PlasmaSplasm

Okay, I know that the MPAA is stupid and evil. I’ve seen the movie about how they’re a group of religious assholes who censor movies based on random, senseless, conservative and often racist and sexist elements. I’m not writing about how the MPAA sucks in general, but just the most recent way it sucks.

And to do so, I’ll be talking about the Fox Searchlight movie “Once” that was released this year, and can be seen in a theater that has expensive parking and fancy bottled water near you.

“Once” is the story of a street musician who meets a musical cleaning lady, and together they perform some fun, hipster-folk songs and almost fall in love.

And it’s rated R.

My mom told me it was rated R, and I didn’t believe her. I had to go and check myself. Before clicking the link, if you’ve seen the movie try and guess why it’s rated R.
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I would just like to announce that I have failed the spam test!

That’s right! In attempting to leave a comment on one of the entries below (I won’t say which one, but it has to do with awesome dragons), I had to answer a random math question to prove I wasn’t spam-commenting. “What was said question?” you might ask. “I know you’re not very good at math, Brooke, but it must have been pretty tough, right? Perhaps something that makes the quadratic equation look like kindergarten math-time fun?”

Nope! It was:

What is the sum of 0 and 0?

It’s zero, right?! ‘Cause that’s what I put! And don’t even tell me that I needed to show my work!

I think I found the poster for the sequel they’re making to Cesare’s dragon movie. This one looks a little more accurate.

Just when you thought it was safe to go back onto a building.

Though, honestly, if there were real Dragon Wars in the middle of downtown LA, I think it would probably make the place safer to walk around in.

I am about to explain why you are both assholes.

Yesterday, a PS3 was added to the Splasm family. I’ve talked a hearty amount of shit about the PS3 since its disastrous launch, but having been able to play one last weekend, I was swayed. It’s actually pretty fun. The $100 price cut helped, too.

While in Best Buy, I realized I was going to need to buy peripherals to make this thing look good on the TV. I asked an employee where I could find an HDMI cable (for the less nerdy, HDMI cables make images on your hi-def TV look the best). He motioned to the wall by the PS3 games and said, “There are cheap ones there for $60, but you’ll probably want the good ones”. I looked at the empty rack where the good ones usually sit and saw a price tag of $100. Thinking there must be a mistake, I walked over to the actual HDMI cable aisle in the TV section and could only find more expensive cables ($150). Fuck this. I called my Sony-employed friend who told me to buy cheap ones ($40) at Radio Shack because it doesn’t matter which HDMI cables you have, they all work fine. I still felt discomfort at the mounting expenses of the PS3. I had hoped to also buy Planet Earth on Blu-Ray ($100) and Kingdom of Heaven ($30-$40). Baby steps, I thought, and just bought the PS3 without the extra cable. I was resigned to the fact that there must be some costly materials in these cables for them to be so expensive.

This morning, I did some research. A trip to the Monster Cable website reveals an “HDMI Education Center”, and if they open a real one it will probably be in a creation museum.
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Here is a poster for some piece of shit movie:

Pretty shitty, right? I mean, “The Water Horse”? Ever since they ran out of Mimzys, I guess they’ve been resorting to Water Horses. Even the kid looks bored that his rock has space AIDS.

But I’m not here to call attention to something our reader(s) are smart enough to figure out is shitty for themselves. I’m writing because when I read this movie’s MPAA rating my eyes rolled so hard I thought I was having a seizure. I’ve taken the image of the rating from the Apple trailer website (which proclaims boldly “Thw Water Horse” at the top of your browser) so you can see for yourself.

That’s right. Smoking. Is now a part of the rating system. I fear the day is coming soon when the MPAA starts policing whether characters in the movie recycle, drive SUVs, and/or eat fatty foods. I can understand not wanting kids to see Jason Statham fucking Amy Smart in the ass on a newspaper stand in the middle of Chinatown (thank you Crank, for letting me check that one off my list), but smoking? Walk around any city for five minutes (especially New York) and you’ll see tons of people smoking their brains out. Smoking is not some behind closed doors activity. In fact, laws now make it so that smokers must smoke outside for everyone to see. So, after kids have walked past the group of teenage smokers outside of the theater, their parents are now faced with the decision of whether or not to buy a ticket for a movie that has “smoking” in the rating. I guarantee you this movie will lose ticket sales (even if they are just a few) because some idiot parent will look at the rating and say “I don’t want my child to witness the horror of a person smoking a cigarette”. Or maybe in the back of their minds they are afraid that the onscreen smoke may get into the theater and their child will breathe some dreaded “third-hand smoke” (the deadliest, according to science).

The MPAA fails to provide any context for it, either. It doesn’t say if the Water Horse emerges and tells the kids that smoking a pack of Menthol Kools will allow them to breathe in space or if somebody’s gross Uncle has a cigarette and the kids all think he’s stinky. It just says smoking. They could have at least provided the excellent context they usually do and said “perilous action/adventure smoking involving thematic elements and some images that may strike one as being kafka-esque though not always directly so” … and so on in that fashion.

Anyway, score one for Rob Reiner and the grumpy parents of America. You have successfully created a warning system by which parents can avoid something ubiquitous. Now are we going to have to go back in time and re-rate every old movie ever made? If so, Casablanca is fucked.
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Wow! I’m really happy people had as much fun at the Buffy sing-a-long as I did. And thanks for all the comments! What’s even more amazing is that I actually have a question to answer!

Max wrote:

“wow, how did you find out about this and other sing-a-longs? can you let me know where to find info on not jsut buffy but other events like this, it looks like a HELL of a lot of fun.”

Sing-a-longs certainly are a lot of fun, Max. Unfortunately, I mostly know about them just by chance. There is a theater in town that runs Rocky Horror Picture Show every weekend; Moulin Rouge used to play at a nearby AMC every weekend (I would see the ad every time I saw a normal movie); and I happen to know that the Hollywood Bowl hosts a Sound of Music sing-a-long every summer (which I will get to in just a moment). However, in this age of internet, it shouldn’t be too difficult to track them down. I found out about Buffy because the LA Times sent me an e-mail announcing the LA Film Festival. From there, it was pure curiosity that made me look at the entire catalog of titles being shown in alphabetical order. I made it almost to the end of B! I hope that somewhat answers your question, Max.

And now for our feature presentation…

The Sound of Music Sing-a-Long at the Hollywood Bowl!

This was a very interesting to-do. First of all, note that this is a yearly event. Secondly, this yearly event was sold out. (People were very excited.) My sister Olivia was along for the ride again (congratulations, licensed driver!) as well as our two childhood friends, Diana and Beth. We had been wanting to do this for years.

The movie was set to begin at 8:15, but the show started at 6:00 with a costume competition! Two whole hours of costume competition, eh? That just sounded too good to be true, so we showed up at a timely 7:45; just enough time to eat our picnic dinners before the movie started. We could quickly see that a lot of the costumes were little girls who wanted to be Gretel for a day. And who could blame them? She’s adorable! There were some pretty impressive costumes, though, in the top group. The winner was “Trying to hold a moonbeam in your hand.” For those unfamiliar with The Sound of Music, (boys!) this is akin to trying to solve a problem like Maria (how do you catch a cloud and pin it down?). To achieve this feat, a boy (I would say about 10 years old) dressed up as a hand. Extending from the index finger of this hand was a wand. At the end of this wand, was a large crescent paper moon (review of that movie coming, as well!) with some sort of tulle hanging down, acting as the beam. This feat required the boy to hold his arm straight up through the index finger of the hand so that he could hold that wand up. He deserved to win for his stamina alone. And his reward? A Mexican cruise for two! Let’s hope his guest is some sort of legal guardian. Also, does a 10 year-old have to pay income taxes on a cruise? Anywho…

The sing-a-long portion of the evening was great! We somehow missed the bag of props and instructions, but it was pretty amusing to just be surprised by what people started doing at various points in the movie.

One thing I learned from this experience is that if I see somebody that I don’t like (i.e. Baroness Schrader), I should hiss loudly until they go away - even if that takes a half hour for them to do so. Also, targeting their head with a red (or green) laser is also effective. I will have to try this out in the office sometime.*

(*A note to Buffy sing-a-long attendees: You think Dawn had it rough! What she got didn’t even compare to what was liberally dished out to the Baroness.)

The singing was enthusiastic. The use of the champagne poppers was great (when the Baron and Maria finally kiss in the gazebo). And the night and surroundings were beautiful!

As for just the film in general, I never really liked it as a kid. It was one of those things that was reintroduced to me in college and I instantly loved it. Sure, there’s a bunch of adorable singing kids running around in lederhosen, which makes it endlessly fun for kids, but this is really an adult film at it’s heart. There is so much innuendo that goes right over the head of a kid, but makes the adult go, “Oh, snap! No he di’int!” And let’s not forget the wonderfulness that is Christopher Plummer. So dapper! So suave! As a kid, I thought he was an old man named Georg (pronounced “gay-org” for you boys). But, as an adult, it’s a very dashing Captain von Trapp that presents himself. So sexy and…well, you get the point.

Great movie, great sing-a-long, great fun.

Splasm readers!!

I come bearing news of great importance! For some time now, I have wanted to make a list of the greatest films ever made. That’s right, EVER. All time. As you can imagine, this list has proved difficult. First, there’s the problem of watching every movie ever made (my Netflix queue is over 320 movies long and that’s just movies that I’ve heard of and want to see). Second is figuring out a way to compare the most incomparable of movies (should Carpenter’s The Thing be higher on the list than The Jungle Book?) Third is, ah well–fuck it. Making that list is a pain in the ass. I should just get to my point.

Last night I discovered that imdb.com has already made such a list. It’s not their bizarrely spotty Top 250 list (Hotel Rwanda? Seriously?). Rather, this 203 film list represents everything that makes cinema grand. What pulls strangers from all walks of life into a dark room to be transfixed together. Ladies, gentlemen, I give you THE LIST.

The trailer for the 1972 movie “Frogs” ends with the announcer yell-whispering “FROGS IS COMING!” Too bad I watched the trailer after the movie. I now understand why people watch trailers first. Damn! Anyway, I want to share with you some thoughts I had while watching it (as monster movie research).

This movie is a total failure on every conceivable level. I am going to explain why beginning with a very important list.
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