AUGUST ARCHIVE

8/18/2003

“I have no plans. And no plans to plan.” --- Mario Cuomo

BAMBI VS. GODZILLA WILL ALWAYS BE THE BEST

Opening at number one is Freddy vs. Jason, a movie that took literally a decade to make, but we will spend the rest of our lives wondering “why?” While I have a bias against seeing “the scary” something this stupid hardly qualifies. I simply won’t see it because it’s dumb. Poor Robert Englund. You know he’s feeling the “Spock Curse” about this role. On one hand, the role has given him money and a certain amount of fame. On the other hand, it means he can’t make money doing anything else and the fame in question is incredibly dubious. The scary thing is this may give way to more of the old style of “Dracula vs. Frankenstein” type of team-up (though “Frankenstein Meets The Wolf-Man” was great). Aliens vs. Predator has actually been in development as long as Freddy vs. Jason, but have we considered Leprechaun vs. Pinhead (from Hellraiser)? Chuckie vs. Hannibal? Michael (from Halloween) vs. Norman (from Psycho)? Julia Roberts from Mary Reilly vs. Julia Roberts from Erin Brockovich (she’s never more horrifying than when she’s “acting”).

THIS ONE’S FOR YOU, ROBERT URICH

Down one notch to number two is S.W.A.T. and what I remember most about the show when I was a kid (other than the hit theme song by Rhythm Heritage) was coming to school the next day and everyone was turning their caps backwards to pretend to be snipers. Did you hear me? We were children pretending to be snipers! My other vivid memory is of the time The Rookies crossed over with S.W.A.T. and how I missed the second part of the two parter. It was a horrible time in my television viewing life. Given that S.W.A.T. only lasted two seasons, it hardly had much of a following, so I have to think they are scraping the bottom of the TV show-to-movie barrel. What next, The Powers of Matthew Star---The Movie? The movie takes the odd tack of doing more of a cop show than balls-out action movie, which would be more rewarding if the characters weren’t so clichéd and two-dimensional (the captain is a pain-in-the-ass out to get our maverick cops) and the action not outright boring. Colin Farrell (in the Robert Urich role) continues to search for his ticket to the “A-list” and not “A-list” wannabe and this still isn’t it. One, it’s an ensemble movie; two, it’s not a blazing success. Not to mention the inherent problem of casting short guys as action heroes. As Tom Cruise has shown us, you’re then forced to cast short guys as villains, which leads to a fight that comes close to comedy, as it looks like midget wrestling at times. At any given moment, I kept waiting for the six foot Samuel L. Jackson to grab Farrell and yell, “Midget toss!” before chucking him across the room.

JUST DON’T TOUCH MY BELOVED ESCAPE FROM WITCH MOUNTAIN

Freaky Friday is down to number four and I loved the original when I was a kid. I can barely remember it, but I remember Jodie Foster, a car chase and that I saw it more than once. Because of this, I was reluctant to see any remake, as it bordered on blasphemy, but this turned out to be pretty good. First off, it matters that two women wrote it. It really does. I feel if two men had done it, you would have seen a lot more, needless sex. I guarantee you there would have been mutual nude full body examinations, not to mention the idea of middle-aged lust in a young body, and young hormones in an older one. Be grateful none of that is here. The romance is kept chaste, but it still feels real. The family film is usually the last chance for a fading movie career, and for Jamie Lee Curtis, it may have paid off, because she does a great job at playing a teenager in an adult body, and Lindsay Lohman does an even better job of playing an adult. The only flaw in the film is a rather backwards Asian stereotype of an accented, sniveling, greedy, but still wise, mother and daughter Chinese restaurant owners, which sets the whole film in motion. I know Rosalind Chao (you know her best of Keiko from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine) is hard up for work, but I can’t believe that she didn’t say anything about how demeaning this role was. Rent must have been due.

BET YOU THERE’S A FUN-FILLED MONTAGE

Uptown Girls opens poorly at number five and I almost saw this because I actually like that creepy little girl, Dakota Fanning (damn sure wasn’t Britney “All Eyes and Teeth” Murphy). She’s like one those kids from Village of the Damned and I’m a little tired of cute kids onscreen. Nonetheless, it still wasn’t enough to get me into a theater. I foresaw an immature woman learning to act more mature from a child and a young girl learning to act like a child from an adult and me vomiting over how unimaginative it all was. And how could you have Heather Locklear---who can seeming maintain America’s love no matter what crap she makes---and not advertise that fact. Hey, maybe that’s how she maintains America’s love.

WRECKS ALONG THE SIDE OF THE ROAD

Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl is down to number six and somewhere Renny Harlin is crying, considering Cutthroat Island is listed as one of the biggest disasters of all time. Know who else made a bad pirate movie? Roman Polanski. Guess what it was called? Yes, Pirates. And it starred Walter Matthau. When was that ever a good idea after 1976? And he was the only star!

KEY TO KEEP BUDGETS DOWN: UNSUCCESFUL ACTORS

American Wedding is down to number seven and at $80M it’s obviously a success, as Seann William Scott was probably the most expensive thing about it. Okay, maybe Eugene “Bright Spot of Any Movie” Levy cost more, but how much could that really be? God knows those other guys couldn’t bargain for much more than bus fare. “Pay me more or I’ll disappear into obscurity,” isn’t really much of a threat.

THE REST

Seabiscuit is down to number eight, followed by Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over at number nine and Bad Boys II closing out the top ten at number ten. Will Smith and Martin Lawrence were talking about a third one. Yeah, that’ll happen right after Men In Black III. Lesson to Will Smith: don’t make sequels. Or movies based on TV shows. Or movies involving golf. Or…

YOU KNOW YOU’RE OLD WHEN YOUR TEEN FILM IS A 20 YEAR OLD CLASSIC

August is the time when studios dump their crap (as you can probably guess), so despite my outrageous computer debt (oh, Jennifer, you beautiful, expensive bitch who now refuses to work with my old printer, meaning I have to buy a new one) I returned to the DVD buying front, purchasing a trilogy of 80’s teen comedies: The Sure Thing, Valley Girl and The Last American Virgin. Okay, first things first: why the fuck did I buy The Last American Virgin? It was a horrible movie. Even when it was in the theater, I didn’t see it. I saw it on cable and hated it even as a teenager. I had a friend who liked it and now he’s wanted in the state of GA for being a deadbeat dad, which pretty much says everything. Why the turnaround? My roommate in Brooklyn, who taught me the true genius of the movie. I haven’t mentioned my old roommate in awhile, but if you recall he was a large Japanese guy from Hawaii who voluntarily wore a tie just about every day, never wore jeans, lived for the Rat Pack (years before it became fashionable) and got blinding drunk Thursday night through Sunday, but was stone cold sober for school Monday thru Thursday for classes. Simply put: imagine a drunken Toshiro Mifune, in a tux, singing “Volare” while reading a comic book and you have him. In any case, he showed that The Last American Virgin was brilliance because it was about a sensitive boy who falls for a girl who is dating his best friend and when she becomes pregnant, he’s the one who takes care of her. He sells his stereo, steals from his mother, blows off a skiing trip all so he can pay for her abortion and nurse her back to health. And what does he get for his trouble? The next to last shot in the film is the girl back with his best friend. The very last shot is of him as he drives off alone, crying, with James Ingram’s “Just Once” playing over the soundtrack. The End. Granted, there’s a lot of other stupid shit about the guys trying to get laid and winding up with a hooker that gives them crabs, but the heart of the movie is this miserable story. Also, now that I’m older I can see they hired the two gayest actors alive for the leads and not for one second do they ever convince you otherwise. But I can still appreciate that Diane Franklin does full frontal nudity (yeah, it’s right before her abortion, but I can disconnect that). If you don’t remember, she was the pretty curly-haired brunette with the mole who was also in Better Off Dead with John Cusack and was one of the princesses in Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure. One amazing thing about it is that it made it to DVD with the music still intact (something Sixteen Candles failed to do and the movie suffers for it). It must have been in the contracts originally, because it would cost you a small fortune now to make a movie with U2, The Police, Quincy Jones, The Commodores, Blondie, Journey, The Cars and Elvis Costello all on the soundtrack. Speaking of soundtracks, the reason the Valley Girl soundtrack took ten years to come out is because Frank Zappa blocked it and they literally had to wait for the man to die to release it. It was also a great soundtrack and a pretty good movie. It was a long desired DVD purchase and I was delighted to see it in perfect digital quality. The extras include interviews (which I’ll never watch) with just about everyone, but the valley girl herself, Deborah Foreman. I can understand that. It must be a little tiresome to be reminded over and over again that you’re a failed actress who’ll only be remembered for the role that should have made you a star. Think Karen Lynne Gorney. Don’t know her? She was the female lead in Saturday Night Fever. Not to mention that freaking E.G. Dailey actually had a better career. And we won’t even get into Nicholas Cage. The Sure Thing was never a great movie, just a teen version of It Happened One Night, but still I liked it. It doesn’t hold up as well, but is still entertaining. And this soundtrack is a true time capsule. While, The Last American Virgin had virtually everything in release on it, some good some bad, and Valley Girl strove for a kind of alternative 80’s feel, this is pure top forty with everything that was popular that year on it. It opens with Rod Stewart’s “Infatuation” goes on to Huey Lewis & The News’ “Heart of Rock & Roll” and eventually to Wang Chung’s “Dance Hall Days.” Yes, Wang fucking Chung. And yes, that is Tim Robbins as “Gary Cooper” the guy driving the car. And yes, Nicolette Sheridan still looks amazing in a white bikini in the opening scene. All hail the beauty of a woman with small breasts and full eyebrows!

MORE REASONS TO STAY HOME

It wasn’t all me reliving my lost youth on DVD. I also got (from Hong Kong, thank you ebay) a copy of Too Close starring that nude Asian girl I had a picture of a few weeks back (that makes three of her films I’ve got now and she’s nekkid in two of ‘em). It’s directed by Corey Yuen who did The Transporter and a whole bunch of HK action films with Jet Li. It’s what Charlie’s’ Angels wanted to be with three actually attractive women kicking a lot of ass. And they use guns! Okay, so maybe only two are actually attractive, but that’s still two more than Charlie’s Angels. And you get what men have wanted from Charlie’s Angels from the beginning: two of the three are lesbian lovers. I also bought Dinner Rush, which I talked about a few weeks ago. I love a good movie about food. It’s just another kind of porn to me. Speaking of which, this brings our DVD total up to 266 (not counting the porn).

“WHO’S HOUSE/MOM’S HOUSE/WHO’S HOUSE…”

So, I was on vacation last week. Having made no plans, I went home on spur-of-the-moment. It’s rare I see my family more than once a year without someone dying, so it was a good thing. I did the usual sleeping and eating, but this time I decided I’d cook for my mom. I gave her a choice of dishes and she chose the chicken pasta salad. It went over well, being totally consumed in less than 12 hours. I had more ingredients than I needed, so I said I’d make a batch the next day. To my surprise, I woke up to find my mom had made my dish. I was a little shocked, but it’s not that hard and she knew the ingredients. However, when I went to make the dijon-vinegrette she told she’d made that too. “But how, mom?” I asked. “I didn’t tell you how to make it.” She gave me a look that made my uncle take two steps back out of range. “Why don’t you just taste it?” she said in a vaguely threatening manner. I did and told her it was good, but actually I was too much in shock to taste anything. My mom had gotten territorial on me in her kitchen! The message was loud and clear: “It was nice for you to cook for me once…but don’t you ever do that shit in my kitchen again.” I don’t even want to think what would happen if I brought a woman home and she made dinner. I’ve a feeling my bride would accidentally fall down a flight of stairs. And our house only has one floor.

WHEN THE LIGHTS GO OUT SHE CALLS YOUR NAME…

I got back to New York Wednesday evening. The Rock & Roll Chick in New Jersey (the one who hurt me with tequila) told me to come party with her since I was landing at Newark and wasn’t working the next day (she’s happily unemployed). I debated it, but decided against it because I didn’t want to make my way back into New York on Thursday hungover. Talk about a wise decision. I was totally sober buying housepaint when everything cutout and there’s something I have to say about this bitching. Not that it wasn’t a huge pain, but you gotta figure in country as advanced as ours, with all the demands we place on power for cities this large, one blackout every 25 years is not a bad ratio, especially when power is back within 36 hours (some people didn’t even go 12). I’m not saying it’s good, but it’s not a bad average. Got to fucking Hati and ask them what they think about one blackout every 25 years. They’d give an organ for a system that reliable. Like most, I wound up sitting on my stoop with my neighbors. I was actually anticipating that a friend who worked nearby would come over since the trains were out, but she never did and I spent six hours as the only straight man on the stoop (I had the only battery powered radio). Well, that’s not entirely true. The Annoying French Guy who once bothered my roommate was there for a moment, and there was a guy who was a friend to one of my neighbors. He was an actor, but he was actually straight, which he proved by embarrassing us all by pointing out my lesbian neighbor’s crotch. She was not amused. It was doubly embarrassing for me because it turned out he was also born in Birmingham, Alabama. This is what makes Manhattan what it is. It’s filled with anything but actual New Yorkers, so much so, that not only was I not the only guy from Alabama sitting on a stoop on W 49th Street in New York City, but I was one of fucking three! One of my neighbors was born in Alabama and while not Birmingham he did follow my life in growing up in Georgia. Needless to say, no one actually born in New York seemed to be among us. As the night wore on, the gay guys got a little drunk and then begin to get a little randy. Fellow Alabama/Georgia Neighbor began to wax poetic about how he wished he could contact one of his “little boys who does the things I like.” Uh-huh. Then there were shouts at people walking by, debate over whether or not to cruise a neighbor (Fellow Alabama/Georgia Neighbor dismissed him as “neck too big for his head”) and talks about potentially hitting bars. There was, however, no talk about me. I didn’t think about it at first, but now I see it was the final nail in my coffin of sexual desirability. If drunk, bored gay guys on a hot summer’s night with absolutely nothing to do don’t want you, then you are simply not attractive. But once again I am reminded that women have much, much lower standards, so I still will not be renewing that gym membership.

WHILE I WAS UNFORTUNATELY IN

Speaking of my ties to the gay world, maybe I’ve been watching entirely too much Queer Eye for the Straight Guy (the episode where they mocked the guy for using “snugger fit” condoms was just plain wrong) and but after buying a shoe rack for my closet, I decided I needed to paint. Never in my life have I cared about painting a room. Whatever color it came in was how it stayed for the duration of my stay. For whatever reasons I now decided I needed some color in my little box. My goal was to match my comforter, which has a bit of a southwestern feel with sandy browns and turquoise blues and burnt oranges. I couldn’t see freaking turquoise on my walls however, and sandy brown isn’t much better than white (actually, considering how dirty my walls are, they almost are sandy brown). I eventually decided upon Navajo Red and Moss Green. Yes, I’m living in a big Christmas present now. Because I’m not about to move any of my freaking bookcases, I only did two walls, but let me tell you, they are the two last walls I will ever do. Holy shit. Why didn’t someone warn me about the work involved? First there’s the masking tape, then the drop cloths, then first second and sometimes third coats. Not to mention the touch-ups that need to be done. I’m in so much pain I can barely move. And I’ve consumed three liters of Coke and half and gallon of orange juice during the 25 hours it took me to do it. From now on, I tell someone what I want, write a check and come back in a few days. If you want to see the Christmas Box, go here.

FRIDAY, BLOODY FRIDAY

It takes an inordinate amount of skill to drop a knife on your foot while making a sandwich so that it hits your big toe blade down, but I have that much skill (but not enough to do even more damage, considering I was making this sandwich naked). In a John Wayne-by-way-of-Dagwood-Bumstead manner I simply put a band-aid on it and went back to making my goddamn sandwich. However, a few moments later, I looked down and noticed the small pool of blood under my big toe. It was at this moment wherein I truly regretted my single life, because I was incapable of being a big baby about it like I wanted to. At that moment, nothing sounded more appealing to me than being able to shout out, “Marge, it’s still bleeding,” while continuing to make my sandwich. In other words, be a real man. But no, I’m single so I had to go back into the bathroom and put antiseptic gauze on it, held fast by a couple of band-aids. See, I don’t need nobody!

THE RED AND THE BLACK

Gregory Hines!?! Goddamn. They are truly dropping like flies this year. The man was only 57. Shit. And to think, he spent some his last remaining years in a wasted run on Will & Grace. Sorry, but he had zero chemistry with Debra Messing. Zero. But did allow me to fulfill a fantasy by brutha proxy. And it’s not the first time. Years ago he made a TV movie where he got Annette O’Toole, another fantasy of mine. And now that he’s gone, it seems Blair Underwood has picked up my proxy baton, as he’s Miranda’s new love interest on Sex & The City. Yes, I know they’re all redheads, but I swear it’s just a coincidence. I mean, I was also thrilled to see Wesley Snipes with Natassia Kinski and Ming Na in One Night Stand (two for one, baby). And if they really wanted to make me happy, Taye Diggs (who did me the favor of Angela Bassett) would make a movie with Bridget Fonda or Kristin Scott Thomas. And, of course, the much-needed hook up with Halle Berry goes without saying. So what I’m basically saying is, I want Taye Diggs to pair up with every actress I like, period.

WHERE IT ALL BEGAN

For the last couple of years, I’ve heard comments about the dumb smile I tend to give while posing for pictures. Doesn’t matter what kind of picture, that same dumb smile comes up. People ask me why I do it and I have no answer because I’m not really aware of it. Well, while I was home I found this old class picture of myself with what I believe is the first recorded version of that smile. I was actually laughing because the photographer told us he was putting us behind the nameplates like a bunch of little Indians, and I just found that hysterical. So there you go. I keep making that dumb smile because somewhere inside me I’m still 8 and laughing at that joke. And do you think you can find me? I’m the little Black boy. Hey, it was Georgia in 1973. You’re lucky I’m there at all, much less in the front row.