Matt Lauer can suck it

I was off work yesterday (vacation day) so I didn't do much of anything except catch a few movies on the free HBO weekend DishNetwork was having.

Aliens in the Attic -- Watched this one because I knew my son would like it, and he did. Not much of a movie but okay for kids. Also that chick from that Disney TV show is all grown up now. The scenes with Doris Roberts doing Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon-style karate were pretty cool.

The Imposter -- Sigh. Let me make it clear in case I haven't already that Philip K. Dick is one of my favorite authors (often referring to him as The Other Master). But a great many of his stories have the same basic theme, and it seems that all the stories Hollywood picks to make movies from are the stories that use that theme*. So I watched it, but I knew how it was going to end pretty much from the minute it started. For some reason I've always like Gary Sinise though. First thing I ever saw him in was a stage version of The Grapes of Wrath that was shown on PBS many years ago--an odd version which didn't use any props whatsoever. He played Tom Joad, of course. I was so impressed with his performance in that play that I've always kind of kept an eye out for him. Also Rose of Sharon's expression as the play ended was indefatigably haunting.

Land of the Lost -- If you're a purist for the original show, don't watch it. If you have no time for extremely low-brow "comedy," don't watch it. But as a farce, I enjoyed it and it had its moments, especially with Will Ferrell playing his totally clueless genius dimwit character. The "it's a walnut" scene had me cracking up and the ending was great. Also Will's reaction to Marshall riding the T-Rex was hilarious. I've added the DVDs of the original series to my Netflix queue and am looking forward to seeing those again (also my son is REALLY looking forward to it). I was unaware that the series had been rebooted in the early 90s until just recently when I was reading about it at Wikipedia, but it appears that DVDs of the reboot aren't available.

*If you've seen Total Recall you know what theme I'm talking about.