This morning on Good Morning America Diane Sawyer talked about ‘snap’ which has to do with young elementary school children engaging in sexual behaviors based on bracelets being broken. I’m sorry but premiscuous children are premiscuous because of a lot more things than bracelets. Parents should be modeling proper behavior for their children and telling them what sort of behavior they expect. And schools, if they’re worried about this effecting their students should ban the bracelets. While this may sound like censorship or something like the blocking of ‘freedom of speech’ it is not. It is schools causing the children to focus on things like education. Lame.

This last weekend while helping remodel at Doug and Amanda’s house I saw a commercial for Cinderella II while passing the TV carrying something (I don’t recall what it was).
There’s a lot of television that you shouldn’t take in passing.
You should take it sitting down.
You should actually not take any television, at least not unless you’ve paid for it.
Anyway…

What grabbed me was that the commercial boldly proclaimed, “This time she’s in charge!”
As usual, my mind went wandering off imagining what that meant.
Close your eyes and imagine the following with me:

Ha ha!
If you’re reading this, then your eyes aren’t closed.
So then, open your eyes with me and close your imagination as we imagine the wonderful whirled of Dizzy bring Cinderella II life.
She’s sitting there on a nice bay window seat, soft cushion underneath, outside the birds are chirping, singing a song just like they did in the first movie (you must capture the minds of the children with familiarity, if it’s not familiar now, it will be when they watch it for the 234th time).
As the birds sing they start to draw near.
The screen pans over to a smallish hole in the castle walls and a cute, chubby mouse (Gus) squeezes out onto the castle floor, other mice pour out after him and in a quick second Cinderella sees the mice and screams with a blood curdling scream, “How on earth does blood curdle?”

The mice scatter, the cat comes running in, blood and carnage ensue.
Children are scared by this, their parent’s sue.
Someone gets upset because their name has been infringed upon in the legal process, her name is Sue, so she gets involved in a litigation as well.
Lawyers get rich, their client’s get mixed up in the legal system and before you know it John Kerry’s beating them in the polls as well.

Anyway, Cinderella being in charge sounds a whole lot like trouble.
Is Disney hurting for cash?
Are they running out of culturally diverse movies where the mother dies in the first few minutes of the film (note that in The Lion King the father dies, but what in the heck happens to the mom)?

Harrison Ford, Mr. Han Solo, Indiana Jones, Jack Ryan, amnesiatic (Regarding Henry), a fugative, Mr. Larrabee, and a lame real estate agent in Hollywood Homicide (HH).
I can’t believe that he is in this movie.
Actually, I haven’t seen many of the movies he’s been in, but this was a real ‘winner.’
Winner of the Randy is Sad He Saw It award.
This award is not handed out to just anyone, but only the worst.
You have to try to make movies that are weak, have little to no plot line, and rely on cheap jokes.
That’s why Malibu’s Most Wanted won it last year, but this year (even though it was released last year) the movie that is in the lead is HH.

Fortunately there are good parts of the movie, like when… um, hold on, let me think of a good part.
Oh, well, never mind.
There aren’t good parts, and I wouldn’t recommend seeing it.
But you already knew that, I only put bad movies up here.

-Randy

Footnotes

* Ratings are from 0 to 1, this is a fractional scale. Odds are You won’t see me ever give a ‘1.0’ on any occasion, however, it could happen.

A Completely Bogus Interview

In an effort to connect with the underground film industry I have interviewed
Simon Jackson, an amateur director who, while not from New Zealand, says
he likes kiwis (with the skin peeled).
Simon says that he was really disappointed with the way Peter Jackson filmed
the Lord of the Rings trilogy and hopes to shoot his own version that
follows more closely to the books by the original author.
Jackson’s goal is to be able to use the Camcorder he got for Christmas last year
and the money that his grandma gives him each year for the holidays to buy
props, and special effects kits.
He’s hoping he can use his high school’s Macintosh computers for some CGI work.
Being 17 his means are limited, but he hopes to make up for that with raw talent
and the passion that young actors can deliver.

rp.com:

Simon, we understand that you’re upset that Peter Jackson and his writers
hacked the books up and used a great story as a backdrop for their own work,
is that what motivated you to start filming your own trilogy?

Simon:

Yeah, when I saw the first movie and saw that they cast Liv Tyler as an elf I
said to myself, “You can’t do that to the woman I love!
You cheapen her.”
Dude, it’s like this: you have to use names and faces that people don’t
recognize, otherwise people have a hard time seeing the movie for the movie.
Take Agent Smith [Ed.: from the Matrix] for example, if you remove his
glasses, and add some pointy ears, he’s still Agent Smith.
I want to make my movie fresh, and without the stigmata [sic] of Keanu Reeves.
And Sauruman totally used his moves from Star Wars Episode 2 in LOTR, which
cheapened both movies.

rp.com

So you have a thing for Liv Tyler?

Simon:

Um, yeah.
As if everyone doesn’t think she’s the hottest thing since Julia Roberts, she was
my first crush.
Liv is so talented, I think that after I release my version of the movie
she’ll hear about me and maybe I’ll have a chance with her.
You’ve got to have your goals.

rp.com:

So tell us what you plan to do for special effects and things like horses, and Orcs?

Simon:

Well, this kid I know at school uses flash to make really cool animations,
kinda like Homestar Runner.
I think that with enough time we can make pretty cool sequences and the anime
look that we can get with flash will really enhance the independent feel of
the film.
I know that WETA used Massive [Ed.: a computer program that creates
special effects characters], but I think that the keyframe technology of
flash lends itself to a more edgy feel.

rp.com:

So what things would you tell other, young, aspiring directors?

Simon:

I’d tell them to go out there, and start now, forget movie school, get a camera
and get out there, the ‘net is changing the way people can get movies, and
watch them.
When I’m done I’m thinking about getting my own domain and just distributing
that way.
Or maybe I’ll put it on Kazaa.
That way people thinking that they’re getting a ripped version of LOTR will
get mine and I’ll be able to get into the eye of the public.

rp.com:

Don’t you mean, “The Public eye?”

Simon:

Whatever.

rp.com:

One last question: When you showed us the clip of one of the battle scenes you
filmed the guys with Chewbacca masks running around yelling, “I’m an Orc,
I’ll get you!” [Ed.: should have been yelling, “I’m a dork!”]
really seemed odd and we thought, um, crumby.
Why did you use that?

Simon:

Dude!
Don’t make fun of me, I’m working really hard on this, and I haven’t gotten my Christmas money yet!
Oh, shoot, my mom just called me to go takeout the trash.
But you wait, when I’m done with this it’ll be way cool!

rp.com:

Thanks for the interview Simon, we’ll, uh, look forward to seeing your rendition
of LOTR, hopefully your parents have a good attorney for the legal issues
that you’ll have publishing a copyrighted work.

I should have seen it coming.
There was no other reason to see this movie other than I find Jamie Kennedy’s television show amussing.
The trailor looked dumb, but I thought, “This guy is funny.”
He is, he really is, but one can only handle so much white-man-plays-black comedy.
Of course he’s helped out by two black-men-playing-white.
There are a few funny scenes – but not enough to prop the movie up.

Dye-a-log was almost completely missing – I say almost because words came out of peoples mouths, but they weren’t valuable for much.
Jamie’s rapping is intentionally bad, but it wasn’t even a ‘good’ bad rap thing.
And the constant reference to ‘shiznit’ (which happens to be a cloaked prophanity, but that’s the word they use) is pretty sad.
In the end we watched the whole movie because we could, not because we had to.

I have made it a personal crusade to save the world from renting or watching bad movies – I’m doing it by watching one bad movie at a time – and then telling you about it.

-Randy

Footnotes

* Ratings are from 0 to 1, this is a fractional scale. Odds are You won’t see me ever give a ‘1.0’ on any occasion, however, it could happen.

Eddie Murphy.
Owen Wilson.
Two seriously funny guys who have both done some different films get together and make a fun action-comedy.
I’ll warn you that I did not see the whole movie, we skipped (I LOVE DVD’s) to the next scene at one point where Owen and his female counterpart Famke (can’t think of the gals last name) started to behave in ways that looked like they should only happen in a marriage (Wink, wink, nudge, nudge. Say no more).

Over all the plot was light hearted and fun with Eddie Murphy playing a boxer with an attitude (can you say Tyson?) and Wilson is a secret agent with envy of a smooth agent that gets all of the cool toys.
Murphy is called in by G.W. (The President) to help Owen to get into a special party where they’ll do some recon.
Things go crazy there’s a leafy bug scene, crazy running from ‘bad guys’ and the whole works.
Its fun. If you like to laugh and just have a good time with your logical self turned off, this is a great catch.

Due to the language I would say that there may be some folks who get offended and you’ll want to watch out for that.
I’m not keen on profanity in movies and this one pushed the limit a couple of times.
There is one point in the movie (right before I skipped ahead) where Eddie Murphy is feeding Wilson song lyrics and Wilson dead-pans them.
We laughed hard, it was a hoot!

If you’ve got the money, and you have a rental store near you and you’ve got some time, you may want to rent this.
It REALLY outdoes Ballistic.

-Randy

Footnotes

* Ratings are from 0 to 1, this is a fractional scale. Odds are You won’t see me ever give a ‘1.0’ on any occasion, however, it could happen.

I don’t know about you, but I have a pretty vague recollection of my first hand full of dirt.
I know that most people dont’ spend a lot of time dwelling on dirt, they have come to take it for granted.
I remember that dirt, its grittiness, the way it felt cool in my hands, the way it tasted as I haphazardly placed it in my mouth.
That was dirt, and I didn’t know I wasn’t supposed to eat it.

I’m sure my parents at some point in time told me, “… don’t eat that.”
I’m sure that they said it was bad, gross, or some other adjective.
I’m also sure that I had a perfectly rational reason for cramming dust,sand and small rocks in my mouth.
That reason is logical: How on earth could my parents know that dirt tasted bad if I never saw them eat it?

It’s this very sort of reasoning of course that got Adam and Eve in trouble in the garden.
It’s not recorded, but it is possible that the snake also said to Eve, “Hey, you don’t see God eating that fruit, how could He know?”

The amazing thing about kids is that they have a reall short amount of memory for important things – things like, “Don’t touch that, it’s hot!” are easily forgotten.
I also must have forgotten that dirt wasn’t all that tasty because I know that I ate some more.
The thought that must have gone through my mind was, “This doesn’t look like the dirt at home…[open mouth – insert dirt].”
And I’m certain that that dirt tasted just as bad…

When I got older I ate some more dirt, I would eat dirt when I crashed on my bicycle.
It was just as gross and gritty, but then I remember the dirt embedded in my skin (assuming that I had skin left on those parts[ouch]).
And in all of that I learned an important lesson: I’m going to die.

Fortunately when I die my body’ll get to be dirt.
And maybe some day, if God waits long enough, some little kid will eat some dirt and that dirt…
that dirt… that dirt will be me 🙂

Yeah, I know that’s gross, but it could be true. And besides, it beats watching Ballistic.

Have fun…

Randy

Rating*

Must See:

0.1

Plot:

0.01

Acting:

0.2

Dialog:

0.1

Production:

0.25

Effects:

0.2

You need to see this movie.
No really, you have to see this movie.
In fact if you do see this movie it will fulfill all your desires.

It will fulfill all of your desires if you desire the following:

• No plot
• Senseless killing
• Rather bad acting
• Stupid spy names
• To waste time
• Seeing an actress with tallent (Lucy Liu) get cast for a movie that she was way better than
• Synchronized car dancing (two cars spiraling in opposite directions over another car)
• Beluga whales as a background for a ‘romantic reunion’
• Swat teams, specially trained specialists mind you, get totally whipped and killed by a single woman (Liu again)
• Antonio Banderas fly like Peter Pan and then mash into the grown, and not get severly injured
• Antonio Banderas get crushed completely by steel pipes from one angle and yet be able to spin around and shoot someone when the camera changes angles
• Antonio Banderas pick police handcuffs with a paperclip
• Antonio Banderas blow large train cars up and cause HUGE billowing fire that would cause disgusting amounts of heat and walk away unscathed
• ‘Trained spies’ or agents run through a train yard like their training consisted of mimicking lab rats running through a maze
• Funding Hollywood pyrotechnics specialists’ kids’ college
• Living in your parents basement until you’re 35 and then, moving in with your friend and starting a worm farm

OK, you really should avoid it.

-Randy

Footnotes

* Ratings are from 0 to 1, this is a fractional scale. Odds are You won’t see me ever give a ‘1.0’ on any occasion, however, it could happen.