Return of the Living Dead Reboot

Well, this was just announced. On July 4th, I remember telling ballz that I was surprised they haven't tried to remake/reboot RotLD yet, but they be listening!

Now, I haven't even seen part 4 & 5 since they seem to have little to do with the first 3, and they don't even have the right zombie type in there. I guess those movies killed the franchise for a while, but they're bringing it back to life. Or at least they'll try.

Is the zombie genre too lame and exhausted for this to work again? Will the comedy be too stupid? Will the movie be punk enough? Will we have another tar man?

Justified: City Primeval

FX's Justified ran for 6 seasons from 2010 to 2015. I was drunk off my ass when I watched it, so I barely remember anything about it, except that I liked it. Set in Kentucky.

We're 3 episodes into the new season and it's pretty good, and pretty standalone with Olyphant being the only returning character (thus far). Set in Detroit, and we all know scuzzy Detroit makes for a great setting.

Boyd Holbrook is an antagonist in the show. He always plays a good scumbag. Typecast as a villain most of the time, so he gets to be an asshole most of the time. Sweet deal.

Bonus: +Keith David



And to revive an old issue, I always feel iffy about classifying revivals of a show. Sometimes, they're the same thing, but sometimes they aren't. But then some shows make it easy, like Full House vs. Fuller House. The title is different, so it's boolean.


I enjoy it, therefore it was JUSTIFIED.

Do movies still mean anything?

As a film buff, I wanted to collect all the classics. Cinematic achievements, good performances, groundbreaking for this or that reason. It seemed a doable task because there weren't nearly as many being released as there are today. I can't keep up with all the shit that comes out now.

I still support my local movie theater because I'm a sucker. I see movies. And while I see movies I like, will I ever see a movie that moves me? Have all the stories been told? Has technology made it too easy for people to generate this content on the fly to the point where it means nothing?

We all grew up with a slew of movies that we have an irrational sentimentality toward. Nostalgia turns these movies into your friends, always there to cheer you up. Do you think there will ever be another movie made that can land on your all-time favorites list? Or are you set in stone at this point?

Kids and violence in movies

So something my dad said got me thinking about this recently. My eldest son, who will be 11 next week, stayed over at his grandparents' house recently and because his grandad had never seen the movies before, he wanted to watch The Dark Knight trilogy with him. A few days later, when I was chatting to my dad he said to me: "So you let Zack watch The Dark Knight then?!" as if it was something he should never had seen at that age (well actually he was 7 or 8 when he first watched it). Well it's a 12 certificate movie over here (PG-13 in the US) and it's a Batman movie. Of course I am going to let him have watched it. But I knew exactly why my dad was surprised. He is of course refering to the scene involving a "magic trick" and a pencil and another scene involving what we know as a "Chelsea smile". My son even warned his grandad: "I don't like this scene coming up". Now these scenes are not particularly graphic of course, but it's the case of sometimes what you don't see is worse than what you do see. And in all honesty, that movie probably should be an 15/R certificate for those scenes and the overall "dark" tone of that movie. And Two-Face's first appearance is pretty frightening too.

On a separate occassion, I remember I was sitting in bed one night and watching Friday the 13th, Part VI: Jason Lives, a movie which is an 18 certificate over here. My son was not yet asleep at that time, he was lying in bed in the room across from mine asking me "what are you watching dad?". I told him to go to sleep but he got up, came into my room and sat next to me on the bed. Again, I told him to go back to his room and go to sleep but in the end I gave up and just let him sit and watch the rest of the movie with me. During most of the "death scenes" he would laugh or chuckle at the absurdity of it. Yeah it was bloody, gory in places, but it was so over-the-top and ridiculous, how could anyone including a kid possibly take it seriously. There is a scene where one of the female characters gets her head "twisted" off. My son didn't cower at Jason, he just laughed at the stupidness of it. He cowered at the Joker though. Having said that, my old man probably wouldn't be too impressed that I'd let him watch a Friday the 13th movie either.

So you probabaly know what my point is going to be: There are some 12/PG-13 movies which contain violence that is less appropriate for kids than many 15-18/R-rated movies. Other examples of PG-13 movies include a couple of the Mission: Impossible movies and scenes of torture. A couple of James Bond movies too. However, movies like Aliens and even the original Halloween, which famously contains zero blood or gore, are apparently less suitable and still get slapped with an '18' by the BBFC. Is the scene in the The Terminator where a "rubber-face" looking Arnold Schwarzenegger cuts out his eye with a scalpel any worse for a kid to watch than the aforementioned "pencil in the eye socket" scene from The Dark Knight. Again, what you don't see is sometimes worse than what you do...

Indiana Jones 5

Harrison Ford has still got it. The opening is a prequel bit, and there's a lot of hoopla about him being de-aged. It looks okay. There are still little ticks that look fake, and while he appears young, he still sounds old.

Cut to the present. 1969, NYC. Indy is actually old and ready to retire. However, there's always some asshole artifact that prompts a larger than life globe-trotting adventure, but it was fun. Not gonna lie, I have no beef with this movie.

Mads is a template Nazi villain here, but he's still classy. Indy has a new female sidekick who has her own child sidekick, because sidekicks are an Indy tradition. For anybody wondering about Shia's character Mutt, don't worry. He's dead.

#Review

AI

There's a lot of talk about this lately. I love the idea, but the practice scares me a bit. You can see "AI" generating images and video now, and some of it is quite good. That facial recognition technology is already pretty scary, but full on AI is all the rage now? RIP John Connor. Your fate was pretty dark.

Elon Musk suggests that people and humanity is the most interesting thing in and out of our world, and his logic is to cement that mentality into the programming. That ought to eliminate most of the termination directives right off the bat.

Microsoft Bing has their "AI" or "AI-assisted" feature up and I gave that a whirl. I asked a question and it searched some stuff and pulled a best match result. Okay. So then I ask it the question "Are you happy with yourself?" and then it got offended and ended the conversation. Moody fuckers...

Phantasm 2

A Twitter thread by Don Coscarelli:
https://twitter.com/DonCoscarelli/status/1677683669027409920

No Country For Old Men is NOT a western

From that wikipedia guy, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_(genre)

The Western is a genre of fiction set in the American frontier and commonly associated with folk tales of the Western United States, particularly the Southwestern United States, as well as Northern Mexico and Western Canada.

The frontier was commonly referred to as the "Old West" or the "Wild West" and depicted in Western media as a sparsely populated hostile region patrolled by cowboys, outlaws, sheriffs, and numerous other stock "gunslinger" characters. Western narratives often concern the gradual attempts to tame the crime-ridden American West using wider themes of justice, freedom, rugged individualism, Manifest Destiny, and the national history and identity of the United States.

Originating in vaquero heritage and Western fiction, the genre popularized the Western lifestyle, country-Western music, and Western wear globally. Throughout the history of the genre, it has seen popular revivals and been incorporated into various subgenres.

But No Country For Old Men is not a western. It is only a crime / drama / thriller. I noticed that Hell or High Water is a western. Why is this?

Day Of The Clown



Sorry, but clowns are shit. I mean, come on! They're basically just people who want to make a living in comedy, but lack either the guts or talent to become a comedian. Instead, they choose to hide behind makeup and go for the easiest possible audience. It's a pathetic existence when you think about it. Going through life pretending you've found your calling while settling for this less-respectable version of what you'd rather be doing. I suppose grabbing hold of even a glimmer of your dream could be better than nothing in some cases, but a clown? I don't know. You should probably just hang yourself and get it overwith. So, anyway. There's this movie about a guy whose genuine dream was to be a clown. To be nothing but a clown. The sad truth about this clown of a man is that he truly was nothing. At one point, all he had was his persona of "Flappy", but after a little hardship, a little soul searching and some much needed growth of his balls, William would finally become somebody... Somebody who is respected. Somebody who is not to be fucked with. This is the story of Vulgar the clown.

There's nothing wrong with being a nice guy. The world could definitely use more of them. However, this guy, William, has got to learn to stand up for himself a little. William is a nice guy. One could say he's just an all around good person. William gets shit on seemingly by everyone he comes across in life. His mom despises him for unknown reasons, Bums hang around outside his lousy little house and throw things at him when he walks by. His only friend is an asshole. It seems as though the only thing that keeps William going is his love for his profession as a birthday clown and his dreams of it all becoming something more. William is convinced it's only a matter of time before his big break and "Flappy The Clown" becomes a household name.

William's biggest problem at the moment is financial. This clown shit is not paying off at the moment and William is going to have to get creative if he plans on making ends meet. William comes up with this idea. It's a bit random and takes some explaining to really make sense, but he comes up with this sleazy alter-ego for bachelor parties. Basically for a prank, like if the groom to be is expecting a stripper, in walks "obnoxious fag clown", and then he'll be all like "what the fuck, dude".... Get it? Yeah, it's pretty lame and does not sound like something that would catch on in a million years. However, William gets his first customer shortly after putting the ad in the paper. And that's where things get interesting.

I'm sure if William had any idea of the hell his first customer would bring down on him, he would have gladly stayed in his lane and remained in the dead end existence that it seems was meant for him. As William slowly creeps into a dark motel room, hoping to find a party, the party finds him. He is immediately assaulted, beaten mercilessly by a giant fat fuck (Ethan Suplee) and his cock-eyed brother. These brothers do the bidding of their vicious deviant of a father. The father, Edwina, explains to William that he's there for one reason: To get his asshole destroyed. William is about to get gang raped and there's not a thing in the world he can do about it. William is then ass raped, fucked in the mouth, beaten within an inch of his life, and left for dead.

After the party, William gets himself home and cleans the cum and blood out of his asshole. Traumatized and forever changed, William needs a little time before even trying to figure out where to go from here. The only person William can turn to and confide in is his asshole friend who turns out to be more caring and dependable than we assumed. It takes him a while to get back into the swing of things, but William eventually dusts off his old Flappy costume and gets back to the only thing in life he is good at: Making children's birthday parties extra special. Once again, the next gig will change everything.

There seems to be a little situation when William arrives at his destination. A pissed off, psychotic father is holding his own daughter at gunpoint in the house as cops are outside trying to reason with him. He only wants his estranged wife to come in and the daughter goes free. Everyone knows what will happen to the wife if she goes in there, so, the cops are stuck between a rock and a hard place. That is, until William grows his balls and just walks up in there and takes the guy out. And just like that, William is a hero. After William's brave act gains some publicity, one thing leads to another, and he is offered his own TV show be an eager network executive (Kevin Smith). William happily accepts, and just like that, his wildest dreams have come true.

William now has the life he's always wanted, and all he has to do is keep on being Flappy. William's new-found happiness would be short-lived, however, as the vicious closet-homo and his boys have discovered Flappy's identity and set out to blackmail, first for money, then for more ass. Unfortunately, the gang rape was filmed and William was forced to say things that might ruin him if it ever got out there. So, once again, William is at the mercy of these sick fucks. The father and sons want one more crack at William's "sweet ass", and he is assured he will be given the only proof of his shame. Of course, William doesn't think for one second that it will be over no matter what he gives them. William knows there is only one way to handle this situation: With a gun!

Starring Brian O'Halloran, who played Dante in Clerks. One thing this movie has over Kevin Smith's is we actually get to see Brian O'Halloran spread his wings as an actor and show what he can really do. William/Flappy/Vulgar is not only more likable and endearing than the whiny pessimist, Dante, but an all around deeper character. A soft spoken doormat who never learned to stand up for himself, and instead, waits and hopes for those who make his life unbearable to pass him by. That attitude only got William so far, and ultimately led him to a situation that waiting and hoping could not fix.

Directed by Bryan Johnson. A friend of Kevin Smith's who has appeared in several of his films, including Mallrats and Dogma. There's obviously a lot of Smith influence to be found in the script, but the silent one certainly never made anything half this dark. And while it is dark in the most entertaining way possible, one doesn't have to be a filmmaker to notice the lack of experience here. I couldn't shake the feeling that there was something missing from this story. It all felt somewhat incomplete to me. It feels like the second and third acts run together, so, when it's all over, it really doesn't seem as though it should be. Not that it was so much anti-climactic as it just sorta rushed to the climax, making the closing scene feel almost out of the blue. I'm guessing this black sheep of the View Askewniverse never found the audience it was looking for or deserves. Vulgar seems like one of those movies that isn't quite sure what it wants to be. It flirts with the rape/revenge aspect, but doesn't quite get there. The comedy mostly falls flat mainly because of how out of place it feels. Vulgar is primarily a dark drama, so, the attempts at comedy relief doesn't really fit, and ultimately doesn't do this movie any favors. If Brian O'Halloran getting his asshole demolished against his will isn't enough to tickle your funny bone, then I don't know what to tell ya! 5/10



#Review

Unwelcome (2022 or 2023, depending on who you ask)

Well, the best way I can describe this movie is Straw Dogs meets Troll 2.

Just after learning they're pregnant, Jamie and Maya suffer a home invasion where they are beat up pretty badly. They decide they must leave London and move to a small Irish town where Jamie just inherited a farm house from his deceased aunt.

Jamie, by the way, is the most pussified character you will ever see. He's constantly getting bullied, he always lets people talk shit to him and his wife, he even dives behind his pregnant wife when a dog barks at them. The man is just pathetic.

His aunt's friend tells them of a bunch of goblins, called the redcaps, who are believed to live in the woods behind their new house. To keep them happy, they must leave some liver out back for them every night. Of course, they think this is nonsense, but try to remember to do it just to keep this crazy lady happy.

Anyway, the house is being fixed up by this family of reprobates, who are doing more harm than good. When one of the sons tries to rape Maya in the woods, the goblins come to the rescue. The remaining family member are sure that Jamie and Maya have something to do with his disappearance, and lay seige to their house. Maya calls on the goblins for help, but of course their help doesn't come cheap or easy.

I really don't know what to make of this movie. Some of it is really well done, and some of it is super hokey. I'm still not sure whether the goblins were meant to be scary or funny. It does have one hell of an ending that left me very satisfied, I'll tell you that. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. I'm actually not sure whether to recommend it, half of you would probably hate it. But I still kind of think you should watch it anyway, I'm glad I did.