Waking Ned Devine is a movie that came onto my radar about a year ago.  One of my friends was watching it as I was using a computer not far off.  When he watched it, I was around for about five minutes during the middle of it before running off to go see Legally Blonde 2, or do something equally as stupid.

The couple bits that I did see were interesting.  Not enough that I had to rush out and watch it, rather rush back in the house and watch it, but still it did look like it would be worth checking out.

The basic premise of the movie is Ned Devine wins the space lottery for a million space bucks, but the shock of winning gives him a fatal heart attack.  It is hard to cash in your ticket when you are no longer alive, so two of Ned’s friends decide to cash it in for him.  They justify it by reasoning, “It’s what Ned would have wanted.”

The tricky part is that Ned signed the back of the ticket before winning.  This means that only Ned could cash in the ticket.  This is where the movie begins to really pick up as the friends decide that they could simply have one of them claim to be Ned and cash the ticket.

What they don’t know is that for a ticket this size, an official from the lottery comes down to interview the winner and check everything out.  This is where things start to get really dicey as the duo tries to keep up the charade only to learn that more of the townsfolk might be needed to fool the inspector. (Don’t worry about spoilers, it says that much on the back of the box!)

I really liked this movie.  I was worried that it would only be a so-so movie, but it turned out to be great.

There was an additional love story in the movie that didn’t have a whole lot to do with the actual plot.  It was between a pig farmer who allegedly smells really bad despite all the soaps everyone keeps giving him and the mother of his son.

She doesn’t want anything to do with him because he always smells like a pigfarmer.  I imagine that is pretty gross and all, but she’s pretty shallow about it.  At the end of the movie he puts the girl’s father in charge of the pigfarm, takes a shower, and gets the girl.

How romantic.

If you haven’t seen the movie Waking Ned Devine, I would recommend adding it to your netflix queue.  It’s more fun than it looks to be.

‘To Ned Devine, may we forever be in your debt.’

I’m not sure what exactly convinced me to watch Brother Bear, the movie that was so bad that Disney had to actually SHUT DOWN IT’S CELL ANIMATION STUIDO because of it.  Nonetheless I watched the cartoon and came to one conclusion.  Disney should have shut down a lot more after releasing this movie into the world.

The movie is about a young tribal guy who hates bears and must learn to love bears.  When he is given his ‘life totem’ which will tell him how to act and live, it is the loving bear.  This makes him so mad that he goes and throws rocks at a bear.  The bear says ‘Stop it’ and the boy’s brother falls off of a cliff.

The movie was so bad that I don’t even remember the names of the characters.  So I’ll make them up. Jojo is the main character who hates bears.  Squeejo is the older brother who falls off a cliff.  Lastly we have Ronjo, the middle child, I’ll tell you about him in a second.

Jojo is given his totem and starts throwing rocks.  The big bear wants the Jojo to stop it, but instead Squeejo falls off of a cliff.  Jojo is pissed at the bear and goes off to avenge his brother by killing the bear that somehow caused his brother to die.

Ronjo is pissed at Jojo, but will not help him out in killing the bear.  Ronjo does decide to follow Jojo from a distance, only to find out Jojo gets killed by a bear.  Ronjo is now pissed as hell because he could have helped avenge his dead brother the first time, but now he has to really take revenge.  I don’t know how you can avenge two brothers that were killed by the same bear, and I guess that you wouldn’t actually see something like that in a Disney movie anyways.  That explains why Ronjo never actually was able to take revenge.

Now for the twist.  Jojo isn’t actually dead.  He got turned into a bear.  HOLY SMOKES RIGHT?

After killing the bear that watched his brother fall off of a cliff, Jojo is crushed by the tremendous weight.  So he did die… I guess.  But the ghost of Squeejay said no, you can’t be dead yet.  So Squeejay brings back his brother from beyond the grave and stuffs him into a bear’s body so he will learn his lesson.

Ronjo gets to the top of the mountain and sees Jojay the bear running off after killing Jojay the mancub and leaving behind a broken spear and the bear totem.

At this point in my life I am really questioning many things.  Why did I watch this movie?  More importantly, why have I gone so far in writing about this movie?  And what am I doing with my life?

Nobody in their right mind would watch this movie.  I would rather go watch Legally Blonde 2 or keeping with the theme, let a bear watch me fall off of a cliff than spend any more of my precious time thinking about this movie.

It’s been twenty five years since the move This is Spinal Tap was released into the world.  Today I just saw it for the first time.

It isn’t that it has been quoted a billion times, that’s certainly not the case at all.  In my opinion there were not a lot of great lines in the flick.  But the movie is widely known enough to be claim cult pseudo-classic.  I’m not quite sure if it is one or not.  People talk about it existing, I think just for the sake of it being a novel idea.  A documentary (or rocumentary as it calls itself) about a band that actually doesn’t exist?  Brilliant!

I am not convinced that I liked the movie.  I am convinced that I like the idea of the movie.  This movie had the same flaws as Napoleon Dynamite and Borat for me.  That is that everyone talked them up and claimed they were the greatest thing since the invention of cake.

Like any cake loving warm blooded human I rushed out to see this films.  Although after viewing them and hearing any moderately funny jokes repeated trillions of times, the movies didn’t seem to do it.  While there were some jokes in the movie I certainly wasn’t impressed to any significant degree.

The whole ‘existence of the band’ thing is somewhat confusing because apparently they decided after making the movie that they should make the band for real and put on a couple shows.  In it’s time I understand that a lot of people thought of the band as real.  Except for a couple moments in the movie, it does seem like it very well could be a real band.

The annoying thing about the ‘band/movie’ is looking through wikipedia about it.  One of the guys in the band actually does the voice for hard rocking Otto in the Simpsons. (As well as Mr. Burns, Smithers and Flanders to round things out!)

Aside from being a goofy movie, if you haven’t made up your mind on if you should watch it here is one thing to push you off of the fence (although I don’t know which way) :   Fran Drescher is in it.

Flintstone in some great looking stop motion. Apparently it was made for a movie called “Flintstones on the Rocks” Which is about Fred and Wilma having marital problems. Seems a little bit darker than the usual chronicles of Bedrock. It came out in 2001 and a quick search looks like it might be hard to find.

I have recently spent hundreds of dollars going to the theater to watch an informing new show called “The Informant!” staring Matt Damon.

Damon’s character, the borderline schizophrenic compulsive serial liar Mark Whitacre  runs around giving the FBI all kinds of information about his company’s price fixing schemes.  Also he tells them all kinds of weird things that may or may not be true, which leaves the FBI thugs with mixed feelings.

During the whole movie, Whitacre is narrating the whole thing with his random wandering thoughts. It is a little weird at first as many of them have absolutely nothing to with the plotline or any of the characters in it.

Although without the inner narration the movie would be a lot more serious.  You are never sure what to believe, and you want to think that Whitacre is telling the truth.  Eventually you have to stop believing him completely or risk having him betray the trust that you need as an audience member.

Matt Damon did a very good job with the character and transforming into a part that would normally go to seasoned nervous paranoid schizophrenic acting master Nicolas Cage.  Damon took the roll and made it his own.  While Damon isn’t exactly type-casted as an actor, this role was outside of many of his previous flicks.  And he did a great job at it.

When the ten nominations arrive for best picture, don’t look for this one.  Although if the movie was released later in the year there is a chance that Damon would be able to get a best actor nomination.

It’s interesting to watch older movies just to see what things used to be like back in the day.  Of course when I say ‘older movie’ I’m talking about 2003.  I recently re-watched Matchstick Men staring Nicolas Cage and directed by Ridley Scott.

I have seen this movie once before, back when it was in theaters, so I knew about the twist that it contains.  (And if you keep reading, you’ll know it too!)

It was much harder to watch knowing that it was all a setup.  Everything was so painfully obvious, but if you weren’t looking for it like poor old Nicolas Cage then you will feel really duped. (Not quite as duped as his character though!)

This really is the roll that he can play well.  A neurotic weirdo with no self esteem and multiple crippling social disorders.

It is a good movie and Cage plays his part soo well!  I’m somewhat shocked that he was looked over completly for any awards for the part.

The movie is great.  It is hard to watch twice.  Unless you are completly devoid of emotions and empathy and really like to watch people get suckered and stomped on.  Then you can laugh at Roy all you want as his heart is torn out in slow motion.

The latest movie ever made was ‘Inglorious Basterds’ staring Brad Pitt, Christopher Waltz, and a whole bunch of other weirdos nobody has ever heard of.  There are two intertwined plot lines at play.  A girl who owns a movie theater, and a team of ruthless bastards on a mission to kill as many Nazis as possible.

This movie is really neat, but it is  a Quintin Tarantino flick, so you know that it is goofy, gorey, and just plain screwed up.  There are some parts of the film that he must have done soley for the purpose of reminding you who directed it.  I can honestly say that I think this is his best movie so far.

Beware the Jew Hunter

This is one of those movies that needs to be seen in the theaters.  There are so many powerful moments that will be lost on your tiny tv or computer screen.

This movie has and endless supply of quotable one liners.  As fun as it is to run around ratteling them off now, I’m sure that it will be very annoying when everybody and their dog starts in.  I suppose though, that’s why he makes his movies, so people can do exactly that!

The movie was very well cast.  Everyone played their parts well, especially Christopher Waltz, “The Jew Hunter.”  His performance was utterly fantastic.  He won some award, “Biggest Baddass at Cannes Film Festival” or something like that.  The award was actually best actor at Cannes.  Hopefully he won’t get skipped over when the Academy Awards nominations get passed around.

Honestly this is a hard movie to tackle here.  Not just because it is a Nazi movie, but it is a Nazi Tarantino film.  That is a seriousy double whammy to end all double whammies.  Just get out there and see this movie.