A month ago I wrote that I don’t like Will Ferrell. With Anchorman 2 in theaters yesterday, I thought I be a little more fair to the Anchorman franchise and Will Ferrell. So for the sake of fairness I decided to watch the first Anchorman movie.
Boy, that was a mistake.
It had an identity problem. It’s a comedy that had flat jokes, a misogynist’s wet-dream, a moral tale of the evils of misogyny, a parody of news anchors and the 70s and an excuse to have a bunch of cameos. Perhaps a plot could have helped anchor the movie a little and helped the jokes and gags have some sort of impact.
But the thing I hated the most about the movie was how obvious the humor was supposed to be. I hate movies that insult people’s intelligence. It’s lazy and overbearing like a bunch of frat guys drank a bunch of beer and wrote the script.
I really fucking hated this movie. Really. So I’ll just skip the sequel, and this will be my last mention of it.
Monday will mark the final regular season NFL game at Candlestick Park. The 49ers will move down to Santa Clara next season, although they will get to keep their “San Francisco” city designation. It’s like the Angels taking the “Los Angeles” designation. Or the Rams doing the same thing while playing at Anaheim Stadium (which is now Angels Stadium of Anaheim or something).
Nonetheless, Keith Olbermann paid a proper tribute to that shithole. And before you pissy “Friscans” get your panties tied up in a bunch thinking it’s an LA guy disparaging SF, I’ve said many times that they should demolish Dodger Stadium and start over.
When I take public transit, I always have this fear of being stranded. Sure I have a phone and can call a cab if things get real hair raising, but the fear of being stuck is always in the back of my mind.
Last night after covering the Kings game, I had to get back home. I usually take the Silver Line to STAPLES Center, and as of Sunday the southbound stop moved one block over from Figueroa and Pico to Flower and Pico. As seen above.
The first fear was not being able to see the bus stop sign. After twice avoiding walking over a homeless person sleeping on the sidewalk, I finally saw the sign hidden by trees on the sidewalk. Brilliant.
Then the bus was late. I started to get the panic that it went to the old stop. But no. The Metro app said that it was coming to this stop. An app wouldn’t lie, would it?
After 10 minutes of being late, I started walking over to the old stop. But before I could get very far, I saw the lights of the Silver Line bus. No need to throw up, it was coming.
I hate Christmas. I hate the holidays. I hate families. So of course this makes me go back to the wonderful John Waters movie Cecil B. DeMented. “Family is just a dirty word for censorship!”
In the spirit of the holidays, I wrote my tribute to them in my Lakers story on Friday. It was sparked by one too many stupid pictures on Facebook. So the first four paragraphs of the story I wrote:
The holidays are such a miserable time. There’s a myth that people enjoy being reunited with the family. Perhaps that is a good myth to be comforted by. The television commercials make it seem wonderful. The only problem is that it’s a bloody lie.
Reality hits. You realize how much you hate your family. Drunk Uncle Jeff who has one too many egg nogs and pisses his pants. Aunt Bessie who is probably the most selfish person you’ve ever known. Cousin Jeff who likes burning things. Mom complains you never call. Dad tells everyone to pull his finger. Older sister slept with all of your childhood friends, and your younger brother is esconsed away in his third stint in rehab. And lord knows how many packages of tube socks and droopy drawers you’ll receive.
And all of your friends on Facebook who post messages and pictures of hope and joy are just fucking liars who have no soul and probably are closeted serial killers.
It’s a nightmare, and unfortunately the Lakers will not give you a couple of hours of solace.
I was worried heading into the theater without Dramamine. I am prone to motion sickness, and it tends to come out when I’m in a movie theater especially when there’s a lot of handheld cam shots. I had problems with Blair Witch Project, avoided problems with Cloverfield thanks to Dramamine and was feeling a bit queasy at 12 Years a Slave.
This was also my second 3D experience in a theater. I went to to a live 3D broadcast of the 2009 BCS Championship Game that saw the Florida Gators beat the Oklahoma Sooners 24-14. It was less 3D and more let’s-put-on-strange-glasses-and-cross-our-eyes-and-maybe-we’ll-see-a-chance-of-the-desired-effect kind of event.
But I went to see Gravity, sat in the back of the theater and put on the glasses. Instantly I knew it was not going to be the same experience as the football game. It worked.
Gravity is a horror story not like Alien or 2001: A Space Odyssey. It’s more like The Shining. The monster is outer space. It’s not tangible, doesn’t have a voice and doesn’t move. Outer space became the Overlook Hotel unleashing horror upon horror to the two floating astronauts.
Despite sounding so open, outer space is claustrophobic in this movie. And like the Overlook Hotel, it implodes onto itself gradually as the movie goes on. With everything that Dr. Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock) has to deal with in her fight for survival, suddenly its her psyche she has to deal with.
The technical marvel in pulling off this film was enough to overcome the thin plot. It’s simple: try and make it back to earth safely. There was some backstory filler of Dr. Stone that was very eyerolling.
It sounds like director Alfonso Cuarón and his team got most of the experience of being in space correct. A couple of things were fudged for the sake of the story, but these oversights weren’t so obvious to the point of distraction.
In all it’s a breathtaking suspenseful movie that will keep you entertained for 91 minutes. I really don’t know how this will translate on the home television, but it was amazing watching it in 3D. And, to boot, I had no issues with motion sickness.
This isn’t the best movie I’ve seen this year, but it is definitely one of the most entertaining ones.
While many places in the United States have high-speed car chases, nowhere else in the world airs it with as much flair and panache as we do it here in Los Angeles.
They usually follow the same basic script: a live local newscast will break in with footage of the chase, someone on Twitter will announce it, people start watching and tweeting about it, the car tries to escape from the cops with the velocity and quality of the driving a variable from chase to chase, the car chase stops, the suspect surrenders.
Just like that our hour-long escape comes to a neat end. Every now and again an innocent victim will get entangled in one of these messes. Ever rarer is when the suspect meets a violent end at the hands of the police. But usually once the end happens everything is wrapped up.
Except last night.
A silver Corvette was being chased around South Gate and Highland Park. The LA County Sheriffs pulled out of the chase saying it was too dangerous for the public opting to only follow it from a chopper. CHP opted not to chase for the same reasons. But once the driver got into LAPD jurisdiction, they were more than happy to oblige.
So the chase heads its way into Downtown LA. To this point the driver hasn’t been more reckless than what I would normally expect from a Corvette driver. Except the driver gets the intersection of Olympic Blvd. and Los Angeles St. and hits a car crossing the intersection at full speed. They t-bone, the “innocent” car spins out and shears off a fire hydrant. The driver keeps trying to flee, gets out of the car once he realizes the car is kaput, gets shot by the LAPD on live television and dies.
Go to the 48-second mark in the video above. Note that the Corvette being chased has the green light heading into the intersection. So the so-called innocent victim ran a red light at full speed.
Question 1: Will the driver of the “innocent car” get a ticket for running a red light? I’ve been pulled over in Downtown LA for a brake light being out. No warning was issued. A full on ticket. Fucking quotas.
So this driver that caused an accident must at the very least get a ticket, right? I get that the driver of the Corvette needed to be stopped, but this “innocent” driver needs to be punished for breaking the law, right?
Question 2: Why was the driver of the Corvette shot? The guy wanted to flee. From the live shot when this happened (which you won’t see on the archived videos on the news site rightfully), he didn’t appear to make any threatening moves to the police.
But let’s assume he made a threatening gesture to the police. Rubber bullets couldn’t bring him down?
This goes back to the Christopher Dorner manhunt and my problems with the police. They tend to want to shoot first then ask questions later.
So why was this driver shot? Had he made threats to the police during the chase? Was he armed? Did the police know he was armed?
I forget how lovely movie matinees are. They’re cheaper, and you get to pretend you own the entire theater.
It had been a while since I have stepped foot in a movie theater, and I forget how annoying the adjacent screen’s sound bleeding into the theater was. I also forget how annoying other people are.
I watched 12 Years a Slave and sat with my jaw on the floor even as the credits ended and the house lights came back on. It did a great job in unflinchingly show the dehumanization of slavery, and the ending was particularly jarring.
Early this morning it received seven Golden Globe nominations which it richly deserves.
But here’s a question. Brad Pitt is only in the movie for about 10 minutes or so. How did he get a personal makeup artist?
I really fucking hated Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life. It was an unwieldy self-conscious mess of a film that was so pretentious even I couldn’t make excuses for it. And trust me, I love a bit of pretense in my art.
I didn’t think I would like Shane Carruth’s Upstream Color based on so many people using Malick as a starting point of comparison. But it was more related to another auteur that critics used in their analysis of this film: David Lynch.
The story is a simple love story between two who unknowingly meet after they had been abducted, used to house parasites in order to grow blue-colored orchids, have all of the money and assets stolen and have their lives completely turned upside-down. They meet on the train, get married, realize they shared traumatic experiences and liberate a pen of pigs.
Sure it makes no sense when told in that matter, but the way actor, director, producer, composer, writer and cinematographer Shane Carruth presented the movie it makes perfect sense. I fell into the movie wrapped up in trying to figure out which reality I was in, what the fuck was going on. When the credits rolled at the end of the film, it all made sense. But most importantly, it made sense in a way that felt fulfilling.
This is a pretentious movie but not so much so where it’s just a director masturbating on film for two or three hours. This is David Lynch-lite, just obtuse enough to hook you in but not so baffling to leave you confused for years.
Another college football regular season has come to an end, and what else can be said? I guess we found out how shitty the Big Ten was seeing how Ohio State lost to Michigan State. We saw the Big 12 cannibalize itself as Oklahoma ripped the Fiesta Bowl away from Oklahoma State allowing Texas and Baylor to fight for the scraps. On Friday we saw Bowling Green cost their conference around $8 million when they beat Northern Illinois.
Florida State predictably beat Duke, but I still don’t know if quarterback Jameis Winston understands the concept of “consent”. But he wasn’t charged so it’s okay for the misogynists to victimize the victim, right?
And Auburn took care of business against Missouri, but the more I watched the game the more I was convinced the Pac-12 was the best conference in the nation. And speaking of the Pac-12, how about some schadenfreude for Arizona State’s head coach Todd Graham? Hahahahahahahahahahahah!
In lieu of rankings, here’s how I think the BCS bowl games are going to be doled out:
BCS Championship Game: Florida State vs. Auburn
Rose Bowl: Stanford vs. Michigan State
Orange Bowl: Ohio State vs. Oklahoma
Sugar Bowl: Clemson vs. UCF
Fiesta Bowl: Baylor vs. Alabama
If I had my druthers, I would have Stanford playing Florida State in the championship game. Of course that is a mere fantasy.
