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Tuesday, November 3, 2015

Hercules: The Legendary Barrels

 
Saturday morning after some running around, Izzy & I transferred our Scotch Ale & Cider to the barrels (since it got rescheduled from Friday night due to coworkers’ going away party)… so here are those pictures that I promised you last time… but this time, for real…
 













Saturday night, Izzy & I went to her former coworkers’ annual Halloween party and as usual it was EPIC… here are a few pictures… and even a special one of us in our outfits… Ash & Umbreon from Pokemon
 







 
 

This past weekend, we watched “Age of the Dinosaurs” which was a 2013 TV movie starring Treat Williams & Ronny Cox… but it was on Netflix and has “Dinosaurs” in the title… so you know that I’m down. The story is about a company who has devised some amazing flesh-regeneration technology… so now they can create dinosaurs. That’s all that you need to know. Well, they have a presentation showing off their new creatures (Ceratosaurus, Carnotaurus & Pteradons) and… spoiler alert… they get out of their cages and start running amok through Los Angeles. So… the CGI actually wasn’t that bad. I mean… considering that it’s a horrible Syfy Channel movie… the designs of the dinosaurs were pretty good, though the movements could’ve used some tweaking. The acting was… well, the script was just bad. It’s hard to go from there. Apparently dinosaurs are impervious to bullets and/or rocket launchers… but hey, I’m even willing to let to go towards an explanation like “maybe the flesh-regeneration is just super fast so they recover instantly like Wolverine” instead of “they just couldn’t afford to sway from the original design in any way because we blew our budget” or something like that. Anyway, I wouldn’t recommend it… but it’s pretty good for Syfy.
 
We followed it up with a Halloween movie that was recommended via the internet called “Stake Land” starring Nick Damici (“Late Phases”) and Kelly McGinnis (“Top Gun”). It’s the story of a post-apocalyptic world where these zombie-vampire hybrids have taken over… and human are struggling to get by. A teenager’s family is killed right in front of him… but he’s saved by a mysterious man called Mister (Damici) who then takes the boy under his wing & teaches him to survive in this wasteland full of these zompires, cannibals, militaristic religious zealots, militaristic military outfits, and so on. Basically it's like "Zombieland" but with absolutely no humor whatsoever... which was kind of the best part. Overall though, the movie is really good & gritty (though the narration gets annoying at times) and the action scenes are actually pretty damn good. I'd highly recommend checking it out. Just don't expect it to be funny... it's more of a think piece about what things might be like if the world were overran with zombie-vampires who are impervious to many things...

 
Sunday we watched football… and ate Halloween candy… and then eventually we started watching bad movies like BOTH 1983’s “Hercules” & 1985’s “The Adventures of Hercules” starring Lou Ferrigno and from Cannon Pictures who I mentioned last entry in that documentary. So… we all know the story of Hercules, right? King of the Greek gods Zeus bangs a mortal woman named Alcmene and they have a demigod baby… he grows up to be super strong, Hera (wifey of Zeus) is angered with this bastard child, 12 labours or tasks that he must complete to form Voltron… or something like that… lots of side adventures… basically super tough Greek dude who wears furs & beats down foo’s. Well… in this interpretation of the Hercules mythology… it’s… a little different. This starts out more like Moses in the Bible, where he’s the child of Zeus & a queen… but then there’s a coup and the royal family is slain… except the nanny floats Hercules down the river… and then he’s raised by a regular family (so opposite of Moses?) and then… he just kinda grows up to be a badass… and there’s an evil King Minos who is all about SCIENCE!!! Then there are some chicks in robes… and robot dragons with laser beams… and Hercules can grow big enough to separate Europe & Africa which apparently is one of his labours? And there’s a lot of dubbing… or is there? Yeah, it’s definitely dubbing but nobody gets credit… and then there’s a sequel that we had to watch too… but yeah, if you’re looking for another odd interpretation of the Hercules legend… then definitely check out these movies. They’re not good… but definitely interesting. Made in Italy!!!
 
There have been MANY Hercules movies made over the past… let’s just say 50 years. So how does this one fare? Well…
 
Ultimate Ranking of Hercules Movies:
 
1.       Kevin Sorbo in “Hercules: The Legendary Journeys” (1995-99) – I’m sure that it’s a lot easier to tell the epic tales of this legend when you have six seasons of television to do so (and guest spots with the likes of Bruce Campbell & Lucy Lawless spin-offs) but yeah, easily the best representation thus far… and you’ll see why with the rest of this list. He’s got the Fabio look… pretty well built… the charisma… yeah, he was the 90’s
 
2.       Dwayne Johnson in “Hercules” (2014) – I reviewed this movie a few months ago… and yeah, he’s amazingly well built… he’s got the charisma… yeah, he’s the new millennium.
 
3.       Arnold Strong in “Hercules in New York” (1969) – Arnold Schwarzenegger’s first movie… and it’s horrible… absolutely horrible… but he’s Hercules… and he has no problem with reminding you something like 78 times during the course of the movie. Let’s be honest though… he’s in the Guinness Book for World Records for having the best body ever. That’s something to take into account… and this was the movie that started the American Dream that is Arnie.
 
4.       Lou Ferrigno in 80’s movies – Look, it may not be his voice… but his mannerisms and stuff aren’t bad in this movie… and the youngest Mr. Olympia ever didn’t do half bad… it was the script that was pretty bad. SCIENCE!!!
 
5.       Tate Donovan in Disney’s “Hercules” & TV series (1997) – Look, Disney makes cutesy stuff… and James Woods was Hades… that’s about all I remember from this movie. Had you asked me who did the voice of Hercules, I probably wouldn’t have responded that guy from “Love Potion #9”
 
6.       Ryan Gosling in “Young Hercules” (1998-1999) – Didn’t even know this existed… so it must not have been good, right? You’re welcome for bringing it to your attention, ladies. Enjoy.
 
7.       That Big Dog in “The Sandlot” (1993) – This version of Hercules was just completely ridiculous. He didn’t seem like a mighty warrior at all… more like a slobbering beast. Absolutely deplorable.
 
8.       Kellen Lutz in “Legend of Hercules” (2014) – Well… but still not the worst. This movie was horrible. I feel like this movie was in the spirit of “Oh sh*t, did you hear they’re making a Hercules movie with the Rock?” “Oh man, we should do one first! Who’s available? I’ll work on the script while you find the actor & we’ll start shooting on Monday…” “Ooooh… we got one of the guys from the Twilight movies!” “Which one? You know what… doesn’t even matter… they’re all horrible. Sign him on the cheap & send him a trainer. He’s got four days to get ready!”
 
Anyway, that’ll do it for this past weekend. More fun stuff coming up this week… including new brews… and the California State Homebrewing Competition!!! Have a great day everybody!!!

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