Right now, I’m so pale that I feel like I need to justify it. How does one justify being pale? Blog about movies. That’s about as “indoors” as it gets.
There aren’t simply good movies or bad movies, there are many shades of gray (like my skin right now-which is a nice ash color). Bad movies can be good, and good movies can be bad. I’m fairly certain each and every movie can fit into one of the categories below, but I’m willing to consider adding more if we come across some uncanny peacocks that don’t fit anywhere.
Bad movies that are good:
Wanted
Jumper
Underworld 2
X-Men 3
Live Free or Die Hard
Bad movies that are bad:
Cheaper by the Dozen
Fool’s Gold
Definitely, Maybe
Pink Panther 2
Spiderman 3
Good movies that are good:
Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
Into the Wild
The Dark Knight
Rachel Getting Married
Good movies that are bad:
Braveheart
Mulholland Drive
The Horse Whisperer
Movies that are sad because they are bad:
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
Transformers
Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace
From Hell
Movies that used to be good, but became bad:
Napoleon Dynamite
Crash
South Park
Movies that are awesome:
Road House
Teen Wolf
Pirates of Silicone Valley
Repo Man
Waterworld
Predator
Space Jam
These lists, if you ruminate on them long enough, might be important to you or a family member. Then maybe I can justify having a hue that falls somewhere between “zombie” and “recycled notebook paper”. I require sunshine, but there isn’t any to be found.
For whatever reason, more than 17,000 people visited Addicted to Words today. I have no idea why, but rather than let this present surprise become ATW’s dying gasp, I have rallied to put actual words and thoughts down. A Prime Leader Zanramon original if you will. Let’s party like it’s November 2007.
My pen’s a bit rusty, so this probably needs lots of editing and probably some self censorship, but here goes…
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2008 will be remembered for many things. The worst US president since Andrew Johnson is leaving office. The Olympics will be held in communist China. Gas got ridiculously expensive. Britney Spears went bat shit insane.
All certainly notable things, but when it is all said in done, 2008 will be remembered as the year of nostalgia. Everything old has become new again. The Boston Celtics handily beat the Los Angeles Lakers for the NBA Championship. 19 years after the last one, a new Indiana Jones movie was released. American Gladiators made a comeback. Even Beverly Hills 90210 has been remade. Ideas from decades past seem fresh and young, (arguably) ready to take the world by storm.
Nostalgia is a powerful weapon. It is the reason people continue to buy a new boxed set of Star Wars DVD’s each year, despite the fact that the only new feature might be that Darth Vader’s light saber is tinted 3 degrees more red. In the right hands, it can spread joy, good cheer, and free spending ways. In the wrong hands, nostalgia can be boring, mundane, or even depressing.
There are three kinds of nostalgia. Two of them are enjoyable, one of them is somewhat more tolerable than eating shards of glass. They are each embodied in current nostalgic presences in pop culture: the release of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, the re-emergence of New Kids on the Block, and the remake of Beverly Hills 90210.
The release of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull: The first kind of nostalgia is the most enjoyable and commercially successful kind. It has been 19 years since the last Indiana Jones movie, the Last Crusade, was released. It was one of the strongest of the three movies, and Indy presumably hung up his hat, whip, and adventurous zeal, on a high note. As time passed, history smiled upon the Indiana Jones movies. People that were not even born yet when the Last Crusade came out discovered them. There is literally not one person in the world who does not absolutely love Indiana Jones.
Thus when word came out that George Lucas, Steven Speilberg, and Harrison Ford were getting the band back together, excitement began to build. Most people assumed that the new Indiana Jones movie would be the best movie of all time, which probably is not a fair assumption. Simply because of how beloved the previous Indy movies were, there is no way that this one could live up to expectations.
Yet, it came close.
For one, as previously mentioned, it has been 19 years since a Indy movie came out. Each year that went by, the nostalgia surrounding Indy simply kept growing. Spielberg, Lucas, and Ford could probably put on a shadow puppet play, and as long as it was called Indiana Jones and the Something of the Lost Something, obscene amounts of people would go out to see it.
So Indy has a significant built-in audience, which is the first ingredient of successful nostalgia. The people love Indy and have been waiting an extremely long time for this, they are coming out to see it no matter what.
The second ingredient of this nostalgia pie we are baking here, is Harrison Ford. Of course, not everything has to have Harrison Ford to be successfully nostalgic. It is how Harrison Ford is still thoroughly Indiana Jones through and through. Yes, he is much older than he was, but he can still do everything he used to be able to do. If anything, Ford seems to solve puzzles and beat up Socialists easier in KOTCS than in any of the other three previous movies. Seeing how much Ford has aged could easily make us all feel old, and make the movie feel depressing, but he has not slowed at all. It ends up making us feel younger. Age is just a number for Indiana Jones, why can’t it be for me? This is why old cartoons are the most successfully nostalgic thing ever. They never age, and take us right back to how we felt when we originally watched them. Despite dealing with real live, aging humans, Indiana Jones has somehow achieved something similar to this. The same goes for Madonna.
The re-emergence of New Kids on the Block: The New Kids on the Block had some popular songs that were awesome in that ironic VH1 sort of way, and they wore some clothes that probably were the same. Mark Wahlburg was somehow involved in the early days, and he was in Boogie Nights, so that seems significant.
After a rather long hiatus, in which TNKOTB presumably were hanging tough, they have re-emerged. Nobody expects them to do anything of note anymore, I’m fairly certain that they don’t either. This is why they are successful, they know that they were ridiculous in their prime, and they know that they are much older now, and they know that doing what they were doing before except for being much older is one of the most ridiculous things ever. And they know that run on sentences are sometimes appropriate.
It is all a big joke, and we all feel in on it because we were around for the first incarnation of TNKOTB. Everybody likes a joke as long as they get it. Like a fine wine, Indiana Jones got better with age. TNKOTB are like Franzia, it spoils with age, but drinking Franzia is kind of funny in the first place. If anybody drinks that spoiled Franzia, it will be hilarious.
The re-make of Beverly Hills, 90210: Beverly Hills, 90210 is being remade for 2008, rebadged as simply 90210, maybe to seem more modern. It doesn’t matter, the re-make of 90210 is a terrible idea. This is where nostalgia fails, where it hits the proverbial 5 second mark of “2 Girls 1 Cup”. Admittedly, the old 90210 was not ever anything I really appreciated. Any time I spent in my youth and early adolescent years watching TV was almost always spent watching cartoons or sports. I missed out on a lot of shows people my age consider important TV. Full House, the Fresh Prince of Bel Air, and of course 90210 got the short end of the TV watching stick. I never really watched any of them, and other than the ability to recite the entire Fresh Prince theme song, I am not aware of any details about any of them.
If I were to guess, Full House would be about a house where a few too many people live leading to lots of hilarious incidents involving somebody taking too long in the shower, the Fresh Prince would be about Will Smith’s remarkable odyssey from being wrongfully accused as the antagonist in a fight to sitting on a throne in Bel Air, and 90210, of course, would be about the glitz and glam of that famous zip code.
The fact that I don’t know a lot about 90210 doesn’t hurt my point in the slightest. It was a successful and popular show in it’s heyday, which seems to lead television execs* thinking it could be a successful and popular show today. Problem is, in the 2008 version of 90210, nothing is the same. All of the actors from the original show are too old to reprise their characters, lest it take place in a world where all high school students are pushing 40. Some of the original actors, most notable Shannon Doherty**, will have cameos in the show. As adults. Kids are adults now, which isn’t nostalgic, it is pretty darn depressing. It reminds us that we are growing old, that our lives are finite and our time in this world is short. Or probably something less dramatic, but equally as ineffective at creating that nostalgic feeling.
The only constant in the new 90210, as compared to the old 90210, is grown up kids. That doesn’t take us back to better times, and is absolutely useless at creating that warm nostalgic feeling. People will tune in to relive the good times and tune out feeling every one of their twentysomething years and unfulfilled potential hanging over them. (Am I self-projecting too much here?)
In a year where nostalgia reigns over the land like smog over Beijing, 90210 simply does not make the grade. 2008 won’t stand for such drivel, I won’t stand for such drivel, and you should not stand for such drivel. Three drivel’s should properly illustrate my point.
*In the biz, we like to shorten executives to execs. We also like to say “in the biz”, in the biz.
**I claim that this is the most notable fact due to Shannon Doherty being one of the only people I’ve heard of in the new 90210.
I watched Teen Wolf the other day for the first time since I was probably about eleven (11). I had forgotten both how awesome this movie is, but also how almost nothing in it makes any sense as far as werewolf, or more correctly, lycanthrope, lore goes. I’m absolutely willing to concede that I need to suspend my disbelief on some level in order to make most movies work, and I’m going to go ahead and concede the existence of werewolves. Problem is, this movie cuts down all standards we have established for werewolves. Teen Wolf knocks down all expectations we have of how a werewolf should be. As I said, it’s a deliciously awesome movie, but I want some effort on the believability scale. I know I should embrace pioneers, or we would have no George Washingtons, no Amelia Earharts, No Ansel Adams, not even any Krangs in our world, but for whatever reason, this perturbs me.
WEREWOLF STANDARD BROKEN #1: Werewolves can’t control when they change from human into human-wolf.
Other than the first time it happens to him, Michael J. Fox’s character, Scott Howard can change into the wolf whenever he pleases. Everybody knows that werewolves can’t control when they change into wolves, the moon controls it. Unless they are in Harry Potter, and that’s only because of a potion. Presumably, Howard didn’t have access to potions because there doesn’t seem to be any magic in his world. Except werewolves, which makes this weird quandary. How is this possible that werewolfery is the only magic in Howard’s world? I have no explanations, and to be frank I can’t think about this for too long because it’s far too confusing.
WEREWOLF STANDARD BROKEN #2: When werewolves are not in their human form, they are totally out of control.
When Howard turns into a werewolf he doesn’t go on any killing or maiming rampages. He doesn’t really hurt anybody at all, except for arguably Boof, but that has nothing to do with his wolfery, but rather his penchant for hot blondes. In fact, Howard’s only discernible difference, personality wise, when he becomes a werewolf is that he is far more confident than when he is a human. This really makes no sense to me either because if I were to become covered in hair and sharp teeth and claws it would not boost my confidence. It would most likely lower it. I doubt I would be comfortable in my own skin, as it were, anymore.
WEREWOLF STANDARD BROKEN #3: Werewolves dress poorly.
In almost every case of werewolves throughout history, they either wear no clothes, or just throw on some tattered rags and call it a day. The werewolves in Underworld sometimes have ripped pants (the Incredible Hulk look), but usually have nothing. Professor Lupin skips clothes all together. Animals generally skip clothes, lest they be considered whimsical. Disney is the gold standard for animals wearing clothes, and I highly doubt most animals want to be pigeonholed into the Disney stereotype, thus, they don’t wear clothes.
When Howard is a wolf he either wears his regular clothes, his basketball jersey, or an awesome Vanilla Ice Cream pimp suit. The suit needs no further explanation, as it is plainly and obviously awesome.* But even when wolf Howard rocks his basketball jersey, he does it in style with a headband, presumably as a tribute to one of my top ten (10) favorite NBA players of all time: Clifford “Uncle Cliffy” Robinson.
WEREWOLF STANDARD BROKEN #4: Werewolves can’t play basketball.
I’m not sure if this is a standard or not, but it should be. Werewolves basically just maul stuff and bite people, which is not conducive to holding a basketball, much less dribbling like Zeke, dunking like ‘Nique, and shooting like Thunder Dan Majerle.** It’s inconceivable that Howard turning into a werewolf would actually make him better at basketball. I could see if it would make him faster and able to jump higher, and maybe he’d even have quicker reactions. I just can’t see a werewolf putting it all together to become the best prospect since Harold Miner. And we all know how well that turned out.
I guess what I’m saying is that we really need some sort of standard set of rules when it comes to magical creatures. A veritable Montreal Protocol of the fantastical. Especially if we want them to ever have a chance of being accepted as something that sort of seems real, but ultimately isn’t. Like the abominable snowman, or of course, the chupacabra. Werewolves just want a chance, which takes us full circle, as that is sort of the underlying message of Teen Wolf. Give werewolves a chance, even though they are different. Give Boof a chance. She isn’t like a werewolf, yet she is still different. It’s the theme, it’s ok to compare girls to wolves. Just this once.
*Maybe it does need a bit more explanation, he is not a pimp when he wears the suit. I apologize if I portrayed that Teen Wolf somehow involves prostitution and pimping.
**Sorry for not continuing that rhyme, but I couldn’t resist the chance to drop a Dan Majerle reference. I had a folder with him on it in 3rd grade.
My nostalgia for the OC seems to be becoming Biblical, and Hollywood isn’t helping by churning up fond memories and parading beloved actors.
It may be my mind playing cruel tricks on me, but I could have sworn I had a Benjamin McKenzie sighting during an 88 Minutes trailer. I realize a quick trip to IMDB would answer my questions, but I choose not to go there. Benjamin McKenzie has become such an enigma in my mind that it seems like it couldn’t possibly be him exchanging glances with Al Pacino. What if this is true? I won’t pretend to care about 88 Minutes at all, I only care about the return of Kid Chino and his Fists of Fury.
Ryan Atwood has emerged, and in full health, done biding his time in the poolhouse. I can’t handle that kind of disappointment, were it to be false. I discovered the Chupacabra, and I’m just waiting for people to tell me that I’m wrong and it turns out that it was simply a rare, but regular, reptile-kangaroo-coyote-dog-dinosaur animal that was drinking my goat blood stores. I’m living on stolen time. I’m a festival, a parade, a fugitive in plain sight.
If all this is true, the real question at hand here becomes: can McKenzie make up for the terribleness that Al Pacino lugs around with him? The Ocean crew fell from grace and a higher plane due solely to the fact that Al Pacino stood up to them and managed to work in something about a gold phone. I fear I’ll never find out the deeper meaning of the gold phone, but a part of me wants to believe McKenzie could. He’ll puncture Pacino’s chest and drain his blood completely.
Ryan Atwood brought out the raw emotion in people. He was both a fighter and a lover. His powers could solve the mystery of Al Pacino. The Bigfoot of Latino Culture has all the answers we need.
I keep hearing murmurs and hearsay about the Twilight books and the movie. It sounds like it has got the requisite fantasy elements I so desire in my stories, so I may delve deeper one of these days.
Point being, Cam Gigandet plays a vampire named James in Twilight. Cam Gigandet, being, of course Volchok, the Krang to Ryan’s Leonardo* of my beloved OC tv show. I know nothing about James the vampire, although I would guess he is an evil vampire because, well, Vampires are generally evil, and Volchok is a less than wholesome guy.
As stated, I know nothing about anything involving Twilight, save for the presence of vampires and a few tidbits Rita has tossed in my general direction, but something I do know is that Volchok is one of the most reactive elements on the planet. He’s all the way on the left side of the periodic table, an Alkali metal with one Valance electron, violently reactive.
And in case you can’t tell thus far, I’m delighted to see him showing up all over in this post-mortem OC era. Adam Brody has floundered around, lost somewhere in the Land of Women. That guy in Chuck, Zachary Levi, stole Brody’s Seth Cohen identity anyway. Benjamin McKenzie seems to have hung up the wrist cuff and clogs, as we haven’t heard a single thing from him. And I think Mischa Barton died.
Rachel Bilson has been lurking in our collective consciousness a little bit, but as I discussed before, it just seems misguided and contrite seeing her in anything other than the OC. Seeing Volchok run free in the wild though has had the opposite effect on me. He gallops beautifully like a gazelle.
I haven’t seen it (and admittedly, the trailers probably tell the whole story) but Volchok’s other current movie Never Back Down seems like it takes on some sort of weird 2 Fast 2 Furious car porn characteristic that means at the very least it will be entertaining to watch on TNT in 18 months, solely for the presence of Volchok.** He might bring down the Twilight movies as swiftly as he killed Marissa, and to a less talked about extent, Ryan’s new car***, but he also might, for lack of a better term, take Twilight and never back down.
Don’t ever underestimate Volchok, save Oliver, Ryan Atwood has never met a more formidable foe.
*Marissa Cooper would have been Raphael, Seth Cohen would be Donatello, and in a hotly contested decision, Summer Roberts would be Michaelangelo. Also, how Splinter was Sandy Cohen?
**That Blood Diamond guy Djimon Hounsou is pretty excellent too. So is the presence of a character called “Beatdown DJ Swagga”. I digress.
***Incidentally, that was the second Ryan helmed car Volchok ruined. He keyed “Lil’ Bitch” into the Range Rover.
Teleporting is undeniably awesome, so I suppose it was inevitable that I would go against fashion (and some would say common sense) and go see the movie Jumper. My love of teleportation overcame any bitterness I have of Hayden Christensen doing his best to ruin Star Wars. The premise of this movie is that some people are born with the power to teleport anywhere in the world, and Samuel L. Jackson is apparently tired of the motherfucking teleporters jumping all over this motherfucking earth so he makes it his life goal to hunt down and kill all of them, under the guise of the religious title Paladin. Also, his inexplicably silver hair seems to say that he subscribes to the Sisqo method of personal grooming.
As promised, Hayden Christensen did plenty of eyebrow acting and looking uncomfortable, but this was more than overshadowed by the unadulterated joy of watching a grown up Billy Elliott play a borderline sociopath teleporter. I could see the grace he carried over from his days as a possibly homosexual dancer as he bashed in Paladin heads with a baseball bat.
The tragedy of this movie though is watching Rachel Bilson as she gets all Radiohead and attempts to disappear completely. Skinniness aside, there is something inherently sad about seeing her play somebody other than Summer. She’s playing pretty much the same character that Summer was from OC season 2 and on, and it brings up painful memories. It makes me mourn for the potential that show had and the emotion I had invested in it. My life is littered with the corpses of 1,000 failed tv shows and I miss none more than I miss the OC.
It wasn’t terribly bad, certainly better than say, 1408 was. Although, I suppose it can’t be that good of a movie when the main thing I get out of it is that I miss the OC tv show. I really should move on.
My brother takes the helm as ATW’s first guest speaker. Take heed as his stream of consciousness finds balance in the wonderful days of the 90’s, which is rather amazing when you consider he wasn’t even alive for the entire decade.
- John
About a month ago, when my brother (John) was in town for what was dubbed by my US History teacher as “non denominational winter break”, he asked me if I would like to be a guest writer for his blog sometime. I said “maybe, ill think about it”. In my language this usually means no thanks. However as I got to thinking about what to write about, somehow i got on the subject of John Goodman. This made me think of the movie “The Big Lebowski” in which there is a motif of urinating on carpets, which made me think of the period of my life that I did not understand the concept of a toilet and consequently urinated on carpets. This made me think of the 90’s, specifically TV and movies in the 90’s and how ridiculous they were. First off, I remembered the TV show “Dinosaurs” and thinking back, I’m not sure how I was not scared out of my mind when watching this show. Second, I don’t even know how I remember watching this show considering it had a life span from 1991 to 1995. According to IMDB, Dinosaurs somehow won four Emmys and was nominated for two more. I then proceeded to Google pictures of the TV show, specifically the Sinclair family, the main family of dinos in the show, and I noticed that the baby of the family, aptly named Baby Sinclair, bore an odd resemblance to the character Krang from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
Oddly, I thought that Krang from TMNT bore and odd resemblance to a chewed up piece of chewing gum. Somehow, and I’m not quite sure why, this reminded me of the movie “Coneheads” featuring Dan Aykroyd as the father of an alien family with cone-shaped heads.
Unlike Dinosaurs, Coneheads actually freaked me out. And by freaked me out, I mean it shook my very soul. Somehow, people with cone-shaped heads scare me more than dinosaurs with the same capabilities as us but with no opposable thumbs. Maybe its the fact that the baby looks like Krang/chewed gum. Anywho, there are many other terrible Movies and TV shows that were products of the 90’s but it would take much too long to name them all. But even all of the bad things from the 90’s movie and TV wise were balanced with good things such as, the original American Gladiators, Walker Texas Ranger, oh and of course, Duck Tales.
I’m watching the Blazer pre-game show and commentator Mike Rice just enthusiastically said that Al Jefferson was “going to try and bang the Blazers tonight”. Call me immature, but I laughed. It doesn’t get much more Superbad than that.
and thinking back, I’m not sure how I was not scared out of my mind when watching this show. Second, I don’t even know how I remember watching this show considering it had a life span from 1991 to 1995. According to IMDB, Dinosaurs somehow won four Emmys and was nominated for two more. I then proceeded to Google pictures of the TV show, specifically the Sinclair family, the main family of dinos in the show, and I noticed that the baby of the family, aptly named Baby Sinclair, bore an odd resemblance to the character Krang from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
to a chewed up piece of chewing gum. Somehow, and I’m not quite sure why, this reminded me of the movie “Coneheads” featuring Dan Aykroyd as the father of an alien family with cone-shaped heads.