Author: Saintmort

I have over 1,500 DVDs and 3,000 CDs, some of them generally respected as great, others are simply Guilty Pleasures.

COOL WORLD

I don’t remember how or why I saw this movie as a kid but I did, and I liked it quite a bit. But until this month when I watched it to write this week’s Guilty Pleasure, I hadn’t seen it in over 15 years. I have mixed feelings about what I just watched so this is going be one of the harder films I’ve had to do a Guilty Pleasure for. How do you describe a movie this fucked up and bizarre? I’m not sure… but I’m going to attempt to give it a shot.

The movie begins with World War II Vet Frank Harris (Brad Pitt) returning home in 1945 to his mother’s arms. As soon as he arrives he shows off his new motorcycle and tells his mom to go for a ride. A drunk driver collides with the motorcycle, killing Frank’s mother. Meanwhile, at the exact same time a cartoon character named Doctor Whiskers transports Frank into a landscape of cartoons called Cool World (I feel like I may have already lost you).

The film jumps to Present Day (aka 1992) where cartoonist Jack Deebs (Gabriel Byrne) is in jail drawing his critically acclaimed comic “Cool World”. His femme fatale, nymphomaniac character Holli Would pulls him into the comic book (this is really the plot, I’m not talking about a famous 80’s Music video). The next day Jack is released from prison.

Frank has since become a police officer in Cool World. His partner is a Spider (of course) named Nails and he dates a cartoon named Lonette who he can’t have sex with for reasons that will be explained later.

Holli pulls Jack back into Cool World and the two have sex leading to Holli turning from a cartoon into a person (Kim Basinger). The two escape Cool World in search of Vinnie Vegas. Frank goes after them. Holli is in search of a “Spike of Power”. No longer needing Jack, she abandons him.

Jack and Frank team up to find the spike. They discover Vinnie Vegas (who is really Doc Whiskers). Holli pushes Frank off a building, killing him, and steals the spike, causing the line between cartoon and real life to be severed. Jack takes the spike from her and returns it, trapping Holli and himself into Cool World forever.

While Nails mourns the loss of his partner and friend, Lonette reminds him that when a person is murdered by a cartoon, he becomes a cartoon himself. The two walk off happily ever after (and finally get to fuck).

Before I break down why I like this movie, I have to ask something. Frank has been in Cool World from 1945 til 1992, that’s over 45 years. If Lonette knew that if he was murdered by a cartoon Frank would become a cartoon, why didn’t she do that like… 44 years ago instead of going years and years never having sex with him (but wanting to)? Then again, that’s just one piece of the very disjointed and illogical puzzle called Cool World.

When I was a kid I loved Cool World. I assume that my parents showed me this film thinking it was going to be just like Who Framed Roger Rabbit? Rewatching it now, I’m amazed by the incredibly explicit sexual content throughout the movie. I definitely liked the movie more then as opposed to now.

That being said, I still dig the movie. Everything that’s wrong with Cool World can be blamed on Paramount. Much like with Jaws 3-D, I mourn the kick ass movie Cool World could have been.

Director Ralph Bakshi started his career with slightly more adult cartoons like Fritz the Cat and Coonskin. His original vision of the movie was an animated Horror movie. The concept of it would have involved a cartoon and human having sex and conceiving a hybrid child who visits the real world to murder the father that abandoned her. After Paramount picked up the movie they wanted to drop the Horror angle and threatened to sue Bakshi if he didn’t complete it. Ralph Bakshi never made a feature film again.

Because of this the whole film feels disjointed. The animation aspect is gorgeous but as soon as any live-action interaction occurs it looks painfully Green-Screened. This wouldn’t be a bad thing except that you remember that Roger Rabbit was 5 years old at this time and blended Animation and Live Action seamlessly.

The issues, however, run much deeper than simply looking Green Screened. Many characters have little to no story or explanation but you can tell they were originally part of a much bigger picture. Even “Main” characters like Doc Whiskers only appear on film when it is convenient to the plot.

Regardless of all of its faults, the animated sequences are truly spectacular. Ralph Bakshi’s eye for insanity leads to some of the craziest looking cartoon characters ever. Just look at these things!

It’s definitely worth checking out if you’ve never seen it before, just don’t expect much. More so it’s worth re-watching if you haven’t seen it in years. It’s be an interesting experience to say the least.

When he’s not blogging you can find Matt Kelly tweeting, producing his podcast The Saint Mort Show or writing in his blog Pure Mattitude.

I have over 1,500 DVDs and 3,000 CDs, some of them generally respected as great, others are simply Guilty Pleasures.

BUSH: RAZORBLADE SUITCASE

The more current radio I listen to, the more I appreciate the alternative rock of the 90s. Say what you will about the slacker generation and the Grunge movement, the 90’s was the last time that radio truly had a variety to it. Currently everyone has a dance/rap influence to their songs whether it’s country or pop music or even punk bands. However, back in the 90’s it wouldn’t be weird for a radio station to play Metallica (Heavy Metal), Beastie Boys (Rap), Soul Coughing (No clue what Genre they were), Sister Hazel (Folk Rock) and Nirvana (Grunge) all in the same hour.

Even the word Grunge had a slightly varied sound. Nirvana sounded like a punk band while Pearl Jam had more of an Arena Rock sound and then there’s Alice in Chains who sounded like straight up metal, yet all 3 were classified as Grunge and/or Alternative. It was around 1996 when the radio seemed to focus more and more on punk and hip-hop.  It was also the year that Bush (a grunge band from London) released their sophomore album Razorblade Suitcase, considered to many as the last Grunge album.

Bush’s previous album Sixteen Stone is the type of album bands dream of releasing as their debut album. Despite peaking at #4 on the Billboard Charts, the record has sold over six million copies and spawned five top 10 radio singles. Bush was unstoppable. Anything they touched seemed to turn to gold. It was time to make a follow up.

In late 1996 Bush released the first single to the album. The song was titled Swallowed and it was the #1 song on the BIllboard Modern Rock chart for 7 consecutive weeks. The album debuted at number one on the charts, but quickly began to fall, underselling their debut. The follow up single Greedy Fly reached number 3 on the charts while their follow up singles didn’t chart at all.

The reviews for Razorblade Suitcase ranged from average to negative. People seemed turned off to the darker tones of the album, leading many to compare it Nirvana’s In Utero (Steve Albini’s producing certainly helped lead to the comparison). The simple fact of the matter though is that In Utero was a better album than Nevermind stylistically and lyrically. I wouldn’t go as far as to say the same about Razorblade Suitcase vs. Sixteen Stone, Sixteen Stone is one of my all-time favorite albums, but Razorblade Suitcase is certainly better than the 2 star rating Rolling Stone magazine gave it.

The variety of sounds Bush played with on this album makes it a little hard to swallow at first listen. You’ve got pure radio pop in the song Swallowed mixed with the anger fueled rock of Personal Holloway and Greedy Fly, and that’s just the first three tracks. Most people are familiar with the song Mouth for it’s remixed version found on the American Werewolf in Paris soundtrack. The original version doesn’t have the electronic mixing and is steady and slow with powerful build to its conclusion. It sounds raw and gritty the way the song should be. It’s followed by Straight No Chaser, the best song on the album. 

Straight No Chaser should have been the third single on this album. It can easily be compared to Glycerine off their previous album for its use of simply electric guitar and strings, but unlike the clean sound of Glycerine, Straight No Chaser feels angrier. The strings don’t play beautifully and subtly in the distance they’re abrasive and abrupt as if conducted by Bernard Herrmann in the 1960s. Even vocalist/guitarist Gavin Rossdale’s guitar sounds frigid, almost out of tune but purposefully. 

Straight No Chaser however wasn’t the third or even the fourth single. Instead Bush released Bonedriven and Cold Contagious as singles. They fared so poorly that neither track are even present on Bush’s Greatest hits album. Since Bonedrive, Bush released only a handful of well received singles. Mouth (Remix) from the American Werewolf in Paris Soundtrack and The Chemicals Between Us from 1999’s The Science of Things both performed well but the commercial failure of 2001’s The Golden State led to the band’s break up in 2003. Gavin Rossdale formed a second band with Bush guitarist Chris Traynor called Institute that failed to achieve any commercial success. He then attempted a short lived solo career that also did little on the charts.

This year Bush has released their first new album in a decade: The Sea of Memories. The band is currently on tour with Cheville and Filter to promote the new record. It is their first self released album and seems to be a return to the straight rock sound of Sixteen Stone (which they attempted to recreate on Golden State). The album has received some of Bush’s best reviews since Sixteen Stone. Hopefully with their return to recording, new and old fans will go back to Razorblade Suitcase and give it the praise it truly deserves.

When he’s not watching bad movies and listening to poorly reviews albums Matt “Saint Mort” Kelly hosts his own podcast The Saint Mort Show and writes in his blog Pure Mattitude.

There’s a thin line between a good movie or a bad movie. Every week I try to erase that line.

SPACED INVADERS

 I believe that everyone has a group of movies that they made their parents rent CONSTANTLY. One of my films was Spaced Invaders. A bizarre little children’s film/sci-fi movie from 1990. Even though Halloween has past, I figure why not one more Halloween Guilty Pleasure for shits and giggles.

 Spaced Invaders follows a group of Martian army men under the direction of brand new Enforcer Drones. The small group of incompetent invaders mistake a rebroadcast of Orson Welles’ War of the Worlds as the actual alien invasion of Earth. 

The group splits into three groups. Their pilot Blaznee decides this is a bad idea and decides to stay with the ship. None of the other aliens pay any attention to him however. I assume it’s because he sounds like a bad Jack Nicholson impersonator (or a very good Christian Slater impersonator). The remaining 4 aliens proceed with their invasion.  Their fearless leader Captain Blipto is hit by a car, leaving the remaining three on their own.

 The only people who seem to believe the alien invasion are the towns newest sheriff, his daughter, her new friend (dressed like a duck) the town deputy and an elder famer named Wrenchmuller. The sheriff’s daughter Kathy discovers the remaining three aliens as they accidentally pose as trick-or-treaters.

 Blipto (surviving the car’s impact) ends up taking a gas station attendant as his slave. They begin building a death machine. The Enforcer Drone decides to take things into it’s own (robotic) hands. The martians unite with the rest of the town in order to take down the Enforcer Drone and save the town.

 Spaced Invaders is a piece of 90’s sci-fi by numbers, but with a kid and comedy twist. The small town is very reminiscent of a film like Critters. In fact that’s the only place a film like this should take place. A few years later Hocus Pocus came out and did a MUCH better version of the evil beings confused by Halloween angle. But there’s still a lot of fun to be had with Spaced Invaders.

Dialogue wise the film doesn’t speak down to kids. Parents will find just as much to enjoy about this as kids will. There are subtle jokes that I completely missed as a kid but loved rewatching it in 2011. One particular sequence involves farmer Wrenchmuller getting frustrated about the foreclosure of his farm. Instead of screaming yelling he calmly starts to load his shotgun. This is occurring while the sheriff is having a conversation with the local credit union owner. I’m considerably shocked by how little the film actually has dated itself. There are however jokes that would never happen in a kid’s movie this day in age, such as the local town asshole giving trick or treaters cigarette cartons.

Performance wise some of these actors are better than they have any right being, specifically Wayne Alexander who plays the Gas attendant turned Robot Vern. His performance reminds me of Martin Short at his best. Sadly, Alexander’s career never really took off much outside of Babylon 5 appearances.

The star of the show is Gregg Berger’s over the top performance of Klembecker, the cruel credit union owner. His confusing wrestling costume and nonsensical screaming is everything an 80’s science fiction film needs. He’s so over the top that one of his lines of dialogue should be ‘Martians this is AMERICA. if you don’t like it you can geeeeeeet out!”

Spaced Invaders isn’t a great movie but it’s certainly not a bad movie. It seems that only a select group of kids growing up in the very early 90’s have ever heard of this film, which is a shame. It’s agelessness should make it a yearly television tradition for kids. I mean they still play Teen Witch every year and that shit is beyond dated.

When he’s not writing for Geekscape Matt Kelly is writing a in his blog Pure Mattitude, producing his podcast The Saint Mort Show and occasionally tweeting.

There’s nothing wrong with watching bad movies. I grew up watching them and I turned out okay…. OH GOD I’M A MONSTER! WHY GOD!

HALLOWEEN 3: SEASON OF THE WITCH

In 1978 John Carpenter created a film that changed the direction of horror films. It became the staple of October television and it still holds the title of highest grossing indie film of all time, and rightfully so. You can’t think of Halloween (the holiday) without thinking of Halloween (the movie). Sadly it was because of this that Halloween III: Season of the Witch never got its proper respect.

 It was inevitable that after the monster success of the original and the equally impressive box office of the sequel that a third film would get made. John Carpenter and Debra Hill would only agree to it if it wasn’t a direct sequel to Michael Myers. Most writers and directors it seems don’t like seeing their creations become a franchise (specifically Wes Craven with Freddy and John Carpenter with Michael Myers). So they worked with director Joe Dante and sci-fi writer Nigel Kneale to create a Mad Scientist plotted horror film. Maybe they should have stuck to franchising the series because things became shaky pretty fast. 

Joe Dante left the project and was replaced with Tommy Lee Wallace. John Carpenter and Wallace did rewrites to the script to add more gore and simplify the bizarre plot a bit. Kneale hated their changes and the addition of violence so much he had his name removed from the final product.

 The resulting story followed Dr. Dan Challis (Tom Atkins) and Ellie Grimbridge (Stacey Nelkin) as they try to solve the mystery surrounding Ellie’s father’s bizarre death. After being found by a gas station tenant clinging to a Silver Shamrock mask, Grimbridge was murdered by a strange man who then set himself on fire. 

 Ellie and Dan conclude that Silver Shamrock creator Conal Cochran has something to do with the murder. The two travel to Santa Mira, California where the Silver Shamrock factory resides. It’s there that they discover Cochran’s evil plan. Using electricity, a computer chip, a piece of Stonehenge and movie nonsense, he plans to kill anyone wearing his masks and cause poisonous snakes and insects to crawl from their skulls, killing those around them.

Okay, so we’ll be honest. The movie is ridiculous. In fact, if I’m going to be completely honest I’d say that it’s bat-shit crazy. People are constantly referring to this as the worst Halloween film, but clearly they didn’t watch Halloween Part 6: The Curse of Michael Myers (which is more of a flashback origin story than an actual horror film) or Halloween: Resurrection (in which Michael Myers is defeated by a Busta Rhymes in a boxing match).

People complain about the lack of Michael Myers in this film. If you ask me, it’s the inclusion of Michael Myers (through television sets). It creates a weird paradox that I don’t like. I’m sure John Carpenter thought it was hilarious though.

Halloween III is one of those films that despite being insane and absurd it’s extremely enjoyable and scary in it’s own right. It’s definitely got some of the most gory and graphic deaths in the series, specifically when the town drunk is decapitated (seemingly with someone’s bare hands). 

Had Halloween III: Season of the Witch been a success, Carpenter and Hill planned to produce yearly Hallloween films, each with a completely new story of awful happenings on Halloween night. When you think about how John Carpenter brought us films like Big Trouble in Little China and They Live during this time, it seems like we missed out on some new horror classics. 

Regardless, this will always be one of my favorite Halloween classics. With the announcement of Dimension’s upcoming Halloween 3 there have been questions of whether it will be a remake of Season of the Witch. While this is stated with tongue firmly in cheek, it is clear that the directors have some plans up their sleeve. They announced that there will be homages to the most infamous of horror sequels and Tom Atkins will be appearing in it. 

From Guilty Pleasures and Geekscape.net I’d like to wish you all a Happy Happy Halloween, Halloween, Halloween. Happy Happy Halloween. Silver Shamrock.

When he’s not watching awful movies and defending them. Matt “SaintMort” Kelly is constantly tweeting, producing his podcast THE SAINT MORT SHOW and writing in his blog. This month he decided to review a horror movie every day. This is what happens when you have no life.

There’s nothing wrong with a bad movie. There is a problem with too many bad movies. Due to an over exposure to shit… I find it hard to dislike anything. These are just a few of my guilty pleasures.

DEAD SILENCE

Let’s face it, puppets are scary as hell. It doesn’t matter if it was Goosebumps or the Anthony Hopkins’ creepfest Magic that did it, almost everyone is terrified by a ventriloquist dummy. I love the Muppets, don’t get me wrong, but those things are adorable. There’s something about the cold, wooden and lifeless stare that is undeniably eerie. In 2007 James Wan riding high off the success of Saw made his follow-up Dead Silence.

Sadly Dead Silence didn’t fare well financially or critically. Making just 16.5 Million in the box office, it was pulled from theaters after just 16 days. Luckily (for Wan anyway), the Saw films continued to make money so he could keep making his other poorly received Death Sentence and the surprisingly well received Insidious.

I am not a fan of the Saw movies. In fact, I gave up on them around fourth film despite not even liking the original film (yes the ending surprised me…but by then I was too bored to care anymore). When Dead Silence came out on DVD I was working at a video store and thus got to preview movies a few days before they were available to rent. The day Dead Silence came out I was very reluctant to even watch it, however I quickly fell in love with it.

The film opens with Jamie Ashen and his wife Lisa. A mysterious package arrives at their door containing a ventriloquist dummy named Billy. Jamie goes to pick up dinner and when he arrives Lisa is dead with her tongue torn out. Detective Jim Lipton (played by Marky Mark’s less talented brother Donnie) suspects Jamie… but without any proof he’s soon forced to release him.

Jamie discovers the puppet’s owner is Mary Shaw, a horror legend from his hometown. Jamie goes to his estranged father about Mary Shaw. His dad has suffered a stroke and is now bound to a wheelchair. Jamie meets his new (and very young) stepmother Ella. Jamie is warned to get rid of the Billy puppet, but no matter what he does it keeps coming back.

I want to pause in the plot summary to discuss the look of the film. It’s got a strange bluish tint throughout which it creates a weird atmosphere right off the bat. In most films this would piss me off, but it seems to be quite fitting to this particular story. According to wikipedia (the source of absolute truth) the film was originally conceived as being a poem told to the audience, if this is true I think the blueish tint does add a nice fairy tale/fantasy feel. Based on the time period of when Mary Shaw existed the style continues to makes sense. The opening scene also begins in a grainy black and white style and the Universal logo displayed as the original one from the early 20’s. It’s decisions like this that which mix this film up just enough to keep it slightly interesting. Anyway… back to the movie.

The Billy doll keeps ending up in different peoples hands, beginning with Detective Lipton and ending with his father. Jamie realizes that if he destroys the puppet the curse of Mary Shaw will be put to rest. So he has to rush to his father to get the Billy doll and destroy it. It’s at his father’s house he discovers… okay… for serious… this is a big ass spoiler. It’s also the most amazingly ridiculous twist in a horror movie since Sleepaway Camp, so if you don’t want this spoiled… skip the rest of this paragraph and just jump ahead, you’ve been very fairly warned…his father has been a goddamn puppet the whole time and Ella is possessed by Mary Shaw.

Dead Silence is a fun film because it’s not a body count film, it’s about a man trying to get to the bottom of his wife’s death. When people do die though, it’s pretty horrifying effects. While the film did poorly and plans for a sequel have been put on hold, the films seems to be developing a following. All month the horror community on reddit has been discussing it’s underratedness (it’s a word I just coined it).

So if you like the Saw movies or just really hate puppets, check this out. Personally I’d love to see it cut together with footage of the Muppets, that would tickle my heart strings.

Sometimes bad isn’t necessarily a bad thing… but too much of a bad thing can be bad. That being said, I’m proud of what I love.

BORDELLO OF BLOOD

In 1989 HBO aired 6 episodes of their new TV series. It was a horror series based off of the infamously controversial EC Comic Books “Tales From the Crypt”. While I’m sure it was expected to be a popular show, no one could have predicted exactly how popular.

I remember in elementary school knowing about the show. It seemed like every kid on the playground knew about it. My parents even would sometimes let me stay up just late enough to watch the opening credits and the introduction from the Crypt Keeper, still one of the coolest looking puppets ever. But I never saw an actual episode until I was a senior in high school and caught a rerun on Sci-Fi.

When a show is as massively popular as Tales from the Crypt, it’s bound to begin spin-offs. There were albums, toys and even an animated series for kids. And of course there were movies. The original Tales from the Crypt movie Demon Knight was well received and thus a sequel was made.

The sequel was the critically despised Bordello of Blood, a bizarre story involving vampire whores, midget archeologists, rocking priests and Dennis Miller. What’s ironic is that while Demon Knight was more critically praised, Bordello of Blood was the one that felt the most like an episode of Tales from the Crypt.

The story begins with Vincent (Phil Fondacaro) exploring a forest when he and his group find the coffin of Lilith; the mother of all vampires. Using an artifact key which gives him control over her, he brings her to the United states.

We jump storylines to Katherine (Erika Elenika), a religious woman who produces a show with Reverend J.C. Current (Chris Sarandon), and lives with her fuck-up of a brother Corey Feldman (pretending his name is Caleb). Corey and his friend go to the titular Bordello and end up dead (or should I say UNDEAD mwahahahaha). Katherine, being understandably concerned about the whole missing brother thing, hires private detective Rafe Guttman (Dennis Miller) to find out here he went.

There’s a batch of absurd twists and turns throughout the film that I’ll leave for you to enjoy when you watch it for yourself.

So let’s start with the bad (for which there is plenty). The film is awful in so many ways. The acting is bad, the one-liners are lame, the plot is completely absurd and it features Corey Feldman. Now the good: this film is pure 80’s gold (but just happened to be made in 1996). The acting is bad, the one-liners are lame, the plot is completely absurd and it features Corey Feldman. Every single reason to hate this movie, is the same reason to love this movie.

Dennis Miller had a short lived acting career, so short that he frequently refers to this film as his Magnum Opus.

The film has never even really found a cult following which I find a little disappointing, because the movie is just fun. Much like how I feel about even the worst episodes of Tales from the Crypt, they always had a sense of style and fun. Absurd doesn’t begin to describe this film but if you’re not at least chuckling at the pure insanity of Dennis Miller running around a whorehouse blowing up topless vampires with super-soakers filled with holy water, then this movie just isn’t going to be your cup of tea. But to me, it is and I’m damn proud of it.

There’s nothing wrong with a bad movie. There is a problem with too many bad movies. Due to an over exposure to shit… I find it hard to dislike anything. These are just a few of my guilty pleasures.

DOLLS

When you look at the films of Full Moon Pictures, it’s easy to see that Charles Band has a mild obsession with puppets and dolls. In fact, they even released a compilation DVD of death scenes called When Puppets and Dolls Attack. However, before Puppet Master and Demonic Toys there was Dolls; a demented fairy tale with a horror film twist.

Stuart Gordon and Charles Band helped provide Empire pictures with some of their best offerings. Dolls was famously shot in-between their Lovecraft inspired Re-Animator and From Beyond movies; even using the same set pieces as From Beyond.

The opening credits reminds me vaguely of Tobe Hooper’s Funhouse (another painfully underrated 80’s horror film). The film follows Judy Bower (played by the adorable Carrie Lorraine), her father and Stepmother (quite possibly the most evil parents in history). Multiple times in the first 5 minutes they threaten to beat and kill her. In a particularly bizarre sequence, her stepmother Rosemary (played by Stuart Gordon’s wife Carolyn) throws her stuffed Teddy Bear doll in the woods and Judy imagines the bear attacking and killing her family. The scene ends with Judy sounding apathetically disappointed in her bear going “oh Teddy” while the bear covered in blood simply shrugs.

A storm causes them to crash at the house of Gabriel and Hilary Hatwicke; an elder couple of doll makers. Their creepy house is filled floor to roof with dolls of all shapes and sizes. Gabriel takes notice of Judy’s lack of toys and offers her a Punch doll (Judy and Punch… adorable). Suddenly Ralph Morris and 2 british punk rockers Enid and Isabel storm the house. They also got caught in the rain and are looking for a place to sleep. Thus ends our cast of characters, we will meet no one else for the next hour.

That night Enid and Isabel decide to rob the Hatwicke’s, meanwhile Judy is feeling thirsty and goes to get a drink. She sees Isabel getting murdered by some dolls. She runs and tells her parents who assume she’s just making up nonsense; so she goes to Ralph instead (the only trust worthy person in the house). In a scene of quick conclusion jumping, they decide that Ralph is both a murderer and a pedophile.

Judy’s father suddenly decides to do a non-awful parent thing and chases Judy and Ralph in an attempt to get her away from the man he assumes is a pedophile. Meanwhile Enid goes on a search for her missing best friend and succeeds. In one of the eeriest moments in the movie, Enid finds Isabel, with her face turned into a dolls face, her glass eyeballs roll out of her head and Enid is attacked by a swarm of dolls. While fighting them off, she cracks in their faces revealing corpses and skulls underneath the porcelain.

Alone in her bedroom, Rosemary is also attacked. She takes her fate into her own hands and decides she’d rather take her own life than have a bunch of tiny stop motion dolls take it from her and jumps out the nearest window.

Judy’s father finds her body and assuming that Ralph murdered her, quickly deciding to exact his revenge. Before he’s able to kill Ralph though, he’s attacked by the Punch doll. He destroys Punch and is discovered by the Hatwickes. They decide that he must replace their Punch doll and so transform him into a doll using witchcraft.

They make a fake letter for Judy informing her that her father no longer loves her and has moved far away forever. She’s to return home to her mother and Ralph.

Dolls is a truly dark fairy tale story. It has all of the elements of a Brothers Grimm tale. The wicked stepmother, a hero, witches and mystic elements. At one point Judy even refers to Ralph as a prince in disguise. Sadly, the film is overshadowed by Stuart Gordon’s H.P Lovecraft Adaptions and Charles Band’s other killer doll movies. But Dolls ranks right up there with the better Puppet Master movies. It’s funny, gory and charming all at once. Carrie Lorraine never worked after this film, but she’s adorable as Judy.

The film has a nice eerie feel. There’s no clear line between good and evil. And while slightly dated and cheesy, the doll effects are for the most part quite impressive. At one point a sequel was even pitched where Ralph and Judy receive a box in the mail containing dolls of the Hatwickes. Sadly, the audience for that sequel doesn’t really exist; but I would have loved to have seen it.

Shawn Levy’s Real Steel will be coming to theaters this weekend. It looks pretty awful. It seems like one of those movies that you’re shocked got made. What’s more shocking than the film’s existence is that the reviews for it are insanely positive. Regardless, I’m still not sure if this is something that I want to see. The more I read about the movie, the more I wish it was something else. If you find yourself somewhere in the middle, wanting to see something fun but without the risk of an expensive night out at the movies, here are the three similar alternatives to Real Steel.

Clue (1985)

It’s been an on going joke that Real Steel is “Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots: The Movie“. I even heard a rumor that Touchstone found the movie so similar that they purchased the rights to Rock ’em Sock ’em Robots to avoid lawsuit. This is not true however. In fact, Mattel has teamed up with Mandeville films to develop an official Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots movie but claim to be having difficulty moving forward on it due to the Real Steel similarities. I think this might be a little off and I’d be willing to guess that the real issue is that a movie about a board game seems like a bad idea. We’ve already got Battleship on the way and Candyland and Oujia board movies in the works.

While I admit that movies based on board games seem like an awful idea, one of my favorite movies is Clue. Clue was the first ever film based on a board game and will probably end up being the best movie ever made out of a board game. The film was simply better than it had any right to be. While it received mostly mixed reviews and came a few thousand dollars short of its budget on release, Clue has become a cult classic.

The film takes advantage of placing the film against the McCarthy era backdrop of 1954 and fills the film with witty history jokes and Marx Brothers level puns. To create even more mystery (and fun, I suppose) the filmmakers gave the film 3 different endings, making it so people would want to see the movie more than once in order to view all three endings. On DVD you have the option to randomly select an ending or all three at once. I recommend the latter if you’ve never seen it before. Universal has announced that they plan to remake Clue for a 2013 release under the direction of Gore Verbinski. Based on the humor of his feature film debut Mouse Hunt, he might actually give us a quality remake.

The Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983)

But Real Steel isn’t based on Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots. It’s actually based on Richard Matheson’s (of Twilight Zone and I Am Legend fame) short story Steel (and no, not the basis for the Shaquille O’Neal film). The story Steel became an excellent episode of the Twilight Zone starring Lee Marvin. While it’s a good episode of Twilight Zone, it doesn’t even crack my top 20 favorite episodes.

If I could see a full length episode of any Twilight Zone episode I’d rather see Walking Distance or Long Distance Call. But since neither of those is happening, I recommend seeing Twilight Zone: The Movie. While one of the segments is a little underwhelming, the film in general is quite enjoyable if for no other reasons than Joe Dante’s take on It’s a Good Life and John Lithgow’s performance in Nightmare at 20,000 Feet. Sadly, three people were killed in the making of the film, which did just average at the box office. The financial return was enough to relaunch a new TV series, but not enough to make another Twilight Zone movie. That’s extremely disappointing because I watch reruns of the show and try to think up what I’d put in my ultimate Twilight Zone the Movie Part 2.

Arena (1989)

Regardless, the trailer for Real Steel didn’t make me think Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots nor The Twilight Zone. It didn’t even make me think “Oh it’s Rocky with Robots”. Instead, it made me think of my favorite Underdog Sports movie: A Sci-Fi film from 1989 film entitled Arena.

Set in 4038, the universe is entertained by an intergalactic boxing sport called “THE ARENA”. The movie stars eventual soap opera star Paul Satterfield as a short order cook at a space station. After getting into a fight with a customer (and Arena Fighter) named Fang, he is approached to become the first human in 50 years to compete in The Arena.

I used to love this movie as a kid. But recently I saw it again on Netflix instant watch. It’s enjoyable… but far from great. There’s a lot of potential for crazy over the top fight sequences but instead the film focuses on the “corruption of The Arena”. It’s not like we’re watching this movie about aliens fighting each other to the death for its dialogue. We just want some bad ass fights involving weird ass aliens. Every trailer for Real Steel makes me wish that it was a remake of Arena.

Regardless, my prediction is that Real Steel is going to score big no matter whether you stay at home and watch (well, maybe not if you account for inflation). And according to advance word, Real Steel is more fun than it has any right to be. It’ll may even be better than any of my suggestions. But I’ve offered you three solid and similar alternatives just in case you don’t feel man (or robot or alien) enough to step into the ring this weekend.

There’s nothing wrong with a bad movie. There is a problem with too many bad movies. Due to an over exposure to shit… I find it hard to dislike anything. These are just a few of my guilty pleasures.

In 1999 pop music was in a weird place. Around this point boy bands and Britney Spears had dominated. Everyone wanted to hear something they could dance to. Now this also give birth to various re-emerging anti-pop sounds. I previously covered this with The New Radicals. This was also during the days of the Swing and Big Band Revival. Somewhere in the middle of all of this, sits Lou Bega.

Lou Bega kicks off this CD with applause (mildly presumptuous for Track 1 of your debut album), the polite introduction “Ladies and Gentleman this is Mambo #5” and immediately we are treated to one of the catchiest one hit wonders of the 90’s. The supercalifragalisticBRAGadocous track begins running down the list of all the girls Bega has been with. There’s Monica, Rita, Sandra and Mary just to name a few. It’s a toe-tapping track that will always get stuck in your head.

Now while the song is a guilty pleasure to many people, does that constitute the entire album being defended? Well the second track will actually answer that question with a resounding YES. Baby Keep Smiling is nice blend of pop, hip-hop and 1920’s doo-wop. It’s the stand-out track of the album and also contains one of the best lines in music history: “I put on my glasses/Then tell you how sweet ya ass is.”

The album keeps raising the bar track after track. Baby Keep Smiling is my favorite track on the album, but Can I Tico Tico You is a close second. The song is all dance, but still has a creepy tone. Bega’s track about obsession contains the strange sampling choice of a girl screaming. It also has a heavy and eerie tenor saxophone empathizing the catchy melody.

I must say that Bega was doomed to fail. The Big Band Revival was already on the way out and even with the pop/dance twist on it, it wasn’t going to last very long. Regardless you can’t say the guy didn’t have style. He was always in a white zoot suit and sporting his Cab Callaway mustache; if it was 1930, it’d be easier to believe songs like I Got a Girl and 1+1 = 2 where Bega continues to brag about his many lovely ladies.  In fact, in I Got A Girl he claims to have a girl on every continent as well as outer space. Apparently he’s “got a girl everywhere.” The songs are all outrageous and stupid, but Bega doesn’t pretend they’re not. It’s in his overly confident and completely serious way that he best shows off the humor of the songs.

The closing track is a little weak: it begins with Bega walking off the stage and being approached by the concert promoter. The audience loves Bega and wants an encore, but his band has already packed up and left. This is literally 20 seconds after the song ended. I’ve thrown concerts before… I’m lucky if a band can load out in 20 minutes. Clearly Bega is trying to lie his way out of playing one more song. But the promoter is persistent, he offers Bega the house band. To Bega’s dismay they’re a salsa band and he is the (self-proclaimed, I assume) king of Mambo, but Bega makes due.

The closing track Mambo Mambo sounds like a Ricky Martin B-Side with Bega rapping to the audience the difference between Salsa and Mambo. It’s a cute idea but the fact of the matter is that Bega isn’t exactly a mambo expert or even a music expert.

I will say that he’s a pop expert. 13 perfectly catchy tracks will promise to keep your toes tapping. I bought this bad boy for $1 at a flea market, I’m pretty sure you can find the exact same deal. If you see it, take it.

There’s a lot that the world can learn from the Muppets. I’ve always loved Jim Henson (evidence) and his muppet friends, since I was a child watching Muppet Babies and Muppet Show reruns. But the “messages” of the Muppets was never as clear to me then as it’s been since moving to Los Angeles, home of The Jim Henson Company.

This weekend marked what would have been Jim Henson’s 75th Birthday. To honor that I present:

WHAT YOUR FAVORITE MUPPET SAYS ABOUT YOU!*

Now obviously there are hundreds of Muppets out there. I’m going to focus on what I consider to be the key elements of the show’s success. Specifically Muppets from the ORIGINAL TV series. My apologies if yours aren’t represented and please make a case for them in the comments below. Now let’s get started:

FOZZIE BEAR

I have a theory that even if he’s not your favorite Muppet, everyone is a little bit Fozzie. Let’s look at who Fozzie is as a Muppet. He’s a stand-up comedian. But he’s also not a very good comedian. Fozzie takes his criticism to heart, but it never stops him from going back on stage and doing it all over again. I’ve heard it frequently said by comedians that stand up is nothing more than trying to get strangers to like you. This is the world of Fozzie Bear. Fozzie just wants to be liked. Fozzie is a loyal friend, but at the end of the day he can always use more friends. Like I said, I think deep down, we’re all a little bit like Fozzie Bear. However, if Fozzie Bear is YOUR favorite Muppet, it means you have a great heart, you’re compassionate about your friendships and you just want to be loved.

THE GREAT GONZO

The Great Gonzo, much like Fozzie, is a performer who typically fails more than he succeeds. Gonzo is the definition of the misunderstood artist. While none of us will understand the art of “eating a tire” per say, every artist out there understands Gonzo. Fozzie Bear wants to reach the masses and be understood while Gonzo just needs to get his “art” out of him and then be understood. Gonzo is the hipster, the real hipster, not the one that’s developed such a social back-lash over the past few years. In the Muppet Movie, Gonzo sings the song “I’m Going To Go Back There Someday”. The song has become a favorite among the art crowd for its interesting look at life, belonging and friendships. With bizarre lyrics like “There’s not a word yet, for old friends who just met” it’s easy to see why it’s so beloved. Who among us hasn’t had a friendship like that, where meeting someone new feels like you’ve known each other your entire lives. If your favorite Muppet is Gonzo, you are probably an artist in the truest sense. You most likely adore the avant garde and want to be taken seriously for what you do regardless of how outrageous it may seem.

ROWLF THE DOG

Almost everyone I’ve ever met who loves Rowlf is a musician. So why Rowlf the Dog over say Dr. Teeth or Floyd Pepper? Well, the fact is that Rowlf is the original cool Muppet. Pre-dating most of the Muppets, Rowlf was a celebrity in the early 60’s as the Jazzy pianist pooch. Musicians, while they enjoy the insane “let’s crank it up to 11” attitude of Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem, relate to Rowlf the Dog’s more laid back style. It’s talent, but confident and not in your face talent. People who like Rowlf also tend to be relatively humble people. If Rowlf is your favorite muppet then you are a talented musician, but humble and laid back regardless. You just want to play music, and don’t care if it’s in a seedy bar or a packed arena, just so long as the songs have got bite.

ANIMAL

On the other side of the musical spectrum is Animal. Rowlf was a laidback humble musician with talent. Animal is a tornado of sounds. He rocks out and doesn’t care if there are a million people listening or one… just as long as it’s loud. If the most famous member of Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem is your favorite Muppet then you might be a punk rocker. You definitely don’t care about how the world sees you, you just care that it does.

SAM THE EAGLE

Every single friend I’ve had who loves Sam the Eagle have all been Republicans. It’s easy to take that statement as me politically bashing someone, but I’m not. If anything it’s a compliment. I think Republicans tend to have a decent sense of humor about themselves (although it’s the ones that don’t who get the most attention). Most people find humor in how over the top Sam the Eagle is. As far as conservative political parody, Sam was the original Stephen Colbert. We all want a general level of “decency” and a “return to morals” but Sam the Eagle is legitimately disgusted by almost anything, declaring it “wrong”, “un-American” and referring to others as simply “weirdos”. Sam the Eagle is that bit of us who aspire to hold ourselves to a higher ideal than the rest, even when it’s plain to everyone that we’re usually falling a bit short.

STATLER AND WALDORF

Statler and Waldorf are probably the most beloved Muppet show characters. Sometimes simply referred to as “the old men in the balcony”, they are the ultimate representation of the hecklers and critics in the world. They claim to hate everything about the Muppets but yet show up episode after episode. They are a statement on most of critical culture. I myself find myself bitching about horror movie remakes, yet I see every single one that comes out. If you watch the Muppet Show strictly for Staler and Waldorf’s commentary then you need to stop reading this article and go get a job as a critic. But chances are you’d rather just sit on youtube, reddit or any other forum and throw insults at anyone that opens their mouth for even a second. There’s a good chance Jonathan London’s favorite Muppets are these two.

MISS PIGGY

Miss Piggy is the Diva of the Muppets. She’s Elizabeth Taylor, Divine, Madonna and Lady Gaga all rolled in one. Every element of her life is based around Glamor or at least portraying the idea of glamor. I tend to find a lot of Actresses love Miss Piggy. This makes sense. While Piggy loves the spotlight, she’s also a driven person. She has her goals in mind, whether it’s being the star of the show or simply married to her Kermie. If anything gets in her way she transforms into a ball of karate chopping rage. While Piggy always needs to make an entrance, she also needs to find her Kermie. If you adore Piggy over all other muppets then you are a driven person, but you’re still a bit of a Diva. You get what you want by any means necessary and when you enter a room, everybody knows it. Specifically if the room you’re entering is the kitchen.

SCOOTER

If you’re a fan of Scooter, there’s a good chance you were in stage crew in high school. Perhaps now you work as a PA or a camera man and love it. Scooter is a behind the scenes guy and loves every second. Scooter doesn’t want to be in the spotlight but he does like being involved. Scooter’s like being part of the group, but never the leader. If Scooter is the muppet for you, then you dig being behind the scenes. You want to be part of the production, but definitely not the star of the show. You also may have a sister that you haven’t heard from in decades.

KERMIT THE FROG

And here he is, the most recognized character of all the Muppets: Kermit T Frog, the host of the Muppet Show and the leader of this whole crazy gang. Kermit represents the most sane person in an insane world. He’s never “completely” sane, but he’s still got it together enough to manage the group. People who love Kermit typically are the “event planners”. They’re the writers and directors. They tend to be the glue that holds groups of friends together.

The Final Curtain

Every circle of friends I think tends to have all of these characteristics. The comedian, the artist, the moral one, the diva, the relaxed person, the critic and the leaders, it’s even possible for one person to be multiple. Depending on who I’m hanging out with, I can be Kermit or Fozzie or Gonzo or even Statler and Waldorf.

Anyone who’s read my blog for the last month knows that while I’m having fun living in Los Angeles, I want to eventually move back to Pennsylvania.

My laptop’s wallpaper is a slideshow of photographs of my friends and I back in PA. It was while staring at my wallpaper that I got the inspiration to write this entry. People are always shocked and confused about my desire to return to a small town in PA instead of staying in Tinsel Town. They’re equally confused by my lack of a desire to be a celebrity or even more than moderately famous. I wish I could explain it; but whenever I try to I can only quote Kermit the Frog near the end of The Muppet Movie:

I’ve got a dream too. But it’s about singing and dancing and making people happy. That’s the kind of dream that gets better the more people you share it with. And, well, I’ve found a whole bunch of friends who have the same dream. And, well, it kind of makes us like a family.

Back home, I have a family waiting for me. They’re waiting to sing and dance and make people happy together. I can’t wait to sing and dance with them again. It’s not success that’s important, it’s who you’ve got to share it with.

So who is my favorite Muppet? I do want to be loved like Fozzie, but aren’t we all a little bit of Fozzie? There are times where I feel misunderstood like Gonzo, but again, who doesn’t? For me, I don’t think it’s shocking that my favorite Muppet is Kermit. And although it’s not always easy being green, at least I’ve got a cast of characters I can call my own.

* – This blog entry, while I stand behind what it says about your favorite Muppet please remember it’s also written by a comedian (to use the term VERY loosely). Please don’t leave comments about how I was wrong with your favorite Muppet. It’s comedy, for god’s sake.

24 hours ago, Scarlett Johansson’s nude photo was leaked to the world. Obviously, the Internet almost immediately exploded with jokes. Some people openly posted comics and facebook statuses about jerking it at work or school. It was as if the entire male population instantly became totally shameless. I won’t lie and say that I didn’t post some statuses and even tweeted about it but the question remains “what is it about the celebrity sex tape or nude photo that grabs our collective attentions?”

I know when I first discovered celebrity nudity: it was 1998. I saw The Wedding Singer and instantly fell in love with Drew Barrymore. I was in junior high at the time and was reaching… that age of self-discovery. I remember a fellow classmate informing me that you could look online and find pictures of celebrities naked!

Now nine times out of ten, these photos were fake, not that a 13 year old who never saw a women naked before would care or even notice. But luckily for me I had a crush on a celebrity that had posed nude for playboy. I became obsessed with seeing all of my favorite female actresses naked. And thankfully, this website was always willing to help (again most of the time with fakes).

High school came and the occasional girlfriend here or there kept my attention off of fake nude photos of celebrities as I focused more energy on the real thing. However, during freshmen year of college my friend showed me a video of a ‘celebrity’ that I had never even heard of. Her name was Paris Hilton. The video was pretty shitty, but it started a weird obsession with me (again).

Much like Mr. Skin wanted to collect every celebrity nude scene caught on celluloid, I wanted to see every nude celebrity I could find. It wasn’t even a sexual thing anymore, just a curiosity. I saw the good (Kat Dennings photo leak) and the bad (Mini-me’s sex tape). I also saw everything in between (Gene Simmons and Pamela Anderson). A close married couple that I was friends with shared this same bizarre obsession. Kevin Smith wrote an entire film premise around our curiosity to see people fuck and as yesterday proved, the world wants to see celebrities naked. But why?

In his book Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs, Chuck Klosterman discusses Internet pornography. He explains how women should be thankful for Internet porn. His reason being that the number one most downloaded type is Amateur porn. Perhaps people no longer want to see big fake tits and professional sexperts. Perhaps they want to literally see the girl next door. According to Klosterman, the average had become beautiful again. While I tend to agree with Chuck Klosterman normally… I think he’s wrong. While it’s nice to see the illusion of ‘amateur’, most people would rather see themselves as professionals pretending to be amateurs. This may be why we still obsess over celebrity sex tapes and nude photos. It helps to remind those of us down here that those of us up there might just be amateurs as well.

The celebrity sex photo works as a reality check to both sides. Haylee from Paramore, Scarlett Johansson, Kat Dennings; they are beautiful, but seen without the Photoshop, the makeup and the airbrush… aren’t these just regular people? While it’s nice to imagine banging a big name, the fact of the matter is that these women aren’t that far removed from your own un-Photoshopped, un-made up and un-airbrushed wife or girlfriend. They both probably have boobs. Both boobs probably have nipples. Shit! Some celebrity sex tapes almost prove that your wife or girlfriend are better lovers!

The celebrity nude photo or sex tape shows the wizard behind the curtain that every one of us “regulars” need to glimpse in the hopes of understanding that we aren’t that bad off as our normal, ignored selves. They celebrate the normalcy (and the base, insecure nature) shared by all of us. There’s no 3^rd breast, extra nipple or Kuato. For the most part, they’re just like you and me.

No longer do you have to jerk off to the opening credits of Lost in Translation, you’ve seen more. No longer do you have to watch creatively covered up breasts of Kat Dennings in Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist because the real thing is just a click away. Maybe Chuck was on to something (or at least a good excuse): celebrity nudity just makes us appreciate that we already have what we need in the lovers we’re with and that each of us really are unique, and normal, when there’s nothing left for us to hide behind.

Jonathan London contributed to this article. He’s not ashamed that he’s also seen the Scarlett Johansson pictures. He IS ashamed that Scarlett took those photos before he got a chance to clean his room. You let a girl into your home and she shares it with the world. Thanks.

I have over 1,200 DVDs, 3,000 CDs and a couple hundred books; over half of them the average person would be completely embarrassed to own. I, however, defend my purchases.

Episode 9: Josie and the Pussycats

Oh snap! This Article just got real! This has been the first movie someone has specifically REQUESTED that I write. I accepted because, well, I had to defend this movie sooner or later. If you ask me, there are two people that exist in this world, those who love Josie and the Pussycats and those who haven’t seen it and thus assume they’d hate it. The people in that second group don’t know what they’re missing. Josie and the Pussycats is an incredible social satire about the music industry, perfectly capturing the climate of the early 2000’s. Also it’s funny as hell.

Josie and the Pussycats is about the titular band consisting of best friends Josie (Rachel Leigh Cook), Melody (Tara Reid), and Valerie (Rosario Dawson). After years of going unnoticed they get signed by Mega-Records. Within a few short weeks they are the world’s biggest group playing sold out shows, going on TRL, and attending exclusive parties. However MegaRecords has some evil plans of brainwashing and splitting up the group up their sleeves.

Josie and the Pussycats is a film that works on various layers. It’s both an outrageous comedy as well as a satire on the music industry. Let’s go back to the year 2001. Every afternoon after school kids from my junior high would flock home in order to watch Mtv’s TRL and see what video made it to number one. It was almost always Backstreet Boys, N*Sync, or Britney Spears; regardless of the lack of suspense we couldn’t wait to hear what won that day. It’s in that boy band and bubblegum pop saturated time a movie like Josie and the Pussycats could exist.

The film opens with Du Jour, a boy band featuring the likes of Seth Green, Donald Faison, and Breckin Meyer (aka LOVEBURGER!). Since this is Deborah Kaplan and Harry Elfont’s follow up to Can’t Hardly Wait these cameos are hardly shocking. The entire scene is shot for shot what the average teen would be seeing every afternoon when they tuned into MTV.

As the boys get back on their private plane, it’s pimped out with various logos. It’s to be noted that despite all the product placement the makers of the film never received a penny for the advertisements.  They thought it’d be hypocritical of them for a movie that mocks product placement (remember that scene in Wayne’s World… imagine if that was the whole movie.)

The boys ask their manager Wyatt (Alan Cumming) about some ‘weird sound’ they heard in the back of their new single. Wyatt goes to the front of the plane, puts on a parachute and says to the pilot “it’s time for operation Take the Chevy to the Levy”, an obvious reference to American Pie (a song about the death of three of the rock legends who died in a plane crash).

Almost every line of dialogue is a carefully placed reference to the music industry and advertisement culture. There’s so many comments on how Kaplan and Elfont see the music industry that it’s safe to say, they weren’t a fan of the bubblegum pop of the 2000’s either. One of my favorite jokes is Josie and the Pussycats being signed without anyone at Mega Records even hearing their songs. That’s not a huge problem though.

The biggest highlight of the movie though is the incredibly infectious soundtrack. The songs are performed by Letters to Cleo vocalist Kay Hanley and work as a nice follow up to Cleo’s last album Go! What’s ironic is despite the movie’s poor box-office the soundtrack sold over 500,000 units making it a certified gold album.

Unlike all the other movies that I’ve covered, I really can’t say a single negative thing about this movie. The reason it’s not popular is sincerely because people didn’t give it a chance. People assumed it was going to be stupid based on it being based on a stupid comic and cartoon series. However the writers keep that in mind and take every opportunity to poke fun at the comic’s more useless and unnecessary characters. Much like James Gunn’s take on Scooby Doo, it’s the constant self-awareness that keeps the film fresh and funny for multiple views.

Funny sidenote: I’ve noticed in talking about this movie to other people. Almost everyone who LOVES this movie has the exact same story of how they saw it for the first time. I worked at a video store and it was one of the only movies they could play in the store. They put it on as something to play in the background and instead became extremely drawn into the film.  That’s  truly the mark of a quality film, it’s video store clerk approved. 

There’s nothing wrong with a bad movie. There is a problem with too many bad movies. Due to an over exposure to shit… I find it hard to dislike anything. These are just a few of my guilty pleasures.

JAWS 3-D

This weekend, Shark Night 3D swims into theaters. I cannot deny two facts. Fact #1: I think this movie is going to be one of the biggest pieces of shit ever released. Fact #2: I can’t wait to see it. That decision may or may not be influenced by my love for Jaws 3D.

In 1983 a decision was made. Studio Guy said “We need another Jaws movie.”

“But wait”, said a producer… “Let’s ride this 3D wave (get it, wave, like as in the ocean… where sharks live)”.

Thus Jaws 3-D was born.

I’ve always raised this question to people. Since 3D has recently made the quite unwanted comeback, if they decided to re-release previous 3D films, which would you want to see? The answer for me has always been Jaws 3D (although the original House of Wax is a close second). I know that Jaws 3D is a bad movie. In fact one could argue that the only thing the film has going for it is that it’s not Jaws: The Revenge. But we’re being unfair. Regardless of how bad the movie might be today, I’m sure that seeing it in a theater, in it’s full 3-D glory, was probably a thrill. Plus, it teamed Dennis Quaid with Louis Gossett Jr., a full two years before Quaid would play a stranded bigoted space man and Gossett Jr. an asexual lizard in Enemy Mine.

One of my biggest issues with modernized 3D is that instead of pushing objects TOWARDS us… they simply push other images further away to create a deeper 3rd Dimension. Obviously I’m not including Piranha 3D and My Blood Valentine 3D that had the same sort of fun with the format that Friday the 13th and Amityville Horror did. Jaws 3D had fun with the format in the form of floating arms, fish heads and shark explosions. That’s a pretty big leap from the boring, floating branches in Avatar.

Jaws 3D also featured the first shark with downs syndrome.

Jaws 3D takes place after the events of Jaws 2. Roy Schneider put his foot down and said ‘no more’, so of course the film follows his kids, all grown up and working at a weird Sea World spin-off. The big opening is coming up when a baby shark makes its way into the park. The employees unwisely make the shark an attraction, which leads to the shark dying in front of a crowd of park attendees. It upsets the employees, the boss and the families of onlookers, but it REALLY pisses off the larger than fuck momma shark. I think this explains the set up just fine. The rest of the movie plays out like this: shark eats people then shark blows up.

There are a few films that I think SHOULD have been much better movies had they stuck with the original plot line. Jaws 3D is one such film. It was originally proposed as a comedy under the title National Lampoon’s Jaws 3: People 0. The film would have been a spoof produced by Matty Simmons (fresh off of Animal House), written by (the then new writer) John Hughes with Joe Dante directing. If you’re an 80’s comedy geek, you are already masturbating furiously.

The film would have had it all. It was going to open with Peter Benchley (author of Jaws) being eaten by a shark in his swimming pool, a naked Bo Derek and shark-costumed aliens. Universal Studios halted the idea on the grounds that Steven Spielberg threatened to never work with Universal again if the movie was made. I’d like to address Mr. Spielberg at this time:

Dear Steven,

Thank you for all of the good things that you’ve done for cinema. I can’t even go into the ocean anymore because of Jaws. You made me cry during E.T. and filled my childhood with wonder with Jurassic Park. That being said; you are a dick. How could Jaws 3: People 0 be any worse than Jaws the Revenge or Jaws 3D? Or The Lost World? I mean sure, at this point you had some hits… but you also had made 1941 and killed Vic Morrow so it wasn’t like you were exactly on cloud nine.

Love, Matt Kelly

P.S. I hope Tintin washes the taste of Crystal Skull out of my mouth. And that War Horse had better live in the end or I’ll be pissed.

Okay, I’m glad to get that out of my system. Anyway, with the comedy potential out of the way (or so they thought), we got this instead. As I said previously, I still enjoy the movie; but mostly because I like gore and sharks. As much as I shit on it, I still own (and frequently watch) Jaws: The Revenge. Maybe I can let a love of sharks cloud my ability to separate good from bad from worse. It is possible.

Regardless, in honor of this weekend’s Shark Night 3D, I will be rewatching Jaws 3D this weekend. Repeatedly. Then Enemy Mine.

When Matt Kelly’s not watching movies because he’s too afraid to even so much as go into a swimming pool he’s hosting his podcast The Saint Mort Show, performing musical comedy and writing in his blog Pure Mattitude.

This Tuesday Dylan Dog: Dead of Night comes to Blu-Ray/DVD. The film was inspired by the comic book series Dylan Dog. The same comic series also inspired the Italian horror classic Cementary Man. The film was directed by Kevin Munroe, the writer/director of the TMNT , we here at Geekscape got a chance to sit and talk with him for a few minutes about Dylan Dog, Ninja Turtles and Monster Squad.  

Matt:
So the movie is Dylan Dog; Dead of Night. It didn’t really come to the area in PA that I lived in, but I’ve been excited to finally see it on DVD and Blu-Ray. I loved how much it reminded me of Cemetary Man.

Kevin:
Yeah, it was based on the same source material so that’s expected.

Matt:

Besides the Dylan Dog comic was there any other movies or comics that influenced the way you choose to direct?

Kevin:

There’s a bunch. It’s sort of a product of the 80s so I liked the idea of going in and reintroducing that Fright Night and Monster Squad kind of vibe. It was really fun to do something like that. Something like American Werewolf and something from that Era. I just like it. Growing up with it. To me it’s real and I like that. I think that it’s something that’s interesting. There’s a huge generation of people that grew up not having those monster movies but Van Helsing and the Mummy and CGI creatures.

Matt:
I’m glad to hear you’re also a member of the Monster Squad vs. the Goonies. Was it mostly the 80’s feel and a general love of horror movies that drew you to the project or was there more than that?

Kevin:

It was just a good story. That’s all you’re left with after you’re finished the two years it takes to do something like that. The challenge of doing something that was a genre mix of putting together action and horror and comedy. It’s a fun challenge.

Matt:
You also directed TMNT which I consider the best of the four turtles movies. How did that come about?

Kevin: 

I was directing pilots and I was writing shorts and bunch of other stuff. I had a pass on a movie called Cattails and I heard they were trying to do another turtles and I told them I knew exactly what I’d want to do. I even brought in my issue one of Ninja Turtles. Eventually they flew me out to meet Peter (Laird) and I got to talk to Peter and then asked him to sign my issue one. We spent the rest of the day hanging out and talking about ninja turtles. So when I got to the airport he signed “Make a good movie… or else” in my comic and that’s how I found out I had gotten the movie.

Matt:

That’s a pretty great story

Kevin:

Yeah it’s pretty cool

Matt:
Now was it your idea to continue the story from where the previous movies left off as opposed to rebooting it, or was that something you wanted to do as well?

Kevin:

No, I definitely pushed for that. I talked to Peter about it and he thought it was a great idea.

Matt:
It works. You yourself are a fanboy and you know how fans can get about reboots, so it was cool to see you take off where it left off ten years after the fact yet being in a completely new presentation. What drew you to doing it as computer animation instead of live action?

Kevin:

That was sort of my field at the time. I had never done anything live action. So we went with CGI. To them it gave Peter more control and that was a big thing to Peter because he’s seen that franchise get taken away from and screwed around. So he really wanted to control it. That was the biggest drive for him to do that.

Matt:

Well, fans everywhere thank you for giving us the bad ass fight between Raphael and Leonardo that we’ve waited on for years.

Kevin:

That’s funny. The only thing we had to change was the final shot. The final shot like was like 2 millimeters off Raphael’s eyeball. It was intense but it was one of the 3 things that gave us a PG-13 and contractually it had to be a PG movie. So I moved it back to beside Raph’s head and they said that was still too close so that’s why it’s kinda far away.

Matt:

Now after Dylan Dog gets it’s blu-ray/DVD release do you have anything else planned that you’re working on?

Kevin:
I’m actually working on something with LucasArts right now. I can’t really say much more. I can say that it’s all CGI. That’s about it. I can say that it’s a movie unlike any other movie. When I heard about it I was just like ‘I have to do this movie’. But that’s all I can say for right now.

Matt:
Well good luck on it! I’m excited to hear and see more about it when that info becomes available

Kevin:

Yea, it’s going to be cool. When it comes out and you look back you’re going to understand why I couldn’t say anything about it now.

Matt:
They’re doing a remake of Fright Night and I keep hearing rumors of a remake of Monster Squad. Are you going to try to get your name in the bidding for director?

Kevin:

You know it’s funny. After Dylan Dog I kinda wanted to stay away from Monster stuff. But if the budget was right, I’d definitely want to do a Monster Squad remake. In a heart beat. It wouldn’t be to make people forget the 80’s one but more just have to take the tone and adapting it. You don’t have to make it harsher. Look at Dylan Dog. Take Dylan Dog and make it a PG movie and just make it cool and fun for kids. It would work, not for the Dylan Dog Franchise. But with that franchise it could work with genuine cheers. Just fun and scary. It could totally work for it. I’d absolutely do Monster Squad.

Matt:
Well I’ll be sure to be pulling for you if you get the offer.

Kevin:
Thanks

Matt:

Thank you Kevin for your time.

I have over 1,200 DVDs, 3,000 CDs and a couple hundred books; over half of them the average person would be completely embarrassed to own. I, however, defend my purchases.

THE NEW RADICALS: MAYBE YOU’VE BEEN BRAINWASHED TOO!

In 1998 there was a massive hit on the radio called You Get What You Give. It’s combination of funk, alternative rock and hip-hop was a refreshing change to the musical climate. The song is most recognized for its rap at the end insulting celebrities like Courtney Love and Hanson. By the end of the year the band was never heard of again.

The New Radicals only had one album, 1998’s Maybe You’ve Been Brainwashed Too. The album managed to produce one major hit and a minor follow-up Someday We’ll Know. That minor hit however was covered twice; once by Mandy Moore and Jon Foreman (of Switchfoot) for the Walk to Remember Soundtrack and also by Hall & Oates in 2003.

Gregg Alexander who produced, wrote, sang and performed various instruments on the album founded the band. The rest of the band was a revolving door of members including child actress Danielle Brisebois (Stephanie Mills on All in the Family). The Album contains some of the ‘best of the best’ studio musicians including Josh Freese (the Vandals) and Paul McCartney’s guitarist Rusty Anderson.

Maybe You’ve Been Brainwashed Too is probably one of the most shockingly beautiful albums ever released by a “one hit wonder”. The songs are well crafted and it’s obvious that Gregg took great care with each song. Songs like I Hope I Didn’t Just Give Away The Ending have so many layers going on that it’s easy to get lost in it. Falsetto Voices, Blues Guitar and Piano all lap over top of each other while Alexander does his best Mick Jagger impression. Suddenly after a very awkward 2-minute intro the song finally kicks into a relaxing summer jam.

Songs like Jehovah Made This Whole Joint For You mock the rising of hipsters in the music scene. A specifically daring move since The New Radicals was basically what any hipster looks for in a band. The song tells the story of a girl named Carolina and he struggle for individuality. While not my favorite song on the album it does contain my favorite lyric in the album “So original in her black lipstick/ listening to some obscure band/But isn’t she pissed that all the other non-conformists/listen to that same obscure band”

My favorite tracks are either the reflective Someday We’ll Know or the upbeat opening track Mother We Just Can’t Get Enough. Someday We’ll Know is something that makes you want to lay on your bed and reflect on your past mistakes. Meanwhile Mother We Just Can’t Get Enough is a song that just makes you want to drive on a sunny day with the windows down.

However the album is not a perfect album. It hits a specifically rough patch with the song Maybe You’ve Been Brainwashed. I once read a rumor that the song was Gregg’s fuck you to the record label for telling him they didn’t like the original recording. The song is almost completely unlistenable. The vocals are layered with so much echo that lyrics are borderline unintelligible; meanwhile the instrumentation sounds like various sound checks at once. From that point it’s hard to get back into the album until the closing track Crying Like a Church on Monday.

Gregg Alexander’s honest perspective of his life and his feelings is refreshing. Specifically in this day and age where it feels like every song is manufactured to sell ring tones. Alexander’s ability to write deep personal lyrics as well as fuse it with 70’s rock sound has made the album a perfect source for sitcom soundtracks. Many of the songs have resurfaced in the last five years on such sitcoms as Scrubs and How I Met Your Mother.

However a year or so after their massive hit Alexander quit the band and thus ended their short career. In recent years the band has received praise from various musicians. The Edge called You Get What You Give the only song he’s ever been jealous of and rapper Ice-T once referred to the single as the only non-rap song in the last few years to truly grab him.

One last fun fact: Remember, You Get What You Give’s celebrity bashing controversy I mentioned at the beginning of the article? According to Gregg Alexander it was an experiment. He spoke of real issues first and then name-dropped celebrities to see what people would report on. Do you remember what the rap was before the celebrity part? I didn’t think so.

Health insurance rip off lying

 FDA, big bankers buying

Fake computer crashes dining

Cloning while they’re multiplying”

Just another example of how many multiple layers are involved this album.

There are many things that tend to be a sign of bad things to come. Good Examples would Be: Being in production for 10 years, a title that has nothing to do with the movie and the words “starring Nicholas Cage”. Season of the Witch has all three and that doesn’t exactly give you much to be hopeful for when you put it in your blu-ray player.

It’s July! It’s time for San Diego Comic Con or as I call it Geek Mardi Gras! Also in the world of Matt Kelly, by the time you read this I’ll be moving to Los Angeles. Sadly this means that while I call them the pick of the week, I probably won’t actually have the money to purchase the DVD/Blu-Ray

JULY 5^th

In the world of new movies on DVD/Blu-Ray we’ve got instant cult classic Hobo With a Shotgun, the newest in Kung-fu 13 Assassins and Uwe Bowell’s BloodRyane: The Third Reich which geekscapists Witney Siebold and William Bibbiani both gave a positive enough review that I’m at least mildly interested in seeing it. Das Boot is finally getting a blu-ray release. The appropriately short-lived super hero series The Cape is coming to DVD. However, if you frequently listen/watch the Geekscape podcast you will know that my pick of the week will absolutely 100% be Boy Meets World Season 6. It’s the long awaited college years; quite possibly the greatest and most bizarre season of Boy Meets World and kids who grew up watching TGIF on their Friday Nights will know enjoyable this season truly is.

JULY 12^th

So normally when I’m doing my research and I find movie titled something as awesome as Dinocroc Vs Supergator it’s normally the pick of the week, but this week has so many quality releases it’s hard to go with the bad SyFy style film. The Lincoln Lawyer, Insidious, Brother’s Justice and Miral are all getting released on Blu-Ray/DVD. Also coming to Blu-Ray/DVD is Buster Keaton: Short Films Collection which is a must have for any budding film student and/or self proclaimed film historian. On Blu-Ray is Terry Gilliam’s masterpiece Brazil, but the pick of the week is Robot Chicken’s 3^rd Star Wars Special. While I’m not the world’s biggest Robot Chicken fan, I find their Star Wars specials to be a level of brilliance that Family Guy only could wish their specials were.

JULY 15^th

Arthur is coming to Blu-Ray/DVD and while I’m sure it’s Oscar worthy, you should put that money towards Rango 

July 19^th

Tekken and Limitless get their Blu-Ray/DVD releases today. Also coming to Blu-Ray/DVD will be the direct to DVD movie The Reef, I know nothing about this movie, but it has a fun DVD cover which probably means it’s garbage, but the shark obsessed me will eventually end up watching it. Coming to Blu-Ray we have the beautifully shot silent film Beauty and the Beast, Chocolat, Bridget Jones’s Diary, Boyz N the Hood and Amelie one of the most interestingly shot and touching modern French films. BBC fans will be excited to see Doctor Who Series 6 Part 1 will come to DVD and in the “Holy Fucking Shit That’s Awesome” category Season 1 of the classic Nickelodeon Show Hey Dude will come out! However my pick of the week is Take Me Home Tonight, a film that went above and beyond my expectations and is currently my favorite movie of 2011 (it should be noted that I haven’t seen Super 8, Super, Natural Selection or Attack the Block… all which have a good chance at the title by December)

July 26^th

Dylan Dog, Life During Wartime and Source Code are all getting a DVD/Blu-Ray release. John Belushi’s greatest films Animal House and Blues Brothers are getting their blu-ray releases today but the Pick of the Week has got to be Puppet Monster Massacre, I don’t know what the hell this movie actually is but it seems to be a love letter to the 80’s b-movie. Also check out this bad ass DVD cover!

I have over 1,200 DVDs, 3,000 CDs and a couple hundred books; over half of them the average person would be completely embarrassed to own. I, however, defend my purchases.

EPISODE 7: THE LADIES MAN

Movies based on Saturday Night Live skits tend to automatically come with the stigmata that they will suck. However history has proven that isn’t always true. While movies like Superstar and It’s Pat are so undefendably bad that even I won’t write That One Guy article on them, we shouldn’t ignore movies like MacGruber, Wayne’s World and Blues Brothers. Somewhere in between terrible and excellent are two SNL films that get a bad rep. Those films are Night at the Roxbury (coming soon) and today’s movie Ladies Man.

SNL skits tend to only have about 5 minute long shelf lives. After that, the jokes become stall and the catchphrases way over done. Movies that try to be 90 minute sketches will always end in disaster. What the successful movies did was take an established character and put them outside the realm of sketch.

Ladies Man was a sketch based around Leon Phelps (Tim Meadows), a talk radio show host. In the film however Leon is fired from his job at the radio station within 15 minutes. The film follows his adventures in job hunting, love and inheriting a large sum of money. Leon has been with hundreds of women, now down on is luck and jobless he gets a love letter from one of his past hook-ups. She misses him, loves him and is rich. More importantly she wants to run away with Leon. The downside is she hasn’t signed her name so Leon must go through all the past hook-ups in his life trying to find “the one”. While all this is going on; the now ex-husband of Leon’s last hook up has discovered an underground group of angry husbands. These men have all caught their wives cheating on them with Leon and want their revenge.

The problem with comedy and the way it’s reviewed is that sometimes critics forget to shut their brains off. This is not a good movie, it’s existiance hasn’t helped or hurt society. But if you check your brain at the door and just watch you’ll find yourself laughing a lot. Rotten Tomatoes gives this movie 11%… however the audience review is 42%. Neither rank a ‘fresh’ rating… but it’s clear that the average viewer liked it more than the critics.

With the exception of Wayne’s World, this is without a doubt the most quotable SNL movie. The lines are quick, bizarre and funny. Leon’s constant obsession with sex leads to some outrageously funny dialogue, such as this one.

A movie like Ladies Man truly incapulates what I made this column for. This isn’t me trying to defend a bad movie by saying it’s a masterpiece. It’s me trying to defend a movie that I think got shit on to quickly, got the cold shoulder from multiple people and has now become buried in obscurity.

Tim Meadows is extremely funny and had some of the best comic timing and delivery in SNL history. For further examples of his comedic brilliance watch his performance in Mean Girls. Sadly Ladies Man was his only ‘character’ on SNL; most of his career was based on impressions and background characters despite having one of the longest tenures as a cast member. Even sadder is that Ladies Man is his only starring movie role; a critically hated box-office bomb that has most likely tainted his career forever. I will however always have fun watching this film and hoping that Tim Meadows will get a second chance.

When Matt Kelly isn’t watching Tim Meadows comedies he’s writing in his blog Pure Mattitude, Producing his Podcast The Saint Mort Show or contributing to Ranker.com

Cracked.com has progressively becoming one of the most popular and influential websites on the internet. Starting as a rival magazine to the infamous MAD, cracked has managed to survive and adapt to the digital era where others struggled and failed. No more centered around spooks and parody the site has become a daily dosage of interesting and humorous lists ranging from Most Bad-ass Presidents, Deadliest Animals and Terrifying Children’s movies. The popularity even lead to this year’s book You Might Be A Zombie (And Other Bad News).

Cracked.com however is more than just lists and books. They also host a few delightful web shows like After Hours or the Award Winning Agents of Cracked series. Today they are premiering their season 3 episode Hoorah!shomon. I got to talk to star Dan O’Brien. 

For those who have lived under a rock and haven’t experience the glory of Agents of Cracked, can you briefly sum up the show’s concept.

It’s a conventional sitcom premise, (Odd Couple), buried in an unconventional sitcom. Agents of Cracked follows Daniel O’Brien and Michael Swaim, two mismatched partners working for a comedy website.  There will be betrayal. There will be passion. There will be almost nothing whatsoever related to working in the field of web comedy. 

This week you’ve got an incredible episode up your sleeve, can you explain it for me?

For a show that started out as “Two guys bantering at their cubicles,” this is probably our biggest departure. We decided to have a lot of fun with both the storytelling and the filming of this episode. We’re presenting it as a Rashomon-style episode, where we’re telling the same story multiple times from the perspective of all of our main characters. Shaping everyone’s respective point of view meant that we got to recreate our office over and over again. It was a real blast getting inside each character’s head and visually representing how they saw the world. It’s an episode for people who like the characters, it’s an episode for people who like fun, unique storytelling devices, and it’s an episode for people who like shows with compelling visual tricks. Also jokes, we’ve got jokes in it. I don’t want to say the episode has something for everyone in the world, but I WILL say that if you don’t like it, you’re probably dead inside, mostly. 

Do you worry that Kurosawa’s Rashomon may be a movie that most of your readers aren’t familiar with?

I think people are familiar enough with the concept of multiple-perspective storytelling that it doesn’t matter if they don’t immediately make the connection to “Rashomon.” All in the Family had a Rashomon episode, there are some elements of it in a few episodes of the Simpsons, I’m pretty sure Powerpuff Girls even used it in an episode once, so I think most folks will be on board with what we’re doing. And if they AREN’T familiar with this particular storytelling style, then they’ll think we invented it, and I am totally fine with that.

After the episode you’re doing a live Q&A, any particular reason you’re doing this for this specific episode?

For one thing, we all just have a lot to say about the episode. Because of the complexity of the script and the shooting, we had very long, very involved production meetings where we discussed every inch of the episode, beat by beat. Not that other episodes ever get ignored, but this one just required hours and hours of discussion and we still all have a lot to say about what creating it was like. We all had such a blast working on it, and we’re eager to talk about, especially to our viewers who are interested in creating web video. Episodes like this one aren’t typically done on the internet. We’re happy to have the chance to talk with future online video producers and say “See? Web video doesn’t have to just be clips of cats and babies, it can be complex, and weird, and involved. And we can teach you how to do it!”

Agent of Cracked isn’t the only show that you and Michael have on your plate either though. You both are involved in After Hours. Is it difficult juggling two different shows where you play exaggerated versions of yourselves?

A little bit. We certainly agonize over it more than, I’m sure, anyone who watches either show does. Often when we’re writing After Hours, we’ll catch ourselves and say “We’re getting too close to AOC Michael or AOC Dan,” and we’ll tone down what we’re doing, (because AH is a slightly more realistic but still exaggerated version of the real Cracked staff). This never would have been a problem if we weren’t so lazy; one day, we’ll create a show that ISN’T about two Cracked employees named “Dan” and “Mike.” Probably.

With a project this over the top it seems like the next logical step is Agents of Cracked THE MOVIE! I certainly worked for Gong Show.

Oh, we want it all. An Agents of Cracked movie, a novelization of that movie, a musical version, a movie musical version, a TV movie based on the movie musical version, a documentary covering what a disaster the TV movie was, a smoke signal version of the movie, and, to bring things full circle, a web series spin-off based on the movie. We want absolutely everything.

Hoorah!shomon is currently up at cracked.com right now!

To learn more about the inner workings of Cracked.com and their other web-shows check out Michael Swaim’s interview on The Saint Mort Show

I have over 1,200 DVDs, 3,000 CDs and a couple hundred books; over half of them the average person would be completely embarrassed to own. I, however, defend my purchases.

This weeks That One Guy is dedicated to the memory of Professor Arnold Markley. I was never the best student, but you taught me a lot about the work of William Shakespeare and believed that I was a decent writer. You could find Shakespeare’s influence in anything, so this one is for you. (March 29^th, 1964 – June 3^rd 2011)

EPISODE 6: WHATEVER IT TAKES

There was a point in the late 90’s when after years of obscurity, the Teen Flick finally returned. The first three set the standard and because of that are still considered classics (She’s All That, Can’t Hardly Wait, 10 Things I hate About You). However by 2000, the theaters were over-saturated with teen flicks. While none of these were necessarily bad, none were necessarily good. But many fun films got buried in the monotony. Whatever it Takes is one such film.

Based on the play Cyrano de Bergerac the film basically comes off as She’s All That with a twist of Roxanne. The film follows geek Ryan (Shane West) who is in love with most popular girl in school Ashley Grant (Jodi Lyn O’Keefe). Meanwhile Ashley’s popular cousin Chris (James Franco) is in love with Ryan’s neighbor Maggie (Marla Sokoloff). The two make a deal to help each other ‘win the girls of their dreams’. Things go well until Ryan realizes Ashley is a bitch and he’s really always loved Maggie.

The film is borderline Shakespearean. It has so many elements of Much Ado About Nothing, As You Like it and other classic comedies of love. Ryan is a likable enough lead character although because he’s played by A Walk to Remember’s Shane West it’s hard to buy that he’s so hopelessly unpopular. Colin Hanks would have been a better pick for the lead in that respect. That being said Colin Hanks and Aaron Paul steal the show in their roles of Ryan’s best friends Floyd and Cosmo. The bigger issue with this movie is that Marla Sokoloff is simply a better-looking actress than Jodi Lyn O’Keefe.

Any one male or female watching the movie will struggle to understand not just why Ryan is interested in Ashley Grant but why he never took notice of Maggie. Obviously without this issue we have no movie but the casting director could have gotten someone better than this. Finally we have James Franco in one of his early film roles. Franco is now an Oscar nominated actor but Whatever it Takes was far from Oscar Worthy, but he did get nominated for the Teen Choice Sleazebag award for his performance; that counts as something right?

What hurts a teen flick like Whatever it Takes is that it doesn’t’ have the self-recognizing ridiculousness. Films like Can’t Hardly Wait and 10 Things I Hate About You give us the most realistic look at High School, but still takes the time to mock the over-the-top presentation of high school parties that we’ve become so accustomed to. On the flipside we have Get Over It and She’s the Man that are far more literal Shakespeare reinterpretations. Whatever it Takes seems to think it’s The Breakfast Club when it’s actually Weird Science.

As stated earlier Colin Hanks and Aaron Paul are amazing in this film. While all the characters are caricatures of high school clichés, their geek characters are the most believable (although still painfully over the top). I went to high school with kids like Floyd and Cosmo; I didn’t have any classmates as distinctly evil and unlikable as Ashley Grant.

Whatever it Takes was one of my favorites of this era of teen flicks. This is specifically because of the sub-plot surrounding Floyd. While all the other characters in this movie are looking for love, Floyd is looking for notoriety. His hero is Virgil Doolittle, a man who stole the neck off the school statue and was arrested for mayhem. Floyd’s constant attempts at making his mark are humorous and charming. Perhaps it’s what appeals to the filmmaker in me. I mean really what filmmaker isn’t trying to make a mark that will live on after they die? That’s all Floyd is trying to do and that’s completely admirable.

When Matt Kelly isn’t watching Sappy Teen Flicks you can find him writing in his blog Pure Mattitude, writing up lists for Ranker or hosting his podcast The Saint Mort Show

We had great pleasure in having Boondock Saints writer/director Troy Duffy on our podcast to talk about his experiences making Boondock Saints and the phenomenon that has happened since. We thought it only fair we take a look at the blu ray we helped Troy pimp. If you want to watch the full interview checkout Geekscape #214 with Troy Duffy.

The Boondock Saints is equal parts entertainment and frustration. The film is now ten years old and has left it’s dubious mark on Hollywood. Boondock Saints, for those few people who haven’t seen it or been told about it, is about two Irish brothers who believe they’ve been chosen by god to assasinate criminals. As the brothers, played by Sean Patrick Flannery and Norman Reedus, are hunting down mafia thugs while being chased themselves by an FBI agent, Willem Dafoe.

Boondock isn’t a deep movie. It’s very superficial and incredibly simple, and that is really half of it’s appeal. You don’t feel stupid for watching it, but you don’t have to waste any excess brain power either. 

Troy Duffy, while being a divisive figure himself, managed to produce a coherent and effective movie. The dialogue feels like what you’d pick up listening to a bunch of guys bullshitting in a bar (which is where Duffy supposedly wrote most of it) and the story is definitely appealing to anyone who’s had to put up with a certain amount of shit in their lives.

The movie is worth revisiting, while there is nothing that makes me stop and recategorize it as my favorite film the new Blu Ray does show off that Duffy made a flashier film than many give him credit for.

The extra features added for the blu ray are only really worth checking out if you’re already a die hard Boondock fan and you want to hear stories you’ve memorized again so you can mouth the words.

From Fox Home Entertainment

Summary: The souls of the wicked shall be purified by blood—but only at the hands of two notorious vigilante brothers whose killing spree is a mission from God. The cult phenomenon THE BOONDOCK SAINTS: Truth & Justice Edition arrives on Blu-ray June 14th from Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment. Just in time for Father’s Day, THE BOONDOCK SAINTS: Truth & Justice Edition contains both the R-rated and unrated director’s cut with digital copy for the first time and an all-new, never-before-seen bonus feature that pulls you even deeper into the gritty, action-packed Boondock’s world.

When a series of mysterious murders occur in Boston, the police begin to suspect that the deaths are vigilante killings perpetrated by twins Connor (Sean Patrick Flannery, To Live and Die) and Murphy (Norman Reedus, American Gangster) MacManus. Pursued by FBI Special Agent Paul Smecker (Willem Dafoe, Spider-Man 3), the devout Irish Catholic duo maintain innocence while wreaking havoc on the town dispensing their own brand of justice—a perverse, religious mission to rid Boston of all evil men. After enlisting the help of their friend Rocco (David Della Rocco, The Boondock Saints: All Saints Day), the brothers set out to hunt down every mobster and vicious criminal with unusual flair and dramatic style: by praying for each victim before the ensuing bloodbath. The Russian mob hires a hitman, the infamous ‘Il Duce’ (Billy Connolly, X-Files, I Want to Believe), to avenge the deaths of their comrades. However, the showdown between the MacManus twins and Il Duce ultimately leads to a shocking and unbelievable climax.

THE BOONDOCK SAINTS: Truth & Justice Edition will be available on 2-Disc Blu-ray and Digital Copy in the U.S. only. Pre-book is May 4.

THE BOONDOCK SAINTS: Truth & Justice Edition Blu-ray

Disc 1:

• Feature Film

• Theatrical Version

• Unrated Directors Cut

Special Features:

• ALL-NEW! The Boondock Saints – The Film and the Phenomenon

• Audio Commentary with Writer/Director Troy Duffy

• Audio Commentary with Actor Billy Connolly

• Outtakes

• Theatrical Trailer

• Deleted Scenes

Disc 2:

• Digital Copy

THE BOONDOCK SAINTS Blu-ray: (Catalog # 2273394)

Street Date: June 14, 2011

Pre-book Date: May 4, 2011

Screen Format: Widescreen 2.35:1

Audio: English 5.1 DTS HD Master Audio

Subtitles: English and Spanish

U.S. Rating: Theatrical Version – R 

Director’s Cut – Unrated

Total Run Time: 2 hours, 52 minutes

Closed Captioned: Yes

Cedar Rapids is an intimate, fun, and engaging comedy starring Ed Helms, John C Reilly, and Anne Heche. When the top salesman at a small town insurance firm dies suddenly the town’s most sheltered manchild is sent in his stead to the yearly insurance conference. The hijinks ensue when he is forced to bunk with a free whelling, devil may care insurance agent Dean Ziegler, played by John C. Reilly.

The film works as a character study for the actors involved, but is over long and too full of anecdotal plot to make a dynamic story. The actors however, manage to bring the otherwise drab movie a sense of life that is lacking in similar films. Isiah Whitlock and Anne Heche fill in the spectrum of personality between Helms and Reilly perfectly. Heche is incredibly likable in her role, shocking considering how easy it was to abhore her in the last movie I saw her in, the abomination Spread. Isiah Whitlock Jr. is such a highlight for me in this movie. There wasn’t a scene he was in I wasn’t laughing hysterically. He bring’s such an understated cleverness to his performance that it is distinctly noticeable in the tone of the film when he isn’t in the scene. Reilly and Helms, while incredibly funny, didn’t have the best chemistry. Their scenes felt like one upmanship meets self deprecating humor, a combination that just doesn’t work.

The film has a sleep inducing glaze over the film. The director’ dries out every scene with pale colors and over saturated lighting. Congratulations, your film feels indy. If your goal was to depress me before trying to get me to laugh, you succeeded. Miguel Arteta displayed a knack for being indecisive with this film, because he chose not to make any hard decisions. There were a lot of scenes that really needed to go to get the movie motoring and he limply lets the movie saunter along at an overly leisured pace.

Phil Johnston gave the actors a buffet of characterization to feast on, and they deliver in spades. Where his script fails is not trusting his audience to make leaps with the characters and having repetitive and unecessary “adventures” for the growth instead of letting it come from the small moments in the movie. Three quarters into this movie I was asking, “how long is this damn conference?” Arteta should have reigned that in and trimmed down this movie. I fault the director on that one. There was a great movie in that script, the director just gave us a decent one.

While not must see watching, I would give it a viewing if you like any of Helms or Reilly’s other work. 

From Fox Home Entertainment:

Follow mild-mannered Tim Lippe as he takes off on an epic adventure to CEDAR RAPIDS, coming to Blu-ray and DVD in a SUPER AWESOME EDITION June 21st from Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment.  This wildly funny and undeniably infectious comedy will have you wanting more of Lippe and his crew, Deanzie, Joan and Ronald as they cause mayhem at the most unconventional business convention of all-time.

CEDAR RAPIDS features an all-star cast including Ed Helms (The Hangover), John C. Reilly (Step Brothers), Anne Heche (TV’s Hung), and Academy Award® nominee and Golden Globe® winner Sigourney Weaver (Avatar).  Find additional chaos and laughs in deleted scenes, gag reel, and other extras in the SUPER AWESOME EDITION Blu-ray disc and DVD!

In CEDAR RAPIDS, a naïve small-town Midwesterner (Helms) is sent to represent his company at a regional insurance convention in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, where his mind is blown by the “big city” and he finds himself in the midst of the most unexpected shenanigans.

CEDAR RAPIDS DVD Features:

• Deleted Scenes  

o Dinner With Macy   

o Song Dedication   

o Cart Ride     

o Fire Extinguisher Fight      

o Goodbye to Bree   

o Cabin Extras     

• Gag Reel 

• Mike O’Malley – Urban Clogger 

• Tweaking in the USA 

• Wedding Belles – Crashing a Lesbian Wedding 

• Top Notch Commercial 

CEDAR RAPIDS Blu-ray Disc Features:

All of the DVD features, plus

• Convention Connection 

o Tim Lippe 

o Dean Ziegler 

o Ronald Wilkes 

o Joan Ostrowski 

o Bill Krogstad  

o Orin Helgesson 

o Bree

• Fox Movie Channel Presents: Direct Effect Miguel Arteta

• Fox Movie Channel Presents: Writer’s Draft Phil Johnston

• BD LIVE

o Exclusive: Ed Helms Mad Chopper Skills

• Digital Copy

I have over 1,200 DVDs, 3,000 CDs and a couple hundred books; over half of them the average person would be completely embarrassed to own. I, however, defend my purchases.

AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN PARIS

For as long as I could remember I always loved werewolves. To be honest it’s not just limited to werewolves. Pretty much anything that involves shapeshifting has a place in my heart. I loved the book series Animorphs as a kid and one of my all-time favorite movies was Monster Squad which has what I still consider to be the best werewolf transformation in film history.

Junior High was when I first started getting into Horror movies, which I explained briefly in Episode 3. One of the original five horror movies I saw was a sequel to a movie I had never seen, An American Werewolf In Paris. I loved this movie! Now granted when I was a kid I also loved Saturday the 14^th Strikes Back but that’s another movie for another episode. If I were to say that An American Werewolf in Paris is a realistic, believable and intelligent movie, I’d lose all creditability (or at least as much creditability as a guy who defends shit movies and CDs on the internet can lose). What this movie is though, is fast-paced, funny and enjoyable. And if you disagree with that, we call all agree that this movie has a nice set of titties in it. Titties only made nicer because they’re attached to the hot French chick from Before Sunrise.

American Werewolf in Paris was “written” by Tom Stern. Tom Stern also wrote and directed one of my top 10 favorite movies of all time Freaked. The reason that I write written in quotations is because Tom pitched the movie and wrote the original script and was then fired. Stern claims not a single scene in this movie appeared in his original script and yet he got the writer’s credit. Tom remained in obscurity for awhile until Jimmy Kimmel discovered him and made him a writer for The Man Show. This all has nothing to do really with American Werewolf in Paris really just a fun fact. I will say that as much as I love this movie, I’d have loved to see Tom Stern’s original script which he promised was more of an homage to the original and was much more tongue-in-cheek.

Tongue-in-cheek is definitely a word that doesn’t exist in the world of American Werewolf in Paris. The plot line follows Andy (Thomas Everett Scott) and his friends Brad and Chris. They are on an “extreme sports” tour, which seems to be sponsored and financed strictly by themselves. They go throughout Europe and do “extreme stunts” off different structures illegally. Andy is apparently far behind on “points”, but plans to take a big lead with his stunt of Bungee Jumping off the Effiel Tower. Just as he’s about to jump he meets the suicidal Serafine (Julie Deply). Andy Stops her from committing suicide and makes it his goal to personally help her… not… be… suicidal? According to wikipedia Serafine doesn’t know this but her parents are the main characters from American Werewolf in London but in the 100+ times I’ve watched this movie I don’t recall any moment hinting to that.

Serafine of course turns out to be a Werewolf and after a wolf themed underground rave Andy is now a werewolf, Brad is a ghost and Chris is… perfectly fine. This obviously means that Chris will be the “bait” throughout the next hour. The film basically turns into good werewolves vs. bad werewolves and other ridiculousness.

It’s clear that even in my plot summary I think this movie is outrageous on all accounts, so what do I want to defend it for? I defend it because this film is fun as fuck. It’s something that is perfect when you don’t want to think. If American Werewolf in London is a thinking man’s horror film than American Werewolf in Paris is a thinking man’s horror film after a long night of studying. The highlight of the film is the performance of Vince Vieluf who played Brad. His character is so likeable and fun that when he eventually dies I remember actually being upset, but I was happy to see him return as a ghost.

So shut off your brain, stop trying to pointing out all the outrageous leaps of logic in the film and just have fun!

Matt Kelly is the host of the Saint Mort Show and also writes in his blog Pure Mattitude

In 1983 an unknown novelty singer released his self-titled debut album on the small record label. No one expected that almost three decades later he’d be releasing his 13^th album. This then unknown artist was Al Yankovic or Weird Al to his friends and family. Everyone expected Weird Al to be one and done but with 6 Gold records, 7 Platinum and 1 Double Platinum record and multiple Grammy nominations and wins Weird Al has proven his staying power time and time again. He has slowly become the idol for every person in this world who has been told they won’t “make it”. Furthermore, he’s a just a nice guy.

With his 13^th album he takes jabs at some of pop music’s biggest stars, mocks the idea of celebrity and of course it wouldn’t be a weird al album without at least one song about food and a polka melody. Al has always had his finger on the pulse of pop culture so even the name is a topical in our Harold Camp end of days society.

The Album kicks off with the Lady Gaga parody Perform this Way. It’s one of the rare Al Parodies where he actually sings about the artist he’s parodying with such lyrics as “My Mama told me when I was hatched act like a superstar/Save your allowance, buy a bubble dress and someday you will go far” but explains to the listener that he’s “not crazy” he just “performs this way”

While Al has always been known for his parodies, personally I find his originals far more satisfying. CNR is a White Stripes style parody mocking the “Chuck Norris” style joke rumors but instead of applying it to a badass like Norris or Mr. T instead describes HooDoo himself Charles Nelson Reilly. Skipper Dan, which I believe is written in the musical style of Weezer, describes the sad life of a struggling actor who instead of acting in films is stuck working as a tour guide on the Disneyland Jungle Cruise ride. Craigslist is my least favorite song on the album. It’s performed in the style of The Doors and is about, you guessed it, Craigslist. Perhaps the problem is the concept is basically the same as his 1999 Backstreet boys parody eBay or maybe it’s because I’m not a Doors fan.He also does a weird style parody of Hanson with If That Isn’t Love.

As far as his Style Parodies/Originals go the masterpieces on this album are a toss up between Ringtone (in the style of Queen) and Stop Forwarding that Crap to me (in the style of Meat Loaf) which is the perfect closing track to this entire album.

Parody-wise it’s not Al’s greatest work but that may have a lot more to do with the lack of quality music out there. Regardless he uses his parodies to really jab at celebrity worship. I already went over his Lady Gaga parody, also on the album is a Taylor Swift TMZ (You Belong To Me) that covers similar themes our celebrity obsessed media. The highlight parodies are his Miley Cyrus spoof Party in the CIA and his B.o.B. parody Another Tattoo. Another Tattoo specifically shows Al’s ear for detail as he nails B.o.B.’s unique rapping style perfectly.

As is the case with most “Weird Al” albums the polka track is the standout highlight of the album. In Polkaface Weird Al does his polka melody around some of those Auto-tune favorites like Right Round (Flo-Rida), Baby (Justin Bieber) and Replay (Iyaz) to name a few. What always struck me as amazing about Al’s polka melodies are the moments where the songs almost sound more beautiful than the original song. It happened on Straight outta Lynwood’s polka melody when he plays Float On by Modest Mouse and it happens again this time when he performs Fireflies by Owl City.

I’m glad that Al has managed to remain fresh and relevant all these many years and hope in my heart that he will continue releasing records.

I have over 1,200 DVDs, 3,000 CDs and a couple hundred books; over half of them the average person would be completely embarrassed to own. I, however, defend my purchases.

EPISODE 4: HARVEY DANGER – WHERE DID ALL THE MERRYMAKERS GO?

In 1998 I was resting in my bed listening to the local radio station y100. Suddenly they debuted a new single by a “new band” named Harvey Danger. That song was the massive hit Flagpole Sitta. The title of the song came from the lyric ‘I run it up the flagpole and see who salutes but no one ever does’, however most people than (and even today) just refer to the song as “Paranoia, Paranoia” after its undeniably catchy bridge. However except for their poorly charting follow-up single Private Helicopter the band basically disappeared into one hit wonder obscurity.

What’s a shame is that the band was extremely talented and their major label debut Where Did All the Merrymakers Go? is a shining example of quality late 90’s indie punk. The bands formed back in 1992 (six years before their hit single) and in true punk fashion began with 4 inexperienced musicians forming a band before learning to play their instruments.

Specifically nailing down a genre for Harvey Danger is tough, there’s definitely punk attitude in songs like Old Hat and Flagpole Sitta but then songs like Jack the Lion come off as much more indie rock based fare (specifically a group like Modest Mouse) but when you’ve got songs tackling such things as Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo and publishing your own zines, I tend to file them safely in the Geek Rock genre with bands like They Might Be Giants, Weezer and Weston (the latter two I will likely be defending albums of one day).

Harvey Danger has managed to keep a decent cult following which is why the band broke up only two years ago. Their debut however is a masterpiece and should have blown this band up into the legendary status of other great debut albums like Weezer’s Blue Album and mewithoutyou: A–> B Life.

The Album kicks off Carlotta Valdez which is both the shortest song on the album as well as one of the best opening tracks someone could ask for. Exploding with a heavy bass-line and lyrics detailing the plot of Jimmy Stewart/Alfred Hitchcock classic Vertigo we get a story of obsession that is delightful. Obsession is an ongoing theme throughout the album appearing in songs Wooly Muffler, Private Helicopter and Terminal Annex. Lead Vocalist Sean Nelson is clearly dealing with an unwanted break-up and isn’t ready to let go just yet.

Carlotta Valdez is followed by Flagpole Sitta which I already explained was/is a massive hit. The song’s narrator (who I think it is safe to assume is Nelson) is frustrated with society in general (“Been around the world and found the only stupid people are breeding” “If You’re bored than you’re boring”) and wants to be part of the underground publishing zines and piercing his tongue. But let’s be honest, this song is definitely cut form the post-grunge clothe where it’s as ambiguous as fuck and thus really difficult to follow a coherent “story”.

The biggest mistake this album made was releasing Private Helicopter as it’s second single. While I adore the song and it’s mildly catchy, they should have released Jack the Lion or Old Hat instead, both being catchy songs that like Flagpole Sitta weren’t specifically about a broken heart.

Harvey Danger’s debut mixes all the things good about Punk (the attitude) and Indie Rock (the sound) and results in a prefect blend of the two. Bands could learn a lot from Harvey Danger, specifically when they conclude “If you’ve got greatness in you, would you do us all a favor and keep it to yourself?”. Good advice that thankfully Harvey Danger ignored.

Summertime and the living is eeeeeeeeeasy.

Going stay indoors watching TV.

Summertime and I want watch DVVVVVVVVVDS.

I need Matt to tell me what I should see.

JUNE 7^th

Adam Sandler/Jennifer Ainston’s romantic comedy Just Go With It comes out on DVD & Blu-Ray. You may remember this movie as being the film with the easiest resolved solution ever (the kids are from a previous relationship) but I suppose if they went with that solution the film is only 30 minutes long.  The Coen Brother’s Academy Nominated Western True Grit is also getting a Blu-Ray DVD release along with Sanctum. Meanwhile on Blu-Ray the complete Superman Motion Picture Anthology is getting released. This box set contains every Superman movie from the original 1979 movie all the way to Bryan Singer’s Superman Returns. Meanwhile Adam Sandler’s first 3 hit films come out on Blu-Ray (these would be my picks of the week) Billy Madison, Happy Gilmore and Bulletproof. Wisely Going Overboard still has not appeared on Blu-Ray

Avoid At All Costs

JUNE 14^th

ScyFy original wanna Battle: Los Angeles and Red Riding Hood are getting a Blu-Ray/DVD release. I’ve yet to see either of these films so I can’t personally speak of my thoughts of them, but I’m willing to bet that Battle: Los Angeles is bad but entertaining while Red Riding Hood is just plain terrible. Also out on DVD/Blu-Ray is Hall Pass which I have seen and can say is worth viewing. It is not the funniest movie I’ve ever seen and it does drag at moments, but when it hits the right note it hits it in a gigantic way. My pick of the week though is Jackass 3.5. I finally saw Jackass 3D last week and am totally pumped up and ready to see the shit that was too outrageous for the theater.

JUNE 21^st

Hitting DVD/Blu-Ray this week is Season One of Louis C.K.’s show Louie. I’ve yet to to see it but I adored his short-lived HBO show Lucky Louie. I’m hoping it will present the same anti-sitcom humor as his HoneyMooner’s tribute was. Also on Blu-Ray DVD is the Philip K Dick adaptation Adjustment Bureau and the Vegas Comedy Cedar Rapids which I’ve wanted to see since Jonathan first mentioned it on the podcast back on Episode 198. However as badly as I want to see it, we all know my love of terrible made-for-tv movies so my pick of the week is obviously Mega Python Vs. Gatoroid.

JUNE 28^th

After reading Jontathan’s infamous rant did you get curious about Sucker Punch but didn’t want to drop money at the theater to see it? Well you’re in luck that and Season of the Witch are now out on Blu-Ray/DVD. If you remember the days when Adult Swim used to show serious anime as well as outrageous comedy than you’ll be happy to know Cowboy Bebop: the Movie is coming to Blu-Ray but My pick of the week is Lord of the Rings Complete Trilogy coming to on Blu-Ray. I can’t wait to see Peter Jackson’s beautiful landscapes and Gollum in that clear Blu-Ray picture!