Updations and other stuff.

Back from Vegas. I want to go back right away, it was awesome and I feel like watching Rush Hour 2 for the Vegas scenes. Funny moment from the trip:

I was already down like $140, and was determined to get it back. I was back in the hotel room.

Me: Henrique, I'm going to go back down with this $100 and get it back.
Henrique: You're an idiot Mahesh.
*2 hours later*
Me: Remember when you said I was an idiot?
Henrique: Yeah.
Me: You were right.

After that Henrique was laughing for a while. All right so Let's finish up some old stuff, the last few movies from Round 1 of this movie a day thing.

Day 45: The Sandlot

What's it about? Baseball in the summer.

Thoughts: Awesome movie, should have seen it sooner. Much sooner. Great summer movie.

Rating: Aww Hell Yeah






Day 46: Live Free or Die Hard

What's it about? John McClane? More like John Estranged am I right? We already know he's divorced and his wife hates him. But now, his daughter hates him. Anyway, his daughter was introduced so that she could get kidnapped, so that John McClane can kill people and try to save her and the country.

Thoughts: It's better than part 2, not as good as the first, not quite as good as the third, so not bad overall. It gets pretty ridiculous later on, but overall not a bad return to the Die Hard franchise.

Rating: Oh hell yeah.




Day 47: Vanishing Point

What's it about? This dude. Who drives a Dodge Challenger. For the entire fucking movie. He's supposed to deliver the car to a customer, and wants to do so very fast. Oh yeah and he only stops to take speed, run away from rattlesnakes, and see some random people singing. Also, there's this stupid ass DJ that is trying to help/motivate the driver through the radio.

Thoughts: This movie was all right. The reason I saw it was because in the Death Proof part of Grindhouse, all those women were talking about it for like 20 minutes. No, seriously, they would not shut the fuck up about this movie. I was like "If I'm watching a movie about people talking about a movie, then the movie they're talking about must be the shit right?" Wrong. This movie is not the shit. Secondly, if he's supposed to be delivering the car to a customer, why is he totally wrecking the car in the process? Well it did make for some good chase scenes.

Rating: Oh Yeah.


Movies seen since then:

The Simpsons Movie - Was pretty good.

The Bourne Ultimatum - Better than the second one. The best part of the Bourne movies is when he's like "lol I'm on the phone with you and I can see you too, I'm the shit."

Dave Chappelle's Block Party - Great music.

Zodiac - Very long movie. Was okay. Jake Gylennhallasll wasn't that good in the part.

TMNT - Not so hot.

Rush Hour 3 - I've seen the first two movies like infinity times each, so I was pumped for this one. It was good, pretty short, but kept in the same spirit as the 2nd one. Fun times, although I think Chris Tucker beat up more people than Jackie Chan this time around.

Animation: Popeye and Archie

Time to talk about Popeye and Archie DVDs. Today two things came out, and I was anticipating them, to different degrees. First up, Popeye Volume 1:
This Popeye set has the first 60 theatrical shorts from Fleischer Studios, which produced 108 Popeye shorts from 1933 until they dissolved 1942. From 1943 to 1957, Paramount, under the name of Famous Studios, took over and produced 125 more shorts. The same thing happened to their Superman cartoons.

This is some high quality stuff right here, Fleischer Studios was pretty technically skilled. In addition to the 60 shorts, there are a couple of commentaries on the history of Popeye and of animation, as well as a bunch of "popumentaries" on the different characters.

I remember the first time I saw a Popeye cartoon, still have that video. I feel like looking it over and seeing what studio it's from...

Anyway I'm not even 1/3 through Disc 1 but already this set is awesome.

So when I was at the store, I noticed that this had also come out:


So we're going from Popeye which was produced during the golden age of American animation to...1968, well into the TV era. Big drop in quality here. I used to be a huge fan of Archie comics, and back then any from of Archie on TV was something I had to see at least once. I bought some Archie digests from Giant yesterday for the hell of it, and whenever I see some of the 70s comics for a few bucks I try to get those. So I...still read Archie from time to time. There I said it.

That's why I was more pumped from for the show Sabrina The Teenage Witch than any 11 year old kid should have been.


After seeing it I was like "WTF? Salem isn't suppose to talk! And they got Hilda and Zelda wrong, they're supposed to dress like actual witches...and...AWW HELL NAW!" In addition, Hilda was supposed to HATE non magical people. But hey, it's a TV show, so I guess they had to adapt it. So after a while I ended up liking the show and was like "You ever read the comic? No? Then suck it you freeloading bandwagon jumping Step By Step watching fuck ." Same thing when the Josie and the Pussycats movie came out, but I didn't bother to see that shit. Despite all this, I was still thinking "Oh, so Melissa Joan Hart found work after Clarissa Explains it All? Good for her."

But it still fucked up the comic, they changed the way everybody looked, since they had to cash in on the show's popularity. Hilda and Zelda were updated to wear modern clothes, and Sabrina also looked different: She didn't have her hair in that constantly folded backwards over her head with a plastic headband look. Nobody looks like this:



Now back to The Archie Show. First off This Intro should tell you all you need to know about the show. One year when I visited India as a kid I got this Archie video. (By the way if you ever want infinite Archie comics, go to India.)

So anyway like I said, anything to do with Archie in TV form was something to look at at least once. That video I got in India was the first 2 or 3 episodes from this DVD. As a result, I'd see those episodes a couple times every year that I visited. So there's a nostalgia factor. Anyway this is very cheap animation, they don't even draw the black checkered lines on Archie's head. And the voices seem wrong for the characters. But this show spawned a couple popular songs, including "Sugar Sugar". Yup, that song that people remember from time to time "you are my candy girl" and all that, is by The Archies, a "fictional" band just like the Gorillaz. If you like Sugar Sugar, I recommend Bang-Shang-a-Lang. I'll see how the rest of the series is, so far I haven't delved into new territory.

But on the back of the booklet for the DVD it said to look out for more Archie stuff on DVD next year. I can only hope it's The New Archies, which was pretty good. I remember it used to be on The Family Channel in the early 90s.

Summary: Popeye is awesome, and Archie could be cool too.

A trip to Costo turns into something entertaining.

Here's some fun. So how do Costco and Deadwood mix? Like this:

Costco is a nice place. Lots of stuff. Occasional good prices on DVDs.

I've also been watching Deadwood the last few days. The lowdown is that due to a coupon, each season costs $30 where it would otherwise be $50, at Costco.



So I'm minding my own business watching an episode of Season 2, and the disc starts skipping on me. I thought "Oh hell no, you did not just do that." After multiple cleaning attempts it still would not work. All right, time to pay a visit to the Costco returns department.

When I got there, I happened to be standing behind some dude who was returnign linguine. I felt like backing away slowly, but decided to stick around anyway. Anyway I am able to return it, but not after a long conversation with the damn lady. First I find out via my brother that there are no more coupons left. And secondly I can't exchange the DVD for a new one, only refund it. That's fine, but then I'd have to pay $50 for a new one. No good. I mention most of this to the lady and hand her the membership card:

"Wait, this isn't your card."
"It's my mom's."
"You can't shop with this."
"Yes I can."
"She has to add you to the card. I'll have to put a block on the card."
After a little more of this, I'm like "Just give me the refund."

BUT HOLD UP TIME OUT:

She gives me a $50 refund when I actually paid $30, because she failed to pay attention to the coupon that I mentioned repeatedly, which was the primary reason I was there. "Uh excuse me miss--you gave me extra money--oh wait you were an asshole? Guess you'll be wondering why you're missing $20 when it's time for the final count at closing time numbnuts."

So anyway, I'm about to leave, because I don't have the coupon booklet....but I find out that the lady in Aisle 7 has it and scans the coupons in for people. Sounds like a nice person that I should pay a visit to.

I get another copy of the DVD, and get a spot in aisle number 7. Oh guess what, she scans the coupon, and gets someone to overrides the override that that other dumbass put on the card.

Summary: Lady gives me $20 for free.

Consider this the bridge.

A Flick a Day is on vacation. But I did see Ratatouille again today. Haven't seen a movie besides that since last Wednesday. Feels...refreshing. Like 7-Up.

The reason is that there were other things to do, reading that new Harry Potter being one of them, wanting to take a break being another.

I'll be back to see more movies hopefully soon, and of course, that list from last post is not going to be followed.

Before I go, here's a round up of all the "Aww Hell Yeah!" movies:

Caddyshack
The Sting
Rashomon
The Old Man and the Sea (animated short)
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
Rope
City Lights
Bicycle Thieves
Yojimbo
Sanjuro
Ratatouille
Ikiru
Transformers
The Iron Giant
High and Low
Kung Pow: Enter the Fist
The Sandlot (not discussed yet)


All right that's it for now.

Stop. Hammer time.

I'll put up the posts on days 45-47 later. Day 48 (yesterday) was skipped for a couple reasons, the main one being this:

And it will likely be the reason for any delays today too. Anyway the count is 52 movies for 49 days, so we're still ahead. Yippee Skippy as Miss Piggy would say from Muppet Babies.

Oh yeah some people wanted to know what the future movies are. They'll probably be these:

Easy Rider
Kid Vengeance
Vampires in Havana
Stray Dog
North by Northwest
and the 1970s King Kong

All right, that's it for now. Later.

Day 43/44: Die Hard 1-3

Counting this as days 43 & 44 to make up for that day I missed and to get back on track, watching these 3 movies should make up for that (07/15)

Background
I found out about a pricing error this week. Basically the collection to the left was priced at $7.50 and it includes a free ticket to the new Die Hard movie. Yippee Ki Yay Motherfuckers.

So today I checked out the first Die Hard, and after that was in the mood to watch the rest, so that's what happened to my day. Let's hit it.

Die Hard (1988)

The one that started it all. Terrorists, led by Alan Rickman, take over a skyscraper and John McClane is there to take them down.

Random Connections

• The guy who talks to Bruce Willis over the CB radio throughout the movie is the dad from Family Matters.

• The City Worker who pops out of the sewer is none other than Henry from Blank Check. I was like "I know that voice....it's the John Candy wannabe limo driver from Blank Check!" And guess what, Die Hard has a comic relief limo driver as well, so this dude has been in two movies involving limo drivers in secondary roles. Shit I never would have expected so many Blank Check connections during this movie a day thing, but here we are.

And since I never got to put up a poster from Blank Check, here's one now:

• Oh yeah this is also Alan Rickman's feature film debut, and among other things he's Snape in the Harry Potter movies, which were talked about a few days ago.

• The deputy police chief was played by Paul Gleason who was the principal in The Breakfast Club, and he was also in a lot of other stuff.

• This last one isn't so random, but the cinematographer for this, Jan de Bont, got into directing a few years later, and his first movie was Speed.

Thoughts
I liked this a lot, I saw the ending on TV once but never the whole thing. Should have seen this sooner. Once the action starts it doesn't stop.

Rating
Aww Hell Yeah!

Die Hard 2: Die Harder (1990)

People were right, this is like Die Hard but with airplanes. It was pretty random that it took place at Dulles of all places. Who knew Centreville could be the center of so much action. Oh yeah and since when did it snow so much during Christmastime in this area anyway?

So John McClane is back, and this time there is trouble at the airport. This movie isn't as good as the first movie, but it's still pretty good. It had some cool moments and surprises.

Rating
Oh hell yeah.

Die Hard With a Vengeance (1995)

This time we add Samuel L. Jackson and Jeremy Irons. I saw this on video a while back, and now it's time to see it again.

Okay so in this one, Jeremy Irons plays Simon, the brother of Alan Rickman's character from the first movie. He's pissed, and as a part of his big plan, makes John McClane and Zeus Carver (Samuel L. Jackson) play a high stakes game of Simon Says. I always liked the puzzles that Simon made them do.

So this is the first movie that gives John McClane a 'partner' but it's a good addition. It takes the series in a different direction which is pretty cool. And as with the other Die Hards, this one has a good amount of shit getting blown up.

Rating
Oh Hell Yeah.

Day 42: Kung Pow: Enter the Fist (2002)

Background
This movie looked random, and Friar once said "I can't believe you haven't seen this." Now that I've seen it, I can't believe I hadn't seen it either.

What's goin on?
The main dude/writer/director/actor, Steve Oedekerk, inserted himself into a 70s martial arts movie and redubbed all the sound.

How is it?
This movie is the shit. The dubbing and all that stuff is hilarious. I made my brother see it later that day.


Rating
Aww Hell Yeah!