My review of Welcome to Mooseport is up. In retrospect, two stars seems a little kind. Ah well.

Lots this week. Let's dive in, like cheese in macaroni.

Against the Ropes: This is one of those movies where the negative hype (it's been pushed back from like 1991 or something) probably doesn't accurately represent how bad this movie is. Oh, don't get me wrong. I'm sure it's a crappy movie, or the studio would have rushed to get it out the door instead of waiting for Meg Ryan's career to bounce back (ha, good move, that). But its craptitude is probably not equal to, say, Looney Tunes: Back in Action in that it won't cause your eyes to bleed and your bowels to clear. Against the Ropes, though, and to a lesser extent In the Cut (which flew under the radar like so many sick geese) have made America wake up and go, "Wait, why did we like Meg Ryan?" I honestly don't believe all that crap about how Russell Crowe ruined her career. Nobody stopped liking Elizabeth Taylor or Larry King or Tom Cruise when they left their spouses and moved on to the next person. Oh. Crap. Somebody just let the air out of my theory. Nevertheless, if you like boxing movies starring Meg Ryan, don't let me stop you from seeing this one. You'll get more than your money's worth, I'm sure, as long as you sneak in for free.

Clifford's Really Big Movie: The PR person for this movie was dying to get us to come to this screening. She made it sound as if this movie was going to come out of nowhere to sweep next year's Oscars. There was an urgency that seemed to belie the fact that this movie doesn't even have an entry on the Internet Movie Database. (Maybe they added it, but last I checked, it didn't exist.) That's a bad sign. Even crappy soft-core-porn movies that they show on Cinemax at 1:30 a.m. have IMDB entries. Apart from the inherent fact of the movie's big red dog, this one's notable because the late John Ritter (wipe a silent tear, my friends) plays the dog. Well, at least his last movie wasn't Against the Ropes.

Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen: I genuinely admired Lindsay Lohan in Freaky Friday (make it a Blockbuster night!) even though she sometimes only seems to have the one facial expression of horrified disbelief where her mouth draws down and she looks just like Frankie Muniz. Nevertheless, I might have given this movie a chance even though it seems to have that same non-threatening teen pop soundtrack that every movie like it has (the soundtrack in Freaky Friday wasn't so bad because it actually had something to do with the film), and it's based on some classic piece of literature; not Jane Austin this time, but Pygmalion, which is not, in fact, a kind of male enhancement drug. Still: Lindsay Lohan and Frankie Muniz. Someone needs to check those family trees.

The Dreamers: I'm a little film-ignorant about Bernardo Bertolucci, but I did finally see Last Tango in Paris a few months ago and, MAN. That guy really didn't give a damn. Neither did Brando. They made a movie that seemed to exist in its own little universe where the laws of mere mortal films don't apply. It's crazy sexual, but not sexy; dramatic, but not contrived. It was, at least in the scenes that I remember most clearly, very honest filmmaking. This movie is about teens in the late '60s in Paris and one of them is Michael Pitt from Hedwig and the Angry Inch (why not look for it at Hollywood Video?). There's a triangle involving a brother and sister that is indeed sexual and the whole affair is rated NC-17 which means that not only will it probably not be playing in your town (unless you live in say New York, L.A., San Fran or Austin) but that even if it comes to your town, it's not likely your newspaper will carry advertising for it. I'm sure a rant about it is forthcoming from Roger Ebert. Is the movie good? It certainly sounds find and good, but probably not among Bertolucci's best. Given that I've seen all of one of his films, that probably wouldn't bother me too much.

Eurotrip: Do you really need me to break this one down for you? If you liked Road Trip and American Pie, this is probably your bag. Some people are giving it much better reviews than I'd have expected which sometimes happens with these movies when there's a drought of good comedies out there. Notable in that Matt Damon, Fred Armisen and Kristen Kreuk (!!) are in it.

The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra: As we learned in LCP on one show, making an intentionally bad video is not as easy as it sounds. (Check out our Buenos Diaz bad sitcom.) It's more to do with being specifically bad in creative and exact ways. This movie is a send up of rubber-costume monster movies. I say bring that shit on.

Touching the Void: I was supposed to see this last Saturday, but between our LCP show and the 1 a.m. snow storm that hit Austin (Rebecca: "Let's go play in the snow!"), there was oversleeping and I missed the 10 a.m. screening. I'm bitter because this movie is supposed to be a very convincing documentary about two mountain climbers who run into trouble on an expedition. Void is said to expertly mix interviews with re-enactments minus the cheese factor to be a harrowing thrill-ride, which is normally to documentaries what peanut butter is to lasagne. Instead of seeing this potentially cool movie, I saw...

Welcome to Mooseport: Fucking Mooseport. We were so bored during this movie, Rebecca and I just kept exchanging eye-rolls and listening to the lady behind us snoore. I had to apologize about five times for dragging my lady to the screening instead of, say, treating her to a steak at The Sizzlah. And we're both Ray Romano fans. We still watch Everybody Loves Raymond and who doesn't enjoy a Gene Hackman movie now and then? (Usually called something dramatic like Foist or The President is Missing a Finger.) But this movie? Not so funny. Even Rip Torn can't save it. I'll post a link to my full review as soon as it's posted. Jeesh.

DVDs: A lot this week, actually. We watched Thirteen and really liked it (Holly Hunter: Da Bomb, but you probably already knew that); the next evening we went and saw City of God, which was 10 assorted kinds of amazing. But after being exposed to gun totin', paint huffin', blowjob-providin' youths, it sort of put the kibbosh on family planning, if you know what I mean. We saw two girls being dropped off at the theater by a mom and I just wanted to yell at the lady, "LOCK THEM UP! They're going to go give somebody blowjobs!" Luckily, I refrained. This weekend, I'm supposed to watch Spy Kids 3-D (I procrastinated on it last week) and my new pride and joy: the Chappelle's Show: Season One DVD. Man. I can't tell you how happy that makes me. Just having the "Playa Haters Ball" on DVD is worth the price of it. And it seems that most everyone has seen the recent "I'm Rick James, Bitch!" sketch, which was just absolutely classic. If you're not watching Chappelle's Show, you're missing out.

I'm home sick today. I had a headache for a lot of last night and when I woke up this morning, I felt all faint and light-headed where I usually feel heavy-headed, so I went back to bed and called in sick. Now I'm catching up on work-related TV watching (yes, there is such a thing) and drinking lots of water.

Coupl'a things: Mary turned the tables on me and did an interview with me in response to the interviews I've been posting here. It was late at night and I was not feeling my best, but she asked some good questions.

Also, the article I mention in the interview about the Quiznos Spong Monkeys can be found here. I can't tell you how proud I am to have edited that story and to have had something to do with uncovering this foul mystery.

Also, happy birthday (she turns "29.95" today in her words) to one of the smartest, coolest people I know, Ms. Pineapple Girl. You rule, PG.

If I don't get any sicker, I'll do Movies This Week later today.

News travels fast and the e-mails and online wellwishes continue, which are great. So much so that I haven't been able to answer them all (I'm behind on e-mail; I apologize).

One thing I don't want to do is act like I'm some sort of authority on love or relationships. I'm still largely clueless and I've found myself giving advice to friends on their own love lives lately as if I have some sort of mystical, Bagger Vance-like insight into the human heart.

I really don't. Asking me about love is like asking someone who won the lottery how they did it. Shit just happened. I made a ton of mistakes and made others suffer a lot of heartbreak and somehow I still got lucky. Don't think I don't realize that.

Wow. When this this site get so personal? Remember when all I used to write about was beguiling bouncing temptresses and silly surnames? This doesn't mean I'm maturing, I swear.

First off, thanks to everyone for all the very nice e-mails about the engagement. I feel bad for holding off for so long on writing it, but I don't feel weird about having it shared it with everyone now. Thank you for the warm wishes.

Here's a few things I wrote (that aren't gushy). It would be cool if you read them:

New Smallville recap is up:

For the Love of Vin Diesel -- The town of Smallville discovers drag racing, probably by watching 2 Fast 2 Furious on DVD, and suddenly the underused Pete gets his own episode. The results are neither Fast nor Furious. Instead, it's Slow, and the only person Furious is the recapper. On the other hand? Red car go VROOOOM!

Also, I wrote some short reviews last week that I forgot to link to. (I also have an upcoming review of Welcome to Mooseport. It should have been called "Welcome to Moosepoo.")

One is a review of the Kameleon bad-ass glowing remote control I got for Christmas. It was one of those things where nobody sent me the product to review -- I just had it in my house and couldn't keep my enthusiasm about it to myself.

The other is a review of the new game NFL Street. It's fun.

That's it for now. Again, thanks for being awesome readers, everybody.

For those of you who only come to the blog, there's a new entry up, in which I write about my impending nuptuals. It's a little gushy.