http://blogcritics.org/ A sinister cabal of superior bloggers on music, books, film, popular culture, politics, and technology - updated continuously. en Copyright 2005-2007 by the authors Tue, 3 Jun 2003 14:45:47 EDT http://backend.userland.com/rss Blogcritics.org custom software http://blogcritics.org/ Phillip WinnSunday, August 26, 2007, marks the switch of all Blogcritics.org article feeds from full-content to short-content. This is the result of several converging factors, and is unfortunately a permanent decision (as permanent as any decision can be on the web, that is). We are aware of all of the reasons that this is a Bad Idea, and we are aware that some of you will be quite upset about having to click on something to read the free content, and we're sorry. Unfortunately, despite great effort, full-content feeds are not currently economically viable. 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Administration0@blogcritics.org Sun, 26 Aug 2007 12:00:00 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2003/06/03/144547.php Jim Treacher Warning: Spoilers for, and scatterbrained whining about, The Matrix Reloaded (just in case I'm not the last nerd on Earth to go see it) It took George Lucas 20 years to forget everything that made people love his movies. How did the Wachowski Brothers manage it in just 4?God, what a mess. I couldn't wait for it to be over so I could give my eyes a rest from rolling every 15 seconds...And I don't just mean the little nitpicky things. Like how this ragtag society has got it together enough to build a gigantic underground city and fantastic hovercraft and Matrix-sneaking-into technology and so on, but apparently they've forgotten the ancient human secrets of sewing and laundry detergent. Or how Neo can stop bullets in midair just by doing a "Talk to the hand," and yet he can't keep all them boots out his damn face. That's all carried over from the first movie, but it didn't really bug me then because of everything else that was going on. They kept things hopping. But this one just draaaags. Your mind wanders, and you start thinking about all the stupid stuff that they should be distracting you from thinking about.I mean, why did they think anybody would care about a bunch of guys sitting at desks arguing about chain of command or whatever? They even had a fucking Meeting Of The High Council scene. You know, like every other Meeting Of The High Council scene that's ever brought a movie to a complete stop? Where a bunch of characters whose names you don't know argue about shit you don't care about? There should have been subtitles at the bottom, like:THIS WILL BE SCENE 14 ON THE DVD... BUT YOU CAN'T DO DICK ABOUT IT NOW... KEEP MASHING THAT IMAGINARY SKIP BUTTON, LOSER... HA HA HAI don't even want to get into the Sweaty Cave Rave scene, or the Cyber-Cake That Gives the Cyber-Blonde a Cyber-Orgasm for Some Reason scene, or any of the several dozen Wheelchair Guy from the HBO Original Series OZ Talking to His Girlfriend Who I Think Is the Sister of the Two Brothers from the First Movie But I Am Neither Sure Nor Interested scenes...And why did everybody act so surprised that Agent Smith could make copies of himself? He's a piece of software. Why wouldn't he be able to? Just right-click, dude. He can probably even rename them if he wants. Or they could just be Agent_Smith(1), Agent_Smith(2), etc. But anyway, don't they have file-sharing in the future? Or maybe that's the point, maybe the Wachowskis are sick of everybody downloading their movies for free, and that's their big "fuck you guys" gesture. Every time a Smith gets kicked in the teeth, it's a blow against Kazaa. Neo's like, "Whoa... I know copy-protection fu!" Speaking of the totally insane special effects battles, they were okay, although you could always tell when it was all-CGI. Even with the realistic flapping cloaks and wrinkled clothing and facial mapping and whatnot, the CGI characters all had a sort of plastic look to them. Although the programmers did do a pretty good job of giving them weight and mass, unlike the CGI in stuff like Spider-Man and all the trailers for The Hulk. And I liked the deal toward the end where they recreated the Millennium Falcon escaping the Death Star II from The Empire Strikes Back, except with Ted "Theodore" Logan gone all goth and zooming around like Superman. And in defense of Laurence "Larry" Fishburne and his extra poundage... Yeah, he's fat, but he was the only one who really made me feel it when he was doing the kung fu shit. He wasn't just going, "Punch, punch, punch, then dodge, then you kick me, then I jump," like you could see all the other actors thinking. He was into it. Even though you could tell the speeding semi he was jumping around on was fake, he made you believe that he was fighting for his life.Oh, and the two other good things about it: Monica Bellucci. Holy shit. Just show a couple hours of her walking around in that dress and call it The MILFtrix Re-boner'd!To avoid going out on a positive note, may I bitch about the ending? The incredible shock ending? "Oh no, look who's on the medical table next to Neo! It's that little creepy guy with the beard! Remember? Back like 2 hours ago? Agent Smith did the black-oil-taking-over-people's-bodies thingy, and then somehow he took over this guy's mind in the real world I guess, because the guy was totally cutting his own hand with a wicked knife and watching the blood flow and getting a stiffy because he's a crazy computer program in a human body, and, and check it out! Now that same guy is right there with Neo! I'm pretty sure it's him, at least, even though his face is upside-down in the very last freaking shot of the movie, and we only saw him for a total of 45 seconds before that, and what's his name, even? But whatever, there he is! Unconscious! With Agent Smith in his noggin! In the real world! Where he can't do gravity-defying kung fu or dodge bullets or take over the bodies of any nearby humans or make a zillion copies of himself or any of the other stuff that made him dangerous in the Matrix! Dude, how many microseconds till the sequel?!?"Shoulda listened to Lileks.Verdict: Two Pocket-Protector-Covered Thumbs Down(Photo courtesy of Hoos)this post originally appeared on Mother, May I Sleep With Treacher? Video5856@blogcritics.org Tue, 3 Jun 2003 14:45:47 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2003/01/31/105243.php Jim Treacher I promised myself I wasn't going to, but after reading Carina Chocano's piece on Jimmy Kimmel Live (she's definitely worth clicking through those Benzo ads) and listening to TV Barn's Aaron Barnhart talking about it, I figured I'd check out Wednesday night's show just because I don't like myself very much. The episode was still sitting there on the Tivo, too depressed to go anywhere. "Mister, would you please watch me? Or don't, whatever." So I locked up all the sharp objects and cleaning supplies in the house and settled in.Where to start... Well, each night so far, the show has opened with Kimmel walking down the street and directly into the studio. Genuinely nice touch. Symbolic, self-deprecating. "Look, folks, I'm just a guy they dragged in off the street!" And it's a good opportunity for sight gags. The first night, right after the Super Bowl (well, 7 freaking hours after), he stopped along the way to console a heartbroken member of the "Raider Nation." The next couple of nights also had sight gags that I can't remember off the top of my head. Good idea, though.But last night, he just slouched down the street looking at his shoes, for all the world like any other hangdog shlub about to walk into a job he dreads. It took me almost 5 years at my last job to get that look on my face walking in, and he's there after only 4 nights. The only attempt at a joke was a "BAR CLOSED" sign next to the door.It was all downhill from there. I keep hearing about this great writing staff he's got -- Steve O'Donnell (Letterman's original head writer), Joel Hodgson from MST3K, even the Sports Guy from ESPN.com -- but I'm not sure what they've been doing for the last six months. There's no monologue, which I guess is actually merciful. But they haven't given him much else to do at the top of the show, so he resorted to getting bombed with co-host Snoop Dogg. After showing a montage of all the "entertainment news" reports about the show getting its liquor license revoked, Kimmel brought out a quart carton that said "Goat Milk" and poured out shots of a clear liquid that made even the Dee-Oh-Double-Gizzle-for-Shizzle wince and shudder like a 16-year-old girl at her first frat party. Everything's funnier when you're drunk, right?Then Kimmel started in on Oprah, saying he wanted to celebrate her birthday. He sent one of the crew (his uncle, I think?) out into the audience with a church basket to collect money to buy her a present from the Home Shopping Network. Kind of a funny idea, and it might have worked if the audience hadn't been dead quiet the whole time. Don't they have an APPLAUSE sign? A PLEASE LAUGH WE'RE BEGGING YOU sign?So they collected nine dollars and some change for Oprah, and he brought up HSN on the big plasma screen behind him and dialed them up. Except when he went to put the sales clerk on speaker phone, he kept pushing the wrong button and cutting them off. He did this 3 times, switching from HSN to QVC, each time having to redial and go through the process of asking for permission to put the sales rep on the air. "Hi, I'm Jimmy Kimmel, we're doing a show, can I put you on the air?" Then he'd hang up on them, thinking they'd hung up on him. All of this on live national TV. Excruciating. He finally asked Snoop for a gun so he could shoot himself. Has there ever been a suicide on live TV? He'd had several shots of Everclear or whatever it was, so who knows if he'd have gone through with it.He finally got through to somebody at one of the shopping networks and tried some Lettermanesque banter with her, but she was having none of it. She must have seen an episode of The Man Show. I think he ultimately succeeded in buying a few pairs of stretch pants for Oprah's birthday. Wow, Jimmy, point proven. Oprah sucks, and women who buy from and work for shopping channels are dumb. And it only took about 75 minutes, with approximately 0 laughs. All this on live TV, remember. I'm almost feeling his naked panic just typing this.Then the night's first guest was Adam Carolla, not wearing a big sign that said NOBODY WANTS TO APPEAR ON THIS SHOW, and not having to. He bellowed out strings of words at the audience (I was starting to shut down emotionally at this point, so I can't remember the particulars), the three of them did more shots, and he and Kimmel were kind enough to repeatedly remind Snoop that he's black. Say, "desperate" and "despair" have the same Latin root, don't they? Oh, no reason.Sweet Christ, I'm crying, I'm actually weeping with borrowed shame as I type this. So then there was a cooking segment with a very nice old lady, some sort of deep-frying expert, who Kimmel proceeded to torment. They battered up various food items and threw them in a deep fryer, Kimmel and Carrola yammering to be heard over each other the whole time. I don't know how many shots they had in them here at the 30-minute mark, but it was more than me. Anyway, they got a wristwatch from somebody in the audience and deep-fried that. Ha ha. Just chaos, and not wacky, madap chaos either. More of a please-somebody-help-them chaos.Then Kimmel asked the woman, who was very short and squat, "How do you eat this stuff all the time and stay so thin?" That was when my sympathy for him snapped to hatred. What the fuck, Kimmel? You were lucky to get her on the show at all, you dumbass! Your first guest was Adam Carolla! Well, when he grabbed the poor woman and started kissing her full on the mouth, that's when I just had to shut it off. (Update: I just watched 10 more minutes of it. There was this inept "ventriloquist" who spoke English as his 3rd or 4th language and couldn't possibly be funny even in his 1st, and Kimmel kept interrupting his act, and the poor dumb bastard brought everything to a dead stop to haltingly demand some respect, and under the circumstances I think he more than deserved it. I had to turn it off again at that point, but I hope the audience rushed the stage to get some of that booze before their ordeal was over. Maybe tomorrow I'll try to finish the episode and find out.)So to recap: Live broadcast and apparently no rehearsals. AWOL writers. No ideas. No guests. Millions spent on a set with an open bar that they used for one night. Bewildered studio audience. Depressed, panicky, and now openly drunken host. The whole mess locked in a death spiral, halfway through its first week. Chevy and Magic, a nation forgives you.P.S. Sorry, Snoop. You did actually provide a few good moments. If the porno thing didn't hurt your career, this probably won't either.(This hatchet piece originally appeared at jimtreacher.blogspot.com. Stop by and vote for a new title for this show.) Video2953@blogcritics.org Fri, 31 Jan 2003 10:52:43 EST