Night at the Museum: Battle to Not Pay

I had a co-worker recently confess to me that he and his wife knowingly attended Hannah Montana: The Movie. This gentleman is well past his prime (Matthew knows him very well) and I wonder if he and his wife should be attending these types of movies alone in a public theater. I have to admit that I posed the same question to myself before deciding to attend Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian. There were several reasons I could justify attending the film in a public theater, the first reason being that my wife and I snuck into the movie after attending an earlier movie for which we paid a reduced rate (Thanks, Entertainment Book!) and ate free popcorn (Thanks, Dominoes coupon!). Another good reason to attend this movie is because it is written by Robert Ben Garant and Thomas Lennon of Reno 911 fame.

As you may remember, the first film in the Museum series was a big hit and probably increased museum attendance among willing children by around one percent. Although the original film was a children’s movie, filled with a lot of childhood imagination, it played better to an adult audience since I doubt most children would get overly excited about a Q&A session with Teddy Roosevelt or a slide show presentation from Lewis and Clark (and Sacajawea).

You probably also remember that the first film starred Ben Stiller as himself under a different character name. As you know from this blog I have seen a lot of Ben Stiller movies and my opinion of his acting chops has not changed. He is always the exact same character with the same mannerisms and reactions to similar situations. Well, Ben Stiller was also in the second Museum film and he will not be winning an Oscar for his performance. I have a sneaky feeling that Ben Stiller learned his acting skills from a seminar at the airport where the two chapters in the take home binder were “know your lines” and “arrive on time.”

The good news about this Museum installment is that it is pleasantly funny, it moves along quickly and the actors cast around Ben Stiller give good performances. Despite low expectations I really enjoyed this film.

I thought the best part of this film was the performance by Hank Azaria. I am a huge fan of The Simpsons so I already like Hank Azaria and he did not let me down with his funny portrayals of Kahmunrah (evil brother of Ahkmenrah from the first Museum film), Abe Lincoln (voice only) and Rodin’s The Thinker (voice only). The only problem I had with the evil Kahmunrah character was that he seemed to be aware of the other characters. How is that possible?

To further explain that question I should probably reveal some of the plot. The exhibits at the Museum of Natural History are being shipped to the Smithsonian for storage and one of the exhibits steals the tablet of Ahkmenrah which brings everything to life. When the exhibits arrive at the Smithsonian the tablet brings everything to life and mayhem, friendship, and sight gags ensue. So, what that means to me is that the exhibits at the Smithsonian had not previously come to life.

When Kahmunrah comes to life he seems to know about all of the exhibits in the museum and even knows details of the exploits of his fellow bad guys Al Capone, Ivan the Terrible, and Napoleon Bonaparte. Since Kahmunrah is 2000 years old I am fairly certain he would not know anything about Capone, Muhammad Ali or General Custer.

Hank Azaria has most of the funny moments in the film; the bit with Darth Vader (as splashed across all of the previews) is good, there is a funny moment with Oscar the Grouch and the line by The Thinker…”I’m thinking, I’m thinking, I’m thinking” is smartly written.

One other oddity that occurs with the Kahmunrah character is that when he calls up his army from the underworld (the underworld is just behind a door to nowhere exhibit apparently) he gets a small battalion of white guys with bird heads. At first I was OK with this, maybe the food in the underworld is not that prevalent so white guys had to evolve in order to properly enjoy and digest small pebbles and grains. But then I started wondering why would they only evolve in the area of the head? About the time I let that thought go the underworld-bird head-white guys got scared in the climatic final battle sequence by giant concrete Abe Lincoln and retreated back into the underworld.

Now, this posed a problem for me. The bird headed white guy soldiers came from the underworld, basically they came from the land of the un-dead. So, after thousands of years of eating chat and marching in endless formation drills they made it to the land of the living and they got so scared of fighting Abe Lincoln that they decided to go back to the underworld…what? How do you think the conversation went when they got back?

“Hey Parakeet Perry, how did it go up there?”
“Well, we were really excited and we blasted through the door and everything was so bright and the air was so fresh and I could smell apple pie - it was wonderful.”
“So, what happened?”
“Well, we were in formation and we had our swords ready but then this tall guy surprised us and we ran back through the door.”
“Why did you run back through the door? Why didn’t you just hide or wait until he left?”
“Honestly, everything just happened so fast and I saw Blue Jay Bill and Cardinal Chris run through the door and I just followed them.”
“Oh well, we’re glad to have you back safely. You did miss two floggings which will need to be made up and I need you to carry that boulder for the next 500 years.”
“There is no place like home.”

Finally, I have to mention that in my continuing quest to have all of this summer’s movies cross into each other, I was really hoping that Napoleon would make a side trip to a water park in San Dimas or ask Ben Stiller if he knew Bill S. Preston, Esquire or Theodore Logan (“Put them in the Iron Maiden.” “Iron Maiden? Excellent!”).

So, to wrap this one up, let it be told throughout history that even the armies of the underworld don’t want to mess with Honest Abe.

Warren

Transformers: I've Fallen and I Can't Get Up

I don’t really feel the need to review the plot lines or story development of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. When the second credit of a movie is “In Association with Hasbro” I think it is fair to assume that you aren’t at a screening of Schindler’s List. While there are a few points I would like to make with regard to the film, in general it was fairly entertaining although way too long.

I don’t think any movie critics have written anything even remotely nice about the second Transformers film. From what I have seen, the reviews have been critical of the human character development, the realism of the story, the confusion of the action sequences and the racial undertones of two of the robots. While these are fair critiques, I think it is also important to remember that this is a fantasy story about robots from outer space based on the look and packaging of toys from the 80’s. I mean, can a paid movie critic really say with a straight face “the plot was unrealistic and over-the-top.”

This Transformers film picks up shortly after the previous film ended. Sam is going to college, Sam’s hot girlfriend is the paint girl at her dad’s chopper store (I too like to paint in Daisy Duke’s while posing seductively), Danny from Las Vegas has been promoted to Major, and the good-guy Transformers (Autobots) are fighting top secret missions against the bad-guy Transformers (Decepticons).

As you can probably guess, the Transformers fight, Sam runs, Danny yells Transformer names exactly as they are printed on the toy packages and pretty much everything is blown up in a spectacular manner. As I mentioned previously, you don’t go to this movie to gain insight into orbital mechanics or military strategy.

I thought one of the most interesting plot aspects of this movie was the character of Alice who is a classmate of Sam’s at college. Alice is a hot chick who comes on to Sam and eventually reveals herself to be a Decepticon with a tail that has a tongue on the end. The only reason I mention this part of the movie is because it has a decidedly Terminator feel to it. On the one hand the Decepticons needed the information from Sam’s mind; on the other hand he simply got the information off the shard on his jacket. Why wouldn’t Alice just kill Sam? And as she had him wrapped up in that metal tail with a tongue on the end, what was her plan to take him somewhere if she was not planning to kill him? Wouldn’t a hot chick with a metal tail carrying around another student raise some suspicions?

Of course, the character of Alice was never seen again in the movie and although it caused relationship friction between Sam and his hot girlfriend, the idea that Transformers can also replicate human cells was never re-visited. In my quest to have every movie this summer cross over, I would have made the character of Alice be an Arnold Schwarzenegger look-a-like and then maybe Sam could have had a class with John Connor. Of course, if Alice was Schwarzenegger than the sexual tension would have been really awkward and the metal tail sneaking out of the underpants scene would have been a head-scratcher.

A good portion of this Transformer movie was set in the Middle East. I am mentioning this because a good portion of the first Transformer movie was also set in the Middle East. In fact, if you look closely the village in this movie looks a lot like the village in the first movie. Both times it was blown to smithereens. Both times there did not appear to be any villagers around. While the battle scenes were exciting and loud and fun, I did notice that for some reason all of our (The United States of America) artillery seems to come with a firecracker attached. If you look at the explosions in this movie, every time a bomb is dropped, a missile is fired or a tank fires off a shell the resulting explosion is topped off with a sparkler. Are we buying all of our artillery from the Koreans now? I can’t imagine that there is a Joint Chiefs memo floating around that states “war getting tired, explosions need more showmanship.”

One advantage of setting a movie in the Middle East is the unnecessary filming of Petra. This is a really cool site in Jordan and always worthy of the big screen but what was the purpose of that scene? I personally think it is just bad business to have secrets of the Universe be hidden behind what is portrayed as dry-wall. With all of the technology of Robots from outer space, they hid the key to the sun-sucking machine behind a layer of drywall in the desert? And if the Autobots are supposed to be wise and smart then why would they secretly hide the key to the machine a mere two miles away?

At any rate, this scene would have been a good time to have Indiana Jones in the background doing the three challenges (Penitent, penitent, only a penitent man shall pass).

Skipping to the end of the film, the Decepticons have this sun-sucking machine that they built but was hidden underneath the Pyramids of Giza. Long story short, the Decepticons get the key to the machine and when they turn it on it starts right up and Megatron (Leader of the Decepticons) announces “we will suck the power from your sun with this machine…as soon as it is ready to fire in about five minutes.” Amazing! Even with extra-terrestrial technology that was created to suck the power of the sun there is still a long period of warming up.

So, as you probably guessed, five minutes is more than enough down time for the Autobots to blow up the machine and save Earth. For me, this immediately begged the question why didn’t they just build this thing on another planet? If the Transformers were on Mercury (which is currently vacant) they could turn on the sun-sucker, let it warm up, have a couple cocktails and harness the power of the sun at their leisure.

Don't worry, the film is fun. Stuff blows up, Megan Fox runs in slow motion, John Turturro is good comic relief and Optimus Prime is still the second coolest baby name I can think of (Money Jackson is still number one).

Warren

The Curious Case of Benjamin Boredom

I really enjoyed the first time I saw the film The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Of course, the first time I saw it the film was called Big Fish.

It took me (and my lovely wife) two days to finish watching The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Although we did not stop at any particular point in the movie, I can say without hesitation that both halves of the film were painfully boring. It is amazing to me that this film was nominated for several Academy Awards and that critics and fans have said with a straight face that the special effects and/or storytelling was groundbreaking and emotional. I will venture to say that this film was not only poorly conceived (it is based on a short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald), it was poorly written, poorly acted, poorly edited and once again there was no quality control from the Studio when it comes to verifying that the story was consistent and that no loose ends were left untied. I guess the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences just can’t get enough of films with half completed stories and self-aggrandizing special effects (That goes for you too James Cameron).

I thought this film was so poorly made and the story was so fuzzy that I did some additional research. I have a ground breaking surprise for the loyal readers of this blog. I am going to give you something you can find nowhere else.

First though I am going to quickly summarize the story of Benjamin Button. At the beginning of this film a blind clock maker lost his son in WWI. That blind clockmaker secured the contract to build a clock in a train station. The clockmaker built the clock so that the second hand would tick backwards but the hour and minute hands would tick forwards (thus reminding everyone of the time they had lost watching this movie). Now, for what ever reason (this information is never tied to anything or explained any further) Benjamin Button is born an old man whose mother dies in childbirth and whose father abandons him at an old folks home. And, as you have probably heard, Benjamin Button gets physically younger as he ages and eventually turns into Brad Pitt.

So, other than the fact that he is aging backwards, pretty much nothing of interest happens in the life of Benjamin Button. He travels, he loves, he loses and he wonders in and out of a poor Cajun accent. Without getting too far off topic, can anyone name me an accent that Hollywood can pull off other than a standard Midwestern American accent? When you watch this movie I think you will find that Brad Pitt’s attempt at a Cajun accent makes Adam Sandler’s Israeli accent in You Don’t Mess with the Zohan sound like Yitzhak Rabin. Maybe I should write a letter to President Obama to tell him that we can find literally hundreds of stimulus jobs by having any American with an accent go to Hollywood to teach their accent to actors and actresses. The President promised us 600,000 new stimulus jobs this summer…by my count this would leave us with only 599,800 more to be created!

As I said earlier, I have seen this movie before. I liked it when it was called Big Fish, my wife liked it when it was call The Notebook, and my sister like it when it was called Stand By Me. Unfortunately, unlike the three movies mentioned, Benjamin Button really had nothing exciting happen in his life. If Jack Nicholson had been in this movie they would have just called it About Schmidt 2.

As I was saying, Benjamin Button was born old and to the amazement or questioning of not one single person he got physically younger as he aged. Benjamin was born with the ability to walk, talk, think and make time with the ladies. Benjamin died without the ability to walk, talk, or think.

One of the other quirks about this film is that (as a flashback picture) it is half narrated by Daisy - the female lead (Cate Blanchett) and her daughter Caroline (Julia Ormond of First Knight fame). The quirk is that the film’s Director (David Fincher) decided that Daisy’s narration should be done in a nearly inaudible old-lady voice. Daisy probably has fifty individual lines of dialogue to set up various flashbacks and banter and I think I might have put the pieces together on two of those lines. For all I know she could have been explaining the holes in the story or telling dirty jokes – although I assume it was neither.

This particular flashback picture was flowing out of a diary written by Benjamin Button. The diary is pretty self explanatory and helps the story boringly move along except for in one crucial place. At one point Caroline is reading the diary and she announces that there are several pages missing. She also indicates that the next available page is stained and it is hard to make out all of the words. No further information was presented in the film with regard to the missing (Watergate) pages. I could not let this go.

Where did the missing pages go? What secrets lie in those missing pages? After extensive research I have located the missing diary pages and I am going to print them for you below. What you are about to read has never been publicly disclosed. This may be the most insignificant find in a generation!

“I was painting the backyard fence of my home this morning. The man at the paint store put a can of ivory white into the paint stirring machine and flipped the switch. The man turned to pick up a dime on the ground and the poorly secured can shot out of the stirring machine and broke through the paint store window.

Meanwhile, an aging insurance salesman was walking down the street near the paint store on his way to a sales meeting with the owner of the book store at the corner of 7th and Bayou. The route the insurance salesman was taking was not a normal route from his office. The more efficient route of 6th Street had been blocked a morning earlier when a newly installed water main broke and flooded the sidewalk.

Next door to the paint store the maintenance man of the Hotel was changing the light bulb in the letter O (the sign had read HTEL for several weeks). The maintenance man was clinging to his ladder with his left hand while trying to put the light bulb into the O with his right hand. He could not quite reach the screw-thread base of the letter O so he removed his left hand from the ladder to try to pull himself ever so slightly closer to the base. Unfortunately, the maintenance man’s balance was lost and he slipped from the ladder and towards the ground below.

The insurance salesman was walking on his way to the book store when the poorly secured can of ivory white paint came out of the paint store window and struck him in the chest.

At that moment a school bus drove by carrying the visiting students from East Central State College in Ada, Oklahoma. On the bus was an unknown student named Mae Boren Axton who was sitting in the back of the bus observing the bustling city street.

If just one thing had been different. If the Public Works Director had not hammered the new water main with such vigor to have caused a crack, the insurance salesman would not have to change the route to his appointment and would not have walked by the paint store. If the man at the paint store had secured the can of ivory white into the paint stirring machine it would not have come lose and broke through the store window. If the hotel maintenance man had climbed down his ladder and moved it over a half inch he would never have had to stretch to reach the base of the letter O. If the school bus from East Central State College would have not run a stop light two blocks earlier.

If just one thing had been different then Mae Boren Axton would not have heard the insurance salesman lying in front of the paint store yelling “I am having a heart attack" and heard the maintenance man lying below the HOTEL sign yelling “I broke my leg.”

If just one thing had been different Mae Boren Axton would not have gotten the idea for a song called Heartbreak Hotel.”

Wow, can you believe the information that was in the three lost pages of Benjamin Button’s diary. It really makes me think about all of the things that had to go wrong in order for me to have ended up watching this film.

Oh, and a guy got struck by lightning seven times. I liked this plot development the first time I saw it - when it was in The Great Outdoors.

Warren

Wolverine: Hair Club for Men President

I think I may be running low on testosterone. I am just having trouble getting excited about any of this summer’s special effects laden, ass-kicking, girls in short shorts, bleak looks into the future, extra terrestrial based, mindless remakes/toy commercials. I think it is time for all of the starving writers who tag along with their slutty cousin to the Sky Bar so they can catch a peek of McG or Brett Rattner and hand them their screenplay to stand up and say, “I think we can do better than this.” Of course, I don’t really know if they can, but wouldn’t it be cool if the people who aren’t involved and have no say try to take back the Hollywood they did not previously have? I truly believe that Hollywood is now being run by toy manufacturers and the aliens behind the human-like exoskeleton of Miley Cyrus.

So, my lovely wife and I attended our first “Summer Blockbuster” last night in the form of X-Men Origins: Wolverine. The film featured Hugh Jackman reprising his role as the protruding blade fingered Wolverine of Marvel Comic fame. Also in the movie were Wolverine’s brother Benvereen, a fat guy, a guy with the worst case of pink-eye I have ever seen, a guy who plays poker “to the death,” a woman who touches you and gets her way (is this really a superpower?), an Asian Ned Nederlander, one of the Hobbits from Lord of the Rings, and a black guy.

The basis of this movie is much the same as the Star Wars prequels. The Vice President of the posable action figure division decided that the market was saturated with toys based on the grown up star of a popular movie so he ordered a new movie to be quickly written, directed and distributed to showcase the younger days of the movie star so that new action figures could be created and sold showcasing the stars various stages of physical development.

So it turns out that Wolverine was a sickly Canadian child who just prior to being stabbed by his brother witnessed the murder of his father by his mother’s lover, got mad and killed his mother’s lover with his protruding finger bones (the protrusions were not yet made of metal) but then finds out that his mother’s lover was really his father. At this point, Wolverine does what anyone would do when faced with the aforementioned scenario; he runs away and joins the US Army. While in the Army, Wolverine and his brother fight in pretty much every major war (I did not see him in the Six Day War or WCW’s War Games) until they go nuts in Vietnam and get executed by a firing squad (which of course did not hurt). Since the Army couldn’t kill Wolverine or his brother, they decided to assign him to a special unit in charge of collecting moon rocks and killing diamond smugglers.

After a few missions in the Army’s special unit Wolverine decided to call it quits and retire to the great Northwest in order to dawn the rich fabrics of a plaid shirt and do some lumberjacking. At this point, you may be asking yourself, “Warren, is this the story of Wolverine or your Uncle Leon?” Their stories are actually very similar. The main difference being that there used to be a statue of my Uncle Leon standing in front of a truck stop gas station west of Booneville, Missouri.

In an ironic twist of story telling, it turns out that the moon rocks that Wolverine was gathering while assigned to the Army’s special unit contain an indestructible metal that is injected into Wolverine thus giving him his infamous protruding blade fingers. Of course, it is a movie fantasy land so there doesn’t need to be any tough questions asked with regard to having one’s entire body filled with moon metal. I guess it should be mentioned that Wolverine volunteered to have moon metal injected into his body so that he could get enough strength to kill his brother who was supposedly killing the other characters in the movie (Fat Guy, Pink Eye, Deuce Dropper, Touchy-Feely, Asian Nederlander, Hobbit, and Black guy).

There were two things that really rubbed me wrong about this movie. The first thing is, if you are going to make a prequel, you have to have watched the movie it is prequelling (Trademark). If you watch X-Men Origins and then watch the first X-Men movie you will notice that when Wolverine meets his brother they don’t seem to know each other. Now, granted Wolverine loses his memory at the end of the Origins movie, but did his brother? And Pink Eye is in the first X-Men movie too but in that movie he doesn’t seem to recognize either Wolverine or his brother (neither does Halle Barry). Additionally, in this Origins movie Wolverine’s brother is an articulate, nearly indestructible force but in the X-Men movie he is just a grunting meat-head with limited power and Andy Rooney's eyebrows that is unceremoniously killed off.

The second thing that I did not like in this movie was the creation and deletion of the super villain Weapon XI. Supposedly, Weapon XI is a combination of all of the powers of all of the movie’s characters (except Fat Guy). So this guy has almost unlimited power and healing ability and yet he gets killed in about 30 seconds by Wolverine and his brother. My best guess is that the movie was humming right along and then the credit crunch occurred and the movie’s producers could not afford any more CGI so they told the film’s director to just wrap it up. Let’s think about this one for just a second, Weapon XI has pink eye, is filled with moon rocks, has a Terminator 2 style sword in his arm and can float like Muhammad Ali. So, Wolverine and his brother punch him a couple of times and about twenty-five seconds later Weapon XI is dead of decapitation.

The real irony in this death is that earlier in the film Asian Nederlander is told by the creator of Weapon XI (William Stryker) that he can only kill Wolverine by taking off his head. This would lead you to believe that Stryker knew that the cabeza was an area of concern…so let’s secure that thing to the shoulders! Why not put a layer of moon rocks around the neck area? Oh well, at least nobody attempted the jump-punch.

So, to wrap this one up, Wolverine is Canadian. And let’s not forget, if you ever get into a superhero fight protect your neck at all costs (I recommend a layer of moon rocks in the traditional African Ndebele arrangement).

Warren

Rupee Millionaire

Let me apologize in advance for the long delay in posting a fresh movie review to our blog. I will not, however, apologize for Matthew not posting a fresh movie review because he has a new job, new apartment and new lease on life! Look out California, Matthew is back to managing people. Although I do not know how many people Matthew is managing, or what he is asking them to do on a daily basis…I am hoping that this nugget will inspire him to set aside a few minutes from his newly busy schedule to wax poetically about his new job, house and maybe even the ladies. Congratulations Matthew and welcome back to the world of 8 to 5 (When Dolly Parton was working 9 to 5 did she get a lunch hour).

I have actually rented and/or attended several movies within the past month. I have seen I Love You Man, Watchmen, Miracle at St. Anna, Semi-Pro (again), Role Models and an unfortunate glance at Cynthia Nixon’s naked body while flipping past the Sex in the City movie. I am actually going back and forth on whether to keep in the “unfortunate glance” remark with regard to seeing that body because two of the other movies on my list have glaring (and in one case glowing) male nudity without proper warning. Since I have already discussed this topic in a previous review I won’t harp on it again, but we really need to stop this ball (no pun intended) from rolling any further down the mountain. On the other hand, I really do appreciate the fact that Malin Akerman is not embarrassed by her body and is willing to provide tasteful, artistic nudity in almost all of her films (Watchmen, The Heartbreak Kid, Harold & Kumar).

All of that aside, I would like to type a few paragraphs with regard to the movie I saw most recently called Slumdog Millionaire. I am sure all of you have heard of this movie as it was the winner of multiple awards this past year including the Oscars for Achievement in Screenplay, Original Song, Director and Best Motion Picture. I knew quite a bit about this film just based on all of the Oscar buzz and water cooler talk. I knew that the main character of the film was a contestant on Who Wants to be a Millionaire and all of the questions on this quiz show related to an experience he had in his life. I also knew that the film was based in India and was quite the social statement with regard to poverty and the reality of the 2nd World.

What I don’t know is whether or not there is a 2nd World. I know there is a 1st World and I know there is a 3rd World but have you ever heard anyone talk about the 2nd World? Wouldn’t you have to put a country like India in the 2nd World? I think they could be considered a 1st World country based on their GDP but it is also one of the poorest and most illiterate countries on Earth. I will save this debate for another forum but right before you go to sleep tonight, turn to your bed-mate and ask he or she “where would you rank India from a socio-economic global prospective?”

So the film moved along OK, it was definitely eye opening to see the scale of poverty in India and the challenges the Indian people face everyday. It will remind you how lucky we are to have clean running water, indoor plumbing and reliable electricity here in the good-ole US of A. It will also make you think just how fortunate we were as a young Nation to grow up in the 18th and 19th Century when so many of the ugly faces of Capitalism (this is really a comment on economies of scale) were not pressing to keep us from realizing our economic independence. That is not to say that I am in any way anti-Capitalism, but Capitalism as an economic system that can be painfully exploited.

OK, so we have talked about Cynthia Nixon’s naked body, India’s place in the world’s pecking order and a popular quiz show. Where could we possibly go from here? How about this one; when you watch Slumdog Millionaire keep a close eye on the three main characters (Jamal, Salim and Latika). Since I know very little about children this may be how it actually works but it sure looked like the ages of the children fluctuated from very young, to young, to getting older, back to young and then straight to older. Who knows, maybe the Benjamin Button disease originated in India.

That makes me wonder, if you had that problem would you tell anyone? Other than the confusion in wardrobe and medicine cabinet contents…would you seek treatment for a disease where you would randomly go from young to old and back to young? I guess it would be like being stuck in the movie 18 Again except that sometimes you would be George Burns and sometimes you would be Charlie Schlatter (what ever happened to that guy? My sister used to love him).

Why wasn’t Regis hosting Who Wants to be a Millionaire? I mean, the guy they had hosting the show in the movie was about as Indian as Regis is human. I think the accent the host used must have come from the same prop closet as the accent Jon Voight used in Anaconda. Wouldn’t the whole movie have been more fun if Regis had portrayed himself? Can’t you just see Regis trying to pronounce the name Jamal Malik and reading Indian trivia questions? And how great would it have been if Regis was the one beating up Jamal while accusing him of cheating! Regis could have been to India what Jerry Lewis is to France.

So, to wrap this one up Slumdog Millionaire won a lot of awards, opened up a lot of eyes to the Indian sub-continent and overtook The Love Guru for best ending dance sequence.

Warren

An Exclusive Ride on the Midnight Meat Train

I consider myself one of the luckiest men on the face of the earth for having seen the theatrical trailer for Midnight Meat Train. I am quite sure Matthew remembers as well because we saw it together prior to There Will Be Blood. As I recall, the trailer flowed in the normal candy-cutter manner of most stalker-based horror flicks. It foretold the danger, running, chasing, slashing and screaming that would face minor Hollywood stars Bradley Cooper, Leslie Bibb and Brooke Shields. Nothing could have prepared me for the final scene of the preview, as the subway hurls down the dimly lit tunnel, the movie title is displayed for the first time and the voice of the preview slowly and calmly says “Midnight Meat Train.”

Matthew and I both immediately broke into laughter and I vowed to myself that I would cherish the viewing of the preview in the same way I cherish my first born child (of which I do not have one). I am still surprised that I cannot buy a T-shirt in Vegas with that movie title written across the chest. If I can buy a shirt that says “I ♥ To Fart” then why can’t I buy a shirt with “Midnight Meat Train” on there? I really believe that the shirt could outsell the yellow smiley face shirt. If you put “Midnight Meat Train” on the front and “Catch It Tonight” on the back…you would have capitalistic gold.

Of course, Midnight Meat Train never came to any theaters that I am aware of. Come to think of it, I don’t recall even seeing the movie at Blockbuster or the magic $1 video box at Fry’s either. It is possible I missed its quick run through theaters and on the New Release shelf at the movie store, but more than likely it just slipped into obscurity. Nothing makes me happier than to think that it slipped into obscurity. Lots of people can tell the story of attending a Super Bowl or watching a Presidential Inauguration or seeing Elvis in concert. How many people can say they saw the original trailer for Midnight Meat Train in the theater?

But, just when I thought I had struck trailer gold, I spotted another shiny nugget last Sunday. This particular trailer portrayed young sexy co-eds dancing, drinking and experimenting with pre-marital relations on the high seas. But when the drunken relations go awry someone ends up dead. In this case (according to the trailer), one of three girls on the boat dies from the relations and her body is disposed of by the three boys on the boat. Somehow this leads to tension between the remaining two girls and the original three boys. This tension leads to the boys tying up the girls, the tying up leads to the girls trying to escape, and the trying to escape leads to a dramatic conclusion.

The dramatic conclusion to this trailer was the title of the movie itself: Donkey Punch.

You have read that title correctly; the movie is called Donkey Punch. I double dare any of you (if you don't already know) to look this term up to see what it means. I would have never thought in my lifetime that I would see this often misunderstood, misquoted, potentially lethal sexual term as the title of a mainstream film.

So now, not only have I had the great fortune to see the trailer to Midnight Meat Train, I have also seen the trailer to a movie called Donkey Punch. Think about that, it is basically the equivalent of seeing Elvis sing Jailhouse Rock live in Atlantis with a pet Dodo on his shoulder.

It is never too early to start filling out your Christmas list. Tell Santa, tell your spouse, tell your co-workers and tell your AA sponsor that you want to take a ride on the Midnight Meat Train and put a Donkey Punch under your tree. Oh, and if anyone that reads this blog creates a “Midnight Meat Train – Catch It Tonight” T-shirt, I want some residuals!

Warren

A Penny for My Thoughts on The Wrestler

This past weekend I finally got the opportunity to attend a movie I have been looking forward to seeing for quite some time. The Wrestler is still in limited release (it is only showing at 1 theater in all of Arizona) but it has generated a lot of Oscar buzz and Mickey Rourke has already won several awards for his leading actor performance. I was looking forward to this movie for three main reasons; I really liked Mickey Rourke in his pre-boxing and pre-motorcycle and pre-cosmetic surgery days, I used to work as a regulator/tax collector for professional wrestling in the Great State of Missouri, and Marisa Tomei is hot! Plus, it is actually nice to see a movie about a topic relevant to people under the age of 65 getting some Oscar buzz.

As I previously stated, The Wrestler is only being shown at one theater in Arizona. The theater at which it is being shown is an Independent/Artsy type theater near a ritzy mall in Scottsdale. Since I had never been to this theater I had it in my mind that they would be serving red wine and the patrons would either be in top hats or peace sign T-shirts. I was hoping that this theoretical cast of characters would somehow clash with the legions of wrestling fans I used to see at High School Gymnasiums in rural Missouri. No movie is complete without some type of rumble when the credits roll (I prefer a rumble with snapping and high-kicks myself).

Unfortunately, when I got to the theater I realized that the only rumble I was going to get after the movie was going to have to come from the bowels of fifty seats full of senior citizens. I got behind several “age-experienced” folks in the line to purchase a ticket and as usual, this took way longer than should be necessary. For those of you that frequent movie theaters, maybe you can help me out on this question: Why do senior citizens always have so much change? Do senior citizens control the coins in this country? Everywhere I go, including movie theaters, they are getting out their coin-purses and unloading nothing but silver coins and crumpled dollar bills. I realize that this may be a generational issue but where do they get all of this change and why is their stock not depleting? I am really only half-joking, I realize that coins are money too, but I just don’t understand how senior citizens accumulated so many coins. And just to follow-up on my previous question, how is it that they never have any idea how much change they have? When they pull up to the register they just start sifting through that coin purse with seemingly no idea if they have enough change to pay for their purchases. I mean, is there one huge coin jar at every senior citizens house and before they go out they just reach in a take a scoop of coins? Then again, Scrooge McDuck had a whole room full of coins that he just dove into and swam around in. Maybe that is why senior citizens do so many exercises that involve holding empty milk jugs.

Anyway, Mickey Rourke stars in The Wrestler as Randy “The Ram” Robinson, a washed up professional wrestler still holding onto the dream well past his prime. As a former professional wrestling regulator, I saw way too much professional wrestling at high school gyms, church basements, county fairs, American Legion halls, smoke-filled banquet rooms and occasionally, eighteen thousand seat arenas. I spent five years of my life traveling all over Missouri to represent the State and collect the ticket tax. I am providing that little walk down memory lane to make the point that I have seen a lot of independent, small time professional wrestling, and The Wrestler captured everything that I saw. The story that was told and the action that was presented, from the wrestlers all pulling the same rolling luggage with their tights and exercise bands, to the camaraderie in the locker room and the highs and lows of the pre-match and post-match experience, was very real and very well done.

I personally thought that both the story and the portrayal of a washed-up wrestler by Mickey Rourke closely followed the true story of Jimmy “Superfly” Snuka. I saw Jimmy Snuka work for an independent wrestling organization in Poplar Bluff, Missouri while working for the State. I remember watching Snuka during his run in the WWF during the height of wrestling’s popularity. He was a dynamic performer and one of the first wrestlers to use a lot of high-flying maneuvers (including his Superfly Splash finishing move). The man I saw sitting on a bucket in the kitchen of the Armory in Poplar Bluff was just a ghost of what I remembered seeing on television. He still wore the shoulder length “soul glow” hair but he also had thick glasses, a well worn forehead and the demeanor of a tired, beaten man. I don’t mean any of this to be disrespectful, Snuka was nothing but polite and friendly to me and we chatted for several minutes about his travels and experiences. In fact, when we were chatting the promoter came in to pay Snuka his fee and it was almost exactly like the scene in the Wrestler where the promoter hands Randy Robinson a disappointing amount of money and says “I thought the gate would be better.”

That scene captured the real essence of minor league wrestling. The men and women wrestlers that I saw worked hard at their day jobs, pushed show tickets to their friends and family at night and then wrestled once or twice a month in the hopes of extending or elevating their wrestling dreams and making $25 to $50 a show. Often times, the hope of making $25 to $50 turned into promoters asking the wrestlers for money to cover the building rental in the hopes that the next show would have a “better gate.” Sometimes, a wrestler would earn his or her $50 only to have to give it directly to me to fund their Missouri State Constitution mandated professional wrestlers license fee. It was not a glorious life by any means, and after they had put on a grueling and painful show, signed autographs for children and adults alike, pushed their homemade t-shirts and VHS highlight reels, they generally folded and stacked chairs and took the ring apart to be loaded into a pickup parked out back.

As much as I liked both the story and the style of the film, I do have to offer a few words of warning. My wife got sick watching the film from a lethal combination of hand-held camera sequences and bloody wrestling action. Parts of the film, including quite a bit of footage early in the movie, are shot with what appears to be a hand-held camera and are very shaky (think Blair Witch Project, the first movie – no one should ever think about the second movie). I did not have any problems watching the movie but the shakiness of the camera is definitely noticeable.

The bloody wrestling action is another story. Unfortunately, the presentation of both how these matches are choreographed and how they turn out looking to the wrestling audience is very real. During the period in recent professional wrestling history when interest in the mega organizations weaned (WWF, WCW, ECW), independent wrestling organizations turned to gimmick matches to lure paying customers to live events. These were not the gimmick matches of the old wrestling days – loser leaves town matches, strap matches, blindfold matches, girls mud wrestling matches, over the top rope matches, handicap matches, etc. The new style of gimmick matches included no holds barred matches, barbed wire rope matches, fire matches, ladder and chair matches, thumb tack matches, staple gun matches, first blood matches and sometimes a combination of all of the above.

The toll that these types of gimmick matches take on wrestlers can be very extreme (both physically and professionally). Unfortunately, once you start down the path of gigging (intentionally causing oneself to bleed) both the show promoters and the fans begin to not only expect it in every match, they also expect to see something new and bigger at every match. In The Wrestler there is a full sequence of an anything goes match in which Randy Robinson wrestles a poor-mans Mick Foley in a High School gymnasium. The match is brutal and includes everything from barbed wire ropes, to ladders and tables, to trash cans and staple guns. If you are at all squeamish about blood and violence you may want to make a run to the snack bar for a refill on your Orange Crush during this scene. If you want to see the scene, you will be rewarded with an accurate depiction of what wrestling has become to some promoters and wrestlers determined to have a crowd leave their professional wrestling show saying “that is the sickest thing I have ever seen.”

Finally, I just want to say that Marisa Tomei is incredibly hot in this movie. It goes without saying that we all saw My Cousin Vinny and we were all immediately taken with Marisa Tomei. In The Wrestler, Marisa plays a stripper named Cassidy and she not only provides a well rounded dramatic performance, she is also in great shape and looks unbelievable in her stripper gear (also known as underwear the size of my wallet). Even if you have no interest in going to this movie, at least go to the Internet and watch Marisa’s performance (remember now, she is 44 years old)!

So, to wrap this one up, I give my full endorsement to The Wrestler. Also, while I think that Mickey Rourke could win an Oscar for his performance as Randy Robinson, I also think that Carré Otis should have won an Oscar in 1989 for her performance with Mickey Rourke in Wild Orchid.

Warren