• Black Dog / White Dog

One wags, while the other swayze.

Black Dog is an action picture about an ex-con being tricked into smuggling illegal arms. White Dog is a movie starring Kristy McNichol around her ABC School Specialdays, and oh yeah – it’s about a racist dog.

• Think Like a Man / What Women Want

The themes of the films form some kind of mental Mobius strip. Better yet – Ouroboros… the snake that eats its own tail.

Despite nobody having a clue about either sex (sorry Steve Harvey – not all men operate on such basic levels, and sorry to all involved with What Women Want – women never know what they want), these films might as well be science fiction instead of comedies.

SIDENOTE: Speaking of comedies, want a good laugh?  Cameron Diaz is making a sequel called What Men Want.

• Act I: Food.
• Act II: Sex.
• Act III: Sleep.

Finis.

• Battleship / Clue: The Movie

I miss the days B4 B9 shit like this was made.

Sure, both are based on board games, but whereas Clue: The Movie was clever, Battleship is sunk by getting handed scrap footage from Transformers 3.

• Chernobyl Diaries / Princess Diaries

And somewhere in the middle sits The Nanny Diaries.

This one’s just dumb.  Moving on…

• Leonard Part 6

Prequels, anyone?

Bill Cosby, you weren’t fooling anyone.  Nor making them laugh.  Not even getting a smile, really…

Keep your sights on the bulls-eye…

First, Katniss has her way with the bow and arrow in The Hunger Games, then Hawkeye shows up as a master archer in The Avengers, and finally Princess Merida goes all Robin Hood in Brave.  Kinda weird, right?  Like Hollywood’s prepping us for Armageddon by developing a fondness for rudimentary varieties of arsenal.

But like I said, I unfortunately was late to the (hunger) game catching that one, so howzabout this Coinkydink or Coinkydonk… the flying vessels the Chitauri use in The Avengers are similar to the flying disks in Masters of the Universe movie:

Sorta…?

What about the Chitauri Leviathan, then?  It looked comparable to those Decepticon ships in Transformers: Dark of the Moon, right?

Yeah, this one’s a bit better… let’s go for one more COC!

Remember how it looked for Tony Stark inside the Iron Man suit?

Don’t look so surprised, Mr. Jr.

Do you think they got their idea’s from 1997′s Star Kid?

Spot on, I’d say.

This first one doesn’t seem like a real ad on TV, but oh yes – it is:

Does this one feature Legos?  Legos?!  Who’s watching this?!

This one might (?) be (?) racist (?), but the scariest thing is the concept of a communal chocolate fondue…

Could this novelty scale I dreamed about ever exist, and if it did, would it sell?

In a nutshell, the novelty scale is like a combination of these two items:

Ooh... colors.

Essentially, it would work like this:

1. There would be a pool table with a mathematically defined set of numbered balls on the table.
2. You’d step on a scale at the end of the table.
3. The balls would scramble to the nearest pockets (courtesy of magnets?), leaving behind the balls that added up to your weight.  Kind of like how the above thermometer works (courtesy of magnets?).

There are plenty of weird people out there with money to burn.  So… any takers?

But I might have to find The Silver Lining in his decision to reboot the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles as aliens.

These are not Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

What good might I find in the seemingly asinine idea to change the beloved oozy origin of our pizza-loving, sewer-dwelling crime fighters?  Midi-chlorians, anyone?

These are not Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

Sometimes such changes work.  In the Sam Raimi Spider-Man series, didn’t a genetically altered spider make a lot more sense than a radioactive one?  (Maybe not enough.  Part 3 did suck, and the new film is abandoning that concept.)

This might be a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle.

I think the best part is that we might finally get to see this guy: Krang.

Okay, he's technically from Dimension X, but isn't that alien enough?

Four movies in, and the best baddies we’ve seen are these two?

Tokka and Rahzar. Why not Bebop and Rocksteady?

That’s at least my hope.  I can’t take any more Shredder nonsense…

Growing up, my sisters and I rarely played together with the same toys.  If we did mix up our stories, my action figures paid a visit to theirs, but never vice versa.  Very few of their toys mixed well with mine:

This was a Transformer?

Star Wars Cantina, anyone?

These were big fans of the M.U.S.C.L.E. wrestlers.*

*These are M.U.S.C.L.E. wrestlers.

Okay, for these, I played the animals.

Despite this, I was able to convince my sister Becky to buy one toy I needed (I co-opted it soon after she purchased it):

Vanessa Warfield and her Manta, member of V.E.N.O.M., enemies of M.A.S.K.

Too bad they didn’t collect She-Ra: Princess of Power… I could have got one of them to buy anyone in the Evil Horde:

Hordak, Leech, and Grizzlor, of course.

Over the weekend, I went to the show to see the re-issue of Star Wars, Episode I: The Phantom Menace in 3D, and you know what?  It wasn’t as bad as I remembered, and here’s why:

1) It has two of the best characters in all the prequel story lines.

Darth Maul and Qui-Gon Jinn, which translates to "Half Slice" and "Hole in Chest"

I always maintained that Liam Neeson brought a gravity to the Jedi Knight Qui-Gon Jinn that Ewan McGregor never could to his Obi-Wan Kenobi.  I still don’t know if it’s his size, voice, or demeanor, but when Qui-Gon defies the Jedi Council to stand by his belief that Anakin is The Chosen One, his conviction is convincing.  Everything in the Star Wars universe we know and love hinges on his gut feelings, and we buy (and buy and buy) into it, too.

As for Darth Maul – once a bad-ass, always a bad-ass… until he falls down a pit like other fan favorite, Boba Fett.

2) Jake Lloyd is a much more tolerable Actor! than Hayden Christensen.

If he says "wizards" one more time!

Notice I didn’t say “better.”  He’s a kid, for Yoda’s sake.  What am I gonna do?  Ridicule him like how… he… will… eventually… kill a bunch of Padawans?  I also think this video existing helps his situation:

3) Jar Jar Binks wasn’t as jarring.

He's wearing Pajarjars.

I’ve come to Jar Jar Binks’ defense before (or at least George Lucas’ decision to include him), so it was no big surprise to me that this time around, he hardly annoyed me.  That’s probably because he was a big surprise in the first place, much like the Midi-chlorian debacle (which was nowadays just as negligible).

4) Were there more practical effects and sets in Episode I?

Seemed like it to me.  To all you non-film school students, practical effects means “it’s really there.”  Episode II and III relied heavily on CGI, whereas this one went partially old-school, and the look of the film benefits greatly.  Palpatine’s senate office looks real when he’s in it; Anakin’s Podracer and Naboo Starfighter look real when he’s in them.

There was an article I read (that I don’t feel like looking for) that stated mixing CGI and practical effects tricks the mind much better.  That’s why Jurassic Park’s dinosaurs were so convincing for early CGI.  It even explains why Ray Harryhausen’s clay figures can mess with us – they really exist.

Now I’m not knocking CGI in lieu of practical effects either, and here’s proof:

"There is no try... only do-over."

(For the flip side of this Silver Lining, check out this article on Time Magazine’s site.)

ITEM #1 – THE BREA GRANT CONNECTION

That smirk seems permanent.

Brea Grant may not be a well-known face (or even known at all), but the moment she appeared early in the sixth season of Showtime’s Dexter, I recognized her.  I didn’t know what from, so I investigated.  Turned out, she also starred in NBC’s Heroes during its third season.  I tried to forget that awful show, and thus, I forgot her.  Now here’s the Coinkydink (or Coinkydonk)…

She starred alongside Actor! Masi Oka on Heroes, and alongside character (Vince) Masuka on Dexter.

It’s a little weird, right?  No, not really?  Okay then, moving on.

ITEM #2 – STOP SHOUTING!

I’ve noticed that The General Insurance must be doing pretty good, because their graphics have been getting better and better.  As for the concepts…?

Does this woman’s “hiya’s” sound familiar to you?

Because to me, I’m reminded of Link’s sidekick, Navi, form The Legend of Zelda – A Link to the Past:

You don’t hear it?  All right, how about this last one.

ITEM #3 - ROBOTS AND ALCOHOL DON’T MIX

Here’s the party I was late to… I love robots, but I couldn’t stand it when Heineken had this atrocity of an ad for an atrocity of a product (the keg can):

So it amazes me that Svedka Vodka could one-up their craptacular idea:

If that’s the future of alcohol, color me sober.

The Wonder Bread Years

There are degrees to which I get happy about my Happy Finds.

For websites such as Celebrity School Pics, it makes me more sad than happy to find out they have a section devoted to porn stars… so this non-charting Happy Find would be a Meh Find.

Then there are sites like Bread People that entertain me, but not for long, like a pita roll compared to a baguette, so they merit the most generic of Happy Finds.  What else could set the bar other than bread humor?

Memba this?

Pica Pic can be considered an Excited Happy Find because sites like it provide unlimited interactivity… until you get bored with its unlimited interactivity.  There’s a reason Nintendo stopped making Game & Watch… and most recently it’s called the 3DS.

The last level of Happy Find is the Ultimate Happy Find.  It usually ends up relating to a site full of videos, and tends to be updated somewhat regularly.  It likely has misses, but there are enough hits to keep you coming back.  One example might be Bad Lip Reading.  Check out this sample:

Here are A Handful Of… The Video Games That Got Away:

• Devon Aire in The Hidden Diamond Caper

Ah, the good ol' days of 16-color EGA graphics...

Not what you’d expect to be first.  This came out back in the days of me playing the original Maniac Mansion and Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders, but it was only available for Commodore 64.  I had an IBM-compatible.  To those not around at the time, that’s like wanting Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception, when all you have is the Wii.

• ToeJam and Earl

I had a Sega Genesis, but I didn’t get the system when it was originally released with Altered Beast.  Then again, ToeJam and Earl was still released after that.  I’m not sure why I didn’t get this game.  All I know is that I wanted it.

• Battle Chess

Another nerdy PC game.  (It was available for DOS, but it looked fantastic on the Amiga.  So I wanted the Amiga.)  I didn’t even really play chess, but I guess I craved digitized violence.  Don’t be surprised if one day it’s revealed that this game paved the way for Mortal Kombat.  Speaking of kombat…

• Killer Instinct

This was one of the two arcade fighting games I was good at (the other was Virtua Fighter), so when it was announced that there would be a version for the Super Nintendo, I was ecstatic.  Then I realized how people must have felt when Pac-Man was finally released for the Atari 2600…  Here’s the SNES commercial:

• The Cavern of the Evil Wizard

"I get to be on top!"

This game might look familiar, although its name is not.  That’ sbecause you probably saw Tom Hanks playing it in the movie Big.  Sadly, TCOTEW never existed in the real world… until now.   Try it by clicking here.

Think of it as my early Gimme Gimme present for you.