CP Chronicle 197

I was sitting at the Wife's computer down in the front room immediately below Spud Central running a Norton Utilities and Disk Warrior on it because it had been acting up recently. While I was sitting there listening to the disk spin and the computer churn itself into a state of correctness, I looked down street and noticed that in spite of the fact that there are at least 12 or 14 houses on each side of the street, I could I could actually only see trees and the odd car. This, in turn prompted me to ask nobody in particular if it was not true that we have one of the most spectacular views that it's possible to have here in the Centre of The Universe, to which the Wife merely chuckled and carried on doing whatever she was doing in the kitchen. Slice of life with creamy frosting.

MATRIX RELOADED (NO SPUD 4U) (BEEG SCREEN)

Now I will be the first Spud on the planet to acknowledge that dazzling visual effects are a wonderful thing. They're a big part of what makes a movie worth seeing on el screeno grande for sure. And I have to admit that the promise of dazzling visual effects are what drew us to a screening of Matrix Re-Loaded. Unfortunately, dazzling visual effects are virtually all this pretentious overacted, underwritten and extremely boring piece of crap had to offer. A few weeks ago, The Boy lent us his DVD of the original Matrix. We barely got through the first act when we realized we had actually forgotten just how pretentious overacted, underwritten and extremely boring a piece of crap it was, so we should have known better. But alas, that's the nature of the movie lover in a cracked nutshell.

As you know, movies don't just end up with a Zero Spud rating because they are bad. They end up there based mainly on the fact that they should have been a hell of a lot better than they were but weren't. Writers/Directors Andy & Larry Wachowski really should have known better. Because all they ended up with in this series of special effects punctuated by long boring dialogue scenes was an even more self-involved piece of crap than they started out with back in '96, when the first Matrix was released. Granted the effects in this sequel are fabulous. State of the art. Superb. Ten thousand propellerheads having a ball with their big black boxes.

But unfortunately, that's not enough these days for Spuds like me. I want it all. I want those mind numbing effects and I want characters who aren't sleepwalking, dialogue that doesn't have its head right up its ass and a story line that's a little more sophisticated than "The machines are coming to destroy our world!!!" Gag me with an particle accelerator. Not even the great and powerful Keanu Reeves could save this one save this one from the scorched earth where no spuds grow.

STAR TREK NEMESIS (ONE SPUD) (VIDEO)

Moving up the food chain ever so slightly, we come to the latest installment of what is now classified here at Spud Central as the 'interminable' Star Trek Next Generation 2 hour big screen episodes. These movies have managed to get worse and worse as times goes by and I have a feeling it's just because the people involved are all a little bit tired of doing them and it shows. This one has something to do with the Romulans cloning Picard with dreams of who knows what kind of intergallactic skullduggery in mind. Anyway, the Nemesis is coolly and (arguably) intelligently defeated by the ingenuity and forthrightness of the humanoids who man the Star Ship Enterprise. And that's the trouble with this film. I never felt anybody was in any kind of serious danger. Even when they attack was going hot and heavy and the shields were down to 10% and power was being diverted from (egads) life support to the damn shields, it just felt like another day at the office for Jean Luc and his motley crew, including a slightly more wrinkled Brent Spiner, as the paradoxically aging android, Data. I'm afraid even the hard core fans will find this one a little light in the antigrav boots for their tastes.

ANTWONE FISHER (ONE SPUD AND A BIT) (VIDEO)

This is the story of Antwone Fisher. It's written by Antwone Fisher. And stars a bunch of actors who play Antwone Fisher at various stages of his sad sack life. It was directed by Denzel Washington who also stars in it with Derek Luke, (as Antwone Fisher) and as a directorial debut, it's not bad. This movie reminded me a lot of The Colour Purple, although it was set in a different period, and had nowhere near the energy, it shared the theme of one black person's struggle to connect the missing dots his his life, which would theoretically make him whole. Yadda. Yadda. It's all very well done. It does not become a soap, which many movies with similar themes tend to do. I'm sure it rang true to a lot of black people or victims of abuse of one kind or another, because, if nothing else Antwone Fisher was certainly abused. But it moves slower than molasses in January and seemed somehow emotionally inert to me. Like poor Denzel had maybe bitten off more than he could chew and was slicing up his energy a bit too thin, never putting quite enough into his acting or his directing to imbue this flick any of the raw power that would make it a more enduring motion picture.
Antwone Fisher is worth seeing and probably should be seen. In spite of the fact that it's a pretty obvious story, the movie is trying and probably succeeds in making a few very important points. It just would have made them a lot more emphatically if it had been a stronger film. And that's all I've got say about that.

KEEN EDDIE (TWO SPUDS) (TV-FOX-TUESDAY NIGHT)

Keen Eddie is a cop show. It's kind of a fish out of water thing. It's essentially a hell of a lot of fun. More shows should try and have this kind of fun. TV would be much more watchable as a result. I know this is a half-assed review, but I don't want to get into a page three this week. I'm too tired. Watch Keen Eddie. It's well, really keen.
See you next week

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