So, I saw Superbad sometime last year and didn’t quite enjoy it. Was I too old for it? Out of the target age group and all that? Maybe. Maybe it was just stupid, with the inability to connect to the two main characters and their dilemmas?

Whatever the case, there was one character in the movie that I could support, someone who I could sympathize with and whose anecdotes were all that saved the movie for me – they were more interesting and slapstick than those of Jonah Hill and Michael Cera’s characters.

I’m talking about Fogell. AKA McLovin.

Whatever the case, the fact is I also love Worth 1000′s occasional Mate-a-Movie contests (along with several other re-occurring contests on the site, but that’s besides the point). Which leads me to post the following Will-Smith-turned-Christopher-Mintz-Plasse vehicle:

I had one question every time I saw positive reviews this summer for Live Free or Die Hard. It’s a rather basic question that no one would really answer — or would give aloof answers to: Does this film live up to the Die Hard franchise standard? I’ve posed this question directly to professional movie critics without an answer

Die Hard, in general, was built on an ultra simple principle: a situation at a location with a reluctant hero caught in the middle of whatever the hell was going down. It’s part of a generation of action movies where everything was “Die Hard on a…” Die Hard on a Bus, Die Hard on a Plane, Die Hard on a Train, Die Hard on a Battleship…

The original — 1988′s Die Hard — set the standard for the genre and began the franchise with out-of-place NYPD officer John McClane – barefoot, outmanned and outgunned, with the cops outside working against him. The second film (Die Harder) was Die Hard in the Airport: not as good but it was still the story of John McClane in the wrong place at the wrong time… Same character but with some graveness to his dialog which made the movie weird. Instead of a tower, it was Dulles Airport that was under siege.

Die Hard: With a Vengeance elaborated the setting. It wasn’t a fixed location but all of New York. It still worked if you ask me because you had John, you had a semi-fixed setting on Manhattan Island (and around New York)… You had deep links to the first movie with references to the past, and yet this time it wasn’t John out of his element, but thrust into things in his home. Oh and John McTeirnan directed (who filmed the first Die Hard). You can see the resemblance to the original with the cinematography employed, and McTiernan’s trademark directly-behind-the-actor light shots. Bruce Willis and Sam Jackson played well off each other to boot. It’s not as highly regarded as the first but it beats the hell out of the second film.

Then you have this… this… this piece of shit that they pushed on moviegoers this summer.

The balance of good-guy, bad-guy (on screen time) is too even — that’s the first sign this doesn’t stand up. Less is more. It’s also hard to feel intimidated by “ready the video uplink”, “start the download”, etc…

Then you have McClane himself — it’s not the fact he’s older or his head is shaved, he’s a caricature of himself while playing a minimalist role. John McClane is a rambling, sarcastic, insulting, sometimes arrogant, belligerent asshole that isn’t the character portrayed on screen by Bruce Willis this time. Oh, sure, he’s got his moments but this isn’t McClane. This doesn’t feel like McClane. This felt like The Terminator — especially with all the shit John is put through, where he’s tossed around like a rag doll, falling several floors and bouncing off blunt objects and he still gets up and keeps going with seemingly no damage. That’s not John either.

I mean, come on! The every-guy, mortality of John McClane was one of the things that made him great. Who can’t remember John running around barefoot in Nakatomi Tower? And what happened — he got shot, he got tons of glass put through his feet, and you saw him suffer that and doubt he’d survive. You had less of that in “Die Hard 2″, but you had more of it (except the jump-off-a-bridge absurdity near the end) in “With a Vengeance”. This time? No — he’s got some cuts but he’s too much like the energizer bunny (which he mocks in “With a Vengeance”) to be hurt. He wheels around Matt Farrell (the Mac guy, Justin Long) and who do you think of but Ah-nold playing the Terminator, wheeling around Eddie Furlong in Terminator 2: Judgement Day (all of this helped along by that minimalist dialog that I talked about).

Oh, and the location isn’t fixed. If the first three films can be directed at exact settings (“Die Hard. Die Hard at the Airport. Die Hard in New York”) this film can’t. (Die Hard America? Die Hard in Cyberspace with real world consequences? Die Hard avoiding Traffic?)

This might have been a great stand-alone movie but it sucks as part of one of the biggest action movie franchises in US history. It doesn’t fit. It’s odd that the original movie was conceived as a Arnold Schwarzenegger vehicle… Because this film plays exactly like one.

Ya see, I help out some people free of charge and there are plenty who have taken notice to what I do. That being said, there is currently a conflict between the guy I work for and a former employee and I’m being used by the former employee to get revenge on my “boss”

Which is petty bullshit.

Seeing I’m an adult fully capable of making my own decisions, I can tell you I do not like being used as a pawn between waring factions. My “boss” doesn’t present me as such but the ex-employee does.

I don’t like my name being invoked as a comeuppance at public functions, especially if it’s done to misconstrue the truth. I don’t like it, I don’t appreciate it, and I certainly won’t stand for it.

Now if I could just figure out what I am going to do…. **sigh**

There are some things starting to get to me though. I guess I was spoiled rotten during my hospital stay and my recovery and now I feel like I’m socially in a black hole. Limited reach outs from friends, limited shout outs and more, and less.

There’s also a lack of focus I am experiencing right now that un-nerves me. For the past 2 weeks I’ve been spot on with focus. On the ball. I see something that needs to be done, I do it. If someone else has something that needs to be done and isn’t sure of steps, I consult. I consult when not requested (and not in a rude way, it coincides needed productivity for a dormant product). I was all over the friggin’ place. AND I was hitting the ball out of the park on this shit! It was incredible, it was a rush…

…It was temporary?

I’m procrastinating more right now — with incoming emails, with to-do projects and what not — than I have at any time since I went to the hospital. There’s just this… social dread? I dunno… Part of me wants to get it done, knows I gotta get it done, knows I NEED to get it done.

The other part of me wants to chill out and surf the web and wait for someone to distract me. The people I want to distract me get credence while the people I don’t drive me back to work.

How about that? “Test your worth to John! Send him an IM during anti-social/anti-productivity hour and if he drops you for a project, you know your value!”

Newest skill test at the state fair, ya’ll. :-p

Oh, one other thing that is getting to me lately… Why can’t I enjoy movies any more? I feel a horrid pain when I watch Superman Returns (who hasn’t?) due to Bryan Singer’s epic scoping of the film and lack-of-editing to make Superman seem more likable. I saw The Two Towers before surgery and thought it (again) a disaster of editing proportions. That’s what I am seeing everywhere — edit, voice-over, edit, edit, chop, dissolve, blah, blah, blah… And these aren’t action sequences where I see them (most of the time)! Is it just heightened perception or should I burn my DVD Collection, get rid of my cable box and renounce Speilburg?

The latter film had enough of a hook to make me want to know what was going to happen next… It nagged at me. I didn’t care for the film as much as Prisoner of Azkaban when I first saw it because it ran so long and had so much going on… But it grew on me. Repeated watchings made me appreciate it more and the ending compelled me to return to Potter literature.

Cal it a Wrath of Khan/Empire Strikes Back negative closing and how it makes you ponder where the story goes from there. Goblet of Fire pulled it off (even if the film lacked the multiple side stories that J.K. Rowling worked into the book).

So I picked up Order of the Phoenix and read it through – finding Rowling’s narration exquisite and the story compelling just as I found the first book to be. While I’ve read about the new movie (due out this summer) through Entertainment Weekly and about which side stories are shelved (Ron playing quidditch, Dobby the house-elf making a return, etc) there is enough going on to keep you interested.

And after seeing the International trailer for the film — I’m dying to see this adaption:

I also blog elsewhere… And tonight I figured I would blog on DFA-link int he Pinellas County DFA group about my fondness for Al Gore and how I am holding out for him to enter the 2008 Presidential primaries.

The only thing I didn’t expect when I blogged this was the fact the post was going to get wider exposure than what I was aiming for. Much wider. Hugely wider.

Blog for America front-paged wider.

More than three years ago, I never would have dreamed in my wildest imagination that I would be featured on the front page of Blog for America — the then-It blog of the Howard Dean for President campaign. Dean failed in his attempts, but he founded Democracy for America in an effort to organize Democratic support better. Blog for America lived on and is still highly thought of on the liberal/progressive blogosphere.

And at 11:45 PM ET, on February 12th 2007 — yours truly has made it to the front page. Whodathunkit?

It’s also the birthday of Shawn Ashmore who plays Bobby Drake/Iceman in the X-Men movies.

Coincidentally — the character Bobby Drake and his birthday is also supposed to be October 7th.

But is Universal Studios and Universal Home Videos able to CLOSED CAPTION a single DVD? Noooooooooo.

Instead, what Universal does is SUBTITLE films, thinking this will cover the hearing impaired just fine and dandy. In some cases — things are indeed fine. But white text on a bright or white background (any given movie image) makes Subtitles a pain in the ass and impossible to read. It’s quite possible to entirely miss out on certain scenes from films because the text subtitles blend in to well.

The above is an example image of a CLOSE CAPTIONED broadcast… See how the text is laid against a black screen?

This is an example of a Universal DVD with subtitles. Notice the location of the titles? On the picture with absolutely nothing to contrast the text with. It’s easy for the text to become illegible depending on the scene.

Of course, most computer DVD playing programs let you change the subtitles around a bit — make them different colors, different fonts and so forth… You don’t have that option on stand-alone DVD players…

Universal prefers subtitles to keep things on teh cheap. It doesn’t matter if hearing-impaired fans have a hard time (or can’t access the bonus materials — a common problem from all Home Video companies). It just comes down to their financial bottom line. Cheap bastards.

My older brother walks in on me to see why I am laughing so hard, and once i explained to him his face lit up a bit and he started relating to me how he loves the show… and so do his friends who call him House when they see him….

Mike’s always been weird in one way or another and I started thinking about the comparison between him and Greg House. House is distant, he’s bitingly sarcastic, shrewd, genius, cold… Mike is… Well, Mike is all of those things, except he’ll smile more often than House, he’ll joke more often than House (for the good of humor, not out of sarcastic desire).

Mike IS Greg House.

I’ve known women who’ve wanted to grab the mystery for themselves with Mike. You can’t quite imagine women wanting House but the mystery about him is there…. Helping to drive Dr. Cameron unsuccessfully towards him.

It’s odd, first my brother happens to look like David Duchovney… Now he happens to be like Greg House. What’s next? He starts making as much money as (insert movie star here)?

But this week I’ve been itching — almost yearning — to see the final Lucas serving of his grand fable. His Magnum Opus of Fiction. I’ve been wanting to view first hand, Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of The Sith. It was the hype for the Umpteenth time that was driving me to see this event movie… And so many times in the past, I have passed on it because I’m hearing impaired and following a movie in the theater is impossible for me — unless you can follow the story through images.

So – tonight’s only the second official evening of Sith‘s release and around 7 PM I said the hell with it and purchased my first ever movie ticket online. I got a ride to the theater and I experienced something I haven’t seen in more than a decade — opening weekend cinema pandemonium.

I can’t review the movie too well because like I said – it’s tough for me to follow films without knowing the dialogue. So if you’re reading this for a review – stop right now. If you are reading this for spolers or just my take on what I experienced – keep reading.

The feelng arriving at Woodlands 20 in Oldsmar reminded me of a crowded pro-sports event…. Not quite what I experienced at the Stanley Cup Finals but it ranked up there. I showed up — 20 after 7? The film was supposed to start at 7:45 and Movietickets.com suggests you show up 30-45 minutes early to pick up tickets. I was worried I’d miss out and get told the flick was sold out. The front box office had a pretty long line and I’m glad I didn’t have to deal with that….

…Dealing with the Automated Ticket Machine, now that was another story.

When purchasing tickets online all you have to do to get the tix is show up at this machine (just off to the right of the box office) and scan your credit card you used to buy the tix in the first place. I have a pretty-much-new ATM card and freaked out when I scanned it a few times with the machine and all I was getting was error messages. A line behind me was getting impatient and I limped off, worried about what woudl happen next.

Besides the Ticket machine, they can handle online ticket orders at the Guest Services counter. I went in and explained what happened and…. and… Well, shit, I just handed them my card, they scanned it, they handed me my ticket and told me auditorium 11.

I was in!

I’ve been eager to experience this opening night / opening weekend crowd and hype for a while now specifically because watching a movie with someone is a much more captivating experience. The last time I watched a movie for the first time with someone was – once again – back in 2003 with Reloaded. That was the second weekend of release but seeing my brother was just as hyped about this film as I was, it wasn’t that bad.

With Sith, however, it was much different. I got to the theater showing the movie and found it jam packed — still with time before even the opening trailers were set to be shown. I limped up the stairs, trying to find an open seat in the middle of the theater but that was a futile effort. Everything was jammed. I turned around and, with a little anxiety on my mind, tried to find a seat down low.

5 rows from the screen itself, the row was virtually empty. Why do I keep making big deals about these little things? But then again, it was reasons like that – the uncertainty – why I wanted to get to the theater ASAP before I even left, and of course why I couldn’t even try to get concessions before the movie. Not enough time. Besides, those lines were at least 3 people deep and it’s not like my balance coudl handle that shit anyway.

The movie itself opened and even with a maxed-out-CGI dogfight, I was immersed in the picture right away. I thought I was watching a buddy cop flick with some fo the banter going back and forth between Anakin and Obi-Wan from their seperate ships.

They said this movie was dark – and indeed, it’s dark. I thought it could be darker but then again I am just talking visuals here.

The one scene where I took in not only the visuals of the film but the audio as well was at the closing of the movie — where Owen and Beru Lars are given young Luke Skywalker…. The music from the original film came up and I got chills. I got choked up…. And I got sold on Sith in whole.

It’s not the Original trilogy. Nothing will ever come close to that… but it saved the Star Wars legacy by not being overly goofy or overly colorful. It wasn’t trying to show you a grandoise image tied to a flimsy story… it tried to tell you a story, which had been a sorely lacking feature in the previous two prequels.

They could have made another mvoei out of Sith — as Anakin’s turn does come abruptly and you do not see Darth Vader as a menace as much as eye candy. But the movie itself is good enough…. And from what I saw it was a sight better than what I had seen in Episodes I and II.

Funny and amusing and a bright spot on my day if I do say so….

July 27th, 2008: It would seem this link is now 404. Quite sad because that was a hilarious concept.

The casting I REALLY REALLY love is Kevin Spacey as Lex Luthor. Who else could play that roll but Kevin?? Oh, some of you fanboys will spout off names but this one works for me.

But they do have their pluses.

A new reporter for AIn’t It Cool happened to be at a happening at the Museum of Modern Art in New York where the Weinsteins and Quentin Tarantino got together to give the audience a little taste of the story behind Mirimax pictures. Being big on Tarantino and admiring Mirmax and what the Weinsteins have done with it, I just had to read this thing and I’m glad I did.

If you’re a die-hard for movies and like to know the behind the scenes stuff, check it out.

How happy is the blameless vestal’s lot!
The world forgetting, by the world forgot.
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!
Each pray’r accepted, and each wish resign’d;
Labour and rest, that equal periods keep;
“Obedient slumbers that can wake and weep;”
Desires compos’d, affections ever ev’n,
Tears that delight, and sighs that waft to Heav’n.
Grace shines around her with serenest beams,
And whisp’ring angels prompt her golden dreams.
For her th’ unfading rose of Eden blooms,
And wings of seraphs shed divine perfumes,
For her the Spouse prepares the bridal ring,
For her white virgins hymeneals sing,
To sounds of heav’nly harps she dies away,
And melts in visions of eternal day.

From Eloisa to Abelard by Alexander Pope

It didn’t take Charlie Kaufman that long to get me tied deeply to Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and it wasn’t just because I’m a big fan of Jim Carrey (yes, even in non-comedic roles) or the fact I think Kate Winset is sexy. No, it was something else that scared me into paying attention to this movie.

I’ve been planning to head up north sometime soon to visit family in New York – on Long Island… And the city I stayed in when my Aunt and Uncle were married 10 years ago is the place where most of the events of Eternal are supposed to take place – Rockville Center. And half the reason I was planning a trip to New York was so I could go out to Montauk and see the Atlantic, the light house, etc…

Does Charlie Kaufman have a camera in mind?

The movie is great in the romantic sense and poses the question – would you erase someone you loved, but have broken up with, from your mind? There are negatives about everyone and everything you ever come across in your life and the truth to the matter is that these things are part of you — part of your mind, part of your heart, part of your soul. It could be an experience of pure humiliation, it could be a period of unquenched sadness, or perhaps when the kids down the street beat the shit out of you…. Whatever it is – it’s part of you. To simply erase thqt would take that part of you away… To shed part of your very existence.

Yet Kaufman offers hope in this movie to the broken hearted… Maybe it’s just a dream seeing it’s a story and a work of fiction – that two people who should be together will meet again down the path or be drawn back to one another.

I loved Adaptation. I left a review that is often requested on the web for the movie. I could understand the character and his fears and such and that’s what drew me into it. In this instance, it’s the desire to shed feelings, to feel betrayed by someone who’s moved on, to be driven crazy by someone but in the end – ultimately realize you are better off with them.

You’re better off with it. With the pain, with the sadness, with the joy, with the elation, with the misery, with the angst, with the apathy, with the torment, with the grief, with the fear, with the laughter, with the tears… They are who you are as much as your significant other. Running from your dirty laundry is just going to make it more painful when you have to live with it.,

If your mind stays “spotless”, your world and your life is blank…. It’d be nice to forget sometimes or somethings, but to forget is to regret living.

Last nigh, a representative from Warner Brothers Home Video emailed the webmaster of Boltsmag.com — namely moi — and tried to recruit me to help sling their product on the web. The product in question is the Stanley Cup Championship DVD which shows highlights of the Tampa Bay Lightning season along with Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Final and the Lightning being crowned as Champs. It’s a DVD I very much want to be able to enjoy….

But I can’t. No sir, I can’t invest a couple of bucks in the DVD knowing it’s going to a company that didn’t complete the DVD and put it on the market. I can’t invest in a company branch that does it all the time with their sport DVDs. The Warner Brothers Stanley Cup Championship DVD lacks Closed Captioning for the Hearing Impaired and I happen to be hearing impaired.

Lets roll back the clock to more than a year ago with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers winning the Super Bowl…. It was a cap on a dream season for the Bucs and I quickly went and bought the DVD that Warner Brothers Home Video produced that had the entire game — or a likeness of it — along with season highlights and a pre and post game show (so they claimed).

What I found out, cruelly, was when I tried to view the season highlight package (which is always an incredible job done by NFL Films) I got pictures and sound but no clue what the narrator was telling me. No clue what miked players were saying. I could see games and relive moments but not find out what people were blabbering about at any given moment…. Was this a joke? I went to the actual game and they had the network video feed but — what is this? Not only is the video feed replaced by the respective teams radio commentary men but — no closed captioning. I had no clue what was being said by Buccaneer radio man Gene Deckerhoff or the Oakland Raiders respective play-by-play radio man.

So I could see but I couldn’t really enjoy the DVD. I wrote off a scathing letter to Warner Brothers Home Videos and got offered a free DVD of my choice as if to say “Sucks to be you – have one of our movies we can’t move on us!”

This isn’t an isolated incident with DVDs and lack of closed captioning. While major motion pictures are captioned on all DVDs, DVDs tend to be loaded with extra features such as commentary tracks and featurettes. Neither of these are captioned so that the hearing impaired can enjoy these additional features they are paying for when they buy DVDs. To make matters worse, Universal Home Videos doesn’t even use Closed Captioning but instead relies on Subtitles (much like you would see on a foreign film) with their movies. It becomes difficult to follow the film if the text is set on a white background or over a bright object. You lose entire sentences or entire conversations because of the setting of a scene.

And it gets worse from there. Trimark Home Video has the rights to NBC’s Saturday Night Live on DVD — which is both syndicated on TV and broadcast on NBC with full closed captioning… Trimark couldn’t be bothered to add this captioning to their DVDs of Saturday Night Live. Just as Rhino Home Videos couldn’t be bothered to add captioning to their DVD palette which includes children’s TV series like Transformers, Jem, GI Joe… Not to mention their Monkees DVD’s…. Or their original offering of South Park DVDs. (I have no clue if Rhino is still responsible for publishing South Park DVDs at this time. This may have changed).

With the Baby Boom population aging and their bodies failing them to one degree or another, why is it that the Home Video industry gets away with this? Better yet, with 22-34 deaf and hard of hearing Americans out there, why does the movie industry think they can ignore this demographic when it comes to their home video sales? Even more pertinent, why doesn’t someone stick the Americans With Disabilities Act in their face and tell them to shape up or ship out?

It’s an ironic story that Warner Brothers tries to get someone to help sling their DVD — for free — on the web when that person can’t even enjoy the product. It’s even more ironic that no one in the deaf community or elsewhere in America makes a fuss out of this… It’s one of the great dupe jobs going on in the entertainment industry for the sake of the almighty buck.