Spall as Pierrepoint

Timothy Spall is truly amazing in Pierrepoint: The Last Hangman. He plays Albert Pierrepoint, an executioner who executed over 600 criminals by hanging including high profile Nazis at the end of World War II. Watching Spall as Pierrepoint slowing changing his mind about capital punishment is rather exhilarating in an odd way.

Vitamin E

My friend Evan has re-launched his blog Vitamin E.

Evan’s been gong through a rough time as of late. He got thrown out of his apartment and had to move in with his old man.

Myself and my friend Ricky went over to Evan’s new home for a dinner party. To be frank, the “dinner” actually consisted of a case of Red Stripe beer, a loaf of mini rye bread, a hunk of cheddar cheese, and a prostitute named Skylar that Evan’s Dad (Mr. D) knew from his previous job as a night security guard for Michigan Sugar.

Evan was promising us a fun night full of laughs and good stories. What we actually got was a nightmare full of sexual humiliation and thinly veiled racism, which was unfortunately mostly directed at Ricky. The night pretty much consisted of Mr. D challenging his son’s sexual orientation and trying to force his son to have sex with Skylar in the living room in front of us.

“Fuck her! Fuck Her! Wooooo! She wants to!”

Evan has a smirk on had face assuming this was a joke, “Dad, I don’t want to do this!” he nervously laughed.

“Holy shit! Maybe I should brought you over a dude… huh Little Miss Jackie? Little Miss Jackie! Little Miss Jackie!”

This is when Mr. D put down his very stiff drink and grabbed Evan’s shirt collar, “Either you drop the shtick and grab you dick, or I swear to God I will fucking unload in your fucking face…”

Evan started to tear up, “I want to go home…ok… I think I want to go home

“Wooooo Wooooo!”

“Stop it! Please!”

“What do you got, whiskey dick?”

“I don’t love her enough to do that to her. Hell, I don’t even know that girl!”

“If you don’t start pounding that capital ‘V’ in the next minute, I will fucking invade your asshole with the high hard hat. I don’t give a fuck about life. I don’t give a fuck about you. I don’t give a fuck about Skylar. You can get it doggy-style or you can get it laying on your side. Those are your only choices. This is my house and I get to say. You have the nerve to pull that hot shot shit around me… I'll break every bone in your goddamn body. You understand me? Yeah, you're in for a change, mister, a whole other ball game!”

“Everything is going too fast! Stop!”

“Wooooo! Wooooo!”

Evan was uncontrollably sobbing. Evan’s Dad was determined to get his son laid. The whole saga came to end when Mr. D got distracted by Ricky playing on his cell phone. He became incredibly paranoid that Ricky was calling his work to get him in trouble for some reason. I also must add that a video camera was rolling the whole time.

Later in the night when the sexual charades was coming to a end, I asked to use the restroom, and Mr. D said, "Sure, it's right around the corner there." Once I went in the restroom, Mr. D locked me in there for like 45 minutes. There was doo doo, feces thrown all over the walls, the floor, the ceiling, and it stunk so bad. Then Mr. D came by the window outside and made the sarcastic remark, "Smell… does it smell good enough for you in there? How do you like the smell? Is it good?" I just simply replied, "It's alright. It's okay." I just sat there, and waited until he got bored and let me out.

When I exited the bathroom, you could tell that Mr. D was physically aroused, possibly from what he just did to me. He was massaging it with a relaxed motion with his right hand as I quickly walked past him. Evan noticed it as well and yelled, “Dad, your boner!” His dad then got right up in face while grabbing his swollen member and screamed, “Stupid, worthless, no good, God damned, freeloading, son of a bitch, retarded, bigmouth, know it all, asshole, jerk!”.

Evan replied sarcastically, “ You forgot ugly, lazy and disrespectful…”

Evan’s dad then reared back his hand and slapped Evan’s face with incredible force, knocking his nose to the left side of his face. Evan hit the floor with a massive thud and blood began to spray everywhere. Mr. D roared with homicidal rage, “Shut up bitch! Go fix me a turkey pot pie!”. Then out of nowhere to our absolute bewilderment, in an act of hypoactive sexual desire disorder, Mr. D pulled down his pants and defecated onto his son’s face. The site of an unconscious Evan at his most defenseless covered in his father’s human waste was horrifying. Mr. D then proceeded to call out Skylar from the bathroom who was in there freebasing crack cocaine to look at his dastardly deed.

Me and Ricky watched all of this atrocity from the kitchen. We were petrified that the violence would soon come to us. We contemplated for several minutes whether to call the police or not. We chose not to solely for the fact that the 911 operator wouldn’t believe us.

With his pants still around his ankles and his , Mr. D stormed around the house cross-eyed from massive amounts of alcohol and amphetamines yelping, “What? No one’s going to fuck this broad? Fine, I’ll fuck her! My nuts are going to be up to guts!”

Mr. D then began to engaged in full-blown anal sex with Skylar right there in front of us, all while proclaiming that he was going to give her the super strain of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome that he picked up while he was a truck driver in Zambia for Nabisco Foods.
Skylar didn’t really look like she was into but that didn’t detour Evan’s Dad. He finished an hour later after taking numerous stops to catch his breath and to freebase a little crack cocaine from Skylar‘s bodacious stash. He made all of us watch.

I hate to report that the last freebase break went horribly wrong for Mr. D. Apparently he over heated the glass pipe and it exploded in his face. Ricky has this whacked-out theory that he intently did this to prove a point. What that point is I don’t know. What I do know is that a majority of Mr. D’s face had melted away leaving him with a skull like appearance. The living room looked like a bloodbath, and there was glass everywhere, it was even embedded inches into the walls. Ricky and I made the decision not to offer him a ride to the hospital… not that he was looking for one to begin with.

The very last portion of the night featured Mr. D, who’s face now was massively hemorrhaging from a narcotics mishap just moments before, berating his son for purchasing a rock polisher machine earlier in the week. Apparently Evan had gotten two hundred dollars for his birthday from his grandmother, and his Dad wanted him to invest the money into a 1952 Mickey Mantle Topps baseball card. Evan instead bought a rock polisher machine because he was looking to get into a new hobby this winter. You know, something you can do inside.
“Why don’t you lay off the kid”, said a brave Skylar

“Yeah Dad, this rock polisher is a great investment! Rocks look so cool once their all polished up. ”

As fast as lightening, Mr. D, who is now in the later stages of dementia by blood loss, smashes Skylar in the face with an empty beer bottle. He then grabs the bloody, nude, and hysterically screaming Skylar by the hair and throws her out the door.

Mr. D turns to Evan and says, “That’s someone I love, and you I don't even like. You fuck with the bull you get the horns!”

While son and father continued to argue about the ethics of tossing a prostitute out like a rummy, Me and Ricky made our escape. I’ll tell you what, you’ve never seen two people leave an apartment as fast as we did last night.

What a terrible, terrible night.

Diablo Cody on Strike!

New Sweeney Todd Theatre Stand-Up

No Country For Old Men

According to the deafening buzz, No Country For Old Men is a return to form for the Coen brothers. I’m salivating at the chance to see this supposed masterpiece from these two national treasures.

The Coen brothers last two films arrived with a thud in the film community. I think I’m in the minority for my admiration for Intolerable Cruelty and with the exception of the inspired performance by Tom Hanks. their remake of The Ladykillers was disappointing.

Here is Peter Travers’ review for No Country For Old Men.

Cría Cuervos

Cria Cuervos is the best film I’ve seen this year. It’s a 1976 Spanish film by Carlos Saura, a filmmaker I’m not all that familiar with but soon will be. I rented it from Netflix a few months back based on a recommendation from a friend. I’m glad I took it.

The film stars Ana Torrent, who you may remember as the young girl from The Spirit of the Beehive. Her character in Cria Cuervos is the kind of child that’s all internal, always lost in thought, and has a wondering imagination. She becomes obsessed with the idea of death when she witnesses her father pass away as he is having a tryst with his mistress. I know this sound like a strange departure point for a movie, but you just have to go with it.

Ana, along with her two siblings move in with her aunt and grandmother after the funeral. From this point on, the picture becomes a mediation on various themes. The one theme that really fascinated me was memory.

Because the film unfolds in memory as the grown up Ana played by an awkwardly dubbed Geraldine Chaplin recounts her childhood, the film makes no effort in distinguishing between reality and fantasy. Cria Cuervos correctly demonstrates that memory is deceiving. Memory is the ability to retrieve past information, but there is no guarantee that your retrieving reliable information. Our brains are like editing machines. We cut out the boring parts, re-dub dialogue, and tighten-up the pace.

As an adult searching through bins of nostalgia and moments from the past, I, myself can’t exactly recall what was real life and what was simple childhood fantasy. Did I fall off the monkey bars during recess at school? Did I really throw water balloons at cars as I hid in a ditch? I seem to remember doing these things… but then again I can’t be sure.

Memories are the only personal thing we really have left when we get older… real or imagined…

… and that’s why I loved Cria Cuervos?

Everything about the film is top tier, especially the use of music. See the film.

No Place Like London

So far the early reviews for Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street have been ecstatic. I had a friend who saw it a few weeks ago at an advanced screening and she absolutely loved it.

"I’m sure you’ve already heard from others, but – key points in a nutshell:

-1 hr 50 mins, not including end credits (they only showed the front credits).

-No ghosts, only music from the ballad.

-Full-throttle musical – believe it or not, you don’t really miss the things that are missing. It’s almost more of a musical than the stage musical! When they sing they REALLY sing, and I’m probably exaggerating, but it seemed like over 80% sung. The music is very powerful throughout. Depp is excellent. Carter has a strong accent. Anthony and Tobias almost steal the show.

-It is almost exactly like the screenplay, minus the ghosts and minus the beginning/end pool of blood thing.

-About 60 people in the audience, with very positive reactions (a few negative)... but the audience isn’t a “random sample”.

-Very disturbingly violent and gory – it’s actually a “musical-horror” movie. We knew it would be a unique film, but it is radically unique because it’s also hilarious. Sure to get widely varying reviews."

Internet Sweeney Todd Trailer

Ann Coulter on The Daily Show (6-17-02)

Happy Halloween!

Extreme Ways

The Jason Bourne trilogy is the best film trilogy since The Lord of the Rings… not that there were many contenders. Even the weakest entry in the series, The Bourne Supremacy was a really good movie.

I just finished watching The Bourne Ultimatum a few minutes ago. It’s easy to understand why this film had a huge summer box office. It’s just as good as the first entry. Brilliant chase scenes throughout the whole picture. I also loved the way Ultimatum connects with Supremacy. Talk about talking it's time to tell the story!

I’m glad I watched it at home and not at the theatre. All the hand-held camera work and fast paced editing would have given me a serious headache. The intimacy of a large sized television set corrects this.

The Bourne Identity (2002, Doug Liman) A
The Bourne Supremacy (2004, Paul Greengrass) B+
The Bourne Ultimatum (2007, Paul Greengrass) A

Homemade Wicked Movie

A very disturbing video I found on YouTube.

Best Picture Predictions

Here are my current predictions for Best Picture:

Atonement
No Country For Old Men
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
Juno
American Gangster

I would like to include There Will Be Blood, but I have a feeling it will receive mixed reviews. The four journalist who saw it last week have been suspiciously quiet.

Sweeney Todd is wishful thinking.

2001: A Space Odyssey

I watched 2001: A Space Odyssey again a few nights ago and saw a completely different film than the one I had seen so many times in my youth. As a kid, I saw a film about the beauty of space travel. As an adult, I see a film about the evolution of man and our place in the universe. I also fully understand now Stanley Kubrick’s use of HAL9000, the computer who attempts to destroy the ship’s crew.

HAL is the most human character in the film. The computer acts all too human in his quest to destroy the Discovery crew out of embarrassment, pride, and self preservation. HAL does not want to be shut down (to die) by the space man. HAL is fully conscious and wants to remain so. The shut-down scene is unbelievably sad.

"These are my friends..."

I Want Sweeney

Tim Burton’s upcoming adaptation of Stephen Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd, The Demon Barber of Fleet is driving me crazy with anticipation. I don’t think I’ve been more excited to see a motion picture in my entire life. For months now I’ve been searching the internet for any bits of information regarding the film. All I have so far to quench my geeky thirst is a promo one-sheet poster from Comic-Con. Needless to say it’s not doing the trick. Oh, what I wouldn’t do for a teaser trailer.

I can’t believe I’m this excited to see a Tim Burton directed movie. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve enjoyed a great many of Burton’s offerings like Batman, Edward Scissorhands, Ed Wood, Sleepy Hollow, and The Corpse Bride. Tim Burton is also the man responsible for shattering the test tube with Batman Returns, Mars Attacks!, Planet of the Apes, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. The dread of knowing such an uneven auteur handling one of my favorite pieces of art give s me nightmares.