"CATCH YOU FUCKERS AT A BAD TIME?"

Stealing Beauty

Well if you know what this movie is then I know what your thinking. How the fuck does a motherfucker like ol’ Vern end up watching a picture like Bernardo Bertolucci’s Stealing Beauty. Well the answer is the Bravo network. Ever since I saw The Getaway on Bravo a week or two ago I started watching this channel pretty regular. I think you know about inside the actors studio so I won’t mention it except to say, at the end, he always asks them what their favorite curse word is, and they either say fuck or more often motherfucker, and the audience always laughs like it was completely unexpected. Kind of like how everybody always laughed when arnold said “Whatyou talkin about Mr. Drummond?” even though for fuck’s sake we all knew the joke was coming, jesus let’s not pretend it snuck up behind us fer cryin out loud.

So anyway, Stealing Beauty is a picture about gorgeous 19 year old Lucy who comes to an equally gorgeous Italian villa where all the artists work and what not. This is like the prettiest god damn place you ever seen. The houses are huge and old fashioned, there are perfectly clean streams to swim in, plenty of nature and olive groves and beautiful wooden statues everywhere. I mean it’s like going camping, only in the garden of eden. Everyone there loves a laidback lifestyle, they appreciate the arts and the nature and beauty more than anything. It seems like none of them ever go to work, but they have huge houses and property and big parties with candles everywhere and yet they don’t come off like a bunch of soulless rich fucks. It takes place in the modern day but it wouldn’t have to. People ride bicycles and read books. Nobody watches TV and the only connection to the media or the outside world is an occasional call on the cell phone or a CD that Lucy plays. (read the rest of this shit…)

Raiders of the Lost Ark: The Adaptation

If you’re on the internet (and I’m betting you are), maybe you heard legends about it. Or if you know how to read, maybe you saw the article in Vanity Fair a while back. The story is these kids who, from ages 11 to 17, took upon themselves the monumental task of remaking that movie Raiders of the Lost Ark, which was popular at the time.

Their movie has all the same dialogue, and they pretty much faithfully re-created the whole god damn thing, with the one exception being the scene where the big bald guy gets chopped up in the propellor blade, because they decided it was too dangerous. They’re just kids, man, cut them some fucking slack. But they have everything else: jungles, caves, deserts, the giant boulder, real live snakes, a teenage Indiana dragged from a truck. And most of this was filmed in their basement, garage or backyard. A few times they had to be clever to be able to pull it off, so one plane chase was changed to a boat chase, and instead of a traitorous Nazi monkey on his shoulder, he carries a sieg-heiling weiner dog. But as the years went on and they got more on tape, they convinced more and more people they weren’t fucking around and they were able to shoot on a real boat and submarine. (read the rest of this shit…)

Derby

If you manage to find a video of this obscure 1971 documentary, you might think it’s gonna be a behind-the-scenes look at roller derby. Which is a phoney sport they used to have, kind of like pro wrestling, Harlem Globetrotters, American Gladiators or Olympic ice skating. What the sport was, I think, was people rolling around in a rink with rounded walls, then they knock each other over and start getting mad at each other and that type of shit.

What you really get though is a little slice o’ american culture, focusing on this one particular dude who decides to quit his job at the factory to pursue roller derby. He goes back stage to talk to one of the pros (you’re not sure if the filmatists set this meeting up or not) and then tells his wife he’s gonna do it, he’s gonna go to a school and train and give it a shot. And she says okay, if that’s what you want to do. She’s real supportive. (read the rest of this shit…)

Deranged

(a.k.a. Deranged – The Confessions of a Necrophile)

I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of a serial killer out of Wisconsin called Ed Gein. He is the most fucked up motherfucker that ever was fucked up. He is the original American Psycho as they would say on Entertainment Tonight. When they caught him he had a dead lady hanging in his shed cleaned out like a deer. He had a heart on his stove and all kinds of heads and skulls and chairs and clothes made out of human skin. He started out digging up graves and then started killing people, collecting their body parts, wearing them and possibly eating them. I mean jesus, I’m not making this up, but don’t read it if you’re eating – the dude had a box full of vaginas and he liked to dance around in the moonlight wearing a belt he made out of nipples. In my opinion, he had a problem with women.

Anway this fucker inspired alot of the most famous horror pictures, from Psycho to Texas Chainsaw to Hannibal Lecter and, I forget which other ones, possibly The Fly or 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea or one of those. But this picture Deranged is a more obscure one from 1978 which is based much more closely on the actual case. (read the rest of this shit…)

Silent Night, Deadly Night III: Better Watch Out!

Well I made a promise long ago and now I’m gonna prove what exactly ol’ Vern is made of. Ol’ Vern is made of honor. And he is made of his word. In other words he (i.e. yours truly) is a man of his word, and a man of honor. So I watched the SILENT NIGHT DEADLY NIGHT sequel directed by Monte Hellman.

As you know if you read alot of the crap I Write here on this sight, I do believe the french theory of the auteur, that they made up. What it is is that if you like movies like COCKFIGHTER and TWO LANE BLACKTOP by Monte Hellman then that means you gotta watch his other movies, even if they’re – no, especially if they’re – Silent Night Deadly Night sequels. (read the rest of this shit…)

The Fifth Element

The Fifth Element is your usual Bruce Willis movie that starts out in Egypt in 1934 and ends up in some fancy space hotel in 2334 with this blue skinned space opera lady singing opera and then busting off dance moves. Bruce is introduced down on his luck, pretty much like in the Die Hards – his wife left him, he’s trying to quit smoking, his mom won’t stop hassling him and he’s “5 points away” from losing his job as a flying cab driver in space age New York.

In fact this is a lot like a Die Hard movie except in a cartoony comic book space world instead of a building. Instead of talking to a cop on a walkie talkie, he just talks to his mom on the phone, and instead of terrorists there’s this big ball of fire hurtling toward the earth that turns light to dark, life to death, sometimes has a giant skull for a face, eats missiles and sattelites, and calls himself Mr. Shadow during phone calls. (read the rest of this shit…)

Silent Night, Deadly Night and Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2

Well the Christmas season is upon us and what better way to celebrate Christmas than to put ornaments on a tree and put presents under it? I don’t know but while we ponder that let’s also talk about evil Santa movies.

Silent Night Deadly Night is a mid-level entry in the holiday-themed slasher movie genre. It’s not a classic like Halloween but then again it’s not completely dumb like the Leprechaun pictures or Martin Luther King, Jr. Day Massacre which is not a real movie but would probaly be pretty stupid, in my opinion. Unless they got the right director but even then, I don’t know about that premise. (read the rest of this shit…)

Fear, Anxiety & Depression

Remember that motherfucker that made Happiness? His name is Todd Solondz and you might think he’s some hipster that came out of nowhere with 1996’s Welcome to the Dollhouse and then hit it big when he was Outlaw enough to refuse to cut Happiness, brought it to a different distributor who would release it unrated or whatever. Well, that’s what I thought but then I found out about this, his first picture from 1989, one year after the release of Die Hard.

And I gotta be honest this movie is a piece of shit. It is only worth watching as a curiosity for fans of the other two Solondz works. What is weird is it has all his themes of loneliness, hopelessness etc. except in the context of a more goofy mainstream comedy. Solondz is actually the star of the picture playing a struggling playwriter named Ira. And this Solondz, I mean to be frankly honest, this guy is what they call a nerd. I mean seriously. He’s a skinny, scraggly haired, overbited weirdo with gigantic glasses, a squeaky, whiny voice and weird affectations. He would be right at home in one of his other movies. But here he is cast as a Woody Allen type stuttering neurotic Writer character. And he is in a functional lifestyle with successful friends, he even goes on dates and gets laid. (read the rest of this shit…)

5 Million Years to Earth

This is a science fiction picture from the Hammer Studios over there in Britain, and you know what that means: I saw it on American Movie Classics. The hero of this story is a dude by the name of Quatermass who apparently stars in a bunch of movies and TV shows over there like Quatermass and the Pit, The Quatermass Experiment etc. No it’s not one of those weird shot on video shows they do marathons of on PBS when they need money. You’re thinking of dr. who and the red dwarf. What the FUCK is up with these college dudes that think that shit is funny? You know how they repeat the jokes in a phoney british accent I hate that man. Anyway I wouldn’t try to pull that shit on you don’t worry this is a whole different thing here, this Quatermass.

Quatermass is a college professor looking dude with the tweed suit and vest, bow tie and beard. He is not an action hero, everything he does is completely with the brains, I mean this guy is a real rocket scientist. And by rocket scientist I mean he is the type of scientist who studies rockets. (read the rest of this shit…)

Carny

A little while back I saw a real good documentary called DERBY which on the surface was about a guy trying to become a professional roller derby artist but really was about how he was cheating on his wife and there was a dude with no shirt on reading playboys, and other weird stuff. I don’t know how to describe it man read that review if that’s what you’re interested in. get off my fuckin back, jack.

Anyway there’s a reason I bring this up, it has to do with this review also. The director of that picture was Robert Kaylor, who according to amazon.com presents the internet movie database only did three other movies, and of those three this here CARNY is the only one in print. So I watched it. (read the rest of this shit…)