Episode 131 - The Covenant

[firsttimecallerlongtimelistenr 3590]

 

I am so sorry she had to die on the island. R.I.P.

spoilers!

[mkgrenwel 6]

Jason. What The Fuck? I thought you were my North Shore bro. I live in Ipswich and when I found out that's where this movie took place I was psyched for you to drop some North Shore knowledge on the podcast. Instead you don't even recognize us as NS brothers?! I was heartbroken.

 

I assure you, one does not drive through Lynn to get from Marblehead to Ipswich. We're between Salem and Newburyport.

 

Honestly, this was devastating.

[taylor anne photo 11311]

I am absolutely perplexed by who this movie is for. Yes, there are hot dudes in it, but aside from (maybe) Caleb, they all seem to be suffering from a chronic case of douchebaggery. Even Kitsch, who I think is supposed to be an ally for Caleb and therefore "a good guy," seems to have no qualms about selling off a piece of his soul to catch a quick glimpse of ass. I'm having a real hard time struggling with the cognitive dissonance within the movie because it seems to be stating, "Tween girls will love it because of the hot guys in it, but will have no problem that these same hot guys will sexually exploit an innocent woman for a stupid bet." I mean, I get the appeal of the "bad boy" archetype, but usually, in movies and television, they're never really that bad. Maybe they smoke, ride a motorcycle, or they're a bit of a smartass, but as far as "bad boys" go, that's usually about it, and always with the understanding that the viewer knows, that deep down inside, they're actually "good guys." These guys have none of that! They're just a bunch of leches! How is that appealing to their core audience?

Okay so I was 16 and in my junior year of high school when this came out so I can confidently say this movie was made for me and my group of friends. Not because of anything substantial but because the guys were hot and there was a supernatural element to it. Briefly, in the mini-thread, I mentioned that the music used was still extremely relevant too, and I'm genuinely not joking about that statement. At least here in North Texas the song they used in the trailer is still played on the "alternative rock" station occasionally, and it was played even more so 10 years ago.

 

I think this movie literally comes down to the physical eye candy element of it all. The guys all look good and the girls all look good and there is magic, y'all. Renny clearly didn't think beyond that and I wonder if I had actually seen this when I was 16 instead of when I saw it at 22 how I would have reacted. Because my gut feeling is that I would have eaten it the fuck up like a lot of those 5 star reviews on Amazon and iTunes. Purely based on the fact that I 100% ate Queen of the Damned up like it was a golden piece of vampire cinema (don't worry I know it's not and I'm really hoping they do that movie soon).

 

But I remember my friends seeing this in high school and non-stop talking it up, but it was never a conversation like, "Oh this is a really amazing movie and you should see it," but rather, "Steven Strait is incredibly hot and this movie highlights all of that goodness." None of us cared what the characters were actually saying or doing. Everyone just wanted to look at him.

 

Oh and this was Steven coming off of Sky High which to this day I believe is one of the best superhero movies ever and I will fight anyone who tells me otherwise. So I think that also grabbed my generation really hard.

[firsttimecallerlongtimelistenr 3590]

there are a couple of lines of dialogue in this that prove it was written by a middled aged man :

 

 

when caleb is showing sarah around ipswich in his car:

 

sarah: "kate told me he (calebs dad) passed away"

 

caleb: "you .. you and kate talk about me?"

 

sarah smiles shyly

 

sarah: "well, you know, just girls stuff"

 

 

ok, she was caught out here so its maybe excusable. but in the bar scene when all the dudes start playing foosball:

 

 

sarah: "wait, what just happened?"

 

kate: "what??"

 

sarah: "we were here, sitting together (boys and girls) and now we are here watching them (the boys) having fun"

 

kate" "that's what girls do ... you know boys and their toys"

 

then kate goes and plays "I love rock'n'roll" on the jukebox and everyone starts to dance.

 

 

two more highly cringe worthy moments

 

 

 

someone helpfully put the clip up on youtube. the description includes "The song is just perfect fot this scene". must be a fan

 

[OoofMaGOOF 348]

 

Except that it is WRONG! I grew up in Plymouth, South Shore (pronounced sho-ah) and Ipswitch is 100% North Shore. It's right outside of Salem. Jason, your Boston area street cred has been REVOKED!

 

Snap!

 

Is him saying people who went to Boston Public are gross valid though?

[Misnaila 12]

I've lived in the south shore my whole life but went to school at Salem State on the north shore and Ipswich is so far north in Massachusetts that it is almost in New Hampshire. That being said, it is still like 40 minutes away from Marblehead so not exactly a quick meet up spot.

 

I do love any mention about Jason being from Massachusetts. Come to Boston, please?

[Amy the Gorilla 732]

I'm not sure why I felt the need to do this. I have an app on my phone that has the ability to do face swap, and the picture was right there... I'm so sorry.

 

 

[EllenM 943]

You Guys!!!! They are going to do BLOODSPORT!!!!!!!!

[TylerZucco-Bernard 0]

Hey I live in the on the Northshore in MA, and Ipswitch is nowhere near the south shore, but it still would be nowhere near Marblehead, for shame Jason (https://imgur.com/32ynrdI link for map)

[Amy the Gorilla 732]

You Guys!!!! They are going to do BLOODSPORT!!!!!!!!

 

And it's a live show too!

 

[Joven 373]

I like that they gave Tyler all the discussion he deserved.

 

So about Nicky's, they asked if there were any older people there and there was. For about a half second an elderly man is shown grooving to a funky beat, and then when the camera angle changes to follow Pogue on his journey back from the bar he's mysteriously vanished.

 

 

Also speaking of vanishings inside Nicky's, the food that Pogue has just purchased there vanishes completely between the time he goes from the ghost of boogies past to the foosball table to meet up with the other guys.

[FisterRoboto 7499]

You Guys!!!! They are going to do BLOODSPORT!!!!!!!!

How? That movie is fucking FLAWLESS.

[PlanBFromOuterSpace 3138]

No mention at all, especially during all the talk of the lame final fight, about all the horrible editing and continuity? It rains a lot in this movie, and the rain disappears and reappears constantly within scenes.

[EllenM 943]

JCVD is finally going to ascend to the Pantheon of HDTGM Saints. I can only think of one thing this calls for:

 

 

Now I feel like we wasted that gif thread a while back.

[walterwoodsiv 215]

I was really confused as to how such an awful movie managed to find so many talented actors before they hit it big.

• Sebastian Stan - Winter Soldier
  
• Taylor Kitsch - Friday Night Lights, True Detective, tons of blockbuster films
  
• Steven Strait - starring on one of the best new shows this year
  
• Jessica Lucas - TONS of TV work
  
• Chace Crawford - lots of success on TV (Gossip Girl)
  
• Laura Ramsey - nothing huge, but has stayed very busy
  

Turns out the casting director is Mindy Marin, who has cast a bunch of awesome movies like Nightcrawler, Drive, Juno, etc. She also cast a few HDTGM classics: Anaconda and Face/Off.

[chmichnga 0]

After all the Charmed talk in the minisode thread, I'm disappointed that no one has brought up Alyssa Milano in child actors that got crazy hot:

 

Agreed. And on the guys' side, I'd vote for Ethan Hawke; I had a thing for both of them when I was a kid.

[Amy the Gorilla 732]

Mukuly Culkin (I don't care that I spelled his name wrong) is one of those that didn't turn out so hot... but his brother Kieran turned out not so bad.

 

There were probably other factors at play here I'm guessing.

[JoelSchlosberg 352]

4 pages in and nobody's mentioned Home Alone 3-era Scarlett Johansson!?!?!?!

 

[JoelSchlosberg 352]

this came out in 2006, a year after the twilight books started coming out and 2 years before the first movie ... renny works fast. which is evident from the amount of CGI in this movie. theres nearly as much CGI in this movie as green lantern .... nearly

 

National Treasure also beat the Da Vinci Code movie to the screen by over a year, and the year after the book.

 

And 2006 was really the nadir for bad CGI. At least '90s to early '00s bad CGI has the "yeah it sucks, but at least they were ambitious in trying to do stuff with CGI that CGI couldn't really do yet" factor. By the mid-'00s, cut-rate CGI didn't have the outreaching-its-grasp factor anymore. And by the '10s even bad movies tended to have access to decent CGI. The mid-to-late-'00s stuff is just charmless and ugly.

[JoelSchlosberg 352]

there was a 6 minute period in the movie where it was nearly all handshakes ... and not normal handshakes but stupid "yo dude" handshakes ... i think kitsch even gives his girlfriend one ...

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2AB6WKiI3qU

 

(not sure if this will play everywhere)

 

Maybe that's the Covenant's equivalent of

?

 

 

Yeah, that bugged the crap out of me too! It was like every time the met up with one another they were acting as if they hadn't seen each other in YEARS! Then it was ten minutes of handshakes and bro hugs.

 

Maybe The Thing-style impersonation is a witchcraft power? And it is able to imitate external appearance but not muscle memory? (Like the aliens in A.E. van Vogt's The War Against the Rull, who are in fact distinguished from the humans they impersonate by their inability to handshake.)

[JoelSchlosberg 352]

someone helpfully put the clip up on youtube. the description includes "The song is just perfect fot this scene". must be a fan

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLcdbnzHOZA

 

There is definitely enough material out there for a segment like "Second Opinion" but for opinions on dubious music cues in movies.

 

And wasn't that particular song on a preroll ad that was attached to what seemed like almost every online video at one point?

[JoelSchlosberg 352]

You Guys!!!! They are going to do BLOODSPORT!!!!!!!!

 

What is your source for this?

 

How? That movie is fucking FLAWLESS.

 

Is there anything less mockable in the entire Cannon library? It's just an utterly solid, straightforward, unpretentious action movie.

 

Moreover, it actually avoids some of the issues that usually come with the territory in its genre. Particularly how the hero has no superfluous additional motivation to enter the central martial arts tournament. There's no mentor/family member/buddy/whoever needing to be avenged, no chosen-one destiny to fulfill, no greater scheme by the villains to unmask of which the tournament is a mere front for. He enters the contest simply to win it.

[Joven 373]

Kinda on the subject of bad CG and stuff, something I've noticed all the times I watched this is the scene where Chase is magically teleporting the blonde girl from the doorway to the bed...is it just me or is that like straight up amateur hour effects? Chase sits on the bed holding a Ghost Rider-style exaggerated point at Caleb that looks like hes trying to hold very still in fast motion.

 

Also the ending is basically saying that our hero is going to be old in no time. Like, he's ascended now so its full on 'every use of your powers will age you' time, but he still wastes it fixing his windshield (like they said, in public no less)...like, you're rich dummy, maybe not burn your life away fixing something that insurance or 500 bucks would take care of? He's clearly full on addicted by the end, despite all the grand statements he wouldn't be throughout the movie. I guess the sequel would just be him strung out on power juice, thinking Chase was onto something and hunting down the other Ipswich dipshit witches to get their power too.

[JoelSchlosberg 352]

I was really confused as to how such an awful movie managed to find so many talented actors before they hit it big.

• Sebastian Stan - Winter Soldier
  
• Taylor Kitsch - Friday Night Lights, True Detective, tons of blockbuster films
  
• Steven Strait - starring on one of the best new shows this year
  
• Jessica Lucas - TONS of TV work
  
• Chace Crawford - lots of success on TV (Gossip Girl)
  
• Laura Ramsey - nothing huge, but has stayed very busy
  

Turns out the casting director is Mindy Marin, who has cast a bunch of awesome movies like Nightcrawler, Drive, Juno, etc. She also cast a few HDTGM classics: Anaconda and Face/Off.

 

 

At first my brain read "Face/Off" as Con Air... which I would say is great evidence of casting magic! Face/Off... is a solid double order of ham, but both were A-list stars at the time. And her filmography includes some... unfortunately-cast stuff like Jennifer's Body and Cutthroat Island (also Renny Harlin!)

 

But with this, it hardly matters since the directing uses the cast so poorly. I seriously could not tell all the pale brunette guys apart.

 

Are there any other casting directors who have gotten great casts for bad movies? I'd have to think about it (the one obvious one is the casting of Michael Paré for Streets of Fire, on the word of the same caster who had made Eddie Murphy a movie star.) I'd pick the casting director for Con Air knowing nothing more than that they had cast Con Air, but it turns out casting duties on that film were the work of 3 people rather than 1 genius.

[NickPettry 4]

Can we talk about the chase scene through the woods? Apparently those cops and kids are all fucking AMAZING drivers. Because they're somehow able to make it through what looks to be a fairly thick forest (that's for some reason almost devoid of underbrush or big roots or branches), and from the looks of it, don't even scratch their cars. Also, as hard as that hummer hit the ground when they landed, there's no way it's not totaled, and it never shows them using their magic demon eyes to fix it before they drive off again.