Ow

I hurt my foot and don't feel like doing anything today. That includes this. See you next Wednesday.

(Today's post was guest written by John Landis.)

Alice's Quest: A Rant

I liked Alice in Wonderland until it stopped being Alice in Wonderland and started being Chronicles of Narnia.

It seems to be a trend in children's book adaptations these days to age child characters into sexy adults and that's what director Tim Burton did here by casting 20 year old Mia Wasikowska to play Alice. Unlike the recent Percy Jackson film, however, they didn't just do it and hope no one would notice. This movie is more of a sequel thought the story is a mish mash of Alice in Wonderland, Through the Looking Glass and Lewis Carroll's poem Jabberwock. The story opens in the early 1800s with a seven year old Alice describing a strange dream about a fantasy world with talking animals and the like to her father. She should be grateful that her father was enlightened enough not to have her committed or leached and was able to reach age 20 relatively unscathed. Her mother, a woman who apparently never read Jane Austen, is trying to marry her young, lovely daughter off to some foolish douche who also happens to be a wealthy Lord. Alice's odd dreams have followed her into adulthood and caused her to become easily distracted and prone to odd, random thoughts. While dancing with her fiance, she stops moving as she suddenly wonders what it would be like to fly. Though marrying a rich douchebag is considered to be the greatest thing a young lady can do in this society, Alice actually runs off when Lord Douche of Douchetopia pops the question and ends up following a waistcoat-wearing rabbit down a hole. What I write next is filled with shocking spoilers so be warned.

It turns out that hole leads to a room with a tiny door. Alice drinks from a bottle that says "Drink Me" and shrinks so she can fit through the door. Amazing, eh? Told you there'd be spoilers. Did I just blow your mind? She enters Underland, a place where everyone knows her, everyone being the rabbit, a wise caterpillar and a pair of goofball twins named Tweedledum and Tweedledee. This is about where we meet the Red Queen (Helena Bonham Carter, in this movie because Tim Burton is required by law to include her in all his movies) and her loyal soldier, the Knave of Hearts (Crispin Glover, who makes that character look unbelievably cool). The White Queen has taken over Narnia and cursed it to be under a perpetual layer of snow...oops, sorry, I mean the Red Queen has taken over Underland and cursed it to be perpetually bleak. The Queen rules by controlling a dragon called the Jabberwock and is somewhat worried about a prophecy saying Alice, who has visited years earlier and called the place Wonderland, would return and take possession of the mystical Vorpal Sword which, I assume, can take out the Jabberwock due to it having +12 Jabberwock damage. The Queen doesn't recognize the now grown Alice who has come to her castle to rescue the Mad Hatter (Johnny Depp who, shockingly gives a memorable performance by playing the Hatter as a split personality, one an effete and silly party goer and the other a crazed Scot). Needless to say, hilarity ensues.

Making Alice an adult with feminist tendencies actually worked for me. I've always found the Alice stories to be more than a little disturbing and it's easier to watch all this weird stuff happen to a grownup than to a little girl. If only they hadn't felt the need to turn it into every other movie. It think it was Roger Ebert who wrote on Twitter that he has to write, "It was great until the action film ending," so often that people think he has no original ideas. Actually, it's the movies that don't. I didn't see this in 3D (which may be good since I've seen nothing but complaints about the movie's 3D version) but I know it 2D it had Tim Burton's trademark visual imagination and it even paid attention to things like creating interesting characters including making Alice into a (rather timid) feminist who doesn't feel she needs to marry to have a happy life depsite what everyone around her says. Then it ended with a battle between good and evil and a dragon fight. I won't tell you who won.

Therefore, i say yes, go see Alice in Wonderland. Just feel free to go to sleep during the ending. Trust me, you'll miss nothing.

Oscar Speeches

Through an extensive network of highly placed exclusive sources from all levels of the movie business, I have received advance copies of the Oscar speeches various nominees will deliver should they win Sunday night. We at Clear's Own are proud of our work and fully expect to receive millions in new book and syndication deals in which case we'll kiss the little Blogger piece of crap goodbye along with the genetic defectives who read it.

On that note, please enjoy this, my loyal readers.

AND THE WINNER FOR BEST ANIMATED FEATURE IS...UP, PRODUCER PETE DOCTER: Thank you, thank you. Okay, seriously, was there any doubt we would win. The Best Animated Feature category exists so Pixar can win Oscars and guess who made Up? Hint: it starts with a P and rhymes with Pixar and if you didn't know it was Pixar then how the hell did you get to be sitting in this room with the great and near great and near great of the film industry and not in some Jack in the Box slurping down cheap burgers with your fat kids? I'm actually a little offended that you made me wait through the reading of the other four nominees. I'm a busy guy with places to be and you all tried to act as if this was actually some kind of horse race instead of the foregone conclusion it's been since Up was released last May. In fact, it would be a good idea to just give me next year's award for Toy Story 3 right now. No? Fine, we'll all pretend to be in suspense this time next year then.

AND THE WINNER FOR BEST PICTURE IS...THE BLIND SIDE, PRODUCER GIL NETTER: Um, we won? Are you serious? ARE YOU FUCKING SERIOUS? No way. I know this is a joke. I grab hold of the statue and it sticks to my hand, everyone laughs and I'm escorted off the stage and the producers of The Hurt Locker come up for the real award, right? Ha ha, very funny, assholes.

AND THE WINNER FOR BEST ACTRESS IS...CAREY MULLIGAN, AN EDUCATION: Oh my goodness, thank you so much. I want you to know I realize this isn't so much for the role I played in An Education but that you're actually recognizing me for the time I played Sally Sparrow on Doctor Who. I want you all to know I'll be returning in 2012 as the Doctor's new companion. (This may or may not be wishful thinking on my part. -- MC)

AND THE WINNER FOR BEST DIRECTOR IS...KATHRYN BIGELOW, THE HURT LOCKER: Wow, just wow. I never thought I'd be lucky enough to be standing here before you receiving this, one of my profession's highest honors. I want to thank screenwriter Mark Boal for the wonderful job he did in giving me and the cast an unforgettable script to bring to life. I also want to thank the brave men and women on the U.S. military who give so very much for our nation. Finally, I want to thank my ex-husband, James Cameron, for being such a huge piece of shit to me while we were married. He generated such an incredible amount of hatred for him within me that he inspired me to become a better director. Oh, hi James, didn't see you there, fuckface. Gosh, were you nominated this year too? I had no idea. HA! Lick my ass, James. You used to like to do that, as I recall, though not as much as you used to like putting on a pink lace bra and ramming a 15 inch vibrating dildo up your ass while we screwed. Fuck you, James. And thanks again, Academy members, for this great honor. Also, fuck you again, James.

Look At My Briefs -- 3/4/10

It's that time of year again, kiddies. Time for another edition of my brief comments on various subjects I like to call Look At My Briefs.

I suppose it was only a matter of time.

I wonder what it says about me that Nip/Tuck is going off the air and I've yet to see a single episode. I suppose it means I don't have 100 hours a week to watch television. I thought some grand philosophical observation would suddenly pop in my head after typing that first sentence but now...nothing. Moving on.

The only really classic moments of the third Pirates of the Caribbean film happened when Keith Richards showed up to play Jack Sparrow's father and people in the audience started muttering, "I think that's Keith Richards." The depth of Johnny Depp's affection for Richards makes me look forward to his planned documentary of the bass player though I've no idea how you're going to stretch, "I don't really remember that due to the drifting dunes of heroin I was doing at the time," into a full length feature but I'm sure Depp will find a way.

Young people may not know that there was a time when video games didn't have even the bare bones storylines they have today. Space Invaders, for instance, didn't take place during World War II or in a zombie infested post apocalyptic world. It was just "Shoot stuff out of the sky" and they made millions off of it. This makes me wonder how exactly one goes about turning something like Space Invaders into a full length feature film but why worry? If there's one source of filmmaking ideas that always delivers quality product, it's video games.

This woman writes an entire article advocating for The Blind Side to win Best Picture before finally admitting this in the second to last paragraph:

“The Blind Side” is not a great film but it is a great story which is documented at its end by the real life pictures of the characters portrayed by Bullock, Tim McGraw, Kathy Bates and others.

The only reason she wants The Blind Side to win is because she sees it as something that affirms her world view. The reason it won't win has nothing to do with values or a liberal agenda. It won't win because there are nine other nominated films much better than The Blind Side, a mediocre film that shouldn't have been nominated in the first place.

Dealers of illegal hallucinogenics will notice a sharp drop in business tomorrow when Alice in Wonderland, a movie that makes them unnecessary, is released. Let your friendly neighborhood drug merchant know you still care and that he'll be back in business in a few weeks when the film slowly drifts out of theaters.

Some Guy Trying To Figure Out "Lost"

When it first started I figured this was some Gilligan's Island type deal where the plane survivors would start building shit out of coconuts and have sex with monkeys (come on, you know they were doing that) while the radio would talk about nothing but them for years. After a while, though, it seemed so obvious they were in Hell or Purgatory or something but the producers insisted that they were all very much alive and not in Hell. I figured the producers were just total douchenozzles and that the last episode would show them in Hell and they'd come on and say, "Ha ha, you just wasted years trying to figure this out but they were in Hell the whole time like you thought."

Some time went by and I thought, "Nah, they're not in Hell, that's just stupid." This was when they started finding the polar bears and the sharks with that weird logo tattooed on them and THAT was what made me think that they're being manipulated by a group of super intelligent bears and sharks working together to conquer the world. I dismissed that when I realized bears and sharks would more likely try to eat each other before they would ever work together so I was back at square one.

After I got past the bear/shark conspiracy, the Others showed up. This is where I said, "Oh come on!" and almost stopped watching cause I figured they were just pulling things out of their butts at this point. That and the way they're on the island and then they're doing flashbacks to some time when they went out to buy bananas or some shit like that made me think, "Why bother? I can't keep up." Still, I stuck it out.

When six of the island's inhabitants got off the island, I figured the damn show would be ending then but the damn thing is still on so I have to keep thinking about it. I thought maybe the Oceanic Six would get an apartment together and the whole thing would turn into a sitcom with wacky situations like the Smoke Monster almost getting them evicted by setting off the smoke alarms but no, instead we see them wandering around looking all mopey even though they got off that stupid island where people were always shooting at them.

Speaking of that Smoke Monster, what's the deal with that? Is it some animal that's on fire? Now they're saying the Monster is also Locke who's dead but is alive back home because a bomb went off that never went off so the plane that crashed never did so everyone on the island is also back in Los Angeles eating In And Out Burgers instead of the wild boar that they're eating cause they're stuck on the island Norman Coordinate!

What was I talking about? Oh yeah. I think they're in Hell.

*Come on, you know they were doing that.

When Lives Explode

I finally got to see The Hurt Locker. This whole time I was wondering what the big deal was about this movie. The problem with most movies about the Iraq war is that they suck yet here's one that seems poised to beat out the top grossing movie of all time for the Oscar AND has the director of that top grossing film saying it probably should even though he ought to hate it since it The Hurt Locker was directed by a woman to whom he almost certainly refers as, "that bitch who took half of everything in the divorce."

What sets this apart from other contemporary war movies is that the former Mrs. Cameron, Kathryn Bigelow, did not direct an anti-war screed but rather made messages and politics secondary to a fascinating story that is both a tense and suspenseful look at the business of defusing bombs and an insight into a guy who finds that he loves looking Death itself in the eye.

The story opens in Baghdad, 2004. After they lose their team leader, two members of an Army bomb squad unit get a new leader in the form of SSG William James (Jeremy Renner). Unlike their former leader who proceeded carefully and died trying to preemptively explode a bomb rather than defuse it, James fearlessly approaches bomb sites with little to no regard for his own safety. His partners are not happy about this, especially Sgt. JT Sanborn (Anthony Mackie). He wants James to scout out locations using a robot or to abandon bombs that are too difficult and just let them blow up. James doesn't do that though. We discover that he is supremely competent at taking apart bombs and has done so with over 700 of them. We also discover that he's borderline crazy when it comes to facing danger. He's way too cool and willing to face death in these situations where there are many ways to die. His predecessor died when an insurgent remotely detonated an IED before he could get away from it. James doesn't even try to do that. Oddly, the bombers don't do this to James even though there is more than one instance where they're almost certainly watching from a distance. I admit not being able to figure this out. Roger Ebert says it's because the bombers are professionally curious to see if this guy can defuse the bombs without getting his hands blown off. Makes sense. Moving on.

The movie opens with a quote from war correspondent Chris Hedges who said, "War is a drug." James embodies that quote. People who take drugs do so because they love drugs more than they love themselves or anything else and that's how James feels about his job. He puts himself and his team in danger, sometimes impulsively. He has a wife from whom he may or may not be divorced and a baby son he's in no hurry to go home and see. Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal (who also wrote the only other decent Iraq War film In The Valley of Elah) use this character to create frightening and suspenseful situations. James simply walks into crazy situations in which he could be blown up or shot at by snipers at any moment. His partners, Sanborn and Eldridge (Brian Geraghty), are constantly on watch to make sure this doesn't happen and have to figure out if the various Iraqus who watch them while they work are the ones who planted the bomb or just some butcher wondering what all the fuss is about.

I still think Inglorious Basterds was last year's best movie but The Hurt Locker is certainly a close second. I don't freak out or act like I'm personally wounded if my choice for the Best Picture Oscar doesn't win. In the long run, Oscars are usually irrelevant anyway. Did you know Ghandi won over E.T. back in 1982? Even people who were in Ghandi probably don't know that. In the short run, however, it can be a huge boost to small (in the case, really small) films like The Hurt Locker and a lot of people will see it who wouldn't have seen it otherwise.

Still, things like box office grosses shouldn't be a concern for the audience. Just rent or buy The Hurt Locker because it's a good movie that can be enjoyed whether you try to understand the characters and the madness in which they live or not.

Rock Out With Your Cops Out

I didn't expect a lot. I wasn't expecting to walk out of Cop Out thinking that a new standard for film making had been set and that director Kevin Smith would not be too fat to win an Oscar. All I asked was that I be mildly amused as I sat in a dark theater on a snowy Friday night watching Smith's tribute to 80s buddy cop films. Did I get that? That fact that I had to ask that question pretty much answers it.

I wasn't asking for realism either. A movie like this certainly doesn't have to be realistic. Hell, most really fun movies aren't. A really fun movie makes you forget to ask questions like, "Why don't they just call for backup?" or "Could you actually outrun a fireball like that guy just did?" In the case of Cop Out, not only were there too few funny jokes to make you overlook a stupid plot but the plot achieved a level of stupidity normally only seen in porn plots.

It starts off with a bit of cleverness when we meet the two cops who, we assume, will at some point be out somewhere, Jimmy (Bruce Willis) and Paul (Tracy Morgan). Though he doesn't come off as being particularly bright, Paul does manage to come up with the idea to interrogate a suspect by pretending to be a an escaped felon hiding in the interrogation room. The first sign the movie was in trouble was that this bit went on too long. After that the two cops recruit the guy as an informant and manage through their utter incompetence to get the guy killed while his murderer gets away, an incident that leads to disciplinary action from their lieutenant. In movies like this you're supposed to be on the side of the street cop who sometimes has to bend the rules to get the job done. In this case, however, we witness their wise superior officer giving Jimmy and Paul the most justifiable "turn in your badge and gun" speech in the history of action films.

That's not where the dumb ends, though. We also get to see that they take the behavior that makes them shitty cops and apply it to their personal lives. Paul won't stop thinking that his wife (Rashida Jones) is cheating on him despite any real evidence that she's doing so outside of his vivid paranoid fantasies. This makes Paul the more rational of the two partners when we learn that Bruce Willis's Jimmy character insists on paying for his daughter's expensive wedding despite the fact that the total is ringing in at around $50,000 AND despite the fact that his ex-wife's new, well off husband (Jason Lee) has offered to pay for the whole thing. True, the new hubby is a douchebag but then again so is Jimmy. You'd think they'd form some sort of douchebag bond but that doesn't happen. This all leads to Jimmy's attempts to raise the cash that, while ridiculous, aren't particularly funny.

It's not that Cop Out is completely without laughs. There just aren't enough of them. It's a shame as it had all the elements required to make both a parody of and a tribute to old buddy cop films. You had the mixed race partners, the surly superior, the rival jerk cops and the scary ethnic villains. I was rooting for this movie but too many jokes fell flat.

Kevin Smith has more films in the works so maybe he'll redeem himself. Luckily, in a couple of years, we'll all be marveling how the guy who did a sucky film like Cop Out made the wonderful movie with this imaginative title.