Dillinger Packed A Big Gun

The new Johnny Depp movie about the notorious 1930's bank robber John Dillinger is as good an excuse as TtP will ever get to post the above classic photo of the late hoodlum experiencing some serious rigor mortis.

Thanks to the website Awkward Boners for the pic. Yes, it is a broad, deep well that TtP takes inspiration from.

By the way, also worth putting on your netflix cue is this earlier version of the Dillinger story.

Khaaaan!

R.I.P Ricardo Montalban, star of stage, screen and TV as well as inspiration to middle-aged men throughout the world that they can still have rippling pecs well into their 60s. Shatner was especially jealous.

Movie Pan of the Day

Over at Aintitcool.com, "JonDough" has seen the upcoming film The Spirit and I think you can safely predict that the producers will not be blurbing his review on any posters or ads:

“I feel like I just watched a movie in a foreign language, where you speak JUST enough of the language to realize that the main character just said he had sex with your mother and then wrote a movie about it...a movie that you can’t fully understand except for the nagging feeling that that’s your mother up there getting reamed.”

The Gift That Keeps on Giving

That would be the Eliot Spitzer-hooker story. There is a possibility you have already seen the girl in question naked. Yesterday Joe Francis of Girls Gone Wild revealed that Ashley Alexandra Dupre spent seven days hanging out with his film crew in 2003. According to the AP, Francis had been in talks with her to appear in an upcoming video when one of his people searched their film library and made the discovery:

"It'll save me a million bucks," Francis told The Associated Press on Tuesday. "It's kind of like finding a winning lottery ticket in the cushions of your couch."

Francis said at that point, his offer was off the table.

"We actually had been dealing with her rep," he said. "Our (offer) was the real deal. We just never made the connection."

***

According to a "Girls Gone Wild" press release, Dupre visited Miami in 2003 to celebrate her 18th birthday. After fighting with a friend and getting thrown out of her hotel, Dupre found a nearby "Girls Gone Wild" bus, the company said.

She signed legal papers and spent a full week on the bus, filming seven full-length tapes which included nudity and same-sex encounters, according to the company.

There does appear to be a hitch though. She may not have been eighteen when the tapes were made. Francis, being that class act that he is, will probably release it anyway:

Dupré's lawyer, Don A. Buchwald, immediately took steps to inform Francis that the New Jersey native, her birthday being April 30, 1985, was only 17 when the footage was taken.

But Francis tells E! News he's going ahead with the release anyway, albeit not for at least a few days while his lawyers debate the repercussions.

"We are getting pressure from her lawyer," Francis said at his Santa Monica, Calif., office Wednesday. "As soon as we withdrew the million dollar offer—he is just mad because her price has dropped. Even if she was only 17, we could still release it. There was no sexual contact. There's only nudity."

So, look for pictures of Dupree to start appearing as spam in in your inbox in 3 ... 2 ... 1 ...

Dot-Com Movies

Just saw e-Dreams last night, thanks to Netfilx instant viewing. Much better than Startup.com(different story, yes, but still better overall IMO). Any other dot-com era documentaries out there to watch?

"I Am Legend" Scared the Crap Out of Me

I saw the trailer for I am Legend at the Uptown in Cleveland Park while I was there to see the totally mindless but entertaining The Kingdom. The Kingdom presented US protaganists who were so obnoxious that I was actually rooting for the radical Islamists to kill them. But back to the trailer...

It looked to me like an alien movie akin to Independence Day. The big money shot was the Brooklyn bridge getting shot down. I thought that aliens had done that and enthusiastically went back to the Uptown to see I Am Legend.

But no, aliens did not do it. The US Air Force did. The movie is not about aliens at all but about a virus gone amok. The virus kills 90% of humans on the spot and turns another 9% into hairless aggressive zombie beasts who want to kill the 1% of humans who are immune from the virus, for reasons that are not explained.

The film was fucking scary. Will Smith and his loyal non-infected German Shepherd are alone in Manhattan except for a few thousand zombies who only operate in the dark but have obtained, through the virus, non-human skills such as running faster than the speed of light (Slate article on how zombies have gotten faster over time here), being able to vertically scale buildings and a spider-like ability to hang from ceilings.

The non-infected dog of course got bit by an infected dog and became a monster so Will Smith had to strangle him. The climax was when Smith killed himself as an army of zombies, who he had the ability to cure but they didn't care, zeroed in on him. Man, this movie gave me nightmares. There was a toss to the optimistic that there was a non-inflected colony in Vermont.

So the movie was super disturbing. Living in Manhattan alone with zombies might actually be worse than spending Christmas with my family.

You Can Draft Me for Rambo

In Sylvester Stallone’s latest film he puts on his glorious red bandana once more. In Rambo Syl illustrates how to bring democracy to Burma, a one man assault by an aging movie star against thousands of government oppressors. Check out the trailer on Yahoo! Movies.

If Syl’s past track record serves as any indicator of this film, I expect it to be a roaring success. He understands that when people go to see an action film they do not want to see a story, but rather an orgy of action and violence in less than 100 minutes. All too often today we must sit through three hour action/suspense movies with no plot just to see Michael Bay or M. Night masturbate on screen.

Why I Hate J.J. Abrams

For those of you who don’t know, J.J. Abrams is the creator of some of the most annoying and addicting entertainment made by man. He cursed the world by writing what would later become the mega-Affleck film, Armageddon, which led to another horrible Aerosmith song. On the small screen he created Alias, a show I never saw or intend to. From what I gather it was based about an attractive female shape shifter or something like that.

Then there was Lost. A show written by English majors that idiots could understand. Its not to subtle to name all the shows characters after major philosophers and place selected science fiction novels throughout the show as clues, but the writers see this as endlessly clever. The show also adds and erases storylines at will and yet it’s qualities are similar to like crack. America can’t get enough of it and now the show has so much freedom the makers of Lost only have to work part-time and still make millions of dollars….but his nonsense is far from over….


Behold! Abrams latest! It’s a film that looks to be some sort of Blair Witch Project/Godzilla in New York. But guess what! To keep you thinking he won’t even tell you the name of it. What happened to name repetition increasing success? I hope everyone will forget about this film and that politicians use the same advertising tactic in the next round of elections. Check out 1.18.08. via Apple.

The Most Important Relationship Conversation

Last week's Onion has one of their best articles in a while. It's on the most important and difficult conversation in a relationship - that one where you try to reveal all the sick stuff you would like to do in the bedroom without sending your partner running. I have yet to find a good way to say I want to have sex on a boat while watching the movie JAWS with me dressed as a shark and her dressed like Quint saying "This shark, swallow you whole" over and over again.

Man of the Year

Thank you Jim McBride. And thank your mother too. Your proof that any kid with a love for boobies can become famous if he just applies himself. You truly are doing the lord's work.

Jim McBride has made it his life's work to know how much naked female flesh appears in movies -- an obsession apparently shared by millions of people.

So far McBride, a.k.a. Mr. Skin, and a staff that includes his mother, who works as a "skintern," have chronicled nude women in more than 25,000 movies and television shows.

It is all recorded on his Web site, www.mrskin.com, which has been running for eight years, and on Saturday McBride launched into print, publishing "Mr. Skin's Skintastic Video Guide" to "the 501 greatest movies for sex and nudity on DVD."

"It's the greatest job in the world," said McBride. "As a kid I used to tape as many movies as I could with nudity and then I'd save the nude scenes on separate tapes. I really amazed my friends with my nudity knowledge growing up."

[...]

"We have eight to 10 people who just go through movies and television shows... for nudity, female nudity only," he said. "We don't do male nudity. I think it's mainly because this job is so fun I didn't want to make it work."

He said his Web site, which had a 35 percent boost to nearly 7 million hits a month after it featured in this year's hit movie "Knocked Up," was a celebration of female nudity that only chronicles mainstream movies, not pornography.

The Finns Stop Making Films

Oh unions, so much drama. Its like an episode of The Hills, but with fat white men. In a turn that will have global implications, Finnish film-makers are on strike to protest a lack of government assistance for their craft. Worst of all, the BBC reports, this will have the greatest effect on art house and independent productions. Think of all of the major cultural contributions that will be lost! Films like Laitakaupungin valot must be made at any cost. There go Ben’s pretentious musings on Finnish cinema.

I’m Not There, In This Cinema

I have been skeptical of the new Bob Dylan biomovie I'm Not There since I heard about Cate Blanchett playing the famous singer/poet/musician. What I didn’t know was how many actors are playing him. The list includes Heath Ledger, Christian Bale, and Richard Gere. From the clips up on Yahoo! Movies, no one disappoints more than Blanchett. While she pulls off the look, she just sounds too much like a woman to play Dylan during what looks to be his 1965 tour of England. She is the only one to speak in any clips, so the rest of the movie maybe even worse. It wouldn’t surprise me at this point if this film could make Mystery Science Theater 3000 if it was still on. I love Dylan, but please Hollywood, don’t shit on his legacy. Check out the clips.

Raiders of the Lost Park

Murdering time yesterday in New Haven allowed me to reacquaint myself with the city and how far it's come in the 12 years since I first moved there. Temple Street was barely recognizable to me. In 1995, the three blocks between Chapel and Route 34 were nothing but empty storefronts and hypodermic needles in the gutters. Yesterday it glittered with bars and restaurants. A cineplex has taken over the deserted meeting hall of the vaguely sinister White Eagle Club. And of course now there is also the Omni Hotel.

But appearances aside, New Haven is still the same city I knew and detested in the mid-90s, an urbanscape constructed on the borderland of perpetual civic breakdown:

People don’t feel safe in the daytime anymore, said East Rock alderman Roland Lemar, due to recent brazen crimes. Two people were mugged in broad daylight in mid-May, including one woman who was beaten up. There have also been nighttime muggings by gun-toting teens; a pair of Yale English grad students were held up at gunpoint on Edwards Street.

Source (second item).

Mrs. Kuhl lived on Edwards; I lived a few blocks away. East Rock is a nice, well-kempt residential area full of enormous Victorian and early 20th-century homes, many subdivided into apartments for the students. It's difficult to imagine it as a place of violent street crime, even though such things happened when we lived there too. I would blame DeStefano but he's only been in office 13 years. Don't rush the man!

Recently the police force numbered as many as 419, but they’re now down to the 370s, mostly due to retirements, explained Assistant Chief Herman Badger. They’d like to be up in the 450s, but the recruitment drives have had such a poor turnout that New Haven police won’t be able to fill enough positions to restore the ranks to 419. The current class of police recruits is only 29 strong—they’ll graduate in September.

All of this by way of explaining what's happening across town in Edgewood:

Members of a politically influential yeshiva led by Rabbi Daniel Greer -- who have spent more than a decade rebuilding their stretch of Edgewood -- have organized an armed citizens patrol.

This is already all over the MSM which, as usual, is light on background. The yeshiva is an island in a poor, predominantly black ghetto. While the rabbis and black leaders occasionally stage a photo op together and mumble something about brotherly love, really they just hate each other. The attack on Rabbi Dov Greer, which apparently precipitated the formation of the Edgewood Park Defense Patrol, was outrageous but probably not random.

The group takes its name from nearby Edgewood Park, a series of rolling, lightly wooded hills perfect for every variety of crime. Police don't patrol it because, like the rest of the citizenry, they're terrified of going inside. Yet now it seems that a bunch of whiskered Torah-readers have the cojones to do what New Haven's crookedest cannot. G-d bless 'em!

Curtis Sliwa is supposed to meet with the Patrol today. Yesterday, while waiting for my big break, I compared the Edgewood Patrol to the Guardian Angels and the teen behind me didn't know who or what I was talking about. Boy, did I feel my age.

UPDATE: Crime in New Haven IS down from the notorious heights of the early 90s. But to focus on homicides a moment, there were 24 murders in New Haven in 2006, comparable to those in the mid-90s (see these crime stats). If we assume a population of 124,512 (according to the 2003 estimate of the US Census) -- and if I've done my math right -- that puts the city's 2006 homicide rate at 19.275 per 100,000 people. According to the FBI, the national rate in 2005 was 5.6 per 100,000.

Little Behind the Curve

When you spend as much time as I do watching pornography; it can be tough to keep up on television, movies, books, eating, etc. My point -- I just now caught Blog Wars on Sundance, and to be honest I only caught the last 30 minutes. That was enough. Michelle Malkin, Jane Hampshire (of firedoglake) and some more annoying self-important, partisan bloggers. Covers the Connecticut primary and the impact of leftist bloggers in handing Lieberman a defeat in the primary. Quite a victory...Uh.wait..How did that general election work out for Lamont?

What I learned:

• Ned has a hot underage legal daughter


• Ned has a hot wife


• I want to cuddle with Ned's underage son(kind of a lie, I discovered this from his website not the movie...Can I get away with this joke? You take a look at him and decide.)


• Chris Matthews knows what a blog is


• There are people socially and mentally retarded enough to describe their blogging as "....a fleet heading towards the death star"


• This came on after Blog Wars and is much better

It Ain't Nothing 'Bout Hounddog, It's 'Won't You Be My Ted Baehr?'

State Sen. Phil Berger, North Carolina's "common sense conservative voice" doesn't want his state to give a tax break to a film depicting Dakota Fanning's rape, as this Charlotte Observer op-ed details. I'm fine with that. But he's apparently in favor of using state funds to get films made in the state when he approves of their content.

Why should any state funds go to any filmmakers? If Berger thinks he's a filmmaker, maybe he should find a new line of work.

Regardless of that inconsistency, the real story in the op-ed is the sickening loon Dr. Ted Baehr, and Fanning's reply to all the hullabaloo.

Some critics say putting a 12-year-old in such a role amounts to child abuse. Dr. Ted Baehr, chairman of the Christian Film & Television Commission, wrote, "The sexualization of young children like Dakota is part of the sick ideology of Freudian Marxists, radical feminists, homosexual activists, and perverts who believe ... that all children are born with an innate lust for sexual fulfillment."

[Ellipsis]

The precocious Ms. Fanning reacted to the furor with professional matter-of-factness: "It's a movie," she said, "and it's called acting."

Baehr, who's a toupee away from Michael Medved, runs Movieguide.com, "a ministry dedicated to redeeming the values of the mass media according to biblical principles, by influencing entertainment industry executives..."

Nothing but a link to Hounddog here. We'd previously touched on Ms. Fanning's rape scene here.

The only redeeming (pun intended) thing I found at Baehr's website -- and I can't stress just how redeeming this is -- was a link from ye olde online shoppe to the Christian website of Ted DiBiasi, best known to wrestling fans as The Million Dollar Man. Via (what else?) YouTube, DiBiase against S.D. Jones here, and earlier footage against all-time great The Junkyard Dog here.

Finally a Great Porn Movie

Tonight at the opening night of gay film fest in DC, called Reel Affirmations, I finally saw a good porn movie, and on a big screen no less. Cicero, I am also addressing your earlier post about how women don't always get into porn.

I am so wanting to love porn, but the reason most porn is not interesting to women is, first, that women who make love to women don't have long fingernails so that is a suspension of disbelief that even Johnson couldn't imagine. Also, the dyed-blonde bimbos who are faking orgasms are a turn-off.

But watch this film. Here is the NY Times review. It is steamy and fun and sexy and the sex is real. Any woman would be into this, as would any man.

Go See 'The Departed'

Saw it this weekend. It was one of those incredibly rare movie experiences where, for 2-1/2 hours, no one's hungry for popcorn, no one has to take a leak, and no one talks. (Full disclosure: One guy sitting in front of Minerva and me did continuously raise his arms in a touchdown salute, and another person did fart, but even these things didn't lead to the typical round of laughter or catcalls.)

Simply put, the movie was fantastic. Leonardo DiCaprio was about as good as an actor can be in a movie. The guy's stock might have been higher when he was scrawny, handsome Leo, but he's now as good an actor as there is.

Also great were Damon, Maahkee Maahk, Alec Baldwin and Jack Nicholson, whose performance may allow Bostonians to finally forgive him for mooning them in hallowed Boston Garden during a pivotal Celtics/Lakers game in the early 1980s.

On a side note, Minerva said she saw "Beverly, Ma." -- my hometown -- on an OxyContin prescription-bottle close-up in the movie. I missed that, so I'll just have to go see the movie again.

On another note, it is, for some reason, impossible to get a cup of coffee in Friendship Heights on a Saturday night after 9 p.m.

Borat v. Nomad: Latter Certain to Be Funnier Kazakh Cinema

By now, you've already laughed at threats by the government of Kazakhstan to sue Sacha Baron Cohen for depicting the country unfairly. And you've snickered at the advertising campaign set to hit U.S. airwaves in advance of the Kazakh president's upcoming visit to the States.

But, with Borat: Cultural Learnings of America Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan soon to hit theaters, have you guffawed at the (significant) expense of the Kazakh government's GNP-busting investment in a nationalist epic?

In response, Kazakhstan has invested $53 million in making the historical epic, Nomad, to counter what it sees as the damage inflicted upon the nation's reputation by Borat.

An English version of Nomad, the most expensive Kazakh film ever made, is to be released in the US this year.

One Kazakh who has seen the film -- Borat? -- comments at IMDB about how great it is here.

'R' is for Smoking

Have they no sense of decency?

Anti-tobacco activists plan to march from the Washington Convention Center to the Motion Picture Association of America headquarters Thursday. They intend to demand the MPAA take action to cut down on-screen smoking, including assigning R ratings for movies that show smoking in a non-historical context.

A whole mile. Wow. Because they care about the children.

I'll give $25 to the first person who emails me "historical" video of themself or someone else walking in this march tomorrow with a lit cigarette in their mouth.

Two 'A-' Openings Today

A Scanner Darkly, Richard Linklater's adaptation of a Philip Dick novel of the same name, "is set in a paranoid world that has lost the war on drugs," writes New York Daily News critic Christopher Cullen. Sounds familiar. Darkly earns the A- from the Christian Science Monitor.

Johnny Depp's Pirates sequel Dead Man's Chest earns a breathlessly qualified "best summer movie of the summer" tag from the excitable ABC News critic Joel Siegel. I'll forgive Siegel's summer-summer giddiness, though, since the first Pirates flick was the most surprisingly excellent movie I can ever recall seeing.

It's nice -- and rare -- to have a summer-movie conundrum that involves picking which of two excellent movies to see first. (Pirates, then Darkly.)

Facing the Giant Asshole

The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) is catching flak from House Majority Whip Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) for allegedly giving the movie "Facing the Giants" a PG rating because of its explicit Christian content.

In a letter sent to MPAA Chairman and CEO Dan Glickman last week, Blunt expressed his concern that the ratings system might be seriously flawed if the small-budget feature is deemed too religious by the MPAA's Classification and Rating Administration.

Blunt placed the questions surrounding "Facing the Giants"” in the context of wider concerns among politicians and the public that the MPAA has become more permissive of graphic content in motion pictures.

"This incident raises the disquieting possibility that MPAA considers exposure to Christian themes more dangerous for children than exposure to gratuitous sex and mindless violence," Blunt wrote. "I am sure many of my colleagues share my concern."

I for one consider Christian themes to be far more dangerous than scenes featuring sex or violence. That Blunt and other Christian conservatives are quick to use the government to force their values on the rest of us proves how dangerous Christian beliefs are. I long for the day when we can feed them all to the lions.

On the Road to Death

Via one of the most cleverly titled posts I've seen in a while I learn that Chuck Palahniuk, author of Fight Club and Survivor, has a fantastic essay in the Guardian on the healing power of death and the comfort of "cycle" horror movies.

In all ["cycle" horror movies], an individual is trapped by an established cycle of events that doom and destroy. From their story you can imagine that same cycle or process stretching into the past or future, destroying an endless chain of similar people, all of them denying the dire nature of their circumstances until their fate is inevitable.

[...]

No, the victims never get very smart in a cycle story. But the viewers get smart; if the viewers ever run across an abandoned ocean liner filled with gold bars, as in Ghost Ship, the viewers will know to run before greed traps and dooms them. In that way, the victim dies for the viewer to find enlightenment. Maybe we won't keep redecorating the Dutch colonial house in The Amityville Horror and ignoring the demons and houseflies until they destroy our family. Maybe we'll notice our rented island farm is isolated and creepy before we're killed, unlike the hippy commune members in Let's Scare Jessica to Death. People watching cycle stories are people who learn from history.

[...]

The cycle horror story is comforting the same way porno is comforting: you already know how they're going to end. The actor will achieve a loud orgasm or die. In a slasher film he or she will likely do both.

Side note to Jenny: No I haven't finished reading your copy of Survivor. Yes, I'm god damn lazy.

Scary Censorship

Neo-Prohibitionists kill Coors plug in "Scary Movie 4".

This is only half as scary as the fact that there's actually a Scary Movie 4. There's a reason there was never an "Airplane III". I guess the Scary Movie folks are trying to outdo the National Lampoon Vacation series, which includes "Vacation", "European Vacation", "Christmas Vacation", "Christmas Vacation 2: Cousin Eddie's Island Adventure", "Vegas Vacation", and "American Adventure". The "vacation" franchise should have stopped with "European Vacation". Most notably because it elevated "pork" to the best substitute for "fuck" (beating out "do" and "bang"), which is the most any movie franchise can aspire to.

The Worst Movie Review You Will Ever Read

A loyal TtP reader and friend, who I will call McIntyre, was kind enough to let me borrow his Film Society pass so I could see the DC screening of "United 93", the movie based on the 9-11 hijacking of the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania after a rebellion by brave passengers. I don't want to give too much away, but the best scene is where Samuel Jackson says "I'm tired of Al Qaeda and their motherfucking snakes on a plane." Or something like that. I didn't actually see the movie. I was too late. Blame mojitos, Guns and Roses, a slut, and the issue of whether or not it was appropriate for Doc to read the letter that Marty gave him in the movie "Back to the Future." Sorry, McIntyre. I let you down. If you want, you can sleep with my sister.

Of course, not actually seeing a movie shouldn't stop me from having an opinion on it. And I will give you one. But, first I want to make sure you know that Pete Doherty was caught injecting heroin into an unconscious woman on a kitchen floor. God, he's so damn smooth. And George Clooney is urging help for Darfur, which makes me care about the region even less. And an Italian restaurant is fined for a "cruel" lobster display. When will people learn, animals are just like humans only not.

Now, back to "United 93". Dozens of innocent people on this flight suffered and died because of our government's reckless interventionist foreign policy. And our nation has learned nothing from the tragedy. In the last five years we've invaded and forcibly occupied two Muslim countries, beefed up our military presence in many others, and killed at least three times as many people as died on 9/11. It's safe to say, we've only begun to reap what we've sown.

I know what it's like to feel fear as I'm being evacuated from a congressional building that might be under attack, to feel sadness upon learning that thousands of my countrymen have died, and to feel anger every time a preview for "United 93" (indirectly) reminds me that many of the masterminds of 9/11 are still at large. But, I can't even begin to understand what it must feel like to see my homeland occupied by a foreign power, to have my daughter killed by a stray missile, to have my parents whisked off in the middle of the night never to return, or to be told by the same foreign leaders that say "ignore our tanks and guns we're hear to give you freedom" that my people should not even bother applying to run their nation's ports or other businesses.

At some point someone in power has to stand up and ask, is our war on terror doing more harm than good? Are we creating more enemies than we're destroying? And that's what is important about "United 93". It nags at us. Why were we attacked? Why have we still not found bin laden? Are we safer now than we were then? I honestly hope we can kill the enemies we've created before they kill us, but I fear we won't. Malcolm was right, the chickens always come home to roost.

I'm a Motherfuckin' Jedi Knight, Bitch

This week's issue of Time magazine has a great interview with Snakes on a Plane star Samuel L. Jackson. In addition to telling the magazine that he wishes he could have used the word motherfucker in Star Wars, he talks about the positive changes he made to SoaP.

When you and director David Ellis talked about tweaking the script before filming, what kind of things did you have in mind?

We were talking about the snake hits being better than just seeing a snake strike. In old cowboy movies you'd see a rattlesnake, hear a rattle and then there's the snake and it kind of struck off-screen, and you never saw the snake actually hit anybody. So you get actual snake hits, and if you got two people who are making love in an airplane bathroom, you just don't show a snake and show them kissing and hear them screaming. You know, girl's got her tit out, let the snake hit it! That's what people are there to see. Show people running all over the plane getting trampled. Show people getting impaled on broken pieces of plane. We have the capability, so do it.

Hat tip to Jenny, who would love it if a snake bit her tit, for sending me the link.

Snakes at a Law School

Saturday's Washington Post had a great article on "Snakes on a Plane" that highlighted the power of bloggers to change the world, or at least Hollywood. (It wasn't on-line over the weekend, so I'm posting it now). The article covers the role that Brian Finkelstein, a first-year student at Georgetown University Law School and architect of Snakesonablog.com, played in getting the movie near God-like publicity.

With lightning speed, Finkelstein's Web site became not only the place to exchange views about the title but a forum for satirical cartoons, poems, music videos, animated videos and submissions for trailers. The songs ranged from "Fly Snakes Fly" to "Baby, Baby, Baby (Shed Yo Skin)." And the posters took off on other movie products, suggesting "How Snakes Got Their Groove Back" and "Camels on a Submarine."

His site created such a commotion that it not only forced movie producers to keep the title of the movie, it forced them to re-shoot parts of it. Most notably they added a scene where Samuel Jackson utters, "I want these mother-fuckin' snakes off the moter-fuckin' plane", and a scene where a man is bitten in the groin by a snake. (Nice!) Finkelstein has done all of this for free; but he is at least getting tickets to the Hollywood premiere. Score! I hope he brings a date.

I Just Want to Rent a &#!$*?@ Movie!

Friend Alan thought he was getting throttled by Netflix, so he did a little experiment and sent an email to the company. His worst fears realized -- and with Netflix having sent a c'est la vie reply -- Alan left Netflix and joined Intelliflix. They took his money and ran. So he went to Blockbuster. They were OK, but not as good as Netflix. So he left Blockbuster (sort of) and went back to Netflix. It's a good thing Alan meditates.

Start here, then go here.

Lots of Vendetta, Little Anarchy

I deleted portions of my review of V for Vendetta to save space. Most notably I droped the sections questioning its harsh treatment of conservatives and the lack of real anti-state (as opposed to anti-conservative) rheteric. Both are reasons that one of the co-authors of the original graphic novel wanted nothing to do with the movie.

Via Lew Rockwell.

Alan Moore, the author of the original V for Vendetta comic book explains in this interview why he took his name off the film:

The British have always had sympathy with a dashing villain. So I decided to use this to political effect by coming up with a projected Fascist state in the near future and setting an anarchist against that. As far I'm concerned, the two poles of politics were not Left Wing or Right Wing. In fact they're just two ways of ordering an industrial society and we're fast moving beyond the industrial societies of the 19th and 20th centuries. It seemed to me the two more absolute extremes were anarchy and fascism. This was one of the things I objected to in the recent film, where it seems to be, from the script that I read, sort of recasting it as current American neo-conservatism vs. current American liberalism. There wasn't a mention of anarchy as far as I could see. The fascism had been completely defanged.

V for Vendetta

Last night Baylen and I saw V for Vendetta, the new Wachowski brothers movie about a tortured, crazy, anti-authoritarian hero who battles conservative media moguls and fascists in a near-future England. I liked it better as V, the 1980s sci-fi TV series about a journalist who battles the media, fascists AND aliens from outer space. (I also liked it better as The Patriot, Mel Gibson's revolutionary tale of a farmer battling illegal aliens from England).

Vendetta's overall political message is certainly something every American needs to hear: the rise of a conservative, homophobic, nationalistic, civil-liberties-hating, war-loving, national security state has placed us just a catastrophic disaster away from a totalitarian nightmare. Hell, the part of town we saw the movie in already has police surveillance cameras so that the DC government can monitor its citizens.

It was certainly great to hear a main character in a box office smash say things like, "People shouldn't fear their governments, governments should fear their people." (a statement that at least one reviewer doesn't believe in - yes, I'm calling you out Roger Ebert , you fat, fascist fuck.) But, the movie suffers from weak acting, a stupid love-interest subplot (barf), a prolonged scene of character "development" that really turned me off (I won't give it away, but you will say, "WTF?"), and very cartoonish characters (in defense of the Waschowski brothers the movie is based on a graphic novel comic book). On the other hand, the main character seeks to blow up the British parliament and bring down a fascist regime, so who am I to complain.

I disagree with the many movie reviewers who claim the movie blurs the line between terrorists and freedom-fighters. It doesn't. The main character is not a terrorist. He doesn't kill innocent civilians, nor does he indiscriminately kill agents of the state. He's clearly a freedom-fighter. That the government and the media call him a terrorist holds real-life lessons. But, to suggest - as many reviewers are doing - that the movie blurs the line between terrorism and fighting for freedom shows how far our culture has sunk into the abyss of moral relativism. There is a world of difference between someone who blows up a government building to bring down a fascist regime (freedom-fighter) and someone who blows up buses and grocery stores full of innocent people (terrorist). It is not terrorism to wage war on governments. It's revolution. And we should all get to do it at least once in our lives. Especially if there is dancing involved.

Finally, I find it very strange that while the movie's main character battles against intolerance - most notably homophobia and anti-Muslim sentiments - he glorifies a man who conspired to blow up the British parliament because the King had a different religion than him. Guy Fawkes may be the only person to have entered the British parliament with good intentions, but he's no libertarian hero. I will have a few drinks and smoke a cigar in his honor on November 5th anyway.

And Certainly No Smoking After Sex

Anti-smoking activists now want to require the movie industry to give "R" ratings to movies that depict smoking in a neutral or positive light. The idea behind it is that no one under 18 should be allowed to see a movie that depicts smoking because it might make them want to smoke. I can only assume that movies that show people drinking are next. And surely teens should be prohibited from seeing movies that depict teens breaking their curfew, forging notes to their schools, or stealing money out of their mom's purse. We wouldn't want them to get any ideas. And lets face it, any movie that contains views undermining the war on terror is a threat. We can't ban such movies because of the First Amendment, but we can at least keep impressionable teens from seeing movies that depict the Iraq war as a costly mistake. In fact, now that I think of it, why not just limit teens to Disney movies. Then we will have the activist's dream world, where no one smokes, drinks, fucks, steals, lies, or kills.

Geisha Banned in China; Pirates Rejoice

There won't be a theatrical release of Memoirs of a Geisha in China, which has finally and officially banned the movie. Rather than welling up with nationalist pride from so many of its actors being showcased on the world film scene, the Chinese government has gone the other way and is apparently bothered by so many Chinese actors portraying Japanese characters.

Geisha was given the seal of approval from China's powerful film regulator Sarft (State Administration of Radio, Film and Television) and distributors had been awaiting a release date.

But sources in the film business say the decision to ban Rob Marshall's film came from higher up in the government. They say senior officials fear the sight of some of China's most beloved actors - Gong Li and Zhang Ziyi, as well as the Hong Kong star Michelle Yeoh - playing Japanese courtesans could prove inflammatory.

This ban could be news to the many Chinese who -- taking advantage of the country's plethora of pirated movies -- have already seen it on DVD.

It's easy to see how China's ban of a movie with top Chinese stars in the home of movie piracy may be the equation that makes Geisha the most pirated movie in history.

Brokeback

I saw Brokeback Mountain last night. It's a fantastic movie. Ledger was great. As were Gyllenhaal, Michelle Williams and Anne Hathaway.

I still think Walk the Line is a better movie, but Ledger's performance was every bit as good as that of Joaquin Phoenix as Johnny Cash (which was remarkable). So I could see the Oscar going either way, so to speak.

[An aside: Director Ang Lee no doubt should take home an Oscar or two -- as he seemingly deserves every time he directs. (Speaking of which, his un-nominated The Ice Storm is one of my favorite movies of the last 25 years.) We'll know more about Lee's chances -- and others', too -- when the Oscar nominees are announced in 11 days.]

Still, great as the movie is, in the end (so to speak) there's something bothering me about Brokeback Mountain. No, it's not that. Though that wasn't exactly fun to watch.

It's Anne Hathaway -- who's very fun to watch. She's pretty hot, yes. And we get to see her briefly topless, yes. Great and great.

But towards the end of the movie we get a close-up of her mouth as her character is talking on the phone to Ledger's character. And there's this weird orange filmy stuff between her teeth. It looks like they've rusted. Or like she's got a mouthfull of Cheez Puffs. What the hell was that? Stains from smoking? I don't know. But it's disturbing the hell out of me...

Stop Nagging Me

At some point - not sure when - state Attorneys General stopped being law enforcement officers and started being Surgeons General. I know crime rates are down, but do they really have so much free time that they can badger major film studios into placing anti-smoking public-service announcements in all newly released DVDs? It's bad enough that I have to sit through ads comparing people who copy a DVD to Charles Manson, now I have to sit through anti-smoking ads telling me the obvious. And why stop there? If Attorneys General really can't find any crimes to stop, why not harass movie executives into including ads warning about the dangers of binge drinking, overeating, and smoking crack with crack whores?

I can live with the nanny state. Tax my single-malt scotch, make it a little more difficult to get my cocaine, prohibit me from smoking a cigar at work. Fine. But, what I can't stand is the nagging state. If I wanted to be nagged I would get married.

Watching Wal Mart Undercover

Philip Klein of The American Spectator recently attended a viewing of Wal Mart: This High Cost of Low Price at the Greenwich Village headquaters of the Socialist Party of New York City. Yes, he lived to tell the tale with his intellect intact. He has also written about it on his blog. I actually met Mr. Klein at CPAC earlier this year, and had a good conversation about drugs (what else?).

Apparently, the Mr. Klein's comrades in the audience had issues with captialism AND private charity:

The film also profiles a young Chinese woman who moved to the city of Shenzhen to work in a Wal-Mart factory, where she labors more than 12 hours a day for pennies per hour. This is sure to be unconscionable to any American audience, because Americans enjoy the opportunities that come with living in a capitalist economy. But China has been under Communist rule for over 50 years, so working in a sweatshop for 12 hours a day is actually an improvement over prior conditions. In fact, the woman who is profiled said that her mother asked her to move back to rural China to be a corn farmer, but she declined, choosing instead to remain at the Wal-Mart factory.

Of course, the audience of Greenwich Village socialists had a different perspective on the film.

One fact that got the audience's attention was that the Walton family has given less than 1 percent of its wealth to charity, but Bill Gates has given 58 percent. However, this didn't endear anyone to the founder of Microsoft.

"The idea that somebody with that much money can just give magnanimously to causes he chooses is insulting," one person said of Gates's philanthropy.

Unfortunately, Mr. Klein decided not to be an agitator, instigator or whatever it is Leftists call themselves to make the feel "revolutionary." One would think that Greenwich Village socialists would be really easy targets for either reason or ridicule.

The real revolutionaries in today's America are those who actually stand for individual freedom, the market process, and a limited, constitutional state. I count myself as one.

Good Night to Morrow

Minerva and I subjected ourselves to George Clooney's Murrow/Friendly anti-wh/WH (witch hunt/White House) parable Good Night, and Good Luck last night. We used as our excuse that this was (sadly) the most palatable movie to play at Cleveland Park's majestic Uptown Theater -- which is also across the street from a great sushi spot -- in some time.

Writer/Director/Co-Star Clooney, whose once-promising career is increasingly and unfortunately resembling that of fork-stuck Harrison Ford, clearly wants us all to know that he's a good Democrat and student of history and the arts.

Clooney attempts to equate morally and ideologically the many genuinely horrifying elements of President Bush's war on terror with the tactics employed in the early 1950s by the anti-communist nut job and House Un-American Committee chair Sen. Joseph McCarthy. Clooney's modus operandi, if you catch his drift -- and he wants desperately for you to catch his drift -- is to mimic the tack of playright Arthur Miller, who deftly cut the legs out from McCarthy in his 1953 play The Crucible.

But Clooney the writer (to paraphrase Lloyd Bentsen) is no Arthur Miller (or Elmore Leonard). Dr. Doug Ross's dialogue is wayward and lacking punch. Oftentimes actors speak over one another in that annoying Aaron Sorkin kind of way, though their words are elocuted in a manner stereoptyical of TV in/about the 1950s. Think The West Wing starring Joe Friday. Not pretty.

The characters are undeveloped. None shine. The only serviceable role the film offers up is for lead David Strathairn, who does an adequate (if paper-thin) Murrow. Clooney is lifeless as Friendly, a man who must have had some courageous moments during such trying times.

Wasted especially is Robert Downey Jr. -- the best actor in most any movie he's in -- as Joe Wershba. Every story arc involving Downey trails off to a dull...

Clooney's directing is first-time, not first-rate. His lens, like the script, goes in and out of focus seemingly at random. The movie is shot in an often murky black-and-white, rather than what would have made more sense -- color interspersed with actual b&w newsreel footage of characters like McCarthy.

What Arthur Miller did in targeting Sen. McCarthy was brilliant, subtle, caustic and daring. Clooney's film is none of those things. While it's easy to assume Clooney made the film to criticize President Bush -- although Clooney's gone so far afield as to say it's meant to target "dumb" people like Ann Coulter -- the end result comes off as more of a misguided attack on today's climate, a message much more partisan and much less effective than that of Miller.

After all, our present-day witch hunt against suspected and rumored enemies -- or people the government simply doesn't like or feels like investigating -- was orchestrated as much by Democrats as Republicans. If one party is looking in the rear-view mirror and seeing a pile of people it's helped run over with, for example, the PATRIOT Act, that party should advocate not to blame others but to change the law.

But that's clearly too much to ask. Case in point: last night several people in the spartan crowd cheered at times during and en (small) masse at the end of the film. Why, when the best thing about it was clearly Minerva having splurged on a box of Raisinets?

I don't know, but I imagine these are the same people who watch Lifetime so they can well up with tears about the clearly defined roles of one segment of society as oppressor and another as victim. Films like Good Night help people who need to feel better about themselves do just that. A daub of the eyes is all these folks need to sleep well -- knowing their highly stylized version of their place in history is so right and that of their opponents so wrong.

Good night, shades of gray, and good luck, posterity.

Meet Jack Thompson, Professional Douchebag

Jack Thompson, a Miami lawyer who operates StopKill.com -- a site devoted to strong-arming artists of all stripes (video games, music, movies, etc.) -- is an utterly horrifying figure. According to a recent letter attacking video games he sent to Florida Governor Jeb Bush, Jack used to be a libertarian:

I am a "recovering libertarian" who has learned that the far more sensible and historically dominant wing of the Republican Party is the one that recognizes that as a last resort government must get involved to stop predatory corporate practices that imperial (sic) the commonweal. The video game industry's decade-long assault upon children is just such a predatory practice that worsens with each passing day.

Thompson's purportedly radical transformation from freedom lover to fascist seems best expressed by the man himself at StopKill:

I am trying to protect our freedoms. How so? When the next Columbine happens and the perpetrators are proven to be copycatters of adult-rated violent entertainment, then the government, driven by parental concern, really will contract freedom for all Americans. Safety will trump freedom.

Ah, I see. Thompson bills himself as a less worse alternative than other people who want to rob me of my liberties.

Well shit, man, where do I sign up? You're right, Jack: it is worth saving constitutional face by cutting off the nose, isn't it? My oh my, Jack, I'm a fascist now, too!

The only bright spot in this whole mess is the Amazon.com page promoting moralist Thompson's new book Out of Harm's Way. There, mixed in under the section header "Customers who viewed this book also viewed", are the following titles:

Trust, the Hand Book: A Guide to the Sensual and Spiritual Art of Handballing

Gay Men and Anal Eroticism: Tops, Bottoms, and Versatiles

Advanced Sex : 101 Positions and Techniques, for the Sexually Adventurous

...and an anti-anti-video gaming handbook for parents...

Everything Bad Is Good for You: How Today's Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter.

Culture 1, Jack Thompson 0. Amen.

[Cross-posted at The Agitator.]

Super Size Me (Hilarious Whisky Version)

Trevor Moore of the NYC Comedy Troupe -- their website is aptly titled The Whitest Kids U Know -- has created a hysterical short film skewering the premise and execution of Super Size Me and mocking its creator/star Morgan Spurlock. (Note: Broken link now fixed.)

You will of course recall Spurlock's pervasive, absurdity-striving-for-reality tale of what happens when evil corporations sell food to willing customers. But whereras Spurlock attempts to show that McDonald's food is unhealthy by eating massive quantities of it three times a day for a month, Moore dispenses with food entirely -- he vows to subsist on whisky alone for 30 days in order to explore (as he tells the horrified customer service rep from Jameson's Whisky) "whether or not it's healthy to drink nothing but whisky for 30 days... I'm not going to eat breakfast, lunch or dinner. I'm not going to drink anything else. I'm just going to drink whisky."

[Link via the kids at the always-fun Milk and Cookies.]

If Veterans Are Offended by “Wedding Crashers”, Wait Until They Read This Post

According to MSNBC.com, veterans have their panties in a bunch over the movie “Wedding Crashers” because two of the characters wear purple hearts to sleep with chicks at weddings. You used to be able to download your own fake purple heart at weddingcrashersmovie.com, before New Line Cinema caved to political correctness, the FBI,

"I challenge the producer of that movie to go to Walter Reed Hospital and walk through the ward and see if he still wants to print out a fake Purple Heart,” said Thomas Cottone, Jr., a special agent with the FBI who enforces a federal law that prohibits wearing, manufacturing, buying, selling or trading a Medal of Honor. “Talk to some of these people who don’t have legs anymore and see how funny they think that movie is".

and Congress.

“If any movie goers take the advice of the “Wedding Crashers” and try to use fake Purple Hearts to get girls, they may wind up picking up an FBI agent instead,” warns [Congressman] Salazar. “I am pleased that New Line Cinema has agreed to take down offensive parts of the website. Our veterans and FBI agents are working hard to make sure that we honor our true heroes, no one should undermine their efforts."

Jesus fucking Christ. Get a sense of humor people. I watched the movie this weekend. It’s hilarious! How did we reach such a point that joking about using a medal of honor to get laid is offensive? And veterans with no legs at Walter Reed??? God damn, I certainly hope those people are using their purple hearts to get laid. They should be.

And what about two-legged John Kerry? The fact that he even received a purple heart is more offensive than a 10-second (literally) joke in a Hollywood movie. This, of course, gets to the heart (sorry) of the matter. Purple hearts aren’t that special anyway. Yeah, yeah, you got shot. You know why? Because you were in another country trying to kill their people. Did you think they wouldn’t shoot back?

For all the ladies out there, I guess I should tell you that I have a purple heart before Congress makes it illegal to falsely claim I have one. I also love you. And no you don't look fat in those pants.