Cavalcade of Awesome

I should do this more often, but I don’t.  However, I will try to get an article like this out more often.

Today, I’m going to give a bunch of quick reviews of movies and TV shows I’ve seen and watched the past few weeks.

Hot Tub Time Machine – Saw it two weeks ago.  HILARIOUS.  It’s every bit as good as I wanted it to be. I will still say that they gave away too many jokes in the trailer and the ridiculous amount of clips they released online. However, this movie is still funny.  Rob Corddry nearly steals the whole shebang.  Also, look for a VERY covert appearance by none other than the Kobra Kai himself, William Zabka.  I swear you won’t recognize him.  For me, this movie is NEARLY as good as The Hangover.

Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans – Watched this last night.  It’s terrible.  Nic tries to relive his Leaving Las Vegas performance.  He must have succeeded because I hated this movie every bit as much as I hated Leaving Las Vegas.  At least LLV had some decent boobie scenes.  F**k this movie.

Predator 2 – I’m gearing up for the new Predator movie in July. I watched the first Predator on Blu-Ray and that movie still holds up. It’s awesome. Just listening to Arnold scream “GET TO THA CHOPPA!” gets my adrenaline pumping.  So I finally watched the sequel, Predator 2 with Danny Glover.  I’m sorry, but there’s no way Murtaugh is gonna kill a Predator.  NO F***ING WAY.  And you rarely get to see the Predator, which, in this movie is bad because there’s absolutely nothing else going on that is interesting.  NOTHING.  Instead of Jesse Ventura we get Bill Paxton.  Instead of Arnold’s Dutch we get GARY F***ING BUSEY.  Yes, Gary Busey’s character was originally written as Dutch.  WTF?!  I want to cry.  For straight up bad ass Predator action, I prefer the first Alien vs Predator movie, even though, as a movie, it’s horrible.  HORRIBLE.  I love Predator based on the original movie, but there has yet to be another movie anywhere near as good as the first.  Hopefully, that gets rectified in July with Rodriguez’s Predators.

The IT Crowd and Torchwood – I love British shows. I fell in love with The IT Crowd last year when Netflix added the first three seasons to streaming.  The IT Crowd is similar to Big Bang Theory except the nerds work in a corporate IT department.  The show is hilarious.  There was an ill-advised attempt by the States to create an American version starring Joel McHale.  Luckily, it failed.  I also started watching the Christopher Eccleston 2005 Dr Who revival (mainly because I’ve never watched Dr Who) but I got bored with it.  It’s too weird.  Just this week, based on word around the ‘net, I started watching the Dr Who spin-off Torchwood and I LOVE it.    Apparently the 2005 Eccleston Dr Who spawned Torchwood but I didn’t watch enough episodes to see the connection.  I will continue to watch Torchwood and I MAY return to Dr Who, but I can’t guarantee that.  Torchwood is a little bit Dr Who, a little bit X-Files and a little bit Men in Black.  Check it out.

Pride & Prejudice & Zombies – Steph got me this for my birthday last year and I finally got around to reading it a few weeks ago.  It’s pretty awesome.  I am surprised how subtle Grahame-Smith was in intertwining his tale of zombies and ninjas with Austen’s original text.  It was hard to tell where the old stuff ended and the new stuff began (well, not too hard when you are reading about beheading zombies and Elizabeth single-handedly killing 4 ninjas).  I expected there to be a chapter of Austen’s novel followed by a chapter of new zombie stuff, but both Austen’s story and Grahame-Smith’s zombie stuff was beautifully twisted into a macabre, clever and very funny story.  I would actually read the prequel Dawn of the Dreadfuls after reading this.  And I am now in full boner mode for Grahame-Smith’s new book Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter.

Robert Kirkman – I recently purchased two volumes of the collected Astounding Wolf-Man by Robert Kirkman and Jason Howard.  I got them to review for the blog this Halloween and I wound up loving the book.  It’s a werewolf story, but the guy that becomes the werewolf uses his alter ego as a super hero (get it?  Wolf-Man, like Spider-Man?).  The writing (Kirkman) and art (Howard) are fantastic.  In the second Wolf-Man collection was an issue of Kirkman’s Invincible in a cross over with Wolf-Man.  I was intrigued by the character so I picked up the first volume of Invincible and read it…and loved it.  Invincible starts off with a normal teen who’s dad just happens to be the greatest super hero in the world.  One day the teen develops his own super powers and decides to become a hero also.  Like Wolf-Man the writing is very good but the art isn’t as stylistic and cool as Wolf-Man.  But that’s a minor gripe.  At this point I was actively seeking out new Robert Kirkman books.  I have yet to get his Walking Dead series but I’m hoping to get Wolf-Man volume 3 and Invincible volume 2.  Next, I read a bunch of the collected Kirkman Marvel Zombies books and I really love what they are doing there also.  The tone is completely different in Marvel Zombies, but it’s a ton of fun watching the Marvel Universe devour itself.  Check these out if you get a chance.  By the way, unconnected with Kirkman, I also purchased the first volume of the critically acclaimed Fables series by Bill Willingham.  I’m looking forward to reading that, too.

This entry was posted on April 8, 2010 at 3:11 pm and is filed under movies, reviews, TV shows with tags movies, reviews, TV shows. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.