joebronx

Yeah, HDTGM needs to do Roar. It's almost as if they made this movie so that that Podcasts would have something to talk about 35 years later. Word.

Here's why this is especially stupid. Caleb lives in Massachusetts. His car is registered in Massachusetts. The year is 2006. This means that Caleb's auto insurance provided glass repair with no deductible. Up until 2008, The Massachusetts Division of Insurance set all auto insurance policies in the Commonwealth. That agency set the deductible on glass repair at $0. Therefore, Caleb could have called one of the many glass repair companies on the North Shore. They would have shown up, replaced the windshield and billed his insurance company. This is very common in Massachusetts, and pretty much everyone knows that if you have glass damage, you can get that fixed for free in relatively no time. Maybe Caleb didn't have insurance. Well, you can't register your car in Massachusetts without it. Maybe he was worried about his premium going up. Well, most insurance companies won't raise your premium for a single damaged windshield claim, but even if they did, a small rise in your annual auto premium seems like a better consequence than giving away a piece of your life (or whatever). Side note: Glass repair wasn't always free from 2008-2012, but now I believe it is again. Word.

I agree that it's not about perfection. It's about giving the audience some context for the jokes. I think you at least need to be able to discern who the character is without being told. As someone who is familiar with Alan Thicke, I wouldn't have had a clue that this was supposed to be him if they hadn't told me. I even wondered if this was intentionally bad. He wasn't even close. The material was inconsistently funny. The execution was consistently poor. Anyway, it's not a home run. I like a lot of his characters. I really liked the concept of the ghost of that character from Boardwalk Empire. But this was just way off. And if you think that youtube clip sounds like what PFT did on CBB, then I guess your hearing has a better sense of humor than mine does. Word.

This impression was so bad that the world actually stopped spinning for 47 minutes on Monday. Word.

The Alan Thicke "character" or whatever we want to call it is just a flat-out failure. While it did hit some high notes, every single other character of his that I've heard is about 8 billion times funnier. The voice wasn't remotely close to Alan Thicke's voice. If you think it was good, then you are wrong. Just wrong. On second thought, I'll instead grant you the benefit of the doubt that you are an optimist. And I disagree with Scott1326657704's reduction of PFT to mere "accents." His Garry Marshall is definitely a knowing exaggeration of the way Marshall actually talks. He has the cadence, vocal mannerisms and timing down. For Thicke, he has almost nothing. There are occasionally syllables. If he just says, "Sorry" he's more or less OK. But otherwise, I have to say, this is a talented guy. Why was he wasting our time with this half-cooked impression? Word.

Here's the problem. If weren't told this was supposed to be Alan Thicke, no one would guess that it was. And as much as PFT doesn't quite get Ice-T's voice, I can tell that he's doing Ice-T. He doesn't clear that minimum bar of recognition here, and he's asking the audience to do a lot of work to follow the premise (that this is Alan Thicke). And yes, funny is subjective. A lot of people think the Larry the Cable Guy is a goddamn riot. But this. This is mostly not funny. His description of Blurred Lines was pretty funny, though. I guess I suffer the hindrance of actually knowing what Alan Thicke sounds and talks like. Word.

I agree that PFT doesn't have to nail the voice. But this isn't even close. This just sounds like Paul F. Thompkins with a deep voice. And I think for a "characterization" to be funny, you have to at least get us into a zone of familiarity with the voice. Otherwise, the absurdity doesn't land within any context that would give it humor. He may as well be saying, "Wouldn't it have been funny if Richard Nixon had been on Thicke of the Night?" By the way, that's not particularly funny anyway. Word.

OK, so I'll preface this by saying that I'm a genuine fan of all of the people involved here. I'll also say I've been traveling for a few days and I might not be as quick on the uptake as I should be. But what is going on with this PFT impression of Alan Thicke? He doesn't sound anything like Alan Thicke. I mean, he sounds like a white male with a fairly deep voice, so perhaps he sounds SOMETHING like Alan Thicke. But, this is a not a good impression. Now, PFT impressions don't need to be perfect to succeed by any means. While Garry Marshall and Werner Herzog are both close to the originals, Ice-T is a bit off, but nonetheless very funny. Unless I'm missing something and this impression is just supposed to be a bad impression, then I'd have to say this is a pretty epic (and surprising) failure. I've been listening to this part for about five minutes and this voice is so far off that I can't even imagine Alan Thicke saying the things that PFT is saying. I'm also struggling to figure out why a bad impression of Alan Thicke might be funny (if that's what he's going for). Finally, why is Alan Thicke even worth impersonating? It's not 1988. I guess his son is famous now. And maybe as I listen further I'll discover the hook. But dropping this terrible Alan Thicke impression out of nowhere is kind of making me crazy. Maybe if I didn't know who Alan Thicke was and had never seen Growing Pains, this might be funny. But I know what Alan Thicke sounds like, and this is not it. Anyway, no disrespect, but I don't respect this. Word.

Wow, yes, the main character of this show is a stone-cold rapist. When we the reach the resolution of his Season 1 arc, I have no idea whether we're supposed to feel like a good or a bad thing has happened. But if I'm supposed to feel like the character has triumphed, then I guess I feel bad about that, because he just goes around raping girls and no one cares. Interesting that you say this isn't good material for HDTGM. Generally when I watch something and think, "What the hell is going on?" more than six times per second, I figure that's a solid HDTGM candidate. When a werewolf eats vaginas (literally), a child cuts off her own tail (which she has for reasons that go entirely unexplained), a werewolf eats its own discarded human flesh, people from Europe speak with inconsistently accurate American accents, and a boat-load of incest happens all over the place and none of this happens with a remote hint of a care about anything adding up, then I'm typically surprised HDTGM hasn't done it already. Also, after completing the first season, yes this is quite misogynistic and also has unresolved gay sexual tension between the two lead characters. And the craziness of Hemlock Grove goes on and on. My head wants to explode. Word.

Despite the fact that I have not seen the Zombieland series, I will say Hemlock Grove. Word.

Nonetheless, Paul did call it a "contender" (I think that's the word he used) on this week's prequel episode. Seeing this picture I hope that Roth comes in for a directors cut and explains to me what the hell is going on in this show. Word.

Yeah, that whole sequence with the boat is crazy. I apologize if I missed it, but I think the podcast also overlooked this part of the movie, which is a shame. The most absurd aspect to me was "stealth mode." Van Damme instructs the crew in the boat to "prepare for stealth mode," and everyone "prepares" for stealth mode by LOWERING THE VISORS ON THEIR HELMETS. As if they're going to warp speed or something. And as if to protect their faces from debris or bright light. Of course, no bright or debris flies at their faces. What makes less sense is that they flip the visors back up mere seconds later. Then, if I remember correctly, I think they blow up a radar dish. This is stupid, because they are in "stealth" mode and therefore invisible to this radar. Of course, blowing up the radar causes Bison to check the video surveillance and he spots them instantly and uses his video game console to attack the boat. Worst stealth mission ever. Word.

Although I didn't expect much when I saw Eli Roth's name in the credits, I will say it's an entirely different kind of bad than I anticipated. It's like a psychedelic fever dream with terrible acting. In his review of Punisher: War Zone, Roger Ebert made the point that we've reached a time when bad movies can be well made. Hemlock Grove is a tremendously well-crafted horrible thing. I'm still trying to figure out how it got a B+ from Entertainment Weekly. In spite of my criticism I do find it strange that the AV Club called it "misogynistic." Because that suggests this series effectively communicated misogyny to someone, and I'm baffled as to how this show could possibly have communicated any sort of ethos to anyone. Every single character on this show is a cipher. I'd say 75 percent of the conversations don't make sense. Not only within the context of the show, but within the context of the conversations themselves. Most dialogue plays out something like this: CHARACTER A "I hate you." CHARACTER B "I hate you. And I want nothing to do with you. We are mortal enemies." CHARACTER A "Need a ride home?" CHARACTER B: "Yes. I have a secret super power, but I don't like walking and we live fairly close to each other." CHARACTER A: "I want to see you turn into a werewolf." CHARACTER B: "No problem." Word.

Granted, not a movie, but I'm four episodes deep on the new Netflix series and it feels like this show was made by film students who have seen nothing but HDTGM movies. It's crazy. It makes no sense. Weird stuff happens. Then awesome stuff happens. Eyeballs fall out. And nothing comes close to adding up. If they ever spend an hour talking about a TV show, it has to be the first (and please God only) season of Hemlock Grove. It's like someone threw Twilight, True Blood, Twin Peaks and Gigli in a blender, filtered out any good elements of those things and then served it to you. In a toilet. Word.