Tag Archives: have you even been inside a turkish prison

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On The Couch #51: The Proposal

After gorging myself silly on Christmas deserts on the 25th, I returned home, plopped down on the couch and realized I had just enough energy to pick a movie on Netflix Instant Streaming. I wanted to watch something light-hearted because it was Christmas. After browsing Netflix’s choices for far too long, I think I was at the 25 minute mark before I picked  something, I settled on Amy Adams in Sunshine Cleaning.
An Amy Adams comedy is the textbook definition of something light-hearted, right? Two minutes into Sunshine Cleaning a guy shoots himself in the face with a gun. There goes my Amy Adams theory. Back to the drawing board, er I mean back to the instant streaming queue.
I almost saw The Proposal during the great Red Box experiment of August in Cape Cod. I think I saw When in Rome instead. I should have rented The Proposal. It’s much better than When in Rome.
I gave The Proposal an “I liked it” rating on Netflix. The ending cost me rating it “I really liked it.”  I thought the ending was completely ridiculous. The whole movie set up that Ryan Reynolds should have ended up with his non-psycho ex-girlfriend, Vince Vaughn’s wife from Couples Retreat, not his completely psycho boss. But once Sandra Bullock skips town, Ryan Reynolds and Betty White announce that Ryan Reynolds now loves Sandra Bullock, so it must be true, the previous hour and a half of The Proposal be damned! The one redeeming quality of the ending is that it provided the opportunity for the INS interviews that take place during the credits, which were some of the funniest parts of The Proposal.
The Office’s Oscar Nunez has the best scenes in The Proposal. He seems to be the only person employed in this small Alaskan town, pulling quadruple duty as a caterer, male stripper, general store proprietor and ordained minister. His unshaven stripper dance will haunt you.
It was weird watching a movie where Sandra Bullock isn’t playing the cute girl next door type. Seeing her play someone as cold as her character in The Proposal was really jarring, but she did a great job with it.
I was surprised by how much I enjoyed The Proposal. It’s not perfect, but it’s good. I recommend watching it the next time you’re stuck on the couch in a food coma.
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On The Couch #21: Planet Hulk

Don’t worry, I’m not turning this blog into a comic book movie blog.

I was just on a bit of a Hulk kick after watching The Incredible Hulk and decided to follow it up with Planet Hulk, an animated movie from Marvel. Like DC, Marvel is making animated features out of its popular comic book storylines. In this one, the Hulk crash lands on an planet full of aliens as big as he is, and becomes a gladiator.

– Hey, you spilled Gladiator in my Hulk!
– Hey, you spilled Hulk in my Gladiator!

If you’re hard up for a Hulk movie (hey, whatever floats your boat, who am I to judge?) and are stuck deciding between Planet Hulk and The Incredible Hulk, The Incredible Hulk wins. It’s better all around. I guess that’s not really a fair comparison as The Incredible Hulk was a big budget Hollywood blockbuster with cool special effects and top grade talent, while Planet Hulk has the animation style of your typical Saturday morning cartoon.

“Hulk, do you like movies about gladiators? Has Hulk ever been to a Turkish prison?”

Story-wise, it’s a very faithful retelling of the Planet Hulk story from the comic book. If you’re one to judge a comic-based movie on well it keeps to the original, you’d probably give this movie an A.

It’s the meh-quality animation that really hurts Planet Hulk. The animation doesn’t hold up to the art from the comic. In the comic, the Hulk seemed like he was in much more danger than he is here. That’s mainly because the big bad guys in the movie as drawn pretty yawntastically. In the comic, the aliens were huge and menacing, here Hulk is still the biggest kid on the block.

“No, Hulk am Spartacus.”

As I was thinking about the premise, basically Iron Man, Mr. Fantastic and some other heroes ship Hulk off-planet because he’s too dangerous for Earth, I started thinking why did they waste this on just the Hulk? Why not throw Dr. Doom, Magneto, Venom and every other psycho with powers on there and say sayonara? Is it only okay to do that to someone who is your friend half the time instead of a villain all the time? Wow, Iron Man is a jerk. Mr. Fantastic too.

If you’re a comic fan, you’ll love the many cameos by Marvel’s cosmic characters in this movie. If you’re not a comic book fan, congratulations on making it this far into this post.

The bonus features on the Blu-ray include the first chapter of motion comics for Spider-Woman and Joss Whedon’s Astonishing X-Men. What’s a motion comic, you ask? It’s about halfway between being a comic book and a cartoon. Remember Sam Keith’s The Maxx cartoon on MTV in the mid-90s? It’s like that. Why are some people excited about motion comics right now as being some great, new innovation? After watching these two, I’m not sure either, because like I said, they looked very similar to The Maxx animation-wise, which looked kind of cool…in 1995.