A quick reminder: If you’re here in Washington state and allowed to vote, please remember to approve the “let’s keep basic gay rights” referendum R-71. If you haven’t been following it, here’s the deal:

Earlier in the year Washington finally passed a bill giving domestic partners (gay couples and elderly people who have lived together forever without getting married) some of the rights that married couples have. It’s not even true equality because they can’t get married, but it applies to things like visiting in hospitals and inheriting property and things like that.

Well, of course common sense and being nice is not allowed, so some scumbag out of state bigots (themselves documented tax cheats and wife beaters) paid a bunch of naive religious people to go around making up blatant lies about how the law was going to teach elementary school kids to have gay sex and penguins at the zoos will have to wear cock rings or whatever, and they got just barely enough signatures to put it on the ballot as R-71.

And to make it confusing, the thing on the ballot is the law itself, so you gotta vote FOR it if you believe in basic equality. Not against it because you are against the nitwits who forced it on there.

I mean, I understand that Leviticus is against gay sex and eating shellfish and shaving but what kind of a huge asshole and fake Christian wants to legally stop an old lady they never met from visiting her life partner in the hospital? There’s just no way to civilly disagree on stuff like this. It’s like saying, “I like punching orphans in the balls, it’s just my belief. Please don’t be intolerant of my views.” To actively go out of your way to legally prevent this kind of thing – you are an asshole. There is no way to be a nice person who wants to make sure the government prevents gay couples from visiting each other in the hospital.

So please, if it’s in your power, APPROVE THE SHIT OUT OF R-71. Don’t let these assholes come into our state and ruin everything.

thank you and sorry for the interruption.

special thanks to Mr. Subtlety for inspiring the “Don’t Be Ellis” graphic in the comments

Attention New Yorkers, Los Angelenos, Philadelphiacs, Atlantians, Chicagoians and Seattleors:

I got an email from BLACK DYNAMITE co-writer/director (and one time outlawvern.com commenter) Scott Sanders. As I feared, he says the lack of a serious advertising budget is resulting in low ticket sales, and “Unless word gets out about the film soon, we have very little chance of surviving the weekend.”

It turns out that having the trailer online and showing the ad one time on BET doesn’t get everybody’s attention. Just ours.

Sorry for the infomercial but I have an interest in this doing well because 1) I want to see a sequel and 2) your life will be made better by seeing this movie, and I am a humanitarian. So here is my outlaw guarantee: if you go pay full price to see it this week and you regret it, contact me. In lieu of a refund I promise to review the movie of your choice. Even if it’s the fucking Boondock Saints or some shit like that, I’ll do it for you. But I probly won’t have to because this movie will kick your ass and grow you a mustache.

In other BLACK DYNAMITE news, the soundtrack and score albums finally came out this week. They didn’t get them at my local record store though, so I have them on order. But I’m listening to them online right now – skip over that hip hop remix (not sure what that’s about) and you can hear what’s actually on the albums. The soundtrack is the original songs by Adrian Younge and the score is all library music, which explains part of why the music sounds so authentic – it is authentic. But listening to those Adrian Younge songs, I swear I forget it’s not one of the vintage collections I have – even the recording quality sounds 1976. That attention to detail is part of what makes the movie so great.

links and more info if you click the ‘click here’ thing (read the rest of this shit…)

This is from Sunday’s New York Times:

(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. (read the rest of this shit…)

By now you’ve probly read the news that Twisted Pictures (the production company behind SAW parts 1-through-indefinite) and writer Stephen Susco (THE GRUDGE) have nabbed the TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE rights out from under the noses of Platinum Dunes. They’re supposedly gonna “reboot” again, now setting it in the modern day instead of the ’70s, and doing it in 3-D. And while Platinum Dunes were only given the rights on a movie-by–movie basis, Twisted is supposedly planning a whole series of them. (Dude, do a trilogy, like LORD OF THE RINGS! Or CHRONICLES OF RIDDICK!)

Of course, I am a huge nerd for the TEXAS CHAIN SAW pictures (the real ones) so many of you were kind enough to notify me about this development. I think maybe I should be outraged, but I actually think it’s kind of a good thing. It was clear that Platinum Dunes were never gonna figure out what to do with these movies, and had sucked all the blood they could out of them. At the same time they already broke its remake cherry, following up on two iffy-even-if-I’m-in-a-charitable-mood sequels from the ’90s. So another one I don’t think is gonna tarnish the CHAIN SAW legacy any more, it’s just gonna smear it around a little. I’d rather the series rest in peace now, but I guess it’s fitting somebody would dig this thing up and play around with its corpse.

Plus, the naively optimistic idealist in me thinks about what if it actually went right? What if this was the WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE impossibly ideal scenario? Picking out pictures to use for this post I kept looking at shots from part 2 and thinking 1) I should be watching that right now instead of writing this and 2) holy shit, imagine that in 3-D! What if instead of a typical modern horror movie this was some crazy funhouse, one o’ them visual marvels like part 2? It could be amazing! (read the rest of this shit…)

I don’t know about you guys but I enjoy the work George Clooney does with his writing partner Grant Heslov (better known as the Rock’s sidekick in THE SCORPION KING). Now Heslov is directing a movie starring Clooney based on a book I’ve heard is good, a true story comedy about a unit of the military that tried to figure out how to use paranormal powers.

It doesn’t come out until the beginning of November, but they’re just now beginning to advertise it and there’s a poster for it now. An interesting design because it doesn’t show any photos from the movie or anything, it’s just some silverish background with red silhouettes, kind of scratched up looking an– wait a minute WHAT THE FUUUUCK!??

I wanted to remind everybody that the Michael Jai White movie BLOOD AND BONE came out on the DVD this week. I really liked this movie and think it’s on par with some of the better late ’80s/early ’90s American martial arts movies. It not only has a great badass role for MJW, but an excellent villain played by Eamonn Walker (left), plus cameos by Gina Carano and some other individuals whose names I don’t know and are listed more prominently than necessary on the back of the DVD.

I’m anxious for you guys to see this so I can hear what other people think. So let me know.