SPARTACUS LOVE-FEST AT THE WHITE CASTLE

So I went to the ultra-ghetto White Castle in the Fulton Mall area on Saturday afternoon and the place was staffed by the usual crew of uncouth layabouts who often serve the burgers cold or get your order wrong, thus forcing you to wait for them to get it right. One of those workers whom I've encountered several times is a woman who easily tips the scales at 350 pounds and looks not unlike a resurrected Mabel King. She's previously acted in a loud, ignorant and obnoxious way that makes me cringe out of embarrassment for the American black race, but the other day while I was waiting on my order, she was chatting with a co-worker about how much she loves the SPARTACUS shows. And I don't mean a casual interest was being expressed; she was hardcore and knew everything about it, especially the first series. I couldn't resist giving the show a shoutout, so I put my fist in the air and yelled "Fuckin' SPARTACUS!" at which the big gal turned around with wide eyes and blurted out "You inta SPARTACUS?" When I answered in the affirmative she went off on the various aspects of the show that she loved, citing in particular the death of Batiatus, which caused her to visibly get fahrklempt and state with a tear in her eye (I shit you not), " I'm sorry...I really felt that one." And when my order came up on the prompter she stopped and asked if the order was mine, and when I said that it was she prepared my order personally (she was on the register and stopped taking orders to go to the prep area and hook me up) and made sure it arrived freshly-made and correct.

The lesson to be learned here is to always let your geek flag fly, because things can turn out sweet as a result.

Pshaw! Tarzan could do it!

START THEM EARLY

AND THEN THERE'S THIS VERSION

Fuck yeah!!!

Personally, I would kill to see what Uncle Walt would have had to say about this.

Double-click to embiggen.

NO COMMENT

IF ONLY THE TRAILERS FOR THOR LOOKED THIS GOOD...

Note to all who would seek to assassinate me: I will definitely be at this film on opening night, possibly even at the first midnight screening, so have your bullets and laser scopes ready.

THE PERFECT END TO INNOCENCE

I just wish the makers of these demotivational posters had proofreaders.

TAKE THAT, SPIDER-MAN: TURN OFF THE DARK — THE ZERO-BUDGET SPIDEY PROJECT JUST MADE YOU ITS BITCH

And so it was that improv performer/playwright Justin Moran and co-writer Jon Roufaeal's $0-budgeted "guerilla theater" musical THE SPIDEY PROJECT: WITH GREAT POWER COMES GREAT RESPONSIBILITY had its scheduled two-performance run, going from conception to opening in just over a month while its bloated counterpart missed its last announced opening date and has been pushed back until mid-June. I was wowed by the colossal elephant balls of such a concept and was even more blown away by the fact that this little musical, seemingly pulled from out of nowhere and fashioned together from baling wire and chewing gum, was in just about every way superior to the much-hyped, ever-in-the-headlines disaster currently stinking up the place at the Foxwoods Theater. I wish I had acted quickly enough to snag tickets for the show but I didn't hear about the free tickets being made available online until it was too late, so that was that. Thankfully, the show was captured on video for posterity and posted on the Internet, so here it is in its entirety.

THE SPIDEY PROJECT: WITH GREAT POWER COMES GREAT RESPONSIBILITY is galaxies better than the Taymor/Bono fiasco, costing quite literally cost zero to make (as opposed to the $65 mil and counting thrown into the other one) and featuring a cast of a mere nine performers. Every element that was missing from the money-pit would-be blockbuster is here in a far humbler and infinitely more genuine and entertaining form. In fact, the only thing — the ONLY thing!!! — the big Broadway monument to excess has over this David to its Goliath is impressive sets and legitimate costumes. I can think of no better critique of SPIDER-MAN: TURN OFF THE DARK than to have a pack of zero-budget upstarts take it to school by reminding us all of what live theater is really all about: heart.

Here's the whole thing in four parts. It's only around an hour in length and I heartily urge you to watch it. And to all involved in bringing this to life, you have my deepest thanks and respect for essentially kicking an over-inflated "titan" square in the batch. I know you did not mean to rip Taymor a new one, but this meager-yet-excellent work serves as a reminder that hubris is usually one's own worst enemy. Bravo!

THE LOVE GURU (2008)

There are bad movies, and then there are BAD movies. THE LOVE GURU falls into the latter category with the presence and implacable authority of a vast black hole, only this particular singularity sucks up comedy into some other realm that is anywhere other than onscreen. Truly, there is nothing more pitiful in all of cinema than an unfunny comedy. At least with a bad movie in any other genre, there's the possibility that you might gather some unintentional laughs from the cinematic grunt biscuit in question, but an unfunny comedy is a failure at its own raison d'être and just lays there onscreen like a dead cat on the side of the road. That said, I watched the universally-reviled Mike Myers vehicle THE LOVE GURU and it is simply one of the very worst alleged comedies ever purported to have been made by humans. In fact, it's so abysmally godawful that I actively recommend it so you can see with your own eyes that such a thing exists.

THE LOVE GURU was apparently intended to be Myers' next franchisable creation in the wake of his Austin Powers success, but it's a very lazy rehash of many of that series' tropes that were played out to death in those films in the first place, so dressing them up in the guise of a piece about a stereotypical platitude-spouting India-raised guru-type fooled no one and led to a swift box office death. The story relates the adventures of the guru Maurice Pitka (Myers), one of those fluffy maharishi-style hucksters who dispense dime store "wisdom" to eager Western audiences who hang on their every utterance as though it came straight from the mouth of the goddess Saraswati herself, a supposedly enlightened holy man who proves himself to be full of shit by desiring to be a bigger exponent of Eastern wisdom than Deepak Chopra. Pitka is hired by Jane Bullard (Jessica Alba), the corporate bigwig behind the Toronto Maple Leafs hockey team, to counsel star player Darren Roanoke (Romany Malco) through his serious relationship issues with his nubile girlfriend (Meagan Good) and restore his winning chops in time for his team to win the Stanley Cup.

The disturbing visual of the twelve-year-old Pitka as seen during the sequence explaining his origin. It's clearly supposed to be funny, but it's just plain creepy.

The incongruous fusion of sports gags and spiritual counseling humor does not work in any way and the viewer does not care one whit for the hockey star's predicament, the fate of the team, or Pitka's attraction to Jennifer. There's nothing here that engages the audience, and what we do get is just a seemingly endless regurgitation of wordplay, innuendo and sight gags that were already run into the ground in the Austin Powers movies. To reinforce the Powers connection, the former Mini-Me, Verne Troyer, is on hand as the Maple Leafs' coach, and his presence guaranteed an avalanche of tied and very predictable dwarf-related "jokes." If the goal there was to get us to understand how sick Troyer must be of such jibes after a lifetime as a little person, then the filmmakers succeeded in spades.

There are endless fart jokes, dick-and-balls jokes, turd gags, urine bits, and god knows what all else, plus the admittedly original sight of two Indian elephants fucking during a crucial Stanley Cup hockey game in order to cause a distraction, and not one bit of it is funny in the least (although the elephant bit gets points for coming from out of nowhere). There are also two appallingly unfunny, self-indulgent and overlong musical numbers in which Myers (as Pitka) performs the title song from 9 TO 5 and Steve Miller's "The Joker" with sitar in hand, and the latter number is staged as a full-fledged Bollywood-style musical number featuring several of the main cast. It was like attending a supposedly-fun party where everyone else knew each other for ages and were all in on some over-arcing private joke, with you left on the outside with no explanation. See for yourself:



Sadly, during the entirety of the film there were only two things that genuinely made me laugh out loud:

• Pitka's fantasy upon meeting Jennifer. When he first sees the Maple Leafs' owner, the camera zooms into Pitka's mind and we see him envision himself and Jennifer as stock characters in a standard cheapjack Bollywood musical, complete with horrible film stock, bad zoom cuts, and shrill singing (cribbed from some actual Bollywood musical) accompanied by ludicrously-translated lyrics.
  

I've seen a lot of Indian films, dating from the 1940's through the present, so I'm very familiar with them and I find the more over-the-top examples of the form to be lysergically insane and fun, and this bit nailed that aesthetic perfectly. Unfortunately, hilarious though it is, that sequence lasts for around a minute, maybe a tad less.

• The trope of running "wacky" outtakes to pad the running time of a short comedy film wore out its welcome in my world ages ago, but THE LOVE GURU does feature the best outtake I've seen in years, namely this reality check from Verne Troyer:

So, for me anyway, THE LOVE GURU amounted to a grand total of under two minutes of legitimate laughs out of a running time of eighty-six. I recommend this only for bad cinema completists, masochists, or insomniacs. And I can honestly say that even the most rabid and sophomoric of Mike Myers' fans will be disappointed by this one. I hope his next film — if he ever makes another one — will be informed by the mistakes made and lessons hopefully learned with this unmitigated disaster.

THE WEARYING OF THE GREEN

NOTE TO NEW READERS: this is a rerun from last year (with minor updates), but it's appropos for today so please enjoy.

So it's Saint Patrick's Day 2011 and I'm going to stay off the streets of New York tonight while the populace at large gets Viking-level destroyed on their fermented beverages of choice. During the bygone days of my misspent youth I gladly joined in the revelry, happy that this one day of the year was more or less given over to everybody getting completely fucked up and shedding the burden of being human, but Saint Patrick's Day has long since lost its allure for me thanks to growing up (sort of) and having worked two St. Paddy's Days at the barbecue joint. The joint opened four years ago today and St. Paddy's is as good a day as any for the anniversary of that fine dining establishment, but it became a bit overwhelming and the altered behavior of most of the crowd in attendance got rather David Lynchian in its crawly strangeness.

And I don't know about the rest of the nation but New York City in the throes of intoxicated Irish pride is an untamable green-clad beast that yowls and screeches random Pogues hits in tones even more unintelligible than those found in a live performance by the band's toothless wreck of a front man, Shane McGowan. Seriously, it took me years to decipher McGowan's wasted warbling during his infamous Saint Patrick's Day performance of "Body of An American" on SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE back in 1990.

The might and Majesty that is Shane McGowan.

There's a strange blend of good feelings and ready-to-erupt primal savagery that permeates the air on this day, a palpable buzz of expectation and yearning that mutates into the full gamut of human emotion once strong drink is introduced into the mix. Fucking and fighting are practically guaranteed, occasionally at the same time, and every bar in the city is sure to be packed to the rafters with folks decked out in cheap plastic Leprechaun hats and "Kiss Me I'm Irish" t-shirts, merrily gobbling up free and fatty corned beef and cabbage while swilling down foul-tasting beer tinted with green food coloring, a libation barely a step up from McDonald's odious seasonal horror, the Shamrock Shake.

The Shamrock Shake: minty taste treat, or mass-marketed bio-hazard sludge?

But the worst thing to come from all of this is the day-after remains of hardcore partying, namely broken bottles everywhere, carelessly discarded party cups, rivers of reeking piss provided by both men and women and, worst of all, sidewalks copiously adorned with spewn beer and partially-digested food, making the streets look like they've been carpeted with day-old corned beef hash. I shit you not, in some years the pavement was so puked-out that one could easily have skated on the vomit, this phenomenon being especially bad near the Park Avenue offices of Marvel Comics during the early-1990's.

The morning after also sees the subways smelling of fetid beer and drunks who have voided themselves in all possible ways without the benefit of having a restroom close at hand. The floors are glazed with spilled drinks and your feet stick to the linoleum like flypaper. Just plain revolting.

Please don't get me wrong; I totally understand the need to let off steam and get buck-wild, but St. Paddy's Day is rightfully termed "amateur night" by those of us who know how to properly get our drink on and not inflict out-of-control, sloppy assholism on the innocent citizenry, so we tend to sit this day out. Have you ever been out on St. Paddy's Day and had some boozed-up Bronx chick with big tits and green hair chat you up only to get close to you and bark up her dinner and last six shots of Jameson all over your chest? Well I have, and I can assure you that it completely harshed my evening and forced me to shell out ten bucks for one of those "I Heart NY" t-shirts to replace the vomit-sponge that the shirt I'd worn had become. Sorry, but stark white with a touristy slogan simply is not my aesthetic.

And why is it that a day that supposedly celebrates all things Irish invariably degenerates into a reinforcement of the drunken Mick stereotype? The Irish have contributed so much worthwhile literature, music, and who knows what else to the world, but other than being thrown a bone in any one of a gazillion St. Paddy's Day parades little, if any, mention is made of that. As far as the public at large seems to be concerned, on St. Paddy's Day the greatest contribution made by the Irish is whiskey. That's a damned shame when one takes into account what a genuinely wonderful people the Irish are, a group overflowing with a no-bullshit humanity and honesty of expression that's just plain endearing. My buddies Cat, Hughes, Amanda, Declan, Garth, and Tracey the waitress goddess are prime examples of this and many of my other friends and acquaintances whose ancestry hails from Ireland are equally as awesome.

Garth and Hughes, two of my favorite people.

So maybe that's what should be concentrated upon on Saint Patrick's Day, namely the oft-ignored excellence of our society's Irish component. And while we're at it, how about a marathon of flicks like THE QUIET MAN, DARBY O'GILL AND THE LITTLE PEOPLE, and THE LUCK OF THE IRISH? So even though the drunken idiots of all ethnicities out there may unintentionally be a rampaging annoyance, show some love to any of the Irish who may be in your life. And be careful when walking on those barf-splattered sidewalks 'cause falling down and breaking your ass on concrete is bad enough, but having that happen with the added accent of having your body coated with slimy, half-digested bar food is simply horrendous.

ONE YEAR OF FUNEMPLOYMENT

Today marks the one year anniversary of me being laid off from my last full-time job, and I am still sans employment. Oh, yay.

YOU'D BETTER BELIEVE IT

A CLASSIC STUPID TATTOO MUGSHOT

A Larry the Cable Guy fan represents.

NEW TRAILER FOR SUPER 8

THE NY TIMES REPORTS ON CHANGES TO BE MADE TO SPIDER-MAN: TURN OFF THE DARK

"Deeply Furious," aka the infamous "shoe chop" number, is wisely being cut from the show.

The NEW YORK TIMES has an article posted that outlines some of the changes being made to SPIDER-MAN: TURN OFF THE DARK in the wake of the justly-disastrous near-universal panning the show received from theater critics (and gobsmacked bloggers like Yours Truly), and all of the tweaks sound like wisely-chosen improvements. Chief among them is the reported excision of the fucking ludicrous "Deeply Furious," what I refer to as the infamous "shoe chop" number, and while I think that choice is by far the smartest creative decision yet made on this show (next to the ousting of director Julie Taymor), I hope to the gods of theater that someone recorded it on video for posterity. No lie, it was hands down the absolute worst professionally-executed musical number I've ever witnessed during nearly a lifetime of seeing Broadway shows (I've been at it since I was nine). Anyway, go here for the details.

YET MORE SPIDEY MUSICAL MISHEGOSS: THAT DOUCHEBAG HACK BONO STEPS IN TO "RIP THE SHOW APART FROM TOP TO BOTTOM"

The saga of SPIDER-MAN: TURN OFF THE DARK just gets more and more insane with each passing moment. It is now being reported that colossal douchebag/hack Bono is stepping in to start the show over from scratch and "rip the show apart from top to bottom." Um, does no one notice that it's this shithead's (and The Edge's) horrendous songs that rank as one of the most blatantly obvious key factors in the show's artistic failure? Bone-hole and The Edge (the most pretentious stage name in the entire history of music) wrote — or should I say "shat out" — an entire musical's worth of songs and not one of them is any good. Not a single one. And now the producers think he's got what it takes to turn around this black hole of alleged entertainment in time for the new projected opening in mid-to-late June? Nigger, please...

The details on this latest chapter in the show's ongoing idiocy can be read here.

THE NY TIMES ON JULIE TAYMOR'S FALL FROM B'WAY GRACE

Now that she's for all intents and purposes been booted from SPIDER-MAN: TURN OFF THE DARK, today's NEW YORK TIMES features an interesting article chronicling Broadway auteur Julie Taymor's precipitous fall from grace. You can read it here, and after reading it I once again state that I hope someone has been putting the whole story of this troubled show's history into a yet-to-be-published behind the scenes book. Or, better yet, a documentary.

WORDS TO LIVE BY

From the admittedly stupid but unfairly maligned BALLS OF FURY (2007):

"It is better to die like a tiger than to live like a pussy."

-Master Wong (James Hong)

MATCHING ESCORT (1982)

I've been in a martial arts movie mood lately, especially of the occasionally outrageous 1980's wuxia variety, and this particularly crazed Taiwanese flick managed to more than fill that need.

For those not in the know, wuxia is perhaps the most venerable of the martial sub-genres, bearing a rich history spanning centuries of literature and other arts, with its best-known examples for western audiences being the elaborate CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON (2000) and HOUSE OF FLYING DAGGERS (2004). Modern wuxia films are genuine spectacles, replete with high-flying wire-work meant to symbolically embellish the heroes' already considerable skills, romance and lavish sets and costumes, but the earlier examples of the form were often cheaply made and hastily shot, rife with over-the-top melodrama and much chewing of the scenery. But, if you ask me, that's what makes the old school examples a million times more fun than their modern descendants, and MATCHING ESCORT is a balls-out riot of superheroics and unintentional (?) hilarity.

First of all, as near as I can determine, the title MATCHING ESCORT has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the film's plot, so that's a win right out of the gate. And unless you're a regular watcher of films of this sort it's rather easy to lose track of what's going on in the story, but I assure you that it does have a linear narrative, albeit one that contains many elements that make not one lick of sense. The basic plot is once again the tried and true revenge saga, this time involving a very girly young woman named Pearl Fan (played by Cheung Ling of WOLF DEVIL WOMAN infamy), who, as a child, is forced to constantly wear heavy shoes of metal with no explanation from her dad.

Child abuse or training device: the metal shoes are locked to our young heroine's feet.

As the years pass, Pearl Fan gets used to the metal shoes and can move about as nimbly as a monkey while wearing them, and when she takes them off her agility and speed become downright superhuman.

Then comes the day when a pack of the evil sword-wielding assholes requisite for this kind of story show up at her dad's house and proceed to kill seventy-three family members and house staff, except for Pearl Fan, who is entrusted with a precious family heirloom — the Jade Lovebird pendant — and unwillingly spirited away by a loyal retainer. The retainer is swiftly killed and our heroine soon finds herself framed for her family's murder, so now she's on the run from both the legitimate authorities and the clan of mysteriously-motivated killers. Disguising herself as a boy (rather unconvincingly, but you just have to let that go) — one of the major tropes of the genre in stories featuring female heroes — Pearl Fan is chased to and dumped over a sheer cliff by the killers, who leave her for dead. But what they don't know is that she has fallen into a deep cave that resembles and even-lower-budget version of H.R. Pufnstuf's Living Island, where resides an hilariously kvetchy old crippled hermit named Uncle Strange. No, seriously.

Uncle Strange: Yoda he ain't.

Initially quite irritated at Pearl Fan for her unplanned landing in a vat of vaguely mystical potion that he'd been preparing for twenty years, a potion that would have somehow enabled him to exact revenge upon the villain who crippled his feet and cast him into the cave, Uncle Strange is moved by our heroine's desire for revenge of her own and so agrees to take her on as his pupil. (It soon turns out that Pearl Fan's quest for vengeance neatly/conveniently dovetails with that of Uncle Strange.) As this is a wuxia martial arts film, it has less to do with hand-to-hand styles than swordsmanship and more "romantic" action playing up the hero's grace and moral purity, so Pearl's training, such as it is, involves little more than a tad of hand techniques that will later allow her to catch and break sword blades with just two fingers (her later-displayed utter badassery with a sword is not explained but is accepted as a given for the genre's requirements).

A clearly not amused Pearl Fan demonstrates the bitchin' two-fingered sword-catching move.

She is also subjected to a regimen of assorted potions, strange fungi (Awright!) and unguents that grant her the necessary skills of a typical genre hero (the aforementioned 20-years-in-the-making potion presumably being some kind of Asian super-soldier serum), and she's ready to get down to the serious business of killing when Uncle Strange dies after physically transferring his energy to her (and hilariously freezing in position with his arm outstretched and a wild look on his face when he croaks). Once back in the outside world, Pearl Fan displays all the attributes one expects from a wuxia superhero, and her skills with a sword would make even the most adept of Jedi turn chartreuse with envy.

The newly-badassed Pearl Fan hands out free passes to the netherworld on a lonely beach.

The rest of the film is a series of genre trope-laden, dizzying and unrealistically bloody swordfights against her enemies and it's a hell of a lot of leave-your-brain-at-the-door fun getting to the inevitable outcome. The wild and utterly impossible acrobatics and swordplay are piled on quite generously, making the film a definite precursor to the kind of thing we so enjoyed in XENA: WARRIOR PRINCESS, only cartoonishly gorier.

Bad guy "Simon Cloud" meets his deservedly gory demise.

Our heroine, mowing down bad guys like weeds.

You've gotta love the heroine's moments of balletic poise in the brief moments between whirling arms and clashing steel.

There's also a disguised traveling prince — accompanied by the by-then-stock annoying comic relief servant whose basic character is meant to invoke Jackie Chan, only much more broadly — who's on hand to provide a love interest that literally goes nowhere and serves virtually no purpose to the story, so the less said of him the better.

The superfluous prince and his annoying servant.

(Oh, alright...Regarding the whole prince sub-plot, the story's Big Bad is revealed to have his eye on ruling the country and aims to kill the prince as part of his plans, but that sub-plot is given very short shrift and really doesn't add anything to Pearl Fan's narrative since you know going in that she's going to win in the end, so the governmental overthrow angle is totally superfluous.)

The film's ultra-flamboyant-looking Big Bad, who is quite appropriately named — and I'm not making this up — Lord Rouge.

If all of this sounds only slightly goofy and not like anything all that special, that's because I have thus far neglected to mention the overall "fairytale on mushrooms" feel and approach of the piece. There's not one single frame's-worth of realism in it and its look fuses low-budget cheapness with garish colors and occasionally weird-assed sets (Uncle Strange's cave being something straight out of a kiddie show's idea of "scary"). And of course all of the aforementioned physical impossibilities, and the ever-popular running-on-water move all add up to a heady cornucopia of wuxia junk food of the highest order.

Wire-work fun at its most endearingly cheesy.

Though nowhere near as brain-wrenchingly out of its mind as actor/director Cheung Ling's legendary WOLF DEVIL WOMAN (which I will definitely get around to reviewing one of these days), MATCHING ESCORT is a stone hoot and should be shared with friends and family as soon as possible. And although there is spewing arterial spray (translation: pressurized gallons of bright red paint) and some dismemberments here and there, the gore on hand is not scary at all and would only be disturbing to the youngest of viewers. I would not hesitate to show it to kids if seven and older, so use that caveat as a guide. Me? I plan to show this to my nephew, Nate, as soon as possible, and I also think my niece, Cleo, would totally dig it because it's about a "lady hero" (as she would have put it when she a tad younger) and it has violence. This film could easily have run on the late, lamented Channel 5 Saturday afternoon DRIVE-IN MOVIE weekly kung fu showcase of the early-through-mid-1980's with no editing for content, but that was then and this is now, so if run today the film's split-second decapitation and hand-lopping would likely be cut. If I had to rate this, I'd give it a PG, but the wussified MPAA would likely insist on a PG-13 or a wholly undeserved "mild R." RECOMMENDED.

The excellence that was Cheung Ling.

IT'S FINALLY OFFICIAL — JULIE TAYMOR IS OFF SPIDER-MAN: TURN OFF THE DARK

Celebrity douchebag/collaborator Bono helpfully points out the "Now Hiring" sign in the nearby White Castle window to former SPIDER-MAN: TURN OFF THE DARK director Julie Taymor. (photo by Joan Marcus)

I've got nothing to add to this, other than to say it's about goddamned time. Go here for the initial details, and I'm sure there will be a lot more to come over the next day or two.

SPIDER-MAN: TURN OFF THE DARK OPENING PUSHED BACK UNTIL JUNE

It seems like something happens with this show on an almost hourly basis and now, though the official press release has yet to be made, reliable sources state that SPIDER-MAN: TURN OFF THE DARK will be shutting down for major creative overhauls and will not open until June. Believe me, after the balls-out-and-doused-in-kerosene mess I saw during previews in December, this show needs all the re-tooling it can get. In a sane world this show would just have its plug pulled, but with over $65,000,000 (and counting) having been spent on it, that ain't gonna happen, so now it's in major crisis mode. The latest on this can be read over at THE NEW YORK TIMES.

MORE SPIDER-MAN MUSICAL MISHEGOSS: WILL JULIE TAYMOR FINALLY GET THE BOOT?

As SPIDER-MAN: TURN OFF THE DARK continues onward despite its opening night possibly being pushed back to June and major fixes to its myriad of flaws being in the offing, it looks like things have gotten so out of hand that director/personification of hubris Julie Taymor could face "leaving" the project. I, for one, think that's a change that's loooooong overdue and I hope someone more grounded in reality and less in ego will be handed the reins of the most expensive show in Broadway history. You can read about this latest development over at THE NEW YORK TIMES.

KUNG FU FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE (1982)

I first heard of this one while watching the fight scene highlights videotape THIS IS KUNG FU with a bunch of equally-stoned friends back in 1989, and we simply could not fucking believe what we saw when the tape opened with the literally jaw-dropping trailer for this flick. Along with all manner of bizarro Chinese mythology-specific creatures and weirdness, the trailer featured tag lines that mangled the English language to an alarming degree (example:"Ghost seeking revenge evils are deadly scared!" and "Human heart annoying both spirits and human!), and my friends and I watched the trailer over and over in disbelief, vowing to someday find and watch this surefire classic of lysergic chopsocky madness.

Packaging art for the Ocean Shores VHS release from the '80's, a tape that took me two years to track down.

I finally found the movie about two years later in a cheesy hole-in-the-wall video store that was going out of business, a victim of the Disneyfication of Times Square and it cost me around ten bucks (about five bucks too much for a beat-up used copy), but I finally had the object of my relentless quest. The wait was worth it, because the martial arts were pretty good and the script is a ludicrous dialogue fan's wet dream.

Starring Indonesian martial arts cult figure Billy Chong — who starred in the rather similar, though way more coherent, KUNG FU ZOMBIE (also 1982) — the film chronicles the young hero's quest for vengeance against the rat bastard who murdered his father, a quest instigated by the pissed-off ghost of the hero's dad. The murderous rat bastard is played by none other than Lo Lieh, star of the film that kicked off the 1970's kung fu movie boom, the classic FIVE FINGERS OF DEATH (1971, released in the U.S. in 1972), but here he's playing one of his many, many outright villains and it's always a pleasure to see him be just plain unabashedly evil. Realizing that the son may come after him and hand him a well-earned ass-kicking, the bad guy hires an evil kung fu priest/sorcerer to handle things for him, and the evil sorcerer gets up to a shitload of black magic and suchlike over the course of the film, including one of the most memorable (to say nothing of ludicrous) moments in the entire history of cinema. The prize goes to a scene wherein the villainous sorcerer realizes he's about to get his ass kicked, so he throws some spells into the air and screams "Count Dracula! Come to my aid!" The second he says this, the sky turns to night, the full moon pops up, a wolf howls and then from out of nowhere fucking Count Dracula himself — the only white guy in the entire film — swoops from out of the sky screaming "I'M COMING!!! HAHAHAHAHAH!!!"

The justly infamous Count Dracula sequence.

And don't ask how the hero and the eerie aides he gathers finally defeat the sorcerer (hint: it involves the aid of a bunch of prostitutes who are experiencing "monthly women's concerns"). To say more would give away shit that you just won't believe, so I leave you to rent this and discover its ultra-bizarro wonders for yourself. Illegal smokables and alcoholic beverages are recommended for maximizing the fun, and it's a real crowd-pleaser/baffler when shown to a roomful of willing attendees. A unique cinematic experience, TRUST YER BUNCHE and snag this one as soon as possible.

Packaging art for the most recent DVD release. You'll note they got the title wrong.

THIS IS BETTER THAN THE ENTIRETY OF QUANTUM OF SOLACE

HOW TO MISCONSTRUE A FILM TITLE

Sabu as the titular Thief of Bagdad...Or is he?

I recently received the visually incredible Criterion edition of the excellent live-action fantasy classic, THE THIEF OF BAGDAD (1940) — which I very strongly suggest that you purchase before it goes out of print and becomes a pricey collector's item — and it made me ponder something.

If you live virtually anywhere in the continental United States and have ever gone to the movies, you have likely encountered my fellow Negroes — and if truth be told, sometimes me — offering blurted-out and sometimes hilarious commentary on whatever film you may be seeing in the theater. I'm wondering if, seventy-one years ago when THE THIEF OF BAGDAD first opened, some dissatisfied black dude exclaimed aloud as the words "THE END" appeared onscreen, "Man, that muthafukka didn't steal no Bagdad! That's some bullshit right there, Jack!"

I can also see a similar scenario taking place at the conclusion of the recent WINTER'S BONE.

SUNDAY'S PORN DAY!

I'm a big fan of sex and violence in cinema but when it comes to porn I prefer to keep the two exclusive from one another, so I am very curious as to how well this new release succeeds as a blend of the tenderloin and martial arts genres.

There have been prior attempts at melding the two forms, especially during the 1970's chopsocky boom, and I always found the shoehorning of (badly choreographed) kung fu or karate into a fuck film to be wholly incongruous. Therefore I very much doubt this will be worth even a squirt of diabetic rat's piss.

As you have no doubt noticed if you read this blog regularly, porn parodies/remakes are proliferating at a rate that is both alarming and downright nonsensical. For example, who in god's name thought this would be a good idea?

Do we really need a XXX remake of one of the most tragic and soul-destroyingly depressing films of the 1990's? Who the hell would find this erotic? I can't speak for the rest you, but I know with absolute certainty that I could never rub one out to this. No fucking way.

Lastly, unless you've been living in a cave in the remote Himalayas for the past two months or so, you are no doubt aware of the media circus surrounding the extremely public meltdown of actor/party loon Charlie Sheen. The guy has whored and coked his way into the hearts and minds of insatiable scandal-lovers everywhere, with new bizarro developments and pronouncements taking place on pretty much a daily basis. Now comes this so-called parody of The Sheen's adventures, starring a number of his call girl pals, for each of whom his moment in the spotlight of public infamy equals free publicity and the potential for making a few quick bucks.

I'm sure this sucks out loud, but it fascinates me because, well, think about it. How hard would it have been at this point to talk the real Charlie Sheen into actively participating in this venture? In fact, considering his call girl and porn biz connections, coupled with him acting as a human reverse-snow-blower ("sober," my beige ass), I'm rather shocked that Charlie didn't think to make this himself. His behavior has been one steadily-escalating litany of highly questionable decisions, so I doubt starring in a porno would do much, if anything, to hurt his already majorly tarnished reputation. And unless the filmmakers have on hand a woodsman who's a dead ringer for Charlie who can also flawlessly imitate his voice, delivery, and mannerisms, this is doomed to be nothing more than the rote and incredibly shameless cash-in that it so obviously is.

COMING SOON!

I'm trying not to get my hopes up, but for me this is a must-see. Bringing the Furious Five into the main action? Oh, HELL yeah.

BEST PORNO MOVIE POSTER EVER

NOTE: though hardcore scenes were shot for this film, they were cut pre-release for legal reasons. Therefore the final version would really be considered softcore. To the best of my knowledge the uncensored edition no longer exists, not even on the DVD.

CHARLIE SHEEN IS EVERYWHERE!