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Tony Robbins: I Am Not Your Guru
Anyone who’s spent even half as much time watching TV at odd hours in the late 80s through the 90s will recognize Tony Robbins immediately. His infomercials were ubiquitous in those wee hours and, as he became better known, ads for his books and seminars would seep into various other viewing hours. He’d show up,…
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Man of Steel: Not My Superman
When Man of Steel was first announced, I wasn’t as excited as I wanted to be. I’d already been burned a bit by Superman Returns (which, in my opinion, told a bad story and wasted some really solid actors), not to mention Superman IV (the last of the Christopher Reeve films). They weren’t going to spin-off from Smallville, which,…
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Now You See Me: Illusion and Magic
I’ve always been a interested in stage magic. Every since I saw my first bit of slight of hand when I was a kid, I wanted to know more about it. That made me a wee bit annoying for, say, local magicians playing birthday parties and community events. Especially once I figured out how some…
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Adventureland – Quirky and Awkward as Expected
Adventureland has been on my list to see since it came out. It always seemed exactly like the kind of movie I love and, well, it is. It’s the kind of film I relate to probably a bit more than I should. It’s not a screwball comedy or, really, even a standard rom-com. It doesn’t quite…
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The Truman Show: Prescient and Hopeful
When The Truman Show came out in 1998, “reality TV” as we know it today was just barely a thing. MTV had aired the first season of The Real World in 1992, the original Dutch version of Big Brother hit the airwaves in 1997. The “king” of all reality shows, Survivor, wouldn’t air until two years later, in 2000. In…
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Hair: You Know Some of the Songs and None of the Plot
Anyone who knows me knows that I’m a bit of a fan of the classic American Musical. That cuts off around the mid-60s, a little after West Side Story. Anything after that I likely haven’t had a lot of exposure to (which is one of the oversights I’m trying to fix lately). The stage version of Hair…
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Transformers: The Movie – Accidental Impact
Two of the main cartoons, comic book series, and toy lines of my childhood were G.I. Joe and Transformers. I started the G.I. Joe comic with issue #6 and Transformers with “Issue 1 of a 4-issue limited series” (which then ran for 80 issues). When Transformers: The Movie hit screens in 1986, I was excited. I saw it and I loved…
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Wet Hot American Summer: Ridiculous in all the Right Ways
I missed catching Wet, Hot, American Summer when it first came out back in 2001. It wasn’t until 2015, when Netflix released the “prequel” series, that I finally got around to watching it. That time delay may have made it even funnier than it would have been 14 years earlier. The Plot The film follows the…
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Many Updates On the Way
So, last year, for the final 100 days of 2015, I took on an ambitious project. I decided I was going to do a vlog a day. That… was a bad idea. I did it, but, man, was it a ridiculous amount of work. This year, I’m going to try something a little less labor…
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Three down, don’t know how many to go…
Just watched three of the new season pilots from ABC that are up on Hulu (The Trophy Wife, The Goldbergs, and Back in the Game). The good news is, that’s an hour and a half a week of new shows I won’t have to worry about watching ever again. Now, don’t get me wrong. None…
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Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter
This wasn’t one of the movies I’d really planned on seeing in theaters, let alone on it’s opening weekend. But an old friend was in town and, after dinner, we decided to hit up a movie. Of everything that was playing that neither of us had seen, we chose Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, kind of…
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Dark Shadows Returns, Will Burton Make it Work?
In case you haven’t heard, Tim Burton is coming out with another film where Johnny Depp is playing a pale, maladapated man who’s completely out of place even among the not-quite-normal people around him. This time around, it’s in a reboot of classic horror soap opera Dark Shadows. I grew up having vague memories of…
Watching Stuff With Our Brains Turned On