"The Interview" now on Netflix

I just saw, "The Interview" on Netflix, starring James Franco and Seth Rogen. It was hilarious. I laughed more during this movie than I've laughed in the last month! The thing is, you just can't take it seriously, it's a comedy after all, and definitely a dark comedy. It did get a little more "bloody" towards the end than I was expecting, but like I said, just take it for what it is, and you'll come away laughing.

People can't leave well enough alone...

I just finished watching Superman II. Now, it's been quite a few years since I've watched it, and apparently someone has taken a cue from George Lucas and decided that it would be a good idea to go back and mess with a good movie. I noticed right from the beginning that someone has been messing around. alternate scenes were used instead of the scenes that were in the theatrical version. Scenes were removed, and in a few instances, stand-ins or CGI was used to fake scenes with principal actors.

In some cases, I'll admit this messing around could have helped. For instance, a lot of the "silly" physical stunts that were in the original film were removed or at least minimized. Scenes like a man talking on a payphone even though it was blown off it's base and scooting down the sidewalk for instance. But they took it far beyond that, especially at the end of the movie. In the original, after defeating the three krypton villains in his fortress of solitude, Clark Kent kissed Lois Lane, using some sort of mind power, we assume, to make Lois forget that he is Superman. The world remembered everything that happened and there was a stirring scene in which Superman places the American Flag back on top of the whitehouse and tells the President that he will never let this happen again.

In this new version, Superman speed flies around the Earth spinning it backwards (like he did at the end of the first Superman movie) turning back time and making it as if nothing ever happened. Everyone, this time, has conveniently forgotten that anything happened at all, completely deleting the last scene with the American flag and the President. In this post 9/11 world, perhaps this is intended to make the movie more non-American friendly. For me, all it did was completely ruin and castrate this once great movie. The studio executives responsible for this farce themselves should be castrated!

I would now have to set this "version" of Superman II on the shelf next to Superman IV, the quest for peace. Another sorry excuse for a Superman movie. Hopefully one day I'll be able to find the original version of Superman II on DVD and keep it so that someday I'll be able to show the grandchildren I hope someday to have what this movie is truly supposed to be.

CinemaNow is still around!

I'd been wanting to see the movie Wall-E for awhile now. I missed it in the theaters, and have yet to see it. A lot of the reason for that is that we don't rent DVD's anymore, or buy them for that matter. What's the point in buying something that you might watch once, then never watch again? What I wanted to do was rent a movie download over the internet, but lately, that hasn't been too easy.

My favorite site for renting and downloading movies was MovieLink. Unfortunately it was bought out by Blockbuster, and although they claim to have incorporated it as it was, it's just not the same. Blockbuster has a pathetic lineup of movies available for download and they're just not worth it. My next choice I looked into was Netflix. I really don't want to deal with another monthly subscription though, and apparently you can't actually download movies to watch later, you have to watch them as streaming movies, and I really don't like that. So, I googled for any other choices out there and what showed up in the search? Cinemanow! I'd been a registered member there way back in 2005 and 2006, but frankly, I didn't even know they were still around. I went there and sure enough, they were still running, not only that, they've got a surprisingly big library of hit movies including a lot of new releases that have just recently come out.

I wanted to rent Wall-E, and sure enough they had it available for download, unlike Blockbuster who only had it available as a rent-by-mail item. I needed to be logged in though and figured I'd have to re-register. I took a chance though and tried to sign-in with what I was pretty sure used to be my username and password. Lo and behold it logged me in and still had my user history intact! I couldn't believe it, I hadn't even rented from there since July of 2006! I rented Wall-E and tried to start downloading it and found out that I needed to have some software installed called media-manager. So I started installing it and unfortunately it tried downloading the movie as soon as it thought media-manager was installed even though it hadn't finished yet. Long story shortened, it messed up the download and Cinemanow thought that I'd successfully downloaded it and wouldn't let me re-download it.

At this point, I was a little irked since I'd already paid my $3.99 for the movie. My only options were to either forget it and quit, or call Cinmeanow's customer service number. Now, I've had a lot of bad experiences with customer service phone calls in the past, so I wasn't looking forward to that option. I decided to try it anyway. Wow! Was I ever surprised. My call was answered in under one minute by a courteous, English speaking American citizen. I don't remember her name, (and I wish I did), but within a couple of minutes she had my account brought up and walked me through everything without any problems whatsoever. She wound up giving me a promotional code for a free rental so that I could re-download the movie. This was the best customer service I believe I've ever received over the phone. I told her so and she said that I'd made her night!

So I want to give a big shout out about Cinemanow and anyone reading this should go register and rent a few movies from them. A great website like that should get plenty of traffic that way they won't go the way of the dinosaur and leave us with nothing but a couple of ugly, lame sites for renting movies!

Just got back from seeing Ironman...what an incredible movie! This one ranks right up there with the best of them! Robert Downey Jr. gave probably his best performance ever. This movie had too many great moments to count them all. I highly recommend seeing it whether you're a superhero fan or not...it's simply a great, entertaining movie for the entire family.

Yippe ki yay Mother F**ker!

I just got back from seeing DieHard 4: Live free or die hard

This is hands down the best action movie of the year, and probably the best Diehard film to date! Bruce Willis isn't getting old, he's getting tougher, like a good steak. This movie starts out fast and accelerates like car out of control (and that's a good thing)! The bad guys are bad, and Bruce Willis cracks wise left and right.

Justin Long as Matthew Ferrell, a computer hacker turned reluctant hero makes a great sidekick for Willis. as they try to save John Mclaine's daughter, Lucy, played by Mary Elizebeth Winstead. The action is fast and intense and doesn't let up for a second, well, maybe a couple of seconds here and there to propel the story forward, but even then it's fun!

Apocalypto review

Well, just got back from seeing Mel Gibson's "Apocalypto". I wasn't keen to see this movie, but my wife, who runs a blog called "lisaspassion4mel", here at blogspot took me to see it. I was pleasantly surprised to find this an enjoyable movie, if you don't get nauseous easily as a couple of women in the theater did! I'd rate this movie a 9 out of 10. Visually, it was stunning. Mel Gibson pulled out all the stops and made this movie an incredible action ride full of characters that you'll come to either love, or hate.

I'd recommend this movie to anyone that likes action, suspence and a movie that in the end, embodies our need for the closeness of family.