Any of
the jackasses praising Saving Silverman
Hey whore,
how's the whoring?
The Burly Bear
Network says "Funnier
than There's Something About Mary!" Who the fuck
is the Burly Bear Network?
Jeff Cornell of highly critical MTV Radio says
"hilarious!"
Tim Sherno, co-host of the highly-respected
film journalism at some godforsaken UPN affiliate (he also once
had a cameo in an episode of Diagnosis Murder) says "You'll
laugh your ass off!"
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Pauline Kael - Going
Steady
Apples in Stereo - The
World Inside the Moone
Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Pod People, It's too bad Mystery cience Theater
is no longer on TV because Freddie Prinze, Jr. seems hellbent
on making enough material to for them to make fun of for years.
In Pod People, two Alf-like monsters come from outer space.
One is good and one is bad and only a horrible actor-child knows
which is which. There is more fog than at a Foreigner concert
and lots of subplots that go nowhere. It all looks extremely
early 80s and the dialog sounds like it was written in English,
translated to Italian and then translated back. a great movie
to make fun of.
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©2000 by
Randy Shandis Enterprises. All rights fucking reserved.
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This week:
Hannibal
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Filthy says:
"I'd rather watch the Hannibal with the elephants." |
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I've been at the First American Video now for almost two weeks,
so it's almost time I can take a sik day without raising too
much suspicion. Two weeks is the third longest I have ever held
a job, and this isn't as bad as I expected. I get free movie
rentals, but I can only pick them after the store is closed so
I don't choose something that a customer might want. That's no
problem because the movies I like aren't very popular. But, I
can't check out the pornos for free, or show them on the store
monitors. Also, after I have been there two months I get to put
videos in the "Employee's Picks" section. I can start
placing "Barely Legal 14" and "African Ass Bandits"
up there right next to Dipshit Suzanne's "Frequency"
and "Ghost."
There are three things that make working in a video store
suck crusty dick, though. First is that I am not allowed to yell
at the assholes who spend a half hour in the store, walk past
every Alfred Hitchcock movie and end up with Demolition Man
or Deuce Bigalow, which the fuckers have already seen
more than once. I have been told by Dipshit Suzanne that I am
not allowed to punch these people. The second is people who ask
me if The Story of Us is good, because I am not allowed
to tell them it's dogshit in cassette format. I have to say "It's
a very good romantic comedy," and if I don't Dipshit Suzanne
will fire me. The third thing that sucks is Dipshit Suzanne,
who owns First American and doesn't even like movies. She likes
to say dopey crap like, "Did you see Gideon's Crossing
last night?" and "I only eat meats and greens,"
(plus about five dollars worth of Junior Mints off the shelves
when she thinks nobody's looking) and "If I catch you with
beer at work again you're fired."
But you don't come here to listen to me bitch and moan about
my job; you come here to listen to me bitch and moan about movies.
This week I got a bladder full of pissing to do on Hannibal,
so get those ears ready. This fucking movie sucked hard enough
to rip my entrails out through my ass. It started out boring
and then became ludicrous. It's exactly what happens when stupid
people try to make a movie about characters who are supposed
to be smarter than them.
Anthony Hopkins is back as Hannibal Lecter, the serial cannibal,
now some sort of fancy Italian art genius. Julianne Moore is
now Clarice Starling, the "brilliant" young FBI agent
who has a special connection with Hopkins. Lecter is in Italy,
seemingly blending in as some sort of scholar while Moore is
home in the US getting blamed for a drug bust gone awry. She
can salvage her career by tracking down Hopkins after being given
a lead by a very ugly billionaire (Gary Oldman) who secretly
only wants help tracking down Hopkins for himself. Oldman was
once seduced into skinning himself by Hopkins, and he wants revenge.
This is a subplot that really goes nowhere except as a series
of scenes where the audience is supposed to be grossed out by
Oldman's face, over and over, and as a device to bring Hopkins
to Moore.
When an Italian cop closes in on him and he learns his old
sweetheart Moore is back on the case, Hopkins makes plans to
return to the US and greet her. Moore and Oldman track him down
in different ways, leading to the much-too-late and conventional
showdown.
The reason so many Hollywood movies are as dumb as shit on
a TV tray is because nobody can create a character smarter than
himself, and the majority of "creative" people in Hollywood
aren't as smart as my retard cousin Larry. Villains are only
as clever asHollywood writers and directors can imagine them
being, which is, as we know, not very. Holy shit would I love
to pile a bunch of screenwriters into a pit with alligators and
see how smart they are. Silence of the Lambs was great
because of how smart and complete the villain and hero were.
It was fun to watch them duel.
But in Hannibal, the very smart Lecter and Starling
from Silence are replaced by wax dummies. They look the
same, their gestures are the same, but the way they think, talk
and operate is no smarter than screenwriter Steven Zaillian,
who was responsible for such gems as the plodding A Civil
Action and the Tom Cruise shitfest Mission: Impossible.
Lecter was scary because he was so fucking smart. He already
knew everyone's next move, and the one after that. In Hannibal,
he's just another cheesy movie monster who can magically appear
and disappear wherever he needs to, and spends a lot of times
in shadows like some lame boogie man. We're supposed to remember
that he's smart from the first movie, but we aren't given any
evidence of it here. And where the Starling character was vulnerable
and only slightly less intelligent than Lecter, now she's weary
and lifeless. There are no brilliant exchanges between her and
Hannibal, no battles of wits. They just chase each other around.
This movie sucks not for a lack of trying. It looks like they
spent a lot of money and worked very hard to convince us it's
intelligent. But all of the Italian villas and speeches about
Dante don't mean shit when the characters don't show any brains.
All it does is make the movie seem like your typical PBS watcher
or Mensa member: more obsessed with how smart others think he
is than with having any practical knowledge. This is Hollywood
screaming "Look! Look! Look how smart we are! Look at our
good taste and all the fancy books in our library!" Never
mind that the books' spines have never been cracked.
Hannibal drips along like the remains of a bad salad
bar out my ass: disgusting, boring and with just a little burning
sting. The movie never became suspenseful and I never really
gave a flying fuck whether Hannibal was caught. Ridley Scott
and Zaillian were way too obsessed with showing us gory shit
and fanciness than building toward anything. Partially, that's
why the movie gets silly. After a while of hauling Hopkins out,
having him say some Schwarzenegger-quality double entendre, showing
us how hard Moore works, and giving Oldman a chance to overact
under his "creepy" raw skin, the filmmakers figured
it was time to wrap the mess up.
Because there is no foundation for a thoughtful ending, they
use hoary horror-flick clichés dressed up real nice-like.
It's gross-out shit that doesn't scare, just makes you go "Ewww."
A man is eaten by pigs, another has his brains served to him.
None of it makes much sense, both logistically and from what
we know of the character's motivations.
Two fingers for Hannibal. Hollywood, stop overestimating
how smart you are and how dumb we are.
Want
to tell Filthy something?
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