The Poster is Available!
The Poster is Available!
entry Update, 12:15pm Monday, November 7th
The Schlocktoberfest Megalodon poster is now available from Warehouse 23. It'll set you back $10.00 plus shipping, and comes rolled in a sturdy, weapons-grade cardboard tube. Buy the poster and bonk your friends! Multiple orders will come rolled in the same tube, though, so you won't be able to arm a tube-wielding phalanx by filling your christmas shopping list with posters.
I now return you to a rambling complaint about this year's cinema...
--Howard
More on Movies
entry, Monday, November 7th, 2005
Okay, okay, okay. Enough of you have reminded me that Chronicles of Narnia is coming out that I'd be remiss in not mentioning that as a worthy recipient of my matinee allowance this holiday season. Also of note, Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit -- this film is already out, and while I haven't seen it, I'm told it's excellent, and may bode well for the season.
A few of you also posted to tell me that Serenity was really good. Well, yeah, I knew that. I tend to agree with Orson Scott Card on this one: it was the best science-fiction movie of all time. However, Serenity didn't show a) this summer, or b) on very many screens, so it can't really be pointed to as a redemption for the extreme low-pressure system that was this summer's film fare. (For non-science types, or slow Monday Morning types, "low-pressure system"="suck.")
I also find it amusing that of all the films I mentioned in the e-pistle below, Google only seems to have noticed one of them. Maybe that's because it's at the heart of said low-pressure system, the eye of the hurricane if you will.
Praying for a Cinematic Christmas
entry, November 6th, 2005
I really, really hope that this year's holiday season has better cinema offerings than we got this summer. It's only a little bit of a stretch to say that I'm PRAYING for that, but you should know that I save my most heartfelt prayers for more important things, like "please can I be a Cartoonist for another year?"
Anyway, movies. I was at Blockbuster last night, and the guy at the counter was whining to a customer who was in turn whining about how there were no copies of Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith on the shelves. The employee said "Yeah, this was like the best movie of the summer, and we only got thirty-six copies of it. THIRTY-SIX! Can you believe that?"
Well, yeah, I CAN. It wasn't the best movie of the summer by any stretch of the imagination, but enough people plan to fill out their collection of Lucas Travesties with the DVD that rental demand will be low. And hey, look at that. You're out of rental copies, but you've got several copies there you're willing to SELL us. Who do you think you're fooling?
The long and short of it was that this summer was pretty lame, movie-wise, and I'm hoping for some serious escapism in the next two months to make up for it. I recently saw Corpse Bride if it's an apt harbinger of the holiday movie season, we'll do okay. I giggled gleefully throughout, and I bought Mr. Bonejangles' musical number "Remains of the Day" at the iTunes music store almost as soon as I got home (current play-count: 42).
I've been watching the King Kong trailers with great interest. This is a movie that is going to thrill me, and I'm sure I'll cry like a baby at the end of it. I mean, All Dogs may Go To Heaven, but I'm not sure about giant apes. After watching the latest trailer (the one where we see Kong squaring off against a T-Rex) I went out to buy fruit snacks for our Idaho road trip. I came home with "Curious George" and "Dinosaur" themed snacks. You'd think I had monkeys and dinos on the brain or something.
Zathura doesn't interest me that much -- I feel kind of like we already DID that with Jumanji a decade ago, and at least THAT movie had monkeys in it. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire looks promising, but I don't want to see it just because I've seen the previous three. I want that movie to reach out and grab me by the collar, and drag me into the theater on its own strengths. (Hey, George Lucas... are you listening?)
What else is coming out? (I mean, besides Aeon Flux, which had better not be as preachy or cautionary as the previews make it look. That movie is supposed to be about a Lady Who Kills People While Wearing Almost Nothing. Casting an Acadamy-Award winning actress in the title role is a not a good sign... )
This paragraph is here because I've been told that it's bad form to end an essay in parentheses (even if all you're doing is ranting about movies.) Ooops! That was close.