So last night after much pleading and cajoling my brother let me borrow season two of ALIAS. If only you could see me rolling my eyes. At least Reporter Boy grew some balls and some sense and is actually keeping a low profile. I'm sensing he's a goner, in part because of his change of heart and in part because he finally shaved. It's not a good sign. Also, Vaughn needs to get laid so he and Sydney can stop spending 15.739% of the show making moonie eyes at one another. This also goes for Jack, who is not making moonie eyes at his ex-dead-wife-spy-woman but instead gazes upon her with a mix of pained heartbreak and constipation. But at least he still kicks some ass. And he actually has a heart to break. And finally Sydney, GET ANOTHER FUCKING JOB AND STOP YER BITCHIN'!!! Geez Louise, "Now I can finally be truthful to you about myself because you were tortured and had your face bashed in and some ribs broken and teeth pulled and I barely saved your life and now you're going to have to pretend to be a drug addict and your life is ruined but at least now I can be honest with you *sniff*." WHATEVER!!!! ARGH!!! And season three doesn't come out until September.
But this isn't why you're here. You want to know about Vin Diesel's rock hard abs.
Unfortunately you don't get to see them. He pretty much keeps a tank top on the whole time. But unlike VAN HELSING, this movie kicked a ton of ass, ran real fast over to where all the ass landed, and then kicked it again. It was a total immersion experience, with awesome art direction, a story and tone that harkened back to the brilliance of CONAN THE BARBARIAN, Nick Chinlund, and lots of ass kicking.
THE CHRONICLES OF RIDDICK, which is either a typo or an allusion to the fifty sequels sure to follow, begins five years after the end of PITCH BLACK. You'll remember--unless you've chosen to totally block that particular film experience from your mind--that PITCH BLACK was that movie with that hot chick from FARSCAPE. Which was how the film was known, THAT MOVIE WITH THAT HOT CHICK FROM FARSCAPE, before Vin Diesel became the huge star and media darling that he is today, because if they'd made PITCH BLACK today instead of back then it would be known as THAT MOVIE WITH THAT AWESOME BALD-HEADED ASS-KICKER, YOU KNOW THAT GUY I'M TALKING ABOUT, THE ONE THAT WAS IN THE MOVIE WITH THE CARS, NO, THE GOOD ONE ABOUT THE CARS, NOT THAT CRAP WITH NICK CAGE. So in that movie (PITCH BLACK) Diesel played Riddick, a total badass evil dude everyone was afraid of, but it turned out he had a heart of gold even if he totally denied it, because he was totally trying to save everyone even though they hated and feared him. And he kicked a lot of ass. The best part about the movie was that everybody got the shit kicked out of them and killed, even the people you totally thought would live. This also happened in the totally awesome Thomas Jane pre-PUNISHER movie, DEEP BLUE SEA, one of many underrated killers-from-the-deep movies that came out around the same time, including DEEP RISING, LAKE PLACID and VIRUS (these are crap, but they're AWESOME!!!) So at the end of PITCH BLACK, Riddick escapes with some priest dude (which I totally don't remember, so I'm going to have to watch it again) and this girl who was pretending to be a boy named Jack. But then she got her period which totally ruined the disguise and made her an easy target for all the menses-sniffing monsters.
THE CHRONICLES OF RIDDICK (can you imagine the titles of the sequels? this is going to be insane; it's going to be like, THE CHRONICLES OF RIDDICK, PART TWO: RIDDICK IS LARGE AND IN CHARGE and it's totally going to take forever to type all that out) starts five years later, with Riddick being chased by these mercenaries after the bounty on his head, placed there by the priest dude he saved to get him to come to the priest's planet to save it from an invasion of the Necromongers, a religious cult intent on bringing about a total conversion of everyone in the universe and the creation of something called the Underverse, which they never show but if you go there you get special powers, one of which is the ability to get your ass kicked and handed back to you on a platter by Vin Diesel. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Lots of stuff happens, and then it turns into a whole different movie, and then Riddick catches up with Jack who's now a badass hot chick with the very lame and unthreatening name Kyra, and then more stuff happens and then there's a big fight and Riddick kicks all sorts of ass.
But then the ending is very melancholy. Which you wouldn't expect from an action film. And that's what makes this film so awesome: it's a character study of a man reluctantly called to fill a role required by his destiny, who recognizes his role and his need to assume it but struggles with an inner conflict born of his antagonism toward all authority and his ambivalence toward taking his place within that authority. As I alluded earlier, these are similar themes explored in CONAN THE BARBARIAN, and then endings of both films are similar, as well. This is another reason why this movie is so awesome: it resuscitates a long struggling (if not dead) genre and reinvigorates it by situating it in another space/time. There are plans to make KING CONAN with Triple H from WWE, but after seeing this it's totally unnecessary, except as a visit with a favorite character.
Not to mention the fact that THE CHRONICLES OF RIDDICK gives you plenty of cool shit to look at. The costumes are AMAZING, as are the sets, with lots of screaming faces and statues of bodies writhing in torment. And it may seem like two different movies, but it comes together brilliantly in the end.
For now, I will completely ignore the one insanity (I'm sure there are more; I was just basking in the gloriousness of THE CHRONICLES OF RIDDICK) that if you're on a planet with a surface temperature of 700 degrees, parking your ass in a bit of shade ain't going to help you much. Not that I've ever been to a planet with a surface temperature of 700 degrees, but I have been outdoors in Ohio in the summer, which is pretty much the same thing, what when you take the humidity into consideration, because as we all know it is the humidity more than it is the heat.
I will have to watch PITCH BLACK again to see which one I preferred, but really, they're apples and oranges. PITCH BLACK is ass-kicking leaning toward horror, and THE CHRONICLES OF RIDDICK is ass-kicking leaning toward Society of Creative Anachronism reenactment. In a good way. If there is such a thing.
Now, my suggestion for THE CHRONICLES OF RIDDICK TWO: WHAT, DID YOU NOT GET YOUR ASS KICKED ENOUGH THE LAST TIME? More nudity. And they totally need to cast Grace Jones as a bad guy. It'd totally be like ALIENS VS. PREDATOR of the cool-as-hell ass kickers!!!
Monday, June 14, 2004
Thursday, June 10, 2004
Review #5--MY LETTER TO SALON.COM
In anticipation of my upcoming review of THE CHRONICLES OF RIDDICK--which you know you are totally salivating at the very thought of--I am going to provide you with a review of my first ever published letter to the editor, which appears on Salon.com. It is not the first thing I've written to appear on the Internet (as evidenced by the blog you are now reading, and various and sundry pieces of X-Files fan fiction that you could probably find if you looked hard enough, but which I would advise you not to read because they are all classified "post-episode," which means you probably wouldn't understand what was going on unless you'd seen said episodes. And yes, I've written fan fiction. Can you honestly say you're really surprised?).
Also, this is not the first letter I've ever written to Salon. I think I've fired off about four total, one of which I was particularly proud of, a diatribe against a piece of fluff they'd printed implying that skin picking is a strange form of erotic foreplay. As a person who has suffered with compulsive skin picking for most of her life, it is neither erotic nor foreplay. It's disgusting and annoying and dangerous (I've gotten a few skin infections from it, and there's a case in a medical journal that you can google about a guy who exposed bone through a spot on his back he kept picking at). It's taken me a long time to get over just being embarrassed by it, and the writer equated it with grooming done by apes. Which is actually a theory proposed by some psychologists, that much like other types of obsessive compulsive behaviors it is a cleaning ritual taken to extremes, but in my case my therapist thinks it's a coping mechanism. The repetitious scratching is obscenely soothing, and the meticulous attention to scabs and sores provides a distraction from stressors. The theory makes a lot of sense even if the behavior doesn't. God bless The Husband and his infinite patience...what he must think when I come at him after my shower, thrusting a box of band-aids in his face and pointing at my back, promising I'll try to stop for real this time. But, I digress. The point of the story is that I fired off a letter to Salon calling them to task for mocking a very serious and very real mental disorder, and they didn't print it. I like to think that it was because it caused them to completely rethink their views on life and politics and PC sensitivity and they were so humilitated that they couldn't print it for fear of the public backlash, but it was probably because my letter was too long.
So my newest missive was in response to this article, about a man's dissatisfaction with Netflix. The Husband was a patron of Netflix when we first started dating. It was a total waste of money. Two people as lazy as we, coming together or acting of our own volition to even browse the web site--let alone place an order--was not about to happen. Also, DVDs had a tendency to sit around for...well, years it felt like, before we could be bothered to send them back. Needless to say, he cancelled once the trial period was over. The author of the article joined and cancelled over and over, until he'd finally decided that he'd try Wal-Mart's fledgling mail-order service. So I wrote a letter. Not to admonish him for even THINKING about using Wal-Mart for anything other than a conversation topic at which to direct derision and scorn, but to offer a modest suggestion. With that, I present...THE LETTER:
"A suggestion from a librarian: Try your local public library. You can reserve the new releases, they have lots of little-known independent films and -- best of all -- the movies are free."
Getting it out of the way, I work in a library, but until I finish my paper and graduate, I don't think I can technically call myself a "librarian," per say, but it's a hell of a lot easier than saying acquisitions assistant/copy cataloger, which is my actual job and which demands much convoluted explanation so I don't even bother other than to say "I buy books and put them in the computer," which still doesn't help, and I know I'm doing a grave disservice to the profession by not carefully explaining what I do to the uninitiated, but really would you sit there quietly and attentively while I outlined Dewey and LC and MARC tagging and whether or not the main entry is still relevant now that we rely more on keyword searching? I didn't think so. But getting back to the review...
This letter is AMAZING. It grabs you from the first word and delivers its message like well-placed devastating body blows to the psyche. It is concise without being terse, succinct without mincing words, and properly uses dashes. It is an opinionated ray of sunshine in an otherwise cloudy land of senseless demagoguery. It is brilliantly formulated and argued, and displays toward the author of the original piece tact which is wholly undeserving. It made me laugh, cry, and pee in my pants, and I wrote it. I can only imagine what patriotism and altruism it inspires in the heart of the casual reader.
Also, this is not the first letter I've ever written to Salon. I think I've fired off about four total, one of which I was particularly proud of, a diatribe against a piece of fluff they'd printed implying that skin picking is a strange form of erotic foreplay. As a person who has suffered with compulsive skin picking for most of her life, it is neither erotic nor foreplay. It's disgusting and annoying and dangerous (I've gotten a few skin infections from it, and there's a case in a medical journal that you can google about a guy who exposed bone through a spot on his back he kept picking at). It's taken me a long time to get over just being embarrassed by it, and the writer equated it with grooming done by apes. Which is actually a theory proposed by some psychologists, that much like other types of obsessive compulsive behaviors it is a cleaning ritual taken to extremes, but in my case my therapist thinks it's a coping mechanism. The repetitious scratching is obscenely soothing, and the meticulous attention to scabs and sores provides a distraction from stressors. The theory makes a lot of sense even if the behavior doesn't. God bless The Husband and his infinite patience...what he must think when I come at him after my shower, thrusting a box of band-aids in his face and pointing at my back, promising I'll try to stop for real this time. But, I digress. The point of the story is that I fired off a letter to Salon calling them to task for mocking a very serious and very real mental disorder, and they didn't print it. I like to think that it was because it caused them to completely rethink their views on life and politics and PC sensitivity and they were so humilitated that they couldn't print it for fear of the public backlash, but it was probably because my letter was too long.
So my newest missive was in response to this article, about a man's dissatisfaction with Netflix. The Husband was a patron of Netflix when we first started dating. It was a total waste of money. Two people as lazy as we, coming together or acting of our own volition to even browse the web site--let alone place an order--was not about to happen. Also, DVDs had a tendency to sit around for...well, years it felt like, before we could be bothered to send them back. Needless to say, he cancelled once the trial period was over. The author of the article joined and cancelled over and over, until he'd finally decided that he'd try Wal-Mart's fledgling mail-order service. So I wrote a letter. Not to admonish him for even THINKING about using Wal-Mart for anything other than a conversation topic at which to direct derision and scorn, but to offer a modest suggestion. With that, I present...THE LETTER:
"A suggestion from a librarian: Try your local public library. You can reserve the new releases, they have lots of little-known independent films and -- best of all -- the movies are free."
Getting it out of the way, I work in a library, but until I finish my paper and graduate, I don't think I can technically call myself a "librarian," per say, but it's a hell of a lot easier than saying acquisitions assistant/copy cataloger, which is my actual job and which demands much convoluted explanation so I don't even bother other than to say "I buy books and put them in the computer," which still doesn't help, and I know I'm doing a grave disservice to the profession by not carefully explaining what I do to the uninitiated, but really would you sit there quietly and attentively while I outlined Dewey and LC and MARC tagging and whether or not the main entry is still relevant now that we rely more on keyword searching? I didn't think so. But getting back to the review...
This letter is AMAZING. It grabs you from the first word and delivers its message like well-placed devastating body blows to the psyche. It is concise without being terse, succinct without mincing words, and properly uses dashes. It is an opinionated ray of sunshine in an otherwise cloudy land of senseless demagoguery. It is brilliantly formulated and argued, and displays toward the author of the original piece tact which is wholly undeserving. It made me laugh, cry, and pee in my pants, and I wrote it. I can only imagine what patriotism and altruism it inspires in the heart of the casual reader.
Tuesday, June 1, 2004
ALIAS--visual crack
SPOILERS!!!
Of course I never watched Alias, how silly of you to ask. It was on at the same time as X-Files, THE GREATEST SHOW EVER ON TELEVISION (until halfway through season 6) so I could not watch Alias, although I had at other times watched other things while taping The X-Files and then watched it at a later date. Which I actually did on a more regular basis as the series dragged on, to the point that I think I (THE HORROR) actually missed watching a couple of episodes. But as I am now slowly working my way through the DVDs with the Husband, introducing him to the EXQUISITE PAIN AND SUFFERING that was The X-Files, I'll finally get around to watching them. We've just started season 4, back when it KICKED ASS. Ah, Scully's cancer, her lost ova, her dalliance in Philadelphia with the cute guy from Space: Above and Beyond . *Sigh* Those were the days.
But this entry is about Alias, though you'd never know it. My brother, also a huge TV geek, has all of Alias on DVD and demanded that I watch it because YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU'RE MISSING. And of course, I absolutely couldn't start watching in the middle.
---As a sidebar, I have problem which I have no problem admitting to: I CANNOT under ANY CIRCUMSTANCES begin ANYTHING IN THE MIDDLE. Case in point: comics. I have yet to read SANDMAN because I don't own them all, and don't want to find myself lost or stuck in the middle of the story. As Alias is really a soap opera in many respects, I couldn't just sit down one random weekend and expect to know what was going on.---
Getting into Alias was an uphill battle. The first episode SUCKED ASS. I watched it six or seven times, leaving in the middle some times, falling asleep once. The Husband recalled coming home to find the first episode playing in the living room and me taking a bath. It's really...really.....really.........boring. So this memorial day weekend we forced ourselves to sit in front of the TV and watch it because there was nothing else on and it was too early to go anywhere or mow the lawn. And it was still really...really.....really.........boring.
BUT THEN COMPLETELY OUT OF NOWHERE THE ENDING WAS REALLY REALLY AWESOME!!!! OHMYGOD!!!! It was like getting hit upside the head with a lead pipe. And then kicked in the solar plexus with a four inch stiletto. And then next thing we knew it was Tuesday morning and we had to go to work and we'd put behind us 12 hours of Alias. And the only reason we quit was because the cliffhanger didn't really involve anything blowing up. IT'S AWESOME!!!
But I still can't watch it on Sunday nights because we haven't completely caught up yet.
Alias stars Jennifer Garner from Daredevil and 13 going on 30 as Sydney Bristow, a woman way too emotional to be an effective spy. Yeah, she kicks a lot of ass, but then she'll have an existential crisis that jeopardizes the mission or the lives of other agents. Seriously, at least once an episode we were thinking, fuck this killing her because she's a mole--chick is totally going to get someone killed what with her crying all the time. Seriously, that can't be good. She's always going on about I'VE GOT so-and-so's BLOOD ON MY HANDS, like BOO HOO it's your damn job, go deliver pizzas or something. And she's in grad school on top of that for some degree we totally can't figure out, but like writing your doctoral thesis isn't hard enough without having to worry all about your Great Moral Dilemma. Although if she were writing on a new interpretation of Lady MacBeth, totally based on her own experiences, I bet that would kick ass. I'm totally going back to school and writing my dissertation..."OUT OUT DAMN SPOT: SYDNEY BRISTOW AS POSTMODERN REINTERPRETATION OF LADY MACBETH." It probably wouldn't be very postmodern, but with that in the title plus my non-ironic use of the colon, I'd totally pass.
So in the first boring episode her stick-in-the-mud doctor boyfriend gets killed, and she spends the next three seasons crying about it. It's all her fault he's killed too, which she conveniently forgets when she's completely focused on her Great Moral Dilemma. So she works for what she thinks is a covert black-ops branch of the CIA called SD-6 (which is a total ROBOTECH shout-out) but it turns out that SD-6 is actually an organization fighting against the CIA, started by these renegade dudes from various worldwide intelligence organizations. Or something. And so Sydney goes to work for the actually CIA as a double-agent trying to bring down SD-6. Or something. And her dad's a double-agent too, or maybe a triple agent working for the Russians, or maybe he's just an ordinary guy working for a bank who totally likes to mind fuck his daughter. Or something. But Sydney's got a hottie contact in the CIA and they totally want to have sex which they totally will because the First Law of Speed comes into play. But then she also likes her reporter friend who's getting too close to the truth which for some reason prevents him from shaving regularly.
All of this is incredibly confusing. Everyone in the show has a serious problem with LEAPING TO CONCLUSIONS WITHOUT EVIDENCE TO BACK IT UP. I mean, really, they could find a half-eaten hot dog in an alley and come up with the theory that Oscar Meyer is running an illegal drug cartel out of Bogota. It's almost exhilarating, the daring leaps of logic. But shit blows up, and the gadgets guy is funny, and the editing and storytelling are insanely awesome, and the BEST was that the reporter guy found this bug in this chick's car and had it tested and it was transmitting so he spends the episode sneaking off to talk to the bug and beg for the people on the other end to call him. So he's getting drunk with Sydney's roommate, and she's singing into the bug and laughing, and his cell phone rings and this mechanical voice says, "tell her to stop playing with the bug!!!" It was AWESOME!!!
So, yeah, last night the Husband and I both dreamed about Alias. And right now I'm totally jonesing for more. Because when we were forced to stop, Sydney's father was telling her that he wasn't the Russian spy in the family, her angelic dead mother was!!! What does this mean for Sydney and the already strained relationship with her father, seeing as how she was planning on turning him in to the FBI as a traitor? Will she totally sex up that dude from the CIA? What crazy new outfit will she be wearing next? And how the hell can Jennifer Garner sleep at night after telling the world she never works out and is just naturally skinny? OOO, I HATE HER!!!
But Alias is awesome.
Of course I never watched Alias, how silly of you to ask. It was on at the same time as X-Files, THE GREATEST SHOW EVER ON TELEVISION (until halfway through season 6) so I could not watch Alias, although I had at other times watched other things while taping The X-Files and then watched it at a later date. Which I actually did on a more regular basis as the series dragged on, to the point that I think I (THE HORROR) actually missed watching a couple of episodes. But as I am now slowly working my way through the DVDs with the Husband, introducing him to the EXQUISITE PAIN AND SUFFERING that was The X-Files, I'll finally get around to watching them. We've just started season 4, back when it KICKED ASS. Ah, Scully's cancer, her lost ova, her dalliance in Philadelphia with the cute guy from Space: Above and Beyond . *Sigh* Those were the days.
But this entry is about Alias, though you'd never know it. My brother, also a huge TV geek, has all of Alias on DVD and demanded that I watch it because YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU'RE MISSING. And of course, I absolutely couldn't start watching in the middle.
---As a sidebar, I have problem which I have no problem admitting to: I CANNOT under ANY CIRCUMSTANCES begin ANYTHING IN THE MIDDLE. Case in point: comics. I have yet to read SANDMAN because I don't own them all, and don't want to find myself lost or stuck in the middle of the story. As Alias is really a soap opera in many respects, I couldn't just sit down one random weekend and expect to know what was going on.---
Getting into Alias was an uphill battle. The first episode SUCKED ASS. I watched it six or seven times, leaving in the middle some times, falling asleep once. The Husband recalled coming home to find the first episode playing in the living room and me taking a bath. It's really...really.....really.........boring. So this memorial day weekend we forced ourselves to sit in front of the TV and watch it because there was nothing else on and it was too early to go anywhere or mow the lawn. And it was still really...really.....really.........boring.
BUT THEN COMPLETELY OUT OF NOWHERE THE ENDING WAS REALLY REALLY AWESOME!!!! OHMYGOD!!!! It was like getting hit upside the head with a lead pipe. And then kicked in the solar plexus with a four inch stiletto. And then next thing we knew it was Tuesday morning and we had to go to work and we'd put behind us 12 hours of Alias. And the only reason we quit was because the cliffhanger didn't really involve anything blowing up. IT'S AWESOME!!!
But I still can't watch it on Sunday nights because we haven't completely caught up yet.
Alias stars Jennifer Garner from Daredevil and 13 going on 30 as Sydney Bristow, a woman way too emotional to be an effective spy. Yeah, she kicks a lot of ass, but then she'll have an existential crisis that jeopardizes the mission or the lives of other agents. Seriously, at least once an episode we were thinking, fuck this killing her because she's a mole--chick is totally going to get someone killed what with her crying all the time. Seriously, that can't be good. She's always going on about I'VE GOT so-and-so's BLOOD ON MY HANDS, like BOO HOO it's your damn job, go deliver pizzas or something. And she's in grad school on top of that for some degree we totally can't figure out, but like writing your doctoral thesis isn't hard enough without having to worry all about your Great Moral Dilemma. Although if she were writing on a new interpretation of Lady MacBeth, totally based on her own experiences, I bet that would kick ass. I'm totally going back to school and writing my dissertation..."OUT OUT DAMN SPOT: SYDNEY BRISTOW AS POSTMODERN REINTERPRETATION OF LADY MACBETH." It probably wouldn't be very postmodern, but with that in the title plus my non-ironic use of the colon, I'd totally pass.
So in the first boring episode her stick-in-the-mud doctor boyfriend gets killed, and she spends the next three seasons crying about it. It's all her fault he's killed too, which she conveniently forgets when she's completely focused on her Great Moral Dilemma. So she works for what she thinks is a covert black-ops branch of the CIA called SD-6 (which is a total ROBOTECH shout-out) but it turns out that SD-6 is actually an organization fighting against the CIA, started by these renegade dudes from various worldwide intelligence organizations. Or something. And so Sydney goes to work for the actually CIA as a double-agent trying to bring down SD-6. Or something. And her dad's a double-agent too, or maybe a triple agent working for the Russians, or maybe he's just an ordinary guy working for a bank who totally likes to mind fuck his daughter. Or something. But Sydney's got a hottie contact in the CIA and they totally want to have sex which they totally will because the First Law of Speed comes into play. But then she also likes her reporter friend who's getting too close to the truth which for some reason prevents him from shaving regularly.
All of this is incredibly confusing. Everyone in the show has a serious problem with LEAPING TO CONCLUSIONS WITHOUT EVIDENCE TO BACK IT UP. I mean, really, they could find a half-eaten hot dog in an alley and come up with the theory that Oscar Meyer is running an illegal drug cartel out of Bogota. It's almost exhilarating, the daring leaps of logic. But shit blows up, and the gadgets guy is funny, and the editing and storytelling are insanely awesome, and the BEST was that the reporter guy found this bug in this chick's car and had it tested and it was transmitting so he spends the episode sneaking off to talk to the bug and beg for the people on the other end to call him. So he's getting drunk with Sydney's roommate, and she's singing into the bug and laughing, and his cell phone rings and this mechanical voice says, "tell her to stop playing with the bug!!!" It was AWESOME!!!
So, yeah, last night the Husband and I both dreamed about Alias. And right now I'm totally jonesing for more. Because when we were forced to stop, Sydney's father was telling her that he wasn't the Russian spy in the family, her angelic dead mother was!!! What does this mean for Sydney and the already strained relationship with her father, seeing as how she was planning on turning him in to the FBI as a traitor? Will she totally sex up that dude from the CIA? What crazy new outfit will she be wearing next? And how the hell can Jennifer Garner sleep at night after telling the world she never works out and is just naturally skinny? OOO, I HATE HER!!!
But Alias is awesome.
Friday, May 28, 2004
I'm making my own movie
I figure what with having so many opinions about film that I should get off my ass and make my own. So last night at dinner, the Husband, Giga, Nala and I came up with an Idea that I'm ready to run with. Keep in mind, if you're a Famous Hollywood Director or Action Star and want to do this, you have to give me a cut of the profits, and I want my own action figure. And a novel tie-in by Star Wars/X-Files/Dune hack Kevin J. Anderson. And collectible trading cards. And Jeff Goldblum reading the Audio Adaptation for Young Readers.
When you hear this sound (*ding*) turn the page.
And now...FLUSH POINT
Flush Point is based on ACTUAL SCIENCE currently being ignored by the Bush Administration!!! See this NOVA Special, Magnetic Storm. Apparently we are in the middle of what could be the most Traumatic Experience the Earth has ever witnessed, and NO ONE IS DOING ANYTHING TO STOP IT!!!
President Morgan Freeman has been in secret discussions with his top Scientific Advisor Brian Cox about the dangers that face the planet should the magnetic poles suddenly shift. CLIMATE CHANGES and INCREASES IN DEADLY RADIATION!!! It's all INCREDIBLY SERIOUS AND GRAVE!!!
But deep within the bowels of the White House, Official White House Plumber Will Patton/Bill Paxton/Bill Pullman knows THE TRUTH!!! (Since these three actors are often confused by audiences, during the movie they will each appear, at various times, as Official White House Plumber.) A SUDDEN SHIFT IN THE EARTH'S MAGNETIC POLES WOULD CAUSE THE WATER IN TOILETS TO GO DOWN THE BOWL THE WRONG WAY!!!! Science has long understood that the Coriolis Force causes water draining from a toilet to spin clockwise north of the equator, but a sudden change in the pressure during a Magnetic Pole Shift would cause toilets all over the world to EXPLODE SIMULTANEOUSLY!!! The results would be CATASTROPHIC!!!
Will Patton/Bill Paxton/Bill Pullman tries desperately to warn the President, but he's having none of it, because EVIL SCIENTIST Brian Cox is downplaying the threat because he WANTS all the toilets to explode, sending the planet back into the Dark Ages, which he and his evil cohorts would then RULE!!! Will Patton/Bill Paxton/Bill Pullman says to the President, "Migratory Patterns be damned, man!!! We've got a bigger problem on our hands!!!" But the President doesn't believe him, and Will Patton/Bill Paxton/Bill Pullman is left to try to salvage some remnant of humanity with the help of his wife Helen Hunt and his spunky daughter Leelee Sobieski.
The sequel, FLUSH POINT 2: FORCE OF GRAVITY, would have the human race reduced to those few people on the planet who used outhouses struggling to rebuild after billions of tons of raw sewage exploded forth during the Cataclysm, contaminating and eating through everything. And then they also have to deal with all the birds running into things.
But that's the plot of FLUSH POINT 3: BALLCOCK AND FLOATBALL in 3-D.
When you hear this sound (*ding*) turn the page.
And now...FLUSH POINT
Flush Point is based on ACTUAL SCIENCE currently being ignored by the Bush Administration!!! See this NOVA Special, Magnetic Storm. Apparently we are in the middle of what could be the most Traumatic Experience the Earth has ever witnessed, and NO ONE IS DOING ANYTHING TO STOP IT!!!
President Morgan Freeman has been in secret discussions with his top Scientific Advisor Brian Cox about the dangers that face the planet should the magnetic poles suddenly shift. CLIMATE CHANGES and INCREASES IN DEADLY RADIATION!!! It's all INCREDIBLY SERIOUS AND GRAVE!!!
But deep within the bowels of the White House, Official White House Plumber Will Patton/Bill Paxton/Bill Pullman knows THE TRUTH!!! (Since these three actors are often confused by audiences, during the movie they will each appear, at various times, as Official White House Plumber.) A SUDDEN SHIFT IN THE EARTH'S MAGNETIC POLES WOULD CAUSE THE WATER IN TOILETS TO GO DOWN THE BOWL THE WRONG WAY!!!! Science has long understood that the Coriolis Force causes water draining from a toilet to spin clockwise north of the equator, but a sudden change in the pressure during a Magnetic Pole Shift would cause toilets all over the world to EXPLODE SIMULTANEOUSLY!!! The results would be CATASTROPHIC!!!
Will Patton/Bill Paxton/Bill Pullman tries desperately to warn the President, but he's having none of it, because EVIL SCIENTIST Brian Cox is downplaying the threat because he WANTS all the toilets to explode, sending the planet back into the Dark Ages, which he and his evil cohorts would then RULE!!! Will Patton/Bill Paxton/Bill Pullman says to the President, "Migratory Patterns be damned, man!!! We've got a bigger problem on our hands!!!" But the President doesn't believe him, and Will Patton/Bill Paxton/Bill Pullman is left to try to salvage some remnant of humanity with the help of his wife Helen Hunt and his spunky daughter Leelee Sobieski.
The sequel, FLUSH POINT 2: FORCE OF GRAVITY, would have the human race reduced to those few people on the planet who used outhouses struggling to rebuild after billions of tons of raw sewage exploded forth during the Cataclysm, contaminating and eating through everything. And then they also have to deal with all the birds running into things.
But that's the plot of FLUSH POINT 3: BALLCOCK AND FLOATBALL in 3-D.
Monday, May 24, 2004
review tres--HAROLD AND KUMAR GO TO WHITE CASTLE
SPOILERS!!!
So I finally got to do what I've always dreamed of doing.
I attended a star-studded Hollywood Movie Premiere.
Granted, it was in Columbus, OH. And the premiere was only bedazzled by two marginally famous actors and many local news talents. And it reeked of frying animal flesh. However, there was a red carpet and a limo and a very long wait in line and it took me until next morning but I finally figured out how tangentially I met Kevin Bacon in under six degrees. I had an awesome time.
I did not, however, get a free t-shirt.
Jen, our Ticket Hook-Up who works for an Evil Entertainment Conglomerate that we conveniently forget she works for when she scams us free tickets, hooked us up with tickets to the premiere of Harold and Kumar go to White Castle. See, Columbus is the home of White Castle, hence the lame marketing tie-in. But hey, free movie. We (being me, that is Kelmeister, and my droogs: Nala, Giga, the Fab Jen and Vijay) were supposed to be in line at the theater to get in by the absolute cut-off of DOORS CLOSE AT 6:45, but of course we were running late and we got there at a little after six and the line was huge and although I was trying to pretend I was way cooler than I actually am I was secretly peeing a little in my pants at the thought that we'd missed our chance. So as we made fun of all the people way overdressed for a Columbus premiere of Harold and Kumar go to White Castle (like, Harold and Kumar are TOTALLY going to see you in the theater in that tiny sun dress and think you are so hot and want to have sex with you and take you to Hollywood were you'll TOTALLY meet Brad Pitt at a party and dump Harold and Kumar and break up Brad's marriage to Jennifer and you and Brad will live Happily Evah After. Seriously, I gave up those fantasies when I turned 30. Duh.) as I stood there doing a little Pee Dance.
There were ferocious security guards there yelling for people to leave their cell phones in their cars, for fear that someone would illegally record and/or broadcast Harold and Kumar go to White Castle. Because I know that personally, were I to spend 24 hours illegally downloading a film from the Internet over my dial-up line, Harold and Kumar go to White Castle would be the movie I'd pick.
Anyway, after listening to a Local Radio Personality babble unintelligibly over a loud-speaker for over a half hour, we FINALLY made it to the doors, where we were practically strip searched and then led to a table of bags full o' White Castles. I, being a vegetarian, walked on by, but was quickly admonished by my companions for ONLY THINKING ABOUT MYSELF and GO BACK AND GET YOUR BAG AND GIVE IT TO US. Between the four of them I guesstimate that they consumed at least two dozen White Castles. Nala had nine. I gravely warned them of the dangers of contracting explosive diarrhea, but like Cassandra, I was ignored.
After the crowd had gorged themselves, the stars of the film graced us with their presence to say a few words about THIS MOVIE WAS AWESOME TO WORK ON and WE HOPE YOU ENJOY WATCHING IT AS MUCH AS WE ENJOYED MAKING IT. John Cho and Kal Penn are very short. Although I was sitting down so my perception may have been skewed. Also, I am left wondering if I found them attractive in real life. Kal Penn is a total hottie in the movie, but I don't think I was really paying much attention when they were right in front of me because I was suddenly stuck by the thought, "What does this meeting mean in terms of six degrees of separation from Kevin Bacon," and I was so preoccupied with trying to figure that one out that I spaced and then missed quite a bit until the movie started.
You know, premieres don't have previews. Someone should do something about this.
From the director of Dude, Where's My Car, Harold and Kumar go to White Castle is the first film by Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg and basically involves the misadventures of Harold and Kumar as they get totally stoned and try to find some food. Their quest for White Castle is precipitated by food porn on the teevee in the form of a White Castle commercial. By the end of the film it becomes more about succeeding in the quest than actually eating, but they do gorge themselves much as everyone in the audience did. So stuff happens in between, and there's pooping, and more pot, and Neil Patrick Harris undulating erotically. And in the end Harold and Kumar learn that IT IS WHAT'S INSIDE THAT COUNTS and IF YOU BELIEVE IN YOURSELF YOU CAN ACHIEVE ANYTHING and IF YOU SMOKE ENOUGH POT WHITE CASTLE DOES NOT CAUSE SEVERE INTESTINAL DISTRESS. Seriously, I would have thought the last scene would have been them fighting over a roll of toilet paper, but that's just me. Maybe when I write my Oscar Winning Teen Film that REDEFINES A GENERATION and TEACHES CHILDREN THE VALUE OF PROTECTING YOUR VIRGINITY UNTIL MARRIAGE I'll include that scene.
Actually, I don't mean to sound harsh, because I actually enjoyed this movie a lot. I laughed more than I have during a film in quite a while. I haven't seen Dude, Where's My Car (which they reference here, cleverly), so I can't compare stories and scripts and such, but I get the sense that Harold and Kumar are far more intelligent than the Seann William Scott and Ashton Kutcher characters, which is a good thing. And as I said before, John Cho and Kal Penn are good-looking, likable actors with a ton of chemistry. The story's pretty goofy with a menagerie of crazy characters, but it's really the relationship between Cho and Penn that carries the movie. They're a delight to watch, and as Nala said afterward, someone should seriously consider some sequels: road movies a la Hope and Crosby. Which is actually a pretty awesome idea.
So who'da thunk that a piece of crap stoners movie would kick more ass than Van Helsing? This will one day be in heavy rotation on Comedy Central, but for a night out you could do way worse (like Van Helsing).
--kelmeister
P.S. Cho and Penn were in Harold and Kumar go to White Castle with Christopher Meloni who was in Wet Hot American Summer with David Hyde Pierce who was on Fraiser with Laura Linney who was in Mystic River with Kevin Bacon.
Although you could also go through Fred Willard, who was in Waiting for Guffman with Christopher Guest, who was in A Few Good Men with Kevin Bacon.
I could have cured cancer with this brain, once...
So I finally got to do what I've always dreamed of doing.
I attended a star-studded Hollywood Movie Premiere.
Granted, it was in Columbus, OH. And the premiere was only bedazzled by two marginally famous actors and many local news talents. And it reeked of frying animal flesh. However, there was a red carpet and a limo and a very long wait in line and it took me until next morning but I finally figured out how tangentially I met Kevin Bacon in under six degrees. I had an awesome time.
I did not, however, get a free t-shirt.
Jen, our Ticket Hook-Up who works for an Evil Entertainment Conglomerate that we conveniently forget she works for when she scams us free tickets, hooked us up with tickets to the premiere of Harold and Kumar go to White Castle. See, Columbus is the home of White Castle, hence the lame marketing tie-in. But hey, free movie. We (being me, that is Kelmeister, and my droogs: Nala, Giga, the Fab Jen and Vijay) were supposed to be in line at the theater to get in by the absolute cut-off of DOORS CLOSE AT 6:45, but of course we were running late and we got there at a little after six and the line was huge and although I was trying to pretend I was way cooler than I actually am I was secretly peeing a little in my pants at the thought that we'd missed our chance. So as we made fun of all the people way overdressed for a Columbus premiere of Harold and Kumar go to White Castle (like, Harold and Kumar are TOTALLY going to see you in the theater in that tiny sun dress and think you are so hot and want to have sex with you and take you to Hollywood were you'll TOTALLY meet Brad Pitt at a party and dump Harold and Kumar and break up Brad's marriage to Jennifer and you and Brad will live Happily Evah After. Seriously, I gave up those fantasies when I turned 30. Duh.) as I stood there doing a little Pee Dance.
There were ferocious security guards there yelling for people to leave their cell phones in their cars, for fear that someone would illegally record and/or broadcast Harold and Kumar go to White Castle. Because I know that personally, were I to spend 24 hours illegally downloading a film from the Internet over my dial-up line, Harold and Kumar go to White Castle would be the movie I'd pick.
Anyway, after listening to a Local Radio Personality babble unintelligibly over a loud-speaker for over a half hour, we FINALLY made it to the doors, where we were practically strip searched and then led to a table of bags full o' White Castles. I, being a vegetarian, walked on by, but was quickly admonished by my companions for ONLY THINKING ABOUT MYSELF and GO BACK AND GET YOUR BAG AND GIVE IT TO US. Between the four of them I guesstimate that they consumed at least two dozen White Castles. Nala had nine. I gravely warned them of the dangers of contracting explosive diarrhea, but like Cassandra, I was ignored.
After the crowd had gorged themselves, the stars of the film graced us with their presence to say a few words about THIS MOVIE WAS AWESOME TO WORK ON and WE HOPE YOU ENJOY WATCHING IT AS MUCH AS WE ENJOYED MAKING IT. John Cho and Kal Penn are very short. Although I was sitting down so my perception may have been skewed. Also, I am left wondering if I found them attractive in real life. Kal Penn is a total hottie in the movie, but I don't think I was really paying much attention when they were right in front of me because I was suddenly stuck by the thought, "What does this meeting mean in terms of six degrees of separation from Kevin Bacon," and I was so preoccupied with trying to figure that one out that I spaced and then missed quite a bit until the movie started.
You know, premieres don't have previews. Someone should do something about this.
From the director of Dude, Where's My Car, Harold and Kumar go to White Castle is the first film by Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg and basically involves the misadventures of Harold and Kumar as they get totally stoned and try to find some food. Their quest for White Castle is precipitated by food porn on the teevee in the form of a White Castle commercial. By the end of the film it becomes more about succeeding in the quest than actually eating, but they do gorge themselves much as everyone in the audience did. So stuff happens in between, and there's pooping, and more pot, and Neil Patrick Harris undulating erotically. And in the end Harold and Kumar learn that IT IS WHAT'S INSIDE THAT COUNTS and IF YOU BELIEVE IN YOURSELF YOU CAN ACHIEVE ANYTHING and IF YOU SMOKE ENOUGH POT WHITE CASTLE DOES NOT CAUSE SEVERE INTESTINAL DISTRESS. Seriously, I would have thought the last scene would have been them fighting over a roll of toilet paper, but that's just me. Maybe when I write my Oscar Winning Teen Film that REDEFINES A GENERATION and TEACHES CHILDREN THE VALUE OF PROTECTING YOUR VIRGINITY UNTIL MARRIAGE I'll include that scene.
Actually, I don't mean to sound harsh, because I actually enjoyed this movie a lot. I laughed more than I have during a film in quite a while. I haven't seen Dude, Where's My Car (which they reference here, cleverly), so I can't compare stories and scripts and such, but I get the sense that Harold and Kumar are far more intelligent than the Seann William Scott and Ashton Kutcher characters, which is a good thing. And as I said before, John Cho and Kal Penn are good-looking, likable actors with a ton of chemistry. The story's pretty goofy with a menagerie of crazy characters, but it's really the relationship between Cho and Penn that carries the movie. They're a delight to watch, and as Nala said afterward, someone should seriously consider some sequels: road movies a la Hope and Crosby. Which is actually a pretty awesome idea.
So who'da thunk that a piece of crap stoners movie would kick more ass than Van Helsing? This will one day be in heavy rotation on Comedy Central, but for a night out you could do way worse (like Van Helsing).
--kelmeister
P.S. Cho and Penn were in Harold and Kumar go to White Castle with Christopher Meloni who was in Wet Hot American Summer with David Hyde Pierce who was on Fraiser with Laura Linney who was in Mystic River with Kevin Bacon.
Although you could also go through Fred Willard, who was in Waiting for Guffman with Christopher Guest, who was in A Few Good Men with Kevin Bacon.
I could have cured cancer with this brain, once...
Monday, May 17, 2004
review number deux--TAKING LIVES
SPOILERS!!
So the husband and I celebrated our 11th month wedding anniversary this month, and as things had been a little rough for us this week, we decided to go on a date. We'd not been out alone together on a "date date" for a while, so what better way to reconnect and rediscover your love for another by enjoying mutilated bodies, naked Angelina Jolie, and Taco Bell!!
One of these three things was awesome. I'm going to let you guess which one.
TACO BELL!!! Hubby got the Nachos BelGrande sans meat, so for the first time ever I was able to enjoy their crunchy, cheesy-cheese goodness. Although I briefly panicked over the presence of scallions, I'm pretty sure I don't have hepatitis.
But, I digress.
Unlike the $17 travesty of Van Helsing, we made the smart move and actually waited until Taking Lives was at the dollar theater (but with the evening rates, it was THREE DOLLARS for two people. THREE DOLLARS!!! And people think the gas prices are bad!!). I'm still trying to decide if the money was worth it. Taking Lives is based on a book of the same name, which I looked up on Amazon on a lark and the book is completely different. It actually sounds way cooler. Someday I'm going to get it from the library and read it and post an update. But not right now, because I'm in the middle of like six different books, one of which is due back next week and I should just buy my own copy because it's taking me forever to get into and it's French history and there are way too many names I can't pronounce. The book--Taking Lives, not the one I'm currently reading--is apparently about an art dealer who is actually a serial killer who's killed the art dealer and taken over his life, and the private investigator looking for a stolen rare manuscript that the art dealer is supposedly an expert on (which he isn't, because he's the serial killer).
The movie actually gives the art dealer the name of the book's private investigator, Cabot, and you'd never know he's an art dealer. I think they may have said something about this at some point but so much random shit happens in this movie that they never explain. Him being an art dealer is just a side note to explain some other red herring's presence in the film anyway, so ignore it for a moment.
Anyway, Taking Lives has FBI Profiler Angelina Jolie called to Montreal by her friend and former Quantico classmate Tcheky Karyo to help with the investigation of a series of unsolved murders. The killer smashes in the victims' faces and cuts off the hands, leaving it almost impossible to identify the bodies. Fortunately, art dealer Ethan Hawke stops one of the mutilations, helping with the case and making himself a target for the killer. Of course, then he has sex with Angelina Jolie, because as Speed taught us, relationships based on intense experiences never work, so you have to base them on sex.
If I were teaching a film theory class on mysteries with surprise endings, this would be the film I'd use as an example of a big DON'T. I will enumerate for you some of the stupid shit in this movie that should not be done in a film supposedly supplying "twists and turns."
We begin at the beginning, with a young guy homo-erotically hitting it off with another young dude on a bus.
POINT ONE: If you decide to actually see the movie for yourself, THIS IS IN FACT THE BEGINNING OF THE MOVIE, AND NOT A TRAILER FOR TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE TWO.
This is an important part to remember. I guarantee you'll be confused for ten to fifteen minutes if you forget this. What should have been the real beginning of the movie involves Gena Rowlands complaining to the cops that she just saw her dead son on a cruise ship.
POINT TWO: IF YOU WANT THE KILLER TO BE A SURPRISE, DON'T HIRE A YOUNG ACTOR WHO LOOKS LIKE JUST LIKE THE DUDE PLAYING THE KILLER.
Seriously, I knew at the very beginning who the killer was because the kid in the Chainsaw trailer looked just like him. Hence another reason to totally get rid of that part.
POINT THREE: THE FILM TAKES PLACE IN MONTREAL, SO EVERYONE HAS REALLY THICK FRENCH-CANADIAN ACCENTS.
This has nothing to do with the plot of the film; it just pissed me off. The levels on either the print we saw or the theater sound system were fucked, meaning I had to strain to hear the dialogue. For some bizarre reason, even though this was in Canada very few people say "aboot." Trust me, I was paying attention. Otherwise I think I would have fallen asleep. Plus, this film was very unpatriotic, what with having France and Canada being represented in the same movie. Because we hate France and Canada.
POINT FOUR: ANGELINA JOLIE LOOKS AT A LOT OF STUFF, BUT NEVER EXPLAINS WHY SHE'S LOOKING AT IT.
Five minute close-up of someone's eye ball...five minute close-up of lace doilies...five minute close-up of my ass. None of this has any relevance to anything. Then the one thing she should have been paying attention to, Ethan Hawke's bruised knuckles, gets completely ignored. Apparently they don't make watching an episode of CSI or Law and Order a requirement at FBI school, otherwise she'd know that bruised knuckles mean struggle, usually with said knuckles dealing out the aforementioned struggle, hence making Ethan Hawke the killer. I know, there's more involved with crime solving. But we're not talking about a documentary.
POINT FIVE: THE FUNNY, SELF-DEPRECATING COP IS A TOTAL RED-SHIRT. ESPECIALLY WHEN HE VOLUNTEERS TO GO ON AN UNASSUMING MISSION ALONE.
Duval, we hardly knew ye.
POINT SIX: YOU CAN ALWAYS TELL THE TYPE OF MAN YOU'RE SEEING BY THE SEX: ROMANTIC = GOOD GUY; SLOPPY AND VIOLENT ON TOP OF FURNITURE NOT MEANT TO SUPPORT SEX WITH CLOTHES ON WHILE DOOR TO HOTEL HALLWAY WIDE OPEN = KILLER.
Seriously. They left the door open! That's at least a sign that he likes to kick puppies.
POINT SEVEN: STRONG, INTELLIGENT, ICY PROFESSIONAL WOMEN GET FUCKED, PHYSICALLY AND MENTALLY.
What better way to punish a woman than to allow one moment of sexual happiness, followed by knowing the guy was the killer you've long sought. Cat, meet mouse.
POINT EIGHT: DUDE HAD A TWIN WHO DIED IN AN ACCIDENT.
Angelina Jolie thought this scarred the young man for life. I thought the dude killed him. I need a badge and a gun, I'm unstoppable!!!
POINT NINE: IT MAY SEEN LIKE A GOOD IDEA TO TROT OUT THE BIG NAME STAR NEAR THE END TO THROW THE AUDIENCE OFF THE TRAIL OF THE REAL KILLER, BUT INSTEAD IT'S MY BIGGEST PET PEEVE--KILLER DUDE THROWN IN NEAR THE END.
I HATE when the killer is someone no one mentions at all during the movie, like, "OH MY GOD, it was ol' hermit Wilson who lives in the hovel that we never even thought to mention until now because even though the original script had Michael Douglas's character as the killer his agent negotiated for a contract that forbid him to play any character that might reflect negatively on his real life persona so we had to re-write the script at the last minute and throw in this character that heretofore didn't exist." Whatever.
POINT TEN: SIMPSONS DID IT.
The best part of the movie was that Gena Rowlands apparently kept her surviving son locked in the basement, which totally reminded me of the treehouse of horror episode where Bart's a conjoined twin, and Hibbert separates them and Marge and Homer lock the supposedly evil one in the attic, but it turns out he was the nice one and Bart was the evil one. Why is everything reminding me of the Simpsons?
POINT ELEVEN: I DON'T KNOW HOW THIS CONNECTS WITH WHAT'S COME BEFORE, BUT THE END WAS REALLY WEIRD AND STUPID.
So it's seven months after Ethan Hawke escapes capture and Angelina Jolie had supposedly gotten knocked up during her romp with Ethan Hawke and she goes off to the middle of nowhere and gets this farmhouse that's totally uninhabitable and I think she totally told Ethan Hawke that she grew up in this middle of nowhere town earlier in the film and he comes to her house and says it took him a while to find her which was totally stupid because if I'd been him it totally would have been the first place I looked seeing as how there are only like a couple hundred people living in the town and they'd totally remember seeing Angelina Jolie buying toilet paper at the local market, because wouldn't you? And that's usually what people do in situations like that, they go back home. But anyway, he comes in and tells her he's been watching her and she's pregnant with twins isn't she, but she's totally not because she's way too small to be seven months pregnant with twins and unless she has a family history of twins she's probably not pregnant with twins because twins are usually passed through the mother. But I'm no scientist so I could be wrong. But it doesn't matter anyway because Ethan Hawke totally stabs her in the stomach saying she can't have his babies, but she's not really pregnant!!! It was a fake belly!!! So she stabs him back and kills him, telling him everything he saw she wanted him to see and he smiles an enigmatic smile before he dies which I think is supposed to mean that he's impressed by how she outfoxed him. Then she calls Tcheky and tells him it's all over. At which point Ethan Hawke totally should have COME BACK TO LIFE AND TRIED TO KILL HER AGAIN!!! But he doesn't. But that would have been cool. Anyway, stabbing a pregnant woman in the stomach is pretty fucked up, especially after you just praised her obvious love for the children and her possible ability to raise both of them so that one doesn't kill the other and then go on a sociopathic rampage. But I may be reading too much into it.
POINT TWELVE: MY HUSBAND THOUGHT NAKED ANGELINA JOLIE WAS STUPID AND POINTLESS AND NOT AT ALL TITILLATING AND WAS INSTEAD DISTRACTING AND SILLY.
That should pretty much sum up the movie, and my review.
So the husband and I celebrated our 11th month wedding anniversary this month, and as things had been a little rough for us this week, we decided to go on a date. We'd not been out alone together on a "date date" for a while, so what better way to reconnect and rediscover your love for another by enjoying mutilated bodies, naked Angelina Jolie, and Taco Bell!!
One of these three things was awesome. I'm going to let you guess which one.
TACO BELL!!! Hubby got the Nachos BelGrande sans meat, so for the first time ever I was able to enjoy their crunchy, cheesy-cheese goodness. Although I briefly panicked over the presence of scallions, I'm pretty sure I don't have hepatitis.
But, I digress.
Unlike the $17 travesty of Van Helsing, we made the smart move and actually waited until Taking Lives was at the dollar theater (but with the evening rates, it was THREE DOLLARS for two people. THREE DOLLARS!!! And people think the gas prices are bad!!). I'm still trying to decide if the money was worth it. Taking Lives is based on a book of the same name, which I looked up on Amazon on a lark and the book is completely different. It actually sounds way cooler. Someday I'm going to get it from the library and read it and post an update. But not right now, because I'm in the middle of like six different books, one of which is due back next week and I should just buy my own copy because it's taking me forever to get into and it's French history and there are way too many names I can't pronounce. The book--Taking Lives, not the one I'm currently reading--is apparently about an art dealer who is actually a serial killer who's killed the art dealer and taken over his life, and the private investigator looking for a stolen rare manuscript that the art dealer is supposedly an expert on (which he isn't, because he's the serial killer).
The movie actually gives the art dealer the name of the book's private investigator, Cabot, and you'd never know he's an art dealer. I think they may have said something about this at some point but so much random shit happens in this movie that they never explain. Him being an art dealer is just a side note to explain some other red herring's presence in the film anyway, so ignore it for a moment.
Anyway, Taking Lives has FBI Profiler Angelina Jolie called to Montreal by her friend and former Quantico classmate Tcheky Karyo to help with the investigation of a series of unsolved murders. The killer smashes in the victims' faces and cuts off the hands, leaving it almost impossible to identify the bodies. Fortunately, art dealer Ethan Hawke stops one of the mutilations, helping with the case and making himself a target for the killer. Of course, then he has sex with Angelina Jolie, because as Speed taught us, relationships based on intense experiences never work, so you have to base them on sex.
If I were teaching a film theory class on mysteries with surprise endings, this would be the film I'd use as an example of a big DON'T. I will enumerate for you some of the stupid shit in this movie that should not be done in a film supposedly supplying "twists and turns."
We begin at the beginning, with a young guy homo-erotically hitting it off with another young dude on a bus.
POINT ONE: If you decide to actually see the movie for yourself, THIS IS IN FACT THE BEGINNING OF THE MOVIE, AND NOT A TRAILER FOR TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE TWO.
This is an important part to remember. I guarantee you'll be confused for ten to fifteen minutes if you forget this. What should have been the real beginning of the movie involves Gena Rowlands complaining to the cops that she just saw her dead son on a cruise ship.
POINT TWO: IF YOU WANT THE KILLER TO BE A SURPRISE, DON'T HIRE A YOUNG ACTOR WHO LOOKS LIKE JUST LIKE THE DUDE PLAYING THE KILLER.
Seriously, I knew at the very beginning who the killer was because the kid in the Chainsaw trailer looked just like him. Hence another reason to totally get rid of that part.
POINT THREE: THE FILM TAKES PLACE IN MONTREAL, SO EVERYONE HAS REALLY THICK FRENCH-CANADIAN ACCENTS.
This has nothing to do with the plot of the film; it just pissed me off. The levels on either the print we saw or the theater sound system were fucked, meaning I had to strain to hear the dialogue. For some bizarre reason, even though this was in Canada very few people say "aboot." Trust me, I was paying attention. Otherwise I think I would have fallen asleep. Plus, this film was very unpatriotic, what with having France and Canada being represented in the same movie. Because we hate France and Canada.
POINT FOUR: ANGELINA JOLIE LOOKS AT A LOT OF STUFF, BUT NEVER EXPLAINS WHY SHE'S LOOKING AT IT.
Five minute close-up of someone's eye ball...five minute close-up of lace doilies...five minute close-up of my ass. None of this has any relevance to anything. Then the one thing she should have been paying attention to, Ethan Hawke's bruised knuckles, gets completely ignored. Apparently they don't make watching an episode of CSI or Law and Order a requirement at FBI school, otherwise she'd know that bruised knuckles mean struggle, usually with said knuckles dealing out the aforementioned struggle, hence making Ethan Hawke the killer. I know, there's more involved with crime solving. But we're not talking about a documentary.
POINT FIVE: THE FUNNY, SELF-DEPRECATING COP IS A TOTAL RED-SHIRT. ESPECIALLY WHEN HE VOLUNTEERS TO GO ON AN UNASSUMING MISSION ALONE.
Duval, we hardly knew ye.
POINT SIX: YOU CAN ALWAYS TELL THE TYPE OF MAN YOU'RE SEEING BY THE SEX: ROMANTIC = GOOD GUY; SLOPPY AND VIOLENT ON TOP OF FURNITURE NOT MEANT TO SUPPORT SEX WITH CLOTHES ON WHILE DOOR TO HOTEL HALLWAY WIDE OPEN = KILLER.
Seriously. They left the door open! That's at least a sign that he likes to kick puppies.
POINT SEVEN: STRONG, INTELLIGENT, ICY PROFESSIONAL WOMEN GET FUCKED, PHYSICALLY AND MENTALLY.
What better way to punish a woman than to allow one moment of sexual happiness, followed by knowing the guy was the killer you've long sought. Cat, meet mouse.
POINT EIGHT: DUDE HAD A TWIN WHO DIED IN AN ACCIDENT.
Angelina Jolie thought this scarred the young man for life. I thought the dude killed him. I need a badge and a gun, I'm unstoppable!!!
POINT NINE: IT MAY SEEN LIKE A GOOD IDEA TO TROT OUT THE BIG NAME STAR NEAR THE END TO THROW THE AUDIENCE OFF THE TRAIL OF THE REAL KILLER, BUT INSTEAD IT'S MY BIGGEST PET PEEVE--KILLER DUDE THROWN IN NEAR THE END.
I HATE when the killer is someone no one mentions at all during the movie, like, "OH MY GOD, it was ol' hermit Wilson who lives in the hovel that we never even thought to mention until now because even though the original script had Michael Douglas's character as the killer his agent negotiated for a contract that forbid him to play any character that might reflect negatively on his real life persona so we had to re-write the script at the last minute and throw in this character that heretofore didn't exist." Whatever.
POINT TEN: SIMPSONS DID IT.
The best part of the movie was that Gena Rowlands apparently kept her surviving son locked in the basement, which totally reminded me of the treehouse of horror episode where Bart's a conjoined twin, and Hibbert separates them and Marge and Homer lock the supposedly evil one in the attic, but it turns out he was the nice one and Bart was the evil one. Why is everything reminding me of the Simpsons?
POINT ELEVEN: I DON'T KNOW HOW THIS CONNECTS WITH WHAT'S COME BEFORE, BUT THE END WAS REALLY WEIRD AND STUPID.
So it's seven months after Ethan Hawke escapes capture and Angelina Jolie had supposedly gotten knocked up during her romp with Ethan Hawke and she goes off to the middle of nowhere and gets this farmhouse that's totally uninhabitable and I think she totally told Ethan Hawke that she grew up in this middle of nowhere town earlier in the film and he comes to her house and says it took him a while to find her which was totally stupid because if I'd been him it totally would have been the first place I looked seeing as how there are only like a couple hundred people living in the town and they'd totally remember seeing Angelina Jolie buying toilet paper at the local market, because wouldn't you? And that's usually what people do in situations like that, they go back home. But anyway, he comes in and tells her he's been watching her and she's pregnant with twins isn't she, but she's totally not because she's way too small to be seven months pregnant with twins and unless she has a family history of twins she's probably not pregnant with twins because twins are usually passed through the mother. But I'm no scientist so I could be wrong. But it doesn't matter anyway because Ethan Hawke totally stabs her in the stomach saying she can't have his babies, but she's not really pregnant!!! It was a fake belly!!! So she stabs him back and kills him, telling him everything he saw she wanted him to see and he smiles an enigmatic smile before he dies which I think is supposed to mean that he's impressed by how she outfoxed him. Then she calls Tcheky and tells him it's all over. At which point Ethan Hawke totally should have COME BACK TO LIFE AND TRIED TO KILL HER AGAIN!!! But he doesn't. But that would have been cool. Anyway, stabbing a pregnant woman in the stomach is pretty fucked up, especially after you just praised her obvious love for the children and her possible ability to raise both of them so that one doesn't kill the other and then go on a sociopathic rampage. But I may be reading too much into it.
POINT TWELVE: MY HUSBAND THOUGHT NAKED ANGELINA JOLIE WAS STUPID AND POINTLESS AND NOT AT ALL TITILLATING AND WAS INSTEAD DISTRACTING AND SILLY.
That should pretty much sum up the movie, and my review.
Tuesday, May 11, 2004
my firest entry--A REVIEW OF VAN HELSING
SPOILERS!!!
Van Helsing would have been an awesome dollar movie. It was laughably bad; I was smiling when I left, but only because it was so ridiculous. For example, here's an exchange my brother Eddy and I had when describing the movie to our mom
Me: "The worst part of the movie--"
Eddy: "You mean there's one part you can single out?"
Me: "The part of the film that betrayed all that is good and holy was when Hugh Jackman turned back into a human from being a werewolf and his pants were still on."
Yes, Van Helsing is bitten by a werewolf. You pretty much know going in that Dracula can only be killed by a werewolf, which is stupid because if he can be killed like that, then how the hell does Van Helsing's descendant Abraham go after him in the book? But ignoring that, I doubt I'm spoiling anything for you because you literally know like 15 minutes into the movie that's what痴 going to happen, because one of the main characters, who is also a vampire hunter, gets bitten and I was for a second thinking he was going to kill Dracula but then I realized I was watching a Hollywood movie and the death of Dracula surely had to involve that scene in the trailer where Hugh Jackman takes his shirt off, and sure enough it does. But not his pants. Which I've already mentioned is a crime.
So anyway, the movie, which already requires quite a suspension of disbelief, then asks us to remove whatever brains we may have left and drop them into our popcorn tubs. Kate Beckinsdale, who has survived all manner of falling from three story buildings, falling from tall trees and hitting very large branches on the way down, being dropped from great heights by flying vampires, etc, etc, etc, dies when Hugh Jackman's werewolf sits on her.
He sits on her.
Let me stress this again. He sits on her, and he kills her. But she of course in her last dying act gives him the werewolf antidote, so he's fine, and also still wearing his pants. And he just killed the love of his life that he knew for all of like two days by sitting on her. Maybe he farted on her, too; they don't really get into it.
So then Eddy and I, after I snort, turn to each other and exclaim, OH NO THEY ARE SO NOT GOING THERE!!! But then they do, for the next scene spliced into the movie is the end of return of the jedi. Hugh Jackman is cremating Darth Vader next to the beautiful sea, because during the one solitary moment of calm in the whole film Vader for absolutely no reason whatsoever very gravely told Hugh she'd never been to the sea, what with fighting Dracula and all that. Apparently though she and her family weren't REALLY fighting Dracula because he only killed like one or two people a month. Or so the town mortician said. BUT ANYWHOO, Hugh cremates Kate, and then Eddy and I again turn to one another and exclaim, OH MY GOD THEY ARE SO NOT ALSO GOING TO GO THERE TOO, knowing full well they were, and sure enough Vader appears among the clouds with Yoda and Ben and her whole family who are all in Heaven having unsuccessfully battled Dracula even though he apparently wasn't that bad of a guy. What with only killing two people a month.
So Eddy and I left the theater, giggling insanely and saying LUKE, SIMBA, THIS IS CNN over and over and over. Maybe I'm getting old; maybe wasting $8.50 a ticket is getting to be too much. GO SEE PUNISHER instead. That movie KICKS ASS.
--kelmeister
(on edit: a friend writes, "that movie made 52 million opening wknd!! how is that possible?" my only answer: america's on crack. and they all thought they'd see hugh jackman without pants. at least, that's what i thought, and you know how that turned out.)
Van Helsing would have been an awesome dollar movie. It was laughably bad; I was smiling when I left, but only because it was so ridiculous. For example, here's an exchange my brother Eddy and I had when describing the movie to our mom
Me: "The worst part of the movie--"
Eddy: "You mean there's one part you can single out?"
Me: "The part of the film that betrayed all that is good and holy was when Hugh Jackman turned back into a human from being a werewolf and his pants were still on."
Yes, Van Helsing is bitten by a werewolf. You pretty much know going in that Dracula can only be killed by a werewolf, which is stupid because if he can be killed like that, then how the hell does Van Helsing's descendant Abraham go after him in the book? But ignoring that, I doubt I'm spoiling anything for you because you literally know like 15 minutes into the movie that's what痴 going to happen, because one of the main characters, who is also a vampire hunter, gets bitten and I was for a second thinking he was going to kill Dracula but then I realized I was watching a Hollywood movie and the death of Dracula surely had to involve that scene in the trailer where Hugh Jackman takes his shirt off, and sure enough it does. But not his pants. Which I've already mentioned is a crime.
So anyway, the movie, which already requires quite a suspension of disbelief, then asks us to remove whatever brains we may have left and drop them into our popcorn tubs. Kate Beckinsdale, who has survived all manner of falling from three story buildings, falling from tall trees and hitting very large branches on the way down, being dropped from great heights by flying vampires, etc, etc, etc, dies when Hugh Jackman's werewolf sits on her.
He sits on her.
Let me stress this again. He sits on her, and he kills her. But she of course in her last dying act gives him the werewolf antidote, so he's fine, and also still wearing his pants. And he just killed the love of his life that he knew for all of like two days by sitting on her. Maybe he farted on her, too; they don't really get into it.
So then Eddy and I, after I snort, turn to each other and exclaim, OH NO THEY ARE SO NOT GOING THERE!!! But then they do, for the next scene spliced into the movie is the end of return of the jedi. Hugh Jackman is cremating Darth Vader next to the beautiful sea, because during the one solitary moment of calm in the whole film Vader for absolutely no reason whatsoever very gravely told Hugh she'd never been to the sea, what with fighting Dracula and all that. Apparently though she and her family weren't REALLY fighting Dracula because he only killed like one or two people a month. Or so the town mortician said. BUT ANYWHOO, Hugh cremates Kate, and then Eddy and I again turn to one another and exclaim, OH MY GOD THEY ARE SO NOT ALSO GOING TO GO THERE TOO, knowing full well they were, and sure enough Vader appears among the clouds with Yoda and Ben and her whole family who are all in Heaven having unsuccessfully battled Dracula even though he apparently wasn't that bad of a guy. What with only killing two people a month.
So Eddy and I left the theater, giggling insanely and saying LUKE, SIMBA, THIS IS CNN over and over and over. Maybe I'm getting old; maybe wasting $8.50 a ticket is getting to be too much. GO SEE PUNISHER instead. That movie KICKS ASS.
--kelmeister
(on edit: a friend writes, "that movie made 52 million opening wknd!! how is that possible?" my only answer: america's on crack. and they all thought they'd see hugh jackman without pants. at least, that's what i thought, and you know how that turned out.)
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