A Massive Foot-Traffic Jam in Maharashtra, Mumbai as The City's Workers Travel Home to Check That Was Junk.Com

I think millions of people read this here site on the web. TONS upon TONS of internet savvy folk. The data may seem clear to prove the opposite, but sometimes, guys, Dave and Kyle especially, data lies. I am confident that we are the most popular net-destination of all netstinations. Otherwise I wouldn’t be pumping out such great works as PIRANHA 3D, HARRY POTTER 7P1 or THE KING’S SPEECH. I would not, I promise, work so hard with no audience.  THAT would be a waste of time. and I DO NOT WASTE TIME. 

Thank You and Thank yourselves, millions and billions of viewers. 

The Beloved,
Josh

Volume 3 - BASEBALL EDITING

You know, like when you’re watching The Sandlot or Major League or Field of Dreams or Benchwarmers and someone’s up to bat.  They dig in.  The pitch.  They hit that shit.  Now let’s say for fun’s sake that this batter is a righty and you can clearly see the ball leave the bat into opposite field territory.  But the editor says “Oh hey.  I’m a greasy, ugly nerd.  I couldn’t play baseball if I tried, dawg.”  So what’s the next shot we see?  Some moron in left field catching a fly ball.  Good job editor.  You fucked it up.

If I can tell the trajectory of the ball off of the bat, the next shot better make sense brah.  Whether it’s a line-drive, pop-up, grounder, foul ball, or any other variation of a hit, the next shot better match.

Actually, nevermind.  Keep doing this.  Otherwise, how would I be able to bitch about stupid shit like this on my shitty website that no one reads?

#7: As I write this article, I’ve just popped a DVD of Uncle Buck, the 1989 comedy from John Hughes starring John Candy as a hapless but loveable man tasked with watching his nieces and nephew while their parents are out of town. However, being only five minutes into the movie, one of the first things that struck me was just how much of a product Uncle Buck is of its time. There was a glorious era somewhere between 1980 and 1995 where you could take your kids to see a movie, and not find a watered down, unrecognizably sanitized version of life that you can never imagine living in, or wanting to live in. There was something about the movies centered around the “family market” during those 15 years that made them so different than what passes for entertainment today, that watching one of those movies makes you feel a sort of nostalgia for them.

I'm Buck Melanoma. Moley Russell's wart. Not her wart. Not her wart! I'm... I'm the wart.

Now, things have changed quite a bit in the last fifteen years or so, and I’m sure that’s partly responsible for the lack of family entertainment that appeals to both children and their parents. With the retirement of John Hughes, writer and director of Uncle Buck (as well as many of the better family movies of that era) in the early 90s, in addition to a suddenly harsher MPAA, it feels like many filmmakers just stopped trying to please both audiences. But what is it that made those movies so special to begin with? Was it the realistic and relatable characters who never seemed to talk down to their target audience, often even going so far as sticking up for the downtrodden youth of America? Well, maybe that had something to do with it, but I think the main thing that made all these movies so great was, obviously, the incredible amount of dirty jokes and cursing.

When it comes to sex and swearing in family films, the age was never more golden than it was in the 80s. Within the first ten minutes of Uncle Buck, words like “shit”, “dick” are thrown around like nothing, and an entire conversation is held about the word “balls” by a then 8 year old Macaulay Culkin, and that’s before the film moves on to several jokes about such various subjects as teen pregnancy, dildos, ritual killing, and John Candy having sex with a washing machine. Not only do I think this kind of explicit humor appeals to both adults and kids, but it doesn’t try to shield its younger audience from the stuff they’ll inevitably experience. If, for some reason, a topless woman can jump up and down on screen for the sake of comedy in Airplane, which was released with a “PG” rating in 1980, then I’ve got to wonder what exactly has changed so much that that would make it get an “R” today? I mean, Steven Spielberg even had Elliot use the phrase “penis breath” in E.T. almost 30 years ago, and you’re telling me that they had to censor the titular lyric of the prominently used AC/DC song “Highway To Hell” in last year’s Megamind? Come on!

No...you can't.

INSIDOUS

#6: When considering the state of modern Hollywood filmmaking, it seems many people wonder, with the rising ticket prices and the use of gimmicks like IMAX theaters and 3D technology disappointing consumers, in addition to rising growth in popular alternative viewing options such as OnDemand and Netflix, how much longer can our country’s current theater distribution format work as a logical or relevant mode of getting the movies to the people? Look, I feel like this is kind of the same argument that has been applied to the ongoing struggles of newspaper and book publishers and live theatre to continue to remain relevant against similar threats, like the internet, the Kindle, and, well, movies. But, despite these struggles, these institutions of popular culture and news delivery show no signs of going extinct, for the same reason why drive-in and reparatory theaters, as well as most local cineplexes, will never completely go away: because there will always be people who prefer the grand experience to the digital equivalent.

Now, I love my DVD collection, and it’s nice to be able to watch hundreds of new releases right on my television as part of some cable package, but, as many of you reading can hopefully back me up on, it’s just not the same as a theater. You can spend thousands of dollars to get the biggest TV with the latest, highest resolution Blu-Ray player and surround sound speakers, and shove them all in your living room, but it’s just a pale imitation of something greater.

Except this...this is awesome.

It seems a majority of the movie-going public, aside from the high ticket prices, tend to use other members of the movie-going public as their main excuse for not going to the movies. People who use their cell phones in the theater, who talk too loudly while the movie is playing, and who just generally make so much noise that it distracts from the movie on the screen have become one of the go-to reasons people claim going to the movies is shot to hell. Yes, it’s understandable that these kinds of people can be detrimental to viewing a movie like Blue Valentine or Inception, something that is attempting to create an emotional impact with it’s audience or tell a fairly complex story that requires those watching to pay attention. But, conversely, without these people, movies like Grindhouse, Piranha 3D, Cloverfield and about 95% of all horror movies that are released wouldn’t be half as fun as they normally are. Plus, hearing some of your fellow movie-goer’s comments as you exit the theater (and wait around in the lobby for your friend who’s been holding it in since the opening credits to finish up in the bathroom) can lead to hearing some pretty entertaining commentary that’s can be as memorable as the movie itself.

Yeah, I'd be intimidated too...

However, barring any distractions from the audience, the main reason I like going to the movies proper, is the fact that when that movie starts, for as long as it takes it to tell its story, it’s generally the only thing holding my attention. I can’t pause it to look something up on the internet, I’m not tempted to get up and make a sandwich, and there’s no risk of having to stop the movie for twenty minutes to talk to one of my roommates who just walked in. It starts and I have a pretty good idea of when it’s supposed to end, and it never takes three and a half hours to watch a two hour movie, as it often does when I’m watching at home. Perhaps it’s got something to do with my generation’s supposed overreliance on technology, or my personal inability to stay off the internet for more than twenty minutes, wanting to see who’s playing that character, or who directed this and what else of theirs I may have seen. The ability to just sit back and have nothing but the movie to hold my attention, and to have it playing on such a big screen at the technical specifications at which it was meant to be seen (unless you’re at an AMC) combined with sharing the experience with a room full of people, just isn’t something you can replicate anywhere else.

Wow, Jason, I thought you would love SUCKER PUNCH. I am honestly quite surprised. What’s even funnier is that after reading your “review”, which is actually more of a trashing of said SNYDER film, I still don’t know why you don’t like it. It seems like one of those films that I would detest and you would respond “It was a good time!”. I guess I’ll just have to see for myself.

<3,
Josh

P.S. TWJers,
Look forward to my SUCKER PUNCH review in 3 months after watching it on BLU-RAY DISC!

There’s literally no good way to start a review of Sucker Punch. No one sentence that can correctly convey the sheer stupidity and pointlessness of it all, in addition to the confusion over how a movie like this ever got made. When approaching something like Sucker Punch, that’s full of silly ideas, campy performances, and a concept that doesn’t really make all that much sense, there’s a very fine line between crazy and retarded, and here, Zach Snyder has enthusiastically pole vaulted onto the wrong side of it.

Trekking through the warped imagination of orphaned mental patient Baby Doll (Emily Browning), after her mother dies, she accidently kills her little sister, and her stepfather commits her to an insane asylum, Sucker Punch attempts to work on multiple levels of consciousness, like Inception, Brazil, or a number of similar movies it does a terrible job stealing ideas and imagery from. As the asylum becomes a high class strip club in the mind of our protagonist, and exotic dancing leads to a number of imaginary adventures that range from WWI battles against steam powered Nazis to slaying dragons at the precipice of a volcano castle that looks suspiciously like Mordor, Baby Doll teams up with several of her other orphan/stripper friends as they attempt to escape the asylum…or the strip club…or something. The biggest, most blatant problem Sucker Punch suffers problem is, well…there’s actually a few, but the most apparent is its lack of understanding its own structure. So, your main character is experiencing the world on multiple levels, with elements in each level representing something in another level (ex. Carla Gugino, the head psychologist in the asylum, plays the girl’s dance instructor in the imaginary strip club), but so many elements remain either impossible to cross over, or don’t really apply to the concept at all. For example, when Baby Doll dances sexy for the audience in her imaginary club, leading to many of the film’s ridiculous action scenes, what does that relate to in the asylum, in order for her co-horts to actually steal the elements they need to escape in reality? (and ten points to anyone who can decipher what the fuck any of that meant)

It’s funny how, with Sucker Punch, his first project not based on any previously published materials, Zach Snyder has managed to create the least original movie of his career. Whereas he has been able to bring a new element of style and presentation to other people’s work before, creating memorable moments that are entirely his own, with Sucker Punch it simply feels like he mashed together dozens of popular science fiction, fantasy, action and martial arts movies from the last few decades, in an attempt to make something different. Unfortunately, it all just comes off as a complicated, convoluted mess of ill-fitting influences that have been cobbled together with the seams still showing.

And as for Snyder’s trademark style, his popular use of super slow motion in the midst of heavy action, popular music and anachronistic instrumentation to pump up the audience’s adrenaline, and dramatic line readings to which said music and action are pushed to the background of, Sucker Punch is full of it, but it simply just doesn’t work. Using the slow motion to usually show the intricacies of a fight or battle, almost in protest of the modern, Bourne-style handheld close-ups that most action movies have become, it feels like, for the first time, Snyder is only using his most famous trademark to simply make things look cool. But they don’t. Holding twenty second shots of your cast walking through a CG battlefield in skimpy clothing isn’t impressing anyone, it’s just making them look at their watches to see how much time is left. And while an excessive amount of computer generated sets and creatures is nothing new for a Snyder movie, in Sucker Punch, there’s simply nothing to be surprised or excited by, as all of the technical wizardry and movie magic has the same dead, grey look to it, is all too familiar in its design, and can all be explained away with a one-word explanation: “Computers”.

From it’s laughably terrible soundtrack, full of slowed down and overly emotional covers of popular punk and new wave songs from 30 years ago, the one-dimensional writing and performances of its main characters, and a technical stupidity that makes it almost unwatchable and loud enough to temporarily deafen its audience, Sucker Punch pretty much a failure on all fronts. And despite some interesting ideas and cool moments, they’re all overshadowed by bumbling ineptitude in both the storytelling and presentation of what I can only assume someone at Warner Bros. thought was an unbeatable combination of sex and violence that doesn’t go far enough in either category to make an impression. Either way, I’m sure that there will be plenty of people who find Sucker Punch to be an entertaining blast, but there are simply too many corny, loud, dumb things to complain about that it’d be surprising if more people didn’t leave the theater baffled and disappointed than not.

2 out of 10.

It seems that in Hollywood, with the success of one franchise or sleeper hit, there’s a rush to create a slew of duplicates in order to replicate the success of the original. However, with the recent dwindling box office numbers on second rate Harry Potter and Twilight knock-offs, and the critical and financial success of recent Best Picture nominee 127 Hours, it’s no wonder that the newest trend has become one armed amputee survival stories. Soul Surfer continues this trend in retelling the miraculous story of Bethany Hamilton, a teenaged surfer who finds adversity when her left arm is bitten off during a freak shark attack. True story.

Here’s the thing: Soul Surfer, while suffering from a pretty dumb title and Christian themes laid on so thick, they’d make a preacher blush, is not a bad movie. In fact, for what it is, a simple tale of a young person overcoming tragedy, it’s surprisingly effective. While the religious overtones may seem laughable, they actually have meaning within the story, allowing the character to have a crisis of faith, and eventually leading to her overcoming the boundaries she faces. And despite a script so predictable and reliant on clichés that I could predict what was going to be said and done long before it actually occurred (that somehow took 12 people to write), all of the incredible surfing and competition footage, as well as some pretty impressive special effects that allowed AnnaSophia Robb, as Bethany, to believably possess only one arm for most of the movie, left me impressed enough to overlook some of the movie’s more glaring flaws.

While impressive cinematography and the inclusion of both Kevin Sorbo and Craig T. Nelson (in the same scene!) don’t make a great movie, they certainly elevate Soul Surfer to become a better movie than it should be. While there is some laughably bad dialogue, and major plot points seemingly ripped from a Disney Channel original movie, I imagine this is mostly due to interference from the character’s real life counterparts, and the filmmakers attempts to make every person completely likeable and redeemable, so as to please those who actually lived the story. Unfortunately, by taking out any real drama or flaws that these characters may have lived through or possessed, the filmmakers removed any reason for an audience to relate to these people, or any reason for them to believe that everything wouldn’t turn out just fine, as, of course, it does. It’s an impressive story, and with a few less cooks in the kitchen during the writing process, a more adventurous director, and a less intrusive real life subject, it could’ve been a far more impressive movie. Instead, Soul Surfer is simply surprisingly average, which, to most, will be far more than originally expected.

5 out of 10.

GHAAAAAAAAA!! I be your lawyer now!

THREE Reasons THE LINCOLN LAWYER is good:
1- It’s a thriller/action/drama with a lawyer as the main character…
2- It’s about a psycho killer (qu’est que c’est) that kills hookers for no reason…
3- Its main character is a lawyer that calls his Lincoln Continental his office…

FOUR reasons THE LINCOLN LAWYER is great:
1- William H. Macy has a sweet mullet/mustache combo…ftw…
2- Matthew McConaughey’s character, Abraham Lincoln, becomes so disheveled he appears to literally melt on screen…
3- Ryan Phillipe’s character is a superior homophobe and says both ‘fag’ and ‘faggot’ in reference to some gays that sat on him…hott…
4- Bill Macy’s character is totally, seriously gay…pwn…

FIVE reasons THE LINCOLN LAWYER is God (our lord) awful:
1- Just plain shot poorly…
2- Just plain written poorly…
3- The story of THE LINCOLN LAWYER is very predictable and average, yet baffling and illogical. Quite TNT original series-esque…
4- Ryan Phillipe is terrible, as is Marisa Tomei in THE LINCOLN LAWYER. Know what? The acting is just bad in THE LINCOLN LAWYER. Except Michael Peña. He is honestly incredible for the 4 minutes he has screen time in THE LINCOLN LAWYER.
5- NO MUSIC. Ok, so I lied. There is music, BUT NO SCORE…Barring a few discords here and there, the only music we get is when THE LINCOLN lawyer is driving in his lincoln. And what do we hear when he is driving his lincoln? How ’bout some hip-hop or some smooth-ass 70s r&b/funk while he drives his lincoln? How awkward cool of them…

With Hugs and Kisses and Hugs,
Josh Phillips, Sexpert Extraordinaire

Released: February 19th, 2011
Plot: FBI agent Malcolm Turner and his 17-year-old son, Trent, go undercover at an all-girls performing arts school after Trent witnesses a murder. Posing as Big Momma and Charmaine, they must find the murderer before he finds them.

Review: Hi Internet! I’m a little disappointed in you. I’m really hoping one day people will learn to not take movies so damn seriously. As of the date I’m writing this, March 5^th 2011 at 2:09am, Big Mommas: Like Father, Like Son has a 2.6 on IMDB and a 6% on Rotten Tomatoes. Of the 1,658 votes cast on IMDB, 763 voted this movie a 1. This movie has suffered the Tyler Perry IMDB attack. Many people realize this movie is obviously going to be lame or the movie has someone they don’t like attached. So what do they do? They go to IMDB and immediately rate the movie a 1 without viewing it. This is why , as of today’s date, Hannah Montana: The Movie has a 3.6 and most of it’s votes are a 1. Now I sat my fat adult ass through that movie and even I can say that it doesn’t deserve a 1.

Big Mommas is in no way a masterpiece and I went into this movie expecting a very normal movie with a mediocre story, slapstick and a few fat black lady jokes. And you know what I got? Exactly that. The 3^rd installment of the Big Mama saga has Malcolm donning the fat suit again to go undercover and track down a USB drive, the random MacGuffin, that must be recovered before the bad guys find it. Malcolm’s super horny rapper wanna be step-son Trent witnesses the badies murder someone and now Trent must also go undercover in order for Trent to stay alive.

Both go “undercover” at an all girls college as their female characters to try and recover the USB. Here’s the thing. The USB could have probably maybe most likely been found had Malcolm acquired a proper search warrant but, then again, we wouldn’t be able to see Malcolm and Trent’s wild and crazy antics while dressed as women. It’s quiet evident that Malcolm is used to his female character of Big Mama but it takes Trent some time getting used to being Charmaine. Trent hates being a woman (big surprise) so he often forgets he’s Charmaine and hits on the girls at the college. How wacky is that!?

Of course this movie has a message. Trent gets accepted to Duke University but he doesn’t want to go to college. Instead, he is offered a record deal, but his dad needs to sign the papers. His dad wants him to go to college. Trent just wants to rap. A hot girl tells Trent he needs to let his passion grow. Trent realizes his dad was right. Trent goes to college. Everyone is happy. But does that really matter?

This movie follows so many conventional tropes it’s ridiculous but it’s expected. I watched this movie and I managed to laughed at a few of Big Mama’s sassy come backs. I took this movie for what it was -a fluff piece. There was absolutely nothing great about this movie but it wasn’t so bad that I wanted to take my pirated copy and crap on it. Too many people probably went into this movie angry knowing they were going to get a piece of shit. If you go into it thinking like that, you’re going to hate it. Movies like this are made to make a little bit of money. In this case, John Whitesell wanted to milk the hell out of his franchise.

I can’t even hate Martin Lawrence and Brandon T Jackson for being in this movie. If they’re thinking like I’m thinking, they know that my people, black people, will flock to this movie just to see Big Mama tell it like it is (“GO AHEAD GIRL!” -my mother). Martin Lawrence is great at being a character actor. His characters are always wild and over the top. Look at his character Sheneneh from the 90s show Martin. Brilliant. This movie is meant to entertain you for 107 minutes. It’s not here to prove a point and if it is, that point is shut the fuck up and just enjoy the movie. Movies like Big Mommas aren’t meant for white 20 somethings who listen to the Black Keys. Nor is it made for most of any demographic. It’s really made for people like me who like to laugh at crappy movies from time to time and my 47 year old mother who would probably yell a phrase like “BIG MAMA IS SUCH A MESS!!” (that’s a good thing if you’re keeping up) or “OMG that boy is not right in the head!”

Sorry. This wasn’t much of a review. It was more of a rant. So there. This is what happens when you upset me, Internet.

5 out of 10