If there's one thing that could ruin your day as a life-long comic book fan, it's getting word that some dickless director has taken one of your favorite comic book stories of all time and adapted it into some horrific mess like Daredevil, Ghost Rider or (choke on my own vomit) Fantastic Four.
Lucky for me, Zach Snyder isn't dickless.
This weekend at the Comic Con, we finally got some solid confirmation on the upcoming cast to one of my all-time (if not my most) favorite stories ever written, soon to be adapted into a motion picture in 2009: WATCHMEN.
The very, very best news of the whole day: Warner Bros. approved an R RATING.
I think this was the most important thing I was really waiting on. To take a story like this and tone it down to the usual PG-13 format would have absolutely broken my heart. Now we can enjoy all the wonderful blood, guts, carnage, cussin', partial or all-the-way nudity and down-right disturbing violence that makes this story ESSENTIAL!!!!
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Other amazing highlights from the Watchmen panel include (thanks to Quint from Aint it Cool News!):
> Sets are being built in Vancouver right now, including a New York City backlot. It's not going to be "300 style," very little digital work except on Mars and in Antarctica.
> Think more SE7EN than SIN CITY in terms of production design.
> It is period. 1985. There was talk of updating it, but Snyder said it never felt right making it about the War On Terror instead of the Cold War, so he insisted it be set in 1985. Warners agreed.
> While it's not a hard rule, he is going to be using the original comic as storyboards. He'll use them to set the framing for most of the movie.
> The casting was not an exercise in marketing, big names avoided.
> Alan Moore is not involved. He asked for his name to be taken off the project way back when it was first being developed and Snyder is honoring that... but he does hope that this will be the first film made from one of his properties that Moore will eventually think "wasn't fucked up too badly."
> Release date is 03-06-09.
> David Gibbons has gotten behind the movie and has frequently given his thoughts on the script and art.
> Dr. Manhattan is going to be a full 3D CG performance capture of Crudup though the old John is going to be Billy Crudup as he is. They are not going to have Crudup in blue paint like Blue Man Group. They'll have to do it CG to make him glow and to have him grow.
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As a long-time fan of this book and a guy who's screamed for years that a Watchmen movie should never be made.... all this news is just out-of-control exciting to me.
Check out this spot-on, kick-fucking-ass cast of characters:
I can't wait to hear more about this as it develops!
Eating my pork and beans out of a tin can and breaking fingers for information,
This is one of my most favorite news clips in the history of time and space.
("Little Sis" is one of my favorite characters since Marty McFly in Back to the Future.)
The key is when he swerves across into oncoming traffic, almost sideswipes a car on the side of the street and then blatantly runs a stop sign. That guy is a fucking badass.
Dig it. WOooooOOOo WOOOOOOOOO!!!!!
-M
P.S. Isn't it awesome how when Bubb Rubb takes off... you never actually hear the whistles at all?
P.P.S. Isn't it also awesome how the guy who runs the muffler shop actually says the line, "I have to sell whatever they want, and whatever people want, I'll sell it"?? That's incredible!!!
Today was a big day for my good friend Tommy Forrester. After weeks of planning, writing and preparing, his all-new independent film, "DDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDutch Tiltttttttttttttttttttttt/Gratuitousssssssssssssssssssss" began production today.
The second location shoot of the day was my scene, an insane cameo where I play a total lunatic (be sure to check out the awesome red shirt Tommy picked out for me below). When I wasn't helping Tommy out with line reads, fake blood and blocking, I was able to take a few photos of the guys on location.
This was the first read-through with the cast on Vesser's porch. (Jared McClane's chicken sandwich is key here.)
Jared McClane was confused about the proper way to grab a woman's breast in public. Director Tommy Forrester explains that, "it's not so much about the technique as the speed. You've got to really get in there, grope, and then run away as fast as you can, screaming something about terrorists and a bomb in the trash can."
This was a shot of Jared McClane's actual suitcase. He says the giant label stickers help him distinguish his suitcase from others just like it. Also: you can lick it and it tastes just like grape kool-aid.
Director Tommy Forrester keeps the troops motivated. "Idle hands are the devil's playpen," says Forrester. "I've got people running around everywhere, and I'd like to give them destinies, but I have to adhere to this script," he says, while screaming at Josh Vesser to 'get your Diet-Vanilla-Coke ass the hell out of my shot.'"
There is no reason for this shot to be here, other than because I saw this machete, it made me think of Jason Voorhees, I loved it, and took its picture. Plus: it's awesome.
I'd like to thank (or punch) Tommy Forrester for providing this brilliant wardrobe for my character in the film..."Meth Head Guy."
This is what happens when you're an idiot and leave three chocolate and caramel Hershey's kisses in your pocket in the middle of July. They were supposed to be a prop... I don't even eat chocolate. Instead, it looks like a smurf ate some Taco Bell and got stuck in my pocket for a long, long time. Nice.
Jared McClane is serious about his lines. Also: this giant van was incredible.
McClane takes a minute to think about his motivation for the next scene. "Mostly just titties and beer," says the film veteran, before turning around and taking a piss on Josh Vesser's shoe.
Robert Manning will go down in history as one of the most terrifying, disturbing characters in a movie... ever. Don't believe me? Just wait.
Check out Jared McClane's battle damage. You think that hurts him? If you said 'yes,' you'd be wrong.
"I made more money working at the bank," says the disgruntled camera before turning around and taking a piss on Josh Vesser's shoe.
It's been almost a year since the Jefferson County High School class of 1996 threw down at the Knoxville Museum of Art for their 10 year reunion, and I thought it might be kind of hilarious to share the two videos that Chris McAdoo and I strategically invented in preparation.
"Project Mayhem" was the theme of the reunion that we hosted, and in the weeks before the reunion, we posted a hilarious MySpace page that stirred up a bunch of controversy from our gratuitous bad language, perverted ideas and absolutely brutally violent messages.
Here's the two videos we posted on MySpace for your enjoyment and disapproval. Great memories... And if you're looking to shed a few pounds, let me recommend the "Project Mayhem Exercise Video." It really works.
I know this blog seems to be getting a little horror heavy lately... but you know what? If you don't like horror movies, I straight-up don't trust you. Can I make that a mission statement? I pretty much don't trust people who don't cuss and don't like horror films. If you've never watched a horror filmed and actually enjoyed it... you're officially dead to me.
Anyway, aside from all that, I found a REALLY great one tonight.
Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon was, without a doubt, one of the most original, extremely fun horror films I've seen since I was in high school. (Yeah, even beating "Mad Man," Mark Bernard.)
It's one of the weirdest things I've seen in a while, and simultaneously genuinely scary. This director really walks a thin line with this thing... dipping his cone both in the good 'ole gory, slasher, big-scare-horror carton and then the absolutely-fucking-hilarious comedy carton. The result is this big, freakin' weird ice cream combo that tastes good... but leaves you wondering if it REALLY tasted good or if you were just too proud to admit that your combination of walnuts, collard greens, jalapeños and yogurt ice cream wasn't all that great.
Then you think about that "Make Your Own Kind of Music" song from the 2nd season premier of LOST and decide to give the world the middle finger and enjoy your tasty new creation.
That's exactly what director Scott Glosserman did, and damn is it delicious.
I don't remember a film making me laugh out loud this much.... and simultaneously scaring the shit out of me since..... ever.
I'd be happy to write up a full review... but this awesome trailer I found sums it up pretty nicely. I'd recommend checking this one out A.S.A.P. horror fans.
And for you pussies who don't like this kind of thing... here's a link that might be fun for you guys.
Sleeping safely tonight knowing that "this river can kill you in a thousand ways,"
When I was a kid, I was notorious for losing my optimism amidst some bad situations.
I think maybe in my experience I see all kinds of young folks do this regularly... from the toddlers to the teenagers. Adults are certainly not exempt from this observation, of course... it's just that children seem to carry more emotion on their sleeves.
You know the scenario, right? You really want to spend the night at a friend's house, mom says no and your entire day goes all to hell. I'm about as close to being a psychologist as Tom Cruise is to being a Christian, but anyone can see that at SOME point in a human's life, he or she just makes a decision to cut that shit out. We move on. We forget about it. We let it go, and focus on something else. We find the switch, and we throw it.
Sure, it's certainly subjective... what Kid A might do at 10 years old, Kid B will still be doing at 30, and vice versa. However, the point to all this is, my threshold for optimism vs. negativity is in a constant fight with my emotions 99% of the time. Just like that "angel on one shoulder and devil on the other" libretto, it's negativity vs. positivity all the way in my day-to-day life.
Sometimes it's just impossible to be positive in a situation, right? Sometimes you just don't FEEL like being encouraging or hopeful. Sometimes it's not in the cards.
Then there's Werner Herzog's Rescue Dawn.
In a nutshell here, Rescue Dawn takes that same piece of framework that I toil like hell over and creates an entire wonderful film based on those principles. No, there are no cheesy angels wearing positive t-shirts or negative devils wearing wife beaters and brass knuckles sitting on the shoulders of Steve Zahn and Christian Bale, but you can see the clash of emotion and intensity of their attitudes in pretty much every scene in the film. Brilliantly.
Just like Kid A and B, when did Bale's character, Dieter Dengler flip the switch in his mind from the middle ground to the optimistic ground, and how did it stay there? How does a man endure a situation and truly remain positive about it? Whether it's not being able to find a parking spot at Ingles or being savagely beaten, tortured and made to shit on yourself in a prisoner-of-war camp... where is this switch that Dengler was able to throw, how did he throw it, how did he KEEP it thrown and how in the HELL do I find mine?
Do we all truly have one of those switches?
Herzog frames the world of 1965 with some of the most terrifying and gorgeous photography I've seen since experiencing the documentary "The Fog of War" a year or two ago. The vintage video, taken from a bomber plane coasting above (what we're to believe is) Laos, illustrates enormous explosions in slow motion... showing huts, shelter, rice fields and farmland being completely torched and obliterated.
I felt strangely while watching this. My first thought from an artist's standpoint was how absolutely gorgeous the frames were. Then the realization of the complete destruction and the actuality of what I was seeing set in pretty hard. It was absolutely, without a doubt, terrifying.
The rest of the film made me feel EXACTLY the same way. A perfect duality of negative and positive... the battle wages on. The film's switch is thrown foward and backward, forward and backward, and the journey it takes is absolutely amazing to watch.
It's a brutally harsh film. It's absolutely jammed packed with torture, discomfort, pain, heartbreak, conflict, hopelessness, violence, fear, and sadness. Amidst all of this, however, Bale's character shines through like a beacon. You begin to lean on him, exactly as the other characters do... to find a source of everything good in the world. Why? Because of his switch. He somehow manages to flip his switch to positive, and keep it on, no matter what the horror of a new negative situation brings.
When you first see him smile, it seems horribly out of place, completely juvenile and utterly fucking retarded. When I saw that guy coming into that village grinning at the people, and speaking to them clearly and politely (even while shitting himself), I—for a minute or two—doubted the film's integrity. I honestly thought to myself... "yeah right... like this guy would be saying that kind of thing... whatever, he's completely screwed."
But the same goofy grin that I thought was completely senseless and idiotic turned out to be the one thing that made the movie the best film I've seen this summer. That grin turns into one of the most powerful devices of survival I've ever seen in my life. Don't take my word for it, watch the other men in the camp for proof of this.
Steve Zahn turns in the performance of his career in this film. Aside from his obvious appearance, he's able to achieve a level of emotion with facial expressions in this film that he's never gotten CLOSE to in anything else. His eyes will reach off the screen, grab you by the shoulders and physically shake you in your seat. His switch was turned off a long, long time ago here, and his character, Duane, completely dwells in negativity. (That is, until the grin gets him like it got me.)
Bale's character comes out of nowhere to these men, and like an outright spotlight of hope, rallies them to rise up and make something out of their situation. It's an amazing achievement, actually... he conveys this emotion not just by his words or his smile, but his entire presence. The way he speaks, especially, is very interesting. He speaks in complete sentences without contractions. Always saying "can not" or "that is" and he accompanies this with very specific movements and eye direction. The way he rolls words off his tongue smoothly, with confidence and solid tone is even a mark of positivity.
His character reminded me, to some degree, of Paul Newman's character in Cool Hand Luke. The man simply would not be broken, and kept his cool under even the most insane of situations. To take it a step further, the way he inspires, interacts and changes the men in the prisoner camp is even more interesting.
Why can't there be more people in the world like Dieter Dengler?
Herzog's penchant for reality comes shining through this film like a flashlight under a white sheet. By incorporating the most simple of shots of man and nature, he's able to place these characters in the most realistic settings and situations possible. His abilities as a documentary filmmaker lend themselves SO well to these harsh jungle moments. One scene, in particular, has Steve Zahn brilliantly staring hopelessly at a collection of vegetation on the jungle floor, and without a word being spoken you can read the despair and heartbreak as it's transcended from Zahn's eyes to the pedals of a green leaf under his fingertips.
You simply won't find this kind of hyper-delicate filmmaking in a movie about giant robots.
The visual style used in the plane sequences are also breathtaking... he uses the same dodged-out, burned-looking film stock as we used to see in 1940's dogfight movies. It was so refreshing to see this rough, classic film-grained direction used instead of some extravagant computer graphic effects. For a lack of better words, Herzog keeps it real.
Check out the scene of the pilots watching the "safety and survival" videos. Taking a cue from "Mystery Science Theatre," he creates a scene unlike anything I've ever seen in a movie like this. What the soldiers are seeing and saying during that screening felt so incredibly real to me. It definitely felt more like real footage than directed actors. Amazing stuff.
This kind of character study is absolutely fascinating to me, and to be based on a true story of a real-life human being is nothing short of astonishing. In a summer full of crazy ass explosions, HORRIBLE computer graphics and mindless, boring stories—for the love of all that's HOLY, do yourself a huge favor and see a movie with some true substance, character and soul. This story is real... it's moving, and above all, it's incredibly inspiring. I'm fairly certain—no matter if we're 10 or 30 years old—that we all have a little touch of Dieter Dengler in us, and I'm also almost positive that all we have to do is flip that switch to the positive side.
After seeing this, I want to do all I can to find that switch in my head, and do anything I can to remember that things could ALWAYS be much worse.
Have you found yours?
-M
ADDENDUM: East Tennessee Movie Viewing
The beauty and skill exemplified in this film was more than enough to carry my movie-going experience tonight to a wonderful level... but the audience I saw this movie with was absolutely insane.
I think it's more than okay to mention this incredibly strange occurrence of balls-to-the-wall laughter in this film.
The people I saw this film with were, I'm pretty sure, either complete idiots, high, bored with their lives, or laughing at something else entirely. Some of the most intense, heartbreaking, terrifying or nerve-wracking scenes in this film which left me on the edge of my seat biting my nails were met with loads of non-stop laughter tonight.
Don't get me wrong... this script is paced WONDERFULLY, giving us a much needed break from tension at all the right spots. It DOES have some very humorous, light-hearted moments that stop the drama and give us a spot to breathe.
HOWEVER.. when Steve Zahn and Christian Bale are riding down a river and Zahn says, "Wait, do you hear that? Is that a waterfall?" and we physically SEE a gigantic, hell-prone, teeth-gnashing set of rapids coming up on them to break their backs... it might not be a great time to ERRUPT in mass laughter like somebody cracked a fart joke.
Neither is it a good time to laugh when Dengler is shot down in a giant rice field and he's screaming "I will not bail out!" and his plane violently explodes in swampy waters deep in enemy territory. At the end of the crash, you obviously see his body falling from above, as to indicate he actually DID bail out, even though he was being very adamant about not doing so. The audience goes fucking crazy with laughter when they saw his lifeless body go flailing into the swampy waters of the rice field. Seriously guys... what the FUCK was so funny about that scene?????? To me, it was beautifully shot, absolutely realistic and utterly TERRIFYING.
At one point I seriously said out loud to myself, "what the hell is FUNNY about that???"
This is absolutely fascinating to me.
Were they laughing because they've seen Steve Zahn in funny movies in the past and feel like they're SUPPOSED to laugh when the starving, disgustingly bearded, run-down, depressed, half-beaten-to-death prisoner of war mumbles something sad? Did I just witness the power of type-casting? It wasn't just a few people in the back row, I'm saying the majority of my theatre would commence riotous laughter every time Zahn would open his mouth. Sometimes he DID have something humorous to say, other times it was sad, heartfelt and emotional. Either way, he'd get the laughs.
Is this an East Tennessee viewing audience?
At one point in the film, Herzog shows a young boy smoking out of a thin reed and exhaling smoke into the air of a Laotian village. When the audience saw this kid smoking, they went absolutely fucking bat shit. These people were laughing and giggling hysterically, like they've never seen a kid smoke before. It was a traumatic scene where we're not sure WHAT they're going to do to Christian Bale. I was worried sick... biting my nails and wondering what these villagers were capable of. Herzog takes a second to show us the surrounding and illustrate that he's in a very slow-moving, day-to-day village with dangerous men holding guns... and when we see a peaceful image of an asian boy smoking from a reed, the audience cackles like interns around a water cooler recounting drunken events at a keg party.
Is it their way of dealing with the feelings of discomfort? They can't allow themselves to really be immersed in the film, so they laugh like that to take themselves away from the building tension and worry? Could that be it?
Whatever it was, it was definitely worth mentioning. I live in a weird place, man. I hope those same people are at home tonight, laughing about the recent Japanese earthquake, and how funny it was that it completely devastated parts of that country.
With the first-person, machete-wielding slash of complete trepidation in 1980, The Friday the 13th series of movies began their reign of terror both in movie theaters and in my heart. Ever since I was a kid, I've been, for some weird reason, drawn to these films like Jason Voorhees is drawn to super-hot teens fuckin' in tents and run-down cabins.
My good friend Mark Bernard and I have talked on several occasions about the most interesting thing surrounding this series of films, however, and it's certainly not the size of Adrienne King's (or Larry Zerner's) breasts.
It's the timeline.
It's a simple fact that Friday the 13th has the MOST jacked up, inconsistent, insane chronology in the history of serial cinema. Characters are all over the map, times are changed up and rearranged and consistencies are thrown out the window for really piss-poor plot devices. Sometimes, perhaps directors and writers just forget things. Maybe they don't bother with research, or... watching...the...previous... films? Maybe they actually just didn't give a fuck and decided to do it their own way.
When Paramount sold the rights to the entire franchise to New Line Cinema sometime around 1990, it was pretty apparent that the powers-that-be straight-up didn't give to bowls of monkey fuck WHAT they did with these characters. It's conceivably a very remote possibility that they might have even PLANNED for it to end up this way. Whatever the case may be, it's worth taking a look and breaking some of this down.
I feel that in most films, this kind of blatant factual disregard for continuity would be a huge hinderance—and the distractive nature of such things would generate more hatred than Sheriff Garris hated Tommy Jarvis for checking out his daughter in Friday the 13: Jason Lives—but in this case, I believe it's absolutely ingenious comedy. Let's break down the facts and look at the trouble spots, starting at the beginning.
[ Editor's note: most of my facts come from watching these movies a whole SHIT load of times, and also various, random online sources, the chief of which would be Wikipedia. Since there was that episode of "The Office" where Michael endorses this Web site, we'll just pretend it's 100% factual and go from there. ]
1. THE BEGINNING
This story technically starts in 1957.
In 1957, Jason Voorhees was said to be "a young boy," which we could only assume is somewhere between 8 and 10. I know my boss's son is about 9 years old, and he regularly attends summer camp, so it seems to me that Jason was about this age at this time. It's here at Camp Crystal Lake in 1957 that Jason Voorhees, 9 years old, was apparently abused, made fun of, and then eventually drowned in Crystal Lake while the counselors, life guards and older kids were all having action-packed pre-marital sex.
In 1958, Jason was assumed dead, and his mother (as we all know) originally got her first-time revenge on two unsuspecting camp counselors... forever cursing the camp and coining the nickname "CAMP BLOOD." Jason would have been 10 years old at this point... buried dead, deep at the bottom of the lake.
Here's where things start to get fucking weird, and it's only the movie's beginning.
We skip ahead to 1980. Here's where we meet our very first set of counselors led by Alice... and here's where we see the mayhem begin. Obviously, Pamela Voorhees is pretty pissed off that Steve Christy and company have decided to re-open Camp Blood, and everybody (INCLUDING CRAZY RALPH) knows that if they do... trouble will come knockin'. We all know that it does (mostly because nobody listens to Crazy Ralph until it's too late), and things get rough and bloody.
Since it's been 23 years since her first attack and since Jason was a little 9-year-old boy ... this means that Jason should at this time be actually 32 years old. At the movie's end, however, we see the same 9-year-old boy appear out of the lake and viciously grab Alice by the neck... pulling her backwards into the depths.
This, of course, would go down in time as being the most widely debated, weird-as-hell ending in a horror movie since Sleepaway Camp. What the HELL actually did happen there, anyway? Was it a dream? Was it in her mind? Did she imagine it? Was it a mind fuck from the director? Was it REAL? If so... why was Jason not 32 years old and instead STILL a little boy?
If we're to believe that it WAS real, and Alice somehow escaped Jason's 9-year-old clutches to be revived in her hospital bed, we must assume from Voorhees' lack of aging that he actually WAS dead at the bottom of that lake, and what came up through the water to snare Alice was a zombie. Yeah, I said it. It's the ONLY explanation that makes sense here. Jason's zombie actually grabbed Alice.. the animated corpse of a 9 year old.
Pamela Voorhees' reign of terror ends, Camp Blood is temporarily closed again... and a 9-year-old zombie is now haunting the waters of Crystal Lake. This is the beginning.
2. THE PLOT THICKENS
Two months after the events unfolded at Camp Blood in 1980, our faithful heroine Alice is brutally murdered in her apartment. (We have no idea where this apartment is geographically located, but somehow this happens.) She's murdered by a guy who we believe to be Jason Voorhees.
The fucking insane thing is that by this time, Jason should be 32 years old if he DIDN'T die, 9 years old if he did. Two months ago, we saw a 9 year old grab Alice... at this point, the guy who murders her is obviously a full-grown man, sporting large shoes, a flannel shirt and pillow case mask. We can only assume here that he's 32 years old, the only alternative. Which means that the zombie boy who grabbed Alice in the first film was actually only a dream, or vision in Alice's head.
Now, according to the subtitles, we fast-forward five years to 1985. (Friday the 13th: Part 2 was actually released in 1981... meaning that this movie takes place 4 years in the future.) That means by now Jason is actually 37 years old.
The same grizzly killings commence, and the same type of crazy shit happens. At the end of the film, of course, they discover Jason's shack in the woods, where he's apparently been living for the past 28 years, feeding off woodland animals, birds and fish. He's also got his mom's severed head in there with him, which is hilarious.
Jason takes a machete to the shoulder, then eventually unmasked, tries to kill Ginny, the female lead of part 2, by smashing through a window and scaring the shit out of her (and me). The ending is completely ambiguous, with Ginny waking up in an ambulance and her boyfriend Paul out of the picture.
Friday the 13th: Part 3 (IN 3-D, SUCKAS!!!!) picks up IMMEDIATELY after the part 2 ends. It's still 1985 (even though this film was released in 1982, still making this a film in the future) and Jason is now still presumably 37 years old.
There's news of his killing spree all over the television and radio, and yet this slow-moving, ninja-like bastard still manages to hide behind sheets on a clothes line and maneuver his way into slaying a whole ton of kids (and a group of riotous, ill-fitting bikers) while living in a nearby barn. It's here, of course, that he picks up his trademark hockey mask (thank you, Shelly!), olive-green shirt and khaki pants.
By the end of a few days, this near-40-year-old Jason manages to kill everyone in the entire area, only to finally be stabbed, hung, and whacked in the skull with a giant axe by Chris, the film's heroine.
Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter picks up IMMEDIATELY after this, as the cops, paramedics and other people of authority have found him hanging dead at the barn with a giant axe in his head. It's still 1985. (You guessed it, part 4 was released in theaters in 1984, meaning we're STILL a year in the future.) Jason is still 37 years old, and his killing spree starts happening AGAIN when they truck him to a nearby morgue and he wakes up, good to go.
According to the narrator of the trailer: "he moves like a shadow, dark and silent.... he never utters a word and doesn't even seem to breathe." I will totally go along with this description, and to even take it a step further: Jason Voorhees is actually the closest thing our society had to a ninja in the 1980's. It's true. Watch the films for proof of this.
Anyway, this film follows his progress as he's obsessed with traveling back to the original Camp Crystal Lake. This strikes me as being odd, as in parts 2 and 3, he didn't seem to interested in the camp at all. In fact, he steered pretty clear of the camp. In part 4, however, it's his mission to get back there and... kill stuff along the way. Let's face it: Jason Voorhees loves that fucking lake, man.
Here we meet the young Tommy Jarvis (Corey Feldman = genius) and his sister, as well as another big ass group of sex-craving kids—notably Crispin Glover's Jimmy (or Jimbo), one of my favorite Friday the 13th characters of all time... for proof of this, watch this dance sequence from the film:
Then there's this really interesting guy named Rob. Rob reveals to Tommy that he's on a secret revenge mission to kill Jason, because Voorhees actually killed his sister Sandra back in part 2.
The funny thing is that technically.. that only happened literally three days before. We're to believe that this guy has been following, tracking, and chasing Jason for years... yet his sister's death JUST happened. (This could be excused, though, maybe he's just a really forward-thinking guy and got out there in the woods ASAP after he got the call about his sister.) I can see how this would easily trip up a director. Hell, it's been like three years since part 2, right? I can see how Joseph Zito was all caught up in the moment and forgot that NO time has passed since then. (Plus, shit, part 3 was in 3-D. If you're directing part 4, you better be coming up with newer and better ways to top a 3-D experience. Fuck some plot continuity, bring on the naked twins skinny dipping sequence!!!!)
At any rate, this is the Final Chapter. Rob gets killed, everybody gets killed, and Tommy Jarvis pulls the wool over Jason's eyes when he shaves his head and tricks the 37-year-old guy into thinking he's looking at his old school zombie-ish 9-year-old self. Tommy whacks him up a few times, and then completely goes bat-shit in the end, cutting Jason's body up like my dad filets a fish.
This is definitely when the 37-year-old Jason Voorhees dies in the year 1985 after a near-week-long killing RAMPAGE that put probably more than 50 people in the ground.
3. THE TIME WARP
We're not privy to a lot of what happened to Tommy Jarvis in the immediate years that followed his mental breakdown and killing of Jason Voorhees, but he pops up again when Friday the 13: A New Beginning opened in 1985. When we next see Tommy, however, he's grown up quite a bit. Many references are made as to how old he could be... he's obviously not quite 18 yet, but nearly there. If we're to assume that the young Tommy Jarvis was not older than 11 when he killed Jason, it's safe to guess that it's been a solid six years since the fourth film.
Although we're never formally told, let's assume it's 1991 at this time, and Tommy Jarvis is 17 years old at the halfway house. That's six years in the future now.
Jason Voorhees only appears in flashbacks in this film, as the killings are being done by a copycat... only furthering Tommy's obsession and hatred of this hockey-mask-wearing, long-dead maniac. Tommy keeps a hockey mask handy, and by the end of the film we're to believe that Tommy's gone completely psycho, as he's shown wearing the mask and preparing to attack the halfway house director. (Weird, man.)
We have absolutely no idea what happens after this.
When Friday the 13: Jason Lives (part 6) opens in 1986, we see an even OLDER Tommy Jarvis, seemingly perfectly sane and extremely motivated, traveling to the grave site of Jason Voorhees to dig up the remains of his chopped-up body and burn him into ash. From his looks, it would indicate that it's been at LEAST three or four years since the incident at the halfway house... meaning that the year would be at least 1994.
We're in the future again, and this time the future is marked by hilarious paintball games, beyond-genius dangling rock and roll earrings, 80's heavy metal (most notably Alice Cooper.. fuck yeah!!!) and stirrup pants. Tommy revives Jason by accidentally jamming a gigantic metal fence post in his chest. A lightning bolt randomly hits the metal post... surging his body with electricity, and Jason is up and going again.
In the 9 or so years since we last saw Camp Crystal Lake, the powers-that-be have re-named the entire town "Forrest Green" so that people will hopefully forget about that whole "Camp Blood" business from nearly three decades ago. Jason, however, doesn't really accept change very well, so he decides to make his way back to camp and kill as many motherfuckers as humanly possible along the way.
It's brought to our attention here that Jason has become "even more powerful" and "more powerful than we ever imagined" or something, because he's gone from being a super-tough 37-year-old dude who can take an axe to the head... to becoming the equivalent of a walking corpse with superhuman strength, agility, stamina and speed. His flesh is rotting, his skin is falling off, green and brown, and you can see shards of bone and maggots crawling through him through the entire film... yet he's a goddamn superman. The guy can punch through metal (or human beings), run faster than a speeding bullet and fly.
(Okay, so he never flew in the movies, but don't think that just because we never saw this happen he can't do it.)
I'm going to go ahead and say that his age doesn't really matter at this point.
By the end of this rampage, Tommy has trapped Jason with a huge chain noose and a massive boulder at the bottom of Crystal Lake and gone off to live happily ever after with the dead sheriff's daughter, Megan. Jason is alive and well, however, in the year 1994, at the bottom of Crystal Lake, where Tommy says he'll be "home."
4. FURTHER INTO THE FUTURE
When Friday the 13: The New Blood opened in 1988, we're never given any clue whatsoever about the amount of time that has passed between the Tommy Jarvis boat motor incident and this new tale. All we know is that the camp has seemingly been replaced by a residential area of homes. Mark Bernard and I presumed that it would take a minimum of four years or more to build these kind of homes and set up this type of community in place of a full campground. Let's make an estimate and say that it's been a rounded-off four years since part 6... making it the year 1998. We're now a full 10 years in the future. (It might be even later, depending on the Forrest Green legal system, strict, red-tape zoning policies, any indian burial grounds that are probably scattered around there and tree huggers—because Crystal Lake was notorious for those fucking hippies.)
Jason squares off against a really poorly orchestrated telekinetic teenager named Tina in this one (who's powers mostly consisted of smashing light bulbs, and throwing household objects like that kid from Home Alone and also reviving the dead just like Jesus Christ), and although the killing and maiming is extremely fun and addictive to watch:
it never achieves the personal heights of brilliant, groundbreaking storytelling that parts 1-4 (or even 6) made famous. By the end of the film, Jason is trapped once again under the lake by Tina's long-dead (but not aged or decomposed? Thanks Tina / Jesus!!!!) father, and everybody lives happily ever after.
5. NEW YORK HAS A NEW PROBLEM, WE HAVE A PLOT PROBLEM
Since there are no plot ties, characters, landmarks or subtitles to clue us in on how much time has passed since Tina's undead father dragged Jason back down into the depths of Crystal Lake, we have absolutely no clue what year it is when Friday the 13: Jason Takes Manhattan (part 8) begins. (The movie actually opened in 1989.)
We could assume only from the wreckage that he's buried under that it hasn't been very long at all.. maybe even less than a year. From his ruined, biodegraded clothes alone, let's say a full year has passed, making it the year 1999 when Jason is revived by yet another electrical charge from a boat. For whatever reason, Jason somehow makes his way all the way to the coast, where he hops on a cruise ship full of recent high school graduates heading towards New York City. (Yeah, a cruise from Crystal Lake to New York City always struck me as weird too, but fuck it, it's hilarious.)
Even though this film was called "Jason Takes Manhattan," he actually only "takes it" in the last 10 or 15 minutes of the movie. The entire bulk of the movie takes place on this deadly cruise ship, as he kills nearly every son of a bitch on board, including Kelly Hu, the brlliant captain of the ship and the hilarious deck hand guy, who was the closest thing we've gotten to Crazy Ralph since he was strangled back in part 2.
This film also pushed the buck in terms of Jason's maneuverability, ninja skills and outright apparent teleportation techniques. He goes from alleyways to rooftops, from hallways to front decks and bounces across entire rooms with the literal blink of an eye in this movie. It's right on the edge of being outrageous, but then you think.... hmm... maybe this fucker can actually shift time and space and just teleport wherever he wants by now? I have no theories here, just the facts.
Also: it's important to mention the infamous rooftop boxing sequence, which solidified this film as having one of the most hilarious death sequences in the history of the series:
(You may want to go ahead and watch that again, just in case you thought I made it up, or you were dreaming, or maybe ate some bad hot dogs or something and imagined it. Go ahead, induldge.)
This is an interesting note, by the way, about New York City. On Wikipedia, they make a note that the depiction of New York City in this film might seem strange to "young viewers" because New York was in an economic downturn, crime was rampant, vandalism and graffiti littered the city, Time Square was a haven for prostitutes and drug dealers, so THUS... Jason visitig the most dangerous city in America made "poetic sense" at the time.
Unfortunately, their directors, writers and producers seem to have fucked up, because the year was literally 1999 when Jason "took" Manhattan... nearly 10 years in the future. Jason wouldn't "take" Manhattan in the late 80's... he'd "take it" nearly at the turn of the century. Little would they know that New York would be a beautiful place then. Hate to make you guys wrong, Paramount, but seriously... you kinda fucked that one up.
ALSO: The main female character in this film, Rennie, has a very strong fear of water. We're later enlightened that this fear stems from a horrifying incident she had in her youth. She currently has these reoccurring nightmarish flashbacks of a nine-year-old, bald Jason Voorhees reaching up and grabbing her in the lake when she was a little girl. (I'd be scared of getting in the water too, if I saw a pissed off, jaded, bald retard coming up through the water and grabbing MY fucking feet!!!!)
BUT.. we have a major problem here. The year is currently 1999, and she's just graduating high school. It's safe to say that she's 18 years old. In her flashbacks, she's around 8 or 9 years old when this small Jason is grabbing her in the lake. That was about 10 years ago. Well, 10 years ago, it was 1989, and Jason Voorhees was actutally 32 years old.... and dead. (Recently chopped up by Tommy Jarvis, who was bouncing around in halfway homes at the time.) It's actually safe to say that not only was Jason dead, but buried deep in the ground at the Forrest Green Cemetary. In a coffin. A wooden one.
Sorry, writers, you guys dropped the fucking ball again.
The ending of this film was the weirdest, most highly debated scene in the series (next to the ending of Part 1, of course), when we see Jason get doused in Toxic Waste in a New York sewer (because New York has all that toxic waste that they flush down city sewers in 1999) and apparently turn into a very small, naked 9-year-old crying boy.
We're left here with this image of him... just lying there in a puddle of toxic waste, shivering and crying... literally 9 years old again in 1999. Full circle. This guy went from being 9 years old in 1957 to being 9 years old in 1999. Technically, at this point, he's 51 years old, and suddenly he's 9 again. I have no idea, and neither does any human alive.
6. TO HELL AND BACK... MAYBE?
At the beginning of Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday, the F.B.I. have FINALLY taken notice of Voorhees' hobbies of cutting people up like sushi and decided to team up with tons of other guys with guns and spotlights and kill him once and for all. This is really understandable. We don't know what year this is, and we also have NO idea how:
1. Jason got all the way back to Camp Crystal Lake (or Forrest Green?) from New York City without being spotted, seen, or caught.
2. Jason managed to change back from a crying 9-year-old boy and back into a giant-sized undead killing machine with his old beat-up hockey mask
3. The F.B.I. decided to get involved, finally, and do something. (You'd think after a guy is responsible for killing more than 200 people, somebody would seriously take notice and try to stop him. I mean, damn, where's Jodi Foster from Silence of the Lambs, you know?)
[ Editor's note: There's an interesting note on Wikipedia that explains the circumstances by which the F.B.I. mounted their big Jason-hunt.... and apparently it stems from Jason's existence being publicly confirmed, finally, after he single-handedly kills mostly everybody in the Phoenix Heights Hotel (?). This was from the novel Hate-Kill-Repeat, an extension of the series. Go figure. ]
At this point in the series... Paramount Pictures had sold the entire franchise to New Line Cinema, and it's pretty obvious that they simply didn't give a fuck. It's apparent by now that the filmmakers didn't care or weren't concerned about continuity, characters, history or time... they just wanted to tell a REALLY insane story based on this character. It was released in 1993, but time would dictate that this film would HAVE to take place sometime after 2000, possibly even as far into the future as 2005.
This film was absolutely insane, with the high points being:
1. Creighton Duke, the strangely effeminate-yet-macho (obviously gay) bounty hunter.
2. We learn about Jason's sister, see Jason's mom's GIGANTIC HOUSE that's never been mentioned in any film before.
3. Kane Hodder, who played Jason in many films before (brilliantly) as a security guard, who calls Jason "a big old pussy," and is killed by the Jason-possessed coroner.
4. The hero kid wears glasses.
5. The Necronomicon was in the basement.
6. The jungle gym at the end was the same one used in Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds.
It's also noteworthy to mention that the original script featured Jason's previously unmentioned father, "Elias," as the real killer and included a backstory about Pamela Voorhees' involvement with the occult. Although it was re-written, I personally feel that this was an AWESOME plot device, and would have really liked to have learned more about this occult business. I think that's a pretty fascinating side of this whole thing, and might have lead to explain more about Jason's weird story than just having a big, slimy demonic-looking worm crawl down people's throats.
Of course, by the end of this film Jason was defeated by a knife, or a woman, or something, and then Freddy Krueger's bladed hand pops up from some sand and drags Jason's mask under the ground, presumably to hell.
7. EVEN FURTHER INTO THE FUTURE. WAY FURTHER.
At the beginning of Jason X (part 10), we learn that in 2008, Jason Voorhees will be finally captured by the US Government and finally in 2010 they decide to put the fucker in "cryogenic suspension" just like Han Solo for safe keeping.
Of course, he thaws himself out in 2455 and kills almost 30 people aboard a space ship, and probably hundreds more aboard a space station when he kills the space ship's pilot and causes the ship to crash into the side of it. (Genius.) This movie apparently had more kills than any of the previous films, but since the kills were on a spaceship, I didn't really take them seriously. To be honest, I have a hard time believing that this movie even exists most of the time.
At the end of this space berserker love story, he ends up crash landing on "EARTH 2" in 2455, in some lake, and that's where we FINALLY leave Jason.
So currently, he's soaking up lake water on some other Earth planet, covered in weird shiny futuristic armor in 2455. (It's funny how these things work out, huh?)
This all leaves a pretty small window of 3 to 5 years from the time we saw Jason go to hell (and the incident with Freddy Krueger in 2003's "Freddy vs. Jason") until they somehow capture him in 2008.
This is all a huge mess from here on, as we're never told how Jason got out of hell, or how he ended up being buried back at Crystal Lake, (or Forrest Green?) or how his powers work, or why he's not a 9-year-old toxic waste boy, or how his body got put back together (including hockey mask) when a small, slimy worm crawled up the vagina of his dead sister. (Seriously.)
This entire blog was written to say... GREAT character... PISS POOR storytelling.
I think there's seriously room for a WONDERFUL remake here. If somebody would please step up to the plate and write a really interesting (and not cheesy) script for a remake (not you, Rob Zombie), I think it could be a fantastic project for a horror film.
I'd really want to see this entire franchise remodeled, rebooted and redone in a very intelligent, terrifying and suspenseful way. If nobody else has the balls to do it, by God, I will. Just give me some time and I'll give you a Friday the 13th story that'll rip through your tent with a machete, put your balls in a sleeping bag, slam them up against a tree, shoot a harpoon gun through them, whack them with an axe and cut 'em up with a big fucking gas-powered weed whacker.
Come on Hollywood... get the hockey mask back on the screen.
In the mean time, enjoy this video... my all-time favorite Friday the 13th feature on YouTube... every single kill from every single Friday the 13th movie ever made. Spread the Jason Voorhees love!!!!
Some say he's a visionary. Others testify that he can literally see the future and consider him to be a modern-day prophet. The smart ones would put their lives on the line for his testimony... the rest will deny his word and meet a horrifying, unrelenting fate.
Whether he's riding his bicycle through your backyard and screaming his unmistakable warning, sneaking around outside your house or cabin, spying and sipping on his burbon-filled flask, or hiding for hours at a time in your kitchen pantry, ready to knock over some pots and pans and scare the truth into you... Crazy Ralph is not someone to be ignored.
I've been collecting evidence of his brilliance for years, and now you can view the entire collection below.
No matter how invigoratingly powerful his words are, no matter how many times he sounds off to protect the lives of those he loves, the horrible truth is that nobody listens to Crazy Ralph... until it's too late.
I've got to tell you guys... I sat down to write a review for Transformers just now, and after I got about 3,000 words written, I realized that it was going to take me another five or six hours to actually articulate how I truly feel about this fucking piece of shit film.
From the racism and stereotyping to the HORRIBLE jokes and piss-poor attempt at robot slapstick comedy, I was really frustrating myself trying to capture all my emotion and get it into words on this blog. It's too much.
I had begun to write a giant list of my favorite "TERRIBLE MOMENTS" of Transformers... but it was seriously taking me an hour to stop writing. There are just too many. Hell, the entire MOVIE is a list of things I hated... one terrible moment after another. It's senseless for me to write a review when THE OUTLAW VERN has already done it for me.
If you please go and read THIS review, you'll get my feelings about this film EXACTLY. This guy encompassed my feelings perfectly in his review, and if I could agree MORE with him, I definitely would. However, I can't. Our feelings about this movie are so similar that I'm pretty sure we somehow shared a brain when we saw this film.
I'm a geek, and I've been waiting a long year to see the movie that would make me feel like a kid again. Instead I got something that would insult the intelligence of a kid, and took the memories of some of my favorite characters and made fun of them. Sure, characters like Bumblebee would be slightly cheesy if they were alive today... but I'll tell you one thing, Michael Bay... the loving, heroic Bumblebee from my youth would NOT pop open a cartoon canister from his robotic crotch and literally PISS all over John Turturro with circus sound effects. That just wouldn't happen, bud. I gotta say fuck you on that one.
I'm also disappointed that you took Jazz... voiced by the awesome Scatman Caruthers in the early 80's, and turned him into a beyond-lame breakdancing black stereotype who's only limited dialogue consisted of "whaaazzzzup my little bitches" and "this looks like a nice spot to kick it" and "autobots represent" and taking actions to fold over and cross his arms like a mid-80's Run DMC video. You also killed him in the end, Michael Bay, and that black robot character happens to be the only one who dies. You killed the token black guy. You fucking suck.
Sure, this movie had some things in it that were really neat to look at, and you definitely can't take anything away from the great production company and effects crews who put it all together. Unfortunately for you guys, though, a terrible script just killed your characters. This movie proves that you can truly have the most advanced visuals on the planet, but if your script sucks a giant cock like this one... the movie is a straight-up failure.
This was one of the worst films I've seen in a damn long time. For me, it was X-Men 3 bad, it was Batman and Robin bad, it was Fantastic Four bad... it was just plain painful to experience.
Happy July 4th America: Enjoy your worthless, mindless summer blockbuster. The idiots and rednecks of the world will never be happier. All 100,000,000,000,000,000,000 of them.
I thought I'd just post this to post this. I really loved this film. I think the review says it all, so enjoy this piece... written November 10, 2005. It still stands firm with me!
-M
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Broken Flowers.
Sometimes I guess, those pieces of yourself you've thrown away or forgotten about (either on purpose or not) really contribute to the person you see in the mirror these days. I guess those pieces can really haunt you, too. My pieces haunt me daily, those broken flowers lying in my living room or head.... leering at me and serving as some kind of a sad reminder of lessons learned and unlearned time and time over again. When you come home at the end of the day, it's up to you to figure out what to do with them.
In a way, I couldn't help but feel a strong, strong connection with Don Johnston (played by Bill Murray) in Jim Jarmusch's wonderful, wonderful film, "BROKEN FLOWERS."
This is a film that snuck up on me and hit me straight in the face. I drove the 45 minutes to see it by myself because of four reasons:
1. It was a Sunday and I had nothing else to do.
2. I absolutely LOVE Jim Jarmusch's "Coffee and Cigarettes," and figured his newest film would be something wonderful.
3. The trailer was one of the best edited, wonderfully creative previews I'd seen in a long while.
4. It stars Bill fucking Murray.
What I DIDN'T expect was a movie that shook me up and down and yeah... even sideways. This film is a film for filmmakers: a quiet study, a slice of life and and an absolutely WONDERFUL examination of human life.
First of all, the theater was freakin' PACKED. For a Sunday matinee', Jesus, it was a madhouse. People lined up at the ticket both, every single person buying tickets for Broken Flowers. Fast Forward.... upon leaving, I overheard a few people talking about it on the way to the parking lot. "I like movies that are different," said a tall, older guy with a beard, "but this one just lost me. It was just weird. What the hell WAS that, anyway?"
I wanted to speak out and tell him EXACTLY what "that" was. I wanted to explain to this guy that what he just saw wasn't Hollywood served up on a silver screen platter with big time cheesy actors and costumes and straight-forward plots and nice, tidy endings. What "THAT" was... was a BRILLIANT study of human life.... reality captured in wonderful quiet moments of confusion, bliss, horror, dismay, anger and frustration. Life isn't like a Hollywood ending and Jim Jarmusch showed me and reminded me of that today. I wanted to tell him ALL this and more... but instead I just laughed to myself and went my separate way.
I'm sure a lot of people haven't even HEARD of this movie, so here's a handy PLOT OUTLINE copied from our friends at the Internet Movie Database:
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In the new film from acclaimed writer/director Jim Jarmusch, which won the Grand Prix at this year's Cannes International Film Festival, Bill Murray stars as Don Johnston. The resolutely single Don has just been dumped by his latest lover, Sherry (Julie Delpy). Don yet again resigns himself to being alone and left to his own devices. Instead, he is compelled to reflect on his past when he receives by mail a mysterious pink letter. It is from an anonymous former lover and informs him that he has a 19-year-old son who may now be looking for his father. Don is urged to investigate this "mystery" by his closest friend and neighbor, Winston (Jeffrey Wright), an amateur sleuth and family man. Hesitant to travel at all, Don nonetheless embarks on a cross-country trek in search of clues from four former flames (Frances Conroy, Jessica Lange, Sharon Stone, and Tilda Swinton). Unannounced visits to each of these unique women hold new surprises for Don as he haphazardly confronts both his past and, consequently, his present.
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Yeah, I've had a lot of relationships here and there in my life. Some much, much better than others. I think back at just how different the women I've dated are from each other and then the total BRILLIANCE of this film really sets in. What if, in twenty years (because trust me....I DEFINITELY plan on being single in twenty years, just like this guy) I was placed in this same situation? I think to myself about the different girls and where they might be in twenty years' time and it really makes me think.
Wow.
Okay, now say I was pushed into a nation-wide road trip and directed to find these women and talk to them again. What in the HELL would I say? What in the holy cup of DAMN would I do?? What do you SAY to an old girlfriend whom you haven't seen in twenty years?? How do you even APPROACH the situation? I think about how DRASTICALLY different the women are and suddenly Jim Jarmusch's Broken Flowers doesn't even feel like a movie anymore, it feels real as hell. It feels like something that would actually happen to me. All these weird, out-of-control strange moments and places he ends up.... all these un-escapable situations he ends up in, having to stay the course and deal.... walking away with nothing but INSANE stories to tell. When Don returns from his long trip, I wanted to sit down with him and say, "Dude, you should seriously write this whole story out so you can share it with other people...because trust me....nobody's going to believe how fucking CRAZY that story was."
It was just like when I got back from Charleston, South Carolina on that hellish job interview trip. The things that happened to me on that trip weren't far fetched or out-of-control unbelievable. Those things could have happened to ANYBODY, but unfortunately they happened to me. Welcome to Broken Flowers.
Broken Flowers felt so real to me at times... I was thinking to myself that Jim Jarmusch must have really BEEN on a trip like this. I kept thinking, "damn, you can't make this shit up. This HAS to be a real trip." I began thinking, "surely this guy has actually been THROUGH this and now he's written this movie about those experiences and captured every single detail." Because trust me, the WONDERFUL, SMALL DETAILS MAKE THIS MOVIE AMAZING.
Read this: This is an EXTREMELY QUIET MOVIE. This movie moves in a quiet, smooth pace that doesn't shut you out when the main character just sits and thinks or sleeps or begins to change his mind. It stays right there with him through all those important quiet moments and to SEE Bill Murray use those quiet moments is nothing short of REMARKABLE. The details... like Don noticing pictures on the wall.... or the texture of a cell phone... or watching trees go by in his drivers-side window.... or the patterns on a girl's dress.... or a basketball goal.... all these things are beautiful surveys of a man who's awfully perceptive for a guy who claims not to be a private detective or a mystery solver. As he takes these things in, you take them in with him. You're right there at his side experiencing these crazy, outlandish things with him. Every second is a gorgeous slice of reality. Every single moment is a piece of REAL LIFE captured on film. NOTHING is unbelievable. Everything is exactly as it should be.
The direction of this movie is wonderful. Calm, steady, doesn't call attention to itself, pure, smooth, paced well, documented well, honest and brutally tangible.
Bill Murray is a national treasure. In this movie, he's calm... yet extremely bottled up and explosive inside. He's steady, yet extremely scared and confused. He's the everyman character, yet he's completely unique and individualized. Out of so many amazing quiet moments.... there's one that just reached out and grabbed me. In the cemetery, sitting still and subdued against a tree, Don opens himself up and allows us to really see himself and his emotion. In that quick moment I silently shed a tear for him. In that moment I believe I really understood his plight and maybe even some of the reasons for his whole quest. That one single moment made fighting the crowd, the ticket price, driving 45 minutes through Nashville traffic... and being ALIVE all worth it. God, that was a beautiful scene. That was probably one of my favorite scenes of this entire YEAR.
As a side note, that scene is a TESTAMENT to Jim Jarmusch. If you look at Bill Murray as directed by Wes Anderson in the horribly, horribly shitty "The Life Aquatic," you'll find something totally different. Yeah, yeah, I know, different character, different script, bla bla bla. What I mean is look at the on-screen ENERGY he's got here. Look at the charisma, believability and the EMOTION he conveys here. This is really something. Again, I tip my hat to Jarmusch and give God a high-five in my head for his skill as a director here.
The cast of this movie is undeniably SENSATIONAL. Let's just ring 'em in here: Bill Murray, Jeffery Wright (more on him below), Sharon Stone, Jessica Lange, Tilda Swinton, Julie Deply, Chloe Sevigny and the surprisingly hot 21-year-old Alexis Dziena who plays a teenage girl in a scene that will make you literally scream, "WHAT THE HELL????" in a really, really good way. ....Damn, just thinking about that scene makes me think to myself, "WHAT THE HELL?" and then smile like crazy. Good God, that scene is hilarious.
I can't stop writing without giving Mr. Jefferey Wright major, major props. This man is genius in this movie. This man makes this movie hum like a well-oiled machine. His character is the next-door-neighbor you would kill to have. His accent makes me smile and chuckle and laugh every time I hear him talk and his energy on screen is nothing short of ASTONISHING. Paired with Bill Murray's depressive, quiet, non-smiling Don Johnston, Jefferey Wright's Winston is directly on the other side of the coin and a perfect instigator for the film's plot. I LOVED this guy.
On the negative side... I can't say I had any negatives for this movie. But, I will say this to the common movie-going average Joe: This isn't your average, every day, run-of-the-mill movie. The older guy with the beard who was walking out in front of me was right.... this is something much different than what audiences are used to. This isn't "THE ISLAND" or "The 40-Year-Old Virgin." This movie is a quiet, hilarious slice of reality and what wonderful, BEAUTIFUL comedy that you find here isn't in-your-face riotous comdey... it's real-life shit that could happen to you at ANY time kind of comedy. So don't go in there thinking Bill Murray is going to bust out some "STRIPES" or "GHOSTBUSTERS" on you.
And finally.... the ending. All I can say about the ending is that when it was over... I was smiling from ear-to-ear in complete joy. I was about to tear up and I couldn't stop nodding my head. I sat back in my seat and took it all in and thought back on the spectacular journey I'd just been on. Jim Jarmusch doesn't tie it up for you. Jarmusch doesn't hand it to you with ribbon on top. This movie ends just like life. When you stop and think about it.... there really is no ending to life in moments like this. It's just right. To me, it was perfect.
So "Broken Flowers" gets a well-deserved four throwing stars from me. I would walk right back in and watch this movie again and again if I had the time. I'll buy this movie when it pops up on DVD and it'll be part of my movie collection for years and years to come. Thank you, Jim Jarmusch and thank you, Bill Murray and the rest of the wonderful cast, for giving me something inspiring, extraordinary and real.
I'll always be on the lookout for a pink typewriter.
So today at work, Wes Anderson came up, and since we're not so far from seeing a new trailer for his newest creation, "The Darjeeling Limited," which will pop up in 2008, I thought I might share an old review for his last film, "The Life Aquatic." This was a rough review written in November of 2005, and to be honest my opinions haven't changed much since then. (My writing style probably has, however.) I truly had a terrible time with this film. But since it was fresh on my mind, here it is in its full glory. Enjoy!
-M
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Hey guys, this is my DVD review for:
THE LIFE AQUATIC WITH STEVE ZISSOU
Written & Directed by Wes Anderson
There should have been a different name for this movie. It should have been called "The uncomfortable,symmetrical life of melodramatic, horrible southern accent-using and uninteresting forgettable characters while on a really badass boat."
What in the CUP OF FUCK did I just watch???
WARNING: This review contains a LOT of cussing. Probably more than usual.
And that's a lot.
Now here's my opinion:
The Life Aquatic takes the super-stylized trademark design of Wes Anderson and pushes it so far down your throat that you don't give a flying cup of monkey fuck about watching it anymore. For example:
EVERY SINGLE SHOT OF THIS MOVIE IS A FORCED SYMMETRICAL COMPOSITION.
After the first 20 minutes or so, it became so tiresome and so distracting that I began to seriously scream out loud at the director. I began howling his name like a fucking convict who's been sentenced to a life in prison for a crime he didn't commit. The symmetry in this movie just turns into this horrible, horrible nausiating mess. It began as sort of a fun thing, you say to yourself, "ha, how cool, that shot is totally symmetrical....the lights and the background and the foreground and the two characters are standing side-by-side having a conversation while facing forward, how neat," and then it slowly turns into..."SWEET JESUS, LIFE DOESN'T WORK THAT WAY!! STOP!!! STOP WITH THE DAMN SYMMETRICAL SHOTS!!! PLEASE, JESUS, TAKE MY LIFE NOW!!! STRIKE ME DOWN WITH YOUR JESUS POWERS, YOU KNOW THE ONES.....THE LASER BEAMS AND WHATEVER!!! USE YOUR JESUS POWERS TO KILL ME NOW BECAUSE OF THE HORRIBLE, HORRIBLE SYMMETRY!!"
Anyway, you get what I'm saying. It just gets arrogant and obsessive. I hated it.
I hate to be such a dick when I say this, but seriously....Anderson really fucked up with this script.
This movie's premise is one of the best I've ever heard in my life. The idea of an aging sea-explorer documentary maker who smokes joints and goes on a sea rampage to hunt down a mythical evil man-eating shark because it ATE his partner and friend??? Think about it...how freakin' COOL is that???
Well, sorry. What you get instead is all premise, no payoff. What you get is about 20 carbon-copied characters who all use the same style of dialogue and delivery (who REALLY wrote and directed this damn thing, Kevin Smith?) who are all, essentially, the same damn person....in a boring, boring environment with boring, boring plot developments.
Jesus, even Jeff Goldblum, who is one of my favorite actors of all time!!!
Yes, yes, Rushmore was like this, to an extent, Bottle Rocket too, and yes, so was The Royal Tennenbaums. Preach it, Anderson fans, come back and yell at me for my sacrilige in calling him out on this one. But I'm sorry, this review is my opinion, and in my opinion, with this film, he pushed his style way too far. So far, in fact, that I woke up this morning feeling like I just got out of prison. His style actually sodamized me. It made me its bitch and didn't even give me the courtesy of a friendly reach-around.
This movie is nothing more than a shitty montage of uncomfortable moments, awkward silences and terrible, terrible acting. Every single time Owen Wilson opened his mouth I wanted to punch him in the throat. That man is not from Kentucky. I have no idea where in God's name he pulled out that southern accent, but it sounds offensively WRONG. It's just WRONG. God, it's so bad. It's WRONG!!!!!
What in the hell was Willem Defoe doing in this movie?
I can't tell you how many times I was watching this movie and started to think (as soon as another weird, completely uncomfortable awkward silence scene came on....which is pretty much this entire film), "what in the hell am I WATCHING here?? What is going ON??? What are they talking about??
Who CARES???"
Although the dialogue is super trendy and quirky and fun, it just gets fucking OLD. As good as Bill Murray is, he's just playing a re-hashed Max Fischer from Rushmore in this movie. He's an OLD version of Max Fischer with a SMALL bit of Gene Hackman thrown in just to try an' make him a badass.
When Bill Murray cries, I don't believe him.
I always believe Bill Murray. Watch Lost in Translation and see what I mean. You believe him, and love what he has to say and trust what he has to say is going to be entertaining and interesting.
In this movie, instead of being an interesting, compelling character being PLAYED by Bill Murray, it was just Bill Murray playing some re-hashed role that I didn't believe in. Who really GIVES a damn what happens to Steve Zissou?? Really?? The movie spends so much time building him up to be such a dick, when the man cries....well......you just make that face that means, "Do you expect me to feel sorry for you, dude? You're a fucking dick."
Shit, I was more worried about that badass boat. That boat was AWESOME!! I could have given a shit if Steve Zisssou or his whole CREW got killed, but PLEASE...don't hurt the boat!!!
The movie strives to create this whole whimsical, cutesy, neat-o atmosphere right out of some college-written playwriting class, and then it's just going to throw in random gunfights (which are pooooorly done....like some shit Jared and I filmed on a weekend with firecrackers and smoke) and hyper violent scenes with people being shot left and right, helicopter crashes and fist fights that just seem.....for a lack of a better word....dumb.
How am I supposed to be scared for these characters, or worry about them, or care when they get injured, when it only feels like a stupid fucking retard high school play?
Now don't get me wrong. Yes, Rushmore felt like this....because it took place in a high school. The lives of those characters weren't constantly being threatened by pirates or sharks. They were making a play, and living their lives and it was BRILLIANTLY DONE. The wonderful characters of The Royal Tenenbaums were the same way....their lives were so complicated and strange and layered.....the "whimsical play" style worked perfectly for structuring their development. The action in that movie played out just like it SHOULD have been (read: Owen Wilson's car crash ending. The violence there was JUSTIFIED by the whimsical "theatre" style of filmmaking).
But in The Life Aquatic.....these people are LIVING IN A HELLISH, NIGHTMARE WORLD of unprotected waters, horrible, unspeakable sea creatures who eat men, and blood-lusting pirates who take your life savings and raid your wife's panties just for kicks.
But instead of being all those great things....it just felt like a bunch of 5th graders with a video camera pretending to be in danger. It never felt like there was actually any threat. It felt LAME.
It would have worked better if this whole movie WAS a play, and there was no sea....just a stage. Then it might have been at least entertaining....then it might have made a LITTLE more sense. (not much.)
I mean, Jesus, when Bill Murray takes on pretty much ALL of the pirates, (coughcoughcoughHORSESHITcoughcough) these guys were UNLOADING some serious ammo at him and they never even touch the guy. For a minute there, I thought I was watching Sylvester Stallone in CLIFFHANGER.
For the love of God, if you're going to make a live-action, on-the- open-seas movie about these things, why not make it a bit more threatening and....well.....COOOOOL????
Besides that, the ending of this movie is just plain fucking lame. I'm sorry, but if you tell me that you enjoyed the ending of this movie (with the whole damn crew jammed in some Deuce-Ex-Machina tiny submarine watching lame stop-motion effects that didn't look like the REAL Harryhausen stop motion effects, but bad, bad CGI), you were on some other plane of existence than me.
The ending of this movie MAKES NO SENSE. Fuck, what am I saying, this WHOLE MOVIE makes no sense. The whole thing is like a forgettable bad dream I had one night after eating too many Cheetos and Peanut Butter on a balls-to-the-wall muchie rampage before passing out. It felt like an INCREDIBLE waste of my time.
Sure, I laughed. Sure, the production design is probably some of the best work I've ever seen in any film in my LIFE, and Bill Murray is incredibly fun to watch regardless. Sure, it had a beyond-terrifying token black man playing obscure David Bowie songs on his guitar.
But that just didn't save The Life Aquatic from getting a big fucking WOOOOF!!! from my jaded ass. I'm sorry, but for me, this movie went down the toilet faster than an unwanted embryo after prom night.
This is one Wes Anderson movie that most DEFINITELY will not come NEAR my DVD shelf. EVER.
Now I'm going to go snuggle up with my copy of Rushmore and think back to when Wes Anderson gave me 16 of the biggest, blackest boners ever. Ah, the good 'ole days.
Okay, so I literally just had one of the best weekends of my entire life.
Taking some advice from a wise friend, I decided to bolt out of work a little early last Friday and get a room in Asheville, North Carolina for the weekend. Since I didn't know a soul there, it was my mission to do a lot of wondering around, drinking and looking at beautiful things.
Luckily for my goofy, confused, half-lost ass, I met three gorgeous women who were kind enough to show me around town and keep a giant-sized smile across my face the entire time.
Since I type way too much anyway, maybe these pictures will tell the story better. Big thanks to Kathy, Laura and Miss Liz for making my time in Asheville the best damn trip since the McClane Brothers' Beach Trip From Hell fiasco in 1998. Hope you enjoy the pics & if you go to Asheville sometime soon, please tell everybody I said hello.
Stay in touch, you wild women!
Much love!
-M
(And yes, the guy in the purple shirt is, indeed, Billy Corgan from The Smashing Pumpkins, who is really skinny and generally creepy looking.)
