For No Good Reason

Great Films I Do Not Enjoy Watching

Steeling myself for another viewing of Zodiac, David Fincher's 160 minute ode to Pakula and investigative futility, got me thinking about other celebrated movies I try not to watch if I can help it.

8 1/2 - The most inspired feat of onanism in cinema history.  It expanded our visual vocabulary tenfold (more profoundly than any film at that point since Citizen Kane - this is arguable, sure, but not unreasonable), and the medium would indeed be poorer without it, but it is a cold, strangely joyless work that was improved upon, at least as a piece of entertainment, by Bob Fosse with All That Jazz.  I'm told this is a fun movie by people who are older than me.  I expect to receive similar expressions of puzzlement from my nephew in thirty years when I extol the post-modern, kinda sorta faux-autobiographical brilliance of Adaptation - which, coincidentally, I haven't revisited since its initial theatrical run.

Raging Bull - To be fair, I do throw this on from time to time to behold two magnificent sequences (e.g. the Mascagni-scored opening credits or LaMotta's penance courtesy of Sugar Ray Robinson's fists), but watch the whole thing start to finish when, for all of Scorsese's reverent craft, it amounts to so little thematically or spiritually?  I'll never forget checking out a matinee at New York City's Film Forum (my first experience with RB on the big screen), and walking out into the harsh daylight two hours later promising to never do that to myself again (a promise broken only once to date).  On the way home, I actually had to duck into the Spring Lounge* for a few pints just to wash the bile out of my mouth.

Dead Ringers - David Cronenberg made back-to-back masterpieces in the 1980s, and it's to his credit that I don't look forward to re-watching either.  At least The Fly has those cheap monster movie thrills going for it; Dead Ringers, on the other hand, is a steady downward spiral into emotional oblivion that'll ruin your day but good.  Okay, okay... the bastard in me has vowed to one day end a doomed relationship by recommending this as a date movie just so I can leap out of my seat during the infamous operation-in-red sequence where Beverly unveils his new instruments for "mutant women" and scream (like I'm in a Times Square theater circa 1980), "Ooh, he's gonna tear that bitch up good!".  But until that day, on the dustiest part of my DVD shelf Dead Ringers shall stay.

Any Ingmar Bergman Movie Not Called Smiles of a Summer Night or Fanny and Alexander (TV Version) - Though there are still a few Bergman works I've yet to see (Winter Light being the most significant), most of his movies are finely tuned instruments from which the same droning melody issues again and again with no possibility of an adventurous solo that could either throw the whole performance out of whack or, best case, transcend the composition's self-imposed limitations.  Look, Bergman was (is, I suppose) a master; he conveys precisely what is on his mind every time out with a flawless blending of austere imagery and carefully selected classical music, and he's also inspired classic films from some of my favorite directors (most notably, Woody Allen's Crimes and Misdemeanors).  I just wish he took more risks.  The cited titles get a pass because they surprised and genuinely entertained me.  (Of course, Smiles of a Summer Night is an unabashed farce while Fanny and Alexander frequently takes a beating for being unduly sentimental, so maybe I'm just exposing myself as a sap.  Wouldn't be the first time.)

Some Like It Hot - Billy Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond are so in love with their cross-dressing premise that they settle for a surprising number of easy laughs and telegraph the punch lines for the jokes that should work.  Aside from the game efforts of Marilyn Monroe and Joe E. Brown, the movie's generally too impressed with its own cleverness to ever be any fun.  Hey, I'm no contrarian, and I love Wilder when his cynicism is demolishing worthwhile targets (e.g. Double Indemnity, Ace in the Hole and The Apartment), but this is one of maybe three "inarguable" classics that just doesn't earn its reputation.  Never mind that Wilder is insanely overvalued in Hollywood when you consider that most people in this town couldn't identify more than one film directed by Ernst Lubitsch.  Hell, if Wilder were still alive today, he'd probably agree.  I'm going to stop now.

*I haven't visited my old local since moving out of NYC at the end of '01.  I wonder if it's changed much.

Jack Sikma was Good in the Beginning, But Then He Went Too Far

Now that we know members of the Seattle Supersonics' ownership group have donated over $1 million to a Gary Bauer-backed outfit dedicated to denying homosexuals the right to marry (totally their prerogative - hell, I fork over a few hundred-grand annually to an organization lobbying to outlaw the breeding of beagles within a two mile radius of the log cabin where Jim Caviezel received his first haircut), it seems likely that the proud franchise of Haywood, McMillan, Payton, McDaniel and, yes, Sikma* has punched its ticket for Oklahoma City, where homosexuality cannot be sustained due to an extreme paucity of cabarets.  In anticipation of this move, I feel it incumbent on the part of NBA fans everywhere to offer suggestions for a new moniker that will reflect the proud traditions of Oklahoma City, the metropolis best known for giving us the most devastating domestic terrorist attack in United States history and Bob Tway.

Because I'm sick and have nothing better to do than cough up phlegm the color of my grandmother's '85 Citation, I'll get the ball rolling on prospective team names for this transforming franchise:

• Oklahoma City Void
• Oklahoma City Shitkickers
• Oklahoma City Snowflake Children
• Oklahoma City Unassigned Lands
• Oklahoma City Tways
• Oklahoma City Despair
• Oklahoma City Terminus
• Oklahoma City Resignation
• Oklahoma City Black Mood
• Oklahoma City Kids I'm Going to My Den, Don't Be Alarmed by the Loud Bang

This should get us started.  Please forward all suggestions to [email protected]   

*If I had any Photoshop skills to speak of, I'd have a tear streaking down the face of Cap'n Jack in the above pic.

There's Always One...

Today and throughout the weekend, we'll be hearing plenty about the greatness of Dennis Johnson, whose unquantifiable talents probably kept him from being a first-ballot electee to the Pro Basketball Hall of Fame.  As a Cavs fan, my hatred for the Pistons far outstrips any animosity I feel for the Celtics, so there's nothing but joy when I remember Bird's Game 5 steal-and-dish to DJ for a win that broke hearts all over the Motor City and Northwest Ohio (where the majority of folks root for the Tigers and the Pistons - though the front-running bastards were always Browns fans when it meant something other than deep, deep shame).  If only the Celtics could've held 'em off into the 90s.

But Dennis Johnson was more than that layup:  he won three NBA titles (one with the Sonics, two with the Celts), was the Finals MVP in 1979 and played defense better than anyone at his position during the 1980s.  There's much to fondly recall about DJ.  And then there's this from anonymous commenter "aditya" at True Hoop:

Dennis Johnson Cheated me out of a lot of money.

He slept with my wife, and promised to pay me 1.5 million to not blow this thing up.

It has been 5 years since the incident, and me and my wife is still together... but I do not appreciate what happened...

Yes, he was definitely an amazing basketball player, but he is an irresponsible person. He ruined my family.

Amazingly, that's only the second nuttiest comment I've read today.  Number one, and wholly unrelated to DJ, is this perverse, all-too-revealing defense of Roman Polanski, at the inexplicable expense of Eddie Murphy, by Jeffrey Wells (caution: you could contract herpes just by reading this)...

Wells to Polanski-haters (Hardy, Breedlove, Jesse Perry, et. al.): The Movie Gods watch over the making and celebrating of great, super-tingly, spirit-lifting movies and those who make them. Despite having once foolishly fed quaaludes to a seemingly under-age girl and then having his depraved way with her (which is something no God-fearing, Boy Scout merit-badge male I've ever known has ever once considered doing), Roman Polanski is a great filmmaker, and therefore beloved by the Gods. Eddie Murphy is a surly, unhappy, lowbrow entertainer (hee-hee-hee-hee) who's in it for the money, and is therefore tolerated (i.e., winked at) but certainly not loved by the Movie Gods. If you believe in the Church of Moviedom, you understand that Polanski is truly holy in a perverse sort of way, like John the Baptist wanking himself off between River Jordan baptizings. You must also understand that by Polanski's standard of holiness, Eddie Murphy is a wanker...a black Jimmy Swaggart looking to stuff his pockets...hee-hee-hee-hee.

My apologies if you've already showered today.

Chris Bosh is Soft

Now with incontrovertible photographic proof:

Anything to take the sting out of not swindling the Sacramento Kings in what essentially would've been a Drew Gooden for Mike Bibby trade.  Add that to Kellen Winslow II undergoing surprise microfracture surgery on his knee and LeCharles Bentley edging toward early retirement, and the misery index is pretty high around these parts.  And while he may not have been a Cleveland guy, it's hard to not be sad about Dennis Johnson's untimely departure.

Nocturnal Omissions

The impending release of Grindhouse has recently sent me flipping through my poorly maintained mental files of obscure, fucked-up movies I watched at an obscenely young age on The Movie Channel (the only cable outlet available in Bowling Green, Ohio during my most impressionable years, which was fortunate since it was the one that avowedly tried to replicate the sensibility-jarring variety of Jerry Harvey's Z Channel), and, as I track them down out of curiosity via the IMDb, it's not surprising to learn that almost all the titles that proved particularly indelible are out of print. How they're indelible is kind of interesting in and of itself, as most of these films were viewed in the middle of the night with the sound barely audible for fear that I'd wake up my parents (R-rated movies were a distinct no-no in our house). Not that hearing dialogue mattered: most of what was going on in these movies was well beyond the grasp of a kid still many years shy of thirteen (these cinephilic vigils began somewhere around 1981, meaning I was getting eyefuls of Eurobush at a healthy seven-years-old). 

The ostensible goal of these pre-dawn boob tube raids was to catch Friday the 13th or any of the multitude of slasher films that were turning up in the sensationally profitable wake of Halloween, but I was usually stymied on this count because The Movie Channel generally aired these quite popular movies during prime time (in fact, I'm pretty sure I never watched an official Friday the 13th flick in my own house until I got the parental okay to start renting R-rated movies around the time Part IV: The Final Chapter hit video). What I watched instead between the hours of two and five a.m. as I listened for footsteps padding down the staircase were critically maligned - if they were reviewed at all - programmers:  crime flicks, horror movies, sex comedies, gialli, soft-core porn and, most pathetic of all, mainstream failures that may never reach home video for want of boosters.   Some were pretty good, some have been justifiably forgotten, but, given the often questionable content and the lateness of the hour, the feeling of transgression I felt while watching these films was so powerful that they'll never fade from my memory even though history has had little use for them.

I remember enjoying a French crime flick called The Heist (aka Le Temps de loups) for its inventive car chases, ragged cinematography (probably just the effect of a lousy print if the sole commenter on the film's IMDb page is to be trusted), double crosses and a surreal, dreamlike finish that would probably make perfect sense to me today (and may not be at all surreal or dreamlike), but was well out of reach for a kid who thought Hammett was just a boring, over-stylized, PG-rated nothing starring Young Frankenstein and the dad from It Lives Again.  I'd love to revisit it, but the paucity of Sergio Gobbi (?) fanatics renders this reunion a tad unlikely.  Maybe a Charles Aznavour completist will lobby for its unearthing one day. Seriously, this film's so obscure that I've never met another human being who can remember seeing it. If only the same could be said of Iron Eagle.

There was also the naughty private schoolgirl romp Felicity (this one's available on DVD), an Australian-produced* bit of soft-core that lingers in memory due to the fetching Glory Annen being commanded by some middle-aged, mustachioed sleazebag to sit "bare-assed on the leather" of his sports car's interior.  Why this is memorable, I haven't the slightest.  It's not like it's an unreasonable request. I mean, It's certainly preferable to asking someone to sit "fully pant-ed on that fourteen-inch glass sculpture of Maupassant".  I guess I just wasn't accustomed to hearing men my father's age order young girls to disrobe in Porsches, which is probably a good thing since my dad owned a Porsche throughout the 1980s.  For the record, I've never sat bare-assed on a sports car's leather interior and am having a hard time recalling the last time my unadorned posterior made contact with a leather anything. Guess who doesn't have a very adventurous sex life?

Though Friday the 13th proved elusive, another Halloween knock-off called Stage Fright (aka Nightmares) was deemed lousy enough to thrill insomniacs during the wees, and, my, what a nasty piece of work it was.  And, in an amazing coincidence that I didn't realize until just now, this disgracefully out-of-print non-classic was directed by Felicity's John D. Lamond, who, some 8,000 nautical miles removed from Bowling Green, must've really had it out for my childhood.  What a fucker. Interestingly, this Aussie feature may have been my introduction to the giallo genre, as I can't remember viewing any other stalk-and-slash pictures that made use of the black leather glove motif prior to this.  Other than that, all I retain from this one is several characters getting gutted by a broken wine bottle, which probably bothered me because my parents and their friends were all serious wine collectors.  Twisting this further, my folks being very often blotto from excess vino imbibation at night may have kept them from stirring whilst I was downstairs breaking my brain. This probably should've been saved for therapy.

One final Australian contribution to the canon of shit-that-fucked-Jeremy-up is Richard Franklin's Roadgames, which isn't that extreme or obscure (it was rated PG in the U.S. and is widely available on DVD via Anchor Bay); it just aired all the goddamn time to the point that I could quote twenty-minute chunks of continuous dialogue if prompted, a talent I believed worthy of a Tonight Show booking (like on a night McLean Stevenson was guest hosting).  Roadgames is actually an accomplished thriller starring Stacy Keach as a trucker who picks up a hitchhiker (a forgivable indiscretion since said hitcher is Jamie Lee Curtis of 1981 vintage), talks her silly, and, when she disappears, finds himself the prime suspect in the hunt for a serial killer.  Or something like that.  Amazingly, I've gone from knowing the film verbatim to not being able to recite a basic thumbnail of the plot.  Guess the ol' recall had to make room for all those Chubb Rock lyrics.

Finally, and I can't believe this film languishes in OOP-ville, there's James B. Harris's Fast-Walking, a scuzzy star vehicle for James Woods that assailed my clinging-precariously-to-innocence-worldview with everything the Reagan era deemed evil.  This fucking thing is wall-to-wall sin. It was one of the first times I'd seen a crime flick where a protagonist in uniform - Woods plays a prison guard - was as much a villain as the story's many antagonists (Vice Squad came close, I suppose, but that was just a cop flouting due process to run over Wings Hauser with a Chevy Nova, which isn't even illegal anymore), and though the whole thing felt wrong, I couldn't help but delight in the rampant drug use and nudity and f-bombs and violent double crosses; Fast-Walking was the antithesis of every Sunday School lesson I squirmed through.  It's not that I yearned to be a bastard (though Woods sure made it look enticing); it's just that the action in Fast-Walking was far more interesting than life in Bowling Green, Ohio, and, most importantly, more real than the escapist entertainments approved by my parents.  It was intoxicating.  And since Harris would go on to do such a bang-up job with Cop (the first big-screen adaptation of a James Ellroy novel), I bet it's the only of the aforementioned titles that's gained something more than bullshit nostalgic value twenty years hence.

This is all probably more interesting to me than you, so my apologies if you've made it this far. The Coens dealt with writer's block on Miller's Crossing by writing Barton Fink; I alleviate the frustration of getting stuck on page fifty-seven of something that will not be Miller's Crossing by doing this. Would you prefer I come over to your house and sit bare-assed on your couch, leather or otherwise 'cuz I'm not picky? Okay, then.

*I swear, half of the movies that aired in these pre-dawn hours were Australian, undoubtedly a function of the country's then flourishing "New Wave".

Attn: QT & RR

Secure the rights from whomever created the below trailer and do this for real in Grindhouse 2!  (Thanks to JoBlo's master cocksman, Dave Davis, for the heads-up.  And be sure to watch it all the way to the conclusion!)

I should also note that this is the only of the Grindhouse trailers in this competition that I've enjoyed.  Harry's got 'em all collected here.

5:35 Addendum:  Hobo with a Shotgun wasn't in the first batch I viewed.  It's pretty damn funny.  Still, Cong of the Dead is the only of the group I'd want to see as a feature length film.

In Honor of Tom Brady's Paternity Predicament

There's never been a more apropos occasion to consult the sage verse of hip-hop's Lorenz Hart, Akinyele.  From his 1993 sophomore LP sensitively titled Vagina Diner.

"I Luh Hur"

My girl is pregnant, I'm ready to start splitting
All around the town on the down low was the girl that I was hitting
Everyone knows I used to luh huh
I don't want this pregnant talk to get back to my mother
Shit! I just can't believe it
I thought me and this lady had came to a mutual agreement
But I was dead wrong, her trick was evil and ill
All along girlfriend I though you was still on the pill
Step to the G-Y-N
The gynecologist, miss, so we can put this to an END
You'll need some dough, I'll probably LEND
You wanna play Biz Mark AGAIN
And tell him I'm just a FRIEND
So buy me Newports, cause as I smoke
All I do is think about you and child support
But I don't got papes, I got money
Sticking up and messing up when I went outta state
So you can stop all that FIENDIN'
With your damn SCHEMIN'
You're Christopher Williams cause you must be DREAMIN'
Wake up and escape
And while you're at it why don't you throw away your Jodeci tapes
Cause you can be forever my lady, but I ain't with no baby
Ah, ah, no ifs ands or maybes
I ain't old enough and ain't trying to hear it
So don't steal my youth cause I'm still young in spirit
That belly blows up, it's gonna be trouble
Imma have to play like a pin and come pop that bubble
Find Chucky if you want child's play
I'll give your ass a hanging and drop you off in an alleyway
This is a diary of a black man
By making no alimony payments due to no wedding bands
So ax that talk about MARRAGE
Miss, you must of misunderstood, I want you to have a MISCARRAGE
I'm fed up, and sorry that I've done it
I'm ready to set her up and have my little man kick her in the stomach
Or punch my fist through that naval
Cause I'll be damned if this be the hand that rocks the cradle
Or push her down a flight of steps
I don't care or give a heck 
About the people under the stairs
I'm all about a home made ABORTMENT
My name's not Pat, so don't send Jack Black
This ain't the damn Wheel of FORTUNE
I don't want no pause or no PORTION
Next time woman you should proceed with CAUTION
It ain't all about boy and girl
A half hour past the Cosby Show
Cause you, it's a whole different world
And yom that's how live I am
Use a diaphragm, I get it off your chest like a mammogram
Oh brother, word to mother
Just cause I talk this shit don't get me wrong
Yo, I still luh hur

A man of steel and velvet, that Akinyele.

I Wonder If That Sad Bastard Went to See 'Ghost Rider' Over the Weekend

Well, once Harry and Devin indicated that the unintentional entertainment value of MSJ's latest bid to end the comic book genre was pretty much nil, I opted to do nothing but stay in and watch the equally unentertaining NBA All-Star Weekend festivities, the highlight of those being a visibly hungover LeBron James lumbering his way through Saturday's skills competition, leaving poor Chris Paul, who immediately followed LBJ, to sour-facedly slog through a toxic cloud of Cristal farts and finish last despite being the only true point guard in a competition originally designed for point guards before injury averse superstars started opting out of the dunk contest - which was a sham again this year (that'll teach Dwight Howard to quote scripture in Las Vegas!).  That said, the vehement booing of The Rat Pack is Back, the wretched novelty act chosen to open Saturday's event, was worthy of a chuckle, and Barkley v. Bavetta somehow lived up to its sarcastic hype; all told, it was far more enjoyable than the actual game, which was a highlight reel of turnovers - to a record-breaking degree? - and halfhearted show dunks eclipsed by a typically sexy halftime performance from Christina Aguilera (hate her music, love watching her, though it's too bad the NFL got to Prince first).  I guess Kobe guarding LeBron like it was Game 7 of the NBA Finals was amusing, and people seemed to enjoy Gilbert Arenas's trampoline dunk (done to protest his own coach - with whom he's been beefing - only playing him nineteen minutes?), but the players were clearly slowed by a long weekend of partying (though LeBron did play himself into a rhythm by the fourth quarter as only a twenty-two-year-old could after three days of uninterrupted carousing).  As a corrective, next year's game should be moved to Salt Lake City.  Or Mecca.

"A Brief Word on the Necessity of Punching Women in the Face," by Neil LaBute

Contrary to popular belief, I do not hate women.  To be perfectly honest, I love them.  This should be quite evident considering the numerous, emotionally complex roles I've written for them in such critically acclaimed films as Your Friends & Neighbors, Nurse Betty and The Shape of Things.  Women and me = simpatico.  Most of the time.

Unfortunately, my most recent work, a remake of Anthony Shaffer's The Wicker Man, which admittedly features a good deal of violence being visited on women courtesy of Nicolas Cage's fists and feet (and, in one instance, claw), has turned public opinion against me.  This is due primarily to my artistic intent being travestied by a contextIess two-minute video celebrating the film's "best scenes" of Mr. Cage doing his brutish worst to a bunch of seemingly innocent women, the unmistakable message of which is simple:  Neil LaBute thinks all women are evil. 

This is untrue.  I do not think that all women are evil.  They can do good in this world - e.g. Mother Teresa.

That said, it is a fact universally recognized that women - even the non-evil ones - are emotionally unstable beasts absent the ability to govern their own emotions.  No offense, but they are like dogs in this respect. And, like dogs, the only effective means of jarring a woman back to her senses is not to chain her up out back and let her bark at the neighbor's cat for a few hours (this is a stopgap), but, rather, to sate that feral, hormonally-induced appetite for nonsense with a nice, meaty knuckle sandwich.  Seriously, just ball up the fists and liberate your frustration right on her hysterically contorted face.  Only then will she truly listen to reason.  Granted, she might not hear reason until she regains consciousness (I once put Renee Zellweger's lights out for a full thirty minutes!), but, trust me, even with some lingering blurred vision there will be no seeing double as regards man's primacy in all matters (save for fashion, interior design and how to cook what I want for dinner tonight).

Some people may find this shocking.  I'm sure most of these "people" are women.  Well, that's their fucking problem. Even though I'm often serving up your gender for abuse like a succulent honey baked ham at Easter dinner, it's only to remind you that men are natural predators who'll fuck their own kind just to boast about it years later in a sauna.  But if you're still looking for hugs and compassion from the guy who used a deaf bitch to represent the entire female perspective in his first film, I have a feeling you'll be kissing carpet real fucking soon.  Just remember, it's because I love you... woman.

Todd McCarthy Gets Down and Funky

I've had only the briefest of interactions with Variety's chief film critic, Todd McCarthy, so perhaps there's a vulgarian I've not had the pleasure of meeting lurking beneath that staid, gray facade, one who drains a few lime rickeys and starts grumbling about all the "hot, dripping minge I coulda buffed Bob Evans's foyer floor with" back in the day.  Until I meet this unvarnished fella (feel like joining us for Ghost Rider on Friday, Todd?), I'm going to conclude that the following passage from McCarthy's 300 review is spectacularly out of character:

Possibly nowhere outside of gay porn have so many broad shoulders, bulging biceps and ripped torsos been seen onscreen as in "300," a fact that will generate a certain bonus audience of its own; it's not even certain Steve Reeves, the original "Hercules," would have made the grade here.

Not terribly shocking in the age of Gawker Media, I know, but you don't expect to read such intimated ribaldry from Howard Hawks's biographer.

And he's 100% right.  300 is a big, bare-chested bohunk buffet*.  You'll leave the theater yearning to be mounted by Gerard Butler.  And, really, when's the last time you could say that?  Dracula 2000 maybe.

*That may be geographically incorrect, but I like the way it sounds, so get stuffed.