bitterisataste . . . words and ramblings . . . v.6.0

Monday, June 11, 2007

this entry brought to you by stone temple pilots, "meatplow"

THE GOOD

The Warriors The Warriors is difficult to explain. The plot couldn't get any simpler: every major gang in a semi-futuristic New York city is called to send five members per gang to a grand meeting in central park where a respected OG explains the details of a truce that will benefit everyone, when The Warriors, the main characters, are framed for his murder. They must then make their way back to Long Island, where their turf is, as every single gang in New York is out for their blood. The movie's charm is what would initially come off as its faults: it is pretty cheesy, and it's extremely dated-- gigantic afros aplenty, roller skates, leather vests, outdated lingo (can you dig it?), and anything that would be embarrassing in any other movie. The Warriors, however, seems to be acutely aware that it was going to look outdated within years, because it is utterly outrageous in every idea it comes up with. One gang is called the Baseball Furies, and they fight with, you guessed it, a baseball bat-- and have distinctive, oddly Marilyn Manson-like facial paint. Another gang rolls by on roller skates, and wear lumberjack overalls. The boppers are an all black gang that wear purple vests. The High Hats are a bunch of street mimes. It's not a good movie in the classic sense. The movie borders on being in the exploitation genre, and you can almost see the trailers promising "You've never seen youths this far beyond civilized!" The Warriors works because of camp value, but also because director Walter Hill really seemed to care about his movie, going out of his way to draw parallels between his 1970's future of campy gangs and Sparta's Battle of Thermopylae (which also inspired 300). It's cheesy, but it's fun.

The SXSW Grindhouse trailer competition I wasn't aware of this until recently, but Robert Rodriguez hosted a competition at South By Southwest this year, where any aspiring filmmaker could film his own Grindhouse faux trailer, and the best would be shown and judged by him. I stumbled across this on Youtube, and man, some of them are awesome. There are some clunkers, but in general I was really surprised at how inventive and professional looking the bulk of them turned out. Although it didn't end up winning, my favorite was Tetas De Muerte (Death Tits), a trailer about a future where robots have overtaken the humans, and one woman, who inexplicably has breasts that make robots explode, is the only person who can stop them. The winner ended up being Hobo With a Shotgun, which was brilliant. I didn't like it as much as Death Tits, but I see why Rodriguez picked it: it's got a real 70's feel that fits perfectly with Grindhouse. Other notables that I got a kick out of: Dead Noon ("It's Dawn of the Dead meets High Noon-- it's Dead Noon!); Black Mantis ("His rage is as dark as his skin!"); and Hippy Bastards From Hell ("The story of hippies-- dirty hippies!").

One Dollar DVD dispensers I don't know if you've seen any of these, but at our local grocery stores here in Chandler, these DVD machines have been popping up. You run your card, make a selection, it drops out a DVD in a black case. At first I thought this seemed silly, because I can't imagine who doesn't have access to a Blockbuster video, but with the 1 dollar per day you can watch movies for much cheaper than you could there, provided you return it promptly. The machine charges you one dollar per day, which is very convenient. The selection is surprisingly robust considering it's just a vending machine; there are even smaller, non-mainstream movies, such as Fast Food Nation and Childern of Men available, which raised my eyebrows. I definitely won't be using the machine myself, because I'm very satisfied with my Blockbuster On-Line account. Still, I thought it was a pretty neat idea that is executed better than I thought it would be. Side note: These machines take debit cards, of course-- so when the hell is the debit-card-running technology going to show up on candy and soda vending machines, so I can stop having to carry around loose change?

Grapples (pronounced "Grape-ls") They're apples, and the box says that they taste like grapes. Well, not quite. But if you take it and put it up to your nose, it smells like grapes-- less like the actual fruit grapes, but more like the Jolly Rancher flavor. When you bite into it, it tastes just like a normal red apple, with this hint of grape punch, which is quite refreshing. If you don't like apples (and what the hell's wrong with you if you don't?) this isn't going to convert you, and for apple lovers the 5-dollar price tag for four is way too much for what you're getting. But as a once-in-a-while treat, I find them delectable. How in the hell do they get that grape flavor in there? It's ungodly, I tells you!

Fuze Healthy Infusions fruit drinks There are three types of Fuze fruit drinks: "Refresh", "Slenderize" and "Vitalize". I've only had Banana Colada, Strawberry Guava, and Peach Mango under the Refresh label and they're pretty goddamned good. Recommendation: chill until almost frozen, then shake extremely well. They taste like smoothies. Exception: I tried the Cranberry/Raspberry flavor under "Slenderize", which is supposed to be a line of no-carb, low cal fruit drinks, and I disliked it because it tasted like a diet drink, which I suppose I should have expected. So I would stick with the Refesh ones, if I were you.

THE BAD

Ultraviolet It's unfortunate that director Kurt Wimmer opened Ultraviolet with a montage of fake comic book covers baring the name "Ultraviolet"-- Ultraviolet was never a comic book, and I'd hate for anyone to watch this and to somehow compare its lameness with its non-existent comic book origins. Ultraviolet is-- with its inexplicably unstoppable killing machine heroine; bright sci-fi environments that all look green-screened, even when they're not; pointlessly elaborate action scenes where everyone is much more interested in posing than actually doing anything resembling fighting, and when they die they don't bleed; lame kinda-vampire backstory, and idiotic "The child is the weapon" plotline-- much more like an anime, and a bad one at that. Everything here is style over substance, except that the style seems somehow utterly derivative and boring, even though I can't think of a single thing it rips off-- sure, there's a lot of Matrix shenanigans, but nowadays, what doesn't? A good example: In one scene, Violet is confronted by a group of Asian gangsters that are said to be of some sort of importance, yet they're never mentioned again. Then in a Matrix-like fight scene Violet manages to kill everybody just by dodging bullets and never actually having to hit or shoot anyone. This is supposed to show how impressive she is-- she need not even do anything but do ballet and everyone will end up dead-- except all it does is show how hard this movie is trying to do and be things that it's not: cool. Everything about Ultraviolet screams that its audience find it cool-- look at the cool gadgets! Look at these martial arts! Look at these vampires! Look at how her hair color changes according to her moods! Isn't this fucking awesome? LOOK AT ME! But as anyone who knows cool, the harder something tries to be cool the less cool it is. And here we have a very lame movie made even more lame by the fact that giant subplots were removed by an intrusive producer's hand, and it shows-- but really, making the movie any longer would've just made it that much more unbearable. Hell, even Aeon Flux was better.

Surf's Up Do we need another fucking penguin movie? I mean, seriously! No matter how good this movie might end up being, I expect it to flop.

Evan Almighty I should say that I want this movie to be awesome. The trailers look fantastic (although way more Christian than even Bruce Almighty), and Steve Carrel is hilarious. I want this movie to do well, both critically and commercially. However, the trailers to Bruce Almighty were frigging excellent, and it had the best plot ever-- and then, out of nowhere, ended up being a pretty by-the-numbers romantic comedy. If I'm going to have to give a prediction about how this movie is going to do, my heart says "I hope this is awesome," but my head says "This will probably suck."

Lindsay Lohan I think what makes me sad about Lohan's downward spiral is that, unlike her peers of spoiled brat socialites, she got famous from her talent. She's an actress. And she hasn't exactly done anything Oscar worthy, but one gets the feeling she could do something concrete and real somewhere down the line like Drew Barrymore or Bijou Philips before her-- unlike, say, Britney Spears, who never had that great of a voice, and Paris Hilton, who is famous for absolutely no reason. What is tragic about Lohan is that she is talented and falling into the same trap other child stars predictably fall into. She may say that she's just trying to have fun while she's young, or that she's not having any more fun than any other girl her age, the difference being that she's got people taking pictures of her everywhere she goes, but this isn't true. Watching Lohan, I can't help but feel we're going to see her in a series of shitty, exploitive reality TV shows in a few years-- or worse, at the rate she's going, just another dead pretty face. In fact, if I could make a ghoulish prediction that I don't want to come true: I have this horrible gut feeling Lohan will be dead in the next twelve months.

My new haircut The last time I cut my own hair, I was really pleased with the results. So pleased that I actually took pictures of it. This time however, I didn't get so lucky. I think the problem was that this time I didn't do it on purpose. I thought it was getting a bit long in the back, so I just wanted to cut it a little. But I cut way too much. Then the top of my head looked goofy because it was so long and the back was so short. So I cut one side-- and that was way too much. It was basically like that episode of Lucy where they're cutting the Christmas tree. My hair is way too short in general, and worse, I fucked up the back. I just keep telling myself: it'll grow back.
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with love from CRS @ 6:38 AM

Monday, June 11, 2007

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