Post-weekend open thread…

Updated on March 21, 2011 By Ken Begg 20 Comments

Didn’t seem to get a lot done this weekend. Attended a friend’s birthday party on Saturday night, started working my way through the first season of Justified–and also just got in at the exact same time, of course, the first seasons of Men of a Certain Age and Walking Dead, ensuring a busy week ahead (these sets go out for a week at my library)–and got about half my T(ween) Fest Diary completed.

How about you guys? What did you see or read or do this weekend?

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  • Ericb

    I watched most of season 4 of Futurama. It’s been a while since I got teary-eyed from watching a video but these episodes managed to pull that trick on me twice. The first time I was like “hey my eyes are watering, what the hell is going on?” and then I realised I was actually crying.

  • Tork_110

    I heard a delightful song about Friday.

    I also read the second Frank Burly novel by John Swartzwelder. “How I Conquered Your Planet.” It’s about a klutzy private detective who gets brainwashed into leading an alien attack.

  • Friday night, my band did a show at The Rockit Room in downtown San Francisco. The drive to and from was horrifying, but the show was fun.

    Saturday night was the 11th Annual Bands4Bands Awards Ceremony. My band had been nominated for 7 awards, and we won one of them: Best Singer. So we’re fairly happy.

    Sunday, I sat on the couch like a lizard on the rocks and watched the Golden State Warriors get splattered all over Creation by the Dallas Mavericks.

  • monoceros4

    Yesterday I watched the dumbest, fakest documentary ever, something called Paul McCartney Really Is Dead. I knew it would be bad, of course, but I didn’t know it’d be so incompetent that the supposed “Last Testiment [sic] of George Harrison” would make basic factual errors about the Beatles’ discography. It might have made a good half-hour or even one-hour fake documentary but dragging out to full length made it dull.

    Futurama–at least the recent movies–does make me want to cry as well, but for a different reason I expect.

  • The Rev.

    Damn, you’re further along on your write-up than I am. I have no time anymore, even on weekends it seems. I’ve made it a goal to have it for you by this weekend but I can’t promise anything. Of course, if you have one, who needs mine?

    I mostly ran errands and helped go though our stuff in storage, trying to lighten the load for a possible move this fall. MAN we have a lot of crap. I watched a pretty uninspiring horror movie called Hallettsville and an only slightly better one called Population 436. The former suffered from terrible pacing, men acting, no gore (a bit of stage blood and that was about it) not enough detail on the plot and subplots, and a predictably dumb ending. The latter had better acting (Fred Durst might want to continue acting and stay away from making music…and I’m not trying to damn him with faint praise, either), pacing, cinematography, and effects, but the story goes exactly where you think it will each step of the way, even into the ending, which ends up being pretty stupid and raising questions that the movie wasn’t interested in answering.

  • Toby Clark

    Watched a few episodes of InuYasha season 1. It has totally lived up to expectations (I’m a Rumiko Takahashi fan).

    Played Strong Bad’s Cool Game For Attractive People: Episode 3: Baddest of the Bands. I missed out on an Awesomeness point somewhere so I’ll have to try it again. But I can’t wait for the next level. It sounds Dangeresque.

    Also watched a few Strong Bad E-Mails. My favourite is still number 80, Stunt Double.

    I’m a third of the way through Batman: Knightfall. The voice acting is hilarious, especially when Azrael’s trainer shows up.

    And I’ve heard Friday as well. All of a sudden those Nikki Webster tracks in my iPod don’t seem so embarassing.

  • P Stroud

    Snow kept me in Sunday so I re-watched “Jackie Brown” which I hadn’t seen for many years. I can’t resist anything with Pam Grier in it. I have a copy of “Coffy” too but didn’t get to it.

    WTF happened to Quentin Tarantino?

  • Reed

    I watched the Nightmare on Elm Street remake. I was surprised. The movie was manifestly unnecessary, but it was not as bad as I expected. It looks slicker than the original, the cast is much less likeable, and it is actually grimmer in tone. I know, the first one was pretty grim, but the remake felt even darker. If you haven’t seen it, it really runs with the idea of who exactly were Freddy’s victims before the Elm Street mob did him in. In the original movie it isn’t really addressed. He’s a “child murderer” and that’s that. However, if the parents of the protagonists were also the parents of the murdered children, why does the new generation not know anything about their departed siblings? I’ve seen the original a bunch of times, and don’t remember any lines of dialog even thrown in that general direction. The remake hinges on Freddy’s victims being the exact same kids, and turns the focus from “murderer”. It makes sense, but it makes a dark story even darker.

    So, totally unecessary, but I wasn’t sad that I’d watch it either.

    Speaking of Pam Grier I watched Friday Foster on Netflix (or Friday something or other, may have the second name wrong). I’d never heard of the movie, but it turned out to be pretty fun, and has an early role for Carl “Action Jackson” Weathers as well as seemingly every African American stock player the US had to offer in the early 70’s. Also, you know, Pam Grier. Pam is absolutely one of the sexiest women of the 70’s to me, so I’m all about that.

    I also watched Black Belt Jones, which I had not seen in 30 years. I love that movie unconditionally. I don’t even think it’s out on DVD. I love Netflix.

  • Rev. – Your piece is DEFINITELY wanted. First, to get a different perspective on the Fest, and second because mine basically covers the entire week I’m down there, while yours will presumably more focus on the Fest itself. So…yes, please.

  • Rock Baker

    I remember thinking the Nightmare remake was pretty good, just pointless. You do raise a good point about the dead and forgotten victims of the mortal Kruger. I suppose we could say it was a conspiracy of ignorance ala Freddy Vs Jason…

    I saw the Punisher: War Zone movie. Not bad, but if Castle has been offing bad guys for so many years (and an entire room is shown to be full of files about his victims), how is it any criminals are left in this universe? Shouldn’t street crime at least be a much rarer thing than we see here?

    I also went back and watched the 1989 The Punisher again. I’m not sure why everyone is so hard on that movie. Dolph is a little wooden through much of it, but he’s pretty good in the climax. Maybe I’m not as demanding because I’m not a die-hard Marvel-ite?

    Other stuff I watched:

    “Ship Ahoy” (1942) Red Skelton and Nazi spies, Tommy Dorsey and the band, some slick chickens, what fun!

    Rock-A-Doodle (1991) Weird, yet charming. Nicely animated Bluth flick with a good voice cast (Phil Harris, yay!) and some nice songs. What spoils it is that its one of those movies that constantly talk over the musical numbers.

    A Goofy Movie (1994?) Fun stuff. Seeing Bigfoot do the hustle always makes me laugh.

  • Mr. Rational

    My biggest problem with the Nightmare remake is the cheap trick it used to be able to shoehorn Freedy into the movie whenever it wanted. “Micro-naps?” I said to the movie. “Oh, puh-leeze. This is just your cheap gimmick to spring Freddy out of nowhere on a protagonist that was awake two seconds before, isn’t it? And you’ll do it a half dozen times, won’t you?”

    “Why, yes,” said the movie, inordinately pleased with itself. “Yes, that’s right.” Then it carried on with its previous plans. I have to give it points for chutzpah, I suppose. Having said that, I thought Jackie Earle Haley was quite good, I thought the slightly darker tone was carried off well, and for a completely pointless remake of an already good movie, I thought it didn’t totally suck.

    This weekend, I drove. And watched “The Young Victoria,” which I highly recommend. And read Nathan Shumate’s novel “The Demon Cross” (look for my review on Amazon within the next couple days). And tehre was some basketball in there too…

  • The Rev.

    Mr. Rational: I gotta also find time to read my copy of that and review it. Thanks for reminding me…of the fact that I have even more to do now…

  • GalaxyJane

    Friday night got together with my Who gang for some “Keys of Marinus”. The fun part was when we realized it was a totally stereotypical D&D style adventure, episodic and with the status quo completely intact at the end, absolutely NOTHING having been accomplished over 6 episodes. Still a fun story though. Then a couple of us drove across town for “Rocky Horror”, this is the first time Richmond has had a regular cast in about 20 year, so I wanted to check it out. Of course the new cast was almost to a woman too young to have seen it the last time it had a run here. Yes, to a woman, the local cast is nearly all female. They do allow props though.

    Since I was up most of Friday night, I spent Saturday glued to my couch watching random YouTube and Hulu crap on my Roku box. Mostly Dr. Who, Red Nose Day sketches, but also the “Lust in Space” doc, that put the show on trial for sexism (asinine). Saw a reasonably cool documentary called “American Scary” covering the history of (mostly) local horror hosts from across the US. They interviewed Count Gore de Vol and Commander USA, so I was happy. Mostly caught up on this season of Glee as well. I did mention I never got off the couch Saturday, right?

    Sunday I watched MST3K Future Wars with the kids and saw VCU whomp Perdue, finally making the Sweet 16.

    That was about it, I was a complete bum. Next weekend I may even leave the house.

  • joliet jake blues

    Hmm, well my TV/movie watching is at an all-time low due to kids, but I did manage to read Moon Over Soho, a kind of police procedural with magic that I really enjoyed.

    The author is the son of a noted Commie (a for real one, card carrying and all that) but the book makes any political points deftly, if at all.

    And I did manage to watch the Queensland Reds carve up in Super Rugby, but thats about it.

  • TongoRad

    Man, I love the hell out of Jackie Brown and have seen it quite a few times. It still seems to get better every time.

    This weekend I finally got around to seeing Inception. Needless to say I loved the hell out of that one, too.

    Also, I’ve been getting my son (13 y.o.) into some old favorite TV shows. We’re just starting on the first season of The X-Files, and it’s been so long for me with that show that it feels like it’s all kinda new to me. I can’t say how far we’re going to take it, but I’m feeling all geared up for the first four or five seasons.

  • EddieF

    Watched “BLACK FRIDAY” over and over again. Can’t get that song outa my head. Its genius and the line “which seat should I take” makes me tear up everytime. I mean how true is that? Isn’t that what we’ve all asked ourselves? WHICH SEAT SHOULD I TAKE? Reminds me of another great line:” The world is a strange place to live in. All those cars. All going someplace. All carrying humans, which are carrying out their lives. ” Heavy stuff.
    I also shot some footage of the SUPERMOON which should have been called SORTAOKMOON. Then I watched the Michael Bay remake of GIANT SPIDER INVASION. Or did I just dream that?
    Well, you asked. I told.

  • Reed

    Speaking of lame documentaries, while I was cruising through the Netflix streaming new releases I came across a Harry Potter documentary. I can’t remember the title of it, but it was something like The Seeker, and it had lessons that we can apply to our lives from the Harry Potter books and the pursuit of modern shamanism. It was narrated by a woman who is probably a very nice person and possibly a legitimate scholar of Irish and Scottish shamanic traditions, but it was really not a good show. If you cut out all of the bits of her chanting in Gaelic and practicing erzats sword katas you could have had a decent 15 minute talk about the major themes of the books to present to your 5th grade class.

    On the other hand, she did say that “Voldemort” means “one who runs from death”, which I did not know. I was edumacated in a public school in Montana; we didn’t exactly have a heavy Latin curriculum. So, I can’t say that I didn’t learn anything from the show.

  • Pip

    Lots and lots of stuff. Things people here would care about: Watched the documentary “The Bridge” (pretty good) and finished the fiction books “The Bridge” and “A Song of Stone” (both pretty bad).

    After a recent argument, I watched “Gummo” intending to just examine the opening scene which features (faked) violence against an animal and ended up watching it all. Meh. (I won the argument.)

    Finally saw The King’s Speech, thus ending it all on an upbeat note.

    Nikolai Andrianov RIP

  • Rock Baker

    I heard about that too! The details at the site claim the film is widescreen too! Since it was a TV movie on our side of the Pacific, it makes me wonder if they got ahold of the master print, or if the US version was intended for theatrical release (which I think I’ve heard was the case) and they’re using that version (from which the TV master would’ve been made). Either way, she’s on the ‘get’ list now!

    So, Ken, about that video list…..

  • Jayson S

    WEll…if memory serves..watched a few episodes of Star Trek Voyager..”Dark Frontier” and “Year of Hell”. Also planted some ivy on my balcony.