Batman & Iron Man vs. Spider-Man

Make sure you watch til after the credits!

INDY 4: The Spoiler-filled review

I kid, I kid.

Well, mostly. I'll talk about PARTS of the movie, but not name anything specifically.

It has it's entertaining moments, but it's still a bit 'eh'. Let's just say I enjoyed Live Free or Die Hard (Die Hard 4) more. Lucas even made a crack that their movie wouldn't have fighter jets in it like SOME sequels, and then did something even more ridiculous and overblown. Actually, 2. Kind of bookends. The character of Marion Ravenwood was NOT Marion Ravenwood. Think Lois Lane in Superman Returns. Just not the character. Good writing can save bad actors, but good actors can't save bad writing.

That aside, there are some fun action sequences, the "creature" scene was pretty entertaining, there's some good jokes and gags, but a lot of forced ones as well. And there are some STUPID 'Lucas-ized' CGI crap, a la Jar Jar Binks and podraces. But not quite as much, so yo only roll your eyes about 25-30% of the movie.

And ending #1 is like a video game cut scene where everyone is just watching and not doing much and Ending #2 is just more 'eh'.

Plus, elements from the beginning, featuring a 'Scrubs' cameo, are all super-important and then disappear, never to return again.

All those Temple of Doom haters will probably wish Indy had gone back to, well, India.

Iron Man is still ruling the summer. Will he be dethroned?!

Rated AARGH!!

So I just found this comic strip online that's really damn funny! I pasted some of my favorites below, but you can hit the archive up over here at Creature Corner.

Angry TV dudes

I'd never seen this before. it's pretty awsome.

The Bastard Wall

or The Wall That Shalt Get It's Nards Kicked Byeth Me



That thing is a bitch, but I'll get over it. By dammit, I will.

Thanks to Allistair for finding this. It's better to see exactly what we were doing at UCLA on Sunday.

Here's the other areas we were hanging around in and exactly what we were doing. I didn't do the jump up the railing/grill in the parking lot structure stairwell because I was too tired at that point but we did the rest.

Can you see where I'm going with this?

Sometime in the night last night (because it was working just fine up til 11pm) my trusty black MacBook passed away. He was very young, but was adopted and we can't ever be sure of the life he lived before I took him in, so we'll never know why he passed away.

His body is still intact and I'm having a new brain installed. Sure, he'll have a chunk of missing time (about 3 1/2 weeks), but I can help him fill in the missing pieces as necessary. Some days are probably best left forgotten.

That said, I bought a damn Time Capsule from the Apple store. I can NOT be trusted to remember to back-up my computer on a daily (or weekly) basis, and since it's a laptop and not alway connected to an external drive, I can't even have it set up for auto-updates. So the Time Capsule (which is also a wireless router) will back it up wirelessly every night no matter where my computer is, as long as it's in the house somewhere.

That's fair.

Shnikes!!!

27315.jpg, originally uploaded by macslost.

I'm so jealous your mom got her own Hellboy 2 poster. She looks great, by the way. You can see the other character posters here.


This movie is gonna RULE. The only thing that SUCKS is that I doubt they'll make a replica of the Big Baby for my collection:

(yes, I know they are making a KEYCHAIN, but come on, that doesn't COUNT.)

Superhero training

Don't be fooled. It hurts! This is like Batman-training not "get bit by a radioactive spider in the lab" training.

So yesterday I tagged along with Allistair, his lady-friend and some other cronies for a fun-filled day of ass-kickery around the UCLA campus. It was Day 1 for most of us, except Allistair who hit up a training session last Thursday. And what were we doing?

Parkour.

"WTF is that? That sounds gay." you say. To which I say "Well, it's French, so it probably is, but it's AWESOME. And you're homophobic."

OK, anyway, the nutshell version of Parkour is bouncing around like a monkey. Up walls over & under railing, vaulting off of trash cans, bouncing up one wall (or tree) onto another. The reality of it is that after you do this for a few hours, EVERY MUSCLE IN YOUR BODY HURTS. Except my hands, oddly enough. Those just hurt because I scraped them trying to get over a damn wall. I was the only one who couldn't make it over, but that's cuz I gots no vertical leap. I have to work on that. I have taken for granted that just because I'm tall enough to reach most things, I didn't feel the need to learn to jump.



The group yesterday was rather large and every once in a while a cop car would cruise by and we were joking that if we were a gang, our big skill would be running away like cockroaches. which would be good if your main income was purse-snatching.

If you saw the last James Bond movie, the guy (Sebastien Foucan) in the chase scene at the beginning helped create freerunning, which is influenced by Parkour.



Anyway, the day was bad-ass and I'm definitely psyched for drills this Thursday, but considering all of the little muscles I need and the flexibility to get my feet higher than my knees, I might have to take up yoga as well.

Anyway, if I can actually stick to this, then I'll be well on my way to being a super-hero. There's no fighting techniques, so since I have a membership to the local shooting range, I'll just shoot people instead. Then run away up a wall.

But once I am a superhero, I'll need a theme song.

Bring the Thunder!

Man, this movie just looks better and better and better. SO AWESOME.



Oh, that doesn't play, that's just a photo of a little kid stabbing Ben Stiller. You gotta download it with iTunes. Or it might be on Youtube by now.

Two-Face!!!

Damn, this photo of Aaron Eckhart as Two-Face in the new Batman flick leaked online last week and was SMOTHERED worldwide pretty damn fast! The Warner lawyers smacked every site they could find with a cease & desist. And I mean EVERYONE. There are "Image removed at the request of Warner Bros." statements all over the damn place. That must have been a nightmare. Hell, it took me a good 20 minutes of Googling to find this one. Considering the viral nature of the web, those guys must have been on an insane smacking spree to try and staunch the flow of that as well as they did.

And it's pretty nasty.

If it's gone, lemme know. I pulled it off before these guys got shut down.

Batman vs. Iron Man: Summer 2008

Overanalyzing Cartoons

M'man Scott just sent over a link to an amazing website that goes way too far into the underlying truths and perversions of animated films and cartoons. The highlight of the day links to another site, but it's well worth a read:

The 10 Most Insane, Child-Warping Moments of 80's Cartoons

10) Shipwreck’s Family Melts in G.I. Joe
9) The Care Bears Raise the Dead in The Care Bears Movie II
8) Turtle-Human Lust in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
7) The Smurfs Sing Someone to Death in The Smurfs
6) Seaspray Loves a Mermaid, Becomes a Mermaid and Hits on Bumblebee in Transformers

I won't spoil the last 5. You can read all about them and watch the scenes in YouTube format over at Topless Robot. This is why children of the 80's are awesome.

And a little something for our children of the 70's:

The 5 Lamest & Greatest ViewMaster slide kits. It's a Bonanza of good times.

Gay Batman Squirtgun

Gay Batman Squirtgun, originally uploaded by macslost.

I don't think I need to add anything to that one.

I mean, wow.

Indiana Jones and The Temple of WTF?!

My mind is BLOWN. I don't get it. I'm not sure why it is. Did anyone ever explain this? It doesn't make sense. There's no reason for it. There weren't books. It's not like the books were out of order. Did Lucas do it on purpose? Was he already hopped up on his Jar-Jar Binks trilogy? I just don't get it. And WHY, has this never come up in conversation ONCE in the last 23 years? It's never been said. I would remember. Probably. There were some Bacardi 151 days where I might not have, but the people I hung out with in that time frame wouldn't have known, anyway. Or did they? Is it a conspiracy? Surely it must be.

Oh, sorry, my point. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom is a PREQUEL. It was set ONE YEAR before Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Why? WHY?! That makes no sense. Doom is in 1935, Raiders in 1936. Only reason given? They didn't want Nazi villains. Wha?! I'm sorry, did every movie from 1936-45 have Nazis as the villains?

I'm taking the rest of the day off.

Incarceration Cafe

You've heard me say a million times that I LOATHE reality TV. And I do, I really do. But I need to qualify that statement. See, to me, "Reality TV" all started with The Real World. Which inevitably turned into trash like The Simple Life and so many more atrocities. There was a quote on 30 Rock a few weeks ago that was essentially "If there's anything we've learned from Reality TV, it's that you can't keep a person with no shame down." And that really sums it up nicely. TV about idiots for idiots.

So I don't count things like Iron Chef or Trading Spaces as 'Reality TV'. I'm not going to get into the semantics of 'unscripted' vs. 'reality', but the point is, some shows have people with real talent (like the cooking shows or So You Think You Can Dance) or serve a purpose (Biggest Loser, Extreme Home Makeover). And some just plain suck (American Idol, The Hills).



That said, my friend Tony, who's the head chef at Studio City's Tommy Ray's, just got his own reality TV series, Incarceration Cafe, which embraces both talent and serving a purpose. The series will take place (ideally) in the correctional facility where he once did time, and inmates with non-violent charges who are up for parole will get to compete in the kitchen for a job at Tommy Ray's. Pretty cool, right? The news popped up on Variety this week, so now it's only a matter of time.

Congrats, Tony!

Knowing is Half the Battle

And more official images!

Breaker!



Heavy Duty!



Hawk!



Baroness!



UPDATE!

Turns out the black battle suits are more along the lines of specific battle suits with fighty/jumpy accelerators in them or something.

Lookee! Official Destro & Storm Shadow! No mask yet, but we have a YEAR for that. But Destro has the awesome pendant still. No bare chest, but it's still there.














(Yes, Cover Girl's camo has 'G.I. Joe' in the design.)












(Yes, Snake-Eyes, who's mute, has a mouth in his mask.)

IT'S GOT WHAT PLANTS CRAVE!!!!

BRAWNDO IS KING!!! (How did I miss this the first time around? Oh, because Fox dumped it)

THANK YOU ALF

D'oh! Space Nazis!

Idiocracy for the Ages

I saw Idiocracy in the theaters and several times since, as it is one of the funniest damn movies I've ever seen. Sadly, most people actually haven't seen it because Fox 'dumped' the movie in a few theaters and let it die.

Why? It didn't test well. At first, I thought that was a bullshit answer for why it got dumped because everyone I know who HAS seen it thinks it's awesome, so how could it had tested poorly? Then I realized that it basically calls 80+ percent of the country idiots and the movie beats that to death with every single example it could think of from fast food to reality TV to fart jokes.

It didn't test well because the audience truly didn't think it was funny. Because that's their reality NOW. Not even 500 years from now.

We are DOOMED as a civilization. Or country anyway.

Awesomeness for Awesomeness' Sake

Team Click, originally uploaded by macslost.

Team Click assembled for the first time last night (minus m'man Scott) for IRON MAN. After some drama which involved traffic, Dinah & Brigid locked out of the theater and returning 7 tix for the following show (after some seeing the first 15 minutes already), all was fine and good!

Not to spoil anything, IRON MAN WAS AWESOME. After leaving, having some hard cider and walking back through the theater to get cars, I totally could have gone back and watched it again.

Also, STAY THROUGH THE ENTIRE CREDITS!!!!!!!!

'nuff said.

T-Minus 32 hours!!

I am SO PSYCHED for tomorrow.

Thanks, Scott!!!