I really liked The Descent. Aside from the rickety ending, it's the best horror movie I've seen in the last few years. It moved me to rent Dog Soldiers to see if the director's magic was old magic, but not so much.

I just finished the first two Dexter discs. Michael C Hall turns in a flawless performance and I definitely intend to finish up the first season, but I wish that the reveal of the ice truck killer's identity hadn't been so stupidly clunky. He might as well have been wearing a sign. I'll be interested to discover if the show deals with how the killer's character manages to hide his emptiness from those close to him in ways that Dexter struggles with.

California Split:
I’ll say this, I think Altman is a guy I wouldn’t mind hammering down a few with. From what I’ve read of him the pot mellowed him out somewhat. He was a supposedly a Big 8 fanatic, I’m guessing a Missouri backer so would we would both loath Nebraska (of course he could still be bitching about the 5th down). Anyway I’m neither a studio exec or a screen writer, which had antipathy with Altman as a rule.

True I can’t stand his work, but I’ve been able to over look character flaws in other people in my life. I have plenty of racist relatives, my dad was a die hard Raider fan, my sister is a school teacher, my niece and nephew are Canadian… hell I was the last of the kids to still be talking to my stepfather.

California Split from Altman’s early 70’s hot streak, Elliot Gould and George Seagal at the top of their game make this one of his more tolerable efforts. Before it all went to his head and outside talents could reign him in from his indulgent tendencies. Unusual for an Altman film in that it has a plot, structure and conclusion. Screenwriter Joseph Walsh comes off as the star on the commentary track.

Given that this is Altman’s last pre-Nashville film and his wankery is just bubbling below the surface.

One-dimensional characters: the prostitutes Gould rooms with

Interminable overwrought scenes: dear god that bar scene goes on forever

Details beat to death: Jeff Goldblum’s two lines. Nice bit of trainspotting, but you’d think this was John Cazale as Fredo. Yeah the editor of the magazine is young!

I got the feeling the Columbian Cartels saw this -*test*-('")iment to ElAy banality and found their ideal market.

I think you would have liked Altman. My Mother worked on one of his films and found him to be a genuinely nice person and rather calm. He was really into inane subplots even for minor characters and some of the more present extras.

I keep meaning to see The Descent but haven't yet -- but it drives me bananas that they used the scariest moment in the film, apparently, in the trailer. I hate when they do that; I think they should save the scariest moments/best jokes and not put them in the trailer...and, you know, it'd be good if they didn't also ruin the movie, like a lot of them do. :\

[/rant]

X-Men 3. It wasn't as bad as I thought it would be, considering how many main characters they killed/cured. I thought they did a good job of indicating the Phoenix vs. Jean Grey changes.

Horatio Hornblower- The Duel: OK, this is one of those movies I put on my Blockbuster queue and expected to watch alone because I am A HUGE NERD and
love English seafaring movies and Ioan Gruffudd. Then one of my friends saw it on top of the TV and demanded to watch it with me.

We fully expected it to suck (TV movie+puffy shirts+huge hat budget=disaster) but by the end, we were completely sucked in. The big bad was a lazy-eyed
psycho, the "that's what she said" jokes practically wrote themselves with all of the nautical language contained therein, the sheer WTF-ness of the sailors
and their rat-maiming con-*test*-('")s and everything else was awesome.

My favorite part was when Horatio tossed the compass overboard and essentially told the French captain to fuck off, plzkthx. So badass! I love Ioan Gruffudd,
though his acting choices are somewhat suspect to me, but he is, like, perfect for this role. I loved his "oooooh, shit" look when <<they realize the
rice is bursting the boat's seams>>. And that Jamie Bamber is cute as a button. We didn't realize how drawn into the movie we were until
<<Simpson cuts the rope to the boat Archie is laying unconscious in >>>and found ourselves hurling obscenities at the screen. Looking forward to getting the rest of the movies.

In terms of horror movies, I'm a little surprised by that, because you'd think the truly scariest stuff couldn't even be put in a trailer. I think when it comes to comedies, the same thing can often apply, although this is most often done for moives that are generally not very funny anyways.

I was deeply bored and clearly desperate for entertainment this weekend because I rented The Hitcher remake and it was if possible even worse than I ever could have imagined. It had precisely 2 scary scenes and was so wholly unworthy of the awesome that is Sean Bean.

Thankfully I also rented one of my favorite movies ever Lovers of the Arctic Circle and I can't recommend it enough. I'm not even saying that just because there is fauxcest, it's just a lovely beautiful romance, with a really compelling narrative structure.

Watched the first few eps of Weeds, season 1, and damn is that show dark! I mean, I liked it, but my jaw dropped several times at the shit coming out of the characters' mouths. Actually, now that I type this, it's pretty refreshing that a show will put itself out there like that.

Wait til you see Season 2, which is what we netflixed over our vacation. Makes Season 1 look sweet & light.

Man, I love Weeds. I felt the same way when I started watching it, but after a while I got so used to the dialogue. It's brilliantly written, IMO.

Is there a particular reason all the DVDs I seem to get in the mail have a the same grey cover and silver logo?

I think the studios actually have a batch printed specifically for sale to rental houses, and they do as little as possible for those - a slip cover to look attractive on the shelf, and nothing in the box but the DVD with no art.

Also it makes them less appealing to steal, or replace with your own broken DVDs. Not that I know anyone who would do that.

A used DVD store used to have a section of those called "DVDs without art" which became kicknamed the Michael Bay section.