[10:47] jakothewoods: Hologram Man! Defending Democracy one explosion at a time!
[10:48] wdalphin: That was a great movie, although I panicked for a minute after the gratuitous sex scene ten minutes in. I thought, "damn, is this another soft core porn hiding as an action movie?"
[10:49] jakothewoods: Yeah, you're just lucky I watched it without Steph, or her opinion of you would sink. She thinks you're into softcore as it is. Fortunately, all later sex scenes were "offstage."
[10:49] jakothewoods: I have to tell you about this bit though...:
[10:49] jakothewoods: At the very beginning, when Dakota was a young Lieutenant, during the first (opening) gunfight, the captain pulls out a gun.
[10:50] jakothewoods: "Wait, Captain, that's not a regulation gun!" Says Dakota.
[10:50] wdalphin: is this the whole "that's not in the book!" thing?
[10:50] jakothewoods: "Neither are these!" Says the captain.
[10:50] jakothewoods: Jack inserts, for Dakota: "Er, no sir. Those are bullets. They go IN guns, y'see..."
[10:50] wdalphin: hehe
[10:51] wdalphin: Early in his career, Dakota was a "by the book" guy, he even had THE book on him at all times...
[10:51] jakothewoods: I also appreciated from a "My god, this is stupid" POV, the fact that the first two lines in the film were "Shit!"
[10:51] wdalphin: then his partner gets killed, and--what, six years later? He's gunning down terrorists with a machine gun.
[10:52] jakothewoods: And then his second partner gets killed (but not blown to bits, because all cops with lines are somewhat supermen), and he goes Hologrammy!
[10:52] wdalphin: He picked up a gun and shot a terrorist and some random guy goes, "that's not in the book!" and I was like, "what, shooting bad guys isn't in your book? No wonder this city is going to hell."
[10:52] jakothewoods: Yeah, "Hey, we're not allowed to shoot if they run out of ammo!"
[10:52] jakothewoods: DUH
[10:53] jakothewoods: I've noticed that a lot of the movies you assign are WRITTEN by someone ACTING in them.
[10:53] jakothewoods: I would just like to insert a gratuitous monkey comment here:
[10:54] wdalphin: also, in the beginning, when SLASH GALLAGHER had the governor hostage, he was like "throw down your guns or I shoot him!" and so they threw down their guns and then he shot him. That wasn't very smart of the police officers.
[10:54] wdalphin: SLASH GALLAGHER.
[10:54] jakothewoods: You know how they say that if a million monkeys typed on a million typewriters, for a million years, eventually one would turn out the works of shakespeare?
[10:55] jakothewoods: Yes/no?
[10:55] wdalphin: yes
[10:55] jakothewoods: This movie?
[10:55] jakothewoods: Ten monkeys.
[10:55] jakothewoods: Half an hour.
[10:56] wdalphin: I watched this well over a week ago, you know-- WHEN WE WERE SUPPOSED TO-- so you'll have to bear with me, because I've forgotten parts I wanted to discuss
[10:56] wdalphin: What was Slash's real name again? Something dumb like Darryl.
[10:56] jakothewoods: His name was Norman, by the way.
[10:56] wdalphin: right, Norman.
[10:56] jakothewoods: No, but Larry was in the movie - he was the computer geek.
[10:56] wdalphin: "DON'T CALL ME NORMAN!"
[10:57] wdalphin: Okay, SLASH.
[10:57] jakothewoods: Hello.... NORMAN.
[10:57] jakothewoods: Yeah, like Dakota had wriggle-room on names.
[10:57] wdalphin: No matter how many times they shot bullets at him and the bullets passed right through, they kept insisting on shooting more.
[10:58] wdalphin: I'd be more like, "aw fuck it!" and throw my gun at him and then grab a fire hose or something.
[10:58] wdalphin: "Captain! the bullets aren't doing any good!"
[10:58] wdalphin: "Obviously we just didn't shoot enough of them at him!"
[10:59] jakothewoods: Yeah, you know, I thought about the whole thing, about halfway through, and If I had the low-down on Norman's condition, but physical and mental, and I were "the chairman" I'd be like "screw this, he can have it. I like living. All hail our new tyrant."
[10:59] wdalphin: but they were supposed to be fighting for some rights or something.
[11:00] jakothewoods: Fine then. When're elections?
[11:00] jakothewoods: Because me? I'm just a little bitty voter. Woohoo democracy!
[11:00] wdalphin: and they were able to recreate the pseudo-engineering process that caused his hologram to become free of its boundaries! Didn't anyone watch it happen the first time and go, "you know, maybe we should make sure this doesn't happen again."
[11:01] jakothewoods: I agree that if they'd researches it enough, you'd think they'd have asked for volunteers to go through the process so that they could combat Norman, rather than waiting for a dying cop to crawl into hte machine.
[11:01] wdalphin: "No, first we must make a holo-cop to battle the holo-villain!"
[11:02] wdalphin: You know, I was figuring they should just trap him in a giant cube of that neutralizing goop.
[11:02] jakothewoods: kind of like what happened to Cyclops?
[11:03] wdalphin: Yeah, only bigger... and cube-like.
[11:03] jakothewoods: I was hoping that when Dakota let Cyclops out of the rubber machine that he'd be just a big pink quivering blob. But no, it was just the head covered.
[11:04] wdalphin: Yeah I noticed that too. I guess they ran out of goop to cover his whole body with.
[11:04] jakothewoods: pity.
[11:05] wdalphin: Wasn't that weasley politician guy the professor from My Secret Identity?
[11:05] jakothewoods: I have to admit, the absolute best line in the movie was right after Cyclops said "Hey! You're not the chairman!" (no shit, Sherlock) was Dakota's response. "Good eye."
[11:05] jakothewoods: I don't know. what's "My Secret Identity"?
[11:05] wdalphin: It was a tv series starring Jerry O'Connell.
[11:06] jakothewoods: Couldn't tell ya. Never saw it.
[11:06] wdalphin: Oh well, I think it was.
[11:06] wdalphin: kind of a snivelling version of Jeff Daniels.
[11:07] wdalphin: You know, if I had a gun, and six bad guys, one of which was immune to bullets, I would shoot at the five who weren't.
[11:07] wdalphin: But I guess that's why I'm not a cop.
[11:07] jakothewoods: I have to also say that the computer at the prison, talking to the review commitee should totally have been voiced over by Majel Barrett
[11:07] wdalphin: ME SO DUMB!
[11:08] wdalphin: This movie had a lot of explosions. I decided after watching it that it was the biggest budgeted bad movie ever made.
[11:09] jakothewoods: Like I said - promoting Democracy, one explosion at a time.
[11:09] wdalphin: I don't know what he was promoting, really. Anarchy seemed more like it.
[11:10] wdalphin: How about the part where all the bombs were set, and the cop was shot, and he was like "get out of here, one of us has to live!" and the woman didn't... she got him in the holomachine, ran the program, then the bombs went off-- and she lived.
[11:11] wdalphin: I kinda thought those were crappy bombs.
[11:11] jakothewoods: This was totally a "made-for-guys-action-movie" Let me see if I can get the sequence of events right. Shootout, sex scene, (mumbled cop talk), shootout/chase scene, shootout, (mumbled cop talk), Villians Lair (did you spot the superfluous flamethrower they had, btw, just to supply bursts of flame?) and bad-guy plans, shootout...
[11:11] wdalphin: THAT'S IT!
[11:11] jakothewoods: Those bombs looked like the time mom uses to remind her to take her pills.
[11:11] wdalphin: That's what I was going to bring up last week when I actually watched the movie!
[11:11] wdalphin: Mr. Flamethrower.
[11:11] jakothewoods: timER
[11:12] wdalphin: The guy who just stood in the background spurting flames to make sure we understood it was not a good place.
[11:12] wdalphin: First he was there while William Sanderson was doing his hackering, and I was like, "what the fuck is that guy doing with the flamethrower?"
[11:13] wdalphin: and then later, they were celebrating in the bad guy lair, and there was Mr. flamethrower with a couple other guys, going "yayyyy" and spurting more flames.
[11:13] wdalphin: But he never left the hideout.
[11:13] wdalphin: I wondered if maybe the other badguys had nailed his feet to the floor as a joke.
[11:13] jakothewoods: Yeah, the first time they showed the villain's hideout, there was this stream of flame in the background, and I was like "What, are they supposed to be in a foundry? Nooo... it's some kind of chemical plant (remember kids, flames + chemicals = FUN!), so why is there fla.... Oh right. It's just there. All bad guy hideouts have "random bursts of flame"
[11:14] wdalphin: I have to admit, if it hadn't been for Mr. Flamethrower, I would have thought maybe they were hacking the mainframe at Happy Fun Park. The metal gratings and steampipes and "abandoned factory" fresco they had going didn't tip me off enough.
[11:15] jakothewoods: I think the place was lacking the ubiquitous "meathooks" hanging around, too.
[11:15] wdalphin: just meatheads hanging around.
[11:16] jakothewoods: It definitely needed some kind of meatlocker area. Refrigerated, for preference. With sides of beef or something.
[11:16] wdalphin: Tiny Lister should have been dead long ago. How could you shoot in his direction and NOT hit him?
[11:16] jakothewoods: Well he was wearing protective football shoulderpads Wil. Let's not be silly.
[11:17] jakothewoods: I think the place could have used a Tesla Coil or two, too.
[11:17] wdalphin: That would have been expensive.
[11:17] wdalphin: And the blue light from the sparks might clash with the red motif they were using.
[11:18] jakothewoods: Hm, point.
[11:18] wdalphin: I was amused that hologram people wore skintight spandex Logan's Run outfits.
[11:19] jakothewoods: Did you notice that every time one of the "hologramized" guys was hit by flame, he turned into a badly-made dummy seconds beforehand?
[11:19] wdalphin: I did, and I loved it.
[11:19] wdalphin: "I'm gonna burn you!" WOOOOSH! "He just torched that mannequin!!!"
[11:20] jakothewoods: Yeah, at first I thought their aim was just really. Off. "Man, Macy's is gonna be pissed!"
[11:20] wdalphin: I have to tell you though, that on Sunday I watched an even WORSE movie than this.
[11:20] jakothewoods: Frightening.
[11:20] wdalphin: SKELETON MAN.
[11:20] jakothewoods: Was this something that Melissas chose?
[11:20] wdalphin: And it's got Michael Rooker and Casper Van Diem in it.
[11:20] wdalphin: Yeah, Melissa picked the movie called Skeleton Man.
[11:21] wdalphin: DUHHHRRR
[11:21] jakothewoods: I thought so. You realy shouldn't let her choose movies.
[11:21] wdalphin: Melissa hates skeletons.
[11:21] wdalphin: and most men.
[11:21] jakothewoods: Really? She is aware that there's one inside her, right? :)
[11:21] wdalphin: so I think a movie that combined the two would be the LAST thing she'd pick.
[11:22] jakothewoods: I mean hell, smile too big, and you can SEE part of your skeleton. :-D
[11:22] jakothewoods: (Steph hates it when I say that)
[11:22] wdalphin: Anyway, it was about an ELITE crack military squad wandering around the woods of northern new york or some other sparsely populated area, shooting at Skeletor with pop guns and getting their heads chopped off and such.
[11:22] wdalphin: and then Skeletor marched into some chemical factory and started mincing up the scientists.
[11:23] jakothewoods: Wow, that's feasible.
[11:23] wdalphin: and Michael Rooker blew him up in a reactor overload.
[11:23] wdalphin: I mean it when I say that the production values on Hologram Man were at least five hundred times superior to those of Skeleton Man.
[11:24] wdalphin: I think Hologram Man would win in a fight with Skeleton Man.
[11:24] wdalphin: In fact, I might just have to bring that up in the IMDb forums, and see what other people think.
[11:24] jakothewoods: Was it better than Exterminator City?
[11:24] wdalphin: It's important that I know whoto root for.
[11:24] wdalphin: Dude.
[11:24] wdalphin: We do not mention that name here.
[11:25] jakothewoods: I'm just checking. If it was worse than that, my world has no place for it.
[11:25] wdalphin: if you had just asked if it was better than THAT OTHER MOVIE, then I'd have known what you were talking about.
[11:25] wdalphin: Yes, it's better than that.
[11:25] wdalphin: How could it not be?
[11:25] jakothewoods: That's something anyway.
[11:25] wdalphin: Can you think of ANYTHING that's worse?
[11:25] jakothewoods: It always nice to have a bottom register for the scale.
[11:25] wdalphin: Maybe watching a colonoscopy would be worse.
[11:25] jakothewoods: No, I've watched a colonoscopy - it's not worse.
[11:26] wdalphin: You've watched a colonoscopy?
[11:26] jakothewoods: Yes. Wil.
[11:26] wdalphin: What, for kicks?
[11:26] jakothewoods: Not exactly, although there was some inadvertant kicking going on.
[11:26] wdalphin: Accidentally sitting on your webcam doesn't count.
[11:27] jakothewoods: Can we drop this topic? Anyway, I want to rate this thing, and get on with my life.
[11:27] wdalphin: How about watching a colonoscopy being done on someone who ate a bushel of corn?
[11:27] wdalphin: okay, we can drop it... I guess. :(
[11:28] wdalphin: I give Hologram man 2 and a half stars, or 5 gazillion explosions.
[11:28] jakothewoods: Oh, couple last things: 1> You need to read Haunted by Chuck Pahluniak, and 2> that woman in the sex scene in the beginning? Those boobs were SO fake!
[11:29] wdalphin: I was too busy browsing the internet to make sure I hadn't picked a porn to really take a good look, sorry.
[11:29] jakothewoods: I give it two and half flickering blue stars covered in negatively charged stage make-up.
[11:29] wdalphin: and you need to read The Prestige.
[11:29] jakothewoods: I want to see that movie, too.
[11:29] wdalphin: I saw it. It was good. The book is good too, and different.
[11:29] jakothewoods: I'll look into them both. You wanna know what's next?
[11:29] wdalphin: okay, what's up for next week?
[11:30] jakothewoods: Lost Horizon
[11:30] wdalphin: sounds science fictiony.
[11:30] jakothewoods: Maybe, in a 1930's sense.
[11:31] wdalphin: well, that's a rather interesting choice...
[11:31] wdalphin: any reason why? Just because you've wanted to see it?
[11:31] jakothewoods: Partly that, partly, it's based on the boook that contains the original reference to "Shangri-La."
[11:32] wdalphin: Thank goodness I watched the 1964 version of Ernest Hemingway's The Killers this weekend, so I have something to return.
[11:32] jakothewoods: :) I just returned two movies today - the mail just went actually. One of them was a disc we received SNAPPED IN HALF.
[11:32] wdalphin: I'm still sitting on Battle Beyond the Stars... maybe I'll save that for next week!
[11:33] jakothewoods: Sounds like Sci-Fi
[11:33] wdalphin: Maybe, in a 1980's sense.
[11:33] jakothewoods: 1980's was killer for bad sci-fi
[11:34] wdalphin: but it also had good sci fi
[11:34] wdalphin: like The Last Starfighter
[11:34] wdalphin: and Tron
[11:34] jakothewoods: fair enough, that was good sci fi
[11:34] wdalphin: and it's a Roger Corman movie
[11:34] wdalphin: so yay
[11:34] jakothewoods: :-D
[11:34] jakothewoods: Wasn't he Q2?
[11:34] wdalphin: apparently, it's based on Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai
[11:35] wdalphin: that was Corben Bernsen.
[11:35] jakothewoods: Whatever.
[11:35] wdalphin: You don't mistake the great Roger Corman for a character actor only remembered for being in L A Law.
[11:36] jakothewoods: He was also in "Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang"
[11:36] wdalphin: eh
[11:36] wdalphin: He won't be remembered for it.

Conclusion:
Jak: **1/2
Wil: **1/2