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(07/27/06 4:00am)
M. Night Shyamalan is one pretentious son of a bitch, and his latest film, "Lady in the Water," sucks.\nThere, I said it. \nThat was hard for me. I am, admittedly, an M Night Shyamalaniac. I thought "The Sixth Sense" was entertaining. I enjoyed "Unbreakable" and "Signs." I even thought "The Village" was pretty boss. \nBut sometimes things go too far. You trust someone to make a decent film, you welcome the guy into your home and readily defend his more questionable titles to people you assume are small-minded assholes. And the next thing you know there's money missing from the dresser and your daughter's knocked up; your trust has been abused. \nSo, on to the informative back-story. The concept for "Lady in the Water" was apparently born out of a bedtime story Shyamalan made up for his kids. He riffed extensively on it, tried to pitch it to Disney (the studio that produced all of his other movies), got pissed when they recognized it as a bad film option and took it to Warner Brothers.\nI'm not saying that "Lady in the Water" wouldn't make a good bedtime story, but you have to consider your audience. You could probably read tax code to your children at night to make them fall asleep, because they're more interested in your presence and company. The average viewer, on the other hand, doesn't want to snuggle with Shyamalan, and expects him to at least try to fill the gaping plot holes left in his imagination. \nHe doesn't. \nInstead, he spent a lot of money to make a film about a sea nymph (Bryce Dallas Howard) who shows up in Paul Giamatti's apartment building pool. The absurd folklore built up around her about wolf demons (gotta have an antagonist) and law-keeping apes roughly amounts to some half-baked bullshit about self worth sprinkled with fleeting references to progressive politics, and it gets old real quick.\nAnd just in case you're bored and disappointed with "Lady in the Water" before it's over, Shyamalan actually cast himself in a supporting role as a writer whose work won't be appreciated until he's passed on. I'm dead fucking serious. Maybe he wrote and added himself at the last minute as a get-out-of-jail-free card so popular opinion and common sense would lay off his piss-poor movie. Or maybe self-vindication is something he's into. \nAnyway, I trusted you, Night. I was on board. But apparently, all of my support and praise went right to your head, and you shat out something that I'm convinced will contend for the title of "biggest disappointment of the year." \n"Lady in the Water" sucks. And M Night Shyamalan is a pretentious son of a bitch. Don't see it.
(07/26/06 7:53pm)
M. Night Shyamalan is one pretentious son of a bitch, and his latest film, "Lady in the Water," sucks.\nThere, I said it. \nThat was hard for me. I am, admittedly, an M Night Shyamalaniac. I thought "The Sixth Sense" was entertaining. I enjoyed "Unbreakable" and "Signs." I even thought "The Village" was pretty boss. \nBut sometimes things go too far. You trust someone to make a decent film, you welcome the guy into your home and readily defend his more questionable titles to people you assume are small-minded assholes. And the next thing you know there's money missing from the dresser and your daughter's knocked up; your trust has been abused. \nSo, on to the informative back-story. The concept for "Lady in the Water" was apparently born out of a bedtime story Shyamalan made up for his kids. He riffed extensively on it, tried to pitch it to Disney (the studio that produced all of his other movies), got pissed when they recognized it as a bad film option and took it to Warner Brothers.\nI'm not saying that "Lady in the Water" wouldn't make a good bedtime story, but you have to consider your audience. You could probably read tax code to your children at night to make them fall asleep, because they're more interested in your presence and company. The average viewer, on the other hand, doesn't want to snuggle with Shyamalan, and expects him to at least try to fill the gaping plot holes left in his imagination. \nHe doesn't. \nInstead, he spent a lot of money to make a film about a sea nymph (Bryce Dallas Howard) who shows up in Paul Giamatti's apartment building pool. The absurd folklore built up around her about wolf demons (gotta have an antagonist) and law-keeping apes roughly amounts to some half-baked bullshit about self worth sprinkled with fleeting references to progressive politics, and it gets old real quick.\nAnd just in case you're bored and disappointed with "Lady in the Water" before it's over, Shyamalan actually cast himself in a supporting role as a writer whose work won't be appreciated until he's passed on. I'm dead fucking serious. Maybe he wrote and added himself at the last minute as a get-out-of-jail-free card so popular opinion and common sense would lay off his piss-poor movie. Or maybe self-vindication is something he's into. \nAnyway, I trusted you, Night. I was on board. But apparently, all of my support and praise went right to your head, and you shat out something that I'm convinced will contend for the title of "biggest disappointment of the year." \n"Lady in the Water" sucks. And M Night Shyamalan is a pretentious son of a bitch. Don't see it.
(06/29/06 4:00am)
"Married… with Children," arguably the flagship show of the Fox network until its cancellation in 1997, has just released its fifth season on DVD. And that, friends, is a lot of television to sit through.\nAs a show, it's great. The Bundys didn't just cater to the lowest common denominator, they were the lowest common denominator, and their decade-long run celebrated the worst the American family has to offer: the broken, pessimistic and sexist father, the lazy, do-nothing wife, the whorish blonde daughter and the sex-starved nerd of a son. It was trashy, lewd, and its working title was "Not the Cosbys." It was so detested by its critics that it was the subject of boycotts. It would make shows like "Yes, Dear" and "Everybody love Raymond" cry before it took their lunch money.\nAs a DVD, "Married … with Children" sucks. Or the fifth season does, anyway. There's nothing on the discs besides the episodes themselves, and to the kind of jerk who would spend 30 dollars on a boxed set of TV episodes, that's a spectacular failure. No interviews, no behind-the-scenes, no making-of documentary. Nothing. \nTry and imagine the surprise of the unemployed, thirty-something bachelor sitting on a couch in his mom's basement when he finds out there isn't even a Christina Applegate filmography section. \n"Rage" is probably the right word.\nHe would have a point. For the price they're asking, they could have included something with the set, but beyond the packaging there isn't anything to be had. Even the opening theme song, the instantly-recognized "Love and Marriage" sung by the Chairman has been changed, assumedly because of copyright issues; the credits roll to a studio band playing a markedly dissimilar piece.\nSo there really isn't much to talk about for the DVD. If you're thinking of buying this you'll have to purchase it on the episodes alone, and that can be a tall order for anyone who isn't a big fan of the series. That's a shame. Nine years after it went off the air, "Married… with Children" is still recognizable and is shown in syndication on cable. It's defined the careers of those who acted on it. The show had a diehard fan base that would probably have loved a couple of crew commentaries, and I find it hard to believe that the production couldn't come up with anything. Since they didn't, it's hard to recommend this to anyone. Skip it.
(06/29/06 1:13am)
"Married… with Children," arguably the flagship show of the Fox network until its cancellation in 1997, has just released its fifth season on DVD. And that, friends, is a lot of television to sit through.\nAs a show, it's great. The Bundys didn't just cater to the lowest common denominator, they were the lowest common denominator, and their decade-long run celebrated the worst the American family has to offer: the broken, pessimistic and sexist father, the lazy, do-nothing wife, the whorish blonde daughter and the sex-starved nerd of a son. It was trashy, lewd, and its working title was "Not the Cosbys." It was so detested by its critics that it was the subject of boycotts. It would make shows like "Yes, Dear" and "Everybody love Raymond" cry before it took their lunch money.\nAs a DVD, "Married … with Children" sucks. Or the fifth season does, anyway. There's nothing on the discs besides the episodes themselves, and to the kind of jerk who would spend 30 dollars on a boxed set of TV episodes, that's a spectacular failure. No interviews, no behind-the-scenes, no making-of documentary. Nothing. \nTry and imagine the surprise of the unemployed, thirty-something bachelor sitting on a couch in his mom's basement when he finds out there isn't even a Christina Applegate filmography section. \n"Rage" is probably the right word.\nHe would have a point. For the price they're asking, they could have included something with the set, but beyond the packaging there isn't anything to be had. Even the opening theme song, the instantly-recognized "Love and Marriage" sung by the Chairman has been changed, assumedly because of copyright issues; the credits roll to a studio band playing a markedly dissimilar piece.\nSo there really isn't much to talk about for the DVD. If you're thinking of buying this you'll have to purchase it on the episodes alone, and that can be a tall order for anyone who isn't a big fan of the series. That's a shame. Nine years after it went off the air, "Married… with Children" is still recognizable and is shown in syndication on cable. It's defined the careers of those who acted on it. The show had a diehard fan base that would probably have loved a couple of crew commentaries, and I find it hard to believe that the production couldn't come up with anything. Since they didn't, it's hard to recommend this to anyone. Skip it.
(06/22/06 4:00am)
Before anyone anywhere passes judgment on "Nacho Libre," they would do well to keep in mind that it was co-produced by Nickelodeon. That means it's for kids. I'm well aware.\nAlright. Every once in a while, an actor comes around who can singularly take a shitty movie and carry it through on his back. Jack Black is one of those actors.\n"Nacho Libre" is the man's latest vehicle, and it isn't very good. But Black is, and therefore it isn't a complete waste of time to those of us who aren't over 12. Kind of like when you'd get a Superball in the bottom of a box of Cheerios. The cereal is bland and tasteless, but damn it if that ball ain't but fun!\nSee, "Nacho Libre" would be the box of Cheerios. And that would make Black the superball.\nAre you following me?\nThe film is written by the married Jared and Jerusha Hess and directed by the former. They didn't fight very hard to distance themselves from their absurd and polarizing "Napoleon Dynamite," a film that followed a socially and physically awkward teenager through a couple weeks at high school. The plot didn't matter very much, but the character did. Matter of fact, that movie was all character. "Napoleon Dynamite" is nothing without Napoleon.\nThat same truth holds true for "Nacho Libre." I could tell you what happens in its 90 minutes, but I'd just be burning space. So to be blunt: Black plays the titular Nacho, a monk in a Mexican monastery and orphanage who hides a lifelong love of luchadores. In order to score more bank for the monastery's groceries, he starts entering into amateur wrestling matches for prize money. And that gives us more than enough time to watch Black make an ass out of himself in light-blue spandex.\nBlack has absolutely no qualms about displaying his plus-sized body prominently. He prances, soars, rolls, farts and sports the sickest perm I've ever seen, and children -- remember the audience here -- will love him for it. Like a clown at a six-year-old's birthday party, he's fascinating, slightly unnerving and nearly impossible to dislike.\nHowever, that isn't to say that "Nacho" doesn't have its problems. The film could also be described as a feature-length riff on Dynamite's Pedro character; sleepy-eyed Latinos in absurd situations. You're laughing at the accents and their bean jokes and the backwater naivety, and for a second it might cross your mind what exactly you're laughing at. But what is occurring is so obviously good-natured that it'll erase any doubt. The movie isn't so much about Mexican luchadores as it is about Jack Black and his presence. The man himself is the event.\nSo please, before you go and see "Nacho Libre" and get pissed that it meanders, or isn't witty or sarcastic or bitter or making a statement, remember that the grade-schooler in the seat next to you thought it was hilarious. That's an accomplishment in itself. Jack Black for president.
(06/22/06 4:00am)
I can't tell you exactly what's missing from the new Futureheads album, News and Tributes. But what I will say is that it lacks pop sensibility; or more importantly, enough of it.\nThere was something about their self-titled first release that made it work. It wouldn't have been fair to call it gimmicky, even if they were the resurrection of Rockapella with feedback and off-beats. The Futureheads knew how to write a hook, and they had a good one in almost every song. \nI've listened to News and Tributes about a dozen times over the last few days, and it's got a lot of the same. Everything is tight. They still make frequent stops in the ruckus to harmonize at oddly appropriate times. And they still aren't interested in maintaining a four-beat tempo. But, like every band should, they've attempted to grow and expand on their sound. And all I'm saying, man, is that they went the wrong way, and ended up sounding gloomy. Lots of minor keys. Still works, but not as well.\nThe album starts out with the same pace as its predecessor, but the anthemic "Yes/No" is markedly dissimilar than 2003's "A to B" … because this time around, the Futureheads have discovered the concept of echo. From there, they move onto "Cope," which is just as loud but twice as angry as anything you've heard them play before. \nAfter "Skip to the End" and "Fallout" prove to be more throwaway than noteworthy, the band regains its pace with "Burnt," which is heavy on the surf guitar. You can almost hear Frank Black babbling incoherently on "Trompe le Monde."\nThe following title track would have fit right in on the first album had the band been in a state of depression. If I may wax poetic, it reminds me of a morning bell under gray skies and the promise of a shitty day on an assembly line. And it doesn't segue into white-noise cacophony of "The Return of the Berserker" at all. \nAnd right about here you'll forget what you're listening to. You'll drift listlessly for a few tracks, disappointed that a band that has so much potential could miss so hard. And then, you come to "Favours for Favours" to save you from an energy-draining sophomore attempt. By far the best track on the album, even if it may be the most user-friendly and radio-ready, its sing-along and uplifting. And that is the Futureheads at their best. \nI wouldn't call News and Tributes misguided, because it's apparent the band knows what it's doing. I would definitely, though, call it a misfire. You could do worse by picking this up, but you could definitely do better.
(06/21/06 8:19pm)
I can't tell you exactly what's missing from the new Futureheads album, News and Tributes. But what I will say is that it lacks pop sensibility; or more importantly, enough of it.\nThere was something about their self-titled first release that made it work. It wouldn't have been fair to call it gimmicky, even if they were the resurrection of Rockapella with feedback and off-beats. The Futureheads knew how to write a hook, and they had a good one in almost every song. \nI've listened to News and Tributes about a dozen times over the last few days, and it's got a lot of the same. Everything is tight. They still make frequent stops in the ruckus to harmonize at oddly appropriate times. And they still aren't interested in maintaining a four-beat tempo. But, like every band should, they've attempted to grow and expand on their sound. And all I'm saying, man, is that they went the wrong way, and ended up sounding gloomy. Lots of minor keys. Still works, but not as well.\nThe album starts out with the same pace as its predecessor, but the anthemic "Yes/No" is markedly dissimilar than 2003's "A to B" … because this time around, the Futureheads have discovered the concept of echo. From there, they move onto "Cope," which is just as loud but twice as angry as anything you've heard them play before. \nAfter "Skip to the End" and "Fallout" prove to be more throwaway than noteworthy, the band regains its pace with "Burnt," which is heavy on the surf guitar. You can almost hear Frank Black babbling incoherently on "Trompe le Monde."\nThe following title track would have fit right in on the first album had the band been in a state of depression. If I may wax poetic, it reminds me of a morning bell under gray skies and the promise of a shitty day on an assembly line. And it doesn't segue into white-noise cacophony of "The Return of the Berserker" at all. \nAnd right about here you'll forget what you're listening to. You'll drift listlessly for a few tracks, disappointed that a band that has so much potential could miss so hard. And then, you come to "Favours for Favours" to save you from an energy-draining sophomore attempt. By far the best track on the album, even if it may be the most user-friendly and radio-ready, its sing-along and uplifting. And that is the Futureheads at their best. \nI wouldn't call News and Tributes misguided, because it's apparent the band knows what it's doing. I would definitely, though, call it a misfire. You could do worse by picking this up, but you could definitely do better.
(06/21/06 8:10pm)
Before anyone anywhere passes judgment on "Nacho Libre," they would do well to keep in mind that it was co-produced by Nickelodeon. That means it's for kids. I'm well aware.\nAlright. Every once in a while, an actor comes around who can singularly take a shitty movie and carry it through on his back. Jack Black is one of those actors.\n"Nacho Libre" is the man's latest vehicle, and it isn't very good. But Black is, and therefore it isn't a complete waste of time to those of us who aren't over 12. Kind of like when you'd get a Superball in the bottom of a box of Cheerios. The cereal is bland and tasteless, but damn it if that ball ain't but fun!\nSee, "Nacho Libre" would be the box of Cheerios. And that would make Black the superball.\nAre you following me?\nThe film is written by the married Jared and Jerusha Hess and directed by the former. They didn't fight very hard to distance themselves from their absurd and polarizing "Napoleon Dynamite," a film that followed a socially and physically awkward teenager through a couple weeks at high school. The plot didn't matter very much, but the character did. Matter of fact, that movie was all character. "Napoleon Dynamite" is nothing without Napoleon.\nThat same truth holds true for "Nacho Libre." I could tell you what happens in its 90 minutes, but I'd just be burning space. So to be blunt: Black plays the titular Nacho, a monk in a Mexican monastery and orphanage who hides a lifelong love of luchadores. In order to score more bank for the monastery's groceries, he starts entering into amateur wrestling matches for prize money. And that gives us more than enough time to watch Black make an ass out of himself in light-blue spandex.\nBlack has absolutely no qualms about displaying his plus-sized body prominently. He prances, soars, rolls, farts and sports the sickest perm I've ever seen, and children -- remember the audience here -- will love him for it. Like a clown at a six-year-old's birthday party, he's fascinating, slightly unnerving and nearly impossible to dislike.\nHowever, that isn't to say that "Nacho" doesn't have its problems. The film could also be described as a feature-length riff on Dynamite's Pedro character; sleepy-eyed Latinos in absurd situations. You're laughing at the accents and their bean jokes and the backwater naivety, and for a second it might cross your mind what exactly you're laughing at. But what is occurring is so obviously good-natured that it'll erase any doubt. The movie isn't so much about Mexican luchadores as it is about Jack Black and his presence. The man himself is the event.\nSo please, before you go and see "Nacho Libre" and get pissed that it meanders, or isn't witty or sarcastic or bitter or making a statement, remember that the grade-schooler in the seat next to you thought it was hilarious. That's an accomplishment in itself. Jack Black for president.
(06/15/06 4:00am)
Raise your hand if you'd like to see Mia Farrow get run over by a car. Oh, do I have a movie for you. Even if it fails in everything else, "The Omen" still knows how to kill off its characters.\nAnd to be honest, it doesn't fail outright. It's just, you know, bland.\nI've never been impressed with this franchise of films, and not surprisingly, this remake of the widely-acknowledged 1976 horror classic of the same name didn't strike me either. Something was missing from the first version. This take of "The Omen" has everything you'd expect it to have: malevolent children, religious iconography, Mia Farrow's violent death. But it suffers from the same problems the original did. It doesn't make us believe the characters move with purpose, and without that, it's just treading water, moving us from scene to occasionally-gruesome scene. \nApparently, a lot of people don't see it that way, or were amused by the film's 6-6-06 release date; the show I went to sold out and I ended up with my ass in a booster seat in the back of the theatre. But ticket sales do not a good movie make. Shit, Tom Cruise sells tickets. And he sucks.\nBut let's stay focused. Let's talk specifics. Let's talk direction. John Moore's years of making commercials have paid off, and as such, his movie looks good. His actors, specifically Liev Schreiber and Julia Stiles, handle the material they're provided. They look competently stunned when one or another of them dies at the hands of the devil, and appear sufficiently crazy (seriously, Mia Farrow vs. the car is hilarious) when necessary. However, what they're provided with is never very good. There isn't enough development in the characters to truly buy what Moore is trying to sell. And try as it might, Farrow's satanic freak-out isn't unintentionally funny enough to enjoy "The Omen" on laughs alone. \nWhat you're left with then are the paced scenes of violence. Character actor Pete Postlethwaite is introduced to the business end of a heavy steel rod, and David Thewlis shows us what a gaping neck wound looks like. And, in case I haven't mentioned it yet, Mia Farrow gets run over by a car. But it's all just traveling tired ground. "The Omen" was a flawed movie when it came out 30 years ago, and they didn't do anything to fix it the second time around. So skip it, or just watch the old one on video. Or pay eight dollars to watch Mia Farrow get hit by a car. It's a toss-up.
(06/14/06 8:24pm)
Raise your hand if you'd like to see Mia Farrow get run over by a car. Oh, do I have a movie for you. Even if it fails in everything else, "The Omen" still knows how to kill off its characters.\nAnd to be honest, it doesn't fail outright. It's just, you know, bland.\nI've never been impressed with this franchise of films, and not surprisingly, this remake of the widely-acknowledged 1976 horror classic of the same name didn't strike me either. Something was missing from the first version. This take of "The Omen" has everything you'd expect it to have: malevolent children, religious iconography, Mia Farrow's violent death. But it suffers from the same problems the original did. It doesn't make us believe the characters move with purpose, and without that, it's just treading water, moving us from scene to occasionally-gruesome scene. \nApparently, a lot of people don't see it that way, or were amused by the film's 6-6-06 release date; the show I went to sold out and I ended up with my ass in a booster seat in the back of the theatre. But ticket sales do not a good movie make. Shit, Tom Cruise sells tickets. And he sucks.\nBut let's stay focused. Let's talk specifics. Let's talk direction. John Moore's years of making commercials have paid off, and as such, his movie looks good. His actors, specifically Liev Schreiber and Julia Stiles, handle the material they're provided. They look competently stunned when one or another of them dies at the hands of the devil, and appear sufficiently crazy (seriously, Mia Farrow vs. the car is hilarious) when necessary. However, what they're provided with is never very good. There isn't enough development in the characters to truly buy what Moore is trying to sell. And try as it might, Farrow's satanic freak-out isn't unintentionally funny enough to enjoy "The Omen" on laughs alone. \nWhat you're left with then are the paced scenes of violence. Character actor Pete Postlethwaite is introduced to the business end of a heavy steel rod, and David Thewlis shows us what a gaping neck wound looks like. And, in case I haven't mentioned it yet, Mia Farrow gets run over by a car. But it's all just traveling tired ground. "The Omen" was a flawed movie when it came out 30 years ago, and they didn't do anything to fix it the second time around. So skip it, or just watch the old one on video. Or pay eight dollars to watch Mia Farrow get hit by a car. It's a toss-up.
(05/18/06 4:00am)
I don't understand our preoccupation with disaster movies. "Twister." "The Core." "Deep Impact." It's always the same; lots of people are killed or threatened by a hostile physical environment. And though you can basically interchange the titles for these movies, and they still manage to get made and sell tickets.\nWith that in mind, I'm not going to bother ripping apart a movie that's about an escape from an overturned cruise ship. There's no point in acknowledging that it's a remake of a 1972 film; that just points out that stupidity spans decades in the film industry. \nInstead, I'm going to accept a movie like "Poseidon" for what it is - idiotic - and I'm going to move on, cause I'm OK with that.\n"Poseidon" is directed by Wolfgang Petersen, a man whose career has been a pendulum swing between sucks and awesome. Yeah, he made "Das Boot," but he also made "The Perfect Storm" and "Troy."\nHis current film falls right in the middle. The back-story is nonexistent and the acting is mailed in -- flipping the ship over is explained by 30 seconds of monologue about a "deadly rogue wave" -- but again, you knew it was going to be like this.\nAnd its better that way.Anyone who will buy a ticket to something like this isn't interested in why Kurt Russell is the de facto leader of the surviving passengers it doesn't matter that he was a hero firefighter and the former mayor of New York; the film says so, so he just is. And again, I couldn't care less about Richard Dreyfuss' cheating homosexual lover, or if lone-wolf Josh Lucas is a cardshark with a heart of gold. What evens "Poseidon" out and makes it worth watching is its chaos. Its disaster. I mean, come on. The fucking movie is about an upside-down cruise ship that's sinking into the ocean. It's pretty easy to make that marginally entertaining, so enough with the talk and get to ship-flipping.\nPetersen recognizes this, keeps the bullshit to a minimum, and gets right to the action. \nPretty soon, that rogue wave catches an amazingly inept ship's crew completely off-guard, and everything is turned on its head. Kind of like in bizarro-world.\nWhen somebody dies - and the movie doesn't go long without that happening because almost everybody does - they die hard. You don't just fall down an elevator shaft in "Poseidon," your dumb ass falls, gets impaled by metal spikes and is sandwiched by the elevator car too. You don't just slip off of wreckage to fall hundreds of feet into jagged furniture, you also get totally rocked by a free-falling engine roughly the size of a Volkswagen Bus. Spoiler: that's how Kevin Dillon dies. He sucks, so you'll cheer.\nThese scenes are ridiculous and awesome at the same time, and thankfully, there are a lot of them. I'm not going to warn anyone to stay away from this film; you know what it is, and you know what you'll be getting yourself into. It's retarded, mindless drivel that plays to the moron in all of us but is still marginally fun. If you want to turn your brain off for an hour and a half and don't have any pot handy, go see "Poseidon," because there have been worse summer blockbusters.
(05/17/06 11:09pm)
I don't understand our preoccupation with disaster movies. "Twister." "The Core." "Deep Impact." It's always the same; lots of people are killed or threatened by a hostile physical environment. And though you can basically interchange the titles for these movies, and they still manage to get made and sell tickets.\nWith that in mind, I'm not going to bother ripping apart a movie that's about an escape from an overturned cruise ship. There's no point in acknowledging that it's a remake of a 1972 film; that just points out that stupidity spans decades in the film industry. \nInstead, I'm going to accept a movie like "Poseidon" for what it is - idiotic - and I'm going to move on, cause I'm OK with that.\n"Poseidon" is directed by Wolfgang Petersen, a man whose career has been a pendulum swing between sucks and awesome. Yeah, he made "Das Boot," but he also made "The Perfect Storm" and "Troy."\nHis current film falls right in the middle. The back-story is nonexistent and the acting is mailed in -- flipping the ship over is explained by 30 seconds of monologue about a "deadly rogue wave" -- but again, you knew it was going to be like this.\nAnd its better that way.Anyone who will buy a ticket to something like this isn't interested in why Kurt Russell is the de facto leader of the surviving passengers it doesn't matter that he was a hero firefighter and the former mayor of New York; the film says so, so he just is. And again, I couldn't care less about Richard Dreyfuss' cheating homosexual lover, or if lone-wolf Josh Lucas is a cardshark with a heart of gold. What evens "Poseidon" out and makes it worth watching is its chaos. Its disaster. I mean, come on. The fucking movie is about an upside-down cruise ship that's sinking into the ocean. It's pretty easy to make that marginally entertaining, so enough with the talk and get to ship-flipping.\nPetersen recognizes this, keeps the bullshit to a minimum, and gets right to the action. \nPretty soon, that rogue wave catches an amazingly inept ship's crew completely off-guard, and everything is turned on its head. Kind of like in bizarro-world.\nWhen somebody dies - and the movie doesn't go long without that happening because almost everybody does - they die hard. You don't just fall down an elevator shaft in "Poseidon," your dumb ass falls, gets impaled by metal spikes and is sandwiched by the elevator car too. You don't just slip off of wreckage to fall hundreds of feet into jagged furniture, you also get totally rocked by a free-falling engine roughly the size of a Volkswagen Bus. Spoiler: that's how Kevin Dillon dies. He sucks, so you'll cheer.\nThese scenes are ridiculous and awesome at the same time, and thankfully, there are a lot of them. I'm not going to warn anyone to stay away from this film; you know what it is, and you know what you'll be getting yourself into. It's retarded, mindless drivel that plays to the moron in all of us but is still marginally fun. If you want to turn your brain off for an hour and a half and don't have any pot handy, go see "Poseidon," because there have been worse summer blockbusters.
(04/24/06 4:32am)
While I was so drunk that I thought ordering the "Italian Night Club" at Jimmy John's was a good idea this weekend, Chinese President Hu Jintao was stateside, posing for the camera with President Bush and American business leaders. You were probably drunk, too. So what did you miss?\nI sobered up and read about his visit for you, but there was really nothing to it. Hu was in the United States for all of four days, one of which he spent with Bill Gates in Seattle touring a Boeing factory. They gave him a very nice baseball hat.\nThen, Hu got on an airplane and went to Washington to meet Bush, where they said nice things to each other, made sure not to make themselves uncomfortable and listened to a bluegrass band. They don't have many of those in China.\nAfter that, Hu got back on his airplane and went to Yale, where he donated books to the university library and gave a speech to a "packed audience," according the school's newspaper. Well, jeez, I'd hope so. If the president of China were coming to my house, I'd sell tickets.\nIt all went well. Except for those unfortunate, uncomfortable minutes on the White House lawn, where someone screwed up and gave Wen Yi Wang a press pass. She stood on a platform on the other side of the fence, and made a scene about the Chinese government's brutal crackdown on the Falun Gong movement. A "forced labor for reeducation" kind of brutal.\nIt wasn't good. Hu started to sweat and shift weight back and forth from one foot to another, like he gets when he needs a bathroom break and doesn't want to tell anybody -- you just know something's wrong. \nBut reason and civility were restored and the Secret Service grabbed Wang and hauled her out of vocal range. The U.S. government is charging her with harassing a foreign official, a federal misdemeanor that can cost you five grand and a six-month stay in the clink. \nI always miss the bigger picture, so I'm going to talk my way through it: This was Chairman Hu's first visit to the United States, and there were massive economic and trade issues at stake. China is quickly emerging as a rival to American influence throughout the world, and things needed to be addressed. They were obviously planning to address China's documented list of human rights abuses later so Wang needed to shut her mouth. \nThat must be it. She spoke out of turn.\nThe Chinese government puts dissidents in labor camps, and the American government puts Falun Gong activists in federal prison for reminding the rest of the world that China does things like that.\nThis must have been a one-time thing because America doesn't pander to top-down dictators becasue that's what we hear in State of the Union addresses and presidential campaigns. But while Bush was listening to bluegrass with Hu, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice met with President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo of Equatorial Guinea, whom she called "a good friend." The man rounded out Parade Magazine's annual "World's 10 Worst Dictators" list. State-run radio in his oil-rich country has declared him God.\nHu looked nice in his Boeing hat.
(04/20/06 9:24pm)
Ah, big tobacco. Every year its products contribute to a death toll that would make a regional conflict proud. Kills more than alcohol and guns combined. Loved the world over by its many consumers. \nAll the while, it remains a truly vilified corner of the market. It's an easy target. I mean, come on, man. It's big tobacco! You can't smoke in bars in New York anymore (let alone Bloomington). There's massive counter-advertising campaigns aimed at it. The government demands a Surgeon General's warning to be placed on every box.\nBut somehow, it survives. Still sells a lot of cigarettes. And this is due, in no small part, to people like Nick Naylor (Aaron Eckhart), big tobacco lobbyist and the fastest, smoothest motherfucker you've ever met. He talks like a divine wind. You won't even know what you're arguing about by the time he gets through with you.\nWhat's both funny and horribly depressing is this is an apparently semi-serious look at the way Washington works. Everyone is full of shit, everyone speaks in circles, everyone has an agenda. The great thing about "Thank You for Smoking" is it doesn't cut corners and focus on only cigarettes. This isn't another smarmy www.thetruth.com TV spot. Everyone gets it, equally.\nThe film achieves this by following Eckhart's lobbyist through a series of interactions with just the sort of characters you'd think would populate Washington's power circles -- who are fleshed out by a great supporting cast. You got J.K. Simmons who plays Eckhart's hard-charging Vietnam vet boss. William H. Macy plays the kind of progressive-environmentalist senator that makes about 60 percent of America cringe. Robert Duvall (greatest actor of our time) plays a julep-sipping tobacco tycoon, Rob Lowe is hysterical as a Hollywood poweragent with a flair for Asian design and Tom Cruise's baby mama (Katie Holmes) plays a journalist writing a profile piece on our main character. Toss in Maria Bello and David Koechner as equally despised mouthpieces for the liquor and gun lobbies and Sam Elliot as the cancer-ridden original Marlboro man, and you've got plenty of space for witty dialogue. With such a group of actors, the movie lies in the hands of its writers. Do they screw it up?\nNo. First-time director Jason Reitman (son of Ivan, the guy who directed "Ghostbusters") and friends do it right. It's funny, over in an hour and a half and has a halfway decent message about personal responsibility -- there is credence to the idea that if you smoke cigarettes in this modern age, you know what you're getting yourself into -- feigning ignorance to the dangers of smoking will only get you so far. \nSo yeah, man. Good movie. Check it out.
(04/20/06 4:00am)
Ah, big tobacco. Every year its products contribute to a death toll that would make a regional conflict proud. Kills more than alcohol and guns combined. Loved the world over by its many consumers. \nAll the while, it remains a truly vilified corner of the market. It's an easy target. I mean, come on, man. It's big tobacco! You can't smoke in bars in New York anymore (let alone Bloomington). There's massive counter-advertising campaigns aimed at it. The government demands a Surgeon General's warning to be placed on every box.\nBut somehow, it survives. Still sells a lot of cigarettes. And this is due, in no small part, to people like Nick Naylor (Aaron Eckhart), big tobacco lobbyist and the fastest, smoothest motherfucker you've ever met. He talks like a divine wind. You won't even know what you're arguing about by the time he gets through with you.\nWhat's both funny and horribly depressing is this is an apparently semi-serious look at the way Washington works. Everyone is full of shit, everyone speaks in circles, everyone has an agenda. The great thing about "Thank You for Smoking" is it doesn't cut corners and focus on only cigarettes. This isn't another smarmy www.thetruth.com TV spot. Everyone gets it, equally.\nThe film achieves this by following Eckhart's lobbyist through a series of interactions with just the sort of characters you'd think would populate Washington's power circles -- who are fleshed out by a great supporting cast. You got J.K. Simmons who plays Eckhart's hard-charging Vietnam vet boss. William H. Macy plays the kind of progressive-environmentalist senator that makes about 60 percent of America cringe. Robert Duvall (greatest actor of our time) plays a julep-sipping tobacco tycoon, Rob Lowe is hysterical as a Hollywood poweragent with a flair for Asian design and Tom Cruise's baby mama (Katie Holmes) plays a journalist writing a profile piece on our main character. Toss in Maria Bello and David Koechner as equally despised mouthpieces for the liquor and gun lobbies and Sam Elliot as the cancer-ridden original Marlboro man, and you've got plenty of space for witty dialogue. With such a group of actors, the movie lies in the hands of its writers. Do they screw it up?\nNo. First-time director Jason Reitman (son of Ivan, the guy who directed "Ghostbusters") and friends do it right. It's funny, over in an hour and a half and has a halfway decent message about personal responsibility -- there is credence to the idea that if you smoke cigarettes in this modern age, you know what you're getting yourself into -- feigning ignorance to the dangers of smoking will only get you so far. \nSo yeah, man. Good movie. Check it out.
(04/13/06 4:00am)
First off, I'd like to think that I'm well placed to review "Phat Girlz." I'm not a woman, and I'm not 350 lbs, so I've got plenty of separation to look at this movie objectively. I just wanted to make that clear: I'm your guy for black chick-flick comedies about weight. Now, onward.\nSo, Mo'Nique is huge. She's a very large person, and -- oh yes, this is great news -- she's decided to make a movie about it.\n"Phat Girlz" (that's girlz with a "z") opened last weekend, and it sucks. I want to dislike it completely, I really do, but I can't. I can't because it tries. Half heartedly, it tries to say something meaningful about body image in America. But it falls flat because it's not very funny, it looks horrible and it's not convincing. Mo'Nique and the self-empowerment of overweight America are hollow.\nAmateur fashion designer Jazmin Biltmore (Mo'Nique) works at a department store, which is a great location to see how thin people are assholes out to belittle the overweight. Biltmore and also-large Stacey (Kendra C. Johnson) slouch around, complaining about loneliness and dead-end jobs for about 25 minutes until the plot finally gets around to announcing that Biltmore has won the contest she entered, that was advertised on the back of a bottle of diet pills. \nThere, she and Stacey meet a couple of Nigerian doctors (male model Jimmy Jean-Louis and Godfrey), who, due to African customs, like their women large and curvaceous. Kick ass, Mo'Nique. That means you can supersize it from here on out.\nBiltmore, who spends the entire movie wanting a man, can't seem to handle having a man interested in her, so she freaks out on him, goes home early and camps out in her room full of ill-fitting clothes and diet books. I still don't know if the film is supposed to be funny. \nThe plot is irrelevant. What's really being discussed here is the way American society views the body, ignoring the fact that not all of us have the ability to look like a runway model. This is true. Some people are built with certain body structures, and there's a certain beauty to that. You shouldn't be ashamed of who you are. \nBut instead of focusing on the occasional moment when the film talks about realities like this, it instead goes over "your mama" jokes and glorifies a food fetish. You know, there are a lot of fat people in America, and not all of them can claim genetic heritage. They eat shitty fast food and never exercise. And there's no excuse for that; they made their own bed.\nThat, and it seems pretty hypocritical for Mo'Nique to be so concerned about body image, only to be attracted to a man who looks like he was carved out of marble. There are plenty of overweight and lonely men out there, but none of them are captured on camera. So, in light of its sometime-message, this movie isn't completely horrible. But it's still pretty bad.
(04/12/06 11:05pm)
First off, I'd like to think that I'm well placed to review "Phat Girlz." I'm not a woman, and I'm not 350 lbs, so I've got plenty of separation to look at this movie objectively. I just wanted to make that clear: I'm your guy for black chick-flick comedies about weight. Now, onward.\nSo, Mo'Nique is huge. She's a very large person, and -- oh yes, this is great news -- she's decided to make a movie about it.\n"Phat Girlz" (that's girlz with a "z") opened last weekend, and it sucks. I want to dislike it completely, I really do, but I can't. I can't because it tries. Half heartedly, it tries to say something meaningful about body image in America. But it falls flat because it's not very funny, it looks horrible and it's not convincing. Mo'Nique and the self-empowerment of overweight America are hollow.\nAmateur fashion designer Jazmin Biltmore (Mo'Nique) works at a department store, which is a great location to see how thin people are assholes out to belittle the overweight. Biltmore and also-large Stacey (Kendra C. Johnson) slouch around, complaining about loneliness and dead-end jobs for about 25 minutes until the plot finally gets around to announcing that Biltmore has won the contest she entered, that was advertised on the back of a bottle of diet pills. \nThere, she and Stacey meet a couple of Nigerian doctors (male model Jimmy Jean-Louis and Godfrey), who, due to African customs, like their women large and curvaceous. Kick ass, Mo'Nique. That means you can supersize it from here on out.\nBiltmore, who spends the entire movie wanting a man, can't seem to handle having a man interested in her, so she freaks out on him, goes home early and camps out in her room full of ill-fitting clothes and diet books. I still don't know if the film is supposed to be funny. \nThe plot is irrelevant. What's really being discussed here is the way American society views the body, ignoring the fact that not all of us have the ability to look like a runway model. This is true. Some people are built with certain body structures, and there's a certain beauty to that. You shouldn't be ashamed of who you are. \nBut instead of focusing on the occasional moment when the film talks about realities like this, it instead goes over "your mama" jokes and glorifies a food fetish. You know, there are a lot of fat people in America, and not all of them can claim genetic heritage. They eat shitty fast food and never exercise. And there's no excuse for that; they made their own bed.\nThat, and it seems pretty hypocritical for Mo'Nique to be so concerned about body image, only to be attracted to a man who looks like he was carved out of marble. There are plenty of overweight and lonely men out there, but none of them are captured on camera. So, in light of its sometime-message, this movie isn't completely horrible. But it's still pretty bad.
(04/10/06 5:05am)
There are few things as consistently entertaining as the Zacharias Moussaoui terrorism trial. Not even on the Food Network.\nThat dude is a walking anti-American soundbite. "No pain, no gain, America," while watching a video montage of the 9-11 attacks. "Gorgeous," when describing seeing video of the towers falling for the first time. He even channels Springsteen. "Burn in the USA," he says, to a courtroom full of victims' families. \nMoussaoui has ushered along the prosecution's case. First, he begged the jury to declare him eligible for the death penalty by accepting he was responsible for at least one dead American during the attacks. Now, he wants to be executed. All the while, his court-appointed defense attorneys have had to wrestle both the prosecution and him, which has, in essence, made a mockery of the American legal system. It kind of collapses when the accused isn't trying to get free of the charges set against him like an animal cornered by fire. Since he isn't, the Moussaoui terrorism trial (the only trial of its kind stemming from 9-11) has been an exercise in absurdity.\nSo I'm really puzzled by the rush to kill him.\nBear with me. The man is odious, no doubt. But he's many things, and one of those things is not worthy of execution.\nNo, wrong word. "Worthy" would imply that I think he should be held up to a standard before killing him. I don't. I'm not going to dehumanize him, jump through the usual hoops, call him a monster. Everyone else does that already, so I'll just stick to the point; which is, there's no point in killing him. No point. None.\nFirst, when he's on the stand, frothing and screaming invective like a jackass, he's not exactly credible. He lied to the federal agents who arrested him in Minnesota in August 2001. Later, he pulled a 180 and claimed he and shoe-bombin' Richard Reid were going to hijack a fifth plane and fly it into the White House, which is as aimed at exciting American opinion as saying Hitler and Lex Luthor were going to team up to kill Jesus (oh, and Reid wasn't in the States at the time). Like his attorneys say, a lot of what Moussaoui has said is "a tall tale, a whopper, even for a convicted felon, an admitted liar and an al-Qaida member who believes that he is obligated to lie to you because he's at war." \nSecondly, consider the voices calling for his execution. There's the government, desperate to cover its own ass by blaming all of this on one guy's fibs to FBI agents a few weeks before the attacks. Because, of course, he knew exactly what was planned, and the government didn't have any other indications of what was going to happen. \nAnd you've got the victims' families. Now, I didn't lose family and friends in the 9-11 attacks, so I don't pretend to identify with their personal suffering. But now that my obligatory acknowledgement of the home team is out of the way, I've got to ask: is martyring someone defense attorneys have called an "al-Qaida hanger-on" really going to help anybody cope? I don't get legal bloodlust. Does it help anyone sleep at night?\nReally?\nGive him a prayer mat, visitation hours, a culturally sensitive diet and access to a bookmobile. Throw him in a supermax for the rest of eternity, but don't kill Zacharias Moussaoui. There's no point.
(04/06/06 4:00am)
You've got a few different kinds of DVDs. You've got older discs, which are usually pretty sparse. They'll have just the film, maybe a trailer and a couple of advertisements for other movies. Newer ones have a few things that come standard; there's always a special features section, usually deleted scenes, maybe a couple of storyboard galleries and some artwork and the perennially boring "cast and crew" filmography. Kind of disappointing. Nothing that really adds to the movie itself, anyway. Then you've got a Peter Jackson DVD.\nThese are like the tomahawk jams of the DVD world. The discs for his "Lord of the Rings" trilogy looked more like bookends than movies -- Jackson overloads, gives you a detailed look at what it actually takes to make the films and effectively doubles the viewing time of the actual feature. Cause, hey, if you're going to pay $30 to watch a movie, you may as well be able to justify it to yourself.\nThe recent DVD release of "King Kong" is no different. Jackson's remake of the 1933 classic was lavish, dramatic, three-hours-long and wonderfully entertaining when it was in theatres, and now that the special edition DVD is out, the total "Kong" experience is three-hours-longer. That's six hours on one movie. That's, like, a fourth of a day, man.\nWhile the special features lack the obligatory director's commentary and deleted scenes, it makes up for their absence in a lot of ways. The amount of shit Jackson and friends find to put on these discs is astounding. \nFirst, you've got an introduction by Jackson himself, and you'll need it since there's a lot to go over, especially in the "post production diaries," which cover every minute aspect of making a massive Hollywood feature. They're cross referenced by both date and subject, for easy viewing and there are roughly 50 or so little vignettes on every detail of the film's making. Curious as to how they built a ruined city on the edge of a Polynesian jungle? Lots of Styrofoam. They'll show you how.\nWanna know how they made a realistic looking 25-foot gorilla for the picture show? They dressed Andy Serkis up in a lightbulb suit and filmed him rolling around a sound studio for a few weeks. There's hours of this stuff. They left no stone unturned; every conceivable question is answered. And surprisingly, most of it's interesting.\nAfter the diaries, which are really the meat of the DVD, there's two documentaries: one titled, "Skull Island: A Natural History," which is a semi-historical farce about the flora and fauna of Jackson's imaginary playground, and another called "Kong's New York, 1933," which is what they'll probably end up showing bored Channel One high school students 10 years from now when they learn about the Great Depression. They're pretty standard, and nothing to write home about, especially after the diary section.\nAll in all, Jackson delivers again. The movie, unaltered, is still cool and the special features just make it a better. So yeah, man, that's good. Check it out.
(04/06/06 12:33am)
You've got a few different kinds of DVDs. You've got older discs, which are usually pretty sparse. They'll have just the film, maybe a trailer and a couple of advertisements for other movies. Newer ones have a few things that come standard; there's always a special features section, usually deleted scenes, maybe a couple of storyboard galleries and some artwork and the perennially boring "cast and crew" filmography. Kind of disappointing. Nothing that really adds to the movie itself, anyway. Then you've got a Peter Jackson DVD.\nThese are like the tomahawk jams of the DVD world. The discs for his "Lord of the Rings" trilogy looked more like bookends than movies -- Jackson overloads, gives you a detailed look at what it actually takes to make the films and effectively doubles the viewing time of the actual feature. Cause, hey, if you're going to pay $30 to watch a movie, you may as well be able to justify it to yourself.\nThe recent DVD release of "King Kong" is no different. Jackson's remake of the 1933 classic was lavish, dramatic, three-hours-long and wonderfully entertaining when it was in theatres, and now that the special edition DVD is out, the total "Kong" experience is three-hours-longer. That's six hours on one movie. That's, like, a fourth of a day, man.\nWhile the special features lack the obligatory director's commentary and deleted scenes, it makes up for their absence in a lot of ways. The amount of shit Jackson and friends find to put on these discs is astounding. \nFirst, you've got an introduction by Jackson himself, and you'll need it since there's a lot to go over, especially in the "post production diaries," which cover every minute aspect of making a massive Hollywood feature. They're cross referenced by both date and subject, for easy viewing and there are roughly 50 or so little vignettes on every detail of the film's making. Curious as to how they built a ruined city on the edge of a Polynesian jungle? Lots of Styrofoam. They'll show you how.\nWanna know how they made a realistic looking 25-foot gorilla for the picture show? They dressed Andy Serkis up in a lightbulb suit and filmed him rolling around a sound studio for a few weeks. There's hours of this stuff. They left no stone unturned; every conceivable question is answered. And surprisingly, most of it's interesting.\nAfter the diaries, which are really the meat of the DVD, there's two documentaries: one titled, "Skull Island: A Natural History," which is a semi-historical farce about the flora and fauna of Jackson's imaginary playground, and another called "Kong's New York, 1933," which is what they'll probably end up showing bored Channel One high school students 10 years from now when they learn about the Great Depression. They're pretty standard, and nothing to write home about, especially after the diary section.\nAll in all, Jackson delivers again. The movie, unaltered, is still cool and the special features just make it a better. So yeah, man, that's good. Check it out.