taka’s home most nights now so we’ve been watching movies more frequently. usually we just watch movies at home since 1. it’s free and 2. i can’t stand people. it’s also more convenient since we don’t have to get dressed up and we can drink and talk and pause for bathroom breaks. the only movie we’ve seen in the theatre recently was wall-e, which was one of the best movies i’ve seen this year, although i hear the dark knight might rival that opinion (i’m seeing it on thursday in imax). so here’s a quick list and my thoughts on the movies we’ve watched in the last couple of weeks:

scent of a woman – i was kinda bored with this movie until about half way through, but by the end i totally loved it. classic pacino. hoo-ah! (one of yahoo! japan’s top 10 movies to watch before you die?)

space cowboys – i’d seen this before, and although it’s totally unrealistic (tommy lee jones really landed on the moon? c’mon) it’s one of those heart warming fun stories about old people and the silly things they do. (also on the yahoo! japan top 10 list)

lock, stock & 2 smoking barrels – another on the yahoo! japan list that taka wanted to see. i had actually just re-watched this movie about a month ago, but it’s one that’s easy to watch again.

garden state – i’m not sure what the moral of the story is, maybe friendship, or forgiveness, or finding out who you are or maybe just that natalie portman is super cute and zach braff is totally cool. i don’t think taka liked it too much, but it’s one of my fav’s.

the eye – jessica alba is blind and finally gets new eyes, but the eyes are haunted. how much does that suck?

closer – the most brutally honest movie about love, and the sexiest natalie portman, ever.

And tonight we’re watching Run Lola Run. There are still quite a few on this Yahoo! Japan Top 10 List that Taka has, and she actually found another Top 50 list (from Japan so the selections are kinda wacky), so we have a lot of movies to watch. There aren’t too many new movies coming out that i’m looking forward to though. Tropic Thunder comes out August 13th, and i’m pretty excited about that. The Time Traveler’s wife comes out on Christmas, so that’s a ways away. Oh yea, and can’t wait for batman this thursday!

something about watching movies on warm summer evenings is just so nostalgic to me. most of the big block-busters come out in summer, and since the days are longer, it just seems like there’s more free time to be wasted watching movies. last weekend the wife and i saw hancock with the campys at the same ghetto theatre that drove me nuts just the weekend before. this time however, we saw the movie on the 4th of july, right around the time everyone else was watching fireworks, so the theatre was relatively empty and quiet.

i really enjoyed the movie, and was pretty surprised to see the poor reviews it received. i rarely think along the same lines as real movie critics, but this one had me grinning ear-to-ear for an hour and a half, so i was surprised they came down so harshly on it. anyway, i recommend it.

we’ve also been watching a lot of movies at home. united has been cutting jobs and taka is getting furloughed, so for the past week, that lazy wife of mine has only been working 40 hours. the nice thing is she has time to cook dinner and hang out during the week. last night we watched enchanted which was ridiculously gay, but entertaining nonetheless. the night before we started to watch be kind, rewind and gave up after 10 minutes. jack black is a (ska)douche.

ben and i have now tried 3 times to see get smart, but keep missing it for some reason, i can’t wait to see batman, and the trailers for the new james bond movie look awesome.

all through the nba finals, there’ve been commercials for a new game show on abc called wipeout. it’s a ridiculous competition that involves crazy contraptions and insane obstacle courses and actually looks pretty funny, except it’s a blatant ripoff of most extreme elimination challenge on spike, which were overdubbed episodes of a japanese game show called takeshi’s castle. mxc was funny because the two american announcers that were overdubbing the japanese show poked at lots of cultural differences in an amusing way. this new show has the same format, but it’s american announcers overdubbing americans and poking fun at their american-ness. i’m sure the show will still be kind of amusing, just ’cause people getting fucked up always is, but c’mon abc, make me laugh with something original.

what bothers me even more is that they’re making an american version of the BBC show: top gear. i think at least 25% of what makes this show funny is that they’re british and they do things differently than us. they call the hood of a car a “bonnet” and the trunk “the boot.” the other 75% that makes the show great is the cast. jeremy clarkson and richard hammond are irreplaceable. and i stand by my constant assertion that top gear is the best show on television, regardless if you’re into cars or not.

BURBANK – June 16, 2008 – Television and radio comedian Adam Carolla, champion rally and drift racer Tanner Foust, and TV construction guru Eric Stromer, will lead NBC’s pilot of the international smash hit series “Top Gear.” The production will begin later this week.

Produced by BBC Worldwide America, the U.S. version of the hit franchise will mirror the UK show’s irreverent humor and camaraderie between the three presenters, epic races, outrageous stunts and challenges, unique celebrity guest participation and eccentric methods of testing cars.

adam corolla? *sigh* i give this show 5 episodes tops. since the original show is on the bbc america channel, and since britain and the us have pretty much the same cars, and most importantly since the british can get away with way more shenanigans than a network tv show ever will, i see absolutely no point in ruining the good name of top gear.

and i’d tend to agree, but ben has faith he’ll get it running again. i always hang out with my dad and he was busy with his friends today, so i went up to la to pick up ben and take him to downey to pick up his car where it died on him last night. it’s just been turning off on him, and i’m sure he’ll post his freeway and tollbooth stories on his blog, but yeh, when we fired it up this morning, it was making an awful clicking noise. we figured we’d just drive it slowly back to his place, but a about a mile down the road it died again, so we pulled into the parking lot of ozzie’s diner somewhere in the city of commerce, called AAA and ordered a sandwich. AAA showed up early, some scary mexican dude loaded the altima onto the truck and took it back to ben’s place.

after we got that taken care of, we then went down to lakewood mall (which was pretty nostalgic since that was me and ben’s stomping grounds back in the early 90′s) and watched the happening which was a movie so terrible it was enjoyable. then ben hooked up with his folks for a father’s day dinner and now i’m at home watching the lakers trying to stay alive. i love adventure sundays.

here are some thoughts about being sick as i look back on this miserable week past:

• promethazine + codeine = cough-free psychosis
• promethazine + ephedrine = anti-nausea and appetite suppressant psychosis
• promethazine is an anti-psychotic
• there are 4 ways to loose weight: diet/exercise, weight loss drugs, being too sick to eat, and hanging out with people fatter than you (a combination of all 4 has led me to loose 10 lbs in the last month)
• humidifiers really help control a cough, especially at night when the air is cold and dry. taka says it makes her feel like she’s on vacation somewhere tropical?
• having a wife that takes time off work to take care of you is wonderful

so during this super shitty cold i had lots of free time and ended up watching lots of movies. instead of trying to give a review of any of them, i’ll just rank them in order of a combination of enjoyability/good movie-ness:

• no country for old men
• charlie wilson’s war
• there will be blood
• the bucket list
• the golden compass
• over her dead body
• untraceable
• pitch black
• semi-pro
• cliff hanger
• alien vs predator requiem
• meet the spartans

while watching all of these movies, i either had a fever or was coked out on promethazine + something combo, but the first few were really good and the last few really, really bad.

i read michael crichton’s the andromeda strain about a year ago and enjoyed it so much, i sought out the 1971 film based off the book that followed the storyline very closely. the film also looked very much as i had imagined many of the scenes.

so i was again excited to hear that there was now a new version of the movie out on a&e. for some reason it was 4 hours long, but with tivo it was only about 3 and change, so i recorded it and watched it last night. what a dumb fucking movie. first of all the cast was comprised of washed up tv and b-rated movie actors. benjamin bratt (of miss congeniality) was probably the biggest star, accompanied by eric mccormack (will & grace), rick schroeder (silver spoons), christa miller (drew carey show/scrubs), and daniel dae kim (jin on lost).

the acting was terrible and the storyline was very different than the book or the original film. they added extra storylines like the reporter that was trying to get the story, and the rouge military unit that was trying to get a sample of the bacteria, and started killing anyone that knew anything and then the ending made no sense. they also for some reason killed off ricky and jin, even though they were fine in the book. anyway, retarded movie. stay away.

man, so last night while me and taka were watching the american idol finale on about 1 hour delay (because i was watching that awesome lakers comeback), we got to the very end, i mean *THE* moment, and ryan seacrest said “by twelve million votes of american idol two thousand eight is…. david” and then i swear to god, my tivo made that little *bloop* sound and asked if i wanted to delete this recording. the fucking recording ended because the show ran long and it stopped *right* before they said the last name of the winner. taka and i started screaming, then laughing, and then looked it up online since it actually happened like 4 hours ago. i didn’t get to see his reaction until this morning when i watched the re-cap on good day la. stupid tivo.

and was i the only one imagining costin, ben and me in these blue suits during this entire performance?

Obama/Laurie ’08?

and how hot is olivia wilde? she’s that sexy lesbian alex, from the O.C. that was mischa barton’s lover for a few epiosdes.

which was across the street from my office it turns out. i was watching csi:miami last night and started to wonder where that building actually was and a quick google search showed it on the corner of rosecrans and aviation. so today i parked in the east parking lot instead of the west one, and realized i could actually see the building from my parking lot.

it’s a great location for them to film because it’s across the street from the manhattan studios, and just behind my credit union and a marriott so it can’t clearly be seen off the street. it’s an amazing looking building, which actually houses the federal aviation credit union.

since moving up to gardena, we haven’t been doing margarita monday very often, so this saturday me, costin and ben had lunch at acapulco. we decided to forgo the margarita mix and just have a couple shots of tequila and a couple of beers out on the patio.

after lunch we watched iron man. *i thought it was an awesome action hero movie (*costin didn’t particularly like it). robert downey jr.’s character as the rich, pompous, millionaire engineer tony stark was so hate-ably likable that i wished there were more scenes of him just walking around drinking scotch and objectifying women. i’m sure this is just the beginning of a series of iron man films. stay through the credits for a final scene of geek goodness.