Lindsey came over yesterday evening for dinner and a movie. We made spaghetti with the help of the oh-so-delicious Kraft Tangy Italian seasoning mix. It is by far my favorite spaghetti sauce. Now if only they made it in a jar…sigh.

After eating tasty food, we watched FORGETTING SARAH MARSHALL. I’ve seen it five or six times, but Lindsey hadn’t. I didn’t mind watching it again because it is so fucking awesome. Mila Kunis and Kristen Bell are hot, the script is witty, and Jason Segal and the other performers give hilarious performances. And the movie features a musical about Dracula. Performed by puppets. It’s the best idea in the history of the world, I think. Except for perhaps Snuggie. If Jason Segal would actually make a fully-realized Dracula musical with puppets I would totally fly out to Los Angeles or New York or whererever to see it.

Speaking of Snuggies, Lindsey got a little chilly during the movie:

That’s right: I own a Snuggie. Sod off, if you don’t like it. At least I can read a book or lift weights without my arms getting cold.

Everyone has a list of Christmas movies/specials that they tend to watch from year-to-year, right? Shows like that annoying RUDOLPH THE RED-NOSED REINDEER (just hand Rudolph some Sudafed and send his retarded ass packing), or A CHARLIE BROWN CHRISTMAS (one day Charlie Brown is going to show up with a roomsweeper, and all of his “friends” will immediately regret how they’ve treated him for the last sixty years).

Yeah, most of those Christmas specials suck. They’re cheesy and sappy, and generally involve the protagonist being shat upon by all the other characters, at least until the end, when everyone learns their lessons and become friends. They aren’t all bad or completely lacking in redeemable qualities, but they are a dime a dozen.

That said, here is my list of Christmas shows that I try to watch most years. The mix is somewhat eclectic, the sappiness is present but at a low, tolerable level, and the word “fuck” is used in three out of five of ‘em.

ERNEST SAVES CHRISTMAS

The late Jim Varney made many awesome movies as Ernest P. Worrell before making quite a few awful ones. This is one of the awesomes. Santa is being forced out by the Powers That Be, and Ernest must help convince Santa’s successor that he has the Right Stuff to take on the job. Despite all the silly physical humor you would expect, this film has a number of witty ideas that are executed well.

HE-MAN & SHE-RA: A CHRISTMAS SPECIAL

This one is a courtly tip o’ the hat to my childhood because, honestly, it’s quite dreadful to watch now. It’s saving grace is that, mercifully, it’s only 45 minutes long. I would try to recap its plot, which mixes Castle Grayskull with Santa Clause and Jesus, but Matt at X-Entertainment does a much better job. HM&SR:ACS has a number of “memorable” moments, including a truly sappy and awful Christmas song, but one of my favorite scenes is when Skeletor learns the true meaning of Christmas:

DIE HARD

Terrorists that are funny, Bruce Willis as the ultimate “normal guy” hero, and the best use of the word “fuck” ever in a Christmas movie — DIE HARD is hella-fuckin, balls-to-the-wall awesome. And who doesn’t tear up at the “Ho ho ho, now I have a machine gun” scene?

NATIONAL LAMPOON’S CHRISTMAS VACATION

My favorite Christmas movie, and a really great movie on its own. It is hilarious, eminently quotable, and illustrates not just how awesome Chevy Chase is, but how Randy Quaid as Cousin Eddy can steal the show from him:

If you haven’t seen CHRISTMAS VACATION, then I honestly don’t know what the fuck is wrong with you, and you need to watch it. Right now.

WHITE CHRISTMAS

As Clark Griswold would say, it’s the movie where “Bing Crosby tap-danced with Danny Fucking Kaye.” The only truly traditional “old school” entry on my list, I generally watch this on Christmas Eve at my parents’ house. I have a fondness for films from the “golden era of Hollywood” anyway, so this one is quite watchable, and it shows that I’m not a completely cynical bastard.

I saw AVATAR over the weekend, and like I said on Twitter, “If THE LAST SAMURAI and FERNGULLY: THE LAST RAINFOREST hooked up one night, AVATAR would be their delightful bastard spawn.”

It’s a good movie, but seriously, James Cameron — was it really necessary to inflict the Papyrus font on us? Hasn’t it been used to death enough already? Wasn’t there a better choice of typeface available to you to use for AVATAR’s logo and subtitles other than a slight variation of fucking Papyrus?

For those who don’t know, Papyrus is one the most over-used fonts in the world. A day probably doesn’t go by that you won’t encounter Papyrus used on some form of sign, website, corporate logo, or product. A quick google actually reveals an entire website dedicated to the subject.

As gripes go, I suppose this is fairly small. AVATAR is pretty stunning. I just wish that at some point during the 14 years it took to make the film, someone would have had the balls to say,” Oh yeah. Totally sweet logo. Wait…doesn’t it kinda look a lot like the label on my delicious Snapple Red Tea?”

Or maybe there just wasn’t enough money left in the $350 million budget to buy a typeface that didn’t come with the standard Windows fontpack.

Sitting on the couch as I type this, and drinking tea. Was seated at the kitchen table earlier, clickety-clacketying away, but the window there apparently isn’t sealed as well as it should be, and it was starting to get a bit drafty.

THE NINTH GATE is playing on the TV, more for background noise than anything. I have seen it probably sixty times or so, and know much of it by heart.

(“You don’t like me very much, do you Mister Corso?”

“I don’t have to like you. You’re a client, and you pay well.”)

I have a strange love for THE NINTH GATE. It’s certainly not the best of Polanski’s films. CHINATOWN and ROSEMARY’S BABY would probably be considered those. Oh, and THE PIANIST (which I don’t care for particularly, but it did win a couple of Oscars and others seemed to really like it, so I suppose if should be included). CHINATOWN is one of my favorite films, and I’ve seen it several times. But it’s not a movie I’m compelled to watch on a regular basis. A viewing every couple of years is more than sufficient. I’ve only seen ROSEMARY’S BABY once, but that one time was very good.

But something about TNG (heh) keeps drawing me back to it time and again. It’s got a lot of things to like about it:

1) the marriage of the world of antiquarian bookselling with a supernatural story centered on the devil;
2) a noir atmosphere very reminiscent of CHINATOWN;
3) Polanski’s flawless directing;
4) Johnny Depp performing the main character as a bastard so well; and
5) last but not least, the wonderful book that the movie is based on: THE CLUB DUMAS, by Arturo Perez-Reverte.

So for many reasons, THE NINTH GATE is one of my favorite films, even though at this point it’s inadvertently become more of a comfort movie than anything. These days it tends to play in the background while I’m doing something else, such as it is today, or at night if I’m having trouble sleeping, rather than it being something I actively sit down to watch.

There is more I was going to write about, such as progress on my project of a novel-ish nature, as well as some thoughts on how I might start blogging in the future, but my knob-slobbering of THE NINTH GATE went on longer than I’d anticipated. So those will have to wait for future posts. Other things are now calling my attention.

Still ill. Not as bad yesterday, thank gods, but am still pretty un-good.

I didn’t go to work yesterday, as all I was really up for was sleeping and puking, and for some reason they frown on this at the job. Instead, while trying to kill brain and body with a number of drugs, I halfway watched 20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA and THE LAST STARFIGHTER. I have seen both several times so I didn’t feel compelled to follow them very closely, which I think is always best when you’re sick. In fact I think I mostly listened to THE LAST STARFIGHTER as I was really out of it for that one.

After slogging my way through work today, my plans tonight consist of making instant mashed potatoes and trying to sit through INTO THE BLUE 2: THE REEF. It doesn’t appear that Paul “Dude, I’m not a buster, bro!” Walker is in this cleverly titled sequel, and I’m honestly not sure if that will make the movie better or worse.

Earlier this year Sarah and I got hammered and watched MAY, some lameass horror movie Sarah picked off of her infamous “horror movie spreadsheet.” It was terrible; the only cool aspect was Anna Faris, who played a hot lesbian. But even this wasn’t enough to elevate the movie to “watchable.”

Afterwords, we decided it would be a good idea to write a review for Amazon.com, so that others would be forewarned as to as to how crappy MAY was, and thus might not rent it. (Honestly, illegally downloading the movie wouldn’t even make the endeavor worthwhile.) Our review lasted about five minutes on Amazon, most likely due to the fact that there was a bunch of swearing and I likened watching the movie to watching a dragon fuck a car.

This morning I found a copy of that review on my lappy, buried for some reason in a sub-subfolder. So for your reading pleasure, I submit the following:

MAY was in two words, boring and terrible. Possibly not in that order. As I write this, I consider this movie to be one of the greatest debacles in Hollywood’s long, glorious history.

No, no. That’s giving the movie too much credit. I’d rather watch a video clip of a dragon having sex with a Honda (splooge and all) than this piece of shit, waste of a perfectly good 99 cent DVD.

Where was I?

Oh yes. MAY’s sole redeeming quality (and I do mean sole) is the half-hearted lesbian tryst. Anna Ferris is a total babe. In fact, if she were our president, she’d be Babraham Lincoln. And probably still a hell of a lot better than George W. Bush.

Seriously. Fuck this movie, and fuck you if you decide to watch it after this oh-so-eloquent review.

Really…fuck you.

That title is not really being fair to the new Bond movie, QUANTUM OF SOLACE; I just wanted to be like every film critic out there and make some sort of derogatory pun off the film’s title.

QUANTUM is actually a perfectly serviceable action movie, plenty full of chases, hand-to-hand fights, and choppy editing. It’s barely recognizable as a Bond film, though. Aside from the character’s name, penchant for banging attractive women he’s known all of five minutes, and wrinkly old, party-pooper M, Daniel Craig’s James Bond could really be any other tortured action hero out there. Like Jason Bourne.

And that’s where this movie ultimately fails. It so desperately wants to Be like the BOURNE movies it forgot what’s supposed to make it a James Bond movie: a sense of fun. Even during CASINO ROYALE, as dark and violent as it was, you never forgot you were watching a 007 movie. This was a new Bond, a younger, more violent and raw chap, but you felt like you were watching a Bond in training. In QUANTUM — the first direct sequel in the Bond pantheon — all of this is thrown out the window. Bond spends most of the film miserable and vengeful, intent on hunting down the organization that killed the only woman he ever loved in the first film.

In the end, he does succeed in bringing in the man responsible, but he’s not any happier for it, and certainly no closer to being the James Bond we’re used to seeing. Hopefully the next film — which I’m sure is already being planned — will change this.

Charlton Heston is dead:

Charlton Heston, who won the 1959 best actor Oscar as the chariot-racing “Ben-Hur” and portrayed Moses, Michelangelo, El Cid and other figures in movie epics of the ’50s and ’60s, has died. He was 84.

The actor died Saturday night at his home in Beverly Hills with his wife Lydia at his side, family spokesman Bill Powers said.

[. . .]

With his large, muscular build, well-boned face and sonorous voice, Heston proved the ideal star during the period when Hollywood was filling movie screens with panoramas depicting the religious and historical past. “I have a face that belongs in another century,” he often remarked.

Publicist Michael Levine, who represented Heston for about 20 years, said the actor’s passing represented the end of an iconic era for cinema.

“If Hollywood had a Mt. Rushmore, Heston’s face would be on it,” Levine said. “He was a heroic figure that I don’t think exists to the same degree in Hollywood today.”

Heston was one of my favorite actors. His historical films like THE TEN COMMANDMENTS and BEN-HUR were sweet, but my favorites were his later, sci-fi stuff: PLANET OF THE APES, SOYLENT GREEN (which I wrote about here a couple of months ago), and THE OMEGA MAN.

Everyone remembers Heston as a crazy sort of gun nut who chaired the NRA for a number of years, but back in the Fifties he was an activist in the civil rights movement, publicly speaking out against segregation before it was fashionable in Hollywood and marching with Martin Luther Kin Jr in Washington D.C.

Charlton Heston was a badass, a man’s man. His death, though not unexpected, is still very sad news.

JAB

Does it make me a bad person because I don’t see anything inherently wrong with the idea behind Soylent Green?

For those who haven’t ever seen it and don’t wish to know the big “secret” of the film, I suggest not reading on. Continue at your own peril. Ye be warned.

Well, I guess I’m really not a nice guy, since I think turning people into processed food is a perfectly marvelous idea. Which is what happens in the dystopic future Soylent Green is set in. (If you’d like to read a nice summary of the film, I suggest Wikipedia.)

This should not, however, be confused with me proclaiming that we should give carte blanche to the Powers That Be to turn old people into food for the rest of us. Though that might be the perfect way to turn homeless people and people constantly on welfare into productive members of society.

Kidding.

First, let me provide a little bit of info about the film so that maybe you’ll understand what the hell I’m talking about. In a horrible future (2022, I believe), the environment is decaying, disease runs rampant, and the world is in the throes of massive overpopulation — so much so, that stairways of apartment buildings are packed full of homeless people — and the government has had to resort to creative, authoritarian methods to keeps things running. Not running smoothly, but just running. One company, the Soylent Corporation, produces these sort of nutrient wafers that feed over half the world’s population. Throughout the film, the main character, a detective (played by my man, Charlton Heston), tries to unravel the mystery surrounding the murder of a man on the Soylent board of directors. Stuff happens, more people die, Heston bangs a hot piece of “furniture” (def. “an attractive young woman who serves as both domestic help and sex object to the rich” — who says the future is all bad, eh? Again with the kidding.) at the dead man’s apartment, and then he winds up at a dead-body-disposal/food-manufacturing plant. Here he discovers, egads, that “Soylent Green is people!”

It’s at this point in the movie that I find myself, not shocked or horrified, but saying, “So what?” I think it’s a great idea that shows foresight, ingenuity, and an ability to make hard decision. As I see it, turning dead people into food for the starving, teeming masses is just another form of recycling. Really, where is the logic in trying to dispose of a bunch of corpses in a future where space is already at a premium? That’s about as logical as sticking your head up a butcher’s ass to get a look at t-bone steak, instead of taking the cow’s word for it.

To be fair, the film does try to twist the knife a little more near the end. Heston prophesies that soon, “they’ll be turning people into cattle.” This could be a valid concern, and I would have some issues with that. Recycling dead people and breeding humans for slaughter are two entirely different matters . . . though both have some merit.

Overall, the film is pretty damn effective. It’s an engaging sci-fi noir, and probably more importantly, it serves as a thoughtful warning of what might happen if the human race keeps on raping the Earth — or waterboarding Gaia, if you prefer — the way it has been since the Industrial Revolution.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to make myself a snack. All this talk of food is making me hungry.

JAB

. . . at least that’s what I think I should be saying, except I’m not.

I’ve been stoked about Indy IV since it was first announced, back in ‘00. This excitement has grown exponentially since then, especially this year, since the movie is coming out in a little over three months. The teaser trailer was released today and I just watched it, as you now can below:

And now I’m a little unsettled, like someone’s whispering in my ear but I’m alone. Or like when every time I watch el Jefe Bush speak, my stomach mildly churns, and I wonder, How could so many people have voted for this man . . . twice?

Sure, it makes me all goose-pimplely, as it should. But it just feels . . . off. I don’t know if it’s just that it’s been so damn long since a new Indiana Jones film (nearly 20 years), or if it’s that the bits of film featured in the trailer look too polished. Too cartoony. Almost like a caricature of an Indy film.

Perhaps I’m reading too much into it. After all, it’s only maybe a minute’s worth of actual footage. The film is still at the rough cut stage; the entire tone of the film could change drastically between now and May 22nd. Regardless, I’ll still be in theaters at midnight on May 21st.

But, man. I still got chills — the good kind — when John Williams’s awesome score faded in . . .

JAB