Wells on Mood Pockets: Who Will Review the Reviewer?™

Imagine you're a writer and someone flies you to another town to appear in a discussion panel. They put you up in a hotel, but the ethernet cable in the room is too short and the connection is not "strong enough." So you inform the organizers of the event that you're upset and don't want to fulfill your obligation...and you leave.

Then you blame them on your web site for not snapping you out of your funk. You also liken the lack of Wi-Fi to "the four horsemen of the apocalypse... circling and going for the kill."

That's the stunt Jeffrey Wells pulled on the Oxford Film Festival this past weekend.

Oh, he had a grand time sight-seeing before the world turned to shit and spit in his face, having visited Graceland and Sun Records on his way to Mississippi. He even stayed overnight in the Internet-challenged Oxford Downtown Inn, knowing full well he was cut off from The Cloud. How he must have tossed and turned that night! He'd heard there was a funny YouTube video of a boy tripping on painkillers, but he couldn't access it without walking all the way down to the lobby! And no way was that gonna happen!

He was, in his words, in a "mood pocket." That's sort of like a Hot Pocket, but with swirling, debilitating emotions instead of rancid lava-meat. He was cut off from his post-1999 safe zone where immediate wireless Internet is a necessity to do one's job and his balls are lovingly massaged by 802.11 digital spectrum fingers at all times.

Reading his responses to comments on that last blog post, everyone's to blame for Wells' hissy fit--including his AT&T broadband card which doesn't always work even though he pays $60 a month for it. Boo hoo hoo. Time to switch to VerizAlltell, Jeffrey?

The last time someone overreacted like this, he had running mascara and was imploring us to "leave Britney alone."

Read the controversial Who Will Review the Reviewer™ debut post here, wherein Rider takes a Pulitzer Prize-winning film critic to task for phoning in a movie review.

Hail to the King, Baby

If you're a multi-millionaire author like Stephen King and you rip another writer's work, there's a risk of coming across as a mean old bully. I mean, you don't see Tom Hanks criticizing Drew Barrymore's limited acting range (although that'd be awesome).

But since King is one of my influences, and since he recently went after two best-selling authors whose work I despise, I applaud the balls it took for him to speak his mind.

No one who reads Stephenie Meyers' weak take on vampires is gonna be swayed by anything I write here in my little corner of the Innertubes, but maybe they'll take a card-carrying horror master's word for it.

The same goes for fans of James Patterson, whom I recently credited with pinching out such a steaming pile of literary excrement that it made me realize I'm already a better writer than he or his collaborators could ever hope to be.

Put 'em in their place, Unca Steve. I got your back.

Rider's One Positive Thing Review of Tooth & Nail

One Positive Thing is a series of reviews wherein Rider savagely pans a lame-ass flick but, because he's normally an optimistic individual, still finds one good thing to say about it...'cuz his momma raised him right.

I don't remember putting this DVD on my Netflix queue, but it showed up in my mailbox anyway. It's the rental equivalent of a boring stranger accidentally receiving an Evite to your Superbowl party and then actually showing up. You don't want to talk to him because he's saying shit you've heard a million times before, but his girlfriend is sort of hot so you let him eat some Tostitos.

Tooth & Nail is what you get when a filmmaker has only two things going for him: A) access to one cool location, and B) Michael Madsen's phone number. Seeing as how 80% of this movie takes place in an abandoned hospital, and that Madsen co-produced and "starred," Mark Young couldn't have shot his vision of an apocalyptic future without either one.

I knew T & N was gonna have major issues when the title credits ended with "Written, Directed, and Edited by." That's not the order you're supposed to list 'em in, right? Unless you're pulling a Robert Rodriguez and going with "Shot and Cut." But wouldn't that require resigning from the Directors Guild? (Mr. Young, please take note.)

We are introduced to two factions of survivors: the Foragers, led by a bewhiskered Robert Carradine, and the Rovers, a band of Road Warrior-lite cannibals headed up by Madsen. Imagine the much scarier Reavers from Firefly, except their leader chases you while whistling "I've Been Working on the Railroad," and they announce their arrival by blowing a trumpet.

No. It happened. More than once.

All logic goes out the window when the voice-over reveals that society didn't end because of disease or war, but rather because, "the world just ran out of gas."

Really? All those charred bodies sitting behind the wheels of abandoned vehicles during the opening sequence were the result of folks simply running out of fuel on a Jimmy John's run during a fucking energy crisis? And if that were the case, why are the main characters shacked up in a hospital rather than their own homes?

What is it about an apocalypse that makes folks go from one place of safety to an unfamiliar, unsafe location to chill with strangers? It can't be for the security, because even with bloodthirsty cannibals roaming around, it never occurs to anyone to secure the hospital's doors once bodies start piling up. It's almost as if Young decided to depict a good-natured End of Days on the outskirts of Mayberry where honest folk leave their doors unlocked while they're getting a slice of pie down t' the diner.

Another pertinent question: if you were struggling to survive after the breakdown of civilization, what reason would you have for changing your goddamned name? And presuming you had one, would you change it to reflect an industry that caused the end of the world? Here are some of the Foragers' names, and I'm not messing with you: "Ford," "Viper," "Torino," "Nova," and featuring Rachel Miner as "Neon."

Don't get me started on the cannibals' names. They have their own motif: an oddly non-threatening Vinnie Jones is "Mongrel," and there's also "Jackal," "Shepherd," "Wolf," and "Badass." (The latter clearly not getting it.)

The actors try to do what they can with what they're given, but the guy who played The Jerk Security Guard in Dawn of the Dead is relegated to disappearing early on for a non-surprising reappearance later (I'd say "spoiler" if it mattered, which it don't), and the rest of the Foragers exist to show off clothing in the director's apparent attempt to do a cross-promotion with Eddie Bauer.

There are so many unsettling leaps in human behavior that we're asked to swallow that it's impossible to reconcile them. At one point a female character who hated one guy earlier, says to him, "You shaved your face. I like it." Then she kisses him, pissing all over the memory of the man she'd been sleeping with two days earlier who tragically ended up on a spit.

The best thing I can say about Tooth & Nail: Nicole DuPort has a nice head of hair. In my above Superbowl party scenario, she's the girlfriend.

Rider's opinions are fully those of Rider's Block Enterprises. Keep in mind he doesn't personally know Michael Madsen or any other actor whose only solid work was done with Quentin Tarantino, and he doesn't have a feature film of his own to prove he knows his shit.

Rider Reimagines Monkey Shines

Alternate title: Proof I Can Write About George A. Romero Movies Without Lapsing Into Zombie-speak

I caught Romero's 1988 flick Monkey Shines on IFC last night (for the first time since its video release) and it didn't disappoint. It had all the elements of a perfect film: quadriplegic sex, a killer monkey wielding matches and syringes, and John Pankow's enormous forehead.

But deep down inside my wooden cranium I wondered how it could be better. How could it be updated with current celebrities and state-of-the-art FX to really make that monkey shine?

For starters, I'd put Jason Statham in the wheelchair. He'd still be the quadriplegic hero who uses a mouth-tube to roll around his house, but I'd set the film in a future where he telepathically controls a pair of hologram arms for getting dressed. That way, when Yakuza cyborg-ninjas attack, Statham's "holarms" can defend him with a twisted-up shirt. Besides, his contract stipulates that clothing be used as a weapon in at least one scene.

Ella, the helper monkey who both loves and taunts him, will be played by Dakota Fanning. I'll use Lord of the Rings-like forced perspective and camera tricks to make her appear 18 inches tall. Nothing will make the audience cheer more than when Statham seizes little Dakota's neck with his teeth and chokes the life out of her as she gibbers and screeches. Fanning doesn't do her own stunts, so we'd have to use a Monchichi stand-in.

I'll change the epilogue to bring the Statham legend full circle: after his character's spinal surgery is a success, his girlfriend picks him up at the hospital (she's played by Angelina Jolie's CG doppelgänger in Beowulf but voiced by Doc Hammer as "Dr. Girlfriend"). She's driving a black Audi A8 or a BMW--depending on who offers more for product placement. It seems they're going to move to France, and he's going to call himself...Frank Martin! Never mind that it's set in 2021 and The Transporter took place in '02. It's Statham. Why question it?

After the credits roll, we'll fade back in on a rural Pennsylvania farmhouse, and a voice on the radio will say, "The dead are rising from their graves and eating the flesh of the living."

D'oh!

Operation: Oh No

"Happy 2009," he said to a man who wasn't there. He scurried away from the terminal, his humorless cackle echoing through the dark room.

It had been an hour since his wife had gone to bed. An hour since the new year had begun. An hour since he'd embarked on "Operation: Oh No."

The mission was proceeding better than expected. The pockets of his robe were already full, and he had begun loading more pilfered booty into his pajamas. They made a pleasant plastic-y grinding sound as he exited the east wing, as if his bed clothes were lined with LEGO blocks.

He gripped a nail file in one sweaty fist. The handle read "Revlon," but it may as well have read "Mjolnir," as, verily, it infused him with the power of a Norse god on this glorious quest.

He silently entered the pitch-black Palm Room, and spied another nearby computer terminal. No sooner had he begun to jab at the keyboard, than a creepy, impossibly loud whisper emanated from the darkness.

"What are you doing, George?"

"Whozat?!" he cried, leaping away from the computer. His nail file was lodged vertically in the keyboard. "Oh, Dick, it's just you."

The newcomer's grin--a frightening smirk, really--materialized out of the darkness like that of a fucked-up Cheshire Cat. He spoke in a whisper, but his lips didn't move. "Are you doing what I think you are?"

George patted his robe, the plastic bulge crunching. He turned back to the keyboard. "I'm'a give 'em a taste of their own medicine."

"I know it bothered you at the time, George, but the liberals will just say you copied Clin--"

"I couldn't type my middle initial for days, Dick," George said, popping the "O" key off and sliding it into his elephant pajama bottoms. "This'll learn 'em. Now if you'll excuse me, I've got a lot of work to do in the Press Corps Office next door."

He felt a cold hand fall on his shoulder. It made him shiver. His balls tightened. "19 more days, George. You're jumping the gun."

"But-but we can do without that letter till then, Dick," he whined. "I wanna crawl in bed next to Laura tonight and tell her 'Mission accomplished.'"

"Prematurely?" asked the whisper.

"Aw, come on, Dick! I don't wanna put 'em all back!"

"I'm not saying you have to put them back...just leave the ones in the Oval Office."

George squinted, thinking. And thinking. And thinking some more. "Oh, right. I'll need it to pardon Scooter."

"And don't forget that 'surprise' involving bin Laden's 'capture' in two weeks."

George smiled at the horrible floating grin in the dark. "How could I forget?"

He went to the door, eager to continue his quest. When he turned to say good night, the floating grin was gone.

"Happy New Year," he said, this time to an empty room.

Rider wishes his readers a prosperous 2009. Here's hoping it's better than '08 and the previous eight.