Bioshocked OR Lightning Really Does Strike Twice

Last week as I was collecting money from my ho's and one of them came up short I had to smack her around a little.  Turns out she wasn't actually one of mine and her real pimp came over and we both pulled out our pimp knives to settle this little dispute and wouldn't you know it we both had the exact same knife.  It's funny how things work out like that.  We started talking and it turns out we also shared a love of Cheddar cheese, big breasts, lion-related maulings, and Bioshock.  After a couple hours we went over to his place where I promptly killed him and stole his stash of heroin and his collection of 1970's porn.  I guess it really is hard out there for a pimp.

The point of the story is my love for Bioshock and its aptly titled sequel Bioshock 2.  I know I'm a little behind the times for Bioshock 2 and really behind with the original Bioshock, but in my defence... shut up.  After a hardcore couple months playing Left 4 Dead and Left 4 Dead 2 (again, way to go with the creative sequel title guys) I needed a break from killing hordes of zombies.  OK really all my friends got bored of playing so until they're ready to play again I needed to pleasure myself.  With video games.  But not on my penis.  Well, OK, sometimes on my penis.  So I played my way through Assassin's Creed 2 (Sequels R Us) and in May I started playing Bioshock expecting a nice little linear FPS.  You know something light to pass the time.  Instead I get hit with the kind of abject terror and and general insanity that kept me on the edge of my seat while playing Dead Space.  And it was great, but having to sleep with the lights on all the time is really hell on the electrical bill.

Right from the very first second Bioshock sets a dark, horrific atmosphere what with a plane crash and all.  Then when you find Rapture you're hit with one of the terrifying splicers right away.  And the splicers were indeed terrifying.  Maybe not as terrifying as reanimated and mutated corpses stalking you on a giant spaceship or a bad case of herpes, but terrifying nonetheless.  A large part of the atmosphere comes from you being trapped basically alone in this city with only psychopaths who possess crazy abilities like teleportation.  That sense of isolation even though it's "just" a video game prays on you and after a while normal sounds in your house -the fridge turning on, creaking floorboards, a gust of wind, that scraping on your cellar door as the homeless people you keep imprisoned there try to escape- all start to make you jump.  The Little Sisters wer also creepy as hell.  The Big Daddies were frightening, but there's something about genetically altered ten year old girls with glowing yellow eyes who harvest dead bodies for genetic material that just makes you shift a little uncomfortably in your seat.  Even more addictingly disturbing is the moral choice you have to make whether to rescue these little girls or harvest (ie. kill) them, both decisions yielding their own rewards.

One of the bonuses of waiting so long to play these games is you get the chance to play the sequel right away.  So it was about mid-June that I borrowed Bioshock 2 from my brother in law.  I didn't really expect much because, really, what more can you do with the game except maybe add more areas to explore.  I was wrong -to a degree.  While Bioshock 2 is essentially just an extension of the first game there are some cool innovations.  First of all you get to play as a Big Daddy, a half-man, half-machine enforcer watching over the Little Sisters.  The first thing you notice is that you get to use both your hands at the same time so you can fire off your plasmids (powers gained from forcefully injecting yourself with random needles full of DNA altering material) and your conventional projectile weapons at the same time.  This may not seem too huge a deal, and I didn't realize how awesome it was until I went back and played the first game again and was so frustrated with the time it took to switch between your plasmids and weapons.  The second innovation is how you interact with the Little Sisters to gain Adam.  In the first game you just rescued or harvested them, but in the sequel you have to protect them from hordes of splicers while they tried to get the Adam for themselves.  Then of course there's the Big Sisters which are just even more insane.  Another cool change was the mini-game that you used to hack electronic equipment.  Although at first I missed the strangely addictive liquid hacking from the first game I quickly grew to enjoy the moving needle hack featured in Bioshock 2. 

The best thing about video games these days isn't the superior graphics and sound, but the quality of the stories and the depth of the characters.  A lot of games I'm playing these days have better writing and better plots than most of the crap coming out of Hollywood these days.  And that's really the great thing about Bioshock and Bioshock 2.  I mean they were both linear first person shooters that both had superior graphics, but it was the strength of the writing that really made them succeed both with the game playing public and the pimping community alike.  I mean they both teach important life lessons like always, ALWAYS inject yourself with random needles you find lying around on the street and ten year old girls are all evil and if you open them up you'll find a prize inside.  If you haven't already played these two games I highly recommend them.  I give Bioshock and Bioshock 2 each a 9/10 = Two Genetically Altered Heads Shooting Fire and Electricity at Each Other  

The First Rule About Chuck Palahniuk is You Do Not Talk About Chuck Palahniuk...

Just like movies these days good books are few and far between.  It doesn't help when bookshelves are flooded with subpar writing about inept wizards and sparkly vampires which is setting the bar so low for future writers who now believe that this lead is actually gold.  I guess I shouldn't be too surprised.  We all know that the written word -as we know it anyway- is dead, or at least dying a very painful death.  But on this downswing in literary history there are still a few deposits of genius left to be found.  Now Chuck Palahniuk first came on my radar way back in my university days after witnessing the cult movie Fight Club based on his novel of the same name.  The movie completely blew me away and quickly climbed the ranks to become my number two favourite movie of all time.  And shortly after I saw that movie... I did not read Palahniuk's book.  Maybe it was because the book is always (or at least 99% of the time (looking at you Lord of the Rings)) better than the movie and I didn't want my cinematic wet dream to end.  Or maybe I was too busy playing Rogue Squadron and SSX Tricky until three in the morning, or watching all nine hours of The Godfather trilogy consecutively, or getting drunk off of Smirnoff Ice or Mike's Hard Lemonade alone in my residence room.  Who the fuck knows?

The point is I kept putting off Palahniuk for some reason or another.  I kept hearing about his work from a couple friends of mine so finally this last Christmas I started asking for anything written by Chuck Palahniuk so I could see what the fuss was about.  I specifically mentioned Fight Club because I really wanted to see the original source matieral.  So of course I got Pygmy.  So shortly after New Year's eve way back in January I set to work reading my first Palahniuk.  And my god was I blown away.  It was like being asleep for a long time and then suddenly being woken up by a nuclear blast.  The book slapped me in the face then firmly wrapped its hands around my neck and wouldn't let me go.  It was some of the most outlandish, crazy shit I had ever read and I fucking loved it.  To me as an amateur-hoping-one-day-to-be-professional writer one mark of truly great writing is something that makes me jealous.  Jealous that I didn't think of that idea first, or put those words in that combination myself.  And damn I am jealous of Palahniuk's writing.

After Pygmy I didn't immediately jump right into more Palahniuk.  First off work kept me pretty busy, and secondly I've been on a huge video game kick this year.  (Thank you Left 4 Dead!)  Thirdly Palahniuk's work is so intense that you need some time to recover after reading it, just like a good workout, or a great lay, or major surgery.  Then last week I was over at my friend Bonegod's house where amidst his copious collections of graphic novels, and Jack Whyte there is a Chuck Palahniuk section so I asked him to borrow his copy of Haunted which I had recently seen at a bookstore but was too cheap to buy at the time.  (Sorry, Chuck, I'll make sure to actually spend my hard-earned cash next time.)  Fuck, what a ride.  I couldn't put it down.  It was so intense and fucked up and totally awesome.  If you haven't read Haunted it basically follows a bunch of strangers from much different backgroundsall pulled together for a three month writer's retreat and end up trapped and fighting for their survival.  Amidst the craziness they all start telling their own stories, 23 in all if I remember correctly.  So it's a compilation of these stories, some poetry all framed in the larger narrative of the trapped would-be writers.  I don't want to say any more lest I ruin the purity of reading it fresh for the first time, but definitely get ready to be shocked.  One of the benefits of being from my generation with all the movies and video games is that I'm so desensitized to violence and other twisted shit that I have built up an almost inhuman tolerance to it, but there were some passages in this book I had to read three or four times to fully comprehend them and others that actually caused me physical discomfort. 

Usually it takes me some time to get through a novel, not because I'm not a fast reader, but because when I'm reading for pleasure (Boo-yah!) I like to take my time and digest every line of what I'm reading.  Usually a book this long would take at least three weeks but I think I got through Haunted in five days.  It was so diabolically brilliant I couldn't put it down.  The thing is that through all the craziness Palahniuk is dealing with some pretty deep issues, bringing a funhouse mirror to reflect our postmodern bullshit society, exaggerating certain elements to the point of satire.  At the forefront is our media-consciousness and our media-whoreishness in which every tragedy becomes a movie of the week.  Then there are larger concerns like how and why humanity is so hellbent on causing itself so much pain and suffering and how we construct the narratives of our lives, assigning people certain roles to create something more compelling and more easily digested by the mass media.  His little microcosm of the writer's retreat really causes you to examine how humanity fucks itself in the ass.  Bad guys are the new good guys.  He also shines his own unique light on morality making us think about the nature of right and wrong and the themes of death and violence are expertly woven throughout the work as well.  Pretty deep shit.

If you haven't already definitely pick up one of Palahniuk's books immediately and read it cover to cover as fast as you can.  After reading Haunted in particular I could feel my world view shifting ever so slightly and his theory on the meaning of life here on earth is the most plausible I have ever heard and even presented in such a dark and twisted way the most hopeful.  It is this mix of sure-fire, gothic cynicism mixed with a dash of reserved hope that there is indeed a "reason" for everything that happens to us that makes his work so compelling.  I think we could all use a little Chuck Palahniuk inside of us.  Take that how you will. 

On the Road Again

Holy shit, just when I'd lost my faith in post-apocalyptic genre after the pile of wet garbage outside a Chinese restaurant that was The Book of Eli I get hit with a little movie called The Road.  And boy, was I blown away (you know, the good kind of blown like from a French whore, not the bad kind, you know, with, like, the wind).  From beginning to end The Road is simply an expertly crafted, thoughtful, gripping, emotionally poignant movie.  I mean this is what filmmaking is all about. 

The plot of The Road follows a father (Viggo Mortensen) and his young son (Kodi Smit-McPhee) as they battle for survival in a bleak, no-holds-barred, post-apocalyptic world.  They live in constant fear of other survivors because they are just as likely to rape, rob, beat and/or eat you as look at you.  Amidst all the scavenging and running from other survivors the father and his son struggle to find meaning in their shattered world as they each contemplate the pro's and con's of dying, try desperately to remain "the good guys", and keep on moving south, always south.

If I was being held hostage at gunpoint by a terrorist and he told me that I had to sum up the movie The Road in one word or less or else he'd put a bullet in my brain the hard way I would have to say: tension.  Hot damn, I was on the edge of my seat practically the whole movie.  Whenever the man and his son encountered any other survivors my heart rate would rise in anticipation of what horrors might befall our protagonists.  When they were alone, huddled like cavemen around a fire I was only slightly less tense because I knew that any peace they experienced was only temporary and when the morning came they would be back in the shit again.  Then there was the tension between the father and son as the boy was at an old enough age to understand the concept of suicide and the moral and practical consequences of leaving some dude naked in the midst of a blasted, dying landscape.

I'm sure all of you astute readers out there noticed how short and lacking in detail that summary was.  (Way to go, Einsteins.)  This is because The Road is definitely a character driven movie and not a plot driven movie.  Indeed there are no epic quests to bring hope and order to the masses, no antagonist bent on rebuilding a new world in his own image, and no half-assed love stories with surprisingly-well-nourished-despite-the-apocalypse hotties.  There was just a dude and his son struggling desperately to survive and dying slowly of malnourishment.  I mean if you want a "realistic" post-apocalyptic movie, The Road is the movie for you.  Society is not in any danger of being rebuilt here, led by some enigmatic leader who wandered out of the wasteland and earned the grudging respect of a group of survivors.  There's just two people with no real sense of purpose other than to keep on moving and no real hope other than to find something -anything- to eat.  Shoes are now a hot commodity because apparently despite their misleading slogans Adidas ("We ARE the Apocalypse") and Nike ("Even Bigger Than Jesus") have both stopped their manufacturing divisions in North America.  Most of the survivors in this movie are wearing the remains of shoes tied together with bits of old string and lined with plastic bags.  There are no animals left to hunt and the trees are slowly but surely dying.  If the gun-toting terrorist from my scenario gave me two words to describe this movie the second would definitely be: bleak.  And I mean bleaker-than-Mel Gibson's-future-as-the-chairman-of-the-Anti-Defamation- League bleak.

Everything element in The Road adds to that sense of bleakness.  There's the general emaciated state of the survivors.  There's the lack of any type of society beyond groups of five or six people who ban together to hunt other survivors for food.  It's pretty cool because these harsh times where the next dude you meet on the road might be looking at you and seeing a giant chicken leg like in an old Bugs Bunny cartoon breeds this weird sort of paranoia and everybody in the movie is always asking everybody else if they are following them.  The landscape is not only blasted, but is still slowly dying like the people that inhabit it.  And only at the end do you realize that nobody in the movie had a name.  Just nameless wanderers trying to survive just a little longer.  Even the way the movie is lit, with the screen at times even completely blanketed in darkness, makes you feel as shitty as the characters on the screen.  Shitty in a good way.  All this is of course brilliantly contrasted with that vague image of the "fire" that the man and boy are carrying.  Now the true brilliance here is that Viggo's character never specifies what the fire is or what it's supposed to symbolize, just that the good guys have it.  And what "it" is is up to the audience, but there's no preaching and nothing being forced on you so it leaves room for interpretation. 

Damn these new WalMarts are getting big...

Viggo Mortensen is just phenomenal here as the nameless father.  The intensity that emanates from this man is enough to level entire city blocks that are lucky enough to be nearby.  Damn this man can act.  Every role he has he just knocks out of the park.  Where his genius really shows is in the flashback scenes with his wife (Charlize Theron) and you can totally see the difference in the calibre of acting.  The kid Kodi Smit-McPhee did a bang up job and see great things in his future.  The scenes where he's asking about suicide really pulled on the heartstrings.  Robert Duvall made a great appearance and it took me a few minutes to recognize him under all the makeup and layers of filth.  Also a nice surprise was Guy Pearce and Molly Parker who showed up at the end.  Guy Pearce is one of my favourite actors so it's a treat to see him in anything these days.

This is definitely not a movie for the faint of heart.  The Road is a gritty, raw, tense, heartbreaking, visceral beast of a film that keeps the audience involved from start to finish.  Every tragedy and triumph, every horror and victory this father and son mus endure, the viewer is pulled along with them experiencing each and every one as if they were his own.  The dark feel of this film at times kept me on the edge of my seat.  I mean, imagine breaking into a house to find food and then finding only a cellar full of people kept like cattle.  That is some messed up shit.  Imagine being on the brink of trying to decide whether a situation is past the point of no return and you would rather shoot a family member in the head to spare them from almost certain horror or whether there is still a chance to escape.  That is some messed up shit.  Even when the father and son find a cache of food, you feel that joy, but you're also waiting for the next shoe to drop.  And it's not just these scenarios, it's how they are presented to us on screen, from a distinctly human perspective.  Anybody with a pacemaker should definitely steer clear.

It's pretty clear from the previous paragraphs that I loved this movie so I'll just give you my final diagnosis: watch this shit.  This is an excellent counterpoint to that shit stain known as The Book of Eli and if you put them side by side, I mean there's really no comparison.  My rating for The Road is 9/10 = One Cannibalistic Post-Apocalyptic Survivor's Head With a Bullet Lodged in the Frontal Cortex

I've Got a Book For You... In My Pants!

The post apocalyptic landscape just got a little bit worse.  It's bad enough that when civilization is in ruins and the human race is hanging on by a thread  having to deal with bands of raiders, lack of clean water, and amateur cannibals, if and when they do find any physical media they might be forced to sit through some shitty movie like The Book of Eli.  Not only was the movie mired in mediocrity from the very first frame, but the "twist" ending just ruined the whole thing for me.  I mean it was just terrible, so terrible in fact that I'm going to have to go ahead and issue a SPOILER ALERT right here because I really need to vent about this shit.

Alright, the plot of The Book of Eli follows a dude named Eli (Denzel Washington) is on an epic thirty year quest through a blasted, post-apocalyptic world to protect a certain book and kick some ass.  Along the way he encounters various dangerous gangs and thugs trying to etch out a living and kill as many other people as they can, but none so dangerous or determined as Carnegie (Gary Oldman).  Eli rolls into Carnegie's settlement of ruffians to fill up on supplies (like a recharged iPod battery, essential for making it after the world ends) and runs afoul of the ruthless leader who it turns out is looking for a certain book that Eli happens to be carrying.  While attributing to the book an almost supernatural power to shape men's minds Carnegie is determined to possess it with or without Eli's consent.  Eli, of course, singlehandedly takes out a whole army of bad guys and proceeds on his quest to take the book West and is soon partnered up with the young and smoking hot Solara (Mila Kunis) who is on the run from the abusive Carnegie.  With Carnegie and his thugs in hot pursuit Eli and Solara must work together to make it past different post-apocalyptic thugs and even a couple of elderly cannibals in order to complete Eli's quest and deliver this much sought after book to a hopefully better home.

I'll start with the positive points, but don't worry that won't take too long.  The movie had a very cool look and I liked the too-bright, desert-like landscape.  I also liked how they didn't go into too much detail as to how the apocalypse happened other than to have Eli briefly mention something about bombs being dropped.  So we are to assume that there was some kind of nuclear war which has apparently damaged the atmosphere and if you look real close everybody in the movie wears shades outdoors to deal with potential overexposure to the sun.  This is just a little detail, but I think it added to the feel of the film and it wasn't blatantly addressed.  Of course the whole sunglasses thing is a part of one the shittiest surprise endings ever, but still.  Denzel I can take or leave, but when he wants to the man can act and he can definitely do action and there was nothing really wrong with his performance here.  Gary Oldman is one of my favourite actors and can do no wrong in my opinion.  He does a commendable job in The Book of Eli, but can only do so much with what he's given.  Mila Kunis was a pleasant surprise, because not only is she hot, but she was a total chameleon in this role.  I have so come to associate her with her characters on That 70's Show and Family Guy that I was totally shocked to see her in a dramatic/action movie with a much less annoying voice.  I had no idea.  I hope she gets some more varied roles because I get the feeling we haven't seen the extent of her talent yet.

OK so I started watching The Book of Eli with an open mind, even though a buddy of mine had already told me the nature of the book that Eli was carrying, which I suppose was supposed to be a secret until the end.  It established pretty quickly the badassery of the title character, the inherent dangers of traveling through a barren wasteland, and the motivation of the antagonist.  About halfway through the movie, however, things started to sour for me.  Even if I hadn't been told it was becoming pretty clear that the book he was carrying was the bible.  I mean this would have been OK, but then Eli goes into this whole story about how a voice told him where the book was and then told him to head west and that he would not be stopped.  "Oh, OK," you might think, "this guy is obviously off his fucking rocker."  Then comes the ending which then completely ruins any hope the movie might have had. 

OK, so Gary Oldman finally gets the book, makes the classic bad guy moving of shooting Eli, but not killing him with a double tap to the skull which he could easily have done, and Eli makes it to the coast where he and Solara take a boat out to Alcatraz because apparently San Francisco is the last safe haven of civilization in the continental US.  There they discover a garrison of soldiers led by Malcolm McDowell in a bad hairpiece (at least I hope it was a hairpiece) who have nothing better to do than collect books which is somehow part of their plan to rebuild civilization. (Step 1: Gather Books.  Step 2: ???????  Step 3: Rebuild Civilization?  Fuck off).  When they arrive Denzel declares in his most masculine voice "I am in possession of a King James bible!" or some such shit which gets him access to the fortified island.  Then they sit down and the "copy" he has is actually (wait for it) inside himself, for he has read the bible so many times that he has indeed memorized every word.  During the recitation montage there is one ineffective shot where Denzel takes off his glasses and the camera zooms in on his eyes which are clouded over and looking in slightly different directions."No, it can't be," you think to yourself "if he's blind that would be a worse 'twist' than having Darth Vader build C-3P0 and would completely ruin the movie."  You'd be right on both counts.

There are two main reasons why the blind Eli twist ending is complete bullshit.  The first is because it almost completely negates all of Eli's badassery throughout the entire film.  This is because there is absolutely no way that a blind man could have done all the things that Eli did.  I'm not saying the whole blind warrior concept can't work.  I mean there's the tradition of the blind swordsman Zatoichi, the blind mentor Master Po, the blind prophet Tiresias (it's Greek mythology you uneducated bastard) and of course blind superhero Daredevil.  I'm saying it didn't work in The Book of Eli because it stretched my willing suspension of disbelief past the point of breaking because of the previously established tone and rules the movie had previously established for its fictional world.  It simply didn't fit with the supposed realistic feel of the film.  There are scenes where Eli is singlehandedly taking on scores of bad dudes with both his machete and a gun.  The machete I could have bought if it was one or two guys and his moves didn't seem so polished or deliberate or if he took a hit or two.  But he busts out the moves with no hesitation and the lethality of a ninja on steroids.  It's too fucking much.  What really got me though was this supposedly blind man's sharpshooting which was even more unbelievable than Lee Harvey Oswald's impossible shooting.  Not only is this guy sharpshooting well-hidden snipers from ranges of what looked like at least 50 metres with a handgun held in one hand while he was running down the street.  I mean that would be tough enough for John McLane or a T-800 to accomplish but a blind man who has to be at least fifty years old.  I'm sorry that's just too much even with all the little hints of his other heightened senses.  Slightly more believable blind shooting scenes were presented in Once Upon a Time in Mexico where Johnny Depp's character has his eyes removed and is only able to locate a target to shoot if they make a sound.  And even then he has uzi's to give a wide spray of bullets and the tone which the movie had established allowed this kind of over-the-top character to plausibly exist in that universe.

The second reason the blind twist ruined the movie for me because the movie basically degenerates into pro-Christian propaganda.  First off, why did the book have to be the bible?  I mean the dudes at the end were looking for all sorts of historical texts.  Why not a collection of Shakespeare's works?  Why not some other significant work like The Catcher in the Rye, Lord of the Rings, Frankenstein, Beowulf, Beyond Good and Evil,or The Dialogues of Plato?  Or another religious text like the Torah or the Koran?  And why imbue the bible with such mystical power?  Carnegie, the main bad guy, is looking for this text because it seemingly has the magical power to control men's minds, like it was the One Ring or some shit.  I mean even if the words were so powerful, you couldn't remember one single fucking phrase?  I mean even the most secular, vegan atheist knows the old "Do unto others" routine.  Instead of wasting time searching for this one piece of literature why not simply write your own text, and then while you're at it teach people to read and write.  Organize, get fresh water, build affordable housing or distract and confuse the people with a highly publicized "war on terror".  I mean, the guy was already in control of a whole city.  He should have focused on expanding, setting up colonies and and banging hot chicks to provide heirs to his throne.  And then the only thing that Eli can pass on from the olden times is the ritual of praying before dinner.  I mean is this the sum total of Western culture?

I could have been a contender...

Also are we to believe that the voice that spoke to Eli is supposed to be the voice of The Almighty himself?  That the reason that out of the thousands of bullets that were fired at him throughout the movie only one actually hit him, and then just barely wounded was because God was watching over him?  And was God the one who was guiding Eli's hand as he brutally killed, maimed or scarred anyone who got in his way?  So much for "Do unto others."  As much as I hate getting preached at during the course of a presumabley secular movie, I hate getting preached at this shittily.  Any time in the biblical narrative that God wanted to save someone never once did he send them a giant machete and say unto them "Go hence and chopeth ye motherfucker's hand off."  So even as Christian propaganda it's hypocritical.  I have only one word for the fiasco: bullshit.

Alright I'm done with this shit, thinking about it again only makes me angrier.  For turning what could have been a cool twist on the post-apocalyptic genre into a two-hour joke I give The Book Of Eli a 4/10 = One Blind, Bullet-Dodging Warrior's Head With Admittedly Pretty Cool Shades.

Yes, But Why is the Rum Gone?

"In the early Fifties, when San Juan first became a tourist town, an ex-jockey named Al Arbonito built a bar in the patio behind his house on Calle O'Leary."

So begins one of the greatest novels by one of the world's greatest authors ever.  I recently just finished reading Hunter S. Thompson's The Rum Diary again, and my god what a fucking great book.  The man was a genius, no two ways about it.  I believe that like many people from my generation my first forray into the Hunter catalogue began with Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas due in large part to Terry Gilliam's brilliant movie adaptation.  It wasn't until some time after Thompson's suicide way back in 2005 that I actually started reading his work though.  A friend of mine, let's call him Joe, was into Thompson since at least high school and he kept bugging me to read his work, but I wasn't sold.  And when news of his death hit, I didn't really get the big deal.  Now one of my regrets is that I didn't get to mourn Hunter S. Thompson at the time of his death and instead learned of his cultural significance and narrative genius until much later.

After pollishing off Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas my friend Joe recommended The Rum Diary and from the first moment I was drawn in.  I couldn't put it down the first or any subsequent readthrough.  Thompson had stated that he was influenced by Ernest Hemingway and nowhere is it more evident to me than in The Rum Diary.  It's a funny thing though because as much as a love Thompson I hate Hemingway.  I could never stomache any of Hemingway's bullshit minimalist writing.  The only thing he ever wrote that I could get any enjoyment out of was A Moveable Feast.  Check it out some time.  I dare you.  This is one instance when the son has definitely outdone the father, and I really don't know why Thompson's works aren't compulsary reading in high school.

Anyhow to get back on track, for those of you not in the know there is currently a movie based on The Rum Diary in post-production starring Johnny Depp in the lead role of of "vagrant journalist" Paul Kemp, a writer at a small newspaper on the verge of collapse in San Juan.  I believe Depp is also producing the movie as he has a vested interest in maintaining the integrity of the source material after befriending Thompson during his work on the Fear and Loathing film.  As a huge fan of Hunter S. Thompson's work I am totally stoked to see this movie getting made and I really hope they don't completely fuck it up.  It's bad enough to see terrible movie adaptations of books (of which there are many), but it's just extra painful when they mess up something you love. 

There are some who would argue that Thompson's subject matter might be outdated and his relevence outdated, but in my opinion that couldn't be further from the truth. The themes that permeated Thompson's work I believe are still as applicable to my generation as they were to his and there was more "truth" in his Gonzo journalism that anything in the popular media. Even above and beyond all that Thompson proved that writers ,just like those in the movie and music industries, could attain celebrity status both for their proffesional talents as well as their real-life exploits (ie. drug use).



I guess there was really no point to this article other than to profess my admiration for Hunter S. Thompson and to let you guys know so that you can keep track of this shit and catch this beast when it hits theatres.  It will also be nice to see a movie adaptation that's based on some quality material and not some stupid shit about vampires or wizards for a change, but god knows we can always use more of them too.  (Yeah, that last part was sarcasm.  I just have to spell it out in case any Twilight fans actually read this because they're either A) Thirteen years old or B) Lacking in mental capacity due to generations of inbreeding.)

The Return of Robin Hood

When I heard way back when about Ridley Scott's upcoming adventure in Sherwood Forest with everybody's favourite thief I knew from that moment that eventually I would be sitting in a theatre watching it.  For some reason I just fucking love the whole Robin Hood myth, and have devoted countless hours reading books, watching movies and even doing my own research about it.  For all you morons out there I'm sorry I just shattered your world by revealing that yes Robin Hood is a myth and never really existed, just like Santa Claus (a pseudo-religious mythical figure) and Colin Farrell (a digital creation put together by a group of our handsomest scientists at NASA and Lucasfilm).  So anything they do with the character is fair game in my opinion, and I like to see all the different variations and interpretations of how he came to be an outlaw and shitting all over the Sherriff of Nottingham and Prince John.

Of course I was totally stoked for this project in particular which was helmed by Ridley Scott, the genius behind such little-known films as Blade Runner, Alien, Gladiator, Legend, and American Gangster.  Now granted he hasn't had as many hits as Martin Scorcese (who has?), but when this guy is on he is fucking on.  I remember a lot of people criticizing the movie saying it was like Gladiator but in England, like that was a bad thing. 

So this is the story of Robin Hood before he was Robin Hood.  Robin Longstride (Russell Crowe) is an archer in King Richard's army returning from the (in)famous crusades in the so-called Holy Land.  Through a series of unfortunate events Robin and his friends, Will Scarlet (Scott Grimes), Allan A'Dayle (Alan Doyle), and grudging accomplice Little John (Kevin Durand) end up deserting the army and trying to make their way back to jolly old England.  Along the way they encounter and quickly dispatch a bunch of bad Frenchmen (really which ones AREN'T bad?) led by Godfrey (Mark Strong).  They then discover the crown of the recently deceased King Richard so they disguise themselves as high-ranking English soldiers and Robin -under the guise of Sir Robert Loxley- and deliver the crown to Richard's much younger and obviously more evil brother John (Oscar Isaac)  Robin then delivers on a promise to return the real Robert Loxley's sword back to his father whereby he is convinced to retain his new identity for reasons which aren't really important here.  One thing leads to another and Robin gets his dick wet with his first of presumably many robberies.  He then ends up helping  King John stop an invasion from the French (bastards!) but in the end is betrayed by the young monarch and officially declared to be an outlaw for posing as a nobleman.  So the legend begins!

I so want to say that I love this movie, and I tried really, really hard (I swear!) but really the overall feeling I get from this movie is a shoulder-shrugging "Meh."  I really dug the overall concept, the set design was fantastic, live locations were breathe-taking, and the battles were expertly staged and filmed.  Even the acting was good for the most part.  This is an example of a bunch of really good elements that for some reason or another just didn't click.  Part of it may have been a relatively weak script which had a really strong overall concept but individually weak elements.  One of the big weaknesses is how the subplot invovling Robin's father is handled.  I don't know if it was just too cliche or what, but what should have been a key emotional catalyst is just kind of thrown in the mix near the end.  I mean by the time the "big reveal" comes it lacks so much emotional relevence to the character that even Russell Crowe's otherwise solid performance is marred by a very weak counter-climactic reaction.  For the whole father/son thread to resonate with the audience it has to be woven a lot more intricately than that into the story.  What could have or should have been a major thematic element seemed more like an afterthought.  Then there's this really confusing subplot about a bunch of orphan kids living in Sherwood forest making coordinated, guerrilla-like attacks on Maid Marion's (Cate Blanchett) town.  This thread too is completely dropped and NEVER mentioned again until the end of the movie when it is inexplicably brought back for some reason.

Another problem for me was confusing or completely lacking character motivation.  The one in particular I'm thinking of is Isabella (Lea Seydoux), King John's main squeeze.  Halfway through the film she is approached by John's mother and told that she (Isabella) must be the one to warn John of the impending French invasion and the trouble with the barons.  But early on it's established that not only is she French nobility she is also a cousin to the king of France.  So are her loyalties to her countrymen so easily forgotten, or does her love for John overpower the love of her former king and country?  See it just isn't made clear why she should give a shit about the French invasion.  I mean either way she'll come out on top (boo-yah!).  Either she marries John, or she marries some other high-ranking French noble after the French control England.  Either way she advances her position.  The main antoagonist of the film, a nobleman by the name of Godfrey, seems very two-dimensional and once again his motivation is never made clear.  Why is he helping the French?  Is it just for the money?  Did he marry some young French maiden and is having problems getting her through immigration so he decides, fuck it, she won't have any problems if England becomes part of France?  Is he a straight-up anarchist who just wants to see shit burn?  He just seemed too two-dimensional.  Even King John by the end of the movie seemed like an asshole with no redeeming qualities.  There was plenty of room in the narrative and many clues given that there was more depth to his character, but by the end all this is forgotten and it seems his existence serves only as a plot device to quickly turn Robin into an "official" outlaw at the end of the movie.

Now on the flip side of the coin, Scott knows how to do an action scene.  The battle scenes were excellent and the siege of te French castle early on really gave the feel of what it might be like to actually have to break through such heavy defences.  King Richard's death was pretty cool, and I'm not sure how historically accurate it was, but the whole idea of this great man, this king, being cut down by a lowly cook (no, NOT Steven Seagal) was a really cool juxtaposition.  Also seeing how Robin Hood became Robin Hood was an interesting take.  I really liked how Robin and the first of his merry men were hardcore war veterans.  That way they didn't have to explain how they kicked so much ass.  There were also the obligatory -but thankfully not over the top- archery shots to show Robin's legendary proficiency with the bow.

I think we should've taken that left turn at Albuquerque...

The acting was good, but not great.  I'm a fan of Russell Crowe and he did a passable job here, but in all fairness I think the weak script might have contributed to the problem here.  Ever since Lost I've had my eye on Kevin Durand and I think he's an excellent pick for Little John.  I don't think I really realized how physically huge this guy really was until this movie.  I was really surprised to see Scott Grimes in this movie, as the only thing I'd ever seen him in was ER and his character was annoying as hell.  I have to say though he did a good job in this movie.  Even more surprising was Alan Doyle as Allan A'Dayle.  For those of you who don't know Doyle is actually the lead singer the popular Candian band Great Big Sea, so how he wound up in this movie only his haridresser knows for sure.  All I know is Scott smartly kept Doyle's speaking parts to a minimum and allowed him to show off his impressive pipes in several scenes where he sings some good old-fashioned English folk tunes.  I must say for three non-British actors I think they did a good job with the accent.  It goes without saying that Cate Blanchett put forth a solid performance.  No matter what she's in you know she's going to give it her all.  Mark Strong is apparently on a bad guy streak, but as I stated in my Kick-Ass review I thought his performance in that movie was much better than here, but once again I think the problem lay in the script not giving him enough to draw on.  Also worthy of mention are William Hurt as the English Lord William Marshal and Danny Huston as a conflicted King Richard.

But therein lies the problem.  Everything was "good" but not "great."  Unfortunately what could have been another excellent addition to Ridley Scott's Top 10 list and my BluRay collection was just another in a series of movies that is making this one of the worst summer movie seasons in a long while.  In my mind the best Robin Hood movie so far is still Prince of Thieves.  What I liked about both this new Robin Hood and Prince of Thieves is that they were both put into historical context which I feel really added to the depth of the movies.  Where the new movie failed is its lack of cohesion in both the story and the overall themes it was looking to explore.  I know a lot of you out there for some reason don't like the Kevin Costner flick because he didn't do a British accent, well all I have to say to you is please firmly grab the stick that is shoved up your asshole, twist slightly to the right, and pull.  Hard.  What Prince of Thieves had that this new film does not was consistency and coherence, both in the plot and in thematic concerns.  It also had rich characters with clear motivation and definable character arcs which Ridley's does not.  (Also I kind of have a thing for Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio.)

Alright, despite all my bashing of Robin Hood I didn't entirely hate it.  As a fan of the myth I couldn't help but be entrigued and entertained by this movie.  In the hands of a lesser director this might have failed completely but Ridley Scott was able to salvage it to some degree.  My recomendation is to go into this movie with low expectations and a couple of beers in you.

Overall I give Robin Hood a 6.5/10 = One Villainous Nobleman's Head Mutilated by a Well-Shot Arrow 

Prepare to Have Your Day Broken

I recently had the chance to check out DAYBREAKERS on BluRay.  I have to admit that I totally got my hopes up.  I mean, a vampire flick starring Ethan Hawke, Willem Dafoe, and Sam Neill has to be enough to make your dick at least a little hard, right?  Put that spring in your step, so to speak.  Alas this was not the case.  What the fuck is so hard about making a good vampire movie?  The last truly great vampire film I can recall is INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE, although even that one I haven't seen in a while so I may be way off base.  Then of course there's a personal favourite of mine, FROM DUSK TILL DAWN, a totally awesome flick from Tarantino and Rodriguez way back in that mysterious time known only as "The 90's" with arguably the best pussy speech ever ("...Take advantage of our penny pussy sale!  Buy any pussy at our regular price, you get another piece of pussy, of equal or lesser value, for a penny!  Now try and beat pussy for a penny.  If you can find cheaper pussy anywhere, FUCK IT!"). 

But then there's a whole collection of fucking terrible shit like the new TWILIGHT series which, from what I've seen and heard, are complete garbage.  To be honest I haven't seen much of the movies or the books, because as soon as I heard that the vampires can't go in the sunlight because their skin "sparkles like diamonds" I couldn't fucking take it seriously.  THE LOST BOYS sucked major goat balls (all due apologies to Kiefer Sutherland) and Francis Ford Coppola's DRACULA was a convoluted mess.  I had a lot of hope for UNDERWORLD, but Len Wiseman screwed up what was a really cool premise.  At least that movie had Kate Beckinsale's glorious body encased in leather.  I also recently watched the first season of HBO's True Blood, which I must admit is pretty cool, but still leaves something to be desired.  While technically not a movie, True Blood does have a really high production value and a lot of nudity (the good kind, you know, with women).  Then on the tails of TWILIGHT came a little TV production known as The Vampire Diaries, which again is just a bunch of horny teenagers running around whining about god knows what. 

Then out of the blue comes DAYBREAKERS, a little vampire film from Michael and Peter Spierig apparently trying to capitalize on the recent resurgence in vampirism.  Unfortunately they took a really cool concept and just like UNDERWORLD and they really mishandled it.  The basic premise is that sometime in the future (it doesn't really matter when) the vast majority -let's say 95%- of the population has been turned into vampires.  This becomes a problem because their only viable source of sustenance -human blood- is becoming scarce even due to the efforts of a large corporation headed by Charles Bromley (Sam Neill) that keeps humans sedated in a large MATRIX-style facility and farms them for their blood.  While the upper classes still have enough, the masses are on blood rations which becomes a problem because apparently when vampires don't get enough blood they become feral, ravenous beasts.  This same company also has a large research team led by one Edward Dalton (Ethan Hawke) trying to develop a synthetic substitute for human blood.  Edward (a popular name for vampires, apparently) gets mixed up with the human resistance led by Lionel "Elvis" Cormac (Willem Dafoe) who claims he used to be a vampire.  Co-operating with the resistance and a small group of vampires who want things to change, Edward works out a cure for vampirism.  Armed with this cure he returns home to try and save the rest of the bloodsuckers only to have to deal with the military and the heartless bastards in charge of big multinational corporations.

So the movie started off pretty cool and it was a neat take on the whole vampire genre.  It was the first time I can recall seeing a vampire movie where the bloodsuckers outnumbered the humans, especially on such a massive scale.  I liked how the filmmakers showed how the vampires still had jobs and how they had adapted their society to overcome their particular weaknesses, ie, exposure to sunlight.  The whole underground tunnel system was a cool idea and the cars rigged for daytime driving with the cameras and the shades and whatnot.  They also showed how vampires always look so suave without the use of mirrors: infrared cameras!

They set up the premise pretty quickly and efficiently.  Basically with the human population dwindling there is a shortage of life-sustaining human bean juice.  This is a huge problem because without human blood vampires start to turn into mindless beasts.  They can't feed on other vampires or themselves because then they mutate into giant, bat-like creatures.  The vampire military exists seemingly just to hunt down humans to extract their delicious juices.  It's pretty clear that the vampires and the whole blood shortage is supposed to be a metaphor for some present-day concerns like our reliance on fossil fuels and other non-renewable resources, the global shortage of fresh water, corporate greed, the dangers inherent in the growing power of the military-industrial complex, and the growing lack of quality hookers who give proper head with no teeth-related accidents.  OK, the hooker thing might be a stretch.  This, of course, gave me hope because it looked like there was going to be some depth to the movie and it was going to explore some hard-hitting issues, but with vampires.  Unfortunately what could have been a very entertaining and thought-provoking movie took a left turn down Mediocrity Boulevard.

In my mind currently there are three ways a movie can go to become really great: 1) Sheer entertainment value (ie. comedy, action or heart) 2) Depth and layers of meaning (ie. metaphor, character development) or 3) Some combination of the first two.  Of course it goes without saying that all of this has to be tied together with some kind of unifying theme or idea that permeates the entire movie.  Where this movie failed was consistency.  It set itself up like it was going to explore all of these big ideas, and then quickly degenerates into just a good guy versus bad guy cat and mouse game with lots of guns, people being set on fire, and death by vampire mob.  The main character Edward is given this really cool conflict at the beginning of the movie with his brother, but for some reason this is left by the wayside for the majority of the movie and then sloppily inserted at the end like crooked dick at a Russian orgy.  The characters were established very well at the beginning but then they stagnated and we weren't really shown to have any sort of arc or progression.  It was simply the old mistake of having a premise and a setting, creating some characters and having them do some stuff but with no real connection to said established setting.

Don't get me wrong, the problem wasn't the acting.  I am a huge fan of Dafoe, Hawke and Neill and they all did the best with what they had to work with, but unfortunately a bad script is a bad script and there's only so much a master craftsman can do with the material he's given.  Neill's character in particular is handled very poorly.  By the end of the movie this complex character became nothing more than a cartoon villain.  The only thing that was missing was the evil laugh and the twisty moustache to twirl around his finger while looking directly at the camera.  Another thing I didn't like was the "cure" for vampirism.  I mean there's nothing wrong with it per se, it's just a matter of not really working for me personally.

If you haven't seen this movie yet and are really stoked, I strongly advise you to lower your expectations so you won't be totally disappointed.  Overall there was a cool concept that was mishandled.  However, the movie had a great look to it, the world felt believable (well, as believable as a world run by vampires could feel) and there is a lot of very gruesome violence with some eating scenes that reminded me more of a zombie movie, which in my mind is a good thing.  If you're a huge fan of the vampire movie genre you'll probably enjoy this a lot more than I did, but otherwise it's little more than a mildly entertaining distraction.  Still waiting for the quintessential vampire movie.

In the end I give DAYBREAKERS a 6/10 = The Head of a Human Resistance Fighter Being Torn Off By a Pack of Hungry Vampires.

Cleveland Show - WTF?

Ok, I was a huge fan of Family Guy, and I still am a fan, though not as hardcore due to the dropping quality.  But just like The Simpsons there are still some funny gags and even some entire episodes I really dig.  I tried watching Amercian Dad out of respect for Seth MacFarlane and the quality he put out but I found it really dificult to watch except for the Patrick Stewart parts.  And then when I heard that Cleveland, one of the characters from Family Guy was getting his own show I thought the same thing most of you thought: somehow MacFarlane is making a fuckload of cash from this deal.  I can appreciate that and I bear him no ill-will.  And I know this probably sounds sarcastic (but for once it's not) but if I was in the same position to whore out my intellectual property with no regards to quality or artistic integrity.  And really "artisitic integrity" is just a bullshit term coined by the popular media to try and keep the working class oppressed by giving them the illusion of some kind of moral superiority.  But all of that still doesn't mean I have to like Seth MacFarlane's shitfest of a show.

I mean what a horribly unfunny show.  Cleveland was pretty much a one-note joke, a sort of straight man to Peter Griffin's shenanigans, but it was a one-note joke that worked.  I watched the pilot of The Cleveland Show but it was so fucking terrible I could barely make it through without putting my remote control in a sack weighed down with rocks and throwing it into the nearby lake and smashing the front of the TV so I couldn't change the channel.  Even then I had to keep from gouging my own eyes out and bursting my eardrums with a nearby pencil.  But, in the interest of fairness and open-minded dialogue (Hurray internet!) I decided to watch another episode this past Sunday.  Boy was I not surprised and a little disappointed when it turned out to still be shit.  Not only did they take one of the least interesting characters from Family Guy, but they seemed to have completely changed him.  Now Cleveland is a lot more similar to Peter Griffin, pulling the same old shit of big-fat-guy-with-a-much-hotter-wife-does-something-stupid-then-has-to-make-up-for-it routine which has already been perfected/done to death by both The Simpsons and Family Guy. 

The big problem is that with The Cleveland Show they seem to want to recreate the success of Family Guy by trying to directly immitate and plagiarise it.  This would be OK if it actually worked, but unfortunately you can't just take the same formula, apply it to another situation, grab your balls and hope it all turns out OK.  Sometimes it's not just having all the right elements (which The Cleveland Show definitley does NOT have) but also a matter of being in the right place at the right time.  The Simpsons and Futurama and Family Guy are put together by talented teams of writers and artists, but there was some other unquantifiable element that made them more than the sum of their parts.  I'm not sure what that element is (let's call it Zaz!) but I know for a fact that The Cleveland Show doesn't have it.

So to sum it all up, The Cleveland Show is a pile of dog shit and Mila Kunis is still hot as hell.  I know that's a pretty loose tie-in, but her smoking body helps in part to wash the taste of shit from my eyes.  My verdict: The Cleveland Show is a crime against humanity and should be banned except in times of war when it should be shown to captured soldiers to torture them for information for information.  I guarantee that if the US government just set up a bunch of giant screens in Afghanistan and Iraq and blared The Cleveland Show at full volume day and night the "war on terror" (AKA "war for more oil") would be over within the week.

There, that should help ease the pain...

Is That a Podcast in My Pocket or am I Just Happy to See You?

It's just the podcast, don't flatter yourself.  So a little while back I was biking home from work when this dark figure gets my attention and motions me to follow him into a poorly-lit ally with no clear escape routes.  I figured the best case scenario would be getting superpowers and the worst case scenario would be some kind of sexual favour in return for drugs, so I followed him.  It was then he revealed himself to be Adam, a friend of mine, and he wanted to put together a podcast to share our thoughts about movies and other bullshit with the rest of the world.  Best case scenario we get our own reality TV show and our own sex tapes with Paris Hilton.  Worst case an excuse to hang out more often and shoot the shit.  I just wish he would have told me before he made me give him a blowjob... And Adam, if you're reading this, you still owe me that crack you promised me you sick fuck.  (He told me it would taste like chocolate.  How many times am I going to fall for that line?)

So me, Adam, and this other dude Pat got together and started recording ourselves and posting over at http://www.jellycast.com/.  Just search for Dicks For Drugs Cylon Bingo and it should come up.  (Boo-yah!)  We are also on iTunes so feel free to download one or more of the episodes before we make it big and have to start charging for them.  There are three episodes posted so far with several more in the works.  So check it out and tell all your friends, and remember: penises DO NOT taste like chocolate, no matter what anybody tells you.  Unless of course it's Chuck Norris, in which case believe everything he says.  I think it goes without saying that there is definitely adult content in the podcast and probably NSFW.

Kick-Ass Gently Nudges Ass

Apparently in this day and age everybody and his grandmother has a line of comics or a graphic novel, and every single goddamn one of them has also apparently been optioned for movie rights.  Because for some reason Hollywood is now categorically and methodically making every single last one of them into movies.  This is not necessarily a bad thing if: A) The source material is solid and B) The director has a clear and effective way to translate the source material from the page to the screen or C) I am too drunk or tired when watching the movie to notice any problems.  I'm kind of at a disadvantage because I never read any of the Kick-Ass comics so I'm not in the best position to judge the effectiveness of the translation to the big screen like I was say with WATCHMEN. 

Hey, look at me, I remembered the SPOILER ALERT this time!  The basic plot of KICK-ASS revolves around a high school kid named Dave Lizewski (Aaron Johnson) who reads a lot of comic books and decides to pursue superheroing as an after-school hobby.  He promptly gets his ass kicked and then hit by a car.  Not one to be easily dissuaded, once Dave is released from the hospital months later after extensive surgery and several metal plates holding his bones together, he gives it another go.  This time Dave AKA Kick-Ass actually saves some dude from getting the smackdown laid on him.  Of course some douchebag with a cellphone decides that instead of helping or -say- calling the police he would tape the whole thing which of course gets posted to YouTube.  Kick-Ass becomes an overnight sensation sets up his own MySpace page to deal with the fans and any requests for his help.  On one of his "missions" he encounters another crime-fighting duo: Big Daddy AKA Damon Macready (Nicholas Cage) and Hit-Girl AKA Mindy Macready (Chloe Moretz) who save his life.  So Kick-Ass somehow gets mixed up with their vendetta against local mob boss Frank D'Amico (Mark Strong) and eventually the proverbial shit hits the proverbial fan.  Many thugs are killed in horrible ways, Big Daddy meets a terrible end, Kick-Ass gets his ass kicked before eventually saving the day, blah, blah, blah. 

So just to be clear, I had never heard of Kick-Ass before news of the movie hit the interwebs.  Upon first hearing about it I couldn't give one let alone two shits, but all the fanboys out there really got me stoked for the movie and I found myself actually hopeful when I went to the theatre.  It was clear from the very beginning that this was not your average comic book movie and from the very start it was clear there would be this sort of darkly comedic element to the film, which was cool.  It started off really witty, and I found myself getting into the whole premise of the "real-life" superhero and what would or might "really" happen.  Then in the second two-thirds of the movie Matthew Vaughn seemed intent on systematically dismantling what could have been a solid story and alienating the audience. 

One of the big problems with the movie is consistency.  The story itself seemed kind of disjointed almost as if there were several story lines that were sort of being jammed together, you know kind of like garbage in the back of a dump truck.  There were several points in the movie where it seemed that a chapter or something was over and a new one was beginning but the transitions weren't handled well at all so it seemed choppy and disjointed.  Then there was the character of Dave Lizewski/Kick-Ass, who was well established because a great deal of the movie was about him.  Then at the very end of the movie the character suddenly does a complete 180 completely negating everything that had been established about him for an hour and a half. 

What I'm talking about is the fact that although Kick-Ass is out there trying to help people, it's established early on that he doesn't want to kill anybody, and is in fact horrified when he first sees Hit-Girl brutally murder a bunch of thugs.  Then later in the movie he keeps trying to convince Hit-Girl not to kill anybody else.  It all makes sense, he's consistent.  But then at the end of the movie he is not only complicit in the deaths of several more hired goons, but he also suddenly starts killing them himself.  To me that just completely destroyed the integrity of the character.  It's not because I shy away from violence.  I fucking love me some violence in movies.  And by some I mean a lot.  The problem was there was no textual clue as to what would spark this sudden change of character.  The character arc got completely bent out of shape and mangled.  It really detracted from the movie for me because based on contextual evidence, there was absolutely no fucking motivation for this sudden shift.

Another big thing that really puzzled me also came at the end of the movie.  I mean the whole rest of the movie was supposed to have been grounded in "reality" insofar as that all the events and even the existence of "superheroes" (and I use that term lightly) were all highly more plausible than in other comic book movies.  I mean there were no radioactive spiders biting people or scantily clad women flying in invisible jets and tying people up with a magic lasso of truth.  Basically, it was just dudes with guns and swords and sticks shooting and slicing and beating each other and some of them happened to be wearing costumes.  But then after a whole movie's worth of the "realism" we get hit at the end with -wait for it- a jet pack.  A fucking jet pack.  Bam.  And not just a fully functional jet pack (that they fucking bought online from some yahoo on e-Bay), but a fully functional jet pack with two mini-guns mounted on it, which was then piloted with pinpoint accuracy by a high school kid with absolutely no aviation experience and not even a practice run beforehand.  For me it completely ruined the whole tone of the movie and just stretched my suspension of disbelief past the breaking point. 

Speaking of unrealistic the other thing that I just couldn't swallow was all the physical stuff that Hit-Girl could supposedly do.  I don't care if she was trained by Bruce Lee, drank the blood of Chuck Norris and had a training montage with Rocky Balboa, there is simply no way an eleven year old girl could match one -let alone a roomful- of adult men.  I mean I'm no Tony Jaa, but I'm pretty sure that if some little grade-five girl came up to me and wanted to start some shit I could -and would- totally stomp her into the ground.  I mean she's so short that even a pre-Subway Jared would be able to kick high enough to nail her in the face.  Drop her like a sack of bricks tied to that dead body I dropped into the river last week.  When she had a gun and was shooting motherfuckers like an adorable little Charles Bronsen, I could buy that.  It (unfortunately) doesn't take much to pull a trigger and shoot somebody in the head.  But a physical match-up?  No fucking way man.  It's a matter of skeletal-muscular strength and also physics where F=MA. (Look it up biatch.  It's a little thing I like to call motherfucking science.  Whatup Newton?!?!)  It's not that eleven year girls can't be tough, but they simply lack the physical strength or body mass to A) deal out the requisite damage to defeat the average adult male or B) withstand any serious amount of punishment that said adult male could dish out. A single straight shot to the head from D'Amico not only would have resulted in Hit-Girl being rendered completely incapacitated -if not totally unconscious- but it probably would have caved in the side of her head.

Since we're on the topic another thing that really bugged me was the character of Hit-Girl.  Now to be clear I am in no way shape or form squeamish about onscreen violence, and I have no qualms about little kids swearing and Cloe Moretz is a fantastic little actress.  I remember as I was watching the movie something just didn't quite sit well with me during Hit-Girl's scenes.  Then when I was discussing it with a buddy afterwards he hit the nail on the head and I realized why I was so disturbed.  Big Daddy had trained and indoctrinated his daughter Hit-Girl to not only kill, but also to show no remorse for the killing.  This is what would be considered sociopathic behaviour in the psychiatric world, and the most disturbing part is that her own father fostered those tendencies.  It is truly fucked up and left a weird taste in my mouth.  I suppose it was good that the film evoked some kind of emotional response.  But still.

I know after that little rampage it may sound like I totally hated the flick, but I actually found it quite entertaining.  It was just all the hype on the Internet and I found myself daring to believe, like when I heard that voice in my cornfield that made me build a baseball diamond except the voice turned out to be a tumour in the frontal lobe of my brain and then I was disappointed and hungry.  I really, really enjoyed Aaron Johnson in KICK-ASS's title role.  That kid gave a terrific performance and I would definitely like to see him in more stuff.  Judging from his performance I don't think Johnson is the same one-trick pony that say Michael Cera is.  As I said already the young Cloe Moretz did a bang-up job as well.  Nic Cage I could take or leave as usual.  The only really entertaining thing about that guy these days is the myriad of hairstyles he sports in any given week.  Mark Strong is apparently the go to bad guy in Hollywood these days, and I must say that he was definitely on his A-game this time around and I thought his performance here was a little better than his turns in SHERLOCK HOLMES and ROBIN HOOD.  There was an uninspired performance by McLovin (yeah, I know his real name, but if I wrote it down here admit it, you would have no fucking clue) as D'Amico's son and another superhero/villain called Red Mist.  Another honourable mention goes to Lyndsy Fonseca for being totally smokin' hot.  (And yes I double-checked her age on IMDB so it's all cool.) So close to seeing those tits and yet so far.

Daaaaaaamn!

The plot wasn't a total bust either.  There was some good shit in there.  I loved the whole opening where Dave is talking about his place in the complex social heirarchy that is high school and how he wasn't a jock or a nerd or anything he was just there, which is something I (and probably a lot of you out there) can relate to.  The little masturbation thing was pretty clever too.  The interaction between Dave and his friends was pretty funny stuff and the subplot with Dave being recruited as Katie Deauxma's (Lyndsy Fonseca) "token gay friend" and him going along with it just to be with her.  There were some pretty emotional moments too like when Big Daddy gets burned alive right in front of his daughter.  Crazy shit.  Kick-Ass's costume was surprisingly cool, but the whole Big Daddy=Batman thing I wasn't a fan of.  Really, that's the best he could do?

Look bottom line: cool concept, poor execution.  I wondered about a few things in the plot so I did a quick wiki-search on the original source material and was surprised by what I found.  There were some drastic changes made in the movie adaptation and I have to wonder: why?  These changes -in my mind- were the main reason this movie was kept from being great.  One thing that stood out for me was the whole Big Daddy/Hit-Girl story line.  Something just never seemed quite right to me and I kept waiting for some kind of big twist or reveal because the whole cop-who-lost-his-wife-and-bent-on-revenge thing just seemed too shallow and hackneyed and straightforward. Then I found out why.  Apparently in the comic books the whole cop-who-lost-his-wife bullshit is just a line Big Daddy feeds his daughter to get her to go along with his revenge plan against Frank D'Amico (Johnny G in the comics).  Turns out the Daddy was just a fucking accountant with a midlife crisis who wanted his daughter to be special so he trains her to be a... psychopathic murderer.  They just picked this particular mobster on a whim because they needed some scum to kill.  See, to me that fits in more with the real-life pathetic vibe that was established with Kick-Ass himself.  Then there's the whole bullshit love story between Dave and Katie that doesn't have the same happy ending as the movie and it's really too bad the filmmakers took the cop-out Hollywood bullshit route instead of staying true to the integrity of the story.  From what I've seen Mark Millar's original comic series sounds a lot better than the movie and I'm going to check it out for sure.

Alright, I've gone on way too long as usual.  My recommendation is go and see it for yourself.  I enjoyed it on a visceral level, but it lacked too much in depth and coherence to make it anything more.  As a final note I also would not consider this a "superhero" movie because I don't know about you but when I think about superheroes, arbitrarily murdering people does not immediately pop to mind and in this movie all the "heroes" -Big Daddy, Hit-Girl and (in the end) Kick-Ass- are all decidedly unheroic.  I know it wasn't supposed to come off that way, but at times these costumed vigilantes seemed much worse than the villains they were fighting.

So in conclusion my rating for Kick-Ass is 5/10 = One Nerdy Teenager's Head in a Green Mask Getting Beaten With Baseball Bats.