All Too Well- Taylor Swift

Wgbw, I know I promised no more non-Halloween reviews but I couldn't let such a moment in history pass me by.

1) I'm not giving a spoiler alert about song of the year (obvi), but I wanted to update one of the previous posts here about song of the year.

2) Maybe it's my ADD but this song is by far and away a front runner now. It's hard for me to get too tuned into the songs that I was gii on in February but I still think this one is running away with it.

3) I haven't been this gitty about lyrics in a while but I even got Bricker excited about dis (maybe not lol):

"Maybe we got lost in translation, maybe I'd asked for too much, but maybe this thing was a masterpiece till you tore it all up. Running scared i was there, i remember it all toooo wellll. you call me up again just to break me like a promise, so casually cruel, in the name of being of honest"

If those weren't some of the best TSwift lyrics of all time I don't know what were. 

If I could give a better grade I would,

A++

Top 10 Horror Villians: #8: Ghostface

#8 on the countdown is the Ghostface killer from the hit movie/s Scream.

Now I know that s/he isn't technically one killer since s/he audibles from movie to movie, but the mask is pretty iconic. But the fact that s/he's not a stable character probably limits her/his potential by quite a bit. (A lot of gender neutral stuff in that paragraph).

Random aside, one time on Halloween someone was wearing this mask and just staring at people on the side of the road. That shit spooks the hell out of me when people have masks on and just don't say stuff when you talk to them. You never know who could be behind the mask lol.

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter

1) Not really much of a horror movie. I mean, I get that there are vampires in it and all, but it's not really spooky, especially since it's supposed to be historical (well in a fictional sense). Most of the movies are just these action shots that are overshot in slow motion. If there wasn't so much slow motion the movie would probably get over faster lol.

2) I'd go on a rant about watching these 3D movies without the 3D effect but I've barked up that tree too many times before.

3) How tight was it when Papa Doc from the hit motion picture 8 Mile popped up in it. He automatically bumps up every movie rating he's in, he's just so tight (see What's Your Number for more evidence of this).  Come to think of it, he probably just should've challenged the vampires to rap battles. I mean, it's kind of like an old school duel, but still gives an appropriate shout out to his role in 8 mile.

4) Although this movie wasn't generally reviewed well by the critics, I do fear that it could spark a wreck of spinoffs that could be horrible. Imagine 'William Taft: Bathtub Layer'. The possibilities to Linc (link get it?) presidents to horror icons makes me nervous about the future of these movies.

C-

Top 10 Horror Villians: #9: Leatherface

WGBW, number 9 is Leatherface from The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.

Although I never thought this movie was super good, he makes the countdown for historical reasons. Obvi most everyone knows about this movie, and the chainsaw killer spawned a litany of knockoff movies and scenes that were probably drawn from the movie.

Although I kind of highlighted his limitations in my earlier review, he's still pretty scary with that chainsaw. I know a bunch of haunted houses have crazy looking people run around with chainsaws to scare all the people waiting to get in. That sure would work on me /o\

Top 10 Horror Villians: #10: Pennywise

#10 of the countdown is that scary ass clown from the movie IT.

I've actually never reviewed this movie because it's been like a decade since I've seen it (I used to own it on VHS lol) and I'm literally afraid of watching it again. I mean, the clown goes after a bunch of little kids at the beginning of the movie.

I know a lot of people that have a fear of clowns and if you're one of those people never go see this movie.  Even the photo of him is scary.

And what's up with the name Pennywise? That's some creepy stuff too.

Top 10 Horror Villains

Wgbw, I've decided the countdown for this year will be the top 10 horror villains of all time.

I can't provide any objective way that I'm really going to rank them but I should provide a few disclaimers:

1) They probably won't be ranked solely based on cultural impact. Obvi that will determine their ranking but the countdown won't focus on it entirely.

2) As a follow up to that, you can imagine that the characters won't be ranked based on how good they were on rotten tomatoes so don't get your hopes up Jon. 

3) How scary they were to little (or older) Buffalo will probably be a pretty big factor. Some of these characters have scared me for the better part of my youth so you can count on them making the countdown.

Anywho, I'll start off with #10 later tonight, I love you all

-buff

Sleepaway Camp 2

1) It was actually light years ahead of the original Sleepaway Camp. This one took the same path as the old one where they just try and focus on how crazy all the deaths could be. Only this time she didn't manage to TKO people in as many goofy ways. Obvi the toilet bowl kill was goofy and so was the guitar string but at least it's an improvement from that awful first one. 

2) The horror movies with the comedic side to them are always hit or miss. This one was okay even though this is obvi not intended to be scary. I think it's just trying to shock everyone with how crazy the kills are.

3) There was some tight connections to other horror movies going on. Obvi the references to the Friday the 13th and the Nightmare on Elm Street movies. There's also a guy named JUDD in it which is tight.

4) Overall the whole lack of getting spooked still puts a ceiling on dis one. It's just hard to imagine some 100 pound 18 year old being able to just wreck havoc on an entire camp. Who knows though.

C-

Taylor Swift- Red Review

First as random aside- was I the only one to get this early? I preordered it off Amazon and it got here 2 days early. I feel bad for all of those teenagers that have to wait till Monday lol. Anywho, here are my initial thoughts after tuning into this for 24 hours (this will be the only detour from horror movies the rest of October too lol).

1) Overall super solid. It's hard to say where it ranks amongst her previous 3 albums but it's obvi top notch.

2) It has a pretty solid mix of super pop songs with her usual sad, slow breakup songs. I'm not crazy about her 2 duets that are on the album but I get that she might like Snow Patrol in real life.

3) Omitting the previously released singles she had off of the album, it's pretty obvi that she'll release '22', Starlight, and Stay Stay Stay. 22 is pretty catchy, but I'm not too wild about the other 2.

4) It's kind of an odd thing about my music taste (well besides that it's usually not very good lol), but I really dig sad slow breakup songs when I'm not going through some breakup. I dunno why I dig them when I'm in a good place in my life but I do. This has probably been one of the tightest months of my life, so I'm really tuning into 'All Too Well' and 'I Almost Do'. The lyrics on them are really good and they're obvi super slow and sad LOL.

Obvi you know this would get a good grade,

A

Near Dark

1) Really kind of an odd vampire movie. I'm not sure they ever mention the word vampires and except for the sun, they don't really show any anti-vampire techniques being rampantly used.

2) Vampire movies always give me the willies. I have a thing about the back of my ankles, my wrists, and my neck that freak me out when people touch me there. When she just bites him at the beginning of the movie I almost jumped out of my bed lol. And then the rest of the movie he just sucks on her wrist. Super creepy.

3) It's really tight when that driver goes missing. The guy is confused why the driver went to Kansas while he shoulda been in Waco, Texas. For anyone that's ever been to Waco, there's no mystery why you'd rather be in Kansas. I guess if you wanna get shit on by birds and cage an animal on your campus I understand. Kind of tight that the final showdown takes place in Kansas too.

4) Maybe it's just the Oklahoma/Texas crowd, but why on earth don't more people just GTFO when they see the vampires? It's like they're chilling at a bar and then vampires start biting people and everyone just stays chilling. I've only been at tha bar a few times when a fight broke out and generally it scared the hell out of me. I dunno why they're sticking around for the whole thing.

5) Pretty tight there's a little RomCom to it too with that dude and chick.

Good stuff,

A-

Top 10 Countdown 2012

WGBW, still have a movie review coming for later tonight. But just thought I'd let you all know that I've narrowed down the top 10 countdown lists this year to two choices.

Either

1) The top 10 decades of scary movies (care of @buns0n).

or

2) Buff's top 10 best Halloweens (care of @thewholemilk).

Both of these are solid choices and I'm down for either. The countdown has to start the 22nd, and I'll have to put in some thought on either of the lists. I know some of the jitsu fans who don't know me personally will probably get confused by the second countdown, but I also know those of you who tune in on the reg are already probably bored of my scary movie reviews.

Anywho, let me know \o/

-buff

Friday the 13th Part 6: Jason Lives

WGBW, got a special post for you tonight. I'm re-reviewing the movie that was the blog's first ever post: Friday the 13th Part 6. Obvi my blogging skills are light years ahead of where they were then (lol) but for how good this movie is I never truly gave it the credit it deserved.

1) The biggest historical role for this movie was that it saved the Friday the 13th franchise from that really mediocre Friday the 13th Part 5 movie. Not that I was tuning into these movies at the time, but if I was I would've been so reluctant to go see this in the theaters after the part 5 movie. This movie is just literally running laps around the previous one.

2) I'd echo all of my sentiment from my post from 2 years ago. They rep that it's on Friday the 13th, Jason does do a pretty consistent job of going to town, and I still have a crush on the girl in this movie. I probably didn't rep that last point enough during my first review: it's really tight that this movie has a somewhat romcom flavor to it. How tight it must be for that Tommy guy. I mean, you get terrorized by Jason, locked up for the latter part of a decade, and then get thrown into jail only to be saved by the really good looking daughter of the sheriff. I know I think my life is tuning up but Tommy is probably one upping me.

3) This is the only Friday the 13th movie with no nudity, so if you're looking for some (sort of) clean family fun here it is.

4) Even the ending is tight. Given that it's the 6th movie of the series it's not ground breaking that there will be another sequel but I'm glad they didn't pretend to finish him off for good.

A

Godzilla, King of the Monsters!

1) I'm kinda confused how they are not totally sure of who wrecked all the havoc in the first place. I mean, didn't people see this gigantic monster running around this huge city? I get they couldn't tweet what was going on at the time to alert the others, but really this doesn't seem to be that hard to figure out. He's not bigfoot.

2) I dunno what's going on with these older classic movies. But it seems like no monster/villain ever just pops out of nowhere. In The Mummy, The Invisible Man, and Frankenstein all involve these scientists that are just curiously creating these supermonsters to wreck havoc on the world. At least in this one the guy has made an oxygen destroyer instead of just creating the monster himself.

3) And what a crazy thing to just start investigating in. I mean, who sits around and just decides to develop some formula that sucks the oxygen up out of you? Did he get a license from the government for this? Seems like some risky experimenting.

4) It's hard to be too scared of this at the end of the day. Living in Kansas kind of insulates me from having to fear oceanesque creatures that could make it rain on small town KS. Then again, I did get nervous that the guy jumping out of space the other day might just land through the Cone. Never say never.

C-

The Butterfly Effect

WGBW, sorry for the delays. I promise no more days off on the blog. I know October's half way over and I promise not to disappoint anymore ;)

1) I should cover some jurisdictional issues up front. I know this isn't a horror movie per se, but it spooked me out quite a bit so I think it's worthy of inclusion here.

2) It's a really solid movie. Maybe it personally resonates with me or something, but it's always crazy to me how the butterfly effect operates in the real world. It's like, what if I never saw the original Halloween and never got a thing for horror movies? What if I trusted my instincts and never let the long-haired Bricker first hang out with me? What if I stayed in and never met that one* girl at the bar?  It's really wild stuff when you step back and think about how some chance encounter can affect your life lol.

3) Besides that this movie mixes the right bit of creepiness with optimism. I mean, the whole creepy dad/ Amy Smart falling off the cliff / kids leg getting blown off stuff is all pretty intense. But AK always gives you some hope that he could just go back and fix things.

4) I guess the movie ending is kind of bad. It reminded me of The Breakup when they just pass each other in the street and never know what could've been. Bunz always said no regrets, so it's hard for me to get on board with this idea that people should travel back in time to avoid making mistakes that they could fix in hindsight. Just gives you some deep stuff to think about.

B+

The Invisible Man (1933)

1) Obvi reminds me of the underrated movie Hollow Man. Only this ones some 60 years earlier lol.

2) If this really happened it would obviously be one of the scariest things that has ever happened. Where would you hide from this guy? My first thought was just to go hang out in your car and feel around until you made sure it was clear and then get the hell out of town. But what if he's just hanging on to the top of your car or something? Really no where to run. 

3) For all the perks of being invisible, the guy does have some good talking points about the drawbacks of it. Walking down the stairs would  be hard as hell since you can't look at your feet. I'm sure kickboxing, dancing, and a variety of other habits would have to go out the door as well.


4) The ending was a little ho-hum. I'm always for the horror movies that leave at least a little bit of a cliff hanger. It's too bad that they just showed him ultimately getting TKO'd and returning to normal. Doesn't really leave much room for a sequel.

B-

Creature from the Black Lagoon

1) This would give me the willies even if there wasn't a giant creature that was hanging out in the Amazon. When I was in Vegas, Leslie dragged me to this aqarium thing where all the sharks and stuff were swimming around in the walls and stuff. Scared the hell out of me. This whole movie is them just hanging out around all these creepy fishes and what not. Scary enough for me.

2) That being said, there's a pretty simple solution to this whole mess. If you quit dicking around by the water you really wouldn't have a problem with this thing. When he's on land he moves at less than a mile an hour and sticks out his gigantic claws so you could see him coming from a mile away. Why they keep investigating while everyone keeps getting TKO'd kind of befuddles me.

3) I mean these people keep dying and they hypothesize that the Creature might just be a 'mosquito that they can shoe away'? HELLO MCFLY.

4) For you Dawson's Creek fans out there, you'll remember that this movie got repped a lot in the Pilot episode lol.

Meh,

D+

Damien: Omen 2

1) Actually a pretty solid movie in the context of sequels. To be fair most of the initial sequels to the biggest horror movies have been good (see Halloween 2, Friday the 13th Part 2, and Nightmare on Elm Street 2), but this one was good too.

2)  I should preface that by saying that I've never seen any other sequel to the original Omen, so it's totally possible that all of the other ones rule too but I'm pessimistic.

3) It gets pretty redundant when all of the people keep dying the same way.  It makes sense that Damien can just make them die off. But how does he have this crow with superpowers that follows him around and TKO's anyone who's suspicious of him? Seems like it's kind of cheating.

4) And how doesn't he notice the giant 666 on the top of his head? I mean, the kids 13 and has probably gotten at least 100 haircuts. Wouldn't the school nurse have checked it for lice at some point and been like: "Holy God, he has the sign of the antichrist engraved on his head, I should think about alerting the local priest."

Nothing compared to the original but still pretty good,

B

The Mummy (1932)

1) Trying to gii with some of the classic movies that I've never seen before. Most of these aren't too bad because even though they're in black and white and what not, they are only like an hour long which is right up my alley.

2) It's kinda wild that the mummy guy doesn't even look like a mummy for a wreck of the movie. I dressed up like a mummy a few years ago (which was dumb- toilet paper doesn't stay wrapped around you for very long lol) but I never actually knew how little time that guy actually rocked the outfit in the movie.

3) Seems like I've been watching a bunch of movies lately that involve someone reading some scroll or poem that just ends up wrecking havoc on everyone. It's always one of those situations where everyone wants to read it because they don't think anything could go wrong but then it does. Reason 3234378 not to read any ancient history books in some other language.

4) It was really tight when they first woke the mummy up. That one guy goes crazy and then just laughs about how the mummy is going on a walk. It's pretty tight the Mummy is on #teamwalk.

C+

Halloween Night

1) Alright blog world, this is hopefully the last really mediocre movie I review this month. I know I have a checkered past but I'm really trying to get better after this lol.

2) I thought this would be okay because it seemed to kind of parallel the original Halloween movie: the guy gets out of an asylum and comes and wrecks havoc on Halloween night. Sounds good but this one went straight to DVD for a reason.

3) Almost every death in the movie happened the exact same way. This guy pops up at the party and everybody thinks he's just horsing around since he's wearing a mask so they just joke with him until he KO's them. I mean, using that once or twice was okay but it was almost the entire movie.

4) And how ridiculous was the end? A guy who looks like bigfoot is walking down an empty interstate wearing only a priest-robe with a paper plate tied onto his head with an upside down smiley face on it and this guy just decides to give him a ride?

Go back and re-read that last sentence. It was as ridiculous to type as the ending of the movie was lol.

D

Evil Dead 2

1) So this has a 98% on Rotten Tomatoes and I've seen it 3 times and just still can't really tune in. The first Evil Dead was also just making it rain on RT but I must be out to lunch or something.

2) I think part of my beef with it is that I'm not too gung-ho about comedic horror movies. And I'm not in love with super super gory movies. I get that in 1987 this was pretty wild but now I'm not really tuning in.

3) I know I'm not a history major either. But why on Earth did he get sucked back to never-ever land at the end of the movie? I mean, I guess the whole point of the movie is to be comedic and what not but why pick such a ridiculous ending? If someone asked me to explain the resolution of this movie I'd be at a loss for words.

4) I think I'm also griping because I obvi enjoy short horror movies that take just a min to get to the plot before quickly getting to the point. This movie jumped into the deep end right off the bat and then just stayed there doggy-paddling around for over an hour. Then the ending just literally sucked the guy up into a drain or something.

Befuddled,

D+

The Eye (2008)

1) Not a great way to start off October lol. I know this is a remake of the Japanese movie, but I guess I thought it'd be a good idea because I can't remember of another horror movie with an eye transfer involved lol.

2) Really not much to say about it. The whole movie isn't really scary at all. It kind of reminded me of The Ward. That girl just sees a bunch of shenanigans that may or may not be real. Only this time the whole point of her getting her eye sight back was to warn of that impending explosion or something. To be honest  EYE don't really know, I didn't keep my EYE on the screen too much after about an hour in (lol).

3) I heard Jessica Alba won a Razzie for this. I'm not really a good judge of what is or isn't good acting (obvi). But all the parts where she was 'playing' the violin it wasn't matching up at all with sound.

4) It's kinda hard to get too excited about this too because I'm unclear if it's actually a horror movie. To me a horror movie kind of has to scare you after you quit watching. Like Chucky is even scary because he could come after you. But here, I'm unsure what was supposed to spook you and how it's even scary given the ending.

5) At least it had a reference to Nightmare on Elm Street when she wakes up and her arm is all messed up. Otherwise maybe don't tune.

D+

Happy October!

Wgbw, happy October. Today is the second greatest day of the year and I'm excited \o/

I've got a movie post for later tonight (obvi it's October) but wanted to let all the fans know what direction I'll be moving in this year.

There's a bunch of classic horror movies that I'm gonna get on here, as well as a bunch of the horror cult classics (that I never seem to enjoy lol) along with some sequels that I've been neglecting.

@warnerben had the tight idea of tuning back into some sort of countdown. Those always go over well but I need to brainstorm for an idea of what to countdown. I thought about doing my top 10 favorite horror movies but I'm afraid the blog may have already given that away.

The one change I think I'll be making from years past is that I'm going to re-review some of the more solid Halloween movies that I tune into year round. Not that I didn't review them great the first time around, but looking back on the early days of the blog I'm sure I can make these posts a lot better. This will happen towards the latter part of October.

As always, if the fans have any suggestions for something for me to review (outside of reviewing the Dirty Projectors concert lol) I'm all on board.

Stay tuned!

Sleeping with the tv off - a case study

 Wgbw, I know I just promised to try and stay away from the self-reflective posts, but this is sort of related since I often fall asleep to scary movies so bear with me.

I've chronicled my journey with sleeping with the tv on and off and thought I'd keep you posted about it. 

9/17/12: I've determined I might have to start sleeping with the tv off. 

To those of you know me, this is unbelievable. For years I have slept with the TV on. The whole reason the couchbread is so popular is because of the gigantic TV in front of it.  It used to be a deal breaker with girls. It was never anything personal, but if you couldn't sleep with the tv on I wouldn't be able to sleep at night. Even the whole 'let's put the sleep timer' thing never made much sense to me.

I mostly trace this back to my childhood. I grew up sleeping with the tv on. Whenever I went to stay at someone's house I could never sleep. Now, being 26 years old, I still can't sleep with the tv off when I'm not in my own bread.

Lately though it's been giving me problems. For the last 4 months I've been waking up every 3-4 hours, checking the clock, and then immediately falling back asleep. Part of the reason I can fall back asleep so easily is that I've seen every episode of the hit tv show Friends 2539 times so when I wake up and it's on the TV I don't tune in too much. I didn't read too much into at first, but then it was a nightly ritual. After doing some research I found out that it can screw with your blood pressure, your ability to make sound life choices, and can cause over the top nightmares. Now I've never believed in the whole 'sleeping with the tv on leads to depression' argument because I'm generally happier when I wake up and the TV is on and more depressed when I realized someone has shut it off.  But the rest of this kind of spooked me. I've had high blood pressure off and on, make poor decisions (well rarely), and have creepy nightmares on the reg.

After realizing that I'm probably the only person I know who has (or even wants) to sleep with the TV on, I've decided I'm going to start shutting it off when I get drowsy. We'll see how this goes.

9/24/12: What a dumb idea that was

Well, after a day or two of that experiment, I've determined that I'm never shutting off the TV again. Ever.

After an hour of being restless I'd eventually fall asleep but then wake up every 3 hours. And when I woke up I'd just lay there confused, wondering why the TV was off.  "Did the power go out? Did Bricker sneak in here to play a cruel prank on me? Am I not at the Cone?"

I've also figured out that there could be other culprits. My mattress pad is old, my beds not pushed up against the wall anymore, and it's no longer summer (story for another post).

Now of course I'll have to figure out the other problems associated with sleeping with the TV on at a later date (i.e. settling down with someone, our energy bill, etc.), but for now I think I'll keep tuning in. 

The Cube

1) I watched this after realizing they had repped it in The Cabin in the Woods.I do think that I am a pretty big horror movie geek, but I still always have a hard time getting behind these 'cult horror' movies. But I'm trying to get better at it so I tuned into this.

2) I thought the acting was all pretty mediocre. Nobody really seemed believable and didn't seem too shocked that these people kept getting killed off in this random cube that they woke up in.

3) It also seemed like this was an earlier setup of all of the Saw movies. It's just these people all waking up in this crazy metal cube and having no idea how they got there. This must've been a solid plot idea in 1997.

4) My problem is that there's no explanation for the cube. I realized this when trying to tag the post. It's not really a haunted house, no one knows if they were set up by a killer or what's going on. They never figure out how they got in there, who put them in there, or where the one guy that gets away at the end is going. Maybe that's why it's supposed to be appealing, but I'm not really digging it. Like in life (lol) I think things need closure and this movie just ends with too many questions unanswered.

D+

Episodes Season 2

1) I can't believe how long ago it was that I reviewed the first season. I was pretty wild about it and it just picked up as the season went on. This season was almost completely backwards. The first few eps were so tight then it just went downhill from there.

2) They transitioned well to everybody getting used to the breakup. And I never would've guessed about the Matt/Boss's wife thing.

3) And obvi it was tight because Matt is just so wholly inappropriate in all of his jokes and the way the British guy reacts to them is always clutch.

4) The biggest problem with the season is just the redundant plots that get boring. I mean, we get the show isn't doing well. And that the two British people can't reconcile. And that the boss isn't going to leave his wife. But it just happens every episode and only partially gets resolved in the finale. I had to shut off like 3 of the eps as they were going on it got so bad.

:(

C+

The Breakfast Club

1) Pretty solid movie. I'm not wild about all of the emotional moments that tend to take over these movies but it was good.

2) I don't really understand why everyone could get so emotional during the day. I mean, I get the stir crazy thing. I've been sitting in my room for the better part of the last 4 months watching mediocre horror movies. It screws with your head. But I think all of them end up crying at some point during the day. And they drop all these emotional bombs on each other. Just seems sort of odd.

3) For example, I don't think I would fit in here. Never having had detention (yeah buddy) I can't say for sure, but I imagine I'd probably just try to nap or read some of the magazines or something. Maybe try to talk to Emilio Estevez about wrestling or something, but besides that I can't imagine this is too hard.

4) Rumor was that it was shot at GBN but I have no idea having never been in the GBN library. Oh- how tight was it that the wrestler was named Andrew? Pretty tight.

B

Rocky IV

In the spirit of America (yesterday), I figured I review one of the best Rocky movies: this one lol.

1) It's one of my favorite Rocky movies because it's not as long as the rest lol. And he's fighting for America which is tight.

2) It's pretty unbelievable that the guy gets TKO'd for real at the beginning of the movie. Seems like Las Vegas has had enough experience with boxing fights that they could prevent that from happening.  

3) Obvi my biggest beef with the movie is that the famous Bill Conti song GONNA FLY NOW isn't in it. It's one of the best songs to rep while you need to get motivated to finish your workout and it makes me sad it missed this film. Wikipedia informs me that he was too busy with the tight Karate Kid movies to do this which is fair because all of those movies are top-notch.

B+

Mean Girls

I'm gonna try to get out of the way all of the non-horror movies I've seen recently since the great month of October is almost upon us. (I guess this has a little Halloween stuff in it. They go to that party and her two friends are watching Friday the 13th Part 2
).

1) It's a really solid movie. Pretty funny, original, and was a big motion picture debut for a lot of the people in it.

2) The really crazy part in this movie is that Lindsay Lohan plays the hero of the movie while Rachel McAdams is the evil one. I don't read a lot of gossip magazines (obvi) but I get that LL's gotten herself into a fair share of trouble. But evertime I think of Rachel McAdams I just think of how tight she was in The Notebook.

3) The other crazy thing  I never realized was that this was Amanda Seyfried's  big debut. She's one of my celebrity crushes which I'm sure I've mentioned before (see Jennifer's Body or Letters to Juliet).

4) And how tight was that kid's business card? Math enthusiast/bad ass M.C. Top notch.

Good stuff

A-

Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971)

1) @Stone thought I should review this and that's not a horrible idea. I actually am not a fan of family/feel-good movies generally but this one was pretty good.

2) I know it's a fictional story and all, but it's pretty unbelievable. He has this big factory that sells candy that nobody's ever allowed to inspect? Obvi they don't abide by any safety regulations. Kind of makes you wonder if those oompa loompa people are paid well and stuff.

3) And really the kids are going this apeshit over winning a lifetime supply of candy? I mean, I know kids dig the candy and all,  but it's probably not worth getting this excited about. Back in the day I used to love those nerd ropes until I ate myself sick of them, but don't really think I would've been this nutso about winning a lifetime supply of the stuff.

4) And actually this movie is pretty spooky. That dude who tries to buy off the kids is creepy, the whole factory place gives me the willies, and the fact that there's just all of this scary unchartered territory to conquer gives me the shakes. The newer version of the film actually scares the hell out of me more. Johnny Depp is generally creepy to me but he is just off the charts in that movie.

B-

Buff Boxing

Wgbw, I don't usually tune out of blogging about movies but I occasionally get off the subject (see buff, KU BBall, and UFC). This morning I started watching this awful horror movie that's not even worth the blogs time. So I figured I'd venture off of scary movies for a min and share my recent experience getting back into kick/boxing.

1) Yesterday was the 3rd month anniversary of me getting back into kick/boxing. I've lost around 18 pounds since I've started doing it. I can't say that it's all related to just doing that since I've taken up long walks and I've obvi still been gii at the gym, but I know it's had a pretty big influence on it. I think group training is inevitably better than gii by yourself because it's hard to stop half way through when you're tired because everyone else is still pushing it.

2) It's kind of crazy that I still feel like I struggle with basic combos sometimes. I guess it makes sense that I wrestled for 6 years and was always pretty mediocre at it even though we drilled it all the time. I think I'm constantly getting better but I guess I just thought it would all come together quicker. (FWIW I could still put a whooping on Hardy, just not a lot of people who train at the gym lol.)

3) I'm a real big fan because it also forces you to work on your core/legs which I usually never have any motivation to do. It's also boosted my endurance when I run and engage in *other* activities requiring cardiovascular endurance. The only trouble with it is that I feel like I'm overtraining sometimes when I lift a bunch of weights in the morning and have to box at night. I'm still trying to tackle that problem.

4) Anytime I've taken someone there with me they always think it's pretty tight. If any locals want to check it out I highly recommend it.

#teamswoll

Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master

1) It's better than I remembered but that's not saying much. Of all of the 80s horror sequel movies (this, Halloween and Friday the 13th), the Nightmare series is by far the worst. This movie isn't horrible but it's definitely the movie that starts the downward trend for the whole Nightmare series.

2) I guess it starts off in a similar manner as the other ones which is solid. The problem is the goofy ass ways that they start TKOing Freddy. I tried rewinding this to figure out exactly how that girl beats him up and I'm still not sure I understand it. She like shows Freddy that he's actually been possessing all of these other kids and so he just collapses on himself?

3) And how does she start accumulating all of the other kids powers? This also begs the question that if this can defeat Freddy (at least until the next movie) why don't they always do this in future movies?

4) It's also disheartening to realize that if eventually I ever become good at boxing that Freddy could still just put a whooping on me.  

C+

The Haunting (1999)

Sorry bw, I was going to post this much earlier in tha week but I passed tha bar(!!) and am just getting around to it now.

1) It took me a while to sit through it, but it was actually one of those movies that got better the more I powered through it. Liam Neeson tricks these people with sleeping problems to come stay over a this creepy place to see if they can eventually just believe that the place is super scary.

2) Then it got kind of goofy. One of the chicks realizes she is the daughter of one of the wives of the dudes who killed all of these kids so that they could stay in tha house for eternity with him.  So she decides that she just wants to never leave the place so she can reconnect with these people or something.

3) Little kids always spook me out so I guess that part was pretty freaky. And when the chick sees the person hang themselves it was scary. I think it kind of reminded me of that creepy ass scene in The Omen when the babysitter decides to jump off tha house in front of all of those kids.

4) It had a pretty star studded cast. CZJ, Liam Neeson and Owen Wilson all had much larger roles in some more popular movies. Surprised they all got together for this one.

C