Outcast (feat. Nicolas Cage)

Outcast is a film about knights who kill women and children. Some do it for Christ. Some only threaten to do it out of pride. I like when movies conjure the spirit of Master Splinter, with a long whiskered man using 'my son' in every sentence. More films should have that for sure. It really makes me want to talk to my dad again, so I can constantly refer to him as 'my father'. My Son assassinates My Father in China, for the throne which is rightfully his, and the weak, peaceful son runs off to avoid execution and become a great warrior.

Meanwhile the action prince (Christenson) and the action King (Cage) get tired of killing women and children. When their great Crusades are over is where we get into the meat of this film. Our heroes had talked about going east, where they might do some use their swords for good. As fate would have it, our crusaders show up at the right place at the right time to restore justice to China and become the heroes they always wanted to be. Or do they? My son, you will have to watch the film to find out.

For some reason, this film got a score of 0 on rotten tomatoes, which I don't entirely understand. These raters obviously haven't seen the Crudes. I very much enjoyed watching beautiful, grown-up Hayden Christenson with a British accent and beautiful princess Lian (played by Liu Yifei). There could have been more Cage, but I know he's a busy man with better movies to focus on. To some extent, he is the true hero of our story. Sure, the Chinese might have saved themselves without Nicolas Cage but that is not the world we live in. If this film were made today, I don't think they'd name his character Gallain. It sounds too much like Ghislaine.

Is this film totally predictable? Yes, but only as whole. There are some fun, grunty action scenes. Does it put a new angle on historical events? No, but it does romanticize a foreign time and place we'd otherwise be left to imagine. Does it say anything new about our current world? He is the lesson of the film: If you neglect your values, you can have a profoundly negative effect on the spirits of your friends. And if you're lucky, you can make things right. Not horrible. Maybe it's just a rehashing of the trauma one experiences from life in battle. Maybe there is only one god, but he/she wears many faces. I could be wrong on all accounts. Maybe Hayden Christenson always had a british accent and I never noticed.

best quote: But the Guards... Cut. Out. Her. Tongue!

1. Raising Arizona
2. The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent
3. Leaving Las Vegas
4. Red Rock West
5. Adaptation
6. Pig
7. Birdy
8. Wild at Heart
9. Renfield
10. Joe
11. National Treasure
12. Guarding Tess
13. Snake Eyes
14. Mandy
15. Dog Eat Dog
16. Color Out of Space
17. Mom and Dad
18. World Trade Center
19. Peggy Sue Got Married
20. The Rock
21. Zandalee
22. Prisoners of the Ghostland
23. City of Angels
24. Willy's Wonderland
25. Jiu Jitsu
26. Captain Corelli's Mandolin
27. Bangkok Dangerous
28. Drive Angry
29. Army of One
30. Lord of War
31. Gone in 60 Seconds
32. Matchstick Men
33. Vampire's Kiss
34. Con Air
35. Face/Off

36. Outcast

37. Trapped in Paradise
38. The Boy in Blue
39. Honeymoon in Vegas
40. Deadfall
41. Amos and Andrew
42. Moonstruck
43. Tokarev
44. The Sorcerer's Apprentice
45. Knowing
46. Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans
47. Bringing Out the Dead
48. The Family Man
49. Stolen
50. Season of the Witch
51. It Could Happen to You
52. The Wicker Man
53. Inconceivable
54. 8mm
55. The Frozen Ground
56. Left Behind
57. A Score to Settle
58. Pay the Ghost
59. Primal
60. Dying of the Light
61. Grand Isle
62. Looking Glass
63. Arsenal
64. Between Worlds
65. Ghost Rider
66. Trespass
67. The Humanity Bureau
68. Next
69. The Weather Man
70. 211
71. Fire Birds
72. The Croods

Novelist as a Vocation by Haruki Murakami

Here is yet another book about how one very talented person becomes a Novelist and maintains that status. If you haven't gathered, I have ambitions as a writer. Sure. I've written a few novels which I won't let anyone read? Why, because I don't have the confidence to do much with it. Why? Because I get distracted and want to do other creative stuff. But writing is fun, and I always want to do more of it while I'm more practiced at completing big projects in Music that very few people listen to. It wouldn't be much different to put out a long piece of fiction that even fewer people will Read. 

Whatever. Writing is fun. Haruki Murakami had fun as a writer, and he did some really great work, with a very unique method of first writing his novels in English and then translating to Japanese (his native tongue), to keep his prose simple and clear. And he does have a wonderful narrative voice. 

Inconceivable feat. Nicolas Cage

Here we have a thriller about a best friend who is a psycho and killer (but maybe for good reason). This came out 20 years after The Cable Guy made the stereotype into a comedy. Cage isn't the star of this film. He plays the very boring doctor husband of doctor Angela, played by Gina Gershon and her very distracting teeth. I don't know what's up with them. Maybe I'm the one with a problem.

The cast is good though. Everyone is good except for the scenes in which everyone is bad, reading their lines like good workers. It's as if the directors were aiming for mediocrity at best. But I had to keep watching because there's always a chance that the villain will in, or the villain will win and the hero will die, or the hero will die and the villain will lose. I'm not going to tell you what happens, my friend. You're going to have to watch and find out for yourself, unless you can find me one of these family sized papasans. Then I'll give you any spoiler you want.

1. Raising Arizona
2. The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent
3. Leaving Las Vegas
4. Red Rock West
5. Adaptation
6. Pig
7. Birdy
8. Wild at Heart
9. Renfield
10. Joe
11. National Treasure
12. Guarding Tess
13. Snake Eyes
14. Mandy
15. Dog Eat Dog
16. Color Out of Space
17. Mom and Dad
18. World Trade Center
19. Peggy Sue Got Married
20. The Rock
21. Zandalee
22. Prisoners of the Ghostland
23. City of Angels
24. Willy's Wonderland
25. Jiu Jitsu
26. Captain Corelli's Mandolin
27. Bangkok Dangerous
28. Drive Angry
29. Army of One
30. Lord of War
31. Gone in 60 Seconds
32. Matchstick Men
33. Vampire's Kiss
34. Con Air
35. Face/Off
36. Trapped in Paradise
37. The Boy in Blue
38. Honeymoon in Vegas
39. Deadfall
40. Amos and Andrew
41. Moonstruck
42. Tokarev
43. The Sorcerer's Apprentice
44. Knowing
45. Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans
46. Bringing Out the Dead
47. The Family Man
48. Stolen
49. Season of the Witch
50. It Could Happen to You
51. The Wicker Man

52. Inconceivable

53. 8mm
54. The Frozen Ground
55. Left Behind
56. A Score to Settle
57. Pay the Ghost
58. Primal
59. Dying of the Light
60. Grand Isle
61. Looking Glass
62. Arsenal
63. Between Worlds
64. Ghost Rider
65. Trespass
66. The Humanity Bureau
67. Next
68. The Weather Man
69. 211
70. Fire Birds
71. The Croods

The Shining by Stephen King

I have a strong feeling you've seen the film, The Shining. You probably even know it's based off a book. You might even be like me and find yourself watching the Kubrick masterpiece every single halloween season. Let me tell you something. There's more to the story than is in the movie. You might be a fan, but you probably feel like a poseur in the face of one who has Read the Book. And it's a good one, a very early work by Stephen King but exhibits his style perfectly. Sometimes it's more fun and more scary to get into the heads of our demons. 

Gino's Pizza & Spaghetti House of Cross Lanes, WV

For my current trip, I thought I had all of my pizza stops planned but I kept seeing signs for this Gino's. I feel like maybe I've heard of it or maybe I've had a frozen pizza from a brand of the same name. It's not a unique name for a pizza monger. Then I saw Gino's and Tudor's Biscuit World in the same building, which greatly amplified my curiosity. In a world of biscuits, can there be a pizza that is the most West Virginia of All pizzas?

My $9.99 Large Cheese Pizza had a Ratio of 3cr/2ce/2ch. I give the dough a 4 out of 5. Texturally it was perfect, with some goo in each bite and a little skin of crispy chewiness on the bottom. However, it was much thinner in the middle 1/3 than the rest, so there were some parts that edged on being too doughy. For that reason, I give Gino's a 4 out of 5 for Overall Quality. 

Gino's sauce gets a 4 out of 5. It's really good, with a consistency I wish Pizza Hut still provided. However, there's nothing remarkable about it. Which leads me to style. I was able to order my pie at a counter, like a fast food joint. There was a counter on the other side of the place for Tudor's biscuit world. The decoration was definitely more like a world of biscuits, which is fine. It's unique. I detected a bit of Cheddar on my pie, which enhanced its savory. Every bite was delightful. 

I see how Gino's is a local favorite and successful chain in the region, but it doesn't stand out. I give them a 4 out of 5 for style. With a final score of 80%, I will definitely go to Gino's again. You should go there too. 

My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh

I read this one because a couple of my friends said they had started it, or were going to read it. I love when this happens because I yearn for friends to talk about books with. As it turns out, my friends didn't read this book. Maybe they have by now. I should ask. Anyway, My Year of Rest and Relaxation is about a depressed young woman who lives alone in New York City. As she was already enabled to support herself as a part time receptionist at a gallery, she lost her parents who left her a house and enough money to live on for a while. So our heroine decides to get herself prescribed to as many downers as possible, so she can sleep almost all the time, until she feels better. Eventually she finds a drug to make this happen, and an artist who's willing to take care of things for her, so she only has to be awake or cognizant for one day out of every week or so. As it turns out, she takes for granted the ones she truly cares about those who truly care for her in turn. 

Maddaddam by Margaret Atwood

You guessed it, this is the conclusion to my beloved Maddaddam trilogy in which our heroes work together to go on a quest and plan to rebuild civilization, with many of the same problems that existed before the Flood. It's a great one, showing you can still have moving scenes and true heroism in a satirical speculative fiction. 

Renfield (feat. Nicolas Cage)

First off, wow. You're in for a ride. I guess you'd call this film a meta horror comedy. With more comedy than horror, Renfield ties itself immediately to the classic universal Dracula films, starring Nicolas Cage as (Lugosi's) Dracula. Of course this story is mostly about the eponymous Renfield and how he keeps his Dracula up and running to do his thing, while struggling to find his own bit of happiness in this monstrous modern world.

The screwball comedy is strong with this one, which is a plus for me. Nothing compliments violent action better than a punch line, am I right? Even in the romcom-leaning segments the cheap gags don't stop.

While Cage isn't the Star of this film, I don't believe anyone could have played his part better. This time Dracula has a better plan, a bigger plan. World domination. It's a terrifying time indeed to be the servant of such an evil god. Good thing for Renfield, he's got a support group for codependents. It's not like anything else could go wrong to fill this wildly entertaining hour and a half.

1. Raising Arizona
2. The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent
3. Leaving Las Vegas
4. Red Rock West
5. Adaptation
6. Pig
7. Birdy
8. Wild at Heart

9. Renfield

10. Joe
11. National Treasure
12. Guarding Tess
13. Snake Eyes
14. Mandy
15. Dog Eat Dog
16. Color Out of Space
17. Mom and Dad
18. World Trade Center
19. Peggy Sue Got Married
20. The Rock
21. Zandalee
22. Prisoners of the Ghostland
23. City of Angels
24. Willy's Wonderland
25. Jiu Jitsu
26. Captain Corelli's Mandolin
27. Bangkok Dangerous
28. Drive Angry
29. Army of One
30. Lord of War
31. Gone in 60 Seconds
32. Matchstick Men
33. Vampire's Kiss
34. Con Air
35. Face/Off
36. Trapped in Paradise
37. The Boy in Blue
38. Honeymoon in Vegas
39. Deadfall
40. Amos and Andrew
41. Moonstruck
42. Tokarev
43. The Sorcerer's Apprentice
44. Knowing
45. Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans
46. Bringing Out the Dead
47. The Family Man
48. Stolen
49. Season of the Witch
50. It Could Happen to You
51. The Wicker Man
52. 8mm
53. The Frozen Ground
54. Left Behind
55. A Score to Settle
56. Pay the Ghost
57. Primal
58. Dying of the Light
59. Grand Isle
60. Looking Glass
61. Arsenal
62. Between Worlds
63. Ghost Rider
64. Trespass
65. The Humanity Bureau
66. Next
67. The Weather Man
68. 211
69. Fire Birds
70. The Croods