You Failed to Make A Movie: Alive or Dead

I don't know why I was expecting anything else. There's a reason slasher films go direct-to-video, after all, but this one was just unreasonably bad.

I'm not going to full describe the film as I usually do, because it's late and I'm tired, so I'm just going to use the magic of point form to lay out my problems with it:

It turns out Andy Kaufman is defintiely dead.

II know this, because last night, Saturday Night Live killed him.

Here's the story, in short form: Recently, Andy Samberg did an uncanny impression of Mark Wahlberg in a sketch titled "Mark Wahlberg talks to animals". Here's a clip of it, along with Mark Wahlberg's flattered response:

So now I have to have contempt for Garth Ennis as well.

I recently read the first issue of Garth Ennis' "Crossed", a new entry in the zombpocalypse genre, in which people desperately band together to flee from the ravening crowd. You may ask "Hey, Count, what separates this particular zombpocalypse comic from all the other ones out there in the market?" Well, in addition to being much worse written, its zombies aren't technically dead yet (like 28 Days Later - also terrible, By The Way), and unlike normal zombies, they absolutely love to rape! Yeah, they can't get enough of that rape. If you forced them to choose between raping and eating flesh, they wouldn't be able to, so instead they'd hit you with a hammer and then do both to you while you were unconscious.

I'm not shocked to see this show up in Garth Ennis' zombie comic, after all, his latest series "The Boys" deals primarily with super-powered rapists and the 'fellas' that work for the CIA and try to put them in their place. Sure, I found the rape scene objectionable, but it was just the unpleasnt cherry atop the worthless pie that is the rest of the comic.

I Hate Indiana Jones: Day 49

Day 49: Indiana Jones and the Lack of Scope

The film Raiders of the Lost Ark contains two images that I feel people associate with it more than any other. I'm not talking about action scenes, or fun exploding heads, or even glamour shots of Harrison Ford posing for promotional purposes. I'm speaking specifically about single frames that everyone takes away from the movie and identify with it more than any other image. The first, and it's no coincidence that this is the frame that you see more often than on any other when people want to show something from Raiders of the Lost Ark, is Indiana Jones crouched in front of the gold idol preparing to switch it for a bag of sand.


The second image is the one that closes the film: is a matte painting of the storage facility (which Crystal Skull identifies as "Area 51") where the Ark of the covenant is being housed. It's a captivating image that slyly suggests the futility of all Indy's death defying feats while at the same time leaving the audience with the slightly unsettling question of what other items of occult significance the government has stacked up in the facility.

I Hate Indiana Jones: Day 48

Day 48: Indiana Jones and the Midnight Rocket Train

Today we go back to the beginning of the film and look at a sequence that is among the worst edited in recent memory. And by worst, I don't mean that it contains myriad continuity errors or is over cut to the point of incoherence like a Paul Greengrass Bourne movie, no I'm talking about bizarre editing creating huge lapses in time.

As the film opens it's noon or fairly close to it. We can determine this because the groundhog that pops its head up during the opening has almost no visible shadow. To give the filmmakers the benefit of the doubt we're going to assume that it's after noon here, somewhere in the vicinity of one o'clock. The main reason I'm giving this benefit of the doubt is that I don't have the necessary information I would need to nitpick any further, such as in which direction the driveway to Area 51 runs. Somehow I doubt googlemaps would be much help on this one.

Count Vardulon's Picto-Quiz: AVP2!

There's more than a few things wrong with Aliens Versus Predator 2: Requiem, but today isn't about nitpicking myriad flaws. No, that's what every other day is for. Today, on the other hand, is all about reader participation.

In that spirit, I'd like to present the first-ever Castle Vardulon picto-quiz! Below you'll find a series of actual images reduced form actual screenshots captured from an actual DVD of the actual film AVP2:R. So what's the quiz? I have selected thirty-five moments from the film. A number of them have been flipped upside-down. Can you identify which ones they are? I've included descriptions of events transpiring in the pictures to help you out.

I Hate Indiana Jones: Day 47

Day 47: Indiana Jones and the Deja Kung Fu

As I've mentioned in a previous entry, the Zombie Monkey Kung Fu Indians weren't a great idea. That being said, I'm sure they would have been more bearable had they not been so bafflingly repetitive. There's a simple rule to go by if you're going to put something odd, or stupid, or cheap in a movie: If it absolutely has to be there, get it onscreen, get it out of the way quickly, and then move on. And whatever you do, if it was ridiculous the first time, don't bring it back. Heck, even things that were absolutely wonderful the first time in a film can find themselves giving off a stink of increativity the second time around.

I Hate Indiana Jones: Day 46

Day 46: Indiana Jones and the Shamed Name

Today's entry is a pretty obvious problem that I'm sure nearly everyone who saw the film in the theatre noticed. Beyond its obviousness, though, it's deceptively important, and I feel the mistake being made says much more about the filmmakers attitude towards the character than they intended it to. What I talking about? The film's steadfast refusal to refer to its main character by the name "Indiana Jones".

This one was so unexpected and completely out of left field that I almost thought I was hearing things. Or rather not hearing things. Somehow every time a character goes to talk to Indiana Jones they referred to him up by his proper birth name: "Henry Jones Jr". His friends call him that. His enemies call him that. Letters address him as that. Even the government calls him that. Why? That's not his name.

I Hate Indiana Jones: Day 45

Day 45: Indiana Jones and the Absence of a Good Henchman

When talking about the Indiana Jones franchise the villains tend to get a lot of attention and rightfully so. The first film's 1-2 punch of Belloq and Toht makes for one of the greatest villain combinations of all time, and while Mola Ram doesn't get a lot of screen time in Temple of Doom, it doesn't stop him from being memorably menacing. By comparison, the lack of any quality or even noteworthy villains in Last Crusade is yet another strike that film has against it. As wonderful as those central villains are, though, in praising them we can wind up overlooking the smaller characters that made the film's action sequences so compelling: the henchmen.

Specifically I'm speaking of the three henchmen played by one actor across two films. The actor/stuntman's name is Pat Roach, and he was former British wrestler who cut an imposing figure and could sell a punch like nobody's business. In Raiders of the Lost Ark he portrayed both the giant sherpa who wrestles with Indiana Jones in Marion's bar and the Nazi mechanic who has an unfortunate run in with the flying wing's propeller. He returned for Temple of Doom to don offensive brownface once more as the giant thugee guard who forces Indiana Jones to drink blood and enter the thugee black sleep.

On the Subject of Durham County...

Having been inundated with ads for Durham County for two weeks straight about eight months ago, the delayed-reaction suggestibility part of my brain finally clicked off and I wound up renting it last weekend. I watched the six episodes back to back, and was more than a little puzzled by what I'd seen.

For the most part it's a standard enough story of a guy who loves to murder (Justin Louis), and the incredibly contrived series of interrelated coincidences that conspire to cover up for his crimes. Peep this:

I Hate Indiana Jones: Day 44

Day 44: Indiana Jones and the Idiotic Archaeologist Part Five

I'm wrapping up this week with a relatively short article because today's subject really kind of speaks for itself. In fact, while speaking for itself it goes to the trouble of telling the audience in the clearest possible terms exactly what the filmmakers think of Indiana Jones' intellectual capacity. Once again I treat you to some dialogue from the film:

Scene: Indiana Jones has just arrived inside the temple of the crystal skull's treasure room. Before him he finds a huge repository of items from our world's ancient cultures in showroom condition, suggesting that the aliens had traveled the world throughout history collecting items of artistic and cultural value, then stored them inside the temple, safe from any degradation or wear.

Harrison Ford: My God... they were archaeologists!

Again I'm going to have to point out exactly what the filmmakers are trying to get across with this line. They want you, the audience, to think that Indiana Jones is so stupid that he doesn't even know what his own job is.

Archaeology is defined as exploring the lives of people throughout history by examining what traces remain of those lives. Indiana Jones has spent his entire life both doing this and teaching would-be archaeologists about the rewards and difficulties of attempting to understand the people and cultures that existed before us. That is in no way what the aliens were doing.

The film explicitly shows us the aliens have been here for an incredibly long amount of time. In that time they clearly explored the globe studying the cultures of man and collecting notably representative items. How exactly does that differ from what Indiana Jones does? Well, for one thing, the aliens weren't doing it hundreds of years after these societies ceased to exist. They were picking up the artifacts while the cultures were still producing them. This makes the aliens not archaeologists at all, but rather anthropologists. Although even the term 'anthropologist' suggests a scientific interest in studying the races of man that the aliens in no way demonstrate. Really the best term we can use to describe them is simply 'collector'.

That's how stupid this film's incarnation of Indiana Jones is. He can't understand the difference between someone like him who spent his entire life trying to gain a better understanding of the peoples of history, and the person who travels around the world picking up souvenirs to remind him of his trips.

Looking back on this week's articles I realized something. All this time I've been writing about my hatred for Indiana Jones assumed that the fire in my heart and bile in my gut was somehow unique, and that perhaps I hated Indiana Jones more than anyone else in the world. Observing how little respect the filmmakers had to one of the great fictional creations of the past thirty years I find myself realizing that when it comes to hating Indiana Jones, compared to the filmmakers I'm strictly an amateur.

I Hate Indiana Jones: Day 43

Day 43 Indiana Jones and the Idiotic Archaeologist Part Four

Interestingly, the film seems to tacitly acknowledge the growing idiocy of the Indiana Jones character, in that he never actually has to figure anything out. He's supposed to be a brilliant archaeologist and beloved professor who uses his mind to first to solve the puzzles and uncover historical mysteries, and his gun second, when when threatened by fascists and communists - although he's very nervous about shooting communists for some reason. What's startling about this film is that it never asks Indiana Jones to figure anything out. He's just a character who gets told where to go and what to do, first by communists, then by Shia Laboeuf, then by a crystal skull.

CSI Wednesday!

The Scene: A psychiatrist's home office. The psychiatrist's daughter has been stabbed to death, and now the psychiatrist is refusing to suggest which one of her patients might have done it, despite the fact that, the night before, one of her patients had talked extensively about sneaking into her house and murdering her in exactly the way the daughter died, and then proceeded to threaten the doctor with a gun.

Psychiatrist: I took an oath.
Horatio Caine: So did I.

Sadly, this all happened indoors, so there was no need to put on or take off sunglasses. Sigh.

I Hate Indiana Jones: Day 42

Day 42 Indiana Jones and the Idiotic Archaeologist Part Three

Today the idiocy moves out of the jungle and into a malt shoppe, in an earlier scene as Mutt Williams tries to explain to Indiana Jones just why his help was needed to save the day. In trying to ascertain just how he knew Shia Laboeuf's mother, Harrison discovers that her name was "Mary". He then opines that he's 'known' such an incredibly large number of women that just the name Mary isn't in the least bit helpful.

This raises the question of exactly why Indiana Jones would have said that at all. In addition to making it seem like he's bragging about all of the tail he's scored over the years, it's an incredibly dickish thing to say in front of the woman's son. It essentially implies that Indiana Jones is a man of such loose morals and low character that his mother would have had to been a huge tramp to spend any time at all with him back in the day.

I Hate Indiana Jones: Day 41

Day 41: Indiana Jones and the Idiotic Archaeologist Part Two

When addressing yesterday's problems I left out the most egregious and offensive aspect of the entire scene. That's right, there's something more egregious than the way Indiana Jones, a professor of archaeology, demonstrating a total disdain for all practices of archaeology or, in fact, human decency. No, the absolute stupidest, most offensive thing about the scene is the dialogue.

The scene: Indiana Jones is preparing to open up a mummy for absolutely no reason. He turns to Shia Laboeuf.

Harrison Ford: Do you have a knife?