Silflay Hraka

Just got back from watching “3:10 to Yuma”. Actually, I just got back from Kroger. I had to pick up an Ommegang Abbey Ale and a pair of 9 volt batteries. The Ommegang went into the fridge and one 9 volt went into the squirrely smoke detector in my bedroom.

As you might guess, the fresh battery has not stopped the smoke detector from chirping every 30 seconds. It’s starting to piss me off. After ignoring one cheep every 30 seconds for something close to 4 hours last night, I am not sure I can pull another night of it. It’s got me on edge. That’s where the Ommegang comes in.

Speaking of wanting to shoot something, “3:10 to Yuma” had a lot of shooting.

I saw one review that compared it to Clint Eastwood’s “Unforgiven”. Don’t you believe it. It was good, especially as far as modern Western’s go but something about it left me cold. I never really came to care about the characters. I’m not sure if it was because the character development was lacking or because the good guy wasn’t that likable and the bad guy was a little too likable. You never knew who to pull for. You knew who to pull against, but not who to pull for. I feel that there was some back-story that you never got.

That’s not to say it wasn’t utterly enjoyable. It has everything you look for in a Western. The gunslinger that is almost preternaturally fast who also happens to be the sympathetic anti-hero, the rough and hard cattle rancher, the bad guy’s lieutenant that’s even meaner, dirtier and murderous than the captain (think “Johnny Ringo”), stagecoach robbing, murder-minded Apaches and plenty of gun-slinging.

It just didn’t get to me the way “Unforgiven” did. Maybe I’m just older. Cause it was pretty good. On the scale of modern Westerns, it was better than “Wyatt Earp” and “Open Range”. It was at least as good as “Silverado” but doesn’t quite reach “Tombstone” or “Unforgiven”. I might even have liked “Young Guns” more. Something must be wrong with me.

I did love the ending, which I won’t give away. It had just the right twist. Nothing too predictable. I like that.

In the end, I think the movie will earn a ton of cash and spark more Westerns. I like Westerns so that’s a good thing. Of course, most of them will be formulaic crap like “The Quick and the Dead” but hopefully there will be the occasional gem.

I gotta’ go fix that g@dd@mned smoke alarm somehow. I guess I’ll go try the other battery. If that doesn’t work, it’s going to take more than one Ommegang to get me through the night.

Okay, Do NOT go see Spiderman 3. It’s bad. It’s bad, bad, bad, bad, bad. It’s way beyond bad. It’s truly, monumentaly HORRIBLE.

I went to the 10:15 showing and couldn’t make it past 11:30 before I had to leave. That includes 15 or 20 minutes of previews, so I didn’t even make it an hour into the film.

The story is bad, the writing is bad, the acting is bad and the direction is bad. It’s all around bad. Bad, bad, bad, bad, bad. Be forewarned. It’s worse than “Batman and Robin”.

I’m not kidding.

It’s bad.

Today was shopping day on Emusic.com. I signed up for the premium annual subscription last month and I haven’t had time to download anything since my 90-song allotment renewed last week. You can imagine my giddy anticipation. I had 59 albums stored for purchase consideration and managed to add two more albums to that list before downloading anything. After today’s spree and after removing some items I purchased last month, that list is now down to 56 items.

I’m listening to the new albums now and I can’t figure out which one is my favorite. It’s a three-way tie between Jay Farrar’s “Sebastopol“, Lucero’s “Tennessee” and the Pernice Brothers “The World Won’t End“. Jay Farrar and Pernice Brothers were my favorite downloads from last month, along with Plain White T’s. Oh, and Dillon Fence. Robbie Fulks’ stuff was pretty good too.

I also downloaded M. Ward’s “Transfiguration“, Bob Mould’s “Body of Work” and Ray Charles “The Essentials“. I haven’t gotten through all that yet but I look forward to it.

I am continually amazed at what a great deal Emusic happens to be. On top of the 90 tracks I get with my monthly subscription, I download maybe 15 to 30 free tracks each month. I probably pay under $.19 cents a track for music without any kind of digital rights restrictions and it’s music I genuinely enjoy. I’m already looking forward to November 21st when my monthly subscription renews again. Emusic does sell “booster packs” I could use to buy music sooner, but I’m trying to avoid those. I almost wish Emusic had a $24.95 per month subscription plan. If they offered 120 tracks per month at that price, I’m sure they’d get plenty of subscribers to sign up. They’re probably missing out by making $19.95 their premium level.

Headed out with a lady friend last night to catch dinner and a movie. She’d mentioned that she liked horror movies, so I thought we might go see “Wolf Creek“.

I hadn’t seen any previews or really read any reviews, but I think I had heard previously that it was pretty scary, which was my sole criterion for selecting the movie. My other choice would’ve been to go see “Hostel“, but I heard that it was pretty much just a gore flick and wasn’t really that frightening.

Before I get too far into this review, let me just tell everyone to stay away. The movie is God-awful. Evidently Greg McLean, the director, thought remaking “The Texas Chain-Saw Massacre” with Australians instead of Americans and all the cinematic excellence of “The Blair Witch Project” would be enough to provide a good scare. Note to Greg: it’s not.

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