Review – The Animal

I want to write the next Rob Schneider movie for Happy Madison. A guy who eats a lot of food from Subway is hit by a bolt of lightning and fused at the molecular level with his lunch and goes on to fight evil with his newfound lunchmeat powers. Some random doofus swallows a radioactive booger and ends up with uncontrollable chest hair and fingernail growth, so he battles the forces of darkness with his long hair and nails. A ne'er-do-well clerk gets animal part implants from a mad scientist and uses the animal powers to beat bad guys and win the woman of his dreams. So okay, other than the title giving it away, what's the difference between the actual plot of this movie and the other two that I just pulled out of my ass? Seriously guys, just do a deal with Lorne Michaels and make Copy Machine Guy: The Motion Picture. It couldn't be much worse than this. See if desperate

Review – Stan Helsing

Let's draw a Venn diagram. The first circle is people who've seen enough horror movies from the 80s and 90s to recognize the characters and situations in this parody. The second circle is people who hate horror movies from the 80s and 90s enough to enjoy a witless, mean comedy making fun of them. Do these circles overlap at some point? Perhaps if this had come out around the time its targets were in theaters (or at least fresh on video) it might have had more of a point. But all these years later all this accomplishes is heaping humiliation on poor Kenan Thompson, who must have lost a bet or something. See if desperate

Abandoned – Dinner for Schmucks

Movie for jerks. Approximately half an hour

Review – Deadtime Stories Volume One

Oh George Romero. Out of respect for Dawn of the Dead, Creepshow and your other really good contributions to the horror genre, I'm going to pretend that your appearance in this turd was taped after the producers got you really drunk at a sci fi con and tricked you into reading bad poetry for the camera. Other than Romero's less-than-stellar-but-at-least-brief performance, this is just three progressively-worse horror shorts crammed together. If there's a Volume Two, it's a movie that will not be seen by me. Wish I'd skipped it

Review – Little Buddha

It's hard to say for certain, but I get the feeling that if this was about Jesus rather than Siddhartha Gautama, its preachiness would have pissed me the hell off. As a message from a less familiar religion, I thought it was colorful and pretty yet silly and dull. A couple (Chris Isaak and Bridget Fonda) in Seattle experience understandable confusion when a couple of monks from Nepal show up at their doorstep and announce that their young son may be the reincarnation of a Buddhist lama. Their attempts to wrap their heads around this weird turn of events is intercut with the story of the life of Siddhartha (Keanu Reeves). I've actually done a fair amount of reading about the Buddhist faith, but a lot of this "gospel" was new to me. Nor do I feel substantially enlightened by the tale. Maybe I just don't get the whole religion thing. And maybe this isn't the time or the place for a more thorough consideration of the subject. Mildly amusing

Review – Starship Troopers 2

The dumb turn of events here is that I got this on disc from Netflix specifically because the Onion AV Club said the commentary track was hilarious, but after I sat through it with the regular sound on I was so thoroughly bemused that I sent it back without watching it with the commentary on. My loss, I guess. Early on it's apparent that this go-around doesn't have anything even vaguely approaching the budget of the original, though to the filmmakers' credit they figure this out and try to find ways (limited locations, dark shots and so on) to work around financial limitations rather than ignoring them and trying to remake the first one. Still, a big can full of soldiers surrounded by bugs doesn't supply a feature-length amount of entertainment, even when some of the humans are possessed by evil spy bugs. See if desperate

Review – Chain Reaction

I like big bombs (and I cannot lie), so I enjoyed the explosions at the beginning and the end of this picture. The rest of it not so much. After the cheap hydrogen from water project they're working on gets destroyed by sinister government agents, a couple of researchers (Keanu Reeves and Rachel Weisz) find themselves framed for murder. Most of the rest of the picture is a protracted chase scene. Morgan Freeman turns in a good performance as a nice-guy-or-uber-creep helper character, but otherwise the only real fun here is watching a chunk of Chicago destroyed by a massive fireball. See if desperate

Review – House of Blood (2006)

A doctor gets into a car wreck with a prison bus, and the escaping convicts take him prisoner. That much of the story took half an hour to tell. Then they end up in a house full of religious wackos who turn out to be vampire/zombie things. That's another ten minutes or so. Then the whole thing repeats. Is director Olaf Ittenbach trying to make some kind of point about destiny or the cyclical nature of the universe? Or is he merely a crapslinger who can't fill 90 minutes of screen time without repeating himself? With the exception of Jurgen Prochnow (who must have been unusually desperate for cash and/or in need of a gig that would take only 20 minutes or so to shoot), all the actors in this stinker appear to have "not ashamed to deliver wretchedly dreadful dialogue" on their vitae. Also released as Chain Reaction. Wish I'd skipped it

Review – Mission of the Shark

Imagine a made-for-TV movie about the sinking of the U.S.S. Indianapolis and you've got this picture in your head without even watching it. Act One is the lead-up (the secret mission, getting to know the characters and so on), Act Two is mostly about the sharks (or at least that was the interesting part), and briefly at the end we get the captain's court martial. Of course like most folks I can't really watch anything about this particular episode of World War Two without thinking of Robert Shaw's buzz-killing speech in Jaws. That notwithstanding, this is an acceptable bit of TV drama. Mildly amusing

Review – Sputnik Mania

Living in the United States during that brief period of Soviet technological advantage must have been a really interesting experience. As is not exactly unusual with History Channel productions, the treatment of the subject at hand was too superficial. The celebrity-narrated presentation included a few interesting facts here and there, but for the most part it was the story most folks already know (or could have learned in five minutes from Wikipedia) made shiny by archival footage and slick editing. Mildly amusing

Quiz answers - Fireworks or STD?

As promised, here are the answers to last week's quiz. If you haven't done the quiz yet, view the previous post before reading this one. Oh, and credit where credit is due: this website provided the slang.

Bees in a Thicket - Firework

 

Flap Dragon - STD

Jumping Bug - Fireworks

Blue Boars - STD

Fire Ship - STD

Hot Pot - Fireworks

Burner - STD

Nimgimmer - STD

Tonga Exotica - Fireworks

Autumn Drizzle - Fireworks

Crinkums - STD

Nutty Monkey - Fireworks

Cats in the Cupboard - Fireworks

Review – On the Double

I never thought I'd find myself typing these words, but this picture seriously needed more corny musical numbers. That's what I've come to expect from Danny Kaye, so on the rare occasion that the mood for such a thing strikes me, I'd at least like to get what I paid for. But this is like getting a craving for a Big Mac only to discover when you get home that they gave you a Fillet O' Fish by mistake. To be sure, Kaye is his usual, charming self, once again playing a goofy nebbish caught up in a comedy of errors. Perhaps World War Two was still too fresh even 15 years later when this was made, but overall it's just far too serious. Our hero is an American private who just happens to bear a resemblance to an arrogant British general. So he decoys German spies (and the general's mistress, and the general's wife, and so on) while the real guy goes off to command the D-Day invasion. However, the Nazis really have it in for the guy, so they keep trying to assassinate him. The deaths that keep cropping up are, well, less than humorous. And worse, we get almost none of the comedian's legendary Catskill musical shtick. When the funniest moment in a Kaye movie is the scene where he and the love interest throw salad on one another, you know you aren't getting the typical experience. Mildly amusing

Review – A Wink and a Smile

The art of burlesque dancing is alive and well in Seattle. Well, alive anyway. This documentary follows the progress of a handful of students in a burlesque dancing class. Though I'm highly in favor of women's sexual self-expression, I thought the endless talking-head discourse on the subject got repetitive after awhile. Most of the women were reasonably interesting, but none of them was so interesting that I wanted to hear them say the same things over and over again. Further, my general opinion of artists of all stripes is that they should communicate with their art, not with statements about their art. The interviews and class segments are interspersed with clips of professional dancers doing their sometimes-bizarre acts at a local club. Mildly amusing

Review – Behind the Burly Q

This is a reasonably good documentary about the origin and heyday of burlesque shows. The filmmakers managed to track down a lot of the bigger names, not only the dancers but also the comedians, novelty acts and other folks in and around the business. One thing I noted in particular was how down-to-earth most of these elderly women were about their "misspent" youths. Many documentaries about the arts are marred with tedious boasting from talking heads, "I invented graffiti" or "we were the first punk band in Boston." The closest any of the subjects here come to that kind of annoying nonsense is an occasional "she tried to steal my act." Overall this picture does a solid job of covering a topic I didn't know much about. Mildly amusing

Quiz time! Fireworks or STD?

In honor of the upcoming holiday, 8sails serves up our first ever Blog Quiz.

Each of the following items is either a firework we bought for our annual Fourth of July celebration or a Victorian English slang term for sexually transmitted disease. Can you tell which is which?

For the answers, come by the house at around 9:00 or so (or whenever anyone sobers up enough to be trusted around explosives) and see what we've got. Otherwise I'll post the answers next Tuesday.

The list:

Bees in a Thicket
Flap Dragon
Jumping Bug
Blue Boars
Fire Ship
Hot Pot
Burner
Nimgimmer
Tonga Exotica
Autumn Drizzle
Crinkums
Nutty Monkey
Cats in the Cupboard

Good luck!