5 Things You Learn From Super Hero Movies aka Comics

1. It’s all fun and games until someone loses an uncle- So you’re flipping around thinking, “Yep, this is the best time of my life, nothing can go wrong” True, until you decide to be a dick which is where karma kicks in like a bitch and takes out a loved one. There is no way to prevent that. You're gonna be a dick and there's no stopping that. What you should do is take out huge life insurances on all your loved ones. It won’t matter that you can barely pay the premium; when your uncle kicks the bucket, you’ll be swimming in easy money. “Oh god, the humanity. why’d I have to be such a whiny bitch?” Oh yeah, that fat check coming in.

2. Never trust the mentor- I know what you’re thinking. “He taught me everything I know, why’d he want to kill me?” ‘Cause you’re being a bitch that’s why. “Oh my uncle’s dead” or “Oh I’m not an executioner” He’s gonna be “Grow a pair, ya puss, or better yet how about you join me so you hopefully become less of a puss and we rule the world together.” Except, you’re a puss, and you’re not going to. However, in this moment of the mentor’s weakness, take a gun and put two between the eyes. Two, because, odds are that fucker’s gonna live through the first one, and if you’ve only put in one, he’ll come back and make sure he’s impenetrable to bullets. No one gets up after two to the head.

3. Your friends are idiots- Where’d you find them? I got no clue. You say the end of the bus, but I’m pretty sure that compared to most buses, that place is the middle, if you get what I’m saying. They ride the short bus; they’re retarded. That’s what I’m saying. This is both a strength and a weakness. Strength being that you can be your normal self around them, then save their dumb ass when they get stuck in the tree and calm them down using the same exact voice, and they will never put two and two together. And I already stated the weakness; they’ll get themselves kidnapped for the 15th fucking time and you’ll wonder why the fuck they didn’t invest in a body guard or a taser or at least some fucking mace. Which brings me to number 4.

4. Your villains have no imagination whatsoever and are also fucking morons.- They might have an ingenious plan to kill you, but it’s the same fucking plan. “Yeah I’m gonna capture the dude’s girlfriend as to lure him into our trap.” Well, what’s the trap? Just kill him? How? He has fucking superpowers; what are you going to do, point a gun at her head and beat him to a bloody pulp? Eventually self-preservation’s going to kick in and say “kill the bitch, that way you two can have something in common in about 30 seconds.” Stick to fighting convenience store robbers: at least they have a reason to be unimaginative.

5. Never leave a paper trail to your other identity- You’re poor. You see an ad offering fat cash for pictures of the vigilante of the city aka you. You’re thinking “easy money.” No. Not so easy. Sure it is now. But then the villain comes on your (the “by day” ego) doorstep demanding where the fuck is the vigilante (refer to #4 in that they are fucking morons and also can’t put two and two together unless they see you put on the mask/ take it off with their own goddamn eyes) showing a paper with your name on the picture. Yep, you fail again. Because you should have had that life insurance plan when your uncle died and then you wouldn’t have needed that picture money.

Brick- Veronica Mars goes Indie aka Not Just Another In The Wall

After writing about a movie that I hated, now here's one that I have nothing but love for: Brick. It's independent in the truest sense of the word. It was so strange and weird idea (detectives and high school? Who knew?), that no one touched it. Well, they would, but Rian Johnson, the writer-director, would have to change a great deal of it. So he went "fuck you" (politely of course) and secured funding through friends, family, and friends of the family until he got the bare amount needed to make the film. Then it went to Sundance in 2005, got nominated and won a Special Jury Prize. It eventually got picked up by Focus and was released in limited in April 2006. Of course it was released in limited theaters because even though it had a ton of critical acclaim, how the hell are you going to market the damn thing? I mean, when I see "Detective in High School," I know I'm gonna go, "Fuck yeah man," but then you got these people (old people. At least, in my mind.) going, "what in garsh darn tarnation is that language they be speaking, Mort?" (See?). But it found me in DVD, and what a glorious day that was. I had an awesome job back then. Sitting on my ass in front of a computer, looking up Robot Chicken videos for 7.50 an hour. It was 8 hour days with 6 hours of doing that and 2 hours of actual work. So, on my lunch break, I head out to the nearest Blockbuster to rent it. Replacing "So, I threw the Senate at him" with "Throwing him to the bulls" for about 2 hours, I was immersed in this high school world that felt nothing like my own, yet in tone felt oddly similar. Because, when in high school, you feel like everything is life or death, and in Brick, every goddamn thing is life or death. Oh yeah, fuck! I forgot to tell the plot of story. Well, without giving much detail (I won't spoil anything past the trailer. I have way too much respect for this film to do that), Brick is about Brendan (Joseph Gordon Levitt, the dude from 3rd Rock and 10 Things I Hate About You, an underrated teen comedy) who finds his ex-girlfriend (Emily de Ravin, the pregnant girl on Lost) dead in a tunnel, and tries to find out who and why.
Now, Veronica Mars basically the same in the small screen (and maybe the big screen?) as Brendan does in this. I think the difference is that Veronica Mars is more Phillip Marlowe while Brendan leans more into Sam Spade. Both are Bogart, but there's a few subtle differences. Marlowe prefers to stand back from a distance to learn what's happened. Spade gets right into the middle of things to find out the real deal. Marlowe also has the mouth, not to say that Spade doesn't, but he prefers to use action. If I'm not making much sense, I'm probably talking out of my ass. I'm not really sure right now.
But back to Brick. Just so much good. The kids talk straight out of a Dashiell Hammet book, which is what Johnson wanted to do. He wanted to capture the spirit of his books. If I had to describe Brick in one sentence it'd be this: Miller's Crossing meets David Lynch but shot like a Spaghetti Western. This is one of my favorites. It may not be yours, but this flick hit me at the right place at the right time.

But, fair warning, if and when you see Brick, put on the subtitles the first time. The sound production crew did what they could, but it's still hard to hear the dialogue the first time around. Afterwards, you get the hang of listening to them, so it's not necessary on multiple viewings.

Babylon A.D.- Nothing I Write Will Prepare You

Before I go, I have to say a few things about my reviews. I believe that it's all about expectation. Go in low enough, and anything can be good. And vice-versa. For that reason, I usually go into a movie with little expectation and give mostly positive reviews with the worst being "I'm never seeing it again, but I don't mind that I spent an hour and a half in there."


This is the exception. (Saving Private Ryan Spoiler later on. I'm going to go ahead and assume you don't care about this waste of celluloid. If you do, don't.)

Dear. God. Where to start? Let's go with the good. There was a decent idea in there. For the first two acts, it's straight up cyberpunk. Instead of a paper passport, you inject nanomachines in your body. Commercialization everywhere, such as Coca-cola owning an airline. But they threw that down the shitter around the beginning of the third act, but more on that later. But it's party for that reason that I hate it even more. I love cyberpunk. Ghost in the Shell, the first Matrix. Anyone serious getting into cyberpunk should see Ghost in the Shell and the series it's based off of, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex (not a continuance, but an alternate time-line kind of deal). That is some really good stuff, and a conversation about another day. Would I love to see more of it? Hell yes. This mistreated? Fuck no. And since this thing has completed bombed critically already, it's going to be harder for better, well thought out cyberpunk scripts to be made. I'm hesitant for the recently announced GITS live-action movie to say the least.

The bad. Hmmm...

Oh yes. Vin Disel. Don't get me wrong. When the man acts, the guy can act. I mean, whatever happened to Saving Private Ryan? It's like a fucking analogy for his entire career. Still hasn't put himself back together again like The Iron Giant did. I want that to be the analogy for his next role. Because I have no idea what made him do this. Apparently the script was good the first time, until the producers fucked it up, so maybe that's why he did it. But once he got the new script he went, "Save [the movie]. What for?" What for, indeed. He and everyone else looked like they did it for the money. But compared to the girl he's supposed to transport, he's looks fucking Oscar worthy (then again, that might be because of the whole disability thing. Wait, he actually talks like that? Nevermind. Low blow, I know *shrug*).

Aurora is, by far, the most annoying creature to have ever graced a screen. From her on out she'll be called Jar Jar Tam (JJT) because it's like they took the insanity of River Tam and the STFU annoyance of Jar Jar and fused them DBZ style, thus making both their traits 10 fold stronger. Here's a line of dialogue- "We protected each other like a family. We're all going to die in New York." The fuck?! Oh and get this, whenever Vin kills someone, JJT makes a shrill worse than nails on a chalkboard come out of her ungodly mouth. It's like you're in the stadium watching Barry Bonds hit a homer, then a guy taps you on the back going "You know he's not natural, right?" No, no I didn't. I didn't notice the pictures of Barry 20 years ago and Barry squared now the 50 fucking times they showed it on Sportscenter. But a more "The fuck?!"" moment is towards the end on the day that Vin dies (his name is Toorop, but I feel even more silly typing that out). JJT says "I need you to live" then proceeds to shoot him in the chest, thus killing him. The fuck?

Now we get to the crippling beginning of the 3rd act. Now, admittedly, I was like "You know, this is pretty mediocre, but it's not comepletely unwatchable." Oh how naive I was. Just a fair warning about the complete idiocracy of this moment, even though this sentence will not prepare you for the huge shit your brain will have after you read the next sentence. Apparently JJT's "father" was kicked out of the medical/religious (they never specify I didn't care enough to verify) society for trying to put artificial intelligence in babies.

Still here? Didn't have an epileptic fit? I wish I could add something to that but I can't. I'm going to try. ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE? IN BABIES?

WHAT.

THE.

FUCK?!?!?!

And that's pretty much word for word. Maybe if they had worded it better it wouldn't have been so "left side of the brain looks at the right side of the brain and says 'it's dark in here, and we may die,' " but still. That is mind numbingly awful. I'd rather see a slightly shitty snowmobile action scene than hear that, oh wait, I had my cake and ate it too. Fuck.

Not sure if you got that, but save your money for a book. And save your brain cells for an alcholic stupor not that I support binge drinking.

So here we go

For the fuck of it (what else am I going to do? I can't look at porn all day; I DON'T WANT TO GO BLIND!), I set this up to review movies, comment on some movie news and post some stories I wrote sporadically over the past year to put out on teh internets. If you dig it, woohoo. If you're like "Fuck you, that is clownshoes," I'll be like, "well, you read it so who's the dumb sumbitch now?" Still me? Probably. You can thank (or blame) Babylon A.D. for this (and man, is it getting a shit ton of well deserved hate. More on that later.) Still here? Cool. I'm gonna wait a while to fully collect my thoughts on Babylon A.D. (Ironic, I know. Thoughts on a brainless movie. Dammit, I'm getting ahead of myself).