Cash grab or fond farewell? That is the still unanswered question after viewing This Is It, self-proclaimed King of Pop Michael Jackson’s new concert documentary. Though Poppa Joe may have already answered that question in a recent television interview in which he so heartwarmingly stated, “He’s worth more in death than he was alive.” Nice. The Father of the Year Certificate is in the mail, Joe. Continue reading ‘‘This’ is almost it’
One of my first legitimate jobs , as many a film geek tale goes, was working at a video store. It was a glorious job that gave me access to titles to films I had never heard nor read about before.
Yet of all the names of unreleased comedy and horror films that would flood the store week in and week out, I was endless fascinated by the porn titles. Not for the reasons that one might think, though. For as a young bookworm, I loved their creativity when they would mock the names of current blockbusters, supplanting them with much dirtier, genitalia-based aliases.
Some favorites included: Romancing the Bone, The Sperminator, On Golden Blonde, The Loin King, White Men Can’t Hump, Die Hard-on, and My Bare Lady.
I am sure there are countless lists already assembled and devoted to such cinema. But as a parent whose DVD library has now slowly been pushed aside to make room for more child-friendly fare, I could not help but regress to those earlier years and wonder what some of our family’s favorite Pixar films may have been called had they been remade into films that lay behind the “forbidden doors of the local neighborhood video store. (I know, try not to read too much psychology into it. I have a 20 minute drive to work and one morning my iPod was not by my side, so boredom set in…).
Here’s my thoughts:
Sex Toy Story (think about it, you already have characters named Woody and Buzz. The script writes itself.)
Splat-it-to-me
Ball-E (Just slap a phallus between the little guy’s two sagging eyes and…)
Grinding Nemo
And, of course, the title that would not have to change at all: Up
Any I missed?
Even though I have included a Halloween alternatives list for those avoiding the latest crop of Hollywood-produced hype, I feel there is one more that should be added to the list of overlooked films that land on local video shelves and Netflix new releases, for it is just one of many films that were all victims of circumstance.
It will not be making its debut on DVD for another month, but it is worth, as “Entertainment Weekly” columnist Stephen King wrote, placing on your rental queue immediately. Because it has been barely released in the US, it is a film that is easy to overlook, but it is hard to forget. And it is called Carriers.
The film stars one of the hottest young faces of the year, the new Mr. James T. Kirk himself, Chris Pine as one of four young adults trying to survive after an epidemic has seized the world they know and laid waste to most of the population. Carriers’ focus is tight, remaining predominantly within the group of road warriors as they attempt to reach an ocean-side cottage two of them visited in their youth. Continue reading ‘‘Carriers’: Viral video’
At the annual pre-Halloween Carve-a-thon at our humble abode, here are our creations from this year. The little ones are on quite the “Nightmare Before Christmas” kick, so I thought Jack Skellington was in order.
I dare not show the winners to give them more credit than they already received ($100 top prize and a year’s worth of bragging rights, the bastards). Personally, I think the Mummy idea wiped the floor with them, but I may have been a tad biased.
