Either way, I have a new candidate to become my millionaire girlfriend or the latest in my long line of celebrity ex-wives.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Unfortunately, the movie is actually pretty terrible.  It’s kind of an anti-The Crazies in the respect that it’s taking from great source movies, but doesn’t do anything with it.  Even more damning, it’s got some really good actors in the lead roles.  In particular, Forest Whitaker gives a great performance that’s absolutely wasted on some really terrible material.

I don’t get it.  Why would a good actor sign on for a bad movie?  Did he not know the script was bad when he signed on?  Did they kill it with editing (not possible since the movie is still 2 hours long) and rewrites?  Did he just need the money?

There’s nothing sadder than a good actor in a terrible film, giving us his all with shitty material.  I mean, if it’s a choice between Forest working and Forest not working, I’d rather see him than not see him.  Still, he could do better than this.  There’s no reason for him not to be doing better roles, aside from his weight (he looks much slimmer now than he has previously).

I also managed to get out and see The Crazies, the 2010 Breck Eisner remake of the 1973 George Romero virus panic horror flick, except this time The Crazies are basically zombies, and the Romero framework is used to support a greatest-hits of postmodern zombie movies.  I also enjoyed it, and it seems more people enjoyed it than did Cop Out, at least in terms of critical indices and whatnot.  Not like I care what critics say, but it’s nice to know I’m not the only person out there in the wilderness, screeching at the top of my lungs that a movie is adequately entertaining.

It’s not novel like B13, or as well done and tense as Taken, but it’s still a really fun action movie and worth checking out if you like European action flicks, John Travolta, or lots of people getting shot in Paris.  As I described the movie in my Den of Geek review, “It’s like The Odd Couple, but one of them kills dozens of people!”

Wouldn’t Camp Besson be the real most magical place on earth?  I mean, you run from explosions down a hallway, you shoot down dozens of people in cold blood, you have ripping action sequences and car chases, and you’re generally the most awesome guy around.  There’s no way I wouldn’t go to Camp Besson every summer for a refresher course in ass-kickery.

Yes, I know I just mixed Shakespeare’s Hamlet with Shelley’s Ozymandias.  I did that in much the same way Legion mixes The Bible, action movies, zombies, and ham-fisted CGI:  deliberately and with malice aforethought.  It’s not that Legion is bad, it’s just that Legion is incredibly dumb.  I have no doubt that it’ll make a great Rifftrax one day.

Either way, I think pretty much any B-quality movie (which Eli is just because of its setting) can be improved with the presence of quality actors who are willing to slum it a little.  Hence Denzel as Eli.  Gary Oldman, while a fine actor, is always willing to slum it in a B-style movie (see his long history of working with Luc Besson), so he doesn’t count for this discussion.  His style of villain is always appreciated.

This topic smells like an article idea, so if you have any good suggestions for A-list actors in B-movie roles, please suggest them below.  I could use some help on this one from the collective Internet Braintrust.

Here’s my review of the wonderfully bloody ninja throwback.  Number six at the box office, number one in my (stabbed) heart.  Still, there was a problem.

One of the reasons I stopped going to the theater closest to me is because of the clientel.  People just don’t know how to behave in movies anymore.  It really ruins my enjoyment of a movie when I have assholes sitting around me.

For example, during Ninja Assassin, this black couple (who sat right behind me for no apparently reason when there was plenty of other rows open) ate dinner during the movie.  Not just popcorn or a snack or a hamburger or something, I mean four styrofoam cartons of food that they brought in with a garbage-bag sized plastic sack to hold it all.  And they proceeded to just throw down on their chow mein or whatever the hell they had in the styrofoam, rattling and squeaking and generally being so completely and totally obnoxious that I really wanted to go narc on them, which is against every fiber of my being.

I admit I was impressed that they got four whole meals into the theater, but aside from that?  No, dude.  If you’re going to eat, eat the crappy food they provide.  if you’re going to sneak in food, don’t spent 45 minutes scraping it around with your spork.  Be considerate of the people who are sitting right in front of you, in your spit/scrape/spill zone.  If you have to rattle your plastic bags, at least go sit on pervert row where your annoyance capabilities are reduced.

If they were just dumb teens, that’s one thing.  Teens don’t know they’re dumb and obnoxious, that’s what makes them teenagers (and explains why everyone hates Tyler on V).  These were two adults in their 30′s or 40′s.  People who ought to know better than to eat their whole take-out meal in the middle of the freaking movie theater.

Long story short, unless they have tables, don’t eat a whole meal there.  If they do have tables, then grub away.  If you’re going to sneak in a whole garbage bag of food, at least offer to share a burrito or give me a piece of your KFC.  If possible, try not to be a noisy asshole, too.

But mostly it’s videos, because writing takes up too much energy and by the time I do my billion daily posts for PopFi and a post for Shaktronics and whatever else I have to do for Den of Geek, I’m too tired to blog over here.  So you get half-assed paragraph-sized posts like this one.

With random spaces to make it seem like there’s more content.

(Realizing, of course, that I can paint whatever picture of myself I want on here, but that’s beside the point, wink wink.)

That kind of rolled around in my brain at the time like a lost marble, but it wasn’t until Surrogates that it kind of sunk in for me.  Not to spoil anything, but most of the Surries look like their real-life counterparts (Bruce WIllis is Bruce Willis, but with awful hair; Rosamund Pike looks like herself but with big hair and better skin; Ving Rhames looks like himself but with a glorious beard and Bob Marley dreads, etc.) Now I know that it’s probably a question of cheapness on the part of the filmmakers.  Plus why would you cast name actors and not have them look like themselves; but aside from two or three background figures, all the rest of the Surrogates looked like real people too.  Just slightly cleaned up, smoothed out real people without blemishes or scars or body fat.

It’s the best version of whoever that actor is.

Really, that’s what we all do.  Sure we don’t have robot wigs, but I think that deep down everyone does their best to put their best foot forward because most of us believe that deep down, there’s something good about ourselves.  Sure we might want to shave off a few pounds or not have to worry about shaving every 6 hours to keep a smooth face  or would like to thicken up the ol’ head of hair and other things that aren’t talking about my personal issues exclusively, but for the most part, we think we’re all right.  Or that we have the potential, at our core, to be something attractive to others. We might not feel that way, and we definitely exaggerate our own flaws more so than others would, but we all want to think we’re redeemable.  And, for the most part, we are.  Or we could be.  That’s why people play Second Life.

That’s kind of what blogging is, in a way.  We’re putting out some version of ourselves, be it overly positive, overly critical, or just exaggerated in some way, for the consumption of others.  Our words (well, my words) are my Surrogate to you, the uninterested reader who has long since branded this a teal deer and moved on to something with a punchline.

This is how I present myself to the world, at least in this location.  I take on other tones at other places, share different pieces of myself in different areas, but it’s not the full picture.  To put everything out there is to take on too much risk.  Somebody might see something or read something and be offended or confused or whatever.  That’s what Surrogates are good for in the movie, and that’s what Surrogates are good for in the blogodecahedron.  That’s why all those social media things have privacy functions.  We need to keep some folks out and let other folks in.

We’re all one step away from a dentist chair, a robot in a wig that looks like Perfect Us, and no reason to change out of our pajamas.

It’s really starting to get distracting.  No matter how much he works out or how many people Dexter slices up, I just see a repressed homosexual.  Maybe he’ll always be David Fisher to me, I don’t know.  Here’s hoping he grows a beard and butches up for his next movie.