When I was a kid, one of my favourite movies was Twister. When I first saw it, it was utterly terrifying, and created an intense fear of tornados whenever we had a thunderstorm. The fact that I lived in the mountains where tornadoes never, ever occur didn’t sink in for a few years, and losing my tent to a microburst while camping didn’t help.

After I got over my fear of tornadoes, I started to really enjoy this movie, and watched it a bunch of times. I even seriously wanted to get into storm chasing (again, not something readily pursue-able in the mountains) after watching it.

My interest in the film faded for awhile, and the next time I saw it, I thought the movie was patently ridiculous. It had gone from terrifying horror film, to exciting thriller, to pathetic comedy in the span of about eight years.

So, this evening, I was browsing The Nostalgia Critic videos. I don’t normally watch his reviews, because they’re really long, and usually about movies/TV shows I don’t remember. His review of Fern Gully, one of my all-time favourite movies, really rubbed me the wrong way, so I don’t really watch his reviews of anything I remember fondly. But, I saw that he reviewed Twister, and couldn’t resist. This is quite possibly the most hilarious video this guy’s ever done, in my opinion

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As a self-proclaimed nerd, this is some of the best news I’ve heard all week (which is really lame, but true). Having never been to Vegas, and only recently discovering how much I like Star Trek, I was really disappointed when I heard about this closing down. The fact that it’s re-opening gives me hope that, someday soon, I’ll be able to visit it

I just hope the new movie doesn’t suck as hard as I fear it will. The writers really need to get some new material; there’s plenty of universe to continue the story forward, instead of this constant tripe of going back in time and re-hashing established storyline. Nemesis was the last forward-moving installment of Star Trek, and it left plenty of room to continue the story line. Why not pick things up from there?

All the whiners who say that newer Star Trek shows/movies are too far removed from the original need to quit bitching and learn to deal with progress. The glory days of Kirk are long gone, and continuing to re-visit the early days of the Federation doesn’t make the original stories any better, it just wastes new production resources. Enterprise proved this pretty solidly.

Anyway, I’m hopeful that the new movie will be decent, but I’m not holding my breath. Voyager will always have a special place in my nerdy heart, and I would be thrilled to see some actual new material come out of the Star Trek franchise.

One of my “guilty pleasures” is a fondness for the movie “Waiting“. If you haven’t seen it…well, I’d have a hard time recommending it to anyone, on the same level that I’d recommend any other movie. It’s quite possibly one of the most disgusting, poorly-written movies I’ve ever seen in my life. Yet, I can’t get enough of it, and anyone else who’s worked in a restaurant will understand why; despite the poor quality of the film itself, it make a great deal of sense to anyone who’s worked in a restaurant, to the point that it redeems itself. It’s like how “Clerks” is viewed by convenience store cashiers, or how “Office Space” is viewed by anyone who’s worked in an office with cubicles.

The sequel, “Still Waiting“, is about on-par with the original, in terms of film quality. The writing is considerably better, with a storyline more involved than “these characters work in a restaurant”, and character development that blows the doors off of the original in a few places, but there are other elements that feel very unfinished. And, the acting is just weird. In the original, it was flat-out bad across the board, with maybe one good performance. The sequel, however, has an odd conglomeration of acting talent; many of the original actors make return appearances, with greatly-improved skills, but they’re joined by a group of no-name n00bs who are so laughably bad that a few scenes made me think I was watching one of those “Scary Movie” parodies of the original (doesn’t help that it largely takes place in the exact same location).

On the plus side, the gross-out factor of “Still Waiting” was much lower than in “Waiting”. Despite the fact that I watch it all the time, there are scenes in Waiting that still make my stomach turn. The humour in this new installment, on the other hand, is more story-based, and while it goes way overboard on sexual content, it’s really not that bad.

And, a big positive point for “Still Waiting” is that it knows it’s a sequel. So many movie sequels try to be stand-alones as well as sequels; they want to appeal to people who never saw the original, and create a whole new storyline, while still tying the viewer into the original just enough to give the people who saw the original a warm fuzzy feeling. So, I’ll say this point-blank; if you didn’t see “Waiting”, “Still Waiting” won’t make a damn bit of sense. It’s very purely a sequel, with much of its character development based on the original, and while that doesn’t necessarily make it a good movie, the fact that they didn’t even try to break it away from the original saved it from being unredeemably bad. Since “Waiting” doesn’t really have a well-defined beginning or end, the appeal of “Still Waiting” lies in the fact that it cleans up a lot of loose ends from the first movie, answering a ton of questions you probably had at the end of “Waiting” (assuming you weren’t stoned when you saw it, which is a big assumption). Put another way, the sequel makes the original feel more like a real movie.

So, that’s pretty much all there is to say about this movie without giving a spoiler-filled synopsis.

Bottom Line
If you liked “Waiting”, you’ll love “Still Waiting”. If you didn’t like “Waiting”, or didn’t understand it, don’t bother. And if you haven’t seen “Waiting”, you’ll probably think it’s the worst movie ever made (as well as never wanting to eat at a generic Americana restaurant again), unless you’ve worked in a restaurant as your primary job (doing it on the side while working a white-collar office job doesn’t count).

On a whim, my mom and I saw Paul Blart: Mall Cop this evening. I didn’t have high expectations; the previews made the movie look rather dumb, and when LilPup & Spike saw it last week, they seemed less than impressed. So, I was expecting a movie full of stupid humour that I probably wouldn’t remember in a week.

However, I thought it was an exceptionally good movie. Not in the sense that it was well-written (the plot was so far-fetched that I couldn’t help but sigh), or well-made, but the underlying story was surprisingly heartwarming.

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Posting from lilkitt’s house, heading to the hotel tomorrow. More people should visit him, he and Ellen are very awesome hosts :-). I’m feeling kinda random, so this post is a bit disjointed.

I’m watching Voyager right now, and it’s a pretty decent episode, but it feels very surreal to watch Star Trek in a house (and a room) filled with more Star Trek autographs than I thought one person/couple could acquire in a lifetime. Earlier, Kitt showed me their collection, and told me tales of his experiences at Star Trek cons, which was really awesome. Now, I’m working, and Voyager’s on TV. I look across the room, and there’s an autographed picture of Captain Janeway on the wall. Trippy, yet cool.

Speaking of TV, there’s a banner on this channel (Spike) that scrolls across the bottom of the screen, with a dire warning to Time Warner and Brighthouse customers that they’re about to lose this channel (with 18 others), and to call some number. Two things are weird about this. Number one, why is this message being played on Verizon FIOS? And number two, what psychotic cable network would drop channels like Spike, VH1, MTV, and Comedy Central? Oh, and why must this stupid banner play constantly during the show, but not during the commercials?

On a completely unrelated note, I’m really having fun with SL lately, and looking at it with a new perspective. Before, though I wouldn’t admit it at the time, it was pretty much a substitute for real life. After the things that have changed in my life since then, SL still appeals to me, but not in the same way. It’s no longer an escape in the same sense, for me. Instead, I’m using it as true game; something recreational for my spare time, as well as an artistic medium. I’ve been working on a new building that I’m really having fun with, and I look forward to unveiling it, and posting pictures of it to my website. I’ve always enjoyed 3D modelling, but I’ve never done a whole lot with it, because it’s hard to really show off 3D creations to others. But, SL provides a venue for others to really explore my work, instead of just looking at 2D pictures of it.

Anyway, I should sleep now, or something. Kitt’s heater makes really freaky noises, though

After spending over a year with a nice HDTV, and no DVD player, just a VCR, I finally bought a DVD player for it. I was going to wait until I get paid, but I’ve run out of VHS movies that I haven’t seen a million times, and I watch a lot of movies while I’m working (there’s a severe lack of not-suck TV shows during the day). Plus, Wal-Mart unexpectedly had the exact model I saw at Crutchfield for $25 less

I had forgotten just how sexy movies look on this TV, damn.

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On a side note, 85%-cocoa dark chocolate bars aren’t nearly as tasty as I thought they’d be (I love 60%-cocoa dark chocolate). It kinda tastes like solidified black coffee, and really hard. Why do foods describing themselves as being “for true aficionados” taste gross?

I don’t normally make posts while I’m travelling, especially when I don’t have my own computer handy, but I had to share this. We saw a play on Broadway tonight, Equus, and to my surprise, Kate Mulgrew was in it, with a pretty big role! That totally made my night, it was so great! She’s one of my all-time favourite actresses, not just because she was my favourite Star Trek captain, but because she’s incredibly talented, and can portray a wide variety of characters well.

Unfortunately, she didn’t come out the front door to sign autographs, but the fact that I had the chance to see her in a live show (something I’ve often dreamed about, but that I never thought I’d do) was definitely on the list of “Greatest Life Experiences”.

Over the weekend, I went to see W., a satirical portrayal of Dubya’s adult life. From the previews, it looked quite entertaining, and it appeared to make him look like the retarded monkey that I see him as in my mind. So, sure, let’s check it out.

And, my impression of it afterwards was a resounding “Meh”. This was a really poorly-written movie, and not the same way as most comedies these days. The storyline didn’t really go anywhere, with no real beginning or end, and it constantly jumped around through different time periods. The producers did have the courtesy to put the year in huge font at the start of every scene, but the constant switching made it really hard to follow.

Another fallacy is that they didn’t really identify who the supporting characters were. You’d think that everyone could figure this out on their own, but when you have actors portraying real-life people, some of whom aren’t particularly noteworthy outside of their names, you need to have something to identify them. There’s one character, presumably a family member, who I still can’t figure out who they were supposed to be. And, in presidential movies, one of the earliest scenes in the film is usually always either a cabinet meeting with conspicuous nametags, or an Oval Office staff meeting with subtitled names to introduce the characters. W didn’t have the latter at all, and the former didn’t happen until halfway through the movie. Even then, only a couple of the nametags were legible, and they lacked names, only titles.

Lastly, the movie didn’t really accomplish anything. Given the premise and subject matter, one would expect this movie to either showcase how inept Dubya really is, or characterize him as a heartwarming, lovable screw-up, like that relative everyone has who can’t go two minutes without doing something wrong. Failing that, it could showcase how the other members of Bush’s cabinet are really the ones in control, with him just as a puppet. Or, it could just be a generic presidential movie, showing what really went on behind the scenes of a particular scandal/crisis. This movie attempted to do all four simultaneously, and did a really poor job with all of them, making it feel like there was no focus. The storyline flailed wildly between different areas of focus, and started down a number of different paths without really bringing them to a coherent conclusion. Even the ending felt like “That’s it?”, and had to actually put “The End” on the screen; a big no-no, according to every film connoisseur I’ve talked to.

On the plus side, it had an incredible A-list cast, and the characters who were identifiable were very skillfully portrayed. And, scenes containing speeches were seamlessly blended with actual footage from those speeches, making it very hard to tell which parts were made for this movie, and which ones were taken from real life.

Overall, it’s not really a bad movie, but it’s not really a good one. It had a lot of potential for greatness, but by trying to do everything all at once, they not only killed the movie they were working on, but they made it much more difficult for anyone else to make a movie about Dubya and still be original. Plus, presidential movies are typically made about 20 years after the president they portray, and this is evidence that there’s a reason for that; without the information from people on the inside, it’s very difficult to effectively portray the true character of a president while he/she’s in office.

Final Opinion: Mediocre movie that’s good for a few cheap laughs at Dubya’s expense, but not really worth seeing in the theatre.

Typical country divorce song, with male singer
“Well, she left me
I never saw it coming
She just disappeared
What did I do wrong?”

Typical country divorce song, with female singer
“He should see this coming
I can’t take it anymore
He doesn’t even know what he did wrong
But I can’t do this anymore.”

Conclusion: Straight people suck so badly at communication in relationships that there’s practically an entire genre of music about this.

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Sidenote: George Jones is my hero. He’s almost 80 years old, still touring, still selling out shows, still releasing albums. And, what’s even more awesome is that instead of sticking to the same material for the last half-century, his new material is continually innovative, without losing his grip on the heart of country music like so many newer artists are prone to do.

Star Trek Voyager: Pathfinder (Season 6, Episode 10)

I watched the last bit of this episode, and I swear this has one of the lamest endings in the entire Voyager series. It concludes with Barclay and Troi drinking champaign, and making small talk with retarded jokes, right after a huge moment in the series (making live contact with Earth).

It’s as if they ran out of script during filming, and said “Shit! We finished a minute early! Do something!”

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