Subtle Bluntness

So thanks to Kiwibox I got to see the best picture of 2008, Slumdog Millionaire.  I don’t know if it’s the best picture, but it definitely is a hellaciously entertaining movie with a timeless plot energized by its location and the obvious directing talents of one of my favorites, Danny Boyle.  Check out my DVD review here.

On a sadder note, this is going to be my last review for Kiwibox.  No, they didn’t fire me or anything.  Effective today, they’re letting all the employees go and are essentially closing up shop.  It’s a shame, especially considering the site had been around in one form or another for like 10 years, but these days nothing is safe.

If you need a great writer/editor, I know one that’s available (for once I’m not talking about me, but my Kiwibox slavedriver Chelsea).  She was a pleasure to work with, didn’t edit my reviews too much, and has a ton of Hollywood contacts, so if you’ve got a struggling entertainment site, she’s your hook-up.

See that up there?  That’s Samuel L. Jackson in a Nazi uniform.  Kind of crazy, isn’t it?

Well, that’s actually one of the most sane things about The Spirit, which I reviewed on Special 2-Disc DVD.  I was eagerly awaiting the movie when I heard it was going to be released, as I wanted to see what Frank Miller could do with real power.  Of course, as more trailers got released, I kind of lost interest because it looked (frankly) bad.  Actually, it looked terrible, and that was my mistake.

Is The Spirit a good movie?  No, not in the sense that Citizen Kane is a good movie.  Is it consistently crazy, visually stunning, and endlessly entertaining?  Hell yes!  In an era where The Dark Knight makes all superhero movies serious, brooding, and hyperviolent, The Spirit is a direct response to that trend.  It’s Frank Miller saying (as he has done with All Star Batman and Robin), “Hey, Christopher Nolan!  It’s okay to smile; it’s a friggin’ comic book!  You can be goofy if you want!”

Sometimes it’s okay to have fun with a movie, especially if it’s based off a kinda goofy comic strip from The Olden Days.  It’s reverent to the look and style of Will Eisner’s original strips, but there’s no doubt it’s Frank Miller’s project all the way.  That alone should help weed out those who can’t embrace the madness.

So people send me DVDs.  I write reviews of them and link to them.  People read them and tell me I suck or that I am awesome.  If they tell me I’m awesome, I know they’re smart and handsome people.  If they tell me I suck, I know that they should probably be issued helmets and drool bibs.

I got to watch and review the Simon Pegg vehicle How To Lose Friends and Alienate People for Kiwibox.  Go check it out.  If you’re one of the five people who’ve seen the movie, lemme know what you thought.  I’ll get the box of drool bibs open, just in case.

I think one of the things I appreciated most about the movie is how anybody who has ever been paid to do something they love could watch it and either remember when they made that big scary decision to stop fucking around and just either sink or swim or hope that one day they’ll get that call up to the big leagues of whateverdom.

I know a guy who moved to California to wait tablesbe a screenwriter.   Do I think he’s crazy for doing it?  Yeah, kind of.  Do I hope he becomes the next Judd Apatow so I can use my connection with him to launch my own series of mediocre horror films of consistently declining quality?  Totally.  Would I be able to do something that gutsy on my own?  No, probably not.

Hell, in the movie Sidney Young (and in real life Toby Young) started a magazine, then dumped that magazine to go write for Sharps (Vanity Fair).  I, uh… started some websites and, when I was at a point where I could either get busy working for myself or dial it back and keep my day job, chose to keep my day job.  It was probably the best decision at the time, given that I was tired of the freelance job that was paying me best and I could see the writing on the wall that it was going to come to an end sooner, rather than later.

If I had held on, could I have used it to get somewhere else?  Probably.  But it wasn’t exactly what I wanted to do.  I want to write, not be a marketing-bot with a personality.

There’s another opportunity (with a profitable website conglomerate that I shant mention) that I missed out on because of my day job.  I would’ve loved to have had that writing and editing, as it is exactly what I want (and what I’m doing for myself and as a freelancer anyway).  Would it still be there now?  That I don’t know.  It was a temporary position for six months and only about 30 hours a week at that; it either could have taken off or I might have been looking for a new job by now.

If I had known then what I know now, I would’ve given up the day job in a heartbeat.  Even this gig, as secure and permanent as it seemed, isn’t terribly secure anymore.  My freelance stuff is getting better and better, and I’m kind of getting the itch to push it and see how far it might take me.  I’ll take six months and 30 hours a week of something with a potential future over a full-time semi-guarantee of something that’s wasting my time, life, and talent.

Sometimes the Internet causes me great pain.  One of the best things about my new writing gig over at Kiwibox is that whenever people respond, they get these things called Kiwipoints.  They’re like regular points, but green and kind of fuzzy.  Anyway, because people get Kiwipoints to respond to things like my DVD review of Guy Ritchie’s RocknRolla, I get some response whereas over at Den of Geek I get basically nothing written back to me.  Such is life.

Anyway, I make a throwaway joke about Mr. Madonna also being known to some people as a filmmaker.  One of the responses left was, and I quote “HMMM seems interesting, I didn’t know that Guy was a
filmmaker…i’ll have to check it out!”

Now, I want to cut the kid some slack, because she’s only 17.  That means when Guy Ritchie’s last good movie came out, she was 9 years old.  When he broke onto the scene by winning an MTV movie award, she was 7.  Still, the fact that my joke was actually true kind of gave me a shooting pain behind my eyeball that I can only assume is a massive hemorrhage developing in the logic center of my brain.  Gushing nosebleeds are normal, right?

To make things better, I had to spend this weekend seeing the #3 movie at the box office, the lovely/creepy little stop motion animation masterpiece Coraline.  It’s the best 3-D movie I’ve seen all year.  It’s also the second 3-D movie I’ve seen all year.  If you have an issue paying a little extra to see a movie in 3-D, let me tell you right now it’s worth the extra dollar.  It makes great movies better, and sleazy movies even trashier.

Well, I’m just everywhere these days.  You know my other places that I write by now, but perhaps you don’t know the latest place I’m doing DVD reviews at.  It’s called Kiwibox, and it’s like a social networking/magazine thing.  The magazine part is what I’m mostly there for.

Either way, they get DVDs in for reviewing purposes, and after cashing in some more of my connections, I’ll be doing the occasional DVD review over there.  For example, I’ve got two reviews that went up today on wildly different subjects.  One of them is a movie from one of the most popular anime in the world, Naruto the Movie 3:  Guardians of the Crystal Kingdom.

The other is also wildly popular, but it’s something that’s passed the test of time.  It’s the original version of the remake I’ve already panned:  The Day the Earth Stood Still.  That’s right, it’s a 2 disc special edition of the 1951 classic, and it’s a really good one with lots of special features for sci-fi dorks like me.

Anyway, go check it out.  As usual, I’ll promote all the stuff I do over there here, so you can click through and eyeball it, but there’s a lot of other great content from people not me.  I don’t think it’ll be as often as I post at Den of Geek, but you can never tell with me.  So long as they keep making with the DVDs to review, I’ll stay busy.  Of course, I’ve been busy this whole time, but you get the point.