08-26-2005

658) Rampage at Apache Wells. If Italian westerns were called Spaghetti Westerns, then what were German westerns called? I'm assuming it's German anyway, the real title is Der Ölprinz and that sounds German to me. If it isn't, someone let me know.

659) The Big Sombrero. Gene Autry. 'Nuff said.

660) Hoedown. Probably the goofiest movie I've ever seen, but I was cracking up the whole time.

661) The Birds. Tippi Hedren = Hot. Suzanne Pleshette = drunk. The Birds = Awesome.

661 down, 339 to go.

They though they were acting in a film?!

08-25-2005

653) My Name is Nobody. Eh. I guess you can look at it as an allegory for Leone's career. The old gunfighter trying to escape the west, the young admirer that just won't let him, he's already a hero but the youngster wants him to be a legend, he's forced to take on "The Wild Bunch" (and Sam Peckinpah is buried in the graveyard) even though he doesn't care about it/them, etc. It was okay, but it seemed like an inside joke that you kind of get but you just don't know enough for it to be as funny as it should be.

654) Copper Sky. Kind of a drag through the middle, but the Apache raid at the beginning was awesome and it turned out all right.

655) The Lucky Texan. I've found something almost as annoying as colorization. This one was so old that it didn't actually have a score. Instead, the score was played by an organ or piano player at the movie house while the picture rolled so whoever has the distribution rights now decided to add one to it and it sounds like they got some geek teenager to do it with a really neat freeware midi sequencer he found at download.com. And there were a lot of weird whip-pans like in old kung fu pictures. And cross dressing. This one was really weird, I don't even know what to think.

656) Stage Fright. Creepiest thing ever in a Hitchcock picture? Marlene Dietrich's face. Seriously, the woman scares the bejesus out of me.

657) Get a Clue. You know times are tough when your life starts to resemble a Randy Travis song.

657 down, 343 to go.

I haven't been able to stop laughing about this all day long.

Things I Have In Common With Dave Matthews

1) Same first name.
2) Everything in this Onion article.

08-24-2005

649) Savage Frontier. Why wasn't I an outlaw? I would have been so good at it.

650) Wild at Heart. David Lynch is my Ike Turner. No matter how much he beats me with his total bullshit movies he's always "David Lynch loves you baby, it's just sometimes I get a little crazy is all. Get yourself a kleenex, now, hurry yourself up, David Lynch ain't got all day. Remember Twin Peaks, baby? Remember how good David Lynch was to you? It'll be like that again baby, I promise, you just got to do what I tell you baby, David Lynch knows what he's talking about. It's just sometimes you make me so mad. David Lynch tried to warn you, but you just wouldn't listen!" and like a battered Tina Turner I get over it and watch another one and afterwards I feel cheap and dirty and used and knew I should have stayed away. If I ever meet Mr. David Lynch "I'm on TV" I'll hit him square in the face. Furthermore, when will someone spare the rest of the world and stop casting Laura Dern? Not only is she a worse actress than Gwynnie, she's punch in the face ugly. Won't someone please think of the children?!

651) Levity. After the awful Wild at Heart it was so hard to start another movie. It just sucked the life right out of me and made me want to never ever watch another movie again, so it's a good thing this one was pretty good cause two stinkers in a row and I would have just quit for the day. Seriously. You can't imagine how detrimental to my mental health that movie was. I laid in bed alternately praying that it would be over or that a jet engine would come crashing through the roof and put me out of my misery. But this, this was okay. Not a lot going on and I don't typically go for tales of "redemption" but this looks like it was shot just before Kirsten Dunst went from talented and attractive young actress to vapid and glassy eyed starlet (if by starlet I mean high functioning retard with a perpetual blizzard up her nose) so she was still good and Thornton and Freeman were both their solid selves. The story, again, didn't have much going on but it knew it and didn't try to do anything grand, just "here's a story, hope you like it" and it kept from clunking along. I'm down with it.

652) Intent to Kill. I'm not 100% positive, but I imagine this was the star turn that guaranteed Scott Patterson the role of Luke. I mean, it would be impossible to watch this and not imagine him all scruffy and back-hatted, serving up coffee and culturally relevant bon mots from behind a diner counter. Plus, funny mental image alert, what if he sat around the set and whenever any of the other actresses were maybe having trouble he'd be all "Well, when I was working on Intent to Kill Traci would have that exact same problem and she would always..."? How awesome would that be, giving Lauren Graham acting advice from Traci Lords? Oh man, I'm so glad I watched this, I was cracking up the whole time. What a great mood lifter.

652 down, 348 to go.

I did a little better today. If it hadn't been for sleeping til noon and Wild at Heart I really would have gotten at least two more in but sleeping so late killed one of those and it took me a good three hours of napping and goofing off on the internet to get back in the movie watching spirit after the Lynchian fugue state I had entered into during Wild at Heart. I also wound up watching 1 1/2 episodes of Once and Again tonight. I would have watched two but Sarah fell asleep during the second one and then she got up and went home so I stopped it and used all of my willpower to not finish it and three more. I have to be at the doctor's office at 11:00 tomorrow morning so I'll be forced to get up early and I can get at least one in before I leave. I'm bending more and more but it's a strain and very painful. The swelling has gone down though and I'm expecting him to be satisfied with the progress. I'm supposed to start using an exercise back to start getting back my full range of motion this weekend but I am so not looking forward to that. The simple bending exercises I'm doing now are hard enough. So anyway, progress, but limited.

08-23-2005

646) Deep Cover. Even though this was a serious crime drama (and a well done one at that), Goldblum got off some pretty good one liners. "A man has only two things in this life. His word and his balls. Or is that three things?" Excellent.

647) Utah Blaine. You want to talk about tough western scripting? Check out these gems:

"How'd you get out of that Mexican jail, Utah?"
"I told them I wanted to kill you and they let me go."

and

"I ain't never hung a woman before, but I don't guess it takes any different kind of a rope."

That's right up there with "Buzzards gotta eat, same as the worms." Too bad this isn't on DVD, it's a classic.

648) Rock Island Trail. Not nearly as catchy as the Rock Island Line, but the chicks were hot.

648 down, 352 to go.

I slept all freaking day long. This is seriously getting ridiculous. Let me run down my day for you:
8:30 AM - Wake up, think really hard about getting up and taking some pain pills and getting an ice pack cause, you know, PAIN. Convince myself that I had done so, only to realize I was dreaming. Decide going back to sleep would be a better idea. Go back to sleep.

9:30 AM - Wake up from PAIN and decide sleeping isn't going to help anymore. Take pain pill, apply ice, watch Deep Cover.

11:30 AM - Get new ice pack, take nap.

2:30 PM - Wake up, start watching Utah Blaine.

3:00 PM - Take nap.

3:45 PM - Wake up, goof off on the internet, watch more Utah Blaine, take nap.

4:30 PM - Wake up, watch more of Utah Blaine. Sarah calls and wants to know if I want to get out of the house for a little while. I say yes, but only if she'll take me to Best Buy to purchase Once and Again - The Complete Second Season.

5:00 PM - Take nap.

6:45 PM - Wake up, call Sarah, finish Utah Blaine, start Rock Island Trail. Van calls, says Zakk Wylde lives near him and drives a convertible Camero. Jealousy.

7:45 PM - Go to Best Buy and the thread store to buy yarn.

9:00 PM - Watch two episodes of Once and Again, which is one more than I had planned. Silently yearn for Sela Ward. Get Sarah addicted.

10:45 PM - Start watching Rock Island Trail again.

12:00 AM - Finish Rock Island Trail, update, go to bed.

Somewhere in there (about 1ish I think, they woke me up and when they left I went right back to sleep) Windy and Diane came over and brought me Jake's Aqua Teen Hunger Force Vol. 3 which contains my favorite episode (Sadness is for poor people!) so I made them watch it and they thought it was stupid, but at least now Diane knows why Matt has nightmares about a Devil Fry Man chasing him around his room.

That normally sounds like a great day (I'm living the dream, Jerry! Eating cheese right off the block!), but I'm not getting any good movie watching done and it's totally pissing me off. I should have had at least five today but I'm lucky to have squeezed in three. Tomorrow I should run out of the Lortab and switch to Darvicet (sp?) and maybe they won't knock me out and I can go on a good run of westerns. Also, only one episode of Once and Again per day! I let Sarah talk me into watching a second one tonight, but I really have to space them out in case it takes ABC another three years to release the next season and because I would literally watch the entire season tonight. Season Three is the only one that I really saw on TV since they came on friday nights when I actually had a life and wasn't sitting at home watching womanly melodrama (Oh Providence, how I miss you. And on that subject, how you gonna release The Providence Collection instead of whole seasons?!) so when Season One was released on DVD I hopped to and wound up sitting at home on friday nights watching them non-stop. Seriously, it was pathetic. I can't tell you how many times Lee would stumble in at 3 AM Saturday morning and I'd still be sitting on the couch watching episode after episode and he'd be all "You should have come out with us insert crazy story about drinking and sluts here. What have you been doing?" and I'd be all "Just watching this" and he'd be all "What is it?" and I'd be all "Once and Again" and he'd be all "Sela Ward?" and I'd be all "Hells yeah" and he'd be all "Sounds about right" and would then stumble off to bed while I stayed awake a few more hours because I just couldn't stop watching. I hate myself.

Ashlee Simpson Forced to Re-route Summer Tour

Turkmen President Bans Lip Synching.

That's Mighty White of Them

NCAA allows Florida St. to use 'Seminoles'.

I'm pretty sure I know what caused them...

65 high school girls get knocked up and "school officials are not sure what has caused so many pregnancies..." There is no way in hell I'm sending my kids to public school.

08-22-2005

642) Baadasssss!. As I suspected, the story behind the movie was far more interesting than the movie itself. Getting Sweet Sweetback's Baadassss Song made was truly an accomplishment even if the finished product wasn't. Plus, without it there would have been no Dolemite and that's just not a world I'd want to live in.

643) Lolita. I forgot Kubrick directed this, so I still have to see Barry Lyndon and that will be all for him. I'm in kind of a bind with this one. If I say I enjoyed it then Robin and Jana and all the other bitches will be all "gee, wonder why" and if I say I don't then Robin and Jana and all the other bitches will be all "whatever, you liked it because you're a dirty old man too" so I can't win either way. But if that's the case, then screw it. I liked it. Now shut your whore mouthes.

644) Jamaica Inn. This sure made me thankful that Hitchcock moved to Hollywood where he had the talent and resources available to make masterpieces. This wasn't all that bad, it did show the potential that he would later fully realize, but it wasn't all that great in and of itself.

645) Holes. This was a kids movie? Because I found it hard to sit through two hours of the one of the boringest movies ever as a grown up. There is no way little kids could stomach it.

645 down, 355 to go.

Progress! I cowboyed up this morning and set the crutches aside. Putting my full weight on is still an issue but I'm hobbling pretty good and managed to go downstairs to get the mail and take the trash out without a lot of trouble and have started some of the bending exercises. Bending hurts like a bitch, but I can almost sit upright on the couch or in a chair and bend down enough to be comfortable so hopefully in the next few days I'll get some more range of motion. It's still swollen to the size of a grapefruit, but it's not nearly as tender. The front of the knee cap where the surgery actually was is still very tender to the touch, but the rest is fine unless it's just being prodded. On the downside, I'm about out of the really good pain pills and will have to switch to the not so good kind. Hopefully they will still be able to control the pain as well as the others and not put me dead to sleep. Seriously, it took me from 11:00 am to 4:00 pm to watch Lolita because I couldn't keep my eyes open and I also fell asleep during Jamaica Inn and dragged it out to three hours. I skipped the seven o'clock pill to stay awake and I'm really starting to feel it now so I'm going to pop it and go to bed.

In other news, damn the Americans and their cultural imperialism!

08-21-2005

638) Big Momma's House. Whatever.

639) The Cookout. Suck.

640) The Secret Lives of Dentists. Okay.

641) Maid in Manhattan. Okay.

641 down,359 to go.

I'll fill in some more details on this weekend later. Sitting at my desk to type forces my leg into an awkward angle so I can't sit here for too long. Short version: According to Bramlett the surgery went better than he was expecting. He was afraid he was going to have to repair some torn cartilage again but that wasn't the case. He said the ligaments were in pretty bad shape but it was an easy fix. So now I'm at home and there's pain when I move but the drugs keep it from throbbing (I overslept and missed a few hours between scheduled pills and woke up in quite a state) and all the serious dope has worked out of my system so I don't feel so sick/tired anymore.