Garrett’s Favorite and Most hated films of 09’

Another year another one of my year-end reviews. (Late I know…but I got really lazy after Christmas.) See I can’t really call this a best and worst film list b/c some things I liked others down right loathed and some things I hate others call classics. In retrospect Hollywood put out a lot of mediocre films this year falling in between crap and awesome. Most of my fav films I saw I picked up blind when they were released on Bluray. Some of them didn’t even come out this year.

Top films and in no particular order.

Boondock Saints 2-I had to drive to a different city just to see it. Totally worthy sequel!
The Box-From the writer of I Am Legend (the book) and director of Donnie Darko you get a think piece that will leave you talking about it long after seeing it.
District 9-One of the top films of the summer! As my parents said after seeing it ‘Different’. Being original in an unoriginal world is hard to come by.
Drag Me to Hell-Sam Rami is back!
Fanboys-If the Weinstein’s were smart they wouldn’t have sat on this for years. If they released it they could’ve made some coin.
Trick R Treat-The best horror anthology in years. Once again if studio dickheads would’ve release it they could’ve made some buck.
I love you Beth Cooper-Reminiscent of 80’s John Hughes.
Jennifer’s Body-This years future cult classic.
Law Abiding Citizen-Monte Cristo meets Prison Break need I say more.
In Search of a midnight kiss- a black and white indie romance from the producer of Before Sunset.
Perfect Getaway-Not overly great but Timothy Olyphant is just badass here.
Paranormal Activity-If I saw this when I was 7 I wouldn’t be able to sleep for a month. For my age now it was just plain cool.
17 again-Don’t let the fact that it starts Zac Efron throw you off. This film is hilarious and his friend is the coolest geek ever!
Star trek-My fav movie of the summer blockbusters.
Taken-Don’t fuck with Liam Neeson
Zombieland-Zombie comedy fun that surprisingly the masses loved as well.
What Love is- A comedy about relationships from the guy who did Poolhall Junkies.
Ben X- a Belgium film about a bullied kid who’s into online gaming.
Choke-a black comedy from the writer of Fight Club.
Fired Up-FU
500 Days of Summer-an actual realistic approach to relationships instead of your typical Hollywood stuff.
The Road-Bleakily awesome

Worst Films-There is probably more films that are worse than these but I don’t plan on seeing shitty films on purpose.

Fighting-I’d liked it better when it was called Lionheart and stared Jean Claude Van Damm
The Final Destination-or in other words a remake of the one before it, which was a remake of the one before that, which was a remake of the one before that.
Gamer-You have a cool premise, the writers and director of the outlandish Crank series and Gerard Butler and we end up with shite.
Men who stare at goats-Love the story behind it and had some take away quotes, but it probably would’ve been better in the hands of the Coens
Up –Well I think I’m the only one out there who didn’t like this one. It is also a surprisingly very dark film.
Night at the Museum 2-I hated the first one and still went to it. I though it could have so much more potential when you could play around with stuff at the smithosian. Man was I wrong.
Push-Snooze fest.
Saw 6-I was with them all the way up to 5 and now they are reaching at straws.
Street Fighter-Most years I don’t have an all time hated film but this one is it. It makes the 94 version look like an academy award winner.
Underworld 3-Pointless
Halloween 2-Good for Rob for doing his own thing but damn
Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant-garbage…and now we’ll never see any of the other book’s adapted, oh darn (this is sarcasm)
GI Joe-My childhood has been raped!
Paul Blart-Was this movie suppose to be funny.
Avatar-The story was Avatared.

Guilty pleasure
Dragonball Evolution-This movie was so bad that it was good.


Films that came out last year that I really wanted to see but missed.
Black Dynamite
Collector
Hurt Locker
Moon
The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus

Best CD’s
Pearl jam-Backspacer
Alice in Chains-Black gives way to Blue.

Some of the films I’m looking forward to this year.
The Crazies
Remember Me.
Hot Tub Time Machine
The Losers
Kick-Ass
Piranha 3-D
A Nightmare on Elm Street
Iron Man 2
The A-Team
Predators
Inception
TRON: LEGACY
RED DAWN
SCOTT PILGRIM VS. THE WORLD
THE EXPENDABLES

Garrett's Cold Remedy

Seems like more people than usual are getting sick this year, so I thought I'd share my cold remedy that will get you back on your feet in no time. As far back as I can remember I would get at least one and sometimes 2 or 3 really bad colds a year. Of course that never stopped me from going to school or work. However now a days I get sick days so to hell with this going to work sick...Well that's a lie I'll still go to work but if it's really bad I'll leave half way. Anyways the trick is a mix of things. Before you get sick there are a couple of things you can do to prevent it. Number 1 constantly wash your hands. Yes it really is that simple and you hear it all the time. Well take it from me and listen to it. From there it's a mental game. If you think to yourself "I'm not going to get sick" you probably wont. Positive thinking is key. If those don't work and you wind up getting sick follow these next two steps. They say drink lots of fluids...Try this concoction next time: Orange Juice, 7-up or Ginger Ale and Vodka. I know what your thinking but it does work. My theory is your getting you vitamin C from the Orange Juice, the bubbly soda is good for upset stomachs and the alcohol kills germs. Sounds all logical to me. And if it doesn't work as long as you drink enough you'll be too drunk to care about being sick. And if all else fails pill popping is the way to go. Down lots of DayQuil and NyQuil or Contact C, but here's the trick. Take one more than the recommended dosage. If it says take 1 or 2 every 4 hours take 3. This way you know when it's working ;) Just don't over do the daily recommended dosage. I'm assuming this would probably kill you. Follow these proven steps and you can prevent colds before they take hold or when it does you'll be right as rain in no time.

On a side note I'm not recommending drinking OJ, Sev, and Vodka every day to prevent colds from ever happening. This could lead to alcoholism and I don't have a cure for that one yet.

Freaky

Okay I have a freaky little tale for all my loyal readers out there.... My oldest brother and his family are visiting this week. The day they get here my brother makes a stop at Dairy Queen. When he gets home he asks me if I've been to DQ lately and donated to whatever fundraiser they are currently collecting money for. It's one of those fundraisers where if you donate a buck or something and you get a pic of a hot air balloon and sign your name on it and they post them all over the store. I'm thinking it's an odd question b/c I probably haven't been there in like 6 months. He goes on to tell me that someone has donated money and signed my name. I'm of course thinking yeah right, haha whatever. My name my not be generic but other people do share this name. Then by chance a few days later I just so happen to find myself in this DQ while killing some time before a movie. I think to myself hey I should try to locate this signature. Of course there is like hundreds of then so I didn't really think I would actually find it, but low and behold there it was. My name in exactly the same cursive as if it were of my own hand, I couldn't believe it. Your probably thinking I got drunk one night and on my drinking binge stopped by DQ for blizzard. I wish that were true. And if during my migraines this week I actually split into some different persona I think my family would have confronted me about this, haha. However in that case I guess I really wouldn't have signed my real name. Maybe I've invented time travel or alternate realities are starting to bleed together. Either way this is some freaky shit!

Parasailing

Finally after years of saying I was going to go parasailing I've completed this task. Every time I've wanted to go there has been one reason or another why I couldn't. In most cases it was due to weather or not being able to match up schedules with my friends to go. I finally booked some time off to get this done unfortunately I was unable to match schedules with my friends. However my youngest brother tagged along and even if he backed out I don't think that would've stopped me. Of course what has to happen for the start of my vacation...a fire in Kelowna. I was thinking that this was going to kill my plans, so my back up was to go sea dooing just outside Kelowna. Lucky for me the fire didn't hinder my plans. I really thought my plans would be wrecked again so I had it on the brain to go sea dooing and since my brother has never been we did that as well. On the down side I got way too much sun by the time we went so I was feeling a little nauseous. It was a pretty good value, only $95 to go tandem for about 10-15 minutes or so up in the air. Plus for only $12 they take pictures, which I though was a great value b/c what you are really doing is buying a 512mb memory card. They take the pictures on the card and you keep it. To be honest after skydiving it was sort of a let down. Don't get me wrong I had fun and it was a peaceful flight, but it fails in comparison after gliding down to the ground after skydiving. As I said this was something I've wanted to do for a while way before I wanted to go skydiving. It was actually my lead up idea to skydiving. When you come back down you have the option for a dry landing or wet landing, and if you were outside that day you wanted to be soaked really good. Now that this is done I'm starting to run out of cool new things to try...However yesterday I did think up one new venture I want to get into and that's archery. Maybe Sagittariians are naturals at it ;)

3D Gaming

There's a sweet new toy on the market! It's a NVIDIA GeForce 3D Vision Kit. So what is this exactly? It's a device that allows you to upgrade your PC to a fully immersive stereoscopic 3D gaming experience. Totally gimmicky, but so cool! We were setting one up today to demo in store. My computer guys were still working on getting a game loaded by the time I left so I didn't get to try out a full game. However I did get to put on the 3D glasses and try it out on a few still images of games and it is so bad ass! Now why can't they do this for DVD's as well! Probably b/c it's $300. In a dream world I'll get a free copy at my conference in September! It's definitely a cool demo to check out.

Daybreakers

I'm back to share my love of movies and music. This time around it's for Ethan Hawke's new movie Daybreakers. This is one of those films I've been waiting to see for some time now. It was shot back in 07 and is finally being released in Jan next year. It's from the Spierig Brothers, the guys who gave us the Australian zombie film Undead. It's been a while since I've seen that one so I can't recall whether I liked it or not. I'll be checking it out again closer to the release. The plot summary from IMDB is "In the year 2019, a plague has transformed most every human into vampires. Faced with a dwindling blood supply, the fractured dominant race plots their survival; meanwhile, a researcher works with a covert band of vamps on a way to save humankind". It's a Vampire film , stars Ethan Hawke, and the effects are done by WETA so I'm sold. The trailer just came out a few weeks back. So there's my first love and the second can be found put to good use in the last half of the trailer. They use Placebo's cover of Kate Bush's song 'Running Up That Hill'. What's great about the song is the beginning sounds a lot like a score from a John Carpenter film. Here's a link to check it out for yourself.

The Living Dead

My friend has brought to my attention a book that he thought I might be interested in. It's called 'The Living Dead' and is a collection of Zombie short stories from some of the top writers in scifi, fantasy and horror including Stephen King, Clive Barker, and Neil Gaiman. One particular story that he said I would be interested in reading is 'Bobby Conroy Comes Back from the Dead' by Joe Hill. It doesn't feature any real zombies, but is a love story about two former lovers who are extras during the making of the original Dawn of the Dead. Obviously this one in particular is a must read for me. I haven't picked up the book yet, but I did seek out this story to read online. It wasn't anything really great but it did have a big cool factor for me. I've been pretty bad when it comes to reading novels latly. I tend to start them and it takes me too long to finish but these are short enough that I think I'll have to pick it up. If your interesting in reading the Joe Hill story here is the link.