Due to the stupid amount of spam in the comments that I’ve been having to delete 3-4 times a day, anyone that wants to comment on a comic or blog post needs to register. It’s not a difficult process, but a necessary one.
Due to the stupid amount of spam in the comments that I’ve been having to delete 3-4 times a day, anyone that wants to comment on a comic or blog post needs to register. It’s not a difficult process, but a necessary one.
This year I didn’t really care who won the Superbowl, but I was hoping for a good game between two really good teams. And for the most part, I guess it was a good game. The score was close the entire game, but something just seemed a bit off with the Colts. Peyton had that amazing pass in the first quarter, but nothing else really stood out, aside from some missed-tackles, and an inability to phase the Saints.
Not that the Saints looked all that great, either. Yeah, Drew Brees tied the record for most completions in a Superbowl, but I couldn’t help but feel underwhelmed by both team’s performances. Maybe it was all the Bud Light commercials.
Speaking of commercials, the best of the bunch was the Betty White one for sure. Is anyone else sick of the eTrade talking babies? I noticed, that unlike last year, there were no commercials for luxury automobiles. I remember thinking last year, is this idiocy or bad taste, every time they showed a Lexus or BMW commercial during the game. Kia is the only one that stood out this year.
I do not want to see Ridley Scott’s Robin Hood. And can someone please tell me why the Prince of Persia would have an English accent? Shouldn’t it be… I don’t know… Persian. You’d think that after The Passion, and even Inglorious Basterds, people would come to expect and appreciate a little authenticity and credibility in their movies. I realize that Hollywood can’t afford to cast an actual Iranian in the movie as the lead (or any other dark skinned guy, they probably would’ve settled for Benecio Del Toro, but he was already doing The Wolfman), but if you’re going to fake an accent, at least fake the right one.
One last thing about the Superbowl. At the start of the game I was siding with the Colts. Peyton Manning was great on SNL, and he’s done some funny commercials, too. But after the Saints went for it on 4th down at the end the half, but didn’t make it, then the Colts practically handed them the ball back, and the the Saints did get a field goal– And then lead the next half off with an onside kick, which they recovered– well, at that point it really looked like one team had their heart in it and the other didn’t. And that seems like a terrible thing to say. These guys train and play all year just to be in that game. So it makes me wonder if a team can whoop another team so as to make it look like that other team just doesn’t care. I know what it looks like when a team is just terrible, that was the Chiefs pretty much all season. And I’ve seen it with plenty of Rams seasons, too. So I think I can recognize bad, and being dominated pretty easily. But one thing I didn’t see this year with the Chiefs was a lack of heart. Just a lack of talent. I don’t know what to say about the Colts the last 3/4 of this Superbowl.
Saw two movies this weekend with Mrs. Danglewood: The Wolfman and Big Fan. The two movies couldn’t be further apart in setting, tone, or quality.
I’m not going to give a full, blow-by-blow account of The Wolfman. The trailers pretty much tell you everything you need to know, and like Dracula and Frankenstein, the Wolfman is fairly ingrained into pop culture lore. Overall, this remake is pretty boring. The last 3/4 of the movie is essentially a chase scene in the dark, in England. There is a little side scene that involves research and questioning gypsies… which has absolutely no effect on anything in the movie at all. Ok, so there was no plot, but it’s a werewolf movie right? Wrong, it’s a werebuffalo movie. I can forgive the original Lon Chaney flick and how unwolflike he looked because that movie was made in 1941. We’ve come a long ways, folks. There’s no reason why a wolfman shouldn’t look, I don’t know– at least something like a wolf and not a rabid bison. Forget that, though. The real crazy transformation seemed to be Benecio Del Toro’s bizarre paunch-to-gaunt switches. One moment he looks like he really has gorged himself on twenty villagers, then he looks like he’s headed to Scotland for some trainspotting. Is this the first case of werefat?
Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t a terrible movie. It’s just very boring. Which might be worse.
Big Fan, on the other hand, was pretty good. This is the Patton Oswalt movie you probably haven’t heard of. In a nutshell: he’s the ultimate Giants fan, he calls into radio talk shows to talk shit to Philly fans, and he lives with his mom. I can’t say much more without giving away the plot. Unlike The Wolfman, Big Fan has plenty of plot, and it brings up a real interesting choice for its protagonist. To me, this is the Requiem for A Dream for sports fans, or fan of anything, really. I think we’ve seen similar stabs at Trek, gaming, and scifi geeks, but this is really the first time we see it with sports. Patton Oswalt does a fine job, and he gets better and better as the movie goes along. We heard an interview with him on “Fresh Air” and Terry Gross asked him how he approached this character without overplaying how pathetic and what a loser he is, or something to that effect. Oswalt said that the character doesn’t believe he’s a loser or pathetic, that he’s leading exactly the kind of life he wants. And you can see that insight on the screen.
As a caveat: if you’re a big fan of Patton’s comedy, don’t expect it in this movie. Instead, appreciate what this fat little troll can do so well, that so many popular actors seem to find so hard, which is to be genuine.
