It's a live blog!

Given the fantastic success of KC in HD, I have extended the brand and helped create "It's a live blog," a website dedicated to live blogging.

I've already sunk money into this venture (ten bucks) so I am highly invested in its success.

What will we be live blogging about? Everything.

But so far that translates into one episode of American Gladiators. We hope to branch out soon.

Check it out: http://www.itsaliveblog.com

Mive most marvelous Marvel movies

When computers became advanced enough to reliably create realistic moving images of men in spandex crashing through brick buildings, Marvel knew the time had come to make lots of movies about nerdy guys getting really buff to beat up bad guys and then get moody about it afterwards.

Most of these movies were not very good, but five stick out as success stories.

Well, ok, only four do, but four doesn't seem like enough for a substantial list so I threw one more in there.

The movies that occupy slots 5-3 are all from franchises wrecked by truly atrocious third installments. I haven't re-watched any of them so I don't remember much about them. As such I will glibly gloss over them in a few short paragraphs.

#5 - Spider-Man
I'm pretty sure Spider-Man is the first in a series of movies that establish the origins of Bruce Campbell. There was also a guy in a red suit portrayed by a particularly athletic CGI gummy bear.

#4 - Spider-Man 2
Settles once and for all who would win in a fight between an arachnid and an octopus. Who can forget when Alfred Molina goes to the arcade and a radioactive claw machine bites him? In all, Spider-Man 2 was a good movie that might have been great if only Sam Raimi had thought to throw in more inappropriate references to past movies he's made.

#3 - X2: X-Men United
The touching story of men with two X chromosomes. Movie tagline: "Some call them mutants... others call them women."

#2 - Iron Man
Who knew Jeff Bridges could be so menacing? Better yet, who knew all it would take to make Jeff Bridges menacing was to shave his head? Bald is the new black hat.

I have only one substantial complaint against Iron Man: Samuel L. Jackson should not look like a pirate. I don't care if that's what his character looked like in the comic book. There are only two accessories on the planet that can make Sam Jackson look like he isn't capable of blowing up another man's head simply by shouting the F-word really loudly. One is an eyepatch. The other is a lightsaber (though to be fair, maybe it wasn't the lightsaber. Maybe it was the fact that his goofy jedi name sounded like a combination cleaning product/self-protection spray... Use it to combat grime on your windows or to fend off rapists! Mace Windu, new from Procter and Gamble!)

#1 - Captain America
It shouldn't take much to prove to you this is a cinematic masterpiece.

"But KC," you begin to ask me before being interrupted by a comma and a quotation mark, "how could you possibly know whether or not Captain America is a great movie?"

Well I watched parts of it on YouTube.

"Is a tiny pixelated recap of a film really enough to judge its greatness?"

Must one watch an entire sunset to determine its beauty?



This is a film about a guy who becomes a superhero not because he felt an overpowering urge to help people, but because he drove off a cliff and someone reminded him people used to make fun of his dad. This is a film about about a guy with a 12-inch vertical leap complimented by the incredible ability to teleport dozens of feet in the air using nothing more than very basic linear editing techniques. This is also a film about another guy named Christopher Lee who has been in some pretty cool movies, but who could never escape the typecasting that resulted from playing "Miguel" in this one.

In other words, this is a film that appears to have only a coincidental relationship with the comic book character it gets its name from. Despite this and the fact that the title does not contain a noun for the masculine gender, I assure you this is most definitely a finely crafted superhero movie.

Friends, I need only write three words to convince you to go pick this up at Blockbuster in the American Flag-themed vehicle of your choice: Reb Brown. You see? I only needed two. Truly Captain America is a film that surpasses all expectations.

Reb Brown, star of Space Mutiny and many other quality films that I haven't yet looked up, is a spectacular actor perfectly cast as the title character. Brown's emotional range is superb. He uses a variety of facial expressions to communicate things like, "Oh" and "I am studying your eyebrows intensely for mites."

I can't be the only one waiting with bated breath until the Avengers crossover movie Marvel has planned for 2011. Right now I'm trying to suppress a grin thinking about the inevitable scene depicting a crotchety, 63-year-old Reb Brown scolding a spry, 46-year-old Robert Downey, Jr. for using his rocket boots to kick up mud on the American Moped of Justice. Oh that Iron Man! He'd learn a thing or two about crime fighting if he'd had to face bad guys with nothing more than a plastic shield and the vacant, slack-jawed stare of a TV-show high school jock!

The movie critic critic: The Host, The Incredible Hulk, Kung Fu Panda

Welcome to an exciting new feature. For every movie I see, I'll post my analysis of a critic's opinion about that movie.

What you should expect from this exciting new feature: A full, nuanced explanation of a movie review based on an explanation given to me by the critic himself that is entirely fabricated. That is, I will write as though I have interviewed the critic about his review when in fact I have magically pulled the interpretation that follows from my behind.

What you should not expect from this exciting new feature: An opinion backed up by research or even a full reading of the movie review. It is much faster and easier for me to read blurbs and then make a mad dash to judgment.

The Incredible Hulk

"By the time the Hulk is battling the Abomination it's simply watching two special effects go after each other. Were Norton and Roth even on the set?" - Daniel M. Kimmel, Worcester Telegram & Gazette (review)

I would have enjoyed this film more had it been acted out with sock puppets. Also, every character should have been voiced by Rowlf.


The Host

"Can 93% of American movie critics be wrong? On the soft and squishy Rotten Tomatoes website, an amazing 70 out of 75 critics gave a thumbs up to The Host, a hokey South Korean monster movie that makes Godzilla look like The Godfather." - Thomas Delapa, Boulder Weekly (review)

I work for the newspaper from The Flintstones. I spent the majority of my review talking about stuff entirely unrelated to the movie I was supposed to be writing about, but when I finally got around to it, I boldly raised my voice in opposition to the unjust enjoyment reviewers experienced while watching The Host. If it were up to me, all monster movies would feature rubbery dinosaurs knocking over Playmobil sets.


Kung Fu Panda

"And honestly, it’s the most entertaining DW Animation project since, well, ever. Which doesn’t mean it isn’t formulaic or dripping with bullshit sentiment about how 'everyone can succeed if they just believe in themselves.' I don’t know where this started, but I don’t think it does any service to children to feed them that line of crap." - Pete Vonder Haar, Film Threat (review)

RAAAAAAR! MOVIE THEMES AIMED AT CHILDREN BAD! TEACHING CHILDREN SELF-CONFIDENCE BAD! CURSING IN A REVIEW OF A CHILDREN'S MOVIE BAD-ASS!

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Today's bonus discussion question: Should I have made a "HULK SMASH" joke somewhere in this post?

Christine Brennan knows more about being a national columnist than I do

This is follow-up to an earlier entry. Expect another piece on some of the issues raised in the previous post a little bit later after I've done all the legwork. You can read the first part here.

When I write things on my blog about people I don't know personally, I do so secure in the knowledge that they will never read what I've posted. I assume they are too stupid to use advanced Web 2.0 tools like Google. I'm veiled in an impenetrable cloak of Internet anonymity that allows me to disclose how much I hate other members of college basketball message boards without risking physical harm.

I rest assured that I'm completely untraceable... except when I'm not. Who would have guessed that putting my name in the title of my blog would prove my undoing?

On April 1, I wrote about USA Today columnist Christine Brennan. I titled it, "Do you understand what your job entails?"

"Ha!" I thought. "Take that, newspaper lady who graciously agreed to speak to my sports journalism class senior year! You thought you were talking to a group of timid college students. Little did you know you had a blogging superstar in your midst!"

Then I turned off my computer, sighed contentedly and waited for my readers (a strong, three-person support group, nearly half of which publicly admits to visiting my site) to pour over my latest offering. Brennan would never know how badly I had damaged her e-reputation, but my flock of rabid fans would.

And that's where the story ended. Or at least, that's where it would have ended if not for the fact that Christine Brennan owns at least one computer that is capable of using the Internet.

The next day I received an email from my professor. Brennan had found my blog and she wanted to talk to me.

Oops.

I had written primarily to criticize her for saying that she didn't often look at the reader comments under the online versions of her USA Today columns. Having been a part of an online newspaper in high school, I have strong feelings on the subject. The Internet has changed the way news media operates and I don't always feel that people who joined the industry when "dot com" sounded like editing shorthand for forgotten punctuation get that.

I read back over what I'd written after I received the email and wondered if perhaps I'd been a bit... overzealous. In hindsight, calling her "smug" and "cocky" might not have helped strengthen my argument.

Her offer to sit down and meet with me also failed to lend credence to the aloof portrait I painted of her.

We met at Politics & Prose last week to discuss what she took issue with in my blog. She'd already told me on the phone right after I'd written it, but I'd been a bit too shocked at the time to think to take notes. This time I was armed with pen and paper.

"We're not talking about the cure for cancer here," she told me after we shook hands. That put me at ease. It was good to know that my blog entry fell somewhere below matters of life and death on her list of important things to talk about.

We then got down to the matter at hand. I'm going to break into a pseudo-Q-and-A format here, which my old high school newspaper adviser would tell me is a very lazy way to do things, but hey, this is a blog and I'm not getting paid.

Where, in her opinion, had I gone wrong?

Well, to start off, she felt I may have gone a bit overboard when I wrote the following: "Did you know she gave Tony Kornheiser the ideas for many of his columns back when he actually still wrote for The Washington Post...?"

Fair enough. I was trying to be funny, but I guess I took what she said out of context. She clarified for me: "When I covered the Redskins, Tony and I talked about column ideas." That sounds similar to what I wrote, but there is a distinction. My statement makes it sound like she told him what to think. Her explanation defines her role as more of a sounding board. She was the Post's Redskins beat reporter and what I believe she means is that they would sometimes discuss what was going on with the team.

As for the main thrust of my post, Brennan agreed with my central point, she just didn't think she "was the person to make that with." As she noted, she had told our class she does her best to respond to every email that comes her way.

But what's the difference between comments and email and why does one deserve a response while the other sometimes gets ignored?

Here she reminded me of the way anonymous Internet tough guys work. She referred to the "food fight" going on in the comment section on several occasions. Under many articles, she said, the commenters end up attacking one another, leaving a messy argument she doesn't always have time to wade into.

"Even if I wanted to email Dirtydog37, how would I do that?" she asked.

I checked out the USA Today comment section briefly and even registered, but I'm not entirely sure if there's a way to publicly display your email address in your user profile. There's an option to send a message, but I don't know whether or not USA Today discourages its writers from using that feature. Dirtydog37, if you're reading this, email me. I've got her number.

I looked through some of the comments on her articles and the tenor of the discussion and the number of replies varied widely based, as one would expect, on what the topic was. Certainly there are instances of personal attacks ("She is a media Tiger butt kisser. She's also an Obama butt kisser as well. It's true about meida [sic], and especially media "chicks", they're Obama-girls and Tiger-girls"), but some of the articles produced fairly focussed replies that stuck to the issues she brought up in her column.

That isn't to say I don't see where she's coming from. In addition to her obligations at USA Today, her website describes her as a "commentator for ABC News, ESPN, NPR and Fox Sports Radio." That doesn't leave much time for anything else. "At some point you have to go, 'Where are the hours in the day?'" she explained.

I should explain that I wasn't advocating that she spend the day constantly clicking the refresh button on her column nor was I saying that I thought she should respond to every reader. I simply felt it was important to get a sense of what people thought of her writing and possibly to acknowledge the readers from time to time.

Clearly she does that. She even took the time to sit down with a recent college grad who essentially depicted her as an egomaniac based on one very limited interaction.

I suppose I can maybe cut her a little slack.

So did anything positive come out of what I'd written initially?

"Since our conversation [on the phone], I do look at the comments more."

Ha! Take that!