Is it gross?

For those of you planning to watch the film Valentine, IT WAS THE KINDA PRETTY GIRL THAT USED TO BE FAT GETTING REVENGE BECAUSE SHE USED TO BE FAT.

Now you have no reason to watch it and can spend your time better elsewhere. You’re welcome.

I recently had the privilege of watching the film Daylight, a late 90’s film starring Sylvester Stallone which I’d describe as “Cliffhanger but in a tunnel.”

I knew in the first ten minutes of this film that it was going to be awesome. Why? Because the writer kept packing things into this tunnel. These include:

1. Several toxic waste trucks
2. Jewel thieves in a high speed chase
3. A bunch of snooty-sounding rich people
4. Viggo Mortensen
5. Sylvester Stallone, playing a cab driver
6. A bunch of tunnel workers that appear really happy

And in the first ten minutes, the word “tunnel” was used at least once every 15 seconds. So you know what this is like, I’ll use the word “tunnel” in every sentence in the next paragraph.

So what happens in this movie about the tunnel? The jewel thieves are in a high speed chase trying to escape the cops, so they decide to try to take the a tunnel. They then crash into toxic waste trucks which cause the tunnel to explode. A bunch of people are trapped in the tunnel. Sylvester Stallone finds all of the survivors in the tunnel and leads them into the tunnel’s wine alcove. Behind the wine alcove is a tunnel that leads all of the survivors into John Malkovich’s head. After about 15 minutes, the tunnel survivors are dumped out onto the side of the New Jersey Turnpike. Everyone dies a little bit after their experience with the tunnel. The end (of the tunnel).

It’s the last inning of the most important game of the year, and you have just one inning to pitch. The only problem is that your arm isn’t letting you pitch 100% anymore. Do you:

1. Call a time out, tell your coach, and get replaced by another relief pitcher? OR
2. Intentionally walk 2 players, then get your team together, come up with two trick plays, and then toss the ball underhand across the plate to the best hitter on the opposing team?

For Henry Rowengartner of Rookie of the Year, the right answer was #2. And apparently the entire team was okay with it.

Henry is a 12 year old boy whose tendons “healed a little too tight” after breaking his arm. He then gains the ability to throw a baseball really fast. The owners of the Chicago Cubs, who at the time needed to sell out every baseball seat for the rest of the season in order to hold onto the team, likely because they have the worst bank in the world, decide to exploit 12 year old Henry, and bring him onto the team.

Henry pitches well, and most players cannot hit his fastball. The exception is nemesis Butch Heddo, a power hitter on the New York Mets that likes to taunt children.

Eventually, the Cubs start winning, and in the last game of the year, the Cubs play the Mets for the division title. Henry pitches two solid innings until he trips on a baseball, falls on his arm, and loses his ability to pitch 100mph fastballs. So what does he do? He intentionally walks two players and relies on their being incredibly stupid to get them out with trick plays.

The third batter up in the inning is Butch Heddo, Henry’s nemesis that has never had trouble hitting Henry’s pitches even when Henry was able to pitch 100mph. So what does Henry do? AFTER INTENTIONALLY WALKING TWO STRAIGHT PLAYERS, HE DECIDES TO ACTUALLY PITCH.

Which, okay, would be fine… except for the fact that his team, fully aware that Henry can no longer pitch fast, still insists that he pitch his fastball, a pitch that, contrary to popular belief, is actually only effective when thrown fast.

Under a lot of stress, Henry takes a second and steps off the rubber of the pitching mound. He then peels back a piece of tape on what he thought was his dad’s baseball glove, revealing that it was actually his mom that played baseball. (Now, you may think that I as the blog writer just neglected to explain the significance of Henry’s glove, but rest assured, this is the first time that the audience of the movie is introduced to it as well). Realizing that it was really his mom that was the baseball player, Henry shares a telepathic moment with his mom in which his mom instructs Henry to “float” the ball over the plate. What’s the significance of “floating” the ball? I don’t know. This was also left out of the movie. However, Henry does it, Heddo strikes out, the Cubs win, and players of Major League baseball go on strike the next year in 1994. The end.

Gracie and Viola are two girls with similar problems. They want to beat their school’s rival boys’ soccer team, and they both have vaginas. To overcome this obstacle, the two have very different strategies.

Gracie’s strategy starts with asking her father to train her. Then, she and her father petition the school board to allow girls to try out for the boys team. When she tries out, she makes junior varsity. Then some how, she gets put into the varsity game where she helps her school defeat their rival team. And thus you have Gracie (2007), starring Carly Shroeder, Dermot Mulroney, and Elizabeth Shue.

Viola, on the other hand, is not one for bureaucracy. She dresses up as her brother, goes to boarding school in his stead while he is in London to secretly enter a contest with his band. Viola ends up living with Duke, the captain of the boys soccer team, and she trades love-help for soccer help. Eventually, Viola makes varsity, wins the game against the rival high school, reveals to the world that she is a girl, and seduces Duke. And thus you have, She’s the Man (2006), starring Amanda Bynes, Channing Tatum, and Laura Ramsey.

Note to movie directors: If you’re trying to make girls look like they are good at soccer, please first teach them how not to run like girls.

Remember back in the day when “tough” generally described the people that could physically hurt you? Generally, this would be the bully that was bigger or the big group of kids that you feared because they had less to lose than you. The movie You Got Served doesn’t follow this pattern.

You Got Served is a about a bunch of people that exist in a world where dancing is equivalent to a weapon of violence, and dance crews battled in an ambiguously illegal dance warehouse led by Steve Harvey’s character. David and Elgin (played by Omarion and Marques Houston, respectively) are the leaders of a dance crew with a winning track record at their local street dancing competitions when Wade and his crew of rich kids from Ocean County challenge them. Elgin accepts the challenge, only to find out (just before the beginning of the competition) that a member of his crew has joined Wade’s crew and given away all of their moves. After losing, Elgin and David confront Wade, where Wade replies with the movie’s title line, “You’re just mad ’cause tonight, you suckas got served!”

This bothers me because:

1. I think it wasn’t that they were served but that you stole a member of their team, learned all of their moves, took $5,000 from them, and then acted as though you were better dancers.
2. Wade and his crew are talented dancers that act tough, but in reality, they were not threatening. I don’t know how no one threw a punch.

In the rest of the movie, a bunch of irrelevant bull shit happens (there’s another storyline that has something to do with drug dealing), a kid gets shot, Elgin and David fight, and they eventually battle Wade’s crew again and win.

Step Up 2: The Streets, on the other hand, seems to get it right. It’s also kind of the opposite of You Got Served. Instead of a bunch of impoverished minorities trying to gain respect by competing against a group of tough, rich white kids, it’s a bunch of un-tough kids at a fancy school trying to gain respect by competing against a group of tough, impoverished minorities. Andie (played by Briana Evigan) is really hot and fun to watch for an hour and a half. She goes through a bunch of crap, enrolls at a fancy school (Maryland School of Arts), gets kicked out of her street dance crew called 410, and starts her own with kids from MSA. They then spend the rest of the movie trying to gain respect and compete against her old dance crew. At one point, a bunch of guys from 410 assault one of the kids from MSA. Why is this good? Because 410 is perceived as tough because of the physical threat they pose and not their dance ability!

So how does this tie into Never Back Down? Simply, Never Back Down and Step Up 2: The Streets, are the SAME MOVIE. Here are their plots.

(Andie/Jake) is a very talented (dancer/fighter) who has been transferred to a new school due to (her/his) delinquent past. (She/he) often thinks about (her/his) deceased (mother/father) who got (her/him) into (dancing/fighting). At this new school, (Andie/Jake) end up competing in a big illegal (dance/fighting) competition that is so illegal that its location/date information is only distributed by text message just before the competition begins. Once the competition begins, something goes awry, so (Andy/Jake) does not end up competing for the title. So instead, they take the competition outside where they battle it out on their own. To accommodate this, members of the audience turn on their headlights and make space. (Andy/Jake) then wins. And despite doing lots of crazy shit on asphalt, nobody seems to be hurt.

Okay, so the two movies are somewhat similar, and Step Up 2 has several moments where its plot just doesn’t make sense or they dubiously recycle characters to move the plot along, but I actually really enjoyed both Never Back Down and Step Up 2 and may have to purchase them on BluRay now that I’m getting a BluRay player.

…on second thought, I don’t think I’ll be doing that. But I did really enjoy them.

Sally, clear my calendar for tomorrow (Sally’s my secretary). I’m going to go to the crafts store so I can buy 7 white t-shirts (one for each day of the week) and a silk screening kit. I’m going to make 7 t-shirts that say, “I <3 Audrey Tautou” (it’ll be a variation on the “I <3 NY” t-shirts.) It’s how I will express my feelings about Audrey Tautou.

Did I always feel like this? No. I was once a Natalie Portman guy (before she got into all of that Star Wars prequel stuff. Yes, there’s lots of themes in it. It’s the Bible in Space). But then I saw Priceless.

I’m not even going to describe the movie. I Netflixed it, rated it 5 stars and fell in love with Audrey Tautou. I think I may also start looking for a Sugar-momma to buy me nice things and use me for my youth.

On my Audrey Tautou high, I decided to see the film Happenstance (also Netflixed). If I had to describe it, I’d describe it as the French version of Twenty Bucks but without the twenty dollar bill tying all of the stories together. Audrey Tautou was still adorable. My only complaint: Audrey Tautou is on the movie poster, but her image on the movie poster looks nothing like what she looks like in the film itself.

Which brings us to Garden Party. This movie was American, and I imagine that if Simple Plan (ooooh high school is sooo hard!) was given the opportunity to make a movie, it’d be this. Actually, no, the movie is actually somewhat more complex and interesting. But not too much more.

Just like Happenstance and Twenty Bucks, Garden Party is another variation of the six degrees concept. There’s a bunch of things going on with a bunch of different people, and at some point, they each see each other. One of these stories involves this teenage emo-singer that’s kind of poor but is discovered and immediately gets signed. And as I recall, the rest of the movie was about teenagers having sex and doing drugs.

Oh what? There’s a Ricky Nelson song of the same name? I wonder if that will be involved at all…

So there you have it. Coming up — how to take care of Tyler’s ferrets…

The Phantom of the Opera is a gothic novel from 1910. In 1986, Andrew Lloyd Webber decided, “Broadway doesn’t have enough flashing lights and loud bangs, so I’m going to make this into a musical.” In 2004, Joel Schumacher (Batman & Robin, Ice to meet you), directs the film adaptation of the musical adaptation of the 1910 novel.

In this movie, Gerard Butler (300, he was Sparta), is a guy who has trouble dealing with his hideous face, so he terrorizes an opera house. He’s also in ridiculously good shape and somehow has a dungeon hidden under the opera house.

So how does the phantom terrorize the opera house? Well, he makes threats that terrible things will happen unless he is provided:

1. A stipend
2. A box seat in the opera
3. [Insert list of things that just piss people off. For example, make Christine (relatively young and unknown) play the lead role, and make the diva Carlotta (played by Minnie Driver) play the silent page boy.

Really though, I am a big fan of the music in Phantom and the fad Phantom Workout which became popular after the film adaptation came out (you too can look like Gerard Butler!) I sometimes wonder though if the Gerard Butler’s role in this film had adverse affects on history. IE, Xerxes found out that Gerard Butler went around singing about his problems, giving Xerxes the confidence that his immortals could take on the Spartans.