Hey, everyone. “Moriarty” here with some Rumblings From The Lab.
Vern rules. Here’s why:
Fellas –
As you know, last week I reviewed CUBE PART 2 and DRACULA PART 2. You know what that means: I’m right in the middle of a straight to video binge. The economy is gettin real bad, in my opinion, and it’s gonna get a whole lot worse when the bombs start dropping. It’s hard to justify paying 8 clams to go see some asshole in a red leather coat pretending he’s blind and can fly. I love you boys, I’d trust you with my life, I’d let my kids sleep over at your ranch, whatever. But for now I’m gonna have to hold off on trusting your recommendation of a movie that looks that silly. Maybe next week.
Anyway I think that’s a pretty good excuse for my quirky habit of digging through piles of video screeners hoping to find gold or at least some kind of shiny aluminum. Usually the best stuff I find is ridiculous straight to video sequels, but occasionally I find a GINGER SNAPS or an ED GEIN or a DOG SOLDIERS. A good low budget movie that for whatever reason didn’t get much of a release here in the unleaded states of america. (read the rest of this shit…)
Hey, everyone. “Moriarty” here with some Rumblings From The Lab.
You probaly haven’t heard of it but ALL THE REAL GIRLS is the new one from the young man who made GEORGE WASHINGTON. Maybe you never saw that one either, it was kinda weird because it wasn’t about President George Washington or peanut innovator George Washington Carver, it was about some kid. Maybe he grows up to be George Washington, I don’t know, I don’t get it. But it’s a unique and effective movie made by a young dude nobody ever heard of and somehow it got its own Criterion Collection dvd and many nominations for Independent Spirit Awards. Now the kid got the job of directing a movie of the book CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES, which people have wanted to do for years and years. We’ll see how that turns out, I think the kid can pull it off but who knows I only read half of the book. 
Somehow this week I ended up seeing two independent movies starring Kieran Culkin as a troubled rebel kid in a private school uniform. That’s just the way life is sometimes, I guess.
Vinnie Jones was the highlight of LOCK, STOCK, AND ETC. ETC., playing the shotgun carrying thug who brings his son with him on the job (SEE: theory of badass juxtaposition; Vern, author). He had a very convincing tough guy, take no shit presence, and I’ve enjoyed seeing him in motion pictures since then, even though most of the british crime pictures that have come my way have been self conscious garbage trying to imitate that earlier picture. I know alot of you liked SNATCH but, I mean, jesus people. Let’s have some standards, is all I’m saying, in my opinion.
Well geez, it’s not too often you get this with a movie writer, but apparently this Charlie Kaufman guy can do no wrong. Between the brilliant BEING JOHN MALKOVICH and ADAPTATION and the underrated HUMAN NATURE and now this… I mean really, what more could you ask for from a writer? There is no other non-director writer working who has been so consistently inventive and surprising and at the same time so personal. In fact there are few who have ever worked who could be in this same category. These are all movies made by skilled directors but it is always the writer’s voice that comes through.
I think it was my colleague in Badass Studies, Mr. Jeff McCloud, who first recommended MR. MAJESTYK to me a year or two ago. When he said that Charles Bronson played a watermelon farmer in it, I knew it was my type of movie. What better way to fulfill the criteria of the THEORY OF BADASS JUXTAPOSITION than to grow a field of watermelons? I mean I guess maybe if they were flowers it would seem more sensitive, but this business of a dude growing watermelons is definitely not the obvious choice for a Badass. Which is why it’s such a good choice.
Sometimes a movie comes along without much of a push, and without much commercial appeal, and not very many people go to see it or even hear about it. But most of those who do are pleased to find that it is an unusually good picture. They tell their friends about it, they write rave reviews of it. Then your connection in the home video industry, Pornographical Jerry, hooks you up with an advanced preview cassette of the picture and you give it a shot. And holy shit, it turns out to be the best movie you’ve seen in a long fucking time. Now you can’t wait to use your power and responsibility as an acclaimed Writer on the films of Cinema to promote the movie, so you try to time your review to come out on the day it is released so that all the little Outlaws out there will storm into their chain video stores and say look asshole, where is it? Where is Jesus’ Son fer cryin out loud, don’t give me that never heard of it look, this is a highly acclaimed movie. “Oh, you mean the one on Vern’s sight? Right over here, sir.” 
