Wow, I haven't mentioned movies in three posts. That must be some kind of record.

I went and saw Grindhouse again, and it was even better than the first time. Still think Planet Terror was the better of the two, but I enjoyed Death Proof a lot more during round two.

I watched The Godfather earlier today. That movie only gets better with subsequent viewings, though this time I noticed something freaking weird. During the funeral, when Al Pacino stands up and sits down, there's some woman's face that randomly appears in the bottom right of the screen. After some research, it's his mother, and is because of some lens reflecting or whatever. Odd...

The Queen comes out on DVD Tuesday and I'm excited.

I've been slacking on the viewings, but here's some lightning reviews:

Mutiny on the Bounty - Gable is obviously amazing, and this movie is obviously great as well. I almost want to see the remake with Brando, but who knows if I ever will (probably will). 8.5/10
Modern Times - Charlie Chaplin is also, obviously, amazing. 9/10
Volver - Almodovar disappoints with his most recent. Penelope Cruz delivers, but it's not enough. 6/10
Top Hat - Fred Astaire? Ginger Rogers? I actually kind of want to buy this movie.... 8/10
Scoop - Woody Allen's latest is terrible, I'm sad to say.... wait, I already reviewed this one. Ok, guess I can stop now.

Slowly chipping away at AFI's 100... though they're updating it soon. I wish they'd hurry up and do that so Toy Story and American Beauty and LotR3 and maybe a few others can bump some of the ones I'm dreading. I'm also looking for an All About Eve bump up, fingers crossed. Why do I place so much on this list? AFI isn't really that great (especially since they didn't put The Departed in their Top Ten of 2007). I think their list is just the best overall. Maybe once I finish the whole list I'll reorder it. Yeah, I get that bored. It's fun to think about, though...

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(I know this probably has a legit answer that I could find with ten seconds of Google searching, but what's the fun in that?)

Let's take a hypothetical situation: A baby girl is born to two parents who for whatever reason (separation, maybe) give their child a hyphenated last name, i.e. Jane Brown-Smith.

Then little Jane grows up and wants to marry some dude whose last name is Davis. But for whatever reason, she wants to kind of keep her name, so she goes hyphenated again. Would her name then become Jane Brown-Smith-Davis? Or, even more extreme, if the guy had a hyphenated name, could she be Jane Brown-Smith-Davis-Monroe? What's the limits on hyphens in last names?

It'd almost be pretty fun if, say she's born Jane Brown-Smith, and then wants to marry a guy whose last name was Davis-Smith, her name could be Jane Brown-Smith-Davis-Smith.

Or, to save a lot of trouble and still achieve the same results, she could just go to whatever the office is and officially change her name to have all the hyphens she wants. I think the probability of that happening is much higher. But where's the fun in that?

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So Agatha Christie is quite the famous mystery writer, and one of her most popular plays is called 'The Mousetrap.' It's one of those with a group of people stuck in a house, one of which is the murderer and one is the next victim, a basic 'whodunit.'

Now Tom Stoppard wrote a comedy play called 'The Real Inspector Hound,' which is a parody of 'The Mousetrap.' I had to read 'Hound' for my Modern British Lit. class.

I'm going to do my final paper on 'Hound,' so I figured, as research, I would read 'The Mousetrap' out of good faith to the source material, and I came to realize that by reading the parody first, it completely ruined the experience of the original. I mean, it was still good, but all I could think about was the mocking premise of 'Hound.'

This happens more with movies--at least for me. I saw 'Night at the Roxbury' a few months before I ever saw 'Jerry Maguire,' so when I did finally see the 'You had me at "Hello"' scene with Tom Cruise and Renee, all I could think about was Chris Kattan telling Will Ferrell to shut up. But again, it was still good, just not as good. Plus, 'You had me at "Hello"' is possibly one of the most parodied lines ever.

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This is my 200th update, and instead of being something special or whatever, it is an unfortunately morbid post.

Kurt Vonnegut dies at 84

I know he was done writing and everything, but this is sad news. Vonnegut was one of the few authors I felt attached to (attached being defined as, 'liking more than one-two of their books, and loving at least one of them'). Sigh.

[I'm going to avoid the obvious SH5 joke.]

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When I first heard about 'Grindhouse,' I shrugged it off as a cheap marketing ploy, but for some reason, over the last couple weeks it became more appealing (probably from the marketing), so I saw it tonight.

In summary: fucking amazing.

For people who don't know, 'Grindhouse' is two ~90 minute movies in one feature, with fake trailers before and between. The first movie, 'Planet Terror' is a zombie movie written/directed by Robert Rodriguez (El Mariachi, Sin City), the second, 'Death Proof' is a... well, semi-thriller, semi-horror movie written/directed by Quentin Tarantino (Pulp Fiction, Kill Bill).

On a first look, it appears Planet Terror is the stronger of the two films, and the main reason is it is 90 minutes of nonstop action and gore, then we're thrown into about an hour of witty dialogue and slow pace, which pales in comparison to the zombie-fest of the previous 'feature.'

I'm partial to zombie flicks, and Rodriguez does it about as awesome as anyone could want. There's straight up some of the most grotesque scenes I've seen, yet they're fantastic. I think it helps that Rose McGowan is extremely hot (this is fact, not opinion). Also, the whole concept of a machine gun for a leg may look stupid in the previews, but I assure you it's part of many laughs, as well as fantastic gore and carnage.

After some extremely hilarious pseudo previews, we get a somewhat typical Tarantino movie, with lots of sharp dialogue leading up to a semi-climactic incident, lots more dialogue, then a big climax. It's a rough transition (as I said above), but it's obviously well done. I'll even admit that though I hate Eli Roth, he was hilarious in this segment. Probably because he wasn't directing or writing, and just playing an asshole. Tarantino has always been great at setting up tension, making his audience just want to scream 'ALL RIGHT, SHOW US WHAT'S GOING TO HAPPEN,' and where most directors would fail to live up to huge expectations, this one's worth being patient. I don't want to ruin it.

I personally think Tarantino will never, ever top Pulp Fiction--but this was a good try. Not even close, but he achieved what he was aiming for, and that's all that really matters, right?

Planet Terror - 9.5/10
Death Proof - 8/10
Thanksgiving--Don't--Machete--Werewolf Women of the SS - 10/10
Grindhouse - 8.75/10

PS. QT can't act for shit.

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Earlier tonight I was going to see the Reno: 911! movie at the dollar theater with a couple friends, because the show is hilarious, so naturally the movie would be too.

We get there, and since it had been raining, for some ungodly reason the showing was canceled. Against my better judgment, we went to see Stomp the Yard instead (not for serious entertainment, but for laughs).

With a 2.1 rating on IMDb, making it #33 on their bottom 100, this is easily the worst movie of the year so far. Not only does it fit into every mold for a movie plot, ever, but the fact that one of the 'teams' is the 'Pythons' and they do the exact same motion as Ben Stiller's team in Dodgeball is beyond hilarious.

Also, the fraternity that our main character joins is Theta Nu Theta, and the only reason it's called that is so at the end of the movie they can use the cheesy joke of their routine being TNT explosive. Get it?

I got dizzy watching half the scenes because the director has no idea how to operate a camera. It's pretty obvious that he just strapped a camera to a flopping trout gasping for water and used that footage to record the scenes, since there's more jump cuts than an Aronofsky film. Except, you know, Aronofsky is a decent director, and whoever did this is a notch above my oscillating fan.

This movie is like a mix between Bring It On and Drumline, except the former is an amazing(ly cheesy, yet awesome) movie, and the latter had a somewhat decent structure (though, being in a real drumline for seven year, it was terribly inaccurate, and just terrible, but that's for another post). So actually, it's nothing like either of those.

God, what a piece of shit.

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So I sat down and read this whole novel tonight for class tomorrow... I'm so tired.

Crash (the novel, not the movie[s])

Ballard's novel is about people who get extreme sexual pleasure from car crashes, and have sex in pretty much every way, everywhere (mainly in cars). There are some interesting parts, but overall the novel aims at shock factor, and that works for about a hundred pages, but the book loses steam when it's obvious that the same scenarios are repeated over and over, often with repeating diction.

7.5/10

Hannah and Her Sisters

I've been on a Woody Allen binge lately. Michael Caine is pretty much one of the best actors around, and this movie was really good. The best out of these three, that's for sure. (That's all you get--I'm hella tired)

9/10

The Purple Rose of Cairo

You can always count on Woody Allen for absurd plots. Not the best movie, but I really liked it--especially the ending. Also, lots of good laughs (more than the movie before and after this one).

8/10

Scoop

Woody Allen's latest, with Scarlett Johansson, Allen himself, and Wolverine. Not a terrible plot, but there aren't many curve balls and the jokes only come from Allen, and even then they're not up to par. But then again, like Jon always says, "Even when a Woody Allen movie is bad, it's still pretty good." Good alternatives: Match Point, Anything Else (ok, not 'good,' but 'better')

5.5/10

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This afternoon I was watching the new Stepford Wives on FX (terrible movie, but...). They have this 'DVD on TV' theme, where they show deleted scenes or trivia and whatnot. During one of these, at the bottom, it said:

Both Bette Midler and Nicole Kindman were born in Honolulu, Hawaii.

Now, maybe it's just me, but I'd think that on such a big network, i.e. FX, they could at least spend ten seconds to proofread their information before misspelling the last name of one of the most popular actresses of today. Just sayin'...

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I think I may have just hit a new low point in my life, but only people who are familiar with the area around UCF will understand.

Tonight I went through a Taco Bell drive-thru and placed a standard order. I got home, and saw that they messed up my order pretty bad, so I'm still hungry. I went to the Taco Bell website to look for a complaint form (they give you free stuff), and began filling it out, and of course they ask which store I went to.

So I enter the store number or whatever, the town, state, then either the zipcode or landmark. What, am I visiting a Taco Bell by the Grand Canyon or something? So weird.

But the real sad part is that it was the Taco Bell at the intersection of Alafaya and 50, and you know what the landmark for that shopping plaza is? The Taco Bell. That's "The Taco Bell Plaza." I would've put that, but I didn't want to inflate their egos too much before I tore them back down with my eloquent complaining.

In other news, why is it so much more fun to watch a movie on TV, even when I have it on DVD right next to me. I mean, there's censoring and commercials on TV, yet I let Jerry Maguire keep playing on TBS, with these terrible mom-and-pop commercials. Who knows...

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