THE HAMSTER SEARCHES HIS OWN RACIST-RODENTIALISMS

i made a joke today on facebook today about an interaction with one of my students:

Kevin Still

had a white male student write on his homework: "Everyone is free to do what they want and to become what they want in America! The sky is the limit in the USA!" To which Kevin replied in the margins, "Who's been feeding you Sugar Puffed Bullcrap O's for breakfast?"

the question this student was to answer asked: How would you describe American culture today? when i originally gave the assignment, i asked the students to write their answer as a letter to a non-american. previously, i had experienced this exact same awkward responsibility in china when groups of chinese students circled around me and asked, "what is america like?" they had only seen america in the movies. likewise, i had only seen america through the eyes of a caucasian male. 

there's a good chance my sugar-puffed student sloughed off the homework. maybe he waited till the last minute and did not really want to engage the question. perhaps he thought i wouldn't really read his work, nor did he expect that i would challenge his response. whatever the situation, my student's response illustrates a pervasive caucasian and upper-class perspective about america. and, sadly, there's a good chance that this student - white, male, upper-middle class, christian - actually believes what he wrote.

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i grew up in smalltown south arkansas. not exactly a hotbed of gang warfare, but my hometown quivered like a pressure cooker of racial tension. i was taught not to trust black people. i was taught to appreciate them but not to closely befriend them. as you can see, from the places the blacks live, we should reach missions to them. and you can see from the way they dress and speak, we should fear them. and i did appreciate black people. and i did fear black people. and i did force my way into some distant intimacy with the few "close" black friends i made at el dorado high school.

*  *  *  *

chemotherapy kills all the cells in the cancer patient's body. with no intelligence to distinguish good from bad cells, chemotherapy kills skin cells that regulates UV rays, as well as hair follicles. teenagers respond to baldness with decorative headpieces. i chose bandanas. 

i was 14 years old, rail thin, and filled to the brim with strict racial mistrust. one day at a shopping mall near the children's hospital in little rock, at a mall that had recently made primetime news for gang violence, a young black man saddled up beside me in a music store and asked me what the navy blue bandana was about. 

"nothing. i'm sick."

"well, sick boy," he said, pulling in close to my ear, "there's two niggas out in that hallway right now that will shoot your ass dead for wearing that rag, and they won't give a shit that you sick."

then he walked away. laughing. and he called over his shoulder as he left the store, "good luck, sick boy! hope you make it to the car!"

*  *  *  *

you might think that i got the last laugh on my hometown, my own race-heavy stories, and my instructed mistrust by marrying a black woman, by spending major holidays with my black family, by simply growing up and leaving those tired old thought patterns behind me. 

but i have not.

i still fear black people at times. i still expect the worst of other races - asian, latino, indian - in social situations. i find myself narrow-mindedly wondering when those people are going to get it together. when will they speak english? when will they assimilate? and my wife and i still have long, long, long conversations in the car about our families when we drive away from saint louis and austin. 

as a white american man, i publicly confess that my heart is not fully healed or completely right, and i confess that on my best days my understanding of other races is as narrow as my student's sloughed off homework answer.

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latonya and i watched CRIPS AND BLOODS: MADE IN AMERICA this past wednesday. and while i'm not much for documentaries, this was definitely one of the best documentaries i've ever seen.

the title is misleading. this is not a film about gangs as much as an exploration of south central los angeles' effect on young black men. chronicling the urban structures set in place by governing white forces. as far back as the 1950s, the film suggests that california has clamped down more vicious racial segregation for the past six decades than the deep south ever did. 

the film discusses the roots and causes for the 1965 watts riot, and then reveals the white government response. interviewed riot participants declare, "you stuck us in these brick streets. you imprisoned us in these old broken buildings. you guarded the streets and wouldn't let us leave. so now, we're throwing these bricks and buildings back at you."

gangs rose up in LA as a response to the ignored dilapidation of neighborhoods and businesses in urban areas. after the primary black speakers of the civil rights movement were either imprisoned or assassinated, during an age when white america was content to skyrocket forward in suburbs and skyrises, young black men and women were forced to form their own social movement systems, usually in the form of gangs. there was still a need to survive. to eat. to make money and fill the hours of the day. but the response of governing forces in los angeles was to rid the streets of the appearance of evil: a.k.a. black men.

like the 1965 watts riot, the 1992 LA riots ignited in response to white america once again stealing the upper-hand in the black community. with the same bottled rage built from generations of concrete imprisonment as their predecessors in watts, young black people used their own homes and neighborhoods as weapons against the white abiding forces. in the aftermath, government officials promised millions of dollars in renovation efforts, as well as urban rebuilding programs that offered jobs to men and women in the community. such optimism even brought rival gangs together in peace. however, as is the pattern with white-collar spin-doctors, the government pulled their money and resources into other areas of interests, once again leaving the community unemployed and disheartened. they even turned the young liberal media to something far more pressing than the plight of urban life:

tipper gore's supreme court battle against explicit song lyrics. 

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consider the following scenarios:

-  a recent study discovered that school aged children in south central los angeles display more symptoms of post-traumatic stress syndrome than children of the same age bracket in afghanistan. 

-  because rival gangs hold such a grip-lock on their neighborhoods and streets, it is possible for young urban men and women never to exit a five block radius of their homes for years. children growing up ten minutes from the ocean have never set foot on the beach due to the heavy hands surrounding them. 

- women in these neighborhoods are feeling the full brunt of the violence as they realize, no matter how much they love their sons and grandsons, boys need men in their lives. with a vast chasm of men in the home, these young boys gravitate to the only men in the neighborhood they can find. and the women lose all voice and all authority in that child's life. 

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beneath the quippy little one-liner i tossed at my student on his paper, i wrote:

"Seriously, you need to know that guys like me and you - middle-class white dudes in good health and with no criminal background history - have more privilege in this country than we will ever realize. Now, I am asking you, look at the question again, think about what you are being asked, and write a new answer."

there is a conversation worth having here. one that is difficult and, at times, awkward. i can't blame my student for his perspective. he's lived his whole life seeing one reality and not realizing that another very different reality exists even in his own hometown. but i want my students to see the dividing lines between people. i want them to see that what's happening in south central los angeles is an honest hyperbole for something that's happening in bryan, texas. and i think the best place to begin seeing these lines, to begin accepting these realities, is to admit that our own vantage point is skewed, and it's the reluctance to challenge our viewpoints that perpetuates the dividing lines between people in our own communities. what's happening in LA is happening everywhere in smaller degrees, and my response to this film needs to work itself outloud in larger degrees.

i give CRIPS AND BLOODS: MADE IN AMERICA 5 skiddish little cancer kids in the record store out of 5. this film is available on netflix as a "watch instantly" offering.

WHEN MARY ROACH WROTE ABOUT CADAVER RESEARCH, I DECIDED TO DONATE MY CORPSE TO SCIENCE. NOW SHE'S WRITING ABOUT SEX AND ORGASMS - DARE I SAY MORE?

when mary roach writes anything, i know i'll be donating or selling or christmas wrapping some part of myself for a future generation. she's honestly that persuasive. the first time around it was cadaver research, and i made latonya promise me - over dinner, no less - that she'd give my leafy little rodential body to a school or a lab or a film crew. that was the first time i read mary roach. this time, she's writing about sex and orgasms. i can't even begin to imagine the conversations around the still family dinner table over the next few days. 

"honey, mary roach finally helped me find a scientific use for my four inch nipple hairs!"

okay, maybe that was unnecessary, but if you can't joke about your own nipple hairs, whose nipple hairs can you joke about?

simply stated, mary roach is delightful. she speaks directly to my inner geek by digging into questions i would never admit to wanting answered. as i told a friend today, this woman has a super sick sense of humor and a relentlessly guilt-free curiosity, so much that i let the "perversely" twisted side of my nerdiness off the leash to romp about vicariously in her books. she's like that one super cool mom who takes the neighborhood kids to heavy metal shows and horror flicks because all the other parents are total prudes.

for instance, roach's first book - STIFF: THE CURIOUS LIFE OF HUMAN CADAVERS - explores the possible scientific destinies (and automotive fates) of corpses donated to science. sure, it sounds morbid (and it is), but mary roach has a way of turning the details of decomposition and disembowelment into one of the funniest books i've ever read. the bit about crash test subjects being outfitted in leotards and adult diapers was nearly too much. and i think of those poor seeping stiffs often while strapping on my seatbelt. because of mary roach, the hamster will never rot in a box or an urn - this temple will be studied and jabbed and prodded and unlayered and joked about for years to come. 

or, if i had it my way, they'll toss me in a ballerina's get-up and i'll crap my innards between a brick wall and a mercedes benz. one can only dream. 

*   *   *

just this past week in class, we read one of mary roach's article about the amount of insects the FDA allows in our common food products. the students squirmed and revolted, but i could tell they secretly loved every gratuitous detail roach provided. one student even came up to me, rubbing his stomach and making a nauseated face, and said, "mr. still, i wish we could read more stuff like this. i've never lost my appetite while reading before."

in the process of preparing the article for my classes, i found that mary roach recently published on the only topic more fascinating to me than death and defecated innards: sex. and not just regular old christianized marital sex, but sex research, sex science, sex in the laboratory, sex between the sheets of statistics and on the cold slab of hard concrete data.

i picked up BONK: THE CURIOUS COUPLING OF SCIENCE

 AND SEX  yesterday in our school library, and while i'm not certain it actually happened or if it was just paranoid placebo effects from a college teacher carrying around a SEX book, i'm pretty sure the librarian cut me a curt little glance. and i bet he likes cleavages, too.

yes, ma'am, as i matter of fact, i do like cleavages.

even though i'm at the last quarter of two really great books right now, i couldn't resist peeking beneath the covers of mary roach's sex book last night, and i have not put it down since.

because i have only just begun reading BONK, this post is not a review. rather, i'm bringing you a preview of mary roach's exploration of sexual science. as a taunting little peek, i'd like to share the first paragraph of the first chapter, titled "The Sausage, the Porcupine, and the Agreeable Mr. G: Highlights from the Pioneers of Human Sexual Response" - 

Albert R. Shadle was the world's foremost expert on the sexuality of small woodland creatures. If you visit the library at the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction, in Bloomington, Indiana, you will find six reels of audio recordings Shadle made of "skunk and raccoon copulation and post-coitus behavior reactions." (Nearby you will also find a 1959 recording of "Sounds during heterosexual coitus" and a tape of the "masturbatory sessions" of Subject 127253, which possibly explains why no one ever gets around to listening to the raccoons.)

with an opening paragraph such as this, you can only expect things to get better. and they do. trust me, they get much better.

*   *   *

by the way, since this is a film site, i would like to include a little film clip of mary roach chatting up rare facts about orgasms. personally, i love how much we can hear mary roach giggling at her own jokes and at the sheer absurdity of saying words like "imitation ejaculate" and "stimulation of the pig vulva" in an enormously packed mixed gender auditorium. this clip alone gets 4.5 orgasmic monkey faces out of 5.

(okay, you're right, there was no need to rate the video. i really just wanted to say "orgasmic monkey faces" in public, and i don't have a packed auditorium and a microphone to really give the phrase justice. one can only dream.)

CAT'S EYE: THE CROWNING MARBLED JEWEL OF HORROR FILM ANTHOLOGIES

sadly, horror film anthologies have gone the way of stinkin'-dirty horror synth tracks: total '80s obscurity, half-priced book store bins, library friend day sales, thrift stores, blockbuster nostalgia, tacky blog sites that scour the cinematic refuse pile for such filthy cheap no-namers.

and right there at the bottom of the barrel, this nearly forgotten little screenplay from stephen king (who just released his umpteenth new novel since announcing retirement) ranks at the tippy-top of the horror anthology film chart.

CAT'S EYE cinematically illustrates three separate stephen king short stories, each starring the same telepathetic pussycat. the first two stories were originally published in king's first story collection, NIGHT SHIFT. the final piece was an original screenplay written specifically for a freshly potty-trained drew barrymore. 

(ain't it strange how drew barrymore rocked way hard as a lisp-lipped child actor? it's like she's de-evolved over time. give me ALTERED STATES drew, E.T. drew, FIRESTARTER drew, IRRECONCILABLE DIFFERENCES drew, seven year old youngest host of SNL ever drew over anything she's done in the past 15 years. the girl freaking topped out before age ten!)

i digress.

 *   *   *

QUITTERS INC.

james woods plays a schmoe that wants to stop smoking, so he signs up for an extreme quitters program. the bit starts with the crazed quitters inc. CEO busting up james woods' cigarettes, and then he shows james woods a cat bouncing and pouncing on an electrified metal cage floor. james gets pissed about the fried cat paws and demands the CEO guy to leave the cat alone. then james woods says, "so if i smoke again are you going to put more cats in the electric cage?" and the CEO guy laughs and says, "no. your wife."

the CEO warns james woods that someone will be watching him at every moment. he tells him that he might see some of the stalkers some of the time, but he won't see all of the stalkers all of the time. that night james woods finds a bloke in his office closet, hiding behind the golf clubs and the rain coats - and he finds him right as he's lighting a cigarette!

king obviously wrote "quitters inc" as a commentary on his fight for sobriety. and because the story (and screenplay) are so autobiographical, king takes liberties to poke fun at himself and his own work through james woods' character. in a scene after james woods gets home from the quitters inc office, all stressed and disturbed from watching the cat's feet sizzle, he sits in his recliner, sipping scotch and watching THE DEAD ZONE, a 1983 cronenberg adaptation of king's 1979 novel by the same name. woods' wife startles him, causing him to spill his drink on his shirt. when he jumps and leaves the tv, his wife says, "aren't you going to finish your show?" and woods says, "no, i don't even know what they're saying. who writes this crap anyway?" classic.

quitter's inc. gets 4 charred pussy-foots out of 5. great short. better than most of the CREEPSHOW bits.

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THE LEDGE

so there's this high-rolling, big-betting, white-collar badass who finds robert hays (from AIRPLANE) running around with his wife. with the help of some hard-hitting cronies, the crime-lord kidnaps robert hays and says he wants to place a wager. the crime-lord says he knows about the skeezing around with robert hays. says that's fine, she's a good woman, a good looking woman. who wouldn't want her? then the crime-lord places the wager:

A) a big bag of heroine was just put into robert hays car. robert hays can walk out the door, get in the car, police will find him, and he'll spend his life in prison being some other crime-lord's wife. "When you get out, you'll be more worried about your arthritis than your libido."

OR

B) robert hays can walk the entire perimeter of the crime-lord's high rise building on a five inch ledge. if robert hays succeeds the perimeter alive, the crime-lord will remove the heroin from robert's car, give him some ridiculous amount of money to leave town, and the crime-lord will throw in his wife, too. it's a good offer, if he can survive the walk around the building.

i won't give this one away, but it's got a super great ending. also heavy on the drug charges, drug avoidance, ultimate freedom equals freedom from drugs theme, which seems to be prevalent in king's writing at the time. THE LEDGE gets 3 ankle pecking pigeons out of 5. not as suspenseful as it wanted to be, but not totally dull either. a good yarn to stick plum in the middle of two great stories. 

*   *   *

(Final Story)

untitled and unpublished before hand, the last short in this anthology was a real treat. the most basic synopsis i can give is this: a cat catches wind of a troll stalking drew barrymore; cat moves in with drew barrymore's family; mom thinks cat is a bird killer; troll comes out of wall at night and kills family parakeet; mom kicks cat out; dad tells drew barrymore that it's okay the cat is gone cause cats steal children's breath; troll keeps coming out of wall to steal drew barrymore's breath; thus, the cat's been framed TWICE; still, the cat knows this is happening, escapes his termination fate, and takes on the troll in a bitter paw fight that involves ceiling fans, muppet babies helium balloons, a Police vinyl on high speed, and a box fan. i will not tell you the end. i'll only tell you that this little short was freaking awesome. this is the kind of story children tell their parents, "a troll lives in my wall and keeps knocking my shit over in the middle of the night! you gotta believe me!" one of the better stephen king shorts i've seen. 

the final short in CAT'S EYE gets 5 troll toothpick daggers out of 5. this is one of the best horror shorts i've seen on any anthology - CREEPSHOW 1 and 2 included.

*   *   *

personally, i think we need more anthology films. let's cut the crap that fills most of these 90-plus minute films with gratuitous sex and partying and "tension building." let's cut all that crap and get straight to the story, straight to the precision perfect scares and disturbances.

overall, i give CAT'S EYE 4 pre-teen drew barrymores out of 5. i'm glad to own this one, even on vhs. seriously, if you love cats, if you love a pre-teen drew barrymore, if you hate cigarettes and electrified metal flooring and adultery and heroin crimelord cronies and pet euthanasia and wall-banging trolls as much as i do, then pounce on this film. we can only hope that stephen king's retirement produces a sequel. 

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and this review of CAT'S EYE from brock at THE ROUGH CUTS on YouTube is worth the watching. i've got subscription to THE ROUGH CUTS. totally great reviews from a weird bunch of film addicts.

Happy Birthday, Myles!

THE BQE - A Sufjan Stevens Film

Unlike the MEGA SHARK VERSUS GIANT OCTOPUS review, this one is about the kind of movie that you will almost never find on this site. Here we usually revel in cheese and bad production values. Myles, the hamster, and I generally do not make forays into the world of artistic visionary kinda stuff. If it’s not playing at the local multiplex, we usually stay away. But when I found out that Sufjan Stevens had made a movie, I was all over it.

Sufjan is an all-time favorite of mine and Seven Swans (and Come On, Feel the Illinoise, of course) occupies a place in my personal hall of fame. The thought of him making a film (about an expressway, no less), was completely intriguing. Here’s little bit of backstory: Sufjan was commissioned by the Brooklyn Academy of Music to create a film about Brooklyn. Stevens, a Brooklyn native, was fascinated by the idea of making the film not about the borough, but about the street that runs though it. He quickly set about filming and scoring a movie about the Brooklyn Queens Expressway. The music was first performed in 2007, with 35 musicians and interpretive hula hooping.

The movie, just released last month, is a visual and auditory banquet. It opens with a panoramic shot of the BQE while a drone fills the audio space, almost as if the orchestra is tuning up for the performance. Then, as the scenes start to change, the scope of the project comes into view. The whole film is presented with three separate panes of film, sometimes joined, sometimes unique. The effect is a triptych, almost a trinity, of image. Three visuals, three words, three hula hoopers – yes, the Hooper Heroes join the film. These lovely ladies play the roles of Botanica, Quantas, and Electress (BQE, get it?) and provide the human element to counterbalance the grit and concrete of the Expressway.

Sufjan provides sweeping vistas of sound juxtaposed against grainy, dirty, and beautiful buildings and street life. The visuals present a melting pot of imagery - the modernity of McDonalds alongside shoes hanging from power lines next to the shells of tenement buildings. The three panels often show the same scene from three distinct vantage points, but even when they are joined to form a unified image, it’s never seamless, always fractured; it's never whole, but still complete.

About a third of the way into the film, Act II starts, and the hula hoopers take center stage. The music turns introspective, shots get tighter, and the actions slows. The hooper scenes serve as salve to eyes overindulged on urban sprawl. Seeing humans soothes and smooths away the harsh edges of concrete we’ve been watching. At the halfway point, the main musical theme returns to close ups of trucks and cars on the BQE, along with shots framed in such a way the birth canal imagery is impossible to miss. In an interview with Paste Magazine, Sufjan said, “If skyscrapers are the ultimate phallic symbols, then the urban expressway is the ultimate birth canal, the uterine wall, the anatomical passageway, the ultimate means of egress, and the process by which we are all born again. The BQE is the Motherhood of Civilization, the Breast of Being, the fallopian tube, the biological canal from which all of life emerges in resplendent beauty, newborn and newly fashioned with the immaculate countenance of a baby.” And he doesn’t beat around the bush with it – Sufjan proves to be the Georgia O’Keefe of New York Expressways.

The film continues and we get some visual trickery, a kaleidoscope effect, some night shooting, etc. In fact, my favorite scene is of fast motion of lights at night along with the hoopers in fast motion - the confluence of lights and speed creates an effect that looks dramatically like graffiti.

The film comes to a slide that says THE END. Don’t believe it. There’s still more. In fact, if THE BQE is a love letter to Brooklyn (and I believe it is, much like The Beastie Boys’ To the 5 Boroughs), then there is definitely a postscript. There is a very tender scene involving Sufjan and friends in the environment where we were just immersed. Still no voices, just visuals. But to the faithful who stick around for the PPS, there is a small coda on the end of the film featuring vocals over more beautiful imagery of The BQE.

I know this is long, and forgive me. But I could say much more about this film. Keep in mind, this is not a documentary – it is a museum piece. There are no vocals until the very end. No dialogue, only music. It runs a short 51 minutes and yes, it does get monotonous (and monotonal) at times, but that only serves to remind the viewer of the traffic on the BQE – monotonous. This is unlike anything we usually talk about here, and it’s a little difficult to put into words. It is a piece of art. It’s not something you invite your buddies over to watch with you (unless they’re big nerds like me who dig this sort of thing), but it’s really, really, really good. It’s the kind of film that people win awards for. Not Oscars or Golden Globes, but important awards.

THE BQE gets 5 Coney Islands out of 5 for the quality of the film. As for recommendation? Well, I highly recommend it, but you might not like it as much as I did. But it’s worth a shot. Seriously.

SKIP BURNING THIS FILM AT THE STAKE - JUST BURN THE DAMN THING!

the wife is currently teaching a unit in her eleventh and twelfth grade resource english classes about the salem witch trials. so far, they've read THE SCARLET LETTER and they've watched THE CRUCIBLE. it's a good unit. it's a profitable study in america's literary, religious, and superstitious past.

sometimes the students say really dumb stuff to my wife - their teacher - like, "mrs., this stuff don't make no sense. this ain't got nuthin' to do with my life."

the my wife says something brilliant back like, "well, let's think about this. have you ever met someone who believed something different than you? or have you ever been wrongly accused of something? or have you ever felt like an outsider and like all the insiders were against you?"

then the kids bite their lips or roll their eyes. and then they say, "well, yeah, but, mrs. . . . . . "

and my wife says, "then this unit about the salem witch trials applies perfectly to you. let's move on."

i'm telling you: this woman can verbally burn those kids at the stake before they even realize their shoes are smoking!

*   *   *   *   *

this past week an uber-excited eleventh grade girl comes up to my wife and says, "ooo! mrs. still! i have this movie at home that is just like THE CRUCIBLE!"

my wife, ever compassionate and ready to encourage the youth, says enthusiastically, "well, bring it to me and i'll watch it."

so the student did bring it. and my wife did watch it. and i watched it with her. and we laughed through most of THE COVENANT at how totally just unlike it is from THE CRUCIBLE. 

bless the poor kid's heart for trying.

*   *   *   *   *

THE COVENANT is the perfect example of a good story ruined by a horrible film. good concept. great massachusetts' landscape and antique setting. potentially nice bridge between classic gothic fiction, a la hawthorne and poe, and modern dark masters of the macabre, ie. neil gaiman and stephanie meyers. (that latter name was a joke.) however, all the promise in the film was completely overshadowed by ridiculous exposition, contrived dialogue, bad acting, a constant eyeful of young male and fresh female abdomen and arse, and enough melodrama to scoop in a bowl and dip with ruffled tater chips.

i will give the producers this: they knew their niche market. aimed at a dramatic, tasteless high school audience, the people behind THE COVENANT banked on their viewers having recently studied the salem witch trials. even though the salem witch trials is merely nodded to two maybe three times in the bleak chatter of confession wafer-thin characters, their aim proved true as illustrated by latonya's student's enthusiasm. this is where the failing american education system meets a dull-minded hollywood, and they get totally sloshed out behind the prom on mad-dog 20-20.

there is one seemingly redemptive aspect of the film: laura ramsey from THE RUINS, which was one of my top films of 2008. ramsey offered a piercingly authentic performance in THE RUINS that rivaled jena malone's starring role in the same film. but even ramsey could not work a single fleck of magical pixiedust out of THE COVENANT'S script. give rembrandt a palate wheel of skittle spit watercolors, and he may only produce a skittle spit watercolor. give laura ramsey THE COVENANT, and she still cleared more after taxes than i will in the next five years combined.

i give THE COVENANT 1 spider in the nostril out of 5. ridiculous. trite. sinfully spell-less. i felt bad the young lady to receive her film back from latonya. for all my wife's fine qualities, she is not a good actress. and i'm not sure she could have thanked this child for the dvd loan with a straight face.

some secrets are better drowned in the river than displayed prominently across our faces. i praise my wife for her inability to lie, even to protect the self-respect of the youth.

"HAVING A BOO RADLEY MOMENT, ARE WE?"

here's how the conversation went in the middle of the Halloween afternoon:

WIFE: I want to watch a movie.

HAMSTER: Great. I'm in the mood for something Halloweeny.

W: No. I want something sweet.

H: (grimace). Something sweet? It's freaking Halloween. I want to watch somebody cut somebody.

W: Well, I don't like scary. I'm in the mood for something sweet, even if it is Halloween.

H: (a few minutes later, after some scheming) Okay, here's my votes: THE UNINVITED, HALLOWEEN H2O with Jamie Lee freaking Curtis, or the Michael J. Fox classic THE FRIGHTENERS. Look Peter Jackson made that Michael J. Fox one, and you like Peter Jackson.

W: (scanning the options) How about SLEEPLESS IN SEATTLE or BENNY AND JOON? I like both of those.

H: It's Hallo-freaking-ween, Latonya. We can't watch SLEEPLESS IN SEATTLE on Halloween. Let's try to meet in the middle.

W: (crunching in eyebrows and perking lips to the side in serious thought) Okay, then we can either watch ALIENS or PREDATOR. That's in the middle. 

(the hamster grimaces some more. pouts. grimaces. super pouts. wife goes down to get lunch. she comes back upstairs and the hamster has secured a vhs tape in the player. the wife doesn't know what it is. he's still grimacing, slightly pouting. she saddles up next to him and ignores his mood. "ignore the behavior" they say in special education. the movie starts and the opening theme song comes up. the wife is surprised.)

W: You put on BENNY AND JOON? I thought you would have put on ALIENS.

H: I'm not in the mood for ALIENS. Besides, there's a scene in this where Sam gives Benny and Joon a jack-n-the-box. And those things scared the poop sticks out of me when I was a kid. Jack-n-the-boxes and ventriloquist dummies. So, on some level, this is a scary movie. 

(and then they watched happily together, sipping the last of the riesling and the final bottle of flying dog's gonzo imperial porter. this, dear friends, is the way the still family celebrated halloween this year.)

*   *   *   *   *

and, by the way, if you've never seen BENNY AND JOON, it's absolutely delightful. i remember this being the film that convinced me of johnny depp's supernatural acting powers. also, mary stuart masterson is cute enough to put on a shelf. i do love this film, and i recommend it uber-highly when given the chance. 

without hesitation, i give BENNY AND JOON 5 dangling window wash stands of 5. an instant classic. a heartwarming triumph. a story of love superseding sanity. there is nothing lacking in BENNY AND JOON. 

HANDS DOWN: SAW 6 IS THE BEST SAW SEQUEL SINCE SAW 2

it's tough to take the Hockey Mask stage after john barber's last post, especially with such a mainstream and seemingly cliche film as SAW VI, but the newest installment of Jigsawian madness needs all the attention this site can afford.

i've said it several times before and i will say it here again: SAW VI is the best sequel in this franchise since SAW II. although i did not care much for SAW III, IV, or V, i am a huge fan of the first two SAW films. 

SAW and SAW II walked a taut tightrope between the genres of horror and crime drama, offering enough bloody edged predator tactics to be somewhat scary, while also building enough cat-n-mouse tension to attract a large non-horror fanbase. the franchise marginalized itself within the opening five minutes of SAW III. (my wife, who admits to enjoying the first two SAWs, walked out of SAW III before jigsaw's voice perked up to define the first "game.") 

although the SAW mythology has expanded with each film, the p

lot has stretched increasingly thinner with each sequel. yes, SAW III questions amanda's devotion to john kramer and shows us the death of major players in the jigsaw puzzle. yes, SAW IV gave us tons of back story on why john kramer became jigsaw. yes, SAW V deepens the characters of john and jill, while also advancing the depraved apprencticeship of mark hoffman. still, and regardless, these are not good films. they're barely worth the price of admission and stand only as descending stepping-stones in a modern day DIVINE COMEDY.

however, and just in time, the producers of SAW have given us a film worthy of its origin. 

this one film successfully explored more background story and character development, while still offering the most meaningful life-and-death game traps, than any SAW sequel to date.  

(the SAW theme song helped me write this review, so i hope it helps you read it.)

1.) BACKGROUND AND CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT. in this SAW, we learn about the deception between amanda and mark hoffman, as well as the full history of amanda's involvement in john's creation of jigsaw. also, we see jill, john's wife, as a primary accomplice in the whole scheme, as opposed to her existing like a silent bystander in previous films. 

mark hoffman's character soars in SAW VI as a primary principle. from his initiation into the SAW mythology to his freshly tested survival, mark hoffman reigns as a character to anticipate in subsequent films. and, yes, SAW VI ended on a note necessitating a SAW VII.

2.) PLOT.  the primary game in SAW VI revolves around the CEO of an insurance company, a man who has developed a formula to rate the long-life probability of new insurance applicants. according to the CEO's formula, if the individual looks like a money maker, keep them. if they look like a cost to the company on any level, ditch them as rodents in the sewer. jigsaw, thereby, takes this man through a series of games that make the CEO fully responsible for choosing the life of one (or more) over another. removed from mathematics and comfortable desk chairs, the CEO finally comes face to face with the death of individuals, causing him to act in ways that may contradict his previous career philosophies, which brings us to the next theme in the SAW films.

3.) SAW "GAMES." the last three SAW films have felt like montages of vigilante justice. games are not fully concurrent with the sins of the player. traps are not always truly purgatorial as to absolve the player's specific sins. 

in SAW VI, however, the traps do not match the victims in the traps as much as they match the player: the insurance CEO. a man who has determined the longstanding survival rates of policy applicants must now choose, within moments, the fate of co-workers. formulas for survival rates are erased as the player literally holds life and death in his hands. given the choice of deciding who lives and who dies, the CEO must lean on something more primitively human than anything he has worked with on a daily basis thus far. 

for example, the scene on the merry-go-round (featured in the poster below) is the first SAW trap that actually felt frightening to me. most traps are so ridiculously far-fetched that i have never felt affected by their grotesque mechanisms. however, this merry-go-round trap messed me up. the merry-go-round holds six people, but only two can get off. the CEO has to choose which four die and which two live. that's all i'll say for now, except that i was all over my seat in this scene. this was one of the most disturbing scenes i have seen in a SAW film yet. and i still recoil at the thought of it.

i give SAW VI an overall 4 reverse bear traps to the jawbone out of 5. though not enough to top the first two films, it definitely succeeded the past three sequels by a long shot. see this in the theater. go somewhere dark, somewhere sinister, somewhere in total solitude. see this film alone on a tuesday night in an empty auditorium. nothing makes you feel closer to SAW than an empty auditorium, echoing with the synthesized energy of abduction, of entrapment, of playing for keeps. 

"let the game begin."

Why This Site Exists

I've seen a lot of bad movies. And I do mean A LOT. Like, way more than you have. Watching bad movies is a unique art. It's like going to the used record store and hunting through the Bargain bin. You may go ten times and look through hundreds of albums before finding anything good. But when you do... oh, man. It's like Christmas. In the same way, there are thousands and thousands of bad movies and most of them are nothing special. They are simply bad. But, every once in a while, you come across a movie like MEGA SHARK VERSUS GIANT OCTOPUS. And I'm gonna be honest with you - if the title of this movie doesn't get you excited, you might as well just quit reading now. 'Cause you're not going to care. And that's ok. But what you need to remember is that this website was created by three guys who love this kind of junk. We freaking love it.

Once you get past the title of this one, pay attention to the stars - Lorenzo Lamas and Debbie Gibson (I know, it's supposed to be Deborah, but I can't bring myself to call her that) - and yes, it is that Debbie Gibson (insert Electric Youth joke here). It doesn't get better than this, folks. Lamas and Gibson are like the Bogie and Bacall of bad movies.

Here's the plot. And no, I'm not making this up (kudos to writer/director Jack Perez, who also has films such as MONSTER ISLAND, THE MARY KAY LETOURNEAU STORY, and LA CUCARACHA to his credit, for dreaming up this masterpiece). Debbie Gibson is a marine biologist/submarine pilot/love interest who studies whales, or something. Then some other stuff happens. Then a giant (sorry, Mega) shark jumps out of the water and attacks an airplane. In the sky. A passenger plane. I know that I tend to be guilty of overstatement, but I promise I'm not here. THIS. SCENE. IS. THE. BEST.

Anyway, more plot. Turns out that there's also a giant octopus out there. Both shark and octopus are terrorizing the world and killing lots of people, so Debbie Gibson and her crew get hired by the government (typical "kill-em-all" types, epitomized by Lorenzo Lamas) to help catch the beasties. Of course, the brown shirts wanna kill the creatures, but Debbie and Co want to capture them. They come up with a typical "attract the beasts with pheromones" plan, which (predictably) goes awry. So, science be darned - everyone agrees that the only way to end the problem is to get shark and octopus to fight each other and fix the problem themselves. Hence, MEGA SHARK VERSUS GIANT OCTOPUS.

A couple of things about the movie. The plot is ridiculous. Wonderfully, amazingly, hysterically, ridiculous. But totally self-aware about its ridiculousness. Also, the special effects are spectacularly bad. The scene where the shark eats the Golden Gate Bridge is worth the price of admission by itself. And man, I haven't even shown you the octopus yet! Again, Lamas and Gibson are totally in their element here. I can't wait for the sequel. And there will be a sequel. There will be.

Movies like this are why Three Hands in the Popcorn Bag was invented. I can't recommend this highly enough. Seriously. If you've got Netflix, you can watch it online. If not, go to Blockbuster or your local Redbox. Invite your friends over. Pop some corn. Delight in the wondrous badness of MEGA SHARK VERSUS GIANT OCTOPUS.

This gets 5 "Shake Your Loves" out of 5.

HAMSTERIAN HALLOWEEN COUNTDOWN: THE KOREANS USE LESS WORDS AND MORE SCENERY

i wrote the following review on june 23, 2008 and published it on another site i once managed. good review, if i do say so myself. this is one of my all-time favorite films. totally beautiful. absolutely soul-wrenching. i cannot say enough good things about this. and even though i dreaded the american remake, i ended up really enjoying THE UNINVITED as well. now i own both, and i'm looking forward to a double feature night to play the korean original next to the american remake. john and i agree on A TALE OF TWO SISTERS.

*   *   *

After one viewing of Kim Ji-Woon’s A TALE OF TWO SISTERS (2003), I knew this film was prime candidate for an American remake. As is, the film is too slow and complex for American audiences. So I searched the film on-line and, sure enough, THE UNINVITED, a re-titled American version of this brilliant South Korean film, will hit American theatres January 2009.


This is what we do these days: we remake really good horror films from Asia for American audiences. By remake, I do not mean that we look to them for inspiration or new ideas – no, we completely translate them into our language, expectations and blonde haired faces. Same script. Same exact plot. Even at times, as in the case of THE GRUDGE and THE RING, same Asian directors. The few changes made usually dumb them down to suit genre-spoiled Americans.


In A TALE OF TWO SISTERS, Kim Ji-Woon has not created what Americans typically consider pulse-stopping horror. Rather, he crafts a visual fairy tale, complete with fairy tale tenets and torments: two young girls; an evil stepmother; a heavy-browed father incapacitated by guilt; a beautiful house looming with shadows in the brightest light of day; a haunting family secret. This modernized Korean folktale develops slowly, focusing on its characters while exploring the shaky foundations between memory and actuality. This form of cinematic storytelling stands in stark opposition to typical American horror that bounces between cheap scares, gratuitous sexuality, gory special effects, and quippy one-liners.


Don’t get me wrong: I love modern American horror as much as any dude sporting a Michael Myers t-shirt from Hot Topic. These films are great. They’re fun. But, admittedly, they leave something to be desired, something meatier and more complex than leather aprons and dolls with swirly cheeks. And it’s because we are in this rut of remakes and shallow storied torture-porn that we look to other countries to fill-in our gaps.


Kim Ji-Woon’s A TALE OF TWO SISTERS - void of American gore, sexuality and fast-paced effects - requires more from its audience than listless viewership. It requires the ability to suspend both reality and expectation, to leave questions unanswered and the thin scrim curtain between life and after-life swaying with rips in the fabric. Good storytelling requires good story reception: allowing the fairy tale to utterly unravel and remain heaped on the ground at our feet.


What unravels in American theatres January 2009, with yet another Asian remake, will serve as commentary on America’s expectations of film. After all, this is what we do these days: we mindlessly translate foreign literary explorations into big-screen money makers. What becomes lost in translation will only be regained when we learn to view foreign art for what it is, not what it could be in American hands. Until that day, it’s the same script. The same exact plot. Planting our flag in another person’s front lawn, hell, that’s just the American way.