i'm only sleeping

"...we're never going to survive unless we get a little crazy."
-seal

you don't need me to tell you that america as a society is dissolving like black and white footage in the nine inch nails 'closer' video. and if you do, i'd just tell you to watch shock corridor. here the american dream meets the american holy sh*t my brain has turned into horseradish mashed potatoes.

back in the late 60's the pulitzer prize meant everything. it meant so much in fact, that a journalist willing to institutionalize himself in order to close the book on an unsolved murder and nab the pulitzer passed as a plausible idea for a movie.
of course nothing goes anywhere near ok for this guy, and in between lobotomies, we meet a hoard of nymphos looking to party, a tiny man written for comic relief ('i am impotent...and i love it!'), and a black guy-hating black guy (at first it's casually made known that he enjoys collecting pillow cases...then it all becomes clear).

what's stayed with me most is the knowledge-drop from the journalist's noticeably modern-looking-for-the-60s roommate: "when we're sleeping, no one can tell a sane man from an insane man'.

time for bed.

I WANT A WOMAN!!

this had to come out sooner or later: i have never seen a fellini movie. so when picking which one to see first, i went with amarcord, simply because a soho vintage store is named after it. c'mon, it had to be cool, right?...RIGHT?

well, the trailer makes it clear that this is from the 'new fellini'. so right off the bat, i knew i had effed up. i was not going to get a lynch-influencing mindf*ck i'm pretty sure fellini is known for. but as that 90's VW golf ad exclaimed, 'in the game of life, there is no reset button'. and despite my muddled knowledge of italy's socialist past and cultural hallmarks, amarcord and i are friends in the end. you see, we share similar interests such as yelling at your family, blind accordion players, and the female behind.

new fellini can hang his hat on this one boys-being-boys montage in which at one point he combines rube goldberg with human urine and it is FUNNY. also, weaving in and out of the movie is the scariest hooker ever put on screen.

in the picture above, a boy is living out his fantasy of a sexual tryst with the local overweight tobacco lady. he's lifting her in the air and she is getting turned on.

no country for young girls

four weeks ago, i popped in picnic at hanging rock and watched the 7-minute trailer. no longer able to put it off, i have finally dragged myself to watch the actual movie.

i have not seen little women, pride and prejudice or captain ron, so i'm at a loss for a proper reference point. however i sure as hell have seen the truman show, which shares directors with hanging rock (peter weir). i will never forget the moment right after truman musters through the 50th thunderstorm thrown at him by ed harris and the newfound silence is broken by his rickety boat slamming into the white wall at the end of the 'ocean'. 20 minutes after hanging rock, very little has stayed with me, except for maybe how good the truman show was.

that said, hanging rock's saucy factor is pleasantly generous (see above), though unfortunately offset by 1900s dialogue ("i expect you to be word perfect") and hairstyles (bun). also, this movie would serve as a highly effective ad for bottled water.

under the covers: #33

For the love of Pete, Inuits are cool. They spearfish, they have their own weird, esoteric version of the Olympics, and they dress like Andre 3000. And you have to respect the focus and concentration on this dude's face. But according to a recent US News & World report, Alaska's crime rate - violent crimes, in particular - is among the worst in the nation. While it might seem counterintuitive at first, it makes sense. I imagine the Inuit to be a territorial people and so pervasive is the hunting and tracking lifestyle that it is almost hardwired into their DNA. Which makes you wonder what this guy is really about to launch that spear at. It could be a fish. Or it could be the fuselage of a low-flying sea plane carrying life-saving rations for starving, at-risk Inuit families impoverished by deadly climate changes. Dude, what an a-hole.

Get Behind Me Satan

For Lucid Screening's '08 White Elephant Blog-a-thon, I tried to bless somebody with "Airborn" but was forced to go with "Only the Strong" when the DVD proved unavailable. Both titles bring a smile to my face. And I wanted to share that smile with somebody. What I got in return was Evilspeak.

In the hands of a different creative team, Evilspeak could have been "Carrie," "Porky's," and "The Next Karate Kid" all rolled into one. And for my money, that movie would be crap. But I'd probably be down to eat a bowl of Cheerios to it.

Instead, in the hands of Eric Weston and Joseph Garofalo (no relation to Janine), and the dude who created "Beastmaster," we get gratuitous (and at one point, full frontal male) nudity, Satan-based computer apps, and a young Clint Howard whose range as an actor can only be measured in degrees buttdussy (that's booty, di*k, and putty). But, despite looking like he just caught a wave of hot ass every time the story requires him to emote, the likeable Howard seems right at home in a movie that 17 year-olds in 1994 would probably love to watch blunted.


Howard (pictured above, 8 degrees buttdussy) plays Stanley Coopersmith, who finds himself on the wrong end of a lot of ass kickings and spontaneous games of monkey in the middle. But when he stumbles upon an 18th century Satanic place of worship built by Bull from "Night Court", he inputs some Satanic verses into his 1982 Tandy Computer and after completing a checklist that includes at least one ritualistic sacrifice, is able to conjure Bull's spirit. And with the remaining fifteen minutes of the movie, Bull channels himself into Stanley's body, and together, then they get buck. It's worth noting that the fusion of Clint Howard and dude from "Night Court" at one point yields a single terrifying frame of Will Ferrell.

Evilspeak also boasts a supporting cast that includes several veterans of the USA original series circuit, the HeyHEYhey guy from "What's Happening!," and the Jewfro'd neighbor from "That 70's Show" as Coopersmith's main antagonist.

I'm still not sure what this movie is trying to be, or maybe I'm so sure that it scares me. What also scares me is the somewhat randomly juxtaposed and therefore infinitely creepy 3 seconds of Super-8 footage involving a naked woman, a wild boar, and a bathtub full of blood and guts.

Thanks again, White Elephant.

it was a graveyard smash

(for the second running of the white elephant blog-a-thon over at lucid screening, i was initially assigned to watch howard the duck. netflix had other ideas.)

take two: orgy of the dead. things looked bleak right off the bat when i didn't recognize a single movie (the gore gore girls, etc.) in the 'enjoyed by members who enjoyed' section of netflix. i was starting to freak. i hate scary movies and the word 'dead' is in the title. you're probably saying to yourself, 'this man has never seen an ed wood flick before in his life'. you are goddamn right.

there is nothing scary about this movie. instead of focusing on the word 'dead', i should have been paying more attention to 'orgy'. if you like ta-ta's and thighs, dig in. but also if you like blatant inconsistencies and the denny's equivalent of dialogue - then please, sit.

80% of this movie takes place in what seems to be my best friend's backyard and roughly the same percentage involves topless white women shimmying to subtle variations of the hawaii five-o theme song. orgy of the dead teaches lifelong lessons like, 'a pussycat is meant to be whipped' and 'no one wants to see a man dance'. and it closes its eyes, reaches into the cliche grab bag, and pulls out the 'it was all a dream' ending b-sheit.

it's also worth noting that the trailer literally shows the entire movie and the dvd menu screen was seemingly created by an adult who has unashamedly mastered broderbund's kid pix design suite.

ain't nuthin but a mistake

the TCP is back in black (...and white) with carol reed's the fallen idol. it's based on a graham greene short story, so it was safe to expect a story about foreigners in foreign countries and the promise of a murder. here we have the son of the french ambassador of england, phillippe (above, red-handed) who worships his globetrotting butler, mr. baines. i can confidently say that i have never encountered an on-screen character as annoying as this little child. an amazingly effective drinking game would just be to drink whenever phillipe says 'baines'. he literally says this in every scene.

since it was released in 1948, cops use the term 'blackies' and when found roaming the streets of london in his pajamas, phillipe is mockingly called nick carter. i wish i knew why.