Top 5 Movies I'm Least Excited To See in 2010

I'm going to use the phrase "hijinks ensue" as often as possible in this list. Trust me, it's appropriate every single time.

Furry Vengance
Brendan Fraser tries to build a giant shopping mall in the woods, but hijinks ensue when the animals of the forest rise up against him in the cutest way possible. This is possibly the worst movie trailer I've ever seen.

When In Rome
Kristen Bell meets the man of her dreams (Josh Duhamel), but when she grabs some coins from a magic love fountain in Rome, hoping to grab the one he threw, hijinks ensue as she finds herself besieged by the attention of several slumming comedic actors, including Will Arnett and Danny Devito.

The Tooth Fairy
We've already covered the hijinks here, so let's just move on.

Dear John
Hijinks totally fail to ensue as Amanda Seyfried has a meetcute with Channing Tatum, he goes off to war, and they write each other long letters as they go about their lives. If I see this movie, I will finally discover whether it's possible to vomit and fall asleep at the same time.

The Spy Next Door
There are worse movies coming down the pike next year - I'll be doing a separate post about Death At A Funeral later - but I left this in because the hijinks ensuing here seem so ridiculous it feels like it can't possibly be a real movie. The best moment is right there in the trailer, when the announcer says "he's about to face his toughest assignment yet: babysitting!" At which point I fall on the floor, giggling myself to death.

Fun fact - the movie The Pacifier was originally written for Chan, but he turned it down and Vin Diesel did it instead. Five years later, Chan's career slows down enough that some small-minded movie producer out there finally gets his man.

Top 5 Movies I'm Most Excited To See In 2010

Inception
It's the first film Christopher Nolan's made since The Dark Knight, and stars one of those amazing collection of actors that Nolan seems to be able to nab so easily: Leonardo DiCaprio, Ellen Page, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ken Watanabe, and Cillian Murphy. The fact that the trailer makes absolutely no sense dissuades me not a bit. I'm more pumped for this movie than anything else this year.

Kick-Ass
This may be the first and only time I ever say the phrase "I absolutely cannot wait to see that Nicolas Cage movie. It looks unbelievable." This is the restricted trailer, for those of you who are at work or squeamish.

Iron Man 2
If this trailer doesn't rev you up for this thing, I don't know what will. It tells us for sure that the franchise hasn't run aground just yet, the way the Spider-Man 3 trailer did. Speaking of which, anyone seen a Spider-Man 4 trailer yet? I'm curious to see what's happening with that.

Green Zone
It's Paul Greengrass and Matt Damon, making a movie that they pretend isn't a Jason Bourne movie, but is clearly a Jason Bourne movie. Not that there's anything wrong with that. Worrying preachy overtones in the trailer give me pause, though.

Robin Hood
For a movie that looks nothing like Robin Hood, I'm awfully sold. It still looks epic and at least moderately swashbuckling, and it is, after all, Ridley Scott and Russell Crowe. You've got to assume that they know what they're doing here. It's still gonna be the fattest Robin Hood we've ever seen, though.

Every movie that came out this year - even the crappy ones.

I found myself far more entranced by this cinematic mashup than I thought I would be - a guy named Kees Van Dijkhuizen jammed together pieces from 342 different movies that came out this year into one long trailer for, I guess, spectacle in general. Check it out.  It's strong up to about 5 minutes in, then gets going again at the 6 minute mark.

 

 

I also enjoyed this rundown of the Top 10 Movie Moments of 2009, which I found myself agreeing with - though I disagreed that Taken had any good moments outside of the one mentioned there. It also included at least one that made me say "Oh, yeah, I forgot about that, but that was epic" - the cafeteria scene in Watchmen.

I'm sure most of you are getting sick of it, but I'm quite enjoying all these "The Top Something-Or-Others Of The Decade" lists. It might inspire me to make my own, though I guess I already kinda did that with movies, huh?  Maybe instead of "top," I'll just do "favorite," which is more fun anyway.

A short dose of winter.

I got to be home in New Hampshire for a couple days over Christmas, and just as I hoped, I got a real snowfall out of the deal. I threw on a jacket and went walking in the snow, stopping occasionally to take a couple pictures with my cell phone. Here are a couple:

By the end of February, when all of New Hampshire is a grayish-brown, and people in Houston are just starting to say things like "do you suppose it's time to get the badminton set out?" - then, I will be thrilled to live in Texas again. But for now... I miss being a real northerner.