How to Train Your Dragon

Dreamworks Animation has it pretty tough. They make string after sting of 'almost good' movies, that are always animated beautifully, with interesting and original ideas... that usually involve talking animals. But they seem to never quite be at the Pixar level when it comes to storytelling and character development. How to Train Your Dragon started off as a refreshing change. The film begins with incredible action, funny sort-of relatable characters, and awesome dragons that don't talk. In fact certain clichés were dancing through my head like, "best animated film of the year," and "give Pixar a run for their money."

...but then the movie fell apart.

I bought the world of dragon killing vikings versus the viking killing dragons (even though neither of them ate the other). But about halfway through the movie we find out the the dragons are under constant threat from some dragon-eating-mega-dragon-dictator of some kind. The dragons were compared to bees who gather food for their queen. This queen-bee dragon ruined the movie for me. Suddenly the dragons were victims who are forced to steal food from the vikings to feed their fascist leader. Then the movie quickly tries to stumble to an end in an anti-climatic mess, where ONE dragon ends up very easily and effortlessly killing the queen-bee. This 'boss-battle' was very reminiscent to the kraken at the end of Clash of the Titans, a lot of hype for a gigantic ugly villain that turns out to be an easily deafetable weak pussy. Then after the queen is dead (after a reign of 300 years, where no single dragon ever stood up to it) the vikings live in a weird dragon utopia, and the dragons become their dogs. This movie will now join most of the other Dreamworks almost good movies that I will quickly forget about... way to go. Maybe it needed a talking animal.

Oh... and the title is terrible.

Weezer - Hurley

I think Weezer called this album Hurley, because only Hurley would call it a good Weezer album. Yes Hurley, the fictional character from the TV show "Lost," not to be confused with Jorge Garcia the actor who's gigantic face fills up the entire cover of the album.

Hurley's plane crashed on the "Lost island" in September of 2004; that means the last Weezer album he listened to was Maladroit (2002); therefore, he crashed thinking that there was only one truely terrible Weezer album. Later, Hurley returned stateside in 2005 as one of the "Oceanic Six" and stayed in a mental hospital until 2007. It's possible that he heard the awful album Make Believe (2005) in that time, but it's unlikely. Hurley returned to the island in 2007 and probably was there until he died. Therefore, if Hurley actually found a way to hear the album Hurley, he would probably would think it is a good Weezer album, based solely on what he has actually heard from Weezer in his life. Hurley almost completely missed Weezer's decline in the past five years into some kind of weird pop-culture theme-song band. So he probably would be okay with this new upbeat Weezer album with his face on it that he somehow came across.

Weezer are in their forties and still sing about teenage angst, there are lots of lyrics like "us boys going crazy for you," and "I'm going to be more than a friend." I guess Rivers Cuomo went full circle to cool again because his big glasses look hipster. But it seems like Weezer is more about publicity stunts than rocking out. They do bad covers of 2005 songs because they can. They hang out with the Jackass dudes because they can. They dance around with internet memes, muppets and the Auto-tune the news people because they can. What they can't seem to do is evolve as a band, and produce anything that doesn't sound like they are trying to sound like Weezer used to sound.

There's a couple of catchy chant-able songs as usual, but way too many annoying ones. I thought "Smart Girls" was the worst song ever made, until I realized that it was sung in the perspective of a deaf post-lobodomy patient.

...and I know Weezer is into remaking songs these days, but remaking "Memories" by Barbra Streisand? Weird...

Machete

Machete is a movie that is pretty much just a long trailer, based on a fake trailer to a fake movie called Machete. Robert Rodriguez should have called it Machete: the Extended Fake Trailer... because it was more of a long trailer than a movi... yeah, you get it.

RobRod got plenty of badass looking shots of Danny Trejo looking cool, and must have had tons of fun with his wet-dream like all-star cast. But there was no effort in making a decent story with any kind of a clear message, and the movie came off as pointless and pretty much boring. The movie needed a poor Mexican family for Machete to save or something because there was no reason to care about anything.

The anti-border message was confusing and weird. I don't get why the cliché bad guy (Steven Segal) is trying to help the racist bureaucrat (Robert DeNiro) close the borders; wasn't he saying that keeping them open helps his drug trafficking? Then Machete (Machete) wants to do the right thing because he's a cop... or used to be... or something, so he gets his murderous brother (Cheech) to help him kill a bunch of other murderous Mexicans on some weird revenge thing for framing him in that ridiculous plan to shoot DeNiro in the leg. So... the message is open the border right? RIGHT?

The cast is cool I guess... but who cares? Jessica Alba sucks, and so does Steven Seagal. There are some funny parts, and some sweet gore, and some naked Lohan's. It probably would be really fun to watch if you were a drunk teenager. If you just watch the trailer you pretty much saw the movie... the trailer trailer... not the short film that is a fake trailer that played in front of Planet Terror...

...Planet Terror sure is awesome.