First of all, know this: pesticide makes Kermit a transvestite.  Moving on…

Next I want to apologize to those of you who missed our time together last week because of The Undergrounds.  I know it was difficult, but trust me, it was worth it.  Benji’s been working with five writers and an artist to put that little web comic together and, well, writers and artists are about the most difficult people in the world to work with, so give the man some slack.  The comic itself is pretty damned funny, especially if you’ve ever spent time in customer service…

Now, to the topic at hand: The Academy Awards.  This Sunday Hollywood is going to blow some smoke up their asses, let it mingle for a while and then burp in our faces with the biggest sham ever, the Oscars.  A group of rich people swooning over one another, ranting about how great they are and how important their work is to the world… Please.  Anyways, these fascists elitists fleshy bags of hot air will, at the very least, entertain us; I’m sure someone will have a nipple slip, somebody will rant about the environment when they win, someone will end up saying something crazy like “midget-mayonnaise” for no reason, and hopefully, if we’re really lucky, somebody with some talent, not connection, will win an award they deserve.  But doubtful.

So, in lieu of the good Sgt. Angle’s picks, I’m here to give you my wishes-that-weren’t, not predictions, for this years Academy Awards in the following categories: Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Cinematography, Best Director and Best Picture.  Shall we?

Best Actor:  Cung Le

I speak a language called FukYooUp!

Last year a little sci-fi gem called Pandorum came out and it was, without a doubt, one of the most fun films in the genre I had seen in a very, very long time.  Not only did the movie have some solid work in the writing, directing and production department, but it managed to surprise me at the end, something films rarely do effectively these days.  One of the actors, real life fighter Cung Le, portrayed Manh, a badass mofo with a huge spear and a foreign language.  Cung Le spent the whole movie flipping, slashing and fighting, something that keeps me interested and holds my attention (I know, weird, right?).  Pandorum itself was fantastic and if you haven’t seen it, you’re doing yourself a disservice.  Cung Le wins because he could fuck any of the Academy’s nominations up, without special effects.

Best Actress:  Sasha Grey

I’d take her serious…

I don’t need to introduce this beauty, but I will anyways.  Sasha Grey has been in some of the more timeless pieces of the last few years, including: Teenage Peach Fuzz 3, Spunk’d 8, The King of Coochie 4, and Soderbergh’s latest (and the film for which she wins this award), The Girlfriend Experience.  In the The Girlfriend Experience, the talented Miss Grey plays an escort, which is acting, because she is not an escort in real life, she is an adult film star — totally different!  The drama deals with the escort managing her clients and her personal life in the days of the 2008 election.  You see?  Politics = drama!  The film scored varying reviews, but I can’t see how anyone would oppose a movie where we follow this fine femme around for two hours, can you?

Best Cinematography:  M David Mullen

If she were a mute, she’d be perfect.

Most of you may not know who M David Mullen is, but you probably know his work as a cinematographer…  Love Pig?  Now Renting?  Lipstick Camera?  No?  Me neither.  But I do know his 2009 release: Jennifer’s Body.  Being a cinematographer is hard work. According to Wikipedia, “The title is generally equivalent to director of photography (DP), used to designate a chief over the camera and lighting crews working on a film, responsible for achieving artistic and technical decisions related to the image.”  So, when you see something beautiful on the screen, don’t thank the director, thank the cinematographer!  In Jennifer’s Body we got two moments of beauté (that’s French for “beauty”): A make out scene with Megan Fox and Amanda Seyfried and a topless Megan Fox — you, Mr. Mullen, are a master of your craft.  Now please understand, I still think Ms. Fox is a moronic piece of white-trash, but she is an extremely hot, moronic piece of white-trash, so there you go.

Best Director:  Zach Snyder

But, where’d he get the mask?

Fuck the haters.  I know he took out the squid and I know that Watchmen is still a better book than movie, but here’s the bottom line:  Zach Snyder took what was, for all intensive purposes, Hollywood’s wetdream/nightmare property and made a damned fine film.  It’s beautiful.  It’s as true as we can hope for any comic book ground through the Hollywood machine.  It gave us an awesome Rorschach.   And if you’ve seen the extended cut with the Curse of the Black Freighter woven throughout, it’s beautifully told cinema.  You can disagree with me (it wouldn’t be the first time), but Zach Snyder deserves a hearty bow-down from all you geeky bitches for pulling off one of the most difficult comic book franchises-to-film ever.  Even if you hate the film you must respect the doors he’s opened.

Best Film:  The Hangover

Really though, who hasn’t woken up with a tiger?

As Comedies go, I don’t ask for much — just make me laugh!  At some comedies I laugh a little, at others, I laugh a lot.  At The Hangover, I laughed my fucking ass off all three times I saw it!  The cast is perfect.  The humor is spot on.  It starts with funnies and never stops — I heard jokes for the first time on my third viewing because I had laughed through them the first two times.  Does this movie make me question what it is to be human?  No.  Am I a better person after seeing it?  Probably not in the existential sense.  But here’s why The Hangover is the BEST film of 2009: It was exactly what we needed — all of us.  2009 could’ve been better in a lot of ways.  I wanted escape.  I got a hilarious romp through the eyes of four not-all-too-smart guys in the land of hedonism and unadulterated pleasure.  I left the theater and I was genuinely happy, more than I can say for some animated/blue-people/depressing films I saw last year…  Oh yeah, and Mike Tyson was in it singing Phil Collins — automatic win.

That’s it kiddies.  Enjoy this Sunday (if you can).  Maybe next year we’ll see some actual talent get an award, like whoever stars in the Burton/Bekmambetov film coming out where President Lincoln fights vampires…

Until next time,

Mr. Wolff

Back to Semantink

Sgt. Angle reporting for duty!

Last week, we got a taste of the worst of the worst, namely that the lamest movie to come around in a while is Legion, as declared by Mr. Wolff. This assertion was quickly followed up by Ben and his “Wasting Ink” blog about horrid comic book characters of the past.

Here, then, are wasted bits of celluloid. Keep in mind, when I say “wasted” in this context, I’m not saying that these movies should be lined up against a brick wall and that I order for each to be hit with a flamethrower. I’m simply saying that there are betters ways to expose film when on these film sets than the resulting footage. Also, I’m avoiding the trap of choosing entire films and shoving them into this column, essentially creating a crappy movies list. Instead, I’m aiming for different elements of different films — an actor that was just entirely wrong for the part, and over-written script for an otherwise decent director, or an entirely over-the-top editing style that would drive an epileptic sane.

The poster for childhood nightmares across America.

Jack — director, Francis Ford Coppola. What was he thinking? Here we have one of the most legendary directors of all time, king of the 70s Golden Age of American Cinema (Spielberg and Lucas hold the trophy for biggest blockbusters, and ushered in a new era, but the art of the decade came from Coppola), fell into a trap of Hollywood greed by directing this Robin Williams starring flop about a ten year old boy who ages four times as fast as regular people, and thus is cursed to resemble Robin Williams. The movie is sappy, ridiculous, and a childish waste of talent (Diane Lane…oh no), veering into typical childish slapstick humor with no other point than to offer kids a casual chuckle, rather than explore the deeper question of when we learn to grow up as people. One wonders if Coppola took an Ambien and slept throughout production and simply woke up to the resulting footage amidst a pile of Williams’ chest hair. Indeed, Jack seemed to be a detour somehow necessary for Coppola to bankroll his next film, The Rainmaker, starring Matt Damon.

Reshoots: Get Robin Williams out of it, and bring in a more serious actor who might be able to practice comedic chops, not the other way around. Also, should’ve brought in a writer with a bit of grace in handling deeper thematic issues — John Sayles, for instance.

The Lawnmower Man — Unreasonable adaptation. There are certain adaptations of stories, books, and plays which are utterly unacceptable and not necessary. In this case, it happened to Stephen King’s short story “The Lawnmower Man,” the creepy short story about a dude who hires a mysterious lawnmowing company, and discovers a terrifying truth about the company’s owner — who turns out to be a satyr working for Pan, and who devours cut grass while nude and kills his client before the truth can get out. The movie, starring ‘James Bond’ Pierce Brosnan, is about a dude who uses a mentally retarded lawnmower for virtual reality experiments, only to watch the poor guy’s evil increase with his intelligence. The ridiculous adaptation was so bad that Stephen King sued to get his name off the final film. Take your rifles and blast a hole in this celluloid monster.

Reshoots: None. Change your damn title and be done with it. Keep Jeff Fahey, though.…

The heat is so on.

Beverly Hills Cop III - Director John Landis and Eddie Murphy. Again, the sound of silver suitcases opening with wads of cash attracts the talent who created “Thriller,” and one of the best comedians of the 1980s, to the end of the better parts of their careers. The film has pieces of comic gems — Judge Reinhold’s hilarious reign as the head of the JDOJSIOC (“The JGjo-josee”), the random George Lucas cameo — but as far as films that represent turning points for anyone in showbiz, BHCIII is that point for Eddie Murphy, when nearly every film that followed carried a lighter, fluffier style (other than, of course, Vampire in Brooklyn), and his raw combination of violence, humor, and relevance just exited stage left.

Reshoots: Fine, keep your Wonderworld amusement park. Now add some blood and violence, and get a director who is able to handle something other than campy, classical horror. I’m sorry, Landis. I love American Werewolf in London, but this sort of thing ain’t your bag. At least, not in the tradition of Axel Foley’s finest work.

Oh, snap! What decade are we in?!

The Good German — Good idea, poor execution. Steven Soderbergh ventured into Post-WWII Vienna with his black and white homage to films like Casablanca a few years ago, and the results of his amalgam of talent and dedication to the craft took a turn for the worse around the moment when Tobey Maguire smacks Cate Blanchett in the face. The elements were all there: Using cameras and film from the era, hiring a great cinematographer who knows how to shoot black and white (Steven Soderbergh), good editing (Steven Soderbergh…again), a classic score (Thomas Newman), a smart script (Paul Attanasio). The problem is the dense story mishandled by great actors who, other than George Clooney, could not understand the basis of the filmmaker’s intentions. That, and the fact that Tobey Maguire was horribly miscast to play an enraged soldier who beats his girlfriend and screams bloody murder at any other soldier who chose today to breathe. Too small, and too soon for TM to try on the shoes of the villain. Pick something smaller, more unique (certainly not this past year’s generic Brothers).

Reshoots: How about recasting? How about re-writing so the plot is not as dense, and how about casting someone other than Tobey Maguire and Cate Blanchett? Cate lacks chemistry with any of her male counterparts in this one.

Dracula: Dead and Loving It - Mel Brooks. If you’re a good soldier,  you grant Mel Brooks your undivided attention from his early days as a performer on “The New Steve Allen Show” as the 2000 year old man, up through and including Robin Hood: Men in Tights. That being said, Spaceballs represented the last great Brooks film, and also the beginning of the Brooks Decline in comedy. RH:MIT is saved not only by Cary Elwes’s English accent, but also bites with humor from Dave Chappelle and a clear comedic target, that being the overuse of classic characters and the resulting effect on the genre itself. With Dracula: Dead and Loving It, Brooks had the chance to exploit the melodramatic forces at play in the vampire genre, and to create a spoof of the soul-sucking nature of monster movies — just as Spaceballs mocked the science fiction blockbuster, and Blazing Saddles taught us that even the most classic of movie storytelling genres was fodder for more jokes than beans in a burrito. Leslie Nielsen couldn’t even save the Dracula spoof’s nightmare of a humorless script. In fact, the one laugh-out-loud moment is featured in the trailer: “She’s Nosferatu.” “She’s Italian?”

Reshoots: More Steven Weber, less Leslie Nielsen.

Stand at attention!

Date Movie - The death of Hollywood dignity. Perhaps a deeply troubled step-child, or third cousin, to Dracula: Dead and Loving It, Date Movie is the representative of the last 12 years of Hollywood spoofs, second generation knock-offs courtesy of Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer. Films such as Scary Movie 3 & 4, Meet the Spartans, Disaster Movie, Epic Movie. These “films” are loaded with slight references and brief moments of familiar, recent movies, trying to cram every ounce of pop culture in between the most bare-bones of familiar plots. Take a lesson from Young Frankenstein: Build your characters, and keep your references subtle. Or from Airplane: Load us up with SMART jokes in the subtle way, and hit us over the head with slapstick humor of the irrelevant kind. Don’t just rely on the casting of Alyson Hannigan in your lead to attract our confidence in your otherwise colorless, odorless product.

Reshoots: I think we could — nah, nevermind. Burn it. Eliminate the last six years of horrible, pop-culture spoofs, and maybe my platoon will learn to laugh again.

You are dismissed!

Sgt. Angle