The wife and I go OVER THE HEDGE

Earlier this afternoon Lisa and I went to see Over The Hedge at the Brassfield here in Greensboro. It's a darned good cute smart lil' movie! I've been looking forward to this for awhile, being a longtime fan of the "Over The Hedge" comic strip by Michael Fry and T Lewis. The strip is about a group of forest-dwelling animals living on the edge of suburbia, where they make wry commentary and snide comments about the inanity and over-gluttony of us humans while wrecking havoc with the very things we buy and consume, like TV and fast food and lawn ornaments.

And the movie did a pretty good job of capturing the spirit of the original cartoon, I thought. It seems to be like an "origin story" almost for how this group of critters first comes together. We see R.J. the raccoon (voiced by Bruce Willis) have his first meeting with soon-to-be best bud Vern, a turtle (Garry Shandling). Central to the plot is R.J. having to replace all the pillaged food that he stole from the den of Vincent, a bear who's promised to find and kill R.J. if the 'coon hasn't restored Vincent's stash in one week (Vincent, by the way, is voiced - somewhat appropriately enough - by Nick Nolte). The movie ignores a few characters from the strip (like R.J. and Vern's girlfriends, the woodtick etc.) but introduces some newer ones that are part of Vern's "family": William Shatner and Avril Lavigne star as father-and-daughter possums, Catherine O'Hara and Eugene Levy appear as the head of a porcupine family, and Wanda Sykes makes for more than a few outrageous moments as Stella, a skunk. The real scene-stealer has got to be Hammy the Squirrel (one of the comic's regulars), the most manic animated character I've seen in a good long time, played by Steve Carrell.

Well, we laughed a lot during Over The Hedge and the kids around us had a good time with it, even during the gags that were obviously intended for the "grown-ups" to catch onto (there's one hilarious reference to A Streetcar Named Desire that readily comes to mind). Definitely worth catching at the theater or later on DVD. If you need any more reason to go see Over The Hedge, it's that it features a much more realistic "treasure hunt" than that other movie opening this weekend has in it :-P

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SITH Happened: One year ago today...

...the Star Wars saga finally came full circle with Episode III: Revenge of the Sith.

I actually saw Sith twice that day: at 12:01 AM with "Weird" Ed, Darth Larry and his wife and Phillip and a few other good crew, and then a much saner time that evening with my wife Lisa and Brian again ('cuz he and I weren't going to end that day without seeing Revenge of the Sith two and possibly three times :-P). And it just kept getting better and better.

Coming out of the theater that day was sort of bittersweet, but something of a relief as well. Knowing that there will not be anymore Star Wars movies, I felt like this series has accomplished what its creator set out to do, that it had nothing more to prove and now it got to go out on top. And now we could go on just being fans of a great saga, instead of fans so busy rabidly hanging onto whatever news trickled out about the movie that we forgot to just simply enjoy the thing. Believe me, as someone who once worked for a good while at what's still the best fan-run Star Wars site on the Internet (and here's hoping that you won the big race, Dustin :-), I've seen way too much of that to not know what I'm talking about.

Guess what I'm trying to say is that with Revenge of the Sith now behind us, I think that Star Wars fans can and finally have become what we were most supposed to be anyway. It's just hard to explain what that actually is, but I believe "respectable" is legitimately something that comes to mind :-)

And for me, on a more personal level, Revenge of the Sith and the closure it brought made me want that much more to be a father, and be able to share this beautiful story with my own children and wonder and cry and laugh right along with them as we watch it together. I really hope and pray that God will give me that opportunity someday, and not none too soon. If there had been the possibility (threat?) of more Star Wars movies, it would have taken away from that thrill. It would have become too much like Star Trek. No, this ended at just the right time, and it ended well. And it's in a good place now: on a bookshelf, waiting to be opened and shared with and appreciated by the next generations of "readers".

Well, I could go on, but that would just be adding "more" to what's probably been said a million times already. If anyone's interested, here's the review of Episode III: Revenge of the Sith I wrote the following day, and if you want a laugh there's also this now-legendary post about me and Darth Larry doing the final "Midnight Madness" of Star Wars toys... and the terrible hangover that ensued.

So happy birthday Star Wars Episode III. It was a heckuva fun ride: one for the ages, definitely :-)

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Something cryptic for your careful consideration

Chronolism is a crack in the crystal that is Creation.

Calculated contemplation of this conundrum causes considerable clarification concerning the curious cosmology of Christopher.

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Last night's LOST (and a little bit about IDOL)

Lost is a show that has only gotten consistently better as the past season has progressed, especially the past several batch of episodes. Last night brought us "Three Minutes", and we finally learned what happened to Michael after he went running off into the brush with a gun to find his son. Speaking of which, we got to see Walt at last. Admittedly he looks a little bigger 'cuz of his growth spurt, but the Lost creators have said this is going to be addressed at some point soon. My theory: the DHARMA guys have been playing around with his genetics, as part of their age longevity program... would make a pretty plausible explanation given what is being leaked about DHARMA through the Lost online game and such. The new character Mrs. Klugh, I don't think she's supposed to be "the Man in Charge" but she's definitely one of the top dogs running the Others show. She was one character I wanted to see Michael go upside her head on, for sure. Definitely feel sorry for Michael, and maybe a little understanding of "why he did it" even though that still doesn't totally exonerate him. But after his exchange with Eko, I think forgiveness is one thing he certainly wants. All told, excellent episode that ends with an intriguing cliffhanger, that if you remember a certain inhabitant of the hatch from the beginning of this season then I think that's who the boat belongs to...

As for American Idol last night: I really wanted Elliott Yamin to make it through and it be him and Taylor in the final round. But Elliott is going to have a terrific career no matter what. Definitely think it'll be mah man Taylor Hicks gonna win next week: he'll probably pick up what votes Elliott would have gotten. Otherwise I really believe that Elliott might have won.

On a related note if I can figure out how to post sound files I'll try to put up my impersonation of Taylor screaming out "Soul Patrol!!" :-P

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Today...

You know Hugh Laurie's character Dr. Gregory House on the FOX show House? He's the doctor with no bedside manner, always looks grizzled and tired and surly and dresses as if he's a flood refugee. But he gets the job done.

I feel like House tonight, after a lot of things today. Not saying I'm that gruff and arrogant, but it's how he looks on that show... that's my picture of myself right now.

Long story about why that is, but right now I'm able to smile, and thank God for a few things. Was a really amazing day, and tomorrow promises more.

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My thoughts on illegal immigration in a nutshell

We - and by that I'm generally speaking about Americans - have been given stewardship over this country by God. So too, has God granted stewardship of the lands of Mexico to her people.

Our house is our own to manage, just as the people of Mexico have their own to take care of.

However you cut the issue, it's wrong for one house to foist its problems onto another, instead of meeting and addressing them head-on, as best they understand and are capable of doing so. So too is it wrong for one house to expect it of itself - or to expect those living within it - to take on something that God never intended them to have.

This doesn't rule out legal immigration at all: that's something perfectly withing the rights of a house to manage itself. But the far more Christian thing to do in this matter would be to politely - and firmly if necessary - turn away illegals at the border, send them home... but with an affirmation that they not only are responsible for their stewardship, they can be stewards of their land.

Just my .02...

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DA VINCI getting crucified in early reviews

"Tom Hanks was a zombie", "a stodgy, grim thing", critics laughing during the big revelation and giggling for the rest of the movie...

This is what so many of my fellow Christians have been worried about??

To paraphrase Kent Brockman: "Once again, we've been had."

Bold prediction time: this movie will mark the end of The Da Vinci Code phenomenon. The biggest part of this book's mystique has been the "Jesus Christ was married and had children" thing, that's what's put it in the mind's eye of the masses regardless of whether or not everyone actually read the book. Now that the story has been translated into the film medium (pretty darned close to the novel too, it's being said) and packaged for everybody to readily digest, everyone is now going to be finding out for themselves... that The Da Vinci Code really isn't that good a story.

Well, that's my prediction anyway. We should know within a week or two how the word of mouth is gonna treat this thing.

EDIT 2:48 PM EST: RottenTomatoes.com has given Over The Hedge a freshness rating of 75% so far... better than anything else on the boards right now including Mission: Impossible III (at 70%) and Poseidon (at 29%).

Meanwhile, The Da Vinci Code, with seven reviews so far, is clocking in so far at... ZERO PERCENT!

The lovely spousal overunit and I will be catching Over The Hedge sometime this weekend, in part because I'm a fan of the comic strip it's based on. If these measurements are any indication, that might be the one sound opening flick to catch in the next few days.

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Superman returns?

He's FLYING AWAY FROM US!! Maybe this movie should be retitled "Superman Scrams"

Seriously though, pretty cool poster.

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Another dude's SOPRANOS intro parody

This is really amazing, I think. As the creator of another spoof of The Sopranos intro, all I can say is "impressive... most impressive." Last month or so is when The Godfather video game came out. Some guy used that to create a spot-on parody of The Sopranos title sequence done a'la the Corleone family! Check it out:

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Two stories about America turning into a police state (and guess who's leading the charge?)

The FBI now admits that the Bush administration is letting them look at reporters's phone records to track down "confidential sources".

Meanwhile, Attorney General and member of La Raza (illegal immigration radicals) Alberto Gonzales wants your Internet provider to keep detailed logs on what you do online, for government perusal.

So all of the Bush supporters that I addressed last night also have a growing police state to answer for too.

While we're on serious discussion, I'm going to throw this out for comment from any readers I have: I'm thinking of "farming" the serious commentary/op-ed stuff onto another blog, and let The Knight Shift be for my more personal/upbeat side of things. That's not to say The Knight Shift won't see serious things, but for a lot of reasons I'm led to consider putting all the really hard-hitting stuff in one location away from the "happy" posts.

What say ye: would y'all be okay with that if I did this?

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To everyone who (still) supports George W. Bush

"God's man" in the White House
A little over five years ago, I was a reporter with a small weekly newspaper. And I received an invitation to be at the big rally for then-governor George W. Bush at the presidential debate that was held at Wake Forest University.

I wasn't there for very long when I was ejected from the premises, practically at gunpoint (by the way, Forsyth County sheriff deputies and Winston-Salem police officers are good little goose-steppers), apparently on orders from Bush himself because I was small-time media, not affiliated with anyone "big". In other words: I was accountable to no one, and nobody could hold anything over my head. How was I supposed to know beforehand that Bush is afraid of being asked questions by "regular" Americans?

Word eventually got to me that Bush had referred to me and another reporter as "those assholes". The invitation was forcefully taken from me by someone that I have since come to refer to as "the anonymous Bush boot-licker" who then threatened me with physical violence.

Bear in mind that all I did was show up as a journalist from an independent newspaper.

I have since come to be thankful for the events of that evening, because my eyes were opened on the kind of man that George W. Bush really is. From that night forward, I've never been able to buy into any of the illusions that the Bush camp wraps around their man: that he’s supposed to be a "good Christian" and all that.

I got to know well in advance what a lot of Americans are just now coming to realize: that George W. Bush is a damaged, very small man at best, and thoroughly evil at worst.

I just read some of the speech that Bush is due to deliver in a little less than an hour about illegal immigration. The speech that is going to infuriate those of us who knew better already and maybe will knock some sense into those that have thus far refused to believe anything other than Bush being God's anointed man to rule America.

George W. Bush is not serving America: George W. Bush is destroying America. He practically has destroyed America. It will take decades to recover from the damage that he has inflicted on this land. That he refuses to take any serious action on illegal immigration is probably the worst thing that any President has done to America in her entire history.

I never supported George W. Bush. And I tried to warn too many of you about how foolish it was to cast your lot in with this very shallow, petty and vindictive little man.

George W. Bush is raping America without lubricant and telling her to lay back and enjoy it. Tonight's speech will more than adequately illustrate that to everyone.

It's like this: America either has secure borders and controlled immigration, or we cease being a sovereign country. Bush apparently prefers the latter. And so do those of you who still trust in "your President".

Like I said, I couldn't be more thankful that I got to know well ahead of time just what kind of man America was really about to start dealing with. I just wish that I could have done more to sound a warning bell before we started being invaded from the south.

EDIT 8:30 PM EST: Per my usual custom, I didn't "watch" this political speech. I listened to it instead, with my back turned to the television. That way I heard the actual words Bush was using, without being distracted by the television as a visual medium.

Bush said he's not supporting amnesty. Yet he wants to allow millions of illegal aliens who've been living here for years to go on living here without penalty.

And Bush says that's not amnesty?

He said nothing about enforcing the laws that we already have. He said the National Guard that he wants to put on the border (which would number far too few, by the way) would effectively have no real power or authority once assigned.

This whole speech was practically a big "winkin' at ya" to Mexican president Vincente Fox.

Heck he literally said that our border doesn't need to be "militarized". OH YES IT DOES MISTER PRESIDENT!!! The border with Mexico needed to be militarized, like four years ago.

Well, I could go on, but like I said before: I knew about this guy a long time ago, and have been saying all this time that George W. Bush has the spirit of a traitor. Unless someone is what the commies used to call a "useful idiot", tonight's speech should be more than enough to convince anyone about that, too.

Dear Lord, stop me from being this angry tonight...

...but it's hard not to be when you watch the fall of a once-great country before your very eyes.

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I've joined the rabble on Myspace

Why oh why have I done this to myself?

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Christians and DA VINCI or: Stop waiting for James Dobson to tell you what to do!

Last week I reviewed the novel The Da Vinci Code. It was enough to make me feel that I could not care about watching the movie version this week, and come away none the lesser for it. To be blunt: the book is awful, and with each passing day I can't help but think the problems in it overwhelm whatever good it has. Why The Da Vinci Code has remained so popular is beyond my comprehension. I honestly am starting to believe that once the film version comes out and more people - who have not read the book - see this story unfold, that The Da Vinci Code will start to lose its luster.

Anyway, that doesn't diminish the fact that there is intense interest in The Da Vinci Code. A lot of it is maybe unhealthy obsession over it. And I speak about my Christian breathren in this regard more than I do about those outside the church. It was only in the past week or so that I've noticed the massive cottage industry that evangelicals have grown around de-bunking The Da Vinci Code: books, CDs, DVDs, all sorts of vindictiveness available for a few dollars or a "donation" to some Christian TV or radio show.

If you've read this blog you know what I'm gonna say: too many Christians are secretly happy that something like The Da Vinci Code has (a) been written and (b) is wildly popular. Because it gives said Christians an opportunity to (a) become prominent and (b) use condemning it to make a lot of money. But there's more to it than that: too many Christians also, it seems, are totally incapable of thinking on their own without "Christian leaders" guiding them.

He wrote it a month ago but Dick Staub has an excellent article on his blog about "evangelical childlike hysteria" and The Da Vinci Code. Here's some of his thoughts on the matter...

...Can you imagine the New Yorker reminding readers that, "skipping a movie is a viable option?" These kind of comments make evangelicals seem like babies strapped into a high chair waiting for Dr. Dobson to tell them what to do next.

If it is true that evangelicals require somebody to tell them they should take part in the cultural conversation than evangelicals are nothing but a docile version of fundamentalism, withdrawn from culture but not feisty about it. An alternative view would say evangelicals are hopelessly conformed to culture, consuming it, marching like lemmings off the cliff, incapable of thinking independently, revealing the truth of Mark Noll's comment "the scandal of the evangelical mind is that there is so LITTLE of the evangelical mind." If either of these views is true, evangelicals may sell a lot of books and CD's and cast a lot of votes in culture, but will not ultimately "influence" culture intellectually, spiritually or artistically.

Excellent read, as are the reactions his article elicited.

Anyhoo, the next few days, for me anyway, with all the Da Vinci Code "specials" on TV - both for it and against it - I'm starting to feel deluged by cheaply produced historical pornography. Hope I can maintain perspective and sanity despite it all :-)

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Yet ANOTHER devastating secret hidden in code

Behold the greatest conspiracy of the past millennium:

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American DOCTOR WHO fans: Download this episode NOW!

The Doctor (David Tennant) and Rose (Billie Piper) in a scene from the new episode "Rise of the Cybermen"In what has become a Saturday night/Sunday afternoon ritual for me, I just finished downloading (with BitComet, after finding it through Torrent Scan so now you know how to nab it :-) and watching the newest episode of Doctor Who a few hours after it aired in Great Britain... meaning it won't run here in America until sometime next year. And boy, was it ever worth it. Tonight saw the return of one of the Doctor's most frightening enemies ever: the Cybermen.

"Rise of the Cybermen" is EXCELLENT (you have to say it like the Cybermen did back in the Eighties: "Ex-Cellent!"). A scary situation lands the TARDIS on an alternate-reality Earth where apparently the Hindenburg never exploded: high-tech dirgibles filling the London skies are the ultimate symbol of wealth and luxury. While the Doctor tries (and fails) to keep Rose and Mickey from running off to peek at their parallel-universe lives (or lack thereof), an insane industrialist named John Lumic, head of the Cybus Corporation, is trying to woo world leaders into accepting the ultimate "upgrade package". The episode ends with the Cybermen - more menacing than ever after an absence of 18 years - marching down on the Doctor and other hostages. There is no preview for next week's episode, "The Age of Steel", that sees the conclusion of this two-part story: all we get is a "To Be Continued...".

Roger Lloyd-Pack, recently seen playing Barty Crouch Sr. in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (which ironically also had new Doctor David Tennant playing Barty Crouch Jr.) used U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld as the inspiration for his portrayal of John Lumic. Without saying anything about Rumsfeld, Lloyd-Pack's Lumic is madness the likes of which we haven't seen on Doctor Who since Davros. Which may be a problem for some people: in a lot of ways Lumic is too much like the Daleks's creator, right down to the life-support wheelchair and insane babbling. What I mostly wonder about though is how the creation of the Cybermen in this "other reality" conflicts with everything we know about the Cybermen's origins from throughout the previous decades. Want my theory? This "other Earth" is going to wind up being the Mondas - the homeworld of the Cybermen - in the real timeline. I don't know how they'll pull that off but that's what I'm betting.

Some of the best CGI effects seen on TV lately, intense acting, a healthy (and demented: the "In The Jungle" scene especially) dose of humor, and some moments of horror that will have you ducking behind the proverbial sofa... "Rise of the Cybermen" should be considered must-see-NOW viewing for any fans of Doctor Who on this side of the pond.

(By the way, for what it's worth, I think this episode proves that the Cybermen would kick Star Trek's Borg's collective butt anytime :-)

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End of an era: Timm/Dini animated DC saga wraps up tonight

Fourteen years of animated greatness will draw to a close later tonight as Justice League Unlimited airs its final episode at 10:30 PM on the Cartoon Network. So will end the DC animated milieu created by Bruce Timm and Paul Dini, by far the most successful cartoon franchise of the past two decades.

It was back in 1992 that Timm and Dini's Batman: The Animated Series first glided into the scene, and it cast a long shadow indeed over the 1990s. Chief animator Timm and series producer Dini created an animated version of the Dark Knight that was finally as edgy and complicated as the original comic. In the Timm/Dini Gotham City, Batman was a creature of the night (no daytime appearances ever) who really did lose his parents to a mugger, the Joker was a true psychotic and people actually died in horrible ways. The cartoon's dark style was borrowed from Japanese anime, particularly the look of Akira and other "serious" animated stories. And then there was that voice talent: Kevin Conroy as Batman, Efrem Zimbalist Jr. as Alfred, and a seemingly never-ending array of voices behind the rogues's gallery. The two that stick out in my mind most were Michael Ansara as Mr. Freeze and Mark Hamill, who created a whole 'nother career after Luke Skywalker as he gave the Joker frightening new life (in my opinion better than Jack Nicholson ever could).

In the years following Batman: The Animated Series's success, Timm and Dini came out with Superman: The Animated Series, playing out in the same "universe" created in Batman: TAS. Tim Daly provided Superman/Clark Kent with his voice while Clancy Brown was brought in to counter Supes as Lex Luthor. And if you want to see the Timm/Dini 'verse at its most potent, watch the Superman series's two-parter "Apokolips... Now!": in my mind one of the DC animated team's two finest works from its entire decade and a half.

A few more series (mostly centered on Batman/Superman) came out during the Nineties, including Batman Beyond: a bold "foretelling" of the Timm/Dini DC saga set some 50 years in the future. In 2000 that series gave us Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker, the other acme of Timm/Dini greatness... and probably (in the unedited version anyway) one of the most chilling stories ever told in the animated medium.

In 2001 the Timm/Dini setting grew dramatically with Justice League, and then broadened further in 2004's Justice League Unlimited. By that point the Timm/Dini environment had included darn nearly every super-hero (and villain) from DC's sixty-some years of history.

And tonight, something that began "On Leather Wings" in 1992 (actually the first Batman: The Animated Series episode was "The Cat and the Claw" that aired Saturday morning before the next evening's "world premiere"... I know 'cuz I watched both :-) will end with Justice League Unlimited's finale episode "Destroyer". The episode pits Batman and Superman and Lex Luthor and all those other heroes and villains against Darkseid: the biggest, most bad-a$$ enemy of the entire DC cosmos. Tonight we are supposed to see Superman go full-tilt berzerk with his powers against Darkseid... something I've been wanting to see happen ever since what Darkseid did in "Apokolips... Now!" Can't wait to watch it.

And afterward, I'll raise a toast to what Bruce Timm and Paul Dini and everyone they worked with have given us all these years. Thanks for the good times, guys!! And Lord willing, may you someday return to this great setting that you've given us :-)

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TWISTER at 10

It was ten years ago this weekend - May 10th to be exact - that Twister was first released. It came out on a Friday and that night CBS ran The Wizard of Oz. I'm a tornado freak anyway - it's one of my life's goals to someday see a real one - so watching that sorta whetted my appetite for a flick with a hella lot more tornadoes. Anyway, the next day "Weird" Ed and Gary, my two accomplices-in-crime, came by the apartment and we took my car to Greensboro to catch Twister. Halfway through the trip a helluva thunderstorm came up. Think there was some sleet in it when we got to the Janus Theater (which ain't there no more) and they were sold out. We tried driving to the Brassfield, they had 2 or 3 screens showing it and we got in there. By the time we got out the weather was better but we were all stoked about "going out and finding us an F-5!" Ahhhhh, good times! That day was ten years ago yesterday... where does the time go? Might interest ya to know that Twister was the very first movie to be released on DVD too. May have to watch it again fer old times's sake this weekend :-)

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