The time I was Hamlet

In the spring of 1996 I was getting ready to graduate from high school. I had a light class load, with the only non-elective on my schedule being AP English with Mr. White. Despite the time I could have theoretically devoted to that class, however, by mid-way through the school year I had convinced Mr. White that I was a slacker.

The problem was that my writing, which was strong, only counted for about half my grade, and was at odds with my tendency to perform poorly on tests (because the tests were consistently on the subject of literature I didn't find enjoyable). That, combined with my sense of humor (which always seemed to be causing the teacher inconvenience rather than amusement), created a haze of mistrust between Mr. White and me, at least in my perception. But in the second half of the academic year, an opportunity to convince Mr. White that I actually wanted to pass his class presented itself.

The final work in our lengthy Shakespeare unit was The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. Mr. White gave us an assignment. Near as I can remember, the requirements were:

1. It had to be a presentation of some kind (he might have actually told us we had to make a video project...I don't know if teachers were allowed to assign things like that technically, but at any rate, every project submitted in my class was a video)
2. It had to be at least ten minutes in length
3. It had to be related in some way to Hamlet

Students formed groups to tackle the project. My group teamed me up with my close friend Ben, and Brandi and Emily, who were both dating other friends of mine. 

I knew that being grouped with Ben would be an advantage for our project. He was the one among us who showed filmmaker tendencies. He understood cinematography, was versed in film as a culture and had already developed a filmmaking style visibly influenced by Lloyd Kaufman (appropriately, Ben would go on to intern at Troma after university). So we set out to make our own abridged, modern-setting version of Hamlet with Ben writing the screenplay, directing the action and doing most of the camerawork.

The cast fell into place quickly: I was Hamlet (knowing full well that I was a poor actor but ready to "ham" it up all the same, if you'll pardon the expression). Brandi was Ophelia and showed a zany side I had never seen while portraying her descent into madness. And Emily played straight-man to the rest of us clowns in her depiction of Gertrude. We knew that Ben needed to appear on screen in order to get credit for the project, so he played both R (Rosencrantz) and G (Guildenstern), who never appeared on screen simultaneously. But that left us with a bunch of roles we couldn't cover with just our team of four, so we enlisted help, not just from outside our group, but from outside our own graduating class. Alumni cameos, if you like.

We asked our mutual friends Kennan, Jeff, another Ben (we'll call him Ben R.) and Matt, all of whom had already finished high school but would be recognized by anyone who saw our movie, to complete the cast. Kennan played the father-son duo of Polonius and Laertes (again, they never appeared on screen together), Jeff filled in as the gravedigger, Ben R. was Horatio. And Matt, the best actor among us, stole the show as Claudius as well as the ghost. Matt's performance easily garnered the biggest laughs from anyone who saw our movie. He was brilliant.

To adapt the story for a modern setting, we did away with the "kingdom" scenario and reimagined Kronborg Castle as a pizza business, which Hamlet, an ambitious heir who had been experimenting with a "new" triangular cutting technique (as opposed to grid-wise square cutting) was to inherit until his treacherous uncle Claudius swooped in. We would replace the daggers and swords with handguns and pizza cutters, and the title character's Elizabethan frilled shirts with a moody black-sportcoat-over-black-turtleneck combo that made me look like a goth college professor. Romeo + Juliet with Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes would come out later, in the fall of the same year. But unlike Romeo + Juliet, our production mixed famous lines from the original with modern parlance, often making for strange interactions.

If this all sounds awfully involved, it was. It took several days to shoot. It's difficult for teenagers to take something seriously, and this was made evident by the countless takes that had to be done to get a scene on camera without a catastrophic character break or uncontrolled laughter. In particular, I remember what felt like dozens of takes of the scene where Laertes discovers Ophelia drowned in about four inches of water in a bathtub. What should have been serious was made farcical by Kennan's inability to say the line, "Oh no, this is madness! Revenge is paramount!" without laughing.

("Revenge is paramount" was a recurring line in the movie, spoken by multiple characters. I always imagined trailers and posters for our movie with the tagline, "This summer, revenge is paramount.")

The project needed to be ten minutes or more in length, but Mr. White hadn't given us a limit, so we ended up making a 35-minute rendition of the story. And I saw an opportunity to "redeem" myself in the eyes of Mr. White by going the extra mile and writing an original musical score for the movie we made.

I had been making music (mostly laughably bad dance tracks) on the household Macintosh LC II for several years leading up to this, but had never attempted music for video before. For inspiration I drew from Dan Forden's music for the Mortal Kombat series, Metroid, Super Metroid and Drew Neumann's music for the Æon Flux animated series. The resulting themes were appropriately melodramatic for Hamlet, but far too serious-sounding in contrast to the absurdity happening on the screen: actors' accents fluctuating at random, Polonius's cotton-ball mustache falling off, R and G finishing each other's sentences.

At the time, we faced a number of technological barriers to this endeavor. For the shooting itself, we were limited to using Ben's handheld Video8 recorder and its built-in microphone. For the music, all I had was my father's Performer sequencing software and a Roland Sound Canvas SC-55. And worst of all was the "post-production" process I used to get the music and a few sound effects onto the final copy:

After receiving all the scenes on VHS from Ben, I had to dub the tape with a line-in mic connected so that the copy would have the original audio, plus the mic audio on it. I pointed the mic at the speakers of a boombox playing the music cues and a couple of sound effects (which I had to sync to the action in real time, starting over from the beginning of the movie when I made a mistake). By the time the finished product came out, it had lost quality from being copied twice (once from Video8 to VHS, and again from one VHS to another for the sound). The final dub also had opening and ending titles that I made by pointing a camcorder on a tripod at a computer monitor.

But ultimately, we succeeded. Mr. White dedicated most of a class period to showing our 35-minute video, which received applause at the end. As class ended and the end title music faded, the music for the morning announcements started on the school's loudspeakers – again, it was the end title theme from Hamlet (because I, who was in charge of the audio for the morning announcements that year, had used the Hamlet music during recording the previous afternoon). It was a media blitz event! And we all got A's.

Mr. White would go on to show our video, as an example of a job a little too well done, for years after my friends and I graduated. In fact, my younger brother, who attended Mr. White's class thirteen years later, told me that even his class watched our Hamlet video. Ben, Brandi, Emily and I were legends at our high school.

This week I converted most of the music from the movie from audio cassette to digital form and put it up on my music YouTube channel. Three short tracks, each one less than a minute long, are missing. I also don't have a good recording of the shorter version of the end titles music that was used in the movie, but I've included a longer version here. The music's not great, but it takes me back to the time when I wrote it and reminds me of what an effort the whole project was. Check the video description for details about what happens in each scene.

Happy meme year

2016 may have been the worst year since mankind first started talking about years, but it did give rise to an internet meme that I particularly enjoy: the "Me at the End of 2016" meme. You've probably seen a bunch of these; there's no shortage. But that won't stop me making my own.

OK, this one may be a bit esoteric. Long story short, the kid on the left and the sea monster on the right are the same guy.

That last one makes me want to cry.

Happy new year, everyone! May your 2017 be comparatively painless.

Star Wars t-shirts

Japanese fast fashion retailer Uniqlo is selling a wide selection of Star Wars-inspired t-shirts (among others) for ¥1500 a piece. It might be the first time since childhood that I've seen Star Wars apparel that I can wear without being embarrassed.

These are the shirts I'm looking for. I can go about my business. Move along.

TIE Fighter Attack

New music! (I repeatedly tell myself that this dubstep thing is just a phase I'm going through. I really hope it is.)

Know Your Mollusks

The other day, Wife and I went to see Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian (or, as it's known to the article- and preposition-challenged nation of Japan, Night Museum 2). Normally I pass on this kind of movie, but there's a theater in Kichijoji where tickets are ¥1000 all throughout your birth month, and Wife was psyched to watch yet another film in which Ben Stiller talks to animals, so our fate was sealed.

(Jeez, to think that ¥1000 for a movie ticket actually sounds like a bargain to me now....)

Now, I'm sure I've said before that people who work in marketing are prone to making astonishingly bad decisions, but the Japanese marketing of this film has been a brave, new world of nonsense. I challenge you to get your head around why the marketing people made the decision I'm about to describe. Thinking hats on.

As you may know, the film highlights a number of the Smithsonian Institution's actual exhibits, like the Apollo space capsule and the Wright Brothers' plane. One exhibit that failed to make it into the film, however, was the body of 24-foot giant squid displayed in a refrigerated tank.

What did make it into the film, on the other hand, was a giant CGI octopus.

Granted, I can imagine the scenario by which the Smithsonian's squid accidentally became an octopus. Hollywood has mistaken these two mollusks before, so it's par for the course that they do it again. Besides, at no point in the movie do they actually call the octopus "squid," so you could chalk the whole thing up to creative license and leave it at that. But what's much harder to fathom is that all the Japanese promotional material for the movie, and I mean ALL OF IT -- trailers, TV spots, printed leaflets and even a two-hour TV special designed specifically to promote the film's Japanese release -- persistently refers to the animal as a squid.

I'll do a quick Let's Learn Japanese here, just to be thorough:

tako (n.) Octopus.

ika (n.) Squid.

There, see? They're different. For these two to be confused in Japan, a country where both are routinely eaten, a country where the average child learns the difference between tako and ika in kindergarten, a country where the difference between the two is important enough that even visiting foreigners figure out how to tell them apart before they return home...well, that's just far fetched.

Like I said before, the movie itself never makes the mistake of calling this octopus a "squid." So why this concerted (not to mention downright Orwellian) effort to fool the moviegoing public? Is it out of an obligation to link the film to the Smithsonian Institution for advertising purposes? Is it just another example of empty-headed marketing?

Could it possibly be both?

Portrait of a Badass: Maximilian

Character: Maximilian
Actor: N/A
Film: The Black Hole (1979)
Badass Moment: VS Alex Durant

At the end of the 1970s, Star Wars had the science fiction world in an inescapable Dianoga stranglehold. Any and all challengers to George Lucas's throne would be thrown into the Sarlac Pit and slowly digested over a thousand years. Those who would attempt to stand on the shoulders of AT-ATs and capitalize on Star Wars mania with their own knock-off product would find themselves under a mighty, metal foot in quick order.

Conditions were perfect for an underdog.

Along came The Black Hole, Disney's space opera counter-attack. (We'll treat it as such for the purpose of this essay, even though its conceptualization pre-dated the release of Star Wars by two years.) This movie had guts. It blazed dark, new, PG-rated trails for a studio whose edgiest movie to date had been The Apple Dumpling Gang. More importantly, it stood in the face of Star Wars's iron-fisted oppression and said, "Oh yeah?"

Even though The Empire Strikes Back effectively responded with, "Yeah and so's your mama," while using The Force to crush The Black Hole's throat, The Black Hole stands out as an important science fiction film (and I'm not just saying that because it's the Walt Disney Company's most expensive box office failure ever, although that's always been a plus in my mind, too).

Contributing significantly to The Black Hole's dark tone was a silent, bucket-headed robot called Maximilian. This metal "mystery monster," as he is called by another robot in the film, floats around scaring the beezus out of everyone with his glowing red eye, his reluctance to speak and let's not forget his arm-mounted retractable food processor blades of death.

Glowing eye
Blades of death
What else do I have to say?
We didn't start the fire.

Speaking of fire (spoiler alert), some of the infernal imagery at the end of film seems to suggest that Maximilian's trip through the black hole lands him in charge of Hell itself. Talk about going over the top! The filmmakers couldn't have made this robot more badass if they showed him riding a Harley Davidson into an erupting volcano while killing John Wayne with a shuriken between the eyes from five hundred meters away.

Of course, I'm glossing over the fact fact that, despite boasting some relatively edgy themes and a particularly badass robot, The Black Hole is a really silly movie. It's full of sketchy science. It's packed with stiff-legged extras pretending really hard that they're androids. It even has a scene where a robot with a British accent laments the death of a robot with a southern accent. It's not exactly a masterpiece...but then again, neither is Star Wars in many ways.

Maximilian, you are a badass who could kick the crap out of Threepio any day. We salute you.

Clean Movies, Dirty Life

Misguided Utah man Daniel Dean Thompson thought it would be a good idea to edit nudity and harsh language out of Hollywood films and then rent them out for profit. Apparently, he also thought it would be a good idea to have sex with a fourteen-year-old.

Thompson's film censorship/rental enterprise (operating under various names including Clean Flicks and Flix Club) was targeted by Hollywood studios who were, not surprisingly, irate with the man's practice of making money off his own "clean" versions of their films and put an end to his business at the end of 2007. That, however, didn't stop Thompson from exploding onto news pages once again. It turns out his own sexual antics are more obscene than the stuff he claimed to be protecting kids from with his rental business. He ended up in jail for sexual abuse and unlawful sexual activity with a minor.

The linked news article calls this a "shocking discovery," but I beg to differ. The people who put themselves in charge of advocating for your kids are also the first ones to be found fornicating with your kids. The next time you hear someone talk about fighting indecency, obscenity or profanity, you know that's someone you don't want little Johnny and Susie hanging out with.

Stef

So I'm deeply contemplating The Goonies (as I have a tendency to do), and it suddenly hits me:

What's the deal with Stef?

The Goonies does a better-than-average job of making relatively effective use of nearly all its protagonists. Each "goonie" has his or her important role and/or time to shine during the course of their pirate treasure hunt. Mikey provides the motivation. Brand brings the muscle. Mouth translates the Spanish. Andy plays the skeleton pipe organ. Chunk frees Sloth. And Data uses the pinchers of peril to bite Joe Pantoliano right in the pantolianos.

What does Stef do?

I'm stumped. After she loses her glasses early in the film, she becomes pretty much useless. She does punch Mama Fratelli in the face toward the end of the film, but that's pretty much a throw-away gag. She also serves as a foil to Mouth, but why is Mouth the only character who has a foil? I guess it is nicely symmetrical that the wisecracking, boyish-looking girl find love interest in the wisecracking, girlish-looking boy. But in terms of the goonie adventure, Stef's got very little reason to be hanging around.

It's ridiculous. It's crazy. It's like she's babysitting, only she's not getting paid.

Even the film's theatrical trailer gives short shrift to this character. The voice-over says, "Stefanie," and we see a one-second snippet of Stef pulling a crab out of a drum full of water, but that's the only introduction we get. We get to see Data's bully blinders. We get to see Chunk break down the door of the Lighthouse Lounge. And we get to see Stef's....crab?

And that's another thing. What the hell is she doing in that scene, anyway? Is this "crab dive" a typical past-time of middle class west coast adolescents? Did she go into the barrel with the intention of getting a crab, or was she just washing her hair and OOPS, look what I found? I used to have a promotional Goonies magazine full of production stills, interviews and trivia about the movie. In that magazine, it is explained that Stef's father is a fisherman. But from only watching the film, you'd never figure that out. You'd just assume she really likes crabs.

The Goonies was the first movie I ever saw in the theater without parental supervision. As such, there are certain things about the movie I'll always forgive. I forgive that Troy is wearing red Underoos on the toilet. I forgive that Andy "can't tell if it's an A sharp or a B flat," even though the two notes are identical on a piano keyboard. And I forgive that Data speaks Chinese at the end of the movie and is subtitled, for some reason, in Chinese. But seriously.

What is the deal with Stef?

Portrait of a Badass: The Grady Girls

Characters: The Grady girls
Actors: Lisa Burns & Louise Burns
Film: The Shining (1980)
Badass Moment: The nice little girls invite Danny to play with them forever and ever.

The appearance of these two unremarkable (yet somehow dreadful) kids in Stanley Kubrick's celebrated adaptation of the Stephen King cabin fever novel ranks high among the most haunting cinematic images in history. The closet shot in The Ring, the janitor in Silent Hill, and the bathroom mirror scene in Poltergeist have all their shot at the championship, but the Grady girls (often mistakenly called the Grady twins) continue to defend their title against all comers.

The great thing about The Shining is that it wasn't so scary the first time I saw it, because the film hadn't yet taught me to be afraid of it. The second time I watched it, the dread of seeing the Grady girls again sprung out of nowhere just a second or two before their first appearance. That dread is a powerful thing; it's so strong that one of my friends from university used to "watch" the whole film with her face covered because she didn't want to be ambushed by the girls' surprise attacks.

Regardless of what viewers of The Shining think of these spooky little girls, the Grady siblings' impact on the other characters in the film is incontrovertibly devastating. Just look what they did to our poor, little protagonist Danny Torrence:

That kid's shit is in ruins. But that's only the beginning of it. Danny's trauma causes a chain reaction that reverberates through the film's entire cast. Look at these poor saps.

Grady girls, you are badasses, even if you did have to be "corrected." We salute you.

Portrait of a Badass: Johnny

Character: Johnny Lawrence
Actor: William Zabka
Film: The Karate Kid (1984)
Badass Moment: Sweep the leg.

Johnny Lawrence was just an ordinary, everyday, all-American boy growing up in sunny California. He was an exemplary student in his karate dojo, he hung out with the popular crowd at school and he was dating Elizabeth Shue. Everything was going great for Johnny Lawrence.

Until...

Until that little Jersey slimeball Daniel Larusso showed up with his short temper and his Crane Technique and his intentions to steal Johnny's girlfriend.

This summer....William Zabka IS....The Karate Kid.

That's how the trailer for this movie should have gone.

If The Karate Kid taught me anything, it's that sometimes the protagonist of a movie is not likable in the least. Sometimes he's an annoying, little punk who is doomed to be picked on because he just can't steer clear of trouble. Daniel Larusso is that kind of protagonist and Johnny Lawrence is that kind of trouble. No matter where Larusso's "stupid bike" takes him, all roads lead to a Johnny Lawrence beat-down.

For young viewers of The Karate Kid, an appearance by Johnny elicits the feelings of dread that only a real-life bully can prompt. And for cynical bloggers, watching Johnny beat up Daniel can be a satisfying form of entertainment. In Johnny Lawrence, the filmmakers have thus found a winning combination that transcends age gaps.

Some might say that Johnny's sensei, the diabolical Kreese, was the true villain of The Karate Kid. After all, just like Mr. Miyagi says, "No bad student. Only bad teacher." And it's not as if Kreese wasn't trying his damnedest to be a villain in the movie. I mean, look at him:

That ain't the face of a sane man. But since Johnny has a far more direct influence on the tribulations of Daniel Larusso, I cannot justify awarding Kreese the badass crown. And since Johnny has the guts to defy his insane teacher in the opening scene of The Karate Kid Part II, it's a done deal.

Johnny, you are a badass. When a man meets you on the street, he's an enemy. An enemy deserves no mercy WHAT IS THE PROBLEM MISTER LAWRENCE.

Portrait of a Badass: Jessica

Character: Jessica Rabbit Actor: Kathleen Turner (speech) / Amy Irving (singing)
Film: Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988)
Badass Moment: A weasel who puts his hand down the front of Jessica's dress falls victim to a booby trap.
Few things can affect a boy's development as drastically as the year 1988 affected me. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles poisoned my brain with the notion that women should have gigantic breasts and wear banana-colored jumpsuits like April O'Neil. Double Dragon poisoned my brain with the notion that women should have gigantic breasts and carry whips like Linda. And Who Framed Roger Rabbit poisoned my brain with the notion that women should have gigantic breasts and be married to rabbits...like Jessica Rabbit.
Yes, 1988 was quite a year for breasts. Even the number 88 itself has undeniably mammal qualities.
The movie was a groundbreaking work of art for its deep melding of live action and animated characters, to say nothing of its highly entertaining action, humor and story. But none of that had a prayer of making an impression on me in competition with Jessica and her 88's. I was only ten years old when the movie came out, too young to really appreciate what I was seeing, yet old enough to know that the part when Bob Hoskins accidentally bumps his head on her chest as he stands up was a moment of true film finesse.
Of course, breasts alone don't make Jessica the newest addition to the Hall of Badass. She's the quintessential femme fatale who spends most of her fleeting screentime earning the intrigue and distrust of the audience. And on top of that, she has a hell of a voice. Two voices, technically. The fact that no singular actress could be found who would do justice to both Jessica's speaking voice and singing voice is also a credit to her badassness.
I read somewhere that, in order to give Jessica's breasts their otherworldly motion, animators tried to make them appear to bounce in reverse. That's right, Jessica is so badass, the filmmakers had to violate Newtonian physics in order to bring her to life.
Jessica, you are a badass. And no, you aren't "just drawn that way." We saulte you.

Portrait of a Badass: Elliott

Character: Elliott
Actor:Henry Thomas
Film: E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982)
Badass Moment: In a drunken rage, Elliott frees all the frogs from his biology class and kisses a young Erika Eleniak.

The Month of Fury known as June is over and now it's time for some more positively-charged blogging. The only thing that can correct my mood is a tribute to one of my earliest cinematic memories. E.T. is at or near the top of many people's Greatest Movies of All Time lists, but too few of those lists actually delve into the science of badass. Well, pull yourself up to a sitting position and take notes, brotha. Science class starts now.

Elliott is the middle child in a fatherless family. His older brother won't let him in on Dungeons & Dragons. His younger sister is a twisted firestarter. As a result of these disadvantages, Elliott harbors pent-up frustrations which occasionally leak out in the form of abusive language like "penis breath."

Doesn't sound very badass so far, does he? Well, pay attention because this WILL be on the test. One scene alone gives Elliott his badass status: The scene where E.T. gets Elliott drunk and his resulting subversion gets him kicked out of school. You might recall that I cited a similar scene in my Badass post about Donnie Darko. I guess, since I never did anything to get myself kicked out of school as a youngster, I find it especially gratifying to see someone do so in a film. Furthermore, that scene's final shot (of the girl's feet surrounded by escaping frogs in the foreground, with Elliott being led away by a teacher in the background) is probably my favorite bit of cinematic imagery ever.

Elliott, you are a badass. (Underage drunkenness is wrong.) We salute you.

Patrick Bateman for Isetan

The Shinjuku branch of department store Isetan (not pronounced "I, Satan") is running a menswear campaign. The man in the ads appearing on Tokyo trains as well as the Isetan website looks a lot like Christian Bale as Patrick Bateman in American Psycho (2000).

Portrait of a Badass: Sadako

Character: Sadako
Actor:Inou Rie / Shirai Chihiro
Film: Ring (1998)
Badass Moment: Sadako is ready for her close-up, Mr. DeMille (pictured).

For a high-contrast example of the difference between Japanese and American horror films, all you have to do is watch Ring (1998) and its American counterpart THE Ring (2002). Each film lays out, in unambiguous terms, the devices of choice for its respective genre: Ring (sometimes romanized as Ringu) creeps you out with uncertainty and indecipherable imagery, while The Ring prefers to make you jump out of your seat with jolting music cues and sudden shots of disfigured corpses.

What most Japanese moviegoers cite, however, as Ring's number one agent of cinematic trepidation is not the creepy business of dead people with contorted facial expressions. That is, unless you count the contorted facial expression pictured above, which belongs to the super-scary killer ghost known as Sadako.

I won't pick one version of this horror story as "better," as both have their strong points. But I will say this: Samara, Sadako's equivalent in the American remake, cannot even approach Sadako's badass factor...mostly because, in a bizarre decision by the makers of the American version, Samara was given dialog. And not good dialog, either. Stupid, bad, un-scary dialog.

Even in a market that is increasingly polluted with movies that use "creepy kids" in their failed attempts to be scary, Sadako stands out (crawls out?) as a shining example of what a great ghost should be: Quiet, lurching and tragically hirsute.

Sadako, you are a silent badass. We salute you.

Technorati: Ringu / The Ring / リング / ghosts / bad dialog

Portrait of a Badass: Brad

Character: Brad Hamilton
Actor: Judge Reinhold
Film: Fast Times At Ridgemont High (1982)
Badass Moment: Brad threatens a mouthy customer with 100% ass-kicking. And even though Brad is really angry in this scene, he's smiling.

Big brothers from all walks of life can appreciate the badassness of Brad Hamilton, the biggest brother of them all. In Fast Times At Ridgemont High, Brad throws fast food out the window of a moving car. He protects the confidentiality of his younger sister's abortion. He gets walked in on by Phoebe Cates while masturbating to Phoebe Cates. He does everything a big brother should do. And then, on top of all that, he takes out the garbage. I didn't know, until I saw this movie for the first time, that I could win any argument just by saying, "I take out the garbage," with an air of miffed indignation.

Brad Hamilton loves his battleship-sized luxury sedan. Eight minutes into the film, he reveals that he has only six payments left to make before the car is officially his. When I was Brad Hamilton's age, I did not have a luxury sedan. In fact, I was a lucky ducky if I was able to borrow my parents' Mitsubishi Colt for a full school day. And I couldn't use the Colt to give any girls a ride home, because the only girl I wanted to give a ride home to had a 20-year-old boyfriend who looked like Judge Reinhold and drove a luxury sedan.

Badass.

Important: Brad Hamilton's greatest scene is certainly his verbal showdown with a dissatisfied customer at All-American Burger. This scene has special meaning for me, as it ought to for anyone who bore the brunt of rude customer complaints while working in a part-time service industry job. As the basis for his complaint, the customer cites All-American Burger's "100% guaranteed" breakfast set.

I can relate to the absurdity of such a guarantee. I used to work at a video rental store which boasted that, "If you're not satisfied with your movie, we'll give you a free rental!" This ridiculous guarantee is a physical customer-vs-cashier altercation waiting to happen. Fortunately, I managed to cut down on potential nastiness by secretly removing all the little signs advertising the guarantee. My boss never even noticed the impact of my workplace sabotage. Of course, a handful of extra-clever customers had already noticed the signs and did what anybody would do: They abused the system to no end.

I am proud to say, however, that I only gave into a questionable demand for a free rental once, and that was because I recommended the movie Fargo to a guy, honestly believing that he would like it. He didn't like it.

Brad, you are 100% guaranteed badass. You take out the garbage. We salute you.

Technorati: Judge Reinhold / Fast Times At Ridgemont High / Fargo

Prowl

On Tuesdays I work with fellow ESL blogger Sleiman. Every Tuesday for the past month our downtime at the workplace is dominated by discussion of the Transformers.

The Transformers franchise was, in its many incarnations, an integral part of my childhood. I watched avidly as Starscream tried to usurp power from Megatron every week on the cartoon show. I worked hard on my impersonation of Soundwave's voice. I ran around pretending to transform, saying, "ee-er-ar-ur." It was a simpler day.

What first comes to my mind when I think of the Transformers today is Prowl. Prowl was a police car that could transform into a robot with twin rocket launchers mounted on his shoulders. He was a hallmark of the Transformers' awesomeness, until the franchise spiralled into madness (characterized by nonsense such as Astrotrain, a foolishly designed robot/locomotive/shace shuttle).

There is much buzz about the new Transformers movie coming out next year, and if Prowl doesn't get a cinamtic treatment worthy of Portrait of a Badass in that movie, I'll be disappointed...especially after his lackluster role and unceremonious, one-hit death at the hand of some lame Constructicon in Transformers: The Movie (1986).

Technorati: Transformers / Portrait of a Badass

Portrait of a Badass: Ren

Character: Ren
Actor: Kevin Bacon
Film: Footloose (1984)
Badass Moment: Ren's anger surpasses the threshhold of smoking, quickly escalating to drinking, then dancing and finally gymnastics

A younger Kevin Bacon once taught us all a few important things. He taught us that we as humans should be able to dance where and when ever we want, and in what ever dippy style we choose. He taught us the value of freedom of expression...and of freedom from persecution by John Lithgow. He taught us all this and more in his role as a big city misfit teen called Ren (you eediot!) in the movie Footloose.

Poor Ren. His parents drag him away from home sweet Chicago and make him attend school in some unidentified rural town (I like to think it exists in the mythical state of South Oklaginiakotah). There Ren finds, to his shock and dismay, the town has an ordinance outlawing dance*. Furthermore, the locals don't take kindly to fancy-pants strangers who come into town with their Sting hairstyles and their skinny neckties and their black and white checkered loafers and think they can just cut the rug any old time they want.

Life in South Oklaginiakotah would get anybody down, to be sure. And sure enough, Ren's frustrations do come to a boiling point in the famous "dancing mad" scene. Through a carefully choreographed campaign of terpsichorean subversion, however, Ren manages to win a tractor race, teach a developmentally stunted farmboy a few "gnarly moves" AND get the town to repeal its despotic anti-dancing statute in time for the senior prom. Thank god for that because, as we all know, prom minus dancing equals nothing but a lot of underage sex.

Ren, you are a badass who doesn't fuse Flashdance with MC Hammer shit. We salute you.

*The town's anti-dancing regulations most likely cite the following obscure Bible excerpt:

"For thus saith the Lord God; In dancing ye shall be damned; And in having an abortion ye shall not necessarilly be damned per se, but be perhaps slightly shunned at My annual Big Heavenly Backyard Barbecue." - Proverbs 10:23

Bait and Switch

I was doing some research this evening about carry-on luggage restrictions (just a few days left before my first visit to the US in more than 18 months) and Google returned this amusing news hit:

As you can see, the headline regarding snakes on a plane is purple because I immediately clicked on it, hoping for a humorous attempt at shock journalism. I could hear the over-dynamic news reporter voice in my head saying, "Snakes On a Plane. You've seen the movie. But could it really happen? Don't miss our special report. It could save your life!"

Unfortunately, the link led to this article about snacks on a plane, not snakes.

It was a lesson in disappointment.

Technorati: carry-on, Snakes On a Plane

Portrait of a Badass: Audrey II

Character: Audrey II
Actor: Levi Stubbs (voice)
Film: Little Shop of Horrors (1986)
Badass Moment: Twoie sings "Feed Me"

I saw Roger Corman's original 1960 B-horror film The Little Shop of Horrors for the first time when I was a kindergartener. Or most of it, anyway; it was being projected in a park in Minneapolis and I think I fell asleep and was taken home by my parents before the ending. Kind of a gruesome film for a little tyke, in retrospect. Fast forward to the VHS release of Frank Oz's film based on the stage musical based on the Roger Corman film, and one would see a nine-year-old me singing along with one of very few musicals I would ever deem "un-stupid." The damage was done. At a very tender age I had been inundated with images of sadistic dentists and man-eating plants.

The plant in question is Audrey II (affectionately called Twoie), whose soulful singing voice serves to convince geeky flower shop employee Seymour Krelborn (Rick Moranis) to feed her as many unfortunate humans as possible. Over the course of the film, viewers witness Audrey II's gradual transformation from a cute little flytrap, to an obnoxious, man-sized adolescent, to a bellicose, room-sized threat to humanity. And all to the tune of one of the catchiest soundtracks ever to deal with the topic of horticultural manslaughter.

Fans of the Corman film and the stage play with their tragic/comic endings might have taken issue with the remake's radically different climax, in which Seymour and Twoie face off in an explosive (literally, explosive) battle to the finish. The way I see it, the ending of the 1986 version is a prime example of the disasters that can come of market research. The remake originally called for a final scene in which giant flytraps run amok, destroying New York City, crawling up the Statue of Liberty, etc. This scene was shown to test audiences in an unfinished state; it was black and white with rudimentary visual effects. I'm willing to bet money that the test audiences saw this and, completely missing the point of the test screening, said "I didn't like the ending," because it looked crappy.

People are stupid that way. I used to work for a market research group that showed movie trailers, sometimes with unfinished effects, and no matter how many times you tell the test audience that the film is not yet finished, they ignore you and say dumb things like, "Why does Lara Croft look like a computer-generated wireframe?" The studio, in turn, misinterprets the test audience's gripe and makes radical changes to the film. Stupid, stupid market research.

Audrey II, you are a mean, green badass from outer space. We salute you.

Portrait of a Badass: Pyramid Head

Character: Pyramid Head*
Actor: Roberto Campanella
Film: Silent Hill (2006)
Badass Moment: Pyramid Head puts an end to Anna and her mopey nonsense.

*I know he's called The Red Pyramid in the movie, but I've been calling him Pyramid Head ever since he scared me out of playing all the way through Silent Hill 2.

The film Silent Hill was released in Japan on Saturday, so after work today I hightailed it to the theater complex in Shinjuku Kabukicho to buy myself ¥1800 worth of big-screen trepidation. As a sometime lover of Konami's Silent Hill games ("lover" may not be the best word...our relationship was complicated), I was sceptical about its cinematic adaptation. I had decided that, in a best-case scenario, the movie would either be A) really scary, or B) faithful to the games. Imagine my delight/horror when it turned out to be C) both A and B.

The appearance of the sword-dragging, mannequin-humping executioner called Pyramid Head was only one of many sources of glee/terror to impress/startle me during the course of this spooky/freaky movie. It is, after all, hard to ignore crucial Silent Hill elements like the rusty chainlink locales, faceless nurses, killer children and, of course, Akira Yamaoka's Portishead-meets-Trent-Reznor's-washing-machine soundtrack. But Pyramid Head is one of the great video game villains, now standing among the likes of Gannon (The Legend of Zelda), Nemesis (Resident Evil 3) and Evil Otto (Berserk).

When his ugly mug (which, despite being a pyramid, is still somehow ugly) shows up on the big screen, a Silent Hill veteran like me can scarcely contain his enthusiasm/revulsion.

Pyramid Head, you are a geometrical badass. We salute/abhor you.