While We're At It...

The 49ers just lost starting linebacker Manny Lawson for the season. Lawson was one of their first round picks last year (the other was Vernon Davis) and he really seemed to be primed to start putting it together. He was a 4-3 end in college and was making the transition to linebacker in the 3-4. He tore his ACL, so it's no cause to celebrate, but that will make things easier on Sunday, no doubt.

Here's the only thing: The guy that will most likely be starting in his place is named Hannibal Davies. Hannibal. Just sounds like a bad ass.

While we're talking about movies, here are three I've seen recently that you need to see:

1. Halloween. Anyone that thinks the first one is a masterpiece won't like the re-make. But, anyone that thinks the first one is anything but a slasher flick with a lot of loud music and an egregous lack of Jamie Lee Curtis boobies probably needs to take a film class. At any rate, the first one was a slasher flick with a lot of loud music. This one is more of a psychological thriller that explores what the hell is going on in Michael Myers' head and tries to figure out why he suddenly decides to bust out of the Booby Hatch and start hacking up babysitters. Some would say that's it's gorier than the first one, but that's really a matter of budget and technology. Rob Zombie could've showed much more blood and carnage than he did. The fact that he didn't is a choice. It's not about body counts and exposed skull fractures, it's about Michael.
2. Shoot 'Em Up. Clive Owen kills a dude with a carrot. If this film didn't at least challenge Rambo III and Total Recall for the highest body count I'll be surprised. You need to leave your disbelief willingly suspended in a sensory depravation chamber with no contact to the outside world before you walk into the theater. If you do that, you'll love it. If you don't, you'll be wondering about more than the fact that a two day old child is eating solid food and producing solid waste (my biggest, "Nah, that's not realistic," moment of the movie because I came prepared). I have no idea if the stunts were done with CGI or if they were real. If they were real, the Stunt Guy for Clive Owen must have a dick like a signpost that has diamonds at the end of it.
3. 3:10 to Yuma. The only film that will even sniff an Oscar on this list. I'm a sucker for Westerns, so most folks won't like it as much as I do. However, it's doing well at the box office and there are strong performances from Russell Crowe and Christian Bale. Somehow, both of those guys manage to pull off flawless Southern accents, while Cameron Diaz needs an old priest and a young priest to do an Irish accent. Great drama, excellent character arcs, cool ending, lots of guns. And, while I'm here, I'd like to add that advances in sound effects editing have actually made Westerns more realistic, even though the characters are doing things that are less realistic. The most people Clint Eastwood ever killed at once in The Trilogy (Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly) was three people. When I first watched him kill three dudes in a flash of gunfire, I actually said, "Holy shit!" I now know that it was because sound was dubbed horribly and the sound of the gun actually came through the speakers after the dudes were already lying in bloody heaps on the ground. Watching Young Guns, Unforgiven, and now 3:10 to Yuma, it's amazing what a difference sound effects editing makes. Russell Crowe and his minions have multiple occasions where they'll gun down four or five dudes and it seems perfectly realistic. I wouldn't like to get into a duel with him or any of his boyz, but it doesn't seem like something that defies all applicable laws of physics.

I think I'm gonna go to bed now. Go see these movies. While you're at it, go buy We Are Marshall (every time I see just the commercial I get goosebumps) and Grindhouse (it's very Tarantino at the beginning but gets intense in a hurry).