New terminator
Skynet to kill John Connor
Stupid heart transplant

…as the disappointment of not getting a beverage at last call wears off, all I can do is continue to boo Hayden Christensen and give awards for what little I saw today.

BEST PERSON:
Without a doubt, Zoe Saldana (Uhura from Star Trek ’09). She was beautiful, insightful, and eloquent as she talked about the role of female characters in Hollywood. To give you an idea of how awesome she was…she was sitting next to Sigourney Weaver, and still blew everyone’s mind.

BEST PANEL
Dexter – First off, I think this is a fantastic show, so I may be bias. John Lithgow is the the new villain for next season, so I hope the show continues to impress. I’m a little afraid of Jennifer Carpenter now, but I like it.

BEST COSTUME
The fandango paper bag. I didn’t see any eyeholes, but it was crossing the street. Bravo, you took the most annoying thing about pre-movie seating and tried to get it hit by a car.

BEST OF THE REST
Bruce Campbell & Burn Notice. Never really watched the show, but Bruce was hilarious as always.

…deserted on a tropical island with Brooke Shields…Audrey Hepburn calling me Fred…scattering Steve Buscemi’s ashes…Tom Hanks singing the Cowboy Song……Robert Duvall telling me that the waves break both ways…and fading away as Elisabeth Shue made me rice. Then I started thinking about…joining the army cause these are the same people I see at unemployment…or maybe I could invent the Opti-Grab…or should I just bet it all on Fleet Dreams…

…and then someone asked me, “What are your top five movies of all time?” A challenge that Shago will accept. My only disclaimer is that, in my opinion, great movies have to have “re-watch-ability.” There are great movies like Schindler’s List, Pan’s Lybyrinth, The Usual Suspects, Das Boot, Saving Private Ryan…etc, but, for the top of my pork list, I need it to be in my collection and always available.

1. Casablanca. Maybe I’m a rank sentimentalist, but easily the greatest movie ever made. Great actors portraying believable characters in a fabulous story. Drama, love, a great ending, and most of all, Bogart’s subtle comedy, “do you want a drink…of course not…mind if I have one?” Mullets, watch this movie again, it’s a masterpiece.

2. The Godfather. An easy choice. Great writing + great acting + great directing = brilliance. Am I the only one that can still watch a three hour movie?

3. The Sting – Newman & Redford, I love to watch it so I can remember what acting used to be. They make movies today to show guns, violence, women, suffering, etc in unending and incomprehensible actions scenes. They think this will cover up the fact that there is no story. Give me a movie like The Sting, I want more characters, I’ve already seen every explosion.

4. The Matrix, I’m not a big Keanu fan, but I really think this is a great movie. In fact, Joe Pantoliano and Hugo Weaving make the movie, they’re fabulous. Next time you watch it, take note of how many times you are captivated by them just talking. The sequels could never equal the original, but which ever could? (Phantom Menace, looking at you…). I’ll have trouble believing that you weren’t blown away the first time you saw this. Plus Carrie-Anne Moss in leather!

5. Raiders of the Lost Ark. After watching this , didn’t everyone want to be Indy? I know I did. Unfortunately, Kingdom of Crystal Skull did knock this down to 5…and still falling.

Honorable Mention

Star Wars: of course.

Jaws – I really want to put this in the top 5 and it may replace Raiders as I write this. After this movie came out, people became mortified of sharks, wow. Kinda like everyone fears Transformers, Hangovers, Cobra, Horowitz, Museums, Christian Bale’s next accent, and marrying Sandra Bullock now…right? …maybe? …hello? …can I get a hallelujah from 20C? …or not? Ok, those movies may be 80 minutes of “fun”, but after watching Jaws, you were seriously afraid of water…awesome.

Star Trek II – The Wrath of Khan: the best and only reason to consider that a sequel could be better than the original. Dear Hollywood, if Ricardo Montalban is not in your sequel, reconsider making it.

James Bond. Bond movies of the 70′s and 80′s were fantastic. And, in my opinion, really started its own genre (anything spy, government related…i.e. Bourne, Tom Clancy etc.) Well done.

The Shawshank Redemption: Excellent movie with all the elements of greatness. Great story, great character development, great ending. But can you watch Escape from Alcatraz with Clint Eastwood and still have the same respect for this movie? I can’t.
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And I might as well throw in the worst…off the top of my head…hmm…maybe something with Horowitz? How about Welcome Home, Roxy Carmichael? Watched it with Anita Mandalay, and we agreed, quite possibly the worst thing I ever saw.

First off, do I even like this movie? Is it Laura Dern? I mean she’s not really hot and seriously looks like a stick. And I don’t really like movies with kids in them. That one kid was in Tremors and that movie sucked. I guess the effects are pretty sweet. I did watch Land of the Lost as a child, so maybe I really like dinosaurs, weird. I can’t believe they’re remaking that.

That dude getting eaten while on the toilet is sweet; Hope I don’t go out that way.

Sam Neill looks pretty cool in that hat, I wonder if I would look that cool? Probably not, I mean when would I even wear it? He can even pull off that that scarf/bandanna thing around his neck. That’s strange because it makes that kid look pretty queer.

Wouldn’t Jeff Goldblum look better with a big patch of chest hair coming out of that shirt? And doesn’t he play the exact same character in Independence Day? I wonder if anyone remembers an old movie he was in called Transylvania 6-5000? I bet it would really piss off Ed Begley Jr if I bought like 60 copies of that movie, then didn’t recycle the plastic DVD boxes. You know who else plays the same character all the time? Oliver Platt. Flatliners, A Time to Kill, Frost/Nixon, that quirky and smart but kinda wussy guy. He should be in this movie.

If there weren’t so many commercials in college basketball, I wonder if I’d even be watching this?

If I made a joke about that girl saying Meat-A-Saurus, would anyone laugh? I bet they’d just think I was some kind of pedophile. Better not risk it.

Sam Jackson has a cigarette in his mouth the whole movie, but does he ever inhale? I hope I don’t watch this whole movie again just to find out. When they find his arm, his hand should totally have a cigarette in it.

If raptors are so smart, why couldn’t they figure out how to clone themselves? Losers.
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Well, I hoped you enjoyed this quick insight into Shago’s brain. Until next post…

Lucy grew up kinda hot, 1 pig.

There comes a time in every man’s life when he sees the end. I guess, accepting his own mortality as a human being, movie fan, writer, Horowitz hater, filthy wine-loving hobo, etc. For me, the time has come…again. The other day, I saw that Universal is planning a remake of one of my favorite movies: ‘Slap Shot’ starring the late, great Paul Newman.

Peter Steinfeld (‘21‘) will write it and he says:
“Right now I’m finishing writing the re-make of the iconic hockey movie Slap Shot for Universal. I’ve never had so many people hate me for writing something they haven’t seen yet. It’s such a classic film and fans of the original feel like I’m grave-robbing or something. But I think the movie will be really fun and will capture what it’s like to play minor league hockey in 2008.”

I couldn’t have said it much better, you’re grave-robbing a classic that fans will hate you for. Hmm…my work here is done. I guess, once again, Hollywood has proved to me that it has no … original … ideas … left.

Another little part of my soul will die when this movie is released.

The President is in Spain for a meeting on terrorism and is set to speak in the middle of an open-air plaza. But, when he is called back to his hotel, his double heads to the speech. Of course, our evil-doers know this because secret service agent Taylor (Matthew Fox) is in on the whole plot. So, the assassination turns into a kidnapping and off we go. (By the way, the lead terrorist is Suarez (Said Taghmaoui) who masterminds all of this through his cell phone.)

I think the best way to do this is to split the movie into my likes and dislikes. So here we go:

SHAGO LIKED…

…the concept of this film. We see the assassination attempt, then we rewind and see it again from a different character’s perspective. Pretty cool..the first two or three times. Then we go again and again and again and yawn. Wait…should this be in the “like” category? Hmmm…anyhoo, moving on.

SHAGO DID NOT LIKE…

…the characters. Oh man, talk about being spoon fed some BS in order to make the characters believable. As my loyal readers know, this is one of my biggest complaints about movies these days. You can’t just give me one line of crap (see below) and expect me to care about the characters…but that’s a whole other post.

Let’s start with the President’s double. They make a point of telling us that they’ve used him before for photo shoots, but nothing this important. Ok, good enough, he must be convincing.

There’s Agent Barnes, who is just returning to work after taking a bullet for the President in an earlier assassination attempt. Ok, he’s tough, I bet he could survive a car crash.

Then there’s Javier (Edgar Ramirez) who, we’re told, has double secret super commando ninja skills. Ok, he’s a bad ass, that’s how he can kill about 20 secret service agents by himself. Oh, and he’s only doing this to get back his kidnapped brother. Kinda pointless, but what’s a movie without some futile in-fighting between the bad guys.

Lastly, there’s Howard (Forest Whitaker), an American tourist, who confesses to a random child that he’s having some family issues. Let me say that I really like Forest Whitaker as an actor. Unfortunately, he comes off looking more like a psycho child molester filming little girls than a concerned parent.

SHAGO RIDICULED…

…the car chase, about ten minutes of:
Drive, Turn, Crash, Barnes dialogue: “Shit!” Drive, Turn, Crash, Taylor dialogue: “Shit!”
Drive, Turn, Crash, Barnes dialogue: “Shit!” Drive, Turn, Crash, Taylor dialogue: “Shit!”
Drive, Turn, Crash, Barnes dialogue: “Shit!” Drive, Turn, Crash, Taylor dialogue: “Shit!”
Seriously.

SHAGO HATED…

…the ending. Let’s recap, our terrorists have: shot the President’s double, blown up a bomb in the middle of a crowded plaza, killed most of the secret service, turned on their henchmen, and are now escaping in an ambulance with the President. Until…dramatic pause…a stupid girl wanders out into the street in front of them looking for mama. The ambulance swerves to miss her and crashes, the end.
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Are you f’ing serious? They just killed hundreds of people!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! You expect me to believe that they give a crap about saving this kid’s life? Really, hit the kid, drive away, and you win.

Ugh, maybe I’m being too cruel. Or maybe I’m just too damn mean to be a terrorist.

8 Strangers, 8 Points of View, 1 Truth, 1 Pig.