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If I had a paid account and the power to make polls, maybe I'd make one on what everyone's favorite flavor of Twin Pop is. Personally, I prefer the grape. When I was a kid, though, my mom liked the grape and cherry but not the orange, so she'd often give me the orange ones. The orange might be my least favorite, but perhaps that's due to overexposure in my youth. Sort of like how I no longer like to eat Lebanon bologna or chicken legs.

bethje and I watched one movie in each of the past two nights. On Friday, it was Re-Animator, which was pretty good. We'd seen Jeffrey Combs, who played Herbert West in the film, speak at Monster-Mania, and he came across at pretty arrogant. More to the point, though, he advised people to watch the unrated version of the movie, rather than the R-rated one. So we were kind of disappointed when the Netflix sleeve identified the disc we got as being rated R. When we actually watched the movie, though, it didn't include the extra scenes that are supposed to be in the R-rated version, though, so maybe the sleeve rating was a mistake. I don't know. Is adding deleted scenes back in for edited-for-content versions something that's done anymore? I remember my dad had the network TV versions of Blazing Saddles and The Naked Gun, both of which had stuff that wasn't in the regular versions. With Re-Animator, people involved in making the film said the deleted scenes were deleted for a reason, and that the movie is better without them. I haven't seen these scenes, but from what I've heard of them, this is probably true.

Last night's movie was Hostel, which sucked. Nothing happened for the longest time, and when something finally DID, there was no real suspense or anything. If I may digress for a minute, I was reading the discussion of The Land of Oz, and I noticed a comment from David Hulan (who, incidentally, has been pretty much absent from online Oz discussion as of late; I wonder what happened to him) saying that Land was "pretty much the classic 'idiot plot', meaning that if the lead characters would stop acting like
idiots for five minutes, the story would end right there." I think that description is even more appropriate for Hostel. But one particular messed-up thing about Hostel that even bad movies usually get pretty much right was the soundtrack. The music would occasionally swell in a way that usually indicates something important is being revealed, and then it would show...nothing! At least twice, it just panned around a normal-looking scene after this. And it's not like this scenery would eventually become important. It's like the music was cued up incorrectly or something.

( Survey )

Why don't we all look at some etchings?

One week after a Family Guy episode where the Army tries to recruit Chris, but Stewie and Brian ends up joining instead, we get a Simpsons episode where the Army tries to recruit Bart, but Homer ends up joining instead. No, I'm not accusing either show of ripping off the other, but I do have to wonder why Fox didn't want to leave a longer gap between the two. I actually thought the Simpsons episode was funnier, as far as the recruitment and basic training jokes went. The episode kind of fizzled out towards the end, though. That chase scene with the miniature helicopter went on WAY too long.

CONTINUITY NERD MOMENT: I notice that this episode ignored Homer's having an old army drill sergeant in "Two Dozen and One Greyhounds." Probably a good move, since that joke contradicted Homer's comment in "Separate Vocations" that the Army thought he was too big. The writers said in the commentary for "Greyhounds" that the dinner party scene was supposed to be a parody of lame sitcom jokes, so I suppose you could argue that it doesn't really have to be consistent with anything else.

And, um, the best scene that they could pick to show us in the big Simpsons movie trailer premiere involved Homer getting hurt? They honestly couldn't have done better than that? I guess when you have a built-in audience of nerdy Simpsons fans, you don't have to come up with a decent trailer. Hey, I'm sure I'll be watching it in the theater. Still, I have to say that I'm a LOT more excited about the upcoming direct-to-video Futurama movies.

As for Family Guy, I found the plot about Brian dating a stupid girl to be really funny, and the one with Peter getting Lois to help him out at the office considerably less so. I did like the Buzz Killington bit a lot, though.

( Vocabulary Quiz Result )

Okay, I have to get up early tomorrow, so I'd better get to bed.