"CATCH YOU FUCKERS AT A BAD TIME?"

Vern Goes on John Carpenter Remake Watch

In my last post about Rob Zombie’s Halloween remake I mentioned MTV’s report that Zombie wouldn’t be using John Carpenter’s theme music in his version. Well, on his MySpace Teen Friendship Page, Zombie reveals that the MTV writer misunderstood what he was saying about the theme music, and that he actually plans to use it.

But don’t let your guard down yet, Carpenter fans. While you were busy boarding up the windows in case of Zombie attack (get it, that is some kind of a pun I believe) Fast and the Furious producer Neal H. Moritz was planning a remake of another Carpenter classic, Escape From New York. As reported earlier by Bilge, the remake may star 300’s Gerard “SPARTAAAAAAA!” Butler as Snake Plissken. It would be written by the guy who wrote Black Hawk Down.

Now, I’m not gonna lie, I can see how some of the elements of the original movie could be juiced up and re-imaginated and what not. In fact, the idea of the government turning Manhattan into a maximum security prison takes on a little more punch in the age of Camp X-Ray and the USA PATRIOT Act, so they could treat the politics a little more seriously if they wanted to. And it would be interesting to see the dark model city world of the original given life by the bigger budget and the digital technology. (read the rest of this shit…)

300

Make no mistake about it, it’s hard out here for a Spartan. Alot of these bastards, they’re “baptized in the fire of combat.” They grow up having to fight their dad all day, and I mean really fight him. You thought your dad pushed you too hard at hoops, well at least he didn’t beat on you until you fucked up. These guys, the beating is the actual practice. It’s their culture.

In some of the other neighborhoods, like Arcadia for example, you can grow up to be a potter, a sculptor or a blacksmith. In Sparta, you’re a soldier. But you don’t even get to talk about it, like “What do you do for a living?” “Oh, I’m a soldier. I’m baptized in the fire of combat.” In Sparta, they ask you what your trade is you gotta yell out “WHOO WHOO!” or something. You are highly trained in combat and in grunting. (read the rest of this shit…)

Rob Zombie’s Halloween Remake

I don’t think I’m gonna surprise anybody by saying that Halloween is one of my favorite horror movies. Like alot of people I watch it once or twice a year. Usually the regular version, sometimes that TV version where John Carpenter shot extra footage of Dr. Loomis dealing with young Michael Meyers in the sanatorium.

So I’ve watched this movie with alot of different people and more often than not, when it gets to the part where Michael steals a car to bust out of the joint, somebody laughs and says “How does he know how to drive? He’s been locked up since he was a kid!” I love it because they think they’ve outsmarted the movie, but they’re wrong. Later when Loomis is told Meyers doesn’t know how to drive he says, “Well he was doing very well last night!”

Turns out Rob Zombie (born Robert Puppydogsandbutterflies) disagrees. He’s the writer-director of the Halloween remake coming August 31st, and he just told MTV that his Michael Meyers doesn’t drive. “[Meyers in the station wagon] always bothered me. They always play that off like someone must have given him lessons, but you know no one gave him lessons! He’s in a maximum-security prison! So, no, he doesn’t drive.” (read the rest of this shit…)

Black Snake Moan

Some people might say, just because Christina Ricci spends a good third of BLACK SNAKE MOAN wearing only panties and a half shirt, chained up like a dog to control her bestial urge to fuck anything with a dick, that it’s degrading to women. Well, okay, if I put it that way. But as cool as Samuel L. Jackson’s backsliding bluesman Lazarus is, it’s Ricci’s coughing town slut Rae that you sympathize with most. The weird thing is this ends up being a sweet movie, a cute movie. Like a really subdued KILL BILL, BLACK SNAKE takes ridiculous notions that don’t have to make sense in an exploitation* picture (a man chaining up a young girl to cure her nymphomania, her forgiving him for it) but then treats the characters’ emotions so seriously that I actually start to care about them.

I’m not gonna complain about seeing Ricci half naked or the lurid pulpy advertising campaign revolving around Lazarus having her on a chain like a pet, or something worse. But honestly, swear to God, cross my eye with a needle, etc., I was excited for this movie because it’s from the writer-director of HUSTLE & FLOW. If you have to compare the two I’d say this one isn’t quite as compelling, although some would disagree due to the panties and boobs. (read the rest of this shit…)

Zodiac

David Fincher’s movie SEVEN (no, I’m not gonna do that cute shit where you type the number seven instead of a v, do I look like the type of dude that would try to pull that sort of typographic horseshit, I don’t think so) is the deadbeat dad of the modern serial killer thriller. Or the killer that inspired all the copycats. Ever since then, hacks have been trying to cop that thick atmosphere, that dark-as-tar nihilistic tone, that sicko mix of religion and violence, that serious treatment of the type of gimmicky murder sprees that used to be fun when Vincent Price did ’em, and especially those fonts used on the opening credits. Simply put, without SEVEN there would be none of those other movies where Morgan Freeman tries to catch a serial killer, nor would there be a GLIMMER MAN. And then where would we be as a society?

When you take away the artfulness of Fincher’s direction (and add a side order of Seagal/Wayans bickering) you can see how morbid and ugly that type of subject matter is. So the fact that Fincher took the time to do such a good job of it makes you question his mental health a little. Didn’t they say he personally splattered the fake blood on some of those victims? (read the rest of this shit…)

Holding the Razzies Accountable: Vern on the Other Great Awards Injustice

(Folks, this is, straight up, one of ScreenGrab’s proudest moments. We’ve been big fans of Outlaw Vern’s awesome reviews for quite some time. And now he’s a regular ScreenGrab contributor. Fuckin’ A. — BE)

Okay, so at the Oscars Jerry Seinfeld pissed off the documentarians, the theater owners, and if I were one of those minimum wagers who have to clean up theaters I don’t think I’d be too happy with him either. We know you’re a millionaire bud, if the popcorn is too expensive just bring some caviar from home. But pick up your own garbage, asshole.

Me, I’m thinking bad thoughts about a different set of awards. Every year around Oscar season you see articles and discussions popping up about “when Oscar got it wrong,” usually pointing to The Unfortunate Dances With Wolves Over Goodfellas Affair as well as the career-long snubs of Hitchcock and Kubrick (please remember to delete references to Scorsese not having an Oscar before recycling that essay next year). Coinciding with those writings are the annual blurbs on the Golden Raspberries, which can be summed up as “ha ha, that crazy bitch Sharon Stone made a bad movie, ha ha.” You don’t usually see complaints about the Razzie people getting it wrong, but they do it all the time. I know it’s all supposed to be in fun and nobody really thinks about it too much, but still – these people have been getting attention this way for 25 years. Either we hold them to a certain standard or maybe it’s time we gave this smarmy tradition the gong. (read the rest of this shit…)

The Departed

If you saw INFERNAL AFFAIRS you know the storyline. Undercover cop vs. undercover gangster. There’s alot of stories about cops going undercover in gangs, but this one also has a member of the crime family who entered the police academy and moved up the ranks as a mole for his gang. So now both traitors are well situated and it starts to get obvious to both sides that they have a mole in their midst. And the moles are given the job of finding out who the mole is. It could be called LOS TOPOS.

Mr. Scorsese took that premise and moved it to Boston and told his own story about contemporary Boston criminals. Scorsese’s young associate Leonardo Del Caprio (looking more like Benicio Del Toro every year) plays the cop who pretends to get kicked out of the force, does some time and then joins Jack Nicholson’s gang. Matt Damon plays the cop who’s really working for the gang. We first see him as a little kid getting money from Nicholson in a diner. And the kid they chose is a dead ringer. They even taught him how to cock his eyebrow like Damon. Somebody’s gonna have to find a young Ben Affleck doppelganger and these two can go on the road. Or they could do THE YOUNG JASON BOURNE MYSTERIES where the camera shakes around while he’s fighting some kid in a treehouse. (read the rest of this shit…)

Babel

It turns out we’re all connected.

The end.

Nah, just fuckin with you. So last year, 2006, some people said was the Year of the Mexican Director because of the so-called Three Amigos, named hopefully not after the Chevy Chase movie but after a half English, half Spanish phrase that literally translates as “Tres Friends”:

AMIGO #1, Alfonso Cuaron, broke through to the V.I.P. Director’s Lounge with CHILDREN OF MEN, which alot of us consider the best or one of the best movies of 2006.

AMIGO #2, Guillermo Del Toro, finally got some respect from the fancypants establishment critics and Oscar voters with arguably his best Blade-less movie to date, PAN’S LABYRINTH.

But it was #3, Alejandro González Iñárritu, who got his new one BABEL somehow nominated for best picture, with some people (comparing it to CRASH because of its multi-cultural ensemble cast, goofy coincidences and themes of different cultures interacting) thinking it’s gonna win. (read the rest of this shit…)

Vern! Steven Seagal! Whattaya Need… A Road Map?!

Hey, everyone. ”Moriarty” here.

It wouldn’t be a holiday weekend without our own Vern digging in with a review of a new Steven Seagal film.

Savor it like fine wine. I did.

FLIGHT OF FURY
Starring Steven Seagal
co-written by Steven Seagal

Well, it pains me to admit it guys, but Steven Seagal may be in a small rut here, at least movie-wise. Everyone knows his heart is in playin the blues right now, yet between guitar solos he’s still poppin out 3 movies a year. I’m definitely not counting my man out yet, especially with him directing PRINCE OF PISTOLS still a possibility. But after MERCENARY FOR JUSTICE, SHADOW MAN, ATTACK FORCE and now FLIGHT OF FURY all in a row, I feel like he’s not at his highest potential of achievement right now. Somebody forwarded me his tour rider for some reason (somehow people got the idea I was obsessed with Steven Seagal) and I noticed he’s drinking Red Bull, not his own Steven Seagal Lightning Bolt energy drink. So that might be part of the problem. (read the rest of this shit…)

Ghost Rider

GHOST RIDER is the story of an Evil Knievel type motorcycle jumper named Johnny Blaze who accidentally drips blood on a contract with the devil so his dad is cured of cancer but then dies in a motorcycle accident the next day so he leaves his girlfriend and then about 15 or 20 years later the devil turns him into a burning magic skeleton so he has to fight some gothy monster dudes and hang out with a cowboy (Sam Elliot, obviously). If you’re into bullshit like that, you might like this movie, but probaly not. I have too much respect for you to assume that.

Now, I gotta admit I went into this movie knowing I would not like it, and actually hoping it would be hilariously bad. It’s not like this is a surprise – the last movie by this director is DAREDEVIL, an absolutely fucking horrible comic book movie about a chubby blind lawyer in a red gimp outfit who fights a villain whose power is that he can kill people by flicking peanuts at them. (I’m not joking.) This is basically the same type of bullshit with more uncomfortable failed attempts at humor and a bigger budget for lots of cheesy video game style effects. (Apparently this movie cost $120 million, which almost makes me cry.) (read the rest of this shit…)