Secure Immaturity

Hey everyone. If you have read the ‘About’ section of our site you’ll know that I am publishing a book soon (around April/May) called I’m Mean, Apparently. Below I have a barely (if at all) edited sneak peak at one of my favorite sections of the book. I apologize ahead of time if there are massive grammatical errors and/or run-on sentences, etc. I just wanted to share a rough copy of some of the chapter and see what you all thought. If you like it then you’ll get LOTS more of it in the future (details to be released soon). And no, the book isn’t solely about movies. And yes, Drey, I am (un-intentionally) insulting you with the section on the Fountain! I’d love to hear your thoughts. . .

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100 Movie Reviews

        Specifically for this book, and your pleasure, I’ve decided to watch 100 movies that I’ve never seen before and compress them into one long review. So, I’ll just cut right to the chase. (*deep breath*)

        My journey starts with the ‘most romantic film of all time’ as cited, verbatim, by many people who are a little off. This romantic epic starts with Hugh Jackman as a conquistador getting ruthlessly butchered by a Mayan guy. Then we cut to him in the future hugging a tree. Then we see him working on monkey brains. If you weren’t already lickin’ your lips from all that fancy romance then nothing can prepare you for The Fountain, directed by Darren Aronofsky, who is really good at making people think happiness can be derived from really disturbing and haunting images. I was ready to make sweet, sweet love after this movie. . .or I was in my dreams anyways because I’m pretty sure I fell asleep a few times.

        We’ll stick to the cuddly side of Hollywood and enter the rape genre. I suppose executives always feel someone will watch a poor man or woman getting raped and think ‘this is quality cinema’. Can good films be made about the consequences of rape? Sure. But when the centerpiece is featuring and based solely on the actual rape as opposed to its consequences, well, it just isn’t necessary.

        To start we’ve got Closure, also and better known as  Straightheads in England. This involves Gillian Anderson getting raped on a car while her sort-of boyfriend gets mangled and ends up looking like Col. Tigh from Battlestar Galactica. The rest of the movie involves revenge and the need for our beaten-down ‘heroes’ to kill the people that hurt them. Cute.

        But even worse is the film Descent, starring Rosario Dawson. This is one of those rape-set pieces where the rape is the main focus of the story and all the time, energy and focus is on the visual act of rape. Rosario Dawson gets raped in the first thirty minutes. Then, by films end, after her ‘descent’ into mild raving and sort-of drug use, she finds the dude, ‘seduces him’ and then uses a stick and her large Cuban friend to rape the dude back. Interesting idea but the 110 minute movie contains 109 minutes of rape. I think I have better things to do.

        But let’s shoot positive. Okay, well after I talk about Wild Hogs, starring living hog Tim Allen. This ‘funny’ movie about a life changing road trip on motorcycles has some great Lynyrd Skynyrd tracks and the occasional Martin Lawrence one liner but, in the end, is really about showing Tim Allen’s man boobs. . .three times. This alone will shake you to your emotional core and break you. The casting of the sexy Marisa Tomei, the Look-I’m Dancing-Again John Travolta and a usually on-target William H Macy/Ray Liotta will not save you from the mind cleansing you need after watching Wild Hogs.

        But fine, fine, fine. I’ll go positive. Watch  Shadow of the Vampire with John Malkovich and living, breathing vampire Max Schreck who plays Willem Dafoe. . .or maybe it’s the other way around. I could sit and wax poetic about this film all day since it is shot beautifully and has a truly history-bending twist. The film involves the making of Nosferatu, the seminal vampire film from the 1920s, and how coo-coo director Malkovich used a real vampire (Defoe as Max Schreck) to make the movie realistic. Defoe should have won the Oscar he was nominated for but the unsung hero is Cary Elwes who is just about awesome in pretty much anything he does (for one reason or the other).

        Even  Saw. Sure,  Saw 17 is coming out next summer but the original Saw is actually pretty good. And while good is relative, this is ‘good’ in the I-love-to-watch-humans-self-mutilate-themselves-and-scream-a-lot-while-being-tricked-by-Tobin-Bell. If I blew the ending for you, sorry, but I have tendency to do that. 

        Especially in the case of Righteous Kill, where AL PACINO IS THE KILLER. But if you can’t figure that out in the first four minutes of the movie then you need help. As a fan of the masterpiece Heat, my all-time favorite film, I was pretty pumped for Righteous Kill. When the movie was over I had to up-chuck all the pills I took to kill myself since the film’s immense expectations came down on me in a manner in which all joy was killed and my life no longer had meaning. If you care: it involves some cops and a murder and stuff and. . .it’s not even worth it. Forget it.

        To raise my spirits I watched a triplet of films sure to bring a smile to my face! That’s right: I watched three David Mamet films in a row. And while I managed to come out happy, I now hate women and say the word ‘fuck’ about every twenty seconds in average mundane conversation.

        The first was Heist, starring Gene Hackman who plays a character who is quite confusing. He is confusing because apparently ‘the motherfucker is so cool when he goes to sleep sheep count him’. While the film about bank and plane heists unfolded I was stuck trying to figure out what the hell that means for the film’s entire running time. The film also stars Delroy Lindo, Danny Devito and the slightly creepy Ricky Jay. Oh and Sam Rockwell as a sleazy guy. What a stretch!

        The second was  Spartan, starring the master of stone-face: Val Kilmer. I love Val Kilmer. In this movie he plays an emotionless secret service agent who has to find the President’s daughter who has been kidnapped by sex slave masters. There is a lot of betrayals, twists and Kristin Bell. . .which is fine by me. Spartan does have the distinction of being the most depressing reflection of human existence on the planet but it sure was fun. . .I think. I could swear I was smiling through the tears.

        The third was Redbelt, starring the greatest actor of my generation, Chiwetel Ejiofor. If you want a rousing, feel-good, epic motion picture. . .well, go somewhere else.  Redbelt is excellent but involves the destruction and rebirth of a man’s moral core and is one hell of a depress-fest to get through. Chewey plays a martial arts dojo master or lives by a certain code. Unfortunately, the real world crashes in on his party. In the end, if all else fails, you get to see Tim Allen get beat up! Yeah! That should make anyone feel good.

        And if anything can make you feel good, especially as Americans, it is flashbacks to the Nixon administration, when the country was whole!  Frost/Nixon, recently, at least when I’m typing this, was nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards. Good for you Opie! Directed by Ron Howard, Frost/Nixon is basically the movie adaptation of the Frost-Nixon interviews from the 1970s. When is Hollywood going to stop making crappy television shows into movies! Grrrrr.

        But Michael Sheen, who stars in Frost/Nixon, isn’t done with me yet. He stars in The Deal, which is a pseudo prequel to The Queen, which shows Tony Blair’s rise to POWER! It’s actually a nice film, helmed by The Queen director Stephen Frears, and is filmed in the same style. The film follows young, shy Tony Blair and early prime minister favorite Gordon Brown and how the two became friends and eventual ‘frenemies’. The film, made in 2003, kind of says ‘GORDON BROWN WILL NEVER BE PRIME MINISTER’ but history has proven this film wrong. Too bad though: he seems as charismatic as a Kilmer/Reeves hybrid. Not entirely familiar with how English elections work, I was a little confused by the numerous stock-election footage used but the film was enjoyable nonetheless.

        Let’s stick to English films. I give. . .(see you in April/May)

“Heya kids! Want some candy?”

Fell free to add captions in the comments section.

(****access gallery below for images described in post; click to enlarge****)

I am in the transition of buying my first home. Since I am still in transition from my parent’s house to this apartment (even two years later) I have been periodically digging through about thirty boxes and finding all kinds of great, classic stuff. Below is probably the most loved book I have ever read: The Mystery Science Theater 3000 Amazing Colossal Episode Guide.

They always said (whoever ‘they’ are) that a book is only well loved if it is clearly abused. This book would qualify for sure as ‘well loved’. If you notice the front cover. . .it is quite abused. To be honest, it has been read so often since 1996 that the cover actually isn’t even attached to the book anymore. If you look at the binding, well, it’s seen better days. The book itself, besides the numerous years of hard core reading or random perusing, punches me in the nostalgic gut when I see a short transcription from my parents on the first page. It not only puts my age into perspective but my pure geekiness.

I started reading this book when I was 14 years old, to the day. I can actually calculate how long I’ve owned this book (12 years and seven months to the day of writing (here in Arizona it is January 30th, 2009; the website is tuned to Germany time and is showing as a later date). I’ve been watching MST3K longer then that. MST3K is actually the one franchise/item/thing I’ve been involved with almost my entire life. I’ve known Crow, Tom Servo, Joel, Mike, Gypsy, Cambot, Dr. F, TV’s Frank and all the rest longer then my greatest friend and even longer then some family members. The SOL is basically my second home, at least for my imagination.

MST3K, book or not, has truly defined my life, down to sense of humor to how I view the world. This book represents just one facet of that geeky fascination that is so seminal to my existence. I did wonder how I could have utterly destroyed this book with obsessive love. I mean, any book gets old after awhile, right? This book has no binding, writing all over it (personal notes about ‘classic’ episodes, etc.) and even the effects of decay (some pages are a mysterious yellow or green here or there).

So I decided to test that nostalgia and see if, after all, this book is so damn good. And, by golly, it is. The best thing about this book is it is basically a text version of the show. This isn’t a blow-hard book about the making of the show and how great everyone is. The book represents the show in every facet; this is basically a lost episode as far as I’m concerned. The greatest thing about MST3K the TV show (and one movie) is that it only gets better with age. At age 7, when I started watching, so many jokes went over my head. And, to this day, many still do. But as you grow and learn the show allows itself to continue to grow with you. A joke you never understood when you were 14 can make a whole hell of a lot of sense when you’re 20. Case in point: my all-time favorite episode, I Accuse My Parents, is given the lowly rating of three stars and denied the CC label that I placed on episodes (the CC stands for ‘Classic Collection’; just in case I forgot, I put the meaning of the term on the front page for future reference) at the tender age of 14/15. Things change over time.

I’m 26 now and the book is even more special to me then before (as is the show). I’m glad I dug this out of the boxes surprisingly in tact (despite the unattached pages and binding) and in the correct order. It now graces my bathroom counter (trust me, an honorary place indeed) and will remain damaged but well loved for the rest of my days and in my sight! (*as I scanned images for this post, a large portion of binding pieces made their last stand and scattered all over my carpet. The decay, and the love, continues!)

Will really likes Hellboy 2; he really, really likes it. He kept getting on me to go out and see it. Last weekend, I finally had the time to sit down with Hellboy 2, and I can confirm that it is completely average.*

In the sequel, Hellboy and crew save the world from Elric, Pan’s Labyrinth, and steampunk. I’m all for destroying as much steampunk as possible, but those villains are really unsinister compared to the undead Nazi, Karl Ruprecht Konen. Hellboy 2 also runs about 30 minutes too long to show off Guillermo del Toro’s creature menagerie. The strangely scene at the troll market feels just like Tim Burton’s waiting room in Beetlejuice, and fairy monsters shouldn’t feel that way.

Like a lot of sequels, Hellboy 2 has problems creating new character conflicts, and it slides right back into the old ones. Hellboy still behaves like a sixty year old teenager. Liz still doesn’t know what she wants. Abe is still a nerdy wallflower. Hellboy is going to become a father, but well, he doesn’t know about that for a good chunk of the running time. The movie goes out of its way to set up a personality conflict with Hellboy and an authority figure, the new member of the BPRD team Johann Krauß** that adheres to every action movie cliche regarding authority.

The plot doesn’t make much sense either. This gives away the ending, but if you don’t see this coming, you really need to see more movies. There’s this magic crown, and the person who has the crown controls the Golden Army, which is unbeatable. Someone can challenge the holder’s claim on the crown, and then, they have to duel. The bad prince gets the crown and wants to destroy the world. However, the bad prince has a sister, and when she gets hurt, the bad prince gets hurt.

With that in mind, WHY DOES HELLBOY CHALLENGE THE BAD PRINCE FOR THE CROWN! WHY DOESN’T THE PRINCESS CHALLENGE THE PRINCE RIGHT THEN AND THERE. HE CAN’T HURT HER WITHOUT HURTING HIMSELF, AND HE CAN’T KILL HER WITHOUT KILLING HIMSELF. WHY DOESN’T SHE CHALLENGE HIM FOR THE CROWN AND STICK HER TONGUE OUT BECAUSE SHE OUTSMARTED HIS DUMB ASS? WHY DOES HELLBOY DO THE FIGHTING?

So, yeah, the dumb ass final fight broke the movie for me. It may be worth watching on TNT or TBS, but I wouldn’t go out of my way to see Hellboy 2.

*I’m not alone on this. See Secure Immaturity Ep. 19, when Matt King says, “Will, you liked Hellboy 2 MORE that the first one?”

**Is it too hard to hire a German kid to deliver coffee and proofread the script when an American or British actor has to deliver lines in German. Do I have to suffer through schoolboy grammar mistakes every time a German character shows up on screen?

Of everything I’ve ever read on the Onion, I want this to be true.

Scary Thing: I get the references.

Via The Triumph of Bullshit (which is necessary reading):

I may have found a new blog header…

Yeah. . .it doesn’t sound like the most exciting episode we’ve ever done but Brian and I sure did have a great time discussing the best and worst of the comic book crossovers that dominant the industry. Naturally (and deservedly) Civil War and Secret Invasion get their lickings in. But overall we just examine whether the whole crossover/tie-in idea is worth it. We think so. . .if done right! Infinity Gauntlet. . .you have no equal!!!!!

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I am beyond confused. I just finished watching Millennium Season 3 (and therefore I finished watching the entire show) and I am not sure what to say, exactly. It is becoming quite clear to me that Millennium was a tortured property. Season 1, a project that was Chris Carter’s baby, was graphic, violent, shocking and often formulaic. Season 2 dipped into the bizarre, took risks, sometimes hit genius gold and sometimes failed in bizarro fashion but at least did something. Season 3. . .is just kind of. . .there. It just kind of sits there and makes you go: ‘I remember when this show was different’ or more importantly ‘I remember when this show used to be fun’.

Fun is a bizarre term: Millennium, mainly in season 2, was fun for many reasons. It always kept me guessing, it always pushed my emotional limits and it often made me work for my entertainment which is very rare. Season 3 just passes as moderately entertaining but most shockingly, and this is probably the worst thing you can say about a thriller, especially one with supernatural elements, boring. Season 3 is just plain boring at times.

At the end of season 2, Catherine Black was killed by the Marburg virus as was, apparently, most of the planet. The Millennium Group, who had become a more religious Syndicate (the X-Files‘ alien colonization group), had engineered the virus and had subjected it to the planet. Frank was left grey-haired and motionless as his daughter, Jordan, tried to snap him out of it. This was epic. Not only was a major character killed for the second season in a row but this earth-shaking apocalypse, which wasn’t necessarily hinted at being just religious/scientific but possibly man-made, was coming TRUE! There were EPIC consequences in the Millennium universe.

But how does Chris Carter who, after being immensely frustrated with season 2 to the point of booting Morgan and Wong from ALL of his productions, took over as executive producer do with his once beloved property? He has Frank investigate a plane crash with a new puppy-dog agent named Emma Hollis and. . .he lives in Falls Church, Virginia. . .and its, uh, been six months. . .and uh, the planet is fine. . .and.  . .yeah, lame. Very lame. Instead of running with the brilliant but sometimes flawed themes of season 2 and working to add to them, Carter, in what is becoming a very frustrating selfish streak (see X-Files seasons 7-9, I Want to Believe, etc.) decides to pretend it all didn’t happen, explain away the virus as ‘overexaggerated’ and not even mention Catherine’s death until bloody fucking episode 12!!!!!!

That, above all else, will frustrate someone who got sucked into the show. If I were watching Millennium season 3 as a stand-alone show then it would still be mediocre but acceptable. But after all that happened before, season 3 starts out with a shocking jolt to your system. It just makes you wonder if you are watching the same show!

It’s not to say the creators didn’t try. Lance Henriksen, nominated for his third consecutive Golden Globe for playing Frank Black here, is always exceptional and can definitely carry this show. Klea Scott, the new partner, Emma Hollis, is both competent and beautiful (but downright sour. Please smile more!). The other two new main cast additions, Stephen Miller as FBI AD McClaren and Peter Outerbridge as the immensely annoying I-wish-he-would-die-now FBI Special Agent Barry Baldwin, all add nice colors to the Millennium canvas.

And technically, season 3 is superior to most or all of television. The cinematography is, I can honestly say, the best in the history of television. The Canadian forests sure do help but season 3 is absolutely breathtaking. The writing is very poor but only because its grandiose ideas fail when delivered to us. The effort is there for sure. The set design and location shooting is also exceptional though in one episode quite lazy since fifteen locations from the X-Files can be found within it.

But, despite all these great A-for-effort achievements, Millennium season 3 is an immense failure and something, if you aren’t a completest, you can ignore. At the very least you can ignore large portions of the episode rundown and finish off storylines that were left unfinished in season 2. Season 3 just lacks bite. Whereas season 2 was more a psychological evaluation of its characters and often showed the temptations of good and evil with the main character of Frank Black and how it led to his often tortured existence, Season 3’s psychological bents are confusing, pretentious and unsatisfying.

The biggest Wow-Season-3-Crapped-On-Me moment is when you watch the ’series finale’ of Millennium which is the X-Files seventh season episode “Millennium”. Wow. Just wow. What a stink fest. Sure, the idea of concluding a show in another show is ballsy but the story is so god damn stupid and craps all over the Millennium universe (and all it built) that you can’t help but feel cheated AND incomplete. Anyone remember the series finale for Enterprise. . .yeah, it’s ALMOST, I said ALMOST, as bad as that.

But I’ll end on a high note. There is one simply horrible episode called “. . .Thirteen Years Later” that is a blatant rip off of Scream 3 (or vice versa, I guess. . .when did Scream 3 come out) which, ironically enough starred Lance Henriksen, but has guest appearance(s) by KISS. Brilliant stuff. And the demonic foe of Frank Black’s, Lucy Butler, played by the intoxicatingly beautiful Sarah-Jane Redmond, returns in what is the most frightening (albeit by cheap tricks) episode in the entire Millennium run (the episode is called ‘Antipas’).

The show is not without its moments but, in general, just leave this season be.

Retrogasmic is a monthly column designed to educate you about all-but-forgotten geeky shit and why you should care about it today.

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“I’m into board games.” This phrase alone will stop me in my tracks on any online dating site. It is the moral equivalent of perfume infused with geek pheromones. It is a freak flag whipping in a wind traveled from exotic islands. It is almost always too good to be true, because, inevitably, “I think Monopoly is awesome!” Also, “I love to laugh!”

No. Just… no. Continue Reading »

SPOILERS WITHIN! BE WARNED!

This was supposed to happen ages ago but I finally found a time to get to this. This ‘week’ I am going to tackle the JumptheShark.com’s residents and their choices over Babylon 5. To start, I USED to be a gigantic Babylon 5 fan. The epic storytelling still intrigues me and the environments JMS created are still fascinating. But as I grow older I start to see through the cracks that were previously covered by naivete and nostalgia. Babylon 5, while still generally good, is kind of a crappy show. Produced on a C-level budget with A-level aspirations, some of the show is unwatchable. But in the end it still has it’s place amongst the science-fiction greats. I can’t help but love it for its originality and hate it for the parts of other sci-fi it blatantly rips off and ruins. I love and hate this show! Now before you analyze those last few statements and realize they are generally contradictory statements, let’s prepare to analyze Babylon 5 by viewing the epic and moving Season 5 title sequence.

ANALYSIS: Due to a rabid, fanboy following that used to include myself, Babylon 5 dominates the first category as NEVER JUMPED. Since I have an intense love and an intense hate for this show it is tough to decide this one. But in the end I’d have to disagree. Babylon 5 did a great job of constantly redeeming itself after failing. After criminally horrible telefilms, the show would recover with engaging story arcs. After outrageous amounts of filler episodes that meant absolutely nothing, the show would then defy the odds and produce long episode arcs dedicated only to character and action. Sometimes the show didn’t care that it wasn’t a widespread hit or that it wouldn’t appeal to audiences trying to join in late: B5 stuck to its guns. But for those unforgivable gaffes, such as killing Marcus for soap opera dramatic effect, showing outer space urinals or. . .*shiver*. . .River of Souls. . .*shiver*, amongst others, B5 definitely did it’s share of jumping. DISAGREE

The fifth season is, unjustly, regarded as the second reason why B5 jumped the shark. I always defend season five because it took the characters to the next logical place in the time allotted. Many people know that season 4 was suddenly the last season of Babylon 5. JMS had to scramble and finalize four years’ worth of storylines in four final episodes. He did, somewhat successfully (who can blame him), but then B5 was miraculously picked up for a fifth season. As a result JMS had to pad the first 10 episodes or so and add a truly horrible telepath-rouge thing to set up what he wanted to finish. Season 5 is breathtaking storytelling when it focuses on the characters: the characters in season 5 are the same fundamentally as they were in season 1 BUT they have made an understandable progression from that point and inhabit very different roles in the B5 universe by the time season 5 rolls around. It adds to the epic appeal of the show and is not a distraction. So, I DISAGREE.

 ’The Vorlons and Shadows Leave the Galaxy’ is listed as the third reason. If I didn’t understand the behind the scenes struggles of the show I’d agree. But due to the fourth season debacle as explained in the previous example the storyline had to be rushed and patched up to avoid future conflict. Thus the easy solution of ’see ya guys, it was fun being the main bad guys but we are done!’ It makes for poor storytelling but was a necessary evil for JMS to finish the President Clark storyline. Still, it sucks. I AGREE.

 The fourth reason is listed as ‘Byron and the Telepaths’. As I mentioned in the first example, this storyline was absolutely dreadful. Since most of Byron’s storylines were filmed in a tiny cardboard box and involved lots of poetic sermons and preachy diatribes you couldn’t help but eye the fridge or the holy Throne (everyone knows what that is, right?) whenever he and his ‘goth’ telepaths showed up. Their fate was written long before their story played out and it was just plain boring! The interesting world of telepaths, so often unexplained or just plain weird, was overexposed and a lame, oft-used plot device was used to overuse it! Damn it! I definetly AGREE.

 The final reason given is that the fourth season was bad. The previous mentioned behind the scenes troubles were the cause of this disastrous run of episodes. Though the fourth season ends solidly enough you definetly can’t help but feel the fourth season had too much going on for its own good and was a tad bit pretentious. A lot of poor dramatic choices were made to spice the season up and in the end the show suffers for it. Still, it is waaaaaaay better then the 1st season. In the end, I AGREE.

In the end there were four agrees (the first disagree counts in the agree category, if that makes any sense) and only one disagree. Thus, for the first time on the site, I’d have to say that Babylon 5, despite its best efforts, JUMPED THE SHARK!

FUNNY REASON: ‘Delenn Becomes a Housewife’. . .it needs no more explaining and is just damn funny.

NEXT TIME: I will reluctantly tackle the fun enigma that is House MD!

So far: The X-Files (NEVER, 3-1); Veronica Mars (NEVER, 4-1); Babylon 5 (JUMPED, 1-4)