It's not what it sounds like

I've had an actor following me around the last couple weeks. As I have mentioned in the past, I enjoy watching bad/cheesy movies. I hit Demonoid (I wonder if they'll pay me for the advertising?) looking up anything I could think of, and doing some cross-referencing to find more. One of those was the Starship Troopers triology. I've only seen the first one as of yet, and I was a bit distracted by the sounds of Robert A. Heinlein turning over in his grave.

Along the way, I decided to look for some Rifftrax (I wonder if they'll pay me for the advertising?). For those of you who don't know, Rifftrax is a project being run by Mike Nelson of Mystery Science Theater 3000 fame. As with MST3K, Rifftrax is all about poking fun at movies while you watch them. Only in this case, the movies are recent big budget films, and the Rifftrax themselves are MP3s you listen to while the movie plays.

But I digress. One of the Rifftrax I grabbed this time was for Highlander. So I'm watching the movie, and chuckling at the comments being made by Mr. Nelson and his fellow MST3K alumni Bill Corbett and Kevin Murphy, when I'm suddenly knocked for a loop. The bad guy, the Kurgen, shows up, and my first thought is "My God. It's Sergeant Zim from Starship Troopers. I totally forgot about that." I went onto IMDb (I wonder if they'll pay me for the advertising?) to verify, and it was indeed the same actor, Clancy Brown.

So, having had that amusing moment, I went on with my life. Then, two nights ago, I'm watching Gargoyles, and I suddenly realize that this one voice actor sounds real familiar. So, I look it up on IMDb. For some reason, the site doesn't have that particular character listed, so I poke around elsewhere, and find a listing which says that the character Wolf is voiced by...Clancy Brown. I figure it's just one of those things where you never notice something until it's pointed out to you, and then suddenly it's everywhere. Like how I never noticed the Pontiac Grand Prix until I bought one, and then every other car on the road is a Grand Prix (granted, it was a very popular model).

I forgot about it soon afterward, as people usually do. Then, just a few minutes ago, I popped in a copy of The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across The 8th Dimension, a movie I've been meaning to see since like High School. I was surprised while watching the credits to see that there's a stack of actors in it that I know. Though I think I already knew John Lithgow was in it. Then, tucked in there at a point calculated to be burned into my memory, I see...Clancy Brown.

I'm getting the feeling that when I go to work tomorrow, Clancy Brown is gonna be sitting on the hood of my car, cleaning his nails with a pocketknife and giving me a knowing grin.

-Long Days And Pleasant Nights

Oh, hai, Blogosphere!

There are times when you hear about a movie or a TV Show, and everyone goes on about how terrible it is. People continually make jokes about one scene, or one line of dialogue, and you feel like the only one on Earth who hasn't tasted the bitter dregs. So, you finally check it out, and it's not what you expected. Sure, it's bad, but you've seen plenty worse. Or it got so hyped that by the time you do see it, the actual product is a let-down.

I wish I could say this was the case with The Room, which I just checked out an hour ago. I was told it's a terrible film, and it is. And the line I kept hearing about, "You're tearing me apart, Lisa!" is just as ridiculously over-the-top as people claim. Hell, Wiseau even milks the giant cow as he shouts it.

Lemme back track a bit for people who haven't heard of this film. It's a low-budget ($8 million, which is actually a bit impressive when you consider Wiseau funded it himself) movie directed by, produced by, and starring Tommy Wiseau, a name that is destined to go down in history next to  Ed Wood, Jr. It's a movie about a love triangle between a man, his finance, and his best friend. There's also numerous sub-plots, but there's no point going into them because none of them are ever resolved, and are often completely forgotten the scene after they're introduced.

Walking in, I knew very little about the movie, except that it was terrible, and someone named Lisa was tearing someone else apart (fun fact: as I suspected, the line is a Shout Out to Rebel Without A Cause). From the title, I had assumed the movie took place entirely in one room, perhaps during a party, or a group of people who found themselves trapped in a room together, something like that. Nope. I can't say why the movie is called The Room, except that most of the scenes do take place in one room (though I blame that on the budget more than anything else).

The only other thing I knew about the movie before watching it was that it was a melodrama black comedy. The strikeout is due to a bit of Soviet Revisionism that took place regarding the movie's genre. Wiseau made the movie as a serious, albeit dark, film, exploring concepts like lust, betrayal, and softcore porn. After a few viewings, it became pretty clear that the movie was so bad as to be downright hilarious, so Wiseau suddenly pulled a 180 and claimed that the movie was a black comedy. Take a look around, you won't be able to find anything official written about the movie without the words "black comedy" chucked in every sentence or so.

It's one of those films that's so bad, it's tough to pin down one thing that was exceptionally bad about it. It's more like "What wasn't exceptionally bad about that movie?" The acting ranged from mediocre to terrible, especially in the case of Wiseau. Large portions of the movie were clearly (and poorly) dubbed over. There were a lot of shots inserted that were absolutely unnecessary. For instance, there's a part in the end where a television is picked up and thrown during an angry rampage. The "action" stops for a moment to show a gratutitous shot containing nothing but the TV hitting the ground and smashing. As if Wiseau was worried that if he didn't include that shot, the audience would spend the rest of the film wondering if the TV got broken or not. Or Lisa ordering a pizza for delivery, complete with 555 phone number.

And speaking of unnecessary shots, there were times the movie felt like a Cinemax Porn, due to a rather ridiculous amount of sex scenes. I counted six total, but since two were coitus interruptus, they probably don't count. I was surprised when I got a sex scene within the first five minutes of the movie. Then I was more surprised to get two sex scenes within the first five minutes. By the time the 3rd showed up, I was bored, and by the 4th I was annoyed. The movie was bad enough without having to see the middle-aged star's naked ass flopping around while he moaned like a (female) porn star.

The Room is just one of many bad movies I've been watching lately. I felt I had to comment on this one though, as it was so much worse than the others. I wanted people reading this to know, it's not just hype, the movie really is as bad as everyone says it is.

-Long Days and Pleasant Nights