Movies, TV, Internet, Video Games, and E-Books
So! The long, stupid summer of stupid summer movies is winding to a end, and we can now more or less officially close the book on our First Annual Summer Movie Fantasy League.
Heading into August, I only had about an $8 million box office lead over Kris, and we each had a movie left: I had Captain America, and she had Cowboys & Aliens. CA set a high mark with a $65 million domestic opening weekend, and C&A just couldn’t match it, coming in with a little over $36 million.
It’s kind of funny that this week’s Breaking Bad episode photos are mostly of people sitting on a couch or a bed or in a chair staring blankly, which is pretty much what everyone is doing on Breaking Bad lately, and pretty much what everyone watching Breaking Bad is doing while they watch everyone on Breaking Bad do that.
This week’s show wasn’t as much of a new episode as a part two of last week’s episode: Skyler continues to try to buy the car wash for money laundering purposes, Jesse continues to bury his thoughts with an unending drug party, Walt scuttles around demonstrating that he’s wrong about everything, Hank mopes in bed, and Marie deals with Hank.
Still, I guess we can go into some detail as the plot inches forward.
Every week I think I’m finally done with Falling Skies, but my DVR keeps stubbornly recording it, and to tell my DVR to not record it means I have to push, like, three buttons, so I keep watching it, hoping it will get a little better. It hasn’t, really.
The recent storyline has a lone army guy showing up and saying, essentially, “I need to take all the children away from the camp because of ALIENS. And you parents can’t come for SOME REASON.” And the parents are all “No way!” And he’s all, “But, ALIENS! And, SOME REASON!” And the parents are all, “Okay, then. Good luck with taking our children away, I guess.”
We went to a 3-D showing of Captain America this weekend, which, as promised, featured Captain America, eventually.
I guess I’m a little tired of superhero origin stories. I kind of wish they’d just start making the sequel right out of the gate and skip the origin movie. (And with The Amazing Spider-Man coming, we’re going to have to sit through his damn origin story, again, even though we did it already about ten years ago. Snore. I say this, of course, as if I have no choice but to watch these films. But I’m a dork, so I kind of don’t.)
(For any newcomers, a quick word: My wife, Kris, writes a column here every Friday under the heading “Lady Business.” — Chris)
I’ve never been cool a day in my life. I’ve been known to have my very occasional moments of coolness, but they end in a heartbeat. One moment, I’m letting a witty rejoinder fly. The next, I’m typing the phrase “witty rejoinder”. It’s tragic, really.
There was a time in college (and slightly after) where I wanted to be cool so badly that I did the unthinkable. I dated a hipster…for seven long years. Imagine living for seven years talking about Einstürzende Neubauten, Beat Poets, Brian Eno, Peter Greenaway and David Lynch. We would watch Robocop or Predator, but only ironically. It was a dark time.
When I look back, I see that Peter Greenaway’s movies are insanely beautiful, and late 1980’s/early 1990’s Industrial music was pretty darned awesome. I just felt like I was living in a box. Don’t put Robocop in a corner!
Breaking Bad! It’s back! It’s good! It’s still slow as hell! (Spoilers follow)
I’m not a huge champion of Breaking Bad, but I do like it for the most part. Bryan Cranston is great, and I love Bob Odenkirk as his sleazy lawyer, and Jonathan Banks is fantastic as Hitman Mike, and, well, that’s mostly it for me. But those three are enough to keep watching, even if I’m not particularly in love with the show as a whole, and think Jesse is one of the most unlikable and unsympathetic and irritating characters ever put on television, and Hank is boring unless he’s out shooting drug dealers, and don’t care much for Skyler or her sister or anyone else we spend time with, really.
Well, well. Just a quick update to our summer movie fantasy league, to capture the record-breaking weekend ‘Arry Potta’ An’ The ‘Eathly ‘Allows just had. Box Office Mojo is reporting that Potter took in $168,550,000 over the weekend, destroying not just my top-grossing pick Transformers: Look Robots Cars Tits Explosions Robots, but officially taking the all-time domestic weekend opening record from The Dark Knight, which made $158 million back in whatever weekend of whatever year that was.
Potter took in $92 million just on Friday, which included $42 million from those midnight showings (I checked our local theater, and they had the movie starting roughly every five minutes). It also featured the biggest Friday-to-Saturday attendance drop-off in history, but even that wasn’t enough to stop it from crushing everything else ever.
Summertime is a real snooze-fest for TV watchers such as myself. Last Summer, we cut cable and brought it back just in time for It’s Always Sunny. We kept it this year because it was such a hassle to connect it again. However, the offerings are pretty slim out there when one absolutely, positively refuses to watch shows of the America’s Got Talent variety.
I’ve come up with some games to make the best of a sad situation and keep myself entertained without having to actually leave the house, live my life or be social.
So, back in early June, Kris and I decided to have a little summer movie fantasy draft, based on what the guys over at Filmdrunk were doing. We each picked five movies we thought would have the highest gross based on their combined opening weekend at the box office (domestic). We also picked three films apiece that we thought would combine for the lowest Rotten Tomato score.
We’re halfway through the summer, and most of the movies on our lists have opened, so let’s look at how our summer league is going.
I watched the ninety minute pilot of SyFy’s new show, Alphas, which I’d heard about roughly thirteen seconds before it aired. The show is about a group of government agents who solve unusual crimes by using what could be defined as superpowers. Nobody can fly or shoot power beams out of their eyes or deflect bullets: these powers are more down to earth. Mostly.