February 18, 2006
The year's off to a great start
Posted by pete at February 18, 2006 9:00 AMLatest reviews are up at Film Threat, including:
Freedomland (**) - had potential, but couldn't make up its mind on what kind of movie it wanted to be.
Date Movie (0) - Yeah, I reviewed it even though we left about a half hour in. If Fox doesn't see fit to show me the movie until the Thursday before it opens, I don't really feel compelled to cut them any slack. And every minute of these lousy movies I sit through reminds me of the grim specter of Death waiting at the end of the ride.
That broken graphic on the review is the "Zero Stars" graphic, which still hasn't been fixed, for some reason. If the beginning of 2006 has been any indication, I'm going to need it several more times before the year's out.
One other film (threat) related note. Maybe some of you saw this on The Daily Show the other night:
That's our logo, all right (minus the little "TM" at the end), in spite of some minor variations (our letters are actually connected). It was used in conjunction with a story about Valley of the Wolves - Iraq, a Turkish movie ("starring" Billy Zane and Gary Busey) about how American troops ship Iraqi civilians to a Jewish doctor (Busey) so he can steal their organs. I had a feeling Zane's career was going in this direction, and said as much in my Silver City review.
Busey's involvement is, in a word, unsurprising.
The logo stays on screen for a good while. I'm told several Daily Show staffer are fans of the site, but I stand by my assertion - made after seeing it last night (The Wife kindly taped it for me) - that a friendly note to Comedy Central which thanks them for the pub, but requests that they ask us next time, wouldn't be a bad idea.
That way, when someone we don't like as much (say, Bill O'Reilly or Uwe Boll) does it, we can more easily tell them to piss up a rope.
No, the logo stayed on for four seconds until the next piece of footage.
No, the logo stayed on for four seconds until the next piece of footage
No, the logo was on for eight seconds, right after the Catholic guy. It served as his seque into bad depcitions of Americans internationally.
And eight seconds, rodeo association aside, is a pretty long time on a 30-minute joke TV news show.
Corrected. You count these off better than I usually do, though the logo appeared after Gary Busey's face in the box and before the Catholic guy. I'm going to stop nit-picking over this. I almost feel like I should be counting fishsticks.
By the way, I hope you checked your review of Date Movie. Eric restored that graphic and it's a perfect pairing with your review.
In order to add to the nitpicking, I restored the zero stars and associated slateboy graphic. Oh, and Pete is correct. The logo appeared after Busey/before Catholic League and then again after Catholic League/before terrorist stereotypes. Don't believe me, watch it at: http://www.filmthreat.com/index.php?section=videos&Id=38
And Pete, show us some love, link to the Film Threat blog, you bastard!!! We link to you...
I have never understood why Billy Zane isn't a huge movie star. He's better looking than Tom Cruise, and a better actor (okay, that's damning with faint praise). If I've said this exact same thing before, feel free to not inform me. Thanks.