Jane made the mistake of asking me what I wanted for my birthday. So, we ended up eating at "The Old Spaghetti Factory", where, when I failed to order dessert I received a sparkler in my coffee. I was a sucker for that veal parmigiana when I was a kid...I have to admit that it's not quite the culinary masterpiece I remembered. All this, and 7 hours of movies...

The 300 (in Imax!) Wow! Jane liked the abs of steel, I loved the whole beautiful computer generated design of this film. Definitely worth seeing at the theatre... and a must in Imax if you can. What could have been a terribly silly testosterone fueled bloodfest was actually a rather beautiful, testosterone fueled blood-fest...I think that everyone should dash out and buy Frank Miller comics to remind themselves how beautiful they are before they start giving "The 300" director too much credit. Still, it was a well directed, gorgeously gory "history" lesson. Note to self: visit a gym once or twice...that or work only with computer generated abs. On the "I knew him when front"... our "A Dog's Breakfast" composer Tim Williams orchestrated "The 300" and so I imagine won't be returning my phone calls any more.

As an added bonus for the highly taxed Hewlett ego, the lad (everyone is younger now) taking our tickets (who had been told by his friends that "The 300" was "too scary for him") immediately recognized me...as a dead-ringer for Robin Williams...He really felt that I should be putting this God given Robin Williams-looking gift to some kind of good use, but he couldn't quite figure out how. Wouldn't have been my first choice, but then again Mr. Williams has done very well for himself, and Jane got a good long, loud laugh out of it.

"Grindhouse" - First up in this double bill was "Planet Terror". I've been keeping an eye on the director, Robert Rodriguez , since his "El Mariachi" days. And his "Rebel Without A Crew" book was an inspiration to getting "A Dog's Breakfast" made. In a complete non-sequiter I want to say that if you watch "Flip this House" on HGTV, like Jane and I do constantly, there's a house flipping guy from Texas that we actually refer to as "Robert Rodriguez"...and I have no idea why that would be of any interest at all to anyone. It kind of makes me want to go to Texas...though I'm not sure I'm quite "manly" enough for all that Texas-tough talk. Any-way...As a guy who loves terrible old-fashioned zombie blood-fests I was terribly impressed. Non-stop, terrific-looking action sequences ( He did a gorgeous job of making the whole thing look old and grungy too!) and some very funny writing. The faux trailers were hilarious (Tim Williams also scored the Rob Zombie trailer as well...don't you know... talented bastard!) . The scariest part for me was the evil glee I experienced at the Bruce Willis "send-up" that started the film. This thing was ridiculously funny! It had Bruce leaping off airborne jet-fighters and these crazy-expensive-looking over-the-top crash-and-burn sequences. And the dialogue! The lines were some of the greatest hokey Hollywood dialogue I've ever heard! Genius! The only problem is it was the legitimate trailer for the next Die Hard Movie! Oh dear! Maybe I don't want to be Bruce Willis when I grow up...no, I do. The only real (potential) downer for this perfect day (Thank you Jane!) was the Quentin Tarantino portion of the film. "Deathproof" was just awful! Worse than that, it was awfully boring! I just don't know what he was trying to do! Maybe he forgot to see what Rodriguez was up to with his half of the movie? It was like guzzling down pot of coffee and then, fully amp'ed, being forced to sit through some God-awful student film. Even "Big Trouble in Little China", "Escape from New York", Kurt "The Thing" Russell coun't save this wet Tarantino noodle. The "action" was so badly directed, and came after such mind-numbingly dull, self-indulgent dialogue scenes, that I felt I could have walked away better satisfied from an episode of CHiPs. He did achieve one cinematic feat that I hope will never be repeated...making Rosario Dawson bland and un-attractive....how is that even possible?!

So to sum it up...Jane is the hottest, coolest fiancee on the face of the planet (I mean, who else would give me an air compressor powered trio of nail guns and spend the day in a sticky movie theatre watching movie-nerd movies!) I blame Quentin Tarantino for trying to ruin my birthday. And if anyone is having any trouble getting Robin Williams for a film, I am wildly available (actually only on weekends now because of Atlantis...but honestly, I'm flexible) that and I'm 21, which is wierd, because apparently, so is my father ;-)

Un-dead-zombie-gore and Love to you all!

D!

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