Ten-Hut, you lazy inbred shit piles! It is time for this week’s economics lesson. There’s been a lot of talk on the Phat Phree about all the terrible remakes that are being foisted on us. Unfortunately, we are just going to have to accept them as the reality-TV version of the big screen. They are easier to get made, and apparently there are a lot of fucking knuckle-dragging cavemen and women who hand over their hard-earned money to see these warmed-over piles of ass magic.
Think about it. If I told you there was going to be a huge blockbuster movie about two rednecks from Kentucky who are in a movie that is basically one really big car chase, and I told you that it starred Stiffler, that Jackass guy and Jessica Simpson, you’d most likely tell me that it was the worst idea you’d heard since your drunk uncle tried to shoot an M-80 out of his ass last Monday. But when I say that movie is a big screen version of The Dukes of Hazard , all of a sudden every goddamn nostalgic hipster dick who thinks campy ‘80’s crap is the bee’s knees can’t wait to see it.
Another bonus for the studios is that these same retards, or the their enemies- the purist retards, will go out and buy up the DVD set of the original show or movie. And that equals free money for the studios. Selling back catalog is about the best deal of all time for Hollywood. That’s why all those DVDs you have will be coasters in two years when you have rebuy everything on HD-DVD, and then again in 10 years when it all available on Super HD-DVD. Hopefully by then we’ll be getting a Jessica Simpson fake vagina as a “special feature” with the Collector’s Edition “Box” Set.
Anyway, onto the reviews…
Hollywood Remake Rating Scale PPPPP – Fist Full Of Dollars (Equally good version of Kurosawa classic Yojimbo) PPPP – Cape Fear (DeNiro Really wanted to get the tattoos!) PPP – The Fly (Goldblum is just as solid as Vincent Price in the original) PP – Planet Of The Apes, Roller Ball, Solaris, and any other sci-fi remake from the 70’s P – Psycho, Dial M For Murder – LEAVE HITCHCOCK ALONE! p – A little extra something for including a cameo with by an original cast member
Movies Fantastic Four PPP
Not only is this a comic book adaptation, but as many of you might know (or might have heard during the publicity of this version) this is also a remake. Actually, maybe it’s not so much a remake as it is a second attempt at a big-screen version. Similar to the way that the Thomas “not as famous as Michael Biehn” Jane version of The Punisher sought to erase the Dolph “Poor Man’s Schwarzenager” Lundgren B-movie version of the Punisher, The Fantastic Four is seeking to erase from history the existence of an ultra campy Roger Korman version of FF made in 1994. Korman’s version is easily in the ten worst movies ever made, and didn’t even manage a theatrical or official DVD release, though you can easily snag a high quality bootleg at any comic book or sci-fi convention. It’s almost worth seeing just for the cheesy effects used when Mr. Fantastic stretches out his leg and trips like 20 bumbling bad guys at once. It looks and feels cheesier than the live action "Captain America" or "Shazam" TV movies from the ‘70s. Hmmn, I wonder when we’ll see big screen version of those two turds. But Fox and Marvel had to make this movie, A) because almost every other superhero has been used, and B) because if they didn’t make it someone was gonna steal their gimmick soon. Oh, wait; the identically superpower-endowed Incredibles already did that. Way to spend gamillions to be ahead of the curve.
This movie doesn’t add a single new moment to the superhero movie resume and is at times a real turd with it’s tongue in cheek action movie style. Directors should go watch The Last Boyscout again if they need a refresher on one-liners that make an action movie better instead of worse. So why did I give this movie a solid 3? Two reasons; Michael “I’m not the Commish anymore” Chiklis and Jessica “I’ll put my Dark Angel in your Susan Storm” Alba. Chiklis picks the right way to cash in his newfound "Shield" success, by grabbing a role (as the Thing) in a big budget blockbuster that doesn’t focus entirely on him. He is the appropriate amount of cheesy and tough compared to the awful overacting of Not Another Teen Movie’s Chris Evans as the Human Torch, and the total non-acting of the “who the hell are you and how did you land this fucking part” star Ioan Gruffudd as Reed Richards. When the Human Torch says, “flame on”, I am only reminded of how gay the character really is. Jessica Alba, however, has the ability to wipe all forms of gayness off the brain immediately. She is just hands-down the most delicious looking piece of mocha crme pie I have ever seen. If you don’t know what I’m talking about go rent The Sleeping Dictionary (though the actual boob shot is a body double) and Idle Hands, so you can at least see a little more of her or even check out the ‘90’s version of the "Flipper" TV show that has Alba chasing around a fucking dolphin in her bikini all day. But if she truly wants Napalm’s Academy vote, she's gonna have to put in one of those naked-on-her-knees, Monster’s Ball type performances before she starts to sag. I can only watch Honey with the sound off so many times.
Dark Water PP
You’ll have to understand how it is very difficult for me to do this review. Jennifer Connelly has been one of my favorites since Labyrinth and The Rocketeer, both equally terrible movies, but she single-handedly made them two of the best movies of their era to watch "single-handedly". Then in 1991 I saw a little movie called Career Opportunities, which starred Connelly and Frank Whaley doing his best Morrisey impression as love interests trapped inside a Target overnight. To my surprise not only had Jennifer’s eyebrows grown into two gigantic eye-catching monsters, but more importantly, so had her boobs! From that moment on, I became one of her biggest fans, and thank God, because it only got better. Not only did she get her eyebrows waxed, but she began removing her clothing in films on a regular basis, showing off a set of baby feeders that would make Mimi Rogers feel insecure! Connelly’s rack made instant classics out of several movies that would have otherwise been lost to the sands of time, like her first nude scene in The Hot Spot, her quick nip flash in Inventing The Abbots, her voyeuristic cameo in Mullholland Falls, her two-finger taco slide in Waking The Dead, her nude in the tub suicide attempt in House of Sand and Fog, her bra and panty run in Some Girls, her captain of cleavage shot from Of Love and Shadows, and most importantly her bush baring best scene, the mirror shot in the otherwise wrist-slittingly dull Requiem for a Dream. She even added some much needed sex appeal to Dark City and Pollack. But sadly, now she has given up on her quest to remain one of my favorites. With her role in The Hulk, and now this pitiful horror thriller, she has resigned herself to playing the mature woman parts in third-rate big budget films. Dark Water was created by Hideo Nakata, the same guy who directed the original Japanese versions of The Ring, as well as the dreadful sequel to the American version. Now he has just become a parody of himself by offering the same tired ghost story featuring a mom and her kid with even less cool gimmicks than The Ring. But the movie is not important, goddammit! What’s important is that Jennifer Connelly not give up so easily on her ability to please movie-going audiences with her magnificent mamaries. If Helen Mirren can still bust them out occasionally at her age, then Connelly has many years left to transition gracefully from hot starlet into MILF and then into GILF.
DVD: Gymkata PPPPP – as a comedy / P as a real movie
During my regular 4th of July bash with my old war buddies, my good friend Shrapnel Smith interrupted my kicking back and enjoying some PBR’s while rocking out the Boss. He berated me for having abandoned my once world-famous proclivity for the world of B-Movies. He said maybe I was doling out so many bad reviews because I wasn’t reviewing the right movies. So I decided to head back to my old DVD and VHS collection and shed some much needed light on the Skin-A-Max tittie movies, the no budget hack-n-slashers, and the USA Up All Night classics of the past. And there is no better place to start than the king of all American Chop Sockey, Gymkata. Unlike the Chuck Norris films that kicked off the idea of Americans in Kung Fu movies, this movie made no attempt to be credible in any fashion. Though most of the cast is American, almost 50% of the movie is dubbed anyway. I’m guessing they couldn’t afford an extra microphone, or that the boom op had to play a ninja sentry in several scenes so he couldn’t do both jobs at the same time. Maybe it was just because they shot it in Yugoslavia. Who knows? Anyway, this movie is the definition of "so bad it’s good".
The badass hero is played by actual Olympic gold medallist Kurt Thomas, who is recruited by the CIA to help win a contest in some Middle Eastern country for no real reason. We learn early on that Kurt is going to use his skill as a gymnast and train to become the world’s most dangerous fighting machine. The second he arrives at his destination the attacks begin. Since he doesn’t like terrorists and they don’t like gay dudes in spandex sporting ribbons and bling, they must kill him or he must kill them. In the second most ridiculous moment in the film, our hero conveniently chases a baddie into an alleyway that just happens to have two poles fashioned into the architecture that somehow function exactly the same as parallel bars! Now he can show us his real Gymfu style, or is it Kungnastics... let’s just call it Gymfitsu. Anyway, somehow Kurt’s effeminate ass manages to get a girlfriend, let her get kidnapped, and conveniently end up at the contest where he proceeds to dodge ninja arrows, spike logs, treacherous canyons and then manages to kill or outlast about 800 other participants.
The best scene in the movie has our 5’4” gymtastic hero fighting some type of deranged psycho zombies in an ancient village. This, however, is no ordinary village, since it has a 600-year-old stone pommel horse built right into the town square that gives Kurt the ability to swing and kick his way to the end of the contest. If you haven’t watched many B-Movies in the past, this is the quintessential place to start.
TV: Iron Chef America PPPp
At first I asked myself, why? The dubbed version of the hit Japanese show was so good with all the ridiculous translations and dubbing. It was like a samurai duel in the kitchen. If Kurasawa were a fan of the culinary arts, he probably would have come up with this show in 1957. Even with the most absurd secret ingredients and tongue-in-cheek dubbing, there was always something fascinating about how serious these guys were about cooking. Like there was something important about winning the respect of the weird head honcho guy with the shit-eating grin who stole Michael Jackson's style. Anyone who has flipped past this show at three in the morning completely baked can tell you it is a late night treat that shouldn’t be missed. But why would anyone want to do a real American version? I thought it would be awful until I actually watched it. The episode I saw had America Chef Bobby Flay going up against Hiroyuki Sakai who is Japanese by nationality but was the expert French chef from the original show. Sakai just keeps giving Flay this look like “It’s not so much that I hate you now, it’s that I never really liked you in the first place.” And Flay just saunters through his southwest dish like the baka geijin that he is. The contest began to blur into this growing pain in the pit of my stomach. It was then that I realized all I wanted was to eat the shit they were making. Left over K-rations and cheese-covered grits from the VFW mess hall just weren’t going to cut it. I thought to myself, shit, if these guys can make masterpieces from a secret ingredient, then I’m set, because everything in my fridge is a mystery to me. I could hardly bear watching the tasting. My mouth was boiling over with saliva. So I rushed to my own kitchen, set the timer for sixty minutes, and began cooking with my own secret ingredients- Hershey’s chocolate syrup, mayonnaise, breadcrumbs, Velveeta, dried parsley, bologna and a few other odds and ends. As the timer ticked down, I rushed to complete my three masterpieces. Luckily I had one of those deep fryers and some bacon drippings to fry up the tasty concoctions in my own kitchen stadium. And then my final dish was prepared in the toaster oven. When the time was up, I had just barely finished plating my wonderful designs.
Then it was time for the tasting. I presented myself with the dishes and proceeded to wolf them down. I never found out who won that night in my kitchen stadium, or theirs. I woke up a day later in the VA hospital having lost about 17 pounds. They said I had blacked out because of some type of bacteria that had developed in the purplish egg I had used to make the dish I called Hershey and Mayo souffl. But they had the Food Network in the hospital, so I was able to see many more episodes of the original and American Versions while eating tasteless hospital food.
Radio / Podcasts: KCRW’s The Business PPPP
Music this summer has been so awful that I thought I’d give you a review of something else I’ve been listening too in my iPod. People ask me all the time how I know so much about Hollywood without being a real insider. Other than watching more movies than Lindsey Lohan takes diet pills, this program is one of the reasons. It used to be a program I could only catch every once in a blue moon when I was hanging out at my buddy Shrapnel Smith’s Army surplus store in Watts, CA. But now Los Angeles’ main NPR station, KCRW, is offering all of it’s non-musical programming as downloadable podcasts. Now, I’m no fan of NPR’s lefty political propaganda, but even I signed the Move-On petition to keep funding for NPR up just so I could have access to quality programming like this. Plus, just this week a new version of iTunes was released with a separate section just for downloading popular podcasting content, so I no longer have to surf the net at large to find these downloadable gems. Though not quite as bitter as yours truly, The Business’ host, Claude Brodesser manages to deliver obscene amounts of non-gossipy insider news while remaining just above the Hollywood fray with witty quips and one-liners.
In a story about a movie theater chain losing a court battle over wheel chair access he quips “now you don’t have to be able to 'walk' to walk-out of a Michael Bay movie”. Proving that even the insiders have to keep a sense of humor about just how ridiculous the world of entertainment truly is. Even if you don’t own an overpriced iPod (though there are tons of ways to get one for free- if you murder someone for one, Steve Jobs will even call and apologize for you, I hear) you can still listen to these streaming programs anytime you want right from iTunes on your computer. It’s basically the next evolution of the blogosphere, but with the slew of awful new CD’s stowed away with my gear waiting for their one-P reviews, it is good to know that I now have another way to fill my on-demand listening needs without torturing myself.
(Question Of The Week: I had a hard time picking what the worst remake of all time was for the rating scale this week. I started with Beverly Hillbillies and ended with Psycho. So what is the biggest piece of shit remake ever made and what do you think is the best?)
remakes Posted: 2/13/2006by: vertigo best-The Man Who Knew Too Much
worst-Rollerball Bratatattaattatatataata! Posted: 7/8/2005by: Napalm Jones Lazerblast is now officially on my list! I think I will continue to review B-Movies from my collection, at least for the rest of the summer.
I have heard that sports editor Jesse Lamovsky got a hard on at the mere mention of some of those Jennifer Connelly movies. I suggest you slide out to the can a splash your minatures on the wall so you can return to you noraml day at work and focus. the middle is all that matters Posted: 7/8/2005by: adam Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed your review of The Fantastic Four..hell, if you like Jessica Alba so much, just go see Sin City.. but as for the last review, to me, it didn't matter. Why? Because you had already reviewed Gymkata and Iron Chef. Gymkata is one of the best kung-fu flicks EVER! It sucks SO Bad that it is genious. As for Iron Chef, the only thing outta Japan that comes close is MXC....or bukkake porn. Thanks for a great article, even if I didn't read the end...and if you liked Gymkata, do yourself a favor and rent Lazerblast. B/W Posted: 7/8/2005by: MSG Best...stick with the Kurasowa theme: The Magnificent Seven as a remake of Seven Samurai. Superior to Fist Full of Dollars, and has four of the coolest actors ever: Yul Brenner, Steve McQueen, Charles Bronson and Eli Wallach. The set of that movie must have had hot and cold running strippers.
Worst: Guess Who's Coming to Dinner. You're replacing Spencer Tracy and Sidney Poitier with...Bernie Mac and Ashton Kutchner???? This movie was shown to cause cancer in lab rats and make black folks vote Republican. Best and Worst Posted: 7/8/2005by: WTF Worst? Although I haven't seen "The Longest Yard" remake, it is a travesty that an attempt was even made. The worst that I have seen would have to be "Rollerball" - Chris Klein for God's sake?!
Best - "The Bounty" - I would have to say "most tolerable" rather than "best".
Not only is this a comic book adaptation, but as many of you might know (or might have heard during the publicity of this version) this is also a remake. Actually, maybe it’s not so much a remake as it is a second attempt at a big-screen version. Similar to the way that the Thomas “not as famous as Michael Biehn” Jane version of The Punisher sought to erase the Dolph “Poor Man’s Schwarzenager” Lundgren B-movie version of the Punisher, The Fantastic Four is seeking to erase from history the existence of an ultra campy Roger Korman version of FF made in 1994. Korman’s version is easily in the ten worst movies ever made, and didn’t even manage a theatrical or official DVD release, though you can easily snag a high quality bootleg at any comic book or sci-fi convention. It’s almost worth seeing just for the cheesy effects used when Mr. Fantastic stretches out his leg and trips like 20 bumbling bad guys at once. It looks and feels cheesier than the live action "Captain America" or "Shazam" TV movies from the ‘70s. Hmmn, I wonder when we’ll see big screen version of those two turds. But Fox and Marvel had to make this movie, A) because almost every other superhero has been used, and B) because if they didn’t make it someone was gonna steal their gimmick soon. Oh, wait; the identically superpower-endowed Incredibles already did that. Way to spend gamillions to be ahead of the curve. 
You’ll have to understand how it is very difficult for me to do this review. Jennifer Connelly has been one of my favorites since Labyrinth and The Rocketeer, both equally terrible movies, but she single-handedly made them two of the best movies of their era to watch "single-handedly". Then in 1991 I saw a little movie called Career Opportunities, which starred Connelly and Frank Whaley doing his best Morrisey impression as love interests trapped inside a Target overnight. To my surprise not only had Jennifer’s eyebrows grown into two gigantic eye-catching monsters, but more importantly, so had her boobs! From that moment on, I became one of her biggest fans, and thank God, because it only got better. Not only did she get her eyebrows waxed, but she began removing her clothing in films on a regular basis, showing off a set of baby feeders that would make Mimi Rogers feel insecure! Connelly’s rack made instant classics out of several movies that would have otherwise been lost to the sands of time, like her first nude scene in The Hot Spot, her quick nip flash in Inventing The Abbots, her voyeuristic cameo in Mullholland Falls, her two-finger taco slide in Waking The Dead, her nude in the tub suicide attempt in House of Sand and Fog, her bra and panty run in Some Girls, her captain of cleavage shot from Of Love and Shadows, and most importantly her bush baring best scene, the mirror shot in the otherwise wrist-slittingly dull Requiem for a Dream. She even added some much needed sex appeal to Dark City and Pollack. But sadly, now she has given up on her quest to remain one of my favorites. With her role in The Hulk, and now this pitiful horror thriller, she has resigned herself to playing the mature woman parts in third-rate big budget films. Dark Water was created by Hideo Nakata, the same guy who directed the original Japanese versions of The Ring, as well as the dreadful sequel to the American version. Now he has just become a parody of himself by offering the same tired ghost story featuring a mom and her kid with even less cool gimmicks than The Ring. But the movie is not important, goddammit! What’s important is that Jennifer Connelly not give up so easily on her ability to please movie-going audiences with her magnificent mamaries. If Helen Mirren can still bust them out occasionally at her age, then Connelly has many years left to transition gracefully from hot starlet into MILF and then into GILF.
During my regular 4th of July bash with my old war buddies, my good friend Shrapnel Smith interrupted my kicking back and enjoying some PBR’s while rocking out the Boss. He berated me for having abandoned my once world-famous proclivity for the world of B-Movies. He said maybe I was doling out so many bad reviews because I wasn’t reviewing the right movies. So I decided to head back to my old DVD and VHS collection and shed some much needed light on the Skin-A-Max tittie movies, the no budget hack-n-slashers, and the USA Up All Night classics of the past. And there is no better place to start than the king of all American Chop Sockey, Gymkata. Unlike the Chuck Norris films that kicked off the idea of Americans in Kung Fu movies, this movie made no attempt to be credible in any fashion. Though most of the cast is American, almost 50% of the movie is dubbed anyway. I’m guessing they couldn’t afford an extra microphone, or that the boom op had to play a ninja sentry in several scenes so he couldn’t do both jobs at the same time. Maybe it was just because they shot it in Yugoslavia. Who knows? Anyway, this movie is the definition of "so bad it’s good". 
At first I asked myself, why? The dubbed version of the hit Japanese show was so good with all the ridiculous translations and dubbing. It was like a samurai duel in the kitchen. If Kurasawa were a fan of the culinary arts, he probably would have come up with this show in 1957. Even with the most absurd secret ingredients and tongue-in-cheek dubbing, there was always something fascinating about how serious these guys were about cooking. Like there was something important about winning the respect of the weird head honcho guy with the shit-eating grin who stole Michael Jackson's style. Anyone who has flipped past this show at three in the morning completely baked can tell you it is a late night treat that shouldn’t be missed. But why would anyone want to do a real American version? I thought it would be awful until I actually watched it. The episode I saw had America Chef Bobby Flay going up against Hiroyuki Sakai who is Japanese by nationality but was the expert French chef from the original show. Sakai just keeps giving Flay this look like “It’s not so much that I hate you now, it’s that I never really liked you in the first place.” And Flay just saunters through his southwest dish like the baka geijin that he is. The contest began to blur into this growing pain in the pit of my stomach. It was then that I realized all I wanted was to eat the shit they were making. Left over K-rations and cheese-covered grits from the VFW mess hall just weren’t going to cut it. I thought to myself, shit, if these guys can make masterpieces from a secret ingredient, then I’m set, because everything in my fridge is a mystery to me. I could hardly bear watching the tasting. My mouth was boiling over with saliva. So I rushed to my own kitchen, set the timer for sixty minutes, and began cooking with my own secret ingredients- Hershey’s chocolate syrup, mayonnaise, breadcrumbs, Velveeta, dried parsley, bologna and a few other odds and ends. As the timer ticked down, I rushed to complete my three masterpieces. Luckily I had one of those deep fryers and some bacon drippings to fry up the tasty concoctions in my own kitchen stadium. And then my final dish was prepared in the toaster oven. When the time was up, I had just barely finished plating my wonderful designs. 
Music this summer has been so awful that I thought I’d give you a review of something else I’ve been listening too in my iPod. People ask me all the time how I know so much about Hollywood without being a real insider. Other than watching more movies than Lindsey Lohan takes diet pills, this program is one of the reasons. It used to be a program I could only catch every once in a blue moon when I was hanging out at my buddy Shrapnel Smith’s Army surplus store in Watts, CA. But now Los Angeles’ main NPR station, KCRW, is offering all of it’s non-musical programming as downloadable podcasts. Now, I’m no fan of NPR’s lefty political propaganda, but even I signed the Move-On petition to keep funding for NPR up just so I could have access to quality programming like this. Plus, just this week a new version of iTunes was released with a separate section just for downloading popular podcasting content, so I no longer have to surf the net at large to find these downloadable gems. Though not quite as bitter as yours truly, The Business’ host, Claude Brodesser manages to deliver obscene amounts of non-gossipy insider news while remaining just above the Hollywood fray with witty quips and one-liners. 
