1976-2008

This is a rather sad but really interesting article about the “death” of the VHS format that I found while browsing the forums at Blu-ray.com.

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And did you know that A History of Violence was the last major Hollywood film to be released on the format? (I’m still trying to erase that movie from my brain. I’m so sorry, Melissa.)

My parents bought our first VCR in the early 1980s so that I wouldn’t have to miss episodes of the live-action Spider-Man show on Saturday mornings while I was at catechism classes in Corydon.

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That was a great deal. We’d get the breaded tenderloin and mashed potatoes and gravy and noodles lunch at Jock’s on the corner, and then go home to a fresh episode of Spider-Man.

Best parents ever. Just for this Christmas, in fact, they bought me Selma Blair to go along with my purchase of Liv Tyler. (Not the actual actresses. That’s just what I named my Blu-ray player and my HD-TV. I would never want to purchase either of those ladies, but if they’d like to come live with me, that would be way okay. I’m a good cook, and I love to tell stories and go on adventures.)

I still own a few VHS tapes, and it will be hard to let them go. So I guess I won’t. And in that regard, VHS, your legacy lives forever.

The Whatever: The Best Movies of 2008

And here … we … go …

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What are the 10 best movies you saw this year?

(Last year’s are here.)

10. Get Smart. Seriously. Original review here.

9. Rambo. If you listen closely, this movie is saying, “Hello, My Audience. Sylvester Stallone here. I know exactly what you want, and I’m going to give it to you, only I’m going to give it to you even better than you’re expecting, with one of the most appropriate and surprisingly beautiful endings you’ll see all year, especially for a movie as lean and as mean as this one.” As my buddy Mike said, “There’s a lot of bad in this movie … but it’s really good!”

8. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Say what you will about this movie. I loved it. I had a ton of fun with it. Harrison Ford was 100% reporting for duty, and the first half of this movie — Indy in the Atomic Age! McCarthyism! UFO mumbo jumbo! — is as exciting and as wonderful as anything in Raiders or The Last Crusade. Original review here.

7. The Incredible Hulk. Original review here.

6. Iron Man. Original review here.

5. Appaloosa. Ed Harris co-writes and directs this adaptation of Robert Parker’s well-regarded Western novel, with an invaluable co-starring assist by Viggo Mortensen. Virgil Cole (Harris) and Everett Hitch (Mortensen) are peacekeepers hired by the small town of Appaloosa, which is being held in the unforgiving grasp of evil rancher Randall Bragg (Jeremy Irons) and his gang of vile bastards. Things get complicated by a girl (played pitch-perfectly by the ever-adorable Renee Zellweger) who can’t stand to be alone and a landscape that’s changing faster than the black-and-white days of good guys and bad guys can keep up with. The film has lots of slower moments, but they’re filled with so many delightful and effortlessly acted character moments that you won’t mind at all. Can’t wait to enjoy this again on Blu-ray on January 13.

4. Quantum of Solace. I read lots of complaints that this movie doesn’t have a story. Of course it has a story. It’s called Casino Royale, and Quantum of Solace is particularly effective if you watch its predecessor immediately before viewing it. Daniel Craig immediately became my all-time favorite Bond upon his debut in 2006, and he proves again here that if you try to kill Bond, Bond will a) kill you first and b) kill you the worst. This is a lean, mean revenge movie, and yet when Bond tells M (Judi Dench) that he’s still driven by his duty, you know he’s telling the truth. Many critics trashed this for not having any romance, but Bond and Camille (Olga Kurlyenko) were every bit the “damaged goods” the villainous Dominic Greene (Mathieu Amalric) observed them to be. They were two broken souls who wanted bloody, righteous revenge, and a romance wouldn’t have been believable, particularly given the hole in Bond’s heart left by Vesper. And then there’s the final scene, that says everything I’ve ever needed to know about James Bond and sets 007 free to become even more formidable in the next installment. I can’t wait to see where they take it.

3. Hellboy II: The Golden Army. Bigger, funnier, and infinitely more magical and action-packed than the first one. And if not for Heath Ledger’s Joker, Luke Goss’s dangerous, nuanced Prince Nuada would take the gold as the year’s most formidable villain. Original review here.

2. The X-Files: I Want to Believe. Beautiful, moving, and everything I needed it to be — and more. Original review here.

1. The Dark Knight. I still haven’t written a review of this because I still don’t know how to approach it in a way that can do it justice. It’s one year after the events of Batman Begins. Bruce Wayne’s alter-ego Batman (Christian Bale), Lt. Jim Gordon (Gary Oldman), and District Attorney Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart) have got the scum of Gotham City on the run. Bruce sees in Dent the kind of hero (and a symbol of hope) he thinks he can never be — a man who stands against crime and corruption without having to wear a mask. He also sees his last chance for a normal life with lifelong best friend and lovely legal eagle Rachel Dawes (Maggie Gyllenhaal), whose own relationship with Dent is more than just business. But The Joker (Heath Ledger), an agent of chaos who unleashes his heinous plans with great and terrible glee, has other ideas. And in the end, the only thing Bruce and his friends can give to stop this monster’s march toward anarchy … is everything. My sincerest thanks go out to my friend Kareem (and his family and friends) for hosting me this summer in Los Angeles and sharing this once-in-a-lifetime movie experience.

And now … it’s your turn.

The Whatever: The Worst Movies of 2008

To be followed soon by the 10 best.

What are the 10 worst movies you saw this year?

10. Punisher: War Zone. Somewhere under this mess of neon lights and stereotypes is the best Punisher movie since the 1989 one with Dolph Lundgren. Ray Stevenson is good as the Punisher. Wayne Knight is good as his arms dealer. Stephanie Janusauskas is really good as the little girl of an undercover federal agent the Punisher accidentally kills, and her moments with Stevenson are directed with motherly care by gorgeous kickboxing champion Lexi Alexander. But I was hoping that an action-oriented female director would inject something fresh, gritty, and real into the action scenes, and instead all we get is jerky editing and stupid, over-the-top kills. (Like when you expect the Punisher to jam the cocaine-sniffing henchman’s vial through his eye, but instead he punches his fist all the way through the guy’s face.) There were rumors that Alexander was removed from the film during the editing process, but I think the real culprit is the screenplay. Had this been leaner, meaner, and more consistent, I think it would have been a lot better.

9. Wanted. Slick, stylish, and more entertaining than it really has a right to be, this still feels like it was made by 13-year-old boys for 13-year-old boys. It’s not as childish as most of the graphic novel that inspired it, but it does trade in the graphic novel’s clever superhero satire for … a magical loom of destiny? What? It’s also easy to figure out all of the film’s twists because of hints and red herrings that are presented far too early and obviously.

8. Doomsday. I love movies that are comfortable with what they are and don’t try to be something they’re not. If Doomsday had stuck to its promise of giving us a couple of hours of the ludicrously hot Rhona Mitra pulling a Mad Max on the psychotic inhabitants of a blasted, post-apocalyptic wasteland, I’d have been fine with that. But it takes too many detours and takes itself too seriously. Director Neil Marshall had the perfect formula with Dog Soldiers, but started to show some troubling trends in The Descent. Sometimes less is more, especially when what’s less is still way damn good.

7. The Happening. The Sixth Sense is amazing. Unbreakable is awesome. Signs is one of the most awesomely terrifying films I’ve ever seen, and there are scares, heroics, and morality plays aplenty in The Village. But even though I understood what writer/director M. Night Shyamalan was doing in Lady in the Water, he still lost me with it. With The Happening, he seemingly lost every bit of knowledge he ever had about suspense, pacing, and plot. Embarrassing and appallingly bad. And obvious. Yikes.

6. Cloverfield. I did like the monster. I really, really did. But I found it hard to root for a protagonist whose own brother called him a douchebag … because he was such a douchebag.

5. Hancock. Peter Berg directed my favorite film from last year — The Kingdom. And the first half of Hancock is as fun and as entertaining as anything you’ll see all year. But then the film takes a crazy, nonsensical turn that devolves it into a ham-fisted mess. Will Smith and Charlize Theron get the worst of the collateral damage here despite their best efforts; only Jason Bateman emerges relatively unscathed.

4. Vantage Point. No more gimmicks! Every few minutes this heavy-handed political thriller stops and rewinds itself onscreen in a spectacularly annoying manner, so that we can see everything happen from another character’s point of view. It gets old really quickly, and the big reveal is revealed too early, leaving the final segment gasping for thrills.

3. You Don’t Mess with the Zohan. Please don’t mess with You Don’t Mess with the Zohan. Most of my all-time favorite films are comedies, and Adam Sandler is hilarious, but I don’t think I laughed once during this.

2. Bangkok Dangerous. It should have been called Nicolas Cage Disastrous. Frustrating and unintentionally hilarious, despite the fact that Cage remains incapable of giving a bad performance even in something as god-awful as this.

1. The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor. Awkward, uninspired, and ultimately the perfect example of how to kill a franchise.

(Last year’s losers are here.)