Agents of SHIELD Needs More Work

Agents of SHIELD.  Or rather, Marvel's Agents of SHIELD.  Or, more specifically, Disney's Marvel's Agents of SHIELD.

Whichever way you slice it, I watched the pilot episode of this spinoff from the Marvel Film Universe twice now.  My review: (shrugs shoulders).

It's not horrible, but it was certainly not in the Realm of Greatness that one would expect from a property that has such an amazing pedigree: Buffy/Firefly/Avengers movie god Joss Whedon directed the thing; Joss Whedon co-wrote it; acclaimed comic book writer/veteran tv writer Jeph Loeb is an executive producer; and it's based on classic comic books by Stan Lee, Jack Kirby and Jim Steranko. 

With all that going for it, it was merely okay.  And that is not okay.

In fact, The Hollywood Reporter enlisted Steranko to review the series for them.  He pretty much nailed it on the head.

Some highlights: "No menace, no tension."  Too many storylines, therefore "who in hell am I supposed to root for?"  "(Jeph) Loeb categorized the series as "SHIELD meets The X-Files." Great premise, but barely in evidence."  And "SHIELD needs to be much tougher, much stranger, much edgier to reach its potential!"

When I was watching Agents of SHIELD, I found my thoughts drifting off to the new Sleepy Hollow series.  YIKES! 

The Six Million Dollar Mustache

Re-runs of The Six Million Dollar Man are on right now.  I loved this show as a kid.

One thing: HE'S GOT A MUSTACHE! 

Yup, stone cold Steve Austin has a 'stache.  And it's a creepy looking thing: with Lee Major's patented squint, it makes Steve look smarmy, not suave (Tom Selleck's mighty 'stache has nothing to fear).  See for yourself, thanks to YouTube. 

It's probably bionic too. Or perhaps it's made from Bigfoot clippings.  Only Steve Austin's barber (and/or Dr. Rudy Wells) knows for sure.

Army Intelligence Meets Starfleet Command

"It looks like the bridge of the Starship Enterprise."

How many times have we seen that quote in a news item before?  Well, it's time to roll it out once again, according to this article in the UK's Daily Mail.

It appears that not only is Keith Alexander, the current head of the National Security Agency, a Star Trek fan, but a Star Trek fan who likes to work in an authentic Trek atmosphere (and we're not talking a Class M  planet).

When Alexander headed the US Army's Intelligence and Security Command, he apparently had the unit's workplace modeled after, yes, the "bridge of the Starship Enterprise" complete with a center command chair, a la Kirk and Picard, and a large main monitor screen on the front wall.  

Pretty nifty, but how much of the taxpayer's dime was siphoned for this fantasy workplace.  And, with all that chrome, it also could double as a Ken Adam-designed James Bond villain's lair.

Errand Of BBQ

If you're hungry and out and around Organia on Labor Day, make sure you stop at Ayelborne's for the best in out of this world BBQ.  Tell 'em Bad News From Outer Space sent ya.

Get 50% of any "Piece Threety (3-piece) Meal" when you mention this blog.

Star Trek is Copyright 2013 and a Registered Trademark of CBS Studios, Inc. No infringement of those rights is implied with this parody.  Screencaps from Trekcore.com. 

This Is How Planet Of The Apes Got Started

Here are three alarms you NEVER want to see go off simultaneously. (However, they do make for the most interesting of days.)

Star Trek is Copyright 2013 and a Registered Trademark of CBS Studios, Inc. No infringement of those rights is implied with this parody.  Screencaps from Trekcore.com

Shot Glasses At 30 Paces

Wanted a shot of Jack Daniels. 

Didn't have any in the station. 

Posted this instead (from my review of "Is There In Truth No Beauty?"

Sláinte!

STAR TREK is a Registered Trademark and Copyright 2013 by CBS Studios, Inc. No infringement of those rights is intended with this parody.  Screencaps from TREKCORE.COM

Give Ben Affleck A Bat-Chance Internet

I wonder if the Internet has recovered yet from the announcement that Ben Affleck will be playing Batman in the sequel to Man of Steel....

...Nope, the Internet is still as stupid as ever.

Affleck has clearly matured as an actor, and as a filmmaker, since his earlier roles in Daredevil and Armageddon, for example.  He's written and directed acclaimed and award-winning movies, even nabbing the Best Picture Oscar for Argo.

I think Affleck will do fine as Bruce Wayne/Batman, but a huge and very important part of his performance will be the story he has to work with that David S. Goyer and director Zack Snyder concoct (I had problems with Goyer's MoS) and Synder's direction. 

(link to io9.com article)

Live Long and Bazinga

The Trek Collective has a nice piece up about upcoming Star Trek-related figures publicized at last month's San Diego Comic Con.  What caught my eye was this terrific and fun Mego action figure mash up of Star Trek with the cast of The Big Bang Theory.

Now you can have Leonard, Sheldon, Howard and Raj go on adventures with your Kirk, Spock, McCoy and Gorn Mego figures.  See how long it takes before Spock neckpinches Sheldon unconscious.

Too bad they can't include a special Penny figure, in the likeness of the super-cute Kaley Cuoco, in a red Yeoman Rand uniform (with or without beehive hairdo).

Live Long and Bazinga.

pic from TheTrekCollective.com

Phaser Phrasing!

We love all things Star Trek here, so when some mad geniuses combined the animation from the 1970s' Star Trek: The Animated Series with audio from current FX channel cartoon-for-grown ups series Archer, the result is, STARCHER TREK!

It's goofy, it's silly, but most importantly, it's funny.  And it was posted by the good folks of IO9.

(Also, love the shou touts at the end to Red Letter Media's Mr. Plinkett.  I too wonder sometimes, "What's with all the Ricks," but I am still waiting for Rick Berman's tell all book about his time at the helm of the Star Trek franchise.)

SHARKNADO 1, WORLD 0

We now live in a world where SHARKNADO was not only a goofy idea for a cheesy scifi movie, but a world in which SHARKNADO was actually made and broadcast on the airwaves.

It's your world, SHARKNADO, we're all just living swimming in it.

Bionic Guffaws

I just caught a couple of episodes of the late 1970s sci-fi/action series The Bionic Woman with the lovely Lindsay Wagner in the role of Jaime Sommers.  It airs in the L.A. area on COZI, an over the air station.

Yikes, but I do not remember the stories being so bad.  One was a yuck fest where Jaime teamed with a retired OSI agent with a penchant for wigs and European accents to take down a former Cold War adversary of said agent.  Even the music was so in your face hokey jokey, as if casting a huge spotlight on the goofy proceedings.  But the other episode is the one that took the cake -- hell, it made off with the entire bakery. It involved an evil hair stylist and his mind-control hairdryer!  (Read that sentence again, I dare you.)  Did they just dust off old rejected Get Smart scripts for this show?

Oh, well, Lindsay Wagner was always pretty in each episode, and a much better actress than the goofy scripts allowed.

Treknobabble Meets Takeout

I was just at the mighty Trekcore.com perusing some pics from Star Trek Into Darkness, specifically photos of the new warp core.

The first thing that immediately sprang to my mind was, "Hoisin Sauce Rotator."  I have no idea what this wacky piece of "treknobabble" means, but it makes about as much sense as any of the tech spewed on the various shows.

Now I'm seriously hungry for Chinese food.

Ray Harryhausen, 1920-2013

Ray Harryhausen, the visual effects maestro, passed away today at the age of 92. 

Across five decades Mr. Harryhausen worked alone to create true movie magic; today it takes legions of technicians, artists, and craftsmen to do what he did.

SciFi and fantasy movie fans will recall Mr. Harryhausen's work in films such as, Mighty Joe Young (1949), Earth vs. The Flying Saucers (1956), The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958), the incomparable Jason and the Argonauts (1963), Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger (1977), and his final film, Clash of the Titans (1981).  He is known primarily for his mastery of stop motion animation, but he was often involved in story creation, drawing and designing the various creatures encountered in his movies, and handling many other areas of the special visual effects for his movies.

Mr. Harryhausen's films took us on adventures to all corners of the globe and across the ages.  After watching Jason and the Argonauts or his Sinbad movies, who doesn't want to don a loincloth and head out across the sea in search of the unknown?

We will miss you Ray, but thank you for all the incredible films and thrilling adventures you gave us. 

MANBORG. SAY IT LOUD, SAY IT PROUD. MANBORG!

If you ever wondered what would happen if a bunch of goofballs working at a cable access station, with full run of a chroma key backdrop, spliced their shenanigans into someone's Adobe AfterEffects demo reel I imagine that you'd get something along the lines of MANBORG.

You heard me: MANBORG.  This MANBORG trailer looks incredibly stupid, but Variety and other blogs say it's good dumb - probably extremely dumb - fun.

Now I know for a fact that the mighty MANDROID from The Eliminators would kick MANBORG'S inferior metal ass like an M-1 tank rolling over a Yugo. 

Greatest Hits Collection

Screencap hijinks from previous reviews of Star Trek: The Original Series (TOS).

STAR TREK is a Registered Trademark and Copyright 2013 by CBS Studios, Inc. No infringement of those rights is intended with this parody.  Screencaps from TREKCORE.COM.Why is there not a Star Trek-themed flavor of Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream, I mean, rilly?  Something like Orion Slave Girl Green Mint.

Trailer of Steel

The Playlist at IndieWire.com has the latest trailer for Man of Steel, the highly anticipated new Superman movie.

I think this looks really good, giving us more of a glimpse of the story of Clark Kent finding his place in our world.  I like Kevin Costner's scenes so far in his role as Jonathan Kent, Clark's human father.  A minor quibble with the trailer is the action scenes looked like they were cut together in a blender.  I hope the sequences in the actual film are much easier on the eyes, more the Steven Spielberg/James Cameron school of action set piece choreography and editing that you can follow, rather than the Michael Bay approach of totally confusing and disorienting action scenes.

Superman should be an inspirational character; he does not solve all our problems but leads by example.  We need him now more than ever.

Apes, Overlords, Ringworlds and The Great Gulf Between The Haves And Have Nots

AintItCool has quite a few interesting news items posted.

The latest big screen version of Tarzan, with Harry Potter film veteran David Yates slated as director, has been put "on hold."  Sad news indeed, as just last year marked the 100th anniversary of the first publication of the seminal pulp story "Tarzan of the Apes."  I wonder if they will ever be able to put on screen images that capture the wonder and awe of some of those great illustrated covers to the many Tarzan novels and comics, featuring the work of such luminaries as, for example, Neal Adams and Joe Jusko. 

Director Neil Blomkamp's upcoming Elysium finally gets a trailer.  Just as with his District 9, this new film looks to be visually amazing, with a timely and thought-provoking story.  Maybe this movie can get the utterly stupid Meet Dave out of my brain.

And SyFy is stepping up the SciFi with two planned mini-series of classic science fiction tales from two of the greats: Ringworld by Larry Niven and Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke.  Holy cow!  This is truly amazing as SyFy has always seemed to shun classic scifi material, especially with their longstanding deal with The Asylum to air that "mockbuster" studio's crapload of ripoffs of big budget studio summer fare such as Transmorphers (to ape Transformers), Alien Origin (Prometheus) and American Warship (Battleship). 

True, SyFy did have the foresight to give the greenlight to Ronald D. Moore's reworked Battlestar Galactica, for which we will be eternally grateful, and therefore, give SyFy some serious wiggle room.  But I have never liked SyFy's fantasy miniseries, such as Tin Man.  They felt to me as simply "TV fare" and not very good TV fare at that, never breaking out of that mold with truly interesting characters, or amazing turns by actors, or with compelling stories.

No CGI Here

Computer Generated Images or CGI are used in many movies today, not just the big budgeted summer blockbusters.

But nothing can take a viewer out of movie as quickly as bad CGI effects.  Some directors, like Christopher Nolan, like to film as much practically and only use CGI to round out a sequence, e.g. Inception's train barreling through a downtown Los Angeles street was accomplished with a real big rig truck with a train facade built around it; CGI was used for the trains wheels and the asphalt churned up by them.

Cracked.com has a fun article about "7 Amazing Movie Special Effects You Won't Believe Aren't CGI" with a look at some way cool non-CGI effects sequences from, among others, The Dark Knight Rises, Skyfall and the classic Tron.

What A Logical Savings

This old Atlantic Bank commercial from the late 1970s featuring none other than Leonard Nimoy is so earnest, that is looks like something that would have appeared in the movie Galaxy Quest.

By Grabthar's Hammer - and Vulcan's moonless sky - what a savings!

Now, WHO's Overacting?

William Shatner shows why he's a truly unstoppable force in this fun ad for the new Star Trek Video Game.

An old friend of this blog helps Mr. Shatner with the game.  Don't worry, this commercial is "mer-ci-ful...and quick."

From the folks at AintItCool.com.

Popcorn Maker Expands

Look like we've scooped the Huffington Post again with this breaking news item.

STAR TREK is a Registered Trademark and Copyright 2013 by CBS Studios, Inc. No infringement of those rights is intended with this parody.  Screencaps from TREKCORE.COM. The lovely Droxine is Copyright by her father, Plasus the High Advisor of Ardana's Ruling Council, who wants you and every young space yahoo to know that he is as brave with mortay as you are with a phaser.  So there.

Avengers Assemble For The Harlem Shake!

The latest Internet meme of the "Harlem Shake" has been filling up YouTube and the interwebs with its many zany dance (if you can call it that) interpretations.

I dig this one by YouTuber SpastikChuwawa with tiny Lego Avengers:

That Band From Trek

We love Star Trek.  We love music.

If we were to front a kick-ass band what kind of Star Trek-inspired name could we use?  Here are some ideas:

The Band On The Edge Of Forever (classic rock n roll)

Merciful And Quick (lounge lizard music)

Schmitter and the Incinerators (punk)

The Landing Party (country/western)

Assault Vampires (rap rock)

Vina's Keepers (country)

Are You Archons? (New Wave)

The Van Gelders (folk)

Fizzbin On Tuesday (pop)

King Kodos (classic heavy metal)

Arne Darvin (like Nine Inch Nails weird younger brother)

Lazarus A (pop; we'd tour overseas as Lazarus B)

Khan Noonien Sings (a Neil Sedaka cover band)

Yang and The Comms (NPR-approved songs only)

The Harry Mudd Experience (like ELO, but not)

Horta & The Devils (southern rock)

Feeders of Vaal (3 chords is all)

Thrill Thralls (industrial rock)

Nomad and The Sterilizers (alt rock)

The Quatloos (a Bugaloos cover band)

M'Benga M'Benga (world music)

The M5s (electronic, like Daft Punk)

The Multitronic Units (an acoustic-only folk group, despite the name)

Janice Lester and The Intruders (like the Go Go's, but very unstable)

The Baand of Troyius (Euro-trash)

Doc Severin and the Herberts (plays whatever reaches the audience)

and our favorite,

Bela Oxmyx and The Mobsters (world's greatest bar band)

The Powers Of Number Four or I Am Matthew Star

So I'm sitting there watching the film I Am Number Four, a 2011 release about an alien kid with special powers and his guardian hiding out on earth from the evil forces from their home planet who are determined to wipe them out...hey, OMG, this is just a rehash of The Powers Of Matthew Star!

Check it, Matthew Star was a 1982 scif TV show about an alien kid with special powers and his guardian...heck, since this was the 80s, the opening credits of every episode TOLD THE WHOLE STORY.  Here they are, courtesy of Wikipedia:

"Quadris, twelve light years across the galaxy from Earth. It was home for us until an intergalactic armada conquered it. I fought by the royal family's side, but in vain. Even their remarkable powers weren't enough. The crown prince and I escaped to the nearest planet on which we could survive and further his powers in order to some day return to free his people.

"Here on Earth, the prince is known as Matthew Star. He's a typical American teenager. He has friends; people who love him. And me, his guardian. I'm the only one who knows how special he is. Life for us is a series of joys and dangers. Enemy assassins constantly come to destroy us. Alone, we must survive."

That's pretty much the plot of Number Four, minus the planet Quadris (giggle), and the fact that in this story there is more than one kid with the "power cosmic," as Stan Lee would put it.

Number Four annoyed me almost immediately in that the high school kids looked like they were in their 20s, which they mostly were (how very The CW of them).  Its funny how Hollywood is never able to find 16 or 17 year old actors to play 16 or 17 year old characters; it's always people in their mid-20s.

This movie just about put me to sleep right away.  Alex Pettyfer as the put upon Numero Quatro hardly registered as a screen presence (his pecs notwithstanding), Justified's Timothy Olyphant was miscast as Henri the guardian, aka the Louis Gossett Jr role on Matthew Star.  Much better was Teresa Palmer as Number Six who appears in the latter part of the film.  She's pretty, looks like she could be in high school, and had a fun kick-butt character, kind of like a well-adjusted Hit Girl.

The alien Mogadishu or Mogadorians or whatever looked stupid, with their tattooed bald heads, black eyes,  goofy teeth and Matrix trenchcoats - they resemble a Filmation cartoon's animated villain brought to live action life.

I Am Number Four is based on a Young Adult series of novels, but the juvenile tone of the move, the negative response from the critics and shallow box office would indicate that this is not the first film of the hoped-for franchise.

Maybe they could just reboot The Powers of Matthew Star for the big screen.  Or not.

Stuart Freeborn - Makeup Legend Passes

Ain't It Cool News is reporting that legendary genre make up master Stuart Freeborn has passed away.  He was 98 years old.

Mr. Freeborn worked on Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove and 2001: A Space Odyssey (his Dawn of Man hominid costumes still hold up today), Richard Donner's Superman: The Movie and, perhaps most notably, on George Lucas' original Star Wars Trilogy.

For Star Wars, Mr. Freeborn created the Chewbacca costume and crafted the Yoda puppet performed by Frank Oz which was first seen in The Empire Strikes Back.  When you look at a photo of Mr. Freeborn and Yoda, you can see how he put a good deal of himself into the diminutive Jedi Master's final form (and not just the visage of initial inspiration Albert Einstein).

Stuart Freeborn was a very quiet, gentle person, but one whose incredible imagination and skill helped to electrify our movie-going experiences.

Our condolences to Mr. Freeborn's family and friends.

Dark Shadows: A Pale Shadow Of Its TV Incarnation

Dark Shadows (2012)

Director Tim Burton and producer/star Johnny Depp decided to take on Dan Curtis' cult Gothic TV soap opera Dark Shadows and pretty much bore us to death.

Writer Seth Graeme-Smith's (famous for the novel Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter) story has absolutely nothing original, or even interesting, to say. He also had way too many characters on his cinematic plate and did not write well for most of them.

In a familiar tale involving bloodsuckers, Depp's 18th vampire Barnabas Collins is let loose upon the 20th century (1972, to be exact) and he makes undead goo goo eyes at the Collins family's new governess, Victoria (Bella Heathcote), who just so happens to be the spitting image of Josette (also Heathcote) the woman he once loved back in the day.  This is supposed to be going on while Barnabas helps the remaining Collins family descendents, led by matriarch Elizabeth (Michelle Pfeiffer), reclaim the Collins' family standing in their Maine fishing community.

I say "supposed to" because Graeme-Smith appears to have forgotten to write scenes showing Barnabas and Vicky together and falling in love again (unless Burton and his editors cut them all out).  You know, showing them doing something; spending time together and getting to know each other, rekindling the magic, or making new magic (the montage of rebuilding the Collins fishing biz does not count).  Since he doesn't, when it comes to that point in the movie where Barnabas declares his love for Victoria, we, the audience, cry out "Bullshit!"  Hey, if the movie-makers don't care, why the eff should we?  Also, for being a fish out of water tale, there aren't any quotable lines or truly memorable situations involving Barnabas as the 18th century gentleman in the groovy early 70s (Austin Powers had better and funnier scenes contrasting generation gaps).  There were, perhaps, opportunities, but nothing that sticks with you (Barnabas' fascination with teenager Carolyn's lava lamp just seemed like Depp acting silly, as if he was improvising that day).

This is a very minor effort from Burton.  Visually, it looks like someone trying to copy the style of a Tim Burton film, but it doesn't fully commit to the whimsy of an Edward Scissorhands or the Gothic creepiness of his Sleepy Hollow (featuring Johnny Depp without garish makeup!).   It feels a bit like Burton's Planet of the Apes, a workman-like effort where he was a director for hire there.  The tone was all over the place: dead serious at the beginning, morphing to Depp's silly/goofy manner and dialogue in the modern day scenes.  Also there was a suggested oral sex scene with Dr. Hoffman (Helena Bonham Carter, in the Helena Bonham Carter role in a Tim Burton movie) and Barnabas that was totally out of place in this PG-13 movie.

The cast, which includes Chloe Moretz as trippy daughter Carolyn and Jackie Earle Haley as Willie the groundskeeper, is mostly fine, with Eva Green being the standout as forever-beautiful witch Angelique (its really her movie).  I think Depp's Barnabas would have been better played without the goofy pancake makeup and raccoon eyes (the heavy makeup, emphasizing the curves in Depp's face, makes him look like a little boy).  After all, original Barnabas Jonathan Frid did an outstanding job, and even became a sex symbol of sorts, without having to go to such lengths.  Someone needs to tell Depp that he doesn't always need to hide behind elaborate makeup and funny costumes when he plays in fantasy films (look at Alec Guinness in Star Wars).  Frid's plastered-to-his-forehead hair was all Depp needed.  The rest of the character should have been handled with, I dunno, ACTING.

Super(man) Photo

I found this over at MTV Geek (from Empire Online).  Henry Cavill certainly looks like he's made of steel.  I just wish they'd have kept the red underwear...and the "S" curl.

Man of Steel. In theaters June 14, 2013.  Please, in the name of Siegel and Shuster, please be an amazing movie.  We sure could use one.

Music For A Sci-Fi Friday

You like your sci-fi movies/TV shows.

You like your music videos.

Squish them together and you get stuff like Tom Petty's "You Got Lucky," featuring the great Sandman ground car from the short-lived Logan's Run TV show, dusty desert locations and stock footage from Galactica: 1980 (which was just footage from the disaster flick Earthquake combined with Cylon Raider spaceship blasting clips from Battlestar Galactica).

You also get Rick Springfield's  sci-fi headscratcher, "Bop Til You Drop."  Whose idea was it to pair the clean cut Springfield and his upbeat pop tune with a grungy, dystopic future setting, replete with decent miniature models (inspired by the movie Dune?), Metropolis-like slave workers, mutant makeup jobs and Rick's future-mullet?

I Love It When A Movie Comes Together

The A-Team (2010)

After years of development hell, the A-Team, the famed - some would say infamous - 1980's action/adventure/comedy TV series finally came to the big screen.  With it came all the gunfights, explosions, action set pieces and comedy bits for which the series was known (multiplied, like, 100 fold).  And that's more than okay by me.

If you watched pretty much any episode of the A-Team's five season TV run, you know the drill: a group of special forces soldiers are framed for a crime they did not commit, they escape and seek to clear their names.  And those names are legendary in the annals of TV action shows: Colonel "Hannibal" Smith, the A-Team's plan-loving leader (now assayed by Liam Neeson); super suave "Faceman" Peck (Bradley Cooper); the muscle and the mechanic B.A. Baracus (Quinton "Rampage" Jackson); and the always hospitalized but ready to slip away in moment's notice uber pilot H.M. Murdock (Sharlto Copley).

Just as in the TV show created by action/comedy vet Stephen J. Cannell and Frank Lupo, when the bullets fly and the explosives, well, explode, we don't see blood and body parts getting splattered all over the place; this isn't Black Hawk Down or Saving Private Ryan, and it never tries to be.  Director Joe Carnahan knows the movie, like its TV progenitor, is a live action cartoon.  That's not a condemnation, just a simple matter of fact; Carnahan never tries to turn it into Narc 2: The Fugitive Years.  

The A-Team is fondly remembered for its characters, and the film version doesn't simply offer us carbon copies but updated versions with the same traits.  Neeson is commanding as always, but can still have a twinkle in his eye just as OG Hannibal George Peppard did.  Cooper does suave and smooth like he was born to it.  Rampage Jackson was a big surprise for me.  No one can replace Mr. T. who came out of nowhere to mesmerize 80s audiences on the big screen in Rocky III as the unforgettable Clubber Lang, and then on the small screen as the loveable tough guy with the "Bad Attitude."  Jackson was  suitably imposing, but also has a knack for comedy.  I'd love to see Jackson and Dwanye (formerly The Rock) Johnson in a movie together.  The biggest surprise was District 9 star Sharlto Copley as the chatterbox Murdock.  I loved that Copley did a huge variety of accents and sort of throw away bits throughout the film.  Not all of it stuck (the whole "Attention passengers" bit during some aerial distress has kind of been done to death), but most of it did.  I loved a recurring joke about Murdock calming down BA by promising to make his favorite dish of coconut curry tapenade.  BA then inquires, "With toast points?"  Like you would serve the dish with anything else?

The main antagonist, a shady CIA dude played by Patrick Wilson, was also a lot of fun.  He was someone so cocksure of himself and his power that everything was just a silly game to him.  He wasn't aloof about it, like the more boring James Bond villains can be, but had a more "regular guy" attitude about himself (his Call of Duty reference was funny and revealing about the character too).  The real disappointment is Jessica Biel as a dogged Army investigator.  Pretty much any young actress could have played her part.  She brought absolutely nothing to the screen.  (This had always been a problem with the A-Team TV show - women were always victims, or things to be seduced by Face.)  I liked Biel in The Illusionist, but have never liked her in any other movie I've seen.  She's one of those actresses who is famous for being famous (and who she was dating), and not really for any standout acting performance.

The whole thing culminates in a huge fireball of action and explosions amid hundreds of shipping containers at the Los Angeles Port.  The A-Team is big, loud, often funny and a pretty good popcorn and big-ass soda movie.  It won't cure any diseases, or win any awards, but it sure made me forget about my head cold for two hours.  And that's a small miracle in and of itself.

Bad Movies Will Always Be Bad Movies

So I went next door to the library today as my neighborhood takeout joint prepared the large wonton soup that I ordered (best thing for the frakking cold I picked up on New Years Eve) and I nearly picked up the movie Green Lantern.

But then I came to my senses, because, you know, it was GREEN LANTERN.

Nothing about that movie will have improved since I last watched it, not the dull generic script, not the uninspired action and visual effects scenes, not the lousy cast.  Nuthin'.

Sometimes a head cold will make you do stoopid things.  Thank goodness that Emerald Turd was avoided tonight.