Clearly I'm going to have to watch this movie about 100 more times before I can sort out what the hell is going on!

So here we are, just three days from baseball season (good god, what has become of me), and I'm watching my new DVD "I Am Legend" for the second time. As a teen I worked in movie theaters, and in college I worked as a movie theater projectionist, and so I got in the habit of seeing movies that I like multiple times. I guess that may explain why I enjoy collecting DVD, particularly for the special features they offer, as well as for the minor details that are easily missed in the first viewing of any movie.

So tonight I'm watching "I Am Legend" for the second time, and it begins with the sound of a sports radio program where the hosts are discussing the coming baseball season, and they predict a Chicago Cubs vs. New York Yankees World Series. And of course, I'm not spoiling anything to let you know that shortly after every person on the planet either dies or turns into a vampire that preys on the few remaining survivors. They don't say how many Chicago Cubs survive, or if the Vampires continue to play baseball (only night games?), but it rather looks like a prediction of a Cubs World Series win is in fact a portent of the end of the world.

So the season starts on Monday. And it's been 100 years since the Cubs last win, which provides a very poetic opportunity to end the drought, don't you think? Let's just hope the end of the world Vampire virus doesn't strike until AFTER the Cubs end their century long series drought.

As a new customer of FiOS TV, and also the owner of an Apple TV, I now have new options available to me in the home entertainment arena, particularly with being able to rent and view a movie on demand.

I have been a customer of Netflix since 2000, and I have rented X movies from them in that time. I don't think I've set foot in a movie rental store since, and the recent closure of my nearest store, I know that in my case, it is Netflix holding the smoking gun that killed them.

So the question is, will my new On Demand options from FiOS and Apple return the favor, and do to Netflix what Netflix did to the bricks and mortar video store? An investigation was warranted.

My first question is one of selection. Which service will provide me the greatest number of titles to choose from? Netflix's web site proclaims that they have "more than 90,000 DVD titles", while FiOS and Apple can only weakly claim "over 1,000". Advantage: Netflix

Next comes convenience. Traveling to a video store is less convenient than browsing the web to select a movie to watch. I find that my new rentals arrive from Netflix within a day after having a new spot open on my list, and having a rental queue always loaded means not even having to think much about what's coming next. Something I put in the queue will come next. But it's hard to compete with 'right now' for impulse movie watching. Advantage: On Demand

Finally, and most importantly, there's costs. I am currently on the $18/month Netflix plan, which allows me to have three movies at home at a time, and to keep them for an unlimited amount of time. Prices for on demand rentals from FiOS and Apple range between $2.99 and $4.99 depending on the movie (new releases cost more), and quality (HD movies cost more). In each case, you have 24 hours to watch the movie you've rented. Using $3.99 as the average on demand rental cost, five movies would cost me about $20. But a review of my rental history over the last year from Netflix shows me I'm renting an average of seven movies a month. That's math easy enough even for me; 7 movies from Netflix for $17, or 7 movies on Demand for something between $21 and $35. Advantage: Netflix

So there you have it. I'm sure variables will change with competition for my rental dollars, changes in technology, and other changes. And I'm sure that from time to time the appeal of renting a movie on impulse for immediate viewing will lead me to do an on demand rental. But for my regular rentals, I'm sticking with Netflix.

So today I thought about Guy Fawkes...

“Remember, remember the fifth of November,

The gunpowder, treason and plot,

I know of no reason

Why gunpowder treason

Should ever be forgot.”

I honestly know little of Guy Fawkes, but when I got home I was happy to find my kids already watching V for Vendetta, and I settled in to watch it with them. It was a good movie to watch on an Election Eve. I'm guessing we've got a new annual movie tradition to watch on November 5th.

It will join another annual November must watch movie, which is of course, Planes, Trains & Automobiles on Thanksgiving Eve.

"I am your father"
— Darth Vader

I took the family to see Star Wars: Episode III - The Revenge of the Sith yesterday. It was great! Consider the challenge of making a movie for which anyone who knows anything about Star Wars already knows how this one will end; Anakin will turn to the Dark Side and become Darth Vader, and his newborn twins, Luke and Leia, will be sent into hiding for their protection. No spoilers there. But even with such pre-knowledge, many other questions are answered, particularly 'How did Darth and the Emperor each get so messed up?'.

I was twelve years old in 1977, and I remember waiting in a long line at the movie theater with my family to see the original Star Wars. I even had a Star Wars poster in my room. So it was a bit of a trip yesterday, to find myself with my own family (including my 12-year old son), going to see the sixth installment of this series. No ticket lines this time, we bought ours in advance on the Internet.

for further reading:

Star Wars
Wikipedia

Star Wars Through the Years
NPR

Revenge of the Sith Insiders Guide
The Washington Post

It was an accidental juxtaposition of movies on the Casey DVD player tonight, two movies of different times, with utterly different messages. And it requires a dual-review. Spoilers within, so deal with that if you haven't seen one or either of these movies; It's A Wonderful Life and The Butterfly Effect.

And I'd find it hard to believe if you haven't seen the first one. Since this film no longer plays around the clock in December as it once did, I do feel a responsibility to provide at least once annual force-feeding of George Bailey's life-affirming adventure. And so, against the moans of my children, I insisted on starting with 'It's A Wonderful Life', Frank Capra's holiday classic.

The story needs no re-telling here (if you really need a recap, try this 30-second version with bunnies). Suffice to say that George's life doesn't turn out the way he had planned, and despite having a beautiful wife, great kids, and many friends, he hits a low-point where his attempt at suicide is prevented by a guardian angel. Still convinced that everyone would be better off if he had never been born, George's angel grants his wish, and introduces him to the people and places in his life as they would be if he had never existed. And of course, everyone and everything is worse off without George (although Pottersville looks like a fun town to me). George has an epiphany, begs his angel to take him back, and we have a happy ending with neighbors emptying their pockets, Clarence getting his wings, and some wine and Auld Lang Syne. The End.

The Butterfly Effect was one I added to my Netflix queue based on the preview. It looked like a nice horror/sci-fi/time travel type of thing, and I generally like that sort of stuff. In the movie, Evan Treborn is a young man with some issues. His father is in the nuthouse, and Evan has a bad habit of blacking out and missing critical events in his own life and the lives of his friends. On his doctors advice, he begins to keep journals, writing down his daily activities and thoughts in order to have a reference to check against when he later forgets what's going on around him. He's got some good reason to black stuff out; a crazy dad, pedophile neighbor, sadistic friends and a prank gone horribly bad. But only years later, when in college Evan is studying how memories work, does he discover a unique talent. By re-reading his own journals, Evan can project himself into the past. Once there, he can act to change events, and then come forward again to live with the end result of the change he has made.

Evan learns that his attempts to change history often bring unintended consequences, and repeat visits to the past to try and fix things again and again typically only make things worse. As he continues, you start to wonder if he's really traveling through time, or if he's just crazy like his father and all of this is in his own head. Ultimately, he decides that all of the problems in his friends lives are his own fault, and so Evan goes back one last time for an interesting final solution. I guess his guardian angel was on a coffee break or something.

I should note that we were watching the Director's Cut, and not the Theatrical version. A posting on the IMDB message boards says that the version that played in theatres had a happy ending (it was supposedly on the flip side of the DVD disc, but our player wouldn't cooperate in playing it). But I can tell you, the Director's cut does not. It was my wife Jennifer who pointed out that The Butterfly Effect was essentially an exact opposite of It's A Wonderful Life, in that unlike George Bailey, Evan finds that they only way he can make everything turn out well for his family and friends is to take himself completely out of the picture.

I guess it's a common question for any of us. Is the world a better place with me in it? Am I having a positive or negative impact on my loved ones? Would my home town become a Pottersville without me living in it? We'll never know the answers, but the questions themselves can help us strive to be more like George than Evan.

Thanks to Eric for sharing the Bunny version of It's a Wonderful Life

OK, so my grand idea of reviewing a week's worth of horror movies was a bust. Events conspired against me; the distraction of the World Series, the need for sleep due to long hours of work, and the final insult, my DVD player broke. But that's OK. We still love our scary movies, and you can count on further reviews here in the future. Just because.

Well, the week-long Halloween Horror Film Fest has proven to be a heavier lift than I expected. Who knew that I would get tired and want to sleep? Damn, a few years ago I would have watched these movies in one sitting! Now, midnight rolls around and I can hardly keep my eyes open. In my defense, I did have to wait for the baseball game to finish, so it was a late start. A sweep by the Red Sox would be a big favor to my film fest. The good news is, I've seen each of the movies in my Horror Film fest many many times, and so I remain qualified to review them now, and today's offering is The Fog.

Now anybody who likes scary movies has to be a fan of John Carpenter films, just has to. Halloween was the beginning of a string of great flicks, including his re-make of The Thing and today's pick, The Fog. This is a VERY cool ghost story, with a plot that really moves the story (rather than gets in the way as with our earlier pick Sleepy Hollow).

So, there's this little sea-side town, see, and they're getting ready to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the town's founding. And just around then the local priest (Hal Holbrooke) discovers the diary of his ancestor priest (how does that happen?) which describes how the town's founding began with the betrayal and murder of a group of wealthy lepers who were seeking to establish a colony nearby. Eight lepers were killed when their ship was mis-led onto the rocks in a heavy fog. And now, 100 years later, the dead leper sailors are looking for some payback. Got it?

The Fog doesn't miss an opportunity to go for the easy jump scare, often as a setup for the real thing. And that's OK, because it's just what you're watching this sort of movie for. Jamie Lee Curtis demonstrates that she's good at running scared, and Adrienne Barbeau shows she can climb on top of a light house in a storm dispite how top-heavy she is. And in the end, Hal Holbrooke gets the answer to his final question in fine style. All-around, a great flick, two thumbs WAY up!

further reading: Leprosy (Hansen's disease) from Wikipedia

It's Monday night in the week long Halloween Horror Film Fest, and tonight's scary movie is Se7en. The film stars Morgan Freeman as an experienced homicide detective who is about to retire, and Brad Pitt as his young replacement. Their jobs are to overlap for seven days, during which Freeman will show Pitt the rope. Kevin Spacey plays the psycho who will make it a disturbing seven days, and Gwyneth Paltrow as Pitt's wife.

The shocking truth is, I fell asleep about halfway through. I just can't stay up as late as I used too. But hey, I've seen the movie before so I can review it anyway.

So what does this scary killer do? He is making examples of people he finds guilty of breaking one of the seven deadly sins, and always in a manner suited to the sin. Victim by victim, a new grusome death illustrates another sin; gluttony, greed, sloth, lust, pride, envy, and finally in a real twist, wrath.

Unlike your typical psycho-killer horror movie, where the killer is endowed with some sort of super-natural power that keeps them coming back (Michael Myers, Jason, Freddy, etc...), the scenario in Se7en is even scarier, because it's more believable. Like Dr. Lecter and Buffalo Bill in Silence of the Lambs, or Kathy Bates in Misery, this killer is so scary because he's so human. A seriously screwed in the head human, and not a supernatural monster. When this movie is over, you have to deal with the fact that people this messed up really exist in the world.

If you're watching the DVD, be sure to check out the special features, especially the storyboards of an alternate ending that I think might have been even better than the excellent one in the movie. Regardless, this is a first-rate suspense movie and Casey gives it two thumbs, WAY up.

further reading: The Seven Deadly Sins on Wikipedia

The first movie of our Halloween Film Festival is Sleepy Hollow, directed by Tim Burton and starring Johnny Depp and Christina Ricci. I've always enjoyed Tim Burton's movies. He has a real flair for the creepy and so 'Sleepy Hollow' was a good pick for kicking off this Halloween week film fest.

From the start you know this movie's going to be cool, with a constant grey and foreboding atmosphere and some quick gruesome deaths. Really a great start. Unlike the clumsy schoolteacher from the Disney version of this tale, Johnny Depp's Ichabod Crane is a New York City homicide detective who gets himself in trouble at work with his insistence that science can help solve crimes. He's kind of a colonial-era forebearer to William Patterson's character Gil Grissom on C.S.I.

So Icahabod the skeptical detective is sent to the boonies to investigate a spate of recent beheadings. Much darkness, blood and special effects laden mayhem ensues, and it is good. Two items muddy the story; Ichabod's flashbacks that slowly reveal some black magic in his own past, and the way too complicated 'it would have all worked if not for you meddling kids' ending.

But there's enough blood and gore to overcome these story faults. And in a role that didn't require any time wasted on learning lines, Christopher Walken makes a very scary horseman.

On the Casey movie rating scale, I give it one thumb up. Not WAY up, just up.

further reading: Sleepy Hollow from Wikipedia