Although they appear to be the same guy, only one of these men is a genius, the other is a buffoon. By the time you finish reading this you will be all too aware of which way I feel on the subject.
Monday, 11-12-7
I hate to bash this one because I'll be accused of "not getting it". Ok, accuse away, I just fucking hated this movie. I thought it had a decent premise and that the potential was there but it just never got good. I sat through the whole thing because I had heard many of my friends tell me that it was pretty good. I have changed my phone number now so that these people can never talk to me again.
We have Borat, a Kazakhstani who wants to help his people become more Americanized. So he takes a producer and a film crew and comes to New York to discover ways to bring his people up to speed with the rest of the world. The movie revolves around Borat's ignorance of our culture. He falls in love with Pamela Anderson and changes his plans to travel across the country to LA to marry her. They have lots of troubles along the way and eventually Borat meets her at a signing. He tries to abduct/marry her. She refuses and Borat returns home where he is a hero and his village is improved only to the point where they now have flat screen TVs and iPods.
There were some funny moments and I'm not saying there was nothing in the movie that made me laugh but it just came across as "Jackass" with a foreigner. Not really worth a full movie but maybe funny as a skit TV show. But if they tried that, it would have been the exact same thing as the "Blue Collar Comedy Tour". It could have been done with someone from Alabama or Georgia instead of Kazakhstan. I don't like the BCCT either, it's just not funny. So with "Get'er Done" replaced with "Make sexy time, is nice" I forced myself to sit through this slop just so I could get a fair review on it.
The funny moments were the expected ones. They want to buy a car so they try to buy a Hummer but end up with a used ice cream truck. They want to buy a gun for protection but they end up with a live bear. They are driving around and the kids come up for ice cream and the bear roars out the window scaring the shit out of all of them. Funny, but not hilarious. They try to learn about American humor and their coach is deadpan and about twenty years behind the comedy curve. That was the funny part. The parts with Borat trying to understand how to use sarcasm (NOT) was really drawn out and boring. They have all kind of run-ins with people that were supposedly unscripted and acted out like Borat was a real roving ambassador. He fumbles a television interview on live TV, insults America at a rodeo and makes a real mess of a southern fine dining club. Ok, the fine dining scene was cute, I liked it but still, not hilarious. There are fraud lawsuits against the movie because these people claim they were duped and never suspected they were falling victim to a prank. I find it hard to believe because many of these scenes had to have been set up and the lawsuits are too frivolous to believe they are for real. I think the lawsuits may be real but that they were set up by the production company to draw attention and realism to the "impromptu" status of the movie.
Not a fan of "Jackass", not a fan of "Blue Collar Comedy Tour", not a fan of "Borat". Maybe I'm too damn old...
2 of 11 Skulls
Monday, 11-12-7
I have to preface this with another disclaimer that if I hadn't stumbled across this as a free movie I would have never watched it. Now before I tear it apart, I also have to remind myself that this is a kid's flick. Anyone above sixteen years old that has any previous experience in high fantasy novels will see this as bland and repetitious. I'm sure lots of kids liked the movie but I thought it was boring.
It is a world where dragons and dragon riders have all but disappeared. There was a great war and one of the dragon riders (we'll call them Jedi) turned on his brothers and betrayed and killed them all. The last rider has established himself as the king and rules with an iron fist. A group of rebels have stolen a large stone from the king and are willing to die in order to keep it safe. Meanwhile a poor farm boy (imagine that, our hero is a farm boy...) comes across the stone while hunting. He tried to pawn it off for food but is refused when he revealed he was hunting in the king's forest. Later that day the stone starts to move and it turns out to be an egg. A baby dragon emerges and he keeps it a secret. Our farm boy (we'll call him Luke) comes across an edgy old man (we'll call him Obi-Wan) who turns out to be an old dragon rider. He trains Luke to use his dragon for good. The dragon goes from a three foot baby to a huge fifty foot dragon in minutes. It is still learning how to carry a rider but that only takes another few minutes.
So they are on their way to the rebel camp to join the rebellion but in a dream Luke has a vision of a woman (we'll call her Leia) being held captive by the evil king (we'll call him Vader). Luke abandons his path of joining the rebellion in order to save Leia even though Obi-Wan warns him he is not yet strong enough to face Vader. In the middle of the rescue it looks like Luke will be defeated but the dragon brought Obi-Wan to the Death Star to help, just in time. The trio escapes and they finally join up with the rebel encampment. Vader has followed Luke and Obi-Wan to the rebel base and is planning an attack. There is a lot of fighting and Luke is kicking ass. When Vader sees this he joins the fight by getting on his own Tie-Fighter and does the "dueling dragons" thing with Luke. The spectacular fight ends with ... damn. I forgot how the thing ends. I'm sure there must have been some kind of resolution, maybe the good guy defeats the evil guy, gets the girl and the world is safe again?
So for all my bashing, it really wasn't that bad, if you are a child. It was the same watered down plot that has been followed by countless stories and there were no surprises or even any interesting points. It was slush and came across so. You could have substituted Frodo for Luke and it would have worked just fine. Unsuspecting farm boy gets saddled with the responsibility to save the world. I'm not bashing that they followed the same old line, that's inevitable. The problem is that they never tried to make it interesting along the way. Nothing new, nothing fun. I would have liked to see something innovative, anything! It looks like this was written for kids and written either by a kid or by a first-time author who got lucky that a publisher bought this crap trying to cash in on the revival of fantasy novels. It is weak and it comes across as such.
3 of 11 Skulls
Sunday, 11-11-7
It took me a while to watch this one. I tried to watch it a few weeks ago but my mind was too busy and I didn't understand a single thing in the first five minutes. I finally got back to watching this one last night and I can say I am glad I tried it again, even though I don't like these kinds of movies. It is one of those artsy impressionist type of movies. Very symbolic and open to interpretation. Lots of nudity and I'm sure psychotropic drugs would have made it easier to understand.
Sumo wrestlers dressed as Roman centurions, limbless midgets, frogs and lizards reenacting the conquest of Mexico, skinned and crucified animal carcasses... All within the first half hour. A very strange movie. It does its best to shock you with imagery and I'm sure back in 1973 it worked. The level of disturbance is dated because there was nothing in this movie that I didn't see at the Marilyn Manson concert a few years back. I'm not sure many people would get it today. I'm not sure I got all of it.
I will try to resist giving you any of my interpretations, just the basic idea of what happens in the movie.
A fallen Christ-figure resorts to thievery and crime. He rebels against his life and goes in search of who he is. He comes across a man who takes him in and endeavors to teach him how to turn his life around. He literally has this guy take a crap in a bowl. Then they take the bowl of shit and turn it into gold, much like Geffen Records.
He is set on to a quest to climb the Holy Mountain and discover the secret of immortality from the nine immortals who control out lives from on top of the mountain. On his quest he will be helped by nine people, each representing a planet. A major chunk of this movie is the display of each of these nine people and their daily functions. Most of this deals with nudity, sex and guns. Really. I guess surrealism makes more sense if you're naked and armed.
So they train together to forget their selves and to form a single being. They take to the mountain and are immediately tempted by the bar at the base of the mountain. There is no need to climb the mountain, every vice can be indulged and every secret can be told here at the Pantheon Bar. They resist the temptation and continue with their quest. Along the way they are each tempted with their own personal vices. They resist with simple maneuvers like, "You have forgotten that we are all one being, rub your clitoris against the mountain!" She humps the cliff face for ten minutes and then they continue along their way. Now why didn't I think of that?
As they approach the summit, our Christ hero is told by the master that he has learned all he can and that the summit does not matter, he should take this woman (a prostitute with a monkey that has followed them along the way) and to go, enjoy life, conquer the Holy Mountain through love.
He leaves and the remaining eight approach the nine immortals. They discover that the immortals are eight mannequins and the ninth is the master that has led them to this place. He explains that the Holy Mountain does not matter, that life is an illusion and that the important thing is to live life. To illustrate how life is an illusion he orders the camera panned back to show the film crew. He proclaims that we must not be tied to any one illusion and that we must escape our lives in order to live them.
It was hard to watch the whole thing because it was difficult to sit through all the slow parts. It turned out to be a pretty good movie. All of the imagery was beautiful and really well done. The story is a simple eastern/Buddhist story. Nothing too far fetched about anything in the movie. There were lots of small aspects to the film that begged for attention and for interpretation. I thought it was a good flick. I wouldn't sit through it again but that's just my personal likes/dislikes. I don't want movies that are too shallow but when they get too deep I feel like I have to do homework. I'd rather read a story like this rather than watch it. I'll probably go out and find the unfinished book that the movie was inspired from and I'll most likely read it a few times. But as a movie I'm stuck with the images the director chose to display.
7 of 11 Skulls
Sunday, 10-28-7
I was told by many people that this is a watchable chick-flick. I think it was alright. No surprises, no unexpected ideas, just a very long, drawn out story about the life of a young girl. I saw it as the Japanese interpretation of Cinderella with a little dash of Pygmalion mixed in for flavor.
For this one I was looking for some kind of unrelated geisha picture but damn, how can you not look at that picture and sigh...
Young girl and her sister are sold to a geisha house. One sister is summarily dismissed and sent to the brothel. The sister that is accepted into the geisha house is our main character Chiyo/Sayuri. She is Chiyo until she becomes a geisha and takes a new name. I will call her Sayuri. She is hell-bent on reuniting with her sister. She tries to escape and falls from the roof, her sister has escaped without her and is gone forever. She gets news that her mother and father have died and now the women in the geisha house are her only family.
The main geisha is immediately jealous of the young newcomer and sets her up to get into trouble time after time. Another young trainee (named Pumpkin) befriends Sayuri until the main geisha takes Pumpkin under her wing and trains her to be the next great geisha, telling Pumpkin that she is now rivals with Sayuri and must treat her accordingly or else she will no longer give her the training she needs.
Sayuri has gotten into trouble enough times that the mother of the house takes her out of geisha school and makes her a slave.
One day she is standing in town being sad when a man comes along with two beautiful geisha with him. He cheers up the young Sayuri and goes along on his way. Sayuri has immediately fallen in love with him and determines to become a geisha so that she can meet back up with "The Chairman".
She is still shunned by the women at the geisha house until another geisha from another house comes along and makes a wager with the mother of the house. She says she can train Sayuri to be a great geisha and earn her purchase price within a few months. The mother agrees and Sayuri goes with the new geisha to train. The new mentor was the greatest geisha in the province. During the training (blessedly missing a "Rocky" training montage) the mentor explains that she is training Sayuri because the mother of the house must pick a new heir. The bitch geisha is too old so Pumpkin will be picked but Pumpkin is only a puppet of the bitch geisha. Sayuri must become the new heiress.
During the training, Sauri comes into close contact with the Chairman but never gets to express her love for him. The bitch geisha is trying to ruin Sayuri's reputation and stealing her clients. The mentor tells Sayuri to show her attentiveness for the Chairman's deformed business partner to throw the bitch geisha off her trail. She does and the business partner begins to fall in love with her. It is repeatedly pointed out that a true geisha must sacrifice any hope of love and a relationship.
After gaining the lead and a spectacular performance in the Spring Dance, Sauyri is the next big thing. She gets a record amount of money offered for her virginity (auctioning off your virginity is reportedly a regular geisha thing in the movie although it sounds HIGHLY suspect to me...) and she has succeeded in earning more than her purchase price. The mother of the geisha house makes Sayuri the heiress. Bitch geisha taunts Sayuri about her hidden love for the Chairman, a fight ensues and bitch geisha leaves, never to be seen again.
Sayuri begins her career as the greatest geisha just as WWII breaks out. Japan is turned upside down and just at the last minute, the Chairman shows up and gets Sayuri and the mentor into different hiding villages.
Years go by and Sayuri is working manual labor to earn her keep. The chairman's business partner shows up and says that they are trying to get their business built back up but that they need American money to do so. He asks Sayuri to help entertain and anchant the Americans with her geisha charms. She agrees and meets back up with her mentor who helps her get back into geisha form (again, without the Rocky montage) Pumpkin is also at the party and she has adopted the ways of the westerners. She smokes, drinks and talks like an American. The party goes well until the rich American financier makes a hit on Sayuri. Sayuri explains to him that no matter what he may see in the streets, a geisha is not a common whore. She tries several times to reveal to the Chairman that she was the little girl her was kind to all those years ago but she is repeatedly interrupted. When she realizes that she will never get to the Chairman because of his business partner's adoration for her, she asks Pumpkin to bring the business partner to her room. Then she allows the American to get her into a compromising position. Pumpkin shows up with the Chairman. He walks away in shame and Pumpkin has her long-held revenge for taking the geisha house from her.
Sayuri gives up all hope and returns to the city trying to re-build the geisha life that has been destroyed by the prostitutes posing as geisha. The Chairman finds her and confronts her. He tells her that he always knew that she was the same little girl and that he sent the famous geisha mentor to her. Now that his business partner has no interest in Sayuri he can finally express he love for her. They kiss, the end.
It was beautiful and obviously filmed in spectacular fashion. Every scene gave you the feel before anyone spoke a line. A technological success. But, it had zero depth. It was boring. Cinderella falls in love and is transformed into the belle of the ball by Henry Higgins. She has troubles along the way but eventually gets her man in the end. In the beginning there was all this talk about her strength of "water" and how she would find a new path to reach her destiny. She never really portrayed those qualities, the paths found her. That doesn't make it a bad plot, it just means that the character learned almost nothing. "I want it, I can't have it, fate provided it to me". No depth.
There was a lot of talk about the casting and "How dare they cast a Chinese girl in a geisha role". I'll be honest, being a casual fan of ancient Japanese history, I thought the same thing until I started talking with some people about the "Asian look" and how most people (including many Asians) can't tell the difference either. Test yourself here. So the inter-Asian casting aside I thought they did a good job. Michelle Yeoh is strong and solid as always. Zhang Ziyi was gorgeous, more so than she was as Moon in "Hero". The only Japanese lead, Ken Watanabe, is barely noticeable. For all his involvement I doubt he was on screen for more than ten minutes in this two and a half hour yawn fest.
I think it could have been saved by a colder ending. After Sayuri has given up her love for him and embraced the sacrifices a geisha must make, the Chairman shows up and Sayuri tells him it is too late and that she has moved on. It would have felt more real to me, it would have shown me that Sayuri is a dynamic character, not just a doll that we dress up in new clothes throughout the movie. But instead we get the Disney ending. They kiss and they live happily ever after.
Ok, maybe they do but what about the bitch geisha? It would have been nice to catch up with her and see her strung out on heroin and being gang-banged by twenty American GIs. And what about little sister? When she said she never saw her sister again, she fucking meant it! Why have her in the story at all? Don't give me all that crap about "It's based on a true story" because I already read all about how the author rolled over so many details and stole the rest to the point that the true life geisha sued him. If it's not a strict autobiography, then we didn't need to introduce the sister. If we are going to have happy endings, the sister plot line should have been closed out with Sayuri receiving a letter from her sister telling her she escaped to Canada and owns a bakery or something.
It was beautiful and boring. I didn't dislike it but I really would have been happy to have never seen it. On the other hand it was exactly what I was told it would be. Teresa liked it a little more than I did so this was indeed; a watchable chick-flick.
5 of 11 Skulls
Friday, 10-26-7
Sucked.
No really, that's all I have to say about this one. It was crap. And this is coming from a guy that indulges in LCD humor from time to time. I still check out "South Park" and I regularly watch "Drawn Together". A well placed fart joke is never lost on me. But this thing was shite!
I was going to use an image of the old "Thunderbirds" puppet TV show but they looked so much like them that it stopped being funny... So you got the puppet sex picture.
The guys that make South Park made a movie about terrorism and how America is conceited enough to police the world. The whole movie, right down to the explicit sex scenes, is done with marionettes.
The terrorist fighting organization, "Team America" recruits an actor as its newest member. They go on missions causing more collateral damage than John McClane from the "Die Hard" films. The actor quits because he thinks he is causing the mission failures. The team is in trouble, the actor gains the courage to rejoin the team and saves them. Along the way, the Korean president escapes in a rocket, one member of the team is actually a cockroach alien and we get to see two puppets fuck. We get all of the third grade humor of South Park but none of the writing that makes it tolerable. Just a flat out two hour booger-eating endurance run.
The marionettes strings were showing the whole time and that's one of the things I liked about it, it was supposed to be REALLY cheesy and parody all of the big budget Bruckheimer/Bay films. To apprehend a single terrorist, Team America obliterates all of Paris and then expects the world to thank them. This can be funny, but for some reason wasn't. The ripping of famous celebrities was mildly humorous but there was really no point in the entire movie that I didn't feel a horrible shame that someone would peep into my window and catch me watching this. Funny thing is I GET the jokes. I actually think a lot of the parodies were funny; it just never gelled as a movie. Maybe if it were small, ten minute shorts it would have worked. But not as a movie.
2 of 11 Skulls
Monday, 10-22-7
Still essentially a silent film. Only some of the musical numbers were synchronized and even the famous first words were adlibbed and only left in on a whim.
Overall, a good film for its era. If you've seen "The Jolson Story", you've essentially seen the same movie. A Jewish cantor's son wants to sing modern jazz music instead of following in his father's footsteps and singing prayers in the synagogue. He runs away, changes his name from Jackie Rabinowitz to Jack Robin. His is on the verge of making the big break through and returns home to New York to get his start on Broadway. He tries to visit home. His mother receives him but his father is stubborn and refuses to have any son of his singing on a stage. It is the morning of the opening of the big show sure to propel Jack into stardom. He gets the visit from his mother that his father is sick and wishes to hear him sing the prayers. Drawn between his family and his big break he runs home after rehearsal hoping to visit his father and return to the show. Seeing that his father is dying, he chooses to sing the prayer, the father hears his son, forgives him and dies. The final scene is Jack singing "Mammy" on stage to a cheering audience with his mother in the front row.
It's the timeless story of the generation gap. That point in a family where the son steps out to go his own way and the father doesn't understand. There is a rift and in most cases it is patched up when the father begins to understand that his son is a man and must make his own choices. These stories are almost always sweetened by having the son come to realize how difficult it is for his father and he sees his father's point of view with a new level of respect. These stories work so well because they are a natural part of growing up. Not everyone goes through it but enough do that these stories will be told over and over into time immemorial.
There is a list of superlatives everyone wants to label and tag the world with. The first, the best, the only... Most things are a gradual and the transition from silent film to "talkies" was no exception. There were earlier movies with synchronized audio but not dialog. There were some with synchronized dialog but they were one-reel shorts. I'm not going to argue that this was or was not the first but it is commonly recognized as such. The famous words caused quite an uproar around our house years and years ago.
We were playing Trivial Pursuit. My father was going to win if he could answer the next question. "What were the first spoken words in a movie (or something like that...)". His face beamed and he knew he had won. I don't know how many times he had seen it as a child but even as a grandchild visiting my grandparent's house I had seen "The Jolson Story" a million times and I know every line. Along with "Glenn Miller" and "Benny Goodman", Al Jolson was one of the few movies I knew Pop-Pop to watch. So with a wide grin my father answered, "You ain't seen nothing yet!" The text on the card read, "You ain't seen nothing yet folks!" We considered it an incomplete answer and didn't let dad win the game. Of course he won but we had to break his balls a little bit. He refused to play Trivial Pursuit for years after that. So over the years the word "Folks" has become a catch phrase around our house. Well, now that they've released it on DVD I just watched it and although "You ain't seen nothing yet folks" was a regular line in Al Jolson's routine, he never said it in the movie. Dad won the game fair and square (just like he knew it all those years ago). The real line comes after a song and he says, "Wait a minute, wait a minute, you ain't heard nothing yet. Wait a minute I tell ya, you ain't heard nothing." He queues up the band and sings another song. Not really dialog but they were spoken lines. Later in the film he does have true dialog with his mother and I would consider that to be the first synchronized dialog in a movie, but I don't run the show man...
6 of 11 Skulls
(Live Free Or Die Hard)
Saturday 10-20-7
Teresa, Becca and Lizzy watched all three of the Die Hard movies this summer to get ready for the fourth one. They never got to the theatre to see it and so when I brought it home they wanted to watch it. I warned them that this was going to be softer and tamer because it was a PG-13 rather than R. I don't think McClane can say his famous line in a PG-13. They watched it anyway.
Computer hackers in the movies are almost always normal looking people. The few "actual" deep hacks I have met look more like Morlocks than Eloi. Very little sunlight, paranoid and malnourished yet somehow obese men with thick glasses. But our computer hacker hero in this story is none other than Mac from those "Hi I'm a PC and I'm a Mac" commercials.
The "white hat" hackers have unwittingly assisted the "black hat" hackers by giving them programs and codes that will now be used to infiltrate the government systems. The government sees a glitch and suspects the hackers. They order the round up of all the usual suspects. The "black hat" group is sending out teams of assassins to kill all the "white hat" group that helped them. Tying up loose ends. This involves C4 bombs that are set off by using the Delete key, for some reason the first key the hackers hit after seeing their screen go fuzzy for a split second. McClane is busy protecting his alienated daughter who hates him when he gets the order to pick up our friend Mac. He rescues Mac just as the assassins hit and is transporting him into DC custody when the black hackers initiate their first attack.
First to go is the transportation system. With just one click on a keyboard all the traffic lights go green on all sides and the FAA grounds all air traffic. It is utter chaos and the whole eastern seaboard is one giant traffic jam.
Second to go is the communication systems. With just one more click, the black hackers shut down all cell phones and satellites. Our friend Mac recognizes this as a "Fire Sale". He is discounted by the government agents but McClane wants to know what it is. Mac explains that the black hacker's dream is to start a revolution by shutting down the government. Transportation, communication, power and financial records. Very "Escape From LA meets Fight Club". They identify three power hubs that control all the electrical power in the US. The one in West Virginia controls the entire eastern US. They take a leisurely drive the West Virginia from DC and show up after the black hackers are in the building and working on shutting down the power. (If they were serious about it and they obviously had access to C4 explosives why not just...)
While in the power plant they see that one of the government buildings is using an inordinate amount of power and that it was immune from the power hack. The bad guys reroute the natural gas lines into the power plant and it explodes just as our heroes escape. They take a helicopter and go in search of the grand hacker who will be the only house whose lights are still on. I guess no one in the wintry Northeast ever bought a generator? I guess not because they pull up to the only house with power (by the way it is NOT being mobbed by neighbors who do not have lights/food/refrigeration...) Grand master hacker turns out to be Kevin Smith. Now when The movie started I thought it was supposed to be called "Live Free Or Die Hard" but my copy said "Die Hard 4.0" At this point I realized I've got an early copy or a European release or something because Silent Bob's voice seemed to be dubbed. I could be wrong but Kevin Smith sounds a lot different than the voice that as coming out of my speakers.
Grand master hacker agrees to help them and they find out the bad guy is an old friend of theirs, an ex-government hacker who warned them of the soft spots in the system. Instead of rewarding him and fixing the holes, they fired him and ruined his career. He turned vengeful and exploited the holes. The secret government building that is using all that power? It is a data storage safe that has all of the financial records in the USA in one place. It was designed and built for our government in case something like this ever happened the records would all dump into one safe place. It was designed and built by our bad guy.
The bad guy is in constant contact with McClane and taunts him by (one click) erasing his 401k and stuff like that. Nothing stops McClane, he will get his man. Somehow we have a F22 Raptor blowing up highways and bridges trying to kill McClane and we have no casualties whatsoever. The bridge was empty, the roads below the collapsed overpass were empty. What happened to the giant traffic jam we had earlier? The bad guy locates and takes McClane's daughter hostage. Now we see McClane get soft but the girl is tough like her father and doesn't give in. A gun fight and grapple ensues. McClane is shot in the shoulder. The bad guy is behind him and they wrestle for the gun. McClane puts the gun into his wound and pulls the trigger only slightly injuring himself further yet killing the bad guy behind him. The daughter is proud of her father and is looking to see if she can score a date with our hot, in-shape, funny and well-rounded hacker, Mac. The geeky guy gets the hot girl again. Hooray for Hollywood.
I really don't know what to say about it all other than, "How did I sit through ANOTHER one of these fucking movies!?!?!" Implausible, blow'em ups aren't really my thing but it seems to be all I've watched recently. It is difficult to pick this movie apart because it does it for me. There really isn't much to criticize about this movie other than just flagellating myself for wasting my time. And for all their waiting, Bruce Willis only half uttered his line. "Yipie Ki Yay Mo..."interrupted by gunshots or a horn or a crash or something. It was so lame I barely remember.
3 of 11 Skulls
Friday 10-19-7
Another one that I would have never bothered to watch if it weren't for my "special antenna". Pay to see a two hour episode of the Simpsons? Why? And that's right where they start the movie. It opens on an extended "Itchy and Scratchy" movie and Homer stands up and yells "Boring!" Then he goes on to explain that anyone who would pay to watch something they got for free on TV is a sucker. "Especially YOU!" as he points to the screen and we get the Simpsons intro music. Did we need this explained to us? Did he need to point to us and explain the joke? I got it when he said it the first time. I thought it was funny. I guess they had to explain the joke to anyone with impaired humor. This is going to be a long movie if this is how they are going to play it.
But, it got a little better. Green Day was playing a concert and died because the polluted lake dissolved their barge. At the funeral Grandpa Simpson had a "speaking in tongues" revelation. "Twisted tale, a thousand eyes, eepa, eepa!"
Lisa is trying to get the lake cleaned up and she mimics Al Gore in her tactics. Eventually the mayor agrees and they barricade the lake.
Homer is having lunch with Bart who is coming to the realization that Homer is a moron and that Flanders is a much better father. Homer barely sees the problem and is quickly distracted by rescuing a pig from becoming a pork sandwich. When he brings the pig home Marge sees the "twisted tail" and becomes worried about Grandpa's prophecy.
Homer breaks the barricade and dumps the pig's generous amount of droppings into the lake. The pig crap was more than the lake could take and it becomes poisonous. A squirrel jumps into the lake and becomes mutated. It develops hundreds and hundreds (a thousand) eyes. The EPA steps in and protects the mutated squirrel.
The government decides to isolate Springfield and drops a giant dome over the city. The helicopters all have the EPA logo on them and Marge sees Grandpa's final warning, "eepa, EPA!" The town figures out that Homer was the cause of all this and they come for him. Marge risks her life running back into the burning house to rescue their wedding tape (and wash the dishes) and the family escapes with some help from Flanders and a sinkhole that puts them outside the isolation dome.
Homer decides to get a fresh start in Alaska. Marge doesn't want to go but Homer invokes the "one time in every marriage you've got to go a long" rule and they decide to go to Alaska. They win a truck at a carnival by learning how to ride a motorcycle inside the steel cage ball. (Yes it will become important later)
They arrive in Alaska and they are starting their lives over. (Welcome to Alaska where we give every citizen a thousand dollars to look the other way while industry rapes out natural beauty) Lisa is pining for her first love trapped in Springfield and Bart takes up drinking to dispel the pain of having a disappointing father. When the family sees on the news that the government is planning a "new grand canyon" right where Springfield used to be they decide to "return to the United States" and warn everybody. Homer refuses to go and Marge invokes the same "one time in every marriage" rule. Homer refuses and goes down to the bar (Eski-Moes) When he returns he finds the house empty and a recorded tape from Marge. On it she says that they are going back to Springfield and that she's tired of his shit. She doesn't know why she puts up with him anymore and she's through with him. To prove it, this message is recorded over their wedding tape. (Yes, I actually had a tear well up from a freaking Simpsons cartoon)
Homer tries to find them but is almost killed in the attempt. He is rescued by a native Alaskan who teaches Homer that he must have an epiphany if he is ever going to get things right again. Homer hallucinates until he realizes that there are things in the world more important than him.
Marge and the kids have been captured and dropped into the Springfield dome. The EPA lowers a bomb on a string and the people of Springfield are climbing up it to escape just as Homer is sliding down the rope to tell everyone about the bomb. He is about to give up until he spots a motorcycle and gets his epiphany. He motors over to Bart who is praying with the Flanders'. Bart refuses to acknowledge his father until Homer offers to let him hold the bomb. The two of them ride up the dome (remember he did this earlier at the carnival?) and throws the bomb out of the dome at the last minute. Springfield is saved.
Cute. I would have watched that on TV if I had nothing else going on. It's not like that would have been a major episode that everyone would be talking about on Monday. The environment was a minor character. It could be seen as a championed character or as a parodied character depending on which side of the recycling bin you stand on. If anything I think the religious people should be very happy about this movie. It shows that Homer is a poor father figure and shows Ned Flanders in a glowing light. It also has Grandpa Simpson's divine inspiration coming true. So, it was a good preachy episode but I am very glad I didn't pay for it. If you really want to be insulted, stick around for the credits. There are a couple of additional spots but the worst was the Simpson family getting up to leave the theatre. Maggie (Who has never spoken for the entire run of the show) starts to murmur. Marge gets excited and is ready for Maggie's first words. Maggie finally spits out the pacifier and says, "Sequel?" I couldn't believe how lame that was. Did the writers already leave the building? My dog drops better lines than that out of his ass. What a waste.
5 of 11 Skulls
Wednesday, 10-17
Like a cliche, it was a much better book than it was as a movie.
I normally describe the plot here but I'm lost as to which plot to describe. Do I tell you what I saw in the movie or do I tell you what I read in the book (although it was years ago) or do I put the two together and tell you what was in the movie and how it was supposed to be according to the book? I'll stick to the movie. Read the book yourself some time.
We see the life of a guy where the timeline is all disjointed and we keep switching back and forth from different time periods. I was going to suggest as if Tarantino had directed it but there was very little violence in this movie.
Billy has become unstuck in time. I'll give you the timeline in order but after you read it, put it in a blender and experience this guy's life out of order.
Billy is a poor soldier in WWII. He is captured and during the fighting one of the soldiers blames Billy for his death. Another soldier hears this and vows to avenge him and to kill Billy. The prisoners and taken to Dresden where it will be safe because there are no military targets. Another soldier is elected peer group leader and takes Billy under his wing to protect him from the vengeful soldier. Dresden is bombed and the prisoners are used to help sort out the dead bodies. The father-figure soldier is shot for looting a statue (teapot?) and that is about all we see of Billy in the war.
Now Billy is a young man getting married and starting a family. His wife is happy and his children are a handful but Billy is always distant from his family. He is traveling to a business meeting with his father-in-law (Boss Hogg from the Dukes of Hazzard) and the plane crashes. When the wife hears about the plane crash she gets in her car and drives to the hospital, three states away. She bangs up a lot of cars in her hysterical drive and eventually makes it to the hospital in time to die of carbon monoxide poisoning. Billy returns home as the sole survivor of the crash and his daughter is very worried about him. His rebellious son has joined the Army and has earned the Green Beret.
Here I skip in time because I'm not sure where this incarnation of Billy belongs. It would seem to follow his death and be some sort of afterlife but he is aware of this before he dies. Billy lives in a lab or a zoo on a distant planet where he is given a porn star and asked to mate with her. While in the zoo Billy learns about the fourth dimension of time and that fate is written. There is no need to change our lives because the events have already happened, even if they are in the future.
Last, we see Billy as an old man giving a speech to an auditorium about the inevitability of fate. He tells them that he will be killed tonight and that he has seen his own death but does not worry because there is nothing he could do to stop it. The vengeful soldier from WWII is in the crowd, pulls out his gun and kills Billy.
After writing this up I have come to the conclusion that maybe I need to go back and re-read the book. Maybe I'm the one who is screwed up. I seem to remember the book having the story as a fractured time with five consecutive alternate lives happening but that wouldn't explain the whole point of fate/free will and the futility of trying to change either. Maybe I missed the whole point when I read the book.
But the book was much better in its imagery. This movie was bland and boring. Partly because it was made over thirty five years ago but mostly because good sci-fi details are much more vivid read from the written page than they could ever be on a viewed screen.
It was a good movie, a much better book and although I thought I already liked it, maybe I need to go back and read it again. The story was a decent enough in its portrayal of time and fate but Billy never really developed. He was as bland as oatmeal in the beginning and the same at the end. It's hard to watch/read and story where the main character never changes. You could argue that he learned enough to accept his death with dignity but I would say that he was ready to accept his death in the beginning. He was a lame duck who never learned, developed or changed in any way that counts. Getting old and going grey should not be your life's greatest achievement.
5 of 11 Skulls
Wednesday, 10-17
Three lessons learned from this movie.
One: Isabella Rosallini can not sing. Hot actresses don't always make the best singers. Why her voice wasn't dubbed I'll never look up.
B: Naked is not hot when it involves a woman getting the crap beat out of her. I learned this lesson a long time ago but now the lesson has been reinforced a thousand fold.
Three: Not every movie that I've heard so much about but have yet to see, needs to be seen. This is one of the ones that lingered for so long and I finally watched it to see what all the fuss was about. I don't think I am alone in my summation of, "Ehhh"
WTF?! Might be a better review.
Young kid goes off to college. His father has taken very ill and the kid comes home to Smalltown USA. While home he stumbles upon a human ear lying in the grass. He takes it to the detective. The detective tells him thank you and leave it to the police. The kid decides to launch his own investigation with the help of the detective's daughter, Lele Sobieski. It was actually Laura Dern but 15 years later you wouldn't be able to tell the two of them apart.
The kids discover that a beautiful singer is involved. Her husband and child have been kidnapped by Frank (the bad guy) who is apparently involved in some kind of drug trade. The kid gets involved with the singer and watches from a closet as she is abused by Frank.
Frank is played by Dennis Hopper. He is constantly inhaling some mysterious gas that gets him high. He sexually abuses and then beats the singer (Isabella Rosallini) then leaves. The kid (Kyle MacLachlan) comes to her rescue and they have sex while she begs him to punch her.
The kid discovers that the detective's partner is part of the crime syndicate and rather than tell the police, he tries to solve the entire caper himself.
Kid is taken hostage by Frank and his gang and scared to death. He is left beaten but alive. Big shootout, good guys live, bad guys die, and peripheral good guys are wounded. The kid gets the girl and Smalltown USA goes back to normal.
For all the hype I've read about this movie I was not terribly impressed. Maybe it was a smash when it came out and these kinds of stories took place in the scary big city but if your only hook in your entire movie was that "bad things can happen in small towns" then your movie is weak.
4 of 11 Skulls
Last Updated: 12/21/07 12:47 a