Old School Bruno

Craptacular!

In the tradition of "Legends of the Superheroes" and the Bea Arthur anointed "Star Wars Holiday Special" we present the ice skating/live-action/animation/fury masterpiece "The Hanna Barbera All-Star Comedy Ice Revue." -Scraped from the fine folks at Cartoon Brew

Calling All Goth Girls...

Here's a preview of what the well-dressed Siouxie and the Banshees fan will be sporting come March 2010 and the release of Tim Burton and Disney's take on "Alice in Wonderland."

A nifty panorama gallery can be found on the USA Today website here

A slide show of images is here. Johnny Depp is in David Bowie "Scary Monsters" drag as the Mad Hatter and Anne Hathaway is very ooh-la-la as the White Queen. Looks pretty interesting. Surprised this wasn't done years ago. It's a pretty obvious idea and 'Alice' is public domain, so if you're thinking of doing your own 'Alice' porno to cash-in, get moving.

I'm assuming this means the oft-rumored Alice flick from America McGhee
based on his twisted game is not likely to happen. Too bad. I'm a big fan of Tim Burton but I can guarantee that the inevitable and hasty video game movie tie-in will not come close to McGhee's version.

Scene Grrl Game Alpha v1.

Not much going on here yet. This is just some of the base elements for a game I'm working on. What was originally slated as an entry in a contest for games that were designed in one week has stretched out way beyond those hopeful parameters. My Action script skills are fairly limited compared to my ambition at least. I'm having trouble keeping everything neat and tidy enough to run at a decent clip. My understanding of global variables leaves much to be desired.

The graphics and content are the easy part.

"UP!" and at 'em.

Pixar continues its glory days run with "UP!" A story about a lonely widower (with a fleghmy growl just like Lou Grant's) doesn't really scream commercial potential but Pixar has the traction to take a whack idea and stick to it. One glaring thing about "UP!" is the utter lack of license-ready intellectual property templates. The Nickelodeon set isn't going to be clammoring for cuddly Ed Asner dolls and in this day and age, that's a pretty bold concept for an animation studio, almost unheard of in a business that relies on gimcrackery for a sizable portion of revenue.

Like its predesescor "Wall-E", "UP!" is at its best when it lets the pictures do the talking. A silent backstory set-piece in the first half outshines the rest of the film. This is a fairly straightforward outing for Pixar. Despite its eclectic premise, the bulk of the story is a pretty standard journey tale. Pretty and well-executed as it is, "UP!" seems a bit more story-oriented than the last few Pixar joints without a lot of technically impressive razzle-dazzle. The short that precedes it "Partly Cloudy" has anthropomorphic clouds that seems designed to show-off some neat technical tricks and is quite enjoyable.

And as for the 3D aspect, don't ask me. I "opted out" and chose the plain 'ol 2D experience (on celluloid.) But unlike certain parts of "Coraline" nothing in "UP!" seemed like it was designed or optimized (or forced) for 3D maximization. No pokey screen thrusts or jabbing fingers. And that suits me just fine. Apologies to James Cameron, but I think we all know that the current 3D revival is a bit of a wash-out artistically. Maybe it helps sell some tickets but it adds ZERO to the movie experience. Zero.

The Toothless Granny From Hell

Dang, but it seems like Sam Raimi has not helmed a non-arachnid related project in about a zillion years. "Drag Me To Hell" is a nice little return to cheesy excess from the fella that brung us "Evil Dead" and "Darkman." Gorehounds will bitch and moan about the PG-13 rating but Raimi knows what buttons to push and which particular streams of viscera can spout out of which particular orifices without getting into trouble with the ratings overlords. Its something of a cat and mouse game really. To say this is a tame outing - just enough Grand Guignol to get the myspace crowd into the multiplex - would be missing the point. If you wanted to compile a list of the various spews and splats of "Take Me To Hell" a more restrictive rating would not seem far off the mark, at least on the page. It's the small judgements that make the difference. Not lingering too long on the dead kitten or too closely on the blood splatter helps to keep the gross-out factor in check. An unrated directors cut would seem like a natural for the DVD release but I don't think it's really going to improve upon anything.

The A.V. Club review by Scott Tobias puts it nicely:
"That PG-13 rating may sound like a liability for a director who once hosed Bruce Campbell with torrents of blood shooting out of the walls, but Raimi makes a sly asset of this limitation. Just like other PG-13-rated horror movies, the film relies on shock effects instead of blood, but Raimi pushes those effects to a full-on visceral assault."

Star BLECCH!*

"Luke Perry meets the new waiter at the Peach Pit."

Much ado was made by Trekkies (there are apparently many on the internets) over the anachronistic** inclusion of the Beastie Boys rollicking "Sabotage" in J.J. Abrams "Star Trek" make-over (more specifically, the song appeared in one of the trailers a few months ago.)

The tune in question fits in rather nicely methinks. A young Kirk take Dad's vintage Corvette for a joyride and gets chased by "The Man." He turns on the radio*** - an oldies station presumably - and hears the Beasties.

More ado was also made a few months ago when ol' Billy Shatner started posting rather embarrassing homemade videos kvetching about whether he was or wasn't invited to appear in Abram's "Trek."

Let's tie this all together in a neat little conspiracy, shall we?

Many moons ago, "Celebrities at their Worst" unearthed a hilarious audio outtake of Bill Shat arguing with an audio engineer about the pronunciation of a certain word.

And what word was it that made Shatner set his Phasers on stun?

Wait for it...

The word was:
SABOTAGE.

Shatner pronounced it (roughly) Saab-Oh-Ta-Gee. The engineer gently corrected him and "Captain James T. Jerk" got all snippy and snarky. Some folks have sided with the Shat and pointed out that maybe "Saab-Oh-Ta-Gee" is an acceptable alternate pronunciation (especially for a rogue Canadian) but I'll leave that debate to William Safire.

Personally, I think Abrams pwned Shatner.

*To be fair, the film wasn't Blecch-ish at all. But I can't resist the temptation to give a shout-out to vintage Mad Magazine-style Yiddish-influenced neologisms. If you have a problem with that, go Portzerbie your furshlinger mom.

**Technically, I don't think it could be termed "anachronistic" - but I don't know what else to call it. Maybe "pandering" is a better term.

***Actually, it wasn't the radio but some fancy, branded gee-gaw that was an obvious product placement.

*snik* Arrrrggghhh! *snik*

"Splish, Splash, Wolverine was takin' a bath..."

I'm not putting it in the same category as "Spiderman 3" but "X-Men Origins: Wolverine" is a bit of a bust.

The X-Men flicks never quite did it for me. The suspension-of-disbelief threshold rises exponentially with an entire team of super dudes. Strangely enough, the two Fantastic Four outings almost pull it off with sheer goofiness and unintentional camp. The X-Men franchise is a lot less tongue-in-cheek and suffers for it.

This doesn't bode well for the forthcoming Avengers movie (not to mention the likely J.L.A flick.)

Hugh (not gay) Jackman does a decent job looking menacing and macho. It was cute the first time he assumes the hunched-over bodybuilder pose and runs towards his foe (while screaming to the sky: ARRGGGGHHH!) - scraping his adamantium pocket-knives along the ground - but it got a bit old fast.

Say, around the twentieth time.

Also, his hair always looks a little too neat. I smell another bad movie wig.

I've read quite a bit of X-Men in my day and while I sometimes get bored watching overly familiar backstories unspool (bit by a spider? Check!) - this franchise assumes a bit too much familiarity on the part of the audience. And I'm not really certain that it's coming from the film or comic continuity. I didn't really know who was who half the time. Spidey and Batman can probably dispense with detailed origin tales on-screen. They are pretty damn iconic but the X-Men universe is rather convuluted and not exactly a "no-brainer." It's been rebooted and retro-conned so much that this movie could have actually used a bit more of an intro. But billing this as being the titular origin story is a bit of a stretch. Most of what makes Wolverine so -umm- Wolverine-ish is barely even touched on, much less explained.

Not much of a story here in any case, especially without the preceding installments. This is not a work that would stand well on its own. And nothing particularly heroic as far as I can see. Yeah, they killed his girl, he swears revenge etc. But the turnaround in the climax sort of negates all that and makes it a bit silly. And, in the beginning - when Wolfie is involved in some clandestine dark-ops team - they never really explain what the point of the whole enterprise is. Hell if I know what it is. Some sort of sketchy, Dick Cheney Blackwater off-shoot I guess. For the most part it's never really clear if they are good guys or bad guys. (Well, until the raping that is.)

There are precious few eye-candy moments to save the day - at least none not already familiar from the trailer. "Transformers" had a pretty fucking stupid story but damn if it didn't have a pretty high quotient of slam-bang cool stuff.

It's not boring, but it's not exactly interesting either.

Coming Soon: Nerd Boner

Excited? Yeah, I'm excited about the Star Trek reboot. Let's say I'm cautiously optimistic. For every "Batman Begins" we get an "Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull-Fuck." J.J. Abrams' oeuvre has never really done much for me. I thought his "Mission Impossible III" was just OK. Never really bought into "Lost" or "Alias." Maybe, someday I'll sit down with the DVD box sets and try a little harder. And according to this New York Times piece, Abrams has been given the liberty to deliver a radical and non-canonical Trek (to borrow a favorite phrase of the Trekker cognoscenti.)

Just checked out Abrams' IMDB page and was surprised he was credited with the script for "Armageddon" - a preposterous film I shamelessly admit I find quite entertaining - although I didn't see much evidence of quality film making.

And so help me Jesus H. Christ, but the new Enterprise bridge looks like an intergalactic Apple Store.

Gizmodo has an early look at the 'Trek' flick and points out Abrams' fondness for lens flares. Lens flares are sort of like the old blinking tag in HTML. Too easy and scorned by professionals. Lens flares are a much maligned design no-no, right up there with the Comic-Sans typeface. Me? I always liked lens flares. Maybe it's time for a revival. Then again, I'm pretty unprofessional. But I tend to agree with the design overlords about Comic-Sans.

Not so surprisingly Harry "Hairy" Knowles of Aint It Cool News has a fawning review. Oh Harry! Your magic-filled childhood must have been wonderful but I'm pretty sick of hearing about it.

Abrams "guest edited" a recent issue of WIRED that incorporated ciphers, codes and puzzles. I spent quite a few hours trying to figure out the secret messages within. Especially interesting is a snippet of an article in the back pages (continued from a non-existent page) about the Koabayashi Maru, a oft-cited "Trek" trope from "Wrath of Khan." The article is a bit rambling and incoherent but on closer examination, it's pretty obvious that it's some sort of coded message but damn if I could make heads or tails out of it. Cryptology is not my forte.

P.S. It looks like the blinking HTML tag still works. At least I can see it in Firefox. I thought it was "depreciated" and ghettoized a long time ago. Hooray for the old school blinking text! I'm rocking the HTML like a 1998 porno site.

The Feel Bad Movies of 2009

"Observe and Report" is quite an odd, disturbing flick. Like "Adventureland," it was heralded via a deceptive trailer that was tailored to a few broad comedy moments lifted from the Judd Apatow playbook. S.N.L. cast members, hipster music cues and wacky physical comedy hi-jinks abound.

The actual films are quite different animals.

"Adventureland" is a nice throwback to 80s teen movies but instead of the usual emo-centric homage to John Hughes (i.e. "Can't Hardly Wait") - "Adventureland" is a bit grimmer and comes across like a mopey Cameron Crowe work, a downcast descendant of "Say Anything."

The over-cooked critical consensus is that "Observe and Report" is a dark comedy take on the revenge, anger and alienation themes of "Taxi Driver." Director Jody Hill points more accurately to another Scorcese flick; "King of Comedy" as an apt inspiration. Whatever animal "Observe and Report" might be, it's not something you see everyday. My less hip taxonomy would position its strange, dark flavor closer to the much-maligned Belushi/Ackroyd vehicle "Neighbors." A comedy marketed to mainstream crowds, featuring bankable actors that runs a lot closer to the dark side than most studio films are allowed to go - especially comedies.

And the full-frontal, male nudity envelope keeps getting pushed *ahem* harder. Fingers are pointing in the direction of trailblazer Harvey Keitel and his drunken Johnny Ace wiener- ballet in (best-movie-ever-made) "Bad Lieutenant" the starting line of a path that leads to Harvey's swingin' medallion in "The Piano" to the sausage party of "Forgetting Sarah Marshall" to the glowing blue tube steak of "The Watchmen" - brothers and sisters, we are now (firmly) in the golden age of swinging dicks.

Amen to that.

Make of that, what you will but I can't imagine what Sacha Baron Cohen is going to do penis-wise in his forthcoming "Bruno."

Billy Bob Thorton >= Douche Nozzle

This is a hot one! If you ever heard "Celebrities at their Worst" you know what to expect here. Billy Bob Thorton shows up at a Canadian radio station with band in tow, plugging his tour with Willie Nelson. Billy apparently takes umbrage at the interviewer's brief mention of his acting career. Awkwardness follows and hilarity ensues.

Thanks to the AvClub, who gave this a classic title:
"Billy Bob Thorton gets weird, dickish on Canadian radio."

Beatles Remasters + RockBand

The NY Times tells us that a newly remastered Beatles catalog will be hitting the shelves September 9, 2009. The set will be released variously as individual titles (based on the original canon U.K. issues.) and in seperate box sets of mono and stereo mixes.

Looks like they will be presented in those nifty paper sleeves that replicate old-fashioned LPs. These faux-LP packages are common with Japanese releases but for some reason, you dont see them elsewhere. That's a shame because these Chu-Bop throwbacks are a lot cooler than brittle CD enclosures - not to mention environmentally friendly for those who drink the Al Gore Kool-Aid. There will also be documentaries about the making of each album included on the CDs and compiled in a stand-alone DVD with the box sets.

And while I'm a fan of "RockBand", the forthcoming Beatles version (also September 9) never really piqued my interest until I saw this way cool CGI render of Abbey Road Studios:


Somebody needs to make this into an Unreal level.