So take it away!

It is I who is me who is the Furious Gaming Geek. Because it is me who is the Furious Gaming Geek, it falls under and below my purview to comment on the various and sundry ways of the brother and sister media of Video Games and Movies. And it is because of this blood relation of Video Games and Movies that their offspring are inbred seven toed hillbillies like brothers and sisters would, upon taboo fornication, create such abominations as carnivorous Hill-eyed mutants. Truly it is an infuriating thing that set of movies which were spawned by games, and perhaps and even more infuriating thing to play those games which, like salmon, were spawned by Video Games. Many times during the course of playing a video game, fish have popped out of it. It happens a lot with the old 16 bit cartridges.

Because this is written for a section known as the Popcorn Junkies dot com, we shall focus on the films which were based upon video games, and not the video games which were based upon movies. We will not mention such horrifying NES games like Back to the Future, a game which makes less sense than a drunken Tom Cruise explaining the plots of all three Mission: Impossible movies in Pig Latin, which was not spoken by the ancient Roman pigs at all!

But, because the site is the Popcorn Junkies dot com, we are required, and by we I mean me, who is the Furious Gaming Geek, we and I mean me, who is I, will discuss my crippling popcorn addiction. At one point, I was eating 18 cups of popcorn per day, which is over one gallon per day of delicious popped corn to snack upon; it was a terribly crippling addiction, costing me nearly 16 dollars a week. It was all air-popped unbuttered popcorn, so it only has as many calories as two cans of coke. Come to think of it, that was the best addiction of my life, the life of me who is the Furious Gaming Geek. Chewing all the popcorn contributed and added to the mastication abilities of the Furious Gaming Geek, who is now capable of biting a quarter in half, but not in a true half, per se, as one side is oblate and the other side is crescent shaped.

After years of costly therapy, and rehab, the Furious Gaming Geek has managed to cut down to 16 cups, which is exactly one gallon, per day, which is approximately 24 hours, of wonderful popcorn. If you, who are all not me, squint, the word popcorn looks to be the word “popcom” which is not a real word in the real world at all, but perhaps should be. This new portmanteau word is sort of like romcom with pop in lieu of rom, thus making it the term for a popantic-comedy, one of the Furious Gaming Geek’s fifteen favorite genres of films.

One cannot mention video game films without mentioning Uwe Boll, even if that one is me who is the Furious Gaming Geek. Many people who are not the Furious Gaming Geek criticize those films of Uwe for myriad reasons. These reasons include, but by no means are limited to such things as factual inaccuracies about Desert Eagles, poor continuity, multiple instances of visible equipment, good actors giving bad performances, terrible performances by terrible actors, gratuitous Michael Madsen, scripts that read like fanfic with the gay sex edited out, the strange and redundant final reel of BloodRayne, and the fact that House of the Dead contained no House of the Dead.

But, you haters, hatererizers, and various and sundry drinkers of the Hatorade, which contains no electrolytes, do not realize something! Uwe Boll has produced fourteen movies since 2005! He doesn’t have time for things like continuity, fact checking, art or entertainment! Have you people no decency! You have no right to be livid, fuming, incensed, outraged, irate, angry or beside yourself. Some of his movies get FOUR STARS! Sure this is a four out of ten rating on imdb.com, but it is much higher than any of the Furious Gaming Geek’s films, which have been thoroughly rejected by imdb for having “no artistic merit” and for featuring “gratuitous violence against sparrows”.

The real problem with Video Game films is that there is no Sonic the Hedgehog movie. Sure, there are cartoons, but what is demanded by the movie-going public is a live action movie. It should not be CGI or anything like that either. We take a real hedgehog, spray paint it blue, and put it in red sneakers and teach it to run so fast as to be capable of running upside-down in a loop de loop fashion. Then it is both wise and necessary to have this spray-painted hedgehog fight robots and a mustachioed man, provided that the hedgehog lives long enough and doesn‘t die like those pigs that were spray painted or that Roy‘s childhood turtle from the situational comedy “Wings“.

This has been a message from the Furious Gaming Geek, who is me.

The Furious Gaming Geek.

The Post Script - It should also be noted that the general public demands Pong the movie.

Perhaps, I’ve said too much.

Of course, this service is far from perfect. As you can plainly see, or at least haphazardly guess, most of the films available to watch on Hulu suck.

To save you good folks some time. The following movies have the CPO seal of approval.

Coffee and Cigarettes
PROS - This movie will increase your indie cred. It’s very cool, starring cool people, and you can feel cool while watching it. In what other film can find Roberto Benigni next to Steven Wright?

CONS - It’s plotless collection of mostly unrelated shorts, often starring non-actors.

Why Watch it? - To feel cool, naturally. There are some good performances, and it’s easy to skip a story that doesn’t work for you.

Ghostbusters

PROS - It’s - wait a second. . . Is there anybody that doesn’t like Ghostbusters? Even I like Ghostbusters. NEXT

The Hollywood Shuffle

PROS - You can see how Robert Townsend got enough good will to make crap like Meteor Man and “The Parent ‘Hood”.

CONS - It gave Robert Townsend enough good will to make crap like Meteor Man and “The Parent ‘Hood”.

Why Watch it? - This thing, like Coffee and Cigarettes is a series of vignettes. Some are really funny, it’s easy to skip something you don’t like.

In the Heat of the Night

PROS - Just go watch In the Heat of the Night. NEXT

Jackass 2.5

PROS - “Jackass” in all its forms is a depraved celebration of life mixed with an odd sociological study.

CONS - It can be quite gross. Plus, you might find the need to make lame excuses for why you are watching this sort of thing.

Why Watch it? - Actually, you can watch the TV show on Hulu. That’s probably a better bet. Watch that instead.

Men in Black

PROS - MIB is an entertaining enough movie that doesn’t require much cognitive function.

CONS - It isn’t really art.

Why Watch it? - It’s the sort of thing to have on in the background while doing other things.

Moonstruck
Oh shut up; the dialogue is great.

Naked Lunch

PROS - It’s one of my favorite films. It features insect typewriters .

CONS - This film is not for everybody; this film isn’t really for any normal people.

Why Watch it? - To admit your abnormality.

Near Dark

PROS - It’s one of the better vampire movies of the last 30 years, though that isn’t saying much. It does serve as a good antidote to The Lost Boys.

CONS - The ending is really stupid. It’s really stupid.

Why Watch it? - Lance Henrikson is a badass. That’s reason enough right?

The Night of the Hunter

PROS - Robert Mitchum plays one of the most memorable villains of all time in this classic film noir.

CONS - The young people can find this flick a little hokey.

Why Watch it? - It is an important and often talked about film. Watching it is like learning. Everybody likes learning, right?

TO BE CONTINUED. . .

All right, so maybe Blacula has been dead for 5 years. (Did you know that he was the King of Cartoons on Pee Wee’s Playhouse?)

Maybe Super Fly is the one. . . Well, no he’s dead too.

Crap.

Cleopatra Jones is dead too. Gordon Parks Sr. (director of Shaft) died a couple of years ago, but at least he lived to be 93 or so. His son (director of Super Fly) didn’t even make it to 45.

Sid Haig seems to be doing well for himself. . .

Well, at any rate, we hope that Richard Roundtree, and Pam Grier stay with us for a long time. Chef and Lord Bowler will be missed around these parts.

In other news, Quentin Tarantino seems to be assembling the strangest cast around for his next movie, Inglorious Bastards. Look at this list, and see if you can make sense out of it: Brad Pitt, Mike Myers, Simon Shaun of the Dead Pegg, Eli “Maker of Hostel“ Roth, and B. J. “The Temp” Novak.

Normally you don’t get a cast that odd outside of an animated movie.

Take a look at any animated flick, and you are bound to see casting choices that would not be made in a live-action flick. That’ll be the game this week. I’ll name some cast members for a film, and you see if you can tell me the film. Sounds easy right?

We’ll do six, and I will offer you NO multiple choice. Half will be from cartoons. I won’t always name the leading man (or lady) just to make it a little more challenging.

Bragging rights are on the line.

1. Hayden Panattiere, Phyllis Diller, Denis Leary, and Jonathan “Dr. Smith” Harris.

2. Helen Hunt, Ben Stiller, Liam Neeson, Adam Baldwin, and Bill Paxton.

3. Mickey Rooney, Kurt Russell, Corey Feldman, and Sandy Duncan.

4. Kelly Lynch, Denzel Washington, Louise Fletcher, and Russell Crowe.

5. Jack Black, Angelina Jolie, Robert DeNiro and Will Smith.

6. Keanu Reeves, Brian Cox, Morgan Freeman and Rachel Weisz.

I mean, you have the “tragic” death of the young celebrity. You have two former teen heartthrobs playing your two leads. You have geek dream girl Maggie Gyllenhaal as the female lead. You‘ve got the old respectable white actor in Michael Caine. You got the old respectable black actor in Morgan Freeman. You’ve got the somewhat less old, respectable actor of Gary Oldman; though his respectability is due in part to being confused with Daniel Day-Lewis. You’ve got one of the 10 most recognizable characters to come out of the 20th century battling his most popular villain. You’ve also got that character’s second most important villain. You’ve got Eric Roberts, star of DOA: Dead or Alive and Less Than Perfect. . .

Okay, so Eric Roberts probably didn’t draw much. . .

But Julia Roberts’s brother notwithstanding, we are still looking at a movie that brings in more money on a weekday two weeks after opening than most movies do on opening weekend.

It is an enjoyable enough flick, although a bit numbing. I only had problems with the characters, dialogue, plot, action sequences and themes. (I had no problem with the setting. Wooo! Go Chicago! Batman rode his fancy Batpod through the Metra Station by Millennium Park! Woo!)

Here are some Dark Knight Discussion topics!

1. How does the Joker scout his criminal henchmen so well? They have to be smart enough to remember directions, amoral enough to shoot their partners in the back, and dumb enough to think that the same thing won’t happen to them.

2. Does it really matter that Heath Ledger is playing the Joker? The character doesn’t have many of the Joker’s traits. He doesn’t have the bleached skin. He doesn’t have squirting flowers or joy buzzers. His victims don’t start laughing hysterically, and they don’t die with twisted grins. With the way that the film’s villain leaves esoteric clues for the Batman to find, he resembles the Riddler as much as the Joker. Seriously, why would the Joker leave DNA samples on a playing card in order to show who his next batch of victims are going to be?

3. And those folks that tested this playing card clue, did they just start matching this discovered DNA against everybody in Gotham?

4. And another thing about the Joker, do you think that the Nolans were reading a lot of Kohlberg moral dilemmas while they were creating this incarnation of the character? “I know, we’ll make him an immoral sociologist!” Seriously, I was waiting for the Joker to ask whether or not it is morally acceptable to steal medicine for a dying spouse.

5. So replacing Katie Holmes with Maggie Gyllenhaal is like replacing Meg Ryan with Cate Blanchett. It’s like replacing a Big Mac with Kobe beef. Maggie Gyllenhaal is so much better for this part. She seems smarter, stronger and more capable than Tom Cruise’s child-bride could ever hope to be. Plus, she appears damaged enough to be a proper Batman love interest.

6. It’s nice to have a Batman love interest that seems strong, capable and morally upright. Unfortunately Rachel Dawes was killed off in order to jump start the third act. Such is life. Here is the thing, though: wouldn’t it have been cool if Dawes had become Two-Face? What makes Two-Face compelling as a Batman villain is the backstory. Harvey Dent was a good friend of Bruce Wayne, and one the earliest allies of the Batman. When he turns into Two-Face, the loss is two-fold. Now, in the film Dent has to be introduced to Wayne. Batman and Dent start to form a minor alliance. Movie Dent becoming Two-Face isn’t a loss to Batman/Wayne, it is a loss to Gotham city. Rachel Dawes becoming Two-Face would’ve been emotionally crippling. Comic nerds would’ve been upset, but hell, Marvel has been feminizing all their villains lately. Just ask that “I’m Just Saying” guy over at the nexus.

7. Is that Limey cocksucker Nolan making fun of America while laughing all the way to the bank? (I’ve seen somebody laugh 2/3 of the way to the bank once or twice. ) It certainly seems to be the theme of the Dark Knight that democracy, truth, freedom and civil rights are good ideas, but only when nothing is at stake. Let’s take a look:

A. Batman violates the sovereignty of a foreign nation, and kidnaps a Chinese national. A little more detective work of the Batman’s behalf might’ve avoided this potentially deadly international incident.

B. Batman violates the privacy of every Gotham Citizen with a cellphone with his improbable wiretapping/ sonar device. Batman needs to listen to Sherriff Andy Taylor about such things. (Okay so the video clip is missing now, but trust me, it was good!)

C. Harvey Dent, Gotham’s great white hope, fully supports the Roman notion of suspending democracy and appointing a dictator in times of peril.

D. The votes of the majority of people on both boats (each to blow up the other) go ignored like so many hanging Chads in Florida.

E. The symbolic reputation of a murderer (I.e. Dent) is deemed more important than the truth of the situation and reality at large. The movie says that people will be better off believing a big lie, or was that the big lie? All I know is that real Chicagoans in real Chicago come perfectly equipped to handle our politicians’ feet of clay.

F. Batman risks the health and safety of innocent Gothamites by making Mob money radioactive. (How did he do that again?) Doesn’t the Batman care about the McDonald’s worker who sells Fat Tony his daily McGriddle? Does Batman want that kid to die of cancer? What about the in-the-dark bank teller who has to count all this money and dies of radiation poisoning? Or what about the poor waiter at the Italian restaurant who stores his cash in his apron? He’s sterile now. Thanks a lot Batman!

8. What about that cell phone nonsense, anyway? Am I supposed to believe that 1 guy covering 10 million phones is going to be able to tell Batman anything useful? It’d be false positive city, population: Fox. Am I really supposed to believe that Batman can hack into all the cellphones in Gotham, even the ones with out of state area codes, and install sonar? First off, he’s killing the battery life of those phones, and probably using up all those people’s minutes. And how does this create a realtime 3d picture of all of Gotham again? (This is almost as bad as Daredevil’s radar sense picking up the cones and rods of Elektra’s eyes in that piece of crap.) And I know that there are a lot of cellphones in the world, but would the hostages, quickly removed from their hospital beds really have cellphones on them?

9. And speaking of those hostages, couldn’t Morgan Freeman have just called up Commissioner Gordon and told him that the clowns were the hostages? He has all the cellphones in the city coming in to him, but can’t get a line out? Shouldn’t the Swat team have known that those were the hostages anyway? Don’t those guys watch movies?

10. How in the blue hell does Gordon get to be Police Commissioner? In two movies he has never shown any leadership qualities or any assertiveness at all. He never stands up to Batman, and places his trust in all the wrong people. Movie Gordon sucks.

11. Speaking of Movie Gordon, how and why did he fake his death again? Was it a spur of the moment thing, decided after he jumped in front of the mayor? Did he plan on doing that ahead of time? How many people did he have to let in on this conspiracy? Certainly an EMT driver, and the medical examiner, and whoever was in charge of assigning him to drive the armored car, etc. I know that the movie tried to explain the why by saying that he did it to protect his family. Was Gordon ever threatened directly, or indirectly, enough to merit such a swerve? What was the point of this crap, aside from jerking around the audience?

12. And speaking of Gordon’s family, did you ever notice that he’s the only person in Gotham with one? Dent has a potential fiancée, but no mom or brothers or sisters or anything. Batman and Alfred have no family, naturally. Rachel doesn’t seem to have a family. The Joker doesn’t even have a right hand man.

13. Who was in charge of the quality assurance with regards to dialogue in this picture? The hero it has is the hero it deserves and not the hero it wants, but the hero it might get on the new moon when. . .

14. And speaking of dialogue, you too can learn to speak like Christian Bale’s Batman!

Step 1: Pout out your lower lip a la “Wanda the ugly girl” on In Living Color. Make sure all of your bottom row of teeth are visible.

Step 2: Do a bad impersonation of Richard Moll’s Two-Face voice from Batman: The Animated Series.

Step 3: Say a bunch of simplistic action hero lines like “You’ll be in a padded cell forever!”

There you go!

15. Wait a second, how can Two-Face just walk away from that horrifying car crash he caused? Did he get Darkman-esque burn victim powers? He was just in a hospital bed! He runs a high risk of infection with his exposed muscle tissue.

At the very least, he should be worried about his eye falling out.

16. How come Two Face was shoe-horned into the movie only to be killed off unceremoniously? Did they think he was Venom or something? Man, I bet the film-makers are kicking themselves for killing off the living actor’s character and not the dead guy’s.

17. Practical effects and stuntwork, these are nice things in a CGI reliant world. Although, I would’ve enjoyed that Semi flipping over a bit more had I not seen it 7,008 times previously in previews.

18. Speaking of the action, am I the only one that was confused as hell during the first action sequence? You know the one with all the Batmen and the pointless Scarecrow cameo? I couldn’t tell which was the real deal. We hadn’t seen the real Batman in the film prior to that scene. The fake Batmen looked as much like the Batman of my mind’s eye as Christian Bale does. Couldn’t a fake Batman have dressed in blue and grey Halloween costume style outfit or something, so I could tell these guys apart? Batman doesn’t even get his own theme in the movie because of The Dark Knight‘s fancy pants score.

I was just hella confused.

19. That Batman barfight, prior to him dropping Eric Roberts, was also terrible. All I could see were some random punches in the dark. It looked like some sort of multi-player melle version of Urban Champion for the NES. Batman has spent 20 years studying the martial arts; can’t he do better than that? Any given Batman cartoon has better fight scenes than that thing. I would rather have had a Pow and a Bam.

20. Did anybody else get the feeling that Nolan and company were just trying to make a bigger budget version of Heat with Joker and Batman replacing Deniro and Pacino?

All right, it is just me.

Recently, I reviewed a DVD called Asylum for The DVD Lounge. It was an inferior version of A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors. That’s when it hit me (for the 1,000 time) that the only thing worse than being a simulacrum is being a remarkably crappy simulacrum.

Okay, so there are worse things than being a crappy simulacrum. Drowning, perhaps. . . But I digress.

Anywho the wife and I went to see new Hulk, and new Shyamalan last week. It was on our way out of the theater that my wife pointed out to me that The Happening is just a shitty remake of The Birds.

The Happening

But apart from being a shitty remake of The Birds, The Happening is yet another version of that same film M. Night Shyamalan usually makes, each one making a little less sense than its predecessor.

Oh, by the way, I will offer a SPOILER ALERT here. I will give away plot points to The Happening. These are not true spoilers however, as the movie was never fresh and tasty to begin with. It’s like going to the produce mart and stocking up on black bananas when you plan on doing no baking.

Maybe it is nothing like that thing.

Anyroad, directed by Elliot Silverstein, The Happening tells the story of a bunch of counter-culture hippies who manage to kidnap a retired mafia don . . . Wait. . . wrong one. . .

The Happening (2008) features Marky Mark and a clunky bunch (of bad writing). Mr. Mark plays Elliot Moore, our neurotically meek and sexless protagonist. He’s got all the edge of the insipid good guy version of John Cena, minus all the testosterone, visiting some dying make-a-wish kids, while their parents vigilantly watch in order to make sure that he doesn’t start Benoit-ing the lot of them.

Actually, he’s more like every other timid, asexual, Caucasian male in every other M. Night Shyamalan movie, who has been dropped into a set of poorly conceived paranormal events. M. Night has made it abundantly clear that he is only able to come up with about 4 different characters. Our Milquetoast hero, his distant or dead wife, bland child who acts like a tiny adult, and 1-dimensional-(wo)man.

Elliot is a high school science teacher, who makes it abundantly clear that M. Night knows less about science than I know about pleasing a woman sexually spot-welding. Elliot and all the scientists featured in The Happening use the word “theory” when they more rightly mean “hypothesis” or even “baseless guess”. They also resign themselves to the fact that there exists a broad category of things which “Nature does and we can never fully understand.” The bad science isn’t limited to these things, but that’s enough for now.

As it turns out, there is some sort of toxin going around the Northeast. It starts in the big cities and moves its way to smaller populations. This toxin makes you walk backwards for a few steps, repeat the word “Calculus” and then compels you to commit suicide. It’s supposed to “reverse our self-preservation instinct” or some such jive. In the course of the film, this toxin causes people to stand in front of traffic, shoot themselves, lay under lawn mowers, get their forearms pulled off by large cats, grab ladders and garden hoses and assemble makeshift gallows, or simply stab their own necks with knitting needles. I guess some people are more clever about their suicides than others.

Sure, this thing sounds far-fetched, but I believe that a minor version of this toxin already exists. It has affected a number of people here in Chicago, completely eliminating their self-preservation instinct with regards to crossing the street in front of my car.

Dumbass, you are not Shaft! Look both way EmEffer!

Where was I?

So, Marky Mark gets his wife Zooey Deschanel, and they take a train out of the city with math teacher buddy John Leguizamo, and the math teacher’s young daughter. Math teacher’s wife is supposed to catch up with them later.

It’s also worth noting that Elliot the Science Teacher and his wife are going through some marital drama because the wife is hiding the fact that she had ice cream with another man.

THE FILTHY WHORE!

The engineers lose contact with their company, so they decide to stop the train in the middle of nowhere (A.K.A. anywhere in Pennsylvania between Philly and Pittsburgh). John Leguizamo loses contact with his wife, so he decides to go to New Jersey to find her, leaving his kid with Marky Mark.

Personally, I would be hesitant to go to Jersey, with or without any evil suicide toxins permeating about. Also, my wife has told me that I am not allowed to leave my daughter in the care of Marky Mark.

Maybe Zooey Deschanel, but never Marky Mark.

Since John Leguizamo is not officially white, is separated from our main character, and this thing is allegedly a horror movie, you can guess how long he stays alive.

Around this time, we get Marky Mark and his funky hunch! Plants are spreading this toxin! Apparently, all plants can talk to each other, all of them can rapidly evolve highly specialized death spores, and they can all give a fairly accurate estimate of population density. You see, Funky Hunch part 2 is that the plants start by killing large clumps of people and work their way down to smaller and smaller groups.

If you’re going to pitch such recockulous notions to me in a movie, can you at least put the Swamp Thing in it? Honestly, this is a job for the Swamp Thing.

We know that Marky Mark is right in his guess because we are treated to numerous shots of plants swaying in the wind OMINOUSLY!

Eventually teacher, wife and other teacher’s kid pick up two other kids, who are subsequently, unceremoniously killed off (and only one of them was black!). No one ever bothers to protect John Leguizamo’s kid from this graphic violence. Shield her eyes, you worthless hunk of Marky Mark!

After that, teacher, wife and OTK spend the night with an old lady-hermit-farmer who introduces them to the third act plot devices.

Finally, teacher and wife expose themselves and the innocent child (whom they are rubbish at protecting) to the suicide toxin in order to group hug. Luckily for them, the toxin disappeared a couple of minutes earlier. As such, we are treated to superfluous future shots of teacher and wife raising the little Latina as their own. And then another superfluous shot of a positive pregnancy test for the wife.

But, uh-oh, the whole thing is Happening all over again, this time in Europe!

All in all, we have bad dialogue, characters who vary between being broadly drawn and being poorly drawn, terrible dialogue, lousy acting by a bunch of folk who can do much better, horrendous dialogue, and a world-wide cabal of tree conspirators.

The three tools of scary stories (according to Stephen King) are gore, horror, and terror. The gore is mostly off screen, and generally laughable when on screen. There is nothing particularly horrifying about zombies who kill themselves. We are never given a good reason to care about these characters, so we can’t share in their terror that there might be, I dunno, windblown grass outside. The movie is made almost entirely of fail. It’s 70 percent fail, about 25 percent ass, and 5 percent voted for Ralph Nader.

It sucks. It sucks hard. It sucks a pork chop through a straw. If you had those clear plastic storage bags full of comforters from the infomercial, you could use The Happening instead of a Shop Vac to suck all those blankets down small enough to fit into that tiny storage space. Hell, The Happening could probably suck them small enough to fit inside one of them red cups for playing Yahtzee.

If you want to see a movie wherein a makeshift family fights off nature inexplicably run amok, rent The Birds. If you want to read a story about plants around the world trying to kill off humanity, I recommend picking up one of Alan Moore’s early issues of Swamp Thing, which are handily collected in the TPB Saga of the Swamp Thing.

The only way to enjoy The Happening is through constant mocking, and at least 2 robot-puppet sidekicks.

And I was told that it is rude to bring puppets into movie theaters.

This week’s column has nothing to do with that thing.

Our subject is documentaries. I love them, but apparently they’re not for every one. Recently, the wife and I were brainstorming why this is so. Some reasons that popped up were a lack of narrative thread, a documentary’s resemblance to “learning”, the examination of topics which seem like they would be boring, and so on.

Also, there is often the lack of an antagonist. So few documentaries have a villain, as it were. As any wrestling fan can tell you, cheering against someone can be more motivating than cheering for some one. It isn’t that I want the Bears to win; I want the Packers to lose.

Villains are not essential to the documentary format, though. If you look at March of the Penguins, the main antagonist is . . . the cold. Granted, the cold is a fairly powerful and nefarious villain. It plotted the death of many a penguin, egg and chick. (All of whom deserved it, goddamned penguins.) In the end, however, cold isn’t really a dynamic villain. It’s kind of a one trick pony.

Then again, March of the Penguins made a gazillion dollars, despite being as boring as watching leg hair grow.

I think I’ve lost my train of thought. . .

Anyroad, CPO is proud to present you with

Great Villains of Documentaries

The Employees of Enron

The Film: Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room
It’s hard to watch this documentary and not want to go get these guys. It makes you want to look one of them up in the phonebook, drive to his house, beat the crap out of them, and move to the next name on the list. You know, like the end of Jay and Silent Bob? Enron was maggoty with these greedy sociopaths, creatures with no regard for the law or the well-being of their fellow man.

What they should be beaten with: claw hammers.

The Hells Angels

The film: Gimme Shelter (1970)
The Hells Angels demand a place on this list; they kill a man during this documentary. An 18 year old pulls a gun out during “Under my Thumb” and is subsequently stabbed to death by an Angel. Still, the Hells Angels manage to evoke a bit of sympathy and to have a cool heel vibe about them. They weren’t trained for this sort of thing, and the event was a total clusterfuck (they’re almost the prototype for Abu Ghraib soldiers). You got a bunch of hippie losers messing with your bike. it’s hot and gross. It makes sense that you’re gonna be a little testy. Maybe you’ll punch out Marty Balin of the Jefferson Airplane. These things happen. Plus, the guy did pull a gun on an infamous motorcycle gang. Does that really sound like a good idea?

What they should be beaten with: penguins. (I don’t want to piss them off, and I’m hoping to start a gang war between bikers and penguins.)

Billy Mitchell

The film: The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters
Billy Mitchell is cut from the same cloth as the villain of every sports movie. You know the type, right? It’s as though he were set out to destroy the Mighty Ducks or the Bad News Bears or whatever ragtag group of misfits who got in his way. He’s talented, he’s in the judge’s ear, and he’s cowardly. Mitchell even dresses the part of the villain, complete with slicked-back hair.

What he should be beaten with: Bottles of his own hot sauce

Sharpe James

The film: Street Fight
In this criminally under-seen documentary, incumbent mayor Sharpe James pulls every dirty trick in the book to get re-elected mayor of Newark. He intimidates, he distorts the truth, he flat-out lies, he breaks the law, and he plays the race card. It’s the toughest and meanest election imaginable, especially considering that the race is between two black Democrats.

What he should be beaten with: The law. Sharpe James currently faces about 8 years in prison, and there is still another trial to go!

The Catholic Church

The film: Deliver Us From Evil
This documentary tells the story of prolific pedophile priest, Oliver O’Grady. He may have molested hundreds of children. Whenever whispers of child-rape broke out over his parish, the church merely moved him to a different community. Molestations of little boys were ignored; molestations of little girls were somehow less than ignored.

What it should be beaten with: Critical thinking.

Donald Rumsfeld

The film: No End in Sight
There is something infuriating about the glib and jocular press conferences of former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. This anger is exacerbated when clips of these press conferences are juxtaposed with the destruction of the Cradle of Civilization, the suffering of Iraqis and American soldiers, and untold deaths.

What he should be beaten with: A pillowcase full of oranges. Then he should go hunting with Cheney. After that? He should go for a ride with Ted Kennedy.

Well kids, enjoy your holiday. Feel free to chime in via email or comments below.

Almost all film actors start out making B-movies. Most of them never move beyond these b-pictures and die sad, alone and penniless. A few of them find themselves in B-parts of A pictures (think Bruce Campbell). Fewer still turn out to be bonafide movie stars.

But just because somebody is the biggest star in the world doesn’t mean that they didn’t make a cheesy horror picture or five. Just two years before becoming a screen legend in The Maltese Falcon, Humphrey Bogart starred as the title character in The Return of Doctor X, a film about spooky blood experiments.

Let’s examine some of today’s big stars and check out some of the stuff they left of their résumés.

George Clooney

B-Movie Résumé:

Predator: The Concert - A grizzly bear attacks a rock festival. Co-starring are LouiseFletcher, Laura Dern, Charlie Sheen, and John Rhys-Davies as a mountain man.

Return to Horror High - This poor attempt at a horror-comedy features a fake movie within a movie and a mysterious serial killer. It also stars Marcia Brady classic and Alex Rocco.

Return of the Killer Tomatoes - ’nuff said.

Brad Pitt

B-Movie Résumé:

Cutting Class - This thing is a surprisingly watchable Dead Teenager Movie. Martin Mull and Roddy McDowell provide the comic relief.

Jennifer Aniston

B-Movie Résumé:

Leprechaun - I just assume that everybody knows this flick. Frankly, the most surprising thing is that it can be used as the measure of all other Jennifer Aniston movies. There are those which are better than Leprechaun (e.g. The Iron Giant, Office Space). There are those that are about as good as Leprechaun (e.g. The Break-up). Finally, there are those that make Leprechaun look like Citizen Kane (e.g. Derailed, The Good Girl).

Johnny Depp

B-Movie Résumé:

A Nightmare on Elm Street - Wes Craven credits his daughter with the casting of Johnny Depp as Glen in the original Freddy Kreuger flick. It would only take Depp 20 years to find commercial film success in that very expensive b-movie pirate trilogy.

Angelina Jolie

- B-Movie Résumé:

Cyborg 2 - This flick is from 1993 and, near as I can tell, Jolie plays some sort of sexy robot. The all-star cast features the under-appreciated Elias Koteas, Jack Palance, and Billy “always plays a psychopath” Drago.

Hackers - Effin’ Hackers. The director of Hackers went on to supply such films as K-Pax and The Skeleton Key. He needs to be stopped before he films again.

Russell Crowe

B-Movie Résumé:

Virtuosity - Crowe plays a serial killer pastiche who escapes from virtual reality. Denzel Washington is the cop who must stop him. Now, this thing was hyped like a proper movie, but, well: Virtual Reality Serial Killer.

Clint Eastwood

B-Movie Résumé:

Revenge of the Creature: Eastwood is uncredited as a lab technician in this sequel to The Creature from the Black Lagoon.

Tarantula: Eastwood is uncredited as “Jet Squadron Leader” in this giant spider flick.

Nicholas Cage

B-Movie Résumé:

Nic Cage, no matter how famous he gets, will never stop making b-movies.

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Marvel’s word of the moment is cross-pollination. Everyone, myself included, has apparently jumped on that bandwagon and accepted the term. When Tony Stark shows up in The Incredible Hulk, they (and we) call it “cross-pollination of franchises.” It’s cross-pollination of franchises when Captain America’s shield shows up in Iron Man.

Apparently, Marvel super-heroes are like flowers. Who knew?

Of course, all of this is possible because Marvel Comics has jumped into the movie business with both feet; they now self-produce. This thing allows for the next batch of Marvel flicks to all take place in the same universe. Its something that is commonplace in the world of comics, but much rarer in the world of movies.

In 1987, Alan Moore wrote:
The very first thing that anyone reading a modern horror comic should understand is that there are great economic advantages in being able to prop up an ailing, poor-selling comic book with an appearance by a successful guest star. Consequently, all the comic book stories produced by any given publisher are likely to take place in the same imaginary universe. . . . For those more familiar with conventional literature, try to imagine Dr. Frankenstein kidnapping one of the protagonists of Little Women for his medical experiments, only to find himself subject to the scrutiny of a team-up between Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot. I’m sure that both the charms and the overwhelming absurdities of this approach will become immediately apparent. ..

I guess the action movie equivalent to this one universe notion would then be to have John McClane team up with John Rambo to stop the super evil villainy of Mr. Blond, Hannibal Lector and Brad Wesley from Roadhouse.

I’d see that thing.

It’s not to say that this Marvel comics movie “cross-pollination” is unprecedented. The classic Universal monsters started bumping into each other as early as 1943’s Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman. This film served as their first sequel to The Wolf Man and their FOURTH sequel to Frankenstein.

The next year, Universal threw Dracula into the mix and featured all three monsters in House of Frankenstein. The film dips in quality from Frankenstein meets the Wolfman, which itself is inferior to the originals of each of those franchises. The year after that they cranked out House of Dracula, a mostly redundant film featuring the same monsters as House of Frankenstein. Finally, they completed the trip to self parody in 1948 with Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein.

Cross-pollination has pretty much been relegated to b-horror pictures since then. The Demonic Toys have met both Dollman and Toulon’s puppets of Puppetmaster “fame”. Freddy Kreuger has battled Jason Vorhees. Predators have hunted Aliens.

Sadly, Ash has yet to have met the Tall Man.

At any rate, what Marvel is doing that does seem unique is planned cross-pollination. From the get-go we see evidence of Captain America in the Iron Man-iverse, and Iron Man in the Hulk-iverse. When Aliens meet Predators, or Jason meets Freddy, or Puppets meet Toys, it’s a ret-con job. Previous cross-pollinated films are, at worst, acts of desperation to liven up mostly dead franchises. At best, these things are fan-fiction turned canon.

A couple of years from now, Marvel isn’t going to say, “What else can we do with Iron Man? I know, let’s have him meet Thor!” Marvel is going in and saying, “Pretty soon, you’ll get to see all these characters together. We’re just going to introduce them first in their own movies.” It’s a build-up to a team-up. Marvel is actually planning ahead, a rare feat in the entertainment business as fans of professional wrestling can tell you.

Even if everything fails and the movies sag in quality, you kind of have to feel good for Marvel Comics. I mean, 15 years ago what was the best movie starring a Marvel super-hero? Honestly, my money would be on Marvel’s previous attempts at super-hero team-ups. I am naturally talking about the TV-movies The Trial of the Incredible Hulk (featuring a half-assed attempt at Daredevil) and The Incredible Hulk Returns (featuring a half-assed attempt at Thor).

It’s telling isn’t it? Twenty years ago, you got the guy from Street Hawk playing a sidekickish Daredevil in a TV movie where no one could be bothered to put Daredevil in a red suit with horns. That was as good as it got. Five years ago, you get an 80 million dollar Daredevil feature film with a big name cast that brings in 100 million dollars at the box office and its considered a turd.

In the end, I just hope that new Hulk doesn’t suck a big green dick.

- Paraphrasing Peter Hedges, in the DVD extras of Dan in Real Life

I cannot blame Mr. Hedges for this thing. Were I confronted with a script written by Pierce Gardner, the scribe behind insidious Winona Ryder vehicle Lost Souls, I would probably write my family into it as well.

Dan in Real Life tells the story of Dan “Kookie” Burns some sort of part-time advice columnist, full-time widower, who is raising his three smart-mouthed daughters. The daughters names are The One Who Wants to Drive the Car, The Little One, and The Slutty One. Coincidentally, this properly fulfills Margaret Cho’s prediction that groups of three women will consist of the Smart One, Sweet One, and ‘Ho archetypes.

She may be a failure as a comedian, but she has her moments as a sociologist.

Anywho, Dan pulls his three daughters out of school for a week so that they can hang out with their extended family in Rhode Island. This annual Burns-fest is said to nearly triple the population of the tiny Ocean State.

The family consists of a number of recognizable and likeable actors relegated to the status of glorified extras. I mean, poor Amy Ryan, now an Oscar nominated actress, has absolutely nothing to do in this movie. Hell, when they introduce her character, her face is partially obscured by a dog!

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot Peter Hedges?! Why introduce a character when you can’t see her? It isn’t as though she was playing a Carlton the Doorman type. She’s not Maris on Frasier. It’s not as though she is going to be doling out nuggets of wisdom to Tim “The Tool Man” Taylor in the backyard. Show the character you’re introducing!

Showing stuff is part of being a director!

Hedges might be most famous for writing the novel turned Johnny Depp movie What’s Eating Gilbert Grape. The film’s legacy is one of convincing people that Leonardo DiCaprio is, in fact, mentally retarded. To this day, a number of Americans still believe DiCaprio to be a retard.

I am one of those Americans.

Anyways, Steve Carell has made it up to Amy Ryan by giving her a part on The Office, so they should be square.

Also in the DVD extras, Hedges says that he wanted audiences to see the actors in Dan in Real Life as they have never seen these actors before. One would have hoped that this would mean that Dane Cook gets set on fire, but unfortunately this is not the case. What we end up with is the unprecedented casting of:
- Steve Carell as the button-down, likeable yet love starved and sexually frustrated type
- Dianne Wiest as the warm and loving matriarch
- John Mahoney as the gruff patriarch
- Dane Cook as an unlikeable tool
- Juliette Binoche as the exotic French woman
- and

Wait a second. . . Aren’t these the sort of parts these actors always play? You lied to me Peter Hedges!

Perhaps, he was referring to Jessica Hecht. She is most famous for playing Susan Bunch, the lesbian lover of Ross Geller’s ex-wife on Friends. She plays a sassy and married heterosexual, not unlike her character on The Single Guy.

Damnit!

So, the plot goes that Dan goes to a book store while in Rhode Island. There, he impersonates a clerk in order to mack on an emotional fragile brunette. He sells her many books, and forces the store to give him a commission at knife-point.

Later on, he chats up the brunette. She shamelessly flirts with Dan, leading him on for hours, only to ditch him after revealing that she has a serious boyfriend. Forgetting that he is in Rhode Island, Dan fails to realize that her boyfriend is probably related to him. In this case, it turns out to be his brother, Mitch, as portrayed by non-Actor Dane Cook, long rumored to be a comedian.

Mitch, as one should be able to tell from that annoying frat-boy sobriquet, is a slow-witted sexual predator. Mitch teaches some sort of aerobics class in order to take full advantage of his brightly colored unitard fetish, which developed from seeing Roadhouse during his formative years. (At least, I think this is all clearly spelled out in the film’s subtext.)

The womanizing Mitch, after years of seeing a bunch of taut, gyrating gym bunnies, decide that he wants to settle down with Marie, a woman who looks to be 10 years his elder. (Juliette Binoche plays Marie; she is about 8 years older than Dane Cook.) Perhaps he is a big fan of Ashton. . .

Marie decides to take advantage of the attention of the Burns brothers, cruelly taunting Dan with suggestive callisthenics and pancakes, all the while wrapping herself in a shroud of pretentiousness and unlikeability.

Eventually, every stupid thing that you imagine is going to happen does happen. Then the movie jumps ahead in time 1 year, where Steve Carell and his love interest are married and everybody dances. This thing is, of course, not like any other Steve Carell movie ever.

That’s what Peter Hedges told me.

Four-time Oscar nominee, the Dude, was surprisingly creepy as Obadiah Stane. You can never see Jeff Bridges acting, and I mean that in the good way. He’s very natural, even here, playing a comic book villain. We’ve seen what other Oscar nominees do with comics roles. I mean, they didn’t have to tear down the sets after they filmed The Punisher; John Travolta had eaten all of the scenery.

Enough has been written about the casting of Robert Downey Jr. as a damaged, hard-partying, womanizing, alcoholic millionaire-genius. Quirky and neurotic actors have seemingly usurped the summer blockbuster from the steroid-addled action heroes in a slow and gradual rate. They’re not always fortysomethings like Downey and Johnny Depp either (read as: Shia Lebeouf).

The movie made me realize something more important than that, though.

Terrorists are the new Nazis.

I think everybody can appreciate the utility of Nazis as movie villains. Nobody likes these guys. The are a common enemy to Anne Frank and Hellboy! They garner no sympathy from anybody. Spielberg can throw them in as bad guys for his Oscar bait like Schindler’s List or stuff like the Indiana Jones movies. In the ultimate bit of revenge, those who dehumanized have become dehumanized. Killing a Nazi in a movie is rarely (perhaps never) morally questionable.

The main problem with Nazis is this: World War 2 ended over 60 years ago. A bunch of octogenarians with swastikas isn’t quite so intimidating. And let’s face it, neo-Nazis will never be sexy or cool. Captain America could plow through those pansies like a nail through Bill Pullman’s scrotum.

But terrorists? Terrorists are scary; Terror is in their name! They’re sometimes tricky for Jack Bauer to kill.

They are great villains. Everybody hates them. The Republicans hate them because they are brown. The Democrats hate them because the Republicans are better at hating terrorists. The conservatives hate them because they are foreign. The Green party hates terrorists because the Green Party hates everything but grass and Phish. The liberals hate them because terrorists are often religious. The Libertarians hate terrorists because terrorists hate freedom. Muslims hate them because terrorism gives their religion a bad image. Brown people hate terrorists because terrorism makes it hard for them to get through airport security.

Even terrorists hate other terrorists. It’s great!

Whoa. The word terrorist looks really weird now.

I’ve written it too much. It keeps on turning into territory or terrier.
Terriers are my very favorite breed
they’re cute and cuddly, easy dogs to feed
they will bring you up whenever you are down
terriers average 20 pounds
when I walk around this terrier town
the only thing that makes me down
is when people put bandanas on their dog

Iron Man is a smart enough flick to have the terrorist be, for the most part, non-denominational. They’re not yelling about Allah or Mohamed. They’re imperialists! Imperialist terrorists, all sides of the political spectrum are bound to hate those.

It’s brilliant.