WTF Weekends (why am I even trying?)

This is Bruce Campbell. I am comfortable enough in my sexuality to say I have a crush on him. I guess you could call it a "mancrush". I would like to thank my pal Joey 6000 Nuts for enlightening me. He once described his feeling towards
Lars Frederiksen of Rancid as his mancrush. I then realized I harbored many a mancrush. Now I'm a heterosexual man, I don't pant over these men, I simply must see or read or listen to everything they do. This just happens to be a dual edged sword. Due to my fascination with these men I have discovered great things I normally would not have. Warren Ellis'Stormwatch, Trey Parker's Cannibal the Musical,Seth Green in Greg the Bunny to name a few. It has also led to me witnessing some terrible things. Seth Green in Be Cool, Joss Whedon's Fray, and the subject of our review today.



I saw this while flicking through the channels and had to watch due to the aforementioned mancrush. The fact that this movie is a Sci-Fi Channel production instantly lowered my expectations, and yet it was still worse then I thought it could be.

The gist of the story is 4 astronauts (Bruce Campbell, Renee O'Connor, of Xena fame, random victim 1, random victim 2) who crash to earth after 40 years of suspended animation. They find an earth decimated and are immediately taken captive by humans. They are then led to a slave camp where they are forced to cut apart wood for their alien captors.



That's right these are your aliens. Apparently the writer of this movie was bitten by a praying mantis as a child and it scarred him for life. Oversized bugs are very rarely scary unless Doogie Howser is involved (Rasczak's Roughnecks) and the actors in this movie do very little to convine me to change my opinion. That might have something to do with the fact that they recruited for this movie from the local drama society or they're just shitty actors. I pray it's the former.

The special effects are what I expected them to be (horrible) but one notable exception was a scene when an alien bites a human's head off. It isn't notable because it was done well, it's notable because the filmakers felt the need to show it 3 separate times. It might be because I'm desensitized to violence but I laughed out loud each time it was shown. Same animation, different actor, still caused me to chuckle.

Alien Apocalypse as a whole was pretty forgettable. Bruce Campbell of course eats up scenery like a starving Rwandan child and Renee O'Conner wasn't completely distracting, also in the final scene she performs more decapitations than Underworld and Underworld Evolution combined. This is a pretty mean feat as anyone who has scene those two movies knows.

Sitting through dreck like this is one of the dangers of having a mancrush on Bruce Campbell, but I don't regret it. One good thing is the next project he is involved in looks pretty damn good. It's called Burn Notice and it premieres on USA on Thursday. The other is I will never run low on things to bitch about on the internet.

Throwback Thursdays: Thor

This is the comic book that got me into comic books hardcore. I read comics before this but when I borrowed Simonson's run from this creepy kid I knew in middle school I started reading comics religiously. Say what you want about creepy kids but I got more free shit off them 'cause they wanted to be my friend.

Getting back to the matter at hand, Simonson had a very long run on Thor but this is my favorite (#337-#341) It introduces a horse-like alien, Beta Ray Bill, who crashes on earth and meets Thor in battle. He eventually takes advantage of a weakness in Thor's hammer to win. This leads to a battle to the death to determine the hammer's true owner.



The reason this story works so well is it mixes the Norse mythology of Thor's world, and the cosmic stories and science fiction that Marvel can do so well. Oh and Walt Simonson is the balls!



This is a pic of Orion(who's awesomeness I will get to at a later date) As I said...the balls!
I can't recommend reading these stories enough. Lucky for you they are conveniently collected in the first Thor Visionaries. I will eventually own all three. I suggest you do the same.

WTF Weekends (only a day late)

I'm a day late and also I'm gonna be pulling back from my promise of 3 posts a week. I'm still going to try to stick to that goal, but there will be guaranteed posts on the weekend and Thursdays. I'm gonna try and stick another post in between those two. Look reading every single thing Warren Ellis writes take up a lot of time. OK so now that's out of the way on to the review.
WTF weekends presents The Phantom:
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"Slam Evil" Wow that is a bad tagline. Anyways "The Phantom" movie was released in '96 when Hollywood was mining old comic strips for movies before they realized comic books are a vital raping ground. I'm still bitter about Constantine.
Seeing as how "The Phantom" has a long history and is beloved around the world this movie can't be that bad right? wrong. If it weren't for Billy Zane, this movie would be unwatchable. The "romantic scenes" between Mr Zane and his co-star Kristy Swanson, "The original Buffy the Vampire Slayer", are about as sexy as a priest and a nun reading the tax code. The villain is played by Treat Williams, and while he makes an effort it falls short, way short. The movie has plenty of "action and laughs", or at least they are advertised. I didn't see any, maybe I fell asleep.

I think I've made it clear that this movie has no place in any discerning movie fan's collection. So why is it here? The nostalgia factor. The fact that things we enjoyed as children are colored for the rest of our lives. Nostalgia is to blame for so many things I've spent money on, from Transformers: The Movie (Starring Orson Welles & Leonard Nimoy), to my copies of Verve Pipe cds. Now most people would defend these decisions saying that they still enjoy these things, but I will be honest with you dear reader. These things are fucking terrible and I know it. Yet like that case of herpes, I can't rid myself of them.

Some old shit.

I found this while looking for something in my memory and I still remember the conversation, I still don't have an answer so I thought I'd post it here to see if I get any answers.
So I was talking to a friend of mine(who just happens to be black & also female) and she was telling me about how a lesbian co-worker has been hitting on her now that she is newly single. She then remarked that she wasn't gay and she isn't into women unless it was Halle Berry.
That made me stop and think b/c whenever you see a dumb poll asking what woman most women would sleep with, the answer is always Angelina Jolie. So the question I'm pondering is "Is Halle Berry the black version of Jolie when it comes to housewife lesbian fantasy?" and why Angelina Jolie? I understand she is considered the sexiest person but it's almost universal whenever that question is asked. I'm not saying I wouldn't fuck her but I would probably do it with Hackers playing in the background so the anger of having to watch that bullshit would keep me hard for a while.
What the fuck am I talking about? I'm not sure what my point is. It is weird the way people latch onto shit when they hear other peoples reponse to a certain question. I don't find Halle Berry that hot.

Throwback Thursdays: The Critic

The Critic for those who don't know was a cartoon that briefly aired on ABC and then was Fox's first in a long line of schedule change butt-fuck victims. I really hate FOX. Anyways, The Critic starred the amazing Jon Lovitz as a movie critic named Jay Sherman, who hated everything. As you can tell I could relate. The show was created by former Simpson's writers (when it was still good) and had that shows nature of coming up with great supporting characters such as Jay's rich waspy parents, his crusty chain smoking make-up woman and his country bumpkin network boss. They released both seasons on DVD a couple of years ago and it's definitely worth picking up if only for the movie parodies.



So once again I highly suggest you buy it. Oh and come back sometime this weekend as I struggle to stay on my first deadline. Later

P.S. I know this is Wednesday but tomorrow I have work, free passes to see the Silver Surfer wreck ass and then karaoke. A long day like that and I'm not gonna be down for writing a post. So I cheat, Deal.

It has been a while.

I am such a lazy mofo. I do apologize but I promise I will start blogging more often. In fact I've come up with a sort of schedule.
Mondays will be Movie Mondays, that's self explanatory
Thursdays will be Throwback Thursdays. I will be reviewing some old school shit.
Weekends will be WTF! weekends. I will review weird shit that I probably shouldn't own.

So that's the schedule . Guaranteed 3 posts a week with some shit in-between. My imaginary fans are besides themselves.

I'm sure you've seen this, but I haven't!

I truly wish I had seen the movie that this was taken from but I'm pretty sure I can sum up my review in 6 words. Karate Midget Interpol Agent...Fucking Genius. This is also a classic example of how foreign countries don't shun their freaks, they make ridiculous movies starring them.