If you’re in a two-piece band called Toasters ‘N’ Moose, and your keyboardist is ofttimes mistaken for a homeless person while your vocalist reminds me of a less zaftig Paula Deen, and you’ve just scored the opportunity to play a place called Dante’s (or something) that looks sorta like the world’s saddest Salvation Army (is there any other kind?), but they’ve only allowed you to do one song, well, you’ve gotta make it a good one. So you’d better break out your big guns (nay, your biggest!), which obviously is a “song” called “Taste the Biscuit”:
I don’t know what persuaded Julia Ormond to get on board the Hot Mess Express and play Lindsay Lohan’s mother in the thriller/slasher/torture porn/masterpiece that is I Know Who Killed, but I do know I’m forever happy she did. Without her commitment to the craft, the line “This is Mr. Jervis” would be a line about a teddy bear like any other; instead, Julia Ormond makes it one of the most dazzling, mind-bogglingly bizarre things I’ve ever seen committed to film. I mean, what in the world is she doing with her voice? And what’s going on with her face? No, seriously:
Pure FACE poetry is what’s going on with her face, y’all.
Sure, it’s all too easy to take a line delivered to the girl you believe is your only daughter–the daughter who’s been abducted by a serial killer, lost portions of her arm and leg through a brutal amputation process that involves dry ice and blue glass surgical utensils (don’t ask), and somehow managed to escape–like a she’s just gone through a serious trauma (so, you know, like a normal person), but it takes a special caliber of actor to play that line like you’re in the midst of an exorcism, and that caliber is BRILLIANT. Lindsay Lohan’s reaction shot pretty much sums it up:
A few years back,I gushed to my mother about what a steal it was when I dropped $5 for a used copy of The Black Dahlia from a nearby Blockbuster. I went on and on and on about how bad it was, and finally mother stopped me and asked, “Why would you even want to spend $5 dollars on it then?” I guess that’s a reasonable question (for other people), so consider the above image of Fiona Shaw delivering a perfectly executed side-eye just before sipping her martini my argument for The Black Dahlia being five of my best-spent dollars.
Seriously, when it comes to performances, The Black Dahlia is by and large one of the most baffling experiences of all time. Most everyone seems to be aiming for ’40s-film-noir only to achieve awkward-and-forced-like-bad-pulp-dialogue, Hilary Swank looks absolutely nothing like “that dead girl” despite Scarlett Johansson having a line of dialogue that explicitly insists otherwise, and then there’s Fiona Shaw. She plays Hilary Swank’s wealthy boozehound of a mother, Ramona Linscott, and she’s incredible. I’m not entirely certain what–if any–direction Brian DePalma gave her because her performance is from a completely different movie about a batshit crazy drunk who won’t take anybody’s sass. She’s like Carla Gugino in Watchmen, lighting up the screen and warming the camp-adoring cockles of our hearts with each slurred word and wildly over-exaggerated gesticulation. For example, a less inspired actress would probably sloppily eat the pot roast in this scene, but not Fiona Shaw:
Do you not know what Megafault is? Don’t worry. Until this morning, neither did I, but now I do, and it’s time to spread the gospel. People, this is Megafault:
Without so much as a trailer, the first thing that occurred to me was that I really need to put Brittany Murphy on Google alert. Between this and The Ramen Girl, I’m beginning to suspect that any movie starring Brittany Murphy is a film destined bad movie excellence. Coming from the producers that brought us Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus and originally airing on SyFy are just shitshow icing on the train wreck cake. Seriously, I need only this bargain bin DVD cover to know that this movie’s destined for greatness.
Of course, saying that would discount the Megafault trailer, which is a whole new realm of terrible I never actually believed attainable:
It’s no lie that I tend to find the fickle nature of YouTube clips and their battles with copyright law to be terribly annoying. I can’t stand that any music video that falls under ownership of the Universal Music Group cannot be embedded, and the same goes for the trailers and clips of anything owned by Disney. This explains the disappearance of Shmathan’s favorite clip on parenticide, which was surreptitiously removed from YouTube on account of copyright infringement, but that doesn’t make it any less annoying. Or confusing, for that matter. I personally would rather not want to claim any credit for such an embarrassingly ridiculous clip, but that’s just me.
Anyways, it’s with a heavy heart that I must today announce that the Powder Blue clips have been taken down from YouTube. Yes, the glistening gems that inspired much camp glee have been taken from us. I’d like to think all my ridiculous ranting and raving in some way preserved some of the train-wreckery that graced this blog, but I can’t help but feel like there’s now a Powder-Blue-shaped hole in my heart. Of course, these clips cannot compare to the glorious Godawfulness that is watching Powder Blue in its entirety, but that doesn’t mean I’m not going to put my cranky pants on over this situation. Sure, I cannot claim to understand the finer nuances of the legal matters behind this indecency, but I can Photoshop up some indignation with the best of them:
Holiday! Celebrate!!! There’s a trailer for the film adaptation of the book adaptation of the blog by the one-man awful machine know as Tucker Max. Indulge your curiosity in seeing just what depths of monstrousness humanity can dive to and watch this train wreck:
Sweet mercy does this movie looks like a bona fide UGHapalooza! I’m not going to even bother explaining to you why I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell looks positively terrible; its terribleness is self-explanatory. I know I’m the antithesis of its target audience, and I’m certain I will simply loathe it, but a movie this mind-blowingly egregious is the sort of rare spectacle that I must witness.
For free, of course.
No no, I would sooner start training for Olympic muff diving than see my money go to Tucker Max. He’s already built an empire on encouraging frat boys to be misogynistic assholes, so I won’t be financially encouraging his behavior. Hell, I refuse to be bothered paying for a bootleg, that’s how neanderthallic this movie looks. Instead, I’ll sneak into a theater to kill my last remaining shreds of faith in humanity. It’s just my blog cross to bear, y’all. Mine to bear, and yours to enjoy.
That said, I must admit that it’s rather disappointing that Richard Kelly is producing this movie. I can only hope that he’s doing this ironically and that I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell is in fact a razor-edged satire against Tucker Max’s repugnant behavior. Otherwise, this can only mean one thing:
Fortunately, this summer, after many a delay, Ms. Lohan’ll be bringing us Labor Pains, her own log to contribute to the raging fire that is America’s baby craziness. Sure, it’s not getting a theatrical release, or even a straight-to-video release (at least until later this fall), but it is getting an ABC Family world television premiere, and that HAS to be something:
Shut. Your. Face. ”I’m better when I’m pregnant” is an actual line in ANY movie EVER? I will never forgive myself if I do not DVR this baby-bump-riddled train wreck because I absolutely have to see this, but I’m also quite certain that, should I watch more than five consecutive minutes at a time, my brain will be liquified by the bad idea waves irradiating out of this…this thing.
I get that they’re the station that finds drama in the possibility that any one of the perfectly timed thrusts in your incredible sex life could very well spell disaster for your parents, so I’d never actually accuse them of having things like taste or good decision making skills, but ABC Family proclaims this one of their “Original Movies” with some sort of sense of pride? Isn’t that kinda like proudly keeping your back-alley abortion in a mason jar on your coffee table because you want it to be a conversation piece at all your cocktail parties? This shit is bleak, and the full trailer is (impressively) even bleaker:
Well, if this internet commenter’s supposed spoiler is to be revealed, lil’ oprhan Esther’s secret is out of the bag, and it’s even more batshit insane than I could’ve ever anticipated. I won’t explicitly discuss the details, but I’ll say this: It’s honestly such an impressively thought-out, completely out-of-nowhere sort of twist that I believe it. And want to see this movie immediately so I can confirm its validity. Not since the phrase “non-religious identical twin stigmata” has an ending scaled such heights of so-bad-it’s-brilliant absurdity. Seriously, y’all, it’s so damn trashtastically awful that it’s pretty much seals the deal: Orphan is destined for of camp/cult/bad horror movie greatness.
On one hand, if it’s true, I’ll be terribly disappointed to not have such a wonderfully gonzo revelation dropped in my lap in the final moments of the film. But on the other hand:
No, poster, obviously the interwebs cannot keep a secret. In the age of the internet, nobody can keep their trap shut to save their damn life, and it’s a rather brilliant move on the part of Orphan‘s marketing campaign to sell a film all around a climactic narrative reveal in a time where spoilers are all but anticipated. When you think about it, it’s a clever spin on an old advertising tradition. (more…)
Back when I saw the trailer for S. Darko, I had high hopes that it was going to be a campalicious train wreck. It seemed to have the pedigree, after all. It’s a straight-to-DVD release, it has a truly bizarre cast (Elizabeth Berkley, Ed Westwick, and Daveigh Chase???), and it’s automatically one of the worst ideas ever. Seriously, a sequel to the cult classic Donnie Darko is pretty much the one thing absolutely nobody asked for, but that’s never stopped Hollywood before, so all we can do is cross our fingers for a new camp classic as we watch the bad ideas pile-up like a multi-car highway accident. At least it’s got Elizabeth Berkley as a Jesus freak, so that’s something, right?
On one hand, I really shouldn’t be surprised by how bad S. Darko ended up being. Everything that could have made it the great camp sensation is also a liability. Straight-to-DVD is always a coin toss between fabulously bad and just plain bad, so I guess for every Powder Blue there must also be an S. Darko. Still, it’s an impressive feat to witness just what a spectacular failure S. Darko actually is. Not in a fun way, mind you, but in a whoabitch-is-this-movie-terrible sort of way.
The plot involves Samantha Darko (Daveigh Chase) heading out on a road trip with her rebellious friend (Briana Evigan) only to end up in a small town when their car breaks down. There’s a crazy Christian cult in the town, disappearing children, and a crazed war veteran the town refers to Iraq Jack (James Lafferty). Iraq Jack keeps seeing a Samantha ghost warn him of the impending end of the world, everybody in town loves Samantha because behaving like a melancholic zombie is the new sexy to Chuck Bass and the town nerd, and then a weird geometric shape travels through one of those space/time worms, bursts into flames above Earth, and becomes a meteor shower. Meteors that give you nasty skin rashes and drive you violently insane. Of course.
Yesterday, one of my co-workers sent me this e-mail:
It should be noted that this is the co-worked who introduced us all to the dance magic that is Sara Carlson, so I immediately was optimistic. Had he found Sara Carlson’s dance interpretation of the life of a Passion play? Nope. Even better. It’s the straight-to-DVD revival of Brittany Murphy’s career. The Ramen Girl, y’all:
Hot toddy! Wouldn’t it have been more appropriate to just title this Japanese Cultural Fetish: The Movie? Or Lost in Translation 2: Miso Sad ‘n Hungry? Whatever. This is a movie about Brittany Murphy learning to make schadenfreude soup with her tears of sadness because it’s her destiny (huh?). Or at least that’s what the cat statue tells her (what?). Riiiight.
Was Brittany Murphy’s character high on something in the soup (mushrooms? crack noodles?) that caused her to trip balls and devote her life to being a soupmonger? Was the screenwriter high on something when they thought this was a story that needed to be told? I’m personally betting it was weed because a movie all about ramen noodles is totally something a stoner would write. That, or a movie all about Pillsbury Toaster Strudels.
Whatever, I shouldn’t throw stones of bitchery because we all know what’s going to happen. I don’t know how she does it, but Brittany Murphy sings the most irresistible siren’s song that always brings me crashing onto the jagged rocks of her bad movies. It’ll probably be terrible, and I’ll probably hate myself for watching it, but at least I can safely say it’s not going to be as bad as Little Black Book. Or Uptown Girls. Really, if I can make it through the following mess, I can make it through anything:
