Waiting for the new old Star Trek movie to premiere? Here’s something to cut off three minutes of that wait:

R.I.P Ricardo Montalban

In celebration of July 3rd, Leon, Veronica, and I headed to Houston’s Angelika Theater post work to enjoy dis ill movie. We knew it would be love, true love, when we discovered the soundtrack was the soundtrack of our youth. Yea, we weren’t Luke Shapiro’s age in ’94 and we definitely weren’t selling mary jane in grade school, but we totally remember Biggie as “the new shit,” which made us laugh a little each time it was referred to as such. And, it was -multiple times.

So, we rollin’ in at eight for an eight-twenty showing when, BAM… I get a craving for a coffee and V-niz, some Milk Duds. We dish out cash money for the shit and take our seats in the eight-seat-plus-middle-aisle wide theater. If you’ve seen the trailer, you know the premise of the movie. I ain’t gonna tell you ’bout it. You should already know Luke exchanges weed for therapy. What the trailer don’t show is that Luke and his family are dangerously close to eviction from their Upper East Side apartment. Yo, it’s his Dad’s fault; he went and f@#$ed up some shit.

What’s a good son like Luke to do? Sell mad weed and make lotsa money because who f@#$ wants to move to New Jersey?!

Speaking of f@#$ed up shit, Mary-Kate Olsen plays one of Shapiro’s regulars –a questionable supporting role. I’m not so sure her character is unique from her actual personality. In fact, she probably wasn’t even acting! The creds should have read “Mary-Kate Olsen stars as Mary-Kate Olsen in The Wackness.” However, she does make out with Ben Kingsley, an act far beyond her common tabloid behaviors. Some people might be into that “creepy old therapist gets with twenty-something hippie” stuff, but me? Nah, man.

Between all of the cash flow madness, philandering, and failing marriages, Luke falls in love with his shrink’s daughter, Stephanie Squires. Like all fly girls in the Summatime, she just wants to play da field. Screw that bitch!

Instead, Luke forms an unexpected friendship with her father, Jeff. While Luke sells his “ices”, Dr. Squires practices his tag, which looks quite similar to the signature on the scripts he writes for patients (and himself). Jeff becomes a bit too cocky while rediscovering his youth with Luke –this being most apparent as he tries to light a blunt in Times Square. In a futile attempt to outrun the cops, Jeff pumps his Reeboks for extra speed, a scene that almost brought me to tears, ‘cept I wasted that shit crying over the four dollaz I blew on coffee. Stupid.

Whateva, brah. If I tell you anything else you ain’t gonna need to see the movie! I’ll leave you with this dope-ass moment; Luke Shapiro sitting on the shores of Fire Island practicing his “I love you, Stephanie’s” to the long-reaching waters of the ocean until settling on the most fitting. “I got mad-love for you, Shorty.” Word, Luke. Word.

During a watering hole raid in Darwin Australia, the Toad Busters picked up this huge cane toad.

“It’s huge, to put it mildly,” he said. “The biggest toads are usually females but this one was a rampant male … I would hate to meet his big sister.”

These toads were introduced into Norther Australia in the 1930s (to control cane beetles, which it turns out they had little interest in doing). Instead they have thrived and become a rather pesky non-native species – especially since they shoot toxic juices out of their pores and have no natural predators.

Read full article on Yahoo.

One of my most favorite movies of all times “Cane Toads: An Unnatural History ” (available on netflix!) details the history of the cane toads and the variety of ways in which the locals have responded. From dressing them up and playing with them in the back yard, to smoking them.

The movie left off in the 80′s where the most anybody was doing to get rid of them was run them over on the road. Turns out the toad buster’s patrol is turning them into liquid fertilizer. I actually sort of feel bad for the toads. Poor, huge, nasty, sweet, darling “dairy queen”….

The Carroll Gardens area is known for many things; for instance, its brownstones, French bulldogs, and lard bread. But one thing this area doesn’t get recognition for is its burgeoning and bustling scene of closed-up video shops as well as video shops who clearly have to do way more than rent videos in order to stay in business.

Let me take you on a tour of the neighborhood so I can show you what I’m talking about.

Pictured above: VHS Tapes available for rent at a store that sells and offers 7,000,000 other goods and services, most of which you’d come to the store for long before you thought about renting a video.

First stop: The Video Corner (Nelson and Court)

Funny, huh? Looks like a bunch of bikes, right? Well that’s because The Video Corner quietly closed a couple months back, and now it’s a bike shop. That’s a shame, really because I thought it was a good little Charlie Brown Christmas tree-type place. It didn’t have much of a selection and I kind of think it stopped getting new releases back in ’95, but it just had that charm to it. Now they sell Huffys.

Second stop: Blockbuster (Degraw and Court)

Just the water stains of the now-removed marquee remain. I know, I know: death to chain stores. Hey, I know what you mean. You think I like having a Starbucks on Court Street? But I will say, they had two floors worth of movies, and they had that whole return-it-as-late-as-you-want policy, which works with my lifestyle.

Third Stop: Pegasus Video (Union and Hicks)

I just hope they keep the tattered awning up there. I’m kind of upset this place closed. They weren’t friendly (like me), but they had a lot of obscure films. I also like winged, mythical creatures.

The good news? A liquor store is opening in its place.

Fourth Stop: Lido Bar (Columbia and Sackett)

Speaking of liquor, it’s time for a bloody mary. (No video rentals here, I was just thirsty.)

All right, now let’s move on to the places that are open and check in with them:

Fifth stop: The Hole In The Wall (1st and Court).

It’s still open. But, I don’t know how. Truthfully, I’ve been thinking this place’s days have been numbered for about 3 years now. Their selection is half-decent, but they miss some of the essentials, if you ask me. There’s rarely anyone in the place, and if you look at the picture below, they’re apparently even less familiar with the Internet than I am:

Notice how they made a giant printout of their homepage. I just feel like that’s defeating the purpose: Like putting a jar of Prego on Caputo’s homemade fettuccine: It just doesn’t feel right.

Sixth Stop: Video Free Brooklyn (Smith and Kane)

I’m sorry, we don’t rent “movies.” We rent films.

Hey, Blockbuster: FUCK YOU, MAN! ATTICA! ATTICA! ATTICA!

Seventh Stop: Cobble Hill Variety Store (Henry and Degraw)

This is it. This is the place of my dreams. You need a shirt? They’ve got it. Need to mail something? They’ll do it. Need an audio adapter that was made sometime in the early 80’s? They’ve got it. A coffee mug? Perfume? Ribbon? Religious figurines? 4th of July decorations? Got it, got it, got it, got it, got it.



That new movie directed by what’s his name? Don’t got it.

And that’s awesome.

He’s done a bunch of other flipbook movies too.

My friend Tom sent this link. This guy can really dance!

Spider-man is supposed to save someone from a window at the far end of the street (Luquer side of Dennet). I was hoping he’d swing on the clotheslines.

I am a bit disappointed that the OrangeYouGlad gates won’t appear in the film – looks like the wardrobe and actor’s trailers are parked around us.

The hot, sweltery sweet summer months are the time for movie studios to descend on our lovely and picturesque neighborhood. This is posted up on Smith street today (from about 9th street to 2nd place). I believe it is more Spiderman but I’ll be sure to nosey my way into some info/pictures.

Really it is just too hot and muggy to hang out all night trying to get a good picture of Topher Grace or some other Spider-Man star/starlet (Topher would be my first choice tho) — but we did swing past the Spider-Man 3 hubbub up on Court to see what was up. The most interesting sight = all of the Carroll Gardens residents out on the town on a Thursday night.

p.s. I’m sure this event will be more than amply covered by our fellow bloggers – so you might want to look around for some good celebrity sightings.

Carroll Gardens residents taking in the sights. Check out the new facade on the theater.

More onlookers.

In this exciting scene, a cab drives by with Mary Jane in it. Peter Parker, standing on the corner, notices her out of the corner of his eye (or perhaps with his spidey sense!) and turns his head in the direction of the cab. They shot this one a few times. I certainly hope this isn’t all they were in the neighborhood for.

It was hot and hot and muggy out tonight – certainly no weather for REAL steam. The ice cream truck in the background proves that this is just hollywood steam.

There was a bunch of fancy equipment too.

Just got back from long walk around the block and found out that Spiderman 3 filming isn’t going to happen until about 6:00pm (and go until about 1-3am) but they are starting to unroll cables and set up cranes and lights and stuff. One fella did tell me that they were going to be filming a fight scene tonight. We’ll see if we can get a few good pictures later this evening.

Both Dave and Mary have sent links out today about outdoor moving schedules. So I figured what better place to repost them than our blog! Here is the beginning of a summer movie list. More to come from Prospect Park, Carroll Park, Rooftop Movies and the Socrates Sculpture Park. (p.s the Sculpture park is having a kite building/flying event this sunday – go check it out!)

8:30 pm Thursdays at Brooklyn Bridge Park- Movies with a View

Thurs Jul 6 The Wizard of Oz
Thurs Jul 13 Easy Rider
Thurs Jul 20 Strangers on a Train
Thurs Jul 27 Pee Wee’s Big Adventure
Thurs Aug 2 The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert
Thurs Aug 10 Bonnie and Clyde
Thurs Aug 17 Raiders of the Lost Ark
Thurs Aug 24 The Warriors

5:00pm Mondays at Bryant Park :

Mon June 19 The Birds
Mon June 26 To Have and Have Not
Mon July 03 M*A*S*H
Mon July 10 Bullitt
Mon July 17 The Band Wagon
Mon July 24 High Noon
Mon July 31 Shot in the Dark
Mon Aug 07 The Manchurian Candidate
Mon Aug 14 Charade
Mon Aug 21 Rocky

Any other movie announcements – send them our way! I’m looking forward to finding out what will be playing in Prospect Park with live musical accompaniment!

Funny videos from folks with too much time on their hands:

Brokeback Mountain parodies

Here is a great little video clip from Futureworld (the sequel to Westworld).

p.s: this movie has the best “worst” dream sequence. (more on that from Andrew in his review…)

In other Westworld news – Rumor has it that a new version of this CLASSIC film will be produced in 2007. Why oh why do they have to go and remake perfectly good movies? Have we not learned anything from Psycho, Planet of the Apes and Charlie & Chocolate Factory (to mention a few)? Where are the new ideas? C’mon people.

It’s been a slow posting week at 423smith – so I’m indulging myself with a post about my favorite movie – Ang Lee’s The Hulk. I thought that perhaps I was alone in my appreciation of the movie and love of Eric Bana’s performance – but it turns out that Stephen Spielberg and I are on the same wave length. And really, who is going to argue with Stephen Spielberg? Spielberg’s selection of Bana for Munich may not be a love letter to The Hulk – but it should be!

Since I can’t write a film review to save my life, I’ll defer to Roger Ebert, to explain how Ang Lee managed to take a seemingly simple comic book movie and turn in into a beautifully filmed drama about two damaged people. (and yes, I would agree with folks who say the effects aren’t the best – but that isn’t really what the film is about.)

Here is a video of Eric Bana talking about the movie and how Spielberg saw him in The Hulk…

And just because this is nutty – I googled “Stephen Spielberg and Eric Bana” and this is what I came up with. I have no idea what compatibility chart means but it seems like a bit of fun.