Glenn's Tribute to the late LDS President Hinckley

From 'Hell' to 'Hobbit'?

Seems the Hobbit race is nearing the finish line, and the winner just may be … Guillermo del Toro. The Hellboy and Pan's Labyrinth director reportedly is not just at the top of the wish list but in negotiations to direct the two-part prequel to The Lord of the Rings, based on J.R.R. Tolkien's classic novel The Hobbit. Del Toro has been atop both Peter Jackson's and New Line's wish list since Jackson and the studio made up in December, after a long financial battle that put the entire future of the Hobbit movie franchise in jeopardy. As for when production might actually get under way, it isn't likely to be soon — no script has been pennedv and won't be until the WGA strike is settled. A start date for the $150 million pair of flicks is tentatively set for 2009.

What do you guys think...Do you think he's the man?? Check out his movies below:


Hellboy II


Pan's Labyrinth


Blade II


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I'm sorry Mr. Jackson

Government Holiday Movie Review

Hello, I'm filling in for Jedboy while he continues to "work." Things have been quiet around here lately. I suspect Jedboy is either busy working with some kind of totally exciting budgetary crisis, or he's totally mailed in his work and is philandering with the stars at Sundance.

In order to fill the void that Jedboy's absence has left in your hearts, I present to you a new feature to Jedboy -- the "Government Holiday Movie Review." The premise of the Review is that every government holiday, I will dive in to at least one, possibly more, movies and review them for Jedboy.

"Why the Government Holiday?" you might ask. Seeing as how I am now a private citizen working in a private industry, I work roughly 266 days a year. That's five days a week, excluding Thanksgiving, Christmas, the Hamburglar's Birthday, and America Day.

However, my wife and her family happened to be employed with government agencies, which means they work roughly 112 days a year. Thus, whenever a holiday like Martin Luther King Jr. Day rolls around, they pack up and head off to Las Vegas for some days. It's especially awesome when they take the "Use it or Lose It" vacation and are gone for like three weeks. Although I still have to work, I'm in essence on a vacation -- a vacation away from some of the day-to-day responsibilities of marriage, such as shaving, helping with the dishes, and wearing pants around the house.

For instance, this last Government Holiday, I ate four meals directly from the paper sack the meals were delivered to me in. No dishes there. And, I ate all of those meals on the comforts of my sweet recliner, sans pants, with the sauces of the meats I ordered dangling to my beard. That's living!!!

Anyway, these Government Mandated Vacations also give me an especial chance to restore the balance of masculinity in the ASmith household. You see, there is a very real balance of man and woman in every established home. The homes collectively make up the balance of man/woman in the universe. Thus, whenever one house tips to far left or right, the entire fabric of the universe is in jeopardy of being rent asunder. (I made a few chaos theory style calculations. My home becoming too feminine essentially tips the scales just enough to set the rest of the world into commotion).

To paraphrase Liam Neeson in Batman Begins, whenever a forest grows too wild, a purging fire is natural and ineviatble. Justice is balance. For every time my wife regales me with how that fascinating Twilight vampire soft-core novel is, I get to buy tickets to a monster truck rally. For every Kiera Knightly movie period film, I get to watch a period piece about Vietnam.

The Government Holiday give me a chance to restore the balance to our home, thereby restoring the male-to-female balance ratio back to its proper 1:1 setting, and thereby saving the very universe.

On to the first review:

Shoot 'Em Up scored a victory by the title alone. This testosterone movie lets you know right off the bat what this thing is about, just from the poster. Clive Owen will shoot stuff, mainly people, while being accompanied by Monica Belucci. They both are being chased by Paul Giamatti who will, as implied in the title, be shooting things up.

For the record, Clive Owen is awesome. This is not an opinion. My Geometry 1320 professor proved that Clive Owen was awesome through a modified Euclidean postulate. No disputing Euclid's equations, no disputing Clive Owen. I could watch Clive Owen eat and be excited by his raw, almost primeval, presence of man. In fact, this movie features several scenes of Owen inexplicably eating carrots. Yep. Carrots. He even uses these carrots to murder several people.

The plot (I use that term loosely for a film titled Shoot 'Em Up) starts right at action time. In addition, Monica Belucci is in it. I can't understand a word she says. She was probably saying some pointless jibberish, like a grocery list, and her stunning emotion had me captivated.

Overall, this movie followed the exact Man Formula -- hard and gritty, yet handsome, lead male character, beautfiul female character, high body count, plus a few memorable verbal quips and barbs. A man movie features at least one "zoom in real close, the dude's about to say something --- OH SNAP!!!" scene. This movie featured three such scenes. However, due to said language of the lines in those scenes, and that Jedboy is a family friendly website, I will abstain from those quips.

Man Scale: 9.2 of 10. Mitigating Factors: Paul Giamatti's character being too scattered -- is he a genius, or is he a family man, is he evil? What's his deal? A true man flick doesn't have such character nuances.

Compliments of 'One Million Strong for Val Kilmer'

Val Kilmer has spent his time recently composing a CD which he is now allowing us to download. He would have liked to have released the CD in a more traditional way but the major lables have refused due to Mr Kilmer's "radical" stand that North American Bison horn can be ground into a powder and then used medicinally. (note: Mr Kilmer takes this horn powder personally, up to 3 bisons worth a day. Many believe this is why he has made such a marked recovery in the past months. The only side effects appear to be that he is now 2-3 times as manly and his acting abilities are too much for current filming technology to capture.)


You can access Val's music on his MySpace page

http://www.myspace.com/valkilmermusic

The money made from the sale of these downloads will go directly to funding the fight against male breast cancer and the treatment of the little-studied anti-persperant addiction. (note: 1 in 90 American young men is addicted to anti-persperant. Call your congress-person and get informed today. Together we can fight this!)

~Aaron Rowley
One Million Strong for Val Kilmer

Late Night Done Right

I’ve come to the conclusion that this strike is proving who the real greats are in the talk show world. Here’s a breakdown of some of the late night talk show hosts as they've been coming back onto the air with mixed results: Leno's in trouble with the WGA for delivering a monologue that was clearly written, which isn’t allowed. Letterman is still losing the ratings war and seems a bit tired, even with his writers on-hand! Jon Stewart wants to lament the writers’ strike instead of lampoon some really juicy moments in the presidential race. And while Stephen Colbert is a masterful interviewer, and deserves props for his improve, he doesn’t have to fill an entire hour with comedy. For this reason I’ve crowned Conan O’Brien the current king of late-night talk for his entertainment prowess and disciplined showmanship during a time of crisis!! Check out this clip of Conan ‘just filling time.’

Blue Moon of Kentucky - Conan O'Brien w/ The Max Weinber

Mormon Myths and Reality

Here's a new video that the Church updated recently. It's ultra cheesy, but pretty good.

IMDB it!!!

Jonathan Pryce and Tom Courtenay

If you’ve ever used the above phrase before then you’re not alone. I was recently watching the trailer for the new George Clooney movie, Leatherheads—a cross between O Brother, Where Art Thou? and The Philadelphia Story—when I saw an actor that I had recently seen in something else, but couldn’t quite place him. So, I IMDB’d the movie and found out that it was Jonathan Pryce, who also played Kiera Knightley’s dad in the Pirates movies. I then remembered that I had thought he played another character in that movie The Golden Compass, but I couldn’t find him in the list of the cast. However, I did find another guy that looks and sounds like Jonathan Pryce named Tom Courtenay, who played Newman Noggs in one of my all-time favorite movies, Nicholas Nickleby. Few! Tragedy averted. Has this ever happened to you? Do you have any IMDB stories??

Leatherheads Trailer!!!