What is Best in Life

There is a natural urge to create adaptations with film.  Film, after all, is still a relatively new art and audiences have not yet lost their childlike wonder at its ability to convey alternate realities so realistically and convincingly.  Who hasn’t read a thrilling scene from one of their favorite books and thought “man, it would be awesome to see a movie version of this!”  Yet, as everyone says, “the book is always better”.  

While I don’t think that this is always true, it quite often is, and not always through any deficiency on the part of the director.  Is this a problem inherent to filmed adaptations of the other arts?  Are all adaptations doomed to “suffer in comparison”?  (more…)

From the pages of Goth Blog, here is the fourth installment of everyone’s favorite spinoff: Jock Blog 4 – Behind the Bathroom Door! That’s right, more wacky adventures from Khaine’s jock older brother, Chet!

(Warning, this is not for the weak stomached. I have culled knowledge gained from years of close contact with jocks in their natural habitat into what is actually a mostly hyperbole free post based on actual events. So yeah, jocks are filthy filthy people. You have been warned.)

Previously in Jock Blog:

Jock Blog 1 - A rash of “German Situps” sweeps the wrestling team.  The fun is over when Chris is unable to control his ex-laxed bowels while tricking the assistant coach into doing one.

Jock Blog 2 - Eddie and Benny’s feud over who was a better runningback comes to a head when Eddie frames a rival school in Shadyville for his trashing of Benny’s sweet 1978 El Camino.  Sadly, the boys’ plans for revenge gainst Shadyville end on a brown note.

Jock Blog 3 – The gang accidentally on purpose (but with the best intentions) destroys Center Valley High School’s September 11th memorial tree.  After they are labeled terrorists by the school (though their identities are unknown) Margo finally breaks up with Chet and goes to the homecoming dance with his now ex-friend Ethan.  Chet has his revenge when he covers the fall formal with catshit, though his prank is overshadowed by the fact that the gymnasium mysteriously burns down.

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While watching It Happened One Night for the umpteenth time the other night I was reminded just how old the romantic comedy “formula” is.  Guy meets girl, guy gets girl, guy loses girl, guy gets girl back, the end (with assorted whacky situations in between)(also, spoiler alert).  That formula has probably been used more than “hero gets his ass kicked before coming back and winning in the end” in action movie fight scenes.  But, is “cliche and formulaic” a legitimate criticism of romantic comedies?  After all, I wholeheartedly support “The Western” as legitimate cinematic art, and you won’t hear me complaining that the good guy won yet another shootout at the end.  Thus I’d like to take a closer look at just why critics are so scornful of modern romantic comedies and yet a “pretentious film cock” like me has found many of them to be so embarrassingly tolerable. (more…)

I like to think that I will someday meet the woman of my dreams.  She will be everything I have always sought in the fairer sex, and our coupling will rival the epic fornication of Beren and Luthien.  So imagine my heartbreak if I were to one day wake up next to this paragon paramour to find that she had suddenly lost her softball-sized purple anime eyes, chain mail lingerie collection and third breast (Total Recall style, not Anne Boleyn style) all in one night. 

Where now is the “helm and the hauberk and the third breast hanging?” I might say, only to realize they had passed like rain on a mountain.  If you, Wizards of the Coast, can find it in your black hearts to imagine my sorrow at no longer even being able to even recognize something so dear to me, and then multiply that tenfold you will have the barest understanding of the sorrow I felt when I read of what you have so callously taken it upon yourselves to do to the Magic the Gathering rules set. (more…)

Hello dear readers, it’s MAILBAG MONDAY again!  On this special day I will search through my mountain of reader mail and answer the five most pressing questions!

What’s that you say?  Do I really get that much mail?  Well, I’ll admit…the contact section of this website doesn’t get used that often, but, one of the perks of wordpress stats is that I can see the google search terms that people use to find my site.  And I’m going to go ahead and pretend that these search terms will count as reader mail, since they are often entered in the form of a question.  So as you read these, remember that each “question” was something that someone actually typed into google that brought up my site as a hit which they then clicked on thus letting wordpress stats report to me the search they used to find my site.  I could make up the questions myself, but it turns out the actual google searches are far better than anything I could come up with!

This time I answer the questions:

• What to put in chicken so it tastes like tomatoes after boiling for tacos?
• Make taccos burreto shells?
• Magic gathering players smart?
• Can women say thats what she said jokes? 
• Why can there be only one + highlander?

So, without further ado, it is time to dig into the old Mailbag to see what kind of things have been on my reader’s minds in the last month! (more…)

Here are some two sentence reviews of the movies I watched in June.

Stats

• Movies watched – 25
• Movies that were new to me – 16
• Romantic Comedies I was embarrassed to review – 4
• Monthly Masterpieces - His Girl Friday, Scarface , The Dark Glow of the Mountains , Pickpocket

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