Interval Error: Integer greater than 30--Whatthefrak?!

Bah, this blog has not been updated in far, far too long. With only one blog update in October and none so far in November, I have well and truly earned a big kick in the Star Wars Essentials. Worse, I totally missed the opportunity to make a timely post for Armistice Day. Thanksgiving, too. And there are at least five or six partially done articles awaiting me in my Blogger queue. Really unacceptable.

Now I could blame the fact that most of the past month and a half has been going through the painful transition of losing one job, searching for another, and getting settled into a new job--as this is my fourth week in a completely new, exciting field. And truly, time flies when you're waiting on a paycheck. Except when it doesn't. Concurrently, I could blame my laxity on my eight-month son--I'm sure he's been draining my batteries. Nerd dads can always blame their kids, right? Audumla and I are beginning to look for a house, too, and are getting into property-hunting frenzy over one piece of real estate we'd like to make our own Jotunheim in particular. It's not easy, let me tell you. Plus, I've been feeling ill, and I haven't had much time at home.

Also...also...also...

Eh, I'm a nerd. You know the truth. I've been playing around:

GMing my GURPS campaign with my game-serfs players. I've recently added a friend to our group, and the next session should see a sixth player joining our clutch of nerds. The game itself is on the edge of the slippery slope towards epic conflict, and as such I might start putting summaries of our sessions on the blog here in the future. I'd say the near future, but who the heck knows? Not you guys reading at home, that's for sure. In the meantime, I'll give you a snippet of where each of the player characters is in their personal development. Ten Green Gem Vine, warrior-monk of the emperor's guard, is moving towards becoming a bit more of a diplomatic sage and less of a combat troll--not necessarily because we've had like 3 session dry-spells without any combat. He's also investing in his teenage acolyte's sword-fighting skills. Vera Wealwa, the falconer huntress, has had to all but give up on her primary livelihood whilst in the capital city and is instead living on housekeeping skills--ignominy most foul! Keagan Na Anyon, the blowhard blacksmith, has recently had his foot shot off by a dwarven hand gonne--thankfully, the Heron Guard should be able to mend the wound and reattach the foot. Should. The beggar known only as Crow continues to operate on his own terms, and spent most of First Day celebration sparring with other Provincial ex-pats. The mysterious temptress Danlyra has revealed her last name is Filorin--a noble house from the eastern kingdom of Gower--and is metaphorically showing some ankle of her secretive past.

Playing the long-neglected Fallout: New Vegas. After trying--and failing, FAILING*--to get all of Deus Ex: Human Revolution's achievements in 2.6 playthroughs, I decided to move onto an older game that had been sitting unfinished on my game shelf for far too long. That's the newest Fallout game, Fallout: New Vegas. It's a fun improvement on Fallout 3's awesome system, and there's no inferior point of comparison in graphics, scale of sandbox, depth of story, or richness of challenges between the two games. It was especially fun to be playing a game with a proper economy and a huge list of purchasable equipment after Deus Ex's lackluster inventory system and paltry gear selection. Also, there's no being forced to shoot tied-down women in the face, so that's another way that Fallout was a refreshing change of pace from Deus Ex. Powering through about 100 hours of gameplay, I was able to beat one of the DLC (downloadable content for you old folks and jocks) quests and get about halfway through the game's main plot. It's expansive, fun, and engrossing. I can't wait to go back to New Vegas, but for now I've been waylaid by the newest pretty thing...

Since Armistice Day, playing Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. This one I've been waiting on for a while now, and the wife and I even schlepped out to the nearest GameStop for a midnight release of the game. And we bought the huge special edition game guide, which clocks in at about 700 pages--with two bookmark ribbons. Two! It's made by Bethesda, the same geniuses who made Fallout 3, Fallout: New Vegas, and Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. Unlike those previous three games--all of which were based on the same utilitarian game engine--Skyrim is based on a new game engine that makes everything prettier, more crisp, and a lot more dynamic. The Scandinavian-themed setting is full of cloud-choked, snow-capped mountains that you can freely explore, and the characters are detailed to a new, fabulous degree that helps to make everyone appear distinct even amongst members of their own race. There's a huge bevy of quests that is almost overwhelming for completionists like myself. It's been a fun, engaging little not-so-little derailment in my personal life.

Reviving my wargame juices. I played role-playing games at a young age, but it was the wargame Warhammer 40,000 that first really got me into a lot of the games and hobbies I play today. After many years of being a willing pawn in Games Workshop's soulless nerd farm, I'm no longer a true fan of their products. I've even divested myself of my first army (space marines, go figure) via eBay over the silent interim. But I still have hundreds of minis and find the occasional need to purchase other companies' minis to represent RPG characters or to flesh out some other wargame system. One such system that I'm finally starting to get around to playing after owning for over a year is Two Hour Wargames' All Things Zombie. Now, Two Hour Wargames is a small game company that makes rules sets but not miniatures. I like companies like this, because if they don't make rules tailored to their own miniatures it means I can use my own vast stable of models, and these sorts of rules sets tend to be more inclusive because of their generic nature. The Two Hour Wargames rules sets also have the unique advantage of being playable competitively, cooperatively, or even solo. That's a huge bonus for me, and I've gotten to play a more involved cooperative game in the past couple of weeks that has helped to cement my enthusiasm for this system. Expect to read more about it in the future. I've also fallen in love with a generic space battles game that does a great job of simulating Battlestar Galactica fleet action. Expect to hear more about it--Colonial Fleet Battles--in the coming weeks as well.

Netflix. Darn you, Netflix. What days I have had at home when one of the above distractions haven't grabbed my free time by the ruge have inevitably been lost to the lure of the Netflix Instant Watch. At the click of a few buttons, I can spam a day watching Frasier or Malcolm in the Middle episodes back-to-back-to-back, watching a half season or more in one sitting. Its insidious convenience means that I'll watch crap movies not worth a complete viewing (Season of the Witch, why would you do that to Ron Perlman?!) in the hopes of finding that unknown gem you didn't know you were missing out on (Ironclad, you scratch my siege-warfare itch). On the bright side, there's a lot of fodder for future blog posts, but it's certainly no help in meeting a personal deadline.



In conclusion: I'm still here. The blog will still be getting updated--more regularly, I assure you. A perfect storm of life hiccups and nerd traps have momentarily pulled me away from the keyboard, but I will keep updating, and I will expand the breadth and scope of the Nerdery.

Filmateleven.

*Insert angry, impotent fist-shaking here. Shake harder, boy!

Movie Web Monday: Rachel Weisz

Movie Web Monday: Each week, I'll look at a specific actor's roles across three good movies. The third movie will in turn tie into the first movie of the next week's actor, whose third movie will continue the pattern. I will go through actors and movies at this rate, with the following limitations in mind: every movie(or television show) invoked will be one I either own, or wish to own; no movie or actor will be invoked twice. So sit back and enjoy as you fall into the nerdery's movie web. (Oh, and I'll try to keep spoilers to a minimum, telling you just enough to know if you'll enjoy the movie)

Rachel Weisz: Nerd-bait, over-bite and all.

This week the movie web features a woman, for the first time since Sigourney Weaver. And while Rachel Weisz doesn't have the same immeasurable nerd-cred Weaver does, the Brit can claim one status that the older New Yorker can't: Weisz is all kinds of nerd-bait in a lot of her roles. Being nerd-bait often involves several things: usually it involves exaggerating the flaws associated with nerds; having a penchant for pairing up with dorky nerd-types for no apparent reason; wearing zero-prescription glasses, usually perched at the tip of the nose in an imperious librarian's fashion. As for the first qualifier, see below for a nice cross-section of timid, passive, bookish character-types. On the second count, Weisz has played love interest to Ben Stiller, Keanu Reeves (twice), and Vince Vaughn. Gugh. With standards like that, I'd say that if you are reading this blog, you could probably play Weisz's romantic counterpart on-screen. And see The Mummy for the third qualifier in spades.

Movie: Envy (Own it) Light Spoilers

In a film with a number of implausible elements thrown in your face, the first, most subtle gag comes in the first shot of the film. Rachel Weisz plays Debbie Dingman, wife of Ben Stiller's character Tim.

Ba-doop-doop-chik!

Really? I mean, it's one of the most twitchy, spastic, freak-out self-destructive character actors of modern comedy paired up with the put-together and classy Weisz? It's dropped in the first scene and never comes up in the plot itself--in fact, at points they feel like a very natural couple, despite the factors conspiring against them. They could have easily played it up like the marriage between Will Ferrell and Eva Mendes in The Other Guys, but instead Envy makes the urbane decision of leaving their casting humor in the casting process and out of the script.

It's also worth noting, that while Weisz is the only principal in Envy who isn't considered a comedy actor, she stands toe-to-toe with the rest of the kinetic bunch and makes for some of the funniest moments. The funniest moments, of course, always go to the disturbingly quirky Christopher Walken, who will ever haunt my dreams as The Continental, but that's a whole other story. Debbie is the put-upon wife, who has to endure not only being married to dedicated white collar bum Tim, but also being caught between their friends and her husband's jealous dementia. The dramatic caliber of Weisz's acting chops adds a crucial bit of wry humor to a movie that often rests on wacky twists and people snapping out fecal expletives. For instance, at one point when Tim is coming particularly unglued and insists she see the bum he just shot, a sauced Debbie blearily follows only to find...nothing. Weisz dryly comments, "You know, sometimes I don't get your jokes. And you know something? I don't think it's just me." Perfectly embodying the funny side of their peculiarly strained marriage, it's one of those lines that makes you giggle in anticipation of hearing it upon subsequent viewings. Another one comes when Tim confides the truth about his accidental equine-slaughter, and asks Debbie if he should ask their gobs-rich friend for  forgiveness:

Rachel Weisz looking a little cartoony--and toothless--in this screen cap.

It's one of those goofy lines in the movie that makes it feel almost inaccessibly cartoony, but Weisz reels you in with a terrified delivery throughout the scene as she panics at the thought of losing the sweet life. So, while Rachel Weisz isn't a huge part of the plot or humor of Envy, she adds an indispensable maturity to a film revolving around a fortune based on doody. Also, at a few points, her airy American bimbo-wife voice vaguely reminds me of Jennifer Tilly--not sure if that's a good thing or bad thing--but it was there the last three times I watched this flick.

Movie: The Mummy (Rent it)

The movie in which one cannot deny Rachel her nerd-bait status*. Similar to her contribution to Envy, Rachel Weisz brings a completely unique acting palette to the cast of The Mummy. Playing Evelyn, a character so strait-laced that she also constitutes a lot of the humor in the first act of the movie, Weisz feels a little less natural in that function. However, she does excel at being the adorably soft-handed librarian-type who both saves the day in a breezy gown and serves as the climax's old-school damsel in distress. And the romantic chemistry between Evelyn and the leading man Rick O'Connell (played by Brendan Fraser) is definitely Indiana Jones fare without developing into slap-slap-kiss territory, as depicted in the first act with the following:

Nerd-bait!

Actually, both of the principal actors stepped into more uncommon roles in The Mummy. Weisz added another actioner to her credentials, and Fraser flirted with being a powerful leading man for a bit. But what Weisz really adds to The Mummy, which even sets it apart from the Nazi-stomping glory of Indiana Jones or the older, classic Egypt cult classics, is the sage intelligence she portrays so well. And when the movie is presenting such an unrealistic view of archaeology and ancient Egypt, coming off as adroit and sage is quite a feat.

*This might be colored by my first viewing of The Mummy. As a very young teen, I first watched it with a handful of nerd compatriots at a friend's house. As we often did, we simulated the theater experience by dimming the lights, turning the volume two notches too high, and spilling Mountain Dew and Slim Jims on the floor. Every scene in which Rachel Weisz graced that buzzing analog screen generated more comments from the bunch of us than the virtually naked gold girl in the film's prologue. That is the power of nerd-bait.

Movie: Enemy at the Gates (Own it)

Enemy at the Gates is one of those movies that is so awesome it's hard to acknowledge its rough historicity. I mean, it's about a sniper duel that ostensibly affects the entire outcome of one of the more critical battles of World War Two. The first scene involves a ridiculous chain of kills that make the phrase "one shot, one kill" seem inadequate. And the Soviet Union is populated with Brits speaking the Queen's English. Alright, so that last part is just stylization license, but the fact is that, for such a sensational movie, Enemy at the Gates is surprisingly close to the source material. Rachel Weisz, playing Russian rifleman-turned-operator-secretary (nerd-bait ahoy!) Tania Chernova is one of the added sensational elements. And I mean that in the sense that she plays a over-dramatized part and in the sense that she does a great job with it. As the sweet, smart girl that both of the main characters dote upon, Tania has to be completely oblivious to the conflict to not qualify as a selfish harpy and still be likably capable enough to be tolerated in a movie populated with at least twenty heads exploding from sniper rounds. And Weisz succeeds in that portrayal. As an added bonus, her scenes of romantic chemistry with Jude Law (playing the main character, Vassili Zaitsev), the self-deprecating and affected sniper, feature some of the most sweetly eccentric lines of flirting and pillow talk I've ever seen. For instance, when Vassili tells Tania that he doesn't need to survive the war because he's not that useful to the Soviet Union as a civilian--which he relates to being a wolf as compared to a useful donkey--she replies in a softly conspiratorial voice:

That and the cuddly day-after talk of snoring is absolutely realistic and endearingly portrayed. It's just the sort of idiotic stuff that you say to someone you love that really falls flat without the proper emotion behind it. Weisz and Law supply that emotion, having a great chemistry that doesn't compromise either character's independence. Tania in particular feels like a dynamic character throughout the movie. While it seems that Vassili does very little between scenes (other than pot-shotting Nazis by the score), Weisz's portrayal of Tania grows and changes throughout the film in such a way that helps to convey the passage of time throughout the siege of Stalingrad.

Movie Web Monday will continue next week with a new actor, picking up with some other prolific player from the last movie listed above.

Movie Web Monday: Jack Black

Movie Web Monday: Each week, I'll look at a specific actor's roles across three good movies. The third movie will in turn tie into the first movie of the next week's actor, whose third movie will continue the pattern. I will go through actors and movies at this rate, with the following limitations in mind: every movie(or television show) invoked will be one I either own, or wish to own; no movie or actor will be invoked twice. So sit back and enjoy as you fall into the nerdery's movie web. (Oh, and I'll try to keep spoilers to a minimum, telling you just enough to know if you'll enjoy the movie)

Jack Black: Chris Farley for the Twenty-First Century

It's not exactly sage to compare Jack Black and Chris Farley, two overweight actors who have distinctive physical comedy styles and generally play the same or similar role in all their movies. But where Chris really dialed in the physicality of his work, Jack Black has done a good job of throwing in subtlety into his roles as well. And, while he hasn't really dived into the dramatic pool yet, it's fun to see him dip his toes in with some movies that feel much more diverse than Chris Farley's.

Movie: Nacho Libre (Own it)

Last week I explained that Nacho Libre isn't for everyone. Part of that verdict is the cultural nesting--being a movie about Mexican wrestling culture, there's certainly a broad demographic that won't get it. Jack Black gives one of his more goofy performances in the film, but the childishly lovable quality that he imbues Ignacio with helps to sell the silliness. And the genuine, if farcically simplistic, nature of his faith makes for a lot of surprising charm. For me, one of the biggest laughs comes when Ignacio (or Nacho, as he is more frequently invoked) explains to his self-proclaimed atheist partner that he's a liability for their match with the "Devil's Cavemen":

The lame, uncultured delivery sets a wry tone as the man of the cloth sneaks up on his gaunt teammate and ninja-baptizes him in a basin of water. Throughout the film, his childish spirituality comes out in silly little quips--especially regarding his crush on a cute nun, whom he flirts with using second-grade overtures. In a movie with fart jokes, stylized wrestling matches, and weaponized corn-on-the-cob, it's nice to have contrastingly subtle humor stemming from internal conflict and character definition.

Movie: School of Rock (Own it)

While Nacho Libre is a movie of particular tastes, School of Rock has much more mass appeal--and much of that can be fairly attributed to Jack Black's perfectly synched charisma, which plays off the rock-centric plot and interacts with the great kid actors well. Jack Black plays Dewey Finn, a perpetual slacker coping with getting kicked out of his band by posing as his substitute teacher roommate to earn money. In the process, he enlists a classroom of private school kids to form a rock band fit for his modest ambitions. Black hits all his usual notes here, ad libbing musical numbers throughout and looking dreadfully intense while cracking one-liners, but in School of Rock it works better than anywhere else. Part of the mass appeal of this film is how mild it is--Dewey eventually teaches his class about the 'values' of Rock* as he identifies them, and they come down to sterilized anti-party messages about standing up for yourself and being a care-free person. This candy-coated heart is adorably clear in the middle of the movie when Dewey tries to teach the class a lesson about Rock that is really geared towards one child he'd seen being dressed down by his father. Asserting that Rock is about "sticking it to the man," he polls the kids on what problems they have and how they feel about it, which composes a quick little song:

While Dewey is teaching the kids an ostensibly deviant lesson, the irony is that he's imbuing the private school shut-ins with the real keys to success. The scrubbed clean Rock is really a coping tool for dealing with failure, hostility, and goal-setting in Dewey's life, and as the film progresses, it becomes the same for the kids, too. Effort and action become more important than success to the pressured youths. They embrace the emotional frustrations they have with their parents, defusing the hostility through healthy confrontation. And the exhilaration of the concert gives the kids an outlet where they become responsible for the fulfillment of their own projects. It's got PSA class with a great Rock soundtrack and a toothlessly counter-cultural vibe, so you can appreciate the film without comprehending any of Jack Black's copious music references. And the cast of kids, with Jack Black as the kinetic shepherd, is well-rounded throughout.

Note to casting directors: James Hosey is a perfect young Tony Curran.

*Rock here is capitalized as it is Dewey Finn's own personal deity of wholesome youth culture.

Movie: Envy (Own it)

Jack Black may be the co-star of Envy, but his presence in the film is a distant second to Ben Stiller's typical twitchy, stuttering comedy. With Black playing a dreamer named Nick Vanderpark, Envy depicts two best friends and family men who have to cope with greed and jealousy when Vanderpark markets a doodoo-disintegrator called Vapoorize and gets absurdly rich in the process. Vanderpark's wealth and eccentricity is the driving force of the film, but he's surprisingly played mildly on screen. Instead, he plays a fairly normal, if attention-challenged, husband and father who goes on a garish spree when he turns out to be filthy rich. Jack Black gets no outlet for his usual hyperactive physicality, and he makes do with only one underplayed musical scene.

Of course, the whole premise of the magical macguffin is a cornerstone of the humor, and Vapoorize is invoked in various ways works really well, as you can tell from the first time Nick spins the idea to his best friend:

Jack Black's wild-eyed, nasal delivery of this and many other lines helps to make this farce feel like one of those classic comedies governed by cartoon physics. It could be any number of Chevy Chase's comedies from the last quarter of the twentieth century, complete with over-wrought plots, wild developments, and episodic plot structure. And Jack Black is perfect, if a little unusual, in the role of the entrepreneur-turned-walking-eyesore--outlining it with a spacey detachment that prevents you from looking too hard at the outlandish and horrible plot developments of this wacky film.

Movie Web Monday will continue next week with a new actor, picking up with some other prolific player from the last movie listed above.

Movie Web Monday: Peter Stormare

Movie Web Monday: Each week, I'll look at a specific actor's roles across three good movies. The third movie will in turn tie into the first movie of the next week's actor, whose third movie will continue the pattern. I will go through actors and movies at this rate, with the following limitations in mind: every movie(or television show) invoked will be one I either own, or wish to own; no movie or actor will be invoked twice. So sit back and enjoy as you fall into the nerdery's movie web. (Oh, and I'll try to keep spoilers to a minimum, telling you just enough to know if you'll enjoy the movie)

Peter Stormare: That Not-Russian Guy

Peter Stormare is one of the more recognizable character actors out of Europe. A Swede by birth, Stormare is known for playing different ethnicities other than his own Scandinavian heritage. He's got a long list of films, including some big blockbusters by Michael Bay and Steven Spielberg--see below. And, thanks to an accounting error in your favor, this week's Movie Web installment will have four entries. Enjoy.

Movie: Jurassic Park: The Lost World (Own it) Light Spoilers

Last week I used Peter Postlethwaite as an atypical antagonist for a Michael Crichton story. This week, Peter Stormare features as a completely typical Crichton antagonist--he bites it hard in a stupid, cruel, and senseless way. This time playing the incredibly German-named Dieter Stark, Stormare is mostly a background fixture in this movie, even more so than the others in today's list. This dino-poacher gets a memorable introduction scene, in which he examines a chicken-sized thunder lizard. The hunters' zoologist explains that the little scavenger hasn't had enough contact with humans to be scared, to which Dieter produces a small cattle prod and tazes the upstart dinosaur, remarking:

It's a goofy little scene that is just plain wrong, and since Crichton's books tend to be anal about the details, I'll blame this on the movie makers: for the most part, animals don't learn to fear man; they learn not to fear man. For instance, coyote attacks are much more worrisome in suburban areas, where the animals become inured to man's presence enough that they learn to attack us large mammals rather than flee in ignorant fear. Rural coyotes, on the other hand, are known to give people a wide berth as they uncertainly probe the larger predator's behavior. Country rats compared to city rats are another good example, as the boldness of the latter is well-known. This makes the whole shtick of Dieter's introduction and his wretched demise sort of a poorly thought-out, zoologically atypical excuse to inflict a painfully drawn-out potty-break-cum-death that doesn't work on a rational level. Stormare, however, sells the agony and the panic of the character's final moments quite well.

And this, by the way, echoes the death of the lawyer in the first Jurassic Park movie. You have a guy off-handedly apathetic towards a small animal's place in the food chain who then dies in the middle of a bathroom break. Gorram lizards, they don't give you a moment's peace.

Movie: Armageddon (Own it)

Armageddon was such a popular film in its time, I doubt Peter Stormare role in this film needs to be introduced. He's Lev Andropov, eccentric cosmonaut and Wookie stand-in for the asteroid teams. As Lev, he gets a couple of the best lines in the rock-beats-planet-but-roughnecks-beat-rock film, and Stormare knows how to deliver the saltily stereotypical Russian lines with just enough cheese to make them work. And it usually serves as a perfect highlight for some of the absurd action set-pieces. For instance, just after the Russian orbital Citgo blows up and the rock-nukers escape, Lev give his ace commentary:

Bunch of cowboys, indeed. Stormare is able to take this funny, one-dimensional character and make him a consistent but reflective element throughout the film. Lev joins in the protagonists' heroics, and as he does so he adopts their level of dramatic gravity while still getting to make a few wry "mother Russia" type jokes. This film probably cemented Stormare's status as funny Eastern European guy, which says a lot about the confident handling he gave this dauntingly shallow role.

Movie: Minority Report (Own it) Light Spoilers

So I shouldn't have done Minority Report this week. I'd planned the movie progression out a long time ago, and it was supposed to be Nacho Libre next (see below), but for whatever reason I thought Minority Report fell into this slot. This was doubly painful for me, as I was reacquainted that Stormare--playing chop-shop surgeon Solomon Eddie--dominates a brief section of the film that is so unwatchably gross that it constantly makes me remember cringing through my first and only viewing of Osmosis Jones. Eddie's impromptu surgery setup is gross, and the profusion of snot in this scene probably exceeds the cumulative total of Spielberg's other works. They lampshade this factor, of course, but it feels forced into the film, with little in the way of transition from the shiny skyscrapers to the slum of this moment. To add to the scene's confusion, the imminent eye-swap is drawn into strict tension that evokes a few Marathon Man notes as Eddie reveals that he's met Tom Cruise's John Anderton before:

Stormare plays up the sadistic pleasure of the scene well, and it's clear that Eddie is really getting off on this moment of power over the cop that put him into prison. Tom Cruise also does a good job playing the doped-up fear of realizing that he might get mutilated as the anesthesia kicks in. But the tension boils away to nothing, as Eddie doesn't do anything too bad to Anderton, and leads me to wonder why the scene wasn't edited down to the bare bones rather than fixating on gross, pointless tension that feels cheap after the payoff is abruptly abandoned. The only explanation I can give is that Stormare's portrayal of Eddie is too good, too condensed and rich already to further edit.

Darn you, Peter. Your quality acting means that this slick sci-fi chase film must always be punctuated by snot dripping out of a grown man's nose and Tom Cruise chugging rancid milk.

Movie: Nacho Libre (Own it)

Most of the movies featured in the Movie Web are ones which I whole-heartedly endorse. One of my favorite past-times is evangelizing unknown or under-appreciated nerd gems, and that forms much of the impetus for the series. That said, Nacho Libre is probably one of the more specialized films on the Movie Web. It's a weird Jack Black film that both homages and parodies certain bizarre elements of Mexican culture in a third grade sort of way that is difficult for some to accept. I love it, but it's not the sort of film I would blanket promote, either. It's easier to appreciate if you enjoy Jack Black's comedy, or if you miss Chris Farley's humor. Indeed, certain strains throughout Nacho Libre are very similar to that of Almost Heroes, as it's a culturally distinct story about a couple of losers banging their heads against a solid object in an effort to feel special...and get rich, too. It also helps if you know a thing or two about luchador culture (a stylized form of Mexican wrestling which makes the WWF* look restrained) or don't mind light ribbing of Latin Catholicism (as opposed to, say, Irish Catholicism).

In this quirky, funny, live-action cartoon of a film, Peter Stormare is just a random piece of crazy potpourri that marks the mid-point of the movie. A "water gypsy"--whatever that is--named Emperor, Stormare gets two lines in the film, but he delivers them with such a drunken, unstable panache that he makes a much larger impression than several other supporting characters in the flick. It boils down to Emperor giving Nacho the most bizarre recipe for wrestling success you'd see outside of an anime:

Like so many of Nacho Libre's moments, much of the humor is enhanced by the pervasively outrageous characters filling this real-ish world. They act serious in the moment, not really giving any big laugh lines at this juncture, but yet this is a strange hobo in a rowboat telling a guy in a home-made wrestling outfit that horking an eagle egg's yolk will make him a magically empowered fighter. The seriousness is what makes it funny, if you enjoy it at all, and Stormare's throaty, bleary delivery of his advice really helps to nail down these elements for me.

*Yes, WWF is the old wrestling organization, from Hulk Hogan's original era. I stick by my archaic identification, as I have no clue what the modern American wrestling abbreviation is.

Movie Web Monday will continue next week with a new actor, picking up with some other prolific player from the last movie listed above.