As everybody knows, The Simpsons Movie opens this week. In celebration of that I decided to take a look back at my 18 years of watching The Simpsons on TV in order to ponder the several important lessons that the show has taught me over the years. Here are the top 10 I came up with.

10. Marriages can apparently withstand a lot of stupidity from one of the spouses

More specifically, if your spouse really loves you, the following will apparently not make she/he divorce you:

- Buying them a bowling ball when only you play bowling
- Dancing on top of a table with a sexy belly dancer, and getting photographed while doing it
- Going fishing during a weekend retreat of marriage counseling
- Deciding to skip church and forming your own religion
- Telling the students in your adult education class personal secrets from your spouse in order to keep them interested
- Losing a bunch of money betting on football. Money that was borrowed form the Mob. And to repay them you allow a porno film to be taped on your house.

9. When it comes to your work, lazy and careless often beats hard working and careful

Sure, if you are really lazy you might never make it past Nuclear Safety Inspector in your local nuclear power plant. And you might only get to go to space as a NASA astronaut once. But that is good enough to support your family and you will still have some money at the end of the month to blow in some ridiculously extravagant thing.

On the other hand, do you know who was was a hard working and careful employee? Frank Grimes. He was going to be Executive Vice President, but they ended up giving that job to a dog. And now he is dead. I’m just saying…

Of course there limits to how lazy you should be. For example, making yourself morbidly obese in order to be put on the disability plan so you can work from home seems like a great idea, but it will end up resulting in more problems than it’s worth.

8. Smart girls can’t get a decent date. At least not before college

Poor Lisa. She is tough, smart and opinionated. And as far as I can tell she is no more ugly than all of the other yellow kids. And yet her main suitors are Ralph Wiggum and Millhouse. The highlight of her early love life? A brief affair with Nelson. *Sigh*

The fact the she may finds much better prospects in college and that she may become president of the U.S.A. does take some of the sting off. Still, some tough years there.

7. Being a TV clown is very depressing. But not as depressing as being the owner of a bar.

Seriously, being the super famous TV star of your own kids show might seem like a great job. But that is only before you realize that you will have to deal with the disdain of your father, rebellions on your summer camp and with your sidekick trying to frame you for a crime you didn’t commit. Tough job!

Another job that is not all that it’s cracked up to be is owning of a bar. Sure, when you were young you dreamed about it. Spending all night partying and drinking with a bunch of young attractive people who would do anything to please you because you are “the owner of the bar”.

But the reality is that your bar will probably be frequented by a bunch of middle aged, out of shape guys who will do nothing but whine to you about the various problems in their lives. And you will be broke. And you will get many prank calls. And you will be one lonely dude.

Also, just in case you were wondering, turning the bar into a family restaurant will not solve your problems. It will just create a bunch of new ones.

6. The human body can take enormous amounts of abuse

You know what happens when you stick a bunch of crayons into your nose? They go to your brain and make you stupid. But don’t worry, all you have to do is take them out and you are smart again! And if you ever decide you were happier when you were dumb just stick them back in.

And if you feel like jumping a gorge in a skateboard, go for it! If you fail to make the jump it will hurt. A lot. Specially if the ambulance that comes to rescue you ends up letting you fall into the gorge again. But, you will survive to do something stupid another day.

5. If your are a really really good Christian, God might stop a fire from spreading to your house. However, he will not stop your wife from dying in a freak accident or your neighbors from pestering and stealing stuff from you

So, you know, don’t expect much from the big guy in this life. As for the afterlife…

4. The whole afterlife and eternal soul thing follows some strange rules

For example, getting into heaven seems to be quite easy. Even if you are a not very good Christian who tries to strangle your kid every once in a while and who causes a nuclear explosion, wiping out most of your town, just so you don’t have to clean the garage you still might be able to get in.

Also, if you pledge you soul to someone in the back of a photo that is a binding contract. And if write “[Your Name] Soul” in a piece of paper you can then sell that piece of paper (and your soul) to anyone.

But remember, you only have one soul. So make sure you get a good price.

3. People really like to see themselves as cartoons

The following celebrities have made appearances in The Simpsons: James Earl Jones, Tony Bennett, Larry King,Jon Lovitz, Danny DeVito, Ringo Starr, Magic Johnson, Aerosmith, Sting, Bob Hope, Paul McCartney, Neil Armstrong, Tom Jones, Adam West, Leonard Nimoy, Brooke Shields, Johnny Carson, Bette Midler, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Barry White, Elizabeth Taylor, Conan O’Brien, James Woods, Kathleen Turner, Buzz Aldrin, James Taylor, Winona Ryder, Michelle Pfeiffer, Ted Danson, Woody Harrelson, Rhea Perlman, Jon Ratzenberger, George Wendt, Ann Bancroft, Patrick Stewart, Glenn Close, Donald Sutherland, Suzanne Somers, Kirk Douglas, Smashing Pumpkins, Christina Ricci, Martin Sheen, Lucy Lawless, Tom Arnold, Alec Baldwin, Dennis Rodman, William H. Macy, Susan Sarandon, Metallica, The White Stripes, and many, many others.

Sure, it’s a popular show. But there are other popular shows out there and none of them can boast such an impressive guest list. So I have to think that this has a lot to do withe the “Hey, it’s me, and I’m yellow!” effect.

2. Beer. Is. Awesome

I’ll let Homer take this one:

Son, a woman is like a beer. They smell good, they look good, you’d step over your own mother just to get one! But you can’t stop at one. You wanna drink another woman!

Homer no function beer well without.

Here’s to alcohol, the cause of—and solution to—all life’s problems.

So true…

And the number 1 thing I learned by watching The Simpsons: No matter what crazy things you do, after about 30 minutes everything will go back to the way it was before

So go out there and raise some hell!

Well, this is my list. What’s yours?

A really good monster can make for a good monster movie. However, it rarely ever makes for a great monster movie. Most of those are actually not really about the monster at all, but about how people react to the threat that the monster imposes. Think about the Romero zombie films. Are the zombies that interesting? Not really. What’s interesting is how the people being attacked respond to the world collapsing around them.

I’m not sure The Host is a great movie. But it’s certainly the best monster movie I have seen in a long time, and it is that good not because the monster, but because of the portrayal of a desperate family trying to fight it in order to save one member of the family that the monster captured.

That family is the Parks. And it’s composed of the father (Hee-bong), who has a little vending booth near the Han river, his two sons, one who is an unemployed college graduate (Nam-il) and the other who still works with the father at the vending booth(Gang-du), his daughter(Nam-joo), and world class archer, and his granddaughter (Hyun-seo), daughter of Gang-du.

When the movie’s monster, which is some kind of giant mutant fish, emerges from the Han river to attack the humans Gang-du is one of the first to see and to have contact with it. And his daughter ends up being one the monster’s first victims. However the monster doesn’t actually eat his victims right away. Instead he regurgitates them into a piece of sewer it has transformed in it’s own private cave. Hyun-seo survived the attack, and manages to call her father on a cellphone.

And now we get into the meat of the movie, as the family comes together to try to save xxx. Doing that is not easy. Nobody outside of the family believes the girl is still alive. They don’t know exactly where she is. And the monster is believed to to be the carrier of a deadly virus, much like SARS, and because of that the whole family has been put into quarantine and nobody is allowed near the area where the monster is. So they have to fight not only the creature, but also their own government.

As the movie proceeds we learn more and more about the Parks, and we begin to understand them better. This is a dysfunctional family, and every member has it’s defects and past sins. But they love each other very much, and when they see one of them in danger they showcase an unexpected courage. This is not the courage of a super-hero, who doesn’t seem to fear anything. But the courage of ordinary people put in an extreme situation. And it’s quite moving.

Beyond the excellent portrayal of the Parks the film still has many qualities. One very important one is that it’s scary and tense. As you get to know the Parks you fear for them and the film competently makes you believe that any one could die at any moment. So you always find yourself guessing whether this will be the last time you see the character alive. And when the deaths do come they are always very well handled, moving and meaningful.

And although I said the monster is not the reason that this movie works, that doesn’t mean that it’s not a a great monster. Because it is. Not only are the effects surprisingly well done, the monster’s design and movement is sufficiently unique to very memorable. Like I said, the thing is a kind of giant mutant fish, which is not something you see everyday.

Finally, The Host also has quite a bit of social commentary. Honestly, not being well versed in the political history of South Korea and not knowing the current political climate, quite a bit of it went over my head. I can tell that the film is critical of the U.S., or more specifically of the relationship of the U.S. military on South Korea with the local people and government. Not only is the monster created due to the carelessness of an American mortician which has a bunch of chemicals thrown into the Han river, but the military is also generally portrayed as not taking the interests of the Korean people into account. The military also steps over the Korean government in several points. And the Koran government is shown as being essentially subservient to whatever the Americans say and do. Again, without knowing more about South Korean politics it’s hard to interpret what the movie is trying to say, but it did make me wonder.

As long as you are not afraid of subtitles I strongly recommend checking out The Host. It’s a strong movie which is never less than very entertaining. And the DVD was just released today, so you don’t even have to wait.

(source:boxofficemojo.com)

This is one of those weekends that leaves everybody at the studios happy.

At number one we have Chuck and Larry, with $34 million. This is a bit below Sandler’s average with straight comedies over the last few years, but it’s still a respectable number. And being in the top does offer some bragging rights.

The other opener of the weekend was Hairspray, which managed a very solid $27 million, good enough for third place. It’s a little difficult to compare Hairspray’s performance with that of other musicals because the pattern for musicals over the last few years has been to open in a limited number of theaters. However, this weekend’s take pretty much guarantees that Hairspray will make it to $75 million before the end of it’s run, which would put it ahead of most modern musicals, the exceptions being Dreamgirls and Chicago.

I’m interested in seeing how Hairspray holds up over the following weekends. The good reviews and the studio polling seem to indicate that the movie will have good word of mouth, which could translate into some good legs. But how good? I’m guessing the movie’s total will fall between $75 million and $150 million when all is said and done, but I wouldn’t venture any guesses beyond that right now.

All of the other movies had good holds. Live Free or Die Hard is impressing me with it’s legs and Transformers is dropping more slowly than I expected, but overall good numbers for everybody.

As you people probably noticed, the site’s design changed a wee bit. Hopefully for the better.

I’m still messing around with a few things, but I it’s mostly done now. Hopefully the posting frequency will ramp up now.

I Now Pronounce You Chuck And Larry

The Players: Adam Sandler and Kevin James (King of Queens, Hitch)
The Story: Straight firefighters Adam Sandler and Kevin James get marries for the benefits. Hilarity Laughter Some amusement ensues.
Rotten Tomatoes: 14%
Trailer

It’s a Adam Sandler movie. We all know what that means and whether we like it or not.

Hairspray

The Players: Adam Shankman (Bringing Down the House) directs, John Travolta does drag and several other well known actors have parts.
The Story: A teenager teaches a 1962’s Baltimore a few things about integration. She does that through a lot of singing and dancing, which was the preferred method for teaching in Baltimore in the 60’s.
Rotten Tomatoes: 94%
Trailer

It’s a musical! Inspired by a John Waters movie! With John Travolta in drag! How can anybody not love that?

By the way, I’m totally serious. Truly looking forward to this film.

I know I’m late to the party on this one, but I just watched the third season finale of Battlestar Galactica, and man was that good. Overall I think the third season was better than the second season, which had a few too many weak episodes, and it cemented Battlestar on my mind as one of the very best shows on TV right now.

As most of you probably already know, Galactica will end after it’s upcoming fourth season. And I’m actually happy about that. Sure, I’m a little sad that I only have 22 original Battlestar episodes to watch now, but from the very first season my biggest fear was always that this series would end up going on too long. I worried that if that happened not only would the series lose it’s quality toward the end, the plot twists that would be necessary to keep it going might make it impossible to  to end the series properly.

Considering the high quality of the third season and that we only have one more to go I don’t think there is much chance of that happening now.

I was reading this interview with Roth and found myself interested in what he had to say and even agreeing strongly with some of his points. He seems like a likable guy.

I still think he is a hack with completely whacked aesthetic sensibilities. And Hostel (part 1) is still one of the worst movies I have seen in the last few years. But I’m warming up to the actual guy.

Judd Apatow, talking about why he kept the budget to Knocked Up to a relatively cheap $30 million:

“The lower the budget, the less there’s a need for it to meet the studio’s expectations”

I loved He-Man as a kid. I even had a lot of the toys, including the very cool Grayskull castle. But the idea of making a He-Man movie? It's really, really silly.

Look, there are some things that we are willing to accept in a cartoon that we are simply not willing to accept in a live action movie. And there are some things we were willing to accept in the 80's that we are no longing going to accept. And a guy raising a sword and yelling “By the power of Grayskull… I HAVE THE POWER!” is not going to fly.

Sure, maybe they will find an angle that will make this work. Maybe they will manage to cut out the silly stuff. But considering how much of the original was composed of "the silly stuff", I'm guessing it would be easier to just come up with an original movie.

Just in case you have never seen or don't remember He-Man, here are the opening credits.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YBXvxgD9fo]

Out of the top ten highest grossing Japanese movies from last year, four were animated, including the highest grossing one,  Goro Miyazaki's "Tales From Earthsea". It's not like the US doesn't have it's own share of high grossing toons (Shrek anyone?), but I'm still always surprised by how popular home grown animation is in Japan.

Anyways, this Variety article has an interesting look at the bussiness side of Japanese animation, and some problems it faces. A little less in depth than I would have liked, but still interesting.