If at first you can't remember, write something else...

I was in the shower this morning, thinking of something that would have made a good blog entry -- then forgot what it was by time I had a chance to write it. This happens a lot...

So, I'll write about what I was thinking of yesterday -- Movies. I ended up watching quite a few last week. Matthew was over, and since he hadn't seen it before, we put "Wild Hogs" on the projector downstairs and watched it. It gave me a chance to pay more attention to some of the details (for example, Tim Allen's character is riding a Fat Boy -- something I notice more often these days) than I did when we saw it at the theater.

I also watched "Epic Movie" -- You know, film spoofs are more fun when they don't trot out send ups of every picture made the year before and beat you ever the head with it. "Airplane", "Young Frankenstein" "Blazing Saddles" "High Anxiety" (almost any Mel Brooks film), the incredibly under-appreciated "The Big Bus" -- all great, this one only so-so. Still, it was nice to see that Crispin Glover could have been almost as weird as Johnny Depp as Willy Wonka.

"Monster's Ball" is a probably the best movie you haven't wanted to see -- but it offers so much. For the tawdry folks, it offers a very nude Halle Berry -- for the artistic integrity audience, it features Halle Berry earning a much deserved Academy Award -- for the hip hop audience, it features Sean "Puff Daddy/P Diddy" Combs -- for the i-hate-hip hop audience it features Sean "Puff Daddy/P Diddy" Combs being executed in the electric chair -- for the Tiger Beat set, you get Heath Ledger -- for the codger set you get "Everybody Love's Raymond"s Peter Boyle. Ok, so it's got Billy Bob Thornton in it -- but his performance is every bit as good as Halle Berry's. The only thing I found jarring about the film was in the use of music -- many times in the film there was no soundtrack trying to lead you emotionally to where the script was maybe failing to. Only at the end do we get this VanGellis / Mark Isham lonely horn stuff interfering with a very well told story. In fact, I watched it edited over the weekend, and it's every bit as good whether you see Halle naked or not...

I don't know if the same could be said for "Black Snake Moan" -- no Halle Berry doesn't get naked in this one, Christina Ricci does. But both films contain a healthy dose of inter-racial sex, growing up, changing attitudes, and redemption. There's almost enough of the actual actors singing in this film to call it a musical. Strangely enough, Justin Timberlake doesn't sing a note...

While watching other things, I flicked back and forth during "Enter the Dragon", "The house of Flying Daggers", and what I thought was "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" but now I'm not so sure. I do know that Flying Daggers will be a film I will look out for -- not that I generally enjoy this type of film, but sometimes something catches my eye (it also is similar to some of the anime I have -- Rurouni Kenshin and Samurai Champloo). The thing that really got my attention on this was the music in the last scene -- it reminded me so much of something I already had. Then it occurred to me it was similar to something from "Kill Bill" -- which makes sense, because I think Tarantino had something to do with getting Flying Daggers released in our country.

So what to watch next? I picked up "300" a little while back -- The girl at the WalMart checkout said she wanted me to tell her how it ended. I said I hadn't seen it yet, but that they all die at the end. "Really, how did you know?" "it's a historical fact" "You mean this really happened?" "don't you ever watch the History Channel?" Needless to say, her interest was really peaked by then -- so maybe I'll watch that one next.

Or maybe not...