PICTURE OF THE DAY

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Quote of the Day

“If it’s between Obama and Romney, there isn’t all that much difference”
-George Soros

GREEN COWBOYS

“I, Hal Jordan, do solemnly swear to pledge allegiance… to a lantern, that I got from a dying purple alien in a swamp.”

Well I watched two movies recently with my brother, and we agreed on both of them. Green Lantern was lousy, I don’t recommend it to anyone. Cowboys and Aliens was pretty fun and its worth a Netflix view.

What’s interesting to me is that I had low expectations for both films. I’d heard both weren’t that great, and wasn’t really looking forward to watching them. In one case I was surprised and the other it just was confirmed.

Which is interesting, because I’m sure that sometimes movies are better for being downplayed. If I’d heard that Cowboys and Aliens was four-star great entertainment and favorably compared to Raiders of the Lost Ark I would have probably not enjoyed it nearly as much. Going into it with the bitterness of people upset at how it didn’t live up to their expectations, I found it enjoyable.

And given the people involved, it could have been spectacular. The acting included Harrison Ford, Sam Rockwell, Daniel Craig, and Keith Carradine. The director was Jon Favrau and one of the producers was Ritchie Cunningham. So it should be pretty great stuff, right? Except it had like 18 writers and it was pretty uneven.

Overall the film was entertaining, and both Ford and Craig were great at their roles, very watchable and engaging. Olivia Wilde did a good job as a strange girl who weaves through the story, and the tale was a fun fable with lots of interesting action. And thankfully, instead of the original graphic novel’s theme of “evil European explorers shown their place by aliens exploiting them” it was just a straight adventure romp.

There were, however, some parts that had me going “what the hell?” when people acted completely irrationally (like Harrison Ford’s tough rancher thinking some drunk cowpoke blew up a herd of cows and like 40 acres of Texas landscape somehow). And the big the aliens alternated between nigh invulnerability and completely soft and squishy depending on what the plot and scene required. But it was visually fascinating and it worked, overall. I’d give it 2 1/2 stars.

Green Lantern, on the other hand didn’t really have anything going for it. The bad guys sucked, the main character was an unlikable lout, the girls weren’t that great looking and acted completely randomly based on what the plot required. The first ten minutes or so of the movie was totally CGI, I mean not a single frame that had anything real whatsoever in it. And it was obviously CGI, like the Hulk Dogs in the Ang Lee movie.

I’m not a big Ryan Reynolds fan, and he smarmed it up above and beyond the call in this movie. It was just not very inventive, but long and cliche riddled. Large portions of the film made no sense, I didn’t care about any of the characters, and as I’ve never been a fan of the Green Lantern Corps part of the storyline anyway, a lot of the movie was just not engaging in any way.

Plus, they mangled the character of Hal Jordan. Hal was always a straight arrow, strong willed character with terrific moral character and personality, but not a joking sophomore. In this movie he was a frat boy doofus who made jokes about everything and was a waste of space.

So the low expectations of Green Lantern I had were actually… higher than the movie deserved. I figured it would be entertaining and interesting to look at, but it was just lousy.

SPENDY RIDES

“But its an American car, so anything I’d normally like about it I’ll find fault with and call it too big”
-Jeremy Clarkson (translated)

Want a new car? Well you’re like fewer and fewer people, because most folks are getting their car worked on and maintained rather than buying a new one. We just don’t have the money lying about to buy something new any more in the Obama economy.

But if you did have a lot of money, here are a few cars you could buy. These are some of the most expensive cars for the 2012 model year, courtesy Forbes magazine:

The Porsche 918 Spyder hybrid costs just $845,000. Its not available for purchase just yet, but will be by the end of the year. It gets an effective 78 mpg and goes from 0-60 in 3.1 seconds, but I doubt the battery lasts a fraction as long as they claim.

Or you could get an Aston Martin One-77 for $1,400,000. It hits 220 mph and develops 730 horsepower.

If you’d rather have a nice luxury car, you can get this Maybach Landaulet, for the same price as the Aston-Martin. However, Maybach is going out of business next year; it just can’t compete with established luxury cars. The Landaulet has a 6.0-liter twin-turbocharged V12 engine that produces 620 horsepower but gets 10 miles per gallon in the city, according to Maybach. Then again, if you can buy this, gas prices are the least of your priorities.

Then there’s the Koenigsegg Agera R which is a flex fuel car, for $1,711,000. It has a reported top speed of 261 and can go 0-60mph in 2.9s.

If you prefer Italian supercars, there’s the Ferrari 599xx for a cool $2,000,000. With a body by Pininfarina (one of my favorite designers) it looks beautiful and set a new lap record at the Nurburgring track in Germany.

And of course there’s the reliable Bugatti Veyron, still the fastest production car on earth – and the most expensive, for $2,600,000.

Well, in tough economic times, its nice to dream.