MovieComment

Meet The Spartans

Posted by Player under MovieComment

Sometimes, you just feel like relaxing and watching something totally silly and that where pretty much Meet The Spartans fits into your movie watching schedule. There really has not been a good spoof comedy since The Wayans Brothers did Scary Movie, that is until now. Unlike all the other crappy spoofs out there that totally suck, Meet The Spartans actually is funny and manages to entertain by aiming most of its jokes at the original movie 300. While 300 was this macho tale of brave Spartan soldiers that came off as too over the top to even approach being a good film, Meet The Spartans brings everything down a few notches and makes fun of muscle bound Spartans, teen idol celebs like Britney and Paris Hilton, and manages to make you laugh at how silly some of the actual scenes in 300 really are. There are some misses though, where the movie tries too hard but overall the entire spoof works very well if you you have seen 300.

However, Meet The Spartans is rather short for a recent film and could be proof that you can only make so many jokes about another film that you are spoofing, and even then the movie is not as original as Scary Movie. For more hilarious 300 spoofing, check out the South Park episode D-Yikes!.

Basic Instinct 2 Trailor

Posted by GardenHead under MovieComment

Okay not much to say about this one that isn’t already out there. You put out a hard R trailor, (do not open up this vid at work!) to generate the buzz that a fifteen year old sequel starring a 50 year old Sharon Stone; the reason being I guess to show that even at the half century mark Ms. Stone’s breasts seem to still maintain a cheerleader type perkiness, and if all that is all you have going for a movie, then well you got the fine makings of an Skinamax Andrew Stevens like crapfest.

After watching the trailor, you really don’t get a sense of what the movie is about, yes Stone’s character still likes dangerous sex and to flash her cooter at a room. She still gets turned on by chicks, and works herself into a tither by taking a wicked looking ice pick to a big block of ass, er I mean ice.

Now Sharon Stone has proved that she is a talented actress. Her turn in Casino was an inspired piece of acting. And in Hollywood once you reach a certain age the roles start to come less and less, so maybe Ms. Stone is taking a risk with this one, and maybe it will be good, or maybe it’ll be another Sliver, guess we get to wait to see!

Mix Tapes Part Deux…

Posted by GardenHead under MovieComment

“I will kill you till you are dead from it!” (HotShots anyone? Ah Saddam, how you used to make me laugh…)

Okay this might rob me of my “street cred” nonetheless I admit, to having totally overlooked this guy.

Thankfully it was SPIKETV that turned me onto the brilliance of “Beat” Takeshi Kitano.

The SPIKE show Most Extreme Elimination Challenge, is frackin’ hilarious! I for one cannot get enough of watching large-ish Asian women bang their poor bodies off of a couple of big rollers before doing a face plant in a big pile of mud, or toxic ooze as they say on the show. When watching the show I could not help but wonder who in the corn bread hell is this Vic “Right you are Ken” Romano guy? If like me you are on the short bus, and behind the curve on this dude, let me tell you Takeshi is as great as a film maker as anyone making films in America right now.

I’m gonna wax on just a couple of Kitano’s recent films Kikujiro,and Zatoichi.

When I saw the box for 1999’s Kikujiro, a story about a guy taking a trip with a young boy the first thought that came to mind was that icky Al Bundy vehicle, Dutch, which if you haven’t seen, don’t cos it really really sucked. But I really dug the whole SPIKE thing, so I gave Kikujiro a chance. Watching this movie reminded me of all the reasons I like foreign comidies. Don’t get me wrong, I love the hyper-kinetic energy of Vince Vaughn, praticulairly in Wedding Crashers, where he seemed wound so tight he was about to explode, but the whole Adam Sandler yelling thing is not comedy, it’s crap. And when you take in a character driven comedy like Kikujiro, it really shows you a film that works on so many different levels, it’s sweet, sad, dark, funny, and innocent, and when someone in Kikujiro yells it has meaning behind it, and not shtick.

Zatoichi is a different bit of film making. This is a remake of the Blind Swordsman series of t.v. shows from back in the 1960’s. Watching a film like Zatoichi reminds you of who’s shoulders Tarantino was standing on when he concieved his great Kill Bill movies If you don’t mind your over the top violence and bucket upon bucket of splattered blood paired with interesting character driven conflict and “a plot” than watch this film with your buddies. If you like your stuff a bit fluffy but can still digest some adult themes smattered with a a well made dissertation on play and innocence then kikujiro is for you. But I think you should watch both films, cos they on my list, holla!

The movie mix tapes…

Posted by GardenHead under MovieComment

It’s just how we roll…

If you are into cinema on any level, you have a list; your calling card. Your movie list, like a good mix tape, denotes your status as a cultivated purveyor of (at least to you) great movies.

We’re just getting started here on this website, and I thought it might be fun to throw out some on the films on my “list” and invite people to agree, laugh at my lack of taste, or to add their own movies to the discussion. Good art like bad is of course subjective to opinion. Every epoch gets the art it deserves, and thankfully, the good tends to grow legs and outlast the bad. I like my senses delighted, my ideas and faith challenged, and most importaintly; I like to giggle like a virgin on prom night at a really good fart joke! It just depends on the mood ya dig? I can be down for the politically relevant commentary found in Clooney’s great Good Night & Good Luck or ready to take drink every time Vince Vaugh says, “money” in the classic comedy Swingers.

If you you spend as much as time as I do parked on your couch with a dvd or PPV movie on the screen, you realize that there are a lot of movies that either because of lack of talent, or the result of coorporate uninspired film making, they seem to be just good enough to hold your attention. So when on occasion that as a movie watcher you run across something that hits you on a lot of different levels; that takes you on a ride, that isn’t a neat little box of a film, where the best buddy dies and the hero gets the girl, you set up and take frackin’ notice!

Hal Hartley’s Henry Fool reamins one of these films for me. I still have this film on VHS which is akin to saying, “Yeah I got that on K-Tel 8-track.” Ahem.

Henry Fool is epic. It’s a messy and inspired piece of film making. Let me be clear, when I say messy, I do not mean to infer that this is a sloppy film, quite the opposite in fact. What I mean to imply is that Henry Fool, is a challenging film, it gets it’s hands dirty. Instead of just throwing up a bunch of flawed people on the screen for effect, Hartley digs deep in these characters nerosis and seems to ask, that if people are broken, can they ever be fixed?

Simon, (played by James Urbaniak) is a quiet and brow beaten garbage man. A chance encounter with the rougish and deeply flawed yet passionate Henry Fool, kick starts in Simon a conduit for expression via the written word.

For some strange reason, this film has been greatly overlooked, if you haven’t seen it yet I highly recommend adding it to your netflix list.