What have you watched lately?

[Diabolical]

Oh, and I've been watching the video for Katy Perry's Friday Night (TGIF) over and over. I'm horrified to admit that I've actually really liked 3/4 radio singles from her last album.

And I have to admit I'm a fan of her tits.

[anarky]

To paraphrase The Band:

I can't stand the way she sings, but I love to see her wonkers.

[jjreason]

[vynsane]

"Her tits were unbelievable."
"Oh, man, I love titties."

commando is a prime example of a movie you can do an AWESOME running commentary on, MST3K style. from the opening scene where he chops down a tree and he's just carrying an enormous log towards his log house, like we're to believe he decided to move there, in the middle of nowhere, and just build a house out of the trees he found and this one log is, what, the beginning of his new den or something? from then on, everything was made of logs in our commentary. stuff like that.

[Rollo Tomassi]

The main baddie being a paunch bellied guy with flabby arms always cracks me up. They try to cover up his soggy midsection with chainmail(WTF) but c'mon.
The part at the beginning where the Col. shows up and says 'Someone is killing off you old team' I started guffawing because THAT is a movie cliche. Then you think back to the people killed at the beginning of the film. One is a nerdy accountant looking guy and the other is a greasy little car salesman. Both of whom resemble nothing like a crack black-ops team. And both are killed in the lamest way possible. If they had truly been Special Forces hiding in new identities they wouldn't have gone out like bitches. I want to see a prequel where this team led by Ahnuld consisting of paunchy Aussie, greasy mullet car salesman and nerdy white guy is on a mission.

[jjreason]

Dude, no kidding I would be there on opening night. I LOVED Commando.

[anarky]

Shrek Forever After. It was on HBO, so I "taped" it and we just watched it. Pretty bad. I've liked the other three, though I don't think they're the classics some make them out to be. (Truth is, the first one's already pretty dated. Making a fairy tale spoof that's loaded with pop culture references tends to do that.) I don't think the second and third are as bad as many do, though.

Even for a kids' movie, Forever After is weak. We're supposed to believe the whole movie (minus flashbacks) takes place in the span of a day? Really? Shrek makes a bargain where he gets a day as an ogre, the way things were before he settled down, and is screwed out of having ever been born and only has the one day to exist. So we see him terrorizing people for what would have to be a few hours based on the scenes shown, then he gets caught and knocked out, and wakes up in a cart that happens to be pulled by Donkey. He's taken to Far Far Away, confronts Rumpelstilskin, learns how he's been screwed, and escapes. After convincing Donkey that he's not nuts, they find a loophole in the contract that he can fix everything with true love's kiss. So they journey to the tower where Fiona had been held captive, only she's not there. They wander around the woods until they find an underground group of ogres who are planning a revolution, with Fiona as their leader. Much stupidity ensues as Shrek tries to convince her to kiss him. After much bumbling, and some uncharacteristically unfunny "humor" from Puss in Boots (who's Fiona's cat for some reason that's never explained), the ogres are all captured by the Pied Piper (who plays fucking Beastie Boys, for Christ's sake... and is hard to take seriously as a bad guy here after one's read Peter and Max where he's truly a fucking menace). Shrek confronts Rumpelstilskin, who chains him just out of arms' reach of Fiona, and sets loose Dragon to eat them. Of course, Donkey and Puss show up with the now-freed ogres, and the bad guys are beaten, and Shrek and Fiona kiss at the last possible second.

Yes. Really. All that in one fucking day. Did they forget that whole half of the first Shrek that involves them traveling to and from the tower and camping overnight several times? Or how in the second movie they have to travel some distance to Far Far Away? And let's keep in mind that Shrek's on foot for pretty much this entire movie.

The story appears to be that Shrek was never born. Fiona's parents were willing to bargain their kingdom for an end to her curse, afraid that true love would never arrive (this is shown at the beginning in a flashback), and are interrupted by a guard (just before their signing the contract, of course), who informs them that she's freed. In the new timeline, of course, Shrek didn't exist to save her, and they sign, and, somehow, this makes them cease to exist and Rumpelstilskin becomes the emperor (and apparently expanded his dominion to include the kingdom that contains Shrek's swamp). Fiona got bored, or something, and eventually freed herself.

Of course, this all forgets a really small detail from the first movie, and, by "really small," I mean physically small, but huge as fucking hell to the plot: Lord Farquaad. Farquaad isn't mentioned at all. Without Shrek, he himself would have likely have set out to save Fiona. And this is a huge mistake, since Rumpelstilskin looks so much like Farquaad, I thought it was Farquaad somehow come back for revenge when I saw the commercials.

It also ignores the existence of Prince Charming, who we learned in the second movie was supposed to save Fiona, but arrived too late. Since it seems the date in the new timeline is the same day that Shek signed away his life, shouldn't he have rescued her long before this movie?

And let's never mind Arthur, who probably would've been involved somehow if the King and Queen suddenly vanished. It's all made so, so much worse when the credits are a fucking montage of bits from the first three, and prominently feature Farquaad, Charming, and Arthur! It's really as if they just tossed together a shit movie and said, "Here's a new movie with Shrek. We didn't watch the previous three movies, so we'll just hope you didn't, either."

Maybe I'm just looking at this from the jaded perspective of a comic book geek who's read and seen one too many bad "time travel leads to dystopian alternate reality" stories. And, like I said, I know it's a kids' movie. But give the kids credit and don't assume they're all retarded and can't remember anything from five minutes ago.

Shrek 4 is like a shitty story where Apocalypse goes back in time and makes it so that Nightcrawler was never born, and this means the All-New, All-Different X-Men never existed and the originals died, but somehow this meant that Peter Parker was the president of the United States and had no spider powers and they were never mentioned and every reader in the world is thinking, "Wait a fucking second. How did Nightcrawler not being born and not growing up in a monastery in Germany lead to Peter never getting bitten by a radioactive spider?"

[Rollo Tomassi]

I can cherrypick moments from the first Shrek movies that I still find humorous, but overall I'm indifferent to them. Now I see they've spun Puss off into his own film.

[jjreason]

I did not like the latest Shrek. For me they have gotten progressively worse as they have gone along, with 1 & 2 being funny, 3 & 4 falling markedly short.

[vynsane]

Maybe I'm just looking at this from the jaded perspective of a comic book geek who's read and seen one too many bad "time travel leads to dystopian alternate reality" stories. And, like I said, I know it's a kids' movie. But give the kids credit and don't assume they're all retarded and can't remember anything from five minutes ago.

it's more like a shitty, not thoroughly-thought out version of "it's a wonderful life" starring an ogre instead of jimmy stewart.

in my estimation, the only really good one was the first one. the second strayed WAY too close to the line where the kids sort of get the "adult humor" that was used to keep the adults entertained (something no pixar movie has ever had to stoop to).

i was delighted to see that there was none of that 'nudge nudge wink wink' humor in "how to train your dragon", which is a great movie.



we saw 'horrible bosses' yesterday. it was funny. the cast was great, the three primaries: jason sudeikis, charlie day and jason bateman were hysterical. i wasn't expecting the plot we got, as i hadn't read any preview info.

[Diabolical]

in my estimation, the only really good one was the first one.

Exactly. Shrek 2 sucked so hard I lost all interest in the other two.

i was delighted to see that there was none of that 'nudge nudge wink wink' humor in "how to train your dragon", which is a great movie.

Dragon was far better that it should have been, considering it was by Dreamworks.

I saw Bad Teacher last night. Pretty funny, even though it relies heavily on the "shock" comedy schtick (like inappropriate language at inappropriate times). Cameron Diaz is actually good in it, Jason Seigel is funny (although a bit underused) and Justin Timberlake continues to surprise me as an actor.

[Rollo Tomassi]

I have yet to see Timberlake in anything I didn't enjoy him in.


Ugh. Road Trip is on late night TV. I had completely forgetten the existence of Tom Green. I wonder what the loser is up to since his career imploded. What a fucking has been.

[anarky]

I tried to hate Justin Timberlake, and mocked those who said, "He's actually pretty good." He was a fucking Backstreet Boy, after all. Or N-Syncer. Or whatever prefab bullshit boy band. But he's been good in every flick I've seen him in, and, I'll admit, his solo music is fairly catchy, even if it's not the sort of music I'd usually listen to.

I'm guessing he must be the Mark Wahlberg of this generation. Because people would fucking laugh in your face if you went back to 1990 and told anyone that, before he mysteriously burned out a few years later for reasons most likely more from the studios than any issue with his talent, he'd have a downright stellar acting career.

[Rollo Tomassi]

Glory was also on latenight TV last night. And while its still an excellent film, the coda always reminds me that they failed in the end. The Fort was never taken.

[anarky]

Ugh. Road Trip is on late night TV. I had completely forgetten the existence of Tom Green. I wonder what the loser is up to since his career imploded. What a fucking has been.

Tom Green's not a has-been. He's a never-was. The funniest thing about him is that Drew Barrymore fucked him. And that's sad in a "what the fuck does he have that gets him Drew Barrymore?" way, not in a ha-ha way.