Thursday, December 31, 2009

Burn Notice Love!

It's funny, slick, clever and engaging. Every episode teaches you how to do illegal things with ease. All the leads have great chemistry and Bruce Campbell appears in every episode. Do you really need anything else?



The first two seasons are on DVD and the third is about to start any day now. Catch up!

Biff answers all your questions.



It's a shame that Tom Wilson only gets bit parts in TV and Animation, his running performance in FREAKS AND GEEKS as the Gym teacher is fantastic in all of the layers he got to play. Well, than again all of FREAK AND GEEKS is fried gold.

Documentary Footage: Man Punches Shark!



So real you can taste the gold.

From the animated classic - MR.T AND THE T-FORCE.



The show is about the heartfelt moral lessons Mr.T teaches a scruffy team of child gymnasts he bought on the black market for a gold tooth. On a weekly basis, Mr.T tries to kill them all in hilariously gory ways. Sometimes they fight diamond guarding alligators.

It is unrelated to the feature film T-FORCE (Sadly)

TREAT WILLIAMS ANECDOTE OF THE DAY!




"Williams is remarkably good..." the reviewer said after having his face blown off by awesome.


It's public knowledge that I have a soft spot for the presence of acting artisan Treat Williams. I've kept my eye peeled for the man ever since I saw him playing the broad bully character in Spielberg's glorious misfire 1941. I don't know what made me fall in love. It could be his now vanished dashing good looks, his current paunchy "I'd rather be taking a nap" wrinkled visage or even his grizzled nice guy delivery. It's to hard to chose.

My Treat-Quest has led me to the three SUBSTITUTE sequels, the clever zombie cop film DEAD HEAT and the classic DEEP RISING (Which for some reason I thought it starred Pierce Brosnan)

There's some other films I haven't seen. Something weirdcalled STAR BORE...or something...and a hippie musical that doesn't have The Treatser kung-fu fighting ANYONE!No thank-you good sir.

When I learned that fave director Jim Wyronski (Of CHOPPING MALL fame) birthed two Treat vehicles it was my solemn duty to watch them and report back.

I haven't done that yet.

I've only watched the first ten minutes of his TREAT FIGHTS PIRATES FOR GOLD opus GALE FORCE and I noticed something mesmerizing: The entire opening action scene is made up of footage of LAST ACTION HERO (The director confirms this in his commentary track). All they did was insert Treat dressed as Arnie in a look-alike car and edited around the pre-existing footage

Cheap rip-off for the audience OR low budget Roger Corman like genius? What other films could we edit Treat Williams into!? He could play Marlon Brando in the GODFATHER! He could belt out song and dance gold in SINGING IN THE RAIN! He could even whisper with never before seen gravitas the word "Rosebud..."





Updates to come after I watch the film. I'll make sure they're AMAZING!

Who believes IMDB SCORES?

ESCAPE THE CAGE: EPISODE 15 "THE TRUTH IN ADVERTISING!"


Spaceboy Nic Cage makes a break from the Danger Dungeon with his trusty parrot partner Winged Ted.

Watch out Nic! Battle Axe Ginger Ghost is hot on your tail and hankering for some decapitation for your crimes against the galaxy!

Tune in next week to see how Tricky Nic will escape this dastardly predicament!

HINT: It involves a skateboard and strawberry ice cream.

The NIC CAGE ADVENTURE PLAY-SET IS AVAILABLE AT http://www.brandonbird.com/

TIGER ON THE BEAT



An example of everything that is brilliant and horrifyingly wrong with Hong Kong cinema.



The slight "Hilariously mismatched cops stop cocaine ring " plot line is anchored by the always revelatory Chow Yun-Fat playing a comedy coward that's teamed up with the stiff as a board Conan Lee (An arrogant martial arts non-star that was blacklisted TWICE in Hong Kong). The partners get into the requisite wildly dangerous stunt sequences that must have killed at least one or two lower paid stuntmen. Highlights a shotgun on a string gag, painful kneecap popping high falls and a crazed final martial arts chainsaw duel. Famed old school maestro Lau Kar Leung directs/choreographs the action with his usual perfectly timed flare.

It's expected to get tons of lame duck comedy and thudding cringe worthy drama (You do here in spades) but on the horrifying wrong side of things you get a woman being beaten, thrown head first through a glass table, choked with corn flower ("It's not cocaine" Chow's character sneers "But it'll kill you anyway") and drowned in a bathtub. After all this abuse, Chow throws her a towel and the audience is supposed to believe that she has HOPELESSLY FALLEN IN LOVE WITH HIM. A love so deep that she'd happily become Chow's human bullet shield in the final act.

Yikes.

But it has good action scenes!

My eyes hurt


Oh right! That's why I don't wake up in the early in the morning. Urrrrrrgh.

Wednesday, December 30, 2009

EOD: Good Morning Future Justin



In an attempt to wake up at an ungodly hour and get stuff done, I've recorded myself yelling at my future self about being a lazy ass and set it as an EIGHT FREAKING AM ALARM! As per usual, the technology alluded me and I had to jump through ten flaming hoops rimmed with razor blades as tigers chased me just to get the bloody thing to work as an alarm. Why is technology always collapsing under me the second I need it to do something useful? Realistically, technology works 98% of the time but every time it actually works it sticks out like a sore thumb as opposed to the smoothness I'm accustomed to.

The stylish new coat I got for Christmas looks good, but when I run the stuff in my pocket bounces up and smashes painfully into my balls with every step. It's as if the designers never assumed people would put stuff in the pockets and run. They assumed that every wearer would only stroll leisurely.

FILM WATCHED:
WHAT ABOUT BOB


I love Frank Oz's hilarious "I'm the dweebish jerk" acting and voice roles, he's Ernie after all, but the man pretty wobbly when it comes to directorial work. His LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS is perfect in every regard, but comedy wise he's all over the place in all the comedies he's done. I'd have ZERO interest in WHAT ABOUT BOB if it weren't for the pitch perfect performance from Bill Murray. Everything else lands flat. There's barely any jokes to keep things afloat. The schmaltzy 90's comedy score grates on the ears every single time it's pumped out onto the soundtrack to let the audience know IT'S OKAY TO LAUGH! I hear Oz's DIRTY ROTTEN SCOUNDRELS is a laugh riot, so I'll check that out next and give the man's creative talents behind the camera another chance. THE LITTLE SHOP goodwill will last him forever.

I had a moment of "Who's that actor?" with the mother character of the film and TA-DA she was female lead in AIRPLANE.

Down on Skid Roooooowwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww!

Making up for Ten Years




On the first day of the sixth grade my teacher asked me "What do you want to do when you grow up?"

I followed up the astronaut, the scientist and the cool kid who shrugged his shoulders and said "Whatevs" as his cronies backed him up with forced little chuckles.

I had moved to the small town of Casselman a week before and knew absolutely no one. I hated the small farming land with a fiery passion my mother swore would fade as time rolled on and I got used to my current life. She had no idea I was going to hate it for the next seven years.

"I want to be a writer." I told the class in my bravest brave boy voice.

Silence.

The class laughed. I sat down red faced.

"I'd show them" I mused in my best villain voice "I'd show them ALL!"

I was wrong

They're still laughing in the ether of time. I'm not a writer. Not even close. I'm barely a scribbler.

Three screenplays. Countless books started and left to collect dust. Zero short stories. About ten blogs started and abandoned.

I've hemmed and hawed, I've made apologies and shuffled my feet, I've distracted myself with something else . I can type over 113 words per minute. I'm not that smart, but I'm clever enough to create something that could create a mild chuckle if someone accidentally stumbled upon it.

I not a gifted writer. I'm only a decent one. The first step to getting work out is acceptance.

I can't lean against the "No one is going to want to read this so I shouldn't write it" crutch. Every day I'm going to write one full article, maybe even a few tiny ones, but it has to cap the 1,000 word barrier.

Here we go.

Please hold my hand. I'm afraid.