Archive for the ‘Comedy/Laffs’ Category
Tuesday, January 1st, 2002
As you know I like to watch the classics but the only way to tell for sure if it is a classic is based on what channel it is on. This one was on American Movie Classics so that’s how I know. If it was on TBS or especially USA that would be another story. Anyway it is an old one from James Whale the director of Frankenstein.
Boris Karloff from the Frankenstein gets top billing but let’s be honest here, he’s playing a mute butler for christ’s sake. This is not a starring role it is strictly a gimp role in my opinion. I mean I know for a fact the man can talk, and can talk well. But you wouldn’t know it the way he’s typecasted in some of these pictures. Here he’s just a big oafish brute who gets drunk and tries to grab the pretty ladies. He looks like they left the Frankenstein makeup on him and pasted a beard over it the poor bastard. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Boris Karloff, Charles Laughton, James Whale
Posted in Comedy/Laffs, Horror, Reviews, Thriller | No Comments »
Friday, December 7th, 2001
When you get two Oscar nominations for best director in the same year (for Erin Brockovich and Traffic) and you’re at the commercial peak of your career, what do you do for a followup?
I think Steven Soderbergh has the right answer. Two Oscar nominations is nothing to commit suicide over. Sure it’s embarassing, but it’s not the end of the world. After all it was only one year earlier that his picture The Limey won Best Picture, Musical Comedy or Badass in the 1999 Outlaw Awards, and that magic could not be entirely faded. So Soderbergh packed up the political pretensions, left them out on the porch in a box marked for the retard center, and went and made a casino heist movie. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Brad Pitt, George Clooney, Matt Damon, Steve Soderbergh
Posted in Comedy/Laffs, Crime, Reviews, Thriller | 1 Comment »
Monday, December 3rd, 2001
Last time we spoke I found that the best way to forget about the nightmarish USA P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act – which is designed to protect freedom and democracy by, among other things, allowing police to enter and search your house without probable cause, warning or even notification after the fact – was through the delights of French Cinema.
As you know the french are very romantic, very beautiful, full of whimsy and what not. The French always know how to make you smile, like they did with AMELIE, or MR. HULOT’S HOLIDAY, or those musicals with the umbrellas and etc.
For example they got this movie called SEVEN DEADLY SINS that I just discovered. Anyone who has read my works thoroughly knows of my admiration for the director Roger Vadim, who married Jane Fonda, Brigitte Bardot and Catherine Deneuve. Also, his movies were pretty good.
Vadim is most famous for BARBARELLA, and then for SPIRITS OF THE DEAD, the edgar a. poe anthology picture he did a segment of along with whatsisname, the frenchy, as well as godard, malle, fellini, and etc. etc. SEVEN DEADLY SINS is another one along the lines of SPIRITS but this one is in black and white and has the, you know, the seven deadly sins theme. Seven segments, seven sins, all french. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: anthologies, Jean-Luc Godard, penetration, Roger Vadim
Posted in Comedy/Laffs, Crime, Reviews, Thriller, Vern Tells It Like It Is | 1 Comment »
Friday, November 16th, 2001
Well, it looks like I’m doin these columns once a month now, and I guess that’s better than nothin. This time I’ll be reviewing a handful of movies that have NOTHING to do with politics. I haven’t seen this Henry Porter witchcraft movie that everybody has a boner about but I have seen some other current pictures and some older ones that I will be discussing.
There’s a catch though. First I’m gonna hafta talk politics some more. I’ll keep it shorter, but this is more important than ever.
There is a grave threat to America right now. Well, another one. In addition to Islamic extremists crashing planes into our buildings, and right wing extremists sending anthrax to us in the mail, and turbulence symbolically knocking the tails and engines off of our American Airlines planes on Veteran’s Day as an accidental commentary on our foreign policy, now we have to worry about our acting president completely and blatantly abandoning the supposed ideals of America, and no one caring. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Ernest Dickerson, Jean-Pierre Jeunet, Mark Dacascos, Snoop Dogg
Posted in Action, Comedy/Laffs, Fantasy/Swords, Horror, Reviews, Romance, Thriller, Vern Tells It Like It Is | 1 Comment »
Saturday, November 10th, 2001
In Hollywood they have a saying that goes something like, “if you can’t think of anything funny, put a movie star in a fat suit.” On some magazine I saw on a news stand they had another saying that goes, “Fat suits: the new blackface.”
It’s true too. I mean the less acceptable it becomes to make fun of the gays, the more people need somebody else to pick on. So they start pickin on these big folks.
I don’t know why but for some reason people think it’s hilarious to see a celebrity made up to look all fat. They did it on Big Momma’s House. They did it on one of those sitcoms that is popular now, I believe it was either Friends or Cheers. The one about the kids in the apartment who have relationships, etc. Also Eddie Murphy did it. He thought it was so funny he based two movies around it. And within each movie he had to play four or five different fat characters in order to try to fill the whole movie with laughs. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Farrelly Brothers, fat suit, Gwyneth Paltrow, Jack Black, Jason Alexander
Posted in Comedy/Laffs, Drama, Reviews, Romance | No Comments »
Friday, August 10th, 2001
This here is one of these live action/cartoon action combos. The live action portion is a story about Bill Murray gets sick from eating a dirty egg. The cartoons is represented by a story about a white blood cell cop (with the voice of Chris Rock) who teams up with Buzz Lightyear to fight off a virus in a city inside Bill Murray.
This is one of those clever ideas where it woulda took a normal person about five minutes to realize that wait a minute, this ain’t clever enough for hundreds of people to spend a year of their lives working on it. And it DEFINITELY ain’t clever enough for millions of innocents to sit through for 90 minutes. But the people of Warner Brothers Studio, Hollywood USA, they are not normal people. So they spent millions on this loser of an idea.
Okay, so the stomach is an airport, and the mouth is kind of like the docks, and viruses are criminals, and a flu shot is an informant, etc. They put some good thought into figuring out all this cleverness but then how are we supposed to invest ourselves in the characters of a cell and a pill? You have to because there’s not much humor in the cartoon parts except for puns like on the flinstones, except instead of having to do with rocks they have to do with bodily functions. Like the mayor is named Mayor Phlegming, etc. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Bill Murray, Chris Rock, Farrelly Brothers, Laurence Fishburne
Posted in Cartoons and Shit, Comedy/Laffs, Reviews | 15 Comments »
Thursday, August 9th, 2001
Hey, everyone. “Moriarty” here with some Rumblings From The Lab.
God bless Vern. He’s proof positive that anyone can turn their life around if they try. For those of you who haven’t enjoyed his writing here or on his own website, Vern’s a former convict who has channeled his post-prison energy into writing movie reviews. He loves bad-ass films, but he’ll write about the most surprising stuff sometimes. In the last few days, he’s sent me two great reviews, so I decided to run them together. I’d agree with him on one, but not the other, and I’ll let you figure out which one I mean. Vern… take it away.
GINGER SNAPS
Harry, I guess I don’t read your sight closely enough. I never heard of this picture other than it was playing the seattle international film festival and some people said it was good. I didn’t know what it was about but I remembered the title so I pulled it out of a box of garbage like wishmaster 3 and children of the living dead. This was a box of artisan entertainment’s straight to video garbage that not even my video store connection was going to consider watching. They were just gonna dump em off to charity.
So this is the story of the teen horror picture that almost got away. The one that played a couple film festivals and then got dumped straight to video in the US by Artisan Entertainment, due October 23. I mean you can understand with all the high quality pictures showing this summer there’s really no room to put another really good one out there. What good is another good movie. They are so abundant right now what really is the point, right? Can’t think of more than one or two good ones off hand, but I’m sure I’m forgetting something.
GINGER SNAPS is not a movie about cookies. It’s GINGER SNAPS as in THE SNAPPING OF GINGER or GINGER FINALLY SNAPS or THE STORY OF GINGER ACTUALLY SNAPPING. This is a horror picture for the strong independent women. That doesn’t mean it’s for pussies, ’cause it’s gorey and intense. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Ben Affleck, Canadian, Jason Lee, John Fawcett, Kevin Smith, Mimi Rogers, self-indulgence, werewolves
Posted in AICN, Comedy/Laffs, Horror, Reviews | No Comments »
Tuesday, July 31st, 2001
What this movie is about is pie fucking. There is a kid who fucks a pie in it. There is also a guy who fucks a grapefruit apparently but you don’t see that. But this guy fucks a pie.
The version I saw is the unrated DVD, which I guess has extra pie fucking footage. in the original apparently it was a standing up with the pie position, wheras here it is a missionary position with the kid mounting the pie. The cover of the unrated DVD shows all the young gals on the cover but don’t be fooled, none of them do any pie fucking in the movie, it is only this one guy. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Chris Klein, Jason Biggs, Mena Suvari, Seann William Scott, Tara Reid
Posted in Comedy/Laffs, Reviews, Romance | 10 Comments »
Saturday, June 30th, 2001
Well as you know I am on the cutting edge of our Cinematic type culture here, so let me tell you this for sure. This movie, which had a release that made BONES look like HENRY fucking PORTER, will be discovered on video and cherished right and left by every motherfucker and his uncle for years to come.
This is not a great movie but it’s a funny one and a unique one. You got basically a super hero story here starring a young black fella named Pootie Tang, played by some Writer from the chris rock show. Chris Rock show is another chapter in the story of people claiming that a show is really good, in fact so good you gotta pay hbo to see it. Hello – tv is supposed to be free. Until you put it on the FREE airwaves I have no choice but to assume that the sopranos, oz, sex and the city, the chris rock show and etc. are all crap just like everything else on tv. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Chris Rock, Louis C.K., Wanda Sykes
Posted in Comedy/Laffs, Reviews | 2 Comments »
Tuesday, June 19th, 2001
Hey, everyone. “Moriarty” here with some Rumblings From The Lab.
Sounds like Vern got cheated out of a screening of BATTLE ROYALE, and maybe that’s a good thing. He’s a reformed man after being a guest of the state, but who knows what’ll happen when you lay bare the blackest heart of man against man. I’d much rather be in a theater with Vern during a warped little character flick like GHOST WORLD, Terry (CRUMB) Zwigoff’s adaptation of the Daniel Clowes comics. I can’t wait to see this, and thanks to the always-appreciated efforts of Vern, we’re getting a little early peek…
This is a story about an individual named Vern who is standing in an alley outside of the Egyptian theater in Seattle, Washington where the world premiere of a movie is about to take place. There is a line around the building and I’m standing next to this dumpster that smells like piss and I’m thinking, this must be the line for Battle Royale. Battle Royale is this movie everybody’s talking about. It’s this week’s Chopper. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Brad Renfro, Illeana Douglas, Scarlett Johansson, Steve Buscemi, Terry Zwigoff, Thora Birch
Posted in AICN, Comedy/Laffs, Drama, Reviews, SIFF | No Comments »
