Richard Pryor. God damn. I don’t know why a guy like me always has to eulogize somebody I never met, but it always bums me out when the world loses a genius like Richard Pryor. So I gotta write something about my favorite Richard Pryor works and it helps me to cope and I apologize if you end up suckered into reading the damn thing. (read the rest of this shit…)
12/5/05
Best find in a long damn time: BLACKJACK. 1998 TV movie by John Woo. Starring Dolph Lundgren. Believe me, this is something special. In other TV movie news I reviewed Spike Lee’s SUCKER FREE CITY as a double header with this Sarah Silverman lady’s comedy standup movie, JESUS IS MAGIC.
Blackjack
Recently I reviewed RED SCORPION and I talked about The Enigma of Dolph Lundgren. The enigma is that this guy who I’m betting is fascinating in real life (he’s a big muscleman martial artist who does dumb action movies, but he’s highly educated) has almost no presence in movies. Well after seeing this topnotch John Woo TV movie I take it back. It turns out when he’s not pretending to be Russian he’s got all kinds of charisma.
I know this is made for TV, not video, but it’s exactly the kind of gem I’m looking for when a dig through all this crap. A ridiculous, enjoyable and unusual action movie. The main reason it’s unusual is that Dolph Lundgren’s character is afraid of the color white.
Well, it’s a long story. Something in his past that he doesn’t quite remember yet has given him a phobia. Dolph is playing some kind of federal marshall or something turned bodyguard. And he’s got alot of problems. For one thing, his friends recently died and he has to adopt their precocious daughter Casey. For another thing, another friend (Fred the Hammer Williamson to be specific) was recently killed protecting a supermodel from a stalker, and he has to take on that case. Even though Casey’s parents were in trouble with organized crime in the prologue, it’s said their death was an accident and we never learn otherwise. But that’s okay because Dolph is haunted by the death of the Hammer and the death of his father, and two separate deaths are more than enough for an action hero to be tormented by. Especially an action hero who is afraid of the color white. (read the rest of this shit…)
Jesus is Magic and Sucker Free City
Sarah Silverman’s JESUS IS MAGIC vs. Spike Lee’s SUCKER FREE CITY
Howdy boys. I got basically two reviews for you here. One is a standup movie by some female comedian, or comedienne, that readers of this sight are familiar with from jerking off. Er, I mean, from Comedy Central. The other one is a Spike Lee Joint made for Showtime as a pilot for a TV series but then turned into a full blown straight to cable feature. So it’s not a big screen movie but yes, it is still officially classified as a ‘Joint’ according to the box art. Anyway, I’m not sure what connection there is between these two other than that I watched them both yesterday. But that’s really the important thing here, isn’t it? Me.
JESUS IS MAGIC comes to theaters this week and no, it is not that family friendly cut of THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST. That already came out a while back and it was called THE PASSION RENAILED I believe. JESUS IS MAGIC is the name of a standup comedy movie and the star is Sarah Silverman, who apparently haunts the dreams of straight men in their 20s and 30s because she is real funny but also cute. She’s just one of the guys because she goofs around and talks about pussy all the time, but also she’s not just one of the guys because she has boobs. Female boobs. Unlike alot of comedians her comedy isn’t cruel, she is usually the butt of her own jokes. She doesn’t straightforwardly point out other people’s shortcomings, she portrays herself as an oblivious character. So maybe if she ever breaks up with that guy from TV she will go out with you and won’t make fun of you. Seriously dude I think you have a shot. (read the rest of this shit…)
11/30/05
What’s better than a Red Scorpion? How bout a BROWN BUNNY? I mean come on. You can’t top that. If you read only one review this year, it oughta be my review of Brown Bunny, don’t you think?
The Brown Bunny
You probaly heard what Vincent Gallo’s THE BROWN BUNNY is all about, and so did I. I’m not gonna pretend I didn’t know what I was getting into. Obviously I’ve heard alot about this movie since its notorious debut over there in the Cannes. Most people said it really sucked, it sucked the big one. They said Academy Award nominee Chloe Sevigny really blew it by being in this one. Doesn’t matter if she did a good job, they said, because this movie really blows. They had a real hard time swallowing it. A real long, hard time. Also there is a blow job at the end I guess.
Gallo plays Bud Clay, a streetwise motorcycle racer who has just finished a fierce competition in New Hampshire. Now he has to get back to L.A. to have his bike tuned up by Renaldo (sort of his Q or Whistler), and only one thing can stop him: pining. He misses his former girlfriend Daisy (Chloe Sevigny) and he’s on a mission to find her. The mystery leads him on a deadly trail from Daisy’s parents house, to a pet shop, to a gas station, to a hotel, to another hotel, to Las Vegas, to another hotel, etc. Mostly down streets though. When I say “deadly,” by the way, I mean “boring.”
There is alot of driving. A whole lot of driving. Don’t worry though, he’s in a van, not on a motorbike. The motorbike is in the back of the van. So his ass probaly doesn’t hurt as bad. He does have a hole in the ass of his jeans though, because that’s the type of individual we’re dealing with here, a guy who has a hole in the ass of his jeans. You know the type.
There’s one scene where he does a little gumshoe business. Daisy’s parents say they haven’t seen her in years and don’t know where she is, but they have her pet bunny. He throws his weight around in a pet store and finds out that a bunny can only live for 4-5 years. The bunny proves that Daisy has been at her parents’ house within 4 or 5 years, probaly less. The trail hasn’t gone cold. (read the rest of this shit…)
11/27/05
Here’s a rare opportunity to combine two of my main interests: sinister republican scandals and shitty action movies. The movie that does this is RED SCORPION, starring Dolph Lundgren and produced by notorious republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff. No shit. Next thing you know we’re gonna find out Karl Rove did an uncredited rewrite on MISSING IN ACTION 3.
Also if you missed it I reviewed this movie called THE ESCAPIST, a little known British revenge thriller from 2001 that’s coming street to video here in the US.
Red Scorpion
The other day I was reading an article about Jack Abramoff, the notorious republican lobbyist at the middle of a bribery scandal that’s dragging down Tom Delay and supposedly ties in to at least 30 other DC ho’s. The whole thing is real complicated and the charge right now is for wire fraud but the investigation has brought to light all kinds of payoffs, exploitation of Native Americans, embarassing racist emails and a supposedly coincidental death that anybody with at least one eye will notice appears to be a mafia style hit. We’re talking more corruption than even Senator Billy Jack probaly knew about.
Anyway, the particular article I read referred to Abramoff as a “former b-movie producer.” Holy shit! I thought. I guess I hadn’t been following this closely enough because I hadn’t heard that before. The trusty ol’ internet movie database explained that Abramoff had produced and wrote the story for the Dolph Lundgren picture RED SCORPION, not to be confused with RED SONJA, RED DAWN, RED SUN, RED EYE, THE RED VIOLIN, THE RED BALLOON, or Krysztof Kieslowski’s THREE COLORS: RED. He’s also credited as executive producer on RED SCORPION 2. That’s it although his brother Robert went on to produce a bunch of other movies I never heard of.
Further research brought me to this article from Salon all about Abramoff and RED SCORPION. It’s an interesting story, well worth clicking through the ads.
Now, I’ve always been real interested in action movies with a left wing subtext, because you don’t get it too much. There’s Billy Jack and there’s some Paul Verhoeven and John Carpenter movies. But mostly in this genre, especially in the ’80s, you had movies that bought into the Reaganite worldview, glorifying the blowing away of commies or inhuman street scum crooks. You got all the cop movies about those god damn liberals with their red tape, always going around and coddling serial killers, giving them a back rub and telling us we gotta be careful not to bruise their wrists when we cuff ‘em. I always figured these attitudes came from copying the undeniably great DIRTY HARRY and the freakishly popular RAMBO 2, not from an actual political bias among creators of action movies. But here is one documented case of a right wing political operative deliberately using a Dolph Lundgren movie as propaganda for one of his pet causes. (read the rest of this shit…)
The Escapist
If you’re jonesin for a big scoop, you might want to put your pants back on, because this ain’t it. But I did find a pretty good revenge movie I never heard of that’s going straight to video this January here in the states. The box for the screener calls it an “Action-Packed Brand-new Feature Film!” which is advertising slang for “British movie from 2001.” Seems like it must’ve been released in the cinemas they got over there, but I’m not sure when since it doesn’t seem to be on video yet there either.
The movie is called THE ESCAPIST, but it’s not a remake of THE ESCAPIST from 1983 which stars actual escape artist Bill Shirk as himself. You would think you couldn’t go wrong with a movie where they do nothing but find excuses to hang the main character upside down in a straight jacket and put snakes on him and crap, but it doesn’t really work out.
In this THE ESCAPIST the guy is not an escape artist trying to promote a radio station, he is some kind of pilot with a death wish getting revenge, like in the movie DEATH WISH, only he’s a pilot. The pilot in question is Jonny Lee Miller (some guy from HACKERS and TRAINSPOTTING) and the recipient of the revenge is Andy Serkis (he is the guy who plays Gollum, if there’s any LORD OF THE RINGS fans out there you will recognize him I bet).
See Jonny is happily married with a pregnant wife, and in a movie like this that’s askin for it. So some weirdo (Gollum) breaks into the house, one thing leads to another and the wife gets killed (spoiler). But the baby survives (spoiler 2). But Gollum just laughs when he’s caught and sentenced to 20 years and this rubs Jonny the wrong way for some reason. So he ignores the baby, tells his sister-in-law to keep it and embarks on a journey. A journey not unlike the one in LORD OF THE RINGS, except instead of going with Gollum to throw a ring in a magic volcano, he has to go TO Gollum to try to shank him in prison. And there’s no giant eagle. I think there’s a talking tree though. No, I take that back, there’s not a talking tree. I guess actually it IS a journey unlike the one in LORD OF THE RINGS. (read the rest of this shit…)
11/20/05
Hey everybody, I wrote a new column. It may or may not be more angry unfocused ranting about the war, torture policies and other terrible things that will bum you out. Unless it is about good things like tits, etc. Hard to say unless you read it.
