(Does that hot air balloon really exist?  Not that I care, I mean.  I hate hot air balloons.  Specifically, the concept of riding in one.  Shudder.)

Mos Defferson is re-locating soon.  As in probably tomorrow soon.  Why?  Because I’m teaming up with my boy Marc to do something way bigger.  So that’s the deal for now.  I’ll link to it as soon as it goes through, and you’ll all be better for it.

Just wanted to say thanks for the views in this temporary blog, though.  I was averaging about 20/day, which isn’t great but I’ve seen much worse.  For a neophyte blog, not that bad at all.  I’m going to post up the new link info when it’s made available to me and leave this blog up for a few weeks.  I’ll transfer over whatever posts are relevant, then I’m going to delete this so as to not waste space on the WordPress server.

So be on the lookout for the new site.  Bookmark it.  Label your mind blown.

I like “versus” movies.  And I like movies that explicitly state what the film is about, in no uncertain terms.  Gladiator, for instance, was about a gladiator.  Hitman was about a hitman and Pollock was indeed about painter Jackson Pollock.

So you can probably guess what Mega Shark Vs. Giant Octopus is about.  And if not, if you can still somehow operate a computer, you can always check out this nifty trailer:

How ridiculous is that?  And by ridiculous I mean awesome.  It’s like an even better version of always those “Raptor” flicks that keep showing up on the Sci-Fi Channel.  An octopus that destroys entire Navy fleets.  A shark that jumps out of the ocean and engulfs a Boeing 747.  What’s not to like?

I mean, come on folks.  They even got Lorenzo freaking Lamas!

If you have Starz, you really need to be watching Party Down.

‘Party’ follows a group of six caterers, most of whom are aspired-but-failing actors, as they manage to never actually do their jobs and piss off a whole lot of important people in Los Angeles.

I think the series is interesting in and of itself because it’s essentially the product of the folks behind Veronica Mars, who were royally screwed over by a network that had no idea how to market its show.  Seriously, one of my top ten favorite series of all-time, it’s a shame that season four never got made even if the third season was a bit week.  But regardless, Rob Thomas, Dan Etheridge and John Enborn have all re-surfaced with this project.  Paul Rudd is also to thank, credited as a co-creator, and Curb Your Enthusiasm director Bryan Gordon as well as It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia director Fred Savage (yup, from The Wonder Years) have been behind the camera for the first season.

That’s about as talented a corps of creators and directors as you’re going to find on television.

The series stars Ken Marino (who, as a former member of The State, is in almost anything David Wain-related), Adam Scott (Step Brothers), Jane Lynch (Role Models, current Apatow/Wain staple), Ryan Hansen (“Veronica Mars”), Martin Starr (“Freaks and Geeks”, Apatow staple) and Lizzy Caplan (Cloverfield) as the afforementioned members of Party Down catering.  All are great in their roles.  But what really makes this series fun to watch are the guest spots, which tend to have a lot of tie-ins to those involved with creating the series.  So if you’re a nerd like me who knows the previous projects these people have produced, you’ll find it hilarious to see Enrico Colantoni (Keith Mars of “Veronica Mars”), Jason Dohring (Logan Eckels of “Veronica Mars”), Ken Jeong (King Arbitron from ‘Role Models’, pissed-off doctor from Knocked Up), J.K. Simmons (Juno’s dad in Juno, or more memorably Schillinger from HBO’s “Oz”), Breckin Meyer (maybe the Garfield series wasn’t the best choice post-Road Trip), Fatso Fasano (Marvin from “Weeds”), Rob Corddry (“The Daily Show”, Wain’s The Ten), etc etc all in awesome guest spots.

So basically, in my opinion anyway, it plays a lot like ‘Curb’ did.  And ‘Sunny’.  Which are pretty similar in that each episode usually revolves around some bizarre every day occurence that gets completely bastardized and usually ends up being ironic.  Except it’s not in the quasi-documentary style that ‘Curb’ is in and not as absurd as ‘Sunny’ can be.  But to draw comparisons to either show, which have both helped set the bar for television comedy, is a terrific achievement.

This is one to keep an eye on.  It seems like every episode has been better than the one before it.  I’ll be interested to see how/if it evolves from here.  I can’t imagine the entire series can consist of catering events, but ‘Sunny’ started out as just a bunch of  crazy happenings revolving around a bar, right?  Now Paddy’s Pub is often an afterthought on the show, because it grew out of that environment.  I think ‘Party’ projects to do the same.  And if any of these saps somehow lands an acting gig, I can’t imagine how great the show will get from there.

By contract talks, of course, I mean discussing the possibility of co-blogging with the other half of the incredible rap team.  Except not rap team.  Write team?  Cultured team.

Not sure if that will happen, and if it does, if Mos Defferson continues or if we chalk up something new altogether.  Either way, I don’t want to put too much work into new entries if it’s the latter situation, so I’m just taking a wait-and-see approach for the time being.

I’ll figure it out by next week for sure.  Then we can see where it goes from there.  I’ll tell ya, though, if this co-venture gets going, go ahead and label your mind blown right now.

But people love zombie movies.  It’s just a fact.  It’s why horror shelves are full of them and a direct-to-video zombie title comes out nearly every month.  The zombie movie has become a genre unto itself, with its own rules and cinematic conventions.

So how does Sweden – which produced last year’s phenomenal “vampire” film Let The Right One In – respond to this genre?  Simple: by making quite possibly the most entertaining zombie movie I have ever seen:

Tommy Wirkola’s Dead Snow revolves around a group of med school students visiting a friend’s cabin for a weekend vacation.  Little do they know, however, the remote cabin is smack dab in the middle of zombie territory.  Well, not just zombie territory.  Nazi zombie territory.  And when the kids come across their stashed gold, all hell breaks loose.

The movie pays obvious homage to a lot of other movies that have succeeded doing the exact same things: taking a genre, explicitly stating its rules then dumping all over them – in practice and in good taste.  The cabin bits play as a nod to Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead, the “battle” bits channel Shaun of the Dead and some of the gore gags border on Robert Rodriguez’ Planet Terror grindhouse territory.  Thankfully, it all works, and it works well.  We don’t pretend that there’s a huge plotline here, so the movie doesn’t waste much time giving some haphazard excuse for the Nazi zombies to rise up and start feasting on intentions.  Similarly, we don’t have to wait long for the humans to realize what’s up and arm themselves with every assortment of limb-chopping weapon.

This all plays out very much like a Nazi zombie game of Call of Duty 4, in that there really never seems to be a limit to the zombie hordes and the humans always seem outnumbered.  But while COD4 focuses on the methodical, semiautomatic disposal of zombies, Dead Snow just lets loose with the bloodbaths.  Outside of Japanese horror territory (read: sex parts), I can’t think of a limb or organ that wasn’t removed at some point in this movie.  Sometimes that can be overplayed for the hell of it, but Wirkola knows his audience and knows what to show and when to show it.  He’ll flip a genre convention on its head, then the next go-around, lead you believe he’s doing the same thing…and just never really do it.  It’s great to see a director so knowledgeable of the type of person watching his film, and it pays off with some hilarious anti-climactic moments and ridiculous deaths.  The only movie I’ve seen handle this better was the NC-17 Feast, which might be the king of all convention-shattering titles.

(I’d be kind of surprised if Dead Snow is released in the United States and doesn’t receive an NC-17 rating or editing for an R-rated cut.  Not advocating it, just realistic about how the MPAA will likely approach it.)

In the end, you get a quick-moving 1 hr 15 minute movie that runs along at just the perfect pace.  It doesn’t drag, which is a problem in similar titles (namely Edgar Wright’s works, which are all brilliant but perhaps 15 minutes too long.)  There’s plenty of laughs, jump scares and dismemberment.  Just the perfect mixture, and consequentially, a terrifically entertaining zombie movie that honors the genre while playing with some of its conventions.

(Which is great because they actually attempt to digitally hide that in some of his flicks.)

But according to MTV Movies Blog, Nic Cage’s movie did more than test audiences’ patience.  When a car chase scene in his upcoming movie The Sorceror’s Apprentice went wrong, a black Ferrari spun out of control on a New York City street and crashed into a lightpost and some pedestrians, testing their skeletal durability.  Don’t believe?  Hit the link for some video of the whole ordeal.

No reports of serious injuries, and of course we hope that all walked away alright.  I always wondered what, if any, safety barriers were in place in case high-speed car chase scenes went wrong.  Mostly any time I watch The Rock…coincidentally, another Cage vehicle.  What’s to stop that Hummer from plowing over a puppy?  Apparently nothing.  And the sound you hear right now is pending litigation.

Last thought: who hired the elderly Asian woman stunt driver?  Stereotyping done.

Here’s a look:

(and if that doesn’t work, click here for the YT version.)

Thoughts?  I’ll share mine.

First, when did Marshall adopt the whole Necro/ICP vibe?  That’s one disturbing ass video.  Just weird.  And gross.  Which is cool in a David Fincher flick, but here, it was just somewhat strange.  And this is the second track I’ve heard Em going with some kind of accent or exaggerated…something.  I don’t know quite what it is.  But tell me, listening to that chorus, you didn’t think of Weezy’s Rastafarian “This Is Why I’m Hot” off Da Drought 3.  Those kinda linguistics were just kinda being thrown out there, and I don’t think I like it.

I really liked Em’s stuff through Marshall Mathers LP.  Maybe it’s just ‘cuz I was back in junior high then and didn’t know how to discriminate.  But ever since The Eminem Show, I just haven’t really been overly enthused with anything he’s put out.  As a caveat, I actually did dig 8 Mile and thought the OST was great stuff, way before Curtis got big and all.  Most of the stuff lately, though, has been garbage.  If the two singles released so far are indeed the strongest tracks on his latest album, I can’t say I’m too optimistic that the streak looks to end anytime soon.

No matter how you remember the movie, you’ve probably seen it.  It’s become a staple film for everyone now in their early twenties.  So naturally, when it was announced that a spin-off movie entitled S. Darko would be made, it was met with a lot of skepticism.  After all, we’re talking Donnie Darko here.  You can’t just make a spin-off of Donnie Darko, can you?

Turns out, popular opinion was right.  You simply can’t mess with Donnie Darko.

S. Darko focuses on the youngest Darko, Samantha, seven years after the events of Donnie Darko.  Sam is travelling across the country with her friend Corey (why all these chicks have dude names is beyond me) when their car breaks down outside of some town whose name I do not remember – if you can’t tell, I don’t actually look up this stuff when I write reviews, like a real movie reviewer would probably do.

I’ll admit, I actually thought I might have gone into the movie with the wrong mentality at first.  Not that I doubted it would be horrible, but because the two main characters – Sam and Corey – are hot as hell!  Wow.  I guess that’s kinda gross considering it’s the same girl who plays Sam in both Kelly’s 2001 film and this 2008 spin-off, but I don’t think many guys would disagree.  The first half-hour of the movie was pretty much these two chicks walking around in cut-offs.  Yikes!

Of course, then they try to introduce a plot, and it all goes to hell from there.  Alright, here’s my thinking: if I’m making a spin-off of a cult classic and try to make it somewhat respectable, I don’t try to make so many obvious (erroneous, flawed or otherwise dumb) parallels between my spin-off and the original classic.  And that’s exactly what this film did.  It was like, oh, hey, this was in Kelly’s film, so let’s inexplicably slap it in here completely out of context!  Just horrible.  And while Kelly’s original was confusing, at least the puzzle pieces were there to be put together.  This version is just a mess of missing pieces – it doesn’t make sense for the most part, and in the rare occasion where it does, it’s so damn inconsequential that you just don’t care.  Basically, I wondered why anything in the movie ever had to happen in the first place.  And if the end result of doing the exact same thing Donnie did in the original (yeah, literally, they just transpose Donnie’s fate from the first and plop it down in this one, with a resounding thud) still amounts to what it does…I mean, yeah, two hotties are saved so that’s always good.  But what about the children?!  The Reformist in me wonders if the scriptwriter even bothered to consider that this fate didn’t make everyone better.  Not even close.

There are also inexplable suggestions of aliens and mutant rashes.  Best not to get into those tangents, because it’s just more of what I wrote above: unnecessary things that are completely unexplained.

Um, if I had anything good to say about the movie, it’s that the acting was at least competent.  Corey and Sam handled some weak roles.  John Hawkes was in it.  As a matter of fact, why was Hawkes in it?  Hawkes is a great character actor.  He was brilliant in Me, You and Everyone We Know, probably one of the better non-lead roles in American Gangster and a great counter-balance to Kenny Powers in HBO’s “Eastbound and Down.”  Why would John Hawkes ever agree to do this?  It pained me to see him in here.  He’s better than that, much much better.

So it’s been a movie marathon kinda weekend, with finals ahead and all.  This was easily the worst, but it would be the worst of a lot of marathons.  I don’t even recommend this to Darko fans just curious to see how horrible it really is.  It’s such a damn waste of time.  It couldn’t even manage to be bad in a good way.  It was just…bad.

So what to make of The Objective?  Well, here’s the trailer first:

The film revolves around the fate of a special forces unit in Afghanistan tasked with finding a Muslim cleric in a mountain range well off the figurative road map.  The unit is under the command of a CIA officer who seems to have a secret agenda he is not sharing with the rest of the men, a mission well beyond the scope of their initial directive.  As the men trek further into the mountains, strange occurences begin to happen, and the men begin to realize that their enemy is far less concrete than they originally believe.

Okay, so I guess the best description of this film is some weird cross between Apocalypse Now and an Afghani Blair Witch.  The same claustrophobic tension so prevalent in the woods of Burkettsville, Maryland hovers over this mountain range, which as one character notes, may as well be Mars.  The terrain is that alien, and stunning when caught on film.  Myrick really knows how to use the terrain and surrounding environment to his benefit, to really build the suspense surrounding the plot.  The further they go, the more you realize they’re not likely to ever make it back.  Again, this is very similar to the mood established in Blair Witch.

As far as the actually story itself, it really starts out well.  Not only is the supposed mission shrouded in mystery, as the cleric appears to have left a remote farming town and gone Colonel Kurtz in the mountains, but there is always the suggestion of the sub-mission (or alternate mission) that the CIA operative seems to be leading, unbeknownst to the men of the unit.  It’s one of those situations where the main character knows far more than the viewer, and the viewer is slowly given the details to compose the overarching truth.  I think, for the first half of this movie, it really works well.  Even beyond the tension instilled by the foreignness of the environment is the tension constructed by seeds of doubt and mistrust planted within the unit itself as things begin to fall apart.

And that’s the strongest part of the film: when things begin to fall apart.  Unfortunately, the film takes an odd paranormal/extraterrestial/spiritual turn somewhere in the second half, and the movie devolves from mystery-thriller to some sci-fi exploration of the human psyche and spiritual awareness…or something like that.  I don’t know.  The ending was simply too abstract, finished on a really insignificant note (the interview) and added very little to everything that preceded it.  I get that some movies are left open-ended and it’s left to the audience for interpretation.  In some movies, that works well.  It does not work well here, though, because the Kurtz-ian de-evolution of character and descent into hopelessness amidst duty to country just does not synchronize with the last ten or so minutes of the film, which are heavy on abstract imagery and symbolism and light on answers or general indications as to what anything referred to previously.  The film suggests a legend/mythos to construct some of these overaching thematic elements, but only briefly and never really develops it.  I mean, I look at a movie like Ravenous and see a plot that suggested a legend and actually built upon it, drew parallels between historical events and a fairly well described myth.  That makes sense to me.  I can trace that development.  I could not, however, trace the mythology that Myrick attempted to develop in this film.  Maybe that reflects poorly on me, but I just didn’t think the film knew what to do in regards to this part of the story.

This one’s a pretty obvious split.  It starts out well and the little moments that highlight their descent into a hopeless state of being lost and damned – a firefight that leaves behind no bodies, canteens whose contents change from water to sand, etc. – are very strong.  However, the back half of the movie is comparably weak and despite its willingness to take chances and not follow narrative convention, simply does not provide enough substance to justify the leaps that it takes.  Myrick might be a gifted filmmaker, but he could still stand to learn a thing or two about developing his plots.