The Cinema File #270: "Ender's Game" Review

One should never let the sometimes vile and disgusting personal views of an artist interfere with an earnest appreciation for the art they create. Great stories can come from even the darkest places, and it does us all a disservice to let tangential prejudices be a distraction. Noted science fiction author Orson Scott Card has become newly famous for two things of late, as the mind behind the latest sci-fi epic adaptation Ender's Game, and as a virulent homophobe and general right wing crank. In a perfect world those two things would have nothing to do with each other, but as the calls for a nationwide boycott continue, it seems many people can't get past Card's ideological dickishness, which is really a shame, because in the context of 2013 sci-fi cinema, the new film that bears his name in very small politically correct print is actually one of the better ones.

The Dirty Sons Of Pitches Podcast! Episode 61 - Now Available!!

Check out the latest episode of my podcast The Dirty Sons Of Pitches, an all games edition where I play Louie Anderson-style quiz master to my co-hosts' feuding family. Or something. Also, we talk about Gravity, and a bunch of other movies.

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The Cinema File #269: "Bad Grandpa" Review

The now defunct MTV television series Jackass was probably the most appropriately named show ever made, perfect to describe both its stars and its target audience. Arguably born out of the post-Tom Green surge in anti-comedy now infecting so much of our culture from Adult Swim to Nickelodeon, where absurdity for its own sake serves to replace comedy, the people behind this show couldn't even bring themselves to be that clever, settling instead for awkwardness and bad taste as the sole sources for its humor. Produced by the even more appropriately named Dickhouse, now we have Bad Grandpa, a spin-off of the popular Jackass movies inspired by the synonymous series, and if only because I just had to sit through the thing, I really wish I could say that its somehow gotten watchable in the twelve years since the show's cancellation. Goddamn do I wish I could say that.

The Cinema File #268: "Planes" Review

How do sentient planes fuck each other? No, that's not the weirdest rhetorical question ever posed, I'm genuinely curious as to the logistics of this. Why, you ask? Because I just watched Planes, the new sort of but not really, though might as well be Pixar movie spun off from the world of the worst films in the company's canon, because apparently living cars weren't asinine enough. When one of these planes romances another one and then comes on screen with lipstick kisses all over his face, I can't help but question how her mouth, receding back as far as it does into her body, could get past the constantly spinning propeller blades of her swarthy Spanish paramour to accomplish what amounts to a silly sight gag, or for that matter, why she would be wearing lipstick, and how she would have applied it without functioning arms or hands. You might rightly accuse me of over thinking this, because of course it is a children's movie after all, but after watching so many Pixar movies over the years since I was a child and seeing all the detail put into them, here I kind of thought that was the point.

From The Idea Hole: "It's Still Halloween Bitches" Edition

Hey gents and whatever the female equivalent of gents is. No movie review today, so I thought I'd throw out two quick movie pitches to round out another Halloween season gone by, to extend the spooky cheer just a bit longer before we're all faced with the onslaught of the clusterfuck that is the ThankChristNewYear mega-holiday. First up, a zombie movie I came up with on the way home from the official 3 Days of Terror screening, where coincidentally my short film The Red Menace premiered to, lets go ahead and say thunderous applause and accolades, since I'm guessing none of you were there to confirm that.

#1: As Good As Dead

The Cinema File #267: "Battle Of The Year" Review

One might reasonably question my capacity to even review a film like Battle of the Year, considering my knowledge of the film's subject matter is so poor that I can't even construct this opening sentence with any more specificity. I don't even know what the thing they are doing in this movie is called. Is it Break Dancing? Break Dance Fighting? Electric Boogalooing? Do I refer to it as a sport? A competition? How is it scored? I don't see any judges, just a bunch of kids "You Got Serving" at each other and then affecting a derisive pose as if to suggest that they had just one upped the person in front of them, all with, at least as far as I can tell, the same level of physical acumen. I am at a loss. Perhaps it is because the film is so complicated in its central premise that the people behind this movie decided for our benefit to make the structure so insultingly simple and formulaic. You know, to help us out.

Stop Or My Mom Will Podcast! All Cryptid Special!! Now Available!!!

Next month is the 50th anniversary month of JFK's assassination, so its all conspiracy all the time, but before that, we got one more Halloween episode to burn, this time an all Cryptid discussion show! My mother and I return to the roots of our podcast talking about nothing but creepy crawly monsters that may or may not exist in the real world, including the Melonheads of Cleveland, the elusive Bearilla, Tennessee Devil Monkeys, and something mysterious that goes Bloop in the night.

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