Bats in the Belfry and the Undead on my Lawn

The website ComingSoon.net has become one of my favorite daily visits due to their selection of trailers that can be viewed without mucking around with Quicktime or Real Player or what have you. Today I took a peek at two upcoming films: Batman Begins and Land of the Dead.

Batman Begins looked good to me, and of course the cast is stellar (no sign of Gary Oldman in the trailer, unfortunately). Having not read the comic book, I cannot profess to be a Batman expert, but it seems to me that part of why this one looks promising from a general audience standpoint is in the villains they chose. Like it or not, people still have images of the TV series in their heads whenever Batman is discussed, and the particular campy way the villains were portrayed on the series seemed to carry over to all four of the films that came out between 1989 and 1997. With this new film and new villains, the ghosts of Frank Gorshin, Burgess Meredith and Otto Preminger have been laid to rest and been replaced by villains that most people have no pre-conceived notions of, which I argue is a very good thing.

As for Land of the Dead, I was stoked. I had seen all three original Romero films and enjoyed the recent resurgence of the genre with 28 Days Later, the Dawn of the Dead remake and Shaun of the Dead. I was really, really excited about this one.

Was.

What changed? Well, I have four words for you: Zombies firing machine guns. Fast zombies I was able to accept, folks, but not this. Of course, the trailer could be misleading as trailers often are. That could be a good, living guy disguised as a zombie for the purpose of an ambush, but I'm fearing the worst. I may chalk this film down a notch on my "must see" list. Besides, the presence of Dennis Hopper simply doesn't inspire as much confidence as it used to.


(This can also be viewed at Blogcritics)

Interior Decorating

Not that I don't already have a time readout on the lower right hand side of my desktop, but I thought this clock from ClockLink spiffed up the place a bit.

And in case you're wondering, "Cowford" was once the name of Jacksonville before the city fathers decided to name us after a President that really had very little to do with the region. So there.

The Healing Power of Pork

Bad for your cholesterol. Good for minor cuts, scrapes and scratches.

Trading in their Pickups for Humvees

I don't believe for one moment that these actions are anywhere near the norm for our troops over there (and thank heavens for that), but I'd still like to see these particular folks publicly punished, humiliated, and ridden out of the armed forces on a rail:

[Mr. Delgado] wasn't happy when, even before his unit left the states, a top officer made wisecracks about the soldiers heading off to Iraq to kill some ragheads and burn some turbans.

"He laughed," Mr. Delgado said, "and everybody in the unit laughed with him."

The officer's comment was a harbinger of the gratuitous violence that, according to Mr. Delgado, is routinely inflicted by American soldiers on ordinary Iraqis. He said: "Guys in my unit, particularly the younger guys, would drive by in their Humvee and shatter bottles over the heads of Iraqi civilians passing by. They'd keep a bunch of empty Coke bottles in the Humvee to break over people's heads."

He said he had confronted guys who were his friends about this practice. "I said to them: 'What the hell are you doing? Like, what does this accomplish?' And they responded just completely openly. They said: 'Look, I hate being in Iraq. I hate being stuck here. And I hate being surrounded by hajis.' "

"Haji" is the troops' term of choice for an Iraqi. It's used the way "gook" or "Charlie" was used in Vietnam.

Mr. Delgado said he had witnessed incidents in which an Army sergeant lashed a group of children with a steel Humvee antenna, and a Marine corporal planted a vicious kick in the chest of a kid about 6 years old. There were many occasions, he said, when soldiers or marines would yell and curse and point their guns at Iraqis who had done nothing wrong.

My Official Opinion On The Runaway Bride Story:

I don't give a flying fig.

Furthermore, my sincerest wishes for the Today show and all the other morning programs and news channels is that I am not subjected to, for the remainder of this week, to interviews with the groom, the father of the groom, the mother of the groom, the father of the bride, the mother of the bride, the uncles and aunts of the bride, the various brothers, sisters and cousins of the bride, the bride's High School friends, the bride's High School Sweethearts, the bride's High School prom date, the bride's High School bus driver, woodshop teacher or cheerleading coach.

I also have no interest in hearing from the Georgia State police, the New Mexico State police, the North Dakota State Police (because they have nothing to do and have been watching the current coverage intently and have therefore become experts on the story), the Mayor of Duluth, Georgia, the District Attorney of Duluth, Georgia, the entire City Council of Duluth, Georgia (concerning current plans of naming a local sinkhole after the bride), and Gore Vidal, who once wrote a novel titled Duluth (but not about the one in Georgia).

I also have no interest in hearing from guest psychiatrists, psychologists, psychotherapists, therapists, physicists, astrophysicists, marriage counselors, grief counselors, camp counselors, Dr. Phil, Dr. Drew, Dr. Joyce Brothers (There's an old reference), Dr. Frist, Dr. Pepper, Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson or Pope Benedict XIV.

I also have no interest in hearing from the wedding planner, the wedding caterer, the wedding florist, the wedding band (renowned winner three years running of "Best Foghat cover band in North Georgia"), any and all of the twenty-eight groomsmen and bridesmaids, the minister, the usher, the limo chauffeur, the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker, the tinker, the tailor, the soldier, the spy and, for no particular reason, Donald Trump.

Finally, I most definitely don't want to see a live via satellite interview from the Hollywood Hills with Julia Roberts, Richard Gere and Garry Marshall on the plans for filming their next new film this summer, Runaway Bride II: Georgia on my Mind.

Back to you, Katie.

(This can also be viewed at Blogcritics)

Keith David Quote of the Month: May 2005

One of the genuine pleasures of "The Quick and the Dead", besides the chance to see before-they-were-superstar turns from Russell Crowe and Leonardo DiCaprio, is the contest that brings together the deadliest gunslingers for a gunfight to the death. The movie then has the opportunity to assemble some very colorful characters played by such genre favorites as Lance Henriksen and Kevin Conway. Keith David plays a gunslinger named Cantrell, and he ends up with a great introduction in the town saloon.

Cantrell: My name is Cantrell

Shemp: How do you spell that?

Cantrell: Correctly.