Prince of Persia - The Sands of Time-wasting

Let me say that Prince of Persia (hereon abbreviated PoP for both simplicity and recognition of its execution) is probably the first legitimately good movie adapted from a video game. It doesn't have the WTF factor of The Mario Bros., nor does it try to get away with the sheer magnitude of campy, straightfaced idiocy that is anything that's ever been produced by Uwe Boll. Having said that...it's still kind of disappointing, even as a summer movie and especially as a product of the guy who gave us Pirates of the Caribbean.

The Crazies, or "28 Sips Later"

The zombie genre is kind of like the zombie itself - just when we think we've had about all we can stand of it, a new installment pops up, grins into the camera, and reminds us all of everything that we love about it and that make it impossible to kill off completely. Kind of like children, but I digress. This time around, George Romero resurrects yet another of his classics in the form of The Crazies, a remake of a fairly obscure (and infinitely less bloody) movie from 1973, simultaneously reviving various social contexts that we were paranoid about back then and are still somewhat paranoid about now, if only because Romero is telling us to be.

 Romero: "I do believe my work here is done."

Chronicles of Wonderland

Dumping Alice into a post-apocalyptic Wonderland is hardly a unique mode of storytelling, but Tim Burton pulls it off here with flying, hallucinogenic colors and his trademark combination of matter-of-fact presentation and neo-Gothic surrealism (and simultaneously providing the scenekid denizens of Hot Topic with wardrobe options that will undoubtedly make even a myopic St. Bernard flinch in embarrassed agony).

"Cop Out" - Points for Honesty And Nothing Else

The main reason I put off the review for this one for so long is that I was in a comatose state of shock from the dual reasons that I went to see this movie AND that I paid for it with my own money. No, really. I'm writing this from a hospital bed and my catheter is chafing me.

To be honest, I don't really find Kevin Smith all that funny, possibly because I'm not still in third grade. So for me, Cop Out is nothing if not Smith's ham-handed attempt to put his own spin on a genre built entirely out of cliches accumulated over the last fifty years. Yes, I realize he didn't actually write the script, but he directed the way it was presented, and you really can't tell it's NOT a Kevin Smith movie. From open to close, he's trying to sell you the argument that the funniest thing in the world is mashing as many pop culture references and F-bombs as you can into less than two hours of film. If Cop Out had actually tried to fit in some kind of snarky-but-sincere social commentary in the same way that Chasing Amy or Dogma did, then I might have appreciated it more for not being an utter waste of my time. But it didn't, so I didn't.

Hi!...Atus?

I didn't do a review last weekend because I had work, no money, and fail at life. I fully intend to have something this weekend.

Also, Alice In Wonderland is next weekend. I'm excited. You can't tell just by reading this text, but I really am. If I had a nickel for how excited I am, that comparison would actually make sense.

Extra Sauce: Scum and Villainy as Essential Parts of a Balanced Breakfast

Like pretty much every other kid of the '90s, my Saturday mornings were composed entirely of campy superhero shows - The Power Rangers, The Amazing Spiderman, and the Big Bad Beetleborgs, most memorably. To my 8-year-old mind, those shows never got old no matter how predictable they got or how outlandish the costumes got (to the point of resembling something that Lady GaGa might have worn for Halloween). The stories were by no means great, but hey, I never watched them for literary merit - I watched them to see some ugly rubber-faced monsters get thrashed by robots piloted by teenagers who didn't even have drivers' licenses!

My dad liked to ask me fake-serious questions about the shows I liked so much. His favorite one was, "Why do the good guys have to fight the bad guys? Why can't they just all get along?" I never really had an answer for that, but if someone asked me that now, I could pretty quickly and fairly tell them, "If it weren't for the bad guys, there would be no story. The show wouldn't exist."

My First Review, Or "Avatar: Where Pocahantas Meets Star Wars"

This review is weeks behind, and everyone reading it has in all likelihood already seen Avatar and formed his/her own respective opinions on James Cameron's latest cinematic juggernaut. But screw you, this blog is as much for my benefit as it is for yours ("benefit" being an extremely flexible term that is defined as pretty much anything that won't give you cancer). This whole thing is my little exercise in writing and contemporary critique as part of my New Year's resolution to not have a completely worthless English major. So, here goes.