A Denver Broncos Update

New quarterback brought in - Brady Quinn.

Odd-man-out quarterback cut - Chris Simms!

Is it petty of me to feel happy as Chrissy is cut from yet another team?

It is? Oh, well.

Suck it, Simms!

Movie Review: Thunderbolt

Kind of an odd movie in the Jackie Chan filmography, Thunderbolt sees Jackie playing....well, it's kind of hard to tell. The opening credits montage seems to show him as an automotive engineer, a car test driver, a tow truck driver, and auto racer and a corporate mail delivery boy(?). Once the movie itself starts, he appears to be doing automobile customization work, but he's also helping the police bust illegal street racers.

Suffice it to say, this may not have been the most carefully thought-out film.

Which is surprising, because it looks like they might have had to spend some money on this one. There's an extensive set piece where Jackie's workshop/living quarters are destroyed by a trailer swung around on a crane, another where a Pachinko parlor is destroyed, and this being a racing film, there is of course a lengthy race scene at the end, with numerous crashes (it's more like a demolition derby by the final few laps). I doubt anyone was paid real money for this work, but it still looks impressive.

There's also a couple of good action/fight scenes. The aforementioned property destruction is one, but the standout actually occurs earlier, when a gang first tries to just beat up Jackie in his shop. This isn't the more light-hearted style of fighting usually seen in Chan's movies; things seem to be taken a little more seriously here. This is particularly seen in an assault on a police station with grenades and automatic weapons - actually on-screen bloodshed was pretty rare in Jackie Chan movies at this point in his career, and this part was more of a Western-style action film than Hong Kong.

Sadly, the early momentum is not sustained, and once we hit the big race at the end, we are treated to a lot of scenes of cars passing each other and crashing. I'm not a big race fan, so this really didn't do much for me. The camerawork in general didn't help much either - lots of stuttering slow-motion type effects were used for some reason, enough to be distracting. I'd rather see the big finale to a Jackie Chan movie be a big fight scene, not watching a stuntman drive a car around.

So in the end, a few parts are of interest, but on the whole, not a good effort. Two stars. Up next in my ongoing chronological Jackie Chan film festival: Jackie makes attempt number four to enter the U.S. market with Rumble In The Bronx.

A Pair Of Reallys

From Slashfilm:

In late-2008, we told you that Sherwood Schwartz and his son Lloyd Schwartz had signed a deal to bring Gilligan’s Island to the big screen.But we haven’t really heard anything about the big screen adaptation for over a year, until now. Variety reports that Warner Bros is developing the feature film with Atlas Entertainment. Charles Roven and Richard Suckle are on board to produce, and screenwriter Brad Copeland has been hired to write the screenplay.

First off - a Gilligan's Island movie? Inevitable, I suppose, but still...really?

Second - "Richard Suckle"? Aka "Dick Suckle"....really?

House Call

I guess I need to finish up my Fourth Doctor review series, so that I can get caught up on my Tenth Doctor episodes. Because now I see I'm about to be two Doctors behind....

BBC America has announced that season 5 will debut on Saturday, April 17th, less than two weeks after it airs in Great Britain (on Easter, or April 4th).

I did watch the Eccleston-era episodes, but I only just got started on the David Tennant episodes before it dropped off my radar, for some reason. So I've got about two-and-a-half seasons worth of shows to watch if I want to get up to date before the premiere.

I've finished my rewatch of Tom Baker's Season 17 - I just need to write it up. And then I'll need to slog through Season 18; can you tell it's not one of my favorites? Oh, well.

(From BBC via Topless Robot)

Movie Review: Drunken Master II

AKA The Legend of Drunken Master in the United States.

This is it. I've reviewed a whole heap of Jackie Chan movies, but if you watch only one, this is the one to watch. Unlike some of the older movies, you aren't waiting around for the big fight at the end to see the fireworks. Here, just about every fight sequence is outstanding - a staff-versus-sword fight underneath a train, a drunken fighting battle in a marketplace, Jackie taking on an axe-wielding gang with a bamboo pole, and the final classic scene in a foundry with Jackie taking on kick-fighting expert Ken Lo (and a pit of red-hot coals). This is Jackie at his top form- fluid, acrobatic and imaginative.

And for a change, the non-action scenes mostly keep up with the action. This is mostly due to the efforts of Anita Mui, playing Jackie's step-mother (despite being younger than Jackie). She channels her inner Lucille Ball here, switching from comic schemer to penitent dutiful wife in an instant when her long-suffering husband appears. Between Jackie's Wong Fei-hung and Anita's wife, it's amazing the husband stayed sane as long as he did.

The plotline is not unusual for a Jackie film. He plays a young man (despite his being way too old for that type of role by this point) who is talented in martial arts but undisciplined. He finally run afoul of his father (too much drunken boxing, even if in a good cause) and is cast out. Unlike other films, though, he doesn't end up getting trained by an older master - here, he just finds the right path by himself. He ends up working to battle the typical "evil British masters" who are working to smuggle out jade artifacts and close a local factory and take over Jackie's family home. As I said, little pieces from many movies in the past, but put together much better here.

This really is the peak for Jackie Chan films. Five stars for sure. Up next in the Festival: Jackie tries a new occupation, getting behind the wheel in Thunderbolt.

It's Nice To Be Wanted

I cancelled my DirecTV service that I have had since 2002 and switched over to AT&T UVerse. I called to cancel my service on Sunday night. Since then, two and one half days later, I've received ten calls to my house from a 1-800 number that I've since found out is owned by DirecTV. Ten calls - averaging four times a day. They haven't ever left a message, but I can see all of the missed calls courtesy of UVerse's digital phone service, which logs the missed phone calls for me.

For the record - I didn't particularly have any problem with DirecTV. I thought their customer service, for the few times I used it, was generally good and effective. And I didn't have any real issues with the DirecTV service itself - I grumbled when the prices increased, of course, but not to excess.

I dropped DirecTV because (a) UVerse was cheaper, especially once I bundled in HDTV upgrades, (b) UVerse provided better functionality than DirecTV (in particular, the Total Home DVR), (c) the UVerse TV/Phone/Internet combo was cheaper and a better deal than the corresponding DirecTV/SBC/Earthlink combo I had at the time, (d) UVerse stuck in a $400 rebate, and (e) there wasn't a contract period with UVerse, so I felt I could switch back if the service proved unsatisfactory.

Now, I told the DirecTV customer support person when I cancelled that I already had started service with a new provider. So there really isn't any reason for ten calls in two days. I've now forwarded calls from DirecTV to come over to my cell (another nice UVerse service), so I can catch one of these calls and hopefully bring them to an end. Hopefully, this won't prove to be an ongoing problem. But I think it is an indication of how cutthroat things are for cable/satellite providers right now that they would put this much effort into holding onto a customer.

A Chance At History

Has there ever been a team start 17-0....and not make the NCAA tournament?

They might still be one of the top 65 teams in the nation, but they aren't in the top 32. This team is bad. Is it baseball season yet?