Badness on the web #8- Take that, Science!!

Hear ye, hear ye.

Disclaimer:

One would hate to see this blog enter the ugly waters of debates over high and low culture, the merits of science versus religion or the like /disclaimer.

That said, sometimes, I see something that so awesomely leaves the realm of rhetoric that one must respect the sheer insanity of it. This Op Ed below bears the hallmarks, not so much of bad argument (though the straw men, appeals to authority and reasoning by analogy are clearly present), as it just plum this brings into question the ability of the author to reason... at any rate, please enjoy this bit o' the lovely:

Hint: when a cat walking on a keyboard can be as effective as a human typing 'thoughts' in the "composing correspondence that makes a lick of sense" Olympics, it may be time make some alteration... just sayin'.

Badness on the web #7- rapping (!?!) All I Do is Click

So, um... sometimes this 'job' has its pitfalls- when folks find-out about this blog, they often recommend things to me that warrant 'appreciation'... this is one such gem...

It should be stated for the record that while the message (auto safety) is a good one, the delivery is annoying and could have been wrapped (teehee) in 1:30 (instead of the 3:00 + minutes that you'll never get back), to say nothing of the poor video quality and deeply questionable monikers that these young fellers took on in their 'rap' personae. At any rate: this YouTube video is there for the... um, something.

Just in case there are those among you who think that we're just beating-up on novelty acts, here are some much, much (did I say much?) better examples: Lord of the Rhyme on YouTube, 'Antony Carmichael' rapping on Music 2000 from Look Around You (series II), and, from the same, 'Tony Rudd' singing Macadaynu, and, my current favorite, Money, Money, Money performing, "Getting Money with a Mouse and a Wacom Pen". There, see folks- it can be done (and in the case of the last video), with flourish and very well-incorporated visuals.

Yours merrily,
Bakagatsuru Eigo, the lesser

The number one comedy in America is...

This is more of a rant that it should be... rather than recommending 'so bad it's kinda good', these are more along the lines of 'danger, Will Robinson, danger, danger.' First off- have we lost our (collective) minds? Are we unable to distinguish good from, "Oh please kill me... so awful"? Are people looking to put me out of a job?!

This began some months ago after seeing Paul Blart: Mall Cop. Now let me say to begin- this movie looked terrible from the trailer, but I thought to myself, 'ohhh aren't we the arteeste? We refuse to see things that are popular...' Bad, bad decision. First, it was lazy... like it used EXTREME sports (only 5 years +/- after their peak, no less) as an excuse to bring in some 'X-treme' action to a movie about a chubby guy. No value judgment, but Kevin James is not Sammo Hung, so the director had to find some way of having action happen *around* the protagonist... here's a hint, that doesn't happen through osmosis, we see that he isn't doing the board stunts. The laziness results in shoehorning two separate films, into one that is less than the sum of its parts.

Hell, as I type, the anger at being snookered into watching this PoCoaR (piece of crap on a rock- Thank you S. F. Brian, for that evocative and ever useful descriptor)... shame. Even if it had been compelling, even if the 'twists' weren't visible from space, the simple fact that in one scene set in an 'empty' mall, you can see shoppers milling about behind some actors. Not panicked victims (as the 'plot' would have it), just regular shoppers who are standing around, looking at the lights, camera, action. Dammit, don't we have post houses now? How much is it to shoot a clean plate and do some digital fixing? AAArgh.

Curiously, that 'Mall Cop abomination' is a less offensive entry for me than the next and I'll tell you why- because if made me wonder WTF happened to a good writer/director. I'm talking here of Kevin Smith.

Now, if profanity isn't your thing, then you may not dig him, but I've been an unabashed fan of his for years and own many of his movies on DVD, and Zack and Miri Make a Porno got the shaft at the box office (see what we did there? Single entendre!!)- it happens outside of the 'Askewniverse' and is a sweet movie that is remarkably raunch-free (considering the title). Anyways, so Clerks II didn't really do anything for me, but whatever, diffen' strokes, right (RIP G. Coleman, BTW), and I haven't seen Jersey Girl yet (it's on the queue though).

Okay, now you may have guessed that the apple of my ire is Cop Out, an avoid at all costs debacle of a thing. How can you take a script from the 2008 'Black List' (the top unproduced film scripts of the year) an ever improving director, some appealing actors, Harold Faltermeyer (that right, cat who wrote "Alex F" and many iconic soundtracks from 1980's movies, came out of his self-imposed retirement to provide the score) and get this mess? The script was... well, we hope that it started to suck in turnaround- if this was the original draft, the world is a cold, frightening place.

Okay, so the execution was painful, the plot, contrived, the acting (mostly by the always mugging Tracy Morgan, though Sean William Scott and much of the cast of 'straight out of central casting' Latino heavies) was completely Over the Top too. Gah, blerhg, apoplexy... okay, medication, making better...

At any rate, alls I'm sayin' is, the next time you see a movie trailer that runs for a couple of weeks, then appears mostly unaltered save for a jovial announcer (sounding like he's mere moments from splitting his sides with laughter), stating, "The number 1 comedy (this is where the other alteration, a #1 Comedy imprint will appear somewhere, usually with a stamping sound) is..." there is no spoon, let alone funny.

Tempin' ain't easy

While I keeps it real (and Puffy, you know this) I do also have a strange aversion to losing Castle Vigor, not having enough gruel to feed the minions or running out of fuel while hither and yon in search of adventure. This means one thing- I must sully my hands with, for and in the acquisition of filthy lucre.

Since being 'down-sized/right-sized' (after 7 + years) from a position coordinating services for an 'at risk' population a couple of years ago, I've had some interesting forays into various realms. This has meant doing everything from working in a university library to spending two days blind-calling donors for a non-profit, to providing administrative support for lawyers, to spending time at a high school. Until recently, one believed that staying ethical barred entry into things governmental, now... not so much.

So far the most fascinating aspect of temping has proven the (in some cases) radical differences between cultures from site to site- the climate in one place may not prepare one, at all, for the next posting. After a while of being employed, I totally took0 the 'culture' or atmosphere of my long-term job for granted after a while- there were some demoralized/ing whingers, some young upbeat enthusiastic (bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, as they say) do-gooders and a range of temperaments in between. Despite adding and subtracting some, often strong, personalities, the overall umwelt didn't change that much- being thrust into different offices though, one sees all kinds o' things...

Just musing at this point as too many specifics may prove unfortunate, but I'm hoping to find a way to be generic enough to speak to a range of experiences... we'll see how effective that can be.

Just because there haven't been any posts lately...

Doesn't mean that there aren't (metric ass) ton(ne)s of badnesses floating about. As part of the tireless search for terrible, I've encountered some new 'martial' arts related stuff (some doozies in the sword-ish category in particular), a batch of movies, and a few random musings, including my ode to unemployment, "Tempin' Ain't Easy*". We'll try to be more productive soon because my backlog of notes is going to require devotion of a special room in Castle Vigor...

*If you don't get this reference, it is to a Big Daddy Kane album of the 80's, those halcyon days of hip-hop yore.

(Comic) Adaptations Gone Wrong #4

The Ottoman Empire once extended through an impressive swath of Europe, the Middle East and northern Africa. Now though, Turkey extends it's cultural reach not through persuasion or force of arms, but hilariously misguided movie mayhem*.

To wit- we are all familiar with The Man Who Saves the World (and the recently released sequel?!?), but did you know that there have been forays into the mighty world of superheroes too? Rejoice my friends, for this goes beyond mere awful to OMG!!WTF!! levels, or, as I like to think of it, my wheelhouse.

Our offering for this installment is - 3 Dev Adam (Three Mighty Men, aka Turkish Spider-man vs. Turkish Captain America) and it is a beaut. Take a Luchadore (Mexican masked wrestler), Captain America and Spider-Man, add a pinch of Turkish spin on these characters and a soupcon of WTF (Spidey is the villain, and a real psychopath in this)- stir, add 1973 and serve chilled. Are you dying to see this puppy? Well, thanks to our friends @ (the) Google, this is available online for free At This Link. Enjoy.


* Just be clear- we aren't singling-out Turkey, there is actually some amazing cinema coming out of there; as we all know, dreck is truly international transcending gender, class, race, ethnicity, language or location.

Watched on Fast Foward- The worst ones

I like movies, good or bad. Documentaries, speculative fiction, epic or intimate character pieces, as long as there is some effort at drawing the viewer into a compelling story, it'll probably seem worthwhile to invest at least some time. This comes up by way of saying that it is hard to make a film that has no redeeming features, but imagine for a moment an enterprise devoid of craft of any type (writing, acting, directing, cinematography, etc.). Not just laughably bad. Not lapses in artistic judgement. All bad with no good. Such movies do exist. These movies are actually worse than The Room, which despite various shortcomings is at least funny (if unintentionally so- in an MST3K kinda way)... we're talking just dismal.

The worst movies I've ever seen combines a lack of art or craft with many of the biggest tropes in pop-culture: serial killer's past justify/explain all, (in one case, that) Germans are, to a person and even now, unapologetic Nazis, women are to be coveted as fetishized sexual objects, and then are victims (either of circumstance or outright murder), oh, and children... a whole thing about 'the kids'...

So, what manages to bring so many exciting traits to one party? the first is a little gem from 2004 Murder-Set-Pieces. What makes the enterprise feel so awful is that it seems to aspire to more, but the writer/director is really, really bad as is the camera work, the acting, editing, music, ADR/foley... you name it, not good. Actually, this was so bad that I couldn't believe JUST how it was on FF, and so endeavored to watch it again... twice... unlike some pieces that have so many sublime subtexts that more time spent enhances the experience, this did not improve with subsequent viewings. You know that a thing is bad when one of the only defenses of (writer/director) Nick Palumbo's (the mind behind Nutbag) work on this can be, 'at least he shot it on film...' Whatever dude...

Tied with this for #1 stanank /waste of resources is Black Dahlia, a craptastic, shot-on-video, er... thing. Not to belabor the point, but the acting, dialogue and continuity in this are terrible, but the effect of the moving image is so overwhelmingly bad that it is hard not to focus (pun intended) on that aspect most prominently. But really, while the net effect of this movie was horrible, M-S-P still stand-out as being somehow, worse.

Based on these two selections, it would appear that I hate the horror genre, no, but they do represent how gore has taken prominance over atmosphere or creativity... They sum up what is most difficult to understand in creating something that requires as much time, money, effort and collaboration as filmmaking- why no one says to a director, "this looks like it is a dung heap." Ah well, without misguided souls, I'd run out of stuff to watch.