Well, I'm back from my hiatus.

In case some of you were wondering (which you weren't, but I'm going to tell you anyway) I spent four nights in the unbelievably amazing Las Vegas doing some indoor skydiving, firing off submachine guns, racing go-karts at 40+ miles per hour, watching the Ka production of Cirque De Soleil, Penn and Teller, and enjoying the company of many many strippers...... strippers as far as the eye can see.

There were MOUNTAINS made out of strippers. Even some of the floors of the clubs had bits of real strippers in them, but I digress.

It's funny how when you're in a place like Las Vegas, the weirdest things seem to grab your attention. It seems that no matter how much I drink, gamble, smoke, drink, walk on the strip, or drink, a seemingly mundane thing like the idea of a live-action Dragonball Z movie can still penetrate my mind and manage to piss me off.

Yes, I used to be a Dragonball Z freak back in high school. When I first heard that they were bringing it back on Cartoon Network to pick up where it left off in America, I'll admit I was excited.

After sitting through the remainder of the atrocity that was the Frieza saga, I decided to call it quits. I came to the realization that no matter how much bad metal, bad voice actors trying to imitate the original actors, and redundant (if not ludicrous) storylines you throw into a cartoon, it will never EVER measure up to the glory it once held back in those days when Vegita's voice was actually cool.

But why on earth would the idea of a movie like this piss me off? After all, I'm the kind of guy who's easily drawn into a movie with lots of bright shiny colors, what's NOT to like about a Dragonball Z movie being released in 2009?

Let's take a look, for a moment, at the choice of casting:

Justin Chatwin, with hits like "Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2", "The Chumscrubber", and "War of the Worlds" under his belt, is the OBVIOUS choice to play our beloved hero Goku. After all, he's Asian, can break a man in half with little more than a hard stare, and possesses the kind of acting talent that could make Steven Seagal weep. I'm already bleeding internally just thinking about this.

James Marsters, whose only notable role that people actually remember him for as the vampire "Spike" in "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" series, will be playing the role of Lord Piccolo. This would actually seem like a pretty cool idea if Mr. Marsters DIDN'T think his role in this movie was as serious as he makes it out to be. As I recall, an alien - FROM OUTER SPACE, MIND YOU (boogity boogity) - who got a little sand in his mangina over the fact that he was imprisoned for 2000 years does not make a very interesting or compelling plot. It also does not qualify as complex or Shakespearean as Marsters seems to think so (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1098327/trivia).

Chow Yun-Fat, the only cast member who can actually qualify as an A-List actor, will be playing the part of a character who merely sat on the sidelines of every battle on his own private island ogling anything with a pulse and a thong. I, for one, am waiting to see exactly how this is going to pan out.

I'm not going to go over the remainder of the cast because..... well....... nobody knows or cares about who any of them are. All I know is that there is NO KRILLIN. Are you telling me that Goku's best friend in the whole wide universe, a super-powered midget that trained with him over the course of their entire childhood, couldn't be added into this movie? Nobody decided to call up Verne Troyer to see what he was doing in between "Half & Half" and "The Love Guru"!? Are you fucking JOKING ME!?

Instead of staying true to the TV show, these assholes saw fit to throw in a few made-up characters to play Goku's high school buddies. Which brings me to my next point:

The contradictions.

If my memory serves me correctly, Goku trained in the mountains with his adopted grandfather every waking moment of his childhood, and never went to school. I also seem to remember a character by the name of Kame who purged the evil within himself so that he could become the kind of guardian that Earth needed him to be. And could it be true that this evil manifested itself as Lord Piccolo?

Not according to the writers of this script.

No. Instead, we're going to be treated to a high school bitchfest with a being threatening planet earth all because he's pissed off about being "imprisoned" for 2000 years.

If this is the kind of shit that's getting the green light in Hollywood, I might as well write a "Sonic The Hedgehog" movie starring OJ Simpson with a mohawk fighting an army of robot Jews in a hotel room because he wanted to get his crappy merchandise back.

It'll be fucking epic.

If any of you plan on seeing this giant pile of horseshit, I have just one simple piece of advice...................

................. Don't.