I haven’t written a movie review in a while. Well, it’s time for one. Today’s movie is Mystery Team. The movie is by the comedy group Derrick Comedy, which is notable for their online comedy shorts such as “Bro Rape”. The most well known member of the troupe is Donal Glover, who you may know as Troy Barnes on the fantastic NBC Comedy show Community.
The group, which features 3 actors a director and a producer, self produced the movie on a tight budge – something you can notice if you look for it while you watch the movie, but it doesn’t distract from the story. The basic premise is that three friends were young neighborhood detectives (think Encyclopedia Brown) and have never group out of solving mysteries involving which kid stuck their finger in a cooling pie. They are ridiculed by the town, but when the opportunity to solve an actual mystery – the murder of the parents of a young girl who is new in town, at least of them jumps on the chance to prove their worth to the town. The fact that the little girl’s older sister is played by Parks and Recreation‘s adorable Aubrey Plaza doesn’t dissuade them in the least bit.
Mystery Team is currently available on Netflix streaming, and I recommend giving it a watch. The movie rates a full five out of five on the rabbit turd scale of yore!
In the meanwhile watch the trailer (the G rated version, you can fin the R rated version if you’d like.):
I’ve been neglecting the blog this month. I don’t have any good reason besides a lack of much to say. However, now I do have a few things.
Rock Band: After naysaying for a year and a half, I bought an Xbox 360 last fall. This turns out to be one of the best electronic purchases I’ve ever made, considering the use I’ve gotten out of it (mostly from watching video on it – either via playon , netflix or hosted on my windows machine (which died and had to be replaced recently, which caused me much angst, but…). However I’ve played a few arcade games, and two games I’ve purchased – Bioshock and Fallout 3. The latter I played the crap out of, but its time had come to get a new game. After spending a weekend playing Rock Band in Lake Tahoe (the first time I’ve played it in a year) I decided it was time to take the plunge. So I’ve been rocking out on Rock Band 2, and will likely get the Beatles version later this year.
Where the Wild Things Are: I saw the second public showing of this evar last night – a benefit show for 826 Valencia, where I’ve been volunteering for the past few weeks. I won’t lie – the tickets were not cheap, but it was for a good cause, and for a movie I’d been wanting to see since I first saw a trailer. Spike Jonze, who directed and co-wrote the move with Dave Eggers (founder of 826), decided long ago that he wanted to do benefit shows at all the chapters before the movie was released (in fact the Chicago chapter had the first public showing the night before). The movie is out on 10/16 and I do recommend you see it, especially if you have children or enjoyed the book as a child. Also, I got a cool crown:
Halloween: It’s coming in a few weeks. I don’t really have any plans yet, but I do have a costume in the making. It’s a costume not quite as obscure as my Zenmai Samurai costume from 2007, but not main stream either. Most of the implementation of it is complete, but I need to buy one more piece of clothing for it to be complete. Here is a hint – if you can figure it out from it, you will get a lot of credit:
I saw Star Trek (2009) twice – once with my parents while I was in Chicago (on IMAX), and then again when I got back to San Francisco with Mackenzie (35mm). It was worth seeing twice, honestly. Which means I’m already saying I like the movie before I start talking about it.
So, without any spoilers, I will just say that J.J. Abrams hit a home run with this movie. It’s far from perfect – if you spend enough time thinking about the story, you’ll get a bit disgruntled, but then again, it’s Star Trek – meaning it’s supposed to be entertaining and one hopes that any literary deficiencies in the movie would not get in the way of that. And this movie succeeds in spades in that regard. The casting is quite good, with the actors capturing the essence and feeling of the roles they are replaying – oh and the villain is good too. And cool special effects.
I watched the latest James Bond movie, A Quantum of Solace this weekend. The movie was as bizarre as it’s title. pretty much. The plot featured a bad guy who was definitely not good, but not a giant mastermind – but of course I think this is an introduction to the modern SPECTRE, Quantum. Or maybe not. There was not super cool tech in this movie, not even an in car-defibrillator, but I guess the super cellphone and the special computer desk were considered gadgety enough.
I decided that I like Daniel Craig a lot, while at the same time not being a huge fan of his Bond character interpretation. Of course it might not be his fault, but that of the writer and director, but Mr. X from L4yer Cake is more suave than his Bond version could ever hope to be. Still, he’s better than Timothy Dalton, for sure.
As far as a rating, it’s about 3.25 out of 5.4 rabbit turds, on a rabbit turd scale. – pretty low for Bond!
On a lighter note, I will leave you with this, the theme song as if David Bowie had sung it:
