The Most Complicated Evil Plot I Have Yet Devised

I think I've figured out how to land myself a job interview next Friday.

This theory came to me as I was waiting for my Chinese food for an hour and 15 minutes. I really had to pee, but I just KNEW the guy was going to come while I was in the bathroom.

Sure enough, I said "Oh the hell with this, I'm not waiting any longer," and the guy came while I was in the bathroom.

This always happens to me: I wait and wait for what's supposed to happen to happen, and then when it doesn't, I start doing something else, and THEN what was supposed to happen happens.

Working from this trend, I've come up with a plan to have at the very least, a job interview by the end of next week.

My job finishes this Friday, and I had been planning (barring a sudden settlement with SAG) to try and leave town next Thursday for about a week and a half to visit my dad up in Idaho. I'll be driving, so I'll be stopping in Vegas on the way up next Thursday if all goes to plan.

I knew Dark Knight was coming out next Friday, and I really want to see it in IMAX, since they actually shot some of it in IMAX and I hear it's brain-meltingly awesome.

So of course, I got online to see if there are tickets to the midnight IMAX screening in Vegas (and I'd like to pause here to note that IMAX tickets in Vegas are cheaper than regular movie tickets here), and there were.

So now, my evil plot: I bought my ticket to that midnight Thursday showing in Vegas.

By purchasing that ticket, I have close to guaranteed that something will come up in L.A. and I won't be able to leave until Friday or Saturday, maybe not even at all.

Clearly, as I'm packing my shit into the car to leave on Thursday morning, I will get a phone call from someone who wants to interview me Friday morning, maybe even for a job that starts Monday.

And if my frustrating luck does not continue to hold...Well, I'll get to see the Dark Knight in IMAX on opening night then spend a week in Idaho with my dad. It's pretty much a win-win.

How To Increase The Chances That I Will See Your Horror Movie

Start by calling it "Mutant Zombie Vampires From the Hood!".

And actually, you can pretty much stop right there, because the title is just that awesome.

Miscellany From The Last Day of Shooting

A few bits of errata, Laz style:

-- Because we were on a Wednesday-Sunday shooting schedule, I had taken to calling each day "Fake ____". Like Wednesday was Fake Monday, Thursday was Fake Tuesday, Friday was Fake Wednesday.

Today, the last day I have to deal with this shift, I found a flaw in my cunning plan: I forgot that it was Fake Wednesday, not real Wednesday, and that therefore the aqua aerobics class would be taking over the pool at 9 instead of 9:30, and got kicked out of the pool halfway through my laps.


-- Are you really really bored? Try to identify the candy bar simply by looking at a cross-section. I went 14 for 20.


-- I am extremely excited to see Wall-E tomorrow. Almost as excited as I am to actually have a Saturday off.


--Our entertainment this evening was chasing the mouse that lives in the kitchen all over the office. My PA was taking videos of this with his cellphone, one of which has me saying in the background, "Well, the mystery guy who lost his clothes finally called back."

No, I will not be posting these videos.


--We finally finished shooting!

This has been a fun show, and a very good learning experience. The shifted week thing has been an absolute bear, but at least it was only for three weeks. I pulled a couple sixth-day paychecks, which is helpful in the realm of "Mama needs a new pair of everything."

I'm back to a normal schedule for the next couple weeks (well, I'll be in for a couple hours Sunday, but nothing like my schedule previous sundays of 5pm-5am), and then I'm scrambling for a new job. Gotta love the freelance world!

In Bruges

In honor of the movie that's recently come out (which I have not yet seen, but Tim, of course, has), I wanted to remind people that I have, in fact, actually been to Bruges.

I even have photographic evidence of this fact. I even have evidence that Mark was there with me, and that he was way taller than the people the brewery designed to accomodate.

My personal favorite picture is not any of the carefully preserved 1600's architecture that Bruges is so famous for, but the following piece of propaganda from their chocolate museum (click to enlarge):


Come on, just eat things in moderation and you won't get fat! It's just that easy!

What Hath Transformers Wrought?

It hath wrought the G.I. Joe movie.

He-Man and She-ra, please call your agents.

A Follow-Up To My Previous Post

I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry is about as dumb as you'd think. parts of it are dumber, parts of it are not as dumb. Overall...about as dumb.

I'm not quite at the point of demanding the filmmakers pay me for the 2 hours I spent watching it, but yet I still think I'd like those two hours back.

Is This Because I'm A Lesbian?

I strolled out to the mailbox today to retrieve my Netflix movies, the better to facilitate keeping my broke ass at home.

I was expecting two movies, but when I opened up the mailbox, I saw three. Huh, I thought, they must have mailed me an extra copy of the Futurama movie, which I mailed back this morning.

Not so. I opened all three movies, found the two that I was expecting...and I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry.

I had no desire to see it, so I'd never even put it in my queue. I thought maybe it was for one of my neighbors, but no, addressed to me, sent from the same shipping center as my other movies.

I mean, perhaps the fact that one of my other movies arriving today was lesbian cult hit The Incredibly True Adventures of 2 Girls in Love (we are not a people who are economical with our titles) might have tipped Netflix off to the fact that I'm a gay lesbian, and made them suggest this as a related movie.

Generally, however, suggestions of related movies are not mailed to you as an extra film, particularly when you have not actually requested them.

I suppose, since I really have nothing better to do, I might as well watch it, if only to see how bad it is: As bad as you'd think, not as bad as you'd think, or even worse than you'd think.

I'll post here probably tomorrow with the results of this experiment.

Post title courtesy the greatest non sequitur ever to appear on Law & Order (fast forward to about 1:50 of that video for the hilarious part of the scene).

I Guess This Means I Should Buy A Hamburger Phone

I just had the fifth person I know tell me unsolicited that they watched Juno and she reminded them of me. I take it as a compliment, since I really liked the character.

However, this raises two related questions for me:

1. How much weirder does this trend make it that this movie made me have a huge crush on Ellen Page?

2. As a subquestion to the above, does that somehow make me a narcissist?

A Quick Summary of My Reaction to Spider-Man 3

Shut up, Emo Peter Parker.

I Think I May Have Seen A Movie Before Tim Did

Although I'm at a bit of an unfair advantage: Working at the Fox Lot, we got a free screening tonight of Juno.

While I'm not nearly as eloquent a reviewer as Tim (and I actually look forward to his take on this movie), I'll give the short version.

This is a movie with several major flaws, the most notable of which is a grating, failed attempt to capture the way teens talk to each other. It has its moments of hilarity, but the overall effect is distracting.

That said, if you want to see a LOT of outstanding acting, you should definitely see this movie.

Starting with Ellen Page (who does an outstanding job as the titular protagonist) and going down through every single supporting character, these actors do a really great job of selling material that often does not deserve it.

I'll throw in a mention of Jennifer Garner, who I've always enjoyed but have never been terribly impressed with until now. She really sells the quiet desperation in a role that could have been made shrewishly hysterical by the wrong actress. Luckily, they cast Garner, and she's great in a pivotal role.

There are a few very strong moments in the story, which I won't spoil for those who wish to see it. But the bottom line is that while this movie has its issues, it's certainly still worth being seen just for Page and Garner's performances.

Also, I'd just like to note that I now have a huge crush on Ellen Page, which feels slightly less wrong after finding out she's not quite as young as she looks and is actually 20, although still fairly wrong as she cannot legally drink.

Tim Brayton Is The Man

I had not even been considering seeing wholly unnecessary sequel Elizabeth: The Golden Age until I read Tim's magnificent review of it in all its glorious awfulness.

Now, I have to see it. This is why Tim should be writing reviews for a living. God bless Rotten Tomatoes for adding him to the Tomatometer, giving him at least some of the exposure he richly deserves.

Let This Be A Lesson To You

Do not neglect your Netflix queue. I'd done so after going through three seasons of The Wire and nothing but for the last couple months.

The last two discs were checked in today, and then I got the following:


I forgot I'd even put this in my queue. I so do not have enough pot brownies in stock to actually be able to enjoy this film.

Questions Raised Catching Up On Films Via HBO

Tonight's episode: Poseidon. The questions I've come up with, ten minutes into the movie:

- Who on earth watched the original Poseidon Adventure and decided "What this hysterically over-the-top movie needs is a completely straightfaced, effects-heavy remake!"?

- Is Jacinda Barrett trying to pull off an American accent? Or some sort of weird nondescript Greater British Empire accent? Because if it's the former, she fails miserably.

- Sweet God above, who decided to murder the ears of the audience by having Fergie of the Black-Eyed Peas try to be a torch singer?

- When did Richard Dreyfuss start looking really, really old?

- How much did they cut out of this movie? I knew a guy who worked on this and it shot for eight months, and it barely surpasses 90 minutes.

Anyway, back to watching Wolfgang Peterson blow over $1 million per minute of finished product.

Why I Almost Never Go To The Movies Anymore

I saw three movies in various theaters this weekend, the first movies I'd seen in theaters since Christmas. I quickly remembered why I generally wait for things to hit Netflix or HBO. The movies were:

Movie #1: Knocked Up, at the Zanuck Theater on the Fox Lot. Free.
Movie #2: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, at the Mann Criterion in Santa Monica. $10.75 + $3 to park.
Movie #3: Ratatouille, at the AMC in Marina del Rey. $9.75, since their matinee prices stop at 4pm.

The differences were instructive. #1, as it was shown at the studio, was great: No previews, no commercials, started exactly on time, had a polite audience (of entertainment professionals, so that might be biased) and had no technical issues.

But it was basically like going over to a friend's house, if that friend had a ridiculously huge home theater and refused to pause the movie when you had to go to the bathroom.

#2 was, theater-wise, the worst experience. Half an hour of intrusive commercials before the 8+ previews for Harry Potter ripoffs, which I would have resented if I was trying to carry on a conversation with someone. Which I wasn't because I'm a doofus and went alone because everyone else I knew who wanted to see it saw it Wednesday.

People constantly running up and down the stairs for more overpriced food, desperately searching for their friends in the dark when they returned. A crying baby at a show that was scheduled to get out after 11pm. For the love of god, get a sitter.

However, I will note that the picture was incredible. That was the first time I've seen something digitally projected, and it does live up to the hype. The sound was loud enough to stun a rhino, but that's pretty standard at this point.

#3 was at least better than #2, but another argument for just staying at home. The price was under $10 for a non-matinee, but that's only because the theater hasn't been renovated in years. It's like an early-90's time capsule, with falling-apart seats that bear the imprints of a thousand asses.

There were focus issues on a couple reels, and one reel had a bunch of hairs caught in the film for a few very distracting minutes. And of course, since it was an afternoon show of a kids' movie, there were several small crying and/or very loud and excited children.

I try not to be annoyed with that (as I was with the bawling baby at an 8:30pm show of a PG-13 movie), since it's part of what you learn to expect at a screening like that, but it reminded me why I prefer to watch movies in the comfort of my own home.

That, and how goddamn much it costs. Seriously, two movies for $21.50? That's more than I pay for a MONTH of Netflix's 3-at-a-time plan. It would have been over $30 had I seen Knocked Up in a real theater instead of through work.

Movie theater owners wonder why movie attendance is way down. It's pretty fucking simple: You pay way more than it costs to watch at home for an infinitely less pleasant experience. This is not rocket science.

Ah, The Past

Turner Classic Movies is doing their 31 Days of Oscar marathon, an event that generally causes me to fill up my TiVo and have to work through the backlog for several months.

However, I did watch 30 Seconds over Tokyo today. It's a fantastic movie about Doolittle's raids on Tokyo in early 1942, but it gave me an unexpected laugh at one point.

The bombers, after refueling, were supposed to go to Chunking, where everything was extremely expensive. So one of the pilots gets the bright idea on the boat to stock up on cigarettes to sell to the military men in Chunking.

Pilot: I'll have 12 cartons of cigarettes.
Cashier: That'll be...$7.40.

I had a good, long laugh about that one.

Twisted

TiVo recorded Twister for me, which was amusing, because it's a great example of one of my favorite genres: the Hilariously Bad Disaster Movie.

The leads, for the most part, fall to the level of the material. But look at the supporting cast, and it's really striking how many really decent actors are in it, acting like total boobs.

Nothing, however, surprised me more than the most "Duuuuuuuuuuude!"-ish of Helen Hunt's team o'dudes being played by none other than Oscar Winning Serious Goddamn Actor Philip Seymour Hoffman.

Not even the fact that Twister is now ten years old.

Putting The Cart Before The SoaP

Saw this when I was at the Barnes and Noble at the Grove last Friday and I couldn't resist snapping a picture with the CrapCam:


Guess they thought Snakes on a Plane would attract more than just a cult audience. Or at least a slightly larger cult.