Moko (stay by your cocoa!) made this after I told him about whatever the hell it was I told him about. I can't remember. But Moko remembers! When he tells me I'll update this post with all relevant facts and you will proudly exclaim "Confused? Not me!!"
UPDATE SEVERAL DAYS LATER: It appears that the memory of the xenomorph/Back to the Future connection has largely been lost in time. One might almost say, like tears in the rain. Time for something else.
Good day. Something like fifty percent of SUPERBLOG!!'s visitors are Americanos, so I thought it would be a nice gesture to wish them all a very happy Indie Day. The picture above is of course from the movie that inspired the list 40 Things I Learned From ID4 That I Never Knew Before. (But the image was most directly swiped from an article called Will beaming songs into space lead to an alien invasion?) That was a very, very shitty movie.
Fuck. Three years ago.
Maybe it's time to end SUPERBLOG!!? It would be a mercy kill at this point. :-(
I watched the entire IMDb top 250 list and now I'm watching everything else. All reviews so far.
I dedicate this installment to SUPERBLOG!! fan Booger Moko Toa, because it will be largely spent dissing movies that he likes.
Hostel (2005)
Three guys go to Slovakia or Slovenia or somewhere to get drunk and fuck girls. So far, so good. Then the film gets sadistic and disgusting. Personally, I don't mind extreme violence in movies as long as there's a point to it. But this is simply an orgy in torture and mutilation, and I don't think it has anything interesting to say. (What's the moral? "Tread warily upon foreign soil"? "Don't get drunk and fuck girls"?)
They Live (1988)
Rowdy Roddy Piper is in this and man, that guy can act! Just kidding. This is a sci-fi something by trash auteur John Carpenter. Entertaining but incredibly, mindbogglingly stupid. In fact, it may be the dumbest movie I've seen this entire year. Extra plus for the very convincing alien make-up, though. This is exactly how I imagine aliens to look:
Saw (2004)
Interesting premise (too guys chained in a public restroom with a couple of saws and a dead guy) but ultimately it's a traditional action/slasher film (Seven meets Friday the 13th Part 5), albeit with a handful of extreme sequences. If you're the queasy kind, you may puke while watching Hostel, but you probably won't while watching Saw. Michael Emerson, who is awesome as Ben Linus in Lost, is just WEAK in this. Still, I like Cary Elwes. He was good in The Princess Bride (See Part 3). I wish he'd had a saw in that.
The Music of Chance (1993)
TV movie with Mandy Patinkin, based on Paul Auster book. Unsatisfying ending, but on the whole I kinda liked it. I wish I had more to write about it. But not as much as I wish I had a million dollars. Then I could hire someone to write SUPERBLOG!! posts. And maybe it wouldn't all be about what movies I've seen recently.
Soylent Green (1973) (repeat)
In the overcrowded future, Charlton Heston is a lone cop who investigates a murder, little suspecting that it will lead to the horrible revelation that Soylent Green is... not very good, actually. But Phil Hartman's spoof of this in Saturday Night Live (which spoiled the "surprise" ending for generations) is classic. If I was a better man, I'd find the clip and link to it.
The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl 3-D (2005)
Pretty crap. I watched it in 2D first and then in 3D and it probably works better in three dimensions. Some of the visual effects look surprisingly crappy in the 2D version. Robert Rodriguez is usually dependable for popcorn entertainment but this time, the story is provided by his 6-year-old son Racer Max, and kids shouldn't write movies. Sure, this is a children's movie, but so was Spy Kids, and that had Antonio Banderas and Carla Gugino and Danny Trejo. And some kids. This one's got David Arquette and Kristin Davis, and some kids. Kids can't act. Did I mention the script is really bad? And the moral, "dream unselfish dreams", seems tacked-on and makes little sense. Important trivia: Both Sharkboy and Lavagirl are named Taylor in real life, even though one is a boy (Sharkboy) and one is a girl (Lavagirl).
Dogville (2003)
Interesting for an hour or so, then it starts getting extremely frustrating and unlikable. Lars von Trier loves turning women into Victims with a capital V (well, in his movies, at least). In this film, like in Dancer in the Dark, his main character is a very gullible woman who is punished for her stupidity by repeatedly being betrayed and abused and raped. Said woman is unable and/or unwilling to defend herself in any way. And in both works, most (if not all) of the people who surround the Victim are Assholes with a capital A. This may be how von Trier views the world... or maybe I should say America: as populated by spineless Victims and sadistic Assholes. I wouldn't object to it (not even to the use of rape - again! and again! and again! - as a plot point) if it weren't so fucking hackneyed and predictable. There's a ton of good actors in Dogville but ultimately they can't save the film from being a piece of shit.
Thx 2 Mook 4 finding this image. For a minute there, I was starting to think I might have dreamt it. But no, it's all real.
Here's the scoop: My friend Damon tells me that Cowboy Joe might be the key to all the mysteries of Lost. As you'll find out in the second episode of season 4 ("Meet Joe Lost"), he's been on the island since the crash and walking around in the background all the time. You'd think we'd have noticed him once or twice, what with his big cowboy hat and all. But it turns out he's mostly been on the toilet whenever there was a big gathering at the beach. So that explains it.
Cowboy Joe may even have caused the crash of Oceanic Flight 815 with his inappropriate behavior on the plane. See episode 5.13 ("What's the Deal with Airplane Food?"). Damon also tells me that Cowboy Joe may or may not have an enormous secret hidden under his hat. This secret may or may not be a pair of antennae proving he's an alien, or a gateway to another dimension, or an ugly wig. The mystery of his hat will be fully explored in season six's penultimate episode ("There's Something About Joe's Hat"). By that time, all the original cast members will be dead, because Joe will have eaten them.
Cowboy Joe will play himself. Cowboy Joe's dad (seen in flashbacks and mysterious visions) will be played by Burt Reynolds.
Okay, so SUPERBLOG!! hasn't been updated in one entire week. That's because a) I've been out of town, and b) my co-blogger is weak and useless (no offense).
Anyway. Here's the eleventh weekly installment of the disturbingly popular SUPERBLOG!! feature in which we watch me watching all the movies on the IMDb top 250 list (actually I'm using the less frequently updated Twofifty list, at least for now) plus a lot of other movies. All installments.
Before Sunrise (1995)
American boy meets French girl on a train. They spend a magical night together in Vienna, walking around and talking about relationships and nothing.
Before Sunset (2004)
Spoilerish: Nine years later they meat up again and spend a perhaps slightly less magical day together in Paris, walking around and talking about relationships and nothing, and something.
Bringing Up Baby (1938)
Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn hunt for a leopard. Isn't that silly? Synchronicity: Hepburn is in The Aviator (played by Cate Blanchette), which I watched last week. Okay, that doesn't count. But how about this? At one point Grant is referred to as a "ladykiller".
The Ladykillers (1955)
See? I watched it 48 hours after I saw the remake (as mentioned last week). It's a Charming British Classic but I don't know. I think I actually prefer the American remake. I mean, Alec Guinness' teeth are awesome, but Peter Sellers is largely wasted.
Penn & Teller: Bullshit!, Season 1 (2003)
The premise (debunking society's bullshit) is much stronger than the execution but I still have a soft spot for this show and I'll probably start watching Season 2 within the next few weeks.
Alien (1979) (repeat)
2003 Special Edition. And God bless Ridley Scott for making a Director's Cut that actually shorter than the original release. But the differences between them are very minor. Hey. What the FUCK are the Alien movies about anyway? Nature versus man? I don't understand the THEME, man. And why are there a lot of SOUNDS in space? Remember the tag line? "In space, no one can here you scream, because it's just a VACUUM", you know?
Alien vs. Predator (2004)
I thought this was supposed to be about aliens and predators. You know, because it's called Alien vs Predator and all. (Well, actually the full title of the movie is AVP: Alien vs Predator but that's like X2: X-Men United and JFK: Jack Kennedy Resurrected.) But there are a lot of humans running around. Talking, even. And the sole survivor is a human (the black chick (that's a SPOILER, don't read it!)). Ewan Bremner who is in Trainspotting is in this. He plays someone, I don't know who exactly, I was a little bit drunk when I watched this. I watched it in a hotel room. (I'm still there as I type this. (But not this.))
Regardless.
The concept is of course GENIUS (and has been milked by comic books for decades) but the execution is KINDA SHIT. Lance Henrikssen as Weyland makes no sense since he was a younger man in Alien3 which takes place a bunch of years in the future. I don't know exactly how many but 57 years passes between Alien and Aliens, right? And Alien doesn't take place before 2004, right? And Alien vs Predator takes place in 2004, yeah? So how does that work? Was that an android in Alien3 after all? But how come he BLED? These are all questions that need to be asked, and asked hard.
Besides, Predators have always looked stupid. And ugly. (Kind of like our old friend Scotty.) One golden Michael Keaton.
Aliens (1986) (repeat)
The director's cut. A little bit better than the original. Not because it's longer (length sucks), but because the scenes that were cut in the theatrical release are kind of important.
A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)
Full of Brando goodness. Vivien Leigh, too.
Great Expectations (1946)
John Mills is 20 years too old to play Pip but otherwise it's a fine film. The only element I really miss is Wemmick. He's in the movie but the actor feels wrong and he gets very little screen time anyway.
Alien3 (1992) (repeat)
The special edition. It's fun to see Paul McGann's role expanded. He was "I" from Withnail and I, you know. But it's still not good.
Mystic River (2003)
The movie that cost Bill Murray his Oscar for Lost in Translation. Sean's not too shabby, though.
Alien Resurrection (1997) (repeat)
Special edition. And NOT a director's cut says Jean-Pierre Whatshisname. It doesn't really matter, it's still a mess.
Once Upon a Time in America (1984)
Sergio Leone was a very talented filmmaker who somehow found new ways to irritate me with each movie he made. Almost all of them are very slow AND very overlong. (One or the other wouldn't be so bad.) And this is no exception. (I think it's the second longest movie on the 250 list.) And just a little while into the movie, he lets an intensely annoying phone ring for what feels like fifteen minutes (but is probably closer to five). Luckily, it gets better. It's quite sprawling but I think it's surprisingly focused considering SIX people are credited with the screenplay, plus one with "additional dialogue". (Plus one uncredited, according to IMDb.) With this one I've seen 90 percent of the films on Twofifty.
Van Helsing (2004)
Stupid and loud adventure movie/horror spoof. Okay to drink beer to. Strangely downbeat ending. I have a low tolerance for this kind of movie but Hugh Jackman is a charismatic action hero and Kate Beckinsale is hot. Other cast members include Faramir from Lord of the Rings and the Duke from Moulin Rouge. Actually, Faramir had a small part in Moulin Rouge as well, but I don't remember him. The Frankenstein monster looks like Danny Boyle [Update: Fuck, I meant Peter Boyle of course. Thx, Matt.] in Young Frankenstein. I kept waiting (to no avail) for cameos by, like, the Mummy and the Invisible Man.
Of course, the 160 million dollars it cost to make this piece of crap could have been used to save the lives of thousands of people. So we might as well enjoy it.
The Searchers (1956)
God, how I hate John Wayne. The DVD extras features 50s interviews by a guy who's the spitting image of Troy McClure.
NOW we DANCE.
Twofifty update: 226
