Sunday, March 13, 2005
45-Second Movie Reviews, Sort-Of Inaugural Edition
It's time for this week's edition of 45-Second Movie Reviews. I used to call these 30-Second Movie Reviews, but I use a bigger font now.
In My Country - After a now-legendary stretch of rewrites, cast troubles, and director firings (and re-hirings!), this semi-autobiographical Yakov Smirnoff project is finally making its way to screen. The SILVER screen. Writer-director David Spanos first conceived the pic when an especially clever Slashdot comment caused him to choke on his "Chunky" bar. Following hospitalization, Spanos was able to lure the reclusive Smirnoff from his hovel to seek investors. Sony Pictures Classics executives green-lighted In My Country after watching only three hours of Smirnoff's 1987 HBO special by the same name. The film's first weekend of limited release has been entirely presold, but expect bootleg copies to appear shortly from BitTorrent seeders in Russia, where Internet browses you.
The Passion of the Christ (Recut) - Mel Gibson's snuff classic is being re-released in an "unrated" version, but the "unrated" tag is just a marketing gimmick because Newmarket Films was unable to get a PG-13 rating from the MPAA. So don't get excited; you won't be seeing Monica Bellucci's tits this time around. Reports say, however, that Gibson has cut about six minutes of the most violent material in the new edit. SPOILER ALERT: Jews still come out looking not so great. :-/
The Pacifier - Vin Diesel protects five pre-pubescent kids from would-be evildoers. What kills me here is that Disney has devalued a major cultural touchstone with this film. No longer can 20-somethings wistfully remember Kindergarten Cop as our own inexplicable action-star career move. Now it's just "that dumb movie Schwarzenegger did with the kids, kind of like the one Vin Diesel did with the kids." Fear not, hipsters. Stop, or My Mom Will Shoot! remains unique and very much ours.
Besides, the following line from IMDB's Pacifier cast listing has me thinking that Diesel's film could someday be a classic in its own right:
Valerie Boyle .... Nun/Nazi
Robots - Lifting part-and-parcel from a two-year-old Futurama episode, the jist of this one is that the old robots are still good machines, and they shouldn't be forced to choose between upgrading and dying. That reminds me, if you're visiting Blank of the Day with an ancient browser, upgrade the fuck up, or don't come crying when your TRS-80 can't parse the stylesheet. Wow, I did not intend for things to get so Clearasil in here.
Aaaand we're off.
