed a deal to make Desperado. He even signed on Antonio Banderas to play the hero, giving some heavier weight to the role. All in all, it’s a pretty decent film.

El Mariachi, aka El, has returned to Acu?a, to avenge the death of Domin? by killing Bucho. But he’s no killer, so he enlists the help of his gringo friend, played by Steve Buscemi, to come into town ahead of him and scope things out.

Buscemi makes a great scout. He heads into the local watering hole, where Cheech Marin is the bartender. It’s full of all kinds of characters. He starts into his story about having run into the now legendary Mariachi, and really plays up how lethal he is and how he’s looking for Bucho. It’s actually a surprise when he makes it out of there alive.

It’s not a surprise when El comes into same bar and more or less levels it. Robert Rodriguez and Antonio Banderas, who I lovingly refer to as Antonio Pendejo out of habit, really put together a well told, well shot sequence with the gun fight in the bar. You almost think that the bartender is going to make it out alive, yet something deep down tells you that, yeah, he’s going to catch a bullet or ten and die. It’s neat to see what Rodriguez can do with access to a little money.

And I think this was the first semi-big movie in which Banderas played the lead. He’d done a ton of stuff before hand, but only a few main-stream-America films. It definitely was the first big thing for Salma Hayek.

She plays Carolina, a local gal who own a bookstore. El ends up with her when he leaves the big bar shootout and it in need of a little Bondo and some bandages. Really, she becomes the new Domin? as El heads off in search of Bucho.

In addition to Pendejo and Buscemi and Cheech Marin and Salma Hakey, Danny Trejo is in this film. You’d know him if you saw him – big Mexican guy with a tattoo on chest his of a woman wearing a sombrero. He is perfectly cast in this movie as a bag guy. The other surprise is seeing Joaquim de Almeida in this film — he went on to do great things in Clear and Present Danger and Behind Enemy Lines.

It’d be easy to look at this movie, see the similarities with the first El Mariachi movie, and declare that Rodriguez just remade the movie but with a bigger budget. But that wouldn’t be fair. It’s a different tale, and a real outgrowth of the first one. Yes, you could see Desperado without seeing El Mariachi, but you shouldn’t.

Robert Rodriuez really comes into his element with this film. He went on to make other movies, even other movie with Pendejo (Spy Kids and a few spin offs), and he formed a working relationship with Quentin Tarantino (who makes a cameo in this film). I liked Sin City, and its dark look (another comic book made into a movie) and am looking forward to what he does with Sin City 2.

This is a Netflix movie. You’re not going to buy it, most likely, unless you see all three and are just crazy in love with all three. It’s the best of the three, I think, but it’s good, not great as a film.

This is the cheapest movie I have ever seen.

And that’s not a bad thing.

Robert Rodriguez managed to scrape together $9000, mainly from taking part in clinical studies for experimental drugs. He went with his friend Carlos Gallardo to Gallardo’s hometown of Acu?a, Mexico, specifically to make the first of three Spanish-language straight-to-VHS-in-Mexico films.

Talk about aiming high. El Mariachi, the first, was good enough that Columbia Pictures bought the rights, refinished the film (for distribution as a movie, not a VHS tape), and released it in the States.

In the movie, our guitar player hero has traveled to Acu?a in search of work. He wants to be a mariachi, like his forefathers. Instead, he’s mistaken for Azul, who’s just out of jail and exacting revenge on his old partner, Moco. With love for and support from the lady who owns the local bar, he tries to work out the misperception that he’s a killer on the loose, only in the end to see her gunned down, himself shot in the hand, and his future as a mariachi ended.

It sounds simple enough. But it’s a really good story, and it’s laid out very well. Yes, it’s incredibly cheap, and yes, there are a million little things you’ll spot in this movie. But it’s a very good movie.

And it’s a thought provoking one. If Rodriguez and (small) crew could make this for less than $8k, why the hell do the big budget movies like Bangkok Dangerous (at a cost of $45 million!) suck so much?

I’ll take El Mariachi over Bangkok Dangerous any day.

Oh, and if you do get a chance to see this move, plan on seeing it twice. Watch it once, and then watch it again with the bonus commentary from Robert Rodriguez. He explains in great detail how he made the movie, what worked and what didn’t, how he saved money and how to make a movie for $7k. I usually don’t go for these kinds of commentaries, but this one is good and it’s a perfect match for this little film.

This morning, I came across a link to these four YouTube videos (1, 2, 3, 4) about the 1997 North Hollywood bank robbery. Cheesy, but a pretty good documentary.

In the North Hollywood shootout, two guys (Larry Eugene Phillips, Jr. and Emil Matasareanu) went into a bank and robbed it. They were dressed in black fatigues, loaded to the gills and with full automatic weapons and armor-piercing rounds, and were wrapped in homemade body armor. On dumb luck, a passing police cruiser saw them exit their car and walk into the bank; the two robbers had planned for an 8 minute response, and got zero.

What followed was a massive shoot out. The police were armed with shotguns and pistols, and the robbers were laying down bursts of armor-piercing rounds from their modified and now-fully-automatic weapons, pumping rounds out of high capacity drums instead of 30 round magazines. Police behind cars and behind walls were being hit by bullets that were going through the cars or walls.

So, does like imitate art, or does art imitate life?

Heat has damn near the same shootout, just without the homemade body armor. Three guys (De Niro, Kilmer, and Sizemore) walk out of a bank and right into the police (Pacino and others). Their plans to drive away end with the death of the driver, and the three shoot their way out, with De Niro and Kilmer ultimately getting away and Sizemore’s character being killed.

It is a brutal running gun battle. Tons of rounds are used, and the three bank robbers unleash violence liberally in an effort to achieve their goal — to get away with the money. They work together, integrating their efforts, and other than the one being killed, use their aggressive application of violent to overwhelm the police and escape.

In other words, they do it pretty well. You can watch the bulk of it, here.

That is, though, just 15 minutes of the movie. There’ a lot more to it.

Heat marks the first movie starring De Niro and Pacino together. De Niro plays the calm and cool robber, slow to act and methodical in his planning and execution. Pacino plays the detective devoted to the job more than anything else. Pacino figures out that De Niro’s character exists and more or less what he does, and begins work on out how to take him down. The movie is cat and mouse, cop and robber doing this little dance about each other.

The highlight of the movie is the run and gun battle coming out of the bank — without a doubt, this is what draws people to see this movie. But the movie has a lot more to offer — like Natalie Portman as the step-daughter, Ashley Judd as Kilmer’s wife, and Amy Brenneman as the budding love interest of De Niro. And Henry freakin’ Rollins.

Remember how I said that Bangkok Dangerous had that unnecessary love angle, one that was suppose to contribute to the change in the main character’s view of his career and his view on death and violence and killing? Heat is an example of how to do it right, with the De Niro / Brenneman angle doing just that.

Pacino and De Niro together works. The cat and mouse game / cops and robbers works well. De Niro and Kilmer together works. De Niro and Brenneman together works. Pacino and his wife? Not so much. Pacino and Portman, his step-daughter? Not so much. Pacino as a cop? Oh, yes — that works well.

The movie, though, is a bit long. The ending isn’t as well put together as the rest of the movie. Which is a bummer, because the first three quarters of the film is a nice cohesive story packaged well.

This is a DVD to buy. If you see this movie and like it, as I do, you’re going to watch it twice a year, I suspect. You might fall asleep during the last half hour, but still, you’ll like it.

On 02 July, I set out to watch 100 movies in 100 days. A movie a day. And to blog about them.

Today is day 66. Here they are, all tagged Movies.

I’m glad I’m doing this. I could easily get consumed here, either doing school work or doing anything or everything other than school work. This is actually helping to keep a good balance — I have to fit the requirements in, around also seeing a movie. Actual planning involved. Egads, looks what’s happened – I’ve almost become responsible.

I’m happiest with having watched the six Star Wars film, and being able to see them in a different light. I have sympathy for anyone who every makes a Star Wars comment in front of me, because they’re going to get an earful about the insurgency, and failures of the Jedi, and the goodness of Anakin at a time when George Lucas wanted us to believe he was evil.

I’m also pleased to have been able to see so many movies in an actual theater, and to see some on opening day. Pretty cool. Matinee movies rule. Of them, Tropic Thunder might have been the most entertaining (with Step Brothers in close second) and Batman Begins the most visually impressive (of course, IMAX did that). The sleeper hit for me would probably be Michael Clayton. And the 4th Indiana Jones movie was probably the most disappointing one I’ve seen this summer.

UPDATE: Apparently, the film isn’t being well received in Bangkok, either.

Uh, wow.

I’m at something of a loss for words for how to describe Bangkok Dangerous, which opens today around the country.

It’s probably the worst movie of the summer.

It’s probably the worse movie I will see this summer.

It’s the worst movie I’ve seen since Soldier.

It took some time, but I came up with 5 movies that I have actually seen that are actually worse than this one:

5. The Hottie and the Nottie (with Paris Hilton in a bikini!)
4. Zodiac Killer (Oh, yeah baby!)
3. Barbed Wire (with Pamela Anderson!)
2. Battlefield Earth (L. Ron Hubbard and John Travolta!)
1. Soldier (yeah — Kurt Russell!)

Did you notice that Gigli isn’t on there? Or Glitter? Or Howard the Duck? Or Ishtar? Yeah — even I haven’t seen those turds. But I got suckered into seeing this, and to add insult to injury, seeing it on opening day.

This movie makes Jackass appear to have redeeming value.

Let me see if I can name just 5 reason why this movie is going to be the bomb of the summer:

1. The haircut. Worst. Haircut. Ever. What the hell was Nicholas Cage thinking? It’s like the K-Mart version of the guy from No Country For Old Men, poorly executed at that. Horrible, horrible haircut.

2. Action? What action? The big chase is between a propeller driven boat and — I kid you not — a scooter. I half expected them to get passed by an old guy with a walker. Or the elephant.

3. He’s dark. He’s moody. He’s going through an emotional renaissance. Yeah, he’s just not talking. And they tried to add to it by using dark lighting, lots of shots at night, deep red colors for things — and really, it just comes across as a low-budget film made on the cheap, and left me wondering if I was actually watching a bootleg copy filmed by someone in the audience the day before.

4. Remember how I said, in my review of High Fidelity, that the whole internal-monologue thing is usually fatal? Yep — he does it here, and sucks at it, too. He does it poorly. He either does it too much or too little, or at the wrong points. It’s just all wrong.

5. The entire bit with the deaf-mute girl was unnecessary. It did nothing to advance the story, and in fact worked against the whole self-discovery stuff going on in his relationship with Kong. Things would have been better had the four targets gone from being pure evil to killing a kitten or something, and using that as the means for him to realize that killing is no longer the business he wants to be in. But this crap with the deaf-mute girl — it comes across as bad filler, and only serves to accent his bad haircut.

6. OK, I can’t name just five. Six is that the music will lull you to sleep, which, I think, is bad for an action film.

The original plan was to have the killer be a deaf-mute. Honestly, that could not have made the movie worse.

Want to see a good assassin film? Watch Leon, or La Femme Nikita, or go see Wanted in the theater.

Just not this. Don’t ever see this. Nicholas Cage, shame on you.

Bear with me, folks. I spent a good chunk of yesterday and a good chunk of today not writing papers and doing research, like I should be, but doing some heavy lifting tech support for my wife.

Why?

Well, yesterday someone hacked her server. OK, fine. Got that fixed. Server came back, but not her blog. OK, fixed that. All was good. Sometime this AM, her blog took a dive. I could not bring it back. I did manage to re-install WordPress and bring it back online (and up to date and patched, etc.) but at the expense of the pretty, custom theme she had (not compatible with the upgraded WordPress).

So, to help the situation, I decompressed with the great photo from Killboy, and a little stupidity. I watched Jackass.

This movie is insanely stupid. It’s off the scale stupid. It gives regular stupid a bad name, because there’s not a word for just how stupid this film is.

But, oh yeah, I laughed. Who goes into their parents bedroom after midnight and sets off a ton of fireworks (in their room), just to wake them up? When do you ever see a midget try to break a board with his head, kung-fu style? When do you see a guy get his nipple bitten by a baby crocodile? Who goes into a plumbing store, sits down on a toilet, and craps?

This movie is that bad. But damn, it hit the spot tonight.

And no, there’s no way I’m watching Jackass II tomorrow. Well, not unless I have a crappy day tomorrow, too. Then, maybe.

My Top 5 Top 5

1. Top 5 Recording Artists

– The Clash
– Johnny Cash
– Stiff Little Fingers
– Led Zeppelin
– The JAMs / KLF

2. Top 5 Records for a Monday

– Social Distortion – Social Distortion
– AC/DC – Back in Black
– Go Home Productions – This Was Pop
– Johnny Cash – At Folsom Prison
– Dean Gray – American Edit

3. Top 5 Books

– Getting Things Done
– Good to Great
– Blink
– The Wisdom of Crowds
– Moneyball

4. Top 5 Things I Miss About My Wife

– The smile she gets when she sits down to a fajita dinner I made
– Her habit of kicking me when she sleeps
– Her shedding
– Her leather pants
– That smirk she has right about now, reading this

5. Top 5 Things I Liked About This Movie

– John Cusack talking to the camera. Normally, this is a fatal error, but he pulls it off.
– The soundtrack. I had forgotten about Stiff Little Fingers (buy this) until I saw this movie (again) a few years ago. The Beta Band? Yeah, they are that good. Go buy this one single from iTunes.
– Jack Black. He’s on fire in this film, a complete spaz. Great character, one that I suspect is not too far off from the real Jack Black.
– Charlie. No, I don’t have any girlfriends from my past who turned out like her.
– Bruce Freakin’ Springsteen, making a cameo as himself to sing a song. Awesome.

Watch this movie once. If you like it, go buy it, because it’s the type of movie that you’ll want to see again in 8 or 10 months.

Tess and I were up early this morning, and on the road to Atlanta and Macon. It’s a sad day for me — I am again Tessless. It’s going to be a long 33 days until we are reunited.

Needless to say, my request to pack the back with water and MRE’s and stow away for the trip was not approved.

To get home, I hopped a cab o the Greyhound station and took the bus back to Ft. Gordon. It’s been a couple of years since I took Greyhound — 2004, I think. The only thing that has changed is that now I make sure no crazies sit next to me or try to cut off my head. I think it’s a pretty good rule of thumb. To pass the time, I played with my iPhone.

I watched an absolutely brilliant episode of Top Gear. It was truly perfect, having just spent my romantic weekend away with Tess, driving through mountain roads at breakneck speeds. How good was the episode? It featured the race between the Bugatti Veyron and the RAF Euro Fighter (go on — watch it here). It also had their review of the Audi R8, which was described simply as being perfect. Not a bad review, I should think. And no, my love for Tess did not wane.

I also watched Napoleon Dynamite. I’d seen it before, but I had it loaded and it was worth the time to watch. It’s a cute and humorous look at those awkward teenage years, without making you squirm in your chair from the pain they’re all going through.

Our hero is Napoleon. He’s a pretty sad case. Back in my day, I’m not even sure what label we’d slap on him. He’s a pretty simple guy, I suppose, with not many friends. The movie tracks him growing a bit, making some friends, and getting on with his life.

And it’s funny. Not ha ha funny, not hold you side funny, but novel and funny. He has to eat quesadillas, but the llama gets ham and casseroles. His 32 year old, still-lives-at-home-with-Grandma unemployed brother uses a dial up internet connection to find love on the net. His uncle goes online to buy a time machine, to travel back to his glory days, only to sadly find out it doesn’t do anything other than run electricity through his nuts.

It’s a low tech, low budget film by a first time movie maker, shot on location in Idaho, and it’s a good little film. Don’t rush out to buy it, don’t jump it to the top of the list on NetFlix, but to plan on seeing it.

Tess and I went out to the movies tonight. Needed to sneak one more in, before we head out tomorrow to see about putting her on a boat to Hawaii.

We went and saw Traitor, because Sarah said to.

Sarah — good call.

Traitor is a modern day thriller. It stars Don Cheadle as Shamir, an America on the run with the bad guys and being chased by the FBI (Guy Pearce plays the lead FBI chaser). Shamir is Muslin, born in Yemen and at least for a while raised by his Muslim-cleric father, until his father is killed. He joined the military, went Special Forces, but after a stint in Afghanistan, got out and stayed on in Pakistan, having found his faith.

Cheadle is great in this movie. A bigger named star likely would have overpowered the “I could be anybody” aspect required of this role. He really does come across as just another guy, trying to do what he thinks is right in a world where everything is complicated. Guy Pearce also carries off the I could be anybody” role as well, as a well educated FBI agent who is also the son of a cleric, this time a Baptist preacher.

And I think I was the only guy in the theater who laughed at Jeff Daniels at the wrong time. Daniels does a good job as a truly anonymous intel guy going “all in” in the war on terrorism. He really does come of sounding the same as the terrorists in this film, with the at-any-cost approach to winning.

This movie reminded me of Sleeper Cell, a Showtime short series (two short seasons, actually) that I just finished watching . Great, great series — see if your library has it or can get it for you.

Both Sleeper Cell and Traitor are worth watching, now more than ever with the elections coming up.

I’m taking a pass on writing tonight. I am insanely tired. I am back from The Dragon, and am just warn out. I’ll blog it tomorrow.

When I got back today, though, I had to stop off at the PX for a few things. Sure enough, it’s DVD sale weekend, and I scored Ghostbusters 1 and 2 and Ruthless People and Down & Out in Beverly Hills, for the low, low price of $20.

I love Ghostbusters. Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis, Rick Moranis, Sigourney Weaver, Annie Potts, and Ernie Hudson — the cast is just awesome. The special effects are dated now, in comparison, but the story and the humor are first rate.

Below is one of the photos from this weekend.

It only took 34 years to get around to making another Italian Job movie. What brought that about? The return of the Mini, of course.

This isn’t a sequel, and it’s not a remake, per se. Mark Wahlberg plays Charlie, Donald Sutherland plays his mentor, and the ever beautiful Charlize Theron plays Steller, his daughter and Charlie’s love interest. They go to Italy with a crew to pull off one more job, the one that will let them all get out of the business. And they pull it off — only to have Ed Norton, as Steve, double cross them and take the loot.

Bastard. He even kills of Donald Sutherland’s character, he’s that much of a cold hearted prick.

From there, it’s an issue of trying to steal back the loot. Charlie rounds of a crew of good seconds, and they pull it off. And, true to form, the second half of the movie is the getaway, and the second half of the movie features the Minis.

Wahlberg is OK in this movie. Charlize Theron is smokin’ hot, as always. The one to watch in this movie, though, is Seth Green — he’s awesome as the computer nerd of the bunch.

You don’t need to see the original to enjoy this one. This a good one to put on the Netflix list, for sure. Can’t go wrong with this one.