I got to do a phone interview with Steve Zahn about his role in the new Werner Herzog movie, Rescue Dawn for my company's website! It's kind of strange because it's just still pictures, but it was still fun. It's not on our website yet, but we put a preview on YouTube:
Who Needs the Kwik-E-Mart? I Dooooo!
As you may or may not be aware, to promote the upcoming Simpson's movie, 7-11 has turned 10 of their stores nation-wide into bonafide Kwik-E-Marts complete with Kwik-E-Mart products like Buzz Cola, Krusty-Os and Homer's favorite sprinkled donuts. Why they didn't create a Duff Beer is beyond me, but the rest of the products are pretty cool. One of these stores is in Seattle, mere blocks from my work! My co-workers and I took a trip there last week to film and take pictures and, of course, buy some Krusty-Os (which are actually just Fruit Loops. But still!!).
Here are my pictures and here is a video we took of my co-worker buying his serial. We added titles to promote our website, of course:
Weekend Recap
I haven't done one of these in a while. I had a really great long weekend though. After spending a lovely, sunny 4th at 2 different BBQs, Brugos and I packed up the 'Stang and headed to the coast for a couple of days of beach camping.
Our trip got off to a slightly rocky start when the direction flew out of the car. Therein lies the problem with convertibles. But we'd read them and could (mostly) remember them and we figured signs would help us the rest of the way. After we made a wrong turn, I felt REALLY bad about losing the directions. But we turned around and were soon on the right track again.
When we finally arrived at La Push's Second Beach (the internet claimed it was the best of the 3 options), we parked the car and strapped on our hiking packs. We had to hike about half a mile down to the beach. Because we had all of our food and water for the next two days on our bodies, it was kind of a rough hike. But it was mostly downhill. When we got down to the beach and scaled the driftwood, we saw our new temporary home. It was truly breathtaking. It was also, miraculously, still warm and sunny which mislead us into thinking it would stay that way. We pitched our tent (we're getting really good at doing it quickly) and lay some rocks inside it to keep it from blowing away. (It was THAT windy). We then set about building a lean-to with driftwood to hopefully block some of the wind. Unfortunately, driftwood is much heavier than it looks and our lean-to ended up not making much of a difference. It was, however, a blast to build. And quite cool looking, if I do say so myself.
We ate dinner (everything we brought was dehydrated so we'd only need to boil water for cooking) and then sat around the little fire we built for a while, playing Uno. The view was amazing. Those rocks jutting out of the water look almost other-worldly. The whole scene was really quite romantic.
The next day, we awoke to a rather windy and cold morning. Given how sunny it was the day before, I thought surely the clouds would burn off. They never did. But Brugos and I are pretty much used to camping in inclimate weather anyway. We bundled up and set about exploring the beach. First, we went out to the big rock that was no accessible due to low-tide. We saw hordes of starfish and muscles doubtless unnerved by their exposure. Then we walked from end to end of the beach, enjoying the scenery and laughing at the post-apocalyptic looking communities other campers had set up. Someone had written Jacob in the sand and we hypothesized that Jacob was the hard but just leader of their community. We were in his territory now and we must abide by his laws or suffer his wrath.
The other end of the beach was much more isolated and we climbed the rocks and sat down in solitude for a bit before heading back to our tent to cook dinner. We whiled away the time playing cards. We couldn't really remember any 2 person card games so we kind of made up rules to Gin Rummy and Go-Fish. Yes, we couldn't even remember Go Fish very well. It was that kind of camping.
Saturday we woke up to mist covering the water. It was warmer than the previous day, but still a bit chilly, so we kept our sweaters on, ate breakfast and packed up. We weren't looking forward to the uphill hike back to the car. Luckily, we didn't have to lug the water anymore. Sadly, that was the only thing we'd brought that we used up and was also heavy. Our dried soups, though now gone, were pretty insignificant in weight. Luckily, there were benches along the way for the more grueling portions of the hike. That was nice of them. Half a mile seems like an eternity when you have a heavy pack.
Our next destination, for which I'd also lost the directions, was the Olympic Hot Springs. There is a commercial hot springs near by called Sol Duc, but we wanted to go back to nature, baby. So at Sol Duc, we asked directions to the natural springs. Their directions weren't very clear and the springs weren't listed on the map they gave us. So we drove on. We were briefly stuck in traffic as they cleared a head-on collision off of highway 101. After we got through, we stopped at Granny's Diner to fulfill my love of roadside diners. Our waitress was a somewhat maniacal young lady who was amazed at how much water we were drinking and who wandered around the restaurant commenting loudly on everything. Turns out she's from whatever town we were in outside of Port Angeles. I guess being a small town girl makes you kind of crazy. Also, for some reason, it took 45 minutes for them to prepare a veggie burger and a bowl of chili. We were on Granny's time. No matter. She knew where the springs were. And while we waited, we got to meet some goats, chickens and a cat with the biggest thumbs I've ever seen. They all lived out back.
Bellies full, we drove to the springs. It was an 8 mile drive up the mountain and then another 3 mile hike from the trail head. Maybe it was because of our after-lunch smoke, but the hike up to the springs was an eternity. We thought we'd never find the things. We also noticed something weird about the people who were passing us on the way back to the car. The closer we got to the springs, the more “swimmy” people looked. By the time we got there, we were passed by people with towels, and one completely naked hippie girl. Oh yeah, the springs are closing optional. Ew. Brugos also pointed out that whenever we seem to find a hike grueling, we are always passed by smiley old couples who seem to be doing fine. That helps us cowboy us a little.
We smelled the springs before we found them. We staked out a nice private one, stripped to our swim suits and climbed into the hot, smelly water. I know it doesn't sound very romantic, especially since our springs kind of looked like the outlet for a sewer, but it really was. The hot water felt really good.
We got out and made the trek back to the car which, of course, felt much shorter going back. Then we headed home, satisfied with our nice Northwestern Couple excursion!
See pics of our adventures here!
Less Than Meets the Eye
X-Posted to the the Reel.
It was always going to be tough for me to see Transformers. For 6-Year-Old Baxter, Optimus Prime was a role model, an icon and even a little bit of a crush. I both loved and was destroyed by Transformers: The Movie, the original animated feature in which my precious Optimus bravely sacrificed his life for the good of Earth and the Autobots. I was actually inconsolable about the death of Prime for weeks after my mom took me to see the film. It was one of the most unforgettable, and possibly one of the most significant moments of my childhood. There was little chance that anyone could have made a live-action Transformers film 20-some years later that would stand up to the memory of MY Transformers, and specifically my Prime.
But why, oh why did it have to be MICHAEL BAY?! You guys have all seen Pearl Harbor, right? Armageddon? The ISLAND?! Crap crap CRAP. And not in a good, Paul Verhoeven kind of way either. Unbelievably bad writing, terrible, forgettable action sequences. People are fooled into thinking his movies are exciting because (I suppose) he blows things up constantly. But they aren't good action films. Are any of those explosions as memorable as, say, the car chase scene in Bullit? (San Fransisco sure has a lot of hills!) or the foot chase scene in Point Break? (Swayze throws a DOG at Keanu to slow him down!) The answer is no. They're not. All I remember from Armageddon is the cheap tear-jerker moment when Bruce Willis is about to die so that Liv Tyler can marry Ben Afleck. All I remember from The Island are pretty people running around in white outfits and yelling a lot. All I remember from Pearl Harbor is…well, I try not to remember ANYTHING about that one.
Transformers isn't much different than the rest of the Bay catalog. He wastes plenty of time on extraneous scenes that supposedly provide Bay's idea of character development. His characters don't develop any further than if they were caricatures drawn at the carnival, engaged in their favorite activity. There's the brave solider (Josh Duhamel) who is about to risk his life to save the U.S. of A. and has a wife back home and a baby daughter he's NEVER MET! There's the hot Australian hacker chick with heavy eyeliner who discovers the Decepticon's plot to infiltrate the government's top secret files. She involves her fat funny hacker friend who loves Dance Dance Revolution because he's the ONLY ONE who can help prevent the Decepticons from getting the information! Or IS he? He never actually does anything other than eat donuts, dance with his brother and get sassed at by his mamma. But he sure is hilarious. Because he's fat.
There's also a hottie love interest who is “more than meets the eye” (new drinking game! smash a beer bottle over your head every time someone in the movie says that line!) because even though she's hot and hangs out with dumb jocks, she also has a convict for a daddy and knows how to steal cars. Great! Now she has one and a half dimensions!
Semper Memento.
And what about our main human character? I do love that Shia LaBeouf. If there were a stock market for actors, I would have bought shares in LeBeouf a long time ago. He's going to be huge. But the things Bay had him say and do in Transformers aren't doing his dramatic stock any favors.
All in all there are at LEAST 5 characters and as many scenes that could be cut completely from the 2-and-a-half hour long movie. Everything else could be tightened. How many times do we need to see robots smash into buildings? And, what would be left after a major editing overhaul would STILL suck. Even without the pilfering of my childhood, this movie is still trite, aimless, cliche, self-important, cheesy, and often, kinda boring.
And WITH the childhood pilfering? Well, I'm still not sure if it's better or worse that they used the original voice of Optimus Prime. I was happy to hear it again, but not happy to hear it come out of that pointy, unlovable re-imaging of Prime. It would have sucked to hear a new actor try to be the hero that I loved, but it was equally difficult to hear them lift dialog directly from Transformers: The Movie as Prime was about to square off with Megatron. It recalled the better film, the better version of the characters, and the heartbreakingly heroic death scene in the original. Basically, it reminded me, as if I needed more reminders, that I was watching crap.
I think I have a few happy childhood nuggets left. Does anyone want to call Baz Luhrman and have him direct a musical version of Clash of the Titans starring Dane Cook?
"You Kill Me" Kills Me
X-Posted to the the Reel.
Movies about Hit Men with a Heart of Gold are played out. Seriously. There is nothing new you can do with them. They will never be as funny as “Grosse Pointe Blank” or as touching (inappropriate relationship with little girl aside) as “The Professional”. Yet I like Ben Kingsley and Tea Leoni so I thought I'd give “You Kill Me” a…ahem…shot.
The first thing I noticed at the screening for “You Kill Me”, was that this was the same audience who attended the SIFF “Death at a Funeral” premiere. In other words, everyone was old. Apparently, the new Retiree Generation likes their comedies like they like their coffee at Denny's. Black and stale. This is comforting, in a way, because it's nice to know that when I'm old I won't necessarily choose to be at home watching Matlock reruns when I could be at the cinema. Unfortunately, it also means that I will be out uproariously enjoying movies that are mostly lame.
“You Kill Me” is the story of Frank Falenczyk, a Gold-Hearted Hit Man with a bit of a drinking problem. When his drinking causes him to botch a very important job, his employers, who are also his family, ship him off to San Francisco to dry out. There he meets a bespectacled (and grossly underused) Bill Pullman who is there to make sure he stays on the wagon. Frank begrudgingly attends his first AA meeting, and encounters Luke Wilson, as the harmless gay punchline who later becomes his sponsor. Pullman also scores Frank a job at a funeral home where he works under the Sassy Black Lady stereotype making dead people look nice. Frank doesn't have a problem working with bodies because he's a hit man, you see. Isn't that just darling?
And then it's time for Frank to meet the younger woman who will eventually warm his cockles and give him a new lease on life etc. The dry-spoken Tea Leoni walks into HIS funeral home to bury her unlikeable stepfather and it's love-at-first sight for these two odd-ball lonely souls. It's all too easy, really. Sure, there are obstacles, but they are precisely the ones you would expect. Leoni must be fine with Frank killing people for a living but she must have an unrelated relationship hangup to get over. Frank must have a relapse and miss a dinner date with Leoni. Frank's family back home must have problems with the man Frank neglected to kill and Frank must overcome his resistance to recovery and his relationship issues in order to save the day. The only thing that's missing is a sweet montage wherein Frank teaches his girlfriend how to kill people. Oh wait, they have that too. I think my monkey wrote a similar script in his sleep last week. Kingsley and Leoni are fine. Wilson and Pullman are fine. The Sassy Black Lady is fine. But no one and nothing is spectacular.
Of course, the audience LOOOVED the movie. They laughed and clapped and waved their canes in the air. Me, I need something a little less formulaic.
One day, I will be the cane-waving person in the audience, happy to know what to expect. Who knows what my formula will be. Since the current Moons Over My Hammy set likes black comedies with heart, perhaps my Rootie Tootie Fresh and Frutie ass will need to see hardcore snuff with heart. Whatever it is, I'm sure it will drive the whipper snappers in the audience crazy. Right now, however, I'm going to go home and watch Grosse Pointe Blank.
T-Town Adventures
Here are the pics from our Tacoma Adventure last weekend. I heart the King's Inn.
Pay for Play
So yesterday morning, my assistant and I interviewed the child stars of Bridge to Terabithia, Josh Hutcherson and AnnaSophia Robb. They were really sweet, kind of cool kids despite the fact that AnnaSophia has a bit of that tiny 40-year-old woman vibe.
In the afternoon, I returned to find a box of DVDs on my desk that needed to be uploaded. Titles like “Japanese Oil Wrestling”, “Topless Fight Club” and “Extreme Fights Vol. 1”. Then, when I took a look at “Punk Rock Girls”, and found that instead of being a softcore rip off of the Suicide Girls, it's actually just girls eating each other out for an hour, I had to talk to my boss to find out if I was still supposed to put the title up on the site. This is the kind of work day I could never have imagined back when I worked in finance, helping rich curmudgeons get richer. Some days, my job is sort of a dream come true. Even if it's a dream I didn't know I had.
Weekend Recap
FRIDAY
Brugos and I met The Gang Which Has So Many Members It Desperately Needs an All Encompassing Nickname at the Big Time Brewery for some drinks before we went to our respective movies. They were going to see Day Watch at SIFF. I'd seen Night Watch and mostly enjoyed it, but Brugos hadn't seen it, so we instead elected to see Knocked Up.
But first, we made use of the incredibly wonky shuffleboard table at Big Time. That thing is filled with dips and dents and slants left. Also, someone went a little crazy with the wax. The board is surrounded by a big white mote of wax beads in which pucks can be easily lost. I started in on the house wine. The Day Watch crew left to get in line and Brugos and I played one more game of wonky shuffleboard before heading off to our movie. We stopped at Safeway on the way to get some mini wine bottles for the movie. We arrived at the Metro nice and early which was good because it turned out the movie wasn't AT the Metro, but at the Guild. Luckily, the Guild was only about half a mile away. We made it just in time.
We both loved Knocked Up. See my review below! After the movie, we stopped briefly at Al's to play some Medieval Madness. We realised we were a little too drunk to be any good. We learned that some of the Day Watch party were at The College Inn, so we headed down there in time for last call.
SATURDAY
So since I'm no longer a poor college student, I REALLY need to stop drinking the cheap wine. I can afford the nicer stuff and I know my body would appreciate it. But at least my hangovers are keeping me on my toes. On this particular morning, I was not nauseous or throwing up. Instead, I was incredibly dizzy and felt like I could topple over at any moment. I helped Brugos steer the car out of the garage so that AAA could finally come and tow it to the mechanic, and then I somehow cooked a breakfast and lay down on the couch. AAA was able to jump start the car so that Brugos could actually DRIVE to the mechanic. This was good news but it also made both of us kind of angry because months ago when the car died at 2am on a Tuesday outside Clever Dunne's, ALL we wanted the mechanic to do was to try and jump the car but he wouldn't do it. He said he knew it was the distributor cap and that jumping it wouldn't work. So we had to wait for a tow. We got home so late that night. But apparently, a jump WOULD HAVE WORKED FINE. What a dick.
Anyway, by the time Brugos got back from the mechanic, I had gone upstairs and, I guess LITERALLY passed out. Ordinarily, I am a very light sleeper. I should have heard Brugos come home. I should have heard him come up the stairs to check on me. I DEFINITELY should have felt him poke me. I was unaware of any of this. I woke up on my own and went downstairs for water and was completely surprised to find him home. But I did feel infinitely better, which was good because we had a big day ahead of us.
Last year, we'd gone Urban Golfing around Capitol Hill. This year, the party was in Georgetown. We had a nice big team assembled and, best of all, we had RAD costumes. Brugos had the idea that we should dress up like the Hi-Hats, the mime gang from The Warriors. It was a pretty simple costume. Red shirts with stripey sleeves, black pants, black hats,, suspenders and mime makeup. We did the sleeve stripes with gaffer tape. I did a stylized girl version of the costume with a black skirt and a cute, girly hat. We got our makeup on at Erik and Fi's. We all looked awesome.
The Urban Golf is rain or shine. Last year it was a bright, sunny day. This time, it was drizzling. It wasn't too bad though. Georgetown is a really cool area. I wish it weren't so far off the beaten path because it would be great to hang out there more. It's very industrial and there's arty junk around every corner. There are also some train tracks which ended up being the downfall of Urban Golf.
All the Urban Golfers got a lot of attention at every bar. In Capitol Hill, people dressed in costumes is (no pun intended) par for the course, but in Georgetown, you've got a lot of working men who definitely look at you funny. They seemed entertained by us though. And us mime's got the most attention. Though toward the end of the day, I was kind of tired of people miming AT us.
My favorite hole was at a park. The hole was inside the empty kiddie pool. After I sank my putt, I made a bee-line for the giant jungle gym with the awesome slide. Others followed. The jungle gym also had a zip line on it which was a lot of fun to use. The funniest part about the park was that it appeared that not too long ago, someone had a major hamburger bun fight. There were buns all over the ground.
The flaw in the Urban Golf course they'd created was that we kept having to play near the train tracks. The working train tracks. The train operators didn't like this one bit. They called the cops. We moved holes. They called the cops again. By the 7th hole, we were told that we weren't allowed to play the 9th because it was too close to the tracks. We ended our night at Stellar Pizza, eating some dinner and playing in the photo booth. We also ran into Carly and Scot who were, naturally, surprised to see us in our costumes.
After the golf, Erik was nice enough to drop me, Brugos and Darsh off at the Brunswick Towers for some poker. Darsh was fresh from having TWO Irish Car Bombs IN A ROW at the bar next to the car. We'd only gone in to use the bathroom.
We played two games and I won a little money in the second one! My poker skills are definitely improving. I win a little bit most every time I play now. I'm ready for Vegas!
Brugos, Darsh and I got a cab back to the U-District and called it a rather early night. It was only about midnight when we got home. Of course, we'd been drinking for 10 hours…
SUNDAY
Cleaning day! After which Brugos and I watched My Super Ex-Girlfriend. We still aren't sure if it's a good movie or not. It MIGHT be a farce. Or it might be an awful film. Either way, we laughed a lot.
Want to see pics of us dressed as Hi-Hats rampaging around Georgetown? Sure you do!
Movie Review: Knocked Up
“Knocked Up” is the next film from the creators of the sleeper hit, “The Forty-Year-Old Virgin”. Most of the same team is there including Writer/Director Judd Apatow, and improv geniuses, Seth Rogen and Paul Rudd. This time, there is no Steve Carell to steal the show. And, that, I think, is what makes “Knocked Up” a superior movie. Steve Carell is just too big. Especially now whatwith the “The Offices” and “Evan Almightys”. So even though he does always play the (mostly) lovable loser, he's just not as relatable as a Seth Rogen.
I have been wanting to see Seth Rogen in a lead role since he played one of my favorite characters on the short-lived but absolutely brilliant TV show, “Freaks and Geeks”. He wasn't improvising so much then, but he was only a kid. Now he has definitely blossomed into his own glorious comedic flower.
In “Knocked Up”, Rogen plays Ben, an underachieving stoner who is coasting through life thinking about nothing but himself. Everything changes when he, with the aid of alcohol, manages to score a one night stand with a beautiful, successful woman named Allison (Katherine Heigl). Alcohol also contributes to the titular state in which Allison finds herself 8 weeks later. She decides to keep the baby and, because he's a good person, he decides to raise the baby with her.
Rogen is ably backed by Paul Rudd who, on screen, can do NO WRONG. This time Rudd plays Pete, Allison's brother-in-law who is going through a bit of a rough patch emotionally. Rudd and Rogen could be much funnier versions of people I hang out with every day. The script is heartfelt, hilarious and, because it's about having a baby, TERRIFYING.
The script also does a fantastic job of balancing the male and female sides of dating, relationships and accidentally growing up. In most movies that attempt to show the female side, the women are shoe-obsessed bags of shallowness or else they are cute but completely insane. In contrast, the women in Knocked Up are completely realistic and actually pretty cool. Sure, Allison's sister, Debbie, can be a little crazy at times, but Leslie Mann (Apatow's real life wife and mother of his children) plays Debbie sympathetically as an otherwise level-headed woman who just didn't realize what having kids was going to do to her life. Allison might be smoking hot and working for the E! network, but she's still a down-to-earth, normal girl who's willing to try and work it out with her baby-daddy. She knows that deep down, he's a good person who just needs a kick in the pants to be a great father. I've read that Heigl beat out actresses like Jennifer Love Hewitt, Anne Hathaway and Lindsay Lohan for the role of Allison. And thank God. It would have been a completely different film. Much more traditional Rom Com and far too Hollywood. The reason I don't like most Rom Coms are because I just don't know people like Lindsay Lohan. I'm not a Jennifer Love Hewitt. I could kick it with a Katherine Heigl.
Of course, the character in the move I most relate to isn't a woman. The thing that really struck a chord with me while watching this movie is the fact that I saw more of myself in Ben and his lifestyle than in Allison. Think about that when you watch this movie. What if BEN were the one who got knocked up. Yikes.
“Knocked Up” is one of those rare comedies that goes deeper than just getting from point A to point B. It's about how real people (who are, granted, funnier than you) deal with life not turning out the way they'd planned. And that's something that EVERYONE can relate to.
SIFF Film Review: The Future is Unwritten
It must be incredibly difficult to make a documentary about your friend. Especially if your friend died reasonably young and happened to be one of the Founding Fathers of a musical movement. Julien Temple’s “Joe Strummer: The Future is Unwritten” is remarkably objective and concise for being a touching tribute to such an important man. However, it still, perhaps unavoidably so, falls into the trappings of a documentary made by a friend. It's just too long. The good news is that is my ONLY criticism of this film. Everything else is just nitpicking. The film covers Joe Strummer's entire life from his childhood with his brother and his foray at boarding school to dealing with his brother's suicide and how that contributed to the man he became. It covers the quiet period between the end of the Clash and the beginning of The Mescaleros that has previously been a bit of a mystery. It ends, of course, with Strummer's untimely death and implicates the full extent of why this was a tragedy. The man simply had so much more to do.
The Clash is absolutely my favorite band. They are also one of the most documented bands and definitely the most documented founding punk band besides, perhaps, The Ramones. It wasn't as easy back then to just carry a camera around with you so it must have been pretty clear to everyone that Joe Strummer was a big deal. What he was doing was important and needed to be filmed. Much of this footage must have been filmed by Temple himself because I have seen every Clash documentary I can get my hands on and I only recognized a handful of the shots in this movie. The only narration is from the man himself, taken primarily from a radio broadcast he recorded. The film is filled with interviews from the people who were close to him, most of which were shot around a roaring camp fire in several cities. The way the interviews were shot, with the people who loved Joe gathered together around a warm campfire, really illustrates how much of an influence he really had on everyone who he touched. This is evident even before you learn that the campfires are a tribute to an ongoing event that Joe had organized himself.
Temple also ignored another documentary film staple. Titling his interviewees with their names. You either recognize an interviewee (the most recognizable of whom is Bono) or you learn who they are through the stories they are telling. If you never learn who they are (the Sex Pistol's Steve Jones is quite a bit more bloated than his skinny young counterpart), it doesn't really matter. The film isn't about them. It's about Joe. His story has been told before and will, thankfully, be told again. But Julien Temple's telling of it is perfect.
Effed by the Wind 