It has been awhile since I’ve done this, mostly because the speed at which I watch Netflix movies slowed to a crawl once I started dating and partly because I’ve just been slow to write anything at all.  It might also have to do with the fact that my Netflix queue was commandeered by Strutter over the course of two years.  It started out with a little “Add this” and “Add that” and progressed to a “Why hasn’t this come in yet?  Move it to the top!”  So the movies for myself have, sadly, all been pushed to the bottom of the list to make way for Strutter picks which, usually sit unwatched for several days until I finally say “Watch this” and “Watch that” so as to get the queue moving again.  I make it sound like she’s picking crap I don’t want to see, but that isn’t the case.  She just takes her time getting around to watching a DVD of anything.  The solution, I’ve found, is to get television programs, which can be doled out in bite-sized portions.  Recently we plowed through seasons 1-5 of The Office.

In a Bold Move, I finally put my selections first.  I mentioned in my previous post that I recently obtained an Xbox 360 so as to stream Netflix picks.  This is an ideal method for queueing up the television programs for Strutter while I start getting my discs in the mail once more.  And the most recent discs were the first four episodes of HBO’s series, “True Blood.”

I’d heard a lot of hype about this from friends and co-workers, and was a little wary of it.  It’s from the same guy who did “Six Feet Under,” after all, and I vainly watched that show in the hopes that it would finally become something I enjoyed.  I actually have to remind myself that the show witht the “light and dark” girl and her crazy-ass brother was actually the same show with the gay undertaker.  It was really that non-memorable for me.

True Blood is a series set in Louisiana, in a world where vampires have come into the open because of the invention of a synthetic blood which can sustain them.  Of course this leads to some ill will between humans and vampires, which I suppose is realistic.  My problems with the show are as follows:

• Vampires, with the exception of Bill Compton, are such a crazy stereotype.  While I do believe that a human being, when bestowed with immortality and the desire to feed on other humans, would resort to a level of such evil and debauchery that would make Satan blush, I do not believe it would be sustainable.  Either the individual would get bored with it and look at feeding as just a necessity, or the other members of the community who had reached that point would eliminate this threat from existence.  The first three vampires introduced after Bill Compton all fall into this category of evil, and it’s, frankly, unbelievable.
• The main character, Sookie, is named Sookie.  I really don’t need to explain myself further than that, do I?
• The sex is gratuitous.  I’m no prude, but the sex adds nothing to the show aside from showing that Sookie’s brother is personally involved with the women that are being murdered.  But since the story also shows us that he’s innocent, it sort of detracts from the point of showing us the sex.  You could just throw a few lines of dialogue in there to place him at the scene of the crime or even do a classy fade-to-black when things start heating up…
• ALL of the main characters are good-looking.  This is a backwoods town in Louisiana.  I expect there to be less teeth, more fat, and more dirty clothes per character.
• I wanted Tara’s character to die before the end of episode one.  Let this next statement be heard by all screenwriters: We do not need any more obnoxious, angry, educated black female stereotypes in television or movies.  It’s not doing anything for the equal right movement except widening the gap.  To her credit, however, I will say that I like her Southern accent the best.  It’s just the right amount of annoying.
• It’s a vampire story.  Yes, I like Vampire stories.  Maybe all this Twilight/New Moon hype has soured the taste for me.  It just seems more commercially-driven than story-driven.

Despite all of that, I’m going to keep watching the show.  It’s got enough of a hook to make me want to see the next episode, and I actually like the character of Bill Compton.  It’s got it’s own stereotype, too, but it’s one that doesn’t make me grit my teeth.  Maybe he’ll convince Sookie to change her name.

Last night I watched Pirates of the Caribbean 3: At World’s End. I like pirates a lot. (More than ninjas, and I like ninjas a lot.) The first movie of this trilogy was excellent, and probably made it into my Top Five Movies Ever at some point. (I haven’t made a Top Five list for movies in awhile, but it changes over time.) The second movie was decent, but in true sequel fashion not as entertaining as the first. The third, which is the movie that I’m writing about, makes me wish I’d stopped watching the series.

Don’t get me wrong, though. There were crazy stunts, awesome acting, excellent special effects, and a shit-ton of pirates. But I just hated the story. I might be a little too critical, but I just couldn’t get into it. I already loved the characters, because of the first movie, so I should’ve cared what happened to them. But I didn’t. Even at the very end of the movie, when Will Turner died something bad happens to my favorite character, I was just sort of like, “Hmm. That kinda sucks for him.”

I think I just expected too much, which is my problem with most trilogies. (The Matrix immediately comes to mind.) Each movie has the pressure to out-awesome the one before, and most of the time it fails horribly. Even the original Star Wars trilogy, which has always been in my Top Five, dropped the ball on Return of the Jedi. When it came out, sure, I loved it. Because I was nine years old, and I wanted pet Ewoks and because the toys from that movie were cooler than the older toys. But looking back on it, I can’t like it as much.

I’m giving Pirates 3 a three-star review. While the plot was lacking, the acting, effects, and sheer number of pirates was still above the bar.

I recently watched Knocked Up, starring most of the funny actors from Superbad and from the 40 Year Old Virgin. Given the amount of laughter produced from the other two movies, as well as the raving reviews from some friends, I was expecting to laugh my ass off.

This is not a comedy. Don’t get me wrong. It has its funny moments, but they’re all surrounded by what should be called a documentary on accidental pregnancy. It’s a heavy plot, flecked with light-hearted moments. This doesn’t make it a bad movie, though. I enjoyed it. It just wasn’t what the hype had toted it as. It sort of reminded me of the movie About Schmidt, which was also previewed as a comedy and turned out to be a fairly depressing story about growing old alone and grumpy.

Anyways, back to the point, Knocked Up was a good movie. The story was believable, the acting was honest, if a bit over the top to get the humor factor raised, and Katherine Heigl is just someone I want to wrap up and smooch on for hours and hours. I think it’s the way her nose crinkles up when she laughs or smiles…

One thing about watching this movie that I totally didn’t expect is that it made me want to have a kid. I mean, I knew I wanted a kid (or two), but watching this movie just sort of kicked in a paternal/guardianship sort of emotion that makes me feel all manly. This emotional reaction, however, is probably just a personal thing. Your mileage may vary.

I recommend this movie, with the caveat that you go in expecting a serious story with a comedic cast, and I give four out of five stars.

With work driving me batshit crazy, I don’t have much going on to write about. Last night, however, I worked in a couple of hours for a Netflix movie.

I Heart Huckabees was recommended to me by more than three friends, which usually means it’s a film right up my alley. None of them, however, would tell me what it was about. In fact, I had never even heard of this movie before it was suggested. (One of the downsides to living life without watching television is that you don’t know what movies are out. I’m sure some of my friends hate the fact that I always have to ask, “What’s that one about?” when they suggest going to a movie.)

Having now seen the movie, I can tell you what it’s about.

It’s a comedy about two detectives (Lily Tomlin and Dustin Hoffman) helping two men (Albert Markovski and Marky Mark) resolve their existential problems. That’s really all I can tell you about it, because existentialism is something that can not be described. I’ll just say that it was funny, more so because I think it mocks movies that take existentialism seriously. And I’m all about mocking things.

I won’t buy this movie, but I’d watch it again, so I’m giving it four stars on a five-star scale.

I had three movies from Netflix sitting on my desk for so long that I had simply forgotten to watch them. Last Friday, I watched all three, and liked every one of them.

The first movie was Dude, Where’s My Car?. I put this movie in expecting it to be ridiculous and unenjoyable. Within the first ten minutes, I was pleasantly surprised to find it ridiculously funny. It’s today’s version of Bill & Ted, featuring two idiots who stumble through their own mistakes and impossible situations. The two heroes wake up with no recollection of the previous evening, which means no memory of where their car is. It also happens to be the one-year anniversary of them dating “the twins.” While the humor is almost entirely physical comedy and low-brow jokes, I was laughing my ass off. When the movie ended, I watched it again with the commentary on, and that was even funnier. There’s a chance that I may actually buy this movie.

The second movie was A Dirty Shame, featuring Tracy Ullman and Johnny Knoxville. It’s a film by Jon Waters (Pink Flamingos, Serial Mom) and is almost a throwback to his earlier films with it’s subject matter. The movie about Tracy Ullman’s character receiving a concussion and becoming a sex addict, led down the path to sexual freedom by a tow truck driver, Ray Ray (Knoxville), and his eleven “apostles.” Ullman becomes number twelve, and she is the one who is destined to discover a previously unknown sexual act. The movie shows no sex at all, yet received an NC-17 rating for “Pervasive Sexual Content.” I guess talking about for two hours is as bad as showing it. If you ever wanted to know what Feltching, a Plate Job, or a Pay Day was, then this is the movie to educate you. The movie is non-stop laughs, despite the crude content.

The third movie in the pile was Love, Actually. There are too many stars in the movie to name. I watched this movie once and didn’t really like it. About two hours later, I realized I was still pondering it, so I put it back in. The story is actually several stories rolled into one. Throughout the movie, the scenes bounce between different people and show the ups and downs of their relationships. Some of them were typical Hollywood relationships. Boy meets girl. Boy sends girl away because she interferes with his concentration working as Prime Minister of England. Boy chases after girl to woo her, a la Richard Gere in Pretty Woman. Some of them, though, are REAL relationships. One of them, with Alan Rickman (one of my favorite actors) goes something like this: Boy marries girl, Temptress tempts boy, Girl finds out, Girl cries, Boy is sad. Another one is even better: Girl loves boy. Boy loves girl. Girl says nothing. Boy says nothing. Boy and Girl hook up at Christmas party only to be interrupted by phone call from girl’s mentally unhealthy brother. Girl leaves hook-up because she loves her brother. (Not in a dirty way!)

Love, Actually is a movie that I am going to buy, and watch again and again until the disc get scratched beyond viewing. (Thank you, Virgina Belle, for recommending it to me.) I’m willing to forgive the Hollywood Love in it for the Real Love.

Since I’m on the subject of movies about Real Love, if any of you guys know of other movies like this, let me know. High Fidelity is number one on my Top 5 List for this subject matter.

I don’t have cable. I used to. It’s simply wasn’t worth it to pay that much for three channels that I watched for maybe an hour a week. So I cancelled my cable subscription. (I did keep the broadband, though. I gotta have my internet.) I also used to go to the movies quite a bit, at least once a week. This is something else that really wasn’t worth it. I love movies, though, so I began to miss that. A friend of mine recommended Netflix (www.netflix.com), which was completely unknown to me. I’ve been hooked ever since. It lets me catch up on all the movies I’ve missed without going to Blockbuster, and it also gives me a chance to induldge in one of my guilty pleasures: I like chick flicks and musicals.

*waits for the laughter to subside*

So this weekend, I watched the 1971 prduction of Fiddler on the Roof. I’d never seen it before, and really didn’t even know what it was about going into it. I will say this, though, any musical that has a character in it called “Lazar Wolf” is deserving of praise. The story is set in in pre-Revolutionary Russia and centers around a Jewish family and their battle with tradition. The world is changing, and their traditions need to adapt. The musical numbers were nice, with my favorite being Topol singing “If I Were a Rich Man.” The movie ends on such a down note that I actually shouted at my television. Apparently, the moral of the story is something like “Do not have any daughters in Anatevka because they will marry off and you’ll never see them again. Oh, and you’ll also get run off your land and have to move to another country.” So I flipped it back to the “If I Were a Rich Man” scene and watched that to bring my sprits back up.

The other two discs I had were the first season of the HBO series ‘Sex & the City.’

*waits for renewed laughter to subside*

I had to know what all the fuss had been about. Just from the commercials, I figured the show was about four actress-looking women pretending to be average-looking. (Maybe in New York, that IS the average, but I wouldn’t know that. I’ll just chalk it up to suspended disbelief and pretend that one of them is obese.) I finished the first disc and two episodes on the second one.

The show is narrated from the perspective of a New York columnist, played by Sarah Jessica Parker, and tells the story of her and her three friends’ exploits in the world of relationships. It’s basically a video-blog, and it has really opened my eyes. Do women really talk like this when men aren’t listening? Is this an honest insight into the psyche of today’s women? I didn’t think they sat around doing needlework and swapping recipes for meatloaf, but the conversations these women have surpass many of the lcoker-room talks I’m used to. One quote, for example:
“If I do this, I’ll become the up-the-butt girl. No one wants to marry the up-the-butt girl!” (This is my favorie quote from the show so far.)

Don’t misunderstand me. This show is funny, aside from the hilarity of a woman paying $400 for a pair of shoes. Just watching women talk so bluntly about a topic I never really thought about them discussing is a laugh a minute. But should I be laughing? Or taking notes?

Tune in next week for another Netflix Confessional. I have so many movies on my list that I have no idea what’s coming next.