Shane Black knows the score

A content-lite week, thanks to Canyon being inundated with work, and me getting dragged into the office for a useless absence management course as well as travelling to Ikea again and again in my miserable quest to replace a broken sofa. Something so simple is actually horribly time-consuming and depressing. Who knew?

So desperate was I to get something on here, I took inspiration from the last 15 minutes of Renny Harlin's The Long Kiss Goodnight (a film that truly exasperates me, what with the terrific script and the inept direction), and decided to do a quick post about cinema's best explosions, with the help of YouTube. However, instead of finding footage of the outrageously large final explosion (a very effective pre-CG FX sequence by Jeffrey Okun), I instead found out that the 9/11 conspiracy types think the film predicted the World Trade Centre bombing.


Who would have thought that multi-millionaire screenwriting supergenius Shane Black knew so much about CIA plots to screw Congress out of funding? I can't wait to read Tim Weiner's Legacy of Ashes now. I bet there's a whole chapter on that! Bear in mind Long Kiss was made in 1996. The fact that Evil Patrick Malahide is referring to the previous WTC bombing, the one that happened in the car park beneath the building, seems to have escaped many of the theorists on there. It's as if they're not really thinking this whole thing through and are just rushing to insane conclusions based on hearsay, bias, paranoia, and terribly flawed science. A mad idea, I know, but it bears considering.

To cleanse the crazy-tainted palate, here is one of the best scenes from Black's magnificent directorial debut, Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang, in which the only thing you learn is that if you meet Val Kilmer pretending to be a gay detective, you should not throw his expensive ceramic gun into the lake next to the crashed car or he will hurt your feelings with pithy insults.


And yes, I probably will do the explosions post at some point. It's either write about that or gibber, "Halo 3! Halo 3! Halo 3!" And you don't want that. Though I'll probably do that too. Sorry.

Just added to Amazon Wish List...

I hadn't heard of the phenomenon of book trailers until a couple days ago, and only then thanks to Doppelganger at one of my favorite blogs, 50 Books. Only just now did I discover what may be the best book trailer -- nay, the best advertisement -- ever.



I can't decide what I love most about this. The fact that the book is called a "new erotic vision"? Sephera Giron's (does she have accents in her name or not? The ad hedges its bets) vampire-dominatrix outfit? The terrible abuses of English? ("Groveling the streets of London"; "Giving moments of flesh to hungry men"; "pleasure her every need.") The FunCam pictures obviously taken during someone's house party, randomly interspersed with famous paintings? The dramatic classical music? The cheap Helvetica text? The angry, angry tiger? Bird lady with the giant boobs?

The ad is so unbelievably cheap that I dearly hope whatever unpaid intern made it on PowerPoint was fired from London. Nevertheless, I am intrigued.

Dance with your gypsies, Hester! Dance away!

D-War Even More Awesome Than We Thought it Would Be

The AV Club review is in – apparently it’s called Dragon Wars in the US – and apparently it’s terrible. Ridiculously convoluted, terribly acted, pathetically written, and ineptly made on every level. I can’t wait! Someone in the comments section said that when a policeman sees a giant lizard wrapped around a building, he says something like, “I’m downtown – we’ve got a Code 3.” Code 3?!?! What the hell is Code 4?

This thing might be the awesomest movie ever made. Inept ridiculousness plus dragons? Top that, Uwe Boll! (Actually he might: the AV Club also has an interview with him, in which he talks about his latest movie, where he plays “the demented owner of an amusement park built on Nazi gold.” Well played, Uwe Boll. Better played than your boxing matches, anyway.)



The AV Club also has an interview with William Friedkin, our favorite sometimes-very-good-mostly-ridiculous cravat-wearing director (Peter Bogdanovich comes a distant second). I haven’t read either interview yet, but based on their DVD commentaries, I’m expecting very entertaining reads. More later when I’ve properly imbibed.

[ETA by AdmiralNeck: Masticator has kindly pointed out in the comments for the original D-War post that I forgot to mention Reign of Fire, and indeed he is right, I totally forgot. I know why my brain seized up, though. Of all the dragon films made over the last few years, I thought this was the one film that was going to kick my ass and sit at the top of the dragon pile, knocking off Dragonslayer and Pete's Dragon (another one I forgot). Everyone told me it was disappointing and that the film was mostly about the humans, with the dragons playing second fiddle, but as the humans were doing a Mad Max kind of thing, I figured that would be just fine. I like Mad-Max-style films. I love Waterworld for that exact reason. (Shut. Up. Everyone.)


Nothing prepared me for the tedium of it all. My God, I was heartbroken when I finally watched it (many years after the original release, oddly enough). It was wretched, horribly filmed, indifferently acted (despite the presence of McConnahunk and Batman), and almost entirely dragon-free. Dreadful stuff. Though better than Dragonheart.

I fully expect D-Wars to be a million times more entertaining.]

Holy shit

Grant Morrison's prediction about the world having real superheroes may be coming true. First sign? Mysterious meteorite irradiates an entire Peruvian village. Think of the llamas, meteorite! The blameless llamas!

Around midday Saturday, villagers were startled by an explosion and a fireball that many were convinced was an airplane crashing near their remote village, located in the high Andes department of Puno in the Desaguadero region, near the border with Bolivia.

Residents complained of headaches and vomiting brought on by a 'strange odor,' local health department official Jorge Lopez told Peruvian radio RPP....'Boiling water started coming out of the crater and particles of rock and cinders were found nearby. Residents are very concerned,' he said.

I think we all know where this is going.

Broken back + sweatlodge + future ghost = Emmy

Many many congratulations to Terry O'Quinn, recipient of the Emmy for Best Supporting Actor In The Best Dramatic Series On TV Who Is Not Michael Emerson. If you'll forgive me for blowing my own trumpet, I called it the moment I saw this scene (beware, season three Lost spoilers for those who have yet to catch up):



Actually, I think there's more chance he won it for this. More tragedy and nuance, less prairie dog.



That scene freaked me out and broke my heart. I've been a fan since seeing the soon to be remade Stepfather, and have been thrilled to see him popping up to enliven Alias and The X-Files, so some recognition (not counting his Saturn Award and Screen Actors Guild group award) is to be celebrated.

Also, congratulations to Tina Fey and the cast and crew of 30 Rock for their Outstanding Comedy Series award, and America Ferrera for her Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series. Not only are they well deserved awards, but it meant a Desperate Housewives shut-out. My night, it is made.

How did I not know this existed?

I only just found out that this film, Shim Hyung-rae's D-War, opened in the US this weekend. Until now I had not heard about it (even though it's massive in South Korea). It looks like the best movie ever made.



Quick disclaimer: Canyon and I love the dragon. I love the dragon lots, Canyon loves the dragon lots and lots and lots. And yet, we are continually frustrated at the quality of dragon movies. Dragonslayer might be the best one yet, and that's not saying much. It's flat and humourless, though Phil Tippett's Vermithrax Pejorative is a go-motion marvel. Dungeons and Dragons might be an excellent game, but the movie is an abomination, criminal for conducting a big finale dragon war in the background while the camera focuses on Jeremy Irons and Thora Birch throwing their careers and reputations on a bonfire. It's so bad and yet I tried to record the straight-to-DVD sequel three weeks ago, saved only by the fact that our PVR memory was at a terrible low (as usual). Dragonheart is not quite as bad, and at least this time we get more dragon. The post-Jurassic Park effects on (::sigh::) Draco are very good, though having him voiced by Sean Connery is half-brilliant, half-lazy casting. Marks against it are the miscasting of Dennis Quaid (nothing against him, but he was not good in this) and the egregious amounts of Thewlis clogging up the action. His fey noncery is not exactly threatening, though he gets extra points for his Robert Plant hairdo. We've not yet seen Eragon, mostly because Irons + dragon = infinite suckage. It's a rare thing, but I do sometimes learn a lesson from seeing bad movies.

While films get it mostly wrong, there are thankfully other media which flirt with dragonicity. Our beloved firebreathing reptiles are the only things that are going to make me break the bank to get a Playstation 3. The launch has been terribly mishandled, and there don't seem to be any unmissable games (though Heavenly Sword looks pretty), but Lair features lots of dragon battles and might sway me, even though critical opinion is mixed. Who cares? It's the closest I'm ever going to get to living out the events of Naomi Novik's magnificent Temeraire series. If you've not yet read them, get the first three now and then get the fourth, Empire Of Ivory later this month. You will not regret it, especially if you even vaguely like either dragons or Patrick O'Brien's Aubrey/Maturin series.


So you can see I will see D-War even though it has been received very badly by critics. Plus, the director's previous film, Yongarry, was widely hated. His response to the critical dismissal and subsequent public embracing of D-War is amusing. From Wikipedia:

The positive reaction among the Korean population is widely attributed to the film's appeal to Korean nationalism. At the end of the film in its Korean print, director Shim delivers a message, "D-War and I will succeed in the world market without fail," accompanied by the Korean folk anthem Arirang.

It somehow makes him sound like the Korean Uwe Boll, though Uwe Boll never appeared in a movie whose English title was Slap On The Cheek Several Times (Hyung-Rae was an actor before becoming a director). I don't care. Anyone who has seen The Host knows Korean filmmakers know how to make good monster movies. Plus, it looks too awesome to comprehend, and sounds like a cross between Lord of the Rings, Gremlins, and Transformers. That's got to be worth something. However, knowing my luck, it'll actually be a cross between Hawk The Slayer, Ghoulies, and Transformers - The Movie starring Orson Welles.

Even so, how can you beat the cast? Yes, it stars Jason Behr apparently imitating Milo Ventimiglia, so that's a strike against it, but besides him there's Chris Mulkey, Robert Forster (Alligator was obviously a dry run for this film), and OMG, Craig Robinson aka Darryl from The Office! Suck on that, Krasinski! Fighting dragons beats working with Robin Williams and Mandy Moore.

CSI: Miami Watch: "Going, Going, Gone"

Another week, another nuclear meltdown narrowly averted. After last week's rather lackluster installment, this week we got a cracking episode -- what starts out as the standard murder of a woman in skimpy clothes becomes H versus the terrorists. All in a day's work for our heroes.


This week's episode starts out during -- what else? -- a feminist nightmare brothel clearance sale charity bachelorette auction. As the producers of CSI: Miami seem contractually obligated to show scantily clad women in the opening scenes of every episode, it seems they've given up and admitted that women are merely objects to be assessed and sold to the highest bidders. And what's better than one scantily clad woman up for sale? Twins! Split-screen twins!

That dude on the right ends up hiring two women -- not the twins, unfortunately (?) -- only to realize that he's been so inured to women in skimpy clothes from living in the Miamiverse that his littlejohn isn't working. He scuttles off to the bathroom for some Viagra, and when he returns to a darkened room, one of the girls has disappeared and the other one is -- well, not covered in chocolate sauce, as our hapless john surmises. In fact, she is covered in...her own blood. YEEAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!

Alexx and Ryan deal with the body, and discover that one of the unfortunate bachelorette's fingers has an impression of a ring on it. Not just a pale band of skin where the ring was, like everyone else in the world, but an incredibly complicated interwoven pattern that resembles a garden trellis. How lucky for our team and also, may I add, completely plausible!!! I'll give you one guess who ate stole that ring.


While Alexx and Ryan bicker, Delko gets the task of talking to all the women who were at the auction/gangbang. I realize talking to hot extras seems to be a prerequisite of the job, but aren't they just asking for trouble getting Delko to do this? Isn't he the one who had the (admittedly short-lived) sex addiction a couple seasons ago? Even if he doesn't contaminate the potential witnesses with Delko juice, he's still there to leer at them creepily. Though, come to think of it, all the men on the team tend to leer creepily, and Calleigh just gives condescending stares of automatic judgement, so I guess it's six of one, etc. Here we see Delko working what appear to be pool-boy scrubs and lasering a woman into a black-and-white split-screen. Has she appeared to him in a disembodied vision to warn him that if he goes anywhere near her nether regions, his Little Delkoid will suffer? Or are CSI: Miami's producers so desperate to keep viewers' eyes on the screen that soon the show will be nothing but a collection of random floating bikinis interspersed with explosions? I think we all know the answer to that one: both.


Actually it turns out that this woman is actually an undercover cop investigating -- sigh -- a drug cartel. Can't the criminals in Miami have a little imagination? Does it always have to be drugs? What about some clown murders? (Actually I shouldn't be complaining, as this episode has quite a twist later on.) In completely unrelated news, this week marks a return to Alexx's corpse whispering -- she has been mysteriously silent towards them in the past few weeks. Oh, how I missed your creepy, delusional conversations with dead people, Alexx. I await the day when they respond (and knowing CSI: Miami, that day won't be long in coming).

Meanwhile, H asks the guy who was running the charity auction / prostitution ring if he can have the guest list. Charity- Auction Dude agrees, explaining that he was about to have his own date with Sonya, a vaguely menacing Russian chick, but was interrupted. This will be important later. For now, Horatio assesses Sonya with a leer somewhere between judgemental, lecherous, and melty. His standard leer, in other words.

Eventually the murder is solved -- it turns out it was the girl's jealous ex-boyfriend, and the one who gave her her trellis ring. No wonder she left him. Especially fun is the show's implication that because the woman left the guy because she wanted more freedom, she of course became a prostitute, and ultimately got what she deserved (i.e., was murdered for it). Nice. But that's not all, folks -- namely because there are ten minutes left in the episode. Out of absolutely nowhere, we get this exchange:

Horatio: You kidnapped [Charity-Auction Dude's] wife and children to fund your terrorist cell.
Sonya the Evil Temptress / Terrorist: That's crrrrazy.
Horatio: Is it?

Through some truly baffling CSI:Miami-logic, the team has discovered that for no particular reason or philosophy, Sonya and her terrorist buddies are planning to "change the world forever." I cannot stress enough how bizarre and out-of-nowhere this twist is -- and how half-assed it is, too. It's like we wander into it halfway through the plot, the first half of which they apparently forgot to film. Why they would save this bizarre plot twist for the last ten minutes of an otherwise boring episode is beyond me. Why not devote an entire episode to it? Or were they so desperate for excitement that they had to shoehorn an explosion in at the end? At any rate, they just happen to find out that this murky terrorist cell is -- OMG! -- planning to blow up a nuclear power plant. Pretty lucky that they didn't take a long lunch that day, because apparently no other law-enforcement agency (even the unit that was investigating it undercover) was aware of this until our intrepid crime-solvers stumbled upon it. And since the usual protocol for defusing terrorist plots is to call in crime-scene investigators, Horatio is here to save the day!



Oh, how do I even pick out a favorite moment? People shouting "Turkey Point"? Wolfe saying "nucular"? The action subtitles that helpfully keep certain key phrases on the screen longer than others? Horatio's unerring aim for blowing things up? His somewhat confused expression at the end?

If that doesn't make you love this show, I don't know what will.

"Going, Going, Gone" Stats:

Horatio's (Disconcerting) Send-Off Into Credits: A really lame one this week, as if the writers couldn't be bothered to come up with something snappy and just said, "Fuck it, send him out on a Caruso Two-Step, that's good enough." And strangely enough, somehow it was.

Horatio: I want to know who bid what for whom and how much they paid.
Roger Daltrey: Yeeaaahhh?

Ripped-Off Plot of the Week: Several seasons of 24, every procedural show ever.

Natalia's Awful Blouse of the Week: This week accompanied by awful hairdo. It looks like a purple silk shirt with shoulder pads and little cowboys all over it. Did Patricia Field get hold of this show when I wasn't looking?


Number of Caruso Two-Steps: Three. A respectable amount.

Most Ridiculously Fake Camera-Phone Photo of the Week:


Horatio's Most Patronizing Line:

Charity-Auction Dude: Well, you can't just barge into my home.
Horatio: I can...when it's a crime scene. Excuse me. [barges into his home]

Clumsiest Exposition: A tough choice this week, as there were several strong contenders.

Wolfe: What is that, plastic?
Delko: Looks like an aglet.
Wolfe: The covering of a tip of a shoelace?
Delko: That's right.
[They go on to conclude that the light-colored threads in the aglet must mean the shoelaces were light-colored. Clear out Baker Street, we've got a new Sherlock Holmes.]