Those with HBO, do yourself a friggan favor and watch this movie.
Sunday, August 24th, 2008
That’s right, HBO is playing MST3K the Movie. That only leads me to believe that they’ve cleared up any rights issues with Universal over the lampooned movie This Island Earth starring Faith Domergue, who is the real young actress girlfriend of Howard Hughes in The Aviator. The movie’s a very cheesy sci-fi from 1955, and Mike, Tom Servo and Crow really lay into it with their peanut-gallery comments If you’ve never seen Mystery Science Theater 3000, watch the intro to the TV show (which began as a cable access show in good old Minnesota [YAY MINNESOTA!]) that I’ve posted at the bottom and listen to the theme song is the perfect explanation of the situation on the Sattelite of Love, with the iconic line “If you wonder how he eats and breathes, or other science facts / repeat to yourself ‘it’s just a show, I should really just relax.’”
I can pretty much quote this movie without it even playing, word for word. It’s THAT funny. When you see the movie and love it and want more, there’s always the TV show (some on DVD, some only through the intricate network of MST3K piraters who have labored in the wee hours of night for years to keep the episodes in circulation, in the good old days dubbing video cassettes lovingly taped from the weekly show, often for the cost of postage and the blank tape) and the hilarious new project of Mike Nelson’s RiffTrax, which skewers modern movies like Jurassic Park (with guest Riffer Weird Al), Casino Royale, Cloverfield, Harry Potter and more. And unlike MST3K, they’re strictly full length audio commentaries. So watch the MST3K movie on HBO (if you have digital cable, you can watch it On Demand) and then go check out RiffTrax. Here’s the pertinent MST3K intro, but also check out the earlier intro from when Joel was trapped on the Sattelite of Love and the origins of the show are revealed.
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I didn’t want to write about M. Night Shyamalan’s newest movie, because I treasure his other movies so much. Except Signs. Not attached to that one for some reason. But The Village, Unbreakable, Sixth Sense, and even Lady in the Water are all good, or at least entertaining stories, and the heavy-handed “F-U” to film critics was still funny. But The Happening was… bad. I tried, and I tried to like it. I tried to let it sit for a few hours. Maybe it had some interesting subtle thing that I just needed to find, but no. (SPOILERS) It contains scenes of running from the wind (which is very much faster than human capabilities at about 13mph in short bursts) in a very (sadly) The Day After Tomorrow way. There is some nonsense about crowds when some crowds were still ok, despite the same wind blowing on them… Zooey Deschanel reminds me very much of Anna Faris, goofy girls who are kind of pretty, but they’re just really kind of hammy. Like Madeline Kahn. Love her to death in campy movies like Blazing Saddles and Clue, but if you thrust her into a tense movie where you’re supposed to actually believe her struggles… bah. One thing really stuck out as being poor writing: heavy-handed foreshadowing of Mark Wahlberg’s character being so surprised that there was a terrorist attack in Central Park. That’s not entirely unbelievable. It is an American landmark where large groups congregate, and there isn’t that much security, yet Elliot was immediately intrigued by the fact that there was an attack in the park. I can appreciate the concept of the movie, the theme of scientific thought only being theories in so many areas, and that we may never really know why things happen. That ignorance in the face of nature is why God was invented by the ancestors of man. Or perhaps before that by some amoeba that had an electrical impulse, or maybe God was the cause of that electrical impulse, “And then there was light” and all that. The point is, it’s a point. However, the point of telling a story is showing us, with your God-like omniscience what the actual cause is in this little alternate film version of a world. And if you want to make a better movie than The Happening you’ll do that without being ridiculously inconsistent. The characters (except John *I Friggan Love* Leguizamo) were unlikable, the running and hiding was very, very reminiscent of War of the Worlds, which is sort of inevitable, but could have been handled better, and just the ridiculous inconsistency and sheer audacity to claim an airborne toxin picks and chooses who it affects despite close proximity. I tried to play the poor acting on a campy spin, much like Lady in the Water, but it’s completely just poor direction. It wasn’t supposed to be nearly as funny as it was, which is why I’ve ruled that although The Happening happened, I’m going to pretend it didn’t and still go see M. Night’s next movie and hope I don’t have to write him off like so many already have. Being the Writer, Producer and Director allows too much room to write something crappy, especially dialog. Just ask George Lucas. Everyone should have a good editor who resides outside of their own head and ego. I know I do.
Yeah, we’re a) poor, b) college students with an overload of classes c) food servers (which adds to the poor factor, and subtracts from time to go to movies) so we haven’t been able to go out to the movies much recently. But we did finally go to see Ironman, which was actually really good. Robert Downey Jr.’s a damn good actor, I gotta say. For more proof of this, anyone who hasn’t seen Kiss Kiss Bang Bang should immediately put it on their Netflix/Blockbuster queue. (Val Kilmer as Gay Perry, the badass gay PI who always has a comeback, is just amazing) But yeah, one thing I really appreciated about Ironman was that it made you laugh without dumbing itself down, or cutting in on the big explosions and near-death experiences. But remember, this IS a comic book movie, so suspension of disbelief in some aspects is necessary. But unless you’re a tool, that shouldn’t be a problem, since movies are really only distractions from your own life, so loosen up and don’t overthink everything. Laugh when something tickles the back of your throat a little bit and you can feel the air in your lungs just begging to chuckle out. Hold your breath when he’s freefalling without power. Spend a couple hours outside of the world you’re familiar with. I understand that would much better apply to a movie like Pan’s Labyrinth or Mirrormask, but this is a un movie that everyone should be able to just loosen up and enjoy. Based on the 93% fresh rating the movie’s got over at 
Put it on the top of your Netflix queue 
It’s to hit theaters in 2009, but how sweet is that? 