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Unexpected

I wanted to see this with my movie pass when it was in theaters but never made it. It's been sitting on my Netflix for ages and I kept moving other things in front of it. I love Ricky Gervais but the reviews were mixed. This week I felt like something lighter so I went for it.

Maybe my lowered expectations helped, but I liked this movie. If you're a fan of Ricky Gervais, you'll appreciate the scenes where he was obviously allowed to ad lib a bit. Especially funny is the scene where he goes to the hospital for a colonoscopy and the nurse is asking him all the usual questions, and he just can't see the point of most of them. Best use EVER of the phrase 'fait accompli'.

Gervais is not who'd you likely expect for a romantic lead, and when it got to the time in the movie when he was supposed to start courting Tea Leoni, I thought this might be where the movie failed. But it didn't. Maybe because I'm a HUGE proponent of 'Marry the Funny One' (see my earlier post re: Antonio Banderas vs. Simon Pegg), I totally believed that a beautiful woman engaged to Mr. Handsome-Save-the-World-Guy would become attracted to a somewhat homely but hysterical dentist.

I think that the filmmakers thought that Gervais might not be the likeliest romantic hero, thus we never see anything physical at all between these two - not even one kiss! The only way we're even allowed to understand the attraction is through their chemistry and reactions to each other - and I thought that they both did a great job portraying their emotions without actually touching each other. Sounds strange but I think it worked. Think old movie Cary Grant style- a lot of times all they ever got was a 'passionate hug' as the movie faded out.

I can't imagine what someone who wasn't familar with Gervais would think of this movie - maybe that's why it didn't do well at the box office. Also going on during the film is the storyline of Gervais seeing dead people who hound him to do favors from the other side. I especially liked the subtle way the movie suggested that every time we sneeze, it's because we just walked through a spirit bound here on earth. Something to ponder the next time you sneeze. Maybe it was Grandpa? Neat!

The film also led Papa Cash and I to have a short but serious discussion whether or not souls bound to earth might be here because of 'unfinished business'. (The movie suggests this). A romantic comedy about ghosts may not lead you to pondering just why or why not a soul might feel like it had to stick around - but hey, we're weird, and we like pulling movies apart to see how they tick.

So if you like ghosts, Ricky Gervais, Greg Kinnear (hey-almost forgot him!), or are in favor of adopting the slogan "Marry the Funny One", you might want to check this one out.

Gesundheit,
Mother Firefly

Mother Is Excited

Y'all BEST Be Coming to this Beeyotch (And I Do Mean You My Brother)

Movies. Zombies. Night of the Living Dead Puppet Show. Dee Wallace. Joe Pilato. TOM ATKINS (who I have never met and am SUPER PUMPED about).

And I just found out that they added SID HAIG this week.

Yes. I said SID HAIG and a Night of the Living Dead Puppet Show.

It's insanely good entertainment AND you get to hang out with me, Mother Firefly.

Life is just too good.

Up to see The Hangover

Me and the P.Cash went a couple of nights ago to see Up in 3D. When we got there, we found a sign on the front door that said something about about only showing it in 2D. I have a friend from school who is a manager who happened to be working, so we went in to ask her what was going on.

Their 3D equipment was broken. She said, 'No, you can't see that tonight but what you can see is anything else that you want to for free.......because you're cool.'

That was an easy choice since we had just seen Drag Me to Hell....so The Hangover it was.

I managed to only repeat 'It's because I'm cool' three times to Papa Cash that night.

I hesitate to tell you how funny this movie is, because maybe what I find funny isn't what you find funny. So I won't mention how I almost peed myself at the end from laughing or about the two times I laughed so hard I lost my breath. Nope. Won't mention it.

Drag Me Through Hell While I Revisit Evil Dead I and II

Hello my Lovelies:
Didya think I went and died? Abandoned my blog? Decided I was too good for you?
Nah. I've just been busy with
1)Finishing up a grueling and canker-sore inducing (not kidding) Spring semester
2)Wondering why the HELL I ever wanted to go to graduate school
3)Driving back and forth to the wonderful state of Michigan
4)Sleeping and hoping somehow that will make my Clinical Project disappear
5)Not watching very many movies
6)Starting Summer semester and wondering if I'll still have my sanity when December gets here

But it doesn't matter tonight - because I just went to see Drag Me to Hell and I just know that all of you are DYING to know what I thought.
Well.
Full disclosure. Part of me kind of wanted to hate it. Because I kinda really hate Sam Raimi. Because one time, a few years ago, I read an interview where he completely dismissed his horror movie past as something he was over and that it was a way for him to get started in the business. I'm paraphrasing here but the guy said it. And I thought Look Here, F**ker, you didn't just make ONE horror movie to get your foot in the door, you F**king made THREE, you Ass! Four if you count Darkman.
So I have had full on hate in my heart for Sam Raimi since then. He's right in my Hate Box next to Tom Cruise, Mel Gibson, and Tom Hanks. And let me tell you, there is some SERIOUS hatin' going on in there.

So I was a little surprised to hear the rumors that he was thinking about remaking Evil Dead, or doing another sequel...and relieved to find out that instead, he made something entirely different.

Well, almost.

I won't give away any plot points or scares or any of the fun stuff because I purposely
read ZERO before I went to see the movie. I did glance enough at reviews to see that they were mostly pretty good, but I didn't actually read them. I only even watched like one ad, and all I remembered was the part with the fly crawling in the mouth. So even though I knew zip about the movie, I could have pretty much guessed the plot just from the title and previous Raimi movies.

It kind of goes like this:
When you unleash evil spirits, bad shit happens.

And that's fine - it's absolutely just fine with me that one line is all your movie is about. As long as you tell it in a new and interesting kind of way with good acting, some creepy visuals, and give me at least one new thing I haven't seen before, then we're good.

So without giving stuff away, I say: Go see this movie. Let's support a horror movie that isn't a sequel, or a remake. Even if it is made by a big old hypocrite. I'm willing to temporarily put the past behind me and give my money to a film like this in the hopes that more original horror movies will follow.

Without bitching too much (because, believe me, this post could have been all about the bitching of my actual experience in the movie), this film was filled with adolescents old enough to see a PG13 movie - but not old enough to drive. Apparently, just so you know, they have very weak bladders and must get up and leave the theater three or four times in a 90 minute period. I wanted to say, don't worry, when you get old like me,you'll actually be able to hold it for an entire movie. Also they must get emergency text messages a lot because many of them seemed like they had an awful lot of important messages to attend to during the movie. ANYWAY - these little assholes would never notice what I'm about to point out, so if you're 14 or never seen a Raimi film before, the following won't be of any interest to you.

One- Alison Lohman gets the Bruce Campbell experience of the new millenium as she must have some kind of bodily fluid, goo, dirt, you name it on her every fifteen minutes or so. Kind of like the Raimi tradition to torment them via fluids.

Two - the seance scene. Without giving anything away, I thought the beginning of it was probably one of the scariest things I have seen this year in a movie. Then everything changed and it became a mini-remake of Evil Dead I and II. I won't tell you what I thought, but if you see it, let me know what parts made you remember the first time you saw those movies.

More movie reviews to come......
Mother Firefly

Back to the 80's....Part 2

Well, the end of the semester is coming soon....and with that comes the craziness.
Since I won't have time to watch many movies in the next 3-4 weeks, I thought I needed to take time to recharge my batteries with some badness.....and what better than some badness from the 80's?

Sorority Babes in the Slime Bowl O'Rama!!!

(it also helps that it clocks in a crunched-for-time-friendly-80- minutes)

So we have a sorority.....and we have the babes. We have the Babes In the Sorority and of course, the Babes that Want to Be. Oh yeah and we have the trio of nerdy guys who want to watch this all go down. The nerds break into the house and of course they get caught. Soo-priize, soo-priize.

The big mean baddie in charge decides she won't call the police on the nerds IF they acompany the Babes on their last and final part of the initiation. Which is to....
Break into the bowling alley and steal a trophy.
Why, sure it is!

But the HBIC has other plans....they're going to beat them there, break in, and ...well, I guess I'm really not sure what they plan on doing....


Then Linnea Quigley shows up- turns out she's broken into the bowling alley too.... but she's only robbing the joint.

The trophies are especially important, they're more locked up than the cash register Linnea (whose name turns out to be Spider! yippee for the 80s) just busted into.....but she's nice enough to help them with that. Good thing they ran into a master thief up in this motha!

they drop the trophy and it springs a leak?Favorite Lines:
Spider: Holy Shit.
Nerd #1: UnHoly Shit.


It's a lil demon. And he sounds like Audrey II from Little Shop of Horrors.


Spider is less than impressed but the demon says his name is Impy and he will give them all a wish. Suddenly they're all claiming they broke it open and set him free. But Impy says no worries, they all get a wish!

Chubby goes first, and he wishes for gold- and gets it. Hmm. Seems easy enough.


The HBIC and her minions see this go down on camera and they say, No Fair! HBICs need wishes too!

Initiate #2 wishes to be Queen of the Prom. Really? That's the best you got?


Impy figures out that the HBIC and her minios are spying on them so he....turns two of them into monsters?

Wait, maybe this isn't all it's cracked up to be? Suddenly the gold is wood and the prom queens' dress in in tatters...and then the monster girls attack!
Leaving Spider to clean up the mess once again..

a good look at the killer makeup effects.....all four dollars and ninety-nine cents of them. I think someone rescued this from a trash can outside the set of Ghoulies.

Yep. she looks like the Bride of Frankenstein. For absolutely no good reason.

Oh yeah, and Impy just kind of sits there while the 'monsters' he created run around and do his dirty work. Although he does yell out things like 'GUTTER BALL!' and 'CRISPY CRITTERS!" when the monsters roll one of the dude's heads down the lane or cook someone in a fry vat.

Eventually everyone is either turned into a monster or dead, except for Spider and one of the Nerds. They end up finding the janitor who was locked in a closet for the first half of the movie (it's not worth explaining how that happened, trust me) and has apparently been sleeping through the second half. They explain their story to the janitor who just happens to know EXACTLY what they're talking about...
So apparently 30 years ago some guy used black magic to call up this Imp to be able to bowl better (!?!) and then lost control of it....but apparently they were able to trap him in the trophy, which took away his powers. Then they put him on the shelf.

Mm-Hmmm.

The janitor suggests a head lock, kicking him in the butt, and shoving him in the trophy.

Annnnnnnnnnnnnnd........a few monster fights and one car crash later, that's exactly what they do


and all ends well....

And....there we have it, a cheap chunk of 80s goodness all wrapped up. There's more to the story, most of which involves nudity that I'm not going to be posting here. And also, if you ever wondered just how long it takes to wash whipped cream off your boobs, you can watch this movie and see that it takes MUCH longer than you might have ever dreamed. Which I'm sure will turn out to be a good thing for some who want to see that.

I'm going to be pretty busy tying up all these loose ends in the next few weeks- so I don't expect I'll be doing any full movie reviews until the semester is over. I know, you're so sad, right? but I will do my Ghosthunters recaps and post smaller things as I can...
-Mother F