Cigarette Burns

Superman Returns

2007-07-13T14:50:00.000-05:00

Read it now at Helium.com!

Bill Mantlo's Pop Parables: Micronauts & Rom

2007-07-04T06:37:00.000-05:00

Read now at Helium.

All-Star Superman #5: The Gospel According to Lex Luthor

2006-09-01T22:19:00.000-05:00

Read it now at Helium.com!

Ultimate Extinction

2006-06-22T15:48:00.000-05:00

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Ultimate Avengers: The Movie (2006)

2006-03-14T11:42:00.000-06:00

Read it now at Helium.com!

What I liked: at least when it came to Captain America they preserved huge chunks of Millar's writing from the comic almost verbatim, and in one or two cases Bryan Hitch's layouts. I liked Cap's fall into the water in that regard.

Thor was actually pretty cool. I liked that they kept him an anti-globalist protestor, and I loved his answering Fury's invitation with a hearty belch of contempt. As they're having this Thor talk a lot more like Marvel's regular Thor, it helped make him a bit more down to earth.

Man, people sure do drink a lot in this thing, though...

Overall, it wasn't bad or boring. I can't say I'm very fond of the style but that's Marvel animation for you. I thought it was interesting that it was mostly cel animation--I'd have thought these days that was prohibitively expensive.

But it was unsatisfying and incomplete(and amazingly short!), in the way a TV pilot is. And this felt like a pilot. And without the stuff they'd added they could have easily fit in all sorts of neat stuff from the book.

I found it odd that they reverted so much to the regular continuity versions, all the way to including "Avengers" in the title. I though the whole idea was to make a version that would work in a movie, which the comic easily would, and yet they take those elements out and add back in the really geeky stuff.

But all in all, not as good as DC's animated stuff(particularly JLU), but okay.

Speaking of really geeky stuff, though...the extras. Oh murder.

I liked the trivia track thingie. Particularly that it pointed out what they'd changed. (Though some of it is bizarre promo fluff--like how the head of Marvel wanted it to be not just a good animated movie, but a good movie, period. Uh, no, that it isn't--this is, at best, TV-level stuff)

The Avengers documentary--Jesus, is anyone as enthusiastic and effusive as George Perez? Interesting to see him, Kurt Busiek, and Mark Millar talk. Not enough of Millar though. But I wasn't sure of the point, apart from promoting the New Avengers, which it mostly seemed about. It glossed over the creation and history of the Avengers, and people like Jack Kirby, Steve Englehart and the like. And Perez almost bragging how he ganked the Avengers from George Tuska(when Perez was only supposed to be filling in) was a little gross. And who's the big guy who looks like Harvey Weinstein?

And my god, why is everyone in mainstream comics a bearded fatass? Or does it only seem that way?

But that wasn't nearly the mind-bending torture that was the Voice Talent Search. Which was like watching American Idol while being electrically tortured after being dosed with some horrible hallucinogen. It made me thank god for superhero comics, as they apparently take so many really creepy guys out of the gene pool. These are the fanboys that make me ashamed of comics and I cringed. In fact, I didn't make it past two minutes. (Not shocked that none of these guys were picked, though) What I found particularly annoying was how none of these guys acted like he was doing a professional voice audition or had any idea how to make a tape for one. Eeesh.

Actually, that's kind of what I found annoying about the whole thing. Millar and Hitch managed to remove most of the geekery from the book and these guys put it back in, probably because they know that, no matter what they say about the Ultimate line, Marvel knows it's the fanboys that will buy this thing.

All-Star Superman #2 (Grant Morrison/Frank Quitely)

2006-01-21T01:53:00.000-06:00

Grant Morrison, as ever, does a fantastic job here of putting us right back in that universe of a Superman with a hundred bizarre things in his Fortress, who has a hobby of inventing super-things all the time, about whom you just accept all this.

This is really like the Superman most of us recall, who embraces being Kryptonian and all that goes with it. I never really liked Byrne's Superman, the one who's perfectly happy to be a humble farmboy. I prefer a Superman who's smarter than me or anyone I know and who can do miracles. That's who everyone pretty much thinks Superman is. Why humble him?

Although this is also the Superman that Tarantino means in KILL BILL, the one who kind of looks down on us.

But what really makes this special is Frank Quitely's almost effortless emoting of Superman. Quitely's said he believes Superman, given his invulnerability and power, would be the calmest motherfucker in the world, and indeed that's how he comes across. This Superman is more of a godlike being like we recall, but Quitely makes him friendly, accessible, totally mellow and likeable, with a sense of humor and very complex, and subtle, expressions. It appears the more cartoonish jut-jawed Supes from the first issue is slowly giving way to a somewhat lankier, more 70s Swan type, but it works.

I'm not sure I'm very big on this Lois, though. For one thing, alone among all the characters, she doesn't bear much resemblance to any previous recognizable Lois, so it's hard to accept this one visually, cute as she is. She seems to be that same Quitely-woman you see in FLEX MENTALLO(the protagonist's angry girlfriend) and WE3(the scientist who makes them). And to be honest, it gives the impression of Katie Holmes playing Lois. Which doesn't work. Lois should come off as a woman, not a girl, and this one's a bit too girlish.

Although Superman revealing his identity to her right off makes sense and Morrison's wise to have gotten it out of the way--though I suspect some super-amnesia thing will pop up later. Sure, she needs to be protected from his enemies, and they can't know who he is. But her? She'd be in danger only if she revealed she had the information, and besides, wouldn't most just assume she knew, being Superman's known girlfriend and all? She's already in danger because of that; screw his secret identity!

Interestingly, Lois does reference all the vicious tricks he played on her in the Silver Age when she was trying to prove he was Kent. And now that she knows, her reporter's pride doesn't allow her to accept it. Which is funny.

But well worth grabbing and reading. Unlike All-Star Batman & Robin, this comic is fun.

Gee, Ya Think?

2005-08-24T09:52:00.000-05:00

Hollywood, after a punishing summer of flops, has hit upon a brilliant explanation as to why the audiences have stayed away in droves.

Because their movies suck dead donkey dick.

Multiples theories for the decline abound: a failure of studio marketing, the rising price of gas, the lure of alternate entertainment, even the prevalence of commercials and pesky cellphones inside once-sacrosanct theaters. But many movie executives and industry experts are beginning to conclude that something more fundamental is at work: Too many Hollywood movies these days, they say, just are not good enough.

Hell, I could have told them that.

The Human Stain (2003)

2005-01-23T04:12:00.000-06:00

Read now at Helium.com.

I very much like Nicole Kidman and Anthony Hopkins, and Gary Sinise for that matter. And all do a great job as they always do, though Kidman, thanks to Robert Benton not knowing when to cut when she's on camera, crosses the line for the first time from "tragic" to "self-pitying"(I'm thinking of the heavy-handedly symbolic scene with the "crow that doesn't know how to be a crow", where she goes on WAY too long after the point has been beaten to death). So why did I get so mad when watching this?

Let's just leave aside the Roth book, which I've not read, and look at this movie as a MOVIE, period.

I suppose, firstly, because so few films deal with the subject of PC madness(OLEANNA dealt with it far better), the fact this film starts off running with it--and quite well--and then mostly just drops the thread after that, I was offended at the cheap use of the subject to give a boost to what ultimately is just a rather bland, barely tragic doomed-love story.

Second, it doesn't know what kind of movie it wants to be--except that you can tell it wants to be an Oscar-winning one. This is exactly the kind of film one expects between November and February, after all. It jumps around with no rhyme or reason, not concluding scenes so much as losing interest in them. The film has a kind of deadly slow ADD. The attempt might be a fractured chronology, but Robert Benton really doesn't have the chops to hold such a thing together. It seems merely poorly edited and structured. One loses the threads(there are two or three major ones) of the plot very, very quickly--I stopped caring about this movie about 35 minutes in. So what if it's an important subject? This isn't a prescription; you have to convince me this story is worthwhile. But indeed, this is the sort of film that thinks it's owed respect before you go in.

Thirdly, I never cared for any of its characters at all. And no attempt was made to give me any reason why. That's not necessary in all films but it is in this case--if we don't care about Coleman Silk, why then should we care if his life was destroyed? Young or old, he simply comes across as a selfish jerk regardless of his rightness, and we're supposed to sympathize with him solely because he was dealt two horrible injustices.

The ending has a very bitter, "stuck for an ending" quality that reminded me of the hideous, pointless ending of Breillat's FAT GIRL, and angered me--for the wrong reasons, and at the filmmakers, not Kidman's crazed ex-hubby--greatly.

Why watch this? Well, the camera does love Nicole and she does her usual excellent job. (Matter of fact, the camera not only loves her, it gives up everything for her from the moment she appears--which is part of the problem) If you like Kidman, as I do, watch this once. Unless the sight of Kidman having sex with the paunchy, aged Anthony Hopkins is enough to put you off all meals forever, let alone lose your lunch.

A very dumb movie done by very talented people. Not enjoyable, not profound, not tragic--barely even really there. And as far as its Oscar-bait quality--well, looks like the fish weren't biting.

Bad movie. No biscuit.

The Passion of the Christ (2004)

2004-10-09T02:32:00.000-05:00

Jesus Christ Pose
Mel Gibson's Passion of the Christ

Read now at Helium.com.

Frailty (2001)

2003-10-18T15:37:00.000-05:00

Read it now at Helium.com!

Stephen King's The Shining (1997)

2003-07-02T17:48:00.000-05:00

Proof once again that Stephen King has a tin eye for film and has no idea how to effectively adapt his own work.

This bland, bloodless TV version has no mystery, no scares, and explains far, far too much at every twist and turn for fear even one person in the TV audience might be confused. This Danny is butt-faced and far too precocious, in fact making you wonder--given this Wendy(who, unlike the underrated Shelley Duvall version, one cannot see staying with Jack even a moment after he broke their child's arm) believes in Danny's powers--why they ended up going to the Overlook in the first place.
The digital effects are laughably cheesy: a fire-hose with fangs that looks like something out of a razor commercial, and the hedge animals; speaking of which, how hard can it be to get the effect of beasts that only move when you're not looking? These look terrible, like blobs of green mercury sliding across the landscape. The ghosts all have blue skin and terrified me about as much as a cloudless sky. And Tony is shown here, and looks like John Denver. OOO, CREEPY!

Add to this a diabetes-inducing ending that isn't in the book even, and you have a waste of 6 hrs. you could be doing something more useful, like drinking yourself to death.It's accurate to the book--except the tunnel scene--but now we see that an accurate adaptation simply doesn't work in this case as a movie. Kubrick's is a masterpiece. This, on the other hand, is prosaic, shallow and dumb. Don't see it.

1776 (1972)

2003-02-01T16:03:00.000-06:00

Read it now at Helium.com!

Peeping Tom (1960)

2002-03-01T03:46:00.000-06:00

Michael Powell's PEEPING TOM is a brilliant, searing film far ahead of its time, after 40 years no less terrifying, intense and disturbing in its examination of complicity between filmmaker and audience. And a damn good classic thriller, to boot.

The film concerns a nervous young man in London around 1960. He's inherited a nice building and lives on the rents, but also works as a cheesecake photographer, but is far too nervous around the girls to respond when they flirt--for odd reasons, the only one of the models he really finds attractive, when it comes up at all, is one with a perfect body and damaged face. Why is this? We also find he works in a film studio as a technician--he wants to be a director. In a way, he already is.

The first time we see him is after we have seen film of a woman being killed, from the killer's perspective, by means not seen on camera. The camera focuses instead on her face, trying to capture every moment of her fear. It's hard to look at. But not for him, not exactly. He was in fact the killer. He films women, then comes in close, and kills them with a knife in one of the legs of the tripod. But his purpose isn't some sexual one, or at least not overtly, or indeed any of the usual motives of a serial killer. He feels guiltier with each killing, and he in fact doesn't seem to even know what a sexual feeling, even a sick one, is. One thing you do know, though, is that he's wrapped tighter than cables on a suspension bridge.

It turns out--when a woman in his building(Anna Massey, daughter of Raymond, who was most recently George Sand's mom in IMPROMPTU) attempts to befriend him, and wants to see something personal in his rather storage-space-like house, which looks like a huge editing room--that his father, a behavioral scientist(played by Powell himself), used him as a test subject(as B.F. Skinner did with his own daughter, in a different way) for experiments dealing with human response to fear. For instance(and what we see is the footage his dad made), we see him dropping a lizard on his sleeping son to film the reaction as he jolts and freezes, watching it crawl up to him.

Another even more telling moment: the boy sits on a fence, looking at something on the other side. It turns out he's watching a couple necking. How do we know? Because his father is filming them. Not him, them, alongside him on the fence. And then the worst: the boy being filmed as he goes to his dead mother's bed to say goodbye.Apparently in his apartment, he has several shelves of the footage his father made, all the abuse of his childhood documented, and he's trapped in it; he watches it often. Suddenly we realize why he always looks so sweaty, wide-eyed & scared.

He is, well, SERIOUSLY fucked-up, barely a person at all, and is yet fully aware of it.He thinks that his task to continue his father's work, and so he films women(obviously due to feelings he cannot comprehend, but has; he's like a grown little boy, in a really sad way) frightened, while he kills them. He knows what he's doing, and very apparently is hoping someone will stop him. He tries to purposely slip & get caught and yet all that happens is people get friendlier to him--except the blind mother of the above-mentioned neighbor, in a scene in which we find--and, apparently, HE finds--that he cannot kill if no fear is shown. She doesn't see the tripod coming, though she does sense something. But she controls her fear, and, looking almost relieved, he puts it away.

The neighbor avoids death this way at the end of the film as well. Others aren't so lucky.

The most interesting such scene involves him, pretending to hone his directing chops, filming a dancer working as a film stand-in. It follows another very telling scene in which a director--again, very Hitchcock-like--repeatedly makes an actress fall down till she's exhausted and in pain, suggesting a certain inherent sadism in filming itself. The dancer is played by Moira Shearer(it's an in-joke, as Powell also directed THE RED SHOES) whom he asks if he can film as she does a jazz dance number--which the ballet-oriented Shearer executes, by the way, quite amazingly; Powell's editing perfectly complements what she does, and also moves things along. He kills her in a place he could easily be stopped, and leaves her right there in the same place he works, and of course she's quickly found. But nobody suspects him, at least not yet. But he says nothing, either.

In this scene, though, we see why Martin Scorsese loves this movie and in fact saved it from obscurity(more on that later)--suddenly we cut to a side shot of him with the camera, and there's an amazing fluid, intense tracking shot following him as he goes toward her--very artificial but transfixing.

The LOOK of the film throughout is weird for the time--odd-perspective, swooping yet precise shots. Exactly like the style Scorsese has favored at least since LAST TEMPTATION(or like older Spike Lee). Very ahead of its time. The camera acts as a rather judgemental and active voyeur of the killer himself, in fact, probing him as hard as his camera does his victims' faces. As though it were his father, in his imagination, glaring critically over his shoulder.The film still has the power to shock, not least of which is that, without the slightest diminishment to the victims, it also elicits pity for the killer. We see that he was made this way, but this doesn't alleviate our anger at his crimes. This isn't a NATURAL BORN KILLERS situation--these are all presented as sympathetic characters you're appalled to see die. It's not so much in graphic violence it's shocking, because as far as what you see, it's not even as violent as PSYCHO, a film it shares much resemblance with, and is superior to; it would be interesting to consider why two completely separate horror films about introverted, screwed-up-by-their-parents killers still living in their parents' houses appeared simultaneously in two countries. Even more, why Hitchcock was lauded and Powell's career was destroyed.

What's shocking, in the end, is both its ambiguity--which leaves you with no black & white comfort of simply hating him, keeping you in tension precisely by not resolving this for you--and what it's really about, the camera's power to exploit human souls, by way of their emotions. The film questions a great deal(not as radically as, say, THE BABY OF MACON) about the relationship of spectator to action.

After all, he's watching girls die. You're watching him watch girls die and wondering what he's thinking that's letting him do this. And in a way, why you're letting him do this, by way of seeing the manner in which others let him, except you know what is really happening; they don't.
When watching this at some point I saw that Powell was basically challenging you throughout, "Why exactly are you watching this?" Powell, who was not normally a director of violent material, was in fact critiquing the very sort of thing that was Hitchcock's forte up to that point: the camera as sadistic provocateur and voyeur. (THE BIRDS alone gives you the impression they were sublimated vicious pranks on Tippi Hedren--he seems to take a childish glee in birds scratching her face) Difference is that Powell is wondering why you like watching that sort of thing.

Also, what's startling is there are almost no other male characters whose action comprises more than part of one scene; the film is dominated by women, an aspect of it that inspired Mary Harron to use it as a model for her interpretation of AMERICAN PSYCHO. In fact, PT is only a little less laconic than AP, and every bit as self-conscious.

Nowadays that's a cliche but in Powell's time it was, well, ahead.It's an impressive film, but destroyed Powell's career. Before that he was best known for films such as BLACK NARCISSUS, THE RED SHOES and TALES OF HOFFMANN, and this was, certainly by comparison, deemed nearly pornography--not because of the killing, of course, but because of the(in our time, rather tame) amount of female flesh, and the context--the film makes you feel guilty for watching, and this must have disturbed the censors, though it seems to argue their own side in a way. But then it questions, and would get under the skin even more, I'd imagine, in regard to the motivations of the censor, the one person through which is filtered all media, the one person who nevertheless gets to see it all. The sense for composition and color learnt in those earlier more fantasy-oriented works shows up here. I've never seen so many bold yellows and reds in the scenery of a Technicolor(well, Eastmancolor)film and still it doesn't look tacky or lurid--tasteful is how it looks; scarily bold and yet balanced.

This film so scorched taste when it first appeared, it was almost lost. The film languished for years and when it was seen, it was a drab, ugly black & white print, cut worse than any of the film's victims. Scorsese saved it and restored the original color, so you've him to thank.A very strange film--a critique of slasher films before they even really existed. Well worth a viewing.

Pearl Harbor (2001)

2002-01-29T03:02:00.000-06:00

SCENE: INT. Nighttime at the home of Jerry Bruckheimer, candles lit at each point of a pentagram chalked on the table, Bruckheimer sitting, sort of fidgety for some reason, at the east end of it, holding a 2-pound sack of what looks like sugar till he does his gums with it.

BRUCKHEIMER(smiling): Proper.

(He dumps the contents in the center of the pentagram, stealing a tiny snort for himself.)

BRUCKHEIMER: Snrk!

(After the head rush, he raises his arms and begins the incantation.)

BRUCKHEIMER(nasal, without feeling): Mammon, Asmodeus, and Moloch, thy faithful servant invokes thy mercy. Please release thy most favorite prisoner for five minutes of conference with me, and I shall grant thee points in my next production, and 5% of the Coca-Cola tie-in. O, lords of hell, please hear my—

(The furiously changing face of ASMODEUS appears in a slick in the air of inky-black smoke, looking nauseous. Imagine voice of Geoffrey Holder.)

ASMODEUS: ALRIGHT already. Hk!--BLUH-GAGHHH!

(Vomits up the ghost of DON SIMPSON, encased in a layer of brimstone-scented phlegm.)

ASMODEUS: Goddamn it, anything to stop your girlish whiny voice.

(He disappears. SIMPSON staggers to his feet, shaking the phlegm off onto everything. It carbonizes everything it touches with an icy flame that neither goes out nor spreads.)

SIMPSON(sleepy-eyed): Ohh...sorry about your curtains, man.

(The chains made of tiny spoons laced around every inch of his body jingle as he staggers forward with the gait of a penguin who's had too much beer.)

SIMPSON: So what can I--(spots the coke) --do---for---I---I--(runs at it feverishly) IIIIIIAAAAA! (lands face-first in it; does not get up) MMsnkMMsnkMMsnk...

BRUCKHEIMER: Um...(drums his fingers politely on the table for a moment, trying to look away, whistling for five seconds.) Don?(knocks on Don's head) DON?

SIMPSON(muffled): Mfffuhwfhhh--

(Bruckheimer grabs the ghost by the hair, lifts up its head. It's barely conscious, and has a coke mustache.)

BRUCKHEIMER: I've only got two minutes left now, Don. Please. The backers are demanding to know the idea of the next movie, Don. You've got to give me something. You know ideas aren't what Jerry Bruckheimer is all about. Only you know what fat, lazy, entertainment-hungry America likes in its trough. Something. ANYTHING.

SIMPSON(audibly blinks thrice; clouds of dust clear around his eyes): mmmmUhhhhh....Pearl Harbor or something?

BRUCKHEIMER: Pearl what?

(Suddenly ASMODEUS reappears, swallowing SIMPSON's damned soul once more, sucking him in legs first.)

ASMODEUS: TIME IS UP! NYAHAHAHAHA!

SIMPSON: AAAAAAAAAAAAA (takes one last desperate snort) Snrk!---heh. Far out...

BRUCKHEIMER: That was never five minutes!

ASMODEUS: BLARGH! (vomits pea soup on BRUCKHEIMER, blinding him temporarily.)

BRUCKHEIMER: YAA!

(He wipes it off his eyes; when he opens them again, the candles are out, all the lights are on, and the demon and his toy are gone. BRUCKHEIMER gets a determined, positive look on his face.)

BRUCKHEIMER: Yes! I have my idea! Bay! Get out from under the table, zip up my trousers again and warm up the Porsche! We've got a MOVIE to pitch!

MICHAEL BAY(rising, wiping chin) Cool! What's it about, Mr. Bruckheimer sir?

BRUCKHEIMER: Pearl Harbor.

BAY: What's that?

BRUCKHEIMER: Who gives a rat's ass. If I haven't made a movie about it yet, then nobody's heard of it. Let's just make something blow up.

BAY: Wow, Mr. Bruckheimer, are you the bestest producer ever?

BRUCKHEIMER: I just may be, Mikey. I just may be.

Titanic (1997)

2001-12-17T03:53:00.000-06:00

Here we have a touching story of a love that was not to be. A lesbian artist(DiCaprio), dressed in man's clothing, sneaks onto a ship and meets a princess engaged to an evil ogre.

I forget what happens in between, but......in fact there's nothing really worth paying attention to after that, except the incredibly lovely Kate Winslet(how is it possible, with her va-voom body, so many young girls who saw the film still have body issues? Kate Winslet is the only sexy young actress Hollywood has left) and DiCaprio, who looks very good in men's clothes, I must admit.

But then there's the loooong part where all the characters you've found annoying for the past three hours all die. Slowly. With great special effects. Great fun for all, and I mean that quite seriously, which is why I'm giving this any review whatsoever.

Skip past the first part of the film about the transvestite and the princess, and you'll have a great time.

Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace (1999)

2001-12-05T16:56:00.000-06:00

I'm very glad I spent not a dime on this. Otherwise I'd have to kill someone.

What the hell is this hideous piece of shit that is barely acceptable in the junk limits of being a STAR WARS film? This is an animated film with three or so real people in it, and proof Lucas needs someone around to tell him he cannot direct actors or a coherent narrative any longer.
I only have assorted reactions.

It's more of a carnival ride than a movie, and not a particularly good one. I'm thinking more along the lines of the "Chamber of Farts."
Never have Brit actors looked so much like they longed for the check.
Portman--Block of Wood. You tell me the difference.

Lucas thinks Jar Jar Binks is the secret of the film's success. He's right, in that Lucas' only idea of success now is to see how much shit he can get kids to buy connected to the film. I'm amazed at him myself. How you could not see him as a Rasta caricature I'd really like to know.
Never again will I watch anything Lucas does.

Crap, nothing but crap, and never was anything but crap. Lucas helped kill the wildness of 70s films, and now he seems to want to remove all characterization. This man must be stopped. Get him hooked on heroin or something. Anything but more of this!

Book Of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 (2000)

2001-12-05T16:36:00.000-06:00

The first BLAIR WITCH, despite all the hype, scared the hell out of me, as I've written elsewhere here. But I didn't have high hopes for this one. What I did expect was better than this. You have no idea how bad a sequel can be till you see this--unless you've seen HALLOWEEN 3. I have, and it was better and more relevant to the original than this.I remember an album by the Cowboy Junkies that has always been a favorite, The Trinity Session. Loved that, but was disappointed at their follow-up, The Caution Horses. I wondered why. The quality of the playing and singing was undiminished, but it didn't have the same feel as the first, which had been recorded with a single mike in a church. This sounded cold and lifeless, very "studio."

That's kind of like my first objection to this one. BW1's video identity actually formed part of what made it special--I was one of those who liked the lousy camerawork, which after a time becomes the film's natural language. To do a sequel without the flavor of the original, you'd better have a better idea, as in Bride of Frankenstein or Godfather 2.
No such luck.

At first it seems that way. Our hero is in a loony bin, then suddenly giving "Blair Witch" tours. Why was he there? We never know. But we do get a small amount of amusing parody of the hype for a little bit.Then after that it turns into...something quite different.

The film depends on video footage that reveals the characters doing things they don't recall doing. Somehow their cameras record everything differently than it happens. The Wiccan finds footage of herself dancing in the woods. She's shocked and refuses to believe it. If you know any Wiccans or are one yourself, this will be very funny to you, as it was to me, much in the same way as Nomi in Showgirls freaking out when asked to put ice on her nipples, after lap-dancing every guy in Vegas. I mean...As we all know, witches would never dance naked in the woods...And also, the townspeople begin mocking them as witches and asking them to leave--this when the tourist curiosity is being served by every store. Doesn't make sense for a second.

Sex happens; orgies happen--offscreen, so we don't even get sex for our money except in the briefest shots, dammit. But what we do get is lots of violent death, mostly hangings. What's really wrong about this is that the first film's power was in that you couldn't see what happened. The film took place mostly in the dark, mostly in your mind. And therefore whatever happened to Josh, say, was as nasty as your imagination. Far more involving, far more frightening. Here, it's just a lot of "Boo" with tits. And then an ending that makes absolutely no sense. All characters are repugnant, and you want something bad to happen to them, but it doesn't happen soon enough. When it does, it's like a cheap echo of a late Twilight Zone episode.

And then when we remember the director of the sensitive documentary Paradise Lost(which I highly recommend) did this, and it becomes unforgivable, because the film actually has a quite similar story--except that here they're guilty. It makes one wonder if the filmmaker just looked at the victim in his previous film as material. But it's wasted here anyway, as I hope I'm among the only 5 who've seen this.

Hideously bad, but definitely worth renting, getting very stoned, and mocking viciously.

Apocalypse Now Redux (2001)

2001-12-05T03:10:00.000-06:00

Read it now at Helium.com!

Saving Private Ryan (1998)

2001-12-04T04:59:00.000-06:00

Read it now at Helium.com!

The Hollywood Janitor! (1)

2001-07-02T17:06:00.000-05:00

The Latest Dirt on Your Fave Celebrities!

"I guess I just got carried away."

"Well, I guess you did."

---HENRY, PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER

HOPKINS FINALLY LOSES IT

(Venice, Italy, Reuters)--At 6:00 am on Tuesday, Italian police were nauseated to find, in a Venice hotel room, famous actor Anthony Hopkins in his kitchen surrounded by the hewn and seasoned remains of former SILENCE OF THE LAMBS co-star Jodie Foster in a grisly scene of cannibalism and cornbread stuffing.

Apparently Hopkins succumbed to the peculiar "stalking virus" carried by Foster, which has already claimed the lives of many men before the stocky Welsh Oscar winner. Foster's refusal to be in HANNIBAL, apparently, bothered Hopkins deeply.

"We were always meant to be together, Clarice," Hopkins muttered to a fingerbone allegedly belonging to Foster instead of answering police questions. Hopkins has suffered bad luck in many roles lately, having to reprise his HANNIBAL character not only in the hit Ridley Scott film but in such films as TITUS, during which the mental breakdown leading to this episode began. "When an actor gets typecast it can sometimes lead to dangerous delusions," a police psychiatrist remarked. "When every movie fan calls you 'Hannibal' on the street, it's very hard to avoid eating them after awhile."

Indeed, the bones of no less than two hundred movie fans were found in a subsequent search of the back yard of his home in LA. Hopkins himself has been very polite, if uncooperative, with investigators. "He signed my HANNIBAL poster," said Sgt. Lazzari of the Venice Police. "This is the greatest moment of my life."

COPPOLA REALIZES TRUTH, TAKES OWN LIFE

(AP) Napa, California--The world was stunned today to hear that world-famous film director Francis Ford Coppola, responsible for such beloved films as THE GODFATHER, APOCALYPSE NOW, and the legendary Robin Williams comedy JACK, put a gun in his mouth this morning and took his own life.

EXCERPT FROM SUICIDE NOTE: "Oh my god, I peaked too early. I am such a whore. I've wasted my talent and over-hyped myself. It'll be better this way, I promise. Oh my god, my best work was two decades ago...oh lord, oh lord forgive me..."

He is survived by his wife and children. Production on the new Coppola remake of GREED will continue uninterrupted. Producer Winona Ryder said, "It's sad, but, y'know, life goes on." The film, starring Ms. Ryder and Keanu Reeves as the dentist McTeague, is set to be released this summer. Mr. Coppola had reportedly had some conflict with Ryder over her suggested changes in the script, such as her insistence that each shot be a close-up of her. "It's an experimental technique but he was just not imaginative enough."

The technique, pioneered by Kevin Costner in DANCES WITH WOLVES, has since been incorporated into subsequent edits. "I mean, why do they need to see other people's faces? The audience knows they're talking to me."

HOLLYWOOD SUES EVERYBODY

{Los Angeles, Reuters) The RIAA and MPAA joined forces in an LA county courtroom today, filing suit against every American citizen who is currently alive, has lived in the past or might live in the future. "New forms of infringement and plagiarism arise all the time," said G.B. Sterling, attorney for the industry groups. "There's only seven plots in the world and one chromatic scale. Obviously any intellectual property in the future must rest on work owned by my clients. We have to stop future creativity, then, as soon as humanly able."

The suit requests a one-time $5000 royalty, upon the birth of a new child, to be paid by every American citizen into a common fund for the use of entertainment executives "Kids are very imitative, and we all know how a child can scribble all sorts of things with crayons. We just want to make sure we, as architects of American popular culture, get our fair share of what is coming to us."

This comes in the wake of new contracts halving the royalty rates paid to musicians, and both have been hailed by RIAA president Hilary Rosen as "enormous steps forward in protecting artists' rights."

"But it does not go far enough. So long as people can still hear music, they can hum, or whistle, or any number of other cheap tactics to get around the system. Do our artists get paid when someone hums as they work? They do not." Rosen proposed new engineering standards that would render recordings audible only to the ears of dogs. "It's just that simple." Further industry talks are scheduled for June 2003.

CRUISE REVEALS GREEK GODHOOD

(AP, Los Angeles) In a tersely-worded statement today, Tom Cruise attempted to dispel rumors he is gay by admitting he is the Greek god Zeus. "This is why I have never fathered children. As you know, the ejaculations of a god would burn a mortal woman to cinders. I was only looking out for Nicole's welfare, I promise."

When asked if Oscar winner Russell Crowe was standing behind him dressed in his GLADIATOR costume as publicity for a new film, Cruise reportedly looked puzzled and was heard to ask, "...Film?" The press conference was abruptly halted at that point.

CGI IN, DIRECTORS SLAIN

(Hollywood, CA, AP)--Hollywood's grasp of computer digital effects has grown to a point that directors "are no longer necessary," announced Disney CEO Michael Eisner at a press conference today. "Let's face it, they're a pain in the neck," he stated to nodding laughter from the reporters assembled. "Money, accomodations, and let's not even think about the fights over changes in the film. Why do we want someone there being paid millions of dollars simply to get in the way?" He then removed a joystick device from his pocket and directed the reporters' attention to the screen. "With this new device, executives can create a movie from scratch right in the boardroom."

He then proceeded to demonstrate by making a computer-controlled simulation of Ben Affleck run through a WW1 minefield, fly a bomber plane, and have explicit onscreen sex with Jodie Foster. "Now who hasn't wanted to see that?" he said to great laughter. He then revealed Affleck was a prototype of this process as Affleck waved from the screen. "He's never been real. We're very proud of Ben. We like to call him 'Pinocchio' in the boardroom."

Roland Emmerich, Renny Harlin, Michael Bay, James Cameron, and David Fincher, who had been mysteriously seated tied, blindfolded and gagged on the opposite side of the room (Eisner explaining, "I told them we had product placement contracts to sign. They were over in five minutes"), were then each shot with a single bullet each in the back of the head, in celebration of the industry's new policy, to the tumultuous applause of the reporters present. "It's a new dawn in American cinema," Eisner said, then announcing the summer spectacular Buy Things, to be released this July 4.

ZEUS DENIES, CRUISE FIRES BACK

(AP, Los Angeles)--Tom Cruise, stung by allegations of deific misrepresentation and terse denials from the Olympian King of the Gods himself soon after Cruise's controversial press conference Monday, reaffirmed in a hastily-called press conference that he in fact is the god Zeus and to prove it, swallowed whole the two adoptive children shared by himself and Nicole Kidman. "There was a prophecy they would grow greater than me. Stress from worry can be very unhealthy."

Poppycock, says the alleged "true" Zeus. Speaking finally to the press in a voice made of thunder from Mt. Olympus, Greece, Zeus was reported to say, "What a dimwit. That's something Saturn would do. When I eat children, goddesses emerge from my head."

"I don't think the American public cares about insignificant detail," Cruise replied in an even hastier press conference immediately afterward. "Sure, the critics can complain for years about accuracy, but that won't change that I am the lord Zeus and my word is law." He then began to read a telegram of moral support from Mel Gibson, when reporters asked why he and Russell Crowe, standing nearby, were shirtless and covered in sweat. "Tom and I are just good friends, and I am merely here because of our mutual interest in dogs."

When pressed further on the point, Crowe, growling, raised his right arm, releasing odors which immediately killed 50 of the 75 attending reporters.

BUSH TO KILL PEOPLE, LISTEN TO HUEY LEWIS

(AP, Washington, DC)--In an unexpected move today, President George W. Bush signed a deal with director Mary Harron to star in the second sequel to the critically-acclaimed but financially unsuccessful AMERICAN PSYCHO.

"Well, Christian said he'd need therapy if he played the part again," Harron explained, "and frankly the resemblance is eerie. He looks just like Christian, if he were boozed- and coked-up for 25 years straight."

President Bush was amiable about it. "I saw them do that show about me the other day and I thought, well, hell, I should get me a piece of this. And I don't see what was so 'controversialist' about it. Laura rented it from Blockbuster and it just looked to me like a film about a cool dude with great taste in clothes and music, who gets a lot of chicks."

"And George, of course, likes to kill people," Harron added.

"It'll be cool," the president chuckled with an impish sparkle in his eye. The last time a sitting president appeared in a motion picture was, of course, Franklin Roosevelt's ill-advised portrayal of a down-on-her-luck rockette in Busby Berkeley's little-known WILL SING FOR FOOD. The film is scheduled to begin filming in early 2003. "Mr. Cheney tells me he won't need me for awhile then," said the president. "What with the camps and all."

ZEUS DESTROYS ALL OF HOLLYWOOD IN FIERY INFERNO OF VENGEANCE

(AP, Arizona Bay)---Enraged by noted gay actor Tom Cruise's repeated assertions that, rather than being gay, he is in fact the Greek king of the gods Zeus, the alleged genuine Zeus unleashed a cascade of murderous thunderbolts upon Hollywood at 2:05 PST Wednesday, incinerating all property and inhabitants in West Hollywood, Burbank, Beverly Hills and other areas close by. "I figured nobody would mind, and that way I'd be sure to get the little bastard. I haven't time to bandy talk with some poxy moon-loony who thinks he's me. I've disposed of hundreds of dupe deities in my time."

Flexing his muscles readily for the cameras, the King of the Gods did not respond to reports that Tom Cruise and companion Russell Crowe had been seen boarding a 747 to Japan shortly before his wrath descended upon Tinseltown. "If that's so, I just hope they don't run into any turbulence," the deity was said to have snickered as he exchanged jokes with the crowd before demanding what he referred to as "the Couric wench, for my pleasure."

With the sons and daughters of all of Hollywood's legends, as well as the legends themselves, dead, Joe Eszterhas and Philip Kaufman, standing at the water's edge of the new town of Arizona Bay, jointly announced that it would now be legal for the first time in almost a decade for actors to work in Hollywood. "Our long national nightmare is over," Eszterhas was reported to say. "By the way, do my tits look OK?"

COPPOLA GETS SCREWED AGAIN

(AP, Iron City of Dis)---In between sessions of being violated by a score of demons in the form of his memorable character Clemenza, recently deceased Hollywood journeyman director Francis Ford Coppola, creator of such well-remembered classics as BRAM STOKER'S DRACULA, GODFATHER III and of course, JACK, described to this reporter his dissatisfaction with his current project, for Satan's newly-established ACCURSED PRODUCTIONS.

"I thought I'd get my pick, now that so many talented actors and technicians were down here. 'How'd you like to finally do THE GREAT GATSBY right?' they asked, and promised me my script would work perfectly this time. I had forgotten the producers were here too." And they certainly were. The new Hollywood down below boasts a glittering multitude of Hollywood producers and agents past and present, all in enviable executive and middle management positions due to canny deals struck before their arrival(with the exception of Saul Zaentz, whose bones are picked daily by Brazilian jaguars).

"It's who you know that counts. That never changes," Coppola whined. Apparently recently-reunited production team Don Simpson & Jerry Bruckheimer took charge right away, demanding Coppola make the following changes:

Update to 1980s ("Who was rich in the '20s?" offered Simpson).

Gatsby be given an invisible alien pal only he can see.

Daisy must be played by Charlize Theron.

"I don't understand. They promised me final cut, and now it seems every day there's more re-editing to do. I don't even know where these new scenes they're having me insert come from. Not to mention that they replaced the belts in the cameras with tendons from my legs. It never ends. It's like some eternal torment," Coppola complains, vowing to sue "the second my lawyer arrives." Meanwhile James Cameron, whose head was plucked off and placed on the gates of Hell upon his entrance, is rumored to be assigned the eternal punishment of remaking GRAND HOTEL.

(with thanks to Chris Lanier and Stephanie Dwyer)

The Patriot (2000)

2000-11-03T03:38:00.000-06:00

Read it now at Helium.com!

Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom (1976)

2000-10-24T15:21:00.000-05:00

Read it now at Helium.com!

American Psycho (2000)

2000-04-15T15:29:00.000-05:00

Read it now at Helium.com!

The Hills Have Eyes (1976)

2000-03-04T16:49:00.000-06:00

Read it now at Helium.com.

Schindler's List (1993)

2000-02-16T05:07:00.000-06:00

What is this? Merely the Holocaust version of MISSISSIPPI BURNING. And as with that piece of garbage, the victims have no voice, no personality, whereas the Nazis have lots. And there were two scenes set up in such a Hollywood-comic way that even a Jewish friend with me when I saw it couldn't help laughing a bit.

I'm thinking of when you first see Ralph Fiennes, close up on his balcony, picking off unseen people from afar lazily; the other are the bungled executions, the one in the camp and his own. The Hollywood style is based on manipulation of emotions and Spielberg just couldn't stop, and didn't seem to think a Holocaust film had to be grim ALL the way through.

I always found it interesting that TV did a much better job dramatizing the Holocaust than film ever did. There's not a Holocaust film, except, SHOAH, that’s the equal of MAUS, even. Spielberg couldn't help using all the damn cheap Hollywood "invisible style"(HA!) tricks. Its lack of success in my eyes I can only express as: I could easily tell it was a Spielberg film. Compare Fiennes' character with Michael Moriarity in HOLOCAUST, an emotionally wrenching character because we see him slowly, mundanely, lose his soul; he's all the Eichmanns without which the Holocaust couldn't have run, the guys just doing their jobs. Fiennes' character is, at best, a slightly more brutal Sgt. Schultz.

And again, all that sufferin' silent poignant grateful-to-the-gentile victimry. Spielberg seems to think the story of the Holocaust is best told from the point of view of the Nazis, and well, that kind of disturbs me. Like CRY FREEDOM had to mostly be about Kevin Kline's reaction to Biko's murder, not Biko himself. Also: in HOLOCAUST they devote a generous section to the Warsaw Uprising, which puts the lie to the well-trod myth there was no resistance, an idea that is often used by some idiots here and there to almost justify(!) the persecution, in a well-if-you-didn't-fight-what-did-you-EXPECT-kind of way. (There was, it was just crushed) You'd never know this from Spielberg, just as you'd barely know there was a civil rights movement apart from three kids--two white--from MISSISSIPPI BURNING. Which wouldn't bother me except the way this movie has been canonized irks me mightily, as somehow the WAR & PEACE of the Holocaust. The one focused on the gentile. Yeah. Whatever. Christ, the 90s were a terrible decade for Best Pictures, weren't they?

Find HOLOCAUST and rent it, or PLAYING FOR TIME, or SHOAH, if you can take it, or read MAUS or NIGHT. Anything but this piece of self-important monstrosity.