| By Furious, on December 7th, 2010  For some reason, the Safeway I shop at has this thing about playing 80’s music. They can choose from over 70 genres, but they seem to stick with 80’s Flashback. So I go to Safeway maybe 3, 4 times a month. A couple weeks back a familiar tune was filling the grocery air while I shopped- the theme from The NeverEnding Story. Of all the songs they could’ve played during the few minutes I’m in the store, they played that one. I took it as a sign. A sign that I needed to stop daydreaming and concentrate on shopping instead of the music. In a likely unrelated event, a couple weeks later I [...]
Continue reading The NeverEnding Story, A Closer Look By Furious, on June 4th, 2010 This is the first in a mini-series of posts I started last year but never completed. Zombie Post sounds like a good name, both because I like zombies and because I am pretty much bringing this topic back from the dead. I saw The Hangover. And I laughed like most people did. Seeing baby Carlos jackin’ it was pretty funny. I’m hoping you’ve seen the movie before you read that last sentence. Watching those guys run all over Las Vegas and get into zany adventures was a decent way to spend an hour-and-a-half. But once it was over and I walked out of the theater, during that period of quiet reflection while your eyes adjust to the over-bright world outside, the movie didn’t seem [...] Continue reading Zombie Post: The Hangover, or Dude, Where’s My Friend? By Furious, on May 11th, 2009 There’s somethin’ wrong with the world today I don’t know what it is Something’s wrong with our eyes -Aerosmith, Livin’ on the Edge The are few things that have gotten as tedious for me as watching horror movies. It seems all modern horror movies fit the same mold. There’s an interesting idea. A half-assed attempt to make us care about the victims (there aren’t really protagonists in horror movies any more, just victims and iconic psychopaths). There are a few atmospheric scares. Then the filmmakers run out of ideas and begin painting with bazookas, becoming more blunt and violent until the movie ends. There’s no actual ending, the movie just ends as the centimeter deep well of ideas is long past empty. [...] Continue reading The Strangers Left Me Wanting For A Refund By Furious, on April 19th, 2009 Fresh of the move to his new domain, pacer521 was so excited he just had to write a movie review. Here’s his review of State of Play. 
In a growing age of overpaid and overworked cinema that seems to be angled exactly in the path of money, it is never a bad idea to walk outside and take a breath of fresh air. And essentially, with that, I have summed Kevin Macdonald’s State of Play. If one decided to find a well paced, well worked plot, illogical twists, a good dose of action and a popular but unquestionably skilled cast in the past few years, he/she would be hard pressed [...] Continue reading Decoding The Thrills Of State Of Play By Furious, on March 22nd, 2009  Mr. Furious (that’s my dad) is a bit of an odd duck, especially when it comes to movies. It’s not really accurate to say he has an eclectic taste, it’s more random than that. Some of his favorite movies include Curly Sue, Dudley Do-Right, and While You Were Sleeping. But he also loves movies filled with nudity and gratuitous violence. His main complaint about Troy wasn’t the heavy focus on Brad Pitt’s oiled body, but that the movie wasn’t nearly bloody enough.
Since he doesn’t watch TV and hasn’t rented a movie in this millennium, he buys a lot of DVDs, especially the ones costing $5 dollars or less. If he doesn’t like the movie [...] Continue reading Is The Cottage A Crime Caper Or A Horror Comedy? By Furious, on March 2nd, 2009  Okay, maybe the combination of porn and Hamlet appeals more to Shakespearean fetishists. I suppose there are people out there that could be really turned on by pornstars speaking their lines in iambic pentameter. But no, I didn’t get to experience this new art form, I got the porn and Hamlet in two different movies: Zack and Miri Make a Porno and Hamlet 2.
Zack and Miri, it’s about these two people named Zack and Miri. They’re like best friends and all, they’ve lived together since high school, but it’s like totally platonic. And these two, it’s a bit of a surprise, but they’re financially retarded. Despite both having regular jobs, they can’t seem to [...] Continue reading Porn and Hamlet SOUNDS Like A Good Idea… By Furious, on February 11th, 2009  Regardless of the warnings I received, I was bound and determined to see The Happening. There’s no way, I said, that it can be as bad as everyone says. They’re all jaded because of M. Night Shyamalan’s undying love of the twist ending, that’s all. I’ll see it and enjoy it, just like his under-appreciated The Village. The Lady in the Water, that was just an anomaly. Shyamalan’s cup of hubris had runneth over. Things could only get better.
After seeing The Crappening, I really wish I would have heeded those warnings. This has to be one of the worst movies I’ve seen by a director with as much talent as Shyamalan. It was bad [...] Continue reading The Happening aka The Crappening By Furious, on January 16th, 2009 I saw this movie about a group of college-aged Americans on vacation in a remote foreign locale who meet some Europeans who are also vacationing and some of these people are killed by an evil entity this is protected and/or fueled by the locals. Did I see A) Turistas, B) Hostel, C) Hostel Part II, D) The Ruins, or E) some other generic horror movie that follows the same formula. If you’ve been following since the title, you probably guessed The Ruins. And I’d say you’re probably right, but I can’t say for sure since these movies all kind of blend together into a haze of blood, stupidity, and vivisection.  What sets The Ruins apart [...]
Continue reading The Ruins Ruined A Perfectly Good Hour And A Half By Furious, on December 2nd, 2008  One trait common to all Kung Fu masters is that they practice a distinctive style of Kung Fu- Monkey, Crane, Hamster. But when you’re a big, cuddly Panda, the options are limited: either sneeze and try to scare the hell out of everyone or develop your own style around your enormous gut.
In Kung Fu Panda, Po (Jack Black) is charged with the task of discovering his own style of Kung Fu as he tries to fulfill his destiny as the Dragon Warrior, which he tackles with great enthusiasm. Vicious beatings by Shifu (Dustin Hoffman) and the Furious Five, all chagrined that they were not chosen to be the Dragon Warrior, cannot crush his spirit, [...] Continue reading Kung Fu Panda: My Fat Belly Style Can Defeat Whatever You Got By Furious, on November 24th, 2008 As long as there have been people, there’s been a desire to change the way we are. We’ve found ways to manipulate some of these things- dye our hair, wear colored contacts, exercise to get stronger, train to run faster. But wouldn’t it be nice if we were just born that way? We could have the inate ability to run a four minute mile or grow to exactly six feet five inches or have strawberry blond hair. And not only tweak our physical traits, but be born disease-free and without the chance of developing disease later in life. It’s every parent’s dream- to have a physically perfect child molded to their own specifications. [...] Continue reading Gattaca: Beware The Man With Dirty Genes | |
