Erin's Gonna Kill Me For This

I was chatting online with Erin a little bit ago and she told me about a dream she had last night. As with most dreams, the details are hazy (especially second-hand), but the idea is great. In her dream Erin got bit by a snake and developed super-powers, a la Spiderman. She could sneak around, was super strong, and had super-fast reflexes.

Of course, no super-hero is complete without a catchy name and a cool logo... so ladies and gentlemen I am proud to unveil The Crimson Cobra!!!



Now that we've got that important matter out of the way there are a few questions... like what kind of lucrative Hollywood deals can we get out of this, and more importantly are the super-powers passed on genetically? I'm guessing they are, in which case we'll be finding out in about 25 hours whether we'll be introducing in early January The Pink Python or The Blue Boa.


As hard of a time as I'm going to give Erin about this, I do have to be fair and admit that the James Bond theme song has been stuck in my head for several days now... our kids are in serious trouble...

Labels: baby, Erin, super-heroes

posted by Brett at 10:14 AM 2 Comments

Sleeper Hits

If you haven't noticed by now, you soon will... Erin and I love movies. We don't really watch much TV, unless we're hooked on a specific show (currently Heroes, used to be addicted to Lost until it fell off in Season 3), we play a lot of board games, and sometimes we'll just chill and read books, but a lot of the time we watch movies. The past several days has been no exception.

Monday morning, since we were both off for the holiday, we caught a matinee of Spider-man 3, in preparation we watched Spider-man on Saturday night and Spider-man 2 on Sunday night... needless to say, we were excited to go see the latest installment. Later on Monday we watched Arthur and the Invisibles, a kids movie that just released on DVD, also one that we were excited about.

Utlimately Spider-man 3 had too much going on, a few things that didn't make sense, and a couple things that just down-right annoyed me; a really good movie, but certainly not on par with the first two. Arthur and the Invisibles was even more disappointing, the movie is partially live-action and partially computer animated. The animation was fantastic and the plot was good, if a little recycled; but much of what happened to the characters was just too cheesy, and the dialog was very, very weak (this coming from a huge fan of kids movies with notoriously weak dialog).

The "sleeper hit" for the week though was a movie we watched last night... we weren't too excited about this movie and only watched it because we had it around and hadn't seen it before. The title pegged it as a cheesy love story but Win a Date With Tad Hamilton ended up being really good. It didn't exactly earn "favorites-list" status, but we really enjoyed it. It was funny, pretty original (about as original as a love story can be), and had some great acting. Topher Grace did a great job and Kate Bosworth was adorable, and believably sweet/naive. The movie also pulled off something I don't remember seeing before; it had two complicated love triangles with an ending that made you happy, but involving all characters that were likeable and honorable. With the exception of two annoying side-characters, every single person in the movie made you like them.

Here's to hoping that Fantastic 4 II, Shrek the Third, Harry Potter 5, Bourne Ultimatum, Ocean's 13 and Transformers don't let their hype get my expectations up higher than they can deliver, cause I'm already pretty excited for them all.

Labels: movies, super-heroes

posted by Brett at 9:19 AM 3 Comments

Holy Disappointment Batman!!!

Did I say Batman? Whoops, wrong super-hero... Did I say super-hero? Whoops, I meant just the normal kind... well sort of. Okay, let's straighten this out. I'm talking about the TV series "Heroes"; Erin and I watched the season finale last night (recorded, it aired on Monday).

Off-base as the last third of the subject line was, the first two thirds were right on. Holy Disappointment. For those who have never seen the show, I won't waste your time with details; for those who have seen the show but not the season finale, I won't ruin it for you. But I will warn you, it's a disappointment (hey, was that the third time I said "disappointment"? I hear saying things three times makes it more likely to stick, I certainly hope so.)

The best way to describe the entire season 1 of heroes is by calling it a roller-coaster; only that's not a good metaphore because it's like a roller-coaster that doesn't exist (confused yet?). Think about that first big lift at the beginning of all roller-coasters, you just keep going up and up and up (see, there's the 3x repeat thing again); and as you're going up you feel more and more anticipation. Okay, now pretend that occasionally that high lift section of the roller-coaster has sudden dips and curves, but followed by more lift and anticipation. Ultimately it would give you a building sense of excitement with generous helpings of "Oh my heck that was nuts!"

Well now imagine that you've experienced this building excitement and wow-factor for the better part of 22 episodes, and then right as you're getting to the top of the roller-coaster ascent and right as you're expecting the biggest rush of all... suddenly the coaster dips a mere 3 feet, the track plateau's, you (unbelievably) pull to a stop, and the operator is asking you to get out; the ride's over. Now you're getting the idea of what episode 23 felt like.

Don't get me wrong, I love the series. It's not perfect, but it's pretty dang close. It just felt like the normal (aka "really good") writers were already working on season 2, so the janetorial staff had to step in and piece together the season finale. Either way, I'll be looking forward to next season.

Now let's hope the summer's super-hero movies fare better...

Labels: movies, super-heroes

posted by Brett at 3:31 PM 2 Comments