MelissaBecker

Watching the boring Safe Haven this week made me remember the much more entertaining Where the Heart Is, aka Holy Shit Natalie Portman's life sucks in this movie. Natalie Portman plays a woman who is pregnant and is abandoned in a Wal-Mart parking lot buy her loser boyfriend. So she lives in the Wal-Mart and gives birth there. The media thinks this is adorable and she gets lots of attention and support. Then her Mom (Sally Field) comes and steals the money leaving her alone with a baby and no money. This is still the first 15 minutes of the movie. Over the next 2 hours every possible calamity hits Natalie Portman and her friends. There's a Tornado. Pregnancy scares. Pedophiles. Kidnapping. Someone becoming a huge country music hit and then losing it all to drug addiction before getting hit by a train and losing his legs. It is a well made and acted movie, but the things that happen are just so unbelievable that it is next level bonkers.

I really hope that Zouks is there for this episode. An episode focusing on the Greek pantheon (which are then randomly called by their Roman names sometimes) needs to have him there. Because remember how annoyed he got at Zeus in Xanadu? I also want basically the whole movie as a series of gifs. Pretzi's face needs to be all my gifs in the future. Also the old ladies on the airplane. Also the fight scenes where people just fall down when the punch is nowhere near them.

I'm home with the flu so I rented Lost Soul, the doc about the film. Frankenheimer didn't want to do the movie. But the studio thought he was the only director that they could afford that could deal with the massive egos on set. So, he made a crazy demand and said he'd only do the movie if New Line gave him a 3 picture deal. They agreed. (And Frankenheimer hated Kilmer so much that he said that if he was filming the Val Kilmer story he wouldn't cast Kilmer in it). This is where it gets interesting. He died before making all 3 movies that were the deal, but the two he did make? Ronin and Reindeer Games. This means that in not only is this movie terrible in and of itself, but that the terribleness of Reindeer Games should also count towards it, since this movie is responsible for that one.

I must add to the general confusion about why Poe was on this federal prison transport plane since there is no reason why he would have been charged with a federal crime. Most crimes are illegal at both a federal and state level allowing for duel jurisdiction however, there must be a federal "hook". Generally this involves the use of interstate commerce in the commission of the crime or targeting a federal officer. So, the Oklahoma City bombing killed 168 people, but the federal case only had 11 deaths. Those were of federal agents who were killed. I spent my first summer of law school interning for the federal prosecutor, and a large part of the job was trying to make sure that cases all had federal hooks. Drugs are easy, since drugs travel in interstate commerce. But crimes against persons are much harder. If this had been a murder for hire where Poe had used a computer or cell phone to arrange the deal, then you'd have something. But I can not think of any reason this would be a federal crime. Unless the rednecks turned out to be government agents. The "you are a deadly weapon and so can't get self-defense" doesn't actually work in this context. However, self-defense laws often include an element involving retreat. Basically, if you can get away safely then you must so that. If you fail to retreat you do not get to use self-defense. This is the big issue with "Stand Your Ground Laws"; they eliminate the duty to retreat. I suppose a jury might reject the self-defense argument by saying that Cage could have retreated safely. I mean, not from what we say but who knows what the witnesses testified to on the stand. But no way would it be in federal court. Nope. Cameron Poe would be in state prison and not flown anywhere upon release. Also, while Con Air does exist it is not really the most common federal prison transport system. I don't think that we had one person transferred via plane the Summer I was interning, but we did have a lot of people coming via federal buses. One more correction: prisons do have convenience stores! Well, sort of. The Prison Commissary provides a lot of different items that prisoners can buy using money placed in their prisoner accounts (and sometimes that they earn from working while imprisoned). These are not luxury items. Toilet paper. Snack foods. Spices. Envelopes and paper for writing home. Radios. The mark-up on commissary items can be quite high (I've been told 50% is standard but I haven't done any research myself) but many family members feel they must put money into the accounts just because the prison provided living items are of such poor quality. But a stuffed animal would NOT be one of the things they would sell. Mostly because such an item would be contraband since it could be used to hide drugs or other items inside of the stuffed animal.

I own a 2-pack of this and War Games. It is perfect and I love it. And let's remember that the reason that the shuttle has to be launched is because of ROBOTS. A robot that has befriended Leaf Phoenix makes NASA think that the shuttle is going to blow up unless it is launched. I just imagine the scriptwriter who has been saddled with this high premise (because clearly "kids in space" was the pitch and then they had to figure out how to make that happen) trying to figure out how and then landing on robots.

I am not looking forward to watching this movie again.I remember when Cage gave that poor sad scared little girl that toxic waste covered bunny and we had to pretend that it was cute. Ugh. UGH. I suspect I'm going to be even more annoyed watching it now that I've actually been to law school and worked a little in criminal law. Because in my experience when the feds are transferring criminals they are on Con Bus with no air conditioning.

I think one of the problems this movie had at the time was that it was very expensive and that it was marketed very much at children when it was pretty violent, and that it couldn't strike the right tone between "actual action movie" and "mocking action movies". (The tone is really hard to get right in the movie that it a deconstruction of other movies. Scream, Cabin in the Woods, and Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang get it right but LOTS of movies don't. Last Action Hero ended up really having too many people touching the script and that didn't help make the tone any clearer.) This article from Empire magazine gets into the real "How Did This Get Made" of the movie. http://www.empireonline.com/features/last-action-hero

Just watched this on Canadian Netflix (if you aren't using an ip proxy to watch Netflix from other countries then you aren't really living) and it is AWFUL. Like, I know. I know they are bad. They are all bad. Although my Mom weirdly liked the first one because "the parents and son love each other so much." My Mom also thinks The Terminator is the greatest love story ever put to film. Anyway, AoE is bad. You get to watch Stanley Tucci give a long speech about Transformium. Kelsey Grammer giving a lecture about the price of Freedom being blood (it is very much like the joke speech that Jason gave during the Demolition Man episode, but it is REAL). Also, the movie ends with Optimus Prime flying away to kill God. The actual bad guy of the film is God. This move is very strange and long and weird and has so many long speeches of award winning actors talking to green screens.

My Dad an I once had a screaming argument at a Scientology Sponsored Easter Egg Hunt* because he insisted a homeless guy was Tom Cruise. It was not. It looked nothing like him. Stop it Dad. * I grew up in Clearwater, Florida, the headquarters of Scientology. The church would often sponsor events around town to try to keep us all from hating them because they own most of Downtown and pay no taxes which really fucked up municipal services. They have an amazing Christmas village with a simulated fake snowfall every night. Also, they bus all their "volunteers" to see the new Cruise and Travolta movies on opening day. It is a weird town.

No joke, I have been singing that all week to my cat.

I thought that this was a documentary about Alexander Skarsgard.

Apparently "My Hat Is Like a Shark Fin" is actually a reference to an earlier rap song. From an article about the Cool James most out of touch moments (http://www.complex.c.../deepest-bluest) I'm not sure if this makes the line cooler (Oh, see he is bringing it back to the history of rap) or dumber (can't even come up with your own Shark metaphor LL?)

The movie was made over 4 years with the sketches being filmed when they could convince someone to sign on. Basically, someone convinced Hugh Jackman and Kate Winslet to be in a sketch. Here's an article on it. http://www.theguardian.com/film/2013/jan/29/movie-43-hollywood-humiliation

This movie came out around the time we were reading the book in High School and so there was nothing greater than listening to people in class pretending they had read the book when they had just seen the movie. Oh, that was glorious. The thing I remember most from the book is that it is actually a "found footage" story. Like, the first scene of the book is Hawthorne going through an attic and finding this account of what actually happened back in ye olde times. Whenever anyone complains about how the found footage genre is a stupid model invention I throw this book in their face. And then run away while they are blinded by being hit in the face with a book.

From the AMA: I want it. I want it so much.

I don't think you can plan the type of insanity that happens in a film where people are trying. People are too self-conscious in an intentionally bad movie because they are trying to show they are in on the joke. Then you have something like The Room where you know that every single take everyone is just putting it all out there. You can't fake that type of thing. I find that a lot of old movies, especially the pre-code stuff, falls into the so bad it is good category. These were movies made before cinema tropes were in place and so they are literally making up the rules as they go along and everything is unexpected. Like "wait, is this a movie about a guy who gets rich people stoned and then steals their stuff" unexpected. Maybe that is what a terrible film has; none of the normal tropes that competent artists lean on making the whole thing an adventure.

I have now officially seen the movie and can report: it is HDTGM worthy. Without getting into spoilers (because honestly there is some shit in the third act of this movie that is absurd) I will just mention some highlights of weirdness. Hugh Jackman as a computer engineer giving his biggest presentation to potential buyers of his robot while wearing tight cargo shorts. Hugh Jackman's hair. The weird stuff with Hugh Jackman being religious that comes out of nowhere (but seems to exist so that he has a reason to hate the robots for being godless). Everyone in this movie is legit on the spectrum. Die Atwood are the worst. So many terrible metaphors. I feel like the director commentary will just consist of "See what I was trying to do?" The movie makes everyone in South Africa look like fucking monsters. Seriously. Nobody in this movie is a redeemable human being at all. District 9 made an effort to show that the criminal alien element was that way because they had been marginalized and could only live on the fringe because they were treated so badly. Not so in this movie where they are all just comically awful people. Also, people have painted their guns in neon colors and one character has a solid gold gun for some reason. Oh, and someone in the movie has a rubber chicken in his glovebox, as people just always do. (Also, Blomkamp on Black Panther would be great. Just don't let him write it. I think that we might need to put him on some type of time out from writing/directing for a little bit).

I think that Blomkamp is one of those guys who needs limits to be creative. District 9 worked because he had to really focus on how to make the movie with a low budget. That made him clarify the story he had because he didn't have the ability to add a bunch of extraneous stuff. That is one reason that a lot of film makers lose it after some early success, they don't have to be creative anymore because they are given free reign. When you watch old movies that had to work within the Production Code they end up being very sly and clever because they couldn't be overt. I'm hoping to check this out this week though.

A lot of Whoopi's movies really sound like they are fake movies that Tracy Jordan starred in on 30 Rock. Along with "cop who is partnered with a dinosaur" there is "goes undercover disguised as a white dude to get taken seriously" (The Associate) and "gets custody of a child with a crazy French imaginary friend". And let's not forget Made in America, a movie that exists just to remind us that there was a point in history when Ted Danson and Whoopi were fucking.

Just saw this and I liked it in the same way I liked Kick-Ass. I enjoyed the 2 hours in the theater, I will promptly forget the entire experience by tomorrow, and I might put it on in the background when it is on cable. But it isn't one of my favorite movies or something I'm going to seek out to ever see again. It was rather cathartic to see Colin Firth stone cold murdering the bigots in that one scene.

Hallstrom makes a lot of books into movies. It seems to be a specialty. The Hundred Foot Journey, Safe Haven, Dear John (another Sparks adaptation), Salmon Fishing in the Yemen, The Shipping News, The Hoax (although the book it is based on is non-fiction), The Cider House Rules, and Chocolat are all based on books. So maybe he's like one of those old studio directors who you could just count on to turn out one genre very well and cheaply. Got a book adaptation, give it to Hallstrom. Or, maybe he is one of those people who likes to pretend he is well read and lies about what he has actually read. This forces him to sign on to the adaptation to save face. "Hey, Lasse, you said you loved The Shipping News. How about turning it into a movie?"

I want a spin-off that is nothing but Lovejoy's crime hotel.

They film a ton of stuff in Cape Fear. My grandparents lived up there and ended up being extras in a ton of stuff: Dawson's Creek, Matlock, and even the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle movie.

Nope. Loved the ending. Did it make sense? Probably not. But I can explain away all of the plot holes with "it's all misdirection for the trick." But I also apologetically love all David Mamet movies no matter how stupid the twists are at the end of them too.

No lie, I love this movie. Because I have two great loves: magicians and heist movies. I literally was watching this movie feeling as if someone made is specifically for me. It was like my id wrote a terrible movie script that made no sense and cast my favorite actor from the Avenger and Amy Adams (but not actually Amy Adams, my id just thought it was Amy Adams because it is easily confused by redheads). So no joke, one of my favorite movies and if they did it my Amazon review would probably be picked as raving about it.