IMDb plot keywords are hilarious.

These IMDb plot keywords are getting ridiculous. But they sure are funny! For the classic disaster film Twister:

Natural Disaster / Weather Girl / Blockbuster / Babe Scientist / Cow / Disaster / Science / Scientist / Tornado / Weatherman / Gasoline Truck / Drive In / Weatherwoman / Weather / Wind / Obsession / Aunt Niece Relationship / Actor Shares First Name With Character / Title Spoken By Character

Mmmm. Babe scientists.

Takashi Miike’s Ichi the Killer has an absolutely absurd amount of keywords. Highlights:

Disembowelment / Masochism / Vomit / Breasts / Vomiting / Naked Man / S&M / Nipple Clipping / Painful Sex / Cigar / Drug / Brutality / Death / Broken Neck / Dead Girl / Erection / Cruelty / Syringe / Rough Sex / Stabbed Through Chin / Beaten To Death / Depravity / Man Punching A Woman / Arm Ripped Off / Hypodermic Needle / Volkswagen Car / Gang Rape / Dead Prostitute / Eating / Masturbation / Tasting Blood / Child Murder / Cut Into Pieces / Deep Frying Fat / Shrimp / Severed Arm / Severed Face / Severed Foot / Severed Head / Severed Tongue / Shot In The Leg / Stabbed In The Face / Stabbed In The Head / Twin Brother / Hook / Death Of Father / Character Name In Title / Number In Title

If you haven’t seen the film, this should give you an idea of how sweet it is. I think you can almost infer the plot.

Good documentaries via Google Video.

Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch’s War on Journalism, or: how large media conglomerations threaten the public’s right to information, as exemplified by Murdoch’s Fox News.

Wal-mart: High Cost of Low Prices, or: the human cost at which Wal-mart offers its low prices.

Why We Fight (1, 2, 3, 4), or: an exploration of the motives behind the neo-Conservative obsession with endless warfare.

The Onion: Garden State Some Poor Fuck’s Favorite Movie

Hilarious. I love the Onion.

LOS ANGELES—Despite the existence of cinema classics such as Citizen Kane, The Godfather, and Seven Samurai, the 2004 film Garden State starring Zach Braff and Natalie Portman is some poor fuck’s favorite movie, according to a posting on imdb.com.

“I thought the interplay between the main characters was beautiful, and the soundtrack was amazing,” wrote the miserable bastard after another post called the film “self-indulgent” and “annoying.” “It’s this cynical society’s snap reaction to dislike a movie about finding one’s true self. I honestly cry every time he gets off that plane.”

The sad sack of shit was swiftly put in his place by another IMDb user, who argued that the film was just a “knockoff” of superior predecessors, such as You’ve Got Mail.

Seriously, though, Garden State is awful — I hate that damn film more than most things.

Grindhouse.

I’ve had some excellent movie theater experiences in my time:

• Kill Bill vol. 1 (opening night, good audience, great movie that is twenty times better on the big screen)
• Snakes on a Plane (pre-screening, t-shirts, 20+ people eating way too much food from Wal-mart and throwing rubber snakes every time the word “snake” was uttered)
• Inland Empire (first Lynch movie I had seen as intended; incredible)
• Big Lebowski (at the Screenland; as awesome as you would expect)

But, I think that Grindhouse, that double feature created by Robert Rodriguez and Mr. Quentin Tarantino, might trump them all.

Brad and I went to Grindhouse at 11 on Friday night (after that whole Mr. OP thing); the only time of day I would recommend anybody see the film. You know, under normal circumstances I am deeply, deeply piqued by people who talk, or eat popcorn too loudly, during movies. But I welcomed the idiotic remarks (“COME ON LET’S GET TO THE BLOOD AND TITTIES”) from the probably-inebriated audience. I mean, between the destroyed film, missing reels and (hilarious) fake trailers, I seriously felt like I was in some seedy L.A. basement theater (in my opinion, AMC should allow smoking for this sort of film).

As for the films themselves, well, they hit every mark they try to. Rodriguez’s Planet Terror is the more campy and over-the-top of the two, with incredible amounts of badass zombie gore and violence, plenty of babes and some really fun, memorable action sequences. Death Proof starts off pretty slow, especially for the second film, but offers a heap of great Tarantino dialogue and a sweet performance from Kurt Russell, and a climax that will undoubtedly go down in cinematic history.

Honestly, seeing that Hollywood allowed a couple of nice guys who just love movies to get this honest and fun double-feature a wide-release restored a great deal of my faith in the movie industry. Here’s hoping they keep this up and continue releasing films under the label.

Here’s one of the trailers from between the films:

Inland Empire.

This is by far the most “Lynchian” David Lynch film to date. Leaving the theater after the bizarre, disjointed trip, I felt completely disoriented; I couldn’t decide whether it was the longest three hours of my life or the shortest, or whether or not I even liked the film. With the distance of a couple days, though, I can say that this film is incredibly substantial — even important. It takes virtually every element from Lynch’s other films and combines them into one beautiful pastiche. He proves himself to be a true artiste and an avant-gardist in the broadest sense of the word. He not only experiments visually with the freedom of video but also joyfully manipulates the fabric of the medium of film itself, playing with time and space in disorienting and delightful ways. And the vague motifs in this film work their way into one’s subconscious like none other in Lynch’s oeuvre. The haunting image of distant, humanoid bunny rabbits asking rhetorical questions, the eerie title of the film-within-a film, “On High in Blue Tomorrows,” and the mysterious phrase “Axxon N” have all been repeating incessantly in my head all weekend. Basically, go see this nasty little thing at the Tivoli before it leaves. I’ll almost certainly be making another trip down there.

Piracy.

I recently saw This Film Is Not Yet Rated, a great documentary about the de facto censorship of the MPAA and the incestuous nature of the conglomeration of big studios that we call Hollywood – you’ve probably heard of it. Very interesting stuff.

The film also touches briefly on the issue of the organization’s vendetta against online movie piracy. This is an issue I’ve explored quite a bit recently, and I think the MPAA’s war on “piracy” offers a very interesting parallel to the US government’s war on “terror.” Both attack a very fuzzy concept practiced by a very abstract group of people. The MPAA has tried to create an enemy which is in direct moral opposition to everything good out of the prepubescent pirates of the world in the same way that the Bush administration has villified, you know, everybody residing in the Middle East. Take a look at this press release released by the MPAA after the raid of Swedish BitTorrent giant The Pirate Bay and tell me that it doesn’t sound like the pompous, militaristic prose of the current US government. “Huge Worldwide Provider of Illegal Movies Told No Safe Harbor for Facilitators of Piracy!” Are you kidding? There may in fact be some very political factors behind the raid, as explored in the amateur documentary Steal This Film.

Of course, both of our generation’s great ideological wars boil down to money. The movie industry is a multi-billion dollar corporation in the same league as the oil and arms industries, every bit as steeped in the art of public relations and deception, and sporting ties to the government every bit as strong. Make no mistake: the MPAA does not care about the blue-collar workers of the film industry, and they most definitely do not care about art.

As much as I love seeing films on the big screen, I’ve been having a hard time morally justifying handing over 8 bucks to see a movie when I can download it with a few mouse clicks, with the added pleasure of knowing I’m doing my small part to disempower some of the biggest slime in the country.

Role model.

I am an avid collector of dollar store DVD’s (I hope to highlight my collection in a future post.). One film, entitled Border Cop, brought a truly beautiful man to my attention: a man named Telly Savalas.

Throughout his career, which spanned from 1989 to 1995, although his life ended in 1994 (he starred post-humously in A. Dean Bell’s Backfire! as Most Evil Man), he took part in more than a hundred television and feature roles, the most well-known of which is detective Theo Kojak from the eponymous 70’s TV series. He also starred in Escape to Athena (“The patriot, the professor, the comic and the stripper, were fighting for what they believed in. Getting rich! “), Pretty Maids All in a Row (“In a California high school, a married teacher is the athletic coach and faculty advisor. He starts to have sex flings with his female students and eventually has to kill several of the girls to keep them quiet.”), and Birdman of Alcatraz (“A surly convicted murderer held in permanent isolation redeems himself when he becomes a renowned bird expert.”), to name a few. He was well-recognized for his signature bald head.

A few tidbits from IMDb :

• Catchphrase: “Who loves ya, baby?”
• He used off-script phrases and mottoes in Greek during filming.
• Had a fear of flying. Ironically, he played a pilot in Capricorn One (1978).
• He had many hobbies including golfing, swimming, gambling, collecting luxury cars, spending time with his family, horse racing, motorcycle racing, watching football and reading romantic books.
• Purchased a house in the Palm Desert because he enjoyed playing golf so much.
• When he worked as a lifeguard, he failed to save a man from drowning, and was troubled by the memory forever after.
• Top part of one of his index fingers was missing.
• The character design for villain Lex Luthor in the animated TV series “Superman” (1996) was loosely based on Savalas.
• Would always refuse to talk about his tenure during World War II.
• In 1990, the city of New York declared The Marcus-Nelson Murders (1973) (TV) as the official movie of New York City, and awarded Telly with the Key to the City.
• Enjoyed watching “Jeopardy!” (1984).

We all need a role model. For me, it’s Teddy Savalas.

Filme sehen!

I watched two pirated movies over the weekend, during which I was stuck at home due to inclement road conditions.

Pan’s Labyrinth: Better than I expected. This movie is obviously getting a lot of critical love, but I didn’t see myself enjoying it too much, mostly because I cannot stand historical dramas, nor did I enjoy Hellboy. Or Blade 2. Or Mimic. This is great, heart-wrenching stuff, though. It takes the same themes you find in basically every fantasy film ever made (namely that of making sense of a harsh reality through an invented alternate reality) and filters them through a dark, intelligent script. The parallels between the reality of the grisly post-Spanish Revolution conflict and the fantasy sequences, which alternate between fascinating and horrific, creates an intriguing, multi-layered story that is worthy of all the attention.

Little Children: Watching this directly after Pan’s Labyrinth reminded me why I prefer real films to over-the-top flights of fancy. An ensemble piece, Todd Field’s film explores the lives of young parents in an upper-middle-class neighborhood. The plot loosely hinges around a sex offender who recently moved into the subdivision and an affair between two young people disillusioned from their respective relationships. Field looks at marital infidelity and suburban disillusionment without ever venturing too close to melodrama. Jackie Earl Haley delivers an affecting performance as the demonized sex offender; it is sure to draw more than a few tears. This film arouses all the emotion that Crash wishes it could have. It’s at the Tivoli right now, definitely try to check it out.