Category: Reviews

Reviews of Music, Movies and More…

The Duality of `Doo`

Reviews

Let me begin by saying that neither ‘Scooby Doo: The Movie’ nor ‘Scooby Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed’ are real winners. Neither is going to win any awards, and neither is really going to stand the test of time and become a classic in twenty or so years.

However…

These two movies wind up being perfect partners. The first Doo is an attempt to take the cartoon characters and put them in the ‘real world’. They give them real problems and make them deal with them, while telling a story thats mildly interesting and moderately funny. The second Doo is a live action cartoon, complete with ‘running in place over an empty pit’ and the goofy ‘sneaky big step walking quietly’ they always do. Its story is pretty much exactly out of the old cartoon, and the humor is actually better simultaneously comically paying homage and sending up the original.

** SPOILERS AHEAD **

If you just missed it, I’m about to tell some specifics of each movie, so stop reading if you don’t want things to be ruined.

I mean it. This is your last warning for the spoilers. If you keep reading and get mad because of spoilers, you are an idiot.

Now, on to the spoilers…

In the first Doo the biggest laughs really came in the Scrappy Doo scenes. Admit it, you hated him too. EVERYONE hated Scrappy. He totally ruined the Shaggy/Scooby & Fred/Velma/Daphne formula of the show that made it as enjoyable as it was. So when they show a flashback of Scrappy Doo being an ass, peeing on everything and then getting left in the middle of the desert I was literally cheering. YEAH!! Then at the end, when the villain turns out to BE Scrappy in a robot-human suit, I was rolling on the floor laughing and having trouble breathing. Sure, the movie had some other funny scenes, but the flashback and the end were head and hands above the rest of the film and made it worth watching.

The second Doo movie was overall more enjoyable. I was snickering and laughing through the whole thing because it was just like the old cartoon only with bad actors too. There is one scene, Shaggy and Scooby are running from the Black Knight Ghost and are piling items up on a door to block it, and I’m already laughing, I see it coming. The Ghost comes in through a secret door and starts handing items to them, Shaggy says ‘Thanks’ then put the item on the barricade, pauses, looks back the ghost, says ‘Zoinks!’ and he and Scooby freak out! Classic Doo. Then in a send up of it, Fred comes in with a shield, says ‘Bring it!’ and the Knight bangs the shield about a dozen times rattling Fred’s noggin, he stands dazed for a second, says ‘He brought it’ and passes out on the floor. There is even a bar where all the ‘unmasked’ villains go to hang out and share their hatred of all things Mystery, Inc. called ‘the Faux Ghost’. They ring a doorbell and get a voice warning saying to ‘Go Away, or Else!’, Shaggy says they shouldn’t ring it, Fred asks ‘What could possibly happen?’, and when he rings it again a trap door opens and they all fall, one at a time, and Scooby runs in place for a couple of seconds before doing so. And the ghosts… the Black Knight Ghost, the Thousand Watt Ghost, the Tar Ghost, the one-eyed skeleton ghosts, Miner Forty-Niner… hehe, pure Scooby Doo.

** SPOILERS DONE **

Yeah, whatever, you read the spoilers anyway…

The only other thing I have to say, besides the fact that these movies are worth watching at least once, is that Matthew Lillard is a horrible horrible actor… however, he is perfectly cast as Shaggy. Perhaps if they keep making enjoyable Scooby Doo movies, we can keep him from making anything else.

Books!

Reviews

Normally my Reviews articles are for movies or TV, but I decided today to hit a different frontier… Books.

I read alot of books, not as many as I would like, but alot none the less. And as you may notice from this site (and my subdomains), I also like to write. When I started playing City of Heroes, I got a jonesing for some spandex fiction. Sadly though, there only appears to be two kinds you can pick up at the local books store: Wild Cards by George R. R. Martin and books based on existing comic book characters.

Now, don’t get me wrong… the Martin edited shared world of Wild Cards is probably one of my favorite series of books, but I had read them before… twice… and was looking for something new. I wanted to avoid the books based on existing comic characters because a few of the ones I thumbed through relied too much on prior character knowledge, basically you needed to be a fan of the comic in order to enjoy the book. I asked around for books in a superhero setting that were neither Wild Cards nor existing comics… but all the recommendations I got we more Sci-Fi or Fantasy… lacking that element of the superhero, the comic book, that makes it unique. So finally, after coming to the conclusion that either none had been written or that none had been published, I caved in and bought some books from existing comic book heroes.

And I was pleasantly surprised with what I found.

There is a series of books, four of them so far, for the Justice League of America. One book is about the JLA as a whole fighting the good fight, and the other three (of which I’ve only read one so far) take a single member off on his own, with the occasional backup of the JLA. The first book I read was the JLA book, The Exterminators. And when I got into it, I was very happy to see the author not rely on prior knowledge. He explained as he went the relative parts of each character’s background as it was touched on. His book read like a comic without pictures… well, in my head there were plenty of pictures. The book was very well done, all-in-all a two thumbs up review. The second I read was for the Flash, called Stop Motion. Like the other, this author too didn’t trust you to just know the character, but he also didn’t bog you down with 50 years of history in the lives of speedsters of the DC Universe. He told what he needed, that’s it. The story was tight, and exciting… but it did leave me wanting in the end. The finale was just a bit sub par… it was a mystery, and as sometimes happens, the resolution of the mystery, figuring out who done it and why, was much more satisfying than the final conflict between hero and villain. It was like pushing a boulder up hill, excited the whole way up to the top, not knowing what was on the other side, getting to the top, seeing the other side, heart pounding, pushing the rock over the edge… only to see it roll about ten feet and stop because the hill on that side levelled off. It was like a rollercoaster that took you up a huge climb only to have a pitiful drop off the other side. I enjoyed the book, but just was a little less than fulfilled with the resolution once the mystery was unfolded.

There are two more books in the series so far, Batman and Wonder Woman, with a fifth, the Green Lantern, coming soon. I look forward to them.

When I picked up the JLA books, I also decided to grab the two Hellboy books by Christopher Golden, the Lost Army and the Bones of Giants. The Lost Army was a good solid read, and felt like Mike Mignola (creator of Hellboy) had done much of the writing himself. The sense of humor, the oddity of the situations, Christopher captured the essense of the Hellboy comics perfectly in his prose. And like the JLA books, he didn’t rely on the reader knowing Hellboy, not that Hellboy readers really know everything anyway. He would just hint at the past, and give you tastes of the world Hellboy belonged in that existed outside the scope of the story. Right now I’m about halfway through The Bones of Giants… and wow. It’s better than the first book. Christopher’s writing style and familiarity with the mythos now shines with a much deeper and provacative tale. I can’t wait to see how it end.

Anyway, that’s it for now… I’m glad I was wrong about at least some of these comic book novels. I hope more are on the way.

Paycheck

Reviews

I had wanted to see Paycheck in the theater, but somehow I kept missing it. It showed up from Netflix this week, so I finally got to see it.

The basic plot is this.. Ben Affleck plays a guy who excels at reverse engineering. He gets paid alot of money to reverse engineer a product and then design a product that is similar but better. And when he’s done the job, he has his memory of the time erased so that there is no proof that the reverse engineering (or technology theft) has occurred. Normally these jobs are up to 2 months in length, during which time he’s usually secluded so the only memory he loses is the time working. However, he takes an eight figure job that is going to be three years in length.

After the three years is erased, Ben’s character is broke, arrested, and his personal items have been switched. He manages to escape and realizes that he switched his own personal items, and this envelope of 20 things is going to lead him to what happened during the last three years, and exactly why someone is trying to kill him.

I had heard alot of bad things about this movie.. but honestly, it was good. I had fun watching it, considering the plot twists they avoided the clear cliches and plot holes it could have brought up, and the fight and chase scenes were excellent. Oh, I forgot to mention, John Woo directed it.

I give it a hearty two thumbs up. Its not a movie that will save the world, but its not a waste of time either.

The Village

Reviews

M. Night Shyamalan makes slow movies. This should be a self evident fact if you have seen The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable and Signs. He likes telling stories, even the "boring" parts.

The Village is about a bunch of people who live in a village, where they are all vegitarians and keep sheep for making wool clothing. Oh, and they have a perimeter of torches to keep the monsters in the woods out. The monsters are attracted to red, so the color isn’t used anywhere.

That, to me, ends up being one of the beautiful points of the film. The absense of red from almost every scene really causes your eyes to draw to it when it does show up.

Anyway, the main thrust of the story is that a very young child has died of illness. One the young men of the village, Lucius, who was very close to the boy decides that if he were allowed to travel through the woods to the other towns and get new medicines that must be available, tragedies like this could be avoided. But, these people left the towns because of bad elements there, and of course there are monsters in the woods who have killed the fathers, mothers, brothers or sisters of the village elders before the truce was made. And then, they find a skinned animal, a sign of intrusion by the monsters. Then another… and one night they enter the town and mark the doors of all the houses. Things are unravelling in their peace…

M. Night has succeeded again in setting a mood, creating characters and laying out the foundation for his story. His story, however, is admittedly light. Many people, having been tricked before, will be looking for the twist, and when they are looking so hard, its almost impossible to hide it. These people won’t be surprised and will likely be angry. The story is interesting, but admittedly, even though I liked the film, it could have been told quicker. But as I said before, he makes slow films, so he takes over an hour and forty-five minutes to tell it. And with his trademark lack of explosions, car chases, extravagent fight scenes, etc, its a quiet, almost silent, story telling.

The Village is a good movie, though I feel many people won’t agree,

A Number of Reviews

Reviews

Lets start with the beginning… Spider-man 2.

Oh my.

And I mean that, really. Its very rare… in fact, I’m not 100% I’ve ever encountered it… this sequel was better than the original. And when you consider how good the original was… damn. It was just simply awesome. I was amazed at the first film with how well they took Spidey from the comics to the screen, and with this film I’m just floored with how well they continued it. When Batman came out, one of the actors (I forget which) from the TV series said, "I would have gone to see Batman 2, and 3, and 4, and so on… but Batman Returns?" That’s how I felt about the Batman series, and when X2 came out, I had the same reservation. But X2 was as good as X-Men, so when hearing about Spidey 2, I thought "X-Men pulled it off… but…" I should never doubt Sam Raimi though. All my reservations vanished as the movie unfolded… I was literally on the edge of my seat at some points.

Rock on Sam Raimi… I’m in, Spider-man 3, and 4, and 5… I’m in.

Now, some quick NetFlix reviews…

Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines. Not bad. It wasn’t like super totally mega awesome, and Jodi didn’t like the ending, but I’m satisfied. It ended how it had to end. Quality.

The School of Rock. Jack Black is god… a god of what, I’m not sure, but he’s got to be one. And the movie was good, but after seeing it, I don’t want to see it again. It wasn’t side-splittingly funny enough for me to want to own it. A thumbs up, but only one time.

Seabiscuit. I had no desire to see this movie in the theater. Horse racing? Bah! But there was buzz about it, Oscar nominations and stuff, so I was intrigued. Well, I finally saw it, and it was good. A very solid movie… a testament to the will of the person who will never give up, never quit. Two thumbs up.

Pieces of April. A good, oddly funny film about a disfunctional family at Thanksgiving. I enjoyed it. Oliver Platt is the man.

The Core. HA HA HA HA HA HA! Oh wait, its supposed to be an action thriller? … HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!!! Man, oh man.. I couldn’t stop laughing at this movie. It was ridiculous, but fun.

Honey. For a movie about a dancer who gets into the music biz while trying not to leave her roots behind and open a dance program "for the kids", it wasn’t too bad. It helps that Jessica Alba is hot.

The Missing. This was good. I remember the previews. It came out at a time when there were a few horror movies out, and the preview, in its attempt not to give anything away, made it sound like a monster or ghost movie. But its not. I liked it. Ron Howard doesn’t disappoint.

And that’s all I can remember for now…

Taking the “Bad” with the good.

Reviews

Recently, we (Jodi and I) came to the realization that we were paying our cable company a bunch of money to give us access to movie channels we never watched. I mean, we are avid DVD fanatics, and we buy any movie we love (read: watch more than 3 or 4 times), so these channels go unwatched. Mostly they go unwatched because they show the same crappy movies over and over again, and any original programming they have is either on at a time we are unable to watch it or we just assume at this point that its going to come out on DVD.

To that end, I called up the cable company and had them cancel all the premium movie channels. Saving me somewhere in the area of $30-$40 a month. I took some of that savings, and realizing that we still wanted to see movies, reinvested it into reactivating our subscription to NetFlix (there is a link over on the right side somewhere).

NetFlix rocks. For $20 a month, they mail us movies of our choosing, we watch them, mail them back, and they mail us more. We can have 3 out at a time, and with a distribution center really close to us, its a 2-3 day trip from when I drop a movie in the mail back to them to when we get the next movie.

That’s the good of the title of this article… Now on to the "Bad".

Its in quotes for a reason. We got "Bad Boys II" in the mail the other day. For the first time in a long time, you are going to see me say.. I was unimpressed.

Sure, it had some funny lines. Sure, it had chase scenes and cool explosions. But, to be honest, unlike the original Bad Boys, I didn’t care about any of the characters. They could have all died in this film and I would have shrugged it off. And when they go to Cuba… well, lets just say that believability isn’t just tossed out the window, its loaded onto a rocket and launched into space. Exactly.

Anyway, in the end, I felt like I wasted 2 hours of my time, and 5-6 days of my NetFlix life. Stuff blows up good, but the overall movie is bad.

Better Than Ezra… Live!

Reviews

For many things in my life, if people ask me my favorite, I can’t answer.

Favorite food? Can’t decide. Favorite movie? Its almost Joe versus the Volcano, but I waiver. Favorite color? Ehh…

But if you ask me my favorite band, the answer is most assuredly Better Than Ezra. Oh, I like all kinds of music, and if you narrow it to something like favorite country music, you’ll get another answer, but hands down, the top of them all is a little band from New Orleans. And its simply because, after over 10 years, 4 studio albums and one collection of B sides, they still haven’t put out a song I don’t like. Not one song rubs me wrong, or gets skipped in the CD player. Not one song causes me to feign interest while waiting for the good ones, because they are all good.

And to make it even better, BTE are excellent live. The guys really know how to work an audience. They play hits, they play requests, they play new stuff, they play cover songs, they make stuff up, they bring an audience member up and let him play… They don’t bother to speak political between songs, though they’ll often offer up a joke, noodle some familiar riffs, or remind people about an upcoming album or DVD.

They rock.

I’ve seen them in concert as part of festivals about 6 or 8 times, I lose track. But this weekend I finally went to see them in one of their own shows, down at the Roxy Theater.

They had two bands open for them, jad (I’m too lazy to look up how to make the symbol, but that’s pronounced like ‘jade’ with the long ‘a’) and Chuck Carrier. jad was pretty good, if a little overly loud. Chuck and his band however, were good enough that I picked up the CD on the way out. Its not often I do that, but he played well, and the songs were solid.

BTE took the stage around 11pm and they played a pretty solid 2 hours or so. As I said above, it was a mix of hits, requests, new songs, covers, and basically anything they wanted to play.

They rocked.

For my money, there just isn’t a better band. A close second would have to be Seven Mary Three.. but they don’t come to town for a couple weeks.

Kill Bill Vol. 2 & The Punisher

Reviews

It was a weekend of revenge at the movies.

First up, Kill Bill Vol. 2. Volume 1 was a spectacle of kung-fu and splatter style gore. Arms and heads removed with ten foot arcs of blood. The body count was high. The story was interesting, uncomplicated, and above all else, action packed.

In Volume 2, the death count drops, in fact, unless I’m mistaken, only 4 people die in it. This volume spends more time focusing on the back story of Black Mamba (Uma Thurman), and how she became the woman she was. As I overheard someone say, "Quentin saved all the talking for this one." And they were right… the story here is thicker, sometimes slow, but still cool enough to keep me watching the screen and not my watch.

The two movies really are an excellent pair, and one day when they make the special collector’s edition DVD with an hour or so of extra footage, it will find its way into my collection for sure.

In another tale of revenge, The Punisher brings to the screen the Marvel Comics character of the same name. And while they changed many of the details of his original (Vietnam Vet just doesn’t fly as easily anymore if you want to set the story in current day), the changes made didn’t detract from the character. Frank Castle is a man whose family is killed by criminals, and he decides that with the life he still has he will stop as many of them as he can.

Its not revenge, its punishment.

While I did find some of the earlier scenes of the movie, mainly those setting up for the death of Frank’s family, to be "laying it on a bit thick," once the action started, it was mezmerizing. The fight scenes, both hand to hand and gun battles, were well done, with the right touch of violence without being overly vicious (some on screen stab wounds were paticularly unsettling, but most finishing shots on wounded victims were done off screen).

As long as Marvel keeps putting out quality films like this for its properties, they can continue to count on my hard earned movie dollar.

The Girl Next Door

Reviews

I just got back from seeing this movie, and for the first time in a while, I just felt I had to come write something about it before sleeping on it.

When I first heard about it, I laughed. When I first saw the preview, I laughed. But from what I heard and from what I saw, I expected to see a funny, yet typical movie about a not quite so cool kid who meets a girl who makes him into the cool guy he always had the potential to be.

What I saw can only be described as a Risky Business for a new generation. It was funny, and sexy, and it just drew me in in a way that your typical comedy can’t. The story is excellent, the comic timing is superb, the acting is perfect, and the girls are hot.

Its ‘R’ rated for a reason, and it needs to be. Much like American Pie, and the afore mentioned Risky Business, its not just kids, comedy, and naked chicks. There is quality here.

See this film.

Sometimes, you just have to say, ‘what the fuck?’ Make your move. Go with it.