Just got back from The Weather Man, which I liked more than I thought I would. It was also a little darker than I thought it would be. It was cool to see all the Chicago scenery, and a little freaky in that there were several scenes shot in the mall where we saw the movie (like, "hey, we were just there... 20 minutes ago.").

Cage's character was rather clueless to what the other characters were going through, which struck me as kinda' Aspergers-ish. Michael Caine was really good in an understated performance.

eta: From IMDB:

There were many instances where I was the only person laughing in the theater.

That happened to me. Now I want to find someone who found it as funny as me. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that there were many cringe-worthy scenes too.

Shot of Thomas Haden Church from Spidey 3 filming, which is only spoilery if you read all the constant back-and-forth as regard to which villain he was playing and aren't sure which was true:

[link]

Geek out... now.

Shit, I...can't tell who that's supposed to be.

I read over at Oscarwatch (I think--somewhere on line) that Alexander Siddig is supposed to be really good in Syriana. Like, potential for Best Supporting Actor good (if the film hits big and takes off beyond expectations, which is a big if). I hope so--always had a Big Love for Dr. Bashir!

Me too, enough to sit through Reign of Fire, which then ended up being worth the rent just for the sheer laughability of it. Man, that movie was great/awful.

Funniest thing I've ever read in a Slashdot comment (this is clearly only vaguely an actual quote):

"I can't imagine the process that must have led to "Reign of Fire." Okay, actually, I can:

First Studio Idiot: Man. You know what's awesome?
Second Studio Idiot: Helicopters!
FSI: Um, well, yes. But I was thinking of dragons!
SSI: Yeah... Those are cool too.
*long pause*
FSI: What... what if we made a movie... that had both dragons AND helicopters?
SSI: Is that... possible?
FSI: Dude... this is gonna be the best movie ever!"

I had many reasons to like Reign of Fire, the frequent shirtlessness of Christian Bale, the lovely voice of Gerard Butler--unfortunately completely clad at all times, ditto Dr. Bashir. But I really loved the little geeky Star Wars play the Bale and Butler characters did for the kids. "hhhuuhhh-pahhh Luke. I AM your father." "Nooooo!" And then one of the kids asked, "Did you write that yourself?" And Bale said yes. Hee!

Shot of Thomas Haden Church from Spidey 3 filming, which is only spoilery if you read all the constant back-and-forth as regard to which villain he was playing and aren't sure which was true:

Oh HELL yeah. HELL YEAH!!!

Polter-Cow, he's Sandman.

The Star Wars bit was one of the only parts of Reign of Fire I actually liked.

Personally, I was hoping for more of the dragons and helicopters angle, in the sense of full-on dogfights rather than one lone unarmed helicopter with stupid people jumping out of it.

On the up side, helicopter vs. dragon would result in dragon-bits being chopped off as it meets the rotating blades. On the down side, helicopter blades don't tend to survive their meeting with dragon flesh, and helicopters don't tend to survive the loss of their blades.

So with only the one heliocopter, we were pretty much doomed to a lack of machine/animal dogfights.

Good thing people took their shirts off in that movie!!

Help me to organize my Netflix queue. What kind of movie am I in the mood for??