He's Snarkastic

It’s like there’s a party in my mouth and everyone’s invited to another edition of the Mustard.

So much for the Yankees and the Red Sox. On the plus side, there goes two teams that I can’t stand and who will just make for a hilarious off season when they try to one up each other and spend millions more on “star” players until next year comes and they get beat again by lower salaried teams who just put together coherent, sturdy teams. On the negative side, there goes half the ratings for the rest of the playoffs. The sound you’re heard after the Yankees lost on Monday wasn’t George Steinbrenner but actually Fox execs screaming in anguish over the money they just lost. Ah well. It’s the White Sox turn. You figure it’s been about a century, they’re due.

So the conclusions drawn from catching the Caps/Rangers game on Monday:

1. The Caps suck with the sole bright spots of Olie the goalie and the rookie Ovechkin.

2. The Rangers sucks with the sole bright spot of Jaromir Jagr.

3. I’m freakin’ glad hockey’s back.

So finally my top summer movies are over so I present you with:

Mr. Snow’s Top 5 Most Anticipated Movies…for the rest of the year:

(In order of release)

Elizabethtown

Why? It’s done by Cameron Crowe who also did Jerry McGuire, Vanilla Sky and one of my all-time favorite movies, Almost Famous. Orlando Bloom finally gets a chance to do something non-historical epic-eqsue. Kirsten Dunst has been rising in my book since not sucking in Spider-man 2 and being pretty darn good in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. The only thing slightly putting me off is the plot seems to be pretty similar to that of Garden State. Hopefully there’ll be enough of a differentiation once I actually see the movie.

Jarhead

Ok, this spot originally was going to V for Vendetta but since that movie got moved to the spring, this one has popped into the list. It’s the newest film by Sam Mendes of American Beauty and the underrated Road to Perdition fame. If nothing else the cast is terrific with Jake Gyllenhaal moving away from his whole Day After Tomorrow phase and back towards serious work, Peter Sarsgaard who is becoming the next Chris Cooper by being in seemingly every movie these days, and Jamie Foxx in his first true followup to Ray (we do NOT count Stealth). I’m interested as Sam Mendes usually makes some gorgeous looking movies and his Cinematographer here is Roger Deakins who has done pretty much all the Coen Brothers movies as well as some big movies such as Shawshank Redemption and Beautiful Mind (which while I hated that movie, even I admit it was beautifully shot).

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

Oh, like this is a surprise. In my mind, these movies get better with each additional one. I know a lot of people did not like Prisoner of Azkaban as much as the other ones due to having to cut a lot of material for time but I loved it for being the best of the actual “movies”. Yes, the book is better but isn’t that always the case? Anyways, this one looks to continue in the POA vein of style which is fine with me. I love the casting of the new roles. Brendon Gleeson is gonna be a great Mad-Eye Moody. Miranda Richardson I know is going to nail Rita Skeeter. And how friggin’ awesome is the casting of Ralph Fiennes as Voldemort? I just hope with the director we’re getting Donnie Brasco Mike Newell, not Mona Lisa Smile Mike Newell.

Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

Ok, this one I’m looking forward to in the same way I was looking forward to Fellowship of the Ring. Great book that I hope they nail and am terrified they won’t. So far things look good. Casting no-names as the kids was the right first step. More famous actors would’ve over shadowed the characters. The design looks great. WETA who did Lord of the Rings is the best at what they do so I know those beasts and creatures are gonna be excellent. And as for the names they did cast, I think they went the best route. Tilda Swinton definitely looks like the White Witch I envisioned while reading the books and while I would’ve loved it if Brian Cox had voiced Aslan as originally planned, I have no problems with Liam Neeson. So here’s hoping cause if they get this right, they’ve got a whole series that’s going to make them some serious money.

King Kong

It’s Peter Jackson making King Kong. This guy seriously just laughs in the face of impossibility. Impossible to make the Lord of the Rings while staying true to the books? Done. Impossible to remake one of the most iconic movies of all time? Well, he doesn’t look to be doing too shabby there either. One he’s got a great cast. Adrien Brody showed just a little bit of talent when he picked up that best actor Oscar for the Pianist. Naomi Watts floored me with her performance in Mulholland Drive. And then there’s Jack Black. Big question mark there as he’s always been a big goofball actor. Honestly though he has some skills as he showed in School of Rock and I think his manic, obsessive energy is going to pour perfectly into the role of Carl Denham, the manic, obsessed filmmaker. Andy Serkis is doing the Gollum thing again by being the motion capture performer for Kong himself as well as playing Lumpy the cook which really is just a great name. And the few shots we’ve seen of Kong? Well it doesn’t have the nostalgic feeling of the stop-motion original Kong but damn he looks pretty sweet. And yes the trailer shows a lot of dinosaurs in it. No one seems to remember that they were in the original movie too. The original Kong had the notion of people being terrorized by pre-historic creatures on an island long before Crichton ever came up with Jurassic Park. So here’s hoping Jackson has a winner with this one. I’ll damn sure be in line on opening day.

News and notes:

I’ve resigned myself to the fact that any “answer” Lost gives always just results in 3 new questions.

Yahoo for Notre Dame moving up to #9 in the polls without even playing last week. USC this Saturday is honestly the rest of the season in one game. We win, the sky’s the limit. We lose, we spend the rest of the year in the teen rankings. Stupid Crowley going to the game.

Bring back Scrubs. Damn you NBC!

Hey there’s this really good movie called Serenity out. Go see it.

Little over a week now. Let the insanity begin.

Until next time:

“What if show Lisa we can sleep in her room without being frightened.”

“Ok Marge, but don’t be surprise if a snuggle monster shows up.”

“Well I hope he’s accompanied by the ‘How was your day’ monster and the footrub monster and the ‘Let me just-‘”

“Don’t worry, he’s not showing up.”

Can we start with the part where Jayne gets knocked out by a 90 pound girl? Because that's never getting old.

It’s back, it’s beautiful, it’s better than ketchup, it’s the Mustard.

So let’s just jump right into it, shall we:

SERENITY

To put it bluntly this move rocked. I will go on record and say that it was better than any of the Star Wars prequels. Yes, I did like Episode III but let’s face it, to someone who watched the first two prequels thinking “George, what the hell are you doing?”, that didn’t take too much. But this movie had all the action, all the intrigue of Star Wars and oh, yeah, dialogue which was actually, you know, good. Not to mention that the movie is funny as hell. But that’s what I’ve come to expect from the guy who wrote all the jokes in Toy Story (quick bit of trivia there for ya). Ok, so what’s great: the characters are spot on. These actors are phenomenally talented and by now they’ve got all their characters down pat to the point where they just aren’t even acting anymore. It’s just natural. Nathan Fillion’s Mal is the best scoundrel with a heart of gold since, well, Harrison Ford. Alan Tudyk, after scoring big as Steve the Pirate in Dodgeball, still gets the best lines as Wash though Adam Baldwin’s ethically deficient tough guy Jayne comes in close second. The best line, however, definitely goes to Crowley’s crush, Jewel Staite during a big shootout at the movie’s climax. Summer Glau really shines through here and her River gets to suddenly be the badass of the group. Plus her random lines just are hilarious. Honestly, I could just go on about every cast member, but they all are just exceptional. The new addition of Chiwetel Ejiofor as the honorable in-his-own-way/mind assassin, the Operative, is an excellent villain, one of the best of Firefly Universe. Fans of the TV series get a whole lot of explanation on several points from the Firefly universe. The movie’s plot actually took several turns I wasn’t expecting and I loved that. And of course I will warn that this is Joss I’m-not-afraid-to-kill-off-anyone Whedon and there’s definitely death that I didn’t see coming. It makes quite an impact on fans of the show. Honestly, the only negative points are not negative but rather the fact that with the limited time frame of a movie, Ron Glass’s Shepard Book and Morena Baccarin’s Inara get a little short shifted with screen time. Which in Glass’s case is a shame as his character was always one of my favorites. But if the worst thing that happens is that I wanted more, that’s not too shabby. Now I have state that this review is coming after I’ve seen the whole TV series so I can’t speak for everyone. However, I went to see the movie with one person who like me had seen the whole series, one person who had only seen the pilot and one person who knew nothing about Firefly but was a big Joss Whedon fan. All of them loved it. In fact, once the movie was over the two people who hadn’t really seen the series both immediately said they now wanted to watch it. So that says something. Now, finish reading this blog entry and then go out and see the movie. See it!!!

Music You Should Be Listening To:

Jamie Cullum – Twentysomething

Ok, imagine the Jazz piano music of Norah Jones or Harry Connick Jr. Now instead of covering classic American tunes, like Harry, you cover Radiohead, Jimi Hendrix, the Neptunes and Jeff Buckley. That’s what this album is. Honestly, his cover of High & Dry is just something I want to put on repeat and listen to over and over again. And Cullum does cover some American songbook tunes but flips on their heads and makes them sound totally new. Singin’ In The Rain has this synth beat behind it which just makes me wait for the Postal Service to kick in. I Could Have Danced All Night is almost completely percussion and a low bass guitar punctuated occasional by strings. His original pieces are also mighty fine with Twentysomething and At the Sea standing out.

News and Notes:

Hockey’s back! Catching the Ranger/Caps game on Monday.

Tonight could be the beginning of a very long winter for Red Sox fans. I swear to God if I hear just one of them bitch about it, I’m dumping whatever drink I happen to be holding at the time over their heads. The Red Sox are lucky to even be in the playoffs after choking their division lead to the Yankees and barely squeezing past the Indians for the Wild Card. Plus the fact that THEY WON LAST FREAKING YEAR!!!!

The strip is written, just need to find time to actually do it. Time hasn’t been a plentiful commodity as of late.

Props to Booter for his casting in a local theater production. Just remember: Mine is an evil laugh. Do it!

Until next time:

"We've got a picture of you with Saddam Hussein."
"I thought that was the guy who played the Soup Nazi. I told him how much I liked his work!"