"CATCH YOU FUCKERS AT A BAD TIME?"

SIFF: Vern on CAPTURING THE FRIEDMANS – this sounds exceptionally disturbing!

Harry here – the idea that this film is reviewed the same day I review FINDING NEMO disturbs me. I don’t know why, but be afraid of Vern. He sees disturbing things. Perhaps, he is a disturbing thing.

Dear Harry,

I think maybe I confused you somehow with my BUBBA HO TEP review. Actually it turns out you guys have been covering that one for a while and that wasn’t the first review you guys published. Some of the newsies in talkback pointed that out if you missed it. But here’s one I think you really truly haven’t reviewed before, the documentary CAPTURING THE FRIEDMANS. I’m not sure why you guys haven’t reviewed it yet. Maybe because it’s not about mummies, it’s about child molesting.

Okay so it ain’t exactly “cool news”. Shit I feel like kind of an asshole even bringing it up. It’s like when you recommend a holocaust movie to somebody. Yeah it’s true, THE PIANIST was a great movie, probaly one of the best I saw last year, but I still felt like a jerk recommending it to people. “Hey, you doing anything this weekend? Yeah, why don’t you sit down for 2 hours and watch this guy survive the nazis.” That’s why they came up with the “remember Adrien Brody’s Oscar speech?” advertising campaign. Own the Oscar triumph. You’ll want to watch it again and again despite, you know, what it’s about. (read the rest of this shit…)

May 28th, 2003 | 1 Comment »

SIFF: Vern here with AICN’s 1st review of BUBBA HO-TEP!!!

Hey folks, Harry here… Vern sent in a review for a movie I’ve just plum never heard of? From the sound of it, I’m shocked we haven’t. I mean a Bruce Campbell movie left uncovered by AICN? Hey Zeus Morales! Ya know? And with Don Coscarelli, you’d think Quint might’ve reported in, but that lazy bastard’s been holding out on us! Well, no more. Vern here is breaking what can only be a conspiracy of silence at the very heights of the corporate whores at AICN, and he’s breaking that door down to tell you folks for the first time about BUBBA HO-TEP… A film that studios everywhere are conspiring to keep from you. The bastards! Here ya go… Thank Beezlebub for Vern!

Dear Harry,

Like I promised I’m back with more incredibly insightful and well Written SIFF coverage and last night I went to the midnight show of BUBBA HO TEP. I know you guys have already reviewed the shit out of this movie but personally I never read any of those reviews because I was waiting for me to review it. And I sincerely doubt I was the only one. So here it is folks, your very first look at BUBBA HO TEP. (read the rest of this shit…)

May 26th, 2003 | 1 Comment »

The Matrix Reloaded

This might bother some of you but I just want to say it up front: put me in the camp of people who say the original MATRIX really is “the shit” as the kids say when they mean that it is not shit but actually the opposite of shit, which is I guess in this case THE MATRIX. Because what these boys the Wachowski Brothers did was an extremely well executed twilight zone concept for the post William Gibson days which also happened to be the perfect vehicle to combine over the top Hong Kong martial arts traditions with american actors and computer effects AND an appropriate metaphor for our times.

I love the idea that somebody like Jackie Chan or Michael Jordan who has extraordinary physical skills could actually just be a smart dude who figured out loopholes in the laws of reality. If you can understand the program well enough you can cheat and do things that a person isn’t supposed to be able to do. In the old shaw brothers movies it was just magic or shaolin wisdom but here we put those same spectacular moves in a sci-fi context and we get a whole different spin where even some jackass like Keanu Reeves can fly through the air and be so convincing that most of American can watch him as the iconic badass Neo and not even think of him as Keanu anymore. (read the rest of this shit…)

May 24th, 2003 | 13 Comments »

SIFF: Vern goes down on THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED!

Hey folks, Harry here… Vern here caught THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED up at the Seattle International Film Festival and… well it’s turned him into an obvious Commie Pinko Anti-American Burn-In-Hell Lily-livered Cock-Sucker, like it did me back when I saw it. So those of you that like to belittle someone with information that you haven’t seen, go right ahead. The problem is this, after you see this documentary, it’s really hard to trust anything any media tells you… Including this site. More than anything, political parties and affiliations aside… This is all about questioning authority and looking for more information, even from this documentary. Stories are never as cut and dried as a 2 hour Documentary, but at the same time… the complications of what happened after the events in this film aside, what DID HAPPEN and WAS CAPTURED here is an astonishing and powerful work that all should see.

Dear Harry,

It’s your personal buddy Vern here reporting from lovely Seattle where I plan to actually get off my ass and see some movies at the film festival this year. I’m gonna have to miss the cartoon one where it’s the matrix but I did get a ticket for the mummy one where Bruce Campbell is Elvis. Also I was wondering man were you serious about wanting to see werewolves in the Matrix? That one threw me off there bud but there’s another movie that me and you see more like eye-to-eye on and that’s THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED. (read the rest of this shit…)

May 24th, 2003 | No Comments »

Streetwise and American Heart

both directed by Martin Bell

Well this is an incredible, classic documentary and a pretty good narrative type companion piece, and both were filmed in Seattle and now that I saw them I wonder why in fuck’s name I took so long getting to them. The real winner of the two is STREETWISE, academy award nominated documentary about runaway kids on the streets of Seattle in 1984. The story behind this is that the photographer Mary Ellen Mark (web site) was doing a photo essay for LIFE magazine. At the time Seattle was considered one of the country’s “most livable cities” (imagine that) so she thought it would be the perfect place to photograph homeless kids. If it can happen in seattle then shit, it can happen anywhere. Well the photo essay turned out good so she decided to get her husband Martin Bell to direct a documentary about the same kids she took pictures of. (read the rest of this shit…)

May 14th, 2003 | 9 Comments »

X-2: X-Men United

Dear Mystique,

Hey sugar it’s me Vern. Remember me I reviewed your first movie “the x-men” and even though I don’t read that comic strip shit, I enjoyed the picture. Well I gotta say although the title “x part 2 x-men united” is pretty terrible I also enjoyed your part 2. It doesn’t have the same “I can’t believe this isn’t total shit” surprise factor but instead it has these characters that I enjoyed in the first picture and it tries to add more depth and drama and convolutedness to their adventures and what not. like a comic strip book.

But the reason I’m Writing to you mystique is because you are my favorite mutant now. Don’t get me wrong, I still think Young Clint Eastwood is great as Professor Logan Wolverine, the art teacher at X-Men Community College. There is another X-Man called Rogue but she’s not really a Rogue, she always sits at the same table as Iceman and Fireman. Professor Wolverine is the real rogue, he wanders around in the snow by himself uncovering his past and going on adventures and shit. Who knows what happened between part 1 and part 2, he could’ve saved an injured baby polar bear, or he could’ve gotten in a fight with a yeti, or got buried under an avalanche and had to melt his way out by banging his metal freddy krueger claws against each other to create heat. I mean anything could’ve happened, as long as it is snow related. Anyway he’s the real rogue, so when he goes to the X-Man school to try to find beer, all the kids follow him around because he’s cool. I liked when he said “You picked the wrong house, bub.” That was pretty tough. (read the rest of this shit…)

May 5th, 2003 | 16 Comments »

The Wrath of Abe Lincoln

Hey folks. I haven’t written since the war began. I spent the first week protesting and the weeks since banging my head against a wall hoping if I do it hard enough my country will come back. I mean can you fucking believe that shit on the USS Abraham Lincoln? Bush, renowned draft dodger and AWOL weekend warrior, dresses up like a soldier and lands in a fucking jet so he’ll seem like “one of them” on TV. It was just like that celebrity stunt show where Vanilla Ice jumped a motorcycle, except this one is being paid for by our tax dollars. They said Bush had to go in a military jet because the carrier was too far at sea for a helicopter. But the next day they admitted that actually the helicopter would’ve worked better, and that they had had to slow down the ship and change its course to get a camera angle where you only saw water in the background, not the nearby San Diego coastline. The carrier had already been emptied of fighter jets but the White House requested they keep one of them there so it could be in the background during the speech. I know all presidents are phoneys but has there ever been one more phoney? The only thing that could’ve made the whole thing worthwhile would be if that famous Washington DC statue of Abraham Lincoln had come to life Dai Majin style, risen out of the water and started banging Bush over the head with his chair. (read the rest of this shit…)

May 4th, 2003 | No Comments »

House of 1000 Corpses

Well this is the long delayed horror movie from first time writer-director Robert Zombie. Let’s face it, that’s probaly not the dude’s real name. But I like it better than “McG.” Apparently Mr. Zombie is some sort of rock and/or roller who directs his own videos and draws his own album covers, and my guess is that he’s better at the artistical stuff than at the actual rock n roll.

Everything I know about Rob Zombie I know from this movie. I know that he likes brutal ’70s horror movies, in particular THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE but also probaly THE HILLS HAVE EYES. I know that he is fascinated by gaudy roadside attractions, tasteless t-shirt slogans, phoney sideshow curiosities, serial killer legends, spookhouse rides, scary rednecks, Bela Lugosi movies, Zacherly-style TV horror hosts, iconic Halloween decorations, oversized paper mache masks, gimmicky cereal boxes, old video footage faded to the point of abstraction, violent satanic rituals. He also has great taste in b-movie actors judging by the cast which includes Sid Haig (SPIDER BABY), Bill Moseley (TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE PART 2), Tom Towles (HENRY: PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER) and Karen Black (everything). If you cram all of those motifs and influences so that they barely fit into one movie, this is what you get. Or to put it another way, you take the first two texas chain saw movies, and you put an episode of Pee Wee’s playhouse in between em, then you smoosh it together like a peanut butter sandwich and keep it in your pocket for a while. like that imaginary sandwich the movie is kind of sticky and messy and doesn’t really work but it’s got a lot of good shit in there. I’m not sure why the hell you would put a sandwich in your pocket though, that’s kind of a weird analogy. what the hell man. (read the rest of this shit…)

April 19th, 2003 | 3 Comments »

Y tu mamá también

You probaly heard of this cute little Mexican sex movie that was nominated for some oscars. It’s really a sentimental story about two young friends on a road trip but it’s also about their sexual experimentation and it’s got alot of the NC-17 sex that’s so hot there were urban legends going around that the sex was all real. So naturally they hired the director to do the next henry porter movie.

The title translates to AND YOUR MOTHER TOO or, in other words, I FUCKED YOUR MOTHER. I FUCKED YOUR MOTHER is directed by Alfonso Cuaron who also directed A LITTLE PRINCESS, an extremely well made fable that’s probaly the real reason they hired him to do Henry Porter. That movie is about a little girl who defies her harsh boarding school by escaping into an imaginative story world. There’s ten headed monsters and all kinds of shit. Everything you want in a henry porter adventure. Shit I admit it I loved that movie, I just never reviewed it because I’m still embarassed by that time I reviewed FLY AWAY HOME. (read the rest of this shit…)

April 15th, 2003 | 1 Comment »

Head of State

Chris Rock is kind of a weird dude in my opinion. Remember when he was first on Saturday Night Live? The guy didn’t seem funny at all, and they would just bring him out whenever they needed a black guy. It took a while but eventually he started to get better material and he really broke out, and when he left the show people really started to realize what a smart guy he was. His standup specials are great, his Chris Rock Show was great and he produced that movie POOTIE TANG which is one of the more madly brilliant cult hits of the past such and such period of time.

But despite all this his movie career is only a level or two above David Spade’s. His heart is in the right place but he ends up making corny shit like CB4. When he tries for more credibility he instead ends up in a god damn Kevin Smith movie. I guess NURSE BETTY was okay but still, the guy is obviously capable of so much more. (read the rest of this shit…)

March 28th, 2003 | No Comments »

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