Hamlet 2

Hamlet 2 is an attempt to spoof the "inspiriational teacher" genre of film. It stars Steve Coogan (who was pretty good in A Cock and Bull Story) as a drama teacher who writes a sequel to Hamlet in which Jesus and Hamlet Jr. use a time machine to prevent the tragic events of the original play. Said play is performed by a predominantly hispanic drama class against the wishes of the school administration and the community at large, who (SPOILER ALERT!) are surprised and delighted with the result. This film is far too stupid to actually satirize anything, and is only saved from being pure garbage (à la Meet the Spartans) by the play-within-a-movie's bizarre premise and the montage of its performance near the movie's end. With 20+ I.Q. points and the tiniest bit of research into what drama and education are actually like, Hamlet 2 probably could have amounted to more than a clichéd Hollywood depiction of more Hollywood clichés, executed with stupidity and bad taste. Oh well.

RATING: Hamlet 2: 40%
Catherine Keener: Hot%

(Image from www.impawards.com.)

Terror Twilight by Pavement

Pavement's fifth and final studio album is one of my favorite and least favorite Pavement albums because its' strengths and weaknesses are rooted in the same place. The downside is their tendency to skew more towards Malkmus' improved technical ability on the guitar. It's only heightened by the fact that it was the first time they had ever recorded on 24 tracks, and utilized OK Computer's producer Nigel Goodrich. So we end up with longer jams, better vocals, and more musical clarity across the board. It's far from the fuzz and distortion of Slanted and Enchanted, but at the same time it's the strength of the album because it, as Pitchfork (I know, I know, but they aren't always off base) said, "allows for the full fruition of some of the band's more adventuresome tendencies". I've got to agree with that statement, and so while there's certainly no comparison in terms of their sonic shift from Slanted and Enchanted to Terror Twilight, their signature slacker ethos is still evident. In the end, it's a band that hasn't swayed from the indie rock roots they started, but the sign of a band that's grown up. Grown so much it was inevitable they'd have to break up. And they did. Man was I right about that one.

RATING: 90%

Citizen Toxie: The Toxic Avenger IV

I don't know what to say about this movie. It was singlehandedly one of the worst movies, one of the dumbest movies, and one of the most offensive movies I've ever seen, but it was trying to be all of those things. I mean, if you want to see a movie that opens with a gang called the Diaper Mafia shooting up a special ed classroom then getting ripped apart and crapped all over by a hero, or a movie with a superhero called Master Bater who ejaculates on everything, a movie with a talking monster penis, or a movie featuring a fight scene between two unborn fetuses in the womb, then I guess this is for you. I really haven't ever seen so much blood, gore, urine, feces, and semen in a movie before. Also Ron Jeremy plays the mayor.

RATING: 10%

The Tales of Beedle the Bard by J.K. Rowling

I regarded the Harry Potter series as the Cabbage Patch Kids of the literary world for several years, heaping scorn upon J.K. Rowling and her fans, until I actually read the books and realized how excellent they are. Rowling combines no-nonsense prose, vivid characters and addictive plots with enough escapist fantasy to make it fun, and sociopolitical themes (e.g. the persecution of werewolves, the racist pseudoscience of the "pure bloods" and the quislingism of the Ministry of Magic) of sufficient relevance and sophistication to keep Harry Potter a few steps ahead of the derivative pulp that has been riding on its coattails, so to speak, for the past decade or so.

The Tales of Beedle the Bard is a collection of 5 fairy tales in the style of the Brothers Grimm with a magical twist, interspersed with M.H. Abrams-style literary commentary supposedly written by Albus Dumbledore in. I like fairy tales, and I liked these stories. However, I think the notes basically act as filler rather than adding much to the story, and in my opinion Beedle is short to the point of laziness--it could have been good instead of quaint if Rowling had put more work into it. I have no problem paying CDN $14.50 for a hardcover book from an author I like. I'd rather not pay the same for 1/4 of a book, thank you very much.

RATING: 65%

(Image from mg.dailymail.co.uk.)

Dead Rising

This is precisely the kind of game that you'd think I'd love. Basically, you are stuck in a mall filled with zombies, and you can use practically every single object in the game as a weapon, from toy swords to loaves of bread to battle axes. It's as close to a video game of Dawn of the Dead that we'll ever get. In fact, on the cover there is a disclaimer that says it has nothing to do with the movie Dawn of the Dead, which in my opinion is practically an invitation for a lawsuit (which they eventually got). Anyway, the point is, the game just became boring to me after a while, probably because of the strict time limit for every goddamn mission. The game is in real time, and it assigns you several missions at once, but I don't think there's any real way you can complete them all before you run out of time, and that's really frustrating. I want to do more than just the core missions, but I always miss out. It's pretty fun I guess, but when a zombies-in-a-mall game bores me, you have to think it has problems.

RATING: 63%

Pizza

Pizza is a circular bread sort of thing that is covered in tomato sauce, cheese, and various other toppings such as anchovies or pepperonis. It was invented in America by Americans for Americans, and it is accordingly delicious. You can have it for lunch or dinner piping hot, or you can eat it for breakfast cold. Even though we often can't agree who ought to be inhabiting what useless piece of desert rubble in Palestine/Israel, at least everybody everywhere can agree that America's #1 invention pizza is the best, even ahead of America's other inventions like airplanes, cars, computers, the Internet, photography, television, movies, controlled electricity, and doing it doggy style.

RATING: 95%

Having Almost 900 Reviews

Sure, a cursory search of our topics would have easily shown me that Chris already reviewed milk months ago, but where's the fun in that?

RATING: Mea Culpa%

Milk

Milk is a drink that comes out of the boobies of mammals. Most mammals stick to drinking milk their mothers produce when they are babies, but human beings decided one day in history to drink milk for always except not from humans from other animals. Milk is good as an ingredient, on cereal, or surrounding a cookie that one is about to eat. Milk is bad because most adults are actually lactose intolerant, but whatevs, you want me to drink Silk like a socialist hippie or something? Go back to France!

RATING: 72%

Milk

Milk is a movie about Harvey Milk, the first openly gay elected official in America. It is fine, but I think that everybody is giving it a lot more credit as a great movie because of its subject matter, what I like to refer to as Guess Who's Coming To Dinner syndrome. Sure, the GLBT movement needs as much support now as ever, but that doesn't automatically elevate this movie into the annals of film history. The acting is great from pretty much everybody involved, from Sean Pean to Emile Hirsch to Josh Brolin to James Franco, but it's chock full of cliches (Harvey Milk and his friends repeatedly joke about him NOT MAKING IT TO FIFTY foreshadowing get it), and it's often fakely sentimental. It's a good film about an important figure in American history, but I think it's a mistake to count it among the best films of 2008.

RATING: 67%

Sandman Vol. 3: Dream Country

Sandman, as I'm sure you all know, is one of the greatest comic series of all time, depicting the god of dreams, Dream, and his conflicts that usually involve an encyclopedic array of various mythological characters and elements. If you've never read it before, you really, really should. Unfortunately, you shouldn't start with this volume which is just four one off stories that only barely feature Dream and his posse at all. They're good, but they're just filler. The best story in this collection in my opinion is one involving a writer who has kidnapped one of the muses to use as his own personal sex slave/inspiration. The best story in this collection according to everybody else on Earth is one involving William Shakespeare being commissioned by Dream to write and perform A Midsummer Night's Dream. Anyway, start with Season of Mists but this is fine I guess.

RATING: 63%

Tombstone

This is a movie that tells the story of Wyatt Earp and some people shooting each other in the Wild West (tm). Although it is an entertaining western I suppose, it seems as though nobody involved in Tombstone had the same end product in mind. The movie is ostensibly "dark," and is clearly a post-Unforgiven western, but while there are a lot of moments of graphic violence and/or uses of the word "fuckin'," Kurt Russell is hamming it up as Earp as though it's a kiddie movie and Bruce Broughton's generic bombastic score sounds like it's straight out of The Rocketeer. There's a huge ensemble cast, but the best part about this movie is Val Kilmer as Doc Holiday. Man, he's a great actor. I mean, he's made some serious missteps in his acting career, but he takes a lot of great roles, too. I think he's really underrated, but then again if I made The Saint I wouldn't expect people to think too highly of me, either. The lesson here is that the 90s were the worst decade for film.

RATING: 53%

Natural American Spirit Cigarettes

Natural American Spirit cigarettes supposedly have no additives. I doubt this makes them any better for you in the long run, but it certainly helps with hangovers. I smoke when I drink (usually about 5-15 cigarettes), and I used to get horrible hangovers, but I after I switched to this brand I noticed next-day headaches and nausea became about 70% less harsh. I've heard people say that cigarette smoke contributes equally or more to a bad hangover than booze itself (research suggests that both vices produce scary levels of acetaldehyde in the human body), and I believe it. Be that as it may, there's something about these cigarettes, even if they don't actually taste so great. If you like to drink and you're dumb enough to smoke you should give them a try, or just quit altogether before you get cancer or arteriosclerosis.

RATING: 90% if you're going to smoke anyway, 0% if you aren't.

(Image from www.ethicalshopping.com.)

Ultimate Spider-man Vol. 3: Double Trouble

I just don't think it can be said enough times how consistently fun this series is. Bendis is terrific at capturing all the awkwardness and drama that is high school life while still managing to inject great superhero antics in as well. Peter Parker just feels like your average dorky kid, albeit with the proportionate strength and abilities of a spider. To think that this series has been going so strong for 129 issues now is amazing. And for the first hundred or so, Mark Bagley's blend of cartooniness and detail matched the writing style exactly. Perhaps part of the reason this book has seemed so effortless is that Bendis doesn't exactly have to create characters, but instead works from the groundwork laid by Stan Lee. This particular volume centers around Doc Ock trying to get revenge on some billionaire biological research dude while also Kraven the Hunter, an Australian reality TV host, decides to come to New York and hunt Spider-man for ratings. And scene.

RATING: 89%

The Post-Christmas Gut

As far as I'm concerned, the birth of Jesus, the pagan Solstice and the New Year are all celebrated the same way: by eating 5 meals a day and getting frequently and thoroughly drunk so I can stand--*cough* I mean, enjoy--the company of my extended family and in-laws. I tend to get into the festive mood around mid-December, and become serious again after January 17th (my birthday), which gives me just enough time to make a habit of living like a fucking pig. This year, I put the brakes on a little earlier due to the practical necessity of being able to fit into my clothes, but it's still gonna be a long, sweaty spring.

RATING: Turkey sandwiches: 90%
Peanut butter balls: 88%
Stolichnaya on the rocks: 80%
A good mud-wallow: 75%
Teacher's Highland Cream Blended Scotch Whiskey: 69%
Jogging pants: 43%
$9 pitchers of Moose Green: 34%
Sore hips from elliptical trainer: middle-aged woman%

(Image from www.utilitarianism.com.)

Foo Fighters by Foo Fighters

Foo Fighters' debut album was the first album I bought on the day it came out. After this album came out it was really popular so it was therefore no longer cool to like them according to the grunge douchebags at my school, but I was a dork so whatevs is what I said. I remember I had a Foo Fighters shirt that I spilled ink all over, but I still wore it until I lost it convincing myself that the ink made it look cool somehow. Oh, right, the content of the album itself. I guess it's pretty good - Grohl has some interesting chord constructions that deviate from standard radio power chord fare, even if he moved away from that almost immediately, not that I don't like the extremely poppy follow up album for its own reasons. Forsooth!

RATING: 76%

DuckTales

Basically, Donald Duck decides to join the Navy and leaves his nephews; Huey, Dewey and Louie, in the care of Scrooge McDuck (#2 on Fortune's Top 15 Fictional Characters of 2008). Basically the Beagle Boys (as in the dog breed) run around and try to scheme new ways to rob Scrooge of his money, while Magica DeSpell just tries to take Scrooge's "Number One Dime" (as in a $.10 piece of currency). Throw in Gyro and Launchpad with some other fools and you've got a pretty lame ass show that I used to love as a kid. I do give strong points for the theme song. However, I just found out the show was intended to be an allegory about the fall of communism. That doesn't make it any better, but remember, kids, Disney was right and the Russians lost. Rumor is he was a huge supporter of Reagan and supply side economics, and that's all hearsay, but I don't doubt it.

RATING: 41%

Duck, You Sucker!

If you like western films, boy have I got a movie for you! It's called "Duck, You Sucker!" or "A Fistful of Dynamite" or "Whatever Gibberish Is On That Poster Picture, I Don't Speak Europe Talk." Made in 1971, this was western-master Sergio Leone's follow up to "Once Upon A Time In The West," the second or first best western ever made, depending on my mood. "Duck, You Sucker!" follows a Mexican bandit, played by Rod Steiger, and an Irish revolutionary, played by James Coburn, as they accidentally get caught up in the Mexican Revolution. Leone is great at mixing the personal with the grand in scope, and the landscapes are stunning as in all of his films. I feel there are some serious pacing missteps, but since the special restored edition I watched was cobbled together from countless different edits there's no real way of telling what Leone wanted. Anyway, this film kicks seven ass-units of ass, but don't take my word for it - dadun dun!

RATING: 76%

Marvel 1985

This limited comic series just ended a couple months ago, so that makes this like the newest comic I've ever reviewed here or some such nonsense. The plot involves a kid in a small town in "our world" in 1985 whose parents are divorced. He collects comics, I guess to escape (who am I, Freud?), and then one day all of the Marvel supervillains come into his universe and start wreaking havoc on his town. Mark Millar writes a pretty convincing kid, and a lot of the tone of this book feels similar to 1980s era kids movies, so it's fun and also dark. I have complaints about Millar's composition that can probably be applied to every book he writes - he uses way too many splash panels. I mean, any six issue arc he does could be done by any other writer in three or four issues, tops. Other than that, it's a good book, and Tommy Lee Edwards' has a neat, choppy art style I liked so if you want you can come over and borrow it sometime yours truly Glenn.

RATING: 70%

Fingernails

Fingernails are great. You can claw your enemies' eyes out, read a scratch and sniff book, or open cans with tabs on them. On the other hand, fingernails are not so great because you can't play guitar easily if your chord hand has long fingernails, and also because they can get dirty. Also maybe you might catch a fingernail on something and then it gets ripped off which would suck I bet but maybe not as much as never having them to begin with.

RATING: 68%

Shaolin Soccer

I never saw this movie when it came out because somebody told me it was about "Shaolin monks playing soccer," and two of the three key terms in that phrase sound hella boring. Anyway, a friend lent this to me a couple weeks ago and it turns out it was funny and there wasn't too much about pure living or religion, but mainly a bunch of slapstick humor. The movie is pretty predictable as far as the plot goes (underdog sports team versus evil sports team, hero falls for plain looking girl who doesn't trust him, old coach atoning for past failures, etc), but the movie makes fun of those standards while employing them so it's ok. Oh yeah, the plot - basically this team of underdogs enters this huge national soccer competition except they use kung fu to beat everybody (spoilers). If you like to laugh in these trying times then check it out I say.

RATING: 61%

Bloom's Taxonomy of R3

Most teachers are functionally illiterate, which is what you call it when you don't ever read, except maybe comic books on the toilet or poetry. Because of this, they need lots of diagrams and pictures to make sense of anything, so this guy Benjamin Bloom decided to draw this pyramid way back in 1956 that's supposed to explain how people learn or something and now schools all over the country have to use it. Whatever, Poindexter, all you need to worry about is that "evaluation" is at the top of the pile, which proves R3 is way smarter than you and your mom.

RATING: Bloom's Taxonomy: Psychobabble%
R3: 1000%

(Image from www.officeport.com. All joking aside, the tendency of elementary and high school teachers to read Bloom's taxonomy as a kind of "pecking order" of learning rather than a nested, concentric hierarchy is one of a dozen or so reasons why North American schools are among the worst in the civilized world.)

That Fucking Bowflex Ad

I was watching the New Year's Day Corner Gas-athon and this advertisement ran about 300 times. It's the one in which the fake-tanned, rat-faced douchebag who recently lost 75 lbs poses shirtless indoors with a surfboard and sunglasses and says contemptuously, "I gave all my fat clothes to my fat friends."

I bet they really appreciated that, you smug piece of shit.

Also, "Be strong, be fit, be Bowflex" is a really stupid slogan. Wouldn't "Get strong, get fit, get Bowflex" make a little more ontological sense?

RATING: Bowflex: I don't know because my fat ass has never used one%
That guy: should be shot in the stomach and buried alive%

(Image from www.courier-journal.com.)

Summer Heights High

Being bored at your parents' house is often made bearable by a fully-loaded cable package featuring all premium channels and On-Demand. After watching the entire Season Whatever of Entourage and crying because I rewatched Brokeback Mountain, I needed something new. I wound up watching the entire (and sadly, only) season of this show and loved it. It's an office-like mockumentary set at an Australian High School, and the writer Chris Lilley plays three roles -- a drama teacher, a Polynesian boy with behavioral problems, and rich transfer student Ja'mie (pictured). The drama teacher turns a school tragedy into a full-scale musical production featuring songs with titles like "Naughty Girl" and "She's a Slut" (which are all stuck in my head simultaneously). The Polynesian boy hasbreakdancing wars with the small blonde children in the year below him. Ja'mie dates a 12-year-old and seamlessly insults everyone while overusing the word "random." And it all took less than four hours to watch. Give us some more, Mr. Lilley!

(Disclaimer: apparently this show is to people who've taught middle school what The Office is to people who've worked in an office -- mostly funny, but sometimes purely tragic.)

RATING: 92%

Arkansas

Have you ever been to Arkansas? Arkansas is a state in the country of USA, a place Americans tend to live. I'm not really an expert on Arkansas or anything, but it seems fucking filthy and every time I go there people look at me like I'm about to crash a crop duster into their treasured landmark the twin grain towers. Last month when I was driving through Arkansas I stopped to use the restroom at a gas station. These two country-looking white folk were using the urinals, and when I walked in one looked at me, then said to the other one "Remember the good ole days?" Then the one who didn't say anything walked away from the urinal and I noticed he was peeing into a coffee pot. I'm not making this up, so in conclusion Arkansas is a state that you should probably avoid and also the birthplace of Bill Clinton.

RATING: 11%

The Infinity Gauntlet

The Infinity Gauntlet was a comic book miniseries from the early 90s, and the first "event" book I ever got into. The plot involves this crazy dude Thanos who gets all this power from the titular glove so that Lady Death will go out with him on a date or something. To impress her he kills half of all life in the universe, usually I just say a joke or put my coat on a puddle but whatever. Anyway, spoilers, lots of superheroes die like Spider-man and Iron Man and Captain America Man, but it turns out to be a glorified What If? book when at the end this one broad undoes everything Thanos did the whole story long. In conclusion it is fun and the art is pretty but probably not worth $25 for the trade paperback.

RATING: 58%

2008 CE

2008 was an ok year I guess. I got an MFA which was sweet, and also The Dark Knight came out which was also pretty cool if you ask me. There was some bullshit, though. Like for instance there was this economic thing I don't understand, but whatevs, I guess it was about time for a recession according to history who am I, Alan Greenspan? Also, war, starvation, poverty, and disease managed to go another year without being eliminated but on the other hand Iron Man was also great so it ends out of the red.

RATING: 51%

PS - That drawing is to scale.

Lake Ontario

Although Lake Ontario is the smallest of the Great Lakes it's the only one that doesn't border Michigan, which already makes it better than that so called "Great" Lake Erie. Michigan has a way of ruining everything it touches. If you don't believe me ask Dan Orlovsky. What I find most interesting about Lake Ontario is that due to it's depth it rarely freezes over in the winter. Hey, I said it was the most interesting thing about it (not that it was interesting). In conclusion, Lake Ontario is pretty shitty.

RATING: 0-16%

Superman: Red Son

I don't care about Superman. He's too powerful and nice, and his comics are often boring. But this one is an exception, imagining what it might have been like if Superman had crashed as a baby in the Soviet Union rather than Kansas. Basically, what happens is he embraces communism and becomes the leader of the USSR, trying to spread their message anywhere. This might be skeletal for a story, but Millar is genius in that he focuses much of the story on American Lex Luthor's attempts to thwart Superman over the years, even as the United States descends into economic chaos. It's a brilliantly written book, and one of the few exceptions to my "never read Superman" rule.

RATING: 91%

An Open Letter to White Anglophone Parents of North America

Dear White Anglophone Parents of North America:

Please don't name your children Haley, Bailey, Daley, Riley, Kylie, Briley, Austin or Madison. They're not dogs, they're human beings, and no one should have to grow up with a name like that. A whole generation of kids have already been molested by Dustin, Crystal, Jarret, Travis and Curtis. Please stop now.

Sincerely,

Internet John

RATING: Horrible names 2%
Grinning white ape 89%

(Image from www.weirdthings.org.uk. Names that don't sound fucking retarded can occasionally be found in the Bible, the works of Shakespeare, or one's own family tree.)

Seven Pounds

Wow it's Depressing Will Smith Movie Day and here I am with nothing to wear for the occasion. The theater by my parents' house had a broken computer system on Christmas, so they were writing out paper tickets and we had no way of telling what started when, and what was sold out. When it was our turn to buy tickets, my cousin was so frazzled that she just picked this movie, and her friend and I did nothing to stop her. That was a mistake for which I will suffer the rest of my life. This movie was SO BAD that I feel no remorse for disclosing the entire plot on R3. I had no idea what this movie was about from the (crappy) trailers I'd seen, and about an hour into the movie, I still had no clue what it was about. Finally, through jokes and over the snores of the couple sleeping in the row behind us, we figured out that Will Smith, to make up for a naughty thing he did that caused people to die, was going to donate all his vital organs to peoples. Even his eyes and his heart! But in order to donate those, you have to be dead! And also he wants to make sure that the people that get his pretty organs are very good people, so he lies about his indentity and stalks them in an awkward manner and makes them sad over the phone like when he yells at blind Woody Harrelson on a customer complaint line. He stalks Rosario Dawson which is not cool because she has heart problems and he could give her a heart attack and she could die, but instead he has sex with her and then kills himself by dumping a live jellyfish into his icy bathwater and Roasario gets his raw, icky heart. And Woody gets his eyes and at the end he meets Rosario and they look into each others' eyes (or rather, Rosario looks into dead Will Smith's eyes in Woody's head) and the tears flow. Not mine though, because I was busy puking. My cousin did cry, because she was so sorry she made us see it. But one day I think I will forgive her. After all, Christmas is all about forgiveness (or is that Yom Kippur?).

RATING: 7% (the movie practically rates itself)

I Am Legend

Do you like depressing movies starring Will Smith? Well, apparently everybody does, since that's the only kind of movies he makes anymore. Anyway, I thought all my friends told me this movie blew, but it was alright mostly. The plot is 28 Days Later happens in New York, except Will Smith is some fancypants immune scientist. The first half of this movie is actually great, and Smith basically holds down the fort of being the only non-monster alive in New York by talking to his dog and mannequins. Then monsters start happening and it's not as good because the effects are terrible, but all the barren, lonely stuff is good so why not check it out if you like seeing New York get fucked up like apparently everybody does.

RATING: 61%