Repo! The Genetic Opera

Let me begin by saying this movie has some graphic violence, and also Paris Hilton. Those two things might scare away a large number of people. Despite these two things, and somewhat because of them (yes, even Paris), this movie is amazing. Stop reading and go rent it. It's entertaining from start to finish, is very visually pleasing, the soundtrack (and since it is a rock opera, this is most of the dialogue) was amazing.

The movie presents a vision of the future of widespread organ failure. Fitting with the natural capitalist American response of most movie businessmen, our villain, Rotti Largo, founds Geneco- a company that produces organs and sells them at high cost, as well as produces society's newest drug of choice. Due to the high cost of saving your own life, people sign steep contracts to get the organs. When they are unable to pay, Geneco sends a Repo-Man after them to get the organs back.

Our heroine is Shilo (Alexa Vega of the Spy Kids series, but don't hold that against her here), a sickly girl trying to live outside of her father's confinements. Her father, Nathan, (Anthony Stewart Head from Buffy) keeps her indoors to protect her frail health. Nathan is also secretly the Repo Man.

Supporting characters include the three Largo children, including Hilton as the plastic surgery and drug addicted spoiled daughter, the GraveRobber who acts as a narrator and inbetween drug deals, and Blind Mag (Sarah Brightman, the original Phantom of the Opera star), the most popular entertainer around and also the best friend of Shilo's dead mother.

Repo! had a very limited release in theaters, but I'm hoping it can gather some underground steam so it's not lost on our culture. I won't go through the entire movie, but here's a rundown of some of the parts I remember fondly. Paris Hilton's face falls off. After trying to repair a botched facial transplant, the heiress attempts to establish herself as a singer to disasterous results when her face falls off. What's a girl to do? Sell it online, of course. The big finale occurs onstage in front of a sold out audience. You can read as much or as little as you want into what that says about present society but it makes something so over the top both even more extreme, and also work. The audience buys it, so I buy it. I'll end with the cameo from Joan Jett. Because her appearance was just as random and short as this description of it.

Sidenote: if you search for images of Repo! The Genetic Opera DVD on google and specify the color orange, you end up with a bunch of non-character related pictures of Paris Hilton.

Let's All Go To The Movies - Wolverine

So I saw Wolverine tonight. I feel like I was expecting more than I got. While it was fun to see all the different mutants, there were a few obvious plot issues - and I'm not just talking about differences between the film and the comics.

This is somewhat spoilerish, but not to the point where I'm going to give away the whole movie. I just want to complain about the major plot problem. Skip the next paragraph if you want to remain 100% unspoiled.







When Wolverine meets Gambit and they're about to fight, Wolverine sees Sabretooth and decides to fight him instead. If Gambit hates Sabretooth as well, as he reveals in the preceding conversation, why would he interrupt the fight and let him get away? I know you couldn't actually kill the character off, but the situation just wasn't natural.








I felt that the acting was sufficient for what it was. The Blob was the most annoying/worst actor, so good news for will.i.am. He did decent enough for his first effort. Most characters didn't really have to do that much, since the movie is less than two hours long and involves a large variety of locations and people present.

I know the movie is going to make tons of money no matter what anyone says at this point. It's the first big summer movie of the year, and the anticipation for this has been brewing for years. It will be interesting to see how people react to the film after seeing it. Will it experience the near-universal praise of The Dark Knight or will it be a more realistic reaction? I'm kind of thinking a Juno-type effect where all the hype is going to end up hurting people's perception. I say go see it, enjoy it, but know it's far from perfect. I'm hoping some of the later movies of the summer (next week's Star Trek, HP6, Transformers 2, GIJoe, etc) will be much better.

Tropic Thunder

I just saw this movie for the first time on Wednesday. I loved it for so many reasons, from its status as a parody of war movies, to its commentary on cinema in general, there were so many little things that add to it.

1. The Soundtrack
War movies (especially those based on Vietnam) have this wonderful tendency to use music by artists that were involved in the anti-war movement of the counterculture. Like using The Doors to open Apocalypse Now, Tropic Thunder uses a great collection of 60s music including Buffalo Springfield and The Rolling Stones.

2. Alpa Chino
A great send up of hip-hop rapper/actors, Alpa Chino also provided a sort of 'straight' man to Kirk Lazarus. The movie opens with his ad for "Booty Sweat" and "Bust-A-Nut," his energy drink and food bar in the same vein as Pimp Juice. He represents LL, Will Smith, T.I., 50, Luda, and any other rapper who decides to get into acting (Mos Def doesn't count), and the revelation that he's gay is also pretty funny considering the rumors surrounding Will Smith, Diddy and other hip-hop stars.

3. From the beginning fake trailers to introduce our actors, Tropic Thunder makes passing jabs at the movie business throughout the entire film. When Lazarus advises Tugg Speedman to not go "full retard" to get a more meaningful performance, he spouts off a long list of Oscar winners to back up his claim. Also, the Klump-bashing Fattie franchise Jeff Portnoy stars in was hilarious. It was nice that it only played such a small part in the movie, but it was great that it was put in there. Also, Ben Stiller used his standing in the industry to get a wonderful collection of cameos. Tobey Maguire as a gay monk fondling Lazarus's rosary beads and Jennifer Love Hewitt, Lance Bass and Jon Voight at the Oscars made great additions to the movie just by being there.

4. Ben Stiller and Jack Black were not Ben Stiller and Jack Black
Usually I hate Jack Black and Ben Stiller has a tendency to place the same character over and over again. Stiller did a very good job of writing characters that both used his strengths, without being the cliche man in over his head he usually ends up with. Jack Black really toned down his energy and I greatly appreciated it.

5. I'm not even familiar enough with war movies to begin to list the references here. Check out this list:
www.imdb.com
Although I do want to add that I don't think it's complete yet. For example, the first big explosion where the trees explode from left to right was taken directly out of Apocalypse Now.

Let's All Go To The Movies - Obsessed

Let's take a minute for this Strange White Female/Disclosure/Perfect Stranger/Swimfan conglomeration, or rather, 2:30 -



Beyonce, Beyonce, Beyonce. "I'll show you crazy?" I know you want to be taken seriously as an actress, so you wanted to step out and do something that's not a musical. After all, there's only so many Carmen: A Hip-Hopera, Cadillac Records, Dreamgirls, Goldmember, Fighting Temptations, etc. out there for you to sing your way through. (Damn! I got all but Fighting Temptations and Pink Panther before I had to use IMDB) But this can not be the type of work you think you can look back on and be proud of. Anyway, my 10 favorite things about this preview are below... and by favorite, I mean the worst and easiest to make fun of.

10. The look Ali Larter gives at :14. 'I'm just a temp. Hee hee.' Varsity Blues was a long time ago. You're getting a little old to be the flirty slutty secretary.

9. The crappy score. I was two notes in before I knew it would be bad. It's such cliche thriller music.

8. "Is she pretty?" Don't ask questions you don't want answers to.

7. "You said you 'wish we could be together!'" Who does Ali Larter think she is? She's not Stan. This isn't an Eminem song.

6. What kind of babysitter let's someone in the house. I'm a little more lenient since Ali barged in, but call the cops. You should have seen some movies, girl.

5. Even worse, what kind of detective/social worker/anyone questions a man about a nude woman overdosing in his bed right in front of his wife? Or out in an open area? That has to be a breach of some sort of protocol.

4. The scene where Beyonce suddenly has a change of heart and tries to save Ali from falling to her death/twisted ankle.../broken leg at worst and then is pulled down as well obviously happens when there are at most 20 minutes left in the movie. It's like how the preview gives away that Hannah Montana will have some sort of concert at her farm place where she reveals her true identity but then gets to sing anyway. Stop giving away the ending, Hollywood!

3. Jerry O'Connell?

2. The crappy intertitles.
An office flirtation - umm... he's already at fault for flirting
An innocent temptation - temptation isn't innocent
Two different perceptions - his face says he knows exactly what she wants
What you hide makes you innocent - if you're hiding something, you're guilty of it
what you reveal makes you guilty - no
and the truth lies somewhere in between - fair enough?

1. 1:13
No, Jerry O'Connell. Bad.

Also, what kind of e-mail address is TempGirl? They can make up realistic ones for the others in the folder, but not for her?
Lastly, how is the man is this movie the same man currently on The Office? He doesn't look like himself...