Film

monkeyFLASHmonkeyBACK… Lethal Oversight

Posted on by sgottahurt

Remember the Lethal Weapon films?  There were four of them, all released in the theater.  I didn’t see the original at the show, but I watched it plenty on VHS.  Especially the beginning.  But not too much of the beginning, because it gets depressing.

Anyboobs, the point of the monkeyFLASHmonkeyBACK is to pretend what I might have written about in a blog before I had a blog (or as in this case, pre-blog, pre-TripleDoubleU).  I just realized what I’m about to share after watching Lethal Weapon 5 for the second time.  What’s Lethal Weapon 5, you might ask?  It was a video the gang made on an episode of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, and like I said… I watched this episode twice and just noticed this… but I’m pretending I did it back when Part 4 was released in 1998.

The Lethal Weapon series was always a fun one.  It was also a series based on opposing forces.

They were too young for this shit.

You had Roger Murtaugh:

  • a stable family man
  • a bit up in his years
  • had a nice home
  • a good cop that followed the rules
  • happened to be black

Then you had Martin Riggs:

  • an unstable man (suicidal) that lost his family (his wife)
  • in the prime of his life
  • lived in a trailer on the beach
  • a good cop that didn’t follow the rules
  • happened to be white

As the series progressed from the first, both men grew, and their stories paralleled each other, culminating in the dual pregnancies of the fourth film (Murtaugh’s gonna be a grandpa; Riggs a first-time dad).

I always considered myself a huge fan of the series.  In fact, when I saw part three at the theater, I convinced myself that if I had to leave after the first fifteen minutes, I was thoroughly entertained enough to justify the price of my admission.  (Which would have been a “cat”-astrophe.)

But having just noticed such a simple writer’s slight-of-hand, I’ve embarrassed myself.  In creating these two iconic characters, screenwriter Shane Black picked every mismatch possible, as I listed above.  How did I miss this?

Their initials.

Awesome Battle… TV Shows That Tried To Find New Life In Film

Posted on by sgottahurt

I could have started this post about the new Tim and Eric movie, but…

...nobody knows anything about this except for five people I know.

So instead, I’ll focus on other TV shows that made the leap to the big screen with the original cast (or at least most of it) in tact.  This is not about the remakes.  Here are some TV Shows That Tried To Find New Life In Film.  Some did; some didn’t.  Awesome Battle, begin!

WE’RE GONNA STICK WITH THIS MOVIE THING FOR AWHILE

These were the TV shows that had either finished their run (Star Trek: The Original Series), were about to finish their run (The Muppets Show, Star Trek: The Next Generation), or barely had a run at all (the short-lived Naked Gun), but went on to produce more motion pictures than thought possible.  These are the successes.  These are the ones that the cinema kept alive… even up to now.

The Muppet Show - Star Trek: TOS & TNG - Naked Gun

WE’RE GONNA GO BACK TO TV A LITTLE WHILE LONGER

It’s weird that this group mostly consists of cartoons.  These are the TV shows that decided to release a movie to capitalize on the boob tube success, and in many ways, they did.

  • Transformers: The Movie was released in 1986 to reboot the toy line and cartoon series, and how did it do that?  It killed most of the original cast.  It’s officially time to throw out Optimus Prime to buy Rodimus Prime.
  • Beavis and Butt-Head Do America extended the show one more season, but it must have also entered it into the nostalgia lexicon.  It returned to MTV with a new season late last year.
  • South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut came out somewhere around season 3 or 4.  The show just finished its fifteenth season.  Oh, my god!  They didn’t kill this show!
  • Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters should have killed ATHF, but it didn’t.  I saw this at the show.  It was horrible!  This happened in 2007.  The show is still on the air.
  • The X-Files: Fight the Future got me to watch the season before the film was to be released.  I wasn’t a fan of the show prior to that, but I knew a fair amount of its mythology.  (I’d only watch it here and there for the random, spooky episodes.)  The show went on for four more years.  Somehow.  The revelations in the movie were boring.  And I think they changed all the mysteries anyway.  Long story short, I stopped watching the show; others didn’t.

Transformers - Beavis and Butt-Head - South Park - The X-Files - Aqua Teen Hunger Force

WE’RE JUST LUCKY TO HAVE ONE MOVIE

These shows probably shouldn’t have had movies, but because of the fans, they did.

Kids in the Hall begat Brain Candy; Twin Peaks begat Fire Walk With Me; Firefly begat Serenity; Strangers with Candy begat Strangers with Candy; and for some reason… when no one was asking, The X-Files begat I Want to Believe.  They were trying to pull an ol’ Star Trek: TOS on us.  You’ll have to do better than pedo-priest and severed heads, Chris Carter.  Mulder needs his Khan.

Kids in the Hall - Twin Peaks - Firefly - Strangers with Candy - The X-Files

WE’RE NOT GOING TO COUNT THESE

Any film based on Saturday Night Live skits is not up for discussion at this time.

And I didn’t include Monty Python because they’re British.

Now, I know that Kids in the Hall are Canadian, and I added them up above.  And they, too, were produced by SNL’s Lorne Michaels.  But they’re already in the Photoshopped image, so nyah.

The Silver Lining… The Heart Hand Gesture

Posted on by sgottahurt

The HeartMark™ is trademarked?!

Trends.

They’re always stupid.  Pet rocks, sequenced gloves, pogs… and now this.  The inescapable heart hand gesture.  It’s everywhere.

Aeroswift™

But would you believe some lady “claims” to have the trademark on it?

This lady looks like she makes many "claims"...

She even licenses it out allegedly (although it just looks like she just made a list of places she’s seen it used and retroactively authorized it).

(SIDENOTE: Did she donate the gesture to Show Your Hearts?  It could be a tax write-off.)

My hope is that it actually is trademarked, and that she’s making bank on its pervasiveness.

I mean, what she claims is not impossible.  She could figured it out during a round of This is the church and this is the steeple gone bad.  I haven’t seen it in use until recent years, and it seems like a simple gesture to devise.

But was she the one who told Taylor Swift about it?  Because Swift claims she invented it, and her fans claim that Lady Gaga, Justin Bieber, et. al. stole it from her.

All that matters is did this woman really trademark what she calls The HeartMark™?  Because I have an idea of my own:

My trademark... Deez Nuts™.

Happy Find… Just Watch This Apropos Of Nothing

Posted on by sgottahurt

I’m not even going to preface this video.  Well, aside from prefacing with this non-preface.

Unofficial Trilogy… Sucked From Time Edition

Posted on by sgottahurt

Flashing Lights, Grids, and Guns = Science Fiction

Millennium (1989)

This is the first of the films in which characters about to die are sucked from their impending doom and thrust into a surreal reality, or surreality™.  As you can see from the poster above, this one involves a plane.  Well, two planes.  And they’re about to crash into each other.  But all the passengers are already dead.  Because they were see the first sentence. It’s not the greatest film in the world, but if you enjoy Cheryl Ladd and Kris Kristofferson looking like this…

...then this pic's for you. Well, not this picture. I mean the motion picture. But I guess you could have this pic, too.

Freejack (1992)

The second film featuring a surreality™ doesn’t give away as much in the poster, other than its odd cast.  You might think the flick has to do something with virtual reality, which is strictly The Lawnmower Man’s territory (no it’s not), when in fact it deals with a man (Emilio Estevez) being pulled into the future before his race car crashes.  The reason why?  Sir Anthony Hopkins wants his body.  Seriously.  Estevez escapes and becomes a Freejack (aha!), and is chased by Mick Jagger looking like this:

He's got the goons like Jagger.

Gantz (2011)

If you enjoy subtitles and odd sci-fi action spread out over two movies, then these Japanese films are for you.  I haven’t seen the sequel yet (Gantz: Perfect Answer), so I don’t have any answers, perfect or otherwise, as to what the Gantz is.  Well, it’s a dude inside a giant black ball that pulls the almost deceased into a surreality™ where they dress up in rubber power suits and set out to kill a vast array of strange aliens.  Here’s a taste:

Natsuna Watanabe is easy on the Gantz.

Coinkydink Or Coinkdonk? 50 First Rachel McAdams’ Notebooks

Posted on by sgottahurt

Rachel McAdams… why can’t you get into better movies?

Her latest is a Channing Tatum film. A Channing Tatum film.

The Vow may be based on a true story, but it’s like a story we’ve heard before.  (But doesn’t this happen all the time in Hollywood?)

Take the end game of The Notebook:

She’s an elderly Alzheimer’s patient, and the whole movie is her husband telling their life story, which was also based on a true story (oops, I forget to put SPOILER ALERT!)

And mix it with this flick:

And you get The Vow:

Channing Tatum plays the husband to Rachel McAdams’ amnesic wife, and he doesn’t know how to act… just like in real-life.

See – it is a true story!

A Handful Of… “Color”-ful Movies

Posted on by sgottahurt

What color sounds like the least exciting color?  Give up?  Howzabout:

The Boring

So, as is par for the course on this website, I got to thinking… how many movies are named after colors much more exciting sounding than The Grey?  Let’s see by checking out A Handful Of… “Color”-ful Movies.

  • RED

RED... featuring some ORANGE.

I could have went with some other titles like Red Dawn, Red Riding Hood, Red State, the current film Red Tails, or the French film Rouge, but I chose this one, which is actually an acronym for Retired and Extremely Dangerous.  But my point is proven so far… RED sounds so much better than The Grey.

  • A Clockwork Orange

I prefer my clockworks to be green.

I’ve never seen this Stanley Kubrick classic, but as a student of film (not that great of one if I haven’t seen A Clockwork Orange), I am familiar with enough of it to know this was a better choice than Orange County to go against The Grey.

  • Yellowbeard

You have to take this poster's word that he has a yellow beard.

Yellow is a tough sell for movie titles, so this is the best I’ve got.  I could have chosen Yellow Submarine or the Swedish film I Am Curious (Yellow), but come on… Yellowbeard is about pirates!  Sure, it was made before pirates were (are?) cool, so The Grey can walk the plank!  Aaargh!

  • Green Lantern

Sometimes green means stop.

Green Lantern was a tough pick, especially against such examples of “greenness” as Green Zone, The Green Hornet, The Green Mile, and Green Street Hooligans.  Maybe I should have picked Green Street Hooligans.  The Grey is only slightly less better than Green Lantern…

  • Deep Blue Sea

Hey! Look out for that

Samuel L. Jackson makes a lot of things automatically better, and since he wasn’t in The Blue Lagoon, Blue Velvet, Blue Valentine, the French film Bleu, or the Swedish film I Am Curious (Blue), Deep Blue Sea blows The Grey out of the water.

  • The Color Purple

Again, my favorite color for clockworks.

Okay… so The Color Purple wasn’t my first choice to battle The Grey, but Purple Rain or The Purple Rose of Cairo don’t sound like they’d fare much better.  Purple might be the color of kings, but when it comes to movies, it’s a notch better than grey.

Now if Liam Neeson’s latest was called The Gray, it’d be a completely different story…

In My Brain While Sleeping… A Precious Centerfielder

Posted on by sgottahurt

There dream exclusively featured Gabourey Sidibe, a.k.a. Precious (she will forever be tied to this role like Jon Heder is to Napoleon Dynamite).

She played on my softball team, and she brought some an amazing talent.  She had a fantastic bat that warranted unlimited homers over the fence.

Precious Fielder

Which worked out immensely well, seeing as how she had great difficulty running.  We tried her at first, and we tried her in right field.  But it just wasn’t working.

So then it occurred to us – deep, deep centerfield.  It worked like a dream.  She was a dream.  It was… a dream.

I think she's even wearing high heels. You go girl.

JusWondering… What Does 37 Mean To Me?

Posted on by sgottahurt

So like I JusWondered above:

What does 37 mean to me?

Perhaps an old Michelle Pfeiffer film?

It also starred Peter Gallagher.

Perhaps mutant Detroit Tigers’ pitcher Max Scherzer?

He's a better pitcher than a belly itcher.

Perhaps a rather blue scene from the black-and-white film Clerks?

Oh, wait.  I remember.  That’s how old I am now.

This is about right.

monkeyFLASHmonkeyBACK…. Some Bands Named After Characters

Posted on by sgottahurt

This post comes from a time pre-blogging… way back in 2006.  Times were simpler then.  I didn’t have to think of new blog posts every day…

You might have seen a lot of this commercial lately:

Well, in case you’re wondering who that new group is, I’m here to help you.  Hailing from Scotland, they’re The Fratellis, and this song is called Flathead off their album Costello Music.

If the band name sounds familiar (and they don’t), that’s because their name was inspired by this lady and her brood:

"You better not even think about throwing me from a train."

That’s Mama Fratelli from The Goonies.  That’s where they got their name!  Awesome right?!  So I figured I’d let you know about a few other bands that followed the same idea.

He's from "Barbarella"... and your dreams

This one isn’t the same spelling, but Brit rockers Duran Duran were inspired by a guy from Roger Vadim’s Barbarella… a fellow named Dr. Durand Durand.  (Okay, that’s not really him up above, but it’s funnier than this guy.)

A Vulcan priestess by any other name is kind of like a Romulan priestess.

Another British pop group was inspired by American pop culture.  This time it was in the form of a cheesy 60’s sci-fi show… a little something called Star Trek.  The character is T’Pau, and coincidentally, so is the band.  What’s funny is the band sang Heart and Soul with a lot of heart and soul… which are two things the emotionless Vulcans can express.

What a nut (or in this case, a golden chocolate egg).

90’s rockers Veruca Salt took the name Veruca Salt simply because they wanted it.

John Hughes saw this real water tower and based the entire film around it. True story.

The California ska band eschewed the typical ska puns common for band names and opted for Save Ferris, which is of course from Home Alone.  Except for a few missteps (Curly Sue, Dutch, Career Opportunities), John Hughes was a fairly clever writer, I’d say.  He’ll always be missed, like Kevin McCallister by his family.  I never understood why the water tower didn’t say Save Kevin.

Not to be confused with Goldmember

California and England seem to be all about naming their bands after characters.  Closing up this list is Goldfinger, named after the James Bond baddie from the same named film.  It’s weird, but most of these happened to be named after bad characters or bad situations.  Why hasn’t anybody named themselves after a good guy?  Someone like Luke Sky(y)walker, for instance?

He so corny.