Monday, November 21, 2005

Football and really bad movies (spoilers)


45 - 17!! Take that, Houston Texans! HAH! Yes, I'm gloating over my Chiefs' win over the worst team in the NFL. I know, it's very sad. I'll be crying next weekend when we get whaled on by New England.

Aunt Terri was in town on Friday nite, so I picked her up and brought her over to our new house! She took a ton of pictures for Nana, who was going to surprise me but couldn't make it, and then I burned - I mean, made - dinner and we had a great visit before I took her back to the hotel. It was really wonderful to see her, and I think she got me hooked on a new label of Chardonnay. I'd never tried The Little Penguin before, but it was excellent, and I bought another bottle Saturday afternoon!

Saturday I slept in, hit the exercise bike and lifted and then spent the rest of the afternoon cleaning the house (again) and running errands. Shorty came home early and started cooking and we had some friends over to watch the UFC fights on pay-per-view, followed by poker, which lasted until the wee hours of the morning. I Sally-ed out around 2 am, but I think the boys played for another couple of hours.

Sunday I cleaned up the kitchen and then chilled and watched football for the rest of the day. Megyn's mom dropped her off for a couple of hours, and on his way home from dropping Megyn off, Shorty picked up 'Unleashed' and 'Shaun of the Dead.' Note to self: never let Cute Boy pick out movies alone. Ever. Again. 'Unleashed' was ridiculous. Seriously. If you're going to make a movie about some poor guy who was brainwashed into becoming a killing machine by his mother's murderer, at least go for a little more in the detail department. We saw how horribly Danny was treated, understood that something in his past had to do with pianos, and then went through the whole journey of self-discovery and learning about the world as he was 'humanized' by a sweet family who took him in. Then he gets pulled back into his previous life (where he was treated like a dog) in an attempt to keep the bad guys away from his new family. Then he goes back to his new family and we discover what really happened to his mother. Then the bad guys come for him, he fends them off, and we're lead to believe he lived happily ever after. Okay, so the director tries to tug at our emotions and make a cheesy action movie into something a little more. We learn that his mother was murdered, but we don't learn why or what her connection was to the bad guy - other than that he slept with her. Was she some ho he picked up off the streets? She doesn't seem like the type. Why did he come back and murder her in broad daylight? Seems a little risky for a one-nite stand. What did she know? What was her connection? There were just too many little things left out, and a few more details would have made the movie a lot better.

'Shaun of the Dead' was just ridiculous. I was all set to curl up and watch a brainless spoof on a zombie movie and then the producer had to kill it. The acting was funny, the characters were goofy and laughable, and things were progressing pretty much as expected, and then they threw in a serious part when Shaun's detestable step-dad, Philip, confesses how much he cares about Shaun just as Philip is about to die and come back as a zombie. Very touching, but from that point the movie seemed like it was trying to become a serious zombie movie instead of the joke it started out as. Then Shaun has to kill his mother because she becomes a zombie. Okay, we're not supposed to have serious, sad stuff like this in what was suppposed to be a completely goofy parody of Dawn of the Dead. If I wanted to watch a trajedy-stricken horror movie, I would have rented something else. I was all set for something more like Army of Darkness. 'Shaun of the Dead' started off goofy and funny and just pooped toward the end.

posted by Arctic Skipper @ 12:03 PM