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Don't worry, it's still me, just with a shiny new wrapper on. Having finally been introduced to all sorts of newfangled layouts that were available for my blog, I decided to spice things up a bit and go with something that had a bit more pizazz. So I hope you enjoy the new diggs and look forward to the rest of the Top 100 Songs of My Lifetime. I know I am.
You know, while I'm breaking character, I figured I'd do a little post off subject. No list this time, just "the Worst Movie I've Seen in the Past Year." For those who don't know, I'm incredibly easy on movies (although as I get older I find myself being much more critical, I guess because I realize there are a finite number of movies left that I will be able to see and I get pissed off when I waste one). I'm the guy that thought Sylvester Stallone's Daylight was "pretty good" and G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra was "not too bad. Great effects. The Blu-ray has lots of extra stuff on it? Cool. Sure, I'd watch it again..." But in my defense, I did walk out of what may be the worst movie of all time, Eddie Murphy's excretous (if that's even a word) The Adventures of Pluto Nash. So I've got that going for me, which is nice.
The movie that recently sucked was Whiteout, starring Kate Beckinsale. She plays a federal marshall stationed down in Antarctica as the lone law officer. She's haunted by a former gig gone bad and has escaped to the boring confines of an Arctic station. And boring it stays. Even with a gratuitous shower scene with the beautiful Ms. Beckinsale (where you don't see everything, but is still a pleasant diversion, chauvinist pig that I am), the movie is woefully short of anything worth watching. Sure, you've got the "it's really cold down here" scene that establishes that at some point, many people are going to be out in that deadly cold. The character development is so poor that you don't really care who gets stuck out there and, if anything, the movie would be more interesting if everyone would get stuck out there.
There's a murder (of course) that she needs to investigate, which in the course of her investigation, there's more murders (of course). The story then has a mystery about a cold war era Soviet plane that crashed with some mysterious cargo. Having watched so many better Arctic offerings (X-Files, Star Trek - Enterprise), I expected it to be something sinister and interesting. But nope, it's just some diamonds. Big flippin' whoop. Oops! I forgot the SPOILER ALERT before that. Don't worry, you'd thank me. Then it turns into a badly acted "who can you trust" thriller that has all the thrills of reading the latest Reader's Digest. I actually finished the whole stupid movie waiting for that cool ending that you didn't see coming. But no, I saw it coming and my two year-old saw it coming. It left me with that feeling you get when you're super hungry and you eat bad Chinese food because it's all you've got and damn, you're hungry. You end up feeling fuller but ashamed of yourself afterwords. Same thing here. I was waiting for something cool and ended up with... this.
It clocks in at a bloated 101 minutes, more than half of which feel like filler. They took an idea that wouldn't even have made a decent episode of NCIS: Antarctica and decided to make it twice as long. The flashbacks used to establish Kate's torment are probably the most exciting part of the movie, but seem more like a lame plot device than anything else. I think Kate Beckinsale is a fine actress (and a fine looking woman, to boot), but the performance director Dominic Sena gets out of her is uninspired at best. I can just hear his notes on her performance: "More angst. No! With the eyes! The eyes! This is gonna be great!" But it's not, and everyone who made this waste of space should've known it. Sure, it's a paycheck, but at least the aptly named Ben Affleck movie of the same name had a somewhat interesting plot to it.
So do yourself a favor. Miss Whiteout at every opportunity. Your life will be better for it. I actually am jealous of most of you who haven't seen it and don't have to try to get it out of your mind. But since the plot and acting are pretty forgettable, I'm hoping it'll kick in soon and my memory of seeing it will fade and just seem like a boring afternoon in study hall that I had in high school.
Here's hoping...
Okay, enough diversion. I'll be back tomorrow with the next entry on my Top 100 list. I'll even tell you what it is, since I'm breaking the rules now anyway. "Burning Love" by Elvis Presley. See you soon...
You know, while I'm breaking character, I figured I'd do a little post off subject. No list this time, just "the Worst Movie I've Seen in the Past Year." For those who don't know, I'm incredibly easy on movies (although as I get older I find myself being much more critical, I guess because I realize there are a finite number of movies left that I will be able to see and I get pissed off when I waste one). I'm the guy that thought Sylvester Stallone's Daylight was "pretty good" and G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra was "not too bad. Great effects. The Blu-ray has lots of extra stuff on it? Cool. Sure, I'd watch it again..." But in my defense, I did walk out of what may be the worst movie of all time, Eddie Murphy's excretous (if that's even a word) The Adventures of Pluto Nash. So I've got that going for me, which is nice.
The movie that recently sucked was Whiteout, starring Kate Beckinsale. She plays a federal marshall stationed down in Antarctica as the lone law officer. She's haunted by a former gig gone bad and has escaped to the boring confines of an Arctic station. And boring it stays. Even with a gratuitous shower scene with the beautiful Ms. Beckinsale (where you don't see everything, but is still a pleasant diversion, chauvinist pig that I am), the movie is woefully short of anything worth watching. Sure, you've got the "it's really cold down here" scene that establishes that at some point, many people are going to be out in that deadly cold. The character development is so poor that you don't really care who gets stuck out there and, if anything, the movie would be more interesting if everyone would get stuck out there.
There's a murder (of course) that she needs to investigate, which in the course of her investigation, there's more murders (of course). The story then has a mystery about a cold war era Soviet plane that crashed with some mysterious cargo. Having watched so many better Arctic offerings (X-Files, Star Trek - Enterprise), I expected it to be something sinister and interesting. But nope, it's just some diamonds. Big flippin' whoop. Oops! I forgot the SPOILER ALERT before that. Don't worry, you'd thank me. Then it turns into a badly acted "who can you trust" thriller that has all the thrills of reading the latest Reader's Digest. I actually finished the whole stupid movie waiting for that cool ending that you didn't see coming. But no, I saw it coming and my two year-old saw it coming. It left me with that feeling you get when you're super hungry and you eat bad Chinese food because it's all you've got and damn, you're hungry. You end up feeling fuller but ashamed of yourself afterwords. Same thing here. I was waiting for something cool and ended up with... this.
It clocks in at a bloated 101 minutes, more than half of which feel like filler. They took an idea that wouldn't even have made a decent episode of NCIS: Antarctica and decided to make it twice as long. The flashbacks used to establish Kate's torment are probably the most exciting part of the movie, but seem more like a lame plot device than anything else. I think Kate Beckinsale is a fine actress (and a fine looking woman, to boot), but the performance director Dominic Sena gets out of her is uninspired at best. I can just hear his notes on her performance: "More angst. No! With the eyes! The eyes! This is gonna be great!" But it's not, and everyone who made this waste of space should've known it. Sure, it's a paycheck, but at least the aptly named Ben Affleck movie of the same name had a somewhat interesting plot to it.
So do yourself a favor. Miss Whiteout at every opportunity. Your life will be better for it. I actually am jealous of most of you who haven't seen it and don't have to try to get it out of your mind. But since the plot and acting are pretty forgettable, I'm hoping it'll kick in soon and my memory of seeing it will fade and just seem like a boring afternoon in study hall that I had in high school.
Here's hoping...
Okay, enough diversion. I'll be back tomorrow with the next entry on my Top 100 list. I'll even tell you what it is, since I'm breaking the rules now anyway. "Burning Love" by Elvis Presley. See you soon...
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