Movie watching

So far, 3 movies for the year.  Two Harry Potters at the theater (Flashback Cinema from Goodrich is great).  And thanks to TCM, I watched an oldie called The Bat, with Vincent Price and Agnes Moorhead. 

Odd movies

The current winner for slowest movie I've ever seen, and strangest, is Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce,1080 Bruxelles.  Belgian movie, I think, from 1970ish.


I watched it on TCM last week, recorded actually, and it took most of three lunchtimes to finish it.  It's 3 hours and 20  minutes long, no soundtrack music that I recall, and very, very little dialogue.  Two main actors, a couple of bit-part shopkeepers.  There's a 3-minute scene of Jeanne mixing the meat for meatloaf.  I kept going, with liberal use of the FFW button, because the synopsis mentioned a murder, and I was really wondering why and how a murder ended up in this very benign movie.

Yeah.  The murder happens at 3:10, I'm still not sure what the motive was, and the last seven minutes is a shot of Jeanne sitting at the dining table with blood on her blouse and hands. 

I'm glad TCM runs foreign films in the wee hours, but I'm also glad I didn't pay to watch this. Ha ha.

Infinity Wars speculation

Warning: Spoilers ahead










Thor got a new eye!!


So, deaths.

Non-Thanos-dust deaths:

• Loki
• Heimdall
• Gamorra
• Vision

Thanos-dust deaths

• T'Challa
• Groot
• Star-lord
• Drax
• Spiderman
• Doctor Strange
• Falcon 
• Bucky
• Nick Fury
• Nick's sidekick
• and more
•  

Still alive:

• Thor
• Rocket
• Stark
• Captain America
• Okoye
•  Bruce Banner
• Rhodey
• Natasha?
• 
  

Now, I figured if anyone died permanently, Captain America and Stark were good candidates, since their contracts are up.   I also figured ahead of time, simce the Time Stone was mentioned in comments, that there's a good chance that someone will get the Time Stone and hit the rewind button, but that some people may still end up dead.  Eithter the non-dust deaths, or people who are resurrected and then die again, or people who are alive now but won't be later.  See Cap/Stark reasoning above.  Non-dust deaths are more likely to be permanent (sad face - Loki is a villain, but he's a good foil)

Idris Elba is on the poster, despite being killed tout suite.  Ditto for Loki. 

Groot-the-teenager is both funny and scary, since I have a tweenager of my own.  Also, Grootish is taught on Asgard?

Peter Parker's dusting was the hardest - flashbacks to Tenth Doctor's regeneration.

Perma-death possibilities:

• Loki
• Heimdall
• Cap
• Stark

Have to be resurrected, because they have sequels coming:

• Peter Parker
• T'Challa
• Guardians?  

Movie list - new for 2014

New for this year (because my memory gets fuzzy:  Movies I've Seen

1. The Internship (Redbox) - Not bad, actually.
2. The Heat (Redbox) - Okay
3. Hobbit: Desolation of Smaug (theater) - Freaking Awesome!
4. Stand By Me (tv) - 1/3/14 - Can't believe I'd never seen the whole thing until now
5. Lego Movie (theater)
6. Percy Jackson & the Sea of Monsters (Redbox)
7. Turbo (Redbox)
8.  
9.  
10. Captain America: Winter Soldier (theater)
11. Thor: The Dark World (theater)
12. Amazing Spider-man 2 (with Kate)
13. Gravity (Redbox)
14. Monuments Men (Redbox)
15. X-Men: Days of Future Past (with Kate and Hadrien)
16. Philomena (Redbox)
17. Saving Mr. Banks (Redbox)

Neat stuff in the mail

Got my Star Trek exclusive flash drive from Kelloggs in yesterday's mail. It's not bad, 1 GB for $7.99, but the "exclusive content" is a little skimpy. It's a total of 11 MB of images - 5 promotional images, and a screensaver with another 5 images. At least they're different images. I was hoping for more, because I'm sure half an hour of Googling could find dozens of official promo images that I could download.

Still trying to get enough proofs of purchase for a Star Trek T-shirt, though.

Grrr

It really shouldn't take 45 minutes and 4 failed attempts just to get one image printed the right way (as in, without bits of it lost off the edge of the page).

It also sucks, honestly, that the main room is back to looking way too lived-in for my happiness. It was clean enough until last weekend, and it's just gone to heck this week.

The only good news is that the soundtracks from the first three Indiana Jones movies will supposedly be re-released this fall. Something to put on my Xmas list. :)

Dirty trick!

I'm an Indiana Jones fan, just to get that clear. Not an extreme fan - I own the DVDs, but haven't watched them recently. (Need to fix that before next week!) I bought the Taters of the Lost Ark Mr. Potato Head, but I won't pay $50 plus for each of the old soundtracks. I'm a moderate fan. :)

Anyway. Our local paper comes with the little USA Weekend "magazine" on Saturdays. I like it for the Sudoku, and occasionally they have something about movies. The latest cover advertised their interview with Harrison Ford (who looks very good for his age).

Notice the Exclusive Poster that is mentioned on the cover. It's also mentioned inside, with the interview.


I was reading along, enjoyed the short interview, and was really looking forward to an Indy poster to stick on my file cabinet next to the PC.

I turned the page, and this is their Exclusive! Indiana Jones poster:

That? Is NOT Indiana Jones. Or Harrison Ford, for that matter.

Nowhere near either one, actually. I'm still disappointed, and it's Thursday. Okay, Shia LaBeouf has gotten past the nerdy Even Stevens thing, and I'm sure the teeny-boppers and even college kids will be hanging his poster everywhere. He's got that whole James Dean thing going. But darn it, I want that Indiana Jones poster that they kept talking about.

Decisions, Decisions

Why do people have to complicate things? Yes, George Lucas, I'm looking at you. And Spielberg, because the edits to E.T. were just silly.

Five years ago, I bought the 4-disc Indiana Jones DVD box set, because I only had VHS copies and they don't hold up well over time. It had all three movies, plus a bonus disc. Now I've seen an ad on TV for a new DVD box set, a "special edition" this time. Apparently, the movies are the same, but the bonus features are different. Oh, and the new set is apparently subtitled in 8 languages (Arabic, English, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Nepali, Spanish) instead of the usual 3 (English, French, Spanish), and appears to be an all-regions DVD instead of just Region 1.

Either way, I think I'll wait for a used copy of this one to turn up cheap. If the movies are the same (thank goodness - Lucas is too enamored of the ability to re-edit), then I'm not paying extra for new extras. I'll admit, I bought 2 of the Star Wars movies on DVD when Amazon had the original versions on sale, but that's it. The "improved" versions don't do anything for me. I prefer the "real" ones. Of course, I think the last three SW movies were bordering on crap. They spent too much money on special effects, and apparently ignored the script. Yes, the effects were cool - the droids in battle were fun to watch - but they felt dumbed down.

I'll admit, I've got both versions of the Lord of the Rings movies, but with those, there were differences in the movies. I bought the extended versions first, and then picked up the theatrical releases when they were on sale later. I can justify that, but paying twice for the same movie isn't going to happen. Plus, I'm enough of a LOTR junkie that I went for the ultra-spiffy box sets, with the bonus disc and the Sideshow Weta figurines.

In short, I guess not much of a decision, now that I've read up on the specs of the new Indy set, but it's still irritating.

When I win the Lottery

I will spend so much money at Sideshow Collectibles.

Check out the Indiana Jones figure (are they still called action figures?) that goes on sale tomorrow. I'm all in favor of replicas that look like the character they're based on.

Yes, I'm a geek. I bought the big mondo gift sets of the Lord of the Rings movies, the sets with the Sideshow/Weta figurines of Gollum, the Argonath bookends, and the Minas Tirith box. The detail on Minas Tirith still amazes me.

They did a miniature of the Golden Hall of Edoras that looked stunning. I drooled for hours, but I couldn't pay $125 for something the size of a shoebox. I got the Puzz3D instead. They also made a statue of Gandalf and Shadowfax, and Samwise with Bill the pony. They're all sold out now, so I'll have to hit the jackpot.

In the meantime, I'll probably end up with a Taters of the Lost Ark, because it's just too darn funny.

Random Bits and Pieces

Random stuff:

I have another sickly fish, unless he's already died. I lost another one about a month ago, so after this one goes, the population will be 4 orange platies, 4 zebra danios, and one huge Squiggy the Pleco.

I just finished the last of the M&M Kissables (a Kiss/M&M cross) from Valentine's Day 2007. In the fridge, we have a Pot o' Gold box of chocolates from 2007, too. Need to eat those before they go bad, but it's honestly not my favorite chocolate assortment. I like the round ones with the orange/lemon/raspberry cream centers. And the caramels, of course. My favorites.

Daylight Savings Time starts this weekend. We are not amused. DST doesn't change the amount of daylight time we get, so I'm really not a fan of the whole thing. And moving the dates this year is going to be a real PITA, because our outdated VCR will have issues with the built-in DST feature. I'm also skeptical about the supposed energy savings, given this little news article on Yahoo today, and this one from last year. Sure, probably not an in-depth study, but food for thought. (Actually, it's like debunking the gas boycott email that goes around - most people will just fill up the day before or after, thus using the same amount of gas, just shifting when it's purchased. DST just means we have more lights on in the morning than the evening, or vice versa.)

I'm ready to start the countdown for the new Indiana Jones movie, which was mentioned in the Heart of the City comic today. I've been waiting for this one, and hoping that Lucas would get in gear before Harrison Ford was too decrepit to pull it off. The man looks darn fine for his age, but keeping up with Ally McBeal may be taking a lot out of him. And then I remembered that this is George Lucas we're talking about, the man responsible for the amazing first Star Wars trilogy, but also the man responsible for the really not-so-good second SW trilogy. Now I'm just hoping that Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull doesn't suffer from some sort of Jar-Jar Binks problem, or that pathetic focus on CGI while leaving the script to be hacked out by monkeys.

Either way, we won't get to see it on Opening Day, because that's El Burrito's birthday and he's a little young for movies yet.

(Also, the IndianaJones.com website is totally Flash-based, and takes for-freaking-ever to load. And they don't give you a "skip intro" sort of option. Now that it's finally loaded, it keeps re-cycling all the little Flash windows about every 3 seconds. I don't have time to read them, much less click on a link. Assuming that any of the links actually work, which they don't for me. Gah!! It wasn't this bad last time I looked at the site.)

There was probably something else, but El Burrito is awake. He's been working my last sad little nerve for the past two days, and making it very hard to get anything done other than reading Grover books and looking at his pictures on the computer.