Because You Want to Book Club #3: "Eats Shoots & Leaves"

I have faith in my abilities as a writer, but I am admittedly a horrible typist. I can write with an eye for punctuation and grammar, but when I type what I have written, my fingers fly so quickly across the keys that I don’t think twice about what I do. I can make a mess like nobody’s business when it comes to typing. I hate proofreading my own work, but when it comes to reading the work of others I am unabashedly a stickler for punctuation; having said that, I have no intentions of proofreading this once it is typed and posted. I am a stickler for everyone but myself.

Thankfully there are people like Lynne Truss to make me want to make a better effort. I read her book on punctuation “Eats Shoots and Leaves” pretty much only because I found it randomly on a library shelf. I had heard about it and figured it might be the nice refresher course I needed. I was not let down and was treated to more than just the nitpicking ways you can correct punctuation like many of its detractors state. While the book is about not being afraid to correct the punctuation of others, it also allows a lot of valuable insight as to why certain punctuation is used and what necessitated the need for it. Some of the history lessons are simply fascinating.

The book’s one major downfall is that even at a little over 200 pages it is too long by at least a third. A lot of the ground covered becomes repetitive and some of the reading is so dry you have to fight not to skim over it particularly the ridiculously long diatribe about use of the apostrophe (something Truss has written an entire book about as well). Also, and this is being a bit nitpicky, this book is very British. Expect to be inundated with reasons why American punctuation is wrong by European standards, but in the end actually maintains the formalities of the English language that British compositions have stopped using (commas within quotations instead of after, commas after the opening greeting of a letter, and particularly the Oxford comma).

Truss pulls her arguments together quite nicely in the book’s final chapter when she talks of how punctuation is becoming a dying component of language in the era of email, text messages, and on-line chatting. She pulls no punches when discussing how it annoys her, but is more than willing to admit her own short comings. Truss can be a hard ass, but she at least knows when to shut it off to an extent so she is never too hard on herself. She is like the teacher who on the surface seems mean, but has a wicked sense of humour and deep down really wants to help.

Grade: B-

2008 Summer Movie Preview Episode 1

“Because You Want to...” presents a “Because Everyone Else is Doing It” production: the first part of the Summer Movie Preview for 2008. This half will cover all major releases for the months of May and June. The preview for the months of July and August will be posted in late June.

May 2

“Iron Man”- It is almost always a given that the first movie to kick off the summer movie season makes a ton of money, and “Iron Man” doesn’t seem poised to be an exception. Robert Downey Jr. is the perfect choice to play Tony Stark: an alcoholic billionaire narcissist who just so happens to be a superhero. With Jon Favreau (writer of “Swingers” and director of “Elf” and “Zathura”) at the helm you can expect a summer blockbuster that doesn’t take itself too seriously with as many witticisms as explosions. Let’s just hope audiences don’t find the superhero genre to be played out just yet. Also, if you weren’t sold before I have three words for you: villainous Jeff Bridges.

Prediction (of final estimated North American box office gross): $170 million

“Made of Honor” – Patrick Dempsey (looking like an only slightly younger version of Sean Penn) sleepwalks his way through another romantic comedy en route to an easy paycheck with what sounds exactly like “My Best Friend’s Wedding 2: This Time it’s a Dude.” The terrible pun of a title makes it not only sound like the Cuba Gooding Jr. military drama “Men of Honor” but also the obscure Ally Sheedy servant-with-a-dream comedy “Maid to Order.” Despite a trailer that bounces between eye-rolling and polite snickering, this is counter programming at its finest. It will make money slowly and quietly, but money it will make. Bonus points to whoever cast Michelle Mognahan as the object of Dempsey’s affection.

Prediction: $85 million

May 9

“Speed Racer”- I could think of a billion things I would rather do than watch a shitty looking live action version of a shitty cartoon. The list would be witty and full of painful ways to kill oneself without actually succeeding. I refrain because everything about this movie other than the cast seems so bad it doesn’t deserve that much effort. The whole “from the directors of the Matrix” thing ensures one good weekend at the box office and then I fear it will be the punch-line of bad movies jokes for every following week and possibly for years to come; with the exception of a few die hard anime fans who are salivating over this I don’t know of a single soul interested in this.

Prediction: $75 million

“What Happens in Vegas”- I couldn’t think of two better people to star in a movie about greedy people who have a shotgun wedding and then attempt a quickie annulment in hopes of securing a casino won windfall. I do not mean this is a compliment, necessarily. Ashton Kutcher (who at least looks like he is having fun in the trailer) and Cameron Diaz (who does not) could play greedy gold-diggers in their sleep. The trailer has the feel of a sitcom pilot, but that is the kind of comedy Kutcher excels at. I am also going to go out on a limb and say that the movie going public really doesn’t give a shit about either one of them anymore; at least not until they try something different.

Prediction: $35 million

May 16

“The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian”- I don’t think one single movie in recent history could have as much riding on it as this one does. If it fails the film’s producer, Walden Media (who has recently fallen flat on its face with such like minded family fare as “Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium”, “The Water Horse”, and most recently “Nim’s Island”), is finished. A Walden Media movie is almost always a costly affair (with the exception of maybe “Holes”) and with the exception of the first “Narnia” none of them have turned a profit. Hopefully they threw every last dime they had at this one to make it as good as possible. Reports suggest they did since they pushed the release back from this past holiday season to the summer to work on the effects and do some re-shoots. Yet, I am shocked at the lack of marketing I have seen for this one. It is ominous especially for something that is ostensibly a niche franchise like “Narnia” that they aren’t really trying to convert the average movie goer and are relying instead on die-hard fans. Anything less than $200 million will be considered an abject failure.

Prediction: $110 million but look for it to pull in a lot more overseas.

May 23

“Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull”- Do I seem to be the only one worried about the quality of this movie? Harrison Ford has gone beyond old and gotten really fucking old. Seeing him in interviews lately (especially the God awful one he gave to Barbara Walters on Oscar night) I am amazed he didn’t die on the set just from being in the sun. Also, screenwriter George Lucas’ track record recently is suspect at best. But who am I kidding? This movie will rip shit up.

Prediction: $400 million

May 30

“Sex & the City”- Curiosity is a powerful thing. People who haven’t seen the show (which I abhor) will go to see what the big deal is to warrant a movie. Fans of the show will go not only for a continuation of the story line, but to see if it is really any different. Both crowds guarantee a good opening weekend. It will be interesting to see how a movie based on a cable TV show performs in the long run. My guess is not very well at all.

Prediction: $50 million

“The Strangers”- Having a great trailer doesn’t necessarily translate into great success. The fact that it has no bankable stars and that it has been delayed for over a year now does not bode well. Scary movies, however, always fare best in a summer season when released in late May or late August. It doesn’t look half bad and it seems like a good remedy for anyone looking for old fashioned thrills that doesn’t want a big budget blockbuster or a romantic comedy. And if movies like “Bug” and “Vacancy” can make money this time of year, this film shouldn’t have any problem.

Prediction: $35 million but it could go higher if any of the film going public has gotten aggravated at the lack of choices this month. The gross will also climb if its “‘Scream’ for a new generation” hype turns out to be true.

June 6

“You Don’t Mess With the Zohan”- Remember earlier when I said “Made of Honor” was a bad title? This is far worse. Adam Sandler films always make money (unless he is trying to be somewhat serious), but even with co-writer Judd Apatow on board this feels like Sandler coasting more than usual. If you find the cadence of someone who may or may not be gay hilarious, or if you find Israeli terrorism a subject that makes you giggle, this just might be your kind of movie. Me, I will just sit at home watching “Happy Gilmore” and “The Wedding Singer” while wondering what the fuck happened. Also, if you care, Rob Scheneider is in it as well. Odds are at 3-1 that he says “You can do eeeeeeet.” at least once. Also, please no more assassin comedies. They never do anything new anymore.

Prediction: $120 million

“Kung Fu Panda”- It looks cute and has an amazingly talented cast of voices. Dreamworks animation can be hit or miss at times, but in a summer that has thus far been devoid of an animated film for the whole family, it could be the sleeper of the summer.

Prediction: $150 million or higher

June 13

“The Incredible Hulk”- Let’s set aside recent problems regarding the editing of the film. Does it look good? Meh. Does the story sound interesting? Aside from a villain known as The Abomination, meh. Does it stand up well when you put it alongside Ang Lee’s “Hulk”? In terms of spectacle, it looks better; in terms of substance it looks considerably bleaker. Does this movie feel at all necessary? No. At least we probably won’t have to deal with the annoying split screens Lee’s version suffered from (or Hulk hopping from sand dunes), and with “Transporter” director Louis Leterrier at the helm his rumoured 30 minute all Hulk action sequence should at least be entertaining.

Prediction: $120 million if they get their shit together and come up with a better ad campaign in time. $70 million if there is little to no change.

“The Happening”- M. Night Shymalan. “What a twist!” An eco-thriller about plagues (and killer trees) that causes mass suicide. I wish I was speculating, but it is what it is. I am going to forget that they trailer offended just about every sensibility I had and give Shymalan the benefit of the doubt on this one. I do want to see where he is going with this, and I don’t doubt that other people won’t bite as well regardless of how good or bad the movie is. EDIT: The teaser that came out last summer was the one that offended me. The new trailer seems a lot better.

Preciction: $100 million

June 20

“Get Smart”- I remember when a little movie called “The Fast and the Furious” came out. It was an indie film, I think. As soon as the trailer debuted everyone I knew that was a cinema snob shit all over it and general audiences ate it up like the sugar coated candy it was. I never once poked fun at how cheesy it looked. I insisted the movie would make a mint and everyone scoffed at me. I was working at a movie theatre at the time and I decided to take the opening weekend of “The Fast and the Furious” off despite having no plans at all. I went in on opening night to find lines out the door, the building woefully understaffed and every performance sold out for the rest of the night. I promptly laughed in everyone’s face since it was my turn to be the asshole. Fast forward to today. “Get Smart” has a great trailer and a perfectly capable cast (Steve Carell, Anne Hathaway, The Rock, Alan Arkin, and more than a few cameos). Plus, it’s based on a TV show few teenagers today have even seen or heard of. Once again, even people I know who laughed at the trailer say that no one is going to see it. Watch and see, friends. Watch and see.

Prediction: $110 million, but only because it is unfortunate enough to open on the same day as...

“The Love Guru”- I need to take a breath. I have been dreading about writing about this one since I decided to take on this project. It has been mocking me this entire time. I am under constant threat of launching into uncontrollable profanity in explaining why this movie is an unfunny looking rehash of everything Meyer’s has done in the past fifteen years and how Meyers has squandered every last ounce of his talent and good will with me over the years. Meyer’s has unwittingly become one of the four horsemen of the comedic apocalypse alongside Eddie Murphy (Death because he has been around for so long that he has beaten his career to death as well as audiences hopes and dreams for him to ever be funny or good again), Jimmy Fallon (Famine because he is devoid of any humour and still gets work like taking over Conan O’ Brien’s spot on the late show when Conan moves up to take Leno’s spot), and Larry the Cable Guy (Pestilence because he is just fucking annoying). That leaves Meyers as Plague. On the surface he looks innocuous, but once he gets under your skin you are paralysed to watch whatever he shits out. Let’s look at his career: “Wayne’s World” was great. The sequel was terrible. “Austin Powers” the first two were great and the third was an unfunny piece of shit that I had to watch twice just to confirm that I wasn’t in a bad mood the first time I saw it and it really was a huge waste of my time. The first two “Shrek” movies were good, and the third one got old. In case you can’t see what I am getting at, let me spell it out. Meyers is simply creating a wacky new character he can beat into the ground with numerous sequels so he won’t have to come up an original idea for the next ten years. Meyers will gladly take all your money and laugh his way to the bank (or his bathtub in an admittedly funny bit on a Dave Foley Christmas special). This movie really doesn’t look funny and it honestly seems like a zanier version of an Eddie Murphy forgotten flop from the late 90s called “Holy Man.” I guess the plagues need to stick together. Having said that, I must point out that no matter how riotously pissed off he gets me; I don’t doubt Meyer’s capacity for good. I still believe he has good work in him. He just needs to stop doing it all himself. I will need at least three credible friends who I would trust with my life to tell me this is the funniest thing Meyers has ever done for me to consider seeing this.

Prediction: $200 million

“Kit Kittredge: An American Girl”- Were the producers of the “American Girl” series of books just waiting for someone to come along like Abigail Breslin to star? It is slight to be sure, but branding alone will guarantee it one decent to middling weekend before the ass kicking it will receive from “Wall-e” the following weekend.

Prediction: $25 million

Silly Rabbit, Trix are for Sticks OR Mad about MADD

When I was younger and didn’t know any better, I was considerably more excited by Earth Day’s pseudo-holiday status. Much like this past Earth Week, which in all seriousness and with all redundancy set aside should be every week and not just a one week cram session for people who feel guilty, I had no clue what day of the week Earth Day fell on. Apparently it was Thursday. Or Wednesday. Or maybe sometime in May. Who the fuck knows?

When I was much younger, however, I had no problem remembering when Earth Day was. I don’t remember now what the exact date was, but I remember it being a weekday in fifth grade. Back then, thanks to a very generically titled book fair purchase (“Save the Earth!”), I was far more eco-minded. “Save the Earth!” was a very elementary read, but I guess all future Greenpeace members need to start somewhere. It espoused the virtues of reducing, reusing, and recycling. It gave you addresses of people to write so you could better voice your outrage. My mind vaguely mumbles that it said something in great length about saving the rainforests (which was in vogue at the time, before we had to start saving everything). As I recall its cover was a strange Noah’s Ark type homage with a boy and a girl looking way to excited to be on a wooden ship with exotic animals (giraffe, elephant, rhinoceros, velociraptor) all set amongst a sky of blue with wispy white clouds and a rainbow to nowhere over their heads. Oh, and there was a palm tree in the background. Now that I try to remember the cover, maybe I am slightly delusional, but I digress. I wrote that while listening to “Tiny Dancer” played at maximum volume.

One of the suggestions in the book was to start a club to encourage people to take notice of their environment (a word that in grade five I had to continuously write on the blackboard five times at the insistence of my English teacher, Mrs. Avery, for chronically misspelling it despite the fact that I was always right and she was always wrong in her marking. It took my father coming to school and practically shoving a dictionary in her face to show her that there was indeed an “n” in the word. I never had any of my tests re-graded retroactive to her stupidity. I did however make a battle rap about how she had a “fat, fat ass” on my tape recorder. That, despite being a digression, I am quite sadly not delusional about.). Don’t ask me how or why we even decided to do it, but we did. We meaning myself and maybe ten other students teamed up with my social studies teacher Ms. Desy (pronounced De-cee, who also taught me that New Brunswick was actually a part of Canada and not Maine or even its own independent nation) as our official advisor.

The one big event we managed to pull off, other than implementing a half-heartedly embraced recycling programme, was a mass tree planting; mass meaning five. The club’s only concern was a lack of money. I approached our principal, Mr. Shaw, about planting trees on school property, and while he was immediately intrigued at the possibility of getting the dying bushes removed from the front of the property through good, old-fashioned child labour, he said that the school would in no way fund the planting or provide the materials for it. They would hold an assembly for the planting, but they wouldn’t front a single cent. We were also not permitted to raise funds from the student body as a whole because the school board did not recognize us as a legitimate club and we couldn’t become accredited until after the school year was over.

We also wanted to place a bench in front of the trees we planted. One of the club members had parents who had an almost brand new park bench they wanted to get rid of, and we all figured that if we couldn’t plant as many trees as we wanted, we might as well have a monument for the one that we did plant. The bench idea was once again vetoed by administration since having a bench in front of the building “encouraged loitering.” Apparently Mr. Shaw neglected to remember that the entire front of the building acted as a bus stop.

Amongst ourselves we raised about $120, or enough for one very nice tree to go in the front of the school. After much searching we settled on a rather beautiful dogwood that flowered in beautiful pink and white. Still, we weren’t entirely content with just the one tree. My friend Jeff, whose parents owned the park bench and was quickly becoming my second in command, came to me with an interesting, sugar coated idea: we eat a shipload of Trix. Now while eating mass amounts of sugar laden, slightly fruit based cereal created by a giant corporation seems to have nothing to do with tree planting, it turned out that General Mills had gotten on the eco-bandwagon. With every 4 UPC-barcodes you sent in (plus a $1 check or money order for shipping and handling) they would send you a sapling and planting kit.

At that moment it was our solemn duty to go on a strict Trix diet. It was a lot less fun than it sounded. After days and days of eating them for breakfast they really do become gross. After that I had to take a six year break from eating Trix with its sub-Skittle flavouring and the chalky aftertaste it always left on the back of my teeth and tongue no matter how hard or how many time I brushed.

We managed to collect enough barcodes to get four saplings and just hoped we all didn’t become diabetic for them. The saplings arrived quite promptly and it was for the best since the planting was going to happen the following week. It was decided that these saplings would be planted within the woods behind the school where there were bare patches that no one could really explain. It was almost as if these sections of the woods for cut down just for the heck of it and then never developed or had anything replanted in any way. This planting was not going to be a part of the assembly as no one felt like having to move the entire crowd from the front of the school to the middle of the woods, or vice-versa. The assembly would focus on only the planting of the dogwood in the front.

I really wish I remembered more about the planting. One of the local news anchors, Lester Strong, would stop by to say some words and film the planting for a spot to run over the weekend. Much later in life what almost amounted to my first one-night stand would be with his daughter. Mr. Shaw said something. I said something. We all cheered and had a great time. It was a wonderful moment, that sadly I remember very little of to this day with the exception of almost sleeping with the daughter of the most famous person to show up while watching “Demolition Man.” Max Bemis would have been proud had I not frozen and just ignored the fact that I was practically getting a hand-job on her couch.

The trees! Oh yes, the trees! Sorry for that.

The saplings were sadly not long for this earth. Someone had kicked two of them over and the other two appeared to have been lit on fire. They were in the ground less than a week before they were victims of bullying. The dogwood, however, survived and bloomed beautifully. It remained consistent and beautiful.

A year after graduating high school I went back to visit a few teachers and give them my best wishes. I went to the adjacent Junior High School to visit my tree that I hadn’t given as much love to over the years as I probably should have. The tree had grown quite mightily and branched out into a very shady canopy for people to sit beneath.

Only this time there was a bench.

And a plaque.

I took off my sunglasses like Horatio Caine and inspected the plaque that resided next to the brand new bench.

“This bench and tree is presented to the students of Shrewsbury Middle School in memory of Brian Maloney. Beloved son, student, and friend. 1978-1996. Presented in partnership from MADD and Laidlaw.” The plaque has the bronzed signatures of Dr. Preston Shaw and Catherine Mehne, president of MADD, and wife of the school board president, Christopher. Their son was always my arch enemy, and as such, a final screwing from their family is no huge surprise.

Other than being an outright lie, a fraud, and hypocrisy, I was even more upset because of who they were memorializing in the first place. Brian Maloney didn’t even die in a drunk driving accident and was a bully to begin with. It was even suggested at first that he was amongst the group who destroyed the saplings in the middle of the woods. Brian Maloney was a special needs student, but really was a psychopath. He would make off colour and often needlessly graphic sexual jokes in the middle of classes and shit on his teacher’s desk in grade one. All around class act.

Brian never actually bullied me, but I knew people who had been. His bullying wasn’t even that original. He would sucker-punch you and run away so fast you would have thought that Vanilla Ice, whom Brian resembled in dress and mannerisms, had just beaten you up and you didn’t even know it. He was the typical picture of someone who never made it off being a benchwarmer on the junior varsity football team despite being a senior in high school twice.

Brian died drunkenly, but not from an automobile accident. He was at a party where he got the wise idea to lie face down in Lake Quinsigamond; in less than an inch of water and with a red plastic cup still in his hand as if he were looking for a refill before he ultimately drowned. Needless to say, he is the perfect candidate for a plaque and accompanying bench beneath a tree he had nothing to do with and probably carved the “A.D.I.D.A.S” that now ran down the side of it.

I went into the school and realized that the administration had changed. Mr. Hochstein, who used to be the Vice-Principal and was the coach of the High School basketball team, was in charge now. I asked for a brief meeting with him that I was granted as soon as he returned to the office. Hochstein, much like his son Matt, was much nicer and easier to get along with than Shaw. No one was exactly sad to see Shaw go, but apparently according to Hochstein, the plaque and bench were one of the last things that Shaw agreed to before he left the previous year.

Hochstein called Mrs. Mehne on the phone while I was in the office and put it on speaker so I could conference so she could explain herself. Hochstein knew that the plaque in front of his school was bullshit and thought I heard the reason why she would take credit for something involving a kid that only the five students who attended his funeral were actually sad passed away.

She told me that she had no idea that we had planted the tree, but since the Save the Earth! Club wasn’t recognized as an official club that year and only lasted for the one year, the tree was essentially public domain and could be dedicated to anyone. She maintained that my work was completely irrelevant and if I had a problem with the plaque, my gripe lies not with MADD but their corporate partner, the Laidlaw bus corporation. I asked about the bench and she said they did have trouble convincing Shaw to let them put a bench in, but she was quick to remind him that a person had just died and needed to be remembered properly with disregard for such a silly no bench policy.

Her tone of voice was so haughty and disingenuous. I wanted to reach through the phone and strangle her, her entire family, and rip their ovaries and prostates out so they could never reproduce. I despised that family when I was in school and they have made quite the living off of making the lives of the little people in the town completely miserable. I asked her if she even attended Brian’s funeral and if she wasn’t just making him a figurehead for an empty, hollow sentiment. She answered with a simple no to both counts and hung up. Our conversation was over.

I let it go. I was leaving any way. It is a great town and generally a good school system with the exception of the board itself. Besides, if I went to take my tree back, I wouldn’t know where to put it, and if I tried to overturn the bench or plaque, everyone would know right away who did it.

The point, somewhat, of this long rambling entry is that sentimentality in the form of symbolic gestures is complete bullshit. I did what I did for no real reason, which is slightly bullshit, but to have it stolen from me in the name of cheap, hollow sentiment really grind my gears; especially when it came at the hands of a family who have never once done something for someone else that didn’t also reflect nicely on them.

Final Note: Laidlaw, however, was surprisingly accommodating. They said they would replace the plaque and maintain that they had nothing to do with the tree, and just the bench was in memory. I don't know if they were got around to it, but if they did, I have no problem with it.

Because You Want To Book Club #2: Embroideries

There isn’t a heck of a lot that can be said of “Embroideries,” a graphic novel from “Persepolis” creator Marjane Satrapi, other than it is short, enjoyable, and if you enjoyed the author’s previous work, you will not be let down.

“Embroideries” is not so much a sequel to “Persepolis” as it is a continuation in the lives of two of the main characters: Marjane and her grandmother. There isn’t really a story to speak of; no underlying plotline. Instead the book focuses on a group of women sitting down for afternoon tea while talking about past loves and their sex lives or in some cases, lack thereof.

That is essentially the entire book. It is remarkably brief and doesn’t overstay its welcome by running circles around itself. While it feels like more could have been said and the book itself is admittedly, nothing more than a slight diversion, it still manages to deliver a message of openness and how sometimes talking behind someone’s back is “the ventilator of the heart”; being as paranoid as I am those words spoken by Marjane’s grandmother still ring true. This book is a celebration of catharsis in its most pure form; talking to good friends; much like “Seinfeld” without neighbours running and elbowing you in the ribs to make sure you got the joke.

Grade: B

It's That Time Again: Time Capsule Viewers Choice

After a brief hiatus, the Movie Time Capsule Blog has returned and once again, you the reader get to chose which movie I review first. This week's theme will be horribly misguided family films. Voting is open until the end of the week.

"The Adventures of the American Rabbit" (1986)

America! Fuck yeah! Comin' again to save the mot...

Wait. Wrong movie. The most obscure of this week's choices, and the only animated one, is the story of a country rabbit that just happens to be a superhero in love with the good ol' red, white, and blue who moves to the big city to fight the mafia through the power of rock and roll. To quote Charles Solomon of the "L.A. Times:" "Both the writing and the animation are so inept that the viewer expects the governor to interrupt the film and declare the theatre a disaster area!"



"The Garbage Pail Kids Movie" (1987)

What can you really say about the first movie ever based off a line of trading cards? That it's not much worse than Tim Burton's abhorrent "Mars Attacks!" doesn't say much. A young man named Dodger (how Dickensian!) befriends a group of magical misfit youths that are ugly as sin (but beautiful on the inside, as the movie bashes over our heads) and have penchants for projectile vomiting, explosive acne, and... um... one is a jive talking alligator with a foot fetish. Yes, this was aimed at children.



"Mac and Me" (1988)

Easily the most infamous and cult recognized film on the list, "Mac and Me" was funded entirely by McDonald's and Coca-Cola with product placement running rampant throughout it. Sadly, they didn't spend enough money on a script or even the movie itself, really. The whole thing really looks like it only cost a few hundred dollars to make. The movie is essentially an "E.T" clone that came out 7 years after "E.T." about a boy in a wheelchair who befriends a M.A.C. (mysterious alien creature) who needs to be reunited with his family. If you are a Paul Rudd fan, you know the running joke with him, this movie, and Conan O'Brien. It also awarded Ronald McDonald his only acting award: a Razzie for worst new star.

Because You Want to Book Club #1: "How We Are Hungry"

This is the beginning of a series where I review books I have had to double back over time and read now. Mostly since I haven’t had as much time to read as I used to; now that I have all the time in the world, it is time to do some serious catching up.

Dave Eggers has always been a hit or miss author with me. I admire him on so many literary levels, but on a fundamental level, I simply can’t relate to him in any way. I appreciate his ability to make something out of nothing. It was that very ability that caused his debut memoir “A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius” to be such a runaway best-seller and cultural cornerstone. But much like the films of Wes Anderson (“Rushmore,” “The Darjeeling Limited,” and for this example I am about to give in particular “The Royal Tennenbaums”) and the music of Andrew McMahon (lead singer of Jack’s Mannequin and former lead singer of emo stalwarts Something Corporate), Eggers often lets his own personal privilege get in the way of his characters; even if the character is the writer himself. Eggers, Anderson, and McMahon all come from a rich white upbringing and it shows through in their writing, films, and songs, respectively. At their best, they create universal themes that people can easily relate to. At their worst, you get the sense that they want to be admonished just because leading a blessed life is just so damned hard. It can even seem like, at times, there are no other people in the world rather than the rich denizens of Orange County where they all grew up.

I loved “Genius” because it was so real and painful, but I could never quite relate to such a privileged and well off family no matter how much they might have suffered. “You Shall Know Our Velocity” was a crashing bore in which class and privilege are relied on far too heavily and made me not want to give him another chance no matter how good of a writer he was. “Velocity” played like someone with an overly severe case of taking oneself far too seriously while suffering from rich white guilt. Ever last smarmy word dripped with the thought that Eggers wanted a medal for his allegory. I use the word allegory because while “Velocity” was a fictional story, coming off of “Genius” it was impossible for me to separate his characters from the man himself. It didn’t help that I found both of the characters so loathsome that I couldn’t have cared less what happened to them. I still managed to give “What is the What” a try and I am glad I did. At points it moved quite slowly, but in the end was a well-written and well-balanced affair. “What” showcases Eggers at his best; it is when he is able to step outside himself and place himself almost directly into the shoes of another person that is not at all like he is. It was reading this book last year that made me go back and read his collection of short stories titled How We Are Hungry.

The first stories are regrettably quite forgettable and slight with only a small amount of entertainment value in the third story “The Meaning of the Oil Wet Water,” which is actually a continuation of sorts of “Velocity.” The rest of the collection, however, is solid gold and showcases some of Eggers’ best work.

“Climbing the Window, Pretending to Dance” is a simple yet powerful story of a man incapable of understanding his cousin’s repeated suicide attempts. “Quiet” is a story so shocking and atypical that one might have a hard time believing Eggers could come up with something so unsettling and off-putting. “Your Mother and I” injects some much needed humour into the collection. “Notes for a Story of a Man Who Will Not Die Alone” is exactly what he says it is, but it is so well done that the actually story isn’t necessary.

Two of Eggers’ more familiar works are also included in the collection. The story “Up the Mountain Coming Down Slowly” features an interesting perspective on a vacation that probably shouldn’t have been taken in the first place. This tale of a woman who feels obligated to take a non-refundable trek up Mount Kilimanjaro to appease her sister plays like the ultimate pissed off travelogue. The book’s closer “After I Was Thrown in the River and Before I Drowned” has always been my favourite work of Eggers, and its inclusion here is delightful. Eggers takes numerous writing conventions from using short fragmented sentences to long, rambling, almost incoherent paragraphs to tell the story of a puppy who is quickly coming of age. Eggers arranges his different elements into a roiling symphony that reaches a boiling point before its over, but by the end reassures us quite gently and movingly that in the end things generally work out as they should.

In the end, Eggers tends to keep his class privilege to himself and creates some of his best work to date. I can’t mark off too heavily that the first few stories aren’t terribly successful, and on top of that, with the exception of “Water,” they are all brief making the start slow, but not deathly.

Grade: B+

Coming Soon: Roger Ebert’s “Your Movie Sucks,” “Eats, Shoots & Leaves” by Lynne Truss, “Embroideries” by Marjane Satrapi, “The Know It All” by A.J. Jacobs, “The Raw Shark Texts” by Steven Hall, “The Road” by Cormac McCarthy, and many more, hopefully.

Diddiology 3.5: "Come With Me"

Danana...Danana...Danana...Danana

As I write this that is all that is going through my head. That and constantly thinking about that giant fucking CGI effect that killed many people’s imaginations back in the early summer of 1998. And now on the 10^th anniversary of the God-awful American/French/British/Canadian/Anything but Japanese remake of “Godzilla” we examine in part 3.5 of Diddiology how the excesses of others can make you do pretty much anything; especially when a truckload of money is involved.

It was customary to have numerous tie-ins with a summer tent-pole blockbuster like Columbia Picture’s Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich created crime against humanity and common sense. There were usually toys created by some fly-by night corporation known as, of all things, Trendmasters:

There had to be a fast food tie in, that quite often would pair one cultural abomination with another:

And above all else there had to be a kick ass soundtrack. Combining disparate elements of music was nothing new. Three year’s prior the “Batman Forever” soundtrack was a huge success combining electronica, hip-hop, and rock The “Godzilla” soundtrack, however, while selling a ton of copies (it is currently out of print), had exactly two good songs on it: A Ben Folds Five song that was horribly out of place and a Rage Against the Machine song that even calls “Godzilla,” and I quote, “pure motherfuckin’ filler.”

But as much as I would love to make this post be about the myriad of reasons why “Godzilla” was an abject failure, this is still a series focusing on the myriad of reasons why Sean Combs is an abject failure. In truth, if it weren’t for “Godzilla” the series would not even exist. For his contribution to the “Godzilla” soundtrack, which had to be inspired by a shit load of money delivered in an armoured car in untraceable bills laundered through a charity bake sale for one of the bifidas, is easily one of the worst songs ever written, and if you don’t believe me, please feel free to ask my guest blogger this week, my ex-girlfriend and fellow Diddy basher, Ms. Jenna Hossack.

Last summer, in a fit of boredom, I began looking up videos that Mr. Combs made. It was late at night, probably sometime around two in the morning where you are so tired that pretty much anything and everything is hilarious. I was living with Jenna at the time and we sat down to have a great laugh at his expense. We watched the videos for “Victory” and “Come With Me,” but the latter was the one that inspired the most snarky comments. We wondered how such a terrible song could ever have been made outside of a giant, overblown Hollywood blockbuster gone terribly wrong.

The blame doesn’t really land so much with the filmmakers. In the end, they had nothing at all to do with the song. The only person you could possibly blame was Diddy who has never really tried too hard with his lyrics, but here, much like “Godzilla” he attempts to make the most over the top spectacle of a song possible by drugging (or so I hope) Jimmy Page to play the repetitive riff from Led Zeppelin’s “Kashmir” over something that Taking Back Sunday would describe as being, at best, worse than teenage poetry.

Andy: Do you have any opening thoughts on the song before we get going?

Jenna: When I was 11 I actually liked this song.

A: I did as well, but I think most of that was just because of the Led Zeppelin hook.

J: When we got the internet, I downloaded it.

A: I actually bought the “Godzilla” soundtrack, but I think that was mostly for Rage and Ben Folds. At least, that’s what I keep telling myself. Your brother still has it on his iPod.

A: When do you think your opinion of the song changed?

J: I forgot about it during high school. Then it came up on random on mom’s computer and I was like “What. The fuck.”

A: I think for me it was when I actually saw “Godzilla.”

(Please note that this liveblogging is not time coded in any way, as it was patched together over several viewings of the video, each more punishing than the last, and over the internet. I apologize for any inconvenience Diddy made us cause.)

Andy: Is that a radar I just heard?

J: Yes.

J: Oooooooh. New York. Swanky

A: It’s always New York. He’s not allowed anywhere else.

J: Who is that singing at the beginning?

A: Whoever Puffy stole the beat to “Big Poppa” from. (Non existent editor’s note: It is actually, as I had suspected, Ron Isley)

A: When the camera pulls back from the TV like that at the start of the video, it looks like he fell asleep watching “Godzilla.”

J: What a coincidence!

A: Or started fucking to it, which is even more disturbing.

J: He could have looked a lot happier in that dream.

A: He was kind of bored. Can you see that as a come on? Let’s go back to my place to watch “Godzilla” and make love and I will show no interest in you or the TV.

A: He sleeps fully clothed and sitting down, I see.

J: BOOM!

A: He totally says “Oh shit” before Godzilla breaks the window.

J: Movie clips!

J: o hai there bus

A: He’s lucky the set falls down around him in slow motion.

J: Well, the city’s a disaster. I guess I better sing.

A: I see your loss. There’s a fucking bus in your apartment.

A: And when the apocalypse arrives Jimmy Page shall appear over Times Square.

J: Did they just bleep out pistol packing?

A: Yes. They did.

J: And trigger happy. And instead of being set on fire, he gets to go on a Willy Wonka elevator ride.

A: It’s Diddy and the Great Douche Elevator. There is now way that elevator is in the Flatiron building. In Toronto or New York.

J: Why would I want to wiretap him?

A: Time Halts? See my loss? This second verse is pretty fucking emo.

J: Look, throwing a hissy fit in an elevator that’s flying out of your building is not going to help your situation.

J: Our favourite line- “I cosigned it”

A: Yes. Shit backfired. Also, this elevator jumps ten floors at a time. There is nothing that can make you stop on, say, the 26^th floor even if you wanted to.

J: No thanks, I have enough drama.

A: Likewise, I don’t want any trauma.

A: Doves? This is just the “Victory” video.

J: Apparently Diddy is made of them. Maybe this is supposed to mean he’s dead.

J: Awwww, all pretty like. But not because of his singing.

J: Somehow there was enough time to assemble a stage and an orchestra pit in the middle of a disaster zone.

A: It’s like the orchestra pit was an airbag to catch him after his “fall from grace.”

J: I think this is a huge display of class privilege. Diddy can afford to hold a concert while the rest of the city cowers in fear.

A: He has plenty of room to breathe. No one is near him.

J: And you’re up to your ears in what?

A: It.

A: You know some women find flailing around on stage seductive.

J: They do.

A: Some say it’s lunacy.

J: I do.

J: Reluctantly moving on? After all this anger?

A: I won’t “pollitit?”

J: Forever + Ever + A Day = Never? Some weird math there.

A: He’s showing more energy here that I think he ever has. About the only dance move he doesn’t attempt is the splitz. This video is actually better put together than the movie was. That was a nice spin move.

J: That’s my Godzilla impression!

A: How did his shirt come undone?

J: His jacket came off a while ago.

A: But his shirt keeps on buttoning and unbuttoning.

J: Continuity error!

A: Turn you up? With what? You just said the same thing three times before you continued the verse. You tell the producer to turn you up at the start of the song, not two thirds of the way through it.

J: I would like to keep my ears, thank you.

J: Who the fuck has fireworks in this situation?!?

A: People afraid of getting busted for having them in the inner city any other time of the year.

J: Wheeeee! Spinny!

A: Was he just doing the monkey?

J: Probably.

A: Fuck you mic stand!

J: Diddy smash!

A: Is he trying to lure Godzilla or just annoy the fuck out of him?

J: My mom told me not to go anywhere with strangers.

A: I think he’s having a seizure.

J: Someone call a medic!

J: You aren’t taking me anywhere asshole! Is it forever or never? I need a clear answer. That way I can plan my life around avoiding you. Or rejoice in your absence.

A: No it’s forever and ever in a day that’s never.

J: Bah.

J: o hai there Godzilla

A: He looks so fucking nonchalant there. Like he’s just begging Godzilla to take a swing at him. Why doesn’t he just punch Godzilla right in the face while he’s at it?

J: He’s just that bad ass.

J: Ewwwww. Bad breath.

A: Well, I’m sure Diddy’s poo stache doesn’t smell much better.

A: And he walks away like Godzilla isn’t even worth it.

In closing:

Movie Time Capsule Blog #8- "Trick or Treat"

Metal and horror movies go together like peanut butter and jelly (or ladies if you prefer). You almost can’t have one without the other. In the past twenty years, with a few dubious hip-hop related exceptions, almost every horror film has had at least one metal or nu metal song on the soundtrack.

Much like the terms “emo” and “indie” the word “metal” has become completely subjective. It wasn’t always this way. In metal’s heyday from the late 70’s to the late 80’s, if something was metal, you immediately knew it and almost no discussion was required. If a band was on “Headbanger’s Ball” prior to 1989, the band was metal as fuck.

Despite metal’s degeneration into numerous sub-genres, many of which end in –core and thusly denote a punk connection that isn’t entirely accurate, metal and horror have remained the best of friends. The dark, ethereal release of metal in a way perfectly counterbalances the nihilism inherent in most splatterfests. No matter how off-putting the violence is or how real and intense it may seem, most viewers that aren’t bat shit crazy can tell the difference to a real murder and one set to Megadeth.

Based on such a pairing, one would think that a horror movie about demonic messages buried within metal music made in the mid-1980’s would have been a can’t miss proposition no matter how dated it would become over time. The idea could be a wonderful starting point for a grotesque satire and broad critique of censorship in general. Or you could play it straight and become a trash cinema classic. Alas, much like Metallica’s career, 1986’s “Trick or Treat” (not to be confused with the much delayed “Trick ‘r Treat” due out sometime within the next few years) starts off hitting all the right notes before giving way to the false metal that the film spends its better half railing against.

The film opens in the bedroom of a young metal fan after an admittedly pretty metal opening credit sequence. The walls are adorned with the posters probably pilfered from purveyors of the pre-eminent metal poster publications of the time. All the greats are here: Priest, Ozzy, Quiet Riot, and the man to whom the young man is writing at the start of the film, Sammi Kerr. The name of the fictional Kerr is about as cerebral as the film gets.

The young and unfortunately named lead character Ragman (real name Eddie and played by “Family Ties” alumnus Marc Price) writes his letter to Kerr in such a painfully awkward and innocent fashion that you can’t help but snicker and feel for him at the same time. Almost on the verge of tears over the cancellation of Kerr’s Halloween concert at Kerr’s former and Ragman’s current high school due to Kerr’s “suggestive lyrics and on stage theatrics,” Ragman uses phrases like the obviously stolen from Led Zeppelin but still profound “song remains the same” and the unintentionally hilarious “rock’s chosen warriors will lead the way” without a shred of irony or regret.

It is a testament to Price’s performance that he never once adds a knowing wink or nod to the audience that you would probably find in a more contemporary movie of this nature. Ragman is hopelessly awkward (albeit with little back-story to explain why). Ragman is so socially stunted that it remains unclear if he is actually writing to Kerr as a pen pal or it is as if Kerr is a journal in which he expresses his feelings.

Unlike most movies, “Trick or Treat” eschews traditional metal stereotypes through its lead character. Ragman is definitely not a scary person or intimidating or bullish like a lot of metalheads are portrayed. Ragman’s school life is hell and he is teased constantly and bullied by almost everyone at the school. His bullying isn’t even brought on as a result of him liking metal music. The other “normal” kids simply single him out based on awkwardness and innocence alone.

Shortly after writing the letter to Kerr we are shown footage of Kerr testifying before a Senate subcommittee looking into “rock pornography.” Then after the clip is shown on the nightly news do we learn that Kerr just died in a hotel fire earlier in the day. The causes of the fire were mysterious, but if Kerr was as metal as he was reported to be the room was probably soaked in Jack Daniels and it went up in a fire ball while falling asleep with a cigarette in his mouth.

Needless to say Ragman is inconsolable and rips down all the posters in his room as if he had just gone through a really bad break-up. When he comes to the poster of Sammi, however, Ragman can’t bring himself to tear it down and resigns himself to crying himself to sleep. I have been there. I cried myself to sleep when Jim Henson died and threw my Ernie doll across the room out of frustration and sadness. I felt so bad about it afterwards that I held Ernie all night within an inch of my life. But that’s not very metal at all now, is it?

Then just in time for Rocktober, we are introduced to a make-up and plastic surgery free Gene Simmons as the town’s lone metal disc jockey, Nuke, although with the ridiculous cowboy hat he wears he looks more like a roadie for Poison than a self-proclaimed rock god. Simmons plays the role of sympathetic mentor to ragman in his brief but effective cameo. Gene genuinely likes the kid, but wilfully admits to him that the man he idolizes was an enormous asshole who was “mad all the time.”

Before you can say “magic ticket,” Simmons gives Ragman a parting gift: the original copy of the last song recorded by Sammi Kerr. The song wasn’t going to be released to air until Midnight on Halloween, but Simmons gives the kid the original since he has already made a copy of it.

That night Ragman puts the album on and begins to drift to sleep to the tune of the worst song in the world. Also, for an original copy it is already skipping and is clearly saying something backwards. When Ragman’s curiosity is piqued and since he can’t go back to sleep he plays the record backwards and is told to “let the others hurt themselves” and mumbles something about “bait.”

Upon his return to school the following morning he is harassed once again by the ascot and dickey crowd. After dumping food all over one of the jocks (the leader of which looks like an asshole version of Mark Hoppus, but is played by Doug Savant of “Desperate Housewives” fame) what ensues is quite possibly one of the best and most ridiculous hallway chases in cinematic history. (This clip includes both the first listening to the record as well as the chase, but the chase needs to be seen to be believed. Trust me when I say you won’t regret it.)

It becomes apparent that Ragman has a connection to the record and to Sammi whenever the album is played backwards, which no matter how satanic it might be is still better than listening to it forwards and at a normal speed.

It was at this point that I was mentally reminded that Diablo Cody is currently working on a film about a girl who gets brainwashed by a satanic emo band. My biggest hope is that she watch the first two-thirds of “Trick or Treat” (if she hasn’t already) and takes note of the painfully awkward dialog spoken here that wouldn’t seem out of place in a “Juno” or “Napoleon Dynamite” type movie. Hell, if Hollywood even wanted to remake “Trick or Treat” today, Michael Cera would be a great choice for the lead.

For example, upon returning to school after vanquishing his foes the previous day, Ragman decides with his newfound confidence to compliment one of his female friends on their attire.

Ragman: “What are those?”

Girl: “Jeans.”

Ragman: “They’re you.”

By horror movie standards “Trick of Treat” really takes its sweet time to get going. Ragman doesn’t even realize that what Sammi is telling him to do is getting far too murderous until an hour into the movie when the record has already sent one girl to the hospital after listening to a mixtape Ragman made for her, made Doug Savant go insane, and told him to kill his mother because, and I quote:

“NO FALSE METAL!”

It is made apparent when Sammi shows up in Ragman’s room in a bolt of lightning before eating a cameoing Ozzy Osbourne (playing of all things an evangelical preacher), that Sammi can appear out of anything that can receive a signal and trying to unplug him will cause you to be tossed across the room like a toss across.

Sammi as he is portrayed here looks about as terrifying as Nikki Sixx stumbling out of a burn ward after passing out face down in a cast iron skillet. Not to say that the actor portraying him doesn’t do a good job (Tony Fields, who sadly died of cancer made worse by AIDS only a few years after the film’s release), but I don’t think he looked in any way terrifying. Aside from the burns on his face he looks very typical.

The next morning Ragman sends his friend Roger (played by “Final Destination” creator and “X-Files” scribe Glen Morgan in his only acting role ever) to track down a copy of the song on tape and destroy it. Roger mistakes “destroy” for “listen to” and both shockingly and unshockingly Sammi appears. Instead of killing Roger Sammi tells him to play his tape at the big Halloween dance later that night. Sammi kills someone else through the TV and leaves.

The big scene where Sammi is finally able to play the Halloween gala at his old high school should be the movie’s chance to make up for the fact that up until this point it has been completely bloodless. Sadly, it is ultimately where the film begins to fail spectacularly and never look back. Sammi’s solos might be able to literally melt faces, but the whole scene (punctuated by the music of the band Fastway that included singer Dave King who would go on to form, of all things, Flogging Molly and Eddie Clark of Motorhead) plays like a metal nerd retread of the prom in Carrie.

This video is actually the song from the credits, but I include it here to show everyone just what the music sounds like and how almost unfathomable that the lead singer would go on to front an Irish punk band.

The entire third act feels horribly chopped up and rushed as the filmmakers must have felt the need to hurry up and tie up all their loose ends before the 98 minute running time is up. If you aren’t even going to show your villain until an hour into the film, you shouldn’t race the plot to the finish line.

To say that the film’s climax and ending are a pointless and incoherent letdown is an understatement, but it does involve an electrocution involving someone getting a hand stuck in the toilet. People race around from point A to point B with no explanation as to how the hell they got there and continuity is thrown to the wolves. You would think that a movie that manages to cram three car chases into its last twenty minutes would be able to explain such logistics. There is really no excuse for it other than sheer laziness and shoddy editing. Come to think of it, does any horror movie really even need one car chase?

Ultimately “Trick or Treat” starts off quite cleverly which would have made its descent into genre conventions almost forgivable or at the very least entertaining. The films decent into complete incompetence nearly squanders all the good will it has earned. It changes tone and style so abruptly and in an unconvincing fashion it almost feels like it was made by a completely different crew and nearly sinks the entire project. It never manages to be scary, suspenseful, gory, or menacing and everything plays out exactly how you think it would. And in the end a horror movie that isn’t scary, isn’t metal. It’s inventive and clever first and second acts save it from abject abasement.

Verdict: Middle of the Road with moments like the chase scene that are Hidden Gems

Side Note: “Trick or Treat” was filmed in Wilmington, North Carolina. The same place my last TCMB entry “Maximum Overdrive: took place and was filmed. It is also home to “Scream” scribe Kevin Williamson and would later become the hub for shooting large parts of Williamson’s “Dawson’s Creek” and its non-union counterpart-slash-knock-off “One Tree Hill.” I never knew Wilmington was such a hub of cinematic activity.

Diddiology 3.0- "Victory"

The key word for this week’s one-two punch of Diddy aimed squarely at your solar plexus is excess. Diddy has never shied away from having a flashy lifestyle (something I will get into in greater detail in my closing argument in two weeks), but he is also a very shrewd man of limited to middling talent. As a successful producer, Diddy realized that:

1. You have to spend money to make money
2. Once you have found success, people can pay you to do just about anything.
   

While today’s entry will focus on the first aspect, I feel compelled to point out how both concepts are intertwined. Essentially, if you want to be successful in any kind of performance art other than mumenshantz or shitting on sidewalks while spouting the national anthem, you really can’t have one without the other.

I know from personal experience and from countless acquaintances that success in the entertainment industry is something you have to buy your way into. Writers often have to pay people to have their stories read. Directors who are just starting out often have to pay their own way, and once their dreams are realized they still have to pay to get their movie seen by the people who can help them eventually pay off their debts. Actors often have to pay for audition materials and manuscripts. But no matter how jaded I have become as a struggling writer, I have to admit that being a musician is probably the least life affirming profession in the arts and quite often a child’s musical dreams are crushed almost as soon as they see hundreds of other kids in their high school band alongside them. Most of them aren’t terribly good and it is often the first time a musician will realize that playing an instrument probably isn’t a sound career choice.

If a musical artist remains undeterred and chooses to make a go of it then they better have a lot of money. You have to protect your work. You have to buy and constantly replace equipment. Then you have to hit the studio either with your band or one that you have hired. The producer has to get paid or you can do it all yourself and pay even more money for the equipment. No matter how DIY you are you have to pay for CDs or tapes to get your demo out. Add the need to constantly tour to gain exposure and actually survive, you begin to wonder where you could ever find the time to take on a second job just to pay the bills. More so in music than any other medium that I can think of does luck and marketing play a bigger role. Timing is a huge part as well.

In the music industry, once you have established yourself you had better be an icon or you just won’t survive. Writers will always be able to find piecework if they want it and actors will always have bit parts. Musicians often don’t have many decent paying options, as such it can lead you do things you wouldn’t normally do, but more on that in the next entry.

Diddy, just like anyone else seriously trying to break into the music business made his own opportunities and worked his way up from being an intern, to a producer, to a manager, and a label owner, and only then did he decide quite narcissistically that he could do the same things the artists that surrounded him did. In a way, that could be the easiest way possible to gain success as a musical artist. So taking what he learned from his marketing days, Diddy decided to spend a lot of money when making the video for the second single off of “No Way Out,” “Victory.”

Admittedly, this is a pretty killer song and one of only two Diddy versed tracks that I can stomach without having much to make fun of. Diddy saw potential in the song and its Mafioso swagger, but he must have thought it would be a tough sell. Puffy was vastly outmatched and overshadowed by the late Biggie Smalls and Busta Rhymes, who is still a more commanding personality than Diddy is even when he is just singing the hook.

Strictly from a song writing standpoint, “Victory” is the strongest thing Sean Combs has ever crafted and his sampling of the “Rocky” theme is so subtle it can go almost unnoticed even by the most trained ears. By Puffy standards this entire song is almost subtle and restrained. So in order to get it noticed, Diddy crafted one of the noisiest and unsubtle videos ever created.

“Victory” ranks as the fourth costliest music video ever made, but is probably the most recognizable since numbers 1-3 are instantly forgettable (*). Directed by music video veteran Marcus Nispel (**) the video is an unapologetic inner city remake of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s “The Running Man” with Diddy in the Arnold role. That would be just fine, but not only does the video not fit the song at all, it is overblown paean to ridiculousness.

Before I run the video and live blog it as I always do, I would like something noted for the record and in Diddy’s favour. Despite the astronomical cost of the video, not once does Diddy stoop to using product placement to pay for it. Pete Wentz and Young Jezzy, I am looking squarely at you guys.

0:06- I really want to know how much money it pays to dance in a tube for hours on end.

0:13- Random falling orange and banana. That shot probably cost five grand.

0:21- 3002 A.D. The setting is the Northern Region of Earth inside of a vaguely warehouse looking thing because if there is one thing we have learned from Sci-Fi movies, the future will be dark and have warehouses everywhere.

0:36- Diddy’s apartment looks like he is crashing on the abandoned set of one of the “Alien” films.

0:42- The New World Order? What is this WCW circa 1999?

0:45- Sadly, beeper technology has taken a step back over the past millennium.

0:53- Really, judging from this overhead shot you would figure even a post apocalyptic New York City would look slightly different than it does here. Also, apparently the twin towers get rebuilt at some point.

0:55- Danny DeVito appears as the host of “Chase TV.” I don’t really have a joke here, but the fact that DeVito is in the video should suffice.

1:03- A 3.6 average? In what? Ratings? Kills? School? And five seasons in the playoffs? As the video goes on everything DeVito says makes less and less sense. Also, if Diddy is 6’ 180 lbs, it could be a fair fight between the two of us if he ever decides to come after me for this column.

1:12- The first of about a bajillion explosions.

1:14- His top speed is 320 km/s. Is he a fucking cheetah? I’m afraid to see how fast he is without that big ass trench coat.

1:20- Code name: PD. Do we have to call him this now, too or is it just his character. Also, the song is just kinda, sorta, starting now-ish.

1:28 Also, just like in “Godzilla” when your ambition doesn’t entirely match your budget, you make it rain for the entire video.

2:05- It’s good to know that Diddy can stand around for a full minute and a half to spit a verse when the fucking army is chasing him.

2:07- So are you both making plaques, then?

2:26- My name is Sean Combs, pronounced “Wesley Snipes in ‘Blade’”.

2:30- OK, I really don’t know how to describe that whole sequence back there. The crazy party is still going on, Diddy is being chased by an inexplicably sparking garbage truck, and they had another shot of the military dude from earlier still shouting orders. I guess $2.7 million doesn’t buy you a decent editor.

2:39- Dennis Hopper looks reflective.

2:42- There is that same fucking military guy again! Did they just hire two guys dressed in fatigues and forget to hire the rest of the army?

2:55- A motorcycle pulling dudes on skates. I guess the rest of the army is comprised of extreme sports enthusiasts.

3:00- I would hate to fart in that tube if I had to work in it all day.

3:05- What the fuck just blew up?

3:07- Shallowest manhole ever.

3:10- Again, what is blowing up? No wonder Michael Bay hired Nispel to helm his remake of “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.” This guy will blow up anything.

3:28- Busta Rhymes shows up and has a spasm.

3:44- If they have all the helicopters and they are on a bridge, couldn’t they just surround him and blow the bridge up?

3:55- Busta looks like he has one hell of a toothache.

4:03- Back to Danny in the Diddywatch-4 helicopter. He neglects to mention that if you are heading out of the city you could hit some trouble on the bridge because it is on fucking fire.

4:18- What kind of fucked up fever dream is it where Dennis Hopper is running the free world? Didn’t they see “Super Mario Brothers?”

4:27- Apparently the Mafia has take over the world and turned everything into one giant game.

4:29- This girl in the peep hole has nothing to do with anything in this video.

4:35- How exactly is this even martyrdom? Other than it being what probably plays out in Diddy’s mind every day.

4:47- Oooooo. Delete. That couldn’t possibly be less bad ass.

5:04- Despite how ridiculous those doves look coming out of Diddy’s sleeves, this video is still better than watching “End of Days.”

5:05- Right there. That is the reason people don’t use “dog” anymore.

5:12- Why do you really need your ass on a bag of money?

5:25- Diddy is such a peaceful guy he practically shits doves.

5:28- Meanwhile in Mordor, Diddy prepares to cast the last of his dignity into the fires of Mount Doom.

5:42- No, seriously, how the hell did he get to the cliff?

5:50- Diddy’s stunt feet can leap from a mountain to a mansion in a single bound...

6:03- ...and apparently directly to another warehouse.

6:13- Diddy very tenderly tells the young man that in a world run by the mafia that you never snitch.

The last minute or so of the video just plays like a clip show of the last seven minutes.

7:07- Why the fuck don’t they just shoot him? Is his pro-tooled voice really that hypnotising?

7:19- So did he just jump into heaven or hell?

7:29- OK, now you are just using the same shots over and over again.

7:43- At least Diddy lets it be known who the real star of the song was.

*- Number one is Michael and Janet Jackson’s unlistenable duet for “Scream” that cost at the very last four times as much as “Victory” did. Two and three belong to Madonna for “Die Another Day” (a.k.a. the worst Bond theme song ever) and “Bedtime Story,” respectively. I don’t even remember the song “Bedtime Story,” let alone the video.

**- In addition to this video Nispel has directed videos for such a wide array of artists from Billy Joel and Elton John to Faith No More and No Doubt. Also, while many fan-boys deride his “Texas Chansaw” remake and are waiting with baited breath to tear apart his upcoming “Friday the 13^th” reboot, Nispel also crafted what I believe to be the best teaser trailer for a shitty movie ever:

Movie Time Capsule Blog #7: Maximum Overdrive

You would be hard pressed to find a modern author with a larger filmography than Stephen King. As such it is not surprising that the films based on King’s stories range in quality from good (“Carrie,” “The Shawshank Redemption,” “Stand By Me,” and the movie everyone I know hates to love, “Pet Semetary,” which is currently getting the remake treatment from none other than executive producer George Clooney) to bad (“Cujo,” “Graveyard Shift,” and the made for television adaptations of “The Tommyknockers” and “The Langoliers”) to downright awful (“Silver Bullet,” “Hearts in Atlantis,” and the so bad I could write a book about it “Dreamcatcher). It is extremely hard however to find a book directly based on one of King’s stories that is merely mediocre.

In 1986 after numerous hits and misses at the box office already based on his material, King decided to finally step behind the camera and direct his first feature. Not only was he working from his own story, but from his own script as well. Unfortunately, King decided it would be a good idea to adapt his story “Trucks” from the short story collection “Night Shift” for his directorial debut.

Despite the “gee whiz I’m just so darn happy to make a movie” optimism and the “I’m going to beat your fucking ass if this movie doesn’t scare you” narcissism exhibited in the trailer, the truth is that you couldn’t get King to talk about this movie today if you tried and once I actually did.

I attended a young writer’s conference in high school and the guest of honour chosen to speak to the class was Stephen King. Each of the thirty students was given fifteen minutes with King to talk about whatever they wanted in regards to writing; one on one with no outside interference. King had even looked over some of our writing in advance, and when it came to my turn with one of the masters of modern horror, I almost froze.

King had in fact read my short story, and I can’t for the life of me even remember what I submitted. All I know is that it was a vaguely violent coming of age story that I have long since lost. Apparently it was pretty good because King said it felt a lot like the characters from “The Body” (which was later made into “Stand By Me”) had grown up slightly and found themselves in a Robert Cormier novel.

So when the godfather pretty much gave my ego a lifetime pass, the first thing I did was geek out completely. I told him about how I wrote a screenplay for an action movie when I was twelve that was completely ridiculous. People just drove around with guns and grenades in the trunks of their cars and single people could take out a S.W.A.T team just by using intricately placed “Home Alone” style traps. I told King that when I read the screenplay I was so proud of to my mother she found the whole thing to be really far fetched with enormous plot holes. I told my mother, who was an enormous King fan and completely jealous that I was getting to meet him, that if they could do such things in a movie like “Maximum Overdrive” I could totally get away with it in my movie.

King laughed heartily before almost whispering, “God what a mess that was. So terrible.” I asked him what the inspiration for the movie was and his response was “Lots of alcohol and cocaine, mostly.” I could have kept going on about it, but I didn’t really know where to go from there. I could have laughed, but this man also has enough money to have me shot, eviscerated, and then have all of my internal organs shot execution style as they lay splattered all over the floor in a pool of viscera and my own urine.

King’s past bouts with drug and alcohol abuse are well documented. Even the advance money he received from his first novel, “Carrie,” pretty much went towards fuelling his habit. In past interviews, King has said he barely remembers making large parts of “Maximum Overdrive,” and has pretty much disowned it quietly; dismissing it as a “moron movie” in his own words.

To make matter worse, King might have bitten off more than he could chew by making such a technically demanding film his debut. A movie that centres around machines that have run amok requires a lot of special effects know how and King had never even really had any remedial exposure to any of the technology used on set. A driver was injured severely when a car flipped over in the middle of a chase sequence, and the director of photography had to leave the film after a lawnmower that was used for a scene ran over a piece of wood and embedded splinters in his eye. The D.P. sued for ten million dollars and the case was quietly settled out of court for an undisclosed amount of money.

The film tanked upon its release at the box office and King was nominated alongside the film itself at the Razzie awards because the premise of the film is admittedly quite laughable. I didn’t even realize it until just before writing this article, but the DVD must have recently gone out of print as well. So really what more can you say about a movie with killer trucks and an all AC/DC soundtrack?

The movie starts the same way it will end; with a title card explaining why everything is happening the way it is. Apparently the world is caught in the... um... well, it has something to do with a comet circling the earth for the next 8 days, 5 hours, 29 minutes and 23 seconds. How scientists are able to calculate such a number, I will never know, but apparently this comet just loves to fuck with people. The first scene before the opening credits features King himself as an ATM user who couldn’t look any less conspicuous if he had a handlebar moustache.

Then just to show how out of his league as a director King is, we are treated to a scene where a drawbridge goes up on it’s own and truck and a motorcycle both fall into the river below in hilarious slow motion. The whole movie is filled with random, pointless slow motion shots but none are as hilarious as the ones that open the film. Nothing on this bridge is safe as every car piles on top of one another (including an AC/DC decorated van, whose music plays over this sequence) and watermelons roll all over the place.

From there we are transported to the Dixie Boy truck stop just outside of Wilmington, North Carolina. The Dixie Boy is pretty much what every writer from Maine would believe a highway truck stop would look like in the south, minus the soul crushing racial tension, of course.

Emilio Estevez plays a short order cook working at the Dixie Boy as part of the terms of his parole while his good ol’ boy boss continuously screws him out of his paycheck simply because he knows Estevez can’t quit or he will be sent to jail. There is also a motley crew of workers and customers to add to the local flavour. Despite being a movie about trucks and appliances trying to take over the world, it is this very local flavour that threatens to derail the entire movie.

King has described his books as the literary equivalent of a Big Mac and fries. While I am not disinclined to agree with him, if his writing is a Big Mac the dialog he writes for his characters is the equivalent of the ghastly dehydrated onions and overly acidic pickles you find at McDonalds. In his books King uses an almost archaic dialect that I never once heard someone use in New England. People would describe their headaches as a “king sized bangaroo” or bemoan that their life is “S.S.D.D.,” meaning “same shit different day,” but everyone has to use the acronym for it.

If King can’t write realistic dialog for characters in a book (where you can often get away with such ridiculousness) set in a place where he has lived his entire life, transporting the same story to the South is a recipe for disaster. The characters in “Maximum Overdrive” are so down home they utter such phrases as “I don’t give a ladybug,” “Horsepucky,” and “I cain’t get pea-turkey out of it.” What the shit does any of that mean? I can pretty much figure out horsepucky, but the rest of it doesn’t make sense at all.

Oddly enough, Estevez plays the only smart person at the Dixie Boy, mostly because he can form entire sentences and is pretty much derided for it because it makes him seem like a college boy to everyone. Naturally when the revolution of the trucks happens he becomes the group’s de facto leader. Everyone in the movie pretty much assumes that the world is coming to an end and basically sits around for the next hour or so as group of out of control semis and what appears to be a gantline gun attached to some wheels and plywood circle the Dixie Boy and peg people off one by one.

Come to think of it, this movie has almost the exact same plot as the most recent King adaptation, “The Mist.” A bunch of people are trapped in a building (in that one it is a supermarket) and they can’t leave or they will be killed. It didn’t really dawn on me until just now. The only real differences are the setting itself, different characters, and the tone of the film. Other than that, when you boil it down, it is the same basic story.

Part of this movie’s charm comes from the fact that every time a machine malfunctions and tries to kill someone, it is accompanied, by the most awesome musical sting in the history of motion pictures.

Whether it is someone getting diesel in the face...

...someone ranting and raving about how an electric knife bit her...

...or this infamous scene that had to be trimmed to avoid an X-rating involving a child getting run over by a lumbering steam roller...

...that goofy wailing guitar remains constant. It is undoubtedly one of this movie’s saving graces.

Estevez devises a plan to get all of the survivors (including Yardley Smith from “The Simpsons” and previous MTC subject “Three O’ Clock High” as a newlywed who can’t seem to stop talking and hyperventilating) to Haven Island where conveniently enough electricity has been outlawed. Well, that is pretty awesomely convenient that Estevez should know about such a place, but what is even more convenient is how they intend to leave without getting run over or shot at.

Apparently, Emilio’s boss has a massive stockpile of army grade weaponry under the Dixie Boy. Why? Because he is a white, southern male and they all do. It is their dag-gum-doodily-oodily-God given right to have fucking rocket launchers, land mines and grenades. This was exactly the kind of ludicrous deus ex machina that I used in the screenplay I had written and told King about during my meeting. If you have a bunch of people in trouble and you can’t find a way for them to get out of it, conveniently have what they need right under their noses.

Under cover of night, Emilio’s army make their way to the marina “Dawn of the Dead” style and armed to the teeth, but not before giving a rousing speech that describes exactly what is going on in the movie, since mostly everything in the movie has to be explained with some of the worst expository dialog in movie history:

“It isn't the comet. It's a broom. Imagine you're a race of aliens, right? And, you're looking for a new place to live. Say you're looking for a planet like you and I looking for a new place to live. A new house. So here's Earth. Only it's like this big old house. And, it's kind of polluted, dirty, and smoky. Grease on the walls, soot in the chimney. So, they send in their interstellar housecleaners. Send in their broom. Sweep us all up. That's what this it is, it's a broom. Using our own machines to sweep us right off.”

Fucking college boy.

Once they leave the Dixie Boy the movie turns into Carmageddon. Trucks and cars follow our intrepid band of merry men and women on their journey almost relentlessly, led by the movie’s most indelible image: The Happy Toyz semi truck with the infamous Green Goblin face on the grill. It is admittedly a pretty bad ass truck, and it made me wonder if I could instil the same fear in a person’s heart if I were to construct a semi with Willem Defoe’s face on the front of it; not as the Green Goblin, just Willem Defoe’s face.

After a trip where some people live, some people die, and they are almost ratted out by a fast food order box screaming “Humans here!” before Emilio emotionally opens fire on it, they arrive at the marina and the movie ends just as it began. With a title card saying the comet was really an alien spacecraft and that the Russian’s shot it down with some nukes and everything went back to normal. Oh really? Gee, Steve thanks for explaining everything to us. For a minute there I was afraid this movie wasn’t going to make any fucking sense.

Ultimately, the movie doesn’t really succeed on a good or bad level. I will say that for an inexperienced director, King does a pretty decent job filming the action sequences and chases when he isn’t trying to use ridiculous camera tricks or rely on slow motion. The actors don’t seem to be taking themselves too seriously, especially Smith who seems like she is always a few seconds away from popping a blood vessel. Estevez seems to almost be poking fun at himself and his image with a performance that only Patrick Swayze could love.

The film still works on a so-bad-its-good level given all the little details. It is a movie about killer machines, but King knows that isn’t good enough. He gives almost all of the appliances and vehicles a personality decidedly their own. The Green Goblin truck has more personality than any of the people it is stalking. You also have to give credit to any movie that kills people using the modern conventions that people depend on every day. I didn’t even mention the hairdryer strangulation, the rapid fire vending machine, the ahead of it’s time walkman electrocution, or the washer and dryer that seemingly walk down the street. Even the all AC/DC soundtrack gives the movie a special kind of feeling; almost like this was a movie put together by a huge fan of the band who only owned one album.

Despite all the cheesiness, I can’t entirely recommend “Maximum Overdrive.” I have always had a problem with King’s dialog to a certain degree and in this movie it is just too much to handle. Every time someone opens their mouth, I just want to cringe. Not only do these people sound unbelievable and unconvincing, but the dialog explains every single last detail of the movie. It sounds annoying and makes the film almost boring to watch, especially in the film’s middle hour where little to nothing happens.

The gaps in logic are also far too much to comprehend even for a movie of this calibre. For example, the trucks don’t bother to attack the Dixie Boy until towards the end of the movie, but if they wanted everyone dead they could have just as easily ploughed through the building. Also, if the trucks can’t hear, how would a talking order box be able to shout directions to the trucks? The comet doesn’t seem to affect every car, either as some are clearly able to still be controlled by their owners. The movie tells you its logic, and then flies in the face of it for the sake of the story and making shit look cool. It’s almost as if King didn’t even believe himself as he was writing it.

“Maximum Overdrive” was even remade in 1997 under the story’s original title “Trucks,” but the remake holds none of the original’s charm or wit. Neither version has been remembered all that fondly. Come to think of it, I don’t know a single person who saw the remake. King has pretty much decided the film be best left forgotten, and even fans of cheesy horror films don’t readily talk about it unless it is brought up, but astoundingly the film does have an audience amongst a select group of people: auto enthusiasts.

If you were to look up “Maximum Overdrive” on the internet or YouTube, you will find fan made videos from clips of the film that showcase only the cars and trucks used in the film. You will find people discussing the vehicles at great length and commenting about how awesome they are. I even know a high school auto shop teacher who swears by the movie and even showed it to a class once to see if his students could pick out the makes and models just by watching the movie.

These are the kind of fans that a movie nerd like myself could get behind. Their anal retentive attention to detail is admirable. They talk about how they love the hum of the diesel engines and discuss at length how these trucks could possibly get from point a to point b in x amount of time to make the film’s logic ultimately work.

But ultimately, even these fans can’t fully defend the movie.

Verdict: Middle of the road