The Aristocrats

So I rented the movie The Aristocrats last night.

The fact that this movie managed to get an NC-17 rating, in spite of having no violence, no sex, and no nudity should tell you something.

Basically, this movie is a documentary of a joke. A joke known as "The Aristocrats" (surprise, surprise). It's a joke which is never told in front of an audience, but has nevertheless been deeply rooted in the consciousness of stand-up comedy.

The joke begins in pretty much the same way: a family walks into a talent agent's office plugging a new act. The punchline is: "wow, that's a hell of an act," the talent agent says, "what do you call it?" The Father replies: "The Aristocrats."

Now, on the face of it, this might not seem very funny, but in between the opening lines and the punch line, they can, and do, put just about anything their warped minds can dream up. We're talking everything from simply crude, to vile, to downright disgusting. As Paul Reiser put it in the film, "I believe in some countries you can be put to death for what goes on in the most tame versions of this joke."

Basically, you shift from laughing so hard you can't breathe, to looking at the screen in complete shock that the comedian they happen to be showing actually just said what you think they said.

And as one who watched Full House in his youth, I will never look at Bob Saget the same way again.

The cast is, in a word, phenomenal. They got over a hundred very famous comedians; George Carlin, Drew Carey (who has the coolest name of all the comedians they got), Hank Azaria, Tim Conway, Carrie Fisher (I will never look at Star Wars the same way either), Matt Stone and Trey Parker, Whoopie Goldberg, Eric Idle, The staff of The Onion, Kevin Nealon, Gilbert Godfreid (who, hands down, gave the single funniest rendition of the joke), Paul Reiser, Chris Rock, The Smothers Brothers, Penn and Teller (The former was actually one of the producers of the film), Jason Alexander... The list literally goes on and on, but I can't remember most of the others. Like I said, they got over a hundred comedians for this thing.

I have here a link to the South Park version of the joke. Be advised, this file is probably not something you should watch at work, and should not be viewed by anyone with delicate tastes. You have been warned.

Definitely worth seeing.

This space for Rent

April and I went to catch the movie version of Rent on Saturday night.

Broadway musicals are a hard thing to translate from the stage to the screen. Something is always lost in the translation; it's not the director's fault, or any of the actors', but there's just something about that interaction between the audience and the performers that you just don't get with a movie; so it should be mentioned that Columbus had the deck stacked against him from the moment that he decided to put this musical on the big screen.

I don't mean to sound as if I didn't like the movie; because I did. The music was well-performed, the actors were comfortable in their roles, and if you like musicals, this was a good one. But having experienced the show when it came to Calgary, then seeing the movie, there's really no comparison.

This is another of the better films I've seen this year, and like the last one, this one will be a hard sell to audiences everywhere. Those who don't like musicals won't like this, and those who have seen it on stage will probably be overly critical of the movie version; whether it's deserved or not. I'm apparently one of those very rare guys (according to April) who a) likes The Sound of Music and b) isn't gay.

All that notwithstanding, if you go to it with an open mind, you'll enjoy it. It's a raucus, energetic film, and if you're at all musically inclined, your toes will be tapping by the time the first song has played its final chords.

Okay; shutting up now.

On Serenity

I can't, by any definition of the term, be described as a science fiction or fantasy nut. I'm one of a very select few people (apparently) who didn't care much for the Lord of the Rings (the books or the movie). I didn't care much for any of the three Star Wars prequels (although I did watch them; who didn't?). I never cared much for any one of the Star Trek franchises. What can I say? None of them really captivated my imagination. I figure that there are enough stories to tell about human nature without bringing aliens, elves, dwarves, and what-have-yous into the equation.

It was Christmas of last year when my little brother, being the slightly neurotic kid that he is, bought me the box set of Firefly for chritmas. My automatic first reaction, it pains me to admit, was "Don, I'm not a Trekkie."

This is more or less true. Although around about twelve, I did watch the Next Generation incarnation of Star Trek relatively faithfully. Not from any particular love of the series, mind you, but because it was what was on. Even at the naive age of 12, I found something rather annoying about Star Trek: everyone was just too damn happy. Don't get me wrong, I admire Gene Roddenberry's utopian vision of the future; but frankly, it was just a little bit too utopian. You had a crew of people of different races, different ethnicities, hell, from different planets, all working side by side. Hell, I can't live with my brother for any extended period of time without wanting to kill him. Basically, it was a LSD-laced vision of what human beings could do if given the absolute best of all possibilities.

Frankly, it just seemed unlikely to me. Just once, I wanted to see one of the captains of one of the series of this franchise go on a completely inappropriate, totally undeserved, and vulgarly profanity-laden rant about the incompetence of his or her crew.

Just once, I wanted to hear this dialogue on the bridge:

Captain: Set course heading 214 mark six and engage at warp eight.

Crewman: But, sir...

Captain: Move your ass, you fucking, douchelapping dickslatherer! Goddammit, how many fucking times do I have to get you tired assholes to do what I ask? You shitbrained apebuggering asspluggers! I'm the fucking Captain! Jesus Christ, you are fucking pathetic! My whole goddamn crew is made up of goddamned motherfucking rimjobbing anusmonkeys!

Believe it or not, it's actually funnier if you imagine it being said by William Shatner; as if.... EVERY. WORD. Is ITS. Own. SenTENCE.

Now, admittedly, this kind of thing wasn't likely to happen on Firefly either; but at least with Firefly, you got the impression that the only reason it wasn't going to happen was because that kind of dialogue wouldn't get past the network censors; not because it was completely out of character for any one of the characters. In short, what Firefly brought to the science fiction genre, that had been lacking pretty much since the original Star Wars trilogy was characters who actually aren't perfect. You have characters in this series who don't have a fricking clue what they're going to do, or even if what they're going to do is right or moral. You have a captain who won't hesitate to deck one of his crewmembers if he wants to. You have genuine personality conflicts.

Which brings me to Serenity. I want to take a moment to comment on something you don't see many people commenting on with this movie: the script. This was, in my humble opinion, one of the most intelligently-written films I have seen in a long time. The dialogue was clever, the plot was intricately thought out. Unlike so much of Science Fiction and Fantasy making it to the big screen these days, I didn't actually feel dumber walking out of the movie theatre.

In short, this was one of the better movies I've seen this year.

If you haven't seen it, see it now.

If you have seen it, see it again.

And that's my input for today.

Payin' a visit to Hazzard County

April and I went out to catch a movie last night. For some reason, I've had a bizarre urge to see The Dukes of Hazzard. Don't ask me to explain it; it might have something to do with my having been heartily exposed to the television series in my youth. Maybe I just needed some dumb entertainment. Maybe I was fascinated by the fact that they got Wonder Woman and Willie Nelson to play a role in it; or that Jay Chandrasekhar (who happens to share a last name with one of the more brilliant physicists in recent history), who directed Super Troopers directed it. Whatever the reason, I had the strange urge to see it.

If you're going to this movie expecting a masterpiece, you're likely to be disappointed.

Scratch that; you're going to be disappointed.

If, on the other hand, you're going to the movie in the mood for blatant escapism; if you want nothing but mindless entertainment for two hours, this is actually a pretty good movie. I was even, believe it or not, able to overlook the fact that it co-stars Jessica Simpson. Apparently wearing low-cut bodices and acting slutty is something she can do pretty well.

Willie Nelson playing a drunken hillbilly... definitely one of his more tailor-made roles....

In short, this is not a good movie, but I enjoyed it anyway.

Dammit!

April and I went to see War of the Worlds last night. And again, I enjoyed it.

Dammit.

So now, I've gone to two movies this summer which could have been ridiculed quite nicely, but neither one was ridicule-worthy.

Dont' get me wrong, this movie isn't Spielberg's best work, and he seemed to be borrowing substantially from his own past works (Jurrasic Park, Minority Report, ET, AI, Close Encounters of a Third Kind, Schindler's List, to name a few), and borrowed from others as well (Signs immediately comes to mind), but overall, I must admit that this was a quite enjoyable movie; and eerily realistic to just how screwed we would be if ever an alien intelligence decided that they wanted to rid themselves of us.

Without giving away the ending, the movie was relatively true to the spirit (if not the content) of Wells' original work.

A quick note on Dakota Fanning, who plays Tom Cruise's daughter. Wow. She was easily the most talented actress in the entire movie, and I don't mean that in my usual fascetious/sarcastic way. To say that I was awestruck at the acting talent she displayed in this movie would be a gigantic understatement.

Tom Cruise actually can act, surprisingly enough. Not particularly well, mind you, but he does manage to pull of his role in this movie rather convincingly.

The ending falls a little flat and isn't quite tragic enouch, but all in all, I rather enjoyed it.

Damn.

Batman

April and I went to see Batman Begins yesterday, and I feel the sudden urge to comment on this small facet of my childhood.

I enjoy ridiculing Batman. The old-school Batman, anyway. I mean, let's face it, he's a character who practically demands ridicule. He's an untouchable icon. He can figure out exactly what his enemies are thinking; he can look at a poison and figure out an antidote for it; he can leap across rooftops; can figure out the most convoluted, twisted scheme of whatever over-the-top villain he's facing; he has a car which is armed with every toy, weapon, and device imaginable; and he can beat the snot out of an army of evil henchmen without breaking a sweat.

And let's face it, he dresses like a giant bat, and doesn't think that's weird.

This was not that Batman.

I went into this movie prepared to ridicule it. Instead, I saw a superbly-made movie that dissected his motivations, and made him a human being, instead of a guy in a suit.

So I'm totally bummed.

Maybe Fantastic 4 or War of the Worlds will provide me with more ridiculing opportunities.