Film

While I’m not nearly as much of a movie buff as many, I do like ’em and watch ’em when I can.

Gladiators, gladiators, gladiators…and spacemen

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Not much went on today…other than the usual purchases of DVD’s to add to the ever growing collection. :) So — on with today’s bits (because I’m sure you’re all just incredibly captivated by what I choose to spend my money on…).

Spartacus: Yet another that I’ve been crazy enough to purchase sight unseen, based solely on the recommendations I’ve gotten on it — though it did seem to go quite nicely with my recent purchases of Ben-Hur and Gladiator. Besides, it’s a Stanley Kubrick film, who I generally really like, and the DVD is part of the Criterion Collection, who consistently does really incredible work with their releases. This is a 2-disc set with an absolute ton of extras…looking forward to spending quite a few hours delving into this.

Star Trek TOS Vol. 21: Finally, Paramount releases more Star Trek episodes! I’m so hoping that when they decide to put out Next Generation and Deep Space 9 they do it in season sets rather than trickling out two discs of two episodes each every few months like they’ve been doing. Anyway, enough of the soapbox…this volume contains two of the most known comedic shows that Star Trek made — I, Mudd, and The Trouble With Tribbles.

Star Trek TOS Vol. 22: Kind of funny, actually, since the first of the two episodes on this one fits right in with the gladiatorial theme I’ve got going. Two episodes on this disc, as usual — Bread and Circuses and Journey to Babel.

Okay, that’s it. It’s almost 2am, and I’m tired. Time to head off to bed.

Mars and More

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Well…the Mars night didn’t go off as well as I’d hoped, unfortunately. Made it through Mission to Mars relatively unscathed, aside from the fact that it was a fairly amazingly hideous movie. I think if it had tried any harder to be 2001, it would have been truly laughable…as it is, it’s just kinda sad.

After M2M, I popped in Red Planet. This one started out much better. It was actually keeping my interest, and had been fairly entertaining…up until the halfway point (chapter 19), when the DVD I’d rented was scratched badly enough to completely freeze up my player, to the point where it wouldn’t even turn off! Ugh…so now I’ve seen the first half of Red Planet, and really want to finish it up one of these days!

Oh, the newest addition to the movie collection: Tank Girl, all around fun, great one-liners, and Lori Petty! Fun fun fun….

And, that’s all I can think of to put up here for the moment…more when I think of something, I guess.

Downtime, upgrades, moving to Mars

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Grrrr…frikkin’ bills. I dunno why everybody’s so picky about wanting their money on time.

Um…yeah. If you haven’t guessed, the reason for the recent downtime was nothing more than my own stupidity when it comes to billpaying. Sorry about that.

However, bills are paid, and everything’s back up and running again. I took advantage of the server going up and down to install the 10.0.1 update to Mac OS X that hit the ‘net today…and, have to admit, this is nice. Not sure what might be there as far as new features, but it’s a heck of a lot faster. Woohoo!

Anyway, not much going on at the moment — since Studio 99 switched me to Saturdays, I’m not dj’ing tonight…so actually have a night to relax. Went out and rented Mission To Mars and Red Planet to watch tonight. Going off to Mars this evening…see y’all when I get back!

Renee…yum…

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Not much big going on today — other than that I was the only person in my close circle of friends who went to work today. Loren just got back from his job working on an oil rig for one of the slope companies, and Rick, Erika, and Miranda were all here at home sick. Bleah. I dunno who got the better end of the deal…probably me, though.

It was, however, something of a Renee Zellweger day for me — picked up two movies with her in it. Not really setting out to do that, just that they both got released today.

First off is Empire Records, a wonderfully silly little story of a bunch of kids working in a record store. Mark and Lucas are hilarious, the eye candy is nice, the script is fun, and a lot of the music is great. Unfortunately, the soundtrack for the film only featured music by today’s “hot” bands, so all the really good music is only in the movie…but at least it’s there.

The other I picked up is one that I consider to be one of the best, if not the single best movie to come out in 2000 — Nurse Betty. While it’s definitely a (very) black comedy, it’s one of the few I’ve found that manages to be a black comedy while still retaining a real heart of gold at the center and doesn’t just descend into full-out nihilistic cynicism — which a lot of black comedies do, much as I enjoy them. When I saw this film in the theater, I literally walked out of the film with a huge grin on my face — not because of the dark humor in the film (though I did enjoy that), but by the wonderful (and, dare I say it, sweet) ending that wrapped it all up. I really think it’s an absolute treasure of a film, and am all sorts of happy to have it.

In case you haven’t seen it, Nurse Betty is the story of Betty, a sweet and incredibly naive housewife (Renee Zellweger) who quite literally mentally breaks down when she witnesses the murder of her husband by a couple of con men (Morgan Freeman and Chris Rock). She retreats into a world where she is in love with the character of a doctor on “A Reason to Love,” the soap opera she watches daily, and sets off to drive to Hollywood to meet her long-lost lover. Now, read that last sentence carefully — she’s not in love with the actor who plays the doctor (Greg Kinnear) — she’s in love with the doctor himself. Meanwhile, chasing her on her road trip are the two con men, who want something her husband had put in the trunk of the car she’s driving. There’s a lot more to the film than that simple summary can do justice to, and the cast plays it to perfection — there is a scene where Betty comes back to her senses and realizes what has been happenig which is just heartrending, to the point where it’s almost painful to watch as the real world comes crashing back in to her. However, with all that, as I said, I walked out of the theater with a huge grin on my face, marvelling at the work I’d just watched. Well worth finding, in my opinion.

So, that’s it for today….

Neil Gaiman’s ‘Goliath’

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I just wanted to throw this link up really quickly before I crash for the night.

If you enjoyed the movie The Matrix at all, you really should check out the official website. Rather than just using it to promote the movie and its upcoming sequels, they’ve got a whole section of the site devoted to exploring the universe of the Matrix, primarily through online comics, with a few short stories.

There’s a lot of really neat stories in there — while not dealing directly with Neo or the other characters from the movie, all the authors have been given free reign to explore the possible storylines of this fictional universe.

The one I’d like to point out, however, is ‘Goliath’, by Neil Gaiman. Neil Gaiman has in recent years become one of my favorite modern authors — as well as the Sandman comic books (which are just incredible, by the way), he’s written some fiction, both on his own and with other authors (the book Good Omens was written with Terry Pratchett, and is just hilarious). With ‘Goliath’, he contributes his own take on the Matrix with a short story that I find to be one of the best contributions on the Matrix site.

In any case, if you’re at all into The Matrix, Neil Gaiman, or just really well-written short fiction, I highly suggest you take a few minutes and give it a read.

Okay, so I’m a junkie

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Hi. My name is Woody, and I’m a DVD-aholic.

Hi, Woody!

Yeah, so…I went through and compared my actual DVD collection with the database program that keeps track of them all and provides the DVD listing that I have here on my website. Turns out I had a few of my roomie’s listed in there that I needed to delete…but I also had a few of my own that I hadn’t put in there. End result?

I passed the 300 mark a week or two ago, it seems….I now have a total of 308 DVD’s.

Boy, am I glad I’ve got a decent paying job!

Bueller’s giant rabbit gladiator

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Three additions to the collection today, as it was a pretty decent paycheck from Suncoast this week. Here’s what we’ve got….

Ferris Bueller’s Day Off: probably the quintessential skipping school film. There really is no excuse for not having seen this one — so if you haven’t go find it. So there. Bleah. Bueller? Bueller? Bueller…?

Harvey: I’d actually never seen this one until last year when my friend Marc introduced it to me. Probably one of the single sweetest films I’ve ever seen, this story of a good-natured man and his best friend — a six-foot tall invisible rabbit — is a true classic, and one of Jimmy Stewart’s best performances. Wonderful, wonderful stuff.

And finally, the last for the day, one I actually haven’t seen yet, but am looking forward to finally watching: Ben-Hur. One of the most famous and truly epic films ever made, and a cornerstone of Charleton Heston’s career, this film actually had the all time record for Academy Awards (11) up until some little film about a sinking boat came along a couple years ago. The only trick with this one is going to be finding some time when I can set aside three hours to watch the full thing in one sitting…when in my life do I have that much uninterrupted time? Ah, well, I’ll find it.

It is way too early

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On the one hand, I really hate the fact that my alarm is going off at 6 am every day so I can get myself moving in time to be at work at 8 am this week for training on the new job. On the other hand…hey, I’m doing it! Making it to work on time every day, and putting in a full 8 hours each day…would probably blow the doors off some of the people back at TimeFrame, where I was so burnt out on the place that I was averaging closer to 30 hours a week rather than the 40 I should have been.

Amazing the differences that can appear when you’ve got a job that you actually enjoy, huh?

And, as a major benefit — between the pay raise and getting my full 40 hours a week, I figure I should start taking home about an extra $600 a month or so!

Picked up what looks to be a fascinating little book yesterday — The Celluloid Closet, by Vito Russo. It’s an examination of the portrayal of homosexuality in movies throughout the history of Hollywood — looks to be fascinating stuff. I had seen the documentary that had been based on this work (the movie is also called The Celluloid Closet), and thought it was a hilarious and fascinating film, so finding the original literary work — on sale for a whopping $2.99, no less — was a nice little treat yesterday. Should be quite the interesting read.

In any case, it’s about time for me to be heading off into the wide wierd world….

Gimme some sugar, baby!

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My single DVD purchase for the day — The Evil Dead II! I was all sorts of happy to find this one, as 1) it completes my Evil Dead trilogy (consisting of The Evil Dead, The Evil Dead II, and Army of Darkness) and 2) this collectors-edition disc is out of print. We had run out at Suncoast where I work, so I had to get it from our competitors in the 5th Avenue Mall…but hey, at least I got it!