In Which I Am Costello

You: Hey, have you heard about that new movie Race To Witch Mountain?

Me: Which mountain?

You: Yes.

Me: Um, which mountain?

You: Exactly.

Me: It's called Exactly Mountain?

You: No, Witch Mountain.

Me: I don't know.

You: Third Base.

THANK YOU! I'll be here all week.

The fact that this gag is more than a half century old means many people have forgotten it and will completely credit it to me.

Even If You Remember The Past, You're Doomed To Repeat It

My freakin God, I am getting sick of remakes. Next month alone, hell, on the same day, we're getting remakes of Last House On The Left and Witch Mountain. Between remakes and sequels, there's very little on the big screen these days that we haven't seen before.

I was just reading today that plans are in the works for a remake of Total Recall. That was far from being a perfect film but do we really need to remake Schwarzenegger films? What if whoever ends up in the lead someday becomes Governor of California? Don't we want to ever give a non-actor a chance of being elected to that office? These are the things you have to think about. On the upside, maybe this new version will adhere closely to the Philip K. Dick story that the 1990 original movie was based on, We Can Remember It For You Wholesale. That's a cool story with twists and turns and a memorable surprise ending. Yeah, I could live with something like that...

Surprisingly, Moritz isn’t planning to return to the original Dick novel for inspiration, but rather the Verhoven film, which he hopes to tell in a “fresh” way with modern CG effects.

Oh, screw you guys. If you want old science fiction, why not Alfred Bester's The Demolished Man? Or Jack Williamson's The Legion of Space? Or A.E. Van Vogt's The Weapon Shops of Isher? Those are all great books and, unfortunately, the fact that we've never seen them on screen before means that now we'll probably never see them at all.

We've also now gotten the news that Cate Blanchett has been cast as Maid Marian to Russel Crowe's Robin Hood in the Ridley Scott directed Nottingham. I like how they're not at all deterred by the fact that every adaptation of the Robin Hood story since the Errol Flynn classic from 1938 has sucked donkey balls, thought the power of the suction and the size of the balls has varied. The only Robin Hood movie I like besides the Flynn version is a 70s film called Robin and Marian in which Sean Connery and Audrey Hepburn play the characters in middle age during the Middle Ages and reunited after Robin spent twenty years fighting the Crusades. I especially loved Robert Shaw as the Sheriff of Nottingham, a man who had grown world weary during Robin's absence but found that the excitement had returned to his life when Robin came back. I am far from optimistic that the actor-director team that brought us the overrated Gladiator are going to be able to match the sheer thrills of Robin Hood or the wonderful romantic tone of Robin and Marian. Still, I'm assuming that this time around Robin's British accent won't be thought of as something optional.

Last and, almost certainly, least, God freaking forbid that we not get yet another piece of shit remake of a piece of shit 70s horror film. Yes, Pirahna is getting another shot at boring the crap out of people. The director is Alexander Aja, a douchebag best known for directing the shitty remake of The Hills Have Eyes which tells me that the movie's profit will come from the producers betting in Vegas on how much money the movie is going to lose. The movie stars...well...no one.

As it stands, casting is still up in the air despite a rapidly-approaching start date. “We’re talking to a lot of people,” Aja said, “but there is nothing official.”

The two possible reasons for this are that no one of even modest fame has gotten the "Please oh please be in my movie" letter from Alexander Aja yet or, more likely, they did get the letter, wiped their asses with it and flushed it down the toilet. Expect Aja to give an interview in the next few months about how excited he is to be working with a cast of energetic young newcomers.

There's even a remake coming out this Friday. Yes, I consider the Jonas Brothers' new concert film to be a remake of last year's Miley Cyrus concert film.

Final Fantasy: Oscar's Edition

I don't have much time today but I will take a moment to compare fantasy to reality.

Fantasy--Violinist and Big Hollywood blogger Endre Balogh:

I recently had a conversation with a very well known actor friend who was dumbfounded by my statement that “No one watches the Academy Awards any more.” Since he attends them every year, he couldn’t imagine how I could utter such a blasphemy.

Fantasy--Movie journalist and fellow Big Hollywood blogger Steve Mason on how the Oscars were doomed this year:

As a hardcore movie fan, I will be watching, but the average American doesn’t care about enough of these movies to draw a substantial audience. This group of Best Picture nominees seems destined to be the second-least popular group of nominees in the past fifteen years with an ultimate combined cume of just $293M.

Reality--

When in doubt, stick on a top hat and wheel out the big band. That seemed to be the motto adopted by producers of Sunday's Oscars telecast, which featuring an all-singing, all-dancing Hugh Jackman in place of 2008 host Jon Stewart's dry wit. And at first glance, it seems to have done the trick: ABC reports that US viewing figures for the show leapt 4.3m to 36.3m, 13% up from last year's historic low of 32m.

Jackman, the first non-standup to take on hosting duties since 1987, was particularly popular among women, who returned to the show in droves. The telecast was up 11% among women aged 18-34, and 12% among those aged 18-49 and 25-54, according to estimates from TV analysts Nielsen.

The One Bank That Doesn't Need a Bailout

I'm way behind on my movies which is why I'm only now able to review The International. I wasn't sure what to expect since it received what could be the very definition of "mixed reviews". It seems that as many people liked it as hated it and my personal history has shown that, in cases like that, I end up not liking it. However, in this case, the exception to history of...of not liking...of ending up...I liked it.

The ads are trying to compare the plot to true, modern day banking scandals but this is complete fiction. First off, the bank in The International is a highly profitable institution that is extremely and, in some cases, lethally competent at what it does. Instead of swapping around piles of imaginary money like most real banks do, this bank is into things like arming third world despots in order to...well, damned if I could figure out why. It was sort of vaguely explained at one point but I didn't retain the information and it doesn't really matter anyway as the reason was never mentioned again. The bank is bad. That's all you need to know.

The movie opens in Berlin with an FBI agent taking a clandestine meeting with a bank official who wants to try to stop the illegal activities of his employer, the International Bank of Business and Credit (IBBC) while Interpol agent Louis Salinger (Clive Owen) observes from across the street. I can't remember the names of the FBI man but it doesn't matter since he is killed almost as soon as his meeting ends. Now, you'd think if there you were some sort of multi-national bank that didn't want to raise suspicion that you were involved in some sort of super illegal activities, you might want to avoid doing things that would confirm the suspicions of law enforcement. For example, killing FBI agents as an Interpol agent looks on. Still, I'm not a part of a professional evil organization so what the hell do I know? The IBBC was right as the German officials didn't believe it was a murder even though a mysterious dart was found in the back of the dead guy's neck. The only person who believes Salinger is Manhattan DA Eleanor Whitman (Naomi Watts), a woman with whom he and Dead FBI Guy were working in a joint investigation of the IBBC. I would be willing to bet a million dollars that the character of Eleanor Whitman exists because it was felt that a female lead was needed since her character basically could have been written out and, about 2/3 of the way in, she pretty much goes away and lets the men handle the messy business of the third act.

One thing I love about The International is that it truly is international. We have scenes set in Berlin, New York, Luxembourg, Milan, Istanbul...hell, I'm betting if you looked in your backyard a few months back, you'd have seen a camera crew back there filming Clive Owen talking to Naomi Watts. A lot of filmmakers these days don't realize the power of filming real people in real places. That is one of the things that elevated the Bourne films out of the category of Standard Action Flick. Unfortunately, it only elevates The International up to the level of Standard Action Flick but that's good enough, I guess.

One of the best scenes is when Salinger and two NYPD detectives follow an assassin known only as The Consultant to a meeting at the Guggenheim Museum with his IBBC handler, Wilhelm Wexler (Armin Mueller-Stahl, one of your better screen villains). After The Consultant is captured by Salinger, a heavily armed hit team that apparently follows Wexler around wherever he goes tried to kill them both and a massive firefight breaks out in the Guggenheim. True story: the one time I was ever at the Guggenheim, two guys started a fist fight. I have no idea why but I do know that Guggenheim security quickly broke it up and the NYPD showed up within two minutes to take the men into custody. That was about ten years ago and things must have changed in New York since then because, in this movie, a dozen guys with high powered automatic weapons shoot up the place for about ten minutes, killing innocent people and pretty much destroying the place. Finally, the cops show up to yell, "FREEZE, NYPD," to all the dead people. Did I say this was one of the movie's best scenes. It's good because it's full of suspense and tense action. It just doesn't hold up to scrutiny.

That's the movie's main problem. It has good actors and entertaining action but the plot is completely unrealistic. Companies like the IBBC stay out of trouble by purchasing the goodwill and influence of those around them and having an army of lawyers do the rest, not by shooting at everything that moves. By the end of the movie, the IBBC has killed many of its own employees, several members of law enforcement in at least three different countries and a candidate for Prime Minister of Italy. When you rack up that kind of a body count, eventually you lose whatever sort of political power you have and legal authorities start working overtime to bring you down.

But hey, I think too much. Go see The International because lots of guns get shot, lots of stuff blows up and lots of tough guys say things like, "You think you know how to stop us. You're wrong," and, "It ends now." Just don't make my mistake and think about it too much.

Big Hollywads

I would say, "This goes double for me," but double doesn't seem like enough. Those of you who don't subscribe to conservative movie site Big Hollywood's RSS feed didn't get the lovely present they left in Google Reader, that being their Oscars Liveblog split up into over 100 separate posts. Here's Pandagon's Oscars Liveblog I was reading during the presentation. Note how the whole thing fits handily into one convenient post thanks to a self refreshing Java applet. I'm assuming that the Big Hollywood bloggers were all probably doing this out of Andrew Breitbart's basement huddled around his decade old PC that still uses Windows 95. I can see you all yelling at each other, "Let me have the keyboard now, I want to call Sean Penn a commie." "No, I want to call him a terrorist." If my outrageous example is true, I apologize as such space age technology wasn't feasible but it still could have been done in 3-4 updated threads tops. Still, since you went to all the trouble to make sure all your comments were individually linked and more easily searchable, I can now present:

BIG HOLLYWADS -- THE NIGHT THE DORKS SALUTE THEMSELVES

One of the biggest surprises was when John McCain's daughter Meghan showed up to inform us all that she was eating cheesecake, had to tell her mom who Tim Gunn was, how cute Natalie Portman looked and that Pineapple Express should have won for Best Picture. Congratulations Meghan McCain. Yours were the most informative, coherent and intelligent comments of the entire night.

A more typical example came from Mike Long. Looking at his picture, many of you men almost certainly recognize Mike Long as the father of the girl you took to the Senior Prom. Hey Long, remember me? The guy who called you "Sir" and promised to make sure she stayed out of trouble? She snorted coke off my balls before we even got out of your driveway all the while yelling, "Kiss my ass, Daddy." Why am I being so hostile toward Mike Long? It's because he wrote stupid shit like this:

someone just won and his name appears to be POOPITY. I love that. POOPITY POOPITY POOPITY

He's talking about Resul Pookutty, one of the winners for Best Sound Mixing whose name sounded like "POOPITY" to Mike Long because be was too busy perfecting his "suck all the meat off the chicken wing in one bite" technique to bother paying attention to what was actually going on. Long thought it was funny to say that because he's a doofus with no sense of humor and a doofus with no sense of humor thinks that simply comparing a foreign name to poop is funny. Sadly, this is the funniest and least offensive joke he tried to tell. The most offensive came later when 5 previous Best Actress winners were presenting this year's award.

what’s with the stupid you-go-girl speeches, actress to actress? this is like some sort of support group where every chick ends up in sync with each other’s period…

If I have to explain why that's stupid, it's too late for you. I will say that Long also lacked the self awareness to realize that the same thing could be said about him and all the other men at Big Hollywood.

Moving on, we were also treated to the wit and wisdom of an actor whose IMDB profile is always good for a chuckle, Gary Graham. After Man on the Wire, a film about the man who walked a high wire between the World Trade Center's towers, won for Best Documentary, someone pointed out that no one mentioned that the World Trade Center wasn't there anymore. Graham jumped in to agree and then, in what I assume was an attempt to honor those who perished on 9/11, started masturbating:

Debbie — i agree 100% on the Magnificent Omission on the poignance of the Twin Towers no longer there. And why, I wonder…

And Moxie…and Meghan… Whoa! Is it just me, or are there hotter ladies on this site than at the Oscars??!

It's awesome how masterfully he blended those two subjects together. I'm sure Meghan McCain is very flattered by the idea that a washed up actor twice her age has a hard-on for her. I imagine we'll see Gary Graham internet chats like this again when he winds up being interviewed by Chris Hanson.

This brings us to a favorite of this site, mediocre comic and self styled Man's Man Steven Crowder who criticized Cuba Gooding Jr. for doing something Crowder has never seen happen before. He made an audience laugh.

I love how Cuba Gooding turns on his “Blackness” when it’s conveniant for jokes… Much like Oprah.

Crowder has apparently poured over thousands of hours of Cuba Gooding Jr. speaking in order to determine the timing and circumstances in which Gooding "turns on his Blackness" in order to render this expert opinion but let's say that what he says is true. Just imagine the nerve and audacity of Cuba Gooding using funny voices in order to get laughs. Why, some might actually call that the job of a professional, competent entertainer which is probably what threw off Steven Crowder. In Crowder's defense, in his stand up act, he waits a respectable 38 seconds before doing his own attempts at funny voices. Crowder was also another guy who let Meghan McCain know that she made him feel funny down there which goes a long way toward explaining why she left early.

Next up, we have everyone's favorite paranoid racist incoherent ranting bitch, Debbie Schlussel. When A.R. Rahman, a man whose musical skills are recognized and revered all around the globe, won an Oscar for his Slumdog Millionaire score, which part of his acceptance speech do you suppose she zeroed in on?

So Muslim music dude A. R. Rahman said, "Allahu Akbar," upon winning the first of two Oscars he’s won so far. He says it means, "god is great." Uh, no. It means, "allah is the greater" or "allah is the greatest," meaning greater than your and my G-d or the greatest above your or my G-d. And that’s part of my tiny objection to "Slumdog Millionaire," which I loved. It shows us the scene of a brutal massacre of Muslims by Hindus. It’s the same problem we see on a much smaller scale with regard to Oscar nominee, "Waltz with Bashir ." They don’t show the plethora of Muslim massacres and violence against Hindus and Sikhs and Christians in India.

Yes, you read it right. Debbie Schlussel seems to think there should be some sort of cinematic affirmative action when it comes to portrayals of ethnic cleansing. If a movie is ever made about Serbian dictator Slobodan Milosevic and his mass murder of Muslims in the 90s, expect Debbie Schlussel to write, "Why didn't they show the time a Muslim scuffed Milosevic's shoe?" Also, I have no idea if Allahu Akbar means "God is Great," "Allah Is Greater," or, "Buddha is The Mostest," but I'm willing to bet that neither does Debbie Schlussel. Please keep in mind that this is a woman who, in the movie Taken, heard Alabanians speaking the Albanian language and declared that, since they were evildoers, they must be Arabs speaking Arabic. I'll take the word of the guy who actually speaks that language over the word of a crazy woman who probably thinks someone is plotting a suicide bombing if she hears them speaking Pig Latin.

And finally, we have Ben Shapiro, a fellow who has never known the touch of a woman save for the ones he keeps in his basement to whom he says, "It puts the lotion on its skin." Ben the answer to your question is: Yes, Asshole, it's just you.

2009 Oscar Predictions

I'm moving up the posting time a bit today in order to get in my Oscar predictions. I'm not really into Oscar predictions since I don't consider them to be especially important and, if I was any good at predicting anything, I'd make a fortune by betting on them. Still, the main topic of this site is movies so I guess I have to.

1. There will be at least three Angelina Jolie "I really love my brother" type moments in tonight's acceptance speeches. You know, something weird that they speak of matter-of-factly because they think it's perfectly normal. Mickey Rourke, if he wins, is the likeliest possibility for this, probably saying something along the lines of, "Wow, winning this is better than when I fart in a plastic bag then sniff it. AM I RIGHT PEOPLE?"
2. Unable to choose between Kate Winslet and Meryl Streep, the Academy will, without their knowledge, toss them into a Thunderdome type setup and let them fight it out. It's difficult to tell whether Streep's canniness and experience will be able to overcome Winslet's youth and superior stamina. I'm especially hoping they make chainsaws available to the actresses.
   
3. Hugh Jackman, unaware of the fact that rules against foul language are stricter here than they are in Australia, will begin cursing. Fortunately, his cursing will consist of Australian sayings like, "Up your duff, ya bloody poofta drongo!" so everyone will think it's charming.
4. Approximately 2000 jokes will be written, none of which will be funny. The only real laughs will be a Jack Black ad lib or an unintentionally funny musical number.
   
5. Some dumbass you've never heard of will win some lame award and will start droning on about some dead relative. This is an excellent time to go to the bathroom.
6. When the award for Best Documentary Short Film is announced, a considerable percentage of the audience will be heard muttering, "No fucking way. They actually give out an award for that? No motherfucking way."
   

And that's it. Can't wait till tomorrow to see how I did.

Things I've Learned From Watching Movies Part 62

When the only film critic quoted on a movie's web site is Harry Knowles, only one word comes to mind: Quality!

When reading the above sentence, only one word comes to mind: Irony!

Michael Clear

Variety

No, not that dumb little newspaper that claims to be some big muckety muck when it comes to entertainment news. No, I'm talking about today's post which covers--drumroll please--a Variety of subjects. Don't be surprised if the word "Variety" is someday associated with me.

Oh yeah, this is the way to get the kids to watch your show. What, were Cloris Leachman and Frank Sinatra Jr. unavailable?

Mel Gibson says he has no interest in doing another Lethal Weapon movie which, upon hearing that, caused me to renounce any and all agnostic leanings I may have had and fully embrace that dude who died for my sins 2000 years ago. It's nice to see Mel having the good sense to at least learn from the mistakes that Stallone, Bruce Willis and Harrison Ford made before him. Just because the movie going public enjoyed something twenty years ago doesn't mean they were clamoring for said film to become a Neverending Story. Hell, even The Neverending Story stopped after one sequel. Mel, this totally makes up for you being a crazy drunken anti-Semitic Holocaust denier. One way in which this could all be ruined, though, is that when Gibson says, "No way will I ever do another one," it is merely Hollywood-speak for, "The check they wrote me wasn't big enough. Fill up an 18-wheeler with money and I'll do it."

Hey, remember that time back in the long, long ago when I wrote the sentence, "Hell, even The Neverending Story stopped after one sequel"? I suddenly had a nagging feeling that maybe some fool would be throwing together a remake of The Neverending Story so I looked it up. No remake plans currently (phew) but it turns out there was a third film. It's rare that IMDB commenters all agree with each other but, in this case, they're all using phrases like, "Worst Movie Ever!" and no one is stepping in to say they at least kind of liked it. It had Jack Black before he got famous. Oddly, I've never heard him tell charming stories about having done this.

It's sad that, as Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles becomes more interesting to watch, it's ratings are plummeting. Maybe they should have it suck again like it did the first season and it's ratings will climb back up. Try doing an episode where Summer Glau's hot girl robot character is sentenced by a judge to become somebody's butler or maybe add a dog and a precocious kid to the cast. That should get it back up above a 3.0 share. One piece of advice I'd give is stop making it so damn depressing. Every week I have to watch as these clinically depressed characters glumly try to prevent the global nuclear catastrophe they know is coming. I realize that premise doesn't easily lend itself to laugh-a-minute hijinks but I've seen some of the darkest premises treated with a light touch that keeps you watching without wanting to slash your wrists, something one of Terminator's characters actually did this week.

I almost wrote, "I bet Joss Whedon could have given it a great deal of humor," but, having seen Dollhouse, that's no longer necessarily true. From what I hear, it takes a few episodes for Dollhouse to take off because Fox executives kept trying to screw around with Whedon's concept which makes me wonder why they didn't just make their own damn show and save themselves the price of hiring Joss Whedon if they think they know so much. On the plus side, if it gets canceled maybe Whedon will just say, "The hell with movies and television," and do a couple Dr. Horrible type internet projects every year. Somehow, Whedon managed to gain not only critical but commercial success on that without the help of the Fox network.

Boy, I sure am glad we have such an awesome slate of movie releases this week that we didn't need an intelligent, innovative fantasy film from England.



I have no idea if Franklyn is any good though this guy seemed to like it. Whether it's good or bad, I find it hard to believe it's any worse than Fired Up, a movie that studios had no problem inflicting on the public. If nothing else, it's more visually imaginative than anything currently in theaters. Damn Hollywood, you really do hate America.

Steve-No

I almost skipped my Big Hollywood post this week, mainly because they've been boring the ever loving crap out of me. I love Big Hollywood for the unintentional laughter they give me when they try to measure everything in show business against how it helps or hurts the conservative agenda. I want to see them do stuff like compare Jason Voorhees to Hamas (you know, cause he always comes back just when you think he's been beaten). I want to see Debbie Schlussel being 1000% wrong in her claims of having spotted Muslims or Dirk Benedict showing us all that there's nothing you can write that Big Hollywood will reject. Hell, where's Tim Slagle, the guy who actually wrote to thank me for calling him a brain damaged douchebag (that's how I remember it), writing long articles about things he claims to care nothing about? Basically, Big Hollywood is devolving into just another right wing blog. Some days, if you hacked into their server and replaced the words "Big Hollywood" with "Townhall" or "Renew America", no one would notice the difference. However, in the past 48 hours, God took a break from all those wars and diseases He has to handle and gave me some glimmers of hope that all is not lost and that, soon, they'll go back to bitching about how they couldn't buy a Big Mac in a Hollywood McDonalds because the manager there won't serve conservatives.

Today, we have a favorite of this site, Steven Crowder, a comedian who makes Dane Cook look like Lenny Bruce. In his latest BH contribution, he waits two whole sentences before he tells a provable lie.

Yeah … I said it. Like many of you, I don’t completely subscribe to or submit myself to the doctrine of either political party.

Now, you can get away with writing something like that if you are known for often stating things like, "I believe that government should take a broad, active role in the lives of Americans but I also think that tax cuts increase revenues." However, when you are a regular contributor to a right wing blog and in your writing you criticize abortion, universal health care and the existence of global warming while also making sure to say that you don't think Obama voters are true Christians then you ARE a Republican. Your denial of that has as much credibility as Larry Craig's denial that he's gay. Face it, you got caught in an airport bathroom tapping your foot to the GOP in the next stall and now your standing up in front of the media saying it was perfectly innocent while your wife, Independence From Party Affiliation, stands quietly next to you with a dour expression on her face.

Crowder criticizes the media for making stuff up about Sarah Palin.

People were actually walking around parroting a line hand-fed to them by Tina Fey herself, completely unaware that Mrs Palin said nothing of the sort.

“I can see Russia from my house.” I’ll admit that it’s a funny line… It’s a comedic premise funnier than anything produced from the Republicans these days (Dennis Miller not withstanding), but a highly inaccurate depiction of what Sarah Palin said.

To which I say: WELCOME TO MY WORLD, ASSHOLE! For the last decade, I've had to watch an endless number of clueless reporters and douchebag pundits march across my TV screen to declare that Al Gore claimed to have invented the internet, something he never said. Also, Sarah Palin never used those words but she did defend the idea that Russia's proximity to Alaska counted as foreign policy experience whereas Al Gore never once claimed, "No, really, I was the first one to put pictures of my cats on a web page."

From here, Crowder moves into a discussion about using comedy to advance the conservative agenda. There are two perfect examples of how that works out. One is The Half Hour News Hour, Fox News' attempt at ripping off The Daily Show. They did everything they thought they were supposed to do: made fun of Obama, had Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter do guest appearances and called the ACLU a group of pedophiles and yet they still couldn't get an audience to watch it on the biggest right wing television network on the planet. The reason they failed and Jon Stewart succeeds is because, to them, comedy came second to advancing the agenda whereas it's the opposite for Stewart. The other big example is An American Carol, a massive black hole of comedy that I've spent more than a little bit of time writing about.

Crowder plays us out by encouraging his fellow Republicans to use something called "The Internet":

Conservatives (young and old) need to get out there and make themselves known. Start a Facebook group, post some conservative MySpace bulletins, create some YouTube videos!

I've also heard about something called "Flamewars on Usenet". Maybe conservatives could do that. If it wasn't that I'd actually seen Steven Crowder trying to be funny, I'd assume this was some sort of joke but it lacks his trademark misogyny and impressions of gay people. It's actually all the rage these days amongst Republicans to talk as if the reason we don't have President McCain and a Republican Congress is because, on Election Day, no one on the Right bothered to post, "Vote Republican," on their Twitter feeds. I can see 50 year old Republican operatives getting together and saying, "Maybe we ought to use this Intertube whachamajig," but a 21 year old? Maybe he's not really 21 and that picture of the young guy with the artfully moussed hair on his profile is what he uses to pick up high school seniors online. That would explain why he wrote this:

“Comedy is a rubber tipped sword, allowing you to make a point without drawing blood…” Truer words were never spoken. Who said them, you ask? I can’t remember… Some broad.

Some broad? Wow, kids these days with their wacky slang.

I'm Here To Eat Quail Eggs And Kick Ass

In the months to come, you will hear teenage boys talking about how they can't wait to see the new movie based on a Jane Austen book. Let me assure you that, if you are the kind of person who always hoped that your son would suddenly gain an appreciation for great literature, this is not a cause for celebration. Also, I can assure you that, if you are a raging homophobe who considers your son's newfound interest in Jane Austen to be a sign that he's going to soon be moving in with his best friend Blaine, this is not a cause for alarm.

The reason they'll suddenly gain interest in a story about a young girl who slowly falls in love with someone she once considered to be a cur and a brute is because of an upcoming movie called, and this is true, Pride and Predator. The plot faithfully follows the love story of the strong-willed Elizabeth Bennett and the mysterious Mr. Darcy up to a certain point. At that point, aliens invade Netherfield Park, adding "Imminent, Violent Death" to a list of worries that normally includes things like "Trying to Marry a Man of Status" and "What To Serve When Lady Catherine Stops By For Lunch".

This is the kind of movie that, when I see it, I think, "Why didn't I think of that?" Unless, of course, it turns out to suck in which case I'll state publicly that, "even a syphilitic chimp would have known not to make this turd of a movie." In fact, I think I'll copy both of those for the Pride and Predator review I'll be writing a year from now.

And yes, I know I can be a smartass which leads me to:

No, I'm not making this up.

FRIDAY THE...Oh, The Hell With It

What you are about to read is quite possibly the most pointless thing ever written. Not only are you reading my review of Friday the 13th several days after it officially became a big hit but you probably already know everything you need to know about it, including whether or not you are the kind of person who would want to see this movie. I'm not the kind of person who really wanted to see it, an odd admission from someone who is now writing a review of it. Why did I go see it? Hell, I don't know. It was there? I go see movies. This is a movie. Also, I had a free ticket.

Do I really have to discuss the plot? It's not like you all don't already know it. I have nothing else to do so I may as well. Twenty years ago, some little goob named Jason Voorhees went and got himself drowned at good ol' Camp Crystal Lake. His mom, a homicidal maniac, went around manically homiciding the camp counselors in return for that until one of them cut off her head. But wouldn't you know, Jason was actually alive somehow, or maybe he was a zombie or maybe it just doesn't freaking matter because little Jason went on to outfit himself in whatever filthy rags and hockey mask he happened to have laying around and went into the family business of killing anyone who wasn't him.

His victims are the same victims he's been killing since the 80s. Good looking college kids happen to wander into his killing grounds. The guys tend to be major league douchebags and the girls are all horny sex bombs who are turned on by major league douchebags, hate keeping their breasts covered and apparently have a life's goal of having as much semen spilled into their various orifices as time will allow. Despite their shallowness, the girls are always much more perceptive than the guys and often say things like, "Steve, maybe we should get out of here," when they stumble into some dark, spooky place that looks and smells like it may just be inhabited by a guy who kills people for no particular reason.

Why does he kill people? This movie doesn't try to break new ground by answering the question people have been asking for a quarter century. The only thing this movie does differently from every other Friday the 13th movie is that it has a few barely recognizable actors and one small plot twist that I actually saw coming before we saw the movie's title card. I can't tell you what it is since it constitutes the only thing in the movie that can be even vaguely defined as a spoiler but it doesn't really matter since I could put the script online right now and it wouldn't affect the way you feel about the movie one bit.

The movie boils down to this: the almost unstoppable Jason kills the douchebags for the crime of being douchy and the hot chicks for the crime of being hot until some final chase scene through mines and a dark forest (in which, apparently, 500 watt klieg lights grow on the trees instead of leaves) where people scream and run and trip at inopportune moments while Jason moves at a leisurely, comfortable pace while he chases them. What happens then? It doesn't matter if you don't know. You can find out next year around this time when the sequel comes out. Oh, if, by chance, you just emerged from a Mohole shaft, had never heard of this or any other movie with a similar title and have decided to go see it because of me, please don't write to thank me for the tip.

Right Wing Movie Reviews -- Top 5 Consersative Porn Films

Once again, I've been contacted by Gotterdamerung, one of the country's top right wing bloggers who often posts here to "bring balance" to my work. Today, however, he is presenting a companion piece to National Review's recent compilation of the 25 Most Conservative Movies. He's asked to post it here before he cross-posts it to Big Hollywood so, here you go. -- MC

Hi all, Gotterdamerung here. I'm sure you've all been enjoying National Review Online's recent attempt to name the Top 25 Most Conservative Movies. Naturally, the Liberal MSM is giving far more attention to the upcoming Pro-Jihadist event known as the Academy Awards than to this but then, what else have we come to expect from them? All that aside, I felt that NRO's list, wonderful though it may be, was ignoring a significant part of the conservative movie viewing experience and yes, I'm talking about pornography. I know that porn is evil and makes Baby Jesus cry but it's a sad truth that, since Obama was elected President, it's become very popular. We on the Right would be foolish not to fully embrace this medium as a tool with which we can advance our agenda, increase our power and, eventually and ironically, legislate out of existence the very thing that brought about our ascendance. I went ahead and made the sacrifice of watching literally thousands of porn films and now present to you what, in my humble opinion, are the five best pornographic showcases of conservative beliefs.

5. Three-Hump-Dred: Just like the Zack Snyder blockbuster for which it was named, this movie chronicles the true-life events of King Leonidas and his army of 300 Spartans battling the much larger Persian army at the Battle of Thermopylae. This version, however, is hardcore all-male action in which the Spartans do not use weapons but, instead, attempt to fuck the Persians to death. The movie's climactic scene (in more ways than one) is a final encounter between Leonidas (played brilliantly by actor Dack Hammer) and the Persian Emperor Xerxes who, while definitely being bigger than Leonidas in every way, lacks the Spartan King's skill and stamina. In the end, the sheer numbers of the Persian Army leave the Spartans too drained and spent to go on. While technically a defeat, their sacrifice will never be forgotten. This movie does teach us all the lesson that we should stand up to our enemies and that's good. My only real problem with it is that, instead of Persians, the movie's villains should have been Iranians.

4. Night of the Living Dicks: A town which consists of nothing but men has to deal with some sort of disease which causes the dead to return as zombies with an insatiable appetite for gay sex. This movie serves as a searing indictment of the militant homosexual culture as many of the living actually choose to allow themselves to be molested by zombies instead of just running away. That's right, they chose to be gay. Also, the zombie cure created at the end proves once and for all that even gays realize homosexuality is something that can be reversed even though all the former zombies celebrated their newfound life by having a massive gay orgy.

3. The Chronicles of Bonia: Hardcore sexual content aside, this movie serves as an excellent example of conservative values. The mythical land of Bonia lives under the grip the White Bitch (porn actress Sierra Cherry) who orders all her subjects to have nothing but boring missionary-position sex. Her enemy, Aslan (not a lion here but instead a very well endowed black man played by well known porn star Chocolate Thunder) brings a family of 4 from Earth to go forth and teach the Bonians the wonders of oral and butt sex. The Bonians' choice of Aslan's superior sexual pleasures causes them to rebel against the White Bitch, a stellar example of the power of competition and the free market.

2. Everyone Loves Bush: From the title, I thought this would be a documentary that finally dared to tell the truth about the wondrous achievements of the Bush administration. Instead, this movie with an all-female cast turned out to be...well, not that. Still, the title itself can go a long way toward cementing the former President's legacy as one of our greatest leaders and that alone puts it at #2 on the list.

1. Best Upskirt Videos: This collection of short films made by guys who surreptitiously stick hidden cameras up the skirts of unsuspecting girls serves as a devastating expose of the dangers of feminism and female sexual self-expression. Had these girls been dressed more modestly in floor length skirts instead of slutty mini-dresses then the brave men who took these shots would not have felt forced to expose their undergarments (or lack thereof) to the world. I, for one, commend the filmmakers, Jizz Spiller Studios, for the service they have performed in exposing these unsuspecting girls as the floozies they are. The fact that Best Upskirt Videos did not receive a Best Documentary nomination this year, to me, is a greater insult than the much better known snub of The Dark Knight.

Things I've Learned From Watching Movies Part 61

First they were Nelson. Then they were Hanson. Now they're these guys. Who will they be ten years from now?

All of this has happened before. All of this will happen again.

In Defense Of My People

I'm sure most of you have seen or heard about this:



I really had no desire to comment on this whole "Miley's a racist" situation until today. First off, I really didn't want to try to defend Miley Cyrus again as I did that once before and, the way she's going, it looks like that could turn into a full time job. My defense would be that I have friends of different ethnicity and we sometimes poke fun at each other. It's something we can do based on the fact that we know each other very well and know that no one is being offended. We have learned where the line is and we don't cross it. However, if someone ever recorded what we said and put it on the internet, it would sound horrible. There is such a thing as context in situations like this and the automatic conclusion shouldn't be that Miley Cyrus or any of the other non-Asians in the picture are racists.

That's what I thought when I first saw that picture. I just didn't care enough about the whole deal to write about it.

Until today.

It turns out that someone claiming to represent, oh, pretty much every Asian everywhere is trying to launch a 4 billion dollar class action discrimination lawsuit against Miley Cyrus. I wouldn't have thought she even had 4 billion dollars. I guess she sold way the hell more of those Hannah Montana lunchboxes than I ever thought was possible. You know, I'm actually something like 1/64 Asian. This means...

MILEY CYRUS, YOU RACIST BITCH! Who the hell do you think you are anyway? So, Supreme Grand Dragon Miley Cyrus thinks it's funny to have slanted eyes. Isn't that just precious? I blame her parents, her country and whatever lame non-Asian god she worships. It is a well known fact that only really cool gods with multiple arms and animal heads can prevent a kid from growing up to be Archie Bunker. There is nothing, NOTHING you could ever do to clean the stain you have smeared on my soul. Well, there is one thing.

Please email me for details on where to send the 4 billion dollar check.

Jack's Off This Season

Some of the scariest people you will ever meet are the ones who watch 24 and talk about it as if it were a documentary. They'll talk as if Jack Bauer is a real guy and his actions should be taught as the preferred method for combating modern day terrorists. This attitude is so pervasive that it has even ensnared a Supreme Court Justice. I've written about this before and one thing I have never been able to understand is why? Why on Earth would you want to take Jack Bauer and hold him up as some poster boy for counter terrorism?

Mind you, I like 24. I've probably seen every episode even though its quality is very uneven. I wasn't at all surprised to read last year that the former Executive Producer, Joel Surnow, and his creative team didn't start each year with a tightly plotted season-long story arc and, in fact, didn't plot very far ahead at all. This explains why the story often lurches in wild, unpredictable directions. Still, it's usually a fun show to watch for Kiefer Sutherland's passionate portrayal of Jack Bauer and for the action scenes. I don't watch 24 for realism or for tips on how to protect my country. Why the hell would I? Under Jack Bauer's watch, thousands of people have died. We've had gas and biological attacks and TWO count 'em TWO nuclear explosions on American soil. In fact, the plotlines of 24 are some of the most unrealistic scenarios I've ever seen on television and that's saying a lot.

Here are some of the important plot points we've seen so far in this season and why they're stupid. If you are waiting for the DVD or have them all saved on your Tivo with a vow not to watch them till May, you might want to stop reading now.

First off, one of the designers of the firewall that the government uses on its computer systems gets kidnapped and is forced to build something called a CPI to breach that firewall. If there really was a guy who could do this, he would almost certainly have been kidnapped once a week since he first beta tested the system. Also, if one could really make something like this, I doubt you could do it in about an hour with what looked like parts from Radio Shack. Somehow, my computer has been kept impervious to any and all infiltrations using nothing but Norton Anti-Virus and Zone Alarm yet the systems used by the U.S. government are rendered useless by some guy who slaps together a couple of circuit boards and some AA batteries to create a device smaller than a Kindle. Still, that's what happens in 24.

Turns out the guy behind the kidnap-the-computer-geek plot is Ike Dubaku, second in command to an African dictator whose country, the fictional Sengala, is about to be invaded by the United States military. His plan is to use the CPI to take over the nation's air traffic control system and make planes crash unless President Allison Taylor gives in to his demands and pulls her forces away from Sengala's border. The President decides to take a firm stand and refuses to give in to the demands of a terrorist even when 300 people die in the first round of crashes. The President's decision is an act of bravery, character and firm leadership. It's also an act of stupidity.

They're told that, in about six hours, all the planes currently in the sky can be landed safely and that the firewalls can be re-established in about a day which would render Dubaku powerless. The proper thing to do would have been to wait, save hundreds of American lives and do the whole invasion thingie tomorrow. But oh no, President Douchebag figures that the invasion has to happen right the fuck NOW. The only explanation I've come up with is they were going to invade Sengala with a rented army that had to be returned by tomorrow or they'd have to pay extra.

Where is Jack Bauer in all of this? He was in the middle of getting grilled by Congress for his penchant of getting information by taking suspects and giving them hot lead enemas when the FBI pulled him out. It turns out that Jack's old friend, Tony Almeida, has been working as a mercenary since he faked his death four years earlier and is the guy who kidnapped the computer expert. When Jack tracks him down, Tony confesses that he's actually working as a double agent for Jack's old CTU boss Bill Buchanan and obnoxious computer genius Chloe Sullivan (one of the greatest TV characters ever, by the way). This is where it gets good.

It turns out that this trio has basically set up their own branch of law enforcement because of some sort of shadowy conspiracy that has infiltrated the government and is in league with Dubaku and his forces. So, do they take what they know to the relevant government agencies who would then launch an intensive investigation that would identify suspects by things like suspicious phone records or sudden large receipts of cash? HA! Shows what you know. Any idiot could tell you that the only way to stop all this is to go ahead and give Dubaku his CPI device so that he can put big ass chunks of the country at mortal risk in the hope that this will somehow lead them to the traitors. They can't involve anyone else because the source would then tell Dubaku that the jig was up to which I say: so what? One of two things are going to happen.

One: Dubaku's source immediately tips him off that the FBI knows all about his plot and he goes into hiding, no planes crash and the Sengala invasion goes off on schedule. The FBI would then find the person who suddenly had to go to the bathroom when he or she found out that Dubaku was about to go down, check this person's cell records and find out that Dubaku was in his or her Five. From there, the whole conspiracy would be unraveled or...

Two: The source, knowing that they now know of his or her existence, would shut the hell up and let the whole operation go down. As I said before, either the source or someone in the conspiracy that stretches to the highest branches of government would be caught and the whole thing would unravel. Maybe not everyone would be caught but the country's digital infrastructure would be safe, no planes would crash and hundreds of deaths would have been prevented.

Remember all this the next time some douchebag talks about Jack Bauer as if he was real. I don't know what the rest of this season of 24 holds for us but I'm sure it will involve equally ludicrous situations. It will probably involve Jack Bauer trying to uncover Dubaku's cohorts by releasing Hanta virus into the nation's water supply. But hey, at least he keeps us all safe.

The Heat Is On

I don't suppose anyone but me remembers back in June when I wrote about plans to make a new sequel to Beverly Hills Cop. Oh, it was a thing of beauty, it was. I had read that the film's director, Brett Ratner, was planning to water down the sequel to get a PG rating and I really let him have it. I unleashed upon Brett Ratner and his stupid ideas the great vengeance and furious anger that they deserved and I imagine that he was so devastated that his testicles withdrew into his body and haven't been seen to this day. Well, I questioned his directing skills (the great vengeance) and pointed out that he had a history of making crappy sequels (the furious anger). That might have made the testicle thing happen if Brett Ratner is a total pussy. For the sake of this conversation, let's say he is.

Anyway, Brett Ratner can go ahead and let his balls drop. I take back everything I said because it turns out that the rumors I had heard about Beverly Hills Cop 4 were just that, rumors.

“It’s a hard R,” the director promised MTV News in an exclusive interview, rebutting web gossip that he’ll be helming a watered-down PG-13 reboot of the beloved action comedy franchise staring Eddie Murphy as foul-mouthed, wise-cracking Detroit cop Axel Foley.

It turns out the source of my outrage was a combination of internet gossip and out-of-context quotes and I probably owe Brett Ratner an apology. Well, he ain't getting it. In the tradition of douchebag know-nothing bloggers everywhere, I'm now simply going to drop all my incorrect statements down the memory hole and try to distract you all with something else. For example, this:

The new “BHC” script is being written by the team who penned last year’s “Wanted,” which is great news for the many fans of that hyperkinetic Angelina Jolie flick and a worrying sign for those who found the film derivative and hampered by galling plot holes.

Wanted? WANTED? The movie in which God literally took out contracts on people by stitching their names into a piece of divine linen? The movie in which the film's hero had a dead father then a live father then a dead one again? The movie that trained a guy to save the world by having him torture flies? That Wanted? The doofs who wrote that are actually going to be put in charge of one of the big screen's most iconic characters. Oh Lord, what has Your creation done to offend you so? If we had all gone to see that Kirk Cameron movie, could we have avoided this fate?

Please note that, if everything I just said is proven wrong six months from now, I will not admit fault then either but will at least strongly imply that all this happened because of Brett Ratner's sexual relationship with either an animal or his own mother. I haven't decided yet so you can all debate for the next several months about which one I will choose.

The Reader

UPDATE 2-12-09: Hello Tim Slagle. Since I see that you keep hitting this post again and again for reasons that I assume are similar to the reasons you like to hire tranny hookers to beat you with sticks, please do us both a favor and fix your browser so that scripts from Statcounter.com are disabled. That way you can slip in here, do filthy things to yourself and slip back out again with me being none the wiser. I have no idea if Safari has this feature but, if it doesn't, try using Firefox with the NoScript addon. In addition to being helpful here, it can actually change the way you surf the internet. You're welcome!

My apologies to anyone who thought this would be about that movie where a German accented Kate Winslet sits naked in a bathtub although the title does refer to an equally exciting subject: my RSS Reader.

I'm not sure this week if I'm covering the most outrageous content that Big Hollywood has to offer. The conservative movie site has decided to pull a really douchy move this week. The reason for the douchy move, I assume, is that they're douchebags. As I do with most blogs these days, I usually read Big Hollywood in my RSS Reader and last week they changed the format of their RSS feed from sending out the entire post to an all-teaser format. This means you only get a sentence or two in the reader before they cut you off and you have to click through to the main website to read yet another article where some right winger bitches that he wasn't given a staff writing position on 30 Rock because Alec Baldwin overheard him saying that Ronald Reagan's face should be on the one dollar bill. I'm not sure why they did this. The only reason I can see doing that is if your site is ad supported and you want people to click all the way to the main site to see the ads. I still don't like it when that happens but I can certainly understand it. Thing is, Big Hollywood doesn't have ads. Anyway, I don't click through teasers for sites that I like so I ain't doing it for them. Big Hollywood articles now have to grab me right off the bat. This means if they don't open with something like, "Coraline is a liberal feminist screed," or, "The Uninvited is anti-American because the villains in the movie are ghosts and not Muslims," then I'll just be skipping over it. So, what grabbed me this week?

How about alleged comedian Tim Slagle (the day he cracks me up is the day I'll believe him when he says he's a comedian) complaining about how Al Gore won a Grammy for the spoken word version of An Inconvenient Truth.

Why are awards dominated by Leftists? While on the Right, achievement is ranked by material gain, for the Left, it’s awards and honorary degrees. What is in the leftist mentality that enjoys golden statues so much? Is there something in the mind of collectivists that makes a nodding approval from the group necessary for self-fulfillment?

Yeah, conservatives don't give a crap about awards. That's why all the writers on Big Hollywood have been collectively pissing themselves in rage over the fact that The Dark Knight, something they see as a conservative film, didn't get nominated for Best Picture this year. The fact that it was the top grossing movie of the year and one of the biggest money makers of all time wasn't enough for them. They wanted Scarlett Johansson to stand in front of a podium in a low cut dress blandly saying, "And the Oscar goes to...The Dark Knight" so they all could simultaneously think, "They like me. They really like me."

Oh, Tim Slagle? If you really don't give a crap about awards, why did you even write this? For example, I don't care about turnips. You know how you can tell I don't care about turnips? Because I'm betting it's been years since I've even spoken the word "turnip" much less written about them. It would be very difficult, however, for me to prove that I don't care about turnips had I just written a 10 paragraph article not only loudly proclaiming that I don't care about turnips but also chastising anyone who does and listing reasons why turnips are evil. Also, the book An Inconvenient Truth was a best seller that was based on one of the most successful documentaries ever made so you can save that "Liberals love awards more than material gain" garbage. When National Review: The Book On Tape becomes a critical and financial hit and fails to win a Grammy, you can come back to this topic although I don't see why you would since you don't care about awards, something I'm sure you will let us know in the long, incoherent rant you will write should this event ever occur.

I was also going to write extensively about Clear's Own favorite, another who has thoroughly earned the titled "alleged comedian", Steven Crowder and how he has once again proven to the world that he is not funny but then I thought, "Why not just let people see his work and decide for themselves." So that's what I'm going to do. Try to enjoy it, although I seriously doubt that's possible.

The Word Of God According To His One True Prophet, Kirk Cameron

A few months back, a movie called Fireproof that no one in the movie business had even heard of suddenly premiered in the Top 5 list. Even the top movie writers like Nikki Finke acted like someone who just had their pants pulled down in public and couldn't figure out who had done it. It turned out it was a low budget Christian film that had been specifically marketed toward church group audiences and finally ended up grossing somewhere around 35 million dollars, a huge profit for a film that cost 500,000 dollars to make. The marketers had learned well the lessons of the Narnia films, that being the best way to make a profitable movie is to convince every Christian in the country that Jesus will cry if they don't see it. As a piece of religious propaganda, it is a rousing success but how is it as a movie?

In terms of quality, Fireproof is a typical contemporary Christian film. That is not a compliment. If the only Christian films you've ever seen are The Song of Bernadette or Passion of the Christ and you think this will be like those, your experience with Fireproof will be similar to walking into McDonalds and expecting a Big Mac to taste like a perfectly grilled piece of top sirloin. Hmm, I take that back. Big Macs can be tasty. I suppose the Fireproof Big Mac would be an underdone E. Coli burger that might taste good and won't necessarily make everyone who eats it sick.

The star of Fireproof is everyone's favorite B-list celebrity Creationism advocate, Kirk Cameron. Cameron plays Caleb Holt, a firehouse captain whose marriage is falling apart due to the fact that he's a complete asshole. In most failed marriages, at least some of the blame can be laid at the feet of each spouse but, in this case, it's pretty much all Caleb's fault. Like all assholes, though, he doesn't see it that way. He wonders why his wife, Catherine, doesn't appreciate the fact that he sits around the house all day and makes her do all the cooking and cleaning even though she works too. He insists on saving thousands of dollars to buy a boat even though her mother needs some expensive medical equipment. Oh, also, he spends loads of time looking at internet porn and can't see why this upsets her. To top it all off, he's pissed at her most of the time and they end up having those really scary kinds of fights where he backs her against the wall and screams in her face. I mentioned he's a complete, total asshole, right?

Thing is, he does want to save his marriage. Most of you reading this can probably figure out that he should do. He should tell her he loves her, talk to her about their problems, try to stop being so selfish, stop looking at naked pictures of other women and don't get into such a frenzied state that he scares the crap out of her. It can be a slow process but, with love and patience, it's possible. Well, not in this movie. See, Caleb's not just a selfish prick. He's a GODLESS selfish prick and the movie is quite specific that his marriage cannot possibly be saved without the direct intervention of Jesus Christ Almighty.

So, how will Jehovah reveal Himself to the former Mike Seaver? It turns out this His methods are similar to Oprah's. Caleb's Christian father convinces him to begin following the advice of a religious self help book called The Love Dare. In terms of advice, The Love Dare says pretty much everything you've ever read in every other self-help book ever written. You can read the same stuff in The Love Dare that you do in Everything I Need To Know I Learned From Star Trek. The twist with The Love Dare is that it's all Christed up with various Biblical Scripture quotes because only the All Knowing Yahweh can tell you to be nice to your wife, give her flowers, and cook her dinner. I'm assuming the most important Biblical verse for Caleb was, "Don't jack it non-stop to internet porn and then scream in your wife's face when she complains (Matthew 4:18)." Seriously, there's actually is a section in the book that says addictions to things like drugs, gambling and PORNOGRAPHY might just be hurting your marriage, something that makes your average person say, "Duh," but is like God talking through a burning bush to Caleb. Caleb needed a 2000 year old book to tell him that he shouldn't be a complete tool to the woman he loves.

To top all this off, Fireproof presents its message in a package of TV movie production values starting with the credits using the same font you've seen in every Lifetime movie ever made. Cameron himself brings a tear to Alan Thicke's eye by forgetting everything he learned in Growing Pains and overacting in a way that would embarrass your typical Richard III actor. The bad news here is that Kirk Cameron is the best actor in the movie. Everyone else reads their lines in a way that would get you kicked out of an eighth grade production of Our Town.

I feel sorry for Christians when it comes to entertainment. I really do. So many of you are told that even such innocent fare as Harry Potter promotes Satanism so your only choice is to find entertainment with some sort of official Christian seal of approval. This usually translates to the same stuff everyone else watches but with all the good parts stripped out of it. Occasionally you get something good but, for the most part, you're stuck with crap like Left Behind and The Omega Code. Compared to those, Fireproof looks like Citizen Kane.

Oh well, I can now get all smug over the fact that we secularists would never, ever make a hit movie out of a lame self-help book. For instance, the number one movie of the week was...oh...never mind.

Things I've Learned From Watching Movies Part 60

If you are a fictional character who stars in a series of movies, don't be greedy and make too many sequels as it's only a matter of time before you end up going to jail.

Don't believe me?

As if that wasn't enough, there's more.

Point proven. Let's move on.

Right Wing Movie Reviews -- Paul Blart: Mall Cop

It has been a while since I heard from noted right wing blogger Gotterdamerung who contacts me from time to time in order to express offense at something I wrote and offer balance. He's been busy as he's now one of the top writers over at Big Hollywood. Perhaps you read his article where he describes how none of his screenplays have ever been produced because he's a conservative. When a commenter asked what his screenplays were about, he admitted that he had never actually written one and said that if a liberal had told the lies he had just told, no one would care. Anyway, here is his response to my review of Paul Blart: Mall Cop. -- MC

Hi all, Gotterdamerung here. If you ever needed proof that Hollywood is run by Marx worshiping Liberals whose greatest wish is to someday be able to invite Osama bin Laden to their Wine and Brie Parties, you need look no further than the treatment that the Holly-nistas have given to one of the greatest expressions of conservative doctrine ever made, that being Paul Blart: Mall Cop. Much has been made of the fact that The Dark Knight, a movie that justified not only George Bush's War on Terror but also ignoring the Constitution and giving him a third term, was robbed of a well deserved Best Picture nomination this year, a fact that I consider to literally be worse than the Holocaust, yet I consider the fact that Paul Blart also fell victim to a Liberal Jihad by failing to get a Best Picture nomination to be an even greater outrage.

And before you get going, Liberals, you can save all your Nazi-like emails and comments about how Paul Blart wasn't "serious" enough to be nominated, probably because it wasn't about an atheist whose favorite activity was spitting on American flags. The other, more laughable complaint that all you Obama loving elitist prigs might have is that Paul Blart came out in 2009 and couldn't be nominated for Best Picture of 2008, a technicality you can blame on left wing calendars that were intentionally designed to cause travesties like this.

Paul Blart is another of those movies that pretends to simply be light, escapist fare because the movie would never have been made had the filmmakers revealed their true intentions. This story about a feckless security guard who accidentally stumbles onto a criminal plot is, to anyone with a brain, clearly supposed to be the story of George W. Bush and his struggle against the Islamofascists who work tirelessly to kill us all because they hate our freedom. It is no coincidence that this story takes place in a shopping mall, something that exists in no other country on the planet except America, a fact that I know must be true despite evidence (evidence that, I assume, was fabricated by al Qaeda) that they actually exist in every part of the world.

The character of Paul Blart is someone who tries to get by in a world of leftists who fail to appreciate him. He is unable to join the New Jersey State Troopers, supposedly because he has hypoglycemia though I think we all know this would be overlooked if he were a minority applying under affirmative action rules. He takes a job in mall security, a job in which he is mocked for stridently defending the mall against Muslims, Liberals, Rappers and anyone else who hates the mall for its freedom. No one but Blart thinks they have to be vigilant against The Enemy until the day that the mall is invaded by violent, anti-American insurgents who claim they only want to steal a database of credit card numbers but, and again this is obvious, also want to destroy everything in America that is good, decent, white and Christian.

The rules say that Paul Blart should follow the instructions of the Police and leave the job of stopping the Mall Insurgency to them but Blart knows what people in the real world like George Bush, Sarah Palin and Jack Bauer know: sometimes you have to break the rules. Blart stays in the mall and handles the situation on his own terms while ignoring Liberal Law Enforcement's demands that he withdraw or at least set up a timetable for withdrawal.

I'm glad to see that Paul Blart: Mall Cop is a hit. I'm hoping it gives everyone who sees it the courage to stand up to America's enemies today in the same way that George W. Bush stood up against the Iraqis on 9/11.

My Favorite Year

Today, February 5, 2009, is important to me for two reasons. The first is that, earlier, I had sex with Kate Beckinsale (go ahead, prove that I didn't). You'd think I'd spend all of today's post bragging about that but, because I'm so damn cool, instead I'll be talking about how one year ago today I decided to start a movie-themed blog and put up this review of Cloverfield for all the world to see.

The best thing about working on this site is that my writing now has something it never had before: discipline. I have set deadlines and commitments and mostly stuck to them even though I answer to no one but myself. I'm not sure if I've become a better writer but I do know I've at least become a better proofreader. The things I miss sometimes in the first draft absolutely amaze me sometimes. For example, this paragraph before proofreading looked like this:

My dick is so massive. I eat boogers. SPOON!

This time last year, it would have been posted like that, but not now.

I don't have a lot of readers but the ones I do have seem to like me. Some of you are very loyal and even log in several hits a day. This makes me wonder if you're all stupid enough to start paying a huge subscription fee for the stuff you're now currently getting for free. I'm hoping at least a few of you are retarded millionaires who will believe me when I say that you are now legally required to send me 10 grand.

Well, that's about it. President Obama will probably declare this to be Michael Clear Day later on so I have that to look forward to. Until then, let me say thanks for the great year and come back tomorrow when I'll either be writing one of my Right Wing Movie Reviews or something where I rip Hillary Duff a new one and no, that's not a euphemism for something we'd actually both enjoy.

Taken Away To Crazytown

I first heard of Debbie Schlussel after the Virginia Tech shootings. At a time when very little was known about the situation there, Debs heard that the shooter was being described as "Asian" and managed to extrapolate that into the idea that the shooter was a Pakistani Muslim Jihadist and that the police and liberal media were covering the whole thing up because of Bush Derangement Syndrome. If you're wondering how exactly anyone could make that leap, it's because, unlike Debbie Schlussel, you are not a paranoid racist. Schlussel is one of those people who, on 9/11, pissed her pants in fear. Most people who did that changed out of the soiled clothing but Debbie liked the damp, cool feeling so much that she now needs a steady supply of fear induced urine which is why she embraces anything that can even vaguely be turned into a narrative about evil Islamofascists hiding under our beds until they get the order to establish the worldwide Caliphate.

Naturally, she was snatched right up by Big Hollywood.

The BH articles that bear her byline include a complaint about Marvel Comics putting Barack Obama into an issue of Spider-Man, an admonishment to the director of Defiance for making an anti-Nazi movie and not an anti-Muslim movie and a rant about the Biggie Smalls biopic portraying the late rapper as a complex human being and not a mindless, savage Negro.

Her latest was an expression of her love for the movie Taken. She and I actually agree that it was an entertaining movie. I liked it for it's fun action sequences and Liam Neeson's spot-on performance. She liked it because she feels it has brought the human race one step closer to the eradication of all things Islamic. After spending a few paragraphs describing Hollwyood's love of all things Muslim...

Part of this is the ultra-PC mentality of Hollywood, which hates all religion but for Islam because so many Muslims share Hollywood’s hatred for America.

...She then writes this:

In “Taken,” retired CIA agent Liam Neeson’s daughter is kidnapped by an Albanian Muslim sex slavery ring in Paris. And while the movie doesn’t outright tell us they are Muslims, the filmmakers show us several quick close-up shots of tattoos on the hands of the men who head the ring–crescents and stars, the religious symbols of Islam.

Then, there are the people who “acquire” his daughter. They are obviously Arabs, who speak Arabic, and they are Muslims–their boss is “the Sheikh” on the yacht (Sheikhs are exclusively Muslim). And for once, they are the criminal thugs, the sex slavers, the murderers–without apology or excuse.

Just the way it was on 9/11.

And here...we...go. I read this before I actually saw the movie and can now play the "Count The Factual Errors" game. It's amazing how many she was able to cram into just two short paragraphs. One of the first things we find out is that Debbie Schlussel is unable to tell brown people apart and, knowing her, probably thinks that all the brown people on the planet are secretly working together.

Thing is, she actually came out and said in the first paragraph that she knew the kidnappers were Albanians. I can only assume that, by the time she reached the second paragraph, the part of her brain that is able to process objective facts had once again lost control and she describes them as, "obviously Arabs, who speak Arabic." Uh, no. As someone who saw the movie in the mindset of "Fan of fun action flicks" and not as someone looking for anything at all that advances my racist, eliminationist agenda and worldview, the movie makes it extremely, absolutely une-fucking-quivocally clear that the kidnappers are ALBANIANS. In fact, one of the ways that Neeson's character tracks them down is that he identifies the language they are speaking as ALBANIAN. At one point he even hires an Albanian interpreter and uses an Albanian-English dictionary to translate something he heard one of them say.

But hey, they must be Muslims, right? What about the crescent/star tattoos that Debs noticed on their hands? Aren't those the religious symbols of Islam? This might be the conclusion you jump to if, like Debbie, you know as much about Islam as you do about what your natural hair color was all those years ago before you dyed it blond. I'm not an expert on all things Islam but one thing I know about Muslims is that they are not supposed to get tattooed and they are super duper extra doubly not supposed to get tattooed with religious symbols. So what were those tattoos? To answer that, I do what no Big Hollywood writer ever does when trying to answer a question, that being the 30 second Google Search.

*30 seconds later*

DING! It turns out that the moon-star combo is also the symbol of the old Byzantine Empire of which Albania was once a part. The moon symbolizes the goddess Artemis and the star was added later by Christians to symbolize the Virgin Mary. In other words, the tats were not only NOT a proud symbol of their Islamic beliefs but are actually evidence against them being Muslims.

"Not so fast, Mike," you're now thinking, "what about the part where they describe their boss as The Sheikh? Debbie said that Sheikhs are exclusively Muslim and she's only been wrong about six times so far, you know, so this is proof that Taken is a proud right wing screed against the evils of Islamo-evil-whatevers just like Deb-Deb said." First off, their boss was not a Sheikh. The Albanians were working for a sophisticated French gangster who hired them to grab pretty girls for his sex slave auctions. There is a Sheikh who shows up toward the end of the movie but he is not the boss but rather a customer of the slave trader. He must be a Muslim due to Debbie's declaration about Sheikh-Muslim exclusivity so that's one for the Debinator, right? Would anyone be shocked at this point to find out she was wrong about that too? I'll cut Debbie some slack here as the idea that Sheikhs are in fact not exclusive to Islam is very obscure and could only possibly be known to a little known tome of higher learning known as Wikipedia:

While the title can be used religiously by Muslims to designate a learned person, as an Arabic word it is essentially independent of religion. It is notably used by Druze for their religious men, but also by Arab Christians for elder men of stature.

And that, as we say, is that. The anti-Muslim screed that Debbie Schlussel describes exists only in her fervid, racist imagination. If this is ever pointed out to her, her history says that she will most likely switch gears and say that Taken is now an example of Islam-loving Hollywood political correctness. If that happens, we can all point out that the movie is not a product of Hollywood but was made in France by Frenchmen. Upon hearing that, she'll say it's an example of the way the French love to coddle all things Muslim even though they recently had a series of Muslim riots there at which point she'll be saying, "Norman, coordinate!" and her brain will explode. We'll all be happier for that.

Gone Luc Retard

If his movies are anything to go by, the name of French filmmaker "Luc Besson" must translate into English as "Sucks Ass By The Metric Ton". This is something that started all the way back in 1990 with Nikita, the movie the presented the idea that intelligence agencies would actively recruit violent criminals, force them to do delicate, high risk missions and then act surprised when they screw the whole thing up. We move on to The Fifth Element in which Earth's fate is placed in the hands of Bruce Willis and a 102 pound alien girl with clown hair played by Milla Jojovich. From there we skip on to Besson's magnum opus, The Messenger, in which the same girl is cast as France's greatest hero, a role for which she was eminently qualified because she was screwing Luc Besson. One day when the lights were actually on in their house and she got a good look at Luc Besson, she ran screaming and that left him with nothing to do except make the same cheesy action movie three times. Which brings us to today.

I was expecting very little from Taken. It has the same cheap, straight-to-DVD look that most Eurotrash action films have but it did have Liam Neeson's very compelling monologue in the trailer in which he informs his daughter's kidnappers that he has the skills to find and kill them if they don't let her go. It turns out that Liam wasn't kidding. It also turns out that Besson wrote and produced a fairly decent movie. At least for this movie, the part of Luc Besson that is a retard is gone (I'm so glad I was able to have that title make at least a little sense since there was no way I wasn't going to use it).

Neeson plays Bryan Mills, a CIA agent who retired to spend more time with his teenage daughter, Kim (former Lost star Maggie Grace). This turned out to be a waste of time since his ex-wife Lenore (Famke Janssen) married a rich man and has lots of spare time on her hands, time she spends being as much of a cold bitch to Bryan as she possibly can and limiting his access to Kim. This comes to a head when she pressures Bryan into giving 17 year old Kim permission to take a trip to Paris without adult supervision. Against his better judgment, Bryan gives in and Kim and her schoolmate Amanda fly off to the City of Lights. Now, I don't know what Bryan thought was going to happen to his daughter in Paris but I'm guessing it was along the lines of being mugged or choking on a baguette. I think if being kidnapped by Albanian sex slave traders was even in the top ten of his Things That Could Go Horribly Wrong List, he wouldn't have let Kim go. I have no idea if that actually happens but I do know how the American media can go crazy when sexy girls go missing and if this was happening in Paris at the rate of at least one per day, as the movie suggests, I think we'd have heard about it. Still, this is a Luc Besson film so this is about as close to gritty realism as you're ever going to get so let's just move on.

Luckily, Kim is on the phone with Bryan when it happens and she's able to give him small though vital clues. In another lucky break, it turns out that Bryan is smarter than everyone in Paris. It also turns out that the only members of French law enforcement who aren't incompetent are corrupt and actively participating in the whole sex slave thing so they're no help, not that Bryan needs it. I noticed at the beginning that he had no weapons with him when he arrived in Paris but it turned out that he didn't need them as various types of knives and firearms pretty much just fall into his lap at just the right time. Also, Paris seems to consist of two, maybe three streets since he has no trouble getting around and more or less trips over anyone he needs to find. Still, as I said, this is gritty realism in the world created by the same guy who, in Transporter 2, had a guy flip a car upside down in midair so a giant magnet could pluck a bomb off the bottom.

Taken is good because once the action starts, it doesn't stop. Taken also has a great performance from Liam Neeson, an actor so good that he's able to shout, "WHERE'S MY DAUGHTER?" dozens of times and still have it sound fresh. And last but not least...no, screw that, he's least, we have Luc Besson, a filmmaker whose greatest talent has always been to create interesting characters and put them into stupid situations where they come off as total idiots. He seems to have lost that talent for the moment. Let's hope it stays that way.

Hitting That Quickly

And now, with no further ado, I proudly present the latest edition of...

QUICK HITS ON VARIOUS SUBJECTS.

The Super Bowl had several new movie ads. I think my favorite one is this teaser for G.I. Joe. I'm kind of hoping this movie never comes out now as it could not possibly live up to the expectations set from this ad. Another good one was for Transformers 2 which, if this link to AICN is anything to go by, is a movie in which the Autobots are conquered by the Germans.

It's been a while since I read Watchmen but I'm having a great deal of difficulty recalling any characters who were well endowed, bi-curious Nazis. I could look this up but, nah, let it be a surprise.

As I was writing this, the Super Bowl halftime show started playing so let me just say...BRUUUUUUCCCEEE! I hope he didn't hurt himself when apparently slammed crotch-first into a camera. He didn't seem to have any trouble hitting those high notes afterward so maybe it was a boon.

The third series of Skins is showing right now in the UK. I expressed my love for the show about British teens back in December and was worried when I read that most of the cast were given the heave-ho since they'd graduated. I'm pleased to say that the first two episodes were excellent and that not only is Skins one of the best written shows I've ever seen but that the producers have an amazing ability to successfully cast talented unknowns. Rent the DVD if you haven't seen it and then, if you live in America, try to wait patiently until BBC America starts running Series 3 here.

And in closing, to the "comedian" who dismissed Will Farell's Broadway show about George W. Bush with the words, "Like we care!" let me just say:

Ha ha ha you major league fuckwit.