Its a sad day G4 fans

Layla Kayleigh is no more. She sent out posts earlier tonight on Myspace letting all her fans know that she will no longer be employed at G4. She goes on to state that she will still be focused on her career in television, so we shall see her in the future on new shows. Maybe she's going into acting? She does still work for MTV's America's Best Dance Crew so you can see her there every Thursday night. Taking her place on Attack of the Show's The Feed segment will be Alison Haislip, who has been the fill-in along with Kristin Adams for the last several months. So, good luck to Layla in all her future endeavors.

Pure awesomeness

100% pure awesomeness indeed. This movie was released last week straight to DVD, which is a shame because I bet that this movie, while winning no attendance contests, would definitely draw enough money to justify it opening in a theatre. Like most projects that feature Bruce Campbell, this movie is pure gold. Its also a really bad movie but it is a blast to watch. While most "B" movies fall apart right after the explanation is given to the whys of the plot, this movie really shines. Its low budget, it amkes fun of itself and has many laugh out loud moments. It even starts with 2 guys singing a folk country song about a chinese demon, how can that not be awesome. The movie begins when Jeff, uber Bruce Campbell fan and his friends enjoy a night out at the local ancinet chinese graveyard located in the samll town of Goldlick. Jeff unwittingly releases an ancinet chinese god of war loose from his resting place, a mine that collapsed and killed over 100 migrant workers. Quan Di, the ancient chinese god of war and patron saint of bean curde arises and swiftly starts a killing spree in the town. Jeff turns to the only man he can think of that could help in this kind of situation, "B" movie actor extraordinaire, Bruce Campbell. Of course this makes sense to everyone in the town and they welcome him with open arms to lead them against the evil menace. Bruce Campbell does a great job acting, playing himself as a cowardly asshole. How close this movie version of Bruce is to the real thing one wonders. This movei was great fun, and anyone who is remotely a fan of Mr. Campbell will love this film. Its no Bubba Hotep but hey nothing is. I give My Name is Bruce a score on the Heath-meter of 9 out of 10.

Well at least one thing went right

Heath Ledger wins the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor. One of the few I was pulling for to win. I was also pulling for Mickey Rourke to win best actor for his work In The Wrestler and for Marisa Tomei for Best Supporting Actress for her performance also in The Wrestler. Slumdog Millionaire was the big winner of the night. Benjamin Button also won a few awards, all technical including visual effects, art direction and best makeup. Dark Knight won best sound effects to go with Heath Ledger's win. Unfortunately, The Wrestler was only up in the two I mentioned earlier and won neither. Best Actor went to Sean Penn for Milk and Best Supporting Actress went to Penelope Cruz for Vicky Christina Barcelona. I'm not planning to watch either one of those films.

Should be at least nominated.

Finally I got to see this movie. It officially came out last year but due to the inadequacy of my local theaters I have not had the chance to see it until this weekend. One of the theaters in my area started showing it this weekend, and that was only because Mickey Rourke is up for an Oscar for best actor and Marisa Tomei is up for best supporting actress. Now it is a crying shame that this film is not up for best picture. This movie is easily one of the best movies I have ever seen. It clearly tells the story without the story getting out of control and that is a very hard thing to do. Most movies that try to show a second chance kinda story fail simply by taking it over the top or more easily disappointing the viewers when the supposed outcome just isn't met. The Wrestler stars Mickey Rourke as Randy "The Ram" Robinson, a former champion wrestler now in the twilight of his career. He spends most days working at a local grocery chain and the weekends wrestling for small or local shows. As his career is threatening to end he turns to his outside life to cope by trying to upgrade his relationship with a stripper played by Marisa Tomei, who welcomes Randy's affections but wont cross the line that separates him from any other customer. Randy also tries to reconcile with his daughter who he walked out on while she was growing up. He tries to replace the hole wrestling left in his heart and he struggles with it at every moment. Easily one of the best movies about second chances and the decisions we make in out lives and how they affect not only ourselves but those around us too. This movie proves that Mickey Rourke is one of the best actors in Hollywood today. I seriously doubt that anyone could portray Randy any better. I also have to give props to Darren Aronofsky who directed the movie. At first I thought I was going to be annoyed throughout the film due to the camera. The movie is shot in many scenes with the camera following the characters as they go along but after the first few minutes, I saw that this actually helped the movie in my opinion, it gives you a very close feel to whats happening and really brings your attention in to the scene. If you haven't seen this yet, go out and hopefully you will be able to find a theater showing it, and see this film. This along with Dark Knight is probably the two best films that came out last year. I give The Wrestler, on the Heat-Scale a score of 10 out of 10.

Babe of the Week 2/22 - 2/28/09

The always beautiful Lynda Carter. Most famous in her role as Wonder Woman in the 70s TV series. She has appeared in many movies including Sky High and The Dukes of Hazzard movies that came out only a few years ago. Not even time can keep her from looking good.

The End of an Era

After 16 years, Late Night with Conan O'Brien is done, finished, kaput. Televison lost tonight one of the best programs ever to be put on the air. The Late Night show will start airing new episodes on March 2nd with Jimmy Fallon as the new host. I think that he will do a decent job, he wont be as good as Conan, but thats not really why they brought him in either. Conan will be getting ready to take the reins of the Tongiht Show starting in June. I can only hope that they can recreate half of the goodness that was Late Night. From what I gather, most of the staff and crew are making the move to LA with Conan including Max Weinnberg and the Max Weinberg 7, who have been the Late Night band since the beginning. I for one cant wait to see the new Tonight Show and I will definitely be looking forward to watching regularly starting in June.

Another Heath List

This time its my top 5 favorite fantasy book series'

5) Books of the Change by S.M. Stirling

4) A Song of Ice and Fire by George R. R. Martin

3) The Dresden Files by Jim Butcher

2) The Black Company by Glen Cook

1) The Gentlemen Bastard Sequence by Scott Lynch

Reading List: The Automatic Detective

A. Lee Martinez is quickly rising on my list of favorite authors. The only gripe I have with his books are that they are too short. For those of you that do not know, I only read at work, when I'm on a break. I rarely read at home mainly because I'm not usually here and when I am, I'm usually busy doing something else. Anyways, I finished this book in two days at work, that's basically an hour a day so, two hours and this book was toast. The Automatic Detective takes place in Empire City where Mack Megaton, one of the few privileged robots to be up for citizen status struggles through his day as a taxi driver. He spends most of his down time trying to find ways to release his inner rage and trying to adapt his programming to be more socially active. He is after all programmed to destroy humanity as the brainchild of a mad scientist. He turned on his maker and rejected his programming. When a human family he is friends with disappears, he sets out to find them and is quickly surprised at how detective work is more to his liking. His journey takes through a thrill ride of the underworld of Empire City as he deals with Giant Apes, Rat cops, Mutants and many others. Like I said earlier, it is a fast read, quickly jumping through the story at blistering speed while entirely engrossing the reader into the story. As most books by A. Lee Martinez, it is very quirky with some well thought out, slightly crazy situations and can make you laugh and think at the same time. While I enjoyed his previous works more, I really liked this book and I would highly recommend it to anyone. The best thing about the works of Mr Martinez, is that most of them are in paperback and can be found pretty cheap at your local bookstore. So if you re looking for something to make you laugh and present you with a zany enjoyable story, check out any of his books, except maybe the Nameless Witch, that's the only one of his books that kinda left me let down, still a decent book, just not as good as the others.

This whole economy situation just plain sucks.

Apparently TV channels have been hit really bad with the whole economic status our country is currently facing. My favorite channel G4 announced today that due to budgetary reasons, Attack of the Show will start March 3 scaling down to 4 new shows a week and X-Play will reverting back to its old schedule with only 3 new shows a week. Meanwhile I am sure we faithful G4 viewers will be bombarded with multiple showings of Fight Club and marathons of Cheaters. I hope our new government can get this thing turned around quickly so I can once again enjoy my 5 days of both X-Play and AOTS.

Reading List: A Cruel Wind

Man it seems like Ive been reading Glen Cook forever. After reading the first two omnibus of the Black Company which in total collected 6 books and now I just finished This collection of his earlier work based on his Dread Empire series. This book collects the first three books in the series that he wrote, and a second one collects two books he wrote later but are prequels to these books. While I enjoyed reading this collection, the series doesn't hold a candle to his Black Company novels. The story revolves around a small cast of characters spread out in a very confusing world, with the story jumping back and forth when needed. He also likes to jump time periods and if you're not paying attention, its very easy to forget when the events you are reading are taking place against the parts of the story already told. One thing Glen Cook shines at is his characterization. You would be hard pressed to find similar characters in any other fantasy novel. He does a fantastic job keeping the reader on his toes and doesn't label his characters into defined roles of hero and villain. Each character in the series could easily fall into either role and often do based on the view point given at the certain time. That alone is what makes me a fan of Glen Cook. He brings a sense of realism into the fantasy genre. No more Princes, or Champions or evil Sorcerers, just people, some extraordinary put into intense situations. I would gladly recommend this series to anyone who is a true fantasy fan. I doubt any one who's not would enjoy it very much.

Retro Review: Die Hard

Recently, I finally bought a DVD copy of Die Hard. Just got done watching it with a friend of mine who had never seen it. I cant say much, I watched it for the first time just a few months ago. I still have yet to see the third and I'm not sure if I even want to see the latest one with it being PG-13 and not rated R. I mean seriously how can it even try to live up the first one without the rated R violence? That's what makes Die Hard so freaking awesome. After watching it again, I decided that Die Hard is one of the all time best action movies ever. It still holds up even after 21 years. The only fault I can find is how silly the big fight scene is with the blond German guy karate chopping at McClain. The story would work with our time and not need much altered at all. This movie put not only Bruce Willis on the map as a bankable action star and all around tough guy, but also Alan Rickman as one of the best Hollywood bad guys. Forget him as the sheriff of Nottingham or as Snape in Harry Potter. This film shows just how bad ass he can be. Today's directors need to go back and watch this film and learn how to make a good action movie. I give Die Hard, on the Heath-Scale a score of 9 out of 10.

Soon to be in the NBA Hall of Fame.....

Chris Mullin! Hopefully anyway. He definitely should be in my honest opinion. My all time absolute favorite ball player growing up. He is easily one of the best all time shooters in NBA history. He was a featured member of the original Dream Team that won gold in Barcelona. He was also voted as one of the 50 greatest players of all time in the NBA. Its just sad that Golden State could never get it worked out to win a championship. Every time they came close something would always screw it up. Chris Mullin was one third of, in my opinion, the greatest back court trio ever, along with Mitch Richmond and Tim Hardaway. He also was able to shoot with either hand even though he is naturally left-handed, which actually threw a lot of defenders off when trying to guard against him. He was announced as being eligible this year for entry into the NBA Hall of Fame along with greats such as John Stockton, David Robinson, and Michael Jordan. I for one hope that the voters remember how good he was and vote him in. Here is a link that can show you in depth all of his stats, http://www.basketball-reference.com/players/m/mullich01.html which in itself is a great site to find anything you re looking for NBA stat wise.

Babe of the Week 02/15 - 02/21/09

G4's gorgeous Alison Haislip. Mostly seen filling in either for Layla Kayleigh or Olivia Munn on Attack of the Show and also as a G4 field reporter. She has also been featured in several movies and is currently in works to appear in a brand new Internet show.

One of the coolest things I have seen in a while

Hey I was informed of a website that you guys should checkout. It is http://www.pixlr.com/editor/. It is a free photoshop kinda deal. I found it linked from Olivia Munn's website, http://www.oliviamunn.com/ where she posted it for fans so they can photoshop pictures she is going to post every friday for a contest where she picks the winners and posts them on her site. Ive played around with it some, I still require much training on many of the tools but I am sure I will learn them soon. I used this site to make the Liam Neeson pictures I used for the Heath-Scale on my review of Taken, located right below this post. So need a pic to touch up, try it out.

Best so far, but it wont last long

Well I can honestly say that I wasnt at all hyped for this movie. I mean the first time I saw the trailer for it, I thought it might be interesting but after that in the weeks that followed, I just kinda lost interest. I didnt even have any plans to see this film until a buddy of mine stated that he wanted to watch it and another buddy raved on about it at great lengths on how great it was. After thinking about it, I decided that I didnt mind going to see it so why not. I can honestly state again that this is the best movie I have seen in a theater this year. Now of course its only competition has been Underworld 3 and Paul Blart: Mall Cop, so its not like this film has won anything of extreme accomplishment. Besides Im pretty sure that in about a months time that honor will go to Watchmen. Anyways, This film is pretty good, Im glad I ended up watching it and I dont feel cheated on seeing it at all. Ill probably never buy it but it is indeed worth checking out. The story revolves around a man now retired from a career in the government apparently as a spy or a "preventer" as he states in the film, played by Liam Neeson. He is now retired because he wants to spend more time with his daughter Kim, played by the annoying Maggie Grace of Lost fame. Playing his bitchy ex-wife is Famke Jannsen. After allowing his daughter to travel to Paris against his wishes, she is kidnapped and he starts immediately trying to get her back using his extensive set of skills honed into him by our government. The action for the most part is plausible, and like most action movies there is indeed the incredibly irritating shaky cam that has now somehow become a hollywood staple in these kind of films. There is no crazy way over the top scenes and it is nice to see something while inplausible at moments, someone could actually do. There are indeed shoot outs, chase scenes and several moments of Holy Crap that make this movie worth watching. My main grievance beside the shaky cam is the characterization. Now I think everyone involved played their parts to the best of their ability, I have nothing against the actors themselves, but if she was my daughter, I'd probably let her go after she is taken and then I'd ask the kidnappers if they wanted the ex-wife too. They were both extremely annoying, but they were just parts in a film and I'm sure the actors had no choice on how they had to play them. I would indeed say this was a really good film and I recommend it to anyone out there who wants to see a pretty decent action thriller. I give Taken a score on the Heath-meter of 8 out of 10.

Babe of the Week 02/08 - 02/14/09

The very beautiful Brittany Murphy has appeared in many movies. She has been in quite a few chick flicks that I have not had the pleasure of viewing, but she was in Sin City which is an awesome movie. You may not know this but she provides the voice for Luanne on the animated show, King of the Hill.

Im starting to get pissed off

Ok, How many of you have heard of the movie Fanboys? It was first slated for realease in theaters like 3 years ago. At first it was just being delayed, which Im ok with. THen it was delayed again, Ok fine, and then delayed to further notice. At one time it was slated to come out straight to DVD, which would have been fine, we could have at least seen it. So after 3 years of this crap, it has finally been released. Now heres the part that gets me, No theater in my area is showing it. I cant find one within 5 hours of a drive thats showing it. WHAT THE $#*& MAN??

A movie is finally released and nobody is showing it?? Im going to have to end up pirating this freakin movie and watching it that way, because they apparently dont want my money so they should be ok with it. Right now, Im not sure if I would even want to watch it anymore, it just keeps aggravating me. Just like the Fox and the grapes man, thats all it is.

And another Heath-list

The last post got me thinking, there are a lot of hot women on some of these sitcoms, so here goes another list, the 5 hottest sitcom ladies:


5: Patricia Heaton, Debra on Everybody loves Raymond


4: Jean Louisa Kelly, Kim on Yes Dear


3: Leah Remini, Carrie on King of Queens


2: Julia Louis Dreyfus, Elaine on Seinfeld


1: Jami Gertz, Judy on Still Standing

Agree or Disagree?

Week at home and another Heath list

Ive realized something this past week. I usually work 2nd shift and I miss all the TV I could be watching. After being home this entire week, I've come to the realization that there is NOTHING on TV before 7pm. When I wake up in the afternoon, I mainly just leave it on TBS and watch old sitcom reruns or flip it over to Sportscenter. So in lieu of that here is a new Heath-list for you, my favorite 5 sitcoms of all time:

5: Coach

4: Still Standing

3: That 70's Show

2: Married with Children

1: Seinfeld

Agree or Disagree?

Heroes is back!

Wow, just a few weeks after Lost, Heroes has also returned to weekly television. While I feel they havent captured the essence that made the first season so good. Ill still be watching of course.

Well this sucks

I was going to do a Heath List on my top 5 Super Bowl commercial picks, but apparently I cant add videos from anywhere on here without downloading it to my computer and then uploading it. That's just a bit too much work for me just to voice an opinion. There were barely any good ones this year anyway. I had to work to find 5 that I really liked. Doritos easily had the best in my opinion. Both of theirs was very funny. The Career Builder one was also hilarious. Bud Lights commercial with Conan O'Brien was their only really good one, all their other ones were trying to be cute and most failed in my opinion. Also got to see some decent movie trailers. Land of the Lost and Year One both looked like they might be worth watching. Transformers 2 of course looked awesome and I missed the GI Joe trailer due to the fact that I was in the bathroom fighting the Nachos I had ate previously. My friend Matt found it online and let me see it later and I have to say that it looked better than I had thought it would, so maybe it wont be complete crap when its is finally released. I was hoping to see a Watchmen and a Wolverine trailer too but apparently they decided not to advertise at the most watched television event of the year. Oh well, I'm still going to go see both.

Well It didnt go as I had hoped.

But I do have to say Congrats to the pittsburgh Steelers on winning a good game and doint what was necesary to win the game. I of course was pulling for the Cardinals but a Steelers win does not bother me at all. They do become the first franchise in the NFL to accumulate 6 Super Bowl wins. I am also glad that Santonio Holmes won the MVP, I was afraid that it would be that linebacker that ran the interception back 100 yards at the end of the first half. After seeing him act like an ass in the 2nd half throwing down players who were not doing anything other than trying to get to their feet at the end of the play, I was releived to find out that Holmes was indeed picked as MVP. So congrats Pittsburgh, enjoy it because next year is the Titan's year.

My official Super Bowl prediction

The title says it all. Almost everyone is picking the Steelers. Even the people Ive heard that are pulling for the Cardinals are saying that the Steelers will most likely win. In the end, it doesnt really matter to me who wins. I would like to see the Cardinals win just because I want to see the underdog victorious, but if the Steelers do win, its no skin off my back. SO my official prediction is:

The Pittsburgh Steelers - 21

The Arizona Cardinals - 24

No longer denied

Just an update for you, I will in fact be "vacating" this coming week. At first it was unclear whether or not I would be able to take this week off due to the amount of work that had accumulated but I was able to get a lot of that done and my time off was cleared. As for how I am going to spend my time off, probably laying around the house and playing some Warcraft.

Babe of the Week 02/01 - 02/07/09

The one time wrestling diva and almost dancing with the stars winner, Stacy Keibler is embarking on an acting career. She has been in a few feature films and I hope we will see more of her in the future.