Quick Reviews: 43 Gangster Bodies

And we move into 2013 releases (although there are still a few 2012 films I'll try to see, a couple of Oscar Best Picture nominees in particular). I'll discuss these in reverse order of the names in the title.

With the "Twilight" films finished, Hollywood brings us another version of the strange-love-between-human-and-other genre, Warm Bodies. Instead of human girl-vampire (or werewolf) romance, we have human girl-zombie romance. After some sort of apocalyptic events (cue the USA Today with the front page headline "The End?" that I swear I've seen in multiple films), zombies wander around in search of human flesh and brains to eat. One such zombie, R (Nicholas Hoult), narrates, explaining that he can't remember his full name or anything of his life. The zombies can barely grunt and moan, let alone communicate. Meanwhile, the survivors have fortressed (is that a word?) themselves and occasionally send out scout parties of young people to find medicine and other items in short supply behind the giant walls. On such a run, Julie (Teresa Palmer) is nearly caught by a zombie pack until being rescued by R, who became smitten with her instantly. R begins to regain some humanity as he falls for her, but her father (John Malkovich) is convinced there's no way a zombie can recover, so...see what we have here? R and Julie...Romeo and Juliet. Spoiler alert? (I didn't come up with that on my own, to be honest.) At any rate, there's some humor and cleverness to it. Certainly more than in the "Twilight" films. My grade: B.

Gangster Squad is almost like a cartoon. That's not really meant as a compliment. The story of a war between a mob boss and a police unit (loosely based on an actual squad) that's kept "off the books" so they can do things regular cops can't do, such as shoot and kill an unarmed mobster, in 1949 Los Angeles is a violent but simple story, with characters that are pretty much walking cliches. Ryan Gosling (as a cop) seems to be having a ball, but Sean Penn (as the mob boss, Mickey Cohen) brings nothing but histrionics. As good as Penn was in "Milk," that's how awful he is here. And Emma Stone as Cohen's girlfriend, who falls for Gosling's character, isn't at all believable in the role. This grade would be lower without Gosling. My grade: C.

As for Movie 43, after sitting through over a dozen gruesomely awful, disgusting, not remotely funny tales tied together by a movie pitch, featuring all kinds of big names (Hugh Jackman, Kate Winslet, Halle Berry, Terrence Howard, just to name a few), just after the credits began to roll, there was one final story, in which an animated cat is jealous of the girlfriend (Elizabeth Banks) of his owner (Josh Duhamel). You might be happy that it includes pictures of Duhamel in a swimsuit, until you see said animated cat masturbating while looking at the photos. Every one of these stars should apologize for this garbage. The only person who didn't leave a negative impression on me was, believe it or not, Snooki. Of course, that's because, in the barrage of excrement that was this waste of celluloid, I didn't even notice Snooki until her name showed up in the credits. My grade: F.

2 a.m. Musings

First of all, someone needs to tell Twitter that I can't think of three people that I'm less likely to follow than anybody in this group. For various reasons, they're all douchebags.

So it's after 2, and I'm pretty wide awake because, for the second weekend in a row, I stayed in bed all morning and much of the afternoon. I'm talking 3 in the afternoon. So, unless something odd happens and I magically fall asleep or I take some medication, I'll be up all night. That means Sunday will be difficult, and Sunday night and getting up for work Monday is problematic.

Last week I stayed up all night, and finally drifted off for a couple of hours or so early Sunday afternoon. That should have made it easy to fall asleep Sunday night, but I was shocked that I had so much trouble sleeping that night. I did get up on time Monday and made it through the day at work, though. But it was rough. Actually, every day was kind of rough.

That won't be a problem, though, because this Monday is my last day of work for a while. With the heating season over, the money's pretty much spent and all of us who were hired (or recalled, in the case of most of them) in the fall are now being laid off. We can file for unemployment, though. This is new for me. I've never filed for unemployment before.

What this means is I'll have free time again. To see movies, to go walking around the city and take pictures, to blog...the only caveat is that I do plan to do a job search. I'd like something that would be a better fit for me. A job that's either much closer to home, only 2-3 days per week or only 4 hours per day would be perfect. If I don't find that, though, then I'll have to hope that the evil politicians don't kill off LIHEAP or drastically cut the funding so that I'll be recalled come September or so. In the meantime, though, my time will be my own again and I CANNOT WAIT.

Oh, and I'll have more time to sleep.

My Recent Comics 2-8-12

With my procrastinating and lack of rest time and such, I actually went to the store(s) on three different days for these. I can't remember exactly when, but I've had them a while. They've been sitting on a table waiting to get their day in the blog spotlight. So, for the sake of getting this out of the way once and for all, I'm only going to touch on a few of these.

Simpsons Comics 183, 184, 185
Simpsons Winter Wingding 6
Simpsons Super Spectacular 14 -- The story of the musical "Radioactive Man: Turn Up The Silence." Sound familiar?
Futurama Comics 58
Veronica 209 a.k.a Veronica Presents: Kevin Keller 3 (of 4) -- As with the first two issues, I actually found this at a bookstore -- Barnes and Noble, now that Borders is gone. I never picked up issue 4, however, which is too bad because it actually had a bit of a cliffhanger. Plus they actually mention Snooki and plug her book, "A Shore Thing." Wait -- did I just plug it too? And that Barnes and Noble is also where I bought...