"I'll Buy That For a Dollar!"

Magnificent Obsession

2011-05-25T16:20:00.000-07:00

Cost: One dollar late fee to the Oakland Public Library
Year: 1954
Run time: 108 minutes
Director: Douglas Sirk
Cast: Jane Wyman, Rock Hudson, Barbara Rush, Agnes Moorehead

A Love Letter to Jane Wyman's Hair (RIP)

Dear Jane Wyman's hair,

Ever since renting the underrated and demented Sirk-sterpiece MAG OB a couple months ago, phantasms of your shellac'd dome have haunted every waking second of my sad little shell of a life. If only I had the strength and derring-do of your daring 'do. So perverse, so severe, so unfailingly fetch. I often fantasize about my own personal Jane Wyman doll, scrubbing pots and pans up and down with her snuffleupagian garden of wooly filaments, wiping away all the dried cheese and pancake syrup like so many dust patches swooped away in a tropical breeze. At the end of this ceremony of cleanliness, I'd grow her back to normal size with my mind and lecture her on how marrying Ronald Reagan was a mistake, but how it will all be better now because there are so many dishes to clean and nothing else quite does the trick as well as she does, yes yes, everything is going to be okay, please don't cry Jane Wyman, please stop crying.

And then on September 10th, the crying did stop . . . FOREVER. Jane Wyman's hair had died, but my magnificent obsession with it was still only beginning. The Jane Wyman doll in my mind keeps telling me that everything will be okay, that the dishes can still get clean, and that the witches shall remain dead as long as we celebrate their passing every year with a big glitzy party that Rock Hudson can describe to you in minute detail while clutching your blind hand. "I could never have you pitied on account of me!" Will you be my beard? Your hair can be the SJP to my pots and pans Ferris. No? Well, I wasn't asking. I'm telling you that it must be so. Take me money! I didn't kill your husband! I was unconscious when it happened! I had no idea! No, don't get out of the car door! BOOM! and then you're blind, but it's okay because years ago, long before I settled into a life of degenerate, speed boat driving, scotch swilling playboy-hood, I had a humble simple dream: to be an eye surgeon. So you see it works out since you're blind and everything Jane Wyman, and I will help you to see, but like Steve Guttenberg, I won't tell her it's me, and you shouldn't either, lest you put her through more trauma then she already has. Just drop my voice a pitch and go on. Yes, Dr. Giggles has taught me well, I'll be ready for her eyes in no time. Just a little goofy gas and then fade. CAN YOU SEE CAN YOU SEE YOU CAN SEE! HUG. END. boom. tears, everywhere i look there are tears. can you see the tears, Jane Wyman? Can you understand the truth in which we live?

YOU CAN, well good, I was afraid.

Love,

Matt

(Editor James Olmos Note: originally written on September 14th 2007, left unpublished until now!).

Fingers (1978)

2009-08-27T12:47:00.000-07:00

Price: $3
Year: 1978
Length: 89 minutes
Writer/Director: James Toback
Cast: Harvey Keitel, Michael V. Gazzo, Tisa Farrow, Jim Brown, Danny Aiello, Tanya Roberts, Anthony Sirico, Dominic Chianese

The perfectly adequate new HBO series HUNG is all about protagonist Ray Drecker's other-worldly huge dong. It enchants all who lay eyes upon it and it dangles freely over every aspect of his life; most notably, his decision to use his wangasaurus sex to stack up paper in the recession by becoming a male prostitute. Yet, in a rare moment of pay cable restraint, his cock has yet to be unsheathed for the home audience. According to the producers, this was a conscious choice since revealing this magical penis would rob it of it's mystical superhuman qualities as no actual cock (real or prosthetic) could possibly be as groovy and gratifying as the cocks' we constantly build in the throbbing tower of our own mind's eye hole. Essentially his member is a kind of Cock Me Deadly/Pulp Fucktion suitcase type deal, we know he's packing something special in there, but special how? Long and thick? Veiny? Mushroom head or Gregorian monk? Enquiring minds demand to know.

Harvey Keitel, on the other hand, has rarely been so coy about whipping it out. With his fly-breaking work in modern classics such as Abel Ferrara's ode to ugliness BAD LIEUTENANT, Jane Champion's multi-Oscar winning THE PIANO and Theo Angelopoulos' artsy fartsy blow bartsy ULYSSES' GAZE, Keitel almost single handily brought full-frontal male nudity into the American mainstream. Since Harvey's early to mid 90s triumvirate of penis showing, male nudity has become increasingly prevalent in mainstream movies from the collected works of Ewang McGregor to the comedy penises of Jason Segel in FORGETTING SARA MARSHALL and the fat dude sporting a GG Allin Denny's Sausage in OBSERVE AND REPORT.

However, being the Rosa Parks of cock-revealing can have its limitations and nowhere is this more apparent than in his lead performance as Jimmy Fingers in James Toback's ode to his own penis FINGERS. You see Jimmy Fingers is a passionate thoughtful conflicted young schizophrenic who is torn between the violent underworld of his life as a mobster's son and his desire to play piano at Carnegie Hall like his crazy old mom. Hanging over this parental schism is the fact that Jimmy Fingers is constantly horny as hell because he has a prostate problem where every time he ejaculates it hurts like fuck. He finally gets his ass checked out by a proctologist who helps to cure him of his constipation issues and also maybe to allude to his latent homosexuality. But this relief is only temporary as he is emasculated later on by having Jim Brown make out with the girl he crushing on. Harvey Keitel's penis just can't catch a break, except for the really weird scene where he has 30 seconds of heaven with Tanya Roberts in a women's room for one of the most repulsive and indulgent sex scenes I've seen in a while. For the most part, he's ruled by his disagreeable cock and it makes his life a living hell, yet even though Jimmy Finger's penis is the catalyst to pretty much all his actions in one way or another, we thankfully never get to see it ourselves, even though I was expecting Harvey to pull a himself at any given moment and show us the goods. Here's him getting a finger (note the title motif!) shoved up his ass.

He also walks around at all times of day with a tape player playing insanely irritating doo wop like some kinda Proto-Radio Raheem. He is particularly fond of playing the song SUMMERTIME SUMMERTIME by the Jamies over and over. It sounds like this . . .

Needless to say, throughout the movie this song irritates all within ear shot, including the audience, as it is the most irritating song of the pre-smell.you.that era. Please don't complain to Jimmy Fingers about it though cause he will threaten to cut your lips off, you cocksucker (again with the latent homosexuality and the penises).

This is James Toback's directoral debut and pretty much all the themes and ideas contained within here are recurrent motifs throughout his 30 year career. By all accounts, James Toback is a self-centered blowhard who makes movies about himself and the things he's obsessed with over and over again. A main character who is driven by sex and can convince gorgeous women to sleep with him at the drop of a hat? Sure, try FINGERS, LOVE AND MONEY, THE PICK UP ARTIST, TWO GIRLS AND A GUY or HARVARD MAN. A fascination with the sexual prowess of huge black sports stars? Try FINGERS, BLACK AND WHITE, or TYSON. Main characters who get mixed up with the criminal element? Try FINGERS, EXPOSED, THE PICK UP ARTIST, BLACK AND WHITE, or HARVARD MAN. A main character who loses touch with reality? FINGERS and HARVARD MAN are the ticket. You get the idea. Lots of directors are guilty of re-making the same film their whole careers (Wes Anderson comes to mind as a recent example). Few have done it with the same relentless drive as Toback has over his eight narrative films and two documentaries, which would be fine or even admirable if Toback were actually, you know, talented (hint: he's not).

When it was first released, FINGERS was heralded as one of the most promising debut features of the 70s. And, despite my numerous reservations about it, it's not hard to see why. Removed from the repetitive grind of Toback's subsequent garbage duty (which also made many of his early adopters abandon ship with the quickness), FINGERS is a pretty impressive debut feature. Harvey Keitel gives one of his best performances as the tortured and conflicted Jimmy Fingers. As written, Jimmy is tickier than Waburton in blue with his continual air piano, tape decking, and repressed penis rage, but Keitel walks a fine line by embracing these quirks but just barely holding them back from the precipice of self-parody. Except when he's supposed to be playing the piano, then it is fucking horrible. Case in point (cut to 3:10 for his wacky piano antics).

He's supported by a murderer's row of mob movie supporting actors including Michael V. Gazzo (who got a supporting actor nod for the Godfather Part II), Danny "The Pickle" Aiello, Lenny "Luca Brasi" Montana, and Dominic Chianese and Anthony Sirico, who would gain fame 20 years later on THE SOPRANOS as Uncle Jun and Paulie Walnuts respectively. The film also features the earthy, gritty photography of Michael Chapman, an underappreciated DP who shot THE LAST DETAIL, TAXI DRIVER, RAGING BULL, and THE LOST BOYS in the 70s and 80s before being relegated to studio hackdom in the 90s and 00s. Oh well, somebody had to shoot SPACE JAM. Actually, no, they didn't.

The whole film is wildly disjointed and erratic in its pacing and in its connection to reality, which those who praise it often attribute to the filmmaker's attempts to have the film mirror the character's mental decline. FINGERS does ok in this regard, but it's still pretty amateurish. It's not as brilliantly evolved as something like THE BUTCHER BOY, which actually made me feel like I was slowly going insane myself, nor is it as assured and disturbing as the aforementioned OBSERVE AND REPORT's handling of bi-polar disorder. That his films that don't deal with schizo main characters often share the same disjointed and clumsy vibe is more of a testament to Toback's generalized shittiness as a writer-director than anything else.

Now, let's try to go full circle, shall we? (No Michael Palin) The problem with HUNG is that you can't make a show about a dude with a huge penis and not show the audience said penis (especially while showing us the boobs of just about every single female character on the show) without it seeming like some kind of cheat. I'm not alone in this as a decent amount of the discourse online about HUNG has tied into this very problem with the show. The same principle applies to making a movie starring Harvey Kietel that is essentially about his character's dick and not showing us said dick as well. However, in this case, this problem wouldn't be a problem to audiences watching the movie back in 1978 because, at that point in his career, Keitel had yet to realize his potential as Hollywood's great bearer of cocks. It's only in retrospect that it seems particularly strange and yes, like some kind of cheat, that we don't see lil' Harv because of his subsequent reputation for and association with bearing his penis constantly in movies when nobody in their right mind would want him to. This very same retrospective expectation taints the movie FINGERS itself because, as previously stated, almost all of the themes and ideas in this pretty good film have been flogged over and over again by Toback throughout the subsequent 30 years of his career to diminishing returns in increasingly horrible bloated self-mythologizing crap like THE PICK UP ARTIST, TWO GIRLS AND A GUY, BLACK AND WHITE, and HARVARD MAN. My own experience of the movie FINGERS was undoubtedly kinda ruined by my having seen those four shitfests before watching FINGERS. Thus, Toback's refusal to stop making movies about the same shit for the love of god is the primary threat to FINGERS' legacy as a pretty interesting and exciting debut film from 1978. It's kinda like that scene in the movie HANNIBAL where Ray Liotta eats his own brain. You can bite off a little bit of your brain to keep going and provide your body with the nourishment it needs to survive being interred by a manic Anthony Hopkins. But if you eat too much of your own brain, you will die because you need your brain to live and your brain is what also enables you to eat in the first place so if you eat the part of your brain that tells your mouth to chew, you can't chew anymore and then you can't eat and you die. Toback's been eating his own brain (the brain apparently on full display in FINGERS) his whole career; taking bits and pieces from it and throwing them repeatedly against the wall in all his other movies, leaving nothing else on the withered husk of the film FINGERS but a thirty year legacy of repetition and self-indulgence. If he'd only had the good sense to either retire or quit after making FINGERS, he could float around like a Leonard Kastle or even Charles Laughton (as director) showing his great debut film and having people think about what if because, in this case, the what ifs that we can imagine after seeing FINGERS are invariably much better than any of the actual movies he's made in the interim. So basically, just like Michael Jackson was in the last few years of his life, Toback has been the biggest threat to the legacy of the material he made when he was still good (i.e. FINGAZ). Fortunately, Michael Jackson had the good sense to die at a time where it was still possible for us to pretend to forget about all the weird awful antics that marred his last 20 years of life and made it possible for us to all enjoy his fucking awesome shit once again free of the looming specter of his weird noseless face and pederast tendencies. Toback's release of a documentary about Mike Tyson this year creatively titled TYSON seems to be a move in the right direction for him as well. It's his most critically acclaimed movie since FINGERS (well, in fact, it's his only critically acclaimed movie since FINGERS) so there may be hope for him yet. My advice is just to avoid any and everything the man produced in between. (ok, except also for his Oscar nominated screenplay work for the perfectly acceptable Barry Levinson movie BUGSY, but once again, there he was eating someone else's brain and not his own).

Rambo III (1988)

2009-08-21T15:19:00.000-07:00

Price: $1.50
Year: 1988
Length: 103 minutes
Director: Peter MacDonald (replacing Russell Mulcahy)
Cast: Sylvester Stallone, Richard Crenna, Kurtwood Smith, Mark De Jonge

"It's a blue light"
"What does it do?"
"Turn blue"

Whenever I have blanked on something to blog about in this very space I turn to the films of Sylvester Stallone for inspiration. My very first post here was on his glorious buddy work with Kurt Russell in TANGO AND CASH, which I quickly followed up with a rambling discourse on the quite underrated JUDGE DREDD. Then, when I felt the need to revive this thing after 6 months of inactivity, I went with his semi serious duet of death with Rutger Hauer in NIGHTHAWKS. So it is not without some precedent that today when I was thinking "oh gee, I should write another entry in that damn thing already," I came to the conclusion that once again I'd need to turn to Mr. Stallone to force me to type entirely too many words into one space about one of his movies.

Hyperlinking and plodding essay exposition aside, RAMBO III will also, strangely, be the first Sylvester film I will have discussed here that features the dueling strengths of Stallone's acting and his screenwriting (but sadly not his directing). Stallone's career as a screenwriter is frequently overlooked or unfairly dismissed in most assessments of his career, yet it's a key factor in the success of many of his best films. His demented, excessively violent take on a book that would later be turned into a fucking Cindy Crawford + Baldwin Bro vehicle singularly made COBRA one of the greatest action films of the 1980's. Most prominently, he has been the only credited screenwriter on every single ROCKY film (6 total), for which he received an Academy Award nomination for writing his breakthrough role in the first ROCKY, for which he also received an acting nod, for which he did not win either, for which I am sad. 4 Witch(es) want to buy me flowers so I will now go ahead with this post now.

Anyway, I think most of Stallone's best movies have been those that he has had a hand in writing, then again he has screenwriting credits on a full half (18 of 36 by my count) of his post ROCKY films so the odds are somewhat stacked in his favor here to begin with. Still, I don't think it is coincidental that his prolonged 1990's flameout at the American box office came on just after he stopped taking a hand in his own scripts post-CLIFFHANGER (his last American box office hit until SPY KIDS 3-D in 2003 and his last script until 2001's uber-dud DRIVEN, which I'm just gonna blame on Renny Harlin sight unseen and I'm a Renny Harlin apologist, but that's another entry and this parentheses needs to end sometime how about no).

While Stallone took over the directorial reigns to the ROCKY franchise as soon as he could get the studio approval and wrote every one of those movies alone, he never seemed to take the same pride in his other signature series: the RAMBO films. Sure, he's a credited screenwriter on every single one of 'em, but up until 2008's reboot RAMBO, he was always a co-credited writer. For FIRST BLOOD, it was Stallone rewriting the script of a TV writer and an old B-movie hack, both of whom would never get another screenplay produced. On the contradictorily titled RAMBO:FIRST BLOOD PART II, Stallone re-wrote a script by James Cameron to fit his own political views with mixed success. Finally with RAMBO III, he worked alongside a good old reliable hack JCVD writer-director named Sheldon Lettich. Clearly, Stallone makes his vision shine through these other writer's words and ideas, but I don't think he really truly achieved greatness with this series until he took over the screenwriting and directorial reigns himself for RAMBO in 2008, a film that stands diarrhea and Drano above all the other RAMBO movies. Much like a French cigarette, Stallone is always at his best when he is unfiltered and the early RAMBO movies suffer for it.

Before I get into what doesn't quite work about RAMBO III, a film I have tried desperately to love but leaves me cold every time like 15 year old me with a Frank Zappa album, I'm going to list a few of the things that RAMBO III gets wonderfully funderfully co-rrect(ida). First off, unlike RAMBO FIRST BLOOD PART II, there is no attempt to shoehorn in any half-assed love interests for Mr. John Rambo this time. It is here that Stallone recognizes for the first time the true homoerotic potential of this franchise by removing almost all females from the picture (the only women in the whole film are a few young Afghani girls who Rambo saves in one scene) and by ramping up his own roided up shirtlessness to its absolute zenith. Never before had Stallone been so shirtless so often, not even in any of the ROCKY films where it even makes sense for him to be shirtless half the time since it's about fucking boxing, and he would never reveal himself so often again either. So if you want to see a lot of Stallone's cocaine and HGH filled chest covered in blood, sweat, and tears look no further than RAMBO III. Stallone also employs his famous exploding Rambo arrows to great effect in this movie. Whenever I was just about ready to nod off like Layne Staley in a public restroom, Stallone would explode someone with an arrow and my interest level would rise just enough to keep me a goin'. Finally, some special mention must be made of the fantastical kill towards the middle end of the movie where Stallone throws a guy with a rope around his neck down a hole with a bomb attached to him that explodes just after his neck is broken by the freshly taut rope. Sadly, this type of imaginative and entertaining death is sadly in short supply in this film. A remarkable decade of killing pulls to a limp end in this film.

At the end of the day though, there's a great YouTube video hidden somewhere in this movie, but it is just surrounded by too much dull exposition and hilariously misguided political intentions that somehow never wind up being hilarious themselves. This film is about how John Rambo puts everything on the line to help the Taliban in Afghanistan fight against those dastardly Russians who have invaded their land and killed their women and so on and so forth. We got A LOT of exposition involving Stallone spending time with the Taliban, learning from and adapting to their sometimes strange but always proud customs, such as playing a version of polo with a dead animal for a ball. Rambo beats them at their dead animal game the first time he plays it cause he's cooler than Clarence Rosario on a napkin and because Americans are naturally more gifted at all sports than foreigners, especially when they are Sylvester Stallone. We also get to spend some good mellow times with the kind hearted Taliban leader who is almost Omar Sharif just as the heroin dealer guy in MITCHELL is almost Anthony Quinn. As Jerry Goldsmith's self cannibalizing string and horn sections ebb and flow all around us, Stallone gives us a well-meaning master class in sympathizing with these Taliban guys and their pretty lousy seeming plight. History has been unkind to this film as the real tragedy these days is that Rambo puts his ass on the line to save a bunch of fuckers who then return the favor 13 years later by blowing up the beloved and historically significant set pieces from KING KONG 1976. But it was a different time then and wacko conservatives like Sylvester Stallone and the Golan-Globus axis were too busy demonizing those evil Russians at all costs so that if they made some other guys look a little too beatific in the process it was worth it to make a point about how evil those damn Russians were.

This extended and drawn out exposition is clearly some kind of convoluted way for Stallone to try to justify all the excessive violence in this film to those who criticized his reliance on blood, sinew, and powder kegs in the past. You see it's okay to kill people if they are really, really bad and if they are hurting people who are just tryin' ta live like Devin the Dude and not bug anyone else. Of fucking course, he befriends a child during this extended sequence. I assumed that the child would die in some horrific way in the movie, but I wasn't really paying too close attention at that point. I certainly hope the child dies, why else would you need to include one in a film like this? Essentially, Stallone in a war environment just makes too much sense. His overwrought, hyper-violent tendencies work best when placed in environments where it makes no sense like the wide world of arm wrestling truck drivers in OVER THE TOP, a city of serial killing satanic bikers in COBRA, or a boxing match against a 7 foot tall Russian that ends the Cold War in ROCKY IV. Logic is never Stallone's best friend, and he spends entirely too much time in RAMBO III trying to make sense, which is something he should never try to do.

At the time of this film's production, it was the most expensive movie ever, unadjusted for inflation, at a total budget of $63 million. Nowadays, a Sandra Bullock rom-com costs that much, but that a film of this extreme political content and violence once reached that hallowed threshold (now occupied by DELGO 2: Avatarded and Loving It) says more about the weird and woolly 1980's than anything I could ever say in this here spot. So I'm just gonna wrap up with the phrase "WHO ARE YOU? YOUR WORST NIGHTMARE" that Stallone tried to make his own "I'll be back" or "Yippie Kay Ay," I bet those Planet Hollywood meetings always got awkward when Sly would try to shoehorn it into some corner of conversation where it didn't quite fit and Bruce and Arnie would smirk to themselves and indulge him amicably, content in the knowledge that they truly achieved catchphrase ubiquity, the sole honor that this world has yet to grant upon Mr. Stallone. Whatever, sometimes a blue light is just a fucking blue light.

THIS BLOGPOST IS DEDICATED TO THE GALLANT PEOPLE OF AFGHANISTAN

One Tough Bastard (aka One Man's Justice)

2009-08-05T13:56:00.000-07:00

Price: $2
Year: 1996
Length: 100 minutes
Director: Kurt Wimmer
Starring: Brian Bosworth, Bruce Payne, Hammer, Jeff Kober, Neal McDonough, M.C. Gainey

I can't decide how to start this so here's a few different opening paragraphs on the movie ONE TOUGH BASTARD (aka the inferior DVD title ONE MAN'S JUSTICE).

1. About Those Eagle Cries

The comedic potential of Eagle cry soundbites has been dutifully harnessed by Stephen Colbert's opening credits over the past few years. However, they were hilarious long before that dirty pinko took a shine to them. In 1996, while Mr. Colbert was still slogging away on the Dana Carvey Show, a movie called ONE TOUGH BASTARD really tried to make the eagle cry motif happen in the most sincere and poignant way. The opening shot of the movie is a sun rise, then after a couple seconds, an eagle cry is heard. I laughed. Then the eagle cries kept coming as the Boz has a heart2heart with his moppety little girl. I kept laughing. Always the same public domain casio keyboard eagle cry. Always the same gut reaction, laughter. By the time the movie ended, I counted somewhere between 12 and 56 eagle cries on the soundtrack. Not since Eagle Eye Cherry first escaped from Don Cherry's nutsack in the 1970s have eagle cries achieved such cultural prominence. And they wouldn't again until Eagle Eye Cherry's timeless anthem of true love conquering all SAVE TONIGHT would top the charts one full year after this movie came and went unloved and unremembered . . . until now!

2. On "And Hammer"

Traditionally, when a film features a well established or well regarded actor in a smaller role, you can expect their name to be set off at the end of the credits by either a "with" or an "and." Sometimes, particularly loaded casts will employ both the "with" and the "and" to set aside different levels of respect for those actors, with the "with" actor(s) coming before the "and" actor(s), thus creating a hierarchy of featured-ness. Often times, the character that the actor plays will be included as well, as if it means something special to us that the movie features "Wilford Brimley as Cooter" as opposed to just plain old Wilford Brimley. It's known as "last billing" in the industry. The movie ONE TOUGH BASTARD gives this spot for Hammer, leading to the rather amusing credit "and Hammer" in the opening credits. At first, I rewinded to see if I had missed a preceding credit for Arm. No such luck as apparently the producers of this film were impervious to the product placing payola of the baking soda brigade. After thinking for another moment, I remembered that MC Hammer dropped the MC when he came out with his epochal statment on life and love, "Too Legit to Quit." It was meant as a statement of ascension on his part as he, with that album, transcended the limitations of merely being an MC and became something more like a life coach in whose lessons one could get lost for hours and hours. So I surmised that this movie featured Mr. Hammer in a supporting or featured role (he's a drug kingpin). And this got me excited. However, if I had known what treasures lay ahead of me, I would have even been more excited. Here's why I was so excited . . .

3. The Greil Marcusy Wanky Americana approach

Action movies are a lot like Blues music. They both involve playing around and incorporating established riffs and motifs and formulas in ways that are at once familiar and hopefully, if you're doing it right, unique. After all, just as there are your shouty growly blues singers like Buddy Guy, there are also blues singers who neither shout or growl like people who aren't Buddy Guy. They may play the same riffs, but do they play them with the same feeling? I don't know, I don't really listen to the blues, which is why I have very little to support this theory with. But I do watch a lot of action movies and I know that Stevie Ray Vaughn sort of played blues guitar (electric blues, ugh) and that for some reason, in the movie HARLEY DAVIDSON AND THE MARLBORO MAN, Mickey Rourke as HARLEY DAVIDSON wears a leather jacket with the initials SRV and the roman numerals MCMLVI-XC, which are supposed to stand for Stevie Ray Vaughn's birth and death dates even though he was actually born in MCMLIV as opposed to MCMLVI, but whatever it's still not as bad as Crooked I's SLAUGTER tattoo, or John Mayer's SRV tattoo for that matter. So basically, Mickey Rourke's jacket in that movie connects everything together well enough that I can stop trying to flog this still born metaphor with something resembling "facts." Maybe action movies are more like jazz music. But not like good interesting jazz music, but boring sucky Wynton Marsalis jazz music that just recycles the same shit Louis Armstrong was doing 50 years ago, but adds a sheeny patina of Kenny G production quirks to blend in with the WAVVVE 94.7 of today. In this sense, ONE TOUGH BASTARD is a great American work of art that takes the established tropes and stereotypes of the 1980's action movie, but puts just enough gonzo retardo flair into it to maintain a sense of lolercaustian discovery while maintaining a hard line of instantly recognizable characters and situations that are comforting to the discerning action fan. It's exactly like almost every other action movie made around the same time, but it is goofier and more outlandish in a good way or something. I got bored with this whole wanky approach before I could even get out of the first overlong paragraph. YIKES stripes froot strype gumm.

4. The most important question ever

When I watch a movie for the first time, I always find myself asking the same questions as I watch it. Do I like this? Do I need to pee now? How about now? And now? Am I thirsty? Are there boobs in this film? How about now? And now? What time is it? But beyond these simple questions, there lies a more important question, heck, it may be the most important question: Does this movie feature a character getting kicked in the balls so hard that he immediately starts vomiting? Well, let's just say that by this rubric ONE TOUGH BASTARD is one of the greatest films of all time. A man does get kicked in the balls hard and you better bet that milky spoogey vomit immediately spews forth from his mouth. For most of you, this is all you will need to know about this film to make up your mind as to whether this is a must see or a most avoid, however, for the few of you who need more info, I can blather on some more below.

5. On Fakes

The day before I decided to watch this movie, I got into an argument with one of my three friends about the movie DEEP RISING. He was all like oh yeah doesn't that have Fake Nick Nolte in it? I had to think for a minute and then I remembered that yes it does have Fake Nick Nolte in it as the evil guy who owns the boat and who wants everyone to die for some reason. You've probably seen Fake Nick Nolte in a bunch of movies as well. He's in Silence of the Lambs, X-Men: The Last Stand, Red Dragon, 8MM, and a whooping 3 unconnected Grisham adaptations: A Time to Kill, The Client, and the Pelican Brief. His name is Anthony Heald and he looks a lot like Nick Nolte. This movie features one of my other favorite fake actors, Fake Stacy Keach with a Mustache. It is important not to confuse him with Fake Powers Boothe or even Powers Boothe himself who was once known as Fake Stacy Keach with a Mustache before he ascended to name awareness levels in his own right. However, I was sad that FSKWAM dies after about 5 seconds on screen in the opening scene of this film. His name is M.C. Rainey and he looks a little bit like Stacy Keach, but with a mustache.

6. The Everybody's Gotta Start Somewhere Approach

When I was at Big Lots the other day, I found myself in a bit of a predicament. They had two Brian Bosworth movies in the $3 DVD bin. I could not in good conscience buy both of them, so I had to compare and contrast. In one hand, I held MACH 2, which is an action movie from 2001 involving planes and also features a rare non-Worf turn from Michael Dorn. In my other hand, I held ONE MAN'S JUSTICE, which is an action movie from 1996 (better vintage) involving revenge featuring a rare attempt at acting by Hammer. Dorn vs. Hammer is a draw, leaning towards Dorn since I am super gay for TNG and am sick of Hammer's public goody 2 "those magic shoes" image at this point. The years obviously favor 1996. No clear winner emerged after this first round. So I perused the rest of the crew information and came upon an intriguing director head to head. Mach 2 was helmed by the familiarly named Fred Olen Ray, who I think assassinated someone but whose specific other works eluded me (according to the imdb, he has directed over 100 movies none of which have a better user rating than 4.28, which went to something called Bikini Chain Gang). ONE MAN'S JUSTICE, however, was helmed by Kurt Wimmer, who I immediately recognized as the writer-director of such over stylized action crap as ULTRAVIOLET, where Milla Jovovich kills vampires instead of zombies, and EQUILIBRIUM, where Christian Bale does silly things with guns that people think are cool. He also wrote such classics as the crappy Crichton adaptation SPHERE and the lousy THOMAS CROWN AFFAIR remake. Despite the fact that I basically like none of his movies, the Wimmer factor tipped ONE MAN'S JUSTICE over the edge for me. I always love seeing where people come from, especially when it's straight to VHS garbage like this Bosworth flick here. Also, it seemed like his aesthetic might mesh well with Bosworth crap and oh boy was I right.

7. Name Confusion

The copy of this film I purchased is called ONE MAN'S JUSTICE, which is a lousy lousy title for a movie. It sounds weak and unclear. He has a gun in front of a flag, but why? The title ain't selling me shit. However, it was originally called ONE TOUGH BASTARD, which is a great title. It is completely inaccurate since The Boz is a total noncy poof in this movie, but it still sells me the ass kicking that OMJ does not. Whoever changed this title is a moron. A cowardly dum dum straight up shook one.

8. The I'm Tired of this writing a bunch of intros nonsense approach

I'm getting really bored of this whole thing here so I'm going to stop and just ramble out my last 3 opening into one mushy pad of butter inside a hot loaf of bread melting along down the sides and dripping onto your plate. It goes to show how stupid and pointless this whole exercise has been that I managed to make it 7 whole intros before I even mentioned the one reason that truly sets this film apart from the pack and makes it worthy of being sought out at your local Big Lots and purchased for 2 whole dollars and that is one Mr. Bruce Payne. If you know Bruce Payne at all, it is most likely for his sublime Fake Alan Rickman turn in one of my favorite films, PASSENGER 57. In that film, which I have someone seen upwards of 10 times over the past few years, he is an evil terrorist who steals a plane and he is very good at being evil and hilarious in that film. He is also maybe known to some of you pathetic nerds out there as the villain in the DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS movie, which I never saw. His name also MAJORLY reminds me of a certain Damon Wayans film. Either way, he is fucking completely brilliant in this movie right here. He plays an evil CIA agent with a nose ring, long flowing Nelson brothers poster on DJ Tanner's wall style hair, a penchant for constant cocaine snorting, and the ability to say things like "You're gonna be in my Dog and Pony show until the Pony dies, Pony!" as if they actually make sense and are menacing. He goes by the Deep Space Nine-ish name Savak. It's one of the best hammy villain performances I've seen since Lance Henriksen's work in the Boz's other meisterwerk, STONE COLD. I don't know why the Boz brings out such great overacting in his co-workers, but I would like to thank him for it.

Also, this movie features a child drug dealer. Now, plenty of other movies have dealt with child drug kingpins. It is a notable element of ROBOCOP 2. The kid in that is pretty evil looking and evil acting though. He kills people with guns and shit. When he gets killed, you're all like good riddance kids these days he had it coming! In this movie, there is a child drug dealer. He is chubby and cute and not menacing at all and like 8 years old. He's like one of Rudy's friends on The Cosby Show, which means he is like Alicia Keys (look it up, fucker!). In ROBOCOP 2, I think there was supposed to be a satirical element to the kid drug dealer. It was misguided like much of ROBOCOP 2, but I think they were going for laughs in a way with it. In ONE TOUGH BASTID, I think the kid drug dealer is supposed to be an actual thing we are supposed to take seriously. By way of character development, we see his 8 year old friend get gunned down by a goofy white kid who resembles Carrot Top, who comes up to him asks "what's your shoe size?" and then blasts him in the face before he can respond. First of all, the common urban legend was the gang banger asks you where you're from and then they shoot you depending on what you say. It supposedly happens. I've read about it in the paper. Shoe sizes though. Why should you die over shoe sizes? It doesn't make sense, but white guys who look like Widespread Panic fans shooting up 8 year old black kids in the hood also makes no sense. So anyway, the main drug dealer guy gives this 8 year old kid a key of heroin to deliver along with a gun. It is implied that this is the first time they have worked together as well. You don't give a key of pure to somebody you just started working with and especially not a child. It makes no damn sense, but in a good way. It's an enjoyable nonsense. A critical madness if you will. You Won't. This is all I could find on YOUTUBE.

Czech it OUUUUUUUUUUUT!

Death Wish 4: The Crackdown

2009-07-29T17:36:00.000-07:00

Price: $2.50 (Part of a 3-pack of DW2,3, and 4 I bought for $7.50 at Wal-Mart)
Year: 1987
Length: 99 minutes
Director: J. Lee Thompson
Starring: Charles Bronson, John P. Ryan, Kay Lenz, Soon Tek-Oh, Danny Trejo, Tuvok

Death Wish 4: The Crackdown opens with a sequence that is at once entirely familiar and typical of the franchise and also announces, in its own weird way, that this ain't your daddy's Death Wish. It starts in the location that is perhaps the most iconic trope of histrionic urban dread: the abandoned parking garage. Placed into this spooky cauldron is a blond professional woman in her 30s, who as a woman alone in a Death Wish film, seems to preternaturally sense her own imminent rape attempt even before any spooky clues start popping up. She walks quickly and suspiciously to her car, breathing a heavy sigh of relief once inside its "safe" confines. However, she turns the key and the car won't start, OF FUCKING COURSE! Before she can even begin to lament the fact that there are no other cars around to give her a jump or call AAA or whatever, she notices a dude standing across the lot from her with a panty on his head. So she tries the key again. No response. When she looks again, there is a second dude with a panty on his head. Tries the key again. Now a third dude with a panty on his head. Still the same distance. Tries the key again. Looks up and poosh they've all gone, but panic has set in now and she keeps trying that damn key but still nothing but grinding. Then whippow, the windows of her car are all smashed in and the panty faces are a grabbing and a groping and we all know how this is going to end, with her being raped and we'll learn that it was like Chucky Bronson's second cousin and there will be revenge and hundreds of bodies will pile up. But wait, in the corner of the lot, a shadowy figure emerges with a gun, he resembles an architect, an architect of MAYHEM. Why, it's good old Paul Kersey as played memorably by Charles Bronson in the previous three Death Wish movies. He promptly kills all the panty head dudes BEFORE they can rape the anonymous 80's woman who plays absolutely no other role in the rest of the movie. And that's it, no more rape or attempted rape for the rest of the movie. That's the big twist I was talking about. It may not seem like that big of a twist. I mean, there was still an attempted rape, and it was still the very first images of the movie; heck, they even rip her shirt off for some uncomfortable nudity right off the top as well. Plus, they beat the living shit out of her before Kersey shows up, so the violence against women quotient can be reached as well. But if you've seen any of the previous 3 movies, you know that this series is known for exactly 2 things: long drawn out graphic rape scenes and the completely over the top vengeance they inspire in one man killing machine, Paul Kersey. By eliminating the protracted rape sequence aspect of these films, we are given a gift by the filmmakers to enjoy this schlocky revenge fest for the stupid pleasure it can provide without having to be bummed out by all the rape that somehow is supposed to justify all the gratuitous killings. Oh here's, the opening scene on youtube anyway.

Now that the "rape" is out of the way, what can it be that will inspire Kersey's heart strings to launch into a concerto of explosions and bullets, why those goddamn drugs these kids are doing these days, of course. Before continuing, it is worth noting that this is the first Death Wish movie that wasn't directed by Michael "named on opposite day" Winner; although it still shares the same Golan-Globus Cannon Films mark of quality that defined the previous 2 sequels. Instead, old smelly warhorse J. Lee Thompson was brought in to whore it up for the Cannon suits as he had been doing for much of the decade. While Thompson was directing classics like GUNS OF NAVARONE (for which he was nominated for a fucking Oscar) and CAPE FEAR in the 60's, he was pretty much limited to directing over violent quasi fascist Charles Bronson films from the mid 70's onward. Death Wish 4 was the 7th of 9 movies that he would direct Charles Bronson in from 1976 to 1989 (they are in order: St. IVES, THE WHITE BUFFALO, CABOBLANCO, 10 to MIDNIGHT, The EVIL THAT MEN DO, MURPHY'S LAW, DEATH WISH 4, MESSENGER OF DEATH, and KINJITE: FORBIDDEN SUBJECTS). It should be noted that Charles Bronson is depicted holding a gun on the poster for every single one of these colorfully named films, except for St. IVES, where a woman behind him is holding a gun over his shoulder, which is close enough since he could grab the gun at any moment and basically be ready to kill. Of these films, the only other ones I've seen are MURPHY'S LAW, which notable mostly for its catchphrase: "The only law I know is Jack Murphy's law. It's very simple. Don't FUCK with Jack Murphy" and the fact that it presents the rare female serial killer antagonist, which is progressive in a profoundly regressive way I suppose; and 10 TO MIDNIGHT, which is defined by having a sex criminal murderer who murders women while he is completely nude, which I don't think any other movie has ever done because it is a fucking terrible idea. So yeah, they musta been fucking buddies (not fuck buddies . . . I think) or something since they worked together so much, but this is the only DEATH WISH movie they made together and, since these films form the bulk of Charles Bronson's claim to 80s filmic immortality, this pairing is very, very special in a way, but also not special at all since they made 8 other movies together that might as well have been DEATH WISH movies for all the killing and the violence and the ladies and the frauleayven chillllld.

So the basic plot of this movie after the completely unconnected opening scene that honestly could have been tacked on at the last moment by the fuming coke splattered face of Menachem Golan himself, "What do you mean there's no rape?? How will they know it's a DEATH WISH movie? Throw in some ALMOST rape so no one's disappointed! After all, they come for the rape and they stay for the violence!" ANYWAY, after that scene, we meet homicidal sociopath Paul Kersey at his new job at an architectural firm in Los Angeles (another change from the first 3, which all take place in NYC). He's just sitting around flipping through papers and pretending to do work when a young girl approaches him with a bunch of papers. He is warm towards her, but asks if she's okay because she's all sniffles mcnosealot in front of him and she's chirpily like YEAH I'M SUPER all Harrison Ford in Frantic like. It seems pretty obvious this girl is going to die now because this guy is like the Midas Bro of Doom in that whomever he loves dies. It turns out she's his way younger girlfriend's daughter. In the next scene, we learn where her sniffing comes from as she goes off with her boyfriend to the old video arcade to buy some cocaine after arousing Kersey's suspicion by blowing a J with her BF in the driveway. "I worry about her" he says, "I love her like my own daughter." Now we really know she's going to die since everyone Paul Kersey ever grows attached to dies in a wildly violent fashion. However, once again, our expectations are tweaked by the prevalence of drugs over rape in the plot. As it turns out when she's at the arcade buying some yayo from Tuvok with her BF, another dealer dude pulls her aside and is like "I GOT A SPECIAL PRESENT JUST FOR YOU, IT's THAT GOOD SHIT, Don't share it with your boyfriend it's ALL FOR YOU!" So yeah, the scene ends and we are immediately rushed towards her being an overdose victim at the morgue. Guess she listened to her dealer and didn't share! Serves her right for being shellfish. Paul cries, his much younger girlfriend cries, and the vengeance plot is seemingly given permission to take off in the filmmaker's eyes. To drive the point home, we are given a tour of the rest of the dead bodies in the morgue, all children, all drug related! OR R DEY? You see, the coroner points to one kid who's like 15 and has a hole in his head, and is like "he was shot after robbing a convenience store to get money to buy drugs" and for another body, a 13 year old girl, "she was a prostitute to get money to buy drugs and her throat was slashed by one of the clients."

Now here's where the turgid and entertainingly retarded morality of the film needs to be questioned. First of all, how can you hold drug dealers responsible for these convoluted cause and effect style deaths. How do they know the kid was robbing the store to get drug money? Shouldn't the guy who shot the 15 year old in the head be responsible for the kid's death, since he you know directly killed the fucking kid. Also, ditto for the girl whose throat was cut. The dude who slashed her throat killed her. Not drugs. It makes no fucking sense why he would jump to the conclusion that the drug dealers are the ones who need to die in the case of these deaths. I guess they made these kids have violent deaths since the correct and more universally accepted point of view on overdose deaths is to blame the person who did the drugs of their own volition for their own deaths. The fact that the plot clearly points out that this girl did all the drugs by herself without her BF makes her culpability in her own death almost absolute to any non-Paul Kersey person. Hell, she even kept it all for herself. Maybe if she'd be more generous and less selfish and shared her super special secret stash, she wouldn't have died in the first place.

This is where I begin to think that this movie may have more up it's sleeve than at first meets the eye (for an eye we in this together son your beef is mines). I honestly think that it could all be a satire of how fucking stupid the war on drugs actually is. First of all, it makes no bones about depicting Paul Kersey as a total fucking psycho. He kills people left and right who maybe have some small connection to the drug trade, but certainly don't necessarily deserve to die for it. For example, later in the film, he raids a fish processing plant that is actually a front for a huge cocaine smuggling and processing factory in the back. It's a huge factory full of working class people. Many of these people don't even work in the back and possibly don't know anything about what goes on back there. But once Kersey gets in there, it's all guns a blazing shoot em all and let Allah sort out the rest. Once he has started out on his killing spree there, the PA loudly announces repeatedly "$1,000 to the man who takes down the killer" and these poor desperate working class people start throwing themselves at him left and right, even though he handily kills them all, just in the sad desperate hope that they might be able to take him out and get $1,000 to like pay for diapers and operations for their sick kids and shit. I mean, I'm not gonna try to take out a murdering machine for $1,000. I don't know anyone who would jump at a man holding a fucking crazy ass machine gun just for the chance to get 1,000 measly dollars as a reward. It just goes to show that these were just people getting by the only way they know how as underpaid lower level cogs in the drug machinery. They were just as exploited and abused by the drug kingpins who truly profited as the so-called victims of drug use. His attack on those workers makes EXACTLY as much sense as it would to blow up the Jack Daniels factory because your daddy drank himself to death. Yet if anyone did that, it would be viewed as a national tragedy, not a cause for celebration.

Which brings me to another (briefish) point, unlike in the other DEATH WISH films, there is very little depicted public approval of Paul Kersey's killing sprees in DEATH WISH 4. The only people who approve of his actions throughout the course of the film are one police officer who keeps claiming he's making their job easier (probably because he's lazy and looks like Ben Gazzara) and a man posing as the father of a dead drug victim who actually turns out to be another drug lord who encourages Kersey because he's helping eliminate his competition. In DEATH WISH 3, we are given numerous shots of common folk congratulating Kersey on cleaning up their streets and, in fact, he gets a whole building of old Jewish people on his side to help him take out those pesky punks in that film's jaw dropping climax. Old people killing punks with guns. It's amazing. But here, Kersey only works by himself, never with any assistance or even public approval. He's already killed hundreds of people over the course of the previous three films and his killing spree in this one seems Bourne more of habit than any warranted wrath or fury. Hell, Bronson never even really expresses any emotion throughout the whole movie apart from his one hilarious line reading of "It's those damn drugs!" Killing for Kersey is just a way of life and one he has no intention of giving up on anytime soon, even if no one he loves got raped this time.

Another point, it is very clear to anyone who has ever seen a Cannon Film or any film from the 80's for that reason, that every single person on the set of every single movie made between the years of say 1982 to 1991 was completely coked out of their fucking minds. There is even a scene in this film (above) where Kersey attacks a film producer who is involved in selling drugs at his office and guns him down. The producer is surrounded by posters for Cannon Films at the time of his death. In fact, they actually shot this scene at the Cannon office complex to allegedly save money, which I don't doubt that it did, but it also sends the pretty clear message that we are seeing a drug dealer character who is basically depicted as also being a producer for the Golan-Globus company. Why would you want to associate your own company with drug dealing, you know apart from the free promotion of your own properties? Because you don't fucking care whether you're associated with dealing drugs cause your company runs on the stuff anyway.

In fact, most of the drug dealers' deaths seem to be more validated by the fact that they are all just a bunch of assholes more than by the fact of what they do for a living (or killing). Poor factory workers scene aside, almost every villain who is taken out in this film is depicted as an abusive, misogynistic, angry, violent pile of shit before being taken out by the Kers Man. So we, as the drug loving audience, can root for their deaths as assholes who deserved to die for being assholes, while others, as the drug hating audience, can root for their deaths as assholes who deserve to die for being assholes and for poisoning our children with those GODDAMN DRUGS.

Another scene early on in the film that I think gives me cokeamamie theory some Creedence (tapez) is when the younger gf of Kersey, who happens to be a newspaper reporter, talks to her editor about how, in light of her daughter's death, she wants to launch an investigation into uncovering how drugs are distributed to our children. He, as the most rational character in the entire film, basically smacks her down with a little bit of something like this: "Everybody does drugs these days, nobody wants to hear about it, it's too mainstream now for you to have any effect on it, plus you're too close to the story to be objective. Nobody is going to want to read what you have to say about it because they already know how to get drugs because they do drugs everyday! Report about something else, anything else, and then I'll talk to you." Maybe we're supposed to view this guy as a callous ass. Someone on the imdb message board said he reminded him of Charles Grodin, who himself has seemed at times like the very living definition of self-important ass. I, however, viewed him as a sole voice of reason in this cracked out bowl of wacky noodles.

Whether any of this satirical or drug war smackdown theories that I'm reading into this film were at all intended by the filmmakers hardly matters at this point. The director and star have both been dead for several years, so all we have left to judge them on is the work they left behind and that is free to interpretation however we, as the audience, see fit. I mean, when I watched TRIUMPH OF THE WILL for an art class in college, we weren't watching the movie because we appreciated or agreed with its message. We were just watching it for the architecture and camera set ups. I honestly find it hard to believe that anyone in this day and age could appreciate anything about that film apart from its technical specs. Its dull as dishwater depiction of Hitler yakking on and on about lord knowz what would probably go over worse at a kkklan rally than a screening of the latest Tyler Perry film. Despite its intent as a celebration of Hitler's glory and ideology, it stands largely today as a boring tired relic of technical innovation. It has taken on a new life as an artifact of a time and place where people thought like that and made movies about it. But viewed through the lens of HIS-STORY!, we can instead view it as one of the best depictions ever of the true banality of evil (yes, I read that book in college as well). It makes being a Nazi look as fun as calculus homework and that's basically what the film has been reduced to itself: homework. I watched it for a class, most people who watch probably do it for classes. It's too boring for any other use. Except maybe cleaning my toilet. Those hard DVD edges really wipe the poop off real good.

I feel like Death Wish 4, regardless of whether it was intended as a secret condemnation of the drug war or as an orgiastic celebration of vigilante justice, stands today in largely a similar light. Removed from the histrionic heights of Nancy Reagan's JUST SAY NO era of paranoid worry worting, it is next to impossible to view the film as anything but a condemnation of the absurd lengths that Charles Bronson goes towards avenging the death of a girl who was entirely responsible for her own death and, therefore, doesn't need any avenging in the first place. Just because it depicts this vigilantism doesn't mean we have to side with it. Sure, there are probably many who do watch the film and think that, yeah, all those drug dealers sure had it coming and boy do they blewed up good. That's fine. But I imagine these people are in the minority, just as there are probably still a minority of very very patient and attentive Hitler Youth wannabes who sit around in their den watching TRIUMPH OF THE WILL and getting all jazzed about being anti-semitic, provided they can stay awake. Once a movie has been released into the world, it is open to the interpretation of every single person who sees it and every single person's interpretation is the right one for them. It's what makes us different from one another and part of what defines us as people.

I'm reminded of the audio commentary track for the movie STARSHIP TROOPERS, one of my favorite films by Paul Verhoeven (who is maybe my favorite director at this point). At the very start of the track, before the credits have even started rolling, Verhoeven starts going into a rant about how false and wrong it was of the many critics who branded his very clear satire of war as being fascist. He argues that while the film does depict fascism, that itself does not make the film or the filmmaker fascist themselves. As anyone with half a brain (which I guess doesn't include about half of the nation's film critics) can attest, the film STARSHIP TROOPERS is indeed a complete and total satirical evisceration and takedown of fascism. By taking on the form of a propaganda film not entirely unlike TRIUMPH OF THE WILL, he is using one of the common tools of fascism to condemn it in an almost exceedingly clever way WOULD YOU LIKE TO KNOW MORE? The only problem is when people who misinterpret the filmmaker's intention throw insults their way. This was what was so troubling to Verhoeven, who has made at least 4 or 5 of the most misunderstood films of all-time. Critics were calling him a fascist and saying that his film approves of fascism when any close reading of it tells you the exact opposite. It probably tells you more about the people making these accusations than it does about Verhoeven himself or his film. Just as my interpretation of DEATH WISH 4 probably tells you a lot about myself since I have been a life long opponent of the drug war and a firm believer that people are wholly responsible for the damage they do to their own bodies. As a result of this, I viewed it through that mindset and found plentiful evidence for my position throughout the movie because that was what I was looking for.

Maybe one day, you'll look at this movie and see the same things I saw. Or you won't. It doesn't really matter. The whole thing is just an excuse to kill a lot of people in amusing ways, which this film does splendidly. The exploding wine bottle on the table was my favorite. I'll look it up on youtube. BOOM!

There's that. It gives you a real flavor for the actual film itself. If you made it this far in my rambly discourse, I will personally buy you a beer if you're ever in LA. Just drop a comment and we'll iron out the details. I'm almost serious about this. This is by far the longest blog post I've ever done and it just keeps getting longer the more I talk about it. LONG STORY SHORT, this movie is fucking hilarious and fails in every possible way to actually convince us that any of the vengeance depicted in this film is at all warranted. Still, it's fucking hilarious. You should watch it some time. Here's how the movie ends if you need more proof.

The whole movie is on youtube if you act fast. Just search for Death Wish 4: The Crackdown and you can't miss it. Good luck out there. And remember, only take what you can handle and always know your dealer. Especially if you're gonna watch this movie. It's much funnier that way.

Baxter (1989)

2009-07-28T04:20:00.000-07:00

Price: $1.50
Length: 82 minutes
Director: Jerome Boivin
Starring: A Bull Terrier and a bunch of French people

I guess there are some people in this world who don't find Ingmar Bergman movies fucking hilarious. I don't know what to tell these people because for my money, Wild Strawberries is a much funnier movie than some Billy Wilder bullshit like Some Like It Hot or whatever else was passing for funny in late 1950s America. Something about the fulfillment of absurd Foreign Film Cliches in Bergman's work just makes much guffaw every time. Blame the deluge of Seventh Seal parodies (Animaniacs, Conan O'Brien, Bogus Journey, etc.) I was privy to long before I gathered my nuts and started shuffling through the foreign section at the local blockbuster. By the time I finally saw the Seventh Seal and Wild Strawberries, I was so used to laughing at their black and white iconography and existential brooding that even Bergman's formidable filmmaking chops were not enough to muffle my laughs. Also, I was 12.

Now a lot of people really love SLIT, many even claim it as the best comedy ever made, which is fine because no one knows why people find the things funny that they do, it's just instinct, cause and effect type shit. Either way, alls I'm getting at is that pretty much every review I can find of this BAXTER movie online (no michael showalters allowed here fyi) yacks on and on about how disturbing and dark this movie is, which is I suppose one way of looking at it.

For those of you who don't know, here's a quick ploticular miles runs the voodoo down: Baxter is an adorable bull terrier dog, total Spuds McKenzie doppelganger effect, who can think, has killed people in the past, will kill people again, and who develops obsessive psycho possessive crushes on human women. All of this might be disturbing if this movie were made in any other country on earth apart from France and if the movie were not in black and white, which tips its manifest artiness out of the blue and into the black. So yeah, we get an evil adorable dog with an interior monologue voiced by a middle aged French guy killing people in black and white. It's the perfect storm of hilarity!

And boy, does this movie deliver. Maybe the funniest movie I've seen this calendar year. The dog he has a french accent! HAHAHAHAHAHA! You owe it to yourself to see it. It's great. It's on DVD now, too, so feel free to add it to your Netflix Q, and don't be put off by Lionsgate's SAW-esque DVD packaging. It's all they know how to do, so don't blame them, blame society. In addition to reminding me of the absurd hilarity of black and white Ingmar Bergman (whose color films I actually find quite devastating, especially the one with Elliott Gould), this movie reminded me somewhat of a film I hate MAN BITES DOG. However, whereas that film was loathsome overrated belabored crap that took itself way to seriously like a trustafarian undergrad prating on and on about how society is fucked up and shit, maaaaaaaaan, our culture of violence is a manifestation of bourgeois angst in a tortilla wrapped inside a donut placed in a field of loofah sponges. FUCKing hell, that movie is bad. No wonder the dude('s) who made it offed himself. I would to if that was all anyone knew me for. Granted nobody knows me for anything at this point, but that's the way I like it. Except INEED$, do you know who is hiring?

PS. SEE BAXTER the one with the dog on it ITS HILARIOUS!!!!!

Night Hawks (1981)

2008-10-29T12:27:00.000-07:00

Price: $1
Year: 1981
Length: 99 mins
Director: Bruce Malmuth (replacing Gary Nelson)
Cast: Sylvester Stallone, Billy Dee Williams, Lindsay Wagner, Nigel Davenport, Joe Spinell, Persis Khambatta, Catherine Mary Stewart, and Rutger Hauer as Wulfgar

I always ignored this movie cause I thought its title sucked. It makes me think of Edward Hopper, Tom Waits, Matthew Broderick, Michelle Pfieffer, Rutger Hauer, Cage, and Camu Tao in that order before settling on a mental image of Stallone, which is a pretty horrible rate of recall for my phoney baloney Stalloney mind. Whenever anyone describes anything as being over the top around me I turn my hat around and start crashing trucks into Robert Loggia's house, for gosh sake. But there are only so many Stallone films in the world and I have a standing order to purchase all unseen ones at any given chance regardless of consequence or funds. So Night Hawks was a no brainer.

Fortunately, the movie is much better, weirder, and prescient than its weak title would suggest. For starters, Sylvester Stallone has the typically strong character name DEKE DASILVA. A name so strong that posters for the movie touted him as being "DEKE DASILVA, THE MOST DANGEROUS COP KNOWN TO MAN" despite the fact that this movie is mostly about what a wimpy sour puss DaSilva is up until the final heartgripping moments. Anyway, Billy Dee Williams is his partner, the tragically named Det. Sgt. Matthew Fox; such a step down from being Lando Calrissian to being linked to that dry rag of a Party of Five alum. BDW had good luck with LC initials, bet he wished they had gone with Lacey Chabert instead. Also, we get Rutger Motherfucking Hauer in his American film debut as the awesomely named international super-villain of terror WULFGAR. It is a fucking travesty that this guy has gone from Verhoeven muse status to straight to video after thought, but so it goes. He's great here and really puts this movie OVER The Top and into being pretty decent territory.

So the movie opens with a burly female nurse with an oddly plasticine and motionless face walking down the street in a bad neighborhood as hoods and toughs swarm around her for the easy mugg. But wait, that weird inhuman face was merely a mask being worn by Sylvester Stallone as Deke DaSilva, the cross-dressing Serpico surrogate the 80's demanded and received. Then Billy Dee Williams jumps out from behind a corner and the dastardly creeps of crime have been stifled again. On the other side of the globe, Rutger Hauer with a beard blows up a department store for some terrorist groups or something, but they get mad at him for killing kids and he's all like pfffft. Then he gets found out when he's trying to seduce some co-eds while posing as a college professor, so he gets plastic surgery that consists of shaving his beard and wiping the putty that won Kidman an Oscar off his nose. Then it's off to New York, which is where Deke and Matthew reign, thus setting up them up for a confrontation!

The movie is kinda slow for the first hour or so, but really picks up during this sweet chase scene, which happens to be on Youtube.
Part 1:

Part 2:

I really dig BDW's Superman tee here and the use of Slow Ride by Foghat during the disco dance scene. Was that seriously a disco dance hit? If so, awesome. If badly placed by misguided people working on movie, awesomer. Either way, a bunch of stuff explodes and Wulfgar is all like I'm gonna kill your girlfriend DEKE DASILVA! But just when he gets ready to stab her, she turns around and has Stallone's face and gun in her hand, which is also Stallone's hand now. Thus bringing us back to the drag show from the beginning and being kind of a bummer of an ending cause DaSilva doesn't like killing, it's just his job. Either way, good show. I mean, it ain't COBRA, but it sure as hell is a buttassload better than PARADISE ALLEY. Now I just need to find a copy of F.I.S.T. cause Anthony Kiedis plays Stallone's son in it. Yes. Oh yeah, the hot bald chick from the first Star Trek movie is in this, too. Looks like she's wearing a wig, which makes sense since this is only 1-2 years later. CHECK IT OUT!

Serbis

2008-10-14T12:51:00.000-07:00

Director: Brillante Mendoza
Cast: Coco Martin, Gina Pareno, Jacklyn Jose,
Run time: 90 minutes
Price: $20 at NYFF

I'll start of by saying that I actually am glad I saw Serbis, even though the freaking New York Film Festival charged me the the price of 20 dollar vids in order to see it. I mean, who do these NYFF fools think they are? GOD!

But I digress. Here are the reasons I am glad I saw Serbis.

1. I have never before seen a movie from the Phillipines, so it gave me a cursory glance at their film culture.

2. On a similar note, this is the kind of movie that might not get too much of a release beyond the festival circuit, since it is not a Wes Anderson rip off featuring over-educated white kids with a script ripped from Urban Dictionary, or an Oscarbatory big budget November surprise. Instead, it is low budget in a way where that actually means something. Also, it has so much nudity that it would have to have an NC17 rating here.

3. Nothing warms my nerdy heart like a decaying movie theater film.

That being said, Serbis is a deeply flawed movie. On paper it sounds pretty fantastic. Its got family melodrama, prostitution, theft, and absurdism, all occurring in a run down colonial relic of a movie house, that now only shows porn. By my standards, these combined elements sound like a winning formula.

However, Serbis teaches the viewer that good ideas simply aren't enough. While I watched it, the most startling element was the amount of potential that was being squandered. The movie dilapidated movie house, which really is an incredible setting, is done a disservice by being filled with such hollow characters. The Pineda family consist of a meandering crew of cousins, aunts, and uncles who all live and work in the "Family" movie house, which currently only shows porn movies. Also populating the building are gay hustlers, and and a few female prostitutes. While many of the characters in the film have some potential, their story lines are underdeveloped, leaving the viewer little to clasp onto. The main drama of the film is Mama Flor's case against her estranged husband, who took up with and started a family with his mistress. She irrationally seeks retribution from the justice system for this emotional abandonment, and resents her children for not wanting to see their father go to jail. Despite Flor's misguided intentions, this plot line could have been quite interesting. However, the entire court case takes place off screen, and all we are left with is the lackluster before and after. Meanwhile, the plots that are actually happening within the house are pretty dull. A character played by pretty boy Coco Martin gets his girlfriend pregnant and pops a boil on his butt. Nayda (who is the DE facto matriarch since Flor is such a drama queen) is in love with her cousin, but since we are not given a good revelatory scene dealing with this love, it also falls flat. The characters in this film wander around the frame without any purpose or heft, and alienate more than they engross.

The naturalistic style in which this is filmed and recorded is something that I appreciate, but I can't say that it is particularly well done. While a little bit of shaky camera movement can be effective, in this film it often looks amateurish, and does not achieve its aesthetic potential. As for the soundtrack, while I see what they were trying to do with all that background noise, it once again seems sloppily done. A more effective approach may have been to have a few more nearly silent moments to provide some contrast that may have been effective to the film's cause.
There are a few truly wonderful moments in the film. My favorite is the scene in which a goat somehow gets into the movie theater, causing the employees to turn the lights on, revealing many audience members who are in very compromising positions. If the film had more scenes that were this refreshing, it would truly be the gem that it promised to be. However, very little of the film is as imaginative as this. I also must add that the last image of the film is something that I consider the type of technical misstep that one wouldn't even subject their freshman year film class to. While two characters are talking, a very digital looking image of burning celluloid overtakes the frame. It is not appropriate considering the content of the previous 89 minutes and 50 seconds, and has been done with much more skill in other (better) films. Ending one's movie on such a note to my mind is a real blunder.

Once again, the premise of this film is promising enough to carry a forgiving spectator through it, but the execution is severely lacking. Serbis was the first Filipino film I have seen, and I hope to view some of the nation's more impressive offerings soon.

Announcement

2008-10-14T12:28:00.000-07:00

Hello IBTFAD readers (if there are any of you left)

I want to apologize for the long absence. A combination of transitional phases and coast hopping have taken the authors of this here blog out of commission for many months.

However, all of that is about to change, in a way that we can believe in, my friends!!

The dollar video reviews that (we hope) you love will be returning shortly, and in additon, we will be broadening our scope to include lots of other different types of films, and media. Dollar vids will remain the heart and soul of this tiny corner of the internet, but we will also be including media of all sorts that have stuck out to us recently. We hope that you will keep on reading, and even leaving comments, even if they are angry and unwilling to humor the idea of a lesbian subtext in the movie Gold Diggers. The internet, after all, is a place where we've all got a voice!

Anyway,

Much love

Stay tuned...

One Last Thing

2008-03-28T12:09:00.000-07:00

Price: Fiddy Cents
Year: 2006
Length: 94 minutes
Director: Alex Steyermark
Cast: Michael Angarano, Cynthia Nixon, Johnny Messner, Sunny Mabrey, Gina Gershon, Gideon Glick, Matt Bush, Ethan Hawke, Wyclef Jean

The happy (?) ending of this movie is a kid who just died of terminal cancer fishing on a heavenesque beach with Ethan Hawke, who plays his father who also die(getic)d of terminal cancer many moons ago, and then Wyclef Jean swings by on a bicycle because I guess he's an angel now or some shit, then the soundtrack swells into some shitty latter day Wyclef treaclemuck about how heaven is in New York City. FIN.

Jesus, what a great fucking ending, right? It's like What Dreams May Come for the post-Rock of Love 2 set, amylrite? But still, this movie is simply not very good because it is based on a horrible premise, shifts tones more uncomfortably than my bowels, and has a recurring motif of the main character being haunted by the haunting visage of soulful, intellectual poet, Ethan Hawke. But let's bring out the magic of this clusterfuck before diving into the turgid morass of misguided tallow that keeps this movie from being rewatchably, hilariously misguided (oh, it'll all mesh together anyway).

First (1): It is about a kid with terminal cancer declaring on National Television (on the dying kid wish channel apparently) that his dying wish is the spend the weekend alone with some fug "supermodel" who wouldn't last 3 weeks on ANTM. OK, so far so LOLZ.

2nd (2): It was prodouched by the irrepressible golden goofball of the NBA, Mark Cuban! I somehow feel that the non-Michael Chiklis Commish, David Stern, must have had a role in this. Maybe it was he who slipped the script along with some roofies and a bunch of pens into El Cubano's ComicCon ToteBag. We will never know; unless Mark Cuban reads this while Googling himself, as I am sure he is right right now, and sends me some angry e-mail about how this movie is heartwarming and not a result of a David Stern plot against him, although he doesn't remember signing the paperwork for this which is kind of weird and come to think of it that red wine at dinner with the Sternmeister was a little bitter. Hmm. Maybe this'll pop up in his newsfeed. I demand answers!

Third (3): The cast is miss guided lee funny. We get the cancery Michael Angarano being all cancery again hot on the heels on his cancertastic turn in Lords of Dogtown, where he dies of cancer at the end. Johnny "Hot" Messner uses the acting chops he developed in ANACONDAS: THE HUNT FOR THE BLOOD ORCHID to sympathetically love up on Cynthia Nixon while her son is dying, which is presented as a classy move within the movie, even though in the real world, it's maybe i dunno creepy? Then there is the lifeless face of GinaGershon2006 coasting on Cristal Connors goodwill yet again, but I ain't mad because she was and always will be GODDESS. Then we get Wyclef Jean as a cabbie/angel/"magikal negro" a la Cuba Gooding JR in Wet Dreams Make Cum. HE IS SO CHARISMAGIC!! Also, a kid in this is named Gideon Glick and he kinda looks like the illegitimate step son of Gideon Yago and Jiminy Glick, so there's that. BUT the crown jewel of this all is, of course, the UNBILLED role of Ethan "Mi Douchi Weighs a Ton" Hawke squinting and squirming his ways into our hearts as the dead father whose death from terminal illness a few years prior makes Cynthia Nixon the saddest woman ever to bone a football star on the side while her dying son is getting beaten up by bouncers at a strip club and vomiting blood all over them. Which conveniently transitions us into

Four (4): th blud. This movie is constantly on the verge of getting enjoyable and silly; but right whenever the movie starts to become mildly enjoyable, the main character (Angarano) starts bleeding black blood out of his nose and coughing up red blood everywhere. This seriously happens every four minutes in this otherwise relatively silly film. It's like if you're masturbating to porn and just when you're about to jizz into the carefully folded napkin in your right hand, the porno switches to being video of aborted feti eating the shit out of the asshole of an experimental mutant crossbred between Melissa Rivers and a Whooping Crane. You may still jizz in that napkin, but by G-d if that switch up didn't kill yr buzz. It's like that except with laughter instead of cum.

(5) Phive: This movie presents a world in which Ethan Hawke has died years ago of a terminal illness and that, my friendos, is a world in which I wish we all lived.

Crucial Context: This movie was purchased for 50 cents on DVD at the final closing blow out of a Hollywood Video near where I work in San Franshitsco. They maybe had a total of 35 DVDs left in stock at this point. 15 were copies of ONE LAST THING, 10 were copies of SILVER CITY (some misguided seeming John Sayles Bush murder mystery satire feat. Billy Zane, which I also bought), and the remaining ten were miscellaneous direct to DVD crap starring people like Jeff Speakman and Lorenzo Lamas.

In spite of this seeming non-popularity, this movie is somehow (ballot stuffing) pulling a 7.0 on the ever reliable bastion of taste, the IMDB. I guess, people find it heart-warming? Depressing? I guess that since it's about a cancer boy nobody wants to hate on it too much. After all, what kind of sick fuck hates on a movie about a kid who wants to fuck some coke addicted, scotch sipping "model" who he's never even met before as his dying wish? Why I can feel the cockles of my heart gaining temperature as I type! Maybe it'll be the next PATCH ADAMS! Either way, this movie is better than PATCH ADAMS because, at least for the first ten minutes, the main character is constantly smoking weed, which makes it somewhat redeemable in my red red eyes. It gives you the brief hope that you might be embarking upon some unholy teeny amalgam of THE GIRL NEXT DOOR, THE FUCKET LIST, and EVIL BONG, that is alas dashed as the kid inexplicably hangs up his joints only to find that not being stoned all the time makes it a lot weirder when you start mistaking Wyclef Jean for DEAD FATHER ETHAN HAWKE.

Either way, it gave my roommate and me the idea to make a post-apocalyptic, terminal illness stoner comedy. You see this guy has deadly incurable parasites inside him that only the calming effects of some marijuana can stagnate. However, the rub is that he's living in a post-apocalyptic world thats a barren wasteland with a finite amount of bud left lying around so he has to like go on an adventure to find more or some shit. I dunno, it's basically Mad Max but with like weed instead of gas, and bad pot humor in place of awesome car chases. If the parasites are heartworms, I can say it's HEARTWORMING! on the box! It will make us dozens! Maybe Mark Cuban can produce it?G-d, I hope (no barack) so!

Boy Wonderz

2008-02-12T16:20:00.000-08:00

Price: 75 centz
Year: 2001
Runtime: 85 minutes
Director: Morris G. Sim
Cast: Mickey Blaine, Hunter Garner, Dylan Cooper, George Mitchell, Stephen Martines

Apathy has seized upon me like a derelict grabbing at the ass of another more attractive and seemingly passed out derelict. And I have not updated this blog in a hot minute as a result of this apathy. The oddness is that my dollar video hoarding and consumption has spiked insanely in the last couple months since I decided to be all lazy about this page. I can't stop buying dollar videos at a precipitous rate and trying to blow them out the other end in due time like a fart through Delta Burke (check the timely irony). But in glancing over what I've been watching lately, it's obvious stuff surrounded by bacon. I've been working mostly common standard everyone has already seen that shit fare as of late, albeit in larger quanitities than usual. But one film stood the fuck out on my list of recent plowings and that is the hopelessly obscure and fundamentally brilliant BOY WONDERZ.

Now to put this in perspective, this film was originally called THIS IS THE DISK-O-BOYZ, which is a more accurate title as the film is about a boy band called The DISK-O-BOYZ and not some fan fic about cloning and burt ward. Let's get to what is important: a member by member breakdown of the DISK-O-BOYZ.

DISCLAIMER: Although this movie is completely unutterably magikal, I barely remember whole sections of it and I don't have my copy handy, so forgive me if I lack what the feds like to call "truth" here.

First, we have the gay one. Squint at the box and he's in the upper left corner almost completely obscured by the hunkiness of all the other members. Perhaps he is being discriminated by the box for being gay, but actually, I think it is because he is balding and looks 40 when everyone else is supposed to be 17. Either way, he splits off from the group for a solo career because he keeps making out with dudes on camera and the tabloids report it and it totally kills their mall tour in the dirty south. At the end of the movie, he comes back to the group and makes out with the dude in the band who was totally gaybashing him earlier in the movie because you know like latent homosexual, duh. I think he was called Dylan-Tee (the balding one, not the beefy guy).

Oh yeah, and then there's the beefy guy, fuck it, what was he called? Uh, was he Kenny? You see Kenny's hook was that there was no hook. Everyone else got a stupid two-times name a la Dylan-Tee, but Kenny was too dumb to come up with something that worked well with Kenny. He really liked Kenny G because it sounded gangsta, but then he found out about that spirited mop of curls and his fantastical flute (ed: sax), so he just kept it real and kept it Kenny. He's the one in the middle of the box, with his head slightly below Dylan-Tee looking all pouty and fab. He's the reformed bigot and maybe also the half-brother of the dude on the right, but that part of the movie is too fuzzy to recall.

Then there's the other two bozos that aren't the huge dude on the right extending his arm to us in a gesture of friendship. They are Sammy-Hay and Ozzie-Bay. One of these guys is actually the half brother by adoption of the huge guy, so I guess it wasn't Kenny after all. I don't really remember much about these dudes except that they are kinda mushy headed and vaguely snarky and perhaps also fun-loving(?). Their noses resemble penis's and this resemblance carries over to their personalities. I did not like either of these cowards and was quite pleased with their lack of screentime.

Then we get to the star of this vehicle, the very large man with the inviting Blue Oyster Cult Album Cover gesture. He is Indy-Lee. He is the main character for all intents and purposes. The main plot often centers on him. Particularly in the maudlin second half, where his search for his real parents drives him mad (hint: it's actually his adopted parents! happy ending!). He is also the only actor from this movie to have any non THIS IS THE DISKO BOYZ credits on the imdb, having put in work on PORT CHARLES and GUIDING LIGHT and something called MONARCH COVE. He also used a fake name for this role calling himself Coltin Scott instead of his nom de soap Stephen Martines. He is dynamic and he is fierce. He is also boring.

Dylan-Tee and Kenny are the best characters. They are creepy, monomaniacal, and erotic. This flitter across the screen with the delicacy of a firefly flittering across a screen. It is delicate and it is fierce.

I miss boy bands and I'm not alone in this if the excessive number of AJ Maclean fan fiction hunting g00gl3rs are any indication. This movie takes us back to those wunnerful times, with shoddier production values, explicit gay sex, and a lurking sense of unease. It is a post-modern pastiche of genre and intention. It subverts what it cannot make it's own, and what it makes it's own, it masticates and spits back out in the form of an elaborate ruse. The movie has more in common with the minimalist plays of Harold Pinter (THE DUMB WAITER in particular) than it does the slavish populist pifflepoof of Lou Perlman. May god have vengence upon his soul. ESXCELSISO!

The Wild Pair

2008-01-13T16:20:00.000-08:00

Year:1987
Price: 75 cents
Duration: 89 minutes
Director: Beau Bridges
Cast: Beau Bridges, Bubba Smith, Lloyd Bridges, Gary Lockwood, Lela Rochon

I'm not Geste-ing when I say that Beau knows movies. He'll beau you over with his splendid visage and everyman bodytype. He's like the Beaulushi brother who decided to beaucome a tax consultant, but instead he's a Bridges and he decided to act. And it was with this same characteristic decisiveness that Beau first embarked upon the worldly battledome of film directordom with a couple of tv movies and an afterschool special that I haven't seen, but fantasize about the quality therefore of. Up until the time that I saw The Wild Pair, a film that barely exists, I was absent minded and aloof in regard to the Beau, never giving him the time of day or even allowing his bushy brows to make cameos in my Peter Gallagher fan fiction. Don't make the same mistake!

Keep in mind, I'm not actually recommending you see this movie. In fact, you probably shouldn't. It is an actionless and laughless pile of rote action comedy. It's only charms are merely nostalgic in nature, but unremarkable in execution. Virtually any other 1986-88 action comedy would fulfill the same criteria and probably pack a whole bunch more entertainment for your 75 cents. Although, I must admit that Bubba Smith's kneehigh cholo socks and highwatertower sweatsuit look is one that lends credence to the idea of his awesomeness more than any content of the film's story does.

But what this film did do was get me started thinking about this Beau Bridges character. And for that I am thankful. He is a beaut. As a small child, he had an uncredited little role in film noir classic Force Of Evil and a smattering of the kinds of unremarkable small kiddie roles that come naturally when one contains the same genetic material as Lloyd Bridges. One thing that is particularly conspicuous is the absence of notable roles in his filmography. Who could forget his nickname begatting performance in THE WIZARD? No one that's who, but beyond that it gets kooky. I used to think he was in TRON, but that was Jeff Bridges. Either way, I am glad he is alive and that he is able to thwart busted face sibling related hatred from the criminally underrated and superior in every possible way, Randy Quaid. But mostly, thinking about Beau Bridges got me thinking that I really should update this shit again and, if it had to be an unremarkable interracial buddy cop movie from the mid to late 80's starring the lesser half of a divergently attractive brother actor duo, well then, THE WILD PAIR just about fits better than anything. Straight 2008.

Collision Course

2007-12-10T16:20:00.000-08:00

Price: 75 centz
Year: 1989 (shot in 1986)
Length: 100 minutes
Director: Lewis Teague
Cast: Pat Morita, Jay Leno, Chris Sarandon, Tom Noonan, Randall "Tex" Cobb, Ernie Hudson, Soon-Teck Oh, Mike Starr

The precise moment that I knew I would love this movie forever came during the opening credits, before a single line was spoken or even a single character spotted on screen: a camera opens steadily on the fender of a speeding muscle car, a saxophone squeals relentlessly as an equally relentless synth line tries to catch up, and the text "Starring Chris Sarandon" appears in big, metallic letters as the camera pulls up and away from the fender to reveal the skyline of an urban wasteland we later learn is Detroit. I giggled ecstatically and started taking notes from which I will try to relate why this forgotten career footnote is perhaps the most important movie I have ever blogged about. And that's motherfucking important.

In any other movie, the sax-fender-Mr. Sarandon trio would be the sort of pinnacle that the rest of the movie hopelessly flounders behind while the viewer impatiently twiddles his or her thumbs while texting their weedman (or weedwoman) every 17 minutes asking if now is a good time or not, but no, Collision Course just takes that opening as a dare for greater glory that it keeps ramping up until the very last frame, which is the most poignant still image this side of both Truffaut and Verbinski.

This is a film that embodies all the tensions that made the 1980's so much fun: xenophobia against the wily Japanese and their intrepid electronics, disturbingly glib treatment of rationalized police corruption and brutality, the effects of white flight on formerly vibrant urban centers, and, of course, the immortal pairing of bushy mustaches and bazookas. To say that this is nothing but a merely a proto-Rush Hour is to do a great disservice to the subtle moments that really make Collision Course thrive, some of which I will recount in list form below.

1. Chris Sarandon's goons are played by Tom "Evil Drug Cult Leader Guy in Robocop 2" Noonan and Randall "Tex" Cobb of "some say I'm part hound dog" fame. Also, Sarandon wears a suit that looks like it's made of dollar bills at one point. Also, his mustache is a dead ringer for John Oates. Crucial.

2. The synth and sax score takes on decidedly Eastern flavors every time as Asian character is onscreen! It really helps keep everyone's race and ethnicity clear!

3. Pat Morita tries to escape from a hotel by placing a garment bag over his body and running, eventually being foiled by the dastardly tactics of a revolving door.

4. At one point, Jay Leno waves a gun in some guy's face and says "Hey Hey We're the Monkees" for reasons never clarified.

5. The main plot concerns a prototype for a supercar that will revolutionize the car industry for some reason that Detroit is trying to steal from the Japanese. The guy who owns the evil American car company trying to rip off the Japanese is named Darrett Jarrett. That's D-A-Double-R-E-Double-T J-A-Double-R-E-Double-T. He resembles the glistening whiteness of deposed former governor Gray Davis, right down to the bureaucratic incompetence and halting speech patterns. Remarkably prescient on the filmmaker's part, if I don't say so myself.

6. From Pat Morita's sensitive portrayal of a Japanese cop we learn the important lessons that Asians both respect their elders and are unfamiliar with the concept of door bells. I found this very helpful and hope to apply it to my own travels in the land of the wise bearded sage. Thanks for the heads up COLLISION COURSE!

7. At some point, someone yells "KARATE THIS!", which I personally think would have been a better title for the movie, but so it goes . . .

8. Pat Morita gets down on a dancefloor.

9. Also, apparently Asian cars are cheap and shoddily put together whereas American cars are sturdy and resilient. I'll make a note of it next time I'm buying. Thanks!

10. 8 mile is a real place where crime happens and stuff. Now I respect that Eminem even more than I did when he made that song about fucking and/or killing his mom.

And that's just ten of 'em!

I could relate so many more, but then I'd just be ruining all the fun for you. Apparently, Jay Leno disowns this movie, but he's a shit head these days anyway.

But really all you need to know is that at one point, Pat Morita reenacts Chuck Norris' immortal windshield kick-thru from GOOD GUYS WEAR BLACK and it is breathtaking. He over comes the prejudices placed before him to steal back that Japanese super car prototype and save Japanese industry and for that, I am eternally grateful!

Lilli Marleen

2007-12-05T20:31:00.000-08:00

Price: free (it came with a $160,000 education, however)
Year: 1981
Run time: 120 minutes
Director: Rainer Werner Fassbinder
Cast: Hannah Schygulla, Giancarlo Giannini, Christine Kaufmann, Udo Kier

Although there aren't really any rules that we've made about it, on this blog I generally try to stay away from RWF and other cannonized, and arguably overrated, directors of European art cinema. Its not that I don't enjoy these movies. Many of them are worth every bit of the hype, and many of them... not so much. If it isn't obvious, I write about movies like Gold Diggers, and Out of the Wilderness because they are seldom given a critical treatment of any sort beyond the time surrounding their release, while movies by the Rainer Werners, and the Werners, and the Jean Lucs of this world are continuously written about, and will likely continue to be written about long after I am gone (if the world still exists!). However, to mix it up a little bit, I've decided to give in to Fassbinder's Lilli Marleen, a film I really loved, that I was lucky enough to find in a box of movies that were being given away for free in my department's building.
While I'm no Fassbinder fanatic, there are moments when his aesthetic really appeals to me. When he's restaging Sirk films as a venue to talk about otherness and old age, I don't really feel it. I'm more a fan of highly aestheticized, glossy fever dreams, many of which Hannah Schygulla stars in. This preference stems more from my doubts in RWF's ability to tell a convincing story about people of color or old women than from my preference for "sexy" looking films. Not that I don't like "sexy" looking films... In any event, Lilli Marleen is full of glamour, and it uses this in a most productive way.

Like one of my favorite films (Bob Fosse's Cabaret), Lilli Marleen tells the story of a female singer during the third reich. Like Sally Bowles, Willie starts as a torch singer in a night club, who is nice to look at, but not exceptionally talented. An immigration issue keeps her away from her lover Robert (Giannini), whom she lived with in Switzerland, so she gets work at a cabaret in Munich. By the sheer force of luck, she is able to wrap her voice around the "Lilli Marleen" song for which this film is named. The song, which is a narrative about love and war, enchants everyone who hears it. When she does a recorded version, it becomes a national sensation. Soon Willie and her star struck pianist are invited to stay at Hitler's mansion. Before she knows it, Willie has become a poster girl for the third reich.
Meanwhile, Willie and Robert (who is a jew) pine away fro eachother in seperate countries. Robert eventually marries a beautiful Jewish woman, but his love for Willie plagues that marriage, as he can never really let it go. Although in the time they are estranged Willie is too sought after to have much time for pining, they scenes when they (briefly) reunite show that she too is not past that love. It is her devotion to Robert, in fact, that leads her fall from grace in the eyes of the SS.

One of my favorite aspects of this film is that it gives the characters humanity, despite their support of the Nazis. It does this without condoning the Nazis (and in fact, as a whole condemns them). When looking back at that time, it is important to remember how normalized it must have been in German society to support the ruling party. Like in any state, more informed citizens probably dissented, while the lesser informed probably supported the ruling party, or were indifferent. Those supporters perhaps were swept up in the ideology so much, to an extent that it was the climate, rather than their own evilness that allowed them to support the nazis. Willie falls into this category. She irresponsibly puts on an identity, without much thought or care to its implications.

Like the rest of her countrymen, Willie is eventually maligned for her actions, or inactions. Her rise and downfall, is chaotic, glamorous, and altogether problematic. We enjoy the glamorous ride along with her, but can't help but criticize the place she carved out for herself.

On a purely aesthetic level, the film is visionary. Everything feels very set-like, in a way that compliments the way the story is told. The colors are evocative, and the images look like they could have been pulled from a Nazi Vogue. When the film portrays the violence on the battlefield, it provides a nauseating but enticing viewing experience that supports and contradicts the overall gloss of the film.

The movie stays away from many of the traps that such a film could fall into. For one thing, while it is implied that Willie interacts with Hitler on a fairly regular basis, he is not portrayed by an actor here. That would have been rather distracting and hokey. Also, the concentration camps are referred to, but not shown. Some might view this as irresponsible, but since the film is portraying members of German society who lacked real knowledge about the full atrocities of the SS, it frames the story well.

Overall, Lilli Marlene is a gorgeous, and thoughtful film. It exemplifies the mix of ideology and aesthetic grandiosity that make Fassbinder an important film maker.

Macon County Line

2007-12-03T14:09:00.001-08:00

Price: 75 cents
Year: 1974
Length: 89 minutes
Director: Richard Compton
Cast: Alan Vint, Jesse Vint, Cheryl Waters, Max Baer, Geoffrey Lewis, Leif Garrett, Doodles Weaver, Joan Blackman

Macon County Line is the type of weird, shaggy, ramblingly ingratiating film that the 1970's found incredibly easy to shit out. Pitched somewhere between accidental art film and subtle exploitation picture, MCL deals with so many shades of gray in regards to its characters that it might as well be a Walker Evans photograph (because his pictures are old and in black and white and I couldn't think of a better metaphor on the fly, dig?).

It opens with our ostensible heroes , Chris and Wayne Dixon (played by real life siblings Alan and Jesse Vint respectively) doing a bunch of rascally shit like stealing money from hookers, ditching out on paying for meals, and destroying some police cars in the process. Eventually they pick up a female hitchhiker (Cheryl "100% Pure Love" Waters) and then they kind of amble about trying to get their car fixed or whatever.

The vhs box and above trailer told me that this was a movie about a crazed sheriff (played by Max "Jethro Bodine from the Beverly Hillbillies" Baer Jr., who also produced and co-scripted) who falsely accuses some kids of killing his wife and chases them all over the place. Well, we don't even meet this sheriff till a solid half hour into the movie and his wife doesn't get murk'd till a solid hour of this movie's 90 minutes and Jethro doesn't even find her till another ten minutes later, so basically all the plot of this bad boy is smooched into the last 15 or so minutes, which is fine by me because what results here is inevitably better than the simple revenge fest that a more focused attempt would have shaped up as.

For one, all the actors in this, including Jethro, are pretty fucking good; delivering naturalistic and muted performances that would be more at home in a Malick or Hellman pic (Alan Vint did just that, by the way, with turns as "Man in Roadhouse" in Hellman's TWO-LANE BLACKTOP and as "Deputy" in Malick's BADLANDS). Both of those films are good reference points for where this movie leans structurally and tonally, but unlike the pastoral naivety of BADLANDS and the stoned existentialism of TWO-LANE BLACKTOP, MCL never forgets that at its heart it is nothing more than an exploitation flick geared to rack up big bucks on the drive-in circuit. The rambling fuck all nature of the plotting is more reminiscent of the slice of life waggling around of the Pacino-Hackman-when-they-still-cared gem SCARECROW, in that nothing plotwise happens for the first hour or so, then something kinda plotty happens, then we just get a downbeat, tragic ending to kinda bum us out on our way out because it's the 70's and a movie can't be good unless it has the downbeat ending and the 70's were right. Needless to say, this is the kind of film that Tarantino seemed to take particularly to heart when crafting his semi-misunderstood half of GRINDHOUSE (and he apparently forced his actors to watch this movie to prepare for their own roles appropriately enough).

What's more weird than how weirdly surprising this movie is, is that it apparently was a HUGE hit on the drive-in circuit, officially bringing in over $20 million on a $225,000 budget and warranting a snarky Vincent Canby review in the New York Times a whole nine months after first premiering across the southern drive-in circuit. Baer made a mint on it as producer and whiled away the 70's honing his technique on other seemingly just as aimless and successful follow-ups, while Compton quickly pumped out a RETURN TO MACON COUNTY the next year starring both a young Nick Nolte and a baby faced Don Johnson.

While this movie certainly isn't a patch on either TWO-LANE or BADLANDS, which are two of my favorite movies ever it should be noted, it is certainly better than it has any right to be and is suggested follow-up material for fans of either of those films who long for a trashier, muddier, more authentic surrogate to those revered art-house pastiches. All that I can say is that it's good enough that I didn't even mention until now that a young pre-cocaine Leif Garrett plays Jethro Baer's son. And that's more than I could say for THE LONG SHOT KIDS (also recommended as it's about foosball). Oh yeah, and Doodles Weaver, the George W. Bush by way of Jerry Lewis linchpin of the previously reviewed ROAD TO NASHVILLE, also makes a memorable appearance as old man befuddled by the stupid guy at gas station, who is memorably played by the old country music star guy in the previously reviwed THE DEVIL'S REJECTS. Oh yeah, and Richard Compton, the director, also directed one episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, which is close enough to the previously reviewed STAR TREK V: THE FINAL FRONTIER for me to link to it without shame or remorse.

Make It So.

The Substitute 4: Failure Is Not An Option

2007-11-27T11:39:00.000-08:00

Price: 75 cents
Year: 2001
Length: Treat Williams
Director: Robert Radler
Cast: Treat Williams, Patrick Kilpatrick, Angie Everhart, Bill Nunn

It's always a Treat with Treat Williams! - me

A man can learn a lot about himself when slogging through the dollar bins for used blog fodder. For instance, I learned that I will purchase any film featuring "Always a" Treat Williams and any film that is a direct to video sequel to a not particularly well loved or remembered Tom Berenger vehicle. So now I own both The Substitute 3: Winner Takes All and The Substitute 4: Failure is Not an Option (Sniper sequels oddly MIA for now). For brevity and clarity, I will focus on the latter as I watched it sober this weekend compared to wasted 6 months ago por tres. Although I get giddier when stumbling across a Treat Williams vhs than Huell Howser does when finding a 19 year old can of kidney beans in a hermit's magic trash house, I can't really explain what it is about the guy that I fond so damn irresistible. It's probably some combination of my eternal love for THE PHANTOM, the time I stayed in a hotel room in Vegas with a picture of Treat and Cathy Moriarty on the wall, and the to the gut simplicity of his moniker. I can't help but be delighted by a man named Treat.

So it was with the great anticipation of a Christmas morn spent next to a fire at Coolio's egg-strewn house being lectured about right and wrong that I approached this film. I was giggly, caffeinated, and alert; open to all the Treats that awaited me, and, as always, Treat did not disappoint.

The Substitute sequels always find a way to shoehorn a professional mercenary into needing to pose as a teacher in order to murder some of his students for being up to (A) general drug dealing, gang banging, Jeff Gillooly-esque kneecappery, being in something awesomely called "The Kings of Destruction" (B) car-jacking, gang-banging, being in something unimaginatively called "The Brotherhood" (C) being on a football team, taking some frothing Benoit fantasia inducing steroids, ripping the tops of desks apart from the chair (D) being in the military, being Nazis, blowing up power plants, beheading old rich guys. Fortunately, D is the plot for The Substitute 4: Failure Is Not An Option and it makes for the least action filled, most nonsensical, strangely name actor filled (by Substitute standards) Substitute yet.

Before getting all Trick or Treaty on you, it bears mentioning that Patrick Kilpatrick is truly remarkable as a American military academy commandant at the realistically titled American Military Academy of the South, who has a poorly kept secret Nazi society called the Werewolves, who cleverly disguise themselves by wearing SS logos on their hats and armbands and denying the Holocaust to anyone within earshot. He constantly accuses Treat Williams of fostering "Multiculturalism" at his beloved academy and bragging about how a race war is totally gonna happen this time if he just blows up that billion dollar power plant that was funded entirely by money from black people apparently! (not making this up, I think!)

Treat is a lover and a fighter and he hates intolerance more than anything so he's on edge from the start about these Werewolf kids who keep trying to kill him and deny the Holocaust and what not. Good for Treat that former Stallone fiance and fading ginger sexpot Angie Everhart is also around to provide some nudity that otherwise the film would have been sorely lacking. She also takes a bullet for him at the end and it is very poignant. Also, good for Treat that Bill "Radio Raheem" Nunn is around to act all crazy like and give him guns when he needs them and kill some racists, too, because as a black man, his righteous anger against the skinheads is more crowd cheeringly deserved. But really, at the end of the day, this is a movie that belongs to the Treat and he does not disappoint.

Treat spins and kicks and flips bad guys over his back like cabbage. He spits and kisses and dances his way into our hearts during the torrid and truncated Campus Dance scene. But most of all, the way he bravely follows the Werewolves on their mission to blow up the power plant, then stands around doing nothing, waiting till after the power plant explodes to start kicking everyone's butt after they get back to campus, really seals the deal. Ultimately, The Substitute series is about the titular character teaching his students important life lessons with his feet and fists and IF he had stopped them and killed them off campus, his point would not have been so pointed. Only at a school can the most righteous teaching of death be solidly administered. Only at a school can the flimsy gimmick of a mercenary stopping crime tie back into the title of the series. Life lessons can be taught at school, but no one is better at offering death lessons than my man Treat Williams as Karl Thomasson in The Substitute 2 : School's Out, The Substitute 3 : Winner Takes All, and The Substitute 4: Failure Is Not An Option. Thank you, Treat Williams, for teaching us about death and teaching . . . again.

Also:

The Man Can Sing! (and not just that Hair shit)

He simply cannot be any Treatier!

Can't Hardly Wait!

2007-11-26T13:00:00.001-08:00

Price: $1
Year:1998
Run Time: 100 min
Director:Harry Elfont, Deborah Kaplan
Cast: J Lo Hewitt, Ethan Embry, Charlie Korsmo, Lauren Ambrose, Seth Green, Peter Facinelli, Freddy Rodriguez, Jamie Pressly, Melissa Joan Hart

The late nineties were a great era for pop compilations. Sure you may not have had Jock Jams, Now (that's what I call music), or any of the MTV buzz bin disks, but if you were a young teen at that time, you were exposed to such compilations whether you liked it or not.

The truth is, you probably liked it, at least on some level. All of those compilations I just named had at least one song on them that would appeal to any given kid. Even if you were a defensive disavower of all things pop at that point, I'd suspect a slight smile still comes across your face when you hear "I Like to Move it Move It".

Can't Hardly Wait is essentially a visual representation of a pop comp. It skates over the surface of nineties teen existence in a way that is ridiculously affable. It touches on much, but explores very little. As a result, the scenarios and characters we see are all vaguely relatable, but cartoonish enough to distance from our own personal experience. We enjoy the spectacle of the teenage experience, but are never subjected to the cringe inducing honesty of say, Freaks and Geeks.

What sets Can't Hardly Wait! apart from aforementioned short lived, but exceptional series, is that you don't have to have been a freak or geek to relate to it. There's a cursory overview of all high school experiences in there somewhere. To link it back to the beggining of this post, Can't Hardly Wait! is a compilation of John Hughes Greatest hits, with a few Cameron Crowe tracks thrown in to appeal to niche consumers.

Besides J Lo Hewitts unseen boobs (which apparently sum up the whole of her sex appeal), there is no tension beneath the surface here, but that's ok. This movie offers kick-ass moments like this:

Heller in Pink Tights

2007-11-19T13:03:00.000-08:00

Price: $3.98 on DVD (DVD cherry officially popped re this blog)
Year: 1960
Run Time: 100 min
Director: George Cukor
Cast: Sophia Loren, ANthony Quinn. Ramon Novarro, Steve Forrest

Sophia in Technicolor would perhaps be a more appropriate title for this film, as those two elements really steal the show here. This is viewed as being a lesser work by master director Cukor. While I'm not about to start a campaign for a mass critical re-evaluation of the movie, I will say that every shot is so beautiful that you could fucking eat it. Art direction wise, think Wes Anderson+ Moulin Rouge + Suspiria+ FIstful of Dollars- most of MR's overblown acting (most, not all)- the irritating bourgeois male malaise of WA (but not minus WA's problematic portrayal of non-whites). Narrative content wise, there is nothing too spectacular. Its a basic story of a femme fatale actress named Angela Rossini (loren) who seduces her way through the old west. Her romance with the dependably affable Healy (Quinn) is threatened by the advances of Mabry, a devestatingly handsome gunslinger (Forrest). This love triangle plays out as the theater company, with Mabry in tow, races away from the debt they left in Cheyenne, trying to escape a murderous Indian tribe along the way (ah, Hollywood).

In this tale that relies strongly on to-be-looked-at-ness, Sophia Loren is the perfect star.

Her presence is truly iconic, and no matter whom you prefer to go to bed with, you will not be able to take your eyes off of her in this film. In an early scene at the theater in Cheyenne (a set which bursts with color) Loren peers through a window with wooden curtains that have a nude women painted on them. This short frame is a one-two punch of feminine spectacle. Her and Mabry eye each others' lower halves in this carnivalesque atmosphere, creating the sexual tension that will push much of the narrative forward. A unique and evocative interior space has been created here. When the narrative moves to the dessert, the open landscapes and mountains and canyons are treated with just as much visual care. The colors and the shapes of the landscape pop out and assault the eye with their beauty. The most heightened moment of this is when the Indians capture the theater company's coach, and set it on fire. The mountains of brightly colored costumes consumed by flames, paired with the blue sky and the gray smoke makes for a compelling spectacle.

Compelling spectacle certainly overtakes compelling storyline here. However, Ms. Loren plays an interesting character here. Although her most prominent quality is her beauty, she sets most of the narrative of the movie into action. She is a much more central force than any of the men in the film. I'm not sure if I'd say this is a feminist film, but what it certainly does do is wear the notion of female spectacle on its sleeve. Angela Rossini, and the other young girl in the company, make money after each performance by parading around the saloon in pretty dresses, selling stylized photographs of themselves. They are able to get the undivided attention of the saloon patrons. WHile the other woman (Della, played by Margaret O'Brien) is a pretty flat character, Angela is what I'd call a powerful spectacle.

Actually, that's what I'd call the whole film.

Star Trek V: The Final Frontier

2007-11-19T09:21:00.000-08:00

Price: 75 cents
Year: 1989
Length: 107 minutes
Director: Will.i.am. Shatner
Cast: William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelley, James Doohan, George Takei, Nichelle Nichols, Waltner Koenig, David Warner, Lawrence Luckinbill

Star Trek or Star Wars?

A Personal History:
1983-1999: Star Wars
1999-2004: Apathetic
2005-Present: Star Trek.

The nu-trilogy and the rise of G4 and Spike's constant rotation of TNG reruns pretty much sums up that whole equation as I imagine/hope it has for at least a few other undiscerning nards out there.

So . . .

Maybe it has something to do with me being a nu-jack Star Trek acolyte and a lover of trash and camp and overblown ego trips, but everything you've heard about this movie is wrong. Old-school Star Trek nerds are mirthless bonerheads for denying this movie's majesty for so long. It's probably the quintessential Star Trek dollar video. Although copies of ST: The Motion Picture and Star Trek: Generations are much more plentiful, this one embodies all the glorious misguidedness that marks a truly noteworthy and remarkable dollar vid. For a TV show whose whole reputation and success is indelibly linked to camp, it is downright unfathomable how the campiest Star Trek film ever "shat" out is also the most hated.

First of all, it was directed by William Shatner from a story he himself wrote with the help of only two (!) other credited screenwriters, so it has vision going for it in spades. His turn in the director seat is also invariably a result of the ego-wounding success that Leonard Nimoy had at the helm of both the muted Star Trek III: The Search for Spock and the worldwide smash eco-comedy Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (still the highest-grossing Star Trek movie). One can easily imagine Shatner refusing to make another Star Trek movie unless they let him try his hand at directing the next one himself after all if a plebe like Nimoy could bang a couple out of the park how about letting ol' Shatface swing, hell he even directed 8 wholed episodes of TJ Hooker beforelike. I want to hug those poor subsequently unemployed studioheads for giving me my turkey early this year.

So it opens with some obvious Star Wars knock offs of the sand people and the mos eisley cantina with this brah that turns of to totally be spock's half brah neverbefore mentioned and never mentioned again. Also Capt. Kirk is apparently into free climbing cause he is doing some of that in Yosemite at the beginning and Spock has sweet rocket shoes that saves his life and they all sit around the campfire singing row row row your boat and eating beans and dranking whiskey and making obvious fart jokes. These scenes are great.

Then Spock's brother gets up to some bullshit and eventually it turns out to be a search for God in the middle of the universe who turns out just to be some random dude with a couple deep purple rekkids and a psychedelic face projector. In between, Sulu and Chekov get erotically lost in the (metaphoric?) forest of their own desires and only through sexual exploration and brainwashing are they able to escape. As a result, they spend most of the movie working against the core groop of Shat, Nim, and BoneThugs. Scotty hits his head on something at one point and does a three stooges quality pratfall. There is also an obviously tacked on plot involving some billy zanily misguided Klingons who stop what they are doing when firmly told to stop by an old guy.

So yeah, it's mishmashy, but it's never boring, except when it is boring, but even when it's boring, it's boring in an interesting way so it stops being actually boring so quickly that you are never actually bored in the first place and, in fact, the boredom was kind of a thankful respite from the non-stop excitement anyway, so you (the audience) are always winning with William Shatner's Star Trek Five: The Final Frontier! Don't you wanna win? Sure, you do! So watch this movie already if you haven't yet and if you already have then you should watch it again and again until you like it as much as I do and if you've seen it already and liked it, then I guess you're cool with me, but you should probably check with the Shatman just to be sure. He may make you buy a TekWar book or something, but it'll be worth it cause that's still better than having to watch Boston Legal or some shit like that. Fuck Boston. That place and everything associated with it sucks (except (maybe) Mr. Boston and (definitely) the band Boston).

Amityville II: The Possession

2007-11-01T11:58:00.000-07:00

Price: 75 cents (110 minutes of your life)
Year: 1982
Length: 110 minutes of spooky!
Director: Damiano Damiani
Cast: Burt Young, James Olson, Rutanya Alda, Diane Franklin, Jack Magner

This is an important film.

It is about what happens when you let the voices in your walkman convince you that sleeping with your hot sister was wrong and that you should kill all yr family members to appease the house you moved to or else it will shake around and move things to where they don't belong (like a blanket on a light fixture, what wants that?). If you do it with a shotgun, even better. If the creepy priest who also want(s(ed)) to bone yr h of a sis tries to reenact THE EXORCIST for the last half hour of the movie even better. This is what important films do.

It also helps if you look like Craig from Degrassi TNG animorphed with just a touch of latter day Wacko Jacko Coke Septum Erosion.

It also helps if you easily confuse the phrase testicles and tentacles.
But before we let the dirt in my teenage mustache coalesce into a serum of defeat, I must address the most important asspect of this great American movie . . . oh wait, i already talked about the incest themes . . . huh, that about does it for point of innarest in this one. Burt Young does some great acting with his cigar chomping scotch swilling inarticulation that certainly seems much more worthy of the TITle mumblecore than a bunch of ennui leaden movies about quirky hiptards feeling sorry for they selves. The way he beats his children and wife while simultaneously not spilling his drink or managing a single discernible human sound is the kind of acting often forgotten about in this post-John Ritter apocalypto of a filmy land. I wish he was in more movies. He was good in the rocky balboa movie, he was drunk a lot, and then i think he died or something, either way it was very very sad. I liked when he got a robot for his borthday in that one rockie movie. it made me smile. Happy Halloween!

White of the Eye

2007-10-25T11:29:00.000-07:00

Price: 2 bucks
Year: 1987
Length: 113 minutes
Writer/Director: Donald Cammell
Music: Nick Mason of Pink Floyd and Some Dude from 10cc
Cast: David Keith, Cathy Moriarty, Alan Rosenberg, Art Evans, Danielle Smith, Alberta Watson

Wow.

Um.

Huh.

What a gloriously strange and haunting movie this one is. I can't really say I've ever seen a movie quite like it, although my inner Bill Zwecker makes me want to shortchange it with some "Zabriske Point meets Henry Portrait of a Serial Killer at a bar and Dario Argento follows them home" verbiage just to stick a nice plump ballpark frank in it.

Anyway, for me (and hopefully for you), the main reason to see this movie is that it is most likely the purest vision of a Donald Cammell movie that we are ever going to be given. This iconoclastic weirdo/genius famously suffered massive interference with his previous two movies, the druggy and strange and brilliant PERFORMANCE and the druggy and strange and somewhat less brilliant DEMON SEED. In fact, it is believed that his suicide was prompted by the massive studio interference in his fourth and final feature WILD SIDE (he blew his brains out and watched himself die slowly in a mirror over the course of the next 30 minutes). I guess something about only getting to make 4 movies over the course of 27 years and having 3 of them (but not WHITE OF THE EYE(!)) taken out of your hands and re-edited without your input must be very frustrating. So it goes . . .

Without being too specific . . .

This one is really super! The camerawork is all crazy! The music is spooky and trippy! The acting's great (especially David Keith)! The desert locations are evocative! The ending doesn't really make any sense, but who cares! It's hallucinatory! It's ambiguous! It all ends with a biiiiiig explosion! It's massively fucked up! David Keith sings George Jones! Alan Rosenberg sings Hot Chocolate! Danielle Smith kinda reminds me of Linda Manz!

In conclusion, see this movie. I'm still not actually sure that it's any good, but I've been debating that in my head all day and isn't that always better than knowing exactly how you feel about a movie. The ending is really over the top and contains at least one thing that in any other movie would elicit groans and disappointment; but given how the rest of this movie is so on point, it had me thinking that the problem lay with me and that I just needed to watch it again to figure it all out. Fuck it, I'm calling this one a masterpiece. I'm still not entirely sure why though. Maybe you can help me with that?

Here's a weird youtube video of the opening murder coupled with some footage cribbed from a documentary about Cammell that the IFC aired a few years back.

Get a shot of my pool in the back . . .

Singles

2007-10-24T16:37:00.000-07:00

Price: $2
Run Time: 99 min
Year: 1992
Director: Cameron Crowe
Cast: Campbell Scott, Bridget Fonda, Matt Dillon, Kyra Sedgwick, Bill Pullman, Eddie Vedder, Stone Gossard, Jeremy Piven, Eric Stolz

For a large portion of my life, people have been telling me that I should really see this movie, and that I would absolutely love it. "Its sooo you" these (mostly former) friends of mine would say as they grabbed my arm with enthusiasm. Although I did not see it until a little over a week ago, it has been on my internal Netflix queue since high school.

Now that I've at last seen the movie, I'm retro-actively insulted. Fuck all those people who told me I would love Singles! Damn them to heck. I mean, if they thought Singles was "sooo me" then they were never my real friends at all.

Ok... so now I'm getting a bit defensive. Let's examine why...

While the judgement of these people who I used to know could very well be questionable, they had a point in recommending Singles to 15 year-old me. Singles is a mess of a film that caters to the mentality of a self-absorbed child who has no sense of the world outside of themselves. I mean, we were all fifteen once, but not all of us wore knee high Doc Martens.

Moving on...

...and there is so much to move on to. So many points of attack. Let's focus on the characters for now.

The four central characters in the movie are Janet (Fonda), Steve (Scott), Linda (Sedgwick), and Cliff (Dillon). There's also some red headed woman who makes a video for a dating service. Nobody cool plays her. Steve is likely the voice of Cameron Crowe in the movie. For all intents and purposes, he is a homeless woman's Lloyd Dobler. He is a whiny, lonely yuppy, who only hang out with this "totally awesome grunge crowd" because he wears band t-shirts. When he is not complaining about his ex-girlfriend, he is trying to design a train that will save the world and eliminate cars. He finds his soul mate in Linda, who is played by everyone's favorite chihuahua/cocker spaniel mix. She is a great match for emo wombat Steve. They are the ultimate whiny white couple who dabble in scenesterdom. Linda even has a nifty garage door opener.

Then there is Janet... oh Janet... How you remind us that Cameron Crowe has little respect and understanding for women, save Diane Court from Say Anything. Janet is a twenty-two year old barista who dresses all quirky-like (usually including some flannel), and hangs out with grunge rocker guys. Her boyfriend/obsession is Cliff. It is through this relationship that it becomes clear that Janet is a moron with no self-respect. Crowe's extreme misunderstanding of the "scenester girl who falls for emotionally distant musician types" is rather disappointing. Janet admits to starving herself for Cliff, and at one point goes to see about getting breast implants when he states an indifferent fondness for large boobs. I can tell you right now that this representation of the rocker/douche loving woman is ridiculous. A real-life Janet would justify and lamely excuse Cliff's mistreatment, instead of throwing down thousands of dollars for cosmetic surgery.

Or maybe I'm wrong. Matt Dillon is SUCH a babe in this movie.

And such an iconoclast.

To tell you the truth, Cliff is to a certain extent the only likable character. I mean, he's a jerk, but at least he's funny. While he certainly is every bit as pathetic as the other characters, he's pathetic and funny, as opposed to pathetic and insulting.

Its sad to think that Singles opened up the floodgates for all of those fun Gen X movies. Its even sadder that even Reality Bites is a better movie.

The truth is Cameron Crowe clearly had no perspective on this subculture.

Whatever...

For shits and giggles/ not a movie review

2007-10-24T16:22:00.000-07:00

I'll be there opening day!

Out of the Wilderness

2007-10-17T16:27:00.000-07:00

Price: $2
Year: 2004 (supposedly)
Run time: 98 minutes
Director: Steve Kroschel
Cast: Black Feather, David Carradine, Amy Wiegert

Pencils tap nervously on the board room table. Production has not even started yet, and the sour news seems to be rolling in by the hour. There was enough trouble when the Dakota Fanning-esque star quit after her involvement in a kiddie porn ring was revealed. When the homely daughter of one of the main financiers was brought in as a replacement it was no consolation prize. It seemed like things couldn't get any worse.

The meeting on this particular afternoon was prompted by a frantic phone call from the wife of the trainer who raised the bear cub that the central narrative of the film focused on. Black Beary, who was normally a sweet little fuzz ball, had an unexpected mood swing, and had clawed her husband to death. The first bottle of whiskey was opened before the phone was hung up.

After the initial shock, and after the 10th shot, calls were made to every animal trainer in the country. Success, of course, was limited. There wasn't a single bear, penguin, iguana, parrot, sugar glider, or bison available during the shoot dates. These were desperate times, and desperate times call for desperate measures.

Suddenly, Mr. Kroschel had an epiphany. Back at Evergreen State he'd had a buddy named Skunk. Skunk was the sort of fellow who nobody was particularly close to, but who one could always count on to be down for smoking weed. He wore no shirt well into the dead of winter, and always readily offered up his theories about the great beyond. Steve (Kroschel) would call Skunk up every couple of seasons to obtain psychedellic drugs. On the last one of these visits, Steve noticed that Skunk was raising what appeared to be a family of ravens. While these creatures had ruined Steve's 2CI trip by giving him ominous stares and reminding him of his imminent death, Skunk reassured him that they were part of a lucrative business venture, and that organizers of goth events often paid top dollar to have a flock of ravens skulking around their parties.

The producers did not share the enthusiasm of the goth night-life impresarios, but since time was of the essence, they deemed the idea a go. An hour later, Skunk swaggered into the conference room like an Iggy Pop for the new millenium with a Raven perched on his shoulder.

A handle of Jim Beam later, and half way through the week's weed supply, Out of the Wilderness was born.

Only an origin story such as this could have produced such an amazing film. The above might be false, but if that's the case, I'll only believe that something more ridiculous brought Out of the Wilderness into fruition.

While the cultural moment seems to have drifted away, the "child meets animal, and forms touching friendship" is one of the classic formats of family entertainment. To replace the cuddly puppies, bear cubs, and other friendly fuzz balls with an ominous black raven is a choice that nearly places Out of the Wilderness into the experimental film genre. The post-modern air of the piece is only exemplified by the disjointed voice over narration given by the Melissa character. She insists that Black Feather (the raven) is a purely benevolent creature who is exploited by humans, and constantly victimized. However, we are shown images of Black Feather drawing blood from people's wrists, causing car crashes, fires, explosions, endangering infants, and crippling humans. Rather than the picture Melissa paints, we are shown a raven who causes peril for nearly everyone who crosses his path, even those who are trying to help him. His love for shiny objects reveals that he is also an evil capitalist raven, whose greed causes him to endanger others. If Black Feather were human he'd be a robber baron.

Out of the Wilderness is still a true gem, perhaps despite itself. Those of us who get all hot and bothered over the accidental avant garde will eat it up. It might make a good double feature with Dario Argento's Opera ( another Raven centric film) and I can tell you from personal experience that it looks like Citizen Kane if you follow it up with Cameron Crowe's Singles.

Out of the Wilderness leaves me with one burning question: How much drugs must they have had to buy for David Carradine?

Money Pit

2007-10-03T16:31:00.000-07:00

Price: $1
Year: 1986
Run time: 91 magic minutes
Director: Richard (not Walter) Benjamin
Cast: Tom Hanks (before he sucked), Shelly Long, Alexander Godunov, Joe Mantegna, Brian Backer, Maureen Stapleton

Like AJ McLean and the movie Truth or Dare?: A Critical Madness, I am forever haunted by the movie Money Pit. To some it is another forgettable 80s comedy, but to me it is a parable for the fragility of human life. Human beings are prone to decay like all organisms. As we grow old and continue to absorb heat are bodies move closer to entropy, and yet we continue to build dreams in a state of denial. These dreams will slip away, and soon our staircases will collapse. Then, our bath tubs will collapse and bring us to a lower level than even before.

Is advancement possible in such a scenario?

The answer is to grim to type.

So what role does love play in this downward spiral? Will it save us, or does it further our denial and detachment from the reality of our situation. It can truly be beautiful, but it eats away at you like all else, until one day you find out the person you love has gone to bed with one of Alan Rickman's numerous Die Hard henchmen. What then? What of this love you once held so dear?

Such are all the things that we believe will help us cope with the pain. Alcohol coarses down your throat like a shady construction that demolishes your home without making the promised repairs. Still, you'll go for another drink. In your state of inebriation, you gaze into your cup and think you see the answer, in the form of Shelly Long and Tom Hanks. They cling to each other in a a hopeless yuppy embrace. You feel yourself drifting further and further from the bliss they experience. You take a swig as a quick fix. When you look back at the liquid in your brite red party cup, all you see are your two red eyes, which look as vacant as WIlson the volley ball.

Its as if you are full of air, and a pin prick could make your head explode.

Would you care to test it out?

The truth is too hard right now. Liquid courage is meant with liquid fear, and instead of finding love tonight, the best you can hope for is an awkward one night stand with Alexander Godunov.

Could he be a God enough?

Denial, is naturally the best way to cope. Wake up every morning, go to work or school, and be sure to drink lots of green tea, since it is full of healthy antioxidants. You will still combust, but you'll feel better about it. You have the grand illusion of control. If you have any free time, watch the movie Money Pit, because it is hilarious, and was made before Tom Hanks was self important and bloated.

Also, who thinks Shelly Long needs to make a comeback?

Agent Cody Banks 2: Destination London

2007-10-03T16:20:00.000-07:00

Price: 75 centz or yr dignity
Year: 2004
Length: 100 minz
Director: Kevin Allen
Cast: Frankie Muniz, Anthony Anderson, Daniel Roebuck, Keith David

For whatever ungodly reason, I was convinced by this set photo that I absolutely needed to see this movie. Annoying twat kicking Anthony Anderson in the chest while he's sporting some crazy afrikan garbo? I'm sold. I even spent damn near 30 minutes fucking around with the cracked vhs cassette for this one so that it would work even though the plastic was concaving in on the tape on the right side so that I could watch this with the quickness.

It's about right now that I should make a confession.

I have no discretion. Haven't for a few years now.

It happened all slow like at first, but now I am excited by anything I haven't seen, which has it's benefits when it's 2 AM and SLIVER is the only movie on rabbit ears (It's got a Baldwin? I'm sold). But when you go to Amoeba to refresh your flaccid vid collect and you swear to yourself that you will only buy say 24 videos this time and you even walk there (it's about 50 minutes on foot with a short train ride in the middle one direction) and you only take one trader joes's conserve a bag which you determined beforehand can only comfortably fit 28 videos max as safeguards against yourself AND AFTER ALL THIS, you find yourself staring at two baskets filled with 72 videos total that it takes you another 20 minutes to widdle down to 44, which is almost twice as many as you said you'd buy, but if you squeeze some in around the sides on the tj bag you can get like 34 in there and then you can fit the extra ten in a standard plastique bag so it's totally doable, right? Then you leave the store 44 videos deeper and realize shit I gotta walk like 3 miles before i get home and with all this shit. Then you're like fuck. And then you get home and realize one of these videos that you sweat and bled for is fucking Agent Cody Banks 2: Destination London with nary a Bynes or Duff in sight (we get some jabronie from S Club 7), well it's deep introspection what-the-fuck-is-wrong-with-me time.

But anywhat,

Like most god-fearing mouthbreathers I have unfailing disdain for this Frankie Muniz arm welt. He's a spoiled twat for sure. I think he owned like 9 cars before he could even drive cause he just loOoOoOoOoOoVeS cars! His TV show suck'd (soulful wilt of cranston aside), but we win because he just gets uglier by the day, which when you started out 20% on the Hedo Turkoglu ugly stick beaten scale doesn't bode well for future desperate bar skank pick ups.

But yeah, this movie is boring, trite, tired, weezy (dontforgethefbaby) sequel that never should have been crap that bored me more than anything else has of late and, as previously expounded upon, I am an easy lay when it comes to these things. Usually its give me a taste and I'm gone, but this just had me nodding off to some jazz tunes, namean?

Actually take that back that "doesn't bode well for future desperate bar skank pick ups" comment, I've been sonned.

Knock Off

2007-10-02T16:20:00.000-07:00

Price: 75 centz
Year: 1998
Length: 91 Mins
Director: Tsui Hark
Writer: Steven E. de Souza
Cast: Jean-Claude Van Damme, Rob Schneider, Lela Rochon, Paul Sorvino

This movie is so fucking great that not even Rob Schneider could ruin it.

Sit back and take a moment to think about what that might mean to you.

Think about how great a movie has to be for that sniveling little cunt the Schneid not to shit all over it with his cockfaced mugging and contorted whiny whine.

Can you visualize it?

Now take that movie that you have in your head, the one that is so glistening and moist that Schneider can't fuck it up, and multiply it by a thousand and you're still nowhere near the greatness that is KNOCK OFF.

If you don't like Jean-Claude Van Damme, you can repeat the exercise from above with his name in place of Schneid's, but then you would be making me sad because what has Jean-Claude ever done to you? He's so talented! He only wants to entertain you and make you happy!

From a young age, JCVD has always made me happy. Bloodsport was the most frequently shown movie on KTLA channel 5 back in the early 90s and I probably watched it 20 times. We used to reenact scenes from it at recess in the third grade. It was awesome. But as great as Bloodsport is, its self seriousness robs it of some of the power that JCVD would later become best known for: his oblivious ridiculousness.

Now as far as absurd Jean Claude moments go, the climax to SUDDEN DEATH seemed to be an insurmountable peak. Here JCVD plays a disgraced former fireman who, in attempt to save the Vice President and an arena full of spectators from being exploded by terrorists, somehow winds up playing goalie for the Pittsburgh Penguins during the closing moments of game 7 of the Stanley Cup Finals.

However, only a year later, Junior College Venereal Disease would take matters of his own ludicrousness into his own paws of destiny when he crafted his definitive auteur piece, THE QUEST, which he wrote, directed, and stars in. Within the first 20 minutes of this surrealistic and elliptically strange genre piece, JCVD fights off a gang of attackers while dressed as a sad clown on stilts with much thanks to a gang of adorable cockney boot black orphans who he cares and provides for in an abandoned warehouse, then he winds up on a boat where he is enslaved and forced to fight in tournaments for his owners enjoyment before being sold to Roger Moore (playing himself) who takes him to some tournament in the middle of Asia where first prize is a 20 foot long dragon made out of like 3 tons of gold (shipping and handling not included with victory). Sample the final fight from it:

While THE QUEST has become recognized in some circles (the ones in my head) as a left-field masterpiece and possibly the purest distillation of the divine madness that is being Jean-Claude, KNOCK OFF is an unparalleled trip into the outer edges of aggro retardation that is undoubtedly JCVD's most insane, OTT, and patently AZN movie ever. Its sub-par reputation in this sad, joyless country of ours probably has most to do with the culture divide. In 1998, Americans weren't quite ready for a movie this gonzo. Hopefully, in a world beaten down by the RADD!! likes of CRANK, RUNNING SCARED, BAD BOYS II, and SHOOT EM UP, KNOCK OFF can get the second life it so richly demands.

If you are not convinced by the empty hyperbole and vague assertions that have so far passed for a compelling argument in favor of this film, a mere plot description will totaaly sway yr vote.

ahem

It is 1997 and Hong Kong is on the verge of being transferred over from British crown colony to Chinese sovereign and JCVD plays Marcus Ray, the owner of a counterfeit jeans company of questionable business practices. In other words, he is a sweatshop owner who makes Pumma sneakers and V-Six Jeans. He gets involved in some weirdness when it turns out that Russians (in 1997!) want to take over the world using nano bombs placed inside the buttons of Jean Claude's bootleg jeans. Jean-Claude senses that exploding jeans would be bad for business, especially considering that the CIA is trying to crack down on his exportations to the United States at the same time. Somehow, Paul Sorvino is involved as well and shit starts going bananas before the plot can begin to remotely resemble anything coherent. It is splendid!

Jean Claude tries to explain what is important in life with some boog suge assistance:

I would be remiss if I did not give a shout out to the two people who we can truly thank for the mind erasing greatness of KNOCK OFF, Tsui Hark and Steven E. de Souza. Tsui Hark made a bunch of sweet Hong Kong action movies like ONCE UPON A TIME IN CHINA and de Souza wrote DIE HARD, which is the best script for any action movie ever.

But KNOCK OFF is the best script for any movie ever, which is more impressive, so let's focus on that. Watch this scene of Van Damme beating the shit out of a sexy lady (she slaps Schneider around first at least) and come back to me:

Did you notice how easily Van Damme's clothes tore off the reveal his xxxey back? It's because they are knock offs. His clothes keep falling apart the whole movie because they are of poor quality (most notable are his Pumma sneakers melting when he is running with them in the scene that the pic up top is from). Brilliant! This film is hilariously self-aware without turning into a meta shit fest or aspiring to be anything more than a hilariously weird, violent distraction best consumed by sexually frustrated teenage boys and the visibly altered, which is probably why I like it so much!!!

Here's your reward for getting this far:

SOME DAMN FINE VAN DAMCING!!!

P.S. That last one is from Breakin'! That movie has a great soundtrack!

Truth or Dare?: A Critical Madness

2007-09-28T07:18:00.000-07:00

Price:$1
Year:1986
Run time: 90 minutes
Director: Tim Ritter
Cast: John Brace (of the Burt Reynold's Playhouse), AJ McLean

As throngs of braced faced little girls and their acne plagued closeted gay boyfriends writhe around me in a blaze of Disney channel pre-eroticism, all I can think about is when the second encore is officially over, and I can go backstage to complete my one goal for the evening. The kids standing around me most likely want to go to the same place, although for very different reasons. These girls want to get as close to Nick Carter as possible, so that his glistening blond locks can blind them in person. I never got much into Nick Carter myself. He's a bit plain and chubby. Actually, I never really got into the Backstreet boys too much.

So then, what am I doing here?

The answer is sort of a complicated one. You see, I'm here exclusively to see AJ McLean, the group's "freak" who is at times even more stunning than dancing Shlitze. It isn't that I have any romantic notions regarding myself and AJ, although I do find his Moroder-esque looks to be quite compelling. What I want is to pick his brain about a little movie called Truth or Dare?: A Critical Madness.

When the show ends, I make the slow push to get back stage. My makeshift press pass evidently works. Mr Carter is immersed in a huge swath of people, mostly groupies and journalists. Howie, Kevin and Brian all seem to be pretty busy as well. Luckily, Mr McLean is only talking to one person rather passively, while trying to conceal a bottle of Cognac. I am able to walk right up to him.

He's pretty friendly, and visibly pretty drunk. He offers me a swig from his flask, and I take it. It seems as though he is flirting with me by the way he keeps eying my prosthetic limbs. While I am tempted by his interest, I have a goal and I have to stick to it.

"So," I ask him, " I saw this movie that you were in as a kid. Its called Truth or Dare."

"You mean the Madonna movie?" he nervously jests. "I wasn't in that one."

"But you were in another Truth or Dare, weren't you?"

He freezes up. Flirtation is replaced with cold sweat. He breathes deep, trying to regain composure.

"I was really young back then. I barely remember it."

"It must have been odd filming that wrist slitting scene."

He looks away.

"Why don't you do any promotion for that movie? I think a lot of people would really like it."

He is frozen like a statue, but I persist.

" You know, I think it would be great if the Backstreet boys covered the 'Critical Madness' song. Would you ever do something like that?"

AJ re-animates by violently snapping his fingers above his head. Before I can move onto the next question, a big man in a tight black shirt is lifting me up and physically removing me from the green room. I am out on the street faster than you can say "I dare you to rip your face off."

Truth or Dare?: A Critical madness is clearly the movie that AJ McLean does not want us to know about. His publicity machine was able to cover it up for awhile. It baffles me that he does not want to be associated with this low budget blood bath. My theory is that as AJ McLean grew up, in the years following his role as young Mike Strauber, his life eerily started to mirror that of the film's central character. Like Mike Strauber, I'd bet that Mr. Mclean has engaged in a killing spree resulting in dead punks, limbless mental patients, and little league players decapitated by chain saws. The publicity machine behind the Backstreet boys has prevented to American people from accessing this important knowledge.

There is a killer amongst us, and his name is AJ Mclean.

Or maybe he has not killed. Perhaps he just fantasizes about re-enacting the scenarios that the grown up version of his character participated in. He is ashamed of the "Critical Madness" within himself.

AJ, if you are reading this, I have a message for you:

There is absolutely no shame in starring in a Halloween rip of that involves machine guns. In fact, the machine guns are arguably an improvement. Also, any movie where a member of the Burt Reynold's playhouse plays the adult version of you is something to be proud of. AJ, don't run from the past.

If you take pride in this move, one day there will be a decent DVD to watch instead of a snow drenched VHS. This would make your fans happy, AJ.

And yeah, the Backstreet boys really should do a cover of "Critical Madness"

Red Planet

2007-09-25T16:20:00.000-07:00

Price: 75 Cents
Year: 2000
Length: 106 mins
Director: Antony Hoffman
Cast: Val Kilmer, Tom Sizemore, Carrie Anne Moss, Benjamin Bratt, and TERENCE STAMP

5. riverrun, past Burt and Adam's, from swell of belly to bend

of sac, brings us by a commondius vomitus of refelchization back to

Howtfuc Kilmerstle and Environs.

A. I'll never forget that gesture, a combination wink and point and jizzture in his own direction that would crescendo into a hand on the back pushing you through the door and into the darkness of the back room, that symbolized what is most sensual and desired in this world . . . that Val Kilmer is going to fuck you. I'm not a prude, but when I was invited to a party at Val Kilmer's house I was expecting more than a string of episodic post- and pre- coital selection emergences from the man of the house (no JTT), but that was all I got. I counted ten sessions of Kilmerization that evening over the course of 2.5 hours and roughly 7 Heineken keg cans. So much for my first big celebrity bash, at least his house was nice, but who the fuck does Val think he is pulling these David Lee Roth paramour tricks in the '00's (decade looks like boobies). He didn't even talk to anyone, he'd just emerge from his sex dungeon in a pallid sweat while his most recent Valctim would rush out with a mixture of exhaustion and shame on her tear and mascara strewn face as Val would cast his discerning eye on the pickings at hand. There was no resistance, it was as if the ladies had all gotten the memo, Come to Val Kilmer's house and he will fuck you and make you cry.

4. A kitten under a floorboard is incapable of distracting me from what is most remarkable about this classic South Dakota money pit hot spot; for a low low price of 8 dollars, you, too, can see the actual car driven by Val Kilmer in the movie Thunderheart, lines form to the right, and oh yeah, that kitten, we got 40 more of em around here, can't get rid of em fast enough, heh heh heh.

3. You download it because well, you download every celebrity sex video, whether it is classic (pamntommy), tamenlame (ray-jandthatpotatoheadedindustrygroupie), poorly shot (greenparis), or imaginary (dakotafanning), but nothing could prepare you for this: a reputed sex addict clad in a black suit cavorting listlessly and continuously. You shut it off after only three skipped around and about minutes, sending it to the recycle bin along with your now useless genitals. Never again will I know happiness.

B. now I understand why Carrie Anne-Moss was wearing a hat during that one scene when we all looked at one another and were like, at the same time, WHY THE FUCK IS SHE WEARING THAT HAT? It was because, with Val and Sizey sex addicting all over one another's priapistastic intourage's, one continually needed all the flying fluid protection that only a baseball hat with gold trim can provide (the trim prevents side spillage).

C. Kilm and Sizey pissing on the MARS side by side, slapping each other on the back, while howling with pleasure.

2. A consumptive paradox. In order to fully appreciate said film, one's alcohol/coughee consumption must attain such a high level that when coupled with the languid pacing and facile characterization of the film in question captivates the viewer into unconsciousness. You cannot win.

1. 2 seconds of redemption for a lifetime of sullied virtue and pants

Delta Force 2: Operation Stranglehold

2007-09-12T10:34:00.000-07:00

Price: 75 cents
Year: 1990
Run Time: 110 Minutes
Director: Aaron Norris
A Globus Pearce Production
Starring Chuck Norris, Billy Drago, Mark Margolis, Begonia Plaza, John P. Ryan, Richard Jaeckel

When perusing dollar videos, there is no signifier of quality more important than the names "Menachem Golan" and/or "Yoram Globus." In the eighties when they ran Cannon Films together, they produced (as well as occasionally writing and directing) well over 100 of the most delirious, trashy, and illogical (predominantly) action films ever made. After kicking off the decade with his glittering disco mind control in 1994 slash biblical allegory masterwork THE APPLE, which is probably the greatest movie ever made, Golan (usually with Globus) continued to shit out gloriously sofa king we todd did action movies such as DEATH WISH III, COBRA, and BLOODSPORT. Although Golan-Globus produced legendary entries in the action careers of Sly Stallone, Charles Bronson, Dolph Lundgren, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Eric Roberts, and Michael Dudikoff, no collaboration was sustained for as long or as successfully as their teaming with future U.S. president Chuck Norris. From the first MISSING IN ACTION in 1984 through Cannon's last film before going bankrupt 1994's HELLBOUND, Norris and Golan-Globus produced a decade's worth of explosions and spin kicks that will long outlive their earthen chambers.

It also bears mentioning that for a class project in the 7th grade I wrote a commercial jingle for WALKER TEXAS RANGER whose lyrics consisted of "My name's Walker Texas Ranger / I hate people who kidnap kids / I don't shoot them / I just kick them / HIYA! / HIYA! / HIYA! / HIYA! / HIYA!"

Anyway, now that the deification/ironization of Chucky N. seems to have fully run it's roffly course and can only provide the metaphorical sand for our collective vagina, it's safe to go back to the products that created such a pop-cultural nuisance and this flick is top-shelf ground chuck (or you could also call it a good bottle of One Buck Chuck if wine metaphors are more your thing).

Despite Chuck Norris' top-billing and reputation, this movie belongs to two of his co-stars, the comedically evil, slippery, pee-wee-herman-esque pervasexual ooze of Billy Drago as Colombian Drug Kingpin Ramon Coto and the whiskey swilling, innocent villager mowing down insanity of John P. Ryan as General Taylor (catchphrase: "Always the hard way").

This exchange sums up Coto's evilness and General Taylor's sensitivity well:

Drago was a clutch utility villain for the Golan-Globus empire, who would later acheive nerd immortality as uber-villian John Bly on the late, lamented Bruce Campbell Fox series, The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr and for his acidic turn as The Dog Catcher in SOCCER DOG: THE MOVIE. In this movie, he overcompensates for his inability to remotely look Columbian by eating the rest of the cast like that big snake did to the train at the end of SNAKES ON A TRAIN.

All in all, it's a solid genre entry high on intentional laughs and malevolent absurdity, but with some nice scenes of Chuck scaling a mountain that were so pastoral I could almost hear the Popul Vuh. It's all pretty standard issue Golan-Globus fare, immensely enjoyable and re-watchable. I'll get into their sickness more with posts on OVER THE TOP, MURPHY'S LAW, and AMERICAN NINJA 2 (and maybe CYBORG) over the next couple of weeks. Here's a nice homo-erotic training scene to cap it off:

Fandango

2007-09-10T13:34:00.000-07:00

Price: $2.99
Year: 1985
Run Time: 91 Minutes
Director: Kevin Reynolds
Cast: Kevin Costner, Judd Nelson, Sam Robards, Suzy Amis

The above clip might mislead you. Not entirely, however, and not as much as the back-of-box description on the beat up copy of this that I bought. It sounds like a basic bro-dude buddy movie, and although it is essentially that, it awkwardly jumps in and out of this genre. Visually, it kind've reminds me of what might have happened if Michelangelo Antonioni had remade animal house. I say this because of the expansive desert shots throughout, and the out of the blue ending.

The thing is, Fandango was most certainly not directed by Antonioni. It was directed by Kevin Reynolds, who also was behind the camera for a little movie called Waterworld. Another Kevin, who we shall refer to as Cos. Cos appears to be Kevin Reynold's muse, seeing as the pair made several movies together that were notable, although of questionable quality. These include Fandango, Waterworld, and Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves.

Like the Robin Hood that he went on to portray, Cos leads another group of Merry men in this film, who go by the ultra-snappy name "The Groovers". These "Groovers" appear to be some unofficial fraternity, residing in the same U-Texas Austin house, circa 1971. We are given a brief glimpse of life in this house, which alternates between homo-erotic group mooning, and anxiety about going to Viet Nam. As it turns out, all of the alpha Groovers, who consist of Cos, Nelson, Robards, and an anonymous fat guy, are drafted. Their natural impulse, of course, is to go on a road trip!

As they cruise through the wide open Texan spaces, Cos remains charismatic, in a sort've proto-Owen Wilson way, Nelson acts like a castrating douche, which makes you question why they are friends with him to begin with, Robards whines about his girlfriend, and the fat guy sits there not saying much and being less attractive than the other three (I mean, someone had to be ommitted from the cover, right?). Hijinks, of course are bound to happen, and zany players are obviously met. Some of my favorites are the Scott Baio-esque car mechanic (who is only notable for his appearance) and the groovy hippies who run the flight school. The most notable moment for the Groovers is when they are at this groovy flight school. Since none of them want to engage in coitus with Nelson, in order to relieve his anal retention, they make him get on a totally far out air plane and sky dive. When it turns out this his parachute is actually the Wanda-from-Big-Love-esque-hippy-woman's-laundry, the groovers have to stop grooving and find a way to signal to their less than groovy bro, leading to some moments of hilarious abandon. Things work out (although I wont say how), although the hippie pilot shows up in the rest of the movie for no apparent reason.

Actually, the whole rest of the movie seems to be for no apparent reason. Cos's dart board, and phsychedellic fantasy woman shows up as Robards's GF, and a Robards-esque character shows up who may or may not have been in the movie the whole time. The movie kind've just ends, and I'm not sure where I was lead. Since I was not under the influence of any far-out mind altering substances at the time of my viewing (save a bottle of beer), I'll have to claim that my mind was clear and that the movie was what was muddy. All the same, a little incoherence never hurt anybody. Don't let it steer you away from Fandango. After all, it is the Water World of bro-dude road trip movies. All it needs is Tina Majorino.

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The Devil's Rejects

2007-09-06T12:25:00.000-07:00

Price: 3.99
Year: 2005
Runtime: 109 mins
Director: Rob Zombie
Cast: Sid Haig, Bill Moseley, William Forsythe, Sheri Moon Zombie, Ken Foree, Danny Trejo, Diamond Dallas Page, Brian Posehn

The Devil's Rejects > Citizen Kane

The Cat's Meow

2007-09-05T08:29:00.000-07:00

Price: $2.95
Year: 2001
Run Time: 114 minutes
Director: Peter Bogdanovich
Cast: Eddie Izzard, Kirsten Dunst, Edward Herrman, Cary Elwes, Joanna Lumley, Jennifer Tilly

Although not a great movie, The Cat's Meow gets a lot of mileage from a few elements, making it a pretty good, compulsively watchable movie. The most notable of these elements is the amazing cast. Films depicting historical events and character are always amusing when famous actors are cast. This film speculates on the mysterious death of director/producer Thomas Ince (Elwes) one weekend aboard a ship belonging to William Randolph Hearst. Although the historical accuracy of what is shown on screen is questionable, the film claims that notable personalities were on board the ship such as Charlie Chaplin (Izzard), Marion Davies (Kunst), Louella Parsons (Tilly), Elinor Glyn (Lumley), and Margaret Livingston (Claudia Harrison) to name a few. A love triangle between Chaplin, Davies, and Hearst drives much of the action of the story. Although some of the casting of these roles is questionable, all of the players are enjoyable to watch. Eddie Izzard's sleazy lothario take on Charlie Chaplin is entertaining and charming. Kunst, who is often criticized for her lack of sex appeal and inconsistent acting talents, is actually pretty convincing as Marion Davies. Her hyperactive little girl schtick works well for this character, and ads an unsettling father and daughter element to the Hearst-Davies love affair. Edward Herrman really steals the show as an insecure William Randolph Hearst, and it is pleasing to see someone who is usually a secondary actor given the chance to shine. Joanna Lumley is a treat as always, and Jennifer Tilly, although of questionable talent, has a very humorous screen presence. As an ensemble, these players, in addition to a few unknowns, have an intoxicating kinetic energy. Its like watching a party you wish you were at.

If you're a sucker for period pieces, and love the 1920s especially, you will probably enjoy this movie. Whenever things are about to get tense, someone yells the word Charleston, and everyone starts dancing. The fashion is pretty exquisite, especially the butterfly hat that Kunst wears in one scene. The movie wants to make a statement of some sort about that time period, even if it is unclear at times.

There are some film-making things that a supposedly master director like Bogdanovich should know to avoid. Having the bulk of the movie in color and just the funeral scenes in black and white is rather trite and predictable. Also, although the sets and costumes are really great, I wish this movie had a more distinct visual style.

This movie has certainly made me interested in the career of Marion Davies. I am only familiar with the way she is portrayed here and with the character from Citizen Kane that is based on her. Here is a clip from a talkie she was in called Floradora girl.

The Cat's Meow is not an impressive movie, but it is very competent and enjoyable. It is also one of the few bones Kunst apologists can chew on.

Winning

2007-09-04T16:19:00.000-07:00

Price: $1
Year:1969
Run Time: 123 long minutes
Director: James Goldstone
Cast: Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward, Richard Thomas, Richard Wagner

The most important thing I learned from watching the movie Winning, is that in addition to being one of Hollywood's most beloved sex symbols, Paul Newman must also be an all around great guy.

My reason for saying this will come off as very shallow, but I suppose I'm past that point. There is one reason I say this, and he name is Joanne Woodward. When this movie was made, both Newman and Woodward were a bit past their primes. However, while Paul ripened with age and gained the textures and accents of a fine wine, Ms. Woodward started to look like a wilty pumpkin. Seeing them on screen as a pair is pretty jarring, and it is even stranger when you are reminded that they are a couple in real life. I'm no I'm perpetuating misogyny by saying this, but you just don't see men as attractive as Paul Newman paired with women as average and old looking as Woodward in today's movies. Mr. Newman has got to be a pretty loving feminist man to not have pulled a Pitt on his so-so looking wife and found a woman who looks like she was created by Madame Tussaud.
In what plays out like a suburban housewife's fantasy, Woodward is swept off her feet by Newman, who is a race car driver who spots her in the window of the car rental facility she works out. They rush into a whirlwind marriage, and he even adopts her queeny son. The Movie of the Week takes a bitter turn when Newman's career gets in the way, and, of all things, Woodward starts two-timing him with the less attractive Richard Wagner. The couple deicides to seperate after this.

Up until the point when Newman catches Woodward and Wagner in the adulterous tryst, there are numerous moments when many men stare Ms. Woodward down and tell her she's beautiful. While she certainly isn't ugly, the extent to which men comment on her attractiveness is pretty absurd. Ms. Woodward is more worn out and maternal than fresh and coquettish. When she cheats on her stud of a husband, it is laugh out loud funny. It is true that there are many women who aren't particularly beautiful in the classic sense, but who are able wrap lovers around her finger. Ms Woodward's character is just not that sort of woman.

It should also be noted that Woodward and Newman don't have much on screen chemistry here. This sometimes happens when real-life couples star in movies together. However Newman does have chemistry with one other character in the movie, and it is none other than Richard Thomas. John Boy from the Waltons plays Woodward's son, who daintily prances into Newman's heart. The boy seems to fall in love with Newman right off the bat. More scenes of innuendo follow, including a scene where Newman seems to be receiving a phantom blow job, while Thomas is sprawled out on the bed in the background. The ultimate moment of romance in the movie is the scene in the auto body shop, which features Thomas straddling the hood of a car and winking at Newman. If you are a fan of thinly veiled gay subtext, you'll surely get a kick out of this.

Overall, Winning is an absurd drama. It is mostly unengaging, but there are some moments of absurdity to make up for this. Paul Newman, who loved car racing in real life, really wanted to get this movie made. However, despite the scenes with Richard Thomas, and one inexplicable psychedellic sequence towards the finale, Winning does not have much passion in it at all.

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang

2007-08-31T11:17:00.000-07:00

Price: 25 cents
Runtime: 144 Minutes
Year: 1968
Director: Ken Hughes
Screenplay: Ken Hughes + Roald Dahl
Production Designer: Ken Adam
Cast: Dick Van Dyke, Sally Ann Howes, Lionel Jeffries, Benny Hill

With Samantha's gurgling under SEED OF CHUCKY post seemingly relgated to residing in a perpetual state of Chinese Detoxcracy, it seems that I need to prop up this boognish with some more filibuster on quarter vids, but this one requires a bit more focus than your average Jean Claude Van Damn Those Olsen Twins vehicle.

You see the first (and prior to yesterday, only) time I saw this lumbering, clunky curio was as a hyperactive kid in kindergarten, which means that there is a 50/50 chance this was still the 80's (feeling old). It was shown to us by that awful wench Ms. Doolittle when the late Ms. Gemme was out sick. I still possess a deep and bitter hatred of that foul Doolittle cunt even though I cannot for the life of me remember what made her so repulsive, I was only 6 at the time. But I digress, Gemme left a copy of this to keep us occupied through our half day and on second viewing, it is very obvious why.

This is maybe the longest seeming movie I have ever seen.

Now I don't mean this literally, of course. 144 minutes barely kicks the ass of the Harry Potter 3 vid I chomped a couple days prior and I've dug some 6 hour Italian familial epic gunk in my day while awaiting the way too long coming of a fucking Berlin Alexanderplatz DVD to crush all others in it's wake, but there is a difference between real time and felt time. While Chitty Chitty Bang Bang may not break the bank in actual measured stop watch time, I'll be damned if I have ever felt more incapacitated and slogged in by a movie. Once the horrifying final chapter kicked into high gear, there was no escaping this film's brown acid grasp on me. I was slathered in molasses and Dick Van Dyke kept on licking my face and throwing pieces of lunchmeat into my slobbering jaw.

It's a pity this movie is so disastrously paced because there is a great great movie lurking somewhere in here. First, you have the gorgeously tacky and oppressive art design of Ken Adam, who famously designed most Bond movies from Dr. No to Moonraker in addition to Dr. Strangelove and Barry Lyndon. His gift for the aggressively massive set lends this movie a sense of scale that almost validates its bloated and fatuous runtime. Second, you have the hateful and misanthropic pen of Roald Dahl scribbling off a story that hinges on poverty, delusion, and the universal enslavement of all children. Third, you have some ungodly Bond money funding this since it was A) based on a story by Ian Fleming and B) as a result, the only post Dr. No non-Bond movie to be produced by the goofily named Cubby Bruccoli. Fourth, you have the gift and curse of the Sherman brothers writing your songs, hot off their Mary Poppins and Jungle Book triumphs.

Ok, fuck this. I am taking this way too methodically and serious. This movie is cracked out on too many drugs for me to try to break it down like it's some fucking Carl Dreyer movie or some shit. Basically, it's too fucking long, a lot of the songs blow, the actors mostly suck, and it pales in comparison to most anything else I can compare it to. As far as overlong clunky late-period road show spectacles go, this most closely resembles It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, but without that movie's saving grace of having the best comedy cast from 1936, 1948, and 1957 yucking it up in Sunny Long Beach in 1963. As far as acid drenched kid's flicks with a hint of the OE800, there's always the superior BEDKNOBS AND BROOMSTICKS, with its animated nuttiness and the hotness that is Angela Lansbury (rowr). God, it's just so fucking slow. And then near the end, it just gets too fucking weird and creepy, just look at this abomination of the senses,

The dead lifeless stare of Cock Molestermobile Butch in his homeless bleached rastafarian clown make up at the end is almost enough to make me pull an Owen Wilson on this bitch. But once again that's all you need to know. The main chick in this is to Julie Andrews what Joe Estevez is to Martin Sheen, but without the blood and plus an Adam's apple. The kids are obnoxious and in need of a good reaming in the shed with Penis Aerostar Lesbian, I have heard horror stories from the set of Diagnosis Murder, let me tell you! I don't know, it's just too much. I need to like get really wasted or something to stop thinking these horrible things. You see that's what this does, it makes you think bad thoughts, it's in that Return to Oz Dark Crystal territory for sure. Fuck it all. I can't take it anymore. It's just Van Damme movies and the Butterfly Effect 2 from here on out.

Also worth noting is the very odd (specially for a kids movie) ad for the fledging Virgin Atlantic airlines starring suicidal monolinguist Spalding Gray rambling about god knows what for entirely too long. oh, branson, what will you waste your money on next? MURRRRDAHHHH!

Seed of Chucky

2007-08-27T23:13:00.000-07:00

Price: $2
Year:2004
Run Time:87 wonderful minutes
Director: Don Mancini
Cast: Jennifer Tilly, Brad Dourif, Red Man, Billy Boyd, John Waters

How do I even begin?

Seed of Chucky is essentially the movie that gave me the initial cheap vhs bug. It has all of the qualities a cheap video should have, and much much more. I might even go as far as to say that if it weren't for this movie, I might have never started this blog.

Allow me to explain.

For me, the ideal dollar video is the sort of movie that was almost entirely ignored at the time of its release, or in this case, booed of the stage before it even had a chance. This isn't all. The movie has to use its own ridiculousness to the fullest, and commit to this to the extent that the effect is an off-putting sort of genious; the kind where you think it isn't an accident, but are never totally sure. I love this sort of tension because it keeps me on the edge of my seat, and stimulates me in a way that more critically acclaimed movies rarely do.

Seed Of Chucky is all about this particular sensation. It makes sense that it was unfairly scoffed at around the time of its not so long ago theatrical release. I mean, it was the fifth installment of a horror franchise started in 1988 about a killer doll! Although that sentence sounds great to me, the Crash loving critics just can't handle something so openly trashy.

It really is to bad, because I feel like Seed of Chucky and its (in my opinion) lesser predecessor, Bride of Chucky, are perfect examples of how a franchise can really reinvent itself in an interesting way. My colleague Osama talked about this a bit in his post about Friday the Thirteenth part 7: The New Blood. A lot of the time horror franchises go a bit stale when they repeat themselves too much. The first three Child's Play movies have a bit of this problem. While the first one is an effective horror movie, despite its concept, number two and three are a little dull and redundant. Both have their moments, but it is easier to get away with one formulaic horror movie about a demon doll than it is to get away with three.

The introduction of the Tiffany character (played by my favorite Oscar winner) added something really promising to the franchise, and that promise was fulfilled with Seed of Chucky. After all, two dolls are always better than one, and three is ideal, particularly when the third looks like David Bowie. Tiffany took the serious out of the series by giving the film makers an opportunity to create humorous instances of inanimate object sexuality. And then came Glen or Glenda?....

.....and with her/him came something remarkable.

Not only do you have doll murderers, but you have dolls dressing in drag, gutting rap stars, and having 'typical' familial disputes on top of it all. Chucky and Tiffany's misfit child is a high cheek boned ticket to the wonderful land of the ridiculous.

This is what I mean

If the dollies aren't enough for you, then you might enjoy Jennifer Tilly, who supplies this movie with a unique kind of humour. When I claimed her as my favorite oscar nominee earlier, it was not a complete lie.

Ms. Tilly gives a hilariously self-aware performance as both Tiffany and herself. She hilariously plays into the public perception of her as a trashy, oversexed busty femme. The whole movie is a Jennifer Tilly vanity project to an extent, but while watching it you'll realize this is a good thing. She's the cherry on top of an already delicious sundae.

Whether you see Seed of Chucky because you are home sick, love Ms. Tilly, or are really into bowie-esque doll children, you're sure to laugh if you have any sense of humor.

New York Minute

2007-08-27T13:16:00.000-07:00

Price: 25 Cents
Runtime: Not Nearly Long Enough
Year: 2004
Director: Dennie Gordon
Cast: Mary-Kate Olsen, Ashley Olsen, Eugene Levy, Andy Richter, Dr. Drew Pinsky, Jack Osbourne, Darrell Hammond, Riley Smith, Jared Padalecki, and SIMPLE PLAN!!!

In 1964, a dude named Clarence 13X founded an offshoot of the Nation of Islam that he dubbed the Nation of Gods and Earths; today it is more commonly known as the Five Percent Nation. This shorthand comes from the central teaching of this sect that loosely breaks down the global (black) population as such; 85% are the mentally deaf, dumb, and blind masses who are incapable of discovering the truth about themselves and the world they live in by their own volition, 10% are devils who can see through to the truth but use their knowledge to oppress the 85% through religion, politics, the economy, the media, etc., whereas the titular 5% are the enlightened divine beings who possess the holy knowledge of themselves and the world and seek to overthrow the devilish 10% through educating and enlightening the 85%.

That on the very day on which I would forever pop my long festering NEW YORK MINUTE cherry I would be dually barraged by this numerical philosophy, both on the crapper while leafing through the Wu-Tang Manual and while driving to the discount supermarket via the track "The Meaning of the 5%" on a tape of Brand Nubian's excellent, if hateful, IN GOD WE TRUST, seems particularly significant. At around the 30 minute mark of this video, I began hazily adapting the 5 percenter philosophy to the Olsen Twin's post-pubescent (let us never forget IT TAKES TWO) theatrical coming out party. Essentially, I feel that 85% of this world is deaf, dumb, and blind to the greatness of NEW YORK MINUTE. These sad people have never deigned to consider spending 91 of the shortest minutes of their lives luxuriating in the warm, viscous, and creamy soup of pleasure that the Bowlsen twins cook up for us all here. These sad, forgotten people have not and never will see this film without specific guidance and teaching. Then there is the devilish and evil 10% who have seen the all-encompassing glory of Andy Richter pretending to be Chinese yet still speak ill of the film to the 85% by stuffing the IMDB with votes of "1" and garnering it a tellingly low and evil 13% on rottentomatoes, among other acts of conspicuous deceit and disruption that ensure that the 85% will never see or embrace their true calling . . . NEW YORK MINUTE. Then there is the 5%, to which me and you (trust me) belong, who have been witnesses to the resplendent enlightenment of the mellifluous tones of MKO's snare riding and skins pummeling and make it their life goals to open the eyes of the 85% to the majesty and totality of NEW YORK MINUTE as life tool and divining principle.

And then I passed out.

This was no fault of the film, but more a product of the severe mental taxation and focus this film required to unravel that, when coupled with my reckless substance abuse and a 5 AM video viewing commencement, rendered me temporarily and blissfully comatose.

The next day I watched the rest of it, and then the next day I set out on my campaign to enlighten the 85% and mercilessly crush the 10% the best way I know how.

Through this blog.

"Life is nothing but show business in two thousand four"

If you don't like this movie, I fucking hate you.

NEW TORK MINUTE

New Jack City

2007-08-26T14:49:00.000-07:00

Price: 75 cents
Runtime: 101 minutes
Year: 1991
Director: Mario Van Peebles
Cast: Wesley Snipes, Ice-T, Chris Rock, Judd Nelson, Mario Van Peebles, Allen Payne, Bill Nunn, Michael Michele

"I need New Jack cops to take down a New Jack gangster" - Stone

This movie is pretty fucking silly, which may or may not have something to do with Chris Rock outacting (almost) everyone else in this movie, but certainly has something to do with the precise moment in time that it was conceived and executed. In 1991, this movie was not perceived as a joke, it was a fucking threat, motherfuckers were killing one another in the fucking movie theaters, for criswell! Its grotesque Disneyland-on-Crack underworld was seen more as a near future nightmare and less of the histrionic Batman Forever-esque carnival it now resembles most closely.

The problem stems from the very root of the title, "NEW JACK CITY." Teddy Riley musta been giving Van Peebs handies in his trailer or something cause this whole movie is kind of a giant sale-a-bration of the T-monster's domination of R&B circa 1990 under the whole New Jack Swing zeitgeist, which he singularly ruled as exquisitely as Keith Sweat's nasal passages would allow. In addition to the Sweatmonster's epic turn here as "Singer at Wedding", we are granted a New Year's Eve gala performance from GUY (Greasiest Underoo Yearling) and a lil side show of Levert with the slightest tingling sensation as only these guys

can service properly.

Now I am not laying a diss to all the NJS musicians above. I pump some Make It Last Forever in my tape deck on the regular and ginuwinely respect Mr. Riley's contributions to our world culture, "No Diggity" in particular, but for a movie as cold, bleak, and harsh as this one, it seems a little too fluffy and bouncy to serve as the prevailing aesthetic. Rap is alluded to with a Flav cameo, some Fab Five Freddy face-time, and the junky Ice-T track here and there, but in a movie where characters deliver lines like that one up top with straight faces, you need something that hits a little harder to underline your point. It's not like O-Dog was drive-by-ing to Boyz II Men or Bell Div Devoe (although he might sip out of a limited edition commemorative Taco Bell Biv Devoe cup if they run out of the Scorpions ones). I have the same problem with the melodramatic and overblown score to Boyz N Tha Hood, which sounds like it's on some Douglas Sirk shit everytime somebody decides to slow it down for a speech or some shit. So audibly, the whole thing is just left of center the whole time. And the whole thing is unbelievably heavy-handed and the conclusion for our big bad drug lord goes down, well, it is as unfathomable and outlandish as possible, ergo, brilliant. This is the rare movie where all the so-called flaws I may point out do nothing but serve to entertain and enlighten us viewers that much more. It is without flaw.

In addition to Chris Rock's bravura performance as troubled flipflopping crackhead with a heart of sterling silver, Wesley Snipes opens up his maw and consumes the rest of the cast whole in this movie. In addition to sporting the silliest haircut sported by a stone cold badass this side of

Brian "The Boz" Bosworth in the correctly titled "Stone Cold" as of '91 vintage (the best movie year, I think, I will argue this in full at a later date, fuck a '39)
Anyway, Snipes became the all-time champion here, this is his big break out, his definitive statement as a young actor on the up and up, his initial proposal to all the fine Asian women of the world to line up for some snipe hunting. Even though his role is written with all the subtlety and finesse of a cock sculpture rendered out of mayonnaise with a crowbar, Snipes proves that he is too large for your petty "words" anyway. With one smoldering vampiric glare, his whole character is embodied. It's kinda like Klaus Kinski in Aguirre or Nosferatu, the intensity and burning insanity behind the eyes. It's all in the eyes. Except Snipes has never claimed to fuck his daughter (yet).

Essentially, Mario Van Peebles is attempting to do here what his father did twenty years prior with Sweet Sweetback's BBBBBBBBBAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAADDDDDDDDDDDDDAAAAAAAA AAAASSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS Song, carve out a cheap independent movie that offers a host of cheap thrills with a little message and gravy on the side. But whereas SSBS made no pretensions towards being anything more than an albeit excellent, but still pulpy, unrealistic, and OTT movie, Van Peebles the highlander takes himself very very seriously, even if no one else involved seemed to get the memo. The often corny script only really works when it goes into full YES I AM ON A STAGE AND THIS IS WHERE I SHALL ACT mode, such as Wesley Nino Snipes Brown's stunningly concise courtroom diss speech (as memorably, at least to me, sampled at the end of Immortal Technique's "Peruvian Cocaine"). But even though this sounds like I am griping, it's exactly these flaws that lend NEW JACK CITY its unique and compelling quality. It's like a black Scarface cliff notes with a heavy dosage of Graffiti Bridge cocaine ego set pieces and editing (though there is no scene that rivals the Morris Day Strobe Light Seduction Scene from Graffiti Bridge). That this movie extends its paws over the current hip hop landscape in unquestioned. Even though it's been 13 years since Biggie mushed out "it's like the crack did to Pookie in New Jack, except when I cross over there ain't no coming back" at the conclusion of Ready to Die, current G.O.A.T. Lil Wayne (Weezy Fucking Baby for you who need unpleasant sexual pairing imagery in yr nicknames) has his street (of the burbs and dorm rooms) classic official album series THE CARTER 1 and 2 seem to be named with a dueling reference to the housing project that Nino Brown takes over with his nutso crack house scheme as well as LW aka WFB's respective last name and a subliminal thrown at Joe Camel incarnate, JZ. Oh yeah, and how could I get this far without mentioning Pookie's positively surrealistically over sized and conspicuous camera belt. He might as well have been wearing a cowboy hat with a giant lens popping out of it like Homer Simpson did that one time. His final plea into the camera for Ice-T and Judd after he gets found out is unintentional comedy at its most honest and true. Oh yeah, and what about my main man Judd Nelson's turn as a loose cannon cop that no one else will work with. The thing is I could buy this to an extent cause he WAS John Bender if he didn't wear the silliest widdle tinted-glasses-that-Richard-Grieco-refused -to-wear-on-an episode-of-21-Jump-Street-and-Judd-Nelson -picked up-off -the-prop-table ever, which when combined with his Fido Dido haircut equals the least intimidating bad-ass cop not portrayed by Kevin Spacey in the history of the world according to Terri Garr. But none of this can take away from the fact that New Jack City is an undeniable classic crime movie thats pacing never flags, features memorable if slight characters, and lots of drugs, sex, and violence but not without letting everyone know what is really going on (crack is wack). One of the best dollar videos I own, I will cherish it forever and you should too or else Woody Harrelson will steal your weed.

Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer (1964)

2007-08-23T16:55:00.000-07:00

Price: 25 cents (i shit you not!)
Run Time: 53 minutes
Year:1964
Director: Larry Roemer, Kizo Nagashima
Cast: Burl Ives, Billie Mae Richards, Larry D. Man

Christmas has arrived early!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Well, not quite, but it seems that way, because I just watched a 25 cent copy of Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer, that I bought last night.

We all know the story and the song. A misfit reindeer with a nose like Ringo Starr at a Senor Frogs struggles to find acceptance, until one day he is called upon to save the day. In addition to this being a popular song, children's films often go back to a very similar story. The moral is that different is good, even if (or especially if) you have a nose like a christmas light.

I can't help but feel that Tim Burton was heavily influenced by this movie. The scenes in Santa's shop and on Misfit Island (a haven for botched toys) are very reminiscent of The Nightmare Before Christmas. The absurd, yet organic look of the characters make me long for a time when stop motion (claymation or otherwise), was the standard in 3D animation. Although CGI animation has had some major triumphs, it has had more failures. Mr. Burton lost the magic of Nightmare Before Christmas when he focused on CGI in Corpse Bride, his most recent mediocre animated effort.

The stop-motion animation used in this classic movie is both organic and surreal in quality. It was considered cutting edge technology at the time it first aired on television. It was sponsored by General Electric, and TV guide did an entire spread on stop-motion animation. Rudolph is certainly one of the most famous stop-motion pieces, and was clearly a big television event.

If you are around my age (22) or older, you probably have seen this at least once, since they used to show it every year on TV, like how they show Its a Wonderful Life. These days Rudolph has been MIA, and not in the hipster-friendly rapper way. I guess today's kids are so used to CGI animation and cell animation that something like Rudolph might seem dated. Every once in awhile we get a Wallace and Gromit, or Chicken Run, but for the most part stop-motion has gone out of vogue when it comes to children's animated features. In fact, you're more likely to see stop-motion animation under the umbrella of experimental film and video. If you yourself are interested in learning stop-motion techniques, Rudolph wold probably be a good piece to look at. With the advancements in animation that have come since its creation, I am more likely to recommend Rudolph to fans of more off beat films than I am to recommend it to children. The jilty movement of the characters might be a little frightening to tots who are used to increasingly graceful characters.

Speaking of the characters, Rudolph has some great ones. My personal favorites are the Abominable snowman, and King Moonracer, who is the flying Lion that rules Misfit Island. Also, Coach Comet, Yukon Cornelius, and Hermey the Elf have some strong moments.

If there is a movement to bring back this classic to regular holiday programming, then i intend to join it. Maybe they could show it as a midnite movie? I know it has many fans....

Including Beyonce and Co.!

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Friday the 13th, Part VII: The New Blood

2007-08-23T14:21:00.000-07:00

Price: 75 cents
Year: 1988
Runtime: 90 mins
Director: John Carl Buechler
Cast: Kane Hodder as Jason, Lar-Park Lincoln as Carrie Lite, Bernie from Weekend at Bernie's as a non-dead (initially, at least)

Before Little Steve Franc(h)is(e) ruined the word with his selfish ballhandling, the Friday the 13th horror FRANCHISE shattered the concept of diminishing returns with a to-date 11 film streak of wide north american theatrical releases in the post video age. Whereas the foreigners have no compunction about shitting out endless series entries (England's Carry On is at plus 30, don't even get me started on A-Z-AH), the douchey american population wants to front like we don't shake that way. whatever.

Anyway, this entry came at a critical juncture in the series. After the semi-classic debut, the pretty alright follow-up, the disastrous but requisite 3-D entry, the remarkable and odd 4th chapter (ironically dubbed the THE FINAL CHAPTER and featuring Corey Feldman "killing" Jason and Crispin Glover's otherworldly dance), a universally reviled 5th entry where Jason naps pretty much the whole time while some yokel pretends to be Jason, and a 6th chapter that according to the imdb lacks boob shots thus rendering it impotent and valueless to the young sleepover pursuers of the 80s, the series needed some warm piss on its sleeping lips to bring a little originality to it (that which herr glover could not produce again, see below).

Friday the 13th Part VII was supposed to be the first attempt at a Freddy vs. Jason scenario, but it got stranded in development hell for another 15 years of wheel spinning, and what we got instead was essentially Carrie (not Carrie) vs. Jason, which works a lot better than it should. After opening with the by-now requisite opening narrated montage of previous mayhem, we see some girl kill her dad with her mind by making him drown in CRYSTAL LAKE after he hits her mommy. Then she's all old all of a sudden and Bernie from Weekend at Bernie's is her shrink. Because he is dastardly and evil, he makes her go back to Crystal Lake because he thinks it will be therapeutic for her, but he just wants to make Jason come back or something, I don't know this part didn't make any sense. Either way, once there, she freaks the fuck out and runs across a bunch of kids at some cabin who all keep fucking and smoking weed and drinking, so you know they will all die terrible deaths, which they do. So then the Carrie girl fucks her mind up and straight murks the dude a bunch of times, but he keeps refusing to die even after she blows his mask off, then she thinks real hard and something amazing happens, something so amazing that I am still in awe and think that it validates all the tired bullshit that precedes it.

So basically, 80% of this movie could be swapped with any other entry in the series and no one would notice. The kids carousing and getting killed is nothing special. Most of the kills are pretty blah, although the irritating party noisemaker through the eye was a nice touch. Apparently, the MPAA demanded like a bazillion cuts to the various kills, which sucks and is obvious. But once everyone else dies, it gets interesting. First of all, you get to see the dude without his mask on for the first time in a minute and he looks really silly. Like

fuck, no, like . . .
Yeah, there it is. I mean, looking like Eddie (UP THE IRONS!!) is never a bad thing because it means you're that close to being Keith Richards, which pretty much means you get a guaranteed role in Joe's Apartment 2. Anyway, there was also an uber-nerd character who was the only likable one in the whole gang, but doesn't even get laid before Jason snuffs him. Lame. The final battle between Carrie and Jason is pretty badass because, well, Jason hardly ever gets to actually fight motherfuckers. It's always just sneak, murk, sneak, murk. So it's very nice that we get a nice 15 minute warfare sequence between Carrie and Jason; it's just too bad that all the HACK-neyed kills before than have to be so die-r and lame (although not as bad as they get in "Friday the 13th VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan, Wait, I Mean, Vancouver, Vancouver Can Pass for New York, Right? Oh Well, Fuck It, Let's Try Anyway, We'll Just Stick a Buncha Kidz on an Ocean Liner for the First 80 Minutes Then Have the Last Ten Be in A Nondescript Alley"). Also, this is the first time Kane Hodder plays Jason, nerds think he is the best, so it's important that you know that. Finally, the lead in it, the ridiculously named Lar-Park Lincoln looks like the primordial genetic soup of Rebecca DeMornay, Amy Smart, and Jenna Jameson. So there's that.

It's hard to write about Jason and the Friday the 13th series because, as much as I love it (and I do, really, I do), it was always the runt of the 80's-early 90's horror franchise litter in terms of character, content, and continuity. Unlike the Halloween, Nightmare on Elm Street, and Hellraiser filmic progressions, Friday the 13th lacked that super classic first film. Hell, Jason isn't even the fucking killer in the first movie (as Skeet (skeet skeet skeet) Ulrich would like to remind you) and he doesn't don a ski mask until the 3rd. Essentially, the first Friday the 13th movie is a competent, generic slasher-loose-in-the-woods-near-a-camp pic; notable only for the deluge that followed it, an early performance from woodsman / bluesman Kevin Bacon, and the always appreciated effects work of Tom Savini. From there, it dithered into a brutal, repetitive series lacking in vision and ambition. Jason is slow, lumbering, damn near mute, and pretty rote as a killer (stabstabstab yawnyawnyawn). Most of the time, he's simply a homicidal version of Kraftwerk's Man-Machine, a model who is killing fine. The better installments of the franchise place him out of context and give him inventive kills, such as the woefully underrated JASON X, which places him in space where he kills a record 28 beautiful young people in interesting and fantastic waze (the face freeze ice smash is a personal favorite). So while Friday the 13th may lack the humor and surreality of Freddy Krueger, the seething blistering evil of Hellraiser, the goofed profanity of Chucky, or the Warwick Davis of Leprechaun, it's still not without its charms; in fact, the sheer predictability of the franchise was probably its biggest key to success. Since every kill was telegraphed five minutes in advance, nobody had to actually get scared, but horny kids in the 80's could still sneak in and use em as a good excuse to snuggle up with their desired and "terrified" ugly bumpers. So there's that, as well.

Huh, according to the IMDB, the main character's name in this is Tina Shepard and not Carrie after all, I guess that's how you avoid a lawsuit (now where's a copy of The Rage: Carrie 2 when I need one?).

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GET OVER IT!

2007-08-21T13:56:00.000-07:00

Price: $2.99 (?) (guessing Sam bought this one, not me)
Year: 2001
Runtime: 86 minutes
Director: Tommy O'Haver
Cast: Kirsten Dunst, Ben Foster, Melissa Sagemiller, Shane West, Colin Hanks, Zoe Saldana, Mila Kunis, Swoosie Kurtz, Ed Begley Jr., Martin Short, Carmen Electra, SISQO, COOLIO, and VITAMIN C (!)

This one makes me feel all fuzzy and warm inside. A missive from a youth culture renaissance I largely slept on while in its demo because, well, I was a twerp back then. Yeah, I mean, of course I watched Dawson's Creek for the first two or three seasons with a side order of Buffy and Felicity, quietly mourned the duelling losses of Freaks and Geeks and Undeclared, saw all three American Pie movies in theatres (let's pretend presents band camp nvr hpnd), nibbled on a couple of the big ones on video like She's All That and Can't Hardly Wait, and scoped the random generic factory model a la Whatever It Takes. Well, actually, now that I type it all out, it sounds like I wasn't sleeping on this teentertainment age d'or at all, but this belies the massive glut of interchangeable product heaved on me and my fellow teenagurz round ye olde Y2K. There was about 3 years there ('98-'01), where a movie like GET OVER IT! was shit out every two weeks to mild box office returns and a virtual guarantee of continual slumber party rental profits well into the next twenty years. Or at least that was the idea for all these John Hughes lite with farts and r & b stunt casting and nepotism stunt casting (hello Colin Hanks!) and based kinda on something classic (Shakespeare? Brothers Grimm?) but adapted loosely enough that nobody will feel like they are learning anything cause like school sucks and the whole point of these shits is to transport you to some magic HS fairy land where everything can be resolved via one well-deployed dance number and tightly constructed moment of honesty.

GET OVER IT! is an archetypal example of the most mathematical and generic offering of this low bugd profit era. It's like a latter period Roger Moore Bond film in how cleanly and efficently it adheres to formula in the most pleasing and mind numbing way.

Essentially,

Aging, semi-busted child star from blockbusters past (the risible Kirsten Dunst before Spider Man ensured we'd be looking at her creepy teeth and forehead forever and ever amen) + Random Hot Chick never heard from again (Melissa Sagemiller) + "Lovable," out-of-his-league Doofus the studio is trying to push as the next Tom Hanks / Proto-Shia (Ben Foster) +
R & B stunt casted non-actor in superfluous standing by protagonist's side on left side of frame tour de force (SISQO) + Hunky Douchebag (Shane West, the DeNiro of the Hunky Douchebag, channeling Chad Michael Murray for a world who wasn't quite ready for the real thing yet) + Nepotism pu pu platter (Colin Hanks) + Hot Black Girl to prove the filmmakers aren't racist (Zoe Saldana) + That 70's Show cast member (Mia Kunis) + Old Talented People slumming for the kids (Kurtz, Begley and Short) + More cameoriffic stunt casting (COOLIO, CARMEN ELECTRA, VITAMIN C) + Extremely Loose adaptation of some old Classic Shit (Midsummer's Night Dream by Billy Shakespeare, who wrote a buncha sonnets) = $$$$$$ in 1999

The problem was that this came out in 2001, when the continuous fatigue of three years of WB-pandering teen comedies had dried the well to the point that GET OVER IT! didn't even clear 12 mill domestic b.o. which is all well and good because my obliviousness to it during its initial release enabled me to evaluate it with fresh eyes and an empty colon and what I get is a film that is simultaneously completely and utterly derivative of all that preceded it, but also reaches a mild level of glib surreality that lends it a off-handed charm that is entirely its own. Basic Plot is Main Dude (the foster) gets dumped by super out of his league gf (sagemiller) for mega douche (shane west) who inexplicably is some boy band drop out with an inconsistent british accent. As the Fost mourns, he slowly falls for douchey best friend (colon hanks)'s sister (the kunst) who is more right for him. That this movie was penned by the same dude who wrote She's All That excuses some of its lack of freshness (only fogerty can rip himself off) and explains all the electronia posters on everyone's walls (Kunst has a Chemical Brothers poster, Foster has a Fatboy Slim, She's All That had that epic Rockafeller Skank dance number).

A cursory wasted viewing convinces me that this whole film is supposed to be a dream. It never has its School Daze moment of "I hold my audience in so much contempt"- Spike Lee, 1988, but it might as well. How else can one explain a world in which this Ben Foster fellow who resembles mr. potato head sculpture rendered with play doh and feces is given a lead role requiring him to be lusted after by women while dream fairies circle his head, Coolio bugs his eyes out on his parents cable access sex show, Martin Short plays a heterosexual, but pervy drama teacher, and Vitamin C bookends the film with musical dance numbers occurring diagetically with the integration of SISQO breaking down the fourth wall. Yes, it's like a fever dream of budget minded year 2000 teen popculture ephemera, but I choose to believe it was intended this way; To be a wet dream for the audience of what high school should be like, but isn't, essentially Hughes plus 15 years and not much else. It's hard to pick apart this movie cause it's like making a birthday cake out of easter bunny peeps in the middle of a coke party at Ric Flair's mansion while a hurricane (streets starring warren from empire rekkids) spins the house around in the air (up there starring kevin baking). The center will not hold. My best bet is to fractalize and hope for the best.
Ergo, the scenes of the ludicrously reimagined pop musical version of Midsummer's Night Dream hit closest to home for two reasons, (1) they are the most legitimately funny scenes in the movie, albeit the comedic equivalent of fish barrel bazooka, and (2) my own high school staged a massively similar production by an equally perplexing hetero drama teacher by the name of MOTOWN MACBETH, I shit you not, (example: MACBETH sung to the tune of my girl, fuk u clumsky). The movie version was not as funny as my own personal experience, but what could be, at least this part rang true. The actors in this movie kinda blow generally as I'm sure you could deduce from my darby crash OD of snark above (coming soon Shane West as Darby Crash in What We Do is Secret, featuring Bijou Phillips as Lorna Doom, crossing fingers it will be the unintentionally camp hipster disastro that Factory Girl should have been). The old people steal the show, the movie only ever comes to true life when the old prose push the kids around. When not around, the movie limps along with good will, quick pacing, and the kind of mind numbingly watchable semi-competence that Saved By the Bell rendered transcendental, but here hews closer to the stunning mediocrity of bellwether middling of thee road cable fare like TOMCATS and latter day WB throwback JOHN TUCKER MUST DIE (We will call it henceforth the TOMCATS effect, a film I hated but watched from top to bottom one fatefully unstoned sunday).

Either way, you slice it, formulaic claptrap, surreal avant prank, or somewhere in be-TWEEN! you are right. This movie is simply a reflective surface that enables us to peek into nothing less than the deepest, darkest recesses of our own vividly realized souls. Like the cover of Smell the Glove, the novels of Clive Cussler or Sue Grafton, or the bronzed skin of Zac Efron, GET OVER IT! offers each and every consumer their own personal entertainment horoscope for success. What is your life success plan? Where will you be in two years? How will you get there? What are you doing about it now? SHUT THE FUCK UP!! SHUT THE FUCK UP!!! Get out of my head, Tommy O'Haver!! You may think you know me, but you don't!! I don't even know me!! I am going to go gnaw my hand off.

Spacehog, check out this youtube video of highlights for children from this moovie,

P.S. everytime Sisqo was on screen in this movie, i was reminded of d-12's visionary proclivity to replace the hateful word "fag" in their songs with the hilarious replacement "SISQO,"
at least as far as their first album was concerned (did anybody ever listen to the second one, "my band" aside?). So I hit OHHLA to find the "fruits" of their labor and realized i had just dreamt this and was thinking of a SPIN article where they did that because their lyrics only have a couple SISQO references, one is directly challenging him (way to go Eminem, stick it to the tough targets), and a couple of synonym references to its use in this way. Neither of which are particularly amusing. The lesson is D-12 can only be more amusing in memory than in practice. Never try to revisit, you will only be disappointed and sad in the end. RIP Proof.

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Road to Nashville

2007-08-20T16:29:00.000-07:00

Price: $1.99
Year: 1967
Run Time: 110 minutes (although the box says 88)
Director: Will Zens
Cast: Marty Robbins, Doodles Weaver, Connie Smith, Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings

By this point in time, concert documentaries are pretty standard and accepted. For the most part, they only appeal to fans of the artists in question, but every once in awhile, a concert movie will play in theaters nation wide (anyone remember Dave Chappelle's Block Party?). Road to Nashville was clearly made before this became a trend. Following a very loose narrative, it tells the story of goofy Colonel Feitelbaum (Doodles Weaver), who is an employee of a Hollywood movie studio. His boss tells him to go to Nashville to make a movie about country stars, particularly Marty Robbins. Feitelbaum (who is a cross between Mr. Bean and George W. Bush) gets right on task and heads down to Nashville. This is where the fun and music begins. The film features 38 songs, some by artists who were most likely flash in the pan, and others by artists who are legends, such as Waylon Jennings, Johnny Cash, The Carter Family, and Connie Smith. There are a few surprises along the way, and a few hijinks from Doodles, but mostly this is a straight up concert video. Many of the performances are very samey, featuring a lot of medium close ups of the main singer, with the back-up singers coming into frame when they do their part. While this isn't to say that the performances aren't good, in my opinion the fashion takes center stage in this movie. It really shows you how country music has changed. While today's country stars tend to be more understated, and don't differ much in appearance from bubble gum pop stars, here it is all about loud, shiny, big, and patterned. In a genre that these days is associated with old-fashioned masculinity, it is startling to see men in matching lightning bolt and star patterned suits, with neatly manicured hair. The women (with the exception of Norma Jean) have bouffants and beehives that rest well above the tops of their heads. Some of these styles are ill advised, but for the most part they leave me wondering if there's any possibility of pulling them off today.

There are some really wonderful music moments. A group I'd never heard of before watching the film, called the Stoneman family, play a set early in the show that is really ahead of its time. Donna Stoneman, and her magical ukelele own this sequence. The speed and gusto with which she plays in this instrumental number is pretty otherworldly, and very reminiscent of a lot of today's folk music. A later performance by the same group is more of a crossbreeding between country and the pop music of that time. The stage presence of the group is very weird here. Donna Stoneman looks as happy as she can be, while the other female band member (playing banjo) looks like she wants to kill someone. The father figure in the middle is pretty cheerful, but has a sort of nervous energy to him. It seems like at any minute the whole thing is going to explode.

The Johnny Cash/Carter Family combination is certainly a powerhouse. I'm slightly biased, because I bought the movie to see Johnny Cash in the first place, but its still pretty notable. The Carter family rendition of "Walk the Line" is pretty well, done, and has more of an air of romanticism than the original one. The highlight of the sequence is when Mr. Cash performs a song (which I don't know the name of) about a band that fails because of the different political affiliations of its members. The song seems rather tongue in cheek because of Mr. Cash's generally radical persona.

It seems like Rhino (the distribution company) is really trying to sell this to Johnny Cash fans. The cover of the box features a large drawing of a 1980s feather haired Johnny Cash, and then smaller drawings of Marty Robbins and Connie Smith, that both look strikingly 80s.

In addition to Mr. Cash, there are many other notable performances, such as that of Lefty Frizzell and of Connie Smith. Also, seeing Waylon Jennings looking all tailored and smooth faced is pretty remarkable.

The loose narrative isn't necessary, but it still entertains. The fact that they felt the need to attach a narrative to this is pretty hilarious, although Doodles Weaver is an entertaining and refreshing screen presence. In fact, it is good to have him around to add some comic relief to a medly of country songs, many of which are about heart break.

I recommend this movie to lovers of music, and lovers of 1960s fashion and style. If you are a fan of movies like Robert Altman's Nashville, this will give you more insight into the insular world portrayed in that film.

There is not too much in terms of images or information about this movie available online. However, here is some vintage Johnny Cash to satisfy your hunger.

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Spice World

2007-08-16T17:23:00.000-07:00

Price: $1
Year:1998
Run Time: 93 minutes
Director: Bob Spiers
Cast: THE SPICE GIRLS, Alan Cumming, Meatloaf, Richard E. Grant, Roger Moore, Elton John, Elvis Costello, Bob Geldof, Bob Hoskins

Right off the bat I want to say that I was not a fan of the Spice Girls at the height of their success. I probably rocked out to them when nobody was looking on more than one occasion, but I never bought any of their records, or displayed any public admiration. I was too hung up on a certain grunge band from Seattle to let myself do so. Still, having been a twelve year old girl at the time that "Wannabe" shot to the top of the charts makes me feel an obligatory nostalgia for those 5 english lasses. Also, a little bit of age and perspective has made me into a lover of bubble gum pop.

Instead of trying to find Spice Girls reunion tour tickets on eBay, I decided to give this movie a second look. When I first saw it, my feelings about it mirrored the way I felt about its stars. Well, it seems like a lot of things have changed since 1998. No, the Spice Girls aren't great actresses, but the aggressive frenetic nature of the film makes up for it. Although most compare it to A Hard Day's Night, it has most in common with Head, the Monkeys movie that Jack Nicholson directed. Like that movie, it is a intoxicating cocktail of bubble gum and post-modernism. Its heroines, who are spokeswomen for the feminism-lite known as Girl Power, each cling to hilariously 2 dimensional female personalities. Just in case you don't know, we have the sporty tomboy, the cutesy babyish one, the posh fashionista, the freaky (or scary), ethnic one, and... um... Ginger Spice! A lot of the movie focuses on these identities, and how absurd they are. In one rather sophisticated sequence, the girls do a photo shoot in which they "trade" these identities, each dressing as a different Spice. They also put on other popular identities, both male and female, such as Diana Ross, Twiggy, and both Danny and Sandy from Grease.

Whether it means to be or not, this is a really interesting scene. If anyone ever wanted to teach Judith Butler to tweens, this sequence might be a good one to show them. In the most simple way, The Spice Girls are saying that their identities are nothing but spectacle.

About 70% of British celebrities make a cameo in this film. The most notable are Bob Hoskins (who has no lines and comes out of a phone booth for one scene), and Roger Moore, who plays the record executive/ wealthy benefactor of the girls. He is constantly petting cute animals, the pinnacle of this being a piglet that he bottle feeds. He keeps a straight face as he does this, and hardly ever looks at the animal.

The movie takes a lot of ridiculous twists and turns, including a run in with some aliens who want Spice Girls tickets, a nervous and sweaty tabloid publisher who uses a creepy bald paparazzo to get dirt on the girls, a haunted mansion, a child birth scene, and the famous bomb on the bus. I'd dare you not to have a good time while watching all of this unfold.

There is so much more I could say about this movie. It is really very ahead of its time. If you dismissed it like I did back in '98, I'd endorse giving it another look, even if all you get from it is a reminder that Victoria Beckham once looked like a normal person. From my point of view, Spice World is an avant-garde masterpiece in disguise.

Judge Dredd

2007-08-16T10:08:00.000-07:00

Price: $1 (or 75 cents)
Year: 1995
Director: Danny Cannon
Screenplay: William Wisher and Stephen E. de Souza
Cast: Sly Stallone, Armand Assante, Diane Lane, Jurgen Prochnow, Max Von Sydow, Balthazar Getty, Ian Dury, and ROB SCHNEIDER AS FERGIE

Oh, Dredd, why are you so hated? What did you ever do to incite such scorn? Oh yes, this is a gimme, I even put it in all caps right there to make it easy to remember. ROB SCHNEIDER AS FERGIE. If ever a potentially great film was torpedoed by "comedic relief," this is it, but there is still copious qual oozing out around the schneid's hyuck-ster-y widow's peak to make this an easy dollar pick-up that titillates, arouses, and climaxificateasizes all my action trash desiahs with the cold clean efficiency of a sex robot dialed past sheen to sizemore, and without the urge to beat you, unless it is beating you with awesomeness and not cody from step by step-esque violencia. ahem. but i digress.
JUDGE DREDD, perhaps more than any other movie ever made this side of Triumph of the Will, needs to be contextualized in order for its massive miscalculations to be fully appreciated. Let us establish the scene. It's 1995. The love hangover from the massive summer of '94 lingers considerably over all in its wake. Truth be told, I barely fucking remember '95. It sits idle and unremarkable between the two biggest years of the 90's for me. But, oh boy, I remember when the dredd came out. Two things stand out to me about the hype building up to its release. First, it was Stallone's first $20 million paycheck, and, correct me if I'm wrong, was the first time any actor was paid that magic amount upfront for a starring role (profit points for Nicholson on Batman and Cruise on Mission Impossible netted them both far more vs. less upfront). It should also be noted that Stallone has maintained that same salary for every subsequent, non-auteur starring role of his, including the theatrically unreleased recent dudz AVENGING ANGELO and DETOX. Secondly, I remember that Mad Magazine ran a parody of this timed directly to the release date of this movie as opposed to the usual 3 to 4 month delay that accompanied most of their movie parodies, meaning that they were so sure that Judge Dredd would be a massive hit worth blessing with a 'rody that they sought out advanced screenings and shit to make it so. Ergo, it was supposed to be a movie that could not miss. Anyway, I never saw this when it came out and always wanted to know what kind of fiasco could direct my main man Sly's career on such a downstroke.

This movie has some ballsy pedigree. First, it has Stallone in his overblown, overbudget, Planet Hollywood shucking prime. Second, it cost a fuckload and looks it. Third, it has a screenplay written by two of the definitive writers of golden age action films: Wiliam Wisher, who wrote the first two Terminator films, and Stephen E. de Souza, who had a finger in the pie of almost every massive action franchise of the era (career highlights: 48 Hrs., Commando, The Running Man, Die Hard 1 and 2, Hudson Hawk) . Fourth, it has Diane Lane looking all fine and shit. Fifth, it was based on some comic book that was really popular in England, but a cult thing in the US so they could fuck around with it a lot and not cause a national nerd uprising (in the US that is, the imdb still hosts legions of butthurt britons whining about sly taking off his helmet). Sixth, it had that badass teaser poster up above. Seventh, it has Armand Assante at his coked up, bug-eyed zenith as a bad guy. Eighth, it had a primo summer slot where it's only competition opening weekend were the power rangers movie and some fruity borefest about astronauts starring the dude from joe versus the volcano and captain footloose. Ninth, it had the exquisite comedic timing and light hearted antics of a burgeoning supple flower of incestuous guilt and romance, the man whose erotic howls enchant survivor cast members globally and locally, the schneid's.
Needless to say, it was those last two sure things that fucked this shit up like it was ving rhame's gardener.

Let's focus on the positive. The special effects are awesome, looking dated in the best possible way. The sets are expansive and impressive, recalling demolition man clusterfucked with some blade runner and maybe a little robocop on the side. The action scenes are well developed and shot. The script is filled with cracking dialouge, gaudy one-liners, whatever. It's competent, tacky, bulky, awkward, but ultimately distracting enough, mercifully short and better than most stallone vehicles as a stallone vehicle, but the problem that ruins the movie or at least, knocks it down from acceptably passive action classic to maddeningly frustractingly inconsistent object of ire is that little cuntfuck ROB Schneider. Now, this little turd of a placenta shouldn't have been allowed to live after spreading his flaccid testicles all over the overwise perfectly amazing SURF NINJAS, yet inexplicably Sly handpicked this undersized grunion to be his sidekick in this big movie and nothing about it works. The way they meet-cute and become BFF is totaaly forced and insipid. His "funny"killing of the main bad guy at the end by whacking the evil robot on the back, thus causing his to short out and sputter like the pacemaker of a cast member of *batteries not included ruins all tension and build that the excessively competent crew rendered so lovingly.

He is quite simply a cunt. A fact that his subsequent career has born out in fantastically rendered detail from his pre-natal emergence as that cunt who says dumb shit about copiers on SNL to his recent Leno-ified mocktacular of my main bitch LiLo on Cuntchin's circus of the cuntified. God i just wanna choke his little measly throat with a laminated burger king crown while beating his nads with a frozen haddock. After releasing his throat from the suffocating grasp of diddy's favorite cardstock headwear, I would proceed to pour tapatio on his eyes while singing LA Puerta Negra by Los Tigres del Norte in a falsetto and using the frozen haddock as a flotation device while i drag his limp lifeless body out into the middle of poolake. once in the poolake, i would urinate myself to prevent hypothermia and recount the plots of various episodes of small wonder to keep my mind limber and alert while i proceed to dive deeper and deeper into poolake looking for the poomonster to offer up the schneid's corpse as an offering of friendship. after the poomonster eats the schneid, we would smell one another and play alien vs predator on atari jaguar until the end of time.

Either way though, Judge Dredd is a good dollar buy, worth revisiting, though i would not recommend watching it sober or alone or without a bag of smelt to pelt the schneider with. Also, the only person more hateable than Rob Schneider is Fergie from the black eyed peas, and in this movie he plays a guy named fergie thus making the hate so strong, the hate so strong.

Gigi

2007-08-15T08:32:00.000-07:00

Price:$1
Year:1958
Run Time:1 hour and 55 minutes
Director:Vincente Minnelli
Cast: Leslie Caron, Maurice Chevalier, Louis Jourdan, Eva Gabor, Isabel Jeans

A young woman, who is slightly rough around the edges, is tailored and trained in the mannerisms of high society. In the end she successfully completes the transformation and becomes a beautiful and refined woman, winning the heart of her mentor. All of this is told through various musical numbers.

Sound familiar?

If you guessed My Fair Lady, you are wrong, but very close.

If your answer was Gigi...

DING DING DING!

You are right. Gigi was Lerner and Loewe's follow up to My Fair Lady. Filmed on location in Paris (besides a few scenes filmed in an MGM Hollywood studio), it was an adaptation of Collette's novel of the same title. The story follows a young woman, and a slightly older man. She is Gigi, and he is Gaston. Gigi (portrayed by the adorable and beautiful Leslie Caron) is a tomboyish Parisian girl being trained as a courtesan by her aunt (who was once a famous courtesan herself), and her grandmother. Gaston ( the handsome Louis Jourdan) is a wealthy and handsome playboy who serves as a friend and role model to Gigi. When we first meet him, he is being disgraced by his current mistress, who is openly cheating on him with a soldier. He deems that the only logical response is to confront her in public place about this and humiliate her, making their situation the scandal and focal point of Parisian society. To re-establish his superiority, he takes a different woman with him to the famous Maxim's every night, in an effort to incite gossip in a way that could only be matched by today's young hollywood. Meanwhile, Gigi is being trained to identify exemplary jewelry and to pick out cigars for her male patrons. One day Gaston looks up to discover that the little girl he once knew is now a beautifully refined woman. At last he is able to embrace the feelings he has always had for her. After a brief back and forth, they get married.

Fans of classic musicals will most likely enjoy Gigi. The score is really wonderful, and there are some great performances. Maurice Chevalier steals the show, of course. He performs show stopping numbers such as "Thank Heaven for Little Girls" and "I'm glad I'm not Young anymore." However, the movie is .more light than would be expected for the story of a girl who is being prepped by her family to participate in the sex industry. The movie does not ever confront this issue, perhaps because the creators thought it necessary to keep this musical as light and fun as possible. Still, it seems as though the movie suffers from trying too hard to integrate the values of the characters into the values of the American middle class. When Gaston asks Gigi to become his mistress, she is offended that he would want her to lead such an indecent life. This is odd, because it implies that she doesn't know what her grandmother and aunt intend for her, which is pretty troubling. In the end they get married, making her a decent woman, but the role of prostitution in the film is not addressed very well at all. A scene of confrontation between Gigi and her relatives would have certainly been a tonal shift, but it might have made the film a bit more meaty, and sent a clearer message to audiences. I have not read the original novel, but having read other works by Colette, I find it hard to believe that one of her heroine could be so unquestioning.

Still, there is some humorous social satire here. The necessity of Gaston to salvage his image by participating in numerous meaningless trysts is pretty comical, and from a 2007 lens, is very reminiscent of today's celebrity gossip culture. Almost all of the characters (besides pre-transformation Gigi) are obsessed with appearances to a ridiculous extent.It also seems like there is a mild tone of criticism of marriage, although this is subverted by the matrimony between Gigi and Gaston.

Gigi won a whopping 9 academy awards in 1958. Although I wouldn't say this is my favorite film, knowing that makes me wish I could live in a time when Best Picture winners weren't always such self important movies. Gigi is an interesting story, with wonderful mise en scene and music, and is perhaps superior to most of the recent best picture winners (save The Departed). This film delights and entices, and will have you singing along by its last chapter.

Tango & Cash

2007-08-13T15:00:00.001-07:00

Price: $1 (or 75 cents if you average out the 4 for 3 bargain discount at amoeba berkeley)
Year: 1989
Director: Andrei Konchalovsky (billed), Albert Magnoli (actual)
Producers: Peter Guber & Jon Peters
Cast: Sly Stallone, Kurt Russell, Jack Palance, Brion James, Teri Hatcher, James Hong, Michael J. Pollard, Michael Jeter, Clint Howard, and Robert Z'Dar's Jaw

"RAMBO?? Rambo's a pussy!"

Before getting too deep and sweaty inside Tango and/or Cash's nether regions, it bears noting that "Tango & Cash" features one of the great opening sequences in all of 1980's action cinema (see above, although this version appears to have been a re-dubbing project for a film class so all the sound is weird and it cuts out early). If you choose to watch it skip the rest of this paragraph, if you are not in the position to fuck with u toob at the present allow me to regurgitate as follows: On a desert road, an oil tanker is being pursued by a helicopter and a police convertible driven by our main dude, Sylvester Stallone, who is trying his hardest to come off sophisticated (Armani suit, Glasses, Proper Diction) in a time of action. The helicopter foolishly implores him to back off because this is their bust and he's about to be way out of his jurisdiction. Sly politely zooms ahead of the careening tanker while maintaining the composure of a cucumber at absolute zero. After gaining a half mile or so on the lumbering silver wildebeest of crime, he skids to a stop with his car vertically across both lanes of the desert highway, steps out of his car, carefully and patiently removes his six shooter (not his penis you "Party at Kitty and Stud's" fans), removes the empty shells, reloads a new clip, and as the tanker reveals itself over the horizon, he aims and unloads on the driver who it should be noted has a cartoonishly oversized jaw. As the tanker approaches, he stops unloading on the windshield and knocks out the front tires causing the gasser to screech to a stop 3 fucking feet in front of him while maintaining enough inertia to propel the two bad dudes driving it clear through the windshield where they land at his feet where he calmly tosses the handcuffs at them to "do the honors" themselves. After a typically delayed arrival (accompanied by Sly watch check and eyeroll) by the other lesser cops who ream him for being out of his jurisdiction and for stopping a tanker on which they can find no contraband, Sly takes aim with the last shot of his pistol at the oil tank itself. Rather than the customary explosion that accompanies such action, a steady stream of cocaine spills out, which Sly tastes and nods.

Hello, Ray Tango.

In the next scene, some asian dude tries to kill Kurt Russell and fails spectacularly, thus introducing us the our other protagonist, Gabe Cash.

"Tango & Cash" is the Judy Winslow of both Sly and Kurt's action resumes. Underutilized, under-appreciated, and unloved. If it were to walk up to the attic and never came back down again, you probably wouldn't even notice and if it were to star in "More Black Dirty Debutantes 30," you wouldn't even bother masturbating to it. It barely turned a profit on its large (for 1989, 55 mill) budget, was greeted with hostility by critics, and is now perpetually relegated to wal-mart bargain bins and USA late night action movie spots.

Yet . . . "Tango & Cash" is a fucking action masterpiece. Maybe 1989 audiences were just too spoiled by the awe-inspiring glut of the golden age of the action movie (roughly "First Blood" to "True Lies") to appreciate T & C's humble zingers, scenery chewing, explosions, electrocutions, slinky stranglings, and ground breaking sodomy humor. Maybe they were unsettled by Sly's awkward attempt to class himself up while still wallowing in the excess of the genre he helped redefine. Maybe it was the total lack of chemistry between the two leads who seem to be acting in their own individual movies the whole time, rarely making eye contact with one another even while on-screen at the same time, and delivering their back and forth lines with the choppy lifeless rat-a-tat of two stars who memorized them in their respective trailers while blowing rails five minutes before ACTION! Maybe they just expected something they hadn't seen before, which this movie unapologetically does not offer because above all, Tango & Cash is a masterpiece of formula. Every single aspect of this film has been done ad nauseum before and after it's release. So while Tango & Cash may not have the cultural cachet of Riggs & Murtaugh, Axel Foley & Judge Reinhold, or even Hallenback & Dix, it's not like they don't deserve a seat at the counter. Their unfailing whiteness could have been a problem. 1989 was right plum in the heart of the halcyon days of the interracial action duo (as all the duos above exemplify). Watching it for the first time in 2007, this point is impossible to avoid noticing, yet entirely perfunctory.

Tango and Cash is not without it's flaws. One wonders why such a big film wasn't entrusted in the hands of a Tony Scott, Walter Hill, John McTiernan, Mark L. Lester or any of the other 80's action impresarios. The look is often soft and muddy, with scenes stumbling into each other with the finesse of a drunken toddler. The writing is snappy, post-Shane Black zingers delivered with the timing of actor's who can barely locate where the punchline is, but this actually lends the movie a cumbersome charm. And above all else this movie deserves a re-examination for one fucking reason in particular

ahem

Jack Palance owns this movie. He chews scenery like Animal in the Great Muppet Caper. When he delivers a speech comparing Tango and Cash to rats in a maze while cradling two mice in his hands, you half expect him to bite their heads off and cover himself in their blood while masturbating furiously, he's that fucking intense. Granted this is a man who built his whole career on such OTT-ness, and frightened the academy into voting him best supporting actor for a fucking billy crystal movie (although maybe that was just a consolation prize for their ignorance of this movie). But either way, Palance was rarely given roles this meaty and (chronicles of) riddickulous at this stage in his career and every moment on screen is a treat (williams).

Some more observations:

Brion James is one of my favorite actors of the 80's but his performance here is truly baffling. He's supposedly be British, but his accent is as viable as Keanu's Shakespeare. He waffles between clueless cockney posturing and weirdly aussie inflections while throwing "bloody"'s around like it's nobody's business. Truly distracting, but fittingly bizarre for this Frankenstein monster of genre cliche.

Robert Z'Dar's JAW
As much as I love Kurt Russell, he is on total auto-pilot here. His Cash is a loose mash-up of Snake Plissken, Jack Burton, and Kurt Russell, but without an interior life or logic to speak of. His main purpose seems to be to act as the Coors Light swilling counterpoint to Sly's brandy and cigar imbibing social climber. Hell, even their last names tell you all you need to know CASH is a no bullshit dude, he just wants the fame and the money that breaking open drug busts can bring, whereas TANGO is intellectual and removed when discussing his craft and uh he wears suits like uh people who tango cause only rich people bother learning how to dance unless Antonio Banderas (or Robert Duvall?) helps them.

Which bring us to the most fascinating aspect of Tango & Cash. Namely the delusional and transparent ambition of Sly Stallone's "Cake and Eat it, too" personification of Ray Tango. "Tango & Cash" marks the first post-Rocky inklings of Stallone's tragic and misguided attempt to distance himself from the gleeful brutality upon which he built his empire of mumble and become reborn as some kind of intellectual brutewad who can pummel your ass while quoting you Sartre. Granted, the dialogue never approaches such lofty heights, but Stallone's terse delivery of the line bolded at the top of this review lets his intentions be known. This is Nu-Stallone, you know, the one who can read and shit (at the same time!). Within two years, he would be starring in his disastrous attempt at screwball OSCAR, where he sports a suit and an education, but a staggering lack of comic timing, which is contrasted charmingly here with K Russ's offhanded brilliance. While Russell succeeds at his role while making no attempt to be anything other than himself, Stallone succeeds with his characterization because it is awkwardly and painstakingly opposed to his comfort zone. It's kind of exhilarating and undeniably quaint to see an actor as iconic and unflaggingly same-y as Stallone stretch outside of his comfort zone, however timidly the stretch may be by any almost any other actor's standards. It's more of a testament to how uniformly Stallone-y most Stallone performances are that one can derive such pleasure from seeing him flail his arms around in the deep end of the pool without his water wings like he does in this movie, but it sure as hell beats trying to wade through COPLAND again, that's for sure because that movie does not feature Clint Howard, the handsomest man in the world.

Heavy Metal (1981)

2007-08-13T10:24:00.000-07:00

Price: $1
Year: 1981
Run Time: 91 minutes
Directors: Gerald Potterton, Jimmy T. Murakami
Cast (voices): John Candy, Joe Flaherty, Eugene Levy, Caroline Semple

For as long as I could remember it had called to me. I'm not sure what was the most enticing element. Could it have been the textured block letters? The blond lion's mane on the buxom cover girl? The adorable, yet frightening phoenix/pterodactyl creature she is riding on? While all of these elements are certainly intriguing, I think what really caught my eye was the shiny metallic cover.

Yes, the cover shined and shimmered, and called out to me when I was just a wee lass, but due to the combined prohibitions of my father and the overbearing video store guy I was not allowed to watch Heavy Metal during the era when it most appealed to me. Then, this past November when my boyfriend and I were cleaning up the dollar video collection at a Blockbuster in Providence, RI, I stumbled upon a copy of this VHS. The shiny cover was just how I remembered it, although this copy was clearly a reissue. I bought it, but didn't watch it until earlier today.

I'm certainly not going to say that this movie isn't enjoyable, but I will say that I now fully understand why my dad and the Video International guy didn't think it was a good idea for me to see this movie. The whole movie is very focused on giant glowing orbs, particularly ginormous animated space bazooms. While I've learned to overlook gratuitous nudity and exploitation of the female body to a certain extent, for the first couple of vignettes the unecessary boob action was pretty hard to get past. The filmmakers have a specific audience in mind, and since I'm neither 12, male, a virgin, and living in an era where internet porn isn't readily available, I just don't quite make the cut. At age eight, when I most wanted to see it, I would have turned beet red, but now I can just laugh.

The movie's strongest feature is the animation. Although it might not impress anime fanatics, and has certainly been surpassed recently, this movie has some images in it that are pretty hi-tech for early 80s animation. Its baroque use of color and light is reminiscent of The Last Unicorn, and The Hobbit, which are more chick friendly early 80s animations. If you're a fan of the style of these two movies, than you are a likely fan of the visual style of Heavy Metal.

The movie also has a few worthwhile characters, such as Hanover Fiste, a plebe with Leno-esque chin whose life is ruined by the effect of the green orb. I'm also a fan of Taarna. While she is gratuitously bare breasted for a portion of her screen time (like most of the women in the movie), she's a badass lady space freedom fighter, and the closest thing to feminist figure that you'll find in a movie like this.

The previews and extras on this VHS are pretty great. They include The Last Supper (a "mature" comedy), starring Cameron Diaz, Annabeth Gish, Bill Paxton, and Ron Perleman, which is about a group of liberal friends who conspire to kill a right wing tv personality; The City of Lost Children, which is a surreal Jon Jeunet movie; Desperado, which is an awesome action movie directed by Robert Rodriguez, starring Antonio Banderas. After the feature, there is some deleted footage called "Nevermore Land", which is pretty basic, but very visually interesting. It tells the story of the orb throughout Western history, showing us images of Ancient Rome and Jack the Ripper to name a few. It is perhaps more compelling than the rest of the film.

All in all, Heavy Metal is a good way to spend an hour and a half, as long as you aren't turned off by misogynistic sex scenes, and know how to appreciate dated animation.

Casper

2007-08-11T19:58:00.000-07:00

Price: $1
Year: 1995
Run Time: 1 hour and 41 minutes
Director: Brad Silberling
Cast: Christina Ricci, Bill Pullman, Cathy Moriarty, Devon Sawa

I first saw this movie in theaters when it came out in 1995. I was 10 at the time. I don't remember the circumstances too well, but it was probably at some all girl movie birthday party. Most of the girls in my grade probably saw that movie. After all, Ricci and Sawa were like the Bogey and Bacall for pre-teen girls circa 1995.

While it is likely that I viewed this movie at least once more within that year at a slumber party, none of those viewings are particularly distinct in my mind. Up until my most recent viewing the only thing I could tell you abut the movie is that I hated Christina Ricci at the time because she got to kiss Devon Sawa twice! (bitch!). When I found a VHS copy of it earlier this month at a Hollywood Video in Oakland, CA (one that you are probably going to hear more about in this blog), I had to have it, if only for nostalgia's sake. It came in one of those puffy plastic boxes that many children's movies are packaged in. The box didn't appear to be in the best condition, but that didn't phase me.

When I popped in the tape (which had no previews), it all started to come back to me. Casper is certainly guilty of many of the cliches associated with kids movies, such as over the top villains, and little consideration for reality. That isn't to say that this is a problem. While Cathy Moriarty's performance as rich bitch Carrigan Crittenden is pretty irritating, the story and its breaks with reality are pretty dead-on in terms of appealing to the not quite teen who likes to flirt with the dark side, but not go overboard. The idea of ghosts in therapy because of their "unfinished business" is one that I realize stuck with me for many years. The movie deals with death in a way that could be considered problematic, but is actually pretty compelling. Bill Pullman's psychiatrist character gets involved with paranormal patients in order to reconnect with his dead wife. His daughter, portrayed by Ricci, has a a flirtation with Casper, who is of course, a very friendly ghost. At the age that I first saw this movie this element didn't seem that weird to me, perhaps because my own fantasies had a similar tone to them. Now that I'm more than ten years older, its still a beautiful idea, but not one that I'd expect from a kids movie. In fact, Casper is all about how the dead never really dies. At one point Bill Pullman dies, but is brought back pretty quickly. Although it is amusing to see the animated ghost version of Bill Pullman, If I were Brad Silberling I'd be a little uncomfortable sending children the message that their parents can come back from the dead. However, the whole movie is so dependant on suspension of disbelief that most children watching would not take this section of the movie literally.

At the end of the day, watching Casper at age 23 is a real treat. The quality of my particular VHS was a bit questionable, but still very watchable. If you see a copy of this for sale at your local branch of a video store chain, and are the sort who likes macabre material intended for children, Casper is worth picking up, but only if the price is right.

And btw, here's something for the fan girls and boys

Obsolete?

2007-08-10T17:11:00.000-07:00

VHS seems to be going out of style faster than a shooting starlette. The medium that I watched so many movies on as a child is now being driven out of town by DVD and other forms of slick digital media. We've even gotten to the point where the first wave of DVDs are starting to look dated. As a result, people all over the world are taking their old VHS tapes and players and either throwing them to the curb, or donating them to the local thrift store. Video stores are overhauling their tape collection to make room for compact DVD cases. If you are the sort of movie viewer who cannot tolerate anything less than the most up to date technology, you probably have already upgraded you home viewing system to be completely digital, and feature a wide screen plasma tv. However, if you are the sort of movie fanatic who is nostalgic for the past, living on a tight, and don't want your compulsive movie watching to dwindle your bank account, than you should be celebrating and taking as much advantage of this dying medium as you can! Right now your average neighborhood video stores are selling wide ranges of movies for prices usually between one and five dollars. Some of them are gems and some (well, many) are duds, but if you have an open mind and an endless appetite for movies you'll be sure to find a lot for prices lower than a rental.
I am a regular visitor of these VHS clearance sales. My purchases range from trashy to classic, but each tape comes with great dated movie trailers that are usually worth the price on their own.

This blog will focus on bargain videos, especially those that cost a dollar, and from time to time movies outside of this category that we endorse. You might not be able to find all of the dollar videos that are posted about, but hopefully these posts will give you a sense of what is going on in the dollar video universe, and remind you that VHS is still magical.