Nothing Like a Day in the City!

Wow, it's actually been over two months since I took a trip to Edmonton. That usually means there have been no good movies out. But of course, I had to make the trip because one of my heroes and favourite directors, Kevin Smith, has a new movie out!

The film, in case you haven't heard yet, is Cop Out, starring Bruce Willis and Tracey Morgan as a couple of detectives on the trail of a stolen, super-valuable baseball card. Smith said that, with this film, he set out to do one of the classic cop films of the 1980s, you know, your Beverly Hills Cop and Lethal Weapon and all that. And in that respect, Smith pulled it off wonderfully. In fact, he pulled it off a little too well as the plot gets kind of cliched and you start feeling like you've seen it all before.

It's got some good laughs, but it's not wall-to-wall laughs, like I've found with other Kevin Smith movies. Haven't decided yet if I want to be a hard-ass and give it 2 nibs, or nice and give it 3. Watch for the full review in the days ahead.

Had to grab some new DVDs too. The latest film from renowned Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki, Ponyo, came out back on Tuesday, so I had to pick that up. I can now once again boast having every Hayao Miyazaki film on DVD. You might remember when I saw Ponyo in the theatre back in August and reviewed it here on the blog. I loved it. Miyazaki is back in the whimsical children's film mode that he was in when he made My Neighbor Totoro and Kiki's Delivery Service, so if you've ever seen those films, you'll like Ponyo.

I do have on complaint about the DVD packaging, though. It says right on the front cover, "Inspired by the classic Hans Christen Anderson story The Little Mermaid." Now, many a reviewer has said that...Miyazaki himself has said it in a couple of interviews. But something about bluntly stating it ON THE FRONT COVER OF THE DVD just seems like a shameless ploy to sell more copies. It bugs me somewhat.

And, of course, because I'm such a fan of the DC/WB DTV movies, I had to pick up the latest one, Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths. The Justice League, doing battle with their evil twins from a parallel universe, the Crime Syndicate. There have been good reviews circulating about this one, so I can hardly wait to fire it up.

It was a good day. Good day.