Now I know what to do with my $7000...

http://cgi.ebay.com/COMPLETE-CRITERION-COLLECTION-1-320-OOP-DVD-NEW-W-SALO_W0QQitemZ200102161694QQihZ010QQcategoryZ617QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

Flying Car

"Admittedly it's more of a dream, but Bricklin told BusinessWeek, when asked about his vision for transportation in 2030: 'I've always wanted to build an air car that goes 18 feet off the ground, so we get rid of roads on top of everything else. Tyres and frames, and all the other crap. The only problem is that I can't find anything that will push it off the ground that doesn't create all sorts of noise, not to mention serious wind and stability problems.'"

That's right kids. If you've got half a million dollars stuck in your purses, you can get yourself a car that fucking flies. Try mailboxing with that.

Link it, bitches.

JACKASS: NUMBER 2

(After being launched off a rocket) "Well that's gonna leave a fucking bruise."

Not to be close-minded, but anyone who doesn't like this film should be deported. Johnny Knoxville and his gang of retards came back to the screen with a bang last September, and JACKASS: NUMBER 2 is simply a fucking sweet movie.

A film hasn't been this notably gay since Jake and Ennis hooked up on BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN. There is more male asses, balls, pubic hair, and male-on-male face farting in this movie than I think has ever been put on celluloid, ever. A sensationally awesome movie, JACKASS: NUMBER 2 is simple in its set-up and execution. There are no plot twists here (there is no plot to twist, really); it's just a bunch of idiots blowing stuff up, messing with people's heads, and laughing their asses off. I did too. There's not much more to write about without spoiling the plot, which I hate doing. Just know that the best is saved for last, and overall it'll make you laugh your ass off. With the exception of BORAT!, this is the funniest movie of 2006.

A

GRINDHOUSE

**Written for the school paper**

This movie is 19 times better than this picture.

Grindhouses were theaters back in the 1970s and 1980s that showed low-quality, cheap movies featuring un-Godly amounts of sex, violence, and gore. Typically a grindhouse would show two films for the price of one: Usually a completely over-the-top film would be shown first, such as a take-over-the-world action movie, followed by a more tension-filled, down to earth slasher film.

This is exactly what directors Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino have brought to the table with their newest film, GRINDHOUSE. It’s a double-feature like you’ve never seen, with so-bad-it’s-awesome action, dialog, and characters, it’s sure to leave any movie lover in the best of moods. In Rodriguez’s PLANET TERROR, a gas has been unleashed that leaves the population of a hick town scrambling to survive a zombie takeover, and in Tarantino’s DEATH PROOF, a crazed driver with an obsession for blood terrorizes two groups of young women in his car, credited on the film’s poster as being “a white-hot juggernaut at 200 MPH!!!”. How can you not see something that cheesy-sounding?

I guess you do need some motivating to see this movie, though. It’s not enough that Rodriguez and Tarantino are responsible for such masterpieces as PULP FICTION, SIN CITY, KILL BILL, RESERVOIR DOGS, and FROM DUSK TILL DAWN. No, I guess not, considering Ice Cube’s ARE WE DONE YET? beat this piece of badass cinema out in the box office over the weekend. I guess I’ll just have to give you some reasons to see this beast.

1) There is a go-go dancer-turned stand-up comedian who has a machine gun for a leg.

2) Fergie (Fergalicious Fergie) gets her brains eaten. Yes, eaten.

3) There are trailers for movies that don’t actually exist, and they’re as funny and as awesome as GRINDHOUSE.

4) It has Kurt Russell and Rosario Dawson.

5) A stuntwoman rides on the hood of a car with only the support of a pair of belts. No wires. No CGI. Just two belts.

6) Said stuntwoman is the greatest woman to ever live, followed closely by Go-Go Dancer with Machine Gun leg.

7) The crazy driver’s name is Stuntman Mike. His first name is actually “Stuntman”, too.

8) The reason why SIN CITY and FROM DUSK TILL DAWN were so amazing was because they were so excessive. PLANET TERROR is 150,000 times more over-the-top.

8) DEATH PROOF features the same style of dialog that made PULP FICTION, RESERVOIR DOGS, and KILL BILL great.

9) The fake trailers are the funniest things I have seen since ANCHORMAN.

10) Everybody loves a good zombie movie. Everybody loves a good slasher movie.

Basically, if you don’t go out and see this movie, you don’t deserve to live. It's three hours of awesome, and one of the funnest times I've ever had at the movies. It’s really quite that simple. Seriously, why wouldn’t you want to see this?

A

BLADES OF GLORY

“I put the 'bone' in Zamboni.”

You know what you're going to get with a Will Ferrell movie, most of the time. Sometimes he surprises us with deep movies, such as last year's STRANGER THAN FICTION or the little-seen and underrated MELINDA AND MELINDA. Most of the time, though, he brings to the table stupid, irreverent, and seriously funny characters, such as Ron Burgundy, Franz Liebkind (THE PRODUCERS) and Ricky Bobby. And when he does, he almost always delivers.

As Chazz Michael Michaels (tell me that's not the greatest name ever), Ferrell plays a sex-addicted slob of a man's man, the best figure skater in the world. His competition is Napoleon Dynamite, I mean Jimmy MacElroy (it's played by that stupid guy from NAPOLEON DYNAMITE and THE BENCHWARMERS), a slightly feminine figure skater who opts for gracefulness and beauty rather than the improvisation and sex-fueled techniques that Michael Michaels uses.

The story really starts when Michael Michaels and MacElroy tie for the gold medal at the Olympics, and then through a series of unfortunate events, are both banned from men's singles' skating for life. But, as one random-as-hell stalker of Jimmy figures out, the boys are actually not banned from men's doubles events.

And of course, hilarity ensues.

One of the highlights of the film is the training sequence. As much as I love me some ROCKY, did the Italian Stallion ever have decapitations, Napolean Dynamite, hilarious homo eroticism, and Pam from THE OFFICE? Yeah, I forgot to mention her. Jenna Fischer, America's favorite girl-next-door from America's favorite comedy, plays the love interest of Jimmy, as well as the sister of World Pairs Championship winners Stranz and Fairchild Van Waldenberg (played by Will Arnett—you may remember him as Gob on ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT, and Amy Poehler).

As mainstream comedies go, this is pretty hilarious. Not as funny as say, ANCHORMAN or BORAT!, but definitely on par with such Frat Pack works as OLD SCHOOL, DODGEBALL, and WEDDING CRASHERS. I was pleasantly surprised by it, considering it's basically Will Ferrell re-hashing an old character (the stupid man-child who is high on himself) and Napolean Dynamite. It has some dry patches, but when Ferrell is given free reigns and him and Napolean are on-screen together, the movie works. Basically, if you want to turn your brain off and have some stomach-hurting laughs, go see BLADES OF GLORY.

B+

The Big Toss-Up: TV or Film?

**Written for the school paper.**


I like to think of myself as a guy with pretty decent taste in film and television. I don't go to the movies every weekend to see such formulaic, high-concept dreg as EPIC MOVIE, NORBIT, and PREMONITION, and I rarely turn on (the Emmy-winning, sigh) TWO AND A HALF MEN, or other hack job sitcoms. I appreciate the work that goes into making movies and television a reality, and I believe that I can separate the good from the bad pretty well.

Ever since I saw the final installation of THE LORD OF THE RINGS in theaters, I've been soaking up movies like a kid using 'Hooked on Phonics' soaks up vocab. Over the past year or so, though, I've really began delving into television as well. Shows such as ABC's LOST, Fox's 24, HBO's THE WIRE, FX's RESCUE ME, THE SHIELD, and NIP/TUCK, and even NBC's newest drama THE BLACK DONNELLYS are all favorites of mine. I believe them all to be ambitious, smartly-written shows with deep meanings and exceptional entertainment values. I find myself often asking, though, can they touch the movies?

Take LOST, for instance. I consider it to be TV's best, and most frustrating, work of art. Deeply meditative and simultaneously thrilling on several levels, it teases its audience constantly, throwing question after question after question at its audience, and not always bothering to answer those questions. It isn't hard to comprehend though, and as deep as it is, it often succumbs to formula and repetition, staying in the audience's comfort zone to retain viewers who may not want to keep up with a true head-trip. If you want something that will truly make you say 'What the hell was that?!', rent a David Lynch film. MULHOLLAND DRIVE, BLUE VELVET, and LOST HIGHWAY are truly disturbing, fascinating looks at crime, insanity, and morality.

THE WIRE, HBO's most under appreciated and best (take that, SOPRANOS) show, is a sprawling epic, a true-life tragedy of the downfall of an American city masked as a cop procedural. It tells the tale of the drug dealers, pimps, cops, students, dock workers, and coke heads in Baltimore with an almost documentary-like quality, instead of vying for the slick, over-stylized look you might find on CSI: MIAMI or the like. And even though it may be the best show dealing with crime and violence in America ever produced, can it touch THE DEPARTED? The performances, writing, and direction are superb, but are they even worthy of being mentioned in the same breath as Martin Scorsese (the best director of this generation)'s masterpiece? The film was so great it was almost distracting, because one keeps thinking 'this is so effing awesome!!!'

There isn't a better character on TV than 24's hero, Jack Bauer. Just the name makes fanboys excited. 24 is the most exciting, revelatory action show in TV history, one of the first to use real-time production well. With the budget alotted to it, the action sequences are as spectacular as TV offers, with explosions and "Put down your WEAPON!"s galore. Pound-for-pound, though, they aren't even comparable to those of big-budget Hollywood films such as the normal Michael Bay production (THE ISLAND, BAD BOYS, TRANSFORMERS) or the common superhero film.

Of course, there is also the issue of how watching movies are better than watching TV. The best of TV shows are usually non-procedural shows (the exception being LAW & ORDER), and shows such as LOST and 24, as great as they are, really need to be seen every week to be able to keep up with. Movies are much easier: a two-hour investment, and then you part ways forever.

Winner: Movies. Hands down.

Tim's Expletive-filled GHOST RIDER Review

Am I supposed to be intimitated by these shitheads?

[At a biker bar, Blackheart finds a frightened waitress hiding behind the bar]
Blackheart: I knew you were here. I could smell your fear.
[Blackheart turns the waitress into a withered corpse]

Yes, that is actually a quote from GHOST RIDER. Fuck you Hollywood. Fuck you too America.

On the weekend this hysterically awful film came out, it made $48 million. That's about $15 million more than CHILDREN OF MEN made in its entire run. While it was getting pulled out of theaters faster than a movie starring Ben Affleck and Jean-Claude Van Damme would, GHOST RIDER crossed the hundred million dollar mark. This makes me angry.

When a film this bad is seen by twenty million Americans, it makes me contemplate where popular society is going. GHOST RIDER made me cringe, it was so stupid. Not the kind of stupid that I love to watch during re-runs on TV, such as COMMANDO or DIE HARD WITH A VENGEANCE, but the kind of stupid that makes me want to punch every single stupid person in the audience that laughs at the retarded jokes and tells their friends that the movie was pretty good, and to go see it.

Nicolas Cage, who had quite a hot streak going with ADAPTATION, THE WEATHER MAN, MATCHSTICK MEN, LORD OF WAR, and WORLD TRADE CENTER, seems to have hit a wall with this and THE WICKER MAN, which I've heard is the most unintentionally hilarious movie in a long time. As Johnny Blaze (I guess he was born homoerotic), he is dull, stupid, and a hick who goes home to eat jelly beans and watch home videos of monkeys beating each other up. These are supposed to be quarks, I guess, to make the character interesting or unique or something.

The girl he dumped twenty years ago, a busty reporter whose named I don't remember and don't feel like looking up on IMDb, is played by Eva Mendes. She's the only redeeming factor of the movie. Well, her tits are, actually. Every shirt she wears seems to be unbottoned all the way down to her belly button, which suited me just fine and kept me awake and unfocused on whatever shitty dialog was being thrown at the audience. They even ruined her goddess body a bit, though, by making me think of her and Nicolas Cage's age gap. He's like, what, 47? She's 30, tops? That would mean that teenage Ghost Rider would have to be macking a chick in diapers. Fuck you, stupid screenplay.

Yeah, I guess I haven't addressed the screenplay enough. It's the worst I've ever been subjected too in a movie, ever. BATTLEFIELD EARTH was better than this. BATTLEFIELD EARTH is the worst movie ever made, if you're keeping track at home. Here's a sample:

"The story goes he made a deal to save someone he loved. He'd be normal during the day, but at night, in the presence of evil, the Rider takes over."

"Your soul is stained with the blood of innocents."

"My name is Legion. For we are [inhales, quite seriously] many."

Ghost Rider: [to Gressul, a demon made of sand] "Hey, Dirtbag!"

"A thousand souls to burn. Look into my eyes, your souls are stained by the blood of the innocent. Feel their pain."

"He may have my soul, but he doesn't have my spirit."

"Come over here and I'll kill you, you son of a bitch!"

Honest to God. If director/writer Mark Steven Johnson ever gets a job again after this, I will burn Hollywood to the ground. I hate this movie. Everybody who liked this is a bad, bad person. Seriously.

D

I won't give a movie an "F" with as much Eva Mendes cleavage as this.

THE BLACK DAHLIA

"Every life it touched, it consumed."

THE BLACK DAHLIA starts out with a bang; a gorgeous, seductive neo-noir that lures its audience in quickly with its set designs and expert camerawork, director Brian De Palma's (THE UNTOUCHABLES, FEMME FATALE, SCAREFACE) specialty. Another signature of many of De Palma's films are how they spin out of control fast, which the disappointing DAHLIA does.

The film takes place in post-World War II Los Angeles, where detectives Bucky Bleichert and Lee Blanchard investigate the almost unimaginably gory murder of a young actress with a rocky past. The cops are played by Josh Hartnett and Aaron Eckhart, and neither has been this dull in a long time. There is a thin line between subtle and boring, and they both trip on that line, trying to be cool and calm, instead ending up montonous. By the end of the film I didn't care about either of their personal drama or their conflicts. Hell, I could barely keep awake.

By the end of the film, two femme fatales are thrown in the mix. Scarlett Johansson, as much as I like her, is just playing the love interest/sexy of the film, just like she's done in THE ISLAND, MATCH POINT, and THE PRESTIGE, and Hilary Swank is horribly miscast as a woman who slept with the victim, because she "wanted to see what it would be like being with a woman who looked like her". Swank is one of the finest actresses in Hollywood, but she's not that kind of fine.

In the end, the standard noir characters have been thrown in the mix: the offbeat supporting characters, the dark people that are basically screaming that they're suspects without actually saying it, and they all come off as boring sketches of better characters of the past. THE BLACK DAHLIA looks good, but it's boring as hell, nothing new, and features lackluster performances and writing throughout. It's a shame they ruined James Ellroy's book, instead of turning it into a modern crime masterpiece, like Curtis Hanson did with his sexy ensemble, L.A. CONFIDENTIAL. Instead, this is just another clunker from De Palma.

C-

Bye Bye, Boys

THE BLACK DONNELLYS just got canceled, I hear. Bummer. I loved most of it. Tommy Donnelly is my favorite character since the spawn of the holy order of Sawyer, Jack, Locke, and Kate. STUDIO 60 may (or may not) be coming back, though, so all is not lost. I hope some sort of resolution to the show will make its way to the internet or DVD, because it's pretty well-written (it's still a Haggis script, therefore not one bit subtle) and totally enjoyable.

Bummer.

Crime Time TV

The season premiere of THE SHIELD is on tonight. I think I'll try to catch it on the TiVo in the morning, back-to-back with THE BLACK DONNELLYS. That should be a pretty good test to see how well-written and performed THE DONNELLYS is compared with the quintessential crime drama on TV. Word has been good on the first few episodes of season six for Vic and co., despite one of the key writers splitting time between it and CBS's lukewarm procedural THE UNIT. I suggest everyone try to catch it.

CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND

"He says the sun came out last night. He says it sang to him."

Steven Spielberg is, in a lot of ways, like Quentin Tarantino. It's as if they were brothers, Spielberg walking out the front door and Tarantino blowing the back door off the hinges with a home-made bomb, and screaming in glee as he ran out. They're both geniuses, in my opinion, and their artistry has left a permanent, and overwhelmingly great influence, on modern American cinema.


Where Tarantino still loves violence and the seedier aspects of criminals and killers, Spielberg loves being using his imagination. That's what CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND is; an exhibition of Spielberg's creativity and ability to floor audiences. He is the Victor Fleming of our time (well, at this point Fleming is the Spielberg of his generation), a director who knows that combining melodrama with the best visual magic the industry has to offer will attract the masses, and make a timeless film.


Overshadowed by its sci-fi counterpart of 1977 (a $10 million indy film called STAR WARS), CLOSE ENCOUNTERS flew as under the radar as a film that grossed over a quarter billion dollars possibly can. It is a brilliant film nonetheless, despite it meandering into the occasional tedium. Richard Dreyfuss, fresh off his hugely successful collaboration with Spielberg in 1975's JAWS, stars as Roy Neary, an every-man with a couple of kids and a rocky marriage. His mediocre living situation turns into something on a whole new level when he witnesses the effects of the human race's first contact with aliens, on his truck. He becomes obsessed with the extraterrestrials, seeing the same image in his dreams over and over again.


He meets Jillian Guiler (Melinda Dillon), a single mother whose young son is abducted by a UFO. While they frenetically race toward the mountain they've both seen in their 'visions', scientists and the government attempt (sometimes fruitlessly, but in the end awe-inspiringly) to track down the visitors. While ET gets most of the love in the film community (and I don't deny that it's a better movie), CLOSE ENCOUNTERS is compared with Spielberg's 1982 masterwork. This film is all about the imagery and the ideas presented, like most sci-fi masterpieces (2001, CHILDREN OF MEN, BLADE RUNNER) are, and story second. Really, the only similarities these films share, other than Spielberg directing and having aliens invade, is that the visitors are friendly and curious (the opposite of, say, WAR OF THE WORLDS, which is also awesome). They're both terrific films on their own merits, for their own reasons and ambitions.

A