Horror Movie a Day: Dead and Breakfast

According to the box, today’s selection is the Best independent horror movie of the year. And The U.S. answer to Shaun of the dead. What those statements tell me is that 2004 must have been really shit year for independent horror films. And that if the Question is Shaun of the Dead, Americans certainly don’t know the answer. I took time out for the day to search Ain’t it Cool News's website for the quote comparing it to Shaun of the Dead. The closest I found was QUINT having seen the film the same week as Shaun of the Dead and telling us he wasn’t crazy about it. So I guess there really isn’t much truth in those little blurbs on the front of video boxes.

I was hoping for surprise here. Like when I watched Shaun of the Dead, Dog Soldiers or the Descent or Hatchet from recommendations by Ain’t It Cool news. Those are fantastic horror films, and I wish to god I was reviewing any one of those. Instead I bring you this shitfest. A movie that tried so hard with forced humor that it falls flat on its face. At one point a character slips on some blood for like 3 minutes of screen time, with goofy sound effects. It made sure it had all the goofy clichéd characters. The nerd, the jerk, the bitch, the know-it-all, I’m still not sure if it was on purpose or it was the result of bad writing. The acting is far beyond top notch either. Which is queer cause I’ve seen many of the actors here, like Portia Del Rossi, Bianca Lawson, Jeremy Sisto fare a lot better in other material, but the lame attempt at comedic writing just left every performance feel wooden, including the guest stars. Which included a bizarre turn from Diedrich Bader with a phony French accent. I almost turned the film off when Diedrich catches someone peeing in the bushes. “Don’t let me catch you with your Dick in My Bush again” That’s probably the genius writing that made them compare this to Shaun of the Dead.

We also get treated to a 60 second of screen time cameo from David Carradine. He’s so underused here I’m surprised they even bothered to get him. But his character is the one that sets everything in motion. It was hard watching David Carradine in this film, my first viewing of his work since his death. He played a weird old guy who runs a Bed and Breakfast that the Gang of friends of the film stay in. He also collects Asian artifacts, I scanned his room for a penis shrine. The film gets increasingly hard to watch when our gang of characters discover his lifeless body. Anyways the movie wastes more of our time figuring out the mystery of his death, when finally one of “the Gang” opens up an Asian artifact and unleashes a Zombie invasion on the town.

Of course they encounter a mysterious drifter who can tell them how to save the town and themselves, because he’s a master of all things Zombie related. And he informs them that these aren’t really Zombies, but people whoa re caught somewhere between the dead and the living. Sounds like Zombies to me dude. The film at this point has turned into an Evil Dead knockoff, with one of the bad characters channeling Evil Ash. At one point someone fights a chainsaw and I caught myself saying “Groovy.” and was surprised the character didn’t say it himself. And located In the same closed he found the chainsaw? An Evil Dead poster.

The movie is almost completely over when the zombie killings begin and finally almsot kind of save it. They did have some good old fashioned killing effects. No CGi here. One of the characters then yells, “This is like a bad horror movie.” I just wanted to yell It’s not self parody when your movie sucks, it's just a putdown then.

The film was also narrated by the Hillbilly Hellcats, a hip-hop square dance group, who go from bad jokes to decent sounding music. They eventually get turned into Zombies themselves and still manage to rock a musical number.

The movie always keeps shooting itself in the foot. square dancing zombies was funny. Thriller zombies not so much. Every time they take a stop forward they take two back. With bettwr writers this movie could have been good. It’s easy to make a Zombie flick. To make a funny one is another story.

For the decent gore effects, The musical accompaniment and one characters creative makeshift shotgun, I give the movie, 2 asshats.

Still if this is what passes as Zombie movies these days. Then I think I’m getting a little tired of them. There’s always Vampires to fall back on.

Horror Movie a Day: H2

This summer there’s a new Halloween movie, H2. So Halloween begins early this year, so it’s time once again for my oft failed experiment. A Horror Movie a day for Halloween. Last year I had to only tackle 31 films. And while I didn’t review them all hear I did get close. This year with the help of Netflix instant Queue we are going to tackle some 65 Horror films. I got to warn you they will not all be classics.

We begin this adventure with one GIANT Turkey. Rob Zombie’s Halloween 2. Or H2.  Maybe I’m being harsh, judging by the amount of young children attending the premiere, I might not have been the target audience. Really parent’s is a Rob Zombie Horror film the best parenting choice?  Maybe that's just Flippers Cinema audience for you though. There’s nothing funnier, and sadder I guess for the director, than to have some 7 year old yell out “Man, this some Bullshit!”  When even a kid whose never seen a REAL Halloween film before judges your movie so harshly.

Let me start over. I love Halloween movies. There’s just a simple formula here. A killer with a one track mind, a haunting yet iconic score, a mask, and Donald Pleasance. It’s not that deep. And yet every single masked killer/teen slasher film owes it a debt of gratitude.  Even when these films aren’t good. And face it they rarely are, they are still fun. They usually fail whenever they try to come up with back story for Michael, (Curse of Michael Myers) or try to change the simple formula of the series, (Resurrection). Halloween audiences hate change, they outright reject it. Season of the Witch should’ve been enough warning for the producers.

So knowing all of this Rob Zombie decides to change Halloween and give Michael Myers a back story and motive, and a heart and it became a recipe for disaster. It’s not that Rob Zombie’s Halloween is a BAD movie. It’s just not a good Michael Myers movie, we didn’t need any of that. On it’s own, might have been a beginning of a new franchise for an unrelated character. But because they were force-feeding us this crap as a Michael Myers movie, we rejected it once again.  

But I came into H2 with an open mind. Really I did. I was going take the new mythology as it stood. I was going to trust Rob Zombie’s new vision. He told everyone this new version of Michael Myers had now cut all ties to the original films. There’s nothing holding him back now. So the first 15 Minutes of H2, is basically the entire plot of Halloween 2! Way to stand on your own two feet Rob. Oh no, wait. It’s all a dream. How’s that for originality? In your face American audiences!  This is when the audience first turned on him. A random 6 Year old Yells out “All that for a Dream? Shiiiiit!”

It gets worse from there. We are soon reintroduced to Michael Myer’s mom via flashback Where we learned that Michael didn’t just become the mindless killer right away. He was a normal kid sitting in the crazy house. So I guess, what Loomis turns him into a killer? Since he was responsible for his day to day care. But that’s not the end of his mom though, she’s with us throughout the whole movie. Standing next to a pale white horse looking like the chick from Legend, inside Michaels demented mind.

    “Michael Myers and His Mom” 

 

             “Chick from Legend”

 

So now we learn Michael has mommy issues like Jason and is killing for her to reunite the family. The only way to do so is to kill Laurie. I think? Because he had a chance to do it at the end of the film but didn’t.  Did I mention this movie makes no sense? He goes on a rampage killing random people who have no connection to Laurie in any way.  I’m guessing the kill count wasn’t high enough yet, so the studio asked for more.Finally he catches up to her. The movie doesn’t make it clear how he does this. He just shows up at her house and kills her friends.

Myers big plan is to carry her off to an abandoned shed and just sit there. While his mom and the horse and little boy Michael Myers act crazy. Eventually Loomis shows up,  he’s been on a book tour and doing the talk show circuit with Weird Al,  whose 1 minute cameo is the best part of the movie. And so he feels guilty for cashing in on the murders and decides to talk to Michael to save Laurie. Inside the shed we learn that the White Horse and Little Michael, and Michael’s mom are inside Laurie’s head as well.

The ending of this movie is just so hackneyed, it’s been done better in Halloween 4 and also Friday the 13th Part 4. Rob Zombie standing on his own two feet got the jump on them by doing it in only his second Halloween film. The audience walked away still laughing at the penultimate scene in which tiny Laurie Strode walks out of the shed wearing Michael’s oversized mask.

This movie sucks, and I don’t recommend it to diehard fans at all. Still its not the worst thing I’ve seen and it had a pair of boobies in it.

So I give it one and a half broken iPhones.

 

Save your money and watch the original Halloween 2 instead.

More Pictures

 

More Updates in Pictures.

FIRST DAY

Ally’s First day of School Pre-K that is. She’s all done with it now. The only thing she learned from here is how to say a mealtime prayer. Which has now replaced our usual Rub-a-dub-dub Thanks for the Grub. She’ll be starting REAL school in august.

 

WRESTLEMANIA

I am now living the dream with my very own WRESTLEFEST Arcade Machine.  Here is LEONARD showing off his trophy after being declared the 2009 Wrestlefest Champion at this years Wrestlemania Party.

Here are some random shots of food and decorations:

Yes. There was even goodie bags. If you weren’t there. Be Jealous.

That Girl Is Only 15

My cousin recently had her Quinceañera. Time flies man. I was almost an adult at 17 when she was born. And now here she is almost the same age I was then. It was a big Spanish to-do mix of all hispanic cultures from our family and her father’s and their church. There was even a mariachi band!

 

Here her parents took the opportunity to serenade her with Las Mananitas, a traditional Mexican Birthday song.

The whole affair was a huge family reunion. My brother though thought it was a great idea to come up with this new design etched into this head.

Which definitely caused my Mom to ignore him/us the whole night.

My daughter took the opportunity to ham it up.

and dance.

 

The whole thing was based around Beauty and the Beast.

Just like at Disney World we even had to wait in line to get our picture taken with Belle, or rather my cousin dressed as her.

 

This post is getting quite long once again. But I leave you with this.  I’ve been going to a new Grocery store. Which has now been dubbed The Voodoo Grocery Store by certain acquaintances of mine.

These are some of the products on the shelf.

Princess Mama Brown Sugar is actually my new nickname for Skittles.

 

I can’t even comment on this shit. Somewhere Petey Greene is laughing his head off.

Update in Pictures (Revised)

 

( i edited this to add some BETTER Pictures)

 

Yeah it’s been awhile since I last posted, and as before the easiest way to go through the past few months is by pictures.

MARCH MEGALADON MUSIC MUSICA

The Megalodon Shark exhibit is now at the Miami Science Museum, this is from the premiere night, March 7th where not everything had been setup.  The second set of jaws are ginormous and give you an example on how big this fucker might of been.

At the time they had two more exhibits. One was about the science of music itself, you could remix a song and create a music video, but they also had these great candid photographs of Rock icons like Kurt Cobain, Freddie Mercury and Jimi Hendrix .

The other was a big audio-visual to-do complete with memorabilia and artifacts on the effect Latinos had in popular music.

It covered every single era and every genre and every musical style Latinos were ever involved in. From mambo to hip-hop. From Tito Puento to Daddy Yankee. It was quite an impressive exhibit. I’m not always a fan of Spanish music but this was an amazing exhibit. I’ll try to dig up some more pictures.

CARNAVAL

I tried to hit up a lot of the activities that week, here are some random shots of Carnaval on the Mile and Calle Ocho back on March 8th and March 15th.

CONCERT

Thanks to my new Sister-in-law i got  a chance to see my favorite folk-comedy-duo from New Zealand and my new favorite TV show stars, FLIGHT OF THE CONCHORDS. They came to the Bank United Center on April 7th.

The show was great and the seats were within spitting distance. Thanks again Monse!

ORLANDO

I won tickets from the Super Bowl contest Universal Studios had back in Feb. And they finally arrived. So I headed up north for a few days of fun. Of all the things this are has to offer this seemed the most wondrous.

I didn’t actually go in. Because The whole time I was looking for the location at Citywalk, I was building it up too much in my mind. I would totally have been disappointed if it was just an lame Burger King kiosk. No, I imagined I’d pull up a seat at the counter. and i could order a Whiskey to go with my triple whopper with cheese.

They also brought out some old favorites from the horror exhibit at Universal Studios.

SAME BAT BLOG

I just reloaded my PC, so i gotta dig up some more pictures. Next update will include the new Car, Memorial Day – July 4th. and odds an ends in between.

I know this update is kind of lame, so I’ll leave you with this.

I’m convinced it’s either a new cult. Or an experiment to entrap people into coming to church by making them pull over and telling them to change the sign.  Because it’s been up there since Mid-May and now  first week of July it’s still there.

-J

“LROD has spoken”

Another one Bites the Dust

First it was Josh back in April being a Fool I guess. That unfortunately didn't work out that well. I might tease you man, but I feel your pain.

Then My brother in August, who was at least smart enough NOT to marry his baby mama.

I think he made the right choice. Time will tell. ;) Welcome to the family Monse.  She's handled my mom these past few months like a trooper. Hopefully she's not regretting it.

And now  a third close friend has decided to get hitched up.

On March 2nd, after Ten years of living in sin, Leonard updated his facebook status to Married. It was a jubilant ceremony in which the guest children outnumbered the guest adults, 3-1. I wish them as long a marriage as their non-marriage.

But I think we need to run a Honk-A-Meter on this one.

The Honky Tonk man was intercontinental champion for a record 64 weeks.

Leonard has been married almost 3 weeks.

Updates in Pictures for November.

It's been awhile since I last posted regularly. And a few things have happened since then. Halloween came and went, Gas prices have plummeted, there's a new iPhone update, Survivor Series, and god damn if there wasn't a new Guns N Roses album. Axl made me a Liar. Not to Mention a history making election. I don't know if the best and most qualified guy won, But the Republicans have been playing the same song for 8 years and it's gotten old.  Time to flip the record over.

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This is a new display at AMC Aventura 24.

 

Some folks are eagerly awaiting Watchmen, or the Punisher as the next major comic book movie. I'm kind of excited about the Spirit. from the trailers , the approach to the material is definitely surprising, as the Spirit has always been a bit tongue in cheek, and the trailer makes him look like Batman.

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Ever wonder what Zorro does on his time off?

I like to think he's a member of a three piece Dixieland jazz band.

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Have you heard? About the bird? buh-buh-buh-bird bird.

I got to see my very first American eagle up close recently.

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This election was hard fought on television, on the streets and even on the men's room at the 163rd Street Walmart.

This McCain supporter went over the "Life" in a sharpie, and corrected it to 4 Years only. Who carries a sharpie to the toilet with him? I have a feeling they both work at the Wal-mart.  Let's look at this image a bit closer shall we?

What is this saucer shape that surrounds Obama's name? Was it the McCainite claiming Obama is from space? Therefore making him an Illegal Alien ineligible to run for the presidency. Or was it the Obamanaut claiming his candidate is simply Out-of-This-World?

The battle continues on the other wall.

Nothing as clever as 4 Years Only on this side. Just a simple addition of No.

That was pretty much it. I had to get out of there once I turned around and saw this:

See ya.

I told you homeboy....

By now everyone on the internets, is familiar with and is fans of Denny Blaze the Average Homeboy, by watching his classic video.

If you've never had the pleasure of that experience watch ti below and get ready to get BLAZED...

Due to his newfound success and popularity through the Magic of youtube he has returned 18 years later. Like Brian Atene, Denny Blaze has launched his own YouTube Channel in an attempt to jumpstart a career from almost nothing. I don't blame them, you can't buy the publicity youtube fame gets you, and letting go of those 15 minutes of fame is very hard. That kind of recognition is something they only dreamed of two decades ago. And now as middle aged, middle class white guys they probably had long given up on that dream.

While the world wondered where these guys are now. I always wondered about what they were upto the last 20 years.  What was the moment that made them give up their dreams of acting and rapping.

Denny Blaze tells us he's been smoothing out his rap the last 18 years. I'd like to believe he's never given up. That he's been working his job at Bennigan's part time and rapping full time. 

And in that alternate reality he made this bad ass awesome rap video for the Miami Dolphins.

 

 

Is that his clone or his twin Brother? You be the judge.

And to all the Brian Atene's and Denny Blazes out there. Never give up your dreams of fame and stardom, It may happen someday.

Stay Gold Pony-boy. Stay Gold.