WAS1 Productions

Originally Written 02/04/04

Hee hee, my mind was wandering and I chanced to think of one of Tom Leher’s old songs. I love his sarcastic wit and socially-conscious humor. He has a good way of making fun of just about everything too. He ribs on both sides of the argument a little here, plus I agree with him that dirty books are fun.

Tom Leher – “Smut”

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Originally Written 02/02/04

Saw a late-night (11PM) showing of Bubba Ho-tep at an independant theater tonight. The first thing I noticed when we got there was the crowd. It was the usual collection of freaks and geeks, lost of college kids and goth girls in black makeup and fishnet stockings. The theater was kind of crowded, but it was kind of fun having a art-house college film experience. It’s been a few years since I’d gone to one of those. The crowd was fun to watch the film with too. People were laughing, but nobody was being too loud or obnoxious.

The movie was a little disappointing. We were all kind of expecting a typical Bruce Campbell movie, but this was no Evil Dead or Army of Darkness. That wasn’t too surprising since it was a different director. There was one or two fun Sam Rami inspired moments though, like when Elvis is fighting a giant scarab. They did the standard camera tricks that Rami would do, and that was fun to watch. The scarab was also super-fake looking, which added to the amusement. And Jen was all sad when the beetle got squished. “Awww, he was cute” she whined, which got more laughs from us.

It did kind of drag in places, but I kind of liked it. It wasn’t great, but it had its moments, it was clever and I liked the characters. Bruce Campbell was great as an aging Elvis in a rest home. The story of him having switched places with an impersonator to get away from it all, then not being able switch back because his double died, was intriguing. It was kind of neat to see Bruce Campbell place such a restrained and understated role, and Elvis was a nice tragic figure.

Ossie Davis was great as a black guy who thought he was President Kennedy (“No offense Jack, but Kennedy was a white man.” “They died me this color so they could hide me!”). They played him as a nut, but there was just a little bit of uncertainty which let you believe his story was true if you wanted to. Either way the two of them were a fun team and their histories, real or imagined, added to the story. I also liked how it was all about the personal redemption of Elvis as a character getting his life back.

The setting of the rest home was very well done. The set designs just showed how the place was slowly crumbling apart and you got a real sense of decay to it. I liked how the old people stuck there were not just used for cheap laughs, but were handled with some care and the mood was sad and regretful.

The mummy didn’t actually play much into the film, which was a disappointment. It was funny how when he did show up he acted pretty much like a redneck. They found some egyptian graffiti he’d scrawled on a wall in one of the bathroom stalls, which roughly translated into something about Cleopatra’s sex life. Also, the couple of times the mummy spoke, they showed subtitles with both silly fake-glyph pictograms and also the english translation. One of the insults the mummy yells at Elvis was the line of the film: “Eat the dog dick of Anubis, you ass-wipe!” Very lowbrow, but too funny. One friend said that one of the pictograms for that was of a guy whipping his butt. I wish I’d caught that.

So it wasn’t a very good film, but it had its moments and had enough to entertain me. I did still like the main characters.

Originally Written 02/02/04

Caught The Butterfly Effect on Friday night. I’d heard mixed and middling reviews on the film, but I was still curious about it and wanted to check it out. The movie definitely had its faults. It was easy to find plot holes and the characters were fairly two dimensional. Still, I found the premise interesting and I could overlook that. The method of time-travel was never explained, but I found I was able to suspend belief on that. So even with its faults, I enjoyed the movie and found it was better than I was expecting. It wasn’t high science-fiction, but it had a really good premise at its core.

They did a lot of fun things with the idea and I liked how the different realities played out. The film had fun showing how the characters changed drastically between the main characters jumps back in time to try and put things right. The film had an interesting idea of causality, which didn’t quite hold up if you analyzed it too much, but disregarding that, the premise it created was pretty neat. It was one of those films where I appreciated it more after watching it and kept on thinking things over. The ending was also satisfying too. It could’ve been darker, but they also didn’t use a typical Hollywood-ending cheat to make everything okay, there was some loss at the end, which made it work better. While there’s no burning need to see the film in the theaters, I would suggest giving it a try as a rental. It’s by no means perfect, but it tries hard and does tell an interesting tale. It’s a bit of light sci-fi that brings up some ideas which are fun to think about.

Incidentally, the title refers to the popular chaos theory explanation about a butterfly beating its wings in Central Park causing it to rain in Brazil. When we first saw the trailer for it we were wondering about it referencing the old Ray Bradbury story about the guy going back in time to the Jurassic era. He steps on a butterfly and when he returns to the present the world and all of history has been completely changed.

Originally Written 01/31/04

Having a streaming MP3 player down with my treadmill makes workouts a lot better. It gives me a better selection of music and I don’t have to drag CDs down to the basement. Plus it lets me reconnect with albums I haven’t listened to in awhile.

Today it was “Moving Pictures,” which is probably Rush’s best album and an old favorite. It was envigorating working out to YYZ and cool hearing those old songs again. Then came “Witch Hunt” and it hit home a little harder than it ever has before. The message is still poignant after 20 years, and unfortunately it’s still applicable…

“Witch Hunt” by Rush

The night is black
Without a moon
The air is thick and still
The vigilantes gather on
The lonely torch lit hill

Features distorted in the flickering light
The faces are twisted and grotesque
Silent and stern in the sweltering night
The mob moves like demons possessed
Quiet in conscience, calm in their right
Confident their ways are best

The righteous rise
With burning eyes
Of hatred and ill-will
Madmen fed on fear and lies
To beat and burn and kill

They say there are strangers who threaten us
In our immigrants and infidels
They say there is strangeness too dangerous
In our theaters and bookstore shelves
That those who know what’s best for us
Must rise and save us from ourselves

Quick to judge
Quick to anger
Slow to understand
Ignorance and prejudice
And fear walk hand in hand…

Originally Written 01/09/04

I got to see Paycheck tonight. I was curious to how it would be since it was based on a story by Philip K. Dick. The authors works have been mined for several movies, about half of them good and the other half not so good. The quality of those films has ranged from the brilliant noir film Blade Runner all the way down to the horrible turd Screamers. I’d describe this film as kind of a Minority Report-lite. It wasn’t as good as that movie, but it touched on some similar ideas. The story was less complex and it was more of an action film. I’d put it on the same level as Total Recall, though it didn’t have tongue-in-cheek humor. It was still an entertaining story.

There were some obvious plot holes, but I was able to overlook them without them ruining things. The film had some clever bits playing on the central theme of sending yourself clues about the future which will help you out. It wore a little thin in a couple of places though and it really reminded me of Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure (“Hey I guess I really did steal my dad’s keys afterall” and “Remember, trash can…”)

I did have problems buying Ben Afleck as an action hero though, as I had in Dare Devil. Both he and Uma Thurman seemed to be miss-cast. The idea of brilliant scientists who happened to be hotties in top physical shape and could handle themselves in fight scenes and hand-to-hand combat was kind of silly. It was made more apparents by the other techie characters being kind of frumpy. That’s typical for Hollywood though and it too didn’t ruin things for me.

As I said this was more of an action movie. John Woo kept things a little restrained though, and except for a few of his standard flourishes, it didn’t feel as much like his vintage style. There was a couple of scenes with the standard Mexican standoff between two characters pointing guns at each others heads, which you’ve got to have. The movie wasn’t spectacular but it was fairly decent overall. It was nice to see John Woo do something decent for a change, since his last few projects have been utterly forgettable.

I got a real chuckle out of the first few scenes in the film. It opens up with Ben Afleck’s character doing a reverse-engineering job and the company whose project he rips off is named ARC. Since I work for the real ARC International, I really had to laugh at that. I wish we made something as cool as a 3D monitor.