New feature here at Friend Mouse Speaks

Perhaps you have noticed the new Amazon.com search box over there to your right. This is part of my little blog's recent Amazon Associates affiliation; the other part will be the new click-through product links I'll put in some of my posts. If you like a review/recap you've read here and are interested in purchasing the supporting medium, you can click through from here to Amazon.com and, at no extra cost to you and no extra hassle, toss a few cents my way. Same thing with the search box: if you search Amazon.com from here and then buy something, they'll reward me with a teeny little bit of money because I sent you to them.

I know, I know: sure didn't take long for Friend Mouse to sell out. And, personally, if I can buy something at my favorite local independent bookstore, that's what I do. But if I'm ever going to quit my day job and support myself solely by watching television and reading books and then reporting back to all y'all, I'm going to need some sort of income stream. So, buy buy buy (especially if you were going to get it at Amazon.com anyway)!

To make it extra enticing for you - and to practice my HTML coding - here are some previously reviewed products. Enjoy - and warm up those credit cards.

Planet Terror - mini-review

I did not get to see the Robert Rodriguez/Quentin Tarantino Grindhouse doublefeature when it was in theaters this past spring (summer?), in large part because it was in Maine theaters for all of about six minutes. After watching Planet Terror on DVD tonight, I really wish I'd seen these films all together on a big screen, the way they were supposed to be seen - what a frickin' hoot!

Planet Terror was the first movie of the double bill. Loaded to the rafters with cast (Rose McGowan, Freddy Rodriguez, Josh Brolin, Bruce Willis, Michael Biehn, Sayid from Lost), it's a horror/action flick complete with zombie-like mutant humans, a corrupt government, the best BBQ in Texas and really, really hot women (Rose = thermonuclear level of hot). You want bloody, oozing, putrescent gore? Got it. Explosions and fireballs and loads of weaponry? Check. Cheating wives, go-go dancers and sibling rivalry? You betcha. And Robert Rodriguez is still a clever enough director to yank you out of the orgy of violence and goo with the unexpected (and mercifully off-camera) death of a child by self-inflicted handgun accident. You think you can't be shocked amid all the carnage but yes, yes, you can, first by the dog and then by the boy. Jeesh. But then, lest things get too somber, they give the one-legged stripper a machine gun prosthetic and all is well in this ridiculous world once more.

I thought this movie was great fun. True, some of the jokes ran a little long (enough with the secret BBQ recipe already - and this coming from a serious BBQ fan). And this is a violent and exploitative movie ... which is exactly what it was supposed to be. Anyone looking for anything more is just being foolish and also a party-pooper. Rodriguez set out to give us a grindhouse experience, complete with schlock, seedy previews, scratchy film - even a "missing reel." He did it and I for one am glad he did. I can't wait to see how Tarantino's Death Proof stacks up.

Mr. Mouse - this movie is not for you. You'd like the girls but little else.