Archive for November, 2004

National Treasure

Friday, November 19th, 2004

Well you gotta find something to be proud of your country for, and right now reality sure as shit ain’t doin’ the trick. As I’m writing this we’re lookin down the barrel of four more years of Bush. There are signs of vote fraud starting to peek their heads out, but since it wouldn’t necessarily change who the president is, everybody seems to figure eh, screw it. They just massacred the shit out of innocent people in Fallujah, only to move the rebels into Mosul and Baghdad, so now there will be more massacres. Meanwhile, Bush continues to stick an electrode up the ass of the concept of accountability, promoting everybody he can think of who has fucked up bad. National security adviser has destroyed our national security? Make her secretary of state! White House lawyer wrote the infamous memo arguing that torture is great and the Geneva Conventions are for pussies? Make him attorney general! As we speak they are trying to track down Joseph Hazelwood to head up the EPA and Mothers Against Drunk Driving.

I mean I love my country. But my country is being a real bitch right now. Don’t worry, I never hit a country in my life. But my country is getting up in my face trying to provoke me right now and I guess I just gotta leave the apartment for a while to cool off.

So I head to the movie theater because if there’s one man who knows how to blow smoke up America’s ass, it’s Jerry Bruckheimer. Now I’m not stupid. I seen Armageddon and a number of these other shitpiles this individual is responsible for. I knew what I was in for and I can take my lumps like a man. But this one sounded so god damn retarded it seemed like it would be worth my time. I guess. Well, it seemed to make sense at the time.

The ads tell us NATIONAL TREASURE is “from director John Turteltaub,” who it turns out is some dude who directed 3 NINJAS and COOL RUNNINGS. But in the tradition of Dick Cheney, the real man in charge here is Bruckheimer, who just Bruckheimers the shit out of this movie. Not in the sense of quick cuts and fetishistic gazing on heat trails and sunsets and crap. More in the sense that he takes the dumbest possible premise and is sure to tell it in the way that is most annoying and insulting to the audience. (more…)

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Seed of Chucky

Friday, November 12th, 2004

Well judging from the low turnout for this picture in its first couple weeks, I might be the only one. But DAMN if I don’t love BRIDE OF CHUCKY. THat was the amazing slasher sequel landmark where the former Hong Kong director Ronny Yu knocked the CHILD’S PLAY series off into a weirdo direction where the killer doll suddenly gets a killer doll wife and it turns into a silly comedy, but with occasional moments of visual poetry courtesy of future oscar winning cinematographist Peter fucking Pau.

Now if you’re like me you remember the very end of BRIDE OF CHUCKY, suddenly a little sharp-toothed baby chucky pops out. It’s like the traditional sudden-jolt-ending used in every horror movie since CARRIE, but at the same time it’s a funny joke because you just KNOW it means we’re gonna get a SON OF CHUCKY some day. Or SEED OF CHUCKY it turns out due to the ambiguous gender of the baby.

SEED OF CHUCKY is the first movie in history to open inside Chucky’s penis, in a computer generated sequence about the actual Seed of Chucky having a go at the Egg of Tiffany, then growing into a baby. Then we skip forward and find the baby at the World Ventriloquism Championships in London. It turns out some random British punk rock fake-ventriloquist found the seed of chucky in the cemetery after BRIDE OF CHUCKY ended. The poor little doll is now living a Charles Dickens style childhood in a cage in London. His name is Shitface and he has the voice of LORD OF THE RINGS hobbit Billy Boyd as he tells us about his sorry existence in a hilarious voiceover.

It turns out the Chucky and Tiffany dolls have been somehow repaired (no explanation needed or offered) and are being used as puppets to star in a movie about their lives. The baby Chucky finds out and journeys to Hollywood where he accidentally does a voodoo spell to resurrect them, and also speaks Japanese to them (long story). (more…)

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The Polar Express

Wednesday, November 10th, 2004

THE POLAR EXPRESS 3-D IMAX SPOOKARAMA

A few years back I wrote a piece called FINAL FANTASY: THE SPIRITS WITHIN (working title: BORING: THE MOVIE). It is available on this web sight as well as in my collection 5 On the Outside. In the piece I talked about the wrongness of computer animators trying to create photorealistic human characters. I argued that no matter how real they looked they would never look completely real, because they wouldn’t be able to walk quite right, or have a human soul, etc. I guess I didn’t mention it in that piece but there was a scene in the movie where two realistic human characters kissed, and it was like watching mannequins go at it.

(For your information, there’s a porno called REAL DOLL: THE MOVIE where pornographic professionals like Ron Jeremy stick their penises inside ten thousand dollar silicone sex dummies. That movie is disturbing in a different way from FINAL FANTASY because the dolls are not moving and their faces don’t look alive. So it looks like these guys are having their way with dead bodies. But picture two of the dolls going at it with no animate objects involved. Then picture a rated PG version of that. That’s the scene in FINAL FANTASY, I guess. It’s not natural.)

Well nobody seemed to care back then but now many of the ideas I presented in that piece have worked their way into the mainstream, as reviewers of the new computerfied Robert Zemeckis Christmas fantasy THE POLAR EXPRESS have criticized the creepy, dead eyed look of its overly realistic computerized cartoon characters. Japanese roboticists have even expanded on my theories, calling it “the uncanny valley” where your ability to relate to a robot or cartoon character suddenly plunges as it gets closer to humanity. So Mickey Mouse is our buddy but final fantasies give us the willies. (more…)

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Garfield

Sunday, November 7th, 2004

the asshole cat

Man, what a fuckin week. On Tuesday Bush got either “re”-elected or re-”elected,” and I’ve been stumbling around muttering to myself ever since. Stabbing at my porridge with my spoon, staring blankly out the window, mouthing the word “why” to myself over and over again. One thing I know, there are some things in this world that just cannot be explained. Sometimes bad things happen to good people. Sometimes people vote for a president that couldn’t be trusted to put on his own pants. And sometimes a guy gets the blue state blues, walks around town in a daze, suddenly finds himself at home having rented the movie “GARFIELD,” not really knowing how or why. I know for a fact this happens because you’re lookin at the guy who it happened to. Me. It was weird.

What this is is a movie based on the popular comic strip from the 1980s called Garfield. Like all comic strips it is not funny and about a talking animal. This is a cat called Garfield who is orange. The thing about Garfield, he is real fucking fat, he eats lasagna. That’s funny because real cats eat cat food, but this one also eats lasagna. Also he says “I hate Mondays” at the beginning although this does not turn out to be important. But it is that sort of detailed characterization that makes him, you know, Garfield. I guess.

I mean, think about it. Why the fuck is a cat gonna hate mondays. Especially this particular cat, this Garfield. What he does, he sleeps, he eats, etc. For a cat, even a talking, dancing asshole cat like this, he is not gonna give a fuck if it’s Tuesday, Thursday, the 12th of February, anything. It doesn’t matter. He doesn’t have to work. He doesn’t have to get out of bed. Every day of the year is the weekend to him. There is no beginning of the week for a cat with that particular lazy asshole cat type of lifestyle. Even when he is expected to eat a mouse, he just fakes it. There is no fuckin reason this cat even knows what Monday is, let alone hates it. And yet he says it explicitly that he hates Mondays. You see. That is why it is funny. Because why would he hate Mondays. Oh, that Garfield the asshole cat. He hates Mondays. (more…)

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ANGRY DISPATCH FROM THE UPPER LEFT CORNER

Friday, November 5th, 2004

Somewhere in the blue-colored upper left corner of the map, under a horrible black cloud, we find Vern, chewing on his fist.

Well, shit.

Let me start by saying to the rest of the world, IT WASN’T ME, MAN. I had nothing to do with this. I can’t justify this but please don’t think this is all of us. It’s nobody I know, none of my friends, none of my family. It’s nobody that writes to me. Whoever these people are who are rewarding that type of behavior, who saw 4 years of horror and corruption and said, yeah, give me more of that… I seen some of them on TV but that’s it.

You know, I was really hoping to travel to other countries some day in my lifetime without having to look over my shoulder thinking, is that guy looking at my head? Does that guy want to cut off my head? And now these people go and make it look like America approves of Bush. It’s like when you’re sitting at a bar (not me, I don’t drink anymore) and you’re making small talk with the guy next to you, somebody you never met before. And you’re having a good conversation, then all the sudden the guy throws in some joke about jews or koreans or something, maybe uses the N word, talking real loud. And everybody thinks this guy’s your buddy, so you get real uncomfortable and try to either end the conversation or talk loudly about how great it is to meet the guy for the very first time ever. That’s what these Americans are doing. Guilting us by association. Thanks alot, assholes.

I’m sorry, other countries. I know you don’t like living under the all seeing eye of the naked butt pyramid. And neither do I. This is a dark fucking week. My first instinct was to pick up and move to New Zealand. Maybe there is a hobbit hole available on that property Peter Jackson owns. But then I cooled down I realized no, I’m staying. They’re the ones who should move. They’re the ones who don’t believe in the Constitution. They’re the ones with the offshore tax shelters too. Wait for them to move to some island resort somewhere. This is my land. (more…)

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pathetically optimistic column written just before the axe came down on the supple neck of our democracy

Tuesday, November 2nd, 2004

Well here we are friends. Right on the edge of the cliff looking down. Pretty sure we can jump all the way to the other side, but not COMPLETELY sure. Very soon we could be having a celebration like the “ewok” aliens used to have at the end of the movie RETURN OF THE JEDI before the footage was mysteriously lost under suspicious circumstances. On the other hand we might find ourselves throwing flaming garbage cans, rolling SUVs or, you know, rolling up in a ball in the corner sucking our thumbs. We, as a nation, might have to start drinking again. We might have to fly our asses to Washington to protest the inauguration. Eggs would be in such high demand that protesters would have to start bussing in thousands of free range chickens to pump out enough eggs to catapult at the presidential limo from behind the protest barricade 200 miles away. Hopefully it won’t come to that. No, it won’t come to that. We’re gonna do it.

We’ve come a long fucking way to get to this day. We have journeyed courageously while the economy trickled down from the sky, dripping all around us but somehow never hitting anybody. We have seen the wonders of the world, from the abandoned caves of Afghanistan to the naked butt pyramids of Abu Ghraib. From Enron Field to Halliburtonland. From the plane hitting the fucking Pentagon to Governor Bush getting his ass whooped in all three debates even while wearing a fucking earpiece. And they tell us somehow the race is still close!

(Yeah, I said it. The fucker was wearing an earpiece. And he should be ashamed of himself not coming up with a better story than “poorly tailored shirt.” Okay, so I’ve never had a shirt tailored in my life, but I think I got a pretty good idea what is and isn’t possible in the tailoring of shirts. For example, I think it is NOT possible for a tailor to accidentally sew a large rectangular box into the back of a shirt. If there in fact IS a tailor that bad somewhere in this world, you would think he would not rise to the level of presidential debate shirt tailor. Okay, so these people are completely inept at pretty much everything they’ve ever tried to do. So maybe they’d promote somebody like that. And yeah they’d probaly hire some oil executive to be the tailor and he wouldn’t know what the fuck he was doing. But still man, how do you EVEN sew a large rectangular box into the back of a shirt? Even if you’re trying? I don’t care who you are, that is some BAD god damn tailoring. And if you get that kind of poor service from your tailor, what you do is, YOU DON’T GO ON LIVE INTERNATIONAL TELEVISION AND DEBATE WHILE WEARING IT. I’m supposed to believe this asshole only has one shirt? And even after the first debate, he wore it to the other debates too? Doesn’t it get uncomfortable being up there in the hot lights, trying to answer difficult questions, wearing the most poorly and freakishly tailored shirt in the history of tailoring? And did this preposterously bad tailor at least get a talking to for accidentally reinventing the shape of the human shirt? Or does the lack of accountability we’ve seen with Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, everybody, etc. extend all the way down to the White House tailor? What sort of bizarre lump would you have to sew into that shirt to get fired? I mean really, this brings up so many questions. I could go on all night.)

Remember the Y2K scare? We were all worried that some assholes had fucked up programming computers, forgot to put an extra digit somewhere and now our whole society was gonna go Mad Max on us. When the clock struck midnight nothing happened, but I think we really got our Y2K problem later in the year. We thought what we needed was one more digit, what we really needed was one less corrupt Supreme Court judge. (more…)

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