Pee-Wee’s Big Screen Comeback!

I am so excited for Pee-Wee to come back to the big screen.  Universal is helming the movie, and Reubens himself is penning the movie with Paul Rust.  Judd Apatow is also in on the fun.

The last big screen adventure was Big Top Pee-Wee, which, let’s face it, sucked.  Sucked really really hard.  The only scenes I particularly enjoyed in that movie was Screech being in the movie for three seconds and the three seconds of Tequila Song at the end of the movie.  You know, the ending felt like this is where the movie should have started, and it ended so abruptly.  Seriously, though, if I were Dustin Diamond, I wouldn’t even worry about that Screech thing.  If that hadn’t happened, he would have forever been associated as that kid from Big Top Pee-Wee.  Screech’s girlfriends were Punky Brewster and Tori Spelling.  I’m just saying.

Of course, theatrically, the biggest competition this Pee-Wee movie would have is Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure.  The movie, which was also the directorial debut of Tim Burton, shows there is nothing as purely awesome as the story of a boy and his bike.  Plus, the Tequila Song is a classic!

No matter what this movie has planned, if it doesn’t have a reference to the Tequila Song, it already loses a point to Big Top Pee-Wee.

I love the movies, but I must confess: the movies make me sad.  His furniture doesn’t talk!  I loved Pee-Wee’s Playhouse most of all, and I love Chairry.  And Pterry.  Oh, heck, I even have a soft spot for Randy.  Plus, Laurence Fishburne was Cowboy Curtis, and it even had the late great Phil Hartman as Captain Carl.  Oh, and how I used to be obsessed with Jambi the Genie.

But let’s be serious.  I love Paul Reubens.  Buffy the Vampire Slayer?  It was all about him.  You Don’t Know Jack?  He was the second best host ever!  (I still love Cookie with my heart and soul.)  Pushing Daisies?  Why wasn’t he in the second season?!  My mom thinks I’m crazy for liking him, but the man is brilliant.

Really, this was just a long, round about way for me to say I CAN’T WAIT FOR THE FREAKING PEE-WEE MOVIE!!!!!  Once I see it, I can die happy.  I mean, with Reubens and Apatow attached…

Oh, wait.  Universal.  Systematically killing my childhood one movie at a time since Josie and the Pussycats.  But they also make some really good original movies, like Bruce Almighty. 

No, it will be AWESOME and it will OWN every other Pee-Wee property EVER.  Or I will die sad of a sadgasm right in the theatre.

No pressure on it being the best movie ever, though.

Sorry for my absence!

I have not forgotten about this place, I’ve just gotten busy lately.  While I don’t have anything new to offer you, I offer you 10 Remakes That Prove Hollywood Was Never Original.

I hope to be back soon with more movie reviews, insight into what I think about movies in production, talking about movies I wish they would make, and more short films you should check out.

Speculation: Diablo Cody’s Sweet Valley High

First of all, I wish to apologize to all the dudes out there.  This one is for the girls who grew up with Elizabeth and Jessica Wakefield.

A denim jacket does not a bad girl make.  What is Jessica, season 1 The Fonz?

As a little girl, I loved Sweet Valley.  I started with Twins, as many girls of my age group did.  I read The Unicorn Club, High, like 3 books from Senior Year, University, and Elizabeth… Not in that order, but chronologically that’s how they happened.  I am stupid excited for a Sweet Valley movie, except for one thing…

Diablo Cody.

Don’t get me wrong!  I love Juno and United States of Tara.  But I’ve seen Juno and United States of Tara and I read many Sweet Valley series.  I’ve even seen every episode of the TV show. 

This was one of my favorite TV shows when I was 11.

Side note, how weird is it that the Red Ranger was in a season 1 episode of Sweet Valley High and then later down the road Tommy from Power Rangers joined the cast?  What, Saban produced the show?  Yeah, that happened.

The twins never got pregnant.  The twins don’t have disassociative identity disorder.  In fact, many of the better story lines didn’t even happen to the twins.  Enid got paralyzed in a plane accident.  Robin had the eating disorder.  Regina died from a drug overdose.  And no, I didn’t say spoiler alert because that’s like saying spoiler alert before revealing that Darth Vader is Luke’s father.  If you don’t know by now, you’re a dude who’s not watching the movie anyway or a little kid.

Truth is, high school was not a hotbed of excitement when it comes to storylines for Elizabeth and Jessica.  Especially when you start University with Jessica getting married to an abusive freak that she just met, Enid changing her name to Alexandra and deciding to pull an Amy and ditch Liz for Jess, Lila getting married and having her boyfriend blow up, and Todd breaking up with Elizabeth for not sleeping with him.  During the first 2 books.  University ended with Elizabeth running away to England after she caught her boyfriend cheating with her with Jessica.  Sweet Valley University would be a Diablo Cody worth movie.

This kind of thing never happened to the twins in high school!

In all fairness, Sweet Valley High had Elizabeth… protesting a beauty contest Jessica was in.  Um, I mean, the twins starting a letter writing business where Elizabeth accidentally wrote her own break up letter from Todd.  I mean… wasn’t there a storyline with a werewolf?

 Riveting.

But Sweet Valley High was where it all began, and where it all ended, so logically, it’s the series that gets all the attention.  I’m cautiously excited, because while this has the potential to be an awesome movie for me to compete with the boy heavy movies based on 80s properties, I read the updated Double Love.  It made me cry.

Don’t let me down, Diablo Cody.

Randomness: Studio Heads Don’t Know What to Greenlight Next

This is true and I'm not making it up.  Nobody wants to see movies that are nothing but remake after remake after remake.  Is creativity going to go on the rise?

If they don’t want to work on Freakazoid! the movie, I’ve seriously got ideas.  I’ve even got one finished script, and that will be finished soon.  Who do I need to talk to?

Movies They Should Be Making: Freakazoid!

We’ll aka this article as “Movie I Would Kick Puppies and Sell Children into Slavery for if Done Right”.  Lengthy, yeah?  That’s why I went with the other thing.

Who wouldn’t watch this movie?  I’ll tell you who. Non-freakish, non-geekish freaks.

I guess when Freakazoid came out, I was not in the demographic -- twice  I guess part of the reason it got cancelled was because it had a huge teen boy following, and as an 11-year-old girl fan of the show, I was the freak.  Do you realize how much more that just made me identify with the show?  It was a shame that it was cancelled, because it was brilliant.

For those of you who don’t know, once upon a time in 1995 there was a brand-new kid’s programming block called Kids WB, to go with the brand new channel The WB.  None of it exists anymore.  However, one of the shows that debuted with the programming block was called Freakazoid.  It lasted two seasons, or about 1/5th of the network’s life (putting it into prospective). 

The show followed (sort of) 16-year-old Dexter Douglas, nerd computer ace and all around supergeek.  For his birthday, he was given a computer with a Pinnacle chip that had a glitch.  His cat helped him to activate the glitch, and he was sucked into the Internet where he went from geek to freak, and became superhero Freakazoid.  Now, Freakazoid isn’t your mom and dad’s superhero.  He… wait a minute, if you really want to know, there’s various research materials.  You know, Wikis.

I feel like I’m not the only one who would support a Freakazoid movie.  Probably because this happened when I Google searched “Freakazoid movie”.  I bet we’ve all imagined what such a wonderful movie would be.  It’d have to be at least a trilogy, of course.  Of course I say of course!  Here is my reasoning:

-- Origin story.  Freakazoid isn’t like Batman or one of the X-Men… There is a wide audience out there who doesn’t know who he is.  Plus, the show came out in 1995.  I don’t know if you noticed, but technology has changed in the past 15 years, and this is a hero who got his powers by being sucked into the Internet.  A fresh restart that keeps in the spirit of the show would probably be a good thing.

-- Freakazette.  Those of us who remember the show also remember Freakazette was never introduced in the show officially, despite being mentioned in the first episode.  She is a character who could finally be a character in a movie franchise.

Pictured: Character that technically doesn’t exist.

-- The many sidekicks and heroes.  By making it a movie franchise and not just a solo movie, there’s opportunities for the many, many characters that supported Freakazoid without trying to cram it into one movie.  I, for one, would love to see a Freakazoid/Lord Bravery team up.  I imagine it falling apart so fast and being GLORIOUS.

-- The many, many villains.  They’re all great, and it would be unfair to have to leave any out!  CaveGuy, Cobra Queen, The Lobe, Candlejack, Arms Akim--

In conclusion, Freakazoid has the opportunity to be an amazing movie franchise, and if you wouldn’t sell your kidneys to make it happen, then you, sir or madam, have no soul.

Story Time: Because I Feel Like It

Not me as a kid, but close enough.

I don’t want to say I’m getting bored with movie reviews, per se.  I just want to change it up a bit.  This is supposed to be a blog about *everything* movie related, and I thought, “Why not relate my experiences with movies?”

This is not to be confused with the entire movie-going experience, which I plan to herald another time.

Movies were not always my thing.  I loved television, and so I watched a lot of movies on TV.  But I didn’t have cable, so I watched a lot of bad movies on UHF channels, like Masters of the Universe and Stay Tuned.  Back then, my parents didn’t even rent movies, and we never went to the movie theatre, so if we didn’t own it, we were screwed; we only ever got 2 new movies a year as a family on average.  It’s really no wonder movies were not my thing, though in hindsight being forced to watch crap movies as an impressionable youth did lower my threshold for movie hatred.

This movie started my relationship with Eugene Levy.

I was 9 years old before I ever saw my first movie in theatres.  I can actually still remember clearly the first 3 movies I ever saw in theatres: Sister Act 2, Titanic, and Inspector Gadget.  I never have been to the movies with my entire family, and to this day have still only ever seen one movie with my mother.  So, how is it a child who grew up with a lack of movies learned to love them?

Ghostbusters.  Sure, I saw it as a kid, but much like Beetlejuice, which is another story for another time, I barely remember the first time I see it.  I was only 6 when the 1980s ended.  My dad doesn’t like to watch the same movie more than once, and since we didn’t own it, it just wasn’t seen again until it came on network television – and on one of the good channels.  Ghostbusters is my favorite franchise, and I’m happy that soon enough I’ll get to stop saying, “Ghostbusters is my favorite trilogy, and the fact that it only has two movies in it makes it even more epic.”  Sure, it was the most technologically advanced movie of it’s time, but I don’t care about that.  I mean, I care, it’s visually stunning and a testament to what imagination and man-power can come up with.  It’s just the perfect movie.

Why are they always leaving out the black Ghostbuster?!

I can “read” movies now, and I’ve always had a feel for if a movie had a good script, director, actors, etc.  But I’ve never bothered to read Ghostbusters and every time I watch it, I’m too captivated to try to get a “feel” for it.  It is natural.  It’s rewatchable.  It’s funny and dramatic and makes you think but not too hard.  It has all kinds of interpersonal relationships going on, and you can learn lessons from it.  It’s just everything a movie should be.  When I decide how much I enjoy a movie, I always compare it to Ghostbusters.

But one franchise alone does not a lover make.  That’s when I discovered actors and directors.  Same names heard over and over and was there a trend of good?  My mom thought it was hilarious that when I was still a little kid, I’d read the credits and learn faces of actors, and remember the behind the scenes people.

My obsession was not complete until my late teens, however.  Not only does this coincide with the release of the DVD player, and so behind the scenes commentaries and featurettes were now available for me to watch on movies that I enjoyed, it coincides with my first trip to Universal Studios.  Actually seeing the sets up close, and thinking about how they looked in the movies, and putting together just how much work was done to them… was amazing.

This just best represents all the concepts I just discussed.

I always wanted to be involved in film and/or television, don’t get me wrong.  Not just because of the glamour, but even as a child I loved to write and preferred visual mediums.  I just didn’t have a deep love and understanding until I was much older.  Probably because I was stuck watching stuff like Masters of the Universe.  And I thought it was freaking awesome, even if He-Man never did say his full catchphrase.

I hope Courteney Cox thanks her lucky stars for Friends.

Movie Review: Death By Scrabble

There was no movie poster, so I improvised with the game itself.

It’s one thing for me to review movies everybody’s seen.  All I can give you is my take and perspective on the movie.  But it’s another thing for me to review a movie I know for a fact only a few hundred people have seen, as is the case with the short film Death By Scrabble, directed by Chris Hernandez.  I happen to know for a fact this was entered in the Golden Eagle Film Festival and it won first place for comedy.  I know this because I was there.  It is based on the short story of the same name by Charlie Fish.

The plot is basically this: man plays Scrabble with his wife.  Man hates wife.  Man ponders how to kill wife while playing Scrabble.  Hilarity ensues.  The running time is only 9:32, but this film makes great use of the time.  We learn everything we need to know about our character, we get twists and surprises, and most important for a comedy, we get laughs.  I only have praise for this thing, but as it is so short I don’t want to say too much, or else I’d give it all away.  Besides, you can just watch it:

 

I hope you give this short film the love it deserves.  I rate it four stars for being a very solid example on how to do a short film.

Professional and captivating.

Movie Review: Who Framed Roger Rabbit.

Question marks in movie titles is equivalent to saying “Hamlet” in a theatre.

Christmas Eve, 1989.  Suburb in Central Georgia just north of Atlanta.  I was six years old and excited as hell for Santa to come.  My family had a tradition of opening one present on Christmas Eve night, I think to shut us up enough to go to bed.  The present I ended up opening that night was Who Framed Roger Rabbit in it’s VHS glory.  I still have that VHS, and it still plays without tracking, but that’s neither here nor there.  My family gathered round our TV and watched the movie before we kids had to go to bed, and I became absolutely enamored with that movie.  Who Framed Roger Rabbit is definitely one of my favorite memories of the 1980s.  December 24, 1989 is also the last time I saw that movie sober… until now.

You see, growing up, Roger Rabbit was the movie I chose to watch when I was home sick from school every single time.  Anytime in the 1990s I was home delirious with fever and high off of cough syrup, I wanted to watch Roger Rabbit, and the tradition carried on well until I was in college the first time.  I learned pretty early on that the movie is pretty damn awesome when you’re out of your mind.  But because I had seen the movie so many times from being sick, it never occurred to me to watch it when I was healthy.  I just wonder how much more of a mind trip that movie would have been had the Pig Head scene been included?

Well, the VHS doesn’t have the Pig Head scene, so I hunted down a DVD to rent that has it.  But I decided, if I’m going to rent it just to see the Pig Head scene, I may as well watched the whole digitally superior movie.  And just so I can attest that I have finally seen the movie sober after 20 and a half years (that didn’t make me feel old at all, no way), I’m high off of energy drinks.  Let’s do this!

Oh, and just to get it out of the way, Kathleen Turner wasn’t credited as Jessica Rabbit, but she let her name be all over Baby Geniuses?  Really?  Bill Murray makes smarter career moves.

Let’s face it, I just wanted to mention Bill Murray.

Watching the movie sober, I learned a few things.  One, it’s still a mind trip either which way.  The only difference is I’m more cognitively aware of the movie sober and pick up on things I otherwise missed out on, which I will get to later.  Two, I’m not six years old anymore.  I mean, I always knew it wasn’t a kid’s movie, but when you realize the biggest product placement in the thing is Budweiser, one starts to realize how innocent they were as a child.

So let’s talk about the movie.  As we all know, it starts off with the short “Something’s Cookin’” staring Roger Rabbit and Baby Herman.  I think this is a brilliant way to start the movie.  First of all, it introduces us to Roger Rabbit.  We know he’s a toon actor who’s head hasn’t exactly been in the game lately.  Secondly, it just feels like an homage to cartoons before the movie of yesteryear.

“Stole your rattle!”

So we learn the movie takes place in Hollywood in the year 1947.  Eddie Valiant is hired to prove that Roger’s wife Jessica has been stepping out on him.  Eddie does it and finds out that patty cake isn’t just a euphemism for sex, it’s a fetish.  Eddie catches Jessica in the act of patty cake with Marvin Acme, takes pictures, shows the evidence to Roger.  Roger promptly freaks the hell out, so Eddie and Marooon give him a drink to “calm his nerves”, but we learn that Roger can’t hold his liquor.  The next day, Acme turns up dead, and all evidence points to Roger.  There’s only one problem: he didn’t do it.

Roger hides out at Eddie’s place and begs him to prove that he didn’t kill Acme.  Eddie reluctantly agrees and discovers that there’s this whole conspiracy going on between Maroon and Cloverleaf.  And stuff.  I mean, we’ve all seen the movie.  While the plot is awesome, it seems almost secondary to all the other awesome stuff going on.  How can I count the ways?

At the beginning of the movie, the director of the cartoon Roger’s in gets mad because Roger can’t make stars appear when hit in the head.  Roger tries to prove he can do it, but no avail.

I want to go into one subtle detail I never picked up on when I was out of my mind: Judge Doom’s glove.  I don’t mean the gloves he always wears.  I mean the glove that he put on to dip the shoe.  At first, I thought it was overkill: he was already wearing gloves, and at that point you think he’s a human so it just seems unnecessary.  But once the big reveal happens, you realize that if he hadn’t worn the glove at that point, then that whole scene wouldn’t have made sense.

As I have previously mentioned, I’m obsessed with Alice in Wonderland.  This means that there is one scene I double love.  When Eddie is running away from Not Jessica, he runs into an out of order men’s room.  The door handle is of course the one from Disney’s original animated Alice in Wonderland.  Right on the other side, written on the wall is “For a good time call Allyson “Wonderland”.  The best is yet to be.”  I heard that once upon a time, Michael Eisner’s phone number was written on the wall, but I didn’t see the movie in theatres, and even if I had I would have only been five, so I wouldn’t know.

For a good time, for a good time call…

And since we’re on this whole Eddie falling straight down business, I noticed that while Warner Bros. had this agreement that their major stars had to have equal air time with Disney stars, Warner Bros. actually got more solo time.  In a part I skipped, Yosemite Sam flew over the wall of ToonTown with no Disney star accompanying him.  Tweety appears in the Eddie falling out of the building scene with no Disney counterpart, as well.  So there was really no reason Bugs needed to be there to turn Mickey Mouse into an asshole.  I hate Bugs Bunny, and the influence he has on Mickey Mouse in this scene is just… disgusting.

Peer pressure hurts other people.

It was around the time that Judge Doom as explaining the freeway thing to the main characters that I realized, as a kid I was lucky I didn’t know that Judge Doom was Doc Brown from Back to the Future.  The movie Dumbo scared the holy bajeezus out of me.  I don’t think I could have made it through Back to the Future knowing that Doc Brown tried to kill every cartoon ever.

I mean, seriously?  This guy drives a Mr. Fusion powered flying DeLorean?

“Look!  Stars!  Ready when you are, Raoul!”  Like a ton of bricks.

Closing comments on the main movie itself: Roger Rabbit is a cockblock, and why do melting characters find a need to announce it?

Now, the Pig Head scene.  The whole reason behind me renting a movie I already own.  My goodness, it was awesome.  I felt Eddie’s absolute horror.  They say it was cut because it was slowing down the movie, but it was just a great scene, and it actually makes sense with the scene that was supposed to follow it.  That point in the movie always felt rushed to me.

Oh, what could have been.

I find it funny that the first time I make it through the movie sober since 1989, my review is incoherent and messy.  It’s actually fitting, but now I must rate this thing.  If you thought I’d give it anything less than 5 stars, you have not seen the movie.  Who Framed Roger Rabbit is one of the best movies of all time.  It has something for everyone: kids, adults, junkies, drunks, and sober people.

To give it less than 5 stars would be an injustice worthy of Dip.

Movie Review: Alice in Wonderland

This poster looks more like the movie I hoped for than the movie actually was.

This review is for the Tim Burton Alice in Wonderland.  I really do feel like I need to specify because there are like 50 movies called Alice in Wonderland.  It’s not even the only Disney movie with that name (obviously).  This movie broke my brain, so I’m going to do the best I can with brain juice leaking out my ears.  Breaking my brain isn’t necessarily a bad thing…  I think.  I don’t know.

This is my brain on Alice in Wonderland.  Any questions?

Also worth mentioning, for I feel I must mention it: I love Alice in Wonderland.  The book.  The other book, Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Saw There.  All but two of the movies.  I even love the Batman villain Mad Hatter, but that matter is neither here nor there.  I also love all but two Tim Burton movies.  I love Johnny Depp.  Even I realized this is a perfect storm for massive disappointment.  I would have skipped this movie altogether if it wasn’t for Alan Rickman.  Alan Rickman is one of my safety actors.  He’s so brilliant that a movie can blow monkey balls and I wouldn’t be disappointed in his performance.  So I figured, no matter how badly my childhood gets raped, Alan Rickman will save me.  Just worth mentioning.

The definition of brilliant actor.

So the movie starts in a house where Alice’s dad is doing business with people.  I don’t know what the business is.  Either way, this is the first clue that there is some major deviation from all source material.  While Alice’s dad is talking to the people, a pajama-clad Alice stands in the doorway.  Knowing she’s had a nightmare, Alice’s dad puts her back to bed where she asks if she’s gone round the bend.  Okay, I had to say it like that because “round the bend” and “round the twist” are two of my favorite ways to say “mad as a hatter”.  Alice’s dad tells her, “Yes, I’m afraid you’ve gone completely bonkers.  But let me let you in on a secret: all the best people are.”  That’s just a great quote.  Anyway, we skip ahead a million years… or thirteen, I guess the screen said… and a 19-year-old Alice is off to a fancy party that’s so obviously not her.

At this party, there are all these people bossing Alice around, basically making her think she shouldn’t be herself, and telling her what’s expected of her.  In her defense, Alice doesn’t know what to make of any of it.  Either way, she sees a White Rabbit, and blah blah blah, we’ve all been down this rabbit hole before.  And so has Alice.

This really doesn’t seem all that familiar, Alice?

Alice returns to Underland… That bothered me.  That is the last time I refer to it as Underland, as it is called in the movie.  It’s not Alice in Underland, it’s Alice in Wonderland.  Anyway, Alice returns to Wonderland where she goes through the same thing she has once before with the growing and the shrinking and the key and the little door.  We hear voices comment upon on how she should remember it from last time, so we know she’s done it all before. Blah blah blah.

Alice is greeted by the White Rabbit, who claims she is the right Alice, the Dormouse, who claims she’s the wrong Alice, and the Tweedles, who don’t seem to know either way.  Also, they all have names, I have forgotten them.  Well, I mean, I remember the Tweedles… Anyway!  They take her to go see Alan Rickman the Caterpillar who claims she is the wrong Alice.  They tell her about Frajubulous Day where Alice is to slay the Jaberwocky.  It was about here that I sensed a more than major deviation from all source material.  Anyway, things come, everyone runs, someone loses an eye, Alice gets hurt, and the Cheshire cat tells Alice to see the Mad Hatter.

Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum.  Or is it Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee?

I’m going to deviate to tell you that I love Johnny Depp.  I have said this before.  When I was fourteen, I wanted to create a band based on the Mad Hatter, called The Mad Hatters.  I imagined four girls, dressed in tails and top hats of four different colors, all the hats with the 10/6 card.  I told you, I love Alice in Wonderland, but I especially love the Mad Hatter.  I also deviate to tell you that I didn’t actually think Johnny Depp was creepy in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, which is a necessary deviation.

The Mad Hatter made me want to cry.  While I at times felt that he was sweet and I sympathized with him, he has this major Uncle Creepy vibe going on.  Sort of like the Batman Mad Hatter.  Yes!  That’s exactly it!  That’s what I couldn’t place my finger on, he had that same creepy vibe as the Batman villain.  Anyway, he notices that people are coming and shrinks Alice even more and stuffs her into a teapot.  Even though it was for her own safety, even Alice felt this was creepy.  He leads the bad guys off the trail and goes to take Alice to the White Queen.  However on the way, trouble arises and Mad Hatter turns himself in so that Alice can get away.

If they’d cast this guy, I’d at least have known what to expect in my Mad Hatter.

Also, they mixed up the Red Queen with the Queen of Hearts.  That they did do.  But as far as the Queen of Hearts goes, I’ve seen some that deviate even more from the path.  Like the one in Adventures in Wonderland.  Please stop underestimating how obsessed I am with Alice in Wonderland.  Anyway, no, she’s a lot like the Queen of Hearts we all know, jealous and vain.  She makes people her possessions, and she orders “Off with their heads!”

Alice decides to save the Mad Hatter, despite being told otherwise.  The White Queen later reveals this was the right thing to do.  Anyway, Alice goes there, ends up growing on accident, tells the Queen of Hearts the Red Queen she’s left home because of her height, and becomes the Red Queen’s favorite.  Then other stuff happens, blah blah blah, Alice gets a sword, runs away, blah blah blah.  Oh, and The Mad Hatter’s to be beheaded.

It was at this point I looked at the Red Knight and went “Hello!  McFly!”  I just can’t seem to see Crispin Glover for like a long time.  I’m just like, “I know that face” and let it go but then it comes to me.  I recognize Biff faster and that guy doesn’t even look like he did in Back to the Future anymore.  Sorry, deviation.

So, more stuff happens, the Cheshire cat saves The Mad Hatter, everyone revolts against the Red Queen, blah blah blah, and then it turns into Narnia.  Okay, I’m exaggerating a little bit.  But it did turn into a game of chess where half the chess pieces are playing cards and everyone has swords and all pieces can do whatever the hell they want.  Where I’m from that’s called Little-Kids-Trying-to-Learn-to-Play-Chess-by-Themselves-and-Half-the-Pieces-Are-Missing-aganza.  And also, they got swords.  And then blah blah blah, battle ends, blah blah blah, Alice returns to her world, but not before Mad Hatter properly hits on her.  Okay, not so much hit on her than propose she live with him.  Just in different words, but the important thing is I AM NOT MAKING THIS UP.  There is a level of wrong there.  Maybe I’m the only one who sees it.  I’M NOT CRAZY THOUGH.

I didn’t mention the Caterpillar that much.  My bad.

Anyway, Alice returns, has a “and you were there moment” while telling everyone to properly f*** off, and becomes apprentice to a business after deciding to expand the trade route to China.  I want to know what the hell kind of business it was.  I hope it was opium.  Either way, during the ending… I just don’t know what I think about the ending.

I’m going to rate this movie on a broken brain.  I did not hate the movie.  I’m just not sure how much I liked it.  Once I’m over the shock, I’m sure I will know.  Would I watch it again?  Sure, why not?  Did it rape my childhood?  Not really, just molested it a little.  So what the hell should I rate this?

I’m giving this three stars because I’m pretty sure it falls somewhere between 2 and 4 stars.  It wasn’t the worst adaptation of Alice in Wonderland I’d seen; that would be a version of Through the Looking Glass where a thirty year old Alice is looking for her daughter in Wonderland… challenge my obsession again, I dare you.  It could have been way worse… but it should have been way better.

 Subject to change.

Movie Review: Wall Street

 Man, Charlie Sheen was hot in 1987.

Can you believe there’s going to be a sequel to Wall Street with Shia LaBeouf?  First of all, the movie’s like 23 years old.  Second of all, didn’t Shia LaBeouf learn anything from Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull?  Or any of the other movies he was in that sucked, which is all of them, Transfomers abstaining because I haven’t seen it yet.  But I don’t like Megan Fox either.  Well, it’s not fair to say I don’t like Shia LaBeouf, I did like him in his Disneyfare: Even Stevens, The Even Stevens Movie, Tru Calling and Holes.  Wait.  I got way off track here.  Anyway, I couldn’t have a proper opinion about Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps because, well… I never seen it.  In my defense, I was 3 and a half in 1987, and I had a lot of other movies to watch in the past 23 years.  Point is, I’ve seen it now, and man, the movie sucks.

Yes, I understand it’s like one of the important movies, but it still sucks.  I mean, besides the cast.  The cast rocks.  And they’re good at acting.  I guess it’s written pretty well.  The music bugged me.  Also, the plot was very dry, and maybe too straight forward.  That last part surprises me because the only other Oliver Stone film I’ve seen is Natural Born Killers, which is so not straight forward it took me three weeks to decide that I didn’t like that movie that much, either.  Wait, I’m sidetracking again.

The cast of the movie was great.  There was Michael Douglas and Martin Sheen, who I believe were well established, awesome actors by 1987.  There’s Charlie Sheen, who I believe was an up and comer… and hot.  Terence Stamp was also there.  I absolutely adore Terence Stamp; the man is awesome.  Then there are other members of the cast that I liked because of who they would be.  There was John C. McGinely of Office Space and Scrubs, and there was James Spader from Shorts.  Yes, I’ve seen Shorts.  It’s cute.  Hey, James Spader has been in a movie with Charlie Sheen, and in one with Jon Cryer.  All he needs is Angus T. Jones and he’s been in a movie with all Two and a Half Men.  Also, I’m horrible.

 While he did age well, oh my gosh he was yummy in the ‘80s!

Oh, yeah, and Daryl Hannah was in it, but she ruined the role of Morticia Addams in Addams Family Reunion and we will never speak of her again.

And since when is Gomez Addams British?

So the movie’s really straight forward, like I said.  Getting into details seems pointless because it’s all dry, and boring.  Also, I forgot the characters names and I don’t want to look them up.  Basically, Charlie Sheen manages to impress Michael Douglas, who then takes Charlie Sheen under his wing and together they commit securities fraud.  Really exciting stuff there, amiright?  Anyway, at some point, Charlie Sheen learns that if someone is willing to break the law, then you should probably suspect that at some point, they tell lies, because he finds out Michael Douglas has lied to him in a big way, and he decides he needs to fix it.  Other stuff happens, but it’s not even important stuff.  I just liked the parts with either John C. McGinley or Terence Stamp.  Love them.

Half the movie was literally Michael Douglas on a phone.

What this movie really needed more of was Terence Stamp.  It also needed more Terence Stamp kicking ass, because Terence Stamp only kicked one ass in this movie, and he didn’t even do it solo.  He kicked more asses in Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, a movie about transvestites and a post-op transsexual going across the desert in a bus singing ABBA songs.

Bernadette is pretty kick ass, though.

If the cast in this movie wasn’t so great, I don’t think this movie would be as well liked as it is.  I could be wrong.  But I think it’s dry and boring and would have stopped watching if Charlie Sheen wasn’t so hot or if I hadn’t wanted to see if Terence Stamp would kick any asses.  This movie let me down.  I give it one and a half stars.

I started doing homework in the middle of this movie.  It sucks.

So, no, I don’t think that this movie needs a sequel.  Not because it’s so beloved, and I definitely don’t think that Shia LaBeouf could hurt the franchise.  Who wants to see the sequel to a dry and boring movie?  But Hollywood does live by a code: “Greed, for lack of a better word, is good.”

 No one can in good conscious say you contributed to sequel/adaption rape -- this time.

Movie Review: Taking Woodstock

Something about this poster just feels misleading to me… 

Taking Woodstock is a movie, based on a book by Elliot Tiber which is based upon the true story of how the Woodstock Festival came to be.  Woodstock is the only part of history I’m a little bit bitter I missed.  Sure, I mean it’s awesome how I’m not in my fifties now, but I will be one day, and despite the sequels when I was a kid, I can’t look back and say, “I might be old now, but at least when I was young, I went to Woodstock.”  Coolest thing I can say is, “I might be old now, but I watched a lot of movies, documentaries, and specials about Woodstock.”

Having such a passion for this one historical event that happened before I was born – and don’t judge me, everyone has one – I didn’t know what to think of this movie.  I saw Eugene Levy attached and I knew that I’d either love it or decide to hate Woodstock altogether.  With Eugene Levy, I either love the movie, or hate it with such a passion I want to go back in time and kill the grandfathers of that movie’s execs.  Either way, I can’t think of a movie with Eugene Levy in it that I think, “Hmm… this is mediocre.”  I love the man, but that’s just the way it works.  Spoiler alert: This movie does not in any way change my opinion of Eugene Levy’s affect on films.  Another spoiler alert: I really do spoil the hell out of this movie.

So, basically, the story goes like this.  Elliot Tiber’s parents can’t run a motel to save their lives.  I mean, I’ve been to crappy motels, but the way they were running this thing.  The mother wouldn’t even wash the sheets if nobody had sex on them because she didn’t want to pay for the electricity and water to wash them.  To help save the motel, Elliot plans on having a live music festival, with a string quartet.  He has a neighbor up the street, Max Yasgur, who loves these festivals.  Elliot’s sister tries to convince him to move to California, but Elliot feels too attached to his parents, and like a captain, does not abandon his sinking ship.

Wallkill, a neighboring city, was supposed to have Woodstock, but they decide to kill it and pull the permit.  Elliot learns about this and decides to jump on the opportunity.  He gets in contact with the Woodstock organizers and tells them he can help them out.

To be honest, I forget what this scene is, but here’s Michael Lang and Elliot Tiber.

The Woodstock organizers show up, and the first thing they notice is they can’t have a concert on a swamp, so Elliot refers them to Max’s farms.  Max agrees to have the festival on his farm.  Some of the locals are not pleased to have so many hippies coming to the town, but neighboring hotel owners are very pleased because of the business coming in.  Many businesses in White Lake do warm up to economic pick up the festival brings to them, but still some remain angry.

Other problems arise, but they all seem trivial because of how quickly they’re solved in the movie.  The only one worth mentioning is when the mafia comes to try to get protection money from the Tibers, but the family chases the mafia off.  Just after, Elliot meets Vilma, an ex-Marine transvestite who saw what happened and offers his services in protection.  Elliot hires him immediately.

Vilma is like one of the top 10 characters in cinema of all time.

Then Woodstock happens.  Some of the townspeople are still angry, but it wasn’t like anyone could force half a million people to leave.  As anybody who’s ever heard of Woodstock knows, the festival lasts for three days.  On the first day, Vilma and Elliot’s father convince Elliot to go to the concert.  A cop gives him a ride there, but he never even makes it all the way up the hill.  Instead, he drops acid with some couple in a VW (bus, for those who were confused and thought I might mean a Cabriolet).

The second day is the same as the first.  On the second day, Elliot goes with his Vietnam friend Billy, but instead of getting over the hill, they go sliding in the mud.  It looked fun, really, but I mean… you can play in the mud any time, there’s an epic and historical concert going on behind you!  Also on the second day, Elliot’s got wasted off of special brownies.  The next morning, the family discovers that Elliot’s mother had hidden $97,000 from the family.

The third day, there were technical problems, and then the festival was over.  Everyone packed up to leave, including Elliot.  Elliot’s father pulls him aside to tell him that the festival helped him to be alive again, and he wanted his son to be able to feel alive, too.  When Elliot asked his father how he could live with his mother, his father replies, “I love her.”  I just thought that was sweet.

This is the coolest thing Elliot did at the Woodstock festival.

Elliot heads back over to Yasgur’s farm and heads over the hill.  Though the musicians are gone, the stage still stands and everyone is helping to clean up.  Mike, one of the organizers, talks with Elliot, and when Elliot tells him his plans, he tells him about a truly free concert being planned in San Francisco with the Rolling Stones.  While he sounds hopeful and confident about it, I want you all to look up “Altamont Free Concert,” if you don’t already know what it is.  I knew what it was, but only because I heard it in my pop music a few years ago and looked it up.

So, basically, that’s the movie.  I thought it was interesting, and another perspective of the world’s most famous, most influential rock concert of all time.  Three days of peace, love, and music took a lot of planning and organizing, it turns out.  I want to say it wasn’t all, “Everyone just show up”, but it really did turn into that, but before that there was a fair deal of planning and organizing.  I give this movie four stars.  It didn’t make me feel like I was at Woodstock, but it gave me another level of appreciation for it – the organizational side.

It lost a star for never showing any of the bands.

Movie Review: Little Shop of Horrors (1986)

The Story of a Boy and His Plant. 

This is for the 1986 musical Little Shop of Horrors.  If you are looking for the original black and white 60s B-movie The Little Shop of Horrors… Patience, man, I’ll get to it.

Who doesn’t love Little Shop of Horrors?  The answer is people without souls.  Of course, the debate is which ending is better?  Right?  Is it the original ending that was never processed in color but remained true to the stage musical that the movie was based on?  Or do you like the movie’s ending?  I think both have their merits, but to decide which one is better… Well, we’d have to discuss the events that proceeded the movie.  And this is your final warning: there are going to be spoilers, as in this movie, it’s the ending that I feel makes the movie.

The musical starts innocently enough on Skid Row.  We meet our characters and we learn their issues in the very first scene.  Mr. Mushnik’s flower shop has no customers, Audrey’s boyfriend is a dick who beats her, and Seymour is socially awkward.  Also, we learn Skid Row sucks and is dangerous, but they show very little evidence of it.  They just sing that it sucks.  But I’ve been to downtown in many towns, so I take their word for it.  Downtown sucks.  So the characters all sing about how they want to get out of Skid Row.  No matter which ending happens to the characters, I almost want to tell them “Good news, everybody!”

So, anyway, at the end of an averagely slow day, Audrey and Seymour show Mr. Mushnik one of Seymour’s discoveries.  I want to know how you can “discover” something you bought for $1.95, but whatever, Seymour discovered a new breed of flytrap.  He named it Audrey II because he’s so head-over-heels for the first Audrey, but she doesn’t seem to notice.  It automagically brings in new customers because it’s so bizarre.  It’s a freaking plant.  I don’t think anybody who cares would actually be in Skid Row.  That’s what known as a “gaping plot hole”, but yeah, I can believe that that first guy is a bit eccentric and travels downtown just for a leisurely stroll.  He was a bit creepy.  I also believe he would tell people about it, so if you can just jump that plot hole, the rest of the movie starts to make sense.

“Coochie coochie goo!”

Well, then the plant decides it wants to die, and Seymour discovers what the plant eats – blood.  I think that if I discovered a plant that eats blood, I’d burn it.  However, I guess if your life was as horrible as Seymour’s, you wouldn’t want to give up the one thing that brought you pure admiration.  So he continues to feed it.  The plant gets bigger, and hungrier, and Seymour doesn’t think he can feed it anymore.  The plant, which can now talk, decides that Seymour should kill people.  Seymour says no with such conviction that if it wasn’t the midpoint of the movie, I’d believe he wouldn’t do it.  Then Audrey’s boyfriend, The Joker The Dentist comes along and beats Audrey up for falling off his motorcycle.  Seymour is so head-over-heels for that girl he decides he’d kill for her.  Feeding Audrey II is just the bonus in that situation.

I know I always listen to my talking plants.

Oh, I have to derail, for a second.  It’s hard to stay linear in discussing the plot.  I mean, the movie is linear, the plot isn’t.  So, Audrey does know that she could do way better than The Joker her boyfriend.  She is apparently, head-over-heels over Seymour, but doesn’t think she’s good enough for him.  Also, Somewhere That’s Green is one of the greatest musical songs ever.  If you don’t agree…. Well, then we don’t agree.  Thought I was going to say you didn’t have a soul, didn’t you?  Made you think.

And now I must discuss Bill Murray.  Oh, but I must.  I love Bill Murray and he’s made a bunch of stupid, boneheaded career moves.  His cameo in Little Shop of Horrors is not one of those stupid, boneheaded career moves.  It is masterful.  It’s sado-masochism at it’s best.  And I love yelling out “candy bar!” when something is painful.  If everyone did that, it would clean up our language and also just be AWESOME.

One of Bill Murray’s better career moves.

So Seymour is waiting in the waiting room with a concealed weapon while all that is going on.  If you look at him, he starts to wonder if he’s doing the right thing.  I blame Bill Murray.  Anyway, Seymour does decide to back out of it, but The Dentist drags him to the exam room anyway.  Once Seymour is on the table, he debates shooting The Dentist a few time, but he doesn’t need to.  The laughing gas addicted fool does himself in when he puts on a laughing gas mask that malfunctions and he can’t get it off.  He realizes Seymour won’t help, but instead of convincing him he just asks why.  When Seymour says her, The Dentist understands and he dies.

Audrey II may be on solid foods now, but the plant still needs it cut up first, so Seymour has the task of dismembering The Dentist.  Unfortunately, Mushnik sees.  I mean, unfortunately for Mushnik.  He confronts Seymour, and all he wants is the plant and for Seymour to go away and never come back.  Audrey II in this stage seems protective of it’s daddy and eats Mushnik on it’s own.   Well, Seymour didn’t help the situation, but the point is Seymour never actually kills anyone, he doesn’t have it in him.  He’s still racked with guilt.  But at this point, Audrey loves him, and there’s nothing in the world he’d give that up for, not even his own guilt.

Seymour reaches a breaking point and realizes that the solution is that he and Audrey will run away and leave everything behind.  Now, this is where the endings split.

We’ll start with the movie’s actual ending, since that’s the one that everyone who’s seen the movie knows, and is the one attached to the movie.  It almost feels like the characters were told to make up their own lines.  It feels forced.  It’s so cheesy it’s delicious, actually.  From Audrey feigning heroics and claiming they have to stop the plant when they learn it could go into mass production, to the happy ending with a random Audrey II living in their front yard, it’s so bad it’s funny.  Basically, this ending is, “Seymour was involved with a lot of bad things and gets absolutely no punishment because he was young and in love.”  Test audiences are stupid, but this ending does make the movie great for cheese enthusiasts.

“Seymour, what are we going to do now you defeated a carnivorous space plant?”

The original ending, however, was quite different.  There was absolutely nothing Seymour would give Audrey up for, so when the plant baits her and kills her, Seymour has reached his limit.  He’s about to kill himself for the horrible things he’s done that lead to him losing Audrey, but learns that the plant could go into mass production.  He decides then to atone for the bad he’s done, he must stop the plant.  However, the plant decides that if Seymour isn’t going to be a meal ticket anymore, he needs to be out of the picture, and kills him while singing to him.  Soon, Audrey II’s take over the planet, and the movie ends with an impassioned plea in the form of song that the world can still be saved if people don’t feed the plants.  This ending is, “Seymour could have prevented the bad things from happening, and he didn’t, and he paid the ultimate price.  And if you behave like Seymour, the same thing could happen to you.”

In a perfect world, Audrey II would have eaten a few major cities.

I would give this movie three and a half stars for being great cheese with wonderful rock and roll music.  Audrey II is one of the greatest villains of all time.

Delicious, delicious cheese.

But if had stuck with the original ending, this movie would have gotten five stars.  I like my characters not getting away with being an accessory to murder, no matter how sweet they are.

No sadder words than those which ask, “What might have been.”