Samantha Morton has big breasts and Viggo Mortensen has skinny legs

Now I want to be in the film business, and I don't care what it is, as long as I make the minimum requirements to get those awesome "for your consideration" screeners of shit I'd have to pay to see. Especially now, in my current situation, where I'd most likely have to wait until DVD to see half of these motherfuckers. This is what I was thinking to myself while watching said screeners this past Sunday night/Monday morning.

My buddy was housesitting for a friend, and it's a nice place, the kind of thing to give ambition to an unambitious motherfucker like myself. In addition to a bunch of DVD's and Blu-rays of old favorites, there were stacks of thin cardboard cases of these screeners. Fuckin' A. So we started watching them on the dude's sweet flat-screen, marathon-style.

The first movie was called The Messenger, starring Woody Harrelson and Ben Foster. Now I know you know who the fuck Woody Harrelson is, and even though he's never been out of style as far as I'm concerned, it's safe to say that thanks to Zombieland he's got a little more heat on him currently, a high temperature not recorded since the days he's been doing buddy pics with IRS favorite Wesley Snipes. By the way, THAT motherfucker's resurgence is LOOONG overdue. Make all the tax jokes you want, homeboy can fuckin' bring it when he wants to, and I hope he gets to make that James Brown movie Spike Lee is always going on about (now that Lee's Jackie Robinson flick is probably never gonna happen). Always bet on black, is what I'm trying to say. But I digress.

So yeah, you know who Harrelson is, but maybe you don't know who or what a Ben Foster is. Foster is this kid who started off playing teeny dreamboy types in films like Liberty Heights (see that shit) and Get Over It (I don't wanna see that shit), but nowadays it's hard to even fathom that because the guy has been playing freaks and psychos for a while. Plus, he just has this crazy intensity to anything he does; if you watch him in Alpha Dog, you will see that Foster can't even take a shit without looking like he's gonna have himself a stroke -- or maybe it was just one of those really painful dumps, I don't know. But yeah, in this movie he plays a soldier who got wounded in Iraq and is now back in the States. Because he's being played by Ben Foster, you know this dude has issues, and it doesn't help that he's been given a new assignment: breaking the news to a family that their soldier son/daughter/husband/wife/etc has been killed in action.

Holy shit, are those scenes tough to watch -- which is the point, obviously. You feel like you're witnessing something way too personal to be witnessing. You don't want to be in this room and would love nothing more than to get the fuck outta there. There's a subplot involving Foster and Samantha Morton (as the wife of one of the fallen) that I was never fully into, and yet I wanted those scenes to go on as long as possible. Because each additional minute spent watching these two mumbling at each other meant one less minute watching mothers and fathers and wives crying/yelling/vomiting after finding out their loved one is fuckin' dead.

The off-duty scenes between Foster and Harrelson were far more interesting, reminiscent of some Hal Ashby kind of shit, which I guess means that I was getting a The Last Detail vibe from it. The performances are top-notch; Harrelson is good as always and this is easily Foster's best work yet and Jena Malone is cute too. But the movie was OK but nothing worth tossing your cookies in a corner store for; the "We regret to inform you..." scenes were powerful to the point of being unwatchable, and the stuff with Foster & Harrelson was cool, but the Samantha Morton stuff wasn't that interesting. If it's Ms. Morton that interests you, maybe you're better off watching a film she did with Jason Patric called Expired -- HOLY SHIT what a fuckin' movie THAT was.

The second movie was A Serious Man from the Brothers Coen. Real quick, can I bring up my little theory on the Coens? Ok, cool. You know that scene in The Big Lebowski when the Dude is at Maude's place and she's on the phone while some fuckin' bald prick is laughing his ass off while reading something? Then both Maude and Bald Prick get on separate phones to talk to someone (from Spain, right? I don't remember) and they share a joke ("Que ridiculo!") and laugh their asses off while Dude just stands there looking assed out? That's the Coens laughing at their secret joke and we're the Dude left standing there wondering what in the fuck. And I love the fuckin' Coens. You just have to admit their totally having their fun at what a bunch of dopes we are.

Anyway, I had read the script for this movie a few months before the film was released, and after the watching the finished product, I was surprised at how the movie damn near reflected the script exactly. I mean, even fuckin' Tarantino made some cuts and changes for Kill Bill and Inglourious Basterds. But it was weird to see that the movie I pictured in my head while reading the screenplay is pretty much the same movie I saw on my friend's buddy's plasma set. The only thing missing was the neighbor's kid constantly saying "Ow" each time he caught his old man's fastball.

It takes place in 1960's Minnesota and some actor I never heard of plays this professor whose life begins to take a turn for the shitty. His wife wants to leave him for some asshole, the kind of asshole who never raises his voice and plays at being super-nice to you in a way that makes you wish he'd fuckin' scream profanities at you so you can deck the motherfucker. He has this deadbeat brother who lives with them, never looking for a place of his own, or a job for that matter. Then there's this kid who doesn't want to fail the prof's class and maybe he did/maybe he didn't try to bribe the dude. All this has our guy looking for answers, so he tries getting advice from some rabbis, and if the movie is saying what I think it's saying based on the outcome of what the rabbis say, it's got a pretty fuckin' right on point about this kinda shit.

I thought the script was an amusing read, with only one real laugh-out-loud moment -- and that's exactly how I felt about the movie. I know this shit has been getting praised all over, but unfortunately I can't say the same. I understand this is probably the Coen Bros. most personal work, but to me, the whole piece felt like minor Coens. Keep in mind that minor Coens is still Pretty Fuckin' Good, I'm not slamming this one, I just don't see coming back to it like I do their other flicks. Watching all the fucked up things our main dude goes through, I kept flashing back to the Coens' other films, and how they seem to take pleasure in torturing their leading characters. It makes perfect sense that they're very good friends with Sam Raimi.

3rd flick of the night was Precious: Based on the novel Push by Sapphire, directed by Michael Shannon's former manager, Lee Daniels. Daniels produced Monster's Ball and The Woodsman, then went on to make his directorial debut with a real piece of work called Shadowboxer. Now when someone's first movie is incredibly well-received and watched, their second movie is eagerly awaited with bated breath. But since Shadowboxer was neither of those, I guess it's safe to say there wasn't much buzz going on with Precious, a buzz that soon came around after it won over the Sundance crowd and left with a couple of awards. They say the air is thin up in Park City, and perhaps that's why motherfuckers were swooning over this one, because as far as I'm concerned, Precious is most definitely a film made by the same guy who made Shadowboxer.

Which is not to say that either film is garbage, because I might be one of two people who enjoyed the hell out of Shadowboxer (me and whoever decided to play it at the Silent Movie Theatre a few months ago) and I enjoyed the hell out of Precious. But the critics and audiences who are Slumdog Millionairing this motion picture are confusing me because they're telling me this is not only Powerful and a Great Movie but downright Respectable. Me, I'm like Whaaa? Shadowboxer was a awesomely weird trip of a movie, and so is Precious. I'm just confused that something as oddball as Precious is getting a free pass by the general public.

Storywise, it actually sounds like something created for the Oscars; a fat, illiterate black chick tries to get by while getting the shit beat out of her physically and emotionally by her monster of a mother (played by monster of a comedian, Mo'Nique). But then I watched the fuckin' thing; it's a goddamn phantasmagorical freak show of garish colors and harsh camera filters and sweaty, pockmarked skin and extreme close-ups of a rapist's face intercut with super gross shots of boiling cauldrons of pig's feet. Ugliness seems to be Lee Daniels' forte, in some cases repeated and familiar; the apartment Precious lives in is shot and designed much like the apartment Cuba Gooding Jr.'s character lived in as a boy in Shadowboxer. Mariah Carey is here and made to look very dowdy and every ounce of Crazy Ho is drained out of her; the only pretty thing to look at in the entire movie is Paula Patton as the black version of Nice White Lady.

This flick features some great performances, and any awards Gabourney Sibide or Mo'Nique get will be richly deserved. The final scene between them is as intense and awesome a climax this year as watching Shoshanna Dreyfus & Aldo Raine try to do their thing at the end of Inglourious Basterds. If I wasn't so overtaken by the nutty strange tone of it all, it might have affected me emotionally in a tear-jerker way. Instead, it only affected my head as I was left scratching it. The stuff Mo'Nique says to this poor girl, for example, left me at a weird crossroads, stuck between Cry Your Eyes Out Blvd. and Laugh Your Ass Off Lane.

At this point, we took a break from the screeners and watched Big Trouble in Little China because my friend had never seen it before and that, my friends, is a goddamn Crime Against Humanity, if you ask me. I think he liked it, I don't know, I didn't ask him; I fear the truth sometimes and would rather live in the Matrix when it comes to friends/families opinions on stuff I dig.

Fifth screener on the menu was The Road, the Weinstein Brothers' attempt at having their own Oscar-winning film adaptation of a Cormac McCarthy novel. I'm sure you know the deal; post-apocalyptic world, man and his son walking the Earth like Caine in Kung Fu, getting into adventures, trying not to lose hope and humanity, shit like that. The guy who made The Proposition made this flick and I wish I dug The Road as much as I dug that flick, but alas, that was not the case.

It was an OK movie, but I just wasn't able to get into it. I wish I could get into it more, but this a lot like The Messenger in that I liked it in stops and starts, but never as a whole. Plus, it's one of those movies that feels a lot longer than it really is. Mortensen is good, but nothing special, the kid is really good and he didn't annoy me the way most kid actors do. You totally get the sense that this is a kid who only knows this world (he was born after the Apocalypsation) and it's pretty goddamn heartbreaking to see him enjoy what is quite possibly The Last Can of Coke In Existence -- that shit would probably go well with the last fresh Twinkie in existence from Zombieland.

I didn't know Charlize Theron was in the movie. The Road remains the only Cormac McCarthy I've yet to read, but I understand that Theron's character is less a presence in the book than she is in the movie. Surely, the book is better, and I might even revisit the movie after I read it. But for now, this one was kind of a sad disappointment.

Last movie after sunrise was Brothers, starring Spider-Man, the guy who almost replaced Spider-Man, and Queen Amidala. Jim Sheridan directed it, and I guess he's still recovering from that 50 Cent movie. Perhaps after one more movie he'll get it out of his system, but this was still pretty good. Maguire's the good brother, a Marine on his way out to Afghanistan and Gyllenhaal is the bad brother, and we know this because he's introduced getting out of the joint and because he's got the perpetual five o'clock shadow going on. That means you're either a badass or bad. Or just lazy.

After Tobey goes out to fight the questionable fight, he gets into a chopper crash and it looks like he's a goner. The family is devastated (the kids seem to take it pretty well, though) and poor Natalie Portman is left looking as alone as Mathilda after Leon went jihad on Stansfield. Bad bro Gyllenhaal slowly becomes the new daddy to the family, and we are treated to a few montages of the warmth entering all their hearts, etc. If you've seen the trailer, then you've seen the entire movie, and you probably already know the little twist that follows. Shit, you don't even have to see the movie to know where this shit is going, but I'll hold off anyway.

Like I said, it was a good flick; Gyllenhaal is decent, Portman is good and looking older for a change (is it her hair?), but fuckin' Maguire is pretty fucking top notch. I guess when you make Spider-Man money, you can take it easy on the acting jobs, but it's work like this that makes me wish he worked a lot more. You know who doesn't make Spider-Man money but is certainly working his ass off? Muthafuckin' Clifton Collins Jr., baby. Yup, he's in this motherfucker, as Maguire's superior. Good for him, and good for Jenny Wade showing up in one scene as Gyllenhaal's date. When I did the MySpace thing, I had her -- and half the cast of Feast -- as a friend, and she was capable of some very entertaining blogs when she felt like it.

My main complaint would have to do with something that happens to Maguire, and what results from it. I just never bought it. I don't know if they had to trim that shit out or it was never in the script to begin with, but it felt like there were some scenes missing from this movie about Maguire, and I think they were sorely needed. His character pretty much changes in a snap of the finger, and this was the kind of shit I think you needed to see happen in slow-motion, so to speak. Ugh, I'm not making any sense. Shit, I never was.

So that was it for the first night of screeners; we then chowed down on breakfast burritos after. I could end it here, but let me just mention something about these screeners. Some of them actually give you a choice to either accept or not accept the rules; shit about not pirating copies and not letting your friends borrowing them, etc. And then ACCEPT and DECLINE would pop up on the screen. Clicking on ACCEPT gets you to the main movie menu, but I was tempted with clicking DECLINE to see what would happen. I just didn't want to find out that the DVD would get all Mission Impossible and self-destruct or something, so I never did. Also, they all have periodic disclaimers during the movie, reminding the viewer that this isn't something to be pirated or sold.

About those disclaimers; it was interesting to see how they differed in timing, depending on the studio. Lionsgate (Brothers, Precious) was the most frequent, their shit popped up every fuckin' five minutes. Dimension Films (The Road) was every ten minutes, and so was Oscilloscope with The Messenger. Focus Features (A Serious Man) wins the prize with a disclaimer popping up only every 30 minutes. Nice work, Focus. Regardless of frequency, the disclaimers weren't distracting -- with the exception of The Messenger. While all the other disclaimers would fade in and out at the bottom of the screen, fuckin' Messenger would scroll in from the top of the screen from left to right -- twice. What the fuck, man. That shit just cost you a nomination, if I was a member of the Academy. But I'm not, so consider yourself blessed.

There might be another screener marathon tonight. If so, consider this shit Part 1. If not, consider this shit Buckaroo Banzai and I just promised you ...Against The World Crime League next.

This asshole thinks he's writing for Yelp or something

The pictures are terrible, I know. I wanted to go the extra mile (mostly because my written descriptions are shit) so I borrowed a friend's camera which I was as familiar with as I am with the Balkan highlands, which is to say, no familiarity whatsoever. Besides, I never said I was fuckin' Robert Capa, motherfucker. I never said I took pictures like him, either. *rimshot*

So an old friend of mine got out of prison last Tuesday, and even though I hadn't spoken to him in years, he hit me up and we've been hanging out for a while. This, in addition to being lazy, has kept me from writing about a couple things I intended to write about. But before I continue, I just have to say that ever since my friend called me a few months back (via smuggled Boost Mobile cell phone), I was afraid that hanging out with him would result in my violent death from one of many rival gang members/drug dealers/general scumbags we'd run into. Turns out (for the time being, at least) that I'm most likely going to die of boredom -- and that's a good thing when you think about it.

Anyway, here are my long-delayed, never-awaited ramblings about my two visits to the new Gold Class Cinemas, located in beautiful, increasingly homeless populated Old Town Pasadena. The deal about this place is that they charge you between $22-27 for a ticket to enjoy a movie in a luxury environment (it's $32-35 everywhere else). There's 3 other GC's in the United States, but there's a lot more Down Under (where GC was established). I guess they figured if we welcomed fuckin' Crocodile Dundee with open arms, then we'll welcome an even more expensive night at the movies than usual.

I buy tickets at the Child's price whenever I can get away with it, and in my current financial state, I shouldn't be going out to see ANY movie (and yet I do), so visiting the Gold Class was something I would have to hold off on until the hopefully-near-future to accomplish. I'm also waiting for the day I can fill up my gas tank completely full instead of to the halfway point, like I've been doing for about a year now. But thanks to a friend with friends, we got wind of a pre-opening "Mock Service" thingy the GC people were doing. See, the week before they were scheduled to open on Dec. 2nd, the GC wanted to straighten everything out, work out all the kinks, oil up the squeaky wheels and gears and blah blah. They would do this by screening movies for volunteers and giving said volunteers the full GC experience gratis. Tickets, food, drinks -- all on the house.

The only downside to this was 1) the movies would be second-run choices and 2) there was plenty of room gleefully given for error, hence the idea for a Mock Service. Fine by me, since I wasn't paying for shit and who knows when I'll be able to afford to go to this joint, if ever. My buddy reserved two seats for The Invention of Lying on the first day, and I reserved two seats for Zombieland on the last day. You can get seats online, but for the Mock Service you had to call it in. I was asked where I preferred to sit; front, middle, back & center or aisle. My friend told me they never asked him that, so that may have been a fresh mistake right there. They tell you to show up about 30 minutes before showtime, and I'll get to that in a bit.


FIRST DAY

We arrived at what used to be the Laemmle One Colorado Plaza, inside Miller Alley. The old joint was turned into a new one, with the Gold Class marquee up, but even then, it's still very easy to miss it outside the block.



Inside, we went to the counter and my friend gave his name and reservation number. The lady printed out our tickets and put them inside a little foldout card, then she told us to go down the two flights of escalators (literally underground cinema) where a host would greet us. A lady in a black dress met us and took our ticket card, then walked us over to the lounge area. It has the look of a trendy hotel bar/lounge, with nondescript "hip" music playing at a low-enough volume as to not disturb whatever conversation you're having. Another lady, dressed in an all-black Asian-style jumpsuit thingy brought us our menus and took our orders. This is the reason why they suggest you come in 30 minutes early; it gives both customer and staff enough time to do everything comfortably. Our server asked us if we wanted to eat our meal here in the lounge or inside, where it would be brought in during the film; we went with the latter.



About 5 minutes before showtime, the lady took our drinks and walked us to our seats inside the auditorium. There are about 4 rows of seats in the entire room, each row containing about 4 groups of 2. So I guess that makes it 32 seats, maybe even less if I remember it wrong. Either way, it's very small and intimate, making the medium sized screen look gigantic because of it. It's raised stadium-style seating with plenty of leg room, there is no chance whatsoever of somebody's head getting in the way or of you accidentally kicking someone. The seats are large, plush and recline as far back as to make it a bed -- it's even more like a bed if you request a pillow and/or blanket, which the GC peeps happily offer. One side of each seat contains a large compartment under the armrest, where you can put your jacket/purse/shopping bag/whatever inside. The lady also mentioned "man bags", which was funny, mainly because she was cute. There's a small table attached to the center where the food is would be served. At the seat end of the table is a green-glowing button; this is the call button that you use if you need anything from your server, or if you just want to be an asshole like Ricky from Made and calling them over.

The servers all wear the black ninja outfit thingies; this helps make them less likely to stand out as they walk back and forth, in and out of the room. They never get in front; they always do their thing in the aisles, crouched down to your level and never speaking about a whisper. When the lights went down, the movie immediately started, there were no trailers even though we were told there would be. Our food arrived about ten minutes into the Ricky Gervais flick, and our server slowly reached over to the table from the aisle. She was on my side, so I felt antsy about it, wanting to take over as my plate of Wagyu Beef Burger hovered over my fat stomach as the poor server's wrists showed signs of weakening.

The meals are prepared in a manner that makes it easy to eat in the dark, and with minimal chance of making noise or a mess. My burger, for example, was given to me as two White Castle-sized sliders, albeit a very thick and tall sliders. The sides on my plate consisted of a handful of their potato chips (slightly thicker and softer than regular chips) which were okay, and onion rings, which were insanely tasty and it's a damn shame they only give you two. My buddy got the Cuban Sandwich, which he said was pretty good for its type. Oh, and I really liked the burger too. If I had to pay for it, I might have felt a little gypped considering how compact they were, but for free food, they were goddamn scrumdiddlyumptious.



During the movie, we took advantage of the call buttons and asked for refills. Just for S&G's, I asked our server if they happened to have popcorn up in this bitch; turns out they did, and my friend and I each got a regular-sized bag. It was rather sub-par and I'm guessing they just bought the kind that comes already popped inside a big bag from the local grocery store. Twice we had another server come up to us with food we didn't ask for ("rice pillows" with dipping sauce and a creme brulee dessert), and like a couple of dumb assholes we asked if these were complementary. They weren't, these dudes just fucked up and were about to give it to the wrong people before we brought that shit up like Good Samaritans/Stupid Douchebags. How could we be so fucking dumb? We should've accepted that shit and scarfed it down -- after all, this is Mock Service week and that was THEIR mistake to make. My buddy and I pledged we would do take advantage next visit.


The print for The Invention of Lying had seen better days; there were scratches and splices every once in a while, and I guess that goes with the whole free thing -- you're not going to get Arclight quality audio-visuals. I'm assuming this all got better after the GC opened proper. For the record, I thought the movie was good but uneven. It's like Gervais and company didn't know how to segue between hilarity and pathos, so instead they bumper-car that shit together. By now, I'm sure it's only a few weeks away from a DVD release, which sounds about right for this kind of flick. I don't subscribe to the "If a movie isn't considered good enough to see in a theater, then it isn't worth seeing" theory, some flicks are better off waiting a few months to see. I mean, this Gervais flick isn't some kind of grand spectacle that demands to be seen in the largest moviehouse you can find. Some movies feel more at home being watched a few feet away from your couch, you know what I mean?

We were supposed to get a mock bill and a survey to fill out after the flick, but we never did. Most of us in the audience even stayed behind a few minutes after the credits just in case, but nope, nobody came. So we left. Of course, I had to check out the restrooms, and I would've taken pics of the crappers and pissers except there were other guys in there and that would've been really weird for them to see some fat asshole of Mexican descent snapping shots of them with a Sony Cybershot as they excreted recently imbibed Diet Coke. It would feel odd. So here's the sink:


Instead of soap dispensers, they had bottles of Aesop "Resurrection Aromatique" Hand Wash and Hand Balm. Whatever, right? But I looked it up, and the same size costs $37 for the wash and $100 for the balm. This is why I love the 99-Cent Store, by the way. Clean hands are clean hands, regardless of whether you spent a buck or $100 on them. But if you need to satisfy your inner Patrick Bateman, then by all means, hit this shit.



LAST DAY

This one shouldn't be as long. But the following Monday, we returned for Zombieland, or to be more precise, I returned and waited for my friend who was being held up by a baby. I could explain, but that statement reads pretty funny, so no. As I stood outside the building, anxiously awaiting my buddy to get the fuck over here, a lady of the darker echelon came from behind, deep into a cell phone call:

"She said 'I bet you like bumble bees'. I was like 'Bitch, what the fuck kind of question is that?'"

The lady had a point, though -- what the fuck kind of question IS that? If "bumble bee" is code for something, let me just say right now that my bumble bees are Exit Only, bro. So back off.

By the time my friend arrived, we had less than 10 minutes before showtime. But by now, the GC peeps had their shit together because they were able to take our orders, lead us to our seats and all that jazz within that brief amount of time. In as nice a possible manner, they pretty much told us to fuck having our drinks in the lounge, we better take that shit inside right now. Unlike the first day, they had trailers and a Gold Class Feature Presentation thingamabob before the movie. Unlike Invention, the Z-Land print looked great and based on that it's safe to say that the GC peeps will be downright Arclight about sound/picture presentation. If not, then that's another reason to use the green button. Yup, they got their shit together by now -- which is unfortunate because we never got to take advantage of wayward meals being sent to us. We also found out too late that they finally got their liquor license (which they hadn't finalized at the beginning of the Mock Service week), otherwise we'd have definitely picked something stronger than the usual caffeinated sugar water.

After both screenings, I'd move around and sit in various seats to see which ones were better or worse. Turns out, they're all good EXCEPT the left and right side of the front row -- only the middle seats are good there, and even then, you're gonna want to recline it back a bit to get a good view. The side seats in the front row are bullshit, they're just as bad as if you sat in a similar seat at a multiplex, you're gonna have to tilt your head way up AND turn it at an angle. If I had paid $22-27 and ended up sitting there, I'd be pissed. Yeah, well what do you expect if you choose to sit front row to the side? I certainly wouldn't expect fuckin' Bowfinger seats, that's for sure.

I've seen Zombieland before and liked it, so I didn't mind my buddy asking to check it out. I was very disappointed to find out that he already knew about a particular cameo ahead of time, even though he's hardcore about avoiding spoilers. Me, I spoil everything and even I wouldn't spoil this one. After the movie, the servers gave us the mock check and a survey. This time we ordered Fish & Chips and a Chicken Piccata Sandwich; including two drinks each, it came out to about $37.

As we left the theater, I told my friend that I thought it was a nice experience. But even if I was back living the salad days and dropping green like DeNiro in Goodfellas, I don't think I'd frequent this establishment often. It's more like a once-in-a-while type of venture. Part of the fun of watching certain movies in a theater is watching them with an audience; like when Avatar comes out, I want to see that shit with a packed opening night crowd, not in what amounts to an intimate screening room. But then there are some movies that I don't want to take a chance with and end up watching with a bunch of noisy jackasses; I still remember going to see Far from Heaven at my local AMC and having to deal with a couple of cunty yentas who not only refused to shut the fuck up, they then had the nerve to declare out loud "THIS MOVIE WAS TERRIBLE" as the end credits barely came up. Something like that or There Will Be Blood I'd see at a joint like this.

And even if I did go again, I'm not sure I'd order food. Tasty as it might be, the portions are too small for the price they're charging, plus, it can be a little distracting trying to work with food more, uh, substantial than a hot dog or nachos or something. A visit to Gold Class would make a nice gift, though; treat your sweetheart or your mom to something like this and not only will it make them feel good, it'll also work toward justifying your assholishness towards them the other 364 days of the year.

I told my friend all of this, and he responded by telling me that the Alamo Drafthouse was better and cheaper. The End.

That angry yell/growl thing Japanese chicks do is so adorable

Some Thanksgiving stuff, starting on the night before and following through to dinnertime. Less a rambling I want to post and more a way to get my monthly minimum of 4 posts. This is where you mouse it on over to the top left corner and click away.

Over at the Cinefamily at the Silent Movie Theatre (how about that for a simple name for a place?), they were going to screen a Japanese flick last Friday called Love Exposure. It's from the director of Suicide Club (or Circle) and supposedly this movie is so good it'll bring sight to the blind and peace in the Middle East. In these trying financial times, only movie marathons and court ordered appointments bring me to the city of Los Angeles, so I wasn't going to be able to catch this one.

But the cool video store where I was able to rent imported DVD's of Ong Bak 2 and Red Cliff I & II -- yet inexplicably only stock the full-screen version of Gran Torino and the theatrical cut of Watchmen -- happened to have the Region ? DVD of Love Exposure, so right on.

The movie starts with a young boy in a religious family, named Yu -- we're not talking Carrie White's mom over here, these are ultra-devout but kindhearted believers -- everything's cool until one evening, right after saying grace before dinner, Yu's mom has a sudden coughing fit. Since this is a movie, you know that there is no other cough in cinema but the Cough of Death, so a couple of scenes later, Yu's mama is on her deathbed. Before she kicks, she gives Yu a little statue of the Virgin Mary and tells him to find a woman just like her to marry.

While Yu grows into his teens, his dad takes it up a notch with his beliefs and becomes a priest -- and not just any priest, but one of the cool priests, the kind who give entertaining sermons and are very down-to-earth with the parishioners and don't fuck little boys. Despite being minus a mother/wife, Yu and his pops do pretty well for themselves and they seem to have achieved that ever-elusive state of contentment.

Then that fucking woman came into their lives.

One day, some drama queen shows up at church sobbing up a storm during one of the priest's services. Next thing you know, she's totally into the Jesus thing and gets baptized and all that. This bitch inhales anything Catholic, and that eventually includes the priest. Yup, a man's brains and a man's morals have nothing on a man's dick. This dude ends up shacking up with the crazy lady on the down low, going as far as moving out of the church and getting a place of his own so they can live together.

Yu is pretty bummed, not so much because Bros Over Hos has gone by the wayside, but because this bitch is a real pill. Goddamn nuts, is what she is, but I guess because Yu's father is lonely/horny, he puts up with all of it. But as time goes on, the lady becomes more and more bored and more and more tired of living with the priest. She even starts acting pretty cunty with him, but you know what? Fuck this guy, this dumbass who wants to get some pussy but won't marry her and still shows up every week at church acting as some kind of example to follow. She gets in his face about that, like Hey motherfucker, you like to talk shit about that corrupt Zero Church cult, but you're just as corrupt with your "I can't marry you 'cause I'm a priest" while still wanting to fuck me. She has a point, this dizzy broad.

Eventually she grows tired enough to leave him for a younger man, which was probably gonna happen whether or not he married her, and Yu's dad goes into a deep funk. A funk so deep, the priest starts acting creepy and starts giving depressing/scary sermons and getting into his son's face about being a sinner. This fuckin' asshole. Yu is a goddamn saint, a Good Boy, and here is is, being given shit every morning about how he's not good and will never be good. Yu is being punished for his father's douchebaggery.

Yu is forced by the old man to come to confession every day and confess made-up sins. Soon, even THAT isn't good enough for the priest, so he forces his son to go out and commit sins just so he can have some real shit to fess up about. Fuck This Asshole, and while I'm at it, Fuck The Bitch Who Fucked Him Up. And while I'm at that, God Help This Kid Yu.

Ladies and gentlemen, I've given away the first 20 minutes of the movie, and yet, I've given away nothing. Because there is so much that follows, so many little turns and detours and twists and reflections and new plot strands, what I've spoiled for you amounts to bupkis in the story department. So I'll just get into other things about this flick.

Sion Sono is the director, and while I thought his Suicide movie was alright, the guy jumped quite a few notches with this one -- quite a few. Shit, let's be real, this guy has jumped a lot of fucking notches. This is his Goodfellas, his Boogie Nights, his Pulp Fiction. This is Sono strutting confidently up to the big boy table of cinema and throwing down his motherfuckin' gauntlet and declaring "Here's MY postmodern epic, motherfuckers!" Except he'd say that shit in Japanese; Scorsese, Tarantino, P.T. Anderson, et al, would all look at him like "I don't understand you".

But I honestly do think it's just about as good as those movies, in my humble opinion. It both shares similar tricks to some of those flicks (my fave being what I like to call the Wes Anderson Camera Zoom), but mostly the style of Love Exposure is very much its own. It's also very much its own when it comes to running time; this motherfucker is three minutes shy of FOUR HOURS.

That's why I'm not too heartbroken about missing this on the big screen; an intermission is the least you can do when showing a movie of this length, and that's not necessarily a given with these screenings. I still remember going to see the 227 min. Once Upon a Time in America at the American Cinematheque and finding out they were NOT going to have an intermission. I don't care how good your movie is, that's some bullshit right there. Even Hitchcock knew you shouldn't make a flick longer than your bladder can take, and if you have to, then you better place a break somewhere in that motherfucker.

As long as it was, the flick never felt the least bit boring or tiresome. If having my own intermission (15 minutes to hit the head and brew up some coffee) at the two hour mark had something to do with that, I don't know. I just know that it had a damn good pace going. I will admit that there was a good 90 minutes or so that weren't as fun to watch as the rest, but I think that was the point. These 90 minutes are to Love Exposure what the Clementine's Loop sequence was to Boogie Nights; Yu's character goes through the most fucked up shit here, and it really got me riled up. There were many loud exasperated breaths and "Oh no!" and "This is bullshit!" coming from me during this period. But do you criticize a film for doing its job? I mean, I think that's how the audience is supposed to feel for this stretch.

Sono is a goddamn brutal manipulator of the audience's emotions; during this film, he can make you dig a certain character and make you think they're cool until an hour later when you're screaming for someone to shotgun this motherfucker, and vice versa. You think the movie is gonna be about one thing and then it turns into something else, and then when you've grown accustomed to THAT movie, this crafty bastard switches it up yet again. A villain can go from someone you despise, to someone you pity, to someone you pretty much forget about. And other stuff like that I don't want to spoil.

It's pretty funny the kind of subjects and themes Love Exposure delves into and how they manage to feel natural, part of the world of the movie, rather than coming off like the filmmaker bragging "Look at the crazy shit I put in my movie". The main stuff here seems to deal with religion and perversion, which I know go together like peanut butter & jelly, but still, Sono seems to be on the "pro" side of both those things. If there's anything that he's against, it's cults. There was some similar shit in Suicide Club or Circle or whatever that shit was called, the whole idea of blind sheep following and doing whatever the fuck the motherfucker they worship tells them to do. Maybe it's because I'm thick and stupid, but to me, Sono doesn't appear to come from the camp of "cults and religion are all the same shit" because he's far more damning of the film's Zero Church than he is of Catholicism.

Anyway, I'm going into the movie a bit more and that's not how I want to go about this, so I'll stop. It's a great flick, definitely one of my faves of the year, and hopefully this gets some more play here in the States rather than the occasional screening. The copy I had featured some pretty dubious subtitles on occasion, and I still dug this one pretty deep. By the time the credits rolled, I was both drained and ecstatic. It didn't bring the dead back to life or create a new messiah, but it gave me four awesome hours of entertainment.

Usually, when I watch a movie that good, I quit while I'm ahead. But because this was the night before Thanksgiving, I had my annual viewing of Planes, Trains and Automobiles. This is cinematic comfort food at this point, and it just seems like a very Turkey Day thing to do. I won't go into the movie, because you're probably as familiar with it as I am, but I will bring up how it would be nice to someday watch the rumored ninety minutes or so that hit the cutting room floor.

The production tales of going way over budget and shooting way too much film make it sound like this could've been John Hughes' Heaven's Gate for all the behind-the-scenes madness that occurred. But unlike the Cimino movie, this one was a hit, so I guess all was forgiven. You do tend to notice that the movie feels noticeably trimmed down, kind of like Dogma, another flick that was cut down to the bone in post. I had to look up online why John Candy suddenly had a black eye in one scene or what the fuck they were doing in Wisconsin in the first place, and sure enough, it's all shit that was shot but cut down for length or something. I doubt it would ever happen, but I'd love to see some of that footage make its way to a future release.

So then came Thanksgiving, where I had my second cinema-related tradition; I catch a flick at the theater before I go to meet the folks for dinner. I time it so that I arrive for dinner anywhere from 15-25 minutes before chow. This is good for all of us. Schedule-wise, it was best to go check out Ninja Assassin.

I barely remember the story, because the story was barely worth remembering. Something about Interpol agents in Berlin trying to figure out who is killing the fuck out of gangsters or KGB agents or politicians or something like that. They figure out this must be the work of a ninja, and the flick focuses on one played by Rain, who I only know as the guy Stephen Colbert has beef with. In between the dull detective-ing being done by some Brit and a cute Brit actress playing American, we have scenes of Rain eating noodles and looking pensive as he has flashbacks to his tough childhood upbringing as part of a ninja clan. The ninja clan master is played by none other than muthafuckin' Sho Kosugi, which goes a long fuckin' way towards showing you where the filmmakers hearts lie with this material.

This is an apologetically bloody ninja movie. That's all they wanted to make here and they accomplished it. The fuckin' movie is called Ninja Assassin -- he's a ninja who kills other ninjas, so calm the fuck down about redundancy -- and that's what you get here. They don't pussy out with the blood or the missing limbs, and even though a good portion is CGI'd, it's the best looking computer blood I've seen yet. Plus, they were going for a stylized blood pattern effect anyway, and CGI is the way to go for that shit. I'm more upset when I see guys like Romero use it, but couldn't care less if the director of V for Vendetta wants to do that shit.

I just wished I cared more for the actual goddamn story, or at the very least, I wished the story and dialogue were enjoyably bad like the Ninja flicks of the 80's. Instead, it's far worse -- it's just dull. It really is just blah. The girl is cute, so that helped a lot, but that's about it. But as soon as Rain and at least one other person of the Ninja persuasion found themselves in a room together, right the fuck on. The opening scene and last fifteen minutes are the best, and this will make great DVD/Blu-ray material because you can just jump to the bloody Ninja ownage. I liked Rain's voice/accent, too. Digging Sho Kosugi's voice/accent goes without saying.

One last thing, though. If you own a theater and project your shit in digital, for God's motherfuckin sake, turn up the goddamn motherfucking brightness on your shit. Christ almighty. I'm sure some of the shit in Ninja Assassin was cool had I been able to SEE it. Ugh. Really, people.

Then I went to have dinner. This time I decided to take a chance and try some cranberry sauce with my turkey for the first time. That's right -- I'm such a pussy, I actually had to man up to eat cranberry sauce.

That's some 3G network for your ass right there

So I checked out Roland Emmerich's new joint, 2012, last night (or is it this morning) for the midnight show. With the exception of that piece-of-shit 10000 BC, I've enjoyed all of his movies as dumb fun spectacles -- even his Godzilla flick, I dug. It was a packed house; on the other end of my row were a bunch of rowdy teens who would ask people in other rows if they believed in the whole 2012 phenomenon, and those who agreed were met with cheers and "Yeah, 'cause its TRUE, baby!". These kids were harmless, just having fun; I did not wish for Charles Bronson to show up and introduce them to his friend Wildey like I usually do to troublemaking youths. The best part was when one moviegoer told them that not only did he believe in 2012, he's already stocked up with food and ammo. One kid asked him what if it comes down to a flood, and the man smiled -- "That's why I have a boat". The kids cheered.

When the movie started, the framing was off, with the bottom of the film on the top. The place went ape-shit, but this might as well have been the cinematic equivalent of Kitty Genovese because nobody did anything. After about a minute of this, I ran outside and picked up the conveniently placed Guest Services phone in the aisle and told the person in charge. It was fixed quickly. More theaters should offer these direct line phones, they fuckin' rule. You can call them for projection problems, sound problems or people problems. If I ever have to do it for the latter, I'll probably act like some 70's style snitch leaving an anonymous tip to the fuzz.

Does it really matter what the details are in how our planet comes to an end? I hope not, because I've mostly forgotten it by now. Something about the neutrinos boiling up the Earth's core and somehow that's gonna cause Earth Crust Displacement and mega-quakes and super volcanoes and tsunamis like a mutha. Some Indian (dot, not feathers) scientist discovers this shit in 2009 and tells his fellow scientist/good friend (played by homeboy from Redbelt -- SEE THAT SHIT NOW IF YOU HAVEN'T), so Redbelt goes off to tell Oliver Platt about it. The cool thing is that I figured half of this movie was going to be about how nobody believes Redbelt and the guys in charge get all Mayor Vaughn about it, laughing the warnings off and saying shit like "That is preposterous!". But no, in this movie, as soon as the government bigwigs get the report, they take that shit seriously and are on the motherfucker, like Marsellus Wallace.

The prologue takes us through some of the going-ons between 2009 and 2012 and then the shit gets real. In usual disaster movie fashion, we are introduced to a variety of characters, doing the whole ensemble cast thing. The top guys in this flick are definitely Redbelt and John Cusack, though. Speaking of Cusack, I remember an interview he gave a few years back when he said something like how he only liked about 10 of his movies and the rest were for money. That was pretty funny, and I don't think you need fuckin' Kreskin to pull out the reason for doing this movie out of the darkest recesses of Cusack's mind. I wonder if he kinda resents the peeps for not going to see him in movies he obviously cared about, like Grace is Gone or War, Inc. but flocked to see him in shit he straight-out considered beneath him like Con Air or Must Love Dogs. It sucks that he doesn't seem to be a fan of his work with Savage Steve Holland either, and I can live with that -- but if I ever find out that he thinks Tapeheads is a piece-of-shit, then he will have cemented himself in my mind as Talented Actor/Supreme Douchebag For Life.

So Cusack's a guy who wrote a book that only sold 422 copies and makes a living as a limo driver, his ex-wife Amanda Peet (who must be happy to be in something people will see for a change) and his two kids live with some plastic surgeon (who is only 15% of a dick instead of the usual 125% you'd expect in these kinds of flicks), and somewhere along the way he's gonna try to save them. There's also a Russian billionaire with his two scumbag asshole kids and his bimbo, Woody Harrelson as some nut who broadcasts a radio show out of a camper in Yellowstone National Park (he's pretty much Art Bell), a Buddhist monk and his family, a singing duo on a cruise ship (one played by George Segal, in a role not as big as I thought it would be -- no Judd Hirsch, this one), you got Thandie Newton here looking cute for a change, and playing the President of the United States, Danny Glover. Upon his introduction, one of the kids in the audience said out loud "I'm too old for this shit".

It's cool to see Danny Glover in a big-ass movie like this nowadays, because there was a period where it looked like that would only happen if he was saddled with the Drunk Jew Hater. But over the years it appears that D-Glo has gotten some dental work done. Maybe "appears" is the wrong word, more like it "sounds" like he's had work done, because every time he opens his mouth it sounds like he'th got himthelf thome dentureth and now he thpeakth with a lithp. Goddamn, this has been a bad year for actors with dentures; first you got Leonard Nimoy orating on the "voyageth of the thtarship Enterprith" in this year's Star Trek, and now Danny Glover is having trouble speaking. These guys have money, yet this is the best dental science they could buy? I'm broke, and I was rather British with my teeth growing up, so I know this is gonna be my future. Fuck. For God's sakes, people, floss floss floss. Don't be like me or Danny Glover or Leonard Nimoy.

Emmerich's older hits like Independence Day and Stargate were co-written with Dean Devlin and I don't know if they got into a lover's quarrel or split that shit amicably, but either way they don't make movies together anymore and you tell in the tone of the later films. How can that be, you ask, aren't all these flicks just shit exploding or falling apart? Well yeah, they are -- except the biggest difference is the lack of corny-ass jokes. That shit was obviously a Devlin special, and I still remember when the motherfucker was promoting Godzilla by showing clips from it on some E! program; he remarked on the creature's huge/deep footprints by claiming the big G wore "some big-ass Nikes", followed by the kind of goofy and satisfied chuckling that only the corniest of the corny give.

But the side-effect to all the Komedy! disappearing is that the sheer joy is gone as well. I mean, ID4 featured aliens vaporizing the fuck out of cities, millions of people died and yet you never really felt that loss because you were too busy laughing at Big Willie Style decking an alien and saying "Welcome to Earth!" -- we should be ashamed for finding that shit funny, by the way. Now that Devlin's gone, Emmerich writes his disaster movies with a dude named Harald Kloser. Think about that; without Borscht Belt Devlin, there's only a German and Austrian writing this shit and do you know what that means? It means you got motherfuckin' Sprockets in das haus. I noticed this shit with The Day After Tomorrow and straight on to 10000 BC and it's still in full effect here; I'm talking about the substitution of joy for utter bleakness. To put it in ID4 dialogue terms, 2012 is less "Now that's what I call a Close Encounter" and much, much more "Is Mommy sleeping now?". This isn't to say that it's completely humorless, because there are jokes, just not nearly as many as in the Devlin collaborations.

You can play a drinking game with how many tearful farewell I'm Gonna Die phone calls are made to family members in this flick. I'm not complaining, because if I recall correctly, there were lots of phone calls made on United 93, so it's a nice harsh dose of realism to a fantasy scenario (or is it? DUN DUN DUN!). Plus, one of those phone calls pays off with a particularly nasty ending, which I think was done on purpose, because Emmerich's a fuckin' sadist/German.

He extends his sadism when it comes to who lives and who dies. It's not quite Deep Blue Sea, because most of the characters you expect to live, will in fact, live. It's just that those who do end up getting owned get it pretty bad. Two of the worst deaths (in my opinion) go to two relatively likable people; in Emmerich's 2012, the innocent suffer and the guilty are not punished -- with the exception of one jerk whose death is so slow-mo'd that it was like Emmerich was telling the audience, "I hope you guys enjoy this asshole getting it, because this is the only time I give you douches the satisfaction, oh and by the way, thank you for paying money to see my movie". To make matters worse, I'm pretty sure that motherfucker died quickly (which is why they slow-mo it), whereas I Just Fucking Know the two cool people went slowly and painfully. Shit, there's even a character named Roland who gets got; the director doesn't even spare a motherfucker with the same name as him!

I'm reminded of something Quentin Tarantino said about watching the film Silver Bullet; he said that in the climax of the movie, you have this girl, a boy in a wheelchair, and Gary Busey, all fighting a werewolf. Now, you know they won't kill the girl because she's narrating the movie, and they're not gonna kill the boy in the wheelchair, so that leaves Busey. The movie can kill off Busey and not break any rules, and because of that, Quentin was totally scared for Busey's character. That's kinda how I felt about the secondary characters in this flick.

It's a great looking movie, as long as it's some special effects shit you're watching, because this movie was shot in HD, meaning that half of the human scenes look like film and the other half suffers from that goddamn video blur that makes you think you're watching a Samsung display in the Dynamic Vivid mode at your local Best Buy. Now the video blur might be okay when it's a Michael Mann or Lars Von Trier joint, because they want it to look that way, it's part of their style, but I hate when it happens on your average Hollywood movie. Dean Semler is the cinematographer here and he is an Oscar-winning badass responsible for shooting The Road Warrior and Dances with Wolves, but for God's sake, keep him away from the goddamn HD because he's one of the worst motherfuckers to use that format. Every movie he's shot on it, with the exception of Click, suffer in large parts from that fuckin' video blur. That's a fucked up place to be when your best looking movie in the format of the future is a fuckin' Adam Sandler movie.

2012 isn't a fun movie, but it's never boring and the flick's full of the kind of spectacle you put down your hard earned $6.50 to watch (if you're like me and buy a Child's ticket through the automated kiosk), if that's what you're looking for. It's a SyFy channel quality script given a Sony Pictures budget, but it's an above-average SyFy channel movie, the kind that you spent two hours watching at home with a bowl of Lucky Charms and a bowl of Strawberry Diesel and after, you're like "Hey that wasn't half bad, and it's good to see Jason London/Lorenzo Lamas/Stephen Baldwin working again". The acting is as good as can get in this type of movie, motherfuckers acting like they're doing Harold Pinter or some shit. No joke. With the exception of the awesome dude who plays the Russian billionaire (he plays that shit like he was a bad guy from one of the Boondock Saints movies), some of these thespians are thespianing the shit out of this flick -- especially Redbelt, he has this one scene where the vein is popping out of his forehead and he's near tears and I wonder if a CGI-techno-fetishist Kraut like Emmerich even cares THAT much, and he made the fuckin' thing.

When the trailers started, it was 12:00 and when the end credits came up, it was 2:45, so it's a long fuckin' movie. But it never felt long, it moved fast and always kept my interest. Even ID4, which I liked as a kid (but has since gotten worse as time goes on) had its lame boring parts to get through, but I didn't feel that way with this one, I was always into it. So much so, that I managed to hold in a piss for the second half, but it wasn't one of those painful pisses, it was one of those that merely makes itself noticed, so maybe that doesn't count. I'll tell you what does count, is the time I almost died holding it in when I first saw Mars Attacks! and didn't want to miss a second of it.

It's a weird conundrum or whatever the right word is; it's not a movie one should go out of the way to buy a ticket to see in a theater, 'cause it's not that fucking good, yet the beautifully-made apocalyptic visuals demand a theatrical experience, so if you're not going to see it in a theater, then just don't see it period. I don't give a fuck how big your fuckin' HDTV is or how awesome your Blu-ray plays, it's still not quite the same. So I guess the way to go is to just hit that shit at a discount house and I think I'm just gonna end it here.

The title of Most Eagerly Awaited Sequel to a Cult Classic from 1999 now goes to Free Enterprise.

Back around '99-00, I remember seeing huge window ads at the local Blockbuster for something called The Boondock Saints, and while I recognized the names, it didn't really get me interested. Then a friend of a friend raved about it a couple of years later, and around that time, Ain't It Cool News had an article about a sequel. A sequel? Well, I had no idea what a fuckin' cult juggernaut this Boondock flick was. So I went ahead and took a chance and bought the uncut Japanese version from eBay (at the time, that was the only version that was untainted by the MPAA) and checked it out.

I dug it, man. It was a lot of fun and I got a kick out of the characters. Over the years, as word kept coming and going on a possible sequel, I discovered something else that bothered me (via the Internet, of course). Apparently, being a fan of this movie makes you as bad as a fuckin' Juggalo, because in the eyes of the hipsters, not only is the movie a piece of shit, but the people who like the movie as well. Many a commenter on AICN or the AV Club would say things like If I found out my friend liked The Boondock Saints, I wouldn't want to be friends with him or her anymore. Wow. I don't understand that kind of sentiment; I think it's safe to say that I'm as nutty a movie fanatic as possible, but I've never hated on someone for liking something I straight up abhorred. I've felt upset at not digging a movie the way everyone else dug, but that's more I Wish I Saw The Same Movie and not at all Fuck You For Not Having My Opinion.

Even the motherfuckers who made that fuckin' Paul Blart: Mall Cop a box-office behemoth, I don't hold a grudge against. Shit, if that shit floats your boat, then god bless ya. Then you got those that go, Hey, fuck that guy Troy Duffy, he's a piece of shit as a human being. Look, I saw Overnight and I know that the director's probably a supreme asshole dickbag, but if you're gonna use the director's personality to judge a film's worthiness, then be prepared to start reading a lot more books. Do you get what I'm trying to say here? Probably not, because I'm an idiot who really liked The Boondock Saints and what are you doing hanging with me?

So, the filmmakers finally got their legal troubles settled and we now have a sequel, The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day (almost beating out Excessive Force II: Force on Force as my favorite redundant movie title). If you haven't seen the first one, in short, it was about two Irish brothers who start going Death Wish on criminals in the city of Boston. By the end, I felt like I had watched an origin story and the follow-up would be purely about the continuing ownage of evil men by the "Saints". It didn't turn out that way, because when we're reintroduced to the brothers McManus and their father, we see that they are now raising sheep on a farm in Ireland. It appears they went into hiding shortly after the events of the first film, on the run not only from the U.S. authorities, but from soap, razors and clean clothes.

Back in Boston (played by Toronto), some old priest gets assassinated in the same manner the Saints used to take out many a bad guy; double taps to the back of the head, then leaving pennies over the dead guy's eyes. Once the McManus bros get wind of this news, they stowaway on a cargo ship (do people still do that shit in the 21st century? just wondering) and head back to Beantown to take out anyone remotely responsible. Meanwhile, both the Boston police and the criminal underground are scratching their heads wondering if the dead priest is really the work of the Saints. They each have their own reasons for being worried; the Mafia guys are afraid of being attacked and three detectives are freaked the fuck out that their simpatico connection to the Saints will be discovered and it'll be slammer-time for them.

Willem Dafoe was in the last one, portraying a brilliant and queer (in both senses of the word) FBI agent investigating the Saints murders. This time, instead of Dafoe, the sausage fest that is the main cast is made slightly less pork by casting Julie Benz as a brilliant and queer (in only one sense of the word) FBI agent investigating the possible Saints murder. This Benz chick has been carving (pun!) herself quite a niche in anything resembling cool and violent; Rambo, Punisher War Zone, one of those Saw movies, and two shows I never watched but are supposedly among the Greatest Shows Ever Made Oh My God I Can't Believe You've Never Seen It -- Dexter and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Anyway, she's really good here and she's pretty hot for a woman in her forties. Except she's in her mid-thirties.

See, that's something about this movie that I noticed right off the bat -- everybody has aged like a motherfucker here. In the case of Benz, it's probably the harsh lighting employed by the relatively gritty cinematography they went with for the sequel (the first one had a more slick and classical look, which I preferred). Sean Patrick Flanery was a good-looking motherfucker but here it looks like he got into the same car accident as Rose McGowan, the kind of car accident that involves getting into your car and driving over to a clinic for a particular kind of surgery. Norman Reedus could only look 19 for so long before time caught up with him and stapled those sag bags under his eyes. Bob Marley (the comedian, not the dead reggae singer) probably works a lot of late night clubs. The only one who aged well is Billy Connolly, and that's probably because he made the decision to look old back when he was still relatively young. The movie takes place eight years after the first one, but they could've got away with eighteen.

Clifton Collins Jr. has had a great fuckin' year in the '09; he got to fuck up the Enterprise's shit with Eric Bana, he chain-whipped the hell out of Jason Statham, but most importantly, he got to hook up with Amy Adams and Mila Kunis and all he had to do to swing that was lose an arm and a testicle. Now here he is playing Romeo, a guy helping out the Saints in hopes of becoming a part of the team. He's pretty funny as this sort of combination badass motherfucker and overly emotional weepy bastard.

Romeo's also subject to the occasional joke made at the expense of his Mexican heritage. But that's okay, as long as they're funny and besides, there are jokes made at the expense of the Irish, Italian, gays, and I think that's it, actually. Surprisingly, the Chinese get off pretty easy and are only violently killed -- it's like the anti-Crank.

While the brothers are out doing their thing, father Noah (known as the badass Il Duce in the original) stays in Ireland to keep the home fires burning. It is during these occasional cutaways to him that we're treated to flashbacks of his past reminiscent of The Godfather Part II. We see young Noah as he makes his living helping his father at a leather factory, and I guess you can see where this is going, but I don't give a fuck whether I can see that shit coming or not, I still enjoyed watching it happen.

On the whole sons and fathers tip, the sequel also introduces us to the son of the Mafia don from the last movie. He's played by Judd Nelson, and if the mere mention of his name does nothing for you, then I can't fuckin' help you and should leave you be. Jay minus Silent Bob said it best, calling this motherfucker "way harsh". He's not in the movie as much as I'd like him to be, but it was fun to see him do his thing whenever he had an opportunity. It's even better because he's overacting and overacting is the name of the game in Boondockland. You can't overact? Then you're not welcome here.

I don't know how seriously Troy Duffy takes this shit, I mean, past the whole "kill 'em all" wish fulfillment deal, I don't know how much more of this is meant to be taken beyond It's Awesome To Watch Motherfuckers Get Owned, and I really don't care. The way I see it, this is like watching a comic book movie and I'm not talking about The Dark Knight or Road to Perdition, where that shit is played as real world as possible, I mean more like Darkman or Punisher: War Zone where the rules of reality don't apply in this motherfucker and people act like they have dialogue bubbles hanging over their heads, complete with bold letters and underlines. Shit, if you did with this movie what they (unfortunately) did with the director's cut of The Warriors by adding comic book frames in between scenes, it wouldn't feel out of place. Also, I know Darkman was not based on a comic book, but it might as well have been.

I'll be honest though, the first 30-40 minutes of this flick were downright terrible. It was hard to sit through and it got to the point where I thought I was watching not only a shitty sequel but the worst movie of the year. It was suffering from many problems; it was dull, it was desperately trying to be funny when it didn't have to be, the pacing was way the fuck off, and worst of all, it was suffering from sequelitis. I'm talking about the kind of sequel that not only rehashes the same shit from the last one, but then continually makes cute references and callbacks to the first movie. Remember the way Agent Smecker was introduced in the first one? Well, here's the same exact thing but with a woman! It just wouldn't stop and I wouldn't have been surprised if Bruce Willis popped up and said "How can the same shit happen to the same guy twice?" All right, I'd be a little surprised if that actually happened.

But then, somewhere after that tough first and 1/4 acts, the film turns on a dime and actually stops becoming a rehash and starts getting real about becoming a goddamn true sequel. It happens around the moment a particular character's confesses his or her true motivations, and it was like Duffy purposely was leading us on, making us think that the worst case scenario was happening with this movie, all before stepping in, blowing cigarette smoke in faces and going "Uh-uh, faggots. You gay faggots thought this was gonna be some more of the same faggy shit, huh? Nope, I know what the fuck I'm doing, queerbait, because I'm not a gay faggot." Then he'd turn up House of Pain and show off his shitty Fighting Irish tattoo for the 16th time. Because Overnight notwithstanding, something tells me Troy Duffy probably talks and acts like that in real life. He's probably called more people gay then there are gay people in the entire country.

ADDENDUM IN THE MIDDLE OF MY SHIT AFTER THE FACT: In the interest of full disclosure, I'm making all these fucked up jokes about the guy, but I actually met him and his producer Chris Brinker at a Best Buy, back in December '02. My buddy and I were looking at the Boondock DVD's, and my friend was going to buy one for himself. Some dude walks up to us and introduces himself as one of the producers, then tells us that the director is in the next aisle. They had been buying movies as stocking stuffers for friends. He asked if we wanted to meet him. Holy shit, we thought, this could be awesome or this could be how guys in their early 20's get kidnapped and sold to white slavery (or brown slavery, in my case). But there he was, Troy Duffy, and he was really nice, actually. Not an ounce of asshole on him. He offered to sign our DVD's, so of course I bought one, even though I had the uncut Japanese version at home. He used his pocket knife to tear open the plastic from the DVD cases, and on mine he wrote "VERITAS AQUITAS" and the first couple lines from the Latin prayer. On my friend's copy he wrote "Keep it stiff". So that's my Troy Duffy story. I can't speak for everyone else, but he was nice to me and my buddy. And here I am, talking shit about him on a blog. But nobody reads this blog, so it all evens out.

From a certain point on, you (if you're me) start getting into the movie and start digging the proceedings instead of wishing them to end. The rest of the film won me over; the story started to catch my interest, the pacing started to flow right, the jokes started to get funny, and only traces of sequelitis remained in the system (the slow-mo gunfights, the dramatizations of what the agent thinks happened at the crime scene). But those traces were acceptable because it felt more like the kind of stuff that was put there because the fans expect it, not because it was Duffy being lazy. Kinda like how every James Bond movie needs a pre-credit sequence and every Star Wars movie needs a space dogfight and every Pixar movie needs an emotional moment that makes you want to cry in the theater and embarrass yourself because the Pixar people are evil sadistic bastards who want to fuck your shit up and I HAVEN'T FORGIVEN YOU FOR WHAT ALMOST HAPPENED TO ME WHEN I SAW UP, MOTHERFUCKERS! Those aren't comparisons, by the way, just the best examples, so calm down and have a drink or a smoke or something. I really wish Duffy didn't feel the need to give the Benz character what basically amounted to her version of "There was a FIREFIGHT!", that was kinda douchechilly.

Anyway, it comes out to about 1/3 of a shit movie and 2/3 of quality shit. The stuff you expect to see in a Boondock movie is here in spades; motherfuckers get owned, off-color remarks are made, actors overact with terrible accents and a guy shits himself if you like that sort of thing. There are a couple of genuinely awesome lines, quite a few hilarious ones, and plot-wise, Duffy pulls out the occasional ace in the hole -- particularly near the end, and boy is it a beaut. There are also moments in this movie that I would go as far to say have Fuck All to do with the plot but were put in there because maybe Duffy figured he might never have the chance to do so again. My favorite such example is a dream sequence where a character basically gives a speech on how men have to take their balls back and de-pussify themselves.

It suffers from those godawful opening 30-40 minutes and a cheaper look (larger scope in story with only a slightly larger budget to tell it), but aside from that (and that darned sequelitis) I'd say that by the end credits, the flick worked its way to becoming about as entertaining as its predecessor. Was the first one a classic? No fucking way. But it was Good Times, and overall, so was this one. I left happy to see this sequel and look forward to a Boondock Saints III: The Saints Go Marching In if Duffy decides to make another one. Non-fans need not apply and can instead stick to making snarky comments on some message board about those of us who dig this shit.

P.S. I apologize to any Juggalos out there for what I said earlier. I was just trying to make a point, I wasn't being as judgmental as the Boondock Saints detractors. I've never heard an ICP song, but I'm sure they're fine musicians and I'd probably like their stuff so much that I would go out and paint myself in that stupid clown makeup which is all I'd need to complete the look since I'm already fat and stinky. Peace.

I appreciate the invite, but driving to the New Bev would've meant extra gas money and I committed that night to doing things the Cheap Bastard way

My computer monitor ate shit a couple of days ago. I ended up hooking the computer up to my television and it works pretty well. Videos look spectacular but the fonts are a little on the blurry side. Whatever. I'm just letting you know in case I use the wrong letter on a word it's probably because some of these letters look the sane om thc televisiom nomitor. See what I did there?

So I was going to go to the Aero Horrorthon for Halloween, but my friend cancelled due to low-fundage and in the battle between putting your last $20 into either Movie Tickets or Rent, Rent won the fuck out, and by Rent, I mean the amount one pays to not get kicked out of their residence, not the musical about how awesome it is to have the AIDS. Anyway, he was actually doing me a favor because I'm in the same boat, albeit mine is about halfway sunk while his is merely residing in trenchant waters. Boo-Hoo on not being able to go to the Horrorthon but Yay for saving money. After sitting at home for a while, being sullen and drunk, I got the idea that Hey! Why Don't We Watch Horror Movies At Home? and I called my buddy to tell him and there you go.

And there I am, at my friend's place, about to watch a couple of flicks; I brought Trick R' Treat and he brought, uh...um...Paranormal Activity. The former I've never seen and the latter, well, just read my last post. In true finish-your-dinner-before-you-get-dessert fashion, we would watch Paranormal Activity first. In case you're wondering, yes, this was a bootleg, and not only was it a bootleg, it was a bootleg of the original cut that played film festivals for a couple of years before Paramount/Dreamworks decided to buy it. All I knew was that this version was about 10-15 minutes longer and had a different ending. I would give it another shot, plus I had no choice, really. Paranormal was my friend's choice and I'm not gonna be the dick to push that by the wayside just to watch what *I* fuckin' brought. It's called good manners, people, and sometimes, I have them.

(I'm assuming at this point that you've seen PA or don't care if I give anything away, so yeah)

My thoughts? Believe it or not, longer did not mean more painful. In fact, I'll go as far as to say that this version was better than the one currently robbing people of their time and money at theaters. This isn't me turning into Roger Ebert and going from calling the Cannes cut of The Brown Bunny one of the worst films ever made to giving the shorter version 3 stars and Thumbs Up; in the end, I still think the movie's a disappointment. But after watching this longer version, I feel that in their attempt to make Paranormal get to the Good Stuff faster by cutting it down, they (either filmmakers or studio or both) hurt the movie and turned something that was OK-at-best into something that was completely shitty.

First off, they trimmed quite a bit of character moments; now, that may sound like they did us a favor, considering how douchey/insufferable the characters came off in the theatrical cut. But the longer version helps make a bit more sense of it; Katie's change in attitude is more believable. In both versions, you find out that the demon has been more or less a part of Katie's life since childhood, but in the original cut, you get more of an idea of just how badly this has been affecting her. In the theatrical cut, she goes from zero to whiny bitch immediately but in the original cut, you get more of a sense of someone slowly but surely losing her shit. It isn't as sudden and off-putting here.

I'm sure the studio thought all the scenes of Katie looking tired and drinking coffee the morning after was boring and useless, but they're sadly mistaken. If you pay attention, you begin to notice how much more out of it Katie is looking after each haunting; it's getting to her, she's getting less and less sleep out of it -- of course she's gonna start acting more and more irritable and nutty! But since the theatrical cut is missing this shit, it just comes off like this chick needs a couple doses of Shaddafuckup and Chilldafuckout.

While there are more scenes in the original cut, it's also missing a couple that are in the theatrical, but I don't miss them at all. One is the scene where Micah and Katie have just finished making love, talking some annoying shit about how what they did was illegal or something. It's not in the original version and I think it was added for two reasons:

1) make the movie "sexier", whether or not that shit is even necessary
2) make it more of a Man Trying To Protect His Woman type of plot

This is further cemented with the second scene that was added in the theatrical, where after hearing something smash upstairs, our happy couple run up and find that a framed photo of them has been bashed in by Mr. P. Activity, with a big dent directly on Micah's face. In other words, the demon has thrown down the muthafuckin' gauntlet and it's gonna be a muthafuckin' throwdown between Micah and Demon over Katie's hand, kinda/sorta/not really.

Both versions have a scene where Micah is reading a book on demons and shit (since what the psychic told them was that they had a demon in the house) and he tells Katie that demons are evil fuckin' inhuman things that thrive on causing people pain and fucking shit up. So basically, Katie had the fucked up luck of having a demon fuck with her. Later on, there's a scene where Micah shows Katie a story online about a woman who had the same shit happen to her, and from what I remember, that's as far as it goes in the theatrical cut. The extended one goes further in that we find out what happened to that poor woman: she got possessed and there was a failed attempt at an exorcism that ended in her death (she bled to death after chewing her own fuckin' arm off! AIIIEEEE!). The idea here is that the demon then must've searched out another victim afterward and that's how Katie came to play.

I thought the orginal version of the demon was scarier, because all it wants is to cause pain to someone, that's it. It doesn't have some I Want Your Body And That Means Your Man Gots To Go bullshit agenda. But either the filmmakers or the studio people weren't happy with that and decided to fuckin' Entity that shit up with the added scenes, and make it about some kind of otherworldly infatuation. Fuckin' bullshit is what it is.

When put into perspective, the ending of the theatrical version makes a lot of sense considering how Paramount/Dreamworks/Steven Spielberg/Oren Peli/Joe Momma/Heywood Jablome/etc. were already trying to make it more Hollywood by going with more of a shocker BOO! type of finish. Needless to say, I prefer the original ending, it feels like it's part of the same movie. I do hate the super-gay slow zoom-in of Micah & Katie's photo that followed it though, made worse when "Dedicated to Micah and Katie" comes up afterwards. That was lame. There's a third ending that's pretty messed up and would actually make sense if used in the original cut but not the theatrical. Who knows if that one will ever pop up somewhere.

I'm still not a fan, but the original version is certainly better than the one that's currently being loved by everyone who isn't me. My friend and his sister-in-law (the wife isn't big on scary movies and was busy watching the latest Harry Potter in her room) dug it, so there you go. When it comes down to it, the original cut of Paranormal Activity is a creepy/tragic tale about a woman driven to the brink by a force beyond her control, while the theatrical cut is about a couple of assholes who get a visit from a perverted entity looking to cock-block the husband. I'm exaggerating, of course, but you get what I'm saying. I don't, I finished up my bottle of Sobieski, so I really should stop writing but...

The second film of the evening was Trick 'r Treat, a film that not only got every geek and genre website and publication praising it to the high heavens, but even regular people who managed to catch a screening dug the hell out of it -- so naturally Warner Bros. sat on it for a couple of years before sending it straight to video. Because why bother releasing a Halloween movie in October when you got shit like Saw LXIX to contend with? Or maybe it was revenge against Trick producer Bryan Singer; that motherfucker shot a Krypton sequence for Superman Returns that supposedly cost upwards of $10 million and then junked it. If that's true, then Holy Shit. Whatever reason Trick 'r Treat didn't get a theatrical release, it all adds up to Quel dommage.

I think this flick is supposed to take place somewhere in Ohio, but it might as well be Halloween Town, U.S.A. considering all the holiday-related craziness that ensues there. You got four stories being told out-of-order, Pulp Fiction style; one follows an evil kid-killing school principal, another is about some asshole kids going to the site of a fatal school bus crash, you got one where Anna Paquin is being all virginal and alone on such a scary night, and the last is about Brian Cox paying a hard price for being a such a Halloween Scrooge.

Unlike Pulp or even Go, Trick 'r Treat doesn't stick to telling one particular story at a time, it kind of mixes it up and there's a bit of cutting back and forth between some of the shit going on. So in addition to being Halloween Pulp Fiction, this also feels like Halloween American Graffiti. It's got a bit of Creepshow thrown in there as well, since the entire movie is framed as if they were stories from a comic book. Plus, the credits are in the John Carpenter font, which I got a big kick out of and I know that shit wasn't an accident either.

It may sound like some derivative shit going on here, considering all the different movies I mentioned, but it isn't. This flick is really its own thing and it's too bad it didn't get a shot at theaters, but if there's any justice in the world, it'll find a big audience on video. Is it the greatest thing since sliced bread? Not by a long shot. But it's definitely a lot of fun and it hits on damn near everything Halloween related. It's kind of a mean asshole of a film, too, with some ultra dark humor thrown in. I don't want to give away everything, but I'll give out one example of some of the dangers Trick 'r Treat offers the audience --

Zombies.

And not just your regular, garden-variety zombies, but Retard Zombies. Think about that, that means you have laughing zombies with superhuman strength to contend with. A Retard Zombie is almost up there with the teleporting zombies from City of the Living Dead/The Gates of Hell when it comes to inevitable That's Your Ass ownage. If the world is taken over by Romero zombies or even those fast zombies, I'll load up the guns and fight to survive. But make that a Fulci zombie outbreak or an onslaught of Retard Zombies to deal with, and I'll save myself the pain and make like R. Budd Dwyer instead. I wouldn't be able to handle it, the news bulletin alone would make me shit myself. Would blasting reruns of Life Goes On out loud help or would that speed up my demise?

You son-of-a-bitch, that's not funny. My brother is mentally handicapped and I don't --

Stop it. Please stop it. I can make these jokes because I know I will pay somewhere down the line. I'll get hit by a car and become a paraplegic or a Terri Schiavo or I'll get the HIV and live Rent for real or I'll get Alzheimer's or I'll lose control of my faculties and start kicking it Depends style or someone in my family will die in front of me or whatever. What I'm trying to say here, sensitive people, is that I make all the fucked up comments and jokes that I want because God will have the last laugh. He always does. The motherfucker killed his goddamn SON, what hope do WE have? None, that's what. But I digress.

Anyway, this small town, this Halloween Town is a terrible place to live considering the high mortality rate -- even higher if you're a kid. Oh yeah, kids get straight out fuckin' murderized in this flick. Some people say that's part of the reason this didn't play in theaters; the studio thought that kind of shit would be upsetting. I hope that's not true, otherwise we really are beyond help as a society if we can't handle over-the-top unrealistic fantasy kid death. It's not like you're dealing with weeping kids getting shot in the fuckin' head like in City of God. Calm down. But for the record, I'm pretty damn sure more kids get it in this flick than adults.

The evil kid-killing principal is played by Dylan Baker, which is kind of funny because he's an actor who made his mark playing a pedophile in Happiness. After this movie, the talented motherfucker has gone to the other end of the Bad Things To Do To Kids spectrum, from fucking kids all the way to killing them. Anna Paquin is in this movie, wearing a Little Red Riding Hood costume, so you can kinda see where that shit is going, but never mind, it's still fun to watch it happen. I don't know what it is about her, but I started really digging her in *that* way around the time she did The Squid and the Whale. A friend of mine thinks it's because she seems very attainable. I don't know about that, let me look up who she's dating and we'll see about that, give me a second. Okay, she's married to a guy who's about 15 years older than her and still better looking than I can ever hope to be, so fuck her and that ugly gap in her teeth. This is me being hurt. Lash lash lash.

There's a character here named Sam, and I guess you can call him the mascot of Trick 'r Treat. He manages to show up for each story and even becomes a big part of the final one. He's a really cool character, and I wasn't surprised to find out that they already sell little collectible Sam action figures now. I'm not even into the collecting thing, but I'd totally get a Sam if I could. He looks awesome. Maybe in a few years, if and when this flick picks up more steam, we might start seeing more and more Sams roaming the streets for Halloween.

Seriously Warner Bros., what the fuck? This shit was entertaining as hell, it had a cool gimmick, and a character with definite iconic appeal. Also, there be titties here. I'm sure would've done well on simple "Hey, it's Halloween, let's go see a Halloween movie" curiosity. But what do I know? If I ran a studio, we'd have Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man part 7 by now -- and that has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man is playing right now. Whatever, this shit was a fun time and next year when I visit Blockbuster on Halloween night, all copies of this movie better be rented out. I'm talking about Trick 'r Treat now.

After the two movies, I took off and made my lonely trek back home. I stopped at the end of a residential street and could hear music coming from a nearby house, so I U-turned and slowly drove past to check it out -- lots of people standing outside, milling about, talking. I had nothing else to do that night, so I figured, Why Not? and parked down the street. I put on a leather coat, thereby making it look like I put in some effort to my t-shirt and old raggedy jeans ensemble. The jeans, by the way, had a hole right where my left testicle would be. I don't remember scratching my balls that much as to wear down a hole in the fabric, let alone on that particular nut, but fine. So I walked to the front yard, nobody giving a fuck who I was, and I stood near the door pretending to check a text message on my cell but in reality scoping out the inside to make sure if I could get away with what I was intending to do. It was packed. Music and beers and chatting.

So I went inside and acted like I was looking for someone, but in reality checking out the partygoers; I would guess early-twenties, half in costumes, half in regular clothes. There were lots of goth-types, angels, devils, cheerleaders and anything else remotely slutty. I don't know what the guys were wearing, nor did I give anything resembling a fuck. I made it to the kitchen area behind the counter where there were three guys standing near the cooler, talking about the Phillies either winning or losing or whatever the fuck. I opened it and saw nothing but Coronas. These kind of motherfuckers are always drinking Coronas. I grabbed one and walked toward the back patio, where the music was coming from.

One of those little black strobe balls with colored lights shooting from it was placed near the D.J. in the hoodie. This was the only illumination in the backyard. There were about 20-25 people back here, and the yard wasn't that big. The music was really loud, playing some 80's mix that I couldn't put my finger on but I've heard it at damn near any house party. As I drank my Corona, a guy in Dead Presidents makeup nudged me -- therefore scaring the absolute shit out me -- and held out a joint. Because I'm unemployed and my next shit job could potentially be right around the corner (shit jobs always piss test), I had no choice but to decline. I have only the alcohol to soothe me for now. Because when it comes to getting lit after work, society allows you to Chinaski that shit but you sure as fuck can't Cheech & Chong.

After finishing the Corona, I left the house. Not once did anyone stop me or look at me weird. Driving home, I called another friend and left a message telling him to join me for coffee somewhere, preferably a restaurant where we can look at costumed girls coming from parties. I stopped at a Denny's and ate a slice of apple pie (a la mode) while checking out what I came to look at. It didn't seem as sad and pervy then as it does now. My favorites were the two girls who were wearing football jerseys, knee socks, cleats(?), very very short shorts and had what I can best describe as hair that looked very P.J. Soles. They looked like potential victims in any 80's slasher movie that involved a sorority sleepover. I never heard from my friend, so I finished the pie, and went home to sleep. During all of this, time went back an hour. Not far back enough, if you ask me.