Jingus

Um, no, those aren't OMG S0 STOOPID type mistakes. The first one is debatable; what if you've never lived in a city with an L? The second one; "dancing on Air Jordan" is a popular phrase? Never heard of it. And third one, I've eaten way more butterscotch candies than butterscotch cookies, the cookie variety isn't exactly common.

I don't see a problem with Catwoman, since her character has been portrayed and retconned in such a wide variety of ways that you could make her into just about anything you want. She could be anything from the sophisticated jewel thief to some hooker who snapped and started murdering pimps and johns. On the other hand, really, what the hell is the appeal of the Riddler? I'm always perplexed when people talk about how Jim Carrey ruined him in Batman Forever; um, what the fuck was there to ruin? In the past few years they've tried to salvage his character a bit by making him some kind of super-genius, but he's still got a stupid name, a stupid costume, and a really stupid gimmick. In the immortal words of Seanbaby on his Superfriends page: "His superpower is tattling. Here's a guy who's just as tough as a regular guy, but easier to catch. Wow. Look out, world."

And oh yeah, something that angered the hell out of me today: American Express's automated customer service hotline. Activated a freaking credit card shouldn't take two hours of "let me transfer you to someone else..." type of hell.

"Sir, put out that goddamn cigarette, you're gonna kill us all! ...here Bob, better have a couple more Jagerbombs before you drive home."

Well, for the restrictions we can actually blame pansy-ass "this is everyone's air!" nonsmokers like you. You want your own non-smoking restaurants and bars? Fine, go have them. But don't insist that all of them be nonsmoking. I don't understand the thought process of not allowing smoking in a goddamn BAR. In some places it's gotten ludicrous, with smoking being completely banned in basically all public places, with a very wide definition of "public".

And Jebus's next pick he sent me: LOTR: The Two Towers

Past time for treble and bps, hell probably for me and Jebus too. Living in Oblivion I don't think I've ever seen much else from director Tom DiCillo that was very good. But it's made up for by this movie, which was very good. It's like a less broad, somewhat more realistic version of Christopher Guest's mockumentaries. Steve Buscemi plays an incompetent indy film director who's going crazy while trying to put together what looks like the lamest, most pretentious low-budget movie of all time; Catherine Keener is his leading lady (who he's secretly in love with). And of course, "oh my God, it's A FUCKING DWARF!"

How big are the seats? That can be a factor. In some theaters I feel like I'm packed into the coach section of a 747 with barely enough room to breathe. And it's not like I'm obese or a giant, six feet tall and about two hundred pounds. I feel bad for bigger people who literally can't fit in the damn things. They'd be willing to pay extra for a seat which doesn't fit like an iron maiden.

I don't follow your logic. You would prefer that an attractive woman be a lesbian instead of heterosexual?

Heh. I've broken that one out on occasion. I have no idea where I first heard it though.

I'm not even saying they should use him. Freeze was never one of my favorite characters, even before Schumacher and Schwarzennegger took turns gang-raping him and then made him walk all the way home naked and crying while putting out cigarettes on him the whole time. I just think if Nolan, Goyer, et al put their minds to it, they could definitely change him into something good enough, at least for a Scarecrow-type throwaway jobber villain for Batman to smash.

The traditional Freeze is the guy in the spacesuit with the ice gun, sure. But Nolan & Co. have proven very adept at retconning the old comic characters into somewhat more realistic versions for the big screen. The traditional Joker tended to use weapons like acid-filleded squirting flowers, spring-loaded boxing gloves, and his deadly laughing gas; not just knives, guns, and bombs. He also had been dropped in a vat of chemicals so his face and hair were permanently discoloured. The traditional Scarecrow had a whole bunch of crazy varieties of scare drugs, and dressed up like a full-body freakin' scarecrow, with straw coming out of his shirt and everything. The traditional Ra's Al Ghul was a centuries-old, nearly immortal sorceror. All of these guys had their characteristics pretty thoroughly changed. You'd think they could do the same thing with almost any villain, short of someone like Clayface, Man-Bat, or John Dee where their entire character is based around abilities which are more or less impossible in anything resembling the real world. EDIT: really, pretty much all of the Batman villains are cartoony in one way or another. Really, all of them are written as being pretty outlandish. Some of the more modern guys like Bane, Hush, or Black Mask aren't quite as goofy as the Riddlers or Penguins of yore, but they'd still all need some significant remodelling before appearing on movie screens. Hey, random idea: I know that everyone involved in the current series has said very emphatically that they would not incorporate Robin into any new films. But... what if they went the Jason Todd route? I could see the death of an inexperienced teenage wannabe sidekick fitting into this sort of vision.

Yeah, when you spell it out like that, it sounds retarded. Or if you really think about the timeline of the Joker's actions, and how he somehow plants like five thousand bombs in about half an hour. When looked at logically in the cold light of day, it doesn't make sense. Or even the central concept: a billionare goes out at night and beats up criminals while dressed as a bat. But during the movie it felt reasonable from the way the filmmakers handled everything. You can make any story feel plausible as long as it's told well enough.

You could find some way to make Freeze at least vaguely plausible. Nobody batted an eyelash at the ancient secret society of ninjas who destroyed entire civilizations used magic fear gas in Batman Begins.

After I saw it, I sure as hell questioned myself. But that's not the point. It wasn't just because of the fanbase; I'd wager that at its peak, the X-Files had better ratings than any Transformers cartoon ever. The point is that movie was easily marketable, and was handled well in the advertisements. An X-Files sequel could have certainly been made in a way that people would have wanted to see. But doing a standalone story which has basically nothing to do with the alien/government conspiracy which was the central focus of the show, putting out a bunch of crappy ads which didn't compel any non-fans to want to see the movie, and then deciding to release it in the middle of blockbuster season against too much strong competition? It wouldn't matter if this movie was the best detective thriller since Silence of the Lambs, it wouldn't have made much difference.

It's not a matter of demand. Where was the demand for another Transformers motion picture, or for most of the endless remakes and sequels which make up half the movies these days? It's about being able to make a movie which you can sell people into watching. There are movies which can entirely base their success on really well-crafted marketing: Borat is a great example, a "surprise" hit that didn't surprise me at all after I'd seen the commercials. Sometimes a movie is so crappy that even the Best Of looks horrible (Love Guru) or seems to be bringing back stuff which people have gotten repeatedly burned with in the past (Meet Dave). But most of the time you can still make a hell of a trailer for a bad movie. Although I ended up hating the Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake, the trailer looked so great that I was indeed conned out of my eight bucks to see it on the big screen. Now, ask yourself: did anyone see the ads for The X-Files and go "man I GOTTA see that!"?

You made the "10 years!" comment last time. I will reiterate: the time elapsed does not matter. Look at your own favorite franchise: eight long years between Batman & Robin and Batman Beings. What apparently sunk X-Files was a lingering resentment over how bad the show got combined with an iffy marketing campaign and crappy advance word on a movie which apparently didn't right any of the wrongs.

Yikes. Looks like I was completely wrong about X-Files. I'd expected there would still be more fans of the show than that. Doesn't help that from what I've heard about the flick, it sounds like a rather boring and very unsatisfying movie anyway.

Here's a better question: why schedule the hometown hero to lose in the first place? Why did he have to wrestle the babyface champion? He could've easily been stuck in the semi-main, going over some midcarder, and everyone would've been happy.

Ed Wood disagrees with you. So does Planet of the Apes, but it disagrees in a mumbling drunken fashion and despite the fact that its argument is sound, nobody wants to hear it anyway.

Tokyo Fist And now it's time for my "I seriously doubt anyone here has ever even heard of this movie" pick. Tokyo Fist comes from the sick mind of Shinya Tsukamoto (the guy who did Tetsuo: The Iron Man), and is often erroneously described as "a Japanese Fight Club" by people with utterly no imagination. It's the story of a middle-aged man who is in such despair that he quits his job in order to start training for a career in boxing. Meanwhile, an old classmate of his is trying to steal his girlfriend. And since it is a Tsukamoto film, pretty much everyone ends up sickeningly mutilating their own bodies in truly vile manners. The reason I pick this one is that, despite the fact that it's about boxing, it also perfectly captures the almost obsessively masochistic and self-destructive ambience which defines almost every pro wrestler I've ever known.

Past the limit. Jebus is out of town and sent me his picks, so I'll be doing those til he gets back. His next pick: LOTR: The Return of the King PICKS TO MAKE UP: Jorge (3 picks) Darthtiki (2 picks) Canadian Brandon (2 picks) Chilly Willy (1 pick) Next USC #55 (1 pick)

I dunno if "charismatic" is the word exactly. Prince Justice pretty much cut his promos exactly like Sid. Same mix of screaming and whispering which made you turn the volume up and down like a yo-yo. Of course, he was also a hundred pounds heavier and had never landed on a thumbtack in his life, so it was like a completely different guy anyway.

Nobody currently out there springs to mind. Most female movie stars are way too scrawny and anorexic to play an Amazonian warrior.

6:22 in what timezone? Since it's already past that everywhere on this continent. I poked around that site a little, I'm still not sure exactly how it works. See, I can't even agree with that. Even though Returns is the only one I flat-out liked, I'd still count Batman and Forever at least as guilty pleasures. But and Robin was so much spectacularly worse than all the other movies, I seriously can't understand how anyone could possibly enjoy it.