jethrien | oh, the badness of the bad movie...

We had a bad movie night on Saturday - cookies and wine (thanks, Marc!) and movies. We started with Sky High (which was obtained as a palate cleanser, but the group demanded to watch first). It was surprisingly good. I mean, I didn't expect it to suck, but I was still surprised by how clever and funny it was.

Dungeons & Dragons, however, lived up to expectations. I can't decide what was the worst part. The one-dimensional characters? The really bad overacting (including Jeremy Irons gnawing the scenery to sawdust and Thora Birch looking like she had never acted before in her life and had only seen the script for the first time five minutes ago)? The fact the plot felt like it was lifted straight from one of the more boring modules? The incredibly tacky badness of the key prop? The bad CGI? The fact that they apparently cut all scenes with actual character development in favor of paying for the bad CGI? The tendency of accents to shift mid-sentence? The inherent silliness of trying to have a bad guy be menacing when he has tentacles coming out of his ears?

Wait, no - it was the incredibly painful performance of Marlon Waynes as Snails the bumbling, incompetent, cowardly thief. Within the first five minutes,

ivy03 turned to

chuckro and asked if he was going to die because he was the only black character. And what do you know? He did. But first he turned in a performance worthy of Stepin Fetchit. I swear, he was one step away from rolling his eyes in fear. It was horrific. We were cringing.

We actually watched a little of the beginning again with the director's commentary. We were hoping that maybe the director would break down in tears and beg our forgiveness. Instead, we had the director and the lead actor talking about how so-and-so is really talented, and the director is a hard taskmaster and how without the chemistry between these characters, the scene wouldn't work. They were talking as if the scene did work. Only - it didn't. Not even a little. These people were convinced they'd made a good movie! What, were they blind? Aaaauuugghh!

But the MST-ing was hysterical, which was the point.

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There is actually a segment in the commentary where the actor playing the main character says, "Guys, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I'm an idiot. I'm sorry." Unfortunately, he's telling a story about a stunt the actors got talked into doing, not referring to his role in the production of the film as a whole.

If I had free time in overabundance, it'd be fun to film buffering shots of guys sitting around a gaming table and then cutting them in with the film. I have a (probably unfounded) belief that one could transform this piece of crap into a redeemable movie by doing that. Of course, I also have a (fully founded) belief that one could get sued doing that...

Also, while having anyone play Snails as written is bad enough, having someone play a roleplayer playing Snails as written would be too horrific for words.

And of course the elf chick would have to be played by a large Asian guy, and the romantic lead by a skinny kid with glasses...

With buffering shots, all the bad acting and props and plot in the movie could actually work to its advantage.

It would definitely explain the bad acting and plot, especially if you intercut scenes of the "players" starting the dialogue and then having the characters continue it.

I'm just imagining a whole secondary plot in which half of the players keep coming and going for various reasons, and the GM eventually gets pissed off, which leads to him killing Snails and making the "wall of force" that stops everyone but Ridley from going into the dragon's horde cave.

And, of course, right after the ending scene, you cut to the characters throwing popcorn at the GM and screaming, "What the hell?!"

I think you also need little title cards - "Game 1" "Game 2" "Epilogue mode."

Or we could just watch Gamers, which I have a serious hankering to do at this point.

Second.

Ok, then we'll watch The Gamers some night. It's now officially on the list, right under Rocky Horror.

What stunt?

You won't remember it. I promise. When they first escape from the garbage pile by diving down the drain, they slide along a ramp. Apparently the ramp was really horrifically old and tetanus-inducing or something.

The sequel they were talking about in the commentary? It got made! Holy shiznich!

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0406728/

That's it, we rent this next.

Oh no. Oh no no no no no.

According to the reviewer on imdb, it's better than the original. But then, that would not be hard.

I'm amazed that they had a commentary at all (let alone two by the SAME PEOPLE). I'm not surprised that in the commentary they talked positively about their product. You always have to be complimentary - if you don't like it why should the audience? Only a very few savvy marketers can turn negative images into sales (like, say, Madonna). And given this guys talents as a director, I doubt he'd be able to convincingly mock himself. It would probably just end up being unbearable uncomfortable to listen to.

Actually, a continuous loop of Whalen going, "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, I'm an idiot..." would make a respectable and fairly amusing commentary that might even redeem the movie and him in some people's eyes.

The worst part of the commentary, actually, was the occasional comment by one of the D&D co-creators, who obviously didn't have a clue what to say and sounded really uncomfortable just being there. So everything he said was just a kind of rambly, obviously prompted monotone about D&D game basics.

If you want real horror, you should watch the video for Crispin Glover's cover of the song "Ben" from the movie Willard. As Willard, Crispin Glover puts his psychosis and emminent creepiness to high effect, but it is not nearly so disturbing as his "vision" of the music video for "Ben," which he directed. There is F. Lee Ermey in it as several characters, one of whom looks like Hitler, and then a bunch of random shit where Goth!Crispin dances while singing to the giant rat--Ben, of the title.

BUT THE REAL HORROR IS THE COMMENTARY. Yes, there was commentary for his music video. We laughed--laughed!--about that when we saw it, and so we put the video on for a second time, expecting to hear vague artist-speak and justifications thrown in randomly, or else total piss-taking.

CRISPIN GLOVER TALKED FASTER THAN THE MICROMACHINES GUY AND WAS TOTALLY SERIOUS THE WHOLE TIME. And the aforemention Hitler? He apparently ended up looking like Hitler "by accident." HOW DO YOU MAKE SOMEONE LOOK LIKE HITLER BY ACCIDENT!?! Yeah, my vote for craziest commentary about a steaming pile of crap, right there.

Oh, and good job watching DnD the movie. Even I knew better than that, and I've seen all The Crow sequels.

Someday we're going to need to watch those too...

Oh, and I was helping my cousin clean out her parents attic on Saturday and she uncovered a gift from her high school boyfriend - a framed and mounted 8x10 glossy of The Crow with two of the trading cards. Know anyone interested? I told her to eBay it.

Depends on how much she's asking for it. I might be interested. She'd get more on eBay, I'm guessing. That stuff still sells. Tragedy, you know?

And please, don't waste your time on the sequels. The Crow: City of Angels wasn't worth trying to decipher the lead's accent, The Crow: Salvation did something slightly different and made itself almost political before ruining the movie with ridiculous plotting and Kirsten Dunst, and The Crow: Wicked Prayer belongs in the bowels of hell.

Oh, and on a completely unrelated note, I got Battlestar Galactica's first season for Christmas. You want to borrow it, don't you?

Yes! Yes! Yes! Pleeeeease??? It still takes forever on Netflix. I'll lend you Pretender in exchange...

No worries at all. I'd love to watch the Pretender. We'll set something up after the holidays, because I'm not sure I'll get to see you before then. Or I can send the box set with Carrie or Lisa, see if they see you. Be gentle with it, the cover is soooooo shiny.

Heee. Could I get you to ferry it to me via your roomies? I have a few days at home over break that would be just perfect for BSG. Of course, this means I won't get any of the backlog of reading done...

I can ferry Pretender to you if you like. I only have season 1 at the moment, but I'm working on getting the others.

And soon I will have seaQuest. Soon.

Yeah, see, I saw "BSG" and I was thinking "Big Scary...George?"

Yeah, I'm begging Carrie to take it in right now. We'll see how good her memory is, but you should be able to get it this week.

Oh, I knew it was going to be awful, and billed it as such. I saw it in the theater when it first came out, and experienced the horror firsthand.

And this all came about because you weren't able to attend. The initial idea for movie night was Rocky Horror.

In that case, I apologize. My recommendation next time is pick something a little less obviously painful. :)

Oh, no, this was perfect. The best part of bad movies is railing in fury at the director for making it.

In that case, I recommend anything by Uwe Boll. If he doesn't work you into a fury of hatred, nothing will.

For some reason, I've always confused Crispin Glover and Don Henley. Go figure.

I of course can never watch the film "Willard" out of solidarity to my uncle Willard who was in college when the first "Willard" came out, tarnishing his name forever.

I thought the original was called "Ben"?

?? This is just what I've heard from my aforementioned uncle. Lots of rat jokes, apparently.

He's still doing better than my poor cousin Forrest.

The guy in the movie was still named Willard, yes, but I think the movie was called "Ben," after the big evil rat.

On second thought, double-checking with the IMDB says I'm wrong. Apparently the sequel to the original was called Ben. My bad.

Sky Kids *was* a good movie, as such go. Scott and I happened to walk by a theater playing it this summer, and saw it on a whim. :-)

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jethrien

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