I saw this for the first time yesterday and it was both strikingly accurate, and telling of the kinds of films that win critical acclaim in the most ‘official’ sense.

Mikey is my newly adopted dog. He’s a black and white beagle/something-or-other mix. He doesn’t have a chip. We have messages in with the local animal shelters and lost and founds, as well as Craigslist. After a few weeks, we’ve still not heard anything back.

Welcome home, pooch.

(Can’t see the video? Watch it on YouTube!)

I have this fear of watching movies that I loved in my childhood. After I watched The Never Ending Story a couple years ago, it dashed my delusions about the movie. It was, in fact, terrible.

Tonight, at a loss for anything else to do, I watched Willow. The 1988, George Lucas written, Ron Howard directed, classic-ish fantasy adventure. I thought for sure all my fond memories would be dashed on the rocks of my since matured taste in cinema.

And while I didn’t watch it with the wonder and excitement I did as an eight year old kid, It wasn’t altogether disappointed either.

Did you ever see the movie? The main character is played by a little person who, strangely enough, boasts a pretty long rap sheet. He’s been in almost every Harry Potter movie, and was the unsung actor behind the robot Marvin in 2005’s move rendition of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. He also happened to be the antagonist in all six Leprechaun movies, including Leprechaun in Space, Leprechaun in the Hood and Leprechaun Back 2 Tha Hood.

And of course, the underrated Val Kilmer towered above him as his heroic warrior companion.

I even found myself actually laughing at some of the jokes. Not just laughing at the 80’s fantasy movie style. But I also noted that a lot of things were distinctly borrowed from Star Wars and almost plagiarized from the Lord of the Rings books. Neither did I notice as a child.

But, the very best part of all was the epic final showdown between two great sorceresses. Both would appear to be in their early 70’s. While at first they fight each other with their magic, by the end it turns into a pretty classic cat fight. I have to admit, I couldn’t help but laugh at that part.

So, if you’ve seen the movie, take a trip down memory lane and have fun with it again. If you’ve never seen the movie… well, just keep it that way.

Do you ever wonder why it seems like every movie looks awesome after you see the trailer? Especially action movies? I mean, we really can’t trust trailers. Well, not most of them anyway.

Remember the trailer for the movie Sunshine? It was the sci-fi action movie about the team of scientists headed to reignite the sun which was on the verge of extinction. The movie was alright. I enjoyed it. But it was nowhere as tense as the trailer had led me to believe. Or how about the movie The Day After Tomorrow? The previous movie from the doomsday director of 2012 and Independence Day? While ID was pretty awesome, The Day After Tomorrow was a pretty big disappointment, though you’d never have guessed based on the trailer. Or to continue down the road, how about the X-Men Origins: Wolverine trailer? That movie was terrible. But for some reason I still went to see it.

I could really keep listing movies. In fact, if you’ve caught the drift I’m going for, you can probably start naming movies yourself. It seems that regardless of what movie they make, they’ve got the art of a compelling movie trailer down to such a science that absolutely everything looks awesome.

You just can’t trust the trailer anymore. Some people I know wish they wouldn’t show trailers for anything. I used to disagree because watching the trailer was so much fun. But now, seeing no other alternative, I’m beginning to agree.

I have a hypothesis as to why this phenomenon is taking place: It’s all in the music.

Sometime around 1993-1995, someone in Hollywood figured out that epic sounding music was a sure fire way to sell movie tickets. If you watch the trailer for Terminator 2, you’ll notice that it fits pretty nicely in with modern trailers. The music is the most epic possible mash-up from the movie’s score. If you rewind into the the 80’s and watch the trailer for the first Terminator, it’s borderline silly by today’s standards.

But today, enter the music from such commercial artists such as Corner Stone Cues, X-Ray Dog or Immediate Music, and it all starts to make sense.

These groups (which I must say I’m quite a sucker for. I have them all in my iTunes library.) make music that is specifically intended to sound like soundtracks, although it’s not tied to any one particular movie. It’s like a store-brand soundtrack. Feels and sounds like the real thing, but it’s actually not. These groups, and groups like them, appear in virtually all trailers that don’t feature a song from a pop artist. And the songs are so awesome sounding that a string of action packed scenes placed on top of them automatically turn to visual gold.

While it makes the trailers pretty fun to watch, it almost seems like they’re not trying as hard to make really great—or at least really fun—movies, cause they know we’ll go see them anyway. Though, that might sound a little too much like a conspiracy theory

I imagine at this point it’d be pretty much impossible to go backwards to the way things used to be, which frankly, wasn’t so great either. (Really, I’m glad the guy with the weirdly deep, raspy voice isn’t working so much anymore)

I suppose for us movie-goers, we’ll simply have to become more scrutinizing in our taste. Which movies we choose to go and see will have to send a signal to Hollywood that a really awesome trailer isn’t enough to get the eleven bucks out of my pocket.

You’ll have to do better than that, Hollywood.

Week four and I’m still video blogging. Between iMovie and a more relaxed attitude toward my video blog, I’m finding a weekly video to be pretty easy. Sooner or later, I’ll stop copping out of my Sunday blog posts by posting the video blog.

But for now, I’m still spreading the word. So, here you go, this week’s YouTube video blog.

(Can’t see the video? Watch it on YouTube!)

Last night was Conan’s final appearance on the Tonight Show. Which is unfortunate because in that one episode, I laughed more than I did throughout all of the Leno watching I’ve ever done. Leno is simply not funny.

But, in the last 10 minutes of the show, Conan shared his final and serious feelings about the debacle, the show, the network and the future. His attitude was admirable and even worth emulating. And for that reason, I’ve decided to share it here. Just in case you missed it.

(Can’t see the video? Watch it on YouTube.)

Conan was always my favorite late night host and I’m certain that he’s going to find a home elsewhere. So, Conan, in seven months I’ll see you on Fox. Or ABC. Or CBS. I could really care less, as long as it’s on the airways.

I have a love-hate relationship with Hollywood. I love the entertainment and the fantasy that Hollywood (and film entertainment in general) provide. But I hate what it seems to do to our children, to women and men. Probably even me—should I be able to see myself clearly enough.

Movies provide us an escape into some alternate world where for two hours we can forget who we are and identify with someone else altogether. For all intents and purposes, we get to be someone else altogether. Rarely is there a movie where no character can be related to. When those movies do show, they may be appreciated for their artistic value, but it seems we’re not often ‘entertained’—if I may assume a distinction.

The characters in movies are almost always ‘regular people’ (although there are exceptions). Just consider Transformers or Disturbia. Both star Shia LeBouff and in both instances he plays a ‘regular dude’ thrust into extraordinary circumstances. From a fantasy standpoint, we’d all like to be a hero of some kind and this provides us an outlet to tease this inclination. Of course, if hordes of alien robots really did land on earth or a murderous neighbor really did live next door, we probably wouldn’t really want to be the only hope for success.

But this is part of why we love the movies. It’s like a ride at an amusement park and we enjoy it.

But what struck me the other day was the way that some elements of our characters are quite ordinary, while others absolutely extraordinary. Most notably the way our characters look and interact with one another.

Part of Hollywood’s reputation is in employing some of the world’s most beautiful and charismatic people. This is okay. But when these performers are married to ‘regular people’ rolls, it seems to create this black-hole of unreasonable desires in the viewer.

Today’s women seem to (needlessly) suffer more than ever from society’s opinions of how they look—driven largely by the ‘standards’ set by Hollywood. But it’s not only from peers that women seem to feel inadequate, but from self entirely. I suspect that Hollywood has something to do with this as well. Consider a story of an ordinary woman who goes up against a local government agency in an attempt to win justice for herself or her kin. Her endeavor is relatable. At one time or another, we’ve all felt wronged by a larger entity than ourselves and we would all love to face it down. This aspect of her story is relatable. But the actress cast is drop-dead gorgeous. This is something that most woman cannot relate to in an ‘ideal’ sense.

Just think of the emotional confusion that’s bound to produce over time.

But it’s not just women either. I think men suffer in similar ways, but from more subtle things. But I can attest that Hollywood has set this kind of confusion in me, to some degree, also. Although putting a finger on it is challenging. Once again, I’m trapped inside myself making this kind of assessment challenging.

It’s hard to say what Hollywood is doing is ‘wrong’ per se. The movie industry seems to reflect the ideals we already have, rather than giving ideals to us. If this is in fact the case, perhaps we just need to learn that we are who we are supposed to be and there is no such thing as an ‘ideal’.