Dorky Goodness

Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker were having one of their little father and son chats. Lightsabers drawn and sparks flying. Vader pinned Luke against a bulkhead and glared into his face, “I know what you’re getting for Christmas, Luke,” he said, “Ohhh, yes! I know!”

Luke fought himself free and jumped to a higher platfrom just out of Vader’s reach, “How do you know!?” Luke yelled at him, “How do you know what I’m getting for Christmas!?”

Darth Vader shot Luke an icey glare, “I felt your presents.”

Outbreak : C+
Isaac: With a solid cast of Dustin Hoffman, Cuba Gooding Jr., Morgan Freeman, and Rene Russo; Outbreak follows a modern day plot of a potentially fast-moving virus threatening the worlds population. This represents a very average movie with nothing too special or different than most movies.

You know, without this insightful and thorough review I would have NO IDEA if I want to see this movie or not. Fuckwit.

Alright. Old News. “Signs” sucked MAJOR ass! I’m talking amazing amounts of rectal suction. Wow! I had nothing to do with the movie and MY ass hurts after watching it.

But evidently there are a number of mortals out there who disagree with my unbiased, fair, and balanced (Fuck you, Fox!) review of “Signs”. Please read the following review. My commentary is in italics.

Without a doubt the greatest movie to come out since Saving Private Ryan (at the time of writing this review). and at the time of this review there was (and probably still is) only a year between the two flicks. With one of the best themes EVER, one of the best directors EVER, and one of the best actors EVER, this movie is a winner. Yep. Winner of the Time Vacuum Award - which has since been handed out to “Water”. It has a combination of suspense that will kill you Yeah. How long can I last without killing myself, comedic relief at pointsHah hah hah! I can’t believe I watched the whole thing, and a incredible storyAliens land, do weird stuff, an asthmatic has an attack, Mel Gibson saves the day. Color me impressed *sic., I physically can not understand anyone who says this is a bad movie “What? You didn’t like this movie? Damn! Gotta go to the potty!. This may not be your favorite of all time Yeah. No it’s not, but it is on my top ten Then your taste is in your mouth, boy-o. You should go out and rent this right away and watch it with a few people Misery loves company!. Movies are always better with some friends, and this movie is no exception Yeah, ’cause then you have something else to do instead of watch this piece of crap.

There. I’ve said it. I feel better.

Oh, and if you want to read this and other insipid reviews (alas, without my witty comebacks) feel free to peruse The College Critic. Of course. I wouldn’t if I were you.

theSpoke

So as I was finally getting down to writing my tirade about “Water” I slummed a few blogs trying to find some sites to trackback to (‘cause I’m a whore) and I stumped across the above post on The Spoke. Oi! Guess, what, kids? Another rant.

I’m going to have to take some exception to the author’s position. Why? Cause s/he’s just about as wrong as you can get. I’m kinda tired of the elitist snob position that derives from the whole, “Oh? You haven’t heard of this so I must be really super cool.” Just ‘cause it’s indy and unknown doesn’t mean it isn’t base shlock. Let’s look at an example: “Go Fish”. That movie was fucking horrible. It was boring, the dialog made me want to fucking puke, and the characters were totally flat. But guess what? The critics of such indy filth loved it. “The best cinema from the gay and lesbian community in years!” WHAT?!?!!? I can’t believe it. I refuse to believe it. Of course there’s also the whole, “Oh? You didn’t like it? Then you must be a closeted homo with a small penis!” factor. It’s impossible to criticize sub culture art without being accused of discrimination against the sub culture itself. Which is fucking retarded. Everybody is capable of making valueless garbage as evidenced by… well, tons of stuff.

I’m also fundamentally opposed to the definition of “film” as “is a much more artistic expression that emphasizes meaning and content, rather than special effects and big name actors. These productions typically have a much smaller budget (under 1M, total = $120,000 for “Water”) and feature upcoming talent and newcomers to the industry.” Heh. By that definition, porn is “film”. Just ‘cause a movie (I fucking refuse to make the distinction) is low budget doesn’t make it art. Likewise, a large budget doesn’t necessarily preclude artistic expression. Take a look at “Schindler’s List”. It was a supreme demonstration of movie making. The story was stunning, the cinematography was great, acting, casting… It was all fucking amazing. Hell, even movies thrown together can be influential. Check out “Clerks”. The acting was horrible in oodles of places but the movie still spoke to the Gen-X’ers and so it remains a classic for folks of my age group.

I suppose the only thing I really agree with from this little article is this statement: “This is a great example of people expecting to see a MOVIE and being disappointed because they are actually watching a FILM.” Yeah, I think people were disappointed ‘cause they were expecting to see something good and instead saw crap.

Alrighty, kidlets. This little tirade has been rattling around for a bitsy.

A few months ago I subjected myself to the banal time sink that is, “Water”. I can accept that I spent money on a stupid movie. No problem there. Fuck, I saw “Species” in the theater. What bugs me is the time. One hour and forty-five minutes of my life are gone forever. I’ll never get it back. And it’s not even that “Water” was so horribly awful that it was funny (like oh, Spawn or Starship Troopers). Nope. It was simply blah. Blah blah blah blah blah. I probably should’ve just walked out but I kept thinking, damn! It’s got to get better. It didn’t. Fuck, you can’t even say it was anticlimactic. There was no build up. It was almost two hours of boredom. Oi! Do not see it. An Enya concert would be more exciting.

However, I think I attended the ONLY showing of “Water” where there was applause at the end. Yep. Credits started rolling and I stood up and said, “Well that was fucking retarded!” The rest of the theater goers applauded. Heh.

Well, shockingly enough I found myself watching Spiderman 2 on Wednesday. Sure, I wanted to check it out eventually but I never thought to see it onng night. I was originally going to watch Shreck 2 and Harry Potter (again!) but Shreck was playing with Two Brothers and I had NO desire to see that flick at all. So my “date” and I opted for Spiderman 2 and Thirteen Going on 30.

Oh, and for the record: My “date” is one of Laura’s friends. Whenever Laura goes out of town for extensive periods of time (like three weeks in Arizona in late June/early July - is she daft??!?!?!?!) she tends to task her buddies to entertain me and keep me out of trouble. Sometimes it even happens.

In any case, read on for my assessment of Spiderman 2
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So I was watching “Army of Darkness”, one of the slickest B flicks EVAH and I was reminded of one of my favorite quotes:

“Are all men from the future loud mouthed braggarts?”

“Nope. Just me, baby. Just me.”

Is that eloquent or what?

Okay, for starters Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban is NOT a horrible sci-fi flick but as Dorky Goodness only has one movie category and my penchant for really awful B movies tends to encourage commentary on the same, the “Horrible Sci-Fi Flicks” category is where my HP review is going to go.

Secondly, spoilers are in the extended entry. If you don’t want me to inadvertantly give something away then you may want to stop reading when the spoilers announcement pops up.

Casting was amazing. Emma Thompson as Trewlaney was fantastic. It must have been a blast for her and she did a great job at bumbling through classes and being melodramatic about Harry’s fate. Michael Gambon did a superb job as Dumbledore, although Steve Kloves gave him some really hokey lines that weren’t in the movie at all. As always, the kidlets are exactly what one would expect. I also thought David Thewlis was a great choice for Lupin. He looked suitably rumpled for the part. Then we come to Gary Oldman. It’s Gary Oldman. ‘Nuff said.

Put your pencils on the desk. Stop reading Spoilers start now.
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A perceptive admirer (as distinct from a great admirer) of the book would never have attempted to dramatize it. Naturally, only the simpler ingredients�are capable of presentation in this form. The play is, on the lower level of drama, tolerably good fun, especially for those who have not read the book.�

J.R.R. Tolkien - Essay on Fairy Stories, referring to A.A Milne’s adaptation of Wind in the Willows.

�Perhaps we should not blame him. Perhaps the scene in the original was not �cinematic�, and the man was right, by the canons of his own art, in altering it. But it would have been better not to have chosen in the first place a story which could be adapted to the screen only by being ruined.�

C.S. Lewis - Referring to the movie version of King Solomon�s Mines, in the essay �On Stories� in the collection Of This and Other Worlds

Last night I went to see The Return of the King, the last installment in the “epic” trilogy of the Lord of the Rings. I am pissed. I honestly can’t understand how ANYONE who claims they enjoy the books could enjoy these flicks.

[spoilers to follow]
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Looking through my visitor logs this morning I stumbled across a referral from Google with the search criteria of sean bean david wenham similarity. How did I show up in the top 20 for that?

In any case, here’s the similarity: They both played essentially the same character in Peter “May something larger than his ass crush his cranium” Jackson’s travesty that is called Lord of the Rings (even though it really isn’t).

Boromir was a power hungry git, but Faramir was supposed to be all sorts of noble. The thought of Boromir crying as he layed out his soul to Aragorn (didn’t happen in the book, BTW. Aragorn found the dead body and didn’t hear some sappy confession from Boromir). Faramir didn’t try to take the ring to Gondor. In fact, he recognized the danger of the ring and fully supported Frodo’s quest.

Ah, but what does Tolkien know. Peter “Why can’t you catch Ebola and bleed out” Jackson has so many better ideas. I’m shocked he didn’t put a giant robot in the movie just so he could use bad CGI.