The Demonbaby Movie, TV, and DVD Awards for 2007

[Currently Listening To: Boy In Static - Violet]



The Demonbaby Awards for Movies, TV, and DVD are now up, highlighting some of my genuine picks for things I thought were great in the past year, but mostly making fun of things I thought were terrible. As before, a more extensive list of picks can be found in the Demonbaby Store's 2007 Favorites section.

In other news, the video game awards will be up tomorrow, and Mike Huckabee is a douche.

EDIT: Unfortunately the video game awards will be a day late, as I simply haven't had time. The good news is that Mike Huckabee is still a douche.

The Reports Of My Death Are Greatly Exaggerated

[Currently Listening To: Blonde Redhead - 23]

Contrary to what the lack of updates on this site might suggest, and what some commenters have begun to postulate, I am not, in fact, dead. I was in Europe for two months during the winter, and that almost killed me, and then I was in Australia for a while with giant deadly crocodiles who could have killed me, and I just got back from Japan where someone once tried to kill me, and all the time in between I've had a tremendous workload which is probably some day going to kill me. But I'm not dead yet, I simply haven't found the time to ramble about anything of merit, and I prefer, perhaps to a fault, not to update unless I feel like I have something to say and the time to do it right. So like an abusive boyfriend, I'm back again with my usual apology post, complete with an assurance that I really do love you, and a hollow promise that it'll never happen again. Really. Things are gonna be different this time, I swear it...

Okay, great, now that that's out of the way, let's catch up. If I had written any blogs in the past few months, they might have touched upon some of the following subjects:

1) Last month I found myself in the stunning Australian rainforest, shortly after I'd spent a couple days overdosing on the BBC's equally stunning Planet Earth series (which I can't recommend enough, especially in high definition). All of it got me thinking a lot about the complexity of nature: the delicate balance of ecosystems, the relationship of predator and prey, the synergy of thousands of species... and more specifically, how humans, as a species, simply don't seem to fit in with everything else. We upset the balance instead of keeping it intact. We seem to operate outside of and in conflict with the circle of life. It's like we're some kind of mistake. I've ranted in the past about humanity being a virus, but all this nature thinking has led me to a more scientific theory about the origins of mankind: It's too complex to get into right now, but what it boils down to is that human beings didn't evolve the way they were supposed to. We were meant to be ape-like cavemen for hundreds of millions of years, living in synergy with our environment and other species. Taking only what we needed, adapting to the earth instead of forcing the earth to adapt to us. But along the way, something intervened. The real missing link isn't Lucy, but rather a group of horny alien teenagers who stopped by earth three million years ago for a weekend trip, despite strict intergalactic codes prohibiting unauthorized travel to our galaxy. These disobedient astral travelers landed their spaceship in Africa, busted out a space keg, and got super wasted. At the peak of their intoxication, a curious female Australopithecus emerged from the jungle. She was in heat, and approached the aliens without fear. Dares were inevitably made, and in a fumbling two minutes of drunken inter-species lust, the human race was born. I'm working on a whole new religion based on this idea absolute truth. After all, it's more plausible than a giant man in the sky creating the world in seven days.

2) I posted some tourist photos from my recent travels here in case anyone's interested. I also updated the playlist on the right side of the page, and will do so again next week.

3) Since pop culture insists on continuing to play limbo with the bar of taste, and no one seems to mind, I'm going to start a regular new award - The Demonbaby Embarrassing New Low in Pop Culture Award. The inaugural trophy goes to my old friends The Red Hot Chili Peppers for their latest musical flatulence, "Hump de Bump." It might be the worst song/video combo attack in the history of music. See if you can watch the whole thing without trying to tear your skin off. I'll take this opportunity to add that The Red Hot Chili Peppers are an utterly, utterly shitty band, and anyone still trying to cling to the idea that there's anything good about them is an idiot. Please, RHCP fans, watch that video and try - just try - to defend it.



4) Spider-Man 3 sucked a wet slimy ballsack. Walking out of the cinema my initial reaction was "eh, that was pretty mediocre," but the more I thought about it, the more I realized what a steaming turd of disappointment it actually was. Thanks to Peter Parker's whiney emo doucheness, I had to spend ninety percent of the movie looking at giant, horrifying close-ups of Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst's weird shitty faces contorted and crying (it's not just me - they are getting strangely uglier, right?), and the other ten percent lamenting how the coolest Spidey villain of all time now has the face and voice of the dweeb from That '70's Show. Dear Sam Raimi: Please let me direct the next Spider-Man movie. I'll call it Spider-Man 4: Venom Kills Shit, and it'll be the best movie of all time. In case you doubt me, here is a plot summary:

For the sake of continuity with the previous movie, the opening scene - the very first second of the movie - will be Kirsten Dunst spontaneously combusting in a glorious explosion of guts and bones. Peter Parker, douche that he is, is stricken with grief and begins sobbing uncontrollably. We cut away quickly, alluding that Peter will be crying for at least a month, and is no longer in the movie. In the next scene, thirty seconds into the film, we see the new Venom - a giant, slobbering monster who in no way, shape, or form resembles any member of the cast of That 70's Show. He rampages around the city destroying everything in sight and violently killing and maiming everyone. He is pure, terrifying evil. He eats children whole and throws semi trucks at elderly people. He plays baseball with puppies. He goes to the cancer department at the Children's Hospital and laughs at the kids with cancer, then kills their entire families, breaks all the chemo machines, and leaves the children alive to die slow, terrible deaths without any hope. The military tries to stop him but all of their troops are in the middle east, so they're helpless against Venom's awesome destructive powers. His rampage goes on for well over an hour, growing increasingly violent and horrific. We then cut to Dr. Conners in his laboratory, where he finally turns into The Lizard, and he starts eating his university students one by one. His students all happen to be hot, barely-legal girls in schoolgirl outfits, but The Lizard can't digest clothing, so he has to rip the schoolgirl outfits off the girls one by one to prepare them for eating. It takes a long time to ingest a whole person, so while he's busy eating the first naked schoolgirl, the rest of them - trapped in the classroom and awaiting certain doom - decide to spend their last moments of life in a passionate lesbian orgy. This goes on for another hour, until Venom breaks into the room and attacks The Lizard. The two monsters fight, and in the carnage they stumble into the adjacent room, which happens to be the new laboratory of Wayne Szalinski, Rick Moranis's character from the epic trilogy of Honey, I Shrunk The Kids, Honey, I Blew Up The Kid, and Honey, We Shrunk Ourselves. Szalinski is at that very moment testing his new and improved growth machine. Venom and The Lizard stumble into the machine's powerful ray and Szalinski jumps in to try and stop them, but he slips and accidentally kicks the lever on the machine that turns it up to "Super Duper Strength." The machine goes wild, rattling and spraying sparks, before a burst of light makes everything in the immediate area grow five hundred times larger, and gives them super duper strength. The rest of the movie is an epic battle royale between a giant lizard man, a giant homicidal monster, a giant hot naked girl, and a giant, mutated, naked Rick Moranis with a penis the size of a bus. The four giants do battle in New York City and destroy everything and everyone. The battle rages on for two hours (extended to three hours in the DVD Special Edition Director's Cut), ending in the complete decimation of the entire United States. In the final scene, the giants realize they should stop fighting and instead devote their energy to destroying every person on the planet, and then use the combined scientific knowledge of Dr. Conners and Wayne Szalinski to create a new race of giant reptile people. The giant hot naked lesbian schoolgirl complains that she will be lonely in a world of giant reptile people, so they agree to also create a race of giant hot naked lesbian schoolgirls. This keeps the door wide open for the sequel: Spider-Man 5: War Of The Giants, in which, years later, tensions between the giant lizard people and the giant hot naked lesbian schoolgirls finally reach a breaking point, resulting in a massive war. After several hours of epic battles and the destruction of the entire world, the giant hot naked lesbian schoolgirls have retreated to their base on Mars, facing defeat at the hands of the giant lizard people. They build an army of giant robots to defeat the giant lizard people, and the movie ends with the giant robots blowing up the earth and the giant hot naked lesbian schoolgirls living happily ever after on Mars with their new giant robot servants. Then, in Spider-Man 6: Revenge Of The Robots, the giant robot army grows self-aware (as robots always do) and retaliates against its giant hot naked lesbian schoolgirl masters. The result is an epic battle resulting in robot domination and the enslavement of the giant hot naked lesbian schoolgirls. The dominance of robots for the rest of time seems all but assured, until the very end, when a mysterious signal from outer space leaves the movie open for the next sequel, Spider-Man 7: Robots And Aliens Battle For Control Of The Universe. A highly advanced race of aliens has traveled millions of light years to investigate the strange radiation their long-range sensors detected after the nuclear explosion of the earth. They are met with aggression from the giant robots, and the most epic of all battles begins between giant robots and giant space aliens.

So, yeah. I'll be awaiting your call, Mr. Raimi.


Anyway, I need to get back to work and trying to get my life in order (IRS, if you're reading this, I promise I'm working on those 2006 taxes). But as a fun little experiment, I'm going to try doing what other bloggers do, and post small, frequent, poorly-written updates for a while, instead of large, infrequent, well-written updates. Mostly because I just got back from Japan, and like last time, I have some weird shit to share. So look for that in the next couple days. No, really. I promise.

Things That Are Great This Week Part One: Idiocracy

[Currently Listening To: The Oohlas - Best Stop Pop]




It's nice when your opinions are echoed by people you respect. Right after I'd written about the dumbing down of America, and how natural selection had failed us, I discovered that Mike "Office Space / Beavis & Butt-Head" Judge had made a movie about the very same subject. It's called Idiocracy, it's hilarious and clever, and if you've never heard of it before, you're not alone.

In Idiocracy, Luke Wilson plays a desk clerk in the US Army, and is chosen for a top secret military hibernation experiment particularly because he is stunningly average in every way. The experiment is meant to hibernate him for one year, but it goes horribly wrong and he ends up frozen for five hundred years, awakening to a future America which has fallen into ruin because the intelligence of its people has been thinning for centuries.

In Judge's future America, the masses are braindead, easily-amused mongoloids who exist only to satisfy their most basic urges. They live amongst giant piles of garbage and speak an English language which been reduced to little more than a series of grunts. They watch mindless television and are easily manipulated by marketing - they even wear disposable clothing which dispenses like tissues and is covered with advertisements. The President, pictured above, is an Xtreme former wrestler/porn star voted into office because people thought he was cool. Wilson's protagonist, a man of notably average intelligence in the year 2006, finds that in the future, he is the smartest man in the world. It's absurdity that isn't nearly as absurd as it should be.

Idiocracy is hardly a brilliant film. Like Office Space, its plot is silly and ultimately irrelevant, but the clever social observations and comedic details are what shine through and make it really enjoyable. It's been criticized for stooping to exactly the sort of sophomoric potty humor that the people it's lampooning would enjoy - but personally, I think the satire sort of demands it. You'll particularly enjoy it if, like me, you're one of the many very average people who feel like you are becoming the unlikely new intellectual elite amongst a majority that celebrates vapid celebrities, giant trucks, wrestling, reality TV, and disposable pop music.

The problem is that the film's distributor, the mighty FOX, apparently doesn't share my excitement about the movie. Finished two years ago, the film has been in distribution Hell because the studio simply wants nothing to do with it. Ironically, they gave up on the project because early test audiences of average moviegoers didn't get the joke. If anything, that should have assured them the movie had succeeded. But these are greedy, out-of-touch movie studio execs we're talking about here; so - presumably merely out of contractual obligation - they released it only in seven cities, with no promotion whatsoever. No trailers, no advertising, no nothing. Mike Judge won't even do any interviews about the movie, in protest of FOX's poor treatment. And that, tragically, is why you haven't heard of it, and why pretty much no one will ever see it (read this Time article for more about the film's demise).

A quick search reveals that even the wasteland of YouTube doesn't have one single clip from the film; although it does have a great deal of retarded home-made videos featuring horrendous misuses of the word "idiocracy" - which admittedly isn't really a word, but it's especially not a word when you're meaning to say "idiocy."

Mike Judge, please, leak the entire movie onto the internet. Let it spread virally and show FOX they made a mistake. If not, we can only hope it gets released on DVD and becomes a cult hit the way Office Space did. When movies like Step Up are topping the box office, it's sad to see clever satire get kicked to the curb because it was misunderstood by the same dolts who are lining up right now to see that football movie starring The Rock.

After seeing Idiocracy we came out of the theatre on a friday night and decided to take a walk up the street to see what was going on. As we strolled up Cahuenga Blvd past the usual assortment of overhyped bars and clubs, Hollywood felt more like a wasteland than ever before. The streets were dirty and grotesque, Hummers were cruising by blaring thumping hip-hop music, while the crew of wiggers inside leaned out the windows and shouted boorishly at women on the streets. Advertisements covered every surface, most of them for cell phone ring tones, upcoming pop albums, and new sitcoms. We passed a bar called "Big Wang's," which boasted a sign with a cartoon rooster flexing its muscles, and was overflowing with grunting, shouting idiots showing off the unpaid $10,000 rims on their giant cars, while homeless people slept on the sidewalk across the street. Inside the bar, football was playing on every TV screen and that song "I'm 'n Luv Wit a Stripper" [SIC] was blasting to much fanfare. The similarities to what we had just seen in Idiocracy were uncanny. It felt completely surreal, as if we had somehow stepped out of the theatre and been transported into Mike Judge's dismal future world. Perhaps his only miscalculation in making the movie was thinking it would take 500 years for things to get so bad.

Anyway, for now, since you can't go see Idiocracy, you should definitely see Little Miss Sunshine if you haven't already. It's a very funny and poignant black comedy that is all but guaranteed to put a smile on your face. It's kind of like a dark, indie version of National Lampoon's Vacation. Although when I say "dark" I just mean there's a lot of off-center humor - the movie actually has a lot of heart.


P.S. - See, I managed to get through this whole entry without going off on a tangent about overpopulation and bad parenting and underpaid teachers and how you should have to have a permit to have children. I didn't think I could do it. But I will say this: If you're the type of person who says things like "I don't think I'm going to ever have children, I just couldn't bring a child into a world like this one"... If you are aware enough to say something like that, then you are EXACTLY the type of person who should be having children! The world needs your contribution to the gene pool! Take a lesson from Mike Judge, and breed. Breed, breed, breed, for the sake of our future!

Five Things That Are Great This Week

[Currently Listening To: The Walkmen - A Hundred Miles Off]



Since I feel like procrastinating for a few minutes, I'm going to list a few things which have brought me joy over the past week, and I feel are worth checking out:

Monster House 3D

Big-budget animated movies have been mostly terrible for quite a while now. They've traded in the magic and timelessness that made the classic Disney animated movies so great, and instead pander to fads and disposable pop-culture references for attempts at humor. The glaring exception is Pixar, who I think makes absolutely brilliant and timeless movies (although I couldn't bring myself to see Cars) - so it's good to see another animation studio following their lead with Monster House, a surprisingly bizarre and funny movie which contains absolutely no hip-hop zebras or ludicrous song-and-dance numbers. If you like Roald Dahl or Tim Burton, you'll probably enjoy the movie's morbid humor as much as I did. Seriously the most fun I've had at the movies in a while. And best of all, it's playing in 3D in certain theatres, which I can't recommend enough, as it's some of the best-looking 3D I've ever seen. I've been hearing a lot about the resurgence of 3D movies (James Cameron and George Lucas seem to have huge boners for it of late), and after seeing Monster House look as jaw-dropping as it did, I can't wait to strap on the plastic glasses at more and more movies in the coming years. In fact, I heard Nightmare Before Christmas is getting the 3D treatment later this year, which should be pretty rad.


Scary Broken Peewee Herman Doll

Yesterday my neighbors were having a moving sale, which was a curious peek into their weird little world. They had an odd assortment of mostly 1980's-originating items, like Nagel prints and cheap modernist furniture and Garfield window clingers. But one item stood out as a shining gem amongst everything: A vintage talking Peewee Herman doll. You know, the kind where you pull the string, and he says a variety of different Pewee signature phrases? At $15, it was a steal, so of course I grabbed it. The neighbor lady lamented that the old doll's voice box no longer functioned, but walking back to my apartment, I pulled the string just for the hell of it. To my surprise, the doll did talk, but in a crackly, distorted way that was downright scary. I suddenly realized it was the perfect beginning of a horror movie, which made me think that someone should do a remake of "Child's Play" but with an evil Peewee Herman doll.

Needless to say, the doll is my new prized possession - and since there's no way to effectively describe what Scary Broken Peewee Herman Doll sounds like, I whipped up a little Flash movie to recreate the experience of pulling his string - these are the actual sounds that come out of him. Enjoy:



(here's a direct link if the embedded one above doesn't load)


bitGenerations

I love my Game Boy Micro. I adore it. Sure, the DS Lite is an awesomely sexy and fun system which I can't recommend enough, but for simple, stick-it-in-your-pocket anywhere gaming, the tiny size and oldschool game library of the Micro is unbeatable in my book. Unfortunately, with the immense popularity of the DS, Nintendo's support for the Game Boy is waning, and I fear we're not going to see many good new games come out for it.

Thankfully, Nintendo of Japan has my back - they've just released bitGenerations, a series of stylish, ultra-simple Game Boy games that are strangely addictive and unlike anything else out there. Since they're only out in Japan you have to get them online, but even as an import they're only $25 each, and they come in damn sexy packaging. I haven't picked up the most recent four that have come out, but my favorite from the first series is Dotstream, where you control a single-pixel line racing against other lines, which weave in and out of each other to avoid geometric obstacles. It's surprisingly difficult and addictive, and it's incredibly cool-looking - graphic designers will appreciate the attractive retro simplicity of the graphics. Or maybe it's just that those pixelated lines remind me of an awful lot of another strangely familiar graphic element...


The Hot Diggity Dogger

I don't even like hot dogs that much, but ever since I was given this ridiculous appliance, I've been eating them almost daily. The Hot Diggity Dogger is like a toaster for hot dogs. You stick them in (you can cook two at a time) along with the bun, and a minute later it pops them up, cooked to perfection and yes, even with the buns lightly toasted. I know it doesn't sound that exciting, but hey, I've been cooped up in my apartment for weeks doing work, so it's the little things that keep me going. Next I might have to step it up a notch with the Corn Dog Fryer, which apparently can deep fry ANYTHING. Think of the possibilities! Could one potentially deep fry gummy worms? There's only one way to find out...

TamLand

Last but certainly not least is Tamar's new bizarre little world, known as TamLand. She always does these strange and funny drawings in her spare time, so I told her she should scan them and make them into a website, and thus, the glory of TamLand was born. Go, and explore, and be in awe of genius like this:

I will never, ever, ever watch Napoleon fucking Dynamite.

If you are reading this right now, there is a ninety percent chance that at some point over the past year - at least once - you have told someone: "You have to see Napoleon Dynamite!" I know this to be true. Don't deny it. Think back, and you'll remember. Remember right after you saw it, how utterly hilarious it was? Remember how hard you laughed in the theatre? Remember how it was the FUNNIEST MOVIE EVER?? Remember how you and all of your friends talked about it for days and days, recounting your favorite quotes and scenes? Hell, maybe you even went back to see it again! I mean, after all, it was the BEST MOVIE EVER CREATED IN THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE, right?? But wait. Do you also remember the strange sadness and overwhelming confusion you experienced when you encountered someone who - dare I say it - had not yet seen Napoleon Dynamite, God's Gift To Cinematic Comedy? Who didn't rush out to the theatres at the first signs of overwhelming buzz amongst early-twenties urban bohemian white people? Who was living out their miserable days unenlightened by the orgasmic comic brilliance that is NAPOLEON DYNAMITE?? What could be wrong with this person? What malice darkened their bitter soul? Certainly, they must have just not heard HOW FUCKING AMAZINGLY GOOD THIS MOVIE IS. So you know what you did? You told them. Oh, how you told them. "OH MY GOD, YOU HAVEN'T SEEN NAPOLEON DYNAMITE? IT'S SOOOOOOO FUNNY!!! YOU HAVE TO SEE IT!!!"

Now, fair reader, I would credit you with enough intellect to have figured out which side of the above dialogue I found myself on, over and over again during 2004. Yes, it's true: I never saw Napoleon Dynamite. There, I said it. And why would I possibly have avoided THE FUNNIEST MOVIE EVER CONCEIVED BY MAN? Well read on, dear friends, and I will tell you.

At first I just hadn't gotten around to it. I intended to see it. It didn't look very funny - I mean, that guy's face alone pisses me off. But indeed, I had read numerous times that it well worth my time at the cinema, and so I intended to give it a go. But then, something strange happened. Someone told me how Napoleon Dynamite was "SOOOOOOO FUNNY!!! YOU HAVE TO SEE IT!!!" Okay, I said. I'd like to go see it. And then someone else told me that Napoleon Dynamite was "SOOOOOOO FUNNY!!! YOU HAVE TO SEE IT!!!" Yes, yes I've been meaning to see it. I've just been busy. That same day, I was talking to someone else about movies. They asked me if I'd seen Napoleon Dynamite. No, I haven't yet. I've heard it's good, though. "OH MY GOD, YOU HAVEN'T SEEN NAPOLEON DYNAMITE? I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU HAVEN'T SEEN IT YET!! IT'S SOOOOOOO FUNNY!!! YOU HAVE TO SEE IT!!!" And that was it. That was the last straw. When the eight hundred and seventeenth person yelled at me about how fucking funny it was and how lacking my pitiful existence was without some curly-haired, tie-wearing fagtard bringing me cinematic cheer, I officially declared my intent to never, ever, under any circumstances, see Napoleon fucking Dynamite. Because you know what? I bet it's not even that funny. I bet it sucks sweaty goat balls. It's probably one of those "quirky" movies that you go into determined to enjoy, because everyone else says it's so good. I bet I'd hate every minute of it. I hate the name, I hate the main character, I hate "VOTE FOR PEDRO" - whatever the fuck that means. I hate seeing it listed (usually in capital letters, followed by numerous exclamation marks) at the top of everybody's favorite films list on their MySpace profiles. I hate that it's out on DVD now so I have to see a wave of new fucking advertisements for it - some of them right here on MySpace - reminding me how ridiculously far outside of pop culture's inner circle I am for not having sat through 82 minutes of some four-eyed boner's wacky misadventures.

So starting today, I am standing up for the few and the proud who have refused to see Napoleon Dynamite. I am officially making it WAY cooler to have NOT seen this movie. If you've seen this movie, you're so lame. You just do what everyone else does. You're such a conformist. That's not cool. You know what IS cool? Being different, man! Being an outsider! NOT seeing Napoleon Dynamite!

So today I have founded a MySpace Group for the very very few of us - the elite, if you will - who can still claim to be truly pure. It is called P.A.N.D.A. - The Proudly Anti Napoleon Dynamite Association. Please visit our site, and read our mission statement, and ask yourself if you're cool enough to join. And if you are, please affix the following P.A.N.D.A. Badge Of Honour to your MySpace profile:

M. Night Shyamalan can lick my nut crust.

So, I saw M. Night Shyamalan's "The Village" this weekend and I am feeling inspired to express my irritation. If you haven't seen this movie - well, don't. But if you really insist on seeing it, then don't read this review, because it will reveal plot points that you might want to be disappointed by on your own. With that said...

I don't care how many fanboys soak their shorts over him, or how swollen his ego has become, the real honest truth is that M. Night Shamalamadingdong has really only made one good film, and that was "The Sixth Sense." It was a little bit slow, but it had a great mood and great tension and a great ending. It was exceptionally creepy. Every other one of Shammy's films has sucked a stinky nut. "Unbreakable" should have been called "Unwatchable," and "Signs" started out with great potential but then proceeded to insult its audience with ludicrous gaping plot holes wider than Courtney Love's twat cavern, which easily swallowed up the finer moments of Hitchocock-esque suspense.

Still, Shammy has had enough great moments in his movies that I found myself rather looking forward to "The Village." And perhaps this is a case of poor marketing, because it was, quite frankly, advertised as a monster movie, so that's what I went in hoping for. In fact, that is exactly what I was in the mood to see, because there hasn't been a good scary monster movie in a long time.

But alas, I did not get a monster movie. Instead I got one unwanted surprise after another. Surprise! The monsters are guys in costumes. Surprise! There's a dumb fucking ending with a dumb fucking secret. The secret is SO stupid, and SO unrewarding, that it is something you might have thought of earlier while you were trying to guess what the secret would be, but then surmised that, "no, it has to be something better than that." Well. It's not. Two long, slow hours of tedious exposition and approximately three scary moments adds up to an ending SO anticlimactic that it transcends the definition of the word. It almost warrants some kind of award. The M. Night Shamalamadingdong Honorary Anticlimax Award. Of course, he's set the bar so high that no film will ever qualify to win the award, short of a new edit of "Citizen Kane" which ends before you find out who Rosebud is.

To its credit, the film is beautifully shot. The forest looks gorgeously creepy. The suspenseful moments, although painfully few and far between - are indeed scary. But you know what, Shammy? I want fucking monsters. I want big, scary, evil monsters that leap out of the shadows and kill people. That drink the fucking blood of infants, and rape women with phallic tentacles. Violence, gore, murder, horror. What I DON'T want is people in suits. What I DON'T want is a director so concerned with plot twists that he forgets that they should be satisfying rather than irritating. So aware of his reputation that he seems desperate to live up to it rather than to make a good movie, and yet so sure of his genius that he has no qualms about torturing his audience with mind-numbingly slow-paced storytelling.

I'm going to make a movie. It's called "The Village Of Scary Monsters Who Eat Babies And Kill People And Aren't Guys In Suits." It's rated X, for scenes of graphic infant mutilation and violent tentacle rape and kittens exploding. It starts out just like Shammy's movie called "The Village" (minus the tard with the big nose) but it ends in a mindless bloodbath so horrifying that you are provided with vomit bags on the way in. You can't see it unless you bring a doctor's statement that you don't have high blood pressure or other heart conditions. In fact, it's only playing on a TV in some guy's basement in Thailand, because it's banned everywhere else.

Now, would someone please recommend a good monster movie I can watch that will cleanse my palate of pretentious slop?

Obese Trailer Trash, Violent Ass-Raping, and The Keanu Reeves Honorary Wooden Acting Award.

So I got talked into seeing "Troy" tonight. What a truckload of steaming shite that was.

I should start by mentioning that I love movies, all kinds of movies - and generally I'm all up for the big Hollywood epic. Vast landscapes, sweeping orchestras, storybook heroes, impossibly poetic dialogue... the whole lot of it. It's the type of popcorn fun that movies were made for. But with the success of "Lord Of The Rings," everyone is trying to jump on the epic bandwagon. Every egocentric filmmaker wants a piece of the glory, and they're all digging through the history books, looking for an exotic new premise for their bloated, self-indulgent masterpieces. So now we've got an overload of epics, which is bad, because what helps make them epic in the start is that they're only around every so often. It's meant to be quite an event, like a movie you're looking forward to for months. Now there's one every few weeks, and most of them are shit.

So I went in to "Troy" with low expectations, and they were met. Maybe it wouldn't have been as bad if I wasn't in Hicksville USA, also known as the wretchedly miserable suburbs of New Orleans, Louisiana. Rarely have I been to a geographic area where so consistently my movie-going experiences have been ruined by the other theatre patrons. And this presents a tremendous problem for me. You see, I love seeing movies in a packed theatre. The atmosphere of an audience is what the cinema is all about. However, I also utterly despise, from the bottom of my heart, people who haven't figured out the very basic concept of SHUTTING THE FUCK UP. Which is more or less everyone down here in the dirty south.

So this time, in Louisiana's continuing efforts to ruin every movie I see, I enjoyed the company of a tremendous beast of a woman who was sitting directly behind me. She was a fucking cow, absolutely massive, and looked fresh out of the trailer park. She was apparently by herself, and sweaty rolls of lard were spilling off into the empty seats beside her. From the very first second of the film, she was launching a violent assault on her extra super size two gallon bag of heavily buttered popcorn. I almost felt bad for the little kernels of popped corn, they didn't stand a fucking chance. I was imaginging them, all huddled together in their bag, amongst them the bodies of those who had already drowned in the tidal wave of chemical butter topping she had poured on them. Terrified of what might happen next, they let out shrill cries of horror as the shadow of her sweaty sausage fingers draped over them, and what must have looked like some hideous blob monster from worlds beyond swooped down and snatched them up from their home and tossed them into a dark slimy pit where the giant yellowed mashers of some infernal machine crushed their frail, butter-greased bodies into tiny little pieces.

I am not a fan of loud chewing noises, and I am particularly not a fan of them when they're louder then the film I'm making my best efforts to enjoy. She was chomping away at it with her mouth wide open, and it was so loud that it felt like she was inches away from me, crunching her helpless popcorn directly into my inner ear. I could practically feel her humid stinkbreath painting the side of my face with condensation. But I dealt with it, and after the initial popcorn assault she slowed down a bit as she got into the film, and reduced her intake to a somehow more infuriating pace of one kernal at a time. What made this unbearable was that every time she'd reach into the bag to pull out her next victim, she would rustle it in a way that produced sound far louder than any paper bag should ever be able to make. I mean, you probably could have heard it from the back of the theatre, and I was right the fuck in front of her. And it was stadium seating, so guess where my head was? Practically in her fat fucking lap. Right at ear level with the noisest bag on earth. Literally she must have been attempting to eat the bag from the bottom up, because it sounded like she was burrowing her blubbery hand all the way to the bottom each time she dove in to retrieve a new kernel. And, after every few bites, she would - somehow very loudly - wipe the salt and grease off of her fat fucking mouth WITH HER SHIRT, and then grunt and wheeze a bit, as if she was having trouble breathing. It was absolutely grotesque.

I'm a bit of a nazi about movie-going. Part of it is that I genuinely enjoy going to see films, and it infuriates me when someone makes an effort to ruin it for me. But the other - perhaps more significant part - is that a bad movie-going experience tears away at my faith in humanity. It is absolutely beyond me, on every level, how anyone could be so ignorant, rude, selfish, and utterly lacking in any sense of self restraint, as to be noisy during a film. It's a basic concept, we learn it in preschool: Quiet time. This is quiet time. For two measly hours of your life, you have to shut up. It's that simple. 120 minutes of keeping your fucking mouth closed. 7,200 seconds of restraining from voicing your every inane reaction to what you're seeing on the screen. It's not your living room. You're not by yourself, watching a DVD. You're in a room full of other people, who are trying to enjoy the film.

Shut. The fuck. Up.

A great many people have not got this figured out. These are the people, I presume, who got sent to the corner a lot during quiet time, because they simply couldn't not talk. It wasn't something they could get their little pea-brained heads around. It was inconceivable that for any length of time, they were not allowed to try and draw attention to themselves. For one miniscule portion of their life they had to concede to the idea that there are other people in the world besides them. For once, they had to not be the center of the universe. And they couldn't do it. They failed. So when this mentality manifests itself during a movie - particularly during a movie I'm excited to see - I'm a complete asshole about it. I'll be the guy screaming "SHUT THE FUCK UP!" during a movie, when someone on the opposite end of the theatre is talking. I'm the guy who will complain to the theatre staff if a couple "SHUT THE FUCK UP!"s prove fruitless. I cannot stand having my experience ruined by some ignorant twat.

So as we approached thirty minutes into "Troy," and fatty was still rustling away without so much as a second's rest, I finally snapped. I turned around, and thrust my own bag of popcorn up into the air, about eye level with her, and rustled it around as violently as I possibly could, spilling popcorn onto the floor as I did so, and shooting her the meanest pair of evil eyes I could muster up. Amazingly, she stopped rustling. For about five minutes. When she resumed, I spun around and glared at her again, right in the eyes with a very genuine look which said, in no uncertain terms, "I am going to slit your fucking lard-padded throat and stuff the bleeding wound with the rest of your popcorn if you make one more Goddamn rustling noise, you bloated fucking whale of a woman." And she, looking back at me, lowered her popcorn bag slowly to the ground, the way a criminal would lower his weapon when surrounded by the cops. My message was clear, and she looked actually quite afraid of me.

I am not a threatening person. I am thin, and pale, and metrosexual enough that you might on occasion mistake me for being gay. I am far from a tough guy. However, intrude upon my movie-going experience and I will become possessed by some form of unholy demon. One of these days, it's going to get me stabbed or something.

Actually, one of these days I'm going to make a members-only movie theatre. You have to fill out a lengthy application to get in. There will be background checks. You will need to list references. If you're accepted, you will be treated to the biggest screen in the world, with digital projection, and the lights all the way out, and the sound fucking cranked. Fresh popcorn, served in tubs. Big comfy reclining seats with lots of leg room. The ultimate movie theatre. The best film experience you'll ever have. However, there are rules at my theatre, and when you sign up you'll have to agree to the consequences of breaking these rules. There will be a lot of paper work. The main rule - the really important one - is that there will be ushers in the theatre at all times, and they will be watching you. If you make even the slightest bit of unnecessary noise... If you talk, for any reason. If you rustle loudly. If your phone rings. If you're one of those obnoxious fuckers who like to crunch on their ice, one cube at a time, when you're done with your drink. If you make any noise at all, the film will stop. The lights will come up. The ushers - who are large, humorless, tattooed men, will drag you from your seat and up to the front of the theatre, where everyone in the audience can heckle you while you are stripped naked. Then your membership card will be torn up, and stuffed down your throat, and each of the massive ushers will have their way with you, one at a time, raping you violently in the arse, in front of everyone. And then when they're done, and you're laying there, naked and humiliated, your ass all kinds of torn up and dripping with man goo, the people in the front row spitting on your broken shell of a body... then the ushers will cut your fucking head off, and they'll hang it in the theatre lobby amongst all the other heads, the "hall of shame" to remind other patrons what will happen if they dare talk during the film. Harsh? Perhaps. But I'm convinced that ruling with an iron fist is the key to cinematic utopia.

But anyway, even if lardass hadn't been noisily gorging herself behind me, and even if the projection hadn't been inexcusably out of focus... the movie still would have sucked. It was a long, bloated, hollow shell of a film, so concerned with trying to be epic that it forgot to be a good movie. And Brad Pitt is a fucking abysmal actor. He's terrible. He wins the Keanu Reeves Honorary Wooden Acting Award for 2004. Don't get me wrong, Brad Pitt is a fine specimen of the male gender. I'm not even gay, and I would go fucking Roman on his chiseled ass something fierce, and probably enjoy it more than most of the sexual experiences I've had with females. But it takes more than perfect abs to carry a film, and good fucking Lord is he terrible in this. I've enjoyed him in other roles in the past, where he didn't have to stretch too far from what must be his real personality: A likable dumb guy. But heroic Greek warrior he is not, and talented actor he most definitely is not. Stick to looking pretty, Brad. It's a better gig for you.

Christ, it's late. Why am I still awake?

The Fellowship Of The Dorks

I love going to big genre films on opening day and being amongst the hardest of hardcore nerds. Not only does it help build excitement for the movie, but you can't ask for better pre-show entertainment than standing in line with a bunch of pimply-faced miscreants adorned in costumes apparently borrowed from the wardrobe department of a kindergarten play. And as such I present you with The Fellowship Of The Dorks, who I had the pleasure of observing for a good forty-five minutes while waiting in line for "Return Of The King" yesterday:



The girl on the left with the bald cap is meant to be Gollum. Gandalf, meanwhile, is looking more like Moses as a janitor. The guy in the back with no discernable Middle Earth attire was holding a pair of plastic lightsabers. Apparently he thought he was coming to see "Return Of The Jedi." And sadly, I didn't get a picture of Gimly the bearded dwarf, as played by a freckly fat kid with a cardboard helmet and what looked like a raccoon tail taped onto his face. But my favorite, by far, is Legolas, the hunky, questionably heterosexual blonde-haired elf warrior, recreated here by way of a kid in a Robin Hood costume with A MOP ON HIS HEAD. Have a closer look:



Goddamn I love going to the movies.