Don't I know it. Why it was such an amazing thing seeing this on the big screen upon its release and hearing all the people in the audience murmuring with great and apparent dissatisfaction when the three sisters exclaimed "A titan against a titan!" when considering what might kill the Kraken.
Why I do recall at least three audience members standing up and rending their clothing asunder while making impassioned declarations that that statement was patently false.
"Who is this Charles Schneer?! And this Harryhausen person - how dare they - the BASTARDS! Why it's almost like he cares not a whit for an accurate representation of classic Greek mythos and just wants to put a bunch of stop motion monsters fighting guys with swords on screen. Well, the American public shall not let this travesty of entertainment stand."

Scoff all you want, but I really did wonder where in the hell the promised clash was when I first saw Clash of the Titans at the Governor Ritchie Drive-In back in 1981. This isn't to say that I was any less thrilled by the movie as a whole, but it did bug me. I leave it to you to judge whether that means I had an unusually sensitive bull#### detector for a seven-year-old, or whether it means Beverly Cross dropped a fairly important screenwriting ball there.

Not so much a scoff as a satiric observation that a majority of the American viewing public targeted by the movie - both the first one and the remake - haven't the least idea that "Titan" actually refers to set of specific beings in the Greek mythos. That stands in stark contrast to the level of disappointment expressed by board members over the lack of actual "Titans" in the movie.

I like the movie, but my disappointment level with the first one was just a general lack of really cool battles between giant creatures. For all the hype - "a titan against a titan" - Perseus' defeat of the Kraken and Caliban were disappointingly quick, easy, and lacking in anticipated property damage.

Yeah, I forgot about that. I'd literally just been reading about that subject, and my jaw was on the floor when they had Alice launch her little business venture. If this had been a century earlier, I wonder if she'd have been chomping at the bit to get into the slave trade?

Thanks to the glorious drive-in, I am now able to review three films, for less than the price of one!

Salt

I think this was meant to be the pilot for a TV show, and someone mixed up and made it a movie instead. In addition, it was made about 25 years too late.

However, the worst crime for this movie is that for large swathes of the running time, you honestly have no rooting interest for the main character. There is no reason to care.

Mr. Schreiber is fun, otherwise a movie that is not worth watching.

Inception

Yup, it's good. This decades Matrix. Hopefully, it won't have any annoying sequels because none are needed.

Knight and Day

This movie is an inoffensive, light weight film. It has a standard old cliche at its core. The only "new" or clever bit about this movie is that they keep drugging Cameron Diaz to let you transition from scene to scene.

This movie did not do well at the box office, but I predict it will have a long tale. This movie is tailor made for cable. It is cutesy enogu, actiony enough, and funny enough without being memorable to be replayed over and over again ad nauseum on TNT.

Species: The Awakening
I missed some parts, but I can report that it was very cheap and by-the-numbers, yet nevertheless it may be less bad than Species III.

...I don't get it.

"To jump" is saltar in Spanish and Portuguese, saltare in Italian. The French sauter is similar ("au" where Spanish and Italian use "al" is something you see a lot of in French), and they all derive from the Latin salire.

Thank you! That makes more than a little bit of sense now.

And that's the root of our word "assault".

Which brings us back to the opening line in my micro review, "A Salt on Precinct Believability."

Had a double feature today...

CHARLIE ST. CLOUD - Zac Efron (from High School Musical) sees dead people in this failed tear jerker that plays kind of like what would happen if romance novel writer Nicholas Sparks (The Notebook, A Walk to Remember) and M Night Shyamalan teamed up to do a project together. The film tries to mix a mawkish teenage romance melodrama, with plot twisty supernatural elements. The problem is anyone who is half-awake while watching the movie will see the twist coming from a mile away. It's kind of gloomy and depressing, but not very effective, since we don't care about any of the characters. Even Ray Liota (in a cameo) is strangely subdued here! Full review is already up over on Reel Opinions.

DINNER FOR SCHMUCKS - An often funny, but also often uneven comedy that comes close to greatness, but never quite makes it. I'm recommending it because I did laugh a number of times, but it also runs way too long, and seems kind of plotless. Steve Carell and Paul Rudd are a likable odd couple (with Carell as the goofy, but well-meaning doofus, and Rudd as the suffering straight man stuck with him), and they do play off each other well. There are some bits and pieces of inspired insanity (the "mousterpieces", the climactic dinner scene), but they're surrounded by long stretches that aren't as amusing as the rest. A marginal recommendation.

Full review of Schmucks will be up either tomorrow morning or night. Review of Cats and Dogs 2 coming either tomorrow night or Sunday morning.

Dinner for Schmucks - agree with Keiichi. To the point, this is what What About Bob? might have looked like were it scripted by someone who wrote for 'Three's Company' (you know, that episode where there was a misunderstanding) and not directed by Frank Oz. Steve Carell is the only really funny character and you get the impression that he improvised a lot of his better lines. Unfortunately there were a lot of painfully unfunny characters - Even Zack G. wasn't given much to work with. The result was a film of extreme highs and lows with a lot of meh in between. The trailer was funnier than the finished product.

The Gamers: Dorkness Rising

Random thoughts:
1. Low production values- but not lowest I have seen.
2. My wife laughed a lot, and she has never played an RPG.
3. The game store in the movie looks almost exactly like two of my former Friendly Local Game Stores (FLGS) combined.
4. My wife was curious if we ever argued like that while playing, sadly the answer was yes...but worse.
5. Made me want to break out the old RPG books.

Kung Fu Chef - Plays like a 90-minute episode of Iron Chef with some fun fight scenes featuring Sammo Hung thrown in for good measure. I had fun with this one.