Life Lessons from Al Pacino

It's easy to lose your way in this workaday world. The path to spiritual fulfillment is often obstructed by the stress of modern living. Bills. Obligations. Family. Great asses which we've got our heads all the way up. Fortunately, there are those who have dedicated their lives to clearing away those obstacles with the metaphorical gun hidden behind a public toilet. For nigh on half a century, Al Pacino has served as such a guide. Some would call him a hero. Others, a prophet. From whatever celestial realm he was sent to us, it matters not. What matters is that the Pacino burns with such a passion that he cannot help but yell out his gospel as loud as he can, as often as he can, to as many people as he can, with as many obscenities as he can.

Through the sacred texts he has passed down to us in film, Al Pacino has presented a path to enlightenment laden with as much wisdom as there is profanity, so in other words, quite a bit. Though his wisdom is not always for the faint of heart, it is as undeniable as a straight-laced cop on a corrupt force that the Pacino is right. And when he's right, he's right, and he is right. And just like his fellow prophets who have gone before him, Al Pacino asks nothing in return for the gifts he bestows upon us. Just know that in this life, Al Pacino will be there to believe in you even when you don't believe in yourself. And the Pacino is a scary judge of talent...

#1: No, You Ain't Gonna Take It, and You Definitely Ain't Gotta Take It at Work

Listen, we all have to work in order to make money to do the things we really want to do. You know it. I know it. And Al Pacino certainly knows it. In Glengarry Glen Ross, Al Pacino portrays crack real estate salesman Ricky Roma who, at one point, is put in a difficult situation when his boss, John Williamson (Kevin Spacey), fucks up the sale that would have put him at the top of the leader board for the month. We've all been in a similar situation. You find yourself working in the service of lesser men who have dick-sucked their way to the top. It's all but inevitable that at some point while under the direction of some ass clown who's been promoted to a position of authority over you, that shit will eventually come to a head.

Star Wars Episode II: Send in the Clones, Don't Bother, They're Here

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Those fateful words will basically serve as the epitaph of an entire age of cinema. To most modern movie goers, those are words of a bygone era, but to cinephiles of certain age, they were a constant reminder of the subpar state of our home video versions of films. In those dark times, before the advent of the widescreen TV, audiences were forced to suffer through releases of films where it was possible that upwards of fifty percent of the image was chopped off just to account for the vast difference in aspect ratios between the original film stock and our televisions. In our darkest hour, "widescreen" versions of movies were paraded as some kind of special edition. Basically, it was a fucking travesty.

It always seemed appropriate to me, then, that out of my entire Star Wars movie collection, the only DVD that still bore those terrible words--Full Screen Edition--emblazoned across the top, those same, terrible words that were no doubt inscribed on the very gates of hell themselves, was my copy of Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones, my least favourite of the Star Wars prequel trilogy.

I have a distinct memory of sitting on my roommmate's bed watching a trailer for Star Wars Episode II on his Mac and wondering aloud about the effectiveness of the subtitle Attack of the Clones. I don't remember exactly what it was that I said, but I do remember that it wasn't positive. I wasn't so much unimpressed as I was bewildered. For whatever reason, it didn't seem Star Wars-ian enough to me. It didn't seem to fit with my idea of Star Wars, which was, of course, the obviously correct one, and George Lucas and everyone else be damned.

Wishing a Final Farewell to the Waco Kid

Immortalized by perhaps his most iconic role as Willy Wonka in the 1971 classic Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, Gene Wilder was known and beloved by generations of movie-goers, whether they knew his name or not. He was a singular comedic talent, and his death on August 29, 2016, was a particularly poignant loss. I must admit here (somewhat sheepishly) that a few years back I assumed that since I hadn't seen him in anything for a while that he was already dead, but it turns out he had consciously taken a step back from the Hollywood scene, and then in recent years he was out of the public eye most likely due to his battle with Alzheimer's.

Myself, I was never a real fan of Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory. It was wacky, and Gene Wilder owned the shit out of that role and was the single reason the character of Willy Wonka became so iconic in the first place, but it never sat right with me. It was filled with terrible characters doing terrible things to each other wrapped up in a terrible message, which wouldn't be so bad if Willy Wonka wasn't specifically trying to impart a moral to its intended young audiences, as children's movies tend to do, much to the detriment of society at large. 

Legacy of the Twelve Colonies Volume III: Battlestar Galactica... The Occupy New Caprica Movement

In the wake of 9/11, the Terrorist became the bogeyman de jour. One of the most defining characteristics of this new threat was their propensity for using suicide bombers. It's a difficult mindset to understand and one typically associated with the evil hordes threatening to kick down our front doors. So it was all the more striking for a sci-fi show made by Western Devils just a few years after the single most iconic terrorist act in modern history to empathize--quite effectively--with what amounts to a terrorist movement employing suicide bombers against the enemy.

Granted, Battlestar Galactica does give us more meat to sink our teeth into in terms of contextualizing the extreme measures the survivors of humanity are willing to resort to in order to fight back against their cybernetic oppressors than, say, nobodies favourite real-life assholes in al-Qaeda. At the outset of Season 3, we're presented with a scenario and point of view that makes such methods more easy to swallow, but that in itself is a pretty incredible feat considering the political landscape both then and now. Ask anybody in the Western world--especially residents of the good 'ol US of A--in the wake of the 9/11 attacks whether they could ever fathom what it would take for somebody to consider going to such extremes, and what few answers you would have been able to remember after waking up in the hospital three days later probably wouldn't have offered much insight into that sort of mindset. For most people living in modern times, it's a nearly unfathomable thought experiment. So to have it tackled in a mature and nuanced way in a sci-fi show about humanity's struggle against annihilation at the hands of usually pretty sexy murder-bots is a feat unto itself.

A Bridge of Spies Too Far: The Spielberg Effect

Steven Spielberg is a tough act to follow. Perhaps especially for Steven Spielberg. It's not just that he's an iconic director who has more classic films on his resume than arguably any other director working in Hollywood today. It's not just that he was one of the fathers of the modern blockbuster, leaving an indelible mark in the landscape of motion pictures. It's not just that he's a heavyweight in the industry, capable of influencing the notoriously insular MPAA into developing an entirely new rating for movies in the United States in between PG and R, the now-popular PG-13.

It's all of that combined plus the fact that he makes it seem so effortless.

As we would say in the '90s (often and with increasing vigour), he's all that and a bag of chips. Steven Spielberg has reached a level of excellence that few of us could ever hope to achieve. Whenever I talk about my favourite directors, Spielberg doesn't usually come up, but not because he's not one of my favourites; it's because his inclusion on the list is a given. I don' have a list of favourite directors; I have a list of favourite directors besides Spielberg. And I think this is true for a lot of people.

Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Lucas... Just Double Checking My Midi-Chlorian Count

In preparation for Star Wars: The Force Awakens, I made sure that in the week leading up to its release that I watched the first six movies as well as Tartakovsky's oft-overlooked Star Wars: Clone Wars show. For as long as I can remember, Star Wars has been a central part of my cultural vocabulary and an essential pillar of my own personal artistic cannon. Growing up on the margins of most social groups, the sci-fi genre was appealing because one of its core messages was always one of hope. Star Wars offered a different sense of hope than, say, the vision of the future that Gene Roddenberry gave us with Star Trek. The hope that Star Wars offered was the hope that for each of us there was the potential of completing our own version of the Hero's Journey: emerging from obscurity to stand against an unfathomably evil force and fighting back for the good of innocent people, your own survival, or to win a moral victory. It also offered the hope that no matter how badly you fuck up, like, say, making out with your own sister, you could still become a badass dressed in black walking the path of the righteous man.

In a lot of ways, Star Wars has become, both for myself and a substantial and increasing subset of the general population more than a series of movies--and video games and books and comic books and memorabilia of every variety that humankind can conceive of. It has become an icon, a cultural phenomenon that binds us and inspires us every bit as surely as the Force. Culture is a funny thing. Seemingly insubstantial artefacts are imbued with extreme significance, but as we validate that significance, we internalize it. Star Wars, like any other cultural text, is both completely irrelevant in the Grand Scheme of Things but intensely important on a very personal level and even on a macro societal level because it is integrated into both who we are and how we interact with each other. Being a fan of something isn't just some silly thing people do to pass the time and lower their chances of getting laid (by someone who isn't their sister); it's a part of their identity.

Oscars Buzzed. I'd Like to Thank the Academy... No Wait, the Opposite of That...

The closest thing I have to a religion is movies. I don't adhere to any systems of spirituality because, frankly, there isn't a single one that is based on even the tiniest shred of verifiable evidence. That isn't to say I don't experience moments of transcendence or embrace cultural systems that do; I'm just a lot more honest about it than a lot of people. I find cultural instances of transcendence in the written word, video games, and mostly movies. I'm not sure why I developed such an affinity for movies. Perhaps part of it based on the fact that out of all forms of media, movies most closely reflect the way that human beings process the world around us. The point is that award shows are the closest thing I have to a High Holy Days, and I have completely abandoned even the pretense of observing them.

I wish the Oscars actually mattered, but it seems like the organizers do everything in their power to turn potential adherents away. Aside from the fact that the Oscars are boring as shit, the whole voting process is a giant clusterfuck. Right now it's a political system, which means it's based mostly on popularity and marketing campaigns and money. Which is fine if that's the system they want to employ. It's just that the results from one year to the next aren't comparable on any meaningful level, and so the outcome doesn't really hold a lot of value. Which wouldn't be so bad, if the Oscars didn't have the pretense of providing some meaningful metric. They're a popularity contest posing as a meritocracy, and it's that gap between what they are and what they purport themselves to be that's the problem.

Valentine's Day... Bummer

It's the end of the world the world as
we know it and I feel... witty and
charming with an offbeat sense
of humour, like always.

For those of you not hip to the proper channels, you might not be aware of your impending doom. Which is probably for the best, because in cases of apocalyptic goings-on, the old adage that ignorance is bliss probably rings the truest. I know that a lot of us had big plans for the future--starting up that surgery-for-hire business, drinking from the skull of Elvis Presley to enhance our virility, burying all of those dead bodies that we've been storing in our basements all winter.

But unfortunately, we will never have the chance to do any of that stuff.

Bill Murray uncovered the truth back in 1989. In Ghostbusters II, the sequel that the world didn't realize it needed until it was too late, Bill Murray reprises his role as the eccentric Dr. Peter Venkman, who is no longer ghostbusting and is instead hosting a low-budget cable talk show. While interviewing a couple of totally legit psychics (including Shia LaBeouf's movie dad from Transformers) he gets a pretty specific date for the end of the world from Danny DeVito's girlfriend from Twins.

February 14, 2016.

If there's one thing that Bill Murray is known for it is ferreting out the truth from the darkest reaches of the universe and the minds of alien abductees. And showing up randomly in the middle of zombie apocalypses. So let's hope that this turns out to be one of those.

On the bright side, nothing is surer to get those juices flowing the the End of Everything as We Know It. If history has taught us anything it's that there's no more potent aphrodisiac for the human species than death and destruction on an epic scale. So come Valentine's day this year, hold your loved one tight or stick close that seemingly uncrackable nut sure in the knowledge that though the end of the world is nigh, you're almost certain to get your dicks wet one last time before the whole thing comes crashing down.

    

There are Badasses and Then There are Legendary Badasses. Thank You, Riddick, for this Bounty We are About to Receive.

Out of all of the badasses that have ever appeared on film, Richard B. Riddick is certainly one of the most resilient. This guy takes a licking like nobody's business, but refuses to give up no matter how ridiculously and outlandishly the odds seem to be against him. And with director David Twohy, you can bet your hover bike that the odds, like everything else in his films, will almost certainly be ridiculous and outlandish. Riddick is a walking contradiction of sorts, because when he puts his mind--and his pecs-- to it, he seems like an unstoppable force of nature, but somehow he always seems to find himself in trouble all the way up to his gloriously bald, badass head that you could probably bend sheet metal on if that was the sort of thing that floated your boat.

In that way, Riddick is a lot like Rocky, in that they're both established as champions yet always seem to be the underdog in their own narratives. The Rocky series went through great lengths with each installment to knock its titular pugilist down enough pegs so that he was forced to crawl his way back to the top, and Riddick, it seems, is no different. His third time out, now simply titled Riddick, sees the escaped convict and murderer turned leader of an intergalactic death cult stranded on a random planet fighting for survival against alien dogs, alien giant scorpions, and (technically) alien bounty hunters.

By Grabthar's Hammer, by the Suns of Worvan, You Shall be Mourned

There is truly only one way to describe the emotional reaction I felt upon hearing about Alan Rickman's death when I awoke on January 14: it felt like someone had cut my heart out with a spoon. With the world still reeling from the loss of iconic singer and codpiece aficionado David Bowie just days earlier, it seemed almost too much to bear to lose the iconic actor as well. It seemed all the more surreal when it was revealed that both Bowie and Rickman had both died of cancer at the age of sixty-nine. It seemed that sixty-nine was quickly becoming the new twenty-three (and the fact that sixty-nine is a multiple of twenty three didn't help to make conspiracy theorists any less insufferable).

Alan Rickman was instantly recognizable with his trademark deep voice that itself was worth the price of admission to any movie he was in as well as, you know, his general ability to kick ass in any role he tackled. He was a stand out in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves as the cartoonishly evil Sheriff of Nottingham, and this coming from a man who actually loves Prince of Thieves completely unironically. Whether threatening to cut Kevin Costner's heart out with a spoon, calling off Christmas, or doing the slow turnaround to one of his fellow lords and telling him to "Shut up, you twit!" Rickman was eminently watchable and is still quoted prominently amongst my family to this day in nearly every social interaction.