Thursday, February 17, 2011

For Your Consideration: The President Edition

It was recently announced that the Donald, otherwise known as 'the hair,' wants to jump on the bandwagon and run for president on the Republican ticket. Since we all know he is more than qualified (he espouses great Americana values such as marrying gold diggers and having a reality show), I wondered if there was anyone left with as much credibility to step up as his running mate. Then it occurred to me that I am an idiot and that we have two pillars of truth that can stand side by side with Mr. Trump and kick America back to world- domineering shape. It is now up to our readers to exercise that Jehovah- given right and vote: Mr Lewis (I hate everything) Black or Mr. John (Irish Catholic) Donaghy?


"America, Fuck yeah!"

They're Taking Over the F@cking World and No One is Noticing

My God.  Readers, we've been hoodwinked.  Here's why...

I paid little attention when Will Smith starred in the 2006 film The Pursuit of Happyness with his son, Jaden.   It seemed harmless for a mega-star to show off his kid to the entire world.  Similarly, I barely noticed when Willow Smith had a small role in 2007's I am Legend.  Looking back on it, I realize that it was just the beginning, a few drops in the tidal wave of oppression known as "Will Smith's Progeny".  I should have warned someone.  I know, I know, I thought the same thing you're thinking right now: "Little Jaden and teeny Willow?  No way, dude."  But I swear to you, these two are poised to become our overlords, and I'm not sure that I welcome them.

Future Overlordz
It started small; Jaden's role in The Day the Earth Stood Still, Willow's announcement of a music career, but it didn't stop there. Like many of you, I did a double-take when it was announced that a black kid Jaden Smith would star in the Karate Kid remake.  Then in 2010 Willow Smith had the entire western world rattling in synchronized fits of epilepsy with her hit song "Whip My Hair".

Back and forth...
Finally, after lulling us into complacency with their hip style and shiny toothed grins, Variety magazine posted this in January 2011.

That's right, America.  The Smith spawn are taking over our country one Hollywood remake and Billboard hit at a time.  I'm sweating profusely as I write this.  What else can they redo and remake?  What other classics can be power-raped for their satisfaction?  Check the following list of potential Smith remakes:

1.)  Dirty Dancing - WHY?: We already know that Jaden Smith can dance, but what happens when brother and sister dance together 


2.)  Chinatown - WHY?: Because the phrase "She's my sister AND my daughter" will take on a whole different meaning.


3.)  The Dark Knight Rises - WHY?: Because it's not even out yet.


4.)  The Passion of the Christ - WHY?: Because Jaden Smith as Black Jesus = A.) controversy B.) a 2-Disc DVD release that leads to C.) Mad amounts of money and D.) hearty lol's for all.

5.)  Independence Day - WHY?: Because like father, like son...and daughter.

Honorable Mention: Lars Von Trier's Antichrist.


"God help us all." - Barack Obama, 2011.

Thursday, February 10, 2011

For Your Consideration: Casting Couch Edition

Imagine you have just been charged with finding the right actor as the lead in your new cop drama.  Who do you cast: Sheriff Shaquille O'Neal or lawman Steven Seagal?


"What are you gonna do?...What are you gonna do?" - Keanu Reeves, Speed.

Monday, February 7, 2011

How the Oscars Can Stop Sucking

Readers,

As a cinephile and movie-masturbator prolific taker of undergrad "FiLmZ 101" courses, you might find that many a post will in some way involve movies, documentaries, films, filthy rich actors, filthy actors, and all around grade-A Hollywood garbage.  That being said, I felt it necessary to cast a disapproving eye on the vom-inducing ceremony dedicated to the god of Cinema: The Academy Awards.

I'll admit that I greatly enjoyed the Academy Awards in the most "no homo" of ways.  I relished tuning into the show and being subtly reminded that I was an unworthy bitch, and would never enjoy the AARP approved hedonism Jack Nicholson gets before breakfast.  However, a change occurred.  In 2009, after three straight years of Oscar enjoyment, the squirms of delight that I previously experienced when watching the awards show gave way to a hesitant excitement, which in turn fell victim to painful intestinal gas and a metallic taste in my mouth.  There was an enlightenment, an epiphany, and it was then that I understood the rules of the Oscars.  It was these rules that led me to believe that the Academy Awards suck the dustiest of ballsacks, and must be changed.  The rules are as follows:

1.)  If You want a Best Picture Nomination, make a film about British royalty. As a director, you won't have to do shit.  You won't even need a script.  All you'll need to do is grab some old British people, give them wigs, put them in colorful robes, and make them say some patriotic stuff like "England Prevails!!" The critics will cream themselves repeatedly at the idea of cucumber sandwiches, and the pronunciation of words including "buh' uns" (buttons) and "tee" (tea).

2.) You May be Rewarded for Showing Skin.  This is a iffy rule, as sometimes this guideline is honored (see: Halle Berry Monster's Ball) or overlooked (see: Every Ewan McGregor film).  However, females can generally be assured that revealing a nipple, allowing the camera to linger on butt-cheeks, or going full lez will be rewarded if such scenes are "in context" or "something that the character would do".  Men are not awarded such pleasantries, however a guy's chances are greatly increased if he is in a film about British royalty.

3.) Make a Film that "Raises Awareness".  By directing, starring, or being an extra in a film that raises awareness, you are inherently making a tangible difference in our global society, and therefore deserve an Academy Award.  Want us to realize that everyone in L.A. is racist?  Bless us with Crash.  Want to educate us on the struggles of gay men in the '70s in California?  Give us Milk.  A note of warning: avoid raising awareness concerning injustices in other countries unless your subject material is the holocaust.  If you feel pressed to make a "film" about Africa, it's accepted as long as the protagonist is Leonardo DiCaprio.  However making a movie about India is about as progressive as you can get.

4.) Like Sci-Fi and Fantasy?  Well F@ck you.  This doesn't need explaining.

5.)  If You Don't at First Succeed, Go Bad-Ass.  In 1999, Denzel Washington, Russell Crowe, and Sean Penn were up for Best Actor for portraying a wrongly accused boxer, a whistleblower, and an arrogant, obnoxious asshole (Penn didn't have to try).  None of the men won that night, however all three returned within four years to win awards for performances in GladiatorTraining Day, and Mystic River.  Washington and company effectively employed the "Go Bad-Ass" routine, a career move often characterized by increased swearing, tattoos, killing innocent people, and letting others know that "King-Kong ain't got shit on me."  So remember, if you feel that your performance has been overlooked, take on a role that lets you f@ck up everyone's world and get dat gold, right Clay Davis?


Note: I have omitted the ultimate rule concerning the Academy Awards, "Make a Holocaust Film", as this is a universal truth understood to everyone.  

Sunday, February 6, 2011

5 Ways to Spice Up Superbowl Sunday

Readers,

Today is the holiest day of the year  Superbowl Sunday, and I hope you and your family have readied a fatted calf in preparation for this momentous occasion.  Now, I will admit that the most recent Superbowls have been inspiring and exciting events, but in order to continue this steady trend of nipple-hardening action I propose that extra elements be added to sport in order to maintain the hype.  The name of the game is excess, an ideal so American it gets it's own spin-off, book deal, and clothing line.  With this thought in mind, I give you 5 ways to make the Superbowl even better.  Let's begin.

1.)  Give Selected Players Weapons - In order to add an element of "Surprise!" to the game, bestow all manner of weaponry upon the players.  These weapons will be dispersed as a "level up" for players who make excellent contributions to the game.  Sack the QB?  Get an RPG.  Make a key block?  Get a moldy brick.  This will level the playing field (literally) and stop all the nonsense talk about protecting the players from injury.  Who cares about concussions when Peyton Manning is using claymores as an extra level of defense?  I suggest chain mail and a gat for Aaron Rodgers, a net and trident for Ben Roethlisberger, and Troy Polamalu can have a billy club topped with a rusty nail.


2.)  Dis-honor killings for failed Superbowl Ads - Let's face it, the halftime show is a hit-or-miss event (as in, you either want to dropkick the performer or miss the show altogether).  Instead of wasting our time with these happenings, why not kick it up a notch by doing harm to those who force us to watch horrible superbowl ads.  It would be a lot like American Idol.  After a selected set of commercials, viewers would phone in to vote on the one they liked best.  Winner receives unfathomed wealth.  Loser is forced to commit seppuku.  This allows the American people to exercise their god-given skills in identifying real talent and punish lazy bastards for failing creatively.  Game on.

3.)  Shock Collars or Points for Commentators - You know as well as I do, that many sports broadcasts are mired by the sheer awfulness of the comments made by the hosts.  I say we eliminate the possibility of being offended by bad game analysis by attaching a shock collar to every commentator.  That way they know we take our play-by-play seriously.  Conversely, we will award "Commentbucks" to hosts who regale us with unparalleled insight into the game.  These Commentbucks can used to buy Slim Jims and sodas for replenishing health, or aloe vera and bandages to ease the pain of failing to please the crowd.  Telling us about a player's favorite restaurant will be punished, insights such as "Boom goes the dynamite" can only lead you to glory.

4.)  Combine with Other Sports - If the game happens to go slowly (which is impossible thanks to #1 listed above), revive the sport by combining the superbowl with other displays of athleticism.  Set up basketball hoops in either endzone and force players to slam-dunk the football for their six points.  Players who fail to catch passes can be forced to complete the Krispy Kreme Challenge.  Competitive eating is also allowed.

5.)  Allow Only the Greatest of Fans to Call the Game - So many times I've sat around the television and heard a drunk and disgruntled viewer rabble on about how the they wouldn't have called a certain play, or how they wouldn't have called a timeout, or how football saved them from a life of prostitution.  I say we put this arm-chair coaching to rest, and let these great fans do what they've always wanted to do: Beast-f@ck the football game.  Seriously, let them flaunt the coaching prowess they've developed through nearly a decade of playing Madden (or Tecmo Bowl, if you've got the balls).  Give these people a headset and playbook and watch the befuddled "Holy shit. God. What?" look cross their faces as they attempt to decipher the x's and o's.  Although potentially painful, this will provide the rest of us with great mirth, and finally allow these morons a teachable moment wherein they learn that they need to shut the f@ck up.

Enjoy the game.  Jeer responsibly.  

Friday, February 4, 2011

For Your Consideration: The Tears Edition.

Who wins the ultimate crying competition:  Actress Julianne Moore or Speaker of the House John Boehner?




"Tears are Summer showers for the soul."

Five Television Shows to Watch in 2011

Long time no see, Readers.

Having been inspired by my expose on television's recent assault on viewers, I have decided not to leave you in a state of comatose-like depression created by aforementioned assault, but instead attempt to lift your spirits by suggesting five excellent shows. Perhaps this will leave you feeling somewhat more positive about the creativity, art, and orgiastic amounts of money-making that is the entertainment industry.  I want you all to know that there is more to television than the following:

Hell Date, BET., Are You Smarter than a Fifth Grader?, FOX., Minute to Win It, NBC...All quality programming.  
   Without further ado, I bring to you the messiahs of television 2011:

1.)  Breaking Bad, AMC - Last week I saw a car accident.  It was a wreck so uncompromisingly glorious that I nearly crashed my own vehicle while rubbernecking.  Breaking Bad is television's glorious car wreck; a show so tense your buttcheeks will clench together in glee and exuberant horror as you watch.  Veteran actor Bryan Cranston is Walter White, a terminally ill, middle-aged, high-school chemistry teacher who turns to cooking meth to provide for his family.  The resulting tale is a white-hot descent into a moral maelstrom as Walter's deal with the devil causes all hell to break loose.




2.)  Mad Men, AMC - I love watching rich white men do whatever the f@ck they want, whenever they want, to whomever they please.  I enjoy it much more when it's set in the 1960s and the main character is a brooding, yet dashing, alcoholic.  Just when you think Jon Hamm's turn as the liquor guzzling, testosterone sweating, ad man Don Draper is enough excitement for one day, Mad Men turns it up a notch with a fine supporting cast that keeps the ball rolling.  The series continues to be an excellent insight into a number of critical social issues including civil rights, the women's movement, Vietnam, and changing social mores all seen through the eyes of the richest, classiest badass in New York who is far more concerned with the style of his cufflinks and making everyone else his bitch.  So tune in to Mad Men, and watch as Don Draper obliviously drinks and f@cks his way to happiness while the cultural shift of the 1960s roars across the U.S.


3.)  It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, FX - In case you need time to let your awe inspired boner subside after watching Breaking Bad or Mad Men, check out FX's breakout comedy It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia.  The show follows the supernaturally insane antics of five friends, "the gang", who own a bar in Philly.  When not getting pregnant, kidnapping families, or naming their cat Jack Bauer, the gang puts on local theater productions for the community.  The Nightman Cometh, anyone?

4.)  Parks and Recreation, NBC - I have to give credit to NBC for greenlighting a show focusing on the banalities of local government in the fictional city of Pawnee, Indiana.  Parks and Rec features Amy Poehler as Leslie Knope, an effervescent government official dedicated to making local government work for the people.  The mockumentary style comedy is given a superstar boost from the likes of funnygod Aziz Ansari, and one of the greatest television characters ever, Ron Swanson.
Ron Swanson (above).  Don't you wanna make love to that moustache?
Not your momma's Spartacus. 
5.)  Spartacus: Blood and Sand, Starz - Spartacus: Blood and Sand makes no apologies for being what it is: the most violent porno ever filmed.  When Spartacus isn't flashing sweat-glistening titties or flaunting graphic depictions of wild, lights-on, no-lube cheetah-style sex, it's saturating the audience with gore unlimited.  I kid you not, there is at least one decapitation, blood spray, or f@ck session per episode; sometimes these elements are combined into the same scene.  My nephew, Jayquan, loves the show.  He's five.  So if you're up for mindless violence with the intrigue of a soap opera and actual character development, be sure to check out the only show that boasts gallons of blood equal to the amount of hate mail Lebron receives from Cleveland.

As this is a Top 5 list, there will obviously be some shows left out of the running.  Leave a message if there's a show you think deserves a lil' lovin' from the Panda community.  More than likely it's a shitty show, but seriously, give it a shot.  

Thursday, February 3, 2011

Five reasons THIS should have been an abortion...

Readers, every once in a while the human condition allows us to experience something or frankly, someone, that gets our eyes to rolling and our heads to shaking; to behold an event so pathetic and preposterous that it makes us seethe with rage, or lol beyond our control.  It's an occurrence that doesn't happen often, but when it does only one thought passes through your head: "That should have been an abortion".

Don't act like it's never happened to you!  You've had that thought before.  Perhaps that time when you first saw your sister-in-law accidentally sent a sext to your sister-in-law, or made that hasty decision to "take a year off and find yourself"... or when you looked in the mirror this morning (it gets better).  As it turns out, I happened to come across another cringe-inducing, shit-filled, spit-slurping endeavor, an event so tragic and utterly confusing that it deserves a personal, passionate, steaming hate-f@ck from yours truly followed by a golden shower from Saddam Hussein's corpse.  It's on NBC, it's called The Cape, and it's  a television show whose premise I firmly believe was spawned after a studio exec read his previous night's drunken attempt at completing a mad lib.  I recently showed the pilot to my five year-old nephew, Jayquan.  Within five minutes he got up from the tv and walked away muttering "This shit is played out, where's the skittles."  The Cape should have been an abortion, and here's why:
Why'd they change the name of the Assassin's Creed franchise? 
1.)  The protagonist blows man-balls.  In the pilot, the audience is introduced to the hero Vince Faraday (see below), a mind-numbingly stupid cop who has a wife, a kid, maybe a porn collection, and some other boring shit.  We don't really get to know anything about who Vince is, because his detective skills fail him, and he is immediately betrayed by his sleazy African-American cop partner (for reasons unexplained).  It gets better.
Zuckerberg can ACT.  
2.)  The First Twenty minutes.  Within the first twenty minutes, Vince is framed for murder, explosions happen, he is declared dead, attends his own funeral, decides to become a super hero, loses his virginity, and finds a weird sheet that he drunkenly mistakes for a cape.  Question: Why does he become a superhero?  Answer: To "take back the city", an ambiguous, boring suburbia that no one gives a Mcf@ck about because all we've seen so far in this episode is Vince being framed for murder, being declared dead, attending his own...yeah.  Why doesn't he go to the authorities?  Why doesn't he try to clear his name the sane way?  Instead, he seems totally unfazed about being declared dead, and hangs out with some gypsies while becoming a super hero by using the cape to convince everyone he's an excellent matador.  Godd@mn, my head hurts.

3.)  The antagonist isn't antagonistic.  
This is the villain.   He's holding a cell phone.
As villain, this lizard looking guy, Chess, is hell-bent on world  city-wide domination.  Fine, but how does he accomplish this?  By privatizing the city police force, because that makes loads of sense.  Rather than accomplish his goals by sensible means (politics, blackmail, gangs) he takes the LEAST circumspect and MOST controversial route possible.  And why in the f@ck would the city just let the tax payers' police force undergo such an overhaul?   The Cape doesn't even try to answer that question.  It's like walking into your house and finding that your wife has a baby in her arms that you've never seen before.  Confused, you ask "hey honey, when did you become pregnant and give birth?"  She responds with "Ain't no thang, we good."

4.)  What is the point of Summer Glau?  

In The Cape, Summer Glau shows up as this feistyreporterbitch type with a fancy minority report style computer and some ferrari car that she has earned through magic and nude centerfolds.  For some reason she decides to help the Cape, but no one tells us why.  'Nuff said.   

5.)  Every Luke Skywalker has a Yoda and Obi-Wan...then there's these guys.  

When not training the protagonist, they moonlight at the "Milk and Honey" club.  
Jesus, where's the decency?  When not utterly failing at creating compelling antagonists, The Cape chooses to fail at creating secondary characters.  The protagonist is trained to hero-dom by random members of the freak show "Shits and Giggles" brigade consisting of a little person, some mind reader, a crazy contortionist, and a black dude (In The Cape, ethnicity is also be considered a handicap).  This crazy melting pot crew is introduced in the first twenty minutes of the pilot, and they immediately decide that they want to assist the mentally ill protagonist.  But why?  Again, character motivation is nonexistent. 

Every once in a while, you experience an event that you realize should have been an abortion.  And this time around, it's NBC that "delivered" the goods.  

"You are what you see."