Fuck you MGM, with your loud-ass DVD intros.

When I was a kid, I didn't know anything about box office nor did I give a shit, and the truth is, I still shouldn't give a shit, nor should you. Because unless you're part of the movie or invested money in it, the financial success or lack thereof doesn't affect you -- the quality of the movie, on the other hand, does. I bring this up because I just found out that the film Overboard was not a hit, which surprised me because I just assumed it was. Instead, it was one of those films that got a second life on cable -- a TBS resurrection, if you will -- and between that and video rentals, it eventually became a success.

Yeah, I'm gonna ramble about the movie Overboard, the second-half of my Written by Leslie Dixon double-bill. This came about when this kind lady tweeted her fondness for the film, and I did something jerky by tweeting back something like "I didn't like that one" which is very unlike me, by the way, for two reasons; first, I subscribe to the belief that you should concentrate on telling people what you like, not what you don't like; and second, how could I not like a movie? I fuckin' like everything, man. Yet there I was, raining on this chick's parade like my opinion fuckin' mattered, and even if it did, you just don't rain on someone's parade, people -- I wouldn't like that if it was done to me so I must have been in a really weird place to do that shit in the first place.

I was a kid when I saw this movie for the first and last time, so I decided I would give Overboard another day in court now that I'm an adult. Ms. Olsson then told me about how I should also check out Outrageous Fortune as well, because it's good and because both films were written by the same person. I wrote about Outrageous Fortune; you see that link in the last sentence, where it says Outrageous Fortune in italics? It leads to my review, so read that shit. Anyway, going back to the popularity of Overboard; that shit took me a long fuckin' time to get on Netflix because of its Very Long Wait status. Sure, I could've gone to my local video store which is only a five-minute drive away and I'm sure they'd have it, but then that would mean I would have to drive (yet I will happily go three times the distance to get grub at the nearest Chick-fil-A because I'm a HUNGRY MAAAANNNN).

The movie opens with Alan Silvestri's peppy theme, sounding like something that would open a sitcom based on this movie. That's not an insult, it's just the vibe I got from it. Silvestri's a versatile composer; he can do some heavy orchestral madness like he did with the Predator and Back to the Future series, but he can also do something more befitting of, I don't know, a Shelley Long/Bette Midler comedy about trying to stop Peter Coyote from destroying the entire wheat belt. The entire wheat belt! Stop that motherfucker, girls!

You have to hand it to Silvestri for his diversity in style, his ability to do different kinds of scores. Ennio Morricone might be my all-time favorite movie composer, but you have to admit that he really only operates at one level -- a level we all love, but a level he's comfortable never getting out of. Shit, he even admits as much; I remember listening to the audio commentary to Il Postino, and the director Michael Radford talked about how he met with Morricone to discuss scoring that film. At one point, Radford requested that one particular scene should feel subtle and Morricone declared "I don't do subtle" and that's why that movie's music is composed by Luis Bacalov.

The beginning of the theme has a down-home, rambunctious feel to it; you hear the banjo at first and maybe you're like Oh Shit, Some Guy's Gonna Get Fucked In The Ass, but then the percussion and the Simon & Simon-style electric guitar kick in to assure you Nah Boy, We's Just Havin' A Good Time (this movie takes place in the Pacific Northwest though, so I'm not sure I should be talking like a Southern hick). There's also the occasional orchestral flourish, which I guess represents Goldie Hawn's character or something. The fact that this part of the music is only a small section that is overwhelmed by the banjos, percussion and guitars is kinda like musical reflection of her character being thrust into a world she knows nothing about, the Kurt Russell world where people don't use bottle openers to open beer bottles, they use tables and counters.

Goldie Hawn's character is a rich bitch, and I don't mean "bitch" as in "assertive woman" because I don't roll like that. She's just not a good person. Actually she's worse than that but I already used the word "cunt" in the last rambling and I think it's too soon to use that word again. She lives on this yacht, the kind of yacht aspiring rappers dream of shooting a music video on, and she's just really fucking miserable to be around. She's very demanding and treats everyone like shit. She even walks and talks like a worst-case-scenario born-with-a-silver-spoon-in-her-mouth type; she somehow manages to give the impression that she never uses contractions when she speaks (even though she does), that's how stuck up she sounds. Attention is demanded from her, she won't even let her weirdo husband (Edward Herrmann!) watch the one fuckin' television show he wants to watch without standing in front of it while she puts on her robe -- I mean, who the fuck does that shit aside from EVERY OTHER WOMAN IN THE WORLD.

Her wardrobe is ridiculous too; I really hope that's supposed to be part of the comedy -- an exaggeration of expensive trendy style, rather than the real thing. Ms. Hawn still looks pretty damn hot in them, though. But a lot of that heat is dissipated by the undeniable fact that she is just so goddamn unlikable. The filmmakers really did a great job in making the viewer (that's me!) wish for someone to give her -- this lady -- a detailed, all-too-real recreation of that scene in The Getaway when Steve McQueen expresses his frustrations with Ali MacGraw in the most delicate manner.

Roddy McDowall plays her long-suffering servant, and this poor guy has to deal with her saying things like "I almost had to wait" when he brings her caviar (I have to admit that's a good line, though) and he has to put up with her whiny bullshit while he's giving her a pedicure. He's also the executive producer of this film, so either he was involved with this movie getting made or maybe he bitched about his role not being that big and they shut him up with an executive producer credit. I've read up on him before and apparently everyone in Hollywood liked him and he also was quite the movie geek. He collected film prints and even admitted to digging so-bad-they're-good movies as well. Damn, this fuckin' guy would've loved The Room, had he lived long enough to see it. Hell, if they paid him enough, he'd probably act in the fuckin' thing. Anyway, take that hipsters -- he was ironically watching bad movies way before you were even born.

So Hawn and her weirdo husband dock over at Elk Cove, Oregon in their yacht (the Immaculata, she's called) and jack-of-most-trades Kurt Russell is called over to renovate her closet. He's trying to be friendly and she's being a typical twat, treating him like the lowly help she sees him as, and I wonder which is worse in the long run -- treating the help like shit or not even acknowledging them as human beings in the first place? I think of this when I think of all of mi gente mowing the lawns and nanny-ing the kids for the rich, I wonder about how they're treated by their employers. My conclusion is that it varies, depending on the employers -- who are also human beings, you see, and therefore just as varied in attitudes towards their fellow man.

Does race/ethnicity ever figure into it? I mean, I remember having gardeners in our household and my parents were always super cool to them, chatting with the dudes and giving them bottles of expensive booze as gifts. I wondered if say, the Anglo clients did the same thing with them or if they just slid their checks under the doors because Please Don't Stink Up My House, Mexican.

I remember hearing a while back about how Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony were threatening the world with a remake (I know I should like those two, but they come off like major league assholes) and I always thought if you had to remake that shit, it shouldn't be two Latino actors, but maybe a White actress and a Latino actor or the other way around. Most likely, though, they'd cast a Black guy as the help because somehow that's more believable in the 21st century; the studio execs would declare that Will Smith or somebody should play the carpenter, then later that day, the main exec would drive home to his expensive house and chew out the carpenter making renovations on his son's spare computer room and the carpenter would answer back with "Que?"

But back to the only Overboard that exists. Kurt Russell is really the only guy I could see playing this role (maybe Burt Reynolds, if this shit was made in the 70's -- then that would mean Sally Field would play the Hawn role and the director would be Hal Needham and the fat friend would be played by Dom DeLuise instead of the guy from Wayne's World and there would be outtakes during the end credits); here's this good-looking movie star who you can totally believe playing a blue-collar type and that's probably one of the many reasons why Kurt Russell rules. Even in interviews, he just has that charm about him where it just seems like he'd be a great guy to have a beer with, unless you're John Leguizamo.

Allow me to elaborate; in Leguizamo's memoir (the title is too long for me to remember the name, but it's a funny read, if you can find it), he talks about how Russell had taken him aside one day while shooting Executive Decision and in a big-brotherly way, told him that he should just say the lines as written on the script, rather than ad-lib the shit out of the scenes (as he had been doing). Leguizamo, as was his wont, ignored the advice and continued to improv his lines and eventually they kind of got into it and they even had a bit of a shoving match later on.

The best part is that Russell said something like "You have no confidence in the script, so you dance around it like some fucking fag! Be a man and say the lines!" which in and of itself is pretty fuckin' hilarious. Leguizamo said that during the press junkets, Russell did the no-hard-feelings thing and was very nice to him (Leguizamo, to his admitted discredit, did not return the love). You see, Kurt Russell is a man's man; he hunts, he's into sports, he likes cold beer, hot women, and he says the fuckin' lines that are on the script because he ain't no fag, man.

Anyway, Russell's character does a great job creating a new closet for Hawn (dig the crank-activated shoe shelves) but she's gonna stiff him $600 because he used oak instead of cedar (which she should've requested in the first place, and besides, hasn't she seen Pulp Fiction? Oak's nice. Oh wait, that movie didn't exist for another 6 or 7 years, my bad). I mean, come on -- earlier she was eager to throw away $1.7 million on some bullshit artwork that she's not even going to remember (she made the deal on a cellular phone that looks like some Zack Morris shit that got flattened by a steamroller), yet she won't cough up a relatively measly six-hundred bucks? Yup. Even though this chick is eating caviar on a daily basis and this guy is busy trying to make ends meet so he can feed his four kids, she's still gonna screw him on the deal -- stay classy, Goldie.

Frustrated with this special case, Russell tells her off (much to the approval of the crew of the yacht -- I dug how while the crew members are whooping and applauding, McDowall simply nods his approval) and she gets back at him for dropping truth bombs on her by shoving him overboard and then proceeds to motherfuck him by throwing his tools into the water as well. What a fucking asshole.

So now Russell is assed out of $600, the school principal is giving him shit about his kids, and he needs to find someone to take care of said kids while he's out busting his ass, making that money. Thankfully, the benevolent god that is the screenwriter sets it up so that Hawn ends up falling off her yacht late one night. She gets picked up the next morning by a garbage scow and it turns out she now has amnesia (she hit her head on the scow or the cold water shocked the memory out of her) and when her husband goes to identify her at the hospital, he decides to take advantage and pretend he doesn't know her, because really, man, who needs to deal with that aggravation? Next stop for weirdo husband: happiness and chicks in bikinis (which is a redundancy, I know).

While scoring some free potato chips at a bowling alley, Russell catches the news report about Amnesia Chick, notices the departing husband and gets all Hot Damn about it because it's time for some fuckin' payback. He claims that Hawn is his wife, and between his being able to identify a birthmark on the woman's ass cheek (which he noticed while she was sunbathing) and the hospital staff's over-willingness to get rid of this unpleasant lady, it doesn't take long before he's taking her to his humble (and I do mean humble) abode. The idea is that he can get the equivalent of the $600 he is owed by having her do chores and take care of the kids for a while. Fucking with her is simply a bonus.

It's lots of fun to watch the shit this chick goes through, as karma goes Steven Seagal on her William Forsythe soul in the Out For Justice that is her current life situation, and we get the pleasure of observing her get owned by simple everyday tasks. It's hell for this former queen as she tries to wash the dishes, make the meals, feed the dogs (those dogs are awesome, by the way, they jump on everyone because they have so much love to give, like William H. Macy in Magnolia), and it's hell for me because it's all done to that Jim Dandy To The Rescue song that for some reason annoyed the shit out of my ears, who then relayed the message to my brain, who was not happy to hear the news.

Anyway, even though you two have probably seen the movie (three, if you count Ms. Olsson), I'm not going to go any further because I have to get ready for this other thing I'm going to in a while (which I'm running late for, actually). I'll just talk about how I'm glad I gave this movie a second chance because I liked it a whole lot more this time. Maybe it's because back when I saw it, I was bored by the lack of talking robots or black guys who do sound effects with their mouths in this supposed comedy. Sure, one of Russell's sons talks like Pee Wee Herman, but too little/too late, I thought. But this time, I found the movie very funny, and not just because of Hawn's improvement-through-suffering, but because there's a lot of funny stuff in the margins, so to speak. I'd give examples but I wasted too much time telling you a John Leguizamo anecdote that had absolutely nothing to do with the movie. I suck.

OK, I'll give you one -- the live news report is full of Win. The main dude on the garbage scow is played by Hector Elizondo (that's a Garry Marshall trademark, giving that dude a role in all his joints) and he was hilarious in his brief running time, explaining how "foca" means "seal" in Portuguese, then he starts with some opera shit because that's what he does for love. And even after they cut away from him, you can still hear him talking to the reporter about why opera is just more than singing, it's telling stories with song, and I don't know, I was fuckin' laughing my ass off during that. I also laughed at the hurt look on the poor reporter's face  when Hawn accuses her of wearing a wig, that shit was priceless. And I couldn't help but smile at the name of the television station: K-RAB with a crab holding up the letters -- a crab! (Writer's disclosure: I'm a Cancer, hence my fondness for the crustacean. Such is the movie's power that I did not hold all the crab-eating against it)

I liked how the kids weren't obnoxious douchebags, like that fuckin' ginger from Problem Child; they were merely discipline cases who needed someone to tell them to stop that shit (Russell was too much of a cool dad to do anything), they needed Bad Cop in a house that was only run by Good Cop. Most kids in movies, I want to throw them in a woodchipper feet-first and film that shit in slow-motion, so it's testament to the ability of writer Leslie Dixon, director Garry Marshall, and the kid actors that I didn't feel that way, even though they start off kind of asshole-like at first, but not too much -- the porridge was just right.

There's just such a happy and sweet vibe to this movie, that it's hard to dislike anything about it. It's a nice movie and the love story is sweet (don't act like you didn't expect that shit to happen in this movie) and I hope it finds a nice girl and settles down with her one day. This is the kind of movie that features a cutaway to a dog peeking from behind a log and it only lasts half-a-second and I'm not sure if that shot was even necessary but I bet Marshall was like "Why not?" and I'm so glad he did. Yeah, it's that kind of movie. You know those kinds of movies, the ones that feature half-second cutaways to dogs peeking behind things, there's plenty of them, I'm sure.

I wish I could find the article online, but I couldn't, so you'll have to take my word for it; there was this piece on Details magazine about the making of John Carpenter's Escape from L.A. and the writer was working on it as an extra. This writer, he was being an asshole and the article shared his asshole point-of-view, but it still had some nice moments, like when he meets Kurt Russell and of course, because the writer is too cool to directly complement the guy, he says something like "My niece loved Overboard" and Russell responds by telling the writer a story about some girl who hadn't spoken in years because of some traumatic event in her life, then she started speaking again after watching Overboard. Of course, the writer found a way to write a douchebag retort to that story, one that I can't remember, thank God.

But seriously, how can you hate a movie like that? It made a mute girl speak! It can probably make a blind man see or a cripple walk again, for all I know. There could be untapped healing powers in this film and someone should do something about it; take all that research money on failing to cure muscular dystrophy (them's the breaks, Jerry) and put it on going over every frame of this movie with a fine-toothed comb. Actually, don't use the comb, that'll fuck up the film.

In conclusion, the actor who played the hospital guard went on to host Family Feud for a while, then he went nuts, got committed to a mental ward, and hung himself. Happy Rapture, everybody!

If you like seeing women do that adorable running thing that they do, all the while hearing the click-clack of their non-sensible footwear, then yeah, this will do.

You know, I just came down to the realization that people who make a funny face, rather than just smiling when having their picture taken are doing that because they're very insecure about how they look. It's like, they're afraid of looking like shit, so they preemptive strike that motherfucker by sticking out their tongues or bugging out their eyes or opening their mouth wide or whatever they fuckin' do when posing with a friend in front of a national monument or something.

I bet you if I had a picture taken of myself ten years ago (I don't like having my picture taken) and held it up next to my reflection in the mirror today, the photo version of me would look better, simply because I was not as shitty-looking back then, compared to now. But I'd gotten so used to waking up with an ugly face/Winston Churchill in drag that I never considered that age was making my non-hotness even worse. At least in my youth I had the benefit of looking fresher. I was too stupid to know that the pitfalls of aging affects both the ugly and good-looking.

On a completely related topic, I watched Outrageous Fortune as part of what was intended to be my Written By Leslie Dixon double-feature (Overboard is the second half of the bill, but more on that later).  This was a movie that came out back in 1987 and starred Shelley Long and Bette Midler. It was directed by Arthur Hiller, a Canadian motherfucker who probably misses the 70's. Seriously man, this guy was fuckin' ON from 1970 to 1979: The Out-of-Towners (the original, not that Steve Martin bullshit), Love Story, The Hospital, Silver Streak, The In-Laws (the original, not that Michael Douglas bullshit). But if you flash-forward to now, you'll find that the last movie he directed was National Lampoon's Pucked; the title alone threatens to throw me into a mild depression. What the fuck happened, Arthur Hiller? Your ass used to be beautiful.

But hey, I'm gonna take a page from Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story and not concentrate on how the man died, but on how the man lived. I'm talking about his career, not his life; I'm sure Mr. Hiller is still alive and you know what? Maybe I shouldn't judge his most recent works without having seen them, because for all I know, when he read the script to National Lampoon's Pucked maybe he was all like "Not since Paddy Chayefsky have I read such words..."

So when the movie started, I noticed that the credits were in French and that the on-screen title was Une Chance Pas Croyable and for a second I thought maybe I was wrong and that there was a mix-up at Netflix. Maybe I got this French film by accident because Outrageous Fortune was not an original screenplay by Leslie Dixon, but in fact, a remake of some Francis Veber shit (hence the mix-up) because back in the 80's, it felt like half of the films that came out of Touchstone Pictures were remakes of Francis Veber joints. Really man, they should've just named that company Francis Veber Remakes.

Except I was wrong -- Outrageous Fortune is not a remake, it is indeed an original screenplay. What happened was that the DVD included alternate French credits if you choose to listen to the French dub of the movie, and somehow I activated that shit. For a moment, I considered watching the movie in French because the quality of the print and the music and even the fuckin' font did have a France-circa-the-late-80's vibe to them and I thought maybe it would play better that way, and plus I need to keep that shit in practice. But in the end, I decided against it; better to watch the original intended vision of the director, this man who evenutally directed National Lampoon's Pucked.

The opening credit sequence is really swell because it consists of a Patti LaBelle song playing over shots of anonymous women's hands, feet, torsos, and lips decked out in horrible/wonderful 80's style. The skirts, blouses, sweaters, earrings, bracelets, lipstick, shoes and belts -- holy shit, the fucking belts! -- all reminded me of my early childhood, not because I was some crossdresser back then (well, there's that too), but because during that time I grew up with my sister and my cousin -- two teenage girls who were all about looking cool, so living with them was like living with a nostalgic movie set in the 80's that still hadn't been made yet because it was still the 80's. Some movies, you're not quite sure what time period it was shot in, but not this fuckin' movie -- there is no doubt during the opening credits when this shit was made.

So then we're introduced to our primary character played by Shelley Long. This chick, she used to be on Cheers, right? And I guess there are two different stories as to why she left, one being that she left that show to pull a David Caruso, and the other story being that the rest of the cast couldn't stand her and she left once her contract was fulfilled because really, man, fuck those guys.

I'm sure the truth can be found somewhere between both of those stories, but as much as I like these guys -- Ted Danson, George Wendt, Danny DeVito's wife, Cliff Clavin, the guy from Frasier who was married to a chick with IBS, and last but not least, my main man, the fuckin' pot-smokin' master himself, Woody Fuckin' Harrelson -- as much as I like them, I think I'm on Team Long. Because I'm thinking that what probably happened was that they were probably being really fuckin' cliquey and for whatever reason, poor Shelley Long wasn't invited to join in their reindeer games. Either that or she's a monster cunt to work with, I'm not sure.

If it's the latter, then she's a great fuckin' actress because she's really likable here and even kind of adorable on occasion. Even when she gets overzealous in her theatrical fencing class, I wasn't hating on her for not pulling her punches (or thrusts, in this case), she's just really eager to be great at what she does. Well, maybe "what she does" is the wrong way to put it, because it's really more like "what she's trying to do" and what she's trying to do is get jobs as an actress, which she isn't doing. In the meantime, she's getting by with a job working at some costume store.

Perhaps a part of why I liked her character so much was that I kinda saw myself in this lady, particularly when she goes to visit her parents to beg them for money so she can throw it away on expensive acting classes with some world-renowned Russian thespian giant. Having had similar experiences with my own parents, I can relate to the empty gesture of promising to pay back a debt. I can also relate because much like Shelley Long's character, I am also a tall pretty blonde woman.

Hey, get this: she has to audition to get into the fuckin' class, just so she can have the privilege of paying $5,000 to listen some Russkie asshole go on about the difference between a Texas diphthong and a Georgia diphthong. Thankfully, I didn't have to deal with that kind of shit in the acting classes I took. Oh yeah, you didn't know? It was something I forced myself to do, in a weird self-therapy kind-of-way, to snap out of the depression I fell into about three years ago. I took acting classes and I started a blog, because I hated the idea of doing either one but at least it didn't involve having to talk to friends or loved ones and letting them know just how deep a world of shit I was living in at the time. Funny how that works.

There's one particular moment in the acting class that I really dug, where this one student is making these weird noises in an overly theatrical way (he was asked to emote without using words), and that reminded me of this one student in one of my acting classes. He approached every exercise and scene we had in this class like he was Mr. Method (I was more of a Given Circumstances guy). So this guy, he reminded me a little bit of that Brian Atene dude who was auditioning for Kubrick, never knowing that 20 years later that shit would pop up on YouTube. I'm not clowning on the dude (or Brian Atene, for that matter), I'm just saying it was amusing to watch -- and apparently my acting teacher thought the same, because a couple of times he couldn't help but laugh.

Anyway, Shelley Long ends up crossing paths with some broad, and when you need a Broad with a capital B, you cast Bette Midler -- at least in the mid/late 80's, you did. Because this is a Hollywood movie and a good example of the kind of screenplay Syd Field would cream over (particularly when it comes to foreshadowing certain character quirks/traits that will pay off later in the movie), these two ladies do not get along, because of that whole Drama Is Conflict deal. Midler ends up auditioning for the class, on a lark it seems -- but mostly to prove something to Long, who is being way-too-uptight about it. It's implied (to me, anyway) that Midler's character, who doesn't know any classical monologues (nor does she seem to care) probably blew the Russian acting teacher to get in (and on scholarship!), or at least that's how Shelley Long's character sees it, and since I'm kind of on her side, I guess I would see it that way as well.

The title, by the way, might throw some people off. Hiller had already directed a couple movies that featured titles that also served as a description of the genre they were in, like Love Story was a love story and Romantic Comedy was a romantic comedy. So rather than complete his Generic Title trilogy (which he could still do by re-titling any of his most recent works as Shitty Film), he moved on to another kind of title for his movies; he moved on to naming his movies after something the characters wanted. For example, he made a movie called Making Love, which I guess is what the gay dudes in that movie were all about. Then he made this movie, where $20 million figures late into the plot, hence the Outrageous Fortune, right?

Well, maybe, maybe not. Because there's also a couple parts where Long, uh, longs to play the lead in William Shakespeare's Hamlet (as opposed to Jamaa Fanaka's Hamlet), and there's a line in that play that refers to "outrageous fortune" and the only reason I even know that shit is because a couple of years ago, for some reason I started watching some Canadian television series on IFC (or was it the Sundance Channel?) called Slings and Arrows. But just to make sure, I checked IMDB, and yup, it's referring to that whole deal about the bit in Hamlet referring to the horrible fucked up shit that could happen in a motherfucker's life.

She wants to play Hamlet and people try to kill her dream by telling her no way will a woman play that part. What the fuck, man? Why would that be a terrible idea? If anything, it sounds pretty fuckin' cool. They used to have men play the women parts back in the day, so why can't a woman play a guy's role? They need to make more (if any) Shakespeare plays with women playing all the parts, that would be awesome. I'm not going anywhere with this (surprise), other than to say that I think acting in general should only involve women, because who the fuck wants to look at men? Aside from girls and gays, of course.

Anyway, the next day Shelley Long's at her job bitching about that bitch Midler, and along comes Muthafuckin' Peter Coyote strolling in, acting like some Perfect Guy. He's doing the sensitive-guy thing, asking Long if they sell pumpkin costumes because he doesn't want the born-insecure picked-on kid in the class he teaches to get assed out during some upcoming pageant. Well, I guess if you look and act like Muthafuckin' Peter Coyote, you can bed a Shelley Long in under 8 hours, because that's what this guy does. Peter Coyote is as cool as Woody Harrelson, if you get my drift.

So Coyote and Long are doing the lovey-dovey thing, and it seems like every time he picks her up from acting class, they go straight to her apartment to get it on. But sometimes they can't, because Coyote is too busy banging Bette Midler's character, because this typical Man With A Penis is cheating on both of them. And then to make things worse, later on he walks into a flower shop only to get blown to bits.
Midler and Long end up arriving at the morgue to identify the body at the same time, meaning some Jerry Springer shit is about to happen.

I don't get that, by the way, I don't get why these chicks would be at each other's throats. They should be kicking the shit out of the charred cadaver currently decomposing on the slab, giving this two-timing son-of-a-bitch some necro-payback for fucking with their emotions. But instead, they try killing each other at this rather convenient location, because they have such low self-esteem it fucks them up to know that the man in their life was seeing someone else. What could this mean? Am I not attractive to him anymore? She's prettier than me, isn't she? Then they notice that the corpse has a tiny penis (evidently, they based the dead body on me) and soon they realize something's up and it's not the penis -- HIGH FIVE!

You better sit down for what I'm about to tell you, because your reaction will be the prelude to an avalanche of chaos that will ensue and wreck your fucking world once this fuckin' bomb is dropped on your ass. It's gonna be like the last 20 pages/last 20 minutes of The Day of the Locust in this bitch when I get through saying what I'm about to say: these two women who didn't get along...now have to work together to solve this mystery...and maybe, just maybe, they might come out of this situation as the best of friends.

I'm not bagging on the tried and true formula used here, I'm just acknowledging -- argh, I'm just being an asshole, that's what I'm doing. Look, it's a buddy comedy, but it's one of the better ones; when it's not being funny, it's actually pretty involving with the chasing and the shooting and the running and Jesus Christ this shit probably reads likes Professor Frink was dictating it to me.

In addition to delivering a satisfactory suspense/comedy quotient (it also delivers a satisfactory quotient in obvious shitty green-screen/rear-projection work), I think a big part of this film's success is that the two leads are fantastic in it, and as a result, their performances elevated the material, making the movie better than it has any right to be (I guess you can say the same about Hiller's Silver Streak -- not to mention National Lampoon's Pucked). I already told you how much I liked Shelley Long, so let me talk about how much I liked Bette Midler with her mix of ball-buster and sweet-talker (there's a funny moment where she's chewing out some phone company guy one minute, then being all nice to him the next). Aside from any Latina thespian (and Mercedes Ruehl), Bette Midler is the only other actress who can convince you that she wants to shoot a man's dick off. I bet she's done it before, or at least tried to.

I got a kick out of how a bit of Midler's attitude eventually rubs off on Long in a subtle, film's not drawing too much attention to it sort-of-way; later in the film, once it's revealed how big a fuckin' asshole Peter Coyote really is (a deadly vegetation-killing toxin -- and he's selling it for millions!), I had a good feeling that they were just as intent on motherfucking this asshole as they were on saving the entire wheat belt. Shit, in some cases, it felt like giving this guy the business had a higher priority.

There's a scene in this movie where someone rips a mask off his face, revealing the real person under it, because it's that kind of movie. Only the problem here is that you can fuckin' tell who the guy is before he rips that shit off. If anything, the "real" face looks faker than the fake face, probably because the "real" face consists of some obvious wig and beard work. All I could think about was how uncomfortable it must've been for that character to wear such a tight mask over his hairy face. That shit must've been hot and itchy.

By the way, you know who got a lot of work in movies during the 80's -- aside from Francis Veber? Fat women with evil laughs. Yeah man, the money was flowing like the mighty Mississippi if you were overweight, had a take-charge look and an unsettling, knowing, Something Bad Will Probably Happen To You cackle. The warden from Reform School Girls, the nurse who gave Captain Mauser a full-body-cavity search in Police Academy 2, and let's not forget Large Marge from Pee Wee's Big Adventure. Well, one of those large ladies also shows up in Outrageous Fortune, playing the madam of a brothel. Long story short, the scene involves Long and Midler dressing up as men in cowboy clothes, and they certainly made very convincing boys, that's for sure. I don't know if that says more about them or me.

The other actors are pretty good in this too; Robert Prosky plays the Russian asshole, and he's always good. You know, he passed away a while back, and he was 77. I don't mean to sound like a dick, but I always thought he was older, kinda like how I always thought William Hickey was older than he really was. It was also nice to see George Carlin take up a nice chunk of the last third of the movie, playing what I felt was the Richard Pryor-in-Silver Streak role; like Prosky and Hickey, he also appeared older than his age. Shooter McGavin (or as you more discriminating filmgoers might know him as, Tappy Tibbons) shows up to be awesome for a minute. I also recognized the painter from Murphy Brown who later went on to overdose on a combo of heroin and coke. It's like the drug equivalent to when you mix different sodas together in one cup, I think they call it a Suicide -- funny name, that.

Also along for the ride is that Nick Nolte-looking motherfucker who played Dr. Chilton in two of the Hannibal Lecter movies. Here's an actor who usually plays assholes (Deep Rising and 8MM are two more examples of his prime assholery in play) and I wished he brought a bit more of that asshole attitude into his game because here he comes off like the kind of guy who's never gonna get laid because he's too nice. He's such a fuckin' pushover and he's never gonna get Long & Midler's respect that way. He's always gonna be referred to as “harmless” and being called "harmless" by a woman is just about as bad as being called a dickless piece-of-shit, only in fewer words.

Earlier I mentioned that this was intended to be a double-feature with Overboard because the same chick wrote both films, which were recommended to me by someone who must get a morbid fascination from reading my terrible ramblings. But the schedule wasn't allowing it, so the double-feature is now a two-parter, and the next ramblings I write on this blog will be about the Kurt Russell/Goldie Hawn comedy that isn't Swing Shift.

Outrageous Fortune made about $52 million at the box office in 1987 dollars. Based on my math, after adjusting for inflation, that comes out to about $793 million in 2011 dollars. Talk about an outrageous fortune, am I right? HIGH FIVE! DON'T LEAVE ME HANGING!

Final tally of references to the penis and its variants: 9

Don't fuck with the babysitter

Hello nonexistent lady and gentleman, I'm going to ramble about the movie I saw last night/earlier this morning, it's called Thor and it's directed by Kenneth Branagh, he's the guy who played the villain in Big Willie Style's Wild Wild West. So I went to the AMC to see it because I had a free popcorn and soda coupon that was about to expire and that's really the only reason I even bother going to the AMC because that place is pretty fuckin' wack, like most movie theater chains. Hell, even the popcorn is fuckin' wack, come to think of it, and yet I went to this place just so I can have some of it for free. Christ almighty.

Some albino homo carrying a blanket and his girl friend sat next to me, and they seemed like nice folk, they asked me if the seat where my jacket was currently resting was being saved for anyone. For some reason I've yet to fathom, rather than say "No it's not", I said "No, we're cool". Who's cool? Me? If that's the case, did I mean "we're" in relation to the royal We? Honestly people, if you think my ramblings make no fuckin' sense, you should try having a fuckin' conversation with me some day, it's some mind-boggling mad mixture of fragmented sentences, missing subjunctives, constantly changing tenses, and a dash of Tobias Funke-isms. I suck at life and its many facets, is what I'm trying to say.

Because it was a midnight showing, it was a midnight crowd and because it was Thursday heading into Friday, that meant it was College Friday and about 98 percent of the audience was old enough to look at you in confusion when you tell them the director of Thor also directed a movie called Dead Again and when you tell them that's the one with Emma Thompson they're all like Who Da Fuck Is Emma Thompson, I Know It's Cinco De Mayo But I'll Still Beat Your Fuckin' Mexican Ass Up And Down The Aisle.

Everybody took the opportunity to hoot and holler during the previews and it gave some of the douchier douches in the crowd many chances to demonstrate their ability to sound like a woman moaning during sex. Because it was all men doing that shit, it made me laugh to think that's exactly how they'd sound if they were to ever find themselves in a prison and Bubba or Leroy or Tyrone or whatever other borderline-racist use of a downtrodden black name for a prisoner shoves about 12 uncut inches of pent-up/veined-up Hurt up these motherfuckers' dumb Axe-wearing bro asses.

There was a trailer for Super 8 before the movie, so I looked away, because I'm good at that shit -- without images, the dialogue and music are useless in trying to spoil shit for me. There was also a trailer for Green Lantern and because I couldn't give a shit about that shit, I watched that lame shit. Anyway, I had no idea who or what was in Thor, aside from the director, because I don't go hunting that shit down on the Internet and because I haven't gone to the movies to see something first-run since Blue Valentine (well, that and Muthafuckin' Fast Fuckin' Five) so it's not like I've been privy to any Previews of Coming Attractions anyway.

So yeah, Thor. This shit starts off with some battle shit way back in the day between Odin and his merry band of supermen (or whatever the fuck they're supposed to be -- Gods? Evolved humans? Highlander II: The Quickening-style aliens?) fighting it out with some bad guys who were probably ancestors of that mutant Mystique from X-Men. The bad guys are called Frost Giants or some shit like that, and they have the ability to freeze shit while wrecking havoc, and because they don't take the time to make some stupid quip like "All right everybody, CHILL!" or "What killed the dinosaurs? DA ICE AGE!" that makes them a million times better than Mr. Freeze from Batman.

Odin is played by Anthony Hopkins, who is doing his thing, and he has an asshole son named Thor (the titular Thor) who wants to be king so he can show all these weak-ass bitches how a Real Man does this shit. Odin's like George Bush and Thor is Dubya, if you're the kind who likes to politicize every fucking thing. Anyway, they're just about to finish the coronation when some of these Avatar rejects try to steal some glowing blue box that has Awesome Powers of some kind (freezing things is what it mainly seems to do). There's a lot of hoopla about the failed attempt, it leads to this dick Thor going over to the Frost Giants' planet and stirring shit up because he's a fuckin' douche who turns tables full of food over if he doesn't get what he wants, like some petulant child, which is kinda what he is, really.

It's hard to judge Thor's friends because they're all really cool but they're big on Thor, so they must be Secret Assholes behind closed doors. I mean, it's like when I found out the lovely Kristen Bell was engaged to that cock Dax Shepard. Now, for all I know, Dax Shepard might be a nice guy, or at least decent enough to get a nice girl like Ms. Bell and not make fun of her lazy eye, but since that motherfucker collected paychecks fucking with people on Ashton Kutcher's horrific program Punk'd, that makes him Guilty by Douchesociation, plain and fuckin' simple. Same thing with Thor's fellow warriors, and same thing with every pro-sports player and their teammates.

As it is, Thor's warrior homies are pretty cool; you have this hot warrior-princess type, you have this young Cary Elwes-looking motherfucker, you have Punisher War Zone with a beard and fat suit, and you have this relatively quiet Asian motherfucker who you wished had more opportunity to kick ass. Hell, I wish they all had more opportunity to kick ass. You know what, powers that be? You should at least make one of those DTV spinoffs like they did with the Get Smart movie, using these characters. I'd pay a few bucks to watch these 4 do their thing.

Anyway, Odin, he knows what's up, he knows his son's a cock, so he takes away Thor's ass-kicking powers and takes away his mighty hammer and exiles the fortunate son over to Earth. Thor ends up landing over in New Mexico which kinda sucks because once you stop for a meal at the Bobcat Bite, there's really not much to do there, not unless you're a filmmaker looking to save some money tax-incentive style.

So Thor lands in New Mexico and gets hit by a van that happens to be driven by Natalie Portman, the lucky bastard. With her, she's got this cute chick in glasses that I was kinda crushing on, and the guy who Jennifer Connelly and Paul Bettany named their kid after. This guy, this Stellan Skarsgard, I guess he's a friend of the Connelly/Bettany double-feature, and I wonder how that's like. I mean, I bet you a typical visit ends with him going home and jerking off to Bettany's hot wife -- that is, if Stellan Skarsgard is anything like me, because that's what I usually do after visiting a friend and his wife or girlfriend, even the unattractive ones, because I ride the Sad/Creepy train to work everyday and I'm a self-employed motherfucker.

It's like this movie I saw once, called In Search of a Midnight Kiss, and it starts with this dude taking a photo of his roommate's wife and photoshopping it onto some anonymous naked chick's picture. Then he starts beating off to it, then his roommate and his wife walk in and catch him in the act. The only reason I haven't done that shit yet is because I'm too lazy to learn Photoshop -- well, that and I was too busy banging so many hot chicks, obviously, I don't have time for lame shit like that. But who's to say Stellan Skarsgard ain't some Photoshop master? I take that back, homeboy doesn't even need Photoshop, he just needs to rent The Hot Spot and get some prime wankery material right fuckin' there, man.

Anyway, Portman's some kind of scientist and I guess the cute chick in glasses and Skarsgard are part of the scientific study Scooby team, and they're trying to figure out what's up with this fuckin' Aryan's wet dream who fell from the sky, and better yet, why is he such an asshole?

I thought it was really canny of Branagh and company to have the first third of the movie play like some ultra-portentous Life & Death shit, some Fate Of The Universe shit, all done with dead-seriousness expected from a story about mythical gods. But then, after the situation is laid out and Thor lands on Earth, the movie bamboozles our asses by introducing a very healthy sense-of-humor to the proceedings, and not in some lame Beastmaster 2: Through the Portal of Time kinda way either, I mean, they don't really overdo it with the fish out-of-water jokes, it's more like "trip out on this fuckin' asshole".

It's pretty fuckin' hilarious the shit this guy pulls once he's on Earth, fuckin' walking in the middle of the street, expecting traffic to stop for the motherfucker. Actually, that's not too weird at all, at least not here in California with that bullshit right-of-way law, because in that case there's a shitload of Thors in this motherfucker. The only way he'd fit in more is if he was riding a bike in the middle of traffic. But yeah, he carries himself in such a I'm Important And You're Below Me manner, thinking everyone's going to cater to his every order and desire, and he finds out the hard way it's not gonna work out that way for him now. Still, it's funny to hear him declare that he's in need of "sustenance", and then after scarfing down many plates of breakfast, this asshole's smashing coffee cups after draining them dry, demanding more of the fine beverage. Because sometimes it's awesome to watch an asshole do his thing as long as he's not doing it to you.

It's also Good Times to see him pulling some shit, thinking he can get away with it because he's fuckin' Thor, only to find out the hard way that he's just as susceptible to getting tased and getting shot up with sedatives. This is the Hollywood version of the real world, though, so that means he can still get hit by a car and come out of it with a minor moment of disorientation, just like Matrix in Commando getting smashed by a Porsche going high speed and shaking that off like it ain't no thang, unless there's an alternate ending where Thor drops dead and while everyone wonders what the fuck happened, Portman uses her scientific knowledge to deduce that it probably had something to do with getting hit by a car twice.

So after the first third of serious set-up, the movie then eases into a back-and-forth structure, cutting between Thor's misadventures in New Mexico and all the drama going on back in Thor's stomping grounds of Asgard (a world that looks a lot like the Feature Presentation intro for Harkins Theaters). The New Mexico stuff is funny and the Asgard stuff is serious, and somewhere along the way, that shit starts to blend in with each other, which I guess makes it like, I don't know, representative of the increasingly dangerous situation. It's like, this shit was funny but now it's no longer the people of Asgard and those Mystique-looking motherfuckers who are in risk of having their worlds rocked, now it's the farmers and migrant workers of New Mexico (and the rest of the world as well, when you think about it) who are now being tossed into the Everything To Lose pile.

Thor has this brother named Loki, and he's got a really big forehead, like Christina Ricci, and I'd make fun of that shit except I've noticed I have a lot more forehead nowadays because getting older blows. I'm more aware of that shit in other people, now that it's happening to me. It's a good thing Mike Epps wasn't in the audience, he'd have his way with the motherfucker, and with me, for that matter. Anyway, Loki's the opposite of Thor, he's skinny, dark-haired, and even-tempered -- or is he? DUN DUN DUN.

There's also this awesome badass gatekeeper played by the motherfucker who gets owned by Denzel in American Gangster (I haven't seen The Wire yet) and Rene Russo plays Thor's mom. This chick, Rene Russo, I don't know if it's the CGI or if she's just lucky to be blessed with good genes but she's growing old gracefully, that one. She's got what Helen Mirren has and what Candice Bergen used to have; she's got that thing going on where if you're an old dude but don't want to look like a complete degenerate by dating a 19-year-old, and you want to date someone in your age range but still get props from your fellow man, then you really can't get any better than her or the other old broads I just mentioned, even though some keep trying to push way-past-glory types as being still in their prime. I mean, people go on about how glamourous someone like Sophia Loren still is, and if by "glamourous" you mean "she dresses well" and nothing else, well then I guess you're right. I'm sounding like an even bigger asshole than usual, because when it comes down to it, I'd hit that shit and be tearfully grateful for it. No I wouldn't, I'm like Brad Pitt in this bitch, excuse me while I have sex with a hot chick between paragraphs.

Raza actress Adriana Barraza is credited in the end credits, yet I don't remember ever seeing her, I don't know what that's about. Maybe Branagh's a big Top Gear fan and shares the same opinion of mi gente as those limey fucks, and he wanted to fuck with us, the fuckin' asshole. Branagh doesn't give a fuck about Oscar-nominated performances if they're coming from a fuckin' wetback, isn't that right, ol' chap? I bet you he almost choked on his fish & chips as he laughed over that particular editing decision. Whatever, perhaps it was something else. Maybe if having a certain foreshadowing cameo by a bow & arrow-using motherfucker in the movie meant you had to ass Babel out in the name of keeping a bladder-friendly 119-minute running time, then I guess it was the right thing to do.

I don't know how they're doing it, but I'm glad Marvel is doing it. I mean, they've been doing very well these past 10 years with their comic book movies. I've liked all of them, and even the one I liked the least, the Ang Lee version of Hulk, I still liked quite a bit. Who's in charge of picking the directors for these joints, because he or she deserves a medal for picking someone he or she thinks would make the most interesting adaptation, rather than just picking some motherfucker whose film opened at number one in the box office the previous week. OK, so they picked Brett Ratner for X-Men: The Last Stand, but nobody's perfect, we all have our weak moments, and besides, at that point in the production they were in such last-minute deep shit, they needed someone competent who could get the goddamn thing in the can, and you know what? I liked that movie too. I like everything.

But yeah man, for the most part, it's like they pick the director least likely to get the job but most likely to get the material. I mean, it's not like Branagh was coming off a string of box-office smash hits when they picked him, but the motherfucker has made some good movies, he's great with actors, and they Just Fucking Knew he sure as shit was going to bring the same over-the-top panache he brought to his previous joints (at least the joints that aren't in black & white and have alternate titles in the UK and the States). I've heard some people say that this one doesn't feel like a Branagh joint, and I'm going to take a wild guess here and say that has something to do with the lack of CGI fire-breathing metal creatures in Peter's Friends or Love's Labour's Lost.

Seriously, what the fuck are you talking about, people? This Brit is directing the shit out of this shit like it was fuckin' Henry V (I still want to see the previous Henrys, but I can't find them at any video store), I really doubt the guy half-assed it for a paycheck, and if he did, he probably had all the scripts on set re-titled "William Shakesphere's Thor" just to make sure he kept his eye on the prize. Sure, I'm sure he could've probably done more with the material, but you gotta understand that's part of the deal when you're working for big daddy Marvel; you gotta bring your A-game but you also have to understand who's signing your checks. Look at it this way: this movie is probably going to make a lot of bank, enabling homebrit the capital and clout to make a couple more movies that are 100 percent his, then when those movies bomb, he'll get hungry again and direct the sequel or something and probably get a wee bit more leeway the second time out. That's called a Win Win situation in my book.

Thor is above-average entertainment; it moved fast and kept my interest and had a nice amount of laughs in the motherfucker. The action was cool in that CGI-spectacle sort-of-way, and the visuals in general are really nice to look at (I especially loved anything involving that hyped-up They Live style otherworldly transporter room). Natalie Portman is very pretty, the cute chick in glasses is my current movie-crush, Stellan Skarsgard is probably secretly jacking it to Jennifer Connelly, and the director of Choke is doing his S.H.I.E.L.D. thing like a fuckin' boss.

They're all giving 110 percent for a movie that averages 84 percent, in my opinion. I wouldn't call Thor great, it didn't rock my lame world like Muthafuckin' Fast Fuckin' Five did, but it's definitely one of the better examples of a summer movie, one that I wish was the rule, rather than the exception nowadays. Yeah, I know it's May, I know it's not really summer yet but Hollywood doesn't give a shit, so why should we, right? Also, Ralph Macchio is thanked in the end credits and that earns Thor extra credit special points, and while you probably think the filmmakers were thanking another Ralph Macchio, as far as I'm concerned, there's only ONE Ralph Macchio, bitches. Get that shit right.

In conclusion, Vincent D'Onofrio is probably pissed off right about now.

You can have any brew you want, as long as it's a Brahma

I don't know if you've seen 2009's Fast Ampersand Furious, but if you didn't, I'm about to spoil that shit, so skip to the third paragraph if you're all sensitive and shit. Anyway, to the best of my recollection of my single viewing of that film, the climax of the climax had Vin Diesel's character Dominic "'CUZ THE BUSTER KEPT ME OUTTA HANDCUFFS" Toretto smashing into Fenix, the piece-of-shit who killed his girlfriend Letty, and the audience at my showing was all Hell Yeah about it. Well, there was one guy next to me, he wasn't so cheery; he looked back at the crowd behind him and shook his head in disdain.

After the film, I asked him why he did that, and he told me that we all looked like assholes cheering the villain's demise, that it made us as bad as him and it wasn't going to change anything. He said that when all was said and done, criminals would still smuggle drugs with the use of high-speed vehicles, the War on Drugs will continue, and hell, there might even be repercussions from people who worked for Fenix. I told him that he might be right, it might not make a difference in the long run, but I bet you Toretto, Letty's family, (and the families of any other people Fenix killed, for that matter) feel a lot better knowing Fenix wasn't breathing anymore. He then gave me this smirk and brought up the fact that we never saw what they did with Fenix's body, so where's the proof that he was really killed in the first place and I was like Whatever, dude. I don't know why I felt like bringing that particular anecdote up, I just did, I guess.

Hello lady and gentleman, I'm going to ramble about the fifth film in the Vroom Vroom series of films that have the words "Fast" and/or "Furious" in the title. It's called Fast Five, and based on the box office reports, you've most likely seen it already. But in case you haven't, this one picks up where the last one left off, with a prison bus breakout that I'm sure has been described as "daring" by many others who've already written about this movie. I was expecting something very clever and elaborate, but I was wrong because it really just came down to causing that bus to flip over 17 times Another 48 Hrs. style and hope for the best that Toretto (one of the prisoners inside the bus) didn't get killed or Reeve'd up as a result.

Nope, homeboy survives (as do all the other passengers in the bus, believe it or not) and we then cut to sometime later in Brazil (Rio de Janeiro, that is), with Paul Walker and Jordana Brewster driving through one of the many City of Gods they have in that fuckin' country; this is obviously one of the lesser City of Gods, because while there are plenty of gun-wielding youngsters running around, none of them are too young to drive and there isn't a Li'l Ze or Knockout Ned in the bunch.

Anyway, the Buster and Lady Toretto are both very good-looking but I'm glad I wasn't in that car, because you can just tell that shit must've smelled kinda ripe in there, I mean, it's a hot climate and I don't think they made that many stops or change of clothes, for that matter. They then meet up with fuckin' Vince "WHY'D YOU BRING THE BUSTER" I Don't Know His Character's Last Name from the first film and get down to setting up a new heist with the Domster, because fuck getting a day job.

All of this eventually leads to a bunch of motherfuckers looking for the Furious crew; a bunch of Brazilian bad guys led by Bucho from Desperado (although from the look of his waistline nowadays, he should be called Mucho), as well as a group of government badasses led by the gay guy from Be Cool. The gay guy from Be Cool is obscenely pumped up in this movie, even more pumped than he was in his last film, Faster (which is a pretty tight flick, save for the last 10 minutes or so).

I'm looking at this scary guy with his tree trunk arms and circa 1989 projection-television-sized chest and thinking to myself that this guy, this gay guy from Be Cool, he must be a really big fan of Lyle Alzado, because it looks like he's trying his absolute darndest to meet the motherfucker. He never stops sweating either; I was going to blame that on the Brazilian climate but nobody else is sweating liters like this guy, who's sweating like Ted Striker trying to land a plane, so it must be a side-effect from downing bottles of Xenadrine between camera set-ups. Can you smell what The Rock is cooking? I can, and it smells like a man going through ketosis.

At this point, the series is making it very clear to us that we are entering video game/cartoon logic territory. Not that the first few Fast/Furious joints were gritty representations of real life, but they were pretty grounded for summer fare. I mean, one of the most outlandish moments in the first film was when both Dom and the Buster race down a street, hoping to cross the train tracks before an oncoming train smashes them both. But by the fifth film, these motherfuckers drive a convertible off a cliff and then get up from the fuckin' car in mid-air and jump off from it before finally landing in a river (shades of Vin Diesel's opening stunt in XXX). In the first two films, the government agents were middle-aged guys played by Ted Levine and James Remar. In this one, the government agents are ripped and look like side characters from the Metal Gear series. In comparison to the fast-talking quip-masters that occupy this film, the side characters in the first one might as well be inarticulate extras from Gus Van Sant's Death trilogy. These aren't complaints, just observations. In other words, I'm just saying.

During all the street chases and vicious ownings, the Furious crew get the idea in their heads to pull yet an even more impossible heist and realize they're gonna need a bigger boat, and by bigger boat, I mean they need more guys on the job. Why I didn't just say that in the first place, I have no idea. At this point, the movie turns all Ocean's on us when we're intro'd to the additions to the team -- characters from previous Fast/Furious joints -- you have the two bickering brothers from the last one, Ludacris from part dos, the tall skinny chick from the last one (she and Sweet Dee from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia should team up and make a buddy action movie, called Killer Birds or something), Tyrese from part dos (I groaned when I saw him, but thankfully, the filmmakers made him not nearly as annoying in this one, so I never felt like throwing him into the path of an oncoming train like I did in 2 Fast 2 Homoerotic) and last but certainly not least, muthafuckin' Han from Tokyo Drift.

Let's talk a bit about Han; this guy -- SPOILER YOU FUCKERS -- died in Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, but his character is pretty awesome and the filmmakers realize that (it's revealed here that his full name is Han Seoul-Oh), so the way they keep him in the series is by having the last joint and this joint (and probably the next joint) all take place before the events of the Tokyo joint -- and even then, you never know what they might pull to keep him in these joints. I mean, you never know. By the way, on a completely unrelated note, stick around during the end credits. Anyway, like I was saying, I have no idea how they might keep him alive.

While Han might be the coolest character in the movie, Brewster & Brazilian Bird the hottest, and Paul Walker's character the most Paul Walker-esque, it's Dominic Toretto who was my favorite. Calm down dear, listen up: I liked how his character was no longer the badass cooler-than-cool person he tried to come off as in the first film, he's softened up quite a bit. Part of that, I think, might be a result of him losing the love of his life in the last movie. In that one, I was pleasantly surprised that they didn't just try to James Bond that shit and have him shacking up with a new broad before the end credits, and I was even more pleasantly surprised that he's still not considering putting himself on the market in Fast Five. He's still grieving, and as a result of that, I notice his character is a lot more, I don't know, needy or something. Maybe "appreciative" is a better word.

I mean, he's done it before in the last one, but here he's really laying it on thick with his talk about the people in his life being "family", regardless of whether they're related or not. He gives at least one heartfelt speech to his fellow Fast & Furious-ers, telling them how much they mean to him, and I think at least a couple of these guys are secretly thinking Calm Down Dude, Don't Start Crying Now and feeling all awkward and shit while politely smiling and nodding their heads before taking a celebratory swig of beer.

He was all about family in the first one too, but it was more of a You're Part Of The Circle Or You're Not and it's really hard to get in his circle (uh, that didn't come out right) but in this one, I think he's very open to anyone willing to hang with the fuckin' guy. I bet you that shit extends beyond the screen; it's like Hey guys, I make these Fast/Furious movies for you, the ones who were always down with the series but weren't down with The Chronicles of Riddick or Find Me Guilty or Babylon A.D. for some reason, and rather than hate on you, I'm gonna give you what you want. It's like he knows where he's wanted, and he's sure as fuck appreciating the shit out of it nowadays. If you're a Fast & Furious fan, then shit man, you're in the family, brother. Well, that and there's also the mass amount of fame & cash he gets for doing these flicks.

That part earlier where I referred to the second (and worst) of the series as 2 Fast 2 Homoerotic, that reminded me of a couple scenes in this one. There aren't nearly as any (if any) of those moments, although the Vince character does seem like a jilted chick every once in a while. I mean, in the first one, he didn't come off that way because he was all about wanting to score with Brewster's character -- but once the fuckin' Buster came into their lives, his chances pretty much went down to zero.

But in Fast Five, Vince has a woman and a kid, and Brewster's with the Buster now, but I guess it's in Vince's nature to be territorial about *something*, and in this movie that Something is his schoolyard chum Dominic. Vince is still wary about the Buster, trying to tell Dominic to be careful with him, but Dom's like Whatever and Vince gets all butt-hurt about it, whining about how "You never listen to me" and I'm half-expecting him to go on about how he doesn't feel appreciated for all the hard work he does cleaning the house and making dinner.

Someone somewhere mentioned how this series is changing, that it used to be about racing but it's now about heists, which is a weird thing to say because the other movies (at least the first 2) involved heists in one way or another. Maybe what he or she meant about this movie concentrating on heists is that there are a lot more staples of the heist genre in this movie, compared to the previous flicks; you have the sequence where each member of the team is introduced, you have scenes devoted to each member performing their part of the heist using his or her specialty, you have the montage where they kept doing practice runs on specific parts of the job, and most importantly, you have one of those awesome scenes where the entire heist crew huddles up around a table, looking at blueprints of the place they're going to hit, and going over the requirements needed to pull off the job. I fuckin' love that shit and I fuckin' love heist movies and Fast Five is a damn good heist movie. I don't know if Paramount was planning on doing this, but if they were, I'd suggest they shouldn't even bother making an Italian Job 2, because Universal and this movie just assed them the fuck out with Fast Fuckin' Five.

I always liked the Fast/Furious series and thought they were fun time-killers, but I also kinda understood that they weren't really respected, at least not in comparison to genuinely awesome summer action movies. These third-tier summer extravaganzas couldn't hang out with the big boys like Die Hard or The Dark Knight, they had to settle for the company of the Pirates of the Caribbean series (well, the last two, anyway) or even lower, lamer excuses for A Fun Time At The Movies like the Transformers movies. When I rambled about Fast Ampersand Furious, I admitted that my enjoyment of that movie may have come more from the nostalgia of digging the first one, but I'm happy to write that the reason I really dug Fast Five is because it's a fucking awesome summer action flick (summer came early, didn't you know?). I'm not sure if I'd put it up there with the A-level summer flicks, because I'd have to see it again and frankly, I need a couple years at least before I even consider qualifying that shit, but I'll sure as hell put it in the B+ section.

The action is top-fucking-notch and I can say that with confidence because at least twice I wanted to jump the fuck out of my seat and fucking applaud the movie for having the ability to make me smile like a dumbass as a result from having just watched something Fucking Awesome happen. It's not just the car chases and crashes, there's also a nice amount of violent shootouts that push the PG-13 rating as far as possible; there's a foot chase through the favela that ends with what felt like a higher body count than the past 4 films put together (it seems like each Fast/Furious film gets harder & darker with each installment). Then later in the film, there's also a pretty brutal fight scene that in the real world would end with one of them in the hospital and the other in the morgue -- that's the Chicago way! -- but in this movie, it only results in an eventual mutual respect for each other's strengths. Only in the movies, baby. Sure, you can be a grouch and be all like That's Bullshit And This Movie Is Bullshit, and if that's the case, I hope one day you'll realize it's OK to enjoy awesome stuff and you won't be mocked by your fellow hipsters for doing so.

I don't know how many cars they destroyed in this fucking movie, but I'm sure the family members of all the stuntmen who surely died performing the stunts will be proud of the film. Also, there was a trailer for the Cars sequel before the movie and that made me think that the families of the cars that were destroyed in this movie would also be just as understanding/forgiving of the film. By the way, 3 of the movie trailers preceding our feature presentation featured shit jokes, and one of them (some Jason Bateman/Ryan Reynolds comedy) actually featured 3 shit-related moments in its 3-minute running time. If that wasn't all, there was also a rather vivid exploding toilet scene in Fast Five.

What the fuck, people? Were we always a society of fecal lovers? And yet, these same people who laughed at a baby rocketing shit onto Bateman's face, these same people who guffawed at Leslie Mann dropping crazy deuces on the toilet while lamenting her choice of Thai food, these people who howled at Bateman freaking out when Mann got in bed with him and pointed her recently-wiped ass towards him -- these same people would freak out if they saw Salo or the 120 Days of Sodom, then they would go home and order Jackass 3 on pay-per-view, gobbling all the bathroom humor like so much chocolate pudding.

Complaints? I have a few -- actually, I only have one, really: I wish they didn't feel the need to Tony Scott the shit out of the subtitles, but what can you do, it's the hip/young thing to do, I guess. I also would've loved to see some ragdoll bodies fly out of the fuckin' cars, and blood, oh yes, precious beautiful blood would've been welcome amongst all the insanity, but again, this is a PG-13 joint and I can always create an Unrated Director's Cut in the Blu-ray player of my imagination. Nudity would've been welcome too, but again, there's always my imaginary Blu-ray.

In short, if you like fast cars, two-fisted action, one-fisted gunplay, sweaty steroid cases, vehicular smashups, and plenty of tits & ass in bikinis and various other tight skimpy outfits, then you're most likely the writer of these ramblings and you should already be planning to see this shit a second time. But if you're not me, and you don't like the above-mentioned qualities, but you *do* like seeing a closeted action star acting less closeted than he did in recent movies, then yeah, you should see this shit right the fuck now.

On my way out, I overheard a guy telling his friend how "martial arts gave me discipline", only he said it like he was asking a question

For years -- since '06, anyway -- my buddy's been talking up the television show 30 Rock. He said I was missing out on something I would really dig, and thanks to sickness and Netflix Instant Streaming, I was able to eventually catch up on both the first four seasons as well as pop culture's love affair with Tina Fey. So when I found out about that book she wrote, I thought that it would be cool to go to a signing and shake her hand or something (her left hand, of course -- us lefties can sense each other out).

Turns out the only signing she's doing in L.A. is after a "conversation" between her and one of my favorite You're Better Than This Material actors, Steve Martin -- but it's at the Nokia Theatre and even if you buy the cheap seats it's still going to cost a pretty penny with parking and all the other supplemental rapings those bastards give you. Meanwhile, all a New Yorker had to do to get his/her shit signed was go to a Barnes & Noble and buy her book. At the risk of going full Kanye, I declare the following: Tina Fey doesn't care about L.A. people.

I'm sure the Nokia Theatre deal will be as nuts as the book signing in New York, what with all the rabid fans and their fanatical rabidry (that's a word...now). But I don't think she's going to get as psychotic a turnout as fictional author of fiction Sutter Cane did in John Carpenter's In the Mouth of Madness, which I just happen to bring up because I just happened to have attended a midnight screening of it at the great New Beverly Cinema. In that movie, this guy Cane, he sells more books than syllable-sibling Stephen King and I bet you he probably sells more books than J.K. Rowling and the shittier Mormon version Stephanie Meyer combined.

This midnight screening was hosted by Brian Collins of Bloody-Disgusting.com and he started off the night by asking if any of us in the audience had also attended the previous midnight show he hosted -- Phantasm II -- and after looking over the raised hands, he said that actress Sam Phillips (the guest for that screening) was in the lobby, still talking (she was rather loquacious, you see). He then intro'd the producer of the film, Sandy King (aka Mrs. John Carpenter) and proceeded to chat about the film and have a Q&A with the audience. One day I'm going to graduate myself to the level of Rich Miser (current status: Plain Miser) and in a brief moment of charity, I will donate a shitload of money to the New Beverly Cinema so they can buy some kick-ass microphones because at this point, the current mics are really more of a prop. Although I guess it would help if the user of said mic actually brought it up towards his/her mouth.

Ms. King spoke softly and I'm going deaf, so here's the best I can come up with, based on what I think I heard:

-- She talked about how the film was shot in Canada as a way to trick New Line Cinema into financing a union shoot; they wanted to keep this film a non-union production and King wasn't having it, and she knew all of Canada's film crews were unionized, so there. At one point, the studio wanted her to film in Love Canal, but she didn't like the idea of sending cast & crew to work in and around a toxic waste dump.

-- Collins brought up that this film was written by a studio exec (awesome risk-taking motherfucker Michael De Luca) as opposed to being a film that was dictated by one, and he asked King how much of the film reflected said script, or did Carpenter have his way with it. King answered that very little was changed; the Lovecraft references and all that shit, those were all De Luca's ideas and Carpenter fought to stay true to the script. In fact, King mentioned that the fights between New Line president Bob Shaye and DeLuca were particularly tough since those two had a father-son relationship.

-- Because this film was shot during a very busy period in Carpenter's career (he shot like 2 or 3 movies from '93-95), King couldn't quite remember when this film was shot (I remember on the laserdisc commentary they said it was shot in '93) but that Sam Neill was cast as the lead before Jurassic Park was released. By the time filming started, the dinosaur joint was breaking box-office records and Neill suddenly got super-recognizable around town.

-- Special effects maestro Greg Nicotero has a breakdown on every one of the productions he works on, usually due to UPS losing one of the items needed to complete his work (despite -- or maybe in spite of -- everyone telling him to stop using UPS)

-- She did everything to make sure that Charlton Heston was comfortable on set (even going as far as telling the "pretty liberal" crew what not to say in front of Mr. From My Cold Dead Hands), and he still ended up hating her and treating her kinda shitty. She didn't take it personally, though, because Heston had a reputation for hating producers in general. Aside from his treatment of her, he was the consummate pro and did everything that was asked of him.

-- They shot at a real church, which created some problems with the family of someone involved with the church (I missed exactly what this guy did) who had recently passed away. I'm sure they would've been OK with it if the movie was Fireproof II or something, but not this ungodly shit.

During the Q&A, Sandy King mentioned 30 Days of Night as being one of the few recent horror films she liked, otherwise most of them suck and she lamented the sad state of the genre (nobody's trying anything original anymore, she said). She also had no idea what was up with The Ward's release date, all she knew was that it had gotten purchased by a distributor and at this point, the movie is out of her and Carpenter's hands and it's up to the distributor to figure out whether they're going to release this shit or not. Also, it was brought up that Hayden Christensen is in the film, he's one of the little kids there somewhere. She also referred to Sam Neill as an "Englishman" and all I could think about was how lucky she was that Zoe Bell wasn't in the audience.

So then the movie started, and the print looked pretty damn good, like maybe it never got much of a run in the past 15 years. John Carpenter's score (done in collaboration with Jim Lang) was great as always, even though the main theme got me tempted to jump in and go Exit light/Enter night/Take my hand/We're off to Never-Never land.

This guy, Cane, he writes books that fuck you up, literally fuck you up. Even though his fame and name make you think of Stephen King, the subject matter of his books is more like some Lovecraftian shit. I remember reading an interview with Joe Carnahan, he's the guy who made the flashy/kinda lame Blood Guts Bullets and Octane, then he made the great Narc, and now he's back to making flashy/kinda lame shit. Anyway, he was promoting his first film, and he mentioned that he was writing the screenplay to Narc, and he said if the finished film reflects even a portion of his original intent, it would "stick to the sleep of the weak" or something like that. Well, Sutter Cane's writing is a lot like that, it sticks to the motherfucker reading it and disturbs his/her shit up something proper.

So now his publishers are all disturbed because Cane's gone missing, and in comes ace insurance investigator John Trent (played by ace New Zealander Sam Neill) to find out if this is all bullshit or not. Biblical motherfucker Charlton Heston plays the Moses of the publishing firm and he sends Trent out with this chick editor named Styles to find him -- but more importantly, to find the manuscript to his latest book (that shit was supposed be in press by yesterday -- dug the Escape from New York font on the cover). Not once is Cane's safety or well-being ever mentioned, except in the context of insurance claims.

Sam Neill is awesome for so many reasons, and reason number 899 is that he has one of the best knowing smirks in the business (he can also yawn and play tired better than any other actor I can think of at this moment). The characters he plays in most of these joints always seems to carry an air of having shit figured out way before you, and it's like he's amusing himself watching you make an ass out of yourself because of it. I wonder if that's something he does in real life or if that's just a trick out of his magical actor bag. Anyway, that shit's in full effect with John Trent.

His character is also kind of a dick in that he'll drive with a bicycle horn in his glove compartment just in case he has a chick sleeping in the passenger seat, then he'll take that shit out and honk the poor girl awake. Why? Shit man, why is there a watermelon there, I don't know why. But I bet you John Trent was also the kind of asshole in college who'd put shaving cream on his sleeping frat-bro's hand, then tickle his face with a feather. I don't know, maybe that's his way of scoring with the ladies, by doing fucked up/lame shit to them. Chicks dig jerks, they say. I mean, he's obviously into this chick, probably figures with this broad (played by Julie Carmen -- raza!) he can get some play during their stay at the hotel (located in the small town Cane is probably hiding out).

Or maybe he's not trying to really score with her, maybe he's just being an old-fashioned Man in the sense that it used to be OK to treat all women like you want to bang them, regardless of whether you want to bang them or not. I say this because the movie came out in '95 but it feels very 70's; you have Trent treating a big-time editor like Styles like she was some fuckin' secretary temp, and he's smoking up a storm in places nobody's allowed to smoke at anymore. To the best of my knowledge, when this movie came out, you couldn't smoke damn near anywhere anymore and Disclosure was still playing in movie theaters. Yet you have Trent smoking in offices and giving the impression that he's thisclose to giving professional women playful smacks on the ass. Also, you have to understand this was written by a guy who had no qualms whatsoever with getting a blow job during a party in front of everyone, so maybe he works from a different code of conduct than everyone else.

You know, I saw this back in '96 on laserdisc and I must've been a little asshole back then because I thought it was OK. Or maybe I'm a bigger asshole now, because after watching this film on the big-screen last night, I'm going as far as to say it might be one of Carpenter's best. It has a creepiness to it that grows larger and larger as the film goes on, it's like a Sutter Cane book in the way it sneaks up on you and eventually pounces on your fuckin' nerves like some asshole kitten pouncing on some awesome dog in a YouTube video.

It's like the director (props to d.p. Gary Kibbe as well) Just Fucking Knew where to put the camera for maximum effect on every single shot and his editor Just Fucking Knew exactly the right moments to cut away and/or how long to stay on a shot. There's a fantastic sequence where Trent is running down what appears to be a hallway straight out of Event Horizon, and he's being chased by...something. True to it's Lovecraftian nature, we only get glimpses of this unholy thing going after him and it's like I'm going Ay Dios Mio over here.

I love Carpenter's use of wide-angle lens and the way that shit is slightly distorted at the edges of the anamorphic frame -- those are usually the biggest giveaways you're watching a J.C. joint. I'm sure it's just a matter of time before filmmakers start aping that look, using it way too much to the point that it becomes a regular go-to setting on Avid or Final Cut Studio, kinda like the way lens flare used to be awesome until everybody and their fuckin' mother started using it. Then J.J. Abrams stepped in and offered his 12-inches to the lens flare gangbang with Star Trek. Maybe by the time John McTiernan goes to jail, does his time, and comes out, that shit will be old and done with for a while and then maybe McT can own the lens flare look once again.

The setting is pretty unnerving as well, like some Silent Hill-looking shit or maybe Fulci (if he was still alive) coulda used this location and made Straight Outta Dunwich with it or something. Nothing feels false or lame here, not even the false scares because this is the kind of rare movie where even the false jump scares have something unnerving about them; usually, the moment after a false scare is left to the audience to catch a breath but here, the false scare makes things worse because it means The Real Scare is coming up and I'm/You're not sure if you want to get to it, I don't need that shit in my life. Ay Dios Mio.

I don't know what it is that made me more susceptible over the years to being freaked out over the idea of this movie. Part of it is that the world of this film is starting to look a lot like the real world today. But to be fair, I'm sure people felt that way even when this movie was brand spanking new. Still, that was 1995 and this is 2011 and it feels like This Is It to me, like maybe we've reached humanity's breaking point and something is going to give one way or the other.

It seems like people are more divided than ever about every fucking topic, about every fucking thing and the Internet has only made it worse; this technology that was created to bring people from far-away lands together is mostly now used to scream I'M RIGHT AND YOU'RE WRONG. You'll find far more discourse on disliking something than you will on liking something. That's the best we did with that shit, use it to tell more people than before what we don't like. Plus, I have a blog, that sure as shit doesn't help.

I guess what I'm trying to say in my rambling and confused way is that shit feels pretty goddamn apocalyptic to me already, just like the world of this movie, and that enhanced the viewing experience. I saw Black Hawk Down in a stifling hot and crowded theater, I saw Enter The Void on the big screen a couple nights ago in a highly altered state, and now I watched In the Mouth of Madness in a theater on a planet that is currently doing its best impression of latter-day Peter Falk -- stumbling around confused, angry and scared.

Throughout the entire film, you'll catch the occasional news report or radio broadcast about some crazy shit, and I like how that the characters in the film are in their own worlds, away from all that horrible shit, and it's not until the end of the film that SPOILERS YOU SENSITIVE ASSHOLES the mass hysteria eventually oozes its way to everything and it's too fuckin' late. That's kinda my worldview; we keep ignoring this shit happening Everywhere But Here and by the time we realize we have to do something, for all the good we'll do, we might as well get ourselves a large tub of popcorn and laugh ourselves to tears while we watch the show unfold. And we won't even need slimy tentacles or jagged jaws to get the party started, we'll do just fine on our own.

Shit man, real life is scarier than this movie, now that I think about it. I mean, in this movie, you can always blame it on those fuckin' Old Ones, but here in the real world we don't have a convenient otherworldly scapegoat to pin our fuck-ups on. There's another John Carpenter movie that had a similar effect on me, They Live, where it turns out it's not us fucking each other over in the name of Big Bucks, it's these goddamn formaldehyde faces from another planet that are pimping us out. If it was only that fucking simple -- if you ask me (you didn't) I'll take zombies, aliens, and motherfuckin' Cthulhu over Human Nature any day of the fuckin' week.

Anyway, it was a pretty scary movie, made scarier by my own wackpot/crackpot worldview and the wiry, skinny guy sitting in front of me; he eventually sat up unnaturally straight (the way we're all supposed to sit) and I swear I thought he was mutating right before my very eyes. To be fair, I was probably still tripping on reserves from last night's viewing of Enter the Void, so there's that too. There was a girl in the audience who would scream every once in a while and it made me sad because her screams never felt genuine. I was made even more certain of this during the end credits when out of nowhere she gave out another one of those I NEED ATTENTION screams, and I was made even more certain of my already certain certainty when outside of the New Bev she gave one more scream as we walked down the residential sidewalk -- giving the sleeping residents yet more fuel for the fire of what I'm sure will one day be a Formal Complaint against all those damn kids and their 2 a.m. exodus after a late night at the New Bev.

In conclusion, I think this movie would make a good double-bill with Memento because they're both wide-screen films about two smarmy insurance investigators (played by Down Under actors passing themselves off as Americans) getting owned by something they could never truly comprehend. The End.

Medium is the new large (popcorn)

The movie was going to start at 2pm and I thought I was ahead of the curve by arriving one hour earlier, but as I drove past the New Beverly Cinema at approximately 12:55pm and saw the line stretching out all the way down to Lulu's Cafe, I was like Of Course I'm An Asshole. Hello lady and gentleman, this is me talking about going to see Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair.

Filmmaker Quentin Tarantino -- as opposed to pastry chef Quentin Tarantino -- had been programming March's schedule at the New Bev, and on the final week he would end it with a week-long engagement of his combined version of both volumes of Kill Bill. Tickets went fast, I know that because I was one of the motherfuckers constantly clicking the Refresh button on my browser minutes before they went on sale. Because of this, the New Bev has not only extended the run another week, they made the last two days (April 6/7) only available to purchase at the box office. That will be interesting to see, how that line ends up looking.

I went yesterday, the first day at the first showing, mostly because I liked the idea of having the rest of the day available to do nothing but check e-mails and harbor resentments against my few friends and acquaintances for real/imagined slights. The line was long, but we all had tickets, so I was able to substitute the panic of not getting in for the panic of not getting a good seat. It turned out I ended up sitting behind Mr. Tarantino again, as I did during the Grindhouse screening. He was sans brother Rodriguez, but he remained consistent in that his guests' were predominately female (Omar Doom was one of the few men in the group, so I'm guessing half of the ladies were with him, as it should be when you're one of the badass motherfuckers who killed -- fuck it, I'm not spoiling that one yet).

Did not expect QT to be there; it was his birthday that day, but it was also 2pm and if I was a rich Oscar-winning filmmaker, I wouldn't be getting out of bed until at least 2:30, but as it was, he was there in his green and black hooded sweatshirt. There's eavesdropping and can't-help-but-overhear, and since I was sitting behind the guy, I think I belong in the latter category; it sounded like he was talking about Tron Legacy and how he dug what he saw as a re-envisioning of the original film's visuals. It was interesting and fitting with his "tell me what you like, not what you don't like" philosophy, that I never heard him actually say that he liked the movie.

He also mentioned how the original Tron didn't leave as much of an impression on him as the arcade adaptation did. Someone said something about how watching Tron Legacy in 2D was like watching Captain EO without the 3D glasses, and QT laughed, saying he was going to use that line. Then he used a line from Death Proof, the one about "if you want to hang with the cool kids, you gotta be cool" or something like that, I don't remember, I'm fuckin' tired.

Before the film, a couple guys on stage were selling limited edition (of 600) posters of Kill Bill, drawn by someone respected, I'm sure. Anyway, they were $50 each and I'm just not quite at that disposable income level yet, so I didn't get one. You should get one, though. Get me one, too, while you're at it.

The pretty woman working the concession stand had a way about her that put me at ease, for some reason, she just did. For all I know, she could be cracking whips at the other employees behind closed doors, but the lady who served me my popcorn had a nice aura about her and strangely enough, did not have a single whiff of hipster about her, unlike the rest of us. She must be a Torgan, I thought to myself. Further thoughts ended with me concluding that a high-strung, overly sensitive piece-of-shit like me would only find peace in a utopia where all the people working behind counters of any kind were of the Torgan lineage.

While I NOM NOM NOM'd the popcorn, a girl I recognized from the stand-by line was walking up the aisle and then did a complete about-face right after passing Quentin's row -- excited recognition. She seemed cut from the Quirky cloth and in the movie of her life, she would be played by Alison Lohman; her blonde hair was mostly done up in something that reminded me of Princess Leia's hairdo, she was wearing a frilly white blouse and leopard print pants with matching suspenders. She carried a leopard print coat that completed the ensemble. She looked down toward Quentin and from where I was sitting I could see her eyes tear up, her form slightly trembling (as was her voice).

"Remember me?" she asked, and I suddenly felt my head tilt down towards the floor. QT did not answer (probably steeling himself, preparing for the worst), so she continued. Something about how she met him last year at a cafe and that she proposed marriage to him -- my gaze was burning a hole into the floor at this point -- and then went on to shower effusive praise, telling Rapist #1 from Planet Terror how much she loved him, and she used that word, "love". I felt for this MPDG and I certainly wasn't judging her -- there but for the grace of ego, go I.  But I wanted her to shut the fuck up before things got worse for both of them. She was a cute girl from where I was sitting but QT probably gets model-quality tang on a daily basis, and besides, you never promise crazy a baby.

Thankfully, nothing followed; Quentin said he did remember her, then thanked her and she went back to her seat. Even more thankfully, Quentin and his crew did not turn into Mean Girls after she left, it didn't turn into them laughing as Stuntman Mike walks away after failing to sneeze (or whatever the fuck he was trying to do in that scene). Instead, they listened as Quentin was rather matter-of-fact in his recollection of running into the girl, and then they continued talking about other stuff.

Julia Marchese stepped up to the mic and led the entire audience in singing Happy Birthday to QT, and then the birthday boy went down and did his intro. As he began, camera flashes started going off, so one of his ladies got out of her seat and hurriedly walked over to Julia to tell her something. Julia then turned to the audience and asked us to please shut off all cameras. Not satisfied enough with Lady Marchese's request, Quentin's Gogo Yubari then took over and went schoolteacher on us, telling those with cameras to stop it. Out of respect for Quentin -- and fear of being sent to detention -- the audience members proceeded to stop photographing QT.

He talked about how this print of Kill Bill was presented in Cannes back in '04 (the year he was president of the jury) and it was screened out-of-competition and he mentioned that there were things in The Whole Bloody Affair that were not in Vol. 1 & 2, and that there were things in Vol. 1 & 2 that are not in The Whole Bloody Affair, likening this version to a 60's "roadshow" film like Battle of the Bulge, complete with an intermission. He also told us that this print was only screened two times before today; the first time at Cannes, the second in a private screening at the Alamo Drafthouse in Texas. Because of that, he told us, we would be the first public audience to watch The Whole Bloody Affair, which we reacted to by cheering because we're special or something.

It was going to be a long ride, so he quickly wrapped it up by thanking us for wishing him Happy Birthday, and then told us that he picked trailers of films that were in one way or another some of the inspirations for Kill Bill. To the best of my weed-damaged memory, we saw the following:

-- a jazzy ad for Dr. Pepper (seen before at the Grindhouse screening)

-- Pam Grier owning motherfuckers in Coffy

-- Sting of the Dragon Masters starring Angela Mao. I've seen this film before, when I was 11; I was studying taekwondo and was quite the fiend for it (the kind of little asshole who would go to the video store in his gi) and one day I saw this box for a movie called When Taekwondo Strikes. I was like Whaaa? A taekwondo movie that wasn't Best of the Best or Best of the Best 2? Huzzah! Anyway, that was an alternate title for Sting of the Dragon Masters. The trailer is awesome because Bernard Herrmann's North by Northwest score plays over it. But don't take my word for it, click here.

--The Million Eyes of Su-Muru with Frankie Avalon and Shirley Eaton. A bunch of hot chicks on an island doing their thing, and then fuckin' Beach Blanket Bingo shows up to shoot the shit out of them because he's the good guy, I guess. What a fucking asshole.

-- Rolling Thunder. If you don't know about Rolling Thunder, then man, you just don't fuckin' know.

-- They Call Her One Eye, the American re-edit of Thriller: A Cruel Picture. I met Christina Lindberg once at a screening of this movie; I pretty much acted like the girl I mentioned earlier, and she seemed genuinely creeped out by me. Par for the course, if you ask me.

-- Shogun Assassin, the American re-edit of the first 2 parts of the Lone Wolf and Cub series. Watching the trailer served as a setup for a pretty amusing callback for the audience near the end of Kill Bill. That John Landis-looking motherfucker Leonard Maltin did two things that will make him A-OK with me for life: he held open a door for me at the Egyptian Theatre, and he gave this movie three-and-a-half stars in his movie guide.

The film began, and this time when the late, great Sally Menke's name came up, Quentin was applauding along with everyone else -- his clapping was the loudest, and he was the last one to stop. 

I'm sure you've seen both volumes of Kill Bill, and it's safe to say that whatever your opinion on those films will be the same opinion with The Whole Bloody Affair. Me, I dug the hell out of both volumes. I dug how in the same way that Spielberg & Lucas took their beloved childhood cliffhanger serials and paid homage to them while taking that shit to the next level with Star Wars and the Indiana Jones flicks, QT took all those kung-fu, yakuza, exploitation, spaghetti western and grindhouse movies he grew up watching and made Kill Bill.

You see it even in the way certain sequences are shot; the Pai Mei stuff gets all crazy with the Shaw Brothers zooms and rack focusing, the House of Blue Leaves battle has the occasional tilted angles that look like 1970's Sonny Chiba is gonna come out at any moment, and the wedding chapel stuff (particularly the Bill/Bride dialogue) has a bit of the Leone-esque vibe, mixing wide shots with extreme close-ups of the characters faces -- and then, of course, there's all those feet shots. Always with the fuckin' feet shots. Me, I'm gonna have all the actresses in my movies wear glasses and everyone's gonna be like Dude, what is up with all the girls-in-glasses in your movies and I'm gonna be all coy about it, saying how it's not gratuitous, all the glasses shots have a reason for being there, unlike Jane Campion's movie which is nothing but gratuitous girls-in-glasses shots, tee-hee-hee.

To be safe, I'll try not to spoil anything too much in the off chance you still haven't seen this. It's been slightly re-edited to give that "roadshow" feel QT was referring to; the intermission break comes right after The Bride drops off a certain character at the hospital, and as a result, eliminating a major plot revelation that Vol. 1 closed with, and as a result of that result, the audience is no longer ahead of the main character in this version of the film.

This is the same print that was screened at Cannes, so we see the official Festival De Cannes logo at the beginning and French subtitles throughout (most amusing subtitle came up when Buck's "Pussy Wagon" is introduced: BAISODROME). The opening credits still proclaim this as Kill Bill Vol. 1, the end credits are from Vol. 2, and while QT has talked about adding an extra scene during the animated Origin of O-Ren sequence, it's not included in this print, so either they're still working on that for an eventual Blu-Ray or theatrical re-release or maybe that shit's just not gonna happen. 

As far as things that are no longer in this cut of the film, I remember the following: The Old Klingon Proverb no longer opens the film (a dedication to Kinji Fukasaku is in its place), the extended ending that closed Vol. 1 is gone (since we're going to see most of it later on anyway), and the Vol. 2 intro of Uma talking to the camera while driving to Bill's is gone too. As far as things added to this cut of the film, we now see the full uncut House of Blue Leaves sequence in color (I swear, somewhere along the way during that battle, the non-stop barrage of red blood and severed limbs became damn near hypnotic in its beauty -- beautiful ownage!) and I swear a couple dialogue scenes in the second half of the film seem to go on a tiny little bit longer (but then again, my memory of Vol. 2 is hazier than Vol. 1).

I'm running out of steam here, what else to say? Oh, OK, I noticed the women in the audience seemed to get a bigger kick out of O-Ren Ishii and Gogo Yubari doing their thing than the guys. One girl a couple rows ahead of me seemed absolutely delighted with Gogo's treatment of that drunk Ferrari-driving motherfucker -- was this a kind of wish-fulfillment thing going on, after a life of being accosted by unattractive men looking to pick up on her? Yeah, I wish I could disembowel the next loser who tries to hit on me!

There's a part when O-Ren tells her underlings how they shouldn't be afraid to speak up if they have an opinion on something or disagree with her. She says she's open to hearing them out as long as they hear her out in return. With the exception of the "I collect your fucking head" bit, that could also be something that maybe an Oscar-winning filmmaker might tell his cast and crew. I don't know, I'm just pulling even more stuff out of my ass than usual. Ready for more ass-out-pulling? Like, totally complete ass-out-pulling?

I like to amuse myself (and only myself) by interpreting the pre-battle House of Blue Leaves stuff as Quentin Tarantino and his entourage hitting up a hot nightspot. Quentin is O-Ren Ishii -- the Crazy 88's, his entourage. Like O-Ren, QT is fuckin' Boss of All Bosses in his field (provided that Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, Terrence Malick, et al, aren't in the room) and I'm sure many an establishment was run by a person who told the staff that no matter what the VIPs demand, they gotta get that shit, no matter how fuckin' outlandish it is, you gotta satisfy their every whim with vim in this bitch. If Quentin's buddies want four pepperoni pizzas in this sake joint, that muthafuckin' Charlie Brown-looking muthafucka best get that shit right quick.

But then, in that case, who does The Bride represent -- Roger Avary, maybe? That motherfucker's blond-haired, so that shit could work. Do you find me sadistic, Roger? Taking your fuckin' Top Gun rant and using it for my own purpose? Uh, uh, motherfucker -- this is me at my most opportunistic. But to go with that interpretation would mean you'd have to go with the tragic assumption that QT has guilt about the whole intellectual property thing, and therefore is deserving of being revenged upon -- ah, but then again (like Budd says) so does Roger, so I guess we'll just see, won't we?

This combined version runs a little over 4 hours, even longer if you count the intermission (felt like at least 15 minutes were given to us), and yet it didn't feel long at all to me. I remember seeing Once Upon a Time in America at the Egyptian, that shit was a half-hour shorter than The Whole Bloody Affair and felt twice as long -- that might have something to do with that flick not having an intermission (what the fuck?), so I don't know what the fuck I'm talking about. I never do, really.

As the end credits rolled, I overheard a girl a few seats down recognize the name Cheng Cheh. I wanted to tell the guy with her that she was a keeper, this chick who knew what the fuck a Cheng Cheh was. Then I was reminded of the Quentin fangirl from earlier (QT left during intermission, never came back, probably out of fear of the girl), and thought maybe I should follow my own ungiven advice, so I got up and looked for the leopard-printed lady.

There was a long line already formed outside for the 7pm show, this one even longer, snaking out even past Lulu's cafe and headed for the residential sidewalk. The standby line was as long as a regular movie night line, and then there was another line from the opposite direction, which I couldn't figure out. Down the street I saw her, the girl who wanted to take Quentin's hand in marriage, and I ran down until I caught up to her. Because I'm a fat fuck, I arrived completely drenched in sweat and out of breath. In between gulps of air, I told her that I may not be Quentin Tarantino, but maybe she'd like to join me for some pie, because I kinda have this thing where I like to go for pie after a movie and talk about it. She stood back, looked me over, and then very slowly, she smiled. I smiled back.

Then she yelled "RAPE!" and I ran away.

Somewhere in that last paragraph, I started making it up, which is sad because even in my fantasies I feel a need to be realistic.