Random Quickie: What I'm Doing and What's Ahead

Hey readers.  I just now realized that I need some sort of endearing/insulting name for my readerbase.  Sarcasmites?  Sarcasmatroglodytes?  But first, I need to get a readerbase to begin with.  Anyway, I hope you guys liked my look at the Summer Movie Season this past weekend.  Plus I'm glad to see some of you enjoyed my review of Murder Set Pieces from a few weeks back...all 3 of you.  There was one person who chose the "Too long, didn't read" option, which I'm surprised no one else picked.  I will be doing another movie review soon but will be toying around with a slightly different (and possibly shorter) format.  Once again, I'll be keeping this movie a surprise but this time I think it'll definitely get more of a reaction than "Man Stabs Whores: The Movie".  But before I do that, I think I'm going to do my "Favorite Hot Chicks" article first.  It's just something I kinda want to get out of my system now, plus it'll be an excuse to post gratuitous pics of girls for no real reason.  Anyway, I'm not going to do a major blog here right now (especially considering I just finished a two-parter that I didn't realize would be a two-parter).  This one is just a recap of what I've been up to lately.

Like I mentioned in the previous blog, I went to see Kick Ass again and loved it just as much as I did the first time.  I rarely do this as I believe the only movies I've seen twice in theaters were Jackass: The Movie and Spider-Man.  But yeah, I was with a group of friends, a few of whom hadn't seen the movie yet, so we went and it was still awesome.  I'm pretty psyched for Iron Man 2 but I'm debating if I want to go to the midnight showing or not.  I've never done a midnight showing before and I'm sure working Friday morning will be kinda rough but it might be worth it.  Plus I think the only time I could possibly see it opening weekend would be Friday night as I'll probably be visiting home for Mother's Day weekend.

As for movies not in the theater, I surprisingly haven't bought that many movies lately, especially since there's no video stores near me closing down anymore.  Right now, I actually have a couple of cheap-ass DVD sets that I have yet to go through.  First of them was a 4-Disc "Urban Action Cinema" set from the $5 bin at Wal-Mart.  At first, I passed over this set as I already had a similar set (which apparently isn't PC as the "Urban" is just straight-up "Black") with half of the movies being exactly the same.  But of the movies that I didn't have, the biggest one was one called The Black Gestapo.  And seriously, how do I not own a movie called The Black Gestapo?  Even if I already own like 8 of the movies, there's another 8 that I don't own and $5 won't break the bank so I grabbed it.  Still haven't watched any of it though.  Also, I grabbed The Sonny Chiba Collection, a 3-Disc set of 4 movies for $7 at Best Buy.  The thing about this was that I already owned two of the movies: Legend of the Eight Samurai and Ninja Wars.  But considering my previous copy of Legend of the Eight Samurai was like someone filming an old screening with a video tape camcorder, I had to get this one since all the movies in the set were restored and with original Japanese soundtrack.  And after watching LotES last night, it is a HUGE improvement.  But my copy of Ninja Wars is restored as well so I'll probably skip that and move onto the other 2 movies:   Resurrection of Golden Wolf and G.I. Samurai.  Also, this past weekend I bought Planet Terror, because I'm sure they'll never release the awesome Grindhouse DVD boxset in America at this point.

With a few of my friends having birthdays recently, I decided to get them some movies as well.  I got one friend Mystery Men for super cheap.  So cheap that I thought about grabbing myself a copy but they were out the next time I went back.  I still haven't seen Mystery Men for myself yet but a few of my other friends loved it.  And for my other friend's birthday, I got him Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans.  And HOLY CRAP is this movie awesome!  If you ever saw Nicolas Cage and wondered "Hmmm...I wonder what Nic Cage would be like on coke" then here's your chance because that's all he does for 90 minutes.  He takes drugs, bangs hookers, takes more drugs, loses witnesses, holds old ladies at gunpoint, fades in an out of a bad Jimmy Stewart impression, takes more drugs, teams up with Xzibit and that's pretty much the movie.  But what I'm surprised at is how many legit accolades this movie is getting.  Let's face it, I like this movie, but that doesn't mean it's a GOOD movie.  And the reason why I like Nicolas Cage so much isn't so much because of talent but his willingness to go crazy for the good of the film, regardless of if it works or not.  But that didn't stop people from giving the movie four stars and Roger Ebert putting it on his list of the best movies of 2009.  Roger Ebert normally likes "good" movies that I hate, not "bad" movies that I love.  And that's another reason why you should never trust Roger Ebert, kids.  Anyway, if you're a fan of just plain batshit insanity, definitely check out Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans.

I wish I could say that having streaming Netflix on the Wii now has opened up a whole boatload of possibilities for movie watching, but I think I've seriously watched like one movie out of it.  Honestly, I've pretty much just been watching episodes of Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations.  With them having most of the shows I actually watch on TV anyways between Travel Channel and Discovery Channel shows, I wonder why I have cable in the first place.  If they carried Food Network shows, I'd honestly pull the plug right now.

I think the one movie I saw on Netflix was Wrong Side of Town, starring pro wrestlers Rob Van Dam and Batista.  And despite Batista taking main stage on the cover, this movie is all RVD.  While I was thinking this, I kept thinking that having RVD in his own movie would've been awesome...10 years ago.  Not so much now.  The movie is pretty bad, though I wouldn't put it in the same league as End Game starring Kurt Angle.  Now THAT is a horrible movie.  Wrong Side of Town is just forgettable.  But at least it has Batista shooting Ja Rule point blank in the head.  That's pretty awesome.

Also on Netflix, I decided to catch the complete live-action series of The Tick, which was pretty easy considering there were only 9 episodes.  I'm not a huge fan of The Tick though I do remember the cartoon quite fondly.  However, I didn't really like the live-action series.  I'm not saying it's bad and it got a lot better by the last 3 or 4 episodes, but I can see why it wasn't renewed for a second season.  It took too long to pick up steam and the jokes weren't even all that funny most of the time.  Honestly, what I was most disappointed in was Patrick Warburton's portrayal of The Tick.  Of course, most of you probably know him better as the voice of Brock Samson on The Venture Bros., Joe Swanson from Family Guy or "Puddy" from Seinfeld.  Basically, he's the kind of guy who's gotten a lot of mileage from his voice alone so I have to give him props for branching out with The Tick.  Maybe I'm more accustomed to the cartoon version but I don't think he played the character right, at least not until later on in the season.  In the cartoon, The Tick was so full of bravado that he was really just naive.  On the TV show, The Tick is so dense in the head that it comes off as childlike at best and mildly retarded at worst.  But who am I to say?  I'm not an actor.  In the end, I think the biggest crime of the show is that there aren't enough Captain Liberty cosplayers out in the world.  My god, she was hot in that uniform.

That's really about it right now.  I've hardly touched any of my video games.  Still reading through Terminator and Philosophy and am a little over halfway through.  But after that, I have no more books to read.  I also bought Brian Posehn's new comedy album "Fart and Wiener Jokes" and it's pretty good so far but is very similar to his previous album "Nerd Rage".  But other than that, I got nothing.  I've pretty much just been writing this blog and wasting my nights on Facebook.  So keep an eye out in the coming weeks for some new content.