Wow, I must’ve really misread the ol’ zeitgeist. I thought for sure with that depressing new Ben Stiller indie drama having come out on DVD last Tuesday GREENBERG was gonna be all anybody had on their minds for weeks. But the comments thread there almost makes it seem like you guys are more interested in this “Inception” business.
Director Christopher Nolan first made his mark on cinema with the black and white (read the rest of this shit…)
I never got into Brian D. Palma’s THE FURY so much, but since you guys mentioned it during my SCANNERSathon I decided to give it another shot. Sure enough it’s a pretty good one with some solid DePalma slo-mo suspense sequences and some crazy shit here and there for flavoring. As you can see to your left, Kirk Douglas has a shootout in his swim trunks. He looks so manly and yet also like your dad embarrassing you on a vacation. Or like a middle school wrestling coach that makes everybody uncomfortable ’cause his balls hang out of his shorts. (read the rest of this shit…)
Didn’t Robert Zemeckis used to be a big deal for movie nerds? Right now he’s mainly looked at as a heretic because of his obsession with doing those creepy motion computerized movies that I seem to be pretty alone in appreciating. But there was another Zemeckis before that, a live action one. Everybody loved that BACK TO THE FUTURE and a couple of his other movies. It seems like people used to put him up there just below Spielberg as one of those worshipped All-American brand name mainstream directors of the ’80s. (read the rest of this shit…)
Every nerd and his uncle has two or more ideas for a zombie movie these days. And even the uncle got kind of sick of hearing about zombies two or three years ago. But as far as George A. Romero creations go, aren’t crazies more relevant than zombies anyway? Coming back from the dead is kind of a quaint 1960s problem in my opinion. Today we worry about ordinary people, people in our neighborhoods and families, suddenly turning nuts on us. We look at them and we can tell something is wrong, something is different, and we don’t really know why but it might be caused by some military fuckup. And there is no reasoning with these crazies. They are not our friends and loved ones anymore. That’s why a crazy is better than a zombie. (read the rest of this shit…)
It’s probly hard to imagine for people who grew up post-internet, but there was a time when you couldn’t just turn on your computer and find the weirdest, most fucked up shit imaginable just as quick as you can type www.theweirdestmostfuckedupshitimaginable.org. Back then people who had strange fetishes or possessed disturbing footage tried to hide that shit, they didn’t think they could proudly put it out there and try to make new friends with it. Finding that stuff took time, effort and connections. These days kids email each other real footage of hostages being beheaded. Back then the FACES OF DEATH guys had to fake a beheading, and even their fake version was more of a legend people heard about then something they’d actually seen. That’s when Dave Cronenberg’s VIDEODROME takes place. And it involves material way more unsettling than FACES OF DEATH. (read the rest of this shit…)
From the director of MISSION OF JUSTICE and the writer of EXCESSIVE FORCE II: FORCE ON FORCE comes SCANNERS: THE SHOWDOWN, or SCANNER COP II in some jurisdictions. It’s a follow-up to SCANNER COP, and the first SCANNERS movie to continue with a character from the last one. For some reason I guess they must’ve assumed the characters from SCANNERS II and SCANNERS III were not dear to our hearts.
In this one Scanner Cop (still Daniel Quinn) has a new Scanner Case. He’s gone from we-behind-the-ears rookie to completely-dry-throughout-the-entire-ear-area cocky veteran with long hair and even – and this is how you understand what he’s all about – a brown leather jacket. (read the rest of this shit…)
SCANNER COP (1994) is a predictably lame execution of a reasonably good concept. If we in fact lived in a world where telepathic “scanners” existed then it could be useful to society to have one on the police force. In this case it’s a kid whose scanner dad goes so crazy he grows 3 tiny little human heads on his forehead. I guess John Carl Buechler, who did the effects makeup, must’ve wished he was doing a Freddy movie. By this time the EPH-3 drug of SCANNERS III has evolved into Ephemerol, which actually blocks a scanner’s telepathy, making them ordinary. It’s depicted as a good thing, because if you don’t drug away your scanner abilities you will go crazy like this guy when he ran out of pills.
I know what you’re thinking: but how did he run out of pills with Canada’s health care system? Well, this one takes place in Los Angeles. A special Los Angeles where “sorry” is pronounced different. (read the rest of this shit…)
SCANNERS 3 makes it clear that muthafuckas forgot about Cronenberg. Now it’s cheesy electric guitars, actresses who look like ’80s Playboy models and amateurish overacting that shifts in and out of different accents. The action kicks off with our hero scanner Alex Monet (named so because this is a great work of art, and played by Steve Parrish) brain-pushing his buddy as a party trick. But then somebody pats him on the shoulder, breaking his concentration and he fires his friend out the window, killing him. That sucks so he goes to find himself in Asia like Rambo III. (read the rest of this shit…)
Of all David Cronenberg’s movies the one that lends itself the most to sequels is SCANNERS. I mean I guess they could’ve easily done M. BUTTERFLY: APOCALYPSE or DEAD RINGERS: THE CRACKDOWN, but in my opinion extending the SCANNERS story makes a little more sense, so that’s the one they made a bunch of sequels to. It’s funny though – I think looking back we have an understanding of Cronenberg as a soft-spoken genius with half his brain devoted to insane perversion. We’ve seen his chest vaginas, gristle guns and everything. We’ve seen him stay true to his vision for 30 years, and once he got bored with the New Flesh and hooked up with Viggo it was just as good and not much more mainstream. He’s a true Canadian original. (read the rest of this shit…)
SCANNERS is a story about mutants with psychic powers, a generation of babies messed up by a medicine their mothers took, now grown and finding their brains too powerful, causing them to hear other people’s thoughts, and giving them dangerous powers like they can drop you to the ground with a nose bleed just by thinking about you too hard. If you get a greeting card from a scanner that says “Thinking of you,” take that as a threat. (read the rest of this shit…)
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(NOTE: My ten year contract has passed on the Titan books, so I don't get residuals on them like I do WORM ON A HOOK and NIKETOWN, but I would love for you to read them because I'm proud of them)
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