Chick Flick Round Up

                                                    Saw that twice

So I decided to get back into movie reviews with a chick flick triple header, 1 movie a night for 3 nights, both to challenge my stamina as well as to see what the hell these movies were about.  One of my friends said that Valentines day was okay, luckily he’s broken up with his girl friend now so I think he will recant.

I started out with She’s Out Of My League because it looked like only a half chick flick, or at least one disguised as a gross out style comedy to get the dudes there with out too much of a fuss.  Well, I don’t even know what to say, that’s pretty much exactly what it was, I mean even movies like Knocked Up have a certain chick flick component, but this one was essentially “what is the brother of the producer of Super Bad made a movie you could bring your girl friend to”  And I’m sure that’s exactly how it was pitched, since any pitch longer than a twitter will require a break for another line of coke so that won’t work.

Anyway, by the time I looked over my notes I realized that A: I have nothing more to say about this movie and B: I can’t write a review that is just 20 un answerable questions.  So I’m just going to post my notes, have fun with that.

She's Out of My League

Jay starts out with over played plea to girlfriend, "like a scientist", snort, 2 years off

Very typical low rent Judd Apatow friends everyone seems like a cheap Jonah Hill or even cheaper Nick Swardson

It appears to be a world where not getting a boner and acting like a retard pulls causes 8s to think about you non stop

She's best friends with heroin overdose chick from Breaking Bad, hope they follow the same plot line

Stupid fat friend talks about Aladdin, cause he's like a little kid

Big shocker, she knows more about hockey than Jay Burachel, it's of course an implied trait as neither of them seem to know anything about hockey

Why are sports scenes critical to romance movies directed towards guys?  Is the chick into sports really the guy fantasy

If this movie was a home video and had not been written it would be pretty good

And she's a lawyer, because why not

Dressed like a waiter and then sees ex-boyfriend who's obviously a douche

Might have the crappiest we just went on a good date song ever

I want to see a movie about a confident, good looking guy get a girl that's totally in his league then they break up after 18 months for no particular reason

She's not retarded hot, I don't get the reactions from every guy in this movie, even if she were has any guy every stammered?

The dinner table seen has a very "we saw Ricky Bobby" flavor to it

How is this family upper middle class?  The dad would be lucky to be a wallmart greeter

Why is it called the slap shot regatta, there's no boats involved at all?  Also, Jay hits a wrister like an 11 year old girl

I know that Jay is the same age as me but he still looks too young to drink wine

The can't get off the coach due to boner move, another classic, is there a way to do a movie like this ironically, of course the dog crotch lick

It just came out was the joke, how could one of the 9 writers not get that right

Missed another come from joke and why is it that dog jizz licking ended their relationship, none of this makes any sense

And what the fuck is up with hard 10

I find oyster in my shorts to be way grosser than any of the really gross things I say, even piss clams

I can't figure out the time-line of this movie, it's as if baseball and hockey are both played in mid July, also this doesn't have special Iron City flavor that makes western Pennsylvania so special

Miss march ball shaving conversation is at least 5 times this funny, strange how that can be

The secret defect better be a dick, if this movie goes Crying Game on me it may be the best movie ever

NO one has ever had this fight, being awesome and good looking I'm pretty sure that's what chicks look for in guys, I've never had a funny safe guy beat me out

I've come to the conclusion that I relate much more to the douche bag ex-boyfriends ever more ass hole best friend in these kinds of movies, like I should be named Blane, Andrew McCarthy in Pretty in Pink is the closest I'll get and I still understand why he is friends with Spader

You have to learn to live up to yourself, you're a 10, that's the retarded moral

Still have a weird goth thing for the other chick, still would like her character better if she asphyxiated while on heroin

Stuck on the plane after the speech was a good move for sure, first clever thing in this shit box

Keep thinking of that Simpsons where they go to Bronson, Missouri:  Hey ma, can get some ice cream; no dice

The crazy ex girl friend has a very 70s hot kinda of thing going, she should stick to period pieces, which by the way is my new candy idea for lesbians

It's nice to see a skinny girl with big boobs, the move away from that is a mistake

That's was shockingly forgettable, wonder how many movies like that come out every year and then just disappear?

Nothing but questions on this movie

Tree Justice

So I’m doing the internet surfing as I’m want to do while I’m supposed to be working and came upon this article from The Salt Lake Trib about a blind man suing the Wienerschnitzel over running into a tree.  Of course this is my kind of story, because I generally hate frivolous law suits, love people walking into trees, especially blind people and will defend Der Wienerschnitzel to the death, mini corndogs are better than sex, and not in the way chicks talk about chocolate being better than sex in some bullshit metaphorical way, they are literally better in every way.

What really made this article is  the opening line by Bob Mims:

All Nathan Reynolds wanted was a hot dog. Instead, as the blind man walked toward a Wienerschnitzel restaurant last year, he got a face full of tree — and severe neck injuries.

It’s like the kind of article that would be in a Will Farrell movie or something, it’s as if he just wrote thinking some editor would say no way we are putting this crap in a real newspaper, but nope, there it is.  This is mostly the reason that I haven’t read a newspaper in years, unless they just become complete self parody like this I think that I might stay out.  The most awesome part though was this wasn’t even the best line to be read, one of the commenters just crushed it.  Since many of you may not read Utah news comments, they are terrible, religious diatribes most of the time so I don’t usually read them but this is different, after 4 or 5 people complain about how law suits like this ruin the economy, blah, blah, blah Utahstufmuffin4 (hard to believe that 1-3 were already take) brings out the heat with “If I was blind, I’m not sure I’d want to eat hot dogs anyway” and then was quickly followed up with Tasm dropping “Why was a blind man walking so fast the he be knocked down when he hit something?”  These were of course followed up with about 10 school teachers types bitching about making fun of blind people and people that have tree induced neck injuries and what not.  But screw them, it’s my goal that all blog commentary be turned into Filmdrunk style nonsense.

Expendables The Movie So Manly it Already got your Sister Pregnant

BANG!

The return to the classic 80s action movie comes back to the earth this Friday.  This doesn’t have any of the crap that modern action movies have, including 3D, anyone names Shia, no one dying, letting bad guys live and other pussy gay marriage crap.  Instead we get Stallone and Lundgren back together for the first time since Rocky IV to bring the pain Ronald Ray-Gun style.  So put on your Ayatollah Asshola t-shirt, which has become strangely relevant again and head to the theatre with your boys and a couple 4-Locos (I think I’m still the only person that has never had these) and leave your girlfriend at home because this movie has been scientifically proven to machine gun down birth control and get her pregnant.

If you happen to not think this movie is kick ass enough, here are the character names that Sly came up with, you little whiny girl:

Cast
   Sylvester Stallone    ...     Barney Ross

    Jason Statham    ...     Lee Christmas

    Jet Li    ...     Ying Yang

    Dolph Lundgren    ...     Gunner Jensen

    Eric Roberts    ...     James Munroe
    Randy Couture    ...     Toll Road

    Steve Austin    ...     Paine

    David Zayas    ...     General Garza

    Giselle Itié    ...     Sandra

    Charisma Carpenter    ...     Lacy

    Gary Daniels    ...     The Brit

    Terry Crews    ...     Hale Caesar

    Mickey Rourke    ...     Tool

TV Round Up

Another feature with another really stupid name, I’ve been trying to write this post for 2 weeks now and finally I’m getting to it and still haven’t come up with a better name than this.

AMC:  Since we all know that AMC has for at least the last 3 years been the best TV network around thanks to Mad Men and their fall hit Breaking Bad is at a new summer season now with a new Mad Men season and the premier of Rubicon.  Since we all know about Mad Men and this season is starting out again to be another great season, I am going to focus on Rubicon.  Rubicon is exactly what AMC would do with a political thriller/spy type show, it is the 3 Days of the Condor to USA’s Girl Spy Thriller’s The World is not Enough.  It has a very film quality look, extremely slow burn and what is obviously about three plots that will at some point meet up, maybe not even in this season.  It’s tense, slow, quiet and fairly interesting, this is exactly the “spy” show that I’ve been waiting for.  As far as Mad Men season 4, awesome, hookers, scotch, Joan, more scotch, working, style going slightly down hill in 1965, and even better straight from Scotland Scotch.

FX and Adult Swim:  I’ve put these together because I find that FX, specifically in Louis has taken off from where Adult Swim started and has made that kind of quirky uncomfortable humor into a viable product for an half hour show.  Specifically the move by Adult Swim to live action shows, Children’s Hospital is the perfect transitional show from the crazy stoner cartoons of Sea Lab and Aqua Teen to an actual cable comedy show, Archer is another example of this in the cartoon realm.  Children’s Hospital is also a great example of web shows and the web show mentality moving to cable.  It combines cheap production and short episodes, 15 minutes or so which Adult Swim has done for years, and the ability for really great comedy actors to convince their friends to do one or two episodes leading to great comedy moments.  Now Louis has these exact kind of qualities, it’s independent in a way TV usually isn’t, edited, written, directed and about everything else by Louis C.K.  It also has the great uncomfortable odd moments, stretching the uncomfortable to before unseen levels, almost the Dogma 95 of comedy.

Premium:  Over on Showtime Liam Neeson will join Laura Linney on a show called The C Word, and Susan Sarandon will be on HBO’s The Miraculous Year, obviously Showtime should work for a trade.  And that is the Charley Sheen Joke of the Night.  Try the lamb.

Art over Money

I know I’m about a month late on this, but someone should give Amerlie Gillette over at the Onion A.V. Club some sort of award for coming up with the idea of Jane Lynch recording a Rifftrax for High School Musical instead of a Glee movie.  I would pay $20 to listen to that, someone give Mike Nelson a call today.  This is a lazy post, I blame your stupid face.

Total Eclipse of a Review

A stunning review of Twilight: Heart Edition by the Foywonder, for anyone that wants to hear a complete evisceration of the Emo Vamp Teen Girl Saga of the Century, head over there, I can’t do any better.

Sometimes I wish it were between 3 ferns

Since I can write whatever I want on this blog, I can do this fun little media review since it’s neither TV nor movies but this exciting new thing called the internet.  I love Chad Farthouse and his unique blend of beards and Greenness which results in comedy and the brutal awkwardness of this bit is great, very much the evolutionary step from The Chris Farley Show.  But part of the appeal was that it was supposed to be real and although there is only so far you can go with that having Carell blow it up like this and reverse the rolls I think does a disservice to the bit.  Also Carell is not very good at playing this character, he comes off very spiteful in it, where Zach can be very playful and innocent asking the exact same questions.  Either way it’s way better than anything on CBS and probably 20% gayer, which seems very important in TV these days.

Miami Shore

Before I write about all the important stuff I’ve been meaning to write about the last 3 days I have to talk about the Jersey Shore Season 2 premier tonight, something I’ve been anticipating and dreading for months now.  I have to say that if you really want a good run down of the show you have to listen to the first 15 minutes of the Tony Kornheiser show from this morning as he tries to wrap his head around the idea of the show, absolutely priceless.  Of course Michael Cera has been added to the cast as a sorta nerdy hipster writing an article for his school newspaper and falling in love with an outcast Jersey girl that doesn’t fit in or something.

What we do have is the Jersey shore Guidpatrol being sent to Miami the Jersey Shore of the south.  Let’s not pretend for a second that South Beach of LeBron and Hollywood is not the real Miami by any means.  Anyone who has read a Florida newspaper knows that is in every way the dong of America and while Miami isn’t the white trash shit whole that northern and central Florida is, it has it’s own flavor or trash assitude.

I’m quite sure that the Jersey shore kids will fit in just fine with the slightly racially different, but culturally similar Miami beach scene.  Not fitting in, or not getting drunk enough, or not finding people to fight was never going to be the problem.  The problem was going to be what happened to the Real World over the first 3 or 4 seasons, which due to this new media age and what has occurred before this process will have sped up greatly.  When the Jersey Shore first hit the scene what separated it from the later years of the Real World and all the other realty shows on TV at the moment is that the Shore was not self aware at all, absolutely no post modernism at all.  These people were actually like this, they simply acted like themselves, almost unaware that they were on MTV.

This is no longer the case.  They have been swept up into the MTV reality celebrity machine, taken around the world to do appearances, opening clubs, told how to speak, how to interview, had their most guido trash ass edges sanded off.  And most of all, they have to know what it is to be reality stars, they have seen the scripting, the editing the finished product.  They know what sells, what doesn’t, the finished product, so once the curtain has been pulled back and wizard has been seen how can they close their eyes and forget what they’ve learned and return to the glory of last season.

If there has every been a group of people that had a chance of doing this, it is these guys, they are the only ones that could pull this off, so we can only hope that all the hairspray has killed their long term memory, that the axe body spray and the Ed Hardy cologne has destroyed their minds they can return to the innocents of season 1, we can only hope.

Clown make up is so hard core

Since you read this blog I can only assume that you very aware of GOTJ 11, or as it’s officially known the 11th Annual Gathering of the Juggalos and the amazing infomercial for this event that can be found over at the youtube.com.  Not that I’m not a fan of hatchets to the dick or anything, but I find the idea of an entire subculture completely based around the fictional world created by Insane Clown Posey to be almost incomprehensible.  One time my sister said she thought that you had to burst through some kind of bubble to leave the atmosphere of the earth and although completely stupid, I can at least understand how someone might think that, Juggalos on the other hand simply make no sense.  I remember being at a park in a pretty nice area of Salt Lake and running into some Juggalos who felt the need to tell us about how they keep meat cleavers in the back of their cars and all had multiple DUIs but the last one was for weed so it didn’t seem fair they had to get one of those breathalyzer ignition devices.  Anyway, the next day we did a bunch of mushrooms and went back to the park where there were a bunch of like 10 year old kids playing and my buddy was so worried that they may grow up to be Juggalos that he had to go back home where he had a total freak out for like 4 hours.  So there’s that.

I have to say that I am having a very hard time believing that there are so many groups out there that thought,”boy what my crappy rock rap needs to make it awesome is crappy clown make up mixed with a Slip Knot aesthetic.”  Thanks once again ICP.  I’m glad that these ethnically ambiguous wiggers for lack of a better term have felt that just doing meth and hanging out at Wallmart to buy pink hair dye and pregnancy test did not define their culture well enough so that the Juggalo had to be invented.  Also what the hell is Naughty by Nature doing at this thing?  Have they become mother fucking hatchet killers? Whatever that means.  Also I hope you paid special attention to the guest comedians, because where else are Tom Green and Galager going to headline.  I have to say I was also very intrigued by the idea of special ICP seminars, how great would an SNL skit be with Tony Robbins talking like Juggalo.  I’m almost to the point that I want to go to this thing and write a Rolling Stone style 5000 word expose on it.  Here’s Juggalo News just in case you guys thought that they went too far with that parody.

Also, normally I wouldn’t advocate killing people nor would I ever want to agree with a youtube commenter named jesuslovesblackmetal, but he has a point when he says, “Just bomb the fucking "gathering". It's just a bunch of worthless, trailer trash, inbred fucking undesirables in one place at the same fucking time. Nobody will mourn their deaths. In fact, I'm quite positive we will gain more than we lose doing this. Juggalo genocide, anyone?”  Thanks jesuslovesblackmetal for making me hate myself a little bit.

Food, Food and Food

A couple weeks ago the City Weekly ran an article about some of the great Salt Lake restaurants that had closed down over the years and then last night while I was waiting to go out I watched an episode of No Reservations from last year where Tony went around to some of the great old New York spots that have survived into the modern culinary world of today.  I have a certain sick love for these kinds of restaurant reviews, a mix of depression and ennui and nostalgia that I think is at the very heart of the Hipster Generation and although I find it ridiculous that kind of attitude has a certain resonance with my personality at a basic level.  Especially when it comes to food in Salt Lake, this city is a wasteland for good food, there seems at times like an almost willful desire from locals to destroy everything good and turn this city into junior Phoenix, the land of chains and strip mall food.

There are still a couple great old places that have survived due to a small number of loyal customers that actually life good food and there are a great number of really good, authentic ethnic places scattered around the valley that must never be overlooked.  It’s the more mainstream traditional good restaurants that are hopelessly with a home here.  It is a city that desires trends more than anything else, always looking for the newest trend, a surprisingly faux hip place in a lot of ways, Williamsburg West I’ve called it many times.  But there is no heart to any of it, whatever trendy chain blows through town that someone heard about when they were in LA or New York hits and hits hard for a while then is gone.  There are of course the Gastronomy places that have been here for years and serve a quite high level or uninteresting sea food, but still good.  There is one great Italian place, maybe two actually, but truly great French is not to be had.  There are a lot of places that survive on ambiance more than food quality as well, and there is lot to be said for ambiance, but both things would be nice.

I guess what I’m getting at is that I would really like to make more of an effort here to at least document, if not bring some kind of notoriety to some of the great local places on this site.  As much as I hate people and would much prefer to eat in an empty restaurant to a full one, it would be nice for some of the great places that happen to still be here to stay in business.  I would hate for the Golden Dragons to be replaced with PF Changs and the Mama’s Kitchens to be nothing but KFCs.

Finally someone admits that hipsters are just rich homeless guys

I think this article over at High Snobiety about Julia Chesky’s photograph series “The Original Hipster” was probably supposed to be about something different, especially with a quote like “I’m calling this series The Original Hipster because on most days he doesn’t even look like he’s truly homeless.“ but the only thing that I took away from it was that hipsters are just trust fund kinds spending lots of money to look like they are homeless, because as you can see, this guy totally looks homeless all the time.

I have to say though, it’s the Mark Jacobs bag next to him in all of the pictures that really makes these pictures what they are.  I’m pretty sure that at some point someone’s fall line is just going to be clothes they have stolen from bums and the prescient view of the future portrayed in Zoolander will come true as we Derelict from Marni for fall 2012.

The one thing that Julia gets wrong about this is Chris here is totally lacking in any sense of unwarranted self importance that is always plastered across the face of any real hipster.  Good try though, maybe next time do a series of dogs with scarves on, everyone loves hipster dogs.

The Triumphant Return

My triumphant return to my personal blog is starting off with a blatant rip off of an quick post that Lance did over at Film Drunk one of my favorite sites on the web.  I’m even going to steal his crappy photoshop for it.

When I first started to read the article about L.A. Zombie it seemed to be the usual crap, bunch of Aussies pissed off about gay zombies.  Having spent some time in the eastern Mediterranean with a couple over privileged Australian guys I realized that everything that Europeans hate about Americans really should be directed towards Australians.

They were loud as hell, constantly yelling at various Greek and Turkish service workers in some strange language that none of us understood, they claimed it was English.  They also referred to almost everything as poofters, asking over and over again if I were a poofer, or others were poofters the entire time drinking Smirnoff Ice by the gallon.  It was like some strange other frat guys from another dimension, I mean I understand pounding Mike’s Hard Lemonade and accusing everyone of being a fag, but what the hell was this?

It was when I was reading the quote from some stupid newspaper and came to this line “rejecting the film by Canadian director Bruce LaBruce.”  At first I thought it was something from the filmdrunk commentary, and a joke, but it wasn’t, that was actually the guys name.  Which I found very odd since we know that everyone from Australia is named Bruce and I’m pretty sure that LaBruce is a very standard surname as it clearly means Mrs. Bruce, probably indicating that he had a single mom, poor bastard.

What really made this so utterly amazing was in the next quote from Brietbart.com that indicated that the film festival board director was named Donald McDonald; how this could not be a huge prank I have no idea.  Since Donald McDonald is clearly the most Canadian name ever I think this all boils down two long lost brothers, separated at birth due to the crash of a streamliner in the north pacific, one adopted by his Canadian aunt, the other taken in by a lowly pig dog breeder in Australia that read about the tragedy in the news, and by read I of course mean over heard someone shouting about it at the pub.

This story of gay L.A. Vampires has brought these two brothers together across the biggest ocean in the world and a world of difference in their views on life, pretty much Perfect Strangers mixed with Crocodile Dundee and Strange Brew.  Built in audience, 80s nestolgia, gay vampires, give me a call Hollywood, I’ll have the script ready to be re-written 4 more times by Monday.

Now that’s a photoshop!