Despite all of the trailers, pre-reviews, and Sundance and whatever, I still found myself surprised this morning as I pressed play on the honest-to-goodness Tim & Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie. From the name to the concept to just the general unbelievability of 90 minutes of Awesome Show, there were some years where I thought that the whole idea of a T&E movie was just a big prank. Perhaps it actually began as one, but eventually the two dudes decided to call everyone’s bluff, and here we are. The results, I’m happy to say, are quite good.

Much of what I’ve heard from other reviewers is that if you’re a T&E fan then you’ll be a pig in slop (which is true. very, very disgusting slop) but I’ve also heard a lot of admonishments in the vein of them refusing to adapt their aesthetic to the big screen so as to attract new fans. This (though it very well may not reflect in ticket sales) is most certainly not true. This is not just 90 minutes of Awesome Show, far from it. It’s not as meticulously plotted as, say, Chinatown, but it’s still a narrative motion picture.

After a haltingly wonderful prologue starring Jeff “Chef” Goldblum, the movie starts with Tim and Eric (playing themselves) screening their billion dollar film for its backer, a still intimidating Robert Loggia and his sniveling sidekick played by William Atherton. The short film, Bonjour Diamond Jim, is hysterically terrible, and the boys end up in huge trouble and on the lam.

Which brings them to the (historic) S’wallow Valley Mall, a genuinely scary derelict space pawned off on them by the loose cannon Damien Weebs (Will Ferrell) with the promise of a billion dollar reward for fixing it up. How convenient! From there it settles into a generic “let’s get this business running!” narrative onto which Tim and Eric can hang the incredibly bizarre asides and jokes. The scenes of just the two of them talking are probably my favorite, more than any quirky editing trick or hyperkinetic montage.

The funniest and most impressive thing about Tim & Eric (for me) has always been their brilliance with speech patterns and vocal ticks, and with the luxury of time afforded to them in this format they can really let loose on having long, strange conversations full of stutters, mispronunciations, malapropisms, lip flutters, and Tim Heidecker’s patented jaw double-clutch. It’s times like those when you can really sense the difference between the movie and the show.

Don’t get me wrong, the movie is still manic, but it leaves itself time to breathe more than I expected. It also, as I’m sure you’ve noticed from the trailers, looks much better, which I worried about, but ended up being fine if unremarkable. Then, of course, there’s the, uhh, vulgarity. Awesome Show has always been crass, but B$M is hard, hard R, bordering on NC-17. It’s chock-o-block with violence (including against children and old people), sex, chunky semen, bathtubs full of liquid feces, and John C. Reilly’s belly.

One thing that isn’t different is the supporting cast, which is rounded out by Awesome Show regulars as well as frequent celebrity guests like Reilly, Goldblum, Ferrell, Will Forte, and Zach Galifianakis. Reilly is predictably fantastic, though he doesn’t play Steve Brule, instead a shy, deathly ill, borderline feral man child named Taquito. The real surprise for me was Ferrell. His schtick has been getting real tired recently, but his sinister and tenuous Weebs is a comedic creation par excellence.

If there’s one real complaint I could level it’s that the movie is almost too consistent. I fully expected it to be 60-75% brilliant, and the rest totally misfiring/boring/what have you. Instead, the movie runs at a static “very good” throughout it’s runtime. This is by no means a bad thing. But few moments really stick in the mind as gut-bustingly hysterical. You’ll laugh the whole time, but you might not fall out of your chair. Regardless, by the time the David Liebe Hart scored ending credits started up, I found myself back at my first thought, this time with a big smile instead of trepidation: holy shit, they made a Tim & Eric movie!

So are you into like gnarly, violent prisons? Did I mention it was a space prison? I got the movie for you!! OH YEAH! SPACE PRISON. Dropping on 4/20/12, is Lockout, the perfect movie to get high as shit and go see. This sci-fi extravaganza, written by Fifth Element and Taken auteur Luc Besson, is basically about Guy Pearce imitating Kurt Russell and being a badass.

His freedom from some other (non-space?) prison is offered (freedom isn’t free) if he can rescue the president’s daughter from MS-ONE, which has been taken over by violent inmates and plot machinations!! The president’s daughter is played by career hostage, Maggie Grace (Taken, Lost). The subconscious character imprint is strong with this one. She needs to work on her “stop getting kidnapped” game.

For some reason, nearly four decades after the release of The Wicker Man, British director Robin Hardy decided it would be a fantastic idea to revisit the world of horrific Celtic paganism. The Wicker Tree, which Hardy is calling a “spiritual sequel,” is getting limited release this weekend but just like the 2006 remake of the original, it’s best to stay far away from Wicker Tree and go put on a bear costume and punch some women instead.

Before tearing into the film, I do want to say that Hardy, who’s been more or less out of the film business for two decades, remains really confident behind the camera. There’s nothing technically wrong with The Wicker Tree at all and some of the scenes feel really inspired. It’s hard not to make the Scottish countryside look amazing and Hardy and his director of photography Jan Hester do a great job of capturing its cinematic aesthetics. The interiors of the castles and cottages are nice as well. But then there’s the story.

While The Wicker Man saw a good moral policeman investigating the missing of a young girl on a Scottish isle, The Wicker Tree dumps two born again Christians in the middle of a village of murderours pagans. Too easy, right? Evangelical country singer Beth (Brittania Nicol) and her fiance Steve (Henry Garrett) travel to a village in Scotland to spread the word of the Lord. The villagers and the leader Sir Lachlan Morrison (Graham MacTavish) welcome the naive couple with open arms and even invite them to be the belles of their May Day Festival. You see where this is going.

Beth and Steve are filled with wide-eyed enthusiasm and that dreadful Born Again Gusto, but none of the villagers ever come off as menacing. Not even when all Hell breaks loose at the Festival. There’s no primal pagan fervor like in the 1973 film. The entire ritual and its participants come off as a bunch of sluggish lazybones. Where’s that ol’ macabre pagan spirit?! Much of the film suffers from this chronic laziness. There are a lot of throwaway bits that could have led to something either creepy or funny, but go nowhere. Like when Beth catches one of her pre-Christian music videos on television (what a whore she was!) and Steve gets excited. This could lead to some great gags and drama later on, but it’s dropped then and there. Even the 60 second cameo by Christopher Lee is lazy.

The film is intentionally funny in some parts – Hardy meant for this film to be comedy/horror. The problem is, I was never sure what I was supposed to be laughing at. It’s a sloppy script that could’ve used some serious tightening up. There’s a whole subplot about contamination from a nuclear power plant that is way overdone. Right when the climax has a great chance to make an impression, it fizzles and sighs. Just rewatch The Wicker Man instead.

Huh. That was… not what I was expecting? I’ve been hearing about the partly crowd-funded Nazi/Sci-Fi/Retrofuture movie Iron Sky for what seems like 2-3 years now, and a trailer finally dropped for the now completed film. The tone is way (WAY) different than I thought. I was expecting something that was po faced and epic, like Sky Captain, but this is more like one of the Grindhouse mid-film trailers expanded to feature length. I guess I’m down with that.

About halfway through I said to myself “holy shit, Udo Kier has to be in this movie” and lo and behold, there he was. So we got Udo Kier, that never hurt anyone. I guess the story is that a cadre of (immortal?) Nazis have been living on the dark side of the Moon since the end of WWII, constructing a massive space base that they will eventually use to fuck America. In its face. I’m in! It premieres next month at the Berlin Film Festival, and will hopefully land in America (direct to DVD I’m gonna assume) soon.

You’ve probably seen them on the street yourself if you live on the eastern seaboard: a tile embedded in the asphalt, words cut by hand into it, sometimes a small figure nearby. “Toynbee Idea In Movie 2001 Resurrect Dead On Planet Jupiter.” Maybe some other words on the edges, fragments of an incomprehensible whole. And for most, this is a momentary oddity. A piece of street art perhaps, or the work of a deluded prankster. And you move on, and the rest of your life happens normally. But, at least for some, that’s not the case. Resurrect Dead: The Mystery of The Toynbee Tiles is the story of those people.

Following three people who come together over their mutual obsession with the tiles to finally track down their originator, Resurrect Dead is a mostly engaging story of not only a slow-burn mystery but also the investigators. Each has come upon the tiles in different ways (there are hundreds of them) but each shares a similar devotion to them: exhaustively photographing and cataloging them, poring over their details, posting them up by their beds.

At least at first, I found the three guys, especially Justin Duerr, a Philly based visual artist who is the central character, more interesting than the tiles. There is a long period of fallow as far as revelations that is unfortunately placed at the beginning of the film, but luckily the unpacking of Justin’s character is a surprisingly effecting study of a strange, somewhat sad man who fills his time with the Toynbee tiles as a sort of security blanket from the world. I really felt for the guy, and he more than buoyed up a potentially deadly first act.

Luckily, and to my surprise, the actual mystery of the tiles ends up picking up considerably. Through various avenues the guys end up with 4 potential suspects, one of whom (hilariously and, eventually, falsely) may or may not be writer David Mamet. Nevertheless, the investigation of the other potential culprits is a impressively deep and layered puzzle, with roots stretching to the early eighties and through subjects as varied as headstone carving, South American slums, pirate radio, train conducting, Larry King, cult activity, and more.

Despite the relatively low stakes of the whole affair, the filmmakers even manage to wring some urgency out of certain sections, including a strangely recreated but still tense moment where Justin encounters a tile that has just been layed down only minutes before and runs down the street yelling “I believe.” As I said, he’s a little strange. Saying anymore or spoiling anything is a useless endeavor, so instead I suggest you track down this movie as it winds down its tour on the festival/small theater circuit. There really aren’t too many mysteries left for the layman in our world, but these guys found one of them.

Continuing their quest to inundate their fans with fun and shenanigans while simultaneously coming off as too strange to recruit any new followers, Tim and Eric have started a new campaign to support the upcoming release of their movie. T&E’s B$M Pledge is the perfect thing for anyone who wants to let the world know how much they like T&E and how everyone else should too. So basically any T&E fan.

Consisting of a written and signed pledge that you will not only see B$M, but you will also bring at least one member of your family (or close friend, they’re not crazy) to the screening, which will be at a movie theater (unless it’s not playing within 50 miles) and you most definitely will not Torrent it, and you will tell at least 4 other people about it. Oh, and you definitely will not go see the movie Lorax. Because it looks bad.

Check out their YouTube Channel for taped pledges by Weird Al, Karen O, James Murphy, Paul Rudd, Elijah Wood, and more. And watch B$M on On Demand this Friday. Unless it’s coming to a theater near you. You promised.

The 2012 Academy Award nominations were announced early this morning and for some reason I can’t explain, I still give a shit about this. Everyone knows that the Academy always makes predictable choices – taking the bait of emotionally manipulative movies, especially historical biopics about royalty overcoming stuttering problems. This year the nominations are even more of a joke, with brazen snubs and jackass picks abound.

Any film with an inkling of indie production or spirit was overlooked, while bullshit movies that stick to the Oscar formula are lavished with nominations. Original, challenging movies like Take Shelter, Drive, Martha Marcy, and 50/50 are completely snubbed while moronic productions like War Horse and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close are nominated heavily. It’s been obvious for years that the Oscars award celebrity status and not actual achievements in cinema, so it’s really no surprise. But this year stings more than usual.

I’m not unhappy with the nominations that went to The Help, Hugo, and Nick Nolte, who got a very well deserved nod for his supporting role in Warrior. C’mon, the hotel scene where he gets blasted listening to Moby Dick on tape was absolutely gut wrenching. I watched The Help a few weeks ago. I put it on while doing laundry thinking it would be some bland 90 minutes about civil rights, but by the end I was weeping into my freshly washed towels. I honestly hope The Help sweeps this shit. Cheers to Bridesmaids, Tinker Tailor, and Bullhead as well.

While we didn’t review them on the Bloglin, I’ve seen The Artist and Moneyball, both nominated for Best Picture as well as in several other categories. These were two of the best reviewed movies of the year, but are you fucking kidding me? The Artist is a well-crafted gimmick with no heart and Moneyball was as deep as a bird bath. Brad Pitt plays Brad Pitt and people eat that shit up whether it’s engaging or not. Moneyball was a saccharine underdog movie with no emotional insight whatsoever. Oh I’m sorry, he does cry when his daughter plays guitar. *fart noise*

As much as I bitch, will I watch the Oscars next month? Of course I will. I’ll get drunk and scream at the TV and annoy my girlfriend about how retarded the Academy is. But at least they’re over at 11:00pm, just in time for Seinfeld.

For full list of nominees, hit the jump:

(more…)

To see Godzilla as more than standard monster movie fare, it’s essential to understand where Japan was coming from in the years leading up to the movie. They were the first country to have nuclear bombs dropped on it and because of U.S. hydrogen bomb experiments at Bikini Atoll, they were the first country to have a man die of radiation poisoning. To say those events changed Japan’s culture is a pathetic understatement. Worse yet, because of the U.S. occupation following WWII, they weren’t allowed to express their fears and rage. Once U.S. occupation dissolved, filmmakers tended to focus their lenses on portrayals of Japanese patriotism and militaristic might.

Then Godzilla came along in 1954 like a big, green middle finger to the establishment. He was the embodiment of years of frustration and anxiety and he blew up like no other film in Japanese history; spawning over 30 sequels and kicking off the kaiju phenomenon. Japanese audiences cheered when Godzilla trampled Tokyo – especially the government buildings – and they wept when he died, alone, at the bottom of the ocean. No other monster sparked so much empathy from its audience- a reason Godzilla endures today. Now the King of the Monsters has gotten the Criterion Collection treatment on DVD and Blu-ray. The discs include high-def restorations of the 1954 film, as well as the 1956 Amercianized reworking, Godzilla, King of the Monsters. In true Criterion form, both discs are loaded with exhaustive special features.

The commentary track by Godzilla historian David Kalat is as entertaining as it is educational. Kalat, who literally wrote the book on Godzilla films, runs us through the history of the film, its creators, and how it single-handedly created the monster movie genre. He explains that while monster movies certainly existed before 1954 (The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms is heavily cited), none of them had an ounce of the impact of Godzilla – both in film and popular culture. Some of the most interesting aspects of the commentary track involve what was cut out for the Americanization of the film in 1956′s Godzilla, King of the Monsters. In his reworking for American audiences, director Terry Morse removed any trace of hydrogen bomb debate; anything that would bring back memories of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The set includes a high-def restoration of Godzilla, King of the Monsters, starring dreamboat Raymond Burr. It’s a highly chopped and screwed version of the 1954 Godzilla, with Burr added as an American, pipe-chomping journalist who’s inserted at key moments – his role frequently involves peering over the shoulders of Japanese civilians as they observe the destruction left behind by Godzilla. During the famous first appearance of the monster on Odo Island, Burr stands his ground while all the Japanese run like hell. Americans are WAY more brave than Japanese!!! It’s sly film trickery and watching the two films back-to-back is pretty amusing.

The set includes interviews with two of the most essential forces on Godzilla‘s filmmaking team: the special effects crew of Koichi Kawakita, Yoshio Irie and Eizo Kaimai. They go over some of the films photographic effects like the seamless use of matte painting and construction of the Godzilla suit. Some of the effects look incredible flimsy and dated (centuries of technology advancement will do that to an older film) but the matte effects remain flawless. Other special features include interviews with actors Akira Takarada and Haruo Nakajima, interview with composer Akira Ifkube, an interview with Japanese film critic Tadao Sato, and “The Unluckiest Dragon,” a fantastic audio essay describing the tragedy of the fishing vessel Diago Fukuryu Maru, the infamous real-life event that brought radiation awareness to the world and helped inspire Godzilla.

As always, the Criterion’s transfer is painstakingly terrific. As I learned listening to Kalat’s commentary, the film used to shoot Godzilla was extremely soft and fragile, and with all the double shooting they did for the superimposing effects, unfortunately there are some permanent scars that can’t be erased during restoration. However the wizards at Criterion were still able to eradicate thousands of instances of dirt, scratches, etc. I was too late to request a Blu-ray copy for review, but the standard DVD copy I got is crisp as hell.

The Criterion release of Godzilla is an event and destined to be one of the best genre releases of 2012. It should more than satisfy diehard fans and to see how diehard Godzilla fans really are, check out the debate over Criterion’s choice of artwork. It’s also a great crash-course for newcomers to the franchise. Collectors, don’t sleep on this release – available January 24th!

They’ve been Rango’ed! Rang oed! R-r-r-rango’ed. Ringer-o. ruh-rrr. In Park City to promote the very imminent Billion $ Movie, Tim & Eric were met with opposition from Robert Redford and company when they got rAnGo’Ed! The bastards. Using B$M as a launching pad for advertising for the DVD extras of Johnny Depp/Gore Verbinski animated film Rango, the festival organizers have replaced up to 75% of B$M with outtakes from Rango. Fuckers!

Though I’m going to go out on a really big limb here and guess that this might not be 100 percent truthful, I wouldn’t put it past Monsieurs Wareheim and Heidecker to go ahead and insert those scenes into the premiere screening because why the fuck not. Anything for the joke. T&E have been so adamant about this Rango’ing, both on TV, interviews, and their twitter that apparently the people behind Sundance are starting to get upset. #SHRIM!