Tales From The Grocery: The Minor

A few years ago I got a second job as a cashier at a grocery store in order to pay off some bills. It was a miserable, humiliating and demoralizing experience in every measurable sense, and I got the hell out of there as soon as my bills were paid. I feel genuinely sorry for anyone who has to work in such a place.

Here is a terrifying Tale From The Grocery. Please note that all Tales are 100% true.

One day I saw the store’s undercover cop confront two male customers-- one older and one younger-- who were buying beer. He said he’d been watching them and saw that the younger of the two had paid the older one to buy beer for him. He didn’t arrest them, but he gave them a warning and told them to beat it.

One of the teen cashiers saw the commotion and asked me what was going on. I said the cop threw the guys out because the older one was buying beer for a minor. He looked shocked and said, “That’s illegal?”

Wow. Like so many of the things that happen at that store, I didn’t know how to respond to that.

It Came From The Cineplex: Maleficent

Maleficent was directed by Robert Stromberg and written by Linda Woolverton.

This is Stromberg's directorial debut; prior to this he was a special effects artist and production designer on Avatar, Tim Burton's Alice In Wonderland and Oz, The Great And Powerful. Maleficent shares a definite design sensibility with those last two.

In addition to starring in the film, Angelina Jolie also served as an executive producer.

This is Disney's attempt at the Wicked-ization of Sleeping Beauty, as they reimagine the story from the point of view of Maleficent and paint her in a more sympathetic light. 

Like it or hate it, you can't argue with the film's success. So far it's grossed an astonishing $500 million worldwide.

MALEVOLENT SPOILERS AHEAD!

The Plot:
Maleficent's a young orphaned fairy who lives in the Moors, a magical land next door to a human kingdom. As a child she meets and falls in love with a human boy named Stephan. Years later, she's betrayed by Stephan, who's only interested in greed and power. He mutilates Maleficent by cutting off her wings, an act which makes him king of his realm.

When King Stephan and his queen have a daughter named Aurora, a vengeful Maleficent places a curse on the infant: on her sixteenth birthday she'll prick her finger on a spinning wheel spindle and sleep forever, unless awakened by True Love's Kiss.

Stephan sends Aurora away to be raised by three fairies in the hopes that she'll avoid the curse. Maleficent begins watching over young Aurora, protecting her from the fairies' gross incompetence. Over the years she grows fond of the child and becomes her fairy godmother.

Unfortunately the curse comes true and Aurora falls into a coma. She's awakened by a kiss from Maleficent though, who realizes she loves her. Motherly love, that is. Get yer mind outta the gutter.

Thoughts:
• The film opens on a happy young Maleficent flitting around the Moors. Question: Who the hell gave her THAT name? It sounds like a combination of "malevolent" and "magnificent," but "maleficent" is actually a real word. It means "doing evil or harm; harmfully malicious."

Why saddle a kid with a horrible name like that? No wonder she turned bad. They might as well have called her Hitlerina Evildoer.

Wouldn't it have made more sense if her name had been "Thistleberry" or something like that, and then after she was violated and turned to evil she renamed herself?

Methinks the filmmakers assumed the majority of the audience wouldn't have any idea that her name was a real word and so didn't bother to explain it.

• I don't mind filmmakers "reinventing" stories like this, but I am NOT a fan of movies that insist on justifying the villain's antisocial behavior. Why can't a character simply be an evil asshole? Why does there always have to be some deep seated psychological reason or justification for their actions?

Wasn't Darth Vader far more interesting before we found he used to be a whiny teen Jedi?

• Maleficent's look was created by Oscar-winning makeup artist Rick Baker. To her credit, Angelina Jolie was insistent that the makeup look as close as possible to the animated version. Baker designed a set of lightweight urethane horns for Jolie, as well as razor-sharp prosthetic cheekbones. 

The one big difference from Sleeping Beauty-- Maleficent's skin color. The animated version has a sickly green completion, but Baker vetoed that idea, as he claimed he didn't want to hide Jolie's natural beauty.

• In Sleeping Beauty, Maleficent was voiced by actress Eleanor Audley. You may not recognize her name, but if you watched any TV at all in the 1960s and 1970s you'll recognize her face. She guest starred on virtually every sitcom of the time. She was best known as Oliver Douglas' mother on Green Acres, and Mrs. Schuyler-Potts, headmistress of the Potts School that Jethro attended on The Beverly Hillbillies.

She also voiced the Wicked Stepmother in Disney's Cinderella and Madame Leota in the Haunted Mansion in Disneyland and Disney World.

• When King Henry's army attacks the Moors, Maleficent drives them back with winds generated from her mighty wings. It's a cool scene, but I wouldn't be doing my job if I didn't point out that if her wings are flapping hard enough to knock men off their horses, they should be propelling her backward with equal force.

• Most of the production design is top notch, but take a look at this Tree Warrior. It's the spitting image of the Balrog from The Fellowship Of The Ring. Same drooping horns and everything. All that's missing is Gandalf shouting, "You Shall Not Pass!"

• Stephan wants to be the king, but first he has to defeat Maleficent and her magic army. To do so, he gives her a roofie and knocks her out. He can't bring himself to outright kill her though, so he does something even worse-- he slices off her wings.

First of all, that must have been some knock-out potion he gave her. She slept right through her grisly de-winging! And Stephan didn't use a blade, he used a piece of iron-- which sears fairy skin-- to burn through them. Yikes!

Second, I never thought I'd live to see a blatant rape metaphor in a Disney movie, but here it is. And lest you think I'm reading too much into it, Angelina Jolie herself confirms it.

• After Maleficent's wings are cruelly removed, she's no longer able to soar carefree through the skies. She then enlists the help of a crow named Diaval (that she periodically turns into a human) to "be her wings" and spy for her.

Oddly enough all through the movie she has no trouble levitating other people and causing them to float through the air. I guess it never occurred to her to use this power on herself?

• When Maleficent uses her powers, sometimes her magic has a yellowish color, and other times it's a sickly green. I think it's green whenever she's doing something evil. I wish they'd made it green all the time though, as it looked cooler and matched what we saw in the animated version.

• Stephan becomes king, takes a wife and they have a baby girl they name Aurora.

For such a pro-feminist movie with a nearly all-female cast, the Queen definitely gets shafted. She's in the film for five minutes, tops. She doesn't even rate an on-screen death.

• Bent on revenge against King Stephan, Maleficent crashes baby Aurora's christening. In a nice touch, the dialog in this scene is almost word for word the same as in the animated version.

• Maleficent places a curse on baby Aurora: On her sixteenth birthday she'll prick her finger on a spinning wheel and fall into a permanent coma. A couple of things here.

That's a pretty darned specific curse. Why bring a spinning wheel into it? What are the odds that she'd just happen to touch one on her birthday? Especially since she's a princess, and would have armies of servants to do her spinning for her.

Later on Maleficent finds the kid's starting to grow on her and she realizes she was a little harsh with the whole cursing thing and tries to remove it. Unfortunately she can't. Wha...? So she has the power to word a curse in such a way even she can't find a loophole in it? Wow, she missed her calling. With a talent like that, she should be a lawyer, writing ironclad contracts and legal documents.

• After Aurora is cursed, King Stephan decides to save her by sending her away until after she's sixteen. Not the worst plan I've heard. However, he's currently at war with the Fairies of the Moors, so naturally he enlists three of them to raise his infant daughter. Brilliant! 

He just handed his daughter over to three of his sworn enemies! Who, by the way, have no reason to recognize his authority and obey him (but inexplicably do so anyway).

• The three Fairy Godmothers (who are a lot like an all-female Three Stooges) are so incompetent that they don't even know how to nurse a baby. There are two ways to interpret this. 

One, they don't know anything about infant care because fairies aren't human and spring whole from the ground or something. Or two, they're incompetent because they've sworn off magic and don't know how to do anything by hand. I guess it's up to the viewer to decide which is correct.

By the way, Knotgrass, the Red Fairy, is played by Imelda Staunton. You may recognize her as Delores Umbridge from Harry Potter And The Order Of The Phoenix. Apparently any time she's in a fantasy movie she's required to wear red or pink.

• On her sixteenth birthday, Aurora is magically compelled to leave the forest, walk into a dungeon and poke her finger on a spindle.

This actually makes sense, since as I said before, it seems like a very specific curse and one that would be pretty easy to avoid. Making it a magical inevitability was a good move on the part of the screenwriter.

However, I could swear that King Stephan ordered all spinning wheels in his kingdom to be burned. We even see them piled onto a big bonfire right after Aurora was born. So why was there a huge stash of them in the dungeon years later?

• After Aurora falls into her magic coma, Maleficent attempts to break the curse with True Love's Kiss. To do so, she kidnaps Prince Phillip (who Aurora has known for about an hour) and sneaks him into the castle so he can kiss Aurora and waken her. Phillip plants one on her lips and... nothing happens. 

Maleficent, who never believed in True Love in the first place, grimly accepts the fact that Aurora will sleep forever and it's all her fault. She kisses her lightly on the forehead and as she turns to leave, Aurora immediately wakes up. Huzzah! She was saved by True Love's Kiss after all! 

So... does that mean that Prince Phillip doesn't really love Aurora? Kind of seems that way, eh? At the end of the movie it looks like she and Phillip are married. I guess it must be of those royal weddings that exists only to unite two kingdoms and consolidate power rather than one born of love.

By the way, when Maleficent kisses Aurora and wakes her, we cut to Diaval the crow-man, who apparently thinks the audience is a bunch of morons and helpfully points out, "True Love's Kiss." 

Thanks, movie. I'd never have been able to figure that out on my own. I hate when films point out things that we just saw fifteen minutes earlier.

• Surrounded by King Stephan's men, Maleficent turns Diaval into a dragon (a pretty useless dragon too, by the way) in order to defeat them. I kind of wish they'd have had Maleficent herself transform into the dragon herself, as that's always been my favorite part of the animated version. 

• In the third act Maleficent and King Stephan have a final battle. This is a Disney movie, so even though Stephan is trying to kill her, she can't kill him, because that wouldn't be heroic, dontcha know. 

Instead Stephan lunges at her, loses his balance and topples off a tower to his death. Disney villains almost always get their comeuppance by causing their own deaths. See Frollo in The Hunchback Of Notre Dame, Clayton in Tarzan, and Syndrome in The Incredibles for other examples.

Maleficent is a stylish reimagining of Sleeping Beauty that concentrates on the poor misunderstood villain instead of the hero. I give it a B.

It Came From The Cineplex: Edge Of Tomorrow

Edge Of Tomorrow is Tom Cruise's latest opus and was directed by Doug Liman (Go, The Bourne Identity) and written by Christopher McQuarrie, Jez Butterworth and John-Henry Butterworth. I've never heard of those last two, but I really like saying "Jez Butterworth." Based on the graphic novel All You Need Is Kill.

Cruise's previous scifi epic Oblivion was a stiched-together, Frankenstein-ian pastiche of several much better films. Edge Of Tomorrow is just as derivative, recalling films like Groundhog Day, Source Code, Deja Vu, ALIENS and Starship Troopers. Despite this, Edge Of Tomorrow's clever script and direction help it succeed where Oblivion failed. 

It's a miracle the film turned out as well as it did. Six months before filming started, director Doug Liman scrapped two thirds of the script and hired the Butterworths to rewrite it. They were replaced by writer Christopher McQuarrie just eight weeks before filming. The movie didn't even have a satisfactory ending when filming began (which is always a risky move).

Brad Pitt was originally going to star in the film, but had to drop out due to scheduling conflicts. Actress Berenice Bejo was originally cast in the role of Rita, before Emily Blunt took over. 

A while back I wrote about the film's horrible, horrible title and feared it would hurt the box office (just like the John Carter debacle a couple of years ago). Fortunately for Warner Bros., the bland, nondescript title doesn't seem to have affected the film much, as it looks looks to be on track to pass the $300 million mark.

Speaking of which-- apparently the filmmakers wanted to call it All You Need Is Kill after the graphic novel, but Warner Bros. president Sue Kroll changed it because she was concerned with "negative chatter about the word 'kill' in the title." Jesus wept. I don't want to live on this planet anymore.

ENDLESSLY LOOPING SPOILERS AHEAD!

The Plot:
It's the near future, and alien invaders known as Mimics have taken over Europe. Major William Cage (Tom Cruise) is ordered to the front lines, despite his alarming lack of combat training. He's thrown into battle with little or no preparation. Cage gets off a lucky shot and kills an alpha Mimic, showering him with the alien's blood, before he himself is killed. 

Suddenly Cage wakes up alive and well the previous morning. It seems the alien's blood has magic time traveling properties, and he's now caught in a loop, reliving the same day over and over. Each time he dies (and he dies a lot) he starts over at the beginning of the loop, remembering everything from each cycle. Eventually he uses this to his advantage, training with famous war veteran Sergeant Rita Vrataski (Emily Blunt) to become a proper soldier and defeat the Mimics by finding a way to destroy their central brain (oy, these aliens and their central brains).

Thoughts:
• This is probably the most video game-like movie ever made. Every time Cage is killed he "respawns" back at the beginning and learns how to advance a little farther each time through the loop, just like in a video game. Too bad for him there were no save points though.

• In a very surprising move, Cruise plays a bonafide coward in the film. One who even resorts to blackmailing a superior officer to stay out of the front lines.

This is a huge departure for Cruise. Apparently he's now at the point in his career where he's willing to risk his usual action hero image. Remember, this is the same Tom Cruise who once campaigned to play Edward Scissorhands, but only if he didn't have scars marring his perfect chiseled looks. He's definitely maturing as an actor.

Well, mostly maturing. Cage starts out the battle wearing a helmet, but after a couple minutes he rips it off and tosses it away. When a fellow soldier asks him where his helmet is, he replies with a lame, "It was a distraction (!)." 

Hmm. Now I wonder why the star of a multimillion dollar film wouldn't want to wear a helmet. Surely it couldn't have anything to do with it obscuring his leading man features, could it?

• Kudos to director Doug Liman for somehow figuring out how to make a film that repeats the same scenes over and over, yet feels fresh each time. Many times we see Cage in a situation and think it's his first time, but then we find out it's the fiftieth. This keeps the action moving at a brisk pace, and the audience on their toes.

• I wonder how many times Cage lived through the same day? A hundred? A thousand? More? Just think how tedious that would be after a while. He needs to get to the end of the loop, but has to go through the motions of the same day again and again and again and... 

Living the same day over forever would be my personal version of hell.

• We're told the aliens are called "Mimics" because of their ability to copy and anticipate human actions. Hmm. So apparently humans like to burrow underground, spin like tops and bounce from object to object like a ricocheting bullet, because that's exactly how the Mimics move. Surely there was a better, less misleading name they could have come up with?

• Speaking of the Mimics, I am not a fan of their design. Everything else in the film-- the battle suits, the troop ships, etc.-- looks top notch and plausible, but they really dropped the ball with the aliens. They look vaguely like glue-covered squids that rolled around in a pile of metal shavings-- I think. Throughout the film they twirl around so fast it's impossible to get a good look at them. 

This is something that's been going on in scifi films for quite a while now. Just because you can make your aliens and ships zip around the screen at Mach 5 doesn't mean you should. Slow the hell down and let the audience actually look at your designs!

An example of why this super speed thing is a bad idea: the first time through the loop Cage kills an Alpha alien, which is supposed to be a really big deal. Unfortunately we don't recognize it as an Alpha because it's the first good look we get an ANY alien. You've got to show us the grunts before we can be impressed with the officer.

• Many have criticized the lack of motivation for the aliens' attack. Eh, that didn't bother me. If Earth was ever invaded by a truly alien species like we see here, we probably never would find out their reasons for doing so. Their minds and methods would no doubt be unknowable to humanity.

It's not like they're going to Tweet their intentions to us. "Invading third planet from yellow star. Inhabitants easy to defeat, LOL."

• I've missed Bill Paxton. Can he be in every movie from now on please?

• The battle suits in the film are fictional of course, but are supposedly based on designs being developed by DARPA (our government's secret mad scientist division). Each suit weighed 85 pounds, which explains the actors' lumbering gait when running in them.

• Cage is thrown into J Squad, which seems to be the platoon in which the Army dumps all the misfits and rejects. They're a colorful group, but unfortunately they're all so shallowly written that I wouldn't be surprised if the script refers to them as Fat Guy, Soccer Hooligan, Hillbilly Girl, Crazy Silent Guy and so on.

• On Cage's first time through the time loop, he receives so little training that he doesn't even know how to deactivate the safety on his weapons. He literally begs his J Squad pals to tell him how to turn it off, but his pleas fall on deaf ears. 

The implication here is that the lovable scamps of J Squad are deliberately trying to get him killed. Sure, he's a coward and a deserter, but fragging him seems a bit harsh to me. You can't redeem yourself if you're dead. Can't they just tie his uniform in knots or short sheet his bed?

To make it even worse, later on the film wants us to weep for these psychopathic members of J Squad as they sacrifice themselves for humanity. Nice try, movie.

• When Cage meets up with Rita, she uses the time loops to train him how to be a proper soldier. The training area is filled with simulated Mimics that careen around the room at high speed, complete with sharp, whirling blades. Just like the X-Men's Danger Room.

At one point a robotic Mimic slams into Cage with so much force that it actually breaks his spine, paralyzing him. Jesus Christ! That seems a bit extreme. I get that the simulation needs to be as real as possible to be effective, but losing your head during a training exercise seems counterproductive to me.

On the other hand, deadly simulations aren't totally without precedent, as our Army often uses live rounds during obstacle course training. 

• Whenever Cage is grievously injured during his training, Rita resets the loop by killing him! It's shocking to see the heroine just up and shoot the hero in the head, but given the circumstances it makes sense. And after a while it's actually funny. At one point Cage is injured and resigns himself to the fact that Rita's going to kill him, sighing, "OK, do it."

• In the third act Cage talks his pals in J Squad-- who've known him for less than a day, mind you-- into accompanying him on a suicide mission to kill the giant alien brain (called the Omega) controlling the Mimics, which is located in the Louvre. 

A couple things here. One, I don't care how many times Cage gives them his "I know this is going to sound crazy, but the longer I talk the more rational it's going to sound" speech, there's no way in hell that J Squad would gleefully follow him into certain death.

But the script demands they indeed follow him, and so they do. Once they reach the Louvre they're all mowed down in rapid succession. As I mentioned earlier we're supposed to feel bad for them, but they're so shallowly written and have so little screen time (in a film that repeats the same scenes over and over yet!) that their deaths have little or no impact on the audience.

• Once again we see an alien invasion in which one central brain controls the entire army. When are aliens going to learn that this is a terrible, terrible idea? Once the giant Omega brain is taken out, the hordes and hordes of Mimic soldiers drop lifeless to the ground like rag dolls.

I've seen this over and over in many scifi films, and it's a sure sign of lazy writing.

• Thank god this film finally premiered. I've been seeing the same damned trailer for it every single weekend for the past six months. At least. I was starting to feel like Cruise's character, reliving the same day over and over and over and...

Edge Of Tomorrow is a derivative, but well written and enjoyable scifi take on the "endless loop" trope. I still hate that title though. I give it a B+.

Things George R. R. Martin Is Doing Instead Of Finishing The "Game Of Thrones" Books

Welcome to a new feature here on Bob Canada's BlogWorld, entitled Things George R. R. Martin Is Doing Instead Of Finishing The "Game Of Thrones" Books. Here I'll be spotlighting all the many, many, many ways that author George R.R.R.R. Martin is wasting precious time gadding about in public instead of bellying up to the typewriter and finishing his goddamned novels.

This past weekend Martin was spotted throwing out the first pitch for his local MINOR league baseball team, the Albuquerque Isotopes (whose owner is apparently a fan of The Simpsons).

That's great, George R.R. In the time it took you to make that incredibly important public appearance in front of an obviously packed stadium, you could have written a new chapter of Book Six and killed off nine or ten more beloved characters. Stop with all the needless distractions and GET BACK TO WORK!

Be sure and check back often for more Things George R. R. Martin Is Doing Instead Of Finishing The "Game Of Thrones" Books.

And yes, I'm aware that technically his series of novels is called A Song Of Ice And Fire, but the vast majority of people out there know it as Game Of Thrones. So I went with the flow.

Why Do They Call Them Comics: Rex Morgan, M.D.

Here's a couple of Rex Morgan, M.D. comics from this week.

Nice to see Bobby Hill's still getting work after his show was cancelled.

It Came From The Cineplex: A Million Ways To Die In The West

A Million Ways To Die In The West was written by Seth MacFarlane, Alec Sulkin and Wellesley Wild (producers and writers for Fox's The Family Guy). It was directed by MacFarlane, who also stars in the film, wrote lyrics for at least one of the songs and even authored a tie-in novel based on the script. 

We get it, Seth. You're a very talented person with an impressive resume. But leave a bit of room in the credits for some other names, huh?

It's your typical modern comedy, chock full of crude humor and R-rated language. Your enjoyment of it will depend on your tolerance for such things. If you like fart, poop and semen jokes, you'll be LOLing in the aisles. If you're a fan of subtle, intelligent humor, you're in for a rough time.

A MILLION SPOILERS AHEAD, INCLUDING A SURPRISE CAMEO APPEARANCE!

The Plot:
In 1882, anachronistic sheep farmer Albert Stark is dumped by his girlfriend Louise. A mysterious woman (Charlize Theron), who is secretly the wife of infamous outlaw Clinch Leatherwood (Liam Neeson), arrives in town and takes an interest in Albert. She teaches Albert how to shoot in order to win a duel between him and Foy (Neil Patrick Harris), Louise's new beau. That's pretty much it. 

Thoughts:
• Seth MacFarlane is an accomplished voice actor, but proves here that that skill doesn't necessarily translate into live action. He's easily the weakest part of an otherwise top notch cast. In addition to his distractingly Peter Brady looks, he just doesn't have the chops to be a leading man. It might have been better if he'd stayed behind the scenes in the director's chair and let someone else-- Owen Wilson perhaps-- take over the starring role.

Speaking of the cast, Neil Patrick Harris gives it his all in a standout performance. Kudos to him for being so committed to the material that he literally craps in a hat not once, but twice.

• Many have compared the film unfavorably to Blazing Saddles, saying it falls far short of the Mel Brooks classic. To that I say, huzzah! I know this is sacrilegious, but I've never been a fan of Blazing Saddles. Especially that ending, with all the fourth-wall breaking and dance number bushwah. Give me the far superior, more coherent and better written Young Frankenstein any day.

• The film has a frustrating, meandering tone, touching briefly on idea after idea but never committing to them. For example, the whole "Deadly West" thing. We see just three or four examples of the many ways to die, but then the concept is quickly forgotten. 

Then we get a few "this century sucks" jokes (such as how there are only three songs and they're all written by Stephen Foster), and for a while it seems like that may be the film's new focus, but then that's dropped as well.

The movie would have benefitted greatly from choosing a direction and then sticking with it.

• The film has some great John Ford-style classic western cinematography. It also features a rousing and awesome score, reminiscent of those of Alfred Newman and Elmer Bernstein. It made me actually wish I could watch some old-school westerns on the big screen again.

• My favorite character in the film: hands down, it's Albert's dad, a sour, miserable and unpleasant troll of a man who looks forward to the sweet release of death. Highlight: when he places sheep manure under his son's pillow to teach him that there's no such thing as the tooth fairy. The film could have used more of him.

• Since this is a Seth MacFarlane production, naturally it includes a big song and dance number. Foy, the proprietor of the local "Mustachery," and a troupe of fellow dandies perform a show stopping number called, "If You Only Have A Mustache."

Since MacFarlane wrote everything else in the film, I naturally assumed he penned this song as well. It's such a bizarre and ridiculous (and specifically appropriate) little ditty that I was very surprised to find out it's an actual old song, written by Stephen Foster (of course-- he wrote all three songs in existence, remember?). MacFarlane did write some additional lyrics for it though (of course).

• My favorite quote from the film: When Albert says, "I'm not the hero. I'm the guy in the crowd making fun of the hero's shirt." 

I gotta admit, that line hit pretty close to home, describing me to a T.

• There's a running joke in the film about how no one ever smiles in photographs, and how insane it would be to do so. There's actually a grain of truth to this. Early daguerrotype photography required extremely long exposure times. In the 1820s, it took a whopping eight hours to take a photo! 

By the 1830s they got it down to a slightly more reasonable fifteen minutes. That's still a hell of a long time to sit rock still, so often photographers would hide supports and braces behind their subjects so they could sit motionless during the long exposure time.

By the 1840s it "only" took around sixty seconds to take a photo. Hence the movie's joke about no one ever being able to smile for that long unless they were insane.

In addition to the long exposure times, people most likely didn't smile because back then portrait photography was a huge deal. It was expensive and so most likely a once in a lifetime occurrence. People tended to take it very seriously and not smile in their photos.

• The film's loaded with cameos, including Ewan McGregor, Ryan Reynolds, Bill Maher, Patrick Stewart (voice only), Gilbert Godfried and Jamie Foxx. 

Christopher Lloyd makes a surprise appearance as Doc Brown, from the Back To The Future films. Funny, but I wouldn't be doing my job if I didn't point out that the film takes place in 1882, and Doc Brown was sent back in time to 1885. Whoops!

• A word or two about that poster. Look at that thing! Each one of those faces has been Photoshopped within an inch of its life. Especially Charlize Theron. She's a beautiful woman; was it really necessary to give her such smooth, plastic-like skin? This thing's been touched up so much it qualifies as a painting.

A Million Ways To Die In The West is a mildly amusing gross out comedy that boasts an great cast and musical score, but ultimately suffers from a meandering tone and uneven humor. I give it a B-.

Ooh, That's A REALLY Useful Invention!

This week a desperate United States Secret Service challenged the scientific community to invent a social media Sarcasm Detector. Que hundreds of "Wow, that sounds like a GREAT idea" comments.

I admit that on the surface it seems like a preposterous idea, but I get why they need one. When their agents are sitting in their underground bunkers, monitoring every online comment we make, it's tough for them to tell when we're serious and when we're just being snarky assholes. 

When some Tweeting tween types "All men must die," does it mean they're a fan of Game Of Thrones? Or are they planning on poisoning the city's water supply with a compound that kills anyone with a Y chromosome?

So a sarcasm detector does make a certain amount of sense. It's just too bad the government is asking for devices The Simpsons already invented...

M-O-O-N, That Spells "I've Got A Bad Feeling About This"

This week Josh Boone (director of the current "dying-teens-in-love cancer epic" The Fault In Our Stars) announced he's working on a film version of Stephen King's novel The Stand. If that wasn't enough of a red flag for you, Boone also says he plans to turn King's sprawling epic into ONE three hour film. Oy gevalt.

As a longtime fan of The Stand, I'm extremely disappointed by this news. 

I first read The Stand way back in 1979 and became an instant fan. I've read both versions of the book many, many times over the years, so I know of what I speak. Trust me when I say that trying to cram the novel into one movie is a very bad idea.

The Stand is a massive book with a huge cast of characters-- at least 28 by my count. I can guarantee they're not all going to make the cut in a three hour film. The 1994 ABC miniseries was six hours long. Even at that length they had to drop certain characters and combine others, as well as eliminate entire subplots. There's no way in hell a two or even three hour version can do justice to the book. It'll be The Stand Lite. 

I don't understand why Boone wants to make just one measly film. Hollywood is positively desperate for franchises these days, optioning any multi-book series they can get their hands on. The Stand could easily be turned into a trilogy along the lines of The Hunger Games and Divergence. Heck, the book's already divided into three parts-- Captain Trips, On The Border and The Stand-- for the filmmaker's convenience. They could feature the super flu plague in the first film, deal with the survivors and their attempts to rebuild society in the second, and then confront Randall Flagg in the third. It seems like a no-brainer to me.

Not only does one film not make artistic sense, it's a bad financial decision as well. Why make one subpar film that'll piss off fans of the novel and tank at the box office, when you could make three good ones that'd rake in at least $150 or $200 million each? They could even split the third film in two, as is the ever increasingly popular custom these days (again, see The Hunger Games and Divergence), and generate another aircraft carrier full of cash.

And once the theatrical runs were over they could sell each of the three (or four) films separately on DVD and blu ray, then combine them and sell 'em all over again in a special collector's set. It'd be like a license to print money!

Please, Josh Boone, stop siding with The Walkin' Dude and reconsider this cockamamie three hour film idea and turn The Stand into a trilogy like it deserves. As Tom Cullen would say, "M-O-O-N, that spells boffo box office!"

It Came From The Video Store: Grabbers

Grabbers is a 2012 Irish sci-fi/horror film that was directed by Jon Wright and written by Kevin Lehane.

If you see only one Irish-made monster movie this year, this is the one to see. I highly recommend it.

I know what you're thinking-- that DVD cover makes it look like some dreadful Syfy Channel reject. I thought the same thing when I saw it on the video store racks, but it's surprisingly well-written and acted. It's also quite funny and filled with many colorful characters, and gives us Yanks a peek into Irish culture. It's very similar in tone to Tremors, but with more pubs and ale and alien squids instead of sand worms.

The Plot:
Eager young policeman (known as Garda in Ireland) Lisa Nolan (played by Ruth Bradley) is transferred to remote Irish island, much to the chagrin of her alcoholic superior Ciaran O'Shea (played by Richard Coyle).

The two investigate a herd of mutilated whale corpses that wash ashore, and realize some... things are attacking the remote island village. A violent storm hits the island, preventing any hope of escape or rescue. The town then has to fend for itself against the hungry alien attackers.

Thoughts:
• The special effects in Grabbers were surprisingly sophisticated. Apparently America and New Zealand aren't the only countries that can produce good CGI.

• There's absolutely no reason this film couldn't have been shown in U.S. theaters-- it's easily as good or better than many Hollywood films I've seen in the past year. I'm betting the lack of recognizable stars is what kept it out of our cineplexes. Studio executives all believe that audiences will shun a movie if doesn't have big stars in it (which I believe is a bunch of bull). That's why we get so many foreign film remakes here. Expect to see an Americanized version of Grabbers any day now.

• Russell Tovey plays Dr. Adam Smith in the film. Tovey guest starred in Voyage Of The Damned, the 2007 Doctor Who Christmas Special. Back then series producer Russell T. Davies suggested that Tovey would be a worthy candidate to play the Doctor when David Tennant left the show. Frankly I just didn't see it. I thought Tovey was way too bland to play a quirky character such as the Doctor. 

But after seeing him in Grabbers, I get it. He can definitely do the whole quirky and funny thing, and there were a few scenes in which he acted very Doctor-y. I could definitely see him manning the TARDIS someday.

Grabbers is a criminally underrated scifi/horror/comedy with big budget effects and a lot of charm from its two main leads. I give it a B+.

You Are Like A Hurricane

Regular readers of Bob Canada's BlogWorld know that for years now I've been taking the National Hurricane Center to task for the ridiculous names they give to storms. 

I posited that people are less likely to listen to the Center's warnings and evacuate their homes when they're told that Hurricane Timmy is bearing down on them. I suggested people would have a healthier fear of the storms if they had names like Annihilator and Destruktorr.

Welp, it looks like I was right. And this time science is there to back me up! And you thought all this blog was good for was amateur movie reviews and extreme nitpicking.

Researchers at the University of Illinois recently studied six decades worth of storm data, and determined that hurricanes with female names are more deadly, because the public perceives them as less threatening than those with male names, and therefore take fewer precautions to protect themselves.

They suggested that simply changing a hurricane's name from Charley to Sally could triple its death rate. Triple! 

See? I was totally right about this (minus the gender bias, that is). Can you imagine anyone ever dashing down the street, shrieking, "Run for your lives! Hurricane Cindy is coming!"

So please, National Hurricane Center, I'm begging you. Stop giving hurricanes such weak and fuzzy names. Give them monikers that strike fear and dread into those in the paths of the storms. Ominous, fearful, and-- dare I say it-- manly names, that no one can afford to disregard.

In the interest of public safety, I once again offer my list of suitably ominous Hurricane Names. You're welcome.

· Annihilator
· Blastarr
· Crusher
· Destruktorr
· Exterminus
· Fearasaurus Death
· Ginormitron
· Hellsender
· Implosionator
· Jackal-gnashor
· Killotronn
· Lay-waste-acuss
· Maimakuss
· Neutralizorr
· Oblitoratorr
· Pillaguss
· Ransackulon
· Slaughteratorr
· Terminatus
· Vandalon
· Wreckkorr

Why Do They Call Them Comics: Real Life Adventures

So here's today's Real Life Adventures comic strip...

Normally I like the dry, snarky tone of this strip, but something's really off today. Am I missing something? Is this it? This is all there is? Nothing was accidentally left out, like maybe a word balloon containing something resembling an actual punch line or some kind of humorous comment? 

I get that it's probably tough coming up with 365 jokes a year, but this is nothing more than a world-weary dad making a half-hearted statement about kids and credit cards. 

Note that it took two people to come up with this non-joke.

This Week In Movie Posters

Check out this character posters for the upcoming movie Sin City: A Dame To Kill For, featuring actress Eva Green. Va va va Voom! Unfortunately the MPAA, that ultra secret rating organization that knows what's best for each and every one of us, has banned this poster, claiming it's too risqué.

Because god knows if the general public ever caught a glimpse of a gauzy boob on a movie poster, this would happen.

In the words of the MPAA themselves, they banned the poster "for nudity-- curve of under breast and dark nipple/areola circle visible through sheer gown." Mercy, their description of why they banned it seems more R-rated than the poster itself. 

Note that typically they have no trouble with the fact that Green is holding a gun; their beef is strictly with her breasts.

Dimension Films, distributer of the film, has decided to rework the poster to meet with the MPAA's standards. Pussies.

Next we have the poster for the soon to be released Nicholas Cage film Left Behind. A few things here.

First of all, didn't Super-Christian Kirk Cameron already make the hell out of these movies back in the 2000s? Didn't he do a whole series of them? Left Behind, Left Behind 2: Even Behinder and all those? So why are they making them again already? Because bible movies are hot this year? Because these literary masterpieces demand a proper Hollywood budget?

Second, why do so many of these religious films involve the end of the world? The entire Left Behind series is about the Rapture and the End Times. Earlier this year we had Noah, another religio-disaster film. Cage himself even starred in 2009's Knowing, a disaster of a disaster film with ill-advised religious overtones. Jesus, why are Christians so obsessed with the destruction of the world? Aren't there any nice stories in the bible?

Lastly, take a good long look at Nicholas Cage's face on this poster. What first day on the job graphic designer picked that headshot to paste onto someone else's body? His befuddled expression makes it look like for all the world like someone ran up and snapped his photo while he was waiting in line at the bank.

If you've ever wondered what someone would look like if you hit them in the face with a fish, look no further than this expression right here.

Chad Michael Murray, seen behind Cage, looks similarly confused by his presence on the poster as well.

R.I.P. Alice Nelson (aka Ann B. Davis)

Well, crap.

Ann B. Davis, better known as Alice Nelson, housekeeper of The Brady Bunch fame, died Sunday at age 88. Sadly, Davis died from injuries sustained during a fall in her bathtub.

Like the vast majority of Americans, I grew up in a family that couldn't afford a live-in housekeeper. Well, we could have had one, but then either me or my sister would have had to go.

If we'd have had a housekeeper though, I'd have wanted one like Alice. Sure her jokes were corny, but what kid wouldn't want a live-in maid who not only had your milk and cookies ready for  you when you came home from school, but would also play touch football with you in the backyard? Alice Nelson was the housekeeper for an entire generations of kids who never had one.

The Brady Bunch aired its final episode in 1974 and has been playing non-stop in syndication for the past forty years. Say what you will about the show, but it must have something to offer if people are still watching it after all these years. I can think of few current shows that audiences will still be watching four decades from now.

So here's to you, Alice. And Ann B. Davis as well. Put on your green cloth coat, call up Sam the Butcher and go compete for that big bowling trophy in those pearly alleys in the sky.

It Came From The Cineplex: Neighbors

Neighbors was directed by Nicholas Stoller and written by Andrew J. Cohen and Brendan O'Brien. It was produced by Seth Rogen and his perennial film partner Evan Goldberg.

Stoller's had quite a hit & miss (mostly miss) film career, directing Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Yes Man, Gulliver's Travels and The Muppets. Now THAT'S a resume!

SPOILERS, I GUESS!
The Plot: 
New parents Mac and Kelly Radner (Seth Rogen and Rose Byrne) are horrified when a noisy fraternity moves into the house next door to theirs. They try to make nice with the rowdy fratboys, but when that fails they vow to run them out of the neighborhood. That's pretty much it for 97 minutes.

Thoughts:
• This is going to be a very short review, as I really don't have much to say about this film. As with most modern comedies, I thought it was mildly amusing at best, it entertained me for an hour and a half and I'd almost completely forgotten about it by the time I walked out to my car.

• This may be a cinematic first-- Seth Rogen actually plays a somewhat responsible character. If you ignore all the sitcom scheming and conniving to drive the frat from the neighborhood, his character is a fairly decent husband and father.

• As a heterosexual male over 40, this was my first ever exposure to Zac Efron. On the extremely rare occasion when I thought of him at all, I considered him little more than a male model. Surprisingly he did a pretty decent acting job here (in the interest of full disclosure though, the script didn't demand much from him).

• Who knew Rose Byrne could do comedy? And kudos to the filmmakers for actually giving her a chance to be funny, instead of focusing solely on Seth Rogen.

• Christopher Mintz-Plasse is in the film, and plays pretty much the same character he's played in every other movie he's ever been in. 

One day soon he's going to have to try and stretch his acting muscles and play a character radically different from McLovin, or he's going to end up signing autographs at conventions for the rest of his life.

• The film's crude visual and verbal humor definitely earns its R rating. Not that there's anything wrong with that-- if you're an adult. Unfortunately there were quite a few kids under 12 at the showing I attended. 

Why do people bring their kids to movies like this? It makes me uncomfortable laughing at a dick joke when there's an eight year old kid sitting next to me. I hope the Parents Of The Year who brought their kids to this film had had fun later trying to explain what a dildo is and how and where one is used.

Neighbors is a crude, raunchy and reasonably entertaining comedy that you'll forget about immediately after seeing. I give it a B-.