Just the Ticket

Well, folks and Fockers, today is yet another milestone in the life and times of the Ticketmaster. As I write this introduction, the Ticketverse crosses the 4,000 pageview mark. This is also Ticket Stubs ' Sweet Sixteen, and back in the day, what you are about to read comprised the fiftieth issue of the original SW@ Ticket . When I was writing SW@ Ticket #50: Sweet Sixteen (Blocks, That Is)  back on  July 1, 2006 , here is what I had to say: You might ask "Well, SW@, how do you plan to celebrate your breakout column's fiftieth birthday?" And I might respond by saying "I'm going to Hawaii... yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy!!! " But seriously, people, SW@ Ticket won't officially turn 50 until I finish the fiftieth issue. So I guess I'll start celebrating by writing the damn thing. Today on SW@ Ticket , Bruce Willis is a drunkass cop turned drunken master in  16Blocks . In the tradition of  SWAT  (shameless self-...

FROM December 30, 2004 (SW@ Ticket #27: Resident Sequel): 1) Surviving Christmas --James Gandolfini, Catherine O'Hara, Ben Affleck, and Christina Applegate. Basically a Dickie Roberts Christmas Carol: Rich, eccentric guy with no family rents one for the holidays, ruins Christmas and family ties, then brings them back together in the end. Recycled concept and humor, but no less funny. B+ 2) Collateral --Jamie Foxx and Tom Cruise. Hitman hires cabby to drive him to his assignments. Cabby gets arrested, saves girl, and thwarts hitman's evil plan. There's more to it, but that's the basics. Good music and mood, buddy-action-comedy humor, the right amount of character development, well-placed twists and good dialogue. Almost a new idea. A- (Most Wanted) And now for something completely different (not!). It's just a  Ticket Stubs Update  of my short review collection to temporarily return to August 30, 2012 . 3) Salmon Fishing in the Yemen --Ewan McGregor and E...

In the last Ticket Stubs , I commented that I hope Hellboy  and The Whole Ten Yards  would turn out to be better than the crap I had just reviewed, and spoiled the fun by saying that the answer was "a resounding NO!" Here's why: FROM September 7, 2004 (SW@ Ticket #16.66: Hell Hath No Fury...):  Hell may have no fury like a woman scorned. But Hellboy hath no fury, period. Ron Perlman (voice of the Beast in some old, sappy Disney film locked by Miramax in that fabled Vault sometime in the recent past), not looking much different than the Beast--except for the red skin, giant stone hand, and cigarette habit--plays the title villain-turned-hero. As a "boy," he was ripped from Hell by the Nazis, recovered by the United States, and raised by the government to be a superhero. Good premise to start out with, but everything else goes wrong. Apparently, the Nazis have been transformed into an evil version of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen . We have a reincar...

In the issue that follows, I originally complained that the private community of GodsOfMelee had been unresponsive to my efforts to spark controversy in the land of cinema following eleven issues of my profanity-laden summarantings (that's portmanteau speak for summarized rantings; now shut up and slurp your Frappucinos, FInch-fuckers!), and that I "decided to put on a stupid-looking uniform and get a job bagging groceries at Ralphs' while you suck your thumbs with your @$$#013$." In present day, I have traded the stupid-looking uniform for a professional-looking monkey suit and Ralphs' for Safeway, and while I get little more than the occasional +1 from Google Plus, the readership is coming up on 4,000. So I can't complain (about movies? I can complain all I want. But about life? Nah. Life is good to me so far. Hope it's being kind to you, too). So fire up the TARDIS and let the cinematic complaining commence! FROM July 29, 2004 (SW@ Ticket #11: Spide...

FROM October 5, 2004 (SW@ Ticket #20: Jersey Is Burning):  I have been unable to post anything lately because Yahoo Groups is being persecuted by the assclowns who run San Diego State's Computing Center. For some reason, they have a problem with us these days. But they should know by now that hating the free movies they show is a fact of my life. Walking Tall was great (If ya smell what the Rock is cookin') and School of Rock had me rolling in the aisles, but Farenheit 9/11 is coming up next week so I say Fuck 'em. Up for reviews today are two great (not excellent, not entirely Most Wanted , but great) movies. First is Kevin Smith's Jersey Girl . The usual Kevin Smith staples (George Carlin, Ben Affleck--mental picture of Hitler and Judas passing out ice skates because hell froze over and Ben Affleck is actually in a worthwhile movie--but no Matt Damon and no Jay or Silent Bob) star as a father and son estranged by Affleck's marriage and Carlin's alcoh...

As I mentioned in the last issue of Ticket Stubs , my posting situation at San Diego State University back in the day had been seriously compromised by the campus' internet security software, which for some reason was blocking Yahoo! Groups at the time, leaving me and the rest of the GodsOfMelee crew without a way to post while on campus. As a result, I had some issues of SW@ Ticket stored up, so the issue numbers were temporarily out of order. When the posting situation improved, I therefore released the Back In Order Boxed Set , which you will see the first half of below. FROM October 5, 2004 (SW@ Ticket #19: Revenge and Punishment):   You don't need super powers to kick ass, and the two reviews today are the proof in the proverbial pudding. First up is a low budget, high octane thriller called Highwaymen : Stephen King's Christine meets M Night Shyamalan's Unbreakable , by way of a human interest story. Jim Caviezel ( The Count of Monte Cristo ) is a retire...

As a footnote to my review of Kill Bill Vol. 1 , I was also in the mood to tear apart (literally and critically)  Mary Shelley's Frankenstein . But it was San Diego State University property, so I opted for the critical brand of book-shredding as a cathartic consolation prize. Fortunately, Shelley's novel spawned a worthwhile book series from the mind of Dean Koontz that placed him (in my mind, anyway) on the level of a grand-scale writer like Stephen King, whose Dark Tower  series I will get to some time in the future. FROM April 19, 2004 (SW@ Ticket #2: Kill Mary Shelly, Vol. 1):  Welcome to a world where color is colour and moving to a new house is quitting the establishment of one's previous residence--Romance-era English freaks!--oh, pardon me. Did I say that out loud? Good. My slowly drooping eyelids endured fifty pages of description before I saw even one damn line of monologue ("Fuck dialogue," she said. "I'm just gonna have this character ta...

I made personal history as a student at San Diego State University in April 2004, when I borrowed catch phrases from authors Stephen King and Peter Straub and American Idol host Ryan Seacrest, and began writing reviews on YahooGroups on a semi-weekly basis. By the second posting, I had decided to make it a weekly column on the site and had given it the name SWAT Ticket , in reference to Leonard Maltin's weekly review show Hot Ticket . Around the fourth issue, I decided that good movies were getting hard to find (or maybe just that average movies were getting harder to tolerate), and that truly good movies deserved a special honor. So I came up with the Most Wanted Movie of the Week award, reserved for movies of good enough quality to score in the A range. In 2007, I briefly moved the column to the blogging site Today.com (which now re-directs to an NBC news site because the paid-blogging site was eventually exposed as a scam), then switched over to MySpace in hopes of...

I'm back, the fog has lifted, the earth has shifted, now raise the gifted. You knew I'd be back, so pack your bone and Hit the Road, Jack, cuz SW@ is home. That's right, Ticketholders. I had to take a break to get used to the new headquarters back in the day and develop some new material to replace my infrequent, uninspired freestyles, but I returned from my leave of duty to bring you the latest in movie reviews and other public bitchery,  circa   April 12, 2004 ( SW@ Ticket #1: Return and Reviews): First up on the roster is a review of the Great One's (now going by Dwayne Johnson) leading role in Walking Tall , a true-to-life character made famous by Joe Don Baker--Buford Pusser (a candidate for worst name ever) in the 1973 original--and later butchered twice by Kevin Sorbo. The Cube (fellow cynic John Hudson) and myself got tickets to a special early screening at SDSU, and The Rock was at his best. Great make-up work covering his trademark Brahma Bull tatoo and ...

FROM August 31, 2004 (SW@ Ticket #16: Skilled Bill In Vol. 2):  A long, long time ago, in a SW@ Ticket far away,  Kill Bill Vol. 1  was under an attack. So now I find me a way to begin to talk your candyasses in to treating yourselves to a good flashback. I said just bring it. My my this Tarantino guy. Once a major moviemaker now he's strictly smalltime. In SWAT Ticket #2 I kicked his stuck up behind saying "This is how your career's gonna die." And so it was  Vol. 2  changed my mind. (btw: If you don't get the parallel to the "American Pie" song, you must be frockin' stupid.) Here's an excerpt FROM April 19, 2004 ( SW@ Ticket #2: How to Kill Uma Thurman's Career, Vol. 1 ):  Last issue, I reviewed the Rock's ass-kicking performance in Walking Tall  and the confusing waste of film (but don't take my word for it) known as The Matrix: Revolutions . Not to be outdone, this week's reviews sucked harder than Paris Hilton in her sex ...

Would have had something for my loyal Ticketholders sooner, but they called and asked me to work an extra shift today at Safeway, and I was pumped to complete the latest Special Ops mission in Marvel Avengers Alliance (and I did, landing the rare, super-hot, super-cheap Emma Frost for my efforts. Hopefully, there will be a re-release of Mockingbird and the Avengers  costumes in the future. It sucks to have to look at those "EXPIRED!" tags every day). Coincidentally, I am wasting valuable time and space on information that is of no interest to some of my readers, so let's hurry up and get back to my third blog post ever, in the days of the Yahoo! Group that is Gods of Melee. FROM April 26, 2004 (SW@ Ticket #3: Time and Space):  As a change of pace, I will actually give a good grade to a movie ! If any film is good enough to receive an A or higher it will be named the SW@ Ticket Most Wanted Movie of the Week. But more on that later. By the way, I do play Smash , and I s...