If you are one of the few people who Saw 2 AND read Haunted (see previous post), you will have noticed that the two have a lot in common. I mean they aren't enough alike that I would say plagiarism for certain, but enough that I can suspect it. They both have the same sort of theme, only Saw 2 is way dumber and has a "bad" guy. They both are about life and how sucky people are, even the best of the protagonists are never heroic, never really all that good or sympathetic. You could say that Saw 2 is the lobotomized working-class brother of Haunted.

I can't say that I agree with either one, really, though both will go right over the heads of their target-audiences. College kids, teenage boys in general, are not the people you want to lecture about the appreciation of life, or any topics of an intellectual nature. Not your average one anyway, and your average ones are the ones who go to see movies like this. Likewise the only people who read anymore tend to be white and middleclass, not the people you want to share tales of venal attention-whores and suffering with. The squalid life does not resonate with this demographic.

Haunted By Chuck Palahniuk

95% of the pretentious, untalented, deluded assholes who call themselves "writers" will never, and should never be published in print. That is, unless they make enough to pay for it themselves, of course. The five percent who will, need to read this book. This is what writing is about. Chuck Palahniuk is who Stephen King was trying to be all along. As with King's better shit, most of Palahniuk's work will just float on over the heads of all those sheltered, naive soccer-moms banging away their banal little stories every night. It will float over the heads of most of you bloggers too. In fact, unless you can see, unless you have seen, unless you have stories inside you to tell, you probably won't ever really get Haunted.

Chuck Palahniuk isn't the world's best writer, but he's a real writer. He knows how to tell stories. He knows how to get you to see his pictures. You won't really get this book if you don't already know how depraved and cartoonish your fellow man can be, if you don't undertand how desperately most of humanity is to be noticed.

From David Edelstein's gushy review of Red Eye:

When Red Eye is all over you'll probably look back-over steak tips and margaritas at the Applebee's next door-and wonder just what made your stomach juices slosh around in your throat. And you'll have another margarita.

I like Cillian Murphy, and I liked 28 Days and I like Rachel Macadams (she isn't really all that sexy, but she's cute), hell, I even like Wes Craven. I'll even say that Red Eye wasn't even all that boring. It was short anyway. That said it could have been made for TV, right down to the casting of . There absolutely nothing all that interesting here. The main character is too good to be believable, you are never surprised, never scared, and never really held in suspense. Edelstein is full of shit.

ASS ON PRECINCT 13
I get it. The re-make of Assault on Precinct 13is really Die Hard. Ethan Hawke is John Maclane. The Amos and Andy duo of Ja Rule and John Leguizamo are twin versions of the chauffer, Argyle. Brian Dennehy is that slick grinning asskissing yuppie guy (only neither slick nor grinning), and Gabriel Byrne is Hans Gruber.

It really is a pathetic movie. Everything wrong with the Hollywood aesthetic boiled down into one stupidized plot. Halfway through the movie you stop giving a shit who does or does not make it out of Precinct 13 alive

The thing about Nicholas Cage is that he can't really act. He does a lot of stuff to distract you from that fact, physical stuff, like waving his hands around and varying his volume and spasming every now and then. It's all about him not knowing how to read the lines in the script. Otherwise he just has this I'm-pissed-off scowl, but that's reserved for his "low-key" performances. It allows his fans to read their own emotions into the character. That's how it works, fool people into thinking that you are really good then they start thinking that they should see something there. He also has an incredibly nasal voice, it's exactly like a black person mocking how white people sound.

Best ever movie sex (not romance, not "love", sex) scenes:
5. Glenn Close and Michael Douglas, Fatal Attraction
IMDB Amazon
4. Jamie Lee Curtis and Kevin Kline, A Fish Called Wanda
IMDB Amazon
3. Naomi Watts and Sean Penn, 21 Grams
IMDB Amazon
2. Annette Bening and Peter Gallagher, American Beauty
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1. Anonymous Fat People, Sideways
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JOHN MACTIERNAN, AND A STIFF JAMES BOND
There was a time in my life when I thought that John McTiernan was the best film-maker in Hollywood. This was at about the time that I though Die Hard was the best movie ever made. It's one of the best, but not the best anymore. Anyway. After seeing The Thomas Crowne Affair- no, wait, that's not entirely right - after trying to watch the Thomas Crowne Affair and failing miserably, I have revised my opinion. At least as far as his judgment is concerned. This is a really bad movie. I mean worse than Hudson Hawk. This is the kind of movie you expect to have heard was locked up in a vault for years because studio execs were afraid to release it. It is ridiculous. Pierce Brosnan is more wooden than George Washington's teeth. Humorless, boring actor playing cartoon character, and not even a good cartoon character, a third rate comic-strip character from the 1920s. The plot for stealing the Monet is dumb, though I imagine if it was workable they would have been sued, but there is nothing here. Nobody you could ever identify with, just ridiculous imitation James Bond hijinks and would-be clever dialogue.

THE LONGEST YARD

I get the feeling that underneath all the of the unassuming working-class good-guyness of his image Adam Sandler is really a smug condescending asshole. I think he believes that all he has to do is show up on screen and we will have fun and pay money to do it. This movie has all of the gimmicks it needs to appeal to the white college boy audience (Chris Rock, football, Adam Sandler, general wantonness) except only naked women, and yet it has nothing. Normally I'm a paying member of the Dumb Humor Boy's Club. The problem is that there is no humor in this movie, dumb or otherwise.

The Adam Sandler remake of The Longest Yard is easily one of the worst movies I have ever seen. It's right up there withGone in Sixty Seconds as movies with the most obvious absolute contempt for their audience. The fact that these movies even have an audience (I'm assuming that they do) might prove the contempt just and well-deserved. If anyone ever says that Hollywood racism doesn't really exist, that's all just hype, make them watch this movie. Amos and Andy is a step up. Blaxploitation is a step up. If I hadn't seen Loose Cannons a few years ago, this would be the least funny "comedy" in my memory and I've seen a lot of unfunny comedies. I'm not that hard to please and this movie didn't even raise a smile. Adam Sandler wasn't funny, Chris Rock wasn't funny, nothing anybody said or did in the whole movie was ever even remotely funny. You just kind of got the feeling that they gave up trying somewhere along the line, like on the first day of the shoot. They try to make you feel excited about stuff, identify wiht the characters, like when they go playing in that muddy field. You know they trying, you know what they want you to feel, but you just don't want to. This movie just isn't worth the effort of feeling anything except relief that it's over.

Ever notice how the women that guys like the character Steve Carell plays in the 40 Year-Old Virgin always end up with hot girls? Ever notice how these hot girls are always nice, smart people? Ever notice that they have little trouble meeting these girls? Ever notice how these girls always like them right away? It's not unlike the Billy Bob Thornton character in Bad Santa. Hollywood clearly is appealing to the dork/asshole market. Dorks and assholes need to know that they stand a shot at landing hot brunettes who will see through the thick layer of dorkiness and assholery. It's the same in commercials, there are lots of ads with ordinary looking guys married to hot women. I figure those guys must be rich and that alienates me. So it doesn't work is what I'm saying. I have met a total of one (1) woman in my life that I got to know and found her worth knowing and that didn't work out. It wasn't easy meeting her either.

The thing about Johnny Depp's performance in Blow is that it's probably his best. Unfortunately the character he plays, George Young, is unbelievably, and I mean unbelievably stupid. Even worse, the character is based on a real person which gives the screenwriters little room for maneuver. It all looks unlikely, because it really happened. I want to say that Depp is overrated, believe me I have nothing but contempt for anybody who would choose to live among the French, but, sadly, he is probably one of the top five best actors alive. He is subtle to the point to the point of being almost off the screen here, but it's more powerful than the funny accents and overblown emotion of a Tom Hanks, say.

Also, something about the guy who plays Pablo Escobar, I've seen him before, but I don't remember where, I don't like him. I mean I seriously don't like him, and I don't know why. Maybe it's those tiny close-together eyes.

HORROR + FFW
The core of the horror movie is knowing that something bad is about to happen but that there is nothing you can do to change it, you are trapped with your destiny. It's like coming home to find that your house has been broken into, not just that, but the intruders are still there, and worse, they know you have come home.
That's your horror right there. That's your terror. So what do you do? You fast-forward to get through the scary bits. You want to know what happens without the agony of waiting for it. You can't handle your fear and yet there you are watching a "horror" movie.

Horror movies weren't meant to be under that kind of control. Fast forward disarms them, breaks them down to the level of of an episode of Friends. Renders them harmless. That is what has made them more popular than ever, the ease of watching. There are so-called "horror fans" who can't watch a movie like The Excorcist without having the remote control in their hands.

To be a real fan of the genre, you have to need to face and overcome your fears. You have to be willing to look Freddy Krueger in the eye and say "Do your worst, motherfucker." Otherwise you're just faking it, your just another Days of Our Lives watching pussy with no backbone. If you can't watch scary movies without being able to speed things up you shouldn't watch at all.

Today I feel the way Michael Madsen always looks: too tired of all this shit to go on living, you know? Seen all of it, done all of it, and there is nothing that can possibly get me interested again. I smoke to keep from killing myself :-).

Apart from proving that Uma can act, nothing special, pretty much any actress can play one-dimensional pissed off, the Kill Bills are, or were, not all that good. Homages are bullshit. It means somebody couldn't come up with anything good and had to rip shit off. I never felt pissed off with her. Skinny arms wielding a sword never appealed or convinced. This is more of an amusement/watch the pretty colors movie. The fight/snake sequence with that mermaid chick was the best part of the stories. Not because you didn't know who would win, but because you didn't know how or what would happen first. I'm almost certain that Tarantino wrote her with one eye so that Beatrix could rip the other out.

THE LIMEY

Soderbergh goes Tarantino. This movie was so clearly inspired by Tarantino's work
(Reservoir Dogs etc.) that I wonder if Steven Soderbergh was threatened, felt he had to prove himself. I mean how many would-be eloquent/witty hitmen could there be? A crime-movie pissing contest. Tarantino wins. Peter Fonda is creepily charming. Emphasis on creepy, those horse-teeth are bizarre, to say the least. I wonder why that whole Narc sequence was necessary, but I'm too tired to bother thinking about it. This is a a geezer's movie in the way that The Golden Girls was granny-sitcom. Nothing touching or interesting or quirky about the storyline or the characters. Maybe you could say that it was made for the old man in all of us, eh? Eh? I clearly have nothing much to say here so I will stop now.

PS The idiot woman who wrote the review at imdb.com should be shot and her grave desecrated on an annual basis.

NOTES ON A WASTE OF MY TIME AND MONEY CALLED "HOSTAGE"

Family is important, but I already knew that.Kids are stupid. Knew that too. There has to be more to it. Tell me something I don't know, Hollywood!

There is something wrong with the team that thought it would be a good idea to make a Robert Crais novel into a movie. Crais' novels are so light that you have to close the book every few minutes to keep the words from floating off the page*. His guilty and grief-stricken heroes have been published in every cop thriller since the genre was invented. John Maclane versus the Crow. The Columbine killers go to LA. I like Robert Crais, he's like a chewable toothbrush after a heavy meal. No nutritional value, doesn't taste all that good, probably doesn't do you any good, really, but it's something to do.

NOTES ON GANGS OF NEW YORK




Scorcese doesn't many movies anymore because he has no good scripts, no ideas. Gangs of NY is nothing new except the setting. The violence is a little unsettling, but not really unsettling. The characters are so unsympathetic you don't really care who dies as long as Bill Cuddy dies with them because Day Lewis was good, I'll give him that. Real menace, real anger. DiCaprio, as always, is overrated. Brooding stares and weepy rage are a teenager's idea of a good performance, not mine.

So you tell a story in film that has not been told before (to my knowledge), but only for that reason, not because it was worth telling. Nice set, nice costumes, nothing else to see here. Oh, and there is something wrong when Boss Tweed is a film's most likable character.

*stolen

BOOKS:

THE
MAN IN MY BASEMENT By Walter Mosley

Right away when Mosley tells me that Lainie, the loan officer in his novel The Man in My Basement, has a bagged lunch every day at 12:30 I know he's full of shit.
This the kind of Disney cartoon character, with
the kind of cute quirk, that only exists in lazy imaginations. There
is nothing real here, no footing in flesh. Walter Mosley knows nobody like this. The first three chapters weren't bad, they weren't that good either though. It's clear that he's setting something up, but he has yet to make me interested in finding out what it is. It starts with the main character living alone and struck a chord because he got it mostly right, I know this because I live alone. But he is too easy with it, too independent. Too secure. Anybody with enough of a thought-life to tell a novel-length story (The Man in My Basement is written in the first person) would not be this easy with solitude.

I had never seen Bad Santa until today. In other words, I am a lonely, pathetic cursing, smoking drinker (not a drunk) completely without the influence of this movie. This movie was funniest for me in the parts where I identified most with the lead chararacter. I can't tell you how many times I have wanted to punch random little kids in the face. Corporal punishment is sadly lacking in families these days. Anyway. It was good, seriously one-note, and not always that funny, but good.

Best Revenge Movies of all Time

Pretty much every action movie has revenge as a core plot element. Violence without rage is just ugly, with (justified) rage, it's extremely satisfying. What I mean by "revenge movie" here is the movie where there is nothing else to motivate the main character(s), no fear for one's life, no fighting to protect somone else. Just revenge, pure and simple.

All links go to the Internet Movie database page on that movie.

10. The Punisher

09.Death Wish

08. Lethal Weapon 2

07. Kill Bill Vol 1

06. Desperado/El Mariachi

05. Nine to Five

04. Payback

03. Young Guns

02.Fresh

01. Unforgiven


Ricardo, Roger, Tyrone, Louis, before I leave this earth I am coming for you.

For your convenience, and my profit, an amazon searchbox:

Jim Carrey overacts a lot. He looks like someone trying to prove he can really, really act when he takes on roles like Joel in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. You can never quite believe that he lacks the confidence of his main character, who I am sad to say, is me. He is so me that I had a hard time watching that movie. Not only is he me, his girlfriend is my ex-girlfriend. No BS. So it's a pattern maybe, of lonely introverted guys finding fucked up extroverted girls. I only know that it has been the best relationship of my life. I also wish I could wipe it from my mind. If there were the possibility of me doing it I would sign up as fast as I could.

Here's something you don't know: You're not very good-looking. Oh yes, you'll claim to have known that already. The thing is, you didn't really believe it. What stuck in your head was the last compliment you got from some guy who wanted to have sex with you. You need to believe that you are at least ok, maybe a 6, even a 5. You need that so that you can feel someone out there one day might want you. But you're not, you are an incredibly ordninary woman. You are definitely no Angelina Jolie. You don't have looks that make your talent seem greater than it really is. You don't have people forgiving your mistakes, your bad script choices because they want to look at you.

I have seen more than once that many white people are more comfortable with black people who manifest black stereotypical traits than the ones who don't. A black man who talks sports or pussy or hip-hop or in bad grammar and thick "ebonics" will always be more popular than the black man who can talk about books or computers or even country music. A lazy black person will invoke much whining, but a fair amount of tolerance. It's nothing new, it's "how they are", and all is right in the world when you have to tell Leroy to get back to work. The universe is in order.

Denzel Washington became popular not because, he is a thorough actor who gives intense and thoughtful performances. He became popular because it was hip to like him. It was hip to like him because he was incredibly popular with black women. He was the replacement-Billy-Dee-Williams-black-heartthrob long before he was recognized for his acting chops. He is not dumb enough to be really likable to your average moviegoer. I have a hard time imagining a lot of dedicated white Denzel Washington fans. Not saying there aren't any, just not a lot. I would think that Danny Glover would have more.

Faith over Logic is what you use to draw the masses. Most people find thought and any kind of calculation a burden. I used to have a co-worker who would sign papers without reading, it was too much trouble to read. Same kind of thing. There are major holes in your major religions. Stuff that doesn't make sense. But no one thinks about them, that's how they find purpose in life, that's how they hold on to their hope. That's how they make peace with death. Except that when you don't think, when you live in denial of the hard questions and comes up death looks you in the eye, you can't hide anymore, and you must think (if have time) because now eternity rests on the things you've been hiding from.

There is a lot of stuff in the Davinci Code that I knew before starting the book. The fact that the Roman Catholic Holidays are just thin masks for paganism, for instance. Nobody is going to look at the holes in their religion while life and it's problems can distract them from it. It's like preaching to rocks.

The Davinci Code really is a badly written book. A good story and well told, but I can only think that that's due to the hard work of a good editor. The language is clichéd and basic, characters are shallow, and as for everything except for the symbolism and a few facts about Opus Dei, it's all been done before.

What I like about Ewan Macgregor: He's short and he has a big unit (by the way, was that movie called memoirs of a Geisha? Can't be bothered to look), kind of like me. The Island is a religious allegory, but you already knew that, it's so obvious that the fourteen year-olds who watched the movie got it. It's interesting that they dug up the guy who you used to be on Benson for the role of lovable, dopey sidekick. Macgregor does not look as young as he should for the part. You get the feeling that it was written for a younger, less jaded-looking person. But I digress.

This is the smartest movie that Baz Lurhma- er, I mean, Michael Bay has ever done. Meaning that it's for the more discerning short-bus rider. It's for the discerning short-bus rider in all of us. It's for the lustful 13 year-old virgin aching for a glimpse of Ewan's testicle cameltoe in all of us. Or maybe not.

It could also be a political allegory. I live in the Third World, and it could also be symbolizing to an escape to the USA. Okay, that's a stretch. But maybe not.