Say What You Will About Fast Food...

But I'm craving Wendy's like you wouldn't believe right now and I hate using my Debit Card at the fast food window, and I literally starting running around the house looking for loose cash, found three dollars, went to put it in my pocket, and discovered...eight unused, uncommitted dollars. Life can be so sweet.

A&E - I Really Need That Job at the Movie Theater

Pure geekgasm here. It appeals to no one.

Yesterday I'm surfing around the web, happy that I'm not working, when I come across this. Days of Heaven isn't my favorite Terrence Malick film (that'd be The New World), but 1) God damn is it great, 2) God damn does the current DVD for it suck in every way (besides, y'know, existing - even now you can't find every great film on DVD), and 3) God damn how the hell did they get Malick in on this? Malick's a genius, and one of the rare cases when you really can declare the guy a master of the medium in spite of his sparse output (four films in nearly 35 years), but the guy never talks about his films. Ever. And although this DVD won't be an exception to that, the fact that it'll come out with his signature of approval on it, meaning he supervised the whole process, is pretty frickin' amazing. And Criterion does amazing work with their DVDs, so the transfer and the few special features that are on it will be worth the nearly $30 price tag for a single disc release.

So anyway, that comes out October 23rd, so I'm figuring it'll be easy to manage the money and this'll be but a blip on the radar.

Then I got up this morning, watched Zodiac (which is still the best film so far this year, and one of the best of the last five...seriously, guys especially, see this movie), hit the interwebs, and found THIS. I've been waiting for this announcement for two and a half years now, ever since Warner Brothers made the barest of mentions about it in a discussion with fans - The Stanley Kubrick Special Editions - two-disc releases of 2001, A Clockwork Orange, The Shining, and Eyes Wide Shut, plus conflicting reports (might just be Blu-Ray and HD-DVD) about a Deluxe Edition of Full Metal Jacket (and, I know, that's two Kubrick-related posts in a row, but this is sort of how my life is). The DVDs that are out for Kubrick's films now are kind of embarrassing - y'know, they exist and I love them and I'm proud to have the ones I do on my shelf, but the transfers are dated and there are no special features (except for a great documentary on The Shining), so I've been holding off on buying 2001 especially for when this new transfer and array of special features would be released. Add to that THIS, in which we find out that there'll be a new (presumably, sadly, one-disc) release of Barry Lyndon that won't be in the box set, and I'm in Heaven (and glad I didn't buckle and buy the crappy copy of that film for $17).

Who knows when the actual special features will be announced, but I'm ten shades of giddy (that was a gay phrase - I apologize) about the possibilities...Criterion is the benchmark for DVD releases, but the only studio really doing justice to their catalog titles is Warner. Their two-disc release of Network is close to perfect (why they didn't put the whole archived interview with now-dead screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky, instead of just segments, is beyond me), and probably the best making-of documentary I've ever seen (certainly for a movie that old) was on their King Kong DVD (I could go on and on - the Batman Anthology, Casablanca...the thoughts of what next year's 4oth Anniversary release of Bonnie and Clyde will be like are the stuff of dreams).

But, of course, Kubrick Special Editions also come out on October 23rd. So even figuring that there'll be a markdown on the suggested retail price of $79 for the box set and $20 for Barry Lyndon, I'd guess that whole bundle will end up costing around $70 altogether (Amazon or Newbury Comics will probably have the box set for $55 and the single disc for $15), plus...$27 if I'm lucky for Days of Heaven means around $100 right there, right then. Don't get me wrong, it's totally worth it and the fact that I have no choice in the matter of this purchase doesn't bother me in the least, but damn will it suck.

And man I really need that job at the movie theater to offset these costs...

Working Overtime, Wanting to Die, Hilary Duff, Hilary Clinton, and Stanley Kubrick

This first part was at the end of my post to begin with, but I decided just to get it out of the way for those of you who get sick of reading halfway through (that's right - I proofread these posts; I've never proofread an essay for school in my life, but I proofread my blog posts).

Here's something that interests me, and so I will force it upon you - throughout the month of August, the NW Film Center is showing every single Stanley Kubrick movie (in no particular order). Kubrick, to me, is the greatest director of all time, bar none, so yeah, little bit excited about all that, if only because I've always wanted to see 2001: A Space Odyssey and Barry Lyndon on the big screen. I'll be writing more about this as it approaches, but for now, here's the schedule. Tickets are $6 apiece for students. I'll be going to the ones in bold, and have previously seen the ones marked with an asterisk(*) (again, more of all this in the next few weeks), but will happily go to any of the others if, in fact, anyone else actually wants to go (especially Dr. Strangelove and A Clockwork Orange, two of the best films ever made, which I won't go to automatically 'cause I've seen both on the big screen, but I cannot recommend highly enough ALL these films, the ones I've seen anyway - they're a thousand times better than anything that's come out this summer, and you paid more to see those, didn't you?).

Thursday, Aug. 2 - The Killing*
Friday, Aug. 3 - 2001: A Space Odyssey*
Saturday, Aug. 4 - Spartacus
Sunday, Aug. 5 - Paths of Glory
Friday, Aug. 10 - Lolita*
Saturday, Aug. 11 - Dr. Strangelove, Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb*
Sunday, Aug. 12 - Killer's Kiss
Saturday, Aug. 18 - The Shining* and Full Metal Jacket* (BACK TO BACK! All for a mere $8! Easily the best money you'll spend all summer!)
Sunday, Aug. 19 - Barry Lyndon*
Friday, Aug. 24 - A Clockwork Orange*
Saturday, Aug. 25 - Eyes Wide Shut*

Aaannnnnnd onto the rest of the post.

Y'know, I was just thinking about how summer is just FLYING by, and then I saw my last post was ten effing days ago! Ten? TEN! How? I'll tell you how...never mind, I don't really know. But I did work a shitload over the last five days, including a 3-11 shift Thursday night followed by a 5:15 AM-6:00 PM shift on Friday after two hours of sleep. Yes, I did want to kill myself. I also came freakishly close to full-on passing out in the middle of the store. I started to feel myself fall but snapped back to it in time. From that point on I made sure to keep moving at all costs. So yeah, life is now restored to me though, and it's my weekend right here, right now.

People have often asked if you ever get used to waking up at 4 or 4:30 five days a week for work, and I always say "yes" but that's only partly true. You do get used to waking up and just wanting to shoot yourself in the face, and it does become easier to move past this feeling. But it never really goes away (man, if anyone who didn't know me was reading this, they'd either think I was really interesting and dark and deep, or just batshit insane).

But summer is FLYING man. No idea where the weeks are going, but boy are they.

I always thought Hilary Duff was kinda hot, y'know, I guess, but man is she hot as balls on the cover of Maxim this month. Their interviews are really, really retarded though. And say what you will about it "just being Maxim," but some of the best pop culture articles I've ever read came from Playboy (a magazine I've admittedly never bought, largely because it's sort of an embarrassing thing to own, but also because I suspect, like Rolling Stone, it's still published mostly because it was so big and so good a few decades ago).

If you haven't seen this yet, you really ought to.

Finally saw Aliens. Sweet.

P.S. I know all of the major spoilers of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, and am oh-so-tempted to mention them to random passers-by in hopes that they actually give a damn. But it also makes me excited for the when the movie finally comes out and something actually happens (seriously...besides that one guy dying, which was pretty unceremonious, NOTHING FRICKIN' HAPPENED in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix! NOTHING! The credits started rolling and all I could do was look a little distraught and think to myself, "where'd all that plot and character development go? Surely it had to be there at SOME point!" I'm not really that mad about it, but seriously, come on).

BEHOLD!

I got an eye exam today for the first time in...three, four years, and guess what? My eyesight's improved! Take that you jackals, I can heal my own damn eyes! What makes you so unique and wonderful?

Well...it wasn't the worst of the Die Hard franchise, at least I was right about that. I'm just glad I didn't have to pay. Makes it all go down a little smoother. Read my review anyway, it's completely retarded and great.

EDIT: I know I include a ridiculous amount of information on here from the Yahoo! News, but I really do wonder sometimes if it's written by hamsters. Such as today..."WAITRESS GETS $10,000 TIP! Jessica Osbourne, 20, receives a huge amount from a regular customer to help pay for college." Which is pretty great, but then below that, for their related links section, are the following two items:
"How do you decide on tip amount?" (which, to me, reads like the thought of forking over $10,000 crosses your mind at some point in the paying process)
"Money found in toilets across Japan."

Top Five HOT Songs

Psyche! I'd really meant to, but the only really good picks were KISS' "Hotter Than Hell," Three Dog Night's "Summer in the City," and Meat Loaf's "You Took the Words Right Out of My Mouth (Hot Summer Night)" (but only as honorable mention because the opening line was in my head all day). Anyway, it's unbelievably hot today, even in Nordstrom, which seems like such a cozy store, but they only kinda air condition the floor and they have like a single vent for a stock room probably 75 yards long and 20 feet wide, so it just felt like death. And as I relayed to Ben on my way home, this was the shittiest day ever to not have air conditioning in the car. I left got out for like a minute to drop some DVDs* off at Movie Madness, and I got back to a car that I could've sworn raised ten degrees in temperature since my departure. To quote Al Pacino in Glengarry Glen Ross (the best movie you haven't seen...except Ian...he saw it), "They say it was so hot downtown this afternoon, grown men on the street corner were going up to cops begging the cops to shoot them." That's about how I felt.

Wanna see a ca-razy trailer before you see it in the theater someday and say, "man, that was ca-razy!" CLICK! But imagine all the text at the beginning spoken by Mr. Voice. Trailers were so much better before the studios realized no one took that guy seriously. That said, big fan of anyone who can make an excuse to put a wooly mammoth onscreen. That said, remember he also directed the Godzilla remake. So there's that.

Y'know, just when you think you're over it, someone brings back the seething hatred by quoting Crash in their away message...you know who you are...and you probably aren't reading.

Can't even really think straight. Gonna be cooking up some steaks (yeah, ME) in about an hour, but I think I'll kill that hour by watching that much of JAWS (one of few movies I absolutely must spell in all caps). If I can stay awake. Somehow I don't get to sleep 'til like 12:30 when I gotta wake up at 4 or whatever, and I still wake up in the middle of the night! WTF mate indeed.

Tomorrow! Die Hard with a Vengeance followed closely by Live Free or Die Hard. Thoughts, reactions, and musings following soon after. Then on Saturday - was Spencer right when he said Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is "the dumbest movie ever," or was it the fact that he was dragged to a midnight showing? Stay tuned, loyal readers. My (constantly-revised) goal is to see Ratatouille on Sunday at Cinetopia, because how better to see a Pixar movie? And I really want that pizza again. God damn.

*I rented the original, 1972 Russian Solaris, which I'm required to say is genius, but upon reflection found to be boring as shit, but which was counterbalanced by the fantastic 2003 documentary End of the Century: The Story of the Ramones.

Stay In Your Homes! Remain Calm! Or: Is It Hot Out Here, Or Is It Just Me?"

I wouldn't know. I went outside to go to dinner today, and that's it. I was gonna take a bike ride, I was gonna clean my car, but screw that man...it was frickin' 105 today!

Occasionally I think it'd be cool to have a summer fling, and sometimes wonder why I never really got on that (so to speak). Then I take a look in the mirror after work. If I'm still not convinced, I end up looking in the mirror at like 9 PM. Taking your daily shower at 4:40 and sweating a good percentage of the day leaves one looking quite grody.

I was staying in a hotel two weeks ago or so, looking at the thermostat thing, and realized "Hot Water, Electric Heat" would be an awesome name for a rock album.

Die Hard 2: Die Harder really does suck. Except for the part where the guy gets stabbed in the eye with an icicle. The good news is Live Free or Die Hard almost couldn't possibly be the worst of them. Could it?

I was at the QFC on SE Milwaukee this afternoon and a woman of about...I'd say 80 years old or so, started walking past the meat counter chanting "Beer! Beer! Beer!" and laughing maniacally. And not in a funny way. It was actually kinda unnerving. She looked like a skeleton someone had hung some extra skin on. I grabbed my beef stir fry and booked it.

Some guy's comment on my review for Transformers..."You're an asshole." I do love anonymous posters.

Okay, so this weekend, I swear to Christ I'm gonna catch up on the staggering number of movie's I've yet to see. I just got paid, so I feel pretty good about diving in. If anyone has any interest in Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, Ratatouille, Sicko, La Vie an Rose, Live Free or Die Hard (which I guess we're gonna wait for until we do the marathon), or POSSIBLY A Mighty Heart (that'll be a push...might have to wait for the DVD, but if anyone else is interested I'm totally down), tell me now. Don't call me tonight, I'll be asleep by 7 (I hope...more in a second), but text or call tomorrow, because I'm just gonna dive right into it. The goal is to be completely caught up by next Friday, when Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix comes out, and is hopefully the one movie this summer that'll live up to expectations. Granted, I still do need to see the last hour of Pirates 3, but if that ends up being the one movie, I'll be the only one who thought so. What'll you do.

Anyway, I'm going to bed at 7 tonight because I didn't get home last night until like 1 AM (and had to wake up by 4:40 as usual), and made the EXTREMELY unwise choice to have Wendy's right before bed. Okay now...the Wendy's was FANTASTIC. For about a year now, I've avoided them because they were so far off their game, but it was extraordinarily good and so close to being worth the extreme fast food hangover I woke up with this morning. Added to the fun today was a major sunburn on my feet from last night's beach trip! Walking was fun.

Annnnnnnnd OUT!

Something I Was Thinking About on the Toilet Today

When guys in biblical times had an especially successful date, did they say, "oh, man, I totally knew this girl last night!"

Discuss.