Things and Stuff...and Things

• OK, I'm a believer. The Horns put up 82 points, the most the Aggies have given up this year...and still lose by 18 points. After wins over Kansas and Texas, it's clear who the best team in the Big 12 is this year. I still can't believe A&M is higher ranked than Duke.
• Gov. Perry wants to sell the Texas Lottery and live off the lump sum. OK, whatever - I don't really have any big opinion on the lottery either way - I don't care if we have gambling in Texas, it's just an idiot tax - but there are a couple of bad points here. First, Perry apparently wants to use part of the money to set up another welfare program.
  I'm against that in general, partly because I'm an eeeeeeee-vil conservative, but also because whenever money shows up in the coffers, the first thing politicians want to do is set up a new program. The problem is, the program then has to be funded in perpetuity, because no welfare program ever goes away.
  Second, Perry is apparently planning on getting a nine-percent return on investment of the proceeds, indefinitely. If that is truly available, why aren't we using it for all kinds of things? Why aren't we investing Social Security funds there? Hell, nine percent return is probably twelve percent better than I can expect to see on the money flushed down that black hole.
  Combine unreasonable expectations with a new funding mandate, and I can shenanigans on the whole thing. Here's an idea: sell the lottery and return the money to the taxpayers.
  

Movie Review: Smokin' Aces

Another day, another three-star rating. At least this one is slightly different from the others - I actually saw this one at a really-for-real movie theater, the Alamo Lake Creek. For some reason, they decided to warm me up with the Yatta! video, which I hadn't seen in whole before - I'm not sure how that trauma affected my opinion of the movie, though.

I didn't know a lot of details about Smokin' Aces going in. There had been a few Tarantino-lite references thrown about, but I didn't really see it myself. Not that I'm a big student or anything, but I don't really see Tarantino films as being full of weird characters - they're full of (usually vicious) characters engaged in unexpected conversations (in between killing each other). The characters in Smokin' Aces don't really have much to say; one of the killers only has two spoken lines in the whole film, and two of the others don't really have any lines I can remember outside of incoherent yelling. About the only characters of interest from a dialogue standpoint are the two female killers, one of which gets into a great but one-sided discussion of woman's rights with a receptionist who clearly couldn't care less.

The interest factor here comes about from having a strange assortment of characters all congregating in one place with a lot of weapons. Some of these characters seem to be strange just for the sake of being strange. It says something when you have three neo-Nazis running around with machetes and chainsaws - and they are only the second weirdest characters in the movie. The first is the inexplicable (and completely superfluous) karate kid one of the killers encounters after getting shot up. And while strange will get you by for a while, it's no substitute for a good plot and good execution.

Plot-wise, Smokin' Aces is OK but not great. Things build up and build up to the expected shoot-out, but frankly too many people seem to take too many times to get killed. There's no way anyone survived the duel in the elevator, and yet both participants end up surviving? A guy gets half of his hand shot off and dumped in Lake Tahoe, and is running around later killing folks? At least Ben Affleck had the good graces to die quickly and get off of the screen.

The big twist at the end wasn't much of a twist, as half of it (the identity of Sparazza) was telegraphed almost immediately and the other half (the identity of Isreal) came completely out of the blue (no clues for the audience at all) and wasn't really that important anyway. So in the end, the movie is primarily a wait for the inevitable shoot-out sequence, and hoping for good individual scenes along the way (like Isreal's final conversation with Ivey). As annoying as things like the karate kid were, there were enough good things to keep me going to the end (when the "twist" showed up), so I can't really drop this one down to two stars. But not nearly good enough for four. Sigh - maybe I should just switch to good/bad instead; everything seems to end up as a three this year.

Prop Bets Result

Well, considering I picked these pretty much at random from a list of prop bets, I did pretty darn well:

Coin Flip: Heads (-105) Won
First Team To Score: Bears (+110) Won
First Team To Record QB Sack: Colts (-140) Won
First Team To Record Interception: Bears (+130) Won
Team With Most Turnovers: Bears (-135) Won
Team With Longest Rush: Bears (-125) Won
Will There Be A Lead Change In The Second Half: No (-180) Won
Chicago Rush O/U 131.5: Over (-125) Lost
First Score Is: Any Other Bears TD (+1300) Won
Margin Of Victory: Colts by 11-13 (+825) Won
Total Sacks O/U 3.5: Over (-155) Lost

So out of 11 picks, I made 9 correct. I actually thought the first score might be a Chicago INT run back for a touchdown, but instead I got it the "Other Bears TD" and "First Interception by Bears" picks in two separate plays. And of course, getting the margin correct was another big pick.

If I had wagered $10 on each selection, for a total wager of $110, I would have taken home $364.12. What am I still doing in Austin? I'm heading to Vegas, baby!

Super Bowl Prop Bets

I'll take:

Coin Flip: Heads (-105)
First Team To Score: Bears (+110)
First Team To Record QB Sack: Colts (-140)
First Team To Record Interception: Bears (+130)
Team With Most Turnovers: Bears (-135)
Team With Longest Rush: Bears (-125)
Will There Be A Lead Change In The Second Half: No (-180)
Chicago Rush O/U 131.5: Over (-125)
First Score Is: Any Other Bears TD (+1300)
Margin Of Victory: Colts by 11-13 (+825)
Total Sacks O/U 3.5: Over (-155)

Movie Review: Rob-B-Hood

I'm a big Jackie Chan fan. I've got most of his movies - seen and enjoyed most of the classics (the Police Storys, the Project As, the Drunken Masters) and have started in on the earlier stuff (The Young Master, Spiritual Kung Fu, etc.). After finally hitting it big in America with the Rush Hour and Shanghai films, though, he's hit a definite slump with his American films. The Medallion and Around the World in 80 Days had little to recommend, and the less said about The Tuxedo, the better.

But in between these stinkers, Jackie has continued to make films overseas. I've had a few of them waiting on my shelf for a while now, and I'm finally getting around to some of them. New Police Story (2004) and The Myth (2005) will get their turn, but tonight's film is 2006's Rob-B-Hood.

This isn't really a typical Jackie Chan action film, but it's probably the type of film we're likely to get from him in the future. It's not really an action film - it's more of comedy/drama film with a few action sequences. Here, Jackie plays a member of a three-man robbery gang. They seem to be pretty successful at their trade, but all three of them have problems. Thongs (Jackie) is a cumpulsive gambler with an estranged family. Octopus is a womanizer whose just learned his wife is pregnant. And Landlord has a delusional wife who never got over the death of their son years ago. They all need money, and so Landlord grabs a shady deal that turns into a babynapping-gone-awry. At this point, the movie turns into "Two Thieves And A Baby", as Thongs and Octopus have to look after the baby until Landlord can extract himself from jail and get the deal back on track. The usual baby-related hijinks ensue, and so does the usual baby-related lessons in life.

The movie has a couple of short but impressive fight scenes, and a couple of longer stunt sequences, before reaching the big fight at the end. There is a fairly nice car chase sequence with a great and funny ending, and an odd little chase for Jackie set on a roller coaster. There's also a classic Chan fight scene set in a small apartment where everyone seems to converge at the same time - the thieves, the loan sharks, the kidnappers, the police and the unknowing girlfriends. It shows Chan's usual great use of environment in staging his fights.

However, the movie is less successful outside of the action parts. There are just too many odd subplots going on, each of which sets up some payoff later on - but most of the payoffs are fairly lame. The whole thing just takes too long (the movie itself is about 2:15), and this extends to the end; after the final big fight, there are two more drama sequences left, neither of which works for me (especially the "execution" at the end).

Jackie has done this kind of film well in the past (I'm thinking especially of Dragons Forever here - and this movie was at one point supposed to star the Three Dragons as well), but this one just didn't work outside of the action parts. Not actively bad, but I don't know that I'll be revisiting this one much. Three stars.

Kids In The Decline

I had heard some rumors about the latest Uwe Boll disasterpiece, Postal (based on the infamous third-person shooter video game), but I hadn't heard just how low he was aiming:

But wait… there's more! Foley's character in the production, called Uncle Dave, is a twisted cult leader who uses his religious doctrine to keep his subjects in a constant state of servitude. He exploits this by luring them into protracted orgies and other debauchery. In the scenes we saw, Foley was dressed in an open robe (and we mean open), wandering around the room barking orders. At the end of the scene, he takes a crap on camera.

That's leaving aside the character of Osama Bin Laden, or the Columbine jokes. Ugh.

I had thought at one point that "Foley" referred to wrestler Mick Foley, who did have a few non-wrestling acting roles on his resume. But no, sadly it refers to former Kids In The Hall member Dave Foley. I guess having It's Pat as the low point in one's filmography just wasn't sufficient.

Between this and fellow Kid Kevin McDonald's recent appearance in the critical and creative bomb (but box office success) Epic Movie (3% at Rotten Tomatoes), I think we better watch out for an appearance by Bruce McCulloch on Armed & Famous 2 sometime in the future.

Stuff and Things...and Stuff

• Kevin Durant is a machine. He's actually giving me some hope...that we might make it past the second round this year.
• I normally roll my eyes at the folks that get all hyperventilated whenever they see anything vaguely related to religion near a government office, but even I think putting "In God We Trust" in the state senate chamber is a stupid idea. Let me get this straight - whenever Senators get stuck on something, or things get too contentious, they can just look up on the wall and realize everything will be alright, because "In God We Trust"? Please.
• Molly Ivins is dead. Since we should not speak ill of the dead, here is my eulogy for her: " "
• I can't believe that the upcoming Aqua Teen Hunger Force movie will appeal to anybody outside of the already narrow fanbase, but aside from the stupidity of planting electric signs on the undersides of overpasses and causing security alerts in Boston - did anyone at Adult Swim really think this would increase the ticket sales? That is, without something like this happening?