E Y E W A N N A B E

I haven't been doing these enough but my work schedule has been KILLER lately.  But it's time I got back to the list with the awesome #11: Grandma's Boy

I was lucky enough to see Grandma's Boy in theaters - it wasn't out for too long and only found its place on video.  The film is really still awesome...I love the shit out of this film.  It has a great cast.  Allen Covert finally comes out from behind Adam Sandler's shadow to do his own film.  He carries the film quite well - he's alot of fun to watch as he finally gets to play the straight man.  As a guy who is forced to leave his apartment after his roommate blows the rent, he masturbates on a Lara Croft doll, sleeps next to a racecar bed, before finally moving in with his grandmother and her two friends.

There's a ton going on in the movie.  Dance Dance Revolution, pot smoking, a monkey, a lion, Linda Cardellini, Nick Swardson, VIDEOGAMES, Joel Moore (DODGEBALL!), Jonah Hill, and Shirley Jones playing a WHORE!  What more can you ask for in ONE FILM?

I still quote the movie..."My roommates are getting me some sweet rims."  It's just an awesome film.  I really don't have much more to say on it...just that it's awesome.  And Allen Covert should star in more movies.

SWEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEET!

Woke up this morning to see my name and quotes in the new Adrien Brody / Forest Whitaker helmed The Experiment trailer!

Every Christmas there are two movies that are a must watch.  The first is The Ref - the AWESOME Denis Leary/Kevin Spacey film.  The other is Bad Santa.  Combined with a rotating third film (Die Hard or Elf or something else) that is usually Laur and I's Christmas Eve.

Bad Santa is awesome.  It's an anti-Christmas film.  There's fucking and cursing and drunkness.  There's Lauren Graham and the role that really gave Tony Cox his street cred.  There's two actors who have since passed on - John Ritter (this is his last film he did before he passed on) and Bernie Mac (another tragedy!).

Is there really anything better then a Santa with nothing to live for?  Who curses...who pisses himself...who yells at kids...who comes to work piss drunk?  No.  There's really not.  I recently read that the producers were trying to lock in Bill Murray but because he's so elusive they had to recast.  I think that was a godsend.  Billy Bob Thornton so owned the part that he is now the go-to asshole for every film that needs an asshole.

Brent Kelly as 'The Kid' is also brilliant.  He is so utterly pathetic in the film that you want to feel sorry for him AND beat the shit out of him at the same time.  Brent's not that retarded in real life which really speaks to his acting ability.  The line "You want some sandwiches" is just brilliant as is most of the lines that Brent says.

All-in-all Bad Santa is a great cult film that I can watch a million times.  Or at least once a year - because there's nothing better while waiting for Santa then watching Bad Santa.

NEXT UP: FREE MAHI MAHI!

"The best ongoing series any publisher has to offer." - Ain't It Cool News

The quote on the cover?  MINE!  The comic?  THE BEST ONGOING SERIES ANY PUBLISHER HAS TO OFFER - GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY!  Am I thrilled my quote is on the cover...hellz to the yes!

Oh Dae-Su is kidnapped and locked in a room for 15 years.  He never sees another living soul and spends his years wondering what he did to be locked up in this prison.  He trains himself in kung-fu, watches television, and nearly goes insane.

Then one day...he is let go.

Oh Dae-Su wants revenge.  The revenge controls his life as he struggles to find out the truth about his jailing.  But is the film really about Dae Su's revenge...or that of the one who kidnapped him?

Oldboy is truly in a league of its own.  It's a mystery with conspiracy.  It's about loose lips.  And it has one of the greatest fight scenes of all time - a remarkable 6 minute fight scene in a hallway that is one long ongoing shot.

Once all the secrets are finally revealed it is a HUGE BLOW to the audience.  It is revenge on an amazing scale.  It is truly just FUCKED UP.  And it is amazing.  A truly great piece of cinema history.  Because once you have your own revenge, and once Oh Dae-Su's kidnapper has his, what is to happen?

The film is part of a loose "Vengeance" trilogy by Park Chan-wook - but this film is truly the finest of the three and one of the best films released in the last twenty years.

NEXT UP: Santa likes to fuck fat chicks in the ass.

Digital Killed The Video Store

Taken from The Ewing Observer

By Ryan McLelland

No longer can a Ewing resident look at someone and say, “Let’s go rent a movie.” Why? Because Hollywood Video, long a staple adjacent to the Shop Rite on Olden Avenue, and the last video store in Ewing Township, has gone out of business.

In the mid eighties, you couldn’t turn a corner in Ewing without running into West Coast Video, Star Video, the video store at Glen Roc or Blockbuster Video.

There was a huge celebration when Choices opened across from the old GM plant. The massive rental store brought in Philadelphia Phillie Von Hayes and the clown prince of baseball Max Patkin to celebrate the grand opening of West Trenton’s first video store. Over the years, Choices became Moovies which morphed into Video Update before being bought out by Movie Gallery who closed the store because they also owned Hollywood Video.

As a kid, I would walk down aisles in awe, looking at each videotape, wondering what I could rent this time around. Renting a movie was just as great as going to the movies, it was just as great as ice cream, and almost as good at getting McDonald’s.

But in the last few years, video stores have become obsolete. We can rent movies on demand the very same day they are available in stores. We can go to the grocery store and rent a new DVD from the Redbox for a dollar. We can shoot over to the Ewing Library and check out three DVDs for the weekend. Wal-Mart is selling brand new movies for $5 apiece. Even stores at the mall sell used DVDs so cheap that it is sometimes cheaper to buy than it would to rent the very same film.

One by one, the video stores dried up in Ewing. West Coast Video moved across the street only to close just a few years later. Blockbuster opened a second store near Marrazzo’s but just as quickly went away. The Blockbuster on Olden Avenue, where I worked at as a teen, was next. The places I revered so much growing up were suddenly dinosaurs in the modern technological world.

Customers weren’t allowed to walk down the aisles on the store’s last day. The shelves were near barren, quite an eerie sight for a place where you are supposed to go for movies. Anything left in the store was 12 DVDs for $10 - an amazing deal that I myself had to take part in while visiting the store. Some were in the store looking to buy the fixtures, completely unaware that they were picking the bones of the last place in Ewing to go rent movies.

The clerks behind the counter looked sullen. When I asked them if they would miss the video store, they said that they were glad the store was finally closing. After weeks of liquidation and hundreds of questions about their own futures, they would finally be moving on. When I asked them what their plans were they just shrugged, simply happy about this chapter coming to an end before going on to their next endeavour.

With Hollywood Video’s closing, Ewing residents have little choice but drive to Princeton or Trenton if they want to rent a film. Or they can do nearly a dozen different ways to watch a movie. Even my iPhone is filled with Pixar movies so I can hand it off to my son Tyler to watch while we are driving around in the car. When Tyler wants to go rent a video game for the weekend it kills me to have to tell him no. The thrill of walking down those aisles, looking at all those film and game boxes in awe, those days are now gone for all of us.

Suicide Kings is one of those indy flicks I'm very glad that I got to see in theaters.  It wasn't a big release, not many people knew about it, and many people STILL don't know about it.  Which is a big shame.  Because Suicide Kings features some amazing kickass performances.

The best performance goes to Christopher Walken in one of the finest roles of his career.  Yes it is up there with, say, The Deer Hunter.  Walken is THAT GOOD in this film as a mobster kidnapped by a bunch of kids who are trying to raise ransom money for a kidnapped sister.  Not a great plan?  No its not...and they all realize it.  What sucks more is the gangster's right hand man DENIS LEARY is hot on the trail looking for his boss.

The kids are played by Henry Thomas (E.T.!), Jeremy Sisto (Clueless!), Johnny Galecki (The Big Bang Theory!), Indiana Jones himself Sean Patrick Flannery (BOONDOCK!), and Jay Mohr (um...let's say...Jerry Maguire.  No...wait...ACTION!  God I love that TV show).  They are trying to rescue Henry's sister.  Throw in Raymond's brother Brad Garrett as a kidnapper and Laura San Giocomo just there to be ...well... "hot" and you have one hell of a movie.

It's a potboiler - it's actually kind of a mystery.  It's what happens when rich kids acted fucking retarded and the consequences that come back to haunt you.  It's Christopher Fucking Walken at his finest.  He's a cool cat in this flick...he's a cool mother fucker taking the situation in stride...yet you know he is fully capable of jumping up and murdering these kids with his bare hands.

Is the sister alive?  Will they get the money from the mob boss to save her?  Will Denis Leary find them first and put a cap in all of their asses?  It's all part of the mystery in one of the best movies of its kind....

NEXT UP: You really are the very monster I created, aren't you? But you won't find out the "why" of this if you kill me. Fifteen years of being curious would go to waste.