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So the top headline today, when our homepage lit up this morning, was that Bennifer II tied the knot last night in the Carribean, along with a picture of a very angry-looking Jennifer Garner that was honest-to-God clipped from a scene of Alias. That's so fucking funny. And just when we thought our day couldn't get any better, the following headline was the top news item from IMDB.com today (how great is this?):
Well, despite its wildly stupid name, it turns out Rescue Me is actually a really good show. That Denis Leary, he writes a heckuva cable TV drama. It seems growing up really did him some good, as his knack for spot-on black comedy drenched in dramatic ennui and neuroses is quite spot-on. Sure, it's no West Wing, but it's damn close.
In other news, we've decided to make it our mission to use the phrase "Brangelina" in every conversation we have today. As in: "Hey, George Bush said last night that the Iraq strategy is working." Answer: "Yeah, but it's not true, and it hasn't been true for awhile. They're totally pulling a Brangelina." Another phrase ripe for insertion: "That's so Conor Oberst-y."
PLanetarium has again finished realigning its corporate offices, hopefully for the last time until the end of summer. This headache has caused us to miss posting the kinds of helpful, to-the-point, Scientology-infused reviews we usually provide on this site. Things like Batman Begins (loved it), Land of the Dead (humorously great but not essential), and Mr. and Mrs. Smith (mmmmm, Brangelicious!). Also to check out: Nanny 911, a show which is almost too entertaining to be believed. Although it gets extremely irritating when they show the same clips over and over again, even when it IS a clip of a five-year-old putting his fist through a wall, or jumping off the top of the stairs and landing on his four-year-old brother. Damn, that's good TV.
Also- is it just us, or has American interest in politics this summer been eaten away like Chevy Chase's liver?
That's right! Break out the party favors, because it's D-Day! Oh yeah, good times! It's Dead-Day! That is, LAND OF THE DEAD!!!!! The grand master of the zombie movies himself, George Romero, comes out of self-imposed exile to show all these johnny-come-latelys how it's really done. You're a fool if you don't see this. We don't care if you don't like scary movies. This is not "a scary movie." This is the man who made Night of the Living Dead. Dawn of the Dead. Day of the Dead. This is the king. These are not just movies, these are debates, philosophies, satires, politics, everything and everything wrapped into one. Oh yeah- and there's zombies.
Alright, folks, there is a funny talkback debate over at Ain't It Cool right now regarding a movie that has inspired more vitriol than you'd think possible, Saw. As one of the folks who fall on the side of defending this very entertaining little movie, it's fun to watch the nerds argue about it on two completely different levels, much as the people who hate this film seem to be demanding something completely different out of their movies than PLanetarium thinks movies like this offer: namely, realism, "real-life" dialogue, "believability" (in a slasher film, natch), "serious" acting, so on and so forth. As one of the talk-backers delightedly points out: "Danny Glover has 3 Oscar nominations and a slew of street cred. Do you honestly think he didn't consciously choose to start hamming it up when he read lines like "I'ma getcha, ooh, boy, I'ma getcha!"
So Planetarium's moving again. Moving sucks, as anyone who has lived to the age of early twenties and has lugged their respective crap to and from a variety of ever-evolving pads can attest to. Especially since, as you may note, Planetarium just moved about two weeks ago. Yeah, the new digs didn't work out so well. After Planetarium was informed that we would have to wipe down the bathtub after every shower in order to ensure that "nothing ever looked dirty", we realized that, hmmmmmm, maybe this isn't gonna work out. So, much like a deep-sea diver itching to ply their trade, we're abandoning ship as early as possible, which sadly means another two weeks of god-knows-where we'll be before entering our next "new digs". Oh, the ennui, the terrible ennui. Perhaps we'll just head over to Liquor Lyle's until we can go home with a creepy forty-year-old.
Remember the educational PSAs at the end of every G.I. Joe cartoon, where one of the "team" would impart some wordly wisdom to some kids, like a weird militaristic homoerotic version of "One to grow on"? Well, this genius over at FenslerFilm.com has done the ol' re-working of these shorts, and Planetarium happens to find them rather funny. His own site got busted by the copyright police, but he gleefully points you in the direction of the many, many ghost sites that still host the 'toons. Check it out.
So Planetarium caught the new film High Tension this past weekend. We wanted to support it because, hey, foreign film getting wide release in America, trying to trick American audiences into going to see a French film by having trailers where no one talks. How can you not support that, right? Unfortunately, the film that actually exists is one of the stinkier duds we've seen in quite some time. Badly overdubbed silly lesbo crazed killer all-in-her-mind fat French guy supposed to be scary but isn't slasher, all combined in a big silly swirl. We know, we know- it sounds like it should be awesome from that description. Sadly, the celluloid doesn't quite live up to its promise. So, until we start importing more actually GOOD movies from other countries (see: House of Flying Daggers, Kung Fu Hustle, Bad Education), Americans will understandably stay the hell away. Especially from overdubbing.
Time for Planetarium to let you all know about a little movie called Primer. For those folks not in the know, this little film, made for approximately $8,000 (don't laugh- we're serious), swept the floor with it's competition at Sundance, taking home the Grand Jury Prize. Now, it's out on DVD for your consideration. A fascinatingly well-crafted little piece of a mind-fuck that's not half as silly as it sounds and twice as good as its gimmicky premise. Worth seeing even if you're a big snob. Like so many of us are.
Darn Internet was supposed to be up and running three days ago, and here we are, stuck in the middle ages- or at least the late 80s- when we didn't have any home computer Internet action and were forced to visit libraries and the like. So, coming to you live from a nearby companies' computer, Planetarium is trying to get back in the game. We're visiting all the usual haunts for good stuff: Ain't It Cool, IMDB, Ifilm, so on and so forth, and we promise that we will soon be once again giving you great links to all the best reasons for the Internet to exist, namely, time-wasting crap. Also, we'll have a few movie and record reviews coming soon. Once we rejoin the Oughts. (It is the oughts, isn't it? It's not the "zeros" or something stupid, we assume.)
Planetarium didn't post much this past weekend, true, due to events entirely out of our control, such as imbibing wildly copious amounts of alcohol. But mainly, it was because our computers were down due to our moving our head offices a little ways down the road, in order to capitalize on a cheaper summer rent for Planetarium World Headquarters, Inc. This is a mere prelude to our fall move, however, which will likely knock us out of commission for several days, due to travel time and the fact we we are lame-os when it comes to moving into a new place. But something which is definitely NOT lame is ifilm.com, which has been entertaining us for several months now. In addition to being the place where you can find any great incidents on TV that you missed (they are the site we linked to for that Bright-Eyes-on-Leno clip as well as the Jon-Stewart-on-CNN beaut), if you can get past the large amounts of bland frat-boy-humor soft porn, there are great live TV moments you never would've known about, such as Kelsey Grammar falling off the stage when he was presenting at some gala. Which is sort of like a dream come true, in our opinion.