This title set the internet on fire when it was released this week, if by “internet” I am referring to “comic book websites”. A lot of people were claiming that this was the best title of not just the week, but of the entire DC relaunch. With that sort of expectation, it was kind of hard to judge this book on its own merits. I read it, I liked it. Do I need to say more? This story didn’t reinvent the wheel or anything, but it was definitely quite enjoyable. I feel like with all of these new DC books, I am just rating them based on “like” or “didn’t like” and haven’t been able to say which one I enjoyed the most. I liked seeing the detective aspect of Batman, and it made me feel like I was back playing Arkham Asylum, with all these gadgets the Batman has and almost a tutorial of how he could use them. I think this title will be going in a good direction, but then again, I also liked Batman & Robin, as well as Detective Comics, so it might be too early to pick my favorite Batman title.
Birds of Prey
This is another book that I couldn’t judge quite accurately because of the internet, even though the attention didn’t really fall on this title. The internet lost its mind, and rightfully so, over the way women were portrayed in two specific titles that came out this week. One of these titles was Catwoman, who is a character who has no problem using her womanly powers to make men weak in the knees. Here is the opening page from the Catwoman series:
Before we even see Catwoman’s face, we see her tits. Okay, most comic book women are drawn with the same endowments, so it’s not that she has giant knockers, I think people were just upset at how blatantly they were trying to exploit her “sexiness”. Okay okay, maybe this image isn’t that bad, but here are some pages from the end of the issue:
NOPE, THIS ISN’T EROTIC FANFICTION, THIS IS SOMETHING PRINTED BY DC. IN A COMIC BOOK. FOR PEOPLE TO LOOK AT. IT’S BATMAN FUCKING CATWOMAN. I mean, for fuck’s sake, tone it dont a little, will you? I’m no prude or anything, but it’s one thing to imply this behavior, but it’s another to put it out there, right in the opening, for what appears to be the sole purpose of getting pervert weirdos to buy this instead of paying someone for a commission sketch. And this is only ONE of the two titles. The other title was Red Hood and the Outlaws, which I wasn’t too familiar with. I knew that Jason Todd was the Red Hood, and then there was the knockoff Green Arrow character, but there’s also some weird lady. I guess her name is Starfire and she is an alien or something, and, well, just take a look at this scene…
WHAT THE FUCK. Talk about trying to be as slutty as you can be in five seconds. Kind of reminds me of someone from a movie I recently reviewed. All this character wants to do is fuck, and doesn’t even give a shit that she is married because she “can’t remember”, which seems convenient. Also, I like how the guy is so shocked that he spits out his soda, and five seconds later is all “Oh, okay! Tell me more about this ‘sex’ thing you speak of!” This scene was after we were introduced to Starfire, which of course was an introduction involving a bikini. I’ve included what the original illustration was that was supposed to be printed, which comes from the artist’s website. WARNING: image is mildly NWS, because it’s a cartoon lady drawn “sexy”. You might not get fired if someone sees you looking, but they’ll definitely think you’re a weirdo creep.
SOMEBODY, SOMEWHERE, THOUGHT IT WAS APPROPRIATE TO HAVE THIS ALIEN WEAR SARAN WRAP AS A BATHING SUIT. They did “tone it down” for the actual printing of the issue by coloring the bikini a solid color, but still, what the fuck guys. Is this what it’s come to? Saving people the time it takes them to draw their favorite characters in erotic situations by doing it for them? Ugh. All of this almost made me embarrassed to buy Birds of Prey, considering I was only trying it because I liked Black Canary from her time with Green Arrow, and considering I am not going to read that, wanted to see what she was up to. Luckily, the females in this book are far more approrpiately well-dressed and I don’t fear that their tits will bounce up and cave in their skulls. I think I’ll keep reading. I’d also like to send you in the direction of this article onNewsarama by Jill Pantozzi on the difference between what can be considered “sexy” art vs. “sexual” art.
Good luck finding out which fucking installment of this “franchise” I’m talking about, since nobody can seem to agree on what the fuck the titles should be. I think that there was something originally called “Deadtime Stories”, which was a few short horror films, and these had nothing to do with George Romero. I’m assuming that these films were shown to him, and he agreed to be involved with “hosting” more movies that were composed of short films, in hopes of getting the films more exposure and Romero more money. The movie I reviewed can be found in stores and on Netflix with that image I posted, but if you look it up on IMDb, the summary of the film is completely different from what I watched. WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON?!
That goth is so pissed at those pregnant boobs. Don’t worry, goth, they’ll be attached to a dead lady soon!
The first story is kind of like the movie “The Descent”, because it’s about people who go exploring caves and get trapped. One of the three rock climbers has some huge rock mangle his foot, and as the foot starts rotting and being really shitty, the other the explorers decide to amputate. After amputation, they eat the leg, and the floodgates really bust open, and these two kill the third to eat his body. Eventually rescued, one of the surviving people has an insatiable hunger, and kills the other, and then goes to live back in the cave. Oh yeah, and this turns her into a cave monster or something. The next story is about a teacher who is really strict, especially when it comes to the affair he has with one student. He gets her pregnant and he treats her shitty, so she kills herself in his classroom. He starts having hallucinations about her, and this eventually drives him to kill himself in the very same classroom. The last story was about a security guard whose wife has cancer, but a scientist at the laboratory he protects mentions some magical space dust from Mars. The security guard feeds this to his wife, and not only does it cure the cancer, it gets her super horny all the time, but also turns her into a zombie or something. I think the space dust was supposed to be alive or something and now it’s colonizing humans on Earth? I don’t know, it was dumb.
Despite being trapped for weeks, it’s good to see that shitty beard stays perfectly intact.
Wait, come to think of it, ALL of these stories were dumb. The first story was a typical cannibal becoming insatiable story, and the fact that it was set in a cave for a good amount of it didn’t really add anything. The effects were pretty good, but that’s about it. I’d give it a 2 out of 5. The next story, again, was pretty cliché, and didn’t really bring anything new to the table. Some of the hallucinations that the teacher had were kind of gruesome, as far as effects are concerned, so that’s another 2 out of 5. The last story was a little sillier, so it made it a little more tolerable, but still, nothing new. This story gets yet another 2 out of 5, bringing the grand total to, well, you can do that math, dipshit. The good thing about this one is that all of the stories worked well when compared to one another, and there wasn’t one that was worse than any of the other two. The problem though was that they were all equally shitty, as opposed to all equally good. Not really worth watching any of these stories, unless of course you watch horror movies for their props and special effects.
Well of course I won’t be seeing this movie. What are you, an idiot? I think I accidentally saw the trailer and it looked terrible, and it really just seems to be the studio trying to cash in on the fact that this Taylor Lautner fellow was in Twilight, and this guy thinks he can have a career other than those movies. Hey, whatever a guy’s gotta do to make a living. I understand that this movie is for teenagers, so obviously I had no interest in it at all, but after spending some time looking at the poster, I now just hate everyone involved with making this movie. Before I go any further, take a look:
I guess it’s pretty typical of a shitty action movie aimed at teenagers. There’s a scene in the trailer involving this guy sliding down a glass window, so obviously they’ve incorporated those images, and arbitrarily threw more buildings into the background. Just so I don’t give the wrong idea, I have no sort of degree in art or any qualifications to judge art or graphic design, but I do remember an art class I had in high school about adding depth to scenes we drew. What you could do is add a “vanishing point” the an image, and as long as all horizontal lines “vanish” into that one point, BOOM, instant depth. I’m going to show you where the horizontal lines are headed in the poster, so we can try to figure out it’s vanishing point.
There are three obvious lines coming from two different buildings on opposite sides of the image, causing the vanishing point to be somewhere behind the actor. Still with me? Okay, good. Now let me point out two other important things in the image.
We have the underside of a helicopter, and we have a strong light source, which I’m assuming is the Sun. What does it all mean? Well, when you combine this information, the vanishing point, Sun, and helicopter this shows that the background of the image is intended to be the view of someone looking straight up. Who cares? Well, let’s take a look at the foreground image:
You can see that Lautner is traveling down the side of the building, that combined with the angle of the glass he’s sliding down, makes him appear to be sliding down and to the right. Seems pretty stupid, but why does this defy the laws of physics? Well, this means that combined with the vanishing point, helicopter, and Sun, were we to look at this scene from a different angle, it would look something more like this:
Doesn’t really seem to make any sense, does it? Also, let’s keep in mind that this is what he would be doing if the diagonal edge is the very top of the building. It couldn’t be the middle of the building, because we don’t see the rest of the building sticking up behind him. If it’s not the very top of the building, I suppose it could be part of the building that sticks out from the rest, and everything above the part of the building he is sliding on obstructs everything that extends higher above it. If that’s the case, the profile of the building would look like this:
Yes, this means that, given the composition of the background, combined with what’s going on in the foreground, it’s entirely possible that this individual is somehow effortlessly clinging, upside-down, to the sheer surface of the building, with more lateral motion than there are gravitational forces being exerted upon him. Is that the only answer? No, not at all! What else could all of this shit add up to? Oh, I don’t know, maybe EVERY FUCKING PERSON INVOLVED IN THIS PIECE OF SHIT MOVIE BEING MADE GAVE ABSOLUTELY ZERO FUCKS ABOUT HOW IT WAS MARKETED, AS LONG AS YOU HAD THE GUY FROM TWILIGHT DOING SOMETHING EXCITING IN THE FOREGROUND. I mean, I recognize the image in the foreground, since it’s from the trailer, and I understand that in the trailer he’s NOT defying gravity, so it seems someone just cropped, copied, and pasted that image on top of the Google results for “shiny buildings and a helicopter”. God fucking dammit. Why does this shit piss me off so much? Probably because the person responsible got paid more money for creating this one image, that negates both physics and artistic perception, than I will in a whole month. Hopefully this lackadaisical approach to poster making will convince everyone in the world to see anything other than this movie.
I wish that there was a warning on Netflix (or should I say Qwikster?) that warned me about movies that were made by SyFy. Based on this movie’s description, I figured it’d be bad, but there’s a certain special kind of sad when it comes to movies made by SyFy. The effects are going to be terrible, the actors are going to had some sort of connection to something popular while still being registered as C or D list celebrities, and it will just be bad. I wish that they’d stick to things like “Shark-o-bot vs. Gator-ade vs. Octo-brainzilla” so we at least know it’s supposed to be terrible. STOP TRICKING ME INTO THINKING YOUR SHITTY SYFY MOVIES ARE JUST REGULAR SHITTY MOVIES GODDAMMIT!
Charisma Carpenter’s fashion decisions reminded me of Kris Williams from Ghost Hunters. Kris Williams forehead reminds me of Olivia Wilde’s forehead. Through the transitive property, Charisma Carpenter’s fashion decisions remind me of Olivia Wilde’s forehead.
A new TV show about hunting ghosts, called “Sinister Sites”, is losing viewers, so the crew decide to investigate some sort of house that is supposedly super-super haunted. In addition to the regular team of investigators, this time they are joined by a psychic, played by Charisma Carpenter. You might kind of remember her for her roles on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, or Veronica Mars. You don’t remember her for anything else for any reason. This investigation starts uncovering the fact that yes, the house IS haunted, and it appears as though the house is alive. Apparently the man who originally built the house was interested in voodoo and thought he would delay his death by having human remains built into the foundation and walls of the house. Sadly, this resulted in the house being alive, and now it’s attempting to kill the investigators. It is determined that the house needs a caretaker to feed it dead people, and one of the crew members goes crazy and kills everyone else, including Charisma Carpenter. We then get to see the future, where this guy lives in the house and invites people to stay, presumably to be killed and sacrificed to the house. Oh yeah, and that guy from “Parker Lewis Can’t Lose” was in it.
YOU TWO WILL NEVER BE STEVE GONSALVES AND DAVE TANGO! And this isn’t a race thing.
Uhhhh, okay. If you say so. Though this movie isn’t quite as awful as Scream of the Banshee or Goblin, this movie still wasn’t good. At all. I would say that the only thing it did that could be considered “good” by any stretch of the imagination was parody Ghost Hunters with their fictional ghost hunting team. From the graphics on their shirts to the fake opening credit sequence, it was quite similar to Ghost Hunters, so I guess that was kind of funny? I did find it strange that they were using Ghost Hunters as their example to parody when they are the ones who show Ghost Hunters. Maybe the reason they were mocking them is because of trademarks or copyrights or whatever allowed them to do so, but I still thought it was weird. Also, and maybe I know nothing about movies, I figure that any movie that stars a C or D list actress would try to take advantage of boners and find at least one scene to put them in their underwear or a bathing suit, but instead, Ms. Carpenter was wearing a sweat suit the whole time and puking/crying blood when things got intense. Guess I’ll never be a major Hollywood player like those folks over at SyFy!
What a movie title! Obviously my first thought was that this film was going to be filled with some incredible brutal and creepy death scenes, and I was all for it. Some of the stills I saw before its release also got me pretty excited for the look of the movie, and was obviously excited to watch it. I got kind of pissed when I heard that AJ Bowen was in it, until I realized I thought that AJ Bowen was someone completely different. AJ Bowen has been in movies like “The Signal” and “The House of the Devil”, whereas I thought it was an actor named Eric Balfour. You might know him as that kind of douche-y looking guy from the remake of Texas Chain Saw Massacre, which also starred Jessica Biel’s butt. This movie featured some flashbacks, so for the sake of getting the plot in order, I’m going to talk about the story chronologically as opposed to how things were shown in the film. And yes, spoiler alert, I’m going to give away the ending, possibly revealing what is such a horrible way to die.
What did you expect to find when breaking into your crazy boyfriend’s storage unit!?
This chick, played by Amy Seimetz, is dating a dude, played by AJ Bowen, when she learns that he is a psycho killer person who has just killed someone or some people, so he goes to jail. Seimetz’s character begins attending AA meetings to treat not only her drug and alcohol problems, but also uses it as a means to put her former life, and former boyfriend, behind her. It’s there that she strikes up a relationship with Joe Swanberg’s character. The two start falling for one another, and do sexy things together, like have sex. Whoa! Bad news is that her former boyfriend has escaped from prison and has been killing people while on his quest to find his former girlfriend, the one responsible for him being in prison in the first place. The new, seemingly happy couple, decide to take refuge in a secluded cabin in the woods to make sure to avoid the psycho ex-boyfriend. Unfortunately, once arriving at the cabin, new boyfriend turns out to be a psycho creep who has planned for this whole thing to happen, along with some of his psycho friends, and they tie the girlfriend up, waiting for the ex-boyfriend to arrive. When he arrives, we learn that this was all an elaborate scheme where three creeps were contacting the psycho boyfriend because they were such big fans of his murders. Now that he sees his ex-girlfriend, the one responsible for his incarceration, he tells these strange creeps that he loves her and he gets all pissed at them for doing that and kills them. After being fatally wounded, the psycho ex releases the captive, being the only character to survive the horrific events.
Paul F. Tompkins AJ Bowen had a pretty sweet mustache.
During the beginning of the film I was thinking to myself about how much I liked that this was shot on a handheld camera and how it added an extra bit of realism to it. Halfway through the movie I was begging for a fucking tripod. I enjoyed the style until it became almost unbearable, having every single shot bouncing all over the screen and different objects coming into and out of focus the whole time. Had this style been handled with more subtlety then I definitely would have bumped this movie up on the moon scale, but it was just too much. I also chose to tell the plot chronologically, because the bearded and unbearded main actors kept confusing me. I kept thinking that the ex-boyfriend killer, who we saw shaving, was a future version of the “new” boyfriend, and we were jumping back and forth between time. Maybe that’s just my own personal issue of not recognizing actors if there is a beard involved, but I was confused for a good amount of the movie. I did really like the twist at the end, and wasn’t expecting it, so if you have a higher tolerance for camerawork that bounces all over, you might enjoy this clever take on a revenge slasher that has a solid cast and writing throughout.
This title caused me a little bit of confusion, because I know that Hal Jordan had his ring taken away from him at the conclusion of the previous Green Lantern title, but I thought that the events of Flashpoint changed a whole bunch of stuff? Maybe if I do some more internet searching I’ll find the timeline, but Sinestro is the titular Green Lantern of this series, and even he doesn’t seem happy about it. We see Hal Jordan being forced to pay rent, and when he thinks he sees a domestic dispute, he jumps through a window of another building to stop it, not giving a shit that he didn’t have superpowers. It was pretty cool. Hal has to adjust to life without these powers, until of course the end of the issues where Sinestro implies he can get him his power back. Geoff Johns is kicking ass writing Green Lantern and this might be what I’ve been most excited about so far with the New 52.
Red Lanterns
The first member of the Red Lantern Corps that we see is a cat…I was willing to set the book on fire and I was only a few pages in. We then got to see some of the other Red Lanterns, and even though I enjoy the idea of the Red Lanterns and that they are driven by rage, I don’t really connect to deeply with any one member of the Corps. The cat left long enough for me to enjoy the rest of the issue, but this might be one that I drop.
Batman & Robin
It’s good to see a little brat as Batman’s sidekick, which I guess will happen when you are Bruce Wayne’s son Damian. Rather than a Robin who is constantly trying to impress Batman and view him as some sort of deity, it’s nice to see Damien acting like a little asshole who doesn’t really give a shit whether or not he has Batman’s approval. Not a bad story, but I think I liked Detective Comics more than this as far as Batman titles are concerned.
Suicide Squad
This is a title I didn’t mention being interested in when I made that big post of what I was looking forward to, and mostly just picked it up on a whim. I figured it would be similar to Marvel’s Thunderbolts, which took a team of lesser-known villains and offered them the chance to reform. I was right about the lesser-known villain thing, but wrong about the idea of reform. Instead, the Suicide Squad is a force of death and destruction for hire. Some of the characters are annoying me already though, but this issue teased the death of a team member and I really hope it’s King Shark, because that guys makes no goddamned sense.
I’ve been flip-flopping over the past day on whether or not to review this movie. I watched it in chunks while working at the movie theater, and I might have missed a grand total of about ten minutes of it, and those minutes were in the beginning and middle. I feel as though I saw enough of it to have a relatively strong opinion of it, compared to a lot of other movies I kind of half-watched, but was still pissed at myself for missing some of it. I figured that since Wolfgang and I agreed on enjoying the movie, I’d give you guys a full review of it, rather than one of those half-assed reviews i’ve been putting up lately. As a warning, there will be spoilers, so if you’re interested in this movie, I recommend seeing it and then coming back to read this review.
The first step in my process of becoming Ryan Gosling will be to buy some of them gloves. That’s a good starting point, right?
Ryan Gosling plays the character named “Driver”, not to be confused with the actress Minnie Driver. I don’t think they’re related? Anyways, Gosling is a driver for both illegal activities as well as for stunts in major motion pictures. He sparks a somewhat intimate relationship with his neighbor, played by Carey Mulligan, whose husband is in prison. Sadly for the two, the husband is released early, but hasn’t been able to keep his criminal past behind him. The husband is pressured into doing one last robbery, and Gosling offers his assistance in order to make sure that nothing happens to the family. The robbery results in the husband getting shot, and now Gosling has a million dollars, which he wants nothing to do with. The rest of the film shows Gosling figuring out whose money it is, how to give it back, and how to cut all ties to the events that happened, as well as wanting to ensure the safety of Mulligan’s character and her son. Rather than type out the ending right here, since it’s not some big action sequence or anything, I’m going to cut this part short and say it doesn’t end quite the way you expect.
Always good to see Bryan Cranston with hair.
Unfortunately this is one of those movies that the more and more someone tries to defend, the more and more pretentious that person sounds. Throwing around terms like “neo-noir”, ”art house film”, or “avant-garde” tell nothing about the movie, but rather confuse and annoy the person who hears these terms. There’s such a vague idea of what elements are present in films with those descriptive terms that I don’t feel it’s fair to say any of those movies should be considered a genre. The strange thing is, I can’t really describe the tone of this movie other than using those words, so it’s a contradiction. One thing I can point out is that there isn’t really one element of this movie that stands out as far as why it’s so entertaining. The characters, the direction, the story, etc. are all relatively generic, but it’s really the combination of all these things that build the atmosphere of Drive. Remove one thing from the equation and the whole house of cards would come crumbling.
Christina Hendricks showed us her rare talent of going from classy to skanky more quickly than the car in this film goes from 0 to 60.
Friendly reminder: I KNOW THAT THIS ISN’T A UNIQUE, OR ORIGINAL MOVIE, AND IT BORROWED TONS OF THINGS FROM OTHER MOVIES. Ryan Gosling was awesome, as usual, as someone who seemed to be completely detached from and apathetic to reality. You got a sense of mania building right under the surface, you just didn’t know when it would surface. Considering this movie had the disclaimer of “strong brutal, bloody violence”, I was a little nervous for the first hour, but then when we had our first Gosling outburst, it scared the shit out of me. And that was only a verbal outburst, which was clearly only hinting at what was brewing below the surface. Which reminds me, there’s really only about half a dozen scenes of violence, but considering the director consulted Gaspar Noé, director of Irreversible, the intensity was based on the realism of the violence as opposed to frequency. I found it kind of amusing that three members of the supporting cast could be described as “That guy from Breaking Bad”, “That guy from Sons of Anarchy”, or “That girl from Mad Men”. Of course you know that I meant Bryan Cranston, Ron Perlman, and Christina Hendricks, but none of their characters had that many lines. The biggest, and probably most important role in this movie was the city of L.A. itself. The crime, the anonymity, the glamour, all came together and made it seem as though this story and these characters could only exist there and nowhere else. The use of cell phones obviously made us aware that it was contemporary L.A., but the gloss over everything, from the character’s wardrobes to all of the musical choices gave a feeling of shallowness and sleaze to everything that was going on, and added an element of cheese to Gosling’s character.
SPOILER ALERT: He doesn’t hammer the nail into the guys head. Which is good, because I learned from Mythbusters that it wouldn’t have worked anyway.
Ultimately I’d have to say that this movie worked well because of the elements it borrowed from other films and they way they were incorporated and the juxtaposition it caused. The credits themselves were even bright pink, in a font that reminded you or something like Sixteen Candles. The plot of this movie sounds like something that Charles Bronson or Patrick Swayze could have been in, and those names aren’t regularly used along with the term “noir”. This film managed to not only leave you with a sense of hope, showing how Gosling was so driven to do what needed to be done, but also left you with a feeling of hopelessness, as to say that this film didn’t quite have a happy ending. And can you believe that for a movie called “Drive”, there are barely any car chases? Fine with me! I’d say that if you took musical cues and sense of real world detachment from Lars and the Real Girl, give him an intense desire for revenge like Old Boy, and the plot of something like Death Wish, and you get this movie. And I can’t wait to see it again and see if I like it even more.
One thing that I hate is when I read user reviews of horror movies where people try to defend a movie by saying “It’s so bad that it’s good” or “You just didn’t get it!” Most of these movies are just terrible and bland and have absolutely nothing redeeming about it, and people just try to come across as being so well-versed in horror films that they know how it is ironically bad. Are you fucking kidding me? There are so many shitty fucking awful movies out there that I am not trying to impress people by saying “LOL Boogeyman wuz so bad it was kewl LOL” like some other people say. I can admit that yes, there are some movies that are so laughably bad that there can be entertainment found in mocking it, but that’s not an excuse to try to say EVERY awful movie is “fun to watch”, because it takes a certain something to push a movie from generically bland and tepid to so ridiculous that you can’t help but laugh. Lucky for us all, this movie, which is also known as “The Beacon”, is so terrible that Rampaige and I had to rewind multiple parts to see how ridiculous it was.
I figured I’d give you guys one shot of the stars of the movie before shit talking everything.
A couple moves into an apartment building while dealing with the disappearance of their child. The mother Bryn, played by Teri Polo, feels the most guilty about the loss since she was the one watching their son when he disappeared. The father Paul, played by David Rees Snell, knows how deeply it affected Bryn and tries to help her cope. Shortly after moving in, Bryn has visions and captures photos of the ghost of a child, and upon further investigation, learns that there was a boy who used to live there who died after falling off the building’s elevator. While trying to track down the rest of the family, she finds that they have killed themselves because they couldn’t cope with the loss of their son. With some help from one of Paul’s fellow professors, it is determined that the ghost is on some sort of loop, replaying the incident over and over, and if the cycle is interrupted, the ghost will be at peace. After even FURTHER investigation, it is learned that this hotel was built on a burial ground where suicide victims were sent, and that everyone who lives in the hotel is actually a ghost, including all of the tenants. All of these ghosts have been trying to convince Bryn and Paul to kill themselves so that they will join them, and Paul ends up falling out of a window and dying, and Bryn kills herself as a result. Looks like The Beacon has a few new residents!
THE MYTHICAL CHAIN HEAD!
Doesn’t sound too bad, does it? I didn’t think it sounded too bad either, and considering that Teri Polo was in those Meet the Parents movies and that Michael Ironside was in it, I figured it might have some credibility to it, but this movie was GODDAMNED RIDICULOUS. One character I left out was Bryn’s sister Christina, who you might also know as a character named Christine. Wait, what did I just say? OH THAT’S RIGHT, SHE IS CALLED CHRISTINE, CHRISTINA, AND CHRISSY AT DIFFERENT POINTS OF THE MOVIE. I understand that Chrissy can be a nickname for either Christine or Christina, but since when are those two names interchangeable? I should probably also mention that within 30 seconds of screen time, Christina establishes herself as THE BIGGEST COCKTEASE IN THE HISTORY OF WHORES. While she’s helping her sister move in and notices that two moving guys are kind of sort of smiling at her because she overhears them say she’s hot, she drops what she’s doing to TAKE OUT HER TITS AND SHOW THEM. Then has a playful “Will you guys get back to work now?” comment like it’s some fucking normal thing to whip out your knockers for strangers because they smile at you. A neighbor walks by and sees this and gets a boner on his face, so she goes over to apologize. She says “My sister moves in, but maybe I’ll be dropping by more often…” in the beginning of the conversation, and I shouted at my TV for how easy she was making it for this guy to rape her. He mentions that his last name is Tyler and that his nickname is “Ty…as in, Ty one on!” because he gets belligerent and drunk all the time. She responds with “Oh, I thought it could me Ty me down…” because she is fucking ASKING TO GET FUCKING RAPED BY THIS STRANGER. Sure, she didn’t drop to her knees to start blowing dudes in the first 30 seconds, but she came pretty fucking close.
“Hmmm…these complete strangers seem to be distracted by my boobs. I have a feeling that if I flash these gentlemen, they will get a nice glimpse of my bra, and will have had their curiosity satiated. Sounds foolproof! TIME TO WHIP OUT MY TITS!”
Need more reasons why this movie was laughably terrible? Don’t worry, there’s more. Paul tries to encourage Bryn to start photography again because she apparently gave up when she abandoned her son because she was such a shitty mother. While exploring the city with her digital SLR, or digital Single Lens Reflex camera as you might prefer to call it, and proceeds to take the shittiest pictures of everything she can find. From out of focus branches to flowers to elevators, they’re all terrible. She plugs the camera into her computer, because remember how I said it was digital? She looks at the pictures she took digitally with her digital camera, and thinks she sees a child in one of the photos. Wanting to get a closer look at the pictures the next day, we then see Bryn pulling her photos off of a drying line, which is what photographers hang their pictures on after developing their film in a darkroom. Wait, did I just say she was drying film? Weren’t her pictures taken on a digital camera? Isn’t the difference with a digital camera the fact that there’s no film in it? Was she developing a picture off of her computer like it was a darkroom? Don’t we see an actual fucking printer attached to the computer? WHY THE FUCK WAS SHE PULLING PICTURES OFF OF A DRYING LINE WHEN SHE TOOK THEM WITH A DIGITAL FUCKING CAMERA. THERE’S NO GODDAMNED FILM TO DEVELOP, SO YOU WOULD HAVE HAD TO TAKE THOSE DIGITAL IMAGES, TRANSFER THEM ONTO FILM, DEVELOP THEM IN A DARK ROOM AND THEN HANG THEM TO DRY, INSTEAD OF HITTING THE FUCKING PRINT BUTTON ON YOUR STUPID GODDAMNED COMPUTER.
This is the scary ghost. See those scissors? There’s some sort of explanation about it, but it’s really dumb, so let’s forget those scissors are even there.
See, it’s these small things that made no sense that really made you do a double take of the stupidity of this movie. When she was taking pictures, Bryn snapped a picture of another tenant who is supposedly a retired actress who did a bunch of softcore porn. Why is that important? Well, don’t worry, there’s a subplot of Paul cheating on Bryn with this woman who uses her softcore porn seduction powers to fuck him in some weird fucking photography warehouse. When this woman gets angry with Bryn for taking photos, the tenant that wants to rape Christine, or Christina, I already forgot, tries to fight back and defend Bryn. Ty tries to comment that this bitch is old, and she says “I’m not old, I’m 32,” to which Ty responds with “Yeah, maybe in DOG years!” which makes him look at Bryn and smirk and mentally says “THAT WAS A SICK BURN.” Let’s take a step back…first of all, the concept of there being ”dog years” isn’t real, because all it means is that humans live seven times longer than a dog, which causes people to think there’s an actual concept of 1 human year being the equivalent of 7 dog years. Even though it’s bullshit, let’s keep this formula in mind with Ty’s retort, because with this logic, being 32 in “dog years” would mean 4.5 human years. Is this making sense to any of you guys? THIS DIPSHIT JUST INSULTED HER BACKWARDS. SHE SAID SHE WAS 32, AND HE TRIED TO THROW IT BACK IN HER FACE BY ARBITRARILY MENTIONING SOMETHING ABOUT DOG YEARS AND UNKNOWINGLY TRIED TO INSULT HER BY SAYING SHE WAS ACTUALLY ONLY 5 YEARS OLD, BECAUSE APPARENTLY NOT ONE SINGLE FUCKING PERSON THOUGHT IT WOULD BE A GOOD IDEA TO CHECK THE SCRIPT FOR INDISCREPANCIES OF REALITY. Bryn’s response to this whole scene is to chuckle and then call the lady Spider Legs. I thought there would be some explanation of why that’s an insult, but rather than attempting to use logic to figure out the implications of “Spider Legs”, I’m just going to assume it was a varicose veins joke and leave it alone.
Watch out! That scary ghost might lean forward and spook you!
Hopefully you guys are starting to get the idea of just how terrible this movie is, and the fact that it is somewhat entertaining that someone devoted time to writing this, someone gave that person money, and actors read for the role and took the time to memorize lines, and I’m sure some thought it would garner them some celebrity. Not to mention the fact that NOTHING ABOUT THIS MOVIE WAS SCARY. The ghost of the little boy’s father kept popping up, and when I say popping up, I mean leaning forward or standing up. That’s right, he would just kind of peek out from behind a corner or from the passenger seat as a means of “scaring” the audience. Also, when Bryn is first exploring the city with her camera, we see her being stalked by some guy who looks like a member of Slipknot with a bag on his head with chains around it. This character pops up a few times, with no explanation, until the very end, which doesn’t justify how comically obvious it was to have a guy wearing a shitty mask with fake chains around. I got excited thinking it might have been a prequel to Chain Letter, but sadly, it wasn’t. Did I mention how terrible to outfits of the police in this movie were? Well, they were awful. Everyone had what appeared to be the TOP FOUR buttons unbuttoned, looking like a bunch of idiots. Fuck. If you want to know how to NOT make a good movie, or I guess if you want to know how to make a really shitty movie, feel free to watch this on Netflix Instant. Maybe if you want to laugh for a good hour, because the last 30 minutes are practically unbearable. How people can like this shit or try to justify it is beyond me, and I hope you all die. Oh, and in case you were wondering, the Christina/Christine/Chrissy character gets run over by a street sweeper for wearing a hat like Blossom so they chop her legs off at the hospital. Her boobs are safe though! SAFE I TELL YOU!
You already think I’ve gone soft, haven’t you? HAVEN’T YOU?! Well, that’s assuming I was hard in the first place, and–nevermind just realized I am too immature to finish this narrative without making boner references. Speaking with a coworker the other day about Pixar films and thinking about how I enjoy making lists on this site, I figure I’d give you guys a little glimpse into what my favorite Pixar films are. I normally do “Top 5″ of things when I make lists, but I don’t think there are enough Pixar movies yet to constitute picking my 5 favorite. There’s only been 12 films so far, so I would really just be saying which half I like more. Without further ado, and in no particular order…wait, chronological order. That’s how I’ll do it.
1) Toy Story (1995)
I suppose that this is an obvious choice, considering it was the movie that started it all. This movie was also one of the first movies I went to see in theaters without family members, and I think I went opening day. It was the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, so it was a half day, and I went to a theater that I ended up working at. I also think that from all the birthday money I had gotten that year I bought a bunch of Toy Story shit, and got a lot of Toy Story shit for Christmas. I understand that this makes me sound like a baby, but 15 years later I still buy toys, so don’t let that confuse you. It could be argued that any film in the Toy Story trilogy is just as good or better than any other of the films, but rather than deciding between which one is best, this one wins as a nostalgic level. Also, this is the only one that Joss Whedon was involved in, so bonus points for that.
2) The Incredibles (2004)
Although I didn’t quite realize it at the time, this film kind of blew my mind. I think I initially wrote it off as being not as good as the others, but after seeing it again…and again…and again, I realized that the reason it stood out was because this was the first non-kid oriented movie. Granted, it’s still a kid’s movie, I’m not saying it’s not appropriate for kids, but this was the first PG rated Pixar movie. CAN YOU EVEN FUCKING COMPREHEND THAT?! No longer was Pixar making movies for General audiences, they demanded that children have Parental Guidance with this film. You see a dead body, superheroes and henchmen alike DIE, and the main character is a middle-aged guy whose personal and professional life have fallen apart after the legal repercussions of his heroic actions. That was probably WAAAAY over the heads of kids, and other than maybe the opening segment of Up or the climax of Toy Story 3, this film takes the cake as far as most adult-oriented content. It comes as no surprise that this film was directed by brad bird, who five years earlier directed The Iron Giant, which is another one of my favorite animated movies.
3) WALL-E (2008)
Have I mentioned enough times on this blog the fact that I saw this movie, hesitantly, at its midnight release? Because I did. And it was one of the best mistakes I’ve ever made. THERE’S NO FUCKING DIALOGUE FOR THIRTY MINUTES. Yes, there are characters interacting with one another through primitive communication, but even that is limited to only about a dozen words. Obviously the fact that they can keep kids and adults thoroughly engaged in what’s going on with no dialogue is impressive, but that’s only where it starts. The film continues to tell a love story about two robots, while also projecting where humankind is heading, and that means we’re going to be fat pieces of shit who have ruined the planet and have to live in outer space. It does have one or two lines that are a little heavy-handed about the message it’s trying to make, but even with those lines, WALL-E manages to show a pessimistic outlook on life and how terrible the human species is. Also, there are lots of funny scenes where robots make noises at one another.
I’d also like to give an honorary mention to Up because that movie is also pretty grim, from the barren uterus of the main character’s wife, to her untimely death and resulting depression, and a side of parental abandonment. It does also have a main character that’s a dog, so that’s pretty awesome. I guess I just didn’t feel right making a “Top 4″, and I don’t think I like Up more than anything I already listed. I will say that I don’t like Monsters Inc. nearly as much as most people do, and everyone agrees that Cars is a piece of shit, and its sequel is the first Pixar movie I haven’t seen in theaters. Okay I’m wrong, I chose going to see Antz over A Bug’s Life, but Cars 2 just looked awful. Ratatouille is pretty good too, but takes a few viewings to really grow on you, and doesn’t really seem like a kids’ movie. Maybe next year’s Brave will be pretty good, or at least I hope it will be, because after that we get another installment of those Monsters Inc. guys in Monsters University. And even though it’s not technically a Pixar movie, I definitely recommend watching the documentary about those guys, “The Pixar Story”, to really appreciate every step they took along the way and how if one thing had changed even slightly, they wouldn’t be anywhere near what they are today.
YES I FUCKING FELL ASLEEP FOR TEN MINUTES OF THIS MOVIE. Just wanted to make sure I got that out of the way before I went any further. Despite missing a few minutes of this movie, I feel as though I can give it an accurate review, because if it was a good ten minutes, maybe it would have kept me awake. With yesterday being 9/11 and all, I figured it was a perfect opportunity to sort my shit out on Netflix and I managed to trim things down to under 100 movies, which made me feel quite accomplished. With so few movies, I started Googling things like “haunted house” and “ghost” movies, because those are what generally creep me out. I stumbled across this movie, which I was surprised to see on Netflix Instant, and even more surprised to see had an average of 4 stars. That’s a fucking lot! Especially for a horror movie that I hadn’t heard of. I decided to take a break from watching Breaking Bad to give this a shot.
Special cameo from that bitch from The Ring
This film is a fake documentary, a “mockumentary” if you will, about an incident that happened near Lake Mungo in Australia. A family was spending some time there when their daughter went missing while in the water. There was absolutely no trace of her, other than a few days later (or something), her body is recovered. Despite the body having decomposed and not having concrete proof of it being the daughter, it was assumed to be her. Obviously the family was bummed and tried to move on, but had some difficulty. The mom tried finding solace in talking with a psychic, the dad tried to keep busy, and the son started getting involved in photography. The son started taking pictures of his backyard once a day, every day, as a personal project. He did this until one day he noticed a figure standing in his backyard, and even though it wasn’t crystal clear, looked just like the daughter. It was some blurry glowing light, it looked like a solid figure. Weird, right? After that, there is footage revealed of what a video camera recorded while left on in the house, and we see another solid figure walk from one room to another that looked just like the daughter.
Ghost? Bigfoot? We may never know…
Thinking the daughter might still be alive, the family starts investigating her friends to see if she had reason to just disappear. This led to some cell phone footage of their daughter at a party, at Lake Mungo, where she is seen to be burying something. When digging up what she has buried, the daughter’s cell phone is recovered. Upon investigating the cell phone, there is footage found from that night. We then see footage of the daughter, presumably alone, exploring a figure she saw near the lake. As the gets closer and closer to the figure, we see then that the figure she sees is what her own decomposing corpse looked like, there’s a brief and seemingly terrifying encounter, and then the footage stops. Days later is when the daughter dies. The family decides that they couldn’t explain the answers that this footage has provided them with, and moves out of their house that held all the memories of their daughter. As the movie ends, we are shown more pictures and footage that has already appeared in the film, but this time we zoom in on different parts and see the figure of the daughter, which most viewers probably hadn’t noticed was there the whole time.
Can you see the ghost in this picture? CAN YOU? How creepy is it when you see it? That’s what I liked, is you had to really search for whether or not you could see what you were seeing. (Hint: she’s in the window)
Okay guys, you got me, you know I always get creeped out by that doppelgänger bullshit. I guess the idea of seeing yourself but it not being yourself just scares the shit out of me. Also the idea that this character saw herself and didn’t think to tell anyone about it seems really creepy. Think of that fact that there are almost 7 billion people on the planet and you realize at least one other person is bound to look just like you. I also really liked the fact that this was shot as an actual documentary, rather than the Blair Witch/Paranormal Activity style of handheld cameras. It was presented as a weird event that just happened to a family that was documented after the fact and once all the dust had settled. I also really enjoyed that the figure they were seeing wasn’t something obscured or vaguely resembled a ghost, but it was obvious that it appeared as a solid figure that had actual weight and mass to it. Granted, I did fall asleep, and there were some slow parts, so it’s not getting the best rating it can, but considering how creeped out I got at the idea of encountering your own rotting corpse and how terrifying that would be, I definitely recommend this movie to any other fans of ghost movies.
