HD-DVD is Dead, Long Live HD-DVD!

So, if you've looked at my DVD Collection lately, you may have noticed that I now have a couple HD-DVD discs that I recently acquired.  Before I become known as The King of Dead Formats (yes, I own a LaserDisc player), I should explain.

My brother-in-law got the Xbox 360 player soon after it became available, and he was pretty happy with it.  However, after Toshiba announced it was dropping the HD-DVD format (due in large part to Sony essentially buying off the remaining studios), the HD-DVD player essentially became a brick (or a decent upscaling DVD player).

He tried once before to give it to me, give it away, mind you, and I refused, because I had no need for it.  When he couldn't sell it at a garage sale, I decided to take it off his hands.

So I felt it wasn't worth having unless I had a (small) handful of movies worth watching.  So you'll notice that I now have the following HD-DVD titles:

• 2001: A Space Odyssey
• Top Gun
• Army of Darkness (of course)
• Rattle & Hum (this is on order, I don't have it as of yet)

I'm thinking about buying a PS3 later this year, so maybe I'll start buying Blu-Ray discs eventually.  But we'll see.

Barry from EastEnders

So, my wife and I finished watching the series Extras, the follow-up comedy by the creators of The Office (they created the original U.K. version, and are executive producers on the U.S. version).  If you liked The Office, you will absolutely cringe at Extras.  It's Ricky Gervais at his best, which is him being an obtusely horrible person (as opposed to his friends in the show, who are horribly obtuse).

Once again HBO fails to disappoint me by providing excellent programming.  It's too bad the season (and series) runs are so short.  Although I've recently picked up Carnivale Seasons 1 and 2, and From the Earth to the Moon.  So those should be fun to watch.

With the new X-Files movie out, the wife and I are going to have to play catch-up on the series.  We stopped watching midway through Season 8, I believe.  I need to write a primer for her to keep up with all the plot elements so we can pick up where we left off.

Finally, I just heard from my friend Pat that Ray Stevenson, the actor who played Titus Pullo in Rome will be the next actor to play The Punisher in the new movie Punisher: War Zone.

I don't know what to say about that.

(I'm expecting a big order this week, so I'll have another post soon)

The 10 Worst Films In My DVD Collection (Part 2)

So, I'm always asked "What's your favorite movie," or "What are your top 10 desert island CDs" or "Do I have to get a restraining order?!"

The first two are always difficult to answer, because it's hard for me to pin down absolute favorites. It's easy, however, to recognize absolute crap, and that's what this post is about.

If you've known me for more than a month, you know that I have an extensive DVD collection, and that I often buy movies without actually having seen them first. However, for some reason, I can't bring myself to part with even the worst of the worst, taking a perverse sense of pride in knowing that these films are so bad, that I wouldn't even give them away for fear of retribution.

Here are the 10 Worst films I own, in descending order, finishing the list with 5 through 1:

5. 8mm

This is one of the first DVDs I ever bought, and I believe it might be the first movie I bought without ever having seen it. You would have thought that I'd learned my lesson, but even today I still make that same mistake over and over (see #3 on this very list). In any event, I usually like Nicolas Cage, but just cannot like this movie. Again, this is one of those movies where the elements of a film I usually like are there, but they're just not put together in the right way in this film. I've also developed a disdain for Joel Schumacher, who also directed The Lost Boys, and was responsible for Batman and Robin and Batman Forever, you know the movies with the bat nipples on the suits (as well as an inordinate amount of neon used throughout the film. I swore I would never watch another Schumacher film again, but then I saw...

4. The Number 23

I blame my wife, Target, and and my friend Dave from high school for me buying this movie. I knew better. I told myself "It's a Joel Schumacher film. Remember what happened with 8MM? Go buy a Renny Harlin movie if you want a bad movie. At least it will have Geena Davis, or a chick that looks suspiciously like Geena Davis, and how can you go wrong with that?" But no, I was curious, because my best friend in Junior High had some weird obsession with the number 23. Target had the movie for only $14, so even if it was bad, it had to be at least worth $14, right? But the clincher was my wife, who really wanted to see it (which she'll now vehemently deny, I'm sure). So once again Joel Schumacher has directed a travesty, and neither Jim Carrey nor Virginia Madsen can save this trainwreck of a movie that doesn't make one damned bit of sense. I imagine whomever wrote this uses a technique that my friend Jeff likes to call "Word Salad," where you just take a bunch of words, and mix them up, and assume what you'll produce is consumable. I'm on to you Schumacher. Never again.

3. The Punisher (2004)

Embarrassingly, this movie is the inspiration for this list. I just watched it last night. This is another one of those situations where I knew better, but I let my wife influence me. To be fair, it's not really her fault. When this movie came out in theatres, she expressed a passing interest in seeing, but I strongly suspect she was trying to placate me, thinking I would be interested in seeing it. However, I told her that if she wanted to see it, she would have to watch the 1989 version of The Punisher featuring Dolph "I Must Break You" Lundgren. Strangely, she never mentioned an interest in this film again. I was at Best Buy last week, and I was going through all the movies that were on sale, and I came across this one for $10. I was mildly interested in seeing it, knowing that it couldn't be anywhere near as bad as the first Punisher movie. Plus, it had a fairly extensive cast with Thomas Jane, John Travolta, Will Patton, Rebecca Romijn(-Stamos at that time), Roy Scheider, and the delectable Laura Herring. Early on in the movie, the wife started poking fun at it, and I started to get annoyed by it, wanting to give the movie a fair chance, but at some point, I just relented, and decided she was right to make fun of it. I don't know that there was anything likeable about this movie.

One other thing I'd like to note. The original Punisher is not on this list. As bad as it was, it deserves another viewing, but it may make an "honorable mention."

2. American Psycho 2

American Psycho was based on the novel by Bret Easton Ellis. I had a number of friends who read it in high school, and I read it shortly afterwards. I didn't think a movie could do it justice. But Christian Bale was so perfect as Patrick Bateman, a homicidal perfectionist whose love for Huey Lewis is unsurpassed. American Psycho is one of my favorite movies, and was just so well done. Then came the "sequel." American Psycho 2 stars Mila Kunis (That 70's Show, Family Guy) and William effing Shatner. That's right. Captain Kirk. TJ Hooker. I gave this one a fair shot, but it had the reputation of the first one to live up to. This one doesn't even deserve to be associated with American Psycho. It was just so ridiculously bad, and so poorly executed, I'm ashamed to admit I own this.

1. Sideways

Here we have the recipe for the perfect comedy movie. We start with Paul Giamatti, who was hilarious as PigVomit in Howard Stern's Private Parts, Thomas Haden Church, who played Lowell on Wings (and later would play The Sandman in Spider-Man 3), the always beautiful Virginia Madsen (although her filmography has its ups and downs), and some chick named Sandra Oh, whom I'd never heard of before.

It was directed by Alexander Payne, who is notorious for making films in his hometown (and mine) Omaha. Most memorable are Election and About Schmidt.

The quotes on the DVD cover call it:

• "The Best Comedy of the Year"
• "By Far The Year's Best American Movie"
• "A Comedy Masterpiece"

I call it

• "Crapola!"
• "Two Hours of My Life I'll Never Get Back!"
• "An Abomination Unto The Lord"

This craptacular crapfest was about a bunch of whiny thirty(plus)somethings who do nothing but drink wine and engage in painfully obviously unfulfilling relationships. Everyone in this movie is a depressing sad sack, and it just encouraged a bunch of people who know nothing about wine or healthy relationships to try and become experts in both. I'm not a wine drinker myself, but I have a lot of friends who are, and not a single one of them is a superficial bastard who will spend an entire evening talking about the fucking wine. Being able to recite something you read in a wine guide does not make you a fucking wine expert. I am less inclined to drink wine after watching this movie.

Do not watch this movie. Do not buy this movie. Don't even buy grapes right now.

The 10 Worst Films in My DVD Collection (Part 1)

So, I'm always asked "What's your favorite movie," or "What are your top 10 desert island CDs" or "Do I have to get a restraining order?!"

The first two are always difficult to answer, because it's hard for me to pin down absolute favorites.  It's easy, however, to recognize absolute crap, and that's what this post is about.

If you've known me for more than a month, you know that I have an extensive DVD collection, and that I often buy movies without actually having seen them first.  However, for some reason, I can't bring myself to part with even the worst of the worst, taking a perverse sense of pride in knowing that these films are so bad, that I wouldn't even give them away for fear of retribution.

So here are the 10 Worst films I own, in descending order, beginning with 10 through 6:

10. Date Movie

I am officially over the whole "Spoof Movie" phenomenon thanks to this movie.  It all began with Scary Movie, which was a fun way to parody a lot of the stereotypes in horror films, poking fun at specific films (namely the Scream series, which I have never seen).  The  sequels to Scary Movie became just as formulaic as the movies they were starting to make fun of.  Unfortunately, the trend has continued with films like Date Movie, Epic Movie, and Superhero Movie.  Parody, if done well, can be extremely entertaining.  This, however, resorted to too much toilet humor to be watchable.

9. Smokin' Aces

There's a truck near my neighborhood that's painted camouflage, and has the word "S-s-s-smokin'" painted on the tailgate.  It's incredibly white trashy, and yet it's exponentially more entertaining than Smokin' Aces.  I like movies that have guns, violence, and Jeremy Piven.  So one would think that this would be a winning combination.   However, this one misses on so many levels, it's not even funny.  Apparently, someone decided that it would be a good idea to remake It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World, but instead of a treasure, everyone was trying to assassinate Jeremy Piven.  They should have gone after the writer, director, and casting director for this movie.

8. Hostel

This movie should be called "Hostile" because that's how I feel after having seen it.  Now, I'm a big fan of horror films.  I remember the chest-burster scene from Alien when I was just a kid, and my parents could find a sitter, so they made us "sleep" in the back of the station wagon while they watched a movie at the drive-in.  I remember seeing A Nightmare on Elm St. at a young age, and just being transfixed (and scared to death) by it.  You might say I'm somewhat of a horror film connoisseur.  Hostel, however, is less of a horror film, and more of a giant disappointing waste of celluloid.  I don't know if Hostel introduced this trend, or it just highlighted something I hadn't noticed before, but this movie was the first film that employed an incredibly bad formula of "filling the first half of the movie with gratuitous T&A, and the second half with gratuitous gore."  I don't know about you, but I prefer my horror and gore to be consistent throughout a movie, or at least if it's going to build up to something, don't bore me in the first half of the movie.  What made this movie incredibly offensive is that I liked the concept, it just failed miserably in execution.

7. Reign of Fire

Reign of Crap is more like it (OK, that was a cheap shot, but if you've seen this movie, you know it's deserved).  I don't know what I was  thinking.  Dragons awaken an invade the earth in the near future, causing humanity to retreat into hiding, and Matthew McConaughey comes to save the day.  Christian Bale has been in so many good movies, I guess the law of averages requires that he make a stinker every once in a while but... c'mon.  McConaughey, of course, gets shirtless (I believe it's part of his standard contract), and the movie just gets pretty ridiculous after a while.  Granted, I take responsibility for having bought it (even if I only paid $3.00 for it).  Let's just move on.

6. Bug

"From the Director of The Exorcist"

I'm listening....

"Starring Ashley Judd"

Sold.

"and Harry Connick, Jr."

Ummm...

"Based on a play by ..."

Cancelled.

I should have done more research on this film, and learned that it was a stage play that had been (barely) adapted for the screen.  There's only seven actors in the whole film, and you only get to see six of them.  I expected it to be a lot like the story in Creepshow where a Howard Hughes-esque mysophobic millionaire isolates himself in a clean room, only to have his apartment infested with bugs.  Bug, however, plays like a straight-to-Lifetime drama about a woman who's escaped her abusive husband (recently released from prison, of course), and finds her savior in a guy who might not be as wonderful as he seems.  I made my wife, her brother, and his wife sit through this drivel, and I think they still hold it against me.

Joey... do you like movies about gladiators?

Such an innocent question with such an innocuous tone, right?  Well, regardless of what you might think of Captain Oveur's intentions, I've found, lately, that I've been buying (and subsequently watching) a lot of movies that take place during the height of the Roman Empire.  It all started with Rome.

I've blogged about it before.   Rome appeared for two Seasons on HBO, and was incredibly fascinating.  Between episodes in the first season, the wife and I watched Spartacus (starring Kirk Douglas).  Of course, the events in Spartacus precede the series Rome, but having seen it added an interesting dimension to the show.

I recently received (today in fact) two more films in the same vein.  Ben Hur, starring one of the all-time greats Charlton Heston, and Julius Caesar, the 1970 adaptation of William Shakespeare's play (also starring Charlton Heston).

So this is a little embarrassing

Every few months or so, I need to integrate DVD purchases into "the collection."  This means going through the entire collection and realphabetizing everything (and trying to find space on my DVD shelves).  However, as I was going through the collection, I noticed two DVDs that for one reason or another weren't properly entered into my DVD Profiler database.

It's a little embarrassing, but for all intent and purposes, I didn't actually "own" An American Haunting or Bubba Ho-Tep, even though I bought both of those when they were released.

The problem has since been resolved, and all is right with the world.

Rome, if you want to

So, the wife and I finally started watching the first season of Rome.  I have to say that so far, I'm really liking it.  The wife couldn't help comparing it to Deadwood, another HBO series we really liked; but I think that raised her expectations a little too high.

Still, it's really entertaining to watch, and I've been really getting into the story.  It's amazing how much lying, cheating, and backstabbing goes on in the show.  It's like watching a 2000 year-old reality show.