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Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back

05 Jul

Today is Independence Day: the day when, 236 years ago, our forefathers signed a Declaration of Independence from their evil overlords, the English.  I thought it appropriate and, also, slightly ironic to choose this night as the night I watch the tale of another rebellion.  Sadly, their tale ends (temporarily) in defeat, doled out by the hands of an evil lord.

[Hands — because one gets cut off!  Right?  Guys?]

One more thing before I hit play: Empire magazine, way back in 2008, said that this was the Third Best Movie of All Time, behind The Godfather as number one, and Raiders of the Lost Ark as number two.  That is pretty steep for me – I LOVE Raiders of the Lost Ark.  So much so, I almost want to make business cards that proclaim me to be an Obtainer of Rare Antiquities.  Because how awesome would that be?

Okay – now I’ll push play.  Right after I pour a gin and tonic.  (What?  It’s the Fourth of July and I don’t like beer.)

Okay, I get why Star Wars began with “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away …”, but shouldn’t Empire begin “A long time ago {but not as long as the last movie}” yada yada?  No?  Am I being too picky?  Okay, fine, I’ll shut up.

ROLLING CREDIT THINGY TRANSCRIPTION!:
[Wow, my TV is super loud.] 

Episode V
THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK
It is a dark time for the Rebellion.  Although the Death Star has been destroyed, Imperial troops have driven the Revel forces from their hidden base and purused thema cross the galaxy.

Eveading the dreaded Imperaial starfeleed, awoijfaerawgokjwerg;lkj GIVE UP PATTERSON

Apparently, the Rebel Base is located on Hoth [but where’s the Revel Base?  Can I go to there?], and Darth Vader has sent a shitload of probes into the galaxy to find Luke, in order to punish him for blowing up his Death Star. 

Hey it’s Luke!  And he’s riding — yes, I know it’s a Tauntaun, but can I just play dumb for another thirty seconds and make a Huge Kangaroo joke?

NEVER MIND BETTER JOKES AHEAD so Luke’s talking to his best friend Han on their super-cool wrist communicators, and Luke’s Tauntaun rears its head, and Luke asks it if it smelled something, and I was about to make a “He who smelt it dealt it” joke when LUKE GETS SIDESWIPED BY A FUCKING YETI

Note to self: Tauntauns can smell Yetis, but apparently not hear their approach or warn anyone about the Yeti’s proximity to its rider.  Good to know.  Meanwhile, the Yeti has knocked Luke unconscious and is dragging him away to somewhere.

Han returns to the rebel base and is calling for his other best friend, Chewie.  Han is deserting the rebels because Boba Fett is still looking for him to collect the debt he owes to Jabba the Hut.  As he’s saying his goodbyes, he gets pissed at Leia for not making a bigger scene, and dares her to tell him to stay for her, and not for the rebel alliance.  Hm…

My hmm stems from: that’s not how a typical hero acts towards his woman.  I mean — oh man, I’m not going to explain this right, am I?  Look, guys?  Pardon me while I try and work out some feels over here.  Han Solo is the typical, brutish, strong hero – witty, quick on his feet, battle-weary yet still battle-ready.  Good at his job (best pilot in this ‘verse, at least).  And he’s telling Leia that he knows how she feels and he wants her to admit it.  Why?  Does Han reciprocate the feelings, and wants to know he won’t be rejected first (which, in itself betrays some vulnerability in Han)?  Does he suspect but isn’t sure?  Or, much like Paul Varjak did in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, is he trying to show Leia how oblivious she is to the love he has for her?  I — I have seen too many movies, yet not enough, that I am pleasantly surprised at this characterization.

It also makes me wonder what the hell happened to George Lucas in the interim.  Because seriously, ten minutes into this movie and I’m waxing philosophical on it, whereas Phantom Menace had me napping during the Pod race.  Twice.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA  I’m sorry, I’m sorry — I’m a horrible person.  Luke’s strapped to the ceiling, and he’s doing his Jedi Mind Trick to grab his lightsabre,, and ALL I CAN SEE IN MY HEAD is Silent Bob, using his own version of the Jedi Mind Trick to get the videotape of Shannon and Trish.  I knew what the Mallrats scene was referencing all these years, but even so — it took me by surprise. 

I really feel the need to watch Mallrats now.

Was that the Yeti’s right hand?  Jeez, George Lucas — or should I call you Freddie Foreshadowing?  But seriously, do you have some mental block when it comes to always wanting to cut peoples’ right arms off?

Okay wow – nothing to snark at, nothing to joke about.  This is totally engrossing me.  So I’m at the part where Han is getting Leia and Chewie and 3P0 out on the Falcon — so yeah, I’ve skipped a lot, but again, not too much to talk about, which is good — but here’s my question: why are the Storm Troopers wearing those cape thingies?  Because you know what they look like?  Klan members.  And that’s not a good look for anyone, even idiots that can’t hit the side of a barn with their blasters.

And then Han goes through the asteroid field and tells C-3P0 to never tell him the odds, and now Luke is crash-landing on Dagobah. 

Yoda’s a little hellraiser, ain’t he?  I kinda like this Yoda.  The Prequel!Yoda was way too stuffy.

I am like Princess Leia in that I, too, need more scoundrels in my life.

Dear Ben Kenobi: I have watched the prequels.  And, granted, I did not see you in your training period.  But when the fuck were you ever reckless?  I mean, sure, you broke with the Jedi to go and rescue Amidala or whatever happened in Attack of the Clones, but — you were the one always reining Ani back from the brink.  You calling yourself reckless is not a good selling point for me.

And look, that’s not a knock to Obi Wan’s character – that’s a knock on George Lucas’s shitty writing.

Holy shit the cave was a sandworm?  [That’s a very stupid sentence I just wrote.]

Okay, COOLEST THING EVER — Luke just fuckin lightsaber’d Darth Vader’s head off in his Dagobah hallucination fight scene, and at the same time in REAL LIFE, a crack of heat lightening (or, now that I hear the thunder, real lightening) shot through the sky.  It was AWESOME and I swear I am NOT MAKING THAT UP.

Now, is this the part where Yoda says that he has done the impossible, and that makes him mighty?  Because that would be awesome.

[Forty minutes of awesomeness later]
I think that says it all.  All the jokes, references — a lot of literature, to be honest — they all make sense now.  I was pleased that I was aware of 90% of the story before actually watching it, which only goes to prove my theory that I don’t actually have to watch any of these movies — that the plots and references are imprinted in my brain, like some cultural brain sludge, and we all know all of this and it’s only when we watch the source material do they resonate. 

Honestly, I kind of wish that I had sent back A New Hope sooner, because that would mean I could watch Return of the Jedi later.  But in a way, it’s good that I have to wait.  For one thing, I’m almost falling asleep while typing these paragraphs, and I never did finish my gin and tonic.

Grade for The Empire Strikes Back: Awesome.

 
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Posted by on July 5, 2012 in Star Wars

 

Insomniac Theatre: “The Virgin Queen”

27 Jun

This feels weird.  I’m writing an Insomniac Theatre post at … 4:17 p.m.  This is, like, the opposite of “Insomniac.”  But the fact remains that I have a shit-ton of movies stored on Jeremy the TiVo, and I have approximately forty days in which to eliminate them.  So prepare to be spammed with random TCM jewels, dear readers.  (And when you get back from England, Sarah, is when I’ll watch Rubber.  Because by that time, I’ll have had enough with black and white movies and will need a decidedly weird and gory break.)

On the last Insomniac Theatre, I watched The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex.  Which y’all probably realize, as it’s the post directly underneath this one.  Well, the night it originally aired on TCM, they did a double feature of Times Bette Davis Played Elizabeth I.  I figured, “Hey, why not?” and ended up taping both.  So … here’s the second one!

HOLY SHIT JOAN COLLINS IS IN THIS MOVIE!?  YOU GUYS, there’s gonna be TONS of FACE-SLAPPING.

Seeing as how the last movie I watched had similar plot points (I’m guessing — I haven’t exactly hit ‘play’ yet), I’m just going to jump right into the live-blog-recap.  So, without further ado, the synopsis according to the imdb.:

Sir Walter Raleigh overcomes court intrigue to win favor with the Queen in order to get financing for a proposed voyage to the New World.

But … hm.  I hope Richard Todd does a good job, because for the past couple of weeks I’ve been associating Sir Walter Raleigh with Sir Vincent Price.  What kind of favor are we talking about, here?  Because all I can think now is that it’s going to be creepy.

According to Robert Osbourne, this is the performance Bette Davis preferred when she played Queen Elizabeth, but we have to decide for ourselves which is our favorite.  *shrugs*  Okay, Osbourne, whatever you say.

The credits roll over a rich blue tapestry and a sword in a scabbard.  It brings to mind the opening credits to Disney’s Sleeping Beauty, another movie I haven’t watched in quite a while.  That right there is one of my all-time favorite movies from childhood.  Speaking of, have you guys seen the stills of Angelina Jolie as Maleficent?  GOD I cannot wait for that movie.  Maleficent is one of my favorite villains.  I want to be her when I grow up.  I mean, she has minions, and she can turn into a dragon, and she has an over-developed sense of vengeance, and — oh, she dies in the end?  Yeah, but she dies with a SWORD thrown into her HEART.  Talk about a way to go.

Man.  I should really watch Sleeping Beauty again … maybe I’ll create a category for Movies Alaina’s Seen a Lot?  Because dudes, if I did that?  The inaugural post would be on Spaceballs, which is apparently 25 years old today. 

Oh shit the movie’s actually starting now.

In 1581 all the roads of England led to London — for better or worse. 

And there’s a coach and four driving rapidly through a rainstorm on a muddy road, and it doesn’t quite look like a British landscape, but what do I know, I’ve never been to England.  The wheels of the coach get stuck in some mud, and a dude jumps out of the coach to assess the situation.

“Tis but a pothole, Ned!  Whip them on!”  Okay, a) of all: I’m not sure that whatever those types of sinkholes where, they were called ‘potholes’ — I’m pretty sure that word came about later than 1581.  Of course, I don’t have an Oxford English Dictionary on hand, so I can neither confirm nor deny that assumption.  And secondly — in my head, I just went “Tis but a scratch!” and then proceeded to recite the remainder of the Black Knight scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.  And that’s another movie I haven’t seen in a long time.

Everybody associated with the coach jumps out and proceeds to this big house about five hundred yards away.  When they get to the house, it appears to be either a tavern or an inn or possibly an inn with a tavern in it, because there are a lot of people drinking at tables in there, and also two couples macking on each other in the back.  Apparently one of the guys in the coach is a Lord, because everyone calls him Milord. 

What the fuck?  Some dude who’s been macking on a girl in the dark corner of this tavern-inn, when he hears the Lord announce that he’s on the Queen’s business he leaves the girl and asks the tavern-innkeeper why he’s not sending help to get the Lord’s coach out of the mud.  And the tavern-innkeeper says something about how he hates the court and they can all go fuck themselves (I’m paraphrasing), and then he punches the guy in the nose with his sword.  AND THEN THEY START SWORD FIGHTING. 

DUDES THE GUY IS SWORD FIGHTING A GUY WITH AN EYE PATCH.  There’s a joke in here about pirates with bad depth perception, but I think I’m not tired enough to find it.

The guy disarms the tavern-innkeeper — oh, he’s saying something about the Irish Wars, which tells me that this movie is supposed to take place after the events of Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex?  WHICH DOESN’T MAKE SENSE, because according to the timestamp in that movie, the events there took place in 1596!  SHENANIGANS

Apparently the sword-fighter was Walter Raleigh.  Anyway, he gets all the innkeeper people to get the coach out of the mud.  The Milord recognizes Raleigh and says that he can visit him at Whitehall in three days.  Raleigh’s friend tries to get more gold out of Milord, but Raleigh pushes the friend into the mud to shut him up.  Nice friend.

Raleigh goes to see Milord, and asks to see the Queen.  Milord warns Raleigh of wanting that, because the Queen is felicitous and flighty.  Or, rather, something about having whims and wisdom.  But Raleigh is determined to make his way in the world, so Milord sends him to a tailor to get better clothes.  Raleigh wants a pretty cloak to wear to the Queen, and is able to talk the tailor into giving him the French Ambassador’s cloak.

The next day, Raleigh strolls into Court as if he owns the place.  Geez, Raleigh’s kind of a pretentious bastard, ain’t he?  Anyway, the French Ambassador is there with his minions (AGAIN WITH THE MINIONS) and sends one of them to go ask Raleigh where he got his cloak.  The Minion asks where Raleigh got his cloak, and Raleigh responds that he took it off a guy he stabbed to death.  OH MAN THAT’S — that could have been a way better retort.  It’s good for a 1950s-era period drama, but if I was making that movie today?  The response would be I GOT IT FROM YOUR MOTHER AFTER I SLEPT WITH HER LAST NIGHT.

Because in my head, Sir Walter Raleigh is actually Sean Connery on Celebrity Jeopardy! in disguise.

Hold on — I need to YouTube that shit right now.

Twenty minutes later…
Oh right, I was watching a movie.

Forty minutes after that —
Sorry, guys.  I had to deal with a crisis that my STUPID FUCKING PHONE put me into.  Y’know, Phone?  When I say “SEND EMAIL,” that means SEND THE FUCKING EMAIL, not SAVE AS A DRAFT.  Also, I finally settled on a name for my phone: SMORON.  Because that’s what it is: a Smoron. 

ANYWAY.  So, Raleigh walks into Court, and then Joan Collins comes up in a breathy whisper of a voice, and starts asking him about why he’s at Court, and why he wants to meet the Queen, and then she starts listing stuff about the Queen as if she’s counting a rosary of pearls, and then the string of pearls breaks, AND THEN BETTE DAVIS ENTERS.

She asks if Raleigh is Joan Collins’s new pig, because she has strewn pearls before him.  OH MAN THAT’S ACTUALLY PRETTY GOOD.  Maybe, instead of face-slapping, this movie has good put-downs?  Bette has a more nasal version of her Margo Channing voice, and I don’t like it.  The Queen takes a liking to Raleigh’s jib, and she invites him to dinner.

On their way to dinner or to inspect armor or something (I’m not really paying attention, I’m half-inclined to send another text to a friend apologizing for the first which, to be honest, wasn’t really that bitchy in the first place) and there’s a puddle in the courtyard.  Raleigh takes off the cloak and lays it across the puddle so the Queen can cross it without getting her slippers or her dress muddy.  He’s going to leave the clock in the puddle, but she tells him to pick it up.  She then says: “I’m not sure if you please me or not, but I must admit you have some qualities the rest of the Court lacks.”  Raleigh is a man of many rare qualities.  His loyalty, efficiency, devotion, warmth, and affection, and so young!  So young and so fair!

Raleigh is having a private wine and cheese party with the Queen later that evening.  The Queen dismisses her guards.  And now there is a discussion that is riddled with innuendo: the Queen asks what Raleigh’s new campaign is, and he says it’s her.  Intrigued, she starts using citadels as metaphors for vaginas and is sorely disappointed when she learns he doesn’t want to sleep with her and instead only wants ships to go to the New World.  She’s so disappointed that he’s not trying to storm her citadel that she tosses her goblet of wine on him. 

When he’s done filling her wine goblet (not a euphemism) and exits the Queen’s chamber, there is one hell of a walk of shame as he strolls through the entire Court, who practically jump to avoid being seen with their ears to a glass on the door.

Joan Collins strolls up to Raleigh and gives him his cloak back.  There’s some talk about her pursuing Raleigh for herself.  Meanwhile, the Queen makes Raleigh the Captain of her Guard, which he didn’t want.  The next day, he’s inspecting his troops (again, not a euphemism) and Joan Collins teases him about being a Captain without a cloak.  Oh good, this movie’s only 90 minutes long.  I was worried, because I’m getting totally bored and it’s only been half an hour.

Queen Elizabeth is holding court around a rectangular table and then just BITCHES out the French Ambassador for a lot of stupid little reasons but damn, it’s good to see Bette Davis verbally bitch-slapping little men.  Sir Christopher, who’s kind of a rat bastard, implies that Raleigh’s friend Sir Derry is actually an Irish rogue who wants to murder the Queen.  The Queen orders Raleigh to send Derry to the Tower, but he refuses and storms out, after making a speech about wanting to live with ships captains and discovering new worlds and such.  The Queen feels faint, and so she leaves with Rat Bastard Christopher.

Raleigh goes back to his in to prepare escaping the Queen’s wrath when Joan Collins arrives and professes her love for him.  They kiss.  A town crier announces that it is 9 p.m. and all is supposedly well.  Raleigh is sitting at the window seat with Joan Collins in his lap, and I am appalled that there are no Dynasty-esque hijinks ensuing.  Joan Collins must serve the Queen for five years, as she is the Queen’s ward.  And there’s the possibility that the Queen could marry her off, should she choose.  And so, in a fit of spontaneity, Raleigh calls up the innkeeper and a serving wench and he marries Joan Collins.  They’re preparing to escape when the Queen’s guard comes along and arrests Raleigh.

The Queen is pretending to be ill so the French Ambassador can go tell the French Queen that she’s dying.  When the Ambassador leaves, the Queen sits up and is as lively as Bette Davis in the Theater Fight scene (you know the one — all playwrights should be dead for three hundred years!).  She calls for Raleigh to come to her and she tricks him into getting knighted by giving him a sword, and then she agrees to give him not the three ships he’s asked for, but one ship.

He leaves the Queen’s chambers and is announced as Sir Walter Raleigh.  He strolls through the Court — and look, I get that she’s a Queen, but does the Court have nothing else to do but hang around her bedroom?  Raleigh goes to find Joan Collins.  Joan Collins gets all bitchy on Raleigh for not standing up to the Queen and telling Her Majesty that he secretly married her.  Raleigh storms out after Joan kicks him out and runs into Christopher.  WHO SLAPS RALEIGH IN THE FACE!  YES!  Now, if only the Queen can get some face-slaps in.

There’s a prayer session just before Raleigh sails off to Plymouth.  The Bishop is as long-winded as the Holy Brother who tells King Arthur that he must count to three, no more, no less, when using the Holy Hand Grenade.  Eventually, the Queen tugs on the Bishop’s robes to get him to shut the hell up and cut the proselytizing short. 

In Plymouth, Raleigh is working on altering the ship he got to make it lighter and quicker.  Meanwhile, back at the Ranch, the Queen has laid a plot that will bring Raleigh back to the castle, and also, she’s shipping her ladies in waiting off to serve Catherine de Medici.  In Paris.  For two years.  Joan Collins looks pale, and there are insinuations that Joan Collins is pregnant with Raleigh’s child, of which the Queen is unaware.

Raleigh races back to see Joan Collins, who is indeed preggers.  She doesn’t want to return to the Queen’s court, so Raleigh comes upon the idea of having Joan Collins sail aboard his ship to the New World, avoiding the return to London.  She agrees to go with him.  But seriously, for having a lot of seamen in his history (heh), he doesn’t know that it’s bad luck to have a woman on board a ship.  I mean, seriously! 

Sir Christopher the Rat tells the Queen that Raleigh has a super-awesome bed in his cabin on board, and insinuates that Raleigh is going to sail away from England with his wife, Joan Collins.  But Sir Christopher the Rat goes to Plymouth to bring Raleigh back and when he refuses, he SPITS IN RALEIGH’S FACE!!  What the shit, Sir Christopher?  And now he’s trying to kill Raleigh, but apparently they’re both pretty good fighters, although this looks more funny than violent.  Especially with Sir Christopher jumping on Raleigh after he punched him onto the bed.

But in the end, the Queen’s guard captures Raleigh and brings him back to London.  And the Queen’s Guard goes chasing after Derry and Joan Collins, whom they find riding along the road to Plymouth.  They capture Joan Collins, and then a dude stabs Derry in the back while he’s swordfighting another guy.  And as he’s dying, he’s saying some shit about “not dying on a Friday, because it’s bad luck.”  Uh, Derry?  Any day you die is an unlucky day.

They bring Joan Collins back to the castle, and they call her the “Throckmorton Minx.”  Now THAT’s a name I’d love to have.  In fact, that would be my superhero name, if I had any say.  “Look, up in the sky — it’s the Throckmorton Minx!”  She escapes the guard as they, I kid you not, attempt to light a candle.  She steals into the Queen’s bedroom, which is especially brazen.  She tries to plead his case, and then she tries to plead her case on behalf of her unborn babe.  Instead, the Queen shows Joan Collins her lack of hair and also tells her that she was told at the age of eighteen that she could never have children.  I — really?  Was medicine that advanced back in the mid-1500s?  I mean, Jesus — I look at my country right now and weep for its lack of medical knowledge.

Anyway, the Queen visits Raleigh in the Tower, and after they have a fight at which I did not pay attention, she agrees that only Raleigh should sail the ship to the New World.  So she doesn’t exactly pardon him, but she does let him out of the Tower.  When the ship finally sails away from London, Raleigh is on board with Joan Collins — and the Queen says the same thing I’m thinking: Who would bring a pregnant woman on board a rocking ship? — but Raleigh’s also flying the Queen’s flag.

So.  That’s how the movie ends.  With very little resolution to what is a very sad attempt at a love triangle.  Oh, Bette — I had such high hopes.  Seriously, I’m going to have to watch All About Eve again to get the taste of this out of my mouth.

Grade for The Virgin Queen: Yay! It’s Over!

 
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Posted by on June 27, 2012 in Insomniac Theatre

 

Insomniac Theatre: “The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex”

10 Jun

So I said I had a bunch of movies on Jeremy the TiVo — oh, shit, I seriously almost typed Jeremy Lin, thanks, SNL repeat that I have to tape now because it’s the Maya Rudolph repeat, and I need to rewatch the skit where Hader, Wiig, and Rudolph can’t get through the scene because they’re laughing too damn hard.  I’m certainly not enjoying this stupid Jeremy Lin sketch again.

Anyway.  I have about ten films on the TiVo, and I really need to watch some of these before I — OW WHAT THE FUCK IS —

Okay, apparently?  The love seat I’m sitting on had a freaking FEATHER poking out of the cushion, STEM FIRST.  I thought I was sitting on a needle.  Jesus Christ, that fucking hurt.

OKAY.  ANYWAY.  I AM NOW WATCHING A MOVIE. 

I think I taped this a few months ago, pre-Movies Alaina’s Never Seen, but couldn’t get through it.  Well, I’m going to try it once more, Insomniac Theatre-style.  The imdb. describes it thusly:

A depiction of the love/hate relationship between Queen Elizabeth I and Robert Devereux, the Earl of Essex.

Oo, love/hate relationship?  PLEASE LET THERE BE FACE-SLAPPING.  EVERYTHING is better with face-slapping.

Ooh, this version has an introduction by Robert Osbourne!  And according to Robert Osbourne, there was a lot of behind-the-scenes fighting about what to call the movie, because everyone wanted to have top billing or make their role sound more important than it really was, and — wait, Vincent Price is in this?!  Sweet!

London, 1596.  After defeating the Spanish forces at Cadiz, Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, marches in triumph toward Whitehall Palace where Queen Elizabeth awaits him.

Yeah, I’ll bet she does.  Jeez, the set looks like they turned It’s A Small World into late Renaissance-England.  The colors are super-bright and there are tons of flags and also, music playing.  Up on some balcony, a bunch of ladies-in-waiting are tittering about Essex’s victory in Cadiz, and one lady badmouths the Queen out of her earshot, and another lady shushes her and pretty much insinuates that the Queen is going to behead her for talking smack.  My only question is, is the smack-talking Lady in Waiting played by Olivia De Havilland?  Because if it is, I’m not sure I know what to do – Miss Melly don’t have a mean bone in her body!

Some dude-in-waiting is having a conversation with Queen Elizabeth as she dresses to receive Essex.  (Yeah, she does.)  Throughout the entire conversation, the Queen is behind a screen and we can’t see her face.  As much as I love Bette Davis and her face, how cool would that movie be?  Only seeing a character from the back or in shadow?  Has that ever been done before?  Because I am unsure.

What I am sure of is that Bette Davis wears Queen Elizabeth’s renowned ugliness well.  Holy Hannah, that’s a high forehead and her eyes are … weird, to say the least.

Elizabeth is pissed at Essex because she thinks he acted in Cadiz on his own behalf and not on the behalf of England.  In spite, she promotes Raleigh to commander of the Navy, and some other dude she promotes to something else.  Pissed, Essex tries to hightail it out of the Great Hall or whatever, but Elizabeth calls him back and – FACE-SLAP!  SHE JUST FACE-SLAPPED ESSEX!  WHAT HAVE I BEEN SAYING ABOUT FACE-SLAPPING AND HOW AWESOME IT IS!

Ahem.

So Elizabeth is writing letters or to-do-lists or, possibly, to-behead lists (I wasn’t completely paying attention — sorry), and there’s this Random … I was going to call him a courtier, but he’s not courting Elizabeth.  Let’s call him … Random Jackass, because he’s trying to jackass Essex out of Elizabeth’s favor in order to promote himself.  Oh, right, because Elizabeth isn’t really pissed at Essex; she admits that she was too harsh on him.  Dearest Bette, you know I adore you and all of your roles, but — you FACE SLAPPED HIM IN FRONT OF THE ENTIRE COURT.  Of course he’s pissed!

Ha!  Elizabeth just called the Random Jackass a slimy toad!  SLAP HIM YOUR MAJESTY RULE HIM WITH YOUR IRON PALM

Elizabeth goes to sit in one of her thrones, and briefly soliloquizes that she’s not sure who she hates more: Essex for making her love him, or herself for needing him.  Uh, little from Column A, little from Column B, perhaps?

Wanstead — Essex’s ancestral home, northeast of London.

Wanstead?  That’s — that’s a place?  I’m … not sure how that sounds.

Okay, I have just been distracted by a) an email from a former co-worker that I, sadly, can’t answer right now, and b) the next movie Sarah’s “forcing” me to watch (no arm-twisting this time; with a synopsis like that, I have to watch it!).  So, when I last looked at the screen, Essex was talking to a friend about how much he loves to hate Elizabeth too.  Or something.  Whatever.  NEEDS MORE FACE-SLAPPING.

And scene.  Glad I paid attention to that.

Someone’s riding their steed off to London like crazy, and Olivia de Havilland is playing chess with Queen Elizabeth.  This is the fastest game of chess I’ve ever seen.  What is this, speed chess?  DOES THE BOARD BLOW UP IF THEY SLOW THE GAME DOWN?  Olivia taunts that she put the Queen into check, and Queen Elizabeth retaliates by FLIPPING THE TABLE or, at least, sweeping all the pieces off the table, but how awesome would this movie be if there was not only face-slapping, but also flipping of tables?

DID YOU SEE WHAT THEY DID TO THE CHESS TABLE?  THEY FLIPPED THE BITCH!

Oh god, is there going to be singing?  Oh god, there’ssinging.  Apparently Olivia de Havilland is using the magical power of song to be bitchy to the Queen about Essex.  Wow, Miss Melly is being a bitch in this movie!  I … seriously, has Olivia de Havilland ever played a bad person?  I do not know what to do with her!

Apparently the song is about an older woman loving a younger man.  I assume this is the case because Elizabeth examines her reflection and does the same thing Margo Channing does when she suspects Eve of stealing Bill from her – looks at her eyes and the crow’s feet and hates men for looking young.  AND THEN SHE SMASHES HER MIRROR.  YES!  SMASHING OF THINGS!

Elizabeth calls Penelope a wench and a spoiled hussy!  YES.  She goes completely batshit insane and breaks ALL THE MIRRORS in her chambers!  Holy shit this movie is fantastic!

Elizabeth gives Miss Margaret some love advice, but I wasn’t really listening.  Then she calls for Francis Bacon, whom she calls Master Bacon, and hi, can I have some Master Bacon?  I love Master Bacon.  I’m a Master Baconator.  Seriously, bacon’s the best thing in the world.  There are a lot of things I would die for; my right to eat bacon is one of them.  Even if I were raised Jewish, I’d be the worst Jew in the world because my love for bacon resides deep in my bones.  I have a bone for bacon.

I AM SO SLEEP DEPRIVED RIGHT NOW AND THERE’S STILL AN HOUR LEFT OF THIS MOVIE.  (Although I am not sorry about bacon.)

SO ANYWAY Elizabeth is asking Sir Francis Bacon (not bacon the food) how she can get Essex back to the palace without seeming weak, when a random person — oh, it’s the guy riding the steed! — breaks into the room and faints.  When he revives, he tells Bacon and Elizabeth that a war has broken out in Ireland.  Bacon and Elizabeth use the war as the PERFET EXCUSE to get Essex back to London without having to lie!  Instead, they’re going to create some stupid role and title to get him back so he can monitor the troops in Ireland from there in London, and oh whatever.  But also, sadly, the person that Mistress Margaret loved is now dead. 

WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT?  WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT?

Wait, I have to take a picture of this:

SERIOUSLY.  WHAT IS THAT?!  I think — though I could be wrong? — that that is a falcon with a hat.  A FALCON.  With a HAT.  (Sidenote: Falcon With a Hat would be an excellent name for a band, yes?)

Oh my God, Essex and his peeps are falconing!  He’s got a falcon of his own with a random feather on its head!  He’s falconing with Master Bacon, and I’m sorry, but that is a That’s What She Said.  Anyway, Queen Elizabeth has dressed Sir Walter Raleigh up in a silver suit of armor, and Vincent Price is Sir Walter Raleigh so that makes it even more creepy, but anyway, Elizabeth is using Raleigh to make Essex jealous, and he returns to the palace in London, as we knew he would.

Raleigh is wearing this ridiculous suit of armor, and apparently, to piss him off, and to exude his own manliness or whatever, Essex commissioned an entire army’s worth of silver armor?  WHAT?  This movie, all of a sudden, has a very Project Runway-esque vibe to it.  I half expected Essex to go all Michael Kors on me and talk about the distracting yellow feathered headdress that tops Raleigh’s helmet.  (And again, That’s What She Said.)

Uh oh, it looks like Penelope/Olivia de Havilland is trying to steal Essex away from the Queen for herself.  I mean, I know why this is happening — de Havilland and Flynn had played lovers / were lovers? multiple times, including in the famed Robin Hood movie that made Errol Flynn famous. 

OMIGOD THIS SCENE So Penelope kisses Essex briefly — the briefest of brief pecks — JUST as Elizabeth walks in.  Penelope quickly runs out of the room to give her queen privacy, and Elizabeth walks over to a table and starts munching on, what is that, a pretzel?  Did they have pretzels back then?  WHATEVER.  Anyway, Elizabeth accuses Essex of loving Penelope, and Essex dismisses Penelope by calling her a child.

DUDES.  FIRST of all, Elizabeth has the same gleam in her eye that Margo Channing had in her eye when she asked Eve if she wanted a milkshake.  Plus, the walking around the room eating bon-bons.  PLUS Essex dismissing Eve Penelope by calling her a child.  “STOP CALLING HER A KID.”  OMIGOD THIS SCENE.

… But, unlike that classic fight scene, the two end up having a great big laugh over Raleigh’s silver armor.  They appear to be all hunky-dory, but oh wait a sec, they’re fighting again.  Nope, wait, the fight’s over, and now they’re embracing again.  Hey, yo-yos, cut it out: pick a side and commit!  Do you love each other, or do you hate each other?  FIGURE IT OUT, I’m getting BORED.

Nope, now she’s trying to get him to love another woman?  WHY?  Elizabeth, you’re just going to get mad and ask him to love you again.  What is with this movie?  So much awesome: face-slapping, mirror-shattering,All About Eve-homaging, but then I’m also so very, very confused.

AND NOW SHE’S TOSSING PLAYING CARDS IN ESSEX’S FACE?!  YES?  And accusing him of conspiring to depose her?  And now they’re laughing again?  THIS MOVIE IS DAMNED SCHIZOPHRENIC.

There’s a war council, and Essex is sent to Ireland to fight.  Elizabeth and Essex are both conflicted, but Essex eventually (after ten minutes of talking about it) goes off to Ireland.  Elizabeth gives him one of her rings as a favor to remember her by.

Ireland — For Essex and his army, a nightmare of suffering, disease and death.  Apparently abandoned by their Queen, the English forces push hopelessly on in pursuit of an elusive enemy.

Abandoned?  Elizabeth — you’re not supposed to abandon your lover when he’s at war! 

Oh shit, I’m falling asleep.  Apparently Essex gets a letter from the Queen, in which she tells him he needs to give himself up and return to London.  He goes off the paranoid wagon and starts wondering if the Queen is in league with the Irish enemy.  Meanwhile, back at the London ranch, the Queen is ranting and raving about something and the letters they write to and from each other are statistically sappy and about nothing I’d want read at my wedding.  Elizabeth dismisses the dude who was here so she can go mope about missing Essex. I may be wrong about that whole last paragraph, by the way.  Because yeah, I’m  falling asleep.

The English army is surrounded — trapped, to quote the Irish general, and now I’m just sad nobody said “It’s a trap!!”  Surely there’s an Admiral Akbar in the English army?

Confession time!: I totally fell asleep.  The last two paragraphs?  I’m not sure if they even match the plot of the movie.  I am now writing the remainder of this entry at 11 a.m. the following morning, refreshed after an eight-hour nap.  I even rewound back to the Ireland leadline.

Apparently, the Queen has forgotten the English army and they are lacking supplies and morale.  Essex is pissed because the Queen is ignoring his requests for more troops, food, and arms.  I think he’s actually pissed because the Queen isn’t including any love letters in her missives.  When the latest tells him to return to London, he gets super-pissed and decides to do one final battle with Ireland.

Meanwhile, what I missed last night — Vincent Price and his silver armor manipulated Lady Miss Melanie and her love for Essex to keep letters to Essex from getting to the Queen and vice versa.  Why Vincent Price, you shrewd bastard!

Sir Francis Master Bacon knows why the letters aren’t getting to where they need to go, and he’s telling the Queen in an oblique way so as to avoid being beheaded.  Meanwhile, Queen Elizabeth is acting like a college freshman.  “Oh, he wrote you but didn’t write to me?  Why doesn’t he respond to my letters when I tell him I love him?  Is he dead?  But if he was dead, someone would have –”

Uh, oh shit.  I just had a stunning realization about something going in my own life.  Wow.  Okay, moving on. 

Although now that I think about it, I think my thing is more that I communicate via text (emails, text messages), and the other person communicates verbally, and I’m sorry, Troy, but even though I was born in the 80s, I don’t really use my phone as a phone.  Much.

Anyway, back to the movie – the Queen dismisses Sir Francis Master Bacon, and takes a nap.  Then we are thrust onto the Irish battlefield, and there’s cannons and bugles and dust and it kind of looks like the same set where Dorothy and her friends were picked up by the Flying Monkeys in The Wizard of Oz.  England calls a cease-fire with Ireland.

General Tyrone of Ireland calls to Essex and tells him that, unless England surrenders, then Ireland’s going to cut off England’s supplies and arms.  I’m very pleased – that is the best cease-fire I’ve ever seen.  Tyrone pretty much convinces Essex of what he already knew: that he needs to surrender in order to live to fight another day.  He ceases fire, and he and his army returns to England to march on the Queen. 

After a pompous walk to her throne, Elizabeth asks somebody about the latest play that Shakespeare wrote, about the deposement of a king, and she mocks that her people are going to storm on the castle based on what they see in “the theatre.”  First off, yay more homages to All About Eve!  But mostly, which play is it?  It must be MacBeth.  Hooray, I love MacBeth!

Hoo boy, Essex and Elizabeth just realized that they never received each other’s letters.  Elizabeth is PISSED.  I hope there’s more face-slapping.

Oh, Jesus, Elizabeth’s sitting in her throne and Essex is lounging on the floor with his head in her lap.  Shouldn’t that seating arrangement be reversed?  I mean, I know she’s the Queen, but I don’t usually see men supplicant to women in movies.  While I like the idea, I’m not sure I like seeing a powerful man subverting himself for a woman.  I don’t know; I am a huge fan of powerful men and women maintaining their power while in a relationship, not having one party lose some power to maintain the relationship.  *sigh*  This type of thinking is too heavy for Insomniac Theatre.  It’s too heavy for The Morning After Insomniac Theatre.

Elizabeth: Take me, my life, my world, my present and future in your hands.  Stand behind my throne, and together we shall build up England, to make the old world one.
Alaina: Uh, that’s what she said?

Oh good, Essex wants to be king.  So he wants to maintain his power and be equal with Elizabeth.  Yay, power equality!  Oh, Essex convinces Elizabeth to share her role and power with him without making him king, and he disbands his army.  Huh.  Poor lovestruck kid.  Hm.  Because with her tone of voice and her posture, it appears that Elizabeth is leading him on, and she’s going to send him to the Tower of London.  Seriously, she had the same look in her eye she had before warning her party that it was going to be a bumpy night.

Ha I was right!  She sends Essex off to the Tower.  Dude, seriously – you can’t love a Queen and ask for equal power unless you are married to the woman before she is made Queen.  I repeat: poor lovestruck kid.

Kittens!  There are kittens … playing near the executioner’s grindstone?!  THAT’S HORRIBLE. 

Meanwhile, Lady Miss Melanie is pleading for Essex’s life.  Miss Melly is telling the Queen that he loved her, not Melanie, and that she was jealous of the Queen because of Essex’s love.  The Queen is not giving pardon whatsoever.  And y’know, I’m okay with that decision.  Because as Queen, she must retain her power over possible usurpers. 

Oh, maybe she is relenting a little bit.  Dangit, Elizabeth!  Rule with your iron palm, not your heart!  She calls him back from the Tower, and they have an argument about if they love each other.  Good Lord, I am bored.  QUICK NEEDS MORE FACE-SLAPPING

Essex goes off to his execution, not willing to submit to Elizabeth’s demands.  Good on you, Essex.  He is brought down through this SECRET TRAP DOOR to go to his execution, and he’s wearing a puffy shirt!  Y’know, I get why Seinfeld hated his puffy shirt, but can I tell ya, Errol Flynn makes it look damn awesome.  He kisses the ring Elizabeth gave him, then says he’s ready.

And then the movie ends!  There was entirely too little face-slapping.  There could have been way more in the last half.

Oh, what does Robert Osbourne have to say at the end?  Eh, nothing I didn’t read in the trivia section on imdb yesterday.

Grade for The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex: Meh.

 
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Posted by on June 10, 2012 in Insomniac Theatre

 

Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back: The Alaina Version

07 Jun

Sarah has blessedly given me permission to take a break from watching bad movies for a while.  In addition, the Roommate and I are going to stop playing Netflix Roulette.  The last time we played (after the atrocity that was Two Girls, a Guy, and an Abortion Hotel Room), we landed on something called Across the Moon, a movie starring Christina Applegate and some other person, plus Peter Berg.  We ended up breaking the rules of Netflix Roulette to go out and buy a copy of Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead instead, but I’m going to save the plot summary, because I have a feeling I’m going to come back to it after I watch a few “good” movies.  When you see the plot summary, you’ll understand why I wrote down the name of the movie for later.

I wish I could say this is my actual watch of The Empire Strikes Back, but honestly, I wanted to write down my version of events because I think after I watch the movie, I’ll be both amused and horrified.  And while it may not be the next next thing I watch, I can say it will be at least within the next five.  (I have ten movies stored on Jeremy the TiVo at this moment.  I’m watching The Big Sleep right now, but since I’ve already seen that one and this is a rewatch, I technically don’t have to review it.  Short and sweet: I liked it, I sought it out to watch it again, but the book is better.) 

And so, I’m typing up this prewatch edition while listening to Bogey and Bacall bicker about what to do with Bacall’s younger sister and what, exactly happened to Rusty Regan.

I fully admit that I have not seen all of The Empire Strikes Back; I am missing not only key scenes, but entire thirds of the plot.  There are holes in my interpretation of the plot big enough for an AT-AT walker to stroll through.  It won’t be pretty, and I’m sure I’m going to make some of my dear friends’ heads explode.  For that, I’m sorry.  But hey, if you find yourself laughing sadly, at least you’re laughing?

Once more: these versions of the plot?  I don’t look anything up on Wikipedia, or imdb. beforehand.  These are the thoughts that come directly from my mind, and again, feel free to either laugh or cry; I don’t care.

I assume the plot picks up after the end of A New Hope.  I also assume that the team of Luke, Leia and Han have split up in order to best attack the Empire.  Leia is running the show from some planet, while Luke and Han are hanging around on THE REBEL BASE IS ON HOTH I just remembered!  Maybe they’re all on Hoth, and Luke and Han are working on maneuvers or something.  There are AT-AT walkers, those big tall things that look like camels without humps but made of metal. 

And then there’s a battle, with TIE-fighters blowing shit up and stuff, and somehow Luke and Han get separated from the rest of the army and have to sleep inside the belly of a dead Taunton in order to stay alive.   

At some point, I think Luke ends up in Dagobah (I spelled that right, didn’t I?  I checked my Star Wars Monopoly board) and starts his Jedi training with Yoda.  Is it after his spaceship crashes?  I seem to remember him being fished out of a swamp.  I hope this isn’t Return of the Jedi I’m misremembering.  Anyway, I believe it is in this movie that Yoda instructs young Master Skywalker: “Do or Do Not.  There is no Try.”

Oh shit, here comes some geek baggage I forgot about.  HERE’S THE THING.  I have never seen that scene.  I may have heard sound clips of the line, or hey, maybe (in complete contradictory fashion), I have seen that scene online or in other media, or WHATEVER.  I KNOW HOW THE LINE GOES, and it goes “Do or Do Not; there is no Try.” 

Dear Former District Manager at my Former Place of Employment: THE LINE ISN’T “DO; THERE IS NO TRY.”  IF YOU’RE GOING TO QUOTE YODA, QUOTE HIM CORRECTLY YOU MUST.  Knowing geek lines backwards and forwards, regardless of actually having seen said scenes, is something that is bred in geeks.  We wear our knowledge of pop culture and transcendent lines of dialogue like badges of honor.  Some of us have more Star Wars badges; some of us wear the Whedon badges with pride.  If you get the quote wrong, you will be outed as a pretend nerd from here to eternity.

Another thing about geeks: geeks never forget.  Hence, me still being offended by something that happened more than six months ago.

ANYWAY.  Somehow Lando Calrissian gets involved — I believe he’s a former friend of Han, and Han doesn’t want anything to do with him, and also, he’s working for the Empire?  It’s in this movie that Leia calls Han a scruffy nerf herder, and also, Chewie was there.

Meanwhile, Boba Fett is a bounty hunter put on Han’s trail by Jabba the Hut, the portly icky person mentioned by Greedo in A New Hope.  Han, the wonderful smuggler, apparently dumped some precious cargo and Jabba demands satisfaction.  So there’s this whole thing where Boba is working for Darth Vader in order to a) capture Han to collect his bounty, and also b) to help cripple the Rebel Alliance.

In the end (Yeah, I’m missing things; congratulations, you got me, I’VE NEVER SEEN THIS MOVIE), Han gets frozen in carbonite after the following heartfelt exchange:
Leia: I love you.
Han: I know.

Luke is fighting Darth Vader in the new Death Star or something, and they’re on the balcony, and then Darth has this awesome move which causes Luke to fall off the balcony and grab onto the support pole or whatever, and Darth Vader asks him what Obi Wan Kenobi told him about his father, and Luke says that Vader killed his father, at which point Darth intones the fateful line, “No, Luke; I am your father.”  But I think the line isn’t actually “Luke, I am your father” but some other maneuvering of the words.  And then Darth Vader cuts off Luke’s hand and runs away to fight again another day.

And speaking of running away to fight another day, Luke reconnoiters with Leia and C-3P0 and R2-D2 and now Lando Calrissian is on their side, and Luke’s getting a new robotic arm put on and he tells Leia that he’s her brother and she’s his sister and they both remember the romantic kiss they shared before they realized they were siblings and agree to never talk about that again, and they vow to band together to rescue Han and cripple the Empire once and for all.

In pop culture news, I know that The Empire Strikes Back set the tone for trilogies to come.  It is now standard operating procedure that the second movie in a trilogy is going to be the darkest.  Look at the statistics: Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.  Okay, Indy may not be as defeated as the Rebel Alliance at the end of Empire, but I think we can all agree that it was the worst movie in the series (until Kingdom of the Crystal Skull came along, and frankly, I choose to believe that that doesn’t exist). 

Back to the Future, Part II. Talk about the darkest timeline.  Marty and the Doc go into the future to save Marty’s future family, only Marty finds a sports almanac that he wants to bring back to 1985.  Old Biff overhears and then steals the time machine to go back to 1955 Biff to set him up for life with that same almanac.  When Marty and Doc return to 1985, it’s not the same 1985; it’s a dark timeline where Biff runs everything and — it’s like a less violent version of the town that the Hobo With a Shotgun was from.  (Resolved: The Drake is 1985-B Biff Tannen, but with more bloodlust.  DISCUSS.)  And then, once Marty has managed to go back to 1955 and fix both timelines, Doc disappears, leaving him stranded in 1955.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest!  It ends with Jack Sparrow being swallowed by the Kraaken, and the team (THE REBEL ALLIANCE) all sad at the fact that he’s gone, and then Barbossa comes out of FUCKING NOWHERE and says he has a way to win the fight against … the dude who ruins Norrington.  That dude.  I want to call him Evil!Coulson, but I know that’s not right.  Oh shit, what’s his name? 

HOLY SHIT I’M TOTALLY GOING TO WRITE AN ESSAY WHEN THIS IS ALL OVER ABOUT HOW THE PIRATES MOVIES IS JUST STAR WARS ON THE HIGH SEAS because the more I think about it, the more it makes sense!

Leonard, we’re going to be rich.

There was something else I was going to talk about here, but I’ll be damned if I can remember it now.  Somehow I was going to loop in a discussion about Don Draper and Joan Harris into some form of comparison with Han Solo and Leia, but apparently, the thread of that conversation has been lost over the past two weeks, so … if there was going to be an amazing insight about that, I apologize, for it is lost forever.

So there’s that.  At some point in the near future, I’ll watch what is supposedly one of the top ten movies of all time, according to a number of lists I’ve read on the subject.  But I also have nearly a dozen old movies I’ve taped off of TCM to watch, and if the looks I’ve been given by my Roommate over the past couple of days are any indication, I may have to go through a couple of rounds of Insomniac Theatre before I can watch the greatest sequel ever.

 
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Posted by on June 7, 2012 in Star Wars

 

Alaina’s Friend Sarah Recommends: “Hobo With a Shotgun”

03 Jun

Sarah, this one’s for you.  As such, expect to be quoted.  A LOT.

Sarah and I have a history, in that she pushes me to read and/or watch things that she KNOWS is bad, all because she wants to hear my reactions.  Usually — I think I’m right in this, but feel free to correct me if I’m wrong — because Sarah and I think the same things about the same things.

I think the first thing she made me read and/or watch was — well, technically, it was The Boondock Saints, but I’m not going to count that because a) of all, I would have ended up watching it on my own, but most importantly b) of all, that movie is fucking fantastic and easily on my Top Ten List.  So really, the first thing was Decadent.  I believe the —

Uh, hold up.  I realize I need to take a momentary digression.

Dear People I Used To Work With Who May Read This Blog But Probably Don’t Follow My Book Blog (Especially the Male Friends): Yeah, I read erotica.  Deal with it.  Hey, go ahead and read the review – you’ll laugh your fucking ass off.  Which, once you read either the next paragraph or that review, you’ll realize that I may have just saved your life. 

Oh, and just so we’re clear, Aforementioned Friends and Everyone Else: the ONLY way I will EVER read Fifty Shades of Gray is if Ian Somerhalder is cast as the dude in the movie.  That is an iron-clad dealbreaker (heh – iron-clad, BDSM — I get it).  I won’t ever read it otherwise, so don’t even try to make me.

ANYWAY.   I had just finished reading another book by Shayla Black, and Sarah messaged me, and I believe the conversation went: You HAVE to read Decadent.  There’s a line in it, swear to God, that says: “Fucking her ass, saving her life.”  And I went, “No WAY is it THAT bad.”

But lo, it was.  Thanks, Sarah.

So in the midst of this project known as Movies Alaina’s Never Seen, Sarah and the rest of the H2 crowd have been pinging me with movies I need to watch that aren’t necessarily on Empire’s Top 500 List.  (And I’ll be talking about that at a later date.)  So forthwith, the conversations between me and Sarah getting me to this point tonight:

Last night, while the Roommate and I were watching Two Guys, a Girl, and an Abortion Clinic –
Sarah: DUDE!  HOBO WITH A SHOTGUN!  WATCH HOBO WITH A SHOTGUN!  I want to read what you write about that film!
Sarah: SERIOUSLY WATCH HOBO WITH A SHOTGUN!  PAY ATTENTION TO MY CAPSLOCK!
Alaina: READ MY CAPSLOCK WE’LL WATCH IT TOMORROW We can’t get out of this Romanian film – we need to know how it ends!
Sarah: Dude … once you watch Hobo with a Shotgun, you are going to regret not taking my advice tonight.  Just sayin’.
Alaina: Oh, I have plenty of alcohol.  I’ll get liquored up right tomorrow.

My sister on Facebook: why … WHY WOULD YOU CONSIDER WATCHING HOBO WITH A SHOTGUN!!?!?!?!?!?! Don’t do it — for your own well-being, I’ve seen the trailer – just walk away!
Alaina: It’s a social experiment.  My pain is funny to other people.  Sarah is making me.  Because of the name.  For science!
My sister: well then for the name of sanity, get a bottle of tequila.
Alaina: Please.

Tonight…
Sarah: We’re watching Hobo With a Shotgun again so my roommate’s BF can watch it.  I want to hear your reactions!
Alaina: I’m finishing my recap of Great Expectations for the book blog but will be watching it before bed.  Promise.
Sarah: Dude.  History has thousands of assessments of Great Expectations and none whatsoever of Hobo with a Shotgun.
Sarah: You’re basically Batman right now.  The world needs you and your reviews.
Sarah: I’m going to stay up until you’ve finished this movie.  I need to hear your thoughts and impulses and rage hahahaha

So I could be incredibly mean and see if Sarah meant that she literally would stay up until I watched the movie and then wait a week, but I love my friends and it’s well-established that I’m a masochist.  So I’ve poured myself a Weevil (my name for Pear Vodka and Cranberry Juice, because no, Brad, it’s not a Fogcutter, and since you’re wrong and haven’t named it yet, it falls to me to name it, and I’m naming it after myself and my Veronica Mars counterpart because we are both awesome) and tweeted Sarah to alert her that it’s beginning.

I have NO IDEA what this movie is about, by the way.  But I presume it involves a hobo and, possibly, a shotgun?

Sarah: Hobo Drinking game: anytime someone swears, any instance of gratuitous violence, any instance of “WTF?!” dialogue
Sarah: I dare you to play the drinking gane AND not black out
Alaina: Challenge accepted!

Okay … let’s do this.

A bum rolls into town hoping to start over, only to find his adopted city saturated in violence and ruled by a vicious crime lord known as the Drake.

The Drake … like, from Darkwing Duck?  Does the Hobo fight a duck?  PLEASE LET THE HOBO FIGHT A DUCK

Okay … Sarah, you’re kidding me with this, right?  It’s Canadian?  From Nova Scotia!?  There are too many jokes, not enough time for this, and I’m three seconds in.  Do I go the “Canada, you ruined this” route, much like Barney Stinson every time Robin says something particularly Canadian?  Or do I reference the New Scotlander Revolutionary front from that episode of Archer?  (“IS THAT BABOU?!  HE REMEMBERS ME!”)

So Rutger Hauer – which is a name I should be able to place in another, less obscure movie, but can’t for the life of me – is a hobo pushing a shopping cart through apparently the worst neighborhood in all of Nova Scotia.  He sees someone break into a person’s car, and guys, what kind of idiot parks their car in Hobo Alley?  As he continues to push his cart and mumble about spare change, he comes upon a bumfight.

A BUMFIGHT.  BEING VIDEOTAPED BY AN ASSHOLE who wants Rutger Hauer to join in for a measly ten dollars.  That’s Canadian dollars, by the way.  And all I can think of is: Logan Echolls!  How the mighty have fallen!  And also, LOOK WHAT I DID THERE I’ve already come full circle with the Veronica Mars reference and I’m only three minutes in.  I think that deserves a drink.

AND THEN A GUY COMES OUT OF FUCKING NOWHERE WITH A MANHOLE FOR A NECKLACE.

Alaina: How did that idiot get his face stuck in a manhole?! #heheheh #thatswhatshesaid

And then this little guy who’s like the Canadian Joe Pesci in a white suit shows up and puts Manhole Guy in a manhole and apparently Manhole Guy’s name is LOGAN WHAT THE HELL VERONICA MARS and talks some shit about how nobody messes with The Drake, and apparently the Drake is not a duck?  Fuck.  ANYWAY, they put a barbed wire noose around Logan, and then Drake’s punk nephew Ivan drives off in his truck with the noose attached to it and WHAT THE FUCK THEY JUST RIPPED THE GUY’S HEAD OFF but worst of all this random chick in a white bikini and a fur coat fucking DANCES IN THE RAIN OF BLOOD THAT IS SPEWING FROM LOGAN’S NECKHOLE

Alaina: SARAH WHAT THE FUCK

Apparently Rutger Hauer really wants a lawn mower?  Why does he need a lawn mower?!  HE DOESN’T HAVE A LAWN

Uh oh – some punkass just spit on Rutger Hauer’s Lawn Mower Sign.  Will the Shit start to go down now?

Oh my god that old guy looks like Leonard from Community!  I love Leonard!  Unlike Jeff, but — HOLY SHIT THEY JUST SMASHED LEONARD’S HEAD IN BETWEEN TWO BUMPER CARS WHAT THE FUCK And then Ivan’s beating up on some kid who reminds me of Fat Neil, also from Community, and this blonde chick comes up and tells Ivan to let it slide.

Ivan: The only thing I’m going to let slide — [extreme dramatic pause]
Alaina: “Is my dick”?  He’s going to mention his dick.
Ivan: Is my dick, into your pussy.
Alaina: CALLED IT.

And then Ivan and his other dick brother or whatever puts their sunglasses on in this wicked dark arcade, and then there’s a fucking cocaine orgy.

The blonde chick turns out to be a hooker — of course.  And when she and the Ivan brother start making out, it is even more awkward than a Decadent sex scene.  And that’s saying something.

The hobo comes out of hiding and tells the Ivan brother to take his filthy paws off her, you damned dirty ape! Ivan-brother says no, Hobo hits him in the head with his Hobo-Cane and says something about writing welfare checks on the Ivan-brother’s skin.  Ivan-Brother makes a crack about writing a check to Mother Theresa, at which point the Hobo says:

Sorry — the vodka’s kicking in. *like a See and Say* [Brrrp] The Hobo Says:
“Mother Theresa was a goddamned saint!”

And Alaina laughs her ass off.

OH MY GOD “WELCOME TO FUCKTOWN”!!??!?  So the Hobo goes to the police station and tries to talk reason to a cop, and then the cop asks if the Hobo’d been welcomed to their quaint little town, and when the answer was no, the cop stands up, points his gun in the Hobo’s face and screams “Welcome to Fucktown!!” All I can hear is Gob leaning over Stan Sitwell in Arrested Development while trying to sell the idea of a housing development called Fuck City.

“You’re living in Fuck City…”  You are indeed, Hobo.

THE PRINCES OF FUCKTOWN?!  Well, with the 1980s hair, members only jackets, and the sunglasses at night, they do resemble Prince a tiny bit.  And then the Drake sons of bitches STAB THE HOBO AND TOSS HIM IN A DUMPSTER.

And then he goes home with Abby the Hooker and she takes care of him and he heals enough to be able to be back on the street the next day, where he fights in enough bumfights (WHICH INCLUDES EATING GLASS, WHAT THE FUCK) to make enough money to buy the titular shotgun.  Wait, is he buying the lawn mower instead?  I would assume not, because otherwise the name of the movie would be Hobo With a Lawn Mower, right?

And then, of course, the one pawn shop the Hobo decides to frequent gets robbed.

Do it …. DOOO IT, HOBO!  KILL THE GUYS WITH THE LAWN MOWER!  I see you looking at it — oh, no, there’s the shotgun.  That works too.

So he buys the shotgun, and then goes on a Rampage.  But the worst part is that they missed the opportunity for the Hobo to go running through Fucktown yelling RAAAAAAAAAAAMPPAAAAAAAAAAGE!!!!!  Also, when the Hobo uses his shotgun, all I can see in my head, for some reason, is the dog from Duck Hunt. 

Actual Dialogue: “I’m Slick!  No one’s supposed to fuck with me either!”
Alaina: Uhhhhh…. ?

DID THAT DUDE JUST KILL A GUY BY FUCKING TOSSING A HOCKEY SKATE INTO THAT DUDE’S CHEST?!  WHAT THE FUCK?!  (You know you’re watching a Canadian crime film when a hockey skate is a viable weapon.)

Um, what happened to the cop the Hobo shot?  Because it looks like when Judge Doom got rolled over by the steamroller in Who Framed Roger Rabbit – deflated, like the bullet popped him like a balloon?

Oh my god, I’m exhausted, and not even a little bit drunk (because NO, I KNOW I said Challenge Accepted, but I think staying up long enough to actually watch this movie is Challenge Enough).

So now, the Hobo and Abby the Hooker are going to skip town and start a lawn mowing company!?  Jesus CHRIST.  HOW IS THERE STILL HALF AN HOUR OF THIS LEFT

I mean, look, I watch a lot of shit, okay?  I rented One For the Money willingly.  But friends of mine: could you please hold off on the Forcing Alaina to Watch Bad Movies for a while?  I’ve still got The Empire Strikes Back to tackle.

… and then I fell asleep.  I saw Abby and the Hobo take Abby to the hospital, and I saw the Hobo scaring the infants when he was talking about the next generation, and then I think this was the climactic fight and Abby’s almost dead and so is the Drake, and then the Hobo kills the Drake and then the evil townspeople kill the Hobo, and in the background, Abby the Hooker screams “nooooooo!!!” and it sounds like a farm animal squealing in pain, and then this song that sounds like … like if Huey Lewis and the News was a girl band, and CREDITS.

Sarah.  You know I love you dearly and would do anything for you.  But please, I beg you: give me a break before finding the next Netflix Roulette you want me to watch.  I swear, I have the need to watch something extremely intelligent or twisty or thought-provoking.  Like, The Prestige or, Chinatown, or maybe Kiss Kiss Bang Bang again.

And in spite of this, I feel that I’m missing a seminal hobo joke.  But I’m too tired to find it right now.  (I need a lawn mower.)

Grade for Hobo With a Shotgun: WHAT the FUCK was THAT!?

 
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Posted by on June 3, 2012 in Alaina's Friend Sarah Recommends

 

Netflix Roulette: “4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days”

02 Jun

So I came home tonight and my roommate was already drinking.  She never drinks more than me — I am known for being the lush in the household.  In fact, it has been proven that I shouldn’t drink in public, because when I do to the point of needing a designated driver, they always get pulled over.  I am bad luck drunk.  True story.

What was I saying?  Oh right.  So the roommate was inebriated and we both wanted to watch something, but nothing on Jeremy the TiVo intrigued, and we watched a couple of episodes of Supernatural and got bored with that.

Roommate: What’d you decide?
Alaina: Uh … I haven’t.  Ooo, let’s play Netflix Recommendations.  That’s always fun!
Roommate: Especially since we’re basically sharing an account and you and I watch different things.
Alaina: Ooo, Phineas and Ferb!

So we watched about four seconds of Phineas and Ferb, agreed that Perry the Platypus is best, but we really need to be drunker to watch it, and went through all the new releases, until finally …

Alaina: New game!  Netflix Roulette!
Roommate: And how do you play that?
Alaina: I’ll hit ‘Search,’ close my eyes, hit random letters, and whatever shows up, we watch.
Roommate: Deal!

Here’s where we end up:

In the last days of Communist Romania, college student Gabita wants to end her unplanned pregnancy.  With help from best friend and fellow student Otilia, Gabita seeks an abortion — which is illegal under the oppressive Ceausescu regime.

Alaina: Well … now we have to watch it.

Note from the Future: Uh, I should disclaim this movie.  There is some serious subject matter all up in here, and while I’ve now watched the entire movie and writing this paragraph before writing the grade paragraph, I’m realizing now that maybe this isn’t the best movie I should be watching.  Or, at least, blogging about.  Abortion is a provocative subject at all times, not just now, and not just because I’m watching a movie about it.  So please, to those who may have abortion sensitivities: I am talking about the movie and not about the political issues.  I am talking about the choices the director and the writer of this film made in order to progress the story along.  Please let it be known that I do not want to discuss the political and/or health issues raised herein in any way, shape or form.  I am here to make fun of this movie, not the subject matter.  I am here to belittle the writing choices, not any choices the inspirations for these characters may have made twenty years ago (the movie takes place in Communist 1987).  I am hoping that my drunken rants amuse you, the reader, and that they do not offend because I do not want to talk about politics.  

So.  Caveat Lector.  If you feel the need to comment about the subject matter of this film and try to get me to talk about Abortion: The Issue, please note I will react in one of two ways: 1) I will ignore your comment(s), or 2) I will post the most inane That’s What She Said jokes in response to your comments in order to annoy you the most and get you to stop.  This blog is for movies, not politics, and that is all I am going to say on the matter.

Thus ends the Note From the Future.

The first ten minutes was all subtitled, and why are they taking the tablecloth off the table, and she’s — is she making meth?  (Roommate: “She’d better be making meth.”)  No wait, she’s heating up wax because she’s waxing her legs?  And then the blonde roommate is going into the showers to ask for money for Kent cigarettes, and all I can think is, is this movie taking place in a Women’s Romanian Prison? 

Roommate: It’s too nice for Romanian prison.
Alaina: Romanian Minimum Security Prison?

The friend meets her boyfriend and pretty much says “no, honey, I can’t go to your mom’s birthday party.  Oh, she’s making a meringue pie for me?  That’s nice, but no, really, I can’t go.  I can’t tell you, I just have to do this, because … because I have to!  Hey, do you have any cigarettes?  I just scored some Marlboros off this dude in my hall, but I really want some Kants.”

Alaina: Why did I just turn the TV up?  The movie’s fucking subtitled.  Turning it up isn’t going to make this movie any easier to understand.

The blonde friend goes to a hotel room and gets the hotel room for three days, and then meets the dude who is going to give her friend the abortion, and they all meet in the hotel room and discuss terms.

Roommate: This is the weirdest fucking movie ever.  What’s it called, “Four Guys, Three Girls, Two Abortions?”
Alaina: Uh, that’s what we’re calling it now.  It’s like Two Guys, a Girl, and a Pizza Place.  Only the Pizza Place is an abortion clinic.
Roommate: Not even – a skanky Romanian hotel room.
Alaina: Is the guy even a doctor?
Roommate: I don’t think so.

Our suspicions were confirmed when, instead of money, he requests sex from the non-pregnant friend as payment.

Alaina: Hey, uh, so, just so you know … you know I’ll do a lot of things for my friends…
Roommate: Yeah, but I’m not fucking some dude who may or may not be a doctor so you can have an abortion.
Alaina: Oh good, we’re both on the same page with that one.

And then, after fucking the not-doctor so her friend can get an abortion, she leaves her friend as she’s whatevering in the hotel room to go to her boyfriend’s mother’s birthday party.  There’s some discussion between the friends about why did the pregnant one choose this not-doctor over another not-doctor, and apparently the friend had thought, and that was a bad idea or something?  Anyway, her friend leaves the pregnant one in the hotel with a tube coming out of her whatever and heads across town.

There’s this super awkward family dinner party where there’s toasting and clearly, the friend just wants to get back to the friend in the hotel but she can’t, and seriously, how is this movie still going?

Alaina: It’s filmed in real time.

So we did a bad thing: we fast-forwarded a little bit.  The awkward family dinner party was going on FOREVER and we were falling asleep on our couches.  There was a fun part where, while fast-forwarding, we read aloud the random lines of dialogue that showed up.  It’s like, “She put potatoes in the polenta!” “Do you know who I met at Easter last weekend?”  “Do you know why priests are so busy? Confessions!”  (That last one was real.)

And now she’s arguing with her boyfriend about what would happen if she got pregnant.  Not that she is, but what happens if she did get pregnant?  Would he pay for an abortion?  Would he marry her?  It’s the old “Why are you mad at me for how you would react in a situation we haven’t experienced” problem.

So the not-pregnant friend is trying to call the friend back at the hotel room and there’s no answer.  So she’s ditched the douchbag boyfriend’s house and heading back to the hotel on foot in the dark … what?  Jesus Christ, I wouldn’t do that in Portland, and you’re doing it in fucking Communist Romania?

While she returns to her friend, let me just take a moment and note that this movie was nominated for the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Film, and won the Palme d’Or in Cannes the year it came out.  HOW.  HOW DID THIS WIN ANYTHING!?

Roommate: Dude, I’ve been asleep for the last fifteen minutes.  I’m going to bed.
Alaina: I’m going to power through, because ten bucks says the friend died.

She heads upstairs, bypassing the Communist dicks at the desk who ask to see her ID.  She yells at her friend for not answering the phone, and her response is, “I got rid of it.  It’s in the bathroom.”

Alaina: The not-doctor told her not to move!  Why did she put the phone in the — oh.
Roommate: YEAH.
Alaina: Oh GOD.

So there’s this shot of the friend staring down at … it …, and the phone rings, and then —

Alaina: AHHHH GROSS
Roommate: Oh, come on, Romania!

Two minutes later…
Alaina: I think the movie would have been more powerful if they hadn’t shown that.
Roommate: I think the movie is still pretty damned fucked up.
Alaina: Oh, no question there.

We quickly fast-forward, because, come on, Romania! And the friend has gathered up the … the thing, and is looking for a rooftop to toss it off of, or a bus to leave it on, or a place to bury it where it won’t get eaten by dogs (there was a section of dialogue the not-doctor said earlier about how to dispose of  … it, once it’s been … disposed of, and specifically said to avoid burying it in a place where dogs can dig it up), but all she can find is a dumpster, and she’s about to toss it in the dumpster when DOGS SHOW UP WHAT THE FUCK, ROMANIA?

She finally finds a building with a rubbish chute and disposes of the .. the thing, and then she cries a bit because really, the whole day has just been fucked up from the get-go.  She returns to the hotel and pounds on the door to the room, but there’s no answer.  The nice concierge tells her that her friend is in the restaurant.  The friend asks the friend what the fuck she’s doing in the restaurant because she didn’t know where she was, and the answer is that she was starving.

AND THEN THE MOVIE ENDS WHILE THEY’RE WAITING FOR FOOD.  WITH NOTHING ELSE HAPPENING.  NO YELLING, OR CONSEQUENCES, AND ABOVE ALL, NO ONE DIES.

COME ON, ROMANIA!

Grade for 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days: What the FUCK was THAT!?

And now, to watch an episode of How I Met Your Mother.  Because Marshall having dinner with Harold Lee over Kobe Lobster will get the taste of Romanian fetus out of my mouth.

Oh and PS – tomorrow night we’ll be watching something suggested by my dear friend Sarah: Hobo With a Shotgun.  Dear Sarah: if this ends up being like when you told me to read Decadent, I’m going to hurt you.

 
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Posted by on June 2, 2012 in Netflix Roulette

 

Regrets & Bad Decisions: “One For the Money”

26 May

Tonight is May 25th.  Apparently, 35 years ago today, Star Wars premiered, making this day in history known forever as “Geek Pride Day.”  Also apparently, when you add up the numbers in today’s date (5 + 25 + 12) you get 42, which is the meaning of life, which means it’s also Towel Day (don’t panic!).

But in my life, today will always be known as the day I made my friends cry.

Jess N. wanted to go see Newsies: The Musical. And everyone started texting each other about Newsies: The Movie.  And then this happened:

Sarah: I daresay all of us involved in this conversation love Newsies.
Emily: ALMOST all.
Alaina: I’ve never seen Newsies.
Sarah: And further — wait.  Alaina … what?
Alaina: I’ve … never seen Newsies.  *tosses phone like a grenade and runs away*
Jessica: That’s a criminal offense with this crowd.
Sarah: Dude! Christian Bale!
Alaina: Christian Bale’s in Newsies?
Sarah: *shakes head* Other people’s kids.  YES.
Alaina: FINE.  I’ll add it to my list.  Just be prepared I’m probably going to make fun of it rather than fall instantly in love with it.

So yeah — at some point, I’ll watch Newsies.  Because yes, I’ve updated my list to include it.  But I’m not watching it tonight.

Here’s what’s on the docket:  I’ve got the apartment to myself this weekend, which means I could knock off a couple of movies on the TiVo in another round of Insomniac Theatre, but a) of all, it’s 9:41 p.m., and b) of all, all I’ve got are dramas, and I’m more in the mood to make fun of shit tonight.  (As evidenced by me making my friends’s heads explode via text message.)

Hey, Friend in the Army: is that a thing?  Making someone’s head explode via text message?  That seems like it’d be a cool weapon.  Let’s get Tony Stark on it.

Oh, and (obliquely) speaking of Tony Stark: so online, there’s this thing going around about Avengers-Inspired Cocktails, and I realized that I have everything required to make the Agent Coulson (COULSON!):

So clearly, I needed something to drink to that would be awful.  Like, if I was going to watch something like Death of a Ghost Hunter again; that awful.  And while our TiVo list is up to 78% capacity, with such classics as The V.I.P.s (with Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton), The Stunt Man (with drop-dead gorgeous Peter O’Toole) and A Streetcar Named Desire (with Vivien Leigh and Marlon Brando) on that list, those are not movies which one should become drunk while watching.

The other half of the story: a month ago, I had reserved a couple of movies on Redbox.  But I accidentally reserved them at the wrong Hannaford.  And since Redbox can’t cancel online reservations yet (whaaaaat?), I got two promo codes for free movies to make up for the charges.  And so tonight, I went to Hannaford to redeem them.

And this is what I found:

And here’s the story behind this:

I love the Stephanie Plum novels.  Love them.  I’ve read almost all of them, I love her, I love Ranger, I love Joe Morelli.  Mmm… Joe Morelli.  Can I have a Joe Morelli?  Please?  Because that would be awesome. 

Anyway.  Love the books.  But I hate Katherine Heigl.  Hate.  Haaaaaaaaate.  I don’t think I have the words appropriate enough to describe how much I hate her.  I would compare it to the classic Mrs. White speech from Clue, and compare my hatred of Katherine Heigl to Mrs. White’s hatred of Yvette, hated her so, much, with flames — on the side of my face –, but that would be insulting to Mrs. White and that scene.  She’s just … awful.

And she ruins everything.  Like, she ruined Grey’s Anatomy with her stupid ghost sex, she’s a bitch, she ruined Knocked Up because she’s a bitch, and I know — I just know — she’s going to ruin this.

But then, they cast Jason O’Mara as Morelli.  And I love Jason O’Mara, and when I read that they cast him for Morelli, I was like, “That makes perfect sense.”  It was like I had a picture of Morelli in my head, and I didn’t really have a person to attribute it to, but once someone said “Jason O’Mara will be playing Joe Morelli,” I went, “Of course!”  Plus, Jason O’Mara’s really hot.  I almost miss Life on Mars.

But … Katherine Heigl.  She ruins everything.  EVERYTHING!  That was my catchphrase for a while! 

So while I’ve always wanted to see a movie version of One For the Money (and for a while was imagining Reese Witherspoon gone brunette to play Stephanie), once Katherine Heigl was attached, I decided that I wasn’t going to spend a cent on it.  Even when my mother said that she wanted to see it; I refused. 

But now that I have the option to see it for free, and to truly see how bad it ended up?  Yeah sure, why not.  Hence, tonight’s entry into what is another long list I could type up at some point: Things Alaina Reads/Watches So You Don’t Have To.  I consider it charity, to be honest.

Shit.  I should actually start this movie; otherwise, I’m either never going to watch it, or it is going to be an entry in Insomniac Theatre.

OH SHIT ANCHORMAN’S ON TBS there goes that plan.

Forty minutes later …
Okay, now that Brick has killed a guy with a trident and Ron has told the San Diegoites — San Diegoans?  San Diegons?  San Diego-uns — to go fuck themselves, I can push play. 

And we’ve started with a stupid opening sequence, like Stephanie Plum is supposed to be the girl James Bond.  I’m sorry, the girl James Bond is Lisbeth Salander in last year’s Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.  Did you see that opening sequence?!  Also-also, the music under this shittastic thing samples Bitter:Sweet’s “The Mating Game,” which I believe was used in Grey’s Anatomy.

Oh god … the bad Jersey accent.  Holy shit, my ears.  And I’m sorry, I always pictured Grandma Mazur as more of a Sophia from Golden Girls than Debbie Reynolds.  I always saw Grandma Mazur as being more … frail.  Which is why it’s hilarious when she shoots the turkey — she needs to have more trouble lifting the gun.

I also pictured Big Blue as … bigger and rounder.  And I get why they had to tame down Vinny’s sexual proclivities, but … making out with Stephanie at her wedding and liking dominatrices just doesn’t have the same ring as … was it a goat or a duck?  I remember it was a barnyard animal of some sort …

Oh my god, there is absolutely no chemistry between Heigl and O’Mara.  I mean, zippo.  Don’t get me wrong, O’Mara’s trying, but my god … it’s like trying to make eyes at a … I don’t know … at a thing that has absolutely no redeeming value.

How the hell does this Stephanie Plum get so damn professional at this bounty hunter stuff so quickly?  This is the stupidest … goddamn.  I am so glad I didn’t pay a dime for this.

This is not funny.  Not in the least.  Whoever wrote this — and I firmly believe that it was Katherine Heigl, because it makes sense in my head — took all the humor out of the book and — WHAT THE FUCK Grandma Mazur just shot the turkey with Stephanie’s gun, and NO ONE REACTED?! 

Is that naked guy the same guy the doctor gave a rectal exam to in The Hangover?  Yes, that is what I think about when THIS MOVIE SUCKS.  Jesus, if I wasn’t such a masochist I’d stop watching this movie and put Anchorman back on.  I mean, seriously, LULA’S NOT FUNNY IN THIS MOVIE.  HOW DID SOMEONE TAKE THE FUNNY OUT OF LULA?!

Oh… she’s taking a shower.  I’m jealous.  All I want to do is take a nice, hot, steamy shower, but I CAN’T, because apparently my shower is LEAKING into my downstair’s neighbor’s closet, or whatever.  So tomorrow, before I go to work, I have to go to the gym to take a freaking shower.  BECAUSE GOD HATES ME, THAT’S WHY.

Meanwhile, I think I figured out what happened with this movie.  It’s like they’re trying so hard to be a dark, mystery thriller with some patches of sarcastic, Jersey-esque one-liner humor, that they forgot that parts of the book are actually laugh-out-loud funny.  Unfortunately, my sister has the family copy of One For the Money; otherwise, I’d be quoting my favorite parts to prove to y’all that you gotta read the book because the book is OH MY GOD SO MUCH BETTER THAN THIS PIECE OF SHIT.

Hold up — why haven’t I been drinking?!  Agent Coulson!

And all of a sudden she’s going to the range and being a cracker-jack shot?  I CALL SHENANIGANS. 

Okay, I gotta go check something on Wikipedia.  Because Morelli just made Stephanie an omelet, and then offered to band together to draw out Benito Ramirez by pretty much using Stephanie as bait.  And I’m 99% sure that that NEVER HAPPENED.  Er, the bait part.  I’m sure he did make her an omelet. 

Um, hold on one more second: before I go check this Wikipedia thing, can I please have a shirtless Jason O’Mara deliver me coffee in bed?  Please?  (Christ, I could do laundry on his abs.  I … I could do a lot of things on his … okay moving on!)

Jesus, they didn’t even make a big deal of Morelli’s truck blowing up!  The fuck is wrong with this movie?

Okay, I can’t find what I’m looking for.  But I guarantee that there is no way Morelli would EVER use Stephanie Plum as bait, regardless of where their relationship is.

Wow.  What … what the hell was I thinking, all those hours ago when I picked this up from Redbox?  Why did I think it would be fun for me to make fun of it?  I mean, look, I didn’t like Death of a Ghost Hunter, but I had tons of fun making fun of it!  I thought this would be the same, but —

Oh wait.  I know.

DAMN YOU, KATHERINE HEIGL!  YOU RUIN EVERYTHING.  YOU EVEN RUIN PEOPLE MAKING FUN OF YOU.

 
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Posted by on May 26, 2012 in Regrets & Bad Decisions

 

Star Wars: A New Hope

05 May

And here we go.

Although, I haven’t even gotten to the menu and I’m already pissed at George Lucas.  I was so happy to see that Netflix had the Original Theatrical Version available for rental.  Oh, right, that was a point I was going to make!

So I had dinner with my sister tonight, and she mentioned that she thought that I had watched Star Wars by now.  I told her that that was my plan for after dinner – to go home and watch A New Hope.

Missy: Did I ever tell you what Dad said when I told him you’d never seen Star Wars?
Alaina: No — what’d he say?
Missy: He said that I was lying.  And I was like, “No, Dad — Alaina’s never seen Star Wars.”  And then there was this pause, and then he said: “But — she lived here.  In this house.  With me.  How did she never see Star Wars?”
Alaina: But I have seen it!  Just —
Missy: Not in chronological order or in one sitting, yeah, we know.  But the point is, why have you waited so long to watch it?

Well — because around the time I thought to myself, “Hey, I should probably sit down and watch this at some point,” at the same time, George Lucas was going in and fucking things up.  And while I may not have seen the majority of the movies, there were two things I did know: that Han shot first, and that Jabba the Hut was not in A New Hope.

So I didn’t go see them in theatres when they were re-released, because they were wrong.  And I didn’t buy them on DVD because, again, they were wrong.  And everywhere I looked, all I could find were the fucked-up versions.  (Nowhere — and by no one– did I hear that the additions made the movies better.)  And if my only option to watch the original trilogy was to dig through the shit in the attic to try and find the VHS copies that my dad … uh, “bought legally through a PBS pledge drive,” knowing that his copy of The Empire Strikes Back was nearly falling apart as it was, if I could even find them?  I decided to wait.

Which is why I was ecstatic when I learned that Netflix had the Original Theatrical Releases available on DVD!  That would make my life so much easier!  I could watch the original movie, be able to confer with friends who may have seen Star Wars in the theater when they were younger and be able to truly share that experience with them, and not be the idiot going around saying, “Wait — I thought Greedo shot first?”

So why am I pissed now?  Because when I opened the special red envelope tonight, I learned that the Original Theatrical Release was actually the “Bonus Disc” in some set that was released recently.  Seriously, George Lucas?  Go fuck yourself.

Also, before I (finally) push play: I am going to try as hard as I can to not mock this movie.  Hopefully, this entry will have less vitriol and confusion as some of my other ramblings.  I really, really hope I like it.  But we’ll see.

10:19 p.m., in an apartment in Maine
Alaina pushes play and embarks on an epic journey of geekdom discovery.

It is a period of civil war.  Rebel spaceships, striking from a hidden base, have won their first victory against the evil Galactic Empire.

During the battle, rebel spies managed to steal secret plans to the Empire’s ultimate weapon, the DEATH STAR, an armored space station with enough power to destroy an entire planet.

Pursued by the Empire’s sinister agents, Princess Leia races home aboard her starship, custodian of the stolen plans that can save her people and restore freedom to the galaxy …

RIGHT!  THAT’S why Darth Vader captured Leia in the first place!  It was the blueprints to the Death Star that she stole during battle!  Dammit – I can’t believe I forgot that…

Yeah, big ol’ spaceship.  Glad to see I wasn’t making that up.  And if that doesn’t look like a shark chasing a guppy in an ocean, I don’t know what does.

C-3P0!  And R2-D2!  And actual humans playing actual humans!  Damn, I forgot what real movies looked like without all the special effects.  I mean, yeah, sure, green screen is awesome and way cost-effective, but to quote one of the heroes in this very movie, “Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster at your side, kid.”

Hm.  I think my metaphor got lost in there somewhere.  Oh well.  Oh hai, Anakin!

Already this movie is tons better than Phantom Menace.  HE SHOT THE PRINCESS!

Here’s a question that I have, now that I have seen the prequels: did the memory wipe of C-3P0 that Senator Jimmy Smits ordered make him prissier?  Because you know what?  I like this C-3P0 way better than the other one.

This is where the Jawas get him, right?  The Jawas?  That’s what they are, right?  Yeah, here’s the ambush where Luke finds R2 and somehow C-3P0 gets back here, and then they watch the video of “Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi, you’re my only hope.”

Okay, seriously?  I kind of love R2-D2.  And the scene where he gets captured by the Jawas is really cute.  I especially like the scream that the robot emits when he gets stunned.  Because robots can’t scream!  

Wait — what?   Okay, funniest scene so far — the Storm Trooper poking his head up into the frame, holding a metal ring and saying, “Look, sir — droids!”  That was so random — I mean, HOW CAN HE TELL IT WAS DROIDS?  Does the ring have the word “DROID” etched in it?  How does he know it’s not debris from the crash site?  Is he the Storm Trooper who rode the short bus to school?

Luke!!  Yay! 

Oh shit — oh right!  That’s right!  I’m sorry, I totally flaked out for a second.  Uncle Owen smarmed up to C-3P0 and said that he’s probably been programmed as an etiquette and protocol droid, and it took me about a minute to remember the joke I had written in an unpublished pilot where I compared a character to C-3P0 being a protocol droid!  Damn — I completely forgot about that joke!  I really need to rewrite that pilot.

Wow, Luke’s kind of whiny at first, isn’t he?  “But I wanted to go to Toby’s garage and play with power converters!”  Yikes.

It’s weird — this version of C-3P0?  I’m not sure what it is, if it’s the cadence of his accent, the prissiness of his manner, or just the uptight Britishness of him, but — I’m getting a very Giles vibe from him.  What did I say — Buffy the Vampire Slayer is my Star Wars.

Luke: Who’s she?  She’s beautiful.
Alaina: SHE’S YOUR SISTER

Ol’ Ben Kenobi!  See?  I knew that! 

Wait, are those things the Jawas?  Or are they just the Sand People?  Are they the same thing?  I know they’re not Ewoks.  Ewoks are cute.

Holy shit … that is some class-A fighting.  Way more realistic than anything I saw in Attack of the Clones.  And look at Luke play dead!  Very effective tactic.  Oh, he’s not playing, he’s unconscious?  My bad.

I’m sorry – I said I wouldn’t mock.  I don’t think I’m mocking.  I’m trying not to. 

Ben!  Obi-Wan!  Uh, Ben?  You were Obi-Wan up until Luke was born.  I’m not mocking this movie, by the way — I’m mocking the prequels for having shoddy continuity.  Did Lucas not go back and watch A New Hope before writing Revenge of the Sith?

Duct tape is like The Force: it has a light side, and a dark side, and it holds the universe together.

Obi-Wan, are you getting too old for this shit?  But, much like Murtaugh, you keep getting up and doing more shit.  Good on you, Obi-Wan.

“I find your lack of faith disturbing.”  I know that line!

I was right!  They were Jawas!  I can tell them apart from Sand People!  Wait, he’s just going to leave them there?  I mean, it’s heartbreaking to see the farm burnt to the ground, but — he’s going to have to go all the way back for 3P0 and R2 and Obi-Wan now, right?

DARK HELMET and “Nobody knows…. the trouble I’ve seen … nobody knows … but Jesus…”  Oh, man — I totally need to watch Spaceballs at some point.

Now we get to meet Han Solo?  We can has Han Solo now?  (Sue me — I like Han Solo.)  And wow, this scene also looks like Cairo in Raiders.  Marion!!

Chewie!  Is that a werewolf?  Nice!  You go, Obi-Wan!

NICE.  Han Solo is the man!  In other news, I’m going to have to work in the phrase “Sorry about the mess” into more conversations.  Y’know, after I go vigilante on their asses.

“Besides, I know a few maneuvers.”  That’s another line I’ve got to say more often.  Hopefully, followed by a wink and a saucy smile.

HOLY SHIT THEY JUST BLEW UP ALDERAAN

“I feel a great disturbance in the Force.  As if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror, and suddenly silenced.”  Poor Obi-Wan.  Poor Alderaan.  Alderaanians?  Alderaaniuns?

Sorry.  I was too busy watching the movie to talk about it.  That’s a good sign.  Luke and Han have broken into the Death Star and are rescuing Leia.  Hooray!

I think I figured out another reason why I detested the prequels so much: everything was so pristine.  Between the green screen backgrounds, the crappy dialogue, and the digital effects, there was no dirt, or grease, or gunpowder or anything else.  The grit and disgusting aspects of a war weren’t there – they were Photoshopped out.  It’s like George Lucas became a germophobe in the intermittent twenty years and directed the prequels from inside a hyperbaric bubble.

See?  That happy laughter at not being compacted into trash?  THAT was what was missing from the prequels!  No one rejoiced, no one was happy!  Everything was “all in a day’s work” for Obi-Wan and Amidala that I don’t think anyone even smiled at all.  I should have taken a shot for every smile that happened.  I didn’t think about it at the time.

Because, seriously – this movie is so much happier than the prequels, I can barely stand it.

HOLY SHIT LUKE HAS A BATARANG

Oh.  There goes my happiness.  Rest in Peace, Obi-Wan Kenobi.

(Wait – at this point in writing the movie, Darth was Darth Vader’s first name?  So, George Lucas decided later to make it a title, not a name?  Fuck you, George Lucas.)

Okay, again, sorry.  It’s a good sign when I’m not talking about the movie.

And in the end, R2 was okay too!

 

I HAVE NOW SEEN STAR WARS.

Grade for Star Wars: A New Hope: Duh-doi: AWESOME.

 
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Posted by on May 5, 2012 in Star Wars

 

Star Wars: A New Hope: The Alaina Version

04 May

Before I begin, I just have to extend thanks to a dear friend. 

Sarah: I know these movies have had a large impact on you.  The only comparison I can rightly make, in my mind, is that Star Wars is to you as Buffy the Vampire Slayer is to me.  In fact, I can loop the two together and say that, in my mind, your love of Star Wars is akin to Spike’s greeting to Angel in “School Hard”: “You were my sire, man!  You were my … my Yoda!”  That if they were to ever betray you, you would curse them with the same venom with which Spike curses Angel. 

So, for all that, I was very careful for a very long time to make sure you never found out that I’d never seen Star Wars.  The last thing I wanted was to receive a ration of shit from you, because I felt that you might take it as a personal affront.

And when I finally ‘came out,’ so to speak, in the absolute loosest of terms, and admitted that I’d never seen the classic trilogy … you said nothing.  And that means more to me than I can ever say.  So thank you.

Brad and John, on the other hand …

John: YOU’VE NEVER SEEN STAR WARS?
Alaina: Johnny …
John: I had a heart attack last year, Weevil! 
Alaina: Johnny!
John: I do not need another one!
Alaina: Hey!
Brad: What’s going on?
Alaina: Nothing!
Johnny: Weevil’s never seen Star Wars!
Brad: WHAT?
Alaina: Okay, seriously?  I have too!  Just not in one sitting, or in chronological order!
Brad: You’re dead to me for the rest of the day.
Alaina: Oh, come on!

Tomorrow is May Fourth.  For those not in the know (people would say that should be me, but I’m savvy to the ways of geekdom), this date is also known as Star Wars Day: “May the Fourth be with you!”

Tomorrow night, after work, I plan on coming home, cleaning the living room a bit, pouring some pre-Cinco de Mayo margaritas, and watching Star Wars: A New Hope.

But before I do, here’s the moment where I prove, once and for all, that I am familiar with A New Hope and that I am only really watching it for a sense of finality.  Much like when I finally watched Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade four years ago: similar to theStar Wars situation, I had seen the whole movie, just not in chronological order, or in one sitting.

And so, without further ado, here’s the plot.  And I know that someone’s probably going to ask if I Wikipedia’d any of this, and the answer is no.  I don’t Wikipedia anything until after the fact.  The following is all from my memory, spotty though it may be.  Go ahead, tell me if I’m wrong.  (But not for 24 hours.)

It begins with a shot of a big spaceship (like in Spaceballs!  Gee, I wonder if that’s a coincidence!).  And then there are people walking down a corridor, and it may or may not be Darth Vader immediately, but anyway, it ends with a meeting between Darth and Princess Leia.  He wants her to surrender her realm to the empire, but she refuses, so he sends her back to the brig.  She creates a video message in her handy R2-D2 unit, and tells him to find Obi-Wan Kenobi, as he is her only hope.

We side-wipe to Tatooine, and a disgruntled young man named Luke Skywalker is pensive about his life.  He has a fight with his uncle and then goes upstairs and stares at the two setting suns.  At some point, he gets directed to go to town and pick up a couple of droids, or get C3P-0 fixed or something, but ANYWAY, he finds R2-D2 wandering the desert, like a robotic Jesus without the followers (or was it Moses who wandered the desert?  Both of them had wanderings in deserts, I think.  DON’T TELL ME, it’s not that important), and on the way back to the farm he gets attacked by Jawas and R2 and C3P-0 save him.  A button gets hit and the video of Princess Leia asking “Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi; you’re my only hope” plays, and Luke thinks, “Hey — I wonder if that’s Old Ben Kenobi?”

So he finds Ben, somewhere, and shows him the video, and Obi-Wan agrees to help Luke help rescue Princess Leia.  But they’re going to need a pilot.  So they end up in this bar on the other side of the planet and run into Han Solo, who is the best pilot in the galaxy (but also the most reckless).  As they’re trying to convince Han to join their ragtag band of rebels, this asshat Greedo comes over and tries to pick a fight with Han Solo but HAN SHOOTS FIRST and Greedo dies.

Somehow, they figure out that Luke is powerful with the Force, and Obi-Wan agrees to train him in the ways of the Jedi, and there’s the scene on the Millenium Falcon where Luke is blindfolded and trying to light-saber the ball using the Force, and someone’s playing a game with Chewbacca and C3P-0 tells him to let the Wookiee win, and also, Obi-Wan Kenobi tells Luke that he knew his father, Anakin, and that they were good friends.

When they get to the spaceship, they dress up as Storm Troopers to go and rescue the Princess.  When they find her, Han realizes that she’s not a simpering idiot, because she calls him a scruffy nerf herder.  On the way out, trying to escape, they almost get stuck in a garbage chute, but somehow they escape. 

Then they learn that Darth Vader has this amazing weapon, called the Death Star.  And it’s possible that, maybe, Darth Vader blew up Tatooine?  Or maybe Leia’s home planet?  I haven’t seen that scene in a while, I can’t remember.  ANYWAY, somehow, the find out about the Death Star, and they start researching ways on how to blow it up.

They join with the Rebel Alliance, and they find that there’s this little, tiny corridor in the Death Star that a TIE-Fighter can fly through and then it explodes it from within, so they decide to do that!  And Luke is decided to be the pilot while Han becomes the squad leader, and Leia is there, too. 

Meanwhile, Obi-Wan goes off to attack Darth Vader and restore balance to the Force, but Darth Vader kills him, after strangling General Needo.  (Or is it Nado?  I can’t remember.)

But in the end, Darth Vader and his Evil Empire escapes to fight another day, while Luke, Han and Leia celebrate, in the wake of mourning Obi-Wan Kenobi.  And at the end, there’s a parade and Leia gives the boys medals, and there’s waving and happiness and they live happily ever after until the Empire Strikes Back.

And look, as I said up there: if I’m wrong, please don’t ruin it for me.  I’ll ruin it myself tomorrow night.

 
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Posted by on May 4, 2012 in Star Wars

 

Alaina’s Friend Sarah Recommends: “Death of a Ghost Hunter”

29 Apr

What’s this?  Two entries within 24 hours?  What’s with that, you ask?  Well, my roommate is spending the weekend out of town, and, let’s be honest for a second: I don’t really have any other friends in the area I can hang out with (*sniff*), so I may as well kill some things on the TiVo.

Although this title is NOT on the TiVo.  For my readers who have not yet sampled Death of a Ghost Hunter, some background:

Every year, me and a bunch of my college friends descend upon Rhode Island like a bunch of very cool locusts — we are only there for one night, but there is much carousing and shenanigans.  This year, there was Disco Dodgeball!  Well, I was running late (thanks, Annapolis training), and by the time I arrived at the President’s Day Eve party, everyone else in attendance had already watched this gem, discovered by Jennifer on Netflix Instant!Watch: Death of a Ghost Hunter.

Thus, the entire rest of the day — and two months after the fact — my dearest friends who do not live close to me have had in-jokes about excessive timestamping, and … well, that’s really the only joke that stuck. 

[Although, even though I have not yet pushed play on this thing, I have to ask: it won Best Screenplay in something?  I have a feeling I’ll be making fun of that as the night goes on.]

Netflix describes the plot thusly:

A famed ghost hunter is hired to investigate paranormal activity at a house where, twenty years earlier, Joseph Masterson and his family were murdered.

Oh, another thing I should mention before I get too far in.  Yeah, there are a lot of movies I’ve never seen.  Shut up, all of you.  But there’s one genre of which I typically steer clear, and that is horror.  I can’t remember if I’ve listed it (and I’m not opening up another tab to actually check the list, so again, shut up), but I’ve only seen the first twenty minutes of The Exorcist, I’ve never seen Night of the Living Dead or even Night of the Dead Living (wait — that was an episode of Homicide.  That I have also never seen).  Nightmare on Elm Street, Halloween, the other one that I can never remember … I don’t like horror movies.  I really don’t.  I know the point of a horror movie is to feel uncomfortable and scared out of your wits, but … no thanks!  I really kind of hate them.

So why am I watching Death of a Ghost Hunter, which is squarely in the horror genre, alone in my apartment after midnight with all the lights on?  Because I have been reassured by my stalwart team of friends — AND by an ACTUAL GHOST HUNTER that I met at work this week, HA BE JEALOUS — that it’s not that scary or gory or gross.  And while I don’t like horror, I have gone to see “stupid” horror movies.  Notably, my favorites were Final Destination 2 and The Grudge.  The former, I went with my aforementioned college friends, and I distinctly remember Emily and I standing up, giving the slow clap to the screen after a guy got cut into three equal pieces by a projectile section of barbed wire fence (and in the same moment, Sarah steadfastly refusing to join in or even acknowledge our existence, because she felt we were being assholes).  The latter, I saw with some hometown friends, and I was the asshole that kept telling Buffy to just fight the fucking demon, why is she running when she should be kickboxing the shit out of it?  (Again, Amelia steadfastly refused to acknowledge my existence.)

So I’m hoping that I can add Death of a Ghost Hunter to my Assholey Horror Movie genre.  Game on?  OH WAIT I’M GONNA NEED ALCOHOL FOR THIS.

Oh, right.  I promised Jen I’d timestamp everything.  Heh heh heh.

12:14 a.m.
Alaina pushes play.  And takes a swig from her bottle of premixed margaritas.

Wait a minute — this is a production of Ominous Productions?  Seriously?!  That’s what they decided to name their company?  Oh, god, who’s the asshole that decided that?  *drinks*

In 1982, Minister Joseph Masterson and his family were murdered inside their home.

And then they go to somewhere in Arizona in 1982 and show some woman going out of a house with a stake in her hand WAIT ARE THERE VAMPIRES and then she’s sawing the arm off a guy? and bringing a gun into the house and then drowning a baby and can I just say, Fakest Baby Ever, and then she shoots herself, and guys, have you never heard of white balance?  Why is everything green?

‘Ghost Hunting’ is the process in which paranormal investigators use modern technology to obtain tangible evidence regarding the existence of life after death.

12:25 a.m.
Alaina makes a snotty remark: “Thanks for the definition, Dirk Dictionary.” And takes a swig of her alcohol.

In 2002, renowned ghost hunter, Carter Simms, was offered $5,000 to perform a paranormal investigation of the Masterson House.

Okay, FIRST OF ALL.  You do not need a comma after the word ‘hunter,’ Ominous Productions.  You can just say “renowned ghost hunter Carter Simms.”  Secondofly, why is Carter Simms underlined?  Why?  What’s the point?  And thrice, five grand — that’s it?  That seems kinda lame.  But what do I know — I have a real job.

Her investgation stands as the single most tragic paranormal inquiry in American history. 

Really?  In ALL of American history?  Are you sure?  Surely, someone investigated the Winchester mystery house and ended up dead.  And hey, speaking of the Winchesters, what about Supernatural?  Or when people investigated the Titanic?

It ended with her death.

NO SHIT, SHERLOCK.  Hence, the title of the damn movie.

This film is based on the journal entries she made during her investigation.

And then it proceeds into — oh, Jesus Christ. 

12:31 a.m.
Alaina attempted to take a screenshot of the TV with her phone, but sinceshe didn’t want to get off the couch and her phone is a piece of shit and doesn’t have a zoom function, she said ‘fuck it’ and — say it with me now — took a swig of her drink.

Anyway, this Carter person — a girl named Carter?  Okay, sure.  I mean, I once had a character named Toby where ‘Toby’ was a nickname for ‘Elizabeth’ — proceeds to READ THE SCREENSHOT.  Like we’re illiterate.

She narrates something about deciding between taking the coastal route from Oregon to Arizona or taking Interstate 5 or something and holy shit, is this really happening?  I am nowhere near drunk enough for this.  Wasn’t someone supposed to give me the drinking game rules?

She arrives in Arizona and meets the owner of the house.  This whole ‘journal entry’ is intercut with shots of her coming out of the shower, her sitting on her bed in a tiny bathrobe — like, dudes, this is supposed to be a horror movie, not Skinimax — and Seth Masterson making some reference to a movie that she hates that apparently I have never seen, because what movie is “step into the light” from, and why is he speaking in that creepy voice?  And what man whose family was MURDERED twenty years ago would be joking about EVIL POSSESSION MOVIES?

Y’know, in 2002, I was journaling on a laptop.  Why is Carter using a legal pad?  And wait, is she a skeptic?  Is her job to debunk or to prove?  Does she even know? 

This premise is turning into a prime example of how NOT to write.  “Here’s a haunted house.  Let’s call in a paranormal investigator and have her prove that there wasn’t a haunting, and we’ll pay her $5,000.  Oh, but here’s A TWIST: she has to work with a film crew she’s never met before.  How could this POSSIBLY go wrong?”  Jesus.  *chugs*

Also, Dear Director: why are you using such extreme close-ups?  Have you never heard of a mid-shot?  A two-shot?  Why are you up in their nostrils so much?

2:00 p.m.
The investigator stands on the porch and pushes her sunglasses warily onto the top of her head before going into the house.

Wait — she instantly draws a connection between the two stuffed birds in the Random Birdcage and the House, as if they were “stopped in time”?  That ain’t Miss Havisham’s wedding cake, Carter — it’s two stuffed parakeets with no additional meaning.

[If it ends up having additional meaning — I don’t really care, actually.]

3:30 p.m.
Colin Green nearly got kicked in the balls.

Yvette’s kind of a bitch, isn’t she?  Is she the first one that gets killed?  I really hope so.  Because in addition to being a bitch, she’s also a horrible actress.

Mary Young, the spiritual advisor? has a very oily face.  She looks like a bitchier, more pious verson of Tara Reid.

Why does Carter keep talking about the five thousand dollars?  Speaking as someone who has more bills than disposable income — and not knocking the idea of a five thousand dollar payday — in the grand scheme of things?  It’s not a lot of money!  Five HUNDRED thousand dollars, and the plot might be a bit more believable. 

I love the emphatic eating of the celery.  And no, that’s not a euphamism.

Oh.  Carter does call herself a skeptic.  That makes me feel a little better.  A little.  Not much.

This scene is one big info-dump.  Bor-ring.  It’s five minutes of “how to be a ghost hunter.”  Damn, Carter is a bitch, what with her dumping on the videographer.  Are we sure he doesn’t kill her?  And if she’s reading her journals, why is she explaining what she’s doing?  I HATE THIS MOVIE.

I ALSO HATE YVETTE.  Just let the ghost hunter do her job without trying to interrupt and ask questions.  The sooner she gets done, the sooner I get to go to bed and have creepy nightmares.

Why does Mary Young look familiar?  Seriously, she looks like a younger Rebekah on The Vampire Diaries.  But it’s not — and thank god.  I’d hate for there to be a connection between the show of my heart and this piece of crap.

Oh good, everyone feels cold.  Thank goodness everyone feels the same cold and heaviness in their chests.

Oh, is this the part where the religious person gets possessed and starts killing everyone and apparently also gets her period?  What — okay, this is where I go into my “I’m going to bash the shit out of this movie” mode and, much like when I was forced to watch The Evil Dead and my sarcasm forced my friends to turn the movie off because I wasn’t scared enough, tonight’s sarcastic bitch line is: this is going to be the worst PMS ever for you, Religious Girl.

[For those wondering, my Queen Bitch Ass line from The Evil Dead: the girl gets raped by the trees.  She manages to return to the cabin, and then proceeds to turn into … whatever it was, zombie? mass-murdering psycho?  I remember the gang of friends locking her in the basement, and there’s this shot of them all standing up, and no one says anything.  In that silence, from the couch, Alaina proclaims: “Well.  That’s one hell of an STD.”]

What just happened to the chair?  Because I’m going to go with ‘earthquake.’

Question: if the ghosts make sounds that can’t be heard by human ears, why are we spending so much time watching her listen to white noise?

WHOA — Religious Girl turns out to be Racist Girl!  I would have said “saw it coming,” but … duh.  Also, they’re in Arizona. 

Is there a reason why Mary Young’s microphone is turned down whereas Yvette’s microphone is turned up? 

DID SHE — DID SHE JUST PISS ON YVETTE’S LUGGAGE?  WHAT the FUCK was THAT?!

So now, they’ve established Yvette as a druggie slut.  She’s going to get her throat slit.  And that has nothing to do with ghosts and everything to do with being in Arizona.

Seriously, guys — how are you not figuring out already that Mary Young is the baby that didn’t actually drown?  Oh, right, because you didn’t realize that there was a baby that didn’t drown.  Kudos.  CAN I GO TO BED NOW, because I have a feeliing that either the acting’s going to get worse and/or the characters are going to get stupider, or it’s going to stop being stupid and start getting creepier, and I’m not sure I can take either of those options.

Okay, hold on, because I’m totally getting distracted.  So there’s, like, ten minutes of Yvette and Colin acting like whacked out idiots, and then there’s an actual ghost event, where a ghost runs through Carter, and then, she proclaims in complete melodramatic fashion, “She went THROUGH me, and I FELT her.”  And I Tweeted that, followed by “Nice read, Velma,” which is of course a quote from Archer.  And I’ve been scouring the interwebs for a clip of that from “Skytanic,” and of course I can’t find it, but you know what I did find?  Some awesome idiot has taken the virus that wrecks the ISIS computers and made a 57-minute long loop of it.  And I may have used that as background music while I typed up this paragraph (I DON’T REWIND, but I do pause so I can get my thoughts down before moving on to the next thought).  It’s scarily mesmerizing, and I think I just found a new game.

Also?  Totally found the Captain Lammers scene!  [Fast forward to 2:03 for my favorite scene in season one]

Jesus — I have now had the movie paused so much so I could type [read:got distracted by the interwebs] that I could have finished the damn movie by now if I had just paid attention.  But since I refuse to finish watching it in the morning, you’re just gonna have to deal with my insomnia and my distaste of the movie.

Dammit!  Just when I start to get bored with this movie, they go and do the one thing that would make like it just a little bit — they go to town and start slapping the shit out of each other.  What have I been saying for years weeks now?  Face-slapping makes everything better.

Dear Colin: you can’t call it a ‘fist fight’ if people don’t punch each other.  The word you were searching for was ‘bitchfest.’

And seriously, again — who didn’t call that Mary Young wasn’t actually supposed to be there?  And again — not having any preconceived notions about the movie aside from the excessive use of timestamps — we have to know that Mary Young is actually the sole survivor of the Masterson killing.

“I’ma find out about this bitch.”  Jesus, Yvette  Learn to read your line.

HAHAHAHA they taped the chair!  Brings to mind Jen’s wedding when Sarah and Marc were moving the cake but didn’t know where to move it to because there was no tape on the floor.  Ah, theatre.

Oh shit, the doorbell.  And it’s Mary Young.  And she’s going to kill everybody, right?  Seriously, I am falling asleep. 

WAIT — DID HER HEAD EXPLODE?  IS THAT HOW RELIGOUS GIRL DIES?  Because I admit that I’m half asleep as it is, but I get what the helment was for, but the gun was downstairs and not in her hand, right?  Which means that HER HEAD EXPLODED?

Okay — that was cool.

Wait — that was it?  No gore, no … just a quick turn around, a stab to the eye, and then you’re done, dead?  That’s — are you — WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT

So obviously, Mary Young ended up being the killer, and now, let me guess — Carter is waking up and realizing that she is a ghost, and not only that, but she’s stuck in the house that she was investigating?  That’s a fitting end for a ghost hunter. 

And now, I’m going to make a reference to both Lord of the Rings: Return of the King and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, and please know that I hate myself for making the reference: this movie has the same amount of endings as Return of the King, which is the mark of having a bad narrator. 

Also, they can afford the wacky special effects to show her as a Ghost Face, but they can’t afford corn syrup and red food coloring for more blood?  Because when I watch a movie called Death of a Ghost Hunter, I expect there to be buckets of blood.

THERE’S ANOTHER ENDING?  SERIOUSLY, DEATH OF A GHOST HUNTER, are you TRYING to be the LORD OF THE RINGS OF HORRIBLE MOVIES?

Many in the Ghost Hunting Community consider the evidence gathered by Carter Simms’ investigation of the Masterson House to be proof of the existence Life After Death… Since the events in 2002, the Masterson House has been regarded as one of the top Ten most active Hauntings in America.  In 2003, holy men from several denominations were asked to bless the house .. It is believed that their efforts were unsuccessful.

You know what was unsuccessful?  THIS MOVIE.  And granted, I probably would have enjoyed this a lot more if I had been playing the drinking game and discovering the badness along with everyone else but … JESUS.

(Good find, Jen.  Good find.)

WillBeFunOrElse: … WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT
BigDamnHerosSir: bahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha just copy that tweet.  You’ll need it again, I promise.
WillBeFunOrElse: But I may need to emphasize different words.  What the FUCK was that?  What the fuck WAS that?  What the fuck was THAT?

Grade for Death of a Ghost Hunter: WHAT the FUCK was THAT?!

 
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Posted by on April 29, 2012 in Alaina's Friend Sarah Recommends

 
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