Not my waterpark

This NEVER gets old. I'm thinking of making this my ringtone, to replace the "Sorry Billy, Happy Pony's on...and I'm NOT missing Happy Pony" ringtone.

Kermit

This disturbs me on so many levels.



(hmmm since everyone reads this blog now through facebook i don't know if the vid will embed or not)

Movie Review: Leap Year

Yeah yeah. It seems like I've seen a lot of movies lately. I might even go see Valentine's Day in the theater. Blow my mind!

Now I really wanted to like Leap Year. I really did. But let's cut to the chase: Amy Adams is an uptight, stick-up-her-ass-sanitizes-bar-counters-before-drinking-there home stager who thinks it's romantic to run to Ireland to follow some folklore about proposing to her boyfriend.

She's not likeable whatsoever. First off, home stager? In Boston? I don't know about the real estate market there, but home staging is not going to bring your home up $150k. If it can, I'm dragging her ass to my house and make her work her magic. She goes all the way to another country and seems to only bring fancy clothes and high heeled shoes. If you're flying with LV luggage, than you know that you need a pair of slippers or running shoes when traveling. ANd no, it's not cute to bore the person next to you about how you're going to propose to your boyfriend, on most airlines if you're yapping on overnight flights they tell your ass to STFU.

I suppose we're supposed to think she's adorably quirky. Like how she's snotty because she expects to find a cab to take her to Dublin. And naturally the locals are bumbling idiots who won't help her. Or how about how she manages to trash an entire teenie hotel room because she wants to plug in her blackberry.

Probably the tip off is when she's reading a recipe and has huge issues over the size of the carrots, whether they're "medium" or not.

I wish I could push on the side of the irish dude played by Matthew Goode but nope...he was just as rude and unlikeable. And he looked like he needed to shave.

So the redeeming parts of this movie:
1. Her wardrobe. Girl had some NICE ASS SHOES in this movie. Her wardrobe is to die for.
2. The wedding scene.
3. The scenery. Ireland is gorgeous.
4. Her boyfriend/soon-to-be-fiance. Maybe we're supposed to t hink he's the stereotypical uptight preppy boy wearing an ascot. But he was always nice to her (unlike Matthew Goode), always saying he loved her, and while they mock his job as a cardiologist...eff that. He's a cardiologist! Rock on sistah.

She makes a turning point at the end when she realizes that he's not the one for her, because when the fire alarm went off he went and grabbed the same items that we would all grab and who knows what she wanted him to grab...her maybe? Who knows. If there's a fire, i'm grabbing my cats, the family jewelry not in the safe deposit box, my purse (i mean, come on...you lose your house you're gonna need your cell and your wallet/ID/car keys)...and if there's another second, my flatscreen. Hey, I back up my photos with Carbonite and everything else is in the safe deposit box. And if Kraig's legs aren't working, there's no way i can drag him AND the cats.

Overall though it's cute. A rental I guess. I had pretty high hopes for it because Amy Adams is a fantastic actress (go see Junebug) but really I just wanted to smack her for most of the movie. There. I said it.

Movie Review: Daybreakers

Now before I give my movie reviews I typically admit to the biases I have going in. I display truthiness!

I was biased because I love the concept of "what if"s. What if the world got overrun by vampires? We know what happens when the world is overrun by zombies...somehow dumb, slow-moving morons can take over the world and leave a few mallgoers behind, but intelligent vampires get wiped after a few local kids and Buffy figure them out.

Let's be real. If vampires exist, we're Effed up the A. They reproduce like mad. There's no killing of any head vampire. I'll be the first to get mauled on my way out of Albertsons. Motherf*ckers would do it right when i've blown $200 on groceries that i won't be able to eat.

So the concept of what happens after we all become vampires? Then what?

Well...that's what this movie addresses. As it turns out, life is pretty good when we're all vampires. We look GREAT. You can buy teeth whitening stuff. As it turns out, suicide (by going out in the sun and letting your skin burn) is the #1 reason for forest fires in the year 2019.

So you adapt. Like Chevy comes out with cars that have daytime driving. It'll even provide a "Ewe Vee Warn-ing.....Ewe Vee Warn-ing" warning if you open your car door in daylight. You buy your blood like you buy coffee, except the government has to limit how much blood you can get 'cause human blood is hard to come by. You still go to work...just at night.

And if you start to get nutty by the whole "holy SH*T...i'm a vampire?!", then you either try eating other vampires or you start sucking your own blood. Which mutates you and turns you into a Creepy Vampire, which Normal Vampires are scared of.

So let's go through the hierarchy of fear:

Humans << style="font-style: italic;">what has he done since Gattica and divorcing Uma Thurman? Not getting orthodontic work apparently) end up with some humans who are trying to reproduce a cure that Willem Dafoe accidentally discovered. Of course, chilling with humans and not giving them up to the government is illegal. Hilarity ensues.

I wouldn't say this movie was amazing or anything, but it was pretty entertaining. And I liked how they covered all areas...like what DOES happen when a vampire attempts to just munch on another vampire? And yeah, you know teeth bleaching companies are going to target blood-stained teeth. And everyone smokes...why not? You're not gonna die anyway.

Willem Dafoe is fantastic with his little one-liners, the best of all being:
Being human in a world full of vampires is about as safe as barebacking a five dollar whore!”

I give it two thumbs up for creativity and Willem Dafoe. Netflix queue fo' sho.


Think you're disgruntled at work? Try being this guy.

Movie Review: AVATAR

So, it seems i'm commissed to write a movie review about Avatar.

And by "commissioned", i mean, "nagged".

Naturally going into this movie I was pretty biased. I can't stand Sam Worthington. It's like he's supposed to be hot but he's not. Zoe Seldana is okay, but she was much too thin to ever play Uhura in Star Trek. So really, my love extended only for her royal fierceness, Sigourney Weaver.
who is supposed to be hosting SNL...yeah!

So the only reason I agreed to see it is 'cause everyone kept insisting that you haveto see it on IMAX, and since my living room doesn't support IMAX format, i was forced to see it on the big screen while I could. Normally I'm all for seeing stuff on DVD because I hate people and movie theaters are full of them.

Much thanks to Lacy and Chris for getting our tix and for waiting in line. Four weeks after opening weekend and there was still a line all the way around the Spectrum on a Monday night.

There's not really a whole lot I can give away since the concepts have been done a billion times before:
- dude with a chip on his shoulder becomes the hero
- government and the military = bad
- every military operation is lead by some square-jawned Texan who loves the smell of napalm in the morning. Who is also always lives while the peons and movie extras die.
- tough-as-nails president/leader/chief's daughter softens up over time
- the one untameable (non-tameable? Something that cannot be tamed) car/plane/dinosaur is the one thing that the hero must do to prove his worth. Very reminiscent of Top Gun...Tom Cruise and his MiGs.

So you've got Jake Sully, a dude in a wheelchair who's PhD twin dies but since they spent a crapload of money creating an Avatar for his brother,they figure they can use him 'cause his DNA is the same. The concept of an Avatar is the same as your Yahoo Avatar....it's you in photoshop or CG format. You sleep in this jelly-filled pod, and your robot-CG guy goes out and fakes it in the world of real things that look like your Avatar. Both can't be awake at the same time.

Jake is supposed to be protecting Sigourney Weaver, a chain-smoking scientist. Secretly he's giving info to the Big Bad Military, 'cause the Smurfs live on an area with expensive smurfberries. The plan is that in 3 months he'll get in good with the Smurfs and figure out how to get them to get them to trade stuff for their smurfberries.

Yep. That's right. Nicolas Cage was a smurf in Avatar. Did you not see him? Pic courtesy of http://niccageaseveryone.blogspot.com.

After much glow-in-the-dark fun with Smurfette, Jake ends up becoming one of "them". And "they" don't want anything us normal humans have to trade for their smurfberries. Jake even ends up getting his smurf mating on with Smurfette. Everything seems to work by a pony tail in your hair, which I dont' see how that works 'cause Smurfette's hair was in thin dreadlocks the whole movie but when necessary she pulled out the massive ponytail with wiggly tails coming out of it. You need a ride on a bird? Plug in your ponytail. Need to talk to a tree? Hook up your ponytail. Need to talk to the earth? Sit with your ponytail on the ground and start moving around like you're doing abdominal exercises at 24 Hour Fitness. So i'm pretty sure in order to bond for life there was some ponytail-on-ponytail action between Smurfette and Jake, but they didn't show that for PG-13 reasons.

Eventually sh*t hits the fans 'cause the military and government folk want their smurfberries asap, Jake begs for just another hour to warn the Smurfs.

Chaos ensues. Good times.

The key thing is that this was in 3D, which was definitely pretty cool minus the bizarre glasses you have to wear. They're not even really "glasses" as much as 2 big trapezoids attached to a tight uncomfortable wraparound stick. When i last checked, sunglasses were supposed to fit around your ears. And be comfortable. I think they make the first 30 mins "uber 3D" and the rest of the movie "low budget 3D", since by the end of it you're not really paying attention to the 3D factor by the end of it.

I wouldn't see it again, I found myself getting really angry at the bad guys and i doubt it would have anywhere near the same wow-factor the 2nd time around. So...go see it in IMAX, or do don't see it at all.

There. That's my Avatar wrap-up without any editing or thought.

Celebrities and their causes....wtf

Emile Hirsch joins celeb climb of Kilimanjaro - Group aims to raise awareness about need for clean water worldwide

The "Milk" and "Into the Wild" star is joining Jessica Biel, Lupe Fiasco, Isabel Lucas and Elizabeth Gore for a weeklong trek up Mount Kilimanjaro. The Summit on the Summit expedition, which begins Thursday, aims to use star power to help raise awareness about the need for clean water worldwide.

Has no one told celebrities that climbing a mountain will not help educate me on the need for clean water?

You know what helps? Money. The money you'd use to buy all your hiking crap.

Or maybe you can go do legwork at various events where they have booths and stuff. Use your celebrity power face-to-face with the people you're hoping, in theory, will give cash.

And finally, you know what else helps? Having more famous celebrities. When Jessica Biel is your most famous celeb, you've got problems. If they're banking on the "star power" of the crew they already have, then poor people of the world better learn to start sucking water out of rocks 'cause they're effed.

Dear John: a letter to Quizno's

Dear Quizno's,

Our love affair started wonderfully. There were only 2 locations in Ottawa ten years ago, and I remember driving an hour to get to the Kanata location. The only other sub options we had were subway, which tasted pretty crappy in comparison.

I moved to California, and I was so happy to find them everywhere. No longer did I have to drive forever to get my Mesquite Chicken (no bacon, no cheese).

Then we hit the peak of my adoration for you, which can only displayed with the commercial:




With that commercial, I settled into my state of loving bliss for years.
A tear is brought to my eye as I rewatch it now. Ahh the good ol' days.

Lately you have lost your focus. And I have to now confess that I am back to my original sub place of choice: Subway.

(Oh Togos...we had a brief affair but you couldn't hold my interest long enough)

It started with their $5 subs. FIVE DOLLARS for a footlong. That's mind blogging. That meant i could go back to my veggie-pizza sub I used to get in university. AND they have toasters now too.

However today I thought I'd try to rekindle our flame. Alas, it was a no-go. It cost me over $10 in order to get two Sammies and a Torpedo. And i'm STILL hungry.

Let's start with the Sammies. Your ad said "now larger". How small were they before? A HotPocket is bigger than that. I felt the way my mother did when she tried an authentic taco in San Clemente for the first time: gypped.

See this picture? Now photoshop out all the food that's popping out of the bread. And then you can get an idea of what I received.




Then the Torpedo...what's not to love about mozarella, turkey, and pesto? Let's see...while you normally OD on sauce, there was barely any pesto. One thin slice of turkey is not going to make me taste any meat when there's thick bread all around it. And your packaging! 1/3 of it was sticking out from the Torpedo wrapping bag doodad, and the cashier just plopped it into your white shopping bags...he looked at me like I was crazy because I asked him to wrap it like a sub. Yes, I must be crazy for not wanting tomatoes and lettuce to flop around in the plastic bag.


Hey call me crazy, but if I held my torpedo like that, gravity would take over the contents.


Don't try to kid yourself into thinking your "Any two for $5!" is a comparable deal. That's like throwing over Rosie O'Donnell when someone's expecting Megan Fox.

I'm not quite sure what your additional costs are compared to Subway. You don't have Jared's salary to cover. Your ads feature at most a smooth-talking oven. Perhaps you should put your oven on commission, 'cause his fiery (uhh..fire-y) ways aren't enough to make me want to pay more for nothing.

So alas, we must part ways. Sure, I'll still come to you when I have a hankering for Mesquite Chicken but since I'm a cheap bastard, don't hold your breath on that happening anytime soon.

Signed,

RandomThoughsAndGripes.com