Hello, Internet So I stopped posting blogs for a while. Reason
being that I got tired of writing about movies as opposed to making
them. So my absence has been so that I may return to production... Yeah, I know. No one cares... The following video is a "making-of" for a cheese
commercial that a friend and I embarked upon and will probably never see
the light of day... but the outtakes are pretty funny. Check out the
newly transformed Shooting From The Hip, now in video.
I used to watch this movie all the time. Re-watching it, I can't remember why. When the original writers of Last Action Hero couldn't properly imitate Shane Black's witty writing style, what started out as a spoof of Shane Black action movies (Lethal Weapon & The Last Boyscout) actually became a Shane Black action movie. That and Shane Black and John McTiernan (Die Hard & Predator) were in need of work, so why not spoof the genre they made famous? And make it for kids!
The movie opens as your typical 80s Schwarzenegger film. There's a hostage situation with children in the hands of an axe-wielding psychopath. (That's how they all were, right?) Suddenly, the scene goes completely out of focus and turns out to be a being played in a rundown, near-empty movie theater.....Stealing the plot-line from The NeverEnding Story,
Last Action Hero is about an inner city kid who through f@$%ing magic
gets sucked into an Arnold Schwarzenegger action movie. Its an appealing
idea, but much darker than expected for a kids' movie.
Its first ten minutes takes place in the bleakreality of Danny's world where he spends most of his days in a dingy movie theater. Danny has no friends, no father, and is a constant disappointment to his overworked mother. And to emphasize how crappy Danny's life is, they even have a scene where he gets robbed at knife-point. The robber handcuffs Danny to the toilet and forces him to go fishing for the key... Now, how is this a kid's movie? The first fifteen minutes is the stuff of urban nightmares: psychotic murderers, crime-ridden neighborhoods, heart-wrenching poverty... Sweet Jesus. Is Danny addicted to heroine too?
So after a visit to the police station, Danny neglects the detective's advise to go straight home and wait for his mother, and goes to the theater instead to see the new Jack Slater movie (Arnie's character). There, he is bestowed by Nick, the old projectionist, with a magic ticket...
Now, let's discuss the magic ticket for a second. Danny is regaled with the story of how Houdini gave Nick this ticket back when Nick was a child, and Houdini claimed to get it from "the best magician in India, and [that] he got it from the best magician in Tibet."
Harry Houdini was an active magician between the years 1891 - 1926. The first ever Indian film released was Shree pundalik, a silent film made in 1912. But, prior to forming The Indian Cinematograph Enquiry Committee in 1927, the few Indian production companies there were only produced on average ten films a year (and most weren't over 30 minutes long). So Indian film probably wasn't recognized internationally yet. Also, there is no mention of Harry Houdini having traveled to India when he was actively performing magic. This doesn't disprove that an Indian Magician gave Harry Houdini the ticket, just that it could not have been a ticket for an Indian film being as their industry was barely in existence yet. Also, Harry Houdini would have already been dead by a year by 1927. So the ticket must be for an American movie.The first public exhibition of a moving photographic image was at Koster and Bial's Music Hall in New York City in April in 1896, meaning movies were playing by time Harry Houdini was actively performing magic and prior to his death. So it's plausible that Harry Houdini might have seen a movie or several movies in his time, but due to the inherent racism of the era, I doubt any Indian Magicians would have been in an American theater with him. Also, Harry Houdini was a Jew, so his chances of seeing a matinee weren't so great either. But hypothetically, say that this Indian Magician and Harry Houdini got turned away at the door for the same movie. That might prompt the Indian Magician to give Harry Houdini his unused ticket... But to what purpose I am not sure...
Then there's this so-called Tibetan Magician. As far as the Tibetan Film Industry goes, try looking it up on wikipedia. You'll come up with nothing. The ticket would not have been for a Tibetan movie because there are and never have been any theaters in Tibet. And the Tibetan Magician probably would never have seen a movie theater before in his life, so would he even know what it is?
Then, of course, the Tibetan Magician would have to buy a ticket, not use it, then give it to the Indian Magician, who would not use it, then give it Harry Houdini, who would also not use it... You know what? I don't think Shane Black did any research into this claim. I think he just said "Hey, Houdini did magic and India sounds magical. How about we just put those two together? Then audiences will buy it! And for good measure, throw some Tibet in there too. It's mysterious." As Chief Wiggum said, "Magic Ticket my ass." Magic Ticket my ass indeed, Shane. Shoulda stopped at "I got the ticket from Harry Houdini. That's it."
Anyways, in the film's film-within-a-film, Jack Slater is caught in the middle of two powerful mobsters joining forces. First thing they do is kill Jack's favorite second-cousin Larry. Then a hit squad comes for Jack, throwing dynamite from a moving car. One of the TNT bundles comes straight off the screen and rolls down the theater aisle towards Danny. Questioning his reality, Danny runs for it - KA-BOOM!
Suddenly, Danny finds himself smack in the middle of the Jack Slater movie, experiencing all the action and AC/DC soundtrack close-up. (Click here for another gem with an AC/DC soundtrack.) But, from Jack's perspective, Danny has unexplainable knowledge about his world and personal life and becomes an asset to Jack and his current situation. Well, that settles it then. Jack's angry police makes Danny Jack's partner... Yep. That's realistic. It worked in Dick Tracy.
The intentions with this movie are very clear, just misguided. The producers wanted to tap the Arnold Schwarzenegger who had made audiences laugh with the hit comedy Twins, but thought it would be funny to spoof the hard-nosed action career that made him famous. Unfortunately, they didn't realize comedy wasn't a natural thing for Arnold. When Arnold killed somebody, slipped in a one-liner, and managed to get some laughs, was it because the audience actually thought he was funny? What was funny about Arnold's one-off's was how wrong they were. Murdering someone and making a joke about it is funny, but not for a kids movie. Imagine if PeeWee's Big Adventure suddenly turned into Natural Born Killers... Actually, that would be pretty great.
But it all just raises the question again of who this movie is really for? When you got a kids going to see a self-referential Arnie movie, in which Arnold kills lots of people, in a cartoonish PG fashion, and you got a whole lot of cameos (Sharon Stone, Robert Patrick, Pam Anderson, Odd Job, Jim Belushi, MC Hammer, Little Richard, JCVD, Tom Noonan) for movies that were rated R, and that kids couldn't even get into the theater to see, who is this movie really for? I've deduced that it's a film for kids who managed to watch movies they shouldn't have seen. We all were those kids, but Last Action Hero waters down the violence and grit to the point of losing the guilty pleasure action movies give the audience. And just because you add an animated cat in the movie voiced by Danny Devito in the mix doesn't make it a kids movie. Cool World had animated characters too.
That all said, some of the adult humor is quite funny. The most clever scene in the movie takes place in a Blockbuster Video where Danny questions the logic
of movie phone numbers and how they all seem to start with 555. "How can
everyone have a phone number with 555 in it?" Arnie brings up the
crippling point, "That's why we have area codes." That was pretty funny, but kids won't get that. Neither will they get the joke when the real Arnie is at the Jack Slater premiere and his former wife Maria Shriver tells him not to plug his restaurant. That was pretty funny too, but I actually went to Planet Hollywood and that was no joke.
With a running time of over two hours, this movie is far too long, definitely losing steam by time the villains enter the real world and Danny and Jack go after them. Why the villains would even want to leave their fantastical movie world for a bleak, depressing reality I'm not sure.
The villain Benedict says that he could open gates for other movie villains to enter the real world, but wouldn't he have already done that by now?
The movie was nominated for several Razzie Awards, but won none of them. It's not terrible. It kind of just falls into that era of Family Friend Arnold Schwarzenegger followed by Junior and Jingle All The Way. Of all those movies, this is probably the best one or maybe the least embarrassing. For those reasons, it's worth watching.
For your viewing displeasure, Danny's entrance into Jack Slater's world...
I remember seeing Bad Taste at a friend's house. While watching it, we're overjoyed to see the role of Derek being played by the film's director Peter Jackson. Then we were even more overjoyed to see the role of the alien menace Robert also played by Peter Jackson. Laughing our asses off, we watched as Robert actually attacks Derek, knocking him off a cliff into a pile of jagged rocks. Having just recently finished The Lord of The Rings trilogy, my friend brought up a point, "This guy just won an Academy Award, folks."
For those of you who have followed the career of Peter Jackson Pre-Lord of The Rings, you know that there are two Peter Jackson's. There is the Peter Jackson who brought us the B-movie gems Bad Taste, Meet The Feebles, and Dead Alive, later to elevate to The Frighteners and Heavenly Creatures. Then came the "New Peter Jackson" who made epic sagas like Lord of The Rings, The Hobbit, King Kong, Lovely Bones, etc. And as much as I like to say that I am proud of the New Peter Jackson for rising through the ranks and showing guys like Lucas, Spielberg, and Cameron how it's done, I miss the Old Peter Jackson... but also realize that he can never go back to his old ways. That's why seeing movies like Bad Taste shows how far this director has come.
In Bad Taste, a small New Zealand Town gets taken over by aliens, who have disguised themselves in human form, leaving the audience only able to tell they are aliens because they all wear blue shirts. But as the character Derek describes, "It's like we got a visit from a planet of Charlie Mansons." However, we never witness the town being taken over by aliens or the carnage that ensued, so the film's beginning is kinda boring. We really could have used one really big massacre to get us going. But once the violence does get started, the movie becomes much more entertaining.
The human characters are from The Astro Investigation & Defense Services (or AIDS), which makes a habit of employing gun-toting metal heads and creepy psychos. At the time of the town's disappearance, AID's own Barry and Derek are on the scene and managed to capture one of the aliens (Robert, also played by Peter Jackson). When Barry is attacked by a group of aliens and forced to hide in an abandoned shed, Derek begins torturing Robert for information... Now, to the untrained eye, most probably wouldn't even realize that they are essentially watching Peter Jackson torturing Peter Jackson.
When hearing the strange cries of Robert, the blue-shirt aliens go after Derek with mallets and sledgehammers (the best weapons earth has to offer) while Derek breaks out the uzi. "I'm a Derek and Derek's don't run." Then all hell breaks loose in one of the goriest gun battles (pre-Hobo With a Shotgun), but results in Derek falling off the cliff and splattering all over jagged rocks. (This sequence does have a hilarious dummy prat-fall.)
Meanwhile, a Bible Salesman stumbles into the abandoned town, only to find himself being hunted by Robert. The Salesman takes refuge in a nearby house, finding himself smack in the home-base of the alien invasion. Led by raspy Lord Crumb, he divulges to the salesmen that humans have become the new fast food sensation of the galaxy and that they are planning to harvest all of earth for their new chain.
As this is happens, back at the bluffs, Derek suddenly sits up, somehow alive. He notices several splattered (and incredibly fake-looking) dead seagulls where he landed, but also finds pieces of his brain on the ground. Soon enough, he comes to realize that his brain is falling out of the gaping wound in his head. Derek manages to use his belt and a top-hat to keep anymore brains from falling out. But now, literally losing his mind, Derek breaks out the chainsaw he's had waiting in the back of his van and begins his deranged quest for vengeance.
What does this movie have to offer? A lot of bad Hair Metal Soundtrack. Lots of falling, fumbling, or character's losing their guns. Elongated action sequences with predictable, unsurprising consequences. Characters constantly referring to each other by their names, even though they have apparently worked together for years. This movie definitely looks like something Peter Jackson made in his backyard with his friends. The only thing that really separates it from a student film is the Tom Savini-inspired gore and the spacecraft shaped like a house that takes off in the third act.
You could say that most of M. Night Shyamalan's movies should be on this list. Signs had the worst acting and possibly the worst climax I've ever seen. The Last Airbender was just a monumental joke. However, I choose The Happening based on it being M. Night's supposed "comeback movie" and then sucking 100% ass in almost every regard. It sums up pretty much the constant disappointment that has become his career.
M. Night started out with a lot of promise. The Sixth Sense was pretty much M. Night's retelling of The Shining, but without the hotel. It had a twist that shocked the world unless you're Director Doug Brown, who had no idea until 2002 that Bruce Willis' character was a ghost. He just thought he was cold all the time. But I don't know if M. Night can really be credited with the success of The Sixth Sense. The cast was utterly superb. You had Bruce Willis in his only performance where he didn't use a gun; Haley Joel Osment earning that Oscar nod; and Donnie Wahlberg, who gets very little credit for his terrifying performance as an escaped lunatic. But movie after movie, M. Night's films went from hokey to bad, to absolutely horrible. Twelve years later, his name has become synonymous with several of the worst movies ever made. Yet, for some reason, he keeps getting budgets of $130,000,000 when filmmakers like me can't even get a f$%@ing handshake.
The Happening stars Mark Wahlberg as Elliot Moore, a high school teacher caught up (somehow) in a strange epidemic. For some reason, mass groups of people are committing suicide without reason or rational explanation. Not knowing how to handle this, the characters flea the city in a vain attempt to get away from... whatever this is. Shyamalan described his idea as being in the same vein as "The Birds and Invasion of the Body Snatchers." Incorrect statement, sir. Those are actually good films. This is most definitely not. Even its star, Wahlberg himself claimed, "It was a
really bad movie... F%$@ it. It is what it is. F&%$ing trees, man.
The plants. F@#$ it. You can’t blame me for not wanting to try to play a
science teacher. At least I wasn’t playing a cop or a crook." Well,
there you have it, folks. Don't ever accuse Marky Mark of not standing by his director. But that being said, f%$@ing trees is right and we'll get back to that...
My biggest problem with The Happening is that a movie about mass suicide is a cheap shot in my mind. Suicide is something that generally rubs everybody wrong (I would hope). Exposing us to an hour and a half of it is kind of tasteless. It does lead to a handful of interesting sequences: There's the opening where construction workers throw themselves off a building, which is a pretty stark image. One sequence follows a gun that multiple people shoot themselves with. Kinda creative. But then there's the sequence where everyone is watching a video of a man who walks into a tiger cage and taunts the beast until it mauls him. To me, watching people watching a video on someone's phone is about as scary as seeing you're coworkers watching youtube videos of puppies at work.
The whole time I was watching this, I was thinking that none of these deaths are actually scary, just unsettling and not in a good way. If you were going to make a horror movie like The Birds or Invasion of the Body Snatchers, don't you think an epidemic of mass murder would make more sense? It would definitely raises the stakes. Characters would be forced to defend themselves rather than be airy, whimpering, passive, wussies.The threat would actually be a physical thing rather than just a looming conceptual one. Mass suicide for me just feels self-defeating, which is the nature of suicide I guess... and also in very poor taste...
Typically, all M. Night movies end with a twist. That's pretty much his signature, one that has gradually become a joke over time. And as Wahlberg stated, it's f*%$ing trees. Yep. Turns out the root of all the outbreaks are trees in the end... I mean, really? Trees?! Trees were the cause of all this mass hysteria? Trees?! Trees are your twist?! That's the best you could do, M. Night?! Trees?!
Another reason I picked this film is that it's got M. Night's worst twist of all his films. In a lot of cases, the twist is the only reason for watching. In this one, it's the most disappointing part. I probably would have been happier with absolutely nothing rather than f&@$ing trees. Sorry if this is a spoiler for some, but I might have just saved you the biggest disappointment of your film-viewing life.
For your viewing displeasure, Mark Wahlberg pulling an Emilio Estevez in Maximum Overdrive and talking to the tree in his office. If you wanna learn how to talk to trees, Mark, take lessons from Hugh Jackman.
The title alone gives you a pretty good idea what Gymkata is about. I rented it having seen it reviewed by Red Letter Media and was wondering how a ninja/gymnast movie would hold up. I was pleasantly surprised with most of it, and absolutely terrified with some. That's right. I said terrified. All in all, most of what Gymkata offered were a lot of surprises I did not expect, making it a very worthwhile bad movie.
The plot is surprisingly complicated. While watching Gymkata, I almost found it almost impossible to know what was happening. I knew there was a deadly game involved, but wasn't sure why the main character Jonathan Cabot (Kurt Thomas) had any interested. Turns out Johnathon Cabot is a gymnastics champ whose father at one time took part in this deadly game and lost, losing his life as well. The game itself is an endurance test held in a fictional country called Parmistan (which will come up again later), where the contestants avoid obstacles and run from Parmistanian warriors bent on killing them. If a contestant wins, he is granted one wish of his choosing.
So early in the movie, our hero Johnathon is approached by the SIA (Special Intelligence Agency) about entering the tournament so that if he wins, they can use his one wish to set up a satellite monitoring station for the Star Wars Program... Yep. That is what they want to do with his only wish. What assholes. Also, this is also the only non-animated movie I've ever seen where wishes are actually part of the plot-line. But Johnathon also has his own reasons for entering the tournament. If Johnathon wins the game, he will be honoring his father and accomplishing what he could not... Wow. So yes, a lot going on, but is anyone really watching it for the plot? No. So let's see some more Gymkata.
The star Kurt Thomas was an actual Olympic Gymnastics winner. So for an unassuming, nimble little white-boy, he's got some sweet moves and manages to execute them with noticably more grace than JCVD (which takes a bit of the grit out of it). The action sequences in the movie, though low-budget, are competently made. You watch them, ooh'ing and ah'ing as Kurt Thomas gracefully kicks some ass. Is Kurt convincing in that sense? Very much so. Is he an action star? No. No, not at all. It's hard to take an action hero series who oddly looks a lot like Wayne Gretzky and dresses like... well, like a dork. I mean seriously, would you be able to take JCVD seriously if he wore a Christmas sweater? So agility is no question. Kurt does a good job kicking ass, especially in the scene where he fights an entire village using only a pummel horse... But as far as be imtidating, well...
Kurt's presence aside, the location of the movie was the most off-putting thing about it. Fictional countries seem to only work in Perfect Strangers or children's cartoons. I refer you to Genosha in X-Men. But when you create one for a movie, you're fall subject to some problems, such as race, ethnicity, culture, etc. Little things. And yet, when you create a country that doesn't have any of those (minus barbaric gaming), you get the great Parmistan, a country named after a cheese-topping, populated by lazy-eyed extras, and decorated with a mix of Russian, Amish, Islamic, Scottish, and Asian stereotypes. It's pretty much a case of "The East" for those of you not familiar with Orientalism. Simply put: in North America's eyes, whatever isn't the west is the east. (Better examples of this can be found in the Italian Sword & Sandal Films, more specifically involving the dance sequences.)
Another strange aspect of the setting is that the characters need to make it through "The Village of the Crazies," a village populated with deadly lunatics. It's a fifteen minute sequence near the end of the film and is as strange and terrifying as anything David Lynch has ever made. John is forced to do battle with maniac after maniac, each with their own brand of psychotic.
I guess mental health is a bit of a grey area in the Parmistanian government. The Village of the Crazies might not be a sequence many will enjoy, but I thought it gave the movie a bit of edge from being just another generically bad action film.
Gymkata is a lot of fun and worth seeing for some decent action and a good string of laughs.
For your viewing displeasure, the "Village of The Crazies" sequence in full.
Some movies are so bad that they are fascinating, like The Crow 2 or Natural Born Killers. You watch it and wonder what exactly was going through the director's mind they made whatever this is. Apparently Richard Kelly's abomination Southland Tales was inspired by the events of September 11th. Now, what exactly the Highlander driving around in a van, Sarah Michelle Gellar as a porn star, Kevin Smith as a gun-totting Obi Wan Kenobi, and the Rock traveling through time have to do with the events of September 11th is beyond me, but that's what was on Kelly's. (The funniest thing is that besides the time travel part, I could see most of the insane notions of celebrity explored in this movie coming to fruition.) Starring pretty much every C-grade actor and misfit in Hollywood -- Sean William Scott, Jon Lovitz, Cheri Oteri, Will Sasso, that midget-lady from Poltergeist -- Southland Tales is a senseless, pretentious mess. Abundantly attempting to be social commentary, the dares to go places its audience might not necessarily want to, ie. seeing Stifler try to seriously actor, Cheri Oteri threatening to kill herself unless she gets some Dwayne Johnson c%$#@, and some androgynous Chinese woman dancing in, like, every scene. Unraveling into moments of what looks like a George Michael video and with a soundtrack entirely by Moby, this giant mess runs over two whole hours. The movie has its moments, but that's mainly the C.G.I. car commercial that turns into vehicular pornography with one truck ramming another. The rest, I just don't know...
For your viewing displeasure, what could arguably be the best scene in the film or the worst. I'm gonna be generous and call it the best because at least its creativity takes over the confusing aspects.
