"CATCH YOU FUCKERS AT A BAD TIME?"

“Explosive! The next Peter Travers!”

This is from Sunday’s New York Times:

blackdynamitequote

(larger than actual size)

This is the first time I’ve ever been a quote whore in my ten years of reviewing. Glad it’s a movie I really like. I always figured if it happened they’d just write “Ain’t It Cool News” and no name, but I lucked out I guess.

Other notes:

1.I believe the censored part was “god damn” in the original review, not “fucking”. So read it right.

2. They contacted me to clear the quote, which surprised me considering some of the out of context and one word quotes you see by other people. Do they really have to get your permission or are the Black Dynamite people just really polite?

3. The best part is they sent the quote and then a correction because the one approved by the MPAA had different symbols for the “god damn” than the one they originally ran by me.

Until now the only times I’ve been quoted on ads were a couple fakes I made. Click through to see those.

FightClubadwolfcreekad

mp_up2surrogates-ad

I thought I’d used this joke more than three times, but I couldn’t find anymore, so maybe I’m less of a hack than I thought.

And seriously, go see BLACK DYNAMITE if you get a chance.

This entry was posted on Friday, October 16th, 2009 at 12:02 pm and is filed under Blog Post (short for weblog). You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

50 Responses to ““Explosive! The next Peter Travers!””

  1. Congrats Vern!

    I’m sure it’s only a few days before they’re calling you to appear on At the Movies and give you a New York Times column heh.

    But seriously, you’re one of the best and most entertaining film critics currently writing. Or at least that I read, I dunno maybe there’s some other fantastic critics I haven’t discovered yet. But the point is, it’s cool to see you getting some legitimate critic points there with that quote.

  2. Congratulations!

    I think this officially get you put in the “Cream of the Crop” section at Rotten Tomatoes.

  3. Unfortunately BLACK DYNAMITE isn’t coming out over here as far as I know. Maybe eventually, but no release date so far. Great posters, though how is FIGHT CLUB a DIE HARD for the 90s? He doesn’t stop the terrorists! He WAS the Terrorist! That cop he confessed to who wasn’t part of Project Mayhem didn’t show up at the end to shoot Tyler Durden over and over again at a crucial moment! “Where Is My Mind” is no “Let It Snow”. And finally…Al Leong wasn’t part of any Fight Club we saw.

  4. Congratulations Vern

  5. I’m going to see this pretty #@& *@#% spectacular movie tonight, bitches! Bow down before my might and majesty!

  6. Amazing! first the bite on “men who stare at goats” and now this!

    Soon ebert is going to be “telling it like it is” and giving outlaw awards.

    Congratulations Vern!

  7. Grats Vern on making it to the big time !!!

  8. Who the *#@! wants to be the next Peter Travers? Fuck Peter Travers.

    Peter Travers cries alone at night as he sits online reading Vern.

    Peter Travers wants to be the next Vern. He doesn’t know there can be no next Vern. We only get one.

    Good job only Vern.

  9. SHIT! you’re just one name right below SPIKE LEE’s too! holy crap, I don’t think I’ve ever heard spike lee say anything about a movie before.

    I find this very exciting, spike lee and you have these very distinct voices about culture and politics. Maybe not of the same voice, but a voice just as powerful and speaks through what you guys do. And to see both of those names praising this movie, is really something to behold.

    Man, talk about credibility! You’re movin up vern! Also, it’s great to see your name up there and not Harry’s. I can’t take his word for anything.

  10. Great to finally see the world is finally comprehending the awesome power you hold to sway public opinion! And right down for Spike Lee, too! Classy as they come. Congrats, man.

  11. My opionion is the last one that should be consulted before making financial decisions, but those fake posters should be sold as greeting cards. The racist robots one in particular is pure genius. Hey, if The Onion can market their fake headlines, these movie posters should be a no-brainer.

    Of course there’s probably some copyright b*&&sh#t that would sink the whole deal. Fuckers.

  12. I had a friend who had a quote from his review for a lousy film strip-mined, then printed in the newspaper ads in a positive light. I can’t remember what the film and quote was, and the friend just headed abroad today. It was something like: “a really great film, if it wasn’t such a steaming pile of shite” and the printed quote was “a really great film”.

    I’m impressed that American PR firms are so polite! But censoring “god-damned”? Lame.

  13. If you really want to be Peter Travers you’ll have to get better at reusing the same sentences over and over and over again. I stopped reading him at some point in the mid-90s, at which point he had used “Enough come-on carnality to singe the screen!” in four different reviews within a few years, which probably means he’s used it a dozen times by now. He also can’t get enough of “It means to shake you, and does.” At this point he probably doesn’t even need to type; he can just cut and paste.

  14. Congratulations Vern !

    But let me get this straight : there’s an actual group of people , a committee , paid to look at concealing symbols for words like “god damn” and “fucking” ? Are you serious ? Who paid them ? I want to be a part of this group , and I promise a more transparent line of work . For example , I will always change “motherfucker” with “m0th3rfuck3r” , and “ass” with “@55”.

  15. Congratulations, Vern!
    A few days ago I thought I saw a quote of you on the German DVD of “Driven To Kill”, but I was wrong. (They used such a weird looking font that it looked from a distance like “outlawvern.com”. Can’t remember what site it really was.)

  16. this is actually hitting theatres?
    k, i’m hunting this fucker down.

  17. It’d be nice if it was playing here. Now I have to go see Law Abiding Citizen instead.

    Fucking bullshit.

  18. Let us know how that is. It doesn’t look very good, but i’s hard to fuck up a vigilante movie.

  19. Way to go, man! I’m pretty sure that Peter Travers has been trying to bite your style for years and it’s nice to see you finally get one-up on his evil scum-caked ass.

  20. Congratulations. It’s long overdue. Every movie you endorse should use your quotes.

  21. oh fuck! this is playing a film festival, down the street from my place TONIGHT! but here i am stuck at work. Boooooooo!!!

  22. Lol. We all know your “underdog” approach to films, but I thinks it must feel good to being put on the “spot light” (along with Spike lee) And the best of all, it´s that it is in a Vern Way. No fucking watered down quote like “cool movie” or something like that, We got THE VERN, with american middle class censorship, but it is still Vern, the “baddass critic”

  23. Congratulations, but the “code” can’t be decoded into the original. I mean, @ is both o and a? No way.

  24. Congrats Vern!

    Black Dynamite’s not playing in my neck of the woods anytime soon, but at least I can get my Michael Jai-White fix from “Tyler Perry’s Why Did I Get Married?”, which seems to be playing on Showtime every #@& *@#% day. I know I’ve bugged you about possibly doing a review of it before, Vern, but I really think you’ll dig it. It’s no Madea goes to Jail, but I honestly liked it better than Star Trek which I never thought I’d say unironically.

  25. Congrats! Truly beautiful would have been “Vern, outlawvern.com” But oh well, awesome all the same. Ok, off to see District 9, movies come fast to Venezuela! Black Dynamite won’t ever show up on a theater here, piracy my friend!

  26. hysterical. And I definitely read the symbols as fucking, but went back and reread it with god damn.

    But then I read it a THIRD time and used “cocksucking motherbuttfucking” and that worked pretty good too.

  27. Pretty cool Vernon!

    So, without giving anything away. How did they go about contacting you? You are after all a mysterious and shadowy internet celebrity. Personally, I’ve always thought you were really Rudy Ray Moore (I know, he’s dead.)

  28. Black Dynamite and The Hangover are the funniest movies I have seen in a few years. Black Dynamite take the crown because I was a big fan of the old 70’s movies. This movie reminded me of a ZAZ movie when they were in there prime and unafraid of dirty jokes. Everything was played straight and that made it even better. Scott Sanders will be a name I’ll look for in the future. This guy only has 2 movies and the other was released 11 years ago. Maybe he finally figured out comedy was his niche. I’m gonna get the word out but the theater I saw it in in Chicago wasn’t packed and I’ve talked to way too many people who never heard of it. My gut feeling is that this will not be a hit but maybe word of will make it a big hit on DVD. Austin Powers wasn’t a huge hit when it first came out but the dvd sales spwaned a sequel and the rest is history. Black Dynamite is much funnier then Austin Powers could even dream of being. Hopefully we’ll get Black Dynamite 2 or Black Dynamite In Africa.

  29. Vern, you remain a national treasure. Which, incidentally, should have been the next quote they had, and then someone else praising Guillermo Del Toro, and then someone else saying something about that person, and so on. But I’ll settle for just having you up there, in the absence of meta-quotations. Congrats.

  30. I was reading Vern last week, before he was a quote whore. Before he sold out.

    Remember the old days, when Vern was writing about Just Before Dawn and House of Death and life was simple and pure? God, I miss those days.

  31. Frank Booth: remember that April Fool’s sellout page Vern put together a few years ago? That was a thing of beauty.

  32. Nice one Vern,this is goodnews………..BTW is your Fb fanpage officially endorsed?

  33. I’m not sure what that means, proper.

    By the way, I forgot to mention that my former Geocities neighbor (and sometimes commenter here) Ryan Kenner once got quoted on the DVD for STONE COLD. I feel that getting quoted for BLACK DYNAMITE is the next coolest possibility after that.

    If they do a 20th anniversary edition of ONLY THE STRONG hopefully they’ll keep me in mind.

  34. You forgot about your fake poster for UP that says, “Had me crying like a little bitch” – Vern, outlawvern.com.

    That was a good one.

  35. about f*@king time, congrats mate

  36. Vern-he means if you are aware and authorise your facebook fanpage.

  37. Well, it’s official: Black Dynamite is the funniest movie of the year by about 50 swillion miles. Everything was just so spot on: the acting, the music cues, and particularly the editing. Whoever’s marketing this movie should probably stick to promoting mud-wrestling exhibitions, though, because the theater wasn’t even half full. It’s a damn shame, but at least every single person there was laughing for pretty much the duration of the film. I personally loved BD’s freak-out over how selling drugs to orphans is bad because they’re orphans and they have no parents. Why is a dude who’s built like He-Man, knows kung fu, and has the comedic chops of an SNL member not a massive star?

  38. Holy shit, I joined that Facebook group (my first ever!) and Ted V. Mikels is a fan! Quick, Vern, review Astro Zombies so he stops by!

  39. I saw a talk by Ted V. Mikels back around 1997 when I was in college. A friend who had organized the event was worried no one was going to show up, so he tried to coerce me into attending. Luckily, I was persuaded to go, as the energetic Mr. Mikels gave an incredibly entertaining and interesting talk. There were a number of aspiring filmmakers in the audience who asked a lot of great questions, and lots of fun was had by all.

    I had originally planned to leave right after the talk, but after listening to Mikel’s inspiring speech, I decided I needed to stay for the showing of THE CORPSE GRINDERS, too. I may have lost some sleep that night, but now I have my memories of a fun evening to share with disinterested readers on the internet. Oh, and I have Ted V. Mikel’s autograph on a poster!

    In conclusion, Vern should review THE CORPSE GRINDERS, and I should see more Ted V. Mikels pictures.

  40. Thanks Stu,sorry Vern,I was in a hurry last night.It is a respectful tribute page though and has been made in the right spirit.Keep up the good work.Have a good day people :>

  41. Thanks for the reminder, Hamslime. I added it.

    Proper, I forgot who started that but he ran it by me first, most likely in the comments here. I’ll have to take a look at it again. I’ve never seen The Corpse Grinders but I should.

    Majestyk – Glad you liked it. I was pretty sure you would. I went and saw it again tonight and it held up a second time. I had a similar experience, there weren’t much more than maybe 30 people but everyone was laughing from beginning to end. Based on that and the reaction at the film festival (including it winning the audience award for best movie) I’m sure the DVD will be popular enough for a sequel. (They’re already making a cartoon I guess.)

  42. No problem, sir. And for the record, I don’t think you’re a hack. In fact, I’d like to see more of those fake posters. Maybe even ones for movies that don’t exist. Like the one you described for Where The Wild Things Are where the wild thing and Max are standing back to back and one of them has their hat on backwards.

  43. Congratulations!!!! It won’t be long until you are misquoted on major movie posters. Transformers 2 poster: “good action scenes”!!! — Vern, AICN

  44. rainman – Sadly, you’re probably right. Even respected authors like Salman Rushdie have had their negative reviews twisted into positive slogans by some marketing chump.

    For my money, the line from Vern’s epic TRANSFORMERS 2 review that should be carved in stone and hung around Bay’s neck is:

    “It’s hard to measure but in my opinion this is the single worst script ever used in one of these huge moron movies.”

    But every line in that review is classic.

  45. They ran a blurb from one of my reviews in an ad for the gritty little indie drama Take Out, which I’d reviewed at a festival about two years earlier. They didn’t call me or anything, and spelled my name wrong. I just happened to spot it in NY Press, I think it was. I called the PR firm to let them know about the misspelling, and they corrected it in later ads.

    I was almost as happy to see you cited in the Black Dynamite ad. The movie was a lot of fun.

  46. Nabroleon_Dynamite

    October 19th, 2009 at 3:28 pm

    You’re extra large son!! Peace!!

  47. Great job man! In a somewhat related story, I have a movie review website and Albert Pyun commented onmy review for Kickboxer 2 today, mere hours after I posted it. I know it’s not the same thing but I thought it was pretty cool

  48. Jack Burton: Yeah, he popped up here on Vern’s KICKBOXER 2 review and he also commented on a review I did of TICKER on my blog. The dude really gets around. That or he has a team of publicists going around making blog posts.

  49. Whoa – Black Dynamite and Michael Jai White have made CNN!

    http://www.cnn.com/2009/SHOWBIZ/Movies/10/22/black.dynamite.movie/index.html

  50. Bit late to the party, but congratulations, pal!

    It’s about time somebody capitalized on the clout the Vern opinion has for people with at least a passing interest in the field of excellence.

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