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Hollow Man 2 (2006)
Critics sometimes say that that an actor "phoned in" his
performance. Almost invariably, they are writing figuratively,
possibly excepting references to John Forsythe on Charlie's Angels. In this film,
however, Christian Slater really could have phoned it in from his
living room. Since he is playing an invisible man who stays invisible,
his presence was not required except for a couple of brief flashbacks
and a brief finale. It seems that the
government has a secret plan to develop invisible assassins. Christian
Slater was one of the candidates, but something went horribly wrong in
the experiment and he became not only permanently invisible, but stark
raving mad as well. Well, actually, he may have been nuts to begin
with, since he was picked for the program because his list of war
crimes made him expendable. I mean, who would care if a war criminal
died as a scientific guinea pig? In fact, one must concede that the
government program was actually a complete success. The pentagon met
its goal of creating a perfect assassin. On the other hand, he might
have been more useful if he had been assassinating terrorists and
spies, or at least Broadway actors, instead of wiping out scientists
and philosophers and day-care workers and the entire buffet line at
Sbarros. But, jeez, no scientific program is ever perfect immediately.
Remember how many rockets misfired or blew up in the early days of the
space program? Like all those rockets in the Atlantic, the dead pizza
customers just have to be viewed as a necessary part of the
ironing-out process. The essence of the
film is that Hollow Guy needs to find a scientist who can create more
top-secret sera for him. In addition to his invisibility drug, he
needs a "buffer" drug because without it he experiences extreme tissue
and organ degeneration - which is to say he rots. He finally
determines that the only scientist who can help him is an incredibly
hot babe, so he hunts her down. Meanwhile, the army has to keep
everybody else in the world from figuring out what's going on. The
Seattle police get caught in the top secret maneuvering because
Seattle citizens keep dying and various colonels and generals keep
taking over the cases without explaining why. The denouement of the
film comes when the hunky young male cop and the incredibly hot
scientist go on the lam, running from ... well, from everyone, more or
less. Hollow Guy is trying to find them so he can get the serum and
then kill them. The Army is trying to find them so they can kill them
and prevent the serum from being made. They are even being pursued by
some bill collectors, and one of Hollow Guy's fellow graduates of
Invisible Assassin Academy, who is rotting faster than a bruised
banana. The film is completely routine,
rounds up the usual suspects, and really makes no use at all of an
interesting premise (invisibility) until the last five minutes of the
film when two invisible dudes fight it out in the rain. That actually
was a pretty cool scene, but before that the special effects consisted
of a bunch of actors throwing themselves around a room, pretending to
interact with an invisible guy. Nothing about the film is original,
but it is assembled in a workmanlike fashion with good photography,
respectably good acting, a reasonably effective musical score, a good
2.35:1 DVD transfer, and three "making of" featurettes. It is a
competent DVD of a competent movie.
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One of Terri Anne Welyki's
breasts falls out in a general melee caused by El Hombre
Hollow at a party. |
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Zara Taylor is
topless in a completely gratuitous
scene in which two unnecessary characters are filming a home
porn tape in the house next door to a main character. (Hollow
Guy hides out there to spy on his prey.) I never
heard of Zara before this week, and she has now made the Fun
House two consecutive days with some pretty good nudity in
two different movies. We say her yesterday in Cigarette
Burns (see Vejiita's section). |
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Other Crap:
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The gray-haired guy wins
American Idol
Photo Album: USS Oriskany
(retired aircraft carrier) sunk to become an
artificial reef.
- Oriskany was
scuttled in 210 feet of water in the Gulf of
Mexico on 17 May
National Review's top 50
conservative rock songs of all time
Dreaming about the
possibilities for Internet2
Weekly World News
discovers "Death's Actual Door"
"MARY CHENEY, BLISSFULLY
WELL-ADJUSTED SECOND DAUGHTER, takes your
questions"
Real Man of Genius: the
Pro Wrestling Wardrobe Guy
The six words that
provide your absolute assurance of quality:
Written and directed by
Ben Affleck
Jesse MacBeth's blog
(Satire from Iowahawk) In case you missed the
whole Jesse MacBeth thing,
Here
is a summary of the controversy.
Per Pat Robertson's
website, Robertson can leg-press 2000 pounds,
thanks to an age-defying protein shake that
Robertson personally developed.
Re: Pat Robertson's
one-ton leg lifts:
"I know, I was thinking,
'Big surprise, Pat Robertson is a lying sack
of shit.' Researching the story for myself, I
found this image. Maybe he's not lying?"
Checks, Balances & an FBI
Raid on Congress
- Get this - since
the FBI is technically part of the executive
branch, Congressmen claim that the system of
"checks and balances" places them completely
above the law, as long as they hide the
evidence of their crimes in the Capitol!
Deadspin - Roger Clemens
update
What do you get when you
cross Billy Joel and Christie Brinkley?
Penelope Cruz.
Bruce Willis attacked by
a rogue wave
Finally! A porn movie
where the Maytag guy just repairs the Maytag
and leaves.
- This comes as manna
from heaven for those of us who have always
wanted to enjoy the dialogue, acting and
plotting of porn movies without all that
pesky sex!
Elizabeth Hurley shows
off her Cannes
William Shatner sells
Commodore - "the wonder computer of the 1980s"
Jeb Bush said he has
discussed the NFL commissioner's job
Letterman:
"Top Ten Signs There's
Trouble in the Clinton Marriage"
Get Michael Rapaport
on the phone. Got another role for him.
Couple (one-half of which
apparently has a small penis) busted after
returning to the same adult store they
previously shoplifted at.
- (And they still had
the stolen property in their car.)
Cannes sex films question
role of porn
- "Directors at the
Cannes film festival this year say they are
using radical images of sex to challenge
mainstream pornography and its widespread
availability on the Internet."
- "There are kids who
have seen pornography from a very early age,
before they are ever gonna have sex," said
Larry Clark
- Ironically, much of
the porn which the kids have seen on the
internet consists of scenes from Larry
Clark's movies! It's Larry's attempt at
vertical integration: provide the material
to the kids, then criticize society for
letting them watch it! But it gets better -
his movies are essentially about underage
kids having sex, so when kids see them on
the internet, they copy what they see, and
give Larry material for future movies!
Cannes update:
French audiences "boo"
Sofia Coppola's "Antoinette"
Dean Martin and Jimmy
Stewart make the mistake of using two
adjoining payphones
Dean Martin and Orson
Welles: Radio Sound Effects
Letterman Flips Off a
Viewer
A killer reel of 1970s
toy commercials
Baltimore police update
- Baltimore must be
the only American city where firing all the
police would actually make the crime rate
decrease.
- When you think
about it, Baltimore's police procedures make
sense as a form of vertical integration. Why
wait for the criminals to create crimes for
you to solve? Why not be proactive? Just
have the police commit the crimes, skip the
middle man, and pass the savings on to us.
The police get to benefit two ways (1) by
deliberately not solving the crimes, they
get to keep the loot (2) they get a bigger
budget to combat the crime wave. It's
genius!
Studio banks on Da Vinci
prequel
- They greenlighted a
script for Dan Brown's other Robert Langdon
book, Angels and Demons, creating another
financial windfall for Dan, and thus
encouraging other nutburgers to sue him,
claiming they thought of the same bad ideas
first.
British Headline of
the Day:
Great tits challenge
evolutionary theory
- Don't get your
hopes up. This is from the home page of
Oxford University
"Want to shoot a water
balloon 140 MPH over 500ft? Then "The
Douchenator" launcher is for you!"
- I think this must
have been invented by a guy I knew in
college with the same name.
KFC flags fly at
half-mast:
Boo Boo the Chicken Dies!
- And she was
delicious!
- "The exotic chicken
that was saved from drowning by
mouth-to-beak resuscitation more than three
months ago has died"
- We never forget
where we were when we heard about the death
of the greats ... Boo Boo, FDR, JFK, Jim
Varney.
- The story does have
a heart-warming conclusion: The chicken
lived to lay three eggs before dying. "We
incubated one of her eggs, and it hatched,"
Calhoun said. "The chick has black and white
markings like Boo Boo's."
- The End ?????
A featurette and the
trailer from The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo
Drift
"Geri Halliwell has named
her baby daughter Bluebell Madonna."
- "what really
clinched it for me was my mother telling me
that the bluebell is increasingly rare"
- I'm gonna take a
wild guess here and say Geri's mom has never
been to Texas.
This week's movies
(3600 screens):
X-Men: The Last Stand -
63% positive reviews.
- This is the only
significant new release for the week. The
movie must be pretty good, because everyone
was prepared to pan it because of the
director change.
This weekend's box office
analysis from The Weekend Warrior
- He thinks that the
X-Men will come close to $100 million on the
summer's long kick-off weekend, and that the
total for the four days will be about $212
million for the top 12. That would be about
5% below last year.
Bai Ling's nipple falls
out for 55th consecutive public appearance,
nears DiMaggio's record.
Rebecca Romijn Likes her
Sex Kinky and Public
- If it's so fuckin'
public, why haven't we actually seen any
record of it?
Despite mixed reviews,
one scene in X-Men 3 is receiving unqualified
praise. Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen are
shown as young men with the help of remarkable
CGI effects.
"Katie's very unhappy and
beginning to realize she may have made a major
mistake being with Tom."
- Took her a while,
eh? One thinks she may not be the sharpest
tool in the shed.
"got a chance to see
X-Men: The Last Stand on Tuesday evening and
we can confirm that there is an extra clip
after the ending credits. While the clip is
fairly short, it is quite significant in what
it reveals. So, do remember to stay in your
seat until you've seen everything!"
Since the movie opens
Friday:
The Top 25 X-Men of all
time
No whar but Texas ...
A North Texas bridesmaid
was struck by a stray bullet while preparing
for the bouquet toss at her best friend's
wedding reception.
No doubt there are
cultural differences from nation to nation.
One thing though, will never change...the fat
kid always gets picked on!
(video)
Sole Collector: for guys
who REALLY take their athletic shoes seriously
From Cheerleader Guy:
"The only thing better
than cheerleaders is cheerleaders in bikinis.
Click the video to see the Redskins
Cheerleaders making their swimsuit calendar."
Voyager II detects solar
system's edge
Throwing his full support
behind the recent initiative to make English
the official language of the United States,
President Bush has stated through an
interpreter that he is prepared to learn the
language himself.
Superman's new power is
FABULOUS!
"Late Teamster leader
Jimmy Hoffa appeared in a new video broadcast
worldwide today in which he taunted the
Federal Bureau of Investigation for failing to
find him in their recent search for his
remains."
Pujols goes yard again.
23 HR, 57 RBI
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Movie Reviews:
Yellow asterisk: funny (maybe). White asterisk: expanded format.
Blue asterisk: not mine. No asterisk: it probably sucks.
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Emotional Girl (1993)
"Na ge shao nu bu duo qing zhi tuo de yi huo" is a Hong Kong Category Three
romantic comedy about a May-December romance. Jean (Ching Ching Yiu) returns
from college, and is out celebrating in a disco with her cousin, when she runs
into her old school friend Ivy (Jacqueline Ng), who was kicked out of school for
trying to seduce a teacher. Jean invites her home for a visit. Meanwhile, her
father and his girlfriend Judy (Julie Lee) are not getting along well. She
seduces him, but it requires a monumental effort, and was not very satisfying.
When daddy sees Ivy, sparks fly between them. Girlfriend Judy leaves in a huff,
and daddy and Ivy become an item. Eventually, adult responsibilities keep him
from playing with her constantly, and Ivy leaves. She ends up drunk at the home
of a club DJ, but they only have a platonic relationship.
There is a small subplot where the DJ has a roommate who is dating an
exchange student from Singapore, Pui Hui. The roommate is too timid to try
anything, but the DJ isn't.
There is good news on the flubtitle front.
She really was a dumb-belt, and "blowing off the candles" is what women over
40 often do.
Frankly, this is a lackluster effort. The characters are likable, and the
fact that the daughter approves of her father's relationship with her schoolmate
is somewhat unique, but the sex is not especially exciting, and the music,
mostly jazz sax, is just plain annoying. This film is neither especially good nor especially bad, and except for the
translation errors, has little of the offbeat energy I enjoy in Category Three
films. This is a C-.
IMDb has no ratings and there are no reviews linked.
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Pat's comments in yellow...
Ryan Seacrest had a bandaged hand last night because earlier in the day, he sat
on a glass coffee table during a meeting and it shattered. Seacrest said
the table had a metal frame so he thought it would support him. But he heard a
loud pop and ended up sitting a pile of broken glass, feeling "like the biggest
idiot." He said when firefighters arrived, "I'm in full hair, full makeup, a
suit, and blood all over my hand, my feet up in the air and glass in my ass."
* Oh, like a fireman has never seen him in that position
before!
Monday, the Public Commission on the Oregon Legislature voted to recommend that
Oregon legislators and staff members not be drunk while performing their
duties. But a commission member said they left it to House and Senate leaders
to write rules and penalties regarding intoxication while legislating because
"we were uncomfortable acting as a nanny."
* Of course, there's nothing to stop them from writing
the new rules and penalties while intoxicated.
* Ted Kennedy called it a blatant violation of basic human rights.
The New Jersey Assembly voted 75-0 Monday to name an official state dirt.
Downer soil is a mixture of grayish brown and sandy dirt that absorbs water
well, and the sponsors of the bill say it will help promote Garden State
agriculture by making people talk about the farm dirt in a state that's mostly
thought of as urban. But critics called it "borderline ludicrous" and asked if
the Assembly didn't have more pressing issues to address than naming a state
dirt.
* They're politicians: they shouldn't be honoring dirt,
they should be slinging mud.
* It's the perfect New Jersey dirt because it's great for farming, construction
or burying dead squealers.
Tuesday, Congressional leaders of both parties complained to President
Bush about the FBI searching Rep. William Jefferson's office, saying it's an
improper infringement on their power* Their
power to hide bribe money in their office freezers
* If the FBI is allowed to search their offices, next
thing you know, they'll start expecting Congressmen to obey laws!
In a radio poll, half of Namibians said they think the day Angelina Jolie gives
birth to Brad Pitt's baby in Namibia should be declared a national holiday, like
the birth of a king or queen
* The baby will be named The Lion King, and a baboon
will hold it up high for all the massed tabloid reporters to worship. |
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