Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog

Rexburg lameness strikes again.  I really want to see The Dark Knight, but the past couple nights Kate has worked nights, and Rexburg's awesome theater doesn't have showings later than 10pm, so I have to wait until Monday.  And I really need to see a good movie, since I've been on a losing streak for choosing movies.  Here are some examples of movies I've seen recently that I don't recommend:

No Country for Old Men.  A friend of mine recommended this one, and it had Tommy-Lee Jones and promised a "chain reaction of violence," so I thought it would be fun.  The opening has a very good monologue by Jones about how crime has changed since the old west days, with the drug running and automatic weapons, and wondering how the old timers would cope with crime today.  As he speaks, there are very nice shots of Texas, and you see the villain of the movie arrested.  Then the movie starts, the villain gets away and starts killing people. Meanwhile, the protagonist comes across a botched drug deal and takes off with a suitcase full of money.  After a very promising beginning, the villain starts spewing nonsense that's supposed to be profound, and in the end kills the protagonist, maybe kills (I don't know and I watched the whole movie!) the protagonist's wife, and makes a clean break.  Then Jones as the sheriff ends the movie by telling about a weird dream he had with his dad in it, and that's it.  All the movie's emotional depth is in the opening monologue.

Dan in Real Life got this comment from Orson Scott Card: "You won't see a better comedy this year."  So I watched it, and while I was definitely impressed by the acting (especially Steve Carell), the movie was boring.  The mishaps in Dan's life were laid on a bit too thickly, I thought, and I didn't care about the other characters, even the girl he likes then finds out is his brother's girlfriend.  I did think the scenes that were just Dan and his daughters were well done, even though it was obvious from the beginning what would come of his forbidding his oldest daughter from driving and the next one from dating; though when those set-ups come back to bite him, it worked pretty well. Taken as a whole, though, it was a boring movie.  Maybe Card liked it because he has kids that age.  I don't, but that shouldn't matter.

Juno was even boringer.  I wasn't interested until I read a review on a blog that made it sound interesting.  Basically the reviewer had all the same reasons I did for not wanting to watch it, then watched it anyway and liked it.  So I watched it, and it was very boring.  Basically, a girl gets pregnant by a guy that she likes, but for no reason I can understand (other than being lab partners and the sex part, she hardly talks to the guy, and they don't make a believable couple at all), and decides to give it up for adoption. She picks a weird couple (he seems normal but turns out to be a jerk, while she's completely psycho controlling weird), and there's drama.  Boring drama.  The main chick was cool, though.

I don't recommend any of those movies, and I'm on the fence about The Spiderwick Chronicles.  This one could have been really good, and it was fun, but it isn't memorable at all.  There's good acting, very good special effects, but it doesn't really offer anything new to the kids' fantasy genre, or fantasy at all.  If you want to see a fun, unique fantasy movie, watch Stardust instead, or Prince Caspian.  This one's entertaining, at least.

I did see something cool and bizarre today, though.

My friend Julie recommended Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog. I had never even heard of it, even though it was made by Joss Whedon, creator of the best sci-fi TV show ever, Firefly, and one of my top-three favorite movies, Serenity, which is based on Firefly.  It's about a wannabe supervillain, and his video blog. It's in the incompetent superhero/villain sub-genre, along the lines of Mystery Men and The Venture Bros., with the added bonus of being a musical as well.  It's very low budget, extremely silly, and it has Nathan Fillion and the guy that played Doogie Howser, if any of you remember that show (I never watched it myself).  It is very weird, and doesn't even compare to the awesomeness of Firefly and Serenity, but I recommend it.

You can watch it here or download it from the iTunes Store.