Movies

It's been a while since I have seen any movies and then just recently I have seen a bunch off them.

Starting of with Monsters University which was simply amazing and held up to everything I had hoped it would be.  The only thing it was missing was an emotional tie like Boo (from the previous movie) but it honestly didn't need it.  It was a fun mad-cap ride through college life and reminded me a lot of Revenge of the Nerds and that is never a bad thing.

World War Z - I knew this movie was going to be nothing like the book and that helped me to lower my expectations and enjoy it.  It was a fun action/zombie flick that satisfied my desire to see dead things deader.

Despicable Me 2 - Another great score for the animated department.  I'll have to re-watch the 1st to see if this was as good or better but the whole thing was enjoyable.  Unlike Monsters University this kept the 3 little girls (specifically Agnes) to keep Gru in check and add that emotional support to the fun and excitement of the movie.  it also introduced a love interest to keep Gru in check.  The main bad guy in this movie was quite enjoyable as well.

Pacific Rim - Sometimes you go into a movie with really low expectations and this was one of those times.  I went with a group of guys from work and they told me it was a movie about giant robots and monsters and I decided that I'd go and just hope I could find some enjoyment out of it.  When I left the theater I was quite satisfied with the mix of action and comedy and how the movie didn't take itself too seriously.  I could have done without them trying to add in the emotional BS mostly towards the end because lets face it - When you have a movie about Giant Monsters and Giant Robots fighting each other you aren't going to get a lot of chicks going to the movies to see it.  If you do get some they sure as shit aren't looking for romantic sparks to keep them tied to the movie/plot/cast/whatever.  No, they are going there because they want to see big set pieces, action scenes and destruction.  Also, Ron Pearlman!

Preview for The Wolverine looks good and there are a lot of movies I want to catch before this season is over.
Turbo, Airplanes (or whatever the movie by Pixar is called), Man of Steel, The Wolverine, R.I.P.D., and a few others that I can't think of.
For the first time in a few years I'm looking forward to the Summer Movie Season!

I'll hopefully be writing up some sort of poker session review shortly.
Unless I decide that I need to head out and play some more poker.....

Movie Talk - Snow White and The Amazing Spiderman

Tonight I watched Snow White and the Huntsman with my lady and I must say that overall I liked it.
Even though Kristen Stewart cannot act to save the baby Jose the movie was still pretty enjoyable.  What really pulled me in was the imagery and landscapes.  Of course, having Thor there to kick some ass also helps to make pretty much any movie better.

About 20 minutes into the movie the child asks "Why do they call her snow white?" and I responded "It's because she did too much cocaine when she was younger."

Unfortunately this Troll did not kill off the Twilight Saga (can't) Act(ress)

Last night we sat down together and watched The Amazing Spiderman which I liked better the second time but I found myself being a bigger nerd while watching it.  Since I have developed my comic book obsession (which I've managed to barely read any at all this month as a breather) I find myself looking at these super hero movies with a different eye than I have before.
For instance I have read many adventures of The Lizard and know his origins and as such I noticed a HUGE contrast to The Lizard in the movie.
In the movie Dr Connors keeps giving himself injections and facilitating the transformation into The Lizard while in the comic books Dr Connors only made that mistake once (at least up through the 1st few years of Spiderman's existence) and the other times he transformed were because of weird freak accidents while trying to do good and help out others.

Also, The Lizard was originally in Florida and Spidey had to travel to see if he was real and then to defeat him - this is NOT the case in the movie.
I preferred the Death of Uncle Ben of the 1st Sam Rami Spiderman to the version in The Amazing Spiderman because the Rami version held more true to the comic books.  I also prefer Mary Jane but mostly because I want to do dirty things to Mrs Dunst.  I'm also curious to see if they kill off Gwen before they finish off the set of movies they are currently making.
The Amazing Spiderman took the comic book approach of having him develop his webs instead of it being something he is just naturally capable of (true to the comic book) but it veered off way out of character for Peter Parker with the high school scenes where he taunted and humiliated Flash during the basketball scene and then again when he jacked him up against the locker after Uncle Ben died.  Peter Parker always wanted to be able to teach flash a lesson but knew that it was the wrong thing to do and that he could not use his powers in such a way.


In other Movie News:
My Steelbook of The Hobbit from the UK arrived the other day.  I still need to see if I can cheaply track down the Steelbook version that has Gollum on the cover as that one looks amazing but I think was a Germany only release.
I also made a trek to Target and picked up a copy of Django Unchained in Steelbook form to add to my collection.

Movies I'm going to be making her watch in the (hopefully) near future:
The Princess Bride
The (original) Evil Dead
The Bourne (all 4 movies)
The Hobbit

The Evil Dead

It's not very often that I'll actually get really excited for something that is going to come out and count down the days until I get to see it, touch it, taste it or play with it.  However I've slowly been making an exception for the remake of The Evil Dead.

When I first heard about it was hated the idea and was rather annoyed that they were taking one of my favorite movies and re-doing it.  How could this possibly go right?  There was too much room to just destroy the movie and ruin the experience for me.

Then, the 1st trailer came out and my thought process turned to "You know, this doesn't look too bad, I'll give it a try."

Then today it all changed.  As I woke up prepared to write a blog bitching about how my back has been killing me this week I checked my Facebook and saw a New, longer trailer for the movie.

I've now gone to being officially excited and planning to be piss myself scared in the theaters.

This next video is not for the squeamish and if this is just a 2 minute preview I'm fucking dying to see the entire movie.

I'm going to have to wait to march but I'm requesting the day off and even if I can't find a theater buddy I'm seeing this on release.

Don't be fulled if the preview screen for both video's looks the same  (they do on my computer).  The 1st Video is the Teaser Trailer and the 2nd Video is the full length preview with different material.

This is a very well done horror movie preview.

I'm ga-damned excited.

Who else is going to see this movie?

Anyone want to watch it on release with me?

The Dark Knight Rises

So I went out and saw the ultimate summer blockbuster movie last night.
From what I understand it overtook The Avengers as having the biggest debut, 214 vs 207 mill.

I'm going to let things soak in a bit more before talking about how much I liked it or what I didn't like, but I am going to say that I thought the Avengers was much better and I also feel that The Dark Knight was much better as well.

Anyone else see it? Opinions? Thoughts?
Maybe this is why I shouldn't watch movies that I have huge expectations for, then generally leave me wanting.

Spiderman vs Batman Reboots

Batman Begins was a "reboot" where the director wanted to focus on the darker side of the Super Hero and as such has put together a trilogy (once the 3rd is released later this month) that has been exceptionally well done. The way the characters were used in this trilogy has been grand and the Batman has been pushed to his limits constantly in order to survive. I am eagerly awaiting for the conclusion to this trilogy even though when Batman Begins was released I just didn't care for it too much.

I hated Christian Bale. I especially hated his Batman voice. however, I have now watched it and The Dark Knight many times over and I really love this series for what it is. The Dark Knight is the reason I fell in love with it as I went in with low expectations and expected Heath Ledger to butcher the Joker (which was brilliantly played by Jack Nicholson back in 1989) and the movie to suck. To my surprise it instantly became one of my all time favorite movies.

Now, while Batman Begins comes out a mere 8 years after the last Batman movie - the horrible Batman & Robin - the reality is that by that time the Batman series had become a parody of itself and downright sucked.   The last Batman that I consider a "real' Batman was the only other one done by Tim Burton and that was Batman Returns.  After that they changed directors because Warner Brothers wasn't happy with the amount of money Batman Returns brought in and because of the director change and the direction that the new movies were going to go Michael Keaton decided it was time to hang up the suit and Val Kilmer came on.  It only got worse from there.  So, in my mind it is the time between 1992's Batman Returns and the reboot in 2005 that counts - 13 years.  The series came back fresh and has been amazing.  I am not looking forward to it ending and the next "reboot" that will happen.  Even without Christopher Nolan and (probably) Christian Bale I would love if they would be able to find someone to come up with some scripts in the same dark vein as The Dark Knight trilogy and continue the series instead of giving it another reboot.  And if we are forced to sit through a reboot I sure as hell hope they at least give us a decade off.

With that said lets now look at Spiderman. From 2002 through 2007 we had a Spiderman trilogy that was pretty good and financially successful.  Sam Raimi put together 2.5 good movies (that last movie had a ton of issues but some good points too).  The thing with Spidey is that over the years (in the comic books) the role of your friendly neighborhood web slinger was played by many different people in different settings.  As such the whole idea of a Spiderman reboot was 100% completely unnecessary because the universe is huge and there are a number of ways to go about putting someone else behind the mask.  Amazing Spiderman (which is what the new movie is) and Noir Spiderman, etc.
However, instead of continuing the series they decided to go with the reboot method.  One of my biggest problems with the reboot for this series is that the last movie was just released in 2007.  There have only been 5 years between our last interaction with Spidey and this new series.
Sure, Amazing Spiderman went with a new villain for the first movie but they pretty much just started it all over again.  Oh look, how many times are you going to kill off Uncle Ben?  Am I going to have to sit through this again in 10 years?

I really wanted to enjoy this new Spiderman movie but it was lacking because it hasn't been long enough since I saw the last versions and a lot of this movie was just recycled from the 2002 version of Spiderman. There are some differences but most of the plot is the exact same.  Dorky kid picked on in school has the hots from a hottie but is basically unnoticed and gets bitten by a spider.  Cure the montage where he is finding his powers and practicing his slinging and then poor old Uncle Ben takes a bullet and now we are seeking revenge and (even though used differently) ends up smack dab in the middle of a wrestling ring.
Thanks for making me watch basically the same movie a decade later with new actors.  This is why I wish they would have just continued the series - they could have used the same villain that they did but they didn't have to repeat the 1st 45 minutes to an hour to get us where we wanted to be - the action.

Yes, I will watch the 2nd and 3rd installments of this new Spiderman Trilogy (I'm assuming it's going to be a trilogy because everything is now a days) and I hope that much like with the Dark Knight movies my opinion will be swayed and I will fall in love with the whole series.  But, after watching the first movie I really just felt the urge to come home and pop in the Toby McGuire version so that I could watch Kristen Dunst in that wet T-shirt scene again.

Then again, maybe I'll just put in Bring it On which (for those of you who have not watched it) is a very good documentary into the lives of teenage cheerleaders and the hardships that they have to go through on a daily basis to escape persecution by the other teens in their high school and gain respect among their peers.  Oh, and Eliza Dushku.

Lincoln Lincoln I've Been Thinkin

The nice thing about the drive in, other than saving ridiculous amounts of money on seeing movies is that generally it's a two-fer.  After Abe Lincoln was done slaying vampires and protecting all of mankind from the menace I got to watch Prometheus.
I've been wanting to see both of those movies so I was quite happy about this double feature.  However, the movie to my right (a 6 screen drive-in) was playing Magic Mike so I got to see a whole bunch of scantly clad male dancing out of the corner of my eye and that might have scarred me for countless years to come.  However, it will probably take therapy to understand the full effect that it has had on me.
The screen to my left was playing some shitty Madea movie or something - you know, that creepy black guy who dresses like his mother all the time... yeah... Steven Tyler Joe Perry .... That guy... whatever... My movies were cool and surrounded by turds.

Being that I have not watched any of the Aliens movies in a few years I now have an urge to sit through them and see exactly how Prometheus fits into everything.  The good part is that it is a prequel so I can just jump into Alien and truck on with no problems.

Up next is this beauty of a box set

And once I'm done with the 4 Alien movies I'll jump right into my beloved Alien vs Predator.

I've got a 5 day stretch where I am off from work so I think I'll take that time to run through the 4 originals before diving into the AvPs.

Because of the 2nd movie coming on and not getting home until 2 am I never got a chance to go out and play poker last night, however I will make up for that tonight as I harass my local crappy home game.  Last time I went there I fared horrible as it appeared everyone (well, just one person) had fun hitting sets against my monsters.  Top Pair NFD vs a set.  KK vs a Set in a RR'd pot where I got 80% of my money in Pre.  This time I will run better and my goal is to bust someone with a spectacularly crappy hand.

Sunday is going to be my day of rest. I will rest my fat ass on the floor of my bedroom with a video game controller in my hands at all time and my cooler filled with essentials like Diet Mt Dew so that I can just chill and play games the whole bloody day and not have to think.

I do have to meet up with Michael at some point for lunch or a bit later in the evening depending on his schedule and availability and I have to meet up with "My name is NOT The Ex" Carmel for awkward conversation and mortgage exchange.

Tonight Tonight Tonight

Sometimes the great Phil Collins needs to be quoted.

Tonight I'm heading out to see ole Honest Abe slay some Vampires.
Honestly, this is one of those movies that I kinda wanted to see from the first moment I saw the poster. When I found out that there was a book (or books) I had seriously considered getting them for my Kindle Fire and reading through them but I got lazy and that never materialized.
However, if I like the movie then I will most likely follow that course of action.



On Sunday I will most likely be meeting up with a reader of mine (and probably yours) named Michael. I have no blog or twitter feed to link to so the name gets to sit there, mysterious and plain. What I do know about him is that he hails from Canadia and is in town until Sunday night.  So, if after Sunday you all never hear from me again - Blame Canada.

My right eye has been bugging me all day long and I'm blaming this on the cats. As the day has gone on it has gotten a bit better but it feels all red and itchy.

The good news is that I won't have to enter that house for a while as my portion of the grrouchie day care system is over and it has been passed on to others more qualified.

Depending on how late the movie runs (or, more specifically, how late of a showing we catch this evening) I might head out on the town for a poker session.  I do realize that all of the visiting bloggers have left town and there is absolutely no more fun to be had at all - but I guess I can still play with some boring locals and tourists who can't even use the internet.

Maybe I can find a big juicy game like this one and show my poker face a time or two.

Tomorrow will be an all day adventure as for the first time since moving to Vegas I'm going to a Farmer's Market.
I haven't been to one in over 6 years so I'm interested to see what kind of goodies I'll be able to come up with.

And after that I'll be heading to a home poker game with a friend from work.  Going to be a fun weekend.

Social Butterfly this week

I'm just going to come out and say that I love my real estate agent.

When I was looking at buying the house she was so patient and showed house after house after house and always kept a great personality about her.  After getting the first rejection (from a bank who wouldn't sell to me at $7k more than the listed price) I took some time off and she kept sending me reminder emails that whenever I was ready, etc.

So, here we are over a year after the house was bought and she still keeps in touch and says hi once in a while and whenever I ask her some questions she is always quick with an answer.  The other day I got a hold of her about getting some paperwork that I currently need and yesterday after a couple of phone calls she worked the paperwork up for me and emailed it to save me from having to go running around town and getting what I needed that way.

So, Boo-Ya for my agent.  I hope I get friends looking for places to live so that I can recommend her!

Last night I watched:

Even though this is not my type of movie (blah, emotions, argh) it still wasn't too bad.  The best part of this movie is obviously that Whitney used to have a voice of gold before she got involved with Bobby Brown and they decided to drug away both of their futures (Remember, was a prominent recording artist at one point as well.  Ghostbusters 2 theme anyone? heh).  

Even though I thought I had seen it before I didn't remember any of it, so I guess I'm now resorting to watching chick flicks from the 90's that I have never seen.  Oh, I sure hope Waiting to Exhale is next!!!!!

After work I also hit up a Blockbuster that is closing but I was pretty much a day or two late on that adventure.  When I got there there were probably only about 10 video games left and the only one I wanted was Space Marine but I just didn't feel like shelling out the $10 bucks for it.  Instead I picked through a bunch of movies and walked away with.

Weeds Season 2 and 3 on Blue Ray for $4.99 each.

Some Watchman cartoon, Nine and Wall Street (all on Blue Ray).

I went through a lot of the "no case" DVD's where were 50 cents each and ended up not getting any of them because 1) - they are DVD's and I'm becoming a Blue Ray snob 2)scratches and 3) pretty much every TV Season that I had found was missing one of the discs.

Case in Point - Soprano's Season 2 I could not find Disc 1.  Same with Rome, Carnivale and Deadwood.  I really wanted Deadwood but it was missing a disc and conversely I found like 4 Disc 2's but that didn't help me.

They had a lot of other Season's boxed up for about $5 each but I didn't want the DVD versions or I just told myself that the ones I was going to buy are available on Netflix and I could just start that service up (Or Amazon Prime) again instead of buying this old junky DVD format.

As I was checking out there was a Mexican family in front dominating one of the registers.  I feel bad for the guy who had to check them out as they probably brought close to 400-500 videos up to the register and had him open every one so that they could inspect the disc and see if they wanted to buy or not.  Good for them I guess but I felt it was a bit assholiness on their part because they were rejecting about 1/3rd of them and they also were grabbing like 5 of one movie and bringing them up just to find the best disc which meant that no one else in the store could even look at those discs until the family was done because they grabbed every copy.  Whatever, it was DVD and not much concern for me.

Tonight I've got a friend in town visiting and I think her and I will be getting a bit of booze in us and then on Friday I do believe that I'm taking Jennifer Gay out for some cocktails.

Jennifer - if you read this how about a local comedy show as well? It's cheap ($5) and enjoyable and the waitress asks for drinks fairly often.

If you don't read this how about I just suggest it via text?

That be all because it's time to have someone beam me to work for another day of playing catch-up!

Poker Bad Avengers Good

So everything will be brief because I'm typing this up at 5 in the morning and I've gotta fly to work soon.

The other day I decided to play some online poker.  You see, I've got some moola in my BCP account just sitting there with no current way to withdraw or transfer so I figure'd that I'd just see if I can run it up or not.
I opened two tables and played for maybe an hour total.  I forgot how boring and drab online poker is. Over the course of the hour I played I maybe raised 12 times and I only got called on one of those Raises.  I don't know if it's bad luck or timing or whatever but really? 1 out of 12?  I wasn't even raising nearly as much as the other people were.  I'm going to assume it's because nobody had a "read" on me and by that I mean I wasn't in their databases so they didn't know how many hands I play and from what position and my 3 betting tendencies. They didn't know what to do because their computer program didn't have an answer yet.
Either way I got to piss away about 4 KK's over the course of the session and I was getting quite bored when Josie sat at my table.  We chatted back and forth for a bit and the rest of the table was really boring so I opened up an AIM session with her instead, mostly so that I could use curse words that don't come out looking like *******.
Next thing you know we have a small pot and Josie is all in for no reason at all.  TBC had just recently joined the table with a MIN buy-in and in honor of him I sent Josie a message saying "This is going to be very TBC of me" and then I called her push with AK.
The board ran our dry and Josie scooped the pot while I went on to concentrate on my other table.  Josie, the brash person she is, kept apologizing to me for taking my scooby snack money and promised me many drinks (and then later proceeded to show me her 36c's).  I tried to tell her that I was treating it as play money but she wasn't happy with that answer because it isn't really play money - whatevs.
20 minutes later I over doubled up at my other table to give me profit for the evening and I quit.

Now lets fast forward to last night.
I am at a table with a lot of raises and re-raises.  Sneaking into a hand in late position for $10 is considered a win.  Money flying everywhere.
I end up in with 45 off and there's $80 in the pot to the flop.  By the river I have a straight and feel confident about that until someone else turns over their Quads!  blah.
2 orbits later I get dealt AA on the button and can't wait for at least a raise and some calls to get to me, however the table knows that I have some cards and it folds to me for the first time all session.  I make a very small raise and the blinds also go away and a tiny profit is mine.
A few orbits later I get involved in another pot that is about $60 to the flop and flop 2 pair.  I check, there is a bet and a call in front of me and I proceed to raise it to 4x the bet.  The original better calls and the next guy pushes.  I call the push and the 3rd man goes away.  My 2 pair (top and bottom) is up against top pair and a flush draw.  Turn is a blank and the river pairs his other card giving him a higher two pair.
I quit because poker is rigged.

Next thing you know I'm watching the Avengers in IMAX 3D and I'm going to say either I'm just used to it, things are getting better or the movie was just that fucking good.  The Avengers rocked, I didn't once want to complain about the whole 3d thing and IMAX was also pretty cool even though I suspect IMAX just stands for "bigger fucking screen than normal."

The preview for Spiderman has me warming up to the movie some even though I still think it's too soon to reboot the series.  I loved the Rami trilogy and wish they would have just continued from there with a different Spidey instead of a total reboot of the series.
The preview for Dark Knight Rises also got me all warm and tingly in my pantie area and I can't wait for that movie even though I hate Christian Bale, at least Hines Ward keeps making all of the previews :)
There were some other previews that looked cool, but those were the ones really standing out in my mind after the fact.

Going to be a good summer for movies and I'm sure I"ll hit up both of those in IMAX even though I have to take out a Small Business Loan to be able to afford to go.