Lent

This past Wednesday was Ash Wednesday. I remember going into the subway and seeing a lady emerge with a dark smear on her forehead and thinking "Gee, what happened to her" and then on closer inspection wondering what crazy cult she belonged to. Turns out it was mine. Once again the begining of the Season of Lent leading up to Easter finds me with no idea what to give up. I'd say DVDs but I actually bought a Juno DVD that Ash Wednesday afternoon. I'd say red meat, but the "Turkey sub" I had the next day contained bacon. I could say blogging, and maybe I will jump back onto the bandwagon I fell off of and resume giving up my blogging and vital discussion forums.

If you have chanced upon this blog and it seems inactive, there are plenty of embedded videos to be found which might be amusing. Mostly on the level of Mork's appearance on Happy Days or Shatner or Hamill on 30 Rock.

With any luck, after Easter I might have actually accomplished something with the time I've gained letting other people wallow in their opinions about movies and politics. I was going to give up googling dirty words, but let's face it - that's not realistic.

Raspberry to the Raspberries

The Golden Raspberry Awards made a couple of "decisions" this year that were asinine.

They named Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull as worst sequel, prequel or rip-off. So right away that kind of statement says they can't be watching very many movies.

They named The Love Guru as Worst movie of the year, when one of their other nominees was Disaster Movie - the hardest thing I've forced myself to sit through (and on-line, illegally, at that). The Love Guru isn't Austin Powers, but it is in no way what the headlines made it out to be.

I don't know how they decide their "nominees," but any member of their site can vote.

I went so far as to write an e-mail to John Wilson HeadRAZZberry@razzies.com to
point out their (admittedly obvious) core problem:

While anyone can vote, who exactly is a) paying to vote and b) dilligently sitting through the alleged worst movies of the year to determine in all fairness which they feel should be assessed as the worst of the worst?

And you know something, The Happening was a well made movie. It was dark and had something to say and presented disturbing ideas - but if like me you view the world's problems as mostly someone else' fault it has a welcome message.

This is not to say they are always wrong. But noting Ewe Boll as worst director is not something that requires a knack for that kind of observation. You read a blurb or a dozen polls that call him worst, see his movies tank, and there it is. But he doesn't exactly represent the Hollywood elite that the razzies claim to be making fun of.

If you do go to razzies.com, by the looks of some of the ads on their page I'd say make sure you have good spyware protection. It looks like their sponsors aren't exactly top drawer, nor the brilliant minds that frequent that site let alone pay to.

Consider the mentality of people who pay the following rates to participate in discussions at razzies.com and to vote:

Generic RAZZIE Member Rate – Just $25.00
• Annual RENEWAL Rate: JUST $20.00!!
F.O.G. (Friend of Golden RAZZberry) $50.00
• Put 4 Friends (or Yourself and 3 Friends!) on our RAZZIE Membership/Mailing List and SAVE 50% OFF Regular Rates (JUST $12.50 Per Person!)
RAZZberry Inner Sanctum – $75.00
• Acknowledgment in RAZZIE Program (if desired)
• Addition of Up to 6 Names to RAZZIE Membership/Mailing List
Berry Important Member – $100.00
• Acknowledgment in RAZZIE Program (or Guaranteed Anonymity, if desired)
• Addition of Up to 8 Names to RAZZIE Membership/Mailing List
Razzie Supporting Member – $250.00
• Add up to 25 NAMES of friends, co-workers, etc. to The RAZZIE Membership/Mailing List, PLUS: Acknowledgment in the RAZZIE Program (or Guaranteed Anonymity, if desired).
LIFETIME Membership – $500.00
• Add 55 NAMES of friends, co-workers, etc. to The RAZZIE Membership/Mailing List, Acknowledgment in the RAZZIE Program(or Guaranteed Anonymity, if desired)

How long before they delete this video?

There was a great, funny comparison between Forrest Gump and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button online just long enough that thousands of people got to see it before the studio clamped down and had it removed.

Here's one that is so politically incorrect and insensitive that I find it refreshing and genuinely funny. But it will anger some people. It was linked
by imdb.com. I rated it as funny, but the arrow doesn't seem to be pointing so unanimously in that direction:

"I Am Sam Milk" Movie Trailer - watch more funny videos

Happy 25th to Tap

Just a random concert clip. Much more out there to see.

This Is Spinal Tap grows on people. They might not get it fully the first
time they watch it.



Here's a great recent audio interview Vanity Fair did with Tap:

http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2009/03/spinal-tap200903

St. Valentine's Day

Following this year's first Friday the 13th, Valentine's Day has gone about as smoothly as it usually does for me. That's the best I can say about it.

According to something I Googled, The British Roman Catholic Church advises that only people married or who have found their soul made should honor St. Valentine on February 14th. Those who are still searching for someone should be praying instead to St. Raphael. That's where I've been going wrong. I know Valentine was beheaded for performing unauthorized weddings, which back then meant Christian weddings.

I forget what I did today, other than watch the Valentines episode of 30 Rock online and the latest My Name is Earl, slepped and worked.

Friday the umpteenth

Voorhees - a jolly bad fell-ow.



If I ever get a rampaging zombie maniac in a vulnerable position, I'll remember that letting a chain strangle him and giving one token stab isn't enough to make sure he's dead. Then I sure won't move his body from the crime scene and throw it off a dock, especially if there is a perfectly good shredder handy - like the one in Fargo - and he has already shown me how to use it. For most of the movie the characters are above-average intelligent for horror victims-to-be. Except for the perhaps intentional laugh it gets for the line, "You better go out to the tool shed" the screenplay (by mostly the same team as Jason X and Freddy Versus Jason) adds to and improves upon the scatter-shot mythology of Friday the 13th many of us ended up seeing at the dawn of VHS and Beta tapes. It's not a straight remake of the 1980 film Sean S. Cunningham (Spring Break) directed. The very beginning is taken from the first, and the ending reminds us of it, but an apparently enchanted locket is added and elements of Part II and Part III are woven into the new movie. This time I stood in a rush line for a free preview screening and the crowd had a positive reaction to it. One person said, "Pretty good. I'd give it a 9" which to me sounds incongruous. I admit I spent much of the movie - especially when there is a cumulative effect of the jeopardy - curled up with my nerves on edge. So the film succeeds in doing what it intended. There is character development, so we care what happens and there is even one guy (other than Mr. Vorhees) that we want to see killed. But I can't give it full marks because of the frustration it leaves me with over the rote ending and the stupidity that allows for it to happen. I didn't expect them to reboot this character only to kill him off for good, but I think given the trauma these characters had gone through they might not permit the denouement to go the way it does. The rest of the audience appeared to have a little better sense of humor about it though.

Ever want to talk back to a critic?

A “Fanboys” review by Roger Ebert becomes a discussion with Jawsphobia

EBERT: A lot of fans are basically fans of fandom itself. It's all about them.

JAWSPHOBIA: So how do you explain them disregarding their own hygiene ?

EBERT: Their objects of veneration are useful mainly as a backdrop to their own devotion.

JAWSPHOBIA: Like Jesus is irrelevant to the Christian?

EBERT: Anyone who would camp out in a tent on the sidewalk for weeks in order to be first in line for a movie is more into camping on the sidewalk than movies.

JAWSPHOBIA: That’s fair enough.

EBERT: Extreme fandom may serve as a security blanket for the socially inept, who use its extreme structure as a substitute for social skills. If you are Luke Skywalker and she is Princess Leia, you already know what to say to each other.

JAWSPHOBIA: Not exactly an ideal springboard to romance, if you recall the films. . .

EBERT: If you know absolutely all the trivia about your cubbyhole of pop culture, it saves you from having to know anything about anything else.

JAWSPHOBIA: How do you explain the enterprising Star Wars fans and Trekkers who write some of the most respected shows today?

EBERT: They're always asking you questions they know the answer to.

JAWSPHOBIA: Asking the Answer Man or me? Who is “you”? How is Fanboys?

EBERT: Its primary flaw is that it's not critical. It is a celebration of an idiotic lifestyle.

JAWSPHOBIA: What lifestyle? Do actual fans end up in replica trash compactors, take pilgrimages to Skywalker Ranch to physically steal movies for friends dying of cancer each week? That lifestyle?

EBERT: If you want to get in a car and drive to California, fine. So do I. So did Jack Kerouac. But. . . . beam your ass down to Route 66.

JAWSPHOBIA: I see. The lifestyle of Jack Kerouac is our yardstick. Very stable.

EBERT: "Fanboys" follows in the footsteps of "Sex Drive."

JAWSPHOBIA: Missed that film. I was “on the road” you might say.

EBERT: This plot is given gravitas because one of the friends, Linus (Christopher Marquette), is dying of cancer.. . . it's one of those movie diseases that is mentioned occasionally so everyone can look solemn and then dropped when the ailing Linus dons a matching black camouflage outfit and scales the Skywalker Ranch walls with a grappling hook.

JAWSPHOBIA: Let me tread lightly here, sir. I know you’ve had close calls with cancer and this is real and serious for you. But someone else can make the movie about sitting around waiting to die. There is a time to live, a time to die, a time to scale walls.

EBERT: "Fanboys" is an amiable but disjointed movie that identifies too closely with its heroes. Poking a little more fun at them would have been a great idea.

JAWSPHOBIA: Just how great? Ever hear the term “easy target?” As it stands, the movie has William Shatner in it. Difficult to forget that the best slams have already been delivered. “You’re almost thirty – have you ever kissed a girl?” So it’s been done and well. I take this movie as being the tone of Detroit Rock City. We can take for granted that loving KISS music is an arbitrary obsession, but it is also about all journeys.

EBERT: They are tragically hurtling into a cultural dead end. . .

JAWSPHOBIA: Only in the most literal 1999 sense, aiming to see The Phantom Menace which is a film that seems to have earned only one “thumbs up” and it was your own lonely thumb. Up what, we don’t want to know.

EBERT: That are mastering knowledge which has no purpose other than being mastered, and too smart to be wasting their time.

JAWSPHOBIA: What knowledge is worthwhile? Movie Answer Man articles? Your DVD commentaries (which I actually like)? Or porn? You know – these people do still have to attend school and get jobs.

EBERT: When a movie's opening day finally comes, and fanboys leave their sidewalk tents for a mad dash into the theater, I wonder who retrieves their tents, sleeping bags…

JAWSPHOBIA: Well, I’ve looked it up Mr. Journalist. They stuff that under the theater seat and hold it on their laps and then they all sit around while one of them reads your advance review. And the ushers walk the aisle with air freshener.

Swearing by Obama

Gread article with interesting clips from an audio book,
sure to provide fun for people on the net as they
wind up re-edited no doubt.

http://tinyurl.com/cvrbap

Bale makes public apology for the rant

I'm posting this without listening to it, since where I'm online there is no sound.
But I'm sure it straightens everything out. I figure the wrong was shared in that episode.

Milk doesn't make it

I had a window of time to catch a film and it happened that Milk by Gus Van Sant was playing. Frankly the publicity about Sean Penn and James Franco kissing turned me off. Jeff Spicolli and the stoner from Pineapple Express?

But Van Sant used some restraint. Unlike the woman who reviewed this movie on Fox describing Harvey Milk as simply "a politician in the 60's," avoiding the G word, I'll tell you he was gay. Meanwhile an upstanding citizen didn't like seeing a perv make more progress than himself so it led to tragedy. But since I didn't know the specifics of that I won't post a spoiler here.



The film has humor and apart from using newsreel and stock footage as the establishing shots between many scenes and one interesting mirror shot at a critical point this is a very simple presentation as Gus Van Sant films go. I think he realizes non arty types have to watch this movie. I had heard about it back when Robin Williams was supposed to play Milk. As good as he is, I think it's more interesting to see the tougher persona of Penn play against type the first openly gay American politician. He never breaks or compromises character, but when he finally shows that he can be cutthroat and doesn't feel guilty about it we accept that more easily from Penn without judgement. Even if you know the cutthroat choice meant his power wouldn't last long.

You mean THIS is what Winehouse SOUNDS like???

I hadn't heard of Amy Winehouse except through "entertainment news" items that pass for news about the entertainment industry. Even if you avoid gossip crap as much as possible, you can't help hearing certain names. For the past couple of years it has been about Amy Winehouse drug problems and rehab and a little blurb when she tried to record a theme for the latest James Bond movie. Since I didn't know her sound I thought it was just a trend-sniffing publicity idea to use her. NOW I'm a little embarrassed having finally searched her on youtube and heard some of her performances. She SHOULD be doing a James Bond theme. In fact, she is the only current singer I can think of who SHOULD be singing James Bond themes. I like her sound and now I see it's a tragedy that she is having trouble. Man whoever put her onto drugs should be shot.

Bale rant - original recording and the dance remix

This brings up a lot of interesting discussion, but I don't know where I stand on it.
The DP for the newest Terminator movie is reputed to (on previous films) blithely wander around during takes rather than be still like everyone else on the crew.
Where Christian Bale refers to the "background" be means his eye-line, not in the frame behind him. Apparently he can tune out the cluster of techs, the director McG and the camera but not the strolling of the DP which offends Bale. What seems incongruous is reference to the DP being "a nice guy. . ." People have pointed out that in the original clip he is only raising his voice to the DP he is angry with, and Bruce the Assistant Director, and McG the director who may like a looser set than James Cameron did back in the day.



Dance remix

When TV eras meet. . .

Chances are I'll miss it. I didn't see this when it aired, but I have to admit as a child of the 70's it is fun to see this intersection with the late eighties, early nineties. . .

It's Groundhog Day. . .Again

February 2 is here again. I'll hopefully have time to mark the day
by watching the only thing that gives it any significance:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107048/

Groundhog Day

Here's me watching it today: