Look, up in the sky! It's a wacky french dude and he's killing it!

Man on Wire

This Philippe Petit dude is off his rocker. I mean he crosses the Sydney harbor bridge on a tightrope wire, does the same thing for Notre Dame and repeats this stunt by crossing between The World Trade Center towers. This guy is as skilled as he is crazy, however, and watching him perform is like watching any great artist. In these clips you do not see the wire that supports Pitet. You only see him floating miraculously in the air.

The inherent danger of his stunts is so great that even though Petit himself is in the film describing his life and the various crossings he has made, the viewer is still afraid for Pitet's life every time the movie shows you a clip of him hundreds of feet in the air supported by little more than a wire.

The archival footage of a young Petit carrying his girlfriend across a wire in his backyard, the interviews with his “gang” as they recall planning the stunt and Petit’s own insights as to why he took such risks are all fascinating. When the movie gets to the footage of Pitet floating across the distance between The Twin Towers the film becomes sublime and you, watching, float with him.

You should rent this movie if

1. You enjoy well-crafted, fascinating documentaries.
2. You want to see a movie that is uplifting.

You should buy this movie if

1. You like real life stories that transcend real life.
2. You own any other documentaries.
3. You are thinking of wire walking as a career choice.

If you are interested in buying this DVD here is a link to Amazon where you can get it at a reasonable price:

You got your Vagina in my Crocodile. You got your Crocodile in my Vagina.

Tokyo Gore Police

Right. Feeling a little woozy right now because my effing brain just got raped by Tokyo Gore Police. Imagine the movie Robocop combined with a great deal of Eraserhead, a half gallon of acid and two peyote buttons. This movie is built upon the premise that a girl with a crocodile’s mouth for legs is anything anyone’s psyche could ever survive seeing*.

The movie uses ironic future commercials as a framing device much as does Robocop, exists in the future and is quite horrific. A Future cop named Ruka played by Eihi Shiina of Audition fame is assigned to hunt down genetically altered criminals who can turn their wounds into weapons. The typical blood firehose effects abound and the plot makes little sense.

As horrific as the movie is, it is actually a bit boring. It is not funny enough to laugh at or with and the pacing is not fast enough to hold the viewer’s attention. The images are completely freakotonic, however. Upon seeing a human being splayed open and turned into a living chair one viewer was heard praying quietly in the corner.

You should rent this movie if:

1. You like to see shocking images or
2. Tokyo shock cinema is your thing

You should buy this movie if:

1. Crocodile vagina
2. Chainsaw battles

*Seriously, it was really effed up. There was this part where this dude goes to this whorehouse and gets tortured and then escapes, but on his way out of the torture room this chick chases him down only instead of legs the chick has a full fledged set of crocodile jaws and the croc's gullet is her vajyushe. It clamps down on the dude's leg and well. yick.

If you are interested in buying this DVD here is a link to Amazon where you can get it at a reasonable price:

The Ghost Annoyer

Ghost Town

Ricky Gervais is a comedic genius. Unfortunately, he did not write Ghost town or direct it. This means that at best Ghost town could only be a pretty good romantic comedy buoyed by the comedic acting of Gervais, Tea Leone and Greg Kinnear, and that is exactly what it is.

Ghost town is a guy who talks to ghosts movie and the twist here is that the guy in question is a misanthrope. It is not a new idea, but the writer and director do a good job of presenting it without making it seem too schmaltzy. The principals are good in it and the supporting cast is also good. Asif Mandvi is funny as a coworker of the people hating Gervais. This would be a very good date movie. It only makes you think a bit, but it does make you think.

The film’s main message that other people’s lives must matter to he who wants to be happy is presented in funny way and at no time during the movie did I ever have the urge to vomit.

I saw this on Blu ray and the disc extras were typical behind the scenes stuff, clips of Gervais corpsing and a commentary track with Gervais and the director.

You should rent this movie if:

1. You want something light but not insubstantial to watch with that special someone.
2. You really like Ricky Gervais.
3. Tea Leoni . . . mmmmmmmmm.

You should buy this movie if:

1. You have a lot of cats.
2. You are a guy who talks to ghosts movie completist.

If you are interested in buying this DVD here is a link to Amazon where you can get it at a reasonable price:

She was a fast machine. She kept her motor clean. She was the best damn woman that I etcetera, etcetera, you get the picture.

Machine Girl

Where does one start with a movie in which the heroine has a bloody great gatling gun for an arm? Let’s just say that if you like violence, Japanese junior high school girls, the yakuza and gatling guns this might be the movie for you. The movie is pretty fast moving. It is funny and confusing and fantastic simultaneously. It is at the very least a must rent.

The star of the film is a first time actress. Minase Yashiro is pretty darn cute and for newcomer she does a pretty good job of playing a sweet normal junior high school girl turned homicidal “demon”. As Ami Hyuga she is both vulnerable and invulnerable. Her characterization is the basis of the film.

Her transformation is triggered by her brother’s death at the hands of a local gang of bullies. After her attempts to seek out justice through socially acceptable channels fails she goes on a mother-effing rampage killing everyone who is connected with the demise of her only brother. The revenge is meted viciously and one might say cruelly, but I say go, machine girl, go!

Surely, you may be thinking, a junior high school girl’s ability to create madness and mayhem would be somewhat limited. Allow me to tell you, dear reader, that the character of Ami is violent on a mansonian scale. Her bloodlust equal to that of any four or five Vikings one might name. When Ami uses her machine gun to sever limbs, eviscerate torsos, flay skulls and just generally cuisinart denizens of the local underworld, it is not shit which hits the fan, it is blood, and I mean gallons of it. The blood in Machine Girl does not flow. It does not run. It geysers forth as if pumped by high pressure jets. It is glorious.

Did I mention she goes effing berserk?

The violence, however, is not the only thing which draws me to this movie like a fat man to a convention of fat men where that particular man might be the keynote speaker. In addition to all the over the top kills we have a finely developed sense of camp lunacy that permeates the film’s characters. The gang names are super wacky, their motivations and methods of attack are as funny as they are implausible and the fashions kill. Leopard prints and feather boas abound.

In short, this movie begins with people being slaughter housed by a bionic gatling gun girl and ends with a full on yakuza/ninja battle royal. There are gatling gun arms, chainsaw feet and head chopping hats. Blood is everywhere. People are suffering in this movie. Shit is biblical.

You should rent this movie if:

1. You have low self esteem and can’t give yourself permission to have nice things.

You should buy this movie if:

1. Happiness is at all important to you.
2. Gatling gun + Japanese junior high school girl = all that is true and good in this world.

If you are interested in buying this DVD here is a link to Amazon where you can get it at a reasonable price:

Girls Will Be Boys and Boys Will Be Girls

Sukeban Boy

Where to begin? I guess it’s best just to leap right in. Sukeban Boy is an hour long exercise in middle child, look at me be naughty, sexual farce, surreal freakshow antics. The story is apparently based on a popular Japanese comic. Superman apparently is not entertaining enough over there. Perhaps, because unlike the hero of Sukeban Boy, Supes is not a biologically correct boy who looks and sounds exactly like a junior high school girl.

Yep. That’s the premise. Sukeban Boy’s father, a gangster, enrolls him in a girls school where he is forced to undergo humiliation classes. The weirdness is ratcheted up another notch when Sukeban Boy meets and must fight various gangs. Imagine The Crips and The Bloods if The Crips and The Bloods were both comprised of half naked Japanese girls. By half naked I of course mean boobies. And a few butts. In fact these gangs have names like the Pantyhose League, the No-Bra League, and - of course - the Full Strip League. There is also a fair amount of gore. Here I refer to bio-organic machine gun boobies. All of this mixed up together in a milkshake of odd. The particulars of the plot are somewhat unimportant as it all blurs together at about the half hour mark.

The movie does have pretty ladies in it if you are into Japanese chicks and it does have weirdness in it if you are into the Tokyo Shock type of movie. What disappointed me about this movie is that it seemed too consciously dumb. It was as if it were trying to outwierd itself just for strangeness’ sake. In fairness to the director this is probably because it was based on a Japanese comic and the comic’s plot points were screwed up from jumpstreet.

At an hour it is not a bad watch. It would probably play best at a party . . . with drinking.

You should rent this DVD if:

1. You like watching Japanese girls naked and don’t have the internet. Or if
2. your sense of irony is more highly developed than your sense of smell or if
3. you want to throw an interesting party.

You should buy this DVD if:

1. You are into shocking and bizarre Japanese comic sex farces.
2. You have an unhealthy attachment to watching Japanese girls naked.
3. Machine gun boobies.

If you are interested in buying this DVD here is a link to Amazon where you can get it at a reasonable price:

A Dingo Ate My Sadness

Frisky Dingo - Season 2

Let me start this post by saying I loves me some Adult Swim. With very few exceptions (12 Oz. Mouse, Assy McGee, Xavier: Renegade Angel) I find most of what they put out to be badass. I especially enjoyed Sealab 2021 mainly due to the excellent writing on the series. The same creative team, which wrote Sealab, Adam Reed and Matt Thompson, created and writes Frisky Dingo and the only thing that is different is that Frisky Dingo is a whole lot better.

The second season finds Xander Crews and evil villain Killface locked in a life or death struggle to . . . become the next President of the United States. Excellent satire is made of almost every aspect of recent real campaigns. Everything from their over reliance on spurious polling data, the absurdity of political punditry and the role of race in modern elections has a funny parallel in the Frisky Dingoverse. The twelve episodes of season two which originally aired from 10-16-06 to 3-23-08 skewer the modern electoral process while simultaneously being really dumb in a really smart way. Or is that really smart in a dumb way?

I don’t know.

I do know that Frisky Dingo season Two is as funny a show as I’ve seen in a long time and I only have a few complaints about the DVD. The first gripe is that there are only twelve episodes. This amount more than justifies buying the disk, but at eleven minutes per episode they are like crack. A group of us watched all of them in one go. We could not stop.

Gripe two is that the special features were limited to an Xtacles skit and a campaign ad by Killface. The Xtacles are Xander Crews army of guys who everyone thinks are robots due to their robot armor. In this skit they have a confrontation with Mr. Ford whose house they have rammed with their Helicarrier. It is a funny skit and I wanted more of them. The campaign ad is really just a funny ad for the DVD.

So to sum up. Frisky Dingo Season two. Funny. No, very effing funny.

Boosh!


You should buy this DVD if:

Everyone needs a copy of this DVD in his or her permanent collection.

You should rent this DVD if:

You are poor.


If you are interested in buying this DVD here is a link to Amazon where you can get it at a reasonable price:

The Message is getting a bit old.

Chris Rock: Kill the Messenger

I put this into my Netflix queue hoping for something like Bigger and Blacker, Bring the Pain or at least Never Scared. Unfortunately, while Rock's delivery still retains its comedic punch his subject matter seems somewhat retread. I only counted a handful of laugh out loud moments and although there were quite a few other jokes that were funny, I felt that Messenger's set did not quite clear the bar set by Rock's earlier work.

As usual, Rock tackles race as his main subject. In one section where he covers when, where and how white people might be allowed to use the word "nigger" he seems to be going over ground both he and other comics have trampled flat a long time ago. I also did not care for the manner in which the DVD was presented. The DVD is composed of three separate sets Rock performed in London, Johannesburg and New York. Usually these are intercut seamlessly, but in several places a phrase from each venue will be played in sequence. This has the effect of making Rock look as if he is repeating himself and has a negative impact on the jokes in which it is used.

I did not hate this DVD and if this set were playing on HBO and if I happened to be in the room I might happily watch it. However, I did not love this DVD and am only lukewarm about having rented it.

You should rent this movie if:

You are into Chris Rock and don't mind that this isn't his best work.

You should buy this DVD if:

1. You are a Chris Rock fanatic or
2. You are a serious comedy nerd.

If you are interested in buying this DVD here is a link to Amazon where you can get it at a reasonable price: