Year Round Jack O' Lanterns

Slugs!

2009-10-09T11:22:00.000-07:00

It's October, so I'm watching horror movies, and nothing but horror movies...with the few exceptions being Halloween-themed stuff. I'll do another post about favorites, but this post is all about the movie Slugs. I just got it from Netflix, and watched it the same day. It's sort of a precious memory from my youth that I finally caught up to. I know I wrote something about being too scared to watch something as a child only to watch it as an adult and be disappointed. This was sort of toeing the line of that idea. I was disappointed, by the lack of exposed breasts, and it wasn't scary at all, but it was also a really good time. Camp to the extreme.

What was my favorite part? It might be the fact that verisimilitude was achieved by intercutting footage of real slugs along with the footage of the fake "stage slugs". The stage slugs tended to look at a lot like feces. So when the terror on screen hits you, it's not scary. You're just looking at a person covered in fake blood and glued on pieces of poop. But I think my favorite part was that the movie tried very hard to paint the portrait of a small town being besieged by killer slugs, yet the savior and go-to know-it-all was a British scientist who works at the high school. The high school. And he has a fully stocked lab that would be better suited to a college campus. But he's British, so you don't question him because he sounds smarter than you.

On top of all that, the film was a Spanish production. Everyone in the crew was Spanish. Half of the cast were American, while the supporting cast was Spanish. Everyone was dubbed. If you want to make sure that the crappy horror movie that you're planning to watch will be fun, make sure a foreign crew is trying to make their production look like it takes place in small town America. (East coast is the best because then things really feel out of place.) Another good example of foreigners making a movie that takes place in small town east coast America is Pieces. Tagline: You don't have to go to Texas for a Chainsaw massacre. But back to Slugs, which takes place in upstate New York.

A fun thing that sometimes happens when watching a movie is that the opening credits tell you shit you could never have begun to imagine or believed was true. For instance, regarding the movie Slugs, some really terrible movies are actually based on books. Slugs was a fucking book before it was a movie. It was written by Shaun Hutson. After writing Slugs, he also wrote the genre head-turners Relics, Spawn, Victims, Hybrid and a few other novels you see in airports. Someone had to borrow the idea for this movie from a book because they were stuck and had movie-makers block. Then they actually went to the bank and took out a loan so they could buy the rights to the book Slugs. (Here are some other movies based on books that don't seem like they'd be based on books: Who Framed Roger Rabbit, based on Who Censored Roger Rabbit; Dangerous Minds, based on My Posse Don't Do Homework; Die Hard, based on Nothing Lasts Forever; Bryanna Loves Jenna, based on the entire run of Hustler Magazine which is based on the idea of guys loving it when two naked girls get crazy together. Unfortunately, this did not happen in Slugs.)

So the American book, Slugs was bought by some Spanish filmmakers and they made a movie with a British scientist in it. We all know that British people have the world monopoly on legitimizing anything they say, and we also know that anyone foreign also speaks English with a British accent. (i.e. every Nazi in the history of cinema.) Therefore, by the virtue of having a British scientist in the film, Slugs is a great movie filled with scientific facts, one scene of fucking, lots of fake blood with too much red food coloring, and five inch long pieces of poo terrorizing the city of Merton.

And speaking of Merton. Merton has got to be the dorkiest name of a fake town in the history of fake towns. Merton. If Merton was a classmate of yours you'd have given him a dozen wedgies, taped him to his locker and broken his glasses. To illustrate my point of how anticlimactic a town named Merton is, here is the tagline of the book that was created to give your nerves a jangling and make you want to read every page of this fast-paced thriller!

"One female slug can lay one and a half million eggs a year - a fact which holds terrifying consequences for the people of Merton."

Everything about that sentence is fine, and it makes you curious I suppose, until you get t the word Merton. "Wow", you think, "one and a half million eggs a year...creepy". "Terrifying consequences! Sounds exciting!" "Merton?! What the fuck is a Merton?" Then you could care less. "The people of Merton." sounds like the most boring people ever to exist. I don't want to visit Merton's famous twenty year old flea market, or come to town for the annual parade of Mr. Merton who settled it in the late 1800's because no one wanted him to live with them in the nearby settlement of Somewhere Cooler Than Merton.

I guess what I'm trying to say is, please see Slugs. It's really funny and there are boobs in it. Next on the Netflix queue: Mountain of the Cannibal God. Is it a quality production? probably not. Does it involve cannibals who have an unhealthy sexual fixation on star Ursula Andress? Why yes, yes it does.

District 9

2009-09-09T10:21:00.000-07:00

It's hard for me to write about movies like this because the obvious allegory that is provided by this film is easy to comment about. Everyone wants to say something about how this movie is apartheid for aliens. (It is apartheid for aliens.) But when I was watching it I still felt that there was something more to District 9 than it's obvious surface metaphor. Technically speaking it's a triumph. Story-wise I thought it was very solid and compelling.

We'll start with the easy praise: the special effects. I can only think of one word to describe them: seamless. The CGI recalled for me the images created not long ago of a looming Death Star above San Francisco's bay area. The news footage could have been culled directly from some networks' stock footage rolls. The images of the huge alien spaceship hanging above Johanesberg were amazingly realisticl. The integration of new footage-type shots looked authentic. I know we live in an age of very ultra-real movie effects but there's a difference between something seeming to be real and something actually looking like it exists in the world. What this movie lacked was the subconscious sheen that most CGI has. I can almost always tell if something is CGI because there are subtle lighting hints. The CGI is too dark or too light or too shiny or too dull. It's the difference between Jabba the Hutt in Episode I and Jabba the Hutt in Episode VI. One of them is a rubber puppet existing on the set, and the other is a fully CGI creation amidst a sea of CGI creations. Even though the CGI Jabba moves more fluidly, the lethargic puppet seems more realistic because it "feels" visually like a real thing.

I never felt that the CGI in District 9 was CGI. (I mean I knew, but it never took me out of the story.) At one point I actually had to ask myself if there was some puppetry going on that I couldn't discern. [**mini spoiler**] At one point the main character, Wikus, ingests a fluid that starts to turn his body into an alien. It's hard to see a difference between the prosthetic arm that he wears and the CGI arms of the CGI aliens populating the movie. [**end mini spoiler**].

Here's a short synopsis of the story: An alien spaceship appears over the city of Johanesberg, South Africa and there are a lot of malnourished, injured aliens on board. People bring them down to earth and set up a ghetto of sorts for the million+ aliens to live in. Twenty years go by and no one has any idea what these aliens are doing here or why they can't go home. They're just living on earth and growing in numbers. People become hostile towards the aliens and want them gone. A relocation camp is set up for the aliens and a group of people go about getting the aliens to move to the new location. That's about it for basic premise. The head relocation chief, Wikus, ends up in the middle of the alien - human dispute and learns the hard way how the aliens are living and what the humans' views towards them really are. (The aliens have weaponry that is DNA-enabled, so humans can't use it, but they're constantly trying to figure out a way.)

What makes this story work and what makes the allegory work is that when you see the aliens living in these decrepit conditions you think to yourself, "Whatever, they are just creatures and I'm not moved by this imagery". I remember watching a scene of news footage with aliens rooting around in the garbage for scraps of edible material, fighting with each other for bits and pieces of trash, and I realized that what I was watching was no different than what a lot of people on this planet go through daily. I wasn't watching someone's idea of poverty, I was watching an example of reality. Maybe that means I'm slower than most, but it impressed me and disturbed me to figure out that if I had no problem seeing the aliens in these conditions then I had no problem seeing the "others" in the world in these conditions. Also, when I became bothered by seeing the aliens in those drab environments fighting for trash, I was also being bothered that this exact same thing was occurring on my planet.

[**SPOILER**]

The part of this movie that worked most for me was the very end, and I'm going to give it away right now. The protagonist, Wikus, fully turns into an alien. Visually he becomes no different than any other alien in the film. From that standpoint no human can distinguish him from the race of creatures they find despicable. Mentally, he is the same person that he was before, albeit without his innocence. He still yearns for his wife and his life the way it used to be. It proves a point: I can never know what someone in that position is thinking. They don't look like me, but we could be very much alike. I'll always be hung up on our differences, therefore neglecting to focus on our similarities. It seems obvious to say it, but since a story like this has never been told with the help of extra terrestrials as the device, it seems fresh and new to me.

[**END SPOILER**]

I also loved this movie because it was visceral and gritty. The special effects were seamless, as I've said, but they were also gory. I enjoyed the horror aspects to the story - laser guns that explode people's heads, mutating alien arms growing out of people, etc. District 9 was a great film from a sci-fi and from a political viewpoint. I feel I learned a lot about the politics of the South African region and about apartheid specifically. I was also treated to a great story with a vague ending that I can think about and determine for myself in any way I choose. The story is left open. You don't know if promises made will become promises kept, and the future of some characters is uncertain, but that's how it is right now in our lives with people in refugee camps and with the battles that are raging in these war-torn regions of the world. Their stories haven't ended yet, so it's fitting that the story in District 9 is left unfinished as well.

Freaky Robotic Hand

2009-08-31T09:17:00.000-07:00

This is video of a robot hand made by researchers in Japan. This hand can do many things, very fast, and very accurately. The hand can dribble a ball on the table, pick up a grain of rice with tweezers, throw a ball, twirl a pen and toss something to itself and catch it. The video is about 3 minutes long, but really interesting. At least I know that when the zombie apocalypse happens, we'll be safe with robot-defense.

FAIL!

2009-08-22T07:52:00.000-07:00

I just discovered a site, thanks to a friends' Facebook posting, about a site called Fail Blog. It's in the same vein as Awkward Family Photos in that it's a bunch of ridiculous stuff. If you've ever heard of the phrase "Epic Fail", it's an MMO video game term, then you know what this site will be about. The categories for the posts are limitless, but in every post someone has failed at something. For instance, the man with the clear plastic shopping bag over his head that he uses to stand in for safety goggles is labelled "Eye Safety Fail". Get it? Anyhow, here's a link to the site:

Fail Blog

And here are a few choice entries that have made me laugh out loud this morning.

Bus Ride Fail

Parenting Fail

Grocery Outlet Fail

Cardinal Fail

Disneyland Photo Fail

Haunted Mansion!

2009-08-20T08:09:00.000-07:00

Disney's Haunted Mansion is 40 years old today, so to commemorate this, here are a couple fantastic YouTube videos about the my favorite ride in Disney World. (I am really bummed that I missed out on the Nightmare Before Christmas integration for the holiday season.)

Video Game Advertising

2009-08-18T15:22:00.000-07:00

There is a current trend in video game TV advertising that gives a whole new meaning to the word "juxtaposition". Lately we've been getting a lot of violent material in our video games (which I love, but some don't) and the commercials for these games have been set to music that is the complete thematic antithesis of the video game content. Below are some examples. The best and most recent one is the final clip advertising Left 4 Dead. (Left 4 Dead is the most fun and most exhilarating zombie-fighting experience out there.)

Mercenaries 2

Batman Arkham Asylum

Gears of War

Gears of War 2

Fallout 3

Left 4 Dead 2

Halo 3

The music completely downplays what's going on visually and plays with your head a lot. If you didn't realize how important the balance of visuals and sound play when you watch a movie or TV show, now you know. The sound can transform what you're seeing in interesting ways. I love this style of advertising and I hope they continue to keep it up for a while.

Rob Zombie is like golf

2009-08-17T13:23:00.000-07:00

Most of the time Rob Zombie makes some decent stuff, and then all of a sudden out of nowhere, he hits one out of the park. Just like me and golf. About 90% of the time I'm playing poorly enough to want to give up, but then I hit some great drive, and that one shot keeps me going.

This interview with Rob Zombie about the upcoming Halloween 2 is good. He mirrors my feelings about Halloween itself and why it didn't work. I will see Halloween 2 and I will go with optimism in my heart. Of course, I still don't feel he's going to wow me the way he did with The Devil's Rejects, but one can hope.

Here's the interview over at Aint It Cool News.

Two Things I'm Enamored with Today

2009-08-14T10:04:00.000-07:00

Here are two items from the web, both referenced to me by my favorite site for crazy awesome stuff: boingboing.net.

The first is a four minute-long video of the Hubble telescope's Ultra Deep Field. Apparently, in 2004, the guys running the Hubble telescope pointed it out into a black piece of space about the size of a grain of sand, and opened the aperture up for eleven days to take in some light and see if anything could be captured on the CCD. They ended up with the light of thousands of galaxies. It's an intense video that does a great job of illustrating how large the universe is and why we are such a tiny tiny part of it. Hard evidence like this is why people wonder what else is out there.

This next piece is from Bazaar magazine. They did a spread this month of supermodels without makeup. It's a great piece, and it makes me wonder, as I always have, why everyone cakes on the makeup anyway? People look great without it.

Bazaar: Keep It Real

Adaptation, for better or worse

2009-08-12T22:19:00.000-07:00

A comment by a friend of mine in the Harry Potter post I did several days ago made a comment about Shell Cottage, the home of the Bill and Fleur and how the filmmakers had better not leave it out of HP7! So much happens there that I won't spoil for anyone, but Bill and Fleur have to get married first right? Well that part is at the beginning of book 7. But they get married at the Burrow...and there was a huge fire at the Burrow at the beginning of the 6th movie. That fire, along with the whole scene of Ginny and Harry being led out into the middle of nowhere, was fabricated for the movie and did not appear in the book.

Why make up a scene like that with the point being that the bad guys burned down the Burrow? maybe it's because the filmmakers aren't planning on putting the wedding into the seventh movie. Bill and Fleur weren't even in the sixth movie, so chances are they won't be in the seventh movie either. Why would the filmmakers do that? One word: Streamlining.

A movie works very differently than a book. In a book you can take detours and build character relationship in a much more intimate and intricate way than in a movie. It takes hours to read a book, and two hours (roughly) to watch a movie. You cannot possibly put everything from a book into its movie adaptation. It blows because some of the best parts of books are never in the films. Here are some examples:

- Fight Club: Ed Norton's character meets Tyler Durden on a plane in the movie. In the book he meets Tyler when Tyler is making a sun dial in the sand with sticks on a beach while Norton's character is on vacation. Why didn't this appear in the movie? To impress upon the viewers of the film that Ed Norton's character is high strung and in a bad place professionally and psychologically, you can't have him go on vacation to try and unwind. A movie-going audience won't accept his issues is he's on vacation. Plus you can't break u a gritty city movie like Fight Club with some scenes of a lovely beach in the bright sunlight with cool blue water.

- Lord of the Rings: There are two huge issues in this epic, and many more small ones. I'm going to bring up Tom Bombadil and the romance between Aragorn and Arwen. Tom Bombadil is a much loved character from Fellowship of the Ring. Frodo and Sam meet him on their way out of the Shire. Tom is very much a man of the [middle] earth. He is so in touch with nature that he is immune to the One Ring's effects. Therefore he can't be in a movie about how dark and powerful the ring is. In order for the audience to believe that the ring is this terrible thing that is the scourge of Middle Earth and must be destroyed, a character like Tom Bombadil can't exist in the film. If Tom exists, then why not give him the ring?

As to the romance bits, Aragorn does indeed love Arwen in the book and they do get married. However, Arwen's character barely exists in the book. She certainly doesn't do any fighting, nor does she have visions of the future. But a movie has to appeal to as many people as possible. In order to do that you have to give women a reason to go see a movie that is basically about fighting. It may sound sexist, but it's true. So the filmmakers trumped up the romance in order for the film to have a wider appeal.

- Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: I assume that Bill and Fleur will not exist in this movie for much the same reason as Ludo Bagman never existed in the fourth movie and because Winkie was never a character in previous movies either" Streamlining. The filmmakers have already set up their omission of the wedding, and they can have Dobby do his thing in the seventh book anywhere they want. Because of this they don't need to hire actors to play Bill and Fleur nor do they need to ad one more location. I could be wrong, but I think the wedding won't be there. If it is, I don't think they'll make Bill and Fleur big characters.

Of course the seventh book is being made into two films, so they will have about five hours to tell the story instead of just two and a half. We will see.

In closing, adaptation sucks, but is necessary. You have to move things around and create the illusion of cohesion for a film. I've said it before and I'll say it again: A movie is an illusion from start to finish. Everything about a movie is fake. In order to sell the story visually, you must make sure that the audience buys into certain plot points and ideas. To do that some things must be sacrificed or moved around.

In case you were curious...

2009-08-12T10:53:00.001-07:00

The website Mr. Skin, which is an inventory of nude scenes in movies, is 10 years old today and so they have prepared a list of the 100 best nude scenes ever.

It's not a complete list, and of course, they've left out a few favorites, but it's a pretty comprehensive gathering of celebrity T & A. If you wanna take a look, then go ahead. There isn't any nudity at all. You have to pay extra for that at Mr. Skin.

Mr. Skin's Top 100 Nude Scenes

John Hughes

2009-08-07T15:47:00.000-07:00

You may have heard the term "universal" when applied to some movies. It seems like a cheap term derived mostly to market certain movies to as many people as possible, but there is a director who has made movies that I feel are universal. John Hughes' work is a part of me. It's a part of everyone born between 1965 and 1990. Hughes made movies with such funny plots, such endearing and honest characters, and such overall personality that it's hard to think of anyone whose oevre has more reality instilled in it.

John Hughes directed only eight movies. Six of them I could watch anytime, anywhere, as could most people. Of the eight movies Hughes directed, here are my top five: Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Weird Science, Planes, Trains and Automobiles. (Uncle Buck is just slightly less impressive to me than these five, but I still love it.) Is there anyone who can't put themselves into one of these films? There is someone's high school lifestyle approximately personified in at least one of these movies, probably more than one.

More astounding still is that Hughes has done great films from both the female and male perspective. He's captured geeks and jocks, popular girls and nobodies. I don't care how cool you were in high school, you can still identify with Wyatt and Gary in Weird Science. I don't care how popular you were, there is some of you in either Breakfast Club-Molly Ringwald or Sixten Candles-Molly Ringwald. (And speaking of, how perfect is she in these movies? A-plus amazing.)

The only thing that separates these movies from being timeless is their obvious '80's accessories. The cars, clothes and hair all serve to remind us that these stories are actually taking place in a world without cell phones, iPods, ABS brakes or Abercrombie and Fitch. I am put perfectly at ease by a Hughes movie. Going back to the world of the fictional Shermer, Illinois is a comforting thing. (It doesn't always work out for everyone though. See Jay and Silent Bob's issues with Hughes and Shermer in Dogma.)

Some might say these films aren't great because they are full of crude humor, drinking/drug abuse and sex. My answer to those people is that these things are what matter to teens. They are what make up the fabric of teen lives. For better or worse, a teenager's life revolves around sex and drugs and a lot of crude humor. Weird Science is the movie that I like best. I love the ultra-sexy Kelly LeBrock and I really enjoy watching the guys try to impress everyone and be popular. So many kids pine for popularity. The point of a lot of these movies, and I've found this to be true in my life as well, is that outside of school, outside of the cliques, the kids are all very eager to meet on common ground. I remember, just as many of you do, being cool with someone all summer, but losing that friendship when school started. Or being able to say "hello" to someone only if no one else was around them.

John Hughes was an amazing personality. I don't know him personally of course, and maybe he was just existing in the past and trying to make sense of his youth as a jock or geek. In any event he made movies that have lives of their own. He created characters who make you laugh and cry. His characters were ones you empathized with. You don't just watch a John Hughes movie, you part of it is in you and there will always be a draw to his films for that reason.

Not to leave anything out, but John Hughes also wrote a lot of great films. In addition to all the movie he directed, Hughes also wrote The Great Outdoors, Home Alone (1-4), the first three Lampoon Vacation films and Mr. Mom. (They're all worth checking out...except Home alone 3 and 4.)

The only film that has come out lately that reminds me of the magic of a John hughes movie is Can't hardly Wait. The people that made that movie did their hughes homework and I really enjoy the movie. It's like an updated version of Sixteen Candles from the opposite side of the gender divide. Go watch a John Hughes movie ASAP. (I watched Sixteen Candles this afternoon.)

I'm officially weirded out

2009-08-07T13:04:00.000-07:00

Over at boingboing.net they've posted a link to a blurb about a 3,000 year old Egyptian statue that just happens to look EXACTLY like Michael Jackson. I can't add anything to this.

3,000 year old Jackson bust

Harry Potter and the lack of a real plot

2009-07-31T12:50:00.000-07:00

I know I've taken a lot of time off, and I'm really sorry. But since no one's been reading my blog anyway, I think it's safe to say, no one needs this apology.

I am now living in beautiful and (sometimes) sunny Colorado. Things here are great, except for the whole no job thing and the whole no money because of no job thing. It still beats Ithaca. Sorry, Ithacans.

Being unemployed means a couple things: sleeping in, watching moves, not really being able to fully enjoy either. Sure I've got a lot of free time, but when you're just waiting for word on a job, you can't really relax to the fullest, and therefore, all the great things that you'd be enjoying on a regular day off are eclipsed by your longing to not actually have a day off.

But this blog is about movies, right? Well I've watched a few recently, so here we go with some brief comments about one of them.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. It was really dark...perfect tone for this one. They cut out all my favorite parts though so that upset me a bit. And really, when you take a huge long book and reduce it down to its bare necessities, you get to see what purpose it serves in the greater scheme of the fictional universe it resides in. Half-Blood Prince doesn't really have a lot of content. Sure, some stuff happens, but it's mostly business as usual. The really dark horrors of the Wizarding world aren't going to come to light until the final (next) book, and the Order has already been set up, so really this book is just a really really long way to tell the reader about Dumbledore's death. There's aren't any big plot revelations. Snape being the Half-Blood Prince doesn't give us any information or progress towards a resolution with the whole Voldemort taking over the world thing. Harry, Ron and Hermione don't gel any more, they don't make any huge revelations or grow much during this installment either.

I'm not saying I didn't enjoy it, but a movie has to have more to it than that. A movie has to be engaging all the way through and basically serve a purpose. While the book became a Voldemort historical guide, the movie omitted all that and we were left with nothing really. Nothing that couldn't have been told in the first two chapters of Deathly Hallows. What did we learn in this book/movie? Horcruxes. That's it. Not really substantial enough if you ask me, which you haven't, but you're reading this anyway.

The book can have all these great asides and give us some more minute character depth, etc, but a movie is forced to cut that out and therefore it feels more empty. Good movie, great way to get a preview of what's coming as far as tone and mood, but other than that, not fulfilling enough.

And just so we're clear, the parts they cut out that I was really excited to see were all the pensieve visits to the Marvolo residence. I would have been happy to see a movie just about Morphin and Marope and Marvolo. That movie would've been rated PG-13, but so much the better. Order of the Phoenix was rated PG-13, and I bet it didn't hurt ticket sales one iota. And why should the Wizarding world become a darker place while the movies get rated lighter? Half-Blood Prince was only PG. I'm not saying that a movie can't really be good if it's PG because Prisoner of Azkabahn, my favorite movie, is only PG. But man does that movie have substance and depth. I guess we can't all be Alfonso Cuaron.

I just wonder how the next two movies will be rated. Right in the first pages of Deathly Hallows is a scene with Voldemort and his followers sitting around the table in Lucious Malfoy's hall watching and talking about a naked woman suspended in mid air upside down being tortured and then killed. Make that PG...I dare you.

They will be able to though. Tomorrow I'll tell you why.

For all you literature fans out there

2009-06-16T07:27:00.000-07:00

Here's a rare treat for you folks who enjoy rare treats, or literature in general: James Joyce reading from Finnegan's Wake. Ever wondered, as I have, how it's supposed to sound? Wonder no longer!

James Joyce reading from Finnegan's Wake.

Since I love weird design

2009-06-15T11:19:00.001-07:00

Threadless.com, the t-shirt company, does design competitions and the winner gets his or her design made into a shirt.

A friend of mine from Toronto submitted his design, so you should check it out and then go to threadless.com/submissions and vote for him. The other designs are ones I voted for that I thought were cool. My friend's design is the first one.

David Carradine

2009-06-09T07:22:00.000-07:00

David Carradine started his acting career in 1963, and according to imdb.com has acted in 221 shows/movies/whatever. But after going through that entire list, I found out that there have only been three movies in which I've seen Carradine perform. It's a testament to his greatness that even though I've only seen him in three movies, I still know what a legend he was. (Yes that's right, I've never seen an episode of "Kung Fu", which is what he's most famous for.)

Having only seen three of his 221 various on screen performances makes writing this article about him a lot easier. The three movies I know David Carradine from are: Kill Bill (1 and 2), Circle of Iron and Death Race 2000 (1975). All of those movies are a lot of fun, especially if you're a geeky movie dork like myself. Death Race 2000 is a Roger Corman film from the height of the Corman era of film making, so it's campy and a riot. In Death Race 2000 Carradine co-stars with Sylvester Stallone (before Rocky), and the guy who plays the evil sensei from the Cobra Kai dojo in The Karate Kid. (Oh alright, his name is Martin Kove.)

In Death Race 2000, Carradine plays Frankenstein, the winningest racer on the circuit. The film takes place in the future where everyone in America loves to watch Death Race in which racers drive from point A to point B and try to run over everyone in their path as well as kill the other racers. The more infirm or young the victims along the way, the more points are earned. Frankenstein is the biggest baddest racer ever, but in a nice twist he has gotten tired of the race and what it stands for politically, so he plots to use his fame and success to kill the president of the united states. I'll only say that the movie has a happy ending, whatever that means. If you like a nice solid B movie with some T & A and violence thrown together with some dark comedic elements, you should rent Death Race 2000 right away.

Here's what Carradine had to say to The A.V. Club about Death Race 2000:
"I had just walked off Kung Fu. Kung Fu was never cancelled; I just left. I decided I had enough of it, and I thought I should do a movie right away, because I think when you leave a television series, it's important that you establish the fact that you're a movie actor really quickly, or you might never get that chance. So this Death Race 2000 thing came up, and the other thing I wanted to do was get rid of the image of the character I play on Kung Fu. And this character Frankenstein, who runs over people, would definitely do that. So I took the movie, and we shot it in three weeks. I had a lot of trouble with Paul Bartel, the director—I almost got fired off the picture at one point before we actually started shooting. We had a very difficult time choosing who was going to play my navigator, and we finally got Simone Griffeth, who was the most perfectly constructed human being I have ever had the opportunity to hang out with naked. That was kind of interesting. And we shot it in three weeks. The whole picture was shot in the hills of Los Angeles, even though it's supposed to be a cross-country race. And we shot the whole picture for $350,000. It was raining all the time, which you actually can't see, but it was always drizzling, which made some of the turns in our racecars a little scary with the wet roads. I had 9.3 percent of the producer's gross after break-even, which I didn't think would be worth anything on a little movie made in three weeks, but I made probably close to a million dollars. And I think I've got a lot more coming."

The next film from Carradine that I've seen is Circle of Iron. I really like the philosophy of this movie and the lessons its trying to teach. It goes parallel with "Kung Fu" because both the show "Kung Fu" and the movie Circle of Iron were products of Bruce Lee's imagination. (The original title of the movie as created by Bruce Lee was The Silent Flute.) Originally Bruce Lee was to star in "Kung Fu", as it was his show, but producers didn't think that American audiences would root for and endear to an Asian leading man, so they cast Carradine instead into Lee's vision. The same thing happened with Circle of Iron.

In Circle of Iron there was always supposed to be one man who played four roles, and it was originally intended to be made in 1969. Bruce Lee was supposed to play The Blind Man, The Monkeyman, Death and Changsha, and the protagonist, Cord, was to be played by Steve McQueen. McQueen didn't want to make Lee a star so he offered the four roles to James Colburn. The movie never made it to the light of day. later on, after Bruce Lee's tragic death in 1975, David Carradine acquired the rights to Circle of Iron, cast a friend of his in the lead of Cord and himself played the Blind Man, Monkeyman, Changsha and Death roles. Eli Wallach also co-starred as did Christopher Lee.

Here is the synopsis from imdb.com:
"A young martial artist, Cord the Seeker, competes for and loses the right to go on a quest for the Book of All Knowlege held by a wizard named Zetan, but he goes along the path to seek Zetan anyway. Along the way, he meets strange tests and challenges by enemies and allies - often having difficulty determining which is which."

This could easily become an article about Bruce Lee, but you can't talk about Carradine and not talk a little about Bruce Lee because they had such similar philosophical interests in addition to their martial arts backgrounds. A lot of Lee's ideas are still present in Circle of Iron and although on the surface it looks like a throw-away movie about a guy who fights a lot of people and talks to an almost cliche character of the wandering prescient blind man, there are many great idea to be found at the movie's core. Plus the hair on the guy who plays Cord is a must-see...

Here's what Carradine had to say about playing the different roles in Circle of Iron:
"It helped when they were changing my looks and everything, but really, what's the difference between Changsha, the guy in the desert who never wears a shirt, and The Blind Master? They're both just me. I'm doing a funny little accent as the guy in the desert, and my blowfish routine, where I'm able to expand my chest and look like I've got muscles. And then The Blind Master, you look at this guy and he's just skin and bones, right? He's just as soft as he can be, while the guy in the desert is rippling with muscles. And sometimes I'd play those two characters in a single day. It 's a question of posture, really."

Which brings me to my, as yet, final viewing experience with David Carradine, Kill Bill. Carradine plays Bill, a role originally intended for Warren Beatty. Kill Bill was intended to be one complete movie, but with it's length, the Weinstein's decided to cut it up into two films instead. Carradine isn't even shown in the first segment, he only appears as Bill in the second part. And he's amazing in Vol. 2. What's great about Quentin Tarantino and a film like Kill Bill with a character like Bill played by a guy like Carradine, is that the role of Bill feels almost like a culmination of all the major cult roles Carradine had played beforehand. Bill is a fighter, a philosopher and an all-around awesome badass guy. You want to pound shots of tequila with him or spar or go for a walk and talk about random meaningless shit. And yet he's the main villain at the same time that he's being so magnetic.

Bill could be Caine from "Kung Fu", he could be a reincarnation of the Blind Man from Circle of Iron, (plus he plays theflute he uses if Circle of Iron too), but he's as hard and tough as both of them put together along with Cole Younger from The Long Riders. It's a brilliant role. There's not much more to say about it. As a bit of trivia however, the yellow jumpsuit that Uma Thurman wears in Vol. 1 is the same as the one Bruce Lee wore in Game of Death, the film he died shooting. I told you Lee and Carradine go together.

Here are Carradine's thoughts on Kill Bill:
"Kill Bill was, what can I say, just an incredible experience. Quentin [Tarantino] is more fun than a barrel of monkeys. Actually, he is a barrel of monkeys. And he's just a great filmmaker, there's no doubt about that. He's a huge party guy, but making the movie, it's strictly business. Very serious about what he does. And he knows more about movies than anybody I've ever met. It was just an incredible joy working with him, and with Uma Thurman. Most of my stuff, I worked with Uma and Michael Madsen and that was about it, but I hung out with everybody, and we trained together for three months. Five days a week, eight hours a day for three months. I think that's more than you'd do for the Olympics. Can you imagine? We're talking about Uma Thurman, Daryl Hannah, Lucy Liu, I think a couple other ladies, and they're all in sweats or trunks or something, working out, and I get to do that with them. Eight hours a day, five days a week, for three months. That was almost better than making the movie."

How to waste time when you're forced to sit in front of a computer

2009-06-05T09:33:00.000-07:00

I learn a lot of stuff during a day at work. I have a select core of websites that I visit every day to get the "important" stuff, and then if I really honestly have no work to do, I dick around on the internet. Speaking of dicking around on the internet, here's a great site:

superdickery.com

Go there and click on GALLERIES and start perusing all the myriad comic book covers that have Superman or Batman being a complete dick to someone else for no good reason. You will be laughing out loud shortly.

And, because I know you care about my habits, here are the sites I visit daily upon sitting down in front of my computer:

Yahoo mail
Gmail
bloody-disgusting.com
horror-movies.ca
aintitcool.com
slashfilm.com
twitchfilm.net
boingboing.net
avclub.com
seriouswheels.com
gamespot.com
mobygames.com
comics.com
menagea3.net (really fantastic web comic...hilarious but sometimes NSFW)
licd.com

Then I can begin my day. (Facebook is also in there somewhere...as well as this blog.)

When I hit up all those sites and there's still nothing else to do, I try to find things to watch. Here are some great places to watch cool stuff:

boreme.com
hulu.com
fearnet.com
youtube.com (obviously)

Free movies are great, and free movies that aren't censored are even better.

I recommend going to fearnet.com to watch one of their free horror movies! I highly recommend making your choice, 976-Evil 2...the sequel to the movie that really didn't need a sequel, 976-Evil. (I'm pretty sure you don't need to see the original in order to follow the uber-twisty plot of the sequel.) Here's the fantastic plot summary used to draw you in to watching this shit-fest:

"A hot co-ed learns that her dean is a rotting ghost who uses astral projection to kill people."

Happy time-wasting!

Oh, if you want to watch an actual good horror movie, check out Night of the Creeps, also on fearnet.com.

Robbie the Rabbit

2009-06-03T08:17:00.001-07:00

One of my favorite horror video games of all time is Silent Hill 2. I like Silent Hill 2 because it is the only one I've actually played. Thankfully, I've read a lot of articles online saying that #2 is the best game of the series anyway, so I feel pretty good about that. (I own a copy of Silent Hill 5 but I've not had the chance to play it yet.)

The enemies/villains in the Silent Hill series are creepy and grotesque and really creative and fucked up. My favorite, many people's favorite, is Pyramid Head, or The Red Pyramid. Here is his picture:

He is really cool, and in the movie they make him awesome. This picture is him from the movie. in the games, as far as I know, he never carries around a dead body. He does represent a sexual id of the protagonist though, so he is often doing some really strange, apparently sexual things when you see him. But I digress.

In Silent Hill 3 you go to the abandoned amusement park and you see Robbie the Rabbit, the mascot, sitting slumped on a park bench. He has blood all over his mouth and he's probably dead. From what we know about amusement park mascots we can infer that there is a guy in the costume. Why the blood on the mouth? No idea!

In Silent Hill 4 you are in a room in an apartment building for most of the game. There is a hole in the wall that allows you to see into the room next to you and you can often look in there and check on the woman who lives there. She has a Robbie the Rabbit stuffed animal on her bed. Seems fine, but after you look in her room more than 10-12 times, you see Robbie the Rabbit staring and pointing at you!

But to add some humor as well as increase the creepiness of Robbie, here's a mash-up video of his many appearances in Silent Hill. (Most of the appearances are in Silent Hill: Arcade which is only available in Japan.)

UPDATE: The video I've posted above of Robbie the Rabbit is apparently part of a bunch of clips called The Art of Silent Hill that are on the DVD of Silent Hill the movie...I pakced my DVD so I can't prove this yet, but that's the story.

Interview Project

2009-06-02T07:39:00.000-07:00

David Lynch has completed a project of interviews of random every-day folks. He is posting these interviews on the website, interviewproject.davidlynch.com. You may know David Lynch from some of his movies, Wild at Heart, Mulholland Drive, Dune, Blue Velvet; or you may know him from his television show, Twin Peaks. He's a weird guy, but he's got very interesting ideas and can implement them well.

Yesterday marked the first day of the project, and I intend to watch it through to its completion. I usggest you check it out too because it's interesting and you might enjoy it.

interviewproject.davidlynch.com

Druggachusettes

2009-06-02T07:21:00.000-07:00

By far the most fun I had this morning was perusing this article, from The A.V. Club, about children's shows that seem to have spawned from the minds of drug-addicted creators. Sid and Marty Krofft are here, as well as several other well-remembered Canadian shows.

It was fun looking through the list and remembering shows I had watched back in the '80's, as well as seeing some new stuff I hadn't heard of before.

Have fun!

Welcome to the altered state of Druggachusettes

Too bad this one wasn't included...it's thought of as the scariest children's cartoon of all time and was banned from schools for a while since it caused lots of nightmares. It's obvious to see why, although now it's just impressive and creepy animation.

Nicholas Coppola, I mean Cage

2009-05-28T11:07:00.000-07:00

Nicholas Cage was born a Coppola. He changed his name to get away from the heritage of the family and start his own separate acting career. It worked in his favor because while Francis Ford has had to delve more deeply into his vineyards, Cage has been able to maintain his acting job no matter what movies he stars in. Nicholas Cage stars in terrible movies and good movies, once in a while great movies, but not often. His filmography is all over the map: Raising Arizona, Moonstruck, Vampire's Kiss, Wild At Heart, Con Air, The Rock, 8mm, Leaving Las Vegas, Gone in 60 Seconds, The Wicker Man, Knowing, Lord of War, and now Werner Herzog's Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans. I skipped a bunch of good and bad stuff in there, so feel free to check out imdb.com to see the rest of his peppered career.

I will tell you that Cage has some of the finest lines in recent movie history. "Put the bunny back in the box."; "I'll be taking these Huggies, and whatever cash you got."; "I came here to drink myself to death."; "I'm a chemical super-freak actually, but I still need a gun!"; "How about having sex WHILE boosting cars?".

Now we can add, "What are these fucking iguanas doing on my coffee table?" to the list of great Cage quotes.

Here's the trailer for Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans. It looks like Nicholas Cage at his Cagiest. I'm kinda excited...

The Garden of Eden

2009-05-21T07:14:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine who has her own blog, Scarlet Lily, posted a website called awkwardfamilyphotos.com. It's pretty damn hilarious. Sometimes you feel bad for laughing at the people who obviously are oblivious and can't help it, but mostly you end up dealing with your guilt and laughing your ass off.

This is my favorite. It's like Adam and Eve, but with tattoos, frosted tips and blue jeans. Classy.

Happy Mother's Day!

Samberg and Timberlake...the new dynamic duo

2009-05-10T13:30:00.000-07:00

So this is how we stilmulate the economy!

2009-05-09T18:26:00.000-07:00

Don't watch if you value your sanity

2009-05-08T11:59:00.000-07:00

Some of you may know, but others do now, that I started a second job and have been working 5 nights a week at a local bar in Ithaca called Level B. I'm managing it and have a great staff of crazy fucked up awesome folks. Some of these crazy fucked up awesome folks discovered a YouTube cartoon series called "Salad Fingers". They have started using the voice of Salad Fingers, especially when drinking, and calling everyone else names from the show. It's kinda weird. I couldn't really imagine what kind of video it could be to spark this kind of crazed behavior, until i saw it for myself.

"Salad Fingers" is a strange kind of fucked up mash of eerie weirdness and horror but mostly it's just strange. It's not gross or anything, just really really weird. I had to put the first episode up on the blog for those who are curious. Here you go.

Dan Savage

2009-05-06T12:51:00.000-07:00

I know I'm coping out by just posting videos, but fuck it, they're all good and you need to see them.

Dan Savage is one of my all time favorite people. I read Savage Love every week, and have two of his books. He's posting little videos on his Facebook page and they're great, as you can imagine. Here's one about how many is too many when it comes to sexual partners.

No reason, it's just funny

2009-05-05T12:58:00.000-07:00

Here's a few of my favorite new things that are hilarious. They're not really new, so if you've seen them before, I apologize.

and

and finally the response...

Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen

2009-05-02T10:46:00.001-07:00

Think whatever you want of my arty movie credentials, but this new trailer for Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen gave me goosebumps. It looks f-ing awesome.

This just in...to me...probably everyone else knows already though

2009-05-01T11:37:00.000-07:00

I just read this for the first time today. I'm not sure how old it is, but it's still funny and wry and apt. I also don't know who wrote the thing but it's been attributed to Michael Moore in the past. That's not the case, he didn't write it, but someone did and it's pretty great on a lot of levels.

Open Letter to Dr. Laura Schlesinger

Funny and Insightful

2009-04-28T10:31:00.000-07:00

The following 20 minute video is Kevin Smith talking about his version of a Superman movie that he did for Warner Brothers back in 1998-1999. He talks very humorously and intelligently about the process he had to go through on writing the drafts of his script. In the end Warner Bros. turned Smith down for his version and picked up Tim Burton's version instead...but of course they turned that one down too and picked up J.J. Abrams' version in the end and that is what came to be called Superman Returns. Even with Superman Returns there are numerous versions that were "supposed" to be made and that got discarded for any number of reasons.

Kevin Smith's story of writing a script for Superman is really funny. It's also sad that movies get made this way, because movies often get made by people who don't have a fucking clue what they're making. Oh well.

Sorry...but I'm making amends

2009-04-28T07:05:00.000-07:00

I know I've been really negligent with this blog for the past 10+ days, and I'm sorry. Some of you come here because of some sort of perceived friendship-obligation, some of you come here for the movie opinions/reviews, some of you come here for the weird shit I put up here sometimes.

Today, I am putting up something ultra-weird. Michael Jackson's stuff is going up for auction soon, and Paul Sheer (a.k.a. some guy) went around looking at everything and took a bunch of photos of all the strangest stuff the auction had to offer. It is a collection of mind-blowing craziness. Follow the link to gain a little insight into Michael Jackson. After you're done viewing the stuff he publicly put up for auction, think about what he kept in his private collection that you might never get a chance to see.

Some day the monkeys that take over the planet will unearth a fifty foot tall pewter statue of Michael Jackson riding a dolphin with the face of Michael Jackson. Look at these photos and tell me that's not a possibility.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/paulscheer/sets/72157617373340442/show/with/3478337725/

Lars Von Trier's Anti Christ trailer

2009-04-15T07:56:00.000-07:00

Here's something to make you squirm a bit. It's not gross or explicit, just unnerving.

Lars von Trier's Antichrist - Official Trailer from Zentropa on Vimeo.

And I'm Published

2009-04-07T07:44:00.000-07:00

So, I have my first post up on an official horror website. Go here if you want to read what I have to say about horror fans themselves. My editorial has been titled "What's Wrong with Horror Fans?" You can scroll down to the editorial section, or you can click on that first big picture at the top. Then you can tell me what you think, either on here or on there.

Thanks!

The future is expensive, but at least it's now

2009-04-06T11:14:00.000-07:00

It's official: We are living in a science fiction place. Science fiction has always been lumped together with fantasy, and therefore people often confuse the two. Star Wars: fantasy. 2001: science fiction. Star Wars has no scientific value, so it's fantasy. Science fiction, by definition, is a melding of science and fiction. True science fiction influences and is influenced by technology and real-world scientific achievements.

Here's an interesting article about ten terms that science now uses that were coined by science fiction writers.

And here's the article that compelled me to write this post. 3D HDTV automated surgery. Probably invented by Skynet.

More remake madness

2009-04-06T08:15:00.000-07:00

Here's the new news on the remake front:

- It is going to be rated R. People all of sudden think that this will save the movie and make it great. It'll still blow for all the reasons previously stated.

- Jakie Earle Haley will play Freddy Krueger in the new Nightmare on Elm Street remake. Jakie Earle Haley is an Oscar-nominated actor who did great work in Little Children, and most recently Watchmen (as Rorschach). You might also know him as Kelly from The Bad News Bears (1976). I think he'll be great. He throws himself into his roles and he is an effective actor. In Little Children he played a convicted child molester living with his mother in a neighborhood where his presence was greatly resented. He did a fantastic job and interestingly enough, Freddy Krueger was a child molester before the Elm Street parents burned him alive turning him into the dream stalking slasher we know him as in the many films. Who knew Jackie's Oscar-nominated role would be training him to be the replacement for Robert Englund?

The new Nightmare on Elm Street might have an awesome Freddy, but it might still suck. Time will tell.

Adventureland

2009-04-06T07:27:00.000-07:00

If you want an example of how differently a movie can be in its full form from how it is advertised to the public, watch the trailer for Adventureland, and then go see the movie. Hollywood tends to run on a theory of sure-things. If a director makes a movie that does very well, their follow-up film is usually advertised as being just like their first effort. In the case of Adventureland, the director, Greg Mottola, had previously directed Superbad, so of course Adventureland, which has a few comedic moments, was billed as being the next Superbad. It is not the next Superbad. Adventureland exists on its own and is an efective drama with some funny parts, not a comedy with heart, like Superbad.

(Funny things happen to you when you go into a movie with focused expectations. The same thing happened with Fargo. Fargo got billed as this murder-mystery-comedy. It's not. It has serious moments of pain and violence. It is about the kidnapping of a woman who's husband owes money and is blackmailing his father-in-law. You sit down ready to laugh your ass off, and then you're struck dumb by all the serious plot elements that keep cropping up. I hated Fargo when I first saw it. Now, having seen almost all of the Coen brothers' films, I know how to watch it.)

Adventureland has college grads having to reevaluate their futures because of new financial problems in the family, intelligent literature majors working menial jobs and dealing with being smarter than all the people they "serve", drugs and alcohol (surprise, surprise!) being used as an outlet for angst, etc. It's a serious movie dealing with the serious problems of serious people who are very average in most respects.

The title refers to the theme park where the main cast is employed, but it's also a hint that working there isn't going to leave you unchanged. The main character, James (Jesse Eisenberg), is on his way to Europe with friends and then to Columbia grad school for journalism. His father gets demoted at his job and money gets tight forcing James to scrap his Europe plans and take a summer job at the titular park. Instead of spending the summer away from his friends, he makes new ones and learns a lot. It sounds trite, but it doesn't play out that way. Plus his summer's adventures lead him on to a very different adventure of his own when summer ends.

There's a lot going on in this movie and it's a great slice-of-life flick. There are a lot of characters that you end up feeling different things for. Much like if you had worked at Adventureland for a summer, you would know some people and not others, you would have ups and downs. The movie is detailed and has some great tension between characters leading to a "happy" ending but not a story-book one. There aren't villains or heroes, just people being different the way people are from one another. I'm sorry that this movie is advertised as being something it's not because people will think it's an unfunny comedy, and not a great dramatic piece of 80's nostalgia.

New Cool Stuff

2009-04-03T08:51:00.001-07:00

I discovered this web comic yesterday. It's called Cyanide + Happiness. It's weird, but sometimes it's really funny. Here's one from a few weeks back.

Cyanide & Happiness @ Explosm.net

There's not much I can do about its size, so click on it to be taken to the site where you can see it completely.

In movie news...

2009-04-02T07:22:00.000-07:00

Fox decided to "save" itself some effort and money by releasing rental copies of movies. These so-called "rental copies" would have no special features, just the movie on a disc. I tried really hard but I don't see the point of this venture. I have just as much right to rent a disc to check out the quality/depth of the special features as I do the movie itself.

I thought I'd have to wait a few years before an ugly side reared up and showed Fox how stupid it was, but I only had to a wait a couple days: On Tuesday, Slumdog Millionaire came out on DVD. Guess what? About half of the DVDs that went to stores to be bought for home viewing were rental copies so they didn't have any of the extras on them at all. Way to go Douchebags At Fox.

In other kind of shitty movie news, Fox has decided not to eat the cost of 3D glasses for Ice Age 3. This means that theaters will have to pay for the glasses themselves, or charge you for them when you go buy your $10 movie ticket. I predict that many theaters will simply choose not to show the movie in 3D.

From The A.V. Club.

Coolest thing this week

2009-04-02T07:19:00.000-07:00

George Lucas finally got the ball rolling on Star Wars beach and pool toys! Now we can have inflatable Death Star beach balls and X-Wing kites!

From boingboing.net...on Star Wars beach/pool toys.

Now if we can just get Lucas to sign off on this little item...I'd be first in line.

Who in their right mind wouldn't want a Jabba the Hutt beanbag chair? No one I know, that's who.

Hmmm, sex

2009-04-02T07:16:00.000-07:00

Best quote of all time, combined with the best comment on sex of all time, combined with the most accurate description of all time:

"Isn't sex, like, fundamentally, a positive? Like, get laid, high five, as you were, etc." - Susannah Breslin

You can read her whole blog posting here. I was just struck by those two sentences.

The Devil Hates Dancing

2009-03-31T12:31:00.000-07:00

If you thought Save the Last Dance, Step Up 2: The Streets or Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo were far too pagan for your tastes, the good Christian people at Uplifting Entertainment have provided you with a God-friendly alternative.

C Me Dance is a story about a teenager who loves ballet, but has a terminal illness and is being stalked by the devil, presumably because she's a great dancer and the Devil doesn't like that. She's a Job in tights and a tutu. I guess the Devil never got over what Johnny did to him when he went down to Georgia.

If Christians feel that they need their own entertainment, that's their business. But if anything is defying God and making the Devil angry it's the acting in this "movie". Are teenagers do dumb these days that they'll only know a movie is specifically for them if you abbreviate words in the title? It's like the production office texted the title idea to the writers who just left it verbatim. I'm surprised it didn't turn out, C Me Dnce.

PS: I don't think I could've come up with a more perfect picture if I tried.

Remakes redux

2009-03-31T09:49:00.000-07:00

A friend has asked why Hollywood is making a new version of Child's Play. I have no idea. No one knows. The easy answer, the answer that is partially true, is that the production company wants to make money. Kids these days, and young adults too, are very put off by things that are older than say, 2000. Think about it, a kid born in 2000 is almost 10 years old. They don't want to see the "old" movies that we used to watch way back in 1995, or 1990, or 1982...potentially the best year for movies of all time.

So, to make money, studios want to remake things with newer flair and relevancy. Cinephiles, and all lovers of movies, know that a movie is good no matter if it's in black and white, color, sepia, silent or audible. Horror movies are ripe for remakes because there is an automatic audience and the movies are pretty cheap to make. A horror movie-goer will not go see a horror movie based on who is in it, but on what creature/monster is slaughtering people. The monsters all work for scale because they're not real. That's one reason why there aren't many famous people in horror movies: It makes them too expensive. Sure there are exceptions, but there are always exceptions.

A remake is usually made of a movie that did well in the theaters or has sold well in the stores. Child's Play, for instance, is a fairly well-thought of movie series with an easily-recognizable star: Chucky. It would take less time and effort for a studio to make a horror movie where the villain has already been thought up than to hire someone to create a new bad guy. Plus, there is fan fiction all over the place. People have tons of ideas for storylines for characters that already exist. You should check out the Harry Potter fan fic with Snape and Hermione.

So a remake is cheaper, can be made faster and makes them more money because the studio is getting a whole other generation of movie-goers to see something they already created and own the rights too.

But that doesn't make it alright. Most remakes are so terrible and come from stupid board meetings where agents are only thinking of how much money the original has made that they forget that you can't replicate certain experiences.

For fuck's sake, they want to remake The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Why would you remake a movie that has been playing in movie theaters all over the world since the first night it opened? A remake of Total Recall is coming out. Not going to make any money. Part of what makes Total Recall so great is Arnold being 1990's Arnold. You can't replicate that. What are they going to do, put a woman with 4 breasts in it to make it better? Plan 9 From Outer Space: Are things so bad that now you're going to remake a movie that only has value as the worst movie of all time? Just remember, there are a few good remakes out there, but mostly awful ones. Try to view them remakes on their own terms, unless it's impossible. It will be impossible to view the Rocky Horror remake on its own terms, so it'll just suck and I won't go see it.

Here are a few good remakes:

Ocean's 11
Teaxas Chainsaw Massacre (2003)
Assault on Precinct 13
A Fistful of Dollars (remake of Yojimbo)
The Thing (remake of The Thing From Another World)
The Italian Job
Dawn of the Dead
King Kong

Here are some of the most terrible excuses for remakes in the world:

Psycho (1998)
You've Got Mail (remake of The Shop Around the Corner)
The Vanishing (remade and given a happy ending for some reason)
The Ladykillers
Quarantine (remake of [REC], not even a year old when remade)
Get Carter
The Wicker Man
Godzilla
The Amityville Horror (remade to look like a J-Horror flick)

Kindle 2

2009-03-31T09:41:00.000-07:00

Anyone out there ever heard of Amazon's Kindle 2? It is a tablet that displays and can read aloud books that you download from Amazon.com's Kindle library. The device costs $360, but the books you download cost about $10 a piece. There is a library of almost 250,000 books right now, and the Kindle 2 has 3G wireless connectivity so you can download books on the go without a PC.

I also said that the Kindle 2 has the ability to read aloud your new books to you.

Except that it might not have that ability, even though Amazon.com already advertises it as so. The only exception is that Amazon.com has said that if the book's author has not agreed to let their book be fed through the translator, that particular book will not be able to be read aloud.

See the Author's Guild of America thinks that if your Kindle 2 can read your book aloud to you then that's a violation of copyright.

But that's a recent adjustment, and the Kindle 2 had previously shipped with no caveat. Please read this article before buying a Kindle! It makes very good points about why the machine is a waste of your money at this point.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/mar/31/cory-doctorow-kindle

Remakes

2009-03-30T14:51:00.000-07:00

A loyal reader has brought up a tidbit that I wasn't planning on addressing, but now may as well write about. This bit of news is the scheduled remake of Stephen King's It. I get a lot of horror new on a daily basis, so it's hard for me to remember that everydaay, average non-horror watching folks don't know what movies are up on the remake chopping block. Before I take a specific look at It, here are some movies getting remade soon:

Funhouse
Plan 9 From outer Space (considered by many ot be the worst movie of all time)
Attack of the Killer Tomatoes
Monster Squad

Scanners
Escape from New York
Martyrs
The Orphanage
Let the Right One In
The House on Sorority Row
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (again)
A Nightmare on Elm Street
Hellraiser
Faces of Death
Evil Dead

Child's Play
The Birds
Children of the Corn
The Wolfman
Re-Animator
Predator
The Thing
Rocky Horror Picture Show

And that's a partial list! But getting back to It, I'm against the remake because the original mini-series was given the best possible chance to be successful. There's no way that a theatrical version of It could do well. The book is 1000 pages long, and the TV version from 1988 had a running time of 198 minutes. I sat in the movie theater for 191 minutes, but that was a whole different animal. No one that I know of is going to sit in the movie theater for 3 hours+ for a horror movie. Why not? you ask. I'll tell you.

If the movie is good (unlikely), the production company won't be able to make enough money by having a movie that long. In order for a movie to make money everyone has to go see it, not just horror fans. Combine that with the fact that for a 3 hour film there are fewer showings in a day and you're already making less money than on average IF THE MOVIE IS GOOD. If the movie is bad (very likely), then no one's going to watch it anyway, even horror fans. We'll just wait for DVD.

Current word is that Tim Curry is being courted to play Pennywise again, but no official news yet on that front. Here's the major gripe of mine: The televised mini-series sucked. I liked the actors, but the production sucked...big time sucked. It wasn't scary by any standards and didn't do the amazing book any justice at all. The book is terrifying and great. It put Stephen King on a pedestal next to Ray Bradbury for me. They are the two best authors when it comes to writing convincing child characters.

The new movie will blow. The mini-series had all the time in the world to work with the story and it blew. The movie will be shorter and therefore even more snipped and cramped and therefore worse in quality. That's just how I feel.

Subtitle change

2009-03-26T07:27:00.000-07:00

I told you I'd let you know when Magnolia commented on their subtitle changes for Let the Right One In. They have commented.

“We've been made aware that there are several fans that don't like the version of the subtitles on the DVD/BR. We had an alternate translation that we went with. Obviously a lot of fans thought we should have stuck with the original theatrical version. We are listening to the fans feedback, and going forward we will be manufacturing the discs with the subtitles from the theatrical version.”

Fantastic, unless you already bought it. But, sometimes waiting for a little bit works out in your favor.

Fun/Serious Stuff

2009-03-26T07:09:00.000-07:00

Sometimes, when I see something that I want to rally behind a little bit, I get pseudo-political on this blog and try to get you guys aware of some stuff you might not know about. Boingboing.net, a favorite site of mine for lots of reasons, has been following closely the movements of the British government as it takes steps to "protect" its citizens from terrorists. The British government is doing everything from creating networks of CCTV cameras in large cities to arresting people for taking pictures of buildings or manhole covers.

The other day a couple of posters came out prodding citizens to report any suspicious activity in their neighborhoods to the police. Does this sound like a government-run neighborhood watch? Yes. Might that be a nice idea? Sure. But really, what's going to happen, as it always does, is that certain people will start reporting all sorts of crazy things, and nosing around in other people's business looking for "clues". Also, the tighter the laws get, the more restless people get. I can't believe we haven't figured this out right now. If the terrorists win by making people change their lifestyles, then terrorism has won out in London. Muse on this old adage if you will: Locks only keep honest people out. I've put that in this blog before, but it's true for so many different forms of control and censorship. I don't care if I overuse it, it's an awesome statement.

Anyhow, Cory Doctorow over at boingboing.net called for people to submit Photoshopped ads poking fun at the anti-terrorism posters up in London the other day. So I submitted one. It's the fourth poster down. The one with the muppet.

You can see the posting here.

As serious as the over-tightening of British laws is, I'm still really excited to have something I did postedon a website I visit every day. It's so cool!

The original posters can be found here.

WTF?!

2009-03-24T07:38:00.000-07:00

A movie that a lot of horror fans, and increasingly a lot of movie fans, have been routing for, and positively responding to, is Let the Right One In, a Swedish vampire film from 2008. If you live in Ithaca, NY, as I do, you could have seen it at Cinemapolis [- The Movie State]. The DVD came out last week with a major flaw. I wanted to buy it, but wanted to hold off for a bit...and I'm sure glad I did.

According to this article at Icons of Fright, the subtitles are all wrong. When I say "wrong", I mean abridged, elided, shortened and mangled. A lot of the tone and humor of the original script are lost in this mishap. No one from Magnolia DVD has made a statement, but when they do, I'll post a follow-up.

I know that not many out there will care, but it brings up a valid point: Who can you trust to correctly relay the spoken-language information from the screen to the audience? I don't speak fluently in any language other than English, so I have to rely on the translator to give me the most accurate subtitles they can. Just by listening to the people on screen talking as I read along I know that it's not always word-for-word, but there has to be an effort made.

Time to show off a bit

2009-03-24T07:24:00.000-07:00

Today Yahoo! Movies posted an article featuring the 100 Movies to See Before You Die.

I would post the complete list, but that would take up a ton of room, and you can just click the link above and see for yourself. Instead I'll give you guys a chance to give me a hard time, and post the movies I haven't seen. This way you can tell me, via the comments section, why I'm such a loser or why I'm so negligent.

A Hard Days Night (1964)
The African Queen (1952)
All About Eve (1950)
The Battle of Algiers (1967)
Grand Illusion (1938)
In the Mood for Love (2001)
It Happened One Night (1934)
The Lady Eve (1941)
Network (1976)
Paths of Glory (1958)
Princess Mononoke (1999)
Rear Window (1954)
Roman Holiday (1953)
Some Like It Hot (1959)
Vertigo (1958)
Wings of Desire (1988)
The World of Apu (1959)

So that brings my total of seen movies to 83...not bad. And some of these I've seen parts of, just not the whole thing beginning-to-end.

My favorite thing of the week

2009-03-24T07:19:00.001-07:00

Good things come in small packages

2009-03-23T12:43:00.000-07:00

A potentially interesting movie is coming out on March 27th. The film in question is The Sinful Dwarf. I have no idea if this movie is supposed to be any good or not, but it sure looks like it could be a hell of a lot of fun. A user on imdb.com gave The Sinful Dwarf a 6 out of 10 and said it was a good time.

The film is from Denmark with the completely non-famous Torbin Bille playing "Olaf, the dwarf". I like that the official credits make sure you know that he's the dwarf. We need that kind of clarity in films these days. According to Bille's imdb.com bibliography, he passed away in 1993. That's too bad because the title alone warrants a remake. Here's a proposal for an unmakeable movie: The Sinful Dwarf 2, starring Torbin Bille and Herve Villechaize as warring brothers trying to duke it out in the cutthroat world of 3 ft. tall gigolos. (Did I mention that the plot of The Sinful Dwarf revolves around the titular sinful dwarf kidnapping teenage girls and keeping them in his attic? "Gigolos" just seem like the perfect theme for a sequel.)

Here's the trailer. This week's catchphrase for me might have to be "dwarfsploitation". The tagline, as you can see from the poster above, is: The mother of all dwarfsploitation films. Can you be the best of something for which there is no competition? (I also want to mention that at no time did the word "dwarfsploitation" get noticed by the computer as being misspelled.)

You'll all find some words on this movie in this spot in early April.

When cool things happen to people who feel sometimes like they exist in a universe of their own belonging

2009-03-23T09:56:00.000-07:00

Don't be thrown by my attempt at humor in the title of this post. I am not "going Emo" or anything like that. I'll keep my body tattoo-free and black-hair-dye-free. It's just that when you like things that other people can't stomach, sometimes that part of you who enjoys horror movies feels just a little lonely...

And then you submit the contents of your blog to a horror website that you visit daily because said site is looking for new writers and they write you back and tell you that they like your stuff and that your piece on Last House on the Left was "great"! Even if I never hear from them again, I'm in an elated state from that compliment.

So I guess this means I need to actually watch the last hour of Frontier(s) and get that review up, and then try to find time between my two jobs to watch more horror...the girlfriend is going to be ecstatic. Oh, this means more horror video games too. And more horror books. I think maybe my next read (after The Stand which is currently on the nightstand) will be Deathtroopers! Or maybe something sooner, since that one comes out in October...

If you are interested in where I'm applying to write, go to horror-movies.ca.

Whither thou knowest

2009-03-23T08:16:00.000-07:00

I saw Knowing on Sunday afternoon. It's the kind of movie where you find yourself wondering how you got to be watching a movie like this in the first place. The ending, without giving anything away, is crazy and surreal and not needed, but right. Also, the movie kind of blows, also it's kind of awesome. Confused? There's no knowing how you'll feel about it until you go see it. It's definitely not time wasted.

Nicholas Cage is getting eerily competent at playing characters who are trying to act normal but aren't coming off as normal. To illustrate my point, let me give you some trivia from The Shining: Jack Nicholson wasn't the top choice for the role of Jack Torrence. Many people involved with the film wanted Jon Voight to play Torrence. The issue with Nicholson was that he seemed so crazy all the time anyway, that most movie-goers wouldn't understand or comprehend his characters' gradual slipping into insanity. A valid point if you ask me, although I love The Shining, and Nicholson is great in it. (Moral: Stanley Kubrick knows what he's doing, don't fuck with his vision.)

See, that picture above is just plain-old-normal-everyday Jack Nicholson. And so it is these days with Nicholas Cage. He starts out being a normal single father and is supposed to end up crazed and frantic...except he seems about to snap the entire way through the movie so there's no transition. Cage discovers this secret code in a page full of "random" numbers, and he does it so quickly that it's like he's been waiting for this opportunity for his whole life. (Plus he does it while drunk, so that scene belies the theme of the film and supports the argument posed by one supporting character against numerology: You see what you want to see.)

Aside from that, when Cage gets to the parts where he is supposed to be teetering on the edge of reason, he is great. It goes without saying that Nicholson's best scene in The Shining is a tie between his reveal to Wendy that he is crazy (all work and no play makes jack a dull boy) and his axing of the bathroom door. Likewise with Cage, his best scenes are towards the end when his natural weirdness parallels his characters', and he becomes a method actor. (PS: this picture below is something Cage does a lot of in Knowing.)

It's hard to critique a movie [that is about how everything is tied in to everything else showing a thread of congruity throughout our seemingly random lives] without ruining some of the surprises, so I won't. I'll tell you that the film is scary, tense, action-packed, weird, scary again, sad and of course, eclectic. But I want to reiterate that it's not a bad movie, and I enjoyed it basically, and it's not a waste of your time. The plane crash alone brings this movie from a C+ to a B-. The subway car crash is even more amazing. It's not bloody, but my GF had to turn her head all the same. You just have to see it to believe it.

The end is...odd. Like I said before, you'll sit in the theater and wonder how in the hell the movie you started with ended up with you watching this. That's the only way to describe it. My final thought on this movie is that it's better than 80% of the other movies out right now. You won't feel gypped at the very least. Here's the trailer.

Those People

2009-03-19T14:18:00.000-07:00

I really admire people who are on one track. Sports nuts, insane hobbyists, single-track folk who just want to be immersed in their one thing all the time. I cannot do that. The desire to absorb different kinds of media and attempt to be physically active is a job in an of itself. There just aren't enough hours in a day to watch a complete season of some show I missed out on, catch up on a couple of horror films, watch at least one brand new movie I've never heard of before, read a book, play some video games, go to the gym, beat this dead-horse of a blog and earn a living each day. How nice it would be to just not care about anything but one thing.

I sit down and think about what's important and what I really want to do and what can be discarded, and I come up with a big chunk of something that isn't important to me: TV. I do not care about TV anymore. I have no energy for it. I'm one of those people who said out loud to everyone who would listen when I was in single digits, "I will never get tired of TV. I love commercials."

I hate fucking commercials. I hate TV. Every time there's supposed to be a swear word or a bare breast or a sucking chest wound there's just a void unable to be filled. You watch a horror movie on TV, the axe is coming down towards the actor's stomach and then, it just cuts to the rest of the cast running away from whatever monster is doing the axing. It's like missing a shift in your car and you get that lag that prevents your body from accelerating along with the automobile at the rate physics wants it to and you feel strange and stunted. TV edits are the uncanny valley of hard-R horror films. It's still the movie you know,but there's something about it that just doesn't feel genuine or authentic.

So I don't watch much TV. I do watch it, because you can't really live in a household in this country and not get some exposure, but mostly I stay away. I enjoy the TV that I happen upon, but I am not drawn to it. So I push the need for TV away from myself and I'm fine with that.

Then I have to read posts like this fucking bullshit from Patton Oswalt's Myspace.com blog telling me all the amazing stuff that is on TV and how I really am not giving TV a chance. Patton Oswalt is probably the funniest and most well-read and well-watched person I have the pleasure to know about these days, but he's a total cocksucker for stuff like this.

Patton Oswalt can write a blog post about KFC, 10 of the best movies the world has ever created and the best television shows around today all while quoting and referencing classic works of literature, canon Sci-Fi book series' and noir from the 1950's. He's a well-rounded guy who writes really well. He is to be admired, respected and emulated. Fucking Patton-goddamned-Oswalt.

Lake Ends in Road

2009-03-17T12:48:00.000-07:00

I saw the Last House on the Left remake over the weekend, and I was pretty impressed. Remakes are coming hard and fast and in worse and worse condition, but I thought this was just a solid movie. Sure, it was a little more "shiny" than the original (due to the use of nice/working cameras and equipment), but the content was just as earthy and gritty.

Garrett Dillahunt is amazing as Krug, the main baddie of the film. He was great in Deadwood, (both times) and I liked what he added to the casts of The Believer and No Country for Old Men). I hope he gets more high profile work in the future. Sara Paxton, who some of you might know as Marnie from Return to Halloweentown, did a good job in her role as the raped and beaten child of the couple whose titular house is used as the main set piece of the film. Her adjustment from Disney TV star to grown up dramatic actress surprised me. I didn't expect her to illustrate such range. (I can hardly be blamed for having low expectations from her. Two of her last movies were Aquamarine and Superhero Movie!)

Some things about the movie were a bit unnecessary, but that's no different from the original. The basic plot is that two young girls are out on the town and run into a group of criminals. They are raped and beaten and one is left for dead, the other is killed. Coincidentally, the criminals seek shelter for the night at the house of the nearly dead girl's parents. The parents discover who the killers are and vice versa. Ultra-violence ensues. **SPOILERS** I liked the decision to remove the blowjob castration scene...but replacing it with the head exploding in the microwave at the end seemed a bit overdone. That scene comes at the very end, almost as bonus, and just didn't fit. I'm sure someone thought it would make for fine closure, but it wasn't necessary.

Last House on the Left was originally made in 1972 by Wes Craven. It was his first film and he has maintained that the movie reflects social feeling and reactions against the atrocities of the Vietnam War from that time period. Since Craven's film is such a cult classic among horror enthusiasts, the new version has been under fire for lacking that Vietnam context. You could always argue that this version could reflect feelings about the war in Iraq, but since it's not an original vision, that wouldn't really make any sense.

However, slighting this new version for not having Vietnam context is ridiculous. There aren't any characters in the original that were in Vietnam or who talk about the war at all. The only reason anyone knows that the extreme violence is a blow back from social unrest is from interviews and articles with Craven and (producer) Sean Cunningham. Taken on its own merits, the 2009 remake is a good film with a well-shot graphic and brutal rape scene, the crux of the original production as well, and great, evil characters to root for and despise respectively.

Apart from the lack of obvious Vietnam context, which is an argument used to create a deeper sense of worth in something that is really just a horror movie, albeit a good one (and has been used before for such movies as Night of the Living Dead and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre), Last House on the Left (1972) is based on a film by Ingmar Bergman from 1960 called The Virgin Spring. The plot is the same, except it's just one girl instead of two and at the end of the film the father repents and promises to build a church on the spot where his child was murdered, even though in the same breath he questions why God would allow such a series of events to take place at all.

The Virgin Spring is itself based on a 13th century Swedish ballad from whence it derives its plot. Since the actual original source material is from 13th century Sweden, it doesn't make much sense to discard the 2009 effort because it has no Vietnam context. It doesn't need any context. The Shining doesn't have any world-view context and it's fantastic. Alien doesn't have current affairs context but it's great too. The same goes for Audition and Jaws. These movies are just good. And instead of bitching that the movie doesn't have any possible way of relating back to the world events that caused its predecessor to be made, why not focus on the fact that it's the best horror film of this year, remake or not.

Criterion

2009-03-10T10:12:00.000-07:00

As the proud few who read this blog know, I am kind of into movies. I say that in the most understated way imaginable. The reality of the situation is that while I find it easy to refrain from using crack and heroin, if there was a way to place Star Wars, Indiana Jones, The Seventh Seal, Akira, Blazing Saddles, Ichi the Killer, Yojimbo, and The Sword of Doom onto a heated spoon I would be a five-syringe-a-day junkie. I'd be broke and my 29-year old face would look like the hallowed out wax visage of a melting Norwegian troll candle.

DVDs are almost as prolific and scattered in their releases as VHS tapes were in their 80's heyday. We're getting shows that aren't even off the air yet, as well as classic movies and TV programs from years gone by. And yet, as much as the studios try, I am still dissappointed to find that such shows as Thriller and Parker Lewis Can't Lose are still not available on DVD. (Although I did find out recently that Parker Lewis will be out sometime this summer.)

The buoy on the sea of movie history is The Criterion Collection. If you have ever watched a DVD commentary, or know what one is, then you are familiar with the major contribution that Criterion has made outside the bounds of their own catalogue. Criterion invented the DVD commentary. Criterion created the idea of "special features", and to this day, Criterion makes the best commentaries and includes the best special features of any DVD company around. (There are standouts in other companies, for example, the Fight Club DVD commentary has David Fincher, Helena Bonham Carter, Brad Pitt and Edward Norton.) But the best comenatary I've ever heard is from the Criterion edition of The Rock: Michael Bay, producer Jerry Bruckheimer, actors Nicolas Cage and Ed Harris, and technical [Navy Seal] advisor Harry Humphries. It is an amazing way to watch a movie.

The Criterion Collection puts out classic movies and conemporary films - anything they feel is important and needs preservation. Why is there no Criterion Citizen Kane? Because Citizen Kane doesn't need saving and there's nothing left for Criterion producers to find that hasn't already been found about the film. Sanjuro needs to be preserved. Branded to Kill needs a documentary. No one in the world will go the lengths to make a great release of Le Samaurai or Jigoku. Criterion to the rescue!

If you think you're a film critic, fan, buff or casual viewer, check out the Criterion collection. Then go create a Netflix account and immediately fill it with The Milky Way, Wild Strawberries, Tales of Hoffmann, The Blob and The Ruling Class.

Graduating: addendum

2009-03-10T09:56:00.000-07:00

I just read the David Foster Wallace commencement address that Patton Oswalt felt he had to live up to.

Here it is .

It's great.

Graduating

2009-03-10T09:10:00.001-07:00

There are all sorts of different experiences that 18-year olds have when they graduate high school. Some of them fuck their girlfriends as a pledge to stay true while they're off at separate colleges. Some get cars or SUVs. Still others might get taken to dinner or receive really nice pens. Some might get good advice.

I got a speeding ticket, a copy of Oh, The Places You'll Go! and a label maker - the better to identify my things while away at college.

Apparently some people received a version of this commencement address from alumnus Patton Oswalt: from Patton's blog, May 25, 2008. I feel like my life would be 1000% different today if I had heard these words at my graduation.

Watching Watchmen

2009-03-10T07:45:00.000-07:00

You find small moments of genius in the strangest places. In Men in Black, a good movie but not a work of genius, we get the genius line, courtesy of Tommy Lee Jones, "A person is smart, but people are stupid." No sentiment sums up the adaptation of Watchmen better than that.

Take it how you will: either that the adaptation sucked and was made by stupid people or that the adaptation was formed because of the nature of the audience dynamic of the movie-going experience. I think the adaptation was a success. The movie was good. It was exciting, violent, gritty, well-realized, engrossing and dense without being too overbearing. Of course I'm coming from having read the story, so that gave me a good sense of what was transpiring onscreen. I know a lot of people who hadn't read Watchmen before, and they were a little lost at the winding storyline.

A single person watching or reading something can handle a wider range of weirdness than an audience in a theater. For some reason there is a place where an audience will become a complete organism and reject what is happening onscreen. I think the filmmakers were nervous about the original ending in the book, so they re-wrote it so it would play better in front of the collective American audience. They did a great job, because the ending is still the same, it's just different. (I know I'm being vague, but I'm not giving away either ending in detail.)

Watchmen has always been touted as the unfilmable book. That is partly because the script had been tossed around all over the place between companies for about twenty years prior to this release. At the end it seemed that two studios had rights to the story, so one of them got international rights and the other got domestic rights. It's a messed up tangle of lawsuits and copyright BS. Long story short, we have a Watchmen film and it's good. The other reason that Watchmen was considered by some to be unfilmable is because it is a dense tale with lots of characters and side-stories that come together to form a wonderful whole, but would make a 6 hour movie necessary.

There are a couple of big changes, one big blue change, and a few smaller alterations that are curious. The most obvious is that there is a lot more Dr. Manhattan...a lot more shown onscreen in fact. He wears more clothes in the comic than in the movie. I'm not sure why they chose to do it that way, but if you want to see a large blue penis, run out and buy a ticket for Watchmen. Another change is the added violence in the prison, where a thug's arms are cut off with a circular saw instead of just his throat being slit. Not sure why the added change with that one. I like gore as much as the next horror fan, but a scene like that will make some people stay away from the theater. It just wasn't necessary.

** Spoilerishness ahead **Casting was strange. When you cast a film based on a novel, it makes sense that there would be some disparities, but when you cast a comic book movie, don't you know what the characters are going to look like? Some people were way off, and it changed the tone a bit. Take Dan Dreiberg for instance, (Nite Owl 2). In the book he has fallen out of shape. In the movie he doesn't look out of shape at all. That detracts from the humanity that the book has to offer. The original story is all about how human these people are underneath their costumes. The movie makes them all amazing physical specimens, and that is counter intuitive to the book. Also Ozymandias is not how I thought he'd be. He seems like an evil genius bent on world domination, not a good guy who feels hemmed in by the only apparent solution to world peace. In the book, Ozymanidas is defeated by his own intelligence. He does what he feels he has to, but he doesn't want to do it. The ends justify the means though, so he goes through with his plan.

Everyone's favorite character, (even if he's your second favorite, he's still who the movie is about in my opinion), Rorschach, is awesome. There's not much to say about him. The filmmakers spent the most time on Rorschach and every part of his performance, look and voice is perfect. He brings the characters and the film together.

Apart from that, the movie works. You can't have everything from the book in the movie anyway, so there were always going to be some elisions. I think the movie works very well in conjunction with the book. They are both required reading and viewing. If you have seen the film, read the book and still want more, you can buy/rent Tales of the Black Freighter, an animated movie that is direct-to-DVD which is a movie version of the story-within-a-story from the Watchmen graphic novel. You can also buy/rent Watchmen: The Motion Comic. The Motion Comic is about 5 hours long and it is the entire graphic novel, panel by panel, slightly animated, but exactly the same as the graphic novel. It's an interesting experience from what I've heard.

Sign #115 of the coming Apocalypse

2009-03-06T13:07:00.000-08:00

There will be a new wine on the market in April. CLD Imports will be bringing the Aussie wine, Return of the Living Red, to American shores next month. The wine is getting pretty solid reviews. it is non-vintage, uses 2 different kinds of grapes, and will probably turn you into the un-dead. Sounds like a blast. The states where CLD Imports distribute to are, CA, IL, NJ, TX, DE, MD and DC.

I would buy a bottle just to have it forever for the fun of it if I could.

See the wine here.

And here.

And just so you're made aware, The Grapes of Death is a real movie about a wine-making town in France wherein the chemicals put on the grape plants turn everyone into zombies when they start drinking the wine.

The long-awaited obscene post

2009-03-06T12:06:00.000-08:00

My girlfriend, chaste virgin that she is(n't) commented recently about how unfair it is that I get to see copious amounts of bare boobies all over the place but she doesn't get to see the equivalent. Where are all the dicks? I assure you that they're there, hiding behind underpants and jeans wherever you go. The issue is more why are there boobs in every movie, but a big ixnay on ocksay? The answer is the same now as it was when I first posted about this topic here, the MPAA has problems with penises.

It's misogynistic I know, and also it's completely unfair. It's a strange weird relationship that guys have with the dicks of other guys. In locker rooms it is no big deal to change and weigh yourself and sit on your towel in the sauna naked. No one cares really. Girls in the locker room hate the fact that other girls are in there naked. But at the same time, girls are drunkenly drawn to breasts and think they're funny and no big deal in public or when they are watching a movie; a guy will never touch another guys' dick, even as a joke, and they'll boo whenever they see a 5 foot long cock on the movie screen. (I mean, it's 5 ft. long because it's on such a large screen. The same way that a girl in a movie has quintillion-D breasts on the same screen...perhaps in the same [money] shot.)

Anyhow, my GF gives me a hard time last night about how there are so many movies with tits and none with dicks. So I go through my DVD collection and point out all the movies I have where there are cocks. I think the total, in a collection of about 500, was 15. There's a dick in Life of Brian, I Am Curious: Yellow, W.R. Mysteries of the Organism, Sweet Movie, Zack and Miri Make a Porno, the list goes briefly on. And what did the GF have to say about all those dicks? "I don't want to see black and white foreign dicks."

She's kind of right...American cinema hates a dick. You can't even show a whole scene of marionettes fucking in an American movie, it has to be edited down. (I appreciate that there is a "yellow shower" and a "hot carl" in said marionettes-fucking movie, but c'mon...it's puppets!) Thora Birch wants to get naked in American Beauty and she's underage? No problem, her folks can sign a permission slip. Kevin Bacon accidentally flashes his member in Wild Things? He has to get woken up at 3am by the director who has to find out if it's okay with him that his johnson has screen time and then they have to discuss it for a two hours and finally settle on it being cool. Ricockulous? Definitely.

Team America Uncut Sex Scene | Viral | SPIKE.com

What can we do about this? I propose that for the next month, you just grab the dick of every man you pass by on the street, look him in the eye and say, "I, as a woman, appreciate and respect the penis. Feel free to be comfortable showing and seeing this little guy all the time." Don't want to do that? You can watch this movie instead of desensitize yourself to the dick in the privacy of your own living room.

However, another issue, albeit a much more subjective one, gets brought up at the same time. My significant other says I get to see boobs and she doesn't get to see the equivalent What exactly qualifies as the equivalent? Technically a bare chested man is the same as a bare chested woman. Un-technically, a bare chested woman is much less acceptable in public than a bare chested man. If you're a man then you can walk around town without a shirt and no one will say anything to you. (Unless you're Quato, in which case you should just keep that shirt on, man...) And since boobs are so round and pleasing to the eye and hands and etc., are they really in the same erotic category as flaccid cocks? My heterosexual opinion is, "no". There are very few things in this world less attractive and more hilarious than what looks like a turkey throat hanging between your legs. Sorry, but that's how I see it. Now an erect cock on the other hand...there's something nice there. Maybe it's because so many great things look like erect penises: rocket ships, submarines, geoducks, trains, balloon animals, George Washington's head on a folded dollar bill, Joe Camel's nose, et al.

I think that the tide of male domination of imagery in this country has saved many people from a sight that is intentionally hilarious: the exposed, limp cock. And instead, we have decided, culturally, to embrace the naughty but acceptable naked breast. I'm cool with this trend. How do you feel about it, readers?

2009-03-04T07:08:00.000-08:00

England has a lot of great things going for it: Boddington's, Guinness, Keira Knightely, Samantha Fox, "Are You being Served?", the MG. A major strike against England are its new anti-terorist laws.

Remember when the Patriot Act came out in this country and everyone was in an uproar because the government could tap your phones and look at your e-mail bu no one you ever knew had anything bad happen to them? England's version of that is much, much worse. England doesn't just have these laws in place to stop terroism either. They are doing it for the protection of all English people. CCTV cameras are up in all the major cities, and I'm sure, if it was possible, they'd put them on every sheep and cow they could get their hands on.

Happy reading.

Happy reading.

Happy reading.

Happy reading.

The picture at the top of this page is a photograph of graffiti by Banksy. If you don't know who Banksy is, then you should check him out. At the link, whichi s his homepage, you'll see many examples of his work including his Guantanamo blow-up doll at Disney World and his post-Katrina work in New Orleans. He is a fascinating person.

Big Budget Gods - Michael Bay

2009-02-27T09:17:00.000-08:00

No one in the industry can top Michael Bay for his epic vision when it comes to action set-pieces. No one in the industry commands as large of a salary as Bay does, and at the same time holds the least critical respect from fans and reviewers. By now you'd think people would know what to expect from Bay. He's not making the next Lawrence of Arabia, but he is making the next Transformers movie, and it should be a ton of fun.

Michael Bay, whose middle name happens to be Benjamin, started directing music videos and other random things, (such as Playboy Video Centerfold: Kerri Kendal), and then burst upon the directing scene with Bad Boys in 1995 after being taken under the wing of Jerry Bruckheimer and Don Simpson in the early 90's. (By the way, if you want to know where Bay got his style from, just look at the two guys who "spawned" his career. The production team of Bruckheimer/Simpson is responsible for Flashdance, Top Gun, Days of Thunder, Beverly Hills Cop 1 and 2, Crimson Tide, Bad Boys, Dangerous Minds and The Rock, among others.)

Michael Bay gets a lot of shit for not having anything to his movies. People dissed Transformers because it lacked a good story, which is untrue, and because it made too many cheap jokes at the robots' expence, which is partially untrue. I don't care what they say, Transformers was good. I loved the sound design, the transformation effects and the fights. Just getting all that animated must have been a sissyphean task in and of itself. I was impressed. Here are the stats from imdb.com's trivia section:

According to one of the CGI artists at the Industrial Light & Magic studio, the Transformers are composed out of a total of 60,217 pieces. Optimus Prime is composed of 10108 pieces, Megatron is composed of 2411 pieces, and Bumblebee is composed out of 7433 pieces. Ironhide is the bulkiest Transformer in the film, with both his guns composed of 10,000 pieces each.
According to one of the CGI artists at the Industrial Light & Magic studio, if you took all the polygons (CGI blocks) from all the Transformer models they created and strung them end to end, they'd reach to the moon and back and you'd still have enough left over to build the Roman Colosseum in Italy twice.

Michael Bay has said that finding a balance on the number of Autobots and Decepticons in the film was a challenge. Too few and the movie wouldn't be action-packed enough. Too many would be too difficult. They finally settled on 6 Autobots and 8 Decepticons. In Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen there will be 11 Autobots and 15 Decepticons. I think it's safe to say that the animation process has been streamlined quite a bit. They're now able to put a lot more moving parts into the new film.

I can't pretend to be a big fan of Michael Bay's movies themselves, although I feel that The Rock is one of the best action films of all time - it's certainly my favorite action film ever made. But Bay has given us, the movie-viewing community, action set-pieces of such grandeur and sheer awesomeness that I cannot ignore his skill. If you haven't seen the following films, rent them if only for the described sequences:

The Rock. Where to begin? The car chase is better and funnier than the one at the end of Bad Boys 2. The shootout in the Alcatraz shower room is a wonderful piece of editing achievement, and the score of the movie is perfect as well. Overall the film has a lot of hard violence between some very hardcore soldiers. Ed Harris' performance is quite deep in my opinion, too. Sean Connery plays a captured and forgotten British secret agent from the 60's. He's basically James Bond if Bond was caught by the Americans, disowned by the British, and left to rot in an American prison.
Bad Boys 2. There are two sequences in this movie that should be listed as "Need to See". The shootout with the Haitian drug dealers is very cool. Will Smith and Martin Lawrence are on one side of the wall, the Haitians are on the other side. There is a fireplace in the center of the wall and a door on each end of the wall connecting the two rooms. The camera moves in a big circle to show you both sides of the fight, but in so doing it moves through the bullet holes in each of the doors. It's difficult for me to describe, so I've put it in below. Also of great cinematic quality is the car chase on the bridge in Miami. The chase scene showcases Bay's abilities with controlled chaos.

Pearl Harbor. This movie was pretty bad because of it's ridiculous length and boring love story. It's similar to Armageddon, except that it all takes place on Earth. The actual bombing of Pearl Harbor sequence is very cool though.

Transformers. Even if you never watched the cartoon, you'll still enjoy the battle sequences in this movie. Barricade is my favorite Decepticon. He transforms into a Shelby Mustang police cruiser that says "To Punish and Enslave" on the side. The opening sequence with Blackout is an adrenaline-pumping good time.

Armageddon. This movie has good characters being pushed into something they aren't able to fully come to terms with. This might have the best character depth overall of any of Bay's films. The only thing driving you to see this movie though is the destruction of cities by meteorites. And Steve Buscemi.

Michael Bay's production studio, Platinum Dunes, is responsible for a few recent horror remakes. The Hitcher, Amityville Horror, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Friday 13th and the upcoming Nightmare of Elm Street reboot and The Birds and Rosemary's Baby remakes are all courtesy of Bay and his cronies. For better or worse, at least someone is trying to make scary, hard-R horror movies with some gritty style.

Give Bay a chance. Even if The Island sucked, it still had some cool shots. His movies are not the work of a hack. If I had to have you watch one Michael Bay film, it would be The Rock. Run to the store and pick it up.

Here's the link for the Revenge of the Fallen trailer.

Favorite thing of the day

2009-02-27T08:38:00.000-08:00

I'll get to a new director post soon, but this music video for Royksopp's "Happy Up Here" is my favorite thing today, so I'm sharing it with you!

If you ever played Space Invaders when you were young you'll appreciate this video. Why doesn't MTV show stuff like this anymore?

Happy Up Here from Röyksopp on Vimeo.

Big Budget Gods - James Cameron

2009-02-26T07:12:00.000-08:00

There are two ways to measure success: Amount and quality. If you can make a living doing what you love, you're a success. If everything you make is fucking awesome, you're also a success. Everything James Cameron makes is fucking awesome. Imdb.com lists only 17 directorial projects under Cameron's name. Pretty much everyone's first couple forays into film are unknowns, so we can throw out Xenogenesis and Piranha Part 2. We're left with 15 movies/shows/documentaries. Of those 15 projects 6 of them are pure blockbusters of monumental status. Considering that in recent years Cameron has turned his eye to documentaries and left narrative fiction behind him, that's a considerable success rate. Here is why James Cameron is a big budget god:

The Terminator (1984)
Aliens (1986)
The Abyss (1989)
Terminator 2 : Judgment Day (1991)
True Lies (1994)
Titanic (1997)

If I had to I could watch only James Cameron movies for the rest of my life and be very entertained. I can't even tell you how many times I've seen the movies on that list...except Titanic, which I only saw once. Titanic became burdened by teenage-girl-weepiness, so it was hard for me to want to see it. The movie definitely deserves another chance because it is a giant spectacle of great film making and special effects. Here's a great article on Titanic and everything done right in the film: Better late Than Never: Titanic

As far as perfect movies go, it doesn't get much better than Terminator 2. T2 is an all time favorite sci-fi movie of mine, followed closely by Aliens. Some might classify T2 as an action movie, but the science fiction aspects of it are really what make the movie work. Apart from Spider-Man 2, T2 might be the best sequel ever made. Terminator 2 has everything: great one-liners, jaw-dropping special effects that still hold up, retina-fusing action sequences and a touching relationship between John Connor and the T-800 (Arnold). The movie has great balance and was a benchmark for visual effects at the time. Cameron's movies have always been on the forefront of technological advancements. Plus what a lot of people don't remember is that Arnold was the bad guy in The Terminator. In T2 he's good, but no one on screen or in the audience knows that at the start.

Aliens is another sequel that's better than the original, although it's difficult to make that statement because Alien and Aliens are such different movies. Everything from the tone and atmosphere to the characters and plot vary so widely that it's hard to compare them. Yet even with their differences, the movies make sense in terms of the development of a continuing story-line. It's one thing for a sequel to just have more of something, (ie: more aliens = bigger, better movie), but it's another to extend the mythology and give the audience more information about the mysterious titular creatures. In Alien, the alien itself is a character. For most of the movie there is a crew of only 6 people on this massive freighter of a space ship. Add one alien to the mix and you're adding a whole character that everyone in the crew is aware of. That's changing the dynamic quite a bit. In Aliens the hive of aliens were essentially one character. They behave with a hive mentality and that gives the audience a way to identify with them. Everyone knows what a colony of army ants is like when they're out on a mission, or how a swarm of bees reacts to the presence of an threat. It's the same with the aliens. They are interstellar insects, cosmic cockroaches. Cameron brought that idea to the table and it changed the tone of the film.

The Abyss was another innovative movie. Its effects predate T2, but there is an obvious progression from The Abyss to T2. The Abyss not only shows Cameron's propensity for creating great fantasy worlds, but his huge scope as well. All of Cameron's movies are big. Big sets, big guns, big vehicles. Even though it's set in a cramped underwater research facility, The Abyss doesn't feel like a claustrophobic story. James Cameron always seems to me to be interested in blue collar stuff. He throws out shiny sports cars and has chases in semi trucks; he ditches X-Files/CSI settings to show us a group of (possibly) high school-educated blue collar Joe's and their interactions on said research station. And the research station isn't a glossy hi-tech affair either, it's dark and grungy and bulky. When I was a kid I liked the fast, sleek cars. My friend liked big trucks and construction vehicles. Most film makers want to have shiny expensive stuff in their films, but it's Cameron's insistence of using big bulky apparatuses that keeps my interest in his work afloat.

I can't talk about James Cameron without mentioning True Lies, or as I like to call it, Arnold's last great movie. Arnold has nearly reached muse-status for Cameron, and True Lies was a role made just for Schwarzenegger. After being a robot for two movies, James Cameron finally let Arnold be a human, and the movie is action-packed and hilarious at the same time. I would never have thought to team up Arnold Schwarzenegger and Tom Arnold, but they gel perfectly. Plus True Lies gets bonus points for making Tia Carrere even sexier than she was Wayne's World, and for introducing the Harrier jet to the public eye.

The sequence where Arnold flies the Harrier is one of my all-time favorites in action movie history. And it cost about $1,700 per frame. There are 24 frames in a second. Factored into this cost are elements like editing, CGI, actor's wages, rental of the Harrier jets from the US gov't, sound stage rental, etc. The United States gov't rented the Harrier jets to Cameron's production at a rate of $2,410 per hour. That's before fuel and everything else. True Lies ended up costing about $146 million.

In recent years James Cameron expanded on Titanic by doing a lot of underwater documentaries about wrecked ships and deep sea life with Expedition: Bismark, Ghosts of the Abyss and Aliens of the Deep. He began using 3-D while filming Ghosts of the Abyss which is a film about exploring the remains of the Titanic. Cameron is continuing to lead the way for 3-D film technology with his newest feature, Avatar, which will be out sometime in 2009.

Cameron makes movies about what he wants when he wants. He always has lavish budgets, but the money is all up there on the screen. He never holds anything back and you always have a good time. He is an infectious geek who knows how to get everyone interested in the things he likes. Everything he does is worth seeing.

Big Budget Gods - Steven Spielberg

2009-02-25T12:09:00.000-08:00

For the next few days I'm going to talk about some of my favorite big budget directors, or select big budget films. Like it or not, you'll want to revisit these mindless summer explosion-fests because deep down, some of them really are good movies and not time-wasters. So I'm starting a column, "Big Budget Gods". I'm leading off with possibly the biggest director ever in the history of movies, Steven Spielberg. Spielberg's movies are amazing spectacles. Say what you will about the substance of blockbusters, but Spielberg knows how to take a story from the page and put it on the screen to dizzying effect.

Jaws is perhaps the single most influential film in the past 50 years. Not only to other filmmakers, but to people who swim in the ocean, or like taking baths. I don't know anyone who hasn't scrunched up their legs when in a swimming pool's deep end for fear of an impossible shark attack. Plus there's the added genius of casting great actors. Some people just click and play off each other's performances well. Roy Schieder, Richard Dreyfuss and Robert Shaw all come together perfectly and make the movie. A movie about a shark where the shark doesn't even get 15 minutes of combined screen time? Ridiculous! But it works. And Jaws was the first official "blockbuster" ever. It is the movie that started the summer big-budget movie tradition.

Another great storytelling moment for Spielberg was Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Close Encounters is good because it taps into everyone's curiosity of the unknown. It also reminds us that sometimes we can be thrust into new and random situations and become connected with strangers through happenstance. Then we have to deal with it. The way the characters on-screen deal with their fateful situations is what makes the story so good. (Plus it never hurts to include aliens.) Close Encounters is a film from early on in the director's career, and if he could do it again, he'd change the ending. In the film, Dreyfuss's character opts to go onto the spaceship with the aliens. He pursues his curiosity. Spielberg would have him stay on Earth with his family if he could do it again, but that just adds to the depth of the film in my opinion.

A film from that people often decry as being terrible is Hook. Everyone who hates this movie can blow me. I love it. It's fun, light-hearted, in keeping with the original concept of the Berrie story and it's a spectacle. Say what you will, but the sets and costumes are amazingly constructed and add to an atmosphere of fun and wonder. It's such an enjoyable film, and it's got its little creepy moments too. Hook makes a fitting sequel to Peter Pan, lending some insight into life and counter balancing the frivilous lifestyle of guadian-less children with the mysteries of what happens to them when they get older. (Okay, the part where Tinkbell becomes life-size and tries to fuck Peter Pan is retarded, but apart from that it's good stuff.) Technically, Hook is a flop, but it's still better than watching Mystics of Bali or Plan 9 From outer Space.

Spielberg has always been about pushing the creative envelope. His films have always represented to me that I should be more creative and imaginative. Films like A.I., Minority Report, Jurassic Park and, yes, even Hook, combine with Saving Private Ryan, Munich and The Color Purple to show that you can be involved in worlds of fantasy and still have your feet grounded in reality. Spielberg makes both types of movies with fantastic results.

His big budgets might be shocking, but Spielberg makes substantive films with heart and quality. His work has the mark of a man who is very committed to making great art, and he enjoys himself in the process. I don't think there's a film among his oevre that he didn't fully put himself into. He is one of the best entertainers in the world. (I can't wait for TinTin!)

Hilarious!

2009-02-25T09:43:00.000-08:00

To balance the previous video out a bit, here's a funny bit of cinematic mash-up for you.

Presented here, for your eyes only, is the alternate ending to Back to the Future!

Wanna see a snake regurgitate a baby hippo?

2009-02-25T09:12:00.000-08:00

Sure you do.

Now, before you ask me, "Is this going to be gross?", the answer is "Yes". It is a snake regurgitating a baby hippo.

It isn't so-gross-you-can't-watch, but it's a mesmerizing grossness that you can't turn away from. Focus on how wide the snake opens its mouth. It's transcendent. Then think about how good the snake must have felt after getting rid of that huge, un-digestible meal. (Kind of like after you go #2 and feel relaxed and tired at the same time...and empty.)

Happy Wednesday!

A good book

2009-02-23T22:02:00.001-08:00

I've got book ADD, which sucks because I love reading. It seems that every time I try and get into a new book, I fall asleep. This trend, which has been on-going for years, was broken last week when I started reading The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, by Mark Haddon.

When the book came out a few years ago, everyone raved and for good reason. I just finished it tonight. I think it only took me about a week, and I wasn't reading it at a furious pace either. I kept being drawn to read more of the book. I read it quickly, but feel at the same time I felt that I had been challenged intellectually. I found it a very satisfying, but sometimes difficult read. The words and structure were easy, but the story has its moments of hardship. The story is narrated by a mentally challenged individual who is brilliant at math, but in the same vein as Rain Man, can't cope with other aspects of society. The story is told through his POV, and as such the narration is very deliberate.

I recommend it to anyone who wants to read a good book. Pick it up soon.

Creative bargaining

2009-02-23T07:55:00.000-08:00

Over at boingboing.net there is an interesting story about a 13-year old video gamer who has struck up a unique deal with his dad.

Parent of gamer asks his son to honor the Geneva Conventions

Hugh Spencer's son, Evan loves video games, as most 13-year old boys do. Recently he wanted to start playing Call of Duty 5. Call of Duty is a violent game, but it in its defense, it is all WWII-style violence. According to Mr. Spencer, Evan is a smart kid who knows the differnt betwen reality and fantasy. He also understands what video games are and why he enjoys playing them. He is not a problem child, nor does he give his father any reason not to trust him in any way.

Hugh Spencer knows from his museum career that Call of Duty goes to great pains to provide accurate historical information, styling, story-line, etc. From that standpoint he has no problem allowing his son to play the game, and learn a little about WWII history at the same time. Mr. Spencer added a little lesson to the game-play by having his son research the Geneva Convetions and play Call of Duty within those set boundaries.

I think that's a fantastic idea. I just hope the game's plot allows him to be so fair to the Japanese armed forces.

Jason Strikes Back

2009-02-19T12:05:00.000-08:00

Two Friday 13th posts in a row might seem like double the dark omen, but it's all I've got right now. Hopefully I'll think of something else to write up soon, but for now you're going to have to read about more Jason, more blood, more boobs, more craziness. I think you're up for it.

The nature of the new Friday 13th has been debated a lot on the net: Is it a remake or a reboot, etc? It's a reboot, because they're trying to start a new franchise based on an old franchise by remaking the original but updating it to modern day. It's a remake of sorts, but only because the source material already existed. There were, as there usually are, ups and downs. I liked some stuff, I hated other stuff.

First let me say that Aaron Yoo has got to get more acting jobs. I like his style and he's funny as hell. If you saw Disturbia, he was Shia LeBeouf's sidekick. He does a great job in this movie and he has the funniest lines and steals every scene he's in. Right before his inevitable death, he hands Jason a hockey stick and says, in a tone that suggests he's returning a lost item to its owner: "Here. This completes your outfit." Then he gets a screw driver through the neck. It sounds like I, a bona fide gore-hound, would be satisfied with a screw driver through the neck, but no! The kill in question takes place in a highly equipped tool shed. There were so many interesting implements that Jason could have used, but instead he went for a screw driver...a Phillips' head screwdriver no less. The Phillips' head is the Nerf of screw drivers. It's as round and blunt as you can get without losing functionality. Seriously, when you have every sharp and menacing garden tool around at your disposal, why settle for a simple screw driver? Here are four ways that the kill could've been much more devastating and entertaining.

It seems like I'm belaboring a tired point, but it's just indicative of the lack of creativity present in the movie. Jason is machete-prone, (always was, always will be), but apart from one fun, creative murder, Jason is a very methodical, predictable slasher in this new version. The interesting kill in question comes in the first ten minutes. Jason ties a girl up in her sleeping bag and hangs her over a fire, while the guy who was banging her moments ago watches, his leg caught in a bear trap. Don't worry, he doesn't suffer too long. He gets a machete blow to the cranium. Many bonus points for that scenario.

One thing I really enjoyed about this movie was Jason's intelligence and humanity. I'm not saying he's ever shown in a sympathetic light, but he seems like a real human being. He is a capable person who has built this maze of tunnels that run underneath Camp Crystal Lake, not to mention grown an impressive crop of ganja. (More on that in a minute.) There is a scene where Jason is returning to camp with the headless body of a recent victim and two survivors are watching him from hiding. Jason walks into camp and sees evidence of the presence of outsiders. He drops the body and starts looking around and checking things out. I've never seen him act so curious and thorough. It's the first time I thought Jason was even cognizant of his surroundings, much less aware of anything but naked girls post-coitus (you know, for machete fodder). He becomes scary for that moment, probably for the first time since 1982.

I think this film series has somewhere to go. This is a promising start, although not the well-thought through movie I and other fans were hoping for. The cast is mostly forgettable. The addition of a running, fiercer Jason is surprisingly welcome, and the atmosphere was effective. There was too much cutting at times. I couldn't follow the action completely enough, and there weren't enough long takes of the kills. It's a Friday 13th movie! Show us some money shots already! The film was also full of these jump-scares initiated by loud noises...really loud noises. That's not scary, it's just slightly startling. And the whole weed thing was a little too accidentally hilarious.

The beginning of the film sees this group of kids going into the woods to find this secret bed of pot. They give up for the day and hunker down for the night. One kid goes off in the woods on his own and comes across the garden of weed. He's admiring the buds when Jason comes out of the woods and kills him. Then Jason kills everyone else in the group. The next kill is this redneck guy who also knows where the pot is and he has a habit of selling and smoking it. Apparently, as we keep getting reminded, this pot is good stuff. Well Jason comes out of the wood and kills him too, while he's in the middle of a joint no less. Is Jason just facially disfigured, cranky pot farmer who wants people to keep off his crop? All signs point to "Yes".

Ki-Ki-Ki, Ma-Ma-Ma

2009-02-13T11:40:00.000-08:00

What kind of a proposed "horror fan" would I be if I neglected to write about the new Friday 13th movie? A shitty one, that's what kind. I've been reading some other writings online about the Friday series, and it seems that these people all wanted today's release of a new re-make/reboot of Friday 13th to be some awe-inspiring, obsession-validating piece of genius. It's a remake of a slasher flick from 1980, why try to build it up so much?

Almost anything new gets shit on in favor of what used to be. No matter how badly put together something was when it first came out, everyone will rally around it when someone else comes along and tries to reinvent it. I do side with the people who hate film remakes. But a film remake these days, and this goes double with horror films, is like putting out a new model car that's just the grill of a Cadillac onto a Ford Focus. It's still a Focus, even if you "remade" it with Cadillac quality in mind. Likewise, remaking a Friday movie by slapping a hockey mask onto a guy with one eye and giving him a machete doesn't make a great movie no matter what your motives are. I'm not trying to insult the film makers, I just want it clear that this movie is just another slasher movie following in a previous slasher movies' footsteps. It could be fun, it could suck. (I'm going to go home and duct tape a Cadillac grill to my Focus right after work!)

Sure, there are genius cinematographic turns in several iconic slasher/horror films: Halloween is obviously important to the genre, Texas Chain Saw Massacre showed what could be done with a small budget and almost no on-screen gore at all (hint: it fools you into thinking it's one of the goriest movies of all time), Freddy is a fantastic villain that you love to fear. But that doesn't mean that every slasher flick that comes out has to be eye-opening and on par with the films comprising the horror canon. Jason is a retard in a mask with a machete who kills kids. I'm serious, that's what he is and that's what he'll always be.

I watch Jason movies for kitsch value. I like the clothing/attitudes/styles of various years that are on display. (Friday 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan is the best for horrible fashion.) I love the nudity and the creativity in the kills. What I'm saying is that Friday 13th movies aren't rocket science. The remake won't add purpose to the original, nor will it give the Jason movies that came before it any sudden value as classics. It'll be the same as it always has been and will be: Fans will hold the films up as classics at their whim, and detractors will continue to give us shit for enjoying the sight of impaled naked teenage girls. Fuck you, detractors.

The only thing I hate about horror in the current times is the inclusion of silicone. Give me nudity from the 70's and 80's. Unfortunately the starlets nowadays have bodies that look as fake as their dialogue sounds. But I'm still going to go see this new Friday movie, even if people think it's no good because...surprise, surprise...it isn't Lawrence of Arabia. What can you possibly expect from a Jason movie besides stupid teens, drinking, boobs, drugs, boobs, blood, repeat? You've no right to expect anything more! And I'm going in expecting to see just that. From what I've read, I won't be disappointed.

25 things

2009-02-12T12:47:00.000-08:00

Facebook is a virus and a drug. Almost everyday I sign on and check up on the people that Facebook tells me have done something new or added something different. Almost every day I willingly participate in Facebook, adding to the problem and not trying to find a solution. Almost everyday I move my mouse over the "Account Delete" button and hold a whispered conversation with myself about should I or should I not just end it right now and go cold turkey. You can check, I'm still on Facebook.

The current trend in Facebook is not the SuperWall or movie quizzes or virtual aquariums but a meme. "25 Random Things" is a note that gets passed on and changed so that everyone can get to know more about you and the crazy things that even your significant others don't know yet. As with most Facebook trends, I hate this one too. As this gentleman points out, who the hell cares that you've been pooped on by a monkey? Then someone else who is smart and enjoys making fun of Facebook BS wrote, "Wm. Shakespeare's 25 Random Things Abovt Me".

Since I have no intention of filling out a "25 Random Things" sheet myself, I figured a good way to cash in on the trend would be to do a mini movie-version here on my blog. Here we go with "10 Momentous Movies/Movie Moments".

1. Who Framed Roger Rabbit. I was 8 when this came out and it was an awe-inspiring, unique motion picture that pretty much consumed my interests for a long time. I was obsessed with the voice and mannerisms of Roger Rabbit and really intrigued by the process of making the movie. I started getting interested in special effects after seeing this movie. (The fact that it is based on a book doesn't bother me that much.)

2. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. I had never seen this movie until film school. Our teacher showed us the opening shot projected onto the wall. I gasped and felt like I'd witnessed proof of amazing genius after seeing just the first minute of this movie. No TV will ever be able to capture the feeling of this movie's scope.

3. Pulp Fiction. My dad and I went to see this movie together in the theater. I was 14. I couldn't believe that he wanted to see it, and afterward he told me he would've taken me out of the theater mid-way if I hadn't already told my teacher I would be writing a report about it. At that time I'd never seen a movie like Pulp Fiction, and I've loved Quentin Tarantino ever since. It was a first-rate educational experience on all fronts.

4. Blazing Saddles. There is no way to describe how I feel inside when Cleavon Little rides into town on his tan horse with his Gucci saddle bags. It's just the beginning of an all-around great movie. (Plus it's the first time farting occurred in a movie!)

5. Grindhouse. A singular movie-going experience. I feel nothing but pity for those who didn't get to see it in the movie theater the way it was meant to be shown. I felt like I'd stepped back in time. I know a lot of other people felt that way too. I might never feel quite like that again.

6. Life is Beautiful. The first foreign movie I really paid attention to. I never knew movies could have so much brilliant color and energy. Roberto Benigni opened my eyes to cinema outside of America.

7. Evil Dead. I still remember watching this movie for the first time in my basement, I had a Dominos pizza, and the camera was gliding over the fog-machined swamp. Evil Dead is better than any of H.G. Lewis' movies by a long shot. Makes me proud to be from Michigan, the home state of Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell.

8. Lord of the Rings. These movies are milestones in film making. Everything about how they were put together is one-of-a-kind and amazing. The fact that we have three four-hour long movies comprising an adaptation of Lord of the Rings is a miracle. Watching that movie makes you feel like you're seeing the greatest piece of cinema ever made. I think it's the best adaptation ever made.

9. Se7en. A movie that truly affected me. The opening credits chill me to the bones, and when the credits rolled...backwards...it just helped to solidify my understanding that David Fincher is cutting edge and brilliant.

10. Rebel Without a Cause. I don't care how old you are or who you are: James Dean is iconic and cool and will always be iconic and cool.

Brad Pitt wants his scalps

2009-02-11T16:22:00.000-08:00

As far as I'm concerned Quentin Tarantino can do no wrong. He is an entity unto himself and thusly he cannot make anything that is less than his all. Every movie he makes has his aroma and aura attached to it in such a deep way that the movies just become "Tarantino-esque". What I'm basically saying is that if you love the types of movies that Tarantino loves, you cannot be disappointed by his work. So that means that whatever he's working on is something that I crave to see. His next movie is Inglourious Basterds. It is a film about Jewish, American soldiers, led by Brad Pitt and Eli Roth it would seem, who are dropped into France to kill Nazis. Here's a link to the trailer. I think that if you let go a bit, you'll see that this movie will be tons of overindulgent fun.

Inglourious Basterds

Fuckin'...Fuckin'...Fuckin'

2009-02-10T15:26:00.000-08:00

So this guy, Victor S, compiled all the swear words from the entire run of "The Sopranos" into one clip. It's about 28 minutes long, so I understand if you don't want to watch all of it. But I bet no one who starts watching pauses it before the 5 minute mark...it's fucking' entrancing.

the sopranos, uncensored. from victor solomon on Vimeo.

Chocolate therapy

2009-02-08T13:22:00.001-08:00

A few posts ago I said that ninjas will always be cool. Pretty much all martial arts stuff is awesome and tons of fun to watch though. A few years ago Ong Bak: The Thai Warrior came out and it was the first movie of its kind that I had ever seen. The athletic ability and the gymnastics of the fighting scenes are crazy cool. There are no stunt doubles...so the acting suffers for it...and there aren't any computers used either. Or wires. In Ong Bak the stunts are shown several times in succession from different camera angles to help drive home the message that the stunts are actually being performed. (Oh, and the Rza did the soundtrack for the American release.)

I don't know if you can effectively fight like that, but when it's all choreographed it looks amazing and brutal. Another film is coming, on Valentine's Day no less, by the same folks who made Ong Bak, called, Chocolate. The story concerns a young girl who is mentally challenged but who has a capacity for martial arts. She kicks lots of ass and again all the stunts are real and performed without help by fantastically gifted athletes. Here's the trailer.

Chocolate - Theatrical Trailer

RIP and something to cheer you up too.

2009-02-06T21:00:00.000-08:00

Today James Whitmore passed away. Whitmore was a prolific actor from the 50's up until a few years ago. Most recently/popularly he played Brooks in The Shawshank Redemption. He was also in "Bonanza", THEM!, Planet of the Apes and "The Twilight Zone", among many many other shows and movies. He was one of those actors that you'd always recognize because he had such a great face. Frank Darabont always has a way with casting actors with great, expressive faces and Whitmore's was one of the best.

It's sad when someone who contributed so much to our entertainment passes away, but at least we've got all of his work saved on DVDs and such. "The Twilight Zone" episode he was in is called, "On Thursday We Leave for Home". It is an hour-long episode about a group of astronauts led by Whitmore's character who are marooned on a distant planet awaiting rescue from Earth. Whitmore's character, William Benteen, makes sure to keep everyone's spirits up, but when the actual rescue comes he tries to keep everyone under his control by forcing them to stay on the planet. His group revolts and as the rescue ship leaves with everyone else from the planet, Benteen comes to his senses too late and is left alone forever. It's a great episode, one of many from "The Twilight Zone".

James Whitmore starred in THEM! as well. THEM! is a sci-fi B-movie from 1954 wherein people fight for their lives against huge mutated insects. It's a fun flick and is an icon of the genre and era. In celebration of Whitmore's work on THEM! I present you with the trailer for another B-movie sci-fi bug flick: Infestation. It's gonna be a lot of fun...kind of like Slither, but with different types of monsters. (That reminds me, I should write about the diamond-in-the-rough that is Slither. The to-do list grows.)

Just for fun

2009-02-04T13:45:00.000-08:00

Simply because it is related to the previous post, here's the trailer for Anaconda: Hunt for the Blood Orchid. Otherwise known as "Anaconda 2", Blood Orchid is the sequel to the very popular Anaconda (if you're a TBS weekend schedule programmer), starring J-Lo, Jon Voight, Ice Cube, Eric Stoltz and Owen Wilson. (An all-star cast if you ask me.)

Blood Orchid is terrible, but the trailer is worth watching because it has the most chilling scene in the entire movie: the part where the crew is walking through the water and you can see the snake swimming through the group unbeknownst to them.

But watch out, because Anaconda 3 cannot possibly come fast enough to a DVD player near you! You are seeing that image correctly...that is The Hoff!

Giant snake remains found in South America...should I be surprised?

2009-02-04T13:17:00.000-08:00

Paleontologists take years to report their findings to the public. Data has to be researched thoroughly and then reviewed to ensure accuracy and fact, leaving out wild speculation and excitement. Knowing this, you can be sure that the news from the University of Toronto that went public today is as accurate as it can be thus far.

Called Titanoboa, the remains of a 49+ foot long anaconda-like reptile were found in a coal pit in Columbia. The giant snake, the largest snake in the world as far as hard evidence is concerned, lived in the rain forests in South America about 60 million years ago. (For those of you who don't know, that was after dinosaurs.) Rib and vertebrae bones were found of several individuals, but unfortunately, no teeth or skulls. I really want to be able to go into a museum one day and see a skull of a 50-foot snake. That would be awesome.

Scientists claim that the snake would have been about 2,500 pounds and at its thickest point would have been about 3 feet in diameter. The other cool thing about finding this animal's remains, other than it's just plain cool, is that snake body size is directly related to the average temperatures of their environments. From the size of the specimens found in Columbia we can deduce that the average temperatures of the rain forests in South America were about 6 degrees C warmer than they are now.

That may not seem too interesting, but it's information like that that gives us a better insight into what the world was like millions of years ago. Fossils tell us a lot of things, but fossils don't record air temps or humidity. Comparing Titanoboa to giant South American snakes of today helps give us an idea of ancient atmospheric temperatures.

(And just to give you the willies, the largest recorded snakes today are about 30 feet. Titanoboa was 20 feet longer than that. However there are many unconfirmed reports of snakes in the Amazon that are closer to 60 feet.)

Is laughing at this video child abuse?

2009-02-03T20:56:00.001-08:00

Take two minutes of your time to laugh a little at this kid who just got out of oral surgery and is loopy from the drugs. Reminds me of some friends I had in college.

Gore. No pun...just gore.

2009-02-03T18:57:00.000-08:00

There are some things in this life that will always be cool. Two of those things are zombies and ninjas. For my birthday I got a couple games that celebrate those aforementioned cool things: Left 4 Dead and Ninja Gaiden 2. I don't care who you are or how old you are, ninjas are awesome. There isn't a whole lot that's cooler than being able to sneak around in an ultra-stealthy manner and dispatch your enemies with effortless martial arts. Ninja Gaiden was a old series of games for the NES back in the 1980's, and in 2004 Microsoft picked it back up and redesigned it for the Xbox. Ninja Gaiden (2004) is the hardest game I've ever played. It is also the fastest and one of the most fun, except for the 40% of the game that teeth-grindingly, hair-pullingly, eye-gougingly frustrating and impossible. It also has the least climactic ending of all time, but it is fitting for a highly trained ninja - no theatrics, just an end to the quest and a start to more training.

Having had so much fun with Ninja Gaiden (2004), I looked forward to Ninja Gaiden 2 with much interest and anticipation. Then word got out: Ninja Gaiden 2 was going to be a little bit easier this time around. I may have to turn in my official "Badass" card, but I was secretly relieved. "I might actually be able to finish this game on a Normal difficulty level in less than a year!" I thought to myself. (Here's hoping.) So far the game is great. It is easier, but only by a little bit. There are finishing moves in gory close-up action, new weapons and a different treatment of dead bodies. In the previous game the bodies of your fallen enemies would disappear after a time. This helped the video game be fast as the computer wouldn't have to keep track of those fallen corpses. This time around the bodies stay put, in all the many pieces you carve them into, forever. It's really satisfying to pile them up. And also heads roll downstairs. It'sreallyfuckingcool!!

Okay, so that might not have appealed to everyone reading this blog, but what I'm about to discuss is a magnet of awesomeness that no one can ignore: waves and waves of screaming, sprinting, jumping zombies...on fire. Left 4 Dead, the other violent game I got for my birthday, takes place in four different types of locations and consists of four survivors of the zombie apocalypse running through said areas and fighting off the zombie hordes. Each section has 5 zones that you've gotta get through, and at the end of each zone is a safe house that you hole up in and in which you can find weapons and health items. You can have pistols, a shotgun, an AK-47, a sniper rifle or an uzi. You can also find pipe bombs, molotov cocktails and propane tanks lying around which are all quite useful. (The pipe bombs have this red glowing light on the end that attracts the zombies. They all crowd around the pipe bomb desperately and then they all get blown to smithereens.) Mostly you run around picking off the individual zombies here and there, but sometimes the huge rampaging masses of zombies come pouring into the hallway, street, room, closet, cabin in which you are hiding out. When that happens it's all guns and bombs and fire and blood and ridiculous chaotic violence. And it's too much fun to unload an entire clip of your uzi into the 100 zombies that are running straight at you.

A great addition made by Microsoft with the Xbox360 is the inclusion of achievements for all games. Achievements are these milestones that you can reach for performing certain feats. Lately the achievements are getting "punny" names, such as the achievement in Dark Sector that you get for cutting off two people's heads with one throw of your boomerang/razor blade/hand thingy: "Double De-Cap Latte".

The other day, as I was fighting the zombie hordes from the top deck of an abandoned cabin in the woods, I threw a molotov cocktail into the air, and it landed on a huge group of zombies through which the flames spread like wildfire. That simple action put me over the top of my burning zombies limit and I was awarded the "101 Cremations" achievement...a badge that I will wear proudly. See when one zombie gets hit with the flames, he/she runs around and spreads it to the next zombie and so on and so forth until it is quite warm out. It's a fun domino effect to watch. I would've spent more time watching had I not been attacked by a bunch more zombies from a different direction. No time to stop and smell the roses when you're under attack by the living dead.

There is a lot wrong with violence in the real world. I could write many blog posts about my feelings of violent acts in the world, and more specifically the quickness at which we arrive at the decision to do violence to one another. But letting loose in a fantasy world is nothing to be ashamed of and is quite theraputic and fun. Grand Theft Auto 4 is a lot of violent fun as well. So is The Warriors and F.E.A.R. I'm trying hard to stay away from any outright commentary, so lets just leave it at this: In the real world and video games, I fully advocate man-on-zombie violence. Left 4 Dead actually makes me fear a potential zombie apocalypse, so in between gaming sessions, I'll be boning up on my Zombie Survival Guide.

Something new

2009-02-02T07:27:00.000-08:00

I started out pretty hot and heavy with this blog, and while I still get a great feeling out of writing a good post, I think I need something to spurn me on. I think a schedule or sorts will help me be a bit more prolific. We've started doing it at home, thanks to the insistence of the GF, with meals. We figure out all the meals and write them down on re-usable white board on the fridge, then we just check them off as we go and we never have any confusion about what's for dinner. It sounds anal to type it out, but it's really not and it works well.

So, this week started out slow but interesting with the Wal-Mart post from earlier today, but fear not because the rest of the week will bring a lot more gore to your door. I got a couple fun games XBOX360 games for my birthday so I'll be writing about getting the "101 Cremations" acheivement in Left 4 Dead, as well as messily killing Spider Clan ninjas in Ninja Gaiden 2. Later in the week I'll get to My Bloody Valentine 3-D, and I'll talk a little about Silent Hill, both the games and the movie, as a result of getting the newest title in that game series, Silent Hill: Homecoming. I hope you're looking forward to it as much as I am!

An interesting way to start the week

2009-02-02T06:49:00.001-08:00

As with many of the ideas I get as to what goes into this blog, today's comes from boingboing.net. Guest blogger, Charles Platt recently performed a personal experiment and took an entry level job at his local Wal-Mart. Mr. Platt wanted to see if all the horror stories he'd read about on the web in regards to horrendous employee treatment had the ring of truth to them. He found out that things at Wal-Mart aren't all that bad. Link up to his entry and read about Wal-Mart. It'll make you forget how guilty you feel after you shop there...which I know you do.

Life At Wal-Mart

Equally interesting is the tidbit he finishes his post with, referring us all to read Adam Shepard's account of trying to earn money after starting with nothing but $25 and a good work ethic. Eye-opening to say the least. I know that the realities of life aren't always so positive, but it's nice to know that there are some people out there who don't have a terrible opinion about our country and the opportunities herein. It's a good feeling to see taht there are some folks who are championing the American Dream and it's potential for fulfillment.

If memory serves...why can't I get it do what I want?

2009-01-29T11:55:00.000-08:00

There are times when memories are jolted out of my subconscious by sudden recognition. It happens, most enjoyably, with movies. For instance: When I was young, 5 maybe?, I wandered into the room when my dad was watching a movie. I saw a guy who was lying in bed, this girl pushes a button on the wall and the bed flips up, then two guys come in with guns and shoot into the back of the flipped up bed. I remembered it for a long long time, but never knew what movie it was from until I was about 14 or so and I got to see You Only Live Twice with Sean Connery, and that scene is where he gets "killed". After they shoot him in the bed they put his body in a coffin and throw it overboard, burial at sea style. A submarine picks up the coffin, brings it on board and James Bond just gets out and later has plastic surgery so he can look Japanese.

That's a pretty big scene from a movie everyone knows, or knows of, that was floating around in my head until I suddenly came upon it. I love James Bond movies and have been watching them for a long time, but I had no idea when I started watching You Only Live Twice all those years ago that I would finally be able to put a title to that scene I saw when I was 5. A similar thing happened when I watched The Goonies...but it was kind of in reverse. We were shown The Goonies in school, second grade I think, and then I didn't see it again in its complete form until I was almost 20. I always had this recollection of seeing a guy in a jail cell who had hung himself, but when the guard comes in the guy kills the guard and escapes, and of course that's the opening of The Goonies.

When I was a kid we had a Beta deck instead of VHS. That meant I could never rent movies, but we always had tons of recorded cartoon specials and movies and shows. It was kind of fun because you could keep seeing the old McDonalds commercials and old trailers for movies that were coming out into the theater then. Our recorded Beta tape of Garfield's Halloween had a trailer on it for The Ice Pirates, an awesome low budget sci-fi comedy from 1984 with Robert Urich, Ron Pearlman and Anjelica Huston. Trust me when I say that it's funny and ridiculous. So I spent many years watching this trailer, always wondering if I'd ever see that movie in my life, or if anyone ever saw it. Then one day my dad came home with two huge boxes. He had gone to an electronics store, and because Beta had recently lost in the format war to VHS, he got a shit-ton of Beta tapes for cheap. We ended up with the oddest assortment of crap and greatness all at once. Imagine my surprise and excitement when I rummaged through the boxes and found a copy of The Ice Pirates! I saw the movie and it is what it is: Not great, but far from awful; very watchable and enjoyable. Plus it's always fun to go back and revisit old movies with people who were just starting their careers, but maybe that's tomorrow's post.

I'll leave you with one more, and then maybe you will want to share some scenes that are lost in your own minds. (Maybe I can help you piece those mysteries together.) My favorite holiday is Halloween and I love, more than anything else, the atmosphere that pervades television during Halloween. Channels add all sorts of cauldron and cobweb graphics, and the color and music queues change to reflect the feel of the haunting season. I never took note of television schedules. I never watched any shows on a regular basis, I always just turned the set on and checked the channels that I remembered had good shows. Consequently I would tune into the middle of interesting things never to know what they were or see them again. One year in October I tuned into some channel and saw a Halloween cartoon that I had never seen before. There was a green goblin-looking guy in a suite with a huge cape and some costumed-kids were hanging onto the ends of his cape and they were flying. They flew to a place where there was a broom festival and witches were chanting and cavorting about. The show had a great feel to it, good atmosphere too. I always wanted to know what it was, but never saw it on TV again. By accident I started reading a great Ray Bradbury book, years and years later, called "The Halloween Tree". Something in my memory jogged and I checked good ol' imdb.com to see if there was ever a movie version made. There was of course, an animated movie of the same name. I rented it, and then bought it immediately. I still watch it every year, but on VHS as there isn't a DVD version yet. Searching specifically for something can be fun, but stumbling upon some treasure from your past is even better.

Information

2009-01-28T16:48:00.001-08:00

Think you're worldly? Check out this Flash presentation on the world's most overcrowded slums. It's interesting, and provides a good ground-eye view of some places you don't normally hear about or get to see pictures of.

The Places We Live

All in a golden afternoon...

2009-01-27T15:19:00.000-08:00

...Full leisurely we glide;

For both our oars, with little skill,

By little arms are plied,

While little hands make vain pretense

Our wanderings to guide.

Today is Charles Dodgson's birthday, or would be if he were alive. He is one of my favorite authors and is well known by almost everyone, although by a different name. Charles Dodgson's pen name was Lewis Carroll. Lewis Carroll wrote Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, as well as Sylvie and Bruno and The Hunting of the Snark. I've been a fan of the Alice stories for a long time, I bet we all have, and I've taken my childhood appreciation of Carroll's work into adulthood and have collected some of his work in first editions, as well as some other peripheral books.

Today, for bloggers, is Down the Rabbit Hole Day, and you're supposed to blog about something that's not your style to blog about. I pretty much only blog about movies, so I guess anything's fair game, so I guess it makes sense to write a little about Lewis Carroll and his works that have given me so much joy.

Through the Looking Glass used to be my favorite Carroll work, until I read The Hunting of the Snark. It's a poem in rhyming style, and is only about 20 pages long, without annotations. The story tells of a group of people, a boots, a barrister, a broker, a billiard marker, a banker, a beaver and the Bellman, who go on a long sea voyage to find a snark. While on the journey they all get in each other's hair and when they hit land they go searching for the snark being careful not to find a boojum instead. The tale is illustrated by Henry Holiday in a style that is described by Martin Gardner as "grotesque", but not in the sense that the pictures are disgusting. They are just oddly proportioned and strangely creepy at times. Also, there are many hints at what is happening in the poem hidden in the illustrations, but there are also inconsistencies between the description in the poem and the pictures that accompany the words. Sometimes these can be chalked up to the pictures having been completed, and the text having been edited at the last minute, but some of the alterations are motive-less and it all adds to the surreal atmosphere of the whole work. The Hunting of the Snark is a fun, easy read that has many strange elements as well. I fully endorse it.

The poem at the top of the post is the opening verse of "A Golden Afternoon" which is the poem that begins Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Dodgson created the Alice stories for his three little friends, the Liddell sisters. Alice herself was the middle child. Dodgson was a logic and mathematics professor at Christ Church, Oxford, and the little Liddell girls were daughters of a co-worker of his. The poem refers directly to them by saying "little skill", "little arms", "little hands", as "little" and "Liddell" are homonyms. Dodgson did a lot of fun stuff like that in his writing. Another great poem of his that I like is "Phantasmagoria" a poem in seven cantos in a collection of his poetry called Rhyme? And Reason?. In "Phantasmagoria", a man comes home from a night of drinking with friend to find a ghost in his flat. He and the ghost strike up a conversation and end up telling each other all sorts of things. The ghost starts telling the man the differences between ghosts, spectres, phantoms, etc.

Charles Dodgson gets a lot of flak for being a pedophile, and while he did have tendencies that were of that nature, the people who knew him maintain that he never acted upon those urges, urges which he himself has said had haunted and tormented him. He took photographs too. I have a couple books of his photography and it's all amazing. He has great photos of animal skeletons and still lifes, as well as many many...far too many...pictures of little girls and boys portraying scenes from literature. The Liddell girls in "Chinese dress", St. George and the Dragon, etc.) He was perhaps more prolific a photographer than he was a writer.

For better or for worse, Charles Dodgson produced some great art in his lifetime. I will make sure my future kids know Alice in Wonderland, and all the versions of it that there are too. For the record Disney's version is alright for a fusing of the two books, The Natalie Gregory version from 1985 made for TV is great because of all the people in it, but the strangest and most interesting one is Jan Svankmajer's Alice from 1988. it's a strange fusion of live action and stop motion animation, but it is not or the faint of heart. It's surreal and odd, and those are understatements! Check it out if you feel up for something off the beaten path. Thanks for reading. Wish Lewis Carroll/Charles Dodgson a happy birthday for the 27th and me a happy birthday for the 28th!

Good news for media!

2009-01-26T16:07:00.000-08:00

No, I'm not talking about newspapers...they're still all dead or dying...but the sharing of digital media has gained ground. I talk a lot on here about DRM, copyright infringement, etc., and there is a lot of back and forths going on around the web on whether or not people actually lose money by having their songs and/or movies downloaded for free. Here is some conclusive proof:

Monty Python, which you can find all over YouTube in very poor quality, is doing something good and making money from it. Monty Python got sick and tired of having their stuff thrown onto YouTube for free and in bad condition so they have created their very own YouTube channel. Everything is free and in great quality. They specifically sought out the most watched videos on YouTube and uploaded pristine editions of them to replace the pixelated versions. All the Monty Python stuff is free...but there are links all over the page that will bring you to Amazon to buy their DVDs.

Since Monty Python's YouTube channel has been active, their videos are the highest rated and most watched on YouTube, and the sales of their movies and TV show DVDs has risen by about 23,000%. Is there a better argument for free and unrestricted sharing of media and digital entertainment? Locks only keep dishonest people out, and the people who illegally download the most MP3s are also the ones who legally buy the most CDs and go to the most concerts. Refusing to let people share media does more harm than good.

Wanna make yourself think?

2009-01-22T16:44:00.000-08:00

By far the best thing I've read today is this paragraph:

"...more items are invented and manufactured – while the total number of hours in a day to enjoy them remains fixed – we spend less and less time per item. In other words the long-term trend in our modern lives is that ALL goods and services will be short-term use. Therefore all goods and services are candidates for rental, sharing, and the social commons." - Kevin Kelly

The entire essay/blog post is here. I recommend you read it. Even if you don't agree with everything Mr. Kelly is saying, it's still rich food for thought, and is indicative of where things are headed. (For most of us we are here already.)

Some creative stuff

2009-01-22T11:02:00.001-08:00

The only new things I've seen lately are Juno, which was hilarious and all sorts of emotional awesomeness, and Bringing Up Baby, which is also very enjoyable and funny, if you can forget that Katharine Hepburn's character is fucking nuts and annoying as hell. If I were in Cary Grant's position, I never would've been so insufferably polite. But I digress.

Since I'm sure no on out there wasn't to read my thoughts about teen pregnancy and Juno, and you just heard what I think of Bringing Up Baby, here are some pictures I've done today and yesterday for the GF. Enjoy!

If you see this broad on the street, back off and find a new route. She's obviously got some craaaaazy mood swings!

Heartbreaking & Awesome

2009-01-21T06:49:00.000-08:00

This is hilarious, disturbing, creative, pitiful and ridiculous all at the same time. The music and the image come together perfectly.

Chocolade Haas

Let the Right One In

2009-01-19T07:04:00.000-08:00

Last Friday night I saw the Swedish horror film Let the Right One In. It's one of the very few horror films to come out of Scandinavia, and of course Dead Snow is on its way too, so maybe this is the sign of a renaissance of horror films from the bitter cold of Norway and Sweden?

Let the Right One In has made many horror "Best of..." lists for it's great story that makes the vampire elements secondary and incidental. It's boy-meets-girl in a very simplistic and pure approach. The boy is 12 and is a bullied only child from two divorced parents. The dad provides little structure and the mom is left to basically be the iron fist, preventing her from finding a healthy balance between discipline and friendship that every parent needs. It's not a healthy environment and the boy has no self esteem or confidence. He lies about bruises and cuts from his bullying at school.

Enter the girl, a seeming 12 years old herself, but really she's a 100+ year old vampire who moved into the apartment next door. They meet in the courtyard one night and a tentative friendship begins to form, even though each one makes sure to tell the other how disinterested in having friends they are. The rapport between the two kids is great, and it's funny to watch them being children, then realizing that one of them has been around for centuries. In the background there are townsfolk reacting to the various murders perpetrated by the vampire's adult "helper". The movie moves at its own pace, which might be a bit slow for some, but the story is genuinely touching and the gore factor is something you forget about between the sparse, but vivid, bloodlettings.

Half-way through the movie, which follows very classic vampire mythology and rules, it becomes apparent that the title has a three-fold meaning: the girl is an old vampire and has to be careful who she trusts, the boy is also careful about who he "lets in" because of his experiences with bullies and alienation from his parents, and they each have to be careful about who they let in to their personal living spaces. A vampire cannot enter a dwelling unless he/she has been invited, and we find out what happens when they try without that formal invitation. The boy needs to be careful who he lets into his room, and he makes a good choice with the girl; she is a vampire in whom he can trust and confide.

A hesitant camaraderie becomes a fast friendship, even though the boy doesn't really catch on to the true nature of his friend until wall into the final third of the film. (Watch the sparks fly when he decides they should be "blood-brothers" and cuts his palm in front of her.) She looks out for him, and in the end he has to do the same for her. They both reach depths of feeling that they never knew existed before.

The dark, long winter of Sweden makes for a fantastic and unsettling backdrop. Snow has never looked so beautiful, yet after watching a movie like 30 Days of Night, you're reminded of how long those nights can last in the winter months and how that can drain hope and joie de vivre. The most suicides occur in the winter, and I can rightly assume, the most vampiric killings. Let the Right One In is a beautiful film with a beautiful story. It has horror elements, but when you leave the theater you'll only be thinking of the great coming together of two beings who found friendship, not the eerie scenes of blood-sucking.

WTF

2009-01-19T07:02:00.000-08:00

I don't know what the purpose of this robot is, but over at Boing Boing Gadgets there is a video of a Japanese push-up robot who turns evil. I especially like the arterial spray.

Put a little Love-craft in your heart

2009-01-16T13:05:00.000-08:00

Cheesy, yes, apt, possibly. I finally got around to finishing the meagre 40-pages of The Dunwich Horror, by H.P. Lovecraft. I had watched the 1970 film version not long ago and, having read that the movie was a far from accurate adaptation, I decided to read the original tale.

About halfway through reading I figured out that the movie is as far from accurate as one can get. Something big must have happened half-way, I hear you say to yourself. Well you're right. The main character of the movie dies half-way through the book. And he looks nothing like his film counter-part either. The story concerns an apparently fatherless man who seeks out a book called the Necronomicon in which he hopes to find spells that will allow him to conjure up the Great Old Ones and take over the Earth. Later in the book you find out that he has a twin brother, who is pretty much a complete monster, who eats raw cattle and lives in the barn. The main character himself, Wilbur Whateley, is 9 feet tall and wears baggy clothes to hide his deranged lower half. You find out, after he dies, that his legs and feet resemble those of an elephant, and he has many tentacles coming out of his stomach and back. The filmmakers thought that Wilbur should look like this instead:

His twin, after Wilbur dies, goes on a rampage and kills and destroys things around the countryside. Some men, a few of them learned men, destroy "him" with some counter spells also found in the Necronomicon. After that no one speaks of the Whateley's again. The movie has Wilbur hooking up with Sandra Dee with the hopes of using her as a human vessel with which to bring the Great Old One, Yog Sothoth, to Earth. Kinda different, right? Remember, Wilbur Whateley is supposed to be 9 feet tall with elephant feet in the book, but in the movie he looks like this:

I know why they had to make him look like that. Sandra Dee is not a great animal lover, and even if she were she'd probably shy away from someone with the legs of an elephant. I will say this about the movie: It's got a lot of great 60's/70's horror movie tropes. The clothing is ridiculous and hilarious and every time the strange monster is shown a whole bunch of colors flow around the screen and the image gets all distorted like you're on an acid trip. There's also some obligatory nudity-on-the-altar-of-sacrifice stuff. (I suspect that it's a body double for Sandra Dee, though, because you never see her face in the frame at the same time as the naked body.)

Lovecraft adaptations are made by people who love Lovecraft, but who just get so excited about making their little opus/ode/homage that they fuck it all up. Not once have I seen a movie even begin to communicate the eerie feeling I get when reading Lovecraft's tales. The only person I'd like to see try would be Daren Aronofsky. I think he could do a great job. I'd also like him to use the all in-camera effects from The Fountain because there was no CGI in that movie, and everything had a great texture and tangible nature to it. Maybe this upcoming adaptation will be a bit better:

Dunwich Horror Trailer
Uploaded by dreadcentral

I can think of two movie that strayed so far from their source material: Starship Troopers and Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Oh, you didn't know Roger Rabbit was based on a book? Well, you'll find out more about that next time.

Some stuff

2009-01-14T06:48:00.000-08:00

Here's a funny commercial from Durex, which I found on The Reverse Cowgirl blog.

And here's a poster for the Nazi-zombie flick from Scandanavia that I mentioned here before. I want to see this movie very badly now. It's becoming an obsession for me. In the same vein I also want to play and beat Call of Duty 5 because after you win you unlock a level wherein you get to take on WW2 Nazi zombies in an old abandoned mansion! This video could also double as a teaser for Dead Snow. At least I hope Dead Snow is as good as this. Here's a look!

And this is just for fun.

How could I forget!

2009-01-13T08:24:00.000-08:00

I was over at a new favorite movie site of mine, twitchfilm.net, and I saw a t-shirt that they were advertising. It's the pic you see above, black shirt with a VHS tape on it saying "Never Forget". I suppose this marks the officiality of the death of VHS and the true reigning of DVD/Blu-ray as the rulers of home media. VHS was on it's deathbed, wheezing through a respirator for some years though, so it's hardly a surprisse to anyone. However, this made me think back some years when we were all using tapes, and I got in touch with my feelings about them.

Tapes, not only VHS but Beta too!, had a kind of allure. The tape itself degraded with time, so when you got your hands on an old tape you knew how much it had been played/loved/obesessed over. I saw a few big movies on old copied beta tapes in my youth and I still recall those watchings with a fondness for the lack of contrast, darkness that crept over it's boundaries encompassing the rest of the frame, tracking issues that you could minimize but never completely dispel. Movies I first saw on poor-quality tape: Animal House, Jokes My Folks Never Told Me, The Empire Strikes Back.

As a family we recorded many TV specials off of TV and I still watch A Charlie Brown Christmas (and It's the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown!) with a sense that a commercial is on the horizon and I'll see that old McDonald's ad where Ronald and the kids are skating on the pond, but the youngest of the group can't keep up. I miss the '80's CBS Special logo and the old NBC peacock that was actually a peacock with a head and neck and legs. Those logos and tags were indicators that what I was watching was not run-of-the-mill.

The copy of Empire Strikes Back that I watched had a Degobah so green and dark that I never clearly knew what was going on. There were so many things I caught hints of in the background and that added a mystery to the Star Wars movie that I will never get back, since now I can see everything...even the new things that have been added to "improve" upon the original release. Oh, and it was formatted wrong: the widescreen image had been compressed to fit a TV screen and I saw a Chewbacca that was taller and thinner than even a wookie could ever be. My copy of Animal House had no contrast, so the nudity really had an underground feel to it. I had discovered an adult movie and was watching it at too young an age. The texture of the tape only amplified that sense of wrong-doing. It made watching exciting.

The same can be said for Jokes My Folks Never Told Me, a film I'm sure none of you have ever heard of, although it is Anthony Keidis' third acting role, well before he formed Red Hot Chili Peppers. Jokes... is a collection of dirty jokes played out by actors with all the sex and nudity you could want. And it's real '70's nudity. No silicon. But maybe that rant is for another post. Unfortunately the copy of Jokes... that was available to me was not complete and I've never seen the ending. It doesn't exist on DVD so I may never know what the rest of the jokes are. I wouldn't mind except throughout the movie there was one joke they told in parts, and I'll never know that punchline.

I was too young and afraid to get into the horror VHS boom of the 1980's. I wish I had, but I was too young for all that stuff. Home video really let horror loose on the world and the horror junkies ate it up with reckless abandon, causing some countries to ban many films with a fervor you wouldn't believe. Britain banned 37 horror films and took severe legal action against stores selling them. These films were called the Video Nasties and I'll probably do a post on just them another time.

So VHS has had a colored history, but it's one I wouldn't trade for anything. It's too bad that kids these days will never have the fun of watching a movie with all the imperfections that tapes had to offer. Scrubbing the negative clean for Star Wars was ultimately a great thing, as a movie like that needs to look good. Cleaning up The Texas Chain Saw Massacre? I'd rather watch it on the 15-year old tape we rented where the grime of the Hewitt house was magnified by the grime on the cassette. Besides, the phrase "stash of porno DVDs" just doesn't have the same ring to it.

Important tip

2009-01-09T11:37:00.000-08:00

Two blog posts in one day! Yay!!

Neither of them are about movies! Boo!!

But this is an important piece of info! I had a web problem at work yesterday that continued on until just recently. It wasn't because I was visiting NSFW web sites, anyone can get this malware, so watch yourselves!

The problem I had was within the internet. I would do a Google search, and when I would click on a search result link I'd be taken to a shopping page somewhere, or a Yellow Pages search for commerce of some sort. It was really fucking frustrating. I could always manually type in a URL and go there, unless the URL was to a site that had to do with anti spyware programs...then I'd be denied access by my own browser. It's really hard to get information about a malware or spyware infection when your browser won't allow you to go to pages about anti spyware programs.

If you are a Firefox user, when you settle your mouse cursor over a link, the address that the link will take you to appears in the lower left hand corner. When I would move my cursor over a link, it would say go.google and then have a shit-ton of numbers and letters, etc. But I finally learned that this malware/spyware effects many, and you can get it just by being in the web. (So that proves that I really wasn't looking at anything bad at work!) I followed the advice of several cross-referenced blogs and decided to go with Dr. Web CureIt!, a scanner that finds and destroys malware and spyware.

In order to get that program onto my computer, because my browser wouldn't let me get to any of the sites I could download the program from, I had to download it at home, save it to a flash drive, bring the drive to work and upload it to my computer from there. Tedious, but not that hard. The point of this blog post is that it worked perfectly the first time around. I haven't even done the deep clean yet, just the quick scan and my internet browser works fine now.

So, if this ever happens to you, or you just wanna scan your comp to see how it's doing, go to:

http://www.snapfiles.com/reviews/drweb-cureit/cureit.html

and download the program. It's pretty self-explanatory from there. It's nice to a free program that is helpful and works. Have fun and happy problem-free browsing!

The Future of Television

2009-01-09T09:44:00.000-08:00

This week, right now, as I type and you read, CES is going in Las Vegas. CES (Consumer Electronics Show) is where new technologies get unveiled every year, from electric bicycles to a solar and wind powered recharging devices. Mostly people go to CES, or follow the happenings at CE, to find out what new advancements have been made in home theater equipment, DVDs, TVs, cell phones, etc. This year, as you may have expected, there are a lot of companies trying to make the thinnest TVs around.

When was the last time you went TV shopping and wondered if you could get your HDTV to possibly be just a little bit thinner? have you ever sat and pined at home about your sorry lot in life because you are the sad owner of a 3.5" thick 60" HDTV instead of a .8" thick 60" HDTV? Neither have I. (In fact, I don't have an HDTV yet, so there!) Toshiba, a fantastic company that lost-the-hi-definition-war-to-Blu-ray-but-invented-DVD-technology-anyway-so-they're-still-cool, have wondered allowed why other companies seem to think that thinner TVs are a good thing to spend [read: waste] your money and time improving? No one knows why thin is such a big deal, but Toshiba has descided to put their best foot forward and predict the state of televisions in the not-so-distant-future.

Cell-TV.

From audioholics.com:

Toshiba again talked about its upcoming Cell TV technology which utilizes the IBM/Sony PowerPC-based Cell processor to allow for advanced video processing and frame interpolation o both standard definition and high definition content. There is a lot being talked about, and a working demo on the show floor, however now they are claiming that this will be shipping in 2009! The new Cell TV will feature:

A powerful cell broadband processor with a focus on advanced picture quality and advanced applications
Wireless HD video support, even at the highest resolutions
Built-in hard disc storage with server capabilities for receiving and distributing content throughout the home
Seamless Internet connectivity for downloading and accessing network content

The Cell TV will ultimately combine elements of IPTV, multi-source file compatibility (HDD, SD, USB, etc), DLNA support for remote file sharing/streaming, and full (and largely transparent) Internet support.

On the real cutting edge side of the Cell TV, the system is said to be able to handle six (6) simultaneous HD streams at once. That means it can record 6 HD streams to the drive or storage system simultaneously. It will utilize a completely new 3D graphical user interface (GUI) and provide a new way of accessing data and programming material easily and from multiple locations. DLNA support and advanced networking would indicate that this box should be able to serve an entire home full of HD displays and enable itself to be a potential AV hub for large amounts of content.

With that said, Toshiba claims they will release this technology this year, however we'll refrain from holding our breath until we see an actual set-top product arrive on the market. It's certainly got potential and was the most exciting thing we heard at Toshiba's press event.

For additional information please visit www.tacp.toshiba.com.

So the device that you're sitting in front of right now will be what televisions will change into in soon. You can already get PC-driven home theater systems, and Apple TV is a pretty big deal these days too. (Even though NetGear debuted their "AppleTV-killer" at CES as well.) So TVs and are getting closer to computers all the time. But Toshiba wants to make monitors and then couple them with cell-powered CPUs of a fashion that can bring you a cable interface that more closely resembles the internet. It's an exciting thing. Netflix already has their set-top box that streams movies stright from your queue online, so this is just expanding on that a bit.

Too Much Rambo

2009-01-07T09:27:00.000-08:00

This past year, 2008, I had the chance to see a couple movie marathons. We didn't watch horror films, but there were quite a few scenes of bloody carnage. In case you haven't guessed...and you haven't...I sat through all four Rambo movies in one night. (I also watched the first three Indiana Jones movies twice in two days, but that will have to wait.) I don't know how many of you have seen a Rambo film, much less all of them, but please take me word for it that Rambo shooting someone in the jungles of Vietnam is the same as Rambo shooting someone in Afghanistan, Burma and Oregon. The only thing that changes are some of the plants and the amount of blood. I confess that I fell asleep and Rambo I-III started to blend together.

I passed out sometime in the fourth quarter of Rambo II, while Rambo was knifing people in the jungle, and I woke up sometime during Rambo III when Rambo was knifing people in the Afghan mountains. Rambo IV I watched completely, but it moves at a much different pace and is really a separate movie from its predecessors. Rambo is pretty easy to recognize as it takes place in America, so everyone is speaking English. Plus Brian Dennehy is in it, so it's hard to mistake Rambo for any of the other Rambos. Rambo II takes place in Vietnam and Rambo is rescuing some POWs in the jungle. Rambo III takes place in Afghanistan and has the worst subtitles I've ever seen in my entire life. Rambo IV takes place in Burma and Rambo is killing the entire Burmese army in ultra violent and bloody ways. (It's pretty awesome actually.)

The subtitles in Rambo III follow this pattern: translate the most mundane Russian dialogue spoken by the extras; fail to translate important Russian dialogue by major players. An important Russian torturer yells commands as the American captive, but we get no subtitles letting us know what he's saying. This would be an interesting device, reminding us that when we are interrogated by a foreigner, we don't know what is being yelled at us. However, a few minutes later we get a scene with Rambo creeping through the Russian camp and overhearing two guards talking. This should also warrant zero subtitles as it's completely unimportant, but no...we find out that they're talking about what time dinner is. That complete reversal of correct subtitle usage is fairly indicative of Rambo III. There are Afghan enemies and Russian enemies, but there are also Afghan good guys, and you can't tell who's who. (All Russians are bad.) So I slept, like a baby, during some intense machine gun fire and a lot of exploding-tip arrows.

Rambo III, while being the most iconic of the Rambo movies, is a little misguided. I believe the pitch for Rambo III went something like this: "It's Lawrence of Arabia, but with guns and Lawrence has more muscles and exploding-tip arrows." Rambo III is Sly's Lawrence of Arabia. It's just that the film makers messed up: they remembered to kill a lot of evil Middle Easterners, they just forgot to add splendor and a message. It's not all bad though, at least Rambo gets to ride a horse. I want this picture in velvet in my house.

I recommend, even though I just spent a few paragraphs mud-slinging, that you check out any or all of the Rambo movies, because they're a lot of fun, taken at face value. Then you can go watch this and actually appreciate it:

and still...

2009-01-06T09:00:00.001-08:00

Yesterday I wasn't feeling well so I posted an article from Patton Oswalt instead of my own words. Today, I'm still not 100%, so I'm posting an entire post from another blog that also happens to be taken out of a book that someday soon I think I need to read. I happen to think this is pretty amazing, even if it may be too vulgar on the surface for many of you to actually get through.

From The Reverse Cowgirl:

"One night, for no particular reason, he went out to wander around the lifeless neighborhood of the West Fifties and walked into a topless bar. As he sat there at his table drinking a beer, he suddenly found himself sitting next to a voluptuously naked young woman. She sidled up to him and began to describe all the lewd things she would do to him if he paid her to go to 'the back room.' There was something so openly humorous and matter-of-fact about her approach, that he finally agreed to her proposition. The best thing, they decided, would be for her to suck his penis, since she claimed an extraordinary talent for this activity. And indeed, she threw herself into it with an enthusiasm that fairly astonished him. As he came in her mouth a few moments later, with a long and throbbing flood of semen, he had this vision, at just that second, which has continued to radiate inside him: that each ejaculation contains several billion sperm cells--or roughly the same number as there are people in the world--which means that, in himself, each man holds the potential of an entire world. And what would happen, could it happen, is the full range of possibilities: a spawn of idiots and geniuses, of the beautiful and the deformed, of saints, catatonics, thieves, stock brokers, and high-wire artists. Each man, therefore, is the entire world, bearing within his genes a memory of all mankind. Or, as Leibniz put it: 'Every living substance is a perpetual living mirror of the universe.' For the fact is, we are of the same stuff that came into being with the first explosion of the first spark in the infinite emptiness of space. Or so he said to himself, at that moment, as his penis exploded into the mouth of that naked woman, whose name he has now forgotten. He thought: the irreducible monad. And then, as though taking hold of it at last, he thought of the furtive, microscopic cell that had fought its way up through his wife's body, some three years earlier, to become his son." Paul Auster, The Invention of Solitude, care of A."

I know it's laziness, but I'm almost finished watching The Dunwich Horror, and I'll definitely have something to say about that tomorrow.

Funniest article of 2008

2009-01-05T09:41:00.000-08:00

I'm not feeling well today, and I'm going to be lazy. The A.V. Club put up an article listing their favorite self-written pieces of 2008, and I'm linking you guys to the article that Patton Oswalt wrote for them about KFC's Famous Bowl. Patton

Oswalt drives to KFC, buys a Famous Bowl and eats it and reviews it. I really want to go to the KFC that he visited because there's something magnetizing about a KFC that "...had withstood assault by bullets, flamethrowers, Baseball Furies, and a hundred hook-handed whores."

Here you go. Enjoy.