Ticket Stubs #17: Br@t And the C@

As I said last time, the milestone moments maintain their momentum this issue, which marks the first time I officially used the SW@ abbreviation in my post titles. Believe it or not, the idea came to me while I was adding my initials to the high score list on Capcom VS SNK 2 at the San Diego State arcade (the only fighting game I had seen up to that point that allowed the @ character in name entry) as S@W. An arcade frequenter I recognized came over and said "S At W? That's stupid." So I superimposed the last two characters and the SW@ logo was born.

FROM January 21, 2005 (SW@ Ticket #30: Br@t and the C@): Aaaahhh. The "at" symbol is truly one of America's gre@est inventions, for it is only in America th@ we are lazy enough to abbrevi@e two letter words. Being a lazy American myself, and just thinking it looks cooler, I will abbrevi@e the acronym "SWAT" as "SW@" in future issues. No big deal, but I gotta put it out there for the new gener@ion of GOM members and their consider@ion. On to the review...

Bringing comic books to the big screen has always been a difficult enterprise. You need a larger-than-life cast to fill the larger-than-life roles, superior special effects to bring all the superpowers into a live action setting, and a script writer who can make the mythologically repetitive archetype seem new. Marvel has been more successful at the transition than DC, and unfortunately, Catwoman is no exception.
The cast: Halle Berry, Benjamin Bratt, Sharon Stone, and Frances Conroy from HBO's Six Feet Under. The special effects: good for a videogame (sort of), far too cheap for a movie (absolutely). The storyline: not believable enough (comic books believable? Yes, at least DC gets that right more often than Marvel, but the faces behind the Catwoman film were worthless) and too much of a long-winded rehash of the first half-hour of Batman Returns (minus Batman, Penguin, Gotham City, etc.) to watch at all. No sex-appeal to the costume, no decent fight scenes, no decent love scenes, no explosions, no unforeseeable plot twists; just a movie for independent women disguised as a guys' action/sex movie that  is an epic fail in both regards.
@ least I got a brief preview of the next Batman movie and a dollar credit @ Hollywood Video.
F

In order to stay abreast (with the lack of sex-appeal in Catwoman, a breast or two seemed necessary) of the current movie madness, I thought it prudent to include a brief review along with the usual Ticket Stubs business. So without further ado, here is another Critical Quickie:

Think Like A Man--Michael Ealy, Kevin Hart, and Steve Harvey. The phrase "the book is better than the movie" doesn't mean much these days. Women use the book Act Like A Lady, Think Like A Man (on which this movie is based), written by "That Family Feud Guy," to manipulate their men in this laughless rom-com about perfectly and predictably matched male and female stereotypes who work their way through the usual romantic comedy paces. I stayed awake, and I was impressed that writers of a black comedy (African American, not depressing--although I did mention that laughless part, didn't I?) were able to restrain themselves from using the N-WORD for a full hour, but that's basically all this production has going for it.
C-

And now, here's a list of books that should not be made into movies:
-Thank You Notes by Jimmy Fallon (and no sequel, please)
-Everybody Poops by Deuce Flanagan (that's his real name, I shit you not)
-War And Peace by Tolstoy (it's a long-ass book, what can I say?)
-Are You There, Vodka? It's Me, Chelsea by Chelsea Handler (especially since the TV series already bombed)
-The Oxford English Dictionary (just because Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Edward Norton can act out the dictionary doesn't mean they should)
-Clifford the Big Red Dog by Norman Bridwell (thank you, Louis C.K.)
-Two For the Dough by Janet Evanovich (because One For the Money did sooo well *pause to wipe the dripping sarcasm from my lips*)
-Windows 7 for Dummies by Andy Rathbone (because watching movies about computer geniuses is hard enough)
-And if another self-help book gets made into another emotionless romantic comedy, Hollywood deserves whatever is coming to them, unless it's large amounts of money and rights to a sequel, in which case the world has ended and the only people left to give a damn are Kieth Richards, Joan Rivers, Donald Trump's hair, and the 900 trillion cockroaches who now run 21st Century Pixarvelmount/Tri-Universifoxacomsteinativity Studios.

Speaking of awful adaptations, next Ticket Stubs will be a trip back to Halloween 2004 for a look at Garfield: The Movie. So stay tuned as I lower my caffeine intake. Good night.