An Open Letter to Hollywood: Part 2

Dear Hollywood,

I know, it's weird that I would write you a letter in two parts. I thought I could retain your attention better by breaking them up. It also makes me look like a more prodigious letter-writer.

Resident Evil: Afterlife

Actual Tagline: “She's back...And she's bringing a few of her friends.”
Implied Tagline: “Milla Jovovich would star in your home birthing video if you paid her enough.”
To be fair, the main reason I passed on reviewing this was because I’d promised to see it with my friend Dani who’s a big fan of all of the Resident Evil movies. That said, if Dani didn’t love Resident Evil so much, I would have never even considered seeing this movie at all. Because I saw Resident Evil: Extinction.

Working title Resident Evil: The Sarah Connor Chronicles.

For some reason, the Resident Evil movie series aged really poorly. The first movie was a passable adaptation of the first game, but if it hadn’t had a video game license attached to it, it would have just been another competent but common zombie/haunted house movie. Milla Jovovich, Michelle Rodriguez and James Purefoy all turned in good perfomances, but two out of three of their characters were dead by the credits. Luckily, Michelle Rodriguez would return to play the same character…in every movie she’s ever been in.

ACTING!

Resident Evil: Apocalypse began the tradition of adding ": Hyperbolic Subtitle” to each sequel. It also replaced the first movie’s useless imposter cop/environmentalist with a useless creepy ginger girl and Michelle Rodriguez’s wise-cracking security commando with Mike Epps’ wise-cracking pimp.

Shouldn’t Foxy Brown be interrogating you somewhere right now?

Then came Resident Evil: Extinction. In the time since the last movie zombies had overrun the Earth…somehow. If you were hoping for explanations to major plot points you’re several movies too late. Also, everything is covered in dust for reasons that are unclear.

Apparently an active gambling economy was the only thing keeping Vegas from turning into the Sahara.

Extinction dropped all pretense of an overall narrative and just barely strung together various action scenes and set pieces. It was relieving when the film ground to an end by just killing all the characters with less and less explanation, until I realized that the screenwriters were just cleaning up loose ends in preparation for yet another sequel, this time starring nothing but Milla Jovovich and a thousand Milla Jovovich clones. It’ll be just like that scene in The Matrix Reloaded where all the Agent Smith Clones fought Neo! You remember how totally awesome and not at all a tedious mess of CGI-abuse that was?

Oh…right.

The real question is why does Milla Jovovich continue to appear in these films? Sure, she isn’t exactly an art house actress, but she has enough name and face recognition that she can turn down roles that are beneath her. It’s almost as if she’s…I don’t know… married to the franchise somehow…

Ah. Well then…

Easy A

Actual Tagline: “Let's not and say we did.”
Implied Tagline: “It’s Juno meets The Scarlet Letter! No, wait, come back!”

This is a tough one. I’ve since heard from friends that this is actually a pretty good movie, and it features Thomas Hayden Church and Malcolm McDowell.

As the world’s most terrifying high school principal.

So I can’t really say that this is a definitively bad movie, but I can absolutely say that everything else seems to indicate this is a bad movie. Just to refresh, here’s the imdb.com synopsis of the film:

“A clean-cut high school student relies on the school's rumor mill to advance her social and financial standing.”

Remember to read “clean-cut“ as “nerdy girl who you know is nerdy because the other characters say she is, but she actually looks like a model.”

A nerdy girl according to Hollywood.

Also, I’m not sure how having sex is supposed to improve a girl’s “financial standing,” and considering the character in question is supposed to be in high school, I think the less time spent considering the possible answers to that question, the better.

Which brings up my second reason for not reviewing this movie: the entire plot is about the sex lives of high school students. There’s no way for an adult male to talk about this movie without coming off as creepy. Roger Ebert valiantly tried, but was shot in the foot by whoever chose this picture to accompany his review:

Oh, Roger, your words may say “underrated actress” but your picture choice says “MMM, TITTIES!”

Oh, and just in case the concept of an out-of-touch portrayal of a hot nerd participating in implied prostitution wasn’t enough to entice you, don’t forget, according to Wikipedia Easy A was “partially inspired the novel The Scarlet Letter.”

“Finally, someone got what I was going for!”

Exactly how “partially”? Well, The Scarlet Letter was about a woman living in Puritan New England who was institutionally ostracized and forced to wear a red letter “A” for the rest of her life because she fell in love and had sex with the local Reverend years after her husband had disappeared and was presumed dead. This social stigma psychologically tortures her, mentally warps her bastard child, and drives her lover to such depths of guilt that it eventually kills him.

Easy A, meanwhile, is best surmised thusly:

Oh, wait, Juno actually had sex. Nevermind, then.

Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps

Actual Tagline: Umm…”Money Never Sleeps”?
Implied Tagline: “So Help Us God, We Will Not Rest Until Shia LeBeouf Ruins Every Film and Television Show You Have Ever Loved.”

Wall Street 2: Wall Street Harder is not something I'm willing to sit through, free or not, for three reasons:

1) It's a sequel to Wall Street.
2) It is not 1989, when a sequel to Wall Street might have been a good idea.
3) Do you remember the last good movie Shia LaBeouf was in? Neither does he. Although, to be fair, he also doesn't remember the original Wall Street…because he was 18 months old when it was released.

Wall Street 2: Electric Boogaloo typifies the modern trend of appropriating successful entertainment properties of the past and revamping them for modern times. This is annoying whenever it happens, but it’s even worse when the creators of the original property are involved in the update.

Again, the inclusion of Shia LaBeouf never helps.

The original Wall Street was released in 1987 and its themes of individual and corporate ruthlessness and greed neatly encapsulated the spirit of the times. Michael Douglas was the essence of immoral financial practices in a character that became archetypal, while oily yuppie Charlie Sheen portrayed exactly who audiences imagined as the cause of the savings and loan crisis.

While Ronald Reagan portrayed the actual cause of the savings and loan crisis.

Wall Street spoke to the public’s anger and frustration over the country’s economic ruin by presenting a morality tale where the players behind that ruin were shown as amoral villains who would eventually receive punishment for their actions.

Eventually.

Once again America is facing a financial crisis, so maybe it is time for a sequel. Maybe we need a movie to address the people and practices that got us into our current mess… oh, wait, we already have that movie. It’s called Wall Street.

A film for our times.

The causes of the current financial crisis are essentially the same as the causes of the financial crisis of the 1980s. The people whose job it was to make decisions with massive amounts of money turned out to actually be pretty bad at making decisions with massive amounts of money and the government paid to cover the cost. Oliver Stone parlaying this into a sequel to Wall Street is like him making a sequel to Scarface that shows the gradual rise, massive success and eventual poetic downfall of a psychotically violent kingpin meth dealer.

Starring Shia Labeouf!

Thanks for your time, Hollywood. I hope this has helped give you some perspective on why you suck so hard. So very, very hard.
Your Friend,
Thaddeus “Handsome Paddy” McGillicuddy

An Open Letter to Hollywood: Part 1

Dear Hollywood,

Have you been getting my letters? They’re the ones written in blood. No? I didn’t think so. See, I keep writing you, trying to get you to stop sucking. So far it isn’t working. Despite my protests you continue to release films so terrible I routinely choose not to see them FOR FREE.

You see, I’m a member of a pool of unpaid movie reviewers for the local paper. Every week the paper picks a new theatrical release and sends out a mass e-mail to all the reviewers. Whoever replies to the e-mail first gets two free tickets to the show and 300 words to say what they want about the movie. There’s also a password involved. It’s pretty sweet.

Frequently I have my Gmail page open when the e-mail goes out, so usually I have the option of replying before anyone else and getting the movie. But for the past six weeks I’ve gotten the e-mail, made a mental note of “Meh,” deleted it and gone back to reloading my Facebook feed.

“Review Knight and Day? Pffft, my time is too valuable.”

Let me restate that, just in case you’re not getting the full impact of what I’m saying. I love movies so much I’ve spent countless hours writing about them on the internet, for an honest-to-God newspaper, and, on more than one occasion, for term papers in college. And I studied Criminology; I love movies enough to risk infuriating an instructor, whose day job is federal prosecutor, because my paper on judicial procedure is really just a thinly-veiled analysis of The Devil’s Advocate.

“Under these circumstances I would have filed for a writ of habeas corpus on the grounds that opposing council violated the rules of disclosure by failing to notify the court that he was Satan.”

I love movies this much, Hollywood, and for seven weeks I have intentionally not seen your films, for free, because the prospect of actually sitting through them is so distasteful.

So, as a service to you, I’m going to spend some time explaining why I’ve been passing up your most recent efforts. Hopefully, you’ll learn something and if not, at least there’ll be a written record of my motives when I one day fire Shia LaBeouf into the Sun.

I hope you like being burned alive as much as you seem to enjoy making shitty movies, fucker.

Marmaduke

Actual Tagline: “Live Large.”
Implied Tagline: “Yeah, We’re Not Even Trying.”

I generally refuse to review children’s movies since I lie so far outside of their target demographic, but calling Marmaduke a children’s movie is an insult to children everywhere. Hell, calling Marmaduke a “CGI Great Dane movie” is an insult to the comparatively subtle and nuanced oeuvre of Scooby-Doo.

The only film to ever have its artistic integrity actually strengthened from a cameo by Mark McGrath.

I refused to see Marmaduke for far better reasons than just that its target audience is primarily impressed by bright colors and fart noises. I chose not to see it because there is absolutely no reason for a Marmaduke movie to exist. For one thing, there’s nothing intentionally funny about the comic strip “Marmaduke“. It’s been in circulation since the transistor radio was invented and kidney transplants were considered novel. That’s not a joke, I looked it up.

Equally cutting-edge.

Most of the actual humor of “Marmaduke” lies in the strip’s creator and still writer/artist, 84-year old Brad Anderson, being completely out of touch with the modern world. Beside the fact that Anderson can’t actually draw, he also regularly screws up common words or phrases when he uses them in captions, and frequently repeats jokes mere days apart. None of these are things to look for when finding material for your next $50 million feature film.

Another Hallmark of the “Marmaduke” strip is its existence in a nostalgically idealized, perpetual Eisenhower-era, where rotary phones abound and there’s nary an immigrant or person of color in sight. And while an accurate film translation of this 1950s twilight zone could be self-deprecating and funny in a way The Brady Bunch Movie could only have hoped to be, the Marmaduke film is set in modern day. Why? Half of “Marmaduke’s” jokes are about evading the dog catchers and stealing gigantic chains of sausage links from the neighborhood butcher. Exactly what part of that is going to translate to 2010? For God’s sake, Hollywood, you didn’t even make his owner look like Hitler! Instead you made him look like this guy:

He’s a dog, but get this, he’s wearing sunglasses! HILARIOUS!

Let me put this in perspective for you. One of the only likable features of your comic strip is that one of the characters vaguely resembles are war criminal and you still managed to screw that up. Instead you gave Marmaduke the ability to talk? Let me assure you, if there’s one thing people wish when reading “Marmaduke” it is not that Marmaduke talk.

Their far more likely wish: Brad Anderson’s home address and a list of his deepest fears.

Grown Ups

Actual Tagline: “Boys will be boys... some longer than others”
Implied Tagline: “Hey, wouldn’t it be funny if the cast from Saturday Night Live circa-1994 got back together to make a film about getting older, having a family, and dealing with the slow march towards inevitable death? Turns out, no. No it isn‘t funny at all.”

Pop quiz time, Hollywood:

1) In the last ten years Adam Sandler has been in how many funny movies?
A) Omigod, dude, like, so many.
B) Three or four.
C) I’m not sure, I’m sure there were a couple in there somewhere, though.
C) I’m just happy to see a mentally retarded man doing so well for himself.

Good on you, big guy.

2) Chris Rock would best be described as:
A) A controversial entertainer.
B) The living embodiment of low acting standards and poor career choices.
C) A poor man’s Dave Chappelle.
D) A rich man’s Tyler Perry.

I will hound you until the day I die, Perry!

3) David Spade is best known for:
A) Being funny.
B) Being talented.
C) Looking like an old lesbian.
D) Wishing the best parts of his career weren’t sealed in a tomb marked “Chris Farley.”

“Too soon.”

4) Rob Schneider is:
A) A comedy genius.
B) Inexplicably popular.
C) Composed of equal parts creepy and unpleasant.
D) Probably paying for a hooker somewhere as you read this.

And if the she has any taste, she’s charging him double.

5) Pick the best choice: “It’s too bad Chris Farley’s dead. Let’s replace him with…”
A) “…Kevin James.”
B) “…That fat guy who does those impressions of John Madden.”
C) “…A clone created from the combined DNA of Chris Farley and John Candy, to be known as Chrohn Farndy.”
D) “…Comedy that doesn’t require a fat man to embarrass himself into an early grave.”

“Still too soon.”

Don’t bother checking your scores, Hollywood. You already got every answer wrong.

Piranha 3D


Actual Tagline: “This Summer 3D Shows Its Teeth.”
Implied Tagline: “As Soon As The Syfy Channel Comes In 3D We’ll Be Out of Work.”

I really debated seeing Piranha 3D. I mean, it’s not particularly substantive, but it could be fun. It’s piranhas attacking people… in 3D! It’s even got somewhat well-known actors in it! Richard Dreyfuss, Elizabeth Shue, Ving Rames, Christopher Loyd, all of your favorite supporting cast members from movies that came out over a decade ago are here! According to imdb.com there’s a wet t-shirt contest in there somewhere and Steve McQueen too! Well, Steve McQueen’s grandson, Steven R. McQueen, who kind of looks like Ashton Kutcher if he had a mild allergy to shellfish.

“Demi, have you seen my EpiPen?”

Ultimately, I passed on this one because I realized there is nothing I could write about it in a legitimate review. Anything I criticized would be beside the point because no one is going to see this with the expectation that it be anything beyond piranhas in 3D. As long as that’s all there, there isn’t really much left to say. What am I supposed to do, summarize the plot? “Well, see, there are these piranhas, ok? And they’re in 3D.”

“Are you with me so far?”

While we‘re on the topic, what are you doing with Jerry O’Connell, Hollywood? He was the fat kid in Stand By Me, then he was on Sliders years later, then years after that he did Kangaroo Jack, then this, and now he’s on CBS with a Primetime show. What kind of career path is that? At this rate next I expect him to form a shitty band, attempt to get some artistic cred by performing on Broadway, fail spectacularly and be brainwashed by a CGI-kangaroo focused cult, only to be rescued and deprogrammed by Will Wheaton, Corey Feldman and (replacing the late River Phoenix) John Rhys-Davies.

And that, CBS, is how you pitch a hit new fall drama.

Come back soon for Part 2, when I'll be criticizing Resident Evil: Afterlife, Easy A, and other movies I haven't seen. Because I can and you can't stop me, so nyeh.

Phoenix Comicon Day Four: Out With a Bang…Or A Whimper…I Don’t Care, Just Please Let Me Out

I was beginning to realize that this whole sleeping in thing really works out pretty well, so I stuck with that. The only thing I’d missed the day before by sleeping in was the Jedi and Stormtrooper children’s training academies. They sounded worth checking out but I was happier not being punched by a helicopter parent enraged by a stranger taking pictures of their precious spawn, so I slept in. Sunday, however, the Stormtrooper academy was still going on by the time I’d dragged myself into the South Ballroom and, surprisingly, the gauntlets of parents were too busy awwing to notice me so I actually got some good photos.

The event was sponsored and run by the Dune Sea Garrison, Arizona’s chapter of the 501st Legion, the international, semi-official Star Wars cosplay organization. You might remember the Dune Sea G’s (as I assume they like to be called) from the faux-bikers at the Star Wars Mixer on Day 2.

They ran the kids through a crash course Stormtrooper boot camp, including thermal detonator tossing, marksmanship, and data retrieval. Hitting your head on shit was not covered.

Stormtrooper aim sucks, so the targets were set up quite favorably. Note that the Gungans are the only targets actively mocking the shooters. Goddamn Gungans.

This kid was a little too good at the target practice portion. I see a bell tower in his future.

The training works!


Next the younglings were put in helmets and sent through an obstacle course. This presented the primary lesson in being a member of the Imperial legion: You can’t see a thing in that helmet.

Pyew-Pyew!

“Hey, kid, welcome to the ranks of--”
“Fuck you, Vader, I run this shit now.”

This is the weirdest fan-fic I’ve ever seen.

Oof, right in the midi-chlorians.

The Imperial Trooper Training neatly abutted the Boba Fett/Darth Maul symposium. A lot of the attendees were disappointed because despite being named “Boba Fett VS. Darth Maul” the event was really just Daniel Logan, who played the young Boba Fett in Episode 2, and Ray Park sitting at a table talking for an hour. I actually really liked it, it was interesting hearing the experiences of Logan, an actor only a few months younger than me who began his Star Wars career when he was 12, and will now likely be doing conventions like these based on that role until the day he dies. I also discovered that after placing a call to George Lucas, Logan, a native of New Zealand, had his Green Card approved THE NEXT FUCKING DAY. That’s right, George Lucas can pull strings in the United States Department of Homeland Security, a fact which chills me to the bone.

My favorite part though was Ray Park. I’ve always really liked him; his early big films were stuff I was into like Star Wars and X-Men and he’s always seemed to take roles that seem fun to him. He’s also legitimately talented. There was a point where the moderator invited a little boy in the audience to have a light saber duel with Park. Naturally, Park didn’t have a light saber on him so he asked for one from the crowd. A guy in the front row tossed his SFX saber to Park on the stage, a solid 15-20 feet away, and with the grace of a ninja Park caught it by the handle and busted out the most graceful demonstration of light saber finesse you’ve ever seen. It was magical to see that behind all the CGI nonsense that Lucas burns through by the metric ton, a martial artist with an expensive glowstick can still truly impress you with the reality of the spectacle. As an aside, Ray Park really, really wants to play Batman. This is a good idea for a lot of reason, not the least of which being that his Batman voice is way better than Christian Bale’s.

Next up was Stan “The Man” Lee. This was bittersweet for me. As a kid, I idolized him. He’d created characters that I treasured. As an adult I had cooled on superhero comics but was still fond of Lee for all the joy he’d given me. Then when going through promotional material for Phoenix Comicon I saw that he charges $50 for an autograph. Granted he’s a legend, but Jesus, $50?! Back in the 1950s he was writing comics for booze-money and turned out to be good at it, but it’s not like he needs the money now. And even if he did depend on his autograph fees, he’s been doing these conventions several times a year for decades, no doubt selling his signature by the hundreds at every single one. Also, he actually signs his name “Stan ‘The Man’ Lee.” What. The. Fuck.

That all said, he is an interesting speaker. He’s very honest and straightforward about the success of his creations and comes off with the kind of self-deprecating humor that I would have expected of him as a child. I’m still torn between my admiration of all he’s done and my frustration at his (admitted) greed, but the audience was definitely enthralled and could not have been happier.

I decided to take a break from all the celebrity symposiums with the polar opposite of intoxicating fame: gamers seeking dating tips.

The Gamer’s Dating Service panel discussed how video game aficionados of all stripes can meet and prosper in the singles scene.

It was filled with pretty much the exact type of people you’d expect.

Black Link is on the prowl!

The panel was actually genuinely entertaining, and I sat through the whole thing. And the entire time a girl in cat ears and a little tail was sitting in front of me. I was really tempted to pull her tail, but I’ve heard that’s frowned upon in the cat people community.

A group of Mandalorian mercenary enthusiasts held a panel demonstrating how to fabricate your own prop armor. I only got to see a little bit of this panel but I did come away from it with the understanding that a lot of their armor is primarily made of plastic garbage bins and awesome.

I stopped by the Creating Custom Toys! panel for one reason and one reason only:

To get a shot of this awesome mental patient Joker statue. This marked the second time that weekend that I was tempted to commit felony larceny and possibly assault out of geek-lust for a painted hunk of plastic.

I stopped by celebrity row to see who was still loitering around there. Only Daniel Logan and Ray Park could be found. Wouldn’t it be awesome if they carpooled? Also, how much does Daniel Logan look like Elijah Wood in this photo?

Elsewhere in the Exhibitor’s Hall I found this example of failure in babysitting…

…Todd McFarlane did the world’s worst Wolverine impression…

…And the Go Daddy booth, realizing that the dinosaur from earlier made no sense, went with something much more on topic for a website hosting firm: a wizard in sneakers.

Paying for the full weekend really seems to be the smart move at Phoenix Comicon. You get to experience any event you want no matter what day it’s on, you can spend as much or as little time at the convention as you want and just come back the next day, and you get to experience the pretty steep discounts the vendors offer on Sunday.

That is the saddest crane I’ve ever seen sit on a young boy’s head. Poor sad head crane.

Good to see the free movie poster table continuing to stay theme-appropriate.

There were a lot of cool costumes at the convention, but this guy’s was by far the best. I caught up to him later and congratulated him on his authentic rendering of the Mayor of What-the-fuck-ville. He was not pleased.

This was a panel called “Joss Whedon is Still My Master.” It was packed. If Whedon ever chooses to militarize his fan base anyone who didn’t watch Dollhouse is screwed. Yes, all 307,006,500 of us.

I ended my Comicon experience the only way that seemed fitting:

Anime Let’s Make A Deal, of course!

It was hosted by our friends from Panda Cubed and the earlier gamer dating panel and featured anime fans being offered candy and manga, with the option to upgrade for a mystery prize. Mystery prizes included children’s bikinis, dollar store notepads, and full-scale replica anime swords.

Oh, Black Link, this has been a big day for you.

This panel taught me two valuable lessons: One, people will always go for the potentially awesome long shot over the mildly pleasing sure thing.

A full-grown man wins a pair of uncomfortable children’s footwear.

Two, you literally cannot give away a box of Good & Plenty.

Even Fred Flintstone, infamous devourer of undercooked Brontosaurus meats, refuses free Good & Plenty. THAT IS HOW AWFUL GOOD & PLENTY TASTES.

Anime Let’s Make A Deal was good fun and all (watching people in costume be humiliated and disappointed through gambling never gets old) but I really wanted to end on something big. Sadly, this was really the biggest thing the convention had going on to cap off the weekend. There was a Con Wrap-Up with some behind-the-scenes convention staff, but it was god-awful boring. Anime Let’s Make A Deal really was a fitting ending to my experience, because it typified what makes these conventions worth going to. Even after the celebrities have gone home and the merchant booths have closed, the fans will hang out until the last minute, dressed like fools, having the time of their lives laughing at, and with, each other.

Plus, Panda Cubed is still adorable. If you're reading this, Panda Cubed:

Call me?