Be Thankful, Honkey Grandmas!

A few quick thoughts while I quietly ponder being thankful for nationally-endorsed gluttony and watch a House, M.D. marathon on USA (do they really need to advertise the new season of The Starter Wife every fucking c-break?  I wasn't going to watch the show after the first 70 commercials, but now that I'm all but convinced that it's Entourage by way of Sex and the City, I'd rather commit ritual suicide via turkey sandwiches than watch that refried shit).  

• Watched The X-Files: I Want to Believe, wishing desperately that I didn't.  I wanted so bad for all the reviews to be wrong, or even right so long as I could enjoy the show as a warm, nostalgic throwback to a seminal show from my upbringing.  Fortunately and unfortunately, the critics were wrong: the movie isn't just bad, it's boring as hell.  The plot, which is too convoluted and nonsensical to be recalled, includes kidnapping, psychics, pedophilia and surgical head transplants, and was STILL boring!  Seeing Mulder and Scully onscreen certainly helped the movie, and the two leads slip back into those two characters effortlessly, but the script fails to provide either one of them anything interesting to do, say or stand peripheral to.  Very, very disappointing.
• Hancock.  Somewhere on the editing room floor is a watchable version of this movie, but it sure as hell isn't the one they put out on DVD, regardless of which version you pick up (the "unrated extended cut" is 10-minutes longer than the theatrical DVD, but the movie needs a hell of a lot more than 10-minutes to fix what ails it).  Will Smith is expectedly terrific, and Jason Bateman is flawless in a fairly dull role, though his mentally-retarded fiance from Arrested Development (Charlize Theron) is, well, mentally retarded here.  Also, hot.  The movie's based around a great idea that's executed very poorly - the only thing worse than the script are the visual effects, which must be hands down the ugliest and least convincing CGI since anything in anything Stephen Sommers ever directed.*  Assume that the best parts of the movie are in the trailer (they are) and skip it.
• Finally, Warner Bros. has started their big Oscar push for The Dark Knight, and not just for Heath Ledger.  Though the movie's terrific score (the one nomination that I wouldn't begrudge the film) has been disqualified by the Academy for having too many credited composers and editors, WB is undaunted, apparently pushing to get the thing a Best Picture nomination.

Seriously?  I understand that Ledger's nomination was sewed up while his body was still warm, but Best Picture?  I can't even put into words how much that irks my shit.  More on that later, for certain.  In the mean time, here's a look at WB's "For Your Consideration" poster for Heath.  As a sidenote, can I get people on board with the idea of replacing oxycontin's popular euphamism "hillbilly heroin" with the more timely, popularly-insensitive "Heath heroin?"  I think it's catchy.  Thoughts?

   

*Excluding Deep Rising, of course.

Lazy ass returns to posting! Also, QUANTUM OF SOLACE semi-review.

Goodness, is it ever easy to lose track of time and ignore one of these things, especially when one is burdened with my debilitating lack of focus on, dedication to or interest in anything.  Alas, Poor Yorick (that's what I call the blog*), you'll have to learn to live with neglect, just like my bookshelf, running shoes and exercise equipment.

Anyway, a few thoughts, observations, opinions and ruminations.

Quantum of Solace.  I'm sure anyone with an interest has already either 1. seen the movie or 2. read a review of it, but goddamnit you're here for a reason, and it certainly isn't my stylish prose.  A friend told me he liked the laid-back tone to the thing, that it was just there to say "Hey everybody, I'm a fucking James Bond movie, remember how fun these can be?"  I think making that argument in the movie's defense is just as lame as Ebert saying he enjoyed Kingdom of the Crystal Prairie Dog because it felt like Indy was in the seat next to you, laughing knowingly.  Quantum of Solace isn't a winking throwback to the old-school style of Bond's heyday in the '60s, it's a regressive slump back into his dreadful outings in the 90s. 

I say that and I actually liked the movie.  The new movie continues the relaunched series' trend of ripping off the Bourne films as much as possible, but that's a good thing.  Bourne (mostly the sequels, though props to Doug Liman for setting the standard that Greengrass so brilliantly expanded, contracted and perfected) has been the best thing to happen to action movies since Die Hard (why not) , so why shouldn't the all-but-dead (creatively) Bond franchise adopt and absorb Matt Damon's kinetic fights and foot chases and hyper-real no nonsense tone?  Of course, I'd rather future Bond-helmer's were a little less transparent in their "homage" to Jason B. than director Marc Forster is here.  We have all the requisite Bourne beats: super-fast hand-to-hand combat that becomes knife vs. (insert random weaponizable object), hectic foot chases, a hectic foot chase across rooftops, an agent on the run from "the good guys," and emotional impotence.   You might contest that the James Bond character has always been emotionally impotent, but at least he always got laid; this go 'round, the dude only nails one of the two wicked hot Bond girls, and has absolutely zero chemistry with the neglected one, despite an obligatory kiss at the end.  

Really though, I liked the movie!  (Okay, I'm going to get through the next paragraph without saying anything negative...)  There really is plenty to like here.  With the exception of a fucking horrific boat chase and an absurd fight amidst an inexplicably** exploding hotel at the finale, the action is terrific here, even better than in Casino Royale.  Marc Forster has a nice eye for shooting action (actually I think he borrowed one of Paul Greengrass's), making for one of the better looking Bond films.  More importantly, Forster keeps things moving along quickly, never letting (most) audiences notice how crushingly drama-free the movie's A-to-B-to-C plot is.  On the topic of the screenplay (staying positive), we're two movies in now and I feel like Paul Haggis' highly publicized re-writes were for dialogue only (which remains as sharp as last time), never actually tackling the dreadful structure of the Craig-era scripts. 

Really, I was trying to be positive.  

Still, Forster smartly uses the movie's not so secret secret weapon: it's star.  If Daniel Craig owned Casino Royale, then he fucking whips the shit out of Quantum of Solace and puts it to work in the goddamn fields.  The guy is the ONLY thing keeping this movie from falling to fucking pieces.  He's so good in this part that he's able to cobble together a slight character arc from nothing, expressed only through his performance.  The script gives him nothing, and Craig makes nothingade.  If you see it (or have seen it), just consider where Bond is emotionally at the beginning and the end of the film, and show me where that's developed in anything other than Craig's eyes.  

For what the script fails to achieve in plotting or character, it succeeds in giving James Bond his first ever complex world view.  The movie all but abandons the franchise's traditional cartoon villains and broad-stroke international landscape, instead opting for shades of gray all over.  There's a neat (if wholly unoriginal) twist where the Americans turn out to GASP! be in bed with shady mother fuckers (the titular "Quantum," which itself has nothing to do with any solace) in exchange for oil.  Nothing new, I know, but it was fun was watching M discover that the Brits are just as cock-hungry for oil as the movies' new go-to villain, the CIA.  The whole thing dies when Quantum's inane plan is finally (and poorly) revealed, but it was nice to see James Bond grow up just a little bit. 

Yes, I've completely failed to be a helpful reviewer, especially since I've done nothing but rag on a movie I really did like.  The action kicks ass (even if James Bond has discovered super-human strength), Craig rules, the supporting cast is way better than the script deserves and the movie offers more to chew on than Bond flicks usually do, though far less than the superior Bourne sequels.  It's still a huge step backwards from the refreshingly character-driven Casino Royale, but Quantum of Solace delivers the bare minimum of a Bond film: action, espionage, and Bond.  We could do worse.    

*Because its occasionally resurrected from a filthy grave and gazed upon mournfully.  Obviously.

**At least, it would be inexplicable in an older Bond film, but this more grounded take on 007 feels the need to explain to the audience why the building is perpetually exploding, even though anyone who's ever seen a noisy action movie already knows why - because it has to.  

Random Ruminations

Here's some random filmic happenings from the last week or so, in randomly numeric order...

1.  I watched How to Lose Friends & Alienate People, or Simon Pegg Gotta Eat as a friend described it.  The first twenty minutes or so were woefully mediocre, mostly because of the movie's willingness to go for the most obvious joke possible in any situation.  I was completely disinterested, even starting several conversations with friends while the movie played on... and then something happened (for the life of me I can't remember what) onscreen that silenced everyone for a moment, followed by hysterical laughter.  And that was pretty much how the rest of the film played out: long patches of mediocrity punctuated by gut-bustingly funny gags.  

I've loved Simon Pegg since Shaun of the Dead, and only found more respect for him as I went back and discovered Spaced, but here he impressed me more than ever by taking a not-very-good script and making it work extremely well.  Points also to Gillian Anderson, 1. For still looking that good, and 2. for being goddamn hysterical.  Never knew she was funny.

2.  Apologies to my friend Justin, who I told that Gillian Anderson had directed a movie called Death Defying Acts.  As it turns out, the director of that film was Gillian Armstrong, and I cannot read.  

2.5  Apologies to Gillian Anderson for the mistake also.  No apologies will be accorded to Ms. Armstrong.  

3.  Re-watching The Lord of the Rings trilogy over the past week brought back massive tonnage of nostalgia, in addition to some forgotten affection for the movies.  I was in high school when those were coming out, and it feels like so very, very long ago.  I remember hating on The Two Towers when it came out, spending a year trying to convince all my friends that it was lousy, then falling in love with the extended cut DVD the night before we saw Return of the King.  I remember complain when incestuous marching bandies/rabid Tolkien fans would talk about spoilerish plot details before all three films had been released, and being rightly told that the books had been out for 50 years and I ought not feel bitch until I read the books.  I remember Jamie and his impeccable Gollum voice, and how quickly it became grating.  I vividly remember walking out of the third movie past dozens of people in line for the next showing, all with terrified looks on their faces as though one of us might loudly blurt out some major spoiler from the movie, and thinking the only thing I could possibly say at that moment was "Can you believe that Darth Vader was Luke Skywalker's father?"  And there was laughter in the land.  I remember my pretentious anti-populism kicking in as I argued with people about how unworthy Return of the King was for it's 11 Academy Awards, and some asshat online IMing me "Hah, your bitch lost" the moment Peter Jackson beat Sophia Coppola (and three others) for Best Director.  I remember thinking that anyone describing Rings as "the Star Wars of its time" was either an idiot or an asshole.  Mostly though, I remember seeing Return of the King four times in theaters, each subsequent visit hoping to recapture the emotional tide that made me weep uncontrollably through the second half of the film.  

Having now completed my non-marathon, the following occurred to me: 

• I regret my adolescent hatred of The Two Towers (theatrical)
• I still haven't read the books all the way through (or The Hobbit, and I own two damn copies of that)
• I kinda miss Jamie's now-retired Gollum voice 
  
• Not only do I think that Rings deserved all of its Oscars, but I kinda wish they'd won a few more.  
• Further, Lord of the Rings isn't Star Wars for a new generation, it's better.  
• I can't believe I spent $40* and 12-hours seeing one fucking movie.  

Also?  I cried again today during the last half of Return of the King.  I really don't 

know why, as the super-violent battle epic films typically have no emotional impact on me (certainly not the fantasy ones), but the battle of the Pelennor just breaks me.  Maybe it's because PJ's just that goddamn good at manipulating the audience's emotions. 

Or maybe I'm a sap when it comes to dudes getting stomped on by gigantic fucking war-Elephants.  

4.  Anybody who's been around me for the last year or so (yeah, sucks to be you) has had to endure, in one way or another, my epic hard-on for Stanley Kubrick.  I got the new Kubrick box set for Christmas last year and have since watched each of the films within at least twice, including the 2-hour long biography Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures.  2001, however, I've watched at least five times in the last twelve months.  Having a blu-ray copy and a 42" Bravia at the store has only increased my obsession with the film: while my co-workers play Kung Fu Panda or Iron Man, I run 2001: A Space Odyssey every shit.

What's come up as a result of the film's frequent display in the store is shocking: most people don't know 2001.  Not just that they haven't seen it, as that's something I could understand (the movie is 40-years old and slow as fuck, after all).  But to not even recognize it when it's playing on an HDTV in front of you?  I mean, the movie has to be the most-recognizable picture ever made, right?  The monoliths, the apes, the spaceships, the music, HAL, the "Stargate" sequence, the Space Baby; these are all enormously iconic film images.  Shit, you could probably piece together a 20-minute version of 2001 just from references on The Simpsons.  So how do these people not recognize it?

Anyway, after two days of befuddled customers asking me what movie I was playing in the blu-ray, I had all but given up on mainstream movie-goers (er, renters) when this happened:

This little boy, not older than seven or eight, sat down on the floor and watched the last third of the movie.  The kid was mesmerized by the damn thing.  He inched closer to the screen when HAL used the Pod to kill Frank, and cocked his head repeatedly during the Stargate trip.  A co-worker and friend (who watched 2001 with me twice in as many days a few months back) said, "I bet you he gets freaked out and leaves when Dave gets to the room."  And so he did.  When Dave arrived in the mysterious white room, the kid got up, cocked his head again, and walked away.  

Despite his inability to withstand the film's mind-crushing finale, that little boy restored (some of) my faith in the movie-watching populace who frequent my store and those like it.

Then someone asked me where they could find The Love Guru, and all was right with the world. 

*Adjusted for inflation, obviously - tickets were only $8 then.

HALLOWEEK OF SOMETHING, PART 2 (of 2?)

Alright, "blog."  I don't like you and you don't like me... well maybe you do like me, but feel neglected since I neglect the ever living crap out of you.  But I certainly don't like you, and you're needy, annoying, prodding way of glaring at me from my bookmarks tab, begging for attention and typography.  Fuck you, parasite!  I'll write when I goddamn want to and you'll be goddamn grateful for it when I do!

...

I'm sorry.  Really, I am.  I should've been here for you, posting more often.  Last Sunday was the last time I posted something, really?  I'm terribly sorry.  Here, lemme give you a long, healthy posting.  Would that make things okay?  Here goes.

WRAPPING UP (briefly) THE HALLOWEEK OF SOMETHING!

3.  Rosemary's Baby is surprisingly not a horror movie, despite it's reputation.  Hmm.  And no, I don't mean that it's not scary - it is, though it lacks the typical jump scares - or that it's lost its edge due to age.  I don't abide with that kind of thinking; a movie that was scary 50 years ago is still scary today, unless you're

 the kind of cretin who watches The Birds or Psycho and says it's not scary because it's old.  Fuck you, movie ageists.

Anyway...  Rosemary's Baby isn't scary because it doesn't try to be.  The movie builds a sense of dread and foreboding without ever delivering a big scare or screamer moment.  The real horror comes from the very real situation that Mia Farrow finds herself in: being pregnant.  Even knowing the big reveal by the end of the film (hint: her baby's got a bumpy forehead, and he ain't a Klingon), I 

was still unnerved by the trials she endures as a young pregnant woman.  The uncertainty of your own body, the unreliability of your emotions and your complete and total dependence on others, namely doctors, to endure nine months of biological mutation is horrific.  

Better them than me, though.

4.  Okay, before I dig into this, let me say that despite a prevalence on this list of horror-as-a-metaphor-for-womanity films, I am not, nor have I ever been, interested in or curious about my feminine side, transgenderification, or women's shoes.  There simply seem to be a lot of horror movies about how fucked up it is to be a lady, is all.

That said, Teeth.  Goddamn.  If you haven't heard of this one, I'm not surprised.  It's trailer made the rounds online (most people thought it looked funny) after a splash at a few film festivals, and then it made it's auspicious debut as a Blockbuster exclusive DVD release (always a sign of greatness).  Regardless, the movie's fantastic.  Here's what the trailer would tell you: Teeth is about a teenage girl who discovers (through a series of unfortunate coming-of-age sexual incidents) that there's a set of teeth inside her vagina.  And if vagina dentata wasn't enough of a hook for a horror film about growing up female in America, here's what the trailer left out: the girl is a fundamentalist Christian who promotes abstinence in her community.  So you can imagine that this movie gives its audience an awful lot to chew on.

Ha.  Ha.

Shitty puns aside, Teeth is truly great.  Like Rosemary's Baby, the horror doesn't come from big scares or monsters or serial killers, but from the Cronenbergian terror of not knowing your own flesh.  The film has a lot to say about how young women are treated in this country, with a few even-handed zingers thrown at Christian abstinence promoters that never approaches parody.

That's not to say that the movie lacks any comedy, however.  One of the chomping scenes (find me a tasteful way to phrase that and I'll consider it) is a vengeful, empowering moment, and the movie plays it with a slight wink... and that's it.   This isn't an exploitation film about biting twats and sexy co-eds, even though it easily could've been.  The concept could've been executed as a classic piece of trash, but writer/director Mitchell Lichtenstein takes it - thankfully - in a much more tasteful direction.  

Jess Weixler plays the dentata'd lead and she's terrific.  She's asked to walk a very fine line between genuine horror and very black comedy, and she pulls it off flawlessly.  This is an actress to keep an eye on.  I'd say the same about Lichtenstein, but his next directorial effort stars Demi Moore and Parker Posey, so he's fucked.  

5.  I saw Halloween for the first time last week.  Not the Rob Zombie one (I might skip that for the rest of my life).  Yes, faithful readers, I somehow, in all my movie snobbery and watchery, never saw John Carpenter's genre-defining classic until just a few days ago.  How ever have I lived with myself the last twenty-odd years?  What's wrong with me?  How could a child raised in the '80s have lived in a Halloween-vacuum?  

Sorry, but that's the kind of shit I heard over the last week whenever I foolishly admitted to only just seeing the movie recently.  Got that out of my system...

I expected a little more from Halloween, to be truthful.  Not that it was bad or lacking in scares -for low-budget horror, the thing is smart as hell and scary as shit - but it kept building and building and building toward something hugely horrifying, some absurdly violent climax that would sustain a level of terror equal to its reputation... and then it just ended.  

Don't get me wrong, I'm not badmouthing the movie; Carpenter's a genius for low-budget scares and this thing is full of 'em.  His camera work is fucking genius, playing to the audience's expectations of where The Shape would pop up next and then cruelly making them wait for it.  (I now take all the credit I gave to Neil Marshall for doing the exact same thing in The Descent and give it to Carpenter, and instead give Marshall credit for so skillfully emulating Johnny C).  It's that waiting where the real horror lies in a movie like this, not in the gore or violence like so many of Halloween's followers.  Watching this for the first time, I can see how a whole genre of slasher films was inspired/derived from it, even though I wish it wasn't.  

NEXT UP:  Whatever other horror movies I watched and haven't written about yet, and the 2001 kid.  

  

HALLOWEEK OF SOMETHING! Part 1

Okay, so maybe declaring that I'd watch a bunch of horror movies and post reviews leading up to Halloween, knowing my own proclivities when it comes to deadlines, wasn't demonstrable of my dedication to this blag.

Or maybe it was.  Anyway, better late than really late... here goes.

THE BLOB.  1988.  Goodness, did I love the ever-loving crap-love out of this movie... love.  You know you're in for something unexpectedly special when the entire opening credits has only two names of interest; unfortunately for The Blob, one of them is Kevin Dillon.  Luckily for the viewer, the other just happened to be co-writer Frank Darabont.  While I dispassionately respect The Green Mile and The Shawshank Redemption, despite the staggering amount of needless praise on the latter, it's The Mist that really makes me love Darabont, and The Blob is very much a tonal precursor to that film (only better).  

The movie sets up all the standard creature-attacks-small-town characters, and kills them off in the exact opposite order from what you'd expect.  And like in The Mist, those characters have just enough little moments prior to their grisly deaths to make their passing just a little sad, while still simultaneously awesome.  Awesome, I say, because the kills in this movie are inventive and varied in their grotesquerie (ought to be a word), and they're almost 100% practical.  As far as gorey effects movies go, the only thing I could compare The Blob to is Carpenter's The Thing.  For those who've seen the latter, you know such a comparison is pretty goddamn high praise.  While there isn't anything quite on par with The Thing's best gags (the stomach-mouth-spiderhead in particular), Blob still has plenty of genius creature effects.  I can't decide which I love more: the kid who gets his face melted off, or the dude who gets sucked down a sink pipe whole.  Well, sort of whole.  

The Blob is grade-A execution of B-movie content.  Witness its glory.  

BUG.  2006.  

If I told you that I just recently saw one of the best film performances that I've ever seen, and that it came out of Ashley Judd, you'd probably slap me... that is, if you were one of my friends, who know better than to listen to my hyperbolic fits of ecstasy over movies I'll probably only rave about for a week before viciously turning on them* and cruelly exposing all their flaws.  Of course, if you were one of my friends, you really wouldn't need much of an excuse to slap me at all, would you?  Long tangent short, Ashley Judd is terrible.  Just fucking horrible.  Really, really, retardedly bad.  

At picking screenplays.  

In truth, I've always thought she was a very talented actress who wasted her time and skills on generic Lifetime-with-a-budget thrillers and mindless romantic comedies, but she really surprised me with Bug.  Not only does she give a fucking fantastic performance (the profanity is to emphasize my enthusiasm, obviously), but it's in an honest to gods great movie.  

Oh, right.  Speaking of surprises from people you expect shit from, William Friedkin directed it!  Friedkin of late has been known for making very workman-like, very forgettable pictures, including The Hunted and Rules of Engagement.  But for a while he was better known as the goddamn brilliant director of The French Connection, The Exorcist and To Live and Die in L.A.  I'm ecstatic to report (two years after its theatrical release) that Bug is Friedkin's return to form.  

Goddamn did that movie freak me the fuck out.  It starts out as a simple human drama (menacingly photographed)  and turns into something considerably more disturbing.  Judd plays Agnes, an addict grieving a lost child and living in fear of an abusive ex-husband, who was just recently released from prison (for beating the ever-living shit out of her, of course).  She encounters Peter, played brilliantly** by Michael Shannon, another damaged soul with a secret.  Friedkin lets a sense of dread permeate the film, even in prosaic scenes that wouldn't feel out of place in a romantic drama.  That foreboding quality makes Bug's eventual transition into true horror an expected one, though no less horrifying.  

I'm not going to say anymore about the movie except that you should obtain a copy with great urgency.  Bug isn't a traditional horror movie, but it's the most horrific film I've ever seen.   The thing unsettled my shit in the worst way and has invaded my sleep ever since I reached its devastating finale.  I've run out of evocative adjectives to describe the movie.  Just watch it.  Alone, and in the dark.  

NEXT: Rosemary's Baby, Event Horizon, Halloween.  

*Turning on the movies, not my friends, though I can do that, too.

**Really, really brilliantly, not just "I'm pretentious and am gonna call something brilliant to sound significant.  Also, not British brilliant, 'cause those people throw the word around like it's candy)