Soul-Devouring Worry
¤ Suitcase shortages

Curse of the Day:
¤ May your girlfriend taunt you for remembering the 70's.

Not much news, but a bunch of movie discussion below.  Lighter fare for a weekend.  That's my excuse anyway.

¤ This article cracked me up. Scott Weiland, late of STP and the Betty Ford Clinic, has officially joined Guns 'n Roses.  Well, not exactly, that band name is owned by the artist formerly known as Axl Rose.  Scott is in a band called Reloaded.  Who dat?

Featuring Slash on guitar, Duff McKagen on bass and Matt Sorum on drums, the heavy metal sort-of supergroup is called Reloaded. While not an official member, former GNR guitarist Izzy Stradlin has chipped in writing songs in the studio.

So how is Axl's Band going?

At this rate, the Reloaded disc will beat Chinese Democracy to the retail racks. The latter is Axl Rose's forever-in-the-works album by his reconstituted Guns N' Roses. Rose, whose infamous temper and lack of patience led most of the original members to leave Guns N' Roses in the early '90s, has been trying to revive the band (he controls the name) with his own backing players for several years.

Axl and his sidemen (dubbed Guns N' Poses by disillusioned fans) embarked on an ill-fated tour last summer. The trek was eventually scrapped thanks to Rose's chronically tardy behavior, which sparked several fan revolts in cities where they played.

The GNR Website hasn't been updated since last fall and there's no word on when, or if, Chinese Democracy will be out. The album has been so delayed that the Offspring took the title for its latest disc.

Quite a proud legacy for a band that, for a few years in the late 80's/early 90's, was shaping up to be the greatest rock and roll band of all time.  Good job, Axl.

¤ In other amusing news, sex columnist Dan Savage has posted a request for readers to send in their best ideas for a sex act to name after the famously-homophobic senator, Dan Sanitarium.

There's no better way to memorialize the Santorum scandal than by attaching his name to a sex act that would make his big, white teeth fall out of his big, empty head.

Atrios posted about this and asked for suggestions, and the comments thread grew enormously long almost immediately.  You'll find it educational, slightly nauseating, and frequently amusing.

ovie discussion galore follows, with a short and spoiler-free comment on the Matrix 2 leading things off.

Matrix 2 had a gargantuan opening day Thursday, making the most of any movie ever on opening day in the US. That's slightly misleading, since the studio is counting the Thursday night sneaks in with the total, which adds about $5m to the $42.5m total.  Spider-Man is now #2, and it made $39.4m opening day with no late night sneaks. However that was on a Friday, and in theory a lot more people would be willing to go to a 10 or 11pm showing on a Friday than a Wednesday or a Thursday, so who can say how much Matrix 2 would have done if it opened Friday and had no sneaks.  I would have caught a matinee before work, myself.

The biggest single day ever in movie admissions is Spider-man's second day, a Saturday, when it made $43.6m.  Matrix 2 is very unlikely to beat that today, since by Saturday when people are out of work/school to see movies all day, many of the fans will have already seen it on Wednesday night or Thursday or Friday.

I'm still not saying much about it, especially about the plot, since I need to see it again to really determine what I think about it, especially all of the mind-bending revelations at the end.  I find it interesting how mixed the reviews are though. 

The two longest and most negative ones I've seen are on PvP and AICN, ironically both written by Simpson's CBG-looking fan boy types, Harry the Knowles and Scott Kurtz.  Both of whom have unhealthy attachment issues to popular culture, and therefore when something they really wanted to be great isn't just how they wanted it to be, they seem to feel scorned. And get angry/disappointed. (Though Moriarty's AICN review is pretty good, if a bit too forgiving of the early slow parts.)

The common thread between the pans is that both Harry and Scott wanted something other than what they got.  That's a bullshit way to review, yet at the same time it's a natural comment.  I thought that SW Episode 1 and 2 both sucked, mostly for the deadly dull plot and dialogue and characters, and since I liked the 3 original Star Wars films, I suppose that naturally I would come up with things I wanted to be in SW 1 and 2 that weren't there.  I'd say that this is the natural result of seeing a movie you didn't like in a franchise you do like.  You wonder why it sucked, and you have your own ideas about how it should have been done, so you start speculating.

So it's sort of a sign of love, but going into a movie so weighted down with the baggage of expectations is asking for trouble. Both of them wanted it to pick up right where Matrix left off, with Neo possessed of godlike powers, and wanted him to destroy all attackers with effortless ease.  I guess that could be cool, but it seems like it would be sort of pointless if it was all so easy.  I liked how things weren't so easy, and how many new elements were added in Matrix 2; much more cool stuff than I would have thought of, and I'm not going to say that Scott and Harry couldn't open up their minds enough to accept a movie that was much different than the rather simple Matrix 1.5 they seemed to be looking for, but I can see someone making that criticism with some validity.

The CAP Alerts guy has his Matrix 2 review up, but it's a disappointing read.  He seems to be mostly unaware of the whole Bible influenced aspects of the movies, and it's like he's just now realizing that "Neo" is a Christ-figure.  This surprises me, I figured he'd be obsessing over it.  He does have one funny remark, but not until the very end of the review:

By the way, Marilyn Manson has a word or two of vulgarity in this movie and the hate-sounding techno style is there, too.

"Hate-sounding techno"... ?  I wasn't aware that techno music sounded like hate.  And not that accuracy is his strong suit, but no, there isn't any Marilyn Manson heard in the movie.  I was disappointed, since the closing credits lead off with an old Rage Against the Machine song, just like Matrix 1 did, and I expected that the MM song would be heard next, just like in the Matrix 1 credits.  But no. There is a Rob Zombie song in the credits and on the soundtrack, and I assume that's what the CAP Alerts guy was talking about.  Close enough for his purposes; another probably Satanic evil rocker guy, anyway.

Speaking of movies that may not be what we want, I saw a new trailer for Terminator 3 before Matrix 2, and it was the first one thus far that made me actually want to see the movie.  I would have seen it anyway, since T2 was so good, and I love good action scenes and destruction, but from the early T3 trailers it really looked like T2.5, just another version of T2, with car chases and destruction in LA and the older Arnie version of the Terminator trying to save young John Conner from a more advanced model of Terminator.  This time it's a woman skin over a super robot, instead of a liquid metal thing, which actually seems like a much less imaginative robot design.

But what looks more interesting about the trailer now is that the Terminator seems to be both hunting John Conner and also actively trying to bring about Judgment Day, by interfering in current events.  That adds a more interesting element, IMHO, and makes it seem like there might be a plot, rather than just a 90 minute chase scene with new special effects.

I just hope we don't have a whole series of, "Can you like, learn and stuff?" "Why do humans cry?" Terminator learning to be more human scenes.  Those were death in T2, though largely because Edward Furlong was such an annoying, bratty little kid in it.

Anyway, I still can't quite imagine that T3 will be any good, but it might be fun, at least.

Another movie that I'll probably have to see, but have been dismayed by the very lacking trailers for, is the new Pixar one about the fish.  I actually can't remember the name, it's been so uninspiring...  Ahh, Finding Nemo.  There was a new trailer for that one before Matrix 2 also, and it was the best one yet, though still far from good.  They have cut most of the stoner turtle out of it (out of the trailer anyway) thank god.

Just based on the trailer I wouldn't consider seeing it, since it looks very pretty, but very stupid. However Toy Story 1 and 2 and Monsters Inc. were so well-written and full of interesting characters that I have to think Finding Nemo is pretty good too. Just burdened by really poorly-edited trailers. I didn't think Monsters Inc. looked very good from the trailers either, and loved it when I finally saw it on DVD, so I'll probably buy a ticket to Finding Nemo and cross my fingers it's a lot smarter and less cliché-filled than the trailer is leading me to believe.

Yet another new trailer was for The Last Samurai, and it didn't look any good at all.  Audience noise for it was zero.  Just silence.  I spent the whole thing thinking, "Shogun meets Braveheart?"  Admittedly I hate Tom Cruise, and he looks Aragorn-esque with that mangy "must make pretty boy look tougher with bad facial hair" beard, but this looks like a historical epic that should have been left in the past.  Forbidden love, the outsider comes to unite a troubled land, old passionate people vs. evil new soulless technology, etc.  Stack up the clichés.

And perhaps my least favorite of them all; the stupid typical Hollywood, "White guy picks up a sword and can suddenly beat up 500 life long trained martial arts masters." I'm waiting for the movie where some primitive tribesman from Africa (or an animal, or an alien, whatever) is brought to the US and the first time he touches a gun or is in a car he can suddenly out-drive all the police and bad guys, and shoot them full of holes.  Or would that be too unbelievable?  Uh huh.

They also ran the new Bad Boys 2 trailer, and I just watched it again, and my reaction is the same.  All of the photography is very crisp and clear and the action scenes look excellent, aside from the 2 main characters yelling at each other through all of them. And then every time they show Fresh Prince and Martin talking, I wince.  If they can't find 30 seconds of good chemistry dialogue to work into the trailer out of the entire movie, I don't hold out much hope for it being watchable.

Now admittedly I loathe Martin Lawrence, and decided I would never award the biggest asshole in Hollywood (which is his nickname and reputation) by paying money to see one of his films again.  And I've never seen the appeal of Will Smith.  I mean he's glib and cheery and everyman and all of that, but he's also a zero emotionally.  Apparently he did real acting in some movies no one ever saw, but I've never seen him in anything where he appeared to have any actual emotional involvement, beyond looking cool and spitting out snappy one-liners someone else wrote for him.

So I'm not interested in either of the actors in this. But I would still be interested if their acting or interactions or dialogue appeared to be good.  It looks like they're both trying to play the cool and misunderstood and dangerous guy, and neither is pulling it off very well.  And anyway, you need to have different types of people to make a buddy action pic work.  I'm fine with it being two black guys, as opposed to the usual white/black, or white/asian, or young/old or man/woman, but it would be nice if the two black guys they got seemed to be working together.  My impression is that Will Smith would be better playing a sort of nerdy or bookish cop, to Martin's fiery unbalanced psycho cop, but that Will Smith didn't want to be the wimp again, so he's playing out of character, and Martin has been arrested and put into the psycho ward so many times with one breakdown after another that he's not about to play to his natural nutcase type.  So you get both actors doing what they want to be perceived as, rather than what they would be best at or what would work best for the film.

But I could be entirely wrong, and maybe it'll be great and they're very funny together. I never saw the first movie, so perhaps they're just like this in that film, and it works very well.

And lastly, speaking of bad buddy cop movies, what in the hell is that new Harrison Ford film?  He looks about 65 in it (At this rate they can ditch Sean Connery and Harrison can play his own father in Indiana Jones 4.) and how old is the script for this?  Isn't it about 6 years late to be doing a poofy yoga instructor meditating new age type guy for the young weird partner to go with the crusty older cop?  I mean really, no one even bothers with Shirley Maclaine jokes anymore; new agey stuff is deader than dead in popular culture.

Despite the utter familiarity of every scene, and the soul-killing Mr. Voice Jr. narration, I'd almost consider going to see it just for the scenes with the wimpy young guy and his yoga class of perfect female asses in shiny tights, if they're seen from this angle.  Yes, it's a weakness of mine.

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