You know, I wonder if somehow having a comment spam filter attracts spam comments. I mean, WordPress and Akismet appear to do a really good job of catching them, but I never got this many spam messages back on the old Blog of Wes. (There's no sense in reading the old page since I ported all of the old entries over to here, but if you're interested you can take a gander at the old layout :)) Perhaps the programs are lying, in order to exaggerate their performance and effectiveness!

Aaaand on a note somewhat related to that last comment, VOTE TOMORROW! Assuming that you have not already. I'm planning to vote Democratic across the board... and it really sucks that I feel like I have to do that, but I think that's the extent to which the political scene has been polarized as of late. And have you seen some of the Republican National Committee advertisements for this campaign? They're like weird fake campaign ads on a sketch comedy show! Insanity.

Also, given yesterday's international news, I totally want to read this book. Could be interesting!

The Prestige is pretty good stuff, by the way. A lot of the reviews that I've read have called it a challenging and confusing film, but I honestly didn't get any of that -- it seemed fairly easy to understand to me, especially since it goes out of its way to explain the twist ending at the end, replete with flashbacks. Anyway, I wouldn't call it a masterpiece (I probably couldn't rank it among even my top 20 or 30 favorite films, though I'd certainly add it to my DVD collection for $7.50 or less), but it's definitely a great film and makes for a good theater experience. It's certainly the best movie I've seen at the cinema this year! But then, the only other movies I've seen thus far are V for Vendetta and Silent Hill, so that's not saying too much.

Finally, the latest Neurotically Yours cartoon from Ill Will Press -- entitled "Useless Software" -- is quite funny. "It all just says pissed off and a date next to it!" Go watch. 🙂

I have watched a lot of movies during the past couple of weeks! Here are my reviews, in an average of five sentences or less. If you want lengthy plot summaries and synopses, you can just pop over to the IMDb links and check 'em out there!

City of Rott: Neat animation, but the film is basically a seven-minute Flash movie that drags on for 11 times as long, making it a really repetitive and boring and frustrating movie -- especially since the few decent ideas in the movie are wasted. Full review available on Scary-Crayon.

Average thus far: 2 sentences per review. (2/1)

Queen of the Damned: As I watched this movie on DVD, I said aloud to myself, "Man, this sure isn't as good as Interview With the Vampire!" Then I burst out laughing at the understatement -- this is nowhere near as good as Interview. In fact, it is fucking terrible... which I already knew because it is one of two movies (the other being Willard) that I actually made the trek to Milford to see alone during my undergrad years. So why'd I buy it? Well, it's like the quintessential bad vampire movie -- it's like a parody of bad campy low budget vampire movies, except worse because it actually takes itself somewhat seriously and had a budget and name stars and popular bands on its soundtrack (et cetera). And it's based on the writings of one of the greatest writers of vampire fiction ever!

To be fair, though, Anne Rice's Queen of the Damned novel was waaaay worse. I hated that book.

Average thus far: 5 sentences per review. (10/2)

Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow: You know, if I had seen this movie when I was 8 or 9, I probably would've thought it was the perfect adventure film -- it would've been like my Raiders of the Lost Ark. As it is, I thought it was kinda stylish and cool, but otherwise fairly shallow.

Average thus far: 4 sentences per review. (12/3)

The American Astronaut (Thanks, Ossabelle! :)): This was a neat little indie sci-fi flick with some quirky set pieces and cool musical numbers. Ultimately I think it suffers from a shallow plot and a lackluster antagonist, but that wouldn't stop me from recommending it to folks in the mood for, well, a neat little indie sci-fi flick with some quirky set pieces and cool musical numbers! 😉

Average thus far: 3.5 sentences per review. (14/4)

The Ring: I'm not sure whether the Japanese version was better or not -- somehow I'm thinking that it suffered from the same flaws that plague this one -- but this movie was fucking dumb and I have no idea how it has a 7+ rating over at IMDb. Evil videotapes and haunting telephone calls and pale little girls with too goddamned much hair (not to mention suicidal horses) are stupid, not scary.

Average thus far: 3.2 sentences per review. (16/5)

Flight of the Navigator (Thanks, Molly! :)): This is definitely one of the best family films I've ever seen -- a cute and thoroughly enjoyable (and oddly touching) film about a little boy who just wants to go home and befriends an alien ship in the process. I think the movie would've been a little better if the ship hadn't lost its mind and turned into Pee-wee Herman (seriously) after scanning the boy's brain, but it was still very good stuff.

Average thus far: 3 sentences per review. (18/6)

Monster: Okay, I'll admit it -- this tragic love story had me getting all teary-eyed at the end. Excellent performances (though I'm not sure I'd call any of them Oscar-worthy) and a poignant story rendered all the more heartbreaking because of its factual basis earn Monster a very high recommendation from me. Also, Christina Ricci has never been cuter.

Final average: 3 sentences per review -- w00t! (21/7)

All for now, then -- ja ne, minna-san. 🙂

I watched New York Minute last night. Oh my god. OH MY GOD. The latest Crayon Haiku says it all, and see the attendant SC blog entry for a mini- review of the film. Oh my god.

In other news, my Dr. Who DVD box set finally arrived yesterday! So far I've watched Dr. Who and the Daleks, which isn't terribly interesting or exciting despite the presence of everyone's favorite salt shaker-shaped cyborgs. Part of the problem stems from the fact that it's adapted from and adheres far too closely to the second "Doctor Who" serial (which itself was fairly boring, the introduction of the Daleks notwithstanding), so there's nothing new here except the draw of seeing Daleks in color. I guess that alone made the movie worth seeing back in the 60s, but considering that one can not only see Daleks in color but see them in color and molesting naked women the thrill is all but gone at this point. I do like Peter Cushing, though, and the lengthy text bio of him in the DVD extras was a rather nifty read.

However, because the film does have Daleks, I now have an excuse to finally add images of them to my random DVD screencap script. Hurrah!

I added a bunch of others as well... click the following link (or just scroll down if you've already done so) to see 'em. See if you can guess what DVDs I snagged them from! Some are pretty easy; some are not. (more...)

I'd intended to write about the 2006 series of Doctor Who a while ago -- apparently since early July, given the creation date of the above image! -- but the Dalek madness took hold of me and I'm just now getting around to it in response to yesterday's review from TAB. I began writing the following remarks as a comment on his post, but then figured I might as well use the above image and post them here.

I agree with TAB that Series 2 was better than Series 1, but only because its somewhat lighter tone and Eccleston's slightly more emotive portrayal didn't make the Doctor seem so much like an asshole when people started dying. Even though the words themselves rang sort of hollow, the way David Tennant solemnly intoned, "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry," upon encountering human corpses at least shows that his Doctor acknowledges the deaths of others, whereas Chris Eccleston actively and recklessly contributed to their demise and then bounced around all giddy like on more than one occasion. (By contrast, he was visibly upset when a hotwired pig was killed.) It's hard to say who was the better Doctor, since it's almost like comparing two different characters. I found Tennant's Doctor to be more appealing, but again that probably has more to do with the tone of the Series 2 episodes than either actor's skill in the role. Eccleston is probably the better actor overall, though.

In retrospect, however, it's kind of odd that I like Series 2 better, seeing as how it had some exceedingly stupid episodes. In fact, looking over the list, I only really liked about half of the thirteen eps: "School Reunion", "The Girl in the Fireplace" (my favorite of the season; almost reminded me of the Douglas Adams serials of old), the "Rise of the Cybermen/The Age of Steel" two-parter, and the two-part "Army of Ghosts/Doomsday" finale. The other eps were mostly just bland, but then there were a few with outright terrible shark-jumping plotlines. (more...)

For the record, readers, do let me know if you post a comment and then don't see it on the site afterwards, because it probably means that the comment got caught in the spam filter for whatever reason. (As evidenced by the comments thread on the Raven article on Scary-Crayon, it's pretty much my policy not to delete comments no matter how ridiculous or stupid or depressing they are. I'm sure there are potential comments that would cause me to make exceptions to the rule, though...) I don't always comb the spam queue for mistakes -- especially when it gets really large -- but if I know you've got something in there I'll likely be able to find and restore it. 🙂

In other news, for those of you interested in checking it out, I posted a new film review on Scary-Crayon yesterday evening. This is another movie that would undoubtedly make my bottom of the barrel booklet, though it's on a DVD with two other flicks (good ol' budget sets -- two discs with three movies each) that may not be nearly as awful. Anyway, I've included four video clips with the review, so you can see just how bad it is for yourself.

And tomorrow, for the first time in four years, I have an appointment with the dentist. I have a feeling I've got a billion cavities. 🙁