- If this keeps up, New York City might become the home of a million bicycles. The city has been on a rampage in recent months, upping fees, tolls and the like for travel of all kinds to and from Manhattan, and the fare hikes continued this week as the tolls for motorists and riders of the PATH train system both went up substantially. The toll for drivers entering NYC has been raised by $2, while the fees for the train have been upped by 25 cents. Now, peak tolls are up to $8 for motorists and $1.75 for train riders. While these are the first increases for these particular fees in a few years, the costs for parking and other travel expenses have also been raised around the city in the past year or so, all in a so-called attempt to keep pace with the soaring post-9/11 security and safety expenses. Right, because getting around Manhattan wasn't expensive enough already. What's next, taxing people a penny for every step they take walking around, or maybe a nickel for every time the pedal their bike around the city? I love New York and it's a great place to visit and hang out, but the way things are going, visiting the Apple is going to become an expensive luxury that a lot of people can't afford to do but once every few years.....
- You'll never believe this, but yet another hour-and-a-half, teen horror film has come out and it sucks. I know, it's been all of a few weeks since the last hackneyed attempt at a scary, torture-porn thriller than crapped out in theaters, so we're in need of our next piece of cinematic ineptitude to mock. We have it now in One Missed Call, a horror film that's more horrible than horror. The notable names in the cast are Ed Burns and Margaret Cho, but even if the stars had been bigger, brighter and more numerous, this weak plot and bad writing would have doomed this movie to crap-i-tude. This movie clearly aspires to follow in the footsteps of films like The Ring, wherein people watch a creepy video and then 72 hours later, they die. In One Missed Call, a girl dies and everyone her cell phone's stored numbers list gets a call. One by one, they hear a ring tone that doesn't belong to them, and when they answer the call they hear their own voices saying the last words they'll say before they die, with a scream typically following. There in on their screen is the date and time of their death....creepy. French director Eric Valette feebly tries to mix in a few laughs with the gag of how hard it is to try and cancel your cell service and end your contract, but terrible writing dooms those attempts, which really weren't a good idea in a horror movie to begin with. Also appearing in the film is Ray Wise, who is obviously big on the demonic and supernatural these days, appearing on the new CW series Reaper as the devil and appearing in this film as the producer of a supernatural TV show that promises to exorcise the demonic devices that are cell phones, which have turned the world into text-messaging addicts. All in all, not only is this a quick, easy, no-meat-to-it horror film, it's just not a good movie. There are no real redeeming qualities to it, not even for people who like horror movies. Next time someone wants to make a film in this genre, they need to be forced to take an extra few months to work on their script and take extra time filming and editing, because clearly the challenge of making a good horror movie takes more time and effort than the current crop of directors, writers and producers are putting in....
- Scoreboard reads: GPS systems 2, Criminals 0. After I told you about a story a few days ago wherein a criminal stole a GPS system from a home and rode down the street on a bicycle in the middle of the night with the stolen goods in tow, we now have the tale of Shannon McGee, 34, of Muskegon Hills, Mich. It seems that Shannon had a bit of a disagreement with his 29-year-old girlfriend during the holidays. By "a bit of a disagreement," I mean that McGee punched her, doused her in rubbing alcohol and set her on fire. Right, because you don't want to waste actual alcohol, say beer or rum, on something like that, so use cheap rubbing alcohol that you can buy for a dollar a bottle, then you have booze left over to drink after you beat and burn your woman, eh Shannon? Regardless, after committing this vile, violent crime, McGee went on the run, hiding from police who, for some odd reason, wanted to talk to him. Even as his girlfriend, who I certainly hope is now his ex-girlfriend, was being treated for burns at the Grand Rapids Hospital, McGee was on the run. So how did the cops track him down? You guessed it, with a GPS system. This time, they used the GPS in McGee's own cell phone to find him hiding in an attic. Clearly Shannon McGee has never watched a single crime drama or movie, because if he had, he'd know what the rest of us know, that a cell phone can act like a tracking device when you have it turned on. With the right equipment, which cops tend to have, they can track you down in a matter of minutes if you're dumb enough to leave your cell on when you're trying to hide from the law. Best wishes on trying to get sympathy from a judge or jury after setting your girlfriend on fire, S., but I doubt you're going to have much success there.
- Well that was anti-climactic. For a second straight year, the Ohio State Buckeyes marched into college football's national title game, jumped out to an early lead on an SEC team thanks to a big play from one of their stars, then flamed out in spectacular fashion. Last year, it ended with Florida whooping OSU by a 41-14 margin to claim college football's top spot, and this year it was the LSU Tigers administering a 38-24 beatdown to the Bucks that wasn't as close as the score would indicate. After OSU went ahead 10-0 midway through the first quarter, LSU proceeded to score the next 31 points to take a 31-10 lead that the Buckeyes could not overcome. Other than a 65-yard touchdown run from Chris Wells, OSU couldn't muster much of anything against a stout LSU defense until late in the game, when quarterback Todd Boeckman threw two touchdown passes to make things a bit more respectable. I'm not a Buckeye fan, so I'm not here to defend them, but I do need to say one thing to everyone who is out there proclaiming that this is just another example of how the Big Ten, Ohio State's conference, can't keep up with the SEC. Have any of you ever considered that maybe these two title game losses aren't a sweeping indictment of the Big Ten, but rather that the 2006-07 Florida Gators and 2007-08 LSU Tigers were simply better than the Ohio State teams of those seams years and that no general conclusions about an entire conference should be drawn from this? After all, every team in a conference functions as its own individual entity; they aren't a big group of cohesive parts working together. The effort and performance of one team from a conference doesn't necessarily mean diddly-poo about another team from that same conference. And oh yeah, this year's 2-loss national champion and plethora of teams better than LSU (Georgia, USC, West Virginia, etc.) do send a message: WE NEED A FREAKING PLAYOFF SYSTEM. So stop with the lame excuses, college presidents, and give us the playoff that every other division of college football besides Division I has. 'Nuff said......
- It was much of the same at the box office over the weekend, with the same movies that held down the top spots last week holding steady this week. National Treasure: Book of Secrets was first despite being an unnecessary resurrection of a mediocre movie franchise that wasn't that good in its first installment. Bad plot, poor writing and subpar acting be damned, America loves Nic Cage and his quest for treasure via hidden clues in historical artifacts and architecture. Coming in second in earnings for the weekend was a far superior movie to Book of Secrets, Will Smith's action epic I Am Legend, followed by Alvin and the Chipmunks and the terrifying;y bad flick I just discussed a few parargraphs ago - One Missed Call. All in all, not exactly a stellar crop of movie offerings, given the fact that a movie about a group of animated chipmunks who can talk was the second-best of the top five films in box office earnings. It's times like these that having a good DVD collection is extremely valuable to you, that's for sure.
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