Ghostbusters #1 Movie

Here we are... life in a pandemic. Stores are closed, people work from home, there's no sports, people should wear masks, idiot argue that wearing a mask is oppression, and my usual lifestyle of hanging out at home playing video games is really paying off.

But also, movie theatres are closed and there are no new movie releases. So that's why it's very interesting to see what movies are topping the box office charts (at least in North America) lately. Some places allow theatres to be open, but not many. And with there being no new movies, these theatres are relying on classic movies. So this past weekend (according to this article), for the 11th time, Ghostbusters was the top grossing movie. The first 10 times was back in 1984... a small gap of 36 years. Similarly, the past few weekends, Jurrassic Park was the top movie.

Imagine saying that at the beginning of the year without any context. Strange times these are.

John Carter

I went to see the movie "John Carter" tonight with Patrick. All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed it. It should do better at the box office than it ultimately will, but that's because it's a textbook example of terrible marketing. I barely knew about the movie and it's supposed to be Disney's huge blockbuster franchise to replace "Pirates of the Caribbean". But with a name as generic as "John Carter", it's not surprising that it has eluded public conscienceness. Apparently some brilliant marketing people thought that if they kept the original title "John Carter of Mars" it would scare off the female demographic.

Interestingly enough, it's based off a novel written back in 1917 called "A Princess of Mars". You can tell that elements of it have inspired many science-fiction works since then.

It was a large series of novels, so I would suspect that the idea was that there would definitely be sequels. Hopefully they can make enough money to continue the series... and hopefully without the dedication to the memory of Steve Jobs at the end. What was that about?

Mission Impossible in LieMAX

I went to see the new Mission Impossible movie last night with my friend Josh in IMAX. The movie itself was very good and I enjoyed it thoroughly, as I have pretty much all the Mission Impossible movies (except the awful 2). But I just don't see the big deal with these new IMAX screens they have now at Empire Theatres. It's in a renovated regular theatre, and the screen is pretty much the same size as normal (albeit curved). Now, the picture was great, but it's not like I think that the regular theatre has a bad picture... basically, if the theatre didn't tell me it was IMAX, I would never have known. So, bottom line, no reason to spend more money for this LieMAX experience (I did not come up with that term, I just really liked it).

Fortunately for me, I didn't spend anything, since I was using a free pass I got when a movie I went to in the summer had technical difficulties. So, no harm to me. But if it's my own money, no way will I go to IMAX.

The Muppets

I went to see The Muppets in the theatre this weekend. I usually don't go opening weekends, but I was going to see a show anyway and it was the one I most wanted to see. I had high expectations going into it, and I'm so happy to say that it did not disappoint me in any way. I was so very funny and did the Muppets characters great justice.

While this movie is definitely family friendly (as evidenced by the G rating), adults will get as much (maybe more) enjoyment out of this movie. In fact, when I went on Saturday night, I didn't actually see any kids in the audience. To be fair, it was the late show (9:40pm), so they could have been in the earlier showing.

Do yourself a favour and see this movie. Compared to anything else out there, this one deserves your money. Definately the best movie I've seen in 2011. Although, to be honest, I don't always remember every movie I've seen. I should go back and make a list.

Best Movie of 2010

I finally got to see the movie Scott Pilgrim vs The World last week. There wasn't much hype surrounding it when it was out in theatres, so I didn't know too much about it. But I knew enough that those who had seen it spoke highly of it. I didn't even know that the director was also the director of Sean of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, two of my favourites (I saw that on the box just before putting in the movie). After watching it, I immediately knew it was my favourite movie of the year, and an instant personal top 5 of all time.

I don't really want to give a review of synopsis, but I think that it is very important that you all see this movie, especially if you're close to my age (give or take 10 years). Movies like this aren't made very often. It's not a normal movie and it's something really fantastic.

That's all I'll say on that.

New Star Trek Movie

I went to see the new Star Trek movie this weekend. My verdict is that it is all kinds of awesome! And it looks like it raked in a tonne of money this weekend. Here's hoping that it will bring about a sequel or two with this "rebooted" version.

I so have to see it again.

Van Hel-suck

So, this being my first real week without a tv signal, I decided to dip into some unwatched movies that I've had on my shelf for a while. First up... Van Helsing. It was one of the movies I got for free with my purchase of my HD-DVD player. This was a movie that I kinda wanted to see when it was out in theatres, but never did because, well... I rarely go to the movies by myself (but I love the movies, so does anyone want to go with me?). Anyway, I really wanted to see it mostly because Kate Beckinsale was in it and looking hot in it. But even that couldn't distract me from the suck-fest that I was about to witness.

Anyway, next up is to finish the Band of Brothers DVDs that I borrowed from my parents about 2 years ago.

It's Like Free Money!

As you may recall, I bought an HD-DVD attachment for my XBox 360. My rationale for buying the losing format in the High Definition media war were basically around what I got for my $129... namely 6 free movies and the hopes of a firesale. Well, since HD-DVD was beaten so badly, the price of the attachment drive just dropped to $49! Seeing how I was still well within my 30 day price guarantee windows at Best Buy, I went down there and got my $90 back! And (in theory) I'll still get all those free movies. I'm still waiting for that firesale on actual movies to start though.

Deliberatly Losing

There's nothing like intentionally buying a technology that will not be around for long.

Yesterday I bought myself an HD-DVD player.

Yes, I was fully aware that Blu-Ray is the winner of the format war and that I'm ending up with this generation's version of a Betamax player. But bear with my reasons. Firstly, it's not going to take up extra inputs on my TV. I bought the HD-DVD attachment for my XBox 360, and I'm not going to be disconnecting that any time soon. Secondly, it recently came down in price... $70 down. Throw in the fact that I get 6 free movies with the purchase and an XBox 360 Universal Remote (which I really wanted to make watching movies easier), I think I'm not coming out behind with this. That, and I hope that there'll soon be an HD-DVD disc firesale. I already got my favourite movie from last year, Hot Fuzz, and I'm hoping to pick up the HD-DVD version of Serenity.

Sure, one day I'll get a Blu-Ray player, whether is be a PS3 or a standalone player (or, if I'm lucky, an Blu-Ray attachment for my 360). But for now, this is good. I rented "The Kingdom" in HD-DVD last night. So, I'm already getting use out of it.

I Know Where I've Seen This Before

Still on this Predators to Hamilton thing... It's been suggested that to ensure that attendance stays low so the Predators can get out of their lease with the city of Nashville, they can do a couple things: raise the prices of tickets to an insane amount of money, or put the crappiest team on the ice possible so no one comes to watch.

If the latter turned out to be the case, wouldn't that be quite the credibility problem for the NHL? Thinking about this possibility got me thinking that I've seen this somewhere before... then it hit me. The movie Major League. You remember that one... it has Charlie Sheen as the "Wild Thing". The owner of the Cleveland Indians wanted to move them to Miami (this was before the Florida Marlins) so she got rid of all the good players and got a bunch of nobodies. Life imitates Hollywood, I guess. I'd go see Major League 4: Ice Cold.

Shaun Of The Dead

Who did I lend out my DVD of Shaun of the Dead to? I was looking for it today and I couldn't find it. Then I vaguely recalled lending it out to someone, but I didn't write down who.

Anybody?

(May 3 update) It's been located

Matt's Year End Movie List Is Stupid

Another year has come and gone. This being New Year's Eve, I thought that it would be good to have some sort of year in review post... but what to review? The thing I came up with was movies. So, here is my ranking of this year's movie crop.

In this list are movies that I saw that were released in 2005, not just movies I saw in 2005. So, I went through the list of 2005 movies on boxofficemojo.com and picked out the ones that I had saw. It turns out that I saw 18 movies that were released in 2005. I ranked those movies best to worst, and here they are:

1. Serenity - By far my favourite, and therefore best, movie of 2005. This movie was based off the short lived series "Firefly". I was shocked at myself for never even hearing of the series before hearing of the movie. This movie didn't make that much at the box office, as I think people were scared of the "based off a TV series I never saw" factor. However, you certainly didn't have to have seen the series to enjoy the movie... but it's definately better seeing the series first. I realized that, and ran out to the video store to rent the Firefly DVDs before I saw the movie. I finished them just in time to catch Serenity in it's last week playing at the Princess Twin. I like the series and movie so much that I immediately went out and bought the Firefly DVDs and then the Serenity DVD when it was released last week. Here's to hoping this story isn't done yet, but I'm not holding my breath.

2. The 40-Year Old Virgin - This year's funniest movie starred Steve Carrol, formerly of The Daily Show (funniest show on TV). I saw this movie twice in theatres and then received the DVD this Christmas. Do you know how I know you're gay? Because you haven't seen this movie yet.

3. Batman Begins - So very cool. Much better than the previous Batman movies. I loved how it was like a Batman backgrounder, describing how he became Batman and how he got all his cool stuff.

4. Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy - I found this movie to be purely enjoyable. Of course, I never read the book beforehand, and had no idea what the story was about. I think that fact actually increased my enjoyment, as I had no idea where it was going next. I was totally caught up in the movie from start to finish.

5. The Wedding Crashers - This was on track to be the funniest movie, until the 40-Year Old Virgin showed up. It's pretty crude, but oh so funny.

Now, I'm getting tired of writing blurbs for all the movies, so I'm just going to list the rest of them in order.

6. Star Wars Episode III (Darth Vadar Cometh)
7. War Of The Worlds (Why I continue to really enjoy Tom Cruise movies is beyond me)
8. Charlie And The Chocolate Factory
9. Sin City
10. The Interpreter
11. Hitch
12. The Longest Yard
13. Mr. & Mrs. Smith
14. Constantine
15. Jarhead
16. Guess Who
17. The Dukes Of Hazzard
18. Kicking And Screaming

So, there's my ranking of the 2005 movies. Of course, the list didn't include movies I haven't seen yet but really want to. They include: The History of Violence, Rent, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Madagascar, The Chronicles of Narnia, March of the Penguins, The Brothers Grimm, and The Ringer.

In other news, I'm having a nice week and a half vacation in the tropical paradise of Bright's Grove, but alas, it ends soon. I hope everyone manages to have a good time on the most over-rated night of the year tonight. See you soon, and go see Serenity.