Sunday, March 08, 2009

More Arctocephalus pusillus pusillus and Mixed Reviews...

Arctocephalus pusillius cape cross namibia
Another cute photo of Arctocephalus pusillus pusillus. It was birthing season when Ahmed and I made it to Cape Cross, Namibia. Those black furry lumps in the foreground are the pups. Difficult to miss and easy to step on (in fact, there were many squished pup carcasses lying about, victims of clumsy adults no less). Lots of blood soaked placentae littering the bleach, as well.

Man, it's been brutally cold the last few days. I walked over to the library today to pick up a couple of dvds I had on hold. Walking was an unwise choice of transportation. I lost most of the feeling in my face. Walking into the nasty wind, I soon rendered my eyelids unfoldable.

Talking about dvds, this is good time to give you, my loyal readers, fellow shut-in Calgarians, a couple of dvd movie choices to watch while huddled in our cold, dank homes around the flames of our flickering oil lamps.

Be Kind Rewind.

Must say there's been a shortage of creative films coming out of Hollywood lately (actually, for a long time).

Be Kind Rewind maybe that breath of fresh celluloid that we're all looking for.

Be Kind, Rewind stars Mike(played by rapper Mos Def). He's stuck running his uncle's video store. Everything is running smoothly until his jackass friend Jerry (played by Jack Black), a walking human super magnet, erases the entire collection of VHS tapes.

All hell breaks loose when they start to remake or swede (yep, a term named after the Scandinavian country) movie titles on demand, starting with a hilarious 20 minute version of the 80's classic Ghost Busters.

An interesting and imaginative plot coupled with good performances by Mr. Def and Jack Black makes this a good choice.

Rating: 4 library overdue notices out of 5.

10,000 BC.

Rubbish.

I must admit that I walked out the living room after 40 minutes of play time. I was thinking of asking the library for a refund.

The film was a horrid conglomeration of Planet of the Apes, Lord of the Rings, and Jurassic Park.

The plot line started with perfectly fluent English speaking humanoids (with heavy Russian accents) hunkered down in mountain top huts, degenerated into a scene with a barbarian princess being abducted by fully armoured, sword-wielding men riding giant horses, ended with scantily clad cave men tracking the princess up and down glacier capped mountains... I think I threw in the towel when the velociraptors a la Jurassic Park made an appearance.

Normally, in a film like this I give the producers some creative license but 10,000 was incredibly bad.

Don't bother this one 'cause it was fit for the pit...

Rating: zero library overdue fines outta five aka 40 minutes I can't get back.

3 comments:

soapyDave said...

Glad you liked Be Kind, Rewind - I thought it was great. I don't think I'll even try 10KBC but thanks for the warning.

Mr Spanky said...

Uncle WOozy, we use Netflix so that we don't have to trudge through the snow here in CA. I think in Canadia, there is a similar service called "Zip.ca". Sure, it's $14/month but you'll use that up in snow boot leather in no time.

bubba said...

Mr. Spanky, thanx for that tip but you see, i like the smell of library dvds... besides, one month of zip.ca=one year library subscription.

Soapydave, come by for mo' reviews coming down the pipe.