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…)
Videodrome
Scanners: The Showdown
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
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 III: The Takeover
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…)
Vern Predicts: Jeremy Renner
Me on Jeremy Renner in my HURT LOCKER review last July:
I think he’ll get an Oscar nomination and a bunch of big roles that hopefully don’t waste his talent too much. In fact I’m gonna go ahead and predict that they’ll give him one of the big comic book roles. We can have Chopper as Hulk, Patrick Bateman as Batman and Jeffrey Dahmer as Captain America.
Hollywood Reporter’s Heat Vision Blog, today:
Jeremy Renner is in final negotiations to join “The Avengers,” Marvel Studios’ big-screen take on its superhero team that’s being directed by Joss Whedon.
Renner will play the bow-and-arrow-carrying hero Hawkeye, who, while not one of the initial members of the team when it was created in the 1960s, became an integral member soon after when the misguided villain switched sides.
So he won’t be playing Captain America, but they’ll at least be co-workers. Not a bullseye for me, but not a bad shot, huh?
Yippee Ki Yay contest winners
The Ain’t It Cool News has posted the winners for that Yippee Ki Yay Youtube video contest that Titan Books put on. I think you guys will get a kick out of some of these. The top winner was Patrick Newman who will hopefully continue being creative and making videos although he could just spend all his time playing his new Playstation part 3.
Vern’s Yippee Ki Yay, Moviegoer contest winners!!
Hey friends, Vern here to update you on the winners of the video-making contest that Titan Books had to promote my new review collection, Yippee Ki Yay, Moviegoer: Writings on Bruce Willis, Badass Cinema and Other Important Topics. (Just to warn you, some of the “other important topics” include Mary Poppins, the movie “Garfield” and a painful medical procedure I once had. But it’s a pretty good book. You should read it.) To be frankly honest it looks like there was a little less elbow grease put into this contest than into the similar one we had for Seagalogy. Most of the videos were obviously things people had already made and decided to enter. Fair enough though, because the book is a collection of pre-existing reviews. (read the rest of this shit…)
Scanners II: The New Order
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
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…)
SONOFABITCH!
It seems the novelist Jonathan Lethem is writing a book-length essay about THEY LIVE (a fact I learned from this post on the blog of Seattle alternative weekly The Stranger). This is good news for the world. Bad news for me, though, since I’ve long been planning on doing exactly fucking that for my next Lulu book. (read the rest of this shit…)
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