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. 🙁

Good lord, DVDs. Does anyone remember when I received a fairly large shipment towards the beginning of the summer and predicted that that shipment would carry me through August? Yeah, what a load of crap that was -- I must've purchased 20-30 DVDs since then. WHY? I've still got at least a hundred movies I haven't watched, yet I keep buying more. It's insane. This week I bought seven. The week before that I bought four, one of which was a budget set containing six films. I think I bought two or three the week before that. IT MAKES NO SENSE I TELL YOU. I haven't even watched all of the movies I picked up during my last two trips to NYC.

On the plus side, these purchases haven't been terribly expensive -- I may have bought seven DVDs this week, but the most expensive of them, House of Flying Daggers, was $6.99. Gamera (GAM-OOH-LA!) was a buck. Still, it's gotten to the point that I bought a couple more DVD storage booklets, one of which has been designated as a queue for all of the movies I haven't watched. (You know how people use Netflix? Well, I call that booklet Wesflix.) I had intended to use the other one to house only the movies I despise, but much to my surprise I don't actually own enough movies that I dislike on that level to fill an entire booklet. (more...)

...or is she goth? I'm not entirely sure these days, and the abundance of contradictory answers floating around on the Internet isn't exactly helping me to resolve the issue. (This link was kinda funny, though. Also, the post takes its title from Hope Is Emo. Amusing.) At any rate, I love it when girls tuck their hair behind their ears. The skunk top and purple eyeshadow slash lipstick combo don't hurt either. :9~~~

And I watched a rather fantastic horror movie starring one of the great genre actors on Friday night. Then, last night, I watched a really terrible one with a girl obviously cast for her looks. One was a classic 1970s horror film that is getting a 2006 remake, the other was the 2006 remake of a classic 1970s horror film. Any guesses which was the better film? (Bonus points if you can guess the actual titles.) More on the lesser of the two later.