Alice in Wonderland

Hey guys! I started watching stuff again this week, and right off the bat I've got a doozy! Tim Burton's Alice In Wonderland. Wow, Tim Burton really stepped out of the box on this one, I can tell you that. It features a slightly older, slightly gothier Alice who returns to Wonderland so that Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter can act crazy. And boy do they! They act just as crazy as they do in every Tim Burton movie. Johnny Depp's Mad Hatter is completely insane, except you know, when the plot requires a moment of sanity. Helena Bonham Carter yells at everybody! A lot! She's never done that before, this is crazy!!!
My problem with Tim Burton is that he used to be awesome and now he sucks. He sucks because he knows he used to be awesome and hasn't changed a thing- every visual in this film was exactly as you would expect it. Everything is impossibly goth and sinister- it's like they filmed the whole movie inside a Hot Topic. The studios might as well save some money and just release Edward Scissorhands under a different title every couple of years. We get it, Tim, you have a unique and skewed view of the world! (if by 'unique and skewed' you mean 'same as every 14 year old girl')

Don't bother watching Alice in Wonderland.

whoops

Hey, the last two posts were about me NOT watching stuff. I'll get better. I watched all of Eastbound & Down over the weekend and re-watched Californication season 1. I'll talk about them soon.

It's been a slow week.

Hey Guys!!!!
I haven't posted anything this week because I haven't really watched much. There were plenty of shows to go to and people to hang out with, so I wasn't in front of the tv much.
Here is a rundown of what I do remember seeing since the last post:
2/3 of Star Trek: First Contact. It was ok, I was always more of a Star Wars fan because Star Wars is superior in every way. This one follows the Next Generation crew of the Enterprise back in time to stop the evil Borg from preventing Earth's first contact with aliens. Yes, it's almost exactly the plot of Terminator, only with aliens and British people. I didn't finish it, maybe some day.
The opening monologue to the Mtv Movie Awards. Aziz Ansari was pretty funny- he made fun of Avatar and Precious and Twilight and some celebrities and stuff. The best part was Tom Cruise reprising his role as Les Grossman (from Tropic Thunder). I take back everything bad I ever said about Tom Cruise because Les Grossman is one of the greatest characters ever. Unfortunately they're going to ruin it by giving the character his own feature. Something that's hilarious for 5 minutes at a time isn't necessarily funny for 90 minutes. Who knows- maybe it'll be good.
Finished season 1 of 24. It was good- Hopper is in it a lot at the end, so that's great. That's the only reason I watched it again to begin with, but I was reminded how awesome Keifer Sutherland is.
Quiet Desperation. This one is weird because it's not on the tv, I watch it on my laptop. It's a fake reality sitcom about the arts & music scene in Allston, Ma. It's really funny. There were rumors of a Jersey Shore type reality show coming to Massachusetts and that's a stupid idea. A good idea would be to put Quiet Desperation on tv, because it's better then most of the crap out there. Seriously, how many shows do you need that feature a camera crew following an unnecessarily large family around? Zero, that's how many. Take them off the air and put Quiet D on instead. Click on this thing to go to the site. Be like me!!!

Sorry, I didn't watch a lot this week

Hey guys,
I didn't watch too much this week because I was busy saving the world but I can't talk about that because it's classified.
When I did get some time to watch stuff this week it was mostly season 1 of 24. I've seen it before, but then Hopper died and it made me all nostalgic (he's the awesome villain in season 1). I'm not done the season yet, but it's as fun as I remember it. Everyone on the show sucks except Jack Bauer (and Hopper, when he eventually shows up on like, the last dvd). Everyone at CTU is an idiot, because they're all "by the book" and don't like when Jack goes with his gut. Well you know what, morons? Jack's gut has saved this great nation more often than [insert something here]. Jack's wife and daughter suck. His daughter gets kidnapped THREE TIMES in season 1, and I know for a fact that in season 2 she is held hostage by a goddamn mountain lion (retroactive spoiler alert). It's like the writers originally knew that Jack would need a family to care about because it would help the audience relate to him, but then they ran out of stuff for them to do. They were like

"Hey, in this part of the script we only have Jack driving for like 40 minutes and then walking around in a field in the middle of nowhere. Pretty boring stuff, no action and no plot development so we need to show something else for a little while. Let's kidnap the daughter and give the wife temporary amnesia. No, it's just temporary, her memory will kick back in as soon as the action picks up again. Yeah, she sucks."

I'm gonna watch more of it later, even though I know it's just a show designed to push Fox's right wing agenda onto a stupid country but I like it. I think Keifer Sutherland should win an award for pissed off staring, by the way.

Oh Goddammit!

The AP is reporting that Guillermo del Toro has quit working on the Hobbit movies. He's an awesome director and I'd have loved to see his versions of the dragon and trolls in the Lord of the Rings prequels.

RIP Dennis Hopper

Watch these commercials:






Now, I generally hate commercials, but these were brilliant. As was pointed out by the wwtdd writer, Dennis Hopper was better in these commercials than most actors are in movies or tv. He was truly an original and the world is less interesting now that he's gone.

Other People Watching Sports

Last night there was a big basketball match between the local Celtics squad and a team from some other part of the country. Orlando? I'm going with Orlando. My roommate had informed me he would be having some friends over to watch the game and hang out. Growing up in New England, I know my average sportsfan, but it's been a long time since I've observed them in their natural habitat. Also, I haven't actually watched a sporting event in a long time. I don't hate sports, I just really don't care. I've been to games for all of Boston's big teams and had some good times at them (the last baseball game I was at was Lester's no hitter, so that was pretty special), it's just that over the years I've chosen to focus my attention on other things.

So, right off the bat (ha!), Peter get's a call from one of his friends informing him that he will only come over if it's guaranteed that every second of the game will be watched. No changing the channel to check something real quick, no turning down the volume while something is discussed. Basically total basketball focus or he won't come over. It was at this time that I attempted to convince everyone who was already there to tell him that we agree to this but then switch to a Bugs Bunny cartoon as soon as he arrived. I was unsuccessful, but you know that would've been hilarious. This is the kind of person I'm dealing with. And I dealt with it by getting gloriously drunk on vodka.

So I watched people watch the game, occasionally asking insightful questions like "OH MY GOD, how is this game still going on?" and receiving answers like "Dude, it's not even half time." People argued about which player is better and ate pizza and nothing exciting really happened. That's the important part. Nothing exciting happened. Remember the kid who demanded we watch every second? Turns out it didn't matter. The Celtics scored first, jumped out to an early 2-0 lead and never fell behind. The other guys never even got close, and it was dreadfully boring. There was never any suspense, no drama. Even if I liked basketball, I can't tell you that I would enjoy watching a game. Maybe just the highlights on the news or sportcenter or something. Actually, yeah, that's what I'd do. To put it in movie terms for myself, I guess it seems like a Michael Bay movie- tons of boring crap with the occasional cool explosion. Just string the explosions together and I'll watch that, I don't care about Shia LeBouf's story arc. Fortunately, last night's victory guarantees a whole new set of games for me to not be interested in.