Image: Tron Legacy poster. Walt Disney Pictures.

Have you tried to watch the original Tron recently? I was first exposed to the 1982 film several years ago. I think I got through it that time, but barely, and can’t claim that it left enough of an impression on me to actually remember anything heading into a recent re-watching.

Watch the trailer. Yeah, it’s pretty much like that. A goofy, very eighties plot stuck on top of a compelling concept, some interesting (for their time) effects, and a truly unique style. That formula apparently worked well enough for the film to develop a fan base and survive in popular consciousness. Thus, with the potential for profit on the line, a sequel was ordered up.

I won’t attack Tron: Legacy for being unnecessary, I think there is enough in the original to draw out a compelling continuation of the series, and any use of the license would surely be better than the likes of Yogi Bear. I will, however, attack it for being an unnecessarily direct sequel. The original film may have worked in its time, but going back to characters from some 28 years ago, when those characters are not the part of your source material which are iconic or well remembered, makes for unnecessarily awkward storytelling.

The problem with Tron: Legacy is, put simply, the plot. For whatever reason, the decision was made to remain beholden to the original film and make this thing as a sequel, where a re-make/re-boot/re-imagining would have better served to bring the world of Tron to modern audiences in a more engrossing way, unencumbered by the events of a film most people don’t really remember anyway.

In short: kid grows up without parents after mega-successful computer engineer dad disappeared. Goes back to his dad’s old office, figures out what the old man was up to, is digitized, and must now uncover the mystery. Dad’s there, as well as fake-dad clone, and he’s joined by some marginally more interesting new characters encountered along the way in the quest for digital liberty.

Everyone is adequate enough to move us through the special effects. Jeff Bridges plays Kevin Flynn (the missing father), but could just as easily be described as playing himself, or else The Dude. He also stars as his younger self in computer program (and villain) form, Clu. In this role, he is helped along by significant CG de-aging effects. The attempt is noble, but frequently distracting, and only occasionally convincing. Garrett Hedlund plays Sam Flynn, Kevin Flynn’s now grown son. He’s entirely passable and entirely unremarkable.

Then we have the ladies, oh yes, the ladies. Olivia Wilde is Quorra, an ally of the Flynns, and Beau Garrett is Gem, a more ambiguous side character. Both wield hotness to rival the impressive effects of the film. The movie’s style, especially the wardrobe (tight, sci-fi chic), have turned these two women into my club/techno/science fiction fantasies come to life. That’s not to say the characters, or the actors playing them, are used to any great effect otherwise. Both seem to show up just to be seen more often than they meaningfully contribute to the plot.

I went to see this movie in its opening weekend, shelling out the cash for the 3-D experience, for no reason other than the visuals, and in that respect I cannot claim to have been disappointed. I’m a sucker for unique science fiction motifs, and Tron: Legacy certainly has that going for it. The old Tron style has been modernized beautifully, with vivid tones and lighting mixed with the black skies of the movie’s digital world.

I was surprised by, and ended up thoroughly enjoying, the movies soundtrack as well. This was composed by French house duo Daft Punk, whose electronic style meshes and enhances the world presented by the film’s visuals.

I cannot claim that Tron: Legacy is a good movie. It offers nothing to the world of science fiction that hasn’t been done better, and repeatedly. Its plot is not thought provoking, or even all that entertaining, and its characters are not endearing. In the end, Tron: Legacy is a special effects master work burdened by the vestigial plot points of a script cooked up some 30 years ago, and no amount of gloss, glow, or hotness can compensate for that.

Score:

Image: Cover art for Baby by Justin Bieber. Copyright Island Records.

Justin Bieber. JB. Biebz. You’ve watched the parody videos, you’ve seen Twitter drown in his name, you’ve read 4chan tried to send him to North Korea, but you’ve never bothered to look him up on Wikipedia and figure out who he is, or what he is all about.

Well, after years of wondering, and becoming increasingly convinced of my disconnect from the culture of kids today and their pre-teen pseudo-R&B music, I have performed about five minutes of research. I now feel qualified to enlighten you, the rest of the world, on the sensation that is Bieber. Disclaimer: I have yet to sit through one of his music videos.

Justin Bieber is hair. Look to the top of this page to marvel at the wonder that is JBiebz’s hair. I’m not exactly what you would call a “hair expert,” a “knower of hair,” or indeed, even a “comber of hair,” but I can tell you that Bieber’s hair is something precious, even unique in this world. How does he get it so straight? How does he get it so long in the front? Would he lose his powers should he ever go bald? How does he get it to curve inward like that without poking his delicate heartthrob eyes?

Justin Bieber is fever. Bieber rhymes with fever. As I under stand it, lazy headline writers and those looking to appear clever will invariably put this stunning convenience together and declare “Bieber fever” should the Bieb ever roll into town.

Justin Bieber is adolescent girl. When I was in Junior High, the girls I went to school with busily funneled their parents’ burnable income into repeat viewings of Titanic. That movie went on to gross $600 million domestically, and stood as the box office champion for twelve years. Bieber has caught on with that same, occasionally obsessive demographic.

Justin Bieber is internet fans. The internet is an important place for people the world over to gather, share information, and communicate. It has also shredded the slow crawl of popular culture into popular consciousness. Bieber’s popularity is due, in part, to the staggering power of internet spam. We live in a time in which Bieber’s fans didn’t have to wait for the TV or magazines to tell them about Bieber, they got to tell those outlets about him. And they did, and they do. A recent rumour claims Bieber-related talk accounts for 3% of Twitter’s server use.

Image: Adapted from 2010-08-261 (Large). Photo by HeatherSokol. Used under a CC-BY-SA license. Yes, you can similarly share alike!

Justin Bieber is internet. Bieber was born of the internet, the internet got him discovered, and he lives on the internet. He uses this once drab place that we geeks used to call home to communicate directly with his fans. That is to say, a very large group of people decidedly outside the neckbeard demographic are using the internet to engage in their interests on a massive scale. This likely explains the attempts at Google manipulation, the pranks, and death hoaxes. Just as I bitterly hated Titanic in my youth because it usurped the titans of my geek universe (Star Wars, Jurassic Park) at theatres, so do the nerdlingers of today hate Bieber for owning such a large mindshare of this place they once thought would always be their own.

Justin Bieber is music. I can’t say I ever followed music, especially popular music, very closely. I can tell you that when I was the Biebz’s age (he’s 16), we still had music videos on TV, and people still bought CDs. Of course, times have changed, and Bieber represents the business of the present. Bieber’s fans have replaced MTV and CDs with YouTube and iTunes, with Bieber boasting the most viewed YouTube video of all time. One constant in all this: teaming up with rappers is still a requisite career move for all mainstream artists.

Justin Bieber is puberty. We can all take comfort, and find amusement, in the fact that Mr. Bieber is getting on in years, and the great destroyer of non-threatening boys, puberty, has struck. Bieber admits his voice now cracks, and can’t hit the notes he once could.

Justin Bieber is fleeting. Thankfully, Bieber fever cannot last forever. Puberty, the fickle interests of tweenage-Twihard-other-buzzword-girls, and an entertainment industry which always demands the newest will eat away at Bieber’s popularity until he is reduced to comeback tours and embarrassing reality TV appearances like some kind of New Kid.

Remembering The Lord of the Rings

The Fellowship of the Ring

Image: Lord of the Rings, The Fellowship of the Ring. Copyright New Line Cinema.

For Fellowship, I believe my count was five. I think it was my second watching, this time at a livelier city theatre, that the audience cheered when Aragorn decapitated that Uruk-hai who had pumped Boromir full of arrows. That remains the only time I’ve ever witnessed an audience respond to a film in a non-embarrassing way.

Upon re-watching Fellowship of the Ring, I am happy to report that it is just as I remember it. Still awesome. The slavish attention to detail, the richness of the world that Jackson has recreated on film, the acting, and the dialogue have ensured a graceful aging. Of the three, I still maintain that it is my favourite, and still the best paced. The film begins slowly, just as with the novel upon which it is based, presenting the idyllic hobbit life, and then steadily layering tension and complexity.

That’s not to say that it’s a perfect movie. The moments that made me grit my teeth and wish they would go away when I saw the movie for the third through infinity times are still there. These aren’t movie-ruining moments by any means, it’s just that the corny bits here aren’t endearing, they’re distracting. The cinematography has a habit of reminding me that Jackson used to direct cheesy horror movies, with those choppy slow-down moments and wacky zoom-outs. Mostly though, it’s Galadriel’s green-faced freak-out that gets to me.

The Two Towers

Image: Lord of the Rings, The Two Towers. Copyright New Line Cinema.

I saw The Two Towers maybe four times in the theatre. I think the general consensus is that it’s the weakest of the three. That was also my opinion once I had seen all three movies, and it’s still my opinion now.

There are too many eye-roll moments in Two Towers for it to stand up to repeated viewings the way Fellowship does. Early on, we’re re-introduced to Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli as they hoof it cross-country in their search for Pippin and Merry, and right away a disappointing tone is set. We get goofy lines about “Elf eyes” and “red suns,” and it’s immediately obvious that Gimli has been demoted to comedic relief.

I don’t want to come off as harsh. It would be too easy to pick at the details of a movie I’ve seen ten or more times and end up hating it. The Two Towers has serious strengths as well. As an action film, it is nigh-unassailable, and probably my favourite of the trilogy in that regard. Anticipation for the Battle of Helm’s Deep is well established, and the payoff is spectacular. In a fashion similar to Fellowship‘s storytelling as a whole, the Battle of Helm’s Deep is carefully and deliberately paced. Both sides have layers of strategy that are steadily introduced in a sort-of one-upmanship that sucks me in every time. First the arrows, then the ladders, then the destruction of the Deeping Wall. One after another.

The Return of the King

Image: Lord of the Rings, Return of the King. Copyright New Line Cinema.

My theatre viewings for Return of the King probably number five or six. The first was a mighty all day event which consisted of getting up early and hungover to marathon the Extended Editions of Fellowship and Two Towers (that’s eight hours of film), followed by a premiere night showing which included a costume contest.

I maintain two complaints with the movie, one minor, and one major. The small nuisance is Pippin’s awkward little music video for Denethor. Especially when the shot returns to Pippin following a catch-up with Faramir. The camera pans slightly as candles dance in the background. Yuk. My larger issue is, frankly, the action. That spectacular pacing from the Battle of Helm’s Deep is missing from the Battle of the Pelennor Fields. Instead of building tension, the opposing forces seem to just take turns washing over each other. The easy victory by the Dead Army is completely unsatisfying. The highlights are Théoden’s speech and Éowyn’s showdown with the Witch-King. The rest lacks emotion.

Those things aside, I’m happy to report that the film holds up well. Jackson’s directing is more skilled than with the first movie, and the dialogue is significantly less cheesy than the second. The depth of plot, characterization, and mythology tower above the first two films. Jackson’s handling of the source material is respectful and smart.

Anticipating The Hobbit

It was recently announced that New Zealand would be keeping production of The Hobbit. As everyone knows, that was where the Rings movies were filmed, and I’m relieved that that’s where there prequels will be made as well.

The other great news on Hobbit’s production has been the casting. Martin Freeman will be Bilbo. Freeman, of course, played Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’s Arthur Dent, and his casting has been well received by the fanboy community. I’m happy with the choice as well. The man just looks like a hobbit. He also looks like someone who could reasonably age into Ian Holm (who played Bilbo in the Rings films). More good news, Ian McKellen (Gandalf), Andy Serkis (Gollum), and Hugo Weaving (Elrond) are all expected to return for their characters’ roles in The Hobbit as well.

I was disappointed when, in May of 2010, it was revealed that Guillermo del Toro had left The Hobbit project. I was looking forward to his take on Middle Earth, having enjoyed his visual style in Hellboy and Pan’s Labyrinth. I don’t mean it as a slight against Jackson, it’s just that we’ve already seen his vision of Middle Earth. Having said that, the further we get from the Rings movies, the more I miss having their releases to look forward to. By the time the first Hobbit film is released, which isn’t expected to be until 2012, I think I’ll be ready for another glance at Jackson’s Middle Earth. Additionally, del Toro was involved for some two years on the project with Jackson, and so I suspect many of his ideas will live on.

Then there is that issue of one simpler book (The Hobbit is a children’s novel, after all) split into two films. Although initially planned as a single Hobbit-proper movie, followed by a “bridge” title that would connect Bilbo’s adventure with the ring to the events of the Rings trilogy, Jackson has now committed to splitting the events of The Hobbit between the two movies. Having recently read the novel, I can tell you that there is plenty for the director to work with. If Jackson’s intent is to match the tone of his Rings films in The Hobbit, then there should be little issue with stretching large and dramatic, but simplistically explained, events from the novel and producing the sort of lengthy work seen in The Lord of the Rings.

In summary, with production issues apparently worked out, my outlook on The Hobbit is strongly optimistic. Their releases in the next few years should keep me highly entertained. Of course, a few years past that point, and I may begin wondering where the movies based on The Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales are, but that may be asking too much of Mr. Jackson.

Image: The Expendables cover art. Copyright Lionsgate.

Welcome again to Movie Maundering, home of my opinion. Enjoy. This week, I actually went to the theater to see a recently released movie, The Expendables.

Plot

Mercenaries turn crusaders for some reason.

Cast

This film’s cast is a spectacular coming together of some of the most iconic action stars into a single tremendously badass movie. Main characters are played by Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Jet Li, and Dolph ‘you’d better not rob my house’ Lundgren. The whole crew basically runs around slamming bitches and shooting faces. Stone Cold Steve Austin makes yet another Hollywood appearance as the bruiser muscle for the bad guys, and even Bruce Willis and the Governator Arnold Schwarzenegger show up to the party for a quick cameo.

Weskimo’s Take

Fun. Just lots of fun. The Expendables is pretty much one single streaming ass kicking on all fronts. The story is nothing to write home about, seeing as it is virtually non-existent. They take a job to assassinate some military leader on a remote island, but turn it down when they reason that it must be a CIA setup. But then they come back and do it anyway, because Stallone inexplicably wants to save the target’s daughter(who is young enough to make you question his motives). Doesn’t make a lot of sense.

But the film just explodes with violent content. Brutal striking, wrestling, shooting, and knife-fights make up the entire flow of the movie, typically getting more explosive towards the finale. The only real complaint I could come up with on the action was a fairly grand amount of exceedingly unrealistic performances. Guy uses a super-shotgun and blows up concrete watchtowers. What up with that?

The Expendables was obviously created with a mission in mind: to make the audience sit up and say ‘that was cool!’ That being said, mission accomplished. This movie was cool. Also, it was extremely cool to see all of these actors stand up and whip some ass. Can’t give it many points for creativity or story, but if you’re out looking for a movie to deliver a furious flurry of action straight into your occipital lobe, The Expendables will hit the mark, probably with an unexpectedly explosive grenade.

Image: Butterfly Effect cover art. Copyright New Line Cinema.

Welcome again to Movie Maundering. Further expanding upon my recent urge to punish myself for unknown sins likely committed in a past life by watching exceptionally poor movie choices, I just finished watching The Butterfly Effect.

Plot

Speaking of committed, this movie focuses most of its time around the theme of mental instability, insanity, and institutionalization. Evan Treborn is afflicted with a seemingly hereditary bout of behavioural instability, manifesting itself in the blacking out of traumatic events. But as it turns out, Evan, and his father and grandfather before him, were actually able to return themselves to these points in their past and redo them, dramatically changing the lives of everyone around them. Everyone else just thought they were crazy. But things never go quite right, someone always gets the stubby end of the dick when Evan goes time traveling, and though he might help one friend, he often causes greater damage to himself or others. So he sets out to fix that too… and there we have the movie.

The film is largely based around the model of Chaos Theory, a set of studies based in math, economics, philosophy and physics to study how any action can affect events far out of its scope. This is commonly known as the ‘Butterfly Effect’, where it is suggested that something as small as a butterfly can flap its wings and the ripple effect of that action could cause a hurricane halfway around the world.

Cast

Ashton Kutcher stars as Evan Treborn, though he is often portrayed in his teenage self or child self by John Amadori and Logan Lerman respectively. His paramount love interest and ultimate goal of the girl to rescue is played by Amy Smart, the character Kayleigh Miller. Other faces show up that you probably can’t name yourself like Elden Henson (Fulton from D2: The Mighty Ducks), William Lee Scott (teenage Anton in Gattaca) and bigman Ethan Suplee (Frankie from Boy Meets World). All in all a pretty decent cast. Ashton Kutcher does a crazy-man run that is a must-see.

Weskimo’s Take

I’ve gotta say, this movie had a fair bit going for it. Chaos Theory is an interesting premise for a movie. However…

This movie ended up with some cheesy balls in its mouth. The beginning of the movie is hard to follow, and though they try hard to build suspense and be dramatic, the feelings they are going for just aren’t there. It does possess a bit of the psychotic behaviour that will shock the audience, predominantly shown through Tommy Miller, Kayleigh’s brother. The problem child actively enjoys brutally delivering a beat down, and likes burning puppies. Pretty sick. Evan’s best friend Lenny also ends up in a mentally unstable state more times than not after his little ‘fixes’ as well, moving between quietly withdrawn, openly violent, and nearly catatonic.

Another serious flaw of the movie is its lack of focus. They attempted to try to cram too many big attention-getter issues into the movie, nothing gets more than a few minutes of play. Prostitution, child pornography, parental abandonment, abusive parents, lost loves, psychological trauma, fraternity douchebaggery, suicide, cancer… they hit on all the key effect points, but never stayed there long enough for anyone but Evan to care.

I have to mention as well that The Butterfly Effect has a few rather large holes in its plot. Mostly, I can’t understand why Evan refused to simply return to the blackout event in question when things went wrong and try a different way to fix it. True to its name, just a couple of tiny things make everything blow up for him in almost every case. He could just try it again, couldn’t he? Also, they never explain the origin of this hereditary ability to change the past? Was his grandfather exposed to gamma rays as a child? Attend Hogwarts? Or is it just some random genetic brain anomaly that allows them to manipulate time and space? Most frustrating.

Probably one of the things that bugged me the most is the Director’s Cut ending. In the Theatrical version, as a last resort, Evan realizes that Kayleigh is better off without him, and makes one last trip to a birthday party when they were 7 and proceeds to alienate her beyond all repair. They grow up separately, and are both decently successful and happy, and none of his friends are insane. There is even a cliché déjà vu moment as they pass each other in the street, and you think she recognizes him, but she’s not sure, so they keep on walking. But in the Director’s Cut, Evan decides that the world would be better off without him entirely, and travels back to the womb and strangles himself with the umbilical cord. What the fuck? No worries there, Mr. Emo, I’m sure your mom would love the gift of a third stillborn child. Nice work, champ.

In conclusion, The Butterfly Effect is a less than mediocre movie. I didn’t gain much enjoyment from it, and I spent most of my time waiting for it to get exciting. It was rather predictable, poorly explained, and dramatically ineffectual. The premise was good, the cast was pretty great, and even showed some decent versatility by being able to play their characters in several realities, but in the end, the film just did not deliver a lasting performance for the audience.

Wow, I got through this review without an abortion joke after watching a baby hang himself in the womb. Where’s DMUSER when you need him?

Scoring

Image: Antitrust cover art. Copyright Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.

In an attempt to bum rush my To-Do List for some last-minute points, I got myself to watch another member of the Computing Science 101 pack, Antitrust. Here’s what I thought of it.

Plot

Milo is a computer programmer who is headhunted by a giant global corporation called NURV (Never Underestimate Radical Vision) and offered a lucrative job opportunity at the firm. Although sad to leave his friends in the small-time project they started together, he takes the position and moves to the company’s headquarters in Oregon.

Work goes very well at first, friendly coworkers, nice job perks, etc. And his job is made easier by his new boss, CEO Gary Winston, seemingly coming up with the missing piece of code out of thin air whenever he hits a roadblock. All is on track for the completion of the company’s next claim to fame, Synapse, a huge social multimedia network set to launch and revolutionize communication the world over.

This all changes when his best friend and former colleague is murdered, and then Winston delivering another piece of ground-breaking programming the following day. Suspicious, Milo begins to investigate, and following the gruesome discovery that NURV is behind the conspiratorial theft, murder, and cover-up of dozens of programmers, he sets out to bring about righteous justice.

Cast

Not bad. Ryan Phillippe plays the lead as Milo, with the oh-so-hot Rachel Leigh Cook backing him up as the hot girl from work/sort of other woman, but not really/traitorous biatch in the end, and Tim Robbins makes a great creepy but charismatic corporate villain. He kinda looks like a cross between Steve Jobs and Bill Gates.

Weskimo’s Take

This movie has a lot of flaws. The soundtrack is pretty good, though its ‘suspense music’ can be pretty oddly placed sometimes. And from several instances of poorly explained story and weak script to the beat-you-about-the-face predictability present throughout, there is a fair bit wrong with this movie.

That being said, I like Antitrust. It’s got that nerdy computer-based storyline that I find appealing, along with a Big Brother type of story progression where Milo discovers just exactly how much of his life is tracked, followed, and manipulated by the evil watchdog enterprise of NURV.

Otherwise, I suppose my only real complaint is how little actually happens in the movie. It sort of seems like it runs you in circles the whole time. I suppose this could be because that is what the movie is about, basically playing for time until the life-altering media network is complete, but it really comes through as simply a lack of significant actions.

All in all, Antitrust is a decent movie. It won’t blow your mind with a big twist ending or anything, and if it does, it will be about half an hour before the writers wanted it to. Worth the watch, but it’s no Hackers.

Scoring

Image: Constantine cover art. Copyright Warner Bros.

I must apologize, both to our readers and the rest of the staff at here shufflingdead.com. I’ve been really slacking these days. My Movie Maundering article is now two weeks late. I’ve even got two started right now, but I just can’t seal the deal. I have been trying to figure out why I just couldn’t get into reviewing another movie, but now I understand: I didn’t fully and completely proclaim my hatred of Constantine, my last review. It’s been tearing me up inside without me even knowing. But luckily, a half bottle of wine and some quiet have allowed me to discover this prolific problem, and I am about to settle in to rectify the situation. Strap in, boys and girls.
This movie left me with a feeling of senseless rage. Absolutely nothing about it was good.

Let’s start with some Shia rage today. First of all, and I don’t know how I forgot to mention this in my initial review, but after the credits roll, Neo (Keanu, when you learn to act like anyone but Neo, I’ll start calling you something other than Neo) visits Shia LaBeouf’s grave, only to witness his triumphant return as a fucking angel. Seriously? Neo has been working his ass off, banishing demons all over the damn place, and Shia says a few biblical phrases and is awarded angelhood? That’s gotta be frustrating. Second, why on earth is the cab driver his wish-to-be sidekick? How often do you even get the same cab driver twice? And third, why does he try to be as good at it as Neo? Doesn’t he know that Neo is The One?

I’ll get back to Neo now. They say several times in the movie that Constantine has no real powers, that he is a mere mortal. Then why the hell is he able to defeat the magics of one of the most powerful heavenly beings around with some runes on his arm that were clearly drawn with a sharpie in Grade 10 Physics class and pretending to be on Dragonball Z? Then there is the fact that he simply walks through a host of demon warriors with a cross-shaped, pimped and gold-plated shotgun. And the chain-smoking man dying of lung cancer, who smokes 4 packs a day, doesn’t wheeze or cough once during the whole thing?

And then we have the true workhorse of the movie: the nameless man carrying the key to earthly destruction. Does he HAVE to be Mexican? Really Warner Bros? You had a man dig up a centuries-old spearhead and WALK it all the fucking way to LA? Nice work there Warner, thank you. Thank you for telling the world that Mexicans are Hell’s Couriers.

There is so much unbelievable crap flying around Constantine that I half expected them to turn around and tell me that my dog snoring in the middle of the night is the devil speaking to him in code to tell him to shit on the sidewalk in the morning. I’m going to have to wrap this up because my rage is starting to overcome my ability to be coherent. This movie freaking sucks.

Image: Scott Pilgrim vs. the World poster. Copyright Universal Pictures.

Dear nerdlingers, have I got a movie for you. Ever dreamed of a film directed by the genius behind Hot Fuzz and Shaun of the Dead based on an indie comic about 20-something slackerdom and filled with video game references both obvious and subtle? It may sound too goddamn awesome to exist in the same universe as Twilight: Eclipse, but such a thing is real, and it’s called Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. It is sad indeed that I needed to tell you that, but not many of you seemed to notice. The film only grossed $10.6 million in its opening weekend. Let me try to convince you why it deserves so, so much more.

I’ll try to avoid spoiling too many of the specific video game winks and nods which exist within Scott Pilgrim, but hear this: the film opens with music ripped straight from Link to the Past. If your Nintendo nerd boners haven’t reached full mast yet, then consider this: Scott plays the bassline from Final Fantasy II.

Video game influence doesn’t just show up in the thrill provided by easy references. The story of Scott Pilgrim is told with the frantic, illogical logic of games. The movie’s pacing rapidly accelerates when Scott finds out he must battle his way through the seven evil exes of his new love interest, Ramona Flowers. No real explanation is given as to why this is the case. Even less of one is given for the remarkable powers most of the characters in the movie possess (like wielding flaming pixelated swords and traveling via sub-space). All of this is in glorious homage to the games which inspire the film, where fun holds significantly more value than adherence to reality.

I don’t mean to suggest that the shallowness of plot often found in games is carried over here. Scott’s true struggle is not in dealing with the League of Evil Exes, but rather life as an unemployed 22-year-old coming to terms with his own shallow existence, and the unkind way he treats the people around him. Scott is forced to juggle his feelings for Ramona along with his absence-of-feeling for his current girlfriend, naive high schooler Knives Chau.

Michael Cera is, of course, Scott Pilgrim. While Cera can once again be accused of playing the same deadpan wimp he always does, it’s hard to fault him here. Anyone in his place would have surely been doing his best Cera impression. The rest of the cast is filled with unknowns and semi-knowns taking on smaller roles and succeeding without exception. Mary Elizabeth Winstead as Ramona Flowers is sexily dry-witted. Ellen Wong as Knives Chau is frantic and hilarious. Kieran Culkin, playing Scott’s older, gayer roommate Wallace, demonstrates honed comedic timing as he quips on Scott’s inability to run his own life.

To take only one small issue with the film, the members of Scott’s band Sex Bob-omb (seriously, that’s what they’re called) are disappointingly underused. Young Neil, Stephen Stills, and especially Kim Pine are funny and well cast. We just don’t get to see the three hanging out with Scott enough.

Scott Pilgrim isn’t just a character piece or a comedy. In fact, it’s an action film as much as anything else. Again, director Edgar Wright excels here. As Scott battles through the pantheon of Ramona’s evil exes, we’re treated to video game action come to life. Characters wield stat-boosting swords, giant hammers, and supernatural powers. Rhythm-based dance-offs and wild fist fights straight out of arcades are presented one after another replete with the corresponding panache of chirpy sound effects and glowing lights.

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World is a film that gets it. Video game references that are correct. Video game references that are used out of respect for the medium rather than mockery. Toronto, where the story takes place, portrayed without the need for belittlement. 20-something slackerdom portrayed accurately (I know, I’m living it). Find every rupee you can find (they tend to be hidden in pots and under long grass) and go see this movie as many times as you can afford.

Scoring:

Guilty secret: I read fan fiction.

Perhaps you’ve never heard of it. Fan fictions, affectionately known as fan fics, are basically self-explanatory. It’s “new” works of fiction written by fans of certain literature. Hence, fan fiction. The stories are based on the characters and environments in the original work. I liken it to music, where musicians regularly cover each others’ work to create something new and different, but made from the same base. For example, a Harry Potter fan fiction may contain a plot where Lily leaves a letter for Harry to read in the future, confessing that Severus Snape is actually his father, not James Potter. Or a Lord of the Rings fan fiction may revolve around a complicated romance between Legolas and Aragorn. Anything can happen. In fact, some fan fics can get pretty smutty, spelling out the romantic and lusty scenes we all envision between our favourite pairings that never actually get published. Or even acknowledged by the author, depending.

Fan fiction can be found most specifically on the website fanfiction.net, but is available via search engine on all sorts of websites, collective or private. Fanfiction.net stories have been divided into many categories, including books (further divided by book or author), film, television, manga, cartoons, plays and musicals, and video games to name a few. Say you really enjoy watching House MD. Well, in case just watching it once a week doesn’t get you enough House action, you can read one of the over 18,000 stories on fanfiction.net alone.

I am more of a book fan fic reader, considering the original work is text itself. I find it difficult to read about something I regularly watch, play or sing along to. But it never ceases to amaze me how many stories can be spawned from a single work or series. Keep in mind that some fan fics are longer than the original work itself.

The top twenty fan fiction sections in books on fanfiction.net are as follows, as of July 29, 2010*:

20. Vampire Academy - 2,480
19. Silmarillion – 2,635
18. Vampires – 2,879
17. Bible – 2,920
16. Clique – 3,056
15. Inheritance Cycle – 3,856
14. Artemis Fowl - 4,071
13. Fairy Tales - 4,081
12. Animorphs - 4,577
11. The Outsiders – 5,273
10. Chronicles of Narnia – 6,695
9. Gossip Girl - 6,961
8. Percy Jackson and the Olympians – 7,678
7. Song of the Lioness – 8,073
6. Warriors – 8,221
5. Phantom of the Opera – 9,384
4. Maximum Ride – 10,787
3.Lord of the Rings – 43,558
2.Twilight – 156,842
1.Harry Potter – 467,071

So Harry Potter still dominates, as it has for years. But Twilight, thanks to hundreds of thousands of sexually frustrated teenage girls worldwide, is quickly catching up. I had no idea The Outsiders or The Phantom of the Opera were so popular as to garner one of the top twenty spots in books. I mean, they’re great books, but seriously? The one that completely stymies me, of course, is the Bible. Seriously? Who writes a fan fic about the Bible? That’s like writing fan fiction about your history text book.

Part II: Bible Fan Fics – Spiritual Glory or Just Fucked Up?

I checked the Bible fan fics and disappointingly, most of them are poems about God and Jesus and pretty normal stuff like that. But with a bit of searching, I found some synopses that sound rather epic:

The Way of the Lord, by StarXEnoch

“A modern day reimagining of the teenage years of Jesus. Through the eyes of John the Baptist, we will watch the young Messiah as he attends high school, learns about who he is, and begins his ministry.”*

Jesus went to high school?

Lilith by Min Daae

“Lilith/Eve. Temptation is sweet. Like fruit. Sort of dark and weird.”*

Nothing like some Biblical girl-on-girl action.

Jesus and Hitler: A Romance by Angkras

“Adolph Hitler travels back in time and meets a man who will change his life forever.”*

I…don’t even know what to say to that.

Judas: On the betrayal by Zak’s-blood13

“Judas’ take on Jesus’ death and his own actions. Remember, there are other gospels and writings from Jesus’ time that weren’t included in the Bible – this takes after one of those – Judas’ gospel. I don’t own Jesus/Judas/Peter or the ideas behind this.”*

I love the disclaimer. I know a lot of people put “I don’t own Harry Potter!” or whatever in their fan fics, but “I don’t own Jesus”? The Bible officially gets top ranks for most awesome fan fics ever.

*Denotes quotes or statistics taken directly from fanfiction.net.

Image: Constantine cover art. Copyright Warner Bros.

Plot

John Constantine has been able to see demons since he was a child. Nobody really knows why. Unfortunately for him, it has led everyone he knew to think that he was crazy, so he tried to kill himself. He was legally dead for two minutes, but then resuscitated. This leaves him damned in the eyes of God, having committed the deadly sin of suicide. In a quest for redemption of the highest order, Constantine spends his time banishing demons back to the plane of Hell to make the world a better place and find himself in Heaven as a reward.

During the normal course of business, he stumbles across a full-blooded demon trying to gain entry into the human world, which is apparently not allowed. After investigating with his cab-driver sidekick and a couple of twitchy contacts, he uncovers a plot to use the blood of a human psychic to attempt to break the bonds holding the demons in Hell. The son of the Devil, Mammon, wishes to manifest himself on Earth and create his own kingdom here. Constantine sets out to stop him.

Cast

Keanu Reeves, you are the bane of the film industry. Other big names grace the screen in this movie, though few of them add anything beneficial to it at all. Rachel Weisz is on screen a lot. You all remember her, right? And of course, the whiny Shia LaBeouf shows up a few times as the shitty sidekick. Although, I gotta say, Gavin Rossdale is pretty badass as a slick half-demon mastermind.

Weskimo’s Take

This movie is awful. It’s hard to even describe how dumb this movie is. After you sift through all the religious rhetoric being tossed around, you are left with absolutely nothing. Lackluster acting and a weak story combine to give birth to this atrocity of a movie.

Keanu Reeves plays a chain-smoking, demon-exorcist, who is terminally ill from the chain-smoking, trying to buy his way into Heaven by doing good things, but because it’s a selfish reason, Heaven gives him a big “Thanks anyway, but fuck you.” However, it’s this damned soul who is apparently God’s only champion on Earth with a clue. Right. This movie might as well have been the Matrix for all the sense it makes. He slits his wrists, and time stops? What the ever-loving crap is that about? He must be The One or something. Jesus.

Rachel Weisz, who I have to admit I don’t mind looking at, didn’t add anything useful to the movie. She had a couple of bad dreams, then got kidnapped and drowned in a bathtub. Twice. And I seriously spent the whole movie expecting freaking Brendan Fraser to run in and save her from the scary decomposing monsters. Shia LaBeouf makes his usual attempts to be useful or funny and really accomplishes nothing throughout.

It seemed like the movie was trying very hard to either impress or scare us with all of its special effects, but ended up doing neither. A demon made of shifting bugs attacks Constantine once, and otherwise there are some glowing eyes and some dead-looking humanoids we call demons which turn to ash when Neo, I mean Constantine, looks at them wrong. Oh, and some lights go out. That’s about it.

This movie was a giant Heaven-Hell circle-jerk. There are rules flying all over the place, different types of demons coming and going that nobody bothers to explain, and a couple of silly psychic humans. I wish I had a dollar for every minute this movie sucked, because I would have $121 dollars right now. Congratulations Warner Bros. You’ve managed to make a movie about redemption with no redeeming qualities.

Scoring

Image: Cover art for Bitch Slap. Copyright IM Global.

After watching the movie Bitch Slap we felt that we should share some of the extremely valuable life lessons it teaches.

1. Have big tits? Have boobs at all? You must show them off at all times. Just in case you were unsure before.

2. When in the desert, high-heeled shoes are not actually an impediment. No, not even if you are attempting an illegal salvage of riches, having a naughty water fight with a host of lesbians, or are involved in a frantic kung-fu fight.

3. A naughty water fight featuring a host of lesbians can save any movie. Period.

4. Hot people are apparently fire retardant. In fact, after being set on fire or being the victim of an explosion they will not only escape with zero burns, but they will rise from the ashes with their clothes burned away and their body smudged with soot and glistening with sweat, actually making them appear hotter.

5. All Asians have ridiculous accents and must dress as slutty schoolgirls. And they’re all kinky as hell, and of course, know kung fu.

6. Never trust a woman, especially the innocent-looking ones because she may be the head of a crime circuit as well as a secret ninja, no matter how much she got her ass kicked in the beginning of the movie.

7. Always ask for the name of the contortionist you banged behind the circus tent that one time, as it may save you from a nasty surprise later on.

8. Nuns, or at least the nuns of the future, are all lesbians. Actually it seems that most woman are lesbians.

9. Kevin Sorbo automatically makes a movie awesome. Also, Hercules would have been badass with shades and a gun.

10. No matter what you are in the middle of, there is always time for a little lezzing out.

11. Chicks who have boobs bigger than a D cup will clearly not have any trouble lifting a gun bigger than their torso. Or ever need a bra.

12. Chick’s got a crazy look in her eye? Probably means she’s crazy…

13. Everything is hotter in slow motion. This includes awkwardly shoveling sand, walking, yeah, everything.

14. If you’re looking for some hidden shit in the middle of the fucking desert, and you think you’ve found it, check your watch. If you’ve only been looking for thirty minutes, that’s not it, probably just another random corpse.

15. If you’re looking for some hidden shit in the middle of the fucking desert, rest assured that absolutely everyone you’ve ever crossed paths with will show up at some point in the next hour to harass you about it.

As you continue on with your daily lives, keeping the above wisdoms in mind might save you from disaster in the long run. But if there is one grand singular lesson of life that we can truly take away from this movie it is: TITS!

Image: Kick-Ass DVD cover art. Copyright Lionsgate.

Plot

Dave Lizewski is an unnoticed highschool student with an unremarkable life.  Looking at the world around him, he is troubled by the fact that everyone just exists, nobody rocks the boat, goes out of their way to help their fellow man, and the world just coasts along unaltered. Inspired by his comic book heroes, he decides to become a superhero, despite the lack of any training, natural or supernatural ability, or clear goal.

Setting out to help people, he sets his sights on a pair of neighbourhood thugs who terrorize the area. As expected, he gets his ass kicked, knifed, and then hit by a car.  The result is several surgeries, rumors that he’s gay, and some messed up nerve endings that keep him from feeling anything in about half his body.  His second attempt is much more successful, fighting off three gang members to protect a guy while again taking a horrible beating. The footage is posted on the internet, and all of a sudden, Kick-Ass is a hero. Taking calls through his MySpace page, he tries to make the city a better place.

His efforts gain the attention of big-time drug dealer Frank D’Amico, and he is singled out for special retribution. Joined by fellow superheroes Big Daddy and Hit Girl they are pitted against D’Amico’s organization and it’s kill or be killed.

Cast

Nicolas Cage?  Really? Why? Well, he shoots a 10-year old girl in the chest, and talks like Adam West, so sure, I guess. The rest of the cast is pretty awesome. A nerdy teenager, a cute girl-of-his-dreams interest, and Christopher Mintz-Plasse (aka McLovin) gets decked out as a superhero/villain. And Mark Strong is a pretty decent villain, playing Frank D’Amico. Throw in some non-descript goons for good measure and a snappy script, and we’re pretty much set.

Weskimo’s Take

This movie is fun.  The script was done very well, and I felt that it really added to the movie, contrasting how bland normal life is at home and how crazy and brutal things get when Kick-Ass enters the world of crimefighting; Dave and his dad will talk about whether or not the cereal box cover has changed, while Kick-Ass threatens to break people’s legs and Hit Girl drops the C-bomb on some lowlifes.

It takes a lot from other superhero movies, specifically Spiderman. Unpopular teenager gets a skin-tight costume and all of a sudden his stalkee starts to notice him, he starts leaping buildings after school and seeking masked popularity.  Even his house looks similar to Peter Parker’s. What I like about Kick-Ass is that even though it is a superhero movie it manages to be unusual about it. There is no scheme for world domination, no superpowers, and no overcome trauma from the hero’s past. It’s just a drug dealer looking for his next paycheck and a few normal (sorta) people out to stop him.

Where it’s low on flashy stunts and special effects, it’s high on simple brutal shock-violence. Otherwise a fairly true-to-form superhero movie, complete with the foreshadowing of the inevitable sequel’s next villain. All in all a good movie.

Scoring

Image: Hackers DVD box cover. Copyright Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.

Plot

Hackers follows the story of Dade Murphy, a young hacker who, at the age of 11, manages to crash 1507 systems in a single day. Impressive, right? Right. But he gets caught and is court ordered to not operate a touch-tone phone or a computer until his 18th birthday. So we fast forward to his 18th birthday, and Dade has moved to New York City with his mother for her new job. Cue typical teenage angst, some rebellious attitude, and new-kid-in-school highschool activities.

At his new school, Dade quickly falls in with other 1337s, taking on a new alias “Crash Override” for his hacking hijinks. Most notable among his new friends is the one with the nice rack, none other than Kate Libby, alias “Acid Burn”. Nerd chicks are hot, even short-haired ones.

All seems to be going well for young Dade when two of his friends get arrested for hacking a high-profile system, the Ellingson Mineral Company’s, and framed for creating a virus set to cause a major environmental disaster. The framing is done by the security officer for the company, a rather Snape-looking hacker named “The Plague” who is using the virus he created and pinned on two highschool kids as a decoy while a worm he planted siphons off $25 million dollars.

Dade and his remaining 1337 friends must band together and strike back against this slimy dickrag and his FBI dupes by trying a risky concentrated attack on the Ellingson supercomputer to try to download evidence of Dickrag’s treachery.

Cast

Great cast. Smartass protagonist, some truly zany friends, stick-up-their-ass grownups, and a smokin’ hot love interest with a passion for tight clothing. Not to mention the rather androgynous pair of asian boys running a regular webisode called “Hack the Planet,” an informative program for curious hackers… Umm, take that however you want.

Weskimo’s Take

Let me just send out a quick message: “Fuck you, every game console I ever owned in highschool. If I hadn’t spent my time playing YOU, I could have been invited to some really cool rollerblading/hacker parties at the blackmarket arcade!” Unless this was just a contrived theatrical ploy to make the audience think that nerds were cool in highschool… oh, wait a second.  I see what you did there. Nevermind.

But, excellent movie. Fun from start to finish, if a little predictable and/or unlikely. From two hackers fighting over a TV program to sending out arrest warrants on FBI agents and shutting down New York’s traffic control system, entertaining hacker antics abound. A few stereotypical teenager themes rear their ugly heads (“mission: find friends to accept me,” “why won’t the hot girl date me!?,” “I hate my life!,” etc.), but that really doesn’t take much away from the enjoyment of the movie. Plus, Angelina Jolie is in it, usually without a bra, and occasionally with a see-through shirt. And was it just me being lonely, or was Jolie’s ass particularly spectacular in this movie?

Anyway, Hackers is a great viewing, from when it came out to present day. On top of the sheer entertainment value, it dishes out pretty decent social commentary on the coming of the computer age and the relative computer illiteracy of the 90s. It makes mention of the “warrior” concept referring to computer savvy individuals, and the importance that they will all play in the shaping of the world as we become more and more dependent upon new technologies.

In closing, if anyone ever wants to watch Hackers, do so. Again and again. Also, as a public service announcement, this film has given rise to the greatest drinking game ever devised. Group A, drink every time Angelina Jolie is hot. Group B, drink every time Angelina Jolie is goth-hot. Enjoy alcohol poisoning. I know I did.

Scoring

Image: William Shatner Has Been cover art. Copyright Shout! Factory.

Bill Shatner has done a lot for the world. His portrayal of Captain James Tiberius Kirk has inspired generations of nerds, giving us indispensable modern day items like cell phones and personal computers. His hammy acting and halted delivery have birthed countless parodies, including Futurama‘s unforgettable Zapp Brannigan. Shatner’s willingness to promote seemingly any company that throws him a few bucks has popularized everything from a travel discount website to All-Bran cereal.

Given all those achievements, it’s easy to underestimate Shatner’s greatest gift to humanity: bringing joy to the world through song. In this article I will take an ear-melting odyssey through Shatner’s 40+ years of musical splendour, counting down the performer’s seven finest masterpieces.

7. William Shatner and Lin Yu Chun cover “Total Eclipse of the Heart”

We begin at the present, with Shatner’s inspired duet with Taiwan’s Susan Boyle, Lin Yu Chun. The two teamed up to perform an Earth-shifting rendition of “Total Eclipse of the Heart” on April 21, 2010′s episode of Lopez Tonight.

6. “Rocket Man”

Next, we venture all the way back to the 1978 Science Fiction Film Awards, where Bill performed his world-famous spoken word rendition of Elton John’s “Rocket Man.” The song-murdering performance ranks among the most amusing attempts at entertainment ever performed by man. Shatner’s implication that he, being Captain Kirk, is the real rocket man, is profound to say the least.

5. A spoken word version of a rap song: “The Real Slim Shady”

Shatner blessed humanity in 2002 by playing himself in television’s finest half hour ever, that being the Futurama episode “Where No Fan Has Gone Before.” I can only assume the actual clip has been posted and removed from YouTube numerous times, and so the above clip will have to do. William’s performance ends with Walter Koenig reflecting “How can you do a spoken word version of a rap song?” To which Star Trek hyper fan Melllvar responds “He found a way.”

4. “No Tears For Caesar”

Bill didn’t bother slowing himself down to spoken-word speed for his epic performance of “No Tears For Caesar” at the conclusion of the criminally underrated 1998 film Free Enterprise. No, Shatner flat-out rapped Mark Antony’s speech from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar.

3. “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”

Shatner’s music career began with his album The Transformed Man. The 1968 record featured readings from Shakespeare interspersed with galaxy-transmogrifying spoken-word covers of songs like “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” and “Mr. Tambourine Man.”

2. “Mr. Tambourine Man”

The highest-high of Shatner’s first album was surely his cover of “Mr. Tambourine Man,” in which Bill sounds to be recklessly screaming for help from the Tambourine Man while in the throes of death.

1. Shat-man covers “Common People.”

Although William Shatner’s musical career continues to “warp” along, it’s hard to argue that Kirk will ever top his album Has Been. The 2004 master work, a collaboration between Shatner and Ben Folds, explored the depths of Bill’s long life. The LP kicked off with Shatner belting out a cover of Pulp’s “Common People” with Joe Jackson. No song has inspired me to make a drunken ass of myself more often.

What’s your favourite William Shatner musical performance? Any classics I missed? Let me know in the comments section below.

Best Movie of the Decade: The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring

In a decade wrought with unnecessary remakes, sequels to perfectly good trilogies, and movies based on toy brands, the LotR trilogy stood as a beacon of hope for fans of fantasy, epic blockbusters, and literature.

I’ve chosen to honour The Fellowship of the Ring specifically because it can stand for the other two as well, and I consider it the best of the trilogy anyway. Fellowship blew the nerd hive mind in 2001 when we were introduced to this picture perfect representation of J. R. R. Tolkien’s seminal work.

Worst Movie of the Decade: Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

There were so many awful movies this decade, including two Cheaper by the Dozens, two Twilights, and two Transformers. Ultimately, I’ve chosen RotF not just because it is itself bad (which it is, thoroughly one of the most cringe-worthy films I’ve ever encountered), but because it also represents so much of what was wrong with this decade, both in film and as a whole.

The film is utterly unoriginal: a sequel to a film based on a line of toys. The story isn’t so much told as vomited clumsily onto the screen as a series of absurdities meant to entertain people with a phobia for thinking. The movie offers up explosions, talking robots, humping dogs, racism, awkward drug humour, American flag waving, and Republican talking points in a clusterfuck of stupidity so choked with lazy filmmaking that its success proclaims for the world the brain-death of the film-going audience. Looking back at that list though, I can’t help but feel those things kind of represent the 2000s themselves. That’s why Revenge of the Fallen is the worst film of the decade: it is the decade in all its lowest-common-denominator loving shame.

Best Book of the Decade: Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

The Harry Potter phenomenon may have begun with a novel published in 1997, but it climaxed in the 00s. Supporting the delirium was a sturdy frame of quality novels featuring well developed characters of both sexes, penned by an author with integrity.

Goblet of Fire was the first Harry Potter book of the decade, and perhaps the most important in the series. Starting with Goblet, Harry Potter books became monstrous tomes. Each massive volume was released to delirious fans who would take them home, devour them within a couple days, and then turn to the internet where they would puke them back out as increasingly erotic fan fiction and art. The whole thing was a genuinely fun time.

Worst Book of the Decade: Twilight

The 2000s featured a strange pairing of massive young adult book series: one which provided readers with respectable heroes called Harry Potter, and one which provided embarrassing, sexist, and archaic role models called Twilight.

Twilight‘s power in our culture is its worst aspect, young women read this shit and love it for some reason, seemingly unaware of the harmful gender expectations which they are absorbing. The novel features a weak female lead, Bella, submitting to her mysterious jerk-off boyfriend, Edward, at every opportunity.

Best Website of the Decade: Shufflingdead.com

Officially born June 17, 2001, Shufflingdead.com has become the go-to website for news, reviews, and humour relating to everything from Technology to Politics. With every careful keystroke, Shufflingdead Editor in Chief Newbs creates not just words, but revelations. When Shufflingdead speaks, the world listens and respectfully bows its head to the awesome power of this electric website.

In the 2000s, Shufflingdead has gone from humble Angelfire shithole to the most powerful media conglomerate in the universe: producing everything from webcomics to videos, all of which ooze undeniable gravitas and provide splendid amusement. Shufflingdead is all things to all people, and it is relentless in its violent conquering of human consciousness.

Worst Website of the Decade: MySpace.com

This was a difficult category. There are millions of terrible websites in the world, but few which anyone has really heard of. Of those which are broadly known, most possess vast amounts of shit produced by huge communities of users.

I’ve selected MySpace because it is a site which everyone has heard of and many have used, its reach is massive, it is supported by one of the giant media conglomerates (News Corp.) and yet it does not function in the least. MySpace is guilty of success despite total failure in its design. A typical MySpace profile contains broken code, obnoxious auto-playing music, animated gifs, and basically everything that was once associated with 90s Geocities sites. In 2009.

Best TV series of the Decade: Battlestar Galactica

Television changed in the 2000s, led by HBO shows like The Sopranos, the good stuff became great by adopting ongoing plotlines and harder-edged drama. The height of this trend came with the 2003-2009 sci-fi drama Battlestar Galactica. We were shown interesting characters who were actually affected by the events with which they were involved, and who acted like human beings instead of unflinching robots. Instead of being fed the same formulaic plotline each week, the audience was given a story which progressed, and sometimes a story which took unexpected, dark directions.

Worst TV series of the Decade: American Idol

With the 2000s, television split, the good half became things like Battlestar Galactica, the bad half became the awful half, became the unbearable half. As the decade dawned, a new television program named Survivor began, and with it came the birth of reality TV. Survivor itself was not such a bad show; it was original when it started, it was engaging, and the people on it seemed real enough. As networks began to push more and more reality programming, the quality became lower and lower, once again, the race to the bottom was also the race to the greatest success. Fun shows like The Osbournes led to blatantly scripted un-reality shows like Gene Simmons Family Jewels.

The worst of this cancerous growth on television was, and continues to be, American Idol, because Idol is the powerhouse of reality TV that keeps the whole thing going. The show features lazy character arcs for its annual rotating cast, while its mainstays spout predictable catchphrases. The show is like the Home Improvement of reality television, with the characters behaving in the same manner each episode: Cowell is mean/Tim screws up, Tim talks to Wilson/Jackson says “dawg,” Jill accepts Tim’s apology/Paula is crazy.

Stay tuned for decade-end reviews of the best and worst in Games and Politics!

Newbs: We started out at the arcade. I found House of the Dead 4 to be quite greedy with my quarters.

Katte: Newbs died by the time I acquired my tokens.

Newbs: I had been to this theatre before, and so I knew they sold pickles. But then, when I tried to purchase one, I was informed they no longer carried them.

Katte: There was an old guy behind us who became very distraught when Newbs exclaimed “they don’t have any pickles?!”

Newbs: I felt like one half of a duo of bitter old men, like those two guys in the Muppets.

Newbs: Explain what things were like inside.

Katte: Well, first of all, the popcorn was very stale. And the bathroom… was literally full of shit.

Newbs: While watching the film, I heard an old man cough himself to death. Perhaps intentionally, as a means of escape from the quality of popular culture today. Someone in front of us, while we were heckling the moving picture, in a brash outburst, demanded “are you gonna talk the whole movie?”

Katte: So we talked more quietly, but by the end, she, just like everyone else, was heckling along with us.

Offending Moments

Katte: Unless you are one of those people who trawls for YouTube videos of dogs having sex, you won’t enjoy most of the opening sequence of this movie.

Newbs: I found the numerous dog humping scenes to be hilarious, educational, and inspirational.

Katte: Some of the scenes didn’t even make sense, though.

Newbs: They seemed to just be inserted at random, as though the film makers thought so little of their audience that they assumed any representation of dog fucking would automatically be funny.

Katte: There also seemed to be an inordinate amount of swearing. I’m not against swearing, but in comparison to the last movie in this series, based on children’s toys…

Newbs: Well, it just seemed to pop up in unnecessarily offensive places. For example, Mikaela gets called a bitch by a robot. He also called her dumb. Way to be a woman hating misogynist, Michael Bay.

Katte: Megan Fox really got all her sex-symbol status from being objectified in Transformers. So I’m not really sure what to say. She’s famous because Mikaela’s a good-looking skeezebag?

Newbs: No no, you’ve got her all wrong. She’s a beautiful and talented young girl who’s had a hard life with a deadbeat father. She just needs a strong boning.

Katte: I don’t think Shia LaBeouf’s Sam Witwicky could administer a strong boning.

Newbs: No, and neither could Bay’s representation of the Democrats.

Katte: I like how they added in the clip naming Obama as the current president.

Newbs: And then proceeded to inform us that Obama could only hide while “the worst terrorist attack since 9/11″ was going on. What was Bush doing on 9/11, again?

Newbs: Reading children’s stories.

Katte: Not to mention Obama’s representative amongst the armed forces was a total jerk-face. And a pussy.

Newbs: Or that “negotiating with the enemy” was an automatic recipe for failure and spelled destruction for humanity.

Catastrophically Offensive Moments

Katte: I am sure any mother, any woman, knows what a pot leaf looks like. So then why is Sam Witwicky’s mother such a dumbass? Not only that, but apparently a two six of hard liquor plus some prescription meds equals a pot brownie.

Newbs: I’m not qualified to say for certain, but her little trip seemed unrealistic for what marijuana supposedly does.

Katte: Extremely unrealistic. But to all the right-wing conservatives, it’s probably the perfect example of why the war on drugs is justified. Despite the fact she just looks drunk.

Newbs: Apparently, tasers are good clean fun.

Katte: Never mind all the people dying from being tasered, let’s tase each other’s nuts!

Newbs: And rape women with little robots.

Katte: Just in case you need the example of robot-leg copulation that this movie provides.

Newbs: My eyes were tea-bagged by the on-screen presence of Transformer BALLS.

Katte: Ah yes, good old “enemy scrotum.”

Characters

Newbs: The Leo Spitz character existed simply as a cheap parody of Shia LaBeouf from the first cinematic feature Transformers.

Katte: Obviously to prove how much spiffier, and generally more macho, the Sam Witwicky in this movie was than his former self.

Newbs: I was overcome with emotion when Sam grew up, as if before my eyes, through the engrossing character development that occurred during the course of the film.

Katte: The way characters interacted throughout was so terribly stilted, so terribly scripted, so terribly acted…it was just terrible. In general.

Newbs: Weren’t you moved when Sam realized he had to be a man, and his parents realized they had to let him go in order for him to grow up?

Katte: Not really. His parents played polar opposites at each end of the movie. His mother sniveled in the beginning and his father whined at the end.

Newbs: Racism.

Katte: I suppose what Newbs is trying to say, is that the only new Autobots introduced with any depth are racist representations.

Newbs: One of them couldn’t read! And they spoke in Ebonics! And one of them had a gold tooth! Jesus Christ. And gaps in their teeth!

Katte: They also had weird droopy eyes and they looked like rodents in their transformed state.

Plot

Newbs: This was half an hour of story stretched to nearly three hours.

Katte: The main fight, Optimus Prime vs. Transformer Voldemort, had two and a half hours of movie leading up to it and was over in a matter of seconds.

Newbs: Sam found that pile of dust, the Matrix of Leadership, awfully easily, considering it was supposed to be so well hidden that all the Fallen couldn’t find it. Somehow, him and his crew of specially abled robots just bumped into a wall and got it.

Katte: I especially enjoyed the moment where Sam died, but was disappointed and horrified when he awoke in the motherfucking robot afterlife. Then when he wakes back up in reality, robot magic! The Matrix is whole again. (After being smashed to smithereens of course).

Final Reactions

Newbs: I walked out doubting the survivability of the human race.

Katte: All I really heard from him was shouted expletives over how horrible of a movie it was.

Newbs: I’ve seen many bad movies, but I can usually laugh at them. This movie made me angry. I was horrified that such an aberration could even exist, let alone make so much money.

Katte: It was a terrible movie at a terrible theatre with no pickles. The company was sympathetic, at least.

Newbs: Thank you for the lovely evening.

There are 22 Bond theme songs, and all of them will thrill you. They begin with Dr. No and run straight down to last year’s Quantum of Solace. Not featured, although given an honourable mention, is The Simpson’s end credit song from “You Only Move Twice.”

To start, Monty Norman wrote the first Bond movie’s theme song. Dr. No’s title is really just James Bond’s theme song entitled “James Bond Theme.” Classic, vibrant, a blast to drive around to in the summer with the windows down and the top off. But it gets disqualified for not ushering the audience into the movie with hushed whispers about this mysterious man and his all-time foe. “From Russia with Love,” which was the first to have John Barry on as the bigwig soundtrack composer, is sung by Matt Munro. It’s slow, kind of romantic, and decidedly not Russian. More of a cross between Neil Diamond and gypsies. A nice song, but Munro sounds like he’s saying “Russi-er” most of the time and that dog won’t hunt. Sorry, FRwL, you’re a fine contender but lack that extra umph.

Goldfinger, he’s the man with the Midas touch! And you can hear Shirley Bassey’s wonderfully piercing voice tell you all about him. If you’re a pretty girl, this is required listening for staying alive. Honestly, this is the go-to for Bond songs– ridiculously dramatic, kind of jazzy, and even though it introduces the villain you can see how the words vaguely reflect Bond as well. A definite possibility for best Bond song, no doubt.

“Thunderball”– or “Thank you, Mr. Tom Jones.” Originally Shirley Bassey wrote the theme song for this movie entitled “Mr. Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang,” but because the lyrics didn’t call for her belting out “THUNDERBALL” every five minutes, a producer demanded a different song. Most of the leitmotifs and musical themes were built around Bassey’s song but oh well. In Hollywood, any day any time, producers can STRIKE. …like THUNDERBALL.

Nancy Sinatra, whose voice cannot penetrate hardened concrete bunkers like Shirley Bassey’s, croons out the slow-going “You Only Live Twice.” It doesn’t sound very much like a Bond song, but it is a nice listen. All about love and danger, which fits the Bond world like a fine leather glove– but where are the tambourines? The jazz, the hip, the skit-skit-skidaddle? “Her Majesty’s Secret Service” tries to bring it back, but… well, it’s alright. John Barry wrote it in the sound of a Gilbert & Sullivan opera, which you can hear when listening, but because it lacks any lyrics whatsoever it’s hard to put it high on the list. Where are the references to spiders and poison lies? Eyes like diamonds that shoot the hope from your smiles?

John Barry told Shirley Bassey to sing “Diamonds are Forever” as if she was singing about a penis. The first lines of the song are “Diamonds are forever, they are all I need to please me; they can stimulate and tease me…” And these are all facts. Hard, rigid facts; unbendable and undeniable.

Wings sung “Live and Let Die.” And honestly, I’m kind of a Lennon man.

“The Man with the Golden Gun” is a pretty hilarious Bond song. It takes the title of the movie and continues on the premise that there is an assassin who has a literal gun made of gold. It’s pretty funny. Much like the next two decades or so of Bond films under Moore’s sappy, though surprisingly racist, family-friendly Bonds. “Nobody Does it Better” is the title song for The Spy Who Loved Me. It’s a slow, piano medley, and the atmosphere matches the movie pretty well. The lyrics are kind of inappropriate for a story about a rival spy who wants Bond dead due to the fact that he killed her husband. The song basically comes out and says “your husband was a punk and this ain’t a gun in my pocket right here.”

Moonraker is an awful movie with Shirley Bassey’s worst song. “Moonraker” is only a fun listen if you imagine that Shirley Bassey is singing about another penis. “For Your Eyes Only” isn’t the worst bond song, but it is the first one of the eighties. Basically, this song reminds me of Bond if he was a member of The Breakfast Club or if he really dug Dirty Dancing. “No one puts Pussy in a corner!”

“All Time High” is the theme song from Octopussy. It is the most un-Bond song here. Unless Bond just kicked a hippie out of a helicopter, its title is almost incomprehensible to me.

You know which Bond song is the worst? Duran Duran’s “A View to Kill.” It’s awful. If you’ve ever seen the movie “Overdrawn at the Memory Bank,” you should recognize how shitty this song is. What the hell, Duran Duran? What’s with the whiny glam-rock? Do you think that sums up a cold-blooded killer doing the Queen’s work across this wide, crazy world? Bond would never “dance into the fire,” he would toss his dance partner into the fire. “She’s hot for me,” he’d say. “And now she’s burning to death.”

A-Ha did the song for The Living Daylights, entitled “The Living Daylights.” I’m kind of pissed off at this song because I don’t know if it sucks or not. Safe bet? It does. But the electric synth-pop breathes such pretty “bip-bleep-bleeps” into my ears. Actually, this sounds like it should be a Brosnan title song instead of Dalton. Friggin’ Dalton. Anyway, Gladys Knight does “License to Kill” and we’re back to dramatic Bond songs. Thank God. It’s a good bridge between that and the upcoming 90s songs which are all a little grungy. Actually it sums up Bond songs pretty well from the start up until the nineties. Dramatic, dour, and sappy all at once.

And here we are– GoldenEye. Tina Turner sang this song for the movie; I wish she had been an unlockable for the game. Anyway, the problem with this song is that the movie doesn’t really live up to it. I’ve always said that one of the main thrusts of the movie–the relationship between Bond and Trevelyan–is woefully underdeveloped. The song works best as sort of a fast chess game, a Spy vs. Spy that should have been dripping from every screen of the film. But as it is, it’s just an alright song that has some really boring lyrics. It’s no Goldfinger, I’ll tell you that.

Sheryl Crow’s Bond song is great. “Tomorrow Never Dies” is this wonderfully noir-ish little song that goes slow for a while and then explodes. Great Bond drama, very nice sound, and Sheryl Crow is pretty good at what she does. Also, the lyrics fit the song title in a lot fucking better than “Thunderball,” I’ll tell you that. Plus it manages to fit the dark humour of the movies in with the fun of breaking the fourth wall!

Garbage did “The World is Not Enough,” and, although every part of me wants to make a pun involving the band’s name, the song is pretty good. It captures the heart-ripped-out feeling that the movie tries to throw out a couple of times. Not the best, I’m afraid, not by a long shot. Not bad, though. Much better than Madonna’s “Die Another Day.” For God’s sake, woman, use your human voice!

Casino Royale’s “You Know My Name” is one of my favourite songs. I’m ashamed to admit it, but there it is. I love the shit out of this one. It’s ridiculously dramatic in lyrics and melody, it’s cartoonish and tries to rock out so fucking hard and I love it. It is also pretty fun to drive around to, but pedestrians will be confused when you scream about how they “know your name” every thirty seconds.

I can’t go on to the next one yet because I’m still listening to “You Know My Name.” Since I’ve now decided to let this one run to the end, I’m just going to go ahead and take this opportunity to spoil another Bond article: best Bond girl. Easily Eva Green from Casino Royale. Come on– she’s feisty and smart and drop-dead gorgeous in every friggin’ scene. Even the one where she’s crying and guilt-ridden over helping to murder someone. Oh, and drowning. I’m man enough to admit when a drowning woman is hot. (Hint: mermaids).

Finally, the only song which might beat out Duran Duran as the absolute worst. The Alicia Keys and Jack White duet– the first duet in Bond history. “Another Way to Die” is not only a terrible Bond song, it’s one of the worst songs I’ve ever heard. At one point–I can only assume because she was too busy checking out chicks to bother writing lyrics–Alicia Keys resorts to wailing like a guitar instead of singing. And not good guitar, either; random, sharp guitar noises that might have been made by a dying coyote. She talks like Mushmouth from Fat Albert at another point. That said, the song is catchy when it’s not stupid beyond belief.

So, truly, what is the best song? Goldfinger? The one about penises? The one with Mushmouth? The answer is simple: “You Know My Name.” “Diamonds are Forever” is second, and “Tomorrow Never Dies” is third.

Yup. There you have it.

Wikipedia tells me that you’re a quintuple-talented performance artist, musician, writer, painter, and actress. Is your talent limitless?

Does this answer your question.

Charlyne, you seem to have managed to make a very good life out of pursuing your own creative interests and not succumbing to The Man. I’d love to do the same, advice?

I suppose I’ve learned the hard way, I have been in situations where I wasn’t happy with the material I was working on. But I’ve realized in partaking in these sort of creative jobs and doing something you don’t believe in — it’ll pay a toll on my soul. And there’s nothing worth hurting that. Life is too short to compromise your soul.

Yes, there are times that you can’t always have your way and have to give in, however, there are ways to make sure you aren’t completely turning your back on who you are.

In the specific job I had taken I didn’t really know I was getting into, and signed up for something where I didn’t get to see the material until the day they brought me on set. When I was on set, I did not like what they had written for me. I was so disappointed in what I was in for. I was signed up for 2 episodes minimum and maybe longer. Luckily, I was such a poor reader (I can’t read well out loud)… I was fired. It was the best feeling ever. I was saved from ruining myself. Now, I won’t take a job unless I approve of the material.

I learned that if I need money, I rather take a day job like waitressing, than take a creative job that I was not passionate about.

I prefer to write in the middle of the night while eating uncooked macaroni noodles. What are your writing habits?

I’m not sure. Sometimes I dream of my ideas while I’m asleep. Sometimes I daydream about situations. I don’t really pay attention too much. Which is probably why I’m always dreaming.

Does it infuriate you when people say that you look young?

No.

So you’re in a band called The Glass Beef, and you have a video on YouTube for a song called “Tony Braxton.” Is it filmed in your home? What are all those jugs (milk jugs?) doing in the background?

It’s filmed in my friend’s apartment. Yes those are milk jugs. Empty ones.

Have you ever heard of cuddle parties?

Nope.

I bet Seth Rogen would be a good cuddler. Thoughts?

Nope.

People are very concerned about the release of a film you co-wrote and starred in, called Paper Heart. When are they going to be able to see this movie?

Strange. Why are people “very concerned”? – I am unsure of it’s release date.

You filmed Paper Heart in Toronto. What do you think of my glorious homeland of Canada?

I think it’s pretty. They’re downtown is pretty too. I had never seen frozen water before. I mean, I’d seen it like in my freezer. Ice cubes. But not frozen lakes, streams, or rivers. It was pretty mind blowing. I like the trees. Everything seems so much cleaner in Canada.

Thanks a lot Charlyne, this has been a lot of fun! May your internet connection remain stable and your Scotch tape maintain cohesion.

Thank you!

Let’s begin with Rory, daughter of Lorelai Gilmore. She is incredibly intelligent, reads obsessively, and knows seemingly everything about literature, popular culture, and current events. She writes for her school’s paper, she’s “cute” without being annoying, she’s not afraid to have sex. In short, she is perfection incarnate.

Now, if Gilmore girls were any sort of ordinary tv show, I would expect Rory to end up with a succession of either dick-ass guys totally devoid of character, played by guys considered attractive by the largely female audience of the show, or a bunch of awesome, well rounded, sane, and intelligent guys played by scrawny nerds. Neither of these is this case with Gilmore girls, however.

Rory’s first boyfriend is Dean, who comes closest to being one of those dick-ass guys devoid of character. He’s pretty much a stereotypical jock early on, but develops into a pretty level headed and sane guy with only one flaw: he shows his affection for Rory. Rory, being such a well written young lady runs away from Dean when he tells her he loves her. This is followed by a small piece of foreshadowing as Rory ends up kissing a rich, useless, dick ass from school, a theme which will return. Miraculously, Rory returns to Dean after a brief time, however. Following this, Rory quickly loses interest in Dean, a guy who dare show her attention, and begins dating the serial jackass, Jess. Jess, though a reader like Rory, pays no respect to those around him, steals and defaces property, can’t bother to attend high school often enough to pass, and generally sucks at life. All of this together causes Jess to appear as some sort of badical badass, irresistible, obviously, to Ms. Female Gender, Rory Gilmore.

Jess’ badicalness eventually causes his relationship with Rory to fizzle as she heads off to college, only to commit the ultimate act of shame. Before that though, knowing that Dean is such a sucker for her, she seduces him just long enough to fuck him a few times and ruin his brief marriage, she ends this new relationship rather quickly, however, by falling in with a group of the richest, prickiest, most conceited bunch of useless cunt fucks ever to walk the Earth. All of this together could probably already be taken as the ultimate act of shame, but no, that is still to come. You see, Rory happens to have a college friend named Marty. Marty’s an awesome guy, shares many of Rory’s interests, treats her well, and just happens to have a romantic interest in glorious Rory. Wouldn’t you know it though, the great Marty rises to the occasion only just in time to compete with the leader of the previously mentioned cunt fucks for Rory’s attention, and loses. Well of course he loses! He’s a decent guy, whereas Logan, that’s the name of the cunt fuck, is not only a cunt fuck, but a rich cunt fuck, an arrogant cunt fuck, a fucking mother fucker of a cunt fuck. Marty is, well he’s “just a friend.”

The other Gilmore girl is obviously Lorelai Gilmore. Lorelai is Rory’s mother, a little older of course, who sports a much more refined shallowness when it comes to mate selection. Lorelai is pretty hot for her age, and she shares much of Rory’s intelligence and encyclopedic pop culture knowledge.

Lorelai’s string of men is a hell of a lot more boring than Rory’s, so I won’t bother covering it all in detail; let’s take a look at the highlights:

• fucks Rory’s dad because he has a motorcycle
• leaves a guy on the day before their wedding because she suddenly decides she’s not quite in love with him enough
• fucks Rory’s dad for no reason because she has no self control
• leads the great Luke on for four years before finally being suckered into a relationship with him
• doesn’t tell Luke that she’s been hanging out with Rory’s dad

Essentially, Lorelai likes to have boyfriends to kill time and fill her insatiable sexual appetite (not that there’s anything wrong with that), but will always find herself wandering back to Rory’s jack-off dad, Christopher. Christopher’s appeal is two fold, his parents are rich, and he’s useless. Christopher spends his time failing at starting businesses, knocking up women along the Eastern seaboard of the United States, and driving a motorcycle.

Gilmore girls has greatly expanded my understanding of the female mind. Where before I would witness the ladies constantly choosing guys for completely incomprehensible reasons and assuring myself that these particular women must certainly be lacking in some regard, and that the decent women were just hiding somewhere, I now have the background knowledge to understand that even the most quality of quality women will still choose the dick ass cunt fucks.

Let’s start off with the channel the movie was on, SpikeTV. Spike is supposed to be a channel for “men.” Now, for the most part this means they cater to the emotionally stunted nerds that men so often happen to be. Certainly, many of my days have wasted away in front of their Star Trek and MXC laden schedule, so I can attest that they do typically cater to this crowd, the kind of “man” that I am. Still, the implication is blatant, Braveheart is on Spike because William Wallace is the kind of “man” that I, nay all men, are “supposed” to be.

Then there is the name of the movie, “Braveheart.” Obviously, this title refers to Wallace. A movie based entirely on the reckless violent whims of its main character can’t just show the audience all that is “man,” and all the ways that we should live up to this example of “manhood,” it actually has to come right out and tell us “HEY, THIS GUYS IS SO BRAVE HIS NAME IS BRAVEHEART.”

Just what kind of “man” is William Wallace? He’s the kind of guy who doesn’t care when his townsmen’s wives are being screwed by the occupying English, but snaps and sends thousands of the same townsmen to their deaths once his own wife is attacked and killed by those same English. He’s the kind of guy who lazily labels his quest of revenge as a quest for “freedom.” He’s tall, muscular, magically well traveled and learned. He’s the kind of man who lets his raving suicidal drive do the talking for him with women, so that they may interpret it as bravery and fall for him unquestioningly. He’s the kind of man who dies only after great struggle and not by some stray arrow during one of his many battles. He dies in the most dramatic way possible, under the “cowardice” of those defending their kingdom through torture. He’s the kind of man whose torture must involve being splayed out on a cross in some blatant Christ imagery. He’s the kind of man who rejects drugs to ease the pain of his torture, opting to “take it like a man.”

The English and Scottish kings, both enemies of William Wallace, are like two halves of a medieval Darth Vader, one with the coughing, the other with the bad skin. In every way they are shown to be the opposites of William Wallace. Where they are cold, intelligent, wealthy men, Wallace is Dr. Crazy Homeless Man. Of course, the movie doesn’t want you to interpret it this way, no, the film insists Wallace’s brutal murderous rampages are the struggle of a man seeking freedom for his people.

The movie is in every way predictable. The first time I saw the English King’s daughter-in-law, the only person in seemingly the entire Imperial court with any common sense or likeability, I knew that Mel Gibson’s mullet sporting character was going to be banging this broad in no time. Of course, a few scenes later she was lubing up just thinking about the deeds of this William Wallace, and wouldn’t you know it, off fucking him a little later. Her unlikable, and might I add flakey and fashion conscious husband, acts as yet another opposite of Wallace. Where Wallace is all that is “man,” the Prince is all that is “eww gay.” I guess a movie which so strictly adheres to Christian ideals has no problem with adultery when the guy is just that awesome, and the cheated-on husband is just that useless.

Braveheart is like a dictionary for defining the masculine gender. Everything about William Wallace is regarded positively, and everything about William Wallace is generic manliness.

I, like many, was first exposed to The Pussycat Dolls with their song “Don’t Cha.”

Don’t cha wish your girlfriend was hot like me?
Don’t cha wish your girlfriend was a freak like me?
Don’t cha
Don’t cha
Don’t cha wish your girlfriend was raw like me?
Don’t cha wish your girlfriend was fun like me?
Don’t cha
Don’t cha

I think the message here is pretty apparent. The ladies are singing collectively about their shared desire to steal the boyfriend’s of other young ladies. Perhaps not the most moral of behaviours, but no where near the realm of madness that would put this song out of my comprehension. Remember the sexual suggestiveness of this song. If I heard a woman saying these things about me, I could only assume I had a pretty good chance of actually getting laid, but let’s move on. The next Pussycat Dolls’ song I was exposed to was “Stickwitu.”

Nobody gonna love me better
I must stick with you forever.
Nobody gonna take me higher
I must stick with you.
You know how to appreciate me
I must stick with you, my baby.
Nobody ever made me feel this way
I must stick with you.

It would seem the disembodied figurehead of our six women has landed herself a boyfriend. Did she manage to steal away the one she was lusting after earlier? Did she manage to land one on her own? I guess what’s going on here is that this female has been contemplating leaving her man friend, the reason being, in case you’re confused, is because “seems like everybody’s breaking up.” In the video for this song, we see the lead singer singing this song into her cellphone while she’s out with her “girlfriends,” a most traumatizing message for the guy I am sure. Still, nothing in this song breaks my mind. The third and final song that I’ve heard from The Pussycat Dolls is “Beep,” which happens to feature a guy named “Will.I.Am,” I think you can figure out who’s singing what here.

[Will.I.Am]
It’s funny how a man only thinks about the…
You got a real big heart, but I’m looking at your…
You got real big brains, but I’m looking at your…
Girl, there ain’t no pain in me looking at your…

Okay Will, we get it, you have the mental ability to process one thing, and you’ve settled on sex, and you’re going to have to assume that this is also the only thing that all men are able to think about. Let’s see what the ladies think of this.

[PCD]
I don’t give a…
Keep looking at my…
‘Cause it don’t mean a thang if you’re looking at my…
I’m a do my thing while you’re playing with your…
Ha, ha-ha, ha-ha, ha-ha

So you’re cool with guys jerking off while they stare at you do whatever it is you do with your life? Awesome, I am down with that, it’s kinky, you must be a sexually liberated woman.

[PCD]
Every boy’s the same
Since up in the seventh grade
They been trying to get with me
Trying to (Ha, ha-ha, ha, ha-ha)
They always got a plan
To be my one and only man
Want to hold me with their hands
Want to (Ha, ha-ha, ha, ha-ha)
I keep turning them down
But, they always come around
Asking me to go around
That’s not the way it’s going down

Oh, wait, so you’re not sexually liberated at all? Actually, you’re a virgin for no reason other than to assert your bitchiness and crush the hopes of the men you meet? And what do you mean you won’t go around with any men? In your last song were you not singing a song to your boyfriend? What happened to that guy anyway?

[PCD]
‘Cause they only want
Only want my ha, ha-ha
Ha, ha-ha
Only want what they want
But, na, ah-ah
Na, ah-ah

So you’re taking Will’s word on this, men only want sex, is that it? They couldn’t possibly want a relationship or anything like that? Hell, what does it matter if all men want to do is screw you, judging from your “Don’t Cha” song, I had to assume you were down with a good time? No? Were you just saying that to get me away from my last girlfriend so that you could break my delicate sanity? You told me you were fun! You told me you were raw!

[PCD]
Do you know that no
Don’t mean yes, it means no
So just hold up, wait a minute
Let me put my two cents in it
One, just be patient
Don’t be rushing
Like you’re anxious
And two, you’re just too aggressive
So try to get your (Ahh)

I’m sorry, all of these assertions of rawness, and your supposed dedication to our relationship led me to believe we could fuck eventually. Oh good, insult me, that will allay my fears of remaining a virgin forever. Tell me, is it your plan to remain a virgin forever as well? Does that make you feel special? What should I be patient for? Another woman to come sing me a song about her rawness, so that I might go try to lay her instead of you, my frosty cunt of a girlfriend?

I will admit, Mr. Kanters, I was initially unsure if I could believe it was really you. This site was what convinced me. It would seem you have a sister! Care to comment on the horror that is having a sibling?

Well imagine having someone who knew everything about you, and wouldn’t hesitate to tell your most embarassing moments to people. Only then can you understand my pain. However, just between you and me that perticular problem will soon be taken care of (evil laugh).

Apparently you worship cheese. Now I like feta as much as the next guy, but what drives you to honor it so?

Every great leader has to have some motivation, for most it is the quest for world domination, I hoever felt that that would be too cliche. So instead I thought about my favorite thing in the world, Cheese, and used that as motivation. You see world domination is only the means to an end. The end being me controlling every piece of cheese in the known universe.

All right, since I’m sure no one has any clue, just how old are you anyway?

I’m 15 but I was 10 when the commerical was shot

What kind of schooling are you in right now? Do you find much time for acting?

I’m currently attending a boarding school of sorts, called the Illinois Math and Science Acadamy or IMSA. SO I don’t have much time for acting. But have no fear, one day I will make my triumphant return.

So how do you do with the ladies? Do you just have to whisper “zoom zoom” and they’re all over you or what?

What can I say, the ladies love the zoom-zoom. My devilish good looks and sexy body help too, but overall it’s all about the Mazda commercial. But in all seriousness, That commercial has done more for me romantically, than anything I could have ever dreamed of.

What is your system of choice for gaming? What are some of your favorite games? Remember, your position in The Alliance hinges on this one!

I’m a PS2 and PC guy, my favorite games are Counter-Strike, Ratchet and Clank Going Comando, Unreal Tournament 2004, Civilization III, and of course GTA: Vice City

Celebrity politicians are all the rage these days. Any interest in running for political office? What would you do to take down the enemies of The Alliance in this position?

Right now I am focusing on building more underground support for the alliance, but someday, I will be president of this fine nation. And when I am, I will first give all of my initial supporters cushy goverment jobs. I will then enslave all who resist my election, and finally take over the world.

From what I gather you live in Illinois. Chicago is in Illinois, this is where the tv show “Family Matters” took place. Steve Urkel is the man. Agree/disagree? Come to think of it… he liked cheese quite a bit too.

Agree, in fact Steve Urkel was the man who inspired my me to get into acting

A man cannot be a car spokesman forever. Plan on furthering your acting career or do you have other ideas?

Yes, unfortunatly the golden years must end sometime, but when the checks stop rolling in, I will begin a career as a lawyer with the intention of getting in to politics.

Does Shufflingdead.com have your official endorsement?

Of Course

Well thank you for your time Micah Kanters. Good luck in the future and may Mazda keep sticking your face in their ads. I’ll probably go ballistic every time I see one of them from now on.

I would just like to add that you are missing The Enlightened Dictator, my swim coach Chris Colburn form the list of my top advisors, I feel he needs to be added seeing as he has helped the Alliance tromendously over the past few years.

Begin with hiring a washed up comedian for your leading role. Don’t worry about having a script or any of that other useless “planning” stuff. I would estimate a good 99% of your theatrical profits come from having a recognizable face in your movie, so you’re pretty much already guaranteed rich.

The filming process should begin on location in wherever the hell you feel like traveling to. A movie’s budget can be as fucking huge as it wants to be, all the money will be made back the first day of its theatrical release. This amazing location is where your washed up comedian should enter. Maybe he’s a veteran explorer or treasure hunter. He’s found an ancient tribes most treasured artifact and is now on a mad dash back to the good ol’ U.S. of A. where grave robbing is looked upon as a noble sport. This five minutes of footage should cost a good seventy million dollars to produce.

Once you’ve got that shot, you can come back to a sound stage and film all of the family drama that films require. Maybe your main characters grave robbing upsets his incredibly hot but troubled vegan fourteen year old daughter. Be sure to include a heartwarming scene where the father has a “heart to heart” with his daughter where he explains how important the desecration of foreign shrines is. After-all, one of them is bound to house the ultimate weapon needed to defeat the approaching alien horde headed for earth! Juxtapose a serious scene like this with some wackay-komeday like your main character’s ten year old son slipping on vomit and splitting his skull open. At some point your main character should also cheat on his wife with the hottest pop singer you can hire. Try to create a scenario where they almost get caught by his wife, this will be a great opportunity to implement your obligatory use of the song “Under Pressure.”

This family drama stuff gets dull after awhile without anybody really doing anything, so once the characters are introduced, spring a surprise wedding on your audience between the fourteen year old and the hot pop singer. They’re both female, so this is some shocking and erotic stuff as well as “relevant to modern life.” Well of course the fourteen year old has lots of pre-wedding jitters, another great opportunity for another “heart to heart” with her father. Once the wedding begins though, things look like they’ll go pretty smoothly… that is until Hugh Grant comes out of fucking nowhere! Oh turns out he’s in love with the pop singer, and she loves him too! They toss the fourteen year old out of the way and have a shotgun wedding right then and there, and run off never to be seen again. You’re probably thinking it’ll be damn expensive hiring this pop singer as well as Hugh Grant for this utterly useless sub-plot, and you’re right. Thing is, you need this shit to keep your retarded low-brow audience entertained so buck up.

Well after this it turns out the object your main character found really is the ultimate weapon needed to defeat the evil alien communist horde coming to destroy earth, thing is, he’s the only one that can use it! Oh my fuck, there’s a shocker that will delight and titillate your audience. Prior to the grand space battle your leading man is required to have with the aliens, be sure that the American President gives a ridiculous flag waving fap off to Americana. During his speech try to cut to patriotic images such as eagles crying, Wal-Mart girls helping customers and Hulk Hogan winning Wrestlemania. Well once that’s out of the way then it’s time for the exciting climax.

I have no fucking clue what this ultimate weapon could be. Maybe a special laser gun that’s been mounted to a pimped out space shuttle. Have your main character fly into space and battle the alien horde for at least an hour, about half the movie. While the hero continuously rapes the alien fleet, make sure he uses lots of witty one-liner’s such as “suck laser bug brains” and “that’s for my emo daughter!”

Once the aliens are defeated I suppose the hero should fly back to earth, upon his arrival Hugh Grant should proclaim his love for the legendary figure. The final scene should involve Hugh Grant fucking your main character and the main character remarking “I thought Christmas only comes once a year.” Maybe Christmas could be the name of your main character, or maybe the line could make no fucking sense whatsoever, I’m not too worried about it. Really, it doesn’t matter as your audience is bound to pick up on the fact that they’re supposed to laugh and therefore laugh.

Well there you go, shoot your movie, have fun being rich.