I haven't seen many movies in the past two weeks. I had a vacation last week, but things are about to amp up with all the stuff coming out in the next month. Here's a couple I saw:

SCARY MOVIE 3: I saw the first one, and I didn't really like it until I saw it with a crowd...on its own, it's still not the very best. I didn't see part 2. Now, part 3 has David Zucker at the helm, a director who I would consider one of my early "heroes." Part 3 is definitely Zucker's brand of parody, and it's weird how you can tell the difference between he and Keenen Ivory Wayans. Where Wayans throws in everything that could possibly be offensive, Zucker throws in everything that could possibly be exaggerated, with all the nastiness left as undertone. The slapstick parody genre has not evolved from its early days (there's even an old AIRPLANE! gag at the end, done by the same actor), and SCARY MOVIE 3 falls well short of the classics, but it has some good gags in it, and I would say watch it while there are still crowds left for it.

ALIEN: DIRECTOR'S CUT: I'm not too familiar with the original to know what has been added to this director's cut, but I know that this has always been one of the most intense films ever made, and certainly Ridley Scott's best ever. As I watched this film, made in 1979, I realized there's a terrible amount of wonder and discovery missing from today's sci-fi films. The music sets the tone for watching a story that you would swear was never told before. Now, every movie that comes out has that feel of, "Well, everyone has seen space movies before, so let's cut out anything remotely slow, suspenseful, smart...and let's add a wisecracking member of the crew somewhere...and oh, we can afford to be cryptic because it's SPACE, man!" Ripley, as played by Sigourney Weaver, is one of the smartest sci-fi heroes EVER. She's the one who tells Dallas (Tom Skerritt) not to bring John Hurt's character into the ship because everyone could be infected by whatever is hugging his face. She's the one who comes up with a clever way to dispose of the Alien at the end (brains not brawn, the opposite of which slays a hundred guys in the later sequels). Scariest movie ever? It's hard to argue.

Bye week for the Titans. It will be interesting if I can pay much attention to football this week. I guess there's always Miami-Indy.