No Oscar for Pale Redheads

Fuck the dark -- Character is what you are on the Internet. Which is probably why you find yourself so moody, disliking human beings more and more each passing day with every new Tweet, comment, or blog post (including this one). Especially the celebrities. It gets to where you consider becoming a cannibal just for the possibility of meeting one of these jerks followed by the eventual pleasure of flushing him or her down the toilet.

You wonder if you are becoming a Hater but that can't really be the case, especially on the eve of the Oscar ceremony. By your watch, it's only a few minutes to the Oscar telecast, yet you're not exactly excited for it. You used to get excited, though. You used to love the Oscars in all its masturbatory glory, but somewhere along the way, it stopped being the Super Bowl for you (or Gay Super Bowl as the truly humorous like to call it). You knew fairly early that it's all politics and ass-kissing and who went to the most Academy old folks homes to brighten some dying day players afternoon with the most fake sincerity, rather than, you know, being the best at your job. But you were a sucker for it. For a while, anyway.

Other factors began to factor into your not-so-much-enjoying-it anymore. Along with cynicism and age, came a creeping ever-growing fear -- the fear that if you stop running/stop hustling, and take even a millisecond to look over your shoulder, you will find the immense dark spectre known as Quiet Desperation literally an inch away from you, practically hovering over you now, like a tidal wave of Fail ready to crash down. You know not to acknowledge it, because that's all the darkness needs to swallow you whole and do to your inner soul what The Blob or the Sarlaac do to flesh and bone, only it will do it for a much longer period of time -- as in the rest of your fucking life (or a thousand years, whichever comes first).

Plus, half of the people they choose to host the fuckin' thing, you just want to judo chop their throats.

But on the other hand, Amy Adams is nominated again! Yay! Hello, sir. Hello, ma'am. Thanks for stopping by. I'm going to ramble about a couple Oscar-nominated films The Adorable Amy Adams recently appeared in while kinda/sorta watching the Oscars. I'm going to ramble about them because once I start on a running gag based on a sincere appreciation of someone, I see it through to the end, baby. Plus, I watched them again recently thanks to a couple of borrowed screeners and I can't do the Oscars with my 100-percent attention and/or sober anymore.

I'll start off with Her, the latest Spike Jonze joint. The film takes place in the not-too-distant future (next Sunday, A.D.) where the world is heavily populated but technology has made it so that we don't really have to reach out and make connections with our fellow humans. Shit, you don't even have to write directly to people you already know, you can have someone else write letters or birthday cards or anything else stationary related and send them out.

That's the job of Joaquin Phoenix's character, playing a high-pants-wearing motherfucker named Theodore, who actually makes a living taking the simple act of writing to a loved one and turning it into a more complicated deal; he dictates the message to a computer, which then prints out the words in the client's handwriting, and it looks like the message gets printed out and mailed out old-school style, even though I'm sure the recipient has to be a little suspicious that it was someone else who wrote it. I'm sure this service is fairly popular, taking what Hallmark does and moving it up to the next level.

It's really how it is nowadays, isn't it? Simple stuff taken for granted has been improved yet made more fragile and complicated. It used to be that I could take a book off a shelf and read it. Now I have to keep up with the techno-Joneses by having all my literature on a fuckin' tablet. Sure I save space but God forbid my shit's not charged up. And if I spill my booze on it, oops, I better dry that shit up quick, lest I lose all my shit and then I have to go make a bigger ass of myself at the fuckin' Genius Bar where the guy behind the counter acts friendly but I know he's really thinking "Listen, you fuckin' Mexican..."

Speaking of which -- donde estan mi gente? This film takes place in a future filled with so many buildings and people, yet very clean and positive, like a Canadian version of a Mega City. But Latinos apparently don't exist here. "Then who occupies this wonderful utopia?", you ask. Well, it's all clean hard-working Anglos with the occasional sprinkle of those wily Asians. What is this, fuckin' Blade Runner? No, it's Shanghai, where quite a bit of the film was shot. But it was also shot in Los Angeles, so you know fuckin' Jonze could've thrown in a few busboys or cholos or whatever passes muster with Hollywood casting agents, but chose not to. Why? I don't know. He probably got knocked off his skateboard as a child by raza once and won't let it go, fuckin' rich boy asshole.

I know to most of you a future with no brown around sounds awesome, but get this, it's even more awesome because like I mentioned earlier, no one really needs human contact anymore. You need an assistant/best friend/lover? Hook your shit up with the newest OS that features some badass artificial intelligence that among many settings includes the former Mrs. Ryan Reynolds as your Girl Friday. That's what Phoenix chooses, and because our lead is currently recovering from a failed marriage and hasn't had the best of luck in the dating scene, soon he and his super-Siri "Samantha" fall in looooove and that's what the movie's about.

I liked Her; it's a sweet movie and has a lot to say about the fragility of relationships and using technology to overcome loneliness (or at least the hint of a threat of loneliness). If it's not those fuckin' dictated letters or cyber sex with chicks into freaky shit that doesn't get you off, it's people having hands-free conversations with their OS in public and no one bats an eye at 'em because the concept of crazy people talking to themselves is practically a quaint memory now, along with milkmen and quality American-made products. I mean, it's really no different from today with people Tweeting/Facebook status updating everything just so they can ensure that the experience has been shared with someone else, like enjoying something by yourself doesn't count or something. Which, I will agree, can really fuckin' feel that way sometimes. I once made an even bigger ass of myself than usual about it.

I BET EVERYTHING I OWN THAT SPIKE WILL WIN BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY(*)

What I dug most about it (aside from You Know Who) was that Jonze, for all his rich-boy Jackass-playing visual smart-asseries, has a very sincere and non-snarky/non-cynical view about it all. It's like he cares about everyone in this film in one way or another and isn't judgmental about them in any way -- which I guess gives him an extra point over ex-wife Sofia Coppola, if you were to believe what she denies. I mean, she can say otherwise all she wants, but there seems to be at least a little ax-grinding with at least a couple of the characters in Lost in Translation, not to mention a minute scosche of Tee Hee Hee Japs Be Funnay. Meanwhile in Her-ville, the hidden subtext running throughout could be interpreted as I'm Sorry I Wasn't A Better Husband And I Hope We Find Happiness In Our Separate Lives, Also I Liked The Bling Ring.

My favorite moment of the film, and probably the most telling of the inner workings of Adam Spiegel is far into the running time: Phoenix puts on his little earpiece so he can start talking to his artificial sweetheart, only he can't find her. She's offline or out of range or some shit. He freaks out, trying again and again, to no avail. Eventually, he dashes out of the building, and through the Hispanic-less streets of future L.A. trying to find a signal somewhere, anywhere. As he runs around like a cyber chicken with its head disconnected from its main frame, he ends tripping over himself and falls down right there on the pavement. Immediately, the people around him, who up until then were ear/eye deep into their own earpieces and smartphones, or just minding their own business, run up to help him. Jonze has a positive attitude on human beings, I thought to myself. Tech'd out or not, the human connection will always be there, somewhere.

That kind of sentiment is heartwarming, especially nowadays with my faith in humans now neck-and-neck with my faith in a higher power. I would've sooner believed that at least one of those guys would start recording that shit, his cock rock-hard at the possibility of a major view count on his YouTube channel or massive Likes & LOLs on his Facebook account. I'm reminded of something Paul Thomas Anderson once said somewhere, about walking out of a donut shop early one morning and finding a woman sitting in her car, crying while singing out loud. The way he talked about it, it sounded like he was worried for her and hoped she felt better. Lucky for her it was him and it was the mid-to-late 90s and not some other asshole in the 21st Century because her weak moment would've Mos Def become many others' highlight of their workday, know what I mean?

I don't get it. Like the other day I saw a prank video on television where these cunts would fool people into thinking a baby just got crushed in its carriage. They all freaked out and ran over to help and then these sadistic pieces of shit would laugh in their face all HAW HAW MADE YOU CARE. Some of these people looked really fucked up about it, like borderline heart attack bad. Had I been one of the fooled, I know how I'd react. Knowing me, after the confusion goes away and the prank revealed, I'd probably get a little choked up by the overwhelming mix of emotions within me. Then, because I'm a man, I'd stuff the tears back inside before they go public and laugh along with the prankster. Then I'd grab something large and bash the fuck's head open Irreversible style until the prankster's death spasms ceased and the urine/fecal tinged scent of Finality filled the air, then I'd take this asshole's iPhone and take a snapshot of the cherry pie/broken candles mixture that used to be his head and forward it to his parents along with a caption reading "Do a better job the next time you decide to shit another one of these out."

This is why I rarely leave the house, by the way.

So. The Adorable Amy Adams plays Theodore's best friend, The Adorable Amy. We never get her last name, but she might as well be Alternate Universe Amy Adams here. Instead of charming audiences everywhere with her awesomeness, in this universe she makes video games for a living but her real passion is in documentary filmmaking. She lives in the same building as Theodore and she pops up in the film every once in a while, usually with her husband. Amy does a great job as Amy, inhabiting her character with a lived-in quality that made me recognize various elements and behaviors that I've seen in other people, rather than the usual overly quirky or overly quippy bullshit you see come from Female Best Friends In Film and thank the fuck Christ that she has nothing resembling Manic or Pixie.

I liked the interplay between her and Phoenix, especially after seeing them in a completely different relationship between them in The Master. I totally bought them as good friends, and I liked how the dynamic between them is that he's always a bit more serious than her and she'll occasionally bust his balls in the way that friends do to each other, even though behind her side of the conversation is an undercurrent of genuine concern for the emotional well-being of her buddy. And while she is but a side character in this Joaquin-centric story, you get the sense that she has own shit to deal with -- like we all have our own shit to deal with -- and she can't always be checking in on the homie, you know?

Another break, another 2nd glass of wine, another bathroom break. OK, I'm back. The magic of the written word, ya'll. Jonah Hill didn't win. The Oscars are A-OK with me as of now.

Anyway, I've heard people call Adams' character "dowdy" or "plain" or even "ugly" but I honestly feel she just looks real (more like real adorable -- AWWW). She's a busy working gal who dresses (and hair dresses) for comfort, not to make all the other men and lesbian woman go I WANT THAT. So quiet down about that shit, gang. Who's to say that she doesn't clean up spectacularly when she goes out, hell she'd probably look not too dissimilar from her character in the next film...

I wonder if Martin Scorsese has seen American Hustle. If he has, I bet you his reaction was probably like that scene in Single White Female where Bridget Fonda gets creeped the fuck out by Jennifer Jason Leigh's attempt to look like her. It would make a pretty good double-feature with fellow bizarro Scorsese flick Blow, is what I'm saying. I've seen the names Preston Sturges and Billy Wilder thrown around as well, but I didn't get that vibe at all. To me, the camera work, editing, sound design, soundtrack, use of voiceover, the angry/awkward arguments between competent husband and harpy wife, all of that shit screams I Heart Scorsese. But it's not directed by Marty S., it's David O. with another one of his films filled with loud and mostly unpleasant characters. Fortunately, I like his films, even if I think the director's a twat. I liked this film too.

The film starts out with Christian Bale doing a great impression of me, with his fat fuckin' gut squeezed into a dress shirt and spending forever making his bald-ass head look like it still has hair. You in-shape hair-having motherfuckers don't know how easy you have it, with your thick hair and thin stomachs. But Bale's character is like the better version of me because despite his visual inadequacies, ol' Light Trasher here still managed to score not only an Amy Adams-looking lady, but one in prime hotness. More on that later.

So Bale is a scumbag con artist named Irving, and we're supposed to be cool with his ripoff games because his father was a hard worker who got screwed. Come to think of it, that's actually a pretty good reason to go the dishonest way. If the news -- and I mean the news for the past 50-100 years -- is any indication, dishonesty is the way to go, bro. Make that fuckin' money and if you have to betray the confidence of your fellow man to do it...well....what's the problem here? I don't see a problem, unless the problem is that you're not making any money. Then that's a big fuckin' problem.

Adams plays his chick, Sydney, who tried making bucks the straight & narrow way before reinventing herself as some English bird with a Kevin Costner-style British accent. Yeah, it wavers but that's OK because her accent is supposed to be shaky, or at least that's what I will tell you while slapping you senseless for even entertaining the idea that maybe Ms. Adams' strengths in acting do not include foreign accents. *slap, backhand slap* How DARE you, sir!

Anyway, she hooks up with Irving and everything is going great -- or as great as things can go for a dude who's still married with a kid -- until Bradley Cooper shows up, which sounds about right because Bradley Cooper always ruins everything with his handsome face and charming personality, the bastard. With his perm, Cooper's character Richie looks like some vaguely Middle Eastern ethnic you'd find at a discotheque wearing tight pants to enhance his bulge, but he's really an eye-tie FBI agent in search of a career-making bust.

Because The Wolf of Wall Street is too harsh and Gravity is too Mexican, this flick has a good chance of winning the Oscar for Best Picture, which wouldn't bother me except I don't think American Hustle is worthy of it. Don't get me wrong, it's a solid joint that's never less than entertaining and featuring great performances by literally everyone in the fuckin' cast. Everyone, even the extras are fucking killing it. There are no small roles here, just brief running times for certain parts. Off the top of my head, I thought whoever played Cooper's mom had a borderline heartbreaking moment where she just has these sad-as-sad-can-be eyes while he's assuring her (but really assuring himself) that he's gonna go places.

It just doesn't give me the Best Picture vibe, that's all. But what do I know? I thought Inside Llewyn Davis, Leo Snorts Off/Blows Into A Girl's Asshole, and the 90-Minute Panic Attack Starring Sandra Bullock were far more worthy of the golden statue, and one of them wasn't even fuckin' nominated for the big prize. I also think this photo here is one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen. See, people, these are my tastes. Different strokes and all that, you know? It's still a while before they announce the winner. Eh, they'll probably give it to 12 Years a Slave, because it's a strong film about an incredibly important subject. And because Obama.

I've read some comments online from people who feel the same way I do the Hustle, except then they knock on O. Russell, saying that his Scorsese-ish direction exposes our fearless Clooney fighter as some kind of hack to which I say Bullshit. Sure, he may have approached the visual/aurals on this bitch that way, but all the back-and-forth between all the characters here scream Russell. I understand his style -- at least for his last couple films -- is to do a lot of rewriting and improv on the set, even throwing new lines at the actors during scenes. So you can say what you want about the style of the film, but the content is all David O., baby, and while the story may be kinda/sorta based on a true story that happened here on Planet Earth, the characters in the film are all from the Planet David O. Russell.

I think Cooper's character is the most D.O.R.-ish of the crowd, because he's a pushy bully who apparently doesn't really understand that he's a pushy bully, especially the way he fucks with his superior, played by talented fuck Louis CK. It reminds me of the story about O. Russell going up to Christopher Nolan and putting him in a serious headlock because Nolan wanted to use one of his actors for The Prestige. Just because Nolan made Batman doesn't make him Batman, so he was helpless against rager Russell's violence.

I bet he apologized to Nolan immediately after fucking his shit up, just like Cooper does to a couple people during this flick. This is not how normal people act, David. Crazy people act like that. Which I guess explains why O. Russell was trying so hard with Silver Linings Playbook to tell us that crazies are people too (ESPECIALLY MY SON, YOU BASTARDS!!!), so rather than act with alarm, we should be charmed by obnoxious behavior caused by mixed wires in the head. Ah phooey, you fuck! Quit trying to justify your fucked up behavior by having the characters in your film act the same way. Got it? Now go tell Nolan you're sorry.

So obviously, O. Russell has lots of sympathy and empathy for the main characters, even if they're kinda like assholes -- but he does a good job at convincing the audience (me) that they're deserving of it. I mean, for all of Cooper's assholishness, I can totally feel where he's coming from, as well as Adams' character. They're not content with their current square in the game of life, they want more. In the case of Cooper, accomplishing this goal involves pulling off this big Abscam bust he's working on. In the case of Adams, it involves reinventing herself completely and always pretending she's someone else. I liked that shared dynamic, probably because when it comes to not being happy with who you are while trying to be someone else, not only have I heard that song before but I can sing it to you note-for-note perfect.

Speaking of sympathy and empathy, my favorite character not played by Amy Adams is Mayor Carmine Something-or-other, portrayed by Jeremy Renner from Dahmer. Did you ever see that film? It's pretty good, but thinking of that movie reminds me of a girl I once knew who told me that she saw it something like 4 or 5 times at the movie theater, this film about a serial killer who brought dudes home to kill/rape/eat them. (I guess that makes me the Jeffrey Dahmer of fast food.)

At this moment, I'm one wine bottle down and an hour into the Oscar telecast and I have three things to say about it -- one, Ellen Degeneres is officially an Oscar host I do not wish to judo chop in the throat, and two, Amy Adams was caught looking down at something (her phone is my best guess) while Tyler Perry droned on and on and on about how the Best Picture nominees will change the world and all that shit. Our gal Amy does not give a shit about that Madea bullshit. I further approve of our lady.

Anyway, Carmine is the mayor of Camden, NJ and he seems like a cool dude to hang out with, singing popular guido tunes all night and then taking you out for breakfast, but he's not some asshole either, which you would assume because of his being in office. Carmine really believes in his town and wants the best for his people. That's why he gets mixed up in all the Irving/Sydney/Richie shenanigans, causing me to shake my head and wish for his character to get the fuck out of this movie because he's such a good dude with good intentions. Watching his particular tale unfold was like watching a car crash in slow-mo with someone you really like sitting in the death seat.

But on the complete opposite end of the Sympathy/Empathy scale, you have Jennifer Lawrence's character as Bale's killer shrew of a wife. If this broad hooked up with Sharon Stone's character from Casino, they'd leave behind a trail of broken-hearted/stupid moronic asshole men from here to Timbuk-fuckin-tu. I gotta tell you, man, I've never been one for wife beating, especially in real life, but at one point in this movie, I used all my mind energy trying to conjure up Lawrence Fishburne as Ike Turner into the proceedings so he could give Katniss the boot treatment. Man oh man, it got to where I wanted to scream out loud while punching every wall in the world -- and I say this as someone who is rather fond of Ms. Lawrence.

But enough of that unpleasantness, let's talk about something absolutely pleasant, like how without warning The Adorable Amy Adams turned into The Incredibly Fuckable Amy Adams all of a sudden. I feel like Marty McFly's brother post-car wreck: When the hell did this happen?! I am not complaining, good sir and madam. No, not at all. She looks very good here, and the 70s fashion is quite becoming on our gal. It's just that there are scenes here where our dear Princess Giselle from Enchanted gets all sexed out with her fellow man, causing my crush on her to battle it out with my newfound lust. It's like my heart was saying NO AMY NO while my poor abused manhood happily declared YES AMY YES. Based on some of the shots of her character in the film, I'd say both O. Russell and cinematographer Linus Sandgren's physical emotions went with the latter.

By the way, I'm spending all this time on how good she looks because it's way past an undeniable fact that she is excellent in the role, like she is in everything else, including life. (And because I'm a sexist pig who only sees the ladies as sex objects.) Since 2006, she's been nominated like 3 or 4 times already, which shows to go you how fuckin' talented our gal Amy is. It would be so sweet to see Ms. Adams win Best Actress for her performance, but I can't say with total conviction that she deserves it, because I haven't seen Blue Jasmine yet and I keep hearing Cate Blanchett is the one to beat. If she doesn't win, that's cool, she's proven herself time and time again and more than held her own with the likes of Streep, Day-Lewis, Seymour Hoffman, and Kermit the Frog.

But you know who did just win? Muthafuckin' Mexican and Kenyan citizen Ms. Lupita Nyong'o. Classy acceptance speech too. I approve of these Oscars. And now the double shot of awesome that was Amy Adams and Bill Murray presenting becomes a triple shot of awesome with his Harold Ramis shout-out -- nay, quadruple shot because muthafuckin' goddamn badass cinematographer Emmanuel FTMW Lubezki just took the statue for Gravity. How can this be better -- holy shit Alfonso Cuaron was one of the winners for Best Editing and I'm so -- oops, they cut him off when he was about to accept: Shut up and get going Cuaron, these leaves ain't gonna blow themselves. 

I think I'm gonna hold off on ending this until I find out whether our gal Amy wins or not. And now that I'm all Mex'd up, I need to know if Cuaron will take it as well. And then I'll know whether or not to begin writing my buddy cop movie/secret Miss Congeniality sequel starring Adams, Sandra Bullock, and Bill Murray. Emmanuel Lubezki will shoot it, and Alfonso Cuaron will direct.

8:35pm: ALFONSO FUCK YEAH

8:44pm: Awww, you'll get them next time, Amy. I can't hate on Cate because they say her performance in Blue Jasmine was all kinds of perfect, and because she held open the door for me at a screening of Notes on a Scandal and gave me a warm smile, proving that she is indeed a great actress. For another year, The Adorable Amy Adams will have to settle for being the Roger Deakins of acting. And that ain't bad, if you ask me. You know what? I actually kinda liked this year's Oscars. Keep running, ya'll.

Fuck it, I'm writing that Miss Congeniality script anyway. Because Hollywood is a land where dreams come true and blah blah blah blabbity blah blah bullshit blah blah my ass.

* - I wrote that part after he won, obviously. 

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Death rides an Econoline van

I don't know how, but an old friend I haven't seen for years got my contact info and now I'm getting calls and letters from him in prison. He's excitingly going on about how he's getting out in December and how he's going to change his life around (attempt number 6, I believe) and how he can't wait to kick it with me like old times. This is a man who supposedly shot a rival gang member in the belly at his doorstep, by the way.

I guess what I'm trying to say here is that if you don't see any more ramblings on this site about a month after December, that's probably because I'll be fuckin' dead, most likely having caught a volley of 9mm and .22's that were meant for him, courtesy of one of the many malcontents he's probably wronged. Merry Christmas. To be honest, the state of my depression kinda has me wishing for death anyway, but I want to be the one who calls it, not some shaven-headed asshole who thinks the two greatest movies ever made are American Me and Blood In, Blood Out: Bound by Honor.

Mimi, the main character from Massacre Mafia Style (aka The Executioner) would probably hate those movies, since he doesn't seem to be a fan of the gangs anyway. (How's that for a segue?) Not that he's any better; the guy is a gangster who will give long monologues on how the Mafia ruins the image of the Italian (Sicilians, in particular) but then has no problems putting a motherfucker on a meathook in such a way that the poor schmuck's eyeball is poked out -- and that's after strangling him to death.

Yeah, this Mimi is something else and so is his story, for which I will be giving a rundown to ya'll. At the age of 15, his "Lord of Organized Crime" father was deported back to Sicily, so Mimi had to leave as well. For the next 16 years, Mimi lives life, gets married, has a son, and becomes a widow (cancer, not gunfire). He decides to go back to the good ol' U.S.A. and get a piece of that American Dream (Mafia Style) that was so rudely taken away from his father -- so what if the old man was acquiring said dream illegally?

Mimi arrives in Los Angeles, hooks up with an old fat friend of his named Jolly, and off they go. Now, I was completely fucking hammered on Sobieski when I watched this, so mine is not the most clearest of memories when it comes to what exactly happened, but here I go. Mimi and Jolly kidnap a mob boss named Chucky from church, cut one of his fingers off and send it over to Chucky's underlings along with a ransom demand. They go ahead and pay it, so Chucky is let go. Then Mimi and Jolly go to Chucky's son's wedding to talk to him about going into business! What balls! Because Chucky used to work for Mimi's old man, he lets bygones be bygones and allows Mimi and Jolly to do their thing. I don't know, man, that's something I'd always be a little sore about. I don't think they reattached that shit, so it's gone for good. I would at least have to take off a thumb or two before forgiving a motherfucker, that's for sure.

Having forced Chucky's hand (by way of finger), Mimi and Jolly decide to hit the streets and take down the bookmakers and pimps who are cutting in on the action. This is done by apparently going to the same bar over and over again (this is a very low budget movie) and shotgunning them point blank. Again, maybe I was too drunk, but I swear Mimi was killing a lot more women than men. They also try to scare a huge black pimp named Super Spook into giving them his girls (to use in porno flicks, but more on that later) but he's not having it, so instead, our boys figure they could sweet talk him by calling him nigger. For some odd reason, this does not sit well with Mr. Spook. So they crucify him (for real) and make some kind of joke involving Jesus Christ being black.

Oh yeah, there's a lot of matter-of-fact racism in this flick, and as off-putting as that might be, I guess you can say that the filmmakers were just keeping it real. I mean, you're gonna make a film about hardcore criminals who are just as hardcore about their heritage and then you're going to have them regard people of other races and ethnicities as equals? Nah. Having said that, some of it does feel a little like wish-fulfillment from the writer/director; you have a skinny short dude and a fat out-of-shape dude, both of Italian heritage, giving a tall strong black man the business to his face. They're acting like that bit Eddie Murphy did about Italian guys coming out of a Rocky movie, only without the Jujyfruits up the ass.

When people aren't getting Massacred Mafia Style or being called "moulinyan", they're given heartfelt soliloquies by Mimi. These monologues are things of beauty; they start off slowly, and then when you think paisan's gonna wrap it up, he goes into overdrive. It is then that you realize that you are no longer hearing dialogue, but in fact getting a lengthy discourse on What's Wrong In Society from the writer/director, Duke Mitchell, who also happens to be the same guy who plays Mimi. It's like somewhere along the way he got off the script and started to speechify his real thoughts. Something tells me that many a friend of Mr. Mitchell have been addressed similarly after a few drinks or so with the dude, or maybe that wasn't the case at all and this was paisan's chance to let it all out.

Among the things that bother Mimi (and perhaps the filmmaker as well) are the loss of the good ol' days, when there was a code to being a scumbag piece-of-shit criminal; and the destruction of the Italian image by scumbag piece-of-shit criminals like himself (at least he's self-aware). Mimi gives one of these diatribes to Chucky, and rather than telling him "Motherfucker, aren't you the same guy who chopped off my fucking finger one reel ago?!" he just nods solemnly, like he just got dropped some major fuckin' science.

With each following scene, Mimi's hair turns from dark to gray, which I means that years are going by. Either that, or being a Mafia Style Massacrer ages you as fast as being President of the United States (have you seen how Obama looks now?).

So the film follows Mimi and Jolly living life, while ending everyone else's; at one point they even go as far as shooting a motherfucker in the eyeball on live television. In between whackings, Mimi hooks up with this chick and Jolly has a little gay dog that he's real fond of, so you probably know how THAT'S gonna end up.

Meanwhile, back is Sicily, Pops is getting news of Mimi's exploits and is none too happy about it because it doesn't look good or some shit like that, I don't know. He has his guy go to L.A. to beat some sense into Mimi, which he does: SMACK "This is from your father!" SMACK "This is from your son!" SMACK "And this is from the Holy Ghost!". He then gives him fifty-grand and an ultimatum -- stop the killing and start a legitimate business or suffer the consequences. Some more gray hair and a mustache later, Mimi and Jolly are now dipping their toes into the water that is the porno movie biz. They decide to make their own porn flicks by using Super Spook's stable as talent, and well, you already know how that ends a few paragraphs ago.

Killing a pimp so you can steal his women and use them in your porno movies does not qualify as standard legitimate business practice, in fact, it draws a hell of a lot of heat on you. Mimi's girl Liz understands this all too well, since she overheard one of Chucky's guys drunkenly blab about how they're going to set Mimi up and do a little Mafia Style Massacring of their own. Liz tells Mimi all of this during a post-coital chat, doing the audience a favor by having her breasts hang out during the whole scene.

They don't know who exactly in Chucky's crew is going to do the dirty work, so Mimi and Jolly decide to go out and start shooting, strangling, stabbing & eyeball-impaling the fuck out of anyone remotely connected. They shoot up an office building consisting of mostly black employees, and once again it makes a drunk motherfucker like me wonder if this was just a coincidence or if shooting holes into many an African-American did for Mr. Mitchell what Arnold blasting pigs in a police station did for James Cameron (and me). Whatever. On their way from another completed massacre, they bump into Chucky's son and kill him as well, dropping his body off in front of Daddy's house.

It's all for naught, all this killing, because Chucky hires some outside hitters to take Mimi and Jolly out. Jolly is MMS'd first; he goes to a restaurant by himself, and the servers arrive with a plate of Recently Deceased Gay Dog before filling this fat fuck full of .45's. Later, Mimi comes home and not only finds Jolly's body on his bed, but Liz hanging dead in the shower. His calm and rational response is to blow up Chucky and everyone else at the son's funeral by way of hidden explosives. At least Chucky and his wife don't have to live the rest of their lives missing their boy. That's me justifying Mimi's horrendous (but ballsy and awesome) act.

Mimi then goes back to Sicily, giving up on trying to do Cosa Nostra American Style. His father welcomes him with open arms and is glad to see that he's back and here to stay. Mimi then goes on another beautiful tangent about how the old ways are no longer respected "out there", and that the street corners that were once run by the Italians, Jews, Irish and Polish are now all run by the black man -- how dare they seems to be the subtext -- and that Organized Crime is on life support and that there is no law to lawlessness anymore. The young criminals no longer respect/fear the old ones, long-haired hippies are bringing dope home for their parents to take(!) and the shadowy secrecy of the Mafia Don lifestyle is now common fodder for books and movies ("The most successful fuckin' motion picture in the history of show business is you!").

The old man is like Whatever and tells Mimi about the young son he left behind. He tells him that he's been raised clean, going to the best schools around the world and living a life that has nothing to do with the Mafia, and he will not grow up to be his father or grandfather. A tearful, hug-filled reunion follows; Mimi and his son go for a walk to catch up on things and to meet the boy's special lady friend. Later, they get together with other family and friends for dinner. The son cuts a loaf of bread and tosses the first piece to Mimi. Just as Mimi catches the slice -- BOOM -- he takes a blast of gunfire to the chest. Turns out there was a four-barreled gun hidden in the loaf, and the son used it on him. The old man then looks at the son, and I guess this means that he's now a man and I guess this is the movie's way of telling us that the sins of the father, the child is father to the man, evil never dies, the circle of life, etc, etc, blah blah blabbity blah. Whatever it means, it's an awesome way to end a movie. The End.

This is a mob flick done Grindhouse-style, featuring some very raw acting and visuals, but it's a lot of fun and I was surprised by how much I ended up liking it. Usually you have to deal with a lot of dead spots in these kinds of movies, even when they have brief running times like this one, but there's always something to keep your interest here; tough guy talk, violence, titties. Some scenes have a darkly comic approach to them, sort of a proto-Tarantino type of thing going on; the opening scene featuring Mimi and Jolly killing a bunch of people is done to a cheery old Italian song. The dialogue can be very funny at times too, and while I don't know how serious those speech scenes are meant to be taken, I don't care, because they are awesome to watch either way. I understand that's the third time I've used the word "awesome" in this rundown, and for that I win an award: The Small Vocabulary Dumb Schmuck Award. I'd like to thank my teachers for trying to teach me and I'd like to thank myself for not learning.

Duke Mitchell (né Dominico Miceli) was a nightclub singer and all-around entertainer, most famous for hooking up with a Jerry Lewis lookalike and doing their spin on Martin & Lewis. He wrote, produced and directed this, his first movie, and you can definitely see that he had more entertaining flicks (and hopefully better made) in him. Unfortunately, he passed away a few years later, leaving behind an unfinished film titled Gone with the Pope. Based on the footage I've seen for that flick, it looked like he was definitely taking things up a notch in Awesome. Shit, that's four times now.

The cool news is that Sam Raimi's editor and Sylvester Stallone's son have been busy putting Pope together for a DVD release. Massacre Mafia Style, meanwhile, is coming out next month in a two-disc DVD set in October, but get this -- it's limited to 500 copies. So if you want your racist Italian mob killers in crystal clear digital picture and sound, you better snatch up a copy right quick. Me, I'll stick to my shitty VHS version (under the title The Executioner); in a weird way, I think the poor quality adds to the seediness of the movie. Besides, booze and gasoline take up most of my budget nowadays, anyway, so I have to come up with something.

Now if you'll excuse me, I now have to look up some gothic designs online to print out and mail to my friend in prison so he can have them tattooed to his leg. Because that's what friends do for each other (especially when they're afraid of getting shivved at their front door in the middle of the night). I need a time machine. I need to go back and tell the 3rd grade version of me to say No to friendship. Then I'm gonna go to the 7th grade me and tell me to make a move on Ms. Travers in Social Studies. Worst case scenario, she says no. Best case, I get a whole lot of much-needed confidence and my life begins a trek through a different path, one that will most likely lead to bigger and better things. I guess the lesson here, people, is this: If you're a school teacher, pick the biggest loser in class and sleep with him. And if you're a student lucky enough to have that happen to you, SHUT THE FUCK UP ABOUT IT.

Surprisingly not starring Whitney Houston and Bobby Brown

This past Wednesday, I went to the supermarket to buy some booze -- I can always get food at a drive-thru. As she took the black plastic guard off the top of my bottle of Sobieski, the cute checkout girl said to me "You'll feel a lot better after some of this, huh?". I didn't know whether to hit her or propose marriage. If this was the 50's, perhaps one followed by the other, but this is the 00's, so I just smiled and told her that she had no idea how right she was. Of course, I entertained myself on the way back home with thoughts of What If? The good and the bad with me and the checkout girl. By the time I parked my car, I was well into an overly romanticized Days of Wine and Roses style relationship with her.

The truth would be a lot uglier, I suspect, something closer to the shit that happens to the characters played by Illeana Douglas and Asshole Chef from Dinner Rush in this movie I saw the other night called Life is Hot in Cracktown. Or maybe not, because me and Checkout Girl would be booze hounds, not crack addicts like those two jokers.

This flick is an ensemble piece about people who are all about the rocks and I guess they got pretty fuckin' lucky to find themselves living in a city named after that shit. Here in Cracktown, everybody's on crack (except for the odd few who dig heroin and probably couldn't afford bus fare to Smackville) and everyone wears clothing that is either stained, worn-out or both. The cops in Cracktown are pretty nice and mellow guys without an ounce of dickhead in them, which is probably why crack and crime runs rampant here.

So back to Illeana Douglas and Asshole Chef from Dinner Rush. They go around town looking to score while leaving two kids to fend for themselves in their rundown, roach-infested apartment. The older son has to go out and beg for change to feed his little sister, and when Mom and Boyfriend come back and find out, the first thing these jonesing motherfuckers ask him is if he has any money left. That's the kind of parenting we're dealing with here. What makes it even more sad is that the mom has moments of displaying honest-to-goodness love and concern to her children, but then here comes Asshole Chef from Dinner Rush with a fresh hit of crack to bring her back to the City of I-Could-Give-A-Shit-About-My-Kids-It's-All-About-Meeee (current mayor: Joe Jackson).

The husband and wife played by Shannyn Sossamon and Some Latino Dude, on the other hand, give a plentiful amount of shits about their baby. She's busy being a good mommy and he's busy working two jobs and studying for his GED so they can get the fuck out of Cracktown. I mean, it's really gotta suck to live in Cracktown when you don't even do crack. That's like living in Las Vegas and not gambling or living in Aspen and not skiing or living in Boston and not hating black people. I had to hit the Mute button and read the closed captions for half of their scenes, though, because baby boy Ramon is like one of those babies from the Godfather movies, this little motherfucker is crying 24/7. Part of Sossamon & Latino Dude's story involves them getting despondent over this kid not shutting the fuck up, and I understand this, but I hear enough at that shit at Target, Walmart, movie theaters, restaurants, airplanes, outdoors, indoors, everywhere on this goddamn planet, that I will fuckin' exercise the shit out of that Mute button on my remote, tout de fuckin' suite.

In Cracktown, chicks with dicks look like Kerry Washington aka Bill Maher's Fantasy from Lakeview Terrace. She plays a transgender person with a boyfriend who digs her/him/it, even though he might not necessarily be into the same sex. Think about that; here's a straight dude who fell in love with this shemale, even though he was pretty sure he was into chicks. I mean, it's still very much like a chick, it looks like a chick and talks like a chick, and he really enjoys its company, but there's that limp and flaccid barrier between its legs that puts a damper on the whole relationship. Personally, I would tell the guy that as long as her dick isn't bigger than his, he should just chill the fuck out and love that thing till the day they die.

People in desperate situations do fucked up things, the movie seems to be telling us, some are more fucked up than others but there are no real evil villains, just painfully misguided motherfuckers. Doesn't mean you should feel sorry for them, just understand why they are the way they are. I was able to roll with that for a while, but there's one character with whom it was very fuckin' tough to do that with, and that's the character of Romeo. He's played by some dude named Evan Ross, and this motherfucker I thought they pulled from the streets. Turns out he's the son of Diana Ross and a Norwegian shipping magnate. You wouldn't know it from the performance he gives here.

Jesus, what a fucking scumbag this Romeo is! Again, the movie isn't asking us to feel sorry for the dude (at least I hope it's not), just understand why he is the way he is. We're told that his kid brother was a recent victim of street violence, so that shit may have amped up his bad behavior, but I doubt it was that big a difference. This fuckin' piece-of-shit prowls the streets with his punk-ass crew, robbing, raping, terrorizing old retirees for their social security checks, horrific shit like that. I know this would be entirely unrealistic, but holy shit, I was hoping that Charles Bronson would eventually step in and introduce this cocksucker to his friend Wildey. That would've made Life is Hot in Cracktown the greatest movie ever made, as opposed to the merely good flick it is.

I'm not kidding about the dirty clothes and faces though, and since I never grew up in Cracktown, I can't say with any certainty whether that was some overdone theatrical bullshit or the Real Thing. That was distracting, as well as recognizing the familiar faces in some of the roles. I understand that if the filmmakers didn't get people like Lara Flynn Boyle and Superman '06 to play whores and junkies, this shit never would've gotten financed, but it's still a problem that sometimes took me out of the movie. It's like if the movie Kids kept the same cast but now Leonardo DiCaprio is playing Casper and the cab driver is played by Samuel L. Jackson. It's a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't situation, and I hate to pull this armchair filmmaker shit (and what the fuck do I know about making movies?), but I think they were better off sticking to unknowns for the cast. Except for the RZA, because that guy rules and should be in every movie, even Julie & Julia.

The movie was written and directed by Buddy Giovinazzo, who came onto the scene back in the 80's with Combat Shock (aka American Nightmares), distributed by Troma, and the way they sold THAT movie, I thought I was in for a fun, trashy Deadbeat at Dawn type of flick. That was not the case at all. It was harsh, bleak, and depressing as fuck -- so it should be no surprise that the dude has a big following in Germany. But it was still a good movie, definitely not for everyone, and worth it for those that can hang. And I guess that's what you can say about Cracktown as well, except it's not nearly as hopeless and potentially suicide-inducing as Combat Shock was, and that's either a good thing or bad thing, depending on your state of mind. The toughest scene to watch in Cracktown is the very first one (a damn near unwatchable rape scene that's even longer in the director's cut), but if you can get past that, the rest is a smooth ride in comparison.

Life is Hot in Cracktown feels very Hubert Selby Jr-esque, and while it sure as shit ain't Requiem for a Dream, it's still a darker, grittier flick than most of what's come out this year. I don't know how it compares to Last Exit to Brooklyn, though, because I haven't seen that shit, I've only read the book. I know it might be hard to believe based on my terribly written ramblings, but I read. Anyway, I liked this movie and I was left hanging and wanting to see more when it ended, which I guess makes it pretty fucking good by my scale, right? I don't know, I'm fucking buzzed right now and my word can't be counted on for shit.

We have a saying around here, "Get used to it, Hitler."

Please bear with me. This is the drunkest I've been while writing one of these, thanks to Sobieski Vodka. I bought it blindly, because I figured the name wouldn't steer me wrong. This summer, Leelee Sobieski went from being a pretty alien to a pretty human being with her appearance in Public Enemies, and I figured this vodka would equally surprise me. And guess what? It did. This $11 bottle is pretty damn good. Definitely a shitload of bang for a modicum of buck. I recommend it heartily, especially in this current economy.

Anyway, people have already made up theories about the spelling of Quentin Tarantino's latest joint, Inglourious Basterds. Some say it's a way for QT to distinguish his film from the original Bo Svenson/Fred Williamson flick, The Inglorious Bastards. Others say it was to get by the MPAA (you telling me these motherfuckers approve movie titles too?!). Then there's those who bring up that Brad Pitt's character has it written that way into the butt of his rifle. I believe the best explanation is in a book titled Killer Instinct by Jane Hamsher. In it, she puts up a copy of a letter QT had handwritten to her, and boy is it some FUUUUUUUNNNNNNNNY shit. THAT is the reason the title's spelled that way, and since Tarantino admitted in a recent interview that no one in the cast or crew ever questioned his spelling just shows to go you that this emperor's new clothes is lookin' mighty fine these days.

But he can misspell all the fuckin' words he wants if he continues to create quality flicks like this one. Shit, he can go retroactively retitling his previous works if he wants: Rezurvwhar Dawhgs, Poulp Fickshun, Jahkey Brauwn, Kill Bill. Also, I knew I was into something good when the movie started off with an old circa 70's/80's Universal logo, like Sam Raimi did with Drag Me to Hell, but unlike that movie, I didn't have two old hens talking throughout the movie and I liked this one a hell of a lot more. (Sorry, Sam. Please don't send the Lamia after me.)

So yeah, Brad Pitt leads a group of Jewish-American soldiers on a Nazi killing spree, I want my scalps! and all that. That's what the trailers and commercials are selling you. But don't expect it to be a men-on-a-mission movie consisting of nothing but Pitt & Company going around and kicking National Socialist ass. It's really two parallel stories; one following the exploits of the Basterds, and the other involving a young French Jew working at a Parisian movie theater. It's the second tale that gets more of the screen time, and there's a lot of subtitles, so those of you who can't hang with that can take that shit over to G.I. Joe right now.

This movie's about two-and-a-half hours long, but it moved pretty damn fast to me. I'm sure I'm in the minority, because lots of people are bitching about the dialogue. They're right in that this is a dialogue-heavy film, supposedly some talking sequences go as long as 25-30 minutes. There's a lot more BLAH BLAH BLAH than BANG BANG BANG going on here, but you know what? I didn't mind at all because I liked the dialogue. It kept me interested. These people seemed to have forgotten a little movie two years ago called Death Proof. Now THAT has a lot of talking that makes you wonder if any of it is going to pay off. With Death Proof, the majority of the chatter felt like filler (albeit entertaining filler), whereas the dialogue in Basterds feels like Quentin playing with the audience, stretching it out and making us wait longer and longer before what's got to be the payoff happens. And just when we reach our breaking point and are pulling our hair out at the possibility of what might happen, holy shit, does the payoff pay the fuck off.

Part of the plot involves a film-within-a-film called Nation's Pride, a Nazi propaganda film about a national war hero by the name of Frederick Zoller who sniped a bunch of American soldiers from a belltower. This movie ends up being screened for a bunch of high-ranking Nazis, and they laugh and cheer their uncircumsized dicks off every time Zoller busts a cap in some red, white and blue ass. I wondered if Tarantino was pulling some "holding a mirror to society" bullshit with that? I mean, I know he's all about making kick-ass movies to have fun with and nothing more, but the audience I saw this with was doing the same shit whenever a fuckin' Nazi got owned, cheering and laughing, myself included. Hopefully that's more like QT saying that his shit is as propaganderous as the shit these Nazis were watching. By the way, if Tarantino can misspell his movie titles, I can make up words like propaganderous, all right? So callate la boca.

I wish I never heard that Quentin had at one point considered doing this as a mini-series for cable, like Band of Brothers, telling various stories during the period of the main events. Because as much as this movie kicked ass, I think we would've gotten a lot more kick-ass stuff out of a really extended version of this. He was seriously thinking of doing it this way until fuckin' Luc Besson talked him out of it. He told him that Tarantino was one of the only filmmakers that made him want to go see a movie in a theater. This fuckin' bastard -- I mean, basterd -- he should've just shut his fuckin' Frenchy mouth and concentrated on writing & producing more movies about Liam Neeson and Jason Statham owning motherfuckers. We could've had 12 hours of this, which is blessing to people like me and a curse for everyone else, I suppose.

The acting, like in all of Tarantino's flicks, is top-notch. Pitt is playing a dude from Tennessee, and he knows what kind of movie he's in so he doesn't go for realism, he goes for exaggerated when it comes to his accent and mannerisms. The French chick is played by someone named Melanie Laurent, and she does a decent job but nothing spectacular. I'll give her this, though, in fact I'll give everyone else this -- these have to be some great fuckin' actors to be able to hold their own whenever they're in a scene with the motherfucker who plays Col. Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz), and while this isn't an Oscar-caliber film, he gives an Oscar-caliber performance.

Col. Landa is known as The Jew Hunter, and that's just what he does, looking for any and all Jews hidden throughout France. What makes him even scarier is that he does it all in as charming a manner as possible. Here's a man who will do everything he can to make you feel at ease before dropping the big one on you, a man who will convince you to give up the goods, leaving you in tears because you just fucking KNOW you're doing the wrong thing, but this guy is such a smooth smoothie, it's like you have no choice but to give up control of the situation. Landa must've gotten ALL the anti-Semitic pussy back in the day.

Mike Myers shows up here for one scene, and his appearance reminded me of a story I heard about something that happened during a test screening of John Milius' Flight of the Intruder. Ed O'Neill had an important role in it, but everybody fuckin' laughed because all they could think of at the moment was "Holy shit, it's Al Bundy!". So they had to reshoot it with another actor. I'm reminded of this because no one in the audience at the showing I went to could stop laughing for the entirety of Myers' scene. The problem could also be that while guys like Pitt and the English motherfucker who plays Hicox were able to toe the line between Over the Top and Bloody Ridiculous, Myers unfortunately could not. This guy is playing his part like a character in the next Austin Powers movie. Actually, he's playing it like his idol, Peter Sellers, who I'm sorry to say, had the habit of hamming it up even in his best work.

A couple of times Samuel L. Jackson's voice comes out of nowhere to narrate this flick. I thought that was pretty awesome, not because it was Jackson, but because there wasn't a real rhyme or reason to the use of narration here. Like the occasional use of narration in a Argento flick, you're listening to it and wondering if it was even fuckin' needed, but you kinda appreciate the wacky need of the director to include it, for whatever fuckin' reason. Harvey Keitel's voice is also heard late in the film, as a general or something, and that was cool. Speaking of which, go watch Keitel's interview in that From Dusk Till Dawn documentary for some good times.

Eli Roth has a big role in this, but I've gone on way too long about the actors already, so he gets assed out in my ramblings. Sorry, pal. Go make Hostel Part III and see if I give a shit.

Ennio Morricone is my favorite movie music composer, and I was happy to hear that Tarantino was going to get him to come up with some original music for this film. Then he fucked it all up when he decided that it was more important to have his movie ready for Cannes rather than give Morricone another couple of months to do his thing. It was more important to have his shit premiere in the country that "respects directors" and get his knob polished by the Cannes critics than to have what could've been the next great Morricone score complementing his movie. And in the end, what happened? The Cannes critics reacted to his opus with an unenthusiastic "eh". Ha ha ha, motherfuck.

But he made up for it (kinda) by using a bunch of Morricone's old stuff for the film score instead. It was fun to pick out the stuff I recognized from the tracks that I couldn't. The best track is from a Sergio Sollima film called Revolver, a sad little tune that is used here for an equally fucked up moment. It made my geek muscle twinge a little to hear a tune I once heard from a shitty television speaker now play in Dolby Digital to a huge auditorium. There's non-Morricone tracks here as well; my buddy was distracted by the use of a David Bowie tune, but that one didn't get me so much as the use of music from The Entity did at one point. Once I heard that, all I could think of was poor Barbara Hershey getting ghost raped.

I've only seen this once, so maybe it's too early to tell, but so far, Basterds felt like a better movie than both Kill Bill and Death Proof and I was a fan of both. I can't understand where the critics are coming from with this, they keep saying that it's not the sum of all it's parts, which is a bullshit thing to say, by the way. It's a film comprised of great scenes that don't fit together well? Shit, that's why Tarantino put chapter headings in this bitch. Anyway, I'm not really one for multiple cinema viewings, but I just might have to go see this one again to make sure. As of now, I'm saying Inglourious Basterds was a great fuckin' movie (made by a horrible fuckin' speller) and I am fucking drunk and hungry like a motherfucker. (How hungry is a motherfucker, by the way?)

P.S. You know what else came out this weekend? Shorts. That was written and directed by Tarantino's hetero life-mate, Robert Rodriguez. I'm a big fan of Rodriguez, but I don't think I could bring myself to buy a ticket to that shit, William H. Macy or not. Besides, the theater will be filled with kids and all the parents will look at me like I'm some kinda fuckin' pedo creep. They would be half right.

P.P.S. In case you were wondering -- Yup, Quentin works in his foot fetish in this movie as well. If I ever make a movie, every chick is going to wear glasses. Please believe that.

The woman who edited this movie went on to edit Ghost World. So rock on with your bad self, Carole Kravetz

I don't dream, but I do have nightmares and last night was a pretty fucking bad one. By the end, a fucking skull was staring at me in the early morning fog and then I woke up pretty freaked out. That shit probably sounds funny to you, because that shit ain't happening to you. I would be cool with having dreamless sleep for the rest of my life if it meant no more nightmares.

Speaking of nightmares, I understand this Bride Wars movie sounds like a big one. Sometimes there are positives to being a lonely drunk with no girlfriend or wife, and one of those positives is not being dragged to see shit like this. Since this movie looks like an incredibly annoying piece of shit, I figured it was going to be number one at the box office and break records, because that's how it works out with those kinds of movies. Luckily, people had the good sense to go watch Dirty Harry call Asian people names for two hours instead. Bride Wars still made a nice chunk of change though, which means there are plenty of unlucky guys who were unable to talk their girlfriend or wife or mistress out of watching it. I take that back. This is the kind of movie that guys don't fight with their chicks about seeing, this is one of those "let her have it" type of movies, where the guy doesn't want to argue or get into any shit with the lady, so he'll agree without putting up any fuss and then tell his friends that it really wasn't that bad afterwards. Wrong. Looking at Anne Hathaway and Kate Hudson for ninety minutes may not be so bad, but the movie they're appearing in HAS to be a complete piece of shit. Has to be.

Why am I going on and on about Bride Wars? I didn't even see that shit. But I did watch a movie from the same director. Before he made Bride Wars or that Charlotte's Web remake or that ripoff of Big that starred the chick from Alias, Gary Winick made an exploitation flick called Curfew in the late 80's. The movie begins with these two prisoners who we find out raped and murdered a girl, so of course their punishment is to live in a cell bigger than my apartment where they could get three square meals a day, gym privileges and cable television. There's also plenty of rampant anal sex, whether they want it or not.

These assholes escape from there anyway, but because this is a low-budget straight-to-video movie, we never see the actual escape. We see them in a jail cell, then the black-on-white title fills the screen, and after the title explodes we cut to them walking towards a small town in their prison clothes. So either they broke out or they were let out and were allowed to take their prison issues with them.

It's your basic Of Mice and Men duo; a bleached blonde asshole who looks like he should be named Chad, and his doughy slow-witted brother who I'm just gonna call Lennie. Going back to Chad, I think he looks a lot like the bully from Encino Man, and for a while I thought it was him, but I looked him up and this Chad motherfucker is some other dude who in addition to acting, also co-wrote Clint Eastwood's movie Firefox back in 1982. Firefox wasn't that great of a movie, in my opinion. So if the dude who wrote Gran Torino is reading this, go watch Curfew and take a look at your future, bro.

So it turns out Chad and Lennie are on a revenge trip and want to kill the people they hold responsible for putting them behind bars. They wanna kill the psychiatrist who declared them mentally competent enough to do time in prison instead of the nuthouse, they wanna kill the judge who sentenced them to do hard time, and they wanna kill the district attorney who prosecuted their asses.

Chad and Lennie first kill a couple of farmhand-types for their clothes, then hitch a ride with a dude who likes to whistle Dixie. You know this asshole probably has a Confederate flag hanging from the porch of his crib, and if you'd ask him about it he would say it's because he's proud of his Southern roots. Sure. Just conveniently forget it also represents the time when you could make Kunta or Kizzy or Tyrone pick your cotton and the only payment they'd received came from a fuckin' whip. The Civil War is over and your side LOST, so take that fuckin' flag down. It's all about the stars and stripes, motherfucker. It's okay though, because Chad and Lennie do us a favor and take this motherfucker out by giving him quite possibly the fastest strangulation death I've ever seen in a movie. He must've had a real delicate neck, this guy. Also, they do it while he's driving the car, and after he dies, the car keeps going and neither of them make an effort to take the wheel. That was odd.

The waste of space we know as Paris Hilton has two aunts who were in the showbiz growing up; one of them is named Kim Richards and she was best known for the Witch Mountain flicks but to me I will always remember her as the poor little girl in the original Assault on Precinct 13 who learned the hard way that if you get the wrong ice cream flavor, sometimes it's best to just let it go. Then there's Kim's sister Kyle Richards, and that's who we have here in Curfew playing our heroine, Stephanie. She's a cute chick but with early 90's Jennifer Connelly bushy eyebrows, which is a little disconcerting when you combine it with having a dude's name like Kyle. Her eyebrows are thisclose to being Groucho Marx style. I'd still hit it, though.

Anyway, Stephanie is new in town and she's going out for the night with her new friends from high school. Her mom and dad are also going out for the night and Dad tells the babysitter to make sure Stephanie gets home by ten, and that's how the movie gets its title. Mom is kind of a cool lady so she tells Mrs. Babysitter that it's okay if her little girl is a little late. Mrs. Babysitter looks like a very kindly older lady, the kind who probably knows how to make some bomb-ass homemade cookies, so you figure it's only a matter of time (approx. 25 minutes) before she dies a horrible death.

Speaking of horrible deaths, our boys Chad and Lennie are busy dealing those out and by the fifteen minute mark they've already taken out two out of their three main targets: the shrink and the judge, along with a number of innocent bystanders. What makes these jerks even more insufferable is that they don't just show up and kill, they have to talk and act stupid with their victims. So basically each of the kill scenes consist of them showing up somewhere, the victim freaking out and asking what do they want, Chad then delivering some long speech on how they got fucked by the system while Lennie is sitting close by just being his usual stupid self. Then they stab or beat the victim to death.

Stephanie meets her friends at the diner, two jocks and a girl who are also the most popular kids in the school, so I guess she lucked out considering she's only been in town for two weeks. You have Jock #1, a blow-dried douchebag who has the hots for Steph, then there's Jock #2, who's got Greatest American Hero hair and is supposedly the comic relief, and finally you have Young Ann Coulter, who's #2's chick but you get the sense she's had the entire football team inside her at one point during the semester, probably behind #2's back. Would you be surprised if I told you the jocks are wearing letterman jackets? These guys are annoying assholes, given to leaning over to some other diners' table and telling them about their latest football victory and then falling on the food. You usually see these motherfuckers in Denny's on a Saturday night at 3am, smashed drunk and fucking with the staff and just being general asses in public and it never gets any less annoying. So Chad and Lennie, please kill these motherfuckers. Kill them good.

We have a couple of familiar faces in this diner as well; you got Peter from the Brady Bunch playing a cigar-chomping cop in sunglasses and a mustache, looking just as ridiculous and not believable as you'd think. Then you have the manager of the diner, played by the one guy from Fast Times at Ridgemont High who managed to succeed in NOT becoming famous afterwards. You know who I'm talking about, he played Rat's ticket-scalping buddy. Wait. Make that TWO guys from Fast Times who didn't become famous afterwards. Not Famous Dude from Fast Times does nothing here but serve coffee and tell some kid to quit beating up the pinball machine. As for Officer Peter Brady, he doesn't like the jocks and is always trying to intimidate them into respecting his authority. Like in one scene, Jock #2 starts belting out "I Can't Get No Satisfaction" in the diner, and Officer Peter Brady's response is to give him a supposed tough-guy glare and threaten him with "You want satisfaction? I'll GIVE you satisfaction". It sounds just as ridiculous as you'd think. He is later pranked by the jocks, making him believe that one of them got into a serious motorcycle accident. By the time he comes back to check on them, he only finds the word "SUCKER" written on the ground in ketchup. Why, those darn hooligans!

That "Satisfaction" song reminds me of something that happened, back when I was 14 or 15. I came down with a serious fever, I couldn't keep anything down and I couldn't stop shivering. It got really bad and I had to be taken to the doctor. In the waiting room, there was a kid about six years old that came in with his parents. This little dude was bouncing off the walls, screaming out I CAN'T GET NOOOOOOOO SAT-IS-FAC-TIOOOOOONNNN!!!! over and over again. Non-stop. I CAN'T GET NOOOOOOOO SAT-IS-FAC-TIOOOOOONNNN!!!! The dude hardly breathed in between his screams. There seemed to be a silent agreement with everyone in the waiting room that this little kid should be treated first. So off he went with his two incredibly worried parents, the scream/singing gradually getting lower in volume as he went further into the building until we couldn't hear it anymore. About ten minutes later, the parents came back out, the father cradling his son who was no longer singing or yelling or anything. He was completely calm and normal. Would it sound incredibly hacky for me to say that I guess he finally got his satisfaction? Har har har? No?

Back to Curfew. Stephanie goes out to some make-out area outside town and once there, she realizes what Jock #1 really wants and turns down his drunk advances. She must be okay with drunk driving because she makes his soused ass drive her home. She gets to the house and Jock #1 takes off. Once inside, an evil cat jumps out of thin air and false-scares her, then she gets real-scared when she finds both Chad and Lennie waiting for her. I guess I forgot to mention that Stephanie's father is the same district attorney who helped put these dudes away, but there you go. There's a brief struggle, followed by a foot chase.

Stephanie manages to get to the road and flag down a vehicle. The driver of the car is played by One of the Worst Old Man Actors Ever, either that or he was told to act the part as if he just came in from Planet Lethargy. Or maybe his character was supposed to be heavily medicated. It's really off, this dude's acting, he would've fit in with most of the Gran Torino cast. So this old dude drives slow enough for the bad guys to cut him off and then they force him to stop, and it's then that the old actor suddenly decides to let out some actual emotion when he walks over to Lennie and gives the dude a whack from his cane: "Where did you learn to drive, young man? We could've been KILLED! HUUUAAAAAAAGGGHHHH!!!!" That last part was the sound he made as he was getting beaten to death with his own cane by Lennie, by the way.

Stephanie takes off in the old man's ride and speeds her way to the diner. Once there, she gets Officer Peter Brady to come back with her to check on the house. She and the Brady Cop get to her place only to find Steph's mom waiting at the front door. Mom says everything is fine, so Officer Brady takes off. Mom pulls Stephanie inside the house and we find Chad and Lennie have been inside the entire time, holding Daddy at gunpoint. DUN DUN DUN! The rest of the movie then becomes a kind of cross being Desperate Hours and Cape Fear, with Chad and Lennie fucking with the family as a way of making them feel the pain the duo felt they unjustly suffered.

They force the whole family to join them for a turkey dinner with all the trimmings and fixings, which Chad later compliments Stephanie's mom on. Wait a minute, you mean to tell me that Stephanie's mom cooked a whole feast in a couple of hours? Even then, it's pretty late in the evening at this point, and there's still a lot of movie left, you figure the sun would be coming up pretty soon. Or maybe she just happened to have a complete Thanksgiving dinner wrapped up in her refrigerator and all she had to do was microwave it. Pretty lucky of her to have all that grub in her house because I don't know about you, but if two convicts break into my place and force me to cook them dinner, the bill of fare is going to consist of Top Ramen, Hot Pockets and Cap'n Crunch.

The middle section of the movie is pretty much Chad and Lennie doing fucked up things to the family, stuff that's supposed to be entertaining, I suppose, but I don't find fun at all. I know the filmmakers would probably excuse it and say it's a way to get the audience worked up for the eventual comeuppance of the bad guys, except I've seen enough of these movies to know it's never good enough. You get some asshole torturing motherfuckers and killing innocent people, and in the end payback consists of some faggy little .22 caliber bullet being shot into the head and the bad guy dies relatively peaceful compared to his victims. Bullshit, motherfucker -- I want some motherfucking SUFFERING and ASSBEATING going on!

So Chad forces the father to take off his shoes & socks and walk on broken glass, something I remember seeing in another low-budget straight to video movie called Eyes of the Beholder, which was about a dude who escapes from a mental institution and holds his doctor's family hostage. I guess it's a subgenre staple in straight-to-video flicks to have the escaped con/nut force his prosecutor/doctor to walk on broken glass. Chad then takes Stephanie's mom upstairs to put make-up on her, making her look like a French whore when he's done. It's suggested that he rapes her, then he tries to drown her in a bathtub. Entertainment!

Chad then brings the mom down to the basement with the others and declares that it's execution time. He and Lennie aim their guns at the family and are just about to shoot when they suddenly hear a noise -- Stephanie's friends.

The two jocks and Young Ann Coulter are upstairs, having snuck into the house. I know Jock #1 is there because he wants to do it with Stephanie, but I never understood why he needed his friends to join him. Maybe he's an exhibitionist. Anyway, they split up, Jock #1 with Young Ann Coulter and Jock #2 by himself. Jock #2 finds the leftovers from the turkey dinner earlier and helps himself to it. He walks around while chomping on his turkey sandwich and discovers Mrs. Babysitter's body. He's then run through with a machete by Chad, proving Chad can't be that bad of a guy. I also like the touch of Chad having a cigarette right afterwards. Nothing like a good smoke after committing murder.

Now remember that Jock #1 came to Stephanie's house with the distinct purpose of having sex with her. I say this because the next thing we see him do is take Young Ann Coulter to the upstairs bedroom to literally do to her what Bernie Madoff figuratively did to so many investors. This is a pretty funny scene because halfway through, the sounds of two completely different people moaning are dubbed in over the obviously closed-mouthed couple. But then in the next shot, it's undubbed moaning from the actual actors. It's like Kung Fu Porno or something. Chad is not as amused by this as I am though, so he grabs Jock #1 and gives him the lamest neck breaking I've ever seen. Chad then channels his inner Democrat and slices up Young Ann Coulter something awful.

Meanwhile, Officer Peter Brady is driving along when he finds someone limping his way down the road. It's the old man, having survived his beatdown by Lennie. The old man actually does a really good job playing beaten up and miserable. I guess as long as homeboy plays to his strengths, he's all right. Officer Brady takes the old man to the hospital and then calls for backup as he heads back to Stephanie's house, and it's here that I thought "Holy shit, fuckin' Peter Brady is going to come in and save the day! Awesome!".

Chad comes back down to the basement to join Lennie in executing Stephanie and her family, but for some reason Chad changes his mind about shooting them, instead rigging up some elaborate electric chair set-up for all three of them. But what Chad doesn't know is that while he was busy upstairs filling his Dead Teenager quota, Stephanie's been talking up Lennie's ear the entire time about how she really wants to get it on with him and because Lennie is not only a man, but a stupid man, he buys it completely and gets in Chad's way. A fight ensues, ending when Chad gets the better of Lennie by grabbing a power drill and giving his bro the Black & Decker treatment. Exit Lennie.

Interspersed with all this shit going on is all these hero shots of Peter Brady as he slowly makes his way into the house with his gun drawn, the tension slowly building up and assholes like me getting hyped up to watch the Brady kid busting caps in these fools. That is until Chad shoots him and it's at this moment that Peter Brady finally stops looking ridiculous and finally looks believable in this movie -- the revolver goes flying out of his hand, Peter gets a stupid look of shock on his face, he stumbles back and then runs away. Chad then follows Officer Brady and kills him. That's what you get for sending little overwhelmed Peter to do a man's job. I bet that shit would've gone a little differently if they had my boy Danny Bonaduce play the cop.

After subtracting one less Brady from the world, Chad comes back downstairs to finish everyone else off but can't find Stephanie. He looks all over, shooting in every direction until our girl comes out of nowhere and blasts him with Lennie's gun. Finally the cops arrive outside and Stephanie goes over to untie her parents. But guess what? Chad's still alive! Wow! I'd never guess that would've happened! He has enough time to give Stephanie a self-pitying "woe is me" spiel before she shoots him in the head, giving him the unsatisfying quick death these assholes always get in these kinds of movies. The End.

I bought this movie on VHS at the video store expecting hilarious badly-made garbage, but Curfew is not really like that. It's not good, but it's competently made and watchable in that late-night-on-cable sorta way. You wouldn't ever watch it again or recommend it to anyone, but it's totally something you'd find yourself watching in its entirety while you're half asleep on the couch at 2 in the morning, and you wouldn't hate yourself for it afterwards. You'd be like "Ok, whatever. I'm going to bed now". It's sure as shit GOT to be better than fucking Bride Wars, that's for goddamn certain. It's cool to know that the dude who did this is now making major bank directing Kate Hudson flicks, but that's because I don't hate on a motherfucker for making money. Doesn't mean I have to see or like his movies, though.

Fuck both of you and your little high-five: my Final Girl Film Club review of Grindhouse

It was probably after Quentin Tarantino had just snorted his third line of uncut Bolivian flake off some stripper's bare foot when Robert Rodriguez finally had enough and put his digital camera down to rub his tired eyes. Rodriguez then looked over and noticed a poster for an old 50's double feature on the wall, and I'm guessing that's when he and Tarantino started talking about the cool idea of putting together a double feature of their own and calling it Grindhouse.

The idea was to create a full night of entertainment, complete with trailers and two feature films, back-to-back. It was supposed to be a big hit, and had it been a double feature of Will Ferrell ice-skating with Napoleon Dynamite in one flick and Ice Cube falling on his ass while trying to remodel a house in another, it would have been huge. Instead, Tarantino & Rodriguez chose to base their double bill on the kind of low-budget exploitation cinema that played in many seedy and rundown movie houses during the 70's & 80's, so it bombed. Shoulda thought that one through, boys.


Grindhouse is this month's Film Club pick over at Final Girl, and I wanted to join in the reindeer games, so for my "review" I watched a DVD that included the extended versions of Planet Terror and Death Proof along with the 3 trailers from the theatrical version.

The following pics were taken while I was watching the movie. I notice a lot of the other movie blogs put up nice sharp pics straight from their DVD or VHS copies, but I'm running on some antiquated equipment, so bear with me. But you can be entertained by the shaky and blurry quality of the shots, which may give you a slight idea of how increasingly hammered I got on Jack Daniels while watching this.


The first trailer is for a movie called Machete, starring my boy Danny Trejo. It feels good to watch homeboy come up, I remember the first time I saw him was in a movie with Michael Pare called The Last Hour (aka Concrete War), where he played a scary Mexican who killed people. Five years later, he was in his first Rodriguez movie, Desperado, where he played a scary Mexican who killed people. Now here he is, starring in his own fictional movie where he plays a scary Mexican who kills people, only this time he uses machetes.
Some kitty cats show up and turn into a big growling panther, then the first feature begins.
Planet Terror is Robert Rodriguez's ode to grade-Z zombie flicks and John Carpenter's badass heroes. Or as I once told a cousin of mine, Planet Terror plays like an Italian rip-off of an imaginary movie written by George A. Romero and directed by John Carpenter. Then I remembered that my cousin doesn't know who the fuck any of those dudes are in the first place. So I just told him that it's lots of gore and lots of action but zero titties. He was kinda bummed about that.

The movie begins with the character of Cherry Darling as she go-go dances on stage. Listening to the director's commentary, you find out that a lot of the character is based on the actress playing her, Rose McGowan; the whole "useless talent" thing she says throughout the movie is something Rose actually says all the time, and the running gag about Cherry wanting to become a comedian is taken from everyone in real life always complementing McGowan's wit and suggesting that she should pursue a career in stand-up. I'm assuming the same people who say that are all guys and some may have succeeded in bedding her with that bullshit, like Rodriguez ultimately did with Rose behind Mrs. Rodriguez's back. When I noticed in the end credits that McGowan also sang a couple of songs on the soundtrack, I wondered if maybe a better title for this flick would've been "I Love Rose McGowan", or "Rose & Robert: Two Against the World" or "Rosie, You So Crazy!". I'm sorry, I'm just hating because I'm lonely. Good for you, guys. I wish you both the best. Hope the wife understood.

But then again, maybe she didn't and Rodriguez feared the worst so he manifested his fear in the form of Josh Brolin's character, Dr. Block. Dr. Block is this dude who finds out that his anesthesiologist wife, Dakota, is cheating on him for the second time with Fergie from the Black Eyed Peas. I'm guessing the first time he found out he was kinda cool with it. He was probably all like "Hey, let's get down and have some Three's Company action up in this piece" but Dakota was like "Nope, I only want to be with her" and that pissed homeboy off so he broke that shit up. Well, when he discovers Dakota was wandering off for again for another taste of those lovely lady lumps, Dr. Block loses his shit completely and becomes a real fucking creep about it. I think he was even going to try to stab Dakota in the eye with a hypodermic needle. Calm the fuck down and call your lawyer, dude. I don't know, maybe Rodriguez likes to see Dakota and Fergie as him and Rose, and that asshole Dr. Block is the mother of all those kids he gave first names starting with "R".

Or maybe Robert sees himself as El Wray, this short unassuming guy who you later find out is actually the Baddest Motherfucker Who Ever Walked The Planet. Wray runs into Cherry and you find out they used to be together, so you know how that's going to go. So it's good that they found each other again, what with the world coming to an end because fucking dude from Lost had to let loose some chemical gas that turns everyone else into flesh-eating "sickos". Where Robert Rodriguez sees himself in any of this, I have no idea. I don't even know why I brought it up in the first place, but the fact that I'm currently well into my third glass of Maker's Mark may have something to do with my current train of thought.


In addition to having to deal with those zombie assholes, Wray's also got some shit going on between him and the Sheriff, played by Reese from the first Terminator movie. Sheriff Reese has both Tom Savini and the original El Mariachi as his deputies, which is pretty awesome. Savini can't shoot for shit, though.

Cherry gets attacked and winds up losing her leg, which really bums her out. On the other hand, by the end of the movie she's got a kick-ass replacement that also doubles as a machine gun and rocket launcher. Plus, I'm sure she can now qualify for handicapped parking, so there you go. Anyway, lots of blood, gore and explosions ensue.

I almost forgot. Later on, Tarantino shows up as a rapist, giving in my opinion his second best performance since From Dusk Till Dawn where he played a rapist.


The look of the movie is perfect. Not perfect as in pristine, but perfect as in getting the tone and feel of this kind of movie down. In addition to giving the appearance of a worn out film print with scratches and jump cuts, Planet Terror is also shot like something that would've played in a downtown discount house back in the late 70's/early 80's -- plenty of shaky zooms along with fast & cheap lighting set-ups. Two of my favorite examples are a kitchen scene with the Block family and Fergie's scene where she's stranded on a dark highway; they look like they could've been deleted scenes from Lucio Fulci's City of the Living Dead (aka The Gates of Hell).

Planet Terror even pulls the "Special Guest Star in a B-movie" trick. Bruce Willis appears as Lieutenant Muldoon, and you can tell that they shot all of his scenes in a row, mostly in close-up, and then filled the rest with stand-ins and body doubles and creative editing to give the illusion he's in the movie a lot more than he really is. It works, and it made me feel like I was watching the movie in an alternate universe where grindhouse theaters and drive-ins never died, the same alternate universe where Willis' career never quite recovered from the failure of Hudson Hawk and now he's reduced to doing special appearances in b-movies. Alternate Universe Bruce Willis probably stars in a lot of action movies and giallos over in Italy and Spain too.


It's fast and lots of fun, but ultimately this feels less like a real grindhouse movie and more like a movie for someone who always wanted to know what those kinds of movies were like but never really wanted to take the time to watch one. Because the truth is that you would need to watch about 3 or 4 real zombie/action flicks of the time to get the amount of craziness and gore and sheer scope of the stuff that happens in Planet Terror. I think Rodriguez knew that and wasn't trying to make an exact replication of that kind of movie in the first place, he just wanted to give folks the same kind of enjoyment he got growing up on that shit.


Three trailers follow. First you have Werewolf Women of the SS, by Rob Zombie. There's Nazis, young women being tortured and bloodied and branded with a swastika iron, machine gun-toting werewolves and Nicolas Cage at the end giving his usual understated performance. It's okay.

An advertisement for a fake Tex-Mex joint called Acuna Boys follows. I guess the joke here is how unappetizing the food looks, photographed in stark lighting conditions. Maybe it was because I was completely hammered at this point, but I swear I saw a shot of pizza served with potato chips. I was like Ewww, but then I remembered that I like to eat pizza with mojo potatoes at Shakey's, so really, how big a difference is THAT shit? I also dug that the Acuna Boys mascots were named after characters from one of my favorite movies, Rolling Thunder. If you haven't seen that shit, then you just don't fucking know and I can't help you. Search that shit out, bro.


Then you have Don't from Edgar Wright. This one's my favorite out of all the trailers. It's just random moments from the movie with no dialogue, only sound effects and music and GOB from Arrested Development narrating. It plays like a trailer to a foreign horror movie, except the distributors don't want to tip you off that it's either very badly dubbed or subtitled. Main dude from Hot Fuzz is supposed to be there somewhere, but I didn't catch him. The fat dude from Hot Fuzz, on the other hand, makes a big fucking impression, showing up in a diaper and with brown smudges all over his body.

The final trailer is for Eli Roth's Thanksgiving. I like this one too. It's about a dude chopping up motherfuckers over the Thanksgiving holiday. Roth also appears in this as a dude who gets his head chopped off while homegirl from Cabin Fever is giving him head, which I guess evens everything out or something. I remember Roth programmed two weeks of movies over at the New Beverly Cinema in L.A. last year, and he would introduce movies like Pieces and Mother's Day, so you can totally tell that his heart lies with this kind of stuff. He does a great job of making a trailer for a movie that would not feel out of place with those flicks. The cheerleader landing on a butcher knife was a little too much, though. I'm just a fucking prude, that's all.


A kitty cat walks through the jungle and becomes a panther, then the second feature begins. Death Proof isn't an ode or tribute to a grindhouse movie, it IS a grindhouse movie. Basically what this means is that most of those flicks are really 45-minutes of story stretched out to 90 with padding and filler. It's what the filmmakers DO with the filler and padding that makes it either worth a watch or a waste of your time, and I think Quentin Tarantino does fine with his in Death Proof.

So you have Kurt Russell as this nacho eating motherfucker named Stuntman Mike, who has this fucked-up thing for stalking girls and then crashing his reinforced muscle car into them. And that's it, really. In between the set-pieces, you get to know the two separate groups of girls he sets his sights on.


The first half of the movie involves 3 friends hanging out in Austin, Texas. You have this chick named Jungle Julia who's a local celebrity D.J., you got homegirl from Cabin Fever and Thanksgiving looking really tiny, and then you have Arlene/"Butterfly", who's visiting her friends from out of town. We watch as they hang out at a bar, drink, smoke bud, and talk. Lots of talk. Talk about guys they hooked up with, guys they're not going to hook up with and guys who they want to hook up with. To even out all this girl talk, you also have Eli Roth and a couple of other dudes (one of whom is a little too, uh...fey for me to believe him) talking about trying to hook up with these girls at the lake house tonight, and how much liquor it's going to take for them to do it.

That reminds me, have you gone drinking at a bar recently? Goddamn, it's way too fucking expensive. That's why I do all my drinking at home. It's also why I don't have friends anymore and I'm single. But maybe that's a good thing, considering how much these dudes in the movie probably end up spending on liquoring up these chicks. Damn. Whatever happened to just taking a girl out for some ice cream? Nah man, apparently now you gotta do shots of Jager and bring some fuckin' primo Kush to blaze on if you even wanna THINK about courting a young lady. Fuck that, I'll just stick to being a shut-in and jerk off. And cry.


Maybe that's why I dig all the chicks talking in this flick, and why so many regular people don't. They don't wanna hear that shit, they probably get enough of it at home. I'm trying to watch the fuckin' game, go call Laura and tell her all of that bullshit.

I read the screenplay to this shortly after having seen it for the first time, and there's a part that isn't in the final film where Jungle Julia talks about her typical day. You know what, I'm just gonna fuckin' find the script and type the shit out for you. It'll be the best written thing on my fuckin' blog, that's for sure:

JUNGLE JULIA
Hey, that's a discombobulated day in the life of a drive time DJ. I get off work at 10:00am, I'm at home by 10:30. By 11:00 I'm snuggled up on my comfy couch, in my pajamas, hittin' the bong. I watch I Love Lucy at eleven...The Andy Griffith Show...at eleven-thirty. At 12:00, I watch back to back episodes of The Fresh Prince of Bel Air. At 1:00 I watch back to back episodes of Moesha. At 2:00 I watch Sponge Bob Square Pants. At 2:30 I watch Pinky and the Brain. At 3:00 I watch back to back episodes of Sister Sister. And at 4:00 I watch Tyra. Then I eat a big bowl of cereal, get unstoned and go about my day.

NATE
What do you mean you get unstoned?

JUNGLE JULIA
(like a doctor)
Dairy fucks up your high. You wanna get unhigh fast, eat a bowl of cereal.

Jesus Christ. You just fucking KNOW this is Quentin Tarantino's average day. You know this, right? But what the hey, you can't hate a dude for writing what he knows. Give homeboy some points.


You also have to give points to Tarantino for putting so much of himself into this flick, because there's a lot more personal shit in his flicks than you might think. No, I doubt that Quentin goes around running over cute girls or slicing up Japanese mafia with a sword, but there's other things spread throughout, like fetish-type shit that comes straight from his beautifully twisted mind. Anyone with eyes probably knows that Tarantino might have a bit of a thing for feet. But after having watched Death Proof the movie and having read Death Proof the script, I'm talking about other kinds of kink.

Near the end of the opening credits, there's a close-up shot of Arlene holding onto her crotch as she runs to her friend's apartment, doing the pee-pee dance. In the script, that scene goes on longer. It describes Arlene as she sits on the toilet, letting out a "racehorse stream of piss" and the shot ends with the camera zooming into Arlene's "pretty face of relief". Halfway through the movie, another woman talks about how her current man has a thing for watching her pee, and her girlfriends are more amused than grossed out. Again, maybe I'm being a prude and overreacting. But then in the script to Tarantino's next flick, "Inglourious Basterds" (that's how he spells it, people) a woman pees herself and the camera is supposed to follow down to a shot of all the urine pooling around her feet. I don't know, I'm probably just looking into it too much. But if there's ever a Grindhouse 2, and Quentin's movie is called something like "Piss, Baby, Piss!" remember where you heard about that shit first, folks.

What's also cool about Death Proof is that it sets you up for one thing and then changes it up on you. Arlene is the one who notices that evil-looking car Stuntman Mike drives, she's the only one who feels something is wrong. Everyone is talking about this lake house they're going to go later that night. They set you up for Arlene as the Final Girl and the lake house to be the setting for all the crazy bad stuff to happen and yet it doesn't work out that way.


The second half focuses on a second group of girls who are in town working on a movie. You have stuntwoman Zoe Bell, stuntwoman Samuelle L. Jackson, John McClane's Daughter (wearing a cheerleader outfit, but no butcher knife up the snatch) and Rosario Dawson. Like our previous group, they also like to talk; all the fun they're having on the movie they're working on (Tarantino himself has said this is the conversation he knows the cast & crew have about working on his movies), the guys they've hooked up with, and the guys they want to hook up with. In both groups there's a woman who wants to get romantically serious with a film director and end up living in his mansion. That was interesting.

Anyway, Stuntman Mike is on the trail, following them around and taking pictures, like he did with the last group of girls. This perv eventually works up the nerve to sneak up to Rosario's bare feet while she's asleep and starts to touch and lick them. This has absolutely NOTHING to do with Quentin's apparent foot fetish, I'm sure. Stuntman Mike's mission to get off is made easier when Zoe comes in with the idea of having her buddy Samuelle drive a muscle car at top speed while Zoe rides on the hood. Why? I guess because she just felt the need to do it. Don't question Ms. Bell. Car chases and crashes ensue.


From all the blah blah blah, you find out that Rosario Dawson is a single mother dying to take part in something with the "cool kids", Samuelle L. Jackson is packing heat and not afraid to use it, and Zoe Bell is indestructable. After what happened in the first half, you're familiar with the game Tarantino is playing and you pretty much have it all figured out -- it's not going to work out the way the movie has it set up and instead it's gonna flip your expectations upside down, right side up, backwards and forwards and all that shit.

Except that doesn't happen. The movie proceeds to go exactly the way it's been set up. Zoe Bell does survive Stuntman Mike's attack with hardly a scratch, SLJ does use her gun on that punk-ass, and Rosario's character is just as determined to join her friends as they look to kill this motherfucker.

I'm reminded of something Tarantino said about the way he originally structured his screenplay for True Romance. For the first act, the audience knows nothing while the characters know everything. For the second act, both the characters and the audience are on the same level. But for the third act, the audience knows everything while the characters know nothing, so we have no choice but to watch the characters get themselves closer and closer into danger. Then Tony Scott came and restructured the script into chronological order for the movie. But if Tarantino was to explain the structure for Death Proof, he would probably say: "First half, I know more than you. Second half, you THINK you know, but I still know more than you. I own you. I never graduated high school and this is how I display my superiority. I rule. I love feet."


While the look of this movie isn't as beaten up as Planet Terror, it still gets the feeling across. There's the occasional scratch, skipped frame and jump cut, but it's the flat lighting used in some of the settings that give it that 70's drive-in look, like an AIP production or something from Crown International. There's also an entire section that's in black & white too. The best explanation I can come up with for that is maybe Tarantino was trying to recreate the feeling of watching a grindhouse movie at his place. The print quality for the movies he'd screen for his friends varied wildly, according to Rodriguez. You'd have a movie that had gone completely pink-tinted, or one that had proper color but was really beaten up (like Planet Terror), or you had a reel or two that was only avalable in black & white, and on rare occasion you might come across a print to a 30-year old movie that looked absolutely stunning -- which would explain the final third looking so clean. That's what I came up with, anyway.


I liked Death Proof as much as I liked Planet Terror. They're completely different kinds of movies, but I think both are representative of the kind of flicks that only Dark Sky or Synapse or Anchor Bay or one of those other companies release on DVD, and I think both are a good time, drunk or sober. Preferably drunk. It's too bad Grindhouse failed at the box office. I would've liked to have seen a follow-up. But I'm obviously in the minority. The majority is busy getting ready to pay their hard-earned money to see The Pink Panther 2 next month.

Ok, time to close this sucker up and end it with a little moment some viewers may have missed. In the theatrical version of Death Proof, just as Arlene is about to take Stuntman Mike inside and give him a lapdance, a "Reel Missing" card fills the screen. Since the previous five minutes or so were all about working the audience up to see this lapdance, we're left with cinematic blue balls, left laughing and applauding at being suckered like that. It wasn't until I saw this at a drive-in, that I was able to hear something being said right before the "Reel Missing" card goes away and the rest of the movie continues. See if you can figure out what the suspiciously Quentin-Tarantino-in-High-Pitched-Black-Voice-sounding guy is saying. Enjoy.