Tag: movies

Movie Review: The Other Guys: Michael Keaton, playing a police chief in "The Other Guys," keeps quoting TLC lyrics. It's enough to be amusing, but you aren't trusted to get the joke -- the other characters keep asking him about it, and he keeps denying it. Something that would have been a cute throwaway in a farce becomes more of a set piece in an Adam McKay movie, where they just bludgeon you over the head with the appetizers and tell you it's the main course. "The Other Guys" isn't bad, by any stretch -- I was amused, even though it runs out of gas with about an hour left. It's just stuck in between genres. It isn't a full-blown send-up of cop movies; it's not really gritty enough to be in the "48 Hours" genre, and it's not silly enough to be absurdist. Like so many comedies of the last few years, there's something lazy about it. It's less of a movie than a collection of mildly amusing scenes. Instead of elaborate sight gags or slapstick -- stuff that would be planned -- you get verbally based "improvised" scenes, which top out at light chuckles. They never even attempt the brilliance of something like Leslie Nielson at an Angels Game -- that would require more writing, or actual commitment to a style of comedy. Honestly, it looks like they hijacked someone else's script about financial crimes, attached Will Ferrell to the project and then just let him gut the script. There are all these characters and plot elements that sort of disappear -- the whole thing seems like it was meant to be more plot heavy, but they had to axe a bunch of stuff to make room for 342 takes of awkward extended conversations. Case in point: the absolute best part of the movie is the first five minutes, where Dwayne Johnson and Samuel Jackson play ridiculous sterotypes of heroes in cop movies. It's brilliant, because they had a clear vision of what they were going for; nothing that follows ever matches that level of comedic intensity or density. I hope all this improv-heavy stuff dies off before too long. It's not worth $11 to see these kinds of movies in the theater. Fun extra note: the closing credits are a graphics display on financial crimes. Seriously. Like that was the point of the movie (it's in the plot, but this isn't a message movie). It's like they gave someone entirely different the job of directing the credit sequence, and he thinks he's the next Michael Moore. Bizarre beyond belief. (August 16, 2010)

Movie Review: Step Up 3D: This was easily the best 3D movie I have ever seen about people entering dance competitions. Bar none. Hands down. No doubt about it. Which is to say, the dancing is really very entertaining, and the "movie" portion is comedically awful. I guess they can't have 90 straight minutes of breakdancing, because no one has been visionary enough to do a breakdancing musical. There is no Gene Kelly of hip-hop, although I'm sure Ang Lee is working on something. So anytime they want to do a new dance movie, they put the following elements into a hat, draw four of them and put together a script: A classically trained dancer who wants to learn hip-hop dancing, or vice versa. A rich person who loves dance but wants to prove that they are "street." An evil white guy who heads an evil dance crew and will do anything to win. Dancers from the "good" crew who lose faith and go to the "evil" crew, taking all the secret moves with them. A particular move that no one can get right until it is required to win the final competition. A dance contest where the prize money is the only way to save something or someone. A teenager with at least one dead parent. Kids under the age of 10 who want to breakdance. A multi-ethnic dance crew. One guy who is really good at doing the robot. Someone is forced to choose between dance and something more "real world," like working in a paint store. Trampolines. A romance that tears apart the dance crew. A wise black guy. Steve Harvey if he's available. In this case, we have Moose from "Step Up 2" fame, who is probably the least likely person to appear in a motion picture this year. He appears to be a 93-pound Jew with curly hair. Now, I like 93-pound Jews with curly hair, and I will be marrying one in two weeks. But when they're guys, it doesn't exactly scream "movie star looks." But guess what: he can do the robot really good! Moose is going to NYU, and on orientation day, he sees some guys dancing in Washington Square. He serves one of them, because that's how Moose rolls. The mysterious Luke, who is videotaping the whole thing like the usual kind of pervert who hangs out in a park with a video camera, invites Moose into his car. Moose, wise to the ways of the world, goes. And he is whisked away to a warehouse where a multi-ethnic dance team lives and rehearses. The drama here is that the "World Championships" are happening in a few months, and the crew (The Pirates) needs the $100,000 prize, or they will lose their crappy warehouse to the bank. I would like to take a moment here to reassert that I do not understand the economics of breakdancing. After taxes, that $100,000 is going to be $60,000 tops. Now, the dance crew is already six months behind on their lease as the movie starts. None of them appear to have jobs, as all they do is live in a warehouse, be multi-ethnic and practice dancing. I won't tell you if they win the money, but let's say they do -- you're paying a good chunk of that to the bank, and then you still have about 12 people with no real income living in a warehouse where the property taxes alone have to be stupendous. Maybe you're getting some spots in a few videos, or cameo appearances on "ABDC," but you're splitting that money 12 ways, plus you have to pay rent, plus I'm guessing you need good medical insurance if you spin on your head more than once a day, plus someone in there probably has a coke habit or child support payments. It doesn't really add up. Oh, and the other drama is that Luke's secret dream is to be a filmmaker. Also, there's a rich white trust fund guy who heads an evil dance crew and will cheat to win. And a hot love interest for Luke, who has a terrible secret. And a very plain love interest for Moose, who looks and dresses like a total frump, but suprisingly can dance a little bit. But the story isn't important, unless you are playing cliche bingo. The dancing is what matters, and that's pretty damn awesome. Except for one thing: it's sort of hard for your dancing layman to tell what's awesome and what's REALLY awesome. In the battles in this movie and "Step Up 2," it always seems like the opposing teams in each battle are a little bit more impressive than the good guys. But maybe I feel that way because of HOMETOWN BIAS! In the battle between the Pirates and the "Asian champions," your keen-eyed reviewer thought he saw a familiar face. It was The Atomic Goofball! Me and my 93-pound Jew actually saw him in action last fall at a breakdancing competition in Adams Morgan. He entered by himself and advanced very far, all by his lonesome -- he was clearly one of the highlights of our day (click through to read about that day). His mug was on screen long enough for me to say to Allyson, "Hey! It's the Atomic Goofball!" Way to step up, DC. (August 11, 2010)

Burn, Baby, Burn: We've got a lot of extra oil floating around the Gulf of Mexico right now. And now we also have predictions of a very busy Atlantic hurricane season. Atlantic hurricanes often draw water from the Gulf of Mexico. As they draw water, they become more powerful. As they become more powerful, they expend more energy. Energy makes things catch fire. Oil can catch fire. It all adds up to one inescapable fact: FIRECANE! A SyFy movie is about to be born. And since it involves water, we can get a shark attack in there somehow. Maybe a community of Dinosharks makes its way into the gulf, gets sucked up in an oil-filled hurricane and catches fire, during Spring Break. "Flaming Flying Spring Break Dinoshark Attack: Daytona Beach." If you are reading this and you know Lorenzo Lamas, please tell him to clear his schedule. (May 27, 2010)

Movie Review: Iron Man 2: If there's a problem with "Iron Man 2," a story about a man who can shoot laser beams from his hands and missiles from his shoulders, it's that it needs some more conflict. We've got man vs. himself -- Tony Stark has to overcome his own self-destructive habits, like his drinking problem, because it was in the comic book and no one wants to be on the wrong end of a nerd letter-writing campaign. But there's really only one scene where his drinking is a "problem." We've got man vs. machine -- the technology that makes Tony Stark famous is also killing him. But it never seems like much of a threat, because they already have Robert Downey signed for "Avengers." (SPOILER ALERT) We've got man vs. man -- but not really that much. Ivan Vanko (Mickey Rourke, who is so "method" he apparently killed 18 people in Red Square to go to a Russian jail, so that his five scenes could be more authentic) sneak-attacks Tony Stark, who was completely unaware of his existence. Then he goes away, and Tony doesn't have to deal with him again until the end. Tony also has to deal with Justin Hammer (a defense contractor) and some jerk senator, but they don't actually ... struggle. I can't think of an action movie where the hero felt less threatend by his enemies. People scheme against Tony, but Tony doesn't know about it; they just plan on hitting him with a two-by-four out of nowhere, and seeing if he can take it. It's not a chess match. So this movie, while entertaining, well-produced and well-acted, has no tension. Tony deals with a lot of crap, but none of it is particularly gripping; and you can't rely on action sequences (there are really only three) to do the heavy lifting anymore, because most audiences aren't blown away by special effects these days. It's nice that they're willing to invest a bit in the characters, but the characters don't really grow that much. The major dilemma is solved by a deus ex machina and the rest of the problems are ... well, clubbed to death with violence. Not bad, but not great. You won't be unhappy with it, but I doubt you'll be walking away just DYING to see "Iron Man 3," or "The Avengers," or "Thor," or any of the other 69 scheduled Marvel movies in the next two years. Unless you work in a comic book shop, in which case, you're probably wearing Iron Man underoos as you read this. P.S. As far as plausible deniability goes, I am willing to accept a man in a flying metal suit with a computer butler. I cannot accept ... A) that no one in the movie is ever hurt by falling glass. At least twice, a crowd should have been cut to ribbons by showers of jagged glass. But no civilian ever appears to die or even suffer minor injuries at any point. Thanks, PG-13! B) that a defense contractor could roll out working prototypes of a mechanized product within a month. It would take at least five years for the bidding process. I'm willing to accept that the Norse god of thunder walks the earth, and will one day help a millionaire playboy in a mechanized suit to fight evil. But I draw the line at this depiction of the defense acquisitions process. Early Prediction "The Avengers" will be a turdburger. "X-Men" was OK, because they introduced all the characters at once. This time out, they're giving everyone on the team a movie in advance, then throwing them together in one movie. Too many characters, not enough screen time. I'm sure the production quality will be top notch, but heaven help the man assigned that screenplay. (May 23, 2010)

Movie Review: Hot Tub Time Machine: There's a good chance that you won't be considering the philosophical implications of a movie called "Hot Tub Time Machine," in which case you might want to rent this one day (I laughed, but not $11 worth of laughs). But if you think about it, this movie is a bit of a mess. Sitting here a day later, I'm almost sure that there has to be about 20 minutes of footage on the cutting room floor. It's like they tried to make a "message" comedy (albeit a silly one), decided the message wasn't working and just clipped huge chunks of it out. (Spoilers ahead.) The idea is that three middle-aged losers (and one young loser, and a guy in a bear costume) visit a ski resort and are transported back 20 years by a magical hot tub of completely unexplained origins. It's not "traditional" time travel, because the middle-aged guys are in their old bodies with all their memories in tact; in fact, the weekend they've traveled back to was a turning point for all three guys, when their lives started to go south. Then Chevy Chase appears as the magical "hot tub repair man" of unexplained origins, tells them that they have to be careful not to change anything in the past, and disappears. So they set off to recreate the crappy events of that weekend. Only, they individually decide that their lives suck so bad, they WANT to change the past to improve their futures. Only, when they try to change their past, they seem to get the exact same results as before, implying that there's some degree of fate. Only, their presence DOES alter some aspects of the past, implying that their knowledge of the future is largely worthless. Only, (BIG SPOILER ALERT) after some kind of epiphany one guy decides not to travel back to the present, and massively rewrites world history to the financial benefit of him and his friends, who missed about 20 years of fun by doing the right thing and returning to the present. Since John Cusack is attached to this, I'm almost positive there was supposed to be some sort of point; I just couldn't tell you what the hell it is because they keep breaking the rules as they set them. It seems to me that if you're writing this story, the characters either need to: a) stay the same and react to their crazy situation; or b) have their crazy situation change them in some way. "HTTM" goes for c) try to change, ultimately end up staying the same, but get all the benefits of change with no moral repercussions. And so it ends up like a lot of recent comedies: a string of mildly amusing scenes and concepts that don't quite get over the top. There's not a real attachment to the characters, instead it's "Hey, remember the '80s?" strung out past 90 minutes. Comedy is hard -- way harder than drama -- and I get the feeling that moviemakers don't want to put in the effort. Little asides, throwaway gags and conversational quirks are phenomenal, but they have to be attached to a coherent story. It doesn't have to be profound ("Airplane!" has a coherent story). Too many comedies these days focus on the asides, so there's nothing to really LOVE about them. Oh well. I did laugh a few times. But in the end it's nothing special, and as movie tickets creep closer in price to comedy club tickets, then I want to laugh as much as trip to the comedy club. (April 11, 2010)

Speedy Delivery: Since I run a multimillion-dollar operation from my palatial rental home, on occasion packages are delivered to the house. A little while back, a disturbing trend developed: if I wasn't home (i.e., in Hong Kong closing a deal with one of my distributors), the UPS guy (or sometimes the USPS guy) would leave a package on the side of the house, right next to the garbage cans but visible from the sidewalk. Now, my palatial estate is not on a "bad" block, but you can't really leave out Jack O'Laterns at Halloween, or bikes without locks, or anything valuable that you care about. The school kids across the street are often in their "stealing is fun, and my life is obviously going nowhere" phase, and since 11th St. is a bit of an arterial road, it's a convenient north-south route for people who are drunk in the middle of the day. Or as I like to think of them, zany characters! So you can see, there's some concern that a package might be stolen. Or that a neighbor might mistake it for garbage and throw it out. Or that it might get rained on. On Monday, I was working in my oak-paneled office when I heard the front gate open -- someone was here. I waited for the bell, but instead, I heard the gate swing again -- someone was leaving. I looked out the window to see the UPS truck. So I threw on a business suit and ran to the front step. The guy, now sitting in his truck, left a package on the side of the house, next to the recycling can. I was a little bit irritated, so I asked him to stop leaving packages on the side of the house. This was apparently a huge mistake on my part, as he got very agitated and told me that a "no signature required" pacakage can be left anywhere safe (which incidentally for my neighbors two doors down is directly in front of their door). I protested that the side of the house is not safe, and also I asked him why he didn't ring the doorbell. "Because you're never home!" he yelled, with such agitation that it made me feel like a deadbeat dad. I momentarily forgot that my being home was the one thing making this conversation possible. Then he said he was trying to help ME out, and he'd have to start sending packages back. This made me sad, because my driver is not well versed in "leaving a note" technology, whereby they tell me a delivery was attempted, and I instruct where a package SHOULD be left. FedEx is pretty good with this stuff, but I guess UPS doesn't want to invest in the betterment of its employees. Shame on you, Brown. Anyhow, the whole thing somehow ended with me apologizing (along the lines of "I'm sorry your wife is so ugly") and going inside with my package. But it gets better. Around 4 p.m., there was a knock at the door. So I put down my 4 p.m. martini, hustled downstairs, and opened the door to discover ... our postman, putting a package INTO a recycling can. Yes, he was putting a package INTO THE GARBAGE. Because that's where I usually look for my mail. In the garbage cans that I share with two other units. Now, if I was caught putting a package in the trash, I might be a little sheepish, but the postman, without flinching, told me "no signature required." So, if you're ever wondering why a certain piece of mail hasn't arrived yet, consider the possibility that you didn't root through your garbage every day. You really have only yourself to blame. I'd tell you the story of how Comcast left me on hold for an hour before I could activate my new digital cable box (the UPS package), but I think that's enough excitement for one day. (March 29, 2010)

Movie Review: Alice in Wonderland: According to some interview I read, Tim Burton didn't feel a "connection" to the Alice books; they're just a series of bizarre events strung together, and there's not much in the way of character development. And he's exactly right. That's exactly the style Lewis Carroll was going for. Also, half the characters are parodies of 19th-century British politicians, so adults today don't get any of the in-jokes. So for the movie, they ginned up a new story! Only, they built it out of the misshapen pieces of the original story. Since the whole thing is a daydream, it doesn't need to conform to the old books, but they decided to cram in all of the weirdos. I spent about half the movie trying to remember if Alice actually liked any of these characters the first time she saw them. Then once I stopped caring, I realized there was no reason for her to like them this time around. Everyone in Wonderland is insane, and not really in a way that inspires affection. That discomfort carried me through to the end. So, the story is mediocre, and the characters stink. They pretty clearly pumped up the Mad Hatter because it was Johnny Depp, but he's just not that interesting or sympathetic. There wasn't a ton of humor or whimsy (it's Tim Burton). But it did look cool. It had that 3D hammock -- lots of effects up front, a bit of a dip in the middle, then a big finish -- but the visuals were very impressive. If you want to drop $15 for something that looks cool, go for it. But as a straight-up movie, I'd say pass. (March 28, 2010)

Pacquiao vs. Dinoshark: Manny Pacquiao is a Filipino boxer who was fighting a Ghanaian boxer on HBO pay-per-vie Saturday night. "Dinoshark" is a made-for-TV movie on the SyFy network about a shark that is apparently also part dinosaur. It aired Saturday night. So two bold competitors were duking it out, with my personal happiness (and endorsement) as the prize. Let's look at the tale of the tape: Manny Pacquiao is 5'7" and fights as a welterweight. He's something like 53-3. Despite no significant reach advantage, he is an offensive machine, relentlessly pummeling opponents and often absorbing massive amounts of punishment as he looks for openings in their guard. His opponent was a fill-in, but the guy seemed both taller and more defined than Manny. At full length, the fight would be about 45 minutes. Dinoshark stars the guy who played Milo on the first season of "24," and even though it was in high definition, it appeared to be shot with a high-end consumer camcorder. It is an offensive machine, relentlessly pummeling viewers with a CGI shark that you could probably whip together yourself using iPhone apps. It runs 120 minutes with commercials. Too close to call on paper. So what about known weaknesses?: Manny Pacquiao was saddled with a truly horrible undercard. Going by appearances, everyone fighting appeared to be either a child molester or mentally impaired in some way. It's like someone went to a Mexican jail and said, "hey, we're totally willing to let that incident with the school bus blow over, IF you fight a slow Irish guy crippled by fetal alcohol syndrome on pay television." In fact, I'm pretty sure that most of the originally planned fighters must have eaten from the same hotel buffet and gotten some kind of parasite just hours before the event, and so the Mexican penal system was called on to save the day. Now, ultimate fighting has some crappy undercards on its shows, but those matches are short. The apparent plan of everyone on the Pacquiao undercard was to bore their opponent to death in the 12th round. Also, no one ringside at 95 percent of boxing matches (i.e. the people you see on TV) seems to care about anything happening in the ring. That's a full three percent worse than the NBA. Boxing is a horrible, dead sport. Dinoshark has commercial breaks, which makes it easy to flip away from Dinoshark. I won't lie: I missed large chunks of Dinoshark, including about 40 minutes where me and my brothers played Wii Sports Resort. So I can't tell you how Dinoshark got from Alaska all the way down to Southern California. I'm thinking he was frozen in a glacier and global warming somehow unleashed. Also, it bears repeating that Dinoshark has computer effects worse than those on 1980s Nickelodeon gameshows. Most shots of Dinoshark are a digitally added fin in the middle of a boat's wake, so that they can save money by not having to digitally ripple the water. Also, when Dinoshark eats a whole boat (he does this several times), there is no wreckage. It just sort of blinks off the water. This could just be a testament to the awesome power of Dinoshark, but I'm thinking it was tied to the $75,000 shooting budget. Of which $12,500 was probably tied up in Milo from "24." I guess the guy who played Chase in season 3 turned it down. Finally, Dinoshark relies on a lot of hand-held camera shots, so even on land the picture constantly sways. I guess a tripods turned it down. Any great matchup has intagibles. This is no different: Manny Pacquiao (or someone who knows him) arranged to have the national anthem of the Philippines sung by the Filipino Steve Perry sound-alike who currently tours with "Journey." This was pretty awesome. Also, because the fight was at Cowboys Stadium, both Jimmy Johnson, Jerry Jones and Barry Switzer were visible in the crowd shots. This was amusing at first, until we remembered that Jimmy Johnson is the new spokesman for Extenze, and then it just became a disturbing distraction. Does Jimmy Johnson have gambling debts? Or does Extenze have so much money they can get anyone? And if it's the latter, where is Extenze getting its money? Are people actually buying Extenze? You see the dilemma. Dinoshark was preceded by "Spring Break Shark Attack," so we were in danger of shark attack fatigue. But Dinoshark also had a script which read (and was acted) sort of like a soft-core porno, except that at the spots were people would start doing sexual things, Dinoshark would attack. That's a very big positive. And as for the fights themselves? Manny Pacquiao wins by unanimous decision. He didn't lose a round. He threw something like 1,200 punches and his opponent threw, oh, eight. Seriously, his strategy was: "I will let a great boxer punch me 1,000 times, while not counterattacking at all." I admit that getting punched 1,000 times by Filipino is not easy, and I could not do it (at least with consciousness for the duration). But I am pretty sure that 45 seconds of Manny Pacquiao inverting my nose while I try to land one solid punch would be reasonably entertaining to a crowd. At the very least, if I had lost the first 11 rounds, I would come out in the 12th doing arm windmills, or emulating someone from "Mike Tyson's Punchout." But hey, I'm a showman. Dinoshark kills an awful lot of people, but Milo gets revenge by ... wait for it ... riding directly at Dinoshark on a jetski, then jumping the jetski off a wave, then leaping from the jetski mid-air, as Dinoshark is leaping toward Milo, then throwing a grenade that blows up part of Dinoshark's gills. And you think Milo won, right? Not quite. As Milo lays in the water, Dinoshark resurfaces and stars slowly advancing on the surface toward Milo, flapping his teeth like a Hungry Hungry Hippo. At which point Milo's love interest shows up on a boat, says "Welcome to the endangered species list, you bastard," and shoots Dinoshark in the eye with a harpoon gun. I realize that killing a one-of-a-kind animal would actualy REMOVE it from the endangered species list, but you have to really see the movie to appreciate how great her delivery is. Also, at one point in the final sequence, Dinoshark leaps straight out of the water like a SeaWorld dolphin show and picks a parasailer clean out of a harness. The complete harness stays in tact and keeps flying; the guy is removed without breaking the apparatus at all. Dinoshark in a knockout. It's not even close. (March 14, 2010)

And the Oscar goes to ...: Another year, another disappointing Oscar broadcast. A roomful of the most successful entertainers in the world, and yet they can't put on an entertaining show. We ask the show to live up to a memory -- not of one particular standard, but of the most exciting moments our minds have cherrypicked from the last 20 years. Thank god I know how to fix this! Fewer Best Picture montages. If you haven't seen a movie, a two-minute tribute isn't going to suddenly convince you of its greatness. Why not just let the nomination speak for itself? A ban on thanking agents. People at home don't care about agents. Many of them would think "CAA" is the Colonial Athletic Association. Why waste your time running off a laundry list of names that mean nothing to the people watching at home? You can thank everyone in person after the show. Actual acting. Lots of the acting nominess come from smaller art films that few people have seen, so we have no opinions about who to root for. All nominees should therefore have attend the ceremony in character, with appropriate costume. They they should perform a scene from something with at least five actors that is readily accessible -- maybe something from "The Jeffersons" where both the neighbors and the maid are in the room. Only, they should perform as though it were the character acting in "The Jeffersons," not them. "Good Times" would also work. Then the audience applause-o-meter at the Kodak theater could determine the winner. I also am open to the directing nominees each getting a 30-minute chunk of the Oscar broadcast to prove their worth to an eager nation. Chimpanzees. Instead of playing a speaker off the stage with music, they should release angry chimpanzees once a speech hits the one-minute mark. If you didn't want angry chimpanzees, you could just release chimpanzees on Segways. If you can stay on the mic long enough to finish, you have earned it. Pneumatic Oscar gun. Rather than have people wander all the way up to the stage to give their speeches, when awarded an Oscar, they should have it fired at them by one of those pneumatic hot-dog guns from stadiums, only rigged to shoot Oscars. Also, Oscars should be modified to bear the visage of L. Ron Hubbard. No more movies that have already been released. Who gets pumped to go to the movie theater to see an old movie? The 2010 Academy Awards should be all about movies that will be released in 2010. Imagine how much MORE excited you'll be for "Iron Man 2" when it has already won 3 Oscars! Exciting, right? We should also reward concepts that sound intriguing, but do not yet exist. If best potential screenplay went to "Mammoth," a gritty crime drama about a beat cop who rides a wooly mammoth cloned from remains found in a glacier, then that might be just the thing that finally gets that project rolling. Incidentally, I have a script treatment if anyone wants it. Better announcing. Let's lose the shrill woman who runs down the achievements of each winner as they walk to the stage. Instead, let's get Morgan Freeman to read a list of each winner's sexual conquests. Death montage. Finally, the "in memoriam" montage should be modified. No longer should it honor the departed. Instead, it should list people whose careers have died. Either that, or people from all walks of life that the Academy of Motion Pictures would like to see dead. (March 8, 2010)

Feet of Clay: Barack Obama, the most powerful man in the world, could not demand than an army of statues be built for his tomb. Even if he thought it was a fun way to spend his book royalties and went through private contractors, his career would be over. So if he wants to be remembered, he has to try to "help people" or "solve problems." In that sense, the terra cotta warriors at the National Geographic Museum are really just another reminder that the world is no fun anymore. I'm sure living under the thumb of a homicidal maniac would have a few drawbacks, but if you were a Chinese peasant 2,200 years ago, at least you knew that your boss had panache. And panache is like the MSG of life: sure, it kills you, but it makes everything taste better. If you're not familiar with the legend, China's first emperor from the very start of his reign planned out an entire necropolis (meaning a city for the dead, like in Egypt, or Michigan). The thinking was that he would continue to reign in the afterlife -- why let a supreme being have all the fun? -- but you can't just show up in the afterlife and start bossing people around. The dead are very set in their ways. So, to facilitate this glorious paradigm shift in post-mortal macropolitics, the emperor had 1,000 of his closest living friends whip up a few thousand running buddies made from baked earth. A lot of these were fully armed soldiers, but there were also some pencil-pushers in there, because when your spirt army isn't happy with a sudden spike in payroll taxes you need a fall guy. (I'm not exactly clear on how lifeless clay statues make the jump to fully actualized spirit army, but it's probably something along the lines of "Pinnochio." Also, I did not see any terra cotta hookers, or females of any kind, so those clay soldiers would have been pissed. Just putting it out there.) The display at Nat Geo is the first time any of the warriors have left China (had the British discovered them, it would be a different story, but the Chinese stumbled on them around 1976). The select statues on display are kind of neat! They have a variety of jobs (accountant, horseman, lovable sidekick) and a variety of facial hair (soul patches? oh yeah!). They're all roughly life-sized, and it appears that some of them do have a kung-fu grip of some kind. The downside: there's not enough of them. Though well made, they aren't exactly high art; the whole "wow" factor is that there are THOUSANDS of the statues. You get to see about 10, plus some fine samples of ancient Chinese roofing tile. The roofing tile isn't pulling its share of the "wow." But I still welcome this display as an excellent reminder that, regardless of race or culture, crazy people are awesome. As soon as I find a dedicated revenue stream, I am commissioning a 300-seat necro-comedy club with a full audience and wait staff. If you're good with clay and you have a human-sized kiln, give me a call! Movie Review: North Face This is a pleasing addition to the "mountain climbing plus Nazis" genre, and while I do not think "North Face" will ever air regularly around Christmas, I'm putting it on equal footing with "The Sound of Music." It's 1936, and mountaineers everywhere are all atwitter over the Eiger (in Switzerland). People had climbed the mountain before, but they had used up all the pansy sissy foo-foo routes. The important thing here was to scale the north face, which is largely vertical, has tons of avalanches and rock slides and gets slammed by horrific and unpredictable weather. In other words, the MAN ROUTE. So these German guys, Toni and Andi (apparently, you can still be a man even if your name ends with an "i"), decide to knuckle up and give it a try. They go camp at the foot of the mountain with all the other climbing teams, then when the weather breaks at 2:30 in the morning, they go for it. Meanwhile, the press and rich people in tuxedos watch through telescopes at this chalet at the base of the mountain. The point isn't so much the acting, which is a little bland. It's more that they filmed a lot of this on location and it looks FREAKING AWESOME. Whatever portion of it was faked I have no clue, because when those guys are freezing to death on the side of the mountain, it looks pretty damn real. Seeing all that suffering, and the skin turning black from the freezing to death and whatnot, you wonder what motivates people to do these things. In 1936 there were no REI stores for these dudes to stock up; ropes were heavier, pitons were weaker, and nobody had Underarmor. Gatorade was but a twinkle in a climber's eye. Anyone taking this trip has to know they might not return, so how do you even start out? In the movie, they do paint up the "national pride" angle -- Hitler apparently had high hopes that some Aryan supermen would be the first guys to the top. But why would you risk death to get somewhere (the summit) that can be reached safely? Especially knowing that there is no added benefit to humanity for you having made the trip, unless you count scoring with chalet skanks as an added benefit to humanity. There's definitely something in the human spirit that compels us to try. Not MY spirit, specifically, but some humans' spirt. I'm more into eating sandwiches. (March 2, 2010)

Movie Review: Animated Shorts: In search of something different, I checked out the Oscar-nominated animated shorts, packed together into one screening along with a few bonus films. The five contenders below (massive spoilers for all of them): French Roast. A rich guy can't afford to pay for his coffee after losing his wallet, so he sits at the table hoping things will magically get better. Instead, they get worse. Not quite deep or funny enough to fill the 8-minute run time, and the animation isn't exactly eye-popping. Presentable, but it tops out at "cute." A Matter of Loaf and Death. Wallace and Gromit are funny in a British way, which means you won't really laugh all that much, but you will smile every now and then. And also Wallace has bad teeth. At 30 minutes this is twice is long as any of the other shorts, but it holds up -- the story is that Wallace (a baker in this episode) ends up dating a serial killer obsessed with bakers. Good, light-hearted fun! It's nothing too different from the other Wallace and Gromit films, but it is clever and consistently amusing. They color to the edges of the page with all the sets, and since it's stop motion it looks substantially different from the competition. Granny O'Grimm's Sleeping Beauty. This one struck me as an old-school "Saturday Night Live" sketch that just happened to be animated. A grandmother tells her pretty granddaughter a bedtime story: a beautiful princess is born, and while all the hot young fairies are invited to the christening, the old gassy fairy (i.e., grandmom) is left off the list. She crashes the party and curses everyone, so that if they ever fall asleep, they will die. Then she says good night. Morbid and good for a chuckle, but what's the point? It didn't need to be animated at all. The Lady and the Reaper. An old widow takes a look at a photo of her dead husband, lays down for bed, and dies in her sleep. The Grim Reaper comes to collect her, and she's almost in heaven when she is suddenly yanked back by a surgeon who looks like Johnny Bravo. The Reaper gets frustrated, so he kills her again; the doctor revives her again. Then there's a Bugs Bunny-esque chase sequence, as the doctor and his nurses square off with Death, carrying the old lady like a football. Death gets frustrated and gives up, but the old lady, on learning of her revival, punches the doctor in the face, then ELECTROCUTES HERSELF. This was very confusing. There were some good sight gags here, and again it was a morbid chuckle. It might have had a point about end-of-life issues, but that doesn't quite gel with the slapstick. Bizarre. Very, very bizarre. Logorama. This was the most frustrating of the bunch. The concept is great: it's a city (Los Angeles) in which every building and person is a corporate logo. The first few minutes (it runs for 16) you're just impressed with how clever it is, and how ubiquitous these images are in our life. And then ... nothing. There's a police chase, where Michelin man cops hunt down an evil Ronald McDonald, a lot of people get hurt in the crossfire, and then there's an earthquake. It's kind of funny, but the concept never pays dividends -- the story doesn't really seem to relate to the theme. In this case, it HAS to -- the theme is just too intriguing. Logos are symbols, so you need something symbolic to say. If there was a point here, I missed it, which is an absolute shame. If I have to pick a winner ... beats the hell out of me. With a better story I'd give it to Logorama, hands down. But as far as combining vision with execution, the best one was Wallace and Gromit. Honestly, my favorite short in the whole program was just an honorable mention. Pixar's "Partly Cloudy" played before "Up" in the theaters, and like most Pixar products it's close to perfect: inventive visuals, sweet sentiment and excellent humor. I guess no one wants to let Pixar big-foot these awards, though. Sigh. (February 26, 2010)

Movie Review: Shutter Island: "Shutter Island" isn't a bad movie -- it looks pretty, and it's refreshing to watch every character chain smoke -- but it is offensively mediocre. If you get that much talent into one film, it should elevate the material, right? Like, if Leonardo DiCaprio and Martin Scorsese decided to work on a teenage sex comedy, it should be a REALLY GOOD teenage sex comedy. As the women's field hockey team does jumping jacks in the shower, it should make you both laugh and truly appreciate the quiet and disturbingly human desperation of the sociopathic loner watching from his hiding place inside a locker. The genre here is psychological mystery: DiCaprio investigates a disappearance of a criminally insane inmate at an island asylum, which also supposedly holds the psycho who killed his wife and kids. And he thinks the guys running the place are experimenting on the inmates. The problem is, the psychology isn't that gripping and the mystery isn't that mysterious. About 40 minutes in you get the vibe that something is seriously amiss -- the action never leaves DiCaprio, so you only get his perspective, and that perspective is increasingly weird. So either there's something massively sinister at foot, or DiCaprio is bonkers. It's not too tough to figure out the answer about halfway through, and then you keep hoping for another twist that's not coming. By the end, the "actual" explanation is so logically implausible that nothing in the plot is entirely satisfying. If the lead was John Cusack and the production values were suckier, it would be perfectly acceptable entertainment. But that's not the case, so the real mystery is why DiCaprio and Scorsese would be pumped to work on this. It's not bad, but the screenplay is on par with something you might have thought up over lunch in a college dining hall. Expectations are not met. Go for the rental. P.S. -- the previews for "Shutter Island" were awesome, and they suggested that there was a horror / action element. This is completely not the case. Sausage Party! A few weeks ago my lovely girlfriend decided to organize a girls only brunch -- a chance for her to spend time with friends of the same hormonal imbalances. It was a smashing success, not only from a socializing standpoint, but also because it made me and several other guys extremely jealous. And so this Sunday, I hosted my first ever sausage party, in which guys gather to ... uh, eat sausages for brunch. Look, it sounded hilarious on paper. As if guys sitting around eating four kinds of sausage isn't manly enough, we also had an excellent and manly screening of ... Movie Review: Black Dynamite Every red-blooded American male worth his salt goes through a blaxploitation phase, because the movies combine male wish fulfillment, great music, nudity and karate/guns. "Black Dynamite" is not exactly a spoof of blaxploitation, but a careful re-creation, right down to the awful camera work and acting. Then once they establish that they can do a perfect imitation, they let it go off the rails and get progressively stupider. It's awesome. You should probably see it. Easily the best Michael Jai White film that I've ever seen. (February 22, 2010)

New Challenge: Pandemics: I have overcome the forces of tremendous apathy to finally post challenge 23. The topic is "Pandemics" and it was suggested by Cory Harris many moons ago. I've been using these jokes for months, but I just got around to taping them and posting it. Be warned that there is some profanity (it was a Thursday night and the crowd was demanding it). This is filmed in Philadelphia a tthe truly excellent Helium Comedy Club. (February 17, 2010)

Movie Review: Zombie! vs. Mardi Gras: I saw this movie on Tuesday night, at a screening by the local B-movie society. I knew it would be bad. I did not know it would be the film equivalent of getting stage 4 cancer in every body part simultaneously while also being set on fire. I don't want to revisit the memories, but the "story" is that ... oh, there is no story, and shots of women flashing the camera do not help. "Girls Gone Wild" has more gravitas. There's something about Galileo (the astronomer) trying to hunt down a zombie, but that sentence makes WAY MORE SENSE than what I watched. In an Ed Wood movie, at least the people are trying very hard. In this movie, the people involved seem to have an active hatred for the viewer. This whole movie might qualify as a hate crime. In conclusion, if Hurricane Katrina somehow worsened the life of anyone involved with this movie, then it was not entirely a bad thing. (February 16, 2010)

Movie Review: Avatar: Right up front: I really wanted to hate this movie. At a party, it's more fun to be the guy who complains about popular movies, especially if there's a science fiction theme. Nerds will take a challenge to their favorite movie as an assault on their entire worldview, so they go straight into nerd berzerker rage. It never ends with violence, but instead some kind of a challenge to play Guitar Hero to defend your honor. And then you have an opening to mock Guitar Hero. But "Avatar" wasn't bad! I usually don't like the combination of live action and CGI; computer environments almost always seem slightly off. Even if you're accepting the fact that it's an alien planet, once you know it's entirely inside a computer, it will never look "real." This however, was easily the best CGI I've ever seen in any movie, with the best use of 3D. And they didn't skimp by putting all the fun in an office park. It's mostly jungle, so they have to color to the edges of the page. There's no "wow" factor to CGI action -- it's pretty, but on a computer there are no stunts -- but the action sequences are put together nicely. I think I have to echo every other review I've read and say that it's worth it to see this movie just to appreciate the technical achievements. The story is crap; it's a rehash of "Dances With Wolves" and "The Last Samurai" with lots of corporation-bashing and heavy-handed eco-posturing. But it is well-acted, and the story did not anger me enough to make me forget about the effects. And more important, it gives you just enough ammo to anger those Guitar Hero nerds! SPOILER ALERT. Science has advanced enough to allow interstellar travel near the speed of light, cryogenic sleep, high-tech exo-skeletons and genetically engineered biological hosts into which consciousness can be transplanted. But the hero does not even have a motorized wheelchair. The evil corporation, despite having no morals and virtually no interest in the indigenous people of the planet, opts against an orbital bombardment. Spaceships are a slight tactical advantage when your opponents haven't advanced beyond bows. All the action takes place in a jungle where it never rains. On a planet swarming with flying carnivores, the primitive aliens opt to sleep in hammocks in a tree. The corporation has a multi-trillion dollar high-tech mining concern, but there doesn't seem to be any mining equipment or miners. There's so much bioluminesence that the entire jungle is like the sidewalk in the "Billie Jean" video. All the living things on the planet have some evolved some kind of biological USB port, but the only living thing that plugs in is the giant humanoid aliens. Despite a complete lack of advanced technology, all the aliens have perfectly white, straight teeth. That's just the surface. If this movie wins best picture, I'll puke, but it is entertaining. (February 10, 2010)

Frozen Fenway: Hockey is a fine sport that requires amazing skill and endurance, but it has one great flaw: very few hot dog vendors. Sure, you can go to the concourse and get a hot dog. But who wants to get up? If I wanted exercise, I'd play sports, not watch them. On Friday that great injustice was remedied. Boston College took on Boston University -- the college equivalent of Israel vs. Palestine -- and I was there, eating a hot dog purchased from a roaming vendor. The hot dog alone made it a special evening, but as an added bonus the game was outdoors in Friendly Fenway Park. It was about 20 degrees and snowing, and I was with 30,000 of my closest friends. It's strange to see hockey in a ballpark. Imagine going to the zoo, and when you get to the lion cage, there's a mime in there. Then as you're watching, the mime get mauled by a lion. Being a professional, he refuses to scream for help, but instead uses hand gestures to express how much agony he's in, until his head finally disappears inside the lion's mouth. It's nothing like that at all, but what a fun visual, right? Our tickets were on the third base line in the lower deck. Ordinarily I like being up high for a hockey game -- seeing the whole ice helps you appreciate how plays develop. But something magical about Fenway made the lower deck the place to be. Maybe it was the view of the Green Monster. Maybe it was the fact that the upper deck was windy, and about 20 degrees colder. Who knows? Some other magical observations: Pep bands. Both the BC and BU pep bands were in attendance, playing from their spots in the stands. If you've never played a brass instrument outside in the cold, here's what happens: the horn is cold, your breath is hot, and when the two touch there's immediate condensation. All the water then rolls back to your face, which chaps your lips and makes it very painful to play. Of course, since you're outside at a sporting event, you have to play even louder to be heard, which usually means pressing harder and more painfully against the horn. You suffer for three straight hours, you can't wander off from your seat, and (trust me) no one will be impressed enough with your effort to make out with your chapped, bruised face after the game. And yet both bands toughed it out, kicking out arrangements of today's urban radio hits for all three periods. I salute you, pep bands! And speaking of urban radio hits, the only black person we spotted the whole night was a player for BU. Hockey! In Boston! Standing. Nobody in the lower deck sat down; we stood for the whole game. You might think that we stood to help mobility, so that our toes would not turn black and fall off. Possibly. Or maybe everyone in the ballpark just loved hockey that damn much. Shirtless people. You always expect some shirtless people at Fenway, but not in January. There were quite a few college students with their shirts off, reminding me that I am very glad to be done with college. Besides, if I take my shirt off in public, there's usually rioting of some sort. I have to alert the National Guard before I go to the beach. These are the burdens I live with. Hot stuff. You know what goes well with hot dogs? Hot chocolate. It a shotgun wedding in my stomach, but the wedding night didn't seem too rowdy. The only disappointments on the night were BC taking the loss, and no one in the crowd offering their spontaneous thoughts on the quality of the New York Yankees. I can now scratch "outdoor hockey" off of my sports wishlist. I do not know when I will see a baseball game played entirely on ice, but after my time at Fenway, that dream seems a little closer. The Blockbuster staff recommends drama Brian recommends FIRST KNIGHT. Lady Guinevere realizes that King Arthur is sort of a creepy, boring control freak and finds herself drawn to the much cooler Lancelot. She tries to fight it, but Lancelot is so much better looking and laid back that Guinevere can't keep it in her pants. Even though Arthur runs the place. Great action, hot romance. Jen recommends FATAL ATTRACTION. A stupid fling, which seems fun at first, is recognized as a horrible, horrible mistake when someone gets clingy and majorly insane. Basically, something that could have been fun goes south in a hurry because someone can't let it go or keep their mouth shut. It's really serious stuff. People die. Pete recommends THE GOOD GIRL. A misunderstood loner finds out that his best friend's hot lady is a total skank who cheats with a co-worker. So he blackmails her into having sex with him! He gets away with it then the other guy dies. A great movie on so many levels. Phil recommends THE SECRET OF MY SUCCESS. Against a backdrop of sex and workplace intrigue, a relatively new hire rises to a position of great power in a matter of weeks by shrewdly manipulating his distracted co-workers. Sweet Night Ranger songs on the soundtrack, too. Mary recommends BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN. In essence, the story of people who have so many secrets that it starts affecting their job performance. It's serious stuff. People die. Joe recommends OTHELLO. A boss has a great girl, great buddies and career success. I haven't watched the whole thing yet, but man, Orson Welles in blackface is hilarious! (January 12, 2010)

New Podcast: Werner's toast: Sometimes you just have to do things for yourself. In this case, I've obtained audio footage of acclaimed German director Werner Herzog ("Grizzly Man," "Rescue Dawn") making a wedding toast for his good friends Gary and Linda. It's some touching, romantic stuff. You can get the file right here, or subcribe to the podcast through iTunes and you'll just get this sort of thing automatically downloaded. And this really won't be funny if you've never seen a Werner Herzog movie, so click accordingly. (January 11, 2010)

Movie Review: Youth in Revolt: Some spoilers here. Be warned. Here's your story: Nick, 16-year-old virgin with virtually no friends and a crappy home life (divorced parents, slutty mom) falls in love with Sheeni, a manipulative hipster girl (religious fanatics for parents) while on vacation. In order to live closer to her and have sex with her, he has to be "bad." In theory this will get him sent away from his mom, and it has the added bonus of turning the girl on. So -- in the interest of having sex -- he ruins his mom's life and his dad's life. He causes several million dollars in property damage. He intentionally ruins the life of the girl he claims to love (in part by drugging her); he horribly mistreats and strings along another girl in order to ruin his girlfriend's life; he pretty much erases any chance he'll have of going to college and leaving the world he hates. Again, this is just so he can have sex for the first time. This monomania could all be very funny if Nick was remotely likable. But instead, he's a high school hipster! If you don't know what a hipster is, that's the kind of person who rejects mainstream culture, then spends a lot of effort making sure that YOU KNOW that you're being rejected; they really care that everyone else knows that they don't care what everyone else thinks. Both Nick and Sheeni talk in such a way that, if you met them on the street, you'd feel the urge to punch them within three minutes. To emphasize how different they are, everyone else in the movie is a barely functioning cretin. High-school snobs don't make for sympathetic heroes. I suppose it's possible that Nick has been horribly mistreated by everyone in his life, and the "revolt" is merely revenge. Maybe that back story is in the book version. But in the movie, all we see is a disturbingly lucid and calculated effort to obliterate the happiness of just about everyone important in Nick's life. He has no regard for anyone else and shows no real remorse for his actions (the Michael Cera monotone doesn't really help in this regard). Sheeni comes off like a cruel bitch for putting him up to it. Call me old-fashioned, but I think you need someone to be happy for as the credits start to roll. I definitely laughed at a few of the simpler moments -- there are two very funny car crash sequences -- but for a comedy, the whole thing needs a bit more warmth. (January 10, 2010)

Movie Review: Up in the Air: This move does not stack up with the "King of the Hill" episode where Dale gets to fire people. George Clooney is no Dale Gribble. But it's not bad! It takes on a lot of interesting themes -- employment, self-worth, emotional attachment -- and it doesn't say anything conclusive about any of them. So it can't really piss you off! It's arty without being too arty, and any time it starts to get too arty, you can just concentrate on how hot Vera Famiga looks. George Clooney plays George Clooney (aging, single, sort of sad). His job is to fly into a city, conduct layoffs for the company that hired him, then move on to the next city. He spends most of his life traveling, has almost no significant personal relationships of any kind, and even though he lives out of a carry-on suitcase 300 days out of the year he never needs ironing. But when his lifestyle is threatened by technology (firing by teleconferencing), he takes a closer look at the value of human contact. In turn, he starts to second-guess his attitude toward his personal relationships. The whole thing might be a tad anti-corporate, but for the most part there's admirable restraint. And there is one plot development that is genuinely surprising and plausible -- the ending was not at all what I expected. You don't get that much from movies these days. So: not the best movie of the year, but it's definitely high quality. Since there are 532 Best Picture Nominees this year, it'll be on that list. Movie Review: Sherlock Holmes I enjoy a good mystery, and the big mystery of "Sherlock Holmes" is who signed off on the script. It's awful! (MINOR SPOILER ALERTS) Though Sherlock Holmes is the only man in London capable of stopping him, the bad guy willingly ignores an opportunity to blow up both Holmes and Watson. Really. He anticipates their arrival at a completely expendable building, lets them d*** around in that completely expendable building for about 10 minutes while completely aware of their presence (he essentially traps them in the building!), lets them leave the building, then blows up the building. More specifically, he relies on the heroes hitting a tripwire to blow up the building. This is the same bad guy smart enough to orchestrate a horrifically elaborate plan that brings him within seconds of taking over the British empire. Holmes solves one murder where he is never at the scene, never sees the body and never sees any of the evidence. He deduces actions at that murder scene that would be impossible to know, since the only person who would tell Holmes about them is the guy who got murdered. America is described as being weak from the Civil War, more than 25 years after the Civil War had ended (1891). Radio waves are important to the plot, though the "wireless age" was about 20 years away. There's a red-headed midget with no speaking parts. How can you forget the Chekov rule? YOU DON'T HAVE A RED-HEADED MIDGET IF YOU AREN'T GOING TO USE THE RED-HEADED MIDGET. About 10 minutes of the movie is devoted to setting up the sequel. They couldn't put together one coherent story, but they are already at work on the second movie. Basically, when it's time to advance the plot, Holmes pulls 15 observations out of his butt and they run off to the next disaster. In that sense it's not entirely divorced from the Holmes books, but you can't get away with that crap in a movie. I think we're all happy that Robert Downey Jr. has't gotten caught with a hooker or checked into rehab lately, and he's a fine actor. But good performance plus bad script equals bad movie. Case closed. (January 3, 2010)

Movie Review: Pirate Radio: Did you know that in the 1960s, the British government BANNED ROCK AND ROLL FROM THE RADIO? And that it took an AMERICAN to show them how to rock again, by STICKING IT TO THE MAN? Only, rock and roll was never banned, the pirate stations operated largely under the purview of the law, and the Brits had plenty of hard-drinking lowlifes to do their own rocking. The commercials for "Pirate Radio" (based on actual events, sort of!) also play up Philip Seymour Hoffman and January Jones, probably on the calculation that Americans won't see a movie about British people. You know, because of the language difference. January Jones has one scene, and Hoffman isn't really important to the plot. Technically, NO ONE in the movie is important to the plot, because there isn't a plot. Here's the movie: an 18-year-old is sent to live on a "pirate radio" ship by his mom. We don't know anything about him or what he was like before he got to the ship, but it doesn't really matter, because there's no actual character development for anyone in the movie. It's not clear what the 18-year-old actually DOES on the ship, but he does meet all the radio personalities, who are zany and crazy and bang lots of chicks (whenever the chicks come aboard). Pirate radio is legal, but a few guys in the British government don't like it much and want it shut down. They never have any direct confrontation or interaction with the pirates, and for 85 percent of the movie everything they do is completely ineffectual. The pirates never have any indication that they are threatened, so there's no actual drama or battle with authority. There's just a bunch of scenes where they do stuff on the ship. But somewhere in there, some fishermen fall of a boat in the North Sea and have their distress call blocked by a pirate radio signal. They die. So the government bans pirate radio over what could be seen as legitimate safety concerns. [SPOILER ALERT SPOILER ALERT SPOILER ALERT] But the pirates decide they're GOING TO KEEP ON ROCKING! This plan involves broadcasting illegally and on the move, even though that means they'd need fuel and would be caught within a week. Good thing their engine blows up! The boat sinks, but the fans of the station come pick them out of the water, so apparently rock triumphed. What's the point? Beats the hell out of me! There are some entertaining scenes and a few funny lines, but don't waste your money. I don't know why people would produce a movie with no plot or conflict, but I guess money is easy to come by these days. Oh, Rape, You Kill Me! In "Pirate Radio," the sort-of hero wants to lose his virginity, so a DJ comes up with a plan: the DJ will get a groupie naked and ready to sleep with the DJ, then shut off all the lights. At that point the hero will come in and have sex with the woman in the dark, before she realizes the switch. Except for the fact that it's rape, that's HILARIOUS! (November 12, 2009)

Movie Review: Where the Wild Things Are: If you're an adult, you've already absorbed whatever this story has to offer (and if you haven't you never will). If you're a kid, you're going to be confused or bored. If you're a really little kid, you're going to have nightmares. From what I can tell the target audience is furries. The whole thing looks very pretty and the acting is fine, but it's slow as dirt and oddly unmoving. It has the story arc of a 1980s family sitcom episode, which is unsurprising because the book is about 10 sentences long. There's not enough coloring outside the lines to make a movie. If you see it, I don't think you'll have a bad reaction. You just won't have much of a reaction at all. Feels Like the First Time The way I figure it, to become a furry, you'd have to: 1) Be in a social situation where you're in costume. 2) Have that sitution somehow turn sexual. 3) Be chemically impared enough, or had enough trauma in your life, that you're willing to go for it. 4) Enjoy that experience enough to make it an organizing principle for your social life. And yet they're out there. Keep reaching for that horrifying, perverted rainbow, friends! (October 18, 2009)

New Podcast: Donnell Rawlings: Donnell was on "Chappelle's Show." He was Ashy Larry, and he's also the guy who famously says "I'm rich, bitch!" So guess what I didn't ask him about AT ALL? Instead, we get into his time in the Air Force, how his mom made him laugh when he was growing up, and the sorts of things you have to do for a good time when you're stationed in South Korea. Plus he throws the race card on me about three times. I really enjoyed talking with him. Go get it over at the podcast page. I command you! New Column! Today McSweeney's Internet Tendency released the second installment of "Chris White Answers Profound Questions About the Presidents." This time out I'm determining if the president should have a beard. I think you'll like the conclusion. Movie Review: Zombieland This was very entertaining. It wasn't all that scary, it wasn't all that hilarious, but it did everything pretty well and wrapped up in about 90 minutes. It also has one of the best extended cameos you'll ever see in a movie. I will not spoil it by revealing it here, and god bless the people who kept it out of all the commercials and previews. It's very rare to be surprised by a movie cameo these days, and you forget how fun that can be in a packed theater. The only big problems are the usual ones with "rage" zombies. They would never exist. If your zombies are animated by evil, then all bets are off -- dark magic can do whatever the hell it wants. But if some kind of virus is destroying humanity, we have to talk: 1) How is it spreading? By biting, I know. But why are rage zombies attacking people, taking a bite and then letting them go? Why wouldn't they just kill them and keep eating their bodies? Sure, some people will get away mid-attack, but that's a small number. 2) How are they living? See, rage zombies aren't "dead." They have to eat. And considering their size, they have to eat a lot. In most movies, they lose the capacity to prepare a delicious meal or even open canned food, so all they're eating is animals, humans or other zombies. Food stock would be depleted pretty quickly. If you found a cabin on a mountain with about three months of Spam you'd probably make it through. 3) Why is the power always operating? I'm pretty sure a lot of power utilities would go down once all the maintenance workers were dead and enough zombies crashed into telephone poles. These are serious problems, but I'm happy to report that watching Woody Harrelson with a submachine gun is enought to make you forget about them for 90 minutes. (October 5, 2009)

No ifs, ands ...: Thursday was a busy day for Chris White Enterprises. I left the house at 9 to take the subway downtown for a podcast. Then I spent a few hours doing some copy editing at my part-time office. Then I walked 20 minutes into Adams Morgan to drop off some promotional materials, did some shopping and hanging out, walked to Dupont Circle, had a beer with my girlfriend, hit up an open mic, then took the subway home. I was in public or office settings for 14 straight hours. When I got home, I took off my jeans, and square in the middle of the butt was a big piece of a parking sticker. I recently swapped out the DC parking sticker on my car, and a remnant of the old sticker must have landed on the driver's seat. I had worn the same jeans Wednesday night when driving to a show; that's when I picked up the sticker. So, for 14 hours, NO ONE WAS LOOKING AT MY BUTT. I'm canceling the swimsuit calendar shoot. Happy Rosh However It's Spelled! May your matzah ball drop at midnight. Just Friends I hate to say it, but "Just Friends" has now taken its rightful place in the Pantheon of Movies I Must Watch to Their Conclusion Regardless of When I Flip Past Them. It stands proudly with "New Jack City," "Back to School" and "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington." In a related note, I would like to reiterate my position that it is possible to calculate with precision the exact point in a career that a hot actress should first go topless, so that she can maximize box-office receipts. String guys along for a few years to build up demand, then unleash before you're yesterday's news. Amy Smart missed the mark by a few years. DCAC! Every day you're getting a reminder: DC Arts Center, September 26, 7:30 p.m. Tickets are just $10 and it's going to be a hell of a show. If you're in the Washington area and you like fun then you should be there. (September 18, 2009)

Little Falls Tomorrow!: People of the upstate New York area: here's your big chance! Tomorrow night I will be kicking off my "I Take Requests" tour at the Stone Mill in Little Falls. It's a fine evening that involves stand-up, videos, trivia and a little bit of singing as well. Good times are guaranteed. You can get tickets online (links through the Stone Mill site), and they're just $10. I will also be available to high-five anyone who wants it after the show. Movie Review: District 9 "District 9" is about a South African middle manager who enjoys aborting alien babies, but then learns some important lessons about respecting intelligent life, regardless of the package it comes in. He expresses his newfound knowledge with a gun that turns people into small chunks of meat, instantly. It's very good, and I'd probably like it even better if I had grown up in apartheid South Africa and all the movie's themes could truly resonate with me. As it was, toward the end I was mostly wondering why we don't have more splatter guns as a means to solve the world's problems. The only drawback: the horrible, slanderous portrayal of Nigerian crimelords. I think Nigerian crimelords have suffered enough at the hands of Hollywood, and it's about time we stopped painting their rape, murder and extortion with such broad strokes. SHAME ON YOU HOLLYWOOD! SHAME! Just kidding. Nigerian crimelords are total jerks. Showbusiness! Say someone is a really good painter, so they go on tour, charging $30 a head ... so people can hear them sing. Does that sound dumb to you? Then you don't understand the stand-up comedy business, my friend! New Video: Guilt-Off (August 25, 2009)

Movie Review: (500) Days of Summer: You'd be hard-pressed to call any movie relationship genuine, but I think "(500) Days of Summer" comes close. It's not meant as a happy story, really, but as the evolution of something simple to one person and complicated to the other -- exactly the kind of thing a lot of people have stumbled through in their 20s. There's lots of posturing about the nature and possibilities of love, but when theory meets practice everyone gets lost in a muddle. There's a boy who believes he's found the one girl the universe has created for him, only the girl, for whatever reason, doesn't believe in love and does not want commitment. She's happy to enjoy a companionship beyond friendship (she has a hint of crazy in her, enough to believe that it's all OK), and he's enamored enough to try to convert her on the fly. The whole thing is strangely honest, with great flashes of humor and not too much self-importance. I'd put it in a category with "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind": a fun way of telling a common story, without any trite bludgeoning. I'd highly recommend it. For the Hall and Oates dance number alone. Songs You Should Know: "Me and Mrs. Jones." It's Monday! And I actually remembered this time, so here's a second installment of Songs You Should Know. The original, and best, version of this song was recorded by Billy Paul. You've definitely heard this. It's about a guy meeting a married woman at a cafe and how they can't seem to break things off, what with the loving being so good. I don't know what was in the water in the '70s, but I'd estimate that about 45 percent of the hits from that era were about people having extramarital affairs that were BLOWING THEIR MINDS. Collectively, it's a great sales pitch for adultery, as many of the people singing cannot sleep, eat, operate heavy machinery or bear to be around their children, such is the compelling nature of the sweet, forbidden loving. So, was pop culture driving the trend, or responding to it? If you answered "Who cares? I just have to have it. Damn," then you're in the right place! Download this song, learn it by heart, and then go to a karaoke night. Find a couple sitting somewhere in the room that you do not know, then when you get up to sing, do the the whole song staring at the woman. Never break eye contact. If you are a guy, you will get a good story out of this. If you are a girl, you will get a REALLY good story out of this. Pittsburgh! Hello from Pittsburgh! I am in this fine city for some leisure, meaning my brother scored Pirates/Phillies tickets for Tuesday. Sure, I miss the 80 percent humidity and 90 degree heat of Washington, but you have to go where the team is. We all make sacrifices, and this is mine. (August 24, 2009)

Hamilton Arts Collective: About a year an a half ago, I decided to expand my "I Take Requests" show outside of DC. I set up a date at the Hamilton Arts Collective in Baltimore. I was pumped. And then the venue shut down for about a year, to make some building upgrades. BUT THEY'RE BACK, BABY! And so am I. "I Take Requests" comes to Baltimore on Saturday, September 12 at 8 p.m. Tickets are $10. If you want to find out more about the venue (and you should!) go visit hamiltonarts.org. Movie Review: The Hurt Locker The opening epigraph to "The Hurt Locker" says something about war being addictive, and then the next two hours the movie studies what that means. It follows a bomb tech squad in Iraq in 2004, but unlike most recent war movies, it isn't "about" Iraq -- there isn't a bunch of hamfisted moralizing and grandstanding. It's about the bomb techs, how they react under the stress of their job and the toll that job takes on them. I don't know if it's 100 percent accurate, but it is very gripping. A lot of recent action movies have no sence of space -- quick cuts, closeups and jerky camerawork mean you never have any concept of the physical positioning of assailants or the actual environment they're moving in. (Every chase in "Quantum of Solace," for example, is just awful.) "Hurt Locker" doesn't have much in the way of fast-paced action, but the setting for each call they go out on (defusing unexploded ordinance, IEDs, car bombs) sets up some serious tension -- in Baghdad, they have rubble and blind alleys and balconies all around; people watching who could be innocents or terrorists with remote detonators; and a million places for enemies to hide or attack from. The pacing is close to real time. It's really, really well done. And it's open-ended. You get to see the characters strain and crack a bit, but I don't think you get steered to a specific conclusion, which I like. Each of the three guys on the squad has his own issues, and at the end, they aren't really resolved. It's a character study, mostly. Highly recommended, and I'll be shocked if this isn't one of the 10 best picture nominations this year. (August 3, 2009)

Movie Review: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince: Sometimes you don't really WANT potato chips, but a friend is having a bag of potato chips, and so you eat a few potato chips, and then over the course of seven or eight years as you sit around talking, you absent-mindedly eat most of the potato chips. You don't really care about having more potato chips, but why bother putting away the rest of bag? You sort of have to finish it at that point. And so I walked into "Half-Blood Prince." I don't really get sucked in (never read the books). I have no emotional investment in any of the characters. The production is top-notch, but as it's completely saddled with an awful narrative structure (for movies), it doesn't do much to build dramatic tension and the humor is sparse and unsustainable. Somehow they manage to make magic seem mundane. BUT I saw the first five, so I have to finish the bag. Here's the a big problem: Movie Dumbledore is a d-bag. Every movie, there's some mystery Dumbledore tells Harry about. Harry spends a few months solving the mystery, then Dumbledore tells Harry that HE KNEW THE SECRET ALL ALONG. It's like someone sending you to the store to pick up beer on a Sunday, and you have to go to 12 stores to find somewhere that's open, and then when you get back they're drinking a beer on the couch. They had it in the basement all along, but they just wanted to see if you could get the beer yourself! Oh, and a few of your friends died while you went looking for the beer. Oops! There's probably lots of info in the books that justifies this kind of behavior, but as I will never read the books, ever, I will continue to be vaguely dissatisfied straight on through the last two movies. Which, make no mistake, I will definitely see. I would like to take this last paragraph to once again champion the cause of Mr. Ron Weasley, the true hero of this saga. With no special talent for magic, no massive collection of magical items and bearing the scorn reserved for redheads, Ron manages to mack on the ladies, pull numerous chestnuts from the fire and provide all the comic relief. Ron, you are a great American. Even though you're British. P.S. -- shortly before watching this movie, a friend spilled a large, cold soda on my crotch. If you are a big fan of Harry Potter you can take all this with a grain of salt. (July 28, 2009)

New Versions of Movies, If Characters Heeded Things Yelled at the Screen at Theaters I Frequent: Drag Me to Hell. After a violent encounter with a gypsy woman she had denied a loan extension, attractive loan officer Chris notices the gypsy's car in the parking garage as she heads for home that evening. She then GETS A DAMN SECURITY GUARD to walk her to her car. When the gypsy woman attacks, the guard easily puts her in a choke hold. Now able to focus on her work, the loan officer is promoted to assistant bank manager and spends the next 70 minutes approving small business loans -- a hell she has shockingly dragged herself to. The Hangover. Poised to do a shot of Jaegermeister on the roof of Caesar's Palace, the four friends suddenly realize, THAT'S A BAD IDEA. Understanding that debauchery never should have been planned the same week of the wedding, they experience only the hangover of buyer's remorse after paying $60 to see Louie Anderson at Excalibur. The Exorcist. Father Merrin prepares to drive the devil from Regan MacNeil, thereby saving her innocent soul from eternal damnation. But on seeing her grisly visage, he DOESN'T GO NEAR THAT CRAZY BITCH. Though Regan dies, Father Merrin stays on at Georgetown and finds redemption as a booster for the basketball team, even dressing on occasion in the bulldog mascot costume, with his career ending triumphantly in 1984 in a passionate embrace with Patrick Ewing following the title game. But the demons live on, haunting Ewing throughout his NBA career. Jaws. Chrissy Watkins, sensing danger, GETS THE **** OUT OF THE WATER. Naked and exhilirated by her brush with death, she opts to explore her burgeoning sexuality with numerous partners of both genders that summer, only to succumb to the ravages of gonorrhea, a shame which will haunt her more than any shark ever could. Raiders of the Lost Ark. Contemplating the entrance to the Well of Souls, Indiana Jones listens to the voice in his head: DON'T GO DOWN THERE WITH THOSE SNAKES! Forfeiting the Ark to the Nazis, Jones passes the time in the canteens of Cairo as Hitler overruns Europe by harnessing the awesome power of YHWH. Casablanca. At the airport, Rick is overwhelmed at thought of losing Ilsa and instead decides to HIT THAT as a distraught Laszlo looks on helplessly. Though Major Strasser arrives moments later, Rick JACKIE CHANS HIS ASS. The personal victory for Rick is offset by the terrible blow to the resistance, as an emotionally crippled and no longer inspirational Laszlo turns to drinking. Louie is executed days later by the Germans, and Hitler overruns Europe in montage to "As Time Goes By." Doubt. Called to Father Flynn's office, the meek Donald Miller yells OH HELL NO! and spends the rest of the day hanging around a pool hall. He is expelled, leading the audience to doubt only why exactly everyone in this movie got an Oscar nomination. Synecdoche, New York. Caden Cotard, searching for a way to cheat death, instead says WHAT THE HELL IS THIS CRAP, THIS SUCKS, and kills himself. To fill out the remaining 87 minutes needed to make feature length, Hitler overruns Europe by harnessing the awesome power of YHWH to "As Time Goes By." (June 23, 2009)

New Podcast: Judah Friedlander: Better late than never! Last week I talked to Judah Friedlander of "30 Rock" and "American Splendor" fame. I think the conversation is a little slow at the start, but once it gets rolling he shares his thoughts about quite a few aspects of Hollywood. Neat stuff. Go get it at the podcast page. Movie Review: The Hangover The plot: stupid people do stupid things for about two hours, and in the end, no one really has much in the way of redeeming qualities. But it's entertaining! If I have any beef, it's that they put a lot of the best surprises in the commercials and previews -- there was lots of fresh stuff (especially from Zach Galifianakis), but it would have been a better overall experience if you didn't know Mike Tyson figured into the plot, for example. And we should all note that, once again, Bradley Cooper plays a total d***. He's now officially the go-to a-hole for any comedy of the next five years. Movie Trailer Review: Bruno I also got to see the "Bruno" trailer for about the 20th time, and I have to say: Meh. I definitely laughed at parts of Borat, but as we brace ourselves for the flood of stories about Bruno's stunning indictment of homophobia and that sort of thing, I have to say I don't buy any social angle. In the Sasha Baron Cohen movies, I think the common thread is extremism -- he poses as a horrible, outrageous version of some kind of stereotype and then hammers away at regular people until he gets an awkward reaction. I even read an interview with his collaborator, Dan Mazer (in Mike Sacks' excellent book "And Here's the Kicker") where Mazer admits that they would just walk out on any segment where the interview subjects weren't having hostile enough of a reaction. Editing then makes everyone seem worse. It can be funny, but is it really social commentary? Yeah, there are intolerant people, but there's a difference between being uncomfortable with an unfamiliar subculture and being goaded into an embarrassing display by a team of people who are actively trying to be horrific stereotypes. (June 22, 2009)

Movie Review: Drag Me to Hell: "Drag me to the movie theater for another viewing!" --chriswhitesucks.com This was an entertaining movie which, at PG-13, was my kind of scary. I'm not really a torture and graphic dismemberment kind of guy. No, I'm an "old gypsy woman vomiting worms on someone's face" kind of guy. If I'm ever single again, that will be the first line in my eHarmony profile. It might shock you to discover that this is a movie about someone, amazingly enough, getting dragged to hell. In this case, it's a hot loan officer. Her only realy crime, aside from dating the "Mac" guy (Justin Long, who only could inspire me to buy a Mac if I could then beat him to death with it), is being in the wrong place at the wrong time. She forecloses on a gypsy lady, who promptly summons a demon that will haunt the girl for three days and then take her soul to burn in eternal torment. If anything, this movie clarifies why gypsies have been shunned and persecuted for centuries: because apparently, they are jerks. The move begins with a gypsy cursing a 9-year-old who stole a necklace from her. There is no juvenile detention for gypsies. Steal a necklace? BURN IN HELL. Deny a loan extension? BURN IN HELL. Buy the last scone at Starbucks with a gypsy right behind you in line? Do not pass go, my friend. All previous philsophical struggles over right and wrong have become irrelevant, because that gypsy is gonna throw the BURN IN HELL card. They're like the douchebag who goes all in on every hand at poker night. Anyhow, the loan officer does not really WANT to go to hell, so the story arc has her fighting off hallucinations, and trying to impress her boyfriend's parents, while dabbling in the occult in her spare time. You know, in between the gym and sudoku. The whole thing is campy and scary in just the right amount, and I salute Sam Raimi for taking all his newfound Hollywood clout to make a movie exactly like "Evil Dead" with no-name actors. Find what you love to do and do it well, baby. As a final note: I saw this horror movie at an urban movie theater, at 10:15 on a Saturday night. And the majority-black audience managed to live up to EVERY STEREOTYPE of a black horror-movie audience. Yelling advice at the characters never gets old. It would really help most Merchant-Ivory productions. Somebody get working on this. Movie Review: Star Trek As a Star Trek enthusiast and JJ Abrams unenthusiast, I was fully prepared to despise this movie. But I couldn't do it! It was entertaining. All the effects looked way better than in any other Star Trek, and the acting was pleasant enough. If they're planning a whole new series of movies, I'm not sure why they tore apart the entire Star Trek universe and all the back story, since doing so wipes away all of the character relationships that they had built up in the TV show. [SPOILERS AHEAD] I'm also not sure why most of the crew seemed relatively unmoved or emotional after watching the most heinous act of genocide ever perpetrated. And I don't get how they could be so cavalier about making a new black hole in relatively close proximity to earth. Or why when they made that black hole they stayed around to gloat, and then almost got sucked into the black hole. And come to think of it, I don't see how the paradoxes of time travel would work out. Or why anyone would build a mining ship to include staggered, floating walkways with no guard rails over fatally high chasms. Or how a mining ship could last in the alpha quadrant undetected for 25 years with no access to space docks. Or how Eric Bana ever gets work. Hey, wait a minute -- I DESPISE THIS MOVIE! OK, not really. It was pretty good. Space ... I am not a "Trekkie." I do not own any costumes, memorabilia, toys, or novels inspired by "Star Trek." I cannot speak any Klingon. I have never been to a Star Trek convention. And yet I have seen almost all the movies, every episode of "Next Generation," every episode of "Deep Space 9," almost every episode of "Voyager" and a pretty good chunk of the original series. If there is a better phrase for what I am, please share it! E-mail me at chris@dcstandup.com. And please, you can do better than "nerd." (June 15, 2009)

Mr. Zip : Of the many things I have never done, zip lining, as of Saturday, is no longer one of them. I could have started out in the rainforests of central America or the mountains of the Pacific Northwest, but being a man, I cut my teeth in the astonishing wilds of Savage, Maryland. Arriving at Terrapin Adventure, I boldly stepped into and adjusted my crotch harness. Then I walked, as normally as possible while wearing a crotch harness, a gruelling uphill path through a parking lot, so that I could stare death in the face. There was about a 20 minute wait to stare death in the face, so I stood in line. Then I climbed a 20-foot ladder to stand on a small platform, where a woman gave me a cable, and let me know that death would be seeing me ANY TIME NOW. Then I walked across a wire (I was harnessed, so while death might have had me in its peripheral vision, it was not staring in my face) to another platform, where a man gave me instructions on how to stare death in the face, then hooked a clip to my crotch harness and attached me to the zip line. Turning now to face death, I HOPPED, yea, HOPPED from the platform and into the cold beam of its steely gaze. At which point a slid as many as FIFTEEN FEET about the ground! Yea, I was one with the eagles, as I soared at more than twice the height of an average man, at speeds approaching that of a cheetah, were that cheetah moving at the speed of a sprinting man of reasonable health! And then, 15 seconds later, another man walked over to where I was dangling with another ladder, and unhooked my crotch from the line. There are but 20 items left on the list of things yet to do, with "Knife-fight a Hobo King in a Railyard" as the most logistically feasible. I'm packing my handkerchief and heading to Union Station at some point in the next week. You shall be kept abreast of the results. Movie Review: Up Just a fabulous movie, in so many ways that it's hard to list them all. It's inventive, whimsical and goofy at times to the point of hilarity. And it has some very real sentiment. I very seldom get emotionally moved by any kind of artistic endeavor, but this movie marks the second time that Pixar made my eyes water. There's a sequence at the beginning of the movie, running down a 50-year relationship in about three minutes, that has more poignancy and depth as a cartoon than any sequence with live actors could ever have. What Pixar is doing as a movie studio the last decade is nothing short of astonishing. Go see it. You won't be unhappy with your decision. (June 6, 2009)

Movie Review: Monsters vs. Aliens: When monsters fight aliens, the only true winners are the viewers. Or at least that's that the theory that inevitably led to "Monsters vs. Aliens"! The plot revolves around monsters fighting aliens, or more specifically one alien that clones itself. The monsters have been held as military prisoners, often for the better part of a century, but instead of having uncontrollable rage toward humankind, they're pretty much fancy free and raring to save the world. Probably because they were TORTURED! Enhanced interrogation: it gets results. The chief monster is a woman named Susan, who was hit by a meteorite which imbued with amazing powers, like the ability to not be crushed by a meteorite. Also, it makes her 50 feet tall and improves her self-esteem. The movie never addresses the most serious issues, like the personal hygeine demands of a 50-foot woman, but instead focuses on Susan using cars like rollerskates and beating up giant robots. And the whole thing is in 3D, which has the amazing effect of making some scenes sort of blurry and harder to watch, but at the end of the movie you do own a great pair of glasses that make you look like an 80-year-old Jewish retiree. Grousing aside, this was pretty enjoyable, if a little disappointing. The writing just wasn't that sharp. There are a bunch of little sci-fi references tossed in, and some of the character design is cutesy, but the whole 90-minute movie didn't have many more laughs than one 22-minute episode of "Futurama." There are a few brilliant touches -- the alien's mandatory plot exposition speech is great. But overall ... just not much more than a few smiles. Pixar spoils us all. Supreme Being I hereby throw my hat into the ring for the opening on the Supreme Court. While I have no "qualifications," my dad is a lawyer, I live in walking distance of the office, and I would very entertaining. I'd write all my own opinions! And I'd be sure to cite "The Golden Girls" as the foundation of my most of those opinions, especially any episode where they had to watch Dreyfuss for Harry. Civil service, baby! I would also like to take this space to say David H. Souter can bite me. He once described his life as having the "best job in the world in the worst city in the world." David H. Souter apparently has never partied in downtown Grozny, maybe because there IS NO DOWNTOWN GROZNY, because it's a rubble pile. I submit that Grozny is therefore worse than Washington, D.C., and I move that perhaps we should revisit any Supreme Court decisions where Souter was the key vote, as he clearly has horrible judgment. And call me old fashioned, but I like good judgment in my judges. (May 4, 2009)

Movie Review: Duplicity : Much like the last movie I saw starring Julia Roberts and Clive Owen ("Closer"), no one in "Duplicity" is really on a fundamental level a good person. They're all petty, horrible and selfish, to the point where they're willing to defraud a company out of millions and ruin the lives of thousands of shareholders. But they're good looking! The basic idea: Clive and Julia are spies. The first time they met, they "bopped," as the kids say, and then Julia drugged Clive and stole some secrets from him. This is a huge turn-on for Clive, so they develop a relationship that involves meeting every few months, having intractable arguments, and then getting past those problems by doing it for about 24 hours straight. Then they part company. In essence, it is the perfect relationship. They decide to get involved in corporate espionage, thinking they'll steal $40 million, as this will allow them their richly deserved retirement, at age 40, to an Italian luxury hotel. They take jobs at rival companies trying to steal eachother's secrets, and then a bunch of confusing stuff happens, punctuated by Clive and Julia occasionally sneaking off to have PG-13 sexual escapades. It's a pretty snappy, well-produced movie, but it's all story and no character. As I mentioned, even though the movie clips along a cheerful pace, the stars are all pretty despicable at heart. By the time you figure out who screwed who, it's not so much a revelation as just a tidy, neat resolution to a very convoluted story. There's not much emotional investment. Probably the best thing in the movie is a fight, shot entirely in slow motion, between the two CEOs (Tom Wilkinson and Paul Giamatti). It plays during the opening credits. I think I'd recommend the movie based on that scene alone, but beyond that it's not exactly hilarious or moving. Scads more sophisticated than a lot of what's out there, true, but it probably could have had a bit more sizzle. They had the ingredients. (April 13, 2009)

Movie Review: The Great Buck Howard: Buck Howard isn't exactly a failure, but he is a dried-up husk; once a popular mentalist, now he's stuck playing half-full rooms in smaller towns. He's old and, to the people who decide what's cool, irrelevant. Work in showbusiness long enough, and you know that most people don't take the transition gracefully; instead, there's a perpetual air of frustration and bewilderment around such performers. They didn't stop being good at their jobs, but they never evolved, and so the culture left them behind. Considering that's me in about three years, I had a particular interest in "The Great Buck Howard." It's good, if underwhelming: told from the perspective of Buck's new road manager (a law school dropout trying to get in touch with his inner artistic whiny white person), it follows Buck through the acceptance of what he already knows, then some surprising developments after that. John Malkovich is pretty amusing, but hardly over-the-top; it's a PG movie so there aren't any profanity-laced green room tirades spicing things up. He's not really having a career meltdown as much as a fizzle, and he's not eating dog food to save money, so there's not quite enough tension to make you really sit up and pay attention. It's almost a fuzzier version of "The Wrestler," which also had an aging artist realizing that he can really only relate to the universe by performing. "Buck Howard" has significantly less footage of men being hit with fluorescent lights, though. Still, despite being a little too demonstrative with the life lessons (it's the director's autobiography, sort of), it's at least entertaining, if not satirical or hilarious or bombastic. John Malkovich is good and Colin Hanks is slightly more engaging that a replacement mannequin. (March 23, 2009)

America the Vomit-Inducing: On Saturday I went to a restaurant called "America," which honors our nation's diversity by having a 48-page menu. If the quality of the food is seen as a hat tip to American production standards, then union labor, have I got a boycott for you! The most important thing: on the menu was a "Hubcap burger," which is 24 oz. of meat. I've eaten a one-pound hamburger. I've heard legends of a five-pound hamburger via the Food Channel. But I've never been directly presented with the option of consuming a pound and a half of ground beef in a restaurant setting. I didn't order it. Now, I can't decide if that decision is a sign of personal growth, or an indication that I'm giving up on life / a slap in the fact to the American spirt. This is a real crisis of conscience, people. Help me! Movie Review: Milk Not bad! I think it was a bit of a whitewash -- the whole gay rights movement gets run through the Harvey Milk spectrum to a conspicuous degree, and it's enough to make you wonder if the story's distorted to polish his legacy. I was also kind of hoping for a little more insight into what made Harvey Milk tick, and maybe a little less of the blow-by-blow political stuff. There's not a ton of depth, because you don't know anything about Harvey before the age of 40 and in almost every scene he's being a great guy. But it's not so much a biopic as a dramatized documentary of an 8-year period, and the acting really was good. One Oscar quibble: John Brolin was fine, but if anyone deserved a Best Supporting Actor nom in this film, it's Diego Luna. I was uncomfortable the whole time he was on screen. Creepy stuff. Movie Review: Cookies OK, there is no movie called "Cookies." But if there were, you'd see it, right? I know I would. Trivia TOMORROW! Just one more day to Happy Hour Trivia! Remember, you can reserve some seats if you're planning on coming -- we have limited capacity, so that's not such a bad idea. E-mail trivia@dcstandup.com if you'd like to hold a table. (February 24, 2009)

Bradley Cooper: Watching the debacle that was "Saturday Night Live" last weekend, they informed me that Bradley Cooper would be hosting this weekend. This made both me and my roommate say: who's Bradley Cooper? Answer: He's the jerk from "Wedding Crashers." In fact, he should change his name from Bradley Cooper to The Jerk From Wedding Crashers, because everyone would know exactly who he was, sight unseen. Branding is important! Yes, Bradley Cooper has what I like to call the "Jerk Face," whereby no matter what role he is in, he looks like a jerk. He probably isn't a jerk, but when your chin comes to a fine point, what can you do? If he was around in the 1980s, he would have been the foil in at least three romantic comedies a year. No matter what costume you put him in, he will seem to be a coke-snorting investment banker. Bradley: don't fight it. Fortune is in your grasp. Any other nominees for the Facial Typecasting Hall of Fame? Obviously, Mickey Rourke, who can now only play professional wrestlers or long-haul truckers. If any come to mind, e-mail chris@dcstandup.com. Make Me a Job The stimulus package Congress is working on is supposed to create jobs. This is important, because everyone you know is now laid off. So: how do you create jobs to match up with unemployed people? Supposedly construction projects employ people, but I don't want to drive over a bridge built by ex-Circuit City sales associates. This isn't quite the 1930s where you had a lot of grizzled guys roaming the countryside hoping to paint fences for a dollar and a lot of construction work involved moving rocks from one pile to another. I guess you could hire some people to move rocks and then a few more to write press releases about the moving of the rocks, but after that it starts to get dicey. As one of four people in the country that regularly visits Public Works Administration tourist traps, I would be in favor of 400,000 displaced database administrators roaming the countryside and touching up every pavilion and historic marker that hasn't been seen by mortal eyes since 1971. GO STIMULUS GO! (February 5, 2009)

Movie Review: Gran Torino: Grizzled old racists finally get their day in "Get Off My Lawn: The Movie," also known as "Gran Torino." Clint Eastwood somehow makes bitter generational hatred fun again! Simple story: a gruff, blue-collar Korean War veteran refuses to leave his Detroit neighborhood, even though it's filling up with all the immigrants he hates. Lonely from the death of his wife and completely out of touch with his kids, when events give him a chance to interact with his Hmong neighbors, he grudgingly moves forward, learning to appreciate them while at the same time dropping every ethnic slur imaginable straight to their faces. Walk Kowalski isn't exactly sympathetic, but he's certainly more complex that most grizzled movie racists, and Clint Eastwood even at 78 definitely plays a badass better than anyone on the planet. A near-octogenarian facing down gang members sounds stupid on paper, but on the screen, it actually seems plausible, and at a few points in the movie you will be eagerly anticipating your own old age, when people will fear you simply because no force on Earth has been able to kill you just yet. Unfortunately, this is just a good movie when it could have been a great one. For some reason, most of the actors have almost no movie experience, and it shows. They're working off a stilted, ham-handed script (neat ideas, but bad writing), and other than Eastwood, no one really has the chops to elevate the material. Half the conversations sound like something from a high-school drama department, a few of the relationships are borderline cartoonish (Kowalski's son and grandkids) and there are too many asides and mutterings -- they could have scrubbed about 20 percent of the words, and just let the actors make menacing or shocking looks. Show, don't tell, right? I did enjoy this movie, and I do recommend it. I wish they had a do-over, though. There's so much here that's fresh and interesting, to the point where it could have been a Best Picture with some polishing. Clint Eastwood, at least, is great; the role reminded me of Kate Winslet's in "The Reader" in that it showed a stereotypical "bad" character in a light you aren't used to seeing, without being maudlin. Change.gov Team Obama has rewritten all the presidential bios on the White House web site, and apparently they're chock full of historical judgments! When one of the greatest criticisms against your organization is its tendency toward quasi-propaganda and message manipulation, you might want to hold off on this until week two. You know, just for the sake of appearances. I am unusually bitter about this, by the way, because now I have to go back and find all new pictures for the Dead Presidents pages. I don't usually steal images from other sites, but I didn't feel bad about borrowing bandwidth from the government. Sigh. (January 21, 2009)

Movie Review: The Wrestler: There is something very cruel about showbusiness; it dangles the promise of wealth and fame always just out of reach, and so some people can never really resist going for it. You see people succeeding or failing around you, you don't understand why, and all that gets you through is the belief that maybe if you work a little harder the breaks will magically come to you. That you're doing it voluntarily makes it unsympathetic. Even worse is the situation of people who HAVE made it, and then lost it ... how could you ever go back to a regular life knowing what you'd lost? That's the situation of Mickey Rourke in "The Wrestler," and it's very, very depressing. Beyond fame and glory, wrestling can destroy your body, so if you haven't implemented a successful exit strategy by the time your body starts failing (in the movie, he has a heart attack), then what else is there? Randy "The Ram" tries to pick up the pieces once he's forced into retirement; he wants to make good with his estranged daughter, and he tries to get some romance in his life by hitting on an aging stripper (another profession where you need an exit strategy. It should be noted that Marisa Tomeii is a fine actress, but it was horrible casting to make her the stripper, because she doesn't look broken down at all). But at this point in his life, the only way he can relate to people is as a performer. This isn't a happy movie at all, because apparently Darren Aronofsky is on some mission to destroy all vestiges of hope within humanity. He's the anti-Obama! It is very well acted, but I'm not sure how it will be Mickey Rourke's "comeback" movie. Mostly because he still looks like a truck ran over his face. Repeatedly. Ron Perlman got around that in "Hellboy," but there aren't too many movies where being hideous is a great asset. So: Me likey. But you won't walk away feeling groovy. Plan accordingly. TV Review: 24 "24" is back! And in the first 3 minutes, they already started getting into wildly implausible scenarios, like a Senate subcommittee hearing that starts at 8 a.m. Why not just have flying dragons attack Washington? I am enjoying that the show is now in D.C., because when they drive to different parts of town, I will KNOW if their transit time is total horses***. I hope at least one episode includes Jack waiting out a motorcade for 30 minutes while trying to drive two blocks. I think that would really build dramatic tension. Torture is almost justifiable once you've waited out a motorcade. That rage has to go somewhere. Facebook Relationship Status Suggestions Nothing brightens your day like logging on to Facebook and seeing that someone has gone from "In a Relationship" to "It's Complicated." Here's some free advice: Advertising to the world, and your significant other, that "it's complicated" usually means "single" is just around the corner! I have often wondered what is meant by "It's complicated," and since the possibilities are endless, I suggest the following clarifying categories: Friends With a Capital F Open Relationship, As Long As I Stay Away from Her Friends Will Be In a Relationship As Soon as the Bloodwork Comes Back Stalking, With High Hopes It's Complicated By Tennessee State Laws Single, but Still Telling Everyone I'm In a Relationship Because I Can't Have Another Dinner With My Parents Telling Me How Disappointed They Are and How They'd Like to See Grandchildren Before They Are Too Crippled By Age to Play With Them Green Card Marriage It Turns Out I Might Be Gay. Sorry, Kids! We're Keeping It Quiet Because She's Ashamed of My Looks (January 12, 2009)

Happy New Year!: I had a great New Year's Eve, except for the nagging belief that there must be something better to yell at midnight, especially if you're at a party. Some suggestions: Oh god, the Prophecy! Begin phase three! Who farted? Oh god, the ransom deadline! Naked time! I want a divorce! Time to steal first base! Movie Review: The Reader Me and the gf wanted to keep the good times rolling as 2009 got underway, so we took in an afteroon screening of "The Reader." SPOLIERS BELOW! This is a touching movie about a teenage boy who discovers love with a vulnerable older woman (Kate Winslet). Their passionate affair flames out, as all passionate affairs do. But their bond persists, and he returns his debt to her decades later by helping her erase her lifelong shame of illiteracy. Also, at some point the woman killed 300 Jews. It's a real feel-good movie, and it should lead to lots of great post-movie discussions about first love, and passion, and whether people who commit atrocities are living in denial or the only only way they can exist is by rewiring their worldview to the point where they honestly believe they have done nothing wrong. Just be warned: it's not a first date movie. There's a lot of nudity, and who wants to have that awkward discussion? Accentuate the positive Kate Winslet is (seriously) really good in "The Reader," even doing a German accent the whole movie. The movie (which takes place mostly in Germany) is entirely in English, with all the German characters speaking accented English, and all the books used by the characters are printed in English. Contrast this with "Valkyrie" (spoiler: they don't kill Hitler), in which Tom Cruise speaks Americanese and many of the other Nazis seem to be British. Subtitles probably would knock about 80 percent off box-office receipts and deprive you of the acting talents of Tom Cruise, so I can totally understand shooting a movie about foreigners in English. But when will we see an artist with enough integrity and boldness to create a Nazi movie in which all the Germans speak English ... with Japanese accents?!!?!?! Admit it, your mind was just blown. (January 2, 2009)

Save Me: If we have the metrics, someone needs to measure the social benefits of charitable work done by the Salvation Army. And then we need to weigh it against the damage done by people who have psychotic breakdowns after working near Salvation Army bell ringers for a month. So Many Choices So hard to figure out what to see at the multiplex these days ... I saw a pretty intriguing preview for this psychological thriller starring Will Smith. "Seven Pounds," I think it was called. Then the other day, I spotted an ad on TV for this new romance starring Will Smith and Rosario Dawson. "Seven Pounds," I think it was called. Or maybe, just maybe, I'll see that new Will Smith drama where it looks like he's fighting a terminal illness. "Seven Pounds," I think it was called. That must have been one hell of a pitch meeting. I'm guessing it went something like this: "Will Smith is intere ... hey, how did this bag of money end up in my hand?" I also think it's great that though they have three different promotional angles, not ONE of them explains what "seven pounds" means. Was this movie made on a dare? It's like someone put a line on how much money Will Smith could pull in opening weekend if the movie defied all description. I'm taking the under! In other movie advertising news, they are now running ads for "Doubt" highlighting Meryl Streep's performance which make the movie look like a comedy about nuns. I guess pedophilia isn't selling. Maybe they can add fellow Oscar winner Whoopi Goldberg, digitally! And then they can change the name to "Sister Act 3: Back in the Rectory." Ka-Ching! Ka-Ching! Ka-Ching! Looking Back: The Boy Who Wanted Cookies More from the vaults: here's a story from 2005. There once was a boy who wanted cookies. It was all he put on his Christmas list. He was a small boy, with many older brothers. Their lists were filled with toy cars, and exciting games, and air rifles, each list long enough to run from a snowman's nose all the way to the ground. Each day as Christmas approached, their lists grew longer and longer. But the youngest boy wanted nothing but cookies. Every night before going to bed, he closed his eyes and wished to Santa: "Please sir, bring me cookies. I have no need of toys; as my brothers always tire of the toys they receive. I have no need of clothes, as I always get their clothes when they grow. I know you cannot make me older, as it is my fate to be the smallest brother for all of my days. But being the smallest, before I can enjoy any Christmas treats, my older brothers have eaten them all. All I want is, for one day, to enjoy the things that regular boys enjoy. A simple bag of chocolate chip cookies just for me is all I need to make my Christmas bright." The older brothers teased him mercilessly. "Cookies?" they shouted. "Why would you want cookies? We have cookies every week! Why not ask for a baseball glove, or a hockey stick, so that we can have an excuse to hit you in a competitive environment?" They were big and loud, like older brothers usually are, and they did not understand their younger brother, who was somewhat dainty and inclined to like arts and crafts. The youngest boy stayed true to his heart, however, and every night he repeated his wish. On Christmas Eve, his heart full of hope, he wished one last time for cookies and went to bed. The next morning, all the boys rushed downstairs. Each older brother ran excitedly to the mountains of gifts surrounding the tree, looking for the tags bearing their names. As long as their lists were, so were their gift piles tall. They jumped in glee, their avaricious little faces red with exertion. The youngest brother had no pile. He sat quietly on his mother's knee as his siblings tore into their mounds of loot, each one a tiny tornado of clawing fingers and wrapping paper. In minutes, they were chasing each other around the living room with their new air rifles, board games and lava lamps in hand. As the last ribbons settled, the mother leaned down to the youngest boy's ear and whispered. "I think there is one present left. Under the tree." And sure enough, as the youngest brother crept forward, he spied tucked under the lowest branch of the tree a simple red sack, no bigger than a bag of flour. He pulled the sack from under the tree, gingerly opened it, and inside found ... Chocolate Chip Cookies! Struck dumb with joy, the youngest brother grabbed the first perfect disk from the bag, raised it to his mouth and nibbled on the edge. It was the best cookie he had ever tasted, and he squealed with glee. The sounds of this happiness gave the older brothers pause. What was this? What treasure had they missed? They gathered around their youngest brother, who continued to nibble away at the most fabulous of cookies, tears forming in his eyes from each mouthful of sweet goodness. The plastic playthings and metal monstrosities in their gift piles did not make them feel this happiness. The oldest brother turned to his mother, and asked, "Why didn't Santa bring us cookies?" "You didn't ask for them," replied mother. "You asked for toys that will be forgotten by February. You teased your brother for wanting cookies. But he understood that Christmas is a time for simpler joys, and he will have the merriest Christmas of all. Now it's time for me to start breakfast." The older brothers stood there in a circle, crestfallen. The youngest brother finished his cookie, and looking up from his trance, saw their faces. It made him sad. "They are not such bad brothers," he thought. "Maybe the best gift of all would be to see them smile. I will share these cookies with them." But just as he opened his mouth to make this generous offer, his mother left the living room and headed to the kitchen. As soon as she departed, the oldest brother grabbed the sack from his hands. Two others held him down, and a third covered his mouth. Pinned and unable to scream, he watched as his older brothers ate all the rest of his cookies, making unnecessary smacking noises and licking their fingers as they finished each one. Because that's what brothers do. (December 18, 2008)

License to Ill: This is a huge couple of days for me, cosmetically speaking, because I have to renew my driver's license. In 2004 I was lucky enough to experience the finest ID photo ever taken of me, which means that I didn't look like an earlier stage in man's evolution. There was glare off my glasses, but I wasn't smiling broad enough to make any extra chins and I didn't have anything in my teeth. I think I can do better this time, though. So I'm getting a haircut. Then, I'm going to beat my face repeatedly with hot rocks wrapped in a towel, because that seems like something people would do a spa. From there, it's a short drive to the formal wear shop, where my special license tuxedo is waiting. The makeup artist I found on Craigslist arrives at the house about an hour later, and my personal smile consultant will run me through all the usual warm-up drills, plus use Face Spackle (TM) to seal up any unfortunate smile lines I've picked up in my march toward middle age. Then, I will use one of those floor buffing machines to give my face a healthy coat of wax, thereby sealing my freshness in, and it's off to the DMV! At which point the lady working the digital camera will take an awful picture where I'm blinking and then refuse to take it over again, even though it's a digital camera. (December 15, 2008)

Movie Review: Doubt: The preview for "Doubt" insinuates pedophilia by a priest, and then shows Meryl Streep and Philip Seymour Hoffman screaming at each other for about three minutes. Bust out the Oscar polish, right? Not quite. There's something missing. It's well-acted, and the story is intriguingly ambiguous (is the priest a molester?), but it's not as intense or gripping as it should be. The guy who wrote the theater version is also the screewriter and the director, and he probably should have staffed some things out, like the screenwriting and the directing. The whole movie isn't bad (I'd even recommend it) but it just feels like you're watching a play that happens to be on the big screen. Every now and then he tilts the camera, just to make sure that you know he wants to symbolize something. It's just a little too flabby. Get in Line At the movies on Saturday, we got to witness some awful line management. Everyone wating for any movie had to get into the same line, about only half of which was cordoned off. When they called "Doubt," people at the back, assuming most of the line in front of them WASN'T for "Doubt," started walking right along the uncordoned area and to the front. This caused a first class hissy fit from some guy in the line (actually not me, believe it or not), who thought that saying "hey" repeatedly in a snarky gay stereotype voice would somehow fix his problems. Oh, if only the world worked this way. International diplomacy would be SOOOOO much more interesting. As a former movie theater usher (and a great one at that) this sort of stuff bothers me, because it's a simple fix: Like most problems, it can be solved with rope, adequate manpower and yelling. But most theaters do not even try to manage lines properly, and most movie patrons are just willing to stand in or cut on any line they see, because they are jerks. That's why I am hereby offering my services as a line management consultant. I will analyze your line situation, study the space available, estimate the career prospects and enthusiasm of your employees, and then design a line system to suit your needs. You will notice that the line of people waiting for my services is zipping along in an orderly fashion, in part because there is no one in it, but mostly thanks to my amazing skills. In this economy, I'm happy to sort out bread lines if needed. Just call me. (December 14, 2008)

Xgiving: Somehow, this year I forgot about my campaign to turn Thanksgiving into Xgiving. So remember, when you're relating the stories of familial horror, it happend on Xgiving. We can make this happen. Movie Review: Let the Right One In As far as vampires are concerned, there's not too much new under the sun, so "Let the Right One In" is a pleasant surprise. It's Swedish, which means it's arty and moody, but beyond that the story is a bit different: a 12-year-old boy (Oskar) who doubles as a bully magnet is intrigued when a 12-year-old girl (Eli) moves into the apartment next door. Never mind that she wears short sleeves in the snow and only appears at night! She's a vampire, but not exactly an evil one; yes, she murders people, but it's only because a girl's gotta eat. As Oskar navigates his awkward tween existence he also forms a bit of a crush on Eli and vice versa, but things are complicated to a certain extent by all the dead bodies that keep turning up around town. She can't keep her secret from Oskar forever, and how will their relationship change when all is revealed? And what about the bullies? It's a quiet and melancholy coming-of-age story punctuated with sudden violence, and the overall effect is very intriguing. Plus the ending is fantastic. It's easily the most unusual vampire story I can remember seeing, and so my streak of "movies that are unbelievably unsusual" continues. I'm enjoying it! Bowl Bowl Bowl Xgiving weekend festivities included a visit to the local bowling parlor, in which it was once again proved that the vast majority of Americans have fat fingers and are so weak that they must use 12-pound balls. You can NEVER get a 12-pound ball with fat finger holes, and that is the only way I know how to roll. I had to go with all kinds of inferior substitutes, which is why I failed to crack 100 in three games. Yeah, that's it. Bowling was on a Saturday, so that meant "extreme bowling," which I believe is now federal law. Just try to find an alley without it! The general thinking is that the bowling experience is greatly enhanced by a) darkness; and b) black lights that let everyone know who uses cheap detergent. There's not too much outside of having sex with ugly people that's improved by darkness, so I'm not sure why this has become the national standard. I think we need to move on to a new level of extreme, where people are forced to wear leather hoods, or else fire is somehow involved. I'm open to suggestions. Flower Power I also got over to the National Portrait Gallery this week, which had a fine display of Georgia O'Keefe paintings. If you're not familiar with her work, she painted New Mexico, and also flowers, to look like a large series of vaginas. You would think after the eleventh or twelfth one, she'd say, "you know what? I've got this whole vagina thing down, maybe I should move on to something new." But nope! She kept going, all the way to the end, hammering home the fact that vaginas are all around us. And you ladies wonder why we're always horny! Tenacity is the true measure of greatness. Ad Nausea Back me up, world: The Xbox 360 ads in which a camera pans around a human head to show the back missing, with some kind of theater on the inside of the skull, are creepy and strange. Right? Huh? (December 1, 2008)

Movie Review: Synecdoche, New York: Going to bed Friday night, I was pretty sure that "JCVD" was the oddest movie I'd see all year. But I was young and foolish then, as Van Damme has now been kicked in the teeth by Charlie Kaufmann. This is a movie about death, and self-image, and the use of art to sustain life, or at least I think it is. The beauty of Charlie Kaufmann at this point in his career is that he can do anything he wants and people will just think it's profound. It might actually be profound, but even if it isn't, his reputation can just make everything fit into whatever opinion you happen to form. Brilliant. Here's the closest I can come to a synopsis: a regional theater director is having a midlife crisis; his health seems to be failing (making him obsess over mortality) and his wife leaves him. Around that time he gets a MacArthur genius grant, and so he decides to embark on a truly personal artistic journey. He rents a warehouse, builds a replica of New York and hires a massive team of actors to replay all the events of his life (but there's no audience). This goes on for a few decades, and expands to include actors playing the actors playing the people. The whole exercise raises questions about whether we're anything more than the perceptions of other people, whether we can ever truly understand anything in another person's life, and whether our own personal tragedies are ultimately epic or meaningless, as every life has variations on the same hardships. It's a trip, and I suspect many people would absolutely hate this movie. When I saw it, one person in the theater was snoring for about 15 minutes. No one near that guy thought it was a good idea to wake him up, because uptight arthouse crowds have no balls. I had to yell "wake up," which did not really work. The snoring took something away from the emotional impact, so this might not be the best review I've ever written. I enjoy Charlie Kaufmann. His movies are mostly about people who have the luxury of living in their heads, but somehow he takes very inaccessible premises and finds ways to make them watchable and fascinating without herding his audience toward any one conclusion. Brace yourself and go check this out. 24! I think 18 months off were good for "24," because that was pretty solid. And way to stick it to the United Nations. Those bastards had it coming. Die Eagles Die I'd like to thank the Eagles for rolling over before the start of December. Without the burden of caring about football, I should be able to have a happy and productive holiday season. You guys are the best. (November 23, 2008)

Movie Review: JCVD: It seems odd to use "Jean-Claude Van Damme" and "defies characterization" in the same sentence, but there's finally a reason! In "JCVD," Van Damme plays Jean-Claude Van Damme, a faded action star with cash-flow problems and a custody battle on his hands; returning home to Belgium, he accidentally stumbles into the middle of a bank robbery, and the authorities mistake him for the perpetrator. It's not really an action movie, because there's not enough action; it's not played as a straight comedy; it's not quite biting enough to be a satire; and it's not exactly a drama. There's a scene where Van Damme, as a hostage, suddenly rises up above the room and delivers a monologue straight to the camera about his career, expectations, drug abuse and sense of inadequacy; if the subtitles were not horrible translations, it's bordering on incoherence and emotional breakdown, and people in the theater were split on whether to be deeply moved or laughing outloud. I really don't know what else to tell you. I can't remember seeing another movie quite like this, ever. Huh. (November 21, 2008)

Movie Review: Quantum of Solace: There's a scene in "Die Another Day" where James Bond (who has an invisible car) rides a piece of wreckage like a surfboard to survive a laser-created tidal wave, or something along those lines. I remember watching it in the theater and thinking, "This is the worst moment in James Bond history." Something had to change, and it did: James Bond is now a remorseless killing machine! All the gadgets are gone, all the action is nastier, and villains aren't quite as cartoonish. The transformation started with the series "reboot" in "Casino Royale," which I enjoyed a great deal, and now things are even more vicious in "Quantum of Solace." It's both good and bad. Good: The action sequences are now a lot more realistic and brutal. Bad: They all use quick-cut editing, so it's jerky and almost impossible to follow. Good: The plot is less ridiculous and the villains seem less moronic. Bad: The plot is much harder to follow. Mostly I think the new style is an improvement, because I am not 13 years old any longer. I can also appreciate that this movie is the completion of the "Casino Royale" storyline, and so James Bond might be slightly less of a heartless a-hole in the movies that follow. There's room for a little more sunshine, whether it's horrible puns about erections or bringing back Q. The only thing I would definitely change is the editing. I get that all the rapid action sequences are supposed to impart energy and excitement to the viewer, but mostly it gives me a headache. Any time there's a vehicle chase it's almost impossible to get any concept of where the various vehicles are or how the action is developing; the camera is moving so much during every fistfight that it's hard to be impressed by what anyone is doing. You can't actually see any moves. Whatever little dramas or storylines exist within each action sequence, you cannot follow; I mostly think this "style" of shooting action has developed because choreographed sequences are complicated and tough to do. Anyhow, I still think I'll recommend this. I've seen every James Bond movie (most of them multiple times) and it's cool to see the franchise dragged into the 21st century. Plus Daniel Craig has a face like a sledgehammer. Of Human Bondage At dinner before the movie, it came up that no one else at the table (of six people) had seen even half the Bond movies. I don't know how this is possible. When I was a kid we used to go crazy when a Bond flick was the ABC Sunday night movie. We watched it as a family, because who wouldn't want to watch "Octopussy" with his mother? Then in college, when TBS had the rights, "18 Days of 007" would air right around finals. I remember watching "Moonraker," which is mostly awful, three times in the same week. This is probably why I never nailed down a 4.0. Here's the rule: if you're a man in the 25-45 range, you should have seen at least 15 Bond movies (out of 23) by now, and you should be planning to see the rest as soon as possible. Anything less and you might be a communist. Song Sung Blue Another intriguing dinner conversation: if you knew that for the rest of your life, every time you had sex, a single song would automatically start to play, what song would it be? For the purpose of the exercise you don't have the option of silence. Whaddaya think? "Fish Heads"? (November 20, 2008)

Reviewsday: Everyone wants to know what I think, and I think that's great. Movie Review: Role Models This is a stupid movie with a completely moronic premise and virtually no character development. That being said, it ain't bad! I laughed. I like things to be a) really absurd; b) tightly scripted so you get actual character-based comedy; or c) with lots of hot chicks. A lot of movies these days (Will Ferrell movies, Judd Apatow movies, David Wain movies) try to live between A and B, and the result is usually an awkward bunch of totally bizarre characters interacting in ultimately unconnected set pieces strung on a lame story. Boo. "Role Models" is bit tighter than that, though, and I don't think it aspires to brilliance or greatness. That, plus the c) several hot chicks, is why it works. The story: two guys who work for an energy drink company get arrested when one has a meltdown (midlife crisis plus breakup), shoves a cop (Louis CK, I think, for all of 10 seconds), breaks a tow truck and then crashes into a statue outside a middle school. So naturally they get ordered by a court to work with children! And not just any children: horridly dysfunctional children! And then the children, in strict accordance with the laws of screenwriting, teach them what's missing in their lives. Also, there is live-action role playing. There's also one factor that's both hilarious and a wee bit offputting. Bobb'e J. Thompson, who plays the little black kid, is 12, and in this movie he curses like a sailor, with plenty of anatomical flourishes. I guess it's not that big a deal, since on occassion kid actors appear in movies about child molesting or abuse and that sort of thing. But I would like to see as DVD extra an interview with Bobb'e's parents, explaining why they allowed him to appear in this movie. Not that they're bad parents; I just think it would be fascinating. Anyhow, you have my permission to see this. Go forth. Book Review: The Devil in the White City If you like architecture, you will appreciate this book. If you like serial killers, you will appreciate this book. And if you like architecture AND serial killers, this is the greatest book ever written. There are two intersecting factual stories here: Daniel Burnham's efforts to plan, build and manage the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago, and Dr. H.H. Holmes' efforts to murder a lot of people (mostly young women!) who came to Chicago to see that fair. Burnham had a Herculean task. He had an imperative to top the recent World's Fair in Paris, limited time, and a problematic building site; his business partner died early in the process; he had to stroke the egos of all the great designers he enlisted to build the pavilions; and he had to handle all the bureaucratic details. Chicago civic pride was on the line. That he managed to pull it off seems to be a bit of a miracle, and some the ripples into the 20th century are carefully noted by author Erik Larson: the number of past and future luminaries that were inspired by the exhibits, buildings and spirit of the "White City" is truly impressive. And also, Pabst won its blue ribbon there. Holmes was a deranged freak who seduced a lot of women and often seized their personal wealth; he was a charmer who was able to borrow thousands of dollars and then ward off creditors with smiles; and he was, of course, a cold-blooded killer. He had property near the fairgrounds that he turned into a hotel / chamber of horrors, and he used the lure of the fair to kill a lot of people, probably because he got a bit of a semi-erotic rush from it. Larson does a nice job keeping both stories moving; the only things that gave me pause were passages where he gets a bit too flowery and descriptive with things that he couldn't possibly have data on. There are a few cases where he describes Holmes' actions in minute detail when there are no witnesses at the scene; he also tosses out of a lot of lavish adjectives describing people's eyes, or emotions, or whatever, and the overall effect is like he's trying to pump up the drama. But why? You have a serial killer on one hand and one of the most ambitious building projects in history on the other. The drama is built in already. Still, this is compelling, mostly well-written and a reasonable length. Something about this era just appeals to me; it's America on the cusp of technological, political, economic and cultural greatness, and the ideas and personalities that put the country over the top (and the ideas and personalities who were crushed along the way) usually make for great stories. Which is why I also enjoyed reading ... Book Review: The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt I'm thinking most people won't be up for 780 pages on TR, but you might have heard that I like the presidents. And if you have to read about one of them, you can do a lot worse than Teddy: from his birth to the time he became president (the era covered in the book) he did about five lifetimes worth of stuff. I'll spare you the blow-by-blow, but TR was a well-reputed historian, a nationally recognized naturalist, a widely read author, a cattle rancher, a New York Assemblyman, an important cog in two different presidential administrations, police commissioner of New York City, a volunteer military hero and governor of New York. He toured Europe a ton, he spoke several languages, he was a widower, he had a ton of kids, he was the head of his family after his dad died (when TR was in his teens), he was an avid sportsman. Oh, and he somehow managed to beat asthma through sheer force of will. He was the most famous man in America in a time before television and radio made that an easy thing to be. Edmund Morris has a ton to cover, but TR moved with such boundless energy that the narrative keeps clicking along from challenge to challenge. Roosevelt was a supremely confident man; his air of competence and command was something he probably observed in his father and then was forced to assume for himself. Plus he seemed to have a passion and joy for his work that you just don't get from public figures these days. He's been called the most interesting man to be president, and after reading this book you'd have to persuade me otherwise. So: great book, but probably not for everyone. Then again, who would've thought "John Adams" would sell? The sequel to this book, "Theodore Rex," won the Pulitzer, and it's now officially on my Christmas list. I only need one copy, so all of you coordinate amongst yourselves. We Have a Verdict I saw a few more episodes, and "True Blood" is in fact an awful, awful show. Bad acting, bad dialog, bad storylines. The whole thing is bad. The fact that HBO decided that vampires are chic is probably a good sign that vampires are no longer chic. Can we find a new supernatural focus for pop culture? Ghosts, zombies, vampires and werewolves are played out. I got one word for you, America: MINOTAURS. We need a smart, po mo seriocomic dramedy about a secret clan of minotaurs trying to control the inner circles of Wall Street high finance. Minotaurs in power suits. This will work. (November 18, 2008)

Charge! : Eisenhower (see yesterday) was only part of my Saturday; I actually suckered some friends into visiting the farm by promising a trip to see the battlefield. Because who doesn't want to spend a Saturday wallowing in the gore of history? We hit up the Cyclorama, which back in the late 1800s would have been the closest thing to HD television; it's a big painting that completely encircles a room and shows the height of the 3rd day of battle, in exciting OIL PAINT! Plus they have a light and sound show to go with it -- FAR better than Pink Floyd. I can't reproduce it here, but we did walk around the field afterwards, and if you were a reasonably patriotic (or unpatriotic, depending how you look at it) guy in 1863, there's a chance this is what you would have seen on July 3: The top is the view of a Union soldier, minus a bunch of smoke and some dead bodies, a few seconds before a line of 12,000 men a mile wide stepped out of the trees and started coming for you. With guns, to boot! The bottom is what Johnny Reb would have seen looking back the other way, right before he got to march across an open field while his friends were turned into Grade-D hamburger all around him. That's the field for Pickett's charge at the Battle of Gettysburg, and had things turned out a little different that day we might all be cleaning our teeth with banjo picks right now. Or, projecting out, maybe we'd all be speaking German. Or Tagalog! The world would be different, is what I'm getting at. The Confederates made it to the Union line, but it took everything they had just to get there, and blammo, Lee loses, the war turns around, and the South loses. More Americans died in 3 days at Gettysburg than in five plus years of Iraq, but in return we got to have one of the best countries in history. Sometimes war is the answer! Bumper stickers be damned! I don't know what the pep talk would have been before Pickett's charge, but it must have been a good one, because I don't think I'd be terribly motivated to walk a mile slightly uphill in the open in July heat wearing a wool uniform toward guys with cannons and guns defending a fortified position. I would stop to tie my shoe, or say I had something in my eye, or take an informal poll amongst my colleagues to see if anyone would maybe, perhaps, be interested in shooting our commanding officer in the face repeatedly and then heading off for a drink. But it could have been worse! You could have been asked to run up a STEEP hill. That's Little Roundtop on the top and Devil's Den on the bottom. To think you could have stopped to play amongst the boulders, right before a Confederate stabbed you in the back on July 2. Whee! Of course, with all those dead people, you need a cemetery, and the dedication of said cemetery is what brought Lincoln to Gettysburg on Nov. 19. He wasn't the primary speaker. How the president of the United States and commander in chief of the Army during an active civil war doesn't get top billing, I'll never understand, but Lincoln actually spoke second, after a TWO HOUR speech by some other chump lost to history. Today there's a big monument where the speaking platform used to be, and a plaque with the full speech. Plus a neat tribute from visitors: Respect If the children are our future, in a lot of ways, the past is screwed. I don't think you have to walk around a battlefield in deadly silence, but there are some things that require pretty basic respect, like, oh, I'll go out on a limb here .... cemeteries. When we got to the Gettysburg cemetery, a group of kids was screaming at each other, and some were actually skipping over top of graves. Skipping. And no parents thought to stop them. Over at the Virginia monument (at the center of the Confederate line that advanced during Pickett's charge), one kid showed his respect by repeatedly making fart noises. And no parents thought to stop them. Finally, at Little Round Top, a few kids thought it was fun to grab stones off of one of the walls (real or replica, does it matter?) used by Union defenders and start throwing them down the hill. And no parents thought to stop them ... but my roommate did! He yelled at them. I applaud this. No one does this because it's thankless; best case scenario, you get no reward, worst case, you are harrassed by angry kids or horrible parents who yell at you for trying to do the job they aren't doing. We should all snap as much as possible, if only to restore moral order to the universe. Admit it, you feel good when someone hauls off and yells so angrily at teenagers in a movie theater that they're shocked into silence. And you aren't completely disgusted by a guy who punches a teenager in the face when they cut the line on him at McDonald's. In conclusion, it takes a village. Thank you and good night. Movie Review: Choke It might seem strange that a movie about a sex-addicted colonial theme park worker who regularly visits his mother in a mental hospital and fakes choking in restaurants to bilk money out of the people who save him would be a little bit dull, but somehow they managed it with "Choke." It's not a bad movie, and it has a few genuinely entertaining scenes, but it's not really sexy, or hilarious, or touching, or anything. Even the colors and lighting are dull. Plus Sam Rockwell always looks like he woke up in a gutter. Basically, you can watch it, and appreciate it, but the whole "beaten down by life" vibe makes it pretty tough to get invested. It's over the top content-wise, but not effort-wise. The movie made me very curious about the book, which I imagine has to be a lot more involving. Preview Review Apparently the target audience for "Choke" skews gay, because two of the trailers were for "Noah's Arc: Jumping the Broom" (flamboyantly gay black guys) and "Another Gay Sequel" (flamboyantly gay white guys) which could be competing for the title of worst movie ever made. There's a point where flamboyance (of any kind) can't make up for awful, and that point was crossed about 2 seconds into each preview. But thank god we live in a country where people of every race, gender and orientation are free to demean their subculture by making horrible movies! Probably the toughest thing to be in America is a flamboyantly gay black man. If you're a flamboyantly gay white guy, sure, there are people who will despise you for being gay, but at this point there's enough general tolerance in the national atmosphere that you can probably find a way to survive. Flamboyant black guy? Yikes. You're coming from a harder-edged subculture; people are already making black guy assumptions about you, and then when they see that you're flamboyantly gay, things just aren't adding up in their minds. It would be a interesting experiment to get a theater full of straight guys (tell them they'll be seeing something entirely different), lock the doors and then show "Noah's Arc." I think at least three people would have a stroke. As for you bicurious eskimos, well, godspeed. (October 6, 2008)

Hello Seattle: Big news (for me at least): As of today, I am now scheduled to duke it out in the Seattle Comedy Competition this November. That means at least a week in the Pacific Northwest and hopefully more -- plenty of time to visit all the sites I've only dreamed of when they were mentioned on "Frasier." It'll be my first trip to the West Coast longer than a three-hour layover at LAX. More on this as it gets closer, but I'm pumped! Oh, and if you live in Seattle and want a great houseguest in November, I'm your man. Movie Review: Man on Wire If you met Philippe Petit or any of his friends at a party, you'd either want to talk to them for hours or punch them in the face. Or maybe both! He's a street juggler and they're people who enjoy hanging out with street jugglers, i.e., people really in touch with their feelings, and also probably in touch with large piles or recreational drugs. But they were arty types with ambition, in that they figured out how to get Petit on a highwire which they strung between the towers of the World Trade Center. "Man on Wire" is a documentary on how they pulled it off, from the initial inspiration all the way to the actual event in August 1974. They have interviews with the conspirators, some video footage of other (smaller) "art crimes" they committed, a ton of photos and some Unsolved Mysteriesesque recreations of the WTC job. The logistics are interesting. They had to figure out how to get a guidewire across the towers (an arrow with a wire attached), how to get all of their gear past security and up to the roof of the tallest buildings in the world, and how to rig safety lines, all in the dark and fast enough that they wouldn't get arrested before performing the actual stunt. I'm guessing they also had to figure out how a street juggler and his posse could afford numerous trans-Atlantic plane tickets, but the movie doesn't get into that. But the neat part is just the audacity: why anyone would bother doing such a thing in the first place, and why other people would bend over backward to help. The conspirators don't seem to have answers, and in fact that can't even imagine why people wouldn't want to try it. The thought that someone might have fallen 1,600 feet to the ground was a concern, but not enough to get in the way of the dream. I could have used more interviews about the inspiration and maybe a little less on the preparation, but in the end I guess the photos of a man walking a tightrope at the top of Manhattan speak for themselves. It's just not something you'll ever see again, and I guess in some ways that's explanation enough. I'd also like to see more about Petit, who apparently celebrated his achievement by promptly cheating on his girlfriend with the first skank he saw and then abandoning all the friends who made his fame possible. (A few of them seem broken up about it 30 years later.) He's all sunshine and lollipops in the interview, but there's something really not right there, and you have to wonder what. Anyhow, I'd recommend this. Even if you aren't a big documentary fan, there's something to enjoy here. (September 8, 2008)

Movie Review: Vicky Cristina Barcelona: There are three distinct approaches to love set forth in "Vicky Cristina Barcelona": practical (Vicky), painful (Cristina) and nihilistic (bowl cut guy from "No Country for Old Men"). Each character gets what they profess to want, and each character ends up wanting something different. Vicky is a snooty graduate student studying "the Catalan identity"; she's engaged to a by-the-books finance guy from New York and seems intent on living a predictable, stable life. But given the chance to study in Barcelona for a summer, she jumps at it. She brings along her best friend Cristina, an artsy and slutty type with the belief that true romance has to be tortured and painful. She can't say exactly what she wants, but she "knows what I don't want." (If you ever hear a significant other say this, run.) Enter the painter Juan Antonio, who introduces himself to the girls in a cafe by offering to fly them to a nearby town so they can have a threesome all weekend. If it were possible to run up to the screen and high-five the guy, you'd do it. He believes (or at least says he believes) in living for the moment, enjoying life's pleasures as the come, since for the most part life is hard and dull. The natural pairing seems to be Juan Antonio and Cristina, but there's also an attraction between Vicky and the painter; as Vicky's plodding married life draws nearer, Juan Antonio has a sudden wild appeal that Vicky can't seem to resist. Cristina gets the bohemian, passionate romance she'd always been searching for -- but it might be the search itself that she lives for, not the romance. And Juan Antonio, for all his talk about free and passionate love, turns out to have a psychotic ex-wife with more of a hold on him than he'd care to admit. These are people who live in their minds, free of the bothers of the everyday grind; like in most Woody Allen movies, they use that freedom to think their way into unhappiness. In relationships we spend a lot of time looking for "the right way" to do things, but here are characters who discover that the right way they believed in gives them no peace of mind. Their experiences don't fit as neatly into categories as they would like. You can take it all as a mockery of the intellectual life, but in the back of your head, you'll probably be thinking: "I dated that once." Plus the scenery is nice and Scarlett Johannson is SMOKING HOT. Seriously, it's the best she's ever looked on screen. Yee. (August 26, 2008)

Martin Van Buren: Myth or Legend?: I'll probably end up on a government blacklist for posting this, but here are some looks at the hard truths about Martin Van Buren. Assisting me are Jared Stern and Michael Graham. (August 20, 2008)

Baltimore Comedy Factory DEAL!: See how I put "deal" in all caps? That means it's IMPORTANT! I am performing at the Baltimore Comedy Factory this weekend, Thursday-Saturday. The headliner is Bob Levy, who is a regular on Howard Stern's show. Here's the cool part -- if you want to come out, when you make the reservation, tell them you're coming to see me and you want the drink special. That means that for $17, you get your admission, PLUS all you can drink (top-shelf liquor excluded, sorry hard-core drunks). Make sure you mention my name. The number for reservations is 410-547-7798. You should be there! If not I'll be sad. Movie Review: Tropic Thunder I am a professional comedian, and I endorse this movie. I could give you a lengthy explanation about people playing to well-defined comedic roles (as opposed to the directionless mugging in many modern comedies), but instead, I will just tell you that Tom Cruise dances in a fat suit. I laughed out loud about ten times. There's a 20-minute stretch near the beginning that's a little flat, but after that it's all gravy. GO! I COMMAND YOU! (August 18, 2008)

Movie Review: Superman: I saw "Superman" on the National Mall last night as part of the annual "Screen on the Green" festivities. I had forgotten what a great movie this is. As Superfriend Jared Stern points out, Jor-El is the Al Gore of Krypton. If only he had put together a slide show, maybe they would have evacuated that planet. Lex Luthor's evil plan involves buying worthless land at exorbitant prices, then destroying California to increase the value of his real estate holdings, even though, as the man who destroyed California, he would have probably have no legal way to keep that land. Lex Luthor, the greatest criminal mind on the planet, has a master plan that hinges on wigs and a large-breasted woman creating enough of a distraction so that a moron can reprogram a nuclear missile. Also, the plan relies on no one bothering to double-check the targeting system on that missile before a nuclear warhead test. Lois wins Clark's heart by being indisputably awful and rude to him from their very first meeting. Superman has the ability to reverse time, and he uses this ability to save Lois Lane from suffocating. Not to prevent the nuclear strike a few minutes earlier which leads to Lois' suffocation, mind you. Just to save Lois. In saving Lois, he also presumably lets Lake Mead drain. The premise of the movie requires you to accept that an alien sent to our planet gets superpowers from the yellow sun. And yet there are still about five moments where you have to say, "Well that's a load of crap." That takes some doing. Great stuff. A Note to the Frisbee Guys ... ... on the National Mall last night. It's nice that you can catch a frisbee between your legs, and backwards, and by leaping even when you don't have to. But you'd be MORE impressive if you didn't repeatedly throw the frisbee into groups of strangers, and also if you wore shoes. The thing about throwing a frisbee is this: YOU ARE THROWING A FRISBEE. You're hitting the maximum possible respect level once it's clear you can throw in a straight line. Divert your energy to hydroponic farming. Do some good in the world. That is all. (August 12, 2008)

Movie Review: The Dark Knight: I really miss Adam West, who had the bravery and panache to wear spandex when he had the physique of a 150-pound bag of potatoes. But I guess we can't go back, and so we're left with "The Dark Knight," which is grim and morbid and mildly depressing. If you read uptight and self-righteous film critics (and I do, I don't have a real job) it's also a profound comment on the awfulness of the Bush administration, though I'm pretty sure you could make a strong case for Batman represeting Dick Cheney, and being completely necessary in a world of evil people. Somebody write that up and have it on my desk by tomorrow morning. I'm not entirely sold on the action -- the car chases are good (the truck flip is awesome), but it's sort of hard to follow what's going on any time there's hand-to-hand combat. There are also a few plot holes, I think (SPOILER: at one point the Joker anticpates that Batman will pull fingerprints off a bullet, but later on no one can match Joker's fingerprints to anything). Still, it's a pretty gripping comic-book movie, and since I choose not to mix politics and comic books, I'm going to give it a thumbs up. Good acting all around, a convincing depiction of a terror spree, and I guess they can give Heath Ledger an Oscar if they want. The performance didn't change my life or anything, but apparently it'll mean something to the people who read People. They're the saa-a-dest people in the world! Movie Review: Wanted As an action movie, this was pretty good stuff. As an expression of philosophical principles, it's about 10 notches below a Rush album. Here's the deal: there's an ancient secret society of weavers who are also assassins. They noticed that for some reason, binary code was hidden in the fabric they were making. Somehow, it was obvious to the weavers that the code spells out the names of people who are fated to die. But fate apparently needs contract employees, so it's the job of the weavers to kill anyone whose name comes up. In doing so they are changing the course of history for the greater good. (Cue Shatner: "Excuse me -- why does God need a spaceship?") Whether you need a super-special loom to make this fabric is unclear, and who would make that loom is also unclear. Also, why the forces of the universe would single out weavers, and not blacksmiths or soldiers, is a puzzler. Fate is apparently an EEOC employer. The weavers call themselves "The Fraternity," though they do let in women, and no one seems to have any decorative paddles or parties involving Natural Light and a Slip n' Slide. In modern-day Chicago, there's a loser named Wesley with a crappy office job. Turns out he's actually the son of the greatest assassin in the world, Who was so great that he was just assassinated! Wesley gets trained by the Fraternity so that he can seek revenge. And in doing so, he takes empowering steps to grab full control of his life ... ... which now involves, uh ... being the agent of fate. Oh, and I forgot to mention, even if you're fated to die, no big deal if nobody kills you! Fate isn't really strict about these things. Ten-year-olds could create more coherent fantasy scenarios, so my advice to you is: don't think about it at all! Just enjoy the mayhem! Lots of stuff blows up, there's fairly neat use of slo-mo, and a bunch of cutesy stylized visual jokes, if you're looking. You get to see Angelina Jolie's butt for about two seconds too, if that sort of thing is important to you. With all the CGI garbage floating around the multiplex these days, it's pretty tough to come up with something genuinely inventive, but I was pretty amped by three or four sequences in this movie. I also enjoyed watching Morgan Freeman say "motherf****r." He should do that more often. (July 20, 2008)

Movie Review: Hellboy 2: If I told you there was a movie in which Ron Perlman has to fight Gunnar Nelson to save the world, you'd go see it, right? Well, that's basically "Hellboy II," only there's lots of make-up involved, which is a positive considering Ron Perlman is involved. This was a pretty good movie: mildly funny, great effects, well-choreographed action and a story that doesn't seem to have any giant holes. It helps to see the first Hellboy, but it's not entirely necessary to understand what's going on. I really like that the bad guy is an elf, since those supernatural prettyboys get off way too easy. Basically, the elf prince, who is very upset because he looks like Gunnar Nelson, wants to start a war with humanity. To do this, he wants to use a mechanical army that was created thousands of years ago. Hellboy and his band of assorted freaks have to stop him from doing so, even though I'm pretty sure that one well-delivered tactical nuke would have the same effect. I'm pretty sure a lot of the creatures were just leftovers on the cutting room floor from "Pan's Labyrynth," but they were still neat looking. Minus a million points for not getting David Hyde Pierce back, though. That guy is awesome. Young Man River I flipped a kayak on the Potomac River yesterday! You might think it's hard to flip a kayak on a slow-moving river with very little chop. Well, you'd be right! Here's why it happened: As my kayaking amigo Michael and I were paddling away from the boathouse, he asked, "do you think these things flip over?" My answer: "Nah. I've done this tons of times. And they let any a**hole rent a kayak. There's no way they'd do that if you could flip them so easily." Much like a Greek hero, but with worse abs, hubris was my downfall. This has happened before. While hiking down Old Rag in Virginia a few years back, a friend noted: "Hey Chris, you're pretty agile!" I answered: "Yes, I am agile!" Within ten seconds of saying that I had rolled my ankle. I had to hobble two miles off the mountain and bandage my foot for a week. Fortunately, I have lived to tell these tales on my blog, and no one has never injured themselves writing a blAWWWWWWWWGRUUUUUUUUURKAAAUGGGH! ow I Take Requests Recap! ITR3 is in the books. Thanks again to everyone who came out; it was a real pleasure to see you there, and I sincerely hope you had a good time. If you weren't there, here's a little bit of what you missed: (July 14, 2008)

I Take Requests this Saturday!: Hey folks! The big show is once again upon us. I Take Requests is this Saturday at the DC Improv Lounge. For $10, you are getting: 1) a trivia contest 2) funny videos 3) a 50-minute stand-up show, including jokes about Phil Collins 4) a grand finale You're not getting that anywhere else, people. The show starts at 8, and I'll be available to sign body parts with a Sharpie after the show. If you're free this weekend, come on out and see it. You'll be glad you did. Movie Review: Wall-E Pixar never makes crappy movies, and here's why: When it takes 500,000 people chained to desks for four years to make your movie, and when you don't have luxury of alternate takes or massive editing, and when the movie can't really use a bankable Hollywood star to guarantee turnout, and you put out one movie a year, then you can't greenlight crap. "Wall-E" is really, really good, and it actually has some pretty bold satire of the human condition without being too preachy. It's also sweet, funny and eye-popping, and it has Fred Willard. Go see it. (July 8, 2008)

I am a Pod Person: I am now officially a podcaster. You work so hard, but you think the day will never come ... You're probably wondering, "Chris, why should I care what you have to say as opposed to every other loser with an internet connection?" The answer is: you shouldn't care what I have to say! But as it turns out, I have struck an agreement with the DC Improv whereby I'll have the chance to talk to people actually worth listening to. When possible I'll be interviewing the Improv headliners (and some other folks) and the posting the results for your listening pleasure. We're trying to keep the finished product around 20 minutes in length. There are already two episodes finished; I've talked to Bob Marley and Jeff Caldwell. You can learn more (including how to subscribe, so these things download automatically to your iTunes at the Podcast page. I'll also be throwing in some other MP3 comedy shorts, and (if I can figure out how) my latest video projects. If all you want is the Improv headliners, you can subscribe just to the DC Improv feed: http://www.dcimprov.com/podcast/rss.xml If you're wondering how this is done: I use Samson C01U USB-compatible microphones. The first two podcasts were recorded to my laptop computer with just one microphone, recording straight to Audacity (a freeware audio editing program). Now, I have a second microphone, and a program that can take feeds from two USB mics at the same time ... after that, I'll just export the recording over to audicity to finish up. It's a pretty simple and affordable setup. Isn't technology neat? Movies I Am Embarrassed to Like 1) Prime 2) Two Weeks Notice 3) In Her Shoes They're all in pretty heavy basic cable rotation ... sigh. (June 8, 2008)