I picked this movie up at Tuesday Morning for about $3. I’m not going to lie, I bought it because it has SMG (now Prinze) in it, and I also really like Joey Lauren Adams. The rest of the cast wasn’t too shabby, either. Adrian Grenier (of Entourage fame), Eric Stoltz (one of my favorites), and Gianni Russo (The Godfather). The thing is, though, is that this movie sucked a lot.
The story centers on Grenier’s character, Alan, who is a Harvard basketball player whose parents’ house was swept up in a tornado (ala Wizard of Oz, one would suppose, and in Kansas, no less) and he needs to find $100K to help them out. So of course he turns to Sarah Michelle Gellar’s character, Cindy, whose father (Russo) is a gangster. Joey Lauren Adams plays his Philosophy professor. He’s sleeping with both of them. The sex scenes are pretty graphic, if you like that kind of thing.
This movie tried pretty hard to be edgy, but it wasn’t. The dialogue was lame, the plot was convoluted and boring, and the camera work was that annoying stop/start flashing-type stuff that only really works in horror movies or David Lynch films. Alan takes a bunch of acid (which he’s been warned about, even though this is the early 2000’s for Pete’s sake) and has wonky visuals that are evocative of the visual effects of 1998’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, but not near as cool.
All in all, skip this. If you’re dying to see it, email me and I’ll send you my copy. Because I won’t be watching it again.
So we received a notice week before last that S & N Contractors would be here “upgrading” the fiber optic network in Henrico County. It was a notice, not a request. They said they’d be digging on county easement that was “on or off private property.” I thought for sure that couldn’t mean that they would be digging in my yard. Wrong. As it turns out, any private property within 8-10 inches of a county road is considered “easement” property – meaning that the county can come dig up your darn yard any old time they want to. So they’ve dug three large holes in my front yard (and to be fair, the front yards of my neighbors) in order to “upgrade” this fiber optic network. I’m all about improving technology, but come on, guys.
Somebody asked us, “Well, are you getting Verizon Fios?” Thing is, we already have it. It’s been working just fine. So I need to be patient and understanding that with this new, “upgraded” fiber optic network things will be better for more people. That’s great.
But here’s the thing, Folks. I work from home. I am in graduate school. My office (on the front of the house, facing the front yard) is my high-productivity place of awesomeness. So how am I supposed to be awesome with this going on outside my house?
And this is the infernal noise it makes.
Dreadful. As a result, I’m unable to get any reading or writing done. And yes, I did try going to a different part of the house. No better. The dining room is on the same level as the noisy drill, and the family room is underground, so the whole room is shaking like a dog pooping razor blades. I hope it doesn’t hurt the large TV.
So, since I luckily have some work to do that does not require my whole brain, I’m submitting articles (and of course one of the article submission sites is being an utter pain in the patookis) and watching horror movies on my office DVD player. The kitty is hanging right in here with me, curled up in the circle chair in my office.
I started with the original Halloween, which is (as far as I’m concerned) one of the most awesome horror movies of all time. It has the right amount of terror, a strong heroine, and a horrifying bad guy. Halloween II was next, which gives us a little background on Michael Myers, and shows us that he is, in fact, invincible and evil. Invincibly evil. Evilly invincible. Is fantastic. My favorite parts are when Laurie’s wanna-be boyfriend finds the nurse that Michael Myers had drained all the blood out of, and he totally does a slapstick-type slip up and lands flat on his back in all the blood, and when Michael gets shot in the head and the blood runs into his eyes, making it so that he can’t see and therefore just swipes blindly at Dr. Loomis with the knife. I know. I’m a weirdo.
I skipped Halloween III, because it’s completely unrelated, and I don’t have IV, V, or VI, so I skipped straight to Halloween H20: 20 Years Later, because it pretends that those other ones never happened, either.
I haven’t seen the Rob Zombie remakes. If someone wants to send them to me for free I’ll review them. Otherwise I have to wait until they cost less than $20 each. My horror budget is depleted. I also bought Nightmare on Elm Street I, II, III, and IV all in the same little package. I don’t like those as much as the Halloween movies, but the third one is quite fun.
More about that later. Back to the work I can accomplish with this infuriating noise going on, and when they finally stop maybe I can get some copy written and some schoolwork done. Or, I might have beat my head against the wall until I’m blissfully unconscious by then.
I think it’s pretty apparent that I have a penchant for crappy TV and movies. I enjoy trite plot lines and overacting. That’s not to say that I don’t love great cinema, or that I don’t have a discerning eye or great taste or anything – because I do have/do all those things, but I enjoy some crap every now and again. Just like I like to eat McDonald’s or KFC or Taco Bell. Sure, I feel pretty bad about myself afterward, but it was kind of worth it, too. I might be wallowing in a greasy ball of shame, but it is a delicious greasy ball of shame.
There are certain movies that whenever they are on TV, I watch them. A League of Their Own is one of those movies. But I’m not going to talk about that movie (or PCU, or The Fifth Element), though I will likely tell you all about the finer points of all those movies in the future. Tonight I’m going to say a few words on The Bodyguard, starring Whitney Houston (pre-coked-up hot mess madness) and Kevin (I Have No Facial Expressions) Costner.
I will say one thing. They both do OK in this movie, because neither of them are acting. Kevin Costner is the same guy he was in, say, Dances with Wolves, or even A Perfect World (which I actually love). He’s expressionless, gruff, reticent…you know, Costner-ish. Whitney Houston is an absolute vision – she’s beautiful, she has an undeniably gorgeous voice, and her performance is not laughable, even though it’s not very believable during the actual acting parts (ie her interaction with other actors). All in all it’s not bad. For a first movie, it’s actually pretty OK.
My main beef is with Michele Lamar Richards, who plays Whitney’s jealous and (spoiler alert!) murder-conspiring sister. She’s only done a handful of films (one was a vehicle for MC Lyte – just imagine) and a LOT of TV. I’ve not seen any of that, so I can’t pass judgment on her as an actor in THOSE things. But in The Bodyguard she’s just awful. She alternates between looking terrified and looking drunk (BESIDES the scene where she actually is supposed to be drunk) and then in her pivotal scene where she IS drunk and she’s telling all about how she hired someone to kill her sister she looks like she’s going to sneeze the whole time. Then she gets killed, so there is no chance of her acting her way back out of that.
Backing up though, there is that scene where Kevin Costner and his dad are walking around outside and the sister’s out on the porch singing “Jesus Loves Me” and I’m sitting here thinking WHO DOES THAT? Who goes out to some stranger’s cabin in the middle of the damn woods when you’ve hired someone to KILL your SISTER and sings “Jesus Loves Me” in a self-conscious way. Plus, isn’t hard to sing in the cold? Don’t your vocal cords get all cold and stuff? Inquiring minds want to know.
You judge:
And another thing. It’s just a leetle too convenient that the hired killer turns out to be Kevin Costner’s character’s old partner or coworker or whatever. We meet him earlier in the movie and Whitney Houston makes out with him a little and he’s all pushy and stuff.
Wait a minute. Is that how it ends? I said I always watch it when it’s on TV, but that doesn’t mean I usually finish it. Being self righteously critical is exhausting, you know?
So, recap. Shoulder pads, inappropriate singing, silver pop helmets, murderous sisters. Sorry I didn’t get to the shoulder pads or the silver pop helmet. Always leave ’em wanting more, my grandma always says.
i can't really tell you what this blog is about, but I can tell you what it's not about. monkeys. at least not all the time.
