Mr. Fabulous

The Tampon Game

2006-02-18T15:36:00.000-05:00

Thanks to the Diva Queen for forwarding this game. The rules are simple: Take a movie title and replace one word with the word tampon. The result is supposed to be more or less funny. A selection, based on various e-mail strings collected by Mrs. Fabulous, follows below.

If you'd like to join in the game, post your favorite tampon-related movie title in the comments section. I'll collect the best and post them here.

Action:
Full Metal Tampon
The Hunt for Red Tampon
Raiders of the Lost Tampon
Tampon: First Blood
Tampon Harbor
Tampons are Forever

Drama:
Brokeback Tampon
Tampons and Misdemeanors
Dances with Tampons
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Tampon
Hannah and Her Tampons
Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Tampons
Memoirs of a Tampon
My Own Private Tampon
Remember the Tampons
The Sisterhood of the Traveling Tampon
Tampon and Flow
Tamponspotting

Romance:
Four Weddings and a Tampon
How Stella Got Her Tampon Back
How to Lose a Tampon in Ten Days
The Runaway Tampon
Tamponless in Seattle
When Tampon Met Sally

Comedy:
The 40 Year Old Tampon
Dude, Where's My Tampon?
The Longest Tampon
Mean Tampons
A Mighty Tampon
My Big Fat Greek Tampon
Revenge of the Tampons
Tampon Crashers

Sci-Fi:
Attack of the 50 Foot Tampon
E.T. - The Extra Tampon
Invasion of the Tampon Snatchers
Planet of the Tampons
The Tampon After Tomorrow
The Tampon: Reloaded

Horror:
28 Tampons Later
House of 1,000 Tampons
Night of the Living Tampon
The Silence of the Tampons

Fantasy:
Charlie and the Tampon Factory
Edward Tamponhands
How the Grinch Stole Tampons
Lemony Snicket's a Series of Unfortunate Tampons
The Lord of the Tampons: The Fellowship of the Tampon

Animated:
Finding Tampon
Lady and the Tampon
Snow White and the Seven Tampons
Tampons, Inc.

Classic:
Gone With the Tampon
The Sound of Tampons
A Tampon Named Desire

It's hours of fun, no?

RIP, Nice Guy Eddie

2006-01-25T13:11:00.000-05:00

Man, what a drag.

In honor of the passing of actor Chris Penn, a snippet from Tarantino's brilliant dialogue in Reservoir Dogs:

Nice Guy Eddie: Did you see that daddy? Guy got me on the ground and he tried to fuck me.

Mr. Blonde: You wish.

Nice Guy Eddie: Listen Vic, I don't mind what you do, but don't try to fuck me in my father's office, I don't think of you that way. I like you a lot man, but I don't think of you that way.

Mr. Blonde: Eddie, if I was a butt cowboy, I wouldn't even throw you to the posse.

Nice Guy Eddie: Of course not, you'd keep me for yourself, you sick bastard. Four years of fuckin' punks up the ass you'd appreciate a piece of prime rib when you see one.

Live blogging the Golden Globes

2006-01-18T22:29:00.000-05:00

On Monday, January 16, NBC broadcast the annual Golden Globes award ceremony. Having absolutely nothing better to do on a Monday night, Mr. Fabulous and his wife, the lovely and talented Mrs. Fabulous, recorded our thoughts about the Globes in a running broadcast commentary. It’s such fascinating reading, we know you’ll want to hang with us all the way to the end.

I. Mr. Fabulous begins
We’re watching the Golden Globes pre-game show right now. In a nutshell, it’s the pretty and dim being interviewed by the congenitally stupid. Matt Dillon and Johnny Depp seem heavily medicated. Anthony Hopkins has slipped back into Remains-of-the-Day mode. Maria Carrey is surprisingly coherent. Matthew Broderick and Sarah Jessica Parker actually seem happy. Mrs. Fabulous and I are rooting for them to stay together—because if they get divorced, then there’s no hope for any married couple in Hollywood. Hillary Swank without Chad Lowe, for example, looks like the Skipper without Gilligan.

Jamie Foxx is going to hook up with his interviewer after the show. Confirmed.

Scarlett Johansson gives new meaning to the phrase “golden globes.”

II. The Show
What a terrible, wretched takeoff of that wretched Pussycat Dolls song for the opener. Good gravy, shame is dead in this country.

Queen Latifah— remember when she hated whitey?

Adrian Brody— what an ugly fucking tux. Best Supporting Actor coming up… George Clooney, Matt Dillon, Will “Ego Train” Farrell, Paul Giamatti, Bob Hoskins. The GG goes to… Clooney for Syriana. Good choice. Clooney’s had a great year. Plus he pulled a De Niro in that movie, so come on. Great dig on Jack Abramoff at the end.

Best Supporting Actress. Scarlett Johansson… Shirley MacLaine, Frances McDormand, Rachel Weisz, Michelle Williams. I’m rooting for Williams… but Weisz takes it down. She looks like one of Captain Kirk’s conquests on Star Trek.

III.
Jessica Alba… you just can’t call her anything but smokin’ hot. The TV awards are on now… pardon me while I doze off.

Superman Returns star Brandon Routh is let out in public for the first time. He looks uncannily like the late Christopher Reeve. But it’s more TV stuff, so it’s time to surf Fark.com. But wait! Sandra Oh staves off certain coma with a cool acceptance speech. “I feel like I’ve been set on fire!”

IV.
Drew Barrymore needs a Wonderbra— the girls are hanging low. She introduces Good Night, and Good Luck., which oughta win something. David Strathairn is an actor’s actor, a veteran of the trenches, and is enjoying some late recognition for a lifetime of fantastic work.

When did Natalie Portman become Winona Ryder?

More TV stuff. Haven’t seen any of it, so I can’t comment… but Gina Davis’s thank-you speech for Commander in Chief kicked ass. Girlfriend has got it going on. So does Evangeline Lily— but in an entirely different way.

V.
Melanie Griffith looks like she’s about to collapse into a pile of tattooed limbs, fake tits and plastic surgery scars. She’s introducing The Producers… which is the next best thing to paying $200 to see it on Broadway.

More TV… haven’t seen a single one of these made-for-TV movies. I’ll bet some of em are good, but I’ll never see one. Empire Falls wins… too bad Paul Newman isn’t around. Seeing him in his twilight years makes me feel old as shit. Pamela Anderson, meanwhile, may be the greatest drag queen who ever lived.

The Steve Carell winning streak continues. Let’s hope he doesn’t board the Ego Train like Will Farrell. His speech rocks, though. Everybody seems to realize that this idiotic broadcast is supposed to entertain those of us whose lives are so pathetic and sad that we have nothing better to do on a Monday night but watch the Golden Globes.

VI. Mr. Fabulous bows out to take a dump
Mrs. Fabulous here— I’m waiting for the commercial break to be over and just looking over Mr. F’s notes. Always with Evangeline Lily. Ugh! What about the dude who plays Sawyer? Have to keep my eyes peeled for a glimpse of him. See, I don’t even know his name so I think my lusting is less offensive than his…

Tim Robbins. Isn’t he one of those Scientologists? Can’t look at him without seeing him as a puppet in Team America: World Police. He looks better as a puppet. He oughta lay off whatever it is he’s smoking, snorting or huffing, because he looks rough.

Ugh. Jamie Foxx. There’s a guy who’s so in love with himself that he could never find a woman who could love him more. Yes, you can sing, but enough already!!

Time for Best Actress in a musical or comedy. Judi Dentch, Keira Knightley— I’m way jealous of that young, talented, pretty thing— Laura Linney for The Squid and the Whale: want to see it, but I need to forget about her horrible role in Mystic River— Sarah Jessica Parker, Reese Witherspoon. Walk the Line is hardly a comedy or a musical…interesting choice. Reese wins it just seconds after Mr. F says he hopes she gets it. Good for you, dear. She’s cute as a bug and I didn’t even hate those Legally Blonde movies, even though that type of chick-flick ain’t usually my bag, baby. She’s thanking Joaquin Phoenix, who used to be quite a looker but has never fully recovered from Ladder 49.

Chris Rock awards Best Actress in a TV comedy. All the Desperate Housewives, of course. That Chris— so funny. I’m kind of sick of looking at these ladies, and I don’t even watch the show— but I accidentally have a subscription to Star magazine, so I’m sick of seeing them in those pages week after week after week. Can’t wait ‘til that subscription runs out so I can quit reading it cover to cover. I know more about Kevin Federline than I ever wanted to…and I had never even heard of him before.

Rock says Eva Longoria is nominated for Chico and the Man. That Weeds chick needs to RE-LAX! And she wins! Thank God! We won’t have to watch one of the Housewives rub it into the rest of the cast’s faces for the remainder of the year. And we thought she had no shot. Mary Louise Parker— I always get her and Bridgette Fonda mixed up– don’t ask me how. Well, let’s see if Mr. F. likes what I’m doing….we’ll see if I’m fired or not.

VII.
Emmas Thompson: now there’s half of a couple I had hoped would stay together. She and Kenneth Branagh were one of my first favorite couples to fall apart. She’s slowly turning into Julie Andrews. Introducing Pride and Prejudice… she looks nice. It’s so weird to see how low some women’s tits are, but I guess that’s natural. The ones that stand up, I guess must be fake. I’m too scared to look at my own boobs, thank you very much.

Eric Bana. Oh, yeah. Saw him on the red carpet ,and knew his name sounded familiar but couldn’t place him – Munich. Duh. He’s handsome.

Kenneth Branagh, Warm Springs. Oops. Best actor in a TV movie or mini-series. There’s the other half of the ex-couple. Ed Harris, Empire Falls. I’m sick of this show already and I never even saw it— although I do love me some Ed Harris. Nice face, Ed. Bill Nighy, The Girl in the Café. Never heard of it. We’re not TV folks, per se. I mean, we see our fair share of TV, don’t get me wrong. Between TLC, the Food Network and let’s not forget my personal favorite, The Weather Channel, we watch a lot.

Jonathon Rhys Meyers as Elvis. Man, I read about this in one of my Star mags, I guess too late. We would have liked to have seen that show. Donald Sutherland, Human Trafficking. If you’re Kiefer, you have to be scared for what you’re going to look like in a few years. Speaking of Kiefer, there is no way in hell I could ever get into 24 thanks to that stupid fucking Phone Booth movie. Every time I hear his voice, I hear, “A ringing phone just has to be answered.” And you just have to be destroyed…you should have stuck with The Lost Boys.

Jonathan won. Go, King! Too bad it wasn’t on MTV or something because you know they’d be replaying it a million times. Oh, well. I guess we can rent it from Netflix when the time comes. Is he Irish? What the ham sandwich?? If it’s not Scottish, it’s crap! Skinny tie, though. He looks like he just stepped out of Trainspotting. Now I really want to see him as Elvis.

Best actress in a mini series or TV movie. Halle Berry, Their Eyes Were Watching God. This must be like the first role in which she doesn’t take her clothes off…Kelly MacDonald, The Girl in the Café. Mr. F. says she was in Trainspotting. S. Epatha Merkerson, Lackawanna Blues. You have to wonder what the S. stands for if Epatha seemed like a better choice…Cynthia Nixon, Warm Springs. Seeing her makes me think of lesbians. which reminds me of Sandra Oh, who thanked her rock, Margo. Is she a carpet-muncher? Not that there’s anything wrong with that….You’re getting married on Saturday?!? Mira Sorvino, Human Trafficking. Missed this one as well. Haven’t seen her since that horrible horror flick, the name of which escapes me. That was some compelling acting…hope she doesn’t win. Oh, good. S. Epatha won. Never heard of this picture, but we saw earlier that Terrence Howard was in it, too, and I think he’s fabulous. S. is 53 and she said it’s her first starring role in a movie. And she’s having hot flashes. Though her name remains a mystery, she seems like a nice woman. Oh, she’s from Law & Order. Thought she looked familiar. Has L&O been on for 16 years?

VIII. Mr. Fabulous returns.
Match Point— gotta catch it as soon as it reaches the hinterlands. Wags are calling it the best Woody Allen film since Crimes and Misdemeanors, which is high praise indeed considering that the latter film is Woody’s best ever.

Virginia Madsen continues the Golden Globes tit parade… screenplay award. Match Point, Good Night, and Good Luck., Crash, Munich, Brokeback Mountain. We’ll see if Brokeback starts racking them up…. Yep. Brokeback is now the undisputed front-runner for Best Picture at the Oscars. But Munich and Good Night are both better films. Larry McMurtry looks and sounds like a South Park character.

IX.
A couple of no-name TV actors give the award for Best TV comedy. The show about the four suburban drag queens won. Thank god for TV, though, because it keeps 40-something bulimic actresses employed. Lord knows they don’t get to make movies.

Penelope Cruz looks sublimely glamorous as she presents Best Picture, musical or comedy nominee Mrs. Henderson Presents. Her squeeze, Matthew McConaughey, introduces Best Foreign Language film. Kung Fu Hustle should win, but I’ll bet you dollars to donuts that Paradise Now wins it. It does. Yep. I know how the game works. But Kung Fu Hustle was the most brilliantly inventive film to come out of any country in 2005. It showed us that CGI effects now allow live-action filmmakers to be as diabolically inventive as Chuck Jones.

X.
Catherine Deneuve introduces A History of Violence, which should be nominated in the Comedy category. Why am I the only critic in America who understands that this picture is a comedy?

Best Original Score, which is a bathroom break category. I’m guessing Brokeback takes this one too— but John Williams gets his 10,000th award. Then it’s Mariah Carrey, who takes the Golden Globe award for Biggest Beefsteak Tomatoes. Hope Mel Brooks wins for best song. Nope, it’s Brokeback. The gay-shepherd juggernaut continues. It does give one hope that Brokeback is playing well in the red states. Maybe the Falwell crowd doesn’t have us licked yet.

Time for the Anthony Hopkins celebrity butt-kiss-a-thon. I remember a few years ago, Kirk Douglas was honored with the Thalberg award at the Oscars. The poor man had just suffered a terrible stroke. There he was on stage, a shell of his former self, forced to watch film clips of himself as a vibrant young man, and I thought, could anything be more depressing? As Kurt Vonnegut’s Kilgore Trout said when he finally met his creator in Breakfast of Champions: “Make me young!”

What the fuck is going on with Gwyneth Paltrow’s gown? Little Bo Peep called, she wants her dress back… Anthony Hopkins has had a fantastic career— although he edged painfully close to De Niro-style career suicide with that Chris Rock picture. And Silence of the Lambs really was the best picture of 1991. Speech time… he should launch into a Hitler-esque tirade. Instead, he’s putting us to sleep. Man, I remember when the Golden Globes used to poor stiff drinks and get everyone fucked up. Now it seems like they’re serving iced tea in those glasses.

XI.
Mandy Moore tees up The Squid and the Whale… who woulda thought that she’d be the one to escape the teen idol ghetto?

Clint! Best director: Woody Allen, George Clooney, Peter Jackson, Ang Lee, Fernando Meirelles, Spielberg. Ang Lee will win… yep. Lee is a class act, though, and he deserves the recognition. My favorite Lee picture is one that no one ever mentions— Ride with the Devil, the Civil War opus with Toby Maguire. It’s an awesome recreation of the guerrilla war that raged in Kansas and Missouri while Lee and McLellan were duking it out in Virginia. Also features the acting debut of former alterna-queen Jewel, who if memory serves flashes a breast. Put it in your Netflix queue if you haven’t had the pleasure.

Oh crap, here comes Big-Head Travolta. Best actor in a comedy: Pierce Bronson, Jeff Daniels, Johnny Depp, Nathan Lane, Cillian Murphy, Joaquin Phoenix. Phoenix takes it— let’s hope for a freak-out! He doesn’t appear to be drunk or stoned; that’s too bad. What a depressingly average speech. Sigh… somebody needs to spike the Evian with LSD.

XII.
Tim McGraw needs cue-card help; he may in fact be drunk. Now here comes Squinty Girl to hand out best musical or comedy… Mrs. Henderson Presents, Pride and Prejudice, The Producers, The Squid and the Whale, Walk the Line. Gotta be WTL… woo-hoo! Johnny and June are dancing a jig in Heaven. It’s not a classic, you understand, but it’s still a pretty damn good love story and it deserves a nod here—after all, it’s gonna be a Brokeback hoedown at the Oscars. Everything else will be forgotten.

Time for the TV awards… ho hum. Let’s hope Lost takes best drama. Woo-hoo! It’s the only TV show I watch, so of course I’m happy to have my tastes confirmed.

XIII.
Quaid on Brokeback… I gotta say, I’m glad Ledger hooked up with Williams on that film. She’s a cutie. Leo on best actress: Huffman, Bello, Theron, Ziang, Paltrow. Goes to… the chick with the dick. Looks like one of the Housewives isn’t so desperate anymore.

Hillary Swank on best actor: Crowe, Hoffman, Howard, Ledger, Strathairn. Rooting for Hoffman, but I bet Ledger gets it. No! Hoffman! Sweet. The Pudgy One gets his due. The guy has been brilliant for so long and in so many different ways that he’s spent a lifetime getting overlooked. Hope this puts him in position to upset Ledger for the Oscar. Ledger is great, don’t get me wrong… but this is Hoffman’s time. Of course, I thought last year was Giamatti’s time, and Foxx snatched his statue away. Still too short and tame a speech… the Globes are becoming as dull as the Oscars ever were. More liquor!

Denzel with the Big Prize: Brokeback, Constant Gardener, Good Night, History, Match Point. Brokeback it is— yawn. Every time I hear those laconic guitar chords, I want to nod off.

There it is… the first attempt by Mr. and Mrs. Fabulous to blog our way though an entire awards ceremony. If you made it this far, then you have our sympathies. Of course, reading about the Golden Globes takes a hell of a lot less time than actually watching them… so maybe we’re the ones who need the sympathy.

Movie Review: Tristan & Isolde

2006-01-18T22:27:00.000-05:00

Way back in 1991, when there was a Bush in the White House and we were at war with Iraq, two competing Robin Hood movies made their respective debuts. In this corner we had Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, starring Kevin Costner as the guy in tights, Morgan Freeman as his anachronistic Moorish sidekick and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio as Maid Marion. In that corner we had a little-noticed British film called simply Robin Hood, which was shown theatrically in the U.K. but only on television in the U.S., and which starred career B-movie actor Patrick Bergin and a young Uma Thurman. Reynolds’s version was a ridiculously overwrought star vehicle, one of the most laugh-out-loud clunkers of the 1990’s, with a script written by a couple of hack producers that can charitably be described as awful, and copious scenes of Costner swaggering around like John Wayne in The Conqueror. That Costner’s film was a box office hit tells us that today’s movie audiences haven’t gotten any dumber.

Read the full review.

Movie Review: Brokeback Mountain

2006-01-12T21:55:00.000-05:00

Mrs. Fabulous and I went to see Coldplay last summer. Now I wouldn’t call myself a Coldplay fan, actually. I find them too precious by half. They’re the musical equivalent of one of those massage chairs you pay to sit in at your local shopping mall— vaguely soothing, but mechanical and lacking soul. Still, given the woeful state of pop music today, they’re fucking Pink Floyd compared to what else is out there. So what are you gonna do? Besides, they’re one of the few bands my wife and I can agree to spend money on.

Read the full review.

Movie Review: King Kong

2005-12-31T16:51:00.000-05:00

Hollywood needs Peter Jackson. In an era in which box office revenues are drying up faster than the world’s oil supplies, in which one after another of 2005’s supposed studio tent poles collapsed in a splintering sawdust cloud of dashed hopes, this rumpled, barefoot, recently-svelte Kiwi seems to be the only director working today— with the possible exception of Spiderman’s Sam Raimi and the still-kicking Steven Spielberg— who knows how to leverage big studio money and digital special effects to create idiosyncratic, personality-driven films that connect with today’s increasingly jaded and distracted audiences. If Peter Jackson can’t save Hollywood, no one can.

Read the full review.

Atlanta after dark

2005-10-27T23:52:00.000-04:00

Was in Atlanta for work last week, which means it took me a hell of a long time to get a new review up. But far be it from me to keep you from another dose of my sparkling prose, so I hope you didn't miss me too much.

But first a word about Atlanta. Mrs. Fabulous went with me on the trip, and because she has family and friends there, I've gotten to know the place better over the past few years. As much as it pains this Yankee Blue-stater to admit it, I've grown kinda fond of it. I've learned the difference between downtown, Midtown and Buckhead; I've had Tapas at Fuego and dinner at the City Grill; and although I haven't been to the Fox Theater yet, I've seen it and will get their soon-- I just missed a show by the String Cheese Incident earlier this month. Every time we head down, Mrs. Fabulous tries to show me another piece of the city.

This time we saw the world-famous Cyclorama that depicts the Battle of Atlanta in the Civil War in the form of a 360-degree, 30-foot tall painting with accompanying diorama. I'm a Civil War buff, and let me tell you that it was pretty spectacular. The after-party for the world premiere of Gone With the Wind was held at the Cyclorama in 1939, and Clark Gable himself is immortalized in the form of a dead Confederate soldier in the diorama. There are movie connections everywhere.

But the best part of the trip was the Clairmont Lounge. If you're an Atlantan, then you know whereof I speak. Mrs. Fabulous had partied here on many an evening, and was determined to get me there on this trip. Billed as the strip club for people who hate strip clubs, the Clairmont is located in the basement of the Clairmont Hotel on Ponce de Leon. It's no bigger than a breadbox. The featured beer is Pabst Blue Ribbon. Its main attraction is Blondie, the obese stripper who crushes beer cans between her size 36-FF tits. The rumor is that she once sent a man to the hospital with a neck injury after whacking him upside the head with one these giant beefsteak tomatoes. The place is supposed to be fun and kitzchy rather than depressing and skanky, like most strip clubs. College kids go to drink and hook up and couples go to take a walk on the wild side.

Unfortunately, we went on a Monday night, which is apparently regulars night. When we got there, we saw about five middle-aged men hunched around the bar and about the same number of scantily-dressed redneck chicks. On the stage behind the bar was a Cher lookalike (scary-old-Botox Cher, mind you, not hot-young-"Cherokee Woman"-Gene-Simmons-plaything Cher) grinding to some shitty song on the jukebox. We got our PBRs from the bartender, a friendly enough 50-something woman who had sniffed enough glue to build a scale model of an aircraft carrier. Before we could pop the tops on our beers, Cher had popped both her top and bottom, and stood revealed in all her glory. The collected barflies were less than thrilled, though one guy gave her a dollar to stuff into her garter.

"Come on, I made two dollars all night!" Cher said. "I gotta buy groceries. I can't even buy a gallon of milk."

I looked at Mrs. Fabulous. What the hell? I pulled out two bucks and handed them to Cher.

"Great, now I can buy a stick of butter!" said Cher.

Mrs. Fabulous was ready to bolt then and there. But dammit, we had made a special trip. We were duty bound to see this moment of Zen through to enlightenment. So we stayed for a few hours. We saw hairy lesbians, pudgy Goth chicks and tatooed biker girls all bump and grind. It was the first time my wife and I had been in the same room together with other naked women, and it was odd, to say the least. They must have thought we were there to pick up one of the strippers to take home with us. Not that there's anything wrong with it-- it just ain't our bag, man.

At one point we befriended a buxom young woman, pretty but with man-shoulders. Her dillema: she had two men on the hook, and couldn't choose between the tatoo artist or the "executive at a major international corporation" who met her at the Clairmont.

"Which one wants you to quit working here?" asked Mrs. Fabulous.

"The tatoo guy," Man-Shoulders answered. "He's sweet. He likes to cook for me."

My wife and I both agreed that she should dump the executive and go for the sweet tatoo artist who wanted her to quit stripping. A few moments later, Man-Shoulders was up on the stage twirling her panties in the air. She actually had the best moves up there. Let's just say she seemed to enjoy her work.

We tipped two bucks per stripper and got kisses on the cheek from each of the girls after their set. It was touching, in a way. Given that we were the big spenders that night, I took their gratitude as sincere.

So Mrs. Fabulous and I bonded in a new way that night; while we aren't planning a trip to Scores any time soon, it's nice to know we can have a good time together looking at naked chicks.

Quickie: Wallace & Gromit in the Curse of the Were-Rabbit

2005-10-14T08:03:00.000-04:00

In Schindler's List, Ben Kingsley's Itzhak Stern introduces the concept of "absolute good. "This list... is an absolute good," Stern says. "The list is life. All around its margins lies the gulf."

Now I'm not about to insult or demean Schindler's Jews by comparing their plight to an animated film about giant were-bunnies. But I do mean to suggest that Wallance & Gromit, in their inimitable plasticine ways, are an absolute good. In three short films and now their first feature, the cheese-loving inventor Wallace and his owner, the Chaplinesque mouthless dog Gromit, posit a universe in which no idea is too outlandish to be tried, vegetables and cheese are prized above gold and rubies and no problem is too great to be surmounted with a combination of ingenuity, tenacity and elbow grease. I'd like to live in Wallace & Gromit's world. It's a far gentler, nobler and loving world than this one-- that's for sure.

Wallace & Gromit in the Curse of the Were-Rabbit is everything you could possibly hope for in a Wallace & Gromit adventure. What makes Nick Park's creations so enjoyable to watch on the big screen is how cinematic they are. They're lit, blocked and shot with all the care of the best live-action directors. Loving attention is paid to the characters. The plot is worked over with all the pizzaz of the best Pixar releases. I loved every ever-lovin' minute of this picture. Its theme and utter brilliance can be summed up in the closing credits sequence, in which a series of perplexed bunnies twirls, rotates and pirouettes in glorious free-fall. The charm and giddy adventurousness of this sequence, not to mention the utter delight it demonstrates in God's creation, sums up everything that Aardman Animation wants to say about life on Earth. If you don't get it, then I feel sorry for you.

Movie Review: A History of Violence

2005-10-13T07:58:00.000-04:00

If you look closely enough at David Cronenberg’s films, you’ll find that they’re all— every dad-blamed one of them, from the head-exploding yucks of his 1981 breakthrough film Scanners to his 2002 Ralph Fiennes mumble-fest Spider— exquisitely dry comedies. Filtered through the prism of his work, Cronenberg has morphed from pigeonholed horror director to cult bio-horror madman to respected indie auteur. Critics bow and scrape before him and examine his films the way a pagan priest examines the entrails of a goat, searching for signs and portents as they try to divine the Truth behind his art. But what they’re not doing is laughing— and they should be, because Cronenberg’s is the most consistently brilliant body of comic work out there.

Read the full review.

Movie Review: Corpse Bride

2005-10-04T23:43:00.000-04:00

How do I begin to describe the unnatural love I feel for The Nightmare Before Christmas? From the moment I saw the Tim Burton-inspired, Henry Selick-directed, Danny Elfman-scored stop-motion Gothic extravaganza, I fell hard and fast. My wife and I bonded over it instantly; I got her a set of Nightmare collectible figures on our first Christmas together. We watch it together every November— singing “This is Halloween” to each other and trading lines like Did anybody remember to dredge the lake? and Interesting reaction! into the wee hours and cracking ourselves up every time.

Read the full review.

The Wonder Years

2005-09-23T08:20:00.000-04:00

Man, I am absolutely obsessing over Stevie Wonder. I'm not talking about the 80's Stevie-- the cheesy Ebony-and-Ivory, I-Just-Called-to-Say-Love-You, make-you-throw up-in-your-mouth-a-little Stevie. I'm talking about the stone-cold Superfunk Master Stevie from the 1970s. The Innervisions, Talking Book, Songs in the Key of Life Stevie, the one-man band who ruled the Funk, Pop and R&B landscapes simultaneously. No one could plug into the Primal Groove like Stevie in his prime. I've been playing the shit out of Stevie recently, and I'm finding shades and emotion and connection in his music like I never have. I've always been a marginal fan; I can't hear "Signed Sealed Delivered" without bursting into a chaotic flurry of white-man dance fever. But I'm grooving to his stuff in an entirely new way. I don't know if it's a lifestage thing or what the fuck is going on, but I love his stuff so much that I get verklempt just thinking about it.

Even back in the day, Stevie could sometimes overdo it. All of the classic albums have at least one cut on them that makes you cringe. But when Stevie erred, he erred by aiming too high. And when he channels the groove in "Sir Duke" or "HIgher Ground" or "Superstition," man, he will knock you on your ass.

You whippersnappers who are too young to have ever actually placed a record on a turntable will have no idea what I'm talking about. Your only connection to Stevie is that Pat Boone funk served up by wankers like Maroon 5. Do yourself a favor and connect with this shit immediately. I know I sound like a WWII-generation old coot arguing that none of this rock 'n roll hooey can touch Glenn Miller or Sinatra. But honestly, no popular music being made today can touch Stevie. You young cats are living through the musical Dark Ages.

If you want to experience the joy that is Stevie, put on the headphones and stream some of this shit:

Innervisions
Songs in the Key of Life
Talking Book

Mr. Fabulous says it'll blow your mind.

Movie review: Junebug

2005-09-22T21:11:00.000-04:00

Ten years ago, I went to my grandmother’s funeral in Southwestern Ohio. My father was the youngest of nine children, which means that both he and I have cousins old enough to be our parents, and that I’m part of an extended family of which I have met maybe 10 percent. During the final service at the gravesite, I remember looking around at the motley collection of mouth-breathers, rednecks, slack-jaws and hill-williams that made up my family. Being of Scotch-Irish descent, I thought to myself, “You know, if we were back in the old country centuries ago, these people would be my clan.” The thought gave me the shivers.

Read the full review.

Update from Baton Rouge

2005-09-02T07:42:00.000-04:00

Here's an e-mail we received from Mrs. Fabulous's brother, who lives in Baton Rouge. It may not surprise you to learn that Baton Rouge has overnight become the largest city in Louisiana.

---
I think Alan's house was spared from the storm, but who knows what the looters are doing. There could be some guys riding around in a one-mile-square area driving his mint condition 356. His camp is probably toast, because the eye went right over Lake Borgne. I had a lot of good memories there.

In all the doomsday scenarios I've heard, I never thought about where do 1.4 million people go when their homes are destroyed? Well, 100,000 take up residence in the next biggest city, which happens to be Baton Rouge.

Living a half mile from the interstate doesn't help either. They have people parking their cars in the middle of O'Neal Lane to get something at the Burger King. Guess the rest of us in cars have nothing better to do than wait on someone getting a burger. Gas lines are blocks long and the Wal-Mart looks like a store in the former Soviet Union,--not much on the shelves. The kids are off for a week, and they're talking about putting all the displaced kids from New Orleans into our school system. It was already overcrowded and in bad shape.

I work downtown, and they're housing 5,000 refugees at the Centroplex. Since last night the Chevron and Frost Top were robbed and today there was a carjacking at the courthouse and someone got shot. New Orleans had the highest per capita murder rate in the country. My building is currently in a lockdown where no non-state employees are allowed in the building. I guess Katrina will spread the wealth.

My friend Barry's nephew brought his boat down to the flooded area to pull people from the rooftops. He came across one group asking if they had a camera in the boat. They decided to wait on the boat with the camera crew to come by so they'd be on TV. They had been on the rooftop for two days. Glad to see someone has their priorities.
---

Hopefully I'll be getting back to trivial movie stuff soon. But right now my heart just isn't in it.

The downward spiral

2005-09-01T18:18:00.000-04:00

This is one of the latest reports from CNN.com:

***
'A scene of anarchy'
Editor's Note: CNN correspondents report back on what they are seeing in New Orleans and other Gulf Coast communities hit by Hurricane Katrina.

Posted: 10:02 a.m. ETCNN's Jim Spellman in New Orleans, Louisiana

I don't think I really have the vocabulary for this situation.

We just heard a couple of gunshots go off. There's a building smoldering a block away. People are picking through whatever is left in the stores right now. They are walking the streets because they have nowhere else to go.

Right now, I'm a few blocks away from the New Orleans Convention Center area. We drove through there earlier, and it was unbelievable. Thousands and thousands and thousands of people spent the night sleeping on the street, on the sidewalk, on the median.
The Convention Center is a place that people were told to go to because it would be safe. In fact, it is a scene of anarchy.

There is absolutely nobody in control. There is no National Guard, no police, no information to be had.

The Convention Center is next to the Mississippi River. Many people who are sleeping there feel that a boat is going to come and get them. Or they think a bus is going to come. But no buses have come. No boats have come. They think water is going come. No water has come. And they have no food.

As we drove by, people screamed out to us -- "Do you have water? Do you have food? Do you have any information for us?"

We had none of those.

Probably the most disturbing thing is that people at the Convention Center are starting to pass away and there is simply nothing to do with their bodies. There is nowhere to put them. There is no one who can do anything with them. This is making everybody very, very upset.
***
Meanwhile, this is what our President was doing yesterday, as the situation in New Orleans was rapidly devolving into murderous chaos:

Draw your own conclusions.

Memories of the Big Easy

2005-08-31T19:15:00.000-04:00

I'm in mourning for New Orleans.

I haven't spent a lot of time in the Big Easy-- I still haven't made it to Mardis Gras, for one thing-- but I have nothing but good memories about the times I've dwelt there.

The first time the future Mrs. Meauxjeaux Fabulous and I gambled together was at the Harrah's Casino in New Orleans. I sat down at the blackjack table (I know, but they didn't have a poker room back then) and was up about $100 in short order. Meaux sat down next to me and proceeded to get her clock cleaned. That night established the precedent-- which holds true to this day-- that only one of us can win at the blackjack table at a time. Not once have we both finished a winning session on the same night.

That same trip saw us eating Oyster and Shrimp Po' Boys at a hole-in-the-wall dive; carrying our open containers of alcohol around Jackson Square; wiggling our way in and out of galleries during a free art show, at one point staring at a motionless naked woman in a cage and being unable to decide if the figure was a real woman or a mannequin; swilling Hurricanes (now a sadly misnamed drink) at Pat O'Brien's.

We also took our first cruise out of New Orleans. We cruised the Western Caribbean on the Carnival Inspiration, which sailed out of New Orleans harbor. We departed about 7pm for the six-hour journey down the Mighty Mississippi to the Gulf, and got to watch the sun set while the Big Easy slowly dwindled in the distance. After dark, we stood out on the observation deck while the black river and shadow-draped shorelines rolled by us. We'd see what looked like a major metropolitan city, dazzling the night sky with its thousands of lights; as we got closer, we'd realize that it was actually an oil refinery. At about 1am, it was too dark to see anything with the new moon overhead. But when we finally left the confines of the Mississippi and hit the Gulf of Mexico, we could feel the change in the air nonetheless. It was the most impossibly romantic moment I'd ever experienced.

And then there's the architecture, which is-- was-- my personal favorite aspect of the New Orleans experience. I'm not just talking about the flashy scene around Jackson Square, although that's cool enough. I'm talking about the afternoons we spent just driving around the residential quarters of the city, our jaws agape at the spectacular old homes with their gamboled roofs, turrets, balconies and ivy-strangled columns. What fabulous Tennessee Williams-inspired lives these folks must lead, I remember thinking.

New Orleans is the closest we Americans can come to visiting a foreign city without leaving the continental US. There's something about the combination of the architecture, the food, the liquor, the music, the humidity and the filth that made spending time in New Orleans like spending the night with a high-class hooker. Yeah, you had to pay her for her time. But man, what I time you had.

And now she's gone. I have no doubt that New Orleans will be rebuilt, in some fashion. But all those fantastic old homes I loved are gone now, or soon will be. What's left of the city will become a theme park for tourists who want to experience a sanitized version of the culture without wallowing in the seediness that makes it authentic. What New Orleans was will never return. She needs to be mourned properly, with music and booze and cigarettes.

Say a prayer for the Big Easy. May she rest in peace.

Surrender Dorothy

2005-08-26T07:23:00.000-04:00

This has been all over the internet, so I'm not exactly breaking any news here. But check out these adorable pictures of little Tom Cruise all dolled up, courtesy of the British tabloid The Sun:

Two things strike me about these pictures: One, little Tommy looks extaordinarily happy to be wearing a dress. Look at that beaming little smile! Two, little Tommy actually makes a cute little girl.

Tom, Tom. I hope you realize that you brought this on yourself.

Movie Meth and Star Trek perverts

2005-08-19T07:36:00.000-04:00

All of us movie fans have a small list of films that, if we happen upon them while channel-surfing digital cable, absolutely must watch to the end, whether the movie is ten minutes or an hour in. It's like rediscovering your crystal meth addiction after six months off. Below are my personal top five instances of Movie Meth. You may decide that I harbor secret gay love for either Patrick Swayze or Keanu Reeves, since I can't keep my eyes off of either of them:

1) Road House: One of the best bad movies ever made, featuring Swayze as a Zen philosopher/bouncer who spouts such brilliant bon mots as, "Pain don't hurt."

2) The Devil's Advocate: Al Pacino and Reeves star as Satan and his son, respectively. Naturally, they're both attorneys. Later remade by Adam Sandler as Little Nicky.

3) Point Break: Swayze as the Zen philosopher/surfer/bank robber and Reeves as the FBI agent determined to hunt him down. The most touching gay love story since Top Gun.

4) Raising Arizona: Can't help it. I know ever line in the movie by heart, but I still lose it every time I hear Holly Hunter say, "Mind his little fontanelle."

5) The Godfather: Part one only please. Part II is great, but doesn't have the mythic forward momentum of the original. Part III is the Fredo to its better older brothers.

Also, found this mention in Slate magazine about the connection between Star Trek fans and pedophelia. As a former Trekkie myself, I couldn't help but laugh.

---

In May, Yale cyberlaw expert Ernest Miller noticed an astonishing tidbit in a Los Angeles Times story on the Toronto police Sex Crimes Unit's pursuit of pedophiles:

All but one of the [over 100] offenders they have arrested in the last four years was a hard-core Trekkie.

Miller was skeptical but the cops basically stood by their story--at the least, a "majority of those arrested show 'at least a passing interest in Star Trek, if not a strong interest.'" Not just an interest in science fiction generally, mind you. But Star Trek.

The conventional explanation for this seemingly bizarre correlation was that pedophiles must simply be trying to use an interest in Star Trek as a device to lure their prey. But Ellen Ladowsky, an L.A. therapist, thinks there actually is something inherent in the show itself that makes it "irresistible to perverts.". She lays out her case in HuffPost. Sample:

[W]hen it comes to relationships off the ship, Captain Kirk displays a truly astonishing emotional poverty. He goes from planet to planet, having trysts with an assortment of nubile women, but never forms any real attachments. ... [snip] ...There's a pervasive message that women are toxic. In an episode called Cat's Paw, there is an evil sorceress who separates the crew from each other and from the starship. The perpetually indignant Dr. McCoy cautions Kirk, "Don't let her touch your wand Jim, or you'll lose all your power!["] On the very rare occasions where Kirk seems to find love, his partners quickly die off. After one of his loves has croaked, Kirk admonishes Spock "Love, you're better off without it."

Ladowsky argues pedophiles naturally identify with the crew's "utopian interracial and interplanetary world" as a model for "denial of the difference between the sexes and the difference between the generations." And then there are the monsters:

[I]f the pedophiles are identifying with the crew members, who do the monsters represent? Possibly aspects of the pedophile's mind that are split off because they are unthinkable, and projected into someone else. On the Enterprise, aggressive impulses aren't battling it out with libidinal ones as they are here on earth. In the Star Trek universe, every "bad" impulse is attributed to an external force. When it comes to sex, for example, it's always an outside influence that takes possession of the crew's minds and bodies, causing them to behave in erotically driven ways. Child molesters have a similar mechanism at work. They deny having any sexual impulses themselves; they frequently claim that it was the children who seduced them.

Ladowsky only discusses the original Star Trek series, not the Next Generation and subsequent follow-ups. But her post certainly seems a big step in the direction of an actual explanation. Give her tenure!

--

Off to see The 40 Year-Old Virgin this weekend. TGIF!

Movie Review: The Devil's Rejects

2005-08-17T00:52:00.000-04:00

I’m not a Rob Zombie fan, per se, but I am an admirer. Zombie (aka Robert Cummings) is a great American success story. A self-made renaissance man who began his career as a musician fronting the 90’s thrash-metal outfit White Zombie (named after a Bela Lugosi film, naturally), he transformed himself into a living comic book character— a dreadlocked undead superhero as envisioned by Boris Vallejo with a bevy of big-titted babes at his feet and a guitar at his side. Zombie wasn’t just the bandleader; he also drew the covers for his CDs, directed the videos, wrote the complementary comic books and even designed his own tattoos, which he wears. He’s performed with childhood heroes Alice Cooper and Ozzy Osbourne. His music was never original or compelling, just loud and omnipresent, which makes him living proof that talent is the least essential ingredient of success. What really counts is moxie, a little luck and a lot of good old-fashioned elbow grease.

Read the full review.

Movie Review: The Island

2005-08-16T07:59:00.000-04:00

How fitting, then, that Michael Bay’s most artistically successful film— and remember that we’re grading on a curve here— is also his biggest bomb. The man who tortured us in his personal cinematic dungeon with such diabolical instruments as Armageddon, Bad Boys II and Pearl Harbor finally gets his comeuppance. No one could be happier than me. I’ve prayed for this moment for years, but my victory is a Pyrrhic one. I actually kind of liked this film, in the way you kind of like a really ugly dog who keeps breathing his stink-breath on you because he’s so happy to see you. I felt sorry for The Island. It’s no classic, but neither is it Pearl Harbor. At the very least, it deserves a pat on the head.

Read the full review.

Free to a good home

2005-07-29T08:09:00.000-04:00

A mama kitty in our neighborhood recently gave birth to some kittens. They're about six weeks old and looking for a good home. Here are some pictures:

RIP: James Doohan

2005-07-20T06:19:00.000-04:00

In not unexpected though nonetheless sad news, one of my boyhood heroes passed away today: James "Scotty" Doohan.

Link to CNN obituary

I won't get into what Star Trek meant to me as a kid. Like many things in my life that I've obsessed over to varying degrees-- movies, the Grateful Dead, Phish, Kate Winslet-- you either get Star Trek, or you don't. I long ago gave up watching the new stuff. Voyager, Enterprise and that ilk just made my feet itch and my underwear ride up. But my DNA is infused with the original series, and Scotty was far and away my favorite member of the Enterprise crew.

So in leiu of waxing philosophic, here's a little story about my personal encounter with James Doohan. This must have been in 1983 or so. Somewhere around the time between The Wrath of Kahn and The Voyage Home. My little preschool buddies and I learned that Doohan was going to be signing autographs at a local video store, so off we went.

Our moms drop us off at the store, and there we find a huge snaking line of geeks waiting to get in to see Scotty up close. We're looking at a two-hour wait. But hey, it's a nice day out, we have our sippy cups filled with apple juice, and besides, it's fucking Scotty, man. He's worth the wait.

So we get in line. We are entertained by a bagpipe player in full Starfleet uniform blowing out "Amazing Grace" to the delighted crowd. Hours go by. Finally, we are literally set to be the next group let into the store when the manager comes out and announces that the show's over-- Scotty is done for the day.

Crushing disappointment. But when the chorus of groans and boos reaches Doohan's ears inside the store, he springs into action. He steps outside. A mighty cheer goes up. We all go weak in the knees. It's fucking Scotty, man! Doohan spends a good fifteen more minutes outside with us, posing for pictures and chatting with the fans before a limo pulls up to take him back to his shuttlecraft-- guess the transporter was on the blink that day. We trudged away, happy to have spent some time in the presence of Mr. Doohan.

There's no moral to this story other than James Doohan seemed like a righteous cat to me. Course, I was only four years old, so I was easily impressed.

I wish I had a picture of that day. If any of you old droogs reading this post have a picture, send it to me and I'll post it.

James Doohan: rocking the comb-over since 1966:

Rest in peace, Scotty.

Walk the Line

2005-07-13T23:55:00.000-04:00

Here's my new favorite movie poster. I'm thinking of buying a copy for my office.

It's a teaser poster for Walk the Line, the new Johnny Cash biopic due this fall and starring Joaquin Phoenix as the Man in Black and Reese Witherspoon as June Carter-Cash. What I love about this poster is how powerfully it sums up Cash's life and career-- about to walk into the fires of Hell, but looking back at a chance for salvation. Phoenix looks nothing like Cash, of course, but his image in this poster perfectly captures Cash's larger-than-life persona. The movie can always turn out to be a dud, but this poster shows that the marketing guys at Fox know what they're doing.

Here's my favorite picture of the man himself:

Movie review: Dark Water

2005-07-11T23:58:00.000-04:00

Until Hollywood started remaking Japanese horror films, I never considered the subconscious dread that we all feel when we think about plumbing. Which is not very often; unless a pipe breaks or the toilet backs up, most of us are content to not know what goes on behind the walls of our houses and apartments. But unless you’re a plumber, plumbing is inherently mysterious and a little spooky. We send food, water, grease, excrement and God knows what else down our pipes, and we’re never sure what happens to it, or what might come back up through those moist portals to the netherworld. For all we know, the pipes might lead straight to Hell.

Read the full review.

We are all Londoners now

2005-07-07T22:39:00.000-04:00

My wife Meaux and I were in London just two weeks ago. We were only there for a day, which was much too short a time to indulge in the pleasures of that fair city. We stayed at the Capital Hotel in Knightsbridge, just down the street from Harrod's. With only a day to kill, we ordered a few items from the appetizer menu: we took a walk around the perimeter of Hyde Park, where we saw the stage for Live8 being raised; we spent a few hours in the National Gallery, where we saw enough paintings of Christ on the Cross to last us a lifetime, but also saw dozens of exquisite portraits from Rembrandt and the other Dutch masters; had a pint at a gay bar in Picadilly; and had dinner at the Capital Hotel restaurant, where we were treated like royalty.

We rode the Tube twice that day. The next morning, we took the Gatwick Express from Victoria Station. You see, when you visit London, you have little choice but to use public transportation. There's simply no other way to get around, unless you want to cab it everywhere. Which I may do from now on.

The London bombings today hit home for me. It's not just because we were just there, and that there's no reason other than timing that we weren't on one of those subway cars or two of the 37 confirmed dead. I have a deep and abiding love for London, you see. I love New York, don't get me wrong. But London was the first world-class city I ever visited outside of my home town. I spend the summer there in college: my best buddy John and I living on Kensington Church Street, absorbing the city into our pores, spending the afternoons tracing Mrs. Dalloway's path through the city, visiting Keates' house, trying to find Muswell Hill because the Kinks wrote a song about it. We were Londoners, at least for that summer.

Later, I got to spend some time in New York, and fell in love with that crazy fucking town as well. But you never forget your first love.

So I take the attacks personally. I'm not going to get all political on you here. Whether you thought invading Iraq was essential to the War on Terror, or you don't, is immaterial. What we saw today was an act of pure, distilled, extra-virgin Evil.

But my city can take it. This may have been the worst attack on British soil since World War II, but Londoners survived the Blitz, and they will survive this. I saw a picture today which pretty much sums it up for me:

God save the Queen.

Movie Review: War of the Worlds

2005-07-03T15:52:00.000-04:00

How much did I dig War of the Worlds? I've seen it twice already. Saw it on opening night, by myself, while my wife was out gallivanting with the girls; saw it again the next night, with the wife at my side. That's the first time this year I've seen a picture twice in the theater. I sure as hell wasn't interested in seeing Revenge of the Sith a second time; the moment I saw Darth Vader cavorting with M&Ms on TV, I was done with George Lucas. I didn't even see Batman Begins twice, and I dug that movie immensely. Haven't felt the urge to double-dip, actually, since Return of the King.

Read the full review.

Movie review: Star Wars Episode III - Revenge of the Sith

2005-05-22T22:53:00.000-04:00

There are two types of bad movies. The first kind are the banal or the mundane bad movies: films made on low budgets, by filmmakers of modest or no talent, the kind that used to end up on Mystery Science Theater 3000, on late night cable or go straight to DVD, where they languish in obscurity on Blockbuster Video shelves for a few months before vanishing forever. For such movies, badness is a natural condition of their being; given the limited resources, in both money and talent, that went into their making, they have no more chance of being good then a turtle has of sprouting wings. You don’t have to actually sit through Lord of the G-Strings or Carnosaur 2 to know that they’re going to suck. To bemoan their badness is to take a bite out of a dog turd and then complain that it doesn’t taste like pumpkin pie.

Read the full review...

Coming soon

2005-05-20T07:52:00.000-04:00

First things first: a shout-out to the awesome power of the Blogfather for bringing me some new readers. Thanks to all of you who commented with kind words for my poker rant. Rest assured I will be attempting to kill that bitch dead.

Lots o' reviews coming: Kingdom of Heaven, Kung Fu Hustle--- and of course, some little independent film about some whiny punk-ass teenager who turns into a supervillain. I'll save my opinions for the review. After seeing the movie, however, I do have a new catch phrase to use whenever someone cuts the cheese:

"I sense Count Dooku."

I am poker’s bitch

2005-05-17T21:38:00.000-04:00

For me, poker is an abusive spouse.

At first, I was charmed by poker’s potent, alchemical combination of a smoking hot body and brains to boot. Poker lured me with her easy charm. It was the way she handled a cigarette. Her hot breath in my ear. The way she swirled the ice in her glass after she downed another Jack and Coke. The sounds she made. All of her filled my head, took control of my body, left me broken and shamed on the altar of my own spectacular Aphrodite. I was deliriously out of control. I could get lost in her warm delta for days on end.

Fast forward five years later. Poker and I are married. Not happily. It started with simple verbal abuse.

“Why didn’t you lay down those pocket aces when you had the chance?” She would say. “You should have got out when the board paired. What are you, some kind of a fucking idiot?”

Or, “Why did you fold to that scare card bet? You had top pair and a great kicker! What are you, some kind of a pussy?”

Little by little, poker sapped my self-esteem. Truths that I had heretofore taken as self-evident— that I was a relatively with-it, together guy, with my share of brains, and who enjoyed the general regard of my peers— she began to call into question. I just wasn’t smart enough, she told me. I just didn’t try hard enough. I couldn’t hack it. I sucked in bed. I was a worthless, lazy, good-for-nothing piece of shit, not fit to lick her boots.

And finally, when she realized that she had worn me down to an ineffectual little nub, she got physical.

“Been waiting all night for that pair of kings? Too bad—here’s a backdoor flush!” WHAP!

Or, “You’re sitting pretty good with that boat, aren’t you? Well, here’s a boat that’s bigger than yours!” SMACK!

Or, “Fuck your measly pair of fucking queens. Here’s a guy playing K2 off who just flopped a set of deuces. Lick my fucking boot, bitch!” THWACK!

Sometimes I try to fight back. But I can never bring myself to do to her what she does to me. I love her too much. My friends and family tell me to leave her. People like her don’t change, they say. Poker will keep taking and taking from you. She will never give anything back. She’ll destroy you.

I have left her before, you understand. I’ve packed my bags more times than I can count. I’ve stood at the doorway trembling with righteous anger, vowing that this time, I meant it. She always just laughs that bitterly cynical laugh of hers and blows more smoke in my face. You’ll be back, she says. You won’t last five minutes without me. I’m all you got, baby. And when you come crawling back, I’ll fucking take you in. You know why? Because you amuse me.

And so it goes. I come crawling back every time. I keep hoping, you see, that I can change her. If I’m just a little nicer to her. if I just work that much harder to please her. On poker, I’ve spent a lifetime of “ifs.” I can’t leave her, and I can’t change her. And therein lies the rub: exactly how much abuse can a man take before he ceases to be a man?

***
What prompted the above diatribe is the 5th anniversary of our Home Game. Dr. Pauly (who is a great guy and without a doubt the most prolific motherfucker I’ve ever encountered) recently wrote up the full story in fine fashion. I can’t top his account, but I can add to it a little of my own history and perspective.

Five years ago, four Las Vegas veterans— Iggy, Huggy Bear, GMoney and me—launched a home poker game. The story of the Infamous Pinochle Game has been recounted elsewhere, so I won’t repeat it here. Suffice it to say that over the proceeding five years, the Home Game has grown in both stature and reputation, primarily thanks to the burgeoning fame of Iggy the Blogfather, who is to the poker blogging community what Timothy Leary was to the counterculture movement— simultaneously its biggest cheerleader and its most enthusiastic participant.

Two weeks ago we had a visit from the esteemed Dr. Pauly and Snailtrax, who had come to Cincinnati in the midst of a barnstorming trip to the Midwest to take in the Trey Anastasio show at the Taft Theater. GMoney and I hooked up with these two Internet celebrities at the Trey show, where we enjoyed some fine balls-out rock and roll (including a cover of Led Zepplin’s In the Light that quite simply brought the house down), and I enjoyed about six Jack and Cokes, some ocelot earlobes and some wolf nipple chips.

The next day, Sunday, we gathered at the Raddison Hotel in Covington, KY (where, coincidentally, my wife and I spent our wedding night— meaning I spent it unconscious and she spent it sore as hell at me) for the anniversary game. Huggy Bear rented a bitchin’ suite and paid off the bellmen and housekeepers, so we could play undisturbed for a good nine hours or so. Some of Iggy’s and Pauly’s poker blogging buddies were there, as well as Home Game regulars T-Dub and the Sheriff. We all cashed in and started to deal the cards.

All was well until the Sheriff arrived late. And he didn’t come alone—he brought his father. I won’t attempt to guess Father Sheriff’s age for fear of insulting him, but let’s just say that he needed help seeing the flop. How cute, we all thought. It’s always fun to have an oldster at the table. Let’s all go easy on the old guy, shall we? We want him to have a good time.

Now of all the four founding fathers of the home game, I’m far and away the worst player. Iggy plays professionally— that’s all you need to know. Our Home Game takes money out of his pocket because he’s going easy on us instead of clubbing the baby seals online or at Caesar’s Indiana. Huggy is the Rock; he has the discipline to lay down hands that I will ride all the way over the cliff. GMoney plays fast and wild, but he’s the craftiest player at the table.

And me? As I said, I am poker’s bitch.

But back to the old man. I sat on his right, which proved to be a bad move on my part. Old Spice played nearly every hand. If he was in the hand, he was raising. There I am, folding 30 hands in a row, tossing aside every 9-4 offsuit as if it were a used syringe. Finally I get the right hand in the right position, and I raise the blinds. You can bet your ass that Old Spice was raising behind me. He played so loose that no one at the table could put him on a hand. If he was in the pot, he could have anything. The Hilton Sisters, a gut-shot draw, a set or Ace high— who the fuck knew?

So the game went as the game usually goes for me— more abuse from the Bitch. She bleeds me slowly. I pay the blinds for four or five orbits. I play a hand, don’t hit the flop and muck to any bet. Or the flop hits me in the face, and only after I’m out $20 do I learn that it hit someone else in the face even harder. The pots I scoop are generally small and serve only to prolong my agony.

But there comes a time in any poker game when you have to take your shot. You’re supposed to get your money in the pot when you have the best of it, right? I’m looking at 4-5 of hearts in late position. A few players call the flop, as do I.

The flop hits me in the face to the tune of AKQ of hearts. Bliss! Nirvana! The nut fucking flush!

Post-flop, it’s GMoney, Old Spice and me. GMoney fires out a $15 bet. I immediately call. Problem is, Old Spice calls too. I figure I’m looking at a set from GMoney and two pair or Aces from the old man. My flush, I am confident, is rock solid.

Then the board pairs aces. Now at this point, a prudent man would have thought very hard before calling GMoney’s bet. Now I’m looking at a possible boat. But I have been hemorrhaging chips for seven hours straight. I’m short-stacked as it is. It’s never going to get any better than this, I thought. After the river turns up a blank, I throw caution to the wind.

“Fuck it,” I said. “I’m all in.”

Old Spice promptly calls. I’m fuzzy on this point, but I think GMoney got out at this point, figuring that he was beat. That left Old Spice and me to flip our cards over. Old Spice flips over two hearts.

One of the reasons why I’m a bad poker player is that I’m often fuzzy on the odds. Iggy tells me that if you flop a flush, the odds are 35 to 1 against another player also holding a flush. Now not only did Old Spice beat those odds, but he held an 8 of hearts in his hand. I held, you’ll recall, 4-5.

Not understanding what had just happened to me, I was resigned to a chopped pot. What the hell, I thought. Better than a sharp stick up your ass. But then Huggy chimed in.

“He’s got the eight,” Huggy said of the old man. “He takes the whole pot.”

The whole $100 pot. The pot that should have been mine. I had to sit there, humiliation dripping from my face like warm piss, and watch the old codger rake it in.

We often say around the table that GMoney is the most emotional poker player of the lot. When G has a bad night, everyone knows it. But in my own quiet way, I’m just as emotional as G, if not more so. The best you can say about me is that I hide it better. But when I watched Old Spice scoop my pot, I was filled with apoplectic rage. I wanted to turn the fucking table over. I wanted to set the hotel suite on fire. But table etiquette required me to take it like a man.

Still, I’m sure every player in the room could tell that I was on major tilt as I bid my farewells. The boys tried to get me to rebuy and sit in for a while longer. But there was no way in hell I could have played another hand of poker that night. The bitch had not only smacked me around, she’d put out her cigarettes on my tongue, tied me to the bed and attached jumper cables to my nuts. She’d worked me over good this time. No hiding these bruises behind sunglasses and a turtleneck.

The only solace I could take from the night was learning after the fact that Old Spice had busted out a few other players and had cashed out over $300. None of us, I can guarantee you, will ever take him for granted again.

So where I come to, after this very long and pathetic tale, is that I have reached a crossroads in my relationship with poker. I can’t go on like this any longer. I’m faced with a choice: either to break down my game completely and reinvent myself as a poker player, or walk away from the game forever.

They say that the odds against truly changing your adult personality— of overcoming your demons, if you will— are about nine to one. But if I am ever again to sit down at a poker table, that’s the challenge I face. Poker is such a personality-driven game that changing your style of play literally requires you to change who you are. You have to stop being a baby and put on your big-boy pants. But if it were easy to do, then the world would be filled with great poker players.

I can’t change poker. That bitch is who she is, and she will always do her best to destroy me. I’m the one who has to change. God help me.

Movie Review: Millions

2005-04-19T02:18:00.000-04:00

I've been an admirer of Danny Boyle for about as long as he's been a filmmaker. He first catapulted himself to attention with the gimmicky but entertaining 1994 Hitchockian thriller Shallow Grave, which also launched the career of Scottish wonderboy Ewan McGregor. Forming a creative troika of sorts with McGregor and screenwriter John Hodge, Boyle scored a triumph with his sophomore effort, the sublimely brilliant 1996 ode to junkie joy Trainspotting, which now endures as a classic of 1990s cinema. By the end of 1997 and his ambitiously flawed road romance A Life Less Ordinary, he seemed unassailably cool. And then came the Dicaprio Incident.

Read the full review at Poor Richard's Film Almanac

Overlooked in the 90s

2005-04-14T02:40:00.000-04:00

So I'm sitting on this horde of movie reviews from my old filmgeek days, and I've been wondering what to do with them. I've decided to parcel them out rather than just throw them all up on the site-- it ain't like the old days when I had more free time than I knew what to do with.

With my limited free time in mind, then, I've started a new series on Poor Richard's Film Almanac called Overlooked in the 90s. The idea is to repurpose reviews for 10 films from 1996-1999 that I feel deserve a fresh look. I've just tossed up the latest review, for the 1998 Robert Altman potboiler The Gingerbread Man. Give it a look. And remember, your mileage may vary.

Poor Richard's Roundup: April 2005

2005-04-12T03:19:00.000-04:00

A look at the theatrical releases on the docket for the remainder of April confirms my theory that 2005 is shaping up to be one of the most creatively flacid years for film in recent memory. It will be a year of small pleasures. Scouring the art houses to find this year's Sideways. Enduring countless overrated foreign dramas to uncover this year's City of God. Diehard film fans will be reduced to prospecting-- and we won't unearth many of this year's gems until we finally catch up with them on DVD.

As for Hollywood-- has their been a more yawn-inducing slate of big studio releases in recent memory? This may indeed be the year that George Lucas finally fulfills his contract with Star Wars fans by releasing a picture that delivers the emotion and high drama that we all loved about The Empire Strikes Back. But other than a few upcoming tentpole releases-- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (see below), Ridley Scott's Kingdom of Heaven, Spielberg's War of the Worlds-- there's precious little to get excited about. It's going to a long year of drudgery at the movies.

My job will be to wade through the swamp of mediocrity to bring back for you those few rare orchids. With that said, here's a look at a sampling of the notable releases for April 2005.

***Opening April 15***

Palindromes
Starring Jennifer Jason Leigh and Ellen Barkin
Directed by Todd Solondz

Remember ten years ago, when Welcome to the Dollhouse gave us hope that we had discovered a curmudgeonly combination of Woody Allen and David Lynch? Solondz must miss those days too. This 2004 film, making its theatrical debut in New York and Los Angeles after a year on the festival circuit, begins with the funeral of Dollhouse protagonist Dawn Wiener-- which is either a symbolic act of rejection of Solondz's most humanistic film, or a shameless attempt to link back to what passed for his glory days. Palindromes features a 12-year-old girl named Aviva (her name is a palindrome-- get it?), played by a succession of young and old, fat and thin actresses that includes the once-great Jennifer Jason Leigh, who encounters abortion, abuse and tragedy that rivals the worst of Solondz's dips into the cesspool of human depravity. Once lumped in with fellow misanthrope Neil LaBute, Solondz has developed a pathologic need to abuse his audience, his actors and his investors in the service of his dark art. Confrontational cinema at its best-- or worst.

VERDICT: Wait for cable.

The Amityville Horror
Starring Ryan Reynolds and Melissa George
Directed by Andrew Douglas

I read the original Jay Anson book and believed every word of it-- when I was 10! The 1979 screen version, starring James Brolin, Margot Kidder and a scenery-chewing Rod Steiger, was about as frightening as a sock puppet, but good for a few laughs. By all accounts, this no-name remake will feature lots of wretched phony scares, pointlessly ominous orchestration and plenty of CGI blood running down the walls. It's going to miss the mark entirely, which should be obvious to anyone with a brain. The Amityville Horror is not about haunted houses or demonic possession or any of that happy horseshit. Much like Tobe Hooper's infinitely superior homage Poltergeist, Amityville is really a metaphor for that sense of dread we all feel when we sign our lives away to become homehowners-- what if we really, really regret our decision? What this material needed was a complete reimagination. What it's getting is a window treatment.

VERDICT: Rent the DVD for Bad Movie Night.

***Opening April 22***

A Lot Like Love
Starring Ashton Kutcher and Amanda Peet
Directed by Nigel Cole

Cole has several airy, mildly agreeable confections to his credit, including 2000's Saving Grace and 2003's Calendar Girls, so expect more of the same from this love story that begins with a chance encounter at an airport. Those who can stomach Kutcher's presence may find something to like. As for me, Kutcher is now on my Sandler List: the list of actors whose presence precludes me from seeing a film, no matter how good it's supposed to be (i.e., Punch Drunk Love). Anyone who sees it, please feel free to write a review for the site. I'll be busy that day.

VERDICT: Avoid like an Amway salesman.

The Interpreter
Starring Nicole Kidman and Sean Penn
Directed by Sydney Pollack

Kidman is the UN interpreter who overhears an assassination plot; Penn is the detective assigned to her case. The presence of Pollack at the helm of this thriller assures us that, at the very least, it won't insult your intelligence. Likewise, the screenplay is credited to a pair of heavy hitters-- Steven Zaillian (Schindler's List, Gangs of New York) and Scott Frank (Out of Sight, Minority Report)-- as well as newcomer Charles Randolph. First rate directors, actors and screenwriters: this is the kind of picture you and I should support, even if we don't end up loving it.

Verdict: To the multiplex!

Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room
Documentary, Directed by Alex Gibney

If you love documentaries, particularly those designed to inspire moral outrage, then this picture, by the director of The Trials of Henry Kissinger, ought to fit the bill. The picture centers around the California energy crisis and Enron's wilful manipulation of the State's energy supply in order to enjoy obscene profits. It's opening in limited release, so it'll be a while before it reaches the hinterlands.

VERDICT: Top of the Netflix queue.

***Opening April 29***

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Starring Martin Freeman, Zooey Deschanel, Mos Def and Sam Rockwell
Directed by Garth Jennings

I remember vividly sitting with my little geek buddies in the theater before our 17th matinee viewing of Raiders of the Lost Ark, regaling them with tails from Douglas Adams' brilliant sci-fi spoof and having them in stitches. This 20-years-in-the-making adaptation hits me right where I live, and I can do naught but enter the theater on opening night hoping it will be brilliant. Adams himself cowrote the screenplay and was intimately involved with the production up until his 2001 death, so we have that going for us. My guess is that the purists will howl about changes, but come on-- from BBC Radio series to book to television serial, THGTTG has mutated in each incarnation. The trailer, at least, makes it appear that the filmmakers have hit the nail pretty squarely.

VERDICT: Don't panic, just get to the theater.

XXX: State of the Union
Starring Ice Cube, Samuel L. Jackson and Willem Dafoe
Directed by Lee Tamahori

As I am outside of the target demographic for this picture-- 15-year-old suburban white hip-hop boys and urban, baggy white T-shirt wearing hoods-- my opinion hardly matters. Anybody counting the days until this turkey is released ain't reading this blog, I can tell you that. Originally conceived as an action franchise for Vin Diesel, Columbia pictures is making the relatively novel attempt to build the brand without the star-- in effect, speeding up the natural evolution of the Bond franchise. Ice Cube being eminently replaceable, the franchise can now continue without succumbing to the demands of egotistical stars. If it at least makes its money back, look for 50 Cent to star in XXX: This Time It's Personal in 2007.

VERDICT: Watch only if stuck on an airplane.

Life after the Rings

2005-04-07T03:03:00.000-04:00

We all know what happened to the cast of the original Star Wars trilogy: Harrison Ford became an international superstar and sported a series of increasingly spiky haircuts; Carrie Fisher became a best-selling author, noted screenwriter, ex-Mrs. Paul Simon and train wreck; Mark Hamil became the voice of the Joker in the Batman cartoon series. Alec Guinness croaked. Billy Dee Williams did a few malt liquor ads.

Will a similar variety of fates befall the actors in this century's most beloved fantasy trilogy? Which Lord of the Rings actors will parlay their roles in Peter Jackson's fanboy opus into fame and glory, and which will fall by the wayside? One year after Return of the King laid waste to the Oscars, it's now time to take a look at which of the Fellowship have enjoyed a post-Rings bounce, and which suffered a post-Rings thud.

Sean Astin (Sam):
Remember when there was serious talk of a Best Supporting Actor nomination for Astin's soulful work as Frodo's longtime companion Sam Gamgee? Astin was probably the fourth in line for breakout potential behind Viggo Mortenson, Orlando Bloom and Elijah Wood. Unfortunately, Astin has been largely absent from the big screen since 2003. He's popped up in multiplex crap (50 First Dates) and a few straight-to-DVD releases, has several below-radar indies in various stages of production and has done a little TV work. But when's the last time you saw or thought about Sean Astin? Given his profile at the end of 2003, it's a shame he hasn't made more hay. Either he's happy living at the shallow end of the Hollywood money pool-- in which case, God bless him-- or it's time to fire his agent. GRADE: C-.

Sean Bean (Boromir):
Let's come to terms with it-- Sean Bean's Borimir was the best thing in The Fellowship of the Ring. Prior to LOTR, Bean's stock was just beginning to rise with well-received supporting parts as hammy Euro-trash villains in Ronin (1998) and the Michael Douglas vehicle Don't Say a Word (2001). Post-Rings, he's reverted back to his mid-tier player status with supporting roles in Troy and National Treasure. Seems as if he's content merely to make his mortgage payments. GRADE: B-.

Cate Blanchett (Galadriel):
Already a mid-tier star, Blanchett had a largely ceremonial roll in LOTR as one of Tolkien's gauzy, half-formed Virgin Mary stand-ins. Her recent Oscar win for channeling Katherine Hepburn cements her status as A-list talent. GRADE: A.

Orlando Bloom (Legolas):
The patron saint of teenage girls everywhere, Bloom is inarguably the premiere breakout star of the LOTR troupe. He's emerged as the poor girl's Brad Pitt, which isn't a bad place to find yourself. The smash hit Pirates of the Caribbean catapulted him onto the A list. But Pirates was really Johnny Depp's triumph-- Bloom could have been replaced by any one of a dozen Brit-sounding pretty boys, or at least by Heath Ledger. The biggest danger facing his career is that his teenaged fan base deserts him before he's established himself as a serious THES-pian. If he follows the DiCaprio game plan, he'll be fine. GRADE: A+.

Billy Boyd (Pippin):
When Boyd turned up as the coxswain in Master and Commander, possibly the best non-hobbit adventure film of the decade, the prognosis looked good. But that was a bit part, and Boyd has pretty much disappeared since then. He has a lead as a con man coming up in a comedy called Save Angel Hope, but for now, he's pretty much invisible. GRADE: D+.

Brad Dourif (Wormtongue):
Dourif has been around forever, usually showing up in scene-stealing cameos or straight-to-video releases. He's since turned up as Doc Cochran in HBO's excellent series Deadwood, where he'll be fine. GRADE: B.

Bernard Hill (Theoden):
Theoden was veteran character actor Bernard Hill's most high profile film role to date, and it's safe to say he knocked it out of the park. But Hill is what he is: a veteran character actor who makes a living in films whenever a casting agent needs a noble-sounding Brit who looks vaguely like Ernest Hemmingway. His upcoming parts in Boyd's Save Angel Hope and The League of Gentlemen's Apocalypse will keep him in the gravy. GRADE: C.

Christopher Lee (Saruman):
Christopher Lee needed no career boost from LOTR; his legend among true film fans is secure. His reprise of Count Dooku in the new Star Wars film will further burnish his mantle of greatness. GRADE: A.

Ian McKellen (Gandalf):
That's Sir Ian McKellen to you, bub. McKellen has earned his marble bust in the Geek Hall of Fame with his turns as Gandalf and the X-Men series' Magneto, two of the highest-profile roles imaginable in the realm of sci-fi and fantasy. Sir Ian has nothing left to prove. GRADE: A.

Dominic Monaghan (Merry):
Monaghan at first looked like the odd hobbit out, but now he's sitting pretty with a starring role on a hit television series. His role as ex-rocker and lovestruck junkie Charlie on ABC's Lost has made his fans forget all about Merry Brandybuck, and that's no small feat-- pun intended. GRADE: A-.

Viggo Mortensen (Aragorn):
Ah, the tragedy of wasted potential. With his smoldering, humble performance as Aragorn of Arathorn, Mortensen did for his female Gen-X fans what Orlando Bloom did for teenaged girls-- gave them the screaming thigh-sweats. Out of all the cast, he had the greatest chance to vault into Harrison Ford-level superstardom. And then came Hidalgo-- which had a few fans, but proved to Hollywood that he couldn't open a picture. Mortensen is, however, a quick study. He has wisely opted out of the box office race to try his hand in artier fare, such as the new David Cronenberg picture A History of Violence and the Spanish-language adventure Alatriste. Like water, Mortenson will seek his own level. GRADE: C.

John Noble (Denethor):
This veteran Australian television actor is a little long in the tooth to vault to any new career heights, but he'll keep working in Australia and New Zealand as long as he wants to. GRADE: C-.

Miranda Otto (Eowyn):
Otto is now poised to become Cate Blachett's understudy-- the only question is whether she truly has the goods. Her pointless part in the pointless remake Flight of the Phoenix didn't help her, but starring opposite Tom Cruise in Spielberg's War of the Worlds ought to raise her stock a little. Plus, she's a babe. GRADE: B.

John Rhys-Davies (Gimli):
Rhys-Davies exists at the same level as Bernard Hill, with extra points for playing Sallah in the Indiana Jones films. He's beloved by geeks everywhere, he'll keep working until he's dead, and always in the same bit parts. GRADE: C.

Andy Serkis (Gollum/Smeagol):
You have to hand it to Serkis-- he parlayed a thankless job as the clown wearing the motion-capture suit into serious talk of a Best Supporting Actor nod for a role in which he almost never appears on screen. Now he's back wearing the goofy motion-capture suit for Peter Jackson's King Kong, and you have to wonder if he'll do anything besides wear goofy motion-capture suits ever again. GRADE: C+.

Hugo Weaving (Elrond):
His Elrond was a bit of a cold fish, and we all got sick of Agent Smith by the end of the third Matrix film. But my hat's off to anybody who winds up with big parts in two epic fantasy trilogies simultaneously. Before LOTR and The Matrix, Weaving's highest-profile role was as a drag queen in Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. Now "Misssster AN-derssson" has entered the pop culture lexicon. Upcoming projects include films with Jackie Chan (downgrade) and Cate Blanchett (upgrade). GRADE: B+.

Liv Tyler (Arwen):
She had the worst role in the Trilogy, she can't really act, and her beauty will only carry her so far. My advice is to land a television series quickly. Boston Legal will take anybody, it seems. GRADE: D.

Karl Urban (Eomer):
In a low-key, non-Orlando Bloom kind of way, Urban has quietly established himself in Hollywood. Vaulting from an unknown Kiwi into the star of the upcoming $70 million production Doom, that ain't too bad. The movie will probably suck, but still. GRADE: B+.

David Wenham (Faramir):
Wenham has wisely gone back to his native Australia to build his career from the ground up. Starring roles in two Australian films, The Proposition and Three Dollars, will give him a leg up. He's too old to become the next Mel Gibson, but ought to be able to live off of Russell Crowe's table scraps. GRADE: C+.

Elijah Wood (Frodo):
If any of this cast was in danger of becoming the Mark Hamil of LOTR, it was Wood. He must have lain awake at night wondering if he would be forever typecast as the tousle-haired, moist-eyed hobbit with the Christ complex. He's fought against this inevitability by taking wonderful cameos in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Sin City, and he's soon set to star in Liev Schrieber's directorial debut Everything is Illuminated. I would have cast him as Jimmy Olsen in the upcoming Superman movie, but that's me. GRADE: B+.

J.R.R. Tolkien (author):
Still dead, and selling more books than ever. GRADE: A+.

Debugging my brain

2005-03-31T15:49:00.000-05:00

So Monday night, my wife Meauxjeaux and I head to the Esquire Theater in Cincinnati, ostensibly to see the new German drama Downfall, about Hitler's last days in the bunker. The Esquire is Cincinnati's lone nod to blue-state film sensibilities; the 20 of us in town that actually care about indie films can usually count on getting the cream of the crop at the Esquire about two weeks to a month after they debut in LA, New York and Chicago. Other than that, it's Hitch playing on at least three screens in every multiplex ringing the wasteland of the city's dying urban core.

The problem is, we don't actually make it into Downfall. As we're standing in line to buy tickets, a wiry little gentleman in ratty jeans and sandals approaches us.

"What movie you going to see?" He asks.

We tell him. "Oh sure, you're going to see the depressing Hitler film," he says. "Why not go see The Gospel of Lou instead? You got the writer, director and star standing right here in front of you." To seal the deal, he offered to pay our way in, and stuffed a $20 bill into my shirt pocket.

"If you don't like the film, keep the $20," he said.

He wasn't, in fact, a crackpot. His name was Bret Carr, and he is indeed the director, co-writer and star of The Gospel of Lou, a $50,000 independent production shot in and around New York City in 2003 that is, as they say, currently seeking distribution. The guy has actually made noise around Hollywood-- he first achieved notoriety when his short film the Passion of the Heist generated enough Internet buzz to get him a few meetings, an agent and mention in the Hollywood Reporter. Lou is supposed to be the vehicle that catapults him into the ranks of working indie auteurs. He had come to Cincinnati for a three-day test screening because, as he put it, "Cincinnati is the worst place in the country to debut a movie like this. If it'll make money here, it'll make money anywhere."

Duly insulted but worn down by the hard sell, we abandoned the depressing Hitler film and settled in for The Gospel of Lou. The film stars Carr as Lou, a down-on-his luck boxer with a bad stutter and an attitude problem. After receiving news that a brain aneurysm could kill him if he continues to box, Lou is forced to reinvent himself. Can Lou stop his stutter and conquer his demons before the credits roll? Cough up your eight bucks and find out.

Carr refers to Lou as "transformational cinema," and the power of personal transformation is Lou's central motif. The film revolves around a gimmicky self-therapeutic process called "Debug Your Brain," which is supposed to snap you out of whatever childhood trauma has been subconsciously informing your life and keeping you from reaching your true potential. It's Scientology for short attention spans. Apparently Carr developed the process himself out of an exercise commonly practiced in acting classes.

Like most indie films desperate for attention, the credits are lousy with name-dropping. Quinn Redeker, who has a story credit on the 1978 Michael Cimino film The Deer Hunter, receives a story credit on Lou; Bill Conti, who wrote the score for Rocky, wrote some of the music; Burt Young, who played Paulie in the same movie, has a cameo as himself.

I won't sugarcoat it: The Gospel of Lou is a clumsy, amateurish film. The script is a mess. The direction is ham-handed, with cheesy slow motion, cartoonish voice effects and the kind of reverse-negative special effects that went out of style in 1973. It has a few redeeming qualities; most of the film takes place out in the streets, giving it a brisk urban vibe that keeps things moving. Carr's performance as stuttering Lou lies somewhere between Ratzo Rizzo and Bugs Bunny, which makes him an entertaining if not entirely ludicrous character. But large swatches of the film are laughably bad.

After the screening, Carr gathered together the ten of us he had managed to rope into the theater for a little Q-and-A. He insisted again that he really was the director and star of the film, even though no one appeared to doubt his claim. He complained about the small turnout, blaming it on everything from his Marketing guy to the Final Four to the low-brow tastes of local moviegoers. No one seemed willing to ask a question. I asked him if he was four-walling the film in the hopes of getting distribution.

"Why do you want to know?" Carr asked me. "Do you have money?"

A creepy, Jeffrey Dahmer-esque guy who claimed to be a Cincinnati Police officer said the movie made him "cry like a baby." Come on, I thought to myself. It wasn't that bad. But Carr seized on the comment like a drowning man clinging to a hunk of driftwood.

"That's significant, because you represent about 100,000 cops who will feel the same way," Carr said. "Would you be willing to come back here tomorrow night, in uniform, to give a testimonial on camera?"

"Uh, urrmh," said the cop. "I don't know about in uniform..."

"You should move to New York or LA, where you could make a real difference," Carr continued.

"Excuse me," said a man in the back row. "Are you saying he can't make a difference in Cincinnati?"

"As you can see in the film, I have embraced non-violence," Carr said. "You win the argument."

Carr went on to mention all of the film festival awards his film had won, bragged about flirting with Nicole Kidman at Cannes and claimed that his next film would be a "Stars Wars type thing." He claimed to have met with Carl Lindner-- our local Mr. Burns-type billionaire-- that afternoon to discuss financing his picture. He complained about how broke he was. He hit on the lone single woman in the audience and told her he hoped he wouldn't have to spend the night alone ("This is you chance to be with a movie star who's not a movie star," he told her).

Finally he offered to lead us on an exercise of debugging our own brains. He told us to close our eyes and look up at the top of our eyelids.

"Now, when I clap my hands, I want you to shout out the first number that pops into your head," Carr instructed. He clapped his hands. "Your age!" he shouted.

"Five!" I shouted back.

"Keep your eyes closed and keep looking up at the top of your eyelids," Carr said. "Your eyes in this position simulate REM sleep, and you now have access to every subconscious memory in your brain. Now take yourself back to that day in your head where you are the age you shouted. Think about the trauma that happened to you that day, and how you keep repeating that experience in your adult life, hoping to change the outcome."

Not sure what "day" I was supposed to be thinking about, I did have a random image pop into my head-- I recalled a day when my mother took me out of the car while I was going down on a pretty big lollipop. As she took me out of the car, the lollipop fell out of my hand and landed on the filthy asphalt parking lot. I screamed and cried-- I want my lollipop! But Mom said it was too dirty to eat now, and we had to go. Devastated, I sobbed with loss and disappointment as my lollipop vanished into the mists of my subconscious mind, never to be retrieved.

That moment was the "bug" in my brain, Carr told me. Now that I had identified it, all I had to do was open my eyes, and the loss and grief of that moment would no longer consume my adult life. My mental hard drive would be reformatted.

Could it be that simple, I wondered? Could every failure in my life, every doubt and insecurity and disappointment, all stem from that fateful lollipop? Could the loss of it be the source of both my oral fixation and my debilitating fear of failure resulting in lifelong procrastination? Have I forever been afraid of reaching for another lollipop, lest I lose it all over again?

Nah, I finally decided. It was only a fucking lollipop.

The rest of the audience seemed similarly unmoved. "I couldn't think of a scene at all," Meaux told me. "Did you?"

"Yeah," I told her. "I'm cured."

Carr seemed to think he had given us all a profound gift. As he wrapped up the session, he told us, "Get everybody you know to come to this theater in the next two days and see this film. And I'm selling personal shares in The Gospel of Lou for $3,000 apiece. You can see a significant return on your investment."

I guess Carl Lindner didn't bite.

So what do I ultimately take away from this experience? Well, here's a note from someone else who attended that same screening, posted anonymously on Lou's entry page on the Internet Movie Database:

----
Bret Carr is a sad, sad, s-s-s-sad man., 26 March 2005

Author: ihatebretcarr from United States

I went to go see this at the Esquire Theatre in Cincy, OH, and - I hate my life now.

Christopher Reeves would have been a more believable boxer.

As a film it was painful, but seeing Bret Carr in person was to see desperation at its pinnacle.
My favorite part of the movie was seeing BC slammed in the face with what appeared to be a "C" battery. The jury is still out on this. It was from a dildo and it was in slow-mo. Yep.

"Shoot the left side of the face only...people become famous by demanding things!" - Bret Carr

B. Carr donned a Chicken Suit for a bit of reverse psychology, roaming the streets of Clifton bashing his own film. He should. This is correct to bash the film.

My soul felt chafed after this movie.

Bret Carr is not charismatic enough to be the leader of a cult, or smart enough for that matter. That is the feeling you get from the What the Bleepesque trickle of brainwashed, impressionable neo-yuppies that came to see this Bret Carr Piece of Work.

It's an emotionally draining experience just thinking about writing about this film, so goodbye.
----

I find it hard to argue with this assessment. The short answer to the question above is that I got talked out of seeing the film I wanted to see in order to placate a publicity-hungry charlatan and sit through a wretched and doggedly amateurish film that has zero chance of finding a distribution deal. I've met a lot of would-be filmmakers in my day (I was once one of them), and Bret Carr fits the bill: unpleasant, egotistical, condescending and possessed of a near-mystical belief in his own abilities that far outstrips his actual talent. That he persistently dogged my hometown, troubled and pathetic as it so often is, made me dislike the man. Fuck you if you don't like it here, mac. Go back to New York and peddle your piece-of-shit film there.

But I'll say this for Carr, and for others of his ilk: unlike you, me and the million other wannabes who have dreamed about making movies, Carr actually got his film made. It's in the can. As awful as it is, the picture exists, and the physical fact of its making will open doors for Carr and set events in motion that he can't anticipate. Maybe he'll eventually slip back beneath the surface of the ocean of mediocrity with the rest of us. Maybe he'll continue to shill his Debugging process and become the next L. Ron Hubbard.

Or maybe, just maybe, he'll make it. He certainly has the balls, if not the talent. In Hollywood, you can get by without talent. But without balls, you're dead meat. If balls and attitude are enough, then I'll be able to say I met Bret Carr on the way up-- even if his movie did stink on ice.

I kept his $20, by the way. Small compensation for the 90 minutes of my life that I'll never get back. But it'll never make up for the tragic lollipop loss that haunts me to this very day.

Bottom feeding in March

2005-03-28T03:30:00.000-05:00

Once upon a time, you could count on a few good mainstream releases hitting the box office in March. January was traditionally Oscar-nomination catch up month; February was "Shit Can" month, the time when studios dumped their obvious bombs and cheapo horror films into the multiplex hospice and then quickly pulled life support.

But by March, you could count on seeing at least one tentpole film released in the hopes of building up early word of mouth and ruling the box office until the big May releases. For example: The Matrix debuted in March of 1999; Erin Brockovich in March 2000; Memento in 2001; Blade II in 2002; American Splendor in 2003; Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind in 2004. All of these releases were either solid popcorn fare or smart indies looking to break out. Every year, we had at least one decent release to get us through the Ides of March.

(By the way, you have to love the Internet Movie Database. Only on IMDB could you learn that Masturbation: Putting the Fun Into Self Loving made its auspicious debut in 2004.)

By contrast, take a look at what's playing at my local gigaplex this week:

The Aviator
Be Cool
Constantine
Diary of a Mad Black Woman
Guess Who
Hitch
Hostage
Ice Princess
Million Dollar Baby
Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous
The Pacifier
The Ring Two
Robots
Sideways

It's nice, I suppose, that three high-caliber Oscar winners-- The Aviator, Baby and Sideways-- are still in front of the masses at this late date. Nothing wrong with that. The month's two major studio releases are both sequels-- Be Cool and The Ring 2-- and both of them blow. Robots? eh. Constantine? pee-eew.

That leaves us with a slew of brain-dead comedies, a routine Bruce Willis vehicle and a Disney picture aimed at tweens. Not much to choose from if your cerebral cortex is still in good working order. Thank God for Sin City, which bows on April 1; advance word says it's a sight to behold. After that, I'll be haunting my local indie theater until Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy launches at the end of the month. Thus far, 2005 is looking like slim pickings.

Fuck Blockbuster up the ass

2005-03-23T02:53:00.000-05:00

I mean it. No doubt you've seen the latest example of Blockbuster's death throes: the new television commercials in which hordes of rapturous Blockbuster cultists do the Safety Dance to the idea of watching unlimited movies for a mere $14.99 a month. Blockbuster is waging a campaign of desperation against the infinitely superior Netflix online service, hoping to milk a few more dollars out of us junkies before they finally go the way of the dodo bird.

To the impartial observer, Blockbuster's offer isn't bad. For a mere 15 bones a month, you can watch as many movies as you want-- keep out three at a time from their online service or one at a time from the brick-and-mortar stores. You can watch movies until your eyes bleed. You can host your very own Adam Sandler film festival. You can keep White Chicks in your DVD player for a whole year if you want. What's not to love?

I'll tell you what's not to love. For many, many years, Blockbuster was the only game in my town, and probably yours. Oh sure, you could always slink into Hollywood Video, the K-Mart to Blockbuster's Wal-Mart. Or you could patronize the local mom-and-pop and try to score their one copy of The Two Towers while skirting past the pervs creeping into the adult section in the curtained-off rear of the store. But if you craved reasonable access to the latest Hollywood releases, it was pretty much Blockbuster or nothing.

And what did those motherfuckers do? They soaked us for late fees for years. I personally could have purchased a brand new Ford Expedition with the amount of money I donated to those bastards in late fees. When you returned the movie a month late and tried to rent another one, the weasily clerks made you grovel like a slave while you ponied up the $28 late fee just so you could rent Clerks. If your rental return was so late that you avoided Blockbuster out of embarrassment, they then sent collection agencies after you to collect the late fees as if they were credit card debt. They were to customer service what the Exxon Valdez was to the Alaskan shoreline.

And now they want to play all nice and let us have as many movies as we want for a low monthly fee? I have two words for Blockbuster: fuck you. Eat shit and die, you worthless cocksuckers. Karma has finally come around to bite you in the ass. You're scared; I can see it in your eyes. And when your awful blue-and-yellow bandboxes are finally empty husks, and we're all downloading the latest releases straight to our TiVos from our favorite online service, I will personally stop by the boarded-up Blockbuster store closest to my home, and piss on your grave. It will be no less than you deserve.

So why another movie review site?

2005-03-20T18:25:00.000-05:00

So here's what happened. In 1995, I was a budding writer and day-job sufferer who started sending out weekly movie reviews to a small e-mail list. After a about a year of this, a web-savvy buddy suggested that I create a web site to host my reviews. So I did a little research, scored a free copy of Frontpage and found a friend who was willing to let me hitch a free ride on his web server. I secured the domain name www.filmgeek.com (if you go there now, you'll see an atrocious site that I have nothing to do with), and I was in business.

From 1996 to 2001, filmgeek grew in scope and popularity. I was a well-regarded member of the internet film community, was a member of several online critics groups, and started receiving Academy screeners in the mail every Oscar season. I was also making a tidy chunk of change every month. Not enough to quit my day job, you understand... but enough to support my movie habit, pay for site support and put a few dollars in my pocket.

The height of my time as the Film Geek came in late 2000. I was approached by a vice president at the Digital Entertainment Network (DEN.com) named Scott Immergut, who asked me if I'd be interested in selling filmgeek. Uh, maybe, I said. What are you offering?

Negotiations began in earnest. I closed the deal to sell filmgeek and become the full-time, paid film critic for DEN.com. My dream come true, right? The goal had always been to eventually break through the brick wall that separates "legitimate" film critics from the hobbyists, and I had done it. I remember closing the deal by cell phone at a spring training game between the Reds and the Rangers in Sarasota; I missed a crucial Barry Larkin homer in the 5th inning while I was on the phone with Immergut. I had finally reached the big time.

But alas, I had flown too close to the sun. A few weeks later-- one day after my first official day as a full time film critic-- Immergut called me and said, "I'm sorry, Rick. We just closed our doors and fired all of our employees. We're out of business."

It's true. DEN.com turned out to be one of the more spectacular flameouts of the dot-com bust. The company had been backed by some heavy hitters-- Ford Motor Company and Coca Cola, to name a few, and the company's lofty goal was to become the first broadcast entertainment network on the web. But they burnt through $30 million of investment capital in just two years without turning a dime of profit or coming up with a business model that even approached reality. I got there just in time to see it all come crashing to the ground.

Needless to say, I was crushed. And then something else happened: I got divorced. Never mind the sordid details; suffice it to say that for the next six months or so, my personal and professional life descended into chaos. I rediscovered drugs and alcohol. My friends didn't know me any more. And in the middle of the madness, my domain name, filmgeek.com, came up for renewal. I didn't even realize I had lost it until three months after some pinhead snatched it up for himself.

I spent the next year or so putting my life back together. I started a new relationship with a fabulous, intelligent babe. I got a new job working for Major League Baseball, which occupied about 16 hours a day of my life during the season. The idea of going back to writing reviews for the web seemed ridiculous-- that was a part of my old life. I pretty much stopped going to the movies altogether.

Fast forward to 2005. I'm remarried to that same fabulous babe. I'm director of marketing for a marketing firm, I'm a new homeowner and I'm thinking about a family. Life is good again. Over the past six months or so, I started to get the itch to write about film again. Friends have encouraged me to give it another shot. And then, in a moment of narcissism, I googled myself and found this:

An homage to yours truly

I took this as a sign that it was time to get back to my one true writing love: bullshitting about movies. So here's the new site. Hope you you like it. E-me if you you have any questions or comments... more later.

Welcome to Poor Richard's Movie Blog

2005-02-28T21:16:00.000-05:00

This blog is coming soon. Please try to refrain from rending your garments and pulling out large clumps of hair as you anxiously await its coming.