Beat It - The Communist Version

If you think that communism is dead you better think again. Now they're trying to co-opt one of the free world's greatest weapons - the music of Michael Jackson - by claiming that they came up with "Beat It" 30 years earlier.

Watch the official government video made by the Chinese Communist Party and see for yourself.

More intensity. Oddly the Red China military uniform doesn't look that different from Michael's own arm-banded military look. It's also surprising how well the "tai chi" the main dude does go with the music. Actually there is no main dude, they are all equal.

The Many Names of John Anderson

In the MST3K episode "Space Mutiny", Mike and robot companions have a running gag throughout the movie where they give the musclehead protagonist various manly nicknames.

I thought it was so funny, I edited together all the names throughout the movie into a single montage so that I could share it with others. Others had the same idea and uploaded theirs to youtube before I could.

Hilarious. It still cracks me up. Receiving this link in an email today, I wanted to respond with the other time that the MST3K crew did this - the episode that fewer people know about... In the earlier episode "12 to the Moon", the exact same gag was utilized with the beefy male model protagonist of that picture. But, HOLD ON, somehow no video for THIS occurence existed on youtube.

Until now. I uploaded it myself. For the first time ever, I give you "The Many Names of John Anderson":

Maybe We Ain't That Young Anymore

Cemetery Junction (2010)

The first film from writers/directors Stephen Merchant and Ricky Gervais, "Cemetery Junction" has been eagerly anticipated by me for a few years.

Set in England in the 1970's it's a slightly different type of "coming of age" film in which the characters are in their early to mid 20's and not teenagers. Drinking, getting into fights and still living in their home town, they suddenly realize that they're not young anymore and it's time to do something with their lives.

For Merchant/Gervais it's a slight departure in that it's not a straight forward comedy but focuses rather on drama, romance and relationships. It's also, as was already mentioned, not a typical coming of age film as it borrows from "Rebel Without a Cause", "The Apartment" or possibly "Swingers" more so than, say, "The Breakfast Club" but also with some "Saturday Night Fever" thrown in (or so I'm told). It's also a departure as neither Ricky or Steve plays one of the main characters though Ricky has a bit part, Steve has a small cameo and there is even a (brief) appearance by Karl Pilkington.

It's quite a good movie and although it took a while to get into, by the end I was quite into the characters and story. The soundtrack is a big factor - the climax of the movie feature's Led Zeppelin's "The Rain Song" played over the film in its entirety. Ralph Fiennes is quite good as usual and Emma Watson ("Punch-Drunk Love", "Equilibrium", "Synecdoche, New York") gives another understated but excellent performance.

Although it's better than 99% of everything that comes out of Hollywood I can sort of see why it wasn't released in the US and I've had to wait for this long for it to come out on DVD. The thick British accents get to be quite hard to understand at times and I, yes even I, was reduced to turning on the closed captioning. Still, it's a non-issue if you're used to reading subtitles on the occasional foreign film.

It's a little bit unfair to how good the movie is and how much work and effort it took to make but the movie itself is a little overshadowed by the Director's Commentary which is one of the funniest DVD commentaries I've ever heard. As a Gervais/Merchant fan it's probably to be expected but they are hilarious in their ridiculous banter. The only funnier commentary that comes to mind is the "This Is Spinal Tap" commentary where the band all discuss the movie in-character but that's a high standard to reach.

All in all, a 9 out of 5.

GET TO THE CHOPPER!!!

Reality shows mar the landscape like bird poop on a field of statues. However, there is one show that represents everything that "reality television" can be (and should be) when all of the stars align and everything is perfect.

"American Chopper" (now called "American Chopper: Senior vs. Junior") premiered last week and within the first five minutes of the first episode I had a surge of adrenaline like the Phillies were about to play a playoff game. This has a great deal to do with the fact that the show format starts off with "last season on 'American Chopper'" and what happened last season was a giant blowout between father and son where Paul Jr. was fired.

But part of it, too, is that judging by the first episode, "American Chopper" is everything reality television can be. Truth is funnier and stranger and more interesting than fiction but most reality shows fail to recognize this and do the exact opposite: take the veneer of reality and script/edit/manipulate it to a bloody pulp. The result - as in my bird analogy - as we've all seen is crap. "American Chopper", when it works, is more like watching sports than episodic television or a sitcom. You care about the characters, you wonder what's going to happen next, you wait with bated breath to see whether they will succeed or fail. And yet, you can't escape the drama and tension - you can't step outside the three walls and simply think that the "writers aren't going to end it that way"; there are no writers, there is no predictable outcome. And you can't dismiss the tension by reminding yourself that "it's just a movie"; it's real people with real problems that can really fail or triumph, they live and breath and can really get hurt. There are no unrealistic twists, no bad actors, no poor sets or cheap special effects. The characters are three dimensional, the action is unpredictable and there are no dei ex machina.

Early last season Paul Jr. was (quite shockingly) fired from a company that he helped create and the television show that documents said company completely flew apart in all directions. The show had always been about the father-son relationship as well as making bikes but after the battle there was no relationship. The plot split in two (Junior/Senior) where Junior thought about starting a boutique (see, you can't write that) and Senior was left to make bikes however he wanted with no real creative process. It turns out that a weekly show about two guys not talking to each other while a drab bike gets built smoothly and easily can be pretty boring and the show was cancelled after it's first truly bad season.

Now, with a lawsuit still pending, Paul Jr. has decided to start up his own shop in direct competition with his father and former business partner. And to help him, he's bringing in a few other former OCC employees that fans of the show will surely recognize - namely Vinny and Nubs. While fans of the show will surely remember these guys, for those who don't, it's like if Mr. T and Hulk Hogan announced that they were going to come back to the WWF for one more tag team match... It would be like that only much less exciting... but then everything in the world is much less exciting than that so my simile is poorly chosen.

But with father and son going head to head, with Paul back designing bikes, with Vinny back building them, with a true underdog vs. Evil Corporation story line, with emotions flaring and people breaking down, with sweet construction montages that include flying sparks, grinding and welding, and as always, really cool motorcycles, it could be an amazing series once again.

It was a little while ago that "Lost" ended and with it a recurring weekly obsession to see the next episode and find out what happens. If the first episode of "American Chopper" is an indication, that terrible torment is back.

Brothers In Arms

Recently Will Ferrell and Jimmy Fallon reminisced about, and played a clip of, the old days where they both were actors on the Canadian soap opera "Jacob's Patience".

Jimmy doesn't even keep a straight face during the setup to the skit.

Oddly, I was recently watching a "Thunderbirds" movie and thinking how strange it was and thinking it was just plain creepy and stupid. This reminds me of that whole "marionette acting" a bit.

Mitchell, Webb, Donald Kaufman?

Thanks to the powers of Netflix, I've recently been going through the British sketch comedy show "That Mitchell and Webb Look". It's actually pretty funny and I'm surprised I'm only now learning about it since it started in 2006 and I've known about David Mitchell ever since he was a panelist on the fantastic quiz show "QI".

I might post a few clips on this blog in future (because, frankly, who's gonna stop me) but I had to at least post this one. If "Synecdoche, New York" were a comedy sketch it would be this. And anything with that description is worth watching.

That Mitchell and Webb Look - The Chiropractor