Another worthless Friday...Yay!

So, I was supposed to go to the racetrack today with friends, but it got cancelled due to a lot of people dropping out and the fact that I felt like shit when I got up today.
So, with no real plans, I decided to do what I do best: sit around and waste time. I had some errands to run, which basically consisted of returning a rented DVD to one place, picking up some new movies to watch, getting a bunch of Cokes (5 for $5 at Kroger, whoo!), and um, seems like there was something else, but it doesn't really matter. So, at the cheap rental place, I decided to pick up a lot of films I'd either heard were good or had seen chunks of and wanted to see more, as well as one that caught my attention at the store. I picked up the original Longest Yard, Comic Book Villains, The War at Home, How to Kill Your Neighbor's Dog, Playing Mona Lisa, and the first Superman. So far, I've watched The Longest Yard, which was really overrated and not that funny (which says something about the recent remake, since I hear it is almost the same word for word), and Comic Book Villains, which wasn't that great. It was in the Comedy section, and it really belongs in Drama, because it's funny for about five minutes and then it becomes this tense, twisting drama that's not only unfunny, but just mean, like the director/writer wanted to take the viewer into the human soul to show just how caught up we can get in things that should be worthless, that life needs to be interaction in this world and not living vicariously through the actions of superheroes with super-hot girls and awesome powers who save the world month after month, and that it is even more wrong to horde comics for the purpose of selling them to collectors, because that can lead men to do stupid things in the pursuit of money and fame, that in the end it all spirals out of control and the realities of life crash into these men, yet, in the end, evil gets what it deserves and the good guy can come out on top, that the intention behind an action can be the ultimate deciding factor in where the person performing that action ends up, but also that the semi-bad guy, the one whose key moment provides the rising action of the story, can also end up successful for a different reason, that it is possible for good and evil to triumph in their own ways (sorry, I decided at some point to make a Faulkner sentence just to see if I could. It's ain't pretty, that's for sure). So, yeah, not that good. Right now, I'm watching The War at Home, which is a film about a Vietnam vet, played by Emilio Estevez, who returns home and is still kind of disoriented by his experiences in the war. His father is this Southern patriarch who fought in WWII and is played by, of course, Martin Sheen. There's this barrier between the father and son. Oh, god, so far, it's been alright, but it seriously just bought into the cliche of using Buffalo Springfield's "For What It's Worth" in a movie that concerns 'Nam. Bah. Anyway, the barrier between father and son reminds me of this story by Tim O'Brien (whose stories always concern Vietnam and which I'm always moved by for one reason or another). The story was about this kid who returns home from two years in 'Nam and is struggling to reconnect. He's driving around the lake on July 4th, just circling it seven or eight times, taking it slow, trying to work through his issues. His father fought in WWII and never talks about it. The kid, Paul Berlin (who was a standard in O'Brien's stories and is considered his Mary Sue), has no one to talk to about the horrors that occurred there, like when a friend of his started to crawl into a Viet Cong tunnel, got shot in the neck, and the guy's legs just spasmed, the wretched spasm that is somehow so vivid in my skull without having actually seen it myself. The kid's driving around and just imagining that his father is in the truck with him, talking to him about it all. I think this has an impact on me because I see the same issue with my father and grandfather, both of which were in the military, fought in their own wars, but never talk about it, not to each other, not to anyone. I think they try and forget what they saw, but you can look at them and tell that they can't, and bottling it up is hard on them. Anyway, it's kind of funny, because while I wrote that last bit, in the movie, the daughter said to Martin Sheen that someone needs to talk to Emilio about his issues, and the father replied, "That may be, but it's not anybody in this family." Heh. Anyway, so far, except for the cliche, it's not that bad of a film. It's definitely the standard "Vietnam Vet has troubles adjusting" film, but at least I can be sure that it won't turn into a Rambo film with Emilio flipping out and killing dozens of people. The film reminded me of Cadence, which had Martin Sheen as the commander of a military prison and Charlie Sheen as a new prisoner (not playing father and son). I remember liking it when I was younger, but can't remember much about it now. It's now on my list of rentals for next weekend.
Bah, the boys were acting up and I had to go attend to them. Silly mutts. I'll probably be like the dwainker and start posting pictures of them on here soon. The problem is that they don't stay still enough to snap photos of.
Anyway, right now, I've still got about half of War at Home to watch, as well as Supes (which I'm not sure I've ever seen all the way through, and if I have, it's been a while), How to Kill You Neighbor's Dog (I've seen about half of it, and I find Branagh hilarious, so here's hoping), and Playing Mona Lisa (not to be confused with Mona Lisa's Smile, this is about a piano prodigy and her decision whether or not to attend Juliard, I think. I've seen maybe a third of it and liked it, so I figured what the heck). For my next rental cycle, I think I'll get Frailty (the movie with Matt MacConaughey and Bill Paxton, which tries to be suspenseful but which is totally given away by the promotional material, since the poster makes Matt look as evil as possible, yet the story tries to make him out to be a good guy), Liberty Stands Still (yeah, it has Wesley Snipes in it, but it has Oliver Platt in a serious role, which is usually a plus. The premise of the film is kind of like Phone Booth, but it looks to be about ten times better), Beat (about the major beatniks and their lives), Vulgar (it has most of the cast of Clerks in it and is about a run-of-the-mill party clown who saves the day and hits it big. Kind of like Death to Smoochy, but it doesn't look as cheesy, so here's hoping), Red Dawn (an anti-commie film about All-American kids who form a resistance group when Soviets invade their town. It has an interesting smattering of actors who became famous around the time of the film and then pretty much disappeared, including Charlie Sheen, Patrick Swayze, Jennifer Grey, and Lea Thompson), and now Cadence.
Heh, Kathy Bates just had a great line: "War doesn't make you rude to your parents."
I was watching I Love the 80s: 3D earlier, which is VH1's attempt to pull as much money out of a concept as possible. (Oh, my God, Kathy Bates is a total bitch. She's all about that "keeping up appearances" thing that the Brits and the Southerners are into. She's talking to her mother on the phone and then gives the phone to Emilio. He tells her that he's thinking about moving to California and she basically rips the phone away from him, telling her mother that the boy's just kidding. She then covers the receiver on the phone and calls Emilio a "vagrant." Bitch) Anyway, they were talking about mousse on ILt80s and how you were supposed to use it with discretion. Jane Wiedlin of the Go-Gos had this great quote: "You were supposed to use it with discretion, but a lot of us in the 80s didn't have discretion because we were on drugs!"
I've been paying attention to this movie for the most part, but I'm pretty sure I'm going to have to rewatch it. I think my main problem is that I like it and I haven't a real clue why. It's a cliche movie, yet it seems really good. Of course, in a way, Elizabethtown is a cliche movie that I think is damn good, so I guess anything is possible.
Martin Sheen's character is a lot like Bartlet. He's the kind of patriarch who's trying to keep everything together, giving everyone commands and expecting them to follow them, but it's just not working. In fact, Emilio just told him to "fuck off," which is kind of awesome. The family is completely breaking apart right now and it feels natural, and it's kind of heartbreaking. Yeah, seriously rewatching this at some point soon.
Anyway, that's all for now. I'll probably post another one tomorrow about the other films.