The MRFH 2004 Revue

Oh 2004… what a great year. I began it the same way I ended it, but how that is, I leave to your imagination. Besides, it’s all the great stuff sandwiched in between that I really had fun with.

Of course, the biggest personal change with me this past year has been my graduation from “Bachelour in E Minor” to “Married Man in F Major”. I tied the knot with my beautiful bride in July (yes, it’s odd to start a year’s re-cap with July, but let’s face it, July was kind of a biggie month) and have since learned that marriage is not as difficult as it’s widely advertised to be. Provided, of course, you have an open mind, decent hygiene, and enough mental strength to reduce your video game playing time down to just 5 hours a day.

The folks on the Forums have heard me wax on enough about the wedding and being married as it is, so I’ll just say this: it’s great. I highly recommend it. Why, I even talked Justin into doing it! I’ll be attending his own wedding ceremony in a scant couple of months. Yes, I’ll take pictures, and I promise I won’t cry.

Moving backwards in time, January marked an interesting new achievement for me. I took my first stage acting role as Snow White’s father the King in a British comedy version of Snow White. While this may sound trivial or silly, rest assured, it was one of the coolest experiences of my life. So much so that I’ve been rehearsing for my second shot at the stage as the evil deputy Butch Casserole for this year’s production of Panto at the OK Corral. It’s just so much fun stepping into a character, live and in person. Now if I were just any good at remembering my lines…

I made a New Years commitment last year to review ANY movie for ANY reader who could get to 666 posts in the Forum by June 6th. June 6th came and went, and nobody had actually qualified yet, so I offered my services to the first person who hit 666 at all. That honour fell to DocD83, and I have shown my respect and admiration for him by completely overburdening my life to the point that I haven’t had time to watch Terminator 2 yet for him. Part of that may have to do with the fact that I HATE T2. But stay tuned, it’s honest and truly on its way to a black and green screen near you soon.

Although I remain haughtily in my 20’s, I have several friends who have turned 30 this year (or in the recent past), and all I can say is: SUCKERS! Ah, just kidding. I’ll be there in less than two years, and then it’ll be your turn to laugh at me.

As far as movies went this year, it was a mixed bag, with some serious highs and lows. Starting on a positive note, I want to stand up and clap loudly one last time for an overweight, overtalented New Zealand director named Peter Jackson. Although released at the end of 2003, Return of the King would finally bring home the Oscars Jackson so richly deserved in 2004’s Academy Awards show. Here’s to nerd cinema!

That said, I’m starting to think we’re nearly at the saturation point for some types of geek movies. I’m thinking specifically of 2004’s releases of comic book (or similarly styled) movies, like Spider-Man 2, Hellboy, The Incredibles, Van Helsing, Kill Bill 2, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, Blade Trinity, and the like. These are (mostly) good flicks, but I can sense the glut starting to really form. Elektra’s only just around the corner for corn’s sake, so now we’ve got spinoff comic book movies popping up out of the ashes of the old ones. Sheesh.

Still, that doesn’t take away from the quality of some of those flicks. Spidey 2, if a little too emotional for its own good, was an incredible technical improvement on the already sound original. The Incredibles proved to me that comic movies can and should be done in CGI… the palette is just so versatile and rich. You can do anything you want and not run the risk of shattering disbelief by having an actor look silly.

I really enjoyed the second chapter of Kill Bill. After the (warning: cliché ahead) action-packed first half, it was cool to see some of the emotional baggage the characters dragged around with them, lending some gravity to the proceedings of beheading 88 Chinese assassins (okay, as Bill said, there weren’t even 88. They just thought it sounded cool). Me and Clare are going to host a Tarentino Appreciation Day Picnic and throw devilled eggs at Justin from the bushes.

I was very pleasantly surprised by Collateral. Brought to you by the man who created Miami Vice, starring the vampire Lestat and that guy from In Living Colour, it totally failed to suck in any way. Au contraire, it turned out to be one of the best things I saw this year. Highly recommended.

Also high on the list is Shaun of the Dead, the now world-famous “romantic comedy with zombies”. I can’t wait for more from these guys. I can’t think of anything better to say about it.

Not so high on the list was the disappointment of The Village. M Night Shampoorinserepeat is so desperate for the “twist” endings in his films that the entire run time of his movies seem to be pretty much be life support systems for the climax. After a compelling first act, The Village turns into something that’s not quite a mess, but sure felt like it.

Scraping the bottom of the barrel was the Wayans Brothers’ White Chicks. If Jamie Foxx is the cream of the crop from In Living Colour, the Wayans’ are whatever sank to the bottom and grew fins. I didn’t see White Chicks. Anyone I know who DID see it has assured me that I’m safe in my assumptions and opinion of the movie. That’s very comforting.

As far as the MRFH goes, we had a great year. The ushering in of Drew and Sue (the Doctor Seuss Two) was a fun process, and one that seems to have finally lent an air of stability to the writing core of the Mutants that we haven’t seen in a while. Although I’m wondering if we shouldn’t hire a 9-year-old one of these days, just so we can have someone who doesn’t have to deal with a packed schedule.

So here’s to you and yours in 2005: may your forehead grow like the mighty oak!