Those marketing bastards are getting pretty clever with their viral ad shenanigans. Like this Bosch-esque puzzle. I only got something like 37 of them so far. It’s funny how few of them I’ve seen, but know of. Who the hell has seen Leprechaun, anyways? Some of them are waaay easy, and they’re right in the middle. But some of them are right in the middle and I can’t hink of ‘em for the life of me! And the music ain’t half bad either.
Don’t get me wrong. I LOVE Salzer’s. But all I can do is shake my head watching Old Man Joe sifting through all those used CDs (unless he can find a good copy of Billy Squier’s Emotions in Motion). I can’t even remember the last time I bought a CD. Not because I been stealing it all from the tubes - I’m too square for that. Until recently I had been using Yahoo’s Music Unlimited, which was fine because I don’t have an iPod, I mostly listen to music when I’m working (in front of the damn computer all night long). But then they changed some stuff, which pissd me off so I quit!
So, now what do I do?! Well, I tried Virgin Digital, which might come in handy as I’ll be travelling to the U.K. more often. But they were more expensive and did not work with my laptop. I’m shopping around some of the other services, and for the life of me I can’t figure out how much Rhapsody costs, can you? Ugh! All the other services are either more expensive than Yahoo, or they won’t tell you anything until you download and install their software and actually sign up! Bastards!
And then there’s Apple. Long have I avoided their siren call. But more and more it’s looking like Apple is the way to go. And I think Cringely is right. The iPod will become the standard for movies too. What happens when all the things you spend your money on (that isn’t rent, utilities, and food) is stored on a little gizmo that you can put in your back pocket? You can store other things on your iPod, too. Like scans of your birth certificate and other valuable documents. You wake up in the middle of the night and your house is on fire! HOLY CRAP! Honey, get the kids! Get the dog! Everyone safe? Whew! That was close! WAIT! Did anyone get the iPod?!
That’s all you get. Before your head hits the pillow tonight, summarize your day in four comic book frames. Do you even have four frames of comic book to say about your day? If you don’t, you’re not alone. Because neither does Clutch, most of the time anyways. But that doesn’t mean you can’t stop turning the pages. There’s something oddly compelling about reading what amounts to a visual diary of those little unimportant moments we all share but never really have anything to say about. You can’t help but love this little dude by the end of the book. By then he’s your friend.
Dang. Four frames a day. Could you do it? If anything, it’s a damn good way to develop mad fast drawing skillz. Brush yer teeth. Put on yer pajamas. Draw four cartoony, yet detailed (and Matt Groening-esque) pictures encapsulating yer day. Turn out the light. I bet Sergio Aragones can pump out an entire issue of Groo when he gets up in the middle of the night to take a piss. Wakes up in the morning and finds ink all over his junk. Better to do it in the morning, right after you finish your dream journal entry. “Dear Diary, last night I dreamed me, Mark, and Stan were in Rush. I was Geddy.”
A couple weeks back digging through my DVD collection I rediscovered Kentucky Fried Movie. If you haven’t seen it, this was the height of the R-rated ensemble comedies of the late ’70s (Groove Tube, Tunnel Vision). It was directed by John Landis and written by the pre-Airplane Zuckers, and is some of their best work. Sure, there are a lot of gratuitous boob shots in sketches like Catholic High School Girls in Trouble and throw-away but hilarious news parodies but the real gem of the film is the send-up of the Bruce Lee oeuvre, Fistful of Yen. Like all great parodies this bit is best laughed at by people who love the source material. And like many truly great send-ups (Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Young Frankenstein) it ultimately ruins ever watching the original films without thinking about the comic possibilities if the upcoming scenes.
The martial arts movie has come a long way since the chopsockey killer-kick kitsch days of Lee. On the one side it became much more lighthearted and approachable with the comic location eating trajectory of Jackie Chan, and on the other it has rocketed past the influences of Sam Peckinpah where violence is given a balletic quality and now with films like Crouching Tiger and Hero, violence is the freaking Cirque Du Soleil.
Now, I mention all of these other films because I think they are the necessary rite of passage to watching the latest retro-exploitation, bone-crushing, leg breaking, boy-saves-his-pet-elephant-from-the-evil-Australian-drug-smugglers extravaganza that is the new Thai film The Protector. This film stars Tony Jaa, from Ong Bak, and is directed by the Ong Bak helmer Prachya Pinkaew.
The plot… well is that really important? There is a great chase with ultra-slim speed boats along a Thai river that tops anything from recent Bond films. There is a wild hack ‘em up fight in a factory with extreme motocross and BMX bikers. There is a fight through a multi-leveled restaurant that must have made producer Quentin Terentino a little envious with its punch-kick path of destruction. There is a sexy mud bath scene where the plot is sort of advanced (sort of). And there are these giants! Yeah, giants! No midgets, sorry to say, but these behemoth walls of muscle that do their best to beat poor Tony Jaa down. But in the end, Tony beats them all. He saves the day and his pet elephant. Pet elephant? Yup, pet elephant. Like a lot of martial arts films this is a hero’s journey to a freakishly foreign land (in this case Sydney, Australia) to right a terrible wrong (a whip-snapping, drug-selling, villainous restaurant owner in Emma Peel garb has stolen the family elephants) and we see the birth of a possible franchise (Elephant Boy?). Well maybe not.
The plot of this film is really secondary to putting Tony in dangerous locations and letting him break as many legs, arms, and backs as he can. You not only hear these limbs go, you see impossible visuals that make you wonder if they did a call out for one-armed extras. How did they do it? There are these huge jumps in logic with the story you just have to go with. And as you watch it you feel like the Zuckers should be getting ready for another parody. This isn’t one of those films that will make the crossover hit of its kinder gentler, more colorful companion films like Hero, so it’s not going to stay in the theatres long. But it has some amazing (though not particularly plot-driven) action sequences, and it goes a long way to further establish the future career of Jaa and Pinkaew.
