Cuz We Said So

Why I Hate "10,000 B.C."

I don't hate "10,000 B.C." for being scientifically inaccurate. I don't particularly care if woolly mammoths died out before the pyramids were built, because those visuals were just too fun to look at.

I don't hate "10,000 B.C." for having a bizarre and contradictory sense of geography. It clearly ends in Egypt, but what kind of path did D'Lay (the hero) take to get there? He's a white-skinned guy, so I assumed he was from somewhere in Europe... but then he crossed a snow-capped mountain range, a jungle, and a desert plain (where he met up with a bunch of Africans) before he even got to the huge sand dunes, at which point he went north to the Egyptian city. So I suppose it all took place in Africa... which doesn't make sense. Anyway...

I don't even hate "10,000 B.C." for its somewhat doofy "magical" story points. (Though, if I see one more movie about a hesitant yet heroic young man who fulfills a prophecy of being "The One", I may just puke.)

Here's why I hate "10,000 B.C." It's entirely freaking predictable! As soon as the characters were introduced, I knew every story beat. I knew who would live. I knew who would die. I knew how they'd die and what revelations would occur before they did.

But I hate it even more because they teased me with the promise of unpredictability. There were four different moments that suggested that maybe, just maybe, I was wrong about how the story would go. And every one of those four was subverted, made pedestrian and pointless by subsequent moments when the story went back to the obvious path.

Yes, I enjoyed a few of the set pieces, but overall this is a very forgettable waste of celluloid.

Surrender Monkeys? Au contraire!

Check out "War Nerds" on the French.  I gotta, say, this was a fun read on French military prowess.

Unless He's French Canadian That Is--We're Harmless

Scott Adams has a new favorite politician, and says that you you shouldn't let a French guy officiate your wedding.

Netflix Streaming Update

Over the weekend, as I was reviewing my Ghost Rider post from last year, I ran across a post from early February 2007, noting the addition of streaming video to my Netflix account.  At the time, I was excited.  Sadly, I needn’t have been.  I used it twice and forgot about it.

The problem was that as I began to explore, it became quickly evident that the selection of available movies was largely governed by a simple set of parameters:

If an available movie was good, it was old.  If it was new, it was bad.

Checking in a year later, things don't seem to have improved much.  Here are some representative examples to demonstrate.  In the good category, we find Groundhog Day (1993), Point of No Return (1993), and Blue Thunder (1983).  In the new category, we find National Lampoon’s Going the Distance (2004), Cruel Intentions 3 (2004), and Suburban Girl (2007).

So what's the problem?  Was Netflix unable to cut a decent deal with the studios?  Are they are deliberately limiting availability of new good movies to protect their core DVD rental model?  I have no idea, but I remain unimpressed.  Today, I rent movies via iTunes, and I’m considering dropping Netflix completely.

Summer Movie Premonition: Iron Man

I've mentioned here before, in the context of 2007's very unimpressive Ghost Rider, my curiosity regarding just what it is about a trailer that suggests a film will be either great or disappointing, an impression often independent of the actual merit of the film.  In the case of Ghost Rider, my initial impression from the trailer was that the film would be terrible—which, in the end, it pretty much was.

It's a year later, there's another super hero movie on the way—Jon Favreau's Iron Man—and I'm getting a much better vibe this time.  Hopefully this one will live up to the promise of the latest trailer (below), which sort of rocks.  It doesn't hurt that I'm a fan of Robert Downey Jr., who plays the ferrous fellow.  There's just something likeable about the guy.

Knight Rider Post Mortem

It was a hit. You can bet we’ll be seeing more in the near future:

Despite slight artistic merits and a frustrating lack of Turbo Boost action, NBC's heavily promoted Knight Rider TV movie proved to be a massive ratings winner this past Sunday night.

According to Nielsen Media Research, the Knight Rider movie averaged 12.7 million viewers during its two-hour run. …It was easily the most popular show in its time slot and did best of all among men aged 18-49 and 25-54 — despite being up against the NBA All-Star game.

…What this means to you: It's almost inevitable that a new Knight Rider series is on its way to NBC this fall. So invest in a hi-def flat screen, because they won't be able to avoid Turbo Boost forever.

Sidebar Upgrade

It's hard to believe that Rip, Russell and I have been posting here for over four years, three of them on TypePad.  One consequence of this is that the list of links to our monthly archive pages was getting a bit long and unwieldy. 

As you can see to the right, I have swapped it out, and our category list as well, and replaced them with a pair of drop down lists that do the same thing in less space. 

Thanks to TypePad Hacks for the instructions on how to do this; they made it very, very easy.