Piranha 3DD – the third greatest movie ever made

I can’t find the list of my outstanding questions to answer even thought I KNOW that I bookmarked it.  Ergo I have failed just like that time one of my friends lost the dry erase board where they kept track of their points.  I lost blogging.  Again. 

Spoiler alert I guess.

I watched the Deadwood movie last weekend.  I haven’t watched the Breaking Bad movie yet, but a lot of the reviews of the Breaking Bad movie were something along the line of “I like Breaking Bad so it was cool to see more stuff but it didn’t really add anything to the story and was basically pointless and self-indulgent”.  I mean all TV is literally self-indulgent, but you know. 

I enjoyed the Deadwood but also I didn’t care about it, what I want is more episodes – a movie to wrap things up didn’t do much for me because I didn’t feel like there was anything to wrap up.  A lot of people felt like the show ended on a cliffhanger which never made sense to me because everything that needed a resolution was resolved.  I don’t like it when a final episode of a show has an “end” for every character – they should just continue on. 

Now that I’ve said that I enjoyed it let’s get to the good stuff – scathing criticism!   I was surprised that Jeffrey Jones was in it since he’s been busted for soliciting minors.  Especially since his character could easily be left out.  I was bummed that Titus Welliver wasn’t in it but his character was easily left out.  Cy wasn’t in it because Powers Booth is dead, I would like some kind of explanation what happened to him.  Which is hypocritical because normally I roll my eyes when they try to dialog away a missing actor – but a scene with Al telling a story about what happened to Cy would have been good.

The movie was supposed to be 10 years after the last episode, but the appearance of the cast was wildly variable.  Some of them looked a little older, some of them looked the same, and some of them looked like they had aged 50 years.  I wonder how much of that was real life and how much was wonky make-up.  Speaking of wonky make-up, there was a lot of dialog saying that Al looked awful and looked like he was on the verge of death but he looked fine to me.  Which is odd because in that episode where he had a gall stone he did look like he was dying.  Maybe they couldn’t find the same make-up and or special effects people.

Deadwood has always been known for fanciful language, but  I felt that they went overboard in the movie.  Sometimes it seemed like Shakespeare nonsense instead of people talking – which I never felt in the show.  There was FAR too much “and they lived happily ever after!” for me.  I get it that’s what they do in finales, but it didn’t seem very Deadwoody to me.  They spent a lot of time introducing a new character, which made no sense since it was the last one ever.  I kept waiting for her to be revealed as someone’s daughter or somehow connected to the main story but nope – it was just a new character for no reason. 

Overall I would give it three Timothy Olyphants.

I feel like I should have something to say about being without power for three days but I really don’t.  I went into the office to work for the first time since March, which I thought would be weird but it wasn’t.  I also thought lots of other people would be there because they didn’t have power but there were none.  My crappy shed got smashed flat, which is halfway annoying and halfway fine.  Now my giant gutter extenders are sitting in my backyard ruining everyone’s property values.  I wonder what I should do with those. 

For quarantine reading I just finished a book called How to Invent Everything and I would give it my highest recommendation.  I loved it and learned hundreds of things (assume any of it is correct).  It would be weird to say it’s the best book I’ve read in years because that seems like that kind of title  should apply to narrative fiction, but it’s definitely the book I’ve enjoyed the most in a long time.  Although it’s possible that part of the reason I liked it so much is that my last few books were kind of duds. 

Yesterday my lady asked me how many times a year I think about scarecrows.  This is an indication that things are working out great for me.  No one I dated in the past would ever asked me how many times a year I think about scarecrows (FYI it’s a lot) and if I ever said anything about how often I think about scarecrows they would have thought I was a real weirdo.  Being with someone who’s not the same as you but “gets it” is pretty sweet.  Always before being in a relationship seemed like I was dragging a boulder up a hill that had no top (not like Sisyphus he was PUSHING a boulder) and eventually I thought to myself “why am I doing thing?” because it was just a lot of work for no payoff.  But  I met the right person and now it’s totally cool.  That’s a sentiment no one else has ever expressed before.  It’s not like there’s no work at all, but the pressure is off.  Always before when I was around the person I was seeing I had a baseline level of anxiety and fear just being around them – the best case scenario if I did everything right was that everything would just be fine.  It was like being on a tightrope, the best thing that could happen is you just get through it without a disaster.  There was no upside. 

But now the baseline is great – it’s not like dragging a boulder, it’s like we’re driving a Flintstone’s car together just windmilling those feet like crazy.  I’m amazed how many corny things people say that make sense to me now – they’re still corny, but I get why people say them.  And that’s all I’m going to say about that.  I often think about writing about my thoughts and hopes and feelings on this subject, but I usually manage to get over that impulse because it’s silly – there’s one person who cares and I should tell her directly.  It’s like Paul F Thompkin’s bit about however much you want you shouldn’t talk about therapy – because your therapist is not trying to send messages to your friends through you.  It’s unseemly. 

One thing that I spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about is terrible movies.  I’m not one of THOSE people who like bad movies (except Semi-Pro which I love) but I like to wonder what goes on behind the scenes.  How many people know the movie they’re making sucks?  How many care?  What’s the mindset of these people?  When a woman gets cast as Rob Schneider’s love interest in The Animal 3 is she thinking “this is my big break!” or “well maybe this will lead to something” or “this will get me another few months of SAG health insurance”?  Sidenote I want to be in SAG so bad – their insurance is fantastic.  If you want to put me in an instructional video I bet I could do okay.  I would love to see a documentary where people talk about their motivation for working on horrible movies. 

One time I saw Sandy B talking about Speed 2 – This Time the Bus is a Boat and she talked about how sometimes you just take a job because it’s offered.  Her point being it’s just nice to be wanted.  I read a book Thomas Lennon wrote one time and he had a chapter about how Herbie Fully Loaded started out as a fun movie for kids and was tinkered into being a pile of garbage for no one.  Grain of salt there because he wrote the movie, but still it was interesting. 

I was talking about this with the scarecrow asker and she said that I need to lighten up on actors and movie people – most people take jobs they know are going to suck, why should they be any different from the rest of us?  Which is a fair point, but it seems different to me because they’re creating something.  It may or may not be art, but it’s something creative – seems like that’s different from getting a job sitting in an office waiting for the day to be over because you need money.  But maybe it’s exactly the same.  And for all I know its fun to be in a shitty movie. 

There’s a podcast I listen to once in a while called How Did This Get Made? but unfortunately they just make fun of bad movies, they don’t actually tell you how it got made.  That’s a podcast I would love to listen to.