This is the post where I throw all credibility on my taste in movies out the window. Speed Racer has a pretty low rating on Rotten Tomatoes, was panned by critics and fans worldwide, and I can’t help but say that I enjoyed the movie. Yes. I enjoyed the movie. I almost considered not writing this review, and actually put it off for the shame that it brings upon me.

The plot focuses on Roger Allam’s character attempting to spend the entire movie fixing the racing syndicate for his cars to win so that he can sell more of his car engines. Speed’s family becomes involved as they attempt to recruit him to the team and when he turns down the offer everything goes to hell. They ran with the movie not trying to explain away any of the unbelievable and just put it out there as if it was normal. Cars that jump and racing as the largest sport in the world. Chim Chim showed up and no one reacted strangely to the fact that the Racer family had a pet monkey who actively helped them out. Honestly I think I giggled at every scene that they threw Chim Chim into. The entire movie was a complete mix of surrealism and real life.

I have to admit I think the staff is what made the movie. Emile Hirsch was perfect in the role of Speed Racer by both having the look and pulling off mannerisms and speech that felt like the original dub of the TV series I grew up on (thanks to Rex.) Christina Ricci as Trixi was perfect casting (and I was doubtful on this at first), though low on dialogue when she did speak it was perfect and the eyebrow arch was perfect (and damn was she a hotty in the role.) John Goodman and Susan Sarandon as Speed’s parents: great casting, acting, and played the roles in a way that made them both human (instead of.. a cartoon) with more than enough throw back to the original actors. Finally Roger Allam played the roll of the corporate executive attempting to fix the racing syndicate to make himself more money. Ever since I saw him in V for Vendetta I have been hoping to see him in more major film rolls and was not disappointed.

The one complaint that I have about the movie is what I’ll start out with, it was a bit long. Honestly there was no necessary reason for the movie to run at over 2 hours. Short of that having sat in one place for far too long feeling I had when it ended I had a good time.

The race scenes were a mix of great action sequences, visuals, and I’m sure the feeling that could only come from a mix of hallucinogenics. There is a fight sequence where Speed’s dad has to fight a few people and seems to grow in size in comparison which was a bit cartoonish and fitting. They even manage to throw in most of the classic one liners from the show! Finally I have to mention that.. there were ninjas. As we all know ninjas make everything better.

Amazon

*Looks at above picture* So THAT’S how I’ve felt about reading lately *sighs* why does LOLCats so fit my mood on regular post updates lately? It’s wrong I say. At any rate it’s time for another one of my actual updates on Life! Not just the random reviews I’ve been doing. So aside from work I haven’t had too much going on for going out the past couple of weeks. With my 6 month insurance being a month earlier than I thought the extra spending dough has been a bit low.

So the three main times I went out off of the top of my head first was for a family party to celebrate birthdays for my Grandmother and Aunt. How can anyone not enjoy a HUGE home cooked meal (with extra corn bread to take home) and some time with the family. Everyone left stuffed (as it should be!) and content. Also hit up Bar Louie in Bolingbrook (*GASP!* the suburbs!) after work one night with Neil, Rex, Sal, and his wife. It’s good to know that even having not been there as a regular in quite a few months I still knew the majority of the waitresses. This leads to free booze, and life is good. Finally ended this last weekend a tower over from my place for Adam and Mia’s Engagement party. Hung out mainly with Neil, Ashly, and Brad on and off though I have met a few of Adam’s other friends so chilled with them a bit as well. All in all good times though there was no reason to take my Wii over with the pool table and copious amounts of alcohol that was available in the lounge

On the gaming end of things I’ll give you *1* guess what I’ve been up to. Call of Duty 4. That’s right. My highspeed was down one night so I ended up playing the single player campaign on veteran and got a few new achievements for beating the first 3 acts:

Aside from that multiplayer I now have every golden gun aside from the sniper rifle with max level… but wait.. Just CoD4? Surely not? That’s right… I have access to the Call of Duty 5 multi-player beta! While I’m reading a lot of negative reviews (and the tanks are a waste of space alongside of a few bugs being there.. hey it is a beta) I have had a blast playing through it. I can’t wait to see what the final product is like as if the bugs are fixed it will be a good time.

In the realm of websites and projects I changed the title format on this blog a bit, while posts about me will still be titled after whatever song is stuck in my head at the moment (or something that fits with the post) any reviews that I do will have it’s own post title with a Review: Name format. Why? Because I felt like it that’s why!

Onto other things my friend Matt Rotroff has been wanting to start a project with me for quite some time now and we finally came to having one that we both liked: The Shiny Swine. (Now by both liked I do mean that I was procrastinating on us getting something going and hey we’re doing this. Hey I just bought the domain. Hey I setup hosting. Hey the site’s up we’re gonna do it now. Right now. So… good for him on knowing I was busy and procrastinating!) Basically it’s a site of cool things that you can buy or read about online that is overall entertaining… oh yes.. and bacon. MMM bacon. We’re trying for multiple daily updates on fun things around the ‘net and plan on keeping it going for as long as we’re able!

Onto other things with a new AOM extender that I have access to I revamped The Wii Addict. For those of you that don’t know The Wii Addict is one of my trial amazon affiliate stores that’s just fun to have running. also I picked up the domain Retailiphone.com on the cheap and setup an ipod site because.. well.. the new script I was playing around with had an ipod setup already so why not run with it?

Finished reading Compulsion by Jonathan Kellerman. This is the 22nd novel in the Alex Delaware series, about a child psychologist who had been enlisted to help the LAPD by his friend Milo Sturgis. One would think that a series 22 books in by the same author would get old and repetitive? Not the case at all! The characters have been been being developed over the years in a masterful style that keeps you not only interested in the characters but feverishly tearing through the pages to see what happens.

In Compulsion, a murderer is apparently randomly killing people while using expensive cars. It’s very vague and the evidence linking everything together doesn’t give any idea of a suspect and barely ties the cases together. Milo and Alex of course find the thread curious enough to follow and it leads them to a great end that ties everything together. As the investigation continues the body count starts to add up with ‘possibly’ other murders being connected to this one. When the end comes though there is no dues ex here and the hints actually allow you to get an idea of who the killer is before the final act comes to a close. My main fault with Kellerman’s previous novels is that I could barely guess ahead of time who the murderer is and this time we have suspects which end up giving you the ability to think it through. (Not a real fault as I’m obviously addicted to the books being 22 in and still buying them! You usually get enough of a hint 3/4th of the way through but this is the first that you could start making serious guesses 1/4th in.) The problem with writing on any murder/mystery is you can’t really go into details without starting to give away key ones and I know at least 2 of the people who follow this blog are fans of the series.

The subplot in the novel felt a bit under developed and there was low character development between Alex and woman he loves (Robin) however you do get so sucked in by the main plot that these are really much room for the usual subplots to get fleshed out. More than worth picking up if you follow the series. If you don’t, do yourself a favor: Buy the first one and read through it!

Amazon

If you were to watch one action movie this year. If you needed to see one sequel that defied logic in it’s awesomeness. If you wanted one more continuation of a series that didn’t go straight to DVD and had all of the original cast in it… than Scorpion King 2: Rise of a Warrior is.. NOT the movie for you.

I’ll be honest, the first movie was sub par at best but The Rock at least made it entertaining in his trying to be a serious action star after being a wrestler kind of way. While it was horrible it at least had a plot that made sense (if not at all fitting with his tie in in the Mummy Returns.) It wasn’t a GOOD plot but it made sense. They did take the idea of having a wrestler attempting to be an action star in it though! The ‘villian’ of the movie was also an ex-wrestler. (Honestly I guessed at this and had to check IMDB to verify that.) Rise of a Warrior seemed to take basic important information from The Scorpion King, ignore it, spit on it, take a few plot lines and remake them so the younger version of the future king followed, and ended up making NO sense in the continuation of the universe.

I feel bad for the lead actress in this as she was actually cute and probably could have worked her way up through B horror movies to land a few successful acting gigs but no one will probably want to touch her after the travesty of this ‘movie.’

Oh yes the plot. It’s the story of our future Scorpion King becoming a warrior (which in this society are apparently called scorpions..), avenging the murder of his father, and fighting a wrestler that tricks a demoness into giving him power which he uses to turn himself into a giant CGI scorpion ghost thing that doesn’t really do that much.

If your in the movie for a borderline C movie with OK special effects (until the scorpion at the end..) sure, pick this one up. Honestly though this was 109 minutes of my life wasted. “ONE” good thing did come from this though:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1104123/board/nest/115298083

This thread is a GREAT read.

Amazon

There’s been a lot of Zombie related stuff passing through my BuyZombie e-mail as of late that has just been heads up on neat stuff!

To start with there is a lego building convention every year called BrickCon which had a Zombie theme this year. I was originally linked to The Brother’s Brick page to find out all of the details on it and WOW .. you just need to check out their flickr set of Zombie Apocafest 2008 for all of the pictures! Awesome! I commend all of the people who still have time to creatively play with toys since, well, I don’t. There really are a ton of well done sets there and I highly suggest checking out the entire flickr gallery.

Onto other things, this is one I did post about but I thought was creative enough to share. Being the season of horror (or pumpkin eating, or candy gorging, or..) what better way to share the spirit of season online than with an ecard? Let’s face it we’re all lazy. This one is with a twist though as it is a zcard! You can actually have it show a picture of whoever (you, the friend your sending it to, a mutual friend, whoever! be creative!) being eaten by a zombie in a fun little animation. It’s worth checking out over here if interested.

Apparently the Colbert Report had a special on the top 5 dangers to the United States.. and you just KNOW what made #1 on the list. (*Deep breath* I hate Hulu. I hate Hulu. I hate Hulu. Why isn’t this streamed somewhere else?) Awesome watch after the ads and buffering

What post is complete without a LOL cat?

My inbox at BZ is far too fun sometimes.

I’ve been running a bit dry on watching horror / apocalyptic end of the world styled films so when Doomsday came in I couldn’t help but be sure to put it at the top of the list of what I needed to see next. While not a zombie movie I was hoping this would temporarily get the job done and fill my want for the genre. This is the first film I’ve watched directed by Neil Marshall so I wasn’t fully sure what to expect, however I wasn’t disappointed (until about 3/4th of the way through but.. I’ll get to that.) The future is hell in Britain as the country has been ravaged by a plague that forced them to seal off half of the country behind walls to stop it from killing off the entire population. This has helped lead the country to be cut off from the rest of the world to avoid spreading the infection and society is slowly breaking down. Years have gone by and suddenly the plague is once more spreading throughout the nation. While there is no cure in sight apparently a select task force is assembled to enter the hot zone of the original outbreak of the virus and determine if a cure had been found as is a report of survivors beyond the wall.

The female lead played by Rhonda Mitra (who I’ve seen in a few movies though never with this type of a role) played a cop who is sent on a government mission to investigate of a cure to this virus was actually discovered by the apparent survivors. She did play the roll of a badass quite well and I hope to see her in more similar roles in the future. Sent in by her commander (Bob Hoskins.. who really needs to be in more movies in general.. and star as one of the characters in the upcoming Dune movie as Gurney Halleck if I had any say in the matter! Of course I don’t.. but a man can dream.) They battle through a band of cannibalistic ‘punks’ while investigating the lab of the lost scientist and rescue someone who claims that she can guide them to their goal. When they finally tracks down the scientist who was working on a cure (Poor Malcolm McDowell.. he’s only good for playing an insane villain these days!) all hell breaks loose. On a side note. The barely shown Prime Minister was played by “Doctor Bashir” of Deep Space 9. While I checked his IMDB I seriously don’t remember seeing him in any roll between the 2 (I haven’t finished Season 7 of 24 though so that would be why!)

While fight scenes occur between this special forces team and neo-cannibal biker punks and a civilization that has ‘formed’ based upon medieval principles (…what?!) I was still able to suspend most of my disbelief until a chase scene near the end of the movie. With what these ‘biker punks’ were driving compared to the Bentley our main hero just ‘happened’ to find… there is NO WAY they would have been able to keep up with her. I’m sorry she was in a Bentley… Really just… I had to suspend my disbelief for enough of the movie that I couldn’t ignore something that blatantly just did not make sense in ‘the real world.’ The ending… was just lame.

It’s a decent paced action movie and was fun to watch. If your looking for a sci-fi thriller that will give you something to think about, this is not it. If your looking for a movie with no plot holes, again not in. In the mood for a good weekend action flick though and you should enjoy this one. Just have to turn off your analyzing skills a bit while you watch it! (It was a fun movie just not if your going to over analyze it.)

Amazon

The above shows my work effort over the past week while I’ve felt kinda blah. Stupid head colds. (Look! It’s got the squinty eyes and everything!) I REALLY need to take some time off of work.

So the past couple of weeks have had a few things coming up in my life:
I did my what appears to be monthly dinner with Jen (Bennigans is closed everywhere now sadly so it’s now going to be at Chilis when I’m in the ‘burbs.) Caught up a bit on whats going on with eachother’s lives. I’m a bit jealous she’s pretty much taking the rest of the year off starting in a couple weeks. Has got to be nice!

Being more conservative on money as of late I really only went out drinking once. Was a good night over at *gasps* Bar Louie (I know I haven’t been there in forever) w/Neil, Rob, Rex, Sal, and Carrie. Cat is still working there until December so of course the eyecandy was a plus. They’ve also upgraded their menu choices a bit. MMM fried egg on a burger. Yum.

Of course a lot of new TV shows, movies, and reading. Those will all of course get their own updates as I make my way through that list.

Part of why I’ve been saving money is Neil’s M3 died for the majority of the time since my last update which meant I had to spend a bit more on gas than I had wanted to budget for. Stupid M3
helped move molly in

Installed a plug-in that will automatically update my Twitter account every time I make a post here. I am considering installing the same plug-in at BuyZombie however I’m not sure if I want that updated on my Civin account or if I should make a BuyZombie twitter account. We’ll see! This is similar to the LiveJournal plugin that updates my LJ account. Of course after playing with this for the last week I discovered another tool which I believe will work even better. Twitter Tools SOOOO I scrapped the old one I was using and slapped this into place. We’ll see how it goes from further testing!