We live in a cinematic climate where everyone from top to bottom is trying to capture some form of the past. It’s partly the reason the film industry is struggling and artistically becoming bankrupt, however that is a topic for another day. We are trying to recapture, and repackage our youth. The big guns in Hollywood are doing it, the little guys with HD consumer cameras in their hands are doing it. We have an obsession to recreate the Reagan-era theater experience, but the popcorn is never flavored right. Hollywood, ala Transformers and such, makes it’s attempts with labels, logos, NAMES. That’s the problem really, you can call it “Transformers” or “Total Recall” all you want, you can plaster the nostalgic logo all over the posters and scream the title from the mountaintops, but in the end it doesn’t feel the same. More often than not it comes off as depressing instead of capturing that “FEEL” that it aims for and we crave. That’s because that “FEEL” isn’t in the logo, and it honestly can’t be found in low-budget “supposed to be awful” parodies of 80’s mainstream entertainment. It has to be in the DNA of the movie and filmmakers like Guillermo del Toro know how to work that double helix magic and bring it out, not with logos and fan service, but with TONE and WRITING and CONCEPT.

Pacific Rim, Guillermo del Toro’s Robots vs. Monster action homage to an eclectic handful of genres from cinemas past, is without a doubt a complete triumph for its intended goal. Oh, and most delightful of all, it’s a completely NEW property, a homage to the Godzilla (kaiju) and Robot movies of 30 or more years ago.

For a synopsis and cast list here’s a direct link to the IMDB page.

The “triumph” aspect stems from the tone and the characters, surprisingly more so than the spectacular action scenes. Del Toro gives us a story that revolves around an ensemble cast doing their best to have a good time. Ron Perlman in a cameo role chews up the scenery as a comic relief along side Charlie Day’s Kaiju obsessed scientist. Idris Elba steals the show as the heavy, and the rest of the cast pulls us into the film in an almost effortless, sometimes pleasantly cheesy, effort. The great thing about the movie is, unlike say Bay’s Transformers films, this isn’t a red, white, and blue America-to-the-rescue patriot-fest. This film feels all-inclusive. The world is facing a giant threat and we all come together equally to stop it. This is especially evident because of the process needed to control the giant monster crushing robots, it’s called “drifting” (not the Tokyo kind) and its when two people lock minds to control the robots because a single human mind can’t do it by itself. This leads us through the emotional through line of the film and is the plot device, which gives us both a male and female hero at the end of the day.

While there is an emotional through line, let’s say this, the film has a light touch. Light touch? Yes, it is very odd to say a film about giant, skyscraper sized monsters and robots fighting has a light touch, but in the “tone” department that is exactly what Del Toro is Aiming for. The movie is meant to be enjoyed, to be savored by those of use who grew up watching Godzilla movies and smashing robot toys together out of pure glee. In other reviews and discussions I’ve seen Jurassic Park mentioned quite a few times, because it’s a movie that made this current generation of almost-30-somethings walk out of a theater with their eyes twinkling with the glee of imagination (this reviewer included.) Pacific Rim, much like the 20-year old Jurassic Park, has the potential to do just that for a new generation of kids. That’s a bold statement to make in a cinematic climate where huge CGI action films are, sadly, the standard. However, Del Toro knows the genres he’s trying to capture, and he captures them right.

Pacific Rim is highly recommended. Furthermore, IMAX might actually be worth the ticket price for this one, but avoid the 3D. Always avoid the 3D.

Thanks for reading!

Pixar’s BRAVE – spoiler free review

I think the title is a mistake.

All the advertising, marketing, trailers, ricketa, racketa, even the first third of Pixar’s newest movie seem to be pushing one singular obvious plot that is nowhere to be found in the movie itself. This isn’t really a bad thing, just a confusing one.

The movie is a scottish period piece, a story about a soon-to-be Queen, Merida (voiced by Kelly Macdonald) who wants a life free from the expectations of her future. She has an overbearing mother, the current Queen (Emma Thompson,) and a very supportive father, the current King (Billy Connolly.) Merida is an expert archer, highly adept at life in the wilderness and is pretty much the antithesis to anything prim and proper. Surrounded by a kingdom of ruthless warriors and the “manliest” of manly scottish men, she is expected to be everything she hates on top of being expected to marry a prince she’s never met. You can see where this is going right? I mean the title, the setup, all of it points to the obvious conclusion that she is going to prove that she is something more than just a pretty smile by her extreme bravery, probably by showing up even the best of the best warriors in the kingdom at some yet to be known task. Right?

I mean look at this poster:

Wrong. I’m glad it’s wrong too. BRAVE is not trying to tell that story no matter how much the marketing and the setup seem to want to. This is a movie about mistakes (much like the title of the movie itself,) responsibility, identity and the relationship of a mother and her daughter. Without SPOILING anythng I’ll just say that the princess tries desperatley to change her destiny and ends up cursing her mother.

I won’t go too in depth with the story, but all of princess Merida’s wilderness and archery skills come into play and her mother sees that she is a much different personality then the one being imposed on her. It’s a very touching story, a very weird tale and even a welcome one, but at the heart of it its not about bravery, sure Merida has to be brave in one scene but it just doesn’t merit the title and the tone of the marketing.

The animation is exceptional, Billy Connolly, Emma Thompson and Kelly Macdonald give great performances. For all of you who were heartbroken at CARS 2 sadly existing, BRAVE will remind you why your standards for Pixar were so high prior to CARS 2. Still, I don’t know if BRAVE is good enough to make up for putting Larry The Cable Guy in theaters TWICE.

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter – Review

I’ve never read the book, so don’t expect any perspective involving that.

please carefully study the following Pictures by SharpWriter:

…and you basically just felt the exact tone, joke, and overall absurdly senseless “badassery” of Timur Bekmambetov’s Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. The movie makes little to no sense, doesn’t bother to truly explain the vamps, Lincoln’s powers are ill-defined and the film often defies its own logic and physics.

However, much like the above “internety” photographs of our founding fathers in absurd situations, fighting beasts while forcing them to “deal” with historical documents, this film succeeds on its complete dedication to the joke. It’s the phrase “AMERICA, F!@#$ YEAH!” formed and molded into celluloid. It is both a satire of “American Exceptionalism” and a homage, albeit a silly one, to arguably this nations greatest president.

Benjamin Walker’s performance, regardless how this movie strikes you, is actually quite great. In both body and spirit he embodies a noble, honest figure, which is a pretty impressive feat when you consider he’s surrounded by so much cartoonish action.

Some of the set pieces in this movie, cartoonish or not, pretty much define the term “AWESOME!” for better or worse.

– Abe Lincoln fighting a vampire in the center of a horse stampede? AWESOME.

– Vampires, fighting for the south, during the battle of Gettysburg? AWESOME.

– Abe Lincoln chopping a tree in half with one blow with the power of TRUTH? AWESOME!!!

***************SPOILERS OVER*******************

The movie isn’t that coherent and like I said it defy’s its internal logic, and never really explains the “vampire rules” of its universe, but I enjoyed it none the less for the nuggets of ridiculous that flowed throughout.

Oh, and DON’T SEE THE 3D…something was seriously flawed with the 3D print, it looked to be a victim of extreme DIGITAL NOISE REDUCTION, wide shots looked laughably horrible. I hope the 2D doesn’t follow suit.

It looked like the awful 2010 bluray of PREDATOR, but in 3D:

SEEKING A FRIEND FOR THE END OF THE WORLD spoiler free review

Earlier this year, when reviewing Cabin In The Woods, I spoke about my desire to reach into Joss Whedon’s nipple abyss, where he keeps his talent, and steal some for myself. This was basically cause I wish I had the idea for Cabin first, well I can say that I’m jealous I didn’t think of Seeking A Friend For The End Of The World first as well.

A light comedy that takes place during the last 3 weeks of the apocalypse , one that doesn’t whimp out in the end, it’s a good idea. Personally, I don’t know if I would consider it a great film, but it’s a very well acted, directed, and funny flick. The comedy isn’t coming from the leads here either, but from the various cameos by T.J Miller, Gillian Jacobs, Rob Corddry, Patton Oswalt, Rob Huebel, Adam Brody and William Peterson of all people. It’s a great cast, and Steve Carrell himself gives a very understated performance that is polar opposite to his Michael Scott.

Please don’t let “THE END OF THE WORLD” part in the title fool you, this isn’t a Michael Bay film, we don’t see much of the chaos and panic and destruction of the world in a storm of mania over it’s end, its only hinted at both visually, audibly, and through suggestion. In fact, that might be my biggest compliment to the film itself, they figured out just the perfect balance to keep the whole affair low budget but without feeling like they were skimping on showing us glimpses of the premise.

Writer/Director Lorene Scafaria doesn’t force armageddon down our throat, the movie knows we get what the apocalypse means, it pushes that aside and tells this small story of one lonely man.

Sadly, I foresee this film disappointing a wide variety of filmgoers expecting either the brash comedy of Carell’s other work, or as I said, a Michael Bay film. If you can except the movie for what it’s trying to be and not what the title would normally make our Hollywood glazed brains envision, it’s worth the price of a ticket.

Ok that’s all for now. I’m Bob Rose and thanks for your eyeball time!

That’s My Boy ““ A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!

Why am I always so on the defensive with comedy these days?

Not really sure if this makes me a contrarian or what, but one of the things I miss most about the “˜90s is that it was like a mid-budget comedy-film heaven. A time where studios were investing in sillyness, stupidity and laughs on a consistent basis, and where the cynicism born out of the soon-to-come net-generation was nowhere in sight. Sue me”¦I loved the Hollywood that could release films like Dumb and Dumber, Wayne’s World, Coneheads, Tommy Boy, Happy Gilmore, Dirty Work, Cabin Boy, etc. Comedy is undoubtedly my favorite genre, I was raised on it, and those were the type of films released during my impressionable years. It was practically on tap at the theater, and I make no apologies for loving them. Why did it all stop? Can’t really be sure, but perhaps it was some mixture between the fact that Hollywood no longer can make a mid-range budgeted film anymore AND somewhere along the lines comedy in film became associated with bad cinema.

I blame Tarantino, and I’ve been accused of being a Tarantino fanboy”¦but in my humble opinion, Tarantino is to studio comedy films what Nirvana is to “Fun Music” (see Darren Aronofsky’s The Wrestler for further explanation.) They came on the scene and suddenly everything needs to be gritty, real, and/or serious or “IT SUCKS!” (at least in the mind of the audience.) Which doesn’t even make sense since there’s nothing “real” about Tarantino’s films”¦in a good way, but I digress.

That’s My Boy is a return to form for Sandler, a return to the Sandler of his early comedy albums, his SNL days, the era of Billy Madison and Happy Gilmore. For some this isn’t really a good thing, if you hated Sandler before you aren’t going to magically love him now, ESPECIALLY with him doing a silly accent for 90 minutes, it even took me a few minutes to adjust without cringing. In retrospect though, I like the over the top absurdity of his (Boston?) accent. I’m the guy who loved and still loves Little Nicky after all .

What is the “form” that this is returning to? Basically, R-rated, family-unfriendly humor. It’s Sandler as the goofball dad and Andy Samberg as his estranged son, the straight man who can’t stand the constant free-flowing sex jokes, stupidity and/or slobbery. Sure, it’s an old formula, but a great formula when played right. I submit the following examples:

Awesome:

Even more awesome:

This poster looks familiar, the posing, the spilling beverage, the word “BOY” :

The best comment I have for That’s My Boy is that it isn’t our worst fear, it isn’t JACK AND JILL 2: JACK AND JILL AND JED (I’m just guessing.) This is the Sandler that we fell in love with in the 1990s. Now that he’s back on track, and the fact that this film is essentially a non-violent Uncle Donnie movie (his name is even Donnie,) I hope and pray that he will finally make my dreams come true and make Toll Booth Willie: The Movie.

I’m Bob Rose and thanks for your eyeball time!

THE AVENGERS ““ Review ***SPOILER FREE***

In the western world, in the culture of Hollywood, we have made films the apex of a property’s existence. When any creative, artistic or entertaining endeavor reaches a certain level of popularity, respect, profits or prestige we turn it into a film, or possibly threaten to turn it into a film, if its isn’t already a film itself. So we’ve grown up salivating for certain things to come to fruition. Impossible things. For better or worse many of those things in my generation, due to new technology powered by James Cameron’s ego, have come into being as live action romps of varying degrees of success.

Well as far as “things” go, The Avengers is most certainly one of those “things” for me. The good news being that I went completely ape-“fecal matter” for the movie. I sang the praises of Sir Joss Whedon in my Cabin In The Woods review not long ago, and here I’m not even sure that singing is going to do him justice. The man is having a good year, so good in fact that his career is probably going to take a different path from now on. Avengers most certainly has the potential to skyrocket him into the big leagues of Hollywood Event Filmmakers like Michael Bay or Stephen Sommers, but the good news for us is that, unlike those guys, Whedon makes sure to take care of character and story first. However, once those are locked he will let loose on the action spectacle with the best of them. He has the potential to be, and I apologize for saying this, a “thinking man’s Michael Bay.” If you remove all the storied history of the characters involved with the Avengers that is what it boils down to: a Bay film where you actually care what happens amidst all the silliness and explosions. Joss Whedon: Man of Emotional Explosions.

Unlike Cabin though, Avengers is “A Joss Whedon Film,” written and directed in full. I’ve been yapping to everyone who would listen that my main satisfaction with this movie is that it truly feels like a comic book script, as in, a script written with the intention of being drawn, inked and printed for Marvel to distribute. It’s very comic-book-like. What exactly do I mean by that? Well, I don’t know really. I suppose if my hand is forced to explain I would say that is has that ever so sacred balance of comic book reality, physics, logic, and tone without ever delving into being stupid or silly. It’s not cynical of its own source material, this movie is proud to be sopping wet with comic book mythology and atmosphere. At no point does it shy away from the exaggerated world of comicdom. It’s as big, awesome, and faithful to the source art form as Joss Whedon is a fan of that art form himself.

The reason Avengers fires on all cylinders is balance. Whedon is no stranger to the group dynamic in his writing and it most certainly shows here. Thor, Banner, Cap, Stark, Hawkeye and Black Widow all share the screen with things only slightly tipping towards Iron Man. However, that isn’t a problem, this is Iron Man’s film and it makes perfect sense. Cap is still reeling from his 70 years under the ice, his rise to leadership is not cemented especially considering this is an “origin” story of a team. Not to mention, that as far as the public is concerned Tony Stark and John Favreau’s triumphant first Iron Man film is responsible for this whole gargantuan undertaking in the first place. It’s impossible to deny Downey’s presence as well, with a character as “large” as his version of Stark on screen it’s going to take at least two films for the cream, or in this case the Captain, to rise to the top.

It’s an impressive achievement on Whedon’s part as well that Jeremy Renner’s Hawkeye and Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow not only have presence in the film but actually prove themselves useful and interesting in the face of being over shadowed by a super soldier, a demi-god, a genius billionaire, and the ultimate engine of destruction. Tom Hiddleston proves once again that he was perfectly cast as Loki, at every turn, even when he’s losing he is deep in character without flinching. Chris Evans gives a convincing take on a recently unfrozen and confused Captain America. Chris Hemsworth probably has the most unsung hardship of the entire group as he succeeds in playing Thor with an undercurrent of shame and disappointment in his adopted brother Loki and the horrors he is bringing about on earth. Fans might complain that Thor doesn’t get as much time to strut his powers this time around, but he is mentally focused on his brother and the plot unfolds as such. I think once we get a Loki-free Avengers flick we will truly see Thor cut loose. (Also, I still say that Hemsworth is quite possibly the best casted superhero role ever. The guy just exudes Thor at every turn. Just my opinion.)

Oh, and Sam Jackson knocks it out of the park playing Nick Fury as”¦well”¦Sam Jackson.

There were two huge standouts of the film for me. First is Clark Gregg as Agent Coulson. His screen time isn’t long but the little he gets he sells hard, going so far as to give his character a lot of heart and a lot of balls. Second is Mark Ruffalo as Bruce Banner/The Hulk. Now, I admit right here and now that I am a lifelong Hulk fan. The comics, the TV show, the movies, I love the Hulk in all his forms, always have. As a credit to Whedon and Ruffalo I would go as far as saying that with the exception of Bill Bixby, Rufalo might be might favorite live action Banner ever. This is the first time in this new era of cinema tech we get to see the green guy “smash” as a hero instead of a menace and it is incredible (sorry.) That is especially a compliment considering Ruffalo did all the motion capture himself. When Hulk is unleased in this film, especially in the last third of the movie, it takes the “awesome” to a whole new level of incredible (sorry again.) However it isn’t just the smashing that wins me over, it’s Ruffalo as Banner. Much like Bixby, Ruffalo is playing a Banner who was been to hell and back and has begun to live with the curse instead of trying to fight it, this movie particularly furthers that very narrative. Of course all the buzz Hulk is getting from audiences and critics for Avengers is due to the smashing, I’m just saying for the rest of us who love the character this movie has other things to offer as well. Hats off to the design team too, the green guy has NEVER looked more accurate, and just plain perfect, to the source material than he does here.

Thanks for reading and for the love of Thor: STAY AFTER THE CREDITS!!!

THE CABIN IN THE WOODS ““ Review
SPOILER FREE!!!

Walking out of the theater there was anger coursing through the circuitry that connects my brain to my face to my lips. This wasn’t normal anger, but a very complimentary one. “How did I not think of that?!?!” Cabin In The Woods, a monumentally entertaining romp with a concept so simple, so genius, it’s hell-bent to anger any determined screenwriters out there munching popcorn.

Joss Whedon, the man, the myth, the soon-to-be legend, how does he do it? That’s what I wanted to know. All the empirical evidence that I have researched is telling me that exactly three to five inches from Joss’s left armpit resides a dark black hole the diameter of a 2-Liter RC Cola bottle. This hole leads to a place that only a few entertainers in history have ever felt the cool caress of on their talented fingertips. This place, this hole, is where a seemingly endless supply of creativity and knowledge of story and character based entertainment is derived. All of it floats freely, you just need to reach in and grab it. Need to create three shows that lead to pulp culture phenomenon? No prob! Just reach in Joss’s nipple abyss and you’ll be writing in no time flat. Stephen King also has a creativity hole, his is located just below his right thigh (the scarier one.)

If it’s not abundant with clarity yet, I very much enjoyed Drew Goddard’s Cabin. Wait, strike that, reverse it”¦loved. Why? Well I don’t think I can fully answer such a question without spoiling the large meaty sandwich of awesome that this film is. Also I don’t mean to hold Joss high and downplay Goddard’s role here, as the direction, pacing, acting and production are all very effective. This is quite possibly the type of film that will define it’s own Horror/Comedy genre for a generation, much like Evil Dead 2, Ghostbusters, or Dead Alive. While it might be a bit MORE or LESS gore/scare filled than those I mentioned, the spirit and craftsmanship is there. The tone located in the center of Cabin, especially the last third, reminded me of a young Sam Raimi with a dash of Ivan Reitman for good measure.

What in the heck is it about?”

How should I put this? It’s a packed-tight meta-horror-comedy with a plot that bows its head to, arguably, history’s greatest horror writer. Cabin is most certainly a post modern take on the horror genre of the last 40 or so years, something we have seen more than a few times in the last decade. The difference here is, the execution is excellent. At no point is the movie “bad for bad’s sake” or pumped with cheese and camp in an attempt at homage. It manages to comment on its own genre using parody, but with no parody of then genre’s low points at all. Yeah, it’s hard to explain without spoilers, give me a break.

The tagline for Cabin is:

“You think you know the story. Think again.”

This is really pointing to everything you get from the trailer, which I’m designating as non-spoiler territory. Kids go to a cabin in the woods. Someone is controlling the horrors that befall them. It’s the “hows” and the “whys” that come into play here that make the film great. The cast is solid, especially with the likes of the now legendary character actors Richard Jenkins and Bradley Whitford leading the way. Their banter anchors the film in it’s comedy-horror roots and was easily my favorite aspect of the whole ordeal.

This film was supposedly shelved for two years, why I can’t imagine, but since it was filmed some of its principal cast have gone on to do bigger projects, most notably Chris “THOR” Hemsworth. They are all perfectly cast in roles that are themselves “meta” yet there is still personality brought through even in the homage. Fran Kranz being a particular stand out as the staple stoner “with a twist!” (M. Night’s favorite character?)

You could say I have trepidations about speaking further on the flick. Discussing this film without spoilers is near impossible. If you are a horror fan, I have a hard time imagining you will regret the very overpriced ticket-sized void in your pocket when walking out of Cabin, and to Joss Whedon’s and Drew Goddard’s credit, neither will casual audience members looking for a good time at the theater.

This is that rare breed of film, like say Hot Fuzz, that reflects on everything that came before but still maintains its own “Ghostbuster-Evil-Deadish” comedy-horror entity in the process. I can’t help but be excited about whatever Drew Goddard is directing next, and of course I’m prepared to be baffled when Whedon blows me away AGAIN this year with Avengers. Whedon, I’m trying to be a screenwriter too, so could I uh, well”¦let me reach into your nipple abyss”¦please?
The Three Stooges ““ Trailer & Movie Review

Oh man. Where do I begin?

No, I don’t say that AT ALL because it was, as the COMIC BOOK GUY would say, the “WORST MOVIE EVER.” No, I liked it a lot, damn near loved it, and so did the audience I saw it with. I ask “where do I begin?” because I’m tired. Drained, if you will. I am so utterly disgusted and tired of defending comedy, especially in this world of internet criticism. My brain is tied in a knot so complex that I couldn’t induce a seizure even by fast-forwarding Japanese children’s programming.

I’ve covered part of this territory before in my review for Macgruber, but I’m not satisfied with my explanation given there. How do I condense what could easily amount to an 800 page dissertation on the misguided modern day view of how comedy and levity in film is viewed by the public, the web, and critics in general? I don’t, I can’t, I won’t”¦I have to keep this smaller. This review is not going to be about the defense of comedy in all its forms, that is just too big and better left to a more eloquent writer to defend.

The negative reaction to the first two Stooges trailers was one of the more hateful waves of venom I’ve ever seen spewed on the internet. I just don’t understand why. First, if you are not a fan of the original Three Stooges shorts, stop reading right now. For this particular film, I don’t care about a “non-fan’s” opinion, your stance is moot to me, and honestly you are most likely (but possibly not) part of the group that need to read that 800 page dissertation about comedy. I’m not saying it’s wrong that you aren’t a fan of the source material, nor am I trying to force it on you, just saying that what follows is not for you in the least. Thanks for trying to read this review, but please stop. Thank you and goodbye.

Ok Stooge Fans, now that they are gone please help me to understand WHY you hated those first two trailers so, so, so much. My first question is this:

“Can you get over the fact that it exists, and that people who aren’t the original stooges are playing the stooges?” AND If I tell you that the directors, The Farrelly Brothers, have considered this a dream project and have been trying to get this movie made for almost 10 years, and it is not just a quick Hollywood cash-in, but a beloved and carefully constructed love letter to their comedy heroes does that help sway your answer at all?

If your answer is “no” then I will have to ask you to please also stop reading. If you can’t except the above then you can’t accept the movie. I respect your decision, now go on and enjoy the rest of your day.

We are losing people quicker than Spinal Tap drummers. Alright, so you love the original Stooges, you can accept new actors playing them, and you are aware that the movie isn’t a Hollywood cash-in board-room decision without any passion behind it. Good. NOW. Here are the only feasible reasons I could see you going into this with a negative perspective based on the trailers:

1) It’s not black and white.

2) It’s takes place in modern day instead of when the originals took place.

3) Modern day references that will become dated and seem like a cheap gag and degrade the “timelessness” of the project as a whole. (ala The Jersey Shore cameo.)
I’ll address these one by one, and I am going to act as though I, assumedly like you, have only seen the trailers.

“Why can’t it be in black and white?” – Regardless of The Artist winning best picture, do you honestly think any studio is going to fund a black and white summer comedy? There’s a reason it took 10 years to get this made, and why any movie has troubles getting made”¦MONEY. Believe it or not, they don’t make these decisions based on how awesome you personally think it would be.

“Why can’t it take place sometime before the 1940s, why do they always have to bring them into the modern world?” ““ Money. Money. Money. Once again, I’m sure the Farrellys would have loved the option to make a black and white 1930s period Stooge flick, but NO ONE is going to fund that. It’s either this or nothing, you might prefer nothing but THIS exists. Deal.

“The Jersey Shore? COME ON!!!” ““ I agree with you here, upon seeing the first trailer I could have done without this, but once again: MONEY. Jersey Shore and iPhone jokes are going to bring in the kiddies, sad but true.

Now, everything I just blathered about is pure common sense, things you already know and are more than capable of figuring out, so what else is left for you to instantly hate on this movie? I’m a lifelong Three Stooges fan, born and raised at the Nyuk Nyuk University of comedy and I’m also a pretty harsh critic when it comes to things I so dearly love. With the exception of the three obvious complaints I made above all I could see was completely, nigh perfect, impressions of the three great ones themselves. Will Sasso, Sean Hayes, and Chris Diamantopoulos are giving their all at every turn and succeeding.

Not to mention the film itself looks to stay true in both plot and technical production to the originals. As stooge fans you should be aware that the Three Stooges were never high art, or shot and filmed by Federico Fellini”¦they were broad comedy shorts produced for a broad audience back in their day. So I guess my question to all you venom squirters is”¦what exactly is your argument for all the hate? It looks 100% accurate sans the obvious changes made due to money and of course the deceased original stooges. Why is this the end of the western civilization as we know it? Why is it somehow MORE AWFUL and MORE OFFENSIVE than the original stooge shorts? Are you absolutely positive that you are even a fan? Please, send all explanations to the comment section.

**********Possible light spoilers ahead**********

The film itself is actually a very accurate and a damn funny 90 minutes. The overall plot is split into 3 shorts that are loosely connected via a main storyline about saving the orphanage the stooges were raised in. A lot of care was taken to actually replicate the same type of physics, editing, side characters, and cinematography of the original shorts. Most things are shot wide and for the most part static to incorporate the three boys doing their stooge thing all in the frame at once, just like the originals.

The physics are “stooge physics” applying to everyone, not just Larry, Moe and Curly themselves. There’s no blood, no reality, and absolutely no permanent effects of violence. An example of this is when Craig Bierko is in a full body cast with a stick of dynamite shoved in the head area, when it explodes, he floats off the bed, smoke shoots out the holes and he sticks his head out with black ash stains all over his face. This isn’t reality. The effect, like this one, was even filmed and executed in such a manner that with the exception of being IN COLOR it felt like it was filmed in 1940. Die hard fans with a keen eye will completely appreciate the filming, editing, physics and FX.

The performances are amazing, not just because the three leads have the look and the voices down, but they are believable as a cohesive comedy trio. The story itself actually is a pretty cliché, on purpose no doubt, but it’s a sweet story with some heart. Larry David as the cantankerous Nun who is often screaming at everyone steals every scene he’s in just for the utter absurdity of”¦well”¦Larry David in a Nun costume screaming at kids.

As for the Jersey Shore cameo, yeah I was dreading it like one does. Little did I expect it to be one of the funniest parts in the movie, it’s almost cathartic seeing Moe slap the tan off their skin for 5 minutes. Sure I would probably prefer it not to be in the flick, but I’d be telling a stone-cold lie if I said I wasn’t laughing.

This whole write up has been way too long and rather on the defensive, which I fully admit. I’m also admitting that this movie isn’t for cynical post-modern internet trolls or Stooge Fans who can’t adjust. Sure, it is a valid point to wonder if this whole venture is disrespectful to the original actors and I agree that it totally could have been, and in fact it was a very high probability it was going to be. After seeing the flick, and especially seeing it with such a satisfied crowd of critics, I must say that I felt no disrespect, and in all honesty it’s a rather harmless, sweet movie that is faithful as all living hell. In this guy’s humble opinion I think the Farrelly Brothers accomplished what they set out to do. They made a pretty darn good Stooge flick, still that doesnt mean it will appeal to the “twitter” generation one bit (I guess that’s why the Jersey Shore is shoved in there.)

Thanks for your eyeball time! Bob Rose signing off!

On the subject of Filmmakers, Filmmockers, Critics, and Cynics:

Tucked and sucked deep within the underbelly of the no-dough-low-budget-micro independent realm of filmmaking for too long can turn a man (or woman, or hermaphrodite) into a bitter by-product that splits off into two essential steams of flowing hate-fire directed at very different targets.

Group A, or as I like to call them, “Groupay” are the ones brimming with classic fits of jealous spite toward that town located on the west coast with that giant hill with words on it. They spell out HOLLYWOOD. Deep within his hill is of course the very dwelling in which Michael Bay sleeps in his money-bunker nightly, on top of a pile of gyrating women who have been genetically modified to smell like newly minted cash. Groupays have diamond-solidified opinions with serrated teeth attached to them, the kind meant to tear flesh off the bone with a single quip. They are busting their ass to make their flick, sweat, blood, tears, and some type of stupidity-passion-willpower mixture pour over every location, shot, and actor they thank almighty Odin for bestowing to the set on their day off work.

If they make it to the final cut of their film still standing and with enough debt to be able to afford avoiding scurvy for a few months they have won, they are adept vikings, they sit atop the mighty throne and look down on the kingdom they stitched together with After Effects and lots of ADR. Those people, those Groupays, when they go to the cinema, shirts soaked in bile and hard work, pockets empty from the massive Pizza-Hut runs to feed cast and crew, they sit there and see a movie in which the catering bill for ONE DAY was more than the budget on their entire production. Of course they aren’t going to give them an inch. The slightest misstep in a $200 million tent-pole film is enough to write off the entire thing as a “pile of sucktastic suckicide with a side of suckitude.” Now it’s easy to assume that the reasoning behind this is, as indy filmmakers, they see a world where the talentless reign and the gifted fail and struggle, and while that might be the main catapulting force behind their searing contempt, one must consider the possibility that they are also, much like myself, natural born buttholes (but not surfers, indy filmmakers hate water and sunlight. We are the gizmos of humanity.)

"...Actually Michael, that was you that said it. In fact, you screamed it."

That brings us to Groopee, or as I like to confusingly call them, “Group B”, the rarer of the two species, the one with no country, the outcasts of a society that tolerated Outkast. This is a group that until around 3 years ago I was uninitiated of their existence and I’m still not quite sure that Group B is even a group, as I only know about 3 people that fall into this reject community. B, the group, consists of the same blokes with silver-screen colored fantasies as I spoke of above, with one major difference, a severe and intense sympathy for all their fellow filmmakers and crews (here comes the difference) INCLUDING Hollywood sized productions past and present. Unlike Larry Talbot, I’ve witnessed the change within me slowly occurring over years, luckily with much less deer slaughter. Being on the other side of production has made me re-examine the constant onslaught of criticism that seeps from the pores of GENERATION PWNED like needles on a gamma irradiated cactus. The venom coming from the net (where Sandra Bullock jokes have finally subsided,) as well as from those that are in, or yearn to be in, film production doesn’t speak to me any more. In fact, seeing behind the curtain has infected the very foundations of my feelings on criticism, art, and ultimately what exactly the word SUCKS truly means, vacuums and straws aside.

It has been said before, will be said again, and is being said in about three or four words from now, you can’t respond to critics with “Well let’s see you make a better film.” You can’t look Roger Ebert in his face after he eviscerates your favorite Bruce Willis film and challenge him to make a better movie than Hudson Hawk. Why? WHY? Well…um…because while it makes perfect sense, you negate all criticism, OF ALL KINDS, in one simplistic statement. It’s a retort that all of us see on the web from time to time but it has to be largely ignored just because of its power to destroy the very institution of criticism. Having an opinion is a human right, voicing it a constitutional one, but being able to actually prove it? (no one is going to shell out the cash for Hudson Hawk: The REquel directed by Roger Ebert.)

"I like HUDSON HAWK this much."

Now, this specifically is interesting to think about in the world of independent filmmakers. In my travels and adventures (all of which usually require less movement than chewing) I have many a spirited session of movie discussion with fellow filmmakers and have often wondered, as I listen to them claw the ass out of the likes of Underworld 9: Rim Job Restitution, if it’s ok to say “Well let’s see you make a better film.” Is it? Is this indy film world the exception? I really don’t have the answer. The first point that will be made is budget. “Give me $200 billiontrillion and I will make a better movie, until then, it’s sucks. FACT.” And yeah, that seems like a pretty great rebuttal, but…is it? Is anything being taken into consideration here besides the “art” of it? Yeah, I could give you a truckload of money, but could you bring in a better Transformers film than Michael Bay on time and under budget that is artistically superior but not alienating to the broad base audiences enough to cause it to lose returns? The average person, and I’d say the average indy filmmaker, couldn’t do such a thing right out of the gate, if at all. I couldn’t. Shouldn’t there be some respect at least toward the type of WAR GENERAL you need to be to get Transformers 3 made on time and underbudget and have it still be arguably coherent?

“I’ve seen you on set man, I’ve seen your last film…the problem isn’t money and time, the problem is talent, and I suck worse than you, how do you think that makes me feel?”

You probably think I am trying to make some grandiose point about how “everyone should shut their damn mouths cause everything is awesome and made of happiness and pink bunnies!” No. I’m not even sure I have a point, I’m trying to lay out all that has run through my head in the past 3 years or so that has contributed to my newfound bafflement at criticism. As all filmmakers know, no one sets out to make a bad movie, and every movie IS NOT suppose to be made or tailored to each individual audience member during every picosecond of its runtime. My thoughts also transferred to critics themselves and the “art” of criticism, sure you can’t tell them to make a better movie, but you can point out that since facts and/or the scientific method aren’t involved in this world that really what criticism is (get ready for a thunderous roar of “duh”) is a giant bullcrap weaving institution. I realized that my love of a film didn’t matter, I could easily “intellectually” bullcrap my way through a negative review of something I loved just as easily as something I loathed. Anyone worth their weight in wit, with the power to truly critically think about their ramblings knows that its not about GOOD or BAD, it’s about how a piece of “art” strikes you AND what amazing streaming barbs of bullcrap you will fire out of your head hole in order to defend what is essentially a gut reaction that you really can’t explain. Sure, there are people who will violently disagree with me here, they will say that there are rules, there are time tested patterns, there are dimensions and facets to all areas of art, specifically film for our purposes, and GOOD and BAD are real and definable and there’s no arguing that. Well…I’m arguing that. Why? Answer these two questions:

1) (directed at all heterosexual males and homosexual females) Could you write a well thought out review of boobs? Yes…boobs.

2) How do you account for enjoyment?

“I don’t get the boobs thing.” Right, its sort of a weird point, one that I normally reserve for defensive discussion of equality in marriage. Let’s say you are a boob lover, not everyone is, but most people at least are casual fans. You know why you like them, you can research WHY you like them, science, psychology and/or biology and all that will explain to you WHY it is that you just seem to be hopelessly addicted to boobs: instinct. Plain. Simple. Now, biological reasoning aside, can you actually put into words why you personally love them beyond the deeply imbedded evolutionary instinct? (feel free to substitute boobs with feet, or lips, or Alf costumes, whatever floats your boat.) I can’t do it. I sit there and think and think and think and no matter how well spoken and thoughtful I try to explain my endearing love for them all I get is this:

“They…uh…they are awesome for one, and uh…they are…well they are awesome cause they are, wait…did I say awesome? They are so awesome.”

Really, what is instinct if not nature’s hardwired version of “gut reaction.” My love for The Big Lebowski can be explained with all sorts of examples of film theory, historical relevance, script originality, line delivery, story structure, but when it comes down to it THAT ISN’T WHY I LOVE WATCHING THAT MOVIE, THAT IS ME TRYING TO GIVE FACTUAL REASONS WHY I LOVE WATCHING THAT MOVIE. Is it not the same for you? Am I a weird guy? Do the films you most love to enjoy and absorb time and time again only get placement into your dvd player due to a list of “artistic quality criteria” that they meet or because you truly, unexplainably love it for reasons either personal to you, and only you, or beyond your own ability to define in words, such as your love of Alf costumes. All I’m saying is think about why you’ve watched Better Off Dead a hundred times since the 80s…is it because of its merit? or cause you enjoy it? If it’s the former how come a film buff like yourself isn’t constantly watching Schindler’s List, Das Boot, or Ghandi? If you are a champion of “Good Art” then why watch films that don’t seem to really fit into that scheme? How do you separate the merit of “merit” itself and pure enjoyment?

The definition of "pure enjoyment."

That brings me to…

“What do you mean? How do I account for enjoyment…what?” Why are we so bitter, why do we hate so hard on these things when they react improperly with our guts? I don’t know. SERIOUSLY I DON’T. Why does it anger us to know that some dude who loved Glitter is at his home right now watching that movie and having a grande ol’time? I’ve admittedly never seen Glitter, but if it’s anything like the substance I won’t be a fan, that stuff gets on everything. Sure, the movie most likely isn’t a shining example of the historical and time tested requirements of the nationally approved cinematic checklist…but that dude, that dude truly enjoys watching it, it brings him endless glee. You and me might not get it, the dude might not even get it, but the question is, is Mr. Dude wrong? I realize its only natural to want the entire planet to adopt our personal opinions as law but really, concerning art and entertainment, why?

Once again, and I apologize for beating you over the head with it, but I DON’T KNOW. It has been a slow process but the notion that other people’s palpably real enjoyment of films I downright hate is completely valid. That dude isn’t faking his Glitter-mania because he is an agent of all that is hackneyed-evil-dreck in the world. He’s not out to destroy me and my opinions, which are righteous and true, fighting on the front-lines of quality and SUPERB TASTE! No. He legitimately enjoys it, and its not some war between good and bad or art and garbage…its essentially a war between opinions and delusions of grandeur, and history has shown that those are always battles that we can be proud of! (the sarcasm checker in Microsoft word froze my computer after that last sentence. I sooooooooooooo love when that happ{{}}{>><<<|||||||||||||||||——#######{program not responding.}#######

Dudes love this movie.

with all that being said…my review of JOHN CARTER:

It didn’t suck too much.

Dooders and Dooderettes, seriously thanks for reading… I promise I’ll be back soon with more “conventional” reviews.

-Bob Rose

Money Shot (Wikipedia): provocative, sensational, or memorable sequence in a film, on which the film’s commercial performance is perceived to depend.

Buck Shot: moments on which a film’s cheese-factor is based, often underlining the tone of the entire production and providing the viewer with the opposite effect intended.

Round 4: Christopher Plummer Halts EVERYTHING: A Moment from Star Crash.

(Here’s Round 1, Round 2, and Round 3)

Taglines:

• The ultimate inter-galactic adventure
• From a vast and distant galaxy… A Space Adventure for all Time!
• From a vast and distant galaxy – A space adventure like no other!

Christopher Plummer dressed as an alien porn star. I’ll say it again. Christopher Plummer dressed as an alien porn star. You should have laughed twice by now. Star Crash is a film peppered to the brim with Buck Shots. This cheap as hell Star Wars rip-off could be the focus of my writings today and for years to come. Here are some reasons why:

David Hasselhoff fighting robots with light sabers.

David Hasselhoff’s Hair.

David Hasselhoff. Period.

Yet, instead we must focus on a scene sans robot and Hoff. A scene in which one of America’s greatest living actors, Christopher Plummer, stands on an ominous sound-stage amongst a room full of laser-gun-toting men dressed as science fiction porn warriors (and David Hasselhoff.) Plummer looks to the heavens and demands that a spaceship stop time. That’s right, TIME, the whole thing, the concept of time… STOPPED!!! HALTED!!! FROZEN!!! Also, Plummer is dressed like an alien porn star. Correction: a very regal alien porn star. Please note the cape, the glistening cod piece, and the oh-so-stylish boots. This is the kind of garb that one wears when elected Emperor of the Galaxy, which I should mention is exactly what Christopher Plummer is playing here. Emperor of the Galaxy.

I stumbled across this particular Buck Shot while trying to ignore it. Hop in the WABAC Machine with me and let’s travel to a time when people still got references like “the WABAC Machine,” before all the VHS tapes on the planet were destroyed by SONY. There my manager and I stood stocking candy at the front desk of a mom-and-pop video store, blissfully ignoring the random sci-fi movie we plopped in to annoy the porn-renting customers. The cover looked enticing enough, could be mildly funny right? Wrong. Spicy as hell.

Then it happened. Christopher Plummer’s voice rang out:

“IMPERIAL BATTLESHIP… HALT THE FLOW OF TIME!!!”

Our ignorance was brutally slain by the cutting sound of quite possibly the greatest quote in all of b-movie cinema. My manager and I stopped dead in our tracks, boxes of candy in hand, looking into our equally chubby faces we broke down and bust a gut laughing. Ignoring all responsibilities we were getting paid to accomplish, we quickly ran over to the VCR and replayed the quote 20 or 30 times.

Not only did Plummer actually say that, but what followed was the epic FX shot of a space ship shooting a green ray “thing” out into space. This green thing was of course the time-halting-ray. We could tell because that’s what time-halting-rays look like: huge, thick, rickety, clouds of space-farts flowing into a planet. They come standard with most Imperial class battleships these days:

The beauty of course is that post-time-halting, Christopher Plummer goes on to explain that he just immobilized time, so that it can restart, after it restarts “Everything will explode.” Does it get better? Not often. What possesses an actor of Plummer’s stature to do movies like this? Many would say money, I say it’s because great actors don’t often watch their own performances, either that or their agents lie to them. John Malkovich’s agent is actually the demon Kromagamnon, lord of deception, the dark one who approved of the Eragon script. Ben Kingsley’s agent actually experimented sexually with Uwe Boll in college, his failure to convincingly enjoy it led to this:

Turning into this:

Admittedly, I’ve only ever sat through director Lewis Coates Star Crash (a.k.a. The Adventures of Stella Star) once, and I barely remember why exactly stopping time only so that everything will explode is the appropriate action for the Galactic Emperor to take. At the risk of making an ASS out of yoU and ME, I’m going to assume that this clip is funnier out of context than in, still if you ever get lucky enough to find a copy, sit through it once. Seeing Hasselhoff light saber fight with stop-motion robots will get you more messed up than injecting horse adrenaline into Oprah’s forehead during sex. Enjoy the clip:

MACGRUBER

A mostly-spoiler-free, mini-review. (Don’t worry, I’ll let you know where the spoiler is!)

I really LOATHE the saying “just leave your brain at the door” when trying to defend the likes of Transformers 2 and films of that nature. The proper response is “When people tell me to shut off my brain and have fun, I tell them I can’t because my brain is where I have fun.” (I got that from Eric Lichtenfeld.) While that is a genius response to a bonehead declaration, I don’t think turning off your brain should often apply to silly comedy, even though most act like it should. Film snobs, net elitists, and message board trolls want every film to be Pulp Fiction or The Dark Knight. Genre, passion, intent, and goals are all bunk ideas compared to how much a movie looks to fall into the very slim category of what they consider is GOOD. It has to be serious, be dark, and most importantly not trying to have any fun. This POV can help to evaluate certain films with certain tones for sure, Transformers 2 attempts to take itself seriously, which in turn reveals its wretched hatred of its audience. How come this is also always heaped on comedy? Sure there are a lot of soulless dead comedies, made without passion or care.

However, is it a crime to be passionate about being silly, vulgar, and stupid on purpose?

Can you not see the difference between the filmmakers of G-Force, Madea Goes To Jail, Old Dogs versus those of MacGruber? Have you truly lost every single ounce of your funny bone to the point where something DEFINING ITSELF AS A COMEDY, starring COMEDIANS and written by COMEDIANS just makes your vagina fill up with even more sand? It’s a sellout piece of shit right? THEN WHERE IS ALL THE PRODUCT PLACEMENT? (not that the lack of product placement proves anything…but seriously, this movie had none, how is it selling out?) It doesn’t make you an idiot to laugh at something silly or stupid, it doesn’t make your degree of “taste” bottom-out if you admit that a film that isn’t “Pulp Fiction-y” made you giggle. Are you saying that Albert Einstein and/or Stephen Hawking never laughed at a fart? If they did would they then be stupid? NO!!! So please, take that clichéd stick out of your ass and just try, for five minutes, to openly laugh at something you humorless prick. (by the way, I was wearing a Pulp Fiction shirt to the screening of MacGruber. I love Pulp Fiction.)

Every review, EVERY REVIEW, on the net is going to go to great detail describing the history of Saturday Night Live movies, the reviewer’s relationship to them, why they suck, and how Wayne’s World and The Blues Brothers are the only exceptions to the rule. Why? Yeah, it’s a character from SNL, so let’s compare it within and only to that group, does that fully make sense? Why can’t we just compare it to action comedies in general? I was very relieved to see the one review plastered on the poster “The best action comedy since Beverly Hills Cop.” It was a bit of a shock to see someone actually looking beyond SNL and seeing MacGruber for what it is, a movie, not only an SNL movie.

Classifying what exactly MacGruber “is” is most certainly a task within itself. A MacGyver spoof, “˜80s action parody, comedic drama? Either way, one thing is for certain, director Jorma Taccone, star Will Forte, and writer John Solomon love, love, love “˜80s action films. MacGruber isn’t so much an expanded sketch about MacGuyver’s doppelganger as it is a very direct (more so than say Hot Fuzz) send-up of 1980’s action film making. The twist of course being, what if John McClane, John Rambo, or Michael Dudikoff from American Ninja was a bumbling idiot who somehow slipped through the system and was known as the greatest warrior the military ever crapped out? The genius of this silly flick is just how straight it’s played. Will Forte and Kristen Wiig are the only buffoons to be had in the whole of the movie, everyone else, from Powers Boothe to Val Kilmer is coming right out of a dead serious action tent-pole. This approach, while confusing to some, actually earns the laughs in much more mature way, even when the laughs consist of poop jokes. I’ll admit to feeling like I was the only one laughing at a lot of the “ultra serious” moments, perhaps I went in with the “action parody” angle more than others, I wasn’t looking for a skit.

***SPOILER ALERT*** For example, when MacGruber digs up his own coffin, left over from his faked death, to get a change of his MacGruber clothes, in the pouring rain, whilst heavily dramatic music is playing, I was no good. ****END SPOILER ALERT**** Sure the piss and sex jokes are funny and well executed (for piss and sex jokes,) but it’s the quiet action-film-moments that I think will give the movie legs beyond its shock value.

Is it funny? Oh hell yes. Forte is giving 190% of himself in every frame. I know the guy has his critics, but if you are someone who questions his talent, I say that is your right, but to question his dedication is a bit absurd. Kilmer plays an over-the-top villain with a subdued demeanor, his eccentricities are absolutely hilarious, yet won’t hit everyone’s funny bone as they are executed very dry. Powers Boothe, great as always, isn’t “hamming” it up for the camera, he’s dead serious as ever, treating MacGruber with a verbal respect he’s done nothing to deserve. Kilmer and Boothe, along with straight man Ryan Philippe are the rock solid anchors to the film and it works. That, alone with Taccone doing his best to replicate the tone of Rambo takes it a few notches beyond a compilation of idiocy.

The movie does have its flaws, a few jokes will fall flat for some, and there is scattered problems with pacing that keep it from being a completely successful “action” film on its own, without the comedy. The second stroke of genius is how they beefed up the character of MacGruber. The skit might as well be considered a ghost (a boner ghost?) when it comes to giving any feedback to Forte’s hero, and they didn’t let themselves become slaves to the source. It’s not 90 minutes of MacGruber blowing up. No, instead they turned him into something more than a buffoon, he’s a clinically psychotic egomaniac who, when pushed, actually gets things done. Without going into much further detail, there are several moments in the film, funny moments too, where you realize that Mac is quite possibly disturbed to the point of it being darker than you’d ever think a comedy like this would take it.

“Bob, is it worth the price of a ticket? I have 7 kids, my wife just left me, and my arthritis makes walking feel like a bucket of nails is being siphoned into my knees caps.”

If you normally dig the type of humor on display here, if you can still watch “˜90s comedies and “˜80s action movies and be fully entertained, I say open your wallet and de-clench your anus for 90 minutes. If you hate it, I give you full permission to send me novel-length hate mail every day for the next 10 years without a single complaint from this side of the screen (as long as you’re cool with letting me post the letters under a section of my column entitled “SEARING HATRED FROM THE UNDERSEXED.”)

That’s all for MacGruber from me, Thanks for reading, and please send all hatred to the comments section below. Please Note: the preferred format of hate comments is that of Haiku, experimental limericks, and/or nonsensical mountain-man-speak with heavy cursing.

Oh and don’t forget to check out my sponsor:

This message brought to you by BLIGGY’S BORK CHUNKS, The only chunks with more sodium than Bork Strips.

Homer: One adult and four children.

Clerk: Would you like to buy some Itchy and Scratchy Money?

Homer: What’s that?

Clerk: Well it’s money that’s made just for the park. It works just

like regular money, but it’s, er…”fun”.

Bart: Do it, Dad.

Homer: Well, OK, if it’s fun…let’s see, uh…I’ll take $1100 worth.

[he walks in, sees all the signs: “No I&S Money”, “We Don’t take Itchy and Scratchy Money”, etc.]

– The Simpsons

The following cries of insanity are not regarding credit cards, debit cards, traveler’s checks, Visa “pay-as-you-go” cards or any form of Gift Card that is of the unique nature of being worth slightly more than what the buyer paid out. Only straight-up 100% normal Gift Cards are applicable to this meandering stream of anger.

Look, I’m not Michael Moore, I’m not some anti-capitalist kook. I’m no economist, politician, political commentator, business man, or bullshit artist. I’m Joe The Plumber, but with no bias, I’m just “JOE,” er”¦well, Bob, but you see metaphorically I’m him without a partisan slant, because”¦forget it”¦

I LOATHE GIFT CARDS. LOATHE THEM.

In no way is any anger directed at the businesses which offer the service of gift cards, I get why they do it. Target, Best Buy, Blockbuster, Walmart all want their own Itchy and Scratchy fun money, and reasonably so. Get the consumer to buy proprietary currency for other people, call it a “GIFT” and ensure future business whilst also already having their money in hand. No, I get it, and if I owned a business I would be forced to do it, but I am not an owner, I’m a consumer, and as “one who consumes” (recently cheeseburger flavored Doritos, guh,) I am entrenched in anger and disappointment at my fellow consumers for letting this go on.

Where’s the benefit to us?

Are we so complacent as a people that we let the one and only benefit, “not being tacky,” force us to not only keep purchasing gyp cards (correction: Gift) but to, more importantly, not devote a single brain cell as to WHY this makes sense? When you give someone a gift card you are essentially saying the following:

“Thurmond, in an effort to avoid the tacky social no-no of giving you $25 cash, I’ve decided to show my appreciation for you as a friend/relative by driving to a local store, one that carries products you use/enjoy, and turned nigh-globally-usable currency backed by the Government into less-usable currency backed by a privatized company with the ability to go bankrupt. This proves I care about you because that Seinfeld episode said so. Now let’s watch American Idol on my iPlorb.”

What it comes down to is, regardless of all the negatives, useless effort, and stupidity, the “gift” of a gift card is making the slight effort to avoid giving cold, hard cash. I guess you could, barely, add on top of that the “gift” of picking a store that most likely has at least, by very good odds, one or two products your “gift recipient” might be interested in. Hence, the counterpoint is that we buy gift cards to show that we know at least something about a person’s interests in life, thus vicariously showing that we care. Simplified: IT’S THE THOUGHT THAT COUNTS.

Is that really the type of thought that counts? Shouldn’t your friends and loved ones care more about the fact that you use your noggin once in a while instead of blindly following the herd. How personal is it to give someone a gift card to a Mega-Department-Store with 3 billion different items in stock? If my little murmurs do, in fact, get you to choose cash over gift cards one day and the recipient gives you grief over it, in so many mumbled words saying to your face that “there’s no thought in cash, and it doesn’t count,” then respond with some honest truth:

“Thought? Well Thurmond, I’ve honestly put more thought into that $25 cash than most people ever have buying a socially accepted monument to banality known as a gift card. A gift with literally no benefits over cash. I sat and thought, and realized that I care enough about my friend/relative to not placate his emotions with hollow gestures of his consumerist pleasures, instead I decided to give him a simple, direct lump sum of usable currency to do anything he so desires with. Let us leave the worth and value of our relationship to the bond we share and not my ability to guess which department store carries your favorite brand of VHS tapes. Now let’s go watch The Never Ending Story III on my iGroinder, Jack Black plays the villain!”

You could just forgo all of this and buy Thrumond a gift (a gun, a pony, a box filled with wet food,) but for today’s little rant we are pretending that isn’t an option. Seriously though, does that type of sentiment happen in other areas of life when making a purchase? Would this scene happen at a car dealership:

Carlyle the Car Salesman: Hello Sir, what kind of automotive dream can I sell you on this fine evening?

Thurmond: Well, Carlyle, my son is a stonemason’s apprentice and I would like to show my love for him and my care for his passion and profession by buying him an appropriate car.

Carlyle: Choosing not to dwell on the fact that you know my, rather difficult to guess, first name, I’d like to move on and ask if you have a price and style of car in mind?

Thurmond: Well, considering he’s a stonemason, I would like a car that costs as much as one of your SUVs but is completely made out of bricks.

Carlyle: Choosing not to dwell on the sheer silly nature of your request, would you also like the wheels to be made of bricks?

Thurmond: Even the Wheels my good sir!

Carlyle: Luckily, it being the year 2345, we have a molecular-matter-synthesizer in the back”¦the kind conveniently only available to car dealerships of the FUTURE, which of course I didn’t need to point out, since to us it is most certainly the present.

Thurmond: Well then, here’s $30,000 in Future-Money.

Carlyle: Here’s your receipt for your purchase of $30,000, which suspiciously does not contain over 300 years of inflation, again”¦something I have no reason to point out since to me and you it would just be the norm.

Thurmond: I’d like my Brick Car now.

Carlyle: It’s the future.

Why pay money for less versatile things only in pursuit of sentiment? Now some people have told me that they like gift cards because it gives them an excuse to go shopping, a break from the normal everyday guilt of shopping with their own cash when there are more important expenses to take care of. Your own consumerism guilt is almost an entirely different issue than the one I am addressing. All I can say is watch this and learn its message.

I’m not a smart man, and deep down I know that any frequent gift card purchaser knows just about every useless aspect of what they are buying, they’d have to right? It’s not like it takes that much brain power to compute. I mean, am I wrong? Do I have no point? Please let me know, I would love a satisfactory rebuttal to my “war” against gift cards”¦I’ve been waiting years for one. With that said, isn’t a gift card really, ultimately, a gift dead in spirit. A morsel of outreached disenchantment from someone trudging through motions they no longer put their time into. Perhaps I’m the minority, but I would rather receive a gift of an item I hate, than a gift of pure mandatory reluctance, such as a gift card, especially from someone I loved.

Think before you buy that Itchy and Scratchy Money. Is it fun, or is it a meaningless exercise in complacent pre-conception? As for me, you might wonder if I dabble in hypocrisy, and you’d be right. I’ll accept gift cards. I’ll take them, spend them, use them to unlock doors, clean under my fingernails, deflect a pee stream, and throw them like little Frisbees at people’s eyeballs. However, I won’t buy them. No way, no how. Still a hypocrite, right? Send complaints to: Bottom of the page.

ROBIN HOOD

A Spoiler Free Discussion and Semi-Review!!!

The past week in my head all I’ve heard, in an extremely sarcastic voice, is the following statement:

“The new Robin Hood movie is the Gladiator version of Robin Hood.”

That’s it, that’s ALL I hear, NOTHING ELSE! Seriously though, the voice is painfully sarcastic (the fake voice in my brain, well…hopefully fake,) to the point of being illegible. For some reason, I envision a soccer-mom type person saying it at a PTL meeting. A vast ocean of undersexed women wearing mom-jeans and attempting to discuss the inside Hollywood scoop that is this one singular goofball observation as if they were on set and Ridley Scott just kept saying “Do it like we did on Gladiator“¦yeah, cause this is like that, LIKE GLADIATOR!” Oh soccer moms, how you have the world figured out. Here’s a snippet of my own personal hell, if I was reincarnated as a sweater-vest in suburbia:

Soccer Mom #1: Oh yeah, it’s suppose to be just like Gladiator.

Soccer Mom #2: Well, Agnes said that it has that Gladiator actor in it, the one with the muscles.

Soccer Mom #3: Oh I love him, his acting is so good.

Soccer Mom #2: it is good! Good observation, he really is good. He was good in Gladiator, so he should be good in this. He’s so good.

Soccer Mom #1: Well the people that made Gladiator, made this, so we will probably go see it as a family outing, since it’s going to be like Gladiator. The same people made it, so you know”¦

Soccer Mom #3: I love movies, it’s our family hobby. Last week we rented Milo & Otis, which wasn’t made by the Gladiator people.

Soccer Mom #2: Oh that is a good movie. I love those animals.

Soccer Mom #1: They make a lot of animal movies, and they make some that are good and some that aren’t as good, but I really enjoy the good ones, because they are good and when it’s good”¦.

Bob The Sweater Vest (worn by Soccer Mom #2): You know ladies, I hate to interrupt, but your conversation is so mind numbingly useless that blood is actually starting to pool inside my body cavity.

Soccer Mom #2: Is that what that moisture on my back is?

Bob The Sweater Vest: Yes, that is my brain fluid leaking on to your skin.

Soccer Mom #3: The existence of a sentient sweater vest destroys my fragile life of 1950’s values and obtuse worldview. I’ve been living an existence of gray, in a sea of crushed dreams.

Bob The Sweater Vest: Sorry, I just needed you to stop talking about Robin Hood.

Soccer Mom #1: The one that’s like Gladiator?

Is the new Robin Hood like Gladiator? Sure, why not? It has three things in common with Gladiator: Russell Crowe, Ridley Scott, it’s a movie. That proves it. Plus the Producer Brian Grazer said it here. So, now that that’s out of the way, how is Robin Hoodiator? (Gladin Hood? Robiator Glood? Gladiatorobin Hoodin? Hoody Roby Glady Atorhood?) Honestly? Boring. Wait, but Gladiator wasn’t boring? Also, Robin Hood is a prequel story, which Gladiator isn’t a prequel”¦so that’s 2 things that are different. Let us not forget that Russell Crowe’s name is different in this movie, so that three differences from Gladiator. Wait let’s do the math:

3 (similarities) ““ 3 (differences) = O

Hence, the movies are equally not the same and as different as they are vice versa, thus yielding them as two separate entities, which are the same thing. Thank Odin for math and logic or else none of this would make sense.

Apologizing for getting that out of my system is probably too little too late, but if you are still with me I appreciate it. In all seriousness, I wasn’t being coy in the midst of my rambling; Ridley Scott’s Robin Hood is immensely boring. There’s a lot of draw backs to point out, but that is the main gripe. I’m not going to be one to compare it to every other adaptation of the material, except one, Kevin Reynolds’s Robin Hood: Prince Of Thieves (the Costner one.) Why? Well, Costner’s movie has taken its licks over the years. He had no English accent, we get it. However, Robin Hood: Prince Of Thieves, accent or no, is a damn entertaining flick, action packed, quote filled, has a clean through-line, and it holds dynamite performances, especially from Alan Rickman. Don’t get me wrong, I love Errol Flynn, and he will always be the world’s premiere cinematic Robin Hood (although I would argue that Cary Elwes and that Disney Fox are no slouches either.) I’m in my late 20’s”¦Kevin Costner is my Robin Hood, that is just how it is, and I’m not going to apologize for it (however, I’ve seen Cary Elwes’s performance more times that any of them.) Now, after witnessing this generation’s Robin Hood film, I’m wondering if this uneventful ode to boredom will alleviate some of the insults thrown at Costner’s Hood for almost 20 years. Put the two side by side and I know which one I’m choosing to watch when sitting on my couch looking for a period-piece action flick, and I would guess most people would do the same after viewing both.

Why did the movie fail on every level to be captivating? Well to use a tired review cliché, Ridley and Crowe seem to be completely on auto pilot. It felt like an uneventful evening that just passes by while you stare at your leg nervously twitching. The only spark of interest in the whole production comes from the supporting characters, mainly Robin’s three merry men, and Friar Tuck. The reason being that every one of them is played for comic relief, which in a movie as stilted as this, should just be called relief.

The advertising is especially misleading as well as the title, if you didn’t know, it’s a prequel of sorts to the well known legend of Robin Hood. Brian Helgeland’s script, with the exception of the last 3 minutes or so, does not cover any of the familiar territory we know and love about the character. This is fine. I have no qualm if that is the story you want to tell, but why name it ROBIN HOOD? Why not Robin Of The Hood, or go with the original title Nottingham? It’s too confusing, and you don’t even bother to sort out the confusion in the trailers and TV spots. The movie is not overtly a prequel to any specific property, other that the story of Robin Hood IF IT HAPPENED FOR REAL, so I guess in their defense it doesn’t need to be advertised as such, since the character of Robin Hood is in the movie. Still, confusing.

This is one of those oh-so-annoying cases where the movie isn’t really “bad,” it just hovers over that label of not qualifying as good entertainment. With the exception of pacing, Ridley Scott’s direction is very much on the ball, he just seems to have fell asleep when it came to the moments in which the movie should be ramping us up. A great example of this is the final battle, it just sort of”¦begins. There’s several moments of people arriving at a field/beach and they start fighting and then poof, movie over. Perhaps it’s the film’s quest to be so realistic and “historical” that drags it through the gutter, the boredom caused by a movie with no “movie moments.”

There’s been a lot of complaining about Crowe’s age in this film, he’s in his late 40s (I think) and Robin Hood should be younger and more spry apparently, especially considering this film takes place before the legend begins. Personally, it doesn’t seem like a problem to me, mainly because his age is never noted in the film itself. Michael J. Fox still looks like he’s in his 20s, some people just don’t look their age, older or younger, why is it so hard to suspend the disbelief for Crowe? Crowe does a fine job in the role”¦I guess. I mean he seams to just be playing Russell Crowe set to “medium” energy, which is annoying since no one will give him the crap they gave Costner, who is always at “medium” energy (and that’s why we love you Kevin, you beautiful “medium” tempered son of a gun!) If you really want to complain about the age thing, start screaming about the great Max Von Sydow, as in this movie he seems to be almost double the age, if not more, than men used to live in that time period. I wouldn’t normally say anything, but for a movie that sacrificed the enjoyable aspect of a legend for a historically accurate feel, why go and cast someone as old as Max? (The answer: He’s a great actor, one of the best living.)

I didn’t really go into detail about story or plot, because honestly, if I did, the review would be just as boring as the film (if it were ONLY subtitles!) The big question is, is it worth the ticket price? Well, how awful is your job? If it’s worse than or as bad as any of the following, save your money for something better:

– Aardvark Feces Organizer

– Assistant Assister

– Pencil Repairman

– VHS Factory Janitor

– Tote Bag Historian

– Feline Sexuality Expert

However, I’d give the flick my recommendation for people who are rich, retired, or looking for an expensive, uncomfortable place to sleep at 1pm on a Wednesday, because what else are you doing? I don’t want you just sitting there, thinking about your own mortality, eating brown sugar flavored off-brand pop tarts. That just sounds awful. Go to the movies.

I’m Bob Rose, Thanks for Reading!!! This Review brought to you by my previous word-for-word Gladiator review, which is of course, very different but almost exactly the same.

A gathering of interesting movie moments in the most interesting of places.

The bathroom is a common nexus of interest for all races, creeds, cultures, and types. It’s the one place in the home that exudes great comedy, deep philosophical thought, painful moments of realization and regret, and vulnerable tasks where we are at our most transparent. So, of course cinema has kicked down the door to this bastion of privacy on many occasions to make light of all that which can happen in the suburban Narnia that is the “john.” This is just Volume 1… I plan to do more, this is not a top 5 list or anything so calm down!

– Opportunity Knocks (1990) ““ Dana Carvey lectures Robert Loggia into submission.

Watch it here.

Our first film scene of choice, where a young Garth Algar speaks of the layered mental exercises that the “crapper” holds for us all. Opportunity Knocks is one of those rare pre-fame movies, 2 years before Wayne’s World, that is actually surprisingly good. Carvey plays a con man who is posing as a rich/smart business man. Here we see him convince a boardroom that you could sell ad space by putting corporate messages on the back of bathroom stall doors. Robert Loggia is pleased.

Dreamcatcher (2003) ““ Jason Lee risks his ass for a toothpick. Literally.

Watch it here:

Lawrence Kasdan’s Dreamcatcher is not a particularly good movie. It’s a good half-a-movie at best, we’ll give it that. Here we see Jason Lee as the toothpick obsessed Beaver. He is so obsessed in fact, that is he’s willing to risk the release of an unknown carnivorous slug monster just to grab a toothpick that HAPPENS not to be sitting in one of the plethora of blood puddles all over the bathroom. You know, the blood from the last guy who was in there. I know Rain Man will always be associated with toothpicks, but Jason Lee give Hoffman a run for his money. Toothpicks: They’re worth the risk!

–Ghoulies II (1988) ““ J. Downing gets eaten, starting with his anus.

Watch it here:

Ghoulies part duex is really the movie that gave me the urge to write about bathroom scenes. A movie so infamous for its toilet scene that they put it on the poster. You see, ever since childhood, J. Downing’s death confused me. What exactly happened in that carnival outhouse? Did he just sit there screaming while the Ghoulie ate slowly through his anus, balls, dick, legs, and torso and eventually head? How long, exactly, did it take him to die? How come once he starts to experience pain he doesn’t stand up? Is he able to stand up? Surely while the Ghoulie is chewing on his chunks of flesh he has time to stand up and open that door… truly one of life’s many mysteries.

–Summer School (1987) ““ Mark Harmon questions a student’s attendance.

Watch the first part here. Skip to 1:20, stop at 1:36…

Watch the second part here. Skip to 2:52, stop at 3:04…

Ok, this isn’t really a “bathroom scene” as neither part takes place in a bathroom, but I wanted to include it merely because we have a character claiming to have spent 6 entire weeks in the toilet, struggling with a stubborn zipper. Now, of course the student didn’t spend the 6 weeks in the bathroom, he was just lying, still, the hilarity of him keeping the bathroom pass is enough to sell me on putting this on the list, not to mention he got a 91% on the test. If only Director Carl Reiner would have made a sequel that revealed he was actually in the bathroom for 6 whole weeks. That could have been the “Back To The Future 2“-esque plot to Summer School 2: Zipper Trouble.

–Jurassic Park (1993) ““ No introduction necessary.

Watch it here:

What better way to end volume 1 of Commode Commotion with quite possibly the most famous toilet scene in all of mainstream film. You’ve seen it a thousand times, and you could see it a thousand more. Just the sentence describing it is enough to cause giggling fits of AWESOME. “A Tyrannosaurus Rex crashes into a bathroom, questioningly stares at a lawyer sitting on a toilet, then subsequently almost bites him in half.” It is a rather beautiful metaphor for life, “when you gotta go, you GOTTA GO…but prepare to die horribly.” And that kids, is why Spielberg, despite his mistakes, is a grandmaster of his craft.

A few things about Kick-Ass:

When it comes to movie monikers and the promises they hold over them, I always think of Rob Zombie’s failure to give us 1000 corpses. Sometimes a movie doesn’t even need to be good, satisfying the lust that the title creates can be nourishment enough for some of us. Bill was most certainly killed, that temple was most certainly “of doom,” and Peewee went on a rather large adventure, so why couldn’t Zombie just give us corpses? Sure, there was a tunnel of approximately a thousand skeletons, but Mr. Zombie, bones do not a flesh-covered-corpse make! Delivering on the title is not always of import, yet its always pleasurable to see a movie with such an enthusiastically positive title be so much fun that its titular line can be used to describe itself. Most likely, cynical or no, the entire internet will be exploding with the all-to-easy phrase: “KICK-ASS KICKS A… sorry, I can’t do it.” Of course, we will get plenty of people doing this:

“KICK-ASS? IT SURE DOES!”

or perhaps a lot of prefacing:

“HATE TO SAY IT, BUT KICK-ASS IS EXACTLY THAT!”

Do you really hate to say it? Also, we’ll get a lot of people going outside said box:

“KICK-ASS PUNTS BUTT”

or lazy negative reviews:

“KICK-ASS LICK’S ASS”

or censored reviews from angry family-values websites:

“KICK-A#S KICKS MORALS OUT THE DOOR!”

or censored reviews from angry family-values websites that don’t get irony:

“KICK-A#S IS A F@#KING PILE OF MORALLY BANKRUPT SH#T!”

or you get the real self-involved ego cases, trying to be so cool:

“KICK-ASS KICKS A… sorry I can’t do it.”

In the end, you just have to give in. Since I saw this film, without fail, whenever anyone brings it up, like a L7-Weenie (is that a term? I stole it from The Sandlot) I blurt out that the movie does in fact “kick ass.” It begins to snowball to the point where you realize that your first instinct when verbally praising anything is to say it “kicks ass,” then you find out that you’ve been describing everything positive in your life as “kick ass” for 20 years and your essentially a caveman with the ability to grunt half-legible mystery tones. This is what Matthew Vaughn’s Kick-Ass did to me, it was so enjoyable I learned I was a Neanderthal on the verge of de-evolution, living on the edge of a knife blade made of cave paintings and liquid-dinosaur-fecal-matter. Why it’s liquid as opposed to healthy dinosaur droppings I have no idea, but you’d think that eating germ-laden cavemen would… wait, getting off topic, right…

“Kick-Ass? AND BOY DOES IT!”

Seriously though, never has the internet (or it’s “generation”) ever encountered a movie that actually begs for vulgarity-filled two-word descriptive reviews. Pay attention all you kids on Youtube and Talkbacks, this is the only movie where legit critics might give you a begrudging pass for saying it “Kicks Ass!” Enough over-obsessing about the title, how’s the movie? Well, having read Mark Millar and John Romita Jr.’s extremely enjoyable graphic novel, I can say with confidence that the movie is accurate where it needs to be, but diverges from the book when it requires breathing room. It’s thankfully, not accurate to a fault, like some would cite Watchmen as being. The film is made with so much enthusiasm that it renders all the changes very welcomed and in some cases better that the source material. SOME cases.

Having never seen Layer Cake, and being almost entirely indifferent to Stardust, Matthew Vaughn’s direction has kind of been a ghost to my realm of perception. That is, of course, until walking out of the theater post KICK-ASS. His ability to wrangle in the comic’s grounded reality, keep his actors spouting off with sharp comedic timing, and keeping the whole thing from possibly spinning out into oblivion is quite a thing of beauty. Get down on your knees, and pray to the gods of Mt. Cinemus that Vaughn not only sticks with this franchise but with this comedy/action/crime thriller mulit-genre type of film, because films like this, done right, are often a rare success. Kick-Ass juggles all of its components much like great family film comedies often do (Ala Galaxy Quest,) all the different genres and tones are there, they have heart, and they have been fashioned to fit together like a toaster and a Pop-tart (or, for you privileged kids, a Toaster Strudel.) Kick-Ass is like those films, with the addition of extreme violence, course language, and a young girl spilling loads of gangster blood. A little something for everyone.

The stand out performances for me were Mark Strong as Frank D’Amico and Chloe Moretz as Hit-girl. Strong seems to get better with every performance, to the point where I think he could be headlining a film, however, there’s no shame in being a superb character actor, especially one whose specialty is villains. Moretz’s Hit-Girl is obviously the centerpiece of controversy, and to hear my one friend talk about her character I felt guilty for not being more jangled. While I find a young girl spouting ultra-vulgarity and violently bloodletting gang members “funny” and “cool,” I in now way was shocked. Perhaps it was the spoilers of the red band trailer, perhaps it was just that I accepted the “age” joke and moved on, but the shock value of Hit-Girl was not why she stood out. Moretz surprisingly confident performance made me honestly forget her age, she carries with her the mojo of a fully grown action star. If there was anything to nitpick about the movie, for me it would be my slight dislike of how “slick” Hit-Girl’s action scenes were. Her fights were bordering on Matrix/Watchmen territory, considering the slo-mo and the flips, I think a grittier pre-“˜90s style of fighting and filming would have served the movie better, but it’s a small nitpick. Aaron Johnson, while not physically resembling his comic counterpart is a great find and does an excellent job as Kick-Ass himself. The comedy gold medal of the movie goes to Nic Cage, which his in-costume Adam West homage. This could be a joke lost on younger generations, many of them thinking Cage’s acting is responsible for his delivery, but hopefully their familiarity with the Mayor of Quahog will spell it out for them.

Is the movie worth a ticket price? Let’s put it this way: Watch the trailer and pay close attention to the moment when Hit-Girl introduces herself. Please note the slight gust of wind that wisps through her pink hair as she says her name with an all too devilish grin. If that kind of self-aware humor/filmmaking usually speaks to you, then you will absolutely LOVE Kick-Ass. So, in summation:

“KICK-ASS, KICKS AS… really sorry, I just can’t.”

A short complaint about HOT TUB TIME MACHINE and a Semi-open letter to Director Steve Pink:

Time-Travel? Check. The “˜80s? Check. Chevy Chase? Check. Crispin Glover? Check. Cusack? Check. A message about the importance of friendship and its deterioration into adulthood? Check? Silly? Check. Funny? Check. Aware of itself? Check. Motley Crue? Check.

Reviewing Hot Tub without my own bias, and overly enthusiastic slant, is pointless due to almost every aspect of the film personally speaking to me. It’s as if the writers and director Steve Pink reached into my eye sockets and made love to all the mush they found in my skull. As I’ve said on this column before, my favorite film ever is Back To The Future (such a daring choice I know,) a fact that I annoyingly never let anyone forget. So trust me when I say that my friends and loved ones could attest to my take on Hot Tub being bias as fact, and I would let them… if I wasn’t still 50% suspicious that my friends might not exist (yet, that’s a discussion for another day.) Other than that, I think, bias aside, that the movie has its flaws but is genuinely a good time. However, to me, it was an orgasm atop Mt. Facemeltertron (note to geologists: I renamed Everest “Facemeltertron,” so spread the word.)

All of that being said, the theatrical cut of the movie has a despicable, atrocious sore on it that angered me to the point of… uh… anger. I was fortunate enough to attend one of the early advance-screenings of the film, so early in fact that the opening and closing credits were very different from what the movie opened with in March, which is fine, the new credits looked good. The theatrical cut, unfortunately sported less Chevy Chase and fortunately much more cleaned up special-effects. The detestable, disgusting, anti-comedic moment of garbage that was added to the theatrical cut is a simple singular line of additionally recorded dialogue by Clark Duke, while he’s off screen. I doubt it’s considered a spoiler to say that they eventually travel back in time to present day, so there, I just said it. So, the moment they are “traveling” back, they are apparently seeing glimpses of all the years in between, so the “˜90s and the “˜00s. Right before the hot tub spits them back out into 2010 we get the putrid, depressingly unfunny quip from Duke: “NO TIGER, DON’T TEXT THOSE CHICKS!” Yes. That’s right. A lamer than lame, added-in-post, jab at Tiger Woods? REALLY?!?!

Not only was the line obviously added in after the fact, but it was damn near illegible to the human ear. There are many things I will fail to put into words here, like just how much I don’t even remotely care about Tiger Woods, his marital infidelity, and the enormous mountain (Facemeltertron) of reasons why the joke doesn’t belong in this movie. However, I’ll ask this: Why take a silly, funny, enjoyable movie that you made and cheapen it for an already stale topical joke such as this? Film is not TV, it doesn’t need to thrive on current events and timely gossip, and in fact it strives for a “timeless” nature at its apex. Characters in the story can be products of their time, but when you start adding in jokes that were only funny for two days, not even that, is when the phrase “product of its time” no longer applies, it is now a “product of this MONTH.” Yes I realize it is just a silly comedy, but comedy is just as important a genre as any other, and I take it seriously, sue me. So, Steve Pink, what happened? Did you get Aaron Seltzer and Jason Friedberg to come in at last minute and spruce up your final edit? Were your grandparents watching a Jay Leno monologue and taking notes for you before the last ADR session? Did you get blackmailed by a TMZ employee? Do the fans of your film a favor and make a DVD/Bluray cut worth owning. Normally I wouldn’t have the audacity to tell someone what to do with THEIR film, but in this case I know the Tiger-free-cut exists, I saw it for myself on the big screen.

Thanks for reading. I’m Bob Rose, the man who re-moniker-ed Mt. Everest.

A plethora of issues need to be addressed about Repo Men before actually discussing Repo Men. Well, really just three issues, so maybe it’s not a “plethora,” but it’s still much more than normal, let us not anger El Guapo with improper word use. First, all issues with Repo! The Genetic Opera are completely covered here and here by Repo!’s co-writer/creator Terrance Zdunich from his point of view. Second, Repo Men has absolutely no connection or affiliation with the 1984 Emilio Estevez classic Repo Man. Third, (SMALL SPOILER) the filmmakers behind Repo Men are fully aware of the similarities to the Monty Python’s The Meaning Of Life “liver donor” segment, going so far as to include a shot of the sketch itself in the film. Good. Everything out of the way? Let’s not speak of these things any further. Well, except…

Not to anger genius/legend John Cleese, but Meaning Of Life is unquestionably my favorite Python film. Blasphemy you say? Sure, and it’s an opinion that often must be defended in everyday life, an argument that usually ends with “It’s not like I don’t love all the other Python flicks as well, leave me alone.” When I saw the first trailer for Repo Men the very first thought in my mind was the possible occurrence of a John Cleese or Terry Gilliam cameo. Little did I know that Repo Men would owe more to Meaning Of Life in tone than in concept. If you haven’t seen it, the “liver donor” segment involves John Cleese and Graham Chapman as liver-collectors, who go from home to home, and nonchalantly collect livers from people that signed up for a liver donor card. So the skit is basically Chapman violently ripping out the liver of Terry Gilliam’s Rastafarian-Jewish character, blood spurting and screaming in pain, whilst Cleese casually hits on his wife, Terry Jones, who isn’t at all affected by the gruesome murder of her husband happening before her, instead complaining about it as if her husband made one of his normal idiotic day to day decisions. Comedy genius. Simple and direct.

The relationship that Repo Men, the film, wants the audience to have with its two main characters is very much like that Python sketch. It’s very befuddling at first, and as much as I hate to say it, very “refreshing” in such a big studio action/sci-fi flick as this. The tone of the film is almost that of a 1980’s buddy-cop comedy, Jude Law and Forest Whitaker, black and white partners and life long friends that battle the struggle of their jobs together, and relax with cold beer and some laughs after a hard days work. The catch is that they are brutally murdering people, poor people, day to day, by repossessing bio-mechanical organs in which the client has lapsed on their payment. These are the bad guys, and for a healthy chunk of the film, Jude Law’s character is a remorseless killing machine. It’s a risk as well as an art to be able to have characters such as these and yet still handle the tone in such a way that the audience can “laugh” with them. Repo Men pulls it off very effortlessly. One minute you have Law and Whitaker killing innocents, the next you are chuckling at their chum-like banter. It’s like American Pyscho, we laugh with Patrick Bateman in the face of his obvious insanity and bloodlust, however in Repo Men it’s very interesting and welcome to see that in such a huge, mainstream film. Mixing comedy with murderers that you don’t exactly hate is, oddly, a lot of fun. This, of course, brings the Monty Python “liver donor” comparison full circle when there is a short moment where these two Repo Men are sitting in their living room, watching Meaning Of Life, and chuckling to themselves.

On the surface and via the marketing the movie seems like a very straightforward Blade Runner meets a-thousand-other-genres type of flick, which, in a lot of ways, it very much is, but it survives by its sense of humor, and its craftsmanship. It has a muted Minority Report/Blade Runner type of evil-future-corporate landscape setting, one that is only really referenced in the visuals aside from the one corporation we deal with in the movie. Its most obvious element is that of the “what happens if the corrupt system you uphold turns on you” genre, very Logan’s Run, which we’ve seen a gazillion times, but luckily the movie has a bit more happening underneath and even if it is derivative, its still very well made and fun. The system turns on Jude Law’s Remy when an accident in the line of duty causes him to need a heart replacement. He then becomes part of the system, and sympathetic toward others with a similar problem to him, thus making him unable to kill, thus making him poor, thus making him lapse on his artificial-heart payments, thus making the plot.

Aside from one or two over-edited fight scenes, the movie is very appropriately shot and stitched together…drab textures and solid geography and pacing. From what I can tell, this is Miguel Sapochnik’s first major studio directorial effort and a very welcome one at that. Having not read the book, The Repossession Mambo, I don’t know what the tone of the source material is, but the film, while not a comedy, has no qualms about irony or making a joke via freeze frames, or voice over.

In the past I have argued that all action-heroes are actors, but not all actors are action heroes. Here we have two of the best working “actors” in Hollywood throwing the punches, their acting ability is not under scrutiny; however their “punches” might be. Forest Whitaker, while certainly more than an “action” star, has done this type of film before, so no concern there, especially considering how enthusiastically joyful he plays his part. I’ll admit, that even for us Jude Law fans, there is a slight concern that he couldn’t carry an action film. When I think of Law, no offense to him, but I see a tiny guy, a great actor, and someone best suited to drama, comedy, and perhaps some Eddie Izzard-coined films where British people named Sebastian walk into rooms where other British people are arranging matches. It’s a pleasure to report that he not only carries the film, he knocks it out of the park. I thought the site of Gigolo Joe beating people up and slicing out their organs would feel wrong, but instead, I found myself more than entertained while he was brutally slicing and shooting his way through plenty of “bay guys,” looking great (sexy?) while doing so. I mean, Law is no Statham, Stallone, Willis, or Ah-nuld, but he held his own. The great Liev Schreiber rounds out the leading men as the head of the Repo Men’s corporate office, silly New York accent (played for laughs,) asshole-ish demeanor, and all. Seriously though, has Schreiber ever not been class-A great? He’s another case of “why isn’t this guy more famous?”

**************MAJOR SPOILERS START HERE**************

While reviewing Shutter Island most of my time was spent harping on the fact that cinematic twists, MOST of the time, are the lamest possible device a movie can use…especially one involving a dream during sleep, cryogenic stasis, or brain illness or injury. Well Repo Men has a twist, not a huge all encompassing “M. Night is crazy” twist, but a twist none the less. I am going to try my best to defend this twist, while sticking to my guns on my Shutter Island review. Skip over the next paragraph if you don’t need your memory refreshed.

About three quarters of the way through the film Jude Law and Alice Braga’s characters are on the run from the corporation. Law has an artificial heart; Braga’s Beth has almost half of her body comprised of fake organs. There is a rather minor showdown between Whitaker’s Jake and Law’s Remy. Jake, of course, is trying to repossess Remy’s heart, in the face of his life long friendship. During the fight sequence, Jake hits Remy in the head with a huge steel hook, right before getting tasered unconscious by Remy. Remy is then awaken by Beth, and the too of them decide to storm the corporate building, kill anyone in their way, and destroy all the credit files to free everyone on the books. Well, including a truly, truly bad ass Jude Law knife fight, they succeed. They make it to the cliché inner sanctum of organ re-acquisition, the sub-basement of evil, the all-white-décor file storage department. They then realize that the only way to get themselves out of the system is to scan the body parts inside them, which brings about an extremely gory and oddly sexual scene where the two of them slice each other open and stick the scanner module (very similar to one you’d find at a supermarket) inside the each others body. They succeed again, they survive, and then Whitaker and Schreiber enter the room, Whitaker has a change of heart on a dime, kills Schreiber and the three of them blow up what’s left of the evil basement.

Cut to: They are sitting on a beach, Jake, Beth, and Remy, enjoying tropical cocktails and laughing it up like all is well. At this point, some overly anxious people in my theater, assuming the film was over, walked out fully satisfied with the most obvious, cliché ending in history. The screen then glitches with static, you hear voices talking, cut back to that small encounter earlier, Remy is lying on his back in a coma, that huge steel hook actually busted his skull wide open. Paramedic’s from the corporation had him on an artificial neural-net, in which he was dreaming beautiful dreams. He’s been in a coma for the entire end climax of the film, a computer creating his ideal scenario. Movie Ends. Bad guys win.

I walked out of the theater completely baffled as to why I liked the flick so much, especially with a twist. I think I figured out why. Unlike M. Night’s twists, this twist didn’t change the entire film, just about the last 20 or so minutes, it also didn’t change the world they were living in. This wasn’t a twist where they find out that all the organs are actually made by aliens or that they aren’t actually on earth and the whole city is a government experiment on the moon or some crap like that. The world that the movie sets up is true, and the twist doesn’t change that. Secondly, if they edited out the twist, the movie itself would still be a completely formed, albeit clichéd, narrative that makes absolute and total sense. There would be no Vanilla Sky/Shutter Island “why are things all weird for no discernible reason” type of confusion. Remy’s delusion is perfectly comprehensible and finishes out the story (If anyone knows how the book ends, leave a comment about it below.)

Also, the twist take’s a turn, at least in my opinion, towards reality instead of the more fantastic and “Hollywood.” The reality of how things end in real life would be that a human head getting smashed in by a giant piece of metal gets busted open and the hero’s journey ends. This makes the twist almost more welcomed, in that the “fake” Remy-created ending wraps everything up in such a nice little package, especially the sudden and unearned change-of-heart that Whitaker’s character takes. Jake, in the span of literal seconds, after an entire film of being unquestionably devoted to the system of organ repossession, decides he’s on the wrong side and stabs his boss in the neck. It’s awkward to watch him laughing it up on the beach with Law. Remember, the both of these men are effectively mass murderers, Law’s character has somewhat fought for redemption, while Whitaker just did an Anakin Skywalker and said “Ok, I’ll be on your side now.”

So it is nice that the corny, saccharin nature of Jake’s turn from the dark side actually never happened. And sue me, but I love it when the bad guys win, when drab, cold reality wins out over triumphant fantastical Hollywood hegemony. Hollywood endings have their place, but it does get tiring seeing the good guy win, giving the audience what it wants. You got to love a twist like this, ESPECIALLY opposed to Shutter Island since the viewer thinks that their emotional journey is over, relaxing on a tropical beach somewhere, just to strip it away and remind them that life sucks, and not every movie exists to help them escape the reality of their banality filled job at the horse manure processing plant (I’m not sure if those exist.) Some movies want you to know that horse manure processing might be as good as it gets. Those movies aren’t for everyone.

While cliché and derivative, Repo Men is worth a look. Jude can kick some serious gluteus-maximus too, good for him.

Thanks for reading, I’m Bob Rose and you probably (PROBABLY) are not.

Alice In Wonderland is the greatest film of the year, based on the trailer. A flick that we THINK we will love, and have already CONVINCED ourselves that we love, before having to, or needing to, see it. It seems like an easy sell, right? You got Tim Burton, Mr. Hot Topic, a parody of his former self, taking on the wild, weird, world of Lewis Carroll. We even get Johnny “surprise, surprise” Depp in the (sort of) lead role as the (supposedly) crazy, cooky, zany, wacky, insane-in-the-membrane, effeminate comedy tornado known as the Mad Hatter. Can’t go wrong. Right?

Admitting that one has never read classic literature is always tough, but this reviewer will do it. I’ve never read any of Lewis Carroll’s works, with the exception of “Jabberwocky.” Like many of my fellow Generation-Pepsi brethren, my biggest forays into “Alice” were via Disney, The Disney channel, that TV movie, and any and all “eat me, drink me” pop culture references. Oddly, I think I am the perfect demographic for Burton’s film: people who have a hazy knowledge of the material to the point where confusion overtakes enjoyment and we just assume that what we watched was good, accurate, and well done due to special effects and filmmaker credentials.

Well, first off, after much research and common-knowledge-recall, I think we can agree that Lewis Carroll’s works were meant to be gibberish, odd, and “cooky” (in an intentionally literate way) to begin with. The brilliant (I’ve heard at least) source material is obviously the least of Alice’s problems, especially since this film, much like Disney’s original, is a huge mash-up retelling of all things “Carroll” in a story that is a sequel to the stories that he wrote. Yeah, let me try to organize that thought: Tim Burton’s Alice In Wonderland is a sequel to the source material that uses story/plot elements from the source material coupled with newly-written material and material that is written from assumptions based on source material. Whew. Now, at least Disney’s original film was just a merging of two books, it doesn’t completely obliterate all possibility of children one day reading the books and understanding how the already confusing brilliance of Carroll fits together with their lifetime of understanding of what Burton told them it was. In the year 2030 there will be a lot of adults surprised to find out that ALICE IN WONDERLAND was possibly the most confusing title choice for a beloved nostalgic film of their youth. I guess Alice Returns To Wonderland was too complex for audiences to grasp. Hook wasn’t titled Peter Pan for a reason.

I love(d) Burton, please know that, but the guy lost his “genius” switch almost a decade ago with Planet Of The Apes. Since then he truly has been doing Tim Burton “Auto-Pilot” theater, and Alice is no exception. If anything, it is more proof. There’s nothing wrong with a director teaming up for several upon several projects with a lead, especially one as talented as Depp. The problems begin when the collaboration starts to get obvious to the point of banality, to the point where it almost seems like they are dragging each other down because everything is taken for granted that nothing is artistically progressing.

This time around Depp and Burton’s past has painfully caught up to them, helped in no way by the marketing blitz displaying the Mad Hatter’s admittedly insane appearance. So how off the deep end does Depp’s performance get? How maniacal does he take his character? How much does Burton’s Mad Hatter resemble a sentient volcano, filed with molten-crazy, ERUPTING COMEDY AT EVERY TURN??? Zip. Nothing. Notta. The MAD Hatter of Tim Burton’s nightmarish dream world is less crazy than most action-film comedy-relief characters during their subdued moments. His entrance and subsequent screen time is scathingly boring, to the point where his bland presence almost becomes embarrassing. In fact, he is actually one of the most serious characters in the movie, yet the movie itself doesn’t seem to realize it. I would assume this was intentional, they were trying to give the Hatter depth, yet it takes away the essential nature of the character. If I create a character called Homeless Jim, and he stops being Homeless, who is he? The craziest thing Mad Hatter does is dancing, via the excessively boring magic of CGI, for like 30 seconds. “Cringe-worthy” is a very clichéd term to use in any review. It was cringe-worthy as all hell.

**********VERY MILD SPOILERS START HERE**********

The last time Burton re-adapted the source material of an already beloved movie (a.k.a. it wasn’t a remake) I absolutely, positively hated it with every ounce of my body. Why should this be any different? Perhaps I’m not the audience for this (I guess.) Although, I try to stay positive, I’m always hoping that my fears about a flick are unjustified. Now I realize that I’ve talked very little about the actual movie itself, and honestly, it’s because I forgot most of whatever it was about. Something having to do with killing the Red Queen’s dragon, the Jabberwock, with the Vorple sword, which is from the poem “Jabberwocky” (yeah, it’s confusing.) What I do remember is that the plot was like Alice In Wonderland adapted, both in script and style, as the most derivative fantasy movie of last decade. I’m not joking either; there are shots of Alice and the Mad Hatter standing on a balcony together in front of Rivendale. Yes, that Rivendale. Waterfalls, majestic landscapes, soft focus, white glow and all. There is even a Narnia-like prophecy about an English child (Alice) returning to the fantasy world to kill the evil Queen (which from what I can research, is not from the books, so they willingly wrote such a derivative concept”¦I could be wrong.) This is all inflamed by an epic battle at the end, where we finally get to see Johnny Depp, as the Serious Hatter fight Crispin Glover with a CGI body. Finally, my dreams made corporeal!

The movie is made up of giant assumptions and it derails from the second Alice steps into Wonderland. The tone is predicated upon audience’s perfect recollection and knowledge of the source material to the point that character’s speak Carroll’s gibberish, which if fine, BUT, they speak it fast and without the slightest bit of enunciation. The movie doesn’t seem to care that if the audience can’t hear the “nonsense” words, we can’t comprehend that they are, in fact, nonsense. I’ve read “Jabberwocky,” I know the word “bandersnatch,” yet I couldn’t tell they were saying it during the entire movie until the very end, struggling to Frankenstein-stitch all the syllables up in my brain. I’m all for nonsense and lunacy, but if I need subtitles to understand what the characters are speed-whispering the whole movie, what’s the point? This gives the entire production a feeling of disjointed, slovenly pacing, not to mention the fact that it doesn’t bother with any character setup. Burton expects that you know the individual and overall plights of these characters, and their struggle against the evil Red Queen, from the word go. Sure, we know what Alice’s deal is, but give us a bit more meat as to why these characters chose the sides they did, and what they have been doing since she left. You are writing a whole new story anyway, if you going to crap on it, at least explain some character motivation. Why doesn’t the Cheshire Cat use his powers to do anything of worth? Burton’s film leaves behind the helping Alice/hurting Alice, deviant nature of the books and Disney’s original film”¦in this he’s a force of apparent, straightforward “good.” This is a “new” story, one in which you’ve changed the tone to action-fantasy and the nature of the character”¦so I’m not asking Lewis Carroll, I’m asking Tim Burton (but I would be interested in Carroll’s response.) Why doesn’t the Cheshire Cat transport himself behind the Red Queen’s throne and slit her jugular with his nails? Ok, it’s a kid’s movie, but come one, this Cat is almost omniscient, practically immortal, and devilishly smart (he also has the power to physically morph into other forms?!?!) Yet, like a badly written Superman comic, he doesn’t work at his full potential.

The cast does a fine job. It’s nice to see Crispin Glover on screen, even with a CGI body. Mia Wasikowska does a damn fine job as Alice. Alan Rickman, Helena Carter, Anne Hathaway, Stephen Fry”¦they are all top notch, movie aside. Right around here, two years ago, you would be treated to me complaining about CGI and green-screen based filmmaking, but I don’t have the energy anymore and I doubt there are any new arguments to bring to the pro-analog table. I would also have to explain why Avatar would get a pass from me, yet Alice seems to be killing my spirit, which in and of itself is probably the best review I could give you.

Highly recommended to The Last Unicorn fans, Hot Topic employees and customers, and elderly folks who have nothing to do at 2pm on Tuesdays.

I’m Bob Rose, thanks for reading, this sentence is going to end now.

Plot Summary from IMDB:

It’s 1954, and up-and-coming U.S. marshal Teddy Daniels is assigned to investigate the disappearance of a patient from Boston’s Shutter Island Ashecliffe Hospital. He’s been pushing for an assignment on the island for personal reasons, but before long he wonders whether he hasn’t been brought there as part of a twisted plot by hospital doctors whose radical treatments range from unethical to illegal to downright sinister. Teddy’s shrewd investigating skills soon provide a promising lead, but the hospital refuses him access to records he suspects would break the case wide open. As a hurricane cuts off communication with the mainland, more dangerous criminals “escape” in the confusion, and the puzzling, improbable clues multiply, Teddy begins to doubt everything – his memory, his partner, even his own sanity.

****************MAJOR SPOILERS********************

Now that no one will partake in this review due to the spoilers I can pretty much be as candid as I want. It is quite a drag when you walk out of America’s greatest living filmmaker’s latest effort and all you can say is “It’s good, but lame.” Shutter Island is just that: good, but lame. Why good? Martin Scorsese’s style and ability to tell a story is just as sharp as ever. There is a lot of very effective, yet puzzling camera work, editing and story injections that feel fresh and give this movie the only leg it has to stand on. Why lame? We’ve seen it all before. Scorsese’s biggest flub here is simply using the source material (once again, I haven’t read it, but I’m going to assume.) He can try his best(est) to infuse all that beloved style into a giant hunk of yesterday’s rotted fruit, and the end product will still be moldy peaches.

If Dennis Lehane’s book is anything like the film, then I guess it’s the literary offspring of an orgy between The Wickerman (1973), David Fincher’s The Game, and M. Night Shyamalan’s entire cranium. It’s 2010 people”¦twists are lame, especially mental illness twists. I’m not being hard on the flick for plagiarism, not at all, what I am saying is that there isn’t one theme or story element in this entire production that we haven’t seen so many times before that they already haven’t been parodied. I guess the hope is that Shutter Island, with it’s cast and director reputation, will do a 180 on the parody/criticism and bring back these themes to being too legit to quit (no reference intended.)

Did no one on set ever see Charlie Kaufman and Spike Jonze’s brilliant Adaptation? Remember how one of the huge jokes in that movie was that Nic Cage’s character Donald Kaufman was a writing a script where a detective was chasing a serial killer and in the end it turns out that the killer is him, THE DETECTIVE!!! (WHAT A TWIST!) The joke was, if you didn’t get it, that twists like that are lame, lamer than lame even. It’s the whole stigma of the Hollywood “dream solution.” You can theoretically end every movie and TV show with the plot twist that it was all a dream/mental illness happening in a character’s head. It’s not creative; it’s stupid and disrespectful to the audience. Vanilla Sky was a pretty cool flick, all right up until we get “oh it was just a dream, everything you were invested in was nonsense”¦ok roll credits!” How about the ending of Roseanne or St. Elsewhere“¦so everything we were watching every week was just in someone’s head? THAN WHY TELL THE STORY! If anything, at least M. Night’s twists were marginally respectful to the investment the viewer put into his characters, with that said, he is almost single handedly responsible for making the “twist” lame, and he spent a whole decade making sure it stayed that way (and I like some of his work, but truth is truth.)

*********HERE COME THE MAJOR, MAJOR SPOILERS*******

So what’s the twist? What’s the dream? What is the obvious, makes-you-pray-while-watching-it-that-it’s-not-the-twist-twist? Leonardo’s character, a U.S. Marshall assigned to investigate the disappearance of a female inmate, responsible for murdering her three kids, is actually AN INMATE HIMSELF AND A MURDER AND THE FEMALE WAS HIS WIFE AND HE’S A GHOST!!! Ok, not a ghost, but the other parts are really the twist of the movie. Lame right? This movie’s plot twist would have been lame in the late “˜90s, now it’s just utterly pathetic.

What really hurts is that DiCaprio’s delusion, where there’s a conspiracy at the mental hospital in which it’s being controlled by Nazis/Communists who are turning people into crazy psychopathic “ghost” killers and releasing them back into society, is way more interesting than the outcome. Not to brag, but I could feel the twist coming from a mile away, so the movie had me sitting there, begging for it not to turn the corner and not to become a “dream solution.”

Enough whipping the movie for its twist, besides that, there is actually quite a lot to love. As I said above, Scorsese is still such a sharpened talent that he almost makes the film rise above its last act. There are quite a few scene’s of Teddy (DiCaprio) having flashbacks to his service in WW2 in which he witnessed, and participated in, the killing of several Nazi’s and the gruesome result of a concentration camp: train cargo cars overflowing with frozen, rotting Jewish innocents. These scenes are just as disturbing as one would assume due to the history, plus more on top due to how well they are handled. The good news is that these flashbacks are not “completely” part of the delusion. Basically Teddy was suffering from a pretty severe case of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder from WW2, which in turn led to him being an alcoholic, which in turn made him neglect the realization that his wife was mentally ill, which in turn led to her murdering their three children, at which point teddy has a fully formed mental breakdown and kills his wife which lands him in a criminally violent mental hospital for two years right up to when we, the audience, join the story. So, in Shutter Island‘s defense, some of his delusions are real, they are just scrambled up, him confusing his guilt of one thing for another.

The other saving grace is the cast. DiCaprio is in top form here and he really does one of the best jobs of his career in carrying a movie. Ten years ago I was not sold on DiCaprio, he was just a sellout pretty boy (it seemed,) but by now I am fully convinced of his chops, and am very much in support of his this constant, and fruitful, team-up of him and Scorsese. DiCaprio’s shining moment in the film, in my humble opinion, is a long conversation he has with the character George Noyce (Jackie Earl Haley, wonderful as always, in a bit part) in which he is trying to find the location, on the island, of his wife’s killer. Mark Ruffalo plays a pretty convincing sidekick and fellow U.S. Marshall through out the film, of course by the end we learn he’s actually Teddy’s primary care physician. Of course you can’t go wrong with Ben Kingsley and Max von Sydow (better known as Brewmeister Smith to all you hosers,) two men so regal and talented in their delivery that they could make Dane Cook’s stolen jokes sound poetic. There’s even a very short, but pivotal, scene starring Elias Koteas (Casey Jones!) as a character completely cooked up by Teddy’s delusion. It’s a small scene, however it’s nice to see Koteas act under Scorsese, hopefully it won’t be the last time.

I’ll say this, I’m glad I saw the movie, lame twist and all, if not only for the acting and Scorsese’s direction. Is it worth the $87 ticket price (not adjusted for inflation)? No clue. However, while it’s lame, it’s less lame than most chick flicks. Seeing Nazis get brutally shot, even for only a minute, is way more satisfying, financially worthy, and cathartic than the banality of seeing a movie about Valentines Day.*

*If Garry Marshall’s Valentines Day is in anyway about Nazis or killing Nazis, I stand corrected. I haven’t seen it.

Thanks for reading, I’m Bob Rose, and this sentence is over.

QUESTIONING GREATNESS with ADAM RIFKIN:

EARTH’S PREMIERE STORYTELLER

We (Bob Rose, me, I?) at the OPINION IN A HAYSTACK DEPARTMENT are proud to announce that I (we?) were (was?) given the chance to pick the brain bucket of Hollywood’s supreme philosopher and film-creationist, Sir Adam Rifkin (facebook, twitter, myspace.) He’s the filmmaker responsible for Detroit Rock City, The Chase, The Dark Backward, and, more recently, the award winning Look. I was able to sit down with Mr. Rifkin, in front of our respective computers, and interview him, via email, about a plethora of assorted, varied, diverse, sundry, indiscriminate, and heavily kaleidoscopic ideas.

I originally sent Mr. Rifkin over 3,000 questions, most of which involved very uncomfortable queries about his family lineage, sexual fears, and Laserdisc-replica collection. He answered all of them in full detail, thus passing the interview-qualification-process, which allowed me to send him the 16 questions you will find below.

This interview brought to you by BLUMP’S WEASELRONI: “Bring Variety Back into Your Mealtimes!”

BOB ROSE: First, thank you for taking the time to answer my questions. From what I can tell you’ve been interviewed by Movie Poop Shoot/Quick Stop/FRED at least three times by now, covering almost every subject of your career imaginable, so I hope it’s ok if I ask some rather unconventional questions and get some unconventional answers? If not, let me know, I will write conventional questions I promise! I swear!!!

ADAM RIFKIN: Great. No problem, ask whatever you like. I’d also love to schedule a live interview at your convenience. That said, evenings are better for me. Either Wednesday or Thursday. Because of my crazy schedule I’m only free from precisely 11:32pm and 15 seconds to 11:32pm and 22 seconds. Hopefully we can get everything we need to discuss covered in those 7 seconds. If we can possibly cover everything in 4 seconds it’d actually be a little better for me because I could really use those 3 extra seconds to do my laundry, feed my cat, jerk off, pay my bookie, paint my house, eat some cheese, bake a cake, shave my balls, pop my zits, tweeze my eyebrows, kneed some bread, pluck my chickens, write a novel, sue my landlord, lipo my love handles, fuck my girlfriend, do an Iron Man, rehearse an opera, condemn an innocent man, ponder the sound of one hand clapping, blink The Bible in Morse Code, club some baby white harp seals, use my powers of hypnosis to pick up chicks, pretend I’m a robot, scratch my ass, swallow my tongue, make Star Trek door noises, stare at an image for a really long time and then close my eyes and study the after image that lingers behind my eyelids, make myself throw up, make prank phone calls to 911, burn ants with a magnifying glass, have a water gargling contest with a midget, fart in an elevator, provoke an unstable hobo, secure my pant legs with rubber bands and fill my jeans with chili, yawn on an immigrant, return my Christmas presents, carve a life size statue of Marv Albert out of chopped liver, calk my crack with creamed herring, commit acts of heresy, bang a gong, loiter outside a 7-11, obsess on obscure JFK conspiracy theories, fondle the penal code of the habeas corpus, ipso facto, e, pluribus unim, e tu, Brute, odds bodkins, ad absurdum, infinitum, and so forth and so on until we’ll all die a horrible, wretched and miserable death. Other than that, I’m pretty open. Cool?

BOB: I’m a studio executive, drunk on power, with cash flowing out of every orifice. I walk up to you, dressed in velvet, and say “Mr. Rifkin, I’ll give you $500 MILLION for your next film, all I ask is that at some point a character must say the phrase: “Gee, this sauce is rather tart, here’s your money.” What film would you make?

ADAM: Easy choice! I’d make a film entitled SUGAR TITS. It’s a long time passion project of mine about a drunken, anti-Semitic movie star who, after being pulled over by the cops for DUI, goes on a vicious cross country killing spree in the name of religion. The film will star Mel Gibson as himself and will open with the all too familiar dashboard video of Mel Gibson being pulled over by Malibu police for driving erratically. The two cops yank him out of the car and soon surmise that the famous actor/director is plastered beyond cognition and attempt to arrest him. After going on a biblically charged, nonsensical tirade to Officer Shlomo Finkelstien, about the fact that the Jews of the world are responsible for all the wars throughout history, he looks amorously to the beautiful and buxom Officer Tootsie Weems and exclaims the now infamous line, “What are you looking at Sugar Tits?”, (which has since become a staple pick-up line on college campuses across the country). While being handcuffed, Mel recites the Good Sheppard Psalm in a mocking Yiddish accent, then breaks free of the cuffs, (thanks to having prepped for a Dick Donner version of a Houdini movie that never materialized).

He then steals Officer Finkelstien’s gun and kills him, execution style, with a single bullet to the taint. He quickly subdues Officer Weems with his mad Jew-Jitsu skills, hog ties her and throws her into the back seat of the police cruiser. Thirsty for as much camera time as humanly possible, Gibson decapitates Officer Finkelstien with the Bowie knife that’s strapped to his ankle, and uses the officer’s disembodied head as a theatrical prop for what he drunkenly believes will be his greatest performance. He then sloppily slurs his way through the “Alas, poor Yorick” speech from his film version of Franco Zeffirelli’s Hamlet, taking awkward breaks between the Iambic Pentameter to suck on whip cream gas from a can of Tippy-Top Topping. Satisfied with his performance, he grabs his balls and screams “Suck on that A. O. Scott!” into the dash cam before stealing the cop car with Officer Weems still hogtied in the back, as his prisoner and sex slave.

Strangely, A. O. Scott, not only, never reviewed the Zeffirelli version of Hamlet, but Hamlet was released in 1990 and Scott didn’t start reviewing for the New York Times until 2000. But go argue with a drunk. Gibson then proceeds to head across the country drinking to excess, preaching the gospel and massacring anyone who dare question his fire, brimstone and beer nuts approach to the Good Book. Along the way he’ll have many adventures and encounter a plethora of obstacles while assassinating as many innocent people as possible. The deaths will be highly stylized and extremely creative. For example, he’ll meet up with Purvis Nimblestroid, a nose hair clipper salesman from Des Moines Iowa who lives with his 78 year old mother, a sufferer of an odd form of dementia resulting in her being convinced she’s Britney Spears. Gibson and Weems, (now lobotomized and completely under Gibson’s control,) rent a room in the Nimblestroid’s home posing as a married couple from South Bend. One night while Mrs. Nimblestroid is performing “Oops, I Did It Again” in the living room after a home made supper of turtle chops and egg soup, Mel takes it upon himself to roll play and pretends to be a member of the paparazzi. He uses an empty box of Kraft Mac N’ Cheese as a camera and starts snapping away, but when Old Lady Nimblestroid horrifically recreates the “no underwear” incident that set the internet on its ear,
Mel is driven into a fit of blind rage. Furious at her ungodly behavior, Gibson ties up both mother and son and kills them slowly with a melon baller. Scoop by scoop he reduces them to a pile of bloody orbs, then Gibson forces Weems to eat the super ball sized remains while sitting in a kiddie pool filled with bible pages and sour cream . As Mel and Tootsie continue East, and as the bodies continue to pile up, FBI agent Zack Craggs is always just one step behind the illusive mass murdering movie star. Conflicted about spearheading the case to catch Gibson, Craggs grew up a massive Mel fan and has a hard time coming to terms with the fact that his child hood hero is a ferocious and fanatical monster. He continually questions his loyalty to the bureau versus the star of his all time favorite film, Bird On A Wire.

Ultimately the story lines all converge at SedaKon, the world’s largest Neil Sedaka convention, when Craggs, in a heart pounding action sequence, chases Gibson through the rafters of the Albuquerque Convention center during Neil’s show stopping performance of Breaking Up Is Hard To Do hundreds of feet below. There’s also a subplot involving Mel smuggling illegal artificial sweeteners into Mexico in Officer Weems fake breasts and them exploding at the border. There is also an elaborate fantasy sequence where Mel rides a giant flying mongoose into the past. The time traveling marsupial takes him into ancient Judea where Mel and Jesus star in a buddy movie together, Jesus playing a loose cannon cop who’s ability to rise from the dead causes him to continually take unnecessary risks, and Mel as his beleaguered sweater-less partner who always says, “I’m gettin’ too cold for this shit.” (kind of a twist on the familiar), but I won’t bore you with all those details. Anyway, the film ends with Mel appearing on Larry King, miraculously having convinced authorities and the public at large that it was actually Agent Craggs who was the killer and that Mel was actually the hero who stopped him from his murderous rampage.

The whole film is to be an indictment of the fact that we let celebrities get away with anything, including murder, because they’re charming, funny and oh so engaging in a quick sound bite. What Larry King doesn’t know however, is that Mel’s new “Gibson’s Own” brand of tomato sauce is actually made (in part) from the brains of all his victims, and when Larry agrees to plug Mel’s new product, buys some and taste it on live TV, he says; “Gee, this sauce is rather tart, here’s your money”. But I don’t want to give away too much (in case this really happens.)

BOB: Your film, The Chase, has quite possibly the most dangerously-elegant sex scene ever conceived. Was the scene inspired by true events?

ADAM: Well, the inspiration behind Charlie Sheen and Kristy Swanson having sex in a speeding car in THE CHASE was the fact that, that is precisely how I was conceived. I never really wanted to know the details beyond the basic facts, I mean, who wants to think about their parents doing the horizontal mambo? Burying the weasel? Doing the tube steak fandango? Filling the cream Doughnut? Getting some stank on the hang low? Having a bit of pork pot pie? Puttin’ sour cream in the Burrito? Running the naked Wheel Barrow Race? Etc… But that was the kernel of truth that inspired the whole movie. Unlike in the film however, my parents actually crashed during the act. My father blindly barreled into an old age retirement community and regrettable killed 27 senior citizens and two staff workers before plowing head long into the swimming pool. He did make it out of prison just in time to be able to come to the premiere. The way I was conceived just may account for my fierce daredevil nature though. I love sky diving, bungee jumping, base jumping and extreme sports of any kind, including extreme digesting. I’ve also invented a new extreme sport, I’ve taken the rush associated with hang gliding and the confidence associated with having an enormous penis. I call it Hung Gliding.

And speaking of penises, what many people don’t know is that THE CHASE was not originally funded by 20th Century Fox, but by a porn company called Jack In The Crack Productions. They agreed to finance 100% of the movie as long as a hardcore version was simultaneously shot for the European release. Surprisingly, Sheen and Swanson both agreed and so we actually shot two completely different versions of THE CHASE, one where Sheen kidnaps Swanson and they’re chased by cops from Newport Beach down to Tijuana, and one version where Charlie shows up to Kristy’s dorm room dressed like a pizza delivery man. Unfortunately Fox bought the PG-13 version and buried the XXX version before the release. It’s a shame too; the alternate version had quite a climactic conclusion.

BOB: I’ve been a huge fan of The Chase since it was released, often thinking of it as kind of the comedic answer to Oliver Stone’s Natural Born Killers in relation to how the media’s absolute power corrupts absolutely. Is there any truth to my observation, or am I just a kook?

ADAM: Duh.

BOB: You played the lead in your film The Stoned Age in tribute to legends like Woody Allen and Mel Brooks. Is this something you could see yourself doing again in a future project?

ADAM: Yes, I wrote, directed and starred in HOMO ERECTUS (AKA National Lampoon’s STONED AGE), a comedy about a philosophical caveman who can’t get the girl (Ali Larter). I love acting and not only would I be interested in performing in more films of my own, but I’m actually starring in a slew of upcoming big studio releases. Now that the deals are signed and the release dates set, I can finally tell you about what I have in the hopper. I just signed on to play the lead in James Cameron’s new Avatar spin off. It’s a heart warming story about a mentally-challenged alien who helps inspire his tribe to be more tolerant to those with special needs, it’s called AVATARD. I’m also starring in Peter Jackson’s new film where I play a little boy who’s murdered and while my father tries desperately to solve my killing I’m accosted in the “in between place” by a group of NAMBLA members who also all died when their tour bus drove off a cliff coming home from a Jonas Brothers concert, it’s called THE LOVELY BONERS. I’ll also be appearing in Quentin Tarantino’s MALODOROUS ASS-TURDS and acclaimed porno director Fartin Squirtspraysee’s SHITTER ISLAND.

BOB: Detroit Rock City is one of my personal favorite comedies ever, as well as a rather touching coming-of-age tale. Did you listen to Kiss growing up?

ADAM: Yes I did listen to KISS when I was a kid, but I was a much bigger fan of Gene Simmons’ first band called OWL TURD HOOTENANNY. Similar to KISS but much more country sounding and a lot more songs about mouse eating. I also listened to my uncle Yortis who told me that urine was liquid sunshine.

BOB: In what warehouse does that enormous Gene Simmons POV-tongue lay dormant waiting for me to steal?

ADAM: It’s in the Smithsonian. You can find it in the same isle as Clarence Thomas’ pubic hair, Wilbur Wright’s nipple clamps and Benjamin Franklin’s peenee pants. (In addition to being one of the Founding Fathers, having invented the lightning rod and bifocals, he also invented a popular style of pants of the day called Peenee Pants, which enabled the wearer to expose his entire genital region with the unfastening of one strategically designed button-flap.)

BOB: Do you truly believe that “Disco Sucks!”?

ADAM: Disco does suck. But never on the first date. You might be lucky enough to get a peck on the lips. Date two might involve some genuine tongue kissing and possibly some boob squeezing outside the shirt, but only if the dinner and conversation before hand was comfortable and intellectually stimulating. The third date might involve some moderate petting but don’t push it because date four is definitely when Disco gets oral. And Disco has the biggest, fattest, softest, wettest, lips around, so it’s worth the wait!

BOB: You work with many of the same talented people over and over again such as Miles Dougal, Natasha Lyonne, Ron Jeremy and Giuseppe Andrews. Do you write with them in mind, or do you just cast all your friends who also happen to be very talented?

ADAM: First of all let’s clear something up right here and now. The words “Ron Jeremy” and “talented” are never to be uttered in the same sentence together again. Ron’s so fat, he doesn’t have an hour glass figure, he’s got a 24 hour glass figure. Ron’s so fat, when the judge said “order”, Ron jumped up and screamed “two chili cheeseburgers and a Cherry Coke!” Ron’s so fat, when he wears a yellow rain coat people yell, “Taxi!” Ron’s so fat, when he lays on the beach Greenpeace shows up and drags him back in the water. Ron’s so fat, it beeps when he backs up…

As far as the others, I use the people I feel are talented and that I know I can rely on. And yes, when I know someone is good, I’ll often write roles with them in mind. Miles Dougal, for example, not only is a classically trained Shakespearean actor with degrees from both Juilliard and Yale School Of Drama, but he’s also the only actor to ever win an Oscar, a Golden Globe, a Grammy, a Tony, and the Triple Crown all in the same year. We went to high school together so I know his strengths and weaknesses and I can tailor roles to the aspects of his talent that others may be unaware of. Like his ability to be able to fart the song Wipe Out. But you’ll learn all these tid-bits about Miles and so many more when the Ken Burns documentary series about him airs on PBS this fall.

…Ron’s so fat, his high school photo was a helicopter shot. Ron’s so fat, the animals at the zoo feed HIM. Ron’s so fat, they found Jimmy Hoffa stuck in his crack. Ron’s so fat, when he farts on Tuesday the sound doesn’t come out until Friday. Ron’s so fat, when the weatherman said it was chilly out he ran outside with a spoon…

BOB: >Can we ever hope to see a flick based on the Shmobots?

ADAM: Yes. Since the graphic novel has done so well and gotten so many fantastic reviews, we are currently prepping a host of ways to capitalize on those lovable pot smoking slacker robots called SHMOBOTS. There’s a Broadway musical in the works as well as a $200 million epic movie that will star Will Smith as the cantankerous Rusty and Ben Kingsley as the nerdily efficient Eyeballs The Robot. Though controversial, we’re also developing an extensive SHMOBOTS weapons program with the United States Military that will be funneled through the Boeing munitions contract. I’m not at liberty to discuss that one in any more detail than I’ve already divulged.

BOB: Night At The Golden Eagle seemed to be a big change of pace for you, and a very artistically successful one at that. Did you get a lot of pleasantly confused reactions from those that normally view you as a comedy filmmaker?

ADAM: The reactions were varied, but interesting. Here is a selection of some of the reviews we got at the time of the film’s release:

“NIGHT AT THE GOLDEN EAGLE, by the usually very funny filmmaker Adam Rifkin, delved so deeply and so effectively into the pits of human despair and emotional darkness, that my penis literally wrapped itself around my own testicles and squeezed them like an anaconda, so hard, cutting off all circulation for the duration of the brilliant film, I was left not only emotionally drained from the movie, but sterile.”
– A. O. Scott, NEW YORK TIMES

“NIGHT AT THE GOLDEN EAGLE is such a powerful and captivating exploration into the sinister side of the human condition that after seeing it I sold all of my worldly possessions and moved to Addis Ababa where I now live as an Ethiopian street mime.”
– Peter Travers, ROLLING STONE

“Adam Rifkin’s inspired NIGHT AT THE GOLDEN EAGLE may very well be the greatest movie ever made. I foolishly walked into the screening thinking Rifkin was only capable of comedy, I now realize he is not only capable of drama as well, but he’s a master of it. I also feel it imperative to mention that my farts smell suspiciously like Chinese food, which is odd because I haven’t eaten Chinese food for at least 3 months.”
– Roger Ebert, CHICAGO SUN TIMES

“NIGHT AT THE GOLDEN EAGLE is that rare once in a lifetime movie that makes you want to fill your underpants with ants!”
– Gene Shalit, TODAY

BOB: Your film LOOK deals with a subject made possible by this new era of digital photography. As a filmmaker do you have a stance on the Digital vs. Film debate, or has it just come down to another factor where budget is concerned?

ADAM: Dandruff. Browdruff. Lashdruff. Burndruff. Bearddruff. Stachdruff. Pitdruff. Pubedruff. Backdruff. Now there’s a Head N Shoulders for each!

BOB: With your cult classic The Dark Backward in mind: What if Adam Rifkin wakes up tomorrow morning and finds an arm growing out the center of his back? What is his next move? Will this discovery ruin his breakfast?

ADAM: I try not to deal in hypotheticals, only facts. And here are 9 facts that you may find interesting:

1. All Norwegians smear pudding on their genitals before taking a driving test.
2. Every time an angel farts a hobo gets his wings. It’s rare, but it does happen. Have you ever heard an angel fart? It’s the most indescribably beautiful sound I’ve ever heard. To fart without sin is the purest form of love.
3. If you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce, they taste much more like prunes than rhubarb does.
4. Moses had a gay brother named Homoses.
5. The American West had a famous gay Indian chief named Geronihomo.

6. One of the most famous gay books on whaling was Homoby Dick.

7. Che Guevara’s gay exploits were explored in The Homotorcycle Diaries.

8. The Gay Three stooges are Homoe, Fairy and Shirley.

9. 1960’s Black music underwent a gay Renaissance when Fairy Gordy founded Homotown Records.

10. Supposedly Jesus’ farts smelled like rainbows ““ a fact suppressed by Vatican procto-theologians for centuries because it could be misconstrued as “too gay” (*see: the lost book of Homoses).

BOB: You’ve worked with personal heroes of mine, legendary directors John Landis and Joe Dante. Was their early work influential on you in your youth or when first becoming a director yourself?

ADAM: Yes, but interestingly enough, their films are only part of the reason I find them inspiring. What many people may not know is that John Landis, in addition to being a renowned filmmaker, is also the world champion in Extreme Origami. He’s the only Westerner to ever win the Gamibowl twelve years in a row. The thousand’s year old competition is held annually in Osaka Japan and is the most popular sporting event in the Eastern Hemisphere. This year he again took home the coveted Saikaku award for his incredibly intricate and staggeringly accurate Origami interpretation of the Peloponnesian Wars.

Additionally, Joe Dante is much more than just a popular filmmaker; he’s the guy who invented tweezers.

BOB: As a lover of quality family comedies I am a fan of both Mouse Hunt and Small Soldiers. Who would win in a cage-match between Chip Hazard and The Mouse?

ADAM: When Ben Kingsley asked me that very same question on the set of GHANDI 2: ELECTRIC HUNDU POO, I told him to kindly tickle my balls with a cat whisker and recite the “Trench Coat Crappletree” speech from William Shakespeare’s THE UNDERPANTALOON GANG DOTH GO BANANAS. He then promptly slit his throat with one of his own pubic hairs and bled out all over my brand new Chuck Taylor Negrons.

BOB: I’ve read about your upcoming LOOK television series, Perhaps you could tell our readers a little bit about the show and also let us know if there are any other future projects you have in the pipeline that you would like to unleash on the world at this moment?

ADAM: LOOK The Series is based on the critically acclaimed and multi award winning motion picture I made of the same name that came out in 2008. It explores the conceit that the average American is captured on surveillance camera over 200 times a day. The film (and now the series) follows multiple story lines, but what hopefully makes LOOK unique is that it’s shot entirely with surveillance cameras. It’s a show about voyeurism, privacy and the things that people do when they don’t think they’re being watched. “Look” for LOOK The Series later this year on Showtime.

I also wrote a comedy that comes out later this year called KNUCKLEHEAD and I’m currently writing a big kid’s movie for Disney.

Oh, and I’ve been sewing body parts together in my basement for the last several months in an attempt to create a special friend who will never yell at me, never judge me and always wanna play when I wanna play and what I wanna play. I’ve named him Erwin and whenever he does something funny I always say, “Oh Erwin!”.

BOB: Thank you for taking the time to answer my questions, it’s very much appreciated. One last question: How many MYSTERY shirts do you own and where can I get one?

ADAM: No problem. Anytime. And yeah, I do own a lot of MYSTERY shirts. They’re made by a skate wear company in San Diego called Black Box. They really loved DETROIT ROCK CITY so they took the logo from the garage band that the kids had in the movie. As you know I wear MYSTERY shirts all the time. So does my girlfriend. I don’t know if you guys noticed but she has enormous natural breasts. Huge pendulous 19 year old udders that defy gravity. Giant fun bags that bounce when she walks, jiggle when she laughs and sway with a jello-like spring when she’s getting plowed from behind. Her cup size is double-D but grow to E during certain glorious times of the month. They’re extremely sensitive to the touch and she can practically be brought to orgasm just by licking her number 2 pencil eraser-like nipples. Sometimes I just curl up in her lap and suckle those commodious honkers of hers like a starving Ethiopian baby, “Mama”, I’ll squeak, my dewy eyes just staring up at her with innocent awe. I mean, I’m not kidding when I say this girl has capacious hooters, voluminous melons, walloping whoppers, humongous bazookas, Herculean bikini babies, immense amounts of sweater meat, colossal, thundering mammarial mountains, massively mammoth tatas, a Goliathly, monolithic dairy section…seriously dude, she got some big ol’ titties! And she’s really sweet too. Gotta run now but next time I’ll tell you a little about her ass.

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That’s the end folks. Thank you to Adam Rifkin for his “spirited” interview. If you would like to read, hear, see (or feel?) more from Mr. Rifkin check out the links throughout the interview and the ones that follow this sentence…this one…yes, the one you’re reading…here comes the period.

Adam Rifkin at TRAILERS FROM HELL

Sneek Peek at TALES FROM THE SCRIPT

Buy TALES FROM THE SCRIPT

Thanks for reading!

Twitter Friendly Lovely Bones Reveiw:

It’s like Peter Jackson doing Terry Gilliam-Light. Stanley Tucci is amazing. Good night everybody!

Attention Span Friendly Lovely Bones Review:

Plot Synopsis from IMDB:

Based on the best selling book by Alice Sebold, The Lovely Bones is the story of a 14-year-old girl from suburban Pennsylvania who is murdered by her neighbor. She tells the story from Heaven, showing the lives of the people around her and how they have changed all while attempting to get someone to find her lost body.

********SPOILER FREE** SPOILER FREE** SPOILER FREE********

You watch a movie like Peter Jackson’s latest effort and wonder why we have the Hollywood system that we do. You think about that for about a second and you quietly remember: it’s 98% based on who is sexier. Duh. Silly to forget such concrete facts. Death. Taxes. Attractive people always win. Why is Mark Wahlberg more famous and prosperous than Stanley Tucci? No offense to Wahlberg, but other than saying hi to mothers vicariously through their offspring, a whispy voice and looking serious all the time, what does he have to offer in a world where acting behemoths like Tucci exist? It’s a rhetorical question, yet the answer is seemingly sex appeal. That could be wrong though, perhaps we haven’t seen Wahlberg’s full potential, but we have seen Tucci’s for decades now. Tucci can do drama, comedy, action, sci-fi, hero, villain, anything”¦just give the guy a script and he pours the premium-acting-serum down his gullet and blows you away. Once again I apologize for my bitter snark, but I’ve been a follower and fan of Mr. Tucci since Undercover Blues. It gets a touch annoying when the community starts praising an actor, who has been great for twenty years, like he came out of nowhere and it’s a surprise he is that damn good. His incredibly nuanced and Oscar worthy performance in The Lovely Bones is the least surprising cinematic pleasure I’ve witnessed so far in 2010.

Praise of Tucci aside, The Lovely Bones is an uneven delight. Having not read the book, it seems obvious to say that none of these assertions are based on accuracy to the source material. Peter Jackson channels his Heavenly Creatures mojo and adds a dash of Terry Gilliam’s aesthetic to the skeleton of the movie. The scenes featuring Saoirse Ronan’s Susie Salmon wafting through the “inbetween” of heaven and earth are easily the strongest elements of the whole film, and the scenes in which Jackson seems to be most comfortable. The director’s output for the last ten years has no doubt become household knowledge. Being a strong fan of his films, (especially his early work) it is a touch disappointing to see him come back from heavy fantasy worlds in order to prove to those that forgot, or didn’t know, his pre-Rings career had shown he can do other genres besides fantasy, only for him to deliver a movie where the fantasy scenes work so well and the scenes based in reality fall way off key. If anything The Lovely Bones will only serve to push him more into the pre-defined little fantasy treasure-chest that it should have broke him out of.

Mark Wahlberg and Rachel Wiesz play the parents of Susie Salmon, and they feel like a huge presence in the narrative”¦for about 15 minutes. After Susie goes missing, murdered by Stanley Tucci’s disgusting George Harvey, the role of the parental units (Conehead speak!) seems to just dissipate off into the wind, so much so that I forgot about Wiesz’s character even being in the movie for a good chunk. Her comings and goings happen without much fanfare, much like the father’s obsession with finding the truth about his daughter’s disappearance. In fact, it seems we are suppose to be following the father’s heartbreak more than anyone’s, but suddenly Susie’s invisible-to-the-audience sister, played by Rose Mclver, comes to the forefront in the hunt for the killer and it gives off this very uneven feeling of who we are emotionally suppose to follow. Add in a wacky montage (wacky montage? Yes really) of Susan Sarandon’s hard drinking, smoking Grandmother trying to do house chores and take care of the kids while the parents mourn and you have one very disjointed feeling. First the movie is killing a kid, and then Susan Sarandon has a wacky “˜80s-style montage, with a side of more wacky. WACKY! There is also a semi-side-story involving a psychic girl who becomes this film’s “Whoopi Goldberg” which I won’t go into, but let me stress, it makes it even more unbalanced.

The one consistent character through out is Tucci’s George Harvey. The razor sharp performance coupled with the dimly lit scenes of the killer bombastically pounding, sawing, and thoughtfully planning out the murder of an innocent girl molds George Harvey into an archetypal villain worth noting. Susie narrates the events of her killer’s life, past and present, showing us the horrid crimes he’s committed and how much he craves them. If there is anything to be said about craftsmanship here it is the wonderful sound design and editing concerning George’s scenes. The sounds are sharp, full, and hit hard in contrast to the rest of the film’s soft audio texture. A small piece of praise, but a worthy one”¦someone’s got to give the sound guy’s their due!

It needs to be said that the uneven tone could possibly be due to the long span of time that the film’s narrative covers. In many ways the movie reminded me of David Fincher’s Zodiac, due to the long spans of time not shown and character progression that has to be sacrificed because of such. In all honesty The Lovely Bones might be getting a rather unfair assessment from me, it felt like one of those movies where repeat viewings help the flick to find its footing in your mind and sell you on it a ton more. Perhaps I’m just saying that because I’m a fan of Jackson, but all the flaws taken into account, the movie still has much to offer. Highly recommended for fans of Stanley Tucci and the concept of purgatory (the non-Catholic version.)

Thanks for reading!

88,000? Do your math; I rounded up to be safe.

The Lorax I am not, I do not speak for the trees. I however do speak for the Me-Tree, the tree that’s me (Dr. Seuss was a genius, I’m not. I know.) There is a strong difference between a person’s “favorites” and what a person thinks are the “best.” Many lists seem to forget that very important fact. Sure, I think There Will Be Blood, Let The Right One In, Pan’s Labyrinth, Requiem For A Dream, Synecdoche, New York (etc.) are probably some of the best films of the decade as far as craft, performances, and technique goes, but they might not make the list (you have to read further to find out.) They might not be flicks that I want to revisit all the time for leisure or laughs. As for the types of movies that usually gravitate toward my favorites, there’s a great quote by Christian Slater, as Clarence in True Romance, that sums it up perfectly:

So, when it comes down to it, I would say my taste mingles well with Clarence’s plus one important addition (make a mental note that I said ADDITION, not difference): humor. Silly, stupid, smart, weird, dry, ironic, satirical, oddball humor”¦I love it all. I think stupidity can be genius, and genius is often required for well done stupidity. So consider that a warning. Comedy is like pornography: to each his own.

Much like any list there will be a lot of choices that baffle and anger you, forcing you to question my taste. Remember, for every one movie you and someone else vehemently disagree on there are probably five that you happily agree upon. This is MY LIST, these are the movies that made my eyes glue open with wonder, my jaw drop in awe, my giggle switch tingle with glee, and my emotionometer (?) go all upsies and downsies (??) I obviously haven’t seen every movie release in the past ten years, so before you yell at me for leaving something out, leave a comment about it and I’ll let you know why it’s not on the list. Don’t sweat the numbered order too much after the top 20, in fact try not to sweat it much at all, putting this stuff in order is hard”¦you try it!!! For the 90^th time, this is a favorites list, it’s all opinion (IN A HAYSTACK!!!) and just for fun, so I’ll stop trying to justify my crappy selections and get to them:

50. Primer (2004) I’ve always been a sucker for time travel in any shape or form, so it’s no surprise that Primer gets the best of me. Its charm comes from two areas: it’s budget, and it’s intriguingly confusing plot. After watching this film several upon several times I still can’t really figure out what happened. The time travel paradoxes lost me after the halfway mark, but happily tied my brain into knots to the point of wanting to watch it again. When I first saw it I was half asleep and the movie started confusing me so much it gave me nightmares, which in turn inspired me to purchase it.

49. O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000) The amazing soundtrack to this film overshadowed what a spectacular movie it was. It’s rumored that there is going to be a new film based on Homer’s Odyssey in 2012, no matter how that turns out, I see myself still preferring the Coen Brother’s version.

48. Frailty (2001) Who would have thunk it? Pvt. Hudson can direct a damn great low-budget thriller. Game over man, game over!

47. High Fidelity (2000) There’s two types of people in this world, those who GET Jack Black and those who HATE Jack Black. Consider me in the former. This is the movie that gave the cinematic world Jack Black, which if you hate him will probably make it very bitter sweet as it’s a damn cool flick. Probably the last great “1990s feeling” comedy ever released.

46. Bandits (2001) Solid Acting. Hilarious. Infinitely re-watchable. Billy Bob and Bruce in top form. Easily Barry Levinson’s best directing effort of the decade.

45. Sin City (2005) The only movie on my top 50 that is based on a comic book. The Spirit taught us that in the hands of Frank Miller (circa this decade) that Sin City would have been close to unwatchable. Luckily Robert Rodriguez knows how to have some serious fun and is the best intentional exploitation filmmaker that ever lived (a compliment coming from me, perhaps not if coming from someone else.) R.I.P. Brittany Murphy.

44. A Dirty Shame (2004) Hilarious movie that made the list for introducing me to a timeless concept: UPPERDECKING.

43. Doomsday (2008) I was really hard on Neil Marshall’s Doomsday when I first reviewed it, even though I liked it. It exponentially grew on me with many repeat viewings. I get now what he was trying to do: write a love letter to John Carpenter and George Miller using the most badass ink he could find. This is the boiled down, “tough as nails” remains of the best films of his childhood, and it couldn’t be more fun to watch. Between this, The Descent, and Dog Soldiers, Marshall has proven that he is one of the coolest, hardcore, sci-fi/horror geeks working. It truly saddens me that he won’t be directing Predators.

Something needs to be said about Craig Conway’s terrific turn as Doomsday’s main antagonist Sol. He is an absolute psychotic, who doesn’t get much screen time, but milks every nano second of it. His on screen demise is one of the funniest and most extreme moments of the decade, which takes place during one of, if not the, best car chases of the decade.

42. Cast Away (2000) Robert Zemeckis’s only non-motion-capture film of the decade and by far his best. I love everything about this film. Being alone on an island with Tom Hanks for 40 minutes sounds boring, but it couldn’t have been more captivating. There was a lot of depth to this movie that was overlooked due to the comedic potential of Wilson the volley ball. Any of us in a situation like that would need to talk to someone to keep us sane, loneliness is the true hell. Hanks was playing a man with no faith, Wilson was Chuck Noland’s substitute for god. Think about it, pretty cool right? Open message to Robert Zemeckis: START MAKING LIVE ACTION MOVIES AGAIN!!!

41. Beerfest (2006) My biggest problem with Broken Lizard is the fact that they seemingly named their comedy group in homage to Monty Python when they are absolutely nothing like Python. They don’t make biting, clever satire, they make “party” comedies, which is fine. Drinking, and drinking parties, are prominently featured in all of their films, thus making Beerfest the apex of everything they do. This, as well as their other flicks, might not be the most finely crafted movie ever, but it’s a hilariously good time hanging out with a bunch of funny guys and their best buddies. Beerfest is on my list for a lot of reasons, if none other than the death and non-supernatural-resurrection of a main character, Landfill, all for the sake of absurdity.

40. Zombieland (2009) Read my review here. Hope the sequel doesn’t ruin it.

39. The Royal Tenenbaums (2001) Still Wes Anderson’s most solid flick. Every frame of Bill Murray in this movie causes me to crack up. Dry humor at its finest.

38. Drag Me To Hell (2009) If we never get Evil Dead 4, this will suffice.

37. Little Children (2006) Some of the best acting this decade, and starring two of the Watchmen! This is the film that gave us Jackie Earle Haley (again.) It’s cliché to say, but the chemistry between Kate Winslet and Patrick Wilson is all too real. I was very late to the party with this movie, seeing it only about a year ago, but since then I have viewed it numerous times, and it gets better each go around.

36. Zodiac (2007) I know many people found this movie dawdling and anticlimactic. I saw it four times in theaters and was on the edge of my seat each time. The pacing was very intentional and meant to reflect the actual hunt for the Zodiac Killer and eventual failure to catch him. David Fincher’s best offering of the decade in my opinion. A movie so well done that it made me afraid of Roger Rabbit.

35. Burn After Reading (2008) This is the Coen’s new Big Lebowski. An oddly paced, weird, dark, cult comedy with no clear cut reason or meaning for the events in it, that they made directly after their Oscar winning best picture. Probably my favorite ending of the past ten years, and, besides Seth Gecko, my favorite performance by George Clooney.

34. Best In Show (2000) Most people would go with A Mighty Wind, I go with Best In Show. I adore all of Christopher Guest’s movies, but there is something about people personifying dogs that makes me laugh.

33. Unbreakable (2000) Upon seeing this film on opening night I remember hating it. I thought it was tedious, boring, stupid, and a general waste of time. Fast forward 9 years, multiple viewings later and I think its one of the most poignant, dramatic portrayals of a superhero’s origin ever. I was too young to give it a chance in 2000 I guess. Sadly, due to poor box office take, we will never see the further adventures of Bruce Willis: Security Guard, but one can dream. Perhaps that is why most “lists” are bunk, you need around 5 years to truly test a film’s legs. I argued this in one of my first columns on this site.

32. Donnie Darko (2001) The theatrical cut, not the director’s cut.

31. A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001) A movie that will prove its merit with time, at least I believe so. I realize that most people blame Spielberg for ruining Kurbrick’s vision, but I would argue that the subject matter was way better suited to Steven than to Stanley. It’s sad that Haley Joel Osment’s career disappeared after his dynamite performance here, luckily Jude Law is still with us. His portrayal of Gigolo Joe was acutely perfect, but the award for coolest character most certainly goes to Teddy. As for the ending, I will say this: if you turn the movie off right as the camera zooms away from the amphibicopter at the end, you just watched one of the science fiction masterpieces of our time. If you don’t turn it off, you just watched a masterpiece with a pretty good, but unnecessary, second ending. What many of you have never bothered to realize is that the “tacked on ending” is Kubrick’s doing”¦not Spielberg’s. Look it up.

As much as I love it, this still doesn’t make up for Indy 4.

30. Hot Rod (2007) Don’t crucify me. I’m praising each movie on this list according to its own aspirations and goals. That’s how I get things like Beerfest and Hot Rod on a list in company with timeless, powerhouse, Oscar winning dramas. At the end of the day I don’t really need to justify what I find funny, so why bother. When praising a movie such as this, anyone is going to be on the offensive.

As a fan of the art of editing, especially editing for comedic effect, Hot Rod destroyed me (and I’m not exclusively talking about the “cool beans” scene.) Say what you want about how stupid and awful you think this movie is, but at least it forms a well rounded old-school-style comedy film. I’m not much of a fan of Judd Apatow’s meandering, improvised, disjointed movies. They are funny and all, but they are just a big pile of catch-all riffing and outtakes coupled with way too many dated references. How many times did they mention Spider-man 3 in Knocked Up? Hot Rod is a tightly knit bag of weird soup, held together by classic winks and nods (Footloose punch-dancing) that don’t date the movie at all. It is basically The Lonley Island: The Movie (thus in turn making it the SNL Digital Short: The Movie.) It’s odd that I feel like this flick is more akin to the Caddyshacks, Animal Houses, and Vacations of the past than all the comedies of this decade that didn’t bomb at the box office”¦oh well.

29. Storytelling (2001) Director and writer Todd Solondz never fails to deliver the most disturbingly interesting character pieces you will ever see.

28. Children Of Men (2006) The Blade Runner of our time? Perhaps. Perhaps not. Discuss.

27. Kung Fu Hustle (2004) Wasn’t it Roger Ebert who said this movie was a mix of Jackie Chan, Buster Keaton, Tarantino and Bugs Bunny? Well, he was right.

26. Pineapple Express (2008) Cheech, Chong, Bill, Ted, Wayne, Garth, Kyle, JB, Jay, Silent Bob, and now Saul and Dale. Pineapple Express is a more than worthy addition to the buddy comedy genre, especially considering the weed humor and the 1980’s style theme song by Huey Lewis.

25. The Rules Of Attraction (2002) James Van Der Beek can act. I was surprised too.

24-22. The Lord Of The Rings Trilogy (2001-2003) The Extended Edtitions especially. There’s nothing more that I can say about this triumphant franchise that hasn’t already been said. All I ask is that you give me credit for not coping out and using up only one slot for all three movies. I hate it when people let an entire franchise take up only one space on a list.

21. Gladiator (2000) Has it really been almost ten years? Love the movie or not, Maximus is one of cinema’s best ass kickers in one of this decade’s best revenge stories.

20. Grindhouse (2007) There is some contention about whether or not this is one movie or two. I saw it in theaters, billed as simply Grindhouse, for one ticket price, hence on my list it will count as a single film. Sure, it is more of an experience then a movie, an experience that was an experiment that didn’t financially work to well. Regardless, it was one of the most enjoyable movie going experiences I’ve ever had, and each flick gets even more enjoyable with repeat viewings. The beauty of Planet Terror is that it’s intentionally not completed, and the beauty of Death Proof is the over-the-top sounds of the mighty Kurt Russell getting punched in the face.

19. Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind (2004) Not that it matters, but can we give Jim Carrey the Oscar he deserved as far back as Man On The Moon?

18. Wet Hot American Summer (2001) Anything sir David Wain touches I want to put inside me (great sentence.) Role Models, Stella, The Ten, The State, even Superjail!…all of it hilarious, all of it sexy (as in quality.) Wet Hot is still my favorite “thing” he’s done (so much innuendo.) If there was ever a decade where GOOD spoofs needed to be appreciated, this is the one.

17. Adaptation. (2002) For every great performance that Nic Cage puts out, he makes four ridiculous movies to overshadow it. His acting credentials this decade have been wonderful”¦if you are looking in the right places: Matchstick Men, The Weather Man, Lord Of War“¦etc. I’m a fan of Mr. Cage even at his most ridiculous, and I would say that Adaptation was his best performance, even outshining Leaving Las Vegas, which he won Best Actor for. With that said, the true stars of this movie are Charlie Kaufman and Spike Jonze.

16. Sunshine (2007) The 2001: A Space Odyssey of our time? Perhaps. Perhaps not. Discuss.

15. Tenacious D: In The Pick Of Destiny (2006) Remember back to #47 when I said there are two types of people: Those who GET Jack Black and those who HATE Jack Black. I really, really get Jack Black. I’ve loved the D ever since the first episode of their short lived TV show, and this movie/musical was everything I wanted it to be and more. The music is top notch and the oddball vibe flows hard and deep in this little movie known to it’s creators as “The greatest motion picture of all time.” Why so high on the list? Because I love it that much, and will watch it frequently for the rest of my days. This is a great little movie to add to the pantheon of silly/dark buddy comedies, much like Pineapple Express or Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey. The opening and closing musical numbers are exceptionally well done, not to mention a gut-busting hilarious cameo from Jack Black’s UCLA college buddy Tim Robbins. There’s no need for me to justify it further, either you are still with me, or I just lost you forever. Either way, fueled by Satan, the D shall live on!

14-13. Kill Bill Vol. 1 & 2 (2003-2004) Note how I once again didn’t cop out and let them take up two spaces. They were both released theatrically separate, until that changes in the USA they count as two flicks according to my criteria. Two amazing flicks.

12. There Will Be Blood (2007) If I was making a “Best Of” list instead of a “Favorites” list then Paul Thomas Anderson’s emotionally taxing masterpiece of craft, performance, and direction would be number one (sans “I drink your milkshake” jokes.)

11. Apocalypto (2006) If this is the kind of movie that comes from Mel Gibson drinking all that crazy sauce, then his next glass is on me. ZING!

10. Team America (2004) The Dr. Strangelove of our time? Perhaps. Perhaps not. Discuss.

9. The Wrestler (2008) Proof that any subject (“˜80s wrestling) can be taken seriously and turned into something entertaining and ultimately beautiful.

8. The Mist (2007) Frank Darabont + Stephen King = Heaven (but it might look a lot like Hell.) A beautiful allegory of the unstable human society that springs up when the lights go out. Chock full of commentary on religion, racism, and logic, this movie probably has my favorite film ending of the entire decade.

7. Inglourious Basterds (2009) You know, I never considered myself a Tarantino fan boy, but looking back on this list I have included every theatrical effort made by him this decade. Guess I qualify. Why are Tarantino’s movies so damn, fudging, good? I would have to say that it’s because the guy only makes the movies he wants to make, and meticulously so. After Pulp Fiction Tarantino could have made triple the amount of films by now, instead he took his time and did what he wanted to. It shows.

6. American Psycho (2000) By far Christian Bale’s greatest performance to date. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to return some videotapes.

5. Slither (2006) Meat! James Gunn’s lovingly disgusting homage to a bygone cinematic era of horror, science fiction, and humor. This film hits absolutely every mark it goes for. The mainstream, choking to death on torture porn, was in dire straits until Gunn came along and turned Michael Rooker into a gorgeous pile of tortured flesh.

4. Snatch (2000) Guy Ritchie’s air-tight, razor-sharp masterpiece of cool, comedy, crime and filmmaking. The editing is beyond impressive, and every actor does a pitch perfect job as pieces of this well oiled machine. This is easily my favorite film of Ritchie’s, however I have yet to see Sherlock Holmes, which would have to be un-fricken-believable to dethrone Snatch.

3. Shaun Of The Dead (2004) Duh.

2. Clerks II (2006) How must this look? Putting Clerks II as number two on a list which is being written for Quick Stop Entertainment seems like either the biggest kiss ass move ever, or the actions of a total sell out. Well I can assure you I’m not trying to kiss ass as I dearly loved Clerks II long before I ever touched a keyboard for this website. As for being a sellout, I have received no compensation for my choices on this list except for the heaping amounts of self satisfaction I get from being allowed to voice my brain waves via such a wonderful utopia of shining entertainment joy that Quick Stop most certainly is (now I’m kissing ass.) Please trust me, this is my true #2, the platform for which I write doth not affect my decision.

Clerks II is a raunchy comedy first and foremost, and a great one at that. However, I think what it does best is show the trials and tests that friendships go through when midlife is just around the corner. Hollywood often reflects societal values to their most boiled down form, which usually results in the message that love, of the romantic persuasion, conquers all. The thing that is most often pushed to the wayside in that equation is the loss of friendship, and how that loss affects those of us who value our friends just as much, if not more than, we value our romantic entanglements. In my personal life I’ve often been known to rant about how the western world hates “friendship” but upholds “romantic relationships” so you can imagine how and why Clerks II spoke to me between all of the pussy jokes. To me, the movie is ultimately about a guy learning that, while life has much to offer in many arenas, there’s simply nothing more important and satisfying than spending time with your best buddies. That it isn’t a waste of time, but rather, time very well spent. The fact that this occurred between two characters whom I had grown up with for almost a decade made it all the more affecting.

Plus it had inter-species erotica, which is also deeply affecting.

1. Hot Fuzz (2007) “Both Edgar Wright movies in the top 5? Really Bob?” Yes, really!

This was the easiest decision for me on this list. They mixed together their sharp comedic wit, pulp action movie elements, some of the best editing of the decade, added in some gore, a touch of The Wickerman (1973), a tighter-than-hell script, and a cast built from welcomed faces of cinema’s past and got something wholly new out of the broth. It’s quick, it’s funny, its ridiculous at points, but most of all it’s 100% grade A entertaining. I could revisit this flick a hundred times and still be ready to see it a hundred more. If only all satires, spoofs, and homages could be this wonderfully crafted. Hot Fuzz and Shaun are most certainly the high watermark of their kind, and the former is easily my favorite movie of the “˜00s. Shit just got real.

Flicks that just missed the list, in alphabetical order:

28 Days Later”¦, 3:10 To Yuma, 40 Year Old Virgin, The, Almost Famous, Anchorman, Anvil! The Story Of Anvil, Aristocrats, The, Avatar, Bad Boys 2, Bad Santa, Be Kind Rewind, Beautiful Mind, A, Beowulf, Big Fish, Borat, Bruno, Bubba Ho-Tep, Club Dread, Crank, Crank 2: High Voltage, Curious Case Of Benjamin Button, The, Death Race, Death To Smoochy, Descent, The, Devil’s Rejects, The, District 9, Elf, Feast, Fido, Freddy Got Fingered, Funny Games, Gone Baby Bone, Gonzo, Gran Torino, Grizzly Man, Hangover, The, Hellboy, Hellboy 2: The Golden Army, History Of Violence, A, I.O.U.S.A., Idiocracy, In Bruges, Incredibles, The, Informant!, The, Into The Wild, Iron Man, Jackass Number Two, Jackass: The Movie, Jay And Silent Bob Strike Back, JCVD, Jesus Camp, King Of Kong, The, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, Kung Pow: Enter The Fist, Ladykillers, The, Let The Right One In, Lord Of War, Master And Commander: The Far Side Of The World, Match Point, Matchstick Men, Memento, Mighty Wind, A, Monster House, Moulin Rouge!, Mr. Bean’s Holiday, Napoleon Dynamite, No Country For Old Men, Observe And Report, Osmosis Jones, Outlander, Pan’s Labyrinth, Peter Pan, Pirates Of The Caribbean: The Curse Of The Black Pearl, Producers, The, Punisher: War Zone, Religulous, Requiem For A Dream, Rescue Dawn, Revolutionary Road, Road To Perdition, Rock Star, Role Models, Scanner Darkly, A, School Of Rock, Seven Pounds, Shaolin Soccer, Shoot ‘Em Up, Simpsons Movie, The, Sky High, Sleeping Dogs Lie, Slumdog Millionaire, Smokin’ Aces, Spider-Man 2, Star Trek, Step Brothers, Stranger Than Fiction, Super Troopers, Synecdoche, New York, Talladega Nights, Ten, The, Thank You For Smoking, Trick ‘r Treat, Tropic Thunder, Up, V For Vendetta, Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, Wall-E, Watchmen, Whatever Works, Where The Wild Things Are, Zack And Miri Make A Porno, Zathura, Zoolander

Here’s some smaller lists for ya:

MY TOP 10 DOCUMENTARIES OF THE DECADE:

(This list is really just the docs that I had a chance to see. I don’t see that many. And no, I haven’t seen Man On Wire yet. I’ll get on that.)

10. My Date With Drew (2004)

9. Jackass Number Two (2006)

It might seem like a stretch, but the Jackass movies aren’t scripted. They aren’t skits, they aren’t fake characters. These are documentaries about guys hurting each other for comedy. If you disagree that they qualify, just pretend it’s a Top 8 list.

8. I.O.U.S.A. (2008)

Probably the scariest movie of the decade.

7. Gonzo: The Life And Work Of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson (2008)

6. Religulous (2008)

5. The King Of Kong: A Fistful Of Quarters (2007)

4. Jesus Camp (2006)

3. Jackass: The Movie (2002)

2. The Aristocrats (2005)

The most impressive collection of comedians on screen ever.

1. Grizzly Man (2005)

TOP 5 DVD EXTRA FEATURES:

5. Road House ““ Fan Commentary by Kevin Smith and Scott Mosier (available here.)

It’s great, not just because of the commentary itself, but because of the mere fact that it exists, and the silly way it came to exist.

4. Freaked ““ Squeal Of Death ““ short film (available here.)

Witness the unending genius of Alex Winter.

3. Back To The Future: The Ride (available here.)

Unless you live in Japan, your home is now the only place to ride one of the greatest simulators of all time.

2. Bruce Almighty ““ Extended Scenes, Steve Carrell’s hair fire (available here and here.)

The visual of Steve Carrell screaming while a halo of fire shoots out from the back of his skull is a bigger laugh than any of the ones left in the movie from which it was cut.

1. Talladega Nights ““ Commentary by Ian Roberts and Director Adam Mckay (available here.)

Funnier then the movie itself, this commentary is a snowballing, dry delivery masterpiece of excess and sarcasm in which Roberts and Mckay talk about the ridiculous (and fictitious) multi-billion dollar production of Talladega Nights without ever breaking character. This is probably my favorite DVD extra of all time, and possibly my favorite comedic “thing” of this decade. Once you here Adam Mckay giving a deadpan description of how, during production, he was blowing up the Easter Island Heads from a helicopter using a Howitzer machine gun while thriving on diet consisting solely of human blood”¦there’s really nothing that is going to top that. Here’s an exert from the beginning:

Adam Mckay: “During the course of making this film, I changed religion four times. I gained a hundred and forty pounds. I lost another two hundred pounds. Three times I flat-lined from heart attacks. I went blind. I regained my sight…this is a journey we all want to share with you, if you will allow us to.”

TOP 7 BATS-SHIT INSANE AWESOME ACTION FLICKS:

7. Doomsday

6. Death Race

5. Rambo

4. Shoot “˜Em Up

3. Crank

2. Crank 2: High Voltage

1. Punisher: War Zone

Dominic West and Doug Hutchison deserve more recognition for whatever it is they were trying to accomplish with those accents. Hilarious.

MY TOP 5 WORST FILMS OF THE DECADE:

5. Date Movie

I used to live for spoof films pre-Scary Movie. What the hell happened?

4. Meet The Spartans

3. Epic Movie

These two writer/directors are so awful that they somehow wasted the opportunity of having Crispin Glover play Willy Wonka.

2. Disaster Movie

The worst “narrative” movie I have ever seen in a theater in my entire life.

1. Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed

TOP 5 PEOPLE WHO LOST THEIR WAY THIS DECADE:

5. Steve Martin

Peter Sellers? Really Steve?

4. Robin Williams

RV? Old Dogs? Night At The Museum? License To Wed? I will admit to being one of the few fans of Death To Smoochy and One Hour Photo and Insomnia were great, but still”¦why tarnish your reputation with all the crap? Hopefully World’s Greatest Dad will help solve this problem.

3. Eddie Murphy

STOP LISTENING TO YOUR KIDS!!!

2. Steven Spielberg

Indy 4? You should know better.

1. George Lucas

You should have retired in 1990.

Ok, That’s about all the list’s I can handle. Thanks for reading and Merry Holidaysmas!

LOOKING AT AVATAR

He did it. James Cameron pulled it off. All of the praise and positive quips you’ve read, heard, and watched are spot on. Avatar is a behemoth spectacle to behold, a mighty game-changing cinematic dinosaur made of fire and fueled by Jolt Cola. The all-encompassing 3D CG environment coupled with the “BEST EVER” motion-captured actors is all numbingly realistic to the point of confusion. Take one of the greatest mainstream directors of all time, let him gestate on a film’s production for over a decade, then stir in a well-used $300 million and you will get Avatar. This is hardly the misfire, dream-project that so many feared. This isn’t James Cameron’s Legend (even though I like Legend.) It has all the markings of a wet-dream-big-director-project gone wrong, yet in the equation Cameron remembered one thing, to make the movie for himself AND the audience.

The film is a triumph not because it’s perfect, which it isn’t, but because it’s succeeds as grand entertainment. When is the last time the public received a movie of this caliber, based on original material, with this level of passion behind it? The fact that this is an original script with a production of this magnitude, sadly, gives it a nostalgia factor of 15-20 years ago, regardless of the technology. It is a very welcomed feeling that makes us glad that Mr. Cameron is back, and worried that he will go away, possibly back to the obscurity of making ocean documentaries.

The film’s plot, blue aliens, and overarching themes have obviously been heavily criticized for the past few months. The horrid advertising for the film should be to blame for this. What marketing department in their right mind thought that advertising a movie as “game-changing” was a good idea? Is “backlash” or “cynicism” not in their vocabulary? What is curious about all the criticism is that they are all more or less true, but not really in a detrimental form. Cameron’s script is simply playing on conventions as old as storytelling itself, which does lend the movie to being rife with cliché, but it’s cliché done well. Let’s take a closer look at the criticisms, from the point of view of someone who’s seen the flick:

***************EXTREMELY MILD SPOILERS**************

Criticism 1: “It’s James Cameron’s Smurfs.”

The Na’vi are blue.

They Live in the woods.

They are peaceful.

The villain (Humans) send a “Smurfette” (Sam Worthington) to infiltrate them.

The “Smurfette” is won over by the love and way of life of the Na’vi (thank you Donnie Darko, and Wikipedia .)
The “Smurfette” yearns to become one of the Na’vi.

The male leader of the Na’vi tribe has prominent RED body adornments much like Papa Smurf. (yes, seriously.)

Conclusion: Yes, it is sort of like James Cameron’s mega-budget-ultra-serious Smurf movie. It should be pointed out that Saturday Night Live called it first, even down to the Celine Dion/Titanic joke. SNL guessed Cameron’s next movie over a decade in advance!

Criticism 2: “It’s the exact same movie as FernGully, even down to the message.”

The humans have come to sap resources (Unobtainium) from the land.

The male lead gets physically transformed into a being much like the natives.

A female of the forest dwellers befriends a member of the humans.

The man and the native fall in love.

The humans continue to collect the resources, without care or regard for the natives.

There is a winged creature that helps the protagonists along the way.

There is a clear message about humans destroying nature for the sake of progress.

Conclusion: Ok, so it’s “sort of” like James Cameron’s live action FernGully remake. It probably even has more thematic/character similarities that I forgot to include, however that doesn’t mean its plagiarism. Do you honestly think James Cameron cares about, or even remembers FernGully? If so, do you think he’s seen this?

Criticism 3: “It’s Dances With Wolves on an alien planet”¦with Smurfs”

I’m going to cop out and just say watch the South Park episode entitled “Dances With Smurfs.” I doubt anyone could explain it as well as Eric Cartman.

Conclusion: As usual, South Park is pretty much on the mark.

Criticism 4: “The Delgo Comparisons.”

Look at them.

Conclusion: Yes, it is pretty similar… but what movie was in production first?

So what does all of that mean? Is James Cameron a plagiarist? No, certainly not. FernGully and Dances With Wolves are both stories built on conventions as old as time, and none of us are going back even further to see what they were “copied” from. If you are going to insult the film for something trivial, how about for using a title font, and subtitle font that is way to close (if not exactly the same) to the corny, over-used font known as Papyrus. As for the Smurfs comparison, yes, that is humorously close. James Cameron even said he found it funny in an interview, right before he went on to insult Jar Jar Binks, which should help us to give him the benefit of the doubt. When all is said and done, even if you think he stole from these other things (which he didn’t) he took the elements and made something great with them. Do you really think for the past 15 years he has been in his basement watching FernGully, Dances With Wolves, and Smurfs DVDs, while sipping cognac and laughing maniacally about his deceptive future plans? Is the theft of FernGully really worth creating revolutionary new technology for? No offense to FernGully, but no, it isn’t.

This column, Opinion In A Haystack, is often overflowing with disdain for special F/X of the computer generated persuasion. Bob Rose (me) is not a fan of CG. However, the level at which Avatar’s environments work, and the nigh-photo-realistic skin texture and muscle movements achieved by Cameron’s team make it so real, that it’s just that, real. By the second half of the film, the effects aren’t even a question anymore. Avatar doesn’t feel like Sin City, Sky Captain, or 300. There’s not this constant search to see the seams because there is no seams, it is one giant cohesive visual. The 3D is not gimmicky either. It is only used as a tool of depth and space, much like how Pixar’s Up utilized it earlier this year. 3D most certainly adds to the whole experience, but even now I think 3D should still be considered a gimmick. Avatar would work in 2D just as well as it does in 3D, if it didn’t then the whole film would be a gimmick itself. I don’t really care how much Cameron, Spielberg, and Jackson back the tech of 3D, until it can be accomplished without the viewer having to wear glasses then it’s not “normal” cinema. To me there is a fear that some movies will start being produced ONLY in 3D with no 2D counterpart.

All the performances in the movie are top notch, perhaps except for Sam Worthington being a touch bland. The shining star of the movie is easily Stephen Lang as Colonel Miles Quaritch. Once again we have cliché in his facial-scars coupled with his hard bitten disposition, but Lang pulls out all the stops and goes for broke with the cliché. He is easily the most enjoyable character to watch through out the run time, and his physical appearance is baffling. It looks as though James Cameron told Lang to spend the last decade in physical training to play this role, it’s hard to believe that is Ike Clanton from Tombstone, or George Pickett from Gettysburg.

The question of whether or not this movie will prove successful is not really a concern of mine. It’s classic Cameron through and through, right down to the “revolutionary” effects, and it’s a damn entertaining flick. The downfall of this will be the aura of “pretension” surrounding it, most people will walk in thinking that Cameron himself is saying that he reinvented the reinvention of the wheel and he’s damn serious about it. However, after reading most interviews with him, he is much more concerned with the quality-entertainment aspect then the need to change cinema. He didn’t spend 15 years on a useless light show, he spent it on a story he felt people would want to experience, and how to tell that story. Avatar works because Cameron worked hard.

Thanks for reading.

Money Shot (Wikipedia): provocative, sensational, or memorable sequence in a film, on which the film’s commercial performance is perceived to depend.

Buck Shot: moments on which a film’s cheese-factor is based, often underlining the tone of the entire production and providing the viewer with the opposite effect intended.
Round 3: The Wizard of Speed and Time and The Greatest Film Ending Ever (which is a fact.)

(Here’s Round 1 and Round 2)

Taglines:

• His Life Is a Special Effect…
• This is the kind of movie you would make, if you had nothing better to do!

Here at the Opinion In A Haystack Department, we make it our goal to purport the message of “opinion isn’t fact” concerning the world of cinema. This notion is only null and void on a single subject: the greatest film ending ever. Sure, you would have to be some type of megalomaniacal-fizzlebottom drunk on your own power to claim that anything in the world of “art” is “the greatest” (let alone, to use the word “fizzlebottom.”) We are going to go out on a broken limb (glued with oatmeal) and proclaim that The Wizard of Speed and Time has the absolute monopoly on greatest endings ever, with the one ending it has. The unique dilemma, and triumph, of this fact is that the ending doesn’t necessarily take place at the end, nor is it part of the narrative reality of the movie. If we were face to face, here is the subsequent conversation that would take place:

(You reach in your pocket, worriedly grasping your canister of mace.)

“If it’s not at the end, than it’s not the greatest ending.”

“No, I assure you it is.”

“I’m not listening to anymore of this nonsense.”

“You just listened to a whole paragraph of nonsense.”

“How did you know it was a paragraph?”

“I write out all my conversations beforehand.”

“Even what the other person will say?”

“A 1985 Chrysler minivan, gray interior with several apple juice stains in the wheel well.”

“I guess not.”

“It’s the greatest ending, I can prove it; you don’t need to mace me.”

“How did you know I had mace in my pants?”

“Well, you are a mace salesman, and this is a mace factory.”

“An odd place to walk around discussing The Wizard of Speed and Time, hence why I hold my mace in defensive preparation”

“Perhaps if I worked here you would be less aggressive.”

“Perhaps.”

(You proceed to mace me.)

Confusion is probably setting in, which is a perfectly instinctual response we assure you. Director Mike Jittlov is the all-encompassing wizard of speed and time in his movie (you guessed it,) The Wizard of Speed and Time. His 1988 feature film, which took over five years to complete, is his big headed baby. He is the head writer, director, producer, actor, animator, editor and all-around deity of his gloriously bitter film, which tells the story of a special effects filmmaker, named Mike “The Wizard” Jittlov, who is trying to make it in the corrupt corporate world of Hollywood. Surprisingly, it’s apparently based on his real life experiences. The stop-motion animation in this film alone makes it a B-movie rental worth its weight in gold-plated space-diamonds (the fancy ones, usually found in black holes.) Remember earlier, before the mace, when I said that the “greatest ending ever” doesn’t take place at the end nor in the reality of the narrative of the film? Well, that’s because the ending, the one being discussed, is actually Mike Jittlov’s (the character, not the real person. Don’t worry, it gets more complex,) film reel, the effects sequence he makes to prove his talent. Needless to say, it’s a total brain-melting tesla-coil to the eye sockets in style, scope, and content.

We, at the Opinion In A Haystack Department, came across TWOSAT long before we, I, Bob, started referring to myself as we (weself?) Jump into the wayback-machine and travel to the triumphant age of 2005, where your humble reviewer stood stoic behind the counter of a video store desk grasping for a reason to live. One day, a random VHS tape was chosen for in-store viewing. It had non-sexually nipple erecting cover art:

Eighty minutes later, my attention unable to be pulled from work, I had stopped watching Mike Jittlov’s peculiar film. Soon, I was awakened from the dark stupor of retail slavery with cries of:

“Bob, are you seeing this? Are you seeing what is happening on screen?”

“REWIND!”

No less then five VCR malfunctions later, the entire crew, all two of us, of the mostly-porn-mom-and-pop video store were mesmerized by the sights and sounds of a wizard running all over the planet spreading his magical “positive” deeds. Have you ever wanted to see night change into day? Poverty into riches? Struggle into fame? Tanks into Taxis?! This is the film sequence for you. Mike Jittlov’s Wizard runs at the speed of pleasantness, his mere presence makes flowers bloom, women become famous, and entire foreign cities explode with sunlight regardless of the possibly severe environmental effects. There’s more blood, sweat, and tears in this one sequence then in all of Michael Bay’s most action-packed nightmares (even the ones where his penis is a refurbished Howitzer that can dance.) Mike Jittlov accomplishes a feat that no known filmmaker ever has or ever will, one that deserves respect, adulation, and many surprise fruit baskets: He made a movie in which a guy slips on a banana peel so hard that he shoots out into space. See for yourself:

A Short Review of The Road

Plot Summary (taken from IMDB):

A father and his son walk alone through burned America. Nothing moves in the ravaged landscape save the ash on the wind and water. It is cold enough to crack stones, and, when the snow falls it is gray. The sky is dark. Their destination is the warmer south, although they don’t know what, if anything, awaits them there. They have nothing: just a pistol to defend themselves against the lawless cannibalistic bands that stalk the road, the clothes they are wearing, a rusting shopping cart of scavenged food–and each other.

Based on the book (which this reviewer hasn’t read) by author Cormac McCarthy, The Road stars Viggo Mortensen and a vicious world of grime and, frankly, sadness. This post-apocalyptic drama might just be able to wiggle its way into the Oscars unlike most movies concerning its subject matter. The Road is a movie of depression and hopeless existence; it is the story of a father and son being suffocated by no options to survive. There are many films that end on a note of hopelessness, the credits roll right after we learn that the disease has spread, or the asteroid can’t be stopped. This film takes place after that moment. The heroes of the world, the leaders of the planet, already fought the battle with nature, lost, and now we are brought into the story.

Beautifully photographed with unending grayness, Javier Aguirresarobe’s cinematography perfectly compliments John Hilcoat’s extremely nuanced direction. Our main characters look as though they are about to cry at every moment, and the movie gives us several different reasons why. Everything, everything, is covered in a thick layer of grime, which dampens all the color out of the frames. The dirt, grime, and struggle of this film make it a great companion piece to Werner Herzog’s Rescue Dawn, even though the genres are admittedly very different. The main characters of the film don’t ever let on to their names, they are Man and Boy, which makes it all the more dark, since they both are essentially deer with broken limbs, walking through a world comprised of wolves in the form of cannibals and thieves. Since the movie takes place well after civilization has ended, the cannibals aren’t the mentally-shocked crazies we normally see, they have grown accustomed to this life, killing and eating people is now the norm, which is all the more scary, of course. Robert Duvall gives an almost chameleon-like performance as the “Old Man.” His make-up is so outstanding that the credits are the only way to know it’s actually him.

The movie felt very truncated at times, which could either be a complaint or a type of praise. While there were many situations that came and went without much fanfare or especially colored reactions from the characters, which is what makes the movie feel so “real.” It doesn’t feel like a movie most of the time, excluding flashbacks, because the action/thematic beats don’t happen at the length and speed of a script we’re used to, especially the ending, to which there is no real build up. While all of this enhances the experience, and while all of the acting and craft of the movie is top-notch, Oscar worthy even, I wouldn’t really recommend it for anyone looking for escapism. It’s one of the best films I’ve seen all year, yet not one I would want to voluntarily revisit too often.

Thanks for reading.

Interview: Eric Lichtenfeld Part 2 of 2

This is the second half of my talk with Eric Lichtenfeld, author of Action Speaks Louder: Violence, Spectacle, and the American Action Movie. Please don’t forget to check out the first half of this interview or my original review of his book.

BOB ROSE: Do you enjoy action film satires such as True Lies, Shoot ‘Em Up, or Hot Fuzz?

ERIC LICHTENFELD: I like True Lies a lot.

BR: It’s definitely a satire, at least to some degree.

EL: Yes, a loving one. It’s one of those films that works both ways. I think Robocop is an even better example than True Lies, but both of them illustrate this well: it’s a satire that works as a movie even if you don’t get the satire. You don’t watch them and think that there is something you’re missing.

BR: Robocop is a movie that I don’t feel has been fully appreciated for what’s under its skin.

EL: I think the critical thinking concerning Robocop over the years has matured to the point where it has gotten its due. Obviously not in all corners–I’d be surprised if Michael Medved went for it, though he might; I honestly don’t know.

BR: Sequels have diluted the way it is remembered.

EL: The sequels really have very little to do with the original, and what made the original special.

BR: I agree, however, when people view a franchise as a whole they tend to have trouble separating the installments in their mind.

EL: Rocky and the Rambo franchise are great examples of that. You might be right about that with Robocop, but, I think anyone who spends any time thinking about this even remotely seriously would still look at Robocop as its own entity.

BR: Sure, I was just saying that, for instance, Robocop 2, which I admit to enjoying as an action film, made the “joke” of Robocop the point of the movie. It makes people forget.

EL: Yeah, you’re right.

BR: My life experience has been, when I tell people I’m interested in film and that Robocop is one of my favorite films”¦I get funny looks. You actually start your book with a quote from Robocop. Clarence Bodeker quipping “guns, guns, guns.”

EL: I was always a very big fan of Robocop. I remember a very close family friend, a friend of my parents, watched it on my recommendation and told me, “Your taste is up your ass.”

BR: [laughs]

EL: I thought, “ok, they just didn’t get it.” One of the clichés I really hate is when people talk about movies and say that some inanimate object was “like another character in the movie,” but in Robocop, violence really is like another character: it goes through a lot of changes and progression. Almost every major violent episode of Robocop has a distinctly different tone. Sometimes the violence is darkly comic, such as when ED209 kills the executive in the boardroom–

BR: Which is even longer and more violent in the unrated cut.

EL: Right, and even funnier. In the drug warehouse or the showdown at the steel mill, the violence is heroic. When the gang converges on Murphy it’s very tragic. So Verhoeven crafted a lot of violence in the movie, but always found a way to give it different emotional flavors, and that’s just one facet of how smart that movie is.

BR: Do you think that is affected by how Paul Verhoeven views the movie, as a form of Christ’s story? Murphy’s death is played so serious and sad, like as if it’s his crucifixion, even though it preceded by something as funny as ED209 malfunctioning.

EL: Well, Verhoeven has described himself as a Christ scholar. So, the short answer to your question is “sure.” I’m sure that how he treats Murphy is a reflection of his investment in the Christ story. At the same time I’m hesitant to make too big a deal about that because all action movies are Christ stories. Most hero stories involve the basic building blocks. Most heroes have–I’m saying this figuratively–an almost supernatural quality. Dirty Harry is set apart from other men. Martin Riggs is set apart from other men. An action hero is set apart from others, has special abilities, has a divine purpose (again, I’m speaking figuratively,) is forsaken by his community (that’s a really important point,) and rises again. So I think that Verhoeven’s fascination with Jesus is certainly informing that scene, but I think you would read the same thing into the movie even if that wasn’t a particular interest of his.

BR: Yeah, I would have never singled out Robocop specifically for that if he had not said “This is my version of the Christ story.”

EL: I’m certainly not disagreeing with Verhoeven on this, but that would have probably been in there to one extent or another, even if –

BR: He’d not been trying.

EL: Exactly, because it’s the nature of the genre. Cobra is a very similar thing. It depends on how “literal vs. figurative” you want to be with some of your language about martyrdom, and about being forsaken and so forth. But the building blocks of that story are present in most these stories.

BR: In keeping with the topic of the hero story, in your book you discuss the archetype of “the man that knows Indians.” The hero as the outsider.

EL: Yeah, he is one of us, except that he has a very intimate knowledge of “the other.”

BR: Like Travis Bickle?

EL: Travis Bickle is certainly based on that archetype as Taxi Driver is very much an inverted The Searchers. Rambo is a perfect example, he’s a guerilla fighter.

BR: Yet he fights for the norm of the people he doesn’t know.

EL: Not just the people he doesn’t know, he fights to protect a society that will not integrate him into it.

BR: What I like about your book is that it shows how Taxi Driver is part of the evolution of the action movie, even though it isn’t really part of the genre.

EL: It’s very interesting: when I would tell people that I was including Taxi Driver in the book, some people got kind of pissed.

BR: Because they thought you were diluting what Taxi Driver is?

EL: Exactly, like I was defacing Taxi Driver by including it in this un-scrubbed mass of movies.

BR: Which you weren’t at all.

EL: Thank you. Once again, that insult kind of goes to the standing of the action genre, in terms of how people validate it, or not. The fact that some people were annoyed that I put Taxi Driver in with this sort of un-washed, un-scrubbed genre says a lot about the standing that the genre enjoys.

BR: Especially now. I admit I don’t remember a lot of criticism from 20 years ago, but do you think that with what action has become, it is respected less?

EL: I think in terms of most critics, action has stayed pretty much where it’s always been, on one of the lower tiers, critically speaking. There are films that break out, and there are ones that over time can grow in stature. I think most critics would argue that Die Hard is one of the great action movies, but if you go back to 1988 and read the reviews, they were mixed.

BR: But, in hindsight, Die Hard can be looked back at as simply a great movie.

EL: I agree. Going back to Taxi Driver, people were very irritated. I wouldn’t reduce Taxi Driver to just an action movie; I think it is a lot more then just that.

BR: Sure, it’s a drama or a dark comedy much more then an action film.

EL: It’s a lot of things. It’s a modern day western. It’s a horror movie. Taxi Driver is one of those films that is such a complicated, but ultimately organic, constellation of genre elements, there are many different ways to parse it.

BR: It’s a film that could be analyzed till judgment day and still not be fully cracked.

EL: It’s made by cinephiles, by true cinephiles. What I tried to do was say that in addition to all the ways that Taxi Driver has been looked at up to this point, you can also look at it as this stepping stone in the evolution of the modern action movie. An important one especially in how it directly engages the idea of the vigilante. That is such an important part of the transition from westerns to modern day action films, and an important transition from basically everything that had come up to “˜70s, in terms of film history, to the “˜80s and what would become that classical period.

BR: Movies like Taxi Driver, and even say, Dirty Harry, compared to the action films of the present day almost feel like dramas.

EL: I would agree with you about Taxi Driver; Dirty Harry less so. I think what you’re probably picking up on is that idea you were discussing earlier that the movies have gotten so much bigger that when you look at Dirty Harry today it’s hard to know how to classify it, because it doesn’t look like the actions movies we’ve grown accustomed to.

BR: I hate to be one of the people that have grown accustomed to it, but we are bombarded so consistently how can you not?

EL: [Laughs] I’ll give you another good example of this idea. I was teaching my class, and that particular semester, our genre unit was on the action movie and we had a 35mm print of Lethal Weapon. Now I have seen Lethal Weapon numerous times, but I hadn’t seen it projected since 1987. So I was very excited to see it in 35mm again for the first time in about 20 years. Know what amazed me? That foot chase over Hollywood Blvd., It’s a great sequence, there isn’t a frame wrong with it. But I kept thinking about how conceptually small it is, and wondering how often you could get away with making it the big third-act sequence today.

BR: Compared to today, that is the action-equivalent of the first act of a movie.

EL: Very true. That made me sad; it made me lonesome for that time.

BR: Yes, but the subtext of that scene is big. The subtext of a mammoth action scene, let’s say of a movie like Transformers, is nil, where as the subtext of the action in Lethal Weapon’s climax is enormous.

EL: [Laughs] I wouldn’t call it subtext in that case, but I would call it intensity. You have characters you really care about, that you are really invested in. I mean, yes, the whole movie is kind of comic-book like, especially the third act, but the performances are real, the dynamic is real, you feel something for these people. I hate reducing the movie or the genre to this issue, but there’s something to it. Yes, the concept might be small, but it does allow for a much more visceral, kinetic experience. That’s why, throughout the book, I try to write so much about craftsmanship and this is the point I concluded on: that what I think is missing today is that physical investment in what’s happening on screen. When I look at something like the first Transformers, and I look at those action sequences, I don’t know what it is I’m suppose to be feeling.

BR: Or what it is you are even looking at”¦ [laughs]

EL: Sure, but one issue is more fundamental than the other. Yes, I don’t always know what I’m looking at, which is a problem, and that’s a big issue with not just Michael Bay, but other filmmakers.

BR: The action-geography influences the physical investment of the scene as well.

EL: Exactly. What I believe is that without a clear sense of geography there’s not a clear sense of jeopardy. So when I look at something like Transformers, and I see the action sequences, I don’t know what I am supposed to be feeling. Am I supposed to feel excited, the way you feel excited when you watch the foot chase in Lethal Weapon, or in First Blood? Or are you just supposed to feel kind of generally overwhelmed (which is a completely different feeling)? I can’t speak for anyone else, but I prefer to be excited over being bombarded.

BR: Overwhelmed is sort of the mantra of the Transformers franchise as well. The goal of the sequel seems to be, “How big can we go? How much can we throw at them, and how fast can we do it?” The movie doesn’t want you there for the characters; it wants you there for the experience.

EL: Yes, Lethal Weapon works in part because we care about the characters and that is all great, but as I was talking about before it was all about sheer craftsmanship. In his review of Lethal Weapon, I think, Roger Ebert said it absolutely beautifully that the pleasure of the action movie is in the choreography of bullets and bodies and all of these elements. There is an aesthetic pleasure that can be gotten from all that. Look at the first Die Hard. Also, and this is a movie that gets knocked around a lot, but I was watching Die Hard With A Vengeance yesterday, and there is some stuff in there that I think is just incredible. It’s all about basic film style and craftsmanship. That is one of the points that I concluded the book with. When it’s done right, the pleasure of the action movie is that it truly physically makes you feel alive. You sense these things on your flesh, you sense these things on your nerve endings and in your gut. Thinking about how filmmakers have the power to do that is really an extraordinary thing and it makes me sad that it’s so forsaken.

BR: It’s dying.

EL: Yeah, probably. I like to think that there are filmmakers that just aren’t on my radar right now, who are, frankly, on lots and lots of other people’s radars. I saw Star Trek and I saw glimmers of that alive in that film. I thought Star Trek was a really good movie. I remember when Waterworld came out, and not unlike Last Action Hero, Waterworld was a movie that had a lot of the story behind the movie dogging it and following it”¦

BR: The biggest budget ever.

EL: Right, and when the movie came out it wasn’t even it hype, it was like anti-hype.

BR: It was also part of the Kevin Costner backlash.

EL: At that point, yes. When it was released, Steven Spielberg was being interviewed about something else, and they asked him “have you seen Waterworld?’ and he said “yes” and they said “was it worth 300 million dollars?” and I loved his answer. His answer was “It doesn’t have to be worth 300 million dollars, it has to be worth seven dollars.” I thought that was just perfect. I thought so much about that after I saw Star Trek, because we can talk about this stuff all day long, but what does this all ultimately come down to? You went to a movie, you bought a ticket, you either had an experience or you didn’t. When I came out of Star Trek, I think we paid about $15 to see it, I said “You know, that was worth my money, I had an experience.”

BR: Flaws aside, I agree it worked as great entertainment.

EL: Yeah, and how often can that be said of these very impressive light shows? You know Transformers was a very impressive light show, but did I have an experience? If I had one, is it a worthwhile one?

BR: Was it worth $10?

EL: Was it even worth the time? I’d say no.

BR: There’s a reason we needed movies like District 9 and Inglourious Basterds this summer. People are all too often are going to films like Transformers, and saying “why did I just pay money for that? What did I just watch?” Seeing something like Basterds, or District 9, which is a light show plus more, at least gives you your money’s worth. I think it has a lot to do with passion. While all “big” movies are product, some movies, like Transformers, feel like only product. At least with Basterds or District 9, even if you didn’t like those movies you can still feel the passion behind them, and that in turn inflates the experience. It makes you say “that was worth my money.”

EL: Yeah, I think that’s a fair way to put it.

BR: This has been a very droll summer. Every film looks like G.I. Joe or Transformers, and while I didn’t see G.I. Joe, I think I can get a picture of what G.I. Joe would be.

EL: [Laughs] Like everyone else, I heard it wasn’t as bad as they thought it would be.

BR: Is that ever really a compliment? [Laughs] One of the chapters of your book is titled “Terror and the Confined Area,” dealing with the sub-genre created by Die Hard. This decade we have sort of seen the confined area die. I guess we could blame the rise of fantasy and comic book films. Do you think audiences have forgotten that an action scene can take place in an elevator just as easily as a battlefield?

EL: [Laughs] Well, let’s start broad and narrow our focus. I would say that the last significant movie in that Die Hard vein was Air Force One.

BR: That long ago?

EL: Yeah. I don’t really even think Live Free Or Die Hard follows the format. When you talk about that state of all those movies coming out on top of each other in the “˜90s, it was because we had a few dominant trends and that was one of them. That cycle ended with Air Force One in July of 1997. That is a movie I really admire. We were talking about craftsmanship; that is a very finely crafted movie. I think the trend died out for two reasons, the rise of CG making other things possible as we talked about before, but also there was such a distinctive trend that had been going on for so long it had to stop. Genre is a funny thing. It’s about formula and variation and carefully controlling that balance between the familiar and the new. This is no fault of the concept, it happens all the time; the cycle just reached its end. I’m glad it went out with a movie that was so well-crafted in that it really got the idea of geography, which is what made the first Die Hard so effective.

BR: Ironically, the biggest criticism of Air Force One is the CG plane crash.

EL: Yeah, that sequence doesn’t work very well. The technology wasn’t that far along yet, they overshot their capability. Air Force One is not one of those widely-admired movies necessarily. I’m usually on the leading edge of its cheerleaders.

BR: Honestly, I was expecting you to be very negative toward it. I love the movie, but in my experience, it usually isn’t greeted with much welcome. [Laughs]

EL: Yeah, I think that’s really unfortunate. In fact, I’ll give you a great illustration of what I’m talking about. A few weeks before Air Force One came out, there was the summer’s other terrorists-take-over-a-plane-movie which was Con Air. I saw it with friends, and I said to them, “You know in the interior of the plane, there’s that cage where they keep the dangerous psychopath?”

BR: Danny Trejo, the rapist character, Johnny 23.

EL: I said, “Where was that cage in relationship to the seats?” and everybody had a different answer. Now how hard would it have been to very clearly map out the geography of the plane? If John McTiernan had directed that movie, one shot would have taken care of all of that. A stedi-cam shot. When the concept is absolutely dependent on your sense of geography, that kind of frenetic style ran roughshod over it. Go back and watch the dogfight where it’s Air Force One between the F-16s and Migs. Whenever they cut into a cockpit the pilots are always facing the direction their planes were facing. Screen direction is preserved there and really, really well. There’s a certain level of craftsmanship there, a lot to admire and learn from in Air Force One between [the director Wolfgang Petersen] and Michael Ballhaus’s cinematography. So that cycle had ended, and your question was about if we had forgotten that action can take place in an elevator or a confined space.

BR: We have such epic action now. I think if you said “action scene” to a 12-15 year old right now, they would think of a battlefield or a desert covered in billions of minions. There’s nothing wrong with that sometimes, but action scenes don’t always have to be a fully filmed war, or a CG equivalent of a classic Godzilla battle in fast motion.

EL: I think that is a fair observation. Again, I think it’s because of CG. It allows you to do things on such a grand scale without paying for it like you had to in the past.

[Both Laugh]

It allows these spectacles to happen, and filmmakers take advantage of it. Yes, there probably has been a loss of more intimate kinds of sequences, which is a pity because I think one of the things that filmmakers most often would tell you is that as much as they always want more time and more money, less time and less money is what often forces them into sharper, more innovative thinking.

BR: You get Jaws out of that.

EL: You get Die Hard.

BR: Do you consider the fantasy genre when you think about action? Lord of the Rings has plenty of action, but do you include it in the category?

EL: I don’t. My general way of looking at this is that since so many genres involve physical action, battles, combat or whatever you want to call it, if you were to talk about all the movies that have action in them as “action movies” the label would stop meaning anything. I talk a little bit about that in the introduction to the book. So, no I wouldn’t. If a movie with action more immediately belongs to another genre, and visually and in everyway you instinctively know it belongs to another genre”¦it probably belongs to that genre, or several genres. I don’t talk about Aliens very much in the book, even though it has a lot of the genre’s elements because Aliens is much more immediately a science fiction movie or a horror film.

BR: I agree. It’s confusing when Entertainment Weekly puts Aliens as the second greatest action film of all time on their list.

EL: Exactly, what does “action” mean then? I talk about science fiction and superhero movies in the book because over time the genre does expand to incorporate these other types of movies, especially with technology and so forth. But no, I don’t consider fantasy to be action movies. It doesn’t mean I dismiss them, and it doesn’t mean they are unrelated. Like I said, all these genres exist on sort of a family tree, some branches are further apart, some are much closer together.

BR: Your book talks about something I’m embarrassed to admit I’ve never realized. That is the tendency of huge action films, specifically concentrating on Armageddon, to have a fear of intellectualism.

EL: An outright disdain for it. [Laughs]

BR: Yeah, you dissect Armageddon in your book, a movie I have seen many times, and you really, successfully, point out how the movie outright makes fun of science and scientists.

EL: In what is inherently a science-fiction scenario.

BR: From every vantage you look at the conflict in the movie it’s fully encapsulated by scientific knowledge.

EL: Remember the line that Bruce Willis says “You guys at NASA, aren’t you the guys who are thinking stuff up, and behind you there are guys thinking stuff up.” Well, we know what Michael Bay thinks about “guys who think stuff up.”

BR: Do you think that is a way of trying to pander to the audience? Not that the audience is inherently stupid, but everyone can’t be an astronomer or a physicist. I know I’m not.

EL: Yeah, and I think it’s committed by Michael Bay in particular. I think it is part of a very broad, very caustic, very noxious form of pandering. What [Bay] does in his movies, he also does in his interviews when discussing his movies and the critics, and he does it when talking about his past. There’s a theme running through all of that, which kind of separates the intellectual realm from “the people.” He positions himself as kind of the vanguard of the people, and of the people’s tastes. He “doesn’t make movies for the critics, he makes movies for the people,” as though critics aren’t people.

BR: I know he believes that quality should be based on financial success.

EL: Right, which is absurd. I wish I could take credit for this, but concerning the new Transformers movie someone wrote, “When people tell me to shut off my brain and have fun, I tell them I can’t because my brain is where I have fun.”

[Both Laugh]

BR: That should be on T-shirts.

EL: It should. I wish I could take credit for it, because it’s absolutely brilliant and perfect. I think what Michael Bay does is beyond pandering. It is consistent with the anti-intellectualism that has blighted our country cyclically for generations. I’m certainly not saying Michael Bay is to blame for all this, but if you look at what’s happening with the environment, economically, to the country, to the planet, this really isn’t a time when we want to be saying that intellectualism isn’t cool. When National Treasure came out, critics really savaged it, and I will say that it’s a pretty imperfect movie, but there was one aspect of it that I really, really liked, and wished more critics had picked up on and championed. This is a movie that made being smart cool. There are lots of critics who rightly dump on action movies because they’re so mindless, and mind-numbing. So when an action movie comes along, imperfections aside, that makes being smart cool, the intellectually honest thing to do is to call out the movie for that and champion at least that aspect of it. I really respected the first National Treasure for doing that. We are really at a point in our history when the smart people need to show up. People in general need to know that intellectualism is a good thing.

BR: In your book, you point to the much less successful movie The Core as almost the inverse of Armageddon, due to how it shows intellectuals in such a positive light.

EL: Yeah, the intellectuals solved the problem, and the writer of The Core, John Rogers, is a brilliant guy, a first class intellect. Yes, The Core is kind of a wonky movie, but he’s a good writer and he’s a physicist; he studied physics for crying out loud. The Core might be wonky, but give me that attitude over Armageddon’s any day.

BR: The entire point of Armageddon is almost saying: scientists can’t stop a giant asteroid from destroying the planet, but John McClane can.

EL: [Laughs] I don’t even mind the fact that “John McClane” is doing it, because these are action movies it’s the way science is portrayed. Why couldn’t science be portrayed in a healthier, more positive light? My problem is funny, because how do you reconcile being very passionate about anti-intellectualism, while being a scholar of action movies? It’s two things that shouldn’t exactly go together. Most people would argue that the action genre is inherently anti-intellectual, and to that my argument is “no,” action movies are not anti-intellectual, they are non-intellectual. They don’t care one way or the other about intellectualism, and that’s fine. What Bay does so often is refuse to sit on the sidelines, which Die Hard might, or Lethal Weapon might. He’s hostile toward intellectualism. In Armageddon, what bothers me is the scene where the scientists were pitching their other ideas. How hard would it have been to craft a scene where those ideas are introduced, and for logistical reasons, none of them are tenable, and then Bruce Willis and his team are the only option, as opposed to showing why all those ideas are ridiculous? It’s not that the movie can’t have a butch hero stopping the meteor; the problem is that you don’t need to make Bruce Willis look good by making the smart people look bad. It’s a very cynical view of the audience, and it’s a view of science and intellectualism that is full of contempt, but that’s what Michael Bay does when he talks about critics, or his education. Bay has made the point that critics don’t like him because he makes things like Armageddon and not Schindler’s List.

BR: Which isn’t true.

EL: That’s not true at all. They don’t like him because he makes bad “Armageddons.” Maybe the action movie is kind of handicapped critically, a weak drama is likely to do better critically than a good action movie, but a really good action film is still going to break through. One of the other charges leveled against Michael Bay is the racism in his movies, and I read about the robots with the gold teeth and such. Do I personally think he’s a racist? I have no idea, but I don’t think he is, I think he just has a corny, cynical sense of humor. What I thought was very interesting about the first Transformers was how that kind of hostility was still there, but some of it was sort of transferred over to adults. The kid’s parents were these big boobs, basically a strategy that Saturday morning television shows use. In shows like Saved By The Bell, and all those clones in the early “˜90s, they would display the adults in those situations as very “boobish” to kind of break children’s identification with adults and authority.

BR: Well, even though Transformers was a Saturday morning cartoon, in the sequel that is turned up to the maximum degree with the parents.

EL: A little comic relief is always a good thing, but when Michael Bay does it there’s a cynicism and a hostility pumping out of it. I will give him credit for one thing, the movies he makes are so enormous that getting a movie that big made, on time, on budget and on that release date is impressive. That doesn’t take a director, that takes a general, and he is that guy and I give him a lot of credit for that. I don’t think that’s an easy thing to do. A lot of people who might dismiss him in favor of directors of smaller, more personal dramas certainly might have a lot of grounds on which to do that, but he does have a very particular and very impressive skill set.

BR: In the last decade Judd Apatow has, in cinema, brought about the age of the Beta male, and even though he did it through comedy, do you think it reflects in action? We get a lot of action films starring “everymen” now, like Shia LaBeouf, which is ironic considering that Bruce Willis was once looked at as the “everyman” hero. In comparison to today’s action heroes, John McClane is a testosterone fueled muscle head.

EL: [Laughs] I think the function of the “everyman” in the action genre is safe. Their job now is to be the lens through which the audience looks at the real star of the show, which is the concept or special effects. With John McClane, and to a certain extent before him, Martin Riggs, going forward into the “˜90s, that trend of “everyman” was more pronounced because it was in contrast to the model of Schwarzenegger, Stallone, and Chuck Norris.

BR: Who are, as you say in the book, almost like machines themselves.

EL: Machines and supermen. They were the supermen before the genre got all superhero- happy. I think the role of the “everyman” in the late “˜80s to mid “˜90s was much more about that fundamental everyman quality, it wasn’t about making room for the concept, or the technology.

BR: What is your take on what Jason Statham has recently become? He is almost the last pure action star we have, discounting the action stars who have lasted since the classical period.

EL: I’ve liked him well enough in what I’ve seen. Time will tell if he’s a great action star, one who is going to endure, and become iconic. To know that is hard to tell, you have to have a longer track record that he hasn’t had time to amass yet. Another point is that you can’t really tell that until you know what his era looked like. We don’t know what this time is going to look like five, ten, twenty years from now.

BR: This is going to sound like an insult, but it’s not, I personally believe he is going to be looked back on as the Van Damme or Seagal of this era.

EL: Maybe, I think his movies, or his fate would be better if he was in sort of bigger productions that were less obviously B-movie in nature. I look at him right now as he is a little bit like Vin Diesel, not just cause of the hair. It feels like his career is happening, but it also feels like it could just short out. Time will tell. Yeah, he is sort of the last action hero right now, but you know what? Vin Diesel was before him. If it doesn’t happen for Statham, then someone else will come along to fill in his shoes. Film history has shown that there is always an appetite for stars, there’s always an appetite for action, whether you call it an action movie or not, whether the genre has fully formed yet or not. The genre, as I defined in the book, doesn’t really come into existence until the “˜70s, yet there was action from the very first movie. There have been movies since 1895, so does that mean that there was no action for 75 years? There was always an appetite, different modes come along to address that appetite, and that’s true of action, and as long as that’s true of action, it will be true of action stars.

BR: With Statham in mind, how do you feel about The Expendables?

EL: I’m looking forward to The Expendables. I love these kinds of exercises in nostalgia. Whenever the last installment was ten or fifteen years ago, I get so excited. I was even excited about Basic Instinct 2.

BR: [Laughs]

EL: Because of the sheer audacity of doing it thirteen years later.

BR: It can work. Look at The Color of Money.

EL: Oh yeah, it can work, I think 2010 worked great. So, yeah I am very much looking forward to The Expendables.

BR: Stallone has admitted that it’s going to be a “1980s action film.”

EL: As a matter of fact this might be the tiebreaker in a way because I thought that Rocky Balboa was really, very, very good and Rambo was really, very disappointing.

BR: I remember reading on your blog that you thought Rambo 4 wasn’t “silly” enough, which I would agree with.

EL: My problem with Rambo 4 was this: it had been 19 years since Rambo III and except for some of the specifics of the geopolitics of the movie, there was no reason why Rambo 4 couldn’t have been made in 1992. What I mean by that is, the movie did not reward the audience for having waited 19 years. I just showed my nephew, who is 8 years old, The Empire Strikes Back and he was very frustrated with the ending, because he doesn’t know what happens to Han Solo. I’m going to show him Return of the Jedi at Thanksgiving. I said to him that when I first saw The Empire Strikes Back the wait to see what happens was three years long, and you should have seen his face. He was stricken at that idea. The new Rambo was 19 years coming and there was nothing inherent to it that necessitated that wait. Rocky Balboa was about the passage of time; the story needs time to have passed so the audience is rewarded for that wait. Rambo 4 does that to the barest degree possible, and yes, from what I remember it was also a little too over earnest. The fact that it starts with stock footage, I think was a big mistake. I’m sitting there watching the actual atrocity, feeling really guilty, feeling like I should be out volunteering instead of sitting in a theater watching escapist faire like a Rambo movie.

BR: Your review was one of the only ones that I agreed with, only because some of that movie just seemed to put this enormous guilt trip on the viewer. Do you think that a campy or silly nature usually increases with action sequels? Even more so, should it?

EL: No, not necessarily, I don’t think you have to keep getting bigger and more ridiculous. That’s how things tend to evolve, but I don’t think they have to. I think it’s ok to use the movie to reflect on what’s come before and be serious about the characters and their lives, that’s fine. My problem wasn’t with the tone of the whole of Rambo, if he wants to take it in a serious direction, that was actually probably appropriate, because how much more ridiculous than Rambo III do you want to be?

BR: Have you heard that he announced a Rambo 5?

EL: Yeah, apparently Rambo 5 has been greenlit.

BR: Considering it was Rambo 4, and Stallone’s current career, admittedly it was a success, all things considered. Do you think he’s pushing his luck with a fifth movie?

EL: I think it’s probably going to dull the instrument a little bit. When you have a 19 year hiatus, and then you bring the character back, that’s pretty powerful, regardless of how successful the movie is.

BR: We’ve seen it so much this decade, it’s starting to feel commonplace.

EL: Yeah, and even less then a decade. It’s more like 3-5 years. When you bring the character back again, when you follow that up with another one, that element is now diluted.

BR: The nostalgia is not playing a part anymore.

EL: It’s reduced, and then what’s special about the movie? I think what winds up happening is that you lose the curiosity, and nostalgia factors, so now the movie just has to deliver. [laughs]

BR: Are there any other action films on the horizon that you are looking forward too?

EL: I hate to be a downer, I can’t think of anything I’m particularly excited about. All of the characters, all of the “˜80s action characters who’ve been brought back and who were ever going to be brought back have been brought back. I don’t think there’s a Lethal Weapon 5 in the pipeline.

BR: I think Joel Silver is still trying”¦

EL: I can’t imagine that it would happen. You can always hear rumors with internet reports and this or that, but I tend to only believe things when the cameras roll, and sometimes not even then. What I’m curious about is the remake of Red Dawn.

BR: Especially considering your book goes into such depth about Red Dawn. I’ll say this, before I read Action Speaks Louder I thought Red Dawn was a cheesy “˜80s movie. After reading it, Red Dawn became a different movie in my mind, and I haven’t even had the chance to revisit it yet. You kind of rewrote the movie in my mind.

[Both Laugh]

BR: It went from being nostalgia to an important piece of cinema that I need to revisit. If I can praise your book real quick, any movie you discuss in it, I wanted to revisit.

EL: I really appreciate that. Of the compliments I’ve received on the book, that is always my favorite. “You made me want to see this again, or that again.” I’m always very happy to hear that.

BR: Your book does that amazingly well. I watched Lethal Weapon twice right after I started reading it. I just haven’t had the chance to revisit Red Dawn and many others, basically just because you talk about so many films in the book. I think the politics of [Red Dawn] is something I was too young to appreciate.

EL: I’m very interested to hear that, because I think Red Dawn is a very good movie. Its critics are usually a little reactionary, no pun intended. I think it is exquisitely crafted. [Red Dawn] is much more ambivalent than people give it credit for. In the book I try not to come out too strongly for a movie or against a movie, at least not very explicitly, but there were times where I was trying to imply my feelings. Red Dawn and Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome are good examples of that.

BR: [laughs] It’s funny that you say that, because your assessment of Beyond Thunderdome was probably one of the biggest stand outs for me, next to Red Dawn. Like most people I never gave much attention to the movie, basically since The Road Warrior is always the one that gets the reverence, you put Mad Max 3 in an entirely new light in your book.

EL: My take on those two movies back to back is this: The Road Warrior is a perfectly made movie, but what it’s trying to do is not especially original, and not especially grand. It is a perfect execution of a pretty conventional vision. Thunderdome is a wildly imperfect movie, but what it’s trying to do is so much grander and so much more interesting, and so much more beautiful. They compliment each other. I wish Thunderdome was more perfect. I admire the vision that it had, and it’s just exquisitely made, it’s beautiful. I hope there is a really nice Bluray of it in the pipeline.

BR: George Miller put a lot into those films, and it shows.

EL: I was very excited about Mad Max 4 – especially when George Miller was going to be directing with Mel Gibson.

BR: While I agree it could be exciting, there is a lot of room for serious disappointment. I say that a lot these days though, post Indy 4.

EL: [Laughs]

BR: I’ll admit it, Indy 4 kind of soured me on the whole concept of bringing back these old franchises. I’ll still give them a chance. Rambo was fine, Die Hard 4 was fine”¦

EL: Well Die Hard 4 wasn’t a Die Hard movie. I thought Die Hard 4 could have been a lot worse, but I’ll tell you when I knew they were in trouble. It was when I saw the first picture of Bruce Willis with a shaved head. John McClane would not shave his head; Bruce Willis would. John McClane is proud, but he’s not vain. When I saw that I said to myself, “this isn’t about John McClane, this movie is about Bruce Willis in generic action star mode.” So, I was sort of preparing for the worst. That said, it was better then it could have been. What I liked best about it was its undercurrent of darkness. It was a pretty grim McClane, and I liked that.

BR: More grim then the alcoholic, smoking, pathetic, end of his rope John McClane of Die Hard 3?

EL: Yeah, I think in Die Hard 3 he is more of a burnout. This will sound strange, but I think in 3 there is sort of a more robust grimness. In 3 they put it front and center; I think they underplay it more in 4, which makes it a little bit more stirring.

BR: While I liked Live Free or Die Hard, I’ll admit it was kind of the John McClane I didn’t ask for. The character specifically. The one who got older, smarter, and cleaner. I prefer the one who is a mess, not the one who probably eats fiber every morning now. It’s just a personal preference.

EL: Well I think the problem was that in 1 and 3 he feels like John McClane, and in 4 he feels like Bruce Willis.

BR: Do you have plans to write another book? Would it involve film?

EL: Yes, I have a few projects down the line. I just actually finished writing an essay on the Rocky series for an academic anthology, which is not due out for quite a while unfortunately. That was a lot of fun. There are a few other ideas that I’m developing that are on the scale of Action Speaks Louder, but they’re in the embryonic stage right now. I’m not talking about them too much yet, I’m still trying to figure out exactly how the research would go, and even if they are doable. They are in a very similar vein of talking about film over time, but through a very specific lens.

That’s all folks. I want to thank Eric Lichtenfeld for his time and the interview. Thanks for reading!

Elias Koteas would hate me. No matter how great an actor he is (and he is a great actor) or how accomplished he becomes, it is very hard not to imagine him with a hockey mask and a golf bag. He is like Frosted Mini-Wheats. The adult in me knows the guy has some of the most underrated acting chops ever; the kid in me watches films, such as The Fourth Kind, and screams “Pound their owl faces in with your cricket bat Casey Jones!”

He is so much more then the role of Casey, that still doesn’t erase the fact that he was a childhood hero to some of us. The first truly great “bad ass” delivered to my generation via an excellent kid’s movie. My point is that actors carry the baggage of past roles with them sometimes. That is expected, and fine, but this is why most “normal” mainstream movies, especially horror, don’t scare as much as they could. We are familiar with these people. Their faces are a constant visual reminder that it’s all make believe. When the step dad from Liar Liar saws his foot off, while you might be in shock at the concept, you know deep down that the Dred Pirate Roberts has still got ten toes. The Fourth Kind confuses me: why go through all the motions of watering down supposedly real footage with the baggage of Hollywood actors? Why even go so far as to blatantly make that part of the marketing campaign?

The Fourth Kind is going to be looked at as another “found footage” movie, especially in the recent wake of Paranormal Activity. However, two very big things separate it from the pack: the footage is supposedly real, and the footage was never lost. In short, this non-sequel-but-titled-confusingly-and-probably-deliberately-like-a-sequel to Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind, is about a supposedly real psychologist, Dr. Abigail Tyler, who is investigating the strange occurrences of alien abductions in Nome, Alaska circa the year 2000. Milla Jovovich plays the title role of Dr. Tyler in the in-movie dramatization of the actual events. Elias Koteas and Will Patton act out the supposedly real events along side Jovovich, all of them doing an admirable job with what they have to work with. Now this is what makes this film so unique: it’s simultaneously shows us the real and the dramatized version of the doctor’s recorded sessions with the supposed alien abductees. The movie even goes so far as to often split the screen in half (or fourths!) and shows the real tape, versus the dramatization of the tape. In many ways it makes the same editing mistakes that Ang Lee’s Hulk did years ago. It is very unique, as I am not quite sure something like this has ever been done before, yet it is also very tiresome, confusing to the eyes, and like a giant exercise in futility. Why do we need Milla saying the same lines simultaneously with the real Abigail while they both are on screen? The answer is that we don’t. They fill in the gaps between the supposedly “actual footage” of the story with the Hollywood actors. One would assume that the gaps being filled in are from the mouth of the actual Abigail Tyler herself. So in conjunction with the “actual footage and audio” you are also getting dramatized accounts of what supposedly happened in between.

Why water it all down? Sure if you want to release this in theaters as a “film” you have to give people more then a Discovery Channel UFO special”¦or do you? I’ll admit that Paranormal Activity made me lose an entire night of sleep, probably for the first time in a decade. This being ever more embarrassing because I was fully aware that it was completely fake. That is not a critique of the movie, I am just saying that it got to me, and horror movies never do. It has something to do with this low budget genre. Any time where no “Hollywood” is present, and no sign of the “evil” is shown on camera it screws with the mind. If Paranormal Activity had showed the demon, I wouldn’t have lost a wink of sleep, if we saw the Blair Witch I probably wouldn’t have flinched, regardless of the quality of the beast (sorry Rick Baker.) The irony being, the less visceral the villain is, the more visceral the scares are. This brings me to all my questions concerning The Fourth Kind. If you have “actual footage,” in many ways similar to the “fake found footage” of Paranormal Activity or Blair Witch, why take all the piss out of it and inject heaps and mounds of Hollywood into its core, wasting all the time and money in the process? Then they go so far as to show them side by side, as if to say “SEE, LOOK, THEY MATCH!!!” As an audience member are we suppose to be thinking “yes, they do match, are the accurate performances what I am suppose to be focusing on?” Who wouldn’t rather just watch the straight up, untouched videos of these regression psychology sessions? I would, and it would be leaps and bounds more terrifying.

The backbone of the entire documentary/dramatization/film/docu-drama-film is a supposedly real interview with Dr. Tyler that happens long after the events in 2000. This interview footage, for me, was the scariest part of the experience. If all of this actually happened then this women has been completely put through the ringer, so I don’t want to outright insult something so trivial, but her face is disturbing. Really disturbing. In fact her facial features and shape are so “alien-esque” that I started to wonder if the twist of the whole Fourth Kind experience was going to be that it’s fake, then her face would start to distort CGI-style, then cut to credits. Her overall look and demeanor is what actually started to make me almost assuredly doubt the claims of the movie. She is perfectly emaciated and morbidly colored to the point where if they were making The Fourth Kind as a farce from the beginning they would have cast this woman and through makeup made her look exactly like she does. Also, while I can’t personally give any validity to its claims, this can be found in the trivia section of the film’s IMDB page:

According to promotional materials from Universal, the film is framed around a psychologist named Abigail Tyler who interviewed traumatized patients in Nome, but Alaska state licensing examiner Jan Mays says she can’t find records of an Abigail Tyler ever being licensed in any profession in Alaska. Ron Adler, CEO and director of the Alaska Psychiatric Institute and Denise Dillard, president of the Alaska Psychological Association say they’ve never heard of Abigail Tyler.

One very questionable aspect of this whole ordeal to consider is what the term “Actual Footage” implies. The subtitles make constant note of when “actual footage” or audio is being presented. Actual footage? All footage is actual footage isn’t it? The footage of Jaws popping out of the water, in Jaws, is actual footage. Sure, maybe this is “actual footage” of a psychologist’s regression therapy session in 2000, but that has really no bearing on the fact that the people in the video aren’t simply actors. Yes, it is a bit ridiculous of me to assume this movie, this possible farce, was 9 years in the making, but if they are pulling on our leg hard enough to say these abductions are real, why would they sweat over saying that footage shot with an old camcorder in 2008 happened in 2000? It should simply be given consideration, due to the ease at which language is often used to deceive. Yes, it could just be nitpicking, and common sense should dictate that the “actual footage” is simply film or video stock that wasn’t shot with the intent of story telling.

***SPOILERS START HERE***

The “actual footage” itself is very creepy, however it felt produced. I obviously don’t know the truth, nor will I probably ever, but something about the video footage seemed perfectly imperfect. It’s hard to explain. When ever the patients start to recount what they think they saw, the video fills with distortion (supposedly caused by aliens.) However, there is just enough clarity in the distortion to tell what is happening, and what is happening seems very”¦cliché. We get loud, digitized, thundering voices, screams of terror, mouths opening extremely wide whilst howling, and a man levitating off a bed. While all of that is filled with the creeps, all of it is also very Hollywood. Also, perhaps it is just me, but it felt as though the mania happening beneath the distortion was digitally touched up. It is obviously very difficult to explain, some of the lighting in those shots just seemed manufactured, as often seen with special effects in the digital age. I am fully open to that not being the case.

***SPOILERS STOP HERE***

If there was a final assessment to make about The Fourth Kind it would be of a missed opportunity. They ladled too much Hollywood gravy all over this delicious, if synthetic, steak and made it just taste like wet salt. However, it would be interesting to find out this story from the point of view of the abductors. There’s a great Kids In The Hall sketch that involves the boring lives of aliens who spend every day anal probing abductees. They complain about their unfulfilling jobs as would a dock worker, or an office temp. That KITH skit was in my head during the entire duration of The Fourth Kind. As the human’s are tortured and screaming with nightmares and getting abducted, are the aliens just doing their boring day jobs?

Thanks for reading. Now go rent, buy, or watch a lot of Elias Koteas movies. He’s a great talent, you won’t regret it.

Now it’s time for a chicken sandwich.