Wednesday, September 14, 2005

50 Greatest Movie Fights

Here is a hilarious article counting down the 50 Greatest Movie Fights of All Time.

An excerpt from #14: Bruce Lee vs. EVERYONE ELSE WHO HAS EVER LIVED IN OR THOUGHT ABOUT CHINA, Enter the Dragon

"If anybody tells you that someone can beat Bruce Lee in a fight, tell them they are wrong. They are. Van Damme can't beat Bruce Lee. Neither could Jet Li, Tony Jaa, or Hulk Hogan. "But Superman could beat Bruce Lee!" No, he couldn't. Superman would fly at Bruce, Bruce would go WATAAAAAAAAAAAA, and Superman would fall down. The only two people who can beat Bruce Lee in a fight are Batman and Captain America, and that is indisputable realism and comic fact."

Any already awesome fight countdown that includes Scout Finch dressed as a giant ham is a must-read.

--link found on X-Entertainment

Tuesday, September 13, 2005

Mucho movies

Looks like I left off listing the movies we've watched back on August 23rd. I'd like to go into more detail on some of these, but I'm so far behind that I'm mostly just going to list them for now:

August 24th:

Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle (2004)
Henry Rollins: Shock & Awe (2004) -- we saw this tour live and it was awesome.

August 27th:

Donovan's Brain -- see Nancy Davis (later Reagan) fight an evil brain!
Before Sunset (2004) -- sequel to Before Sunrise. I loved this.

August 28th:

Be Cool (2005)
Killing Zoe (1994)

August 30th:

Fraternity Vacation (1985)
The Last American Virgin (1982)

August 31st:

Gleaming the Cube (1988) -- I'm confused by the plot of this movie. Who were the bad guys shipping guns to in Vietnam? If they were sending them to the folks you would expect to be labeled as "bad guys" in a 1988 action movie, wouldn't they be sending them to the Vietnamese government? We lost, remember? That's like me moving to Mexico and then shipping guns to the U.S. Army. WTF? Either way, it has Tony Hawk and "Gator", who was the subject of the documentary I mentioned here, doing stunt skating.

September 1st:

Serenity (2005) -- again I say GO SEE IT.

September 3rd:

9 1/2 Weeks (1986) -- way better than I thought it would be, and totally not a porno.

Streets of Fire (1984) -- it's billed as "A Rock and Roll Fable", but that's only because it defies true description. The main villain is shirtless Willem Dafoe in pleather bib overalls. The way this movie is, I wasn't sure if the thonged dancer in the biker bar a really femme guy, or a kinda butch gal. A little research tells me she's a woman, Marine Jahan, best known as Jennifer Beals' dancing double in Flashdance. It was the lack of hips and the supershort haircut that threw me. This movie has a bizarre soundtrack (in a good way). I bought it before I saw the movie because we saw one of the videos on VH1 Classic one night and I recognized it as a Jim Steinman song. I'd never heard it, but you know Jim Steinman when you hear him. The video was mostly clips from the movie featuring a great many exploding cars and motorcycles, so we knew we had to check it out. The movie was directed by Walter Hill, who had a hit right before this with 48 Hrs.

Purple Rain (1984) -- what a weird movie! I hadn't seen it before. The only likable character is Morris Day's sidekick Jerome. That said, I've always loved the soundtrack (but where are the awesome songs by The Time? "Jungle Love"? "The Bird"?). Regardless, when the elevator tries to bring you down, go crazy.

September 4th:

Waiting for Guffman (1996)

Desperately Seeking Susan (1984) -- it was a weekend of '80s rocker movies!

The Final Countdown (1980) -- the most frustratingly terrible movie I've seen all year. Who knew a perfectly decent movie could be wholly destroyed by its last 10 minutes? Watch it with someone you hate!

The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires (1971) -- Do you like Hammer horror starring Peter Cushing as Van Helsing? Do you like Shaw Brothers kung fu movies? This movie is both of those. I'm serious. Watch it with someone you love who is also cool. Make sure you get the one called The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires, not the chopped up version released as The Seven Brothers Meet Dracula.

September 5th:

Cheech & Chong's Up in Smoke

September 6th:

They Live by Night (1949) -- we TiVoed this off TCM. It's a good, little-seen movie about two young lovers/criminals on the run. Kinda heavy stuff for 1949.

Riding Giants (2004) -- I have a deep and abiding love of surfing documentaries. This makes a nice double feature with Step into Liquid. It also goes extremely well with Hawaiian pizza.

The rest of the movies we've seen have been during QT6, Quentin Tarantino's film festival currently being held in Austin. We had to come home to work so we're skipping a few days, but we're going back this weekend. I'll list all those flicks later, as they require more detail.

Great moments in proofreading

Part of my job is helping proofread our company's monthly newsletter. The newsletter is distributed to employees, customers and prospective customers. One columnist wrapped up her column this month with the following sentence:

"This business truly is Pandora’s Box. All you have to do is kick yourself in the tail and go fill it up!"

Today I am extra glad to have knowledge of literature, mythology, and you know, COMMON FREAKING KNOWLEDGE. I immediately took it to my department head, who also chuckled at it and then changed the sentence. Now it no longer asserts that our business is a giant box o' evil that we should be trying to fill with more evil.