Pop Bunker

The Ultimate Old Dude

2010-03-11T01:40:21Z

Chuck Norris is 70 years old. Can ya believe that?

Well you know, Chuck Norris doesn’t fear Death. Death fears Chuck Norris, right?

They say his tears would cure cancer, if anything could ever make him cry.

Why? Observe:

Similar Posts:

Thursday Night Live: The Office vs The Office vs The Office

Pulp Posters: 13 Variations on Inglourious Basterds Theme

2010-03-11T00:37:26Z

Quentin Tarantino’s self-proclaimed masterpiece was my favorite movie of 2009, and sadly this past Sunday he did not walk away with any tiny statues. However Christoph Waltz who portrayed Hans Landa in the film did in fact win the prize for Best Supporting Actor, an honor that was well deserved. While reading the #oscars tweets that night I came across this really cool find. 13 graphic artists put their talents to work and have created these amazing versions of the Inglourious Basterds poster. Quentin himself signed more than half the posters and they will be auctioned off for Haiti relief. Click here to see the pulp artwork.Similar Posts:

Cinematic Blues – 3/8/10

2010-03-10T00:02:09Z

Every week, Netflix sends me three movies from my queue. Sometimes I get the new releases that I keep at the top of the list, and sometimes I get titles from lower down on the list. Often these are movies I forgot I put on there, and more often than that, I’ve forgotten why.

Still, it is my duty here in the Bunker to take the celluloid bullets that no one else will and review them for you, our faithful readers.

You are faithful, right? Yes? Good. Read on.

♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦

THE PENTHOUSE (2010)
Directed by: Chris Levitus
Written by: Corey Large, Kyle Kraven, David Martin, and Chris Levitus
Firstlook Studios

“Yeah. It wasn’t really about a gopher, though.”

Before I get to the review, I want to tell you about this nightmare I had the other night. I was on this awful reality show called “Strangers in a Penthouse” which was kind of a Real World/Big Brother mix-n-match thing. This major douchebag (MDB) and his on-screen hookup won the game, and thus the titular Penthouse apartment in NYC. MDB had a couple of friends move in, one of whom was that guy from “Boy Meets World.” No, not that one. The other one.

BMW is dating Penny from “Big Bang Theory” and claims to be a writer, but is going through this existential crisis and has a fear of commitment which is tested when MDB’s sister – who may or may not have been a “Deal or No Deal” model – comes to visit.

The other roommate is a male nurse, who is your standard overcompensating chipster frat boy, and is too busy giving the doctor he works for (Mya. Yes, the singer. Don’t ask me why.) a full physical to care about anything else.

There was a game of strip tag, a cubicle on the roof of the building, Ed Begley Jr., and a whole lot of other things I don’t really want to re-live. I’ll tell you this, however: I am never ordering a 5-layer burrito with extra habanero sauce after midnight ever again.

When I popped in this bullet-train-to-video DVD, the nightmare started up all over again.

Elwood Says: 1½ Hot Carls out of 5.

DARE (2009)
Directed by: Adam Salky
Written by: David Brind
Image Entertainment

“Yeah, well…Alexa has nothing better to do than pretend, period.”

Is being dressed down by Alan Cumming all it would take to completely change your attitude and way of life? Would that be what you need to go from Sandra Dee to SANDY? For Alexa Walker, apparently it was.

After being harshly critiqued by visiting actor Grant Matson (Cumming) for attempting to be Blanche DuBois on-stage without any life experience off-stage, Alexa (Emmy Rossum) goes on a rebellion bender. First, she puts a streak in her hair. Then she mouths off to her teachers, lands in detention, and goes to a party where she loses her virginity to school bad boy and acting partner Johnny (Zach Gilford). The movie makes it seem like this all happens literally overnight.

Caught up in the ‘I’m Changing’ wave is Alexa’s best friend Ben (Ashley Springer) who goes from ambiguously gay to full-on gay after his own encounter with Johnny. Ben was not well served by the story, or by Springer, and comes across as a very two-dimensional character.

Things get even more awkward from there as jealousy, lust, and an extremely misguided attempt at a threesome get to hot for these children to handle.

Rossum – an opera singer and highly seasoned performer for her young age – has one big gap in her repertoire, and that is that she doesn’t know how to act like she’s acting. When she makes the sudden and jarring shift from Good to Not So Much it’s a complete transformation, and very confident. It’s unrealistic at best. We’ve all been there, and it’s not that easy.

It’s difficult to buy Gilford, best known for playing white-bread Good Guy Matt Saracen on TV’s “Friday Night Lights” as the Bad Boy at first, but as the movie progresses we discover that to be intentional. Johnny is perhaps the most layered and lost soul of the three principals in the film, and Gilford plays his sorrow and loneliness with nuance and skill, giving an impressive performance.

Elwood Says: 3 Stanley Kowalskis out of 5.

SERIOUS MOONLIGHT (2009)
Directed by: Cheryl Hines
Written by: Adrienne Shelley
Magnolia Home Entertainment

“Why am I duct taped to a fucking chair, Louise?!?”

When filmmaker Adrienne Shelley was murdered back in 2006, she left behind a number of finished and unfinished stories. Thanks to her friends and family, one of them became this funny, delightful movie about a marriage in crisis and the series of unfortunate events that puts it back together again.

Louise (Meg Ryan) arrives home one day early from a business trip to find that her husband Ian (Timothy Hutton) has decked the house out with all sorts of romantic trimmings…

…for his girlfriend, Sara (Kristen Bell), with whom he is intending to go to Paris the next day.

At first glace, this movie looks to simply be a retelling of “French Kiss,” which also starred Ryan and Hutton as a broken couple where Hutton runs off to Paris with his new squeeze. However, the film quickly takes a left turn when Louise knocks Ian unconscious and restrains him – first to a chair, then to the toilet – in order to talk him into staying with her.

This is a fun and playful, but honest script from the late Shelley, and would work very well as a stage play. The entire film takes place in one or two rooms of a house, and there are only four main roles.

Ryan plays the same kooky character she’s played before in “French Kiss,” “When Harry Met Sally,” and “You’ve Got Mail” but the neurotic is tempered by a Been There kind of mentality that comes with age. Meg Ryan is at the point in her life and career where she can draw from so much experience that a role like this comes easy and natural. (Take note, Alexa Walker.)

During the course of the day and night spent with this couple, there are laughs, tears, a tense but polite face-off between Louise and Sara, and a home invasion. One scene during the robbery is a little offputting, if only for the close parallel between it and the details of Adrienne Shelley’s death, but the entire circumstance is mostly played for laughs.

While she isn’t really headed in this direction, Kristen Bell could easily make a career out of being the Next Meg Ryan. Justin Long was amusing and a little scary as the landscaper turned thief, Todd. (Go ahead. Laugh. I did.)

The final scene was very much out of place with the rest of the movie, and looked like something that they added because test audiences didn’t get the resolution the first time. It shouldn’t have been included at all.

This movie was clearly a labor of love. A heartfelt tribute to Shelley with wonderful performances from the cast and a job well done by first-time director (and Shelley’s “Waitress” co-star) Hines.

Elwood Says: 4 Airborne Flower Pots out of 5.Similar Posts:

[Trailer] Tron: Legacy (2010)

2010-03-09T14:09:25Z

Watch this. Get excited. Then get more excited.

Are you there yet?

Now…sing along with me. “It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas….”

Similar Posts:

How to Turn AVATAR into a Movie I’ll Watch Again

2010-03-09T00:05:50Z

I wasn’t going to see Avatar in the theater, after being told repeatedly by friends who know me well that I’d hate it, but when a friend I don’t get to see very often wanted to go, and bought my ticket, I decided to go. Aside from the company of said friend, this was a pretty painful experience for me.

First, there was the physical pain:

We saw the 3-D IMAX version, and I left feeling queasy and headachey from that much exposure to the medium. Furthermore, the 3-D glasses are really uncomfortable.

That was a really long movie, and a long time to feel trapped in an uncomfortable movie theater chair.

Then, there was the mental pain:

I can’t even remember the character’s name, and won’t bother to look it up. I keep thinking of him as “Military Sue,” the bad guy with ambiguous motivation and one-liner dialogue made up entirely of sound bites taken from transcripts of political ads from our previous presidential term. My friend and I could not suppress a bark of incredulous laughter when Military Sue intoned, “Ya gotta fight terror… with terror.”

Two words: Papyrus subtitles.

Being spoon-fed philosophies that don’t even quite believe in themselves.

Lastly, there was the emotional pain:

Senseless violence on both sides, frought with indiscriminate killing and destruction.

The knowledge that with the artistic talent and budget at the disposal of the makers of this movie… they did that, and that makes me sad.

After all of that, would I watch the movie again? Sure, I will – there just need to be a few slight changes made.

1. Remove the subtitles. First of all, they’re in that awful Papyrus font. Secondly, it’s not like it matters what they’re saying anyway.

2. Mute the volume. Again, the dialogue only serves to decrease my enjoyment of the movie.

3. Cut out all scenes that include any of the following: guns, mech-suits with Bowie knives, hairsex, bloodshed, and any character that isn’t blue. Keep cutting until the total run-time is around 5 minutes.

4. Add soundtrack in the form of Enigma’s Return to Innocence.

Voilá! You have made Avatar into a watchable movie!

Play both at once. You’ll get the idea!Similar Posts:

[Trailer] Iron Man 2 (2010)

2010-03-08T07:57:45Z

The new trailer hit the web tonight.

Two Words: Briefcase. Armor. I’m really looking forward to this movie now. This may be the summer I start getting back in the theater more often.

Similar Posts:

AXE COP

2010-03-06T05:23:25Z

I have not been one to post things from around the Internets, but I would be seriously chagrined if Pop Bunker-ites led lives that had never been touched by the wonder and magic that is Axe Cop. When you think of a name like Axe Cop, your first thought is probably “OMG it sounds like a show devised by a five year old. What will the networks think of next?” Well, it *is* a show devised by a five year old. And it is 100% as awesome as it sounds.

Axe Cop Episode 1

You can also check out the comic strip here. Also check out the Q&A sessions, which resolve a lot of issues you might have from your readings of Axe Cop. Yes, I said readings in the plural sense because you will definitely want to run through this bad boy more than once. I don’t think I’ve laughed at something so hard since my entire kindergarten class came up with a song that went “JOHN JOHN LEPRECHAUN WENT TO SCHOOL WITH NOTHING ON TEACHER TOLD HIM WHAT TO WEAR POLKA DOTTED UNDERWEAR”. And come to think of it, I wasn’t laughing then. I was crying green, golden tears.Similar Posts:

The 10 Greatest Words Given To Us By Television

2010-03-06T04:41:34Z

Ever since it’s inception television has been accused by it’s detractors of being evil and making us stupid. Now, I don’t disagree that I am stupid but how can something be evil and give the world so much? Our culture is so rich and sparkly that I can’t even fathom life today without the magic box.

My vocabulary, for example, has been affected fairly positively. I mean, I write for one of classiest pop culture websites out there and I haven’t yet been told to get the funk out. So if you want to be a pseudo-successful, non-paid, nerd writer, like me you could do a lot worse things than watch an unbelievable amount of t.v.

To help you spruce up your sad vocabulary I’ve ripped out a couple of pages from my personal dictionary and pasted together a list of the 10 greatest words given to us by television.

Read and absorb, friends. Read and absorb!

Word: Bitchcakes
Origin: Newsradio
Definition: berserk, crazy, freaked out
Example: “Everyone is going totally bitchcakes today.”

Word: Blurgh
Origin: 30 Rock
Definition: an expression of disgust, replacement swear word
Example: “Blurgh! I forgot to write that stupid t.v. article for today.”

Word: Cromulent
Origin: The Simpsons
Definition: normal, acceptable, legitimate
Example: “Embiggen is a perfectly cromulent word.”

Word: Crumbelievable
Origin: Commercial for Kraft Cheese
Definition: I’m not quite sure. It makes me smile every time I say it.
Example: “The big cheese taste that blows you away. It’s CRUMBELIEVABLE!”

Word: Embiggen
Origin: The Simpsons
Definition: to make or become bigger
Example: “A noble spirit embiggens the smallest man.”

Word: Frak
Origin: Battlestar Galactica
Definition: replacement for the word fuck
Example: “Frak you. You frakking, motherfrakker!”

Word: Semprini
Origin: Monty Python’s Flying Circus
Definition: profanity, unspecified body part
Example: “Right, who’s got a boil on his Semprini, then?”

Word: Shazbot
Origin: Mork and Mindy
Definition: replacement swear word
Example: “Shazbot! When will this article end?”

Word: Strategery
Origin: Saturday Night Live
Definition: pseudo-strategy
Example: “Bush summarized his campaign with one word: strategery”

Word: Wikiality
Origin: The Colbert Report
Definition: the idea that if enough people agrees with a notion, it becomes the truth
Example: “In the Wikiality we can create a reality we can all agree on.”Similar Posts:

[Trailer] Clash of the Titans (2010)

2010-03-05T21:15:14Z

I’ve got a lot of childhood love for the original Clash of the Titans, but this looks all kinds of ass-kicking good.

When Dale brought you this first trailer (below) he was unimpressed. I’m hoping the second trailer brings him around.

I’m not totally sold on Liam Neeson as Zeus, but just get a look at that Kracken!!!! Holy Mount Olympus!

Call no man happy who is not dead!
Similar Posts:

Black Dynamite (2009) – Counter-Review

2010-03-04T18:00:48Z

I should say this straight out: I thought Black Dynamite was a good movie. I don’t think it was the second best movie of the year for 2009 the way Dale does, or even the 2nd best comedy, but it was very good.

The probable disconnect between Dale and I is that Dale, undoubtedly, was very into the blaxploitation genre of the 70s. They just didn’t show those so much out here in the Pacific Northwest. They showed kung fu flicks a bit more (although, based on the movie knowledge of friends I have who grew up in New York City, not a whole lot of those either) but the blaxploitation flick was largely avoided by KCPQ and KSTW, those non-affiliated Seattle channels who survived by showing movies in the 70s and 80s (KCPQ since latched onto the FOX network as soon as it was born, and KSTW has linked up with the WB or whatever they call it now). Sadly, most of my blaxploitation knowledge is second hand by way of Jackie Brown or the original Shaft, which I went out and bought back in the mid-90s due to extreme awesome quality.

So a lot of the humor was, if not quite lost on me, didn’t resonate the way it might for someone steeped in the genre. Even if you’re in my position, though, it’s worth watching. There’s a soliloquy by Michael Jai White towards the beginning regarding his experiences in ‘Nam that is about as funny a scene as I’ve seen in any comedy this year. Since this is a black comedy, there are cameos and small parts for lots of black comics: Arsenio Hall, Tommy Davidson, Buddy Lewis, and Darrel Heath all figure into this film in some way or other. And then there’s Michael Jai White, who looks like he’s been transplanted straight out of one of those 70s movies.

One of the things that really struck me about this movie is how much care was taken into making it. This is so heavily stylized, it’s almost a black Wes Anderson film. Every single item in every single scene is carefully placed, from pool cues to one conveniently placed box of eggs. And while director Scott Sanders (formerly a writer for comedies Roc and A Different World) eschewed Richard Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino’s celluloid-slashing techniques from Grindhouse, he mocks/celebrates the low budgets of these movies in other, arguably more subtle ways. There is a bit, also towards the beginning of the movie, where one of the heroes gets into a fight scene with a bad guy and accidentally actually hits him. This bit, as well as the bad guy’s indignant curse, comes and goes in a split second and unlike so many spoofs doesn’t sit there and wait for you to get the joke before moving on. You might even miss it the first time you see it. No matter – that just gives you a good excuse to go in and watch this bad boy again.

So why don’t I have it quite up there with the greats of 2009? That’s a good question, actually, and in the end my reasons have less to do with the quality of Black Dynamite and more to do with what the other movies of ‘09 bring to the table. It’s great but not simply amazing like Moon or – please don’t shoot me – Avatar. It wasn’t quite as consistently funny as The Hangover (although it did pretty well, don’t get me wrong) and didn’t have the “wow” moments that Up had. I do think I’d put it in the same second-tier group as Away We Go, Up In The Air, and Funny People.Similar Posts: