A Night at the Flicks
It’s the most wonderful time of the year. What time is that, you ask? Is is the crisp winter? The new year, with all the promises it holds? No, my friends. It’ a couple of months before the Oscars, and the studios are sending out screener DVDs to the academy members, which means that the Chinese DVD pirates end up with them, resulting in us poor lao wei being able to see good quality, recently-released films on DVD. In the last couple of days I watched Benjamin Button and Gran Torino, both of which I loved. (Eastwood is fucking brilliant, and the visual effects in Buttons more than make up for Brad Pitt’s atrocious New Orleans accent.) I’ve got Milk and Slumdog Millionaire and a whole bunch of other films to watch in the coming days. On top of that I recently watched the most recent season of House (in a one-day marathon of viewing) and the final season of Boston Legal, which was an even bigger vehicle for David E. Kelley’s left wing agitprop than any that preceded it, though the characters and stories were still great. Next up is season two of Californication, a show I love in part because it takes place exactly where I used to live and work when I lived in Los Angeles, and I recognize half the locations in it. (In the opening credits there’s a brief flash of David Duchovny outside a building with an abominable massive piece of art comprised of a ballerina with a hobo’s head—I used to work a block from there, we called it the “clown building” and I used to park in there all the time. (Useless trivia—you remember the exploding bus in the film Speed? That’s the same corner where the filmed the explosion. More useless trivia—in Californication all the names of Hank Moody’s novels, such as “Seasons in the Abyss” and “God Hates Us All” are the names of albums by the band Slayer. I fucking love Slayer.)
I still think, overall, Tropic Thunder has been my favorite movie so far this year. I thought I was going to crap myself laughing at the “You never go full retard” scene, which I think has some of the best comedy dialogue I’ve heard in years (not to mention the most accurate) and the Tom Cruise scenes are awesome.
Remember, folks, these movies cost about a buck each.
Update: In the first few minutes of the first episode of season two Hank’s daughter is playing Guitar Hero. The song she’s playing? “Raining Blood” by Slayer.
