While shopping at Meijer yesterday, I noticed that they’ve added a Redbox machine, where you can rent a DVD for a day for $1. Always a sucker for fancy new methods of media consumption, I found myself poring over the list of available movies. There was a reasonable spread of available movies, but none that really captured my imagination… except for one.

I knew full well that it would be bad. But I love the first two Alien movies, and that love obliges me to watch each sequel as it comes out, no matter how increasingly wretched they progressively get. And so it was that, after Angry Teti opened some early Mother’s Day gifts, we retired downstairs to watch… Alien vs. Predator: Requiem. I don’t know why she insisted on watching it with me, but I’m glad she did, because it let us record for posterity some of our commentary as the horror unfolded. Spare yourself the horror of watching this, and instead read on. You’re not missing anything. I’ve added a few timestamps in case you inexplicably want to actually watch the movie:

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between me (Angry Teti) and Byzantine.

The scene: While watching some show at hulu last night, we got the opportunity to view this commercial about 14 times. I found it easy enough to ignore, but on about the 3rd or 4th go-round, I was recalled from my reverie by this comment from Byz:

Byz: I don’t understand this commercial.

AT: [peers at screen] I think they want you to buy a car.

Byz: Like, I don’t understand the words he’s saying.

[AT listens intently]

Commercial: One door for “buzzin’”…One door for, yeah, you…

AT: The car has four doors?

Commercial: …It’s car…

Byz: [Affecting accent of John Rhys-Davies in the Indiana Jones movies, specifically the line “You are named after the dog?”] One door for crazy…One door for you…Is car!

AT: What is car? Is thing with doors!

Epilogue: Apparently, a “shwayze” is a person. And it remains to be seen whether the key to the car-buying hearts of Gen Y is the presence of four doors, and the absence of indefinite articles.

Short Cuts: Actually, I’m not sure if it’s accurate to say that Everybody Loved this one, since probably a lot of people have never heard of it. I wish I hadn’t.

According to rottentomatoes, the critics loved it, at least. Of course, they hardly had a choice, since it was the work of a couple of famous guys. Which makes me quite the Philistine to be taking exception to it (but not literally).
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Forgetting Sarah Marshall was a pretty funny movie with a few laugh-out-loud moments. The rest of the audience agreed, though most of their laughs were directed at the full-frontal wang nudity.

Ok, so is 2008 going to be the year of the comical wang on the big screen? It’s only April and weens have already drawn big laughs in Walk Hard and now in Forgetting Sarah Marshall. I was at both and the laughs were big. Laughs = cash, so I wouldn’t be surprised to see a few more fellas in movies in the near future. Will they last? Will they lose their comedic value? When the wang-shock-value is over, where do we go next? Anus in 2009? Boners in 2010?

P.S. I laughed too.

I caught the first half of 21 the other day, before being called out to pick someone up. The closest I ever came to leaving a movie before this was when Will Smith connected to the alien ethernet in Independence Day.

The 10.5 I managed to see was interesting in the formula “guys working the system and avoiding a beat-down” sort of way. It was 50% of a fun watch and had all the right energy soundtrack in all the right “will he get away with it” moments. I don’t feel compelled to immediately sit through the first 10.5 again to get to the last, however, so apparently I don’t find it 100% stellar … and besides, that’d be like 31.5, which is just weird.

Four Weddings and a Funeral: I don’t really hate this one as much as some of the other Movies I’ve Hated that everyone else Loved. I just sort of didn’t like it, and couldn’t figure out why everyone else did so much.

I guess the main problem is that I don’t like Hugh Grant, at all. I never have, and he’s at his blinkiest and phony-harmless-slimiest in this one. I do like Andie MacDowell, but mostly because she has a pleasant voice and always has a nice smile on her face every time you see her. But I would not like the line “Is it raining? I hadn’t noticed” no matter how pleasant the voice doing the uttering.

I could also do without the big speech about how much Andie’s character loved her husband, “Hamish” (what kind of a name is that? “What is that I taste? It seems kind of Hamish”), followed by her leaving him with no explanation to take up with The Blinkinator. I also don’t buy the breaking-up of a wedding, no matter how sweet and pure-hearted the disabled fellow responsible for it, as a major triumph for Love and Romance. This movie is kind of an anti-romance really, at least anti-the concept of the possibility of romantic love as more than a temporary diversion. Actually, if it had been marketed that way, I might have liked it better.

Anyway, in trying to remember more about the movie to type smack about, I just read the “memorable quotes” on imdb. I don’t remember any of them. I guess that just about says it all.

So not too long ago, my roommate, his girlfriend, and I were hanging out an we were kind of bored.  So we decided to bust out a board game he had gotten from his Aunt for Christmas, and yet to have the self-loathing to open.
Fact or Crap - Beat Da Bomb, the Explosive Interactive DVD Game featuring Howie Mandel

I can barely put into words how dumb this game is, but I’ll try.

So literally all that is in this normal board game size box is a DVD in a cardboard slip case, a humorously small and uncomfortable heating pad (minus the heat) type thing that says “Hot Seat” on it, and about 40 “tokens” which look identical to poker chips.  The instructions for the game are printed on the inside of the box, and spoken to you by Howie Mandel via the included DVD.

So here’s the game (according to the rules they provide).  You can play individually or in teams, and each turn Howie Mandel sarcastically makes some sort of quip about your score and questions whether or not you’re ready for the sheer intensity of the coming round.  You then see a statement of some sort (A banana is a type of fruit) and you have to quickly answer whether or not that is fact or crap.  If you get it right, you are then asked another one.  If you get 4 right in a row, you successfully “Beat da bomb” (the word “da” in place of “the” is used with reckless abandon).  You then get tokens for however many questions you answered correctly (what the bonus is for “beating da bomb” remains to be seen).  You are then made fun of by Howie, just to simulate what it would be like to play the game with your alcoholic dad.
But here’s the catch.  The other team (or individual) is supposed to read the statements to you, while you sit in a chair topped with the cheap pad labeled “hot seat” which faces away from the television.  And the other thing is, the person reading the statement to you has about 6 seconds to read the question to you and enter in your answer correctly, or “da bomb” explodes.  What is to prevent the other person from reading slowly or entering in the wrong answer?  Nothing.  Needless to say, this was the first rule we abandoned, logically having the person who’s turn it was hold the DVD remote.

Every once in a while there’s a special round in which you answer four right away before entering.  I don’t remember how it works but we decided to have those rounds be the “you just won 4 tokens” rounds.

The ultimate goal?  To get 15 tokens.  That is literally it.  There is nothing else to the game but having Howie Mandel relentlessly make fun of your score or your poor fact or crap performance between each turn.  It’s almost as if he’s mocking you for having purchased the game in the first place.

And the price for this?  33.95, when on sale.  I have to imagine that each game costs maybe $2.00 to manufacture, and they probably gave Howie Mandel a couple thousand bucks to put on a jump suit and say stupid lines for half a day, so with that kind of a mark up, they need to sell about 100 to break even (though maybe they gave Howie a lot more, who knows).

So if you’re a mid fifties person who needs to get a birthday present for a nephew or niece, and you think that Howie Mandel is a real hoot, and you’re blown away that you can play an actual game on the DVD, then this is the game for you.  Otherwise, it will make you hate America.

Angry Teti shared this with me this morning. This is the sort of thing that makes the internet worthwhile. Uh, spoilers for Predator. ‘Cause you wouldn’t want its intricate plot twists wrecked for you.

The Wicker Man and I came into the world the same year: 1973. Therefore, I spent my early years marinating in this decade of questionable aesthetics. It is possible that my baby pictures would have been as cute as baby pictures are wont to be, if they were not defaced with the clothing of the day, which without exception aped the hues of long-dead plant life. It is possible that children today watch educational videos which do not scorch the visual as well as intellectual sensibilities of their viewers, as did those produced in that miserable decade. It is possible that something good happened some time during the 1970s, but you would not know it looking at the documentary evidence available from that time.
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I should probably stay off the internets. I can already hear the crabbing about last night’s Lost inside my head. Spoilers below.
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