Sharks in Venice

So here's whatsup: The baby is asleep and the wife is off spending money. I am in a good mood after our work holiday dealie, which including lunch at Fogo de Chao (fantastic) and some gaming at Brunswick Zone, where I found out I am bad at Laser Tag (12th out of 14 players), mediocre at bowling (129 and 144), rock at the basketball pop-a-shot (36 and 44, two best scores there), and thoroughly dominating at air hockey (smoked some fool 7-0 and another one 7-1). I also learned Brazilians can't bowl for shit. What was my point? Oh yeah, I'm gonna drink beer and watch "Sharks in Venice." Sounds like heaven.

- Summary: A man (Stephen Baldwin) must brave shark-infested Venetian waters to find treasure and rescue his girlfriend. A little bit of everything.

- Will they go with the time honored shark movie tradition of have someone get killed in the first three minutes? I'm going to guess not, because they are going to have to come up with a reason why there are so many damn sharks in Venetian waters - traditionally sharkless. I will, however, guess that they will continue the tradition of most shark movies and use footage of the wrong species of shark at some point. Which would have been like tossing in a shot of Samuel Jackson into an Indiana Jones movie and saying it was Indy, except worse because Sam Jackson and Harrison Ford are at least the same species. Can you tell this gets me all riled up?

- Oops, two minutes in and we have faceless, treasure hunting divers - you know what that means.

- This was given a 2.9 out of 10 on IMDB. That can't be good. But Scarlet Johannson's sister is in this. If nothing else, it gives me a reason to post a picture of Scarlet if I get bored.

- Shark attack. Killed the divers, right as they found the treasure, too. Along with a plaque that "dated from the correct time period" which really means they didn't want to look anything up. And guess what? The god damned shark roared when it attacked. Again. I don't understand why movies keep doing this to me.

- Holy god is Stephen Baldwin awful. I have no idea how he ended up in the brilliance that was "The Usual Suspects." Here he's giving a lecture on the Andrea Doria (oh, yeah, he's a professor - good Seinfeld reference though) while channeling a poor Alec Baldwin impersonator caught between his poor Alec Baldwin impression and a bad Dirty Harry one. But yeah, one of those divers from before was his father, so he's off to Venice - HOORAY!

- Well, in a complete ripoff from Jaws, the Venetian authorities are trying to claim it was a boat propeller accident that killed the divers, not a shark. But Billy Baldwin knows the truth! He will not be denied! Vengeance!!!!!!!!!1

- Have you ever been to Fogo? Ohmigod. They give you these little coasters with a green side and a red side. Red means don't serve me, green means bring me food. And boy do they ever. They walk around with skewers of fifteen different kind of meat preparations, from worthless chicken and pork to lamb and about 10 kinds of beef. They're like, "would you like this kind of steak" and then "would you like this kind of slightly different steak prepared with slightly different seasoning" and then like "here is some prime rib" and what not. My god. I don't think I'll ever have to eat again. I'm not even close to hungry and I last ate over 8 hours ago. Although I could really go for some steak right now.

- Ooh, Baldwin just found his father's diary hidden away (his house was ransacked, naturally) and it refers to the crusades and the templar knights. This is like DaVinci Code and Jaws all wrapped into one juicy candy shell, much better than his last big hit, Bio-Dome.

- Wife's home. Constantly talking and talking and talking and showing me what she bought that we don't need. What she's really doing is causing me to miss key plot points and steve baldwin facial expressions. She just doesn't get it.

- Ok, so I did some research and the Venetian canals water comes from the Adriatic Sea. Minimal google searching reveals that both a Great White and a Tiger Shark have been found there at a minimum in the past ten years. Since they haven't bothered to explain it, I basically just did it for them - although they haven't said what kind of shark it is yet. Probably a super shark like the ones from Deep Blue Sea or something faggy like that.

- You know what else borders on the Adriatic? Albania. Their chief export is chrome (I had to look that up, I always thought it was coal.)

- First shark footage. Great White. Let's see how consistent that is. Also Danny Baldwin is in the water right now. With our roaring shark. Searching a location that was marked on the diary they found in his father's ransacked apartment, looking for treasure. This movie is a mess, and we're only a quarter way through it. Venice was done much better in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.

- So the new thing in this movie is everytime they show the shark they show it in fast motion and then use a sound effect that sounds very much like when the Millennium Falcon went into Hyperspace. Odd. And it roared again.

- Is anybody else really not getting the offers for Texeira? 8 years, $20 million per year? That's insane. Sometimes I'm glad the Twins not only don't have the resources, but also don't have the balls to get involved in anything like this. Although, I'm not going to lie to you, it would be nice to see them do something this off-season. Signing Nick Punto doesn't count. And way to make him your starting shortstop. Giving up already? The guy is an excellent, excellent utility player and backup. I love him in that role, because he's a great fielder at several positions and no longer completely worthless with the bat, but he's not a starting caliber player. Never has been, never will be. And they just eliminated themselves from signing any free agents or making any kind of move for a shortstop.

- If I'm following this correctly, Barty Baldwin just got chomped by Mr. Shark, who then inexplicably let go and now he's running around some hidden cave looking for treasure with no ill effects from said Shark Attack. From the same shark that completely destroyed all four previous victims, one so thoroughly that it decapitated him and his water-logged head went floating by (another Jaws ripoff). I don't know, but I'm starting think this movie might have been written by monkeys. Not smart ones either, but the Mr. Burns ones, "It was the best of times, it was teh BLURST of times!!!!"

- He found the treasure, but then he fell in the water and got chomped again, and his leg just got ripped off and DAMMIT it was just a dream. DAMN stupid movie with all it's false awesome death of Baldwin.

- Now he's meeting with a mob boss who looks like one of those stupid Geico cavemen from those retarded commercials who wants him to go back and find the treasure again. The boss's name: Vito Clemenza. So this movie is now Indiana Jones mixed with Jaws mixed with The Godfather. It's like somebody took pizza, tacos, and steak and mixed them up in a blender and expected to not get baby crap. Also Scarlet's sister is a horrible overactor who belongs on a day-time soap, and kind of a buzzill as she tells Bucky if he dives for the treasure again she's leaving him. But here's a picture of Scarlet to make me feel better:


- Worst piece of CGI ever, featuring a shark flying through the air to grab an attempted date rapist. Thing of reverse beauty.

- Jesus Christ, now the shark is rampaging and attacking the gondoloas, including eathing three people at once. This movie is worse than Jumper.

- Now there's some kind of shoot-out between police and what appear to be ninjas trying to inject Baldwin with something in a syringe. There are like, five hundred plot elements to this movie, and none of them connect to each other in any way that makes sense. It's kind of like a baseball team without good chemistry; unlike the Twins who always have incredible chemistry and invite each other over for a cook out all the time and thus always win the championships always and then have slumber parties.

- Early line on UL/Gophers is UL -9. If I had to pick, I'd take the Cards.

- So the caveman mafia godfather guy finally admits to putting the sharks in the canals. So now it all ties together. Great movie.

- Worst fight scenes ever. I can't go on.