Category: Movies
What is your favorite "Die Hard" sequel?
Someone want to clarify something for me?
Is James Clayton in The Recruit NOC or is he a wash out that got used by a dirty CIA agent?
I watched it late last night and I know this question isn’t supposed to hang with you but it is hanging with me… Don’t know why for sure… I knew Al Pacino’s character was the dirty one but I wasn’t quite sure about the ending of the film….
Observations on "Pie Fucker 3"
Jason Biggs described himself in Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back perfectly while he was being arrested…
“I’m the Pie Fucker! I’m the Pie Fucker!”
Unfortunately that’s the only role Jason gets questioned about — or when he’s being asked about other things… Pie Fucking ends up one of those questions that comes up. Pretty nice distinction to have about yourself, isn’t it? “I was a teenage pie-fucker”…
Ok, why am I talking about the copulation of Jason Biggs and an Apple Pie? Because I saw Pie Fucker 3… er.. American Pie 3….er… American Wedding this afternoon where we continue the gross outs and the odd sexual situations that Jim ends up getting himself into. He ruins a wedding cake, he gets head at the most uncomfortable time…
And his bride doesn’t even talk about Band Camp in this one. I feel ripped off!
Serious, American Wedding wasn’t that bad a piece of cinema from a cast that you knew for the most part – Jim, Michelle (Say my name bitch!), Finch, Stifler, Jim’s Dad, Kevin Myers…
This wasn’t Jim’s movie like American Pie 2 was (American Pie was just a general exploration of teenage sexuality inthe late 1990’s). There were plenty of things that revolved around Jim and Jim’s wedding but for the most part this was Steve Stifler’s movie. Trying to hook up with Michelle’s sister, trying to throw a great bachelor party, ruining and then saving Jim and Michelle’s wedding… Seann Williams Scott got the big role of the movie.
And I will not be one to say American Pie is dead because this married Michelle and Jim (though I do think you won’t see anyone back for a 4th). There is arguably a 4th movie out there that would explore — and this gets a little gross to think about it — the trials and tribulations of a couple expecting their first child. Of course, we’ve seen that in Nine Months but then again – that was a lot more gentle and a lot less of a gross out than any American Pie movie has been.
Oh, and for those who haven’t seen it – don’t mistake Allyson Hannigan for Tara Reid in the movie… That’s who she resembles more times than not for some strange reason. I don’t mean because she’s a party girl or a blonde but I just mean she isn’t bubbly as much as she was in AP and AP2.
Overall good movie — for a gross out. Worth seeing.
Netflicked
What the heck happened with my Netflix Profile???
Oh, it’s not like something wrong or bad happened to it. Quite the opposite really. Netflix, it seems, made two of my movie reviews spotlighted (that or there is a glitch in the system) and I am very much surprised to find that some of my reviews have large numbers of people who have voted to describe my reviews as “Helpful”.
For example, check out the review for Jewel of the Nile by Stonegauge and you’ll see that this crappy movie and subsequent review has a ton of votes now for it…
Also, my review of X-Files: Fight the Future now has seven favorable votes in it’s name. All my other reviews (from The Naked Gun 33 and 1/3rd to the Buccaneers Super Bowl DVD) have somewhere below 10 votes to them – mostly 1 or 2.
Personally I think it’s a technical glitch but who cares? I’ll take it!
And for those following my 24 Season-renting-saga, it is now 4PM on the day of the California Presidential Primary. Disc 4 was much weaker than the first 3 discs (first 12 episodes) mostly because the product can’t keep providing great plot twists over and over again. I can’t get into details because I don’t want to spoil the show (I consider it like a movie after seeing as much as I have) for those who have not watched it yet. It’s that good.
Adaptation (the movie this time)
I just got finished watching Adaptation and.. well… you look at the hour this was posted and you can judge me a bunch of different ways because of it.
“John’s still having problems sleeping, eh?”
“He really shouldn’t have had Pizza Hut last night, it messes up your insides.”
“I’m driving him mad, I know it… Just wait until I surprise him with the knife in the gullet! Buahahahahahah!”
Um, that last one’s kinda’ messed up, ain’t it? But it was original context and you have to give me credit for that one! Score one for the John-ster! *cha-ching*
OK, off the craziness and back onto the reality of it all… I finished watching the film Adaptation and it just struck home with me in so many ways. I mean, I totally identified with the character even though it was the screen writer himself (for the record, I know there is no Donald Kaufman)… The self doubt, the cowardice, the shyness.. And some of the phrases that were quoted from The Orchid Thief and stuff like that. It was just… Wow..
I mean you look at the fact that Charlie has a a twin brother in the movie and he (Donald) is talking about split personalities in his screenplay — that’s a ploy to have Charlie himself use multiple personalities in his character after damning multiple personalities to Donald in the movie.
I mean, I really can’t say anything else… the movie just floored me. It was funny but it was also a lesson of sorts… “You are what you love, not what loves you” is a great example of it… But also the following:
Point is, what’s so wonderful is that every one of these flowers has a specific relationship with the insect that pollinates it. There’s a certain orchid look exactly like a certain insect so the insect is drawn to this flower, its double, its soul mate, and wants nothing more than to make love to it. And after the insect flies off, spots another soul-mate flower and makes love to it, thus pollinating it. And neither the flower nor the insect will ever understand the significance of their lovemaking. I mean, how could they know that because of their little dance the world lives? But it does. By simply doing what they’re designed to do, something large and magnificent happens. In this sense they show us how to live — how the only barometer you have is your heart. How, when you spot your flower, you can’t let anything get in your way. (John Laroche said that in the movie… character played by Chris Cooper. I swear, that guy either pisses the shit out of me, annoys me or I find him just too damned likable! )
The quote itself had my mind swimming with regards to a lot of different things. The movie in general made me want to write. There were a few times where I just got up and said “I have to stop and I have to write that idea I have.” Or maybe, “I should start that story I was thinking of with this and that.”
It also made me nostalgic, remorseful, confused and lonely – yet it also made me understand how we are all alone and all feel alone in our own ways. Some deal with it a lot better than others, some hide it… Some have met someone that takes away that solitude and some are forever searching.
Find your flower, find your insect. You won’t be truly pollenated in life unless you find your match and make love to it. You will not procreate the epiphany of your being unless you find your match.
As crazy as I sound right now – I’m sure of myself, I’m just very very confused and very very tired. Though I’m longing my flower…
The Phantom Edit Part 2
I was debating writing this here on my own journal or on Kill The Web but I figured I am having such a shitty day that having a topic to write about in here was going to be impossible unless I thought up something like this…
A couple of years ago after The Phantom Menace came out in movie theaters, there was a copy of the movie circulated that cut out Jar Jar Binks from the movie, along with some other cuts. It was titled The Phantom Edit. Personally I think about the editing room and how much Star Wars Episode 1 could have been better if they had left out some of the crap that was in the movie (a lot of the kiddie stuff with Anakin, 3PO and R2D2, etc) and I was thinking to last year’s “Attack of the Clones” and how things could have been improved with that one.
…and it bothers me that it would have been so much better if Lucas had just been a little more liberal with the knife.
I mean, any story is better if you cut the fat. Cut out the bullshit and try to make a long story short… It works in writing and it works in cinema too. I mean, think about this — did they REALLY need to define the Force in Star Wars Part 1 as a fucking parasite in the blood? Absolutely not. What about Back to the Future? Did they need to show Marty’s mom acting really irresponsible more than they did in the final version of the film? Nope, and it worked. They didn’t need to show Marty drugging his father to get him to go back to sleep either… Both shots were cut out from the final version of the movie (but available on the DVD) and would have given just a bit too much information. It wasn’t important that they were in the final version of the film but then again it would have been strange if they had been.
Any Star Wars faithful would balk at the idea of C3PO and R2D2 being cut out from Episodes 1 and 2 but honestly – what point do they serve besides comic relief? Couldn’t there have been written quips in characters lines in order to get them some comic relief in the film? Also the stunning false visuals that they had too many of in Episode 2 needed to be trimmed down a bit. It got to be useless and annoying to see CGI everywhere. Don’t get me wrong, they painted a stunning picture but at the same time, nothing was real (and there’s nothing to get hung about, strawberry fields forever). It wasn’t like they hand-designed miniatures as they had in the first film which awed movie goers because every visual WAS real to an extent.
CGI is good in moderation (as long as you have a good movie attached to the CGI), but over doing it… well, that just bores people. I had that problem when I saw The Matrix Revolutions but I could live with it – the story made up for short comings of reality.
Maybe I’m just too picky with things? Eh, take out the maybe. I AM too picky with things. But then again, if I wasn’t, I wouldn’t be leading my true life.
Equilibrium
As of starting this writing, there are a lot of things that are going through my head right now that I wanted to enter in here, but at the same time I need to give some order to the chaos, right? First things first, second things second and all that… right?
The first thing is the balance of the soul — Equilibrium.
Actually, I’m not writing about balance directly or about Libra or about the soul and all that deep shit that I could get into right now. Instead I’m writing about the movie Equilibrium with Christian Bale. Now I’ve talked about wanting to see The Matrix Re-Woah-ded and seeing I haven’t, this makes one very acceptable substitute in my mind. No bullet time and the action sequences weren’t as sped up as The Matrix, but the idea of Gun Kata (a martial art that makes the gun as lethal as a sword) and this 1984 / Fahrenheit 451 / The Matrix inspired film was excellent in it’s own right.
The premise of this film that got my attention the most, however, was the emotion=crime / war / man’s destruction premise. I couldn’t feel Sunday morning besides sorrow or numbness. I started watching the movie and I could identify with Bale encountering emotion for what was probably the first (or a fresh) time. It was like me receiving sound again by way of the ABI in
2001… He is overcome by trivial things such as a sunrise and other emotions and it’ s… just powerful. Of course they could have overkilled that (or maybe it would have been proper?) by showing more imagery like that — having the character just staring at something we take for granted every day and finding emotion (pleasure) in it? That would have been strong too.
As things go, I’ve got 2 papers I may very well use for my 2nd Assignment with der Long Ridge. I’m waiting to hear from my instructor, Lou Fisher, about a question that I had concerning the paper and hopefully that will be soon. I’m also waiting for Sarah Evanchalk to get back to me with regards to the stories — I sent them both to her for her to critique.
Speaking of stories, I’m also waiting for someone to get back to me on a story I touched on a few days ago on here. I think it’s a good story but it could be cleaned up a bit.. And I long to be able to piece together some of the things I touched on with this story by starting another portion of the thing.. I know, I know – vague, but it’ll become apparent soon enough I hope.
I’m also thinking things I shouldn’t be – or I had been thinking things I shouldn’t be. Now I have regrets and I started believing things that aren’t true any more. Talk about a fucking roller coaster with emotions.. And also another vagueness that I apologize to the masses for reading. The person who that would mean something won’t even see this, so it’s not like I’m doing anything by publishing it.
Oh well, more ttomorrow – got stuff on my mind and got time to write.
