Mexicans will shoot you in the face through a pillow

Why does seeing a guy in flip-flops make me want to punch him in the fucking face? It's like Zuckerberg in The Social Network didn't even have to do anything else in that fuckin' movie, because I judged that fuckin' book cover as soon as I noticed he wore flip-flops most of the time. I'm getting ahead of myself, I'll get to that motherfucker in a bit.

Edgar Wright co-wrote and directed the film Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, a film that made less money in its entire American theatrical run than Paul Blart: Mall Cop made in its opening weekend, which means that the latter is a way better film than the former, and Mr. Wright should be ashamed of himself for wasting his time on adapting Bryan Lee O'Malley's work when he really should've been working on cool ways to film Kevin James falling down. But at least Mr. Wright is trying to atone for his obvious cinematic sin, by hosting another two-week run of cool movies at the New Beverly Cinema -- The Wright Stuff II -- and I went to see a double-bill of The Driver and Duel. In attendance was the director of the first film, Walter Hill, along with two of the actors, Bruce Dern and Ronee Blakley, and producer Frank Marshall. They would give a Q&A and tell stories between films.

So yeah, I noticed a dude in line wearing flip-flops and shorts on what felt like a crisp night and it just made me want to have sex with him tell him to put some pants on. Instead, I did nothing; judge not lest ye be judged, they say, and since I'm a fat fuckin' douche, I have no right to judge. Instead, I asked my friend about his day at work and pretended to care.

Walter Hill is a great fuckin' filmmaker because he tells two-fisted, double-barreled stories about Men doing Man shit and the best part is that his tongue is not anywhere near his cheek as he does so. Sure, these things take place in fantasy worlds, as Hill himself admitted during the Q&A, but he goes with the fuckin' fantasy, he doesn't stand back and play off some Yeah, I Know This Is Bullshit kinda vibe. His second film, The Driver, takes place in a downtown Los Angeles where apparently the population is like, 27 people or something, and the people in the movie are always wearing the same fuckin' clothes. Marc Heuck brought that up during the Q&A about the clothes being like the characters' uniforms, and Hill was like Fuckin'-A They're Uniforms and I don't know about Marc, but if I had been the one to bring that up and get that response from a fuckin' filmmaking god like Hill, well, that shit would've made my fuckin' month.

But yeah, in this movie people have on their uniforms and they don't have names, they have descriptions. The main character is called The Driver, and he's played by Ryan O'Neal, who unfortunately is now best known as the motherfucker who says OH GOD OH MAN OH GOD OH MAN in Tough Guys Don't Dance. A lot of these young punks, they go on the YouTube and they watch that shit and laugh their asses off, never knowing that this guy was a fuckin' badass in at least one movie. They don't know that there are two sides to his nature -- the enforcer and the maniac -- and they never met the maniac. But you know, back in the 70's, O'Neal probably had to deal with that kind of shit for different reasons. He was known for playing pretty boy pansies in pretty boy pansy movies, and I guess he wanted a shot at playing Hard Motherfuckers, and along came Walter Hill's script for The Driver.

Bruce Dern plays The Detective, an awesome motherfucker with a shit-eating grin (probably because he knows how awesome he is) and a hard-on for catching The Driver. Hill said later during the Q&A something about Dern's character hating on The Driver for this kinda pure Zen lifestyle he's got going; The Driver gets paid big bucks for being the wheelman on heists, yet doesn't appear to spend it on much. The fuckin' guy stays in cheap motels (not even paying the extra $1 for a television set) and doesn't appear to own any belongings. You never see him reading a book or doing a fuckin' crossword puzzle. He certainly doesn't need to own a car, he'll boost one if he needs a ride somewhere. All he has is that suit and a tape player with the same fuckin' song playing from it. So it leaves a motherfucker wondering -- what does The Driver get out of this life, enjoyment? Fuck no, this guy wears one of those Perpetual Blank Faces that Alain Delon probably gets royalties from every time a motherfucker in the movies puts one on. Is it a rush for him? I really doubt that, I never see anything resembling emotion coming from him before/during/after the job. It's just what he does.

The Detective sees this as a game, one that he Just Fucking Knows he's going to win. It's pretty awesome how he looks down at his fellow detectives, calling them losers and I bet he sees himself as being pretty fuckin' generous when he tells one of them that he's going to teach him how to be a winner -- then manages to keep that shit-eating grin while downing an old-school glass-bottled Coke. Fuckin' ace, man, fuckin' ace. He also likes referring to The Driver as a cowboy, which is funny because I don't think Driver likes being called that. I mean, I would guess that "cowboy" is synonymous with reckless assholes who fuck it up for everybody else, and if anything gets him out of his Perpetual Blank Face, it's dealing with cowboys.

This guy, Mr. Driver, he'll pick you up from the robbery you just committed and bail you out from certain capture by the cops, but because you took your sweet time and fucked up the timetable, he'll never work with you again. "You were late" he tells a couple cowboys, and that's all he really has to say. Later on, you see that he has a real dislike for one potential client, eventually knocking him the fuck out for trying to scare him into doing the job. But just in case the audience didn't get that you're not supposed to like Potential Client ("Teeth" is his given moniker), they cast raza in the role, so all the Harolds and Sylvias watching can go "Of course he shouldn't trust him, he's a filthy Hispanic". I kid, this movie is full of equal-opportunity criminals, but I'm sure some people watching did probably go Mmm-hmm and nod regarding Teeth's scumbaggery in connection with the ethnicity of the actor portraying him.

The Driver is one of my all-time favorite movies; the old-school car chases are super-fuckin-tense and I'm always reminded that these movies back then, they didn't need fuckin' Cuisinart editing to get the fuckin' point across. Most car chases nowadays don't do shit for me, the last car chase I remember really getting into was Tarantino's Death Proof and that's because he knows what the fuck is up, he doesn't roll Michael Bay-style. The main character is one of those awesome Men Of Few Words; Wright brought up how the guy never has any witty comebacks or shit like that, he'll just look at you for a bit and then just walk away. In the rejoinder department, he's not James Bond -- he's Golgo 13.

The main chicks in this movie don't wear skirts, they wear pants. I think this a way for the filmmaker to get across that even the women in this movie have balls. Isabelle Adjani (her character: "The Player") is smoking hot in this (she's still smoking hot if you like plastic surgery), and in a way her uniform is kinda like the female version of The Driver's; she and O'Neal look badass together and in the cinema of my mind, there's a sequel to this movie about their continuing adventures and it's even better than this damn-near-perfect film. It's the stripped-down simplicity that does it for me, I think. The mise-en-scene manages to be basic yet stylish-as-fuck, the settings and locations are underpopulated, and the dialogue is minimal (O'Neal hardly talks in the fuckin' thing; line-wise, this movie shoulda been called The Detective).

Hill mentioned how lots of actors turned down the film (Robert Mitchum met with Hill for six hours, sharing a bottle of frozen vodka while discussing possibly playing The Detective), probably due to its "experimental" nature and Wright brought up the European feel of this movie (later he referred to it as the French feel). Hill insists it wasn't intentional; while he's a fan of guys like Jean-Pierre Melville, films like Le Samourai are totally influenced by American movies, and Hill, he was tapping that shit at the source, so to speak. Hill thinks that casting a French actress like Adjani probably added to the European feel of the film. By the way, forgive me for using "mise-en-scene" earlier, I just noticed that right now and feel like an even bigger ass than usual. I don't even know what that fucking means!

The Q&A, what else happened during the Q&A? Oh, OK, Bruce Dern did most of the talking while Hill took most of the time talking, because one talked much faster than the other. Dern is one of my favorite character actors and he should be one of yours too, and he's a very funny dude too. He had a couple nights devoted to him at the Cinefamily at the Silent Movie Theater in Los Angeles California on Planet Earth (or something like that, it's a long name) and I'm totally kicking myself right now (figuratively) for not going because I bet that guy had some great fuckin' stories. He's the kind of awesome guy who will give a name to his particular kind of ad-libs -- "Dernsies" -- and not come off like a douche for doing so. He's the real fuckin' deal, people. Look at his resume and check out the motherfuckers this guy's worked with. Stories, motherfuckers, the stories this guy must have. I've read other interviews with the dude and he doesn't mince words, and the fact that he speaks nothing but praise for Walter Hill just proves, that, well, you know, that Walter Hill is just that fucking awesome.

I loved it whenever he got worked up about something and his voice would get louder and he would work gesticulations into it; favorite moment was when he talked about how there's a scene in The Driver where someone gets killed in a pretty sudden/brutal manner, Dern said that only Walter Hill would let the scene continue after the death. I can't do justice to how worked up he got at this point, but the gist of it was basically ONLY WALTER FUCKING HILL WOULD HAVE THE FUCKING BALLS AND UNDILUTED MANHOOD AND OVERALL I-DON'T-GIVE-A-FUCK HARDNESS TO NOT CUT AWAY FROM THE SCENE. ALL OTHER DIRECTORS ARE FUCKING PUSSIES COMPARED TO THE MANGOD THAT IS WALTER HILL. Fuckin'-A, Bruce Dern, fuckin'-A. I'm not a sports fan like you, but still, we gotta hang out some time, Bruce Dern -- and introduce me to your daughter, while you're at it.

A guy like Dern, you need to give him the spotlight and let him talk for as long as he needs to; as it was, he was sharing the stage with others, so the rest of the Q&A basically went like this: Edgar Wright asked a question, Walter Hill slowly/thoughtfully/carefully answered, then Bruce Dern interjected with a Walter Hill anecdote that always ended in effusive praise for the man. Occasionally, Frank Marshall would say something about the production and Ronee Blakley would try to chime in but a Soft & Sweet voice will always lose to Fast & Loud and Slow & Booming every fucking time.

Blakley did manage to get one story out, though; she had decided that her character in The Driver (her character's name: "The Connection") should carry a gun at all times. Hill disagreed, and she decided to carry a prop gun anyway because it would really help her performance, only she would hide it and wouldn't let the director know. No one would see the gun, only she would know that she was carrying -- The Connection would never want anyone to know she was strapped --  so it's not like it would fuck up the movie if no one could see it. Well, in between camera set-ups she started doing some calisthenics and sure enough, the fuckin' gun comes falling out and Hill was all like What The Fuck, Lady?

We found out that Walter Hill doesn't like to rehearse the actors, he treats the first take as a rehearsal and only shoots about 2 or 3 takes before moving on. Also, according to Dern, Walter Hill is a funnier guy than Eddie Murphy -- while Murphy would crack wise at a mile-a-minute, Hill's humor is apparently more of a quality-over-quantity approach. Dern and Hill haven't seen each other in a while, but they appear to be very much friends (eventually Hill started warming up more during the Q&A and would occasionally make a joke at Dern's expense), and Hill said he would've used Dern more in his movies if he wasn't so busy on other projects.

They also talked about about how the car chases were meticulously planned out, everything was written down and diagrammed and every precaution was taken -- Bruce Dern compared Hill's way of working with a football play called "organized mayhem" or "organized chaos" or something like that -- but in the end, someone died during the making of the movie anyway, but it wasn't from a stunt, it was an unfortunate crew member who died from a high fall while setting up a light. I wonder how a filmmaker deals with that, losing someone on the set; I guess most just move on because there's millions of dollars at stake. But does it get to any of them afterwards, or is it just considered an unfortunate accident? I thought I read somewhere that Richard Lester pretty much retired because an actor died on the set of one of his movies. I'm too lazy to Wiki that shit, you do it.

So, that was it for the Q&A. People went up to talk to guests and Wright, and I saw one guy carrying what appeared to be his entire fuckin' DVD collection (and a couple posters) to be signed. I'm one to talk -- I had my DVD of The Stunt Man signed at a New Bev screening -- but I don't think I have it in me to bring every goddamn movie the actors on-stage happened to be in.

Before the next movie, the European theatrical print of Duel, Mr. Wright read an e-mail from the director, some unknown fringe filmmaker named Steven Spielberg. The e-mail detailed the 11-day shoot (I think it was 11) and how they got so much done in so little time (they shot with 5 cameras) and then Wright joked about giving out Spielberg's e-mail address, saying how funny would it be if it was actually stevenspielberg@aol.com.

The trailers that followed were for similar vehicular horror flicks; The Car, starring the big-screen version of Pee-Wee Herman, Christine (I got a kick out of the Coming Soon card being in the John Carpenter font), and a trailer for Maximum Overdrive, which consisted of footage from the movie intercut with Stephen King going on about how he directed this film himself because it was the only way to get a Stephen King story on film done the right way. He looks really scary here, probably because he was a cokehead at the time, and also because standing in front of that Green Goblin truck, you realize that he very much resembles said Goblin.

It's also funny, because he keeps going on about how he's going to scare the shit out of you with this movie. I miss that kind of showmanship, that whole "If This One Doesn't Scare You, You're Already Dead" kinda deal. More movies should straight out declare that they're gonna fuck you up from how scary they are. I think the next step is to warn the audience that they will literally shit themselves from fright, but that kind of sell has to be done with the utmost sincerity, you can't be winking at the audience talking that kinda shit.

I first watched Duel on television when I was 4 or 5 and according to my parents, afterwards I wouldn't refer to trucks as trucks, I'd call them "duel". We'd be on a road trip and I'd see a passing truck and I'd get all excited and shout "Mom, Dad! Look, it's Duel!" Once I found that Duel was available on VHS, it became one of those movies I made my folks rent every time we went to the video store. I would re-enact Duel scenes using my toy cars. I'm telling you, man, I loved me some fuckin' Duel. The last time I watched that film, I would guess I was probably 10 years old. Man, I wished the little kid version of me was at the New Beverly last night, rather than the current jaded douchebag adult version, because....damn. I hate to fuckin' say this, but...fuck. I, uh, I didn't like it nearly as much as I did back in the day. I know! What the fuck, right? I still dug it, though. I'm just saying.

The first 20 minutes or so are fucking fantastic, with fuckin' McCloud on the road, dealing with this asshole trucker hogging up the road. He passes him, which I guess makes the trucker play the I Have A Bigger Dick Than You card and he passes McCloud in return. McCloud doesn't have time for this shit, he's got things to do, so he passes him once again and I guess that offends the trucker, who now demands satisfaction and the titular Duel is fuckin' on. This mainly consists of Asshole Trucker speeding up right behind McCloud and scaring the shit out of him and maybe trying to do a little more than just that.

In his e-mail, Spielberg praised McCloud's "game face" throughout the fast-paced production; me, I want to praise his performance. I'm watching this guy McCloud, and I can't think of anyone else who could play that part, because McCloud is very convincing as this business-type dude who straddles the line between non-confrontational and total pussy. There's a scene earlier where he's talking to his wife on the phone and I guess they had an argument the night before about how a co-worker of his was getting a little too touchy-feely with homeboy's wife at a party. She thinks he should've done something about it, and I agree.

That's your fuckin' woman, chief -- I'm not saying deck the guy, but step in and be all good-natured while telling him that's enough. I bet you this fuckin' McCloud, he didn't have the stones to take care of business but he sure as fuck raised his voice with his wife afterwards, when she was giving him shit for it. So in a way, this whole truck duel deal can be a way for him to prove his manhood or something. I mean, the motherfucker's name is Mann, the least he could do is try to act a little bit like one (albeit spelled with one less "N").

But for the majority of the movie, McCloud's getting more and more freaked out and the sweat stains on his corporate shirt are getting bigger and bigger and that fuckin' Asshole Trucker isn't going away. Kinda like how Black Swan puts you in the increasingly fragile mindset of poor, sweet Natalie Portman, this fuckin' movie (when it isn't boring the shit out of you) is putting you in the increasingly frazzled mindset of McCloud's character. At one point, I swear the motherfucker is actually squealing from fright and all I could think is There But For The Grace Of God And My Giant Testicles, Go I.

I don't know, maybe it was because it was following The Driver or maybe I'm not as easily amused by shots of trucks driving down roads, or maybe (most likely) I'm just an asshole, but whatever the reason, Duel did not hold up for me as much as it did back when my life was simple and happy. Which is not to say that I thought it was a bad movie, far from it, I just wasn't as into it as I was back then. It's still worth watching because it's Spielberg's first film and it's a trip to watch a fuckin' master doing his thing back during a time in his life when it was probably harder for him to get laid.

The guy had something like 11-16 days (depending on where you get your info) to shoot the fuckin' thing and the fuckin' thing is definitely well-made. This was made-for-TV but looks like it was made for the big-screen, and you can tell Spielberg was giving his all making the motherfucker; there's one of those long take deals where McCloud's character walks into a restaurant, goes into a restroom, washes up, has one of those internal monologues, dries off, walks out the restroom, through the restaurant and then looks out the window. I doubt some old pro television director would've even bothered doing it that way.

After the movie, Mr. Wright thanked everyone for coming out (while they were turning their backs to him and walking away) and thanked his guests for being cool enough to do a Q&A (while they were probably already at home, fast asleep). As my buddy and I walked down the sidewalk, I looked over at the residential street and how narrow it was, made even narrower with the parked cars taking up both sides. A car going down one direction would have to practically make contact with one of the parked cars just so the car coming down from the opposite direction could get through. Jesus Christ. I'm not from this city, and I don't live here. How do you people fuckin' do it? Every fucking day, you deal with this shit? Should I be surprised that you're not all Asshole Truckers as a result? Is that you, John Wayne? Is this me?

I've given up on ever seeing Alien Love Triangle by now.

The first time I went to see 127 Hours, I didn't get to finish watching it. There was a couple near the front, talking throughout the film, mostly narrating the on-screen events or clarifying the on-screen events to each other. It's gotten to a point that I've lost enough love for my fellow man that I tend not to put up with that kind of shit anymore. The days of Gandhi-ing these motherfuckers are long lost and gone. I'll either tell them to shut the fuck up or I'll throw M&M's at the offender's head until he or she departs the theater. One day I will carry with me a taser gun, and I will shoot a motherfucker with it to prove a point. Then the motherfucker's friend will pull out his shitty .380 pistol and fill me with the entire magazine to prove his point. I will most likely die, but no longer will I have to put up with the bullshit anymore. There is a peace in death, I believe, unless you write blasphemous-yet-respectful ramblings about Christian movies, then you'll (and by you'll, I mean "I will", because I've done just that) end up in Hell and since Hell is other people, it'll probably be an eternity spent watching your favorite movies with an audience of non-stop talkers. I will be watching Brazil with an audience from The Room.

But this time I couldn't tell them to shut the fuck up, because, well, because they were old. Really old, elderly old. I understand that we got to Eat All The Old People but I'm not really in agreement with that sentiment because I still have some bullshit principle about respecting my elders; even my cunt grandmother gets plenty of respect from me (nobody said you can't talk shit behind their backs, though), but part of it probably comes from having old parents and coming to the sobering realization that their medicine cabinet actually is a medicine cabinet nowadays. So I couldn't tell this old couple to cut the shit or I'd take their dentures away and they'd have to gum their popcorn, I couldn't. I actually felt bad, because it was probably a hearing problem issue (combined with their lack of respect for their juniors, of course). So about 20 minutes into the movie, I could hear the rest of the audience getting uncomfortable and the most someone would muster was a Shhh but that was it, really -- until Laura Linney stepped in.

See, there was a woman in her late 30's/early 40's who would be played by Laura Linney in the movie of her life, but for the sake of my recollection, I'm going to say it was indeed the star of You Can Count On Me who was sitting on the other side of the row from the old couple. Ms. Linney decided she had enough and loudly asked (so we can all hear it) the couple "Are you going to keep talking throughout the movie? That way I can leave right now, if you're going to keep talking". The old woman then turned to the old man and asked him "What did she say?" and at that point I wanted to crawl under my seat and die among the discarded chewing gum and popcorn. The old man then went on to tell his old lady, "I think she's saying we're too loud" and at that point I wanted to dig a hole in the floor and take it as deep as I could take it. Instead, I left the theater and got my money back. No I didn't, I got what they call a "Readmittance Pass".

Anyway, I finally got around to watching Danny Boyle's new joint (co-written by Simon Beaufoy, who also adapted Slumdog Millionaire for the big screen, but more importantly, co-wrote Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day), starring James Franco, a great-looking young actor with a reputation of being an insufferable shit and a genuine eccentric -- a shit eccentric -- and somewhere along the way started doing more fun movies and started giving off the vibe that he might be kind of a cool guy but is probably still a weird douchebag. So he's the new Val Kilmer, basically, only he hasn't gotten into his Fat Kilmer stage yet.

Whatever, no one's asking me to have a conversation with the dude, so whether he's a Good Guy or not shouldn't/doesn't matter to me, not as long as he's not bringing his doucheyness to the screen and inflicting it on the audience, whether or not the role calls for it. Nah son, that's Ashton Kutcher territory, and THAT motherfucker is gonna live for at least a hundred years. Think about that: Ashton Kutcher will live approximately 10 Christina-Taylor Greens, that's 10 nine-year-old girls who will never have a chance to have their first kiss, never fall in love, never drive a car, while Punk'd the Douchebag will always remain to unpleasantly surprise you with his stupid douchebag face on a poster of the newest Natalie Portman movie. I don't know what sweet angel Natalie Portman did to deserve that fate. Oh wait, I know -- she said yes to a fuckin' Ashton Kutcher movie. Enjoy your pregnancy, toots.

God, how I wish I was Ashton Kutcher.

Yeah, so the movie. I finally caught up with it and I have to say, I wish I just saw the shit at home. Don't get me wrong, I really ended up liking this movie but it's one of those movies with lots of quiet scenes, and movies with quiet scenes are either best seen at a film festival, a critic's screening or in the privacy of your own home, otherwise you're watching it with a noisy public audience. I didn't have an old couple to deal with this time, I had a father in his 40's or 50's and his wife and kids and believe it or not, the fuckin' kids were the quiet ones. Meanwhile, this basso-profundo-voice-having bald-headed fuck was chiming in with some bullshit every once in a while and if it wasn't for the power of the fuckin' movie, I'd have conjured up a tack hammer with black magic and cave in that giant flesh-colored melon he calls a head with it, right in front of his well-behaved kids and probably-scared-of-her-husband wife. His exposed brains would probably pass for a delicacy in some cultures, the dumb bastard.

It's a true story, this 127 Hours, and you probably already know it so I'm not spoiling it by giving a synopsis, and if you think I'm spoiling it, then stop reading this and go take a flying leap into a fuckin' canyon crevice and I hope a fuckin' boulder meets you on the way down and tries to give you a handshake -- which by the way, that's what happens to this dude in the movie. He goes rock climbing or something in Utah, falls in a big hole, gets his hand stuck between a rock and a hard place, eventually severs his fuckin' arm off because it sucks drinking your own piss. Also, the Titanic sinks in Titanic and the crew of Apollo 13 make it back home in Apollo 13.

So, this James Franco motherfucker plays Aron Ralston, and I figure that some audience members would be all like Fuck This Guy (well, I did anyway), so I think the filmmakers wanted to make sure that we know that Ralston's a charming motherfucker, that he's something more than just some XXXXTRRREEEEEME type of asshole, which he isn't. The dude eats shit early on while riding his bike and he just laughs at what happened and takes a picture of it, he doesn't yell out how Fucking Extreme that was. It sucks that he crashed, now he's gonna take a picture to show friends how dumb he looked at that moment. I don't think he's about bro-ing out with his fellow fratbros and circle-jerking in the Congo and how fuckin' Extreme everything is, he's about doing this shit alone, it's probably a Proving Yourself kinda thing. I'm sure this is further explained by Ralston himself in that book he wrote, but we all know how I roll in this motherfucker, he might as well have written that shit on sky-paper in invisible ink.

He runs into a couple chicks on his solo trip, and after swimming with them and NOT fucking them, one of them remarks something like "I don't think we figured into his day at all", and she might be right. I mean, he helped them find what they were looking for and showed them a fun time, but whereas most dudes in this kind of situation would be more about trying to work out a plan to Luke Skywalker their penis into the Tauntaun that is the chick's vagina, this guy Ralston just wants to show them a cool swimming hole they never would've known about otherwise. He's a sincere dude, so you're with him or at least I was with him, even though you find out later that he committed a massive fuck-up before he left that ends up making his eventual shitty situation even more shitty of a shitty situation. What happens is that the motherfucker never told anyone where he was going, and even if he had fuckin' GPS, he'd probably ditch that shit because he'd probably consider that shit defeating the purpose or something. What an asshole.

But at least Ralston realizes he fucked up badly, and the filmmakers use that moment for what I'm guessing was a Boyle/Beaufoy creation, where Aron interviews himself like he's in a cheesy talk show; watching Ralston pretty much call himself a stupid asshole for making his situation worse would make even the most staunch member of the Fuck This Guy club in the audience reconsider his or her initial thoughts on the dude. Poor Aron, if he only left a fuckin' note or answered his poor mother's phone calls or told his sister where he was going, then maybe he would still have a right arm -- but then the movie would've been called 62 Hours or 80 Hours and you'd end up with pissed-off motherfuckers demanding their money back because they thought they were gonna see Nick Nolte and Eddie Murphy wreck shit up again, not watch some asshole get really thirsty.

Speaking of thirsty, I was pretty fuckin' parched watching this movie, I drained my Cherry Coke like it was, well, like it was Cherry Coke. The motherfucker didn't have that much water with him when he got stuck, he had to make that shit last, and that resulted in him having thoughts/dreams/hallucinations of Coca-Cola or Mountain Dew or ice cold beer. Movie theaters must love this fuckin' movie with all of the product shots of delicious beverages, that's some straight-up advertising that should send the audience to the concession stands. I don't think it's some kinda canny corporation/filmmaker alliance to scratch each others back though, it makes perfect sense that a dehydrated motherfucker would think of those things, and it's not like he's gonna think of some generic shit. While Aron Ralston was stuck in the hole, thinking of the party the girls invited him to, the party that's currently going on while he's in his predicament, I doubt he was thinking to himself "Man, I wish I had some fuckin' Generic Brand Cola up in this bitch."

But I bet you there are still some motherfuckers out there who saw the movie and went Hey Maaannnn, What's With This Corporate Bullshit, Maaannn! because everything to them is a goddamn conspiracy to turn us into mindless zombie sheep consumers or something. You gotta calm down every once in a while with that shit, man -- and quit acting like you're better than me just because you buy your shit at Whole Foods. Oh wow, you know what the fuck is up because you only eat organic food, oh you're the man now, dog. If you really want to do something good for the world, dig a big hole, jump inside, kill yourself, have someone cover you with all the dug-up dirt, and do your best to decompose quickly. That's some organic shit right the fuck there, good for the planet and the soul of your fellow carbon-based lifeforms.

My buddy brought up Danny Boyle's visual style as a director (as opposed to his visual style as a gardener) and yeah, it's true that he can be a flashy motherfucker sometimes, and yet I've never had a problem with it and I've never found his style intrusive to the story he's trying to tell in any of his films. This guy, he's so good he knows when to dial it down, when to ladle it on, and when to find a happy medium. This guy, he won Best Director at the Oscars a couple years back, and you know what? He fuckin' deserved it -- not just for that movie, but for all of them, even the ones that weren't as hot as the others. He's fuckin' solid, man. What's interesting is that I think the guy is in his 50's now, but he's got a young style -- young but not desperate. It never feels like he's trying to keep up with the cool kids, kinda like what Tony Scott's been doing since the new millennium. 

Boyle's able to adapt his style depending on the kind of story he's trying to tell, it's never just one speed, and that's why I feel that while his movies definitely have the Flashy factor in common, I never feel like they're movies from the same director (in that it's the same ol' tricks from the same ol' fuckin' trick bag). It's gotten to a point that every fuckin' Michael Bay movie is gonna operate at the same speed/same style, whether he's telling a story about a bunch of fuckin' oil drillers trying to blow up a giant asteroid the size of Texas or a story about a love triangle set in 1940's Pearl Harbor. I used to love M. Bay and I used to love T. Scott and hopefully I will never have to "used to" anything involving D. Boyle. As far as I'm concerned, Danny Boyle is always welcome to my Scooby Doo party anytime, while Bay & Scott will have to bring some booze, weed or chips to even be considered entrance to the motherfucker. I will say this, though: Boyle's got a thing for contrails because I think he's done it in at least 2 movies now, this movie and 28 Days Later. If he makes a movie with the number 26 in the title, I bet you'll see contrails in that shit too.

There have been reports of people fainting, freaking out, and probably losing control of their bowels/bladder towards the end, when Ralston decides to lose some weight the hard way. In the grand cinematic scheme of things, it's not that bad. Sure it's gory, but compared to your standard zombie movie, visually it ain't no thing -- and yet, it feels pretty fucking horrible, shit, it feels a lot fuckin' worse than watching the undead chow down on a motherfucker. I think it's because you've been with this dude for the past hour and fifteen minutes, you've been watching all the shit he's gone through, and you've gotten to really know him by watching him reminisce about those close to him, like his family (his dad is played by Treat Williams and his mom is played by Kate Burton from Big Trouble in Little China (which was based on the real-life story about her truck driving brother)). It's one thing when it happens after you've been in his shoes (or shoe, actually) and been along for the ride, so when he does what he does, it fuckin' hurts.

Also, the fact that this really happened probably adds a lot to it. While this motherfucker starts cutting into his arm as if it were the driest, rubbery, burnt sirloin steak ever (a woman screamed in the audience at this), hundreds of miles away he has a mom, dad and sister wondering and worried about where he is, and hoping that he's OK. I teared up and had a lump in my throat by the end of this movie -- didn't think I was going to feel that way over someone I dismissed as some thrill-seeking douche in the trailers. But I doubt I'll ever have moistened eyes over the victims in Saw. Why? Because they never fuckin' existed. So go suck a dick, Jigsaw.

The Not-So-Quiet Earth

Left Behind: The Movie is based on a series of books of a similar name (I think the print version is called Left Behind: The Book), but they might as well have been titled Hotcakes because that’s how they fuckin’ sold, like muthafuckin’ hotcakes. Some dudes decided to make a movie out of it -- a trilogy of movies, eventually -- and that was ten years ago (TEN YEARS! TEN YEARS!) but I’m finally watching it now because my sister asked me if I could burn a copy of her copy for someone else to have a copy, and what could I do, NOT watch the fuckin’ thing?

Kirk Cameron, he’s like the Tom Hanks of Christian entertainment, so he stars in this movie as Ace Reporter, the ace reporter for fake-ass news network GNN and he’s in Israel interviewing this old scientist who created some kind of formula that will allow people to grow food even in the most barren lands.  They call this shit “The Eden Formula” or something, so you know what the fuck is up. Then the sky turns Wesley Snipes and then a bunch of CGI jets fill the air, headed to bomb the fuck out of Israel, but something happens that causes all of the Evil Jew-Hating Jets to explode. Ace Reporter, his middle name is Fearless, so he takes his fuckin’ Canon XL-1 and starts filming himself give a live report while the EJHJ’s are falling around him. He’s so into the scene, he doesn’t notice that he’s giving a report using a disconnected microphone from the camera, but I guess such is the power of the Holy Spirit that he still manages to make himself heard through the airwaves. That’s real Phantom Power right there, bitches.

Some old bearded guys in rags walk past the wreckage and one of them starts talking to Ace Reporter’s camera in English, even though later on when AR plays that shit back for his peeps in Chicago, the shit comes out in Hebrew. AR then meets up with one of those Jittery Smoking Whistleblower types who’s freaking out about some shit he found out about but he’s not sharing it. For reals, yo, this guy carries a small disc inside his fake expensive watch and Neener-Neeners it in front of Ace, saying it’s too important for him to share it or some bullshit like that.

The other star of the movie is Brad Johnson, a dude lucky enough to get cast in a big role in a Steven Spielberg movie, except the movie was Always and that was pretty much it for the guy as far as Big Movies went. Anyway, he’s this pilot who gets bitched at by his wife because he’s off to a last-minute gig flying from Chicago to London, even though today is his son’s birthday party. The son seems cool with it, he even asks Dad to bring him one of those big fuckin’ Beefeater hats those assholes wear. Moms, on the other hand, she’s not having it, she’s like How Dare You Go Work Hard To Put Food On Your Family’s Plate. She’s like How Dare You Go Off On The Job That Paid For This Big House, How Dare You! And rather than pimp-slapping this fuckin’ nag across the nag-hole, he’s like Whatever, Honey. He also has a teen daughter who straddles the thigh between Responsible and Rebellious. What I mean is that she wears a nose ring but she also has college exams to take and she’s serious about that shit.

What she and her pilot Daddy don’t take seriously, is Mom/Wife’s devout Christianity. I liked how Daddy Pilot and Pilot’s Daughter never specifically mention it, they just refer to “those people” she has over and the virtues of listening to them and pretending to give a fuck versus not even bothering to listen. Mommy also receives regular visits from a reverend played by Theo from Die Hard; Theo comments to DP how he hardly sees him at home nowadays, and DP’s response is something like “People still fly -- even on Sundays.” OMG -- the quarterback is toast!

Whatever, that was probably DP’s way of telling the reverend that God or No God, Chick-fil-A has no business being closed on Sundays. Literally, no business -- because they’re closed on Sunday. What the fuck, what is this day of rest shit, what is this bullshit? It don’t matter to Daddy Pilot. By the way, when DP is introduced, he’s washing his face even though he’s already dressed for work. I don’t know about you, but to me that looks like a clear case of I Didn’t Shower. He probably just sponged the more stinky areas but to me that’s a slap in the face to your fellow man. Fuck Daddy Pilot and his non-believing/non-showering ways.

So, Ace Reporter is on Daddy Pilot’s flight for whatever reason, and we’re introduced to a flight attendant played by Kirk Cameron’s wife, which I guess makes her like the Rita Wilson of Christian entertainment. Turns out she is Ace Reporter’s favorite flight attendant, and I know this because the first thing Ace asks her is “How’s my favorite flight attendant?”. He’s not bullshitting either, because thanks to him making some phone calls, Favorite Flight Attendant is now about to embark on a new career working for the U.N., even though she should find a new career in making bad choices because I think she’s banging Daddy Pilot, or trying to bang him, at least.

An old lady asks Ace Reporter to help find her husband, who it appears has disappeared without his clothes. Suddenly the other passengers start to freak out because their loved ones have disappeared sans clothes as well. Everyone starts crying and shit, looking for their babies and shit, no one knows what just happened. One fat goateed fuck even goes as far as being completely balls-out nuts, trying to open the hatch because he doesn’t want to end up like the missing passengers. This asshole must be the grandson of the asshole passenger from Airport, you know the one.  Anyway, it takes both Daddy Pilot and Ace Reporter to wrestle this fat red-faced fuck from opening up the emergency exit.

So it turns out that this shit is happening all over the world, approximately 142 million people (including every child on Earth) are now gone, vanished without a trace. We see lots of crying people, parents grieving over empty baby carriages, sad dogs stumbling around with loose leashes, etc. Back on the ground, DP goes back home with AR tagging along, and finds that nobody is home. He goes to his bedroom to find an empty bed with only his wife's nightgown and wedding ring left on it. Oh, and her cross pendant is delicately placed in full view, giving us a big hint as to what or who caused this shit. Naturally, this is too much for DP, who then grabs the nearest bible and Tommy Wiseaus that shit to the nearest mirror, shattering it (the mirror). Then, what I think happens is that DP is so impressed by the damage the bible made to the mirror, that he then picks it up to take a better look, then decides to read it from the very beginning.

During the first night of this, uh, happening, the country (I think) goes under martial law and Ace Reporter nearly gets shot for committing the crime of being outside his home after curfew -- either that, or the military guy with the rifle is a big fan of Julie McCullough and wanted to give this Kirk Cameron-looking motherfucker a piece of his mind. Anyway, turns out Pilot's Daughter is still around, so she and Daddy Pilot have the tearful reunion and try to figure out what the fuck is going on, while Ace Reporter charters a private plane in his attempt to figure out what the fuck is going on. Meanwhile, some foreign dude with blue eyes and blond hair is hooking up with the U.N., trying to save the world from starvation, in addition to trying to figure what the fuck is going on. His name is Nicolae Carpathia, by the way, just thought you should know.

You wanna hear (read) some fucked-up shit? Turns out Reverend Theo from Die Hard did not disappear, even though his family did and so has his entire parish. He ends up making like Harvey Keitel in Bad Lieutenant and does the whole Why God/Fuck You God/I Love You God spiel. His crime, apparently, was that even though he spent every Sunday giving sermons and having answers for people, he never had complete faith -- he had doubts, the motherfucker -- and you know how it is with that asshole, if you're not with him 100 percent, then you don't get to share in His Kingdom, the motherfucker. Quit being such a needy fucking child, God.

Yeah, so that's the deal, by the way -- it's the Rapture that happened. The believers, the people who accepted Jesus Christ as personal Lord and Savior and had ABSOLUTE COMPLETE UNQUESTIONABLE FAITH have been swooped up into Heaven while everyone else is assed out having to spend the next 7 years living through Tribulation, which means all the bad horrible shit with the Antichrist and all that fun shit, that frankly, is probably at least a tiny bit awesome to experience. I remember Patton Oswalt had a bit about something similar, something about how those who live long enough to experience the Apocalypse are gonna have some awesome stories to tell about it afterwards.

But on that tip, that always made me wonder about those who have to go through Tribulation, let's say they find Christ during that period, so they suffer through all the horrible shit that the other Christians didn't have to suffer through because they were all about the Notorious G.O.D. ahead of time -- wouldn't the Tribulation-era Christians (or Tribbles, for short), wouldn't they have, like, serious bragging rights?

O.G. CHRISTIAN: Welcome to God's Kingdom, so happy to finally see you here, my brother in Christ. Tell me about your last days. 

TRIBBLE: Man, I was starving and stinky, I watched loved ones die slow horrible deaths, then these assholes got me and beat me for days, and then after the beatings, they tortured me, and after all that, they chopped my fucking head off because I refused the Mark of the Beast. And now I'm here. Praise God. How about you?

O.G. CHRISTIAN: I went to church every Sunday, where we sang happy songs, listened to inspirational sermons and ate delicious meals after the service. 

TRIBBLE: Seriously? That's all you had to do to get here?

O.G. CHRISTIAN: Yup. 

TRIBBLE: Man, that's some bullshit right there.

O.G. CHRISTIAN: Hey, we gave you so many chances to do it the easy way. 

TRIBBLE: I had things to do...

O.G. CHRISTIAN: Sir --

TRIBBLE: ...and it all just sounded so goofy...

O.G. CHRISTIAN: Sir, please -- 

TRIBBLE: ...plus I always sleep in on Sundays --

O.G. CHRISTIAN: Listen to me, ya deaf fuck! We offered you a chance when we coulda done something, we offered you a chance to give your life to Jesus Christ and you BLEEEEEEWWWWWW IT!!!

See that's why people like Daddy Pilot and Ace Reporter and Fake Pastor and Pilot's Daughter were Left Behind -- they weren't down with all that business, but after watching a videotape that was, uh, left behind by another pastor (played by real-life stereotypically fat & sweaty pastor Pastor T.D. Jakes), they realize that it wasn't radiation or aliens that took everyone else away, it was the Rapture, yo. The Rapture, muthafucka, back in yo ass in the 2K. DP now admits that what bothered him about his wife's beliefs was that it meant that she was looking to something else other than her husband in the Things To Look At For Help department. What an asshole. But that's all good now, because he's got a Bible practically fused to his hand now, plus, his daughter doesn't have that heretical nose-ring anymore.

Ace Reporter tries digging deep into Nicolae Carpathia's business, despite finding his Jittery Smoking Whistleblower friend dead in his apartment and while dodging the World's Worst Sniper. At one point, he enlists the help of a GNN colleague and I thought it was interesting that said colleague is a woman with henna tattoos on her face and hands, and weird might-as-well-be-Pagan symbols hanging from her neck. She also has a sassy black roommate and I think I was able to put 2 and 2 together there as far as what the movie was trying to tell me about those two characters -- and more importantly, why they were not among the Rapture's chosen. You know what the fuck is up. They shoulda just cast some lisping prancing dude and include a scene near the end where Kirk Cameron shakes his head and looks at the poor homo with pity and say something like, "It's not too late to change your life" and then the gay guy's like "Change? What do you mean? I was born this way!" and then a lightning bolt comes down and sets him on fire, and while Mr. Alternative Lifestyle is running around, screaming in fiery pain, Cameron looks up to the sky and winks and then a giant hand reaches down and they high-five each other. At least in Mel Gibson's version, it would play like that.

I'm getting tired, so I'm gonna wrap it up sooner than intended. In the end, it's a whole New World Order conspiracy that involves international bankers, the U.N. going bankrupt, and Nicolae Carpathia suddenly turning from Brother Teresa to a creepy piece-of-shit talking about how everyone will now look to him for guidance, since he was the one to get a 7-year peace treaty set up in the Middle East. Also, he has this plan to use the Eden formula to grow food in 10 various plots of land around the world that he happens to own. Yeah, you know what the fuck that means.

What's interesting is that all this shit basically happens at the end; the climax is really about Ace Reporter accepting Jesus Christ while shitty Christian Rock plays on the soundtrack, while the denouement is about Carpathia letting his Antichrist flag fly (Favorite Flight Attendant is among those poor souls choosing to be on Team 666). The movie ends with AR meeting Daddy Pilot and Pilot's Daughter in church, while AR's narration basically says that the next 7 years are really going to suck, but at least he has his faith and faith is all you need and now he knows and knowing is half the battle G.I. JOOOOOOOOOEEEEEEEE!!!!!

According to Wikipedia, the guys who wrote the book series ended up suing the filmmakers because they thought the movies were shit. It basically came down to them thinking that in addition to watering down the story during the adaptation process, the movie was ultimately way too cheap for its ambitions. They want to see these movies get a much better looking treatment. I kinda agree with them; I never read the books, and since I don't read, I probably never will, but I think the premise is kinda cool -- how would something like the Rapture happen in real life -- but yeah, it's kinda cheap-looking and occasionally dull. I also have a feeling that the filmmakers told, like, half of the book's story in this movie, which is why this shit ends on a bullshit Golden Compass note. It wasn't that bad though, it was watchable enough for me, also it wasn't like I had anything to do at the time, so that helped. It was watchable enough that I'll probably watch the other two sequels, just to see where they're going to take this shit next, and whether or not they have the budget to pull it off -- plus, they're on Netflix Instant, so yeah, that would've happened eventually.

More entertaining was the 20-minute video of the film's premiere, included in the DVD special features; you had some chick host who looked like she could be related to Cheryl Hines talking about how this 100-million-copy-selling series of books is now a big movie, and then they interviewed some of the actors and premiere guests. They interviewed Tom Selleck, who it turns out, is a friend of Brad Johnson's and figures that the movie must have some value since his friend chose to be in it. They also interviewed actors like Corbin Bernsen and Nick Mancuso, who also seemed to play things on the secular side, saying that it all comes down to whether it's a good story well told. I think Johnson, Bernsen and Mancuso attend the Church of As Long As The Check Clears, so that's where they're coming from. But then they interviewed Lacey Chabert, who was pretty open about reading the books and believing in the message. Supposedly, she was gonna play Pilot's Daughter but scheduling issues prevented her from doing so, which is why they cast someone else who was vaguely Chabert-esque.

The DVD also included trailers for Christian movies starring the aforementioned Bernsen and Mancuso (the latter apparently playing the same role in three of them -- Satan and/or the Antichrist), in addition to Kirk Cameron, formerly nutty-but-now-just-merely-kooky Margot Kidder, annoying OCD-having piece-of-shit Howie Mandel, and last-but-not-least, Sir Gary Busey. I'm gonna be honest with you, I want to watch these movies, for the same reason I want to watch movies in general -- because they're movies. I don't know if they're any good, and I wouldn't bet any money on them being good, but Jesus Christ, they've got to be entertaining one way or the other. It's all I ask of these motion pictures.

In short, if you like late 90's/early 00's Christian pop music, then you'll love the DVD menus for Left Behind: The Movie.

26 reds and a bottle of wine

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It was like he shouldn't have even bothered, he thought to himself

Like last December, my buddy was housesitting for someone else who had places to go for the holidays, and it was the same place, a nice place and because this guy has access to screeners, it was like, fuck yeah, let's watch some fucking screeners again. How can the same thing happen to the same guy twice?

It was only a one-night triple feature this time, so I had to tell Sofia Coppola, Julie Taymor and that dead dude who directed Casino Jack to go fuck themselves, but in actuality I was telling myself to go fuck myself because I'll probably end up seeing their films anyway, only I'd end up paying for the privilege.

First film was Black Swan, directed by that asshole who bangs Rachel Weisz, that's why he's an asshole. If you're banging a famous chick I want to bang, you're an asshole and that's why I like Ryan Reynolds again. But the guy who knocked up Natalie Portman? Fuck that guy. No, not you Natalie, you've done enough damage to yourself taking that advice.

Anyway, Black Swan is not about some racist asshole falling in love with some rich black chick, instead it's about this bundle of nerves who wants to be the best ballet dancer ever or something like that. She wants to be perfect, and if that means starving herself and vomiting up what little she eats, then so be it. Poor girl, there's a part where she's going to eat a grapefruit for breakfast and she's looking it over and doing the whole Happy Girl Yummy thing and I felt bad for the little swan. Her mother is played by Barbara Hershey who is now one of the most awesome people in the world because she signed my DVD of The Stunt Man at the New Beverly Cinema. Richard Rush and Steve Railsback signed that DVD too, but they aren't in Black Swan, Barbara Hershey is. It was strange trying to figure that character out, because on the one hand you think she's one of these stage mothers who force their kids to live out their own fantasies and maybe she is, but if that's the case, it's gotten to a point where she realizes she has created a Frankenstein. That's right, she's created a mad doctor intent on bringing the dead back to life.

Fuckin' Aronofsky would be my bro if he wasn't already betraying our brotherhood by turning Rachel Weisz into a baby machine. What I mean is that he casts some cute fuckin' ladies in this flick; Natalie Portman is super-skinny but she wears her bones well, making her and Angelina Jolie the only skeletons I find hot. Then you have Mila Kunis who not only looks like she enjoys the occasional cheeseburger but even eats one in the film; if you want to amuse yourself, go look up any YouTube video where they go behind-the-scenes of Family Guy and read the comments, because it's like every other comment is "OMIGOD MEG IS ACTUALLY HOT IN REAL LIFE" and then they skeet all over the keyboard and that's a bitch to clean up, even with a Q-tip. It's too bad those losers aren't badass sex machines like me. Excuse me while I take a break from writing so I can go have sex with a sexy girl. I'm so fuckin' awesome, I never call them back.

I think Mr. Requiem For A Wrestler's Fountain knew I'd be pissed at him and he tried to triple-combo his good graces into my heart by casting Winona Ryder as the 3rd part of the Why Aren't You Girls Making Love To Me Like Right Now trifecta. She's, like, 40 now but I'm not hating, she's still got it, plus 40 is the new 20. Didn't you know that? I know that because a 40-year-old told me. I Heart Winona and if I had the bank account, I'd open a chain of stores where she can shoplift to her pretty little heart's content. One of my cousins, on my dad's side, used to always say "Winona Ryder? I'd ride her" and that's just one of the two reasons I haven't spoken to him since 1998. The second reason is because he and most of my dad's side of the family are all cunts and I don't speak to any of them either. Thanksgiving is awesome now, thank you very much.

So Portman's got the lead role in Swan Lake and she's trying to be all perfect and shit and she's getting all fucked-up in the head over it. She's finding these weird bloody scratches on her back and since she wasn't having sex with me, she figures there's got to be another way she attained these minor scrapes. She's also got a bad case of They're All Coming To Get Me; seeing weird shit, having weird dreams, wondering if Mila Kunis' rival ballet-girl is out to help her or out to fuck her over. Meanwhile, Winona is all pissed about her upcoming retirement, because it's one of those retirements where the retiree is the last one to know. Then there's muthafuckin' Vincent Cassel, goddamn Mesrine himself showing up as the director of the ballet company and this guy, he's surprisingly not a Gay but then again, who knows? I mean, you figure this guy is trying to bang Portman and he's tired of banging Ryder but that shit's never confirmed, he puts the moves on a motherfucker but then it seems more like he's just doing some head-game shit to get the best out of his ballerinas. Ballerini?

I liked the movie, but like Aronofsky's wrestler movie (I think they could actually play very well together, they've got similarities, says I), I think the performance makes the film. Wait, that doesn't sound right -- the performance and the film go very well together. It's some perfect one-in-a-million kismet shit; if Natalie Portman didn't exist, they'd have to invent her for this movie, otherwise you could never make it. Mr. Weisz does a very good job making you feel almost as fucked up as Portman's character, putting you into her increasingly fragile mindset, but I was more impressed with Portman. I don't know who the fuck else is possibly up for an Oscar, but they better be fuckin' phenomenal because I think Natalie did a pretty good job throwing down the fuckin' gauntlet like a fuckin' boss. Mila Kunis is very good too, especially in one scene between her and Portman that has little to do with acting dialogue-wise, but a lot to do with, uh, physical acting. If that's a spoiler, then fucking Life is a goddamn spoiler and I'm getting fucking sick of it and want to punch every sensitive motherfucker in his mother's cunt. I'm being serious, people. Your Mother's Cunt. Pow.

Quentin Tarantino probably loves this flick because there are a lot of shots of feet in it, and since they're ballet dancers, their feet are pretty jacked, but anyone who's seen Kill Bill knows that QT doesn't discriminate. If you are in possession of a vagina and have feet, he'll probably be all over them. If I was a chick and I offered my bare feet for QT to do with whatever he pleases and he turned me down, I'd throw myself off of a tall building and with my luck end up splattering all over some passing automobile with a podiatrist inside.

My friend and I then ate shitty delivery pizza which I still gobbled up 4 slices of because I'm a smelly disgusting piece-of-shit with no self-respect, then we popped in True Grit, starring Jeff Bridges, or as we all like to refer to him as, the President of the United States in The Contender. Every dispensary I go to is always playing The Contender, either that or Pineapple Express. Bridges must get tired of people coming up to him all "President, yeeeeeeaaaahhh!".

So Bridges plays Rooster Cogburn, this badass U.S. Marshal who gets the job done, but he plays by his own rules, so I guess he's the original cliche. Only he's not some psycho Riggs or ornery Harry Callahan; when you give him shit about the people he's killed/wounded, he seems almost like a forgetful grandfather who didn't know his glasses were on his head the whole time, like Oh Yeah I Forgot About That. We all have grandfathers like that, I'm sure.

When I was 14, I thought chickens gargled in the morning based on a cartoon I saw, but the 14-year-old girl in this movie, she probably rips the heads of off chickens everyday to prepare that evening's supper. I guess hard times create hard people, and she's kind of a badass herself. After her father is killed, she goes to town and looks to get some justice against that bad Josh Brolin, and this chick is fuckin' haggling prices and not backing down like a goddamn angry pro. If this chick existed in the 21st century, she'd be giving seminars on not being a fuckin' pussy when it comes to dealing with asshole car salesman (redundancy). She talks to adults like she was older than any of them, and she has no problem sleeping in a room full of corpses, she can handle that shit. I wonder if she was always this way, or if the murder of her father (at the hands of the aforementioned Brolin) increased that shit. She mentions that her mother is pretty much inconsolable and her sister (or brother, I forgot) is too young, so whatever the case, it's safe to say it didn't take long for her to declare herself as the man of the house.

This 14-year-old, she gets Rooster to go on the hunt for this father-killing mofo and even though he doesn't want this girl to cramp his style, he lets that slide, he abides, just like The President in The Contender. They go from place to place, meet people, get in adventures, like Caine in The Man Who Would Be King. Joining them on their journey is my man, the fuckin' Bourne Identity himself, Matt Muthafuckin' Damon. Fuckin' A. I'd like to add that guy on my shortlist of people I'd like to play me in a movie, alongside the late great Brother Theodore and the drunk rich lady from Will & Grace. If I ever meet that guy, I'm gonna give him a high-five that he will not return, he's gonna leave me hanging but I'm gonna be OK with it because he's Matt Fuckin' Damon.

I don't like the taste of John Wayne's cock, and that's probably why I haven't seen as many of his movies as I guess I should, so I've never seen the original True Grit. But from my understanding, that version wasn't as faithful to the book as this version is. Talented assholes Joel and Ethan Coen helmed this shit, and they must be related to God because like Him, they like to put their creations through fucked-up shit and probably get off on it. Anyway, with the exception of some annoying guy who makes animal noises, it didn't feel that Coen-esque in terms of quirky shit, but it's definitely a Coen Brothers film in that it's Good Times.

These guys, I don't know how they do it, I think while everyone else is drinking Hater Juice or Haterade, these guys are drinking straight-up 100-proof Champion, because that's what they are. They did cut down on the consumption when they made Intolerable Cruelty, but they're probably mainlining that shit now. Is it a masterpiece or a reinvention of the Western or whatever else these jackass critics always say about these things? No, I don't think it is, it's just a damn solid 2 hours of entertainment. There's not that much action, but that's OK because the interactions between the characters was more than enough to keep me happy. 

Wait, I take it back a bit -- it is more of a Coen Brothers film than I thought. You see, these guys, they like being assholes and have to find a way to amuse themselves at our expense; the reason you and me haven't beat the shit out of them by now is because they make cool movies. Well, here I think they have their fun by having every character who isn't a 14-year-old girl speak like they have shit in their mouth. Bridges is so awesome an actor that he can make Cogburn's dialogue sing (sample dialogue: "Gwarhss woit popadonsh umfff batahgh dogsh rawrff") and then I bet my man Damon thought he dodged a bullet with that shit, but then the Coens probably did a rewrite and halfway through the movie he ends up biting his tongue and for a while starts cotton-balling his lines as well. Fuckin' Brolin? Same shit, only it sounds like he reached a compromise with the Coens by only doing it at 50% power and making up for his increased grasp of diction/enunciation by doing a Ted Levine impression.

The 3rd and final film of the day was The Fighter, starring the precious Amy Adams and two other guys. Now I thought the title of the film was referring to the Clooney-fighting/Tomlin-angering/Nolan headlocking director of the film, but it's not. The Adorable Amy Adams plays Charlene, a bartender in the city of Racism who probably drinks as much as she sells and one day Mark Wahlberg shows up, being all nice to her the way he was nice to Reese Witherspoon in Fear. During their chat, some douche shows up trying to be stupid with Wahlberg and smart with Adams, so Wahlberg grabs this punk and makes him feel the vibrations. Turns out this Wahlberg, he's this potentially awesome boxer who's being held down by his once-potentially-awesome older brother, played by a crackhead who looks like a balding Christian Bale.

In between these brief moments with The Adorable Amy Adams, we have these long periods focusing on Wahlberg and his brother who might as well be the white Flavor Flav. There's one scene where she and Wahlberg are about to do their impression of me on any given night by sleeping with each other. Ms. Adams is wearing only a bra and panties and she's crawling on the bed toward Wahlberg and just then, my friend is all like "I bet you like this, don't ya" and I actually had to put my foot down (I had it on the table) and tell him he was kinda wrong.

I mean, even with the harsh "real" setting and the real "harsh" unflattering cinematography, Ms. Adams looks nice and even though Mr. Huckabees told her not to get in shape for the role, she still looks like a real girl who I'd hit up and get turned down by. I told my friend that I don't really think of her in that way, it's more of a sharing-a-milkshake-with-2-straws kind of deal I have with her. I know I've said that before, but I'm pretty sure you guys never read the previous references anyway, so it's all new to you, right? I guess another way I can put it is that I'm gay for Amy Adams, even though I'm technically straight. I say "technically" because I'm really just a compliment away from going either way, know what I'm saying?

I've never had a fuck-up brother, probably because I am the fuck-up brother, but it didn't stop me from feeling about this movie the way I felt about it. There's a scene where Bale's character is being a fuck-up once again and his mom picks him up, and she's ready to go off on him and he manages to win her back over by singing to her. You get the sense that this is a song he's sung to her since he was a kid, and she probably loves it every time he does so. It's genuine, but at the same time, I bet you he knows that the song to him is like a smoke bomb is to Batman -- distracting shit that works every time.

It did get me thinking though, that as much of a fuck-up that I am, my parents are cursed with this unconditional love for their child. Most parents have this curse, I think. They can read the writing on the wall all they want, but they might as well be wearing Nostalgia Goggles when they look at you; because you're always their little boy or little girl, albeit one who needs money because he/she went into debt for the umpteenth time and/or need to be picked up from jail. Anyway, I think that's what's going on between the mom in this film and the balding crackhead who looks like Christian Bale.

It's that kind of love that is keeping Wahlberg's character true to his bro even though the motherfucker is keeping him from achieving something other than getting his ass kicked by a boxer he's 20 pounds too light to fight. The Adorable Amy Adams, she's trying to help him see the error of his brother-loving ways, but I also like that she's not perfect either, and that in some cases she can be as demanding and overpowering as his family. Still, though, it's Amy Adams and I don't know about you, but I'd do whatever she says. Leave my family? Bye family. Learn Mandarin Chinese? 当你的愿望。Put a gun into my mouth and pull the trigger? It'll certainly be the most adorable suicide ever.

It's a good movie with great performances, particularly from Adams and the crackhead, the latter is even more impressive when you watch his real-life counterpart show up during the end credits and realize that he got that motherfucker down cold. Wahlberg's pretty good too, I like sincere Wahlberg and prefer sincere Wahlberg to badass Wahlberg. I saw Melissa Leo's name in the credits, then forgot she was in the fuckin' thing until I saw her name again in the credits -- that's how good she was, I thought they got some Boston broad off the street for that part. For real, I'm not bullshitting or speaking in critic-speak. I think they did cast some real Bostonians in this, though, because those badly-bleached locks of hair, greasy faces and jelly rolls can't be created even with the best Hollywood has to offer. Also, one of Wahlberg's sisters is played by Conan O'Brien's sister; she's the one who looks like Conan O'Brien.

I like how all the screeners had opening disclaimers from studios that assume you're going to destroy the DVD's by a certain date. Would I? Maybe to upgrade to Blu-ray, and even then, I'd probably just give that shit to family members. That's probably how piracy keeps going, I don't know. The studios were pretty good about not interrupting the movie too much with the on-screen For Consideration/Don't Bootleg This Shit disclaimers; True Grit came up every 10 minutes at the bottom, wasn't too distracting. Black Swan only came up at the beginning. I don't even remember The Fighter having one.

Order of preference:

1) True Grit
2) Black Swan
3) The Fighter

That was that, the movies were watched and my friend had to take off to go see family -- it was Christmas Day. Me, I drove around for a bit and eventually went to a discount house, where I ended up seeing Skyline. I didn't want to see Skyline, but the other movies already started and I didn't want to wait 90 minutes for the next showing, so there I was, watching Skyline. It was decent, which I guess is to be expected when your expectations are below zero and you only paid $2 to see it. There was raza in the cast and not only did he represent, he was probably the best character in the fuckin' thing, so that was nice.

After, I drove over to the burg of Chino to look at the Christmas lights because that's what they do over there in Chino, overdo it with the Christmas spirit -- but I love Christmas, so overdo that shit all you want. Great displays, and even one house had a group of carolers in front. I got too close and one of them snatched me like a frog's tongue to a passing fly and he gave me a card from the Church of Latter Day Saints. My favorite display was the one done with a Nightmare Before Christmas theme, complete with Jack, Sally and a giant Oogie Boogie.

The last time I went to see the lights in Chino, was about 20 years ago. I went with my aunt and my cousins, right after catching a special Christmas show at a local college's planetarium. That was awesome and so were the lights. We then stopped at a neighborhood pizza joint and stuffed on pepperoni pie while watching a Beauty and the Beast rerun on the establishment's big-screen television; to think that there was once a television show starring Hellboy and Sarah Connor and not enough people watched it. Anyway, 20 years later I was feeling nostalgic and looked for the same pizza joint, and there it was, and sure enough, they were open. The only difference was that they replaced the old projection big-screen with a plasma HDTV. I ordered a pie and while waiting, I told the owner my story which I guess amused him. He said that the pizza is just as good as it was then and wished me a Merry Christmas. I returned the sentiment and then played Galaga. He was right, the pizza was just as good. Only the company was lacking, in that I was lacking it.

I'm pretty sure this is my last post of the year, so I'll just say Happy New Year and all that. 2008 was terrible, 2009 was horrible, but 2010 was interesting. I lost a close family member in her late 50's while watching another family member who will never enter the neighborhood of Close or Loving get closer to the age of 100. Even then, the year left me with a slight minute modicum of a tiny glimmer of hope. Better than the previous two years, that's for sure. Anyway, that's all for now. Merry Christmas, Happy New Year and go fuck yourself. Say hello to Satan for me.

Something about being paved with good intentions

The Holocaust was not one of humanity's proudest moments, or it is, if you think we're only capable of committing evil shit to our fellow innocents. You read about some of the horrific shit these assholes did in service to that one-testicle-having cocksucking piece-of-shit vegetarian and you wouldn't believe any of it, if it wasn't for the fact that it really did happen (unless you're Mel Gibson's dad or someone like that, then no, you wouldn't believe it). But when it comes to the Toy Holocaust, though, you might as well call me Bobby Fischer because that shit? Never fucking happened.

I don't give a fuck what The Nutcracker in 3D aka We Fucked Up So Badly With This Movie That We Had To Hold It Back For A Year So We Could Convert It Into 3D And Change The Title So It Reflects That It Was Always Intended To Be In 3D is trying to tell you, that's part of the fuckin' Toy Conspiracy. They control everything, these Toys, they control the media with all the commercials and ads for Toys R Us, making people think that we need Toys for our kids. They make movies like Toy Story 3 that are outright fallacies created to make us feel sorry for them. The shopping malls used to be havens for bookstores like B. Dalton and Crown Books, it was their rightful place. Then the goddamn Toy stores came in and took it over, kicking them out or putting them out of business. Now the book stores are relegated to doing business outside of the malls; Barnes & Noble can only find a home in shitty shopping centers, sometimes having to coexist in a symbiotic state with Starbucks in order to get by.

According to this film of lies, some guy named The Rat King took over with his Nazi Rat stormtroopers and they rounded up all the toys and piled them up. Then they would pick up all the toys and dump them at the Smoke Factory, a crematorium where the toys are burned and giant plumes of smoke fill the sky (the Rat King loves smoke and hates toys -- it's a 2 Birds 1 Stone deal for him). I don't know who this Rat King was, but it's probably bullshit, because the only Rat King I know of was the dude from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and he wasn't so much evil as he was just a creepy motherfucker. The Rat King in this movie, on the other hand, is one of those evil & fey motherfuckers; he's played by Andy Warhol but they misspell his name in the credits as John Turturro, a fine actor who would never lower himself to acting in this garbage just to collect a paycheck, therefore sullying a spotless Curriculum Vitae that included such productions as You Don't Mess With The Zohan and the Transformers trilogy.

What a piece of shit this Rat King is! He's dressed like a Bond Villain and he even has a shark tank in his lair, which he then proceeds to electrocute for shits & giggles, dancing and singing about the "thousand-year" empire he has created, while poor Jaws is floating lifelessly in the water for everyone to see. The one cool thing about him is that he has a mural in his hallway that is made up of close-up pictures of crying children, that was pretty awesome. Whenever he has the opportunity, he will snap candids of sad kids on the street; they are to him, what I think sunsets are to me. In addition to his Nazi Rat stormtroopers, he has packs of robot Rat Dogs that sniff out Toys and Toy Sympathizers and dig holes where they need to be dug. Rat-Faced Nazi Warhol also has his 2 best minions flying around in winged jet-packs, looking like Michael Ironside's 2 minions from Highlander II: The Quickening. There's also the Rat Queen, some old hag who looks really disgusting and disturbing (like most of us will look when we get old) and that's before you realize she's wearing stripper boots and whore stockings.

The liberal Toy-run media try to soften the Lie Hammer by presenting this as some kind of dream world, and meanwhile, in the real world, we have Nathan Lane hamming it the fuck up as Albert Einstein. They never actually say it's Albert Einstein; his nephew calls him "Uncle Albert" but you know it's him. He's got the hair and he's also got the douchey habit of writing E=MC2 on his nephew's kids' blackboard, in case you (or they) weren't aware of who the fuck he was. And even then, he will insist on singing some bullshit song about how Everything is Relative. Oh yeah, there's singing; this is kind of a musical, as something called The Nutcracker would tend to be. To my knowledge, The Nutcracker is a magical ballet with beautiful music composed by Tchaikovsky but in this film version, those sneaky crafty Toy people decide to shit on it by including retard lyrics by Tim Rice, who must have written this shit following a stroke that rendered him incapable of having talent.

Oh, that lovable Uncle Albert, with his Fuck Realism accent and his occasional breaking of the fourth wall by addressing the audience! He comes over to his nephew's house (nephew played by Withnail, house played by a soundstage in Hungary) to watch over his nephew's kids and to give them Christmas gifts. The kids are a brother & sister duo; the sister is a nice girl played by Elle Fanning and the brother is a fucking asshole played by I Don't Know And I Don't Care. This fucking asshole kid brother likes to break and destroy shit; he takes the fairy from the beautiful Christmas tree that was just put up and tries to burn it at the fireplace, just because he felt the need to, I guess. Later, Uncle Albert gives Elle a Nutcracker doll as a gift and Fucking Asshole Kid Brother breaks the jaw off of it. Elle understandably freaks out, and Fucking Asshole Kid's response is "Just a stupid toy!" and I'm like "And you're just a stupid mistake who only exists because you have wire-hanger-dodging abilities".

The way the Nutcracker doll is introduced, you'd think you were watching a horror film. The fuckin' thing looks scary with its creepy demon soul-sucking eyeballs; you half-expect Uncle Albert to tell a tale about the killer Nutcracker who comes alive to slaughter bad little boys by living up to it's name, so be good for goodness sake! At the very least, it would look right at home in a circa 1970's Dario Argento joint. It eventually grows to human size and begins to talk (voice supplied by this chick who played Moaning Myrtle in the Harry Potter movies but much much more importantly, was in Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day) and takes Elle on a magical journey of amazement and wonderment and other shit like that.

Actually, it's kinda cool because somehow the Christmas tree in the house is now over 200 feet tall and it reaches towards the starry night sky and you can climb it to the very top. On the way up, NC (that's what the Nutcracker prefers to be called and it's also a way to make all this shit more Hip and Now to the young kids today -- yo yo yo, NC is in the hizzy!) and Elle Fanning run into some suicidal Russians who happily throw themselves off the tree. I think that kinda kills the tree-climbing mood for them, so NC & Elle decide to take a flying sleigh (or something) the rest of the way. At one point, NC turns to her and remarks "You're very pretty" and the way he says it and the way he's shot when he says it, led me to believe that in another five minutes he's going to be dragging the poor girl's mutilated remains in a bag, on the way to the fireplace to be disposed of. It would later be found out that the Nutcracker Killer was responsible for a rash of similarly gruesome murders of similarly Elle Fanning-esque victims who were all similarly dressed like 80's-era Madonna.

NC doesn't do that, though. Instead, he introduces her to the Sugar Plum Fairy and for a brief moment we hear that lovely Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy song and then suddenly here comes that fucking Shit Singing again. I want to hear this beautiful music, but the assholes on-screen insist on singing these fuckin' precious lyrics over it. Shut the fuck up! Nobody shuts the fuck up; if they're not singing bullshit, they're talking bullshit. NC invites Elle to the doll house where he resides and the tenants are making a goddamn racket; you have a monkey man named Gielgud (named after the actor who would turn this shit down if he was still alive to do so), a morbidly obese gay clown (singing Pagliacci, natch), and a Jamaican kid who apparently doesn't want to work because all he does is bang on his fuckin' drums all day (NC refers to Rasta Boy as being "the least reliable" which to me sounds like code for "Blacks Be Lazy" -- another tactic of the Toy Conspiracy is to create racial strife where none exists, the better to control us).

Eventually, Elle joins NC on a quest to fight back against the Rat King's reign of terror; the Asshole Kid Brother gets involved, toys are getting burned, some motherfucker's head gets torn off of his fucking body (it's a family film!), Gielgud hurts his balls and exclaims "Oh my bananas!" (because he's a monkey, you see), there are Prince of Darkness-style mirrors that lead to the other side, and the climax involves explosions and toppling buildings and fuckin' Rat-Faced Nazi Warhol flies a helicopter that I swear was inspired by Opa-Opa from the Fantasy Zone video game. In other words, it's EXACTLY like the ballet it was based on, they didn't try updating it or making it more exciting for the kids. Sigmund Freud is in there somewhere as well, just so Elle's mom could say something like "Maybe Freud was right about..." and Withnail cuts her off with something like "Shut the fuck up about Sigmund Freud, bitch! FUCK Sigmund Freud and FUCK his coked-up bullshit!". I'm paraphrasing.

Now that I've established that this movie is Toy Propaganda comprised of lies, I will discuss its quality. It's a weird movie, really fuckin' weird; I can't say it's bad, but it sure as fuck ain't anywhere near the vicinity of Good. I'm watching this and I'm numb to it all; I see the Christmas trees and lights and hear the music, and yet I feel no holiday spirit. The characters are making lots of noise and some of the proceedings have the appearance of humor without actually being funny. The music from the original ballet is great, while the singing is ugh. The movie works best when it's scaring the shit out of you with insane moments like when the Rat King is speeding down a sewer in his Ratcycle, firing twin Gatling guns at the good guys, while his Rat Mouth suddenly transforms into a horrific mutated monster version of Rat Fangs as he screams wildly. Goddamn, that would scare any kid, except for that kid with leukemia who sells pictures online of monsters he likes to draw, because he's not scared of monsters, he loves them -- except for the monsters currently living inside his body, eating him alive.

But was that the intent, to make a horror show disguised as a family film? I don't know. Part of me thinks the writer/director wanted to make an update of a holiday classic, he wanted to make it great, something the whole family would enjoy and perhaps watch every year. Instead, somewhere along the way, his admirable goal became a bad idea and this motherfucker kept zigging when he should've been zagging. Perhaps he lost his way, and the results are Massive Fail. If that's the case, I want to say to him "How could you do me like this, Andrei Konchalovsky? You directed Runaway Train. Muthafuckin' Runaway Train! That's one of my favorite movies of all time! Sure, you also made Tango & Cash and it's a shit movie but it's a fun shit movie and I gave you props for that, but since then I don't know what the fuck happened to you, bro. I feel like Samuel L. Jackson in Jackie Brown and you're Robert De Niro. What the fuck happened, man? Your ass used to be beautiful!"

And yet part of me thinks this was all intentional, and maybe Konchalovsky wanted to compete in the WTF division with the big boys. Maybe he got tired of making respectable awesome shit like Runaway Train and Maria's Lovers and Siberiade. He got a taste of the good stuff with Tango & Cash, but then he got fired from the picture, and he's been steaming ever since. He's like "I'll show you some fuckin' unintentional good times, I'll show you what I'm made of!" in a thick Russian accent. Motherfucker then took this classic tale of The Nutcracker, threw a live grenade down its pants, and shoved it down the stairs -- the results being muthafuckin' F.U.B.A.R., big time. If that's the case, then I want to shake the motherfucker's hand for doing it this way, for quite possibly being the maddest Russian genius who ever lived since muthafuckin' Rasputin.

I was all alone in the theater during this movie, which is awesome for me but not-awesome for the film's financiers. I try not to bother with the shitty upconversion 3D flicks; only animated films look best in that format. Live-action 3D only looks good when shot with 3D cameras, like Avatar and Resident Evil: Afterlife. But since I was so interested in seeing a new Andrei Konchalovsky film play on the big screen (he made Runaway Train, people!), and since they were only showing it in 3D, I gave it a shot.

Well, it looked just as shitty as the other upconverted flicks; the characters looked unnatural, they either looked like someone was standing directly behind them or their faces looked weird because their nose is like, right in front of you and their eyes are all the way back, giving the impression that a side profile would reveal the person to have an unnaturally horizontally-elongated head. After the movie ended, after sitting through the end credits -- the best part of the film, by the way, because it's the only time you can hear Tchaikovsky's music without someone singing over it -- I left the auditorium and dumped my RealD glasses inside the recycle bin they have in front (those things cost money, you know). Those glasses sounded so lonely when they landed at the very bottom of that very empty bin.

There's a scene near the end of this film, where Elle's character slides down a chute and lands in a pile of dolls and toys. She's in the belly of the beast, the Smoke Factory. Up ahead, she sees NC (who's unconscious or dead or something) on the conveyor belt that leads to the incinerator. I hadn't been this caught up in a cinematic predicament like this since watching Andrew McCarthy try to save Kim Cattrall from a similar fate in Mannequin. Anyway, she quietly sneaks toward the conveyor belt, so as not to alert the nearby guards. The shot that follows is from behind her, as she crawls on her hands and knees with her skirt hiked up -- we're basically looking at underage girl ass now -- while on the other side of the frame we see NC and a bunch of other toys headed for fiery death. That shot? That's the movie in a nutshell.

And if you complain once more, you'll meet an army of Milla

I've been to this particular discount theater before; I watched The Haunting of Molly Hartley and Changeling back-to-back and it only cost me like, two bucks. You have to buy your tickets at the concession stand, which means you get to stand behind the girl chatting away at the counter guy who's only listening to her bullshit in the off chance it'll increase his chance of finding out what it feels like to be inside her -- then eventually he'll notice you and charge you the $1 ticket fee + a $2 3D surcharge. What -- a 3D theatrical experience for three bucks?! Hot damn. Out-of-focus projections of scratchy film prints are the norm at these joints, but this place was showing Resident Evil: Afterlife in RealD 3D or whatever the fuck that shit's called. I'm assuming you've seen the previous 3 Resident Evil movies, as I have, so keep pace or don't. There be spoilers.

George A. Romero is right; when Zombie Armageddon arrives, it's gonna be us -- the people -- who are going to fuck it all up. But where he has it wrong is that it's not going to be because of class differences, or race differences, or the inability to forget that these monsters are no longer our friends & relatives and must be disposed with extreme prejudice. No, that's not what's going to lead to humanity's demise. You know what's gonna do it to us? No one's going to fucking agree on what to call them -- we're going to be too fucking busy having pissing matches over whether to call them zombies or infected or whatever the fuck you want to call them. While we fight over that, we're going to be too distracted to notice the army of Bad News slowly approaching us. Then it'll be too fuckin' late.

But it won't end there, because the zombies/infected/whatever are also going to be fighting amongst themselves on whether they should tear the living apart or eat them, and if they eat them, should they eat the flesh or the brains or both? And then some of the zombies/infected/whatever will be having arguments because one is shambling while the other is running and it's like Make Up Your Mind and What Kind Of Zombies Are We and I'm Not A Zombie, I'm Infected and The Fuck You Are, You're A Zombie and meanwhile you have the teleporting Fulci zombie laughing at all of them. 

So, the movie. The world's been taken over by whatever you want to call those creatures, and in the meantime, the underground headquarters for Umbrella Corporation in Japan is under attack by a group of Milla Jovovich clones. I'm looking at all of these Millas in their black skintight ass-kicking uniforms, shooting/stabbing/kicking the shit out of people, and I'm thinking to myself that while dying really sucks and I don't look forward to it (not anymore, at least), if I had to go -- well, being killed by a bunch of scowling Milla Jovoviches wouldn't be a bad way to go, especially in the Resident Evil universe, where you're very likely to get eaten alive by a pack of zombies/infected/whatever. I'd rather that the last thing I see before moving on to the next world (or eternal darkness, depending on your beliefs) be a lineup of hot angry Millas (Milli?) aiming their blazing MP9's at me, not a pack of asshole zombies.

These Millas, they were created at the end of the 3rd Resident Evil, and I don't know if they have souls and I don't care, but they sure as fuck are the same as the original Milla in every other respect, right down to the mannerisms and even the supposedly tough/funny one-liners. They're as human as human can get, minus the whole God Created Me deal (or not, depending on your beliefs). Being human beings, I'm sure they have needs, these Millas. And every available man in this post-apocalyptic world is either a zombie, a bad guy, a S.T.A.R.S. member about to valiantly sacrifice himself for the greater good, or Mike Epps. Pickings be slim. I guess what I'm trying to say here is, uh, I'm sure that in between sparring and shooting and training for future bad guy ass-kickings, they probably got to know each other very well. At least in my cut of the movie, they would. And shut the fuck up about me being lonely, I'm just saying. We should see that shit, it would be beautiful.

It doesn't happen, though. They all get blown up by some fuckin' Chad in sunglasses and long coat. Wesker's the name of this fuckin' asshole and he's probably a Gay, that's why he blew them up, because you don't blow up Milla Jovovich X 10, you just don't -- what you do is call up a couple of your bros, bring out the booze and crank up the Journey, 'cause it's Party Time. The only awesome thing Wesker does is shoot one of his own men in the head for committing the cardinal sin of questioning an order. I love when Big Bads kill their own men, it shows how evil they are.

It turns out that the real Milla, she's still alive and she almost takes the motherfucker out but she fucks up by trying to pull some "Any last words?" bullshit and you KNOW how that shit fuckin' works. There's a brief scuffle and it ends with Wesker the Chad injecting Milla with some kind of serum that neutralizes the T-Virus cells inside her, and whatever the fuck it is, it ends up sapping poor Milla of all her super-abilities and telekinetic powers. It allows Wesker to not have to worry about her fucking up his plans for World Domination, but more importantly, it allows writer/producer/director Paul W.S. Anderson to not have to worry about explaining why Milla's character doesn't just use her superpowers to get out of the many jams she's going to end up in for the next 90 minutes.

Paul W.S. Anderson is also married to Milla, and he even tried ruining her by impregnating her, but what I was left thinking about while watching all the Milla clones get shot, stabbed and blown up was if this was just an excuse to watch his wife die a bunch of times. I mean, even the happiest couples have their disagreements and maybe watching Milla #6 end up a twitching bloody mess on the floor brought a smile to his face as he remembered the time Real Milla didn't let him hang out with his mates (he's a Brit) because she's a wife and that's what wives and girlfriends do -- not let you hang out with the homies unless they're along for the ride. I'm not bitter, Stacy. I'm not. I'm sure he and fellow on-screen-wife-killing director Stuart Gordon would have quite the chat over a couple of pints (Paul's buying).

Anyway, Milla flies a Zero plane from Japan to Alaska, in search of the previous film's survivors (they left for a supposed refuge paradise called "Arcadia"), but upon landing, she finds nobody except for Ali Larter (also from the previous film). Larter can't remember shit because of some mechanical spider hooked up to her chest, and immediately begins fighting Milla, grabbing each other and rolling around on the ground, causing my special parts to feel funny. Because she's Ali Larter and not Muhammed Ali, Larter gets knocked the fuck out and Milla takes her along for a ride on her Zero. Usually when I see Milla Jovovich and Ali Larter flying, it's in my dreams and it's usually without the aid of an airplane and their destination is the city of Me. But in this case, they're flying to Los Angeles for whatever reason. They end up landing on top of a prison and hook up with the survivors inside, which comprise of an asshole movie producer, his bitch-boy intern, a Brit aspiring actress, the token Mexican Played By A Spaniard, some bald guy who I thought was the sports guy from Frasier but wasn't, and Wentworth Miller (whose full name is Wentworth Earl Miller III but was changed from his original birth name, Sir Fancy Britches Britchardson the IV).

The prison survivors are disappointed to find out that Milla and Ali are not there to rescue them, but are probably happy to see that the girl/boy ratio just rose up and gave the dudes better odds. Not only that, but what fuckin' odds! It's the end of the world and there's only 3 women with them, and they're all hot. Fuckin' A. You'd think these girls would stick together, forming some Girl Power shit, but it's all a front. When one of them ends up getting chowed down by the monsters, a minute later, one of the survivor girls is cracking wise again. It's like the poor girl never existed. Yet, when one of the guys is presumed dead, this same chick who was making her fucking stupid one-liners, she immediately gets borderline-weepy, proving once again the 2nd eternal truth that Women Secretly Hate Each Other. (For the record, the 1st eternal truth is I Don't Know Shit About Women.)

I forgot to mention another survivor; he's a basketball star and he's a likable dude for an athlete -- he's more Shaq than Kobe. He escorts Milla to the shower room and tells her that the prison has running water (even though it's cold) and I think this is probably his way of hinting to her that while she might look like Milla Jovovich, she currently smells like present-day Michael Jackson. I mean, she puts enough thought into her appearance to continue using make-up and get her hair done, but it looks like she only changes outfits between films. We're talking years here. That's something that I always think about when I watch these post-apocalyptic films, is how bad everyone must smell in these worlds. The survivors are not the lucky ones, if you ask me. 

Anyway, zombie/monster/Chad nastiness ensues, most of it in slow-motion and set to a driving tomandandy score. In addition to Wesker the Chad and the zombies, there's also these scary dudes with tentacle maws who like to burrow through walls and floor so they can get at you. If they don't get you, there's also a couple of those monster dogs that split open to reveal more teeth. Every monster in this movie has teeth to spare; there are jaws within their jaws. There's also this creepy giant dude with a makeshift axe/hammer deal; he's like 10 feet tall and doesn't talk and I don't even think you see his face in the entire movie. I wonder if Anderson forgot that he was making a Resident Evil movie and ended up dipping his toe into Silent Hill waters with that motherfucker, but it turns out that the creepy giant is an actual Resident Evil character. I don't know which game he was in, because I'm only familiar with the 1st one and part of the 2nd. What can I say, I was more into movies than video games at that point. I don't even know how true these movies are to the video games anymore, and I don't know if it even matters, because people are watching the shit out of them either way.

I remember looking up Army of Darkness in John Landis-lookalike Leonard Maltin's movie review guide; he complained that the movie became dull in between the set-pieces, which saddened me because it meant that Leonard Maltin was smoking crack. This is why when I met him in person at the American Cinematheque, I looked at him with pity as he happily held the door open for me as we made our way into a screening of Los Angeles Plays Itself. I regret not turning that screening into an intervention. Anyway, I bring up that review because I kinda feel the same way about the non-action stuff in this movie. If there were any fucks to give during the dialogue/character scenes, I couldn't find them. Thankfully, there's enough action to balance that shit out in the movie's favor.

This entry is a lot more Matrix-y than the previous films, with all the slow-mo and the 360-degree freeze-frame shit and some of the characters pulls some Agent Smith bullet-dodging shit. Now that I think about it, maybe the Resident Evil universe takes place in the Matrix. That would be a mind-blower. It amuses me to think that some 10-year-old kid (there was a little girl with her cholo father in the audience) is going to watch this movie, have his-or-her world rocked by it, and then years later he-or-she is gonna come across The Matrix (which he-or-she has never seen), pop it in, watch it, and then go "It was all right". What was Totally Fucking Awesome to you or me is going to be merely OK to him-or-her. I know this because it's happened to me with other classics I finally got around to, after having grown up watching the imitators and the inspired-bys.

Like the previous Resident Evils, all the going-ons are happened-befores -- we've seen some of these plot elements and scenarios in other movies of similar genre. Having said that, I had lots of fun with it. Sure, I've seen a hot chick in a leather outfit jump backwards out of a plate glass window and fall a great height while firing two automatic weapons before -- but this time it's two hot chicks, and they're both Milla Jovovich. The Resident Evil flicks were never the most original, or even the least original, but they're good fast times. Shit, the fuckin' games they're based on aren't exactly reinventions of the wheel, either.

Some of the action scenes feel like they were directed by Zack Snyder and The Wachowski Brother & Sister, and since I like those guys (and girl) and it's done well, I was cool with that. It's when someone tries aping a motherfucker's style and fails miserably at it that I have issues. P.W.S. Anderson's a ripoff artist, but he's a pretty good one. His movies have always been a decent night of entertainment for me, so I've no reason to hate on the guy -- except for Soldier, where Kurt Russell wins the EFC Award for Best Performance in a Piece-Of-Shit. I know it sounds weird to applaud a filmmaker for being adequate, but I feel a need to do so because this dude is straight-up HATED by so many. Don't know why, unless all the hate is for Soldier.

I'll go you one further -- I don't get the Uwe Boll hatred either. Yeah, I said that shit. I've seen, like, 3 of his movies before I learned my lesson, but while I didn't like them, I didn't think they were affronts to the artistry of cinema. Maybe it's because he made his Bad Filmmaker bones with video game movies, which are a risky endeavor unto themselves. If there's two things I've learned in this world, it's that you don't piss off a woman (sorry, Stacy) and you don't make a video game movie, because Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned or a geek disappointed. Maybe it's because his shit is so mediocre, maybe that's a bigger crime than outright incompetence; this would also explain why people happily worship Ed Wood and Tommy Wiseau, while wanting to disappear Boll and his whole family off the face of the Earth.

If people felt that way about me, I'd punish the world by making bad taste movies about fat girls and Auschwitz too; might as well play the Asshole card, which I suspect is Boll's game nowadays. This Kraut motherfucker is happily going to play the I'm A Shit Filmmaker Who Doesn't Give A Fuck part for as long as his name continues to be met with boos. And don't give me this shit about purposely making movies that suck because of some tax-shelter bullshit as being a reason to hate the guy. Unless you work for the German government or pay German taxes, you have no dog in that fight. Did you know Uwe Boll stole a fuckin' 35mm movie camera from a film school -- probably fucking over an eager film student in the process -- to make a movie? No? Well, that's because it wasn't Uwe Boll, it was Werner Herzog who did that shit. But I bet if you thought it was Boll, you were all like What A Fucking Asshole. There's a point in here somewhere, go look for it, I'm too lazy to make one.

In conclusion, I want to play video games and smoke pot with a bunch of Milla Jovovich clones.