Not a blog.

"I Know Who Killed Me" (but I wish I didn't) and "Ratatouille"

2007-07-31T22:30:00.000-07:00

Yes it's been ages since I've posted something but it takes some inspiration to write marvelous insights such as mine. Tonight I managed to see two films, each on one absolute extreme of the spectrum between "Who would seriously invest money in this film?" and "I wish I could create a film as amazing as this" that just happened to provide me with such inspiration. So anyway, on with the reading!

I Know Who Killed Me
This film is worse than you can imagine. I'm almost positive this film was made just so Lindsay Lohan could continue calling herself an actress in between drunk driving incidents and stints in rehab, as well as to pay for her coke and whatever else addiction. The film begins somewhere that is still unclear to me and never really sets a solid introduction point for the narrative, instead after a brief scene we get a scream and then a meaty "thwack" and that's kind of it. Anyway, Lohan really pushes the envelope of her acting ability as she plays two 18 year old girls; one girl lives the ideal white picket fence, upper-middle class life and the other a dirty stripper raised by a mom with a drug habit. Lohan, by her looks, is much more suited for the second. Imagining the girl that I'm seeing in this movie is the same girl from Mean Girls makes me understand how nasty substance abuse can be, Lohan looks like she's aged three decades rather than three years. While the film tries to play off whatever dwindling fanbase exists for Lohan, the scenes instead become comedic interludes where the filmmaker is flamboyantly proclaiming "Hey we have Lindsay Lohan in this movie, please give me money!"

Anyway, the movie progresses as we learn about the lives of these two girls and eventually we piece together a seedy murder plot from scattered points of straightforward exposition. At one juncture in the movie, the audience is actually subjected to watching a movie clip within the film that explains exactly what is happening, however, they make sure that you know the story you're being given directly is the "only reported case" and that what we're seeing in the current case is maybe only somewhat related, or something. Somewhere along this murder mystery we see brief stints reminiscent of "Hostel" where the audience gets quick glimpses of some sort of brutal, bloody activities. Continuing, eventually we begin to see Dakota (the stripper) being mistaken for Aubrey (the gifted child) and Dakota quickly slips into the sleuthing role of Nancy Drew to find out why everyone thinks she is Aubrey. While beginning this adventure down the rabbit hole that was Aubrey's life, Dakota begins having body parts begin to fall off, think the Black Knight scene from "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" but with the Black Knight not being struck by a sword. While you may think I'm exaggerating, I'm not. Go see it for yourself. Actually don't, instead go see "Kangaroo Jack," you'll have spent your time more wisely. Anyway, the film is highly predictable for anyone that's ever seen any sort of teen horror film and not in the "Oh man I bet I know who did it let's see what kind of crazy stuff happens" way but rather the "Well, let's see we're 3 minutes into the film and I know who the bad guy is, now I need to sit through an excruciating hour and a half of a cast of actors that sound like they were recruited from a local car dealership commercial." I was going to say a McDonalds' commercial but frankly I've seen better acting in commercials for McDonalds.

In the end the only saving grace was seeing Lohan being tortured a bit, kind of like Julia Stiles being killed in "The Omen" remake or Michelle Rodriguez dying in "Resident Evil." This is one of those movies that is so bad it's not even fun to make fun of, it has to be seen to make people believe how bad movies can be. I'm sure if subjected to watching this again I'd have plenty of things to say, however, unfortunately all my hate towards this movie left me once "Ratatouille" began. I'm not sure what I was expecting from someone whose directorial credits begin with "All Cheerleaders Die" on IMDb, but I'm fairly certain if I was given a choice between watching this movie again or having my limbs randomly fall off, I'd go with the second option.

Ratatouille
I have a major problem with Pixar, and specifically Brad Bird. Every time I sit down to see one of their films, as soon as it ends I think to myself "That's it, that's my favorite film from them. They've peaked and there's no way they can top themselves, kiss your perfect track record goodbye suckers." Without fail, they never meet this expectation of mine. Instead, they decide to shatter this thought the instant I set foot into a new release. As soon as this film begins you can tell these guys absolutely love what they're doing, they want to continue producing the absolute best films they can while still having loads of fun, and want absolutely everyone, from young children to adults, to share in their love of stories and film. While praise is often much harder than criticism, this film makes it absolutely impossible for me to provide anything other than compliments. "Ratatouille" continues this tradition of perfection with another brilliant story and even more stunning animation.

With Pixar films, you have a vague idea of what to expect. You'll always have the oddball of some sort with their best friend, some kind of love story in there, the wise older character that while seemingly harsh at the beginning always ends up with a heart of gold, and the most villainous villains that ever were created. However, with each new film, the team is able to create an entirely new cast of characters that changes these interactions enough that you don't care and it becomes something entirely new.

The story focuses around Remy, a rat with unique, advanced senses of smell and taste which leads him to constantly complain about the food the group eats and often leads him into dangerous situations to satisfy his palate. Emile is Remy's brother and best friend who doesn't seem to care much for the cooking side of things but is always dragged into these adventures because of his loyalty. Gusteau is a world famous chef that believes anyone can cook and provides inspiration for Remy, however, we only see him as a figment of Remy's imagination as he is dead before the movie begins. Linguini is a bumbling man that has a hard time holding down a job but manages to land one at Gusteau's restaurant based upon his mother's relationship with Gusteau. The film continues giving each character a quick biography that does a better job giving us a solid characterization of these cartoon characters. Quite succinctly, Pixar is able to do in 10 seconds what most films can't do in 30 minutes with their main character, which is craft an identifiable, unique character that the audience will recognize every time they see or hear them and will remember their quirks. Pixar is always able to do simple yet extremely clever things regarding their characters, such as naming the food critic Anton Ego (for those of you that aren't so quick, lookup "antagonist" and "egotism") who has earned himself a nickname of "The Grim Eater" for killing the careers of those chefs he dislikes and who does all his writing from a large, coffin shaped room. Reflecting his nickname and general disposition, Anton is a giant, gaunt, hunched character who looks like something out of "Nosferatu" while his eyes are as dark as those kids from "My Chemical Romance" that wear all that eye shadow.

Remy's love of food eventually gets him into a debacle which separates him from all of his family and friends, however, fortunately for him he lands in Paris, the city in the world which produces all the best food. Through an unlikely situation, Remy befriends Linguini and together they begin their cooking adventure (as well as Linguini's romance with Colette, the sole female chef in the kitchen) and I'd like to not give away much more of the plot because it is brilliantly written and a pleasure to watch unfold. The story is so wonderfully written that even though I know it's a Pixar film and things will work out for the best in the end, during those dark moments of suspense and the low points where the outlook always looks impossibly grim, I find myself doubting that I'll be leaving the theater with a smile. The ability to balance these lows with the ecstatically happy high points is what always makes me appreciate how truly talented the guys at Pixar are. Between the writing and the animation I find myself experiencing some kind of empathy with these cartoons. These animated characters are more full of life than most of today's stiff, cardboard cut out stars of cinema which, I think an overstatement is to call them "actors."

I absolutely loved this film, and one of the final cooking scenes will be burned into my mind as one of the most dazzling animated scenes I've ever seen. Films like this are what allow me to truly appreciate how amazingly awful a lot of films I settle for wasting my time with are.

Apocalypto

2007-03-26T21:19:00.000-07:00

When I threw on Apocalytpo I really had no idea what I was in for. All I remember reading from anything surrounding the film was that it was an exciting action movie which led me to think I was in for great things. An action movie that centered around the Mayan civilization, what could be cooler than that?!

As an aside, I'll state right now that I actually like Mel Gibson. Every time Braveheart is on TV I without fail end up leaving it on and watching it till the end. I've always thought he was an incredibly entertaining actor as well, between the Lethal Weapon series and films like Payback and The Patriot he always keeps me entertained. I have indeed seen The Passion of the Christ and frankly I didn't care for it because I just found it to be a mediocre, boring film. I've never really paid any attention to his outspoken, real life personality because frankly I find most celebrities are often completely misinformed or so biased about their topics it's funny and also have a habit of picking the most worthless causes possible to speak about. And now on with the review.

After finishing the film, the first thing I did was go online and read other reviews to see if I had missed anything involving the film and to get a general feel of other people's feelings towards the film. Two things that were consistent across all reviews and stuck out quite clearly:
1. The costumes, soundtrack, and acting in this film were great.
2. It's very polarizing, or rather, people either loved it or found it boring for the most part, there's very little middle ground.
I happened to fall into the group of people that found this movie incredibly boring. The film begins by setting up Jaguar Paw's (Rudy Younblood) family, friends, and village for 20 minutes. After that 20 minutes which gives just enough time to give the audience an idea of the village life but not nearly enough time to make the audience care or connect with any of the characters, they are attacked by a band of warriors that ends in a bloody mess. From there, the audience watches an hour long march (that could've easily been done in 5 minutes) to a massive Mayan temple. Here, where Mel could've given the audience some interesting insight into the little bit we know of the civilization and way of life, he instead skips to a long drawn out scene of human sacrifice which isn't all that thrilling or entertaining. Jaguar Paw escapes through a series of absurd and overt "deus ex machina" moments and eventually the film ends with 45 minutes of a small group of men chasing Jaguar Paw with more "deus ex machina" garbage. So to reiterate, the film is broken down into the attack on the village, an all-to-long death march to a Mayan temple, and an all-to-long chase scene.

One of the major criticisms I've found amongst reviewers is that in Gibson's films the gore is excessive. What I find amusing is that the gore is supposed to add to the realism, however, it often comes off looking very cartoonish and made me laugh. The gore in Braveheart I found to be necessary and that film involved much more blood than this one, so I had no problem with it. I actually, at points, found it amazing that more blood and gore were not used, as I imagine when you cut open someone's stomach using a knife made of rock and rip out their heart there would be plenty of blood. Another criticism is that the facts involving Mayan civilization were virtually absent, and this is very apparent to anyone that has ever done any sort of research or reading regarding the civilization. While I love the civilization and was fairly upset at how it was portrayed initially, eventually I got over it by reminding myself this is a film and a work of fiction and not a documentary. What was silly to me, however, was that Gibson uses the native language (such as he did in TPotC) to ensure realism, however, any research done on the civilization must've been thrown out the window. Finally, I don't understand what was "visually stunning" about this film as often the shots looked pretty bland or poorly presented as though it was someone's directorial debut.

One of the most notable things I found about this film, was that for an epic, it lacked any sort of grandiosity. There were no memorable speeches (heck there was very little dialogue through the entire film), almost no memorable, breathtaking shots, and no hero that you actually cared about if he lived or died. It actually took me several minutes to figure out who the hero in the film was, until finally Gibson decided to add in the little plot of Jaguar Paw's pregnant wife and child. Oh yes, during the attack on the village, Jaguar Paw hides them in a well (whom we revisit several times through out the film only to see them sitting around not doing much, think the queen subplot in 300), which is when I finally figured out who the hero was and from then on was bored because I knew he wasn't going to die anytime soon. The complete disconnect between myself and any of the characters ever presented on screen was by far the most off-putting thing about this movie for me. I could not engage or empathize with any of the situations as the whole time I just found myself bored because I had absolutely no emotional attachment to any of the characters. Finally, the other problem I had with the film was that the action scenes were incredibly slow and flat out boring. Gibson never gives you a sense that the pack of warriors are closing in on Jaguar Paw in the last chase scene, never really presents any sort of suspense at any point during the chase, spends far too much time just focusing on one person running, and the fighting is virtually non-existant except for a few moments that look like something straight out of MacGyver.

The only saving grace of this film were the completely absurd, arbitrary, and sudden explosive acts of violence that, as I stated earlier, actually didn't involve all that much gore. For a film that has this listing on IMDb "Plot Keywords: Stabbed In The Chest / Blow Pipe / Shot Through The Mouth / Hunter / Fall From Height" I could not have fathomed how you could make the action uninteresting, but Gibson does it. I "get" the ideas that people are violent and I understand the (laughably horrendous) ending, I just found this movie to be poop.

When A Stranger Calls

2007-03-09T12:33:00.000-08:00

I know this film is old news now, but it's been on my list of movies to view ever since Mr. Neville recommended it to me and today I finally got around to watching it. All I can say is, wow! This film was everything I expected and more!

The film is a remake of a 1979 film, however, with obvious updates to ensure that today's modern teenagers would be able to relate to the heroine Jill Johnson (Camilla Belle). The plot of the film is very simple and does not require much exposition or logical sense, and as such the film delivers on this as well. Jill Johnson is grounded for going over her minutes on her cell phone and therefore will not be able to attend the big bonfire where apparently the entire high school travels to a local hillt0p location which manages to kill every student's cell phone signal and burns a huge straw effigy in some sort of voodoo ritual where underage drinking and streaking are acceptable and so is the high school marching band prancing around playing. Instead, Jill babysits for a the family of a doctor and begins receiving strange calls. These strange calls quickly evolve from heavy breathing to statements which quickly inform Jill she is being watched and shortly thereafter letting her know her life is in danger.

The film opens with a brilliant scene of quick cuts of a carnival (because everyone knows carnivals are essential for the teen-horror genre since they're the scariest places ever) together with a random house that ends in a scream. A quick scene of a police investigation informs the audience that the people in the house were murdered most horrifically. The great thing about this opening sequence, however, is that we don't really care about them as they're never mentioned again, none of the police investigators are heard from or seen again, and the town where Jill Johnson lives is 125 miles away (yes, the film tells you that exact number).

After the opening sequence, the audience discovers that Jill's best friend Tiffany kissed her boyfriend and now they are fighting which is the cause for Jill going over her cell phone minutes. Might I interject, at this point, that the film is full of brilliant, humorous little interchanges and quips. Two of these specifically stick out in my mind. The first occurs between a police officer and a random investigator in the beginning, which goes something like this:
Policeman: "Hey Hanz, growin' a beard."
Police Investigator: "Yes, I am."
Policeman: "It makes you look um..."
Police Investigator: "Old and fat, I know I've heard."

The other occurs during the scenes in the high school between Jill and her friend Scarlet.
Scarlet: "Guys, this is so high school."
Jill: "Scarlet we're in high school."

Brilliant! Anyway, after the audience receives a brilliant 10 minutes of exposition which prove to be completely worthless they receive a 15 minute tour of one of the most expensive houses with the absolute poorest lighting possible. For the rest of the film, the audience is treated to viewing 45 minutes of viewing Jill sitting on the couch from different angles, 35 minutes of Jill slowly creeping through dark corridors (which director Simon West ensured were shot with the proper lenses to create the illusion they were miles long), and 5 minutes of unimpressive action towards the end. Through out this whole film, the entire soundtrack consists of random ambient noises, heavy breathing, and phone static.

I must say, however, that Jill is a mighty interesting character to examine. At the beginning she is very upset that Tiffany kissed her boyfriend, mad enough that she won't even talk to her. Hours later as she begins to get harassed, however, it takes only a single sentence from Tiffany to change her mind and reconcile them. Jill manages to continue these schizophrenic episodes through out the film, as she goes from recoiling in horror at every noise in the house to attempting to bait the stalker into a conversation which must last for 60 seconds in a matter of minutes. Through out her stay in the house she is consistently feared for her life, however, she is willing to slink through the shadows in attempt to discover her pursuer and at one time is even willing to run through the stormy night in her t-shirt and jeans wielding a phone, heavy metal object (I couldn't see what since the lighting was too poor) and a flashlight.

Yes, this film had everything I expected and more. It managed to avoid any violence altogether and had absolutely no T&A (clothed or not) which allowed to it to maintain its precious PG-13 rating which is so hard to achieve today. I truly believed that absolutely nothing would happen in this film and I was not let down, absolutely nothing happened.

This film is exemplary in its ability to rank as one of the absolute worst teen horror/thriller flicks I have ever seen in my entire life. It managed to take all the worst parts of the teen horror genre formula and twist them into something that I did not think was even possible. The ending could not have wrapped up this film more spectacularly. This is one of those films that is able to be crowned "so bad it's good" to such an extreme that I am actually on my way over to Best Buy now to pick it up on DVD because I honestly feel that any fan of horror films or film in general as an art ought to own this.

Fast Food Nation

2007-03-07T11:05:00.000-08:00

Now to begin, I need to clear something up. I'm not exactly a "smart" guy. I don't read "books." I'm not exactly "literate." If something can't be said by a fat orange cat in a three-panel comic strip in the newspaper authored by Jim Davis, I don't want to know about it. Therefore, every time I hear of a best seller or any extraordinarily popular book being thrown into a film adaptation, I do a little dance. Where as books-on-tape you actually need to listen and interpret what is happening, often film further allows you to sit back and basically shut down most of your mental processes. After hearing so much buzz about this book "Fast Food Nation" I was thrilled to hear it was being made into a film. I was hoping it might be a form of docu-fiction, sort of like Michael Moore likes to build in his films, except it wouldn't masquerade behind a documentary style of filmmaking. I hoped it would be as hard-hitting as "Super Size Me" which blew the cover off fast food and taught me that fast food isn't healthy if that's all you rely on for a diet (which is the polar opposite of your normal meals involving minimal meat consumption) while quitting your daily habits of any form of routine exercise.

The last two films I've seen directed by Richard Linklater were "A Scanner Darkly" and "Bad News Bears." "Bad News Bears" is an experience I prefer to block out of my mind as I think I would've rather asked Jack Bauer to spend an hour and a half torturing me than think about that film. I decided to give Linklater another chance after "Bad News Bears" and ventured to "A Scanner Darkly" which is another book-to-film adaptation. I actually enjoyed it. Instead of just being a film relying on the gimmick of rotoscoping which I felt "Waking Life" was, the technique added to the surreal feel of the story. I decided to delve into another Linklater venture of "Fast Food Nation" without having read the book hoping to have the whole thing summed up to me in two hours.

The film is broken into three stories that have the connection of Mickey's (the fictional restaurant in the film) fast food franchise. The first segment involves a group of Mexicans, including Raul (Wilmer Valderrama), illegally crossing the border to come to America searching for their dream life. The next segment involves top marketing executive Don Henderson (Greg Kinnear) investigating reports that "There's shit in the meat." Finally, the third storyline revolves around Amber (Ashley Johnson) whose widow mother (Patricia Arquette) is always drinking or going out on dates and receives a surprise visit from her uncle Pete (Ethan Hawke).

Based upon these three storylines and what I learned in the film, I think I can break down the evils of fast food into five points:
1. Illegally crossing the border from Mexico to America is dangerous.
2. Illegal immigrants get bad jobs that are often dangerous, disgusting, and underpaid.
3. Executives in the fast food franchises care about profit and nothing else.
4. Teenagers don't like their jobs.
5. Cows are killed so that people can eat beef.

I'm not sure exactly what "truths" were supposed to be uncovered in this film, so let's explore some of these. I'm not campaigning for political office, so I'm going to leave all opinions and ideas out of this involving illegal immigration, but needless to say I'm pretty sure everyone understands that illegally crossing the border from Mexico to America is not going to be an easy adventure. Next, the higher-ups at Mickey's in the film are the epitome of capitalism and it's what our society and country was founded upon; no "truths" revealed yet. Following that, teenagers have almost always hated their jobs and future generations of teens will probably continue having the same abysmal jobs. I stocked dog food for three months as a teenager at a pet supplies store, how come I don't get my own storyline in a movie? Again, we are still waiting for a "truth" to come out. Finally, the film uses real footage of a meat-packing plant including segments from the dreaded "kill floor." Audiences will see footage of cows getting their throats cut, the removal of limbs, skin being ripped from the muscle, disembodied heads, and organs flowing down a trough. Again I don't know what "truth" this is revealing besides the fact that cows, like every other animal we eat, need to be gutted and cleaned before ingestion. The meat still seems cleaner than many other forms of food you can find around which films such as "Fight Club" and "Waiting" have graphically portrayed.

The only intelligent point of the film involves uncle Pete explaining to Amber that if you're stuck in a small town and in a job you hate, you should probably do everything in your power to change that situation. In the end it felt like a propaganda film for PETA with no new "truths" to me, yet I can easily see this being a "shocking and revealing" film for many Americans, specifically groups that thought "Fahrenheit 9/11" was a mind-blowing documentary that was cause for a revolution, to chat about. If nothing else, I must say that the cast was excellent in their acting and I actually did begin to buy into the characters, but it was more like having a friend that consistently makes stupid decisions and you want to explain to them everything they are doing is wrong.

Also, for no reason revealed, Greg Kinnear likes to watch porn in the movie.

The Perry Bible Fellowship

2006-07-23T00:02:00.000-07:00

I've kept this comic my personal secret for long enough and I've decided to finally share it with all of you whom are so near and dear to me. If you want to read the bio or find any other fun information, go here and click around: http://70.86.201.113/imageserv2/stilltemporary/index.html It's a temporary site while it switches servers, but still has all the content.

The archive of all the comics is located here: http://70.86.201.113/imageserv2/stilltemporary/archive.html

I suggest you go to the bottom of the comics and begin working your way up so they are in chronological order.

If you don't "get" any of the comics, chances are you're either 1. Overthinking the whole strip and should just look for what's obvious, or 2. Missing one of the major details that makes the whole thing funny. I "get" and find funny every single strip, so if you don't understand one just let me know and I'll be happy to explain it to you.

Some of my favorites are "Deal with the Devil," "Instant Bacon," "Skub," ...the list just goes on and on. In fact, if you've taken the 2 minutes to look through at least 10 of the strips and haven't at least chuckled or found something humorous enough to keep you reading, you're a terrible person and need to re-evaluate your sense of humor.

Midsummer update festival!

2006-07-11T23:51:00.000-07:00

Well, I've been short of time as of late and short on motivation for writing, however, I decided to do a comprehensive update 0f sorts tonight. So let's begin as I know you've all been waiting with baited breath for me to return.

First off, this post gives me a reason to post this gif I made recently.

I watched the entire "Are You Afraid of the Dark?" series this summer over the course of a few weeks and this is the only episode that weirded me severely out. There are a few that still get to me and bring back nightmarish images from my childhood, but this doll is the bane of my existence. Even making the gif from the movie took all my might. I recall posting about the glory days of Nickelodeon, and this show is one of the programs that occurred during these times. This show would never be allowed on today, probably most of the "SNICK" shows wouldn't, however, this one was different. This was a sort of "Twilight Zone" for kids, except every once in a while they'd come up with a horrible, mind-twisting, spine-shivering freakish episode that would make you be thankful you had a week before the next one. This episode is by far the worst for me, however, because I fucking hate dolls and a lifesize doll talking in a little girl's voice weirds me out for some reason. The lifeless stare and incredible awkward walking motion combined with the perfect atmosphere in the episode make me cringe everytime I see it. Not only does the episode combine an incredibly freaky basement with weird old-timey music, but it also ends on an incredibly sadistic note which (I'm going to spoil it so stop reading if you don't want to know) leads you to believe that the kid that discovers the evil power of the radio is going to fucking feed his neighbor, a bully, to the demonic forces within.

So yes, "Are You Afraid of the Dark?" is one of those pieces of nostalgia that you figure would be boring and trite when revisited, however, upon watching it it's still an incredible show and I can only hope that it's eventually put on DVD and hopefully end up having kids of my own that I can traumatize with this brilliant show.

Next up, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest. This is a hot topic right now and I figure I should tackle it. I've seen plenty of movies this summer, however, not even Superman or The Da Vinci Code were hyped and anticipated as much as this film. I want to begin this film by saying I really enjoy and love the first film, I find it funny, entertaining, and overall the epitome of what a summer blockbuster film should be. I did not, however, see the movie till well into it's release and the only draw for me was Keira Knightley as I absolutely am in love with her as everyone that knows me can vouche for. I was surprised to see how many people had been going to the film and decided I should jump in as I had been cleaning it for weeks and just rocking out to the fun score by Klaus Badelt. Once I saw it, I decided I enjoyed the movie and after multiple viewings on DVD I still enjoy the movie.

After random delays, I finally managed to see this movie the other night after hearing both sides of "I really liked it!" and "Nothing happened!" Going into this movie knowing full well who the forces were behind the film and knowing who had concocted this trilogy, I was expecting to be spoonfed more of the same from the first one. And what I got, was exactly more of the first one. I completely agree that not much happened through out the film, and a lot of the entertaining sword fights had been removed, and a trivial "plot," if you can call it that was created, however, in the end I still enjoyed it. I wanted to see pirates, an incredibly good-looking Keira Knightley (and jeez did she look good in this one, whoever did her boob make-up shading in this one must've been practicing between shoots), and pirates.

To criticize this film for being whipped together quickly solely to make money, "the soul of a cash machine" -Duane Dudek from the Journal-Sentinel, is one of the most asinine claims I've ever heard in my entire life. In basic film class I took at college which immediately ranks me as an expert on the subject, one of the first things they state in the class is that "Every piece of cinema is created as an economic venture." While that is definitely an objectionable statement, it stands very true for every piece of commercial cinema, independent or not, that is released in theaters and reaches a broad audience. Next, did he not realize that the first film was created solely based off a popular ride from Disneyland and therefore was created to cash-in on this popular attraction even if it was solely to hitch onto the household name? The first film had just as much the soul of a cash machine as this one, hell it's Disney, what else would you expect?

The other major criticism is that "nothing happened." I totally agree with this statement. However, I understood that going in this film was going to be the one that was forced to be the whipping boy for a trilogy to be created out of a film that wasn't originally written as an entrance to a trilogy. I expected a bridge and a lead up to a third film and that's exactly what I got. I was pretty much going in knowing that this film should be considered Pirates 2 (part 1) and that's exactly what it is. This may infuriate some people and cause people to throw out any shred of respect they had for my opinion, however, I feel that I really need to reserve judgement of the film until I'm able to view the third one. The film you can tell has all the flash and is basically all spectacle with absolutely no substance, however, what else can you really expect from a summer blockbuster? It had plenty of jokes and things that had me chuckling similar from the first one and I can assure you there was no forced laughter coming from me, and I also enjoyed seeing money being blown on huge sea monsters attacking ship crews, however, I really would have liked to see more of the Kraken rather than just tentacles flailing everywhere. The third one, I would expect, would have the Kraken finally being defeated (hopefully) and (hopefully) an incredibly awesome, large scale battle where Davey Jones unleashes everything he possibly can against the crew of the Black Pearl and Tortuga and what not.

In the end, I felt that the film was a standard middle film of a trilogy. Besides The Empire Strikes Back and The Temple of Doom it's hard for me to think of a second film in a trilogy I've ever really enjoyed. That said, Temple of Doom is definitely my least favorite of the three Indian Jones films. "But what about The Two Towers?" you might ask yourself. I'll say this flat out, and not as a fact but flat out as an opinion. I enjoyed it the least, just like I did with the books, out of the three and while the film may have solid starting and ending points, I feel exactly the same way I felt about Pirates 2 and that is that it's just a massive build up to the third portion.

I hope everyone is watching It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia because I just got caught up on the last 2 episodes and that show is by far one of the most hilarious shows I've seen in a long time.

Finally, on to music news since I left that list of 10 bands in the dust a while ago. To pick it back up, I'll write small blurbs about three bands I deeply, deeply love.

The Lawrence Arms and Tuesday - Yes, more punk. And I know punk is dead and punk isn't real music and punk doesn't take any real talent to play and is technically boring. Well fuck you too buddy! The Lawrence Arms are a band from Chicago and I've got a long history with them. The bassist, Brendan Kelly, was in a ska-punk band called Slapstick in the early/mid 90s with a bunch of amazing musicians, most notably Dan Andriano and Rob Kellenberger. Shortly after graduating high school, the band split and Dan and Rob went on to form Tuesday while Brendan went on to form The Broadways. Tuesday played a melodic form of punk rock that most people today would classify as "indie rock with emo influences" while The Broadways continued with a more gritty, punk rock style similar to Jawbreaker. What's interesting, in my opinion, is that Slapstick has a pretty clear split in their lyrics, half being written about regret, love, personal experiences, and other high school junk while other songs are written about political opinions and critiques of modern society. The former were almost always written by Dan Andriano and the latter almost always by Brendan Kelly. When the bands split, it's obvious who wrote which because Tuesday's songs are all about girls and The Broadways are all about corruption in governments, critiques of the education, the government, and all sorts of things in society. Unlike many punk bands, however, The Broadways were actually literate, did research, and held opinions backed by strong arguments rather than just screaming "FUKKEN ANARCHY DUDES FUKK DA SYSTEM." Anyway, these two bands eventually depleted as well and...let me stop here for a second. I'm going to list a bunch of bands and you're not going to care, but someone might so I'm going to do it anyway. These bands all contained or were created by members of Slapstick:

Tuesday, The Broadways, Colossal, Duvall, The Lawrence Arms, The Falcon, Alkaline Trio, Less Than Jake, The Honor System, The Smoking Popes, The Chinkees, Tricky Dick

If you've heard of any of those bands, good on you! Anyway, Dan went on to join Alkaline Trio and still remains with them, while Rob Kellenberger has gone on to do a billion other projects, and Brendan went on to form The Lawrence Arms. The Lawrence Arms continued the lyrical ramblings of Brendan Kelly, however, Chris from The Broadways finally started to balance the grating voice of Brendan with a smoother side that most people consider the "emo" side of the band. Nuts to that I say, anyone that considers emo bands like My Chemical Romance needs to seriously do some research or else have a little pow-wow with me and let me ramble. Anyways, basically The Lawrence Arms are much more accessible than The Broadways but just as angry, intelligent, and fun to listen to.

Tuesday, on the other hand, really didn't reach much of an audience. After their first EP, they released their only LP which is incredibly melodic, really slowed down, and in general just fucking awesome. I've never really been able to squeeze them into a genre which is one of the reasons I really love their stuff. I could go on for days about this band but I'm tired and want to sleep. If you really care, you can drop me a line and I could do an entire update about either of these bands.

Dan and Brendan have recently gotten back together in a project called The Falcon which combines elements of Tuesday with The Lawrence Arms and right now they've only got an EP out, however, it's totally rad and they're releasing a full-length this fall called "Unicornology" which is a kickass name and I'm incredibly excited for it.

Anyway, both bands were introduced to me by my brother when I was a wee lad and I've basically grown up with them, so there's a major nostalgia connection with them both.

For more information, here are two Wikipedia links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lawrence_Arms
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuesday_%28band%29

Don Caballero - Abso-fucking-lutely incredible. Damon Che is one of the best rock drummers ever, and he recently reformed the band and I was finally able to catch them live. It was the best drumming performance I've seen since Hella, and equally as mind blowing. The band started with a much darker, metal influence math-rock (another complicated term that upsets me and we can discuss it over some tea, an abacus, and many sighs of frustration from me) but in their later albums turned to crazy guitar noodling continuing increasingly mind-blowing drumming. If you're going to give them a shot, listen to the full song. Many of them are 5 or more minutes long and can turn into something completely different from what the song started out at. I can't even begin to describe this band besides saying that everyone should at least give them a try to see what bands are out there that they're missing out on. Also, if you're ever around any hipsters or that cute, shy, artsy girl in your philosophy lecture and you get to talking about music, name-drop this band and she'll instantly fall in love with you.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Caballero

As always, the best way to form an opinion of these bands is to ignore everything I've said and just listen to a few songs for yourself. Here are some of my favorites, which isn't really true because just about everything these bands have released is incredible I just picked the first handful of songs that happened to come up. I really urge you to just take 20 minutes or so and sit down and check out at least one song by each band. As always, I've bolded the songs that I could lose my hearing except being allowed to hear these songs at least once a day and still be happy.

Don Caballero - American Don - Details On How To Get ICEMAN On Your License Plate
Don Caballero - American Don - Fire Back Aout Your Baby's New Sex
Don Caballero - American Don - The Peter Criss Jazz
Don Caballero - For Respect - Nicked and Liqued
Don Caballero - World Class Listening Problem - I Agree...No!...I Disagree
Don Caballero - What Burns Never Returns - Slice Where You Live Like Pie
The Lawrence Arms - The Greatest Story Ever Told - Alert The Audience!
The Lawrence Arms - A Guided Tour Of Chicago - Detention
The Lawrence Arms - Apathy And Exhaustion - Boatless Booze Cruise (Part 1)
The Lawrence Arms - Apathy And Exhaustion - Navigating The Windward Passage
The Lawrence Arms - Oh! Calcutta! - Great Lakes/Great Escapes
The Lawrence Arms - Oh! Calcutta! - The Devil's Takin' Names
Tuesday - Free Wheelin' - Disappear
Tuesday - Free Wheelin' - My Mess
Tuesday - Free Wheelin' - Sixty-Eight
Tuesday - Free Wheelin' - Everything Left Out

Chances are you didn't like any of that, and if so, well then fuck you because I do! Well, that about wraps it up for now. I figured I'd like to put out an update so I just typed this flat out in a matter of minutes and I'm sure it's full of typos, incoherency, and any humor that may have been present in previous posts is now absent, but I don't care because I'm tired and want to go have a nice cup of warm milk, hang up my booties, and cuddle with my pillow.

A brief essay on feminism.

2006-05-04T14:30:00.000-07:00

I'm interrupting my 10 bands list because frankly I'm swamped with the end of school and finally I've decided something has motivated me enough to write a rant. Feel free to comment on it at any time and share it to any one you think would be interested in it, I'm always interested in feed back, and I realized I had anonymous posting turned off so now it's back on. Well...let's begin!

I have absolutely no problem with feminism. According to dictionary.com, the definition of feminism is "Belief in the social, political, and economic equality of the sexes." I find the concept to be absolutely wonderful as I am essentially a hippie egalitarian. I think everyone should have equal rights until they have given people just cause to remove or limit their rights. The concept of feminism is perfectably acceptable as a theory, just as acceptable as the concept of Communism.

I do, however, have a problem with femists. To begin, the term "feminist" is of itself rather hypocritical. "Feminists" often claim that they do not enjoy being labelled by others as they feel it demeans women. Similarly, they do not enjoy when people make broad generalizations about women as it removes their individuality and does not take all aspects of each person into account. By applying the term "feminist" to oneself, however, they are labelling themself and placing themself into a category, therefore doing exactly what they are trying to revolt against. On this same note, feminists, in my experience, despise generalizations especially when a man makes a remark involving all women. Feminists, however, have no problem using the generalization of the term "men" when discussing the patriarchal society that has oppressed and is oppressing them. Thus, they feel they are granted a privelege that allows them to make generalizations while people of the opposite gender are not, therefore creating a double standard. A double standard is inherently contradictory to any form of equality and therefore females that call themselves "feminists" are essentially misandrists trying to overturn a society founded upon patriarchy into a matriarchal based society, or rather simply they do not want equality they want women to be the dominant force in society.

This desire by "feminists" leads to many illogical, asinine demands that asks for all the rights of men and more, but does not entail any of the responsibility. For example, in 1998 Karla Tucker was the first woman in Texas ever to be sentenced to the electric chair. The outcry against this execution was not simply anti-death penalty people proclaiming the electric chair was evil, they were simply against executing a woman. Regardless of whether you agree with the death penalty or not, the woman committed a crime a male would've been executed for and there would have been minimal to no outcry against it, as it is with most executions. Instead, it was purely based on the fact she was a woman. If women want equal rights, why are they not willing to accept equal responsibility? Another personal example was a video I watched junior year of high school I still remember vividly. The video was about a group of feminists that argued that the physical requirements the fire department had in place for its firefighter training course discriminated against women. These "feminists" were demanding that females should have a separate, gender specific set of physical requirements. They did not realize that in the case of an emergency, perhaps a 250 pound person would not drop 75 pounds and lower themselves in the building a few stories solely because the firefighter attempting the rescue was a women. This issue stuck with me because it does not discriminate against women based on an inane argument that consists of something like "women are emotional and can't handle the stress of the job," it was simply that women could not meet the demands imposed upon everyone and therefore decided it would be equal to make the requirements for the genders unequal.

Criticizing women that enjoy dressing up, shaving, and doing things that are essentially considered "normal" by society's gender roles does not mean that a woman is not low on self-esteem or conforming to patriarchal society. Not shaving your legs and getting a unisex haircut does nothing to promote equality and if anything just furthers the divide between genders. Frankly, by doing these things it furthers the "feminist" stereotype and does even more to make men, and many women, look down upon self-proclaimed "feminists" leaving them further from their goal.

I have met a few women that I would indeed call feminists and they would be willing to accept that label. They understand that with equal rights comes equal responsibility. It is the self-proclaimed "feminists" that often take a wonderful idea and misconstrue its meaning into something that advocates exactly the opposite of its intention, similar to the idea of "straight edge." I agree that often it is the fanatical, vocal majority that give the entire idea a bad rap, however, you can easily counter this by having rational, logical discussions with people and reaffirm our belief that there are still people out there that understand the concept and don't bother talking the talk, they just walk the walk.

In the end, my stance is this: If you advocate feminism, that's fine, but do so in a rational, logical way. If you want the rights, take the respsonsibility.

I don't know really know what I was trying to accomplish with this post but frankly a couple classes at this university along with a lot of ignorant girls promoting women's empowerment by ranting about how men ruin society in many classes forced me to express my ideas through some outlet and this was the most readily available.

The Descendents - or - All punk sounds the same and it all sucks.

2006-04-27T19:12:00.000-07:00

The Descendents/ALL - There is so much I could say about this band that I could probably sit here and rant for ages, but instead I'll just try and keep it straight and to the point of what makes this band incredible. I've been putting off which band to start with because frankly it's a daunting task trying to type everything out about this band I want to, so I'm just going to do the best I can after doing a 45 minute presentation on transvestites, a 10 minute presentation on the divided-self in Victorian novels, and typing a 6 page paper on the representation of Mercutio in Baz Luhrmann's "Romeo + Juliet."

When you hear the term pop-punk nowadays, you probably think of some crappy band that looks like they were put together on "Making The Band" where the members wear too much mascara and play a horribly poppy, watered down version of up-tempo rock with a bit of punk influence. Think pretty much any band on the Drive-Thru Records label.

In the late 70's/early 80's, this was not the case. The Ramones had released their self-titled album in 1976 and the Sex Pistols released "Never Mind The Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols" in 1977. Regardless of which band you feel "started" punk, the genre of music known as "punk" officially blossomed to the public in those two years. The aim of those bands was to play loud and fast while expressing your anger at whatever government was in control of your country at the time or the inequalities of social institutions. The music spoke to thousands of angry, angsty teenagers at the time just waiting to express their frustration. Four of these kids were Milo Aukerman, Bill Stevenson, Karl Alvarez, and Stephen Egerton.

The four high school kids, all around age 17, formed a band based around "rejection, food, coffee, girls, fishing, and food" and decided they would use music as their outlet. They eventually would become one of the best punk bands ever and release a solid list of albums as well as tours for nearly 30 years.

Ok, thanks for the biographical info (if you want to read more just check the Biography on their homepage), what makes them special? At the time when the Sex Pistols were shouting "Anarchy in the UK" and The Ramones were doing the "Bliztkrieg Bop," the Descendents took the energy of punk music and decided they didn't want to change the world, they wanted to sing about what they knew. They took the pop melodies that they liked to jam out to, the frenetic speed and energy of punk, and topped them off with lyrics full of teen angst and humor. The band wasn't a bunch of big, mohawked punk rockers with dyed green liberty spikes walking around the hall. They were the nice, quiet, nerdy guys with glasses getting A's in all their classes that would go jump around in the pit looking for a way to vent their frustrations. While most bands were writing lyrics solely to distinguish one song from the next, the Descendents were putting genuine feelings into what they were singing about.

The result is that they were one of the first "pop-punk" bands ever and released one of the greatest punk albums ever written around the time they were all 18, "Milo Goes To College."

Alright, enough of the stupid biographical information, hopefully you understand their context now, what makes me love them so much? Well, when you're a geeky, suburban, middle-class, angsty high school student that is just starting to discover punk rock and you hear a band ranting about everything you're experiencing, it's pretty easy to identify with them. Back when Napster was first developing and I was first beginning to get into punk rock, I stumbled upon the song "I'm Not A Loser." I immediately fell in love and tried to get my hands on everything that I could find. I bought "Milo Goes To College" and to this day it's still one of my favorite albums ever, the song "Bikeage" ranks as one of my top 5 songs ever. Everything I sat through in high school wishing I could rant about to the people in my school, I found The Descendents to have vocalized my frustrations not only with words, but with kickass melodic pop-punk. I spent many years catching up on the back catalogue of stuff they'd released, and then realized that they were still releasing albums. That fed me with plenty of The Descendents to keep me busy for a while, but when I had finally listened to everything, I began digging around. I then discovered that the band ALL is basically The Descendents without Milo. ALL is an excellent band, don't get me wrong, they've written a lot of incredibly good songs, but Milo just completes the quartet.

So yes, the Descendents defined a lot of my teenage years, even now when I listen to certain songs I can remember driving my '88 Toyota Corolla around my little suburban areas rocking out to this band that I felt was able to see directly into my head. The band was able to sing about how I may not be going out to a party one weekend, but it was a choice, I embraced my nerdiness; I didn't want to be one of the spoiled jerks at my school and I didn't want to associate with them. The great thing about the band, however, is that while I was growing up and graduating from high school, the guys in the band had moved past that point so I could grow up as they were growing up. As you can see in the Milo Goes To College album cover, most of the album covers feature the same structure, a cartoon sketch of Milo and the covers are incredibly simple, just the name of the band, album title, and different sketch of Milo. Some people hate it, I find it totally fitting for the band. They consistently rank as one of my favorite bands, and easily my favorite band that ranks in any band related to the "punk" category.

Now, I know many, many people hate punk rock because it all sounds the same. This is because when a band like The Descendents comes around, they influence so many people that they spawn hundreds of imitators. Then these imitators spawn imitators which are even worse and basically what you are left with is a bunch of crappy bands that have only peripherally heard the name of the band that created what they're trying to mimic. Every band that tries to play some form of pop-punk and sings about personal experience or self-deprecation, those bands a good portion to the founding fathers and pioneers of that style, The Descendents. Most people will listen to The Descendents and find them to be nothing special at all, but remember that the pop-punk you were hearing in 1998, The Descendents were doing that, except better, and 20 years ago. Now, they were widely influenced by many other bands around the time such as The Buzzcocks, but I feel that The Descendents did it best, and many other people would agree with me. I can't make the statement "The Descendents founded pop-punk," but they were some of the pioneers and were massively influential on hordes of bands.

They've got an incredibly large, solid following, if anyone says they listen to "punk" and doesn't know who The Descendents are, they probably think Blink 182's self-titled album is the best album they've ever heard and purely has bad taste therefore you should never discuss music around them again unless you're forcing them to listen to something worthwhile. The Descendents' early stuff is fairly abrasive, however, their later albums are loaded with catchy riffs that most people people can tolerate. The band is hugely influential and widely popular with anyone that listens to any form of punk rock, chances are you've heard me mention them or have heard their name in passing somehwere.

Even if you are a steady believer in hating punk rock, such as my friend Jeff, I think you should give this a spin. He heard me jamming to "Milo Goes To College" and now it has a fairly permanent spot on his iPod, or at least that's what he tells me.

I think that most people are too lazy to go look up any band I mention here and I can't possibly say enough good things about these bands. so I think it's best if people just give them a listen and decide for themselves. Anyway, since I am serious about trying to get people to listen to some of the bands I want to rant about, I figure I'll put some links up to some of my favorite songs so all you need to do to listen is to click one link.

The Descendents - ALL - Coolidge
The Descendents - Milo Goes To College - Marriage
The Descendents - Everything Sucks - Everything Sux
The Descendents - Milo Goes To College - Bikeage
ALL - Allroy Sez - Hooidge
ALL - Mass Nerder - Perfection
ALL - Allroy's Revenge - Box

(yes, there is a recurring theme of songs ending in "age" or "idge" or any suffix that produces a similar sound)

10 bands you should make sure you've heard in your life...

2006-04-22T10:44:00.000-07:00

Let's start this off with something of a disclaimer. I listen to music. I mean, I listen to a lot of music. I listen to music pretty much any chance I get. This also means that when I discovered the internet and Napster back on my 56k in my early days of high school, I began finding all sorts of new, fun bands. This also means that whenever I mention a band I really like they've heard of them and they rarely talk about music I care about or enjoy. When I do mention a band, I get told they're too underground and no one knows about them but me, and when I criticize other people's tastes, I am an elitist. I understand I am not an authority on the subject, in fact I think anyone that considers themself an authority on music (with the exception of possibly Steve Albini) is probably a worthless shmuck.

As my collection has grown over the years, so has my quest in the world to introduce people to new music. This is not a "YOUR BAND SUCKS" post and I understand most people in the world don't really care about the music they listen to, if they did bands like The Pussycat Dolls would not exist. Ok, that was a cheap shot. I simply get some kind of sick pleasure from introducing people to new bands they really enjoy because I remember the feeling of discovering bands that eventually would become some of my favorites, hence the reason for this post. I like introducing people to new music, and as such I hope you, my faithful reader, will take the time to at least listen to one or two songs by each band I mention.

This is not a "Top 10" list, rather this is just merely a list, in absolutely no particular order, of bands that I find incredibly enjoyable and talented. It seems like everyone that I used to discuss music with now gets all their news from www.pitchforkmedia.com and takes the reviews and opinions like it's some sort of indie rock Bible. I really don't care about the latest electro-no-wave-bliss-pop-shoegaze band. I find much more enjoyment out of sifting through piles of albums that are complete dogshit and coming out with one that is an absolute diamond rather than have some pretentious jerk telling me what band I should like in order to remain "hip." But anyway, this isn't a rant about what's wrong with PFM, this is a "Hey, you guys should check these bands out because I like them a lot." I understand some of these bands won't be for everyone, and that's fine, but you should at least give them a fair shot.

The main criteria I used for this list are as follows:
1. Personal Enjoyment - obviously this should be at the top of anyone's list if they're recommending a band to someone else. If it isn't, that person is name-dropping bands to try and make them sound more musically "in-the-know" which is dumb. Own up to what you like and don't like, if you hate The Pixies it doesn't mean you're some kind of ignorant dipshit, it means that they're not your cup of tea and that's it. One of the great things about music is that you can develop your own tastes and find bands that fit them perfectly, there's never a need to settle for less. Most of these bands are bands I've listened to for years and have consistently remained in my playlist regardless of what else I've discovered.
2. Popularity - Let me explain. It won't do me any good to recommend bands people have heard of, however, some of these you probably have whether it was through me or through some other means. Anyway, some of these bands do have large followings wherever they go, but most have remained on independent labels and mostly under the radar for as long as they've been around. I am also taking into account their popular appeal to people that generally don't listen to whatever genre the band may belong too or have possibly never even heard of the genre. Obviously, while I may like a band such as The Locust, I'm not going to find many people going "Hey man, remember when you recommended me those guys that were screaming at me and sounded like complete chaos, something similar to a train hitting a bus full of screaming babies while the guy from Casio was making his first keyboard? They'll fit in totally awesome next to my Green Day albums." I'm trying to recommend bands I think people may enjoy that aren't drastically different from what they may have heard, however, if you want some bands that the order of the day is abrasiveness, feel free to let me know and I can recommend plenty.
3. Context - Bands that have a significant impact in their genre or musical scene at the time almost always have a reason for that impact. I can't count the number of times I've heard a band and gone "Hey, band X sounds like band Y and I've listened to and liked band Y for a long time" then find out band X came first. Almost always, this results in me listening to band X and realizing that band Y is just a watered down knock off of band X. This then results in me listening to band X, enjoying band X even more than I enjoyed band Y, and finally understanding why they made such a big influence.

So now that my disclaimer is out of the way, I will begin with the bands shortly. Feel free to post comments and opinions on my own feelings of music or opinions on the bands. I always enjoy a solid discussion of music, however, be aware that once you start a conversation with me about music it will probably go on longer than you planned.

(ps. this post may or may not be disjointed because for some reason I could only sleep for 4 hours last night and woke up hungover. I think you can make sense out of it though.)

The "Final Destination" trilogy is one of the best horror film series ever.

2006-03-23T22:00:00.000-08:00

In my conscious effort to update more often and try and win back some of my audience (which I don't think I ever really had) I've decided to write about this film series because I watched "Final Destination 3" tonight and decided it really deserves a mention here.

In case you've never heard of these films, I'll describe the plot of the first one because that is the only one that is necessary. "Final Destination" is a film about a group of high school students going on a school trip to Paris. Upon arriving at the airport, one student begins experiencing major anxiety about the flight meanwhile everyone else continues chattering excitedly unknowing of what is going on. Once the students board the plane, hi's anxiety kicks it into high gear when suddenly he has a premonition of technical problems with the plane causing it to explode and thereby causing everyone on board to die. The student begins shouting and causing a scene causing some students to leave voluntarily, and others to be forced off involuntarily. Shortly after the plane takes off, the group of students and their teacher left in the airport watch the plane they were just on explode and everyone die. The group of remaining students consist of the standard, exaggerated, stereotypical caricatures of high school students such as the jock, the outcast, and the popular girl. Soon the members of this group begin dying in mysterious accidents that through a series of totally contrived occurrences. The student that had the premonition begins investigating what is happening, and in a ridiculous encounter with a local undertaker, learns that death has a plan for each person, and by getting off the plane, the student interrupted death's plan. Therefore, in order to make things right, death must kill these students that survived. The film then follows the group as they try and cheat death a second time.

The plot is absolutely a cheesy, plain horror movie plot. What makes these movies special, however, is the thought that is put into the deaths of the people. Each death gives you "clues" as to how it will happen, such as a simple shot of something being spilled onto the floor or perhaps a frayed wire waiting to spark. This allows the viewer of the film to put together exactly how the death will play out in their head, and allows them to prepare for what they are about to see. When the death actually occurs, this is one of the few films that displays exactly what you had pictured in your head because of the beautiful way in which it has previously setup the death. Sometimes, however, the deaths are prolonged and fool the viewer into predicting something that will not happen. For example, one of the first deaths in the original "Final Destination" starts with one student in the bathroom shaving. The viewer sees the force that symbolizes Death in the film creep in through the window and cause the toilet to start overflowing silently allowing for water to begin covering the floor. The water begins to creep over to the student's feet while he is shaving and the music begins to crescendo. Obviously, the viewer begins to prepare for the student to slip on the water and somehow slit his own throat with the razor. This is not, however, what occurs and in order to prevent any other spoilers I'll let you view the film and see what plays out.

In these films, it is basically a series of sudden, shocking deaths separated by moments of standard horror dialogue and contrived meetings with people. One example of this is that in the first film the student that had the premonition randomly meets the undertaker at the local morgue and pretty much has it spelled out for him exactly what is going on. These films require absolutely no thought except for the deaths, as the characters in the films constantly inform other students that survived the tragedies with what is transpiring in the film.

The real value of these films is, as I said, in the deaths. The deaths are almost always incredibly swift, and incredibly gory. The build ups to the deaths are quite long so as to provide some semblence of suspense, however, the actual events that kill the people are swift and bloody. Did I also mention hilarious? The film does not take itself seriously at all, it knows that it is a cheesy teen horror movie. The excessive setups as well as the intricate and totally random circumstances surrounding each death are thought up with utmost care to ensure the viewer is able to delight in each death's blood-soaked wonderment. Now let me clarify, this is not the type of film for for someone that finds someone getting stabbed film cringe worthy, this is the type of comedy that occurs from viewing over-the-top gore such as in the "Evil Dead" trilogy. The laughs evoked from each death come from, as I call it, the "Holy shit!" value, which is, as I said before, the fact that they are able to provide you with a visual that often exceeds the expectation you had created in your head. It has earned this name as literally, and often, while watching these films alone or with others, the first thing out of my mouth after I view one of the deaths is "Holy shit!" and then I proceed to laugh at the pure carnage I have just witnessed.

Now, what is truly, and what I think one of the best ideas ever for a film series, is that each of the films is totally formulaic and nearly identical. The characters in each film are totally interchangeable and the dialogue is absolutely unimportant. The only character I am able to remember fromt he series at the moment is Wendy from "Final Destination 3" and the only reason for this is because the actress that plays the role is Mary Elizabeth Winstead, that's right, Gwen from "Sky High." I also remember this because I think she's cute. There, I said it. Anywy, the only things that really needs to have some time put into them is the deaths. There is no deep moral lesson here, there are no major tragedies, there is no major exposition, there is no beautiful love story, there are no philosophical undertones, there are no ingenious film styles, it's simply the viewer watching freak accidents, it is a film that epitomizes the saying of "Shit happens."

The original "Final Destination" surrounds a group of high school students that get off a plane and try to figure out death's plan while they are killed off one by one. "Final Destination 2" surrounds a group of high school students and a couple other people that managed to avoid a major traffic accident that are killed off one by one and this time no undertaker is required as they can just look up newspaper articles about the incident in the original "Final Destination" which is referred to through out the films as the "Flight 180 incident." This is because Flight 180 was the flight in the original film which the students left. "Final Destination 3" surrounds a group of high school students that avoid a major roller-coaster catastrophe and are killed off one by one and, once again, don't need an undertaker as they have the newspaper article from the first film. The first film attempts slightly to pass itself off as a true suspense/horror/mystery film at times, but there are definite glimpses (such as the bus incident) where you see the true intention of the filmmakers. The second film requires slightly less exposition as it quickly sums up the concept of "death's plan" as outlined in the first film. The third film the exposition is almost non-existent as there is just a mention of "death's plan" and then people trying to prevent death.

Overall, this trilogy is one of the most enjoyable horror series out there, both for its comedic value and exorbitant amount of gore. I can only hope they won't end it in a trilogy and these filmmakers will continue using the brilliant formula they have devised to provide me with many, many more hours of enjoyment.

ULTRAVIOLET

2006-03-19T23:12:00.000-08:00

I WAS TEMPTED TO WRITE THIS ENTIRE POST IN ALL CAPS SINCE I THINK IT BEGINS TO GIVE A FEEL FOR THE TRUE INTENSITY AND BADASSNESS OF THE FILM, but then the few people who might read this really won't. This movie was all the awfulness I expected it to be and more. It was like Kurt Wimmer watched "Aeon Flux" and "Resident Evil: Apocalypse" and felt he would never top himself after "Equilibrium," so he tried to remake it with a female but add much more BADASSNESS to it and less anything else. Also, apparently in the future you can change your hair color and outfit color at any given time, but the style has to remain the same, especially for females the uniform they must wear is: some kind of tiny, odd vest/jacket, a tight shirt that makes sure to leave your entire midriff open, and some super spandex pants. I would not have pulled through the whole film had it not been for Milla Jovovich as the star, but I have a feeling that I will grow to love this film and will definitely be purchasing it as soon as it drops to under $7 which will probably be within 2 weeks of the DVD release. I don't really want to write much more about this except that I have to say at least there was close to what I was expecting which is loud music, some of the worst written dialogue I've ever heard, guns, blood, and one of my favorite leading ladies (it will take a helluva lot more than this film to ruin the place she earned in my heart from her role as Leeloo in "The Fifth Element").

Silent Hill

2006-03-19T13:17:00.000-08:00

Pretty much every film I have written about on here was a review after the film was released, I realized I haven't really hyped any film very much over the past couple years. This changed once I realized they were adapting the game "Silent Hill" into a movie. I've been following it as best I can and had been checking in on the progress being made every now and then, but frankly I didn't want to ruin any awesome surprises or stumble upon some spoiler that would ruin it for me. I can't hold it in anymore and this is probably my most highly anticipated film of this year and from what I've read and seen it seems like it will absolutely meet my expectations. So...let's begin!

"Silent Hill" was a horror-based video game released for Playstation in 1999. The game was released by Konami which, regardless of whatever they produce, will always be remembered by me as the producer of arcade games across the nation that proudly displayed the blue screen with the government's anti-drug message randomly. The game was well received, however, it was often compared to "Resident Evil" which had pretty consistently received better reviews. The difference I found, while playing these games, is that while "Resident Evil" would spook me with something shocking, "Silent Hill" felt like it had an overall creepier atmosphere that I found more entertaining. The series then continued with the games "Silent Hill 2," "Silent Hill 3," and "Silent Hill 4: The Room," and eventually the film was announced. I was wary of the film because each of the games changed the cast of characters and also because I have seen both (and own both) "Resident Evil" movies. I then began reading articles that changed my mind and I am totally confident in this film.

Christophe Gans is directing the film, his major credit right now is "Brotherhood of the Wolf" which was an enjoyable film about a wolf-like creature in 18th Century France that likes to eat people. I still wasn't totally confident in the film crew until I began reading gossip which turns out to later be confirmed, that the team making the movie actually met with the creator of the original "Silent Hill" game Akira Yamakoa and discussed the ideas surrounding the game. That alone was enough to make me convinced that Monsieur Gans actually was going to make a decent movie and that it wouldn't be an Uwe Boll film, a "Street Fighter," "Mortal Kombat," or pretty much any video game to film adaptation ever. Besides that, Akira Yamakoa is also credited as being the composer for the film which leads me to believe that he made sure the feel he gave the games will be retained in the film. Finally, I have not found any confirmation (because I haven't really investigated it that much) but most rumors state that there were "3 people from Konami on set at all times to give input and review the dailies." A video game company that actually cares about what happens to their license in the hands of someone else? HOLY SHIT! My mind was now made up that this would in fact be better than "Garfield 2: A Tale of Two Kitties."

Then I viewed the trailer online (http://www.apple.com/trailers/sony_pictures/silenthill/index.html) and felt that this film will not butcher the name of Silent Hill but will further help it to maintain its place as one of the best puzzle/horror/awesome titles ever. I recommend watching the trailer rather than reading the IMDb description because frankly, the IMDb description makes the premise sound incredibly stupid. While watching the trailer a second time, something caught my eye...PYRAMID HEAD!

For everything you've ever wanted to know about Pyramid Head, you can read here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyramid_Head but I'll give some basic information so you can get a feel for the guy...er...thing. He's a creature that looks like a human male, he's about 8 feet tall or so, and wears a giant fucking pyramid on his head. The pyramid resembles the executioners' hoods that executioners in the town used to wear, and he wears outfits made of human flesh. He's got a massive machete and everytime you encounter him the game he's either raping something, killing it, and in general is probably one of the best characters in a video game ever. Here's a couple better pictures of him:

Since I posted the poster of Pyramid Head (which didn't win), let's discuss the brilliant idea Sony developed for the poster. Sony decided to hold a contest where fans create movie posters for the film and the winner will get his or her idea chosen for one of the final Silent Hill posters. This not only allows fans to make posters which will tempt other fans of the film but also allows for Sony to save a shit ton of money by saving them the cost of hiring a professional designer to make a poster. Brilliant!

Anyway, basically this entire post was an excuse to post the above two images and in general just express my incredible level of anticipation for this film. This film could easily become one of the cheesiest, stupidest movies ever in the hands of someone like Uwe Boll, however, I feel that this film, even for people that have not played the games, will stand up as an excellent horror film, which there has been a major lack of in the last couple of years, on its own.

How can one say Hollywood is in decline...

2006-03-06T19:15:00.000-08:00

...when an image like that can sum up the Academy Awards? Last night was possibly one of the worst awards shows I've ever watched for anything. You know it's bad when the host (Jon Stewart) is taking jabs at the content of the show. I found it humorous that they chose Jon Stewart to host when they know he's got some pretty big balls and will be willing to criticize nearly anything, solely so in opes that they'd the "anti-establishment" types to tune in to watch him. Anyway, the content of the show consisted of mainly two incredibly confusing and less-than-mediocre performances ("Bird" York and Three 6 Mafia), boring montages, and stupid anti-piracy speeches. I think they realized this show was going to be awful this year so to ensure that it would be talked about the next day they gave Three 6 Mafia an oscar.

As far as the awards go, I wasn't all that shocked by any of them. I was 100% sure Reese Witherspoon was going to win for Best Actress, and 90% sure Ang Lee would win for Brokeback Mountain. I haven't seen Capote yet, but Philip Seymour Hoffman has consistently been awesome in every part he's had, however minor the role may be, so I was glad he finally got some solid recognition. I was slightly surprised Jake Gyllenhaal didn't win for Best Supporting Actor, however, George Clooney is still a badass regardless of what people say so that sat fine with me. I didn't really care about Best Supporting Actress at all, so I had no feelings as to who should win. I was extremely glad Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit won for Best Animated Feature because anything Wallace and Gromit is always brilliant. I was impressed how many awards Memoirs of a Geisha won because while it was a beautiful film, I found it pretty dull and hadn't heard much talk surrounding it.

Overall, it was a pretty dull awards show and hopefully based on the garbage that came out last year coinciding with poor ticket sales, Hollywood will realize they can't churn out films that progressively get shittier.

(PS. If you missed the show, here is Three 6 Mafia performing and winning which was by far the most interesting couple minutes of the whole show http://youtube.com/watch?v=Vkhp8i1adFQ&search=three%20six%20mafia)

This is not an update!

2006-02-13T21:58:00.000-08:00

I really am going to start updating this, I swear. For now, let me say that I have found the greatest picture of Keira Knightley ever.

(pro tip: Click on it to view it in it's full resolution glory. I also suggest setting it as your desktop background as I have done)

24 is the best show on television.

2006-01-17T23:22:00.000-08:00

While I love the show "House" and it's one of the few shows left I actually make sure I try and watch when it's on, the show "24" is my true love. The first time I ever watched Jack Bauer in action was my second year here in Madison. My roommate's friend came over with the first two seasons on DVD and told us he wanted to watch it in our attic because then it felt like he was "doing something instead of sitting at his house watching TV." We laughed and let him go to it. After an hour or so, I wandered up to see if the show was any good. After the first 5 minutes I saw I was glued to the show and set up camp on the futon. Over the next 30 hours or so, I watched the rest of Season 1 with him and all of Season 2 with him. The bonding that can occur between two people sharing their love of Jack Bauer is immense and he is now one of my good friends. "24" also became one of my favorite shows, however, mid-season 3 I had a class that screwed me out of my precious "24" time, and therefore I had to stop watching. It also had pained me waiting each week to see the next incredible hour of the longest day of Jack Bauer's life. I never managed to catch up to the show, however, until this season. After watching the first 4 hours, I am right back killing terrorists with Jack Bauer. He is by far one of the best characters ever in a television series and frankly, the events that occur are quite over the top, however, that is what makes me love the show.

I am considering paying $19.95 to join the official "24" fan club just for the hell of it, however, I might just order a t-shirt instead.

Anyway, watch "24," if you missed the first 4 episodes, you can probably find them for download. I promise you won't be disappointed.

Aeon Flux - yet another attempt to capitalize on a cult classic and bring it to a mass audience.

2005-12-16T00:04:00.000-08:00

I will state right now that I was never some devoted fan of the original shorts of "Aeon Flux" that aired during MTV's "Liquid TV," I can't even recall watching more than small fragments of random shows once it became a series, hell I was 11 years old at the time the series came out. What I do know, from what I saw at the time, was the show was basically a collage of weird, fetish sex and violence contained within a comic book/anime cartoon form. When I heard this was being made into a movie my first thought was "Oh cool, maybe I'll finally get to see what all the fuss was about when it was originally on television."

Then I found out it was live action.

Then I found out Charlize Theron was cast to play the part of Aeon Flux.

I decided that it still might be an entertaining action movie, and hell, Charlize Theron is pretty fun to look at and from the looks of the old cartoon the outfits she'll be wearing will make it more fun to look at her.

I don't know who gave Karyn Kusama the "OK" to direct this, but whoever did dropped the ball BIG TIME. In the original shorts and series Aeon was an incredibly thin, twig-like woman with crazy black hair wearing skin tight out fits that barely covered her naughty bits. In the film, Aeon is an average woman with short black hair that wears a giant spandex outfit that covers nearly everything up, removing the whole idea from sex that was a basis of the original series. To make up for Aeon not being a spindly, spider-esque woman, Ms. Kusama decided it would be a good idea to spend a half hour of shots that consisted of nothing more than Ms. Theron jumping around and trying to show how flexible she was, however, all of these were done with some terrible special effects that left me totally unimpressed.

Then the violence. Being rated PG-13 I wasn't expecting much, but what I got was even less. There was almost no blood and very few deaths removing another of the foundational elements from the original series. I expected Aeon to be a bad ass assassin able to wail on guys and pull off some awesome kung fu type moves, and instead the fights were simple, generic, and quite frankly boring. I fell asleep halfway through the movie, woke up, then had to force myself to finish the film. Maybe it's because recently I watched "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" and the fights in there still give me chills, but this film left me totally unimpressed.

The plot was absolutely straight-forward, predictable, and direct, there wasn't a point in the film where I felt that the film was adding anything new that I hadn't seen before. The love story was incredibly bland, I felt no sympathy for Aeon, Trevor, the resistance, or anyone else. The film felt like a half-assed attempt to cash in on the audience of the original, which it failed to do. Budget: $55,000,000 Gross-to-date: $20,000,000

One of the things this film had been praised for was it's beautiful cinematography and style. Based on the facts that there was a $55,000,000 budget and the world already drawn for you, however, this film left me totally unimpressed.

I didn't find this movie satisfying as a simple sci-fi movie and especially not as an action film. Frankly, I would've rather sat at home and stared at a picture of Charlize Theron on the internet.

This is not an abandoned blog! -or- The Adventures of Pete and Pete was the greatest kids show ever

2005-10-31T11:40:00.000-08:00

Yes, it is still active. Shortly after moving to my place for this year in Madison I had no internet and as such began thinking of all the wonderful things I could write about in here that I couldn't at the moment. The list eventually grew so immense that I did not want to tackle it and I have actually written the beginning to a multiple part update, but today I have decided I shall begin and only have a brief amount of time before I must leave for lecture, so I am posting something else.

Now to the topic at hand. When you are used to being able to turn on a TV and view any show you want because you have cable and when you are accustomed to turning on your computer and looking up any answer on Google, a month with neither of these luxuries causes some strange things. You realize how much free time you have, and as a result plug those gaps with odd things. After doing an absurd amount of crossword puzzles, watching Dr. Phil, every show involving a judge imaginable, watching many many movies, and running around outside, I realized I still had lots of time on my hands for hanging out and doing whatever I wanted as at this point school had not started yet. While digging through my backup CDs and movies I had downloaded, I realized I had hit the jackpot. I downloaded all 3 seasons of The Adventures of Pete and Pete a long time ago and had completely forgotten about it. So, my adventure began.

I sat down and began to watch the first season, glorious memories of my younger days filling my head, and to my surprise, the shows were now just as enjoyable, actually, scratch that, they were incredibly more enjoyable than I could possibly remember. Immediately I realized how now I was finally able to fully appreciate the brilliance and bizarreness that was involved with this show. For those of you not familiar with the show, this show aired on Nickelodeon back during the golden age of teenage children's programming when Nickelodeon actually aired shows worth watching such as Rocko's Modern Life, Are You Afraid of the Dark?, and Ren and Stimpy. The show revolved around the two redheaded Wrigley brothers, Pete and Pete, and their experiences with family, friends, and their eccentric collection of acquaintances in their small town of Wellsville. The word "quirky" doesn't even begin to describe this show.

To begin, perhaps it is just my obsession with music, however, as I began watching the show, I realized how incredible the music was, and when I investigated further, I realized the soundtrack to the show was made up of seminal indie rock acts like The Magnetic Fields and Apples in Stereo. I was absolutely dumbfounded that the creators of a kid's show would be willing to put thought into the music instead of just rip off some crappy composition. My love for the show grew that much more and then I realized something about the show that I believe has secured it in my mind as the best kid's show, possibly show, ever to hit television. Every single item in the show was created by a fictitious corporation called "Krebstar." This leads to humorous parodies of items such as "Kreb-Flakes" cereal. It was then that I realized, besides being hilarious, the show was sticking to it's indie ideals that the soundtrack portrayed by not giving in to any corporate sponsorship or just using the show as a vehicle to pawn merchandise on to young sappy kids. You can tell that there was actually feeling and real heart put into the show. Now to blow your mind even further, the show had an incredible cast. The regular cast members were excellent, especially by child acting standards, but when you realize that there were often cameos by people such as Steve Buscemi as Ellen's dad, Iggy Pop as Nona's dad, LL Cool J as Mr. Throneberry, Janeane Garofalo, Larisa Oleynik (who went on to star in "The Secret World of Alex Mack and is dropdead gorgeous), Johnny Unitas, Sam Rockwell, Frank Gifford, Michael Stipe, John McLaughlin (a former speech writer for Presidents Nixon and Ford), Selma Blair, and ADAM WEST as principle Kent Schwinger I believe the show enters an entire universe of its own. The eclectic collection of guests should give you some idea to the extent of how absolutely unique this show was.

The first two seasons of the show are finally available on DVD, however, each costs around $20 because Nickelodeon is the one releasing the show on DVD. According to http://www.tvshowsondvd.com/newsitem.cfm?NewsID=4348 the third season will be coming out this February, so now you can enjoy all 3 episodes legally.

I really cannot pick favorite moments to describe or episodes to discuss, as the list would be enormous as I would start writing and feel the list would not be complete without certain scenes, and it would just continue to grow. All I can say is that every show ends with some mellow, generally instrumental, indie rock fading in, all conflicts being resolved, and leaves you with a gigantic smile and a warm fuzzy feeling you have inside, similar to the felling you get when you're done watching Love, Actually. While I am sad there are only three seasons, I feel it was a good time to end the series as I'd rather have three incredible seasons, all worth watching, rather than just droning on and hitting some very low points that make me lose interest in the show a la Simpsons. I need to go to class now, so I'm going to wrap this up.

After watching all 3 seasons within a matter of days, the only negative thing I have to say about the show is that it makes me get all nostalgiac and I begin remembering how awesome television was in my childhood, and how now every show I see for kids and teens is such complete and utter trash.

ps. Anyone that can watch the entire series and not think Ellen is the coolest girl ever needs to introduce me to the girls they know.

Proof that there is a god!

2005-08-22T22:42:00.000-07:00

While talks of Garfield 2 were enough to make me believe that either God does not exist, God hates film, or God hates people, seeing this today began to restore my faith that he does have some taste.

Yes, this is celebrating me caving and buying King Arthur on DVD today.

ps.

QED

3 minute reviews

2005-08-22T22:21:00.000-07:00

Skeleton Key - I was told when I went to see that this film was not very good but the ending was pretty nifty. All I had heard from commercials was that this film had the biggest twist ending that would bend my mind in 18 different directions until blood dripped from my eyes, ears, and nostrils. This didn't impress me much, because I can bang out a horribly crappy horror movie in 5 minutes with an ending that doesn't make any sense and could be labelled a "twist." Instead, what I received, was a mediocre thriller film that was pretty good compared to my recent film expeditions and an end that was fairly predictable. I'm sure there are plenty of 13 year old kids running around saying "Holy crap I did NOT see that coming, what an ending, that was the coolest thing ever!" whereas halfway through I thought "Well, it's going to be one of these two outcomes and each second brings me closer to knowing what is going to happen and I don't really care anymore because there's no way this will end well."

Red Eye - This is the first Wes Craven movie I enjoyed since Nightmare on Elm Street, however, I think it was due more to the fact that Cillian Murphy and Rachel McAdams were the stars of this film and Brian Cox made brief appearances. Again, this film was less a horror film and more a thriller since the story is about Cillian Murphy trying to pyschologically manipulate Rachel McAdams into doing his evil biddings. It seems like Wes got 3/4 of the way through this movie, then said "Let's see if I can sell it to the studio with a giant question mark for the last 1/4 of the movie, I like improvising!" Then when they were on set and shooting they got to the end of the writing and he said "Guys, I'm kind of tired, let's just end this." I felt kind of let down like there should've been another half hour of craziness that goes on. The film held my attention pretty well and sadly, was one of the better movies I've seen in a while.

Broken Flowers - I did not like the movie Coffee and Cigarettes even though it had some of my idols in it and hearing that this movie wasn't all that good was a let down, as I expected the combination of Jim Jarmusch and Bill Murray to be exceptional. Anyway, I wish I was better at praising films because I could write longer reviews, instead all I can say is that this film was really well done and had some incredibly funny scenes that made me think Jim Jarmusch had Bill Murray in mind while writing this film. The ending is expected, however, it fits wonderfully in with the film. In the historic words of Kevin Neville, "Broken Flowers is a good movie."

Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo - This film is not worthy of a review, my effort, or my time, because frankly it would aggrivate me too much to attempt writing a real review. In fact, I don't think this is actually a film at all, rather it is a random selection of scenes Rob Schneider thought up thinking "Whoah, this is hilarious!" or else "I bet this'll make the audience gag!" There aren't words in my vocabulary that could even begin to describe the absolute abomination this film is, instead I'll let Roger Ebert do it for me. Here's just part of his review:

The movie created a spot of controversy last February. According to a story by Larry Carroll of MTV News, Rob Schneider took offense when Patrick Goldstein of the Los Angeles Times listed this year's Best Picture Nominees and wrote that they were "ignored, unloved and turned down flat by most of the same studios that ... bankroll hundreds of sequels, including a follow-up to 'Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo,' a film that was sadly overlooked at Oscar time because apparently nobody had the foresight to invent a category for Best Running Penis Joke Delivered by a Third-Rate Comic."

Schneider retaliated by attacking Goldstein in full-page ads in Daily Variety and the Hollywood Reporter. In an open letter to Goldstein, Schneider wrote: "Well, Mr. Goldstein, I decided to do some research to find out what awards you have won. I went online and found that you have won nothing. Absolutely nothing. No journalistic awards of any kind ... Maybe you didn't win a Pulitzer Prize because they haven't invented a category for Best Third-Rate, Unfunny Pompous Reporter Who's Never Been Acknowledged by His Peers."

Reading this, I was about to observe that Schneider can dish it out but he can't take it. Then I found he's not so good at dishing it out, either. I went online and found that Patrick Goldstein has won a National Headliner Award, a Los Angeles Press Club Award, a RockCritics.com award, and the Publicists' Guild award for lifetime achievement.

Schneider was nominated for a 2000 Razzie Award for Worst Supporting Actor, but lost to Jar-Jar Binks.

But Schneider is correct, and Patrick Goldstein has not yet won a Pulitzer Prize. Therefore, Goldstein is not qualified to complain that Columbia financed "Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo" while passing on the opportunity to participate in "Million Dollar Baby" "Ray," "The Aviator," "Sideways," and "Finding Neverland." As chance would have it, I have won the Pulitzer Prize, and so I am qualified. Speaking in my official capacity as a Pulitzer Prize winner, Mr. Schneider, your movie sucks.

The full Ebert review.

The Dukes of Hazzard

2005-08-09T01:36:00.000-07:00

The Dukes of Hazzard - When Sean William Scott is the best actor you have in your film, you know you're in trouble. To begin, let's take a look at the cast for this remake.

Bad ideas for casting:
-Johnny Knoxville as Luke Duke - Not an actor, became famous by hurting himself on MTV's Jackass
-Jessica Simpson as Daisy Duke - Not an actor, famous pop-star singer known for being rather ignorant.
-Burt Reynolds as Boss Hogg - Famous actor from the 60's and 70's that should've stopped acting long ago while he was ahead.
-Willie Nelson as Uncle Jesse - Famous country musician that has been in many movies, but should've stuck to music.
-a whole bunch of Broken Lizard guys which shouldn't have tried to continue on after Super Troopers.

Good ideas for casting:
-Sean William Scott as Bo Duke - Actor who rose to stardom by landing roles in teen comedies, mainly the American Pie series.

As you can see, the casting for this was not well thought out and the film tried banking on big names and fans of the TV show to gain their money. This was pretty obvious, as the film was absolutely terrible and no one would possibly like it for anything besides having a crush on one of the stars or just because they're a die-hard fan of the TV show.

The simple plot of this film involves Boss Hogg trying to buy the land of Hazzard county so he can strip mine it and make some cash. In order to get his strip mining ordinance passed he tries to draw everyone's attention to the big race held in Hazzard county, and once the Dukes find out about this they are determined to thwart his efforts.

This movie was easily one of the hardest films to sit through of the summer, I was struggling to stay in my seat at the half hour mark. While I was a fan of Super Troopers, I despised Club Dread, and unfortunately what you get more of in this film are jokes and gags similar to those in Club Dread. Often there were scenes that were completely random so that the director could try and squeeze another joke in, however, when the joke was told all that was received from the audience was complete silence. The jokes were just painful to listen to and often I would hear a line from one of the actors and literally have to ask my friend sitting next to me "Was that a joke or what?" and in return all I would get is a confused stare and shrug. I am not able to type more negative things about this movie because frankly my mind shutdown at the 45 minute mark and I've been trying to erase the few things I do remember about this movie from my memory.

There was one saving grace, and perhaps it's the midwest redneck in me trying to break out, the concept of the American rebel or cowboy, or simply the car lover in me, but I did actually enjoy a few of the driving scenes. The music in the film was chosen rather brilliantly, as most of it is good, down-south shit-kickin' dixie anthems perfect for speeding down a dirt road winding through a forest with rocks and dust spewing everywhere behind your '69 Charger. Something about the pure southern wildboy aspect of it tugged at some small part of me I never new I had, but I guess it's similar to the feeling I get while watching a worthwhile film like Vanishing Point or Bullitt. In the end when I left the theater, even after all the nonexistant humor and despicable dialogue, I did feel like hopping in a solid, American muscle car, blasting some Allman Brothers or Lynyrd Skynyrd, and celebrating all things redneck by speeding all over.

Luckily for me, this show was not a part of my childhood and therefor no memories or nostalgia to destroy. From what I have seen or heard about the show, I expect many, many people to be upset that this piece of trash is even associated with the original series. This summer is the summer of Hollywood cashing in on remakes and sequels, and this is a perfect example of what happens when people that don't care at all about making a good movie create a movie solely for capitalizing on a name. Hopefully, after this, Broken Lizard's movie making days will finally be over.

The Great Raid - The raid was rather great, but the movie...not so much.

2005-08-06T23:42:00.000-07:00

The Great Raid - The Great Raid tells the true story of 500 POWs that survived the Bataan Death March that were held in the Cabanatuan Japanese POW camp and the incredibly daring rescue of these POWs.

The film begins with a brief history lesson describing the circumstances surrounding the Bataan Death March and how this group of 500 prisoners arrived at this camp. The film then skips between a love story subplot of nurse Margaret Utinsky (Connie Nielsen) and some other guy that's a POW in the camp that I can't remember right now because frankly I didn't care in the slightest about him or her. The film could've easily been edited down to around half an hour, starting at day 4 and showing a few brief shots of the preperation and planning for the raid, and then the actual execution of it.

I was bored out of my socks while watching this nurse smuggling in medicine to these POWs, sure what she was doing was noble, however, I am sure there are many, many more real-life tales of people equally as deserving of a film being made about them. Her lost-love army guy that was being held in the camp was even less interesting, as basically the audience sits there and watches him get sicker and sicker until he decides to write one of the cheesiest, sappiest letters I've seen in recent films that even made me laugh. The film would have been much more interesting if John Dahl kept the film focusing on the group of rangers that this task was assigned to, however, Hollywood films are nothing without a love story so of course this film needed one. What was even worse about this love story was that in the end, it wasn't all that moving and once you get to the end of the film, you realize it was completely pointless.

A good portion of the scenes at the camp were somewhat moving, however, there was nothing that hadn't been done much more emotional in other stories and films I had seen or read earlier, such as the scene where during a line of executions, one prisoner kneeling down is waiting to be executed while the guard takes his time reloading his gun. Yes, hearing stories like this the first two hundred times wrenched my guts a bit, but now, perhaps it's because I've been desensitized, or perhaps it's because there are much more inhumane and evil stories to be told that would make for a much more moving film, I didn't find it all that devastating or emotional. I suppose to some people this will be an eye-opening experience because, surprise! The Nazis weren't the first and only people in the world to torture their enemies in sinister ways, through out history war is littered with stories that would make your stomach turn that many people never hear about.

The planning for the actual raid was one of the most mind-numbing things I have ever watched in my life. Besides explaining everything down to the most minute detail in a scene that felt like watching a "How To" video, you actually get to see the captain drawing pictures in the dirt for everyone. While in some war films this would be very helpful as when the camera is shaking during the action, lights are flashing, and everything is blowing up it would give you a sense of what is going on, in this film it should've been left out completely. The raid itself was shot very well. There was not one point in time during the action where was I confused about what was happening, which group was doing what, or where in relation to the prisoners the camera was; it was possibly one of the most easy to follow war segments I've ever seen in a war film and it was the only real enjoyable part of the film.

Overall, I was extremely disappointed by this film. A lot of time is focused on a wasted love story, slightly below average prison camp sequences that didn't engage my emotions at all, and banal scenes involving planning the so-called "great raid." While the actual story of the rescue is fairly fascinating and every person involved should be commended and has my highest respect, this film does not do them justice. If you're itching to see a war film this summer, head to your local Wal-Mart and just pick up a copy of Full Metal Jacket, Apocalypse Now, or The Great Escape on DVD.

Sky High - A live-action version of The Incredibles or one of the best superhero movies to come out recently?

2005-08-05T02:57:00.000-07:00

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Sky High - The story begins with Will Stronghold (Michael Angarano) heading to his first day of high school at Sky High, his parents' alma mater. Sky High is no ordinary high school, however, because Will's parents, The Commander (Kurt Russell) and Jetstream (Kelly Preston), are the greatest superheroes in the world. Will is nervous about attending school because he has not fully developed his powers, and when this is discovered he is sent to the sidekick, ahem, excuse me, "hero support" classes. Will battles the standard conflicts of popularity and cliquest faced at most high schools, a run in with the school rebel, Warren Peace (Steven Strait), which leads to him discovering his super strength, and a mixed up relationship with Gwen (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), the school super smart hottie which makes his best friend Layla (Danielle Panabaker) jealous. Gwen turns out to be the antichrist, I mean, a former nemesis of The Commander and ends up carrying out her plan to capture all the superheroes and destroy their school. The story then continues with the kids in the "hero support" class breaking out of their subordinate class and trying to save everyone.

I had no idea what to expect from this film except that there were lots of random celebrities playing minor roles such as Bruce Campbell playing Coach Boomer, Lynda Carter playing Principal Powers, Dave Foley as Mr. Boy, and Kevin McDonald portraying Mr. Medulla. I knew this would be required viewing solely for the Bruce Campbell scenes, so in I went. I was extremely surprised as the film began, I was impressed with the way the film did not take itself seriously at all and immediately showed me that I was not here to watch fancy special effects or watch any highly dramatic situations. With cheesy effects and small jabs at classic superhero cliches, I was in the mood for a fun, light-hearted film. The film was much funnier than I expected, I figured the jokes would be funny only to the target audience, very young children, however, I found myself laughing at many of the gags and situations. There was plenty of action to keep me entertained and alongside the cheesy visual effects, there were some fun scenes involving kids using their special powers.

For me, easily the most likeable thing about this movie was the character of Warren Peace. Warren Peace is the classic long-haired loner in the school who minds his own business unless you get on his bad side, in which case he will shoot fireballs at you. Not only does he have the best name of any character in the film, but he had the best superpower as well. This coupled with his dark, recluse attitude at school and outgoing, philosophizing manner while waiting tables in a Chinese restaurant for his job not only confused me, but made me not care because this was a perfect example of a stereotype of the badass with a heart of gold.

Once again, like Stealth, this film made me feel like I was watching a few other movies just combined into one. I wasn't sure what to expect from the writers that work on Kim Possible but what I got was a blend of Harry Potter and The Incredibles. While it had very similar events from both stories, it varied it enough to make it entertaining to watch and I'd recommend this film to fans of either of the previously mentioned films.

At the end of the film, however, I had something bothering me which I couldn't quite put my finger on until today when Mr. Majewski was kind enough to put it into words and put my mind at ease without even knowing it. He said that at the end he was thinking "Well, ok, this is cool, now what happens? You need to make a sequel!" That's exactly how I felt, I felt like I'd really like to see a continuation of this story, they probably could've stretched this film out into a couple episodes, similar to the way the Harry Potter stories are told, however, I'm not sure if Sky High 2: The College Years sounds like a good idea, especially after seeing the outcome of Saved By The Bell.

Anyway, if you're looking for a fun film to take your kids to this summer that won't make you want to drive a chainsaw straight through your forehead, finally that film has come. While not quite as enjoyable as The Incredibles, it certainly did an excellent job making sure that while children would be mesmerized by the kids on screen stretching out, shooting lasers, and freezing people, adults would have a trip back to their youth watching giant robots attack a poorly done model while viewing some of the cheesiest flying effects seen in recent years.

Must Love Dogs

2005-08-05T02:13:00.000-07:00

When I first saw the title of a new movie coming out called Must Love Dogs I laughed until my pants hurt, and then laughed a little bit more. I was expecting the most horrendous, incredibly bad film ever with the lead role being an animal, I imagined a film along the lines of Air Bud or Soccer Dog: The Movie but with a horrible love story thrown in. Upon further reading, however, I discovered John Cusack was billed to star in this film.

I have had a special spot in my list of favorite actors reserved for John Cusack ever since the killer 80's film Better Off Dead (the film has a hamburger rocking some Van Halen on guitar!), and also the Cameron Crowe staple Say Anything. He truly is an incredible actor, and right about now you're asking me why I made that statement and how I can actually believe it. Well, it's because John Cusack's acting range is about the same as the acting range of a cheeseburger. He plays one character in every single film he's in, and that character is John Cusack. He's actually very similar to Billy Bob Thornton in that respect. He does, however, play this character incredibly well and the character is quite fetching, unlike Billy Bob. In spite of this slight flaw, if you want to call it that, his career has continued to blossom and he has made the same romantic comedy 8 or 9 times now and people seem to be completely oblivious that they're spending their time and money watching a movie they've already seen multiple times. For some reason, I can't bring myself to dislike the guy. Perhaps it's the way he manages to wear a Ramones shirt as much as possible to show how he's totally a laid back guy but knows how to rock, or perhaps it's the fact that he seems like the guy you'd sit down with and chat over a beer or two at the local pub.

Thanks to this special little love of John Cusack, I immediately labelled the film as THE romantic comedy of the summer everyone must see. When I saw the poster hung up with a giant black dog with it's tongue lolling out in the middle of John Cusack looking like John Cusack and Diane Lane looking like the typical female interest in a romantic comedy, I was excited and my expectations were set.

The film starts by characterizing the two as heartbroken fourty-something-year olds somewhat given up on the whole idea of finding someone new ("benched"). Their friends refuse to let them wallow in self-pity and find them dates online, and eventually they hook up together thanks to John Cusack being so charming and captivating. After a brief romance, the sleazebag interloper played by Dermot Mulroney comes in to mess everything up. There was not one point in the film where even the tiniest thought of "Oh no, John Cusack maybe you can't win them all" came up since the film continually bludgeons you over the head with how much of a jackass Mulroney's character is and how John Cusack is made for Mrs. Lane. Also, there's a sub-plot about her widowed father dating three women at once that, which in the end, might've possibly made for a more interesting story, however, I was satisfied with what I received. That's really all that needs to be said about the movie, the whole thing can be summed up that easily.

The film is absolutely as formulaic, cliche, sappy, and lovable as I expected. This is one of the few romantic comedies where there are some genuinely funny jokes through out the film that had me laughing out loud. The only twist, if you'd like to call it that, on the romantic comedy storyline is that both of these characters are slightly older and have been divorced. That's it.

I loved the way John Cusack had an awesome apartment/loft place to live, even after being divorced and running his own failing business. I loved the way John Cusack poured his heart out to an old man with an Irish accent solely because the man mentioned he liked one of his boats. I enjoyed how Diane Lane should have had no reason to interact with this guy after all the crap she had been through but for some reason she picked this guy to give a shot. Oh by the way, there is another twist, Diane Lane has a large family that meddles in her love life, it's not just her friends. And her butcher meddles in her love life. And she babysits her brother's dog named "Mother Theresa" a lot so I guess that means she loves dogs.

In the end, I was not disappointed in the slightest by this film, I knew what I should be expecting, and received exactly that, added with some great jokes and funny segments involving pets.

Stealth

2005-08-01T13:18:00.000-07:00

Right now, I am still digesting what I just sat through, however, I felt the urge to write this while everything was fresh in my head. I walked into this movie expecting it to be one of the worst movies of the summer. I loathed the fact that W.D. Richter, the same man who wrote Invasion of the Body Snatchers and also Big Trouble In Little China (one of the greatest movies ever), wrote this film and then Rob Cohen, the creative genius behind The Fast and the Furious and also xXx, edited it to his own dim-witted taste.

If you don't believe me, here's a direct quote from Cohen himself:

I will say that I did 36 drafts of the screenplay after Richter, with other writers and by myself. Richter’s script was more what you would have expected–it was more like “Buckaroo Banzai.” It was filled with wackiness and computers singing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” and guys running around with their hair mussed while acting crazy. It was a fascinating read, I will say, but it would have been a non-emotional movie and more of a satire and I didn’t think this was a satire subject because it is real and it is coming. The question is, how do you convey that? If you go into “Dr. Strangelove” territory, that is interesting after the public knows there is a nuclear bomb. Kubrick did it because we already had twenty years of nuclear awareness–if Kubrick had tried to make that film in 1943, no one would have gotten it. No one would have believed it.

http://hollywoodbitchslap.com/feature.php?feature=1559

Sitting down in a theater with 4 other customers I was prepared for the worst, I was ready to cry, I was ready to swear, to hate myself for sitting there, however, I was determined to sit through this after all the bad-mouthing this film had received. As soon as the credits started, I began to realize what I was in for. As the film continued I just sat there, I couldn't truly believe what I was seeing and hearing. After about 3/4 of the film I was ready for the film to end, and then it happened. It's like the retarded kid at school who kicks you, bites you, spits on you, yells at you, harasses you, punches you, and then all of a sudden, he walks over and gives you a big dopey and apologizes. The film hit a soft spot with me, I'm not sure how, or why, but it did, and I burst out laughing. It was then that I realized the film had gone beyond my expectations of low and I was watching something "badass" just like AvP.

Despite ignoring all the laws of physics, despite the over-the-top explosions, noises, and digital effects, despite the ever-present blue and purple illuminated "computers," despite, the terrible dialogue, "Pardon my C-cup," despite the limitless annoyances this film had and despite absolutely every single thing in the movie being simply bad, I was enjoying myself. The only thing I can possibly think of that made me enjoy this film was that I realized I felt like I was 4 years old again and watching Short Circuit combined with a high-tech unrealistic version of Top Gun, but this time it was written so even a 4 year old could understand what was going on!

If you've read this far, you deserve a taste of what you're in for, so let me describe some of the scenes:
-Satellite views of the Earth, however, added for anyone that doesn't know their geography the borders and names of the countries are overlayed on top.
-Do you remember that killer movie Flight of the Navigator that was made in the 80s where a young boy flies a space ship around while the alien is basically a ball on a robotic arm that jokes with him and plays music? Imagine that exact scene, except with a grown man instead of a young boy, and the music is modern radio rock.
-Visuals on computer screens that look like they were stolen directly from the classic 90's movie Hackers.
-One female taking on the entire army of North Korea even after ejecting from her plane and getting shot in the arm. (Note: She has just been shot at by a large group of army personnel and decides to head to their base camp.)
-The plane downloading every mp3 ever. While that was comedy, for maximum effect they should have just said "Oh no, the ship just downloaded the internet."
-The army being scared that their automatic plane is flying into Russian air space, however, being perfectly okay with their human pilots shooting down multiple Russian planes, coating an entire village located in Tajikstan in nuclear fallout killing everyone, and killing lots of North Koreans.

I don't know why but for some reason when the airplane makes a joke about 3/4 of the way through, "he had nothing more to say," I decided that I liked this movie a lot more than a good majority of the movies I've seen this summer. I wanted to hate this movie so much, I wanted it to end the careers of everyone involved (except Jamie Foxx), but I just couldn't. It was just so blatant about ignoring all sense of realism and care-free about everything every decent filmmaker is so meticulous with that I can't help but smile when I think about it. I guess it's similar to the way I enjoy Wesley Willis, the fact he doesn't care about a goddamn thing and does exactly what he wants to do.

Also, Ebert's review for this film is hysterical and an absolute must read: http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/...REVIEWS/50713001

In the end, I'm giving this movie a worthy rating of George of the Jungle/Dudley Do-Right ( *1/2 ) but I believe that upon a second viewing I might have some sense knocked into me.

New, 5 minute movie reviews!

2005-07-27T01:28:00.000-07:00

Family Guy: Stewie the Untold Story - Yes, this movie leaked onto the internet 2 months early, and I will admit to being privileged to a special advance screening which I will talk no more about. Anyway, the film starts out with multiple subplots none of which are all that important. Eventually, a main plot of Stewie searching for someone he believes is his "real father" is created and the film continues there, with occasional tangents to involve the other members of the family. If you were looking for humor reminiscent of the first two seasons of the show, you will probably be disappointed by this movie. While the current (fourth) season is not unfunny, it just doesn't have the same charm and humor as the first two seasons: these episodes seem to rely more on repeated jokes and cameos from past episodes. This film, does the same, however, it also has pointless cursing, at times it seems as if they're dropping the F-bomb solely to show that they can do it uncensored now. While the movie does have some incredibly funny jokes, it seems to just drag on after a while. It feels like they took the humor from a 25 minute episode, ran it through a taffy puller, and even though I am a man who loves his taffy, it just felt needlessly long and dragged on at points.

Bad News Bears - Through out history there have been some truly tragic events such as the genocide in Rwanda, the massacre in My Lai, Saved by the Bell: The College Years, and the Holocaust. I have read about and seen pictures of these horrible phenomenons, yet, eventually there has always been something to renew my faith in humanity. After watching this film, however, I felt like I had truly killed part of myself that I would never get back. It was as if I took a large chunk of what is "good" about people, molded it into a tiny, innocent puppy, left it on an island, let loose on the island with a hail of nuclear bombs and massive amounts of napalm, then when it was over, swam out to piss on the ashes. I should have trusted my first instincts and left 10 minutes into the movie, however, I am a masochist and stayed. Billy Bob Thornton once again plays himself in this movie, a dirty old drunken asshole, and is teamed up with a group of some of the worst child actors ever that I wouldn't mind running over in a semi while they were playing in a pile of leaves at the side of the road. I hate this movie with every fiber of my being and don't feel like writing anymore about it.

The Island - Michael Bay released another movie, this time with Scarlett Johansson and Ewan McGregor. The movie, however, feels very similar to other sci-fi movies, such as Logan's Run, and apparently ripped off from another film, which you can read all about here: http://seattletimes.nwsourc...islandripoff.html. The film is fairly pleasing visually, and has plenty of people getting hit with blunt objects which made me laugh in the same way Final Destination 2 had me rolling on the ground at each death. Again, this felt to me like another movie that was trying to hit too many things at once, action, science-fiction, and a little bit of drama with some thoughts about ethics thrown in as well. On the Michael Bay scale I would throw this up there just below The Rock, however, in the end, it's a Michael Bay film and nothing that really got me excited. It might be worth seeing as this is possibly the last Michael Bay film we will see in the theaters for a while, hopefully, as the film had a budget of over $120 million and raked in just over $12 million opening weekend.

March Of The Penguins - If you like penguins, you will love this movie. If you do not like penguins, you will not like this movie. While watching the movie I felt like I was 5 years old again and seeing some of these animals for the first time and they are just as entertaining now as they were then. The truth is, I love penguins, so I loved this film. If I ever had enough money, I would raise a giant army of penguins and we would frolick around in the snow all day. Err...back the review. I felt like I was at home watching an extended documentary about penguins on an Animal Planet show, I didn't find the love story to be as compelling as many people did. The cinematography was excellent, especially considering the conditions the film was shot in, and some of the scenes, especially the first march of the penguins, are absolutely incredible. There were scenes, however, where you were left with nothing to look at besides two penguins standing next to each other doing nothing but touching beaks. I understand it's supposed to show love, I understand it's supposed to be romantic, however, I got just as fidgety after minutes of watching many similar shots as I would watching multiple shots of human couples standing around hugging. In the end, however, there were some hilarious moments and beautiful scenes and frankly, my desire to give a penguin a giant hug has never been stronger.

Hide And Seek - Oh good, Dakota Fanning is in this , I sure can't get enough of her. Anyway, De Niro plays a pyschologist who's wife kills herself so of course he decides the best thing for himself and his daughter (Fanning) who, by the way, is mentally unstable and visits a child psychologist (Famke Janssen), is to seclude themselves out in a house in the middle of a forest. Once they move, De Niro gets upset she's not making real friends out in the middle of bumfuck and she just plays with her imaginary friend Charlie. From there, De Niro starts trying to hook up with the recently divorced neighbor, which causes strange messages on the bathroom walls and creepy events. The movie ends up with what has, by now, become an extremely predictable, uninteresting, and cliche ending.