Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Trailer Official HD

I'll go see both of these movies by myself if necessary, that's how invested I am.
Let's hope it doesn't come to that.

The A-Team

This week's highlight was a girls-only field trip to the local movie theater. Just in time for my 105th birthday, The A-Team movie has FINALLY come to fruition, like a present from the universe. BTW, this won't be so much a review as a commentary, since 1/2 of my reading audience was with me at the movie, including Easter Island.



For the second time this year, Liam Neeson has signed on for something with the potential for pure awesome. Luckily, unlike the train wreck that was Clash of the Titans, The A-Team almost totally lived up to the high expectations set by my A-Team crazed teenage self. Each weekday I would rush home from school and wait impatiently through three hours of bad TV (complicated by my mother's stubborn resistance to the cable "fad", requiring me to constantly adjust antenna).

I have to admit being concerned about casting. Short of bringing George Peppard back from the dead, there seemed to be really no good option for Hannibal Smith. Mel Gibson was rumored for years to be taking the role, but when they were considering Mel Gibson, he still had that weird Lethal Weapon mullet. Then, seemingly out of nowhere came Liam Neeson. Both guys have action and serious roles behind them, but Liam Neeson is taller and played Dark Man so, in my opinion, was just a better choice. As Hannibal, Neeson just seemed to channel his inner George Peppard right down to the hair style. He's no Samuel L. Jackson, but Liam Neeson is climbing the charts on my cool list.

Rampage Jackson was okay as BA (a little wooden, but he does look the part), and we're still about 15 years out from hearing me complain about Bradley Cooper taking off his shirt (Face). Sharlto Copley was good enough as Murdock to make me want to stop stalling on watching District 9. The best moments in the moment belonged to this guy, from painting his face half blue and quoting Braveheart, to twirling around on chopper blades while singing "You Spin Me Right 'Round", to knighting a guy with a pair of 3D glasses.

Maybe the biggest surprise, and the one that spawned the most debate after the movie, was the appearance of '80s child star Brian Bloom as one of the bad guys. He grew up to be bald, but past that looks EXACTLY the same, which put most of us in the "OH MY GOD BRIAN BLOOM I HAD A POSTER OF THAT GUY MOST BEAUTIFUL EYES IN HOLLYWOOD DIDN'T HE HAVE A BROTHER HE IS SOOOOOOOO HOT FANGIRL SCREAM!" camp, except Imposter Jen (not to be confused with Junior), who said, "Really? I don't think he's hot at all." We're having her vision checked.

A good chunk of this new incarnation is the origins story, which witnesses the demise of BA's van (sort of how the owl didn't make the cut in Clash of the Titans) and brings Murdock and BA into Hannibal's line of sight. From there, it's a typical weak A-Team plot, from cartoonish bad guys to Face making out with anything with the right configuration of body parts. The difference is the witty script, which is extremely aware of the type of show The A-Team was, and seems determined to stick to the rules. Brian Bloom was one of the writers. He is getting hotter all the time!!! At one point, Face actually escapes from a band of corrupt Mexican soldiers by rolling down a hill inside a tower of tires. Very much like the original.

There's lots of pseudo-intrigue and double crosses and explosions, etc. etc. I'll definitely buy it on Blu-Ray when it comes out...the only part we didn't like, and EVERYONE agreed, was the Easter Egg at the end of the credits. So, Easter Island makes us wait until this final scene, and they trot out Dirk Benedict and Dwight Schultz. Granted, they're in their mid-60s, but most of the girls agreed that we all had a crush on Dirk Benedict at one time, and seeing him old was just sort of something we wish we could take back. Thanks, EI!!

Anyway...
Overall Rating: Pure Awesome
Marcia Rating: We took her with us and it was Marcia-safe, but she preferred The Losers
Brian Bloom Rating: Not replacing Future Husband Jeffrey Dean Morgan anytime soon, but WOW!!

New Review: La Roux

Good dance album. Better remixes. La Roux @ LittleRat.

Scorpion. Sub-Zero. No Sonya. Fight!

And now a word from #1 in a series of 4. #1 advises you to watch this full screen (HD) with your sound turned up. I don't know about the sound part, but the rest of the advice stands.

(warning. this is really long and extremely Marcia inappropriate. also, it helps if you like a) video games in general, b) Mortal Kombat in particular and c) have a high tolerance for long, violent movie trailers. note that jeri ryan appears in what appears to be possibly the best video game movie of all time AND possibly the best franchise reboot since Star Trek. initCap is for pansies. my only objection is to the lack of MK Techno.)

VendingSpree.com

Apparently blog genius Matthew Baldwin has a new side project - he's eating out of the vending machine at work and recording the results. It might not sound interesting, but this is D E F E C T I V E Y E T I we're talking about. The man who brought us the Bad Review Revue. The picture of how cashews are grown alone is worth the price of admission (which is free, by the way). I didn't eat cashews before, but now I won't be tempted to try.

Oh, Matthew Baldwin, please write a novel so we can buy it. By the way, Goldfish pretzels are made with smiles...and unbleached wheat flour.

EvilStepmonster, Now With 50% LESS Content!!

Yeah, you read right! So, after stalking Easter Island around the Interwebs for awhile, I decided to clean up my blog (the domain mappings are next), concluded that this blog was LONG overdue for a clean-up. I used to go through once a year or so and delete my mass of ramblings about America's Next Top Model (which I didn't even watch this season, what with having basically given up television and all). Anyway, so I deleted about half of my posts, and removed most of your names from the rest.

A Key to Names on EvilStepmonster
Nate Last name removed = Nate
The J = J
Marcia = Marcia
LJ = Junior
Me = Senior
Woman with a problem with obsessively collecting books and an outsized head = Easter Island
Mark = Refusal to cooperate with clever renaming...

Creeped Out By Social Search Engines

First, I want my regular readers (all four of you) to know that I am going over to a new system of code names for myself and all of us.

So, The Elbow Easter Island and I were stalking each other on Spokeo and Pipl.com over the weekend, when we discovered just how creepy the internet really is. *I've given The Elbow until I complete this post to come up with a better name for herself. This article from PCWorld.com advocates a system of relentlessly stalking yourself online to determine what a real stalker would find.

Easter Island discovered that, in addition to her house being worth more than 1 million dollars, 2.0 is actually TWO different people. Also, if you run into Easter Island on Monday, she's apparently closing in on her 68th birthday. Make sure you tell her how great she looks for her age.

Spokeo has my demographic information slightly closer to accurate, but believes that I enjoy cooking, books about cooking, and gardening. I honestly don't know who the hell they're talking about, but it isn't Junior or Senior.

Anyway, the creepy amount of info they have on me is making me consider some drastic action. What that might be, I do not yet know. But, in the meantime, I'll be codenaming up my blog and slapping anyone who looks at me too closely. Just in case.