Wow, am I behind on this one. Should give you guys a lot to pore over, if this page is your main source for my other stuff.
I reviewed Taco Bell’s new Chicken Tortada:
The big signs plastered across the window of my local Taco Bell use the word “premium,” and silly me, this got my hopes up. “Premium Chicken Tortada”? I thought maybe this was the dawn of some new ingredient called “premium chicken.” It isn’t. It is, rather, Taco Bell’s generic “all-white-meat chicken,” which may be a technically true term, but in fact refers to orange-tinted compressed bits that are as fake in shape as any McNugget.
I looked at an amusing promotional item:
Mickey Rourke and drinking. They go together like…uhhh…Mickey Rourke and plastic surgery. Scalpels don’t make good promo items, though. They can make you bleed way too much. Which leaves drinking, something Mickey can now assist you with. No, not booze. SLURPEES.
I reviewed the remake of DEATH AT A FUNERAL, and was pleasantly surprised:
I’ve been preemptively slamming the remake on Twitter, but now that I’ve seen it, I admit that I was wrong. The new DEATH AT A FUNERAL is every bit as profane as its predecessor, but it’s a hell of a lot funnier. Which is strange considering that the plot – briefly synopsized as: “at a funeral, everything that can go wrong does” — is almost beat-for-beat exactly the same (so yes, Danny Glover shits on Tracy Morgan’s hand, in an equally gross reprise of the original’s most offensive scene; thankfully, the loogie-spit/swallow bit is not repeated). The key here, I think, is that LaBute and Rock have cast actors who are experienced at comedy, while Oz did not.
I looked at eleven selections from the recently concluded Newport Beach Film Festival:
The fact is that there are lots of film fans in OC, but few people care about giving them any kind of notice. The OC Register’s coverage is generally anemic, as is their coverage of everything else…and that other publication never ceased reminding me that they believed their readership was more interested in stories about elementary school boards than film-makers or festivals (in fairness, many of the readers who wrote letters to the editor reinforced that stereotype).
You saw my video review of KFC’s new Double Down, but here it is at Geekweek with an introduction:
With the Double Down — two fried chicken filets, cheese, sauce, and bacon — KFC is veering dramatically into county fair territory. This may not be quite at the level of the Krispy Kreme Donut Chicken Sandwich, but it’s close.
Drew McWeeny at Hitfix calls the video “The Pink Flamingos of fast food reviews.” And speaking of movies about shit-eating, I also interviewed the writer-director of THE HUMAN CENTIPEDE:
“I always made a very sick joke to friends, if we were watching television, and we saw a child molester on television, I always said they should stitch his mouth to the ass of a very fat truck-driver, it would be a good punishment for him. Everybody was laughing, and thought that was so horrible, that I thought that idea’s great for a horror film. It all started with a very simple joke.”
In E! Online reviews, I watched KICK-ASS:
In a supercolorful, slightly heightened reality, a handful of folks are crazy enough to try to become costumed heroes. Their plans meet with often disastrous outcomes for them, but hilariously entertaining results for those of us who appreciate profane and slightly perverse humor. Kick-Ass is being promoted like Watchmen, from the writer of Wanted, and while it has elements of both, it’s more purely entertaining than either.
…and the NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET remake:
When the folks in charge of this remake tell you they’re reclaiming Freddy as a more “serious” character, they’re fibbing a bit: Not just because Freddy was never as emasculated in the movies as they seem to think, but also because this new Freddy still has the wisecracks, including a couple directly lifted from the original and its sequels.
The difference here is that Freddy is now possibly a molester as well as a murderer (if indeed he was guilty of anything at all in life, which is another new potential wrinkle). This makes the whole thing more unsettling and disturbing, yes; but also makes it less easy to enjoy in quite the same escapist way as before.
