What the Hell Are You?

So I was talking to Andy, an old work buddy of mine on Facebook (yeah, apparently that's still a "thing") and he says he wants to get together sometime and "hang out."  Knowing Andy I know that "hanging out" in his mind means doing blow off the tits of some strippers, killing some homeless people and dumping their mutilated bodies in the river after eating their genitals to increase our sexual prowess, followed by a circle jerk with him and five of his closest crackhead friends during which time we all cum on a piece of bread, pass it to the left when finished and then everyone chows down.

"So how about it, Nathan?" Andy says.

"I don't know, Andy.  How about we go catch a movie instead?"

"Fine, whatever you pussy.  How about we go catch this movie Predators, biatch?"

"That sounds like a mutually agreeable heterosexual male bonding ritual," I said.

When I got to the theatre I found Andy yelling at the manager.  Turns out he thought Predators was about perverts in nondescript, unmarked vehicles stalking children waiting for the right time to strike, a subject Andy has a special interest in.  He was yelling at the manager about "false advertising" and "entrapment."  After twenty minutes Andy's friends and I were able to calm him down and we grabbed a seat in the theatres to see about the (as far as we know) non-child molesting Predators.  You know, the aliens with the cloaking devices, and crazy Wolverine-style blades, and crazy awesome dreads.

So obviously I wasn't going into this movie expecting it to be a cinematic masterpiece.  I didn't even have high hopes that Predators would succeed in any memorable way as an action showpiece.  I'm a total diehard fan of the original Predator made all the way back in 1987.  I mean that was Arnold Schwarzenegger during his action glory days and Predator was classic 1980's testosterone-filled, impossibly big gun toting, ridiculously repeatable one-liner delivering, gloriously gore-laced, action packed awesomeness.  I mean the magic from that film and others like it just can't be captured again.  There was some mix of ridiculousness and hardcore action that just seems to be lost to filmmakers these days, just like the methods of building without cranes power tools are lost in the sands of time.  There was something (maybe the minimum 40-inch biceps requirement) about Predator that just made it eternally cool.

I will say I wasn't totally right about Predators, but neither was I wrong.  I won't say that there was the same kind of magic that the original had that will make it transcend others in the genre like the original.  What I can say about Predators is: it was what it was.  This statement may seem kind of vague and a little bland, but then so is the movie it describes.

The plot follows a group of apparent badasses and Topher Grace for some reason who are dropped quite violently into the middle of the jungle.  These strangers are mostly military with a mix of mercenary, cartel enforcer and death row con mixed in for good measure.  With no memory of how they ended up in this jungle they quickly discover that they are being hunted by persons unknown.  They quickly realize that A) they are no longer on planet Earth and B) they are being hunted by a group of aliens who live for the hunt.  As they are slowly killed off one by one they formulate a plan of escape involving an alien spaceship and a final, climactic showdown with even bigger, more badass Predators than ever before.

There's not much I can really say about this movie.  It was a pretty standard group-of-strangers-from-different-backgrounds-who-must-grudgingly-work-together-to-survive scenario.  There was an adequate amount of action and gore but nothing really memorable.  There was some effort made to differentiate the characters but they turned out as little more than slightly amusing cliches, like the tough, solitary leader, the token black guy, the token woman, the token Hispanic, the token Asian who ends up wielding (surprise, surprise) a samurai sword, and the comic relief.  I mean it was amusing and all, but only two days after watching the movie and it's already starting to fade in my memory.  This could be chalked up to my terrible memory brought on by a lack of Vitamin E in my diet, an excess of alcohol, and brain damage brought on by numerous blows to the head... sorry I forgot what my point here was.

I wasn't sure how or if I was going to buy Adrien Brody as the tough guy lead and basically the new Schwarzenegger and to be honest I'm still not sure.  Just when he was starting to convince me he'd spout some really obvious tough guy dialogue in his gruff, supposedly tough guy voice and he'd lose credibility with me.  It's not about sounding tough, it's about exuding toughness, whether it be real or not and in my mind Brody just does not exude that toughness, at least not in this movie.  Or at least not consistently.   One thing I will say is that in the final showdown when Brody was shirtless he looked fucking huge.  He's got kind of a lankier build but he looked like he'd been hitting the gym pretty hard and damn I was impressed... in a totally heterosexual way of course. (A-hem)  I've always loved Danny Trejo and I'm glad to see him getting more work in higher profile projects.  Can't wait for Machete.  Topher Grace was, of course, the comic relief but most of the movie he just felt out of place.  There was a really weird and sloppily handled turn for his character late, late in the movie where he actually got to do something a little darker, but overall I could have taken of left him.  Honourable mention goes out to Walton Goggins who plays a convict who was two days away from his execution and if Grace's character had been left out entirely this guy would have easily covered the humour.  It wasn't just his lines which were funny ("Man let me tell you, if I get out of here... I'm going to do so much cocaine.  I'm going to rape so many bitches.  Yeah it's after 5:00.  Time to do some coke and rape some bitches.") but his delivery of them.  Alice Braga did a competent job as well, but really the only reason I mentioned her is so that I have some pretext to show some pictures.

  The predators themselves were handled very well and shown very sparingly which worked well.  They all had slight variations in their armour to differentiate them but they remained true to the original look.  The new bigger predators (aparently there's some racial tension amongst these gentle giants) looked pretty cool when one was finally unmasked at the very end and they felt threatening enough.  It just seems now that they're getting a little too easy to kill.  I mean in the original they have som much trouble dealing with just one, but these guys manage to take out a total of three.  Not a huge amount, but still. 

Another thing I liked was that that the characters were so quick to leave each other behind for the good of the group.  That was a fantastic touch.  It's so fucking annoying in movies when the characters walk into a trap so obvious even they know it's a trap and get themselves into even more trouble.  In this movie not only did they leave each other behind when it was pretty clear that they were fucked, sometimes they even but each other out of their misery.  You know, with a bullet.

There were lots of nods to the original Predator, which didn't really help this movie, but they were still cool.  Braga's character goes over a report that was obiously a direct reference to Schwarzenegger's charcter Dutch.  Then there was Adrian Brody covered in mud taking on a predator with low-tech means.  Then I suppose there's the whole jungle setting.  There was a predator ripping a dude's spine and attatched skull out of his victim's body, but I'm pretty sure Ozzy Osbourne did that at a concert once years ago.  Of course that could also be the acid talking.  Then there was the scene where Louis Ozawa Changchien's character stays behind to face this nameless terror alone with only sword for no aparent reason much like Billy (OK, exactly like Billy) from the first movie.  Although this time the the dude actually brings down a predator in a pretty cool fight, although at the cost of his own life.  Oh yeah, ths SPOILER ALERT thing.  I keep forgetting.

So overall, even though my friend Andy was expecting a much different, more risque movie, Predators was alright.  It was a highly forgetable piece of action fluff, that while moderately entertaining offers almost nothing memorable or highly unique.  It is another name on a long list of disappointing movies this season, but what can you expect when it's directed by a guy named Nimrod?  (I kid, I kid)  Also, what the hell was Laurence Fishburne doing in there?  Aside from some needless exposition his character serves no real purpose.  Just like this sentence (which is technically just a sentence fragment).  Really makes you think.  I give Predators a 5.5/10 = One Decapitated Alien Hunter's Head With A Mouth Like A Mutated, Murderous Vagina

What in the Name of Odin's Beard is Going on Marvel?

Anybody with even the slightest interest in the Marvel universe has probably heard about the propsed Avengers movie that's supposed to come out in the next couple of years.  Unless of course you're an evil dictator hiding out under a rock in the middle of the desert.  And even then you'd have some inkling.  The cool thing is that there a whole battery of movies like Iron Man 1&2, The Incredible Hulk, and the upcoming Thor and Captain America that are building towards the Avengers movie with little cameos and other subtle nods. 

Now of course it's the wet dream of a lot of fanboys out there to see all the actors from these movies appear in the Avengers movie project together, which would be totally awesome.  But somehow, for some reason Marvel is fucking the whole thing up.  I've been following the story over at JoBlo.com for the past couple of days and you can read about it here.  Now I don't know the whole story (nobody ever does) but from the comments I've read the good folks over at Marvel seem to be behaving like a bunch of douchebags.  The comments I have read make it seem like Marvel is caught up in Ed Norton's reputation for being reputedly as difficult to work with as an albino rhinoceros in heat.  But it seems far more likely that the production is trying to cut costs.  Paying a big A-list actor top dollar for twenty minutes of screen time may not be the most financially logical course to take I suppose.

But I mean it's such bullshit.  If you're going to make a decision just fucking make a decision.  Call it what it is.  I mean you want to save money, just say you want to save money.  Don't attack a man's character publically and prey on this mythology of Norton's difficulty to work with.  Maybe there is some truth to it, I mean I've heard a few rumours especially regarding American History X (kick-ass movie by the way), but I mean if he was really that terrible then explain to me how the hell he still gets work.  I mean what is so hard about saying Bruce Banner's part in the movie will be very small, you're too cheap to pay a phenomenal actor to play the part, and you want to shit all over your fans just for fun because you know they'll keep coming back no matter what.  And from what I've seen it's Marvel who's coming off as a bunch of ass clowns in this scenario.  I mean Norton's response on facebook makes him look like a rational, well-spoken professional, quite the contrast to the folks over at Marvel.  It really is a shame that it's just a matter of money that could potentially fuck up what could have been one of the greatest super hero flicks of our generation.

 But hey, even if we don't get Ed Norton -one of the hands down best actors in Hollywood today-at least we still have the superior "acting skills" of Scarlett Johansson.

Sorry, I got distracted, what was this article about again?

 

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...