Year in consumables: 2006 movies

Continuing my late entry into the traditional year-end slash year-in-review lists, I present my list of flicks for 2006.

If you are interested in my list of music, then click that link and I promise my list of games will be out later this week. If I don’t have it done by the end of February, then why bother?

Whether it be in the theater or on DVD, I hardly took in any movies this past year. To that end, I actually reopened my Netflix account two weeks ago, but that doesn’t help this list. I think I am going to start logging movies I have flixed as such on the blog because it might be interesting to track how many I actually take in over the course of a year… well, interesting to me anyway.

I’m going to give you a top five, but that’s not saying much since I probably only saw ten movies this year! It only includes theatrical releases too. Mostly because I don’t remember what I watched on DVD…

1. Casino Royale: Hands down, easy pick. I can’t believe how much I liked this movie. I never got around to writing a *review* about it, but suffice to say I agree with Stephen King in that this is the best Bond movie of... Continue reading »

Heroes: Don’t Look Back

So, as I said in my latest Tellyman post, I am going to try my hand at standalone posts of Heroes much like Ed does for 24 and Lost. Since there is a lot more thinking going on for all three of these shows, it makes sense to do something like this. My hope is you guys will want to engage in conversation about your thoughts about each show as well. If not, then this will just be my thoughts and we’ll see how right or wrong I am. Fair warning though, I don’t read message boards about shows, so if you do, please cop to it when you post your comments… or not. I’m not your English professor…

I blurbed about the pilot episode in Tellyman: Week Two and that’s about all that was really necessary. We mostly meet the main characters and get a sense for what they might be able to do, but there’s not a lot to uncover there yet. The only thing that really gets you going is whether you believe Claire’s daddy is good or evil. Well, this second episode has me believing he is more on the side of the angels, and he is probably a Fed, but that doesn’t mean he’s a nice guy.

The other little thing I picked up on in the ... Continue reading »

Summer Shudder

Well, the title of this post should have been the title of the previous post, but I just wasn’t paying close enough attention. A lot of the time I try to come up with clever titles that play on words and stuff like that and I am sure I am not in the minority there. Look no further than Ed as he consistently comes up with great title posts. Then you have Jason, who usually has me running straight for dictionary.com.

However, when I’m not feeling clever, I try to find a song title that fits my posting topic in some way. Well, I got stuck on Consumed Summer because I was going to write about stuff I had consumed over the Summer, but I also felt it was a play on “Cruel Summer” — yes, it is a reach, but who can resist Bananarama — and the fact that Summer was now over, thus consumed.

What would have been more perfect was this title because not only does “shudder” suggest the Summer is closed (if you pretend it is “shutter”), it is the title of one of the tunes on the current AFI album (decemberunderground) that I recommended in the post! Anyway, I noticed it when I was spinning the disc tonight. Better. Late. Tha... Continue reading »

Fanboy Fodder 8.5

It’s a week five write-up, so that usually would mean a light week in terms of number of books out, but that wasn’t the case. What is/was the case is half the books purchased could not be read due to my behindness on Civil War. I’ll get around to catching up, hopefully soon because TV and Xbox 360 games are fast approaching to capture my attention from the waning baseball season.

To be honest, I am actually not all that interested in writing about comics from this past week, but I have to keep up with this, so here’s a half-hearted shot for the six books I did read. I did have a hard time choosing between running the cover for X-Men or All-Star Superman, so I went with both, but Supes at the top since I ran an X-book last week.

All-Star Superman #5 Holy crap Batman! The Superman book has actually taken the lead in the shipping schedule despite debuting at least a month after the Batbook. According to Jim Lee, it’s all his fault and not Frank Miller’s, but whatever. This is about the excellent Superman book penned by Grant Morrison and penciled by Frank Quitely. I think I mentioned this book in my Superman Returns review because it is... Continue reading »

I, Crisis

I got myself into a bit of a fracas with Jason over at BBn earlier this week — okay, this past weekend — with respect to fanboys. I seem to have found myself bashing the Momma’s basement dwellars when it comes to defending this Summer’s Superman Returns. You can read more about that over on the BBn post, but it did get me thinking on continuity in comics.

Okay, so many of you just read that last sentence and started thinking you might stop reading this particular post. Well, I don’t blame you. If you don’t really have an interest in comic books, then this post probably isn’t for you. If you have an interest in bashing fanboys, then this post might be for you. We’ll see how it goes, but my intention is to quickly review a couple DC Comics mini-series that I read earlier in the week and a few barbs may be tossed at DC fan(boy)s.

It is my intention to start writing more about comics, but I promise not to do so more than once a week. Heh, yeah, that’s exciting you, right? No, I thought not, but I would like to do quick reviews of the stuff I read in a given week. Not sure how long that will last either because I te... Continue reading »

Superman Returns

I am having a hard time deciding how I want to write this up, so I’m just going to start writing and see what happens. I have stated before that I don’t care if I spoil things without warning or not in my reviews, but I actually gave it a thought while watching Superman Returns. On one hand, I want to throw out what I thought about everything, but that means spoilers. On the other, I want to preserve the experience for anyone who has not yet seen the film.

Okay, after writing that first, it seems obvious what I have to do… spoil everything, but I’ll at least warn you. Yeah, I think you are down with that and I’ll try to keep the spoilage towards the end so that you aren’t just reading this fluff at the top.

Whoa, wait… speaking of fluff — allow me a quick tangent — I found a number of interesting Superman posters while googling for the lead in teaser poster image. I ended up going with the teaser, like I also did with X3, because I like it better than the release poster. Not that it is all that bad, but then I had to decide if I wanted to use the international release poster or even the outdoor/bus poster. Then I fou... Continue reading »

Blog Days of Summer

I can tell by the way the past two weeks have gone that it is going to be tough to post on a regular basis. Actually, maybe I just need to redefine what a regular basis is going to be for the Summer.

Yeah, that’s what needs to happen, so based on how it has gone since it *officially* turned Summer, we’ll go with the one post a week schedule. I think it’s a thing going around, you know? Ed and Jason seem to have it too and those Scoobs have it year ’round. Of course, there could be Asides added at any time in between, but not much has really caught my eye as of late, although I did just post one about being Pearl Jammed.

You’d think I had all kinds of stuff going on since it was so nice out and all that, but the truth is the opposite. There’s not a lot going on, or rather, maybe it is just not a lot of stuff that is bloggable. I mean, I could post about the craptacular Sox games versus the Devil Dogs of Tampa Bay, but why bother? I could post a thought dump about Superman Returns, but I haven’t gotten out to see it yet, so hopefully this weekend. I could post about my odd-ass fantasy baseball team — they can’t see... Continue reading »

The Block is Hot

My little weather.com doo-dad says it is 90° today, which is I think the first time that has happened this year. Of course, with all the rain we’ve had lately, who can really remember? At least we finally have a nice weekend and it allowed me to put the top down and pull the doors off the Jeep for a couple days.

However, today I am sitting cooped up inside waiting to test something for work that may or may not be happening. At this point, 2.38pm, I am thinking it either didn’t happen and they didn’t notify my group or they are having troubles and not providing an update. Anyway, I am sweating my t!ts off in my home office and I thought about that title up there.

The title is the title of epsiode 14 in season 1 of The Boondocks. Not only is it a successful newspaper comic strip, but it is also an animated series on the Cartoon Network’s [adult swim]. The episode guide describes:

Jazmine learns the true meaning of “Capitalism” when she sells her lemonade stand to corporate tycoon, Ed Wuncler.

Wuncler is voiced by Ed Asner, so that’s pretty cool. In fact, several actors lend guest voices to dif... Continue reading »

Superman Returns Trailer

If you haven’t seen the new trailer, do yourself a favor and watch it right now. Don’t worry, the crappy blog will still be here if you come back…