Spoon, Bright Eyes and the Lord of the Rings...

by Bill the Evil Twin

I went the Spoon and Bright Eyes concert on Friday, November 11 at the Orpheum in Omaha, NE. I had never seen a concert there before and was quite looking forward to it, but the weeks leading up to it were met with uncertainty. I wasn't certain if Spoon was the headliner or Bright Eyes. I assumed that Spoon was the opener because Bright Eyes is technically an omaha "band" and Bright Eyes does come to Omaha at least 3 times a year. The day before the show, I found out that Bright Eyes was definitely going to open. Oh well, I guess I just was going to have to deal with it.

Things did not seem out of the ordinary. It seemed like a normal concert with a notable exception. There were not the overly annoying fans that you might find at a Green Day, (Insert name of TRL band here), etc... which has the "fan" who "loves" the aforementioned band so much that most of them immediately lose their "love" or for that matter "memory" of the band a year later when the next big thing comes along. What was at the concert was your typical alterna-fan in all age ranges, mostly wearing black, chuck taylors and disheveled hair. Although, there were a lot of older people there and by older I mean age 50 and above which I found odd, but it will be explained later.

Willy Mason was the first to open up and in my opinion he was one of your typical folk singers. He has a message and a guitar and well...he's a folk singer... so politely listen which I did. He got a lot of applause, but I think a lot of that had to do with the fact that the bassist for Bright Eyes was playing bass on the first part of his set. Before one song, he said, "You know everytime I come to Omaha, the people are great, the places are great... the music." This got an applause. You know, because he said, "Omaha." and well... the concert was in Omaha. Anyway, later he said this was the second time he was in Omaha. So apparently Willy is one solid judge of character.

After his set, may friend Dave and I riffed on his "second time" comment by saying things like,

"You know everytime I come here, there's a place I always go. The food is just incredible."

Dave would then ask, "So how many times have you been here?" To which I reply, "Oh... this is my second time." It went on like that for at least 20 minutes. All in all, of all the times I have seen Willy Mason, I've never really been impressed with him. How many times have I seen him? Once.

David Dondero was next and he bored me... so we went to the lobby for drinks. Sorry David.

Spoon came on and played for about an hour and a half. I was very pleased. I don't really have much to add. They played a tight set. Didn't talk too much and just cranked out as many songs as possible. Overall very good. The crowd seemed to react very well at least I thought.

After Spoon left the stage, they then set up for Bright Eyes. I don't know if this is the norm, but live they have at least seven members who play live. Not only that, but they gave everybody in the band ample room to roam on the big statge. Now, I have never seen them live before and frankly was just going to leave after Spoon. I had tried on several occasions to get into Bright Eyes, but it hasn't taken. I recognize Conor Oberst is a great songwriter, but it just doesn't appeal to me, but we were encouraged by some friends of ours to stay for Bright Eyes.

So the lights go down and a woman comes out, people scream and someone yells, "Yeah Sabrina!" Sabrina sits down at the harp and plays some long intro during which the people behind me were talking to each other on how talented Sabrina is. She then played three notes and everyone went apeshit. The rest of the band came out and took their places and started playing. I found out later the song they started with was, "Sunlight Sunset" off of Fevers & Mirrors.

Conor was wearing a black suit jacket and black loafers and even though I was in the 3rd balcony, his hair seemed to be pure black. Also, he seemed to be the average height of a rock star. 5 foot 6 and below, but I digress.

Between one song, someone yelled, "I love you Conor!" It was a male and I wasn't quite sure if he was joking, but I am leaning towards that this guy actually did love Conor and simply chose to express that fact in a crowded theatre. Later, whenever Conor would do his trademark, "Wooh!", the crowd would scream. The audience seemed rather entranced and would gasp and voice their approval whenever Bright Eyes played a note, any note, they recognized.

I guess I should also mention the old people. I was told that there were several members of the Bright Eyes families in attendance. Man, my Grandma would have loved my band too if I could play.

Dave and I stayed for 4 songs. We gave it a chance, but we decided to leave anyway. On the way out, I realized three things. 1) I probably would never really come to like Bright Eyes. 2) Omaha and the state of Nebraska does not need another Bright Eyes fan. There was plenty of adoration to go around. 3. Seeing Bright Eyes reminded me of going to see The Lord of the Rings.

Lord of the Rings you might be asking? I'll explain.

I went to see Lord of the Rings - The Fellowship of the Ring when it came out on opening night. My twin brother, Bob, was a fan and so was my brother Joe. I think they had both read the books and wanted to know if I would go. I had heard of much hype about this movie, so I decided to go and so it with them. Bob told me some of the story and told me of a side story where they get a pony and name it Bill for so reason. Why he told of this, I don't know. (Bob's note: In the movie, the characters specifically mention this pony named Bill, which is described in great detail in the book. People chuckled. I thought Bill might want to know the reference.)

Like the Bright Eyes concert, things seemed normal at first until the movie started. I could feel people having internal orgasms as the movie was rolling. They would start to snicker before something funny was going to happen. They would laugh at an in-joke and just before something scary or exciting was going to happen, I could feel them get excited. So this basically was me in a crowd of moviegoers seeing a movie that everybody had seen already, but hadn't actually seen. I should note that before the movie someone asked their friend if Bill the Pony was going to show up. In the movie, when Bill the Pony shows up (briefly), Bob leans over and says, "That's Bill." I think to myself, "No Shit!". When the hobbits say bye to Bill, people laugh because, yeah, that was really funny.

It's all coming back to me now. I was kind of mad while I was watching the movie. Everyone practically ruined the movie for me, because of the comments and the body language. After the movie, Bob and Joe asked me what I thought of the movie. I said, "The Lull of the Rings" Now, I've seen The Two Towers and Return of the King and really enjoyed them, but the first one just rubbed me wrong.

Now, I have heard that across the country for the Lord of the Rings movies, people were dressing up like hobbits, elves, etc. when they went to go see it. Now, nothing like this happened, but at the Bright Eyes show, there were a lot of little Conor's running around dressed in black with black hair that was unkempt.

I had a friend who went to the concert and he thoroughly enjoyed it, but he did admit that Bright Eyes fans are very annoying. He was on the main level and he said there were a couple of guys that were really into Conor Oberst. When they weren't dancing their asses off, they were commenting on what a genius Conor Oberst was. Like I said before, Nebraska does not need another Bright Eyes fan. The market is officially cornered.

You lost me at the 42 hour road trip...

by Bill the Evil Twin                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

Went and saw Elizabethtown last night (this was weeks ago obviously, but we haven't promised timely criticism). I was looking forward to it. I have seen almost all of Cameron Crowe's movies. Vanilla Sky kind of sucked, but this seemed like it would be a more of a back to basics type of movie. You know, one filled with a character you could identify with that's going through some personal accompanied by a deep musical soundtrack showcasing a knowledge of music most of us don't have. Sadly, only the latter happened.

Elizabethtown is the story of a guy named Drew (Orlando Bloom) who is a shoe designer who loses the company he works for over 976 million dollars. He is eventually fired and decides to kill himself. Right before he is about to kill himself, fate intervenes and... yep...somebody calls to stop him. It's his sister and their father has died. He has to go to Elizabethtown, Kentucky(where his father was born and lived until high school) to take care of the funeral arrangements. His sister has a baby so, naturally(?) can't go and his Mom can't go because no one likes her in that town. (Bob's note: Wow. Those are some really good excuses. I can't make it to Thanksgiving this year with a legitimate excuse and I feel like I'm getting the guilt trip for it. Only in Hollywood.)

Right at the very beginning, Orlando Bloom narrates the movie for a very long time setting up the story. First off, this is a problem because he cannot narrate a movie very well. As he is explaining how he got this great idea for a shoe, working several years to get it done, the fallout, I just found myself not believing him to be the every man I could identify with. I don't really think he comes across as likeable at all. At least in Jerry McGuire, Tom Cruise is likeable even though he is a nut job.

On the way to Elizabethtown, he takes a red eye flight where he meets Claire (Kirsten Dunst), a flight attendant. For reasons I will never know, she decides to talk to him. Because speaking from experience, women just don't find the depressed, suicidal, I-hate-myself persona all that attractive. You might think the opposite, but, no. They really don't. Claire talks to him for a long time while he tries to ignore her and get some sleep. (Bob's note: While she's supposed to be working?) When the flight lands, she gives him her number and directions on how to get to Elizabethtown. Naturally, he gets lost and eventually finds it to meet up with the people of Elizabethtown.

I really don't want to bore you with the other details. Let's just say it deals with him dealing with the townfolk about the funeral arrangements, his relationship with Claire and his relationship with his family.

In one segment of the movie, they talk on the phone all night and eventually meet to watch the sunrise. During that scene, the song, "Come Pick Me Up," by Ryan Adams is playing which is a song about him wanting to get in a relationship with a woman he knows is going to fuck up his mind, sleep with his friends and steal his records. Surely, this was the best song to choose for this part of the movie. (Bob's note: I'm detecting Bill's sarcasm here)

Supposedly, Claire has a boyfriend, who is gone a lot, and continues to hang out with Drew as a "friend." Not once giving him mixed signals. Wait, she does, which you would think would bother Drew, but no, not really. It doesn't.

The big "whatever" in this movie is when Claire makes him a map for him to take a road trip because he's never taken one, and he promised her he would. So in the span of maybe 12 hours, she makes a map that is pretty much a scrap book of maps, brochures and pictures of all the places he needs to go to on his way back to Oregon. Drew says it took him 42 hours for him to complete it. Did I mention that she put together 12 CDs of music timed to where and when he would be traveling and that it was narrated by Claire? So, along the way, you hear several songs you have never heard, but they sound good. Obscure songs by Elton John, Elvis, obscure blues, obscure 70's band, etc, etc, etc.

On this road trip, he is encouraged to take 30 minutes to have a bowl of chili, go to Graceland, see a round barn, take time to pump his fist in the air and dance, take 5 minutes to look at an article talking about his doomed shoe, see the motel where Martin Luther King was shot, etc, etc. Did I mention she included a picture or a brochure from each of the places she visited and had music to accompany it. At the very end of the road trip, he meets up with Claire at a farmers market and they live happily ever after. I guess.

Here are some problems with this movie. No girl is this cool and has this type of taste in music. Not unless she had a brain transplant with Cameron Crowe. So, this very cool girl ends up with the guy who had everything and then failed. I hate to break this to Cameron Crowe, but I don't root for the guy who has everything and then lost it. I root for the guy who has nothing and then gets the girl. In Almost Famous, I totally related to the 15-year-old kid (William Miller) because I was that kid. The kid that wanted to be cool and then realized he could never be cool because he can't. (Bob's note: What a second?! You were never cool? Since when?) I relish when someone who has everything fails, unless you can show me he was a great guy and didn't deserve to fail, but they never did.

Another problem: the music. We get it Cameron Crow!. You know a lot about music!

You really drove it home with the 42-hour road trip with all the songs we may have heard once or twice or never in our lifetime. Your character, Claire, lives in Kentucky and is a flight attendant. When does she have time to listen to music? In one scene you have her packing two CDs in her suitcase: Ryan Adam's "Love is Hell" and a Heart album. How convenient. This wouldn't have anything to do with the fact that your wife is Nancy Wilson from Heart. Probably a huge coincidence. So she packs CDs. CDs? Not an ipod? Again, she is a flight attendant and wants to pack light, so why would she just pack two CDs when she has this VAST collection of music. Which brings up an interesting point. Since she is a flight attendant, why would she road trip when she could fly where ever she wanted for free? Oh, that's right, she's a free spirit who just so happens to look like Kirsten Dunst.

In another scene at the "Celebration of Life for Drew's father", a band fronted by Drew's cousin reunites and plays a cover of Free Bird. It was at that point where I said to myself, "Now I really hated Lynard Skynard." (Bob's note: actually spelled Lynyrd Skynyrd)

The main problem: Orlando Bloom. I just didn't buy him from the start as the lead for this movie. I don't know who would have been better, but he is obviously better wearing long blond hair, shooting arrows and hanging out with hobbits.

Bill nada fan of Nada Surf...

My twin brother, Bill, and I exchange CDs a lot to find out new music. Usually, I'm mooching off CDs he bought, but occassionally, I come up with CDs for him that I've obtained.

I had come across the newest CD by Nada Surf, called "The Weight is a Gift". I thought Bill might like it, so I made a copy for him to listen to and then give back later. ;-)

Bill flips through the CDs and says, "Mm Hmm. Like it. OK. Sure. (He gets to the Nada Surf cd). Nada. Nada going to listen to it."

I had listened to it a few times, so I defended my choice, "Hey! It's good! Just listen to it!"

You might remember Nada Surf from the end of the alternative craze in the 90s. They were supposed to be the next Weezer as their album was produced by Ric Ocasek, who produced Weezer's blue album. Also, they had an MTV-friendly video called, "Popular" that we definitely Weezer like. They seemed like a one-hit wonder. The CD was nothing special and I remember selling it. They fell of the face of the earth, or so it seemed, until they came back into prominence a few years ago.

Nada Surf's new CD is the follow-up to their sort of comeback CD called "Let Go". It was hailed my critics everywhere as the next greatest CD of that year it was released (too lazy to look, but I think it was 2003). I'm sure if you did a search for it right now on Amazon.com, you'd see plenty of 5 star reviews proclaiming it the greatest CD they've ever heard. I liked it. It wasn't so great. It was good. I liked plenty of songs on it, but it seemed to drag down when they'd hit a slow song. Just my opinion.

The newest Nada Surf CD suffers from the same kind of problem for me. I really like the uptempo songs, but I feel the slow songs drag it down.

The album starts with "Concrete Bed", a quick start song with a fast acoustic riff through it. The chorus proclaims that "To find someone you love, you gotta be someone you love." A simple enough message that you need to like yourself for others to like you. It's a nice song.

Then you hit, "Do It Again." It's kind of set up like a Pixies song in which the bass and drums hit first with some light electric guitar strumming. Things build by the bridge with the chorus of course being the selling point. Go figure, this song is about a relationship that seems to be about a couple lying around with nothing to do, so the guy begs his girl to "show me the keys" and "Do It Again". I'm sure you're seeing where this is headed. Maybe I missed something in that interpretation, but I think that's where it's going. It's a solid song.

Then we hit the single, "Always Love." This one tells you that "Always love. Hate will get you everytime." This one starts out quiet for the first 38 seconds and then kicks into high gear. It's a nice rocking song (for them it's rocking).

Next comes my favorite song, "What Is Your Secret." which seems to be about a failed relationship. Nada's singer proclaims, "I don't care about you anymore. The people got tired. Our movies don't play much anymore. The actress was fired." It's an interesting semi-rocking song about someone feeling mislead about a relationship.

So you have four really good songs to open the album, which is a problem. The rest of the album doesn't match up in my opinion. There are a couple of clunky slow songs that drag it down. And a really snappy corny song that Bill absolutely hates, "Blankest Year."

"Blankest Year" proclaims, "Ohh! The Hell with It! I'm gonna have a party!" Bill said that when he was listening to it, he was rolling his eyes. Then came the verse, "Ohh. Fuck It!" along with the background harmonizing of "Fuck It!" He said, "Oh no! They DIDN'T just harmonize "fuck it" did they?"

Bill said that he couldn't take anymore so he stopped listening.

I said, "Well I think it has a few good songs. The first four are really good."

Bill snorted, "That's great. I happen to like albums."

I snorted back like Bill, "I'm Bill. I only like albums. I don't like individual songs."

He got mad.

"Oh screw you! I didn't say that!"

All in all, it's a decent album. If I was grading it honestly, I'd give it a 3.5 stars. Seriously.

Saw Wallace and Grommit today... Part of it...

Originally posted on 10/16/05...

I went to the movies with Julia today since my wife has to work on Sundays. We would have gone yesterday to the movie, but we spent part of the time buying a used car.

I purchased a 2003 Hyundai Santa Fe. I test drove it for a few days and really liked it. It gets decent gas mileage for an SUV. It rides really smooth, too.

Today I was feeling really horrible about the purchase. I haven't purchased a car with payments in over a decade as one I bought with insurance settlement money, one was a cheap repo and the other was given to us. I felt really good about this purchase for most of the day, but maybe it was the alcohol I ingested while watching the Baylor/NU game, but started feeling really horrible about it. I kept wondering if it was the right decision and if I really needed that new of a vehicle and if we could afford it (we can). Basically, I had a huge amount of buyers guilt. I shouldn't. We needed the new vehicle because our last car was falling apart. As a bonus, there's a warranty on the car AND our insurance went down. I'm feeling better about it now, though.

So seeing as how I was bummed out, I decided to take Julia to the new Wallace and Grommit picture, "Wallace and Grommit and the Curse of the Were Rabbit"

Julia loves the Wallace and Grommit DVD that I bought for her before she was born (the first one I bought knowing that I was going to be a father), so she was pretty excited to see the movie.

We rush to get to the theater, but I had to stop as an ATM to get some money. We half-run to the entrance and buy tickets. We buy a pop and a popcorn and run to the theater, expecting to barely make the movie on time.

I have no idea why I was worried about being late.

We must have sat through seven movie trailers before the main movie started. There were trailers for Dozen 2, Chicken Little, some new CGI movie about animals feeding off food in the suburbs, Curious George and a movie called Dreamer. Dreamer is a Dakota Fanning movie about a girl who basically begs her father, a horse trainer played by Kurt Russel, to keep a horse that got injured alive. The horse gets better and they consider running it. It's all sentimental and crap... Basically, tears started streaming down my face a little during one part of the trailer when Dakota and Kurt talk about a story she wrote about a king that lives in a big palace with a horse. She says the story is dumb. He says that he loves the story about the king. She whispers, "I love the king, too."

So I'm a real sentimental guy. I was feeling homesick today and thought of Julia telling me that when I saw that scene. So sue me. Hey, I've only seen ET twice and I cried when ET leaves each time.

So the movie starts and it's a Madagascar spin-off with the penguins from that movie doing a Christmas short.

Immediately, Julia is impatient.

"I want to see Wallace and Grommit!"

I shush her and try to explain that it'll start after this one.

"But I want to see Wallace and Grommit!"

Finally, the movie starts not a moment too soon. I was afraid we were going to have a repeat of the March of the Penguins movie. Julia was entranced at first, but then bored silly after 20 minutes. We didn't see the end of it. It's a great movie, but whoever called it the perfect family movie is high.

The new Wallace and Grommit movie centers around our heroes Wallace, the inventor, and Grommit, his dog, in their efforts to rid the neighborhood of the rabbit problem before the annual vegetable festival. They now run a service called AnitPesto. They capture rabbits from people's gardens and house them in their basement.

While experimenting with a new brain modification device, Wallace and a bunny are hooked up during a full moon. He thinks thoughts like, "Veggie bad. Carrots bad."

Something goes wrong and suddenly a huge rabbit is on the loose eating up everyone's gardens and causing rampant destruction.

The movie is pretty charming and it's kind of odd seeing a non-cgi 3D film in wide screen. I started noticing when finger prints would be on the characters as they were doing their actions and when they would disappear.

But then, we had to leave.

About an hour into the film, we see the Were Rabbit transform and Julia was not amused.

She turned to me, "Daddy, I want to go... NOW!"

"What's the matter?"

"This movie is scary!"

"No, it's not. It's okay sweetie."

"I want to go now!"

"Umm.... Okay."

And we left. I guess I'll have to wait for DVD to see how this ends. I could have forced her to stay, but I didn't want to press my luck.

War of the Worlds is Wo(t)w!!!

Originally posted on 07/07/05...

This weekend, I saw what is most likely the feel-good-movie of the summer, War of the Worlds. It's a cheery tale of a divorced father who becomes closer to his estranged kids when aliens invade and start terminating the human race.

The story takes place over a few days as Cruise just gets off work at his job on the seaside shipping yards lifting and placing shipping containers on and off of barges all day long. He goes home to have his ex-wife bitching at him a little about being late for his weekend with the kids and then his kids start giving him flack for being a shitty Dad and for having no food in the house.

Like any good father when this happens, he tells his ex-wife not to worry, tells the kids to order in and goes to sleep.

Shit starts hitting the fan when an electric storm starts shooting lightning down to the same spot in downtown Boston, which completely fries anything in a mile or so radius. Cars won't start, TVs are on the fritz. Telephones don't work. Of course, this opens a plot hole for the aliens to arrive and a future plot contradiction, but more on that later.



Here Cruise thinks he's going to get his kids to clean this mess up...

He goes downtown to see what is going on. In the middle of an intersection, through a series of earthquake-like activity, a hole opens up. Out comes a large tripod-like creature that indiscriminately starts shooting (and disintegrating every person in sight.) Cruise and everyone starts running for their lives. Such is the tone of the movie. It's one long chase run and hide sequence with a few breaks in the action to set up the new action.

Spoilers ahead...

Because he's stolen the only car that happens to work, which is a van that just had a fried solenoid replaced, Cruise and his kids make it to his ex-wife's house (she's out of town). Outside of the house, after several jet airliners crash in the neighborhood, he runs into a news crew that is running from the aliens yet still have the moxie to get all of it on tape, which leads to the big plot hole. Cruise is shown a tape of the aliens coming down in the lightning strikes, which is pretty cool except for the fact that the news crew had to be there at the time to record it, avoid their equipment from being fried and escape in a van that was probably fried, too. Oh well, no plot can be perfect.

End spoilers...

From there, they try to flee the area and be safe but mob mentality soon takes hold and it's a frantic struggle to stay alive in every scene after newly introduced characters get quickly vaporized or grabbed by the aliens. The alien's attacks start big and then go small as they get down and dirty to find humans hiding.

Along the way, Cruise's kids still manage to give him flack for doing things to keep them safe, but for the most part are pretty realistic portrayals of regular kids. Dakota Fanning gives an especially convincing turn as Cruise's 10-year-old daughter who suffers from claustrophobia.

So Cruise does everything to keep his kids safe, which got me thinking about what my Dad would do in a situation like that (My Dad when he was 40). I'm sure it would go something like this:

(Fleeing the house)
"Get your asses in the car!"
"Where in the hell did you kids put my flashlight?"
"You've got 60 seconds to get your asses in the car or I'm leaving you. Now one of you kids fill up this box with food and another grab a few cases of Budweiser out of the garage."
"Goddammit don't slam the door! I don't care if aliens are coming!"
"Don't stomp down the stairs!"

(In the car)
"Who fiddled with the radio?"
"Will you kids shut the hell up and do as I say?"
"If you kids don't shut up, I'm going to turn this car around and we'll get killed by the aliens. Now do you want that?"

But I digress (Just exaggerating Dad! Except for the beer part. He doesn'’t drink now, but when he was younger, he'’d buy extra cases if bad weather was coming. I can only imagine what he'’d do if aliens attacked)...

If anything, the film does suffer a little from the lack of characters that you feel any empathy for. The action all follows Cruise, so he's in every scene. This does make you care about his character, but it does make the other characters paper-thin. Only Tim Robbins stands out as a mentally-deranged former ambulance driver who helps Cruise and his family hide out.


"You must believe me! I know about the aliens because I've studied! Don't be glib!"

Tom Cruise does a good job of keeping things afloat. Critics complained that it was a little hard to picture Cruise as a working Dad, but I found no problem with it. In fact, I think that a lesser actor would have had a hard time keeping the audience engaged for the whole picture.

On the downside, the ending is a little predictable and it wraps up things a little too neatly. Also, the movie is a bit much to take. It's like watching Schindler's List with all the executions in front of you, but there is no magic list to keep certain people safe. The constant on the run danger feel got tiring after a while.

All in all, it's a roller coaster ride of a movie about what an everyday Joe would have to do to keep his family safe.

Armageddon it...

Originally posted on 04/19/05...

Tuesday, April 19th, 2005

6:00

Armageddon - FX

Bruce Willis stars as the leader of a rag-tag group of eccentric oil drillers sent up in space to save the world from a killer asteroid. In typical over-the-top blockbuster style, the asteroid is going to hit in about 30 days. On top of that, the asteroid is the size of Texas, which has to be blown up by a nuclear weapon, but only a nuke that's inserted 1000 feet into the Asteroid.

There are many head scratchers in this movie, but the one that always kills me happens early on in the movie. Harry, played by Bruce Willis, owns an oil rig business. He finds out that AJ, played by Ben Affleck, is sleeping with his daughter, so he chases him around the oil rig with a shot gun. He's contacted by the US government, so he fires AJ and orders his crew to clean up the rig. 18 hours later, Harry he agrees to do the impossible job of flying up the asteroid and blowing it up, but only if he can use his own crew. There's a snag, however, because they just got paid and they could be anywhere! In the short day after they've gotten paid, all of Harry's guys are scattered around the country. One of them is even as far away as South Dakota on his motorcycle. Hell, AJ even had time to start his own company and be in the process of oil drilling when Harry comes to see him!

Some of head scratchers in this movie:

• When the astronauts are on the surface of the asteroid, they feel almost no gravity. When they're inside the shuttle, there's full gravity. Must be that new gravity feature on those experimental space shuttles.
• The asteroid seems to have earth gravity as evidenced when they are pulling the drilling pipes out of the asteroid when they struggle to pull the pipes out. The asteroid only has no gravity when they need to fly off the asteroid.
• Truman, played by Billy Bob Thorton, is seen in Florida talking with the astronauts prior to their lift-off. Mission Control in Houston takes over once the rocket clears the tower, which begs the question as to how Truman can be in Texas just a few seconds after being in Florida.
• In the shuttle, the seats are too small for the astronauts. There are no head supports for the seats, which would cause their heads to snap off when they hit 12 Gs around the moon.
• After the first shuttle crashes, the crash has fire crackling around the wreckage. Fire needs oxygen to burn, which is unavailable in space.
• The shuttles take off during the day. Everyone in the world is watching it take off on TV and its day everywhere no matter where they are.

Starship Troopers on tonight...

Originally posted on 04/15/05...

9:00 - Starship Troopers - Showtime Beyond

I saw this movie when I was recently married. We had bought a new bed from the Nebraska Furniture Mart and we were waiting for it. It was supposed to be delivered between 10 am and Noon. Noon came and went. No bed. My wife went to work later that day. Still no bed. I waited and waited. Still no bed. Finally, 7:00 rolled around and Bill showed up to see Starship Troopers. All I could think of was that I couldn't leave, what if the freaking bed showed up? Bill told me not to worry about it because it's probably not coming. However, because I knew that Laura was going to come home while I was at the movie, I had to do something. I wrote a long note about how I waited and waited, but no bed came. Then I had to put our old crappy mattress back on the bed frame. Then I made the bed. I went to the movie with Bill and all I could think of during the whole movie was "I hope to God the delivery guy doesn't show up with the bed while I'm gone." I get home and check the caller ID. Thankfully, no bed showed up and I was free from any possible blame. This was all the stores fault. Oh and the movie was pretty cool. Starship Troopers shoot tons of armored bugs. Which reminds me, why didn't they just uses small ships on the ground instead of ground troops? 9:30 The Shining - Thriller Max West Steven King openly hated this adaptation of his book, but it's miles scarier than his piece of shit miniseries that was on ABC. So Stanley Kubrick botched up your vision of the book. It's still one of the scariest movies ever filmed that just oozes creepiness. Also, as a twin, the dead twins freaked the shit out of me when I was a kid. I was always scared that I was going to round a corner in a hotel and see dead twins.

You can learn a lot about life by watching CSI...

Originally posted by Bill the Evil Twin and Bob At Large on 04/05/05...

I'm giving Bill a little credit since he thought up this topic and a few of the lessons.

• If someone has committed a crime, chances are good they had their apartment or car detailed prior to the crime.
• If you're into something freaky (a la dressing up as an animal or sleeping with fat chicks), you're going to die.
• If you cheat on your spouse/lover, chances are pretty good that you're going to die.
• If you try to help someone out by being nice, chances are pretty good that you're going to die.
• If you are mean to someone, chances are pretty good that you're going to die.
• If you have a business partner, look out because he/she is probably going to kill you!
• Don't have Sara on your case if you're a suspect in case in which the victim is a woman, she'll almost always be wrong, but that won't stop her from trying to prove you did it.
• Your CSI supervisor will usually remind you to look for the evidence.
• If you're in a semi-competitive sport and you live for the glory and not the sport, someone will kill you because you were about the glory, not the sport.
• If you're in a semi-competitive sport and you're good, someone will kill you because you were a threat to win it.
• It's perfectly acceptable to use giant LCD wall computer monitor screens in which to display suspect breakdowns when a magnetic map on a wall could do the job just as easy and probably faster.
• While you use your giant LCD monitors, you can be sure that someone will complain about a piece of equipment that they're using that is on loan, but CSI won't buy it because it's too expensive.
• Apparently, it's possible take a fuzzy, grainy surveillance video and then enlarge certain sections with not only no loss of clarity, but a huge increase of clarity!
• CSI has super computers in which surveillance video can be enlarged, reversed, twisted, manipulated and rendered with no lag time.
• It's easy to get a court order to search someone's house on the flimsiest of evidence, but if you were a teenager raped during a home invasion, good luck trying to get that DNA evidence from a guy tied to the crime with a record. That's against his rights.
• CSI will usually spend their time trying to prove that the most obvious guy pulled a crime when it almost always someone that I've pegged from the minute I met them. Just ask me first, guys.
• Semen seems to be more common than blood.
• Surgery on burn victims requires none of the surgeons to wear masks or face shields.
• Every family member that's a suspect will act disgusted that they have to be ruled out as suspect.
• Any activity or hobby you enjoy (like word games or robot wars) will be critiqued and demonized by the CSI crew no matter how harmless it is.
• Don't ever make fun of a family member with an embarrassing condition like bed wetting, they'll kill you with no remorse.
• Don't ever get rid of some friends and act like you're too good for them, they'll kill you, especially those that listen to Vertical Horizon!
• If you're black and not a cop and you're not a victim, you'll be cast as an angry gang banger, an angry teen mentor, an angry athlete or an angry rap mogul.
• Why use an extra syllable or two for 'victim' or 'gun shot residue' when you can use cool words like 'vic' or 'GSR'?
  

And lastly, from CSI - Miami

You can talk to dead people all day long and no one questions your sanity.

Impossible heists? More like entirely possible heists...

Originally posted on 04/01/05...

There's a new show on Court TV called Impossible Heists on Sunday nights . More like, it's entirely possible. In the intro for this show, they say they've combed the country for 8 "experts" in their respective fields to help pull off heists based on real heists from the past. There are two teams of 4 who both compete to be the fastest team to pull of each heist without getting caught and leaving the least amount of forensic evidence. The best out of 5 heists gets the cash prize.

Now this sounded like a really cool premise to me. I love movies like Ocean's 11 and the Italian Heist in which a diverse group of specialists work together to pull of the impossible heist. In the meantime, they wear cool clothes and say cool things to each other that all adds to the coolness of the impossible heist.

Sadly, none of the people on this show are that cool. In fact, almost all of the people on this show have huge egos, which makes them unable to take directives from their team members which means they spend a lot of time bitching at each other during the heists.

The episode that I watched was based on a heist from the sixties in which a guy stole a rare jewel.

That heist seemed impossible. This heist was very possible.

At the beginning of the heist, 3 of the team members are stuck in 3 dumpsters and are wheeled into place by the fourth team member that stays behind. They're right next to the guard station. One team member that isn't in view of the security camera must get out and disable the camera. This is where the easy tasks go wrong.

For the blue team, the one lady that is out of shot of the camera gets out of the dumpster to disconnect the camera. She's told by another team member, "Don't walk straight across. Walk next to the wall out of camera range." She says "OK" and proceeds to tiptoe straight across from her position to the wall in full view of the camera! The red team fares no better, while the team member that gets out to disconnect the camera manages to avoid being on camera, she doesn't have a screwdriver to open the box! So she improvises to open the security box by using her finger nails. So you start with a really easy task and they both screw it up.

The "impossible" tasks continue.

They go to the adjacent guard station and install a security spy camera in which to spy on the guard. Thankfully, the guard has thoughtfully left a notebook on the shelf with a hole the exact size of the spy camera. Whew, that might have called for some ingeniuty on their part.

Next, they need to find some keys in which to turn off the floor alarms in the vault room. Again, thankfully the guard left the needed keys in his desk drawer. It's not as if a competent guard would keep the keys on him for safe keeping.

A four-digit code is also needed to turn off a 6000-volt grate blocking the team members from climbling up the air duct to the skylight over the vault room. So they look for something personal in the guard station. In a move that seems totally plausible (kidding), the code is on a poster for the 1986 New York Mets. The numbers are qouted on the poster like this "1986" with an arrow pointing to the number with the words "THE BEST YEAR EVER!!" next to it. Let's not make this obvious or anything!

They're in the air shaft and have to cut a large square through the air shaft into the other one. This takes an hour. An hour of grinding and cutting during with the "guard" walking around and never hears anything. Hearing tests must not be a requirement for becoming a guard.

While in the airshaft and almost to the top, a member of the red team remembers that she left the alligator clips that she used to disable the camera security box. Sure enough, the box is open with the clips and wires still hanging on it. She shuffles down the shaft, retrieves the clips and climbs back up the shaft just in time to avoid being seen by the guard that's just came back to the station, who is also blind since he cannot see her helmet light reflecting off of the air duct walls while she's waiting for him to to leave.

In the vault room, both teams used the team member with climbing and rope skills to hang upside down over the jewel case to drill a hole. Neither team bothered to actually practice showing the person how to use the drill on bullet proof glass so both teams ended cracking the glass over the case.

In the end, the blue team did manage to get the jewel even though they had a member caught on tape. The red team ran out of time and had to ditch the attempt, but of course forgot to leave an escape rope for the person hanging upside down. So that person was caught by the guard.

It's an okay series with a lot of challenging obstacles like repelling from ceilings and down buildings, but I think it might make a little more sense for the teams to not have things spelled out for them like it is for half of the obstacles.

Saw the movie Saw...

Originally posted on 02/21/05...

I had it all worked up to attempt a stupid rhyme review like She sells seashells on the seashore along the lines of "She saw saw simply to stupify her stepmother" or something like that, but I don't have that much free time on my hands.

So anyway, I saw the movie Saw and it was really good. It's a suspense thriller that for once had a lot of suspense and thrills. I read a lot of mediocre reviews this movie, but I found it quite good. Granted, if you are easily disturbed, then you'll either hate this movie or you'll be watching quite a bit of it with your hand over your eyes.

The movie centers around a villain named Jigsaw who doesn't actually kill his victims. He gets them to kill themselves or to kill others for the sake of saving their lives. One victim has a poison in his body and the antidote is in a safe. The numbers are on the wall among other numbers, but he only has a candle to light his way. Did I mention that the guy is smeared from head to toe in a highly flamable gel?

Such is the nature of Jigsaw. He invents deadly puzzles for this victims who are usually drugged and wake up in the puzzle.

The movie centers around two men who are chained to opposite ends of a dirty washroom. They are chained by one foot. There is no key and they are given saws that aren't strong enough to cut through chains, but they will cut through bone. You probably get where that leads.

I won't spoil the plot, but I would like to point out that one review I read said that the twists in this movie are sillier than the next. I heartily disagree. Considering the bizarre premise, I think all of the twists made sense. Also, I defy you to see the ending coming!

I have a grudge against the Grudge...

Originally posted on 02/10/05...

I watched the movie The Grudge on DVD last week. I was kind of looking forward to watching it because I heard that it was supposed to be scary as hell. To an extent, I could see how it'd be scary. It's got a freaky little kid that does a screaching cat noise when he opens his mouth. There's a freaky looking lady with black hair that reminded me of the girl in The Ring if she was older. In Hollywood lately, there seems to be an affinity for creepy women with their hair in their face for scary effect.

There are some spoilers ahead, so if you want to watch the movie, you might want to stop reading.

The movie centers around a curse on a house. In Japanese culture apparently, if someone dies in a fit of rage, a curse is placed on the house. Anyone that walks into that house will be caught in the fury of the curse and will be doomed. Now, that would be a pretty neat premise if that's how it plays itself out, but it doesn't. Granted, there is a creepy back story from when the original murders take place in the house three years earlier, but it doesn't hold up.

The movie starts with a family caregiver named Yoko, caring for a lethargic woman. She starts cleaning and hears a sound in the ceiling. She investigates. She dies. Curiosity kills Yoko I guess.

Sara Michelle Gellar is an American exchange student who works for the came caregiver company and is sent to fill in for Yoko, who didn't show up that day. She comes to the house to find it all in disarray and helps the lady living there into bed and cleans. Some more strange happenings go down and the lady gets it. This is where I had problems with the movie...

The police all show up and then they start showing flashbacks to when a couple moves into the house with the lady, who is the mother of the husband. While the house is being shown, strange stuff happens to the real estate guy, but strangely, he doesn't die.

We come to find later that the husband's sister, who was shown the house with them, also dies in a strange manner.

The police chief on the case tells Gellar's character that the house has a curse and what not, but if the whole premise of the movie is that anyone that enters the house is doomed with the curse, then wouldn't the initial police and medical crews that entered the house be cursed? In flashbacks, only 4 people are affected. Three of the police that investigated ended up dead, but I'm pretty sure more people would have entered the house to investigate.

In the present, there are at least a dozen people in the house when the police come. Surely all of them are doomed? What about the 3 years from when the house was empty and it was occupied again? Didn't a crew probably came in to clean and paint it? No one from the Trading Spaces crew got it? Now that would have been a Trading Spaces I'd watch.

"I'm Paige Davis and today we trade homes with a couple that was recently murdered. Will their spirits design a home that their neighbors will love or will it give them the chills..."

But I digress...

Let's get back to the movie.

So we have a real estate guy, a painting crew, a cleaning crew, the building inpectors, paramedics, reporters that covered the case, anyone that happened to get shown the house by the realtor, the realtor himself, two different sets of policemen. That's a lot of people! That's what distracted me about the premise, for hyped up non-selective ghosts, they sure are selective.

So I have a problem with the loopholes in the premise. Does the movie stack up? Well, if your the person that is easily scared by freaky looking kids and dark, scary women, then this movie will probably scare the hell out of you, but two things about the main lurkers in the movie also caused me some problems with getting into and being scared.

One, the kid is only creepy when he opens his mouth and when he does, he suddenly grows pale as the special effects morph in and he wails like a screeching cat. as I mentioned earlier. Because of this, I was more confused than anything. He's nice and quiet, but only seems to get evil when the cat voice kicks in. Is the director saying that all black cats are evil? Also, why a cat's voice? It was pointed out to me by a co-worker that in Japanese lore if a person dies at the same time as an animal, the two spirits will merge. I should mention that the kid had a black cat who inexplicably gets whacked during the original rage.

Second, the lady that staggers causing horrors sounds like she's gagging on something. It became a bit of overkill after a while. She's crawling down some stairs trying to be scary, but meanwhile she's gagging away and it sounds ridiculous.

All in all, it's an okay movie that is ruined by a premise that promises a nifty curse, but in the end, it has problems like all horror movies, the premise can't live up to the story.

It takes a Village to spoil a movie...

Originally posted on 02/01/05...

Ever read I am the Cheese? I read it in my ninth grade English class and I thought it was great. It was a nice adventure in the whole What-the-hell-is-going-on? genre that can be pretty effective. That's how I'd equate the Village.

Not that anyone's reading this, but if you are, then spoilers are ahead.

I watched The Village Sunday night courtesy of my brother, Bill, who cooled off long enough to let me borrow the movie on DVD. I'm really glad I didn't spend money to watch it. Not that The Village was a bad movie, but in terms of let downs, it was a HUGE disappointment.

Don't get me wrong. It has a rather interesting story, with interesting characters and interesting twists, which is played out like a quirky drama with some suspense thrown in. That would have been fine if that' s how it was potrayed in the TV commercials and movie trailers. Not even close.

The movie trailers made the movie seem like the scariest movie of the year. It had all of the elements of creepiness. A town isolated from the world in a large valley. They can't leave because of the truce that exists between them and creatures in the woods. The trailers make it seem that the truce is broken and a blood bath ensues. The scenes you see are of spooky creatures moving about with the townspeople huddled in a floor trapdoor begging the person at the door not to let the creatures in. That would have been a nice thriller if that's how it played out, but it doesn't play out that way.

Every scary part of the movie has already been shown to you in the trailers and commercials for the movie.

There are two twists to the movie. One is that the creatures that you see early on in the movie are a farce potrayed by the elders of the village to keep their inhabitants from leaving. As to why they do this is the other twist.

Joaquin Phoenix's character gets stabbed by the village idiot played by Adrian Brody because he's going to marry his sister, whom he loves and is afraid to lose. Because they don't have any medicines, his fiance begs to go into town to find medicines to heal her future husband. The fiance is a blind woman, by the way, who is one of the more interesting characters of the movie.

Her father, the town preacher, shows her the secret of the forest and tells her how to get to town. Of course, there's a lot of "How could you?" lines by the other town elders in on the sham. She gets to the end of the path in the forest and this 1800's village is actually in the middle of a wildlife refuge in modern times!!! Nice twist, but not scary.

That's what I had a problem. I was expecting a scary movie and instead I get a cozy drama pretending to be a scary movie.

This would be like seeing a trailer for a movie promising the hottest love scenes and steaming adult action and instead you get mostly pillow talk and clothes humping. Or if you saw a trailer for a non-stop action movie, but then most of the action you see in the trailer occurs in the first 10 minutes and the characters sit around and bitch at each other for the other two hours. Or if you rented an adult movie, but all you saw were shadows behind a screen with people moaning for the whole movie.

I can understand why this movie fell off the radar fast. People felt ripped off and I don't blame them.

Besides the fact, what people start a village up in modern times and then not come up with a stash of essential items like medicine? You could have stored a huge parsel of them in the shed you don't allow the townspeople to enter. Since the town doctor is also in on the sham, you could trick your naive townspeople that the medicines they have were procured from the town years ago before they were born. That'd be the first thing I'd stock up on if I was going to isolate myself like this. What's more, it's mentioned by those on the outside that the estate makes sure that no aircraft fly over the refuge. If you have someone looking out for you on the outside, why wouldn't this person make sure that every few months a parsel of goods and medicines is thrown over the wall of the refuge. The town elders could have come up with an excuse that only a certain blessed person could go into town to get the goods, or better yet, act like they've always had them. How would the naive townspeople know?