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The Film Habit #21 - September 24, 2004 We of the CinemaBlend.com crew generally agree that TV’s are best used for watching DVDs. Last night though, I discovered a couple of exciting new uses for my television. I watched a new show called “Lost”. You should watch it too. I passed up a screening of First Daughter to do it. Ok, that really wasn’t much of a sacrifice; in fact it was really a bit of a relief. I got home from my monthly doctor’s visit (consisting of far too much poking and prodding for my tastes) and just couldn’t face the thought of dragging myself thirty miles across town to watch another movie about the president’s daughter finding love. One a year is quite enough.
Instead, I decided to celebrate my first year of staying cancer free. The best way to do that is of course to give yourself presents. So I drove around town looking for a copy of “Star Wars: Battlefront” for my trusty Xbox, and found it in the last place I looked. It should have been the first place, but then of course if it had been it would still also have been the last place, since they had the game and my incessant searching could have stopped (funny note: the shelves of all the stores I visited were packed with Star Wars DVD sets but every mega-mart was sold clean out of “Star Wars: Battlefront”). The GameStop at Grapevine Mills Mall always comes through. So I played a bit of “Battlefront” (which is basically just Jedi Academy without the Jedi) as a way to work out the Star Wars hunger I’m not feeding with the new DVDs and then tuned in to “Lost”. The game was a disappointment, but the show blew me away. J.J. Abrams may not know jack when it comes to writing Superman movies, but he’s a genius when it comes to the old boob tube. Good shows have a tendency to get cancelled, so get off your ass and support the first legitimately cool thing to hit a big network since the crew of the Serenity tossed that guy into their ship’s engine. Strangely enough, the biggest “wow” moment on “Lost” last night featured a little man to engine collision as well. But mostly it’s about 48 people stuck on an island with a dog, and a mysterious thing that may or may not be in cahoots with the Sleestacks. Be ready for it next Wednesday at 8 pm EST. me to join up for a game of Battlefront on Xbox Live. What to Watch New movies come out each week. I don’t see all of them, but still feel qualified to tell you which movie you should watch. Feed your film habit from my picks. This week, Zombies spring eternal. I didn’t want to see a movie about presidential daughters when I saw one five months ago; I’m certainly not interested in watching the second place finisher in the presidential daughter movie competition. The winner was bad enough. Back in April, Mandy Moore’s presidential daughter flick scared First Daughter out if its original release date and now First Daughter is being dumped in the doldrums of September to get whatever cash it can and disappear. The less cash you give it, the quicker it’ll pull off that vanishing act. In case you’ve forgotten, Julianne Moore is still making movies. In fact, The Forgotten is her second just this year. Thank god for the title, since it makes it easy for hacks like me to make lame jokes about Moore’s career. See, the title is appropriate, because she’s in a movie called The Forgotten and I’m saying that she’s been forgotten! Someone once told me that if you over explain a joke it is no longer funny, but since this one wasn’t funny to start with, I doubt all this extra explaining hurt it much. The Forgotten is probably better than Laws of Attraction, but after a string of movies like it already bouncing around this year, I’m just not that hyped to see another thriller, conspiracy, twist ending type of flick. I think we’ve all reached our limit.  Yet I’m not the least bit sick of John Waters, who used to be sorta cool and is now just well, really really gay. After seeing him on “Dinner for Five” I was starting to think he was more interested in flaunting his flamboyant persona and reminiscing about the past than heading out to make anything good. Of course good is a pretty relative term when talking Waters. Perhaps outlandish and offensive is a better one. A Dirty Shame is guaranteed to be both of those, whether or not you’ll actually like it probably depends in great part on how uptight you are. For instance, if you’re all about God, you’ll probably hate it. God hates it, I’m almost sure of it. Me, I’m really uptight, so watching this is a sort of therapy to bash the uptightness right out of me. John Waters is like attacking your hang-ups and inhibitions with a thirty pound sledgehammer made entirely from poo. If only it was in wider release, I’d go right on and demand that every one of you make it a point to run out and see A Dirty Shame. I don’t really think it’ll be very good (I mean come on, is it really that funny to give Selma Blair outrageously ginormous boobs? Ok, maybe it is.), I just love the thought of thousands of blindly loyal CB readers walking out of hundreds of theaters and screaming at poor, underpaid, popcorn pushing, multiplex managers. Only the most open minded, sick twisted, complete weirdo would actually seek out Waters NC-17 latest. While that description likely fits most of us, there’s something better to hunt down this weekend.
 The highly anticipated British comedy/horror movie Shaun of the Dead opens this weekend, bearing romance with zombies and guys with those crazy wooden planks the Brits call bats. It is technically in limited release but it’s a pretty big limited release (close to 700 theaters at last count) and thus should be easily available to most of you. Nerd sites of the internet are going nuts for this one, so if your tastes generally jive with geeks like Harry Knowles or well, to a much lesser extent me, this may be a good sort of thing to seek out. It’s also probably the best place to go if you’re a geek and you want to fit in. I imagine most Shaun of the Dead showings will be a sort of nerd fiesta. For you ladies, it’s also your best shot at finding a desperate and lonely future Bill Gates… or a guy who will do nothing for the rest of his life but live in his parent’s basement collecting DVDs. Date wisely. Shaun of the Dead is the thing to see this weekend. Go get some zombie love.
Hey! Do you like working for free? Are you over 18? Do you secretly wish you could live the wild and exciting life of Michael Brody? You’re in luck. CinemaBlend.com is looking for writers, specifically the type interested in slogging it out on DVD’s or those with a flair for internet news stories. If you think you can capture the signature Cinema Blend style as a DVD critic and/or BNN reporter send me an with a few samples and we’ll talk. |
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