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Borat!

Update: the video, which was the trailer for the upcoming Borat movie has been removed. Frankly, this is idiotic. If you’re a movie company, or a band, or anything that relies upon buzz and lots of consumers for your product, you want people to be excited about your product. You want them to be talking about it and spreading the word.

So fuck you, Borat distributors. You shortsighted idiots, you.

Snakes on a Plane 2 rumors

An anonymous e-mail scooper reported to the site that their friend who works at a film production company in Hollywood has the job that requires him to searching the Motion Picture Association of America’s title registry for upcoming movies, in order to see any conflicts with current or pending titles.

Don’t you love news stories that involved anonymous e-mails, rumors, and facts that came from a “friend”?

Well supposedly a recent search has turned up the following registered movie names: Snakes on a Boat, Snakes on a Train, Snakes on a Plane 2, More Snakes on a Plane, and Snakes in Space.

My vote is for Snakes on ANOTHER Motherf*in Plane! as the sequel title.

I don’t think it has aged well, but I saw it at an opportune time (closely after my own undergrad graduation) and it struck a chord. Plus, great cast, good script, intelligent, kooky. Probably too talky to be anything more than a trinket, but I still like it. Now it’s getting the Criterion treatment.

Paralyzed by postgraduation ennui, a group of college friends remain on campus, patching together a community for themselves in order to deny the real-world futures awaiting them. Academy Award–nominated screenwriter Noah Baumbach’s hilarious and touching directorial debut was one of the highlights of the American independent film scene of the nineties, speaking directly to a generation of adults-to-be unable to reconcile their hermetic educational experience with workaday responsibility, and posing the eternal question, where do we go from here? Stingingly funny and incisive, Baumbach’s breakthrough features endlessly quotable dialogue, delivered by a stellar ensemble cast.

I watch a ton of movies, so I’ll try to keep the review to headline-level complexity.

Bean, the Movie – 3/5. It’s some of the better bits from the TV show. If it’s your first introduction to Bean, it’s hiliarious, but otherwise unnecessary.

The Black Adder, Season 1 – 3/5. I think you have to both appreciate British history and cheesy sitcoms to really enjoy this. Rowan Atkinson is a spedcial kind of talent, that’s for sure.

Chungking Express – 4/5. Wong Kar Wai’s first crossover movie, and it’s a good one. Two movies, actually, with a split in the middle and only a bit of crossover. Tony Leung and Faye Wong star.

City of God – 4/5. Boyz in the Hood, if the Hood is Rio. Aside from the crushing poverty and rampant violence, one of the most striking things of the movie is how beautiful Brazillians are.

The Cooler – 4/5. Quirky, enjoyable. It’s supposed to be W.H. Macy’s movie, but Alec Baldwin steals the show. The movie follows a guy whose luck is so bad that he is employed by a casino to cool off anyone who is winning by too much. And then he falls in love…

Gentleman’s Agreement – 2/5. Featuring a so-young-as-to-be-unrecognizable Gregory Peck, this movie is a heavy handed diatribe on the evils of antisemitism. Antisemitism is bad! Bad, bad, bad! As a message, it’s great. As a movie, this is dogshit.

Gladiator – 1/5. I hated it in the theatres, I still hate it. Ridley Scott and his awful direction should stick to commercials or glacially paced scifi horror movies. Anyone who pulls the 12fps/48fps directorial bullshit during a fight scene to show the “ebb and flow” of the action deserves to be taken behind the NYU woodshed.

Good Night, and Good Luck – 4/5. Good movie, well told. Some annoying indie schtick (the jazz interludes). Stratham’s role of a lifetime.

Irma Vep – 4/5. Gonzo filmmaking plus satire of French New Wave cinema. Maggie Cheung is awesome in this role written specifically for her by her ex-husband. Think: Being John Malkovich meets In the Presence of a Clown meets Shadow of the Vampire.

La Femme Nikita – 5/5. French original, not shitty American remake. Still Luc Besson’s best, with an edginess not recently captured. I can’t believe they made a TV series out of what is essentially an indictment of the sociopathy of governments.

Matchstick Men – 2/5. Was a 4 right up until the bullshit ending. Grifters getting grifted was good, but don’t fucking show the post-mortem, particularly when it’s just to rescue the reputation of an actress who wants a big time Hollywood career show the grifter with a heart of gold angle. Plus, upon reflection, the movie is told in a fundamentally dishonest way, which is unfair to the audience.

Maverick – 4/5. Good, clean fun, with good acting and rapport. They really needed to do a Maverick 2, but I think Garner’s health and the animosity between Foster and Gibson probably short circuited that.

MST3K: The Wild World of Batwoman – 2/5. Even the MST3K boys couldn’t save this thing. Dear FSM, it’s awful. Best line: “Hello, college Republicans”… guess you had to be there.

The Mummy – 2/5. Mindless crap action. Bonus: Rachel Weisz, not as bad as The Mummy Returns.

My Summer of Love – 2/5. I have no idea what makes this movie remarkable other than a lesbian angle and that its competence won it a BAFTA award. It’s got some potential and cute moments, but overall it feels strained, awkward, and amateurish. Emily Booth could be a doppelganger for Fiona Apple, and may make a career out of this movie business.

Phantom of the Opera – 2/5. It has pretty costumes, shitty music, a retarded plot, and horrid acting.

Romance – 2/5. French existentialism with “shocking” graphic sexual content. Supposedly an exploration of need, desire, love, and sex… movie would have been a lot better – and shorter – if the protagonist had dumped her boyfriend in the first 20 minutes.

Stargate – 3/5. It’s a crap movie, but it’s fun. Too bad it was successful, because it directly lead to the decline of Western civilization via ID4 and Godzilla.

Uzumaki – 1/5. Japanese horror film. Two of earlier examples of which, Ringu and Ju-on, have been remade as Hollywood thrillers The Ring and The Grudge. Uzumaki will not be a third. It’s a cheese fest with Saturday night made-for-TV movie scare attempts. It feels like it had a budget of about $20 and a student film crew headed by the cliched gotcha! direction of M. Night Shyamalamadingdong.

… only I can’t decide on a third. Given the theme, probably something French. Feel free to drop suggestions in the comments.

1. Ikiru
2. The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit
3. ___

I really need to get out of this ennui phase. Maybe Office Space would end the minifest on a high note, and it’s not like Kurosawa doesn’t need some counterbalancing.

Wow, this looks even worse than I expected. How is this not straight to video? It looks like they spent approximately $3.48 on the CGI budget.

Then again… who doesn’t want to see snakes on a plane?

A new contender for worst. movie. ever! has just arisen in this big screen treatment of the TV series Welcome Back Kotter, starring Ice Cube.

Dimension Films has completed a deal to turn the ABC series “Welcome Back, Kotter” into a feature film, with Ice Cube producing and playing the title character.

I’m fairly certain I have an elective colonoscopy scheduled for the day this movie releases. It’ll be more fun than the movie.

The Aristocrats, in case you didn’t already know, is a famous joke. The joke in plain form is mildly amusing, but not great. In modern times, it has morphed into this grand epic that comedians tell each other in their oneupsmanship games at 3AM in the IHOP after the gig. The humor in the joke comes from the process, not the outcome. The journey, not the destination. And the process is all about shock.

Now, I’m going to spoil the “joke” if you keep reading. Instead of hiding it in spoiler markup, just skip the blockquote if you don’t want to know. Here goes:

A man, his wife, their son, their daughter and the family dog walk into a talent agent’s office and says “I’ve got a great act, audiences love us.”

The talent agent says, “Great, what do you do?”

[ and here's where the comedian shows their mettle, with their description of the act. Typically, this involves shit, piss, cum, fucking, fisting, incest, asses, dicks, pussies, and cunts. Typically. And that's just the first couple minutes. ]

At the end, the talent agent says “What do you call your act?”

The man says, with a big shit eating grin on his face (and a flourish) “The Aristocrats!”

I enjoy watching comedians just going at it. The 4/5 rating is not for The Aristocrats as released – it’s a pretty shitty documentary, probably a 2/5, but for the Aristocrats is actually for the almost unedited full tellings in the special features section of the DVD.

The comedians that most stood out to me were the intellectual ones, not the schticky ones. I thought the cream of the crop was Bob Saget, Kevin Pollack telling the joke as Christopher Walken, the South Park bit, Sarah Silverman (though admittedly my other brain might be clouding my judgement there), Taylor Nagron, George Carlin doing the intellectual angle, and Gilbert Godfried just going for it at the Hefner roast. Oh, and Doug Stanhope telling it to his infant. That was just precious. Oh, and Ron Jeremy too.

Good times, good times.

Here’s five words I thought I would never utter in sequence: Bob Saget is my hero.

Finally, a movie that I’m really looking forward to seeing. V for Vendetta is the perfect movie for these times – it’s my kind of aggressive civil libertarianism… revolution washed in the blood of the people fighting to free themselves from tyranny.

The people should not fear the government, the government should fear the people.

Alan Moore’s among my favorite writers, and this is his second best work (the first being Watchmen). Too bad it has Natalie “I can’t act” Portman in it, but otherwise, looks to be some good times. If you have the opportunity, I highly recommend the graphic novel upon which the movie is based.

He’s better than Chuck Norris! The Foley guys must’ve gone through an entire farm’s worth of celery on this one. I think there is more bone breakage there than actual limbs present.

Today’s transgression?

The disc they held in the queue yesterday, they put in the shipping queue today… to arrive Friday. I live 30 miles from their shipping center. It takes one day for shipped discs to arrive. This means that today, Tuesday, they have set the disc to be shipped on Thursday. Even if I’m being generous and ignore their previous actions, this means they aren’t shipping until Wednesday and expect a two-day transit … which they’ve never expected before.

Bitches.

Today’s transgression? They received two DVDs today, and mailed one in response. The other they’re holding onto until tomorrow. Or Wednesday. Maybe. Who knows? @#$! Fuckers.

Looks like the throttling has been increased recently. It’s getting lots more play in the press at any rate.

Manuel Villanueva realizes he has been getting a pretty good deal since he signed up for Netflix Inc.’s online DVD rental service 2 1/2 years ago, but he still feels shortchanged.

That’s because the $17.99 monthly fee that he pays to rent up to three DVDs at a time would amount to an even bigger bargain if the company didn’t penalize him for returning his movies so quickly.

Netflix typically sends about 13 movies per month to Villanueva’s home in Warren, Mich. — down from the 18 to 22 DVDs he once received before the company’s automated system identified him as a heavy renter and began delaying his shipments to protect its profits.

Treating customers paying the same amount of money differently just grates. If you offer “unlimited,” it damn well better be unlimited. Bitches.

Whomever first offers me a better deal gets my business. Hear that, Blockbuster?

Malena - 4/5

Malena is a beautiful picture without an overabundance of dialogue. It stars Monica Bellucci as the eponymous character, and her magnetic beauty dominates the movie – as it was intended to. Malena works on multiple levels – coming of age, budding sexuality, obsession, human cruelty – but it is primarily director Giuseppe Tornatore’s ode to his beloved Italy.

There’s a lot to like here. Beautifully shot, the easy symbology, the score, multiple points of interest thematically, humor, love … oh, and Monica Bellucci is nekkid. A lot. Full frontal nekkid, even (import version only). There’s something for everyone! Unless you’re into cock, in which case I think there’s half a ball at one point and the rest is up to your imagination. Me? I’ve got Monica. Hubba hubba.

You know, Bellucci probably deserves more credit as an actress than she typically receives. She takes some difficult, uncomfortable roles sometimes (see, e.g. Irreversible), and even here where her primary purpose is to be an unobtainable beauty there are a few excruciating moments. Bellucci and Jennifer Connelly are cut from the same cloth in that way. I’m not comparing their acting chops because, frankly, I can’t tell if Bellucci can act. It’s a language thing; gimme a couple movies, but I’m leaning toward “yes.” Then again, I haven’t seen Tears of the Sun. At any rate, Bellucci’s fearless and she does well at the uncomfortable situations. One of the better models-turned-actresses around. How’s that for damning with faint praise?

As mentioned previously, the symbology in Malena is shallow. Which is good for guys like me, because then we feel all smart but don’t have to actually strain ourselves. W00t! See, Malena is Italy and Italy is Malena. From jaw-dropping beauty to desperate, used, and reviled outcast to acceptance once the beauty has been pummelled – this is Italy from 1939 onward.

Of note: don’t pick up the New Line American release – it’s a far lesser version. They cut 15 minutes of the movie, mostly for the teen sexuality (not only the nekkidness, but a (non explicit) handjob in a theatre, some of the fantasy interludes, and other such imageries that pose a danger to the republic). Fuck them puritanical bitches and get ahold of the uncut import version. Tornatore fans, movie buffs, and onanistic pervs will thank me… not that those are mutually exclusive categories. As of today, there is no uncut American version to buy, so the import it is. As a humorous side note – on the import version, if you are watching with Korean subtitles… there naughty (pubic) bits are censored out with this big black dot. Hahahah!

Malena. A good, solid 4 of a movie. If you like the story, you’ll probably also like Tornatore’s Cinema Paradiso. Make sure you pronounce it “cheen-ee-mah” at the art house, or your beatnik cred will be revoked.

I was all ready to blame the new mail boy for screwing me over on my Netflix movies. Whereas before, I mailed the discs and get the new ones with only a one day lag, now Netflix is routinely throwing an extra day’s lag in there. I’ve mentioned this shifty behavior before, but I wasn’t sure of the culprit.

Well, it’s Netflix. Why? Because apparently, “unlimited” does not actually mean unlimited.

A large majority of our subscribers rent between 2-11 movies per month. The number of DVDs that you rent will vary based on a number of factors (See “Allocation, Delivery and Return of Rented DVDs” below). We provide a number of different subscription plans to accommodate a variety of movie watching preferences. Click on the “Your Account” link, located at the top of the pages of the Netflix Web site and see “View Membership Terms” for details on the various plans we offer. In our unlimited plans, we do not establish a monthly limit on the number of DVDs you can rent, however, the actual number of DVDs you rent in any month will vary based on a number of factors (See “Allocation, Delivery and Return of Rented DVDs” below).

There was even a lawsuit over this recently. You can still hold a DVD for an “unlimited” time – that part is still true, but your throughput is artificially limited by Netflix.

After the first set and using a basic 3-disc account, you could theoretically receive 24 movies in a 4-week period. This was my plan, or at least 20, since I figured I’d miss a Sat or two; after all, I’m a movie buff and I don’t subscribe to cable. Now, with this artificial extra day’s delay, they’re pretty much just flipping me the bird here. It’s a cheesy move on their part, and if they weren’t still providing me with decent value I’d cancel here and now. Do your jobs like an upstanding corporate citizen, bitches. Gimme mah movies!