Savoir-faire

This lovely lady has decided that until I step forward and introduce myself to people, I will be referred to as "Princess Sparkle", which the other tweeps have picked up on. So when I heard Phil Blankenship asking if Princess Sparkle was in the audience at the end of his intro to the 3rd annual All Night Horror Show at the New Beverly Cinema this past Saturday, boy-oh-boy was I amused/mortified. A brave man in the front row jokingly claimed to be Sparkle and while I was disappointed about Phil not believing him, I was happy to see that Mr. Blankenship seemed to be in better spirits (as usual). Last year, it seemed like he knew ahead of time the reception Tales from the Crypt was going to get and that's why he seemed down that night.

Following trailers and a Woody Woodpecker "cartune", was the first film, Dario Argento's Tenebrae (or Tenebre, if you want to be that way) which opens with a black gloved hand tossing a book into a firepit like it was a Qur'an in Florida, then we're introduced to the character of murder-mystery writer Peter Neal. He's the kind of guy who will ride his bike (as in bicycle) to the airport, happily riding along in the middle of the road, keeping hard-working truckers behind him. What an asshole; these guys are blue collar men trying to put food on the table for their families and this fuckin' rich cunt is slowing them down in the name of...Fitness? Nope, there's treadmills and stationary bikes for that. The environment? Nope, because this MOTHERFUCKER had someone drive his luggage to the airport behind him. That means he rode his bike to the airport simply to fuck shit up for people who drive for a living and/or who are trying to make it to the airport in time. There's your protagonist, people.

In a rare departure for Argento, this film features scenes of people dying harsh deaths at the hands of a killer wearing black leather gloves; someone is killing people in Italy and sending letters to Neal (who's there promoting his new book), informing him that he will be the last to go, because they're all filthy slimy perverts and he's the corruptor or some shit like that. But never mind that, let's talk about the best character in the entire movie -- let's talk about that awesome fuckin' Doberman.

There's a scene where this cute jailbait chick (I can say that because I'm sure the actress was above legal age -- I hope, otherwise Chris Hansen's gonna walk in and ask me to take a seat over there) is walking home and she gets a little too close to a fence. RAWR RAWR RAWR goes the guard dog Doberman, and rather than keep walking, Cute Jailbait Girl picks up a stick and starts banging it against the fence. What the fuck, Lolita? That dog is just telling you to stay away, fool ('cause love rules, at the do-oo-og shack) and you gotta get all indignant on homedog? He's just doing the job he was hired to do; he's a blue collar dog trying to put Alpo on his litter's table. Oh, you sure showed him.

Well, this dog, he's not having it, he jumps the fence and runs after her -- what's up now, bitch? At one point, she climbs over a tall fence and you figure that's the end of the line for the Doberman. Nah man, this dog, he walks up to the fence, looks it over, does the calculations in his dog brain, backs up a couple yards, runs and fuckin' parkours that goddamn fence. This dog rules. Even when she hides inside the killer's Underground Room of Murder Planning, that dog still manages to find a way to get to a window(!) to show her that he hasn't given up. The Doberman can't be bargained with, it can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, remorse, or fear and it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are bitten numerous times. That's what he does, that's all he does!

The actor who plays Peter Neal had this slightly George Takei-esque way of pronunciation that I'm going to probably mimic for the next few days in everyday life. What else, oh yeah, pretty much all the women in this film are attractive in a They Probably Don't Shave kinda way, even this flashback sequence chick who's pretty hot for having a dick and balls in real life. The title more or less translates as Darkness, so naturally Argento had his cinematographer blast everything with bright light, thinking he was trying out some daring shit but ultimately giving the proceedings a look reminiscent of low-budget Mexican genre films.

The camerawork is still aces, though, especially that There's-No-Reason-To-Do-It-This-Way-Except-That-It's-So-Fucking-Cool shot where the camera starts at one end of a house, goes over the roof, then ends up on the other side; Johnny La Rue would've killed for that kind of crane shot. This is one of my favorite Argento flicks, the print looked great (it came from Australia) and I'm pretty sure nothing was missing since this wasn't the U.S. Unsane edit of the movie.

After a break, we had more trailers and commercials; there was an old one for Schlitz beer that was pretty awesome, even more so when you consider it was about to make a choice product placement in the next movie, The Gates of Hell aka City of the Living Dead aka The One Where The Chick Pukes Her Intestines Out. This was a Lucio Fulci joint which means that if you came for logic, Fulci would grab his balls and tell you that he's got your logic right here, only it would be in heavily-accented English because he's from Italy, plus he's dead now, he's not grabbing anything, let alone his balls. Anyway, Fulci also makes a cameo here (which was greeted by some applause), playing the same role he played in The Beyond and Zombie: a man who speaks perfect English because he's being dubbed by somebody else.

Catriona MacColl aka Katherine MacColl aka The Chick From The Unofficial Fulci Trilogy plays a psychic who, during a seance, sees not only a priest in the small town of Dunwich hang himself, but a large tombstone that's written in English yet makes no sense whatsoever. This overly baffling one-two combo of confusion literally scares her to death, which is quite a feat because she lives with this Crypt Keeper-looking old woman, so you'd think she'd be past getting scared by anything. Meanwhile, in Dunwich, shit's starting to get scary; teleporting zombies (How About That, I ask the running zombie haters) show up out of nowhere, grab people by the back of the head and yank out a piece of brain; Zombie Priest stares at this woman (played by that chick who always dies gruesomely in Fulci movies) and she literally pukes her guts out; fat old white guys sit around, drinking beer. Also, the town pervert is running around and acting a stupid asshole and doing stupid asshole things like getting a poor nonjudgmental girl killed by Zombie Priest.

If you're lucky, the teleporting zombies just scare you to death, but if it's not one thing, it's another, because then you end up in this funeral home under the care and supervision of this super-creepy-looking mortician. I look at this creep with his creepy eyes and his creepy smile as he applies lipstick to the Poor Nonjudgmental Girl's lips and all I could think about was that this creep is soooo going to have sex with this dead girl, you can just tell by looking at a motherfucker like that. In the next scene, her parents and little brother (named John-John) are grieving over her and I'm like "Why is her mouth open? Is this acceptable? Am I missing something here? HER FUCKING MOUTH IS WIDE OPEN!"

The recently-deceased psychic chick wakes up in a coffin -- she was dead...but she got better -- and freaks out because, really man, there's no reason to be in a coffin if you're not really dead, not unless you're Bela Lugosi giving it a test-run or something. Lucky for her, her family paid for the Silver package, not the Gold package, which means you don't get embalmed. Even luckier for her, Christopher George was hanging around, probably coming home from working on another Italian horror film, and breaks her out (using an ill-advised method similarly employed in The House by the Cemetery).  So off they go to Dunwich to stop the end of the world, joined by a psychologist (Carlo, you always play psychologist with us!) and his loony patient who has Men issues and Why Didn't Daddy Fuck Me issues and she paints fuckin' awesome paintings of giant rhino heads hovering over landscapes. She also wears pantsuits, so you know what's up.

Fulci's a specialist in setting up a gag, then prolonging the fuck out of the buildup, before he finally sucker-punches you with the punchline. Some guy is about to get drilled through the head, so we get a slow zoom-in shot of the drill, shot of the guy, shot of the drill, shot of the guy, shot of the drill, shot of the guy, back & forth, back & forth. Just when you're about to throw your hands up and scream Get On With It -- BOOM -- motherfucker gets a drill through the head. Goddamn Fulci KNEW what he was doing, he was purposely fucking with us, the sadist. He's also great at creating atmosphere; I loved those shots of Dunwich at night with its empty spooky streets and neighborhoods shrouded in mist. There's also these odd bird calls on the soundtrack that would suggest Dunwich is a town located somewhere in the Amazon, not Massachusetts. Or maybe that was Fulci's way of telling the characters (and the audience) "You know where you are? You're in the jungle, baby! You're gonna DIIIIEEEE!"

This was my 3rd viewing and my opinion remains the same; I like it but always felt it kind of petered out about 2/3 of the way in, not keeping up with the cool gory/tense/WTF set-pieces that preceded it. As the credits rolled, some dude turned to me and my buddy to share his WTF feeling about the WTF ending. I once had a dream that involved me at a family reunion and it was a good dream, yet I woke up completely freaked out. I don't know why that happened, I don't remember it ending badly, maybe it did and I immediately forgot the shock ending upon waking up. All I know is I didn't want to go back to sleep. So personally, the ending works because it reminded me of that dream -- the on-screen events suggest a happy ending, yet with the help of a cheap, lame-ass optical and a couple sound effects, that fuckin' diabetic eye-tie managed to turn it into a negative one with his last-minute idea. There's also a cute kitty cat in the movie, so yeah.

What snobby filmgoers choose to call Hell, a geek calls home, and that's the snob's loss because the 3rd film of the night, The Evil was a solid haunted house movie. Richard Crenna shows up playing a psychologist (Richard, you're always playing psychologist with us!) who decides to take his wife, some former junkies, a grad student with awesome button jeans, the grad student's student girlfriend, a German Shepherd named Kaiser (probably a former Nazi) to this old abandoned mansion (as they tend to be in these movies) so they can spruce it up like that montage scene in Revenge of the Nerds when the nerds find that house and fix it up while that One Foot In Front Of The Other song plays in the background. Except in this movie, they face something far more evil than Ogre and Jefferson D'Arcy, they face *the* evil.

Crenna wants to turn this place into a rehab clinic, because he's a decent dude, he's not some asshole who thinks these sick people should be thrown into jail (that's me projecting), but the spirit of the man who built this house long ago wants them to get the fuck out. Emilio Vargas is the name of the spirit, and he had this huge beautiful mansion built by the time he was 30 years old, proving George Lopez's point that if you want quality construction done fast and cheap, you hire raza. What is it with being a spirit/ghost/spook that takes away your ability to just be straight out about shit? The guy wants them to leave for their own safety, but he's gotta be so fuckin' vague, leaving clues and shit. Motherfucker, this ain't Midnight Madness, just Beetlejuice these assholes out of your fucking crib! The only time he does something serious (barbecuing a handyman) nobody's around to see it. As it is, he can only communicate with the help of Crenna's wife, who's a believer (she's got the big cross around her neck to prove it) while everyone else is a bunch of Godless liberals who probably hate America and love paying taxes and want to take my guns away.

This movie was written by the guy who also wrote Superstition, which in retrospect, makes sense because there are similarities like the Super Cross (except this one doesn't have that awesome ability to open the fuck out of locked doors), the haunted house setting, and relatively likable characters getting killed off with extreme prejudice. I don't remember an Asian-looking student (or maybe he's just a Jimmy Kimmel type) lovingly gaze at his grad student teacher with his finger in his mouth in Superstition, though, so I guess that's where the similarities end. I dug The Evil, it's a good haunted house flick for the most part (the climax was a little too goofy for me) with the occasional nasty surprise popping up. According to Phil, this is the only print in existence, acquired from Uruguay (probably in some dead Nazi's closet) and while it was a little red/pink at times and one slightly bloody moment appeared to be trimmed, it was in pretty good shape.

The secret mystery movie was up next, and Phil asked the audience that if they liked what they saw, go up and tell him, but if they don't like it, shut the fuck up. He was referencing a little moment during last year's All Night Horror Show, when one audience member voiced his disapproval in a rather douchey way. There was a cartoon about this little girl witch ("Lil' Hermione", my buddy called it) and it was called "Trick or Cheat" and that was Phil's sneaky way of telling you what movie we were about to watch.

The DEG logo came up, which tells you straight off the bat that this shit is from the 80's and was most likely shot in North Carolina. The movie was Trick or Treat, which I'd never seen, but is at the very least, much-loved by one individual, based on the incredibly loud reaction from the guy on the other side of the theater ("YEEEEEEEAHHHHHHH! THANK YOU!" or something like that, and I think he proclaimed his love for Phil as well). Skippy from Family Ties plays this high school metalhead and it really sucks for him because it's 1986 and he's attending the one high school where apparently there are no other metalheads to hang with, because he has only one friend and that guy doesn't look so much like a metalhead but a guy who merely appreciates metal. There is a difference, you know. Poor guy gets picked on by the guy from Melrose Place and that Desperate Old Whores & Felicity Huffman show or whatever it's called, but at least there's a pretty girl who seems to have a thing for him.

Anyway, this metal god that Skippy's all gay for dies in a fire and he's all bummed out about it. He goes to his radio DJ friend (played by Gene Simmons) to cry about it and Simmons gives him the last song the guy ever recorded. I'm sure there were people in the audience who looked at that 12-inch vinyl platter and had no idea what it was or how it worked. Turns out that the metal dude's soul or something is in that record, and playing it backwards allows Skippy to talk to the dude and get advice on stuff like getting back at the bullies. It's all good at first, but soon Skippy finds out that his hero has ulterior motives, and like most awesome musicians, is really just an evil selfish asshole. You know who isn't an evil selfish asshole? Ozzy Osbourne. If you disagree with me, then you're wrong. That guy rules and will always rule and his cameo as a preacher was pretty damn funny as well.

I didn't expect Trick or Trick to have a relatively light tone, I don't know why I always assumed this was a straight-up horror film. It's actually kinda funny at times and it doesn't take itself too seriously. Maybe it played a little scarier and darker back in '86, back when people still thought these metal dudes were in league with Satan and back when shirtless long-haired guys in leather pants were actually considered cool-looking motherfuckers. I don't know, I'm pretty sure director Charles Martin Smith saw through that shit and made it kinda goofy on purpose, he seemed more intent on having you walk out with a smile on your face, not shivering from having the shit scared outta you. I enjoyed the movie, and I'm glad Phil picked it and I'm glad I finally saw it; this was easily the best secret movie of the past 3 All Night Horror Shows.

I think at this point the breaks ended and the movies were going to play straight through, back-to-back. The Giant Claw was next; a black-and-white movie from the 50's about the fakest-looking giant bird creature ever. It goes around doing awesome shit, attacking planes and turning them into shitty models on fire, then swooping on the parachuting survivors and nom-nom-nom-ing them with a satisfying CHOMP sound. You hear that super-squawk and you better hope you're not in the sky, otherwise that's your ass. Some French-Canadian motherfucker calls it La Carcagne, after some old myth; it's a harbinger of doom because those who see it, die soon after. In that case, that fuckin' Schlitz beer sign in The Gates of Hell was a harbinger of doom as well.

In between those mercilessly brief Giant Claw attacks, we get these long dialogue sequences that don't feel as long they could've been because some of the lines are slightly tinged with awesome; I remember something like "Keep your shirt on and I'll put my pants on". You can also play a drinking game for every time someone says the word "battleship", holy shit, they don't stop about this fuckin' battleship -- it's a flying battleship, good luck with your flying battleship, I didn't say it was a battleship, is that your battleship, a bird as big as a battleship, you sunk my battleship -- BATTLESHIP BATTLESHIP BATTLESHIP BATTLESHIP. I have had it with these motherfucking battleships on this motherfucking battleship!

The hero of the movie -- who looks like what you'd get if you picked up Cary Grant and Spencer Tracy by the ankles and swung them at each other until their heads connected in a violent KER-SMOOSH-- he's an electronics expert and he's always engaging in flirty 50's-speak with the mathematician broad. I don't think the General in the movie appreciates that, he might have a thing for Cary Tracy because he's always touching up on the dude, grabbing his shoulders, putting his hands on the back of his neck, staying in contact a little too long. Don't ask, don't tell, I guess.

All the guys in this movie must spend half of their income on Brylcreem because these are some buttered-toast-hair having motherfuckers. God, I wonder how their pillows looked -- white man's Soul Glo. During the dialogue scenes, I would just stare at Ms. Mathematician Broad, not just because she was a dish (to use the parlance of the times), but because it meant I wouldn't have to look at all that greased-up hair and go GODDAMN how much do you use?! At least when Jack Deth slicks his shit up, he has a great justification -- dry hair's for squids -- but God forbid one of these guys has to scratch an itch on his head, because then he wouldn't be able to have a firm grip for at least a week. I wish there were more Giant Claw attacks, those were cool to watch, but I still thought this was a fun cheesy 50's monster movie. The print for this one was beautiful, by the way, the best looking one of the entire night.

Breeders is not a movie about how heterosexuals are assholes who have lots of kids, it's about how aliens are fuckin' asshole rapists who go around knocking up our women -- and by "aliens", I mean in the extra-terrestrial sense of the word, not the Glenn Beck definition. There are a lot of virgins in Manhattan, according to this movie, and that's good for the alien because he needs virgin women to do his thing. He's like Telly from Kids, this asshole, he thinks he's the muthafuckin' virgin surgeon. I watched the fuckin' thing and I'm still not sure how he does it, but I think what he does (I'm calling it a He) is somehow parasite his way into a human host (like a kindly old man) and then when he finds a proper fit virgin girl, he tears himself out of the flesh (sucks to be you, human host) and attacks. Someone says as much, but all I could understand was "RARARAARARARRGHUUUUAAAAHFFREEE---PAAAARRRAAASIIIITESS---ARRRAGHHH!"

This movie does a shit job on practically everything; it's not until the midway point that the movie appears to pick a main character, until then, it cuts between different characters and yet manages somehow to fuck it up so it doesn't feel like an ensemble piece. The heroine is this doctor who works at Manhattan General Hospital but might as well be called St. Hottie's Hospital or better yet, Our Lady of the Hot Chick Who Can't Act For Shit because it seems to be populated and staffed with attractive women who are all graduates of the Chuck Norris School of Acting. The main doctor chick, in particular, is either very bad or very good and it was the director who told her to play it like a hostage being forced to read a prepared statement on video about how she's being treated well by her terrorist captors and that the Western evil will be demolished by Ammala Bulla Bulla or something. That's me being sensitive.

I'm trying to be positive here, so I'll just assume that the writer/director of Breeders is working from the Andy Kaufman playbook and purposely trying to get the audience to ask What In The Holy Name Of Fuck. There's a nurse who reminded me of Anne Carlisle from Liquid Sky and when she comes home from work, she takes a huge pot out of a refrigerator, like she was gonna have some leftover bouillabaisse from Casey Ryback and sets it on the stove while she undresses. This is even weirder to see on-screen, my words can't do it justice.

Quentin Tarantino loves feet, so he always finds ways to put a girl's tootsies up on that screen, but I have to give him credit for finding justifications for those shots; Uma Thurman had to un-atrophy those atrophied muscles and Christoph Waltz had to confirm that the shoe did indeed fit a particular lady's foot. But the guy who made this movie was like, "You know what? I want to see a chick paw herself" and he didn't even wonder if it would make sense for the model chick to suddenly do that after a photo session. I guess the justification was that she just did two lines of blow and that got her in the mood. I'm not complaining, I was grateful that he gave me something to get off on laugh at, but still.

I looked the director up, and it appears he makes his living shooting porn now, which makes perfect sense because this looks, feels, and plays like porn with the porn cut out -- except for the climax of the film, where the alien's stable of bitches end up bathing in this giant organic pod filled with a sticky white substance. That's right, they are swimming in money shot. I was totally with him as far as the naked chick angle goes, but the whole raping-a-virgin angle combined with that alien bukkake madness, that's where I excuse myself from this particular cocktail party conversation and head over to Richard Crenna, where we'd tell each other religious jokes. I mean, there are so-bad-it's-good moments in the movie, but eventually I just wanted to kick Breeders in the balls and tell it to get the fuck outta my face.

The final movie of the night (morning, really) was called The Outing and it's kinda like Wishmaster, except I think the genie only grants like, one wish here; most of the time it's just killing people. The movie starts out with 3 redneck burglars breaking into a house and killing the old lady who lives there. One of the burglars finds a lamp, rubs it, the spout of the lamp begins puffing out smoke and somethi--JUMP CUT NEXT REEL-- suddenly it's the next day and the house looks all fucked up and there's cops and ambulances all over. One detective asks "What the hell happened here?" and the other responds "Your guess is as good as mine" and the whole audience laughed.

We then watch the tragic story of 2 high school (or college, I don't remember) bullies who are both closet cases; one of them looks like Freddy Lounds in Manhunter and he's all pissed off because the Final Girl used to date him, but not anymore. I think the movie is trying to say she dumped him because he's an asshole, but we can read between the lines, this chick was tired of being his beard and told him he should just come out of the closet and live his life. But this guy Freddy Lounds, he doesn't want to do that, he's too fake-macho to admit to that shit, especially here in Texas. He fears that she's going to tell her friends the truth, so he and his not-so-hetero lifemate follow the Final Girl and her friends around and try to start fights. Like somehow beating the shit out of them or running them off the road is going to change everything.

Each of his attempts end in Fail; he gets stopped by a cop during the car chase, and the fight he starts in the locker area turns into a goddamn Tsui Hark fight scene with everybody suddenly kung-fu fighting. Then the principal comes in to stop it, and fuckin' asshole Freddy Lounds calls him a "nigger". Jesus Christ, Lounds -- you of all people should understand the pain a derogatory word can cause. Please stop being so angry with others because you're ashamed of who you are. Dude, there's nothing wrong with how you were born, but there's plenty wrong with trying to deny it. I guess what I'm trying to say Lounds is, it gets better. It gets better.

The lamp ends up in a museum, where the curator also happens to be Final Girl's daddy. She sneaks her friends in after hours (they don't know she's under the genie's control at this point), while Freddy Lounds and his very close friend sneak in ostensibly to fuck with the group, but again, we all know what's going on here -- he thinks she's finally going to tell her friends the truth about him, hence his attempt to stop...The Outing. He goes about it the wrong way, attempting to prove that he and his lover are not gay by attempting to rape one of the girls. It's a good thing the detective from Breeders wasn't on the case, he'd see through that clever act. Did I mention the genie/jinn/djinn going around killing everyone? I just did.

This movie was half-decent, nothing that rocked my world (well, there was a cool dolly shot involving the curator and another dude, almost like a mini-Touch of Evil moment) but I didn't hate the goddamn movie. It was OK.

They played a Mr. Magoo cartoon, and another Woody Woodpecker cartoon where our bird is nice enough to make some stupid witch a broom, even though the factory wasn't open yet, and this cheap daughter-of-a-bitch tries to take off without paying the 50 cents. What an asshole. Finally, the All Night Horror Show ended with the National Anthem, which I am happy to report the audience (what was left of us) sang along to -- it helps that there were on-screen lyrics, I guess. The lights then came up, the projectionist stepped to the front and thanked us, and then we left. I told my friend about the running theme between some of these movies, and he backed away with a very serious look on his face and told me he didn't catch the same theme I caught, and maybe I was seeing what I really wanted to see in those movies. I laughed and told him that wasn't true. Then I kissed him.

Click here for Cathie's far more detailed -- yet far shorter -- recount of that night. She, and the Doberman from Tenebrae are, like, my heroes.

"Maybe you all are homosexuals, too."

I'm about to ramble about the movie Commando, which is about a guy who decides to go through the day without wearing underwear, and the only reason I'm even going to do this -- especially since it's been written about and talked about many times before by better people than me -- is because this kind-hearted soul asked me to. She seems awesome but because she takes Korean classes, I figure she's some kind of commie working for this guy and I shouldn't be doing this because Better Dead Than Red, I say. But I'm also afraid that she'll use her Korean connections and have me Oh Dae-su'd if I don't comply. Fuck that, I don't need that shit in my life, so here goes.

The main character is introduced carrying a huge log on his shoulder (from a tree) and it's done in a manner similar to something Leni Riefenstahl did in her movies, at least that's what director Mark L. Lester says on his commentary. Where do I stand on Riefenstahl? Preferably over her grave. You know, I never liked the term "guilty pleasure" because I don't think such a thing exists. If you like it, you like it, fuck what everybody else thinks, everybody's always going on about what everybody else thinks. Yet, these same assholes who would call something like Big Trouble in Little China a guilty pleasure, they're the same assholes who would call Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will a cinematic masterpiece with a straight face. Shit, if any movie deserved to be called a guilty pleasure, it should be THAT fuckin' movie, a movie about how awesome Hitler and the Nazis are -- that movie, and Feds.

Our soon-to-be-former governor plays John Matrix, who came to the States from East Germany, where rock n' roll was considered subversive and I guess that's why he got the fuck out. Anyway, he has a daughter played by Alyssa Milano, who at the time was just a cute little girl but eventually grew up to become to athletes what Winona Ryder was to musicians -- just something to be used and passed around like a joint at a Bob Marley concert, and I say this as someone who still considers Ms. Ryder to be one of Earth's most precious assets. It didn't surprise me that she was caught shoplifting because the little lass had long ago stolen my heart.

Anyway, Matrix and his daughter are out living the kind of life that comes off like Full House Goes To The Wilderness; they're hiking and swimming and doing karate and feeding wild animals and wasting perfectly good ice cream by shoving it in each others faces even though meanwhile in Africa some poor child with a distended belly and a fly on his eyeball just wants a grain of rice to chew on. This is apparently the kind of retirement life a member of the Special Forces gets after deciding he's killed enough brown and yellow people for the government.

Like a Joe Walsh song, life's been good to Matrix so far, until his former superior, General Franklin Kirby (I think General is his first name, which kinda sucks since he's only a Major; a kid is fucked at birth if you give him a name like that, setting him or her up for some lofty position in life without knowing if he or she is capable or even wants to), shows up to give him some bad news; his former teammates have been killed and he's the only one left, so you better watch out and here's a couple of lame-ass soldiers to watch over you until we can get you the fuck out, OK bye. No sooner does Colonel Trautman-lite take off when the bad guys pop out and immediately dispatch those two guards and it's fuckin' on. Matrix manages to get a rifle from Charlton Heston's outhouse and shoots an unarmed Mexican in the head in cold-blood and then finds out the hard way that it's probably best not to put a Ford in neutral and send it careening down the mountains just because they kidnapped your precious "Cheeny!" even though her name is Jenny.

She gets kidnapped and Matrix is forced to go to the fictional country of Val Verde to assassinate the president, even though he and his merry band of World Police helped the prez come into power after deposing the dictator (played by Cher's dad from Clueless) who up until then had been running shit. But because this is Arnold the fuckin' Matrix we're talking about here, he's not gonna play that shit. Helping Cher's Dad is Bennett, a former member of Matrix's unit and I guess since I just typed the words "member" and "unit", this is as good a place as any to talk about the character of Bennett.

Much has been made about Bennett probably being gay and he's probably in love with Arnold and he probably got kicked out of the unit because he made a move on the Matrix, but the official reason was that he enjoyed killing too much or some bullshit like that. I can see why people would say that about Bennett's sexuality, what with all the dialogue between him and Arnold dripping with sweet, sweet subtext and that outfit he's got on: cutoff shirt, cotton netting vest, a chain necklace with a huge pendant that people think is a lock but isn't, weightlifting gloves, and um, leather pants. Fuck. Take out the leather pants and that could be me during the few times I gave working out a try. Goddammit -- looking at his fat gut and skinny arms, I realized I could've played Bennett. In that case, he looks less like some gay dude on the prowl and more like the kind of guy who dresses like he works out, only he doesn't work out, he's the kind of guy who goes to the gym dressed like that and spends most of his time bullshitting with people; the sauna is probably the extent of his workout.

I noticed during this viewing that Bennett is always fondling his knife or his gun. Yeah, that's not very phallic. Yet, I won't jump on the gay train (hmm) because I will take Mark L. Lester's word that he intended Bennett to be the most macho guy around. Well, he succeeded in creating a macho man all right -- as in the Village People song. Plus, once he and Matrix get it on (fighting), with all that talk about "Put the knife in me and look me in the eye and see what's going on in there when you turn it...don't deprive yourself of some pleasure. Come on, Bennett. Let's party." it's really hard (tee-hee!) to not take it a certain way. Look at Bennett's face, I swear he's fighting not to bust a nut right then and there. But I'll side with Lester and consider it unintentional gayness.

Rae Dawn Chong seems like a groovy lady and she's pretty funny in the DVD interviews (fave moments include her referring to Bill Duke's lips and the climax involving a bunch of Mexicans getting blasted by Arnold) so it's too bad her career didn't continue as well as she had it going during the 80's. Here she plays a stewardess who ends up having a pretty shitty day, I mean, it's already a bummer if sleazy fuckin' Sully (played by the motherfucker who shot Cyrus) calls you a "fucking whore" after you rebuff his advances, I can imagine it getting even worse if some fuckin' Austrian tears the seat out of your classic ride and makes you drive him to the mall. 

I just realized that I'm doing a rundown, which I haven't done on this poor excuse for a blog in a long while. This might come as a shock to you, so you might want to sit down for this, but I don't plan these things ahead. If you need time to get over that bombshell I just dropped, go ahead, I understand.

There's a security guard at the mall, and he might be my favorite character in the entire film; he has a goofy way of speaking ("...one gigantic moth-er-fuck-er") and a very healthy amount of self-esteem ("Wanna see me kick some ass?", he asks two girls he'd been chatting up). Overall, he has a decent day, aside from getting punked out by Matrix (the way he uses his super-strength to push away an entire group of security guards is a particularly awesome bit of awesome) and watching a couple of his fellow $3.35/hr. guards take about $5 worth of bullets.

On the other hand, one of his fellow guards manages to put a bullet into some guy who was doing business with Sully, even though the guards weren't after that particular individual and probably didn't know or care that he had a briefcase filled with loose cash (the better to scatter in the air with), he just started shooting at them, the moron. The goofy guard can tell this story to his grandkids one day, about the shootout/fight at the mall that he was a part of, and how the scary gigantic motherfuckin' Austrian pulled a Tarzan with one of the big balloon decorations, and how the scary gigantic motherfuckin' Austrian used his strength to lift a phone booth up from the ground and flip it over -- with a guy inside, mind you -- and how that same scary gigantic motherfuckin' Austrian got fuckin' slammed by a speeding Ferrari and said To Hell With Internal Bleeding and went after the little motherfucker who hit him.

Ernie Kovacs was a pioneer from the Golden Age of Television that a lot of older comedians who aren't funny anymore looked up to; he did a lot of crazy experimenting with the format, mostly visually but also pulling shit like talking to the crew off-screen or ad-libbing or even test-piloting some of that Adult Swim type of humor where it doesn't have to be funny, it just has to be weird and off-putting and only amusing to the creator (kinda like this blog). Anyway, it's too bad Matrix wasn't around to chauffeur him around because maybe Kovacs would've survived *his* head-on collision with a telephone pole and live long enough to die of cancer from smoking all those goddamn cigars, rather than getting assed out of existence on his way home from a Milton Berle party. Half of the stunts in this movie, I don't know how they could've been accomplished without killing a few people; that car crash looks like they killed an Arnold lookalike and I swear the poor Rae Dawn Chong stand-in had her torso severed, because you can see it rocket out of the passenger seat. Anyway, Matrix teaches Sully a lesson in how to increase your body's flexibility so that when you're dropped from a cliff ("I lied"), you resemble a dummy.

Two guys who eat too much red meat beat each other up in front of a fucking couple (a couple in the midst of fucking) in a motel room until one of them lands on something he shouldn't have landed on. Exit Bill Duke and score another for Matrix. The way Duke said "Fuck you, asshole!" sounded like some hard shit coming from a hard man, but when Matrix shoots that shit back at him, he sounds like maybe some of Bennett rubbed off on him, if you know what I mean and I think you do.

He sounds a little gay, is what I mean.

Matrix and RDC sneak into a warehouse full of illegals and poor Branscombe Richmond gets knocked the fuck out, and it's a good thing RDC happens to have a pilot's license, because she's going to fly Matrix to the same island where the real life Citizen Kane built his real life Xanadu, so you know there's some evil shit going on there.

Surplus City is where you go to get high-quality goods if you're a survivalist or an Angry White Man. They have knives and MRE's and vests. I'm sure it's the kind of place a disturbed middle-aged guy can go to browse around for a pair of hiking boots while the owner fucks with the gay guys -- C'mon, make your play, make your play!  -- then they knock over the sunglasses on their way out. Matrix knows of such a place (as he should), so he hops on a bulldozer that happened to be in the area and smashes that fucker right through the storefront and now it's like the final part of Supermarket Sweep, only instead of Rice-a-Roni, it's military surplus that's on the shelves. The best part is the secret room in the back with all the heavy artillery; machine guns, rifles, shotguns, rocket launchers, grenades, fuckin' claymores -- from my cold, dead hands! -- this was obviously all the stuff that wasn't for sale, instead this was where the owner stored all the hardware for the upcoming Race War, of which Matrix was privy to since he is not only the Aryan ideal, but also a card-carrying member of the Angry White Man underground.

The worst cops in the world arrest Matrix for breaking into Surplus City; these guys must've figured that searching the perimeter was a waste of time, because after all, it's not like there would be some Rae Dawn Chong-looking chick hiding out in a convertible with a rocket launcher. So I have no pity for them when RDC blasts their bread truck with the launcher (after accidentally firing it the wrong way and blowing up a bus stop, killing many an innocent 3rd shifter waiting for their ride) and breaks Matrix out. I wonder if she was even trying to break the dude out in the first place; she had driven up to the cops and got all flirtatious, probably because she was free of Matrix and she's newly single from what was probably her lesbian lover (she goes both ways, keeping with the film's subtext, according to me because I just made that shit up) that she was talking to on the pay phone in her introductory scene.

In response to Chong's comely come-on, one of the cops looks over to his partner and says "hooker" and they both have a laugh, obviously too blind to notice that she's wearing a fuckin' flight attendant uniform (which would explain how they were able to not notice RDC hanging out behind Surplus City in the first place). I don't understand confusing RDC for a prostitute because I paid for it once and while the woman was attractive in a single-mother-office-worker-supplementing-her-income-because-she-has-3-kids-to-raise kinda way, she certainly wasn't pretty enough to be in Soul Man. Anyway, that's not the first time someone referred to her as a Lady of the Night ("you fuckin' whore" sayeth the late Sully), but it's sure as hell gonna be the last time, so, KABOOM.

A couple of dead blown-up Mexicans later (they're all Mexicans in this movie, let's be real here; any Spanish-speaker in a movie -- and real life -- is a Mexican to the rest of the world anyway and even Rae Dawn Chong admits as much in her DVD interview), Matrix and RDC are in the air in their newly-acquired airboatplane, headed to real-life Xanadu to save Matrix's daughter and send the motherfuckers there a message. Patricia Hearst was unable to relay a message of her own via Matrix, but the sentiment is surely the same, I'm positive of that. On the way, Bill Paxton radios to inform them that they're flying over the Danger Zone, and it's common knowledge among many an airliner that the Navy shoots the shit out of any plane flying through this restricted airspace, they just do. Matrix, though, he don't give a fuck about that shit, he knows how to handle it by backseat driving RDC into flying low enough to blend in with the waves and there you go, the airboatplane is off the radar. That's the 2nd time Paxton gets fuckin' assed out by Arnold (1st time was The Terminator), you'd think he'd learn by now not to fuck with the Oak, but it apparently took getting the piss scared out of him in True Lies to get there.

If you want to get the point across that the setting is somewhere in South America, just add chickens, or at least give the impression/feel that there are probably chickens in the off-screen vicinity. That's how we know that we're in Val Verde where a couple of rough trade-looking dudes (I would know, right?) find out that the plane Matrix was supposed to be on, well, he's not on it, leaving behind the dead pimp-looking motherfucker that was supposed to escort him. Rough Trade #1 calls Cher's Dad to inform him, which leads to Bennett being given the order to take out Matrix's daughter, and I don't mean take her out for ice cream -- HA HA YOU SEE WHAT I DID THERE, I'M AWESOME! Ugh.

Having left RDC on the airboatplane to radio for the cavalry, Matrix arrives on Xanadu in his speedos and Goddamn is he in good shape, I can see why Bennett wants to fuck him so bad. He then takes all that shit he jacked from Surplus City in one of the most awesome loading-up-for-battle scenes ever. It's a bunch of close-ups of Matrix's weapons being loaded up, camouflage being applied, grenades being attached and it ends with a shot of Matrix walking off with 50 pounds of Death on him. According to the commentary, Arnold ended up stabbing his hand somehow when he tried shoving the knife into its holster, which made me wish I was on the set that day to find out if Arnold did that weird foreign-tinged AAAAEEEEGHH noise he does in his movies. He looks ridiculous, by the way. When I saw this movie as a kid (my parents were cool/didn't give a fuck about my watching R-rated films), I thought he was the most badass-looking motherfucker on the planet with all that hardware, now in my bitter adult age, he looks more like he came out of a parody of this kind of movie, which I guess this movie is -- a parody of itself.

People go on about Why Do People Love Commando When It's Just A Shit Movie and to that I respond with Silence You Commie Motherfucker. The movie is 92 fast-paced minutes of ownage, and if you didn't feel that way for the first two acts, you'll sure as shit feel that way about the last act, because that's all it is, ownage. Supposedly the original script for this had a more serious tone and I think it took place in Israel, which to me sounds like it would've played like The Delta Force -- not nearly as fun as you'd think it would be. Thankfully, Joel Silver stepped in and had Steven E. De Souza do his thing, which is take everything out but the bare bones, and put in a bunch of one-liners. Works for me.

He claymores the fuck out of a couple huge barracks (Matrix, not De Souza), and all I could think about during that bit was all the soldiers inside who were chilling out. I bet you there was a South American version of Biloxi Blues going on inside that bitch, with the evil Latin version of Eugene Jerome playing that game with his bunkmates where they'd all have to talk about what they would do with their last 5 days on Earth, not knowing that it's more like the last 5 seconds on Earth and they ain't gonna get to do shit because Matrix is about to activate those fuckin' claymores and create two incredibly awesome explosions. Sky full of smoke.

This movie should please anybody who isn't an asshole who likes watching waves of bad guys getting killed. It becomes a video game in the way Matrix goes through each of his weapons -- assault rifle, grenades, machine gun, that bullshit Desert Eagle, shotgun -- firing bullets that cause the receiver(s) to perform acrobatics upon being struck. At this point Matrix is an invincible Angel of Death, nothing can touch him as he places periods at the end of the sentences that represent the soldiers' lives. I swear, at one point Matrix turns around, sees a bad guy coming toward him, ALLOWS the bad guy to get off a few shots, and THEN he fires back. He knows he's that fucking good. He knows how this movie will end, he's read the script.

The last time I watched this film was at a midnight screening at the New Beverly (back in '08, I believe), and during the climax, around the time Matrix was about to rocket-launch a jeep into oblivion, the film stopped and the lights came on. You can just about hear the collective sound of every guy's erection immediately going limp and flopping back against their thighs. It was a cruel moment. Thankfully, the film came back on a couple minutes later and we were back to getting off on all that violence.

Somewhere along the way, he gets grenade'd and the only place to hide is inside a shed. Oh sweet Jesus, that shed scene should be placed up high in the AFI's Top 100 Scenes of Straight-Up Fuckin' Ownage, as Matrix is surrounded by a group of soldiers that consist of some white dude with a spray-on tan and a fake mustache, some Joe Dante-looking motherfucker, another white dude they didn't even bother to spray-on tan, and the leader, played by the guy who usually plays Latino scumbags but got to serve Keanu Reeves coffee once in a rare non-scumbag role ("Jack, you forgot your muffin."). Matrix uses the tools in the shed to dispatch each of them; he pitchforks one in the chest, transforms Joe Dante into Clint Howard with the use of a saw blade to the scalp, and chops off the leader's arm. According to the commentary, Arnold wanted to smack the guy in the face with the severed arm, and in a wrongheaded display of restraint, the director decided against it -- that's right, the man who directed Showdown in Little Tokyo thought it was too much. Someone please steal that idea and use it wisely, I want to see that shit happen in a non-horror film.

More carnage ensues with Matrix blasting more soldiers, at one point firing through a garden of roses, which in my humble opinion, is as close to Film As Art as you can get. Anybody who isn't Jenny bites it hard, including Cher's dad, who takes about two too many shotgun blasts to the chest, but I understand where Matrix was coming from; you don't fuck with family, you know? Then comes the final fight between Matrix and Bennett, which as I mentioned way earlier (remember back in the day, when you started reading this entry?), is pretty much about one man's unrequited love for another. So strong is Bennett's passion for Matrix, that not even 100,000 volts of inconveniently-placed electricity will stop him, no, it will only make him stronger.

Matrix finally objects when Bennett declares that he's going to shoot him between the balls (reneging on the original plan to shoot Matrix between the eyes), so he penetrates Bennett with a piece of steam pipe, which I guess would kill him. Anyway, Matrix gets Jenny, tells General Franklin Kirby to lose his number and off they go in the airboatplane, where I'm guessing Matrix introduces Jenny to RDC aka New Mommy while some 80's rock shit plays and the credits roll, The End and all that and I guess that's it. I mean, I like the movie and all, but I don't know how I'm going to end this, so I'll end it with this video that amuses me to no end.

Oh wait, I remember something -- back when I was a kid, my cousin used to have a Commando action figure. It came with a little comic booklet that was pretty much a condensed, PG-rated version of the movie. The only bits I remember about the comic booklet was that rather than impaling Bennett with the steam pipe, Matrix uses it to blow steam in his face. Also, Matrix doesn't drop Sully, he lets him live. In other words, he doesn't let him go, he...uh...lets him go.

Behind every great man, there's a woman who kicked him to the curb and next thing you know, all my friends are like "Ugh, forget MySpace, you gotta go on Facebook now!", so maybe you shoulda just given him an HJ or BJ or something to calm him down before hitting the road. I'm just saying.

The theater was fairly packed when I got there and I managed to get a good seat. It was a young crowd, which I guess is to be expected for a Thursday midnight show, and they were very chatty. There were 3 trailers that had a similar theme of being the kind of movies you don't expect to be directed by the director who's directing them. Ron Howard, James L. Brooks and Ed Zwick are tossing their hat into the Young People RomCom ring -- although to be fair, I take back Ron Howard because I think the leads in his film The Dilemma are all late-30's/early 40's and the guy made Night Shift and Gung Ho and EdTV so I can see him making this one.

The opening scene of The Social Network hits the ground running, or maybe a more appropriate term should be "hit the air flapping", as in flapping one's lips because this film is letting you know from Frame One that TalkTalkTalk is the name of the game in this flick. Some people weren't so sure about David Fincher directing this one but I think it makes perfect sense; he can balance out all the talking with some great looking visuals and he's really good making movies about asshole people.

Aaron Sorkin wrote the screenplay, based on some book I probably won't ever read and his dialogue in this bitch is high-octane and fast and you better get adjusted to it because this movie will not wait for you. Someone's gonna ask the person next to them "What did he just say?" and that person won't be able to respond from fear of losing his or her place. Sorkin created The West Wing, which I understand consists of people briskly walking down hallways while talking and that's gonna be you while you watch this movie, hurriedly trying to keep up with the rapid-fire dialogue as if it was President Bartlet himself. The audience of texters and chatters I watched this with immediately shut the fuck up and put away their Blackberries upon realizing this during the opening scene and it was beautiful to experience. What a concept -- an audience giving its full attention to the on-screen events.

The Social Network is about the guy who created Facebook, and me, I couldn't give a shit about the behind-the-scenes of Internet social networking sites, so this was all news to me that the motherfucker more or less jacked the idea from a couple of twin golden-boy Chads while at Harvard and improved it, put some stank on it, changed the name, and that's how we now have Facebook. The guy's name is Mark Zuckerberg and like most nerds, he's a complete utter disgrace to the idea of Being Socially Well-Adjusted and yet he's got the balls to put down his chick in the opening scene. Motherfucker, you should not only be on your knees every morning thanking God, you should be on your knees five more times throughout the day thanking Allah because you have a cute girlfriend who is giving you the time of day.

But no, Mark Zuckerberg, you gotta fuck that shit up by making her feel like an asshole for a hundred stupid reasons, one of them being that she goes to Boston University and you go to fuckin' Harvard, therefore she's below you. You need a beating Zuckerberg, you need a motherfucker like me to take you outside and teach you some fuckin' manners, kid. Except that would prove your fuckin' point that a stupid guy like me can only defeat a smart guy like you by using violence, which I will accept and then demonstrate with a nice punch to the throat.

So, American Girl With The Dragon Tattoo is like Fuck This Shit and rightfully dumps Zombieland's ass and hits him with one of the best lines I ever heard in a movie because it's so fucking true about a lot of motherfuckers, both penis'd and non-penis'd -- something like "You're going to go through life thinking girls don't like you because you're a nerd, but that's not true. It'll be because you're an asshole" and I was like FUCK YEAH, TELL THAT MOTHERFUCKER WHAT'S UP. And I guess Zuckerberg decides not to prove her wrong by going on his blog and talking fucked-up shit about her. I would go on about what a cruel, cowardly thing this is to do, except I think I have like 100 examples of me doing the same shit on this blog, so in that case, rock on with your bad self, MZ.

Long story short, he does the Facebook thing (for a while it's known as "The Facebook", like some unhip older dude trying to reference it; "Oh yeah, I heard about The Facebook while I was on The Twitter, which I found on The Google") and we watch him as he displays some hardcore Asperger's symptoms towards his fellow man, even though I don't think he suffers from Asperger's. By the way, Asperger's is awesome because it allows you to get away with being an asshole, and you know what, from now on, that's my official reason for why I am the way I am: I've got the Aspergers. Me, Zuckerberg and Abed from Community -- we will rock the aloofness to da break of DAWN, baby!

Somehow, Zuckerberg has a friend, and because he's his only friend, that also makes him his best friend. His name is Eduardo Saverin, and because David Fincher hates the dirty ethnics (he also cast a white Brit to play an Indian dude and probably jizzed himself in the editing room every time those two super-Aryan Chads appeared on screen), he got the new Spider-Man to play him, some limey. Man, I gotta tell you, aside from American Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, Saverin's the only other person I felt for in this movie. He comes off like a decent dude, but he's ultimately some kind of needy pussy with daddy issues and maybe that's why he takes Zuckerberg's shit and I think MZ knows it and takes advantage of it with the aforementioned shit-giving, not to mention making passive-aggressive remarks like "It's probably a diversity thing" after congratulating Saverin on getting accepted into one of those awful elitist college "final clubs".

There's a scene where they're having some beers in the dorm and if you pay attention to their actions, it kinda tells you everything about Zuckerberg's and Saverin's friendship. MZ is looking for something to open the beer with and Saverin tosses him a bottle opener, and a few seconds later, MZ forcefully throws the fuckin' bottle cap at Saverin, and you get the sense he's done that often, treating Saverin like a wastebasket. Why did he have to do that? What the fuck is your problem, Zuckerberg? How about just saying "thanks", you piece-of-shit? Argh! Jesse Eisenberg does such a great job being this guy, I seriously considered walking out of the movie about 10 minutes in, I couldn't stand this motherfucker. I've always found Eisenberg to be very likable in his other movies and here, holy shit, here he proves he can basically use the same delivery and body language and come off like the most unlikable guy in the room simply because of the lines given to him.

I didn't even know about or care about the real Mark Zuckerberg before this movie, but I kinda hope for the benefit of my fellow human beings (and for his own welfare) that he really isn't like his portrayal in the movie. MZ isn't a Revenge of the Nerds nerd, he's not a nice nerd (until it was time *not* to be nice, of course), this isn't a guy who tried killing other motherfuckers with kindness after being left out of the cool kids' reindeer games and/or being made fun of in school. This guy, I figure this guy decided somewhere along the way to justify his being ostracized by putting on the Fuck You For Not Being Me cape, as opposed to the far more acceptable Fuck You For Not Getting Me cape.

But you can only put on those I'm Not Impressed airs for so long before someone shows up to rock your world, and next thing you know, you're doing the last thing you'd expect to do, like fawning over a motherfucker. And that's what happens here, when Justin Timberlake shows up to bring sexy back and to play Napster Man, who smooth talks his way into MZ's life and convinces him that Facebook has the potential to make billions. Saverin doesn't care for the dude, sees him as a flashy all-talk paranoid douche who's in love with himself, not to mention kind of a sleaze (drugs and possibly underage trim). But because I guess this guy kinda represents what Zuckerberg wants to be like, MZ is drinking the Kool-Aid and going along with it.

It's interesting, though; with the help of Saverin's deep pockets, Zuckerberg eventually scores the house with the babes and the swimming pool and the music and the big-screen tv and the giant bongs, but he never partakes, choosing instead to spend his time working on his site. MZ appears to be less into scoring with the opposite sex and partying all night and more into the idea of knowing that he could if he wanted to. I wondered if this was yet another example of his narcissistic I'm Better Than You attitude; later on during one of the depositions he casually mentions that he has enough money now to buy the house of the Chads final club and fuck it all up, that is, if he was into doing that sort of thing.

The filmmakers find a pretty cool way to tell the story; somewhere early on you find out that this is all being told in retrospect during 2 different depositions. Sorkin and Fincher find the perfect balance of this, cutting between the past events and the depositions, sometimes cutting from one deposition to the other just to bridge sentences and statements together, or to get another person's side of the story. The more I think about it, the more I gotta give Fincher and Sorkin major fuckin' props for making some really intriguing shit out of what basically amounts to a film about people sitting around a table talking and talking and talking. It made me glad that SPOILER AY DIOS MIO SPOILER they never go to trial because the real-life motherfuckers saved us from watching yet another courtroom drama.

The movie has this almost clinically objective point-of-view on the events; Kubrick could've made this movie. There is plenty of emotion in the film but it never leads you down the path as to what to feel, it really comes down to what the audience brings to it, the emotion is there to be found but it depends on what kind of person you are, really. It's almost Rorschach-test-like in the way it presents certain images to you; some of the people in the audience would laugh or applaud at something Zuckerberg would do, while others (like me) wouldn't give the motherfucker the time of day (in an audience reaction kinda way).

Maybe this is why there were just as many haters with Fight Club; Fincher never hit you over the head and said Ok Guys, Hope You Had Your Fun But Ultimately This Is Wrong, he left it up to you to come to that conclusion by yourself and that's why you got guys like Roger Ebert and Lisa Schwarzbaum frothing at the mouth that it condoned and encouraged that kind of behavior and mentality. With the exception of his Benjamin Button movie, all of his other flicks have had that same approach, and you can even argue that Button was his worst movie because Fincher isn't built for that kind of emotional manipulation. Kubrick had that same criticism, and I'm sure Fincher knows this since he seems to be going for that style of filmmaking, from thematic sensibility to shooting an insane number of takes. But both Kubrick and Fincher will never defeat the master of insane take-shooting -- muthafuckin' Jackie Chan, who shot a fuckin' badminton-type scene 2900 times for a movie called Dragon Lord. GodDAMN, Jackie Chan; for a guy who often declares "I don't want any TROU-ble!" you sure go around looking for it. But I digress.

I think some people will be on Zuckerberg's side, and that's OK, that's just how they are. I can certainly admire him from an entrepreneurial perspective; the guy busted his ass since he was a kid working on shit like this and you can't deny he is as brilliant and driven as they come. And there's a twisted kind of logic that I'm afraid to admit I kinda agree with, when he says the only reason the Chads are pissed at him isn't so much because he stole their idea but because for the first time in their privileged upper-class, final club member, row crew team 6'5, 220 lbs, 3.9 GPA lives, for the first time things didn't go their way.

Having said that, I can't totally give it up for him because he's such a disagreeable human being. When it comes down to it, he is no different from the Chads of the world, because while they might act all superior over you with their connections and their high status, Zuckerberg is gonna always look at you like some goddamn insect and your worth depends on what you can bring to the table. Some jock bully might beat you up and stuff you in a locker, but Zuckerberg would post blogs about what a cunt you are for everyone to read, and that my friends, is just as bad if not worse. He's not even an asshole like American Girl With The Dragon Tattoo said, he's a prick, that's even worse because I can still come out admiring a motherfucker simply because he's an asshole (aka the Daniel Plainview clause).

But even Zuckerberg can't maintain prick status, and by the end of the movie, he's managed -- well, the movie managed, not him -- to have you pity the motherfucker, but not the good kind of pity, I'm talking the even worse kind of pity, the Mr. T kind of pity, there is no bright side to this pity. I still wouldn't want to hang with the motherfucker, not unless he had some cash to give me. The final image of him in The Social Network is beautiful in how ultimately pathetic and sad he comes off, and the song that accompanies this is goddamn perfect. It's irony and sarcasm and pity and Fuck You all rolled into one. By the end of the movie, Zuckerberg has gone from being an asshole, to being a prick, and now he's just a fucking douche who needs to wake up and smell the coffee on the wall before it's too late. If I could mix drinks as well as I mix metaphors, I'd be Tom fuckin' Cruise in Cocktail, baby.

Life is Hot in Robberytown

These bastards, they want me to know what Catfish is about; the trailer came up as I waited for the feature to start and I've no idea what the film is about except that I shouldn't have any idea of what the film is about. I decided right then and there that I didn't want to know. Usually, I'll sit through trailers but if it's something I don't want to have spoiled, the best I can do is turn away and tune out the dialogue. A friend of mine takes more extreme measures; he covers his ears or if there's someone with him to save his seat, he'll get up and leave for a few minutes. Anyway, I decided to pull one of his moves; I had popcorn and soda saving my seat (I hoped) and got up and left. 2-and-a-half minutes later, I returned to see the green band for another trailer up on the screen, so I started walking up the aisle.

It was the Catfish trailer. Again.

Fuck, I said to myself, and I walked back out of the theater for another 2 and-a-half minutes. When I returned, I had a good news/bad news scenario to greet me. Good news? It wasn't the Catfish trailer for a third time. Bad news? It was a trailer for something with that piece-of-shit Katherine Heigl and that guy from the Transformers movies about two mismatched people who don't like each other but under circumstances are now under the care of a recently orphaned baby, I guess because the baby's now-dead parents watched way too many shitty rom-coms. Christ. Sweet Christ. How many future break-ups and eventual divorces are gonna sit through that goddamn thing? Thankfully, that ended and the movie I used my "Free Night at the Movies" (admission, soda and popcorn!) AMC ticket on, The Town began.

Ben Affleck not only co-wrote and directed, but also decided to star his fine ass in this picture, playing a recovering alcoholic/druggie but unrecovered criminal hardass, doing jobs with his 3 buddies. One of them is played by The Hurt Locker and Mr. Locker is the wild card of the bunch, in this group of professionals he's the one most likely to go "Let's kill these bitches" (to reference a bit from the greatest comedian in the world, one Sir Danish Cook, O.B.E.). At the start of the movie, Affleck and company just pulled a bank job and aside from a couple unexpected violent improvs from Mr. Locker, everything went well -- until they find out after the job that the bank assistant manager they had taken hostage during their getaway (and dropped off at a beach), well, she lives near these dudes. Affleck decides to do a little spywork by paying her a little visit as just some random dude, just to make sure that she's busy trying to move on with her life, rather than moving on to the nearest FBI office.

People love that show Mad Men, and maybe I'd love it as well but I'll never know because I won't watch the motherfucker. Too many movies out there and I'm already watching 2 programs (by which my count, is 2 too many). But anyway, the guy from that show, Jon Hamm is here playing an FBI agent and what I liked about his character was that he wasn't particularly likable. His job doesn't require him to be, in fact, it probably helps big time that he's a colossal prick because all his job requires him to do is put away the bad guy. Period. And he loves putting away the bad guy because he sure as fuck doesn't like the bad guy. There is no "my heart bleeds for him" Manhunter duality in this mofo, he will talk crazy shit to your face about how he's gonna fuck your future if he thinks you're the bad guy, and I swear he gets as much enjoyment trying to fuck people who are merely associated with the bad guy. 

Because Affleck is the main character, Jon Hamm is the antagonist here. Same people that are cheering Affleck to get away with it, would be cheering Hamm on if the film was re-edited so that *he* was the star. It's weird how that works with us audiences; tell us who the star is, devote your screen time to him or her and unless he or she is a complete animal, that's the side we're gonna be on. I mean, I want Affleck to get away with it but it's not like he's a criminal with a soft side in this movie. It seems that way in the beginning, when he doesn't call out the assistant bank manager on some shit she pulls during the robbery, but that's more because she's a pretty girl. I'm sure if that was a dude, he'd have tuned him up a bit.

It's like this interview I read with Jada Pinkett before she got Big Willie into her life; she talked about how when she was 18 or 19, she got robbed at gunpoint. It was some serious shit, harsh and violent and it got to the point that she pissed herself, she was so scared, she admitted this in print. Me, I'd do some revisionism on that story. Well, some time later, this dude got caught and it turns out he had a history of killing all the people he jacked. This got to Ms. Pinkett-Not-Smith-Yet, so she visited him in jail and asked him something to the effect of "Why did you let me live, when you killed so many others" and his response was that he thought she was cute. That was it; it wasn't a question of morality or this sudden change-of-heart about how he was doing these things, it was simply that if she was ugly or a guy, she'd be dead.

I was reminded of that story with Affleck's character here, and why he tries to protect the Chick from That One Woody Allen Movie I Haven't Seen. Because when it comes down to it, he doesn't have a heart of gold, he's a fuckin' gangster and will throw down into some gangster shit if need be. This guy is a Professional in the same way that Mr. White and Mr. Pink were professionals -- a choice between doing 10 years and taking out some stupid motherfucker, ain't no choice at all. There's a job in the film he doesn't want to take, and it's kinda left out there whether it's because of his official reason (it would involve dealing with hardcore gung-ho do-or-die young armed guards, rather than older dudes who just want to make it to retirement) or because he really wants out. Enough is put out there for you to take it either way. But just because he doesn't have a heart of gold, doesn't mean he doesn't have a heart at all, it's just that it only extends to the those he's close to, or wants to be close to, as in the case of Ms. Assistant Manager.

There are questionable actions Affleck's character pulls in this flick but since we're focusing on his life and his problems, and since all we see of Jon Hamm is that he's an asshole who works for a good cause, then that pretty much decides who you want to take the ride with, know what I mean? No, you don't -- I'm not that articulate. Hmm. Let me put it this way -- I guess it shows to go you how much of a master Michael The Fuckin' Mann is because he managed to put a dude like me in a real audience's quandary when I watched Heat. By the climax of the film, I was torn because I wanted both DeNiro and Pacino's character to succeed even though I knew that wasn't going to be possible, so I was left with this unsettling feeling wondering who was going to win/lose. But with The Town, I was totally on Team Affleck by default. And just to make sure you don't completely hate on Jon Hamm (he is trying to bust these guilty-as-sin robbers for you know, breaking the law, it's not like he's some corrupt murderer), the film gives us this scary Irish gangster dude who runs shit from a flower shop with this big white-haired dude who reminded me of King Cotton (aka Roscoe of Roscoe's Chicken and Waffles from Tapeheads) with shorter hair.

For a while, I thought they were gonna set up The Hurt Locker's character as some piece of shit who would be better off dead rather than fucking up my boy Affleck's game, but sometimes I'd listen to what this dude was saying and think, Shit he has a point, you know? Mr. Locker has a problem knowing when to say when as far as pulling the Ownage card goes, but as the movie goes on you kinda get the feeling this dude is even more of a stand-up guy than Affleck is, when the chips are down. He's a loyal motherfucker, I'll put it that way, especially when you start thinking more about how Affleck's treated/treating the other people in his life. And then there's this other scene where Affleck calls The Hurt Locker to help him do something that didn't really need to be done, and it involves doing some damage and the whole time I'm thinking, Wait a minute, wasn't Affleck getting all up in Hurt Locker's grill about hurting people 10 minutes ago? What the fuck, I guess as long as it serves *your* purpose, it's OK, right?

What you have here is a solid entry into the book of crime movies under the Heat chapter; the movie is far more interested in the characters but doesn't skimp out when it comes time to do some crime. In addition to bringing the goods in the acting department (the supporting cast is great, Affleck does fine with his slightly Parker-esque character), it brings the goods in the action department. There's a pretty tricky car chase through some narrow streets and there's also one of those automatic weapon shootouts I like so much, the ones with crazy thump and bass with every burst of rapid fire coming from multi-magazine clips. I can watch that kind of shit for hours. The movie gets better as it goes along, in thirds; it was a decent flick for the first third, a good flick during the second third, and a very good flick by the last third. Then it kills some of that goodwill with the ending, but I'm not gonna hate on Affleck for it because I think he was put in a really tough damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't situation as far as how to finish this fucker. His first film, Gone Baby Gone, had a better ending but despite that and a great Ed Harris performance, I think I'll give the edge to this one.

Oh yeah, forgot about this. The movie starts with some quotes and a title card telling you that the setting of the film, Charlestown, might as well be called Robberytown on account of all the bank robberies that occur there, then halfway through the end credits there's a disclaimer that tells you that it's still a great place because there's lots of hard-working law-abiding citizens who live a life of decency. It's great that they waited to put that bit up until when they were certain most of the audience would be halfway to the parking lot by then. It's kinda like the very end of the end credits of De Palma's Scarface, when at the last possible moment they put up a disclaimer that basically says "By the way, not ALL Cuban immigrants are drug-dealing criminals, FYI. Wink wink" or the very last 10 seconds of the 10 minute end credit scroll for Blood In, Blood Out: Bound by Honor that tells you "Oh, yeah. Those shankings and riots and rapes at San Quentin? Uh, they don't happen anymore" and might as well end with snickering and maybe a "Not!".

That's called responsibility, people. One day I'm gonna make a movie called All The Asian People In My City Know Martial Arts And Want To Kill You and it's going to be about sweet, innocent Amy Adams making a wrong turn on her way to a birthday party and having to escape from a city where all the Asian people know martial arts and are kung-fu'ing the fuck out of all the non-Asians for about 90 minutes, then they all go after her because she's, like, super White. It's going to have a 20-minute long end credit reel, and at the very end for about 0.5 seconds before the reel ends and the lights go up, I'll cover my ass with this:

Disclaimer: All Asian people do not know martial arts and will not look to kill you. The Asian community is filled with hard-working, non-violent, peaceful people who have love and respect for all others. Everything you just watched was a lie and I apologize. Thanks for watching.

For Tanya Livingston and Gwen Meighen

Airport is a movie about an evil old hag named Ada Quonsett who thinks she can get away with being a fuckin’ criminal because she’s old. Fuck this bitch. Everyone else falls for it, and even Burt Lancaster is won over by this piece of shit but you know who won’t play her fuckin’ game? Jean Seberg, that’s who. She plays the character of Tanya Livingston, and as far as I’m concerned, I owe this fictional broad a drink, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

The titular airport is the fictional Lincoln International and we cut between different characters and their various going-ons during one particularly rough snowstorm. Burt Lancaster runs the show, because when you look like Burt Lancaster, you don’t need credentials, they just give you the fuckin’ airport manager position because you obviously know how to run shit. At the beginning of the movie, some hotshot pilot tried to pull some shit on the runway during landing and ends up getting his plane stuck in the snow, so Lancaster calls up George Kennedy (who was busy macking on his wife, proving that some people, you just don’t ever want to see getting remotely intimate) and tells him to get his ass over to the airport to find a way to move that fuckin’ plane so it’s not hogging up all that precious landing space.

Dean Martin plays a pilot who also happens to be Lancaster’s brother-in-law and is it me or will there never be bona-fide 100% cool motherfuckers like Dean Martin anymore? Like super cool. I don’t think it’s possible, you have all these perpetrators and wannabes who call themselves cool but they’re not. They made human beings different back then, we’re all pussies now, even the supposedly cool people of today are fuckin’ douchebags compared to the cool people of Yesterday. Anyway, Dino is married but this is 1969/70 we’re talking about so he’s got a hot little stewardess on the side played by Jacqueline Bisset. They have a nice little moment where he’s trying to get some from her at her apartment even though they have to be on a plane in 15 minutes; they’re using some of the most awesome/lame/obvious double entendres and I love them for it.

I don’t remember seeing a single male stewardess in this movie, probably because they didn’t invent the term “flight attendant" yet. Goddamn, the past was a beautiful thing at least in the fantasized romanticized version of the past I have playing in my head; pretty young ladies in their short skirts walking up and down the aisle asking you politely -- politely! -- if they can get you something to drink, or if you’d like a pillow and a blanket (which means they want to go to bed with you, of course).  Now I get nothing but the Steven Slater types on my flights. Here’s something sad -- every time it looks like I’m going to get some dude bank teller at the bank, I always pretend I forgot something in my wallet and let the person behind me pass through. Then guess what has two thumbs, suddenly found his bank card, and is now walking up to the anonymous pretty girl bank teller? This guy!

Jean Seberg plays Lancaster’s assistant, and I want to Purple Rose of Cairo/Last Action Hero my way into her life and ask for her hand in marriage for the way she dealt with that Quonsett bitch. OK, so this is where I started, right? The old lady was caught trying to stowaway on a flight, and they bring her down to talk to Seberg and get a well-deserved shaming and dressing down. Mrs. Quonsett then happily -- happily! -- admits to always pulling this kinda shit, not just on this airline, but others as well.

Quonsett thinks she has an excuse, talking about how she wants to see her daughter but can’t afford the ticket because she only has social security and her late husband’s small pension to live on, and for a second my heart was slightly bleeding for her. But then she goes on about how she pulls this breaking-the-law shit and will continue to do so because she knows she can get away with it. It wouldn’t look good for the public relations if they prosecuted a little old lady for trying to see her daughter. I swear, she even fuckin’ smiles and looks all proud-like about it. The balls on this fuckin’ lady. The BALLS.

I love when people use poverty as an excuse to pull some shit. I have a friend who I think the world of, but this fuckin’ guy has happily admitted to never tipping at bars or clubs because he can barely afford to get in the clubs/bars and drink. He figures, Hey, at least I’m paying for the drinks and cover charge and they should be happy that I’m bringing some kind of business to the establishment. I bet you he would be among the people cheering and laughing along with Ada Quonsett. Well, you know what bro? Go hang with your old broad friend. I’m going to be hanging here with the lovely Tanya Livingston, played by the chick from Breathless.

There is an annoyance/borderline-anger in Mrs. Livingston as she’s dealing with Quonsett, and I loved her for it, because it showed that I wasn’t the only one feeling that way, especially since the movie is obviously on the old lady’s side. They play goofy “She’s incorrigible!” music every time she’s around and even the movie trailer calls her “huggable” and I guess they’re right because I want to hug Mrs. Quonsett around the neck with my hands. Why are we supposed to cheer this bitch? Her sociopathic ability to not give a fuck about STEALING is shared by the kind of con artists who make their livings ripping off little old ladies who resemble Quonsett.

I also never got into the whole Ain’t-It-Cute-When-Old-People-Do-Crazy-Things? deal you see in movies; it’s seems like a lame way to get laughs when they show an old lady swearing or kicking ass or being super-horny. This, by the way, is why a show like The Golden Girls is a goddamn miracle, because that shit managed to always be funny even though it had all the old lady shit I hate in movies. Maybe it’s because it was a sitcom and not a relatively serious movie and in some hidden discriminatory way I hold movies to a higher standard? I hope not, that's an asshole stance. Speaking of The Golden Girls, I’m a Betty White fan and while I’m aware of her resurgence in pop-culture, I haven’t seen The Proposal or the SNL episode or that television show she’s on, so all I can say is Good For Her and if they’re giving her lame shit to do, fine, as long as she’s making some cash and people are digging on her. Meanwhile, the only thing I want to dig for Ada Quonsett is a fuckin’ grave.

Airport was based on a best-selling book, and this was back at a time when the majority of people still read, so we’re talking a shitload of books were sold the world over. I looked up a review that pointed out a big problem with the film adaptation was that there was no surprise since you knew what was going to happen. I don’t get that, because that’s the case with most adaptations and besides, I never read the book, so most of this movie came as a surprise to me anyway. The only thing I could see coming was part of the subplot about a dude trying to sneak an attache case bomb onto the plane (ah, remember when 9/11 was just 3 numbers used to dial for emergencies?), and that was because I saw Airplane II: The Sequel, where they were poking fun at that.

Of course, the guy trying to sneak a bomb onto a flight is named Guerrero; these assholes are always trying to give raza the short end of the stick. Even worse/weirder is that the guy who plays him, Van Heflin, looks about as much a Guerrero as Cameron looks about as much a Diaz. Wait. Ah, I see. I take it all back. In fact, there’s a scene where that evil Quonsett points out that this fat Irishman looks like a fat Irishman, not a Guerrero. He explains that it’s an ancestral thing from long ago, the same way Johnny Rico and Dizzy Flores from Starship Troopers look like clean-cut all-Americans. By the way, “all-American” is just a nice way of saying Absolutely White With No Traces Of Race Contamination. When people go on about how some dude grew up with an all-American upbringing or some shit like that, it means he’s clean and white and untainted by the savagery that has already infected the coasts. Word.

Maureen Stapleton plays Guerrero’s wife and gives my favorite performance in the movie. She has a scene where she’s watching a plane take off and you can see just about the entire world go out from under her, yet she does her best to keep a lid on it. She cries and tears roll down her face, but I got the sense that she absolutely wasn't going to lose her shit completely in public, even though she absolutely wanted to. It takes her all the strength she has left just to remain standing up, and maybe it would’ve been better for her to just let it the fuck out, then maybe all that pain and anguish wouldn’t have had the chance to eat her up from the inside. I felt bad for her character, really bad.

I also feel bad for Tanya Livingston because she was so alone in how she felt about that fuckin’ Quonsett. If only I was able to be there for her; I’d show up in my fuckin’ late 60’s business wear, smoking my 32nd cigarette of the evening. I know how you feel, baby, I know. I’d ask her if she wanted to talk about it at the Commander’s Club, over cocktails and steak dinners, because that’s how people rolled back then. Cocktails and steak every fuckin’ night, people! In my dreams, at least! In my dreams when I sleep!

I guess compared to today’s standards, one could call this movie slow, but I didn’t find that the case at all. I mean, yeah, nothing serious happens until an hour in or so, but I was always into it. The soap-opera melodrama between characters was fun to watch, and at the very least it was just a trip to watch how different shit was in ‘69/‘70; the fashions, the interior design of the airport and the airplane, people smoking wherever the fuck they wanted, every man is wearing a suit and tie, and every woman is wearing a skirt and stockings. Think about that -- people dressed up to go on a flight. If I could get away with it, I’d wear a fuckin’ suit everyday and the only reason I don’t is because I hardly leave the house, I’ve no reason to wear a suit alone at home, I’m not that sad. But I really enjoyed this movie, I was entertained for all 136 minutes and maybe it was a good idea to watch a movie that takes place during a snowstorm on such a warm night.

Some people consider this the first “disaster” movie because it was made in ‘69, came out in ‘70, it features an all-star cast, and George Kennedy is in it telling people what to do, so I can see why they’d lump it in with stuff like Earthquake and The Towering Inferno and The Poseidon Adventure (with Ernest Borgnine as George Kennedy) and all those other movies, but I can’t quite agree. It’s more like the proto-model for what would become the disaster movie of the 70’s, it’s more of a “crisis” movie, or better yet, a “headache” movie because it’s all about these different headaches being brought Lancaster’s way on just another night on the job.

Yup, Lancaster's got a lot of shit to deal with and if it’s not the plane stuck on the runway, it’s the protestors picketing for the closing of a runway that is too close to their homes, or it’s the constant phone calls from his socialite wife giving him shit for working a job with crazy hours and not having time for her or especially his children, or it’s dealing with this stowaway bitch, or (the biggest headache of all) it’s the possibility that there’s a guy on a plane with a bomb. It’s a good thing his assistant is easy on the eyes. Have I mentioned that I was a tad smitten with the Tanya Livingston character, partially because of her refusal to fall for some old lady’s shenanigans and partially because she’s played by Jean Seberg (who I like with either super-short hair or super big hair)? Well, I am. I’m also smitten with the Jacqueline Bisset stewardess character and I wish there was another Airport that focused on both ladies where they’d tell all the old lady grifters to go fuck themselves.  Case in point, this beautiful scene:

Not so much about a movie, but I did see one that day

My grandmother (on my father's side) is approaching 100, will probably live to 120, and no one really likes her. That is expected when you act like a cold bitch to the kids you raise; my father never heard "I love you" from her ever or got a hug or anything resembling warmth and it's no surprise that he (and most of his siblings) left home before the age of 17. On the opposite end of the Mutha scale, my aunt (on my mother's side) is an incredibly nice and loving person, probably never went without telling her kids how much she loved them or giving them a hug, and she's in her 60's, so it makes perfect sense in a God's-A-Mean-Asshole-With-A-Fucked-Up-Sense-Of-Humor sort of way that she now has terminal cancer.

I went to see her and came out admiring her fearlessness about dying; a religious woman, she believes in an afterlife, so I guess she has faith in being taken care of on the other side. Me, I'm not so sure what happens but I certainly hope there's somewhere we go to after we die. Watching her children at her side, taking care of her, it made me think of the difference between how quick and easy it was for my cousins to take care of their mother whereas my dad and his siblings are basically playing hot potato with their mother, trying to find a place for her to stay (she got kicked out of a nursing home for hitting someone there) and I wonder if this reflects on how they were raised. My cousins had a sitcom mom and my dad and his sibs had Livia Soprano.

Thoughts started flooding my head (for a change); thinking not just about my aunt's mortality, but my own parents' as well. It didn't faze me too much because it's always been something I've been -- for lack of a better word -- *prepared* for. I know that day will come, unless God decides to have another one of his pranks and decides to have me die before them (he's a vindictive fuck who hasn't gotten over the ownage his son received) but while I'm prepared for the day they shuffle off this mortal coil, I'm not prepared for the process of watching them die. But then again, who IS ready for that shit? Who is ready to watch someone they love slowly die? Aside from those who are preparing to kill them slowly, of course. But I'm pretty sure the rest of us want it to be quick for them, painless, but chances are when the time comes for our parents to hop the Death Train, they're gonna end up taking the scenic route.

Anyway, the day that happens is the day that happens and I guess the best you can do is always let them know how you feel. I don't regret always telling my parents (and my sister's family) whenever I see them that I love them, and I won't regret it. I am such a fag. You wanna hear something pathetic on top of the sadness pile I've just plopped down on you? I actually cried while writing this, somewhere around the second paragraph. Took a break and then continued. It's not the first time I've cried while writing these ramblings, usually I cry while writing these ramblings because I know how badly written they are and how they're ultimately a waste of everyone's time. These are the jokes, folks. OK, fine, here's an actual joke, then:

It's a guy's first day in prison and he's crying. His cellmate has had enough of it and turns to him and says "Buddy, relax. Enough of that. Prison's not so bad. For instance, do you like movies?" 

New fish is like "Yeah, I love movies." 

"Every Monday, they show us first-run movies on the big screen." says the Lifer.

"That's great!" responds the new fish.

Lifer continues. "Do you like baseball?"

"Yeah, I love baseball." says new fish.

"Every Tuesday, we arrange a baseball game" says the Lifer.

"That's terrific!" says the new fish.

Lifer continues. "Do you like Italian food?"

"Yeah, I love Italian food." says the new fish.

"Every Wednesday, in the cafeteria, it's all Italian food." says the Lifer.

"Wow" the new fish says with a smile.

Lifer continues. "Let me ask you one more thing, are you a homosexual?"

"No way!" the new fish responds.

Lifer shakes his head. "Oh, you're not gonna like Thursday."

I can't take credit for that one.

After I left, I didn't feel like going home, I knew my mind would continue to be occupied by these nonstop thoughts and I wanted at least a couple hours of sensory distraction. So I stopped by a dispensary and bought some medicated cookies and then I went to my neighborhood theater and I asked the girl behind the counter what was the next IMAX or 3D showing of whatever, and she said there was a RealD presentation of Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole that started 5 minutes ago and I was like "Yeah sure, whatever". How's that for a goddamn segue? I should win a fuckin' award for that segue. Oh yeah, the guy who owns Segway is dead now. It happened fast, his death. Lucky son-of-a-bitch.

So in case you didn't know that Zack Snyder directed it, he lets you know by having the opening shot be one of those regular-motion-now-super-slow-motion-back-to-regular-motion deals while a feather comes off a flying owl. Some mouse is chilling out on a branch, then the owl swoops in and clutches the motherfucker. That owl is the mother to some English-accented motherfucker, who with his older asshole brother ends up falling off a tree and then they get swooped away by a couple other asshole birds and taken to Asshole Bird Island where the Helen Mirren bird runs shit by mind-wiping kidnapped birds (with the help of the moon) and turning them into either soldiers or slaves in the mission to rule the world or something.

The older brother ends up doing the soldier thing and our lead owl ends up escaping with some elf owl and they end up hooking up with the Good birds and train for battle while some laaaaaame-ass Disney Channel style song plays over them. I guess because the band/singer calls themselves/himself "Owl City" that got him the job. They didn't think to hear the music, the producers probably just said "Hey, with a name like Owl City, that's gonna blow like dynamite and sell like hotcakes!" or something. Somewhere along the way, the cookies took hold and I don't remember much else aside from creepy 3D owls looking at me and the use of that "Seraphim" song by Dead Can Dance that was used in The Mist, proving once again that Zack Snyder is like the Quentin Tarantino of taking songs/music tracks from other movies and using them in his own movies. He used Johnny Cash's "The Man Comes Around" on his Dawn of the Dead remake a year after William Friedkin used it in The Hunted, he used a Philip Glass track from that Godfrey Reggio flick called Bunchoffastmotionslowmotionimagesqatsi for Watchmen, and he used one of those This Is Sparta songs that you see all over YouTube, took out the music, and had Gerard Butler lipsync over the vocal for 300.

I guess it was an OK movie, I was way past being able to make sense of it (or anything else for that matter), having purposely taken enough pot cookie to ensure that I might possibly be the first guy to die from it (to steal a line from a comedian whose name I can't remember), and even then I would occasionally have flashes of visiting my aunt earlier that afternoon. Also, I was listening to the little girl a couple rows back who kept talking out loud to her family, only taking breaks from disrupting the movie with her mouth so she could then disrupt the movie by walking around the other rows and hopping over seats. It was so awesome to be completely fucking insanely baked at the time, because otherwise I would've been livid and swinging Little Miss Girl by her ankles, playing xylophone with the handrails in the aisles by using her head. Instead, I was absolutely fine with it. I even went to sit at the very back of the theater during the movie, so I can observe this considerate kid (oxymoron) and the movie at the same time. It's like her mother (didn't see a male in the group, so I figure it was all sisters and cousins and aunts with her) was just so tired from raising her excess number of kids that were most likely never planned (but hey, no plans are needed when you use the never-fail method of pulling out, right?) to do anything about it. I guess I shouldn't talk because I don't have kids, therefore, I have no right.

I imagined what would happen if I complained to her. I'd go up to the mother, tell her "That's it, lady. Take your kid home, because it's over. It's over!" and she'd get all pissed and stand up and point at me and go "Nothing is over! Nothing! You just don't turn it off! It wasn't my fault! He asked me to get off the pill, I didn't ask him! And I did what I had to do to not have the kid! But somebody wouldn't let me abort! And I come back to my neighborhood and I see all those maggots at Planned Parenthood, protesting me, spitting. Calling me attempted baby killer and all kinds of vile crap! Who are they to protest me? Who are they? Unless they've been me and been there and know what the hell they're yelling about!" and then I realized that I'm completely lost in this blog and I haven't even had a drink or a smoke. I'm completely sober now and it doesn't make a difference. 

The comic relief was bullshit in this movie. Fucking lame. Two of the bad guy birds are comparing intimidating looks and I guess we're supposed to find that funny but instead we found it a miserable failure, and by we, I mean the royal We. It was pretty cool to watch the birds go into battle because it was some straight-up cockfighting (rather than dogfighting); they either have blades attached to their talons or they're actually carrying the fuckin' blades and swinging them around. Of course, it's still got to be kid-friendly, so there's no actual blood. I think one bird gets impaled, though. That was pretty awesome.

I looked up this whole Guardians of Ga'Hoole deal on Witwickypedia and there's a bunch of books in this series. All I could think about was how long it would take to make them all. Harry Potter's what, like 7 books and it took 10 years to make movies out of those. Ga'Hoole's got 16. But since the shit's animated, they don't have to worry about aging actors like with Harry Potter; The Simpsons has been on the air long enough to have kids and drop out of school and the actors supplying the voices sound the same. I'm sure the filmmakers expect to make more, considering that there are more books out there, not to mention the open ending. That's kinda risky, though, because I'm sure the guys who made The Golden Compass expected to make follow-up flicks as well.

For the record, I pronounce "Ga'Hoole" in a manner similar to what this guy does at the 0:33 mark of this video. Shit, I don't know what else to say other than Hooray for 3D or something.

Bubbles like a mutha

Scroll scroll scroll. That's what the woman a couple rows down from me was doing on her iPhone during the movie. It looked like she was looking up her Facebook page, but she put it away before I could go down and tell her nicely to put that shit away, which was probably for the best because she had her boyfriend with her and basically if it went down THAT way he'd have kicked my ass, but I'd get a few shots in, that's for sure. It made me wonder if I should even bother going to the movies anymore, at least in neighborhood theaters. Maybe just narrow it down to revival houses like the New Beverly, but even then, that same kind of shit has happened there. Shit man, someone punched a dude at that place. There is no safe haven from the majority of the human race. I don't know, every few years I reach this movie-watching nadir (the last time was in '02), I get bummed out and consider pretty much giving up on movie theaters altogether and just going All In on waiting a few more months to catch it at home on my rather decent setup.

Anyway, I'm supposed to be talking about Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, which I caught a few hours ago. So Oliver Stone's last couple flicks didn't get the attention or box office they were expected to receive, and Michael Douglas' career has seen better days, so I figure the existence of this sequel has absolutely nothing to do with what I just mentioned, forget I brought it up. But it is great timing, though, considering all the shit that's been going on with the economy for the past few years. Didn't the last movie come out around the time that the stock market crashed back in '87? I'm too lazy to look it up.

So Douglas' character, Gordon Gekko gets out of the slammer with his Zack Morris cell phone and is looking pretty assed out. It's kinda sad seeing him like that; back in the day, this dude owned everybody -- literally owned, in some cases -- and he was living the big pimpin' lifestyle until he made the mistake of hooking up with the fuckin' Ma-Sheen. Now he's out of jail, 9/11 just happened, the world's changed and he doesn't even have anyone waiting to pick him up from prison. Cut to 8 years after his release and he's doing OK for himself doing the lecture circuit and writing books and warning people that pretty soon there's gonna be a big financial shitstorm and we better be ready for it. Even then, shit's not the same as it used to be for him. The guy lives in a nice apartment, but this was a guy who used to own a seaside estate -- plus, the apartment's a rental. Here's a guy who had his own private jet, and now he takes the subway to get around. This is a man, a fucking MAN who once said something along the lines of "So I'll only make 10 million instead of 70" and today he's unable to afford the $10,000 donation fee to attend some big-deal charity dinner.

As in the last movie, Michael Douglas is the biggest name in the flick but is not the main character, that would be Shia "Ow My Hand" LeBeouf. The Beef plays a trader who's also trying to get some action going for an alternative energy plant, which to his credit, he totally believes in. I mean, he wants to make some money but the idea of solving some world energy problems sounds pretty fuckin' awesome to him. He's engaged to Gekko's estranged daughter and after someone close to him gets royally fucked over, he decides to pay Eventual Father-In-Law a visit for some lessons in the fine art of Payback.

Early in the film, there's an extreme close-up of Michael Douglas while his character lectures a bunch of college students, and all I could think about while looking at most of his mug taking up the Scope frame is that the motherfucker looks just like his father Kirk now. When I was a kid, Kirk Douglas was already old, and now Michael Douglas looks like that version of his father. If they remade The Fury and cast him in his father's role, you'd be like "Goddamn, that actor looks just like he did the last time they made this movie". Speaking of old people, Eli Wallach is in the movie. It's great to see the dude, he's been in a lot of cool shit and he's pretty good in the 3 scenes they give him. His character has a tendency to make noises with his mouth, combined with hand gestures and whistles, which left me wondering if that shit was scripted or if Wallach was ad-libbing or if that's just the kind of shit one does when he or she gets to an age where most of their idle time is spent trying not to die.

Back to Douglas. There's a scene where Gekko goes into detail about what happened to his son (who died of a drug overdose while he was in prison) and it's kinda painful to watch because it's hard not to think that the actor playing him wasn't thinking of his real-life son's drug troubles and where that shit lead him. Not only that, but his brother died from an overdose as well. They tell some actors to use their own life experiences and put them into a performance but in this case, I wonder if Douglas was trying not to do that, I mean, it's some painful shit to bring up, especially since it's happening Right Fucking Now. I don't know what I'm trying to say, all I'm saying is that I don't think you're watching Gordon Gekko get emotional during that particular scene, you're watching Michael Douglas get emotional.

To be honest, I like Shia LeBeouf. I understand he's kinda up there with pieces-of-shit like Ashton Kutcher, who could do the whole world a favor by shoving a nail gun up his nose and pulling the trigger until it goes Click and yet would manage to find a way to still annoy us, but The Beef, I ain't got no beef with. I didn't find him annoying in Eagle Eye and I didn't find him annoying here. His character comes off like someone who wants to be the best at his job -- making a ton of fuckin' money -- but he also wants to maintain some human fuckin' decency as well. There's a moment where he goes up to his mentor (played by Frank Langella) and gives him a kiss on top of the head and reading that you're probably all WTF but I'm telling you, it's a touching moment. I was totally with the dude from that moment on, because really, who the fuck is going to do something like that in the cutthroat dog-eat-dog-then-a-fuckin-shark-eats-you world of Wall Street and be completely sincere about it? The Beef, that's fuckin' who. I am on Team LeBeouf.

The chick from An Education is here, playing The Beef's fiancee/Gordon Gekko's daughter. As far as love interests in the Wall Street movies go, Daryl Hannah's hotter but this chick gives the better performance. Faint praise, I suppose, since the electronic stock ticker in Wall Street gave a better performance than Daryl Hannah, but to be fair, she was great in Kill Bill. Josh Brolin plays the villain (his character is more of a villain here than Gekko was in the first flick), and while he's worked previously with Oliver Stone in W., in this one you'd think he was up for the lead in the Ronald Reagan story because that's how he looks here. And you know how in the first film, there was a mini-Blade Runner reunion with Daryl Hannah and Sean Young, well in this one, you have a little Grindhouse get-together between Brolin representing Planet Terror and Vanessa Ferlito (playing one of Lebeouf's fellow traders) representing Death Proof.

Oliver Stone loves to cameo in his own shit, so I guess here he's reprising his role from the last Wall Street as some fuckin' random trader. That makes me wonder why Tarantino gets so much crap for appearing in his own movies, when guys like Stone, Scorsese and Spike Lee get away scot-free for fecalizing the frame with their fuckin' faces. The best I could come up with is that Tarantino was on the Accepted list until he started playing bigger parts than cameos -- I mean, I guess it's fine if you want to show up for 5 minutes doing "Don't fucking Jimmie me, Jules, don't fuckin' Jim-ma-me" but once you start trying to play lead roles with George Clooney, you're crossing a line.

The movie looks great, which is expected when you get a great cinematographer of raza like Rodrigo Prieto, who not only shot Brokeback Mountain, but played a male hustler in it as well. For reals, yo. What's up with that? I mean, the cinematographer for MacGruber had a role in the movie, uh, MacGruber where he made out with some muscle-bound dude. Are cinematographers a bunch of closet-cases or is that a way for the director to show everyone who the real boss is? Better yet, why do I take notice of whenever a D.P. plays a potential DP? I don't know, but I wonder about me sometimes. But yeah, the movie looks great visually, not so much composition-wise (which it had going on in spades, don't get me wrong) but color-wise, lighting-wise. There's also a lot of the usual Stone flashiness, mostly in the form of split-screens and Crimson Tide-style computer screen projections onto people's faces. There's also a pretty nifty shot where the camera cranes up from the street and then starts going up a high-rise building, and then starts to pan in circles while still going up up up, making a motherfucker go dizzy. It's obvious they did the CGI thing to pull that shot off, but I liked it.

In addition to Gordon Gekko, there are a few more things that pop up along the way to remind you of the first film, and I still haven't decided whether or not the movie would work better without them. They felt a little too cute for the most part, and there's one in particular that I appreciated but again, not sure if we really needed to see that. I'm being vague because everybody's so touchy about how much you know about a fuckin' movie before seeing it. There are a bunch of songs by David Byrne and Brian Eno throughout the movie, I'm not sure if they're old songs or original tunes made specifically for the movie -- yup, that one song from the last movie is here as well. They didn't bring back Stewart Copeland to do the score though, which is kind of a bummer but not too much of one because Craig Armstrong does a pretty good job here.

I dug this movie, and was surprised that I was more into the LeBeouf stuff than the Douglas stuff. I was more intrigued with the idea of a guy trying to remain at least a half-decent dude in a world where decency is a liability. It was also cool to then watch him put that part of him aside while putting on his Payback hat. Also, the chick from An Education was cute, so there's that. Of the movies he's made in the past 10 years, this is Oliver Stone's strongest work, which you can take the way you want to take it; Alexander is the only Stone film I didn't like (saw the theatrical cut, will not waste my time with the "director's cut" but I might give his "final cut" a day in court), World Trade Center was a solid flick but it felt like a film anyone else could've made, and W. was decent. I don't know if Stone is ever bringing back his A game but it's nice to see that he can still bring his B+ game for this one. The first Wall Street is the better of the two, but Money Never Sleeps ain't no slouch, it's a good follow-up for the most part. The biggest problem I had with it was....


SLIGHT SPOILER THAT KINDA RUINS THE ENDING SO STOP HERE IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW SO ITS THE END RIGHT HERE. THE END. TAKE OFF HOSER. SO LONG, FAREWELL, AUF WIEDERSEHEN, GOOD NIGHT


...the odd Wayne's World-style mega-happy-ending during the end credits. Don't take my advice, but if you watch the movie, take my advice and get the fuck out of the theater as soon as the end credits roll. Do not stick around for what happens during the credits because it feels and looks like some wacky dream sequence. Maybe that's what Stone was going for? I don't know. It's like the end credits bit at the end of Natural Born Killers, seeing Mickey and Mallory in an RV with kids. The ending before the credits is happy enough, it's realistic enough, I don't know why Stone felt he had to give us what he gave us during the credits. Maybe he's just getting soft in his old age, or maybe he just wanted to balance things out. I mean, the movie pretty much ends by telling the audience that shit will never change with the greedy motherfuckers in charge of everything and you're powerless to change it, so this is probably Stone's way of saying "The world is ugly and mean and awful and full of people who will eventually fuck you hard, but as long as you have love in your life, well, uh, at least the fucking won't feel so lonely".