Grindhoused

For one whole week, one whole movie theatre devoted one whole screen to showing the 'American' version of Grindhouse. I was all over that like mutated rednecks on a stripper's leg.

I'm glad I saw it in the way the directors intended and I'm also looking forward to seeing them separately. Oh hells yeah, I'm seeing them again.

I'm also glad I saw them when I did and with whom I did. A bunch of geeky gaijins and some squeamish Japanese ladies. The fellas all laughed and hooted and hollered at all the same spots and the girls really squirmed. I felt bad for them. especially since I was the one who suggested the movie in the first place. But that didn't stop me from bursting into applause at the end of Death Proof.

And I wasn't the only one. I've never seen or even heard about a Japanese audience applauding and cheering at the end of a movie. So that was cool.

Know what else was cool? Everything.

Yeah, this was totally my kind of movie.

Although there don't seem to be any strippers who actually get naked in Rodriguez's universe. Small quibble.

The only other quibble I have is that the 'ladies' from the first half of Death Proof are way less engaging than those from the second half. Seriously. I found them kind of annoying. In no way deserving of what fate befell them, but maybe not worthy of all that screen time.

That's it. Thems is all the nits I have to pick.

It sucks that it didn't do so shit hot at the cinemas, but I hope they don't abandon this idea. In fact, since Grindhouse was inspired by the 70's, why not make a direct to video spiritual sequel inspired by the direct to video shlock that started popping up in the 80's?

I want to talk more about the films, I want to gush like that guy's black tongue, but it would just be a bunch of exclamation marks and OMGs. I dug it, and people who think that they might dig it will most probably dig it and I would never in a million years let my mom watch it.

Grindhouse

is finally coming here. But not as Grindhouse. It's being released as two films. Nearly a month apart from each other. Death Proof first.

I'm happy that I actually get to see it but sad that it won't be in the original format.

Also, Japanese people do the above a lot. They start typing out a sentence in their subject line and then just continue the sentence in the body of the email or txt message. It takes some getting used to.

The Only Way This Vacation Could Get Off To A Worse Start is if it Starred Chevy Chase

So I woke up this morning not to the alarm clock, but to Carla telling me to shut off the alarm clock. Poor girl, I didn't hear it at all. Next I awoke to the sound of the garbage truck. It was too late for me to get or garbage out in time. Next I awoke to an unpleasant feeling in my bowels. I dashed into the bathroom and spent the next ten minutes making sure no more hot chocolate soup was going to fly out my anus.

Welcome to my summer holidays.

Woot.

Some Kind of Pun Relating to the Movie and Its Relative Merits

Transformers was a pretty movie. All of Michael Bay's movies have looked nice (I assume. I haven't watched most of them. The trailers looked pretty. And retarded), but in this one, the cameras stayed still and the edits were spaced out so that you could actually appreciate the prettiness. Still no continuity once the action started, but I think that's just the way Mike likes it. That's just about it for the nice things I'm gonna mention.

There's an old saying, "An action movie is only as good as it's villain." That's not totally true, but it's a lot closer to right than to wrong. And that is one of the many reasons why Transformers is not very good.

Shut up, internet, it just isn't.

Megatron spends the bulk of the movie in a block of ice and then rips an ebonics speaking moron robot in half and then gets killed by an actor whose name translates into 'the beef'. That ain't much of a villain. Oh yeah, he also screams about hating all of humankind. Spooky stuff, eh kids?

His heroic opposition is Optimus Prime. Prime's actions play out thusly: he crashes into our planet, gets a rad flamey paint job, says a bunch of phony hollow bullshit, cuts the head off a dump truck (that part was kind of cool), gets the shit beat out of him, tries to sacrifice himself honorably and fails. Woot.

Not all the robots were handled so poorly. The opening with the helicopter was pretty sweet. Stuff blew up real good, there was a sense of menace. But it shows just how poorly Megatron is introduced.

Bumblebee, despite being involved in all the lame comedy, was pretty alright as well.

Notice how I singled out the two characters who spoke the least? Don't think that's an accident.

Nothing that comes out of anyone's mouths is any good. Anything that comes out of the humans' mouth is retarded and anything that comes out of the robots' mouth is inane.

Megatron hates humanity for no real reason other than he's the bad guy, and I can accept that. Bad guys are just born bad sometimes. But Optimus Prime loves humanity. He's been on earth for like three days and he's willing to sacrifice his Spark for us. Why? If he learned all there was to learn about humanity via the internet, as he stated, he would have nuked the planet from orbit.

I should have said pwned. Optimus would have pwned the planet from orbit.

There were other robots in the movie but I don't really know why. There was that medic who couldn't fix anything, the Autobot who got torn in half, the dump truck who got his head cut off, the jet and the police car.

Man. Starscream was pretty awesome in the cartoons. He was devious, always plotting to overthrow Megatron. I can't even recall if they had a scene together.

I saw the movie two days ago and I can't remember it. And that's not really a bad thing.

Anything to do with the internet was head breaking. I could hear Carla's eyes rolling.

The action was cool, if a little hard to follow sometimes. The Beef is charismatic. Navel McTits reminded me of Jennifer Connelly, and that ain't ever a bad thing. Plus it had Optimus' voice! I was so happy to hear that voice come out of that blue and red robot. Then I heard the words he was saying. And despaired.

I know that this is a summer movie based on an old cartoon that was nothing more than a commercial for toys, but they really could've done a better job.