Blacks Books

So I watched season one of Portlandia on Netflix a few days back, I'd gone into it expecting some kind of documentary about hipsters, instead I got a sketch comedy show about hipsters. Sounds awful right? Surprisingly it wasn't, it felt a bit like Kids In The Hall, which is something I don't think I've ever said about a show since Kids In The Hall, so I see it as a very welcome thing. Anyways, I hop over to IMDB to check out all the pertinent facts and I find a review proclaiming Portlandia to be complete bollocks and in fact a rip off of an earlier BBC series called Black Books. Now, I'm generally a fan of what the BBC does, so a show that I liked being an inferior copy from a company that I find generally does above average work was exciting news indeed. I rushed to download the entire series and see what a marvelous wonder it was sure to be.

I cue up the first episode and I see two familiar looking faces who I'm sure can only be a good sign of things to come. Dylan Moran who I recalled as being a prominent character from Shaun of the Dead and Bill Bailey who I probably remember from some stand up television special. Being that Portlandia is supposedly derivative of this show I come into it expecting sketch comedy.

It's a sitcom, which is strike one. Sitcoms are where comedy goes to retire. The only exception to this rule is Spaced, and possibly the intentionally edgy sitcoms such as Married With Children and It's Always Sunny In Phillidelphia depending on how generous I'm being. Spaced is the only one that was genuinely good though. Seinfeld was pretty good for a while, it just went on for too long. Whatever, Black Books, it's funnier than Friends. That's about as much praise as I'm willing to give it in comparing it to other sitcoms.

Visually it's very boring outside of the opening credits. They ask you to imagine a lot of things, like vermin on the floor or filth at angles the camera never shoots. The two or three times they film outside of the studio it's quite refreshing, but these moments are quite brief. I really can't help but feel so much more could've been done in that regard.

The music...what's there ranges from unnoticeable to pretty good. The opening credits are by far my favorite part of the entire show. There's canned laughter, I'm never a fan of that. That's pretty much all there is on that front really

Overall, it's not a bad show, had I come into it objectively without such high expectations I'd probably not have been quite so disappointed with it. If you've got nothing better it's a pretty watchable series with one or two stand out episodes mostly in the second season. Fever in particular is an episode I remember getting a laugh out of, mostly because it didn't focus quite so much on the main character Bernard and instead focused more on his side-kicks, the ever quirky Manny and Fran who's kind of the normal one. There's a few celebrity guest appearances, most notably Simon Pegg and Nick Frost of Shaun Of The Dead fame. So there's that going for it.

Not Dead Yet

Watching too many crappy movies kind of killed off my desire to blog about them, I think next year I won't binge on terrible horror films quite as hard. I've been watching lots of documentaries lately but by and large most of them aren't really anything I'd want to blog about. I've definitely got 4 or 5 favorite documentary oddities I'm feeling the urge to share with the world though.

Survival of the Dead

This film offended me it was so terrible. This movie is a very definite contender for worst movie out there. I guess Diary of the Dead got my hopes up since I managed to find something to like about it, but Survival failed to meet even my lowest expectations. I don't even know where to start with this steaming pile of shit. But I suppose from the beginning is never a bad place. The film stars the bandits from the previous movie, the lead character tries to justify it but it's all kind of word salad. The token lesbian bandit masturbates while the white guy watches late night variety talk shows on his laptop. Yeah, some chick is just idly flickin' the old bean on top of a jeep at the start of the film, very classy. From there we get some hillbillies with a bunch of black zombie heads on sticks. We pick up a kid who does retarded shit and our lead takes a retarded shining to him for no reason. There's some banter about how apple stuff is cool. Fuck you Romero. Fuck you. It's hard to even recall how stupid this steaming pile of bullshit was. I hope the paycheck from this keeps you warm at night. Whatever. They listen to the kid in terms of taking directions because he found a clip on youtube of a guying telling them to come to an island. SURFUCKINGPRISE IT WAS AN AMBUSH ALL ALONG. No reason is given for why these people have turned to banditry. Oh, I forgot about those guys. The bandits are people we met earlier in the film. They come from an island with two families, the guy who was banished advocated killing the dead and was shunned by his daughter and the other family for it. No reason is given for how retarded they all are. Anyways, they fight it out, the latino bites a zombie which is apparently enough to turn him into a zombie. Reverse rules. Genius. The old guy from the island who tried his best to kill them joins with a wink and a nod. EVERYONE IN THIS MOVIE IS RETARDED BY THE WAY, IT'S KIND OF IMPORTANT TO KNOW THAT. On the Island the dead are chained up to stuff, but one of them is riding a horse. A zombie. Riding. A horse. I will cheer when Romero dies. He did good stuff in his time, but he's intent to undo it all with the single worst movie he could possibly make. To some extent his zombies have always retained some intelligence and dexterity. But do you know how much is involved in riding a horse? What's next? Zombie accountants? Zombies that give history lectures? Fuck this shit. Anyways, there's a weird blood feud that escalates. We find out the zombie on the horse has a twin who isn't a zombie. That is until she feeds her hand to her sister and then gets pissed when it happens. They make a big point about the zombies eating other food like horses. The guy who advocates killing zombies is portrayed to be wrong for some ungodly stupid reason. It ends, the main character talks about wanting to stay on the island to make a living but then 5 seconds later they state that they left and took money which would have no value at all.

Jesus fucking christ. This movie is terrible in every way possible. Seriously. It probably is the worst movie ever made. Nobody can act. The visuals are half awful CGI. The sound will be mostly that of your brain begging for death. The story might fit in with a western, but what little idea is there is handled piss poor.

I can not advise against seeing this movie enough. I feel I am worse for the experience. Do not let loved ones watch this putrid goose anus of a movie. Burn it if you come across it. Do what needs to be done. Fuck this movie.

The Thing (1982)

This was another film recommended to me on Facebook, it wasn't the surprise hit that was Session 9, but it clearly deserves its reputation as one of the greats. A research site in Alaska strikes me as a pretty genius setting, it's secluded, still on earth and extremely inhospitable, thus pitting a limited crew against the monster in a deathmatch. It's got all the benefits of putting the film in space without the risk of venturing off into the realm of sci-fi and beating the monster with science. This shit is a gritty cage match, and I love it for that. There's not a man among the main cast who's incapable of acting, they're all very believable as angry paranoid mountain men. Most of them have pretty distinct personalities and I found myself caring about their grizzly deaths. Right from the start McReady destroys a computer because it beats him at a game of chess and I knew I was going to like him.

I was excited to see Morricone's name in the opening credits but the soundtrack never really wowed me. It's very much appropriate to the film but I'm used to his music making me stop a while to focus on it for a little bit. It's entirely adequate though, and if it served only to draw me deeper into the film then I can only conclude it did it's job flawlessly. Visually this movie is pretty stunning. At no point do I feel like I'm not in the middle of the arctic. Nothing seems inauthentic or implausible. The titular thing always looks top notch, rubber puppets covered in slime are how I like my monsters to be done, none of that CGI shit. It's also very easy to tell when someone is cold, they'll have realistic frost build up which is a really nice touch.

The story is pretty simple and it works well. It practically sprints to get us into the meat of the film and once it gets there it's a mad dash to the end with no lull. That's something I appreciate immensely. It's rare that the film isn't barreling through deadly situations one after the other. The paranoia of the thing being anyone at any given time adds to the tension, the film addresses this at one point and then leaves us to hope things haven't changed since then. The thing is one hell of a monster too, rather than showing one power it appears to adapt into something more threatening as the film goes on, giving us something new to be scared of all the time. The primary means of fighting the beast is fire, often manifested as a large explosion, this movie loves blowing shit up and I love it for that.

Diary of the Dead

I wasn't expecting much after how disappointing Land of the Dead was so the bar was set pretty low for this one. Somehow it managed to not be disappointing. Thinking about it I can only name one thing in this movie that stands out as good, the alcoholic English ex-patriot professor who stands like a judgmental god of death over his students. Even that one good thing sounds pretty stupid. But somehow it worked. This film adopts a terrible documentary style which doesn't really work. Half the time someone is always pointing out that the cameraman is filming and telling him to stop. It pokes fun at itself a few times and there's a really annoying callback towards the end that was a real groaner. The zombies are slow but threatening since, like any good zombies, they're very inclined to bite. All our characters are film students, which makes them more hateable than they needed to be yet still kind of relatable. The actors are all fairly good for a change, I suppose that was what I liked about this movie, I was able to lose myself in it a bit without being jarred back to reality every couple of minutes. That's a very rare thing in a zombie film. Visually nothing in this film is particularly interesting, and the documentary style is kind of annoying sometimes. There's no soundtrack to speak of, which was probably a good choice. The story barely exists. This is all about watching competent actors and a little bit of gore here and there. It's not a very exciting movie, or a thinker, or much of anything really. If you want to see competent acting, decent zombie gore and don't care if it really has a point to it this is the movie for you.

The House on Haunted Hill (1999)

I'm going to go ahead and disclose I have a bias towards this movie, saw it in theaters around Halloween when it was released and I loved it. I've seen it more times than I like to admit but it's been a while. I've never really cared about the plot, or the characters. As a movie, it's kind of crappy. It could've been a series of paintings and been just as effective. The soundtrack is pop crap too, but it's pop crap from an era I'm nostalgic for. The sound is adequate, probably even a little above average. When I watch this I am in it for the corn syrup and red dye. This film wastes no time in giving it to me either. I like that. I like that a lot.

I'm really not sure what there is to even say about this movie. I hate Chris Kattan in it, but I generally just hate Chris Kattan. I hate the people who've made careers of mimicking him. Justin Long, Jimmy Fallon, clumsily charming white guy who's big schtick is being nervous. Justin Long was actually really good in Zack and Miri, I'm not sure why he keeps sticking to the Chris Kattan bit. Between those 3, Michael Cera and Jesse Eisenberg the awkward nervous funny guy routine has been done to death. Oddly enough I can barely tell Kattan, Long and Fallon apart, same for Cera and Eisenberg. They're not really helping themselves stand-out by all trying to act the same either. That rant doesn't really belong in this review, but I had to get it out. It annoyed me throughout the film anytime Kattan would talk. Have a creepy hot nurse to make up for it. (The guy in the rubber mask shaking his head behind her was deliciously weird)

It's cheesy to it's core. But it doesn't try to be more than it is. I appreciate that. It's the kind of movie you can watch in a group and riff while you go. Watch it if that sounds like something you'd enjoy, it's one of the better horror movies out there. Have some more screen caps since I can't think of anything else to say.

Land of the Dead

I watched this movie a few hours ago and really didn't want to write about it. As I often like to say; it's not the worst movie I've ever seen and that is the only praise I can offer here. There are two good things about this movie. The first is John Leguizamo who gets a fairly prominent role, I'm always happy to see him in a movie. The guy made an amazing Captain Vegetable.

The second good thing, and I readily admit this is very arguable as a good thing, is that the zombie threat in this movie is a legitimate threat. They aren't fast zombies, they're smart zombies. At least one of them is. He can do simple things like operate assault rifles, swim and apparently feel emotions, that's a pretty big repertoire for an undead guy.

The movie tries to make a point about corporate greed but doesn't really pull it off. The extreme dichotomy between have and have not isn't really believable which makes the whole thing feel faker than it needs to. There's some stupid things, most of which I've already forgotten but I do remember one zombie that was a thread of flesh away from being decapitated yet it could still move it's body enough to catapult the head at people and bite. It wasn't on screen for long but it annoyed me enough that I'm still kind of pissed. It doesn't help that it was a CGI zombie, which never thrills me in the first place.

Don't watch this movie if you want a good movie, a fun movie or anything but very mild mediocre entertainment. If you're like me and trying to watch through all Romero's zombie films just sit back and think about better movies you'll watch afterwards, that's what got me through it.