Movies Shmoovies

It's been a bit of a time of a while since I actually wrote a review. This is because last week I felt that life was too short to spend one second of it watching movies like The House Bunny, Death Race or The Rocker. This week I'm realizing that life hasn't gotten any longer* so I'll probably go see at least one of the three releases. Ah, but which one? I'd like to see Hamlet 2 but it's not showing anywhere near me. This leaves me with College, Disaster Movie and Babylon A.D. So, in the old Clear's Own tradition that started last week...

TO THE TOMATOMETER!

Man oh man, does this week's crop suck. Disaster Movie is one of those crappy parody comedies. These get worse every year and I think that Disaster Movie may actually be an attempt to kill off the entire genre before it destroys the planet as we know it. As of this writing, Disaster Movie scored a big fat Zero Percent. Here's a quote from film critic Prairie Miller of Newsblaze:

Movie metaphor junkies be on high alert, for a horny Dr. Phil, Michael Jackson hiding out in a car trunk with a little boy and a pet chimp for good measure, and a bad imitation Juno blasting lactating breast milk as a deadly weapon.

If you did not say, "Holy shit," when you read that, it means that you are instead saying, "Holy fucking shit." Zero percent may be too high.

Our next selection is Babylon A.D. This one scored 6%. Congratulations Babylon A.D. You are the number one movie of the week. I've mentioned Bab-Ad (I'm trying to hip it up) here and here and it was obvious then it was going to suck but the six percent is a big shock. Usually an action film can have the hero dodge bullets while outrunning a fireball and push the movie up to at least 15% that way. Sadly, due to the fact that I like Vin Diesel, cute French girls (this movie has one), Michelle Yeoh (this movie has one of those too) and the fact that a bad action movie is easier to watch than a bad comedy, this will probably be the one I go to see.

Fianlly, we have College. This movie does not yet have a Tomatometer rating which means that the producers felt it was so bad they didn't do advance screenings for critics. But hey, maybe they're wrong. I gave it what I call as Ass Number of 22% but I'm more than willing to admit that my ass was wrong and that even 22% was way too good for it.

Anyway, see you at the movies. If you are in northern New York and see a blond guy coming out of Babylon A.D. with tears in his eyes, please don't look at him. He's already ashamed of himself and needs neither your pity nor your judgement.

*So what if that makes no sense? You try coming up with clever things to write.

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Status: AAAAAHHHHHHH!!!

All I heard at first was that someone was making a "Facebook Movie." This gave me visions of a movie consisting entirely of large groups of people in hot tubs, guys licking beer out of a girl's navel, girls miming oral sex with carrots or touching tongues with other girls and endless Playlists featuring indie bands that even the maker of the Playlist doesn't give a crap about. Oh, and every single character would be telling constantly and passionately that (insert favorite sports team here) IS FUCKING AWESOME! This caused me to make a decision I had often come very close to making in the past. I was going to travel to Hollywood, kidnap the guy who greenlit the movie and bury him up to his neck in an anthill until he changed his mind.

It turns out that it's not that bad. Sony and Aaron Sorkin are in the preliminary stages of filming the story of Facebook's creation. I read an article a few weeks back in what I think was Rolling Stone (and through the magic of Google, I find out it was Rolling Stone) about Facebook's controversial creation and the ongoing legal battles surrounding it. The article's a decent read and you should check it out if only to be able to yell at the screen during the movie when a historical inaccuracy rears its ugly head.

Aaron Sorkin himself talks about this on his own newly founded Facebook page. You high school and college kids out there will recognize the style of Sorkin's page as the same one your mom uses when she tries to set up her own page. She proudly states that she knows jack about Facebook and just, "wanted to see what all the fuss was about." She then wants to join all your groups and have access to all your pages. Because you're probably stoned most of the time, you do so and she sees you licking apple sauce off the breasts of that very nice girl she met when you brought her home for Thanksgiving and this example gets ten times worse if you happen to also be a girl which means Mom starts sending you brochures for Christ Camp which include that quote from Leviticus about man not laying down with another man or, in this case, a girl not licking the intimate parts of another girl.

If this ever happens to you, in a roundabout way it'll be Aaron Sorkin's fault because he made that movie.

Today's Playlist:

Glob Rats -- Eating Up The Food
The Aerodynamics -- Kiss It
Jaded -- Who Gives A Crap?

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Things I've Learned From Watching Movies Part 39

From what I can tell, it always goes like this: some hardcase who's super-competent at whatever illegal activity he happens to call his profession meets up with some sexy girl who makes him feel all funny "down there" and is thus moved to betray his employers whose response is a little more harsh than just posting a blistering job performance review to Angie's List. It always happens the same way. Always!

My Mistake

Here I was thinking I would skip this movie since I assumed from its title it was an educational film produced by Sesame Street. You know, "Today's episode was brought to you by the Letter...W." Turns out its a historical film made by Oliver Stone, the guy who brought you JFK which was the historical movie equivalent of Chariots Of The Gods in that everything, including the lack of evidence, was evidence of a conspiracy to kill the President.

Personally, I'm looking forward to what I'm sure will be the unbiased and maturely written Dirty Harry review. I was thinking of making a drinking game where you take a drink every time he accuses someone with whom he disagrees of being a traitor or a member of al Qaeda but most participants would die of alcohol poisoning.

Congratulations to College

Yes, College, congratulations. You are the official winner of the One Millionth Animal House Remake Award.

This movie takes the very dangerous step of trying to make a Judd Apatow movie without Judd Apatow. When you do stuff like that, the stuff that's supposed to be offensive and funny is just offensive. People who look at Apatow films or watch South Park often fail to appreciate what it is they do and how they elevate low-brow humor to a high artistic level. If you lack the writing and film making talents of Judd Apatow or the South Park guys then stuff that's supposed to be offensive and funny is just offensive and the only people who say that they liked it are either stoned or they're the type of people who laugh when they see a puppy get kicked. I chuckled a couple of times during the trailer and it has a 20% chance of being good (please note that this is a number I pulled entirely out of my ass). Also, the college in this movie, like all movie colleges, has a strictly enforced Hot Girl Only Policy which means that the only way an ugly girl gets on campus is if she's the type who only needs to wash her hair and put on a tight dress to be hot. I'm a superficial man so I'll raise my Ass Number from 20 to 22% for that reason. The rest of the movie looks like college movie cliches so 22% is final.

We'll see if I'm right. If 22% is enough to beat the odds, I'll start playing the lottery again.

Dollop Of Bondness

I would love to meet the person or people who managed to convince Sony Pictures that they should be allowed to name the new James Bond film Quantum Of Solace. I imagine a great deal of pressure was put upon the filmmakers to give it a title like Maximum Deathness or Hard Charge Overdrive. Quantum Of Solace sounds like it should be the name of a student film about a young man just out of college who is devastated by the death of his favorite house plant and gets over it by having a three way with his girlfriend and her best friend who may or may not be female (we never find out).

If you can convince a nervous movie studio that their big holiday release on which they have spent in excess of 100 million dollars of their company's money should be called Quantum Of Solace then there's nothing you can't do. Hell, you could bring peace to the Middle East. Congratulations and have your excuses ready if it flops since the title will then be Hollywood shorthand for poor decision making for the next century.

Random Thought

When a movie has a name like I Served The King Of England, shouldn't the plot have something to do with serving the King of England? It's about some old guy who mainly views World War II in the context that it was a major league pain in the ass for him and one of the supporting characters makes some vague reference about how as a waiter he once served the King of England a plate of meatballs or something. Something tells me there won't be a car chase through the Los Angeles River in this. Oh well.