A Winter's Tale

countessmary rules for allowing me to join her and others for the advance screening of V for Vendetta.

Eso es todo.

But I discovered that watching the latter part of The Iron Giant is quite effective when in need of catharsis.

As previously stated, I had plans to see Serenity tonight, and it was good.

If anyone in the Atlanta area is interested in joining to see Mirrormask, Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean's new film, I'm planning to see it Saturday night at 9:30 at the MAC. Leave a comment if you want to meet up.

And I'm planning to see Serenity again on Sunday. Speak up if you want in.

Lauren Graham combines an appealingly goofy wit and crack comic timing in an extremely gorgeous physical form. And if she didn't share a network with so many annoying teenagers, she would have been able to parlay all that into a successful film career. We don't know exactly whom we should blame for Graham's not having become an internationally famous superstar by now, but we suspect that it's all Rory's fault. Stupid Rory.
-- Fametracker.com's Fame Audit on Lauren Graham

If you've been wondering where I've been, you need to find better things to do... I'll report on my five-day D.C. trip shortly.

The weekend of September 30, my plans are:

• See Serenity in the theaters.
• See Mirrormask in the theaters.
• See Serenity in the theaters.

If anyone would like to come with, you're welcome to, but anything beyond that will need to be pre-scheduled.

A recent Slashdot story offers:

A poll conducted by Ipsos on behalf of the Associated Press and AOL confirmed that 73% of movie viewers prefer to watch movies at home rather than at a theater. This article comes on the heels of a consistently poor box office this year, even despite the presence of the new Star Wars film. Despite this demand for home viewing, only 5% admitted to downloading a movie from the internet.

In light of these not-so-startling statistics, I'd like to give the movie industry some advice:

1. Stop letting Humbert Humbert Tom Cruise have women who are some 11.5 years younger than his previous wife. Katie Holmes will devastated after their inevitable divorce and his shacking up with some girl born between 1989-1990, and she won't have the benefit of drugs or psychiatry to ease the pain of her broken, broken heart. Let's stop the bleeding beforehand.
2. Quit charging me three dollars for a pack of M&Ms. M&Ms are not three dollars. They're one dollar. If I go to Costco, I can buy a freaking case for the amount that you want to charge me for all of my concessions.
3. Take Brett Ratner off of X-Men 3.
4. The only ads I want to see in a movie theater are ads for new movies that haven't come out yet.
5. Quit giving Uwe Boll jobs, and quit throwing millions of marketing dollars at the poo he keeps flinging.
6. This is something you should have learned in high school: Demand is down. Either lower supply or lower prices. Since nothing will make you lower supply (see #5), this means that no one thinks it's worth 8+ dollars to sit in a movie theater, eat four dollar Sour Patch Kids, and try to ignore jackasses who don't turn off their cellphones.
7. People got tired of the long epic movie with computer-generated battles when they had to pee their pants in the middle of Return of the King. You might want to save your money.
8. Hire Joss Whedon more.

Two weekends ago, I'd pretty much caught up on all of the TiVo that I'd needed to. A backup of five weeks of Deadwood and South Park on top of the weekly viewing of Everwood, 24, Lost, and all the other network shows that I follow were behind me--only an episode of Real Time with Bill Maher and a single Mythbusters remained.

Somehow, in my newly-discovered free time, I've nearly drowned myself with an inundation of new media which, in addition to my weekly television fix, includes:

• The Jerk DVD from Netflix
• Dumb and Dumber DVD from Netflix
• Ai Yori Aoshi Vol 1. DVD from Netflix
• The Colour of Magic, The Light Fantastic, and Equal Rites by Terry Pratchett Audiobooks
• Negima and Love Hina by Ken Akamatsu Manga
• Cupid DVDs that I bought on ebay
• Kingdom Hearts on the PS2
• Ratchet and Clank: Going Commando on the PS2
• Hoyle Casino Omaha and Triple Crown poker tournaments on the PC
• The LJ friends list

It's become quite a dilemma as to what I should do when I get home--do I watch the episodes of The Daily Show that have backed up to the point where the TiVo will start deleting them, or do I check the friends list (I know if I sit at the computer I'll be likely to start up a poker tournament)? Do I continue listening to what happens to Granny and Esk, or should I watch to see just who proposes marriage in the season finale of Gilmore Girls (I chose both--unfortunately not seeing who proposed because the stupid WB overran the 9:00 pm cutoff time because of their ten-minute included promo of The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants--and ended up going to sleep at 1:00 AM after re-reading some more Negima)?

The meatspace isn't helping--just last night I went to see Unleashed with a friend, and a group of ten of us are in preparations to see Revenge of the Sith tomorrow night. The Independent's been holding a few Texas Holdem tournaments (in which I've been regularly placing), and I've made arrangements to meet up with the Indy's new waitress at Wallcrawlers to do some bouldering.

And on top of this, I've got my country's 500th anniversary to plan, my wedding to arrange, my wife to murder, and Guilder to frame for it. I'm swamped.

Let's say you're putting together a crack gang of international terrorists to, say, hijack an office tower or track down and execute a rogue super soldier. You'll need an icy, silent, well-built Aryan type, preferably Austrian or German, and preferably wearing a turtleneck. You'll need a geek to circumvent alarm systems and...you know, hack into things; he may or may not be black, but he must wear glasses and should have an affinity for argyle cardigans. If the geek is white, then you'll also want to hire a huge African man who wears bandoliers and favors little knit caps and is always chewing on something. And, of course, you'll need an Asian guy, preferably one with a bit of Far East mystique, as symbolized by his long Fu Manchu-style moustache. In other words, you'll need Al Leong.
-- From Fametracker's Hey! It's That Guy! profile of Al Leong

Check out Fametracker.com. Other highlights include 2 Stars, 1 Slot where the Fametracker folks pit one star against another--for example, Penelope Ann Miller vs. Mary-Louise Parker (guess which one wins) and for the fannish among us, Tom Welling vs. Ian Somerhalder.

ETA: According to his Hey! It's That Guy! Profile, J.K. Simmons, in addition to playing Vern Schillinger on Oz and J. Jonah Jameson in the Spider-Man movies, also has another widely-seen role:

J.K. Simmons is also the voice of the yellow M&M on the animated candy commercials. Knowing this makes it easier to play a fun game while watching M&M commercials. The next time you see one of these commercials, imagine the yellow M&M telling the red M&M to "suck my dick, you sniveling bitch." Okay, it's not really a "game." But it is fun.

In other news, I'd really appreciate it if someone could call me at around 7:00 PM tonight and ask, "Are you still playing Ratchet and Clank?" If I answer yes, then please berate me and tell me to clean the house, wash the dishes, do the laundry, and catch up on the TiVo.

Your support is sincerely appreciated.

For some reason, I am feeling particularly cranky today.

If you haven't already done so, vote on what movies you think I should keep in my Netflix queue.

"Never!"

Somewhere around twenty-two years ago, in a city not so far from here, my brother and I sat in a movie theater, transfixed by the images onscreen. I was nine at the time, my brother eleven, and when John Williams' score crescendoed, a deep-bass chorus chanting in the background, I remember Jerry pleading audibly with the screen, uttering exactly what I was thinking:

"Don't turn, Luke! Don't turn!"

Watching Return of the Jedi at that age, we didn't particularly care that the Ewoks were a particularly silly addition to the series; we didn't think that trees, stones and sticks shouldn't be effective against a high-tech army; nor did we have the slightest notion that getting stuck in the trash compactor was (spuriously) analogous to Joseph Campbell's "In the Belly of the Beast" mythic element.

We just loved Star Wars, and the Last Temptation of Luke was a bit much for our pre-adolescent minds to bear.

After repeated viewings and the first two prequels, however, Star Wars nowadays is something of a disappointment. The nostalgia is still there, but it's not unlike watching Krull for the first time as an adult and realizing that the movie sails along on an ocean composed entirely of cheese.

A couple of weeks ago, ludditerobot pointed me at some hype for Robert Rodriguez' upcoming Sin City, and we had a brief discussion of the perils of looking forward to a movie too vehemently. We're both being a bit wary of watching the trailers for Batman Begins and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, although I did breakdown and watch them on the last couple of week's Coming Attractions.

All this week, Cartoon Network has been airing the latest episodes of Star Wars: Clone Wars, Genndy Tartakovsky's animated bridge between Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith. Those of you who are fans of cartoons may know Tartakovsky's name from Dexter's Laboratory or the utterly brilliant Samurai Jack. When Clone Wars was first announced, I had to question if it would be a good thing or not. Just today, I picked up the first Clone Wars DVD at Costco and watched the Behind the Scenes feature "Bridging the Saga."

Having seen both Clone Wars, the latest trailer, and all the other assorted hype-goodies for the upcoming movie, I, despite myself, have now got the full on mental salivation for the Revenge of the Sith to come out.

Dammit.