Rider Takes Public Transportation After Dark

This review is leaving the station and will take a turn down a dark tunnel to Hell. Don't despair, though, because I'll let you off at an unusual bus stop. You might even thank me.

Clive Barker is one of my writing influences, and many of the movie adaptations of his work have also left their mark on my subconscious. Images from Nightbreed to Candyman have stuck with me through the years. Even as recently as yesterday I was reminded of my favorite Andrew Robinson quote from Hellraiser: "It's never enough."

The director of The Midnight Meat Train, Ryûhei Kitamura, apparently echoes Robinson's claim--except in this film he isn't talking about the human condition...he's talking about the liberal use of blood on a movie set.

The sheer amount of gore here is almost a wonder to behold. It's absolutely gruesome. Even without it, this movie grips you by the back of the neck and drags you screaming into the black abyss. This isn't a horror flick for the casual viewer.

Keep in mind I love that kind of thing. I cheered during the lawnmower scene in Peter Jackson's Braindead (or Dead Alive, as I knew it when it was released in the U.S.). But that's how I roll. Your mileage may vary.

Vinnie Jones plays a sinister heavy named Mahogany who waits patiently on a subway bench, Forrest (Ackerman) Gump-like, for the first train after 2:00 AM. And pity the poor soul who happens to share a car with him once he reaches into his large black bag and retrieves his silver tenderizing mallet.

Just like any great Barker story, Meat Train doesn't flinch from the necessity of an inevitable, bleak ending. And, brother, it is bleak. How much more bleak could it be? None. None more bleak.

In other commuter news, here's a cool scene from the upcoming Fox Searchlight movie (500) Days of Summer. I'd buy a year-long pass for that bus ride. Wouldn't you?

Last stop, Rider's Block Station. Mind the gap.

We here on the Block would also encourage interested parties to check out The Midnight Meat Train's special feature "Cliver Barker: The Man Behind The Myth." Rider has never felt like more of a lazy jerk than he did upon seeing the staggering number of paintings Barker has completed--keeping in mind the man started painting at the age of 45. This image shows you how many canvases he considers "failures." They're kept in a tent and referred to as "the planet of the fucked-up." And even some of those were painted over five times.

Battlestar Gateway-ica

A preliminary note to Battlestar fanatics who stumbled upon this post while searching "Galactica kicks ass": This blog will only anger you. Stop reading now. Back-button and go away. You won't like what I'm about to say here in my little corner of the Innertubes.

If you read ahead anyway and are determined to label me a douche, allow me to take the wind out of your puffed-up chest right from the get-go by saying:

I'm an idiot. I write unentertaining things. Of the 200 posts I've published, none of my commenters has ever agreed with my ridonkulous positions on pop culture.

Buh-bye now.

Now--are my three regular readers still here?

Good.

This is for your eyes only:

Battlestar Galactica started out as a friggin' phenomenal show. Remember when I watched every episode, up through the second season, in an unemployment marathon screening one year ago? Remember how I said it was "truly one of the best examples of the science fiction genre, period"?

Well, it was.

It goddamn well was.

If someone offered me a kick in the nuts or free DVD copies of the first two seasons of Battlestar, guess which I'd choose?

But that's exactly where it stopped being unbelievably excellent and became...just slightly above average.

The show sputtered and flamed out halfway through the second season's last episode ("Lay Down Your Burdens"). No spoilers, but I'd thought that finale was just a dream. Then the third season picked up with that deflated turd of a twist, and I sat back on my couch with my head cocked to the side like a retarded Labrador and said, "Huh."

But I persisted. It was still better science fiction than Enterprise, and I watched that entire run with a vapid smile on my face. I plowed through the rest of the shows as they came out on DVD, finally catching up to the live ones just as the final season began. I enjoyed them enough to patiently wait out the mid-season hiatus, and, just as I was getting excited by the possible direction of the final ten installments...

...I just don't know what the point is anymore.

The series became anti-climactic 30 minutes into that premiere. Now it's literally crawling toward the finish line like Simon Pegg's character in Run Fatboy Run.

We're down to the last two episodes. One tonight. One next week.

I almost don't care to watch, though, because even if the producers manage to pull out of this screaming nose-dive with a fantastic finale, it doesn't make up for the fact that the series has become a shadow of what it promised to be. What's more, it's become a bad parody of itself.

Fer frak sake, I always accepted how much smoking and drinking was going on on that damn ship. I'm a liberal guy. I get it. When your civilization is wiped out and life sucks, one expects a few vices to surface. And they surfaced a lot. But last week Adama actually started toking weed.

I don't know how I expected the series to end, but I didn't think it would dovetail with the sensibilities of Pineapple Express or Half Baked.

I hear Adama's new first officer will be Tommy Chong.

Rider Watches Them, That's Who - Updated

I'll be honest: there's no way for me to write an objective Watchmen movie review without mentioning the comic. I considered several different directions to take this review, and they all came full-circle back to the source material. (Kinda like the first and last panels of the actual mini-series...and if you don't get that reference, you should stop now.)

I read the individual issues as they first came out in 1986, and I knew from the beginning that I was experiencing something way beyond the cookie-cutter superhero comics I'd been buying up until that point. Important and complex things were happening. By the twelfth issue, I didn't exactly consider the series bona fide literature--but that was only because I hadn't realized that comics could be literature.

I reread the hardcover collection in the weeks leading up to the movie's premiere, and there's no doubt in my mind that Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons created a literary masterpiece. (I also listened to the entire series of Comic Geek Speak "Footnotes" podcasts recapping each issue, because I knew I'd missed themes and symbolism in the past. Those boys clued me in to stuff I hadn't even considered. Kudos to them.)

I wish I could tell you that if I weren't the comic book fan I am, that I would've loved the movie anyway. I wish I could, but it's impossible to be sure. At the bare minimum it succeeds in depicting an alternate world on the brink of nuclear Armageddon, populated by a handful of impotent heroes forced into retirement and/or employed as weapons by the military. The plot poses the mystery of who would eliminate these castrated heroes and why, then asks us to judge a Big Bad who uses a proverbial sword on a Gordian Knot in order to change everything. Going by a "this tale hasn't been told on film yet" level alone, it delivered the goods.

Zack Snyder compressed a lot of storytelling into his film, but it didn't feel like overkill. I summarily dismiss other critics' claims that he was a slave to the adaptation. It's nonsense. As much respect as I have for Gibbons' art, I wouldn't necessarily call his work dynamic. Snyder's visuals on this movie were dynamic; almost breathtaking at times. He lifted many panels from the comic, but you're an idiot if you didn't expect him to. He owned the look of this reality (only David Fincher could have done it better).

Snyder took liberties with a few plot elements, and many fans have, in turn, taken issue with those fixes. (The poor guy simply can't win...should he change shit or shouldn't he?) I can confirm that the ratio of what he left to what he noticeably changed is about 10 to 1. But the things he did tweak were necessary to the believability of the story. There are a lot more folks who'll see this movie that didn't read the comic than those who did, and they're not gonna notice a change in tone or sense something was deleted. And those of us who realize movies and sequential art are two intrinsically different art forms--and that some things simply don't translate well--just won't care. (Follow this minor spoiler footnote for the three "big" differences I noticed...and why they still don't change the tone of the film.*)

Watchmen was almost three hours long. Snyder took his time and paced it out. He let it breathe and didn't rush it. He loosely stuck to Moore's already loose two-issue-per-character exploration, but I could've gotten to know the characters even more--especially Rorschach and Silk Spectre II (the former being my favorite, and because the latter didn't have a real origin). None of the heroes were slighted, mind you, but I honestly wanted a longer movie.

I hear there's a director's cut in the works. That's a must-own. I'll strip naked and cover myself in blue paint while watching it.

What? That's what I did while reading it.

Note: I'll award a Rider's Block no-prize to the first commenter who tells me where Zack Snyder worked a 300 reference into Watchmen.

* Rorschach takes a more hands-on approach to dispatching a child killer than he did in the comic. So the hell what? It made his origin story all the more shocking.

In the comic, Dr. Manhattan is the only hero with actual powers, but in the movie the others are throwing thugs across rooms and breaking walls with their fists. This was probably done to appease mainstream audiences who need to see snapping bones in their R-rated action movies, along with comic fans who didn't "get" the subtle tone of the original story. I was cool with it, and I especially liked that the bad guy took a few licks...he needed to.

There's no space squid in the movie, and I don't care. I always thought that was the most outlandish element in Moore's plot. Snyder's change actually makes sense, and improves the story without altering the tone. The doomsday clock is stopped and gives a terrified world a chance to reflect and give peace a chance. Whether it's accomplished due to a psychic blast or [the movie's alternative], the outcome was never certain and ultimately open to interpretation.

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.

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.

Best Vampire Movie Ever

I saw a great movie this weekend that set the standard for vampire stories, as far as I'm concerned.

It was about a beautiful vampire and a human who fall in love, and how their Romeo-and-Juliet-like relationship affects their respective friends and families. The cinematography was cold and blue. It was directed by a woman named Catherine Kathryn.

No, I'm not talking about Twilight. Heck, no.

I'm talking about Near Dark.

I saw it on DVD and was blown away. It was hard to believe this movie came out 21 years ago. I only realized that when I recognized a much younger "Nathan" from Heroes as the main character.

I love movies where genres are mixed together in a blender, and here Kathryn Bigelow served up a purée'd dish of horror and Western, and it felt like something new and original.

If you already know about this movie, see it again. Buy it.

If you haven't seen it, you're missing out on something far, far better than what Twilight attempts to be.

Compared to Near Dark, Stephenie Meyer's vampire books are like the non-threatening foreign boy that Lisa Simpson wants to hold hands with. But vampires aren't supposed to coddle you and act like one of the Jonas Brothers. They're demons from hell. The minute they're written like gentlemen you've de-fanged them, leaving a pale loser with messy hair drooling on your cleavage with no intention of doing anything about it.

Am I right?

Note: I was a little bothered to see someone's working on a remake. How does anyone think they can make this movie better? It's the most original take on vampires I've seen since Buffy ended its run.

How Is This (Wait For It)...Happening?

There are bad ideas and there are bad executions. When both happen at once, if you're lucky, you get something so magically bad it's awesome.

I took part in a talent show last spring, and among the lamer acts that night, one guy decided he would do a dramatic reading of General Patton's speech from the beginning of that movie. Aside from the fact "Patton" wore Reeboks, the timing of the message was confusing at best (i.e. it may have gone over six years ago, but at the time it just felt...off).

The awkwardness as it unfolded was palpable.

I watched M. Night Shyamalan's movie The Happening on DVD, and I wondered how it ever got produced.

Who keeps greenlighting that guy's movies? Why didn't they stop after Unbreakable? His plots and dialogue are so horrible you can't help but laugh out loud.

I love the movie Juno, but one complaint I've heard is how "no one talks like that." That's the point, though. We go to movies to be entertained and I don't want to hear how people really talk. It'd be weak.

But when M. Night puts words in his characters' mouths, they say things like, "Cheese and crackers!" (This was a soldier expressing disbelief). Or you get Mark Wahlberg talking to a potted plant and saying, directly into the camera with his eyes wide, "I'm talking to a plant." (Long, comedic pause.) "I'm still doing it."

Hilarity.

That's the other thing, if you're trying to sell such bad dialogue, get someone who can actually act. Wahlberg always looks like he's attempting to act but knows full well it's not going smoothly.

(I couldn't keep from laughing every time Wahlberg's character tried to be serious, because of Andy Samberg's impression of him. Every time he talked to Zooey Deschanel I pictured him saying, "Hey, Zooey, I produce Entourage. Someday you'll be cool. Say hi to your mother for me.")

Shyamalan has been making unintentional comedies for years now.

Maybe he should remake Patton next. If he can get it greenlit.

Loving Nick & Norah So Much It's Retarded

I loved Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist for so many reasons.

"Mikey" Cera was perfect (again). For those who haven't seen him in Superbad or his hilarious webisodes with Clark, you have to listen to everything he says, because just when you think he's done talking he says more under his breath...and it's always funny.

Finally a director who gets it, i.e. doesn't fall into the trap of putting together a soundtrack consisting of music from 20 years ago in a flick about today's teens. You know, a movie about what the director wishes his teen years were, set in the present, but with songs from his "Senior Year Was The Bomb" playlist on his old-ass iPod. Weeeeeak.

I have one criticism. It's the one thing that's keeping me from adding Nick & Norah to my favorite movies on my profile. "The Drunk Friend Who Looked 25 But Was Supposed To Be 18" was one of the best characters in the movie, but--as a girl who doesn't see the humor in getting sloppy--I wasn't laughing as hard as the rest of the audience. I'm not taking anything away from the actress (and hey, she is 25!), because her performance was perfect. At some point I just realized, "You're the daughter of a functioning alcoholic," and it wasn't funny anymore.

Anyways, I saw Nick & Norah with a few members of my band, and we all agreed: when we finally play our first gig, please let us have just one fan as enthusiastic as the guy literally doing flips for "Are You Randy."

Last Blogger Standing

"Where the hell's Rider?"

I heard your bitching.

If you must know, I slipped into the pop culture equivalent of a coma. With the TV season still weeks away, I resorted to renting V: The Original Miniseries and playing Donkey Kong (only 500 Wii points* on the Wii Shop Channel!)

It was like 1983 all over again, minus the low self-esteem and inescapable Fixx songs.

On the bright side, I finished reading the final collection of the Y: The Last Man series from Vertigo/DC Comics.


If you haven't read it, Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra crafted a superb 60-issue story about a mysterious plague that wiped out every individual on the planet with a Y chromosome. Only one man, Yorick Brown, survived the "gendercide."

It's a fascinating read and impossible to put down. Vaughan delves into the way society would change with women running everything from governments to the entertainment industry to black ops.

The only thing he doesn't explore is how the blogosphere would change...which got me thinking.

If a plague killed off every blogger on the planet except me, it'd be interesting to see exactly who would be left. Many questions and suspicions about the identities of my online friends would be confirmed by the sheer number of blogs with no new entries.

For example, I've met Slinger and McGone and I know they are fine, upstanding representations of the human male (the latter proving it by not wearing Crocs, but that's beside the point).

But who out there is actually a man writing as a woman (or vice versa)?

And how else would the Interwebs change without guys?

Please post your guesses in the comments section.

And ladies, hug a man today. The world would suck without us.
* That's five bucks to you, you non-Wii-playin' loser!

Rider's Clone Wars Review

I attended an early screening of the new animated Star Wars movie, and I knew about the embargo on published reviews until the day of the film's release. But now that Warner Brothers forced Harry Knowles to remove his negative review, I'm gonna tempt fate. Come get me, you bastards.

George Lucas has never made a bad movie in his entire career. He has stayed true to his own vision, while simultaneously pleasing die-hard fans whose imaginations were kick-started by his creative genius.

Still, Star Wars: The Clone Wars stunk like Oprah's septic tank in 120-degree heat. It was full of gaffes, strange plot twists, and odd choices, beginning with the new Lucasfilm logo: a unicorn with a pink lightsaber horn. Then things got worse.

A JEDI TALKS NOT THIS WAY: Yoda (pictured) uttering the phrase "Can o' whup-ass"

The opening musical number seemed out of place. "Winchester Cathedral"? Really? Director Dave Filoni didn't stop there with questionable music from our world appearing in a far away galaxy. At one point Jar Jar came out of the closet and played "I Will Survive" on the kazoo while roller-blading in biker shorts. He's gay, yes, but come on.

How could Admiral Adama and the crew of the Galactica appear and join the conflict against the Jedis? That's an entirely different franchise. And why was everyone pantsless? Did they really have to include CG rendering of Edward James Olmos' acne pockmarks...then explain them as midi-chlorians gone awry?

Technical glitches and product placement plagued the entire production. At one point Senator Palpatine was inexplicably replaced by the squirrel from Ice Age who suddenly threw an acorn at Shrek-Wan Kenobi. Then he hoisted a can of Pepsi and launched into a monologue about Cool Ranch Doritos. "They will be my downfall," he cackled, loosening his belt another notch.

I also didn't understand why the producers chose America Ferrera to provide Yoda's voice.

Spoiler: Stay through the end credits. Lucas teases the final title of the upcoming TV series. (Clone Wars: Anakin at 15.)

Texted Movie Reviews: The Dark Knight

Texted Movie Reviews™ is a regular feature wherein Rider posts SMS messages he received on his BlockBerry from friends or family members about current movies.

The following reviews are from Tim L. and Eriq E. about The Dark Knight.

Message #1 (Eriq):

Watchmen trailer so sick

Message #2 (Eriq):

Very well put togther film-lacking in action at times-both Heath and bale are excellent-I feel Heath would have received nod dead or alive

Message #3 (Tim):

Funny dark very very good heath ledger is great and a surprise twist in the plot

Message #4 (Eriq):

overall good movie-would see it again

Texted Movie Reviews: Wanted

Texted Movie Reviews™ is a regular feature wherein Rider posts SMS messages he received on his BlockBerry from friends or family members about current movies.

The following is Jeremy W.'s review of Wanted.

Message #1:

Wanted was awesome. No nudity.

Message #2:

Movie was awesome! GREAT kills

Click this link to read a translation of Angelina Jolie's tattoo

Day 35 on the road - Jebus help me. After leaving Target two days ago, now we're staying in an Arby's.


Chas, the 16-year-old store manager, lets us sleep in a booth because "the corporate douches haven't promoted me to district after five goddamn months. Besides, what are they gonna do--fire me? Feel free to use the laptop, even for porn. I've got shit bookmarked."

His assistant manager Gladys, a 43-year-old mother of six, brings us leftover Bacon Beef 'n Cheddars just before she leaves for the night. I have managed to keep them down, but just barely.

This morning the Mordor County Health Inspector walked in as I was bathing Boxter in the prep area sink. He watched quietly, then informed me that I "missed a spot." He gave the restaurant a pass in exchange for one of my Chuck Taylors. When I handed it over, he explained that he met Ellen Page at a Katy Perry concert and she autographed his right shoe. He keeps it on a shelf at home and needed a replacement.

Chas was pissed at me, though. "You shouln'ta done that, bro! Let 'im close us down! I needed a vacation!"

I replied that it could have turned into a permanent vacation.

"Dude-man, haven't you been listening? Nobody gets fired from Arby's! Joe-Ray the maintenance guy strangled the last store manager, and I just gave him a fi'ty-cent raise!"

I don't think I'll be staying here much longer.

Gotta go. Gladys just told me Boxter pooped in the walk-in.

Rider Cries During The Incredible Hulk

I cried like a little girl while watching The Incredible Hulk today. It was like Terms of Endearment for nomadic drifters on lonely, personal quests. I told Boxter it was allergies.

Yes, I liked it more than Ang Lee's take on the comic book, with his endless, lingering shots of shrubberies and fungus. Exactly what the fanboys waited years for, huh?

The French Transporter dude knows his way around an action scene. I was only briefly consumed by the thought of how often his cameramen had to film nothing in front of them during any given CG battle. I pictured guys looking like Phillip Seymour Hoffman in Boogie Nights dashing around the set with day-glo green tennis balls on long sticks as Louis Leterrier shouted, "Fast-air! Fast-air! Zee Hulk ees queek-air zan zat!"

More often, though, I was distracted by Liv Tyler's ginormous upper lip. It was always filmed in profile for maximum freakish effect. Most directors know the best angle to shoot their female lead. Not this guy.

Best actual line from the movie: "I'm...hungry. You wouldn't like me when I'm hungry."

Fun fact: I saw this movie for free. I'm not saying whether I downloaded a copy from a file-sharing service here in the home office department of this unfinished Super Target, or whether I had an AMC gift certificate. Go with whichever makes me sound cooler. Factor in how I cried.
--
Sent from Gmail for mobile | mobile.google.com

Texted Movie Reviews: Zohan

Texted Movie Reviews™ is a new feature wherein Rider posts unedited SMS messages he received on his BlockBerry from friends or family members about current movies.

The following is Eriq E.'s review of You Don't Mess with the Zohan.

Message #1:

Ok so I know you prob already know this but I saw zohan last night and it has got to be by far the worst movie of the year so far-garbage

Message #2:

One of the worst movies I have ever seen in a theater-can't wait for hulk tho-what u been up to

Day 5 of BaconQuest - Boxter and I stopped in at an Apple Store to whip up this map to show our cross-country trek toward Portland*, measured in the number of Targets and Paneras we ate free lemons in and/or sink-bathed in.


* Also to check out Engadget's live coverage of the new iPhone announcement.

Why Indiana Jones Is Like Current John Byrne Art

I will punch you in the throat if you're telling your friends that Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is even half as good as Raiders of the Lost Ark. You and me, we're blood enemies at that point. I slap your cheek with my gauntlet and spit on your shoe.

That being said, it's not a "terrible" movie, as one guy I know insisted over and over during conversation. I didn't walk into the theatre expecting a friggin' Mamet piece.

I was fine with the opening warehouse sequence, I laughed at Spielberg's tongue-in-cheek method of introducing Indy to the "Cold" War, I was only slightly distracted when "Janitor" from Scrubs appeared and gave Jones the third degree, and I thought the ending was entirely apropos for late-'50s-era genre movies.

What was missing was the magic.

I'm not talking a lack of CG or extended action sequences. This had those in abundance. No, I'm talking about the magic found in the details.

27 years ago when Raiders took the box office by storm, my favorite artist was a guy named John Byrne. He was the talent behind several seminal runs in comic titles like Uncanny X-Men, Superman, and Fantastic Four. He was awesome because of the attention to detail he lavished upon every panel. As the years went by, Byrne took on more and more projects and his lack of passion soon became clear on the page. He chalked it up to an "evolving" art style.


The left panel shows Byrne at his peak, circa 1982. Click on the image and compare it to the panel on the right from '99 (which I believe was the last time he drew the FF for Marvel).

This is my roundabout way of telling you that Spielberg and Lucas have drawn the latest Indiana Jones adventure with much broader strokes than they once did, and the result is a pale imitation of the globe-trotting archaeologist I came to know and love.

My favorite moments in Raiders were the little ones. Remember when the rolling boulder came down the incline and Harrison Ford had that look in his eyes that said, "Jeez!" Or when the bald, bare-knuckled Nazi hit Indy so hard his legs wobbled? What about when Belloq was monologuing like a good villain should and that fucking bug crawled into his mouth while he talked--and he didn't notice?!

Magic moments like those are entirely lacking in Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. And lingering on a portrait of Sean Connery doesn't count in my book.

I expect shabby work like that from George Lucas, but not Spielberg.*

Now if you'll excuse me, I just dug out a pile of FF comics from the '80s and they're calling my name.

* I can think of three moments in War of the Worlds alone that qualify as proof that Spielberg still knows his shit: the thrown-sammich-on-the-window scene, the swooping tracking shot in and out of the family's car as it races down the highway, and the lingering shot on the basement door when Cruise confronts Tim Robbins.

Insultingly Short Review of a TV Series™: Battlestar Galactica

I watched 2003's three-hour miniseries, the 2004 13-episode first season, and the 2005 20-episode second season of the new Battlestar Galactica.*

You should buy it, not just rent it. It was hardcore.

Hardcore rating: 5 out of 5 "Hardcore, Chucks"






Next: All 144 hours of 24, seasons one through six. Unless I get a job.

* I've been unemployed, remember?

Ebert on Cloverfield: Who Will Review the Reviewer?™

I don't get paid to blog. I do it for two reasons: 1) I have time on my hands because I'm unemployed, and 2) I love to write. Truth be told, I love to play with words the way Bryan Cranston loves appearing in his tighty-whities on TV.

If I did get paid to blog, however, the quality of my writing would improve to the point that none of my posts would have a "filler" tag. You don't turn in filler when someone's paying you damn good money to write something with content.*

So what's Roger Ebert's excuse with his review of Cloverfield?

If the point of a movie review is to inform readers with an accurate and fair summary of a film, then Mr. Ebert has failed spectacularly with this effort.

Sure, he devotes the requisite word count to pointing out the shakiness of the camerawork (*yawners*), and manages to work in an amusing colonoscopy joke, but then the review devolves quickly into the worst kind of pap. How bad is it? Imagine Ain't It Cool News posting an email from a twitchy ADHD sufferer with an ax to grind after a preview screening of I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry.

Some highlights:

• Ebert writes that "the statute has run out on the theory that after 9/11 it would be in bad taste to show Manhattan being destroyed"...an obvious point considering actual controversy linking 9/11 and bad taste erupted two years ago following the release of Paul Greengrass' United 93. Plus, scenes of mass destruction in New York have appeared in numerous movies in recent years. I guess Peter Jackson's King Kong didn't count because it took place pre-9/11? That's just lazy writing, dude.
  
• He takes issue with a female character walking for miles and then having "the energy to climb 49 flights of stairs...in her high heels" to rescue someone trapped on a building's 49th floor. Ebert apparently didn't hear the characters say they're trying to rescue someone on the 39th floor. And while the heroes actually climb over 57 flights (long story), Ebert failed to see a close-up of Lily's bare feet on the stairwell. I saw it, and I don't even have a Tarantino-like foot fetish. Then again, they were only 40-feet high and filling a movie screen.
• He points out "the incredible element" of the camcorder's battery lasting "on the evidence of the footage we see, more than six hours, maybe 12." Now, right at the beginning it's established that the "found footage" that makes up the entire movie is shown in real time (depicting exactly what was recorded on a memory card over a seven-hour time-frame). I don't know which hellish director's cut Ebert sat through, but the one I saw was 84 minutes in length.
• My biggest quibble with his review: he spends an entire paragraph (out of eight) explaining something about the nature of the monster...and then dismisses the entire point by including a parenthetical disclaimer that says, in effect, "I just checked online and I was mistaken about that." See, that's where a paid professional would rewrite and not include the reader in the fact-checking process.
  

If I were to rate Cloverfield using Ebert's four-star scale, I'd give it a three-and-a-half. He gave it a three. His unfounded complaints and poor writing make it sound like a two. Considering that Roger Ebert has won a Pulitzer Prize for criticism and there's a bar set for his writing, I give his review a one.

By the way, I wasn't compensated in any way for this review of a review. (Hold on! I just checked on the Interweb and see that feedback from readers and high traffic always fills me with a sense of self-importance.)

* Or, if you turn in filler as a professional, you refuse compensation--or take the money but remove your name.

Insultingly Short Reviews of Huge Books™: Box Office Poison

I read all 602 pages of Alex Robinson's graphic novel Box Office Poison.

It was good. You should read it too.

Next: Jeff Smith's 1,332-page collection of Bone.

Rider's 6-Ounce Reviews™ - December 2007

For a guy with too much time on my hands, I don't have much to spare for barely-above-average pop culture offerings. I can wrap these up in the time it takes you to slam half of your Miller Lite (unless you're drinking a tall boy).

Grounded (Image Comics)

Imagine you go to a high school where everyone's special except you. Sounds like 9th-12th grade for me, but Jonathan in Grounded is the only normal kid in a school full of super-powered teens. The creators mix in equal amounts of humor and pathos as they introduce this lonely but determined young boy. Jon's belief in himself at the expense of a social life reminded me of Corey Haim in Lucas--and I don't mean that as a punchline. This is a story about a kid overcoming extreme odds and trying to gain respect through sheer force of will. It had a few flaws (which knocked this down from earning a full review), but it pays off for fans of the superhero genre looking for something original and heartwarming.

Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon (Anchor Bay)

Most horror films ask you to suspend your disbelief the way a bum wants you to think your donation is going towards food. This movie knees your disbelief in the balls and offers you an ice pack only after you've suffered for an hour. Behind the Mask isn't bad, mind you, but it asks an awful lot. Are you OK with a mockumentary selling the premise of a slasher that lets a camera crew film his wacky exploits as he plans a night of premeditated murder on a group of teenagers? And that the interviewer would treat him like an all-star quarterback training for the Superbowl? To be honest, I was. I wanted to like it based on this blogger's review. It's clear the creators love the genre they're satirizing, but maybe I'm too much of a fan: I saw plot twists coming from the first ten minutes and got hung up on all the questions they didn't answer that would've made it stronger. Saving them for the sequel, perhaps. Heck, I'll rent it. I give change to hobos, too.

52 volumes 1-4 (DC Comics)

I'm more of a Marvel fan than anything, but I cut my reading teeth on old school DC titles, and the premise of telling a year's worth of stories in real-time (a comic a week for 52 weeks) appealed to me. But not enough to buy them as they came out. Hell, no. I waited for the four collected volumes before delving into a universe without its Three Big Guns on active duty. Supes, Bats, and the Amazon take a back seat to a handful of minor and/or supporting characters and give them their moments in the spotlight. Who'da thought a Marvel zombie would actually care about The Question or Animal Man? Or that I would get goose pimples during an especially creepy moment when a burning wicker effigy with a woman's face tugs at Elongated Man's robe and whispers, "Ralph...?" Jebus, I'm still creeped out, and that was in the first volume! Many of the finer points were surely lost on me, but I came away with a deeper appreciation of DC's rich history.

Paleontologists At War

Bone Sharps, Cowboys, and Thunder Lizards from G.T. Labs. Written by Jim Ottaviani, art by Big Time Attic.


I attended one of the 366 Wizard World conventions this year* and as I walked through Artist's Alley--right between a merchant selling lethal Japanese weaponry to kids and the guy who was Count Dooku's alternate stunt double--I found the Big Time Attic table. I was drawn to the Mark Schultz cover of Bone Sharps, but I handed my money over for the rest of this wonderful book.

Jim Ottaviana crafts a based-on-true-events story about two pioneers of paleontology, Edward Cope and Othniel Marsh, whose intense, bitter rivalry was tabloid fodder during the Gilded Age. Yes, this is a comic where you'll learn things, like how there was something called the Gilded Age.

These two distinguished men of science couldn't stand each other, even though their theories on dinosaur evolution were identical. They did everything they could to mess with and discredit each other, including planting fake skulls. Cope and Marsh's excavation camps threw frickin' rocks at each other, fer corn's sake.**


Artistically, this book is a triumph. The overall design is just gorgeous. I told the artists that their stuff reminded me of Chris Ware's work on Jimmy Corrigan. (They seemed pleased and signed my copy with a dino sketch for free.) I always appreciate a project where it's obvious the writer and artist work together so perfectly.

It's worth a click on the G.T. Labs link above. Check out the other titles from this company. You wouldn't think "comics about scientists" would be a selling point, but based on this title alone it will be for me.***

* One for every day, with leap years thrown in as a bonus!

** I quote SpongeBob regularly.

*** At the next Wizard World, which begins in ten minutes.