Queue Tips: It's not anything.

I recommended "Black Swan" yesterday.  It's not out on DVD yet, so you can't have it on your Netflix queue apart from the Saved section.  But you can stand in an actual theatre queue and get your tickets to it.  Interestingly, it looks like Darren Aronofsky's next movie will be about Wolverine the superhero, starring Hugh Jackman.

I've never been a die-hard X-Men fan or anything, but I've always found them interesting.  I have noticed though that everytime I've read a comic or watched a cartoon, there always seems to be a different storyline.  So I don't really know what the original plot should be.  I know many of my friends were complaining about that with "X-Men Origins: Wolverine".  As for me, I had no expectations or predispositions, and I was able to just sit back and go along with the ride.

I actually found the story interesting.  I've enjoyed the other X-Men movies as well, and of course, I recommend this one.  Hugh Jackman as the title character didn't disappoint.

He was also in "Australia" with Nicole Kidman.  That was disappointing.  First of all, the title is too bold and broad for what turned out to be a simple action movie, especially if you can tweak a few elements and set it anywhere else.  There were scenes involving half-caste kids which seemed like cheap imitations of "Rabbit-Proof Fence", but maybe that's just me.  They tried to incorporate World War II in the story, and it was about as historical as "Pearl Harbor" was.

Speaking of history, WTF happened to The History Channel?  Where's all the education stuff that you would normally expect?  History, as I understand it, is a written record of the past.  "How The Earth was Made" is actually a great show, I think, but it's not strictly history, is it?  It's a bit of a stretch that I can sort of accept, but when they show stuff like dinosaurs walking around eating, hunting, fighting, that's a bit too much for me.  That's considered prehistory, I believe, before written records existed.

And now they have "Pawn Stars", "Ice Road Truckers" and many other reality-type shows.  According to their slogan, they produce these shows on their channel because history is made everyday.  Wow!  By that standard, so much history is made everyday that they are being made on every other channel as well.

It's a free country, I suppose.  But what really irritates me about this, is that this channel probably survived through the years because there were many history buffs out there who supported it.  This is no way to thank them, I think.  At the end of the day, it's all about the bottom line.

While I'm at it, I'd also like to mention MTV, formerly known as Music Television.  This channel who became so popular because of the music videos they showed, no longer shows music videos.  But now you can check out MTV2, MTVU, and other offshoot channels if you want music videos.  That is, if they show them there anymore or at all.  Likewise, The History Channel has many other permutations out there.

As for The Animal Planet, they used to have all these nature shows like "Wild Kingdom" and "Meerkat Manor".  Now it's just full of reality shows about people and their pets.  Who wants to see that?  I can see cats messing up our trash cans or dogs pooping on the sidewalk when I step outside.

One other channel I'd like to mention is TruTV.  Their tagline: It's not reality, it's actuality.  What's the difference?  I don't know.  I do know their shows aren't actually real.  A while ago, they had a marathon of this show about a tow truck company, and my wife and I actually found it interesting.  After a handful of episodes, we started to notice a pattern that everybody was always irrational and for people who had been in the business for a long time, they certainly didn't seem like they knew how to handle irate customers.  Once they had a man pretending to be handicapped, and they find out that he wasn't when he decides to stand up and fight them.  Once they were towing a very expensive sports car and of all the things that could happen, they get into an accident and total it.

I got Fios not too long ago.  I like it.  It's already cheaper than what I was getting with cable, and I'm already getting so many more channels.  But it's really frustrating because I still can't find anything to watch.