Archive for April, 2008

VERN VS. THE DEMOCRATIC PRIMARY / TURNS OUT OBAMA HATES WHITES AND STUFF?

Monday, April 28th, 2008

You know, if there was ever a time when humans and dinosaurs co-existed like they used to do in caveman movies it would’ve been unfair. A t-rex comes by your cave and starts eating your clan, you’re gonna get pissed. You go out there and start throwing rocks at the fucker, poking him with sticks. Doesn’t do anything. You go back inside, paint some unflattering cave pictures. When he’s far enough away you go out and beat on a drum, trying to rile up the other clans. If everybody throws rocks at that thing, everybody pokes it with sticks, then we’re safe and we’re all gonna eat steak tonight.

So the next day everybody throws the rocks and sharpens the sticks. And again the next day. And the next. But no matter how many times you do it that asshole keeps coming back, keeps biting off heads. Eventually you get tired. You’re not afraid of that thing anymore, but you don’t feel like you can defeat it. So you go back in your cave. Not cowering in fear – worse. Trying to ignore it. Stay in here, wait it out. Eventually a comet will hit or something.

Sadly, that’s where I’m at with George Bush, and that’s why I haven’t written about politics in a long time. After the dinosaur eats a certain amount of people you become desensitized. But the wait is almost over. On a clear night you can see the comet headed this way. 2008 is here and the campaign is underway – time to find a president to fill the all time smallest shoes. Whoever they get will probaly feel like a comedian going on after Michal Richards’ infamous n-word breakdown. It’s uncomfortable, and there’s a mess to clean up, but you’re gonna come out looking pretty damn good by comparison. Even if McCain wins it’ll probaly feel good.

I had some people ask if I would write a column about the primaries. I do have some opinions, but I’m no expert. When I write about politics usually it’s not because I really want to, it’s because I can’t stand to be quiet anymore. But when we had the Washington State primary here back in February I decided to go to a caucus and see what the deal was. (more…)

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War, Inc.

Monday, April 28th, 2008

As an aficionado of DTV I’ve exposed myself to many works from the Millennium Films library, films starring the likes of Van Damme, Seagal, Snipes, Jai White, Timberlake, etc. I’m talking about movies like THE ORDER, UNDISPUTED 1-2, OUT FOR A KILL, UNSTOPPABLE, TODAY YOU DIE, EDISON FORCE, MERCENARY FOR JUSTICE, UNTIL DEATH and the DAY OF THE DEAD “remake.” They’re the kings of crap – kind of like the new Cannon Films except they don’t have as many fluke good ones under their belt as Cannon did. They’ve made it to the big screen every once in a while which is how we got THE BLACK DAHLIA, THE WICKER MAN and some of those shitty Al Pacino movies that have been coming out lately. I’m obviously biased on the Seagal pictures so let’s just say the closest they’ve ever gotten to a great movie is RAMBO.

So I was surprised to see their logo at the beginning of John Cusack’s new satire WAR, INC. I guess that explains why this movie that I thought was coming to theaters already has a DVD screener available. (Apparently it’s playing right now in Toronto, New York and LA next month, then straight to DVD July 1st.) The movie does have some of the Millennium Films feel here and there but it’s actually a pretty good one, a much more competent shot at making some of the points that were fumbled in LORD OF WAR and the awe-inspiringly god awful tsunami of directorial over confidence that was SOUTHLAND TALES.

Cusack plays Hauser, an ex-CIA assassin now working for Tamerlane, a private security firm headed by the recently-cleared-of-all-charges ex-vice president of the United States (Dan Aykroyd mixing some Nixon into a Cheney imitation). Hauser’s new assignment is to take out a head of state named Omar Sharif (not played by Omar Sharif though, I didn’t really get this joke). Hauser enters the Green Zone of occupied-Turaqistan undercover as the producer of a trade show bringing democracy and American technology to this devastated war zone. But before he does the hit he starts questioning the ethics of it due to his encounters with a left wing journalist (Marisa Tomei) and a central-Asian pop star named Yonica Babyyeah (Hilary Duff). (more…)

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Boiling Point

Sunday, April 27th, 2008

Some individuals have been writing to me asking for me to “go on record” about Wesley Snipes getting sentenced to three years for not filing his tax returns. I don’t know, man. It seems to me like a bullshit sentence. You can skip down a couple paragraphs to get to BOILING POINT but I’ll say a few things here by request.

I got mixed feelings about taxes. On paper I believe in them strongly. I mean somebody’s gotta pave the fuckin streets so you hot shots can drive around on them. I like having electricity in the street lights. There’s alot of anti-tax sentiment here in Washington, there’s a rich prick who has made himself richer with a for-profit company that every election files a bunch of anti-tax propositions. They usually get shot down as unconstitutional but they’re popular so the state government ends up following them and the next thing you know the fuckin library is closed two months out of the year and the bridges are ready to collapse with no money to even tape ‘em up with duct tape and there’s twice as many homeless people sleeping on my street and everybody is confused. WHY is the soccer field by my house closed?! I demand justice! … What’s that? Lower property taxes? Of course, where do I sign?

But on the other hand obviously I hate sending in my tax return and especially because I know the money’s not only (or even mostly) going to those important things like infrastructure and helping people to not die. In fact I have noticed that especially over these last 8 years they have been using my money to actually MAKE people die, which is the opposite of what I like. From what I’ve read Wesley’s “tax protest” comes from not wanting to support the government’s activities, so I can relate to that.

But a wise movie character once said “Motherfuckers always tryin to ice skate uphill,” and telling the IRS that the language in the tax code technically means that nobody has to pay taxes definitely counts as ice skating uphill. So I’m a little disappointed in Wesley on this one. (more…)

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The Proposition

Thursday, April 24th, 2008

The Burns Gang, three brothers, recently attacked some family, raped and killed a pregnant woman. I don’t know about you but I’m against it and in fact so is middle brother Charlie (Guy Pearce) who was so offended he decided to take little brother Mikey (Richard Wilson) and run off. But of course it’s those two remorseful brothers that have been captured by Ray Winstone now, not the ringleader Arthur (Danny Huston). Since we didn’t see the attack we don’t know for sure how guilty they are or how much of a chance they had to stop it, but Winstone seems to believe this Arthur is the guy to get. So he takes Mikey, lets Charlie go, says I’m gonna kill little brother on Christmas Day unless you kill older brother. That’s the proposition.

This is a western, but it takes place in Australia. I’m not familiar with the geography of Australia, for all I know this takes place on the East Coast, but oh well. It’s a western.

The director is John Hillcoat, writer/composer is Nick Cave. Together they create a hell of a mood. Nice dirty, sunny look and it’s interesting to have aborigines instead of Indians. You would think spears would do more damage than arrows, but Charlie manages to survive one. So if you are reading this and you are Rambo or Ted Nugent then don’t worry about it, no need to switch to spears. (more…)

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Chopper

Thursday, April 24th, 2008

CHOPPER came out in 2000 and in the 8 years since I don’t think I’ve seen too many characters or performances as good as Eric Bana playing Mark Brandon Read, whose friends call him Chopper and he calls himself Uncle Chop Chop. I never heard of him before the movie but he’s a real Australian criminal who became a celebrity writing his memoirs while he was locked up. And the movie’s based on some of those.

It’s kind of a weird movie. It threw me at first because it doesn’t have much of a structure and it’s kind of a small story. Maybe I was expecting some kind of crime epic or something, but instead a bunch of stuff happens and then it ends. I prefer a tight story but it still had me. It was so captivating I ended up watching it again the next day.

And the reason is this character of Chopper. He’s so funny and likable and yet clearly a dangerous psychopath. Maybe you can forgive him killing criminals, but then he punches his girlfriend. And when her mom intervenes he headbutts her! I mean come on. You don’t disrespect someone’s mama, and in my opinion headbutting is a sign of disresepect.

Chopper is a scary lookin dude. He’s big, covered in shitty tattoos, he’s got some fake teeth in the front and after a certain point in the movie his ears are fucked up. Because he had a guy cut them off in pirson. Long story. But his real talents are mental, he knows how to fuck with people. Like when he visits the house of Jimmy, his old friend who betrayed and stabbed him in prison. And he scares the shit out of him by being too friendly, too jokey. “Wife and kids, eh? The sort of thing that could be used against a fella,” he laughs as if it could really be just a couple buddies teasing each other. (more…)

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Razorback

Thursday, April 24th, 2008

How do you do an Australian version of JAWS? You can’t have a killer koala. Maybe a rogue kangaroo that goes around punching people or stealing babies in its pouch. In 1984 these guys went with a huge fucking boar. And that would’ve been a great headline for a review if the movie was bad, but actually I really liked it.

I know this is the kind of movie people write off immediately. It definitely is a ripoff of JAWS and redoing JAWS with a huge pig seems even funnier than redoing it with an orca. But the movie doesn’t give a fuck what you think. It knows what it is and it has no shame. Go ahead, laugh at the razorback. Laughing is healthy and will make you taste better. As one of our heroes says, “It has two states of being. Dangerous or dead.” Mostly the first one.

The director is Russell Mulcahy or “the HIGHLANDER guy” as he is now known but at the time he was “Russell Mulcahy” because he was a rookie. He directed lots of music videos though, including the very first one ever played on MTV. Yes, video killed the radio star, and Mulcahy was the killer. Some other guy originally took the rap but was later exonerated by DNA evidence.

Music video directors making movies can be bad news. Or it can be some of our most creative filmatists such as David Fincher, Spike Jonze and Michel Gondry. But usually you assume it means quick cuts and incoherent storytelling. In this case the transition from MTV to Australian cinemas was a good thing because they hadn’t figured out how to ruin editing yet. His experimentation in videos gave him a better eye for exaggerated visuals than your average movie director, and he used that to his advantage. He made a really great looking movie, kind of stylized, almost post-apocalyptic. Lots of orange outback skies, shooting stars, unnaturally fog-drenched nights, dirty shacks and weirdos with goggles and machetes. (more…)

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Enchanted

Tuesday, April 22nd, 2008

I like to think I’m a pretty tough individual, even on a cellular level. So I don’t usually watch movies like this and I don’t usually get sick. A year or two ago I got some crud that really knocked me out, so while I was laying there a useless husk of my regular self I decided that God had opened a window – a window of opportunity for me to watch KILL BILL VOLUME 1 and VOLUME 2 in a row. The movie seemed even better in one sitting and I was healed the next day. Thanks God. You got good taste in movies.

So the next year when I got real sick I did the same thing, with the same success. Only trouble is when I got sick again this month and it was the worst I had in years. My KILL BILL treatment had been too recent, I didn’t know if it would work and I didn’t want to overdo it and create a KILL BILL-resistant supervirus. So I watched a bunch of other DVDs I had laying around.

But nothing worked. The shit was stuck in me. I watched alot of movies but they were hard to enjoy, they somehow left a bad taste in my mouth and brain. On about day 3, laying there in my feverish state, I became some kind of naturopathic theorist. My ideas were so revolutionary I could’ve been one of those doctors interviewed on THE SECRET. I decided that KILL BILL’s power was a two-tiered regimen: its classic fight scenes and high quality filmatism got my adrenaline level up, but it was the sweet ending, with the lioness crying in happiness that her cub has been returned to her, that really did the trick. The pure joy raised my metabolism or my anti-bodies or my something-something… you know the thing. The thing that makes you healthy, in my opinion. That meant what I needed was not the usual mayhem I watch but some kind of fluffy sweetness.

So I crawled to the video store and when I came back it turned out I had rented Walt Disney’s ENCHANTED. (more…)

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48 Hours + Another 48 Hours

Friday, April 11th, 2008

the complete 96 hour saga

48 HOURS is a well made and highly influential movie, but I think you sort of had to be there. Today about 30-42 hours of it holds up.

Coming 5 years before LETHAL WEAPON this is the father of the ’80s interracial buddy movies. The premise is that edgy cop Jack Cates (Nick Nolte), in a desperate ploy to stop a killer, manages to get custody of convict Reggie Hammond (Eddie Murphy) for two days to help him with the case. Of course they hate each other until they slowly earn each other’s respect. It’s cop vs. criminal, white vs. black, etc. Part of the fun is watching them flip each other shit and get in fights, although it gets uncomfortable because Nolte uses most of the racial slurs he knows – yes, including the N-word. He later apologizes and says he was just doing his job of keeping Reggie down – I’m not sure what that’s meant to say about cops but you can interpret it how you want.

I really like the look and feel of this movie, very gritty, not at all a comedy. It’s Eddie Murphy’s first film role and he gives a good performance as a two bit con man. Even though he’s the criminal he’s kind of prissy compared to Nolte. They both wear suits but he looks more like a yuppie. So it’s not entirely convincing when he beats up on Nolte a little. But when it’s just them insulting each other he can clearly hold his own. (more…)

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4/8/08

Tuesday, April 8th, 2008

Do you realize that today is the twentieth anniversary of the release of Seagal’s first movie, ABOVE THE LAW? Damn, should’ve had the book come out today.

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Big Trouble in Little China

Monday, April 7th, 2008

Here’s a John Carpenter movie I somehow never reviewed before. Kurt Russell plays Jack Burton, a loudmouthed truck driver who stops in Chinatown to gamble with an old buddy, and ends up stuck in the middle of a gang war, an ancient prophecy, magic powers, monsters, etc.

The opening scene of the movie is classic. It fades in on Egg Shen, the driver of a tour bus in Chinatown, being interviewed by a lawyer about “what happened.” We know that something big and crazy happened, that a whole block erupted into “green flames,” and that people want to know where “Jack Burton and his truck” are. Shen admits that he believes in Chinese black magic and when the lawyer asks why he should believe in it Shen holds up his hands and shoots bolts of green lightning between them. “See?” he says. “That was nothing. But that’s how it always begins. Very small.” Then it cuts to a shot of a truck as the opening credits begin, and you realize “okay, a truck. This must be that Jack Burton they were so concerned about.” Classic!

So I was kind of surprised to learn from the commentary track that the scene was a concession to the studio. Barry Diller, chairman and CEO of Fox at the time, demanded and helped write the scene to make Jack Burton seem “more heroic.” Which is kind of going against the whole joke of the movie that he’s the main character but not exactly the hero. His buddy Wang (Dennis Dun) is smaller than him and seems like the sidekick, but is actually far more capable than him. This is probaly Carpenter’s most overtly comedic movie and that idea of this blowhard thinking he’s the reluctant hero when he’s actually not doing much is where alot of the laughs come from. For example during one of the big fights he fires his gun in the air causing a piece of the ceiling to break off, fall on his head and knock him out while the others do battle. Later he confidently pulls out a knife and you think “How does he know how to throw knives?” but then he throws it and in fact he doesn’t know how – it flops through the air and bounces off a gong. (more…)

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