Intellectual Poison Movie Review: X2

With great anticipation I went to see X2 last night with Hardy (as both our girls were, lets say, less than enthralled with the idea of going to see it). The movie was both far better than I thought and quite a bit less deep than it could have or should have been.

Visually it was superb, the special effects were nothing short of awesome. Although I am quite aware that they will almost certainly be overshadowed by Matrix: Reloaded when that opens tomorrow. But just the opening scene is truly astonishing to watch. And made me rethink Nightcrawler's rank in the pantheon of mutants (yeah, yeah, my geek stripes are showing, get over it, I've been an X-Men fan since I was old enough to read). And, as always will have to happen in a commercial venture that must come in under a certain time limit, the story was sort of rushed through. The hour and a half or two that the movie lasted felt like a half hour or maybe forty five minutes. Which is both good and bad, good because I was fully engaged in the movie and bad because, when its over, I felt like it was just getting started.

But my most over riding thought is that this second installment in the X-Men movie series was more of an extended trailer than a full movie on its own two feet. Its a place setter for the next one. Yes, there was a plot, yes there was an evil bastard, yes there were great mutant battles, yes we did get to see Rebecca Romijn-Stamos' incredibly fine body from many angles, all of them lovely and compelling (truly, John Stamos has sold his soul to the devil to have landed such an amazingly beautiful woman even if she can't shape shift into any woman he wants).

There's the one glimpse (only one tiny moment!) of Colossus' mutant ability to transform his body into living metal. A short scene of Kitty Pride running through walls to escape the soldiers. Banshee (though in this case, a young girl and not an Irish spy) opens up a can of scream-ass on everyone. Peeks at what's to come in the next installments. But it definitely had enough to keep me entertained and already looking very much forward to the next movie.

By the way, Hugh Jackman makes an excellent Wolverine. Now if only we can keep him from doing the sappy shit movies in between these. But yeah, it was a good flick and well worth the price of admission. My sole complaint about the theater is that, they've got this kicking THX uber system that can rattle fillings out of mouths if they let it run hot enough. But I get better sound, better surround and better base effect from my home system. I was disappointed in the level they had the movie at, action movies like this need to be rock concert loud so the "snick" of Wolverine's claws extending is clear, scary and unforgettable.

Another Review, this time from Morford
And even though it comes from my favorite columnist (thanks leblanc for turning me onto him!), he is precisely hitting on every one of my thoughts regarding the most oxymoronically named sitcom in existence, "Everybody Loves Raymond". My extra comments are in italics.

CBS loves "Everybody Loves Raymond" more than ever, giving star Ray Romano a raise to about $1.8 million an episode next season, oh my freaking god why not just reach right in and wrap your gnarled wart-crusted little demon fingers around the karma and rip out the very soul of all that is fair and good and decent, and in its place drive a rusty black spike of absurdity and insult and moronic dumbed-down crap that makes you want to run off to the woods with a lover and a couple big dogs and a case of very old whiskey and the collected works of Emily Dickinson and John Ashbery and AC/DC and never come back until dildos outnumber guns and inane sitcoms about sports and mothers-in-law and bad sex are proven to cause screaming brain tumors

Or better yet, let's just contaminate the national water supply with a Prozac cocktail that makes this terribly unfunny crap bearable, as it is now, I would far prefer watching the open heart surgery channel than watch even five seconds of Ray Romano..

The deal makes Romano the highest-paid actor in TV, slam slam bang bang goes the giant mallet of inanity, pounding even lower the national level of intelligence and humor and general overall mental health, holy Christ but I need a drink

Yeah, he became the highest paid actor? Because he delivers comedy genius? Hell no, because he's safe, because he's not going to stir up controversy by having his gay lover come on the show, by not really being funny at all but just self deprecating in that way that makes me want to smack him in the face every time I think about him, his fake goonie freak brother on the show with a face nearly a mile long, why in the hell is that ugly pug on TV? Ray Romano was never funny, he's like cottage cheese, neither here nor there, a supplement to something else but boring and, well, ugly on its own.

The 45-year-old comedian had been earning about $800,000 per episode for the past two years, poor thing

$800K per episode? for churning out the pathetic shit that these shows make? next thing you know, what's her name, Jenna "Perpetually Surprised" Elfman will top a mil per episode and they'll give her a Nobel Peace Prize.

Romano's new salary surpasses that of Kelsey Grammer, who has been making $1.6 million per episode of "Frasier", which of course also makes you say, what? What the hell? Are these people goddamn insane?

Insane, stupid, blind, severely mentally handicapped, fat, ugly, scared of change, comforted by predictable humor that offends no one because it attacks no one and isn't really humor, its like humor lite, looks like its supposed to be funny but has had every last smidgen of humor sucked out of it. Yes, they are fucking insane for giving an idiot like Ray Romano $1.6 million per episode but then, that means that people are watching the awful garbage and I can only say, SHAME ON YOU FOR HELPING TO PERPETUATE SUCH OBVIOUSLY BAD AND SOUL DRAINING ENTERTAINMENT.

And Lastly, for now
Finally got around to getting some work on the New Words page, things are now alphabetized and looking decent (and I got rid of all that shitty MS Word code that got added when I did some editting in Word last time around, now to do that on the rest of the site and get rid all every MS stink here).
New words are: Craptacular - sarcastic joy usually, refers to poo and spectacular (hey look, I can draw a straight line too!), can refer to a series of events as well; Outpout - when you're trying to write but the only things that you can come up with are so bad that they make you want to cry; and Retardisize - when a computer application goes into convulsions while trying to execute some sort of wacky user command or an internal software error. Mostly likely confined to Microsoft's "fine" (meaning they should be fined for selling it) software but it also happens with other stuff. Like when iTunes tries to play an .mov file or mpeg. Just doesn't work and starts chunking electro-blasts of interference type sounds while struggling to cope with the bad data its chewing on.

And I added a Dictionary search box in the nav bar. You can easily look up words or get right out to a web search. Kind of cool how well it blends in with the rest of the stuff although I wish I could resize the boxes a bit. I'll bet it renders differently in IE than in Netscape but oh well, that's life.

Happy Hump Day, everyone!
By the way, Layne, I wore my bike helmet while riding in to work today so you should be mildly proud of me. I'm still working on the full body armor though. Think I'll start with an elbow guard! Though my elbow's well healed at this point, the thought of tagging it on the ground in a wipeout makes me physically wince, tender is the tip of the iceberg and on the tip of my elbow.