All Fall Down–A Short Indie Horror Film (remastered) by Kyle Riesenbeck.

A relative of mine asked for this to be shared.  So I thought this was the best way I could fulfill that wish.  Let me know (or him) what you think either here or on youtube.

Weekend Box Office Report 6-2-2013: The Smith Family crashes and burns in After Earth, then repeats the feat at the Box Office. Wrapping up May, the month of the blockbusters.

I spent most of the weekend prior to this one at the movie theaters in Bakersfield.  Instead of writing about Box Office Receipts, I was contributing to them in a big way, doing my part to help the economy and all of that patriotic stuff. 

I saw three of the blockbusters:  Iron Man 3, Fast & Furious 6, and Star Trek Into Darkness.  I skipped The Hangover III, as I had  no real interest in that, not having met Mr. Hangovers I & II, and having  banished my last hangover some thirty years ago I could not relate.  I would have dearly loved to have gotten to know The Great Gatsby though, but the show times at the local multiplex didn’t jive with my scheduling. 

The week before that, Audrey and I  were at Pismo Beach out here in California.  I wasn’t able to do much in the way of motorvating, and didn’t even attempt to walk towards the end of the pier.  But we did find one great little place to eat and seeing how I haven’t done one of those Food essays in a while, I may have to just do one soon and start giving Guy Fieri a run for his money.


Why didn’t I just do the box office columns during the week?  As I keep saying, I have this real world job that keeps me run down because of real world health problems that happen in the real world outside of Hollywood world.  Some day (maybe in five or six years), if I manage to retire before the Grim Weeper comes a calling, I’ll be able to sit here and write crap that nobody reads or wants to read to my hearts content, and filling that stuff with even more Amazon and Google ads that nobody uses to buy shit.  Yeah, I know.  Life’s a bitch. 

I’m left to roll three weeks of statistics into one overly long article so that when somebody passes by they can at least say, “Boy, that’s a lot of words” before skedaddling over to Twitter where the requirement is to print what you have to say in 140 characters or less. 

Or maybe they’ll head over to Facebook where with a simple mouse click one can prove they have a strong belief in Jesus, support the separation of church and state, believe we should all be Christians, support of the Military/Veterans, their love of Barack Obama, gay marriage, support for finding a cure for cancer, fighting breast cancer, fighting child abuse,  their hatred for Obama, fighting spousal abuse, oppose gay marriage, fight animal cruelty, support of the Affordable Care Act, denouncing the ACA, trickle down economics, lower student loan rates, support executing Jodi Arias, in favor of not cutting Social Security, save Social Security, and do this all in fifteen minutes or less before going on to play Candy Crush Saga which seems to be the newest Facebook game craze of the moment since it’s the one I get asked to join more often than any others.

I have a Facebook page as well.  It has all of 33 followers, so where are you people?  I promise, I’ll never make you click on anything to prove you support whatever.  Share, don’t share, just read, leave a comment, or do absolutely nothing to your heart’s content.  

I did twitter for a while.  Still do on occasion.  But it can become very repetitious unless you have a lot of followers who are actually interested in what you have to say instead of just regurgitating what everybody else has already said.  There’s nothing worse than being on Twitter and feel like you’re talking to dead air. 

So unless you’re someone like Miley Cyrus or part of a very large clique, I’ve yet to see that it holds any great purpose for me but that may change.  I just can’t hang on there 24/7.  So, now that I’ve made it necessary to add the tag “A Day In The Life” to this post, and/or “Random Thoughts”, let’s move on to why we came here in the first place.

If you look at the chart for the week ending 5/19, you’ll see that Star Trek’s take for the three day weekend was $70 million.  And those newspaper and entertainment rags that tend to dwell on failures reported that this was a weak opening as compared to the original.

In order to arrive at this dreary headline, it was necessary for them to completely ignore the fact that on Thursday, Star Trek Into Darkness scored a whopping $13.5 million dollars in limited showings.  In a Washington Post article that I read, the Thursday evening gross wasn’t even mentioned as if it hadn’t taken place at all.  (Checking back a couple of weeks later though, that article has been removed and replaced with one that did mention it).

Worse was an idiotic article for Forbes written by some bozo named John Gaudiosi who did include the Thursday gross, in a half ass sorry attempt  to equate a poor Star Trek video game by connecting it directly to the gross of the movie and reporting that Into Darkness debut was a total failure.  Everybody on this planet knows that the quality of a film has very little to do with a related video game.  Just ask E.T.  He’ll tell you.

This guy may have super knowledge regarding the video game market.  I have no way of knowing that one way or the other.  But he  doesn’t know shit about the cinema.  I’ll give him some kind of a runner-up award for the absolute worst, most misleading headline of the year so far.

Star Trek’s debut weekend was $83.7 million, thus toppling the debut of its predecessor which also debuted on a Thursday by some $5 million dollars.  In essence, when you talk about box office take these days, you simply manipulate the numbers to whatever fits any asinine story you want to dream up. 

When you get right down to it, it’s all rather pathetic.  These days a film lives and dies by it’s opening weekend, and by whatever tale some young whippersnapper entertainment reporter out to make a name for himself wants to create.  Let’s not forget that Star Trek Into Darkness was released against some much stiffer competition then it’s original predecessor.


And while it remains to be seen as to whether or not Into Darkness will top the previous film in total gross, it’s overseas take is eclipsing Star Trek by a few light years and then some.

Another notable entry over the past three weeks is The Great Gatsby, which has proved its opening weekend was no fluke.  It took in another $23.9 million during it’s second  weekend, and so far has taken in over $128 million in the states.  Stir in another $120 million from overseas and the film that many predicted wouldn’t even take in half that is a genuine hit.

Whomever decided that it was a great idea to open The Hangover Part III on the same weekend as the juggernaut Fast & Furious 6 should just resign now before he’s forced out.  The final chapter in this trilogy will be lucky to make half the amount of Part II.  It is a popular franchise overseas which may or may not resuscitate it into profitability. 

Fast & Furious 6 originally looked ready to eclipse all the Fast Films that came before it. This is one of the few series that just gets stronger with each new entry. Despite having dropped 63 per cent from the opening weekend it still held onto the number one spot in week two. 

The previous Vin Diesel Hot Wheels commercial, Fast Five, also experienced a large drop off from an opening of 86.2 million down to 32.5 in it’s second week.  By comparison, number six dipped from 97.8 million simoleons down to 35.1 million which  means all things being equal, Fast 6 should still top its predecessor overall depending on how it does in week three.  And in week three, there doesn’t appear to be much out there.

Many of these films have something going for them that wasn’t available or should I say exploited until recently.  That’s the China Market, where Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, and Duane the Rock should clean up handily.  The gang has already raked in $310 million across the Atlantic & Pacific in just two weeks while Fast Five managed $416 million total.

The biggest loser of all came this past weekend and it turned out to be The Will Smith Family Movie Making Nepotism Machine which also  had M. Night Shyamalan hitch his wagon to their cart and come along for the ride.  Of course, I’m talking about the Sci-fi epic, After Earth which only managed to come in at number three with a paltry $27.5 million dollar intake.  What this proves is that money can’t buy you love nor can it buy your kid instant stardom and acting ability to go along with it.




 
There’s one clown in the circus who simply had to try and make a name for himself and give this futuristic turkey a rave review to the point where he called After Earth the right film at the right time for M. Night Shamalama Ding Dong.  He may be right.  Maybe it will put Shyamalan’s now lackluster career in the shitter once and for all and he can go do TV commercials or something along the lines of M. Night brings you Flo, The Progressive Girl.  Never has such a promising director fallen so far so fast.

Just about every other critic blasted After Earth, and as word of mouth spread you could watch the audience ratings for the film plummet on both Rotten Tomatoes and IMDB like a futuristic space ship crashing into a futuristic planet.  Maybe if upon crash landing on earth they had found Charlton Heston, one fourth of the Statue of Liberty, and some talking apes everything would have worked out for Papa Will and his spawn called Jaden.

The film that benefitted the most from that disaster was the independent Now You See Me which came in at number two with 29.3 million dollars.  And it did this on 500 less screens, on a budget half the size of After Earth, which made for a per screen average of $10000 compared to Shamalamadingdong’s $8,000 per screen.  I just love a good underdog story, don’t you?  Add to that the fact that magician type movies don’t generally do well in theaters, and Lionsgate/Summit has to be pleased.

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But Columbia/Sony’s biggest mistake may have been to not open their After the Disaster Earth film wide overseas simultaneously with its domestic release.  They are counting on it to recover  in the International market, and considering Will Smith’s popularity it’s always a possibility.  It’s probably a good thing that they didn’t let the budget ($130 million) soar into John Carter territory though.  But now there is also time for word of mouth passed over the internet to help convince many to spend their Euros elsewhere.

Fast Five was always going to finish on top in it’s second week.  That was a no brainer.  But After Earth was supposed to  challenge it.   It wasn’t that long ago that the soothsayers were predicting a $40 to $50 million opening.

As for the rest of the films, Iron Man and Star Trek keep hovering around the top ten.  The Hangover is still in free fall mode, dropping 60 per cent from it’s poor opening weekend showing and coming in at number six in week two.  Wish it a quick goodbye as it sails out of site and into your nearest Redbox.  Gatsby is still plugging along in the top ten, more power to it.

Mud  is the little film that could.  It keeps hanging in the top ten week after week on just five hundred or so screens.  It’s been on the chart for six weeks now, and it’s another film I hope to catch soon if it isn’t too late.

Iron Man 3 is now the the 5th biggest money maker of all time.  Adjusted for inflation though, and it doesn’t make the top 100.  Robert Downey Jr. no longer just places his money in the bank, he owns the damn thing.

 
Looking ahead to next week, Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson try to conjure up memories of Wedding Crashers with The Internship.  Wedding Crashers ended up scoring $209 million total at the box office, but finished second to Charlie & The Chocolate Factory for two weeks before taking over the number one spot in week three.  It’s been almost eight years since Wedding Crashers, so I’m not sure if that success will even bleed over to this one.  Let me put it this way.  The Internship had better be pretty darn funny.

Here are the numbers for the past three weekends for you to compare, decipher, and decide for yourself whether or not I know what I’m talking about.
 




   






 

Random Thoughts: Apple’s New Patent, Pre-order Your GalaxyS4, and Why is Buffy Here?

So I’m reading several tech web sites today and the news is that Apple has applied for a patent on a phone with a wraparound screen.  And after reading about it, I’m left scratching my head.  This is not a new idea.  Other’s have gone into this territory before.  But I’ve always held to the firm belief that most of Apple’s ideas aren’t really new.  For all their belly aching about others stealing their patents, practically everything Apple puts into their products came from somewhere else.  But I’m not about to get into that long long history.

You can read it and see for yourself here.  I’ve studied the drawings and designs, but as far as I’m concerned, it could just as well be a new muffler for the next generation Toyota Prius.  That’s how tech savvy I am.

It may all be much ado about nothing.  Just because you apply for a patent does not mean you are ever going to be bringing the thing to market.  Besides, I’m saving my money for a Deluxe Hover Board due out in a couple of years.  Not to mention that running my new Buick Hover Automobile after I have it converted is going to cost me a pretty penny as well.

Speaking of the company whose name comes from the Forbidden Fruit, there’s also a report that Apple is working on a dedicated game controller.  Has there ever a been a day that went by without an Apple rumor?  I didn’t think so.  And has ever a company’s product been speculated about more than Apple.  I can’t think of any.  You can put the controller up there with the ongoing Apple Television rumors that have proliferated forever.  Me?  I don’t care.  I just need something to write about for the massive swarm of people visiting my blog who also don’t give a crap.

So what mobile phone does the great and powerful Clyde use?  The GalaxySIII (see expertly photo shop illustration).  I’m just not an Apple fan although I did have an Apple 3GS phone for a short while.   I really didn’t have much of a choice due to some major fail on Best Buy’s part.  I even started writing a long article at the time but I think that’s about when my health problems took control of my life.  Now that those seem to be working out, if I could just find a way to retire I could write this crap all day long.  As for the 3GS, I still have it although it’s not the original  3GS I had.  (Do you want to see that too?  Okay.  More Buffy.  See the other inspirational graphic) That one went berserk and Best Buy had to replace it with a model that had been rehabilitated in reform school.  One of the few times I’m glad I paid for a warranty.

Mentioning my own Galaxy SIII is my sneaky way of bringing up the fact that the S4 will be out soon.  AT&T will be taking preorders beginning April 15.  But instead of the usual $199 with a two year contract, it will run you $249 to sign your cell phone life away for two years.  I can’t get a new phone for at least a year but I won’t need one before then either.   Hell, I’m not even getting full use out of the one I have now.  If you want to preorder one unlocked, it’ll cost you $725.99 on up.  A grand bargain I say, and just think of my commission I’d get from Amazon!  Why, I bet it would be at least $1.30.  Maybe even $1.50!  One can really rake in the dough with those Amazon ads.  To be honest, the most I’ve made is about $70 bucks total in the three or four years I’ve had them up.  Most of that came when I could write on a regular basis and about 90 percent of that came from family members I bamboozled into buying shit.  What I’m saying is, if you think you can retire by writing a blog,  you better have one hell of a huge family!

Before next year comes around, I’m seriously going to consider getting out from under this cell phone contract nonsense.  It’s nice to have a new model cell phone every couple of years, but I think T-Mobile may be on to something with this plan.  But oh wait, isn’t Straight Talk the same thing?  Just some things for me to consider over the next year.  I’ll let you know what happens if you and I are still around.   More stuff later.  We’re on a roll this week.

Random Thoughts Special Edition: Prequels, Sequels, and Reboots! Oh my!!

 

For all the bitching one hears about the over abundant proliferation of sequels and super hero rip-offs that fill the screens at the Big Ass Studio 64 Screen Cinema Multiplex out by your local mall, pub, or health spa, on a daily basis, movie fans still flock to them as if they’re a wily nilly herd of Republican sheep trying to decipher the latest ranting's and ravings of Michelle Bachman because she’s too deep for their thought processes.   Yet, the same crowd will leave the film, jump on the Internet and proclaim that as far as originality is concerned, Hollywood is bankrupt. They’ve run out of ideas. It’s time to fold the tent and go home. Yeah, right.

The average movie patron, for all their bitching, gets what they ask for, what they put their good money down for, and what they buy their $15 Popcorn and $10 soft drink for. No more, no less. Hey, it’s not your billions some studio nincompoop is investing, or even your Monopoly Money they’re playing with so quit your complaining or just stay home so they can feed it to you on the TV at sixty bucks a pop.

Sequels have always been around forever and I guess they always will be. Even back in the 30’s movies had sequels. 

King Kong had a Son , even though we never were an eyewitness to him dilly dallying with a Mrs. Kong, although such a scene would have probably boosted the movie grosses by a factor of ten, and our knowledge of Simian reproduction by 20.   Still, such a plot twist would have left Ms. Fay Wray, Ms. Lange, and Ms. Naomi Watts extremely jealous, but they would have been no match for Mrs.  It would be tantamount to pitting Don Knotts up against Muhammad Ali in his prime.   The more time that has passed since the film editor spliced together the last strips of film, the more opportunities there are for some studio big wig to take another stab at it.

 

 

In Kong’s case, Dino DeLaurentiis sent him up the WTC in 1976, and in 2005 Peter Jackson finally brought fulfillment to his personal long passionate unrequited love affair with New York’s biggest citizen. In the sixties, the Japanese shipped a gangly and mangy looking Kong in for a WWE grudge Match against their very own radioactive giant Lizard Gojira, so that they could party all night long in downtown Tokyo.

But being the generous nation that we are, Hiroshima and Nagasaki not withstanding, we returned the favor by flying Godzilla into downtown Manhattan, because Roland Emmerich swore that Size Does Matter, although he wasn’t talking about his overinflated ego or budget.

It pissed rain for most of the two and a half hour running time proving once gain that size does matter when you have to cover up your not quite ready for prime time CGI Lizard with more running water than Noah saw in 40 days and nights, plenty of dark scenes, and then have Mr. Zilla dart in and out of and in between skyscrapers so you never really see him up close and personal. Talk about laying a giant egg or should I say a truckload full of giant eggs. But if you cross your fingers extremely hard and say you do believe in monsters fifty times, Godzilla may roam the planet in 3d in 2014. So get your asses busy now.

Tarzan has been swinging on a vine since the first tree sprouted up in the rain forest. And even Jane and Boy, who dropped in from the sky, hung around for quite a while with him.

The Thin Man drank enough hard liquor solving mysteries with Mrs. Thin Man to keep his most favored distillery in business for years. Now, Johnny Depp says he want’s a shot at that liquor cabinet. No word on who’s playing the dog yet.

Andy Hardy kept looking for his love life for 20 years until he finally came home in 1958 carrying a passel full of mealy mouth brats and a wife with him, apparently having found amore without us. In other words, he got screwed and we got screwed over after putting up with him all those years.

I personally want to know what ever happened to my favorite funny guy, Henry Aldrich and his pal Dizzy? Bet you don’t remember those two. They made a bunch of movies. About eight of them. Funny ones. Can’t find the movies unless I want to order from some offbeat company I never heard of. Then again, they do sound legitimate.  What have you got for me?  They’ve got the BBB thing going on and everything.  Hey, send me a few and I’ll stick an ad up for you.  You know the old saying, early to bed, early to rise, advertise, advertise, advertise.  But I guess I’ll settle for a couple of clips on YouTube for now.

Henry Aldrich seems to be available legitimately from a web site called Nostalgia Merchant. We dealt with them for VHS products back in the 80’s. Don’t know how they are now who owns it.

Bonita Granville wasn't totally clueless as Nancy Drew, the teen sleuth, through four films until she met and married Jack Wrather who had this Lone Ranger gig of his own going. They then found out that old dogs never die, they just have puppies and carry on forever. It seems you can make more money with a cross dressing collie than solving the Mystery of the The Hidden Staircase.

But have no fear, all you amateur female detectives. Nancy has been around forever and always will be. Pamela Sue Martin climbed out of The USS Poseidon to pick up the clue book in the 70’s. Recently, Emma Roberts, brought Ms. Drew back to the big screen, but a once planned sequel seems to be kaput. And then there’s another one, one I didn’t even know about until recently. All I know is that it was broadcast on the TV in the 1990’s but I don’t know where, filmed in Canada and France, starred someone named Tracy Ryan as a 20 something Drew, and this curiosity piece is now showing on Netflix. Have at it.

I will when if and I do find the time and then I’ll report back. And if watching isn’t your cup of tea, thanks to the wonders of computer gaming, you can now be Nancy Drew to your hearts content, be you male, female, young, old, or anything in between.

And look, let’s be honest, wasn’t everybody clamoring for another Indiana Jones film until there finally was one? But after all was said and done fans everywhere decided to get all pissy about it because it wasn’t what they thought it should be? Now all they do is whine, “They should have left well enough alone!” Audiences are just plain fickle, and in the case of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull they were fickle to the tune of $786 million worldwide.

It’s the same thing with Star Wars. If people hadn’t been clamoring for sequels and prequels then maybe George would have retired with his billions instead of foisting the abysmal Haydn Christianson on us and stinking up the joint. NOOOOOOOOOOOoooooo!

Hell, I’ve wanted Willow II since 1988, but George and Ronnie can’t seem to get their act together. If Harrison Ford can put on that fedora at age 67 or so and crack his whip as Jones, then certainly Val Kilmer’s Madmartigan, at age 52, ought to be able to still swing a hefty sword with authority. So what if Ron Howard has won an Oscar since then? It won’t soil him to do just a little slumming. And one thing Ron, you should have talked your daughter out of being in that crappy M. Night Salami movie. It didn’t do squat for her career.

Theres been talk of a Goonies II, but having a bunch of middle age men dragging ass in the sewers of Seattle looking for a pirate booty doesn’t have the same appeal that it did when the journey was made by a motley group of up and coming teensters and tweensters. Then again, what kind of booty would we be talking about here?

If some of the sequels turn out bad, you pretend they don’t exist anymore and pick up wherever you damn well want to.

That’s why Superman Returned after Superman II, and numbers III and IV never really happened. It’s sort of like Pam Ewing waking up and finding Bobby in the shower after dreaming a whole television season up in Dallas for all the suckers who tuned in once a week. And Richard Pryor is no longer around to attest in the first person that there was a Super 3, although for all I know he may have been the one that wished it away.

Superman Returns to only $400 million dollars worldwide, and that wasn’t enough for the WB. No sir. Casting call. Time for the Superman reboot. New director. New Super duper. Bye bye Kate “Lois Lane” Bosworth, hello Amy "Lois Lane" Adams. Then to get everybody really confused, you take the Superman out of the title and slap the Man of Steel label on it. Crap, for all we know this could be a sequel to the 2011 October flavor of the month called “Real Steel” which is not about Superman at all. I think it has something to do with Rocky Balboa and Robots . Haven’t seen it, I’m not sure, let’s move on.

But that’s a way better fate that than being done in by what happened to poor Supergirl! Talk about a one shot deal! One movie, you’re done, and take Mommie Dearest with you, bitch. To punish you for failing, they stick you in some movie where you’re running around trying to get your kid brother’s stupid scooter back and have you cut off all your beautiful blonde hair in the process while your little friend discovers she’s a woman.



Talk about a career wipe out! But at least there was that nifty Pat Benatar song to cheer you on and regale MTV viewers across the nation for a time.

The best thing about The Legend of Billie Jean is this song. Then again, I think the movie was very underrated.

Let’s not forget the dreaded prequels. I’ve already mentioned George Lucas’s batch of bologna, but there have been others. Hell, Indiana Jones went back in time for one year to his younger self for Temple of Doom. I’m still trying to figure that one out.  He not only traveled through the time space continuum for Doomsville, he resided there  long enough to do a whole damn TV series. And he did it without a DeLorean.  I don’t think Lucas knows for sure why Indiana II  took place a year earlier than Indiana I.  I guess it fit the timeline he made up on the spur of the moment.  But at least we knew for sure Indy would survive the damn thing.

Sometimes your two heroes end up pretty much dead at the end of your hit film, thus really leaving you with a big prequel or sequel problem. The Sundance Kid aka Robert Redford and Butch Cassidy aka Paul Newman morph into William Katt and Tom Berenger for Butch and Sundance,The Early Days. Hey, I liked Katt as the hapless super duper klutz of the Greatest American Hero on the TV, and even more so as Carrie's hot date at the prom. But he is no Robert Redford. And if Paul Newman were the bright center of the universe, Tom Berenger would be the planet that it’s farthest from.

And nobody morphed better than Newman and Redford, who also reappeared in The Sting II as Jackie Gleason and Mac Davis. Either that or Newman was really chowing down in between films and Redford took some time to tune up his vocal chords for a few hit songs. 

If your super hero franchise lays a real big turd such as George Clooney's Batman did with Robin and The Governator back in 1997, you simply wait eight years, and then call your film Batman Begins, as if you were just kidding around the first time down the pike with Mr.’s Keaton , Kilmer, Clooney, O'Donnell, Nicholson, DeVito, Jones, Carrey, Schwarzenegger, Pfeiffer, Ms. Silverstone, and Ms. Thurman. You hire a director that made a film nobody understood because he goofed and ran it through the projector backwards, but  made movie critics get all misty eyed anyway. That way if he turns the caped crusader into a confused schizophrenic nit wit you can claim, “But it’s art.”

By starting all over again you also have the benefit of that new breed of internet species unavailable to you ten years ago who will proclaim your greatness from sea to shining sea. Yes, we do have the fan boys forever and ever amen.  And nothing, absolutely not one thing, will ever deter them, stand in their way, or hold them at bay through ice, wind, snow, rain, sleet, hail, or a massive power failure from coast to coast.

Absolutely none of this even remotely begins to explain why Spider-man is being sent back to relive his high school days when he hasn’t even been out of there long enough for a class reunion.   We’re starting over from square one,  becoming not just Spider-man, but The Amazing Spider-man because he wasn’t quite amazing enough to bear that adjective when he was just some damn overpriced American Colonist.  So riddle me this, why is the new Spidey better than the old Spidey, when new Spidey has to use mechanical gunk to spin his webs while old Spidey was making it natural?   Answer me that, Sony?   Screw you.

And what the hell is Sally Field going to do as Aunt May?  Give the kid a box of chocolates and yell, “Run, Spidey, Run!” 

I can see it now:

Peter Parker:  What is my destiny, mama?
Aunt May:  You’re a freakin’ spider mutant person, what the hell do you think your destiny is?

Screw you again.

Now, we get a new cup of Tassimo Tea, whereas the old Maxwell House Home Grown Coffee had yet to finish brewing to the last drop. But hey, this is Sony we’re talking about. Sony’s a corporation, and your measly 3 Spider-Man films grossing $2.5 billion (yes, billion) just isn’t enough moulah for you and your shareholders. So what do you do?

You get out your slide rule, figure out that the director and cast that helped you gather in all that loot in the first place should be kicked out the door because if they were in one of your sweat shop assembly line factories pumping out your PlayStation 3's or blu-ray players you’d do the same damn thing. Then you find some cheap replacement parts, a no-name director with no hits, an unknown obscure actor, and start dreaming of a Happy Fourth of July because the bean counters have convinced you that the movie going public is too stupid to see through your charade.

They are sure we will want to watch this low-budgeted rehashed instant replay even if your star won’t be celebrating Independence Day with us when the movie premieres because he probably doesn’t even know that his country lost the war almost 250 years ago. The worst part of it is that those bean counters are probably right. They know fan boys as well as I do and they are already beginning to wrap their arms around this imported pile of steaming sheep dung.   Me, I’ll stop in to see The Avengers, but screw your Spidey when I’m still waiting for him to join Mary Jane in holy deadlock. And I mean that. I won’t go. Period. I hate corporate b.s.

Just one thing sir, when do tickets go on sale?  Honorable number 3 son would like to know.

I could go on for days with this sequels, series, and prequels, stuff.   And I certainly may do so again if I sit down to write a review and that Drew Baylor came up with when his own dear old dad was dead as a doornail comes upon me again. You know the one. Whimsical.

Remember, none of this sequelitis rebooting rehashing recooking and refrying gets done if you don’t go. But for all your complaining about idea bankrupt Hollywood, going out to the theater will always be infinitely more entertaining than sitting in front of the tube, eating your cheeseburger, and having your brain cells killed off one at a time by Dancing with the Stars, The Bachelor, X-Factor, So You Thought You Could Dance, Dummass, America Ain’t Got No Talent, and American Idol. I’m proof of that. Two years of writing about Idol several years ago, and I’m still in recovery. But the doctor’s say there is hope for me. You on the other hand, maybe not. You have to read this crap. Now I do have a movie review to write.

Amazon Tags: Movies, Films, Sequels, Reboots, Prequels, Movie Series, Batman, Superman, Nancy Drew, Spider-man, Paul Newman, Robert Redford, King Kong, The Dark Knight

Technorati Tags: Movies,Films,Series,Reboots,Remakes,Sequels,Prequels,Spider-man,Batman,Nancy Drew,Paul Newman,Robert Redford,Jackie Gleason,Mac Davis,Tarzan,Godzilla,King Kong,Superman,The Man of Steel

A Day in the Life: 10 months and 40 doctors later-We know what ails you.

We're doing the doctor bit today--twice. First the Neurology guy, then later today the regular HCP office. They have Faux News on the TV and you know how much I hate that crap.

I didn't sleep worth a damn last night so I'm probably going to be grouchy.

Update: Made it into the examine room at 9:20 for a 9:00 appointment. Not too awful bad.


Update II: I've now been in this examining room longer than I was in the waiting room. Time 9:50 PM

Update III: The news is all bad. This may have to wait until I get home. Carnac sees surgery in my future.

Update IV:  Better Late than never.  There's one thing about being stuck in a doctor's office for hours.  It's hell on your IPhone battery while you try to keep yourself occupied.  That examining room that you see.  I ended up sitting there waiting until almost noon, for some stuff they could have finished up with by no later than nine thirty.

So why write about my medical stuff?  Health care in this country has reached an abysmal state, and it shows in our ranking, somewhere around 38th in the world I think.  Rather piss poor, and now I know why.  Funny how some politicians (and you know which ones) continue to talk about the US health care being the best in the world when it's not even close.  And if you're unlucky to have insurance as tens of millions of people in this country are, you're basically just shit out of luck.  I know.  I've been in that situation before, for a good percentage of my life.

If you've been following this caper along in my other posts, you pretty much know how piecemeal HMO coverage is by now. You have to wait for approval on just about every little procedure.  And that's about where I stand right now with the one big caveat:  After six months of shuffling around from specialist to specialist, I now know what my main problems is even if  I don't fully understand it.

It has to do with the vertebrate in my neck are compressing against the nerves in my spinal cord.  Quite a bit actually, as the Doctor Genius showed me on my MRI pictures that I had taken about a week ago, which if they had taken them months ago it would have saved me a lot of trouble.  What it amounts to is that they have to fix it, because if they don't I could end up paralyzed or worse.  Or so they say.

But before any of that happens my regular HCP has to do my surgical preliminaries:  blood samples and all that crap.  But, because I've had a persistent case of laryngitis off and on, I have to go to another specialist for that before they can begin getting me ready for surgery.  You know, just to make sure it isn't cancer causing my voice to come and go like a yo-yo.  Take my word for it though, it isn't cancer.  I've had this laryngitis problem before.  For about two or three years as a matter of fact and it was a lot worse than it is now.  But they have to do what they have to do.

The worse part of this is going to be wearing a neck brace.  But even that has to be approved. Hope it takes a long time.  The bad part:  I have to wear even before surgery which tells me that what my doctor says is true.   Even those I have spoken to have never had to wear the brace before the operation.  Still, some are advising me not to have it.  I wish I knew more.  I was too stunned when he told me to ask about more specific details.

Anyway, I'm still going to write about this and we'll see how it develops.  Hopefully I can get back to working on more pleasant blog stuff.

Sorry about the time it took me to update this post. Not like anybody's going to read it anyway.  I laid down in the bed and looked for something on Netflix to watch but I fell asleep making a selection.  That's how tired I was.  Oh well, watching Scarecrow and Mrs. King on Amazon as I write this.  Better than nothing, but kind of hokey.  I didn't remember the show being this hokey.  All four season are available for free with Amazon Prime though and it isn't on Netflix.  I only mention that show so that I can stick an Amazon ad on here..lol.   Catch you later.

A Day in the Life: Random Thoughts

When I was writing political crap, I used to write some quick thoughts about recent political happenings from the four corners of the earth.  I think I called it Around the World with Clyde or some idiotic sounding name.  So after having spent the week writing movie reviews and having polished up some of the old ones while hauling them over from the my soon to be deleted other blog, I thought I would take it easy for a moment and just write some of my thoughts on anything that comes to mind.  Let’s get busy.

The Let’s Get busy bit that I used here and on my Netflix reviews comes to you courtesy of the old Arsenio Hall show.  I began wondering whatever happened to him because at one time he was such a hot commodity. 

He showed up on George Lopez’s show as a guest, before it was canceled. 

He was once in consideration to host the crap game show Deal or no Deal, but lost out to Howie Mandel for that privilege.  Lost out?  He should consider himself lucky to have missed that gig. 

He has hosted a show called The World’s Funniest Moments on myNetworkTV.  I’ve never seen the show, I’m not even sure I get that network on our Craphouse Cable.  But for my money, video clip shows cloned from World’s Funniest Home Videos wore out their welcome with me a long time ago.  So has the original. 

He’s been a guest on Jay Leno as well, which is funny considering he once proclaimed he was going to “kick Jay Leno’s ass.”  So it’s nice to see he’s not impoverished and living on some street corner. 

I seldom watch talk shows anymore.  The guests are usually nothing more than celebrities trying to sell their next movie, book, or television show.  But now you know what happened to Arsenio and so do I.

My latest DVD/Purchase is a show from the seventies called Medical Center.  It starred Chad Everett and Tyne Daly’s dad James Daly.  As a matter of fact, I made the purchase just a few moments ago when Amazon so generously dropped the price down about ten dollars.  The thing to remember about Amazon is that some prices go up and down like schizophrenic yoyo.  Don’t blink or you may miss it.  I’ve put stuff in my shopping cart to mull over whether I really want to make the purchase, then come back a short time later to find the price all jacked up.  

I almost bought Medical Center from the Warner’s Archive Store for a couple of dollars less but by the time shipping, handling, and tax was added, then the price was jacked up quite a bit easily making Amazon the better value.

Bricks and Mortar stores claim Amazon has a huge advantage because they don’t charge tax.  That may be true, but if they think that Amazon charging tax is going to make customers suddenly ditch Amazon and head out to the shopping center, they are badly mistaken.  Here’s my opinion as to why that would be even when they do start charging taxes after having shopped there for about the past four years: 

1.  Amazon prices are often cheaper, regardless of tax. 
2.  If you buy a lot and have Amazon prime, you pay no shipping and handling and get two day delivery on most items.  Without Amazon prime, if you buy more than $25, there is still no shipping and handling fees but you get it regular ground shipping. 
3.  If you have Amazon Prime, you can get an item over night for $3.99.   For two day air, the Warner Archive wanted $10.00 which is just idiotic.
4.  As far as I’m concerned, Amazon customer service has been exemplary.  I’ve had no problem with item returns at all.  You simply print up a return label, and ship the article back.  It costs you nothing.  I’ve had to do that twice in two years, and once for something that was my own fault.

So I paid $41.79 at Amazon, I’ll get the item on Wednesday.  I would have paid $45.54 at the Warner store, and would have received it whenever via ground. 

I’ll be honest enough to say that last year I did drop Amazon Prime because I figured I could wait out the extra shipping time.  But I reinstated it when they added the free streaming movies, which made it a better value than Netflix, especially after Netflix jacked up their prices. 

And yeah, they need work with their streaming interface, and the selection isn’t as large, but it is growing steadily and actually growing at a pace faster than Netflix streaming did in it’s early days.  And besides, I found I really missed the free shipping and two day delivery when the order doesn’t total twenty five dollars.  Just a few days ago I bought a DVD for about $2.98.  And it cost me no more than that.  That’s better than the bargain bin at Wal-mart.

I’m sure you’ll say this post has something to do with the Amazon ads posted all over the blog.  No, it doesn’t.  I’ve had those ads previously on Clyde’s Movie Palace, the blog I’m in the process of integrating into this one.  I had those posted for three years.  Recently, Amazon closed all the California accounts and settled up  all outstanding balances. My settlement was just over $7 dollars for those three years, which almost paid for my Top Gun on blu-ray, but not quite.  When they sent me an email saying I was getting it, I’d just about forgotten I even had those ads.  So why am I  bothering with the ads again? 

Well, $7 dollars is still better than no dollars.  And once you put them up, they really don’t require much maintenance.  As for the wish list near the bottom of the right hand column, that’s there for family members to find easily.  I became tired of them asking me to send it to them last Christmas, especially since it was always changing depending on what I bought or finding something I wanted more and what I thought were real possibilities.  And besides, how the hell else am I going to get them to read this blog, something they seem to regard as pure poison. So Merry Christmas to you all.

About a week and a half ago I pre-ordered The Donna Reed Show, The Complete Fourth Season.  These are the Lost Episodes, that weren’t seen when the series ran on Nick at Nite.  When I ordered, the price was $39 dollars and has dropped down to under $30 as of this writing.  (Which is another thing about Amazon.  When you pre-order you always get the lowest price from the time you order until the item ships.  But this little article isn’t about Amazon.)

I already own seasons one, two, and three, and for a long time it looked as if we were not going to get season four.  So this made me extremely happy.

I’m sure the biggest percentage of those who read this will shrug their shoulders when I mention The Donna Reed Show and this DVD release.  But it is important, and it’s important in a lot of ways.

In case you haven’t noticed, I’m also big on Classic Television.  I hope to write a lot of articles regarding that hobby but they will have to wait until I get the other blog articles transferred over here.  By then I should have more time.

What I’m afraid of is that we are going to lose our television heritage.  Even more than films, I believe that most television programs are a microcosm of the world in which we lived at a certain point in time.  They are a part of our history, and in a way are a recorded time capsule.   Yet, while much is being done to preserve our motion picture history, the majority of our television history is being ignored, except by those of us who are old enough to appreciate it for what it was.

Think about it.  If someone hadn’t been willing to put together these episodes of this show, they would have probably been lost forever.  And if there are to be more released, it will probably be dependent on how well these sell.  We hear about one society after another working for film preservation, yet I know of no effort to preserve our television heritage unless more than a few pennies in profit can be squeezed out of bringing these shows back to life.  But this is just the tip of an iceberg, and part of a longer article I really have to be writing.  Maybe a series of articles.

If you visited this blog before I began re-working it, you probably saw a long list of feeds in the margins.  Most had to do with entertainment sites, some with political sites, and others concerning consumer affairs.  I debated a long time before taking them down, but after studying the situation, I found out that most of them had the same exact stories and it was all very repetitious, not to mention how much they slowed the page down when it was trying to load.  I had all of these same sites in my Google reader and when I would go to read the articles, there was seldom very little difference between most of them or the headlined stories. 

So I decided it was all pretty useless information, just as posting the same news bits on here would be.  I made up my mind there would be no copying and pasting news articles unless I knew for sure it was very fresh information, (the Netflix/Qwikster story broke and I was on top of it by accident which is why I posted it), or if I had something to say about the story other than one or two sentences.  So my advice is if you want to read all that stuff, use an RSS reader.  Most of it is boring useless crap anyway. 

But on the other hand, I’m still pasting links on my Clyde Stuff Facebook page in the hopes that someone will respond and there will be a half way decent follow up or discussion of whatever it is I posted about.  And if by chance you go there, try hitting the like button for me.  There is no prize, this is not Digital Bits, and it is not DVD verdict.    This is just me writing my fool ass off.  But maybe someday.  But feel free to post and comment as long as you keep it in bounds.

I’m a skeptic sometimes when it comes to new gadgets.  I for one thought that blu-ray players were not that big of a deal and repeatedly said I wouldn’t buy one.  But when the prices came way down they made them so that you could stream Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon I caved and bought one.  Yeah, I know I could have bought a Roku but for a top of the line Roku Player, the price difference just wasn’t that prohibitive.  I did eventually buy a Roku for one of the other rooms.

But having experienced the format,  I can now say that for many movies, the difference is remarkable, especially when a studio ends up cleaning up older films so that the picture is like it’s brand new.  My son bought me Casablanca on Blu-ray, and it was as if they had developed the movie off of a fresh negative.  Likewise, some others have just blown me away like Gone With The Wind, How The West Was Won, Ben-Hur, Quo-Vadis, and most of all The Sound of Music.

One problem though is that for some damn reason, my laptop that has a blu-ray play player in it won’t play them.  Even after installing software to enable you to do so.  It just won’t recognize the discs, so it would be impossible for me to do a few screen captures for a review unless I use my web cam as I did on this article for The Big Bird Cage.  Come to think of it, I should do another one of those.  I had a lot of fun writing that.

I hope to get back to doing a lot of reading sometime before I’m placed in the furnace and my ashes dumped into some pretty urn. Between work, this blog, and dealing with pain on a day to day basis, I haven’t had the time. I do have one large book back in the bedroom I intend to read soon, just before I review the movie version of that same book. And no, I won’t say what it is but it’s an older book and movie. I can tell you for sure it isn’t Harry Potter though.

And so I was also a skeptic about the Kindle, until I my son bought one.  Now, I want one.  Sure you can read books on your laptop, desktop, or your I-pad, but it’s not even close to the same experience as reading the printed page.  The Kindle comes as close to that as you possibly can get electronically.  I can’t compare it to the Nook, because I haven’t seen one of those, but if you want to send me one, I’ll check it out and let you know.

And finally, if you look in the right hand margin you’ll see a list of my most popular posts.  Of course, a bunch of dirty old bastards searching endlessly for Jenni and Dex porn have made the Jennifer Ringsley article number one.  Right beneath it however is my review of the 1973 version of Walking Tall.  I was kind of perplexed about that at first but not any more.  People aren’t looking to read my review about Walking Tall, they want to buy it. Some of them may be vendors hoping to pick up a cheap copy for resale at an exorbitant price.

The problem is that for whatever reason, the movie is out of print again, and the prices on Amazon have skyrocketed and are climbing on a daily basis.  The lowest price for a used disc is $40 but a new unopened copy will put you back $60 dollars or more.  Why is it out of print?  I don’t know.  Ask Paramount.  I think they have the rights.  I don’t know how well the movie sold, or what their plans are.  Maybe they will sell the rights to Amazon or Netflix for streaming, which might put a dent in the DVD price, but not much of one because streaming is still not the same as owning  it. 

I have three copies of this film.  The first time I bought it was part of a three disc set that included all three original movies.  And the quality was abysmal to say the least.  I think it was issued by Rhino.  Yet, this crappy quality three disc box set is selling for $85 dollars right now at Amazon by outside sellers.  But I won’t be selling mine.  Not because I cherish it that much, but it is the only copies of the other two films that I have should I decide to revisit that franchise, something that is a distinct possibility. 

When Paramount finally reissued the film in widescreen with good picture quality, I for one was eternally grateful.  But somehow my disc came up missing here in the house and I had to repurchase it.  Eventually the other disc showed up which is how I ended up with two of them.  The original one I bought was only played once I think, so I guess I could list it as like new and sell it.

But I won’t.  Posting ads for Amazon all over the place is one thing, getting into actually having to sell them is another story altogether.  Maybe if I were healthy and retired and had hours to kill, I could manage it.  What I can’t figure out is why any one would pay these prices?  Well, hell yes I can.

Way back when, Disney had issued a copy of The Little Mermaid on DVD for a limited time.  This was a bare bones edition released when DVD’s were in their infancy.  By the time I bought a DVD player, it had been out of print for a quite a while.  So I got caught up in an auction for one on Ebay.  I really wanted the disc, and ended up paying fifty dollars for a brand new unopened copy.  Afterwards I kind of regretted it and later Disney reissued the movie as a special edition just like they always do, which meant that the value of the copy I had went into the dumpster.  So even to this day I kind of regret having bought it.

Still, I don’t know what the odds are of Walking Talk getting another reprieve on disc.  It would be cool to see a blu-ray issue of the set with some special features and commentary by some of the cast, even if I didn’t particularly care for the sequels.  I would say that’s a long shot though.  I don’t know if the film has a large enough following for penny pinching Paramount to believe it merits that.

But that’s the gamble you take if you buy it.  If it is reissued, than you lose.  If it never sees the light of day again, then you win.  So if you want to spend that kind of money, be my guest.  Since you’ll be buying from an outside seller, it doesn’t affect me one way or the other in regards to Amazon.  Catch you later!