Reviews by Friends of NubtheSquirrel

Fardreamer says "Willis is watchable in 1990's otherwise too formulaic Die Hard 2" about Die Hard 2: Die Harder

Fardreamer — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 16:37:41 GMT

One of the predictable consequences of the success of 1988's Die Hard was 20th Century Fox's decision to greenlight Renny Harlin's Die Hard 2: Die Harder, a spectacularly violent sequel to Bruce Willis' star-making hit about a brave, wise-cracking police detective who goes mano-a-mano with a band of sophisticated criminals in order to save his estranged wife (Bonnie Bedelia) and other civilians.

The studio's big shots, of course, rarely see movies as works of art but rather as investments for which they expect at least some profit, so when a stand-alone film such as Airport, Jaws, Smokey and the Bandit or Die Hard makes more money than they put into it, the temptation to make them into franchises becomes irresistible.

Although Die Hard director John McTiernan had been tapped to helm the sequel (written by Doug Richardson and Steven E. de Souza), he had to pass because he was working on Paramount Pictures' The Hunt for Red October. Determined to release Die Hard 2 for the summer 1990...

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Fardreamer says "De Palma's Mission Impossible reboot goes on Cruise control" about Mission: Impossible

Fardreamer — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 17:13:59 GMT

In 1996, 30 years after its debut on the CBS television network, producer Bruce Geller's spy-action adventure series Mission: Impossible followed Star Trek from the small screen into the silver screen when Paramount Pictures released Brian DePalma's film adaptation, which stars Tom Cruise as IMF operative Ethan Hunt and Jon Voight as Jim Phelps.

Because the series was so much a product of the Cold War - proving Nicholas Meyer's statement that "all art reflects the times in which it's created" - storywriters Steven Zaillian and David Koepp and screenwriters Koepp and Robert Towne couldn't simply take stories from the old show and update them for the film.

They could, however, take some of the series' basic premises and one character (Phelps) and try to extrapolate what the end of the Cold War has wrought on the IMF team and its leaders now that the Iron Curtain has fallen and their roles and missions are being redefined.

The big issue faced by Zaillian, Koepp and Towne was this: Tom Cruise's...

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Fardreamer says "Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket is quirky, violent Vietnam War film " about Full Metal Jacket

Fardreamer — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 17:26:56 GMT

Before I bought Stanley Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket on DVD last year, I had only seen the movie once before - when it was released in theaters in 1987.

I was still in college then, a journalism major and - at the time - copy editor of my junior college campus' student newspaper. But because I had been the paper's Diversions editor during the previous semester, I still wrote entertainment-related articles or reviews if the section needed me to do so.

I went to see Full Metal Jacket with my friends Betsy Matteis and Richard de la Pena; we had met in elementary school in the 1970s and remained close until Betsy moved to Alabama several years ago and (sadly) Richard's death at the age of 41 (cancer).

At the time, many Hollywood studios were releasing "combat experience" movies about the Vietnam War, a topic they had either ignored or danced peripherically around by focusing their attention on the post-war experiences or the home front dramas (The Deer Hunter, Coming Home) of the veterans. ...

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Fardreamer says "Great Fox War Movies is decent but lacks exciting extras" about Great Fox War Movies - The Longest Day/Patton/Tora! Tora! Tora!

Fardreamer — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 19:42:55 GMT

I've been watching movies for as long as I can remember and been collecting them for 25 years, first on VHS tapes after I bought my first VCR in 1984 and on DVD since 1999.

Like many film buffs, I embraced the DVD (and its successor format, the Blu-ray) not only because it has much better audio and video playback, but also because the slimmer packaging takes up less shelf space than the bulky videotapes did when they were the only available home-video format.

I also like DVDs/Blu-rays because they can often be bundled in box sets that contain three or four movies which are either (a) multi-movie sagas along the lines of The Star Wars Trilogy or the Indiana Jones series, or (b) stand-alone movies that are nevertheless thematically linked to a specific genre or topic.

Another nice (or perhaps not-so-nice) thing about DVDs is that if the first release version of a movie in the format - usually dating from the late 1990s to the first few years of the Oh-Ohs - was skimpy on extra features,...

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Fardreamer says "Kobayashi Maru is a tepid look at Star Trek's 'no-win' test " about The Star Trek #47: The Kobayashi Maru Books

Fardreamer — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 19:20:56 GMT

One of the coolest things about J.J. Abrams' Star Trek movie is that it gave Star Trek fans the "true" story of how Cadet James T. Kirk beat - on his third attempt - a test designed to pit future starship commanders against a "no-win scenario" intended to be a test of character rather than "a fair test" of a student's command abilities.

In the Star Trek universe, the Kobayashi Maru scenario (first seen in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan) is a required test that all Command-track cadets at Starfleet Academy must take to see if they have the "right stuff" to someday take the "center seat" of a starship as its commanding officer.

In The Kobayashi Maru, Julia Ecklar (who is also one of the team of writers which uses the pen name L.A. Graf) does describe how James Tiberius Kirk beat the "no-win scenario," but in a very superficial manner, since her vignette set in 2254 delves into why Kirk gets frustrated with the simulation, the effects of his "reprogramming" of the Academy computer, and...

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Fardreamer says "Power of the Force Han Solo figure is a cool collectible" about Hasbro Star Wars - The Power of the Force Han Solo (CommTech Chip)

Fardreamer — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 17:07:52 GMT

Han Solo (CommTech) action figure:

Although Kenner had created a basic Han Solo figure based on his appearance in 1977's Star Wars - Episode IV: A New Hope (aka Star Wars) in its "Vintage" collection, the only "variants" were accidental; the 1978 figure came with either a "big head" or a "little head" due to inexact molding issues. The collection which focused on A New Hope (1978-early 1980) never bothered with Han Solo (in Stormtrooper Disguise) or Han Solo (Death Star Escape); it wouldn't be until The Empire Strikes Back collection (1980-early 1983) that Han would get a better head mold and different outfits.

By the mid-1990s, however, several factors contributed to a change in policy by the "suits" in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, to make various versions of the same character as he, she, or (in the case of droids and aliens) it appeared in different sequences in one movie.

The biggest factor, of course, was that the decade between the Kenner POTF1 and the Hasbro/Kenner POTF2 runs had...

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Fardreamer says "You'll be saying 'Yippee-ki-yay' with Willis in 1988's Die Hard!" about Die Hard

Fardreamer — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 17:56:50 GMT

It's hard to believe that, as I write this, more than 20 years have passed since 20th Century Fox released director John McTiernan's seminal action movie Die Hard, which not only put Bruce Willis on the "action hero" map, but also "inspired" a plethora of copycat movies which usually involved terrorists, an enclosed space and one or two good guys determined to stop the bad guys.

Die Hard itself launched three sequels over a 19-year span of time, all of them starring Willis as the sardonic New York City police detective with a penchant for snappy quips and a particular talent for disposing of bad guys in skycrapers, airports, federal banks and even an entire city.

It will blow you through the back wall of the theater

The story takes a basic Western-movie plotline (lone hero faces off against a band of menacing black hats) and pulls it forward into the late 20th Century. N.Y. Detective John McClane (Willis) arrives in L.A. for a Christmas vacation with his estranged wife Holly (Bonnie Bedelia)...

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Fardreamer says "Out-of-this-world conspiracy is at heart of Capricorn One" about Capricorn One

Fardreamer — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 17:54:52 GMT

Americans - for good or ill - seem to thrive on conspiracy theories.

Since the founding of our nation in the late 18th Century, many Americans have espoused or believed in all kinds of conspiracies, beginning with the notion that Freemasons were a threat to American civilization itself to the totally outlandish accusation that President George W. Bush's Administration had a hand in planning and carrying out the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

The three biggest myths of U.S. history in the 20th Century are (1) that Franklin D. Roosevelt knew the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor was coming and did nothing to stop it so the U.S. could enter World War II; (2) there was a vast government conspiracy to assassinate President John F. Kennedy (for various reasons); and (3) that the Apollo Program to land men on the moon was secretly halted after 1967 and that the subsequent lunar landings were faked.

Now, I seriously doubt those conspiracy theories, and I'm relatively sure that writer-director...

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Fardreamer says "Up is a heartwarming film by the animators at Pixar Studios!" about Up

Fardreamer — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 16:57:45 GMT

Although I have watched, perhaps, hundreds. if not thousands, of movies of all types (ranging from adult films to Z-grade Westerns) since the mid-1960s, I've never really been a fan of "family fare" or animated movies.

Perhaps this reluctance to like anything that smacks of kid-friendly fare stems from the razzing I suffered when, in the fifth grade, I remarked that I had gone to see Snow White and the Seven Dwarves when Walt Disney Pictures re-released it in theaters in one of those "once in a blue moon" Special Engagements. I, like many others before and since, had loved that first of the Disney classic animated films, but lots of my friends considered Disney movies "baby stuff" and totally uncool.

So even though I've seen some of the last batch of 2-D Disney Classics (The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast and The Lion King), I tend to ignore tons of movies which are animated or are produced/released by Walt Disney Pictures.

For some reason, though, I've liked quite a few of...

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Fardreamer says "This Special Edition Boba Fett figure is, well, special!" about Hasbro Star Wars - Power of the Jedi Boba Fett Special Edition (300th Figure)

Fardreamer — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 19:55:58 GMT

In 1977, Star Wars magically transported millions of moviegoers to a galaxy far, far away. With its 3-¾" - scale figures, Kenner allowed kids of all ages to take pieces of that galaxy into their homes and forever changed the way children play with toys. As the Star Wars saga expanded and evolved over the last twenty + years, so did Hasbro-Kenner's action figure lines. It is with great pleasure that we celebrate these decades of fun with this Special Edition Star Wars 300th 3-¾ " figure. - from the package blurb

When I began collecting Star Wars action figures in the spring of 1978, little did I realize that a gift of the original Kenner Landspeeder and two small figures would be the foundation of a modestly large collection of figures, vehicles and "action playsets" based on the characters and situations created by George Lucas.

I don't, of course, have every action figure, vehicle or accessory ever made; I lack both the financial resources and the space to have amassed the most complete...

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Jolie says "buyuggsboot.net is a scam! Ugg Boots from China that are fake." about www.buyuggsboot.net

Jolie — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 05:22:46 GMT

Background on Buyuggsboot.net

A friend of mine at Viewpoints recently passed along a site called www.buyuggsboot.net. She found it online. www.buyuggsboot.net is a web site that sells all styles of Ugg Boots at discounted prices.

We werent certain if www.buyuggsboot.net were the real or not. But after a thorough review of the site, we thought it was legit. Buyuggsboot.net looks like a reasonable reseller of Ugg Boots. The page is designed well, the pictures look authentic and they make claim to having the real deal. They also consistently site throughout the web site having customer satisfaction commitments.

To add to the thought it was authentic, the pricing seemed good but not amazing. As you probably know a typical pair of Ugg Boots cost about $110. On Buyuggsboot.net the cost was $89.00- approximately a $20 savings. Seemed like a good deal, but they werent so cheap that I thought it could be scam. As an aside, last year Nordstrom had a similiar sale on Ugg boots so the pricing seemed...

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Fardreamer says "Hasbro's Palpatine is nice rendition of Star Wars' main baddie! " about Hasbro Star Wars Saga: Supreme Chancellor Palpatine

Fardreamer — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 17:36:08 GMT

A Look at Supreme Chancellor Palpatine from Attack of the Clones

For all their flaws (real or perceived), the Star Wars prequels finally get around to explaining how a once-great and thriving democracy evolved into a tyrannical dictatorship even though it was protected by the formidable Jedi Order.

The Republic didn't become the evil Empire because Palpatine -- who was introduced into the film series in The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi -- came from another galaxy and took it over by an external attack, but because the Senator/Sith Lord wormed his way patiently into the office of the Supreme Chancellor by using the weaknesses of the democratic system against itself. By allying himself with greedy ultra-capitalist organizations such as the Trade Federation and employing subtle "dirty tricks" to remove Supreme Chancellor Valorum from office, Palpatine cleverly manipulates people and events to get himself elected as head of the Senate and the Republic's Chief Executive.

As George...

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Fardreamer says "Nivea For Men Oil Control Face Wash does the job on my skin!" about Nivea Oil Control Face Wash 5oz For Men

Fardreamer — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 19:21:49 GMT

I usually have a clear complexion with some dry skin issues, but most of the time my facial skin is normal and relatively low-maintenance. All I normally have to do is wash it a few times a day, including once when I'm taking my shower and once while shaving.

Every so often\, though, my 40-something year-old face will start regressing to adolesecence and start getting oily and pimply.

While this is not a disaster of Biblical proportions it's not pleasant, especially if the problem escalates from being merely oily skin to an acne breakout, particularly on the tip of my nose or my forehead. The oily skin feels weird and yucky, and the pimples look ugly and are often painful, too.

Before I switched to Nivea® For Men Skin Care products several years ago, I relied on Clearasil soap and its StayClear deep clean astringent partner. I used Clearasil products throughout my teens and into my twenties, and for the most part they did a fantastic job of eliminating zits and keeping my skin from...

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Fardreamer says "Alien Resurrection flirts with excellence but fails to get it" about Alien Resurrection

Fardreamer — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 18:45:31 GMT

One of the most annoying aspects of the movie industry is Hollywood's penchant for taking a successful "property" such as Airport, Jaws and other one-shot films and offering remakes and sequels that were never planned for by the original screenwriters, novelists or directors.

Universal Pictures, for instance, gave the world not only the ridiculous Airport "quadrilogy" of one interesting film and three lame-to-beyond awful remakes/sequels, but it took Steven Spielberg's classic man-versus-white shark summer movie Jaws and saddled it with such unworthy follow-ups as Jaws 2, Jaws 3-D and the inanely idiotic Jaws: The Revenge.

Of course, Universal is not the only major studio to commission "franchises" where no franchise was originally intended; Paramount Pictures, MGM-United Artists and 20th Century Fox have all fallen prey to the lure of Sequelitis.

That the studio which reluctantly released Star Wars in 1977 and suddenly had a big moneymaker in its hands would want to squeeze every buck...

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Fardreamer says "Senator Palpatine is a nice but not great Episode I figure" about Hasbro Star Wars - Episode I: Senator Palpatine

Fardreamer — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 18:30:24 GMT

A political and tactical mastermind, Senator Palpatine represents the people of Naboo in the Galactic Senate and engineers his own election as Supreme Chancellor of the Republic. - From the package blurb

Star Wars fans -- especially those who have read the novelizations of A New Hope and Return of the Jedi -- have known that the evil Emperor was once Senator Palpatine, an ambitious politician who cleverly maneuvered his way up the ranks of the Galactic Senate and into the Republic's highest elected office.

In the Prequel Trilogy writer-director George Lucas showed audiences how Palpatine worms his way into power, by cleverly manipulating the democratic process, pushing Queen Amidala to call for a vote of "no confidence" against his one-time friend Valorum, and (in his true Sith form of "Darth Sidious") fomenting a crisis involving the greedy Trade Federation and his own backwater home world of Naboo.

Hasbro's Star Wars Episode I: Senator Palpatine 3.75-inch scale action figure depicts...

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Fardreamer says "This Darth Maul action figure is nicely rendered by Hasbro" about Hasbro Star Wars - Episode I: Darth Maul (Tatooine) with Cloak and Lightsaber

Fardreamer — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 16:41:45 GMT

I've been collecting Star Wars action figures ever since some friends of mine gave me, as my 15th birthday present, the first version of Kenner's Landspeeder vehicle and the original R2-D2 and C-3PO figures over 30 years ago.

For the next seven years I was constantly going on what I now call "figure runs" to such stores as Lionel Play World, Sears, K-mart and the then-new Toys R Us. Every time Kenner released a new 12-figure "collection" of characters from Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back or Return of the Jedi, I'd be feeling both anticipation and frustration; I wanted them all, but my life was becoming more complicated as I grew older and the responsibilities of college life loomed in my horizon.

By a strange twist of fate, Kenner ceased producing new Star Wars toys in 1985, which was also my freshman year of college. I still liked the figures I had managed to get and was a bit vexed that I had not gotten them all, but my load of classes and my long hours on campus working on...

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Fardreamer says "Long Snoot is a cool figure from The Power of the Force line" about Hasbro Star Wars - The Power of the Force Garindan (Long Snoot)

Fardreamer — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 18:08:38 GMT

In March of 2010, I will not only celebrate my 47th birthday, but I will also mark the 32nd Anniversary of becoming a Star Wars action figure collector.

Since I have been collecting those small replicas of major and minor characters from the six live-action Star Wars movies for over three decades, I have many memories and tales about the good, the bad and the frustrating sides of my hobby.

Because Kenner and its successor Hasbro have made so many action figures, vehicles, playsets and accessory assortments, I do not have a complete Star Wars collection. Not even during the Kenner figures' heyday (1978-1985) did I stand a chance at being a completist; some of Kenner's offerings never enthused me much, and my freshman year of college coincided with the end of the original figures' production run.

One of the vexing things about collecting Star Wars action figures and knowing the movies backwards and forward was knowing that Kenner had ignored certain characters - both major and minor...

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Fardreamer says "Fiction permeates plot of otherwise good Bridge at Remagen" about The Bridge at Remagen

Fardreamer — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 18:01:03 GMT

If you have ever watched cable television's History channel even casually, you probably remember that it used to air a series called From Real to Reel, which consisted of a screening of a Hollywood historical movie, with commentary by the show's host and a panel of historians in between the three acts of the movie.

From Real to Reel often focused on war movies, and the discussions nearly always pointed out what the filmmakers had gotten right and (more often than not) what they had gotten wrong either because they had not researched the topic well or because they distorted or fictionalized too many elements of the "story" to make the movie more entertaining.

Whether or not History ever aired an episode of From Real to Reel centered on The Bridge at Remagen I have no clue, but given the fact that it is a fact-based movie about one of World War II's most dramatic episodes, I would be surprised if it had not done so.

What It's About:

If you have read - however casually - any general history...

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Fardreamer says "Though not a cure for bad dandruff, Herbal Essences does help" about Clairol Herbal Essences Anti-Dandruff Shampoo

Fardreamer — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 18:30:40 GMT

Before my present doctor suggested that I switch to Nizoral A-D and/or Neutrogena T-Gel Anti-Dandruff shampoos, I used Clairol Herbal Essences' Anti-Dandruff Shampoo. Ever since I was 12 I have noticed I have a really bad case of dandruff; sometimes the itching and flaking is so maddening that I'll drop whatever I am doing and go wash my hair.

Over the past 34 years, I have used several major brands, including Selsun Blue and various variations of Head and Shoulders. Some of them relieved the itch and flaking, others just diminished the symptoms but required almost daily use with little or no change in my scalp's condition.

Before I switched brands a few years ago, I always tried to get Herbal Essences' Anti-Dandruff formula for oily hair, but when that was out of stock, the iris-chrysanthemum-mulberry root "For All Hair Types" shampoo suited my needs.

Used in conjunction with Herbal Essences' Anti-Dandruff Conditioner, this amazingly gentle shampoo did seem to alleviate some of the...

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