Tuesday, 2-20-7
Movies about Stephen King novels almost always suck, and this is no exception. I read this book a few years ago and remember thinking, "I hope they don't try to make this one a movie." I'm a fan of Stephen King. I've read almost everything he's got. I'm not sure when it happened but at some point, everything became blurred together. Here is the basic King plot: 15 chapters on setting up the location and characters. 10 chapters on making the characters likable of disliked. 10 chapters on getting the characters and the plot line moved along. 2 chapters on building up to the climax, no climax to follow. 1 paragraph on explaining what the fuck just happened. 1 chapter on unrelated post story life. The end.
It's like he spends the whole time building the exposition and the narrative and when he gets tired, he just ends the book and says good night. I HATE that about his books. He spends the whole book drawing you in and then closes it down in two pages. "OK, I'm tired and want to go to bed, the monster is a... it's a, a, a tennis ball and it is defeated by... um... popcorn. Good night."
Case in point: Childhood friends save retarded boy from bullies, become close friends with Douglas (who can't say his own name clearly so is known as "Duddits".) The friends grow up and stay in contact by going hunting every year at the same cabin though none of them have seen Duddits since childhood. Through flashbacks and exposition we learn that Duddits had psychic powers of finding things and some telepathy. The boys picked up these powers as well. Now they are all at the hunting lodge, drinking a toast to their old friend Duddits who they haven't seen in years. OK, now we're more than half way through the book. Time for one of King's twists.
Aliens have crash landed in the woods and the government has a "black ops" team that responds and quarantines the entire area. Animals are running around with weird orange fungus growing on them. A lost hunter is taken in by the boys and soon he starts to exhibit the orange fungus too. He dies and the alien escapes from his body. We don't actually see it explode from his chest like in "Alien" but the creature is almost identical looking. Actually, I don't think we want to see the alien escape from his body this time because he was sitting on the toilet when it happened. If I see a giant worm with teeth shoot out from anyone's ass, I think I'd have to turn the movie off. So through telepathy, one of the guys is able to contact what's left of his group of friends to warn them that the alien has taken over his body and is trying to escape. The government team is detaining every person it finds in fenced off camps. The team is led by Morgan Freeman who just wants to kill everything and his protégé who thinks that they might be able to save some of these people. One of the gang talks Freeman's protégé into escaping with him and finding his friend with the hitch-hiking alien in him. The alien is trying to get to the city water supply and infect the whole population. The chase is on; we have the alien being chased by the protégé being chased by Morgan Freeman. After talking into a pistol as though it were a telephone, some how our friend talks the protégé into stopping to pick up Duddits because he can solve the whole problem. We get to the water supply all at the same time and Morgan Freeman is in a helicopter trying to shoot the protégé who is trying to kill the alien who is trying to get into a manhole that leads to the water supply. Just when things look hopeless, Duddits leaves the car and shows up at the doorway. He turns into an alien and the two aliens battle it out and kill each other. The day is saved. The end.
Now what kind of military officer is this protégé guy? He lets a civilian talk him into countermanding a direct order, escapes a quarantine zone, hands his pistol to the civilian who then talks into it like it were a telephone, then stops to pick up a retarded kid who no one has seen in years. Is this believable in the least? I can believe in telepathic aliens before I believe this nut is actually in our military somewhere...
It was bad. Even by "King adapted movie" standards it was bad. But, I expected as much, so, I really didn't lose anything.
Sunday, 2-24-7
I dreaded this movie. I love 'Clerks' and all of the other Kevin Smith early works. I wasn't prepared for Kevin to shit on 'Clerks' yet. How the hell do you do a follow up to that, years later and in color none the less? I had heard that after he made the statement that there will be no more "Jay and Silent Bob" films, he made the promise to Jason Mewes that if he stayed sober he could play Jay again. Also, after the crap he's been pushing out recently, it was time to go back to the well, dick and fart jokes made him what he is today, why turn your back on them? So I understand why he came back to the same format, but why did he have to make a sequel? Yuck!
I watched most of this on-line (Pirating again arrrgh!) and didn't like what I saw. Last week I saw it while shopping at Best Buy and said, "What the hell, I'll watch the whole thing and hope for the best, if nothing else, I'll have the movie to include in my Kevin Smith collection. (No, I did not buy Jersey Girl, I meant for my Jay & Silent Bob collection)
Teresa and I watched it last night and I loved it and hated it. I liked it because it was a decent movie. I hated it for my own STUPID reason.
The run down is this: Rosario Dawson isn't as hot as they are trying to make her out to be but she is cute in a weird kind of way. Dante looked like he was wearing a hairpiece the whole time. Randall looked like Randall. Jay & Silent Bob; timeless.
The "Quick-Stop" and "RST Video" burn down, Dante and Randall take jobs at Mooby's, a fast food chain. The movie takes place on Dante's last day of work. He is moving to Florida with his domineering girlfriend to take a job in his future father-in-law's car wash. Through the day we see that he is actually in love with his boss, pussy-trolls are keeping good girls safe from fornication and that there is only ONE "Return Of" and that's the Jedi, not the King. Randall plans a big going away party that ends in a guy blowing a donkey, Dante finding out he knocked up his boss (with whom he is sincerely in love), Dante's girlfriend finding out and leaving him and then they all end up in jail. In the cell, Dante points out that Randall is always fucking up his life. Randall points out that Dante fucks up his own life and that he is absolutely devastated that Dante is leaving him to move to Florida. In a "Well, what would you do?" moment, they decide to buy the burned down "Quick-Stop" and "RST Video" and be their own bosses. At that point, I found myself wishing there was such a simple solution in real life. Can any of you imagine Fred and me working at our own store? He's one of the few reasons we haven't pulled up stakes and gone to PA yet.
So, after seeing the whole thing, I actually liked it. The reason I didn't like it, was because Teresa liked it. She's not in the original "Clerks" clubhouse. Not many people were and now a lot more people are jumping in and it's getting crowded in here. A few months ago I reviewed a movie in which a guy points out this personality flaw in my. He says that some people are upset when their private little thing gets popular. Yeah, I'm still guilty of it from time to time. I just can't stop some times. I don't know why... It was a good follow up to Clerks (unless you know the alternate ending of the first Clerks; Dante gets shot and dies as the credits roll) and I am not really upset that it got a little popular; I'm just being funny... No I'm not... Yes I am! Um... Nevermind.
Monday, 2-26-7
I am a big Charles Bukowski fan. I love his work. Part of the reason I keep my writing to myself is because I'm afraid that my some of my short-work is too much in his style. So, when I saw this movie/documentary was available, I couldn't wait to see it. It was decently done, a little dry cut. It showcases a lot of his readings and archived footage. I liked that. What I didn't like was the modern interviews. Why the fuck do I care what Bono thinks about ANYthing!? Do I give a freeze-dried shit what Bono thinks about the Buk? No! No, I do not. But, crappy interviews aside, it was FULL of Buk footage and I was happy to see that. I haven't seen a lot of actual footage of the man. He's just as crazy as I imagined. Just as eccentric and just as drunk. Too many people imitating that whole life now. It can't be done. It was a different time, it was a different world.
I may pick this one up if I see it in a cut-out bin. I've got 'Factotum' and I'm dying to get a DVD copy of 'Barfly'. But those are just characters he wrote. Even if they are based on himself, they aren't him. It was good to see live footage but you'd have to be a fan to watch it and you'd have to be an uber-fan to buy it.
Sunday, 3-3-7
I just mentioned this a little while ago, where did Eddie Murphy go? Why has he forsaken us? He used to be so funny... Ok, maybe the world grew up and he grew with it. Me? I'm still that 12-year old kid that started swearing just because of this concert. I remember seeing "Delirious" and being blown away. The next morning I was out at the bus-stop hanging on the James/Easy Street sign post and regaling my friends with Eddie Murphy jokes while waiting for the school bus. If my mother reads this, she'll be horrified to learn the truth about when her precious, innocent little boy turned into the foul-mouthed pervert he is today.
I grew up pretty sheltered from the stuff that most kids are exposed to today. I had one black kid in my school and I had no real idea what a homosexual was. Then there was Eddie Murphy doing a dead-on impersonation of Jackie Gleason being fucked by Ed Norton. "Waaahhooooooo. Humina-Humina" I remember almost blacking out watching this because I had to hold my breath to keep my laugh down so no one would hear me.
This concert is full of the Eddie Murphy classics. Ice Cream Man, 4th of July Cookouts, Aunt Bunny is a Bigfoot... I loved it. It doesn't have all of the bits that are available on the audio version of the concert called "Eddie Murphy: The Comedian" but it is everything I remembered from the "old" Eddie Murphy.
The next weekend we went out and bought "Eddie Murphy: Raw" and watched that too. It's just as good and should be considered as "Delirious Part 2".
I'm so happy they released this on DVD. Now I can throw away my Bit-Torrented version of it. See, music/video piracy isn't always about stealing. I would have bought this years ago if it was available.
Saturday, 3-10-7
Teresa told me she wanted to go see this one when the preview came out. I was not interested in it at all. I was hoping she'd go during the week with Becca or with one of her friends. But, she waited to see it with me. I smiled as best as I could and sat through it. It wasn't half bad. Not exactly cinematic history but they weren't going for that. A friend mentally kicked me in the head last week about my cynicism toward movies. Thank you, I need that kind of readjustment every once in a while. She told me, "I just watch a movie for entertainment, a short escape from my life" while I'm always tearing apart every flaw and looking for continuity errors. Not every movie is 'Citizen Kane'. To be honest, I'm a fan and all but not even 'Citizen Kane' lives up to the hallowed status it has been given.
So with a new outlook of, "Let's just enjoy the movie" I sat and watched it last night. Tim Allen, Martin Lawrence, William H. Macy and John Travolta are suburbanite middle-aged men with their own problems. One can't talk to women so he is alone, another is hen-pecked by his wife, one is losing his wife and house and the other has a kid who thinks he's lame. They go out for a motorcycle ride and a few beers every week and at the urging of the one who is about to lose everything in his life, they decide to escape their troubles and take a road trip. On the way, they run afoul of a real motorcycle club and end up hiding out in a small town. When they are discovered, they decide to make a stand to save the townspeople. (Yeah, I need to re-watch 'The Three Amigos" too) Just about the time it seems hopeless, the elder, lone biker that the gang looks up to shows up and points out that the 'poser' bikers are doing what the road is all about and that the gang has forgotten what being free on the road is all about. The guys finish their ride and their home lives improve because they have rediscovered themselves.
Now when I first sat down I was all dour and wasn't expecting to laugh much. Especially when I quickly realized I was sitting just front-left of the guy that laughs out loud at every little thing. Not a little titter but a full-out guffaw. I never heard him after the first ten minutes, everyone else was laughing too. Teresa caught me laughing a few times. I wasn't trying to hide it or anything but I rarely laugh at simple things like this movie. To be honest, it was pretty good. I screwed up really big though. Ok, the movie has a lot of rough language so it's not exactly a children's movie but it is definitely family-friendly if you can get past "SOB", "asshole" and some language like that. The problem is when the elder biker shows up on screen and there's a fat guy in the audience that says, "Holy shit it's Peter Fucking Fonda!" Yeah, it was at one of the deadly silent scenes too, everyone in the theatre heard me. Oops.
Wednesday, 3-14-7
When we saw the preview for this, Heffner and I decided we had to go see this one together. It looked like it was going to be good but it also looked like it would be the type of movie that doesn't get much theatre play. Two or three weeks and out. So last night we finished work at 4pm (We're over here in the Central Time Zone and the NOCC is still over in Melbourne, an hour ahead.) So we hit the movies. I went up to the window and bought the tickets. I told Heffner I'd buy the tickets, he said he'd buy the popcorn. I handed the lady my credit card and she said, "$5.75" I told her I was buying both tickets and she pointed out that it was a matinee and Tuesdays were 2-for-1. I grabbed my credit card back and handed her the last two bills in my wallet, a $5 and a $1. I can't recall the last time I bought tickets for a movie that I got out of there for under $25. Not bad. Heffner goes in and buys popcorn, candy and 2 large cokes. One large coke was $5.75. The same price I paid for both of us to get in. I think he got the shit end of the stick. So does he.
Just the idea of this movie made me want to see it. Samuel L. Jackson as an old blues guitar man who chains up a hot white nymphomaniac inside his house. God-damn! Name one thing about that that doesn't kick ASS!
The movie opens with an awesome profile of Son House (I had to look that up. I thought it was Pink Anderson) explaining that all of the Blues comes from a man and a woman and that one of them have done something wrong. Blues is love gone wrong. Then we see Jackson being dumped by his wife. We later find out it is for his younger brother. Unrelated, and on the other side of town, Christina Ricci is the absolute portrait of a trailer skank and her boyfriend is leaving to go into the military. Not even before the dust settles from the truck taking her boyfriend to the airport, she's banging the local drug dealer. That night she goes to a party, gets high and drunk and ends up sleeping with anyone who will come near her. Her boyfriend's best friend takes her home and tries to get some for himself. She resists and he beats the crap out of her. He pushes her out of the truck, leaving her for dead.
The next morning, Jackson finds her lying in the road. He takes her in, nurses her back to health. She has delirium dreams and hallucinations. Jackson keeps finding her on the floor, in the garden, all over the place. Meanwhile, he has made inquiries about her around town, including from the pharmacist who has the hots for him. He decides he is going to fix the crazy little white girl. She finally wakes up and finds a 40 pound chain tying her to the radiator. He explained to her that she is going to get her shit together. After some resistance, she figures out that she is stuck there but that she is safe. Her dreams and hallucinations are still coming for her. When she is discovered by Jackson's preacher friend and a local boy, they all have dinner and the preacher gives Ricci some peace and some thoughts on religion. That night, Jackson unchains her but she opts to stay with him for a while. They bond and she sees him as a safe father figure, he sees her as the child his wife killed in the womb.
The boyfriend has returned from the military because he has severe anxiety attacks. The best friend tells him that she's a whore, banging everyone and everything including him. The boyfriend takes off to find the girl. Jackson and Ricci go in to town and she confronts her mother about ignoring the fact that she was constantly molested in the very next room. There is a huge scene and Jackson takes her home. Now the boyfriend knows where she is. He pulls a gun and is talked down by Jackson. The preacher friend is called back over and there is a redneck counseling session. The two are married and sent on their way. Jackson returns to his crops, his guitar and a woman who loves him.
I loved the movie. It was better than I expected but not as deep as I thought from the open sequences. I expected crap, saw a shimmer, thought it was a diamond but it turned out to be gold. Gold is still good, but the diamond was possible and they didn't get there.
The characters were just too shallow. Jackson was the only one with any depth. Ricci tried but that part was just poorly written. And she was probably the second best character in the movie. The boyfriend was just impossible to believe or have any sympathy for. Unlike Ricci, I believe this fault was in the actor. Justin Timberlake is not an actor. I'm not sure he's much of a singer but he's sure as hell no actor. The new love interest was played by the police captain from Law & Order, she was alright. Such a minor character and I liked her. The preacher friend played out pretty well too. Hell, even the drug dealer was good. The only lame acting I saw was Ricci and Timberlake. Maybe it's because I have known their characters in real life and didn't see any reality in them.
That's sad. I wish I could say I've known some old blues guitar man but all I can relate to is the trailer trash. Ok, now I am depressed. Play me some blues baby...
Friday, 3-16-7
Over the years, I've tried over and over to watch 'Brazil'. I never seem to make it all the way through it. I fall asleep or have to leave or something comes up and I just never got into the movie even though I have been told that this is a pretty cool film. I got it on Netflix three weeks ago and I finally finished watching it this morning.
I do like it. It was a good movie, One I would definitely buy, but I'll have to think twice about it this time. It's just a cursed film for me. It doesn't put me to sleep because it is boring, I just choose to try watching it at 3am or something like that.
It has a bit of an Orwellian 1984 thing going on through the movie. The government is bogged down by its own paperwork and bureaucracy. A typo (Tuttle becomes Buttle) condemns an innocent man and a clerk tries to correct the problem. In doing so, he meets the woman he has been dreaming of for years. She is a revolutionary and despises the government. He gets her to trust him and he tries to delete her from the system so she will no longer be hunted by the government. He just about succeeds but now they are coming for him. The girl is dead and he is in a torture facility but in his head, the two of them are living happily ever after in the countryside.
This movie was simple but nicely played out. A bevy of awesome one-liners that just buzz on by and you'll miss them if you don't think fast because the next scene is already coming at you. Things like;
"Bye bye, say hello to Carol and the twins for me."
"Triplets actually."
"Triplets now? My, how time flies."
I was glad to finally recognize and identify some of the .wav file quotes I have on the computer. "An empty desk is an efficient desk!" I've been using that sound byte for my Empty Recycle Bin noise since I can remember. Now I know where it's from.
So, it was a good movie. Very funny, VERY quotable and in a way, a little bit serious. After the week I've had, with the paperwork shuffle, reports being resubmitted because I didn't have THIS WEEK'S version of forms and scheduling issues, I related to a world where you couldn't make a single move, much less fart, without filling out a form.
Monday, 3-19-7
George Lucas' student film. Of course, not the actual student film, this was the theatrical release version. It was a real movie, not some poorly edited student film like I was half expecting. The theme in the film is one I find recurring in a lot of my favorite movies.
We open into a bland world where every person is reduced to numbers and letters. They are required to be on drugs that inhibit emotions. They do their jobs, they consume and they even watch television, all without any emotion at all. We meet THX's mate, LUH. There is something different about her, she behaves just a bit unusual compared to the other citizens of this antiseptic world. We find out that she has stopped taking her medications and began having feelings. She has also been placing placebo pills in THX's daily regimen too. He goes through withdrawals and eventually comes out of the emotional coma. The two fall in love and THX decides he is no longer going to take the pills. The two of them will escape and live in the "superstructure".
They are discovered. He is detained, put on trial and experimented upon. After enduring the most punishing trial, the inane chatter of his fellow prisoners, THX escapes his prison and finds that LUH has been terminated and recycled. He makes a break for it and runs to escape the "perfect" society. As he runs, we see that he is climbing levels. He is approaching "Level 1" and after making a climb up a chasm, he emerges onto the surface, seeing the sun for the first time.
I know this is a played-out concept but it was 1971. It was a stepping-stone in the line of movies of that theme. Lucas borrowed heavily from '1984" and fed future films like 'Equilibrium'. As much as I like to rip George Luca$ for his "Re-Directing", I can't rip him on this one at all. It was a good movie. I especially liked that THX eventually realized that the prison was his. It was a prison created in his mind. There were no walls, the guards were only making suggestions, and they were not going to hurt him. He could simply walk away. He walked away from the prison in his mind, he walked away from the only society he knew, and he walked away from the status-quo. This movie says something for "perceived power" and suggestion. The religious over-lord figure didn't really exist. You have to love a movie about an electronics-heavy future where everyone worships the god "Ohm". Everyone obeyed the officers because they were officers. Large, tall, uniformed and robotic. They were there to be obeyed and no one ever questioned that; until they stopped taking their sedation pills. Open your eyes and you just might find that those things holding you down have no real power over you.
At least, that's what I got out of it...
Tenacious D: The Pick Of Destiny
Tuesday, 3-20-7
Sucked. I could stop right there, but why? About 150 years ago, back in 1999 I remember recording a movie off of HBO (on VHS, that's how long ago) and I got this weird short about two moronic guys playing acoustic guitar at an open mic night. The reason I remember it so clearly was because of the scene with them trying to come up with another song and Jack Black is hurling abuse at Kyle. It was so funny. When their CD came out I bought it. It had its funny moments, a little underwhelming.
Now Jack Black has hit the big time and I have come to realize that I like him in very small doses. Anything more than ten minutes and I just don't think he's funny. Maybe I'm just getting too old. Ben Stiller, Jack Black and Will Ferrell; I just don't get them.
So enough about my inability to expand with the times, let's get on to trashing the movie. Actually, I can't really trash it because it wasn't anything more than what it promised to be. It was a long version of the original shorts. The band comes together, they play open mic nights. They stumble on a rock and roll secret; the greatest guitar players of all time have been playing with the same pick. A guitar pick made from Satan's tooth. They go on a road trip to steal the pick, hilarity ensues. They return with the pick just in time to play the open mic night and just before they go on, they argue over who will use the pick and they break it. Satan reclaims it and they challenge him to a rock duel. They lose but knock one of Satan's horns loose. They keep the horn and turn it into a bong. Nothing much else.
I'd have to say, even for a burner flick, this sucked. If I were looking for a movie to watch while baked, there are a zillion other movies that are much more entertaining, "Harold and Kumar" comes to mind... The only parts I liked were in the open sequences. Meat Loaf as the oppressive dad and then the kid "prays" to Dio. That was cool. Everyone should pray to Dio! No recurrence of either of them later in the movie though. The origins of the band was tolerable but the open mic and the road trip sequences were just too lame for me. Maybe because they were later in the movie. Maybe it's not a scene problem. I probably wouldn't like much of anything after more than the initial scenes. Remember, ten minutes and I'm done with these guys.
Tuesday, 3-27-7
I took the day off to go on a field trip with Becca to Tallahassee. On the bus they showed "Happy Feet" and I thought to myself that I'll watch the first five minutes and go back to my book. The trailers didn't look that good and I wasn't expecting much. After five minutes I was pretty much done with it but Becca was into it and was holding on to me so I ended watching a little more of it. After I got through 20 minutes or so, I decided to watch the whole thing.
It wasn't bad. It wasn't
much but it wasn't as painful to sit through as I expected. The Emperor
penguins find their mates through song. In the movie, everyone was singing pop
songs (badly at that) and that was their interpretation of the individual
penguin's song. It was cute for about 30 seconds. Then it just became
downright irritating. So, baby penguin is born and he can't sing. But he can
tap dance. His father tells him to stop dancing and just go to school and try
to learn to be normal. Baby penguin grows up and falls in love, but he still
can't sing. He gains a tiny bit of acceptance and starts to get a few penguins
dancing until the elders come forth and blame his un-natural behavior is causing
the fish drought.
He finds himself out of the
colony and discovers other tribes of penguins. These penguins are impressed
with his ability and he's now a celebrity instead of an outcast. In this
community they have a guru penguin who claims to have knowledge of an alien
race. His proof of this is the alien necklace he wears. Of course the aliens
are mankind and his necklace is a plastic 6-pack ring.
Our hero finally discovers
the aliens and realizes that they are taking the fish. He goes after the aliens
and is captured and put in a zoo. A tracking device is attached to him and he
returns home. The humans tracking him are so impressed with the dancing penguins
they film them and the footage travels the globe (YouTube?). Everyone is so
impressed with the penguins that they raise awareness of their fish shortage and
they pass new legislation limiting human fishing in order to save the penguins.
It was cute. It was also boring. I normally hate Robin Williams' "over the top-ness" but it was the only saving grace in this thing. The plot was lame, the turns were telegraphed miles ahead, the environmental message was bashed over our heads and the singing rubbed me like a cheese grater. The silly Robin Williams voices were actually a welcome intrusion. Reading this last line, it sounds like I hate this movie but I don't. It was a good movie to sit and watch with Becca, she loved it. It was not a movie I would watch on my own.
Last Updated: 06/20/07 06:33 p