Blast Hardcheese

Three weeks ago, I was Covid-canned from my J-O-B of nearly five years, so I decided to drown my sorrows in some shoegaze-y noise-pop. In the interest of trying to stay creative and motivated, and made this mix and I am sharing it with anyone on this board with a ear towards static gossamer noise-pop: Enjoy!

I remember seeing the trailer for this movie and thinking that the leads were supposed to be related instead of love interests. Maybe its "attractiveness bias," but Dane Dehaan and Cara Delevingne (who are, in their defense, very attractive), look like they could be siblings. In this movie, they have zero on-screen chemistry and come across more like and antagonistic and quarreling fraternal brother and sister. The movie falls flat for me because of Dehaan's character especially, who is supposed to be this roguish Han Solo type, but doesn't really look or act like he has the years of experience behind him performing this insanely dangerous line of work. Han Solo, Indiana Jones, James Bond: I believe that these guys have seen some shit and shrug it off with a rye comment and a smirk to stave-off the gravity of what they've been through. However, just like in The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (another dumpster fire that HDTGM definitely needs to cover), Dehaan comes across in this film like an immature fancy lad pretending to be an adult, rather than the scruffy, hard-scrabble rule-abiding-rule-breaker he's supposed to be. They may be long in the tooth for it now, but Clive Owen could have played Valerian, with Eva Green playing Laureline. Just a thought.

I wish Paul would start a podcast called How Did We Get Scheer. The premise would be simple: Paul sits down with a guest who is given a one-sentence description of Paul's past exploits and the remainder of the show is the show is the guest asking follow-up questions as Paul's story unfolds. Paul F. Thompkins would be the first guest interviewer.

Holy shit, right?!? Going into this movie cold, I totally thought they were.

-Best Jason Shutting An Audience Member’s Shit Down (aka, “Hey, Bro...?”) -Best “How Did We Get Scheer” (Tales from Paul’s Past). -Best June Just Not Having It.

Be that as it may, to me Matt Damon sounded like he was doing an impression of Liam Neeson doing an impression of an American accent. Imagine Damon’s character from this film doing the “particular set of skills” speech from Taken and you’ll get the idea.

This is a great playlist! That Walkmen song is one of their absolute best. Here's the first in a planned four-part series of mixes featuring bands from 2020 I recently put together:

Yeah, that is weird.

When this movie was announced as one of the tour films HDTGM would be discussing, I thought it was a strange choice. It’s not the most over-the-top film in the Underworld series, but maybe they had their reasons or special insights into this installment of the franchise in particular. Listening to this episode, however, it seemed like Paul, June and Jason were trying to backwards engineer many of the plot points they found confusing and convoluted (check and double check) established in the earlier films. it’s still a very hilarious HDTGM episode, please don’t get me wrong. But I still wish they would have reviewed the first film instead.

Both Gargoyles (a Disney joint, by the by) and Exo Squad (which tackled lighthearted themes such as war, bio-engineered slavery and humans as the antagonists) were pretty aggro for children’s cartoons. But, yeah, Gargoyles—which has a far superior storyline—is the very first thing I thought of when I saw the I, Frankenstein trailer.

I don’t think it’s mentioned in this episode, but the team behind the Underworld franchise tried to recapture the magic in yet another crazy-ass patchwork of action inanity in the form of I, Frankenstein (which, if I’m remembering this correctly, is based off of a comic book created by one of the Underworld writers). It’s basically the same premise as Underworld but with demons (bad guys, obviously) battling gargoyles (good guys, I think... ?) in yet another centuries-long underground blood-war-battle-feud-gothic-drama thing, with Frankenstein’s monster, Adam (I see what ya did there, writers!) caught in the middle. Humanity (or is it dignity?) is also at stake, too, maybe.

Can we throw The Crow (the first one) in this mix, too?

This for the win! I just realized: Underworld is like John Wick for goths, or Fast & Furious for manic depressives.

The first one is my favorite, but I did enjoy the Rube Goldbergian sideways helicopter death scene from the second film. I remember think that was almost too clever for this series.

I have no idea what the allure of these films is, but I’ll never hesitate to watch one. I remember sheepishly introducing my wife to this series, and to my surprise, she really likes it, too. Underworld: spellbindingly “bad in a good way.”

Sadly... me. I have no idea why I like these joyless, excessively dark (read: nearly impossible to actually see), self-serious, and impenetrably plotted Underworld films. I remember Patton Oswalt once saying, “I don’t believe in ‘guilty pleasures.’ If it makes you happy, you shouldn’t feel guilty about it,” and immediately flashing on watching this series of movies (repeatedly) and feeling nothing but inner shameful guilt. This shit is like something an ADD-riddled teenager would come up with. I dunno why I do this to myself, honestly. This film is like Chicken McNuggets: comfort food for the soulless. I’m truly surprised that Jason, Tall and June picked the 4th film in the franchise for the podcast when the first film is brimming with so, so, SO much batshitfullness. Besides establishing this world, the first Underworld film is simply a hot fuckin’ guilty pleasure mess: Michael Sheen as the head lycan; Selene shooting out the floor beneath her in a circular fashion to make an escape that would take longer than simply jumping out a window; the introduction of bullets that contain “sun light”; the entire movie takes place at night—all the time—in a weird, constantly wet hybrid American-Eastern European city; one of the writers of this film appears prominently as a hulking lycan with a vocal range so deep it can drop panties the next village over; vampires using plaster busts for shooting practice; Bill Nighy as a vampire elder in a sewer claw fight with a vampire-lycan hybrid; lead actor Shane Brolly’s painfully awful line delivery; the term “death dealer”; etc. So, yeah...

You’re still here, huh? I thought you were unsubscribing...

You, sir, are in for a treat. It makes Purple Rain look like Casablanca.

Bumping this one because it’s a “comedy” (and I’m using that term lightly) whose entire story is predicated on a spoiled white dude in blackface. Not just for one scene, but for a considerable amount of the film’s running time. And (Spoiler Alert!) the main character gets a slap on the wrist in the end when he gets caught!

Haha! I do. I’ve also read and enjoyed your great and insightful comments on the boards and you strike me as a very thoughtful, intelligent and hilarious member of this community. This thread isn’t even worth TheAbsoluteShittiestBuddhist’s time, let alone yours. Your powers are wasted here.

I get the cathartic impulse to clap back at this poster (believe me), but it’s a lose-lose endeavor; as evidenced by the initial post and their response, this commentator (who interestingly enough only has two posts on this message board, btw) thrives on negative attention and here we are giving them exactly that. We live an increasingly divided and conquered culture, and resorting to their methods (playground name calling) is just fuel for their fire; they were just waiting for a response to their drama-fueled post and here we both are giving it to them. Ultimately, what’s the point? Let go of the anger and frustration they are so desperately trying to manipulate you into, starve this post and just let it wither away into obscurity. They want to leave and get their little two cents in in the process? Mazel tov and whatever... Hey, no one’s keeping them here, right?

Holy shit! This looks F&F level amazeballs bananagans! And is it just me, or is Jackie Chan looking damn handsome in this one?

It took me a second to name the song in this commercial: "N.W.O" by Ministry.

This over Graffiti Bridge?!? In the immortal words of Rudy Ray Moore:

I remember seeing this movie at the behest of my girlfriend at the time. We watched this on VHS and then followed it up with another Meg Ryan classic, IQ, where her character had no agency and acted against her own instincts by entering into a relationship built on lies by the film's end. Watching it then, Prelude to A Kiss felt stilted in a way that movies can feel off, but you really want them to make sense so you keep going with it (think the first time you watched The Phantom Menace; you want it to "get there," if only to justify the time you have given over to the film). Watching Prelude to A Kiss again (because I'm a glutton for punishment), it dawned on me why this film feels ...weird. Sure the structure of the film's narrative is wonky, but the reason this move feels so off is that we, as the audience, are removed from the pivotal event (two people swapping bodies) and stuck watching said event unfold through Alec Baldwin's character's eyes; essentially forcing the audience to view these events through his point of view only. Who watched the watcher? We do! And we are limited this poor, put-upon yuppie's perspective; what's he going through? How is he dealing with all of this? How is he going to potentially resolve this problem? Speaking of Molson beer: I remember they had a big ad push in the 90's here in the States. One television ad featured a contest to see Metallica, Hole, Veruca Salt and Moist play a live, outdoor concert event called--I shit you not--The Molson Ice Polar Beach Party. Now, while traversing Canada's abundantly icy tundra to watch rock bands play a "show in the snow" may sound like just another Wednesday night to our friends in the Great White North, I can see why some 'Mericans (even diehard fans of Metallica in their totally non-controversial and reemerged "alt-rock" form) wouldn't want to make this schlep.