No matter what you think of Sting — and you should think VERY WELL of him — he’s never boring.
This video is part travelogue, part concert-montage. And it has yet to bore me.
DESERT ROSE by Sting
Tag: Movies
ICE, ICE BABY as sung by the movies
Oh, this is brilliant. The classic ’90s song by Vanilla Ice, as sung by clips from various movies.
For fans of this song, I took the original and put it under the lyrical microscope, line by line:
ICE, ICE BABY as interpreted by the Red Pen of Doom
007 villains: Getting rid of incompetent henchmen
Bond villains need all kinds of minions, right?
Somebody has to feed the sharks, build the secret lairs, hide in hotel closets to attack 007 and all that.
HOWEVER: You can’t just fire a henchmen, not when they know all your secrets. That wouldn’t do at all. And you need to send a message about accountability to the remaining employees of your secret shebang.
THE PROTOTYPE trailer is what movies should be
Now, sometimes a bad movie can fool you by putting together 3 minutes of good stuff — the only 3 minutes that don’t stink — into the trailer.
Not this movie. You can feel that it’s going to be good, just like five seconds into the ARGO trailer, I knew Ben Affleck had strapped himself into a chair and watched GIGLI for 72 hours before vowing to atone for his sins, which also include PEARL HARBOR and any other movie he doesn’t also direct. He is born to direct, and to have shaggy hair with a beard.
HOWEVER: This is preventing you from watching one of the best trailers I’ve seen in forever. Here you go.
Short film ROSA blows Hollywood away
So this studio works for years to produce ROSA, a beautiful little short about an apocalyptic android goddess with kung fu powers on loan from Neo, who’s busy not using them in the Matrix — oh, wait?
One lone man did this?
NO WAY.
But it’s true. Take a look.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1iqiMqbbIE
Hollywood took notice, and now ROSA is becoming a full-on movie, with popcorn and everything. This makes me happy.
Peoples of the Series of Tubes, and the Twitter, what’s your favorite short film that deserves to be made into two hours of movie goodness?
Seven movie clichés that must be NUKED FROM ORBIT
Now that going to the movies more than once a year involves taking out a second mortgage to buy $9 popcorn and $7 Diet Coke and $11 tickets, you must pick your flicks wisely.
I’ve already skewered my favorite genre with Top 10 Thriller Clichés.
Then I went after the Top 10 Action Mystery Clichés — but it goes deeper than that.
Peoples of Hollywood, please stop spending the gross domestic product of Paraguay to make movies with these seven stupid clichés.
7) Romantic comedies starring Matthew McConaughey
We get it: he’s cute, and his Texas drawl is charming.
HOWEVER: He is not required, by federal law, to be in every romantic comedy on the planet.
6) Macho action heroes walking away from explosions really, really slow
Wussy little bad guys are thrown through the air by explosions.
Explosions only make macho action heroes slow down and stroll.
5) Romantic comedies where the man is a bumbling, lovable loser while the woman is a hot neurotic mess
The man is a 40-year-old virgin (Steve Carrell), a chauvinist pig (Russell Crowe) or a nerdy writer type (Woody Allen).
The woman is a beautiful mess (Jennifer Aniston, Kate Hudson or, God help us, Sarah Jessica Parker) who is far more educated, cultured and successful than the man.
So, she naturally hates this loser at first, then she slowly molds this wreck of a man into a real human being worthy of dating and / or marrying.
Please.
4) False alarms in Every Horror Movie Known to Man
Enough with the cat / boyfriend / little brother nonsense, and the scary music is just cheating.
3) Romantic comedies starring Kate Hudson
Though I have to say this: it’s better than Sarah Jessica Parker.
2) Movie villains who carefully explain their plot instead of KILLING THE HERO ALREADY
Why does every movie villain feel the need to talk to the hero?
Look, the villain always has hordes of minions who are completely motivated to listen to his stupid monologues. He can give speeches that make Fidel Castro look like the king of brevity.
A villain’s minions are the best listeners ever. They must not only nod and smile, but be entranced by his every syllable. The villain is their employer and visionary leader, and there’s a good chance that not listening with your entire body and soul will get you thrown into the tank full of sharks with lasers.
Chatting with the hero makes no sense.
Here’s one villain who gets it right.
1) Romantic comedies starring Matthew McConaughey AND Kate Hudson
And you thought I was making that up.
THE WALKING DEAD walks into Dumb Movie Land
Movies make people dumb.
Not the people watching movies, unless that movie happens to be TWILIGHT: BREAKING DAWN PART 5 or whatever, in which case yes, your LSAT scores will never be the same.
No, I’m talking about characters in movies.
Characters in books sometimes do stupid things, but not usually. Put that same character in a movie and they turn into absolute idiots.
This is true for romantic comedies (bumbling fools in love!), action movies (no henchman can shoot, and no heroine or sidekick can avoid getting kidnapped by the villain) and especially horror movies, which deserve a post all their own.
If a person with a functioning brain cell rattling around their skull wouldn’t go into the spooky abandoned house where people keep disappearing, you can bet the movie character will march right in. Does the hot young teenager know that a serial killer is chasing down and killing hot young teenagers? Well, she should definitely wear high heels and fall down six times while the psycho chases her.
There are websites dedicated to listing the stupid things that movie characters do.
However: I want to pick on THE WALKING DEAD, a zombie shebang that’s on the Glowing Tube.
As a fan of zombies, I am aware of this show, and though I haven’t watched every flipping episode, I kinda keep track of things by recaps and reviews and such. It’s a good show and not at all stupid.
So why did a smart show have their characters get so idiotic in the big series finale?
Here’s the setup: the non-zombie hero peoples are holed up at some farm, and the big finale is a battle that happens when the zombies show up, en masse.
What made me want to throw things at the YouTube clip is how the zombies happily marched across the fields and surrounded the farmhouse.
No, no, no.
If you or I are hanging around a farmhouse during the zombie apocalypse, the zombies won’t ever march up on us from every direction. Why? Because we’ll get busy, real quick, using all the tools and equipment that any decent farm has the second we arrive there and take inventory of the place.
First thing we do is fire up the tractor or backhoe and dig a long ditch around the farm.
Second thing we do shove the dirt we dug up into a berm, a rough wall. So they fall in the ditch, and if by some zombie magic one of the undead gets out of the ditch, he’s gotta climb a wall.
Third thing we do is put a barbed wire fence on top of that berm.
Fourth thing we do is find some fuel and make Molotov cocktails.
If there’s a working tractor, this sort of thing takes a day or two.
And it’s worth it, because now a single Farmer Joe type with a flipping .22 rifle can stand on top of that berm and pick off zombies all day while he sips moonshine. Because there’s no way a horde of zombies is magically getting past the ditch, the wall and the barbed wire. It’s not happening.
Zombies can’t climb.
Instead, the heroes of THE WALKING DEAD go on foot (to get nom-nom-nommed) and drive around in cars trying to blow away zombies. Which isn’t smart, either. Shooting from a moving vehicle may look cool, but you have a much better chance of hitting a moving target when you’re not bouncing around, too.
Bottom line: If you really want to survive a horror movie / zombie apocalypse, please use your noggin first and your trigger finger second.
The Red Pen of Doom dissects every Batman movie IN HISTORY
Here is my take on every Batman movie known to man except for THE DARK KNIGHT RISES, because I don’t want to spoil that for folks who haven’t seen it yet.
Fire up the time machine.
BATMAN
Do you remember the hype for this first Batman movie? It was insane.
Just seeing the intro, where the camera zooms around something that looks cool and immense, and turns out to be the bat symbol — it blew our little minds.
Looking back at it, the thing seems incredibly cheesy and low-budget. But still fun.
The fight scenes were the best thing around aside from movies involving (a) Bruce Lee, (b) lightsabers or (c) Bruce Lee wielding a lightsaber.
Jack Nicholson was also on fire.
HOWEVER: Tim Burton did go a little wacky with the mix of time periods, cars, costumes and musical choices. This movie was a combination of cheesy, trippy, awesome and weird.
Grade: B
BATMAN RETURNS
The Michael Keaton sequel followed the iron-clad law of comic-book movies, which says: “The first movie must have the origin story of the hero plus the best villain, then the second movie must have two villains and the third movie THREE FLIPPING VILLAINS, then you reboot the franchise with a cheaper star and cheaper director.”
Bad news: the sequel had Danny DeVito instead of Jack Nicholson, though Danny did a pretty decent job of being creepy and threatening.
Good news: the sequel had much higher production values. Darker, grittier, less Prince-flavored and cotton-candy colored. Dark looks good on Batman.
Best news: Michelle Pfeiffer as Catwoman, which is glorious.
Grade: B+
Now we’re talking: bring on the craziness.
BATMAN FOREVER goes first. I actually didn’t mind Val Kilmer as Batman, or Tom Cruise’s 5th wife as whoever she was supposed to be.
And shockingly, Jim Carrey does a great job as The Riddler while the more honored actor, Tommy Lee Jones, was boring as Two Face.
HOWEVER: The movie is kind of like Lindsey Lohan: a good-looking mess.
I did like the ending, though. The final confrontation with Jim Carrey in tight pajamas, and the choice Batman has to make in saving his friends — good stuff.
Grade: C+
BATMAN AND ROBIN
BATMAN AND ROBIN is where the franchise jumps the shark.
This may be the most expensive mistake George Clooney ever made as an actor. He’s a tremendous actor, one of the best ever, but he’s completely wasted in this film, which is a bit like IRON MAN 2 in that we have 14 subplots involving sidekicks (Robin, Batwoman, Alfred, whoever) along with another 8 subplots involving Uma Thurman, Arnold Schwarzenegger and whoever else was one of the villains in this mess.
Bane is in here as some kind of wrestler thug. Big waste.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jj2KcFj1jbE
So, this is the movie that gives us Batman on ice skates and batsuits with nipples. This movie should be nuked from orbit.
Grade: F
BATMAN BEGINS
The Christopher Nolan / Christian Bale movies are obviously the best.
This movie is under-rated. Seriously. I just watched it again last night, along with THE DARK KNIGHT, and it’s rock solid.
The beginning is hard core. Bruce in a Chinese prison, his parents getting shot during the mugging, Liam Neeson showing up with a lightsaber and talking about how the Force helps you be a ninja for justice or whatever.
Loved every second, especially when Bruce rejects the League of Shadows and their plan to destroy Gotham for the 14th time, and instead destroys their base. Beautiful.
The middle is great, especially since you get to watch Bruce Wayne tinker and try out new things. He doesn’t just flip a switch and turn into Batman: he evolves into it, painfully, and it doesn’t happen in a Rocky montage set to the music of Prince, Usher, Eminem, Rihanna or Justin Bieber, which is a possibility if you handed the reigns to this franchise back to Tim Burton or Joel Schumacher.
Liam Neeson actually being Ra’s – a great surprise, as was Liam burning down Wayne manor and leaving Bruce for dead, just like what happened to him back at his Jedi ninja lair in the mountains.
The ending is also satisfying. Every payoff has a setup, and things tie together perfectly.
Grade: A+
THE DARK KNIGHT
Now, THE DARK KNIGHT is both more brilliant and more uneven. The beginning scene with the Joker robbing the bank is shocking. Every scene with the Joker is shocking and brilliant, to be honest.
But this film — as genius as it is — is uneven compared to BATMAN BEGINS. The beginning and middle are better than the end, though the closing bit is awesome.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zu8FvFezAI4
I’m not saying its a bad movie. Love it. I’m saying the beginning and middle are awesome and the end is merely great, and the genius of the whole thing completely overshadows the parts that are a bit talky or slow.
Grade: A+
Three random airplane movies: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
Anybody who’s a fan of Clint Eastwood‘s spaghetti westerns knows that THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY is one of his best films ever. Clint hardly says a word the entire thing. It’s like the first 30 minutes of WALL-E, if you changed him from a robot that cleaned up humanity’s trash in an apocalyptic wasteland to a gunslinger who cleaned up human trash in an apocalyptic wasteland.
So: flying over to Germany and back, I saw many, many airplane movies. As a public service, I’m reviewing the ones that I remember to (a) save you from watching stinkers, (b) give you a head’s up on hidden gems and (c) say sarcastic things about Sarah Jessica Parker.
First up is the Good, then the Bad and finally the Ugly.
More good stuff from George the Clooney and Ryan the Gosling, who does a good job portraying the crazy life of a political campaign.
As a reporter who covered all kinds of campaigns, and as somebody working in politics now, this movie gets a lot of things right. The long hours. The mix of cynical veterans and 20-something interns full of energy. Lofty ideas crashing into the shores of reality. Reporters working angles. War by leaks.
I appreciated this movie, and how it saw all the shades of gray in the characters.
Ryan goes from a wunderkind who can do no wrong to having no job — and then, having learned things the hard way, rolls around in the mud to pull a coup on the boss who fired him to get the job of running Clooney’s campaign. You see this character suffer and change.
Clooney could have played his presidential candidate as a straight-up hero, a cartoonish good guy. Once again, Clooney has the guts to play somebody interesting and flawed.
Verdict: Rent it on Netflix at least TWICE, because I say so.
PAUL NEWMAN AND ELIZABETH TAYLOR IN SOME FILM WHERE PEOPLE TALK A LOT
From watching this with the sound off: Paul Newman is a good-looking jerk. He broke his leg, so he lays around the house all day, drinking up the booze and glowering at people. For some reason I never understood, Elizabeth Taylor is completely nice to him the entire time, even after he tries to break her ribs with his crutches.
This movie raised many, many questions in my mind:
First: Why doesn’t Elizabeth Taylor — or whoever owns this house — kick angry Paul Newman to the curb?
Second: Who’s paying for all this booze that Paul drinks?
Third: Does he have a job?
Fourth: Yes, he’s good looking, but does he have blackmail photos of Elizabeth or something? Because being good looking doesn’t usually let you sit around a house for weeks and weeks, drinking all their alcohols while you throw things at your host and act like a total dipstick.
This is a talky movie. There are old people and kids and a birthday cake.
I’m guessing it was a play (CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF?) before it was a movie, because nobody every drives anywhere and there’s just a few sets. The camera keeps bringing us back to Paul Newman’s bedroom, where he demolishes Elizabeth Taylor’s liquor while giving her the cold shoulder.
She is far too kind in this flick. I would’ve kicked him out of the bedroom, crutches or not, after his first hissy fit.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWsG_Qj1wUo
Also, why is Paul the Newman such an angry drunk? My guess is he was some kind of high school sports jock, sad about the passage of his glory days, because the first scene I saw was Paul at some high school stadium at night, killing a bottle of whiskey or whatever while he throws stuff around before running hurdles. On the last hurdle, he trips up and that’s when he breaks his leg.
I found Paul Newman to be completely unsympathetic. Plugging in the airline headphones wouldn’t change my opinion because he never seemed to say anything anyway.
Note: After firing up the googles, yes, this was CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF, and the internets say Tennessee Williams, a playwright famous enough to have his OWN STATE, hated this movie adaptation of his play so much that he told people the film would set back cinema for 50 years or whatever.
Verdict: This might be a good movie with the sound on. Who knows? Visually, it was boring. You’d have to pay me in purple euros to watch it again.
I DON’T KNOW HOW SHE DOES IT
I also watched this with the sound off, peeking every 10 minutes, and that was plenty to understand the plot: Sarah Jessica Parker is a working mom with a husband, kids, a gigantic loft and many, many pairs of shoes. Her boss is Remington Steele / 007, which makes her life even more miserable, right?
It’s a rough life.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bn_OrhwIidA
There are more than 7 billion people on the planet. Half are women. I bet if you showed this film to moms in Africa who walk miles every morning to fetch drinking water, or moms in China working on assembly lines 14 hours a day, they’d break down and cry at all the hardships that Sarah Jessica Parker has to endure in this movie. Should she spend more time at the office with the suave Pierce Brosnan, more time at home being a wife and a mother or maybe hire another nanny and just not feel guilty about it?
The climax of this movie, I believe, comes when Sarah Jessica Parker faces the ultimate test: should she pack five pairs of shoes on her business trip or six?
The Hollywood executives who greenlit this turkey should be belted into a 15-hour airplane ride, halfway across the world, while they’re forced to watch this thing five times straight.
Verdict: Kill it with fire. Nuke it from orbit. No mercy.
Crazy funny documentaries: DARKON and TREKKIES
Who said documentaries are boring? No. Check these two out.
Our first documentary — which I rented on the NetFlix and watched TWICE — answers the questions all of us have asked, at one time or another: What happened to the 13-year-old dudes who were really, really into Dungeons and Dragons? I’m not talking a little into it. I mean really, really serious about it, as in they’d go pro if there was such a thing.
The documentary DARKON answers those questions. And no, they don’t hang out in mom’s basement dressed up like warriors and wizards and elves while rolling dice on a table for ten hours a day. That’s silly. They dress up like warriors and wizards and elves for entire weekends and bash each other with foam swords.
And this is serious business. The swords may be foam, but the armor is real, and the politics are all kinds of crazy.
So: watch this trailer, then watch the whole thing.
This documentary is less deeply epic than DARKON and far more comic. You will snort coffee from your nose, or bourbon, or a Capri Sun juice box, if that’s what mom packed.
A former actress from STAR TREK: I FORGET WHICH SERIES (she’s blonde, and left the show, then came back as an evil Romulun twin or whatever) goes forth and interviews all sorts of Star Trek fans. She’s also got interviews with Leonard Nimoy and William Shatner, but those won’t stick to your mind as much as the dentist whose entire office is decked out like the bridge of the Enterprise or the gang of Klingons ordering food from Taco Bell while speaking Klingon.
This thing is hilarious. Here’s the trailer.
The Red Pen of Doom 