Pneumonia Marathon

Recently I came down with a case of pneumonia. This meant I had to stay home for a week.

A week full of high temperatures, cough syrup and movies. Lots of movies.

I started off the pneumonia marathon with limited energy (because of the pneumonia, the medicine and my temperature) so I stuck to lowbrow easy to follow flicks and TV shows.


Over The Hedge: I had seen this before, but I had wanted to see it again for a while. It's a fun animated film featuring the voices of Bruce Willis, William Shatner, Avril Lavigne and some other glaring examples of stunt casting.


Sanford & Son: I bought the complete run of this series about a year ago and I have been slowly working my way through the entire series. Finally I had time to just watch the last dozen episodes back to back.

I spent each of the last episodes assuming every appearance of Aunt Ester would be the LAST appearance of Aunt Ester and every time that Fred would grab his chest and tell Elizabeth it was the "big one" would be the final time of the series.

I even looked for more obscure Sanford & Son trademarks like Fred cooking menudo (the soup not the band... I hope), Rollo being called a thief or Fred drinking Ripple (which he didn't do in any of the last episodes.)

The show had a pretty good final episode in which Fred goes back to school to get his high school diploma. After getting it he gave a little speech thanking all the main characters from the show.


Open Season 2: This is a straight to DVD follow up of the animated film Open Season. In this one the bear and the deer are on a mission to rescue a dog from a doggie spa. It's silly fun and Crispin Glover is along for the ride giving voice to a poodle.


Open Season: One of the only things I learned from Open Season 2 was that I didn't remember Open Season very well. So I watched it again. No Crispin Glover in this one, but you do get a bear and a deer rand-sacking a convenience store... the funniest scene in either film.


WWE Legends - The Monday Night War: As a subscriber to WWE 24/7 I get more hours of wrestling every month than I can watch in a fortnight (which I think is longer than a month, but shorter than a year... if I am wrong change it to four score.)
One of my favorite features of the WWE's on demand service is WWE Legends. The show consists of a panel of wrestling experts (usually Jim Ross, Pat Patterson, Michael Hayes and a couple other rotating experts.) The panel usually faces the rotating expert and watches him spin. It's lots of fun.
Actually, they all smoke cigars and talk about the old days... in this case it was the late 1990s.
The episodes vary in length, but this one was actually 90 minutes... and I loved every second of it.


Resurrecting the Champ: This was a neat film where Sam Jackson plays a homeless man who claims to have once been a great boxer. I don't want to spoil anything for those who haven't seen it so I will just say that it was a good movie.
If you have seen it... what is the deal with that video tape of Satterfield fighting Kincaid that the reporter finds. What are the odds that he found THAT tape. That is a plot hole that I saw even though I was hopped up on cough syrup.


Lucky Number Sleven: I wish they had made a sequel to this. "Lucky Number Sleight." Then "Luck Number Sline."
I wasn't crazy about this... until the end. For about an hour and a half I just kept waiting for it to end... but the ending was pretty dang good. Now I really want to see "Lucky Number Sleight".


The Comebacks: In the tradition of Scary Movie and Date Move... Which means it isn't really funny.
This is a parody of sports films... and it makes The Naked Gun 33 1/3 look like... uh... The Naked Gun.
At one point a player is running down the field and someone says "he's on fire" then they cut to him and... yup... he's on fire.
At another point someone says "what are you blind, referee?" Then they show the ref and he has the dark sunglasses and a seeing eye dog. Get it?
Kind of makes you appreciate the comic possibilities of Jim Ross and Pat Patterson watching a man spin around or "Lucky Number Slen".


Cop and 1/2: Burt Reynolds stars in a film directed by The Fonz... how could this not be awesome?


McShayne- Winner Takes All: This was an Ocean's Eleven knock off starring Kenny Rogers. I picked it up in a discount bin recently for $3. Kenny plays an ex-con who is recruited as part of a gang that wants to swindle the casino. Kenny's beard steals the film.


WWE Legends- Bad Asses: This time around Tazz joined the panel and they talked about tough guys in the WWE. That seemed to include everyone except for Shawn Michaels, Edge and Bastion Booger. This one also ran over 1 hour long but was so disjointed it didn't really live up to the high expectations the Monday Night War episode established.


Bushwhacked: This Daniel Stern comedy vehicle looked good enough to plunk down some cash and see it in the theaters back in the early 1990s. I think movies cost 50 cents back then.
Now, a decade plus later, I revisited the film. It's funny. Stern plays a criminal who ends up leading a group of Boy Scouts up a mountain. The plot didn't make sense to me as I watched it so I won't try and rehash it here.
Also interesting to note: with Daniel Stern playing a man on the run from the law was a bit of a call back to the earlier film with Kenny Rogers as an ex-con. Throw in Pat Patterson and criminals seemed to be the theme of the day.


WWE Legends Piper/Funk and Hogan/Backlund: This was a pair of episodes each highlighting two stars from the 1980s. In addition to the panel, they cut in some clips of some of their greatest moments. I was so happy to see Bob Backlund doing step exercises at ringside and Terry Funk beat a ring attendant senseless for wearing his hat.


Cellular: This was an action packed film released over 4 years ago and I had been putting it off again and again. I wish I hadn't! It was awesome. Fast paced, lots of fun and some great scenes on the Santa Monica Pier (one of my favorite places in the world.)


United 93: I had been putting this one off for a few years, too. I wasn't too keen on seeing the film since I didn't really like World Trade Center (the other September 11th film released that year.)
I liked this one a lot. The story was actually somewhat uplifting, but had this weird feeling of a movie where you knew the ending in advance.
On a happy note, the film featured Sledge Hammer! star David Rasche. In an odd twist... it also featured an actor named David Basche. Believe me, I had to re-watch the credits just to make sure the cough syrup wasn't getting to me.


Meet The Spartans: After The Comebacks, I wasn't too keen on watching this... but I needed some laughs so I followed up United 93 with another movie in the vein of Scary Movie, Epic Movie, Date Movie, Disaster Movie, Superhero Movie, etc, etc, etc. Of course, there were no laughs.
This one was a parody of 300 and the reoccurring joke seemed to be that it's funny to see warriors appear on game shows. They would be walking through a field and then they would be on Deal or No Deal or So You Think You Can Dance or some other nonsense.


Secret of the Sword: What better way to cap off a week's worth of movies than with He-Man. This was He-Man's first movie to be released theatrically, and it also sets up the She-Ra series.

The film is actually a bunch of episodes of the She-Ra series and it feels like it. After the main story is told which I guess told us the "secret" of the sword (Spoiler: I think the secret was that the sword belonged to She-Ra) He-Man and She-Ra just seem to go on adventure after adventure. Every 20 minutes the movie wraps up and then starts again.
Also, it really highlights what little thought went into She-Ra. Everything about her world is identical to He-Man's just with different names.
Still, it was 90 minutes of He-Man and that made me feel better.

If it wasn't for the lack of Orko it would have been a perfect end!