Apoca-Lips and a great rack.

It’s The Apocalypse, and everything is pretty much the same… except the Anti-Christ is Walking The Earth and trying to get off with your girlfriend.

RAPTURE-PALOOZA is atheistic, irreverent and very funny, with just the right amount of C-cup. Just the way I like it.

For those irreligious and sensible enough not to know what The Rapture is, it’s from the biblical Book of Revelations when God physically takes Justin Bieber fans up to heaven– no, sorry, I’ve been told he only takes Believers not Beliebers. Then, in his infinite wisdom and compassion, he leaves all the One Direction fans behind. And everyone else. RAPTURE-PALOOZA is about the people left behind.

In Seattle, after being left behind, Lindsey (absolutely luscious Anna Kendrick) and her boyfriend Ben (John Francis Daley) try to make a life amongst the intermittent foul-mouthed locusts and crows and fiery falling rocks.

The Anti-Christ has also appeared Walking not The Earth, but just Walking Seattle. His name is Earl, but he prefers that people call him The Beast. And he’s Craig Robinson. Of course! It’s so obvious! Jesus is a white bitch, so natchelly, the Anti-Christ has to be a BLACK MAN!

The new Broadway smash: Poffy Palooza

While Lindsey’s parents (John Michael Higgins and Ana Gasteyer) weep and gnash their teeth over the misery of being left behinders, Ben’s father (Rob Corddry with a porn-stache) embraces the new life-after-normal and goes to work for the Beast at his mansion.When Lindsey and Ben are introduced to the Beast (who is looking for love, but not with a slut), he immediately falls for Lindsey, not least because she’s a virgin. And has a nice rack.

Funniest line is Beast referring to the androgynous-looking Ben as Rachel Maddow.

The best part about being in the movies must be the honesty. As the Beast, Robinson gets to say whatever he wants about Anna Kendrick: “Oh God, look at them titties!” We’re ALL thinking it (even Rachel Maddow, and by that I mean the character Ben and the real Rachel Maddow) – but Robinson’s actually getting to say what all of us are thinking! “You’re like Scarlett Johansson and Hilary Swank with a good rack!” “Don’t worry, we’re gonna fuck soon!” “I’m gonna bust all over your face.” “Where do you wanna go for our honeymoon? Not that it matters, cos you’ll be getting face-fucked all the time, am I right?”

I don’t care whether he’s married or how many girlfriends he’s got right now, or how many kids he has, or whether he’s a respected family man or not. He’s actually saying things that we all want to say in reality, and that I’m 100% pretty damn sure the director and writer and all the male crew want to say to Anna Kendrick as well.

Ah, Honesty. God and Satan swear by it.

With the help of Thomas Lennon as a lawnmowing zombie, Ben must save Lindsey from the imminent clutches and even more imminent swinging dick of the Beast. Luckily, Jesus arrives, in a blaze of stallion glory – and is taken out by a missile. But then God appears. God is Ken Jeong, the white bitch spoken of earlier.

And God and Beast engage in thunderclap battle that shakes the foundations of creation… uh, well, they bitchslap each other near Beast’s jacuzzi, eventually falling in and being electrocuted. With the death of God and Satan, everyone starts arguing over who should be in charge. The simple, profound message comes from Lindsey, “Hey nobody’s in charge, which means everybody’s in charge, so we can all be grownups now.” Such wisdom. What does it say in Matthew 21:16? “…out of the mouths of babes…”

And what a babe! I want to bust all over her face– Oh right, when *I* say it, I’m a pervert!.…

END

BAD TEACHER not good.

It’s commendable that Cameron Diaz would go to such great lengths to portray someone so despicable and “ugly,” but BAD TEACHER doesn’t do her any justice, being even more despicable and ugly.

Foul-mouthed gold-digger Elizabeth (Diaz) takes a teaching job for a year while she cultivates her sugar daddy into marriage. When he dumps her before the big day, she must blondly support herself while searching for a new daddy, so returns to teaching – inexplicably, as she hates, neglects and mistreats the kids and has no respect for the school syllabus, so we assume it’s the only thing she knows how to do standing up.

As Elizabeth whiles away the school days smoking pot, sleeping at her desk and letting her students watch movies instead of study, she becomes obsessed with the notion that bigger fake tits will aid her quest for a rich john. She’s right, of course. Bigger fake tits will aid a woman in ANYTHING, not just the quest for a sugar daddy. The movie implies that due to Elizabeth being shallow, fake tits are shallow too, and don’t solve anything. Firstly, in Elizabeth’s milieu (that of a young woman coasting through life on the wallets of others – i.e. 80% of women today), fake tits solve almost everything; secondly, in EVERY milieu, they are a free pass to food, drinks, cars, homes, you name it – they make men listen to your mindless chatter for hours, they garner you compliments on dresses, shoes, necklaces, bikinis, when all we want to say is “Nice TITS!”; doors are opened, literally and figuratively; help with your luggage? wanna get a coffee? the cop let you off with a warning? need me to move that couch? Who is this movie trying to fool?

Jason Segel is a down-to-Earth gym coach who has eyes for Elizabeth but is not on her financial radar. John Michael Higgins is the school principal with an almost lustful affinity for dolphins.

British Lucy Punch is fellow teacher, slightly batty Ms. Squirrel, who turns into a rival of Elizabeth’s for the affections of a rich new teacher, Scott (Justin Timberlake). Punch and Timberlake salvage what little they can of their poorly-written roles, and almost save the production; most amazing thing about Punch is that she is ample-busted yet genuinely funny – how rare is that?! – usually blond, here lusciously red-headed, doing an impeccable American accent. And Timberlake, we find, is quite gifted at comedy, but then, he’s been making us laugh since he was in ‘N Sync.

Timberlake is Diaz’s real life ex, so we watch in two minds as they flirt and dry-hump, with Timberlake pulling one of the funniest O-faces not in an actual porno.

The person most responsible for this failed attempt at dark toilet humor is the miscast Cameron Diaz. She is not funny. Never has been. She is a fine actress, and plays drama well (BEING JOHN MALKOVICH, THE BOX), but she just doesn’t sell her comedy character, because – as is always the case – hot women cannot pretend to NOT be hot. They cannot have it both ways – Elizabeth cannot supposedly be so good-looking that men trip over themselves to be near her and then also be stuck as a lowly middle school teacher. Ironically, Diaz really IS ugly, but we know the filmmakers would have us believe her character is only ugly on the inside and BEE-YOO-TI-FUL on the outside. So if she really wanted out of the lower class treadmill, why doesn’t she use what God has given her and strut those buns and that bucket mouth into an upscale bar in Bel Air? Or why not use what Al Gore has given her and use the internet to look up sugardaddy.com?

Elizabeth begs, borrows and steals money for her boob job, using her leering legs and peekaboo pear-cheeks like the prostitute she is, along the way making a mockery of the school system. It’s not the mockery of school I have a problem with, it’s not the prostitution, it’s not the drugs, swearing or sex, it’s not even the fact that Diaz is a one-dimensional actor – it’s the sudden flip-flop of Elizabeth’s heinous character. Writers Gene Stupnitsky and Lee Eisenberg (of the lame U.S. version of THE OFFICE) didn’t bother putting signposts along the way to this slut’s redemption. They simply decided to take a left turn when the script reached its page quota. And why is Jake Kasdan (WALK HARD) directing this trash?

We just KNOW that Elizabeth will never get that boob job because that is the device that drives her slut mode. This anti-hero would somehow have to turn into the hero, or test audiences would have a hissy fit and Sony Pictures would never distribute this offal. So the filmmakers sacrifice Ms. Squirrel, making her the villain to Elizabeth’s “unconventional” anti-hero, simply because she was trying to expose Elizabeth’s venal agenda. It’s a jaw-dropping display of lazy scriptwriting.

I’d hazard a guess that those two TV writers probably took screenwriting classes with bad teachers like Cameron Diaz. But probably not that ugly. And if those classes were in Hollywood, the teacher already had fake tits.

END

Anne Heche contemplates being the meat in a Legend Sandwich…

Conflation Nation.

“Of course there’s a war – I saw it on TV.”
–Robert De Niro, WAG THE DOG.

War is only real if you let them get away with it. As George Carlin used to say, “Why do the troops keep turning up?” But even if the troops didn’t turn up for active duty, WAG THE DOG is an example of what the government can do with a little false-flag media.

WAG THE DOG is only a movie. It’s ostensibly a “satire” but as Roger Ebert insightfully observes, “It is getting harder for satire to stay ahead of reality.”

The U.S. President in a sex scandal. What can the American government do to atone for it? Not apologize to the public, or make amends, or even try to make the president a better man – but manufacture a fake war to take the focus off him, just two weeks before an election.

He’s termed a government spin doctor in the junkets, but Conrad Brean (Robert De Niro) is what mobsters would call a “cleaner.” (And isn’t the government just a legalized form of thug life?) He makes problems go away. He and the White House PR aide (Anne Heche) manufacture the “war” with Albania (“because no one knows where it is or what’s happening there”) with the help of a Hollywood producer, Stanley Motss (Dustin Hoffman, channeling Robert Evans).

Aided by Denis Leary (facilitator) and Willie Nelson (composing a theme song for the conflict); bringing home a fake war vet, who happens to be PTSD to the gills (Woody Harrelson), and tailed by William H. Macy (CIA).

I’m biting my tongue here on the real life parallels of American government. WAG THE DOG is an allegory of this Orwellian society sometimes called America, where government manufactures crises in order to solve them and pretend efficiency. Like the bailout crisis of 2008; like the debt ceiling crisis of 2011. Who caused them? Not us. Who “solved” them? Not us. But the taxes and fortunes of the oblivious American people were raided by the American government as excuse for the quelling of those crises.

So the uncomfortable dichotomy in WAG THE DOG is its biting humor (for the audacity of the liars in this story) tempered with outrage (for the audacity of the liars in real life that this story bases itself on).

Movie brings together acting legends De Niro and Hoffman, cheekily playing off each other like a devil against an atheist; De Niro’s diabolical twinkle in his eye says, ‘Do right by me or you will burn in a lake of fire’ and Hoffman’s cute obliviousness doesn’t truly believe a lake of fire exists unless he produces the movie about it.

Flooding the media with war images produced by Motss, Brean can safely proclaim to his CIA questioners who doubt the veracity of the war, “Of course there’s a war – I saw it on TV!”

And our minds again wander to the terrifying reality of Orwell’s America: how the Bush admin flooded the media with “news conferences” that they engineered themselves as propaganda to showcase their murderous policies like Shock and Awe, and nonsensical programs like No Child Left Behind; to check off their ever-moving benchmarks in the fake War On Terror; to “prove” their transparency (ironically, by being duplicitous!). It’s not just the felons in the Bush administration; every government finagles the media, but the Bush Klan were so hamhanded and arrogant that they blew it for everyone. Now we know it is common practice to hire PR companies like Burson-Marsteller to “re-brand” activities, entities, corporations, even policies, to repackage lies and malfeasance.

“… the administration’s ambitions to manage the news knew no bounds…”
–Frank Rich, The Greatest Story Ever Sold, writing about Condi Rice’s attempt to keep bin Laden videos out of the media.

In WAG THE DOG, as in real life, they plant “reporters” in press conferences to ask questions that they answer with their spin; they disallow legitimate investigative reporters into their midst for fear of diluting the message; they preclude unfavorable coverage by threatening the news networks with lack of access (i.e. either report the lies or report nothing at all; any “news” is better than no news)…

Released in 1997 (when Clinton was prosecuting his own underhanded wars with little or no media coverage), whether this movie is satire or fact, it is undeniably prophetic, because in 2011, this is exactly how “war” is being prosecuted in America – via the media. Yes, there are ground troops and people dying in Iraq and Afghanistan (what Dubya liked to call “over there”) but it’s less than 1% of the American population who are involved or who know people involved in this political skirmish that has no reason and no goal. America is not “at war” – there are no bombers droning overhead, no blackouts, no rationing, and the only ruined streets and bridges are those that the local governments choose to ignore, choosing to funnel that taxpayer money into their own pockets. For America, war is an entertainment diversion; it only exists on TV.

(On the day I was writing this article, political commentator Lawrence O’Donnell made an observation about how the majority of America doesn’t even realize it is at war: “…a nation where it is impossible to in any way experience a country at war, a nation where not a single deprivation has been suffered because the country has been at war for a decade; a nation where no one has to wait in line for bread or fuel or anything else in short supply because of war…” Full disclosure: it was in a different context, but it corroborates everything I stated above.)

If you plop a person anywhere in America with no access to media, they could live out their life oblivious to America supposedly involved in “two wars” and innumerable illegal skirmishes ‘pon de side. If you did not turn on the news, would you ever know about drone attacks in Libya, or Yemen, or Pakistan? It’s just a frivolous game that politicians think it’s their job to play. Assholes. As Keith Olbermann used to say, “George W. Bush is having a war in Iraq – for the sake of having a war in Iraq.”

As Brean and his associates escalate the “war,” they escalate the lies to unimaginably audacious proportions, the aide constantly wondering if the lies will “take” with the public. Of course they do. When TV talks, people listen.

How many citizens of the indoctrinated United States of America will come away from WAG THE DOG knowing that it was a riotous satire once upon a short time ago, but has turned into a depiction of unethical real life political engineering? Only much tamer.

END

Uglier than we can imagine.

THE UGLY TRUTH seems to be telling us that strong, intelligent women are not desirable, or at least, not as alluring as eye-candy T&A who exhibit only as much brainpower as required to breathe and fuck.

Why does the movie make its leading lady an ambitious, intelligent, decisive woman until she is in the proximity of her leading man? His message is that domineering women are “bitches” and men are only attracted to eye-candy T&A. If she really WAS intelligent, why does she immediately crumble like a schoolgirl under his tutelage? Which effectively proves she is NOT intelligent and strong, but desperate, insecure and petty.

So the movie’s message is that women can’t even BE strong and intelligent because it is only a facade until a stronger MAN comes along.

I don’t even have to be my usual double-slice of misogynist – I’m just describing exactly what the movie is portraying.

Gerard Butler is Mike Chadway (was Brick Mandick already taken, in Masculine Names For Dummies?), who has a segment on a News Program called The Ugly Truth, where he rants on women and relationships.

“…They say they want true love, but all they want is a check list. Is he perfect? Is he handsome? Is he a doctor? For you men who fit the criteria, don’t kid yourselves. Cuz they’re not sleeping with you, they’re sleeping with a carefully calculated set of venal choices. Money over substance, looks over soul, polished over principles. No gesture, no matter how real or romantic will ever compensate for a really impressive list of credentials.”

Katherine Heigl is his leading lady Abby Richter, producer of a competing television show, who thinks Chadway is full of himself and talking garbage.

But when the studio boss (Nick Searcy) tempts Chadway onto Abby’s show for higher ratings, Abby more than eagerly falls for Chadway’s shtick as it will help her bed Dr. Colin, her dreamy neighbor (Eric Winter). Her unconditional acceptance of Chadway’s methods to entrap the good doctor with her wiles means she has accepted his ranting as gospel. Which means all you ladies out there who dismissed Chadway as chauvinistic should ALSO be accepting him – because he is helping your leading lady, successfully we observe.

And very bluntly: all the courting and relationship advice Chadway gives Abby is absolutely true; and everything that Abby does corroborates Chadway’s advice, meaning the movie itself proves Chadway right – yet by story’s end, the movie which has just shown us how right he is, castrates him and tries to make us believe he is falling for his leading lady like any lovestruck low-rent douchebag, retrofitting his advice as if it was simply the wayward ranting of your average garden variety male chauvinist sex piggy. That’s called cognitive dissonance – holding two contradictory ideas in your head at the same time.

Written by three women – Karen McCullah Lutz, Kirsten Smith and Nicole Eastman – THE UGLY TRUTH, like most “romantic comedies” (‘scuse me while I vomit in my mouth and swallow it down for saying that phrase), is a case study in cognitive dissonance. To paraphrase a dictum made famous by Nicholson: like all women – they can’t handle the truth! Never mind that irritating advertising campaign that shows Heigl holding a heart up to her head and Butler holding one to his groin – UGLY TRUTH has nothing to do with “men thinking with their dicks while women think with their heads” or “men thinking physically, women thinking emotionally” – the movie is actually premised around Abby thinking with her groin and Chadway thinking empirically.

As with every unwatchable White American Romantic Comedy, there are a few fun bits, a few titters, but not worth the annoyance at how implausibly those situations are arrived at. Nice to see Cheryl Hines outside CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM and John Michael Higgins in another small but effective role.

Chadway is right in classifying Abby as a dominating bitch – yet she was more than willing to stultify her dominatrix tendencies to bed the sexy doctor, which means that for the sake of sex she was willing to give up her very personality! Ultimately, she doesn’t give herself to the doctor, confessing she doesn’t really like him. Which is yet another admission that Chadway’s “woman’s checklist” exists; the checklist that Abby in fact subscribes to, and that she has discovered – as Chadway predicted – is an unreliable method of choosing partners. The movie proves time and again that Chadway’s dictums are correct – through its own leading lady!

After truisms like “Never talk about your problems ’cause men don’t really listen or care”; after the implicit message that the only way dominating bitches can be tamed is in the embrace of a MORE dominating man (Butler the perfect Man’s Man for this role); after being directed by a man (Robert Luketic, MONSTER-IN-LAW), for the sake of pairing the couple for the final scene, Chadway is emasculated so he can snivel down to Abby’s low-self-esteem level for a fadeout snog.

That’s soooo vagina.

This is the exact moment THE UGLY TRUTH falls apart as a movie, a comedy and as a simple document on human interaction:

As a novelty gift, Chadway sends Abby a pair of vibrating panties (this in itself is another topic of discussion, pertaining to cultivation, which we won’t enter into), and she accidentally ends up wearing them out to an executive dinner meeting. (Already, you can feel the contrivance building, can’t you?) At the meeting, she loses the remote control for the panties, which a little boy picks up and starts fooling with, sending her into paroxysms of public pleasure, which she tries to pass off as needing to go to the toilet. (Someone actually wrote this stuff down in a screenplay.)

She rises, crossing her legs ostentatiously, and announces she’s going to the bathroom (to remove the panties, which only we the audience know about). Then the movie hits rock bottom when her boss asks her to stay and give her presentation to the execs…

Who in their right mind would ask someone to stay and give a presentation after they’ve just announced, cross-legged, that they’re heading to the toilet?

And then: who in their right mind would STAY and weather the mind-glutting pleasures of an orgasm in public? Which is what Abby does, going one better than Meg Ryan in WHEN HARRY MET SALLY by having a real scream-gasm.

A simple “Let me visit the ladies room first and I’ll be right back,” would suffice for professional protocol.

Yes, it’s funny and farcical and prurient – but arrived at in such a contrived manner that it ruined it for me and I had to put my pants back on in the theater.

END

FEMper Fi.

If she wants to play lumberjack, she’s gonna have to learn to handle her end of the log.
— Dirty Harry, THE ENFORCER.

Demi Moore tries to prove she’s got a dick.

As Jordan O’Neill, Demi goes action figure in G.I. JANE and claws her rambunctious way through man-sized basic training to be a Navy SEAL in this extremely unimportant movie. Which I think the filmmakers regard as some kind of statement about womankind or transgenderkind or manwoman testicles or something.

Anyway, I missed the boat on that whole woman-empowerment, burn-the-bra, equal-opportunity, kick-male-butt feminism thing. Cos I have a penis.

So Jordan shaves her head, badgers high command not to give her preferential treatment (which is technically preferential treatment if they heed her request) and goes balls deep with the boys climbing obstacles and being shouted at by Master Chief Urgayle (Viggo Mortensen, with a faggoty little mustache and testosterone levels so dangerously high his balls are not just navy blue, they’re Navy SEAL blue).

To ensure we don’t mistake Jordan for a lesbian (a mortal sin in military parlance) or a feminazi (slightly less mortal), the story sets her up with a nominal army boyfriend in another sector. (Don’t Ask Don’t Tell but shove this gutless aside in our faces just in case…)

Totally ironic Jordan should want to prove she has nuts in an organization which is intrinsically one big penis inferiority complex. Why else do they loooove shooting off those big, big guns?

She lobbies for her “right” to share the sleeping quarters with the men, do pushups man-style and flaunt her implant juggernauts in the showers. And for the life of me, I don’t know what she is trying to prove. Let me get this straight: she DOESN’T want to get gang-raped, right? And you can bet if the men actually DO treat her like One Of The Boys, without askew glances, without flirty comments, totally flensing themselves of the desire to grab her jugaloos, she’ll be the first to whine that she’s not being treated like a woman!

Has it occurred to women that the double standards they complain about are brought about by themselves?

At one point, Master Chief Urgayle steps in on Jordan while she’s showering, to give her a message, looking over her nudity casually, like he’s too cool for frickin’ school, while she’s in prescribed Penthouse Posedown position (it’s a fact that all women shower in runway-model poses) – and what exactly are we meant to derive from this encounter: that he is taking her seriously because he is not trying to pick her up?; that he regards her as one of the boys because he has no erection?; that he’s insulting her by looking at her naked? I’m telling you – I missed the boat on this hypocrisy.

In PULP FICTION, John Travolta espouses how certain interactions between men and women, though regarded as casual, have much more sensual import than even pornography: “I’ve given a million ladies a million foot massages – and they all meant something. We act like they don’t, but they do. That’s what’s so fuckin’ cool about it. There’s a sensuous thing goin’ on where, y’know, you don’t talk about it, but – you know it, she knows it…”

Hmm, Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. Just go with the honey flow.

So in this state of high libido, Jordan is handcuffed and bashed in a combat exercise by Master Chief (there’s a penis envy title if ever there was one, created by grown men with the mentality of frightened, entitled little boys). We supposedly turn a corner here. After the thorough bashing (with – you guessed it – simulated rape), instead of washing out of Navy SEAL School For Meatheads, Jordan defiantly taunts Master Chief, “Suck my dick!” And a cheer goes up from all the men. Yay! Jordan has a dick at last! Now we can all get some sleep.

Even when Jordan passes training, Viggo’s sadomasochistic Master Chief continues to be skeptical that she will make a good soldier, constantly riding her, “You’ll never be able to drag a man out of combat.” Upon consulting our Screenwriter Handbook, we see the flow chart denotes that she will ultimately drag Master Chief Bondage and Discipline himself out of combat. This she does, in the most contrived war scenes ever committed to film since Meg Ryan pretended to fly a chopper into a hot zone in COURAGE UNDER FIRE (1996).

So what does THAT prove? That she’s equal to a man? What does equality even mean when women cite it? How would the human race continue if women and men were the same psychologically and physically? We ARE different – live with it! If you don’t believe me, look two feet below your jawline – oh! A vagina and womb! Not better, not worse. Not equal, not unequal. Different.

Every time women claim they “want equality with men,” they mean “superiority over men.”

As illustrated by this ever-recurring scenario: So she’s granted equal pay, equal privileges, and god knows, she’s allowed to take her panties down in the same bathroom as the boys – THEN – she gets pregnant. And wants six months off work WITH THE SAME PAY AND PRIVILEGES! Which Hypocrite Queen said that was sane? Further, extolling pregnancy as some kind of “miracle” (again, for the sole purpose of making herself superior to men) – which it isn’t. It complies with all natural laws; nothing supernatural about it. And a billion species on Earth are giving birth even as she is yammering about how superior she is and how miraculous she’s become.

G.I. JANE’s plot of Jordan applying to be a United States Navy SEAL (Sea, Air and Land) is set in motion by a politician (Anne Bancroft) pulling strings. (Hmm, is that not “preferential treatment”?) In real life, the number one qualification is: be male. Let’s face it, women would never be allowed into the SEALs. There’d be no troops left – all the gay guys would leave.

Tyne Daly in THE ENFORCER (1976), fought alpha male Harry Callahan every step of the way to accept her femininity-yet-independence. Every time Dirty Harry asked if she could handle the situations they got into, her catchphrase was, “Don’t concern yourself,” meaning, Don’t give me a break. But the fact you’re here means you’ve been given a break.

And that’s why this movie is so unimportant. Its very existence puts woman on a pedestal, thereby promoting her “superiority” from the get-go. It is giving women a break by featuring them as superior to men. It does nothing for and says nothing about female discrimination; in the patriarchal American Military there is innate discrimination even after the point where the men have supposedly accepted Jordan as an equal. And let’s face it: men only “allow” women the perception of equality – to get into their pants.

And we must question exactly what motivates Jordan to be this attention whore in the first place. Is it a misguided “duty to her country”? Like the rest of the grunts, she can do much more productive work for her country by NOT becoming an inculcated legal murderer (i.e. Navy SEAL).

Surprising that G.I. JANE is written by a woman, Danielle Alexandra (with David Twohy). Not surprisingly, directed by a man, Ridley Scott. Surprisingly, each sex didn’t do their sex justice.

G.I. JANE should really give you a hard-on. If you’re a woman.

END

YES means Mo.’

In YES MAN, anti-social Carl (Jim Carrey) has been sinking lower into negativity since leaving his girl, Stephanie (Molly Sims), making dumb excuses not to attend any social events with his friends, turning down loan applications at his job, saying ‘no’ to life in general, spending every night blankly watching DVDs in his apartment. Kinda like you’re doing right now…

One day he meets a crazy coot friend (John Michael Higgins), whose life has changed drastically due to his allegiance with a group who say Yes to everything. Carl attends a Say Yes meeting – overlorded by guru Terrence “Welcome to Mind Head” (Terence Stamp) – and accepts the challenge to Say Yes, to be a Yes Man.

And he finds that saying Yes leads to myriad life-changing possibilities, money, success and, of course, panty, in the form of insipid Zooey Deschanel. (The tryst with his 70-year-old neighbor who insists on “pleasuring him sexually” doesn’t count! Oh, great gums a-mighty! How that doesn’t count!)

YES MAN marks Carrey’s return to his forte – that plastic, elastic, bombastic spastic who refuses to grow up.

It is obvious which Carrey movie YES MAN resembles – LIAR LIAR (1997), where a birthday wish from his son forced Carrey to Tell the Truth for 24 hours. No such mysticism here, which is this movie’s saving grace. Carl’s decisions to Say Yes are made under no duress or magic – just a leering curiosity to see where it all leads.

And the explicit message is very succinct – that being positive is better than being negative (just don’t tell that to a person with HIV); that it should not be a compulsion or a rule to Say Yes, but a decision; that it opens up possibilities that might not have been created had you said No. Simple.

A light-hearted film which doesn’t even annoy me when Carrey and Deschanel trip through the usual romantic arc of “boy-meets-girl, boy-loses-girl, boy-makes-assface-of-himself-to-get-girl-back” which only proves YES MAN advocates the same tired, insidious message of procreation guised as something wondrous and mysterious.

How difficult can it be, Humans? When it comes to sex, just say YES.

END

La Dumba.

Laugh Hard.

Musicians: this one’s for us.

WALK HARD is not for Guitar Hero fakers or karaoke jackasses or talentless DJs with the audacity to call their fade-ups and fade-downs “mixing.” Let me say it again: WALK HARD is for MUSICIANS; for we who have lived the road, beaten the boards, spanked the groupies, trashed the dressing room, fart-filled the studio, fed the beast our day-job dollar, and slapped the roadies and called them Susan.

Cuke Hard

The public won’t get WALK HARD as deeply as musicians will. And I don’t care. Cherish it, Musicians. Hug it and pet it and call it George.

After the two formulaic, Hollywood-drenched biopics, RAY and WALK THE LINE, set the standard and simultaneously lowered the bar for musician biographies, WALK HARD takes every single cliché from those glossy turkeys and parties with a penis in your face.

John C. Reilly is fictional songwriter-guitarist Dewey Cox, who rises to superstardom on the wings of cliché. Cliché so battering and obvious, we will never look at musician biopics with a straight face again, especially those featuring the seminal artists of the 50’s who rose from dance halls to superstardom – Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis, Buddy Holly. They ALL look like spoof biopics now!

Dewey finds he is talented at a young age, soon after slicing his brother in half with a machete, Monty Python style, who telegraphs the tragedy: “Everything’s fine when you have such a long life in front of you!” Later, Dewey’s father (tough-as-nails Raymond J. Barry) would constantly lament, “The wrong keed died!”

John C. Reilly lives Dewey Cox, performing all his comedic songs himself, which are actually enjoyable and catchy country/rock and roll tunes. We follow him from his big break in a colored club “where people come to dance erotically,” to touring with Elvis and Jerry Lee, to immediate radio airplay with his hit Walk Hard (“recorded just 35 minutes ago by Dewey Cox”). Dewey meets The Beatles (Jack Black as Paul, Justin Long as George, Paul Rudd as John), experiments with musical styles from Dylan to Bowie; on through the 70s he hosts a TV show and marries Cheryl Tiegs (playing herself, taking the name Cheryl Cox-Tiegs – yeah, say it out loud). In the 80s, Dewey succumbs to mind-altering drugs while trying to compose a magnum opus with ethnic orchestras, trampolines, farm animals and fruit. He even takes a leaf from his friend Will Ferrell’s book and runs naked through the streets during a freakout.

WALK HARD will be compared to the progenitor of this rocku-mockumentary genre, SPINAL TAP, as WALK-HARD’s makers also display actual hands-on, penis-on knowledge of their target.

Writer-director Jake Kasdan and co-writer Judd Apatow ladle out every single vignette that musician biopic screenwriters have grown lazy on – from teens at the dance warming to Dewey’s high school band and jiggling in ways that make a priest yell, “devil’s music,” to the record producer admonishing Dewey then suddenly loving his song (a riotous John Michael Higgins cameo, “…and if somehow you are able to sing a song now with these boys whom you haven’t even met… but I’m telling you right now, I don’t think it’s going to happen… I’ll give you 15 seconds”), to the whining wife in curlers (Kristen Wiig) cradling three babies, constantly telling Dewey he’ll “never make it” – even whilst he is on the road supporting a number one album. With a penis in his face.

Musicians know these scenes from their own lives, and how Hollywood has compressed them to nut-squeezing idiocy. Kasdan and Apatow display a virtuoso’s knowledge of their subject, down to making the instrument-playing look authentic (a pet peeve of all musicians watching musician movies). The script is as taut as a guitar string and sings like a Les Paul plugged through a Marshall stack on 11.

Johnny Cash and Ray Charles would be spinning in their graves – if they were not laughing so hard.

Slap a roadie for me. With your cock.

END